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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/31698-8.txt b/31698-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..21c55ca --- /dev/null +++ b/31698-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17266 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Nineteenth Century Literature +(1780-1895), by George Saintsbury + +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: A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895) + +Author: George Saintsbury + +Release Date: March 19, 2010 [EBook #31698] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + + +A HISTORY + +OF + +NINETEENTH CENTURY + +LITERATURE + +(1780-1895) + +BY + +GEORGE SAINTSBURY + +PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF +EDINBURGH + +_New York_ + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + +LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. + +1906 + +_All rights reserved_ + + +COPYRIGHT, 1896, +BY MACMILLAN AND CO. + +Set up and electrotyped, January, 1896. Reprinted October, +1896; August, 1898; September, 1899; April, 1902; March, 1904; +November, 1906. + +_Norwood Press_ +J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith +Norwood Mass. U.S.A. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In the execution of the present task (which I took over about two years +ago from hands worthier than mine, but then more occupied) some +difficulties of necessity occurred which did not present themselves to +myself when I undertook the volume of Elizabethan Literature, or to my +immediate predecessor in grappling with the period between 1660 and +1780. + +The most obvious and serious of these was the question, "What should be +done with living authors?" Independently of certain perils of selection +and exclusion, of proportion and of freedom of speech, I believe it will +be recognised by every one who has ever attempted it, that to mix +estimates of work which is done and of work which is unfinished is to +the last degree unsatisfactory. I therefore resolved to include no +living writer, except Mr. Ruskin, in this volume for the purpose of +detailed criticism, though some may be now and then mentioned in +passing. + +Even with this limitation the task remained a rather formidable one. +Those who are least disposed to overvalue literary work in proportion as +it approaches their own time will still acknowledge that the last +hundred and fifteen years are fuller furnished than either of the +periods of not very dissimilar length which have been already dealt +with. The proportion of names of the first, or of a very high second +class, is distinctly larger than in the eighteenth century; the bulk of +literary production is infinitely greater than in the Elizabethan time. +Further, save in regard to the earliest subsections of this period, Time +has not performed his office, beneficent to the reader but more +beneficent to the historian, of sifting and riddling out writers whom it +is no longer necessary to consider, save in a spirit of adventurous or +affectionate antiquarianism. I must ask the reader to believe me when I +say that many who do not appear here at all, or who are dismissed in a +few lines, have yet been the subjects of careful reading on my part. If +some exclusions (not due to mere oversight) appear arbitrary or unjust, +I would urge that this is not a Dictionary of Authors, nor a Catalogue +of Books, but a History of Literature; and that to mention everybody is +as impossible as to say everything. As I have revised the sheets the old +query has recurred to myself only too often, and sometimes in reference +to very favourite books and authors of my own. Where, it may be asked, +is Kenelm Digby and the _Broad Stone of Honour_? Where Sir Richard +Burton (as great a contrast to Digby as can well be imagined)? Where +Laurence Oliphant, who, but the other day, seemed to many clever men the +cleverest man they knew? Where John Foster, who provided food for the +thoughtful public two generations ago? Where Greville of the caustic +diaries, and his editor (latest deceased) Mr. Reeve, and Crabb Robinson, +and many others? Some of these and others are really _neiges d'antan_; +some baffle the historian in miniature by being rebels to brief and +exact characterisation; some, nay many, are simply crowded out. + +I must also ask pardon for having exercised apparently arbitrary +discretion in alternately separating the work of the same writer under +different chapter-headings, and grouping it with a certain disregard of +the strict limits of the chapter-heading itself. I think I shall obtain +this pardon from those who remember the advantage obtainable from a +connected view of the progress of distinct literary kinds, and that, +sometimes not to be foregone, of considering the whole work of certain +writers together. + +To provide room for the greater press of material, it was necessary to +make some slight changes of omission in the scheme of the earlier +volumes. The opportunity of considerable gain was suggested in the +department of extract--which obviously became less necessary in the case +of authors many of whom are familiar, and hardly any accessible with +real difficulty. Nor did it seem necessary to take up room with the +bibliographical index, the utility of which in my Elizabethan volume I +was glad to find almost universally recognised. This would have had to +be greatly more voluminous here; and it was much less necessary. With a +very few exceptions, all the writers here included are either kept in +print, or can be obtained without much trouble at the second-hand +bookshops. + +To what has thus been said as to the principles of arrangement it cannot +be necessary to add very much as to the principles of criticism. They +are the same as those which I have always endeavoured to maintain--that +is to say, I have attempted to preserve a perfectly independent, and, as +far as possible, a rationally uniform judgment, taking account of none +but literary characteristics, but taking account of all characteristics +that are literary. It may be, and it probably is, more and more +difficult to take achromatic views of literature as it becomes more and +more modern; it is certainly more difficult to get this achromatic +character, even where it exists, acknowledged by contemporaries. But it +has at least been my constant effort to attain it. + +In the circumstances, and with a view to avoid not merely repetition but +confusion and dislocation in the body of the book, I have thought it +better to make the concluding chapter one of considerably greater length +than the corresponding part of the Elizabethan volume, and to reserve +for it the greater part of what may be called connecting and +comprehensive criticism. In this will be found what may be not +improperly described from one point of view as the opening of the case, +and from another as its summing up--the evidence which justifies both +being contained in the earlier chapters. + +It is perhaps not improper to add that the completion of this book has +been made a little difficult by the incidence of new duties, not in +themselves unconnected with its subject. But I have done my best to +prevent or supply oversight. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER I + +THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + +PAGE + + The Starting-point--Cowper--Crabbe--Blake--Burns--Minor + Poets--The Political Satirists--Gifford--Mathias--Dr. Moore, + etc.--Paine--Godwin--Holcroft--Beckford, etc.--Mrs. + Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis--Hannah More--Gilpin 1 + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NEW POETRY + + Wordsworth--Coleridge--Southey--Scott--Byron--Shelley--Keats-- + Rogers--Campbell--Moore--Leigh Hunt--Hogg--Landor--Minor + Poets born before Tennyson--Beddoes--Sir Henry Taylor--Mrs. + Hemans and L, E. L.--Hood and Praed 49 + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE NEW FICTION + + Interval--Maturin--Miss Edgeworth--Miss Austen--The _Waverley + Novels_--Hook--Bulwer--Dickens--Thackeray--Marryat--Lever--Minor + Naval Novelists--Disraeli--Peacock--Borrow--Miss + Martineau--Miss Mitford 125 + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS. + + New Periodicals at the beginning of the + Century--Cobbett--The _Edinburgh Review_--Jeffrey--Sydney + Smith--The _Quarterly_--_Blackwood's_ and the _London + Magazines_--Lamb--Hazlitt--Wilson--Lockhart--De + Quincey--Leigh Hunt--Hartley Coleridge--Maginn and + _Fraser_--Sterling and the Sterling Club--Edward + FitzGerald--Barham 166 + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY + + Occasional + Historians--Hallam--Roscoe--Mitford--Lingard--Turner-- + Palgrave--The Tytlers--Alison--Milman--Grote and + Thirlwall--Arnold--Macaulay--Carlyle--Minor + Figures--Buckle--Kinglake--Freeman and Green--Froude 211 + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD + + Tennyson--Mr. and Mrs. Browning--Matthew Arnold--The + Prę-Raphaelite Movement--Rossetti--Miss + Rossetti--O'Shaughnessy--Thomson--Minor Poets--Lord + Houghton--Aytoun--The Spasmodics--Minor + Poets--Clough--Locker--The Earl of Lytton--Humorous + Verse-Writers--Poetesses 253 + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE NOVEL SINCE 1850 + + Changes in the Novel--Miss Brontė--George Eliot--Charles + Kingsley--The Trollopes--Reade--Minor Novelists--Stevenson 317 + + +CHAPTER VIII + +PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY + + Limits of this and following Chapters--Bentham-- + Mackintosh--The Mills--Hamilton and the Hamiltonians-- + Mansel--Other Philosophers--Jurisprudents: + Austin, Maine, Stephen--Political Economists and + Malthus--The Oxford Movement--Pusey--Keble--Newman--The + Scottish Disruption--Chalmers--Irving--Other + Divines--Maurice--Robertson 342 + + +CHAPTER IX + +LATER JOURNALISM AND CRITICISM IN ART AND LETTERS + + Changes in Periodicals--The _Saturday Review_--Critics of + the middle of the Century--Helps--Matthew Arnold in + Prose--Mr. Ruskin--Jefferies--Pater--Symonds--Minto 378 + + +CHAPTER X + +SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE + + Increasing Difficulty of + Selection--Porson--Conington--Munro--Sellar--Robertson + Smith--Davy--Mrs. Somerville--Other Scientific Writers-- + Darwin--_Vestiges of Creation_--Hugh Miller--Huxley 404 + + +CHAPTER XI + +DRAMA + + Weakness of this department throughout--O'Keefe--Joanna + Baillie--Knowles--Bulwer--Planché 417 + + +CHAPTER XII + +CONCLUSION + + Survey and Analysis of the Period in the several + divisions--Revolutions in Style--The present state of + Literature 425 + + +INDEX 471 + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + + +The period of English literary history which is dealt with in the +opening part of the present volume includes, of necessity, among its +most illustrious names, not a few whose work will not be the subject of +formal discussion here, because the major part of it was done within the +scope of the volume which preceded. Thus, to mention only one of these +names, the most splendid displays of Burke's power--the efforts in which +he at last gave to mankind what had previously been too often devoted to +party--date from this time, and even from the later part of it; while +Gibbon did not die till 1794, and Horace Walpole not till 1797. Even +Johnson, the type and dictator at once of the eighteenth century in +literary England, survived the date of 1780 by four years. + +Nevertheless the beginning of the ninth decade of the century did +actually correspond with a real change, a real line of demarcation. Not +only did the old writers drop off one by one, not only did no new +writers of utterly distinct idiosyncrasy (Burns and Blake excepted) make +their appearance till quite the end of it, but it was also marked by the +appearance of men of letters and of literary styles which announced, if +not very distinctly, the coming of changes of the most sweeping kind. +Hard as it may be to exhibit the exact contrast between, say, Goldsmith +and men like Cowper on the one side and Crabbe on the other, that +contrast cannot but be felt by every reader who has used himself in the +very least to the consideration of literary differences. And as with +individuals, so with kinds. No special production of these twenty years +may be of the highest value; but there is a certain idiosyncrasy, if +only an idiosyncrasy of transition--an unlikeness to anything that comes +before, and to anything, unless directly imitated, that comes +after--which is equally distinguishable in the curious succession of +poetical satires from Peter Pindar to the _Anti-Jacobin_, in the +terror-and-mystery novels of the school of Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk +Lewis, in the large, if not from the literary point of view extremely +noteworthy, department of politics and economics which in various ways +employed the pens of writers so different as Moore, Young, Godwin, +Priestley, Horne, Tooke, Cobbett, and Paine. + +Giving poetry, as usual, the precedence even in the most unpoetical +periods, we shall find in the four names already cited--those of Crabbe, +Cowper, Blake, and Burns--examples of which even the most poetical +period need not be ashamed. In what may be called the absolute spirit of +poetry, the _nescio quid_ which makes the greatest poets, no one has +ever surpassed Burns and Blake at their best; though the perfection of +Burns is limited in kind, and the perfection of Blake still more limited +in duration and sustained force. Cowper would have been a great poet of +the second class at any time, and in some times might have attained the +first. As for Crabbe, he very seldom has the absolute spirit of poetry +just mentioned; but the vigour and the distinction of his verse, as well +as his wonderful faculty of observation in rendering scene and +character, are undeniable. And it is not perhaps childish to point out +that there is something odd and out of the way about the poetical career +of all these poets of the transition. Cowper's terrible malady postpones +his first efforts in song to an age when most poets are losing their +voices; Crabbe, beginning brilliantly and popularly, relapses into a +silence of nearly a quarter of a century before breaking out with +greater power and skill than ever; Burns runs one of the shortest, if +one of the most brilliant, Blake one of the longest, the strangest, the +most intermittent, of poetical careers. Nor is it superfluous to draw +attention further to the fact that when we leave this little company--at +the best august, at the worst more than respectable--we drop suddenly to +the flattest and most hopeless bog of poesiless verse that lies anywhere +on the map of England's literature. Passing from the ethereal music of +the Scottish ploughman and the English painter, from Cowper's noble or +gentle thought and his accomplished versification, from Crabbe's manly +vigour and his Rembrandt touch, we find nothing, unless it be the +ingenious but not strictly poetical burlesque of the Wolcots and the +Lawrences, till we come to the drivel of Hayley and the drought of +Darwin. + +Of the quartette, William Cowper was by far the oldest; the other three +being contemporaries within a few years. He was born on 26th November +1731 at Great Berkhampstead. His father was a clergyman and a royal +chaplain, his mother one of the Norfolk Donnes. Her early death, and +that school discomfort which afterwards found vent in _Tirocinium_, +appear to have aggravated a natural melancholia; though after leaving +Westminster, and during his normal studies at both branches of the law, +he seems to have been cheerful enough. How what should have been the +making of his fortune,--his appointment as Clerk of the Journals to the +House of Lords,--not unassisted by religious mania, drove him through +sheer nervousness to attempt suicide, is one of the best known things in +English literary biography, as indeed are most of the few events of his +sad life,--owing partly to his own charming letters, partly to the +biographies of Southey and others. His latest days were his unhappiest, +and after years of more or less complete loss of reason he died on 27th +April 1800. + +It has been said that Cowper did not take to writing till late in life. +He had had literary friends--Churchill, Lloyd, and others--in youth, and +must always have had literary sympathies; but it was not till he was +nearly fifty, nor till the greater part of twenty years after his first +mental seizure, that he attempted composition at the instance of his +friend Newton and the Unwins. Beginning with hymns and trifles, he +before long undertook, at this or that person's suggestion, longer +poems, such as _Truth_, _The Progress of Error_, and _Expostulation_, +which were finished by 1781 and published next year, to be followed by +the still better and more famous _Task_, suggested to him by Lady +Austen. This appeared in 1785, and was very popular. He had already +begun to translate Homer, which occupied him for the greater part of +seven years. Nothing perhaps settled him more in the public affections +than "John Gilpin," the subject of which he also owed to Lady Austen; +and he continued to write occasional pieces of exquisite accomplishment. +Almost the last, if not actually the last, of these, written just before +the final obscuration of his faculties, was the beautiful and terrible +"Castaway," an avowed allegory of his own condition. + +Cowper, even more than most writers, deserves and requites consideration +under the double aspect of matter and form. In both he did much to alter +the generally accepted conditions of English poetry; and if his formal +services have perhaps received less attention than they merit, his +material achievements have never been denied. His disposition--in which, +by a common enough contrast, the blackest and most hopeless melancholy +was accompanied by the merriest and most playful humour--reflected +itself unequally in his verse, the lighter side chiefly being exhibited. +Except in "The Castaway," and a few--not many--of the hymns, Cowper is +the very reverse of a gloomy poet. His amiability, however, could also +pass into very strong moral indignation, and he endeavoured to give +voice to this in a somewhat novel kind of satire, more serious and +earnest than that of Pope, much less political and personal than that of +Dryden, lighter and more restrained than that of the Elizabethans. His +own unworldly disposition, together with the excessively retired life +which he had led since early manhood, rather damaged the chances of +Cowper as a satirist. We always feel that his censure wants actuality, +that it is an exercise rather than an experience. His efforts in it, +however, no doubt assisted, and were assisted by, that alteration of +the fashionable Popian couplet which, after the example partly of +Churchill and with a considerable return to Dryden, he attempted, made +popular, and handed on to the next generation to dis-Pope yet further. +This couplet, paralleled by a not wholly dissimilar refashioning of +blank verse, in which, though not deserting Milton, he beat out for +himself a scheme quite different from Thomson's, perhaps show at their +best in the descriptive matter of _The Task_ and similar poems. It was +in these that Cowper chiefly displayed that faculty of "bringing back +the eye to the object" and the object to the eye, in which he has been +commonly and justly thought to be the great English restorer. Long +before the end of the Elizabethan period, poetical observation of nature +had ceased to be just; and, after substituting for justness the wildest +eccentricities of conceit, it went for a long time into another +extreme--that of copying and recopying certain academic +conventionalities, instead of even attempting the natural model. It is +not true, as Wordsworth and others have said, that Dryden himself could +not draw from the life. He could and did; but his genius was not +specially attracted to such drawing, his subjects did not usually call +for it, and his readers did not want it. It is not true that Thomson +could not "see"; nor is it true of all his contemporaries and immediate +followers that they were blind. But the eighteenth century had slipped +into a fault which was at least as fatal as that of the +Idealist-Impressionists of the seventeenth, or as that of the +Realist-Impressionists of our own time. The former neglected +universality in their hunt after personal conceits; the latter neglect +it in the endeavour to add nothing to rigidly elaborated personal +sensation. The one kind outstrips nature; the other comes short of art. +From Dryden to Cowper the fault was different from both of these. It +neglected the personal impression and the attention to nature too much. +It dared not present either without stewing them in a sauce of stock +ideas, stock conventions, stock words and phrases, which equally missed +the universal and the particular. Cowper and the other great men who +were his contemporaries by publication if not by birth, set to work to +cure this fault. Even the weakest of them could never have been guilty +of such a passage as that famous one which Congreve (as clever a man as +any) wrote, and which Johnson (as clever a man as any) admired. The +sentiment which actuated them was, if we may trust Coleridge's account +of Boyer or Bowyer, the famous tyrant of Christ's Hospital, well +diffused. "'Nymph,' boy? You mean your nurse's daughter," puts in a +somewhat brutal and narrow form the correction which the time needed, +and which these four in their different ways applied. + +We have already glanced at the way in which Cowper applied it in his +larger poems: he did it equally well, and perhaps more tellingly, in his +smaller. The day on which a poet of no mean pretensions, one belonging +altogether to the upper classes of English society, and one whose lack +of university education mattered the less because the universities were +just then at their nadir, dared to write of the snake he killed + + "And taught him never to come there no more" + +was an epoch-making day. Swift would have done it; but Swift was in many +ways a voice crying in the wilderness, and Swift was not, strictly +speaking, a poet at all. Byrom would have done it; but Byrom was +emphatically a minor poet. Cowper could--at least in and for his +day--boast the major afflatus, and Cowper did not disdain vernacular +truth. He never could have been vulgar; there is not in the whole range +of English literature quite such a gentleman in his own way as Cowper. +But he has escaped almost entirely from the genteel style--from the +notion of things as below the dignity of literature. + +His prose in this respect is at least equal to his verse, though, as it +was known much later, it has greater tendency than influence. All good +critics have agreed that his letters are not surpassed, perhaps not +surpassable. He has more freedom than Gray; he has none of the coxcombry +of Walpole and Byron; and there is no fifth name that can be put even +into competition with him. Ease, correctness, facility of expression, +freedom from convention within his range, harmony, truth to nature, +truth to art:--these things meet in the hapless recluse of Olney as they +had not met for a century--perhaps as they had never met--in English +epistles. The one thing that he wanted was strength: as his madness was +melancholy, not raving, so was his sanity mild but not triumphant. + +George Crabbe was three and twenty years younger than Cowper, having +been born on Christmas Eve 1754. But his first publication, _The +Library_, the success of which was due to the generous and quick-sighted +patronage of Burke after the poet had wrestled with a hard youth, +coincided almost exactly with the first appearance of Cowper, and indeed +a little anticipated it. _The Village_ appeared in 1783, and _The +Newspaper_ in 1785, and then Crabbe (who had taken orders, had been +instituted to livings in the East of England, and had married, after a +long engagement, his first love) was silent for two and twenty years. He +began again in 1807 with _The Parish Register_. _The Borough_, his +greatest work, appeared in 1810. Shifting from the East of England to +the West in 1813, he spent the last twenty years of his long life at +Trowbridge in Wiltshire, and died in 1832 at the age of seventy-eight. + +The external (and, as will be presently remarked, something more than +the external) uniformity of his work is great, and its external +conformity to the traditions and expectations of the time at which it +first appeared is almost greater. A hasty judgment, and even one which, +though not hasty, is not very keen-sighted, might see little difference +between Crabbe and any poet from Pope to Goldsmith except the +innovators. He is all but constant to the heroic couplet--the Spenserian +introduction to _The Birth of Flattery_, the variously-grouped +octosyllabic quatrains of _Reflections_, _Sir Eustace Grey_, _The Hall +of Justice_, and _Woman_, with a few other deviations, being merely +islets among a wide sea of rhymed decasyllabics constituting at least +nineteen-twentieths of the poet's outpouring. Moreover, he was as a rule +constant, not merely to the couplet, but to what has been called the +"shut" couplet--the couplet more or less rigidly confined to itself, +and not overlapping. But he did sometimes overlap, and either in fealty +to Dryden, or from a secret feeling of the craving for freedom which his +more lawless contemporaries expressed in other ways, he reverted to the +Drydenian triplet and Alexandrine on which Pope had frowned. In Crabbe's +couplet, too, there is something which distinguishes it from almost all +others. This something varies very much in appeal. It is sometimes, nay, +too often, a rather ludicrous something, possessing a sort of awkward +prosaic "flop," which is excellently caricatured in _Rejected +Addresses_. But it always shows signs of a desire to throw the emphasis +with more variation than the icy uniformity of the Popian cadence +admitted; and it is sometimes curiously effective. + +Crabbe's position, independently of the strange gap in his publication +(which has been variously accounted for), is not a little singular. The +greater and the better part of his work was composed when the Romantic +revival was in full swing, but it shows little or no trace of the +influence of that revival in versification or diction. His earliest +attempts do indeed show the same reaction from Pope to Dryden (of whom +we know that he was an eager student) which is visible in Cowper and +Churchill; and throughout his work, both earlier and later, there is a +ruthless discarding of conventional imagery and a stern attention to the +realities of scenery and character. But Crabbe has none of the Grace of +the new dispensation, if he has some glimpses of its Law. He sails so +close to the wind of poetry that he is sometimes merely prosaic and +often nearly so. His conception of life is anti-idealist almost to +pessimism, and he has no fancy. The "jewels five words long" are not +his: indeed there clung to him a certain obscurity of expression which +Johnson is said to have good-naturedly smoothed out in his first work to +some extent, but from which he never got quite free. The extravagances +as well as the graces of the new poetry were quite alien from him; its +exotic tastes touched him not; its love for antiquity (though he knew +old English poetry by no means ill) seems to have left him wholly cold. +The anxieties and sufferings of lower and middle-class life, the +"natural death of love" (which, there seems some reason to fear, he had +experienced), the common English country scenery and society of his +time--these were his subjects, and he dealt with them in a fashion the +mastery of which is to this day a joy to all competent readers. No +writer of his time had an influence which so made for truth pure and +simple, yet not untouched by the necessary "disprosing" processes of +art. For Crabbe is not a mere realist; and whoso considers him as such +has not apprehended him. But he was a realist to this extent, that he +always went to the model and never to the pattern-drawing on the Academy +walls. And that was what his time needed. His general characteristics +are extremely uniform: even the external shape and internal +subject-matter of his poems are almost confined to the shape and matter +of the verse-tale. He need not, and indeed cannot, in a book like this, +be dealt with at much length. But he is a very great writer, and a most +important figure at this turning-point of English literature. + +Yet, however one may sympathise with Cowper, however much one may admire +Crabbe, it is difficult for any true lover of poetry not to feel the +sense of a "Pisgah sight," and something more, of the promised land of +poetry, in passing from these writers to William Blake and Robert Burns. +Here there is no more allowance necessary, except in the first case for +imperfection of accomplishment, in the second for shortness of life and +comparative narrowness of range. The quality and opportuneness of poetry +are in each case undeniable. Since the deaths of Herrick and Vaughan, +England had not seen any one who had the finer lyrical gifts of the poet +as Blake had them. Since the death of Dunbar, Scotland had not seen such +strength and intensity of poetic genius (joined in this case to a gift +of melody which Dunbar never had) as were shown by Burns. There was +scarcely more than a twelvemonth between their births; for Blake was +born in 1757 (the day appears not to be known), and Burns in January +1759. But Blake long outlived Burns, and did not die till 1828, while +Burns was no more in July 1796. Neither the long life nor the short one +provided any events which demand chronicling here. Both poets were +rather fortunate in their wives, though Blake clave to Catherine Boucher +more constantly than Burns to his Jean. Neither was well provided with +this world's goods; Burns wearing out his short life in difficulties as +farmer and as excise-man, while all the piety of biographers has left it +something of a mystery how Blake got through his long life with no +better resources than a few very poorly paid private commissions for his +works of design, the sale of his hand-made books of poetry and prophecy, +and such occasional employment in engraving as his unconventional style +and his still more unconventional habits and temper allowed him to +accept or to keep. In some respects the two were different enough +according to commonplace standards, less so perhaps according to others. +The forty years of Burns, and the more than seventy of Blake, were +equally passed in a rapture; but morality has less quarrel with Blake, +who was essentially a "God-intoxicated man" and spent his life in one +long dream of art and prophecy, than with Burns, who was generally in +love, and not unfrequently in liquor. But we need no more either of +antithesis or of comparison: the purely literary matter calls us. + +It was in 1783--a date which, in its close approximation to the first +appearances of Crabbe and Cowper, makes the literary student think of +another group of first appearances in the early "eighties" of the +sixteenth century foreshadowing the outburst of Elizabethan +literature--that Blake's first book appeared. His _Poetical Sketches_, +now one of the rarest volumes of English poetry, was printed by +subscription among a literary coterie who met at the house of Mr. and +Mrs. Mathew; but the whole edition was given to the author. He had +avowedly taken little or no trouble to correct it, and the text is +nearly as corrupt as that of the _Supplices_; nor does it seem that he +took any trouble to make it "go off," nor that it did go off in any +appreciable manner. Yet if many ears had then been open to true poetical +music, some of them could not have mistaken sounds the like of which +had not, as has been said, been heard since the deaths of Herrick and +Vaughan. The merit of the contents is unequal to a degree not to be +accounted for by the mere neglect to prepare carefully for press, and +the influence of _Ossian_ is, as throughout Blake's work, much more +prominent for evil than for good. But the chaotic play of _Edward the +Third_ is not mere Elizabethan imitation; and at least half a dozen of +the songs and lyrical pieces are of the most exquisite quality--snatches +of Shakespeare or Fletcher as Shakespeare or Fletcher might have written +them in Blake's time. The finest of all no doubt is the magnificent "Mad +Song." But others--"How sweet I roamed from Field to Field" (the most +eighteenth century in manner, but showing how even that manner could be +strengthened and sweetened); "My Silks and Fine Array," beautiful, but +more like an Elizabethan imitation than most; "Memory Hither Come," a +piece of ineffable melody--these are things which at once showed Blake +to be free of the very first company of poets, to be a poet who for real +essence of poetry excelled everything the century had yet seen, and +everything, with the solitary exception of the _Lyrical Ballads_ at its +extreme end, that it was to see. + +Unfortunately it was not by any means as a poet that Blake regarded +himself. He knew that he was an artist, and he thought that he was a +prophet; and for the rest of his life, deviating only now and then into +engraving as a mere breadwinner, he devoted himself to the joint +cultivation of these two gifts, inventing for the purpose a method or +vehicle of publication excellently suited to his genius, but in other +respects hardly convenient. This method was to execute text and +illustrations at once on copper-plates, which were then treated in +slightly different fashions. Impressions worked off from these by +hand-press were coloured by hand, Blake and his wife executing the +entire process. In this fashion were produced the lovely little gems of +literature and design called _Songs of Innocence_ (1789) and _Songs of +Experience_ (1794); in this way for the most part, but with some +modifications, the vast and formidable mass of the so-called +"Prophetic" Books. With the artistic qualities of Blake we are not here +concerned, but it is permissible to remark that they resemble his +literary qualities with a closeness which at once explains and is +explained by their strangely combined method of production. That Blake +was not entirely sane has never been doubted except by a few fanatics of +mysticism, who seem to think that the denial of complete sanity implies +a complete denial of genius. And though he was never, in the common +phrase, "incapable of managing" such very modest affairs as were his, +the defect appears most in the obstinate fashion in which he refused to +perfect and co-ordinate his work. He could, when he chose and would give +himself the trouble, draw quite exquisitely; and he always drew with +marvellous vigour and imagination. But he would often permit himself +faults of drawing quite inexplicable and not very tolerable. So, too, +though he had the finest gift of literary expression, he chose often to +babble and still oftener to rant at large. Even the _Songs of Innocence +and Experience_--despite their double charm to the eye and the ear, and +the presence of such things as the famous "Tiger," as the two +"Introductions" (two of Blake's best things), and as "The Little Girl +Lost"--show a certain poetical declension from the highest heights of +the _Poetical Sketches_. The poet is no longer a poet pure and simple; +he has got purposes and messages, and these partly strangle and partly +render turbid the clear and spontaneous jets of poetry which refresh us +in the "Mad Song" and the "Memory." And after the _Songs_ Blake did not +care to put forth anything bearing the ordinary form of poetry. We +possess indeed other poetical work of his, recovered in scraps and +fragments from MSS., and some of it is beautiful. But it is as a rule +more chaotic than the _Sketches_ themselves; it is sometimes defaced +(being indeed mere private jottings never intended for print) by +personality and coarseness; and it is constantly puddled with the jargon +of Blake's mystical philosophy, which, borrowing some of its method from +Swedenborg and much of its imagery and nomenclature from _Ossian_, +spreads itself unhampered by any form whatever over the Prophetic +Books. The literary merit of these in parts is often very high, and +their theosophy (for that is the best single word for it) is not seldom +majestic. But despite the attempts of some disciples to evolve a regular +system from them, students of philosophy as well as of literature are +never likely to be at much odds as to their real character. "Ravings" +they are not, and they are very often the reverse of "nonsense." But +they are the work of a man who in the first place was very slightly +acquainted with the literature and antecedents of his subject, who in +the second was distinctly _non compos_ on the critical, though admirably +gifted on the creative side of his brain, and who in the third had the +ill luck to fall under the fullest sway of the Ossianic influence. To +any one who loves and admires Blake--and the present writer deliberately +ranks him as the greatest and most delectable poet of the eighteenth +century proper in England, reserving Burns as specially Scotch--it must +always be tempting to say more of him than can be allowed on such a +scale as the present; but the scale must be observed. + +There is all the more reason for the observance that Blake exercised on +the literary _history_ of his time no influence, and occupied in it no +position. He always had a few faithful friends and patrons who kept him +from starvation by their commissions, admired him, believed in him, and +did him such good turns as his intensely independent and rather +irritable disposition would allow. But the public had little opportunity +of seeing his pictures, and less of reading his books; and though the +admiration of Lamb led to some appreciation from Southey and others, he +was practically an unread man. This cannot be said of Robert Burns, who, +born as was said a year or two after Blake, made his first literary +venture three years after him, in 1786. Most people know that the +publication, now famous and costly, called "the Kilmarnock Edition," was +originally issued in the main hope of paying the poet's passage to +Jamaica after an unfortunate youth of struggle, and latterly of +dissipation. Nay, even after the appearance of the _Poems_ and their +welcome he still proposed to go abroad. He was summoned back to +Edinburgh to reprint them, to make a considerable profit by them, and to +be lionised without stint by the society of the Scottish capital. He +then settled down, marrying Jean Armour, at Ellisland in Dumfriesshire, +on a small farm and a post in the Excise, which, when his farming failed +and he moved to Dumfries itself, became his only regular means of +support. He might have increased this considerably by literature; but as +it was he actually gave away, or disposed of for trifling equivalents, +most of the exquisite songs which he wrote in his later years. These +years were unhappy. He hailed the French Revolution with a perfectly +innocent, because obviously ignorant, Jacobinism which, putting all +other considerations aside, was clearly improper in a salaried official +of the Crown, and thereby got into disgrace with the authorities, and +also with society in and about Dumfries. His habits of living, though +their recklessness has been vastly exaggerated, were not careful, and +helped to injure both his reputation and his health. Before long he +broke down completely, and died on the first of July 1796, his poetical +powers being to the very last in fullest perfection. + +Burns' work, which even in bulk--its least remarkable characteristic--is +very considerable when his short life and his unfavourable education and +circumstances are reckoned, falls at once into three sharply contrasted +sections. There are his poems in Scots; there are the verses that, in +obedience partly to the incompetent criticism of his time, partly to a +very natural mistake of ambition and ignorance, he tried to write in +conventional literary English; and there is his prose, taking the form +of more or less studied letters. The second class of the poems is almost +worthless, and fortunately it is not bulky. The letters are of unequal +value, and have been variously estimated. They show indeed that, like +almost all poets, he might, if choice and fate had united, have become a +very considerable prose-writer, and they have immense autobiographic +value. But they are sometimes, and perhaps often, written as much in +falsetto as the division of verse just ruled out; their artificiality +does not take very good models; and their literary attraction is +altogether second-rate. How far different the value of the Scots poems +is, four generations have on the whole securely agreed. The moral +discomfort of Principal Shairp, the academic distaste of Mr. Matthew +Arnold for a world of "Scotch wit, Scotch religion, and Scotch drink," +and the purely indolent and ignorant reluctance of others to grapple +with Scottish dialect, need not trouble the catholic critic much. The +two first may be of some use as cautions and drags; the third may be +thrown aside at once. Scots, though a dialect, is not a patois; it has a +great and continuous literature; it combines in an extraordinary degree +the consonant virtues of English and the vowel range of the Latin +tongues. It is true that Burns' range of subject, as distinct from that +of sound, was not extremely wide. He could give a voice to +passion--passion of war, passion of conviviality, passion above all of +love--as none but the very greatest poets ever have given or will give +it; he had also an extraordinary command of _genre_-painting of all +kinds, ranging from the merely descriptive and observant to the most +intensely satirical. Perhaps he could only do these two things--could +not be (as he certainly has not been) philosophical, deeply meditative, +elaborately in command of the great possibilities of nature, political, +moral, argumentative. But what an "only" have we here! It amounts to +this, that Burns could "only" seize, could "only" convey the charms of +poetical expression to, the more primitive thought and feeling of the +natural man, and that he could do this supremely. His ideas are--to use +the rough old Lockian division--ideas of sensation, not of reflection; +and when he goes beyond them he is sensible, healthy, respectable, but +not deep or high. In his own range there are few depths or heights to +which he has not soared or plunged. + +That he owed a good deal to his own Scottish predecessors, especially to +Ferguson, is not now denied; and his methods of composing his songs are +very different from those which a lesser man, using more academic forms, +could venture upon without the certainty of the charge of plagiarism. We +shall never understand Burns aright if we do not grasp the fact that he +was a "folk-poet," into whom the soul of a poet of all time and all +space had entered. In all times and countries where folk-poetry has a +genuine existence, its forms and expressions are much less the property +of the individual than of the race. The business of collecting ballads +is one of the most difficult and doubtful, not to say dangerous, open to +the amateur. But it is certain that any collector who was not a mere +simpleton would at once reject as spurious a version which he heard in +identically the same terms from two different subjects. He would know +that they must have got it from a printed or at least written source. +Now Burns is, if not our only example, our only example of the very +first quality, of the poet who takes existing work and hands it on +shaped to his own fashion. Not that he was not perfectly competent to do +without any existing canvas; while, when he had it, he treated it +without the very slightest punctilio. Of some of the songs which he +reshaped into masterpieces for Johnson and Thomson he took no more than +the air and measure; of others only the refrain or the first few lines; +of others again stanzas or parts of stanzas. But everywhere he has +stamped the version with something of his own--something thenceforward +inseparable from it, and yet characteristic of him. In the expression of +the triumph and despair of love, not sicklied over with any thought as +in most modern poets, only Catullus and Sappho can touch Burns. "Green +grow the Rashes O," "Yestreen I had a Pint of Wine," the farewell to +Clarinda, and the famous death-bed verses to Jessie Lewars, make any +advance on them impossible in point of spontaneous and unreflecting +emotion; while a thousand others (the number is hardly rhetorical) come +but little behind. "Willie brew'd a Peck o' Maut" in the same way rides +sovereign at the head of a troop of Bacchanalian verses; and the touches +of rhetoric and convention in "Scots wha hae" cannot spoil, can hardly +even injure it. To some it really seems that the much praised lines "To +Mary in Heaven" and others where the mood is less boisterous, show Burns +at less advantage, not because the kind is inferior, but because he was +less at home in it; but it is almost impossible to praise too highly the +equally famous "Mouse," and some other things. It was in this tremendous +force of natural passion and affection, and in his simple observation of +common things, that Burns' great lesson for his age and country lay. +None even of the reformers had dared to be passionate as yet. In Cowper +indeed there was no passion except of religious despair, in Crabbe none +except that of a grim contemplation of the miseries and disappointments +of life, while although there was plenty of passion in Blake it had all +conveyed itself into the channel of mystical dreaming. It is a little +pathetic, and more than a little curious, to compare "The Star that +shines on Anna's Breast," the one approach to passionate expression of +Cowper's one decided love, with any one of a hundred outbursts of Burns, +sometimes to the very same name. + +The other division of the Poems, at the head of which stand _The Jolly +Beggars_, _Tam o' Shanter_, and _The Holy Fair_, exhibit an equal power +of vivid feeling and expression with a greater creative and observant +faculty, and were almost equally important as a corrective and +alterative to their generation. The age was not ill either at drama, at +manners-painting, or at satire; but the special kind of dramatic, +pictorial, and satiric presentation which Burns manifested was quite +unfamiliar to it and in direct contradiction to its habits and +crotchets. It had had a tendency to look only at upper and middle-class +life, to be conventional in its very indecorum, to be ironic, indirect, +parabolical. It admired the Dutch painters, it had dabbled in the +occult, it was Voltairian enough; but it had never dared to outvie +Teniers and Steen as in _The Jolly Beggars_, to blend naturalism and +_diablerie_ with the overwhelming _verve_ of _Tam o' Shanter_, to change +the jejune freethinking of two generations into an outspoken and +particular attack on personal hypocrisy in religion as in _Holy Willie's +Prayer_ and _The Holy Fair_. Even to Scotsmen, we may suspect (or rather +we pretty well know, from the way in which Robertson and Blair, Hume and +Mackenzie, write), this burst of genial racy humour from the _terrę +filius_ of Kilmarnock must have been somewhat startling; and it speaks +volumes for the amiable author of the _Man of Feeling_ that, in the very +periodical where he was wont to air his mild Addisonian hobbies, he +should have warmly commended the Ayrshire ploughman. + +In a period where we have so many great or almost great names to notice, +it cannot be necessary to give the weakest writers of its weakest part +more than that summary mention which is at once necessary and sufficient +to complete the picture of the literary movement of the time. And this +is more especially the case with reference to the minor verse of the end +of the eighteenth century. The earliest work of the really great men who +re-created English poetry, though in some cases chronologically _in_, is +not in the least _of_ it. For the rest, it would be almost enough to say +that William Hayley, the preface to whose _Triumphs of Temper_ is dated +January 1781, and therefore synchronised very closely with the literary +appearance of Cowper, Crabbe, and Blake, was one of the most +conspicuous, and remains one of the most characteristic of them. +Hayley's personal relations with the first and last of these +poets--relations which have kept and will keep his name in some measure +alive long after the natural death of his verse--were in both cases +conditioned by circumstances in a rather trying way, but were not +otherwise than creditable to him. His verse itself is impossible and +intolerable to any but the student of literary history, who knows that +all things are possible, and finds the realisation of all in its measure +interesting. The heights, or at least the average levels, of Hayley may +be fairly taken from the following quotation:-- + + Her lips involuntary catch the chime + And half articulate the soothing rhyme; + Till weary thought no longer watch can keep, + But sinks reluctant in the folds of sleep-- + +of which it can only be said that any schoolboy could write it; his not +infrequent depths from the couplet:-- + + Her airy guard prepares the softest down + From Peace's wing to line the nuptial crown. + +where the image of a guardian angel holding Peace with the firmness of +an Irish housewife, and plucking her steadily in order to line a nuptial +crown (which must have been a sort of sun-bonnet) with the down thereof, +will probably be admitted to be not easily surpassable. Of Hayley's +companions in song, I have been dispensed by my predecessor from +troubling myself with Erasmus Darwin, who was perhaps intellectually the +ablest of them, though the extreme absurdity of the scheme of his +_Botanic Garden_ brought him, as the representative of the whole school, +under the lash of the _Anti-Jacobin_ in never-dying lines. Darwin's +friend and townswoman, Anna Seward; Mrs. Barbauld, the author of the +noble lines, "Life, we've been long together"--the nobility of which is +rather in its sentiment than in its expression--and of much tame and +unimportant stuff; Merry, who called himself Della Crusca and gathered +round him the school of gosling imitators that drew on itself the lash +of Gifford; the Laureate Pye; and others who, less fortunate than the +victims of Canning and Frere, have suffered a second death in the +forgetting of the very satires in which they met their deserts, can be +barely named now. Two, however, may claim, if no great performance, a +remarkable influence on great performers. Dr. Sayers, a member of the +interesting Norwich school, directly affected Southey, and not Southey +only, by his unrhymed verse; while the sonnets of William Lisle Bowles, +now only to be read with a mild esteem by the friendliest critic most +conscious of the historic allowance, roused Coleridge to the wildest +enthusiasm and did much to form his poetic taste. To Bowles, and perhaps +to one or two others, we may find occasion to return hereafter. + +The satires, however, which have been more than once referred to in the +preceding paragraph, form a most important feature, and a perhaps almost +more important symptom, of the literary state of the time. They show, +indeed, that its weakness did not escape the notice of contemporaries; +but they also show that the very contemporaries who noticed it had +nothing better to give in the way of poetry proper than that which they +satirised. In fact, one of the chief of these satirists, Wolcot, has +left a considerable mass of not definitely satirical work which is +little if at all better than the productions of the authors he +lampooned. + +This very remarkable body of satirical verse, which extends from the +_Rolliad_ and the early satires of Peter Pindar at the extreme beginning +of our present time to the _Pursuits of Literature_ and the +_Anti-Jacobin_ towards its close, was partly literary and partly +political, diverging indeed into other subjects, but keeping chiefly to +these two and intermixing them rather inextricably. The _Pursuits of +Literature_, though mainly devoted to the subject of its title, is also +to a great extent political; the _Rolliad_ and the _Probationary Odes_, +intensely political, were also to no small extent literary. The chief +examples were among the most popular literary productions of the time; +and though few of them except the selected _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_ +are now read, almost all the major productions deserve reading. The +great defect of contemporary satire--that it becomes by mere lapse of +time unintelligible--is obviated to no small extent here by the crotchet +(rather fortunate, though sometimes a little tedious) which these +writers, almost without exception, had for elaborate annotation. Of the +chief of them, already indicated more than once by reference or +allusion, some account may be given. + +_The Rolliad_ is the name generally given for shortness to a collection +of political satires originating in the great Westminster election of +1784, when Fox was the Whig candidate. It derived its name from a +Devonshire squire, Mr. Rolle, who was a great supporter of Pitt; and, +with the _Political Eclogues_, the mock _Probationary Odes_ for the +laureateship (vacant by Whitehead's death), and the _Political +Miscellanies_, which closed the series, was directed against the young +Prime Minister and his adherents by a knot of members of Brooks' Club, +who are identified rather by tradition and assertion than by positive +evidence. Sheridan, Tierney, Burgoyne, Lord John Townshend, Burke's +brother Richard, and other public men probably or certainly contributed, +as did Ellis--afterwards to figure so conspicuously in the same way on +the other side. But the chief writers were a certain Dr. Lawrence, a +great friend of Burke, who was in a way the editor; Tickel, a descendant +of Addison's friend and a connection of the Sheridans; and another +Irishman named Fitzpatrick. The various "skits" of which the book or +series is composed show considerable literary skill, and there is a +non-political and extraneous interest in the fact that it contains some +_rondeaux_ believed to be the only, or almost the only, examples of that +form written in England between Cotton in the seventeenth century and +the revival of it not very many years ago. The fun is often very good +fun, and there is a lightness and brightness about the verse and +phrasing which had been little seen in English since Prior. But the tone +is purely personal; there are no principles at stake, and the book, +besides being pretty coarse in tone, is a sort of object lesson in the +merely intriguing style of politics which had become characteristic of +England under the great seventy years' reign of the Whigs. + +Coarseness and personality, however, are in the _Rolliad_ refined and +high-minded in comparison with the work of "Peter Pindar," which has the +redeeming merit of being even funnier, with the defect of being much +more voluminous and unequal. John Wolcot was a Devonshire man, born in +May 1738 at Kingsbridge, or rather its suburb Dodbrooke, in Devonshire. +He was educated as a physician, and after practising some time at home +was taken by Sir William Trelawney to Jamaica. Here he took orders and +received a benefice; but when he returned to England after Trelawney's +death he practically unfrocked himself and resumed the cure of bodies. +Although he had dabbled both in letters and in art, it was not till 1782 +that he made any name; and he did it then by the rather unexpected way +of writing poetical satires in the form of letters to the members of the +infant Royal Academy. From this he glided into satire of the political +kind, which, however, though he was a strong Whig and something more, +did not so much devote itself to the attack or support of either of the +great parties as to personal lampoons on the king, his family, and his +friends. Neither Charles the Second at the hands of Marvell, nor George +the Fourth at the hands of Moore, received anything like the steady fire +of lampoon which Wolcot for years poured upon the most harmless and +respectable of English monarchs. George the Third had indeed no +vices,--unless a certain parsimony may be dignified by that name,--but +he had many foibles of the kind that is more useful to the satirist than +even vice. Wolcot's extreme coarseness, his triviality of subject, and a +vulgarity of thought which is quite a different thing from either, are +undeniable. But _The Lousiad_ (a perfect triumph of cleverness expended +on what the Greeks called rhyparography), the famous pieces on George +and the Apple Dumplings and on the King's visit to Whitbread's Brewery, +with scores of other things of the same kind (the best of all, perhaps, +being the record of the Devonshire Progress), exhibit incredible +felicity and fertility in the lower kinds of satire. This satire Wolcot +could apply with remarkable width of range. His artistic satires (and it +must be admitted that he had not bad taste here) have been noticed. He +riddled the new devotion to physical science in the unlucky person of +Sir Joseph Banks; the chief of his literary lampoons, a thing which is +quite a masterpiece in its way, is his "Bozzy and Piozzi," wherein +Boswell and Mrs. Thrale are made to string in amoebean fashion the +most absurd or the most laughable of their respective reminiscences of +Johnson into verses which, for lightness and liveliness of burlesque +representation, have hardly a superior. Until the severe legislation +which followed the Jacobin terror in France cowed him, and to some +extent even subsequently, Wolcot maintained a sort of Ishmaelite +attitude, by turns attacking and defending himself against men of +eminence in literature and politics, after a fashion the savagery +whereof was excused sometimes by its courage and nearly always by an +exuberant good-humour which both here and elsewhere accompanies very +distinct ill-nature. His literary life in London covered about a quarter +of a century, after which, losing his sight, he retired once more to the +West, though he is said to have died at Somers Town in 1819. The best +edition of his works is in five good-sized volumes, but it is known not +to be complete. + +Both the _Rolliad_ men and Wolcot had been on the Whig, Wolcot almost on +the Republican side; and for some years they had met with no sufficient +adversaries, though Gifford soon engaged "Peter" on fairly equal terms. +The great revulsion of feeling, however, which the acts of the French +Revolution induced among Englishmen generally drew on a signal rally on +the Tory part. The _Anti-Jacobin_ newspaper, with Gifford as its editor, +and Canning, Ellis (now a convert), and Frere as its chief contributors, +not merely had at its back the national sentiment and the official +power, but far outstripped in literary vigour and brilliancy the +achievements of the other side. The famous collection above referred to, +_The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_, which has been again and again +reprinted, shows no signs of losing its attraction,--a thing almost +unparalleled in the case of satirical work nearly a century old. Its +very familiarity makes it unnecessary to dwell much on it, but it is +safe to say that nothing of the kind more brilliant has ever been +written, or is very likely ever to be written, than the parodies of +Southey's Sapphics and "Henry Martin" sonnet, the litany of the +Jacobins, French and English, the "skits" on Payne Knight and Darwin, +_The Rovers_,--mocking the new German sentimentalism and +medięvalism,--and the stately satire of "The New Morality,"--where, +almost alone, the writers become serious, and reach a height not +attained since Dryden. + +Gifford and Mathias differ from the others just mentioned in being less +directly political in writing and inspiration, though Gifford at least +was a strong politician. He was, like Wolcot, a Devonshire man, born at +Ashburton in 1757, and, as his numerous enemies and victims took care +often to remind him, of extremely humble birth and early breeding, +having been a shoemaker's apprentice. Attracting attention as a clever +boy, he was sent to Exeter College and soon attained to influential +patronage. To do him justice, however, he made his reputation by the +work of his own hand,--his satires of _The Baviad_, 1794, and _The +Męviad_ next year, attacking and pretty nearly extinguishing Merry and +his Della Cruscans, a set of minor bards and mutual admirers who had +infested the magazines and the libraries for some years.[1] The +_Anti-Jacobin_ and the editing of divers English classics put Gifford +still higher; and when the _Quarterly Review_ was established in +opposition to the _Edinburgh_, his appointment (1809) to the editorship, +which he held almost till his death (he gave it up in 1824 and died in +1826), completed his literary position. Gifford is little read nowadays, +and a name which was not a very popular one even on his own side during +his lifetime has, since the triumph of the politics and of some of the +literary styles which he opposed, become almost a byword for savage and +unfair criticism. The penalty of unfairness is usually and rightly paid +in kind, and Gifford has paid it very amply. The struggles of his youth +and lifelong ill-health no doubt aggravated a disposition at no time +very sweet; and the feuds of the day, both literary and political, were +apt to be waged, even by men far superior to Gifford in early and +natural advantages, with the extremest asperity and without too much +scruple. But Gifford is perhaps our capital example in English of a cast +of mind which is popularly identified with that of the critic, though in +truth nothing is more fatal to the attainment of the highest critical +competence. It was apparently impossible for him (as it has been, and, +it would seem, is for others,) to regard the author whom he was +criticising, the editor who had preceded him in his labours, or the +adversary with whom he was carrying on a polemic, as anything but a +being partly idiotic and partly villainous, who must be soundly scolded, +first for having done what he did, and secondly to prevent him from +doing it again. So ingrained was this habit in Gifford that he could +refrain from indulging it, neither in editing the essays of his most +distinguished contributors, nor in commenting on the work of these +contributors, outside the periodicals which he directed. Yet he was a +really useful influence in more ways than one. The service that he did +in forcibly suppressing the Della Cruscan nuisance is even yet admitted, +and there has been plentiful occasion, not always taken, for similar +literary _dragonnades_ since. And his work as an editor of English +classics was, blemishes of manner and temper excepted, in the main very +good work. + +Thomas James Mathias, the author of _The Pursuits of Literature_, was a +much nearer approach to the pedant pure and simple. For he did not, like +Gifford, redeem his rather indiscriminate attacks on contemporaries by a +sincere and intelligent devotion to older work; and he was, much more +than Gifford, ostentatious of such learning as he possessed. Accordingly +the immense popularity of his only book of moment is a most remarkable +sign of the times. De Quincey, who had seen its rise and its fall, +declares that for a certain time, and not a very short one, at the end +of the last century and the beginning of this, _The Pursuits of +Literature_ was the most popular book of its own day, and as popular as +any which had appeared since; and that there is not very much hyperbole +in this is proved by its numerous editions, and by the constant +references to it in the books of the time. Colman, who was one of +Mathias' victims, declared that the verse was a "peg to hang the notes +on"; and the habit above referred to certainly justified the gibe to no +small extent. If the book is rather hard reading nowadays (and it is +certainly rather difficult to recognise in it even the "demon of +originality" which De Quincey himself grants rather grudgingly as an +offset to its defects of taste and scholarship), it is perhaps chiefly +obscured by the extreme desultoriness of the author's attacks and the +absence of any consistent and persistent target. Much that Mathias +reprehends in Godwin and Priestley, in Colman and Wolcot, and a whole +crowd of lesser men, is justifiably censured; much that he lays down is +sound and good enough. But the whole--which, after the wont of the time, +consists of several pieces jointed on to each other and all flooded with +notes--suffers from the twin vices of negation and divagation. Indeed, +its chief value is that, both by its composition and its reception, it +shows the general sense that literature was not in a healthy state, and +that some renaissance, some reaction, was necessary. + +The prominence of the French Revolution, which has already appeared more +than once in the above account of late eighteenth century poetry, is +still more strongly reflected in the prose writing of the period. +Indeed, many of its principal writers devoted their chief attention +either to describing, to attacking, or to defending the events and +principles of this portentous phenomenon. The chief of them were John +Moore, Arthur Young, Helen Maria Williams, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, +Richard Price, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Holcroft. Of these Price, +a veteran who had nearly reached his sixtieth year when our period +commences, chiefly belongs to literature as an antagonist of Burke, as +does Priestley, whose writing was very extensive, but who was as much +more a "natural philosopher" than a man of letters as Price was much +less a man of letters than a moralist and a statistician. Both, +moreover, have been mentioned in the preceding volume, and it is not +necessary to say much about them, or about John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), +philologist and firebrand. + +Of the others something may, and in some cases not a little must, +appear. Dr. John Moore, sometimes called "Zeluco" Moore (from his most +popular book), and father of the general who fell at Corunna, was born +at Stirling in the winter of 1729-30. Studying medicine at Glasgow, he +was apprenticed (as Smollett had been earlier) to Dr. John Gordon, and +entered the army as surgeon's mate for the Laufeldt campaign. He then +lived two years in Paris, perfecting himself in medicine, after which he +established himself in Glasgow. After many years' practice there, he +accompanied the young Duke of Hamilton on various travels through +Europe, and in 1778 settled in London. This was his headquarters for the +rest of his life, till his death at Richmond on 21st January 1803. The +chief interruption to his residence there was his memorable journey with +Lord Lauderdale to Paris in the latter half of 1792, which resulted in +one of the most vivid and trustworthy accounts by an eyewitness of the +opening scenes of the Terror. This _Journal during a Residence in +France_ was published during the next two years. But Moore had earlier +than this, though not very early in his own life, become an author. His +_View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany_, the +result of his journeyings with the Duke, appeared in 1779, with a +continuation relating to Italy two years later; and in 1786 he published +his one famous novel _Zeluco_. After the _Journal_ he returned to novel +writing in _Edward_ (1796) and _Mordaunt_ (1800)--books by no means +contemptible, but suffering from the want of a central interest and of a +more universal grasp of character and manners. He contributed a Life of +Smollett and an Essay on Romance to an edition of his friend's works in +1797. One or two medical books also stand to his credit, while he had +rather unadvisedly added to his admirable _Journal_ a _View of the +Causes of the French Revolution_ which is not worthy of it. His complete +works fill seven volumes. + +Of these, the earlier travels are readable enough, and sometimes very +noteworthy in matter. It is almost enough to say that they contain some +of the latest accounts by an Englishman of France while it was still +merry, and of Venice while it was still independent; an early picture of +Alpine travel; very interesting personal sketches of Voltaire and +Frederick the Great; and one memorable passage (remembered and borrowed +by Scott in _Redgauntlet_) telling how at Florence the shadow of Prince +Charlie, passing the Duke of Hamilton in the public walks, fixed his +eyes earnestly on the Duke, as though saying, "Our ancestors were better +acquainted." _Zeluco_ and the _Journal_ alone deserve much attention +from any one but a professed student of literature. The value of the +latter has been admitted by all competent authorities, and it is +enhanced by the fact that Moore was a strong Whig, and was even accused +by some zealots of favouring Jacobinism. His picture, therefore, of the +way in which political revolution glides into ethical anarchy is +certainly unbiassed the other way. Of _Zeluco_ everybody, without +perhaps a very clear knowledge of its authorship, knows one passage--the +extremely humorous letter containing the John Bull contempt of the +sailor Dawson for the foolish nation which clothes its troops in "white, +which is absurd, and blue, which is only fit for the artillery and the +blue horse." But few know much more, though there is close by a much +more elaborate and equally good piece of Smollettian fun in the quarrel +of Buchanan and Targe, the Scotch Whig and Jacobite, over the reputation +of Queen Mary. The book, however, besides the unlucky drawback that +almost all its interest lies in the latter part, has for hero a sort of +lifeless monster of wickedness, who is quite as uninteresting as a +faultless one, and shows little veracity of character except in the +minor personages and episodes. In these, and indeed throughout Moore's +work, there is a curious mixture of convention with extreme shrewdness, +of somewhat commonplace expression with a remarkably pregnant and +humorous conception. But he lacks concentration and finish, and is +therefore never likely to be much read again as a whole. + +There may appear to be some slight inconsistency in giving a paragraph, +if only a short one, to Arthur Young where distinct mention has been +refused to Price and Priestley. But Olivier de Serres has secured a +place in all histories of French literature as a representative of +agricultural writing, and Young is our English Serres. Moreover, his +_Survey of France_ has permanent attraction for its picture of the state +of that country just before, and in the earliest days of, the +Revolution. And though his writing is extremely incorrect and unequal, +though its literary effect is much injured by the insertion of +statistical details which sometimes turn it for pages together into a +mere set of tables, he has constant racy phrases, some of which have +passed into the most honourable state of all--that of unidentified +quotation--while more deserve it. He was born in 1741, the son of a +Suffolk clergyman, was connected by marriage with the Burneys, and very +early developed the passion for agricultural theory and practice which +marked his whole life, even when in his later years (he lived till 1820) +he fell under the influence of religious crotchets. His French travels +were published in 1792-94, and form by far his most attractive book, +though his surveys of England and Ireland contain much that is good. +Young was a keen, though not a very consistent or clear-sighted +politician, especially on the side of political economy. But, like other +men of his time, he soon fell away from his first love for the French +Revolution. In the literary, historical, and antiquarian associations of +the places he visited, he seems to have felt no interest whatever. + +Helen Maria Williams, with Young and Moore, is our chief English witness +for the state of France and Paris just before and during the early years +of the Revolution. She was one of Johnson's girl pets in his latest +years, but Boswell is certainly justified in suggesting that if the sage +had lived a little longer he would certainly not have repeated his +elegant compliment: "If I am so ill when you are near, what should I be +when you are away?" She outlived this phase also of her life, and did +not die till 1828, being then sixty-five. Even in the early days she had +been a Girondist, not a Jacobin; but she happened to live in Paris +during the outbreak of the Revolution, wrote _Letters from France_, +which had a great popularity, and was hand in glove with most of the +English and Irish revolutionary leaders. Wolfe Tone in his diary speaks +of her as "Miss Jane Bull completely," but neither prudery nor +patriotism would have struck persons less prejudiced than the leader of +the United Irishmen as the leading points of Helen Maria. Her poems, +published in 1786, during her pre-revolutionary days, are dedicated to +Queen Charlotte, and nearly half the first of the two pretty little +volumes (which have a horrific frontispiece of the Princes in the Tower, +by Maria Cosway) is occupied by a stately list of subscribers, with the +Prince of Wales at their head. They have little merit, but are not +uninteresting for their "signs of the times": sonnets, a tale called +_Edwin and Eltruda_, an address to Sensibility, and so forth. But the +longest, _Peru_, is in the full eighteenth century couplet with no sign +of innovation. The _Letters from France_, which extend to eight volumes, +possess, besides the interest of their subject, the advantage of a more +than fair proficiency on the author's part in the formal but not +ungraceful prose of her time, neither unduly Johnsonian nor in any way +slipshod. But it may perhaps be conceded that, but for the interest of +the subject, they would not be of much importance. + +The most distinguished members of the Jacobin school, from the literary +point of view, were Thomas Paine and William Godwin. Paine was only a +literary man by accident. He was born at Thetford on 29th January 1737, +in the rank of small tradesman, and subsequently became a custom-house +officer. But he lost his place for debt and dubious conduct in 1774, and +found a more congenial home in America, where he defended the rebellion +of the Colonies in a pamphlet entitled _Common Sense_. His new +compatriots rewarded him pretty handsomely, and after about a dozen +years he returned to Europe, visiting England, which, however, he left +again very shortly (it is said owing to the persuasion of Blake), just +in time to escape arrest. He had already made friends in France, and his +publication of _The Rights of Man_ (1791-92), in answer to Burke's +attack on the Revolution, made him enormously popular in that country. +He was made a French citizen, and elected by the Pas de Calais to the +Convention. His part here was not discreditable. He opposed the King's +execution, and, being expelled the Convention and imprisoned by the +Jacobins, wrote his other notorious work, _The Age of Reason_ (1794-95), +in which he maintained the Deist position against both Atheism and +Christianity. He recovered his liberty and his seat, and was rather a +favourite with Napoleon. In 1802 he went back to America, and died there +(a confirmed drunkard it is said and denied) seven years later. A few +years later still, Cobbett, in one of his sillier moods, brought +Paine's bones back to England, which did not in the least want them. + +The coarse and violent expression, as well as the unpopular matter, of +Paine's works may have led to his being rather unfairly treated in the +hot fights of the Revolutionary period; but the attempts which have +recently been made to whitewash him are a mere mistake of reaction, or +paradox, or pure stupidity. The charges which used to be brought against +his moral character matter little; for neither side in these days had, +or in any days has, a monopoly of loose or of holy living. But two facts +will always remain: first, that Paine attacked subjects which all +require calm, and some of them reverent, treatment, in a tone of the +coarsest violence; and, secondly, that he engaged in questions of the +widest reach, and requiring endless thought and reading, with the scanty +equipments and the superabundant confidence of a self-educated man. No +better instance of this latter characteristic could be produced or +required than a sentence in the preface to the second part of the _Age +of Reason_. Here Paine (who admitted that he had written the first part +hastily, in expectation of imprisonment, without a library, and without +so much as a copy of the Scriptures he was attacking at hand, and who +further confessed that he knew neither Hebrew nor Greek nor even Latin) +observes: "I have produced a work that no Bible-believer, though writing +at his ease and with a library of Church books about him, can refute." +In this charming self-satisfaction, which only natural temper assisted +by sufficient ignorance can attain in perfection, Paine strongly +resembles his disciple Cobbett. But the two were also alike in the +effect which this undoubting dogmatism, joined to a very clear, simple, +and forcible style, less correct in Paine's case than in Cobbett's, +produced upon readers even more ignorant than themselves, and greatly +their inferiors in mental strength and literary skill. Paine, indeed, +was as much superior to Cobbett in logical faculty as he was his +inferior in range of attainments and charm of style; while his ignorance +and his arbitrary assumption and exclusion of premises passed unnoticed +by the classes whom he more particularly addressed. He was thus among +the lower and lower middle classes by far the most formidable propagator +of anarchist ideas in religion and politics that England produced; and +his influence lasted till far into the present century, being, it is +said, only superseded by new forms of a similar spirit. But he never +could have had much on persons of education, unless they were prepared +to sympathise with him, or were of singularly weak mind. + +William Godwin, on the other hand, affected the "educated persons," and +those of more or less intellectual power, even more forcibly than Paine +affected the vulgar. This influence of his, indeed, is a thing almost +unique, and it has perhaps never yet been succinctly examined and +appraised. Born at Wisbech in 1756, the son of a dissenting minister, he +himself was thoroughly educated for the Presbyterian ministry, and for +some five years discharged its functions. Then in 1783 (again the +critical period) he became unorthodox in theology, and took to +literature, addicting himself to Whig politics. He also did a certain +amount of tutoring. It was not, however, till nearly ten years after he +had first taken to writing that he made his mark, and attained the +influence above referred to by a series of works rather remarkably +different in character. 1793 saw the famous _Inquiry concerning +Political Justice_, which for a time carried away many of the best and +brightest of the youth of England. Next year came the equally famous and +more long-lived novel of _Caleb Williams_, and an extensive criticism +(now much forgotten, but at the time of almost equal importance with +these), published in the _Morning Chronicle_, of the charge of Lord +Chief-Justice Eyre in the trial of Horne Tooke, Holcroft, and others for +high treason. Godwin himself ran some risk of prosecution; and that he +was left unmolested shows that the Pitt government did not strain its +powers, as is sometimes alleged. In 1797 he published _The Enquirer_, a +collection of essays on many different subjects; and in 1799 his second +remarkable novel (it should be said that in his early years of struggle +he had written others which are quite forgotten) _St. Leon_. The +closing years of the period also saw first his connection and then his +marriage with Mary Wollstonecraft, who will be noticed immediately after +him. + +It is rather curious that Godwin, who was but forty-four at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and continued to be a diligent +writer as well as a publisher and bookseller till his death in 1836, his +last years being made comfortable by a place under the Reform Ministry, +never did anything really good after the eighteenth century had closed. +His tragedy _Antonio_ only deserves remembrance because of Lamb's +exquisite account of its damnation. His _Life of Chaucer_ (1801) was one +of the earliest examples of that style of padding and guesswork in +literary biography with which literature has been flooded since. His +later novels--_Fleetwood_, _Mandeville_, _Cloudesley_, etc.--are far +inferior to _Caleb Williams_ (1794) and _St. Leon_ (1799). His _Treatise +of Population_ (1820), in answer to Malthus, was belated and +ineffective; and his _History of the Commonwealth_, in four volumes, +though a very respectable compilation, is nothing more. Godwin's +character was peculiar, and cannot be said to be pleasing. Though +regarded (or at least described) by his enemies as an apostle of +license, he seems to have been a rather cold-blooded person, whose one +passion for Mary Wollstonecraft was at least as much an affair of the +head as of the heart. He was decidedly vain, and as decidedly priggish; +but the worst thing about him was his tendency to "sponge"--a tendency +which he indulged not merely on his generous son-in-law Shelley, but on +almost everybody with whom he came in contact. It is, however, fair to +admit that this tendency (which was probably a legacy of the patronage +system) was very wide-spread at the time; that the mighty genius of +Coleridge succumbed to it to a worse extent even than Godwin did; and +that Southey himself, who for general uprightness and independence has +no superior in literary history, was content for years to live upon the +liberality not merely of an uncle, but of a school comrade, in a way +which in our own days would probably make men of not half his moral +worth seriously uncomfortable. + +Estimates of the strictly formal excellence of Godwin's writing have +differed rather remarkably. To take two only, his most recent +biographer, Mr. Kegan Paul, is never weary of praising the "beauty" of +Godwin's style; while Scott, a very competent and certainly not a very +savage critic, speaks of the style of the Chaucer as "uncommonly +depraved, exhibiting the opposite defects of meanness and of bombast." +This last is too severe; but I am unable often to see the great beauty, +the charm, and so forth, which Godwin's admirers have found in his +writings. He shows perhaps at his best in this respect in _St. Leon_, +where there are some passages of a rather artificial, but solemn and +grandiose beauty; and he can seldom be refused the praise of a capable +and easily wielded fashion of writing, equally adapted to exposition, +description, and argument. But that Godwin's taste and style were by no +means impeccable is proved by his elaborate essay on the subject in the +_Enquirer_, where he endeavours to show that the progress of English +prose-writing had been one of unbroken improvement since the time of +Queen Elizabeth, and pours contempt on passages of Shakespeare and +others where more catholic appreciation could not fail to see the +beauty. In practice his special characteristic, which Scott (or Jeffrey, +for the criticism appeared in the _Edinburgh_) selected for special +reprobation in the context of the passage quoted above, was the +accumulation of short sentences, very much in the manner of which, in +the two generations since his death, Macaulay and the late Mr. J. R. +Green, have been the chief exponents. Hazlitt probably learnt this from +Godwin; and I think there is no doubt that Macaulay learnt it from +Hazlitt. + +It may, however, be freely admitted that whatever Godwin had to say was +at least likely not to be prejudicially affected by the manner in which +he said it. And he had, as we have seen, a great deal to say in a great +many kinds. The "New Philosophy," as it was called, of the _Political +Justice_ was to a great extent softened, if not positively retracted, in +subsequent editions and publications; but its quality as first set forth +accounts both for the conquest which it, temporarily at least, obtained +over such minds as those of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and for the horror +with which it was regarded elsewhere. Godwin's system was not too +consistent, and many of its parts were borrowed more or less directly +from others: from Locke, from Hume, from the French materialists, from +Jonathan Edwards, and, by way of reaction as well as imitation, from +Rousseau. But Godwin's distinctive claim, if not exactly glory, is that +he was the first systematic Anarchist. His cardinal principle was that +government in itself, and with all its consequences of law, restriction, +punishment, etc., is bad, and to be got rid of. He combined this +(logically enough) with perfectibilism--supposing the individual to be +infinitely susceptible of "melioration" by the right use of reason--and +(rather illogically) with necessarianism. In carrying out his views he +not only did not hesitate at condemning religion, marriage, and all +other restrictions of the kind, but indulged in many curious crotchets +as to the uselessness, if not mischievousness, of gratitude and other +sentiments generally considered virtuous. The indefinite development of +the individual by reason and liberty, and the general welfare of the +community at large, were the only standards that he admitted. And it +should be said, to his credit, that he condemned the use of violence and +physical force _against_ government quite as strongly as their use _by_ +government. The establishment of absolute liberty, in the confidence +that it will lead to absolute happiness, was, at first at any rate, the +main idea of the _Political Justice_, and it is easy to understand what +wild work it must have made with heads already heated by the +thunder-weather of change that was pervading Europe. + +Godwin has been frequently charged with alarm at the anarchist phantom +he had raised. It is certain not merely that he altered and softened the +_Political Justice_ not a little, but that in his next work of the same +kind, _The Enquirer_, he took both a very different line of +investigation and a different tone of handling. In the preface he +represents it as a sort of inductive complement to the high _a priori_ +scheme of his former work; but this is not a sufficient account of the +matter. It is true that his paradoxical rebellion against conventions +appears here and there; and his literary criticism, which was never +strong, may be typified by his contrast of the "hide-bound sportiveness" +of Fielding with the "flowing and graceful hilarity" of Sterne. Indeed, +this sentence takes Godwin's measure pretty finally, and shows that he +was of his age, not for all time. But, on the other hand, it is fair to +say that the essays on "The Study of the Classics" and the "Choice of +Reading," dealing with subjects on which, both then and since, oceans of +cant and nonsense have been poured forth, are nearly as sound as they +can be. + +In his purely imaginative work he presents a contrast not much less +strange. We may confine attention here to the two capital examples of +it. _Caleb Williams_ alone has survived as a book of popular reading, +and it is no small tribute to its power that, a full century after its +publication, it is still kept on sale in sixpenny editions. Yet on no +novel perhaps is it so difficult to adjust critical judgment, either by +the historical or the personal methods. Both its general theme--the +discovery of a crime committed by a man of high reputation and unusual +moral worth, and the persecution of the discoverer by the criminal--and +its details, are thoroughly leavened and coloured by Godwin's political +and social views at the time; and either this or some other defect has +made it readable with great difficulty at all times by some persons, +among whom I am bound to enrol myself. Yet the ingenuity of its +construction, in spite of the most glaring impossibilities, the striking +situations it contains, and no doubt other merits, have always secured +readers for it. _St. Leon_, a romance of the _elixir vitę_, has no +corresponding central interest, and, save in the amiable but very +conventional figure of the heroine Marguerite, who is said to have been +studied from Mary Wollstonecraft, no interest of character; while its +defects of local colour and historical truth are glaring. But Godwin, +who was in so many ways a mirror of the new thought of the time, had +caught by anticipation something of its nascent spirit of romance. He is +altogether a rather puzzling person; and perhaps the truest explanation +of the puzzle, as well as certainly the most comfortable to the critic, +is that his genius and literary temperament were emphatically crude and +undeveloped, that he was a prophet rather than anything else, and that +he had the incoherencies and the inconsistencies almost inseparable from +prophecy. + +Even if fate and metaphysical aid had not conjoined Godwin and Mary +Wollstonecraft in the closest bond possible between man and woman, it +would have been proper to mention their names together as authors. For +as Godwin's "New Philosophy" was the boldest attempt made by any man of +the time in print to overthrow received conventions of the relations of +man to man, and incidentally of man to woman, so was his wife's +_Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ a complement of it in relation to +the status of the other sex as such. She was rather hardly treated in +her own time; Horace Walpole calling her, it is said (I have not +verified the quotation), a "hyena in petticoats": it would be at least +as just to call Lord Orford a baboon in breeches. And though of late +years she has been made something of a heroine, it is to be feared that +admiration has been directed rather to her crotchets than to her +character. This last appears to have been as lovable as her hap was ill. +The daughter of an Irishman of means, who squandered them and became a +burden on his children; the sister of an attorney who was selfishly +indifferent to his sisters--she had to fend for herself almost entirely. +At one time she and her sisters kept school; then she was, thanks to the +recommendation of Mr. Prior, a master at Eton, introduced as governess +to the family of Lord Kingsborough; then, after doing hack-work for +Johnson, the chief Liberal publisher of the period, she went to Paris, +and unluckily fell in with a handsome scoundrel, Gilbert Imlay, an +American soldier. She lived with him, he deserted her, and she nearly +committed the suicide which was actually the fate of her unfortunate +daughter by him, Fanny Imlay or Godwin. Only at the last had she a +glimpse of happiness. Godwin, who had some weaknesses, but who was not a +scoundrel, met her, and fell in love with her, and as both had +independently demonstrated that marriage was a failure, they naturally +married; but she died a week after giving birth to a daughter--the +future Mrs. Shelley. The _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_, on which +Mary Wollstonecraft's fame as an author almost wholly rests, is in some +ways a book nearly as faulty as it can be. It is not well written; it is +full of prejudices quite as wrong-headed as those it combats; it shows +very little knowledge either of human nature or of good society; and its +"niceness," to use the word in what was then its proper sense, often +goes near to the nasty. But its protest on the one hand against the +"proper" sentimentality of such English guides of female youth as Drs. +Fordyce and Gregory, on the other against the "improper" sentimentality +of Rousseau, is genuine and generous. Many of its positions and +contentions may be accepted unhesitatingly to-day by those who are by no +means enamoured of advanced womanhood; and Mary, as contrasted with most +of her rights-of-women followers, is curiously free from bumptiousness +and the general qualities of the virago. She had but ill luck in life, +and perhaps showed no very good judgment in letters, but she had neither +bad brains nor bad blood; and the references to her, long after her +death, by such men as Southey, show the charm which she exercised. + +With Godwin also is very commonly connected Thomas Holcroft (or, as Lamb +always preferred to spell the name, "_Ould_craft"), a curiosity of +literature and a rather typical figure of the time. Holcroft was born in +London in December 1745, quite in the lowest ranks, and himself rose +from being stable-boy at Newmarket, through the generally democratic +trade of shoemaking, to quasi-literary positions as schoolmaster and +clerk, and then to the dignity of actor. He was about thirty-five when +he first began regular authorship; and during the rest of his life he +wrote four novels, some score and a half of plays, and divers other +works, none of which is so good as his Autobiography, published after +his death by Hazlitt, and said to be in part that writer's work. It +would have been fortunate for Holcroft if he had confined himself to +literature; for some of his plays, notably _The Road to Ruin_, brought +him in positively large sums of money, and his novels were fairly +popular. But he was a violent democrat,--some indeed attributed to him +the origination of most of the startling things in Godwin's _Political +Justice_,--and in 1794 he was tried, though with no result, for high +treason, with Horne Tooke and others. This brought him into the society +of the young Jacobin school,--Coleridge, and the rest,--but was +disastrous to the success of his plays; and when he went abroad in 1799 +he entered on an extraordinary business of buying old masters (which +were rubbish) and sending them to England, where they generally sold for +nothing. He returned, however, and died on 23rd March 1809. + +Holcroft's theatre will best receive such notice as it requires in +connection with the other drama of the century. Of his novels, _Alwyn_, +the first, had to do with his experiences as an actor, and _Hugh Trevor_ +is also supposed to have been more or less autobiographical. Holcroft's +chief novel, however, is _Anna St. Ives_, a book in no less than seven +volumes, though not very large ones, which was published in 1792, and +which exhibits no small affinities to Godwin's _Caleb Williams_, and +indeed to the _Political Justice_ itself. And Godwin, who was not above +acknowledging mental obligations, if he was rather ill at discharging +pecuniary ones, admits the influence which Holcroft had upon him. _Anna +St. Ives_, which, like so many of the other novels of its day, is in +letters, is worth reading by those who can spare the time. But it cannot +compare, for mere amusement, with the very remarkable _Memoir_ above +referred to. Only about a fourth of this is said to be in Holcroft's own +words; but Hazlitt has made excellent matter of the rest, and it +includes a good deal of diary and other authentic work. In his own part +Holcroft shows himself a master of the vernacular, as well as (what he +undoubtedly was) a man of singular shrewdness and strength of mental +temper. + +The Novel school of the period (to which Holcroft introduces us) is full +and decidedly interesting, though it contains at the best one +masterpiece, _Vathek_, and a large number of more or less meritorious +attempts in false styles. The kind was very largely written--much more +so than is generally thought. Thus Godwin, in his early struggling days, +and long before the complete success of _Caleb Williams_, wrote, as has +been mentioned, for trifling sums of money (five and ten guineas), two +or three novels which even the zeal of his enthusiastic biographer does +not seem to have been able to recover. Nor did the circulating library, +even then a flourishing institution, lack hands more or less eminent to +work for it, or customers to take off its products. The Minerva Press, +much cited but little read, had its origin in this our time; and this +time is entitled to the sole and single credit of starting and carrying +far a bastard growth of fiction, the "tale of terror," which continued +to be cultivated in its simplest form for at least half a century, and +which can hardly be said to be quite obsolete yet. But as usual we must +proceed by special names, and there is certainly no lack of them. +"Zeluco" Moore has been dealt with already; Day, the eccentric author of +_Sanford and Merton_, belongs mainly to an earlier period, and died, +still a young man, in the year of the French Revolution; but, besides, +Holcroft, Beckford, Bage, Cumberland, Mrs. Radcliffe, and Monk Lewis, +with Mrs. Inchbald, are distinctly "illustrations" of the time, and must +have more or less separate mention. + +William Beckford is one of the problems of English literature. He was +one of the richest men in England, and his long life--1760 to 1844--was +occupied for the most part not merely with the collection, but with the +reading of books. That he could write as well as read he showed as a +mere boy by his satirical _Memoirs of Painters_, and by the +great-in-little novel of _Vathek_ (1783), respecting the composition of +which in French or English divers fables are told. Then he published +nothing for forty years, till in 1834 and 1835 he issued his _Travels in +Italy, Spain, and Portugal_, recollections of his earliest youth. These +travels have extraordinary merits of their kind; but _Vathek_ is a kind +almost to itself. The history of the Caliph, in so far as it is a satire +on unlimited power, is an eighteenth century commonplace; while many +traits in it are obviously imitated from Voltaire. But the figure of +Nouronihar, which Byron perhaps would have equalled if he could, stands +alone in literature as a fantastic projection of the potentiality of +evil magnificence in feminine character; and the closing scenes in the +domain of Eblis have the grandeur of Blake combined with that finish +which Blake's temperament, joined to his ignorance of literature and his +lack of scholarship, made it impossible for him to give. The book is +quite unique. It could hardly, in some of its weaker parts especially, +have been written at any other time; and yet its greater characteristics +have nothing to do with that time. In the florid kind of supernatural +story it has no equal. Only Dante, Beckford, and Scott in _Wandering +Willie's Tale_ have given us Hells that are worthy of the idea of Hell. + +Except that both were very much of their time, it would be impossible to +imagine a more complete contrast than that which exists between Beckford +and Bage. The former was, as has been said, one of the richest men in +England, the creator of two "Paradises" at Fonthill and Cintra, the +absolute arbiter of his time and his pleasures, a Member of Parliament +while he chose to be so, a student, fierce and recluse, the husband of a +daughter of the Gordons, and the father of a mother of the Hamiltons, +the collector, disperser, bequeather of libraries almost unequalled in +magnificence and choice. Robert Bage, who was born in 1728 and died in +1801, was in some ways a typical middle-class Englishman. He was a +papermaker, and the son of a papermaker; he was never exactly affluent +nor exactly needy; he was apparently a Quaker by education and a +freethinker by choice; and between 1781 and 1796, obliged by this reason +or that to stain the paper which he made, he produced six novels: _Mount +Henneth_, _Barham Downs_, _The Fair Syrian_, _James Wallace_, _Man as he +is_, and _Hermsprong_. The first, second, and fourth of these were +admitted by Scott to the "Ballantyne Novels," the others, though +_Hermsprong_ is admittedly Bage's best work, were not. It is impossible +to say that there is genius in Bage; yet he is a very remarkable writer, +and there is noticeable in him that singular _fin de sičcle_ tendency +which has reasserted itself a century later. An imitator of Fielding and +Smollett in general plan,--of the latter specially in the dangerous +scheme of narrative by letter,--Bage added to their methods the purpose +of advocating a looser scheme of morals and a more anarchical system of +government. In other words, Bage, though a man well advanced in years at +the date of the Revolution, exhibits for us distinctly the spirit which +brought the Revolution about. He is a companion of Godwin and of Mary +Wollstonecraft; and though it must be admitted that, as in other cases, +the presence of "impropriety" in him by no means implies the absence of +dulness, he is full of a queer sort of undeveloped and irregular +cleverness. + +The most famous, though not the only novel of Richard Cumberland; +_Henry_, shows the same tendency to break loose from British decorum, +even such decorum as had really been in the main observed by the +much-abused pens of Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne himself; but it has +little purpose and indeed little vigour of any kind. Cumberland clung as +close as he could to the method of Fielding, including the preliminary +dissertation or meditation, but he would be a very strange reader who +should mistake the two. + +The school of Bage and Cumberland, the former of whom bears some little +resemblance to his countrywoman George Eliot, was, with or without +Bage's purpose, continued more or less steadily; indeed, it may be said +to be little more than a variant, with local colour, of the ordinary +school of novel-writing. But it was not this school which was to give +tone to the period. The "tale of terror" had been started by Horace +Walpole in the _Castle of Otranto_, and had, as we have seen, received a +new and brilliant illustration in the hands of Beckford. But the genius +of the author of _Vathek_ could not be followed; the talent of the +author of the _Castle of Otranto_ was more easily imitated. How far the +practice of the Germans (who had themselves imitated Walpole, and whose +work began in the two last decades of the century to have a great reflex +influence upon England) was responsible for the style of story which, +after Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis had set the fashion, dominated the +circulating libraries for years, is a question not easy and perhaps not +necessary to answer positively. I believe myself that no foreign +influence ever causes a change in national taste; it merely coincides +therewith. But the fact of the set in the tide is unmistakable and +undeniable. For some years the two authors just mentioned rode paramount +in the affections of English novel readers; before long Miss Austen +devoted her early and delightful effort, _Northanger Abbey_, to +satirising the taste for them, and quoted or invented a well-known list +of blood-curdling titles;[2] the morbid talent of Maturin gave a fresh +impulse to it, even after the healthier genius of Scott had already +revolutionised the general scheme of novel-writing; and yet later still +an industrious literary hack, Leitch Ritchie, was able to issue, and it +may be presumed to find readers for, a variety of romance the titles of +which might strike a hasty practitioner of the kind of censure usual in +biblical criticism as a designed parody of Miss Austen's own catalogue. +The style, indeed, in the wide sense has never lost favour. But in the +special Radcliffian form it reigned for some thirty years, and was +widely popular for nearly fifty. + +Anne Radcliffe, whose maiden name was Ward, was born on 9th July 1764 +and died on 7th February 1822. One of her novels, _Gaston de +Blondeville_, was published posthumously; but otherwise her whole +literary production took place between the years 1789 and 1797. The +first of these years saw _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, a very +immature work; the last _The Italian_, which is perhaps the best. +Between them appeared _A Sicilian Romance_ (1790), _The Romance of the +Forest_ (1791), and the far-famed _Mysteries of Udolpho_ in 1795. +Matthew Gregory Lewis, who, like Beckford, was a West-Indian landowner +and member for Hindon, and was well-to-do if not extremely wealthy, was +nine years younger than Mrs. Radcliffe, and did not produce his famous +_Monk_ till the same year which saw _Udolpho_. He published a good deal +of other work in prose, verse, and drama; the most noteworthy of the +second class being _Tales of Terror_, to which Scott contributed, and +the most noteworthy of the third _The Castle Spectre_. Lewis, who, +despite some foibles, was decidedly popular in the literary and +fashionable society of his time, died in 1818 at the age of forty-five +on his way home from the West Indies. Although he would have us +understand that _The Monk_ was written some time before its actual +publication, Lewis' position as a direct imitator of Mrs. Radcliffe is +unmistakable; and although he added to the characteristics of her novels +a certain appeal to "Lubricity" from which she was completely free, the +general scheme of the two writers, as well as that of all their school, +varies hardly at all. The supernatural in Mrs. Radcliffe's case is +mainly, if not wholly, what has been called "the explained +supernatural,"--that is to say, the apparently ghostly, and certainly +ghastly, effects are usually if not always traced to natural causes, +while in most if not all of her followers the demand for more highly +spiced fare in the reader, and perhaps a defect of ingenuity in the +writer, leaves the devils and witches as they were. In all, without +exception, castles with secret passages, trap-doors, forests, banditti, +abductions, sliding panels, and other apparatus and paraphernalia of the +kind play the main part. The actual literary value is, on the whole, +low; though Mrs. Radcliffe is not without glimmerings, and it is +exceedingly curious to note that, just before the historical novel was +once for all started by Scott, there is in all these writers an absolute +and utter want of comprehension of historical propriety, of local and +temporal colour, and of all the marks which were so soon to distinguish +fiction. Yet at the very same time the yearning after the historical is +shown in the most unmistakable fashion from Godwin down to the Misses +Lee, Harriet and Sophia (the latter of whom in 1783 produced, in _The +Recess_, a preposterous Elizabethan story, which would have liked to be +a historical novel), and other known and unknown writers. + +Another lady deserves somewhat longer notice. Hannah More, once a +substantially famous person in literature, is now chiefly remembered by +her association with great men of letters, such as Johnson in her youth, +Macaulay and De Quincey in her old age. She was born as early as 1745 +near Bristol, and all her life was a Somerset worthy. She began--a +curious beginning for so serious a lady, but with reforming +intentions--to write for the stage, published _The Search after +Happiness_ when she was seventeen, and had two rather dreary tragedies, +_Percy_ and the _Fatal Secret_, acted, Garrick being a family friend of +hers. Becoming, as her day said, "pious," she wrote "Sacred Dramas," and +at Cowslip Green, Barley Wood, and Clifton produced "Moral Essays," the +once famous novel of _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_, and many tracts, +the best known of which is _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_. She died +at a great age on 7th September 1833. Hannah More is not to be spoken of +with contempt, except by ignorance or incompetence. She had real +abilities, and was a woman of the world. But she was very unfortunately +parted in respect of time, coming just before the days when it became +possible for a lady to be decent in literature without being dull. + +If a book and not a chapter were allowed about this curious, and on the +whole rather neglected and undervalued, Fifth Act of the eighteenth +century, many of its minor literary phenomena would have to be noticed: +such as the last state of periodicals before the uprising of the +_Edinburgh Review_, and the local literary coteries, the most notable of +which was that of Norwich, with the Aldersons, Sayers the poet, who +taught Southey and others to try blank verse in other measures than the +decasyllabic, William Taylor, the apostle of German literature in +England, and others. But, as it is, we must concentrate our attention on +its main lines. + +In these lines the poetical pioneers, the political and other satirists, +the revolutionary propagandists, and the novelists of terror, are the +four classes of writers that distinguish the period 1780 to 1800; and +perhaps they distinguish it sufficiently, at least for those with whom +historical genesis and connection atone to some extent for want of the +first order of intrinsic interest. In less characteristic classes and in +isolated literary personalities the time was not extremely rich, though +it was not quite barren. We can here only notice cursorily the +theological controversialists who, like Paley, Horsley, and Watson, +waged war against the fresh outburst of aggressive Deism coinciding with +the French Revolution: the scholars, such as, in their different ways, +Dr. Parr, the Whig "moon" of Dr. Johnson; Porson, the famous Cambridge +Grecian, drinker, and democrat; Taylor the Platonist, a strange person +who translated most of the works of Plato and was said to have carried +his discipleship to the extent of a positive Paganism; Gilbert +Wakefield, a miscellaneous writer who wrote rapidly and with little +judgment, but with some scholarship and even some touches of genius, on +a great variety of subjects; Jacob Bryant, mythologist, theologian, and +historical critic, a man of vast learning but rather weak critical +power; and many others. Of some of these we may indeed have more to say +later, as also of the much-abused Malthus, whose famous book, in part +one of the consequences of Godwin, appeared in 1798; while as for drama, +we shall return to that too. Sheridan survived through the whole of the +time and a good deal beyond it; but his best work was done, and the +chief dramatists of the actual day were Colman, Holcroft, Cumberland, +and the farce-writer O'Keefe, a man of humour and a lively fancy. + +One, however, of these minor writers has too much of what has been +called "the interest of origins" not to have a paragraph to himself. +William Gilpin, who prided himself on his connection with Bernard +Gilpin, the so-called "Apostle of the North" in the sixteenth century, +was born at Carlisle. But he is best known in connection with the New +Forest, where, after taking his degree at Oxford, receiving orders, and +keeping a school for some time, he was appointed to the living of +Boldre. This he held till his death in 1814. Gilpin was not a +secularly-minded parson by any means; but his literary fame is derived +from the series of Picturesque Tours (_The Highlands_, 1778; _The Wye +and South Wales_, 1782; _The Lakes_, 1789; _Forest Scenery_, 1791; and +_The West of England and the Isle of Wight_, 1798) which he published in +the last quarter of the century. They were extremely popular, they set a +fashion which may be said never to have died out since, and they +attained the seal of parody in the famous _Dr. Syntax_ of William Combe +(1741-1823), an Eton and Oxford man who spent a fortune and then wrote +an enormous amount of the most widely various work in verse and prose, +of which little but _Syntax_ itself (1812 _sqq._) is remembered. Gilpin +himself is interesting as an important member of "the naturals," as they +have been oddly and equivocally called. His style is much more florid +and less just than Gilbert White's, and his observation correspondingly +less true. But he had a keen sense of natural beauty and did much to +instill it into others. + +In all the work of the time, however, great and small, from +the half-unconscious inspiration of Burns and Blake to the +common journey-work of book-making, we shall find the same +character--incessantly recurring, and unmistakable afterwards if not +always recognisable at the time--of transition, of decay and seed-time +mingled with and crossing each other. There are no distinct spontaneous +literary schools: the forms which literature takes are either occasional +and dependent upon outward events, such as the wide and varied attack +and defence consequent upon the French Revolution, or else fantastic, +trivial, reflex. Sometimes the absence of any distinct and creative +impulse reveals itself in work really good and useful, such as the +editing of old writers, of which the labours of Malone are the chief +example and the forgeries of Ireland the corresponding corruption; or +the return to their study ęsthetically, in which Headley, a now +forgotten critic, did good work. Sometimes it resulted in such things +as the literary reputation (which was an actual thing after a kind) of +persons like Sir James Bland Burges, Under-Secretary of State, +poetaster, connoisseur, and general fribble. Yet all the while, in +schools and universities, in London garrets and country villages, there +was growing up, and sometimes showing itself pretty unmistakably, the +generation which was to substitute for this trying and trifling the +greatest work in verse, and not the least in prose, that had been done +for two hundred years. The _Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798, the clarion-call +of the new poetry, so clearly sounded, so inattentively heard, might +have told all, and did tell some, what this generation was about to do. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Although _The Baviad_ and _The Męviad_ are well worth reading, it +may be questioned whether they are as amusing as their chief quarry, +_The British Album_, "containing the poems of Della Crusca, Anna +Matilda, Benedict, Cesario, The Bard, etc.," the two little volumes of +which attained their third edition in 1790. "Della Crusca," or Robert +Merry (1755-98), was a gentleman by birth, and of means, with a Harrow +and Oxford training, and some service in the army. Strange to say, there +is testimony of good wits that he was by no means a fool; yet such +drivelling rubbish as he and his coadjutors wrote even the present day +has hardly seen. + +[2] I used to think these titles sprouts of the author's brain; but a +correspondent assured me that one or two at least are certainly genuine. +Possibly, therefore all are. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NEW POETRY + + +The opening years of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century saw, in +unusually close conjunction, the births of the men who were to be the +chief exponents, and in their turn the chief determining forces, of the +new movement. The three greatest were born, Wordsworth in 1770, Scott in +1771, and Coleridge in 1772; Southey, who partly through accident was to +form a trinity with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and who was perhaps the +most typical instance of a certain new kind of man of letters, followed +in 1774; while Lamb and Hazlitt, the chief romantic pioneers in +criticism, Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, the chief classical reactionaries +therein, were all born within the decade. But the influence of Scott was +for various reasons delayed a little; and critics naturally come after +creators. So that the time-honoured eminence of the "Lake +Poets"--Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey--need not be disturbed. + +The day of the birth of William Wordsworth was the 7th of April, the +place Cockermouth. His father was an attorney, and, as Lord Lonsdale's +agent, a man of some means and position; but on his death in 1783 the +eccentric and unamiable character of the then Lord Lonsdale, by delaying +the settlement of accounts, put the family in considerable difficulties. +Wordsworth, however, was thoroughly educated at Hawkshead Grammar School +and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in +1791. He travelled in France, and for a time, like many young men, was +a fervent Republican; but, like all the nobler of those who had "hailed +the dawn of the French Revolution," he lived to curse its noon. He +published early, his first volume of poems bearing the date 1793; but, +though that attention to nature which was always his chief note appeared +here, the work is not by any means of an epoch-making character. He was +averse from every profession; but the fates were kind to him, and a +legacy of £900 from his friend Raisley Calvert made a man of such simple +tastes as his independent, for a time at least. On the strength of it he +settled first at Racedown in Dorset, and then at Alfoxden in Somerset, +in the companionship of his sister Dorothy; and at the second of the two +places in the neighbourhood of Coleridge. Massive and original as +Wordsworth's own genius was, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the +effect, both in stimulus and guidance, of the influence of these two; +for Dorothy Wordsworth was a woman of a million, and Coleridge, +marvellous as were his own powers, was almost more marvellous in the +unique Socratic character of his effect on those who possessed anything +to work upon. The two poets produced in 1798 the _Lyrical Ballads_, +among the contents of which it is sufficient to mention _Tintern Abbey_ +and _The Ancient Mariner;_ and they subsequently travelled together in +Germany. Then Wordsworth returned to his native lakes and never left +them for long, abiding first at or near Grasmere, and from 1813 at his +well-known home of Rydal Mount. When Lord Lonsdale died in 1802, his +successor promptly and liberally settled the Wordsworth claims. The poet +soon married his cousin Mary Hutchinson; and Lord Lonsdale, not +satisfied with atoning for his predecessor's injustice, procured him, in +the year of his migration to Rydal, the office of Distributor of Stamps +for Westmoreland--an office which was almost a sinecure, and was, for a +man of Wordsworth's tastes, more than amply paid. It is curious, and a +capital instance to prove that the malignity of fortune has itself been +maligned, that the one English poet who was constitutionally incapable +of writing for bread never was under any necessity to do so. For full +sixty years Wordsworth wandered much, read little, meditated without +stint, and wrote, though never hurriedly, yet almost incessantly. The +dates of his chief publications may be best given in a note.[3] For some +years his poems were greeted by the general public and by a few of its +critical guides with storms of obloquy and ridicule; but Wordsworth, +though never indifferent to criticism, was severely disdainful of it, +and held on his way. From the first the brightest spirits of England had +been his passionate though by no means always undiscriminating admirers; +and about the end of the first quarter of the century the public began +to come round. Oxford, always first to recognise, if not always first to +produce, the greatest achievements of English literature, gave him its +D.C.L. in 1839. He received a pension of £300 a year in 1842 from Sir +Robert Peel, who, unlike most English Prime Ministers, cared for men of +letters; the laureateship fell to him in right of right on Southey's +death in 1843, and he died on the 23rd of April 1850, having come to +fourscore years almost without labour, and without many heavy sorrows. + +Of his character not much need be said. Like that of Milton, whom he in +many ways resembled (they had even both, as Hartley Coleridge has +pointed out, brothers named Christopher), it was not wholly amiable, and +the defects in it were no doubt aggravated by his early condition (for +it must be remembered that till he was two and thirty his prospects were +of the most disquieting character), by the unjust opposition which the +rise of his reputation met with, and by his solitary life in contact +only with worshipping friends and connections. One of these very +worshippers confesses that he was "inhumanly arrogant"; and he was also, +what all arrogant men are not, rude. He was entirely self-centred, and +his own circle of interests and tastes was not wide. It is said that he +would cut books with a buttery knife, and after that it is probably +unnecessary to say any more, for the fact "surprises by itself" an +indictment of almost infinite counts. + +But his genius is not so easily despatched. I have said that it is now +as a whole universally recognised, and I cannot but think that Mr. +Matthew Arnold was wrong when he gave a contrary opinion some fifteen +years ago. He must have been biassed by his own remembrance of earlier +years, when Wordsworth was still a bone of contention. I should say that +never since I myself was an undergraduate, that is to say, for the last +thirty years, has there been any dispute among Englishmen whose opinion +was worth taking, and who cared for poetry at all, on the general merits +of Wordsworth. But this agreement is compatible with a vast amount of +disagreement in detail; and Mr. Arnold's own estimate, as where he +compares Wordsworth with Moličre (who was not a poet at all, though he +sometimes wrote very tolerable verse), weighs him with poets of the +second class like Gray and Manzoni, and finally admits him for his +dealings with "life," introduces fresh puzzlements into the valuation. +There is only one principle on which that valuation can properly +proceed, and this is the question, "Is the poet rich in essentially +poetical moments of the highest power and kind?" And by poetical moments +I mean those instances of expression which, no matter what their +subject, their intention, or their context may be, cause instantaneously +in the fit reader a poetical impression of the intensest and most moving +quality. + +Let us consider the matter from this point of view.[4] + +The chief poetical influences under which Wordsworth began to write +appear to have been those of Burns and Milton; both were upon him to the +last, and both did him harm as well as good. It was probably in direct +imitation of Burns, as well as in direct opposition to the prevailing +habits of the eighteenth century, that he conceived the theory of poetic +diction which he defended in prose and exemplified in verse. The chief +point of this theory was the use of the simplest and most familiar +language, and the double fallacy is sufficiently obvious. Wordsworth +forgot that the reason why the poetic diction of the three preceding +generations had become loathsome was precisely this, that it had become +familiar; while the familiar Scots of Burns was in itself unfamiliar to +the English ear. On the other hand, he borrowed from Milton, and used +more and more as he grew older, a distinctly stiff and unvernacular form +of poetic diction itself. Few except extreme and hopeless Wordsworthians +now deny that the result of his attempts at simple language was and is +far more ludicrous than touching. The wonderful _Affliction of Margaret_ +does not draw its power from the neglect of poetic diction, but from the +intensity of emotion which would carry off almost any diction, simple or +affected; while on the other hand such pieces as "We are Seven," as the +"Anecdote for Fathers," and as "Alice Fell," not to mention "Betty Foy" +and others, which specially infuriated Wordsworth's own contemporaries, +certainly gain nothing from their namby-pamby dialect, and sometimes go +near to losing the beauty that really is in them by dint of it. +Moreover, the Miltonic blank verse and sonnets--at their best of a +stately magnificence surpassed by no poet--have a tendency to become +heavy and even dull when the poetic fire fails to fuse and shine through +them. In fact it may be said of Wordsworth, as of most poets with +theories, that his theories helped him very little, and sometimes +hindered him a great deal. + +His real poetical merits are threefold, and lie first in the +inexplicable, the ultimate, felicity of phrase which all great poets +must have, and which only great poets have; secondly, in his matchless +power of delineating natural objects; and lastly, more properly, and +with most special rarity of all, in the half-pantheistic mysticism which +always lies behind this observation, and which every now and then breaks +through it, puts it, as mere observation, aside, and blazes in unmasked +fire of rapture. The summits of Wordsworth's poetry, the "Lines Written +at Tintern Abbey" and the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"--poems of +such astonishing magnificence that it is only more astonishing that any +one should have read them and failed to see what a poet had come before +the world,--are the greatest of many of these revelations or +inspirations. It is indeed necessary to read Wordsworth straight +through--a proceeding which requires that the reader shall be in good +literary training, but is then feasible, profitable, and even pleasant +enough--to discern the enormous height at which the great Ode stands +above its author's other work. The _Tintern Abbey_ lines certainly +approach it nearest: many smaller things--"The Affliction of Margaret," +"The Daffodils," and others--group well under its shadow, and +innumerable passages and even single lines, such as that which all good +critics have noted as lightening the darkness of the _Prelude_-- + + Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone-- + +must of course be added to the poet's credit. But the Ode remains not +merely the greatest, but the one really, dazzlingly, supremely great +thing he ever did. Its theory has been scorned or impugned by some; +parts of it have even been called nonsense by critics of weight. But, +sound or unsound, sense or nonsense, it is poetry, and magnificent +poetry, from the first line to the last--poetry than which there is none +better in any language, poetry such as there is not perhaps more than a +small volume-full in all languages. The second class of merit, that of +vivid observation, abounds whereever the poems are opened. But the +examples of the first are chiefly found in the lyrics "My Heart Leaps +up," "The Sparrow's Nest"; the famous daffodil poem which Jeffrey +thought "stuff," which some say Dorothy wrote chiefly, and which is +almost perfect of its kind; the splendid opening of the "Lines to +Hartley Coleridge," which connect themselves with the "Immortality +Ode"; the exquisite group of the "Cuckoo," the best patches of the Burns +poems, and the three "Yarrows"; the "Peel Castle" stanzas; and, to cut a +tedious catalogue short, the hideously named but in parts perfectly +beautiful "Effusion on the Death of James Hogg," the last really +masterly thing that the poet did. In some of these we may care little +for the poem as a whole, nothing for the moral the poet wishes to draw. +But the poetic moments seize us, the poetic flash dazzles our eyes, and +the whole divine despair or not more divine rapture which poetry causes +comes upon us. + +One division of Wordsworth's work is so remarkable that it must have +such special and separate mention as it is here possible to give it; and +that is his exercises in the sonnet, wherein to some tastes he stands +only below Shakespeare and on a level with Milton. The sonnet, after +being long out of favour, paying for its popularity between Wyatt and +Milton by neglect, had, principally it would seem on the very inadequate +example of Bowles (see _infra_), become a very favourite form with the +new Romantics. But none of them wrote it with the steady persistence, +and none except Keats with the occasional felicity, of Wordsworth. Its +thoughtfulness suited his bent, and its limits frustrated his prolixity, +though, it must be owned, he somewhat evaded this benign influence by +writing in series. And the sonnets on "The Venetian Republic," on the +"Subjugation of Switzerland," that beginning "The world is too much with +us," that in November 1806, the first "Personal Talk," the magnificent +"Westminster Bridge," and the opening at least of that on Scott's +departure from Abbotsford, are not merely among the glories of +Wordsworth, they are among the glories of English poetry. + +Unfortunately these moments of perfection are, in the poet's whole work, +and especially in that part of it which was composed in the later half +of his long life, by no means very frequent. Wordsworth was absolutely +destitute of humour, from which it necessarily followed that his +self-criticism was either non-existent or constantly at fault. His +verse was so little facile, it paid so little regard to any of the +common allurements of narrative-interest or varied subject, it was so +necessary for it to reach the full white heat, the absolute instant of +poetic projection, that when it was not very good it was apt to be +scarcely tolerable. It is nearly impossible to be duller than Wordsworth +at his dullest, and unluckily it is as impossible to find a poet of +anything like his powers who has given himself the license to be dull so +often and at such length. The famous "Would he had blotted a thousand" +applies to him with as much justice as it was unjust in its original +application; and it is sometimes for pages together a positive struggle +to remember that one is reading one of the greatest of English poets, +and a poet whose influence in making other poets has been second hardly +to that of Spenser, of Keats, or of the friend who follows him in our +survey. + +Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devonshire, at Ottery St. Mary, of +which place his father was vicar, on the 21st October 1772. The family +was merely respectable before his day, but since it has been of very +unusual distinction, intellectual and other. He went to Christ's +Hospital when he was not quite ten years old, and in 1791 was admitted +to an exhibition at Jesus College, Cambridge, with his thoughts already +directed to poetry by the sonnets of Bowles above mentioned, and with a +reputation, exaggerated perhaps, but certainly not invented, in Lamb's +famous "Elia" paper on his old school. Indeed, high as is Coleridge's +literary position on the strength of his writing alone, his talk and its +influence on hearers have been unanimously set higher still. He did very +well at first, gaining the Browne Medal for Greek Verse and +distinguishing himself for the Craven Scholarship; but he speedily fell +in love, in debt, it is suspected in drink, and it is known into various +political and theological heresies. He left Cambridge and enlisted at +Reading in the 15th Light Dragoons. He obtained his discharge, however, +in three or four months, and no notice except a formal admonition +appears to have been taken of his resuming his position at Cambridge. +Indeed he was shortly after elected to a Foundation Scholarship. But in +the summer of 1794 he visited Oxford, and after he had fallen in with +Southey, whose views were already Jacobinical, the pair engaged +themselves to Pantisocracy[5] and the Miss Frickers. This curious and +often told story cannot be even summarised here. Its immediate result +was that Coleridge left the University without taking a degree, and, +though not at once, married Sarah Fricker on October 1795. Thenceforward +he lived on literature and his friends, especially the latter. He tried +Unitarian preaching and newspaper work, of which at one time or another +he did a good deal. The curious ins and outs of Coleridge's strange +though hardly eventful life have, after being long most imperfectly +known, been set forth in fullest measure by Mr. Dykes Campbell. It must +suffice here to say that, after much wandering, being unable or +unwilling to keep house with his own family, he found asylums, first +with some kind folk named Morgan, and then in the house of Mr. Gillman +at Hampstead, where for years he held forth to rising men of letters, +and where he died on the 25th June 1834. His too notorious craving for +opium had never been conquered, though it had latterly been kept in some +check. + +Despite this unfortunate failing and his general inability to carry out +any schemes of work on the great scale, Coleridge's literary production +was very considerable, and, except the verse, it has never been +completely collected or systematically edited. He began verse-writing +very early, and early found a vent for it in the _Morning Chronicle_, +then a Radical organ. He wrote _The Fall of Robespierre_ in conjunction +with Southey in 1794, and published it. Some prose pamphlets followed, +and then Cottle, the Bristol providence of this group of men of letters, +offered thirty guineas for a volume of poems, which duly appeared in +1796. Meanwhile Coleridge had started a singular newspaper called _The +Watchman_, which saw ten numbers, appearing every eighth day. The +_Lyrical Ballads_ followed in 1798, and meanwhile Coleridge had written +the play of _Osorio_ (to appear long afterwards as _Remorse_), had begun +_Christabel_, and had contributed some of his best poems to the _Morning +Post_. His German visit (see _ante_) produced among other things the +translation of _Wallenstein_, a translation far above the original. Some +poetry and much newspaper work filled the next ten years, with endless +schemes; but in 1807 Coleridge began to lecture at the Royal +Institution--a course somewhat irregularly delivered, and almost +entirely unreported. 1809 saw his second independent periodical venture, +_The Friend_, the subsequent reprint of which as a book is completely +rewritten. In 1811-12 he delivered his second course of lectures, this +time on his own account. It was followed by two others, and in 1813 +_Remorse_ was produced at Drury Lane, had a fair success, and brought +the author some money. _Christabel_, with _Kubla Khan_, appeared in +1816, and the _Biographia Literaria_ next year; _Zapolya_ and the +rewritten _Friend_ the year after, when also Coleridge gave a new course +of lectures, and yet another, the last. _Aids to Reflection_, in 1825, +was the latest important work he issued himself, though in 1828 he +superintended a collection of his poems. Such of the rest of his work as +is in existence in a collected form has been printed or reprinted since. + +A more full account of the appearance of Coleridge's work than is +desirable or indeed possible in most cases here has been given, because +it is important to convey some idea of the astonishingly piecemeal +fashion in which it reached the world. To those who have studied the +author's life of opium-eating; of constant wandering from place to +place; of impecuniousness so utter that, after all the painstaking of +the modern biographer, and after full allowance for the ravens who seem +always to have been ready to feed him, it is a mystery how he escaped +the workhouse; of endless schemes and endless non-performance--it is +only a wonder that anything of Coleridge's ever reached the public +except in newspaper columns. As it was, while his most ambitiously +planned books were never written at all, most of those which did reach +the press were years in getting through it; and Southey, on one +occasion, after waiting fifteen months for the conclusion of a +contribution of Coleridge's to _Omniana_, had to cancel the sheet in +despair. The collection, after many years, by Mr. Ernest Coleridge of +his grandfather's letters has by no means completely removed the mystery +which hangs over Coleridge's life and character. We see a little more, +but we do not see the whole; and we are still unable to understand what +strange impediments there were to the junction of the two ends of power +and performance. A rigid judge might almost say, that if friends had not +been so kind, fate had been kinder, and that instead of helping they +hindered, just as a child who is never allowed to tumble will never +learn to walk. + +The enormous tolerance of friends, however, which alone enabled him to +produce anything, was justified by the astonishing genius to which its +possessor gave so unfair a chance. As a thinker, although the evidence +is too imperfect to justify very dogmatic conclusions, the opinion of +the best authorities, from which there is little reason for differing, +is that Coleridge was much more stimulating than intrinsically valuable. +His _Aids to Reflection_, his most systematic work, is disappointing; +and, with _The Friend_ and the rest, is principally valuable as +exhibiting and inculcating an attitude of mind in which the use of logic +is not, as in most eighteenth century philosophers, destructive, but is +made to consist with a wide license for the employment of imagination +and faith. He borrowed a great deal from the Germans, and he at least +sometimes forgot that he had borrowed a great deal from our own older +writers. + +So, too, precise examination of his numerous but fragmentary remains as +a literary critic makes it necessary to take a great deal for granted. +Here, also, he Germanised much; and it is not certain, even with the aid +of his fragments, that he was the equal either of Lamb or of Hazlitt in +insight. Perhaps his highest claim is that, in the criticism of +philosophy, of religion, and of literature alike he expressed, and was +even a little ahead of, the nobler bent and sympathy of his +contemporaries. We are still content to assign to Coleridge, perhaps +without any very certain title-deeds, the invention of that more +catholic way of looking at English literature which can relish the +Middle Ages without doing injustice to contemporaries, and can be +enthusiastic for the seventeenth century without contemning the +eighteenth.[6] To him more than to any single man is also assigned (and +perhaps rightly, though some of his remarks on the Church, even after +his rally to orthodoxy, are odd) the great ecclesiastical revival of the +Oxford movement; and it is certain that he had not a little to do with +the abrupt discarding of the whole tradition of Locke, Berkeley and +Hartley only excepted. Difficult as it may be to give distinct chapter +and verse for these assignments from the formless welter of his prose +works, no good judge has ever doubted their validity, with the above and +other exceptions and guards. It may be very difficult to present +Coleridge's assets in prose in a liquid form; but few doubt their value. + +It is very different with his poetry. Here, too, the disastrous, the +almost ruinous results of his weaknesses appear. When one begins to sift +and riddle the not small mass of his verse, it shrinks almost +appallingly in bulk. _Wallenstein_, though better than the original, is +after all only a translation. _Remorse_ (either under that name or as +_Osorio_) and _Zapolya_ are not very much better than the contemporary +or slightly later work of Talfourd and Milman. _The Fall of Robespierre_ +is as absurd and not so amusing as Southey's unassisted _Wat Tyler_. Of +the miscellaneous verse with which, after these huge deductions, we are +left, much is verse-impromptu, often learned and often witty, for +Coleridge was (in early days at any rate) abundantly provided with both +wit and humour, but quite occasional. Much more consists of mere +Juvenilia. Even of the productions of his best times (the last lustrum +of the eighteenth century and a lucid interval about 1816) much is not +very good. _Religious Musings_, though it has had its admirers, is +terribly poor stuff. _The Monody on the Death of Chatterton_ might have +been written by fifty people during the century before it. _The Destiny +of Nations_ is a feeble rant; but the _Ode on the Departing Year_, +though still unequal, still conventional, strikes a very different note. +_The Three Graves_, though injured by the namby-pambiness which was +still thought incumbent in ballads, again shows no vulgar touch. And +then, omitting for the moment _Kubla Khan_, which Coleridge said he +wrote in 1797, but of which no mortal ever heard till 1816, we come to +_The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ and the birth of the new poetry in +England. Here the stutters and flashes of Blake became coherent speech +and steady blaze; here poetry, which for a century and a half had been +curbing her voice to a genteel whisper or raising it only to a forensic +declamation, which had at best allowed a few wood-notes to escape here +and there as if by mistake, spoke out loud and clear. + +If this statement seems exaggerated (and it is certain that at the time +of the appearance of the _Ancient Mariner_ not even Wordsworth, not even +Southey quite relished it, while there has always been a sect of +dissidents against it), two others will perhaps seem more extravagant +still. The second is that, with the exception of this poem, of _Kubla +Khan_, of _Christabel_, and of _Love_, all of them according to +Coleridge written within a few months of each other in 1797-98, he never +did anything of the first class in poetry. The third is that these +four--though _Christabel_ itself does not exceed some fifteen hundred +lines and is decidedly unequal, though the _Ancient Mariner_ is just +over six hundred and the other two are quite short--are sufficient +between them to rank their author among the very greatest of English +poets. It is not possible to make any compromise on this point; for upon +it turns an entire theory and system of poetical criticism. Those who +demand from poetry a "criticism of life," those who will have it that +"all depends on the subject," those who want "moral" or "construction" +or a dozen other things,--all good in their way, most of them +compatible with poetry and even helpful to it, but none of them +essential thereto,--can of course never accept this estimate. Mrs. +Barbauld said that _The Ancient Mariner_ was "improbable"; and to this +charge it must plead guilty at once. _Kubla Khan_, which I should rank +as almost the best of the four, is very brief, and is nothing but a +dream, and a fragment of a dream. _Love_ is very short too, and is +flawed by some of the aforesaid namby-pambiness, from which none of the +Lake school escaped when they tried passion. _Christabel_, the most +ambitious if also the most unequal, does really underlie the criticism +that, professing itself to be a narrative and holding out the promise of +something like a connected story, it tells none, and does not even offer +very distinct hints or suggestions or what its story, if it had ever +been told, might have been. A thousand faults are in it; a good part of +the thousand in all four. + +But there is also there something which would atone for faults ten +thousand times ten thousand; there is what one hears at most three or +four times in English, at most ten or twelve times in all +literature--the first note, with its endless echo-promise, of a new +poetry. The wonderful cadence-changes of _Kubla Khan_, its phrases, +culminating in the famous distich so well descriptive of Coleridge +himself-- + + For he on honey dew hath fed, + And drunk the milk of Paradise, + +the splendid crash of the + + Ancestral voices prophesying war, + +are all part of this note and cry. You will find them nowhere from +Chaucer to Cowper--not even in the poets where you will find greater +things as you may please to call them. Then in the _Mariner_ comes the +gorgeous metre,--freed at once and for the first time from the +"butter-woman's rank to market" which had distinguished all imitations +of the ballad hitherto,--the more gorgeous imagery and pageantry here, +the simple directness there, the tameless range of imagination and +fancy, the fierce rush of rhythm:-- + + The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, + The furrow followed free: + We were the first that ever burst + Into that silent sea. + +And thereafter the spectre of Life-in-Death, the water-snakes, the +rising of the dead men, the snapping of the spell. There had been +nothing like all this before; and in all the hundred years, for all the +great poetry we have seen, we have seen nothing so _new_ as it. _Love_ +gave the magnificent opening stanza, the motto and defence at once of +the largest, the most genuine, the most delightful part of poetry. And +_Christabel_, independently of its purple patches, such as the famous +descant on the quarrels of friends, and the portents that mark the +passage of Geraldine, gave what was far more important--a new metre, +destined to have no less great and much more copious influence than the +Spenserian stanza itself. It might of course be easy to pick out +anticipations in part of this combination of iambic dimeter, trochaic, +and anapęstic; but it never had taken thorough form before. And how it +seized on the imagination of those who heard it is best shown by the +well-known anecdote of Scott, who, merely hearing a little of it +recited, at once developed it and established it in _The Lay of the Last +Minstrel_. In verse at least, if not in prose, there is no greater +_master_ than Coleridge. + +Robert Southey, the third of this curiously dissimilar trio whom partly +chance and partly choice have bound together for all time, was born at +Bristol on 12th August 1774. His father was only a linen-draper, and a +very unprosperous one; but the Southeys were a respectable family, +entitled to arms, and possessed of considerable landed property in +Somerset, some of which was left away from the poet by unfriendly uncles +to strangers, while more escaped him by a flaw in the entail. His +mother's family, the Hills, were in much better circumstances than his +father, and like the other two Lake Poets he was singularly lucky in +finding helpers. First his mother's brother the Rev. Herbert Hill, +chaplain to the English factory at Lisbon, sent him to Westminster, +where he did very well and made invaluable friends, but lost the regular +advancement to Christ Church owing to the wrath of the head-master Dr. +Vincent at an article which Southey had contributed to a school +magazine, the _Flagellant_. He was in fact expelled; but the gravest +consequences of expulsion from a public school of the first rank did not +fall upon him, and he matriculated without objection at Balliol in 1793. +His college, however, which was then distinguished for loose living and +intellectual dulness, was not congenial to him; and developing extreme +opinions in politics and religion, he decided that he could not take +orders, and left without even taking a degree. His disgrace with his own +friends was completed by his engaging in the Pantisocratic scheme, and +by his attachment to Edith Fricker, a penniless girl (though not at all +a "milliner at Bath") whose sisters became Mrs. Coleridge and Mrs. +Lovell. And when the ever-charitable Hill invited him to Portugal he +married Miss Fricker the very day before he started. After a residence +at Lisbon, in which he laid the foundation of his unrivalled +acquaintance with Peninsular history and literature, he returned and +lived with his wife at various places, nominally studying for the law, +which he liked not better but worse than the Church. After divers +vicissitudes, including a fresh visit (this time not as a bachelor) to +Portugal, and an experience of official work as secretary to Corry the +Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, he at last, at the age of thirty, +established himself at Greta Hall, close to Keswick, where Coleridge had +already taken up his abode. This, as well as much else in his career, +was made possible by the rare generosity of his friend of school-days +and all days, Charles Wynn, brother of the then Sir Watkin, and later a +pretty well known politician, who on coming of age gave him an annuity +of £160 a year. This in 1807 he relinquished on receiving a government +pension of practically the same amount. The Laureateship in 1813 brought +him less than another hundred; but many years afterwards Sir Robert +Peel, in 1835, after offering a baronetcy, put his declining years out +of anxiety by conferring a further pension of £300 a year on him. These +declining years were in part unhappy. As early as 1816 his eldest son +Herbert, a boy of great promise, died; the shock was repeated some years +later by the death of his youngest and prettiest daughter Isabel; while +in the same year as that in which his pension was increased his wife +became insane, and died two years later. A second marriage in 1839 to +the poetess Caroline Bowles brought him some comfort; but his own brain +became more and more affected, and for a considerable time before his +death on 21st March 1843 he had been mentally incapable. + +Many morals have been drawn from this melancholy end as to the wisdom of +too prolonged literary labour, which in Southey's case had certainly +been prodigious, and had been carried so far that he actually read while +he was taking constitutional walks. It is fair to say, however, that, +just as in the case of Scott the terrible shock of the downfall of his +fortunes has to be considered, so in that of Southey the successive +trials to which he, a man of exceptionally strong domestic affections, +was exposed, must be taken into account. At the same time it must be +admitted that Southey's production was enormous. His complete works +never have been, and are never likely to be collected; and, from the +scattered and irregular form in which they appeared, it is difficult if +not impossible to make even a guess at the total. The list of books and +articles (the latter for the most part written for the _Quarterly +Review_, and of very great length) at the end of his son's _Life_ fills +nearly six closely printed pages. Two of these entries--_the Histories +of Brazil_ and of the _Peninsular War_--alone represent six large +volumes. The Poems by themselves occupy a royal octavo in double columns +of small print running to eight hundred pages; the correspondence, very +closely printed in the six volumes of the _Life_, and the four more of +_Letters_ edited by the Rev. J. W. Warter, some five thousand pages in +all; while a good deal of his early periodical work has never been +identified, and there are large stores of additional letters--some +printed, more in MS. Nor was Southey by any means a careless or an easy +writer. He always founded his work on immense reading, some of the +results of which, showing the laborious fashion in which he performed +it, were published after his death in his _Commonplace Book_. He did not +write very rapidly; and he corrected, both in MS. and in proof, with the +utmost sedulity. Of the nearly 14,000 books which he possessed at his +death, it is safe to say that all had been methodically read, and most +read many times; while his almost medięval diligence did not hesitate at +working through a set of folios to obtain the information or the +corrections necessary for a single article. + +It is here impossible to mention more than the chief items of this +portentous list. They are in verse--_Poems_, by R. Southey and R. +Lovell, 1794; _Joan of Arc_, 1795; _Minor Poems_, 1797-99; _Thalaba_, +1801; _Metrical Tales_ and _Madoc_, 1805; _The Curse of Kehama_, 1810; +_Roderick_, 1814; with a few later volumes, the chief being the unlucky +_Vision of Judgment_, 1821, in hexameters. A complete edition of the +Poems, except one or two posthumously printed, was published by himself +in ten volumes in 1837, and collected into one ten years later with the +additions. This also includes _Wat Tyler_, a rhapsody of the poet's +youth, which was (piratically and to his infinite annoyance) published +in 1817. + +In prose Southey's most important works are the _History of Brazil_, +1810-19 (this, large as it is, is only a kind of off-shoot of the +projected _History of Portugal_, which in a way occupied his whole life, +and never got published at all); the _History of the Peninsular War_, +1822-32; the _Letters from England by Don Manuel Espriella_, 1812; the +_Life of Nelson_ (usually thought his masterpiece), 1813; the _Life of +Wesley_, 1820; _The Book of the Church_, 1824; _Colloquies on Society_ +(well known, if not in itself, for Macaulay's review of it), 1829; +_Naval History_, 1833-40; and the great humorous miscellany of _The +Doctor_ (seven volumes), 1834-47; to which must be added editions, often +containing some of his best work, of Chatterton, Amadis of Gaul, +Palmerin of England, Kirke White, Bunyan, and Cowper, with divers +_Specimens_ of the British Poets, the charming prose and verse +_Chronicle of the Cid_, the miscellany of _Omniana_, half-way between +table- and commonplace-book, the _Commonplace Book_ itself, and not a +little else, besides letters and articles innumerable. + +Certain things about Southey are uncontested and uncontestable. The +uprightness and beauty of his character, his wonderful helpfulness to +others, and the uncomplaining way in which he bore what was almost +poverty,--for, high as was his reputation, his receipts were never a +tithe of the rewards not merely of Scott or Byron or Tom Moore, but of +much lesser men--are not more generally acknowledged than the singular +and pervading excellence of his English prose style, the robustness of +his literary genius, and his unique devotion to literature. But when we +leave these accepted things he becomes more difficult if not less +interesting. He himself had not the slightest doubt that he was a great +poet, and would be recognised as such by posterity, though with a proud +humility he reconciled himself to temporary lack of vogue. This might be +set down to an egotistic delusion. But such an easy explanation is +negatived by even a slight comparison of the opinions of his greatest +contemporaries. It is somewhat staggering to find that Scott, the +greatest Tory man of letters who had strong political sympathies, and +Fox, the greatest Whig politician who had keen literary tastes, enjoyed +his long poems enthusiastically. But it may be said that the eighteenth +century leaven which was so strong in each, and which is also noticeable +in Southey, conciliated them. What then are we to say of Macaulay, a +much younger man, a violent political opponent of Southey, and a by no +means indiscriminate lover of verse, who, admitting that he doubted +whether Southey's long poems would be read after half a century, had no +doubt that if read they would be admired? And what are we to say of the +avowals of admiration wrung as it were from Byron, who succeeded in +working himself up, from personal, political, and literary motives +combined, into a frantic hatred of Southey, lampooned him in print, sent +him a challenge (which luckily was not delivered) in private, and was +what the late Mr. Mark Pattison would have called "his Satan"? + +The half century of Macaulay's prophecy has come, and that prophecy has +been fulfilled as to the rarity of Southey's readers as a poet. Has the +other part come true too? I should hesitate to say that it has. Esteem +not merely for the man but for the writer can never fail Southey +whenever he is read by competent persons: admiration may be less prompt +to come at call. Two among his smaller pieces--the beautiful "Holly +Tree," and the much later but exquisite stanzas "My days among the dead +are past"--can never be in any danger; the grasp of the +grotesque-terrific, which the poet shows in the "Old Woman of Berkley" +and a great many other places, anticipates the _Ingoldsby Legends_ with +equal ease but with a finer literary gift; some other things are really +admirable and not a little pleasing. But the longer poems, if they are +ever to live, are still dry bones. _Thalaba_, one of the best, is spoilt +by the dogged craze against rhyme, which is more, not less, needed in +irregular than in regular verse. _Joan of Arc_, _Madoc_, _Roderick_, +have not escaped that curse of blank verse which only Milton, and he not +always, has conquered in really long poems. _Kehama_, the only great +poem in which the poet no longer disdains the almost indispensable aid +to poetry in our modern and loosely quantified tongue, is much better +than any of the others. The Curse itself is about as good as it can be, +and many other passages are not far below it; but to the general taste +the piece suffers from the remote character of the subject, which is not +generally and humanly interesting, and from the mass of tedious detail. + +To get out of the difficulty thus presented by indulging in contemptuous +ignoring of Southey's merits has been attempted many times since Emerson +foolishly asked "Who is Southey?" in his jottings of his conversation +with Landor, Southey's most dissimilar but constant friend and +panegyrist. It is extremely easy to say who Southey is. He is the +possessor of perhaps the purest and most perfect English prose style, of +a kind at once simple and scholarly, to be found in the language. He has +written (in the _Life of Nelson_) perhaps the best short biography in +that language, and other things not far behind this. No Englishman has +ever excelled him in range of reading or in intelligent comprehension +and memory of what he read. Unlike many book-worms, he had an +exceedingly lively and active humour. He has scarcely an equal, and +certainly no superior, in the rare and difficult art of discerning and +ranging the material parts of an historical account: the pedant may +glean, but the true historian will rarely reap after him. And in poetry +his gifts, if they are never of the very highest, are so various and +often so high that it is absolutely absurd to pooh-pooh him as a poet. +The man who could write the verses "In my Library" and the best parts of +_Thalaba_ and _Kehama_ certainly had it in his power to write other +things as good, probably to write other things better. Had it been in +his nature to take no thought not merely for the morrow but even for the +day, like Coleridge, or in his fate to be provided for without any +trouble on his own part, and to take the provision with self-centred +indifference, like Wordsworth, his actual production might have been +different and better. But his strenuous and generous nature could not be +idle; and idleness of some sort is, it may be very seriously laid down, +absolutely necessary to the poet who is to be supreme. + +The poet who, though, according to the canons of poetical criticism most +in favour during this century, he ranks lower than either Wordsworth or +Coleridge, did far more to popularise the general theory of Romantic +poetry than either, was a slightly older man than two of the trio just +noticed; but he did not begin his poetical career (save by one volume of +translation) till some years after all of them had published. Walter +Scott was born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. His father, of +the same name as himself, was a Writer to the Signet; his mother was +Anne Rutherford, and the future poet and novelist had much excellent +Border blood in him, besides that of his direct ancestors the Scotts of +Harden. He was a very sickly child; and though he grew out of this he +was permanently lame. His early childhood was principally spent on the +Border itself, with a considerable interval at Bath; and he was duly +sent to the High School and University of Edinburgh, where, like a good +many other future men of letters, he was not extremely remarkable for +what is called scholarship. He was early imprisoned in his father's +office, where the state of relations between father and son is supposed +to be pretty accurately represented by the story of those between Alan +Fairford and his father in _Redgauntlet_; and, like Alan, he was called +to the bar. But even in the inferior branch of the profession he enjoyed +tolerable liberty of wandering about and sporting, besides sometimes +making expeditions on business into the Highlands and other +out-of-the-way parts of the country. + +He thus acquired great knowledge of his fatherland; while (for he was, +if not exactly a scholar, the most omnivorous of readers) he was also +acquiring great knowledge of books. And it ought not to be omitted that +Edinburgh, in addition to the literary and professional society which +made it then and afterwards so famous, was still to no small extent the +headquarters of the Scotch nobility, and that Scott, long before his +books made him famous, was familiar with society of every rank. His +first love affair did not run smooth, and he seems never to have +entirely forgotten the object of it, who is identified (on somewhat more +solid grounds than in the case of other novelists) with more than one of +his heroines. But he consoled himself to a certain extent with a young +lady half French, half English, Miss Charlotte Carpenter or Charpentier, +whom he met at Gilsland and married at Carlisle on Christmas Eve 1797. +Scott was an active member of the yeomanry as well as a barrister, an +enthusiastic student of German as well as a sportsman; and the book of +translations (from Bürger) above referred to appeared in 1796. But he +did nothing important till after the beginning of the present century, +when the starting of the _Edinburgh Review_ and some other things +brought him forward; though he showed what he could do by contributing +two ballads, "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John," to a collection of +terror-pieces started by Monk Lewis, and added Goethe's _Götz von +Berlichingen_ to his translations. He had become in 1799 independent, +though not rich, by being appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire. + +His beginnings as an author proper were connected, as was all his +subsequent career, partly for good but more for ill, with a school +friendship he had early formed for two brothers named Ballantyne at +Kelso. He induced James, the elder, to start a printing business at +Edinburgh, and unfortunately he entered into a secret partnership with +this firm, which never did him much good, which caused him infinite +trouble, and which finally ruined him. But into this complicated and +still much debated business it is impossible to enter here. James +Ballantyne printed the _Border Minstrelsy_, which appeared in 1802,--a +book ranking with Percy's _Reliques_ in its influence on the form and +matter of subsequent poetry,--and then Scott at last undertook original +work of magnitude. His task was _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, +published in 1805. It may almost be said that from that day to his death +he was the foremost--he was certainly, with the exception of Byron, the +most popular--man of letters in Great Britain. His next poems--_Marmion_ +(1808) and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810)--brought him fame and money +such as no English poet had gained before; and though Byron's +following--for following it was--for the time eclipsed his master, the +latter's _Rokeby, The Lord of the Isles_, and others, would have been +triumphs for any one else. + +How, when the taste for his verse seemed to cool, he struck out a new +line in prose and achieved yet more fame and yet more money than the +verse had ever given him, will concern us in the next chapter. But as it +would be cumbrous to make yet a third division of his work, the part of +his prose which is not fiction may be included here, as well as the rest +of his life. He had written much criticism for the _Edinburgh_, until he +was partly disgusted by an uncivil review of _Marmion_, partly (and +more) by the tone of increasing Whiggery and non-intervention which +Jeffrey was imposing on the paper; and when the _Quarterly_ was founded +in opposition he transferred his services to that. He edited a splendid +and admirably done issue of Dryden (1808) and another not quite so +thoroughly executed of Swift (1814), and his secret connection with the +Ballantynes induced him to do much other editing and miscellaneous work. +In the sad last years of his life he laboured with desperation at a +great _Life of Napoleon_, which was a success pecuniarily but not in +many other ways, produced the exquisite _Tales of a Grandfather_ on +Scottish history, and did much else. He even wrote plays, which have +very little merit, and, except abstract philosophy, there is hardly a +division of literature that he did not touch; for he composed a sermon +or two of merit, and his political pamphlets, the _Letters of Malachi +Malagrowther_, opposing what he thought an interference with Scottish +privileges in currency matters, are among the best of their kind. + +His life was for many years a very happy one; for his marriage, if not +passionately, was fairly successful, he was extremely fond of his +children, and while his poems and novels began before he had fully +reached middle life to make him a rich man, his Sheriffship, and a +Clerkship of Session which was afterwards added (though he had to wait +some time for its emoluments), had already made him secure of bread and +expectant of affluence. From a modest cottage at Lasswade he expanded +himself to a rented country house at Ashestiel on the Tweed, having +besides a comfortable town mansion in Edinburgh; and when he was turned +out of Ashestiel he bought land and began to build at Abbotsford on the +same river. The estate was an ill-chosen and unprofitable one. The house +grew with the owner's fortunes, which, founded in part as they were on +the hardest and most honest work that author ever gave, were in part +also founded on the quicksand of his treacherous connection with men, +reckless, ill-judging, and, though perhaps not in intention dishonest, +perpetually trading on their secret partner's industry and fame. In the +great commercial crash of 1825, Constable, the publisher of most of the +novels, was involved; he dragged the Ballantynes down with him; and the +whole of Scott's fortune, except his appointments and the little +settled on his wife and children, was liable for the Ballantynes' debts. +But he was not satisfied with ruin. He must needs set to work at the +hopeless task of paying debts which he had never, except technically, +incurred, and he actually in the remaining years of his life cleared off +the greater part of them. It was at the cost of his life itself. His +wife died, his children were scattered; but he worked on till the +thankless, hopeless toil broke down his strength, and after a fruitless +visit to Italy, he returned, to die at Abbotsford on 21st September +1832. + +Scott's poetry has gone through various stages of estimate, and it can +hardly be said even now, a hundred years after the publication of his +first verses, to have attained the position, practically accepted by all +but paradoxers, which in that time a poet usually gains, unless, as the +poets of the seventeenth century did in the eighteenth, he falls, owing +to some freak of popular taste, out of really critical consideration +altogether. The immense popularity which it at first obtained has been +noted, as well as the fact that it was only ousted from that popularity +by, so to speak, a variety of itself. But the rise of Byron in the long +run did it far less harm than the long-delayed vogue of Wordsworth and +Coleridge and the success even of the later schools, of which Tennyson +was at once the pioneer and the commander-in-chief. At an uncertain time +in the century, but comparatively early, it became fashionable to take +Scott's verse as clever and spirited improvisation, to dwell on its +over-fluency and facility, its lack of passages in the grand style +(whatever the grand style may be), to indicate its frequent blemishes in +strictly correct form and phrase. And it can hardly be said that there +has been much reaction from this tone among professed and competent +critics. + +To a certain extent, indeed, this undervaluation is justified, and Scott +himself, who was more free from literary vanity than any man of letters +of whom we have record, pleaded guilty again and again. Dropping as he +did almost by accident on a style which had absolutely no forerunners in +elaborate formal literature, a style almost absolutely destitute of any +restrictions or limits, in which the length of lines and stanzas, the +position of rhymes, the change from narrative to dialogue, and so forth, +depended wholly and solely on the caprice of the author, it would have +been extremely strange if a man whose education had been a little +lacking in scholastic strictness, and who began to write at a time when +the first object of almost every writer was to burst old bonds, had not +been somewhat lawless, even somewhat slipshod. _Christabel_ itself, the +first in time, and, though not published till long afterwards, the model +of his _Lay_, has but a few score verses that can pretend to the grand +style (whatever that may be). Nor yet again can it be denied that, acute +as was the sense which bade Scott stop, he wrote as it was a little too +much in this style, while he tried others for which he had far less +aptitude. + +Yet it seems to me impossible, on any just theory of poetry or of +literature, to rank him low as a poet. He can afford to take his trial +under more than one statute. To those who say that all depends on the +subject, or that the handling and arrangement of the subject are, if not +everything, yet something to be ranked far above mere detached beauties, +he can produce not merely the first long narrative poems in English, +which for more than a century had honestly enthralled and fixed popular +taste, but some of the very few long narrative poems which deserve to do +so. Wordsworth, in a characteristic note on the _White Doe of Rylstone_, +contrasts, with oblique depreciation of Scott, that poem and its famous +predecessors in the style across the border; but he omits to notice one +point of difference--that in Scott the _story_ interests, and in himself +it does not. For the belated "classical" criticism of the _Edinburgh +Review_, which thought the story of the _Last Minstrel_ childish, and +that of _Marmion_ not much better, it may have been at least consistent +to undervalue these poems. But the assumptions of that criticism no +longer pass muster. On the other hand, to those who pin their poetical +faith on "patches," the great mass of Scott's poetical work presents +examples of certainly no common beauty. The set pieces of the larger +poems, the Melrose description in _The Lay_, the battle in _Marmion_, +the Fiery Cross in the _Lady of the Lake_, are indeed inferior in this +respect to the mere snatches which the author scattered about his +novels, some of which, especially the famous "Proud Maisie," have a +beauty not inferior to that of the best things of his greatest +contemporaries. And in swinging and dashing lyric, again, Scott can hold +his own with the best, if indeed "the best" can hold _their_ own in this +particular division with "Lochinvar" and "Bonnie Dundee," with Elspeth's +ballad in the _Antiquary_, and the White Lady's comfortable words to +poor Father Philip. + +The most really damaging things to be said against Scott as a poet are +two. First, that his genius did not incline him either to the expression +of the highest passion or to that of the deepest meditation, in which +directions the utterances of the very greatest poetry are wont to lie. +In the second place, that the extreme fertility and fluency which cannot +be said to have improved even his prose work are, from the nature of the +case, far more evident, and far more damagingly evident, in his verse. +He is a poet of description, of action, of narration, rather than of +intense feeling or thought. Yet in his own special divisions of the +simpler lyric and of lyrical narrative he sometimes attains the +exquisite, and rarely sinks below a quality which is fitted to give the +poetical delight to a very large number of by no means contemptible +persons. It appears to me at least, that on no sound theory of poetical +criticism can Scott be ranked as a poet below Byron, who was his +imitator in narrative and his inferior in lyric. But it may be admitted +that this was not the opinion of most contemporaries of the two, and +that, much as the poetry of Byron has sunk in critical estimation during +the last half century, and slight as are the signs of its recovery, +those who do not think very highly of the poetry of the pupil do not, as +a rule, show much greater enthusiasm for that of the master. + +Byron, it is true, was only half a pupil of Scott's, and (oddly enough +for the poet, who, with Scott, was recognised as leader by the Romantic +schools of all Europe) had more than a hankering after the classical +ideals in literature. Yet how much of this was due to wilful "pose" and +a desire not to follow the prevailing school of the day is a question +difficult to answer--as indeed are many connected with Byron, whose +utterances, even in private letters, are very seldom to be taken with +absolute confidence in their sincerity. The poet's character did no +discredit to the doctrines of heredity. His family was one of +considerable distinction and great age; but his father, Captain John +Byron, who never came to the title, was a _roué_ of the worst character, +and the cousin whom the poet succeeded had earned the name of the Wicked +Lord. His mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight, was of an excellent Scotch +stock, and an heiress; though her rascally husband made away with her +money. But she had a most violent temper, and seems to have had +absolutely no claims except those of birth to the title of lady. Byron +was born in Holles Street, Cavendish Square, on 22nd January 1788; and +his early youth, which was spent with his mother at Aberdeen, was one of +not much indulgence or happiness. But he came to the title, and to an +extremely impoverished succession, at ten years old, and three years +later was sent to Harrow. Here he made many friends, distinguishing +himself by obtruding mentions and memories of his rank in a way not +common with the English aristocracy, and hence, in 1805, he proceeded to +Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent about the usual time there, but +took no degree, and while he was still an undergraduate printed his +_Hours of Idleness_, first called _Juvenilia_. It appeared publicly in +March 1807, and a year later was the subject of a criticism, rather +excessive than unjust, in the _Edinburgh Review_. Byron, who had plenty +of pluck, and who all his life long inclined in his heart to the Popian +school, spent a considerable time upon a verse-answer, _English Bards +and Scotch Reviewers_, in which he ran amuck generally, but displayed +ability which it was hopeless to seek in his first production. Then he +went abroad, and the excitement of his sojourn in the countries round +the Mediterranean for the next two years not only aroused, but finally +determined and almost fully developed, his genius. + +On his return home he took his seat and went into society with the +success likely to attend an extremely handsome young man of +twenty-three, with a vague reputation both for ability and naughtiness, +a fairly old title, and something of an estate. But his position as a +"lion" was not thoroughly asserted till the publication, in February +1812, of _Childe Harold_, which with some difficulty he had been induced +by his friend Dallas, his publisher Murray, and the critic Gifford to +put before some frigid and trivial _Hints from Horace_. Over _Childe +Harold_ the English public went simply mad, buying seven editions in +five weeks; and during the next three years Byron produced, in rapid +succession, _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, _The Corsair_, _Lara_, +_The Siege of Corinth_, and _Hebrew Melodies_. He could hardly write +fast enough for the public to buy. Then the day after New Year's Day +1814, he married Miss Milbanke, a great heiress, a future baroness in +her own right, and handsome after a fashion, but of a cold, prim, and +reserved disposition, as well as of a very unforgiving temper. It +probably did not surprise any one who knew the pair when, a year later, +they separated for ever. + +The scandals and discussions connected with this event are fortunately +foreign to our subject here. The only important result of the matter for +literature is that Byron (upon whom public opinion in one of its sudden +fits of virtuous versatility threw even more of the blame than was +probably just) left the country and journeyed leisurely, in the company +of Mr. and Mrs. Shelley for the most part, to Venice. He never returned +alive to England; and Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa were successively +his headquarters till 1823. Then the Greek Insurrection attracted him, +he raised what money he could, set out for Greece, showed in the +distracted counsels of the insurgents much more practical and +untheatrical heroism than he had hitherto been credited with, and died +of fever at Missolonghi on the 19th of April 1824. His body was brought +home to England and buried in the parish church of Hucknall Torkard, +near Newstead Abbey, his Nottinghamshire seat, which, however, he had +sold some time before. The best of Byron's poems by far date from this +latter period of his life: the later cantos of _Childe Harold_, the +beautiful short poems of _The Dream_ and _Darkness_, many pieces in +dramatic form (the chief of which are _Manfred_, _Cain_, _Marino +Faliero_, and _Sardanapalus_), _Mazeppa_, a piece more in his earlier +style but greatly superior to his earlier work, a short burlesque poem +_Beppo_, and an immense and at his death unfinished narrative satire +entitled _Don Juan_. + +Although opinions about Byron differ very much, there is one point about +him which does not admit of difference of opinion. No English poet, +perhaps no English writer except Scott (or rather "The Author of +Waverley"), has ever equalled him in popularity at home; and no English +writer, with Richardson and Scott again as seconds, and those not very +close ones, has equalled him in contemporary popularity abroad. The +vogue of Byron in England, though overpowering for the moment, was even +at its height resisted by some good judges and more strait-laced +moralists; and it ebbed, if not as rapidly as it flowed, with a much +more enduring movement. But abroad he simply took possession of the +Continent of Europe and kept it. He was one of the dominant influences +and determining causes of the French Romantic movement; in Germany, +though the failure of literary talent and activity of the first order in +that country early in this century made his school less important, he +had great power over Heine, its one towering genius; and he was almost +the sole master of young Russia, young Italy, young Spain, in poetry. +Nor, though his active and direct influence has of course been exhausted +by time, can his reputation on the Continent be said to have ever waned. + +These various facts, besides being certain in themselves, are also very +valuable as guiding the inquirer in regions which are more of opinion. +The rapidity of Byron's success everywhere, the extent of it abroad +(where few English writers before him had had any at all), and the +decline at home, are all easily connected with certain peculiarities of +his work. That work is almost as fluent and facile as Scott's, to which, +as has been said, it owes immense debts of scheme and manner; and it is +quite as faulty. Indeed Scott, with all his indifference to a strictly +academic correctness, never permitted himself the bad rhymes, the bad +grammar, the slipshod phrase in which Byron unblushingly indulges. But +Byron is much more monotonous than Scott, and it was this very monotony, +assisted by an appearance of intensity, which for the time gave him +power. The appeal of Byron consists very mainly, though no doubt not +wholly, in two things: the lavish use of the foreign and then unfamiliar +scenery, vocabulary, and manners of the Levant, and the installation, as +principal character, of a personage who was speedily recognised as a +sort of fancy portrait, a sketch in cap and yataghan, of Byron himself +as he would like to be thought. This Byronic hero has an ostentatious +indifference to moral laws, for the most part a mysterious past which +inspires him with deep melancholy, great personal beauty, strength, and +bravery, and he is an all-conquering lover. He is not quite so original +as he seemed, for he is in effect very little more than the older +Romantic villain-hero of Mrs. Radcliffe, the Germans, and Monk Lewis, +costumed much more effectively, placed in scheme and companionship more +picturesquely, and managed with infinitely greater genius. But it is a +common experience in literary history that a type more or less familiar +already, and presented with striking additions, is likely to be more +popular than something absolutely new. And accordingly Byron's bastard +and second-hand Romanticism, though it owed a great deal to the +terrorists and a great deal more to Scott, for the moment altogether +eclipsed the pure and original Romanticism of his elders Coleridge and +Wordsworth, of his juniors Shelley and Keats. + +But although the more extreme admirers of Byron would no doubt dissent +strongly from even this judgment, it would probably be subscribed, with +some reservations and guards, by not a few good critics from whom I am +compelled to part company as to other parts of Byron's poetical claim. +It is on the question how much of true poetry lies behind and +independent of the scenery and properties of Byronism, that the great +debate arises. Was the author of the poems from _Childe Harold_ to _Don +Juan_ really gifted with the poetical "sincerity and strength" which +have been awarded him by a critic of leanings so little Byronic in the +ordinary sense of Matthew Arnold? Is he a poetic star of the first +magnitude, a poetic force of the first power, at all? There may seem to +be rashness, there may even seem to be puerile insolence and absurdity, +in denying or even doubting this in the face of such a European concert +as has been described and admitted above. Yet the critical conscience +admits of no transaction; and after all, as it was doubted by a great +thinker whether nations might not go mad like individuals, I do not know +why it should be regarded as impossible that continents should go mad +like nations. + +At any rate the qualities of Byron are very much of a piece, and, even +by the contention of his warmest reasonable admirers, not much varied or +very subtle, not necessitating much analysis or disquisition. They can +be fairly pronounced upon in a judgment of few words. Byron, then, seems +to me a poet distinctly of the second class, and not even of the best +kind of second, inasmuch as his greatness is chiefly derived from a sort +of parody, a sort of imitation, of the qualities of the first. His verse +is to the greatest poetry what melodrama is to tragedy, what plaster is +to marble, what pinchbeck is to gold. He is not indeed an impostor; for +his sense of the beauty of nature and of the unsatisfactoriness of life +is real, and his power of conveying this sense to others is real also. +He has great, though uncertain, and never very _fine_, command of poetic +sound, and a considerable though less command of poetic vision. But in +all this there is a singular touch of illusion, of what his +contemporaries had learnt from Scott to call gramarye. The often cited +parallel of the false and true Florimels in Spenser applies here also. +The really great poets do not injure each other in the very least by +comparison, different as they are. Milton does not "kill" Wordsworth; +Spenser does not injure Shelley; there is no danger in reading Keats +immediately after Coleridge. But read Byron in close juxtaposition with +any of these, or with not a few others, and the effect, to any good +poetic taste, must surely be disastrous; to my own, whether good or bad, +it is perfectly fatal. The light is not that which never was on land or +sea; it is that which is habitually just in front of the stage: the +roses are rouged, the cries of passion even sometimes (not always) ring +false. I have read Byron again and again; I have sometimes, by reading +Byron only and putting a strong constraint upon myself, got nearly into +the mood to enjoy him. But let eye or ear once catch sight or sound of +real poetry, and the enchantment vanishes. + +Attention has already been called to the fact that Byron, though +generally ranking with the poets who have been placed before him in this +chapter as a leader in the nineteenth century renaissance of poetry, was +a direct scholar of Scott, and in point of age represented, if not a new +generation, a second division of the old. This was still more the case +in point of age, and almost infinitely more so in point of quality, as +regards Shelley and Keats. There was nothing really new in Byron; there +was only a great personal force directing itself, half involuntarily and +more than half because of personal lack of initiative, into contemporary +ways. The other two poets just mentioned were really new powers. They +took some colour from their elders; but they added more than they took, +and they would unquestionably have been great figures at any time of +English literature and history. Scott had little or no influence on +them, and Wordsworth not much; but they were rather close to Coleridge, +and they owed something to a poet of much less genius than his or than +their own--Leigh Hunt. + +Percy Bysshe Shelley, the elder of the two, was Byron's junior by four +years, and was born at Field Place in Sussex in August 1792. He was the +heir of a very respectable and ancient though not very distinguished +family of the squirearchy; and he had every advantage of education, +being sent to Eton in 1804, and to University College, Oxford, six years +later. The unconquerable unconventionality of his character and his +literary tastes had shown themselves while he was still a schoolboy, and +in the last year of his Etonian and the first of his Oxonian residence +he published two of the most absurd novels of the most absurd novel kind +that ever appeared, _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_, imitations of Monk +Lewis. He also in the same year collaborated in two volumes of verse, +_The Wandering Jew_ (partly represented by _Queen Mab_), and "_Poems_ by +Victor and Cazire" (which has vindicated the existence of reviewers by +surviving only in its reviews, all copies having mysteriously perished). +His stay at Oxford was not long; for having, in conjunction with a +clever but rather worthless friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg (afterwards +his biographer), issued a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism" and +sent it to the heads of colleges, he was, by a much greater necessity, +expelled from University on 25th March 1811. Later in the same year he +married Harriet Westbrook, a pretty and lively girl of sixteen, who had +been a school-fellow of his sister's, but came from the lower middle +class. His apologists have said that Harriet threw herself at his head, +and that Shelley explained to her that she or he might depart when +either pleased. The responsibility and the validity of this defence may +be left to these advocates. + +For nearly three years Shelley and his wife led an exceedingly wandering +life in Ireland, Wales, Devonshire, Berkshire, the Lake District, and +elsewhere, Shelley attempting all sorts of eccentric propagandism in +politics and religion, and completing the crude but absolutely original +_Queen Mab_. Before the third anniversary of his wedding-day came round +he had parted with Harriet, against whose character his apologists, as +above, have attempted to bring charges. The fact is that he had fallen +in love with Mary Godwin, daughter of the author of _Political Justice_ +(whose writings had always had a great influence on Shelley, and who +spunged on him pitilessly) and of Mary Wollstonecraft. The pair fled to +the Continent together in July 1814; and two years later, when the +unhappy wife, a girl of twenty-one, had drowned herself in the +Serpentine, they were married. Meanwhile Shelley had wandered back to +England, had, owing to the death of his grandfather, received a +considerable independent income by arrangement, and in 1815 had written +_Alastor_, which, though not so clearly indicative of a new departure +when compared with _Queen Mab_ as some critics have tried to make out, +no other living poet, perhaps no other poet, could have written. He was +refused the guardianship, though he was allowed to appoint guardians, of +his children by the luckless Harriet, and was (for him naturally, though +for most men unreasonably) indignant. But his poetical vocation and +course were both clear henceforward, though he never during his life had +much command of the public, and had frequent difficulties with +publishers, while the then attitude of the law made piracy very easy. +For a time he lived at Marlow, where he wrote or began _Prince +Athanase_, _Rosalind and Helen_, and above all _Laon and Cythna_, called +later and permanently _The Revolt of Islam_. In April 1818 he left +England for Italy, and never returned. + +The short remains of his life were spent chiefly at Lucca, Florence, and +Pisa, with visits to most of the other chief Italian cities; Byron being +often, and Leigh Hunt at the last, his companion. All his greatest poems +were now written. At last, in July 1821, when the Shelleys were staying +at a lonely house named Casa Magni, on the Bay of Spezia, he and his +friend Lieutenant Williams set out in a boat from Leghorn. The boat +either foundered in a squall or was run down. At any rate Shelley's body +was washed ashore on the 19th, and burnt on a pyre in the presence of +Byron, Hunt, and Trelawny. + +Little need be said of Shelley's character. If it had not been for the +disgusting efforts of his maladroit adorers to blacken that not merely +of his hapless young wife, but of every one with whom he came in +contact, it might be treated with the extremest indulgence. Almost a boy +in years at the time of his death, he was, with some late flashes of +sobering, wholly a boy in inability to understand the responsibilities +and the burdens of life. An enthusiast for humanity generally, and +towards individuals a man of infinite generosity and kindliness, he yet +did some of the cruellest and some of not the least disgraceful things +from mere childish want of realising the _pacta conventa_ of the world. +He, wholly ignorant, would, if he could, have turned the wheel of +society the other way, reckless of the horrible confusion and suffering +that he must occasion. + +But in pure literary estimation we need take no note of this. In +literature, Shelley, if not of the first three or four, is certainly of +the first ten or twelve. He has, as no poet in England except Blake and +Coleridge in a few flashes had had before him for some century and a +half, the ineffable, the divine intoxication which only the _di majores_ +of poetry can communicate to their worshippers. Once again, after all +these generations, it became unnecessary to agree or disagree with the +substance, to take interest or not to take interest in it, to admit or +to contest the presence of faults and blemishes--to do anything except +recognise and submit to the strong pleasure of poetry, the charm of the +highest poetical inspiration. + +I think myself, though the opinion is not common among critics, that +this touch is unmistakable even so early as _Queen Mab_. That poem is no +doubt to a certain extent modelled upon Southey, especially upon +_Kehama_, which, as has been observed above, is a far greater poem than +is usually allowed. But the motive was different: the sails might be the +same, but the wind that impelled them was another. By the time of +_Alastor_ it is generally admitted that there could or should have been +little mistake. Nothing, indeed, but the deafening blare of Byron's +brazen trumpet could have silenced this music of the spheres. The +meaning is not very much, though it is passable; but the music is +exquisite. There is just a foundation of Wordsworthian scheme in the +blank verse; but the structure built on it is not Wordsworth's at all, +and there are merely a few borrowed strokes of _technique_, such as the +placing of a long adjective before a monosyllabic noun at the end of +the line, and a strong cęsura about two-thirds through that line. All +the rest is Shelley, and wonderful. + +It may be questioned whether, fine as _The Revolt of Islam_ is, the +Spenserian stanza was quite so well suited as the "Pindaric" or as blank +verse, or as lyrical measures, to Shelley's genius. It is certainly far +excelled both in the lyrics and in the blank verse of _Prometheus +Unbound_, the first poem which distinctly showed that one of the +greatest lyric poets of the world had been born to England. _The Cenci_ +relies more on subject, and, abandoning the lyric appeal, abandons what +Shelley is strongest in; but _Hellas_ restores this. Of his comic +efforts, the chief of which are _Swellfoot the Tyrant_ and _Peter Bell +the Third_, it is perhaps enough to say that his humour, though it +existed, was fitful, and that he was too much of a partisan to keep +sufficiently above his theme. The poems midway between, large and +small--_Prince Athanase_, _The Witch of Atlas_ (an exquisite +and glorious fantasy piece), _Rosalind and Helen_, _Adonais_, +_Epipsychidion_, and the _Triumph of Life_--would alone have made his +fame. But it is in Shelley's smallest poems that his greatest virtue +lies. Not even in the seventeenth century had any writer given so much +that was so purely exquisite. "To Constantia Singing," the "Ozymandias" +sonnet, the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills," the "Stanzas +written in Dejection," the "Ode to the West Wind," the hackneyed +"Cloud," and "Skylark," "Arethusa," the "World's Wanderers," "Music, +when soft voices die," "The flower that smiles to-day," "Rarely, rarely, +comest thou," the "Lament," "One word is too often profaned," the +"Indian Air," the second "Lament," "O world! O life! O time!" (the most +perfect thing of its kind perhaps, in the strict sense of +perfection, that all poetry contains), the "Invitation," and the +"Recollection,"--this long list, which might have been made longer, +contains things absolutely consummate, absolutely unsurpassed, only +rivalled by a few other things as perfect as themselves. + +Shelley has been foolishly praised, and it is very likely that the +praise given here may seem to some foolish. It is as hard for praise to +keep the law of the head as for blame to keep the law of the heart. He +has been mischievously and tastelessly excused for errors both in and +out of his writings which need only a kindly silence. In irritation at +the "chatter" over him some have even tried to make out that his +prose--very fine prose indeed, and preserved to us in some welcome +letters and miscellaneous treatises, but capable of being dispensed +with--is more worthy of attention than his verse, which has no parallel +and few peers. But that one thing will remain true in the general +estimate of competent posterity I have no doubt. There are two English +poets, and two only, in whom the purely poetical attraction, exclusive +of and sufficient without all others, is supreme, and these two are +Spenser and Shelley. + +The life of John Keats was even shorter and even less marked by striking +events than that of Shelley, and he belonged in point of extraction and +education to a somewhat lower class of society than any of the poets +hitherto mentioned in this chapter. He was the son of a livery stable +keeper who was fairly well off, and he went to no school but a private +one, where, however, he received tolerable instruction and had good +comrades. Born in 1795, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at the age of +fifteen, and even did some work in his profession, till in 1817 his +overmastering passion for literature had its way. He became intimate +with the so-called "Cockney school," or rather with its leaders Leigh +Hunt and Hazlitt--an intimacy, as far as the former was concerned, not +likely to chasten his own taste, but chiefly unfortunate because it led, +in the rancorous state of criticism then existing, to his own efforts +being branded with the same epithet. His first book was published in the +year above mentioned: it did not contain all the verse he had written up +to that time, or the best of it, but it confirmed him in his vocation. +He broke away from surgery, and, having some little means, travelled to +the Isle of Wight, Devonshire, and other parts of England, besides +becoming more and more familiar with men of letters. It was in the Isle +of Wight chiefly that he wrote _Endymion_, which appeared in 1818. This +was savagely and stupidly attacked in _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_; +the former article being by some attributed, without a tittle of +evidence, to Lockhart. But the supposed effect of these attacks on +Keats' health was widely exaggerated by some contemporaries, especially +by Byron. The fact was that he had almost from his childhood shown +symptoms of lung disease, which developed itself very rapidly. The sense +of his almost certain fate combined with the ordinary effects of passion +to throw a somewhat hectic air over his correspondence with Miss Fanny +Brawne. His letters to her contain nothing discreditable to him, but +ought never to have been published. He was, however, to bring out his +third and greatest book of verse in 1820; and then he sailed for Italy, +to die on the 23rd of February 1821. He spoke of his name as "writ in +water." Posterity has agreed with him that it is--but in the Water of +Life. + +Nothing is more interesting, even in the endless and delightful task of +literary comparison, than to contrast the work of Shelley and Keats, so +alike and yet so different. A little longer space of work, much greater +advantages of means and education, and a happier though less blameless +experience of passion, enabled Shelley to produce a much larger body of +work than Keats has to his name, even when this is swollen by what Mr. +Palgrave has justly stigmatised as "the incomplete and inferior work" +withheld by Keats himself, but made public by the cruel kindness of +admirers. And this difference in bulk probably coincides with a +difference in the volume of genius of the two writers. Further, while it +is not at all improbable that if Shelley had lived he would have gone on +writing better and better, the same probability is, I think, to be more +sparingly predicated of Keats. + +On the other hand, by a not uncommon connection or consequence, Keats +has proved much more of a "germinal" poet than Shelley. Although the +latter was, I think, by far the greater, his poetry had little that was +national and very little that was imitable about it. He has had a vast +influence; but it has been in the main the influence, the inspiration of +his unsurpassed exciting power. No one has borrowed or carried further +any specially Shelleian turns of phrase, rhythm, or thought. Those who +have attempted to copy and urge further the Shelleian attitude towards +politics, philosophy, ethics, and the like, have made it generally +ludicrous and sometimes disgusting. He is, in his own famous words, +"something remote and afar." His poetry is almost poetry in its +elements, uncoloured by race, language, time, circumstance, or creed. He +is not even so much a poet as Poetry accidentally impersonated and +incarnate. + +With Keats it is very different. He had scarcely reached maturity of any +kind when he died, and he laboured under the very serious disadvantages, +first of an insufficient acquaintance with the great masters, and +secondly of coming early under the influence of a rather small master, +yet a master, Leigh Hunt, who taught him the fluent, gushing, slipshod +style that brought not merely upon him, but upon his mighty successor +Tennyson, the harsh but not in this respect wholly unjust lash of +conservative and academic criticism. But he, as no one of his own +contemporaries did, felt, expressed, and handed on the exact change +wrought in English poetry by the great Romantic movement. Coleridge, +Wordsworth, Scott, and even Southey to some extent, were the authors of +this; but, being the authors, they were necessarily not the results of +it. Byron was fundamentally out of sympathy with it, though by accidents +of time and chance he had to enlist; Shelley, an angel, and an effectual +angel, of poetry, was hardly a man, and still less an Englishman. But +Keats felt it all, expressed what of it he had time and strength to +express, and left the rest to his successors, helped, guided, furthered +by his own example. Keats, in short, is the father, directly or at short +stages of descent, of every English poet born within the present +century who has not been a mere "sport" or exception. He begat Tennyson, +and Tennyson begat all the rest. + +The evidences of this are to be seen in almost his earliest poems--not +necessarily in those contained in his earliest volume. Of course they +are not everywhere. There were sure to be, and there were, mere echoes +of eighteenth century verse and mere imitations of earlier writers. But +these may be simply neglected. It is in such pieces as "Calidore" that +the new note is heard; and though something in this note may be due to +Hunt (who had caught the original of it from Wither and Browne), Keats +changed, enriched, and refashioned the thing to such an extent that it +became his own. It is less apparent (though perhaps not less really +present) in his sonnets, despite the magnificence of the famous one on +Chapman's _Homer_, than in the couplet poems, which are written in an +extremely fluent and peculiar verse, very much "enjambed" or overlapped, +and with a frequent indulgence in double rhymes. Hunt had to a certain +extent started this, but he had not succeeded in giving it anything like +the distinct character which it took in Keats' hands. + +_Endymion_ was written in this measure, with rare breaks; and there is +little doubt that the lusciousness of the rhythm, combined as it was +with a certain lusciousness both of subject and (again in unlucky +imitation of Hunt) of handling, had a bad effect on some readers, as +also that the attacks on it were to a certain extent, though not a very +large one, prompted by genuine disgust at the mawkishness, as its author +called it, of the tone. Keats, who was always an admirable critic of his +own work, judged it correctly enough later, except that he was too harsh +to it. But it is a delightful poem to this day, and I do not think that +it is quite just to call it, as it has been called, "not Greek, but +Elizabethan-Romantic." It seems to me quite different from Marlowe or +the author of _Britain's Ida_, and really Greek, but Greek medięval, +Greek of the late romance type, refreshed with a wonderful new blood of +English romanticism. And this once more was to be the note of all the +best poetry of the century, the pouring of this new English blood +through the veins of old subjects--classical, medięval, foreign, modern. +We were to conquer the whole world of poetical matter with our English +armies, and Keats was the first leader who started the adventure. + +The exquisite poetry of his later work showed this general tendency in +all its latest pieces,--clearly in the larger poems, the fine but +perhaps somewhat overpraised _Hyperion_, the admirable _Lamia_, the +exquisite _Eve of St. Agnes_, but still more in the smaller, and most of +all in those twin peaks of all his poetry, the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" +and "La Belle Dame sans Merci." He need indeed have written nothing but +these two to show himself not merely an exquisite poet but a captain and +leader of English poetry for many a year, almost for many a generation +to come. Wordsworth may have given him a little, a very quiet hint for +the first, the more Classical masterpiece; Coleridge something a little +louder for the second, the Romantic. But in neither case did the summons +amount to anything like a cue or a call-bell; it was at best seed that, +if it had not fallen on fresh and fruitful soil, could have come to +nothing. + +As it is, and if we wish to see what it came to, we must simply look at +the whole later poetry of the nineteenth century in England. The +operations of the spirit are not to be limited, and it is of course +quite possible that if Keats had not been, something or somebody would +have done his work instead of him. But as it is, it is to Keats that we +must trace Tennyson, Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Morris; to Keats that +even not a little of Browning has to be affiliated; to Keats, directly +or indirectly, that the greater part of the poetry of nearly three +generations owes royalty and allegiance. + +Of him, as of Shelley, some foolish and hurtful things have been said. +In life he was no effeminate "ęsthetic" or "decadent," divided between +sensual gratification and unmanly _Katzenjammer_, between paganism and +puerility, but an honest, manly Englishman, whose strength only yielded +to unconquerable disease, whose impulses were always healthy and +generous. Despite his origin,--and, it must be added, some of his +friendships,--there was not a touch of vulgarity about him; and if his +comic vein was not very full-pulsed, he had a merry laugh in him. There +is no "poisonous honey stolen" from anywhere or extracted by himself +from anything in Keats; his sensuousness is nothing more than is, in the +circumstances, "necessary and voluptuous and right." But these moral +excellences, while they may add to the satisfaction with which one +contemplates him, hardly enhance--though his morbid admirers seem to +think that the absence of them would enhance--the greatness and the +value of his poetical position, both in the elaboration of a new poetic +style and language, and still more in the indication of a new road +whereby the great poetic exploration could be carried on. + +Round or under these great Seven--for that Byron was great in a way need +not be denied; Southey, the weakest of all as a poet, had a very strong +influence, and was one of the very greatest of English men of +letters--must be mentioned a not inconsiderable number of men who in any +other age would have been reckoned great. The eldest of these, both in +years and in reputation, holds his position, and perhaps always held it, +rather by courtesy than by strict right. Samuel Rogers[7] was born in +London on 30th July 1763, and was the son of a dissenting banker, from +whom he derived Whig principles and a comfortable fortune. It is said +that he once, as a very young man, went to call on Dr. Johnson, but was +afraid to knock; but though shyness accompanied him through life, the +amiability which it is sometimes supposed to betoken did not. He +published a volume of poems in 1786, and his famous _Pleasures of +Memory_, the piece that made his reputation, in 1792. Twenty years +afterwards _Columbus_ followed, and yet two years later, in 1814, +_Jacqueline_; while in 1822 _Italy_, on which, with the _Pleasures of +Memory_, such fame as he has rests, was published, to be reissued some +years afterwards in a magnificent illustrated edition, and to have a +chance (in a classical French jest) _se sauver de planche en planche_. +He did not die till 1855, in his ninety-third year: the last, as he had +been the first, of his group. + +Rogers had the good luck to publish his best piece at a time when the +general and popular level of English poetry was at the lowest point it +has reached since the sixteenth century, and to be for many years +afterwards a rich and rather hospitable man, the acquaintance if not +exactly the friend of most men of letters, of considerable influence in +political and general society, and master of an excessively sharp +tongue. A useful friend and a dangerous enemy, it was simpler to court +or to let him alone than to attack him, and his fame was derived from +pieces too different from any work of the actual generation to give them +much umbrage. It may be questioned whether Rogers ever wrote a single +line of poetry. But he wrote some polished and pleasant verse, which was +vigorous by the side of Hayley and "correct" by the side of Keats. In +literature he has very little interest; in literary history he has some. + +_Felix opportunitate_ in the same way, but a far greater poet, was +Thomas Campbell, who, like Rogers, was a Whig, like him belonged rather +to the classical than to the romantic school in style if not in choice +of subject, and like him had the good luck to obtain, by a poem with a +title very similar to that of Rogers' masterpiece, a high reputation at +a time when there was very little poetry put before the public. Campbell +was not nearly so old a man as Rogers, and was even the junior of the +Lake poets and Scott, having been born at Glasgow on the 27th July 1777. +His father was a real Campbell, and as a merchant had at one time been +of some fortune; but the American War had impoverished him, and the poet +was born to comparative indigence. He did, however, well at the college +of his native city, and on leaving it took a tutorship in Mull. His +_Pleasures of Hope_ was published in 1799 and was extremely popular, nor +after it had its author much difficulty in following literature. He was +never exactly rich, but pensions, legacies, editorships, high prices for +his not extensive poetical work, and higher for certain exercises in +prose book-making which are now almost forgotten, maintained him very +comfortably. Indeed, of the many recorded ingratitudes of authors to +publishers, Campbell's celebrated health to Napoleon because "he shot a +bookseller" is one of the most ungrateful. In the last year of the +eighteenth century he went to Germany, and was present at (or in the +close neighbourhood of) the battle of Hohenlinden. This he afterwards +celebrated in really immortal verse, which, with "Ye Mariners of +England" and the "Battle of the Baltic," represents his greatest +achievement. In 1809 he published _Gertrude of Wyoming_, a short-long +poem of respectable _technique_ and graceful sentiment. In 1824 appeared +a volume of poems, of which the chief, _Theodric_ (not as it is +constantly misspelled _Theodoric_), is bad; and in 1842 another, of +which the chief, _The Pilgrim of Glencoe_, is worse. He died in 1844 at +Boulogne, after a life which, if not entirely happy (for he had +ill-health, not improved by incautious habits, some domestic +misfortunes, and a rather sour disposition), had been full of honours of +all kinds, both in his own country, of where he was Lord Rector of +Glasgow University, and out of it. + +If Campbell had written nothing but his longer poems, the comparison +above made with Rogers would be wholly, instead of partly, justified. +Although both still retain a sort of conventional respect, it is +impossible to call either the _Pleasures of Hope_ or _Gertrude of +Wyoming_ very good poetry, while enough has been said of their +successors. Nor can very high praise be given to most of the minor +pieces. But the three splendid war-songs above named--the equals, if not +the superiors, of anything of the kind in English, and therefore in any +language--set him in a position from which he is never likely to be +ousted. In a handful of others--"Lochiel," the exquisite lines on "A +Deserted Garden in Argyleshire," with, for some flashes at least, the +rather over-famed "Exile of Erin," "Lord Ullin's Daughter," and a few +more--he also displays very high, though rather unequal and by no means +unalloyed, poetical faculty; and "The Last Man," which, by the way, is +the latest of his good things, is not the least. But his best work will +go into a very small compass: a single octavo sheet would very nearly +hold it, and it was almost all written before he was thirty. He is thus +an instance of a kind of poet, not by any means rare in literature, but +also not very common, who appears to have a faculty distinct in class +but not great in volume, who can do certain things better than almost +anybody else, but cannot do them very often, and is not quite to be +trusted to do them with complete sureness of touch. For it is to be +noted that even in Campbell's greatest things there are distinct +blemishes, and that these blemishes are greatest in that which in its +best parts reaches the highest level--"The Battle of the Baltic." Many +third and some tenth rate poets would never have left in their work such +things as "The might of England flushed _To anticipate the scene_," +which is half fustian and half nonsense: no very great poet could +possibly have been guilty of it. Yet for all this Campbell holds, as has +been said, the place of best singer of war in a race and language which +are those of the best singers and not the worst fighters in the history +of the world--in the race of Nelson and the language of Shakespeare. Not +easily shall a man win higher praise than this. + +In politics, as well as in a certain general kind of literary attitude +and school, another Thomas, Moore, classes himself both historically and +naturally with Rogers and Campbell; but he was a very much better poet +than Rogers, and, though he never reached quite the same height as +Campbell at his narrow and exceptional best, a far more voluminous verse +writer and a much freer writer of good verse of many different kinds. He +was born in Dublin on 28th May 1779; his father being a grocer, his +mother somewhat higher in social rank. He was well educated, and was +sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he had but surmounted political +difficulties; for his time as an undergraduate coincided with +"Ninety-eight," and though it does not seem that he had meddled with +anything distinctly treasonable, he had "Nationalist" friends and +leanings. Partly to sever inconvenient associations, partly in quest of +fortune, he was sent to London in that year, and entered at the Temple. +In a manner not very clearly explained, but connected no doubt with his +leaning to the Whig party, which was then much in need of literary help, +he became a protégé of Lord Moira's, by whom he was introduced to the +Prince of Wales. The Prince accepted the dedication of some translations +of Anacreon, etc., which Moore had brought over with him, and which were +published in 1800; while two years later the _Poems of Thomas Little_, a +punning pseudonym, appeared, and at once charmed the public by their +sugared versification and shocked it by their looseness of tone--a +looseness which is not to be judged from the comparatively decorous +appearance they make in modern editions. But there was never much harm +in them. Next year, in 1803, Moore received a valuable appointment at +Bermuda, which, though he actually went out to take possession of it and +travelled some time in North America, he was allowed to transfer to a +deputy. He came back to England, published another volume of poems, and +fought a rather famously futile duel with Jeffrey about a criticism on +it in the _Edinburgh Review_. He began the _Irish Melodies_ in 1807, +married four years later, and from that time fixed his headquarters +mostly in the country: first near Ashbourne in Derbyshire, then near +Devizes in Wiltshire, to be near his patrons Lord Moira and Lord +Lansdowne. But he was constantly in London on visits, and much in the +society of men of letters, not merely of his own party. In particular he +became, on the whole, Byron's most intimate friend, and preserved +towards that very difficult person an attitude (tinged neither with the +servility nor with the exaggerated independence of the _parvenu_) which +did him a great deal of credit. He was rather a strong partisan, and, +having a brilliant vein of poetical satire, he wrote in 1813 _The +Twopenny Post Bag_--the best satiric verse of the poetical kind since +the _Anti-Jacobin_, and the best on the Whig side since the _Rolliad_. + +Nor did he fail to take advantage of the popular appetite for long poems +which Scott and Byron had created; his _Lalla Rookh_, published in 1817, +being very popular and very profitable. It was succeeded by another and +his best satirical work, _The Fudge Family_, a charming thing. + +Up to this time he had been an exceedingly fortunate man; and his good +luck, aided it must be said by his good conduct,--for Moore, with all +his apparent weaknesses, was thoroughly sound at the core,--enabled him +to surmount a very serious reverse of fortune. His Bermuda deputy was +guilty of malversation so considerable that Moore could not meet the +debt, and he had to go abroad. But Lord Lansdowne discharged his +obligations; and Moore paid Lord Lansdowne. He returned to England in +1823, and was a busy writer for all but the last years of the thirty +that remained to him; but the best of his work was done, with one +exception. Byron left him his _Memoirs_, which would of course have been +enormously profitable. But Lady Byron and others of the poet's +connections were so horrified at the idea of the book appearing that, by +an arrangement which has been variously judged, but which can hardly be +regarded as other than disinterested on Moore's part, the MS. was +destroyed, and instead of it Moore brought out in 1830 his well-known +_Life of Byron_. This, some not incompetent judges have regarded as +ranking next to Lockhart's _Scott_ and Boswell's _Johnson_, and though +its main attraction may be derived from Byron's very remarkable letters, +still shows on the part of the biographer very unusual dexterity, good +feeling, and taste. The lives of _Sheridan_ and _Lord Edward Fitzgerald_ +had, and deserved to have, less success; while a _History of Ireland_ +was, and was bound to be, an almost complete failure. For, though a very +good prose writer, Moore had little of the erudition required, no grasp +or faculty of political argument, and was at this time of his life, if +not earlier, something of a trimmer, certain to satisfy neither the +"ascendency" nor the "nationalist" parties. His prose romance of _The +Epicurean_ is much better, and a really remarkable, piece of work; and +though the _Loves of the Angels_, his last long poem, is not very good, +he did not lose his command either of sentimental or of facetious lyric +till quite his last days. These were clouded; for, like his +contemporaries Scott and Southey, he suffered from brain disease for +some time before his death, on 25th February 1852. + +During his lifetime, especially during the first half or two-thirds of +his literary career, Moore had a great popularity, and won no small +esteem even among critics; such discredit as attached to him being +chiefly of the moral kind, and that entertained only by very +strait-laced persons. But as the more high-flown and impassioned muses +of Wordsworth, of Shelley, and of Keats gained the public ear in the +third and later decades of the century, a fashion set in of regarding +him as a mere melodious trifler; and this has accentuated itself during +the last twenty years or so, though quite recently some efforts have +been made in protest. This estimate is demonstrably unjust. It is true +that of the strange and high notes of poetry he has very few, of the +very strangest and highest none at all. But his long poems, _Lalla +Rookh_ especially, though somewhat over-burdened with the then +fashionable deck cargo of erudite or would-be erudite notes, possess +merit which none but a very prejudiced critic can, or at least ought to, +overlook. And in other respects he is very nearly, if not quite, at the +top of at least two trees, which, if not quite cedars of Lebanon, are +not mere grass of Parnassus. Moore was a born as well as a trained +musician. But whereas most musicians have since the seventeenth century +been exceedingly ill at verbal numbers, he had a quite extraordinary +knack of composing what are rather disrespectfully called "words." Among +his innumerable songs there are not one or two dozens or scores, but +almost hundreds of quite charmingly melodious things, admirably adjusted +to their music, and delightful by themselves without any kind of +instrument, and as said not sung. And, what is more, among these there +is a very respectable number to which it would be absolutely absurd to +give the name of trifle. "I saw from the beach" is not a trifle, nor +"When in death I shall calm recline," nor "Oft in the stilly night," nor +"Tell me, kind sage, I pray thee," nor many others. They have become so +hackneyed to us in various ways, and some of them happen to be pitched +in a key of diction which, though not better or worse than others, is so +out of fashion, that it seems as if some very respectable judges could +not "focus" Moore at all. To those who can he will seem, not of course +the equal, or anything like the equal, of Burns or Shelley, of Blake or +Keats, but in his own way,--and that a way legitimate and not low,--one +of the first lyrical writers in English. And they will admit a +considerable addition to his claims in his delightful satirical verse, +mainly but not in the least offensively political, in which kind he is +as easily first as in the sentimental song to music. + +Something not dissimilar to the position which Moore occupies on the +more classical wing of the poets of the period is occupied on the other +by Leigh Hunt. Hunt (Henry James Leigh, who called himself and is +generally known by the third only of his Christian names) was born in +London on the 19th October 1784, was educated at Christ's Hospital, +began writing very early, held for a short time a clerkship in a public +office, and then joined his brother in conducting the _Examiner_ +newspaper. Fined and imprisoned for a personal libel on the Prince +Regent (1812), Hunt became the fashion with the Opposition; and the +_Story of Rimini_, which he published when he came out of gaol, and +which was written in it, had a good deal of influence. He spent some +years in Italy, to which place he had gone with his family in 1822 to +edit _The Liberal_ and to keep house with Byron--a very disastrous +experiment, the results of which he recorded in an offensive book on his +return. Hunt lived to 18th August 1859, and was rescued from the chronic +state of impecuniosity in which, despite constant literary work, he had +long lived, by a Crown pension and some other assistance in his latest +days. Personally, Leigh Hunt was an agreeable and amiable being enough, +with certain foibles which were rather unfairly magnified in the famous +caricature of him as Harold Skimpole by his friend Dickens, but which +were accompanied by some faults of taste of which Mr. Skimpole is not +accused. + +In letters he was a very considerable person; though the best and far +the largest part of his work is in prose, and will be noticed hereafter. +His verse is not great in bulk, and is perhaps more original and +stimulating than positively good. His wide and ardent study of the older +English poets and of those of Italy had enabled him to hit on a novel +style of phrase and rhythm, which has been partly referred to above in +the notice of Keats; his narrative faculty was strong, and some of his +smaller pieces, from his sonnets downwards, are delightful things. "Abou +ben Adhem" unites (a rare thing for its author) amiability with dignity, +stateliness with ease; the "Nile" sonnet is splendid; "Jenny kissed me," +charming, if not faultless; "The Man and the Fish," far above vulgarity. +The lack of delicate taste which characterised his manners also marred +his verse, which is not unfrequently slipshod, or gushing, or trivially +fluent, and perhaps never relatively so good as the best of his prose. +But he owed little to any but the old masters, and many contemporaries +owed not a little to him. + +A quaint and interesting if not supremely important figure among the +poets of this period, and, if his poetry and prose be taken together, a +very considerable man of letters,--perhaps the most considerable man of +letters in English who was almost totally uneducated,--was James Hogg, +who was born in Ettrick Forest in the year 1772. He was taken from +school to mind sheep so early that much later he had to teach himself +even reading and writing afresh; and, though he must have had the +song-gift early, it was not till he was nearly thirty that he published +anything. He was discovered by Scott, to whom he and his mother supplied +a good deal of matter for the _Border Minstrelsy_, and he published +again in 1803. The rest of his life was divided between writing--with +fair success, though with some ill-luck from bankrupt publishers--and +sheep-farming, on which he constantly lost, though latterly he sat rent +free under the Duke of Buccleuch. He died on 21st November 1835. + +Even during his life Hogg underwent a curious process of mythopoeia at +the hands of Wilson and the other wits of _Blackwood's Magazine_, who +made him--partly with his own consent, partly not--into the famous +"Ettrick Shepherd" of the _Noctes Ambrosianę_. "The Shepherd" has Hogg's +exterior features and a good many of his foibles, but is endowed with +considerably more than his genius. Even in his published and +acknowledged works, which are numerous, it is not always quite easy to +be sure of his authorship; for he constantly solicited, frequently +received, and sometimes took without asking, assistance from Lockhart +and others. But enough remains that is different from the work of any of +his known or possible coadjutors to enable us to distinguish his +idiosyncrasy pretty well. In verse he was a very fluent and an +exceedingly unequal writer, who in his long poems chiefly, and not too +happily, followed Scott, but who in the fairy poem of "Kilmeny" +displayed an extraordinary command of a rare form of poetry, and who has +written some dozens of the best songs in the language. The best, but +only a few of the best, of these are "Donald Macdonald," "Donald +M'Gillavry," "The Village of Balmanhapple," and the "Boy's Song." In +prose he chiefly attempted novels, which have no construction at all, +and few merits of dialogue or style, but contain some powerful passages; +while one of them, _The Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, if it is +entirely his, which is very doubtful, is by far the greatest thing he +wrote, being a story of _diablerie_ very well designed, wonderfully +fresh and enthralling in detail, and kept up with hardly a slip to the +end. His other chief prose works are entitled _The Brownie of Bodsbeck_, +_The Three Perils of Man_, _The Three Perils of Woman_, and _Altrive +Tales_, while he also wrote some important, and in parts very offensive, +but also in parts amusing, _Recollections of Sir Walter Scott_. His +verse volumes, no one of which is good throughout, though hardly one is +without good things, were _The Mountain Bard_, _The Queen's Wake_, +_Mador of the Moor_, _The Pilgrims of the Sun_, _Jacobite Relics_ (some +of the best forged by himself), _Queen Hynde_, and _The Border Garland_. + +A greater writer, if his work be taken as a whole, than any who has been +mentioned since Keats, was Walter Savage Landor, much of whose +composition was in prose, but who was so alike in prose and verse that +the whole had better be noticed together here. Landor (who was of a +family of some standing in Warwickshire, and was heir to considerable +property, much of which he wasted later by selling his inheritance and +buying a large but unprofitable estate in Wales) was born at Ipsley +Court, in 1775. He went to school at Rugby, and thence to Trinity +College, Oxford, at both of which places he gained considerable +scholarship but was frequently in trouble owing to the intractable and +headstrong temper which distinguished him through life. He was indeed +rusticated from his college, and subsequently, owing to his extravagant +political views, was refused a commission in the Warwickshire Militia. +He began to write early, but the poem of _Gebir_, which contains in germ +or miniature nearly all his characteristics of style, passed almost +unnoticed by the public, though it was appreciated by good wits like +Southey and De Quincey. After various private adventures he came into +his property and volunteered in the service of Spain, where he failed, +as usual, from impracticableness. In 1811, recklessly as always, he +married a very young girl of whom he knew next to nothing, and the +marriage proved anything but a happy one. The rest of his long life was +divided into three residences: first with his family at Florence; then, +when he had quarrelled with his wife, at Bath; and lastly (when he had +been obliged to quit Bath and England owing to an outrageous lampoon on +one lady, which he had written, as he conceived, in chivalrous defence +of another) at Florence again. Here he died in September 1864, aged very +nearly ninety. + +Landor's poetical productions, which are numerous, are spread over the +greater part of his life; his prose, by which he is chiefly known, dates +in the main from the last forty years of it, the best being written +between 1820 and 1840. The greater part of this prose takes the form of +"Imaginary Conversations"--sometimes published under separate general +headings, sometimes under the common title--between characters of all +ages, from the classical times to Landor's. Their bulk is very great; +their perfection of style at the best extraordinary, and on the whole +remarkably uniform; their value, when considerations of matter are added +to that of form, exceedingly unequal. For in them Landor not only +allowed the fullest play to the ungovernable temper and the childish +crotchets already mentioned, but availed himself of his opportunities +(for, though he endeavoured to maintain a pretence of dramatic +treatment, his work is nearly as personal as that of Byron) to deliver +his sentiments on a vast number of subjects, sometimes without too much +knowledge, and constantly with a plentiful lack of judgment. In +politics, in satiric treatment, and especially in satiric treatment of +politics, he is very nearly valueless. But his intense familiarity with +and appreciation of classical subjects gave to almost all his dealings +with them a value which, for parallel reasons, is also possessed by +those touching Italy. And throughout this enormous collection of work +(which in the compactest edition fills five large octavo volumes in +small print), whensoever the author forgets his crotchets and his rages, +when he touches on the great and human things, his utterance reaches the +very highest water-mark of English literature that is not absolutely the +work of supreme genius. + +For supreme genius Landor had not. His brain was not a great brain, and +he did not possess the exquisite alertness to his own weaknesses, or the +stubborn knack of confinement to things suitable to him, which some +natures much smaller than the great ones have enjoyed. But he had the +faculty of elaborate style--of style elaborated by a careful education +after the best models and vivified by a certain natural gift--as no one +since the seventeenth century had had it, and as no one except Mr. +Ruskin and the late Mr. Pater has had since. Also, he was as much wider +in his range and more fertile in his production than Mr. Pater as he was +more solidly grounded on the best models than Mr. Ruskin. Where Landor +is quite unique is in the apparent indifference with which he was able +to direct this gift of his into the channels of prose and poetry--a +point on which he parts company from both the writers to whom he has +been compared, and in which his only analogue, so far as I am able to +judge, is Victor Hugo. The style of no Englishman is so alike in the two +harmonies as is that of Landor. And it is perhaps not surprising that, +this being the case, he shows at his best in prose when he tries long +pieces, in verse when he tries short ones. Some of Landor's prose +performances in _Pericles and Aspasia_, in the _Pentameron_ (where +Boccaccio and Petrarch are the chief interlocutors), and in not a few of +the separate conversations, are altogether unparalleled in any other +language, and not easy to parallel in English. They are never entirely +or perfectly natural; there is always a slight "smell of the lamp," but +of a lamp perfumed and undying. The charm is so powerful, the grace so +stately, that it is impossible for any one to miss it who has the +faculty of recognising charm and grace at all. In particular, Landor is +remarkable--and, excellent as are many of the prose writers whom we have +had since, he is perhaps the most remarkable--for the weight, the +beauty, and the absolute finish of his phrase. Sometimes these splendid +phrases do not mean very much; occasionally they mean nothing or +nonsense. But their value as phrase survives, and the judge in such +things is often inclined and entitled to say that there is none like +them. + +This will prepare the reader who has some familiarity with literature +for what is to be said about Landor's verse. It always has a certain +quality of exquisiteness, but this quality is and could not but be +unequally displayed in the short poems and the long. The latter can +hardly attain, with entirely competent and impartial judges, more than a +success of esteem. _Gebir_ is couched in a Miltonic form of verse (very +slightly shot and varied by Romantic admixture) which, as is natural to +a young adventurer, caricatures the harder and more ossified style of +the master. Sometimes it is great; more usually it intends greatness. +The "Dialogues in Verse" (very honestly named, for they are in fact +rather dialogues in verse than poems), though executed by the hand of a +master both of verse and dialogue, differ in form rather than in fact +from the Conversations in prose. The _Hellenics_ are mainly dialogues in +verse with a Greek subject. All have a quality of nobility which may be +sought in vain in almost any other poet; but all have a certain +stiffness and frigidity, some a certain emptiness. They are never +plaster, as some modern antiques have been; but they never make the +marble of which they are composed wholly flesh. Landor was but a +half-Pygmalion. + +The vast collection of his miscellaneous poems contains many more +fortunate attempts, some of which have, by common consent of the +fittest, attained a repute which they are never likely to lose. "Rose +Aylmer" and "Dirce," trifles in length as both of them are, are very +jewels of poetic quality. And among the hundreds and almost thousands of +pieces which Landor produced there are some which come not far short of +these, and very many which attain a height magnificent as compared with +the ordinary work of others. But the hackneyed comparison of amber does +something gall this remarkable poet and writer. Everything, great and +small, is enshrined in an imperishable coating of beautiful style; but +the small things are somewhat out of proportion to the great, and, what +is more, the amber itself always has a certain air of being deliberately +and elaborately produced--not of growing naturally. Landor--much more +than Dryden, of whom he used the phrase, but in the same class as +Dryden--is one of those who "wrestle with and conquer time." He has +conquered, but it is rather as a giant of celestial nurture than as an +unquestioned god. + +Even after enumerating these two sets of names--the first all of the +greatest, and the greatest of the second, Landor, equalling the least of +the first--we have not exhausted the poetical riches of this remarkable +period. It is indeed almost dangerous to embark on the third class of +poets; yet its members here would in some cases have been highly +respectable earlier, and even at this time deserve notice either for +influence, or for intensity of poetic vein, or sometimes for the mere +fact of having been once famous and having secured a "place in the +story." The story of literature has no popular ingratitude; and, except +in the case of distinct impostors, it turns out with reluctance those +who have once been admitted to it. Sometimes even impostors deserve a +renewal of the brand, if not a freshening up of the honourable +inscription. + +The first of this third class in date, and perhaps the first in +influence, though far indeed from being the first in merit, was William +Lisle Bowles, already once or twice referred to. He was born on 24th +September 1762; so that, but for the character and influence of his +verse, he belongs to the last chapter rather than to this. Educated at +Winchester, and at Trinity College, Oxford, he took orders, and spent +nearly the last half century of his very long life (he did not die till +1850) in Wiltshire, as Prebendary of Salisbury and Rector of Bremhill. +It was in the year of the French Revolution that he published his +_Fourteen Sonnets_ [afterwards enlarged in number], _written chiefly on +Picturesque Spots during a Journey_. These fell early into Coleridge's +hands; he copied and recopied them for his friends when he was a +blue-coat boy, and in so far as poetical rivers have any single source, +the first tricklings of the stream which welled into fulness with the +Lyrical Ballads, and some few years later swept all before it, may be +assigned to this very feeble fount. For in truth it is exceedingly +feeble. In the fifth edition (1796), which lies before me exquisitely +printed, with a pretty aquatint frontispiece by Alken, and a dedication +of the previous year to Dean Ogle of Winchester, the Sonnets have +increased to twenty-seven, and are supplemented by fifteen +"miscellaneous pieces." One of these latter is itself a sonnet "written +at Southampton," and in all respects similar to the rest. The +others--"On Leaving Winchester," "On the Death of Mr. Headley" the +critic, a man of worth,[8] "To Mr. Burke on his Reflections," and so +forth--are of little note. The same may be said of Bowles' later +poetical productions, which were numerous; but his edition of Pope, +finished in 1807, brought about a hot controversy not yet forgotten +(nor, to tell the truth, quite settled) on the question Whether Pope was +a poet? That Bowles can have had scant sympathy with Pope is evident +from the very first glance at the famous sonnets themselves. Besides +their form, which, as has been said, was of itself something of a +reactionary challenge, they bear strong traces of Gray, and still +stronger traces of the picturesque mania which was at the same time +working so strongly in the books of Gilpin and others. But their real +note is the note which, ringing in Coleridge's ear, echoed in all the +poetry of the generation, the note of unison between the aspect of +nature and the thought and emotion of man. In the sonnets "At +Tynemouth," "At Bamborough Castle," and indeed in all, more or less, +there is first the attempt to paint directly what the eye sees, not the +generalised and academic view of the type-scene by a type-poet which had +been the fashion for so long; and secondly, the attempt to connect this +vision with personal experience, passion, or meditation. Bowles does not +do this very well, but he tries to do it; and the others, seeing him +try, went and did it. + +His extreme importance as an at least admitted "origin" has procured +him notice somewhat beyond his real deserts; over others we must pass +more rapidly. Robert Bloomfield, born in 1760, was one of those +unfortunate "prodigy" poets whom mistaken kindness encourages. He was +the son of a tailor, went early to agricultural labour, and then became +a shoemaker. His _Farmer's Boy_, an estimable but much overpraised +piece, was published in 1800, and he did other things later. He died +mad, or nearly so, in 1823--a melancholy history repeated pretty closely +a generation later by John Clare. Clare, however, was a better poet than +Bloomfield, and some of the "Poems written in an Asylum" have more than +merely touching merit. James Montgomery,[9] born at Irvine on 4th +November 1771, was the son of a Moravian minister, and intended for his +father's calling. He, however, preferred literature and journalism, +establishing himself chiefly at Sheffield, where he died as late as 1854 +(30th April). He had, as editor of the _Sheffield Iris_, some troubles +with the law, and in 1835 was rewarded with a pension. Montgomery was a +rather copious and fairly pleasing minor bard, no bad hand at hymns and +short occasional pieces, and the author of longer things called _The +Wanderer of Switzerland_, _The West Indies_, _The World before the +Flood_, and _The Pelican Island_. Bernard Barton, an amiable Quaker +poet, will probably always be remembered as the friend and correspondent +of Charles Lamb; perhaps also as the father-in-law of Edward FitzGerald. +His verse commended itself both to Southey (who had a kindly but rather +disastrous weakness for minor bards) and to Byron, but has little value. +Barton died in 1849. + +The same pair of enemies joined in praising Henry Kirke White, who was +born in 1785 and died when barely twenty-one. Here indeed Southey's +unsurpassed biographical skill enforced the poetaster's merit in a +charming _Memoir_, which assisted White's rather pathetic story. He was +the son of a butcher, a diligent but reluctant lawyer's clerk, an +enthusiastic student, a creditable undergraduate at St. John's, +Cambridge, and a victim of consumption. All this made his verse for a +time popular. But he really deserved the name just affixed to him: he +was a poetaster, and nothing more. The "genius" attributed to him in +Byron's well-known and noble though rather rhetorical lines may be +discovered on an average in about half a dozen poets during any two or +three years of any tolerable poetic period. His best things are +imitations of Cowper in his sacred mood, such as the familiar "Star of +Bethlehem," and even these are generally spoilt by some feebleness or +false note. At his worst he is not far from Della Crusca.[10] + +In the same year with Kirke White was born a much better poet, and a +much robuster person in all ways, mental and physical. Allan Cunningham +was a Dumfriesshire man born in the lowest rank, and apprenticed to a +stone-mason, whence in after years he rose to be Chantrey's foreman. +Cunningham began--following a taste very rife at the time--with +imitated, or to speak plainly, forged ballads; but the merit of them +deserved on true grounds the recognition it obtained on false, and he +became a not inconsiderable man of letters of all work. His best known +prose work is the "Lives of the Painters." In verse he is ranked, as a +song writer in Scots, by some next to Burns, and by few lower than Hogg. +Some of his pieces, such as "Fair shines the sun in France," have the +real, the inexplicable, the irresistible song-gift. Cunningham, who was +the friend of many good men and was liked by all of them, died on 29th +October 1842. His elder by eleven years, Robert Tannahill, who was born +in 1774 and died (probably by suicide) in 1810, deserves a few lines in +this tale of Scots singers. Tannahill, like Cunningham in humble +circumstances originally, never became more than a weaver. His verse has +not the _gusto_ of Allan or of Hogg, but is sweet and tender enough. +William Motherwell too, as much younger than Allan as Tannahill was +older (he was born in 1797 and died young in 1835), deserves mention, +and may best receive it here. He was a Conservative journalist, an +antiquary of some mark, and a useful editor of Minstrelsy. Of his +original work, "Jeanie Morrison" is the best known; and those who have +read, especially if they have read it in youth, "The Sword Chant of +Thorstein Raudi," will not dismiss it as Wardour Street; while he did +some other delightful things. Earlier (1812) the heroicomic _Anster +Fair_ of William Tennant (1784-1848) received very high and deserved no +low praise; while William Thom, a weaver like Tannahill, who was a year +younger than Motherwell and lived till 1848, wrote many simple ballads +in the vernacular, of which the most touching are perhaps "The Song of +the Forsaken" and "The Mitherless Bairn." + +To return to England, Bryan Waller Procter, who claimed kindred with the +poet from whom he took his second name, was born in 1790, went to +Harrow, and, becoming a lawyer, was made a Commissioner of Lunacy. He +did not die till 1874; and he, and still more his wife, were the last +sources of direct information about the great race of the first third of +the century. He was, under the pseudonym of "Barry Cornwall," a fluent +verse writer of the so-called cockney school, and had not a little +reputation, especially for songs about the sea and things in general. +They still, occasionally from critics who are not generally under the +bondage of traditional opinion, receive high praise, which the present +writer is totally unable to echo. A loyal junior friend to Lamb, a wise +and kindly senior to Beddoes, liked and respected by many or by all, +Procter, as a man, must always deserve respect. If + + The sea, the sea, the open sea, + The blue, the fresh, the ever free, + +and things like it are poetry, I admit myself, with a sad humility, to +be wholly destitute of poetical appreciation. + +The Church of England contributed two admirable verse writers of this +period in Henry Cary and Reginald Heber. Cary, who was born in 1772 and +was a Christ Church man, was long an assistant librarian in the British +Museum. His famous translation of the _Divina Commedia_, published in +1814, is not only one of the best verse translations in English, but, +after the lapse of eighty years, during which the study of Dante has +been constantly increasing in England, in which poetic ideas have +changed not a little, and in which numerous other translations have +appeared, still attracts admiration from all competent scholars for its +combination of fidelity and vigour. Heber, born in 1783 and educated at +Brasenose, gained the Newdigate with _Palestine_, a piece which ranks +with _Timbuctoo_ and a few others among unforgotten prize poems. He took +orders, succeeding to the family living of Hodnet, and for some years +bid fair to be one of the most shining lights of the English Church, +combining admirable parochial work with good literature, and with much +distinction as a preacher. Unfortunately he thought it his duty to take +the Bishopric of Calcutta when it was offered him; and, arriving there +in 1824, worked incessantly for nearly two years and then died. His +_Journal in India_ is very pleasant reading, and some of his hymns rank +with the best in English. + +Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer," was born in Yorkshire on 7th +March 1781. His father was a clerk in an iron-foundry. He himself was +early sent to foundry work, and he afterwards became a master-founder at +Sheffield. From different points of view it may be thought a +palliation--and the reverse--of the extreme virulence with which Elliott +took the side of workmen against landowners and men of property, that he +attained to affluence himself as an employer, and was never in the least +incommoded by the "condition-of-England" question. He early displayed a +considerable affection for literature, and was one, and about the last, +of the prodigies whom Southey, in his inexhaustible kindness for +struggling men of letters, accepted. Many years later the Laureate wrote +good-naturedly to Wynn: "I mean to read the Corn-Law Rhymer a lecture, +not without some hope, that as I taught him the art of poetry I may +teach him something better." The "something better" was not in Elliott's +way; for he is a violent and crude thinker, with more smoke than fire in +his violence, though not without generosity of feeling now and then, and +with a keen admiration of the scenery--still beautiful in parts, and +then exquisite--which surrounded the smoky Hades of Sheffield. He +himself acknowledges the influence of Crabbe and disclaims that of +Wordsworth, from which the cunning may anticipate the fact that he is +deeply indebted to both. His earliest publication or at least +composition, "The Vernal Walk," is said to date from the very year of +the _Lyrical Ballads_, and of course owes no royalty to Wordsworth, but +is in blank verse, a sort of compound of Thomson and Crabbe. "Love" (in +Crabbian couplets slightly tinged with overlapping) and "The Village +Patriarch" (still smacking of Crabbe in form, though irregularly +arranged in rhymed decasyllables) are his chief other long poems. He +tried dramas, but he is best known by his "Corn-Law Rhymes" and +"Corn-Law Hymns," and deserves to be best known by a few lyrics of real +beauty, and many descriptions. How a man who could write "The Wonders of +the Lane" and "The Dying Boy to the Sloe Blossom" could stoop to +malignant drivel about "palaced worms," "this syllabub-throated +logician," and so forth, is strange enough to understand, especially as +he had no excuse of personal suffering. Even in longer poems the mystery +is renewed in "They Met Again" and "Withered Wild Flowers" compared with +such things as "The Ranter," though the last exhibits the author at both +his best and worst. However, Elliott is entitled to the charity he did +not show; and the author of such clumsy Billingsgate as "Arthur +Bread-Tax Winner," "Faminton," and so forth, may be forgiven for the +flashes of poetry which he exhibits. Even in his political poems they do +not always desert him, and his somewhat famous Chartist (or +ante-Chartist) "Battle-Song" is as right-noted as it is wrong-headed. + +Sir Aubrey de Vere (1788-1846), a poet and the father of a poet still +alive, was a friend and follower of Wordsworth, and the author of +sonnets good in the Wordsworthian kind. But he cannot be spared much +room here; nor can much even be given to the mild shade of a poetess far +more famous in her day than he. "Time that breaks all things," according +to the dictum of a great poet still living, does not happily break all +in literature; but it is to be feared that he has reduced to fragments +the once not inconsiderable fame of Felicia Hemans. She was born (her +maiden name was Felicia Dorothea Browne) at Liverpool on 25th September +1794, and when she was only eighteen she married a Captain Hemans. It +was not a fortunate union, and by far the greater part of Mrs. Hemans' +married life was spent, owing to no known fault of hers, apart from her +husband. She did not live to old age, dying on 26th April 1835. But she +wrote a good deal of verse meanwhile--plays, poems, "songs of the +affections," and what not. Her blameless character (she wrote chiefly to +support her children) and a certain ingenuous tenderness in her verse, +saved its extreme feebleness from severe condemnation in an age which +was still avid of verse rather than discriminating in it; and children +still learn "The boy stood on the burning deck," and other things. It is +impossible, on any really critical scheme, to allow her genius; but she +need not be spoken of with any elaborate disrespect, while it must be +admitted that her latest work is her best--always a notable sign. +"Despondency and Aspiration," dating from her death-year, soars close to +real sublimity; and of her smaller pieces "England's Dead" is no vulgar +thing. + +Between the death of Byron and the distinct appearance of Tennyson and +the Brownings there was a kind of interregnum or twilight of poetry, of +which one of its strangest if not least illuminative stars or meteors, +Beddoes, has given a graphic but uncomplimentary picture in a letter: +"owls' light" he calls it, with adjuncts. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and +Southey; Scott, Campbell, and Moore, were all living, but the poetic +production of all had on the whole ceased. Shelley and Keats would have +been in time the natural, and in genius the more than sufficient sun +and moon of the time; but they had died before Byron. So the firmament +was occupied by rather wandering stars: some of them elders already +noticed, others born in the ten or twelve years between Keats (1795) and +the eldest of the Tennysons (1807). The chief of these were the pair of +half-serious, half-humorous singers, Hood and Praed. Next in public +estimation come Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, Macaulay, Sir Henry Taylor, +the Irish poet Mangan, R. H. Horne, and the first Lord Lytton; while a +third class--of critics' rather than readers' favourites--varying in +merit, but, at the best of the best of them, ranking higher than any of +the above, may be made up of George Darley, C. J. Wells, the Dorsetshire +poet Barnes, Beddoes, Charles Whitehead, R. S. Hawker, and Thomas Wade. +To the second class must be added "L. E. L.," the poetess who filled the +interval between Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Browning. + +Wells, Whitehead, and Wade may be dismissed without disrespect as, if +not critical mares'-nests, at any rate critical hobbies. Persons of more +or less distinction (and of less or more crotchet) have at different +times paid very high compliments to the _Joseph and his Brethren_ (1823, +revised later) of Charles Jeremiah Wells (1800-1879), a friend of Keats, +and a person who seems to have lived much as he pleased; to the +_Solitary_ of Charles Whitehead (1804-1862), a Bohemian ne'er-do-weel, +who also showed talent as a novelist and miscellanist; and to the _Mundi +et Cordis Carmina_ (1835) of Thomas Wade (1805-1875), a playwright and +journalist. Of the three, Wade appears to me to have had the greatest +poetical talent. But I do not think that any one who on the one hand +uses epithets in poetical criticism with caution, and on the other has +read a great deal of minor poetry as it appears, could put any one of +them very high. All were born late enough to breathe the atmosphere of +the new poetry young; all had poetical velleities, and a certain amount, +if not of originality, of capacity to write poetry. But they were not +poets; they were only poetical curiosities. + +Darley, Beddoes, and Horne belong in the main to the same class, but +rise high, in one case immeasurably, above them. George Darley +(1795-1846) is perhaps our chief English example of "the poet who dies +in youth while the man survives," and who becomes a critic. In him, +however, the generation of the critic did not wait for the corruption of +the poet. An Irishman, and of Trinity College, Dublin, he was one of the +staff of the _London Magazine_, and wrote much verse bad and good, +including the once famous "I've been Roaming," of which it is safe to +say that not one in ten of those who have sung it could tell the author. +His best work is contained in the charming pastoral drama of _Sylvia_ +(1827) and the poem entitled _Nepenthe_ (1839). He was a good but rather +a savage critic, and edited Beaumont and Fletcher. His work has never +been collected, nor, it is believed, ever fully published; and it has +the marks of a talent that never did what was in it to do, and came at +an unfortunate time. Some not bad judges in the forties ranked Darley +with Tennyson in poetic possibilities, and thought the former the more +promising of the two. + +Except Donne, there is perhaps no English poet more difficult to write +about, so as to preserve the due pitch of enthusiasm on the one hand and +criticism on the other, than Thomas Lovell Beddoes, born at Clifton on +20th July 1803. He was the son of a very famous physician, and of Anna +Edgeworth, the youngest sister of the whole blood to the novelist. +Beddoes, left fatherless at six years old, was educated at the +Charterhouse and at Pembroke College, Oxford, and when he was barely of +age went to Germany to study medicine, living thenceforth almost +entirely on the Continent. Before this he had published two volumes, +_The Improvisatore_ and _The Bride's Tragedy_; but his principal work is +a wild Elizabethan play called _Death's Jest-Book_ or _The Fool's +Tragedy_, which he never absolutely finished. He died in 1848 at Basle +by a complicated and ghastly kind of suicide. Three years later his +Poems appeared, and they have been recently republished, with additions +and a curious collection of letters. + +Beddoes has sometimes been treated as a mainly bookish poet deriving +from the Elizabethans and Shelley. I cannot agree with this. His very +earliest work, written when he could not know much either of Shelley or +Keats, shows as they do technique perhaps caught from Leigh Hunt. But +this is quite dropped later; and his Elizabethanism is not imitation but +inspiration. In this inspiration he does not follow, but shares with, +his greater contemporaries. He is a younger and tragic counterpart to +Charles Lamb in the intensity with which he has imbibed the Elizabethan +spirit, rather from the nightshade of Webster and Tourneur than from the +vine of Shakespeare. As wholes, his works are naught, or naught but +nightmares; though _Death's Jest-Book_, despite its infinite +disadvantages from constant rewriting and uncertainty of final form, has +a strong grasp. But they contain passages, especially lyrics, of the +most exquisite fancy and music, such as since the seventeenth century +none but Blake and Coleridge had given. Beddoes does not seem to have +been at all a pleasant person, and in his later days at any rate he +would appear to have been a good deal less than sane. But the author of +such things as the "Dirge for Wolfram" ("If thou wilt ease thine heart") +in _Death's Jest-Book_, and the stanza beginning "Dream-Pedlary," "If +there were dreams to sell," with not a few others of the same kind, +attains to that small and disputed--but not to those who have thought +out the nature of poetry disputable--class of poets who, including +Sappho, Catullus, some medięval hymn-writers, and a few moderns, +especially Coleridge, have, by virtue of fragments only, attained a +higher position than many authors of large, substantive, and important +poems. They may be shockingly lacking in bulk, in organisation, in +proper choice of subject, in intelligent criticism of life; but they are +like the summer lightning or the northern aurora, which, though they +shine only now and then, and only it may be for a few moments, shine, +when they do shine, with a beauty unapproachable by gas or candle, +hardly approached by sun or moon, and illuminate the whole of their +world. + +Although quotation is in the main impossible in this book, Beddoes, +despite the efforts of his friend Kelsall, of Mr. Swinburne, of Mr. +Gosse (thanks to whom a quasi-complete edition has at last appeared), +and others, is still so little known, that a short one may be allowed in +his case. I have known a critic who said deliberately of the +above-mentioned stanza in "Dream-Pedlary"-- + + If there were dreams to sell, + What would you buy? + Some cost a passing bell, + Some a light sigh + That shakes from Life's fresh crown + Only a roseleaf down. + If there were dreams to sell-- + Merry and sad to tell-- + And the crier rung the bell, + What would you buy? + +that these ten lines contain more pure poetry than the entire works of +Byron. And the same touch will be found not merely in the "Wolfram +Dirge" mentioned-- + + If thou wilt ease thine heart + Of Love and all its smart, + Then sleep, dear, sleep. + + ... + + But wilt thou _cure_ thine heart + Of Love and all its smart, + Then die, dear, die-- + +but in several other dirges (for the dirge is the form natural to +Beddoes), in the "Song from Torrismond," in "Love in Idleness," in the +"Song on the Water" (which is pure early Tennyson), in the exquisite +"Threnody," and in many other things. They have been called artificial: +the epithet can be allowed in no other sense than in that in which it +applies to all the best poetry. And they have the note, which only a few +true but imperfect poets have, of anticipation. Shadows before, both of +Tennyson and Browning, especially of the latter, appear in Beddoes. But +after all his main note is his own: not theirs, not the Elizabethan, not +Shelley's, not another's. And this is what makes a poet. + +As Beddoes' forte lay in short and rather uncanny snatches, so that of +Richard Hengist Horne lay in sustained and dignified composition. He was +not christened Hengist at all, but Henry. He had a curious life. In +youth he knew Keats and Wells, having been, like them, at the private +school of Mr. Clarke at Edmonton. He went to Sandhurst and was expelled +for insubordination; joined the Mexican navy in the war of liberation; +travelled widely; but seemed at about five and twenty to be settling +down to literature and journalism in England. After writing various +things, he produced in 1837 the fine but not quite "live" plays of +_Cosmo de Medici_ and _The Death of Marlowe_, and in 1843 the famous +farthing epic, _Orion_, which was literally published at a farthing. +This was the smallest part of a great literary baggage of very unequal +value. In 1852 Horne, resuming the life of adventure, went to Australia, +served in the gold police, and stayed at the Antipodes till 1869. Then +he came home again and lived for fifteen years longer, still writing +almost to his very death on 13th March 1884. + +It is not true that _Orion_ is Horne's only work of value; but it is so +much better than anything else of his, and so characteristic of him, +that by all but students the rest may be neglected. And it is an example +of the melancholy but frequently exemplified truth, that few things are +so dangerous, nay, so fatal to enduring literary fame, as the production +of some very good work among a mass of, if not exactly rubbish, yet +inferior stuff. I do not think it extravagant to say that if Horne had +written nothing but _Orion_ and had died comparatively young after +writing it, he would have enjoyed very high rank among English poets. +For, though doubtless a little weighted with "purpose," it is a very +fine poem indeed, couched in a strain of stately and not second-hand +blank verse, abounding in finished and effective passages, by no means +destitute of force and meaning as a whole, and mixing some passion with +more than some real satire. But the rather childish freak of its first +publication probably did it no good, and it is quite certain that the +author's long life and unflagging production did it much harm. + +Of the other persons in the list above, Macaulay, Hartley Coleridge, and +Lord Lytton are mainly something else than poets, and Talfourd, as a +dramatist, will also be noticed elsewhere. Barnes and Hawker were both +clergymen of the West of England: the former very highly ranked by some +for his studies in Dorset dialect; the latter the author of the famous +"Song of the Western Men" (long thought a genuine antique), of the +exquisite "Queen Gwennyvar's Round," of the fine "Silent Tower of +Bottreaux," of some beautiful sonnets, and of the stately "Quest of the +Sangreal." Whether James Clarence Mangan, whose most famous poem is +"Dark Rosaleen," a musical and mystic celebration of the charms and +wrongs of Erin, is a great poet to whom Saxon jealousy has refused +greatness for political reasons, or a not ungifted but not consummately +distinguished singer who added some study to the common Irish gift of +fluent, melodious verse-making, is a question best solved by reading his +work and judging for the reader's self. It is not by any sane account so +important that to dismiss it thus is a serious _rifiuto_, and it is +probably impossible for Irish enthusiasm and English judgment ever to +agree on the subject. Of "L. E. L." Sir Henry Taylor, Hood, and Praed, +some more substantive account must be given. + +Although it is not easy, after two generations, to decide such a point +accurately, it is probable that "L. E. L." was the most popular of all +the writers of verse who made any mark between the death of Byron in +1824 and the time when Tennyson definitely asserted himself in 1842. She +paid for this popularity (which was earned not merely by her verse, but +by a pretty face, an odd social position, and a sad and apparently, +though it seems not really, mysterious end) by a good deal of slightly +unchivalrous satire at the time and a rather swift and complete oblivion +afterwards. She was born (her full name being Letitia Elizabeth Landon) +in London on 14th August 1802, and was fairly well connected and +educated. William Jerdan, the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ (a man +whose name constantly occurs in the literary history of this time, +though he has left no special work except an _Autobiography_), was a +friend of her family, and she began to write very early, producing +novels and criticisms as well as verse in newspapers, in the albums and +_Souvenirs_ which were such a feature of the twenties and thirties, and +in independent volumes. She was particularly active as a poet about +1824-35, when appeared the works whose titles--_The Improvisatore_, _The +Troubadour_, _The Golden Violet_--suggested parodies to Thackeray. Her +best novel is held to be _Ethel Churchill_, published in 1837. Next year +she married Mr. Maclean, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle; and, going +out with him to that not very salubrious clime, died suddenly in about +two months. All sorts of ill-natured suggestions were of course made; +but the late Colonel Ellis, the historian of the colony, seems to have +established beyond the possibility of doubt that she accidentally +poisoned herself with prussic acid, which she used to take for spasms of +the heart. + +It is tolerably exact, and it is not harsh, to say that "L. E. L." is a +Mrs. Hemans with the influence of Byron added, not to the extent of any +"impropriety," but to the heightening of the Romantic tone and of a +native sentimentality. Her verse is generally musical and sweet: it is +only sometimes silly. But it is too often characterised by what can but +be called the "gush" which seems to have affected all the poetesses of +this period except Sara Coleridge (1802-50) (who has some verses worthy +of even her name in _Phantasmion_, her only independent book), and which +appears in very large measure in the work of Mrs. Browning. + +Sir Henry Taylor's poetical repute illustrates the converse of the +proposition which is illustrated by that of Horne. It is probable that, +if each is measured by his best things, _Orion_ and _Philip Van +Artevelde_, Horne must be allowed to be a good deal the better poet. But +a placid official life enabled Taylor both to gain powerful friends and +to devote himself to literature merely when and how he pleased. And so +he has burdened his baggage with no mere hack-work. He was indeed a +singularly lucky person. The son of a man of fair family but reduced +fortune who had taken to farming, Henry Taylor began in the navy. But he +disliked the service very much, and either obtained or received his +discharge after only nine months' sea life as a mid-shipman during the +year 1814. Then he entered the public store-keeper's department, but was +ousted by rearrangements after four years' service. These beginnings +were not very promising; but his father allowed him to stay quietly at +home till by pure luck he obtained a third post under Government in the +Colonial Office. This he held for nearly fifty years, during which it +gave him affluence and by degrees a very high position, and left him +abundance of time for society and letters. He resigned it in 1872, and +died on 27th March 1886. He wrote some prose of various kinds, and just +before his death published a pleasant autobiography. But his literary +fame rests on a handful of plays and poems, all of them, except _St. +Clement's Eve_, which did not appear till 1862, produced at leisurely +intervals between 1827 (_Isaac Comnenus_) and 1847 (_The Eve of the +Conquest_ and other poems). The intervening works were _Philip Van +Artevelde_ (his masterpiece, 1834), _Edwin the Fair_ (1842), some minor +poems, and the romantic comedy of _A Sicilian Summer_ (first called _The +Virgin Widow_), which was published with _St. Clement's Eve_. He had +(as, it may be noted curiously, had so many of the men of the transition +decade in which he was born) a singular though scanty vein of original +lyric snatch, the best example of which is perhaps the song "Quoth +tongue of neither maid nor wife" in _Van Artevelde_; but his chief +appeal lay in a very careful study of character and the presentation of +it in verse less icy than Talfourd's and less rhetorical than Milman's. +Yet he had, unlike either of these, very little direct eye to the stage, +and therefore is classed here as a poet rather than as a dramatist. +There is always a public for what is called "thoughtful" poetry, and +Taylor's is more than merely thoughtful. But it may be suspected by +observers that when Robert Browning came into fashion Henry Taylor went +out. Citations of _Van Artevelde_, if not of the other pieces (none of +which are contemptible, while the two last, inferior in weight to their +predecessors, show advance in ease and grace), are very frequent between +1835 and 1865: rare I think between 1865 and 1895. + +And so we come at last to the twin poets, in the proper sense +humorous,--that is to say, jesting with serious thoughts behind,--of the +first division of this class. They were very close in many ways--indeed +it is yet a moot point which of the two borrowed certain rhythms and +turns of word and verse from the other, or whether both hit upon these +independently. But their careers were curiously different; and, except +in comparative length of life (if that be an advantage), Praed was +luckier than his comrade. Thomas Hood, who was slightly the elder, was +born in 1798 or 1799 (for both dates are given) in the Poultry; his +father being a bookseller and publisher. This father died, not in good +circumstances, when the son was a boy, and Thomas, after receiving some +though not much education, became first a merchant's clerk and then an +engraver, but was lucky enough to enjoy between these uncongenial +pursuits a long holiday, owing to ill-health, of some three years in +Scotland. It was in 1820 or thereabouts that he fell into his proper +vocation, and, as sub-editor of the _London Magazine_, found vent for +his own talents and made acquaintance with most of its famous staff. He +married, wrote some of his best serious poems and some good comic work, +and found that while the former were neglected the latter was eagerly +welcomed. It was settled that, in his own pathetic pun, he was to be "a +lively Hood for a livelihood" thenceforward. It is difficult to say +whether English literature lost or gained, except from one very +practical point of view; for Hood did manage to live after a fashion by +his fun as he certainly could not have lived by his poetry. He had, +however, a bare pittance, much bad health, and some extremely bad luck, +which for a time made him, through no fault of his own, an exile. His +last five years were again spent in England, and in comparative, though +very comparative, prosperity; for he was editor first of the _New +Monthly Magazine_, then of a magazine of his own, _Hood's Monthly_, and +not long before his death he received from Sir Robert Peel a civil list +pension of £100 a year. The death was due to consumption, inherited and +long valiantly struggled with. + +The still shorter life of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, on the other hand, +was passed under sufficiently favourable stars. He was born in 1802, and +his father, Serjeant Praed, possessed property, practice at the bar, and +official position. Praed was sent to Eton, where he became a pillar of +the famous school magazine _The Etonian_, and thence to Trinity College, +Cambridge, where he did extremely well, made the acquaintance of +Macaulay, and wrote in _Knight's Quarterly_. After a short interval of +tutoring and reading for the bar he entered Parliament in 1830, and +remained in it for the rest of his life, which closed on 15th July 1839. +He had latterly been secretary to the Board of Control, and it was +thought that, had he lived, he might have made a considerable political +reputation both as speaker and administrator. + +The almost unchequered sunshine of one of these careers and the little +sun and much shadow of the other have left traces--natural though less +than might be supposed--of difference between the produce of the two +men; but perhaps the difference is less striking than the resemblance. +That Hood--obliged to write for bread, and outliving Praed by something +like a decade at the two ends--wrote a great deal more than Praed did is +of little consequence, for the more leisurely writer is as unequal as +the duty labourer. Hood had the deeper and stronger genius: of this +there is no doubt, and the advantage more than made up for Praed's +advantages in scholarship and in social standing and accomplishment. In +this serious work of Hood's--_Lycus the Centaur_, _The Plea of the +Midsummer Fairies_, _The Elm Tree_, _The Haunted House_--there is +observable--to a degree never surpassed by any of the poets of this +group except Beddoes, and more sustained and human, though less weird +and sweet, than his--a strain of the true, the real, the ineffable tone +of poetry proper. At this Praed never arrives: there are at most in him +touches which may seem to a very charitable judgment to show that in +other circumstances sorrow, passion, or the like might have roused him +to display the hidden fire. On the other hand, neither Hood's breeding, +nor, I think, his nature, allowed him to display the exquisite airiness, +the delicate artificial bloom and perfection, of Praed's best _vers de +société_--the _Season_, the _Letter of Advice_, and the rest. This last +bloom has never been quite equalled--even Prior's touch is coarse to it, +even that of the late Mr. Locker is laboured and deliberate. So too as +there is nothing in Praed of the popular indignation--generous and fine +but a little theatrical--which endears Hood to the general in _The +Bridge of Sighs_ and _The Song of the Shirt_, so there is nothing in +Hood of the sound political sense, underlying apparent banter, of +Praed's _Speaker Asleep_ and other things. + +But where the two poets come together, on a ground which they have +almost to themselves, is in a certain kind of humorous poetry ranging +from the terrific-grotesque, as in Hood's _Miss Kilmansegg_ and Praed's +_Red Fisherman_, to the simple, humorously tender study of characters, +as in a hundred things of Hood's and in not a few of Praed's with _The +Vicar_ at their head. The resemblance here is less in special points +than in a certain general view of life, conditioned in each case by the +poet's breeding, temperament, and circumstance, but alike in essence and +quality: in a certain variety of the essentially English fashion of +taking life with a mixture of jest and earnest, of humour and sentiment. +Hood, partly influenced by the need of caring for the public, partly by +his pupilship to Lamb, perhaps went to further extremes both in mere fun +and in mere sentiment than Praed did, but the central substance is the +same in both. + +Yet one gift which Hood has and Praed has not remains to be noticed--the +gift of exquisite song writing. Compared with the admired inanities of +Barry Cornwall, his praised contemporary, Hood's "Fair Ines," his "Time +of Roses," his exquisite "Last Stanzas," and not a few other things, are +as gold to gilt copper. Praed has nothing to show against these; but he, +like Hood, was no inconsiderable prose writer, while the latter, thanks +to his apprenticeship to the burin, had an extraordinary faculty of +illustrating his own work with cuts, contrary to all the canons, but +inimitably grotesque. + + * * * * * + +It is probable that even in this long survey of the great poetical +production of the first third of this century some gaps may be detected +by specialists. But it seemed to me impossible to give more than the +barest mention here to the "single speech" accident of Charles Wolfe, +the author of the "Burial of Sir John Moore," which everybody knows, and +of absolutely nothing else that is worth a single person's knowing; to +the gigantic and impossible labours of Edwin Atherstone; to the +industrious translation of Rose and Sotheby; to the decent worth of +Caroline Bowles, and the Hood-and-water of Laman Blanchard. And there +are others perhaps who cannot be even mentioned; for there must be an +end. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[3] _Lyrical Ballads_, 1798, and with additions 1800; _Poems_, 1807 (in +these four volumes even adorers have allowed all his greatest work to be +included); _The Excursion_, 1814; _The White Doe of Rylston_, 1815; +_Sonnets on the River Duddon_, and others, 1819-20. In 1836 he brought +out a collected edition of his poems in six volumes. _The Prelude_ was +posthumous. + +[4] It must be remembered that Wordsworth was a prose writer of +considerable excellence and of no small volume. Many people no doubt +were surprised when Dr. Grosart, by collecting his pamphlets, his +essays, his notes, and his letters, managed to fill three large octavo +volumes. But his poetry so far outweighs his prose (though, like most +poets, he could write admirably in his pedestrian style when he chose) +that his utterances in "the other harmony" need not be specially +considered. The two most considerable examples of this prose are the +pamphlet on _The Convention of Cintra_ and the five and twenty years +later _Guide to the Lakes_. But minor essays, letters of a more or less +formal character, and prefaces and notes to the poems, make up a goodly +total; and always display a genius germane to that of the poems. + +[5] This word, as well as "Aspheterism," which has had a less general +currency, was a characteristic coinage of Coleridge's to designate a +kind of Communism, partly based on the speculations of Godwin, and +intended to be carried into practice in America. + +[6] Yet this praise can only be assigned to Coleridge with large +allowance. He was always unjust to his own _immediate_ predecessors, +Johnson, Gibbon, etc.; and he was not too sensible of the real merits of +Pope or even of Dryden. In this respect Leigh Hunt, an immeasurably +weaker thinker, had a much more catholic taste. And it is not certain +that, as a mere prose writer, Coleridge was a very good prose writer. + +[7] Curiously enough, there was another and slightly older Samuel +Rogers, a clergyman, who published verse in 1782, just before his +namesake, and who dealt with Hope-- + + Hope springs eternal in the _aspiring_ breast. + +His verse, of which specimens are given in Southey's _Modern English +Poets_, is purely eighteenth century. He died in 1790. + +[8] Henry Headley, who, like Bowles and Landor, was a member of Trinity +College, Oxford, and who died young, after publishing a few original +poems of no great value, deserves more credit for his _Select Beauties +of Ancient English Poetry_, published in two volumes, with an exquisite +title-page vignette, by Cadell in 1787, than has sometimes been allowed +him by the not numerous critics who have noticed him recently, or by +those who immediately followed him. His knowledge was soon outgrown, and +therefore looked down upon; and his taste was a very little +indiscriminate. But it was something to put before an age which was just +awakening to the appetite for such things two volumes full of selections +from the too little read poets of the seventeenth, with a few of the +sixteenth century. Moreover, Headley's biographical information shows +very praiseworthy industry, and his critical remarks a great deal of +taste at once nice and fairly catholic. A man who in his day could, +while selecting and putting forth Drayton and Carew, Daniel and King, +speak enthusiastically of Dryden and even of Goldsmith, must have had +the root of the matter in him as few critics have had. + +[9] Not to be confounded with _Robert_, or "Satan" Montgomery, his +junior by many years, and a much worse poet, the victim of Macaulay's +famous classical example of what is called in English "slating," and in +French _éreintement_. There is really nothing to be said about this +person that Macaulay has not said; though perhaps one or two of the +things he has said are a little strained. + +[10] Some fifteen years ago, in a little book on Dryden, I called Kirke +White a "miserable poetaster," and was rebuked for it by those who +perhaps knew Byron's lines and nothing more. Quite recently Mr. Gosse +was rebuked more loudly for a less severe denunciation. I determined +that I would read Kirke White again; and the above judgment is the +mildest I can possibly pronounce after the reading. A good young man +with a pathetic career; but a poetaster merely. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE NEW FICTION + + +Although, as was shown in the first chapter, the amount of novel writing +in the last decades of the eighteenth century was very considerable, and +the talent displayed by at least some of the practitioners of the form +distinctly great, it can hardly have been possible for any careful +observer of it, either during the last ten years of the old age or the +first fifteen of the new, to be satisfied with it on the whole, or to +think that it had reached a settled or even a promising condition. Miss +Burney (now Madame d'Arblay), whose brilliant début with _Evelina_ was +made just before the date at which this book begins, had just after that +date produced _Cecilia_, in which partial and contemporary judges +professed to see no falling off. But though she was still living and +writing,--though she lived and wrote till the present century was nearly +half over,--_Camilla_ (1796) was acknowledged as a doubtful success, and +_The Wanderer_ (1814) as a disastrous failure; nor after this did she +attempt the style again. + +The unpopularity of Jacobinism and the growing distaste for the +philosophy of the eighteenth century prevented much attempt being made +to follow up the half political, half philosophical novel of Godwin, +Holcroft, and Bage. No such causes, however, were in operation as +concerning the "Tale of Terror," the second founder of which, Monk +Lewis, was indeed no inconsiderable figure during the earlier part of +the great age of 1810-30, while Charles Robert Maturin improved +considerably upon Lewis himself. Maturin was born in Ireland (where he +principally lived) in 1782, and died there in 1824. He took orders, but +was too eccentric for success in his profession, and his whole heart was +set on literature and the drama. Befriended by Scott and Byron, though +very severely criticised by Coleridge, he succeeded in getting his +tragedy of _Bertram_ acted at Drury Lane with success; but his later +theatrical ventures (_Manuel_, _Fredolpho_) were less fortunate. He also +published sermons; but he lives in literature only by his novels, and +not very securely by these. He produced three of them--_The Fatal +Vengeance: or, The Family of Montorio_, _The Wild Irish Boy_, and the +_Milesian Chief_--under a pseudonym before he was thirty; while after +the success of _Bertram_ he avowed _Women_ (1818), _Melmoth the +Wanderer_ (1820), and _The Albigenses_ (1824), the last in a sort of +cross style between his earlier patterns and Scott. But his fame had +best be allowed to rest wholly on _Melmoth_, a remarkable book dealing +with the supposed selling of a soul to the devil in return for prolonged +life; the bargain, however, being terminable if the seller can induce +some one else to take it off his hands. Although far too long, +marvellously involved with tales within tales, and disfigured in parts +by the rant and the gush of its class, _Melmoth_ is really a powerful +book, which gave something more than a passing shudder to its own +generation (it specially influenced Balzac), and which has not lost its +force even now. But the usual novel of this kind, which was written in +vast numbers, was simply beneath contempt. + +The exquisite artist who, as mentioned formerly, had taken these tales +of terror as part subject of her youthful satire, had begun to write +some years before the close of the eighteenth century. But Miss Austen's +books were long withheld from the press, and she was considerably +preceded in publication by Maria Edgeworth. These last are the only +novels of the first decade of the nineteenth century which have held any +ground, though they were but few among the crowds not merely of tales of +terror but of fashionable novels, "Minerva Press" inanities, attempts +in the bastard and unsuccessful kind of historical romance which +preceded Scott's, and others. Miss Edgeworth, who was born in 1767, the +daughter of an eccentric busybody of good family and property in +Ireland, and who lived till 1848, had a great fame in her own day, +deserved it, never entirely lost it, and has lately had it revived; +while Scott declared (but in such matters Scott was a little apt to let +his good-nature and his freedom from personal vanity get the better of +strict critical truth) that her Irish novels had supplied the suggestion +of his Scotch ones. Her chief works in this kind were _Castle Rackrent_ +(1801), a book with little interest of the strictly "novel" kind, but a +wonderful picture of the varieties of recklessness and misconduct which +in the course of a generation or two ruined or crippled most of the +landlords of Ireland; _Belinda_ (1803), her most ambitious and elaborate +if not her most successful effort, which includes a very vivid and +pregnant sketch of the feminine dissipation of the end of the last +century; _Tales of Fashionable Life_, including the admirable +_Absentee_; and _Ormond_, the most vivid of her Irish stories next to +_Castle Rackrent_. She continued to write novels as late as 1834 +(_Helen_), while some very charming letters of hers, though privately +printed a good many years ago, were not published till 1894. Miss +Edgeworth's father, Richard, was himself something of a man of letters, +and belonged to the class of Englishmen who, without imbibing French +freethinking, had eagerly embraced the "utility" doctrines, the +political economy, and some of the educational and social crazes of the +French _philosophes_; and he did his daughter no good by thrusting into +her earlier work a strain of his own crotchet and purpose. Indirectly, +however, this brought about in _The Parent's Assistant_, in other books +for children, and in the _Moral Tales_, some of her most delightful +work. In the novels (which besides these mentioned include _Leonora_, +_Harrington_, _Ennui_, and _Patronage_, the longest of all) Miss +Edgeworth occupies a kind of middle position between the eighteenth +century novelists, of whom Miss Burney is the last, and those of the +nineteenth, of whom Miss Austen is the first. This is not merely, +though no doubt it is partly, due to the fact that the society which she +saw (and she mixed in a great deal, from the highest downwards) was +itself in a kind of transition state: it was at least as much owing to a +certain want of distinct modernness and distinct universality in her own +character, thought, and style. Miss Edgeworth, though possessed of +delightful talents falling little short of genius, and of much humour +(which last is shown in the charming _Essay on Irish Bulls_, as well as +in her novels and her letters), missed, as a rule, the last and greatest +touches; and, except some of her Irish characters, who are rather types +than individuals, she has not created many live persons, while sometimes +she wanders very far from life. Her touch, in short, though extremely +pleasant, was rather uncertain. She can tell a story to perfection, but +does not often invent it perfectly; and by herself she can hardly be +said to have originated anything, though of course, if we could accept +the above quoted statement of Scott's, she indirectly originated a very +great deal. + +Very different is the position occupied by Jane Austen, who was born at +Steventon in Hampshire on 16th December 1775, being the daughter of the +rector of that place, lived a quiet life chiefly at various places in +her native county, frequented good society in the rank of not the +richest country squires, to which her own family belonged, and died at +Winchester unmarried on 24th July 1817. Of her six completed novels, +_Sense and Sensibility_, _Pride and Prejudice_, _Mansfield Park_, and +_Emma_ were published during the last seven years of her life, while +_Northanger Abbey_ and _Persuasion_ appeared, for the first time with an +author's name, the year after her death. They had no enormous or sudden +popularity, but the best judges, from Scott downwards, at once +recognised their extraordinary merit; and it is not too much to say that +by the best judges, with rare exceptions, that merit has been +acknowledged with ever increasing fulness at once of enthusiasm and +discrimination to the present day. With Scott, Miss Austen is the parent +of nineteenth century fiction; or, to speak with greater exactness, she +is the mother of the nineteenth century novel, just as he is the father +of the nineteenth century romance. + +One indeed of the most wonderful things about her is her earliness. Even +the dates of publication of her first books precede those of any +novelist of the same rank and the same modernity; but these dates are +misleading. _Northanger Abbey_ was written more than twenty years before +it appeared, and the bulk of _Pride and Prejudice_ (which some hold to +be the best and most characteristic of all) is known to have been as old +at least as _Northanger Abbey_. That is to say, almost at the very time +of the appearance of _Camilla_ (to which, by the way, Miss Austen was an +original subscriber), a book not strikingly more nineteenth century in +tone than the novels of Richardson, though a little more so in manners, +a girl even younger than Miss Burney herself had been when she wrote +_Evelina_ was drawing other girls, who, putting aside the most trivial +details of dress, speech, and so forth, might be living girls to-day. + +The charm and the genius of Miss Austen are not universally admitted; +the touch of old fashion in external detail apparently discontenting +some readers, the delicate and ever-present irony either escaping or +being distasteful to others, while the extreme quietness of the action +and the entire absence of excitement probably revolt a third class. But +the decriers do not usually attempt formal criticism. However, they +sometimes do, and such an attempt once came under the notice of the +present historian. It was urged that to extol Miss Austen's method is a +masculine delusion, that method being nothing but the throwing into +literature of the habit of minute and semi-satiric observation natural +to womankind. It did not apparently occur to this critic that he (or +she) was in the first place paying Miss Austen an extraordinarily high +compliment--a compliment almost greater than the most enthusiastic +"Janites" have ventured--inasmuch as no higher literary triumph can be +even conceived than thus to focus, formulate, and crystallise the +special talent and gift of an entire sex into a literary method. Nor did +it probably occur to him that he was laying himself open to the +damaging, or rather ruinous retort, "Then how is it that, of all the +women who have preceded and followed Miss Austen as novelists, no other +has displayed this specially and universally feminine gift?" + +It is no doubt true that there is something feminine about the method, +which, with the addition of a certain _nescio quid_, giving it its +modern difference, may be said to combine the peculiarities of Fielding +and of Richardson, though it works on a much smaller scale than either. +It has the intense and pervading, though not the exuberant and +full-blooded, _livingness_ of Fielding, and it also has something not +unlike a feminine counterpart and complement of his pervading irony; +while it is not unlike Richardson in building up the characters and the +stories partly by an infinity of tiny strokes of detail, often +communicated in conversation, partly by the use of an exceedingly nice +and delicate analysis of motive and temperament. It is in the former +respect that Miss Austen stands apart from most, if not from all, women +who have written novels. Irony is by no means a frequent feminine gift; +and as women do not often possess it in any great degree, so they do not +as a rule enjoy it. Miss Austen is only inferior among English writers +to Swift, to Fielding, and to Thackeray--even if it be not improper to +use the term inferiority at all for what is after all not much more than +difference--in the use of this potent but most double-edged weapon. Her +irony indeed is so subtle that it requires a certain dose of subtlety to +appreciate it, and it is not uncommon to find those who consider such +personages as Mr. Collins in _Pride and Prejudice_ to be merely +farcical, instead of, as they are in fact, preachers of the highest and +most Shakespearian comedy. But there would be no room here to examine +Miss Austen's perfections in detail; the important thing for the +purposes of this history is to observe again that she "set the clock," +so to speak, of pure novel writing to the time which was to be +nineteenth century time to this present hour. She discarded violent and +romantic adventure. She did not rely in the very least degree on +describing popular or passing fashions, amusements, politics; but +confined herself to the most strictly ordinary life. Yet she managed in +some fashion so to extract the characteristics of that life which are +perennial and human, that there never can be any doubt to fit readers in +any age finding themselves at home with her, just as they find +themselves at home with all the greatest writers of bygone ages. And +lastly, by some analogous process she hit upon a style which, though +again true to the ordinary speech of her own day, and therefore now +reviled as "stilted" and formal by those who have not the gift of +literary detachment, again possesses the universal quality, and, save in +the merest externals, is neither ancient nor modern. + +For the moment, however, Miss Austen's example had not so much little +influence as none at all. A more powerful and popular force, coming +immediately afterwards and coinciding with the bent of general taste, +threw for the time the whole current of English novel writing into quite +a different channel; and it was not till the first rush of this current +had expended itself, after an interval of thirty or forty years, that +the novel, as distinguished from the romance and from nondescript styles +partaking now of the romance itself, now of something like the +eighteenth century story, engaged the popular ear. This new development +was the historical novel proper; and the hand that started it at last +was that of Scott. At last--for both men and women had been trying to +write historical novels for about two thousand years, and for some +twenty or thirty the attempts had come tolerably thick and fast. But +before Scott no one, ancient or modern, Englishman or foreigner, had +really succeeded. In the first place, until the eighteenth century was +pretty far advanced, the conception and the knowledge of history as +distinguished from the mere writing and reading of chronicles had been +in a very rudimentary condition. Exceedingly few historians and no +readers of history, as a class and as a rule, had practised or acquired +the art of looking at bygone ages with any attempt to realise and revive +the ideas of those ages themselves, or even, while looking at them with +the eyes of the present, to keep in mind that these were quite different +eyes from those of contemporaries. In the same way no attempt at getting +"local colour," at appropriateness of dialect, and so forth, had been +made. These negligences in the hands of genius had been as unimportant +as the negligences of genius always are. If Shakespeare's "godlike +Romans" are not entirely free from anachronism, nobody of sense would +exchange them for anything else than themselves; and though Dante +practically repeated in the _Commedia_ the curious confusion which in +less gifted _trouvčres_ and romances mixed up Alexander with Charlemagne +and blended Greek and Gothic notions in one inextricable tangle, this +also was supremely unimportant, if not even in a manner interesting. But +when, at the end of the eighteenth century, writers, of secondary powers +at best, engaging in a new and unengineered way, endeavoured to write +historical novels, they all, from Godwin and Mrs. Radcliffe to Miss +Reeves and the Misses Lee, made the merest gallimaufries of inaccurate +history, questionable fiction, manners heedlessly jumbled, and above all +dialogue destitute of the slightest semblance of verisimilitude, and +drawn chiefly from that of the decadent tragic and comic drama of the +time. + +It is not possible--it never is in such cases--to give a very exact +account of the causes which led Walter Scott, when the public seemed to +be a little tiring of the verse-romances which have been discussed in +the last chapter, to take to romances in prose. The example of Miss +Edgeworth, if a true cause at all, could affect only his selection of +Scotch manners to illustrate his histories, not his adoption of the +historical style itself. But he did adopt it; and, fishing out from an +old desk the beginnings of a story which he had left unfinished, or +rather had scarce commenced, years earlier, he fashioned it into +_Waverley_. This appearing in the year 1814 at a serious crisis in his +own affairs, opened at once a new career of fame and fortune to him, +and a previously unknown field of exploit and popularity to the English +novel. + +The extraordinary greatness of Scott--who in everything but pure style, +and the expression of the highest raptures of love, thought, and nature, +ranks with the greatest writers of the world--is not better indicated by +any single fact than by the fact that it is impossible to describe his +novels in any simple formula. He practically created the historical +novel; and, what is more, he elaborated it to such an extent that no +really important additions to his scheme have been made since. But not +all his novels are historical. The two which immediately succeeded +_Waverley_, and which perhaps the best judges consider his best,--_Guy +Mannering_ and _The Antiquary_,--have only the faintest touch of history +about them, and might have none at all without affecting their +excellence; while one of the most powerful of his later books, _St. +Ronan's Well_, is almost absolutely virgin of fact. So also, though his +incomparable delineation of national manners, speech, and character, of +the _cosas de Escócia_ generally, is one of the principal sources of his +interest, _Ivanhoe_, which has perhaps been the most popular of all his +books, _Kenilworth_, which is not far below it in popularity or in +merit, and one or two others, have nothing at all of Scotland in them; +and the altogether admirable romance of _Quentin Durward_, one of his +four or five masterpieces, so little that what there is plays the +smallest part in the success. So yet again, historical novelist as Scott +is, and admirably as he has utilised and revivified history, he is by no +means an extremely accurate historical scholar, and is wont not merely +to play tricks with history to suit his story,--that is probably always +allowable,--but to commit anachronisms which are quite unnecessary and +even a little teasing. + +There is no doubt that the single gift underlying all these and other +things--the gift which enabled Scott not merely, as has been said, to +create the historical novel, but to give the novel generally an entirely +new start and direction, to establish its popularity, to clear its +reputation from the smirch of frivolity on the one side and immorality +on the other, to put it in the position occupied at other times or in +other countries by the drama and the sermon, and to make it a rival of +the very newspaper which was being refashioned at the same moment, while +providing opportunities for the production of literature proper not +inferior to those of any literary kind except poetry--that this was a +gift of higher scope, if of vaguer definition, than any of those +referred to. It was that gift which no one except Shakespeare has ever +possessed in larger measure, though others have possessed it in greater +partial intensity and perfection--the gift of communicating life to the +persons, the story, the dialogue. To some extent Scott had this treasure +in an earthen vessel. He could not, like Thackeray, like Fielding, like +Miss Austen even, make everybody that he touched alive: his heroes very +generally are examples to the contrary. And as a rule, when he did +perform this function of the wizard,--a name given to him by a more than +popular appropriateness,--he usually did it, not by the accumulation of +a vast number of small strokes, but by throwing on the canvas, or rather +panel, large outlines, free sweeps of line, and breadths of colour, +instinct with vivacity and movement. Yet he managed wholly to avoid that +fault of some creative imaginations which consists in personifying and +individualising their figures by some easily recognisable label of +mannerism. Even his most mannered characters, his humourists in the +seventeenth century sense, of whom Dugald Dalgetty is the prince +and chief--the true commander of the whole _stift_ of this +_Dunkelspiel_--stand poles asunder from those inventions of Dickens and +of some others who are ticketed for us by a gesture or a phrase repeated +_ad nauseam_. And this gift probably is most closely connected with +another: the extraordinary variety of Scott's scene, character, and--so +far as the term is applicable to his very effective but rather loose +fashion of story-telling--plot. It is a common and a just complaint of +novelists, especially when they are fertile rather than barren, that +with them scene, plot, and character all run into a kind of mould, that +their stories with a little trouble can be thrown into a sort of common +form, that their persons simply "change from the blue bed to the brown," +and that the blue and brown beds themselves are seen, under their +diverse colours, to have a singular and not very welcome uniformity of +pattern and furniture. Even Scott does not escape this almost invariable +law of the brain-artist: it is one of the sole Shakespearian +characteristics that Shakespeare does escape it entirely and altogether. +A certain form of huddled and not altogether probable catastrophe, a +knack of introducing in the earlier part of the story, as if big with +fate, personages who afterwards play but a subordinate part, and one or +two other things, might be urged against Sir Walter. But, on the whole, +no artist is less chargeable with stereotype than he. His characters are +hardly ever doubles; their relationships (certain general connections +excepted, which are practically the scaffolding of the romance in +itself) do not repeat themselves; the backgrounds, however much or +however little strict local colour they may have, are always +sufficiently differentiated. They have the variety, as they have the +truth, of nature. + +No detailed account can here be attempted of the marvellous rapidity and +popularity of the series of novels from the appearance of _Waverley_ +till just before the author's death eighteen years later. The anecdotage +of the matter is enormous. The books were from the first anonymous, and +for some time the secret of their authorship was carefully and on the +whole successfully preserved. Even several years after the beginning, so +acute a judge as Hazlitt, though he did not entertain, thought it +necessary seriously to discuss, the suggestion that Godwin wrote +them,--a suggestion which, absurd as, with our illegitimate advantage of +distance and perspective, we see it to be, was less nonsensical than it +seems to those who forget that at the date of the appearance of +_Waverley_ there was no novelist who could have been selected with more +plausibility. After a time this and that were put together, and a critic +of the name of Adolphus constructed an argument of much ingenuity and +shrewdness to show that the author of _Marmion_ and the _Lady of the +Lake_ must be the author of _Waverley_. But the secret was never +regularly divulged till Sir Walter's misfortunes, referred to in the +section on his poetry, made further concealment not so much useless as +impossible in the first place, and positively detrimental in the second. +The series was dauntlessly continued, despite the drag of the +_Napoleon_, the necessity of attempting other work that would bring in +money, and above all the strain on the faculties both of imagination and +labour which domestic as well as pecuniary misfortunes imposed. Nor did +Scott, it may be fearlessly, asserted, though it is not perhaps the +general opinion, ever publish any "dotages," with the possible exception +of _Castle Dangerous_, which was not only finished but begun when the +fatal disease of the brain which killed him had got the upper hand. The +introduction to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, written in 1827, is +one of the most exquisite and masterly things that he ever did, though, +from its not actually forming part of one of the novels, it is +comparatively little known. The _Fair Maid of Perth_, a year later, has +been one of the most popular of all abroad, and not the least so at +home; and there are critics who rank _Anne of Geierstein_, in 1829, very +high indeed. Few defenders are found for _Count Robert of Paris_, which +was in fact written in the valley of the shadow; and it may be admitted +that in his earlier days Scott would certainly have been able to give it +a fuller development and a livelier turn. Yet the opening scene, though +a little too long, the escape from the vaults of the Blachernal, and not +a few other things, would be recognised as marvellous if they could be +put before a competent but unbiassed taste, which knew nothing of Sir +Walter's other work, but was able to compare it not merely with the work +of his predecessors but with that of his imitators, numerous and +enterprising as they were, at the time that _Count Robert_ appeared. + +In such a comparison Scott at his worst excels all others at their best. +It is not merely that in this detail and in that he has the mastery, but +that he has succeeded in making novel writing in general turn over a +completely new leaf, enter upon a distinctly different competition. +With the masterpieces of the eighteenth century novel he does not enter +into comparison at all: he is working on a different scene, addressing a +different audience, using different tools, colours, methods. Every +successful novelist up to his time had, whatever his ostensible "_temp._ +of tale," quietly assumed the thoughts, the speech, the manners, even to +a great extent the dress and details of his own day. And in this +assumption all but the greatest had inevitably estranged from them the +ears and eyes of days that were not their own, which days, no doubt, +were in turn themselves rapidly hastening to change, but never to revert +to the original surroundings. Scott had done in prose fiction what the +poets and the dramatists had sometimes done, what very rare philosophers +had sometimes done likewise. Ostensibly going to the past, and to some +extent really borrowing its circumstances, he had in reality gone +straight to man as man; he had varied the particular trapping only to +exhibit the universal substance. The Baron of Bradwardine, Dandie +Dinmont, Edie Ochiltree, Mause Headrigg, Bailie Jarvie, and the long +list of originals down to Oliver Proudfute and even later, their less +eccentric companions from Fergus MacIvor to Queen Margaret, may derive +part of their appeal from dialect and colouring, from picturesque +"business" and properties. But the chief of that appeal lies in the fact +that they are all men and women of the world, of life, of time in +general; that even when their garments, even when their words are a +little out of fashion, there is real flesh and blood beneath the +garments, real thought and feeling behind the words. It may be urged by +the Devil's Advocate, and is not wholly susceptible of denial by his +opponent, that, after the first four or five books, the enormous gains +open to Scott first tempted, and the heroic efforts afterwards demanded +of him later compelled, the author to put not quite enough of himself +and his knowledge into his work, to "pad" if not exactly to "scamp" a +little. Yet it is the fact that some of his very best work was not only +very rapidly written, but written under such circumstances of bodily +suffering and mental worry as would have made any work at all +impossible to most men. And, on the whole, it is perhaps as idle to +speculate whether this work might have been better, as it is ungenerous +to grumble that it ought to have been. For after all it is such a body +of literature as, for complete liberation from any debts to models, +fertility and abundance of invention, nobility of sentiment, variety and +keenness of delight, nowhere else exists as the work of a single author +in prose. + +It was certain that an example so fascinating in itself, and of such +extraordinary profit in fame and fortune to the author, would be +followed. It was said with sufficient accuracy that Scott's novels, at +the best of his career, brought him in about £15,000 a year, a sum +previously undreamt of by authors; while their reputation overshadowed +not only all others in England, but all others throughout Europe. And it +is rather surprising, and shows how entirely Scott had the priority in +this field, that it was not for six or seven years at least that any +noteworthy attempts in his manner appeared, while it can scarcely be +said that in England anything of very great value was published in it +before his death. In the last ten years of his life, however, +imitations, chiefly of his historical style, did appear in great +numbers; and he has left in his diary an extremely interesting, a very +good-natured, but a very shrewd and just criticism upon them in general, +and upon two in particular--the _Brambletye House_ of Horace Smith, one +of the authors of the delightful parodies called _Rejected Addresses_, +and the first book, _Sir John Chiverton_, of an author who was to +continue writing for some half century, and at times to attain very +great popularity. This was Harrison Ainsworth, and G. P. R. James also +began to publish pretty early in the third decade of the century. James' +_Richelieu_, his first work of mark, appeared in 1825, the same year as +_Sir John Chiverton_; but he was rather the older man of the two, having +been born in 1801, while Ainsworth's birth year was 1805. The latter, +too, long outlived James, who died in 1860, while holding the post of +English Consul in Venice, while Ainsworth survived till 1882. Both were +exceedingly prolific, James writing history and other work as well as +the novels--_Darnley_, _Mary of Burgundy_, _Henry Masterton_, _John +Marston Hall_, and dozens of others--which made his fame; while +Ainsworth (_Jack Sheppard_, _The Tower of London_, _Crichton_, +_Rookwood_, _Old St. Paul's_, etc.) was a novelist only. Both, +especially between 1830 and 1850, achieved considerable popularity with +the general public; and they kept it much longer (if indeed they have +yet lost it) with schoolboys. But while the attempt of both to imitate +Scott was palpable always, the success of neither could be ranked very +high by severe criticism. James wrote better than Ainsworth: his +historical knowledge was of a much wider and more accurate kind, and he +was not unimbued with the spirit of romance. But the sameness of his +situations (it became a stock joke to speak of the "two horsemen" who so +often appeared in his opening scenes), the exceedingly conventional +character of his handling, and the theatrical feebleness of his +dialogue, were always reprehended and open to reprehension. Harrison +Ainsworth, on the other hand, had a real knack of arresting and keeping +the interest of those readers who read for mere excitement: he was +decidedly skilful at gleaning from memoirs and other documents scraps of +decoration suitable for his purpose, he could in his better days string +incidents together with a very decided knack, and, till latterly, his +books rarely languished. But his writing was very poor in strictly +literary merit, his style was at best bustling prose melodrama, and his +characters were scarcely ever alive. + +The chief follower of Sir Walter Scott in "Scotch" novels--for Miss +Ferrier, the Scottish counterpart of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen, +was, though his friend, hardly his follower, and _Marriage_ was mainly +written before _Waverley_--was John Galt, who also has some claim to +priority. He was born (2nd May 1779) at Irvine in Ayrshire, the scene of +his best work, but passed most of his youth at Greenock. His father was +a retired West India captain; and Galt's biographers do not make it very +clear whence he obtained the capital for the various travels and +enterprises which occupied his not exactly eventful, but busy and +varied life. He had entered the Custom-house; but went to London in +1804, and tried literature in many forms, and for the most part with +very little success. While travelling in the Levant he met Byron, of +whom long afterwards he published a rather absurd life; and after his +return home his _Ayrshire Legatees_ found welcome and popularity in +_Blackwood_. This was in 1821, and after five years' busy writing Galt +went to Canada in charge of a great scheme of colonisation and commerce +called the Canada Company. This, after fair prospects, broke down +completely. He came back again, wrote hard, and schemed incessantly. But +fortune was not kind to him; and he died, in a way a broken man, at +Greenock on 11th April 1839. + +Galt, though with some of the national characteristics which have not +always made Scotchmen popular, appears to have been a person of worth +and amiability. He got on well with Byron, a very uncommon thing; and +from Carlyle, whom he met when they were both on the staff of _Fraser_, +he receives unwontedly amiable notice. His literary production was vast +and totally uncritical; his poems, dramas, etc., being admittedly +worthless, his miscellaneous writing mostly book-making, while his +historical novels are given up by all but devotees. He had, however, a +special walk--the delineation of the small humours and ways of his +native town and county--in which, if not exactly supreme, he has seldom +been equalled. The _Ayrshire Legatees_ is in main scheme a pretty direct +and not very brilliant following of _Humphrey Clinker_; but the letters +of the worthy family who visit London are read in a home circle which +shows Galt's peculiar talent. It is shown better still in his next +published work, _The Annals of the Parish_, which is said to have been +written long before, and in the pre-Waverley days to have been rejected +by the publishers because "_Scotch_ novels could not pay." It is not +exactly a novel, being literally what its title holds out--the annals of +a Western Parish by its minister, the Rev. Mr. Balwhidder, a +Presbyterian Parson Adams of a less robust type, whose description of +himself and parishioners is always good, and at times charming. _Sir +Andrew Wylie_ (a fantastic book of much good fun and much good feeling), +_The Entail_, and _The Provost_ (the last two sometimes ranked next to +the _Annals_), followed rapidly, and are all good in a way which has +been oddly revived of late years by some of our most popular novelists. +A better writer than Galt, though a less fertile, was Dr. Moir +("Delta"), another _Blackwood_ man, whose chief single performance is +_Mansie Wauch_, but who wrote both prose and verse, both tales and +essays, with considerable accomplishment of style, and with a very +agreeable mixture of serious and comic power. + +Meanwhile, the historical novel did not by any means absorb the +attention of the crowds of aspirants who hurried to try their fortune in +the wake of Scott. Lady Morgan (or rather Miss Sydney Owenson) did, in +_The Wild Irish Girl_ (1806) and other things, some "rattling Hibernian +stories" quite early; John Banim (1798-1842) coincided with the two +Englishmen and exceeded them in _goūt du terroir_; and the _Fairy +Legends_ (1826) of Crofton Croker (1798-1854) are at their best simply +exquisite. But the older styles continued after a fashion, or underwent +slight changes, before the novel of purely ordinary life, on a plan +midway between Scott and Miss Austen, triumphed in the middle of the +century. One of the most popular of novelists in the reigns of George +IV. and William IV. was Theodore Hook (1788-1841), a man of respectable +connections and excellent education, who, having made himself a +favourite with the Regent and many persons of quality as a diner-out and +improvisatore, received a valuable appointment at the Mauritius, laid +himself open by carelessness to a prosecution for malversation, and, +returning to England, never entirely escaped from the effects of this, +though he was extremely successful both as a novelist, and as a +newspaper writer and editor, in the _John Bull_ chiefly. Some of Hook's +political squibs and light verses still retain attraction; and the +tradition of his extraordinary faculties in improvising both words, +music, and dramatic arrangement remains. But his novels (_Sayings and +Doings_, _Gilbert Gurney_, _Gurney Married_, _Maxwell_, etc.) have +become very dead-alive. They have little plot; a sort of rattling +adventure in a modernised following of Smollett, which is their chief +source of interest; manners true enough to their own day to be +out-of-date now, but not handled with sufficient art ever to regain the +attraction of revived antiquity; and a very careless and undistinguished +style. + +The first series of Hook's _Sayings and Doings_ appeared in 1824, the +year before that of the novels of James and Ainsworth above noticed. +Three years later, and five before Scott's death, appeared _Falkland_, +the first (anonymous) novel of a writer far surpassing any of the hour +in talent, and credited by some with positive genius. Edward George +Earle Lytton Bulwer, afterwards Sir Edward Lytton-Bulwer, and later +still Lord Lytton (born in 1800), was the youngest son of General Bulwer +of Wood Dalling and Haydon in Norfolk, while he on his mother's side +represented an ancient Hertfordshire family seated at Knebworth. He was +a Cambridge man: he obtained the Chancellor's prize for English verse in +1825, and his first books were in poetical form. He became a Member of +Parliament, being returned in the Whig interest for St. Ives before the +Reform Bill passed, and in the first Reform Parliament for Lincoln, and +he held this seat for a decade, receiving his baronetcy in 1835. For +another decade he was out of the House of Commons, though he succeeded +to the Knebworth estate in 1844. He was returned for Hertfordshire in +1852, and, joining Lord Derby's reconstituted party, ranked for the rest +of his life as a Conservative of a somewhat Liberal kind. In the second +Derby administration he was Colonial Secretary, but took no part in that +of 1867, and died just before the return of the Tories to power in 1873. + +This sufficiently brilliant political career was complicated by literary +production and success in a manner not equalled by any Englishman of his +time, and only approached by Macaulay and by Mr. Disraeli. _Falkland_ +was succeeded by _Pelham_, which was published with his name, and which +was the first, perhaps the most successful, and by far the most +brilliant, of the novels in which authors have endeavoured to secure +the rank of man of the world even more than that of man of letters, +taking the method chiefly of fashionable, and therefore somewhat +ephemeral, epigram. Nor did Bulwer (as he was known in the heyday of his +popularity) ever cease novel writing for the forty-five years which were +left to him, while the styles of his production varied with fashion in a +manner impossible to a man of less consummate versatility and talent, +though perhaps equally impossible to one of a very decided turn of +genius. The fashionable novel, the crime novel, the romance of mystery, +the romance of classical times, the historical novel, by turns occupied +him; and it is more easy to discover faults in _Paul Clifford_, _Eugene +Aram_, _The Pilgrims of the Rhine_, _The Last Days of Pompeii_, _Ernest +Maltravers_, _Zanoni_, _Rienzi_, _The Last of the Barons_, and _Harold_, +than to refuse admiration to their extraordinary qualities. Then their +author, recognising the public taste, as he always did, or perhaps +exemplifying it with an almost unexampled quickness, turned to the +domestic kind, which was at last, more than thirty years after Miss +Austen's death, forcing its way, and wrote _The Caxtons_, _My Novel_, +and _What will he do with it?_--books which to some have seemed his +greatest triumphs. The veering of that taste back again to tales of +terror was acknowledged by _A Strange Story_, which, in 1861, created an +excitement rarely, if ever, caused by the work of a man who had been +writing for more than a generation; while _The Haunted and the +Haunters_, a brief ghost-story contributed to _Blackwood's Magazine_, +has always seemed to the present writer the most perfect thing that he +ever did, and one of the most perfect things of its kind ever done. In +the very last years of his life, the wonderful _girouette_ of his +imagination felt other popular gales, and produced--partly as novels of +actual society, partly as Janus-faced satires of what was and what might +be--_The Coming Race_, _Kenelm Chillingly_, and the posthumous +_Parisians_. + +But this list of novels, which does not include by name much more than +two-thirds of his actual production, by no means exhausts Lord Lytton's +literary work. For some years, chiefly before he had passed middle +life, he was an active dramatist, and at least three of his plays--_The +Lady of Lyons_, _Richelieu_, and _Money_--had a success (not merely +passing, and in the first case at least permanent) which few if any +other plays of the century have had. He was always returning to verse, +though never with real poetical success; the exceptions which may be +urged most forcibly being his translations from Schiller, a congenial +original. He was at one time editor of the _New Monthly Magazine_. He +translated freely, he wrote much criticism,--which is often in isolated +passages, if not so often in general drift and grasp, extremely +good,--and he was a constant essayist in very various kinds. It is +probable that if his entire works were ever collected, which is not +likely, few, if any, authors of the nineteenth century, though it be one +of unbridled writing and printing, could equal him in volume; while it +is certain that very few indeed could produce more numerous testimonials +of the kind given by the immediate, and not merely immediate, success of +separate works. + +Yet it has been sometimes complained, sometimes boasted, that "with the +critics Bulwer is dead"; and it is not very certain that with the +faithful herd of uncritical readers the first Lord Lytton keeps any +great place. Even many years ago he had ceased to be, if he ever was, a +general favourite with those who specially loved literature; and it is +rather doubtful whether he will ever regain even a considerable vogue of +esteem. Perhaps this may be unjust, for he certainly possessed ability +in bulk, and perhaps here and there in detail, far surpassing that of +all but the very greatest of his contemporaries. Even the things which +were most urged against him by contemporary satirists, and which it is +to be feared are remembered at second-hand when the first-hand knowledge +of his work has declined, need not be fatal. A man may write such things +as "There is an eloquence in Memory because it is the nurse of Hope" +without its being necessary to cast up his capital letters against him +in perpetuity, or to inquire without ceasing whether eloquence is an +inseparable property of nurses. But he had two great faults--want of +concentration and want of reality; and the very keenness, the very +delicacy of his appreciation of the shiftings of popular taste may seem +without unfairness to argue a certain shallowness of individual soil, a +literary compost wherein things spring up rapidly because they have no +depth of earth, but also because they have no depth of earth, rapidly +vanish and wither away. The novel and the magazine have beyond all doubt +given us much admirable work which without them we should not have had; +they have almost as certainly, and in no case much more certainly than +in Bulwer's, over-forced and over-coaxed into hasty and ephemeral +production talents which, with a little more hardening and under less +exacting circumstances, might have become undoubted genius. Sentimental +grandiloquence is not by itself fatal: the fashion which tempts to it, +which turns on it, may return to it again; and it is never impossible to +make allowance for its excesses, especially when, as in the case under +discussion, it is accompanied by a rare and true satiric grasp of life. +In these early externals of his, Bulwer was only the most illustrious of +the innumerable victims of Byron. But his failure to make his figures +thoroughly alive is more serious; and this must be put down partly to +incapacity to take pains. + +It was nearly ten years after the first success of Bulwer, and more than +half as much after the death of Scott, that a novelist greater than any +the century had seen, except Scott himself and Miss Austen, appeared. +Charles Dickens and Lord Lytton became rather intimate friends; but +their origins and early experiences were curiously different. Dickens' +father had been in a government office; but after the Peace he took to +the press, and his son (born in 1812), after some uncomfortable early +experiences which have left their mark on _David Copperfield_, fled to +the same refuge of the destitute in our times. He was a precocious, but +not an extraordinary precocious writer; for he was four and twenty when +the _Sketches by Boz_ were printed in a volume after appearing in the +_Morning Chronicle_. But the _Sketches_ _by Boz_, though containing +some very sprightly things, are but as farthing candles to sunlight when +compared with the wonderful and wholly novel humour of _The Pickwick +Papers_, which (Dickens having been first (1836) employed to write them +as mere letter-press to the sporting sketches of the caricaturist +Seymour) appeared as a book in 1838. From that time their author had a +success which in money came second to that of Scott, and which both +pecuniarily and otherwise enabled him to write pretty much as he +pleased. So to the last the style of his novels never bore much +reference to any public taste or demand; and he developed himself more +strictly according to his own bent than almost any writer of English who +was not born to fortune. During the last twenty years of his life, which +ended suddenly on 9th June 1870, he was a newspaper editor--first of +_Household Words_, then of _All the Year Round_; but these very +periodicals were of his own making and design. He made two journeys to +America: one very early in 1842, with a literary result (_American +Notes_) of very sharp criticism of its people; the other late in 1867, +when he made large sums by reading from his works--a style of +entertainment which, again, was almost of his own invention, and which +gave employment to a very strong dramatic and histrionic faculty that +found little other vent. But his life was extremely uneventful, being +for its last two and thirty years simply one long spell of hard though +lavishly rewarded literary labour. + +The brilliancy and the originality of the product of this can never be +denied. True to his general character of independence, Dickens owes +hardly anything to any predecessor except Smollett, to whom his debts +are rather large, and perhaps to Theodore Hook, to whom, although the +fact has not been generally recognised, they exist. He had had no +regular education, had read as a boy little but the old novelists, and +never became as a man one of either wide learning or much strictly +literary taste. His temperament indeed was of that insubordinate +middle-class variety which rather resents the supremacy of any classics; +and he carried the same feeling into art, into politics, and into the +discussion of the vague problems of social existence which have so much +occupied the last three-quarters of the century. Had this iconoclastic +but ignorant zeal of his (which showed itself in his second novel, +_Nicholas Nickleby_, and was apparent in his last completed one, _Our +Mutual Friend_) been united with less original genius, the result must +have been infinitely tedious, and could not have been in any way +profitable. For Dickens' knowledge, as has been said, was very limited; +his logical faculties were not strong; and while constantly attempting +to satirise the upper classes, he knew extremely little about them, and +has never drawn a single "aristocrat," high government official, or +"big-wig" generally, who presents the remotest resemblance to a living +being. But he knew the lower and lower middle classes of his own day +with wonderful accuracy; he could inform this knowledge of his with that +indefinable comprehension of man as man which has been so often noted; +and over and above this he possessed an imagination, now humorous, now +terrible, now simply grotesque, of a range and volume rarely equalled, +and of a quality which stands entirely by itself, or is approached at a +distance, and with a difference, only by that of his great French +contemporary Balzac. This imagination, essentially plastic, so far +outran the strictly critical knowledge of mankind as mankind just +mentioned that it has invested Dickens' books and characters with a +peculiarity found nowhere else, or only in the instance just excepted. +They are never quite real: we never experience or meet anything or +anybody quite like them in the actual world. And yet in their own world +they hold their position and play their parts quite perfectly and +completely: they obey their own laws, they are consistent with their own +surroundings. Occasionally the work is marred by too many and too +glaring tricks of mannerism: this was especially the case with the +productions of the period between 1855 and 1865. The pathos of Dickens +was always regarded as slightly conventional and unreal by critical +judges. But his humour, though never again attaining the same marvellous +flow of unforced merriment which the _Pickwick Papers_ had shown, was +almost unfailing; and, thanks to the gift of projecting imaginative +character, above noticed, it was never exactly the same. + +These and other gifts were shown in a long line of novels covering just +thirty years, from _Boz to Our Mutual Friend_; for the last few years of +his life, disturbed by his American tour, by increasing ill-health, and +other things, produced nothing but the beginnings of an unfinished +novel, _Edwin Drood_. He attempted little besides novels, and what he +did attempt outside of them was not very fortunate, except the +delightful _Uncommercial Traveller_, wherein in his later days he +achieved a sort of mellowed version of the _Boz_ sketches, subdued more +to the actual, but not in the least tamed or weakened. Although a keen +lover of the theatre and an amateur actor of remarkable merit, he had +the sense and self-denial never to attempt plays except in an indirect +fashion and in one or two instances, nor ever in his own name solely. +His _Child's History of England_ (1854) is probably the worst book ever +written by a man of genius, except Shelley's novels, and has not, like +them, the excuse of extreme youth. His _Pictures from Italy_ (1845), +despite vivid passages, are quite unworthy of him; and even the +_American Notes_ could be dispensed with without a sigh, seeing that we +have _Martin Chuzzlewit_. But his novels, despite their many faults, +could not be dispensed with,--no one who understands literary value +would give up even the worst of them,--while his earlier "Christmas +Books" (during the fancy for these things in the forties) and his later +contributions to the Christmas numbers of his periodicals contain some +of his best fantastic and pathetic work. _Pickwick_ was immediately +followed by _Oliver Twist_,--a very popular book, and in parts a very +powerful one, but containing in germ most of the faults which afterwards +developed themselves, and, with the exception of the "Artful Dodger," +not bringing out any of his great character-creations. _Nicholas +Nickleby_ (1838) is a story designed to fix a stigma on cheap private +schools, and marred by some satire as cheap as the schools themselves on +the fashionable and aristocratic society of which to his dying day +Dickens never knew anything; but it is of great interest as a story, and +full of admirable humoristic sketches, which almost if not quite excused +not merely the defect of knowledge just referred to, but the author's +unfortunate proneness to attempt irony, of which he had no command, and +argument, of which he had if possible less. His next two stories, _The +Old Curiosity Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_, were enshrined (1840-41) in an +odd framework of fantastic presentation, under the general title of +_Master Humphrey's Clock_,--a form afterwards discarded with some +advantage, but also with some loss. _The Old Curiosity Shop_, strongly +commended to its own public and seriously hampered since by some rather +maudlin pathos, improved even upon _Nicholas Nickleby_ in the humoristic +vein; and while Dick Swiveller, Codlin and Short, Mr. Chuckster, and +others remain as some of the best of Dickens' peculiar characters of the +lighter sort, the dwarf Quilp is perhaps his only thoroughly successful +excursion into the grimmer and more horrible kind of humour. _Barnaby +Rudge_ is in part a historical novel, and the description of the riots +of Eighty is of extraordinary power; but the real appeal of the book +lies in the characters of the Varden family, with the handmaid Miss +Miggs and the ferocious apprentice Tappertit. Sir John Chester, a sort +of study from Chesterfield, is one of the most disastrous of this +author's failures; but Dennis the Hangman may have a place by Quilp. +Then (1843) came _Martin Chuzzlewit_, which, as observed, embodied his +American experiences in a manner which may or may not have been fair, +but which was exquisitely funny. It also added the immortal figure of +Mrs. Gamp (not unattended by any means) to the glorious list of his +comic creations. It was in _Dombey and Son_ (1846-48) that the Dickens +of the decadence first appeared; the maudlin strain of _The Old +Curiosity Shop_ being repeated in Paul Dombey, while a new and very +inauspicious element appeared in certain mechanical tricks of phrase, +and in a totally unreal style of character exemplified in the Bagstocks, +the Carkers, and so forth. Yet Captain Cuttle, his friend Bunsby, Miss +Nipper, and the inestimable Toots put in ample bail for this also. And +it was followed (1849-50) by _David Copperfield_, one of the capital +books of English fiction. This was to some extent obviously +autobiographic; but, setting some questions of taste aside, not unduly +so. Even the hero is too real to be frigid; and of the two heroines, +Dora, if an idiot, is saved by pathos different from that of Paul and +Nell, while the insipidity of Agnes does not greatly spoil the story, +and the commonplace theatricality of the Steerforth and Little Em'ly +episode can be neglected. On the other hand, Miss Trotwood, David +Copperfield's schools and schoolfellows, Uriah Heap (not wholly good as +he is), and above all the priceless Mr. Micawber, would suffice to keep +twenty books alive. + +But this book, though by no means Dickens' Corunna or even his +Malplaquet, was certainly the climax of his career, and no impartial and +competent critic could ever give him the same praise again. In two long +stories, _Bleak House_ and _Little Dorrit_, and in a shorter one, _Hard +Times_, which appeared between 1852 and 1857, the mania of "purpose" and +the blemish of mechanical mannerism appeared to a far worse degree than +previously, though in the first named at any rate there were numerous +consolations of the old kind. The _Tale of Two Cities_ (1859) has been +more differently judged than any other of his works; some extolling it +as a great romance, if not quite a great historical novel, while others +see in it little more than mixed mannerism and melodrama. Something of +the same difference prevails about _Great Expectations_ (1860-61), the +parties as a rule changing sides, and those who dislike the _Tale of Two +Cities_ rejoicing in _Great Expectations_, Dickens' closest attempt at +real modern life (with a fantastic admixture of course), and in its +heroine, Estella, his almost sole creation of a live girl. _Our Mutual +Friend_ (1864-65), though not a return to the great days, brought these +parties somewhat together again, thanks to the Doll's Dressmaker and +Rogue Riderhood. And then, for it is impossible to found any sound +critical judgment on the fragment of _Edwin Drood_, the building of the +most extraordinary monument of the fantastic in literature ceased +abruptly. + +That exactly the same fate befell the great successor, rival, and foil +of Dickens in novel writing during the middle of the century was due to +no metaphysical aid but to the simple and prosaic fact that at the time +publication in parts, independently or in periodicals, was the usual +method. Although the life of William Makepeace Thackeray was as little +eventful as Dickens' own, their origin and circumstances were as +different as their work. Dickens, as has been said, was born in +distinctly the lower section of the middle class, and had, if any +education, a very irregular one. Thackeray, who was born at Calcutta in +1811, belonged to a good family, regularly connected with English public +schools and universities, inherited a small but comfortable fortune, and +was himself educated at the Charterhouse and at Trinity College, +Cambridge, though he took no degree. Unsuccessful as an artist (it is +one of the chief pieces of literary anecdote of our times that he +offered himself fruitlessly to Dickens as an illustrator), and having by +imprudence or accident lost his private means, he began to write, +especially in the then new and audacious _Fraser's Magazine_. For this, +for other periodicals, and for _Punch_ later, he performed a vast amount +of miscellaneous work, part only of which, even with the considerable +addition made some ten years ago, has ever been enshrined in his +collected works. It is all very remarkable, and can easily be seen now +to be quite different from any other work of the time (the later +thirties); but it is very unequal and distinctly uncertain in touch. +These qualities or defects also appear in his first publications in +volume--the _Paris_ (1840) and _Irish_ (1843) _Sketch Books_, and the +novels of _Catherine_ and _Barry Lyndon_. The _Punch_ work (which +included the famous _Book of Snobs_ and the admirable attempts in +misspelling on the model of Swift and Smollett known as the _Memoirs of +Mr. Yellowplush_, with much else) marked a distinct advance in firmness +of handling and raciness of humour; while the author, who, though now a +very poor man, had access to the best society, was constantly adding to +his stock of observation as well as to his literary practice. It was +not, however, till 1846, when he began _Vanity Fair_, that any very +large number of persons began to understand what a star had risen in +English letters; nor can even _Vanity Fair_ be said to have had any +enormous popularity, though its author's powers were shown in a +different way during its publication in parts by the appearance of a +third sketch book, the _Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo_, more +perfect than either of its forerunners, and by divers extremely +brilliant Christmas books. _Vanity Fair_ was succeeded in 1849 (for +Thackeray, a man fond of society and a little indolent, was fortunately +never a very rapid writer) by _Pendennis_, which holds as autobiography, +though not perhaps in creative excellence, the same place among his +works as _Copperfield_ does among those of Dickens. Several slighter +things accompanied or followed this, Thackeray showing himself at once +an admirable lecturer, and an admirable though not always quite judicial +critic, in a series of discourses afterwards published as a volume on +_The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_. But it was not till +1852 that the marvellous historical novel of _Esmond_--the greatest book +in its own special kind ever written--appeared, and showed at once the +fashion in which the author had assimilated the Queen Anne period and +his grasp of character and story. He returned to modern times in _The +Newcomes_ (1853-55), which some put at the head of his work as a +contemporary painter of manners. After this he had seven years of life +which were well filled. He followed up _Esmond_ with The _Virginians_ +(1857-58), a novel of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, which +has not been generally rated high, but which contains some of his very +best things; he went to America and lectured on _The Four Georges_ +(lectures again brilliant in their kind); he became (1860) editor of the +_Cornhill Magazine_ and wrote in it two stories, _Lovel the Widower_ and +_Philip_; while he struck out a new line in a certain series of +contributions called _The Roundabout Papers_, some of which were among +his very last, and nearly all of them among his most characteristic and +perfect work. He had begun yet another novel, _Denis Duval_, which was +to deal with the last quarter of the century he knew so well; but he +died suddenly two days before Christmas 1863, leaving it a mere +fragment. He had unsuccessfully attempted play writing in _The Wolves +and the Lamb_, an earlier and dramatic version of _Lovel the Widower_. +And during almost his whole literary career he had been a sparing but an +exquisite writer of a peculiar kind of verse, half serious half comic, +which is scarcely inferior in excellence to his best prose. "The Ballad +of Bouillabaisse" and "The Age of Wisdom," to take only two examples, +are unmatched in their presentation of pathos that always keeps clear of +the maudlin, and is wide-eyed if not dry-eyed in view of all sides of +life; while such things as "Lyra Hibernica" and "The Ballads of +Policeman X" have never been surpassed as verse examples of pure, broad, +roaring farce that still retains a certain reserve and well-bred +scholarship of tone. + +But his verse, however charming and unique, could never have given him +the exalted and massive pedestal which his prose writings, and +especially his novels, provide. Even without the novels, as without the +verse, he would still occupy a high place among English writers for the +sake of his singular and delightful style, and for the attitude both to +life and to letters, corresponding with that style, which his essays and +miscellanies exhibit. This style is not by any means free from minor +blemishes, though it discarded many of these as time went on. But it has +an extraordinary vivacity; a manner entirely its own, which yet seldom +or never approaches mannerism; a quality of humour for which no word +would be so fit as the old-fashioned "archness," if that had not been so +hopelessly degraded before even the present century opened; at need, an +unsurpassed pathos which never by any chance or exception succumbs to +the demon of the gushing or maudlin; a flexibility and facility of +adaptation to almost all (not quite all) subjects which is hard to +parallel. + +And this style reflects with more than common exactness, even in these +minor works, the attitude above spoken of, which is not less unique and +not less inestimable than the style itself. Towards some of the "great +subjects" Thackeray indeed adopts not quite a Shakespearian silence, but +a slightly uneasy respect. Never irreligious as he was, there was +something in him of his own beloved eighteenth century's dislike and +discomfort in face of religious dogma and religious enthusiasm; he had +no metaphysical head; his politics (he once stood for Parliament) were a +little childish. It was his, in short, not so much to argue as to +observe, to feel, to laugh with no unkindness but with infinite +comprehension, to enjoy, to suffer. Of all the innumerable cants that +ever were canted, the cant about Thackeray's "cynicism" was the silliest +and the most erroneous. He knew the weakness of man, and laughed at it +as the wise knows and laughs, "knowing also," as the poet says, "that he +himself must die." But he did not even despise this weakness, much less +is he harsh to it. On the contrary, he is milder not only than Swift, +but even than Addison or Miss Austen, and he is never wroth with human +nature save when it is not only weak but base. + +All these good gifts and others, such as incomparable power of +presenting scene and personage to the necessary extent and with telling +detail, appear in his novels, with the addition of a greater gift than +any of them--the gift most indispensable of all others to the +novelist--the gift of creating and immortalising character. Of mere +story, of mere plot, Thackeray was not a great master; and he has made +himself appear a less great master than he was by his fancy for +interlarding his narratives with long addresses to the reader, and by +his other fancy for extending them over very great spaces of time. The +unities are no doubt in fiction, if not in drama, something of a +caricature; but it is seldom possible to neglect them to the extent of +years and decades without paying the penalty; and Thackeray is not of +those who have evaded payment. But in the creation of living character +he stands simply alone among novelists: above even Fielding, though his +characters may have something less of massiveness; much above Scott, +whose consummate successes are accompanied by not a few failures; and +out of sight of almost every one else except Miss Austen, whose world is +different, and, as a world, somewhat less of flesh and blood. In _Vanity +Fair_ he is still in this respect not quite at his acme; and the +magnificent character of Becky Sharp (the attempt to rival whom by her +almost exact contemporary, Valerie Marneffe, is a singular critical +error), supported as it is by the lesser successes of Jos and Rawdon, of +George Osborne and Lord Steyne, does not find itself, save now and then, +especially in the crowning scene of the scandal in Curzon Street, +completely parted or completely put in scene. And so at the other end of +the list, from _The Virginians_, fine as much of that is, onwards, it is +permissible, without unreason or want of generosity, to discern a +slight, a very slight, flagging, not in the quality or kind of the +power, but in the vigour and freshness with which it is applied. But in +_Pendennis_, in _Esmond_, and in _The Newcomes_, it appears as it does +nowhere else in English, or in any literature. It is not so much the +holding up of the mirror to life as the presentation of life itself. +Although the figures, the scheme of thought and sentiment and sense, +differ from what we find in Shakespeare by the whole difference between +poetry and prose, there is, on the lower level, a positive gain in +vividness by the absence of the restraints and conventions of the drama +and the measured line. Every act, every scene, every person in these +three books is real with a reality which has been idealised just up to +and not beyond the necessities of literature. It does not matter what +the acts, the scenes, the personages may be. Whether we are at the +height of romantic passion with Esmond's devotion to Beatrix, and his +transactions with the duke and the prince over diamonds and title deeds; +whether the note is that of the simplest human pathos, as in Colonel +Newcome's death-bed; whether we are indulged with society at Baymouth +and Oxbridge; whether we take part in Marlborough's campaigns or assist +at the Back Kitchen--we are in the House of Life, a mansion not too +frequently opened to us by the writers of prose fiction. It was +impossible that Thackeray should live long or write very many novels +when he had once found his way. The lesson of the greatest imagination +of his great contemporary and master settles that. Not the "Peau de +Chagrin" itself could have enabled any man to produce a long succession +of novels such as _Vanity Fair_ and _Esmond_. + +During the time before the century reached its middle, in which Bulwer +and Dickens were the most popular of novelists, while Thackeray was +slowly making his way to the place that was properly his, the demand for +novels, thoroughly implanted in the public by the success of Scott, was +constantly met by work of all sorts, very little of which survives +except in country circulating libraries and on the shelves of houses the +ownership of which has not changed hands for some considerable time. +Very little of it, indeed, much deserved to survive. Lockhart, an +exceedingly judicious critic, thought it necessary not long after the +appearance of _Vanity Fair_ to apologise for the apparent extravagance +of the praise which he had given to his friend Theodore Hook by +observing that, except Dickens, there was no novelist of the first class +between the death of Scott and the rise of Thackeray himself. But about +the time of that rise, and for a good many years after it, what may be +called the third generation of the novelists of the century began to +make its appearance, and, as has been partly observed above, to devote +itself to a somewhat different description of work, which will be +noticed in a future chapter. + +The historical novel, though some of its very best representatives were +still to make their appearance, ceased to occupy the first place in +popular esteem; and the later varieties of the novel of more or less +humorous adventure, whether in the rather commonplace form of Hook or in +the highly individual and eccentric form of Dickens, also ceased to be +much cultivated, save by Dickens himself and his direct imitators. The +vogue set in for a novel of more or less ordinary life of the upper +middle class, and this vogue lasted during the whole of the third +quarter, if not of the second half, of the century, though about 1870 +the historical novel revived, and, after some years of uncertain popular +taste, seems in the last decade to have acquired almost as great +popularity (with its companion study of purely fantastic adventure) as +ever. Yet we must, before passing to other departments, and interrupting +the account of fiction, notice not a few other writers of the time +previous to 1850. + +The descent, in purely literary merit, from Dickens and Thackeray, and +perhaps from Bulwer, to some of those who must now be mentioned, is +great. Yet the chief naval and the chief military novelist of England +need surely not appear by allowance; and if affection and frequent +reading count for anything, it is not certain that some technically much +greater names might not shine with lesser lustre than those of Marryat +and Lever. Frederick Marryat, the elder of the pair, was born in 1792, +early enough to see a good deal of service in the later years of the +Great War, partly under the brilliant if eccentric leadership of Lord +Cochrane. His promotion was fairly rapid: he became a commander in 1815, +and afterwards distinguished himself as a post captain in the Burmese +War, being made a C.B. in 1825. But the increasing dearth of active +service was not suitable to a character like that of Marryat, who, +moreover, was not likely to be popular with "My Lords"; and his +discovery of a faculty for writing opened up to him, both as novelist +and magazine editor, a very busy and profitable literary career, which +lasted from 1830 to 1848, when he died. Marryat's works, which are very +numerous (the best being perhaps _Peter Simple_, _Mr. Midshipman Easy_, +and _Jacob Faithful_, though there is hardly one that has not special +adherents), resemble Smollett's more than those of any other writer, not +merely in their sea-scenes, but in general scheme and character. Some of +Smollett's faults, too, which are not necessarily connected with the +sea--a certain ferocity, an over-fondness for practical jokes, and the +like--appear in Marryat, who is, moreover, a rather careless and +incorrect writer, and liable to fits both of extravagance and of +dulness. But the spirit and humour of the best of his books throughout, +and the best parts of the others, are unmistakable and unsurpassed. Nor +should it be forgotten that he had a rough but racy gift of verse, the +best, though by no means the only good example of which is the piece +beginning, "The Captain stood on the carronade." + +The range of Charles Lever, who was born in 1806, was as much wider than +Marryat's as his life was longer and his experience (though in a purely +literary view oddly similar) more varied. He was educated at Trinity +College, Dublin, and after some sojourn both on the Continent and in +America became (1837) physician to the British Embassy at Brussels. At +this time the Continent was crowded with veterans, English and other, of +the Great War; while Lever's Irish youth had filled him with stories of +the last generation of madcap Irish squires and squireens. He combined +the two in a series of novels of wonderful _verve_ and spirit, first of +a military character, the chief of which were _Harry Lorrequer_, +_Charles O'Malley_ (his masterpiece), and _Tom Burke of Ours_. He had, +after no long tenure of the Brussels appointment, become (1842) editor +of the _Dublin University Magazine_, where for many years his books +appeared. After a time, when his stores of military anecdote were +falling low and the public taste had changed, he substituted novels +partly of Irish partly of Continental bearing (_Roland Cashel_, _The +Knight of Gwynne_, and many others); while in the early days of Dickens' +_All the Year Round_ he adventured a singular piece entitled _A Day's +Ride, a Life's Romance_, which the public did not relish, but which was +much to the taste of some good judges. He had by this time gone to +Florence, became Vice-Consul at Spezzia in 1852, whence, in 1867, he was +transferred as British Consul to Trieste, and died there in 1872. + +For some years before his death he had been industrious in a third and +again different kind of novel, not merely more thoughtful and less +"rollicking," but adjusted much more closely to actual life and +character. Indeed Lever at different times of his life manifested almost +all the gifts which the novelist requires, though unfortunately he never +quite managed to exhibit them all together. His earlier works, amusing +as they are and full of dash and a certain kind of life, sin not only by +superficiality but by a reckless disregard of the simplest requirements +of story-telling, of the most rudimentary attention to chronology, +probability, and general keeping. His later, vastly amended in this +respect, and exhibiting, moreover, a deeper comprehension of human +character as distinguished from mere outward "humours," almost +necessarily present the blunted and blurred strokes which come from the +loss of youth and the frequent repetition of literary production. Indeed +Lever, with Bulwer, was the first to exemplify the evil effects of the +great demand for novels, and the facilities for producing them given by +the spread of periodicals. + +To descend to the third, or even the lower second class in fiction is +almost more dangerous here than a similar laxity in any other +department; and we can no more admit Lord John Russell because he wrote +a story called _The Nun of Arrouca_, than we can exhume any equally +forgotten production of writers less known in non-literary respects. It +can hardly, however, be improper to mention in connection with Marryat, +the greatest of them all, some other members of the interesting school +of naval writers who not unnaturally arose after the peace had turned +large numbers of officers adrift, and the rise of the demand for essays, +novels, and miscellaneous articles had offered temptation to writing. +The chief of these were, in order of rising excellence, Captains +Glascock, Chamier, and Basil Hall, and Michael Scott, a civilian, but by +far the greatest writer of the four. Glascock, an officer of +distinction, was the author of the _Naval Sketch Book_, a curious +olla-podrida of "galley" stories, criticisms on naval books, and +miscellanies, which appeared in 1826. It is not very well written, and +in parts very dull, but provides some genuine things. Chamier, who was +born in 1796 and did not die till 1870, was a post captain and a direct +imitator of Marryat, as also was Captain Howard, Marryat's sub-editor +for a time on the _Metropolitan_, and the part author with him of some +books which have caused trouble to bibliographers. Chamier's books--_Ben +Brace_, _The Arethusa_, _Tom Bowling_, etc.--are better than Howard's +_Rattlin the Reefer_ (commonly ascribed to Marryat), _Jack Ashton_, and +others, but neither can be called a master. + +Captain Basil Hall, who was born of a good Scotch family at Edinburgh in +1788 and died at Haslar Hospital in 1844, was a better writer than +either of these three; but he dealt in travels, not novels, and appears +here as a sort of honorary member of the class. His _Travels in America_ +was one of the books which, in the second quarter of the century, +rightly or wrongly, excited American wrath against Englishmen; but his +last book, _Fragments of Voyages and Travels_, was his most popular and +perhaps his best. Captain Basil Hall was a very amiable person, and +though perhaps a little flimsy as a writer, is yet certainly not to be +spoken of with harshness. + +A very much stronger talent than any of these was Michael Scott, who was +born in Glasgow in 1789 and died in 1835, having passed the end of his +boyhood and the beginning of his manhood in Jamaica. He employed his +experiences in composing for _Blackwood's Magazine_, and afterwards +reducing to book shape, the admirable miscellanies in fiction entitled +_Tom Cringle's Log_ and _The Cruise of the Midge_, which contain some of +the best fighting, fun, tropical scenery, and description generally, to +be found outside the greatest masters. Very little is known of Scott, +and he wrote nothing else. + +One unique figure remains to be noticed among novelists of the first +half of the century, though as a matter of fact his last novel was not +published till within twenty years of its close. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl +of Beaconsfield, belongs, as a special person, to another story than +this. But this would be very incomplete without him and his novels. They +were naturally written for the most part before, in 1852, he was called +to the leadership of the House of Commons, but in two vacations of +office later he added to them _Lothair_ (1870) and _Endymion_ (1881). It +is, however, in his earlier work that his chief virtue is to be found. +It is especially in its first division,--the stories of _Vivian Grey_, +_The Young Duke_, _Contarini Fleming_, _Alroy_, _Venetia_, and +_Henrietta Temple_,--published between 1827 and 1837. They are more like +Bulwer's than like anybody else's work, but _Vivian Grey_ appeared +in the same year with _Falkland_ and before _Pelham_. Later +novels--_Coningsby_ (1844), _Sybil_ (1845), and _Tancred_ (1847)--are +more directly political; while certain smaller and chiefly early +tales--_Ixion_, _The Infernal Marriage_, _Popanilla_, etc.--are pure +fantasy pieces with a satirical intent, and the first of them is, with +perhaps Bedford's _Vathek_ as a companion, the most brilliant thing of +its kind in English. In these more particularly, but in all more or +less, a strong Voltairian influence is perceptible; but on the whole the +set of books may be said to be like nothing else. They have grave +faults, being sometimes tawdry in phrase and imagery, sometimes too +personal, frequently a little unreal, and scarcely ever finally and +completely adjusted to the language in which and the people of whom they +are written. Yet the attraction of them is singular; and good judges, +differing very widely in political and literary tastes, have found +themselves at one as to the strange way in which the reader comes back +to them as he advances in life, and as to the marvellous cleverness +which they display. Let it be added that _Henrietta Temple_, a mere and +sheer love story written in a dangerous style of sentimentalism, is one +of the most effective things of its kind in English, and holds its +ground despite all drawbacks of fashion in speech and manners, which +never tell more heavily than in the case of a book of the kind; while in +_Venetia_ the story of Byron is handled with remarkable closeness, and +yet in good taste. + +Two other novelists belonging to the first half of the century, and +standing even further out of the general current than did Disraeli, both +of them also possessing greater purely literary genius than his, must +also be mentioned here. Thomas Love Peacock, the elder of them, born a +long way within the eighteenth century (in 1785), passed a studious +though irregularly educated youth and an idle early manhood, but at a +little more than thirty (1817) produced, after some verse, the curious +little satirical romance of _Headlong Hall_. This he followed up with +others--_Melincourt_, _Nightmare Abbey_, _Maid Marian_, _The Misfortunes +of Elphin_, and _Crotchet Castle_--at no great intervals until 1830, +after which, having in the meantime been appointed to a valuable and +important office under the East India Company, he published no other +book for thirty years. Then in 1860 he put forth _Gryll Grange_, and +some five years later died, a very old man, in 1866. Peacock at all +times was a writer of verse, and the songs which diversify his novels +are among their most delightful features; but his more ambitious +poetical efforts, which date from his earlier years, _The Genius of the +Thames_ and _Rhododaphne_, are not of much mark. The novels themselves, +however, have a singular relish, and are written in a style always +piquant and attractive and latterly quite admirable. They may all be +described as belonging to the fantastic-satirical order of which the +French tale-tellers (instigated, however, by an Englishman, Anthony +Hamilton) had set the example during the previous century. Social, +political, economic, and other fads and crazes are all touched in them; +but this satire is combined with a strictly realistic presentation of +character, and, except in the romances of _Maid Marian_ and _Elphin_, +with actual modern manners. Peacock's satire is always very sharp, and +in his earlier books a little rough as well; but as he went on he +acquired urbanity without losing point, and became one of the most +consummate practitioners of Lucianic humour adjusted to the English +scheme and taste. More than thirty years after date _Gryll Grange_ is +not obsolete even as a picture of manners; while _Crotchet Castle_, +obsolete in a few externals, is as fresh as ever in substance, owing to +its close grasp of essential humanity. In verse Peacock was the last, +and one of the best, of the masters of the English drinking-song; and +some of his examples are unmatched for their mixture of joviality, +taste, sense, and wit. + +George Borrow, who was eighteen years Peacock's junior, and outlived him +by fifteen, was a curious counterpart-analogue to him. Like Peacock, he +was irregularly educated, and yet a wide and deep student; but, unlike +Peacock, he devoted himself not so much to the ancient as to the more +out-of-the-way modern tongues, and became a proficient not merely in +Welsh, the Scandinavian tongues, Russian, Spanish, and other literary +languages, but in Romany or Gipsy, having associated much with the "folk +of Egypt" during his youth. After some very imperfectly known youthful +experiences, which formed at least the basis of his later novels, +_Lavengro_ (1851) and _The Romany Rye_ (1857), he received an +appointment as colporteur to the Bible Society, first in Russia, then in +Spain; and his adventures in the latter country formed the basis of a +study called _The Gipsies of Spain_ (1840), which has much, and a volume +of travel and autobiography, _The Bible in Spain_ (1843), which has +unique interest. Returning home, he married a wife with some money, and +spent the remainder of a long life in his native county of Norfolk, +producing, besides the books just named, _Wild Wales_ (1862), and dying +in 1881. There is, in fact, not very much difference between Borrow's +novels and his travel-books. The former had at least some autobiographic +foundation, and the latter invest actual occurrences with the most +singular flavour of romance. For his mere style Borrow was a little +indebted to Cobbett, though he coloured Cobbett's somewhat drab canvas +with the most brilliant fantastic hues. But his attitude, his main +literary quality, is quite unique. It might be called, without too much +affectation, an adjustment of the picaresque novel to dreamland, +retaining frequent touches of solid and everyday fact. Peacock's style +has found a good many, though no very successful, imitators; Borrow's is +quite inimitable. + +Harriet Martineau, one of the numerous writers, of both sexes, whom the +polygraphic habits of this century make it hard to "class," was born at +Norwich in 1802, and belonged to one of the families that made up the +remarkable literary society which distinguished that city at the end of +the last century and the beginning of this. She began as a religious +writer according to the Unitarian persuasion; she ended as a tolerably +active opponent of religion. But she found her chief vocation (before, +as she did in her middle and later days, becoming a regular journalist) +in writing stories on political economy, a proceeding doubtless +determined by the previous exercises in didactic story-telling of Miss +Edgeworth and Mrs. Marcet. These _Illustrations of Political Economy_ +(1832) exactly hit the taste of their time and were very popular. Her +less adulterated children's books (of which the best perhaps is _Feats +on the Fiord_) and her novel _Deerbrook_ (1839), owing much to Miss +Edgeworth in conception, display a good faculty of narrative, and she +did a great deal of miscellaneous work. As she became less religious she +became more superstitious, and indulged in curious crazes. She lived +latterly at the Lakes, and died on 27th June 1876. Harriet Martineau was +the object of rather absurd obloquy from Conservative critics as an +advanced woman in her day, and of still more absurd eulogy by Liberal +sympathisers both in that day and since. Personally she seems to have +been amiable and estimable enough. Intellectually she had no genius; but +she had a good deal of the versatile talent and craftsmanship for which +the literary conditions of this century have produced unusual stimulus +and a fair reward. + +There was something (though not so much as has been represented) of the +masculine element about Miss Martineau; a contemporary Miss M. was +delightfully feminine. Mary Russell Mitford, born at Alresford, the town +of Wither, on 16th December 1786, was the daughter of a doctor and a +rascal, who, when she was a child, had the incredible meanness to +squander twenty thousand pounds which she won in a lottery, and later +the constant courage to live on her earnings. She published poems as +early as 1810; then wrote plays which were acted with some success; and +later, gravitating to the _London Magazine_, wrote for it essays only +second to those of Elia--the delightful papers collectively called _Our +Village_, and not completed till long after the death of the _London_ in +1832. The scenery of these is derived from the banks of the Loddon, for +the neighbourhood of Reading was in various places her home, and she +died at Swallowfield on 10th January 1855. Latterly she had a civil-list +pension; but, on the whole, she supported herself and her parents by +writing. Not much, if anything, of her work is likely to survive except +_Our_ _Village_; but this is charming, and seems, from the published +_Life_ of her and the numerous references in contemporary biography, to +express very happily the character and genius of its author--curiously +sunny, healthy, and cheerful, not in the least namby-pamby, and +coinciding with a faculty of artistic presentation of observed results, +not very imaginative but wonderfully pleasing. + +To these authors and books, others of more or less "single-speech" fame +might be added: the vivid and accurate Persian tale of _Hajji Baba_ by +James Morier, the _Anastatius_ of Thomas Hope, excellently written and +once very much admired, the fashionable _Granby_ and _Tremaine_ of +Lister, the famous _Frankenstein_ of Mrs. Shelley, are examples. But +even these, and much more other things not so good as they, compose in +regard to the scheme of such a book as this the _numerus_, the crowd, +which, out of no disrespect, but for obvious and imperative reasons, +must be not so much neglected as omitted. All classes of literature +contribute to this, but, with the exception of mere compilations and +books in science or art which are outgrown, none so much as prose +fiction. The safest of life (except poetry) of all literary kinds when +it is first rate, it is the most certain of death when it is not; and it +pays for the popularity which it often receives to-day by the oblivion +of an unending morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS + + +Perhaps there is no single feature of the English literary history of +the nineteenth century, not even the enormous popularisation and +multiplication of the novel, which is so distinctive and characteristic +as the development in it of periodical literature. For this did not, as +the extension of novel writing did, concern a single department only. +The periodical--it may almost for shortness' sake be said the +newspaper--not only became infinitely multiplied, but it gradually +absorbed almost every department, or a share of almost every department, +into itself. Very large numbers of the best as well as of the worst +novels themselves have originally appeared in periodicals; not a very +small proportion of the most noteworthy nineteenth century poetry has +had the same origin; it may almost be said that all the best work in +essay, whether critical, meditative, or miscellaneous, has thus been +ushered into the world. Even the severer and more academic divisions of +history, philosophy, theology, and their sisters, have condescended to +avail themselves of this means of obtaining a public audience; and +though there is still a certain conventional decency in apologising for +reprints from periodicals, it is quite certain that, had such reprints +not taken place, more than half the most valuable books of the age in +some departments, and a considerable minority of the most valuable in +others, would never have appeared as books at all. + +The first division of our time, the last twenty years of the eighteenth +century, though it witnessed a very great development of the mere +newspaper, with which we have little to do, did not see very much of +this actual "development of periodical literature" which concerns us. +These twenty years saw the last attempts in the line of the Addisonian +essay; they saw the beginnings of some modern newspapers which exist at +the present day; they beheld in the _Anti-Jacobin_ perhaps the most +brilliant specimen of political persiflage in newspaper form that had or +has ever been seen. But they did not see--though they saw some fumbling +attempts at it--anything like those strangely different but mutually +complementary examples of periodical criticism which were given just +after the opening of the new age by _The Edinburgh Review_ (1802) and +Cobbett's _Weekly Register_; and they saw nothing at all like the +magazine, or combination of critical and creative matter, in which +_Blackwood_ was, some years later, to lead the way. At the close of the +eighteenth century such magazines were in an exceedingly rudimentary +state, and criticism was mainly still in the hands of the old _Monthly_ +and _Critical Reviews_, the respective methods of which had drawn from +Johnson the odd remark that the _Critical_ men, being clever, said +little about their books, which the _Monthly_ men, being "duller +fellows," were glad to read and analyse. These Reviews and their various +contemporaries had indeed from time to time enjoyed the services of men +of the greatest talent, such as Smollett earlier and Southey just at the +last. But, as a rule, they were in the hands of mere hacks; they paid so +wretchedly that no one, unless forced by want or bitten by an amateurish +desire to see himself in print, would contribute to them; they were by +no means beyond suspicion of political and commercial favouritism; and +their critiques were very commonly either mere summaries or scrappy +"puffs" and "slatings," seldom possessing much grace of style, and +scarcely ever adjusted to any scheme of artistic criticism. + +This is a history of literature, not of the newspaper press, and it is +necessary to proceed rather by giving account of the authors who were +introduced to the public by--or who, being otherwise known, availed +themselves of--this new development of periodicals. It may be sufficient +to say here that the landmarks of the period, in point of the birth of +papers, are, besides the two above mentioned, the starting of the +_Quarterly Review_ as a Tory opponent to the more and more Whiggish +_Edinburgh_ in 1809, of the _Examiner_ as a Radical weekly in 1808, of +_Blackwood's Magazine_ as a Tory monthly in 1817, of the _London +Magazine_ about the same time, and of _Fraser_ in 1830. + +It was a matter of course that in the direction or on the staff of these +new periodicals some of the veterans of the older system, or of the men +who had at any rate already some experience in journalism, should be +enlisted. Gifford, the first editor of the _Quarterly_, was in all +respects a writer of the old rather than of the new age. Southey had at +one time wholly, and for years partly, supported himself by writing for +periodicals; Coleridge was at different times not merely a contributor +to these, but an actual daily journalist; and so with others. But, as +always happens when a really new development of literature takes place, +new regiments raised themselves to carry out the new tactics, as it +were, spontaneously. Many of the great names and the small mentioned in +the last three chapters--perhaps indeed most of them--took the +periodical shilling at one time or other in their lives. But those whom +I shall now proceed to mention--William Cobbett, Francis Jeffrey, Sydney +Smith, John Wilson, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt as a prose writer, William +Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, John Gibson Lockhart, and some others--were, +if not exactly journalists (an incorrect, but the only single +designation), at any rate such frequent contributors to periodical +literature of one kind or another that in some cases nothing, in most +comparatively little, would be left of their work if contributions to +newspapers, reviews, and magazines were to be excluded from it. + +William Cobbett, not the greatest, but the most singular and original of +the group, with the exception of Lamb, and as superior to Lamb in +fertility and massive vigour as he was inferior to him in exquisite +delicacy and finish, was the son of a very small farmer little above the +labouring rank, and was born near Farnham in 1762. He was first a +ploughboy, next an attorney's clerk, and then he enlisted in the 24th +regiment. He served very creditably for seven or eight years, became +serjeant-major, improved himself very much in education, and obtained +his discharge. But, by one of the extraordinary freaks which mark his +whole career, he first took it into his head to charge the officers of +his regiment with malversation, and then ran away from his own charge +with his newly married wife, first to France and then to America. Here +he stayed till the end of the century, and here he began his newspaper +experiments, keeping up in _Peter Porcupine's Journal_ a violent crusade +against French Jacobins and American Democrats. He returned to England +in June 1800, and was encouraged by the Government to set up what soon +became his famous _Weekly Register_--a paper which, after being (as +Cobbett's politics had been up to this time) strongly Tory, lapsed by +rapid degrees into a strange kind of fantastic Radicalism shot with Tory +gleams. This remained Cobbett's creed till his death. The paper was very +profitable, and for some time Cobbett was able to lead something like a +country gentleman's life at Botley in Hampshire. But he met with two +years' imprisonment for a violent article on flogging in the army, he +subsequently got into money difficulties, and in 1817 he made a second +voyage to America, which was in fact a flight both from his creditors +and from the risk of another Government prosecution under the Six Acts. +Through all his troubles the _Register_, except for a month or two, had +continued to appear; and so it did to the last. Its proprietor, editor, +and in the main author, stood for Parliament several times, and, after a +trial for sedition in 1831, was at last returned for Oldham in 1832. He +was not much of a success there, and died on 18th June 1835 near +Guildford; for he always clung to the marches of Surrey and Hampshire. + +Some such details of Cobbett's life are necessary even in the most +confined space, because they are intimately connected with his singular +character and his remarkable works. These latter are enormous in bulk +and of the most widely diversified character. _Peter Porcupine_ fills +twelve not small volumes; the mere selections from the _Register_, which +are all that has been republished of it, six very bulky ones; with a +wilderness of separate works besides--_Rural Rides_, a _History of the +Reformation_, books on husbandry, gardening, and rural economy +generally, some on the currency, an _English Grammar_, and dozens of +others. Of these the _Rural Rides_ is the most interesting in matter and +the most picturesque in style, while it affords a fair panorama of its +author's rugged but wonderfully varied and picturesque mind and +character; the _History of the Reformation_ is the most wrong-headed and +unfair; the currency writings the most singular example of the delusion +that strong prejudices and a good deal of mother-wit will enable a man +to write, without any knowledge, about the most abstruse and complicated +subjects; the agricultural books and the _English Grammar_ the best +instances of genial humours, shrewdness, and (when crotchets do not come +in too much) sound sense. But hardly anything that Cobbett writes is +contemptible in form, however weak he may often be in argument, +knowledge, and taste. He was the last, and he was not far below the +greatest, of the line of vernacular English writers of whom Latimer in +the sixteenth, Bunyan in the seventeenth, and Defoe in the eighteenth, +are the other emerging personalities. To a great extent Cobbett's style +was based on Swift; but the character of his education, which was not in +the very least degree academic, and still more the idiosyncrasy of his +genius, imposed on it almost from the first, but with ever-increasing +clearness, a manner quite different from Swift's, and, though often +imitated since, never reproduced. The "Letter to Jack Harrow," the +"Letter to the People of Botley," the "Letters to Old George Rose," and +that to "Alexander Baring, Loan Monger," to take examples almost at +random from the _Register_, are quite unlike anything before them or +anything after them. The best-known parody of Cobbett, that in _Rejected +Addresses_, gives rather a poor idea of his style; exhibiting no doubt +his intense egotism, his habit of half trivial divagation, and his use +of strong language, but quite failing to give the immense force, the +vivid clearness, and the sterling though not precisely scholarly English +which characterise his good work. The best imitation to be found is in +some of the anonymous pamphlets in which, in his later days, government +writers replied to his powerful and mischievous political diatribes, and +which in some cases, if internal evidence may be trusted, must have been +by no mean hands. + +Irrational as Cobbett's views were,--he would have adjusted the entire +concerns of the nation with a view to the sole benefit of the +agricultural interest, would have done away with the standing army, +wiped out the national debt, and effected a few other trifling changes +with a perfectly light heart, while in minor matters his crotchets were +not only wild but simply irreconcilable with each other,--his intense if +narrow earnestness, his undoubting belief in himself, and a certain +geniality which could co-exist with very rough language towards his +opponents, would give his books a certain attraction even if their mere +style were less remarkable than it is. But it is in itself, if the most +plebeian, not the least virile, nor even the least finished on its own +scheme of the great styles in English. For the irony of Swift, of which, +except in its very roughest and most rudimentary forms, Cobbett had no +command or indeed conception, it substitutes a slogging directness +nowhere else to be found equalled for combination of strength and, in +the pugilistic sense, "science"; while its powers of description, within +certain limits, are amazing. Although Cobbett's newspaper was itself as +much of an Ishmaelite and an outsider as its director, it is almost +impossible to exaggerate the effect which it had in developing +newspapers generally, by the popularity which it acquired, and the +example of hammer-and-tongs treatment of political and economic subjects +which it set. The faint academic far-off-ness of the eighteenth century +handling, which is visible even in the much-praised _Letters of Junius_, +which is visible in the very ferocity of Smollett's _Adventures of an +Atom_, which put up with "Debates of the Senate of Lilliput" and so +forth, has been blown away to limbo, and the newspaper (at first at some +risk) takes men and measures, politics and policies, directly and in +their own names, to be its province and its prey. + +It is a far cry from Cobbett to the founders of the _Edinburgh Review_, +who, very nearly at the same time as that at which he launched his +_Register_, did for the higher and more literary kind of periodical what +he was doing for the lower and vernacular kind. I say the founders, +because there is a still not quite settled dispute whether Francis +Jeffrey or Sydney Smith was the actual founder of the famous "Blue and +Yellow." This dispute is not uninteresting; because the one was as +typically Scotch, with some remarkable differences from other Scotchmen, +as the other was essentially English, with some points not commonly +found in men of English blood. Jeffrey, the younger of the two by a +couple of years, was still a member of the remarkable band who, as has +been noticed so often already, were all born in the early seventies of +the eighteenth century; and his own birthday was 23rd October 1773. He +was an Edinburgh man; and his father, who was of a respectable though +not distinguished family, held office in the Court of Session and was a +strong Tory. Jeffrey does not seem to have objected to his father's +profession, though he early revolted from his politics; and, after due +study at the High School of his birthplace, and the Universities of +Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Oxford (at which latter, however, he only +remained a year, deriving very little benefit or pleasure from his +sojourn at Queen's College), he was called to the Scottish bar. He +practised at first with very little success, and in 1798 had serious +thoughts of taking up literary life in London. But he could obtain no +footing, and, returning to Edinburgh and marrying a cousin, he fell into +the company of Sydney Smith, who was there with a pupil. It seems to be +admitted that the idea of a new _Review_--to be entirely free from the +control or influence of publishers, to adopt an independent line of +criticism (independent, but somewhat mistaken; for the motto _Judex +damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_ gives a very one-sided view of the +critic's office), and to be written for fair remuneration by persons of +more or less distinct position, and at any rate of education--originated +with Sydney Smith. He is also sometimes spoken of as the first "editor," +which would appear to be a mistake. At first (the original issue was in +October 1802) the review appears to have been a kind of republic; the +contributors being, besides Jeffrey and Sydney, a certain Francis Horner +(who died too soon to demonstrate the complete falsity of the golden +opinions entertained of him by his friends), Brougham, and some +Professors of Edinburgh University. But no such plan has ever succeeded, +though it has been more than once tried, and very soon accident or +design showed that Jeffrey was the right man to take the command of the +ship. The _Review_ was not ostensibly a political one at first, and for +some years Tories, the greatest of whom was Scott, wrote in it. But the +majority of the contributors were Whigs, and the whole cast of the +periodical became more and more of that complexion, till at last, +private matters helping public, a formidable secession took place, and +the _Quarterly_ was founded. + +From time to time students of literature turn to the early numbers of +these famous periodicals, of the _Edinburgh_ especially, with the +result, usually of a certain, sometimes of a considerable, +disappointment. With the exception of a few things already known from +their inclusion in their authors' collected works, the material as a +whole is apt to seem anything but extraordinarily good; and some wonder +is often expressed at the effect which it originally had. This arises +from insufficient attention to a few obvious, but for that very reason +easily neglected, truths. The inquirers as a rule have in their minds +much more what has followed than what has gone before; and they contrast +the early numbers of the _Edinburgh_, not with its jejune forerunners, +but with such matured instances as Macaulay's later essays; the early +numbers of the _Quarterly_, not with the early numbers of the +_Edinburgh_, but with their own successors. Again it is apt to be +forgotten that the characteristics of joint-stock periodical-writing +make as much for general inequality as for occasional goodness. That +which is written by many hands will seldom be as bad, but can never be +as good, as that which is written by one; that which takes its texts and +starting-points from suggested matters of the moment will generally +escape the occasional dulness, but can rarely attain the occasional +excellence, of the meditated and original sprout of an individual brain. + +The _Edinburgh_ in its early years was undoubtedly surpassed by itself +later and by its rivals; but it was a far greater advance upon anything +that had gone before it. It had the refreshing audacity, the fly-at-all +character of youth and of intellectual opposition to established ideas; +it was, if even from the first not free from partisanship, at any rate +not chargeable with the dull venal unfairness of the mere bookseller's +hack who attacks Mr. Bungay's books because he is employed by Mr. Bacon, +or _vice versa_. And it had a very remarkable staff, comprising the +learning and trained intelligence of men like Leslie and Playfair, the +unrivalled wit of Sydney Smith, the restless energy and occasional +genius of Brougham, the solid profundity of Horner, the wide reading and +always generous temper of Scott, and other good qualities of others, +besides the talents of its editor Jeffrey himself. + +Of these talents there is no doubt, though they were initially somewhat +limited and not seldom misdirected afterwards. Jeffrey's entire energies +were absorbed by the _Review_ between its foundation and his resignation +of the editorship after nearly thirty years' tenure, soon after which, +his party at last coming into power, he was rewarded first by the Lord +Advocateship and then by a seat on the Bench. He made a very fair judge, +and held the post almost till his death in 1850. But his life, for the +purposes of literature, is practically comprised between 1802 and 1829, +during which he was far more than titularly the guiding spirit of the +_Review_. Recently, or at any rate until quite recently (for there has +been some reaction in the very latest days), the conception of an editor +has been of one who writes not very much, and, though choosing his +contributors with the best care he can give, does not interfere very +much with them when they are chosen. This was very far from being the +Jeffreyan ideal. He wrote a great deal,--often in the earlier years as +many as half a dozen articles in a number,--and he "doctored" his +contributors' articles (except in the case of persons like Sydney Smith, +who were of too unconquerable idiosyncrasy and too valuable) with the +utmost freedom. At the present day, however, his management of the +_Review_ is less interesting than his own work, which he himself in his +later years collected and selected in an ample definitive edition. It is +exceedingly interesting, and for a good many years past it has been +distinctly undervalued; the common, though very uncritical, mistake +having been made of asking, not whether Jeffrey made a good fight for +his own conclusions from his own premises, but whether he approved or +disapproved authors whom we now consider great. From this latter point +of view he has no doubt small chance. He began by snubbing Byron, and +did not change his tone till politics and circumstances combined made +the change obligatory; he pooh-poohed and belittled his own contributor +and personal friend Scott; he pursued Wordsworth with equal +relentlessness and ill-success. And these three great examples might be +reinforced with whole regiments of smaller ones. A more serious fault +perhaps was the tone which he, more than any one else, impressed on the +_Review_, and which its very motto expressed, as though an author +necessarily came before the critic with a rope about his neck, and was +only entitled to be exempted from being strung up _speciali gratia_. +This notion, as presumptuous as it is foolish, is not extinct yet, and +has done a great deal of harm to criticism, both by prejudicing those +who are not critical against critics, and by perverting and twisting the +critic's own notion of his province and duty. + +Nevertheless, Jeffrey had great merits. His literary standpoint was a +little unfortunate. Up to a certain extent he had thoroughly sympathised +with the Romantic movement, and he never was an advocate for the +Augustan period in English. But either some curiosity of idiosyncrasy, +or the fact that Scott and the Lake Poets were all in different ways +pillars of Toryism, set him against his own Romantic contemporaries in a +very strange fashion. Still, in some ways he was a very great critic. +His faculty of summarising a period of literature has rarely been +equalled, and perhaps never surpassed; he had, when prejudice of some +sort did not blind him, an extraordinary faculty of picking out the best +passages in a book; and, above all, he arranged his critical judgments +on something like a regular and co-ordinated system. Even his prejudices +and injustices were systematic: they were linked to each other by +arguments which might sometimes be questionable, but which were always +arguments. And though, even when, as in the cases of Keats and Shelley, +his extra-literary bias was not present to induce him wrong, he showed a +deplorable insensibility to the finer strokes of poetry, he was in +general, and taking literature all round, as considerable a critic as we +have had in English. + +Sydney Smith was a curious contrast to Jeffrey in almost every respect +except in politics, and even there the resemblance was rather fortuitous +than essential. The second son of a man of eccentric character and some +means, he was born in 1771, was sent to Winchester, and proceeded thence +to New College, Oxford, where he became Fellow and resided for a +considerable time; but unusually little is recorded either of his school +or of his college days. He took orders and was appointed to a curacy on +Salisbury Plain, where the squire of the parish took a fancy to him and +made him tutor to his eldest son. Tutor and pupil went to Edinburgh, +just then in great vogue as an educational centre, in 1798; and there +Sydney, besides doing clerical duty, stumbled upon his vocation as +reviewer. He abode in the Scottish capital for about five years, during +which he married, and then removed to London, where he again did duty of +various kinds, lectured on Moral Philosophy, and, when the Grenville +administration came in, received a fairly valuable Yorkshire living, +that of Foston. Here, after a time, he had, owing to new legislation +about clerical absentees, to take up his residence, which involved +building a parsonage. He had repaid his Whig patrons by writing the +exceedingly brilliant and passably scurrilous _Letters of Peter Plymley +on Catholic Emancipation_, and he reviewed steadily for the _Edinburgh_, +as indeed he did during almost the whole editorship of Jeffrey. At last +Lord Lyndhurst, a Tory, gave him a stall at Bristol, and he was able to +exchange Foston for Combe-Florey, in the more genial latitude of +Somerset. The rest of his life was fortunate in worldly ways; for the +Reform Ministry, though they would not give him a bishopric, gave him a +canonry at St. Paul's, and divers legacies and successions made him +relatively a rich man. He died five years before Jeffrey, in February +1845. + +Besides the differences of their Scotch and English nationality and +education, the contrast between the two friends and founders of the +"Blue and Yellow" was curiously pervading. Jeffrey, for all his supposed +critical savagery, was a sentimentalist, and had the keenest love of +literature as literature; Sydney cared very little for books as books, +and had not a grain of sentiment in his composition. Jeffrey had little +wit and no humour; Smith abounded in both, and was one of the very +wittiest of Englishmen. Even in his _Review_ articles he constantly +shocked his more solemn and pedagogic editor by the stream of banter +which he poured not merely upon Tories and High Churchmen, but on +Methodists and Non-conformists; his letters are full of the most +untiring and to this day the most sparkling pleasantry; and his two +chief works outside his reviews, the earlier _Peter Plymley's Letters_ +and the later _Letters to Archdeacon Singleton_ (written when the +author's early Whiggism had crystallised into something different, and +when he was stoutly resisting the attempts of the reformed government to +meddle with cathedral establishments), rank among the capital light +pamphlets of the world, in company with those of Pascal and Swift and +Courier. The too few remnants of his abundant conversation preserve +faint sparks of the blaze of impromptu fun for which in his day he was +almost more famous than as a writer. Sydney Smith had below the surface +of wit a very solid substratum of good sense and good feeling; but his +literary appeal consisted almost wholly in his shrewd pleasantry, +which, as it has been observed, might with even more appropriateness +than Coleridge said it of Fuller, have been said to be "the stuff and +substance of his intellectual nature." This wit was scarcely ever in +writing--it seems to have been sometimes in conversation--forced or +trivial; it was most ingeniously adjusted to the purpose of the moment, +whether that purpose was a political argument, a light summary of a book +of travels, or a mere gossiping letter to a friend; and it had a quality +of its own which could only be displayed by extensive and elaborate +citation. But if it be possible to put the finger on a single note, it +is one distinguishing Sydney Smith widely from Fuller himself, bringing +him a little nearer to Voltaire, and, save for the want of certain +earnestness, nearer still to Swift--the perfect facility of his jokes, +and the casual, easy man-of-the-worldliness with which he sets them +before the reader and passes on. Amid the vigorous but slightly +ponderous manners of the other early contributors to the _Review_, this +must have been of inestimable value; but it is a higher credit to Sydney +Smith that it does not lose its charm when collected together and set by +itself, as the more extravagant and rollicking kinds of periodical +humour are wont to do. It was probably his want of serious +preoccupations of any kind (for his politics were merely an accident; he +was, though a sincere Christian, no enthusiast in religion; and he had +few special interests, though he had an honest general enjoyment of +life) which enabled Sydney Smith so to perfect a quality, or set of +qualities, which, as a rule, is more valuable as an occasional set-off +than as the staple and solid of a man's literary fare and ware. If so, +he points much the same general moral as Cobbett, though in a way as +different as possible. But in any case he was a very delightful person, +an ornament of English literature, such as few other literatures +possess, in his invariable abstinence from unworthy means of raising a +laugh, and, among the group of founders of the new periodical, the +representative of one of its most important constituents--polished +_persiflage_. + +The other contributors of the first generation to the _Edinburgh Review_ +do not require much notice here; for Brougham was not really a man of +letters, and belongs to political and social, not to literary history, +while Mackintosh, though no one would contest his claims, will be better +noticed under the head of philosophy. Nor do many of the first staff of +the _Edinburgh's_ great rival, the _Quarterly_, require notice; for +Gifford, Canning, Ellis, Scott, Southey have all been noticed under +other heads. + +Two, however, not of the absolutely first rank, may be mentioned here +more conveniently than anywhere else--Sir John Barrow and Isaac +Disraeli. The former had a rather remarkable career; for he was born, in +1764, quite of the lower rank, and was successively a clerk in a +workshop, a sailor, a teacher of mathematics, and secretary to Macartney +on his famous embassy to China. After following the same patron to South +Africa, Barrow, at the age of forty, became Secretary of the Admiralty, +which post he held with one short break for more than forty years +longer. He was made a baronet in 1835, and died in 1848. Barrow was a +considerable writer on geography and naval history; and one of the +pillars of the _Quarterly_. Isaac Disraeli, son of one Benjamin of that +name and father of another, seems to have been as unlike his famous +offspring as any father could be to any son. Born at Enfield in 1766, he +showed absolutely no taste for business of any kind, and after some +opposition was allowed to cultivate letters. His original work was worth +little; indeed, one of the amiable sayings attributed to his friend +Rogers was that Isaac Disraeli had "only half an intellect." He fell, +however, pretty early (1791) into an odd but pleasant and profitable +course of writing which amused himself during the remainder of a long +life (he died blind in the same year with Barrow), and has amused a vast +number of readers for more than a century. The _Curiosities of +Literature_, the first part of which appeared at the date above +mentioned, to be supplemented by others for more than forty years, were +followed by the _Calamities of Authors_ and the _Quarrels of Authors_ +(1812-14), a book on _Charles I._, and the _Amenities of Literature_ +(1840). Of these the _Curiosities_ is the type, and it is also the best +of them. Isaac Disraeli was not a good writer; and his original +reflections may sometimes make the reader doubt for a moment whether +Rogers was not more wrong in granting him half an intellect than in +denying him a whole one. But his anecdotage, though, as perhaps such +anecdotage is bound to be, not extremely accurate, is almost +inexhaustibly amusing, and indicates a real love as well as a wide +knowledge of letters. + +The next periodicals, the founding of which enlisted or brought out +journalists or essay-writers of the true kind, were _Blackwood's +Magazine_, founded at Edinburgh in 1817, and the _London Magazine_, of +about the same date, the first with one of the longest as well as the +most brilliant careers to run that any periodical can boast of, the +latter as short-lived as it was brilliant. Indeed, the two had an odd +and--in the Shakespearian sense--metaphysical opposition. Scotland and +England, the country and the Cockney schools, Toryism and Liberalism +(though the _London_ was by no means so thoroughgoing on the Liberal +side as _Blackwood_ was on the Tory, and some of its most distinguished +contributors were either Tory, as De Quincey, or neutral, as Lamb) +fought out their differences under the two flags. And by a climax of +coincidence, the fate of the _London_ was practically decided by the +duel which killed John Scott, its editor, this duel being the direct +result of an editorial or contributorial quarrel between the two +periodicals. + +Both these magazines, besides being more frequent in appearance than the +_Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_, attempted, as their very title of +"magazine" expressed, a much wider and more miscellaneous collection of +subjects than the strict "review" theory permitted. From the very first +_Blackwood_ gave a welcome to fiction, to poetry, and to the widest +possible construction of the essay, while, in almost every respect, the +_London_ was equally hospitable. Both had staffs of unusual strength, +and of still more unusual personality; and while the _London_ could +boast of Charles Lamb, of Hazlitt, of De Quincey, of Hood, of Miss +Mitford, besides many lesser names, _Blackwood_ was practically +launched by the triumvirate of Wilson, Lockhart, and the Ettrick +Shepherd, with the speedy collaboration of Maginn. + +The eldest of these, and if not the most vigorous, if very nearly the +least prolific, yet the most exquisite and singular in literary genius, +was Charles Lamb. He also was of the "Seventy Club," as we may call it, +which founded the literature of the nineteenth century, and he was born +in London on 18th February 1775. He was of rather lower birth than most +of its other members (if membership can be predicated of a purely +imaginary body), being the son of a lawyer's clerk and confidential +servant; but he was educated at Christ's Hospital, and, through the +interest of his father's employer, obtained, at the age of seventeen, a +berth in the East India House, which assured his modest fortunes through +life. But there was the curse of madness in his family, and though he +himself escaped with but one slight and passing attack of actual lunacy, +and at the cost of an eccentricity which only imparted a rarer touch to +his genius, his elder sister Mary was subject to constant seizures, in +one of which she stabbed her mother to the heart. She was more gently +dealt with than perhaps would have been the case at present, and Lamb +undertook the entire charge of her. She repaid him by unfailing care and +affection during her lucid intervals (which were long and frequent), and +by a sympathy with his own literary tastes, which not seldom made her a +valuable collaborator as well as sympathiser. But the shadow was on his +whole life: it made it impossible for him to marry, as he evidently +would have done if it had not existed; and it perhaps had something to +do with a venial but actual tendency on his part to take, rather fully, +the convivial license of the time. But Lamb had no other weakness, and +had not this in any ruinous degree. The quality of his genius was +unique. He had from the first been a diligent and affectionate student +of sixteenth and seventeenth century writers, and some of his first +literary efforts, after some early sonnets (written with Coleridge and +their friend Lloyd, and much fallen foul of by the Tory wits of the +_Anti-Jacobin_), were connected with these studies. He and his sister +wrote _Tales from Shakespeare_, which, almost alone of such things, are +not unworthy of the original. He executed an Elizabethan tragedy, _John +Woodvil_, which is rather better than it has been generally said to be; +and he arranged a series (or rather two) of scenes from the Elizabethan +drama itself, the short, interspersed, critical remarks of which, though +occasionally a very little fanciful, contain the most exquisitely +sympathetic criticism to be found anywhere in English literature. + +It was not, however, till he had well reached middle age that the +establishment of the _London_, the later publishers of which, Taylor and +Hessey, were his friends, gave him that half accidental, and yet it +would seem necessary, opening which has so often made the fame of men of +genius, and which apparently they are by no means often able to make for +themselves. Lamb's poems have occasionally an exquisite pathos and more +frequently a pleasant humour, but they would not by themselves justify a +very high estimate of him; and it is at least possible that, if we had +nothing but the brief critical remarks on the dramatists above noticed, +they would, independently of their extreme brevity, have failed to +obtain for him the just reputation which they now hold, thanks partly to +the fact that we have, as comments on them, the _Essays of Elia_ and the +delightful correspondence. This latter, after being first published soon +after Lamb's death in 1834 (nine years after he had been pensioned off +from the India House), by Mr., afterwards Serjeant and Sir Thomas +Talfourd, has been gradually augmented, till it has at last found an +excellent and probably final editor in Canon Ainger. + +It is in these two collections that Lamb presents himself in the +character which alone can confer on any man the first rank in +literature, the character of unicity--of being some one and giving +something which no one before him has given or has been. The _Essays of +Elia_ (a _nom de guerre_ said to have been taken from an Italian comrade +of the writer's elder brother John in the South Sea House, and directed +by Lamb himself to be pronounced "Ell-ia") elude definition not merely +as almost all works of genius do, but by virtue of something essentially +elvish and tricksy in their own nature. It is easy to detect in them--or +rather the things there are so obvious that there is no need of +detection--an extraordinary familiarity with the great "quaint" writers +of the seventeenth century--Burton, Fuller, Browne--which has supplied a +diction of unsurpassed brilliancy and charm; a familiarity with the +eighteenth century essayists which has enabled the writer to construct a +form very different from theirs in appearance but closely connected with +it in reality; an unequalled command over that kind of humour which +unites the most fantastic merriment to the most exquisite pathos; a +perfect humanity; a cast of thought which, though completely conscious +of itself, and not in any grovelling sense humble (Lamb, forgiving and +gentle as he was, could turn sharply even upon Coleridge, even upon +Southey, when he thought liberties had been taken with him), was a +thousand miles removed from arrogance or bumptiousness; an endlessly +various and attractive set of crotchets and whimsies, never divorced +from the power of seeing the ludicrous side of themselves; a fervent +love for literature and a wonderful gift of expounding it; imagination +in a high, and fancy almost in the highest degree. But when all this has +been duly set down, how much remains both in the essays and in the +letters, which in fact are chiefly distinguished from one another by the +fact that the essays are letters somewhat less discursive and somewhat +in fuller dress, the letters essays in the rough. For the style of Lamb +is as indefinable as it is inimitable, and his matter and method defy +selection and specification as much as the flutterings of a butterfly. +One thing he has always, and that is charm; as for the rest he is an +epitome of the lighter side of _belles lettres_, and not always of the +lighter side only. + +No one who studies Lamb can fail to see the enormous advantage which was +given him by his possession of an official employment which brought him +a small but sufficient income without very hard labour. Such literary +work as his could never be done (at any rate for a length of time) as +"collar-work," and even if the best of it had by chance been so +performed, it must necessarily have been mixed, as that of Leigh Hunt +is, with a far larger quantity of mere work to order. No such advantage +was possessed by the third of the great trio of Cockney critics, or at +least critics of the so-called Cockney school; for William Hazlitt, as +much the greatest of English critics in a certain way as Lamb is in +another and Jeffrey in a third (though a lower than either), was a +Cockney neither by extraction nor by birth, nor by early sojourn, nor +even by continuous residence in later life. His family was Irish, his +father a Unitarian minister; he was born at Maidstone in 1778. When his +father was officiating at Wem in Shropshire, in Hazlitt's twentieth +year, Coleridge, who at times affected the same denomination, visited +the place, and Hazlitt was most powerfully impressed by him. He was, +however, divided between art and literature as professions, and his +first essays were in the former, which he practised for some time, +visiting the Louvre during the peace, or rather armistice, of Amiens, to +copy pictures for some English collectors, and to study them on his own +account. Returning to London, he met Lamb and others of the literary set +in the capital, and, after some newspaper work, married Miss Stoddart, a +friend of Mary Lamb's, and a lady of some property. He and his wife +lived for some years at her estate of Winterslow on Salisbury Plain +(long afterwards still a favourite resort of Hazlitt's), and then he +went in 1812 once more to London, where abundant work on periodicals of +all kinds, on the Liberal side, from daily newspapers to the _Edinburgh +Review_, soon fell into his hands. But after a time he gave up most +kinds of writing except literary, theatrical, and art criticism, the +delivery of lectures on literature, and the composition of essays of a +character less fanciful and less purely original than Lamb's, but almost +as miscellaneous. + +He lived till September 1830, the first of those early thirties of the +nineteenth century which were to be as generally fatal to his +generation of great English men of letters as the seventies of the +eighteenth had been prolific of them; and his dying words, "Well, I have +had a happy life," are noteworthy. For certainly that life would hardly +have seemed happy to many. He quarrelled with his first wife, was +divorced from her in Scotland, discreditably enough; published to the +world with astounding lack of reticence the details of a frantic passion +for Sarah Walker, a lodginghouse-keeper's daughter, who jilted him; and +after marrying a second time, was left by his second wife. He had never +been rich, and during the last years of his life was in positive +difficulties, while for almost the whole period of his second sojourn in +London he was the object of the most virulent abuse from the Tory +organs, especially the _Quarterly_ and _Blackwood_--abuse which, it must +be confessed, he was both ready and able to repay in kind with handsome +interest. He appears to have played the part of firebrand and makebate +in the John Scott duel already referred to. Even with his friends he +could not keep upon good terms, and the sincere gentleness of Lamb broke +down at least once, as the easy good-nature of Leigh Hunt did many +times, under the strain of his perverse and savage wrong-headedness. + +But whether the critical and the unamiable temper are, as some would +have it, essentially one, or whether their combination in the same +person be mere coincidence, Hazlitt was beyond all question a great, a +very great, critic--in not a few respects our very greatest. All his +work, or almost all that has much merit, is small in individual bulk, +though the total is very respectable. His longest book, his _Life of +Napoleon_, which was written late and as a counterblast to Scott's, from +the singular standpoint of a Republican who was an admirer of Bonaparte, +has next to no value; and his earliest, a philosophical work in +eighteenth century style on _The Principles of Human Action_, has not +much. But his essays and lectures, which, though probably not as yet by +any means exhaustively collected or capable of being identified, fill +nine or ten volumes, are of extraordinary goodness. They may be divided +roughly into three classes. The first, dealing with art and the drama, +must take the lowest room, for theatrical criticism is of necessity, +except in so far as it touches on literature rather than acting, of very +ephemeral interest; and Hazlitt's education in art and knowledge of it +were not quite extensive enough, nor the examples which in the first +quarter of this century he had before him in England important enough, +to make his work of this kind of the first importance. The best of it is +the _Conversations with Northcote_, a painter of no very great merit, +but a survivor of the Reynolds studio; and these conversations very +frequently and very widely diverge from painting into literary and +miscellaneous matters. The second class contains the miscellaneous +essays proper, and these have by some been put at the head of Hazlitt's +work. But although some of them, indeed, nearly all, display a spirit, a +command of the subject, and a faculty of literary treatment which had +never been given to the same subjects in the same way before, although +such things as the famous "Going to a Fight," "Going a Journey," "The +Indian Jugglers," "Merry England," "Sundials," "On Taste," and not a few +more would, put together and freed from good but less good companions, +make a most memorable collection, still his real strength is not here. + +Great as Hazlitt was as a miscellaneous and Montaignesque essayist, he +was greater as a literary critic. Literature was, though he coquetted +with art, his first and most constant love; it was the subject on which, +as far as English literature is concerned (and he knew little and is +still less worth consulting about any other), he had acquired the +largest and soundest knowledge; and it is that for which he had the most +original and essential genius. His intense prejudices and his occasional +inadequacy make themselves felt here as they do everywhere, and even +here it is necessary to give the caution that Hazlitt is never to be +trusted when he shows the least evidence of dislike for which he gives +no reason. But to any one who has made a little progress in criticism +himself, to any one who has either read for himself or is capable of +reading for himself, of being guided by what is helpful and of +neglecting what is not, there is no greater critic than Hazlitt in any +language. He will sometimes miss--he is never perhaps so certain as his +friends Lamb and Hunt were to find--exquisite individual points. +Prejudice, accidental ignorance, or other causes may sometimes +invalidate his account of authors or of subjects in general. But still +the four great collections of his criticism, _The Characters of +Shakespeare_, _The Elizabethan Dramatists_, _The English Poets_, and +_The English Comic Writers_, with not a few scattered things in his +other writings, make what is on the whole the best corpus of criticism +by a single writer in English on English. He is the critics' critic as +Spenser is the poets' poet; that is to say, he has, errors excepted and +deficiencies allowed, the greatest proportion of the strictly critical +excellencies--of the qualities which make a critic--that any English +writer of his craft has ever possessed. + +_Blackwood's Magazine_, the headquarters, the citadel, the _place +d'armes_ of the opposition to the Cockney school and of criticism and +journalism that were Tory first of all, enlisted a younger set of +recruits than those hitherto mentioned, and the special style of writing +which it introduced, though exceedingly clever and stimulating, lent +itself rather less to dispassionate literary appreciation than even the +avowedly partisan methods of the _Edinburgh_. In its successful form +(for it had a short and inglorious existence before it found out the +way) it was launched by an audacious "skit" on the literati of Edinburgh +written by John Wilson, John Gibson Lockhart, and James Hogg, while very +soon after its establishment it was joined by a wild and witty Bohemian +scholar from the south of Ireland, William Maginn, who, though before +long he drifted away to other resorts, and ere many years established in +_Fraser_ a new abode of guerilla journalism, impressed on _Blackwood_ +itself, before he left it, several of its best-known features, and in +particular is said to have practically started the famous _Noctes +Ambrosianę_. Of Hogg, enough has been said in a former chapter. For the +critical purpose of "Maga," as _Blackwood's Magazine_ loved to call +itself, he was rather a butt, or, to speak less despiteously, a +stimulant, than an originator; and he had neither the education nor +indeed the gifts of a critic. Of each of the others some account must +be given, and Maginn will introduce yet another flight of brilliant +journalists, some of whom, especially the greatest of all, Carlyle, +lived till far into the last quarter of the present century. + +Wilson, the eldest of those just mentioned, though a younger man than +any one as yet noticed in this chapter, and for many years the guiding +spirit (there never has been any "editor" of _Blackwood_ except the +members of the firm who have published it) of _Maga_, must at some time +or other have taken to literature, and would probably in any case have +sooner or later written the poems and stories which exist under his +name, but do not in the very least degree constitute its eminence. It +was the chapter of accidents that made him a journalist and a critic. He +was born in 1785, his father being a rich manufacturer of Paisley, was +educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, came early into a +considerable fortune, married at twenty-six, and having established +himself at Elleray on Windermere, lived there the life of a country +gentleman, with more or less literary tastes. His fortune being lost by +bad luck and dishonest agency, he betook himself to Edinburgh, and +finding it impossible to get on with Jeffrey (which was not surprising), +threw himself heart and soul into the opposition venture of _Blackwood_. +He had, moreover, the extraordinary good luck to obtain, certainly on no +very solid grounds (though he made at least as good a professor as +another), the valuable chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of +Edinburgh, which of itself secured him from any fear of want or narrow +means. But no penniless barrister on his promotion could have flung +himself into militant journalism with more ardour than did Wilson. He +re-created, if he did not invent, the _Noctes Ambrosianę_--a series of +convivial conversations on food, drink, politics, literature, and things +in general, with interlocutors at first rather numerous, and not very +distinct, but latterly narrowed down to "Christopher North" (Wilson +himself), the "Ettrick Shepherd" (Hogg), and a certain "Timothy +Tickler," less distinctly identified with Wilson's mother's brother, an +Edinburgh lawyer of the name of Sym. A few outsiders, sometimes real +(as De Quincey), sometimes imaginary, were, till the last, added now and +then. And besides these conversations, which are his great title to +fame, he contributed, also under the _nom de guerre_ of Christopher +North, an immense number of articles, in part collected as _Christopher +North in his Sporting Jacket_, substantive collections on Homer, on +Spenser, and others, and almost innumerable single papers and essays on +things in general. From the time when Lockhart (see below) went to +London, no influence on _Blackwood_ could match Wilson's for some ten or +twelve years, or nearly till the end of the thirties. Latterly +ill-health, the death of friends and of his wife, and other causes, +lessened his energy, and for some years before his death in 1854 he +wrote little. Two years before that time his increasing ailments caused +him even to resign his professorship. + +Wilson--whose stories are merely mediocre, and whose poems, _The Isle of +Palms_ (1812) and _The City of the Plague_ (1816), merely show that he +was an intelligent contemporary of Scott and Byron, and a neighbour of +the Lake poets--developed in his miscellaneous journalism one of the +most puissant and luxuriant literary faculties of the time; and in +particular was among the first in one, and perhaps the very first in +another, kind of writing. The first and less valuable of the two was the +subjection of most, if not all, of the topics of the newspaper to a +boisterous but fresh and vigorous style of critical handling, which +bears some remote resemblance to the styles of L'Estrange towards the +end of the seventeenth century, and Bentley a little later, but is in +all important points new. The second and higher was the attempt to +substitute for the correct, balanced, exactly-proportioned, but even in +the hands of Gibbon, even in those of Burke, somewhat colourless and +jejune prose of the past age, a new style of writing, exuberant in +diction, semi-poetical in rhythm, confounding, or at least alternating +very sharply between, the styles of high-strung enthusiasm and +extravagant burlesque, and setting at naught all precepts of the +immediate elders. It would be too much, no doubt, to attribute the +invention of this style to Wilson. It was "in the air"; it was the +inevitable complement of romantic diction in poetry; it had been +anticipated to some extent by others, and it displayed itself in various +forms almost simultaneously in the hands of Landor, who kept to a more +classical form, and of De Quincey, who was modern. But Wilson, unless in +conversation with De Quincey, cannot be said to have learnt it from any +one else: he preceded most in the time, and greatly exceeded all in the +bulk and influence of his exercises, owing to his position on the staff +of a popular and widely-read periodical. + +The defect of both these qualities of Wilson's style (a defect which +extends largely to the matter of his writings in criticism and in other +departments) was a defect of sureness of taste; while his criticism was +more vigorous than safe. Except his Toryism (which, however, was shot +with odd flashes of democratic sentiment and a cross-vein of crotchety +dislike not to England but to London), he had not many pervading +prejudices. But at the same time he had not many clear principles: he +was the slave of whim and caprice in his individual opinions; and he +never seems to have been able to distinguish between a really fine thing +and a piece of fustian, between an urbane jest and a piece of gross +buffoonery, between eloquence and rant, between a reasoned condemnation +and a spiteful personal fling. Accordingly the ten reprinted volumes of +his contributions to _Blackwood_ and the mass of his still uncollected +articles contain the strangest jumble of good and bad in matter and form +that exists anywhere. By turns trivial and magnificent, exquisite and +disgusting, a hierophant of literature and a mere railer at men of +letters, a prince of describers, jesters, enthusiasts, and the author of +tedious and commonplace newspaper "copy," Wilson is one of the most +unequal, one of the most puzzling, but also one of the most stimulating +and delightful, figures in English literature. Perhaps slightly +over-valued for a time, he has for many years been distinctly neglected, +if not depreciated and despised; and the voluminousness of his work, +coupled with the fact that it is difficult to select from it owing to +the pervading inequality of its merits, may be thought likely to keep +him in the general judgment at a lower plane than he deserves. But the +influence which he exerted during many years both upon writers and +readers by his work in _Blackwood_ cannot be over-estimated. And it may +be said without fear that no one with tolerably wide sympathies, who is +able to appreciate good literature, will ever seriously undertake the +reading of his various works without equal satisfaction and profit. + +Wilson's principal coadjutor in the early days of _Blackwood_, and his +friend of all days (though the mania for crying down not so much England +as London made "Christopher North" indulge in some girds at his old +comrade's editorship of the _Quarterly_), was a curious contrast to +Wilson himself. This contrast may may have been due partly, but by no +means wholly, to the fact that there was ten years between them. John +Gibson Lockhart was born at Cambusnethan, where his father was minister, +on 14th July 1794. Like Wilson, he was educated at Glasgow and at +Oxford, where he took a first-class at a very early age, and whence he +went to Germany, a completion of "study-years" which the revolutionary +wars had for a long time rendered difficult, if not dangerous. On +returning home he was called to the Scottish Bar, where it would seem +that he might have made some figure, but for his inability to speak in +public. _Blackwood_ gave him the very opening suited to his genius; and +for years he was one of its chief contributors, and perhaps the most +dangerous wielder of the pretty sharp weapons in which its staff +indulged. Shortly afterwards, in 1819, he published (perhaps with some +slight assistance from Wilson) his first original book (he had +translated Schlegel's _Lectures on History_ earlier), _Peter's Letters +to his Kinsfolk_. The title was a parody on Scott's account of his +continental journey after Waterloo, the substance an exceedingly +vivacious account of the things and men of Edinburgh at the time, +something after the fashion of _Humphrey_ _Clinker_. Next year, on 29th +April, Lockhart married Sophia, Scott's elder daughter; and the pair +lived for some years to come either in Edinburgh or at the cottage of +Chiefswood, near Abbotsford, Lockhart contributing freely to +_Blackwood_, and writing his four novels and his _Spanish Ballads_. At +the end of 1825 or the beginning of 1826, just at the time when his +father-in-law's financial troubles set in, he received the appointment +of editor of the _Quarterly Review_ in succession, though not in +immediate succession, to Gifford. He then removed to London, where he +continued to direct the _Review_, to contribute for a time to _Fraser_, +to be a very important figure in literary and political life, and after +Scott's death to write an admirable _Life_. Domestic troubles came +rather thickly on him after Scott's death, which indeed was preceded by +that of Lockhart's own eldest son, the "Hugh Littlejohn" of the _Tales +of a Grandfather_. Mrs. Lockhart herself died in 1837. In 1843 Lockhart +received the auditorship of the duchy of Lancaster, a post of some +value. Ten years later, in broken health, he resigned the editorship of +the _Quarterly_, and died towards the end of the year. + +Lockhart's works, at present uncollected, and perhaps in no small +proportion irrecoverable, must have been of far greater bulk than those +of any one yet mentioned in this chapter except Wilson, and not +inconsiderably greater than his. They are also of a remarkable variety, +and of an extraordinary level of excellence in their different kinds. +Lockhart was not, like Wilson, an advocate or a practitioner of very +ornate or revolutionary prose. On the contrary, he both practised, +preached, and most formidably defended by bitter criticism of opposite +styles, a manner in prose and verse which was almost classical, or which +at least admitted no further Romantic innovation than that of the Lake +poets and Scott. His authorship of the savage onslaught upon Keats in +_Blackwood_ is not proven; but there is no doubt that he wrote the +scarcely less ferocious, though much more discriminating and +better-deserved, attack on Tennyson's early poems in the _Quarterly_. He +was himself no mean writer of verse. His _Spanish Ballads_ (1823), in +which he had both Southey and Scott as models before him, are of great +excellence; and some of his occasional pieces display not merely much +humour (which nobody ever denied him), but no mean share of the feeling +which is certainly not often associated with his name. But verse was +only an occasional pastime with him: his vocation was to write prose, +and he wrote it with admirable skill and a seldom surpassed faculty of +adaptation to the particular task. It is indeed probable--and it would +be no discredit to him--that his reputation with readers as opposed to +students will mainly depend, as it depends at present, upon his _Life of +Scott_. Nor would even thus his plumes be borrowed over much. For though +no doubt the letters and the diary of Sir Walter himself count for much +in the interest of the book, though the beauty and nobility of Scott's +character, his wonderful achievements, the pathetic revolution of his +fortune, form a subject not easily matched, yet to be equal to such a +subject is to be in another sense on an equality with it. Admiration for +the book is not chequered or tempered, as it almost necessarily must be +in the case of its only possible rival, Boswell's _Johnson_, with more +or less contempt for the author; still less is it (as some have +contended that admiration for Boswell is) due to that contempt. The +taste and spirit of Lockhart's book are not less admirable than the +skill of its arrangement and the competency of its writing; nor would it +be easily possible to find a happier adjustment in this respect in the +whole annals of biography. + +But this great book ought not to obscure the other work which Lockhart +has done. His biography of Burns is of remarkable merit; it may be +questioned whether to this day, though it may be deficient in a few +modern discoveries of fact (and these have been mostly supplied in the +edition by the late Mr. Scott Douglas), it is not the best book on the +subject. The taste and judgment, the clear vision and sound sense, which +distinguished Lockhart, are in few places more apparent than here. His +abridgment of Scott's _Life of Napoleon_ is no ordinary abridgment, and +is a work of thorough craft, if not even of art. His novels, with one +exception, have ceased to be much read; and perhaps even that one can +hardly be said to enjoy frequent perusal. _Valerius_, the first, is a +classical novel, and suffers under the drawbacks which have generally +attended its kind. _Reginald Dalton_, a novel in part of actual life at +Oxford, and intended to be wholly of actual life, still shows something +of the artificial handling, of the supposed necessity for adventure, +which is observable in Hook and others of the time, and which has been +sufficiently noticed in the last chapter. _Matthew Wald_, the last of +the four, is both too gloomy and too extravagant: it deals with a mad +hero. But _Adam Blair_, which was published in the same year (1821) with +_Valerius_, is a wonderful little book. The story is not well told; but +the characters and the principal situation--a violent passion +entertained by a pious widowed minister for his neighbour's wife--are +handled with extraordinary power. _Peter's Letters_, which is half a +book and half journalism, may be said to be, with rare exceptions (such +as an obituary article on Hook, which was reprinted from the +_Quarterly_), the only specimen of Lockhart's miscellaneous writing that +is easily accessible or authentically known. He was still but in his +apprenticeship here; but his remarkable gifts are already apparent. +These gifts included a faculty of sarcastic comment so formidable that +it early earned him the title of "the Scorpion"; a very wide and sound +knowledge of literature, old and new, English and foreign; some +acquirements in art and in other matters; an excellent style, and a +solid if rather strait-laced theory of criticism. Except that he was, as +almost everybody was then, too much given to violent personalities in +his anonymous work, he was a very great journalist indeed, and he was +also a very great man of letters. + +Thomas de Quincey was not of the earliest _Blackwood_ staff (in that +respect Maginn should be mentioned before him), but he was the older as +well as the more important man of the two, and there is the additional +reason for postponing the founder of _Fraser_, that this latter +periodical introduced a fresh flight of birds of passage (as journalists +both fortunate and unfortunate may peculiarly be called) to English +literature. De Quincey was born in 1785 (the same year as his friend +Wilson) at Manchester, where his father was a merchant of means. He was +educated at the Grammar School of his native town, after some +preliminary teaching at or near Bath, whither his mother had moved after +his father's death. He did not like Manchester, and when he had nearly +served his time for an exhibition to Brasenose College, Oxford, he ran +away and hid himself. He went to Oxford after all, entering at +Worcester, where he made a long though rather intermittent residence, +but took no degree. In 1809 he took up his abode at Grasmere, married +after a time, and lived there, at least as his headquarters, for more +than twenty years. In 1830 he moved to Edinburgh, where, or in its +neighbourhood, he resided for the rest of his long life, and where he +died in December 1859. He has given various autobiographic handlings of +this life--in the main it would seem quite trustworthy, but invested +with an air of fantastic unreality by his manner of relation. + +His life, however, and his personality, and even the whole of his +voluminous published work, have in all probability taken colour in the +general thought from his first literary work of any consequence, the +wonderful _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_, which, with the +_Essays of Elia_, were the chief flowers of the _London Magazine_, and +appeared in that periodical during the year 1821. He had acquired this +habit during his sojourn at Oxford, and it had grown upon him during his +at first solitary residence at the Lakes to an enormous extent. Until he +thus committed the results of his dreams, or of his fancy and literary +genius working on his dreams, or of his fancy and genius by themselves, +to print and paper, in his thirty-sixth year, he had been, though a +great reader, hardly anything of a writer. But thenceforward, and +especially after, in 1825, he had visited his Lake neighbour Wilson at +Edinburgh, and had been by him introduced to _Blackwood_, he became a +frequent contributor to different magazines, and continued to be so, +writing far more even than he published, till his death. He wrote very +few books, the chief being a very free translation of a German novel, +forged as Scott's, and called _Walladmor_; a more original and stable, +though not very brilliant, effort in fiction, entitled _Klosterheim_; +and the _Logic of Political Economy_. Towards the end of his life he +superintended an English collection--there had already been one in +America--of his essays, and this has been supplemented more than once +since. + +It may, indeed, fairly be doubted whether so large a collection, of +miscellaneous, heterogeneous, and, to tell the truth, very unequally +interesting and meritorious matter, has ever been received with greater +or more lasting popular favour, a fresh edition of the fourteen or +sixteen volumes of the _Works_ having been called for on an average +every decade. There have been dissidents: and recently in particular +something of a set has been made against De Quincey--a set to some +extent helped by the gradual addition to the _Works_ of a great deal of +unimportant matter which he had not himself cared to reproduce. This, +indeed, is perhaps the greatest danger to which the periodical writer is +after his death exposed, and is even the most serious drawback to +periodical writing. It is impossible that any man who lives by such +writing can always be at his best in form, and he will sometimes be +compelled to execute what Carlyle has called "honest journey-work in +default of better,"--work which, though perfectly honest and perfectly +respectable, is mere journey-work, and has no claim to be disturbed from +its rest when its journey is accomplished. Of this there was some even +in De Quincey's own collection, and the proportion has been much +increased since. Moreover, even at his very best, he was not a writer +who could be trusted to keep himself at that best. His reading was +enormous,--nearly as great perhaps as Southey's, though in still less +popular directions,--and he would sometimes drag it in rather +inappropriately. He had an unconquerable and sometimes very irritating +habit of digression, of divagation, of aside. And, worst of all, his +humour, which in its own peculiar vein of imaginative grotesque has +seldom been surpassed, was liable constantly to degenerate into a kind +of laboured trifling, inexpressibly exasperating to the nerves. He could +be simply dull; and he can seldom be credited with the possession of +what may be called literary tact. + +Yet his merits were such as to give him no superior in his own manner +among the essayists, and hardly any among the prose writers of the +century. He, like Wilson, and probably before Wilson, deliberately aimed +at a style of gorgeous elaboration, intended not exactly for constant +use, but for use when required; and he achieved it. Certain well-known +passages, as well as others which have not become hackneyed, in the +_Confessions of an Opium Eater_, in the _Autobiography_, in _The English +Mail Coach_, in _Our Ladies of Sorrow_, and elsewhere, are unsurpassed +in English or out of it for imaginative splendour of imagery, suitably +reproduced in words. Nor was this De Quincey's only, though it was his +most precious gift. He had a singular, though, as has been said, a very +untrustworthy faculty of humour, both grim and quaint. He was possessed +of extraordinary dialectic ingenuity, a little alloyed no doubt by a +tendency to wire-drawn and over subtle minuteness such as besets the +born logician who is not warned of his danger either by a strong vein of +common sense or by constant sojourn in the world. He could expound and +describe admirably; he had a thorough grasp of the most complicated +subjects when he did not allow will-o'-the-wisps to lure him into +letting it go, and could narrate the most diverse kinds of action, such +as the struggles of Bentley with Trinity College, the journey of the +Tartars from the Ukraine to Siberia, and the fortunes of the Spanish +Nun, Catalina, with singular adaptability. In his biographical articles +on friends and contemporaries, which are rather numerous, he has been +charged both with ill-nature and with inaccuracy. The first charge may +be peremptorily dismissed, the second requires much argument and sifting +in particular cases. To some who have given not a little attention to +the matter it seems that De Quincey was never guilty of deliberate +fabrication, and that he was not even careless in statement. But he was +first of all a dreamer; and when it is true of a man that, in the words +of the exquisite passage where Calderon has come at one with +Shakespeare, his very dreams are a dream, it will often happen that his +facts are not exactly a fact. + +Nevertheless, De Quincey is a great writer and a great figure in +literature, while it may plausibly be contended that journalism may make +all the more boast of him in that it is probable that without it he +would never have written at all. And he has one peculiarity not yet +mentioned. Although his chief excellences may not be fully perceptible +except to mature tastes, he is specially attractive to the young. +Probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love +of literature proper by De Quincey than by any other writer whatever. + +Of other contributors to these periodicals much might be said in larger +space, as for instance of the poisoner-critic Thomas Griffiths +Wainewright, the "Janus Weathercock" of the _London_, the original of +certain well-known heroes of Bulwer and Dickens, and the object of a +more than once recurrent and distinctly morbid attention from young men +of letters since. Lamb, who was not given to think evil of his friends, +was certainly unlucky in calling Wainewright "warm- as light-hearted"; +for the man (who died a convict in Australia, though he cheated the +gallows which was his due) was both an affected coxcomb and a callous +scoundrel. But he was a very clever fellow, though indignant morality +has sometimes endeavoured to deny this. That he anticipated by sixty +years and more certain depravations in style and taste notorious in our +own day is something: it is more that his achievement in gaudy writing +and in the literary treatment of art was really considerable. + +Wainewright, however, is only "curious" in more than one sense of that +term: Leigh Hunt, who, though quite incapable of poisoning anybody, had +certain points in common with Wainewright on the latter's more excusable +sides, and whose prose must now be treated, is distinguished. He +reappears with even better right here than some others of the more +important constituents of this chapter. For all his best work in prose +appeared in periodicals, though it is impossible to say that all his +work that appeared in periodicals was his best work. He was for fourteen +years editor of, and a large contributor to, the _Examiner_, which he +and his brother started in 1808. After his liberation from prison he not +merely edited, but in the older fashion practically wrote the +_Reflector_ (1810), the _Indicator_ (1819-21), and the _Companion_ +(1828). His rather unlucky journey to Italy was undertaken to edit the +_Liberal_. He was one of the rare and rash men of letters who have tried +to keep up a daily journal unassisted--a new _Tatler_, which lasted for +some eighteen months (1830-32); and a little later (1834-35) he +supported for full two years a similar but weekly venture, in part +original, in part compiled or borrowed, called _Leigh Hunt's London +Journal_. These were not his only ventures of the kind: he was an +indefatigable contributor to periodicals conducted by others; and most +of his books now known by independent titles are in fact collections of +"articles"--sometimes reprinted, sometimes published for the first time. + +It was impossible that such a mass of matter should be all good; and it +is equally impossible to deny that the combined fact of so much +production and of so little concentration argues a certain idiosyncrasy +of defect. In fact the butterfly character which every unprejudiced +critic of Leigh Hunt has noticed, made it impossible for him to plan or +to execute any work on a great scale. He never could have troubled +himself to complete missing knowledge, to fill in gaps, to co-ordinate +thinking, as the literary historian, whose vocation in some respects he +might seem to have possessed eminently, must do--to weave fancy into the +novelist's solid texture, and not to leave it in thrums or in gossamer. +But he was, though in both ways a most unequal, a delightful +miscellanist and critic. In both respects it is natural, and indeed +unavoidable, to compare him with Lamb and with Hazlitt, whom, however, +he really preceded, forming a link between them and the eighteenth +century essayists. His greater voluminousness, induced by necessity, +puts him at a rather unfair disadvantage with the first; and we may +perhaps never find in him those exquisite felicities which delight and +justify the true "Agnist." Yet he has found some things that Lamb missed +in Lamb's own subjects; and though his prejudices (of the middle-class +Liberal and freethinking kind) were sometimes more damaging than any to +which Lamb was exposed, he was free from the somewhat wilful eclecticism +of that inimitable person. He could like nearly all things that were +good--in which respect he stands above both his rivals in criticism. But +he stands below them in his miscellaneous work; though here also, as in +his poetry, he was a master, not a scholar. Lamb and Hazlitt improved +upon him here, as Keats and Shelley improved upon him there. But what a +position is it to be "improved upon" by Keats and Shelley in poetry, by +Hazlitt and Lamb in prose! + +Hartley Coleridge might with about equal propriety have been treated in +the last chapter and in this; but the already formidable length of the +catalogue of bards perhaps turns the scale in favour of placing him with +other contributors to _Blackwood_, to which, thanks to his early +friendship with Wilson, he enjoyed access, and in which he might have +written much more than he did, and did actually write most of what he +published himself, except the _Biographia Borealis_. + +The life of Hartley was a strange and sad variant of his father's, +though, if he lacked a good deal of S. T. C.'s genius, his character was +entirely free from the baser stains which darkened that great man's +weakness. Born (1796) at Clevedon, the first-fruits of the marriage of +Coleridge and Sara, he was early celebrated by Wordsworth and by his +father in immortal verse, and by Southey, his uncle, in charming prose, +for his wonderful dreamy precocity; but he never was a great reader. +Southey took care of him with the rest of the family when Coleridge +disappeared into the vague; and Hartley, after schooling at Ambleside, +was elected to a post-mastership at Merton College, Oxford. He missed +the Newdigate thrice, and only got a second in the schools, but was +more than consoled by a Fellowship at Oriel. Unfortunately Oriel was not +only gaining great honour, but was very jealous of it; and the +probationary Fellows were subjected to a most rigid system of +observation, which seems to have gone near to espionage. If ever there +was a man born to be a Fellow under the old English University scheme, +that man was Hartley Coleridge; and it is extremely probable that if he +had been let alone he would have produced, in one form or another, a +justification of that scheme, worthy to rank with Burton's _Anatomy_. +But he was accused of various shortcomings, of which intemperance seems +to have been the most serious, though it is doubtful whether it would +have sunk the beam if divers peccadilloes, political, social, and +miscellaneous, had not been thrown in. Strong interest was made in +favour of mercy, but the College deprived him of his Fellowship, +granting him, not too consistently, a _solatium_ of £300. This was +apparently in 1820. Hartley lived for nearly thirty years longer, but +his career was closed. He was, as his brother Derwent admits, one of +those whom the pressure of necessity does not spur but numbs. He wrote a +little for _Blackwood_; he took pupils unsuccessfully, and +school-mastered with a little better success; and during a short time he +lived with a Leeds publisher who took a fancy to him and induced him to +write his only large book, the _Biographia Borealis_. But for the most +part he abode at Grasmere, where his failing (it was not much more) of +occasional intemperance was winked at by all, even by the austere +Wordsworth, where he wandered about, annotated a copy of Anderson's +_Poets_ and some other books, and supported himself (with the curious +Coleridgean faculty of subsisting like the bird of paradise, without +either foot or foothold) till, at his mother's death, an annuity made +his prospects secure. He died on 6th January 1849, a little before +Wordsworth, and shortly afterwards his work was collected by his brother +Derwent in seven small volumes; the _Poems_ filling two, the _Essays and +Fragments_ two, and the _Biographia Borealis_ three. + +This last (which appeared in its second form as _Lives of Northern +Worthies_, with some extremely interesting notes by S. T. C.) is an +excellent book of its kind, and shows that under more favourable +circumstances Hartley might have been a great literary historian. But it +is on the whole less characteristic than the volumes of _Poems_ and +_Essays_. In the former Hartley has no kind of _souffle_ (or +long-breathed inspiration), nor has he those exquisite lyrical touches +of his father's which put Coleridge's scanty and unequal work on a level +with that of the greatest names in English poetry. But he has a singular +melancholy sweetness, and a meditative grace which finds its special +home in the sonnet. In the "Posthumous Sonnets" especially, the +sound--not an echo of, but a true response to, Elizabethan music--is +unmistakable, and that to Shakespeare ("the soul of man is larger than +the sky"), that on himself ("When I survey the course that I have run"), +and not a few others, rank among the very best in English. Many of the +miscellaneous poems contain beautiful things. But on the whole the +greatest interest of Hartley Coleridge is that he is the first and one +of the best examples of a kind of poet who is sometimes contemned, who +has been very frequent in this century, but who is dear to the lover of +poetry, and productive of delightful things. This kind of poet is +wanting, it may be, in what is briefly, if not brutally, called +originality. He might not sing much if others had not sung and were not +singing around him; he does not sing very much even as it is, and the +notes of his song are not extraordinarily piercing or novel. But they +are true, they are not copied, and the lover of poetry could not spare +them. + +It is improbable that Hartley Coleridge would ever have been a great +poet: he might, if Fate or even if the Oriel dons had been a little +kinder, have been a great critic. As it is, his essays, his introduction +to Massinger and Ford, and his _Marginalia_, suffer on the one side from +certain defects of reading; for his access to books was latterly small, +and even when it had been ample, as at Oxford, in London, or at +Southey's house, he confesses that he had availed himself of it but +little. Hence he is often wrong, and more often incomplete, from sheer +lack of information. Secondly, much of his work is mere jotting, never +in the very least degree intended for publication, and sometimes +explicitly corrected or retracted by later jottings of the same kind. In +such a case we can rather augur of the might-have-been than pronounce on +the actual. But the two volumes are full of delicate critical views on +literature; and the longest series, "Ignoramus on the Fine Arts," shows +how widely, with better luck and more opportunity, he might have +extended his critical performances. In short, Hartley Coleridge, if a +"sair sicht" to the moralist, is an interesting and far from a wholly +painful one to the lover of literature, which he himself loved so much, +and practised, with all his disadvantages, so successfully. + +All the persons hitherto mentioned in this chapter appear by undoubted +right in any history of English Literature: it may cause a little +surprise to see that of Maginn figuring with them. Yet his abilities +were scarcely inferior to those of any; and he was kept back from +sharing their fame only by infirmities of character and by his +succumbing to that fatal Bohemianism which, constantly recurring among +men of letters, exercised its attractions with special force in the +early days of journalism in this century. William Maginn (1793), who was +the son of a schoolmaster at Cork, took a brilliant degree at Trinity +College, Dublin, and for some years followed his father's profession. +The establishment, however, and the style of _Blackwood_ were an +irresistible attraction to him, and he drifted to Edinburgh, wrote a +great deal in the earlier and more boisterous days of _Maga_ under the +pseudonym of Ensign O'Doherty, and has, as has been said, some claims to +be considered the originator of the _Noctes_. Then, as he had gone from +Ireland to Edinburgh, he went from Edinburgh to London, and took part in +divers Tory periodicals, acting as Paris correspondent for some of them +till, about 1830, he started, or helped in starting, a London +_Blackwood_ in _Fraser_. He had now every opportunity, and he gathered +round him a staff almost more brilliant than that of the _Edinburgh_, of +the _London_, of the _Quarterly_, or of _Blackwood_ itself. But he was +equally reckless of his health and of his money. The acknowledged +original of Thackeray's Captain Shandon, he was not seldom in jail; and +at last, assisted by Sir Robert Peel almost too late, he died at Walton +on Thames in August 1842, not yet fifty, but an utter wreck. + +The collections of Maginn's work are anything but exhaustive, and the +work itself suffers from all the drawbacks, probable if not inevitable, +of work written in the intervals of carouse, at the last moment, for +ephemeral purposes. Yet it is instinct with a perhaps brighter genius +than the more accomplished productions of some much more famous men. The +_Homeric Ballads_, though they have been praised by some, are nearly +worthless; and the longer attempts in fiction are not happy. But +Maginn's shorter stories in _Blackwood_, especially the inimitable +"Story without a Tail," are charming; his more serious critical work, +especially that on Shakespeare, displays a remarkable combination of +wide reading, critical acumen, and sound sense; and his miscellanies in +prose and verse, especially the latter, are characterised by a mixture +of fantastic humour, adaptive wit, and rare but real pathos and melody, +which is the best note of the specially Irish mode. It must be said, +however, that Maginn is chiefly important to the literary historian as +the captain of a band of distinguished persons, and as in a way the link +between the journalism of the first and the journalism of the second +third of the century. A famous plate by Maclise, entitled "The +Fraserians," contains, seated round abundant bottles, with Maginn as +president, portraits (in order by "the way of the sun," and omitting +minor personages) of Irving, Gleig the Chaplain-General, Sir Egerton +Brydges, Allan Cunningham, Carlyle, Count D'Orsay, Brewster, Theodore +Hook, Lockhart, Crofton Croker of the Irish Fairy Tales, Jerdan, Dunlop +of the "History of Fiction," Gait, Hogg, Coleridge, Harrison Ainsworth, +Thackeray, Southey, and Barry Cornwall. It is improbable that all these +contributed at one time, and tolerably certain that some of them were +very sparing and infrequent contributors at any time, but the important +point is the juxtaposition of the generation which was departing and +the generation which was coming on--of Southey with Thackeray and of +Coleridge with Carlyle. Yet it will be noticed (and the point is of some +importance) that these new-comers are, at least the best of them, much +less merely periodical writers than those who came immediately before +them. In part no doubt this was accident; in part it was due to the +greater prominence which novels and serial works of other kinds were +beginning to assume; in part it may be to the fact that the great +increase in the number of magazines and newspapers had lowered their +individual dignity and perhaps their profitableness. But it is certain +that of the list just mentioned, Thackeray and Carlyle, of the +contemporary new generation of the _Edinburgh_ Macaulay, of the nascent +_Westminster_ Mill, and others, were not, like Jeffrey, like Sydney +Smith, like Wilson, and like De Quincey, content to write articles. They +aspired to write, and they did write, books; and, that being so, they +will all be treated in chapters other than the present, appropriated to +the kinds in which their chief books were designed. + +The name of John Sterling is that of a man who, with no great literary +claims of his own, managed to connect it durably and in a double fashion +with literature, first as the subject of an immortal biography by +Carlyle, secondly as the name-giver of the famous Sterling Club, which +about 1838, and hardly numbering more members than the century did +years, included a surprising proportion of the most rising men of +letters of the day, while all but a very few of its members were of +literary mark. John Sterling himself was the son of a rather eccentric +father, Edward Sterling, who, after trying soldiering with no great, and +farming with decidedly ill, success, turned to journalism and succeeded +brilliantly on the _Times_. His son was born in the Isle of Bute on 20th +July 1806, was educated, first privately, then at Glasgow, and when +about nineteen went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he fell in with +a famous and brilliant set. He migrated from Trinity College to Trinity +Hall, took no degree, wrote a little for the then young _Athenęum_, was +engaged in a romantic and in all ways rather unfortunate business of +encouraging a rebellion in Spain, but married instead of taking active +part in it, and went to the West Indies. When he came home he, it is +said under Coleridgean influence, took orders, but soon developed +heterodox views and gave up active duty. He lived, though under sentence +of death by consumption, till 1843, spending much time abroad, but +writing a little, chiefly for periodicals. + +The chief characteristic of Sterling in life and thought appears to have +been a vacillating impulsiveness, while in letters his production, small +in bulk, is anything but strong in substance or form. But, like some +other men who do not, in the common phrase, "do much," he seems to have +been singularly effectual as a centre of literary friendship and +following. The Sterling Club included not merely Tennyson, John Stuart +Mill, Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, Lord Houghton, Sir Francis Palgrave, +Bishop Thirlwall, who all receive separate notice elsewhere, but others +who, being of less general fame, may best be noticed together here. +There were the scholars Blakesley, Worsley, and Hepworth Thompson +(afterwards Master of Trinity); H. N. Coleridge, the poet's nephew, +son-in-law, and editor; Sir Francis Doyle, afterwards Professor of +Poetry at Oxford, the author of some interesting reminiscences in prose, +and in verse of some of the best songs and poems on military subjects to +be found in the language, such as "The Loss of the Birkenhead," the +"Private of the Buffs," and above all the noble and consummate "Red +Thread of Honour"; Sir Edmund Head, Fellow of Merton and +Governor-General of Canada, and a writer on art (not to be confounded +with his namesake Sir Francis, the agreeable miscellanist, reviewer, and +travel writer, who was also a baronet and also connected with Canada, +where he was Governor of the Upper Province at the time of the Rebellion +of 1835). There was Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a keen scholar and a +fastidious writer, whose somewhat short life (1806-63) was chiefly +occupied by politics; for he was a Poor-Law Commissioner, a Member of +Parliament, and a holder of numerous offices up to those of Chancellor +of the Exchequer and Secretary of State. Lewis, who edited the +_Edinburgh_ for a short time, wrote no very long work, but many on a +great variety of subjects, the chief perhaps being _On the Influence of +Authority in Matters of Opinion_, 1850 (a book interesting to contrast +with one by a living statesman forty-five years later), the _Inquiry +into the Credibility of the Ancient Roman History_ (1855), and later +treatises on _The Government of Dependencies_ and the _Best Form of +Government_. He was also an exact verbal scholar, was, despite the +addiction to "dry" subjects which this list may seem to show, the author +of not a few _jeux d'esprit_, and was famous for his conversational +sayings, the most hackneyed of which is probably "Life would be +tolerable if it were not for its amusements." + +But even this did not exhaust the Sterling Club. There was another +scholar, Malden, who should have been mentioned with the group above; +the second Sir Frederick Pollock, who wrote too little but left an +excellent translation of Dante, besides some reminiscences and other +work; Philip Pusey, elder brother of the theologian, and a man of +remarkable ability; James Spedding, who devoted almost the whole of his +literary life to the study, championship, and editing of Bacon, but left +other essays and reviews of great merit; Twisleton, who undertook with +singular patience and shrewdness the solution of literary and historical +problems like the Junius question and that of the African martyrs; and +lastly George Stovin Venables, who for some five and thirty years was +the main pillar in political writing of the _Saturday Review_, was a +parliamentary lawyer of great diligence and success, and combined a +singularly exact and wide knowledge of books and men in politics and +literature with a keen judgment, an admirably forcible if somewhat +mannered style, a disposition far more kindly than the world was apt to +credit him with, and a famous power of conversation. All these men, +almost without exception, were more or less contributors to periodicals; +and it may certainly be said that, but for periodicals, it is rather +unlikely that some of them would have contributed to literature at all. + +Not as a member of the Sterling Club, but as the intimate friend of all +its greatest members, as a contributor, though a rather unfrequent one, +to papers, and as a writer of singular and extraordinary quality but +difficult to class under a more precise head, may be noticed Edward +FitzGerald, who, long a recluse, unstintedly admired by his friends but +quite unknown to the public, became famous late in life by his +translation of Omar Khayyįm, and familiar somewhat after his death +through the publication of his charming letters by Mr. Aldis Wright. He +was born on 31st March 1809, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, the +neighbourhood which was his headquarters for almost his entire life, +till his death on a visit to a grandson of the poet Crabbe at Merton in +Norfolk, 14th June 1883. He went to school at Bury, and thence to +Cambridge, where he laid the foundation of his acquaintance with the +famous Trinity set of 1825-30. But on taking his degree in the last +named year and leaving college, he took to no profession, but entered on +the life of reading, thinking, gardening, and boating, which he pursued +for more than half a century. Besides his Trinity contemporaries, from +Tennyson and Thackeray downwards, he had Carlyle for an intimate friend, +and he married the daughter of Bernard Barton, the poet-Quaker and +friend of Lamb. He published nothing till the second half of the century +had opened, when _Euphranor_, written long before at Cambridge, or with +reference to it, appeared. Then he learnt Spanish, and first showed his +extraordinary faculty of translation by Englishing divers dramas of +Calderon. Spanish gave way to Persian, and after some exercises +elsewhere the famous version, paraphrase, or whatever it is to be +called, of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyįm appeared in 1859, to be much +altered in subsequent editions. + +FitzGerald's works in the collected edition of 1889 fill three pretty +stout volumes, to which a considerable number of letters (he was first +of all and almost solely a letter-writer and translator) have been +added. In his prose (no disrespect being intended to _Euphranor_, a +dialogue Berkeleian in form and of great beauty, and other things) he +interests us doubly as a character and as a critic, for the letters +contain much criticism. Personally FitzGerald was a man of rather few +and not obtrusive, but deep and warm sympathies, slow to make new +friends but intensely tenacious of and affectionate towards the old, +with a very strong distaste for crowds and general society, and +undoubtedly somewhat of what the French call a _maniaque_, that is to +say, a slightly hypochondriac crotcheteer. These characteristics, which +make him interesting as a man, are still more interestingly reflected in +his criticism, which is often one-sided and unjust, sometimes crotchety +(as when he would not admit that even his beloved Alfred Tennyson had +ever been at his best since the collection of 1842), but often also +wonderfully delicate and true. + +As a translator he stands almost alone, his peculiar virtue, noticeable +alike in his versions from the Spanish and Greek, being so capitally and +once for all illustrated in that of Omar Khayyįm that in narrow space it +is not necessary to go beyond this. From the purist and pedantic point +of view FitzGerald, no doubt, is wildly unfaithful. He scarcely ever +renders word for word, and will insert, omit, alter, with perfect +freedom; yet the total effect is reproduced as perhaps no other +translator has ever reproduced it. Whether his version of the Rubaiyat, +with its sensuous fatalism, its ridicule of asceticism and renunciation, +and its bewildering kaleidoscope of mysticism that becomes materialist +and materialism that becomes mystical, has not indirectly had +influences, practical and literary, the results of which would have been +more abhorrent to FitzGerald than to almost any one else, may be +suggested. But the beauty of the poem as a poem is unmistakable and +altogether astounding. The melancholy richness of the rolling quatrain +with its unicorn rhymes, the quaint mixture of farce and solemnity, +passion and playfulness, the abundance of the imagery, the power of the +thought, the seduction of the rhetoric, make the poem actually, though +not original or English, one of the greatest of English poems. + +Of the periodical too, if not entirely, was Richard Harris Barham, +"Thomas Ingoldsby," the author of the most popular book of light verse +that ever issued from the press. His one novel, _My Cousin Nicholas_, +was written for _Blackwood_; the immortal _Ingoldsby Legends_ appeared +in _Bentley_ and _Colburn_. Born at Canterbury in 1788, of a family +possessed of landed property, though not of much, and educated at St. +Paul's School and Brasenose College, Barham took orders, and, working +with thorough conscience as a clergyman, despite his light literature, +became a minor canon in St. Paul's Cathedral. He died in 1845. Hardly +any book is more widely known than the collected _Ingoldsby Legends_, +which originally appeared in the last eight years of their author's +life. Very recently they have met with a little priggish depreciation, +the natural and indeed inevitable result, first of a certain change in +speech and manners, and then of their long and vast popularity. Nor +would any one contend that they are exactly great literature. But for +inexhaustible fun that never gets flat and scarcely ever simply +uproarious, for a facility and felicity in rhyme and rhythm which is +almost miraculous, and for a blending of the grotesque and the terrible +which, if less _fine_ than Praed's or Hood's, is only inferior to +theirs--no one competent to judge and enjoy will ever go to Barham in +vain. + +The same difficulty which beset us at the end of the last chapter recurs +here, the difficulty arising from the existence of large numbers of +persons of the third or lower ranks whose inclusion may be desired or +their exclusion resented. At the head, or near it, of this class stand +such figures as that of Douglas Jerrold, a sort of very inferior Hook on +the other side of politics, with a dash (also very inferior) of Hood, +whose _Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures_ and similar things were very +popular at and a little before the middle of the century, but whose +permanent literary value is of the smallest, if indeed it can be said to +exist. But of these--not a few of them more worthy if less prominent in +their day than Jerrold--there could be no end; and there would be little +profit in trying to reach any. The successful "contributor," by the laws +of the case, climbs on the shoulders of his less successful mates even +more than elsewhere; and the very impetus which lands him on the height +rejects them into the depths. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY + + +After the brilliant group of historians whose work illustrated the close +of the period covered by the preceding volume, it was some time before a +historical writer of the first rank again appeared in England; and there +were reasons for this. Not that, as in the case of purely creative +literature, in prose as in verse, there is any natural or actual lull +between different successive periods in this case; on the contrary the +writing of history is more likely to be stimulated by example, and +requires rather the utmost talent than positive genius, except in those +rare cases which, as in other departments, are not to be accounted for, +either in their presence or in their absence, by observation or +inference. But in the first place the greatest minds of the first +generation of which we have to take account, who were born about the +beginning of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, were, partly +by time and partly by chance, directed for the most part either into +poetry, or into politics, or into active life; and the five and twenty +years of the Revolutionary War in which they passed their manhood were +more likely to provide materials for history, than history itself. + +Yet history, after the example given by Hume, by Robertson, and above +all by Gibbon, was not at all likely to cease, nor did some men of great +talents in other ways fail to betake themselves to it. Godwin was a +historian, and, considering his strong prejudices, the unkindness of +fortune (for history demands leisure almost as much as poetry), and some +defects of knowledge, not a contemptible historian in his way. +Mackintosh, intended for a philosopher, was a historian. Southey was a +very considerable historian, and master of one of the most admirable +historical styles on record. But he was signally unfortunate in having +that work of his which should have been most popular, the _History of +the Peninsular War_, pitted against another by a younger man of +professional competence, of actual experience, and of brilliant literary +powers, Sir William Napier (1786-1860). The literary value of these two +histories is more even than a generation which probably reads neither +much and has almost forgotten Southey is apt to imagine; and though +there is no doubt that the Poet Laureate was strongly prejudiced on the +Tory side, his competitor was even more partial and biassed against that +side. But the difference between the two books is the difference between +a task admirably performed, and performed to a certain extent _con +amore_, by a skilled practitioner in task-work, and the special effort +of one who was at once an enthusiast and an expert in his subject. It is +customary to call _Napier's History of the Peninsular War_ "the finest +military history in the English language," and so, perhaps, it is. The +famous description of the Battle of Albuera is only one of many showing +eloquence without any mere fine writing, and with the knowledge of the +soldier covering the artist's exaggeration. + +Moore, Campbell, Scott himself, were all, as has been previously +recorded in the notices of their proper work, historians by trade, +though hardly, even to the extent to which Southey was, historians by +craft. But an exception must be made for the exquisite _Tales of a +Grandfather_, in which Sir Walter, without perhaps a very strict +application of historical criticism, applied his creative powers, +refreshed in their decay by combined affection for the subject and for +the presumed auditor, to fashioning the traditional history of old +Scotland into one of the most delightful narratives of any language or +time. But Henry Hallam, a contemporary of these men (1778-1859), unlike +them lives as a historian only, or as a historian and literary +critic--occupations so frequently combined during the present century +that perhaps an apology is due for the presentation of some writers +under the general head of one class rather than under that of the other. +Hallam, the son of a Dean of Bristol, educated at Eton and Christ +Church, an early _Edinburgh_ reviewer, and an honoured pundit and +champion of the Whig party, possessing also great literary tastes, much +industry, and considerable faculty both of judging and writing, united +almost all the qualifications for a high reputation; while his +abstinence from public affairs, and from participation in the violent +half-personal, half-political squabbles which were common among the +literary men of his day, freed him from most of the disadvantages, while +retaining for him all the advantages, of party connections. Early, too, +he obtained a post in the Civil Service (a Commissionership of Audit), +which gave him a comfortable subsistence while leaving him plenty of +leisure. For thirty years, between 1818 and 1848, he produced a series +of books on political and literary history which at once attained a very +high reputation, and can hardly be said to have yet lost it. These were +a _View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages_, published in the +first, and supplemented by a volume of notes and corrections in the +last, of the years just mentioned; a _Constitutional History of England_ +from Henry VII. to George II. (1827); and an _Introduction to the +Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth +Centuries_ (1837-39). + +The value of Hallam as a political and as a literary historian is by no +means the same. In the former capacity he was perhaps too much +influenced by that artificial and rather curious ideal of politics which +distinguished the Whig party of the later eighteenth century, which was +exaggerated, celebrated brilliantly, and perhaps buried by his pupil and +younger contemporary, Macaulay, and which practically erects the result +of a coincidence of accidents in English history into a permanent and +rationally defensible form of government, comparable with and preferable +to the earlier and unchanging forms of monarchy, aristocracy, and +democracy with their sub-varieties. A certain coldness and sluggishness +of temperament and sympathy also marred this part of Hallam's work, +though less mischievously than elsewhere. But to balance these drawbacks +handsomely in his favour, he possessed an industry which, immense as +have been the pains spent on his subjects since he wrote, leaves him in +possession of a very fair part of the field as a still trustworthy +authority; a mind, on the whole, judicial and fair; and an excellently +clear and scholarly if not exactly brilliant or engaging style. + +As a literary historian and critic Hallam deserves, except on the score +of industry and width of reading, rather less praise; and his dicta, +once quoted with veneration even by good authorities, and borrowed, with +or without acknowledgment, by nearly all second-hand writers, are being +more and more neglected by both. Nor is this unjust, for Hallam, though +possessed, as has been said, of sound and wide scholarship, and of a +taste fairly trustworthy in accepted and recognised matters, was too apt +to be at a loss when confronted with an abnormal or eccentric literary +personality, shared far too much the hide-bound narrowness of the rules +which guided his friend Jeffrey, lacked the enthusiasm which not seldom +melted Jeffrey's chains of ice, and was constantly apt to intrude into +the court of literary judgments, methods, procedures, and codes of law +which have no business there. + +Many other estimable, and some excellent writers fill up the space of +fifty years, which may be described best, both for remembrance and for +accuracy, as the space between Gibbon and Carlyle. William Roscoe, who +was born as far back as 1753 and did not die till 1831, was the son of a +market-gardener near Liverpool, and had few advantages of education, but +became an attorney, attached himself strenuously to literature, +especially Italian literature, and in 1796 published his _Life of +Lorenzo de Medici_, which, after finishing it, he followed up nine years +later with the _Life of Leo the Tenth_. Both obtained not merely an +English but a continental reputation, both became in a manner classics, +and both retain value to this day, though the Italian Renaissance has +been a specially favourite subject of modern inquiry. Roscoe was a +violent Whig, and not a very dispassionate student in some respects; but +he wrote well, and he is an early example of the diffusion of the +historic spirit proper, in which Gibbon had at once set the example and, +with some lapses, attained nearly to perfection. + +William Mitford (1744-1827) was even an older man than Roscoe, and +belonged to a slightly less modern school of history-writing. He was a +man of means, a friend of Gibbon, his fellow-officer in the militia, and +like him a strong Tory, though unlike him he could not keep his politics +out of his history. Although Mitford's hatred of democracy, whether +well- or ill-founded, makes him sometimes unfair, and though his +_History of Greece_ contains some blunders, it is on the whole rather a +pity that it should have been superseded to the extent to which it +actually has been by those of Grote and Thirlwall. For it is not more +prejudiced and much better written than Grote's, while it has greater +liveliness and zest than the Bishop's. It occupied more than thirty +years in publication, the first volume appearing in 1784, the last in +1818. + +While Roscoe and Mitford were thus dealing with foreign and ancient +subjects, English history became the theme of a somewhat younger pair of +historians, one of whom, Sharon Turner, was born in 1768 and died in +1847; while John Lingard, born three years later, outlived Turner by +four. Lingard was a Roman Catholic priest, and after being educated at +Douai, divided most of his time between pastoral work and teaching at +the newly founded Roman Catholic school of Ushaw. He was the author of +what still retains the credit of being the best history of England on +the great scale, in point of the union of accuracy, skilful arrangement, +fairness (despite his inevitable prepossessions), and competent literary +form,--no mean credit for a member of an unpopular minority to have +attained in a century of the most active historical investigation. +Turner was more of a specialist and particularist, and his style is not +very estimable. He wrote many books on English history, those on the +later periods being of little value. But his _History of the +Anglo-Saxons_, first issued in 1799, was based on thorough research, and +may be said to have for the first time rescued the period of origins of +English history from the discreditable condition of perfunctory, +traditional, and second- or third-hand treatment in which most, if not +all, previous historians of England had been content to leave it. + +Sir Francis Palgrave, another historian to whom the student of early +English history is deeply indebted, was born in London in 1788, his +paternal name being Cohen. He took to the law, and early devoted himself +both within and outside his profession to genealogical and antiquarian +research. Before much attention had been paid in France itself to Old +French, he published a collection of Anglo-Norman poems in 1818, and +from these studies he passed to that of English history as such. He was +knighted in 1832, and made Deputy-Keeper of the Records in 1838; his +tenure of this post being only terminated by his death in 1861. Palgrave +edited many State documents (writs, calendars, rolls, and so forth), and +in his last years executed a _History of Normandy and England_ of great +value. His considerable literary power became more considerable still in +two of his sons: the eldest, for some time past Professor of Poetry at +Oxford, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, being still alive, and therefore merely to +be mentioned; while the second, William Gifford, who was born in 1826 +and died in 1888, Minister at Monte Video, was a man of the most +brilliant talents and the most varied career. He was a soldier, a +Jesuit, a traveller in the most forbidden parts of Arabia at the expense +of a foreign country, and for nearly a quarter of a century a member of +the consular and diplomatic service of his own. His _Narrative_ of his +Arabian journey, his _Dutch Guiana_, and some remarkable poems are only +a few of his works, all of which have strong character. + +Nearly contemporary with these was Dr. Thomas M'Crie (1772-1835), whose +_Lives of Knox_ (1812) and _Melville_ (1819) entitle him to something +like the title of Historian of Scotch Presbyterianism in its militant +period. M'Crie, who was styled by Hallam (a person not given to +nicknames), "the Protestant Hildebrand," was a worthy and learned man of +untiring industry, and his subjects so intimately concern not merely +Scottish but British history for nearly two centuries, that his handling +of them could not but be important. But he was desperately prejudiced, +and his furious attack on Sir Walter Scott's _Old Mortality_, by which +he is perhaps known to more persons than by his own far from +uninteresting works, argues a crass deficiency in intellectual and +ęsthetic comprehension. + +The tenth decade of the eighteenth century was as much a decade of +historians as the eighth had been a decade of poets; and with Milman and +Tytler born in 1791, Alison in 1792, Grote in 1794, Arnold and Carlyle +in 1795, Thirlwall in 1797, and Macaulay in 1800, it may probably +challenge comparison with any period of equal length. The batch falls +into three pretty distinct classes, and the individual members of it are +also pretty widely separated in importance, so that it may be more +convenient to discuss them in the inverse order of their merit rather +than in the direct order of their births. + +Patrick Fraser Tytler, son and grandson of historians (his grandfather +William being the first and not the worst champion of Queen Mary against +the somewhat Philistine estimates of Hume and Robertson, and his father +Alexander a Professor of History, a Scotch Judge, and an excellent +writer in various kinds of _belles lettres_), was a man of the finest +character, the friend of most of the great men of letters at Edinburgh +in the age of Scott and Jeffrey, and the author of an excellent _History +of Scotland_ from Alexander the Third to the Union of the Crowns. He was +born in 1791, was called to the Scotch Bar in 1813, and died young for a +historian (a class which has so much to do with Time that he is apt to +be merciful to it) in 1849. He was perhaps hardly a man of genius, but +he commanded universal respect. Sir Archibald Alison was the son of a +clergyman of the same name, who, after taking orders in England and +holding some benefices there, became known as the author of _Essays on +the Principles of Taste_, which possess a good deal of formal and some +real merit. Archibald the younger was highly distinguished at the +University of Edinburgh, was called to the Scotch Bar, and distinguished +himself there also, being ultimately appointed Sheriff of Lanarkshire. +Like most of the brighter wits among his immediate contemporaries in +Scotland (we have the indisputable testimony of Jeffrey to the fact) +Alison was an out-and-out Tory, and a constant contributor to +_Blackwood_, while his literary activity took very numerous shapes. At +last he began, and in the twenty years from 1839 to 1859 carried +through, a _History of Europe during the French Revolution_, completed +by one of _Europe from the Fall of the First to the Accession of the +Third Napoleon_. He died in 1867. It was rather unfortunate for Alison +that he did not undertake this great work until the period of Liberal +triumph which marked the middle decades of the century had well set in. +It was still more unlucky, and it could less be set down to the +operations of unkind chance, that in many of the qualifications of the +writer in general, and the historical writer in particular, he was +deficient. He had energy and industry; he was much less inaccurate than +it was long the fashion to represent him; a high sense of patriotism and +the political virtues generally, a very fair faculty of judging +evidence, and a thorough interest in his subject were his. But his book +was most unfortunately diffuse, earning its author the _sobriquet_ of +"Mr. Wordy," and it was conspicuously lacking in grasp, both in the +marshalling of events and in the depicting of characters. Critics, even +when they sympathised, have never liked it; but contrary to the wont of +very lengthy histories, it found considerable favour with the public, +who, as the French gibe has it, were not "hampered by the style," and +who probably found in the popular explanation of a great series of +important and interesting affairs all that they cared for. Nor is it +unlikely that this popularity rather exaggerated the ill-will of the +critics themselves. Alison is not quotable; he is, even after youth, +read with no small difficulty; but it would be no bad thing if other +periods of history had been treated in his manner and spirit. + +Henry Hart Milman belongs to very much the same class of historian as +Hallam, but unlike Hallam he was a poet, and, though a Broad Churchman +of the days before the nickname was given, more of an adherent to the +imaginative and traditional side of things. His father was a King's +Physician, and he was educated at Eton and Brasenose. He obtained the +Newdigate, and after bringing out his best play _Fazio_ (of which more +will be said later), took orders and received the vicarage of St. +Mary's, Reading. Some poems of merit in the second class, including some +hymns very nearly in the first, followed, and in 1821 he became +Professor of Poetry at Oxford, where six years later he was Bampton +Lecturer. It was in 1829 that Milman, who had been a frequent +contributor to the _Quarterly Review_, began the series of his works on +ecclesiastical history with the _History of the Jews_, the weakest of +them (for Milman was not a very great Hebraist, and while endeavouring +to avoid rigid orthodoxy did not satisfy the demands of the newer +heterodox criticism). The _History of Christianity to the Abolition of +Paganism_ was better (1840), and the _History of Latin Christianity_ +(1854) better still. This last indeed, based on an erudition which +enabled Milman to re-edit Gibbon with advantage, is a great book, and +will probably live. For Milman here really _knew_; he had (like most +poets who write prose with fair practice) an excellent style; and he was +able--as many men who have had knowledge have not been able, and as many +who have had style have not tried or have failed to do--to rise to the +height of a really great argument, and treat it with the grasp and ease +which are the soul of history. That he owed much to Gibbon himself is +certain; that he did not fail to use his pupilage to that greatest of +historians so as to rank among the best of his followers is not less +certain, and is high enough praise for any man. He received the Deanery +of St. Paul's in 1849, and held it till his death in 1868, having +worthily sustained the glory of this the most literary of all great +preferments in the Church of England by tradition, and having earned +among English ecclesiastical historians a place like that of Napier +among their military comrades. + +Hallam and Milman were both, as has been said, Oxford men, and the +unmistakable impress of that University was on both, though less on +Hallam than on Milman. It is all the more interesting that their chief +historical contemporaries of the same class were, the one a Cambridge +man, and one of the most distinguished, the other not a University man +at all. Both Grote and Thirlwall, as it happens, were educated at the +same public school, Charterhouse. George Grote, the elder of them, born +in 1794, was the son of a banker, and himself carried on that business +for many years of his life. He was an extreme Liberal, or as it then +began to be called, Radical, and a chief of the Philosophical Radicals +of his time--persons who followed Bentham and the elder Mill. He was +elected member for the City in the first Reform Parliament and held the +seat for nine years; though if he had not retired he would probably have +been turned out. Leaving Parliament in 1841, he left business two years +later, and gave himself up to his _History of Greece_, which was +published in the ten years between 1846 and 1856. He died in 1871, and +was buried in Westminster Abbey. So was, four years later, his +school-fellow, fellow-historian of Greece, and junior by three years, +Connop Thirlwall. Thirlwall was one of the rare examples of +extraordinary infant precocity (he could read Latin at three and Greek +at four) who have been great scholars and men of distinction in after +life, and to a ripe age. He was of a Northumbrian family, but was born +at Stepney. From Charterhouse he went rather early (in 1814) to Trinity +College, Cambridge, where he had almost the most brilliant undergraduate +career on record, and duly gained his fellowship. He entered Lincoln's +Inn, was actually called to the Bar, but preferred the Church, and took +orders in his thirtieth year. He had already shown a strong leaning to +theology, and had translated Schleiermacher. He now returned to +Cambridge, taking both tutorial work and cure of souls; but in 1834 his +Liberal views attracted the disfavour of Christopher Wordsworth, Master +of Trinity, and Thirlwall, resigning his tutorship, was consoled by +Brougham with a Yorkshire living. Nor was this long his only preferment, +for the Whigs were not too well off for clergymen who united +scholarship, character, and piety, and he was made Bishop of St. David's +in 1840. He held the see for thirty-four years, working untiringly, +earning justly (though his orthodoxy was of a somewhat Broad character, +and he could reconcile his conscience to voting for the disestablishment +of the Irish Church) the character of one of the most exemplary bishops +of the century, and seldom dining without a cat on his shoulder. + +Thirlwall wrote many Charges, some of them famous, some delightful +letters, part of a translation of Niebuhr, and some essays, while Grote, +besides his historical work, produced some political and other work +before it, with a large but not very good book on Plato, and the +beginning of another on Aristotle after it. But it is by their +_Histories of Greece_ that they must live in literature. These histories +(of which Grote's was planned and begun as early as 1823, though not +completed till long afterwards, while Thirlwall's began to appear in +1835, and was finished just after Grote's saw the light) were both +written with a certain general similarity of point of view as antidotes +to Mitford, and as putting the Liberal view of the ever memorable and +ever typical history of the Greek states. But in other respects they +diverge widely; and it has been a constant source of regret to scholars +that the more popular, and as the French would say _tapageur_, of the +two, to a considerable extent eclipsed the solid worth and the excellent +form of Thirlwall. Grote's history displays immense painstaking and no +inconsiderable scholarship, though it is very nearly as much a "party +pamphlet" as Macaulay's own, the advocate's client being in this case +not merely the Athenian democracy but even the Athenian demagogue. Yet +it to a great extent redeems this by the vivid way in which it makes the +subject alive, and turns Herodotus and Thucydides, Demosthenes and +Xenophon, from dead texts and school-books into theses of eager and +stimulating interest. But it has absolutely no style; its scale is much +too great; the endless discussions and arguments on quite minor points +tend to throw the whole out of focus, and to disaccustom the student's +eye and mind to impartial and judicial handling; and the reader +constantly sighs for the placid Olympian grasp of Gibbon, nay, even for +the confident dogmatism of Macaulay himself, instead of the perpetual +singlestick of argument which clatters and flourishes away to the utter +discomposure of the dignity of the Historic Muse. + +It is possible, on the other hand, that Thirlwall may have sacrificed a +little too much, considering his age and its demands, to mere +dispassionate dignity. He is seldom picturesque, and indeed he never +tries to be so. But to a scholarship naturally far superior to Grote's, +he united a much fairer and more judicial mind, and the faculty of +writing--instead of loose stuff not exactly ungrammatical nor always +uncomely, but entirely devoid of any grace of style--an excellent kind +of classical English, but slightly changed from the best eighteenth +century models. And he had what Grote lacked, the gift of seeing that +the historian need not--nay, that he ought not to--parade every detail +of the arguments by which he has reached his conclusions; but should +state those conclusions themselves, reserving himself for occasional +emergencies in which process as well as result may be properly +exhibited. It is fair to say, in putting this curious pair forward as +examples respectively of the popular and scholarly methods of historical +writing, that Grote's learning and industry were very much more than +popular, while Thirlwall's sense and style might with advantage have put +on, now and then, a little more pomp and circumstance. But still the +contrast holds; and until fresh discoveries like that of the _Athenian +Polity_ accumulate to an extent which calls for and obtains a new real +historian of Greece, it is Thirlwall and not Grote who deserves the +first rank as such in English. + +Intimately connected with all these historians in time and style, but +having over them the temporary advantage of being famous in another way, +and the, as some think, permanent disadvantage of falling prematurely +out of public favour, was Thomas Arnold. He was born at Cowes, in the +Isle of Wight, on 13th June 1795, and was educated at Winchester and at +Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At the age of twenty he was elected a +fellow of Oriel--a distinction which was, and remained for two decades, +almost the highest in the University--and he gained both Chancellor's +Essay prizes, for Latin and English. Oriel was not in his time, as it +was very shortly afterwards, a centre of ecclesiastical orthodoxy; but +rather the home of a curious transition blend of thought which in +different persons took the high-and-dry or the Rationalist direction, +and was only generally opposed to Evangelicalism. Arnold himself +inclined to the Liberal side, and had also strong personal gifts for +teaching. He took orders, but neither became a tutor nor took a living, +and established himself at Laleham, on the Thames, to take private +pupils. After ten years' practice here he was elected to the +Head-mastership of Rugby, a school then, after vicissitudes, holding +little if anything more than a medium place among those English Grammar +Schools which ranked below the great schools of Eton, Harrow, +Westminster, Winchester, and Charterhouse. How he succeeded in placing +it on something like an equality with these, and how on the other hand +he became, as it were, the apostle of the infant Broad Church School +which held aloof alike from Evangelicals and Tractarians, are points +which do not directly concern us. His more than indirect influence on +literature was great; for few schools have contributed to it, in the +same time, a greater number of famous writers than Rugby did under his +head-mastership. His direct connection with it was limited to a fair +number of miscellaneous works, many sermons, an edition of Thucydides, +and a _History of Rome_ which did not proceed (owing to his death in +1842, just after he had been appointed Regius Professor of Modern +History at Oxford) beyond the Second Punic War. Arnold, once perhaps +injudiciously extolled by adoring pupils, and the defender of a theory +of churchmanship which strains rather to the uttermost the principle of +unorthodox economy, has rather sunk between the undying disapproval of +the orthodox and the fact that the unorthodox have long left his +standpoint. But his style is undoubtedly of its own kind scholarly and +excellent; the matter of his history suffers from the common fault of +taking Niebuhr at too high a valuation. + +Thomas Babington Macaulay (who may be conveniently discussed before +Carlyle, though he was Carlyle's junior by five years, inasmuch as, even +putting relative critical estimate aside, he died much earlier and +represented on the whole an older style of thought) was born at Rothley +Temple in Leicestershire on 25th October 1800. His father, Zachary +Macaulay, though a very active agitator against the Slave Trade, was a +strong Tory; and the son's conversion to Whig opinions was effected at +some not clearly ascertained period after he had reached manhood. A very +precocious child, he was at first privately educated, but entered +Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of eighteen. Here he fell in with +a set somewhat but not much less distinguished than that of the famous +time, about ten years later, of which Tennyson was the centre--a set the +most brilliant member of which, besides Macaulay, was the poet Praed. +Praed had been accustomed to journalism before he left Eton, and had +made acquaintance at Windsor with the bookseller Knight, for whose +_Quarterly Magazine_ both he and Macaulay wrote some very good things. +Macaulay himself obtained the Chancellor's prize for English poems on +"Pompeii" and "Evening," in two successive years 1819 and 1820; and +after a very distinguished undergraduate career was elected fellow of +his college. He went to the Bar, and his father's fortune, which had +been a good one, being lost, his chances were for a time uncertain. In +1825, however, he won the admiration of Jeffrey and a place on the +_Edinburgh Review_ by his well-known, and slightly gaudy, but +wonderfully fresh and stimulating article on Milton; and literature, +which had always been his ideal employment, seemed already likely to +yield him a fair subsistence--for review-writing was at that time much +more highly paid than it is at present. Moreover the Whigs, on the eve +of their long postponed triumph, were looking out for young men of +talent; and Macaulay, being recruited by them, was put into Lord +Lansdowne's pocket-borough of Calne. In the Reform debates themselves he +distinguished himself greatly, and after the Bill was carried, having +been elected for Leeds, he was not long in receiving his reward. It was +munificent, for he, a man of little more than thirty, who had made no +reputation at the Bar, though much elsewhere, was appointed Legal Member +of Council in India with a salary very much of which could in those days +be saved by a careful man, especially if, like Macaulay, he was +unmarried. Accordingly when, after between four and five years' stay, +Macaulay in 1838 returned home, he was in possession of means sufficient +to enable him to devote himself without fear or hindrance to literary +and political pursuits, while his fame had been raised higher during his +absence by his contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_. Indeed his +Indian experiences furnished the information--erroneous in some cases +and partisan in others, but brilliantly used--enabling him to write the +famous essays on Clive and on Hastings, where his historical method is +at almost its best. He was elected member for Edinburgh, a very high +compliment, in 1839; and next year became Secretary for War. In 1842 and +1843 respectively he established his position in verse and prose by +publishing the _Lays of Ancient Rome_ and a collection of his _Essays_; +and in 1846 he was made Postmaster-General. But his support of the +Maynooth Grant offended the Protestantism of his constituents, and he +lost his seat, and for the time his political opportunities, in 1847. +The disaster was no disaster for literature: he had long been employed +on a _History of England from the Accession of James II._, and being now +able to devote his whole time to it, he published the first volumes in +1848 with astonishing success. + +He was re-elected for Edinburgh in 1852, published the third and fourth +volumes of his History in 1855 with success greater in pecuniary ways +and otherwise than even that of their forerunners, was raised to the +Upper House as Lord Macaulay of Rothley in 1857, and died two years +later, on 28th December 1859, of heart disease. Some personal +peculiarities of Macaulay's--his extraordinary reading and memory, his +brilliant but rather tyrannical conversation, his undoubting +self-confidence--were pretty well known in his lifetime, and did not +always create a prejudice in his favour. But a great revolution in this +respect was brought about by the _Life_ of him, produced a good many +years later by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan--a Life, standing for +the interest of its matter and the skill and taste of its manner, not +too far below the masterpieces of Boswell and Lockhart. + +The literary personality of Macaulay, though a great one in all +respects, is neither complex nor unequally present, and it is therefore +desirable to discuss all its manifestations together. In the order of +importance and of bulk his work may be divided into verse, prose-essays, +and history, for his speeches less directly concern us, and are very +little more than essays adroitly enough adjusted so as not to be tedious +to the hearer. In all three capacities he was eminently popular; and in +all three his popularity has brought with it a sort of reaction, partly +justified, partly unjust. The worst brunt of this reaction has fallen +upon his verse, the capital division of which, the _Lays of Ancient +Rome_, was persistently decried by Mr. Matthew Arnold, the critic of +most authority in the generation immediately succeeding Macaulay's. A +poet of the very highest class Macaulay was not; his way of thought was +too positive, too clear, too destitute either of mystery or of dream, to +command or to impart the true poetical mirage, to "make the common as if +it were not common." His best efforts of this kind are in small and not +very generally known things, the "Jacobite's Epitaph," "The Last +Buccaneer." But his ballads earlier and later, _Ivry_, _The Armada_, +_Naseby_, and the Roman quartet, exhibit the result of a consummate +literary faculty with a real native gift for rhythm and metre, applying +the lessons of the great Romantic generation with extraordinary vigour +and success, and not without considerable eloquence and refinement. It +is a gross and vulgar critical error to deem Macaulay's poetical effects +vulgar or gross. They are _popular_; they hit exactly that scheme of +poetry which the general ear can appreciate and the general brain +understand. They are coin for general circulation; but they are not base +coin. Hundreds and thousands of immature and 'prentice tastes have been +educated to the enjoyment of better things by them; thousands and tens +of thousands of tastes, respectable at least, have found in them the +kind of poetry which they can like, and beyond which they are not fitted +to go. And it would be a very great pity if there were ever wanting +critical appreciations which, while relishing things more exquisite and +understanding things more esoteric, can still taste and savour the +simple genuine fare of poetry which Macaulay offers. There are few wiser +proverbs than that which cautions us against demanding "better bread +than is made of wheat," and the poetical bread of the _Lays of Ancient +Rome_ is an honest household loaf that no healthy palate will reject. + +In the second division, that of essay writing, Macaulay occupies a +position both absolutely and relatively higher. That the best verse +ranks above even the best prose is not easily disputable; that prose +which is among the very best of its own particular kind ranks above +verse which though good is not the best, may be asserted without any +fear. And in their own kind of essay, Macaulay's are quite supreme. +Jeffrey, a master of writing and a still greater master of editing, with +more than twenty years' practice in criticism, asked him "where he got +that style?" The question was not entirely unanswerable. Macaulay had +taken not a little from Gibbon; he had taken something from a then still +living contributor of Jeffrey's own, Hazlitt. But his private and +personal note was after all uppermost in the compound. It had appeared +early (it can be seen in things of his written when he was an +undergraduate). It owed much to the general atmosphere of the century, +to the habit of drawing phrase, illustration, idea, not merely from the +vernacular or from classical authorities, but from the great writers of +earlier European literature. And it would probably have been impossible +without the considerable body of forerunners which the _Edinburgh_, the +_Quarterly_, and other things of which some notice has been given in a +former chapter, had supplied. But still the individual character reigns +supreme. + +Macaulay's Essays are in something more than the ordinary loose +acceptation of the term a household word; and it cannot be necessary to +single out individual instances where almost all are famous, and where +all deserve their fame. The "Milton" and the "Southey," the "Pitt" and +the "Chatham," the "Addison" and the "Horace Walpole," the "Clive" and +the "Hastings," the "Frederick the Great" and the "Madame D'Arblay," the +"Restoration Dramatists" and the "Boswell," the "Hallam" and the +"Ranke," present with a marvellous consistency the same merits and the +same defects. The defects are serious enough. In the first place the +system, which Macaulay did not invent, but which he carried to +perfection, of regarding the particular book in hand less as a subject +of elaborate and minute criticism and exposition than as a mere +starting-point from which to pursue the critic's own views of the +subject, inevitably leads to unfairness, especially in matters of pure +literature. Macaulay's most famous performance in this latter kind, the +crushing review of the unlucky Robert Montgomery, though well enough +deserved in the particular case, escapes this condemnation only to fall +under another, that of looking at the parts rather than at the whole. It +is quite certain that, given their plan, the two famous critiques of +Tennyson and Keats, in the _Quarterly_ and in _Blackwood_, are well +enough justified. The critic looks only at the weak parts, and he judges +the weak parts only by the stop-watch. But, on his own wide and more +apparently generous method, Macaulay was exposed to equal dangers, and +succumbed to them less excusably. He had strong prejudices, and it is +impossible for any one who reads him with knowledge not to see that the +vindication of those prejudices, rather than the exposition and +valuation of the subject, was what he had first at heart. He was too +well informed (though, especially in the Indian Essays, he was sometimes +led astray by his authorities), and he was too honest a man, to be +untrustworthy in positive statement. But though he practised little in +the courts, he had the born advocate's gift, or drawback, of inclination +to _suppressio veri_ and _suggestio falsi_, and he has a heavy account +to make up under these heads. Even under them perhaps he has less to +answer for than on the charge of a general superficiality and +shallowness, which is all the more dangerous because of the apparently +transparent thoroughness of his handling, and because of the actual +clearness and force with which he both sees and puts his view. For a +first draft of a subject Macaulay is incomparable, if his readers will +only be content to take it for a first draft, and to feel that they must +fill up and verify, that they must deepen and widen. But the heights and +depths of the subject he never gives, and perhaps he never saw them. + +Part of this is no doubt to be set down to the quality of his style; +part to a weakness of his, which was not so much readiness to accept any +conclusion that was convenient as a constitutional incapacity for not +making up his mind. To leave a thing in half lights, in compromise, to +take it, as the legal phrase of the country of his ancestors has it, _ad +avizandum_, was to Macaulay abhorrent and impossible. He must +"conclude," and he was rather too apt to do so by "quailing, crushing, +and quelling" all difficulties of opposing arguments and qualifications. +He simply would not have an unsolved problem mystery. Strafford was a +"rancorous renegade"; Swift a sort of gifted Judas; Bacon a mean fellow +with a great intellect; Dryden again a renegade, though not rancorous; +Marlborough a self-seeking traitor of genius. And all these conclusions +were enforced in their own style--the style of _l'homme mźme_. It was +rather teasingly antithetical, "Tom's snip-snap" as the jealous +smartness of Brougham called it; it was somewhat mechanical in its +arrangement of narrative, set passages of finer writing, cunningly +devised summaries of facts, comparisons, contrasts (to show the +writer's learning and dazzle the reader with names), exordium, +iteration, peroration, and so forth. But it observed a very high +standard of classical English, a little intolerant of neologism, but not +stiff nor jejune. It had an almost unexampled--a certainly +unsurpassed--power (slightly helped by repetition perhaps) of bringing +the picture that the writer saw, the argument that he thought, the +sentiment that he felt, before the reader's eyes, mind, and feeling. +And, as indeed follows from this, it was pre-eminently clear. It is +perhaps the clearest style in English that does not, like those of Swift +and Cobbett, deliberately or scornfully eschew rhetorical ornament. What +Macaulay means you never, being any degree short of an idiot, can fail +to understand; and yet he gives you the sense, equipped with a very +considerable amount of preparation and trimming. It would not merely +have been ungrateful, it would have been positively wrong, if his +audience, specially trained as most of them were to his standpoint of +Whig Reformer, had failed to hail him as one of the greatest writers +that had ever been known. Nor would it be much less wrong if judges very +differently equipped and constituted were to refuse him a high place +among great writers. + +The characteristics of the _Essays_ reproduce themselves on a magnified +scale so exactly in the _History_ that the foregoing criticism applies +with absolute fidelity to the later and larger, as well as to the +earlier and more minute work. But it would not be quite fair to say that +no new merits appear. There are no new defects; though the difference of +the scope and character of the undertaking intensifies in degree, as +well as magnifies in bulk, the faults of advocacy and of partiality +which have caused the book to be dismissed, with a flippancy only too +well deserved by its own treatment of opponents, as "a Whig pamphlet in +four octavo volumes." Yet the width of study and the grasp of results, +which, though remarkable, were not exactly extraordinary, in the compass +and employed on the subject of a _Review_ article, became altogether +amazing and little short of miraculous in this enlarged field. One of +the earliest and one of the best passages, the view of the state of +England at the death of Charles the Second, may challenge comparison, as +a clearly arranged and perfectly mastered collection of innumerable +minute facts sifted out of a thousand different sources, with anything +in history ancient or modern. The scale of the book is undoubtedly too +great; and if it had been carried, as the author originally intended, to +a date "within the memory of" his contemporaries, it would have required +the life of Old Parr to complete it and the patience of Job to read it +through. The necessity of a hero is a necessity felt by all the nobler +sort of writers. But the choice of William of Orange for the purpose +was, to say the least, unlucky; and the low morality which he had +himself, in an earlier work, confessed as to the statesmen of the period +imparted an additional stimulus to the historian's natural tendency to +be unfair to his political opponents, in the vain hope, by deepening the +blacks, to get a sort of whiteness upon the grays. It has further to be +confessed that independent examination of separate points is not very +favourable to Macaulay's trustworthiness. He never tells a falsehood; +but he not seldom contrives to convey one, and he constantly conceals +the truth. Still, the general picture is so vivid and stimulating, the +mastery of materials is so consummate, and the beauty of occasional +passages--the story of Monmouth's Conspiracy, that of James' insane +persecution of Magdalen College, that of the Trial of the Seven Bishops, +that of the Siege of Londonderry--so seductive, that the most hostile +criticism which is not prepared to shut eyes and ears to anything but +faults cannot refuse admiration. And it ought not to be omitted that +Macaulay was practically the first historian who not merely examined the +literature of his subject with unfailing care and attention, but took +the trouble to inspect the actual places with the zeal of a topographer +or an antiquary. That this added greatly to the vividness and +picturesque character of his descriptions need hardly be said; that it +often resulted in a distinct gain to historical knowledge is certain. +But perhaps not its least merit was the putting down in a practically +imperishable form, and in the clearest possible manner, of a vast number +of interesting details which time is only too quick to sweep away. The +face of England has changed more since Macaulay's time, though a bare +generation since, than it had changed in the four or five generations +between the day of his theme and his own; and thus he rescued for us at +once the present and the past. + +It is almost impossible to imagine a greater contrast between two +contemporaries of the same nation, both men of letters of the first +rank, than that which exists between Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle. +In the subjects to which both had affinity there was a rather remarkable +connection. Macaulay's education rather than his sympathies made him +something of a master of at least the formal part of poetry, in which +Carlyle could do nothing. But essentially they were both writers of +prose; they were both men in whom the historico-politico-social +interests were much greater than the purely literary, the purely +artistic, or the purely scientific--though just as Carlyle was a bad +verse-writer or none at all, Macaulay a good one, so Carlyle was a good +mathematician, Macaulay a bad one or none at all. But in the point of +view from which they regarded the subjects with which they dealt, and in +the style in which they treated them, they were poles asunder. Indeed it +may be questioned whether "the style is the point of view" would not be +a better form of the famous deliverance than that which, in full or +truncated form, has obtained currency. + +Carlyle was born on the 4th December 1795 at Ecclefechan (the Entepfuhl +of the _Sartor_), in Dumfriesshire, being the son of a stone-mason. He +was educated first at the parish school, then at that of Annan (the +nearest town), and was about fifteen when he was sent, in the usual way +of Scotch boys with some wits and no money, to the University of +Edinburgh. His destination was equally of course the Church, but he very +early developed that dislike to all fixed formularies which +characterised him through life, and which perhaps was not his greatest +characteristic. To mathematics, on the other hand, he took pretty +kindly, though he seems to have early exhausted the fascinations of +them. Like most men of no means who have little fancy for any of the +regular professions, he attempted teaching; and as a schoolmaster at +Annan, Haddington, and Kirkcaldy, or a private tutor (his chief +experience in which art was with Charles Buller), he spent no small +number of years, doing also some hack-work in the way of translating, +writing for Brewster's _Encyclopędia_, and contributing to the _London +Magazine_, that short-lived but fertile nurse of genius. The most +remarkable of these productions was the _Life of Schiller_, which was +published as a volume in 1825, his thirtieth year, at which time he was +a resident in London and a frequenter--a not too amiable one--of +Coleridge's circle at Highgate and of other literary places. + +The most important event in his life took place in 1826, when he married +Miss Jane Welsh, a young lady who traced her descent to John Knox, who +had some property, who had a genius of her own, and who was all the more +determined to marry a man of genius. She had hesitated between Irving +and Carlyle, and, whatever came of it, there can be no doubt that she +was right in preferring the somewhat uncouth and extremely undeveloped +tutor who had taught her several things,--whether love in the proper +sense was among them or not will always be a moot point. The _Edinburgh +Review_ was kind to Carlyle after its fashion, and he wrote for it; but +Jeffrey, though very well disposed both to Carlyle and to his wife, +could not endure the changes which soon came on his style, and might +have addressed the celebrated query which, as mentioned, just at the +same time he addressed in delighted surprise to Macaulay, "Where did you +get that style," to Carlyle in the identical words but with a very +different meaning. Even had it been different, it was impossible that +Carlyle should serve anywhere or any one; and his mind, not an early +ripening one, was even yet, at the age of thirty-two, in a very +unorganised condition. He resolved to retire to his wife's farm of +Craigenputtock in Nithsdale; and Mrs. Carlyle had the almost +unparalleled heroism to consent to this. For it must be remembered that +her husband, with the exception of the revenue of a few essays, was +living on her means, that he undertook no professional duties, and that +in the farmhouse she had to perform those of a servant as well as those +of a wife. Whatever other opinions may be passed on this episode of +Carlyle's life, which lasted from 1828 to 1834, there can be no doubt +that it "made" him. He did much positive work there, including all his +best purely literary essays. There he wrote _Sartor Resartus_, his +manifesto and proclamation, a wild book which, to its eternal honour, +_Fraser's Magazine_ accepted, probably under the influence of Lockhart, +with whom, strangely different as they were, Carlyle was always on good, +though never on intimate terms. There too was written great part of the +earlier form of the _French Revolution_. But the greatest thing that he +did at Craigenputtock was the thorough fermentation, clearing, and +settling of himself. When he went there, at nearly thirty-three, it was +more uncertain what would come of him than it is in the case of many a +man when he leaves the University at three and twenty. When he left it, +at close on his fortieth year, the drama of his literary life was +complete, though only a few lines of it were written. + +That drama lasted in actual time for forty-seven years longer; and for +more than the first thirty of them fresh and ever fresh acts and scenes +carried it on. For the public his place was taken once and for all by +the _History of the French Revolution_, which, after alarming +vicissitudes (John Stuart Mill having borrowed the first volume in MS. +and lent it to a lady, to be destroyed by her housemaid), appeared in +1837. From at least that time Mrs. Carlyle's aspiration was fulfilled. +There were gain-sayers of course,--it may almost be said that genius +which is not gainsaid is not genius,--there were furious decriers of +style, temper, and so forth. But nine out of every ten men at least +whose opinion was worth taking knew that a new star of the first +magnitude had been added to English literature, however much they might +think its rays in some respects baleful. + +Lecturing, after the example set chiefly by Coleridge and Hazlitt, was +at this time a favourite resource for those men of letters whose line +of composition was not of the gainfulest; and Carlyle delivered several +courses, some of which are unreported while others survive only in +inadequate shapes. But _Heroes and Hero-Worship_ was at first delivered +orally, though it was not printed till 1841; and about the same time, or +rather earlier, appeared the _Miscellaneous Essays_--a collection of his +work at its freshest, least mannered, most varied, and in some respects +best. _Chartism_ (1839) and _Past and Present_ (1843) reflected the +political problems of the time and Carlyle's interest in them. But it +was not till 1845 that a second, in the ordinary sense, great work, +_Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_, was published. Five years +passed without anything substantive from him, but in 1850 appeared +_Latter-Day Pamphlets_, the most brilliantly satiric, and in 1851 the +softest, most finished, and (save theologically) least debatable of all +his books, the exquisite biography in miniature called the _Life of +Sterling_. Then he engaged, it is difficult to say whether by ill-luck +or not, on the last and largest of his great single undertakings, the +_History of Frederick the Great_. Fourteen years were passed, as a +matter of composition, in "the valley of the shadow of Frederick," as +his wife put it: half the time (from 1858 to 1865) saw the actual +publication. Shortly after the completion of this, Carlyle visited +Edinburgh to receive the Lord Rectorship of his University, and soon +after his wife died. He survived her fifteen years, but did nothing more +of great importance; indeed, he was seventy-one when this loss happened. +Some short things on "John Knox," on "The Early Kings of Norway," and a +famous letter on "Shooting Niagara" (the Reform Bill of 1867), with a +few more, appeared; but he was chiefly occupied (as far as he was +occupied at all) in writing reminiscences, and arranging memorials of +Mrs. Carlyle. The publication of these books after his death by the late +Mr. Froude led to a violent conflict of opinion both as to the propriety +of the publication and as to the character of Carlyle himself. + +This conflict fortunately concerns us but little here. It is certain +that Carlyle--springing from the lower ranks of society, educated +excellently as far as the intellect was concerned, but without attention +to such trifles as the habit (which his future wife early remarked in +him) of putting bread and butter in his tea, a martyr from very early +years to dyspepsia, fostering a retiring spirit and not too social +temper, thoroughly convinced that the times were out of joint and not at +all thoroughly convinced that he or any one could set them right, +finally possessed of an intensely religious nature which by accident or +waywardness had somehow thrown itself out of gear with religion--was not +a happy man himself or likely to make any one else happy who lived with +him. But it is certain also that both in respect to his wife and to +those men, famous or not famous, of whom he has left too often unkindly +record, his bark was much worse than his bite. And it is further certain +that Mrs. Carlyle was no down-trodden drudge, but a woman of brains +almost as alert as her husband's and a tongue almost as sharp as his, +who had deliberately made her election of the vocation of being "wife to +a man of genius," and who received what she had bargained for to the +uttermost farthing. There will always be those who will think that Mr. +Froude, doubtless with the best intentions, made a very great mistake; +that, at any rate for many years after Carlyle's death, only a strictly +genuine but judicious selection of the Reminiscences and Memorials +should have been published, or else that the whole should have been +worked into a real biography in which the frame and setting could have +given the relief that the text required. But already, after more than +the due voices, there is some peace on the subject; and a temporary wave +of neglect, partly occasioned by this very controversy, was to be +expected. + +That this wave will pass may be asserted with a fulness and calmness of +assurance not to be surpassed in any similar case. Carlyle's influence +during a great part of the second and the whole of the third quarter of +this century was so enormous, his life was so prolonged, and the general +tone of public thought and public policy which has prevailed since some +time before his death has been so adverse to his temper, that the +reaction which is all but inevitable in all cases was certain to be +severe in his. And if this were a history of thought instead of being a +history of the verbal expression of thought, it would be possible and +interesting to explain this reaction, and to forecast the certain +rebound from it. As it is, however, we have to do with Carlyle as a man +of letters only; and if his position as the greatest English man of +letters of the century in prose be disputed, it will generally be found +that the opposition is due to some not strictly literary cause, while it +is certain that any competitor who is set up can be dislodged by a +fervent and well-equipped Carlylian without very much difficulty. + +He has been classed here as a historian, and though the bulk of his work +is very great and its apparent variety considerable, it will be found +that history and her sister biography, even when his subjects bore an +appearance of difference, always in reality engaged his attention. His +three greatest books, containing more than half his work in bulk,--_The +French Revolution_, the _Cromwell_, and the _Frederick_,--are all openly +and avowedly historical. The _Schiller_ and the _Sterling_ are +biographies; the _Sartor Resartus_ a fantastic autobiography. Nearly all +the _Essays_, even those which are most literary in subject--all the +_Lectures on Heroes_, the greater part of _Past and Present_, _The Early +Kings of Norway_, the _John Knox_, are more or less plainly and strictly +historical or biographical. Even _Chartism_, the non-antique part of +_Past and Present_, and the _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, deal with politics +in the sense in which politics are the principal agent in making +history, regard them constantly and almost solely in their actual or +probable effect on the life-story of the nation, and to no small extent +of its individual members. Out of the historic relation of nation or +individual Carlyle would very rarely attempt to place, and hardly ever +succeeded in placing, any thing or person. He could not in the least +judge literature--of which he was so great a practitioner always, and +sometimes so great a judge--from the point of view of form: he would +have scorned to do so, and did scorn those who did so. His deficiencies +in abstract philosophy, whether political, theological, metaphysical, +or other, arise directly from this--that he could never contemplate any +of these things as abstract, but only in the common conduct of men +towards their fellows, towards themselves, and towards God. For Carlyle +never "forgot God," though he might speak unadvisedly with his lips of +other men's ways of remembering Him. The "human document," as later +slang has it, was in effect the only thing that interested him; and he +was content to employ it in constructing human history. More than once +he put his idea of this history formally under a formal title. But his +entire work is a much better exposition of that idea than these +particular essays; and it is not easy to open any page of it in which +the idea itself is not vividly illustrated and enforced upon the reader. + +But once more, this is no place for even a summary, much less for a +discussion, of the much discussed Carlylian "Gospel of Work"; of its +apostle's less vague, but also less disputable, condemnations of shams +and cants; or of the innumerable applications and uses to which he put +these doctrines. The important thing for our purpose is that these +applications took form in thirty volumes of the most brilliant, the most +stimulating, the most varied, the most original work in English +literature. The titles of this work have been given; to give here any +notion of their contents would take the chapter. Carlyle could be--as in +the _Cromwell_, where he sets himself and confines himself to the double +task of elucidating his hero's rugged or crafty obscurities of speech +and writing and of piecing them into a connected history, or where he +wrestles with the huge accumulation of documents about Frederick--as +practical as the driest of Dry-as-dusts. But others could equal, though +few surpass him, in this. Where he stands alone is in a fantastic +fertility of divagation and comment which is as much his own as the +clear, neat directness of Macaulay is his. Much of it is due to his +gospel, or temper, or whatever it is to be called, of earnest suasion to +work and scornful denunciation of cant; something to his wide reading +and apt faculty of illustration; but most to his style. + +In the early days of his unpopularity this style used to be abused with +heat or dismissed with scorn as mere falsetto, copied to a great extent +from Richter. It is certain that in Carlyle's very earliest works there +is small trace of it; and that he writes in a fashion not very +startlingly different from that of any well-read and well-taught author +of his time. And it is certain also that it was after his special +addiction to German studies that the new manner appeared. Yet it is very +far indeed from being copied from any single model, or even from any +single language; and a great deal that is in it is not German at all. +Something may even be traced to our own more fantastic writers in the +seventeenth century, such as Sir Thomas Urquhart in Scotland and Sir +Roger L'Estrange in England; much to a Scottish fervour and quaintness +blending itself with and utilising a wider range of reading than had +been usual with Scotsmen; most to the idiosyncrasy of the individual. + +Carlyle's style is not seldom spoken of as compact of tricks and +manners; and no doubt these are present in it. Yet a narrow inspection +will show that its effect is by no means due so much in reality as in +appearance to the retaining of capital letters, the violent breaches and +aposiopeses, the omission of pronouns and colourless parts of speech +generally, the coining of new words, and the introduction of unusual +forms. These things are often there, but they are not always; and even +when they are, there is something else much more important, much more +characteristic, but also much harder to put the finger on. There is in +Carlyle's fiercer and more serious passages a fiery glow of enthusiasm +or indignation, in his lighter ones a quaint felicity of unexpected +humour, in his expositions a vividness of presentment, in his arguments +a sledge-hammer force, all of which are not to be found together +anywhere else, and none of which is to be found anywhere in quite the +same form. And despite the savagery, both of his indignation and his +laughter, there is no greater master of tenderness. Wherever he is at +home, and he seldom wanders far from it, the weapon of Carlyle is like +none other,--it is the very sword of Goliath. + +And this sword pierces to the joints and marrow as no other of the +second division of our authors of the nineteenth century proper pierces, +with the exception of that of Tennyson in verse. It is possible to +disagree with Carlyle intensely; perhaps it is not possible to agree +with him in any detailed manner, unless the agreer be somewhat destitute +of individual taste and judgment. But on his whole aspect and tendency, +reserving individual expressions, he is, as few are, great. The +_diathesis_ is there--the general disposition towards noble and high +things. The expression is there--the capacity of putting what is felt +and meant in a manner always contemptuous of mediocrity, yet seldom +disdainful of common sense. To speak on the best things in an original +way, in a distinguished style, is the privilege of the elect in +literature; and none of those who were born within, or closely upon, the +beginning of the century has had these gifts in English as have the +authors of _The Lotos Eaters_ and _Sartor Resartus_. + +Only one other writer of history during the century, himself the latest +to die of his generation except Mr. Ruskin, deserves, for the union of +historical and literary merit, to be placed, if not on a level with +Macaulay and Carlyle, yet not far below them; but a not inconsiderable +number of historians and biographers of value who distinguished +themselves about or since the middle of the century must be chronicled +more or less briefly. Two Scottish scholars of eminence, both in turn +Historiographers Royal of Scotland, John Hill Burton and William Forbes +Skene, were born in the same year, 1809. Burton, who died in 1881, +busied himself with the history of his country at large, beginning with +the period since the Revolution, and tackling the earlier and more +distinctively national time afterwards. He was not a very good writer, +but displayed very great industry and learning with a sound and +impartial judgment. Skene, on the other hand, was the greatest authority +of his time (he lived till 1892) on "Celtic Scotland," which is the +title of his principal book. In the same year (or in 1808) was born +Charles Merivale, afterwards Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, +and Dean of Ely, who, besides other work, established himself in the +same class of historians with Hallam and Milman, Thirlwall and Grote, by +his extensive _History of the Romans under the Empire_. On the whole, +Merivale (who died in 1894) ranks, both for historical and literary +gifts, somewhat below the other members of this remarkable group--a +position which is still a very honourable one. + +Shortly after these three was born Alexander Kinglake (1811-1891)--a man +of very remarkable talents, but something of a "terrible example" in +regard to the practice, which has already been noticed as characteristic +of the century, of devoting enormously long histories to special +subjects and points. Kinglake, who was a native of Somerset, an Eton and +Cambridge man, a barrister subsequently, for some years a Member of +Parliament, and a man of independent means, first distinguished himself +in letters by the very brilliant and popular book of travels in the East +called _Eothen_ which was published in 1847. That there is something of +manner and trick about this is not to be denied; but it must be allowed +that the trick and manner have been followed, apparently with success, +in travel-writing for about half a century, while it cannot be fairly +said that Kinglake himself had any exact models, though he may have owed +something to Beckford and a little to Sterne. It is not very easy to say +whether Kinglake's literary reputation would have stood higher or lower +if he had written nothing else; but as a matter of fact, before many +years were over, he attempted a much more ambitious task in the _History +of the Crimean War_, the first two volumes of which appeared in 1863, +though the book was not finished till twenty years later. That this +history shows no small literary faculties no competent judge can deny. +The art of word-painting--a dubious and dangerous art--is pushed to +almost its furthest limits; the writer has a wonderful gift of combining +the minutest and most numerous details into an orderly and intelligible +whole; and the quality which the French untranslatably call _diable au +corps_, or, as we more pedantically say, "dęmonic energy," is present +everywhere. But the book is monstrously out of proportion,--a single +battle has something like an entire volume, and the events of some two +years occupy eight,--and, clear as the individual pictures are, the +panorama is of such endless length that the mind's eye retains no proper +notion of it. In the second place, the style, though brilliant, is hard +and brassy, full of points that are more suitable to the platform or the +newspaper than to the historic page,--not so much polished as varnished, +and after a short time intolerably fatiguing. In the third,--and this is +the gravest fault of all,--the author's private or patriotic likes or +dislikes pervade the whole performance and reduce too much of it to a +tissue of extravagant advocacy or depreciation, made more disgusting by +the repetition of catch phrases and pet labels somewhat after the manner +of Dickens. Sir Stratford Canning, "the great Eltchi," is one of +Kinglake's divinities, Lord Raglan another; and an acute and energetic, +but not quite heaven-born diplomatist, a most honest, modest, and in +difficult circumstances steadfast, if not always judicious soldier, +become, the one Marlborough in the council-chamber, the other +Marlborough in the field. On the other hand, for this or that reason, +Mr. Kinglake had taken a violent dislike to the Emperor Napoleon the +Third, and affected, as did some other English Liberals, to consider the +_coup d'état_ as not merely a dubious piece of statecraft, but a hideous +and abominable crime. Consequently, he abused all those who took part in +it with tedious virulence, which has probably made not a few Englishmen +look on them with much more leniency than they deserved. In short, +Kinglake, with many of the qualities of the craftsman in an +extraordinary degree, was almost entirely deficient in those of the +artist. He served as a favourite example to Mr. Matthew Arnold of the +deficiency of the British literary temper in accomplishment and grace, +and it cannot be denied that Mr. Arnold's strictures were here justified +to an extent which was not always the case when he assumed the office of +censor. + +John Forster, who was born a year later than Kinglake, and died fifteen +years before him, was an industrious writer of biographies and +biographical history, the friend of a good many men of letters, editor +for many years of the _Examiner_, and secretary to the Lunacy +Commissioners. He paid particular attention to the period of the +Rebellion; his _Arrest of the Five Members_ being his chief work, among +several devoted to it. He wrote a _Life of Goldsmith_, and began one of +Swift. In contemporary biography his chief performances were lives of +Landor and of Dickens, with both of whom he was extremely intimate. In +private life Forster had the character of a bumptious busybody, which +character indeed the two books just mentioned, even without the +anecdotes abundant in more recent books of biography, abundantly +establish. And towards the men of letters with whom he was intimate +(Carlyle and Browning may be added to Landor and Dickens) he seems to +have behaved like a Boswell-Podsnap, while in the latter half of the +character he no doubt sat to Dickens himself. But he was an +indefatigable literary inquirer, and seems, in a patronising kind of +way, to have been liberal enough of the result of his inquiries. He had +a real interest both in history and literature, and he wrote fairly +enough. + +One of the most curious figures among the historians of this century was +Henry Thomas Buckle, who was born near Blackheath in 1823, and privately +educated. He had ample means, and was fond of books; and in 1857 he +brought out the first volume (which was followed by a second in 1861) of +a _History of Civilisation_. He did not nearly complete--in fact he only +began--his scheme, in which the European part was ultimately intended to +be subordinate to the English, and he died of typhus at Damascus in May +1862. The book attained at once, and for some time kept, an +extraordinary popularity, which has been succeeded by a rather unjust +depreciation. Both are to be accounted for by the fact that it is in +many ways a book rather of the French than of the English type, and +displays in fuller measure than almost any of Buckle's contemporaries in +France itself, with the possible exception of Taine, could boast, the +frank and fearless, some would say the headlong and headstrong, habit +of generalisation--scorning particulars, or merely impressing into +service such as are useful to it and drumming the others out--on which +Frenchmen pride themselves, and for the lack of which they are apt to +pronounce English historians, and indeed English men of letters of all +kinds, plodding and unilluminated craftsmen rather than artists. In +Buckle's reflections on Spain and Scotland, he accounts for the whole +history of both countries and the whole character of both peoples by +local conditions in the first place, and by forms of civil and +ecclesiastical government. In respect to these last, his views were +crude Voltairianism; but perhaps this is the best and most +characteristic example of his method. He was extremely prejudiced; his +lack of solid disciplinary education made him unapt to understand the +true force and relative value of his facts and arguments; and as his +premises are for the most part capriciously selected facts cemented +together with an untempered mortar of theory, his actual conclusions are +rarely of much value. But his style is clear and vigorous; the +aggressive _raiding_ character of his argument is agreeably stimulating, +and excellent to make his readers clear up their minds on the other +side; while the dread of over-generalisation, however healthy in itself, +has been so long a dominant force in English letters and philosophy that +a little excess the other way might be decidedly useful as an +alterative. The worst fault of Buckle was the Voltairianism above +referred to, causing or caused by, as is always the case, a deplorable +lack of taste, which is not confined to religious matters. + +Edward Augustus Freeman, who was a little younger than Buckle and +survived him for thirty years, had some points in common with the +historian of civilisation, though his education, interests, and tone in +reference to religion were wholly different. Mr. Freeman, who was not at +any public school but was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, very soon +devoted himself to the study of early English history, and secured a +durable position by his elaborate _History of the Norman Conquest_ +(1867-76), which, even though the largest and most important, was only +one among scores of works, ending in an unfinished _History of Sicily_. +He was, when he died in 1892, Regius Professor of Modern History at +Oxford, and he had for many years been very influential in determining +the course of historical study. He was also, for many years of his life, +an active journalist, being especially known as a contributor to the +_Saturday Review_, and he sometimes took a very busy part in politics. +Mr. Freeman was a student of untiring energy, and will always deserve +honourable memory as the first historian who recognised and utilised the +value of architecture in supplying historical documents and +illustrations. His style was at times picturesque but too diffuse, and +disfigured by a habit of allusion as teasing as Macaulay's antithesis or +Kinglake's stock phrases. That he was apt to pronounce very strong +opinions on almost any question with which he dealt, was perhaps a less +drawback to his excellence as a historian than the violently +controversial tone in which he was wont to deal with those who happened +to hold opinions different from his own. Putting defects of manner +aside, there is no question that, for his own special period of English +history (the eleventh and twelfth centuries), Mr. Freeman did more than +any man had done before him, and as much as any man has done for any +other period; while in relation to his further subjects of study, his +work, though less trustworthy, is full of stimulus and of information. + +His chief pupil John Richard Green, who was born in 1837 and died of +consumption in 1883, was a native of Oxford, and was educated there at +Magdalen College School and Jesus College. Mr. Green, like Mr. Freeman, +was a frequent contributor to the _Saturday Review_, and did some +clerical duty in the east of London; but he is best known by his +historical work on English subjects, especially the famous _Short +History of the English People_, perhaps the most popular work of its +class and kind ever written. Mr. Green professed, on a principle which +had been growing in favour for some time, to extend the usual conception +of historical dealing to social, literary, and other matters. These, +however, had never as a fact been overlooked by historians, and the +popularity of the book was chiefly due to its judicious selection of +interesting facts, to the spirit of the narrative, and to the style, +based partly on Macaulay, but infused with a modernness which exactly +hit the taste of the readers of our time. Mr. Green afterwards expanded +this book somewhat; and his early death cut short a series of more +extended monographs, _The Making of England_, _The Conquest of England_, +etc., which would have enabled him to display the minute knowledge on +which his more summary treatment of the general theme had been based. + +Among historians to whom in larger space more extended notice than is +here possible would have to be given, perhaps the first place is due to +Philip Henry, sixth Earl Stanhope (1805-75), who (chiefly under the +title of Lord Mahon, which he bore before his succession to the earldom +in 1855) was an active historical writer of great diligence and +impartiality, and possessed of a fair though not very distinguished +style. The first notable work,--a _History of the War of the Succession +in Spain_ (1832),--of Lord Stanhope (who was an Oxford man, took some +part in politics, and was a devoted Peelite) was reviewed by Macaulay, +and he wrote later several other and minor historical books. But his +reputation rests on his _History of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht to +the Peace of Versailles_, which occupied him for some twenty years, +finishing in 1854. Very much less known to the general, but of singular +ability, was William Johnson or Cory, who under the earlier name had +attracted considerable public attention as an Eton master and as author +of a small but remarkable volume of poems called _Ionica_. After his +retirement from Eton and the change of his name, Mr. Cory amused himself +with the composition of a _History of England_, or rather a long essay +thereon, which was very little read and falls completely out of the +ordinary conception of such a book, but is distinguished by an +exceptionally good and scholarly style, as well as by views and +expressions of great originality. Many others must pass wholly unnoticed +that we may finish this chapter with one capital name. + +One of the greatest historians of the century, except for one curious +and unfortunate defect, and (without any drawback) one of the greatest +writers of English prose during that century, was James Anthony Froude, +who was born at Dartington near Totnes in 1818, on 23rd April +(Shakespeare's birthday and St. George's Day), and died in 1894 at the +Molt near Salcombe in his native county. Mr. Froude (the youngest son of +the Archdeacon of Totnes and the brother of Richard Hurrell Froude who +played so remarkable a part in the Oxford Movement, and of William +Froude the distinguished naval engineer) was a Westminster boy, and went +to Oriel College, Oxford, afterwards obtaining a fellowship at Exeter. +Like his elder brother he engaged in the Tractarian Movement, and was +specially under the influence of Newman, taking orders in 1844. The +great convulsion, however, of Newman's secession sent him, not as it +sent some with Newman, but like Mark Pattison and a few more, into +scepticism if not exactly negation, on all religious matters. He put his +change of opinions (he had previously written under the pseudonym of +"Zeta" a novel called _Shadows of the Clouds_) into a book entitled _The +Nemesis of Faith_, published in 1849, resigned his fellowship, gave up +or lost (to his great good fortune) a post which had been offered him in +Tasmania, and betook himself to literature, being very much, except in +point of style, under the influence of Carlyle. He wrote for _Fraser_, +the _Westminster_, and other periodicals; but was not content with +fugitive compositions, and soon planned a _History of England from the +Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada_. The first volumes of this +appeared in 1856, and it was finished in 1869. Meanwhile Froude from +time to time collected his essays into volumes called _Short Studies_, +which contain some of his very best writing. His next large work was +_The English in Ireland_, which was published in three volumes +(1871-74). In 1874-75 Lord Carnarvon sent him on Government missions to +the Cape, an importation of a French practice into England which was not +very well justified by the particular instance. Between 1881 and 1884 he +was occupied as Carlyle's literary executor in issuing his biographical +remains. Later _Oceana_ and _The English in the West Indies_ contained +at once sketches of travel and political reflections; and in 1889 he +published an Irish historical romance, _The Two Chiefs of Dunboy_. He +was made Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in succession to +Mr. Freeman, and his two latest works, _Erasmus_, published just before, +and _English Seamen_ some months after his death, contain in part the +results of the appointment. + +It is a vulgar observation that the natural element of some men appears +to be hot water. No English author of the century justifies this better +than Mr. Froude. His early change of faith attracted to him a very +considerable share of the obloquy which usually (and perhaps not so +unreasonably as is sometimes thought) attaches to violent revolutions of +opinion on important points. His _History_ was no sooner published than +most acrimonious attacks were made upon it, and continued for many +years, by a school of historical students with the late Mr. Freeman at +their head. His Irish book, coinciding with the rise of "Home Rule" +sentiment in Ireland, brought upon him furious enmity from the Irish +Nationalist party and from those who, at first or by and by, sympathised +with them in England. His colonial visits and criticisms not merely +attracted to him the animosity of all those Englishmen who espoused the +politics of non-intervention and non-aggrandisement, but aroused lively +irritation in the Colonies themselves. About his discharge of his duties +as Carlyle's executor, a perfect tempest of indignation arose; it being +alleged that he had either carelessly, or through bad taste, or with +deliberate treachery, revealed his dead friend's and master's weaknesses +and domestic troubles to the public view. + +With some of the causes of this odium we are fortunately here dispensed +from dealing. Theological and political matters, in so far as they are +controversial, are altogether outside of our scope. The question of the +dealing with Carlyle's "Remains" is one rather of ethics than of +literature proper, and it is perhaps sufficient to make, in reference to +it, the warning observation that Lockhart, who is now considered by +almost all competent critics as a very pattern of the union of fidelity +and good taste towards both his subject and his readers, was accused, at +the appearance of his book, of treachery towards Scott. + +But it must be confessed that if Mr. Froude's critics were unfair (and +they certainly were) he himself gave only too abundant opening to fair +criticism. That his first great book (not perhaps any of his others) was +planned on an unduly large scale, and indulged in far too extensive +dissertation, divagation, and so forth, was rather the fault of his time +than of himself. Grote and Macaulay had obtained, the first +considerable, the latter immense popularity by similar prolixity; and +Carlyle was about, in the _Frederick_, to follow the fashion. But +whereas all these three, according to the information open to them, were +and are among the most painfully laborious researchers and, with a fair +allowance, the most faithful recorders among historians, Mr. Froude +displayed an attention to accuracy which his warmest admirers must allow +to be sadly, and which enemies asserted to be scandalously insufficient. +He has been called by well-affected critics "congenitally inaccurate," +and there is warrant for it. Nor did any one of his three great models +come short of him in partiality, in advocacy, in the determination to +make the reader accept his own view first of all. + +He was, in the earlier part of his career at any rate, a very poor man, +whereas Macaulay was in easy, and Grote in affluent circumstances, and +he had not Carlyle's Scotch thrift. But the carelessness of his dealing +with documents had more in it than lack of pence to purchase assistance, +or even than lack of dogged resolve to do the drudgery himself. His +enemies of course asserted, or hinted, that the added cause was +dishonesty at the worst, indifference to truth at the best. As far as +dishonesty goes they may be summarily non-suited. The present writer +once detected, in a preface of Mr. Froude's to a book with which the +introducer was thoroughly in sympathy, repeated errors of quotation or +allusion which actually weakened Mr. Froude's own argument--cases where +he made his own case worse by miscitation. To the very last, in his +_Erasmus_ itself, which he had prepared at some pains for the press, his +work would always abound in the most astonishing slips of memory, +oversights of fact, hastinesses of statement. There is probably no +historian of anything like his calibre in the whole history of +literature who is so dangerous to trust for mere matters of fact, who +gives such bad books of reference, who is so little to be read with +implicit confidence in detail. Had his critics confined themselves to +pointing this out, and done him justice in his other and real merits, +little fault could have been found with them. But it is impossible not +to see that these merits were, at least in some cases, part of his +crime, in the eyes of those who did not like him; in others were of a +kind which their natural abilities did not qualify them to detect. + +The first of these merits--the least it may be in some eyes, not so in +others--was a steadfast, intense, fiery patriotism, which may remind us +of that which Macaulay in a famous passage has ascribed to Chatham in +modern times and to Demosthenes of old. This quality differed as much +from the flowery and conventional rhetoric not uncommon in writers of +some foreign nations, as from the smug self-satisfaction which was so +frequent in English speakers and authors of his own earlier time. No one +probably of Mr. Froude's day was less blind to English faults than he +was; no one more thoroughly grasped and more ardently admired the +greatness of England, or more steadfastly did his utmost in his own +vocation to keep her great. + +His second excellence--an excellence still contested and in a way +contestable, but less subject than the first to personal and particular +opinion--was his command of the historic grasp, his share of the +historic sense. I have seen these terms referred to as if they were +chatter or claptrap; while the qualities which they denote are very +often confounded with qualities which, sometimes found in connection +with them, may exist without either. The historic sense may be roughly +described as the power of seizing, and so of portraying, a historic +character, incident, or period as if it were alive not dead; in such a +manner that the fit reader, whether he is convinced or not that the +things ever did happen, sees that they might and probably must have +happened. Some of the most estimable and excellent of historians have +not had even a glimmering of this sense: they have at best laboriously +assembled the materials out of which, sooner or later, some one with the +sense will make a live history. But Thucydides and Herodotus had it; +Tacitus had it, and even Sallust; it betrays itself in the most artless +fashion in Villehardouin and Joinville, less artlessly in Comines; +Clarendon had it; Gibbon had it; Carlyle had it as none has had it +before or since. And Mr. Froude had it; not much less though more +fitfully than Carlyle. It is not in the least necessary to agree with +his views; it is possible to regard his facts with the most anxious +suspicion. You may think that the case made out for King Henry is pretty +weak, and the case made out against Queen Mary is much weaker. But Mr. +Froude is among the rare Deucalions of historic literature: he cannot +cast a stone but it becomes alive. + +Thirdly, and still rising in the scale of incontestability, though even +so contested, I believe, by some, is the merit of style. I have +sometimes doubted whether Mr. Froude at his best has any superior among +the prose writers of the last half of this century. His is not a +catching style; and in particular it does not perhaps impress itself +upon green tastes. It has neither the popular and slightly brusque +appeal of Macaulay or Kinglake, nor the unique magnificence of Mr. +Ruskin, nor the fretted and iridescent delicacy of some other writers. +It must be frankly confessed that, the bulk of his work being very great +and his industry not being untiring, it is unequal, and sometimes not +above (it is never below) good journey-work. But at its best it is of a +simply wonderful attraction--simply in the pure sense, for it is never +very ornate, and does not proceed in point of "tricks" much beyond the +best varieties of the latest Georgian form. That strange quality of +"liveliness" which has been noticed in reference to its author's view of +history, animates it throughout. It is never flat; never merely +popular; never merely scholarly; never merely "precious" and eccentric. +And at its very best it is excelled by no style in this century, and +approached by few in this or any other, as a perfect harmony of +unpretentious music, adjusted to the matter that it conveys, and +lingering on the ear that it reaches. + + NOTE.--As examples of the almost enforced omissions referred + to in the text may be mentioned earlier Archdeacon Coxe, the + biographer of Marlborough and the historian of the House of + Austria; later, Finlay (1799-1875), the valiant successor of + Gibbon, and the chronicler of the obscure and thankless + fortunes of the country called Greece, after it had ceased + to be living. Professor Sir J. R. Seeley, Kingsley's + successor at Cambridge (1834-94), equally distinguished in + his professional business, and as a lay theologian in a + sense rather extra-orthodox than unorthodox; and Sir John + Stirling-Maxwell, no mean historian either in the general + sense or in the special department of Art. It is open to any + one to contend that each and all of these as well deserve + notice as not a few dealt with above; yet if they were + admitted others still could hardly be excluded. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD + + +The second period of English poetry in the nineteenth century displays a +variety and abundance of poetical accomplishment which must rank it very +little below either its immediate predecessor, or even the great +so-called Elizabethan era. But it is distinguished from both these +periods, and, indeed, from almost all others by the extraordinary +predominance of a single poet in excellence, in influence, and in +duration. There is probably no other instance anywhere of a poet who for +more than sixty years wrote better poetry than any one of his +contemporaries who were not very old men when he began, and for exactly +fifty of those years was recognised by the best judges as the chief poet +of his country if not of his time. + +Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where his +father, a member of a good county family, was rector. He was the third +son, and his two elder brothers, Frederick and Charles, both possessed +considerable poetical gifts, though it cannot be said that the _Poems by +Two Brothers_ (it seems that it should really have been "three"), which +appeared in 1826, display much of this or anything whatever of Alfred's +subsequent charm. From the Grammar School of Louth the poet went to +Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was contemporary, and in most cases +intimate, with an unusually distinguished set of undergraduates, many of +whom afterwards figured in the famous Sterling Club (see chapter iv). He +also did what not many great future poets have done, he obtained the +Chancellor's prize for English verse with a poem on "Timbuctoo," where +again his special note is almost, though perhaps not quite, absent: it +appears faintly and fitfully in another juvenile poem not formally +published till long afterwards, "The Lover's Tale." + +It was in 1830 that he made his first substantive appearance with a book +of _Poems_. This volume was afterwards subjected to a severe handling by +the poet in the way of revision and omission--processes which through +life he continued with such perseverance and rigour, that the final +critical edition of him, when it appears, will be one of the most +complicated of the kind in English literature. So did he also with +another which appeared two years (or a little more) later. It is not +therefore quite just to judge the criticism which these books received, +by the present condition of the poems which figured in them; for though +most of the beauties were there then, they were accompanied by many +defects which are not there now. Criticism, however, was undoubtedly +unfavourable, and even unfair. Although Tennyson was not, either at this +time or at any other, a party politician, the two great Tory +periodicals, the _Quarterly Review_ and _Blackwood's Magazine_, were +still animated, the former by a dislike to the Romantic school in +poetry, the latter by a dislike to "Cockneys"--though how anybody could +have discovered a Cockney in Tennyson may seem marvellous enough. +Accordingly Lockhart in the one and Wilson in the other fell foul +(though in Wilson's case, at least, not indiscriminately) of work which +beyond all question offered very numerous and very convenient handles, +in ways which will be mentioned presently, to merely carping criticism. +Some attempts at reply were made by the poet's friends, notably A. H. +Hallam, but the public did not take to him, and even well-affected and +competent older judges, such as Coleridge, expressed very qualified +admiration. + +But during the next decade, in which he gave himself up silently to the +task of perfecting his art, attempting no profession or literary +occupation of profit, and living (partly in London, partly in the +country at High Beach and elsewhere) with extreme simplicity and economy +on his own small means and a pension which was provided for him, the +leaven of an almost fanatical admiration was spreading among readers of +his own age or a little younger. And his next publication, a new issue +of _Poems_ in 1842--containing the final selection and revision of the +others already mentioned, and a large reinforcement of admirable +work--was received, not indeed with the popular avidity which had been +displayed towards Scott and Byron in the generation before, and which +revived in the case of his own later work, but with an immense enjoyment +by almost all true lovers of poetry. Even Wordsworth, the most +ungracious critic of other men's work in his own art of whom the history +of literature gives record, acknowledged Tennyson in the amplest terms. + +This was, as has been hinted above, exactly fifty years before his +death, and though in the first of these five decades the pudding if not +the praise was still rather scanty, his reputation waxed steadily and +never waned. To keep for the present to chronicle in biography and +bibliography, he published in 1847 the exquisite "medley" of _The +Princess_, his first attempt at a poem of any length. 1850 was a great +year in his career, for in it he published the collection of elegiacs on +his friend Arthur Hallam, in which some have seen his most perfect work, +and he became Poet Laureate. Three years later he bought a house at +Farringford, near Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, which was for the +rest of his life his occasional and, until 1870 (when to avoid intrusion +he built himself another at Aldworth near Haslemere), his main house. +His poetry now was beginning to bring in some profit, the editions of it +multiplying every year; and during the last thirty years of his life, if +not more, he was probably at least as richly provided with mere gold as +any poet has ever been. He was, however, never seduced into hasty +writing; and he never gave himself to any other occupation save poetry, +while during his entire life he was a hater of what is commonly called +society. In 1855 there appeared _Maud_, the reception of which seemed +at first something of a relapse in welcome, which was in its first form +open to some criticism, and which he touched up to one of the finest as +a whole, as it was in parts one of the most passionate and melodious of +his works. But the _Idylls of the King_, the first and best instalment +of which appeared in 1858, completely revived even his popular vogue, +and made him indeed popular as no poet had been since Byron. It was said +at the time that 17,000 copies of _Enoch Arden_, his next volume (1864), +were sold on the morning of publication. + +For the rest of his life his issues were pretty frequent, though the +individual volumes were never large. A series of dramas beginning with +_Queen Mary_ in 1875, and continuing through _Harold_, _The Falcon_, +_The Cup_, the unlucky _Promise of May_, _Becket_, and _The Foresters_, +though fine enough for any other man, could be better spared by his +critical admirers than any other portion of his works. But the volumes +of poems proper, which appeared between 1864 and his death, _Lucretius_, +_Tiresias_, the successive instalments of the _Idylls_, _Locksley Hall +Sixty Years After_, _Demeter_, _The Death of Oenone_, and perhaps +above all the splendid _Ballads_ of 1880, never failed to contain with +matter necessarily of varying excellence things altogether +incomparable--one of the last, the finest and fortunately also the most +popular, being the famous "Crossing the Bar," which appeared in his +penultimate, but last not posthumous, volume in 1889. He died at +Aldworth in October 1892, and was buried with an unequalled solemnity in +Westminster Abbey. + +In the case of no English poet is it more important and interesting than +in the case of Tennyson, considering the excellence of his own work in +the first place, and the altogether unparalleled extent of his influence +in the second, to trace the nature and character of his poetical +quality. Nor is this difficult, though strange to say it has not always +been done. In his very earliest work, so soon as this quality appeared +at all, it is to be discovered side by side with other things which are +not native. Undoubtedly the tradition which, in the general filiation +of English poetry, connects Tennyson with Keats, is not wholly wrong. +In many of the weaker things, and not a few of the better, of the +volumes of 1830 and 1832, there is to be seen both the wonderful music +which Keats attained by a combination of the classical and romantic +appeals--the appeals which in his own case are singly exhibited at their +best in the "Grecian Urn" and in "La Belle Dame sans Merci,"--and the +sometimes faulty and illegitimate means which Keats took to produce this +effect. But to any one who compares rationally (and it may be permitted +to remark parenthetically, that nothing seems to be more misunderstood +than the comparative point of view) the difference between Keats and +Tennyson will emerge at once. Both being great poets, there is the +inexplicable in both; while as Keats undoubtedly died before he had any +chance of applying to his own powers and products the unequalled process +of clarifying and self-criticism which went on with Tennyson in the ten +years' silence between the second of the volumes just mentioned and his +issue of 1842, it is impossible to say that Keats himself could not have +done something similar. Nothing that he ever did is worse in point of +"gush," of undisciplined fluency, of mistakes in point of taste and of +other defects than the notorious piece about "the darling little room," +on which the future Poet Laureate's critics were so justly severe; while +in the single point of passion it is very doubtful whether Tennyson ever +approached the author of "La Belle Dame sans Merci." There was not +perhaps much to choose between the two in their natural power of +associating pictorial with musical expression; while both had that gift +of simple humanity, of plain honest healthy understanding of common +things, the absence of which gives to Shelley--in some ways a greater +poet than either of them--a certain unearthliness and unreality. + +But Tennyson had from the first a wider range of interest and capacity +than Keats, and he had the enormous advantage of thorough and regular +literary training. No poet ever improved his own work as Tennyson did; +nor has any, while never allowing his genius to be daunted by +self-comparison with his predecessors, had such a faculty of availing +himself of what they had done without copying, of seeing what they had +not done and supplying the gap himself. And besides this he had the +inexplicable, the incommunicable, the unique, the personal gift. In the +very earliest things, in "Claribel," in "Mariana," in the "Recollections +of the Arabian Nights," in the "Ode to Memory," in the "Dirge," in the +"Dying Swan," in "Oriana," there is even to those who were born long +after they were written, even to those who have for years sedulously +compared them with almost all things before and with all things since, +the unmistakable note of the new, of the new that never can be old. It +is there in the rhythms, it is there in the phrase. The poet may take +things that had previously existed--the Keatsian and Shelleian lyric, +the Wordsworthian attitude to Nature, the Miltonic blank verse; but +inevitably, invariably, each under his hands becomes different, becomes +individual and original. The result cannot be accounted for by +mannerisms, from which at no time was Tennyson free, and after the +thousands and ten thousands of imitations which have been seen since, it +stands out untouched, unrivalled. + +In the next instalment this quality of intense poetical individuality +strengthened and deepened. As we read "The Two Voices," "Oenone," "The +Palace of Art," "The Lotos Eaters," "A Dream of Fair Women," it becomes +almost incomprehensible how any one who ever read them even in forms +less perfect than those that we possess, should have mistaken their +incomparable excellence. But the student of literary history knows +better. He knows that nearly always the poet has to create his audience, +that he sings before the dawn of the day in which he is to be sovereign. + +And then with the 1842 book came practically the completion of Tennyson +in the sense of the indication of his powers. Edward FitzGerald, as is +elsewhere noticed, thought, or at least said, that everything his friend +had done after this was more or less a declension. This is a common and +not an ignoble Fallacy of Companionship--the delusion of those who have +hailed and accompanied a poet or a prophet in his early struggles. It +is not even wholly a fallacy, inasmuch as, in the case of the class of +poets to which Tennyson belongs, there does come a time when the rest of +the products of their genius is so to speak _applied_: it ceases to +reveal them in new aspects. They do not repeat themselves; but they +chiefly vary. Now came the magnificent "Morte D'Arthur" (the "Idylls of +the King" in microcosm, with all their merits and none of their +defects), "St. Simeon Stylites," "Ulysses," "Locksley Hall," "St. Agnes' +Eve," and other exquisite things; while to this period, as the +subsequent arrangement shows, belong not a few, such as "Tithonus" and +"The Voyage," which were not actually published till later, and in which +keen observers at the time of their publication detected as it were an +older ring, a more genuine and unblended vintage. + +It is not improper therefore to break off here for a moment and to +endeavour to state--leaving out the graces that can never be stated, and +are more important than all the others--the points in which this new +excellence of Tennyson differed from the excellences of his forerunners. +One of them, not the least important, but the least truly original, +because something distantly resembling it had been seen before in Keats +and Shelley, is the combined application of pictorial and musical +handling. Not, of course, that all poets had not endeavoured to depict +their subjects vividly and to arrange the picture in a melodious frame +of sound, not that the best of them had not also endeavoured to convey, +if it were possible, the colours into the sense, the sense into the +music. But partly as a result of the natural development and acquired +practice of the language, partly for the very reason that the arts both +of painting and music had themselves made independent progress, most of +all, perhaps, because Tennyson was the first poet in English of the very +greatest genius who dared not to attempt work on the great scale, but +put into short pieces (admitting, of course, of infinite formal variety) +what most of his forerunners would have spun into long poems--the result +here is, as a rule, far in advance of those forerunners in this +respect, and as an exception on a level with the very best of their +exceptions. With Shakespeare there is no comparison; Shakespeare can +send to every poet an "O of Giotto" in his own style to which that poet +must bow. But of others only Spenser had hitherto drawn such pictures as +those of the "Palace" and the "Dream," and Spenser had done them in far +less terse fashion than Tennyson. Only Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, +perhaps Beddoes, and a few Elizabethans had poured into the veins of +language the ineffable musical throb of a score of pieces from +"Claribel" to "Break! Break!" and not one of them had done it in quite +the same way. Only Milton, with Thomson as a far distant second, had +impressed upon non-dramatic blank verse such a swell and surge as that +of "Oenone." And about all these different kinds and others there +clung and rang a peculiar dreamy slow music which was heard for the +first time, and which has never been reproduced,--a music which in "The +Lotos Eaters," impossible as it might have seemed, adds a new charm +after the _Faerie Queen_, after the _Castle of Indolence_, after the +_Revolt of Islam_ to the Spenserian stanza, which makes the stately +verses of the "Palace" and the "Dream" tremble and cry with melodious +emotion, and which accomplishes the miracle of the poet's own dying swan +in a hundred other poems all "flooded over with eddying song." + +But there is something more to be noted still. The poet had caught and +was utilising the spirit of his time in two ways, one of them almost +entirely new. That he constantly sang the subjective view of nature may +be set down to the fact that he came after Wordsworth, though the fact +that he sang it without the Wordsworthian dryness and dulness must be +set down to his own credit. But in that sense of the history of former +times which is perhaps the chief glory of the nineteenth century in +matters of thought he had been anticipated by no one. He might not have +attained it without Scott and Byron, but his expression of it was hardly +conditioned in the very slightest degree by the expression either of +Byron or of Scott. They were not in strictness men of the nineteenth +century; he was, and he represented the very best features of his time +in attending, from its point of view mainly, to the features of better +times. + +But if FitzGerald's dictum were taken in the sense that Tennyson's +poetical career might, with advantage or with anything but the greatest +possible loss, have been closed in 1842, then certainly it would be +something more than a crotchet. Nothing perhaps appeared subsequently +(with unimportant exceptions such as the plays, and as the dialect +pieces of which the "Northern Farmer" was the first and best) the +possibility of which could not have been divined from the earlier work. +The tree had blossomed; it had almost, to keep up the metaphor, set; but +by far the greater part of the fruit was yet to ripen, and very much of +it was to be of quality not inferior, of quantity far greater, than +anything that had yet been given. + +_The Princess_ and _In Memoriam_, the two first-fruits of this later +crop, were certainly not the least important. Indeed they may be said to +have shown for the first time that the poet was capable of producing, in +lighter and severer styles respectively, work not limited to short +flights and exemplifying what (perhaps mistakenly) is called "thought," +as well as style and feeling, colour and music. _The Princess_ is +undoubtedly Tennyson's greatest effort, if not exactly in comedy, in a +vein verging towards the comic--a side on which he was not so well +equipped for offence or for defence as on the other. But it is a +masterpiece. Exquisite as its author's verse always is, it was never +more exquisite than here, whether in blank verse or in the (superadded) +lyrics, while none of his deliberately arranged plays contains +characters half so good as those of the Princess herself, of Lady +Blanche and Lady Psyche, of Cyril, of the two Kings, and even of one or +two others. And that unequalled dream-faculty of his, which has been +more than once glanced at, enabled him to carry off whatever was +fantastical in the conception with almost unparalleled felicity. It may +or may not be agreed that the question of the equality of the sexes is +one of the distinguishing questions of this century; and some of those +who would give it that position may or may not maintain, if they think +it worth while, that it is treated here too lightly, while their +opponents may wish that it had been treated more lightly still. But this +very difference will point the unbiassed critic to the same conclusion, +that Tennyson has hit the golden mean; while that, whatever he has hit +or missed in subject, the verse of his essay is golden, no one who is +competent will doubt. Such lyrics as "The splendour falls" and "Tears, +idle tears," such blank verse as that of the closing passage, would +raise to the topmost heights of poetry whatever subject it was spent +upon. + +_In Memoriam_ attacked two subjects in the main,--the one perennial, the +other of the time,--just as _The Princess_ had done. The perennial, +which is often but another, if not an exclusive, word for the poetical, +was in the first case aspirant and happy love, in the other mourning +friendship. The ephemeral was, in the latter, the sort of half doubting +religiosity which has occupied so much of the thought of our day. On +this latter point, as on the other just mentioned and on most beside, +the attitude of Tennyson was "Liberal-Conservatism" (if political slang +may be generalised), inclining always to the Conservative rather than to +the Liberal side, but giving Liberalism a sufficient footing and +hearing. Here again opinions may be divided; and here again those who +think that in poetry the mere fancies of the moment are nothing may be +disposed to pay little attention to the particular fancies which have +occupied the poet. But here again the manner, as always with real poets, +carries off, dissolves, annihilates the special matter for poetical +readers. Tennyson had here taken (not invented) a remarkable and not +frequently used stanza, the iambic dimeter quatrain with the rhymes not +alternated, but arranged _a b b a_. It is probable that if a +well-instructed critic had been asked beforehand what would be the +effect of this employed with a certain monotone of temper and subject in +a book of some three thousand lines or so, he would have shaken his head +and hinted that the substantive would probably justify its adjective +and the monotone become monotonous. And if he had been really a deacon +in his craft he would have added: "But to a poet there is nothing +impossible." The difficulty was no impossibility to Tennyson. He has not +only, in the rather more than six score poems of this wonderful book, +adjusted his medium to a wide range of subjects, all themselves adjusted +to the general theme, but he has achieved that poetic miracle, the +communication to the same metre and to no very different scheme of +phrase of an infinite variety of interior movement. There is scarcely a +bad line in _In Memoriam_; there are few lines that do not contain a +noble thought, a passionate sentiment, a beautiful picture; but there is +nothing greater about it than the way in which, side by side with the +prevailing undertone of the stanza, the individual pieces vary the music +and accompany it, so to speak, in duet with a particular melody. It must +have been already obvious to good ears that no greater master of English +harmonics--perhaps that none so great--had ever lived; but _In Memoriam_ +set the fact finally and irrevocably on record. + +_Maud_ was the third, and perhaps it may be said to have been, on a +great scale, the last experiment in thus combining the temporal with the +eternal. It was also probably the weakest as a whole, though the poet +had never done more poetical things than the passage beginning, "Cold +and clear-cut face"; than the prothalamium, never to have its due +sequel, "I have led her home"; than the incomparable and +never-to-be-hackneyed "Come into the garden"; or than the best of all, +"Oh! that 'twere possible." It may even be contended that if it were +ever allowable to put the finger down and say, "Here is the highest," +these, and not the best things of the 1842 volumes, are the absolute +summit of the poet's effort, the point which, though he was often near +it, he never again quite reached. But the piece, as a whole, is +certainly less of a success, less smooth and finished as it comes from +its own lathe, than either _The Princess_ or _In Memoriam_. It looks too +like an essay in competition with the "Spasmodic School" of its own day; +it drags in merely casual things--adulteration, popular politics, and +ephemera of all kinds--too assiduously, and its characterisations are +not happy. There is a tradition that the poet met a critic, and a very +accomplished critic too, who was one of his own oldest friends, and +said, "What do you mean by calling _Maud_ vulgar?" "I didn't," said the +critic, quite truly. "No, but you meant it," growled Tennyson. And there +was something of a confession in the growl. + +But these slight relapses (and, after all, what sort of a relapse is it +which gives us not merely the incomparable things referred to, but +others hardly less exquisite?) never, in the great writers, serve as +anything but retreats before an advance; and certainly, in a sense, the +_Idylls of the King_ were an advance, though not, perhaps, in all +senses. No total so brilliant, so varied within a certain general unity, +so perfectly polished in style, so cunningly adjusted to meet the +popular without disappointing the critical ear, had ever come from +Tennyson's pen as the first quartet of Idylls, _Enid_, _Vivien_, +_Elaine_, and _Guinevere_. No such book of English blank verse, with the +doubtful exception of the _Seasons_, had been seen since Milton. Nothing +more adroitly selected than the contrast of the four special pieces--a +contrast lost to those who only read them in the completed +Arthuriad--has been often attempted or ever achieved. It is true that +the inner faithful, the sacred band of Tennysonians, old and young, +grumbled a little that polish had been almost too much attended to; that +there was a certain hardish mannerism, glittering but cold, about the +style; that there was noticeable a certain compromise in the appeal, a +certain trimming of the sail to the popular breeze. These criticisms +were not entirely without foundation, and they were more justified than +their authors could know by the later instalments of the poem, which, +the latest not published till twenty-seven years afterwards, rounded it +off to its present bulk of twelve books, fifteen separate pieces, and +over ten thousand lines. Another, more pedantic in appearance, but not +entirely destitute of weight, was that which urged that in handling the +Arthurian story the author had, so to speak, "bastardised it," and had +given neither medięval nor modern sentiment or colouring, but a sort of +amalgamation of both. Yet the charm of the thing was so great, and the +separate passages were so consummate, that even critics were loth to +quarrel with such a gift. + +The later instalments of the poem--some of them, as has been said, very +much later, but still so closely connected as to be best noticed +here--were of somewhat less even excellence. It was an inevitable, but +certainly an unfortunate thing, that the poet republished the +magnificent early fragment above noticed in a setting which, fine as it +would have been for any one else, was inferior to this work of the very +best time. Some of the lighter passages, as in _Gareth and Lynette_, +showed less grace than their forerunners in _The Princess_; and in +_Pelleas and Ettarre_ and _Balin and Balan_ the poet sometimes seemed to +be attempting alien moods which younger poets than himself had made +their own. But the best passages of some of these later Idylls, notably +those of _The Holy Grail_ and _The Last Tournament_, were among the +finest, not merely of the book, but of the poet. Nowhere has he caught +the real, the best, spirit of the legends he followed more happily; +nowhere has he written more magnificent verse than in Percivale's +account of his constantly baffled quest and of Lancelot's visit to the +"enchanted towers of Carbonek." + +Far earlier than these, _Enoch Arden_ and its companion poems were +something more of a return to the scheme of the earlier books--no very +long single composition, but a medley of blank verse pieces and lyrics, +the former partly expansions of the scheme of the earlier "English +Idyll," the latter various and generally beautiful; one or two, such as +"In the Valley of Cauterets," of the most beautiful. Here, too, were +some interesting translations, with the dialect pieces above referred +to; and all the later volumes, except those containing the plays, +preserved this mixed manner. Their contents are too numerous for many to +be mentioned here. Only in the _Ballads and Other Poems_ was something +like a distinctly new note struck in the two splendid patriotic pieces +on "The Last Fight of the _Revenge_" and the "Defence of Lucknow," +which, even more than the poet's earlier "Charge of the Light Brigade," +deserve the title of the best English war-songs since Campbell; in +"Rizpah," an idyll of a sterner and more tragic kind than anything he +had previously attempted; and in the "Voyage of Maeldune," this last in +some respects the most interesting of the whole. For the marvellous +power which great poets possess of melting, of "founding," so to speak, +minor styles and kinds of poetry to their own image, while not losing a +certain character of the original, has never been shown better than +here. Attention had, even before the date of this poem, been drawn to +the peculiar character of early Celtic poetry,---not the adulterated +style of Ossian, but the genuine method of the old Irish singers. And, +since, a whole band of young and very clever writers have set +themselves, with a mixture of political and poetical enthusiasm, the +task of reviving these notes if possible. They have rarely succeeded in +getting very close to them without mere archaic pastiche. Tennyson in +this poem carried away the whole genius of the Celtic legend, infused it +into his own verse, branded it with his own seal, and yet left the +character of the vintage as unmistakable as if he had been an Irishman +of the tenth century, instead of an Englishman of the nineteenth. And +indeed there are no times, or countries, or languages in the kingdom of +poetry. + +A very little more may, perhaps, still be said about this great +poet,--great in the character and variety of his accomplishment, in the +volume of it, and, above all, in the extraordinarily sustained quality +of his genius and the length of time during which it dominated and +pervaded the literature of his country. The influences of Pope and +Dryden were weak in force and merely external in effect, the influence +of Byron was short-lived, that of Wordsworth was partial and limited, in +comparison with the influence of Tennyson. Of this, as of a mere +historical fact, there can be no dispute among those who care to inform +themselves of the facts and to consider them coolly. Of his intrinsic +merit, as opposed to his influential importance, it is not of course +possible to speak so peremptorily. Among the great volume of more or +less unfavourable criticism which such a career was sure to call forth, +two notes perhaps were the most dominant, the most constant, and (even +fervent admirers may admit) the least unjust. He was accused of a +somewhat excessive prettiness, a sort of dandyism and coquetry in form, +and of a certain want of profundity in matter. The last charge is the +more unprofitable in discussion, for it turns mainly on vast and vague +questions of previous definition. "What is thought?" "What is +profundity?" a by no means jesting demurrer may object, and he will not +soon be cleared out of the way. And it will perhaps seem to some that +what is called Tennyson's lack of profundity consists only in a +disinclination on his part to indulge in what the Germans call the +_Schwätzerei_, the endless, aimless talkee-talkee about "thoughtful" +things in which the nineteenth century has indulged beyond the record of +any since what used to be called the Dark Ages. On the real "great +questions" Tennyson was not loth to speak, and spoke gravely enough; +even to the ephemeralities, as we have said, he paid rather too much +than too little attention. But he did not go into the ins and outs of +them as some of his contemporaries did, and as other contemporaries +thought fitting. He usually neglected the negligible; and perhaps it +would not hurt him with posterity if he had neglected it a little more, +though it hurt him a little with contemporaries that he neglected it as +much as he did. + +The charge of prettiness is to be less completely ruled out; though it +shows even greater mistake in those who do more than touch very lightly +on it. In the earliest forms of the earlier poems not seldom, and +occasionally in even the latest forms of the later, the exquisiteness of +the poet's touch in music and in painting, in fancy and in form, did +sometimes pass into something like finicalness, into what is called in +another language _mignardise_. But this was only the necessary, and, +after he was out of his apprenticeship, the minimised effect of his +great poetical quality--that very quality of exquisiteness in form, in +fancy, in painting, and in music which has just been stated. We have, it +must be admitted, had greater poets than Tennyson. Shakespeare, +Spenser, Milton, Shelley, undoubtedly deserve this preference to him; +Wordsworth and Keats may deserve it. But we have had none so uniformly, +and over such a large mass of work, exquisite. In the lighter fantastic +veins he may sometimes be a little unsure in touch and taste; in satire +and argument a little heavy, a little empty, a little rhetorical; in +domestic and ethical subjects a little tame. But his handlings of these +things form a very small part of his work. And in the rest none of all +these faults appears, and their absence is due to the fact that nothing +interferes with the exquisite perfection of the form. Some faults have +been found with Tennyson's rhymes, though this is generally +hypercriticism; and in his later years he was a little too apt to +accumulate tribrachs in his blank verse, a result of a mistaken sense of +the true fact that he was better at slow rhythms than at quick, and of +an attempt to cheat nature. But in all other respects his versification +is by far the most perfect of any English poet, and results in a harmony +positively incomparable. So also his colour and outline in conveying the +visual image are based on a study of natural fact and a practice in +transferring it to words which are equally beyond comparison. Take any +one of a myriad of lines of Tennyson, and the mere arrangement of vowels +and consonants will be a delight to the ear; let any one of a thousand +of his descriptions body itself before the eye, and the picture will be +like the things seen in a dream, but firmer and clearer. + +Although, as has been said, the popularity of Lord Tennyson itself was +not a plant of very rapid growth, and though but a short time before his +position was undisputed it was admitted only by a minority, imposing in +quality but far from strong in mere numbers, his chief rival during the +latter part of their joint lives was vastly slower in gaining the public +ear. It is not quite pleasant to think that the well-merited but +comparatively accidental distinction of the Laureateship perhaps did +more even for Tennyson in this respect than the intrinsic value of his +work. Robert Browning had no such aid, his verse was even more +abhorrent than Tennyson's to the tradition of the elders, and until he +found a sort of back-way to please, he was even more indifferent to +pleasing. So that while Tennyson became in a manner popular soon after +1850, two decades more had to pass before anything that could be called +popularity came to Browning. It is, though the actual dates are well +enough known to most people, still something of a surprise to remember +that at that time he had been writing for very nearly forty years, and +that his first book, though a little later than Tennyson's, actually +appeared before the death of Coleridge and not more than a few months +after that of Scott. Browning, about whose ancestry and parentage a good +deal of mostly superfluous ink has been shed, was born, the son of a +city man, on 7th May 1812, in the, according to the elder Mr. Weller, +exceptional district of Camberwell. He was himself exceptional enough in +more ways than one. His parents had means; but Browning did not receive +the ordinary education of a well-to-do Englishman at school and college, +and his learning, though sufficiently various, was privately obtained. +_Pauline_, his first poem, appeared in 1833, but had been written about +two years earlier. He did not reprint it in the first general collection +of his verse, nor till after his popularity had been established; and it +cannot be said to be of great intrinsic excellence. But it was +distinctly characteristic:--first, in a strongly dramatic tone and +strain without regular dramatic form; secondly, in a peculiar fluency of +decasyllabic verse that could not be directly traced to any model; and, +thirdly, in a certain quality of thought, which in later days for a long +time received, and never entirely lost from the vulgar, the name of +"obscurity," but which perhaps might be more justly termed +breathlessness--the expression, if not the conception, of a man who +either did not stop at all to pick his words, or was only careful to +pick them out of the first choice that presented itself to him of +something not commonplace. + +In _Pauline_, however, there is little positive beauty. In the next +book, _Paracelsus_ (1835), there is a great deal. Here the dramatic form +was much more definite, though still not attempting acted or actable +drama. The poet's appetite for "soul-dissection" was amply shown in the +characters not merely of Paracelsus himself, but of his soberer friends +Festus and Michal, and of the Italian poet Aprile, a sort of Euphorion +pretty evidently suggested by, though greatly enlarged from, the actual +Euphorion of the second part of _Faust_, then not long finished. The +rapid, breathless blank verse, the crowding rush of simile and +illustration, and the positive plethora of meaning, more often glanced +and hinted at than fully worked out, were as noteworthy as before in +kind, and as much more so in degree as in scale. Here too were lyrics, +not anticipating the full splendour of the poet's later lyrical verse, +but again quite original. Here, in fact, to anybody who chose to pay +attention, was a real "new poet" pretty plainly announced. + +Very few did choose to pay attention; and Browning's next attempt was +not of a kind to conciliate halting or hostile opinion, though it might +please the initiated. He wrote for his friend Macready a play intended +at least to be of the regular acting kind. This play, _Strafford_ +(1837), contains fine things; but the involution and unexpectedness of +the poet's thought now and always showed themselves least engagingly +when they were even imagined as being spoken not read. After yet another +three years _Sordello_ followed, and here the most peculiar but the +least estimable side of the author's genius attained a prominence not +elsewhere equalled, till in his latest stage he began to parody himself, +and scarcely even then. Although this book does not deserve the +disgusted contempt which used to be poured on it, though it contains +many noble passages, and as the "story of a soul" is perfectly +intelligible to moderate intellects, it must have occasioned some doubts +and qualms to intelligent admirers of the poet as to whether he would +lose himself in the paths on which he was entering. Such doubts must +have been soon set at rest by the curious medley issued in parts, under +the general title of _Bells and Pomegranates_, between 1841 and 1846. +The plays here, though often striking and showing that the author's +disabilities, though never likely to leave, were also not likely to +master him, showed also, with the possible exception of the charming +nondescript of _Pippa Passes_, no new or positively unexpected faculty. +But certain shorter things, lyrical and other, at last made it clear +that Browning could sing as well as say: and from this time, 1846 (which +also was the year of his marriage with Miss Elizabeth Barrett), he could +claim rank as a great poet. He had been hitherto more or less a +wanderer, but with headquarters in England; he now went to Florence, +which in turn was his headquarters till his wife's death in 1861. His +publications during the time were only two--_Christmas Eve and Easter +Day_ in 1850, and _Men and Women_ in 1855. But these were both +masterpieces. He never did better work, and, with _Bells and +Pomegranates_ and _Dramatis Personę_, which appeared in 1864 (when, +after Mrs. Browning's death, he had returned to London), they perhaps +contain all his very best work. + +Up to this time, the thirty-first year from the publication of +_Pauline_, Browning's work, though by no means scanty, could hardly be +called voluminous as the result of half a lifetime of absolute leisure. +A little before _Dramatis Personę_--itself not a long book, though of +hardly surpassed quality--the whole of the poems except _Pauline_ had +been gathered into three small but thick volumes, which undoubtedly did +very much to spread the poet's fame--a spread much helped by their +immediate successors. The enormous poem of _The Ring and the Book_, +originally issued in four volumes and containing more than twenty +thousand verses, was published in 1869, and, the public being by this +time well prepared for it, received a welcome not below its merits. +Having at last gained the public ear, Mr. Browning did not fail to +improve the occasion, and of the next fifteen years few passed without a +volume, while some saw two, from his pen. These, including translations +of the _Alcestis_ and the _Agamemnon_ (for the poet was at this time +seized with a great fancy for Greek, which he rendered with much fluency +and a very singular indulgence in a sort of hybrid and pedantic spelling +of proper names), were _Balaustion's Adventure_ and _Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ (1871), _Fifine at the Fair_ (1872), _Red Cotton +Night-Cap Country_ (1873), _Aristophanes' Apology_ and _The Inn Album_ +(1875), _Pacchiarotto and how he Worked in Distemper_ (1876), _La +Saisiaz_ (1878), _Dramatic Idylls_, two volumes (1879-80), _Jocoseria_ +(1883), and _Ferishtah's Fancies_ (1884). The five remaining years of +Browning's long life were somewhat less fruitful; but _Parleyings with +Certain People of Importance_ came in 1887, and at the end of 1889, +almost simultaneously with his death in Italy, _Asolando_, which some +think by far his best volume since _Dramatis Personę_, a quarter of a +century older. These volumes occasionally contained a few, and +_Asolando_ contained several, of the lovely lyrics above referred to. +But the great bulk of them consisted of the curious blank verse, now +narrative, now ostensibly dramatic monologue, which the poet had always +affected, and which he now seemed to affect more and more. In them, too, +from _The Ring and the Book_ onwards, there appeared a tendency stronger +than ever to an eccentric and almost burlesque phraseology, which at one +time threatened to drown all his good qualities, as involution of +thought had threatened to drown them in the _Sordello_ period. But this +danger also was averted at the last. + +Critical estimate of Browning's poetry was for years hampered by, and +cannot even yet be said to have been quite cleared from, the violent +prepossessions of public opinion respecting him. For more than a +generation, in the ordinary sense, he was more or less passionately +admired by a few devotees, stupidly or blindly ignored by the public in +general, and persistently sneered at, lectured, or simply disliked by +the majority of academically educated critics. The sharp revulsion of +his later years has been noticed; and it amounted almost to this, that +while dislike to him in those who had intelligently, if somewhat +narrowly, disapproved of his ways was not much affected, a Browning +_cultus_, almost as blind as the former pooh-poohing or ignoring, set +in, and extended from a considerable circle of ardent worshippers to the +public at large. A "Browning Society" was founded in 1881, and received +from the poet a kind of countenance which would certainly not have been +extended to it by most English men of letters. During his later years +handbooks solemnly addressed to neophytes in Browningism, as if the cult +were a formal science or art, appeared with some frequency; and there +has been even a bulky _Browning Dictionary_, which not only expounds the +more recondite (and, it is fair to say, tolerably frequent) allusions of +the master, but provides for his disciples something to make up for the +ordinary classical and other dictionaries with which, it seemed to be +presumed, their previous education would have made them little +conversant. + +This not very wise adulation in its turn not unnaturally excited a sort +of irritation and dislike, to a certain extent renewing the old +prejudice in a new form. To those who could discard extraneous +considerations and take Browning simply as he was, he must, from a +period which only very old men can now remember, have always appeared a +very great, though also a very far from perfect poet. His imperfections +were always on the surface, though perhaps they were not always confined +to it; and only uncritical partisanship could at any time have denied +them, while some of them became noticeably worse in the period of rapid +composition or publication from 1870 to 1885. A large license of +unconventionality, and even of defiance of convention, may be claimed +by, and should be allowed to, persons of genius such as Mr. Browning +undoubtedly possessed. But it can hardly be denied that he, like his +older contemporary Carlyle, whose example may not have been without +influence upon him, did set at naught not merely the traditions, but the +sound norms and rules of English phrase to a rather unnecessary extent. +A beginning of deliberate provocation and challenge, passing into an +after-period of more or less involuntary persistence in an exaggeration +of the mannerisms at first more or less deliberately adopted, is apt to +be shown by persons who set themselves in this way to innovate; and it +was shown by Mr. Browning. It is impossible for any intelligent admirer +to maintain, except as a paradox, that his strange modulations, his +cacophonies of rhythm and rhyme, his occasional adoption of the +foreshortened language of the telegraph or the comic stage, and many +other peculiarities of his, were not things which a more perfect art +would have either absorbed and transformed, or at least have indulged in +with far less luxuriance. Nor does it seem much more reasonable for +anybody to contend that his fashion of soul-dissection at a hand-gallop, +in drama, in monologue, in lay sermon, was not largely, even grossly, +abused. Sometimes the thing was not worth doing at all--there are at +least half a dozen of the books between _The Ring and the Book_ and +_Asolando_ from the whole of which a judicious lover of poetry would not +care to save more than the bulk of the smallest of them should they be +menaced with entire destruction. Even in the best of these what is good +could generally, if not always, have been put at the length of the +shorter _Men and Women_ with no loss, nay, with great advantage. The +obscurity so much talked of was to some extent from the very first, and +to the last continued to be, in varying degrees, an excuse, or at least +an occasion, for putting at great length thought that was not always so +far from commonplace as it looked into expression which was very often +not so much original as unkempt. "Less matter with more art" was the +demand which might have been made of Mr. Browning from first to last, +and with increasing instance as he became more popular. + +But though no competent lover of poetry can ever have denied the truth +and cogency of these objections, the admission of them can never, in any +competent lover of poetry, have obscured or prevented an admiration of +Browning none the less intense because not wholly unreserved. Even his +longer poems, in which his faults were most apparent, possessed an +individuality of the first order, combined the intellectual with no +small part of the sensual attraction of poetry after a fashion not +otherwise paralleled in England since Dryden, and provided an +extraordinary body of poetical exercise and amusement. The pathos, the +power, at times the humour, of the singular soul-studies which he was so +fond of projecting with little accessory of background upon his canvas, +could not be denied, and have not often been excelled. If he was not +exactly what is commonly called orthodox in religion, and if his +philosophy was of a distinctly vague order, he was always "on the side +of the angels" in theology, in metaphysics, in ethics; and his politics, +if exceedingly indistinct and unpractical, were always noble and +generous. Further, though he seems to have been utterly destitute of the +slightest gift of dramatic construction, he had no mean share of a much +rarer gift, that of dramatic character; and in a century of descriptions +of nature his, if not the most exquisite, have a freedom and truth, a +largeness of outline combined with felicity of colour, not elsewhere to +be discovered. + +But it is as a lyric poet that Browning ranks highest; and in this +highest class it is impossible to refuse him all but the highest rank, +in some few cases the very highest. He understood love pretty +thoroughly; and when a lyric poet understands love thoroughly there is +little doubt of his position. But he understood many other things as +well, and could give strange and delightful voice to them. Even his +lyrics, still more his short non-lyrical poems, admirable as they often +are, and closely as they group with the lyrics proper, are not untouched +by his inseparable defect. He cannot be prevented from inserting now and +then in the midst of exquisite passages more or fewer of his quirks and +cranks of thought and phrase, of his vernacularity or his euphuism, of +his outrageous rhymes (which, however, are seldom or never absolutely +bad), of those fantastic tricks of his in general which remind one of +nothing so much as of dashing a bladder with rattling peas in the +reader's face just at the height of the passion or the argument. + +Yet the beauty, the charm, the variety, the vigour of these short poems +are as wonderful as the number of them. He never lost the secret of them +to his latest years. The delicious lines "Never the time and the place, +And the loved one all together" are late; and there are half a dozen +pieces in _Asolando_, latest of all, which exhibit to the full the +almost bewildering beauty of combined sound, thought, and sight, the +clash of castanets and the thrill of flutes, the glow of flower and +sunset, the subtle appeal for sympathy in feeling or assent in judgment. +The song snatches in _Pippa Passes_, "Through the Metidja," "The Lost +Leader," "In a Gondola," "Earth's Immortalities," "Mesmerism," "Women +and Roses," "Love Among the Ruins," "A Toccata of Galuppis," "Prospice," +"Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Porphyria's Lover," "After," with scores of others, +and the "Last Ride Together," the poet's most perfect thing, at the head +of the list, are such poems as a very few--Shakespeare, Shelley, Burns, +Coleridge--may surpass now and then in pure lyrical perfection, as +Tennyson may excel in dreamy ecstasy, as some seventeenth century +songsters may outgo in quaint and perfect fineness of touch, but such as +are nowhere to be surpassed or equalled for a certain volume and variety +of appeal, for fulness of life and thought, of action and passion. + +Mr. Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett, was older than himself by six +years, and her period of popularity considerably anticipated his. But +except one very juvenile book she published nothing of importance till +1838, when Browning, whom she did not then know, had already manifested +his idiosyncrasy. Miss Barrett, whose father's original name was +Moulton, was born at Carlton Hall, Durham, on 6th March 1806. The change +of name was brought on by succession to estates in the West Indies; and +the family were wealthy. For the greater part of Miss Barrett's youth +they lived in Herefordshire at a place, Hope End, which has left great +traces on her early poetry; later her headquarters were in London, with +long excursions to Devonshire. These excursions were mainly caused by +bad health, from which, as well as from family bereavements, Miss +Barrett was a great sufferer. She had read widely; she began to write as +a mere child; and her studies extended even to Greek, though in a rather +amateurish and desultory fashion. Her _Essay on Mind_ and other poems +appeared in 1825; but a considerable interval, as noted above, elapsed +before, in _The Seraphim_ and other poems, she gave, if not a truer, a +more characteristic note. And two more intervals of exactly the same +length gave _Poems_ 1846 and _Poems_ 1850, containing most of her best +work. Meanwhile she had met Robert Browning, and had married him, rather +against the wish of her family, in 1846. The rest of her life was spent +mostly at Florence, where, in 1849, the only child of the marriage was +born. Two years later appeared _Casa Guidi Windows_ and the long +"sociological" romance of Aurora Leigh. In these, and still more in the +_Poems before Congress_ (1860), a not unnatural tendency to echo the +peculiar form and spirit of her husband's work is observable, not by any +means always or frequently to advantage. She died at Florence on 30th +June 1861, and next year a volume of _Last Poems_ was issued. The most +interesting document in regard to her since has been her Letters to R. +H. Horne, the author of _Orion_, which were published in 1876. + +It has been said that Mrs. Browning's popularity long anticipated her +husband's; indeed, years after her death, and on the very eve of the +publication of _The Ring and the Book_, it was possible to meet persons, +not uncultivated, who were fairly well acquainted with her verse and +entirely ignorant of his. The case has since been altered; but it is +believed that Mrs. Browning still retains, and it is probable that she +will always retain, no small measure of general favour. It has been +usual to speak of her as the chief English poetess, which she certainly +is if bulk and character of work as distinguished from perfection of +workmanship are considered. Otherwise, she must as certainly give place +to Miss Christina Rossetti. But Mrs. Browning no doubt combined, in very +unusual and interesting manner, the qualities which appeal to what may +be called, with no disdainful intention, the crowd of readers of poetry, +and those which appeal to the elect. Even the peculiarities which lent +themselves so easily to parody--and some of the happiest parodies ever +written were devoted to her in _Bon Gaultier_ and other books--did not +serve her badly with the general, for a parody always in a way attracts +attention to the original. Although her expression was not always of the +very clearest, its general drift was never easily mistakable; and +though she was wont to enshrine her emotions in something of a mist of +mysticism, they were in the main simple and human enough. It must also +be admitted that pathetic sentiment is almost the surest of popular +appeals in poetry; and Miss Barrett--partly through physical suffering, +partly through the bereavements above referred to, but very mainly it +may be suspected by temperament and preference--was much more a visitant +of the House of Mourning than of the House of Mirth. She was, yet again, +profoundly and sincerely, if a little vaguely, religious: and her sacred +poems, of which the famous and beautiful "Cowper's Grace" is the chief +example, secured one portion of the public to her as firmly as the +humanitarianism of "The Cry of the Children," chiming in with famous +things of Hood and Dickens, did another; "Isobel's Child," a pathetic +domesticity, a third; the somewhat gushing and undistinguished +Romanticism of "The Duchess May" and "The Brown Rosary," a fourth; and +the ethical and political "noble sentiments" of "Lady Geraldine's +Courtship," a fifth. + +But it would argue gross unfairness in an advocate, and gross +incompetence in a critic, to let it be supposed that these popular +attractions were the only ones that Mrs. Browning possessed. Despite and +besides the faults which will be presently noticed, and which, +critically speaking, are very grave faults, she had poetical merits of a +very high order. Her metrical faculty, though constantly flawed and +imperfect, was very original and full of musical variety. Although her +choice of words could by no means always be commended, her supply of +them was extraordinary. Before her imprisonment in sick-rooms she had +pored on nature with the eagerest and most observant eye, and that +imprisonment itself only deepened the intensity of her remembered +nature-worship. Her pathos, if it sometimes over-flowed into gush, was +quite unquestionable in sincerity and most powerful in appeal; her +sentiment was always pure and generous; and it is most curious to see +how in the noble directness of such a piece as "Lord Walter's Wife," not +only her little faults of _sensiblerie_, but her errors of diction, are +burnt and smelted out by the fire of the expressed impression. Her +verse-pictures--for instance those in the "Vision of Poets"--vie, in +beauty if not in clearness of composition and definition, with +Tennyson's own. The Romantic pieces already glanced at, obnoxious and +obvious as are their defects, unite the pathos and the picturesqueness +just assigned to her in a most remarkable manner. And when, especially +in the Sonnet, she consented to undergo the limitations of a form which +almost automatically restrained her voluble facility, the effect was +often simply of the first order. The exquisite "Sonnets from the +Portuguese" (which are not from the Portuguese, and are understood to +have been addressed to Mr. Browning), especially that glorious one +beginning-- + + If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught + Except for love's sake only-- + +(which is not far below Shakespeare's or the great thing which was +published as Drayton's), rank with the noblest efforts of the 16th-17th +century in this exquisite form. And if this, instead of having to +conform to the requirements of a connected history, were a separate +study of Mrs. Browning, it would be necessary to mention scores of +separate pieces full of varied beauty. + +But in no poet, perhaps not even in Byron, are such great beauties +associated with such astonishing defects as in Mrs. Browning; some of +these defects being so disgusting as well as so strange that it requires +not a little critical detachment to put her, on the whole, as high as +she deserves to be put. Like almost all women who have written, she was +extremely deficient in self-criticism, and positively pampered and +abused her natural tendency towards fluent volubility. There is hardly +one of the pieces named above, outside the sonnets, with the exception +certainly of "Lord Walter's Wife" and possibly of "Cowper's Grave," +which would not be immensely improved by compression and curtailment, +"The Rhyme of the Duchess May" being a special example. In other pieces +not yet specified, such as "The Romaunt of Margret," "Bianca among the +Nightingales," and especially "The Poet's Vow," the same defect is +painfully felt. That the poetess frequently, and especially in her later +poetical work, touches subjects which she does not very well comprehend, +and which are very doubtfully suited for poetical treatment at all, is a +less important because a more controversial objection; and the merits of +such a book as _Aurora Leigh_ depend so much upon the arguing out of the +general question whether what is practically a modern novel has any +business to be written in verse, that they perhaps can receive no +adequate treatment here. But as to the fatal fluency of Mrs. Browning +there can be no question before any tribunal which knows its own +jurisdiction and its own code. And that fluency extends to more than +length. The vocabulary is wilfully and tastelessly unusual,--"abele" +rhymed "abeel" for "poplar"; American forms such as "human" for +"humanity" and "weaken" for a neuter verb; fustianish words like +"reboant"; awkward suggestions of phrase, such as "droppings of warm +tears." + +But all these things, and others put together, are not so fatal as her +extraordinary dulness of ear in the matter of rhyme. She endeavoured to +defend her practice in this respect in the correspondence with Horne, +but it is absolutely indefensible. What is known as assonance, that is +to say, vowel rhyme only, as in Old French and in Spanish, is not in +itself objectionable, though it is questionably suited to English. But +Mrs. Browning's eccentricities do not as a rule, though they sometimes +do, lie in the direction of assonance. They are simply bad and vulgar +rhymes--rhymes which set the teeth on edge. Thus, when she rhymes +"palace" and "chalice," "evermore" and "emperor," "Onora" and "o'er +her," or, most appalling of all, "mountain" and "daunting," it is +impossible not to remember with a shudder that every omnibus conductor +does shout "Pal_lis_," that the common Cockney would pronounce it +"Onorer," that the vulgar ear is deaf to the difference between _ore_ +and _or_, and that it is possible to find persons not always of the +costermonger class who would make of "mountain" something very like +"mauunting." In other words, Mrs. Browning deliberately, or lazily, or +for want of ear, admits false pronunciation to save her the trouble of +an exact rhyme. Nay, more, despite her Greek, she will rhyme "idyll" to +"middle," and "pyramidal" to "idle," though nothing can be longer than +the _i_ in the first case, and nothing shorter than the _i_ in the +second. The positive anguish which such hideous false notes as these +must cause to any one with a delicate ear, the maddening interruption to +the delight of these really beautiful pieces of poetry, cannot be +over-estimated. It is fair to say that among the later fruit of her +poetical tree there are fewer of these Dead Sea apples,--her husband, +who, though audacious, was not vulgar in his rhymes, may have taught her +better. But to her earlier, more spontaneous, and more characteristic +verse they are a most terrible drawback, such as no other English poet +exhibits or suffers. + +No poets at all approaching the first class can be said to have been +born within a decade either way of Tennyson and Browning, though some +extremely interesting writers of verse of about the same date will have +to be noticed in the latter part of this chapter. The next year that +produced a poet almost if not quite great, though one of odd lapses and +limitations, was 1822, the birth-year of Matthew Arnold. When a writer +has produced both prose and verse, or prose of distinctly different +kinds in which one division or kind was very far superior in intrinsic +value and extrinsic importance to the others, it has seemed best here to +notice all his work together. But in the case of Mr. Arnold, as in some +others, this is not possible, the volume, the character, and the +influence of his work in creative verse and critical prose alike +demanding separate treatment for the two sections. He was the eldest son +of Dr. Arnold, the famous head-master of Rugby, and was educated first +at the two schools, Winchester and Rugby itself, with which his father +was connected as scholar and master, and then at Balliol, where he +obtained a scholarship in 1840. He took the Newdigate in 1844, and was +elected a fellow of Oriel in 1845. After some work as private +secretary, he received an inspectorship of schools, and held it until +nearly the time of his death in 1888. He had been Professor of Poetry at +Oxford from 1857-67. He published poetry early, and though his fame at +this time was never very wide, he was known to those interested in +poetry, and especially to Oxford men, for more than twenty years before +he acquired popularity as a critic and began the remarkable series of +prose works which will be noticed in a later chapter. So early as 1849 +he had published, under the initial of his surname only, _The Strayed +Reveller, and other Poems_; but his poetical building was not securely +founded until 1853, when there appeared, with a very remarkable preface, +a collection of Poems, which was certainly the best thing that had been +produced by any one younger than the two masters already discussed. +_Merope_, which followed in 1858, was an attempt at an English-Greek +drama, which, with Mr. Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_ and +_Erechtheus_, is perhaps the best of a somewhat mistaken kind, for +Shelley's _Prometheus Unbound_ soars far above the kind itself. Official +duty first, and the growing vogue of his prose writing later, prevented +Mr. Arnold from issuing very many volumes of verse. But his _New Poems_ +in 1867 made important additions, and in this way and that his poetical +production reached by the time of his death no inconsiderable +volume--perhaps five hundred pages averaging thirty lines each, or very +much more than has made the reputation of some English poets of very +high rank. Until late in his own life the general tendency was not to +take Mr. Arnold very seriously as a poet; and there are still those who +reproach him with too literary a character, who find fault with him as +thin and wanting in spontaneity. On the other hand, there are some who +not only think him happier in verse than in prose, but consider him +likely to take, when the "firm perspective of the past" has dispelled +mirages and false estimates, a position very decidedly on the right side +of the line which divides the great from the not great. + +Family, local, and personal reasons (for Dr. Arnold had a house in the +immediate vicinity of Rydal), as well as the strong contemporary set in +favour of Wordsworth which prevailed in both universities between 1830 +and 1845, caused Mr. Arnold early to take a distinctly Wordsworthian +bent. He was, later, somewhat outspoken in his criticism of Wordsworth's +weaker points; but it is impossible for any one to read his own poems +without perceiving that Arnold stands in a line of filiation from +Milton, with a slight deviation by way of Gray, through Wordsworth, +though with a strong personal element in his verse. This personal +element, besides other things, represents perhaps more powerfully than +it represents anything else, and than anything else represents this, a +certain reaction from the ornate and fluent Romanticism of the school of +Keats and Tennyson. Both, especially the latter, influenced Mr. Arnold +consciously and unconsciously. But consciously he was striving against +both to set up a neo-classic ideal as against the Romantic; and +unconsciously he was endeavouring to express a very decided, though a +perhaps not entirely genial or masculine, personal temperament. In other +words, Mr. Arnold is on one side a poet of "correctness"--a new +correctness as different from that of Pope as his own time, character, +and cultivation were from Pope's, but still correctness, that is to say +a scheme of literature which picks and chooses according to standards, +precedents, systems, rather than one which, given an abundant stream of +original music and representation, limits the criticising province in +the main to making the thing given the best possible of its kind. And it +is not a little curious that his own work is by no means always the best +of its kind--that it would often be not a little the better for a +stricter application of critical rules to itself. + +But when it is at its best it has a wonderful charm--a charm nowhere +else to be matched among our dead poets of this century. Coleridge was +perhaps, allowing for the fifty years between them, as good a scholar as +Mr. Arnold, and he was a greater poet; but save for a limited time he +never had his faculties under due command, or gave the best of his work. +Scott, Byron, Keats, were not scholars at all; Shelley and Tennyson not +critical scholars; Rossetti a scholar only in modern languages. And none +of these except Coleridge, whatever their mere knowledge or instruction, +had the critical vein, the knack of comparing and adjusting, at all +strongly developed. Many attempts have been made at a formula of which +the following words are certainly not a perfect expression, that a poet +without criticism is a failure, and that a critic who is a poet is a +miracle. Mr. Arnold is beyond all doubt the writer who has most nearly +combined the two gifts. But for the present we are only concerned with +his poetry. + +This shows itself distinctly enough, and perhaps at not far from its +best, in almost his earliest work. Among this earliest is the +magnificent sonnet on Shakespeare which perhaps better deserves to be +set as an epigraph and introduction to Shakespeare's own work than +anything else in the libraries that have been written on him except +Dryden's famous sentence; "Mycerinus," a stately blending of +well-arranged six-lined stanzas with a splendid finale of blank verse +not quite un-Tennysonian, but slightly different from Tennyson's; "The +Church of Brou," unequal but beautiful in the close (it is a curious and +almost a characteristic thing that Matthew Arnold's finales, his +perorations, were always his best); "Requiescat," an exquisite dirge. To +this early collection, too, belongs almost the whole of the singular +poem or collection of poems called "Switzerland," a collection much +rehandled in the successive editions of Mr. Arnold's work, and +exceedingly unequal, but containing, in the piece which begins-- + + Yes! in the sea of life enisled, + +one of the noblest poems of its class which the century has produced; +the mono-dramatic "Strayed Reveller," which as mentioned above is one of +the very earliest of all; and the more fully dramatised and longer +"Empedocles on Etna," in regard to which Mr. Arnold showed a singular +vacillation, issuing it, withdrawing nearly all of it, and than issuing +it again. Its design, like that of the somewhat later "Merope," is not +of the happiest, but it contains some lyrical pieces which are among +the best-known and the best of their author's work. Early too, if not of +the earliest, are certain longer narrative or semi-narrative poems, not +seldom varied with or breaking into lyric--"Sohrab and Rustum" with +another of the fine closes referred to, perhaps indeed the finest of +all; "The Sick King in Bokhara"; "Balder Dead"; "Tristram and Iseult"; +"The Scholar-Gipsy," a most admirable "poem of place," being chiefly +devoted to the country round Oxford; "Thyrsis" (an elegy on Clough which +by some is ranked not far below _Lycidas_ and _Adonais_). But perhaps +Mr. Arnold's happiest vein, like that of most of the poets of the last +two-thirds of the century, lay, not in long poems but in shorter pieces, +more or less lyrical in form but not precisely lyrics--in short of the +same general class (though differing often widely enough in subject and +handling) as those in which the main appeal of Tennyson himself has been +said to consist. Such is "The Forsaken Merman," the poet's most original +and perhaps most charming if not his deepest or most elaborate thing--a +piece of exquisite and passionate music modulated with art as touching +as it is consummate; "Dover Beach," where the peculiar religious +attitude, with the expression of which so much of Mr. Arnold's prose is +concerned, finds a more restrained and a very melodious voice; the +half-satiric, half-meditative "Bacchanalia"; the fine "Summer Night"; +the Memorial Verses (Mr. Arnold was a frequent and a skilled attempter +of epicedes) on Wordsworth, on Heine, and on the dog _Geist_; with, +almost latest of all and not least noble, "Westminster Abbey," the +opening passages of which vie in metre (though of a more complicated +mould) and in majesty with Milton's "Nativity Ode," and show a wonderful +ability to bear this heavy burden of comparison. + +Perhaps these last words may not unfairly hint at a defect--if not _the_ +defect--of this refined, this accomplished, but this often disappointing +poetry. Quite early, in the preface before referred to, the poet had run +up and nailed to the mast a flag-theory of poetic art to which he always +adhered as far as theory went, and which it may be reasonably supposed +he always endeavoured to exemplify in practice. According to this "all +depends on the subject," and the fault of most modern poetry and of +nearly all modern criticism is that the poets strive to produce and the +critics expect to receive, not an elaborately planned and adjusted +treatment of a great subject, but touches or bursts of more or less +beautiful thought and writing. Now of course it need not be said that in +the very highest poetry the excellence of the subject, the complete +appropriateness of the treatment, and the beauty of patches and +passages, all meet together. But it will also happen that this is not +so. And then the poet of "the subject" will not only miss the happy +"jewels five words long," the gracious puffs and cat's paws of the wind +of the spirit, that his less austere brother secures, but will not make +so very much of his subjects, of his schemes of treatment themselves. +His ambition, as ambition so often does, will over-reach itself, and he +will have nothing to show but the unfinished fragments of a poetical +Escurial instead of the finished chantries and altar-tombs which a less +formal architect is able to boast. + +However this may be, two things are certain, the first that the best +work of Matthew Arnold in verse bears a somewhat small proportion to the +work that is not his best, and that his worst is sometimes strangely +unworthy of him; the second, that the best where it appears is of +surpassing charm--uniting in a way, of which Andrew Marvell is perhaps +the best other example in English lyric, romantic grace, feeling, and +music to a classical and austere precision of style, combining nobility +of thought with grace of expression, and presenting the most +characteristically modern ideas of his own particular day with an almost +perfect freedom from the jargon of that day, and in a key always +suggesting the great masters, the great thinkers, the great poets of the +past. To those who are in sympathy with his own way of thinking he must +always possess an extraordinary attraction; perhaps he is not least, +though he may be more discriminatingly, admired by those who are very +much out of sympathy with him on not a few points of subject, but who +are one with him in the Humanities--in the sense and the love of the +great things in literature. + +The natural and logical line of development, however, from the +originators of the Romantic movement through Keats and Tennyson did not +lie through Matthew Arnold; and the time was not yet ripe--it can +perhaps hardly be said to be ripe yet--for a reaction in his sense. He +was, as has been said, a branch from Wordsworth, only slightly +influenced by Tennyson himself, than whom indeed he was not so very much +younger. The direct male line of descent lay in another direction; and +its next most important stage was determined by the same causes which +almost at the middle of the century or a little before brought about +Prę-Raphaelitism in art. Both of these were closely connected with the +set of events called the Oxford Movement, about which much has been +written, but of which the far-reaching significance, not merely in +religion but in literature, politics, art, and almost things in general, +has never yet been fully estimated. As far as literature is concerned, +and this special part of literature with which we are here dealing, this +movement had partly shown and partly shaped the direction of the best +minds towards the Middle Ages, which had been begun by Percy's +_Reliques_ in a vague and blind sort of way, and which had been +strengthened, directed, but still not altogether fashioned according to +knowledge, by Scott and Coleridge. + +This movement which dominates the whole English poetry of the later half +of the century with the exception of that produced by a few survivors of +the older time, and to which no successor of equal brilliancy and +fertility has yet made its appearance, is popularly represented by three +writers, two of whom, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Swinburne, are +fortunately still alive, and therefore fall out of our province. +Rossetti, the eldest of the three, a great influence on both, and as it +happens an example unique in all history of combined excellence in +poetry and painting, has passed away for some years, and will give us +quite sufficient text for explaining the development and illustrating +its results without outstripping the limits traced in the preface to +this book; while his sister, and a distinguished junior member of the +school, also dead, Mr. Arthur O'Shaughnessy, may profitably be brought +in to complete the illustration. + +Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel +Rossetti, was born in London on 12th May 1828. He was the son of an +Italian poet and critic of eminence, who, like so many of his countrymen +of literary tastes during the early part of the century, had fallen into +the Carbonaro movement, and who had to fly first to Malta and then to +England. Here he married Miss Polidori, whose mother was an +Englishwoman; and his four children--the two exquisite poets below dealt +with, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a competent critic, and Maria Francesca, the +eldest daughter, who wrote an excellent introduction to Dante--all made +contributions, and two of them great contributions, to English +literature. The father himself, who was Professor of Italian at King's +College, London, was an enthusiastic though rather a fantastic Dantist, +and somewhat of a visionary generally, with wild notions about medięval +secret societies; but a man of the greatest honesty and honour, and a +brilliant contrast to the various patriot-charlatans, from Ugo Foscolo +downwards, who brought discredit on the Italian name in his time in +England. These particulars, of a kind seldom given in this book, are not +otiose; for they have much to do with the singular personality of our +English Rossetti himself. + +He was educated at King's College School; but his leanings towards art +were so strong that at the age of fifteen he began the study of it, +leaving school to draw at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. His art +career and the formation of the P.R.B. (Prę-Raphaelite Brotherhood) +unfortunately fall outside our sphere. It is enough to say that for some +twenty years Rossetti, if he was known at all (and he was never known +very widely nor did he ever seek notoriety) was known as a painter only, +though many who only knew his poems later conceived the most passionate +admiration for his painting. Yet he wrote almost as early as he +painted, contributing to the famous Prę-Raphaelite magazine, the _Germ_, +in 1850, to the remarkable _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_, which also +saw the early work of Mr. Morris, in 1856, and publishing some +translations from _The Early Italian Poets_ in 1861. He had married the +year before this last date and was about to publish _Poems_ which he had +been writing from an early age. But his wife died in 1862, and in a fit +of despair he buried his MSS. in her coffin. They were years afterwards +exhumed and the _Poems_ appeared in 1870. Eleven years later another +volume of _Ballads and Sonnets_ was published, and Rossetti, whose +health in the interval had been much shattered, and who had +unfortunately sought refuge from insomnia in chloral, died next year in +April 1882. The last years of his life were not happy, and he was most +unnecessarily affected by attacks on the first arrangement of his +_Poems_. + +These poems had a certain advantage in being presented to a public +already acquainted with the work of Mr. Morris and Mr. Swinburne; but +Rossetti was not merely older than his two friends, he was also to some +extent their master. At the same time the influences which acted on him +were naturally diverse from those which, independently of his own +influence, acted on them. For the French and English medięval +inspirations of Mr. Morris, for the classical and general study of Mr. +Swinburne, he had his ancestral Italians almost for sole teachers; and +for their varied interests he had his own art of painting for a +continual companion, reminder, and model. Yet the medięval impulse is +almost equally strong on all three, and its intensity shows that it was +the real dominant of the moment in English poetry. The opening poem of +Rossetti's first book, "The Blessed Damozel," which is understood to +have been written very early, though afterwards wrought up by touches +both of his love for his wife while living and of his regret for her +when dead, is almost a typical example of the whole style and school, +though it is individualised by the strong pictorial element rarely +absent from his work. The "Blessed Damozel" herself, who "leaned out +From the gold Bar of Heaven," is a figure from the _Paradiso_, divested +of the excessive abstraction of that part of Dante, and clothed partly +in the gayer colours and more fleshly personality of English and French +medięvalism, partly in a mystical halo which is peculiar to these +nineteenth century re-creations of medięval thought and feeling. The +poem is of extreme beauty, and ornate as is its language in parts there +are touches, such as the poet's reflection + + To one it is ten years of years, + +which utter the simplest truth and tenderness; while others, such as the +enumeration of the Virgin's handmaidens (over which at the time the +hoofs of earless critics danced)-- + + With her five handmaidens, whose names + Are five sweet symphonies-- + Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, + Margaret and Rosalys-- + +are consummate triumphs of the word-music brought by Tennyson into +English poetry. Indeed this couplet of names might be made a sort of +text to expound the great appeal to the ear of this kind of poetry, +which any one who is deaf to the exceptional and golden harmony of the +arrangement need never hope to appreciate. It is perfectly easy to +change the order in many ways without affecting the verse; there is +absolutely none of these combinations which approaches the actual one in +beauty of sound and suggestion. + +"Love's Nocturn" which follows is more of the early Italian school pure +and simple; and "Troy Town," a ballad with burdens, is one of a class of +poem much affected by Rossetti and ever since, which has produced some +admirable work, but is perhaps a little open to the charge of too +deliberate archaism. It is at any rate far inferior to his own "Sister +Helen." But "The Burden of Nineveh" which follows is in a quite +different style, and besides its intrinsic excellence is noteworthy as +showing how very far Rossetti was from being limited in his choice of +manners. But to go through the whole contents of this very remarkable +volume would be impossible, and we can only particularise the great +sonnet-sequence "The House of Life" (which was attacked for want of +decency with as little intelligence as "The Blessed Damozel" had been +attacked for want of sense), and a set "for pictures." The first, +somewhat thorny and obscure in language, is of extreme poetical and +philosophical beauty. The latter, beautiful enough, may be said to lend +themselves a little to the attacks of those critics who charged Rossetti +with, in the Aristotelian phrase, "shifting his ground to another kind" +or (to vary the words) of taking the quotation _ut pictura poesis_ in +too literal a sense. Some songs, especially "Penumbra" and "The +Woodspurge," of intense sweetness and sadness, were also included; and +the simple directness of "Jenny" showed, like "Nineveh," capacities in +the poet not easily to be inferred from the bulk of his poems. + +Rossetti's second volume, while it added only too little to the bulk of +his work--for much of it consisted of a revised issue of "The House of +Life"--added greatly to its enjoyment. But it produced no new kind, +unless certain extensions of the ballad-scheme into narrative poems of +considerable length--"Rose-Mary," "The White Ship," and "The King's +Tragedy"--be counted as such. "Rose-Mary" in particular exhibits the +merits and defects of the poet in almost the clearest possible light, +and it may be safely said that no English poet, not the very greatest, +need have been ashamed of such a stanza as this, where there is no +affectation worth speaking of, where the eternal and immortal +commonplaces of poetry are touched to newness as only a master touches, +and where the turn of the phrase and verse is impeccable and supreme:-- + + And lo! on the ground Rose-Mary lay, + With a cold brow like the snows ere May, + With a cold breast like the earth till Spring-- + With such a smile as the June days bring + When the year grows warm for harvesting. + +Here, as elsewhere, it has seemed better to postpone most of the +necessary general criticism of schools and groups till the concluding +chapter, but in this particular respect the paucity of individuals which +our scheme leaves (though Miss Rossetti and Mr. O'Shaughnessy will give +valuable assistance presently), may make a few words desirable, even if +they be partly repetition and partly anticipation. We find in Rossetti a +strong influence of pictorial on poetic art; an overpowering tendency to +revert to the forms and figures, the sense and sentiment of the past, +especially the medięval past; and a further tendency to a mysticism +which is very often, if not always, poetic in character, as indeed +mysticism generally if not always is. We find in point of form a +distinct preference for lyric over other kinds, a fancy for archaic +language and schemes of verse, a further fancy for elaborate and ornate +language (which does not, however, exclude perfect simplicity when the +poet chooses), and above all, a predilection for attempting and a +faculty for achieving effects of verbal music by cunning adjustment of +vowel and consonant sound which, though it had been anticipated +partially, and as it were accidentally in the seventeenth century, and +had been after the Romantic revival displayed admirably by Coleridge and +Keats, and brought to a high pitch by Tennyson, was even further +elaborated and polished by the present school. Indeed, they may be said +to have absolutely finished this poetical appeal as a distinct and +deliberate one. All poets have always attempted, and all poets always +will attempt, and when they are great, achieve these enchanting effects +of mere sound. But for some considerable time it will not be possible +(indeed it will be quite impossible until the structure, the intonation, +the phrase of English have taken such turns as will develop physical +possibilities as different from those of our language as ours are from +those of the seventeenth century) for any poets to get distinctly great +effects in the same way. It is proof enough of this that, except the +masters, no poet for many years now _has_ achieved a great effect by +this means, and that the most promising of the newer school, whether +they may or may not have found a substitute, are abandoning it. + +Rossetti's younger, but very little younger, sister, Christina Georgina, +was born in 1830, sat to her brother early for the charming picture of +"The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and is said also to figure in his +illustration of the weeping queens in Tennyson's _Morte D' Arthur_. But +she lived an exceedingly quiet life, mainly occupied in attention to her +mother and in devotion; for she had been brought up, and all her life +remained, a member of the Church of England. Her religious feelings more +and more coloured her poetical work, which was produced at intervals +from 1861 till close upon her death in the winter of 1894-95. It was not +hastily written, and latterly formed mainly the embellishment of certain +prose books of religious reflection or excerpt. But it was always of an +exquisite quality. Its first expression in book form was _Goblin Market, +and other Poems_ (1861), which, as well as her next volume, _The +Prince's Progress_ (1866), was illustrated by her brother's pencil. A +rather considerable time then passed without anything of importance (a +book called _Sing-Song_ excepted), till in 1881 _A Pageant, and other +Poems_ was added. A collection of all these was issued nine years later, +but with this the gleanings from the devotional works above mentioned +(the chief of which were _Time Flies_ and _The Face of the Deep_) have +still to be united. + +There are those who seriously maintain Miss Rossetti's claim to the +highest rank among English poetesses, urging that she excels Mrs. +Browning, her only possible competitor, in freedom from blemishes of +form and from the liability to fall into silliness and maudlin gush, at +least as much as she falls short of her in variety and in power of +shaping a poem of considerable bulk. But without attempting a too rigid +classification we may certainly say that Miss Rossetti has no superior +among Englishwomen who have had the gift of poetry. In the title-piece +of her first book the merely quaint side of Prę-Raphaelitism perhaps +appears rather too strongly, though very agreeably to some. But +"Dreamland," "Winter Rain," "An End," "Echo," the exquisite song for +music "When I am dead, my dearest," and the wonderful devotional pieces +called "The Three Enemies" and "Sleep at Sea," with many charming +sonnets, adorned a volume which, on the whole, showed more of the +tendencies of the school than any which had yet appeared. For it was +less exclusively medięval than Mr. Morris' _Defence of Guinevere_, and +very much more varied as well as more mature than Mr. Swinburne's _Queen +Mother_ and _Rosamond_. _The Prince's Progress_ showed a great advance +on _Goblin Market_ in dignity and freedom from mannerism, and the minor +poems in general rivalled those in the earlier collection, though the +poetess perhaps never quite equalled "Sleep at Sea." The contents of _A +Pageant, and other Poems_ were at once more serious and lighter than +those of the two former books (for Miss Rossetti, like her brother, had +a strong touch of humour), while the _Collected Poems_ added some +excellent pieces. But the note of the whole had been struck, as is +usually the case with good poets who do not publish too early, at the +very first. + +The most distinguished members, with the exception of Mr. and Miss +Rossetti, of this school are still alive; and, as it did not become +fashionable until about five-and-twenty years ago, even the junior +members of it have in but few cases been sent to that majority of which +alone we treat. Mr. John Addington Symonds, an important writer of +prose, began early and never abandoned the practice of verse, but his +accomplishment in it was never more than an accomplishment. Mr. Philip +Bourke Marston, son of Dr. Westland Marston, the dramatist, was highly +reputed as a poet by his friends, but friendship and compassion (he was +blind) had perhaps more to do with this reputation than strict +criticism. The remarkable talents of Mr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, which +could never be mistaken by any one who knew him, and of which some +memorials remain in verse, were mainly lost to English poetry by the +fact of his passing the last twenty years of his life as a Jesuit +priest. But the most characteristic figure now passed away was Arthur +O'Shaughnessy (1844-81). He was an official of the British Museum, and +published three volumes of poetry--_The Epic of Women_ (1870), _Lays of +France_ (1872), and _Music and Moonlight_ (1874)--which were completed +in the year of his death by a posthumous volume entitled _Songs of a +Worker_. Of these the _Lays of France_ are merely paraphrases of Marie: +great part of the _Songs of a Worker_ is occupied with mere translation +of modern French verses--poor work for a poet at all times. But _The +Epic of Women_ and _Music and Moonlight_ contain stuff which it is not +extravagant to call extraordinary. + +It was never widely popular, for O'Shaughnessy pushed the fancy of the +Prę-Raphaelites for a dreamy remoteness to its very furthest, and the +charge (usually an uncritical one, but usually also explaining with a +certain justice a poet's unpopularity) of "lack of human interest" was +brought against him. Sometimes, too, either of deliberate conviction or +through corrupt following of others, he indulged in expressions of +opinion about matters on which the poet is not called upon to express +any, in a manner which was always unnecessary and sometimes offensive. +But judged as a poet he has the _unum necessarium_, the individual note +of song. Like Keats, he was not quite individual--there are echoes, +especially of Edgar Poe, in him. But the genuine and authentic +contribution is sufficient, and is of the most unmistakable kind. In the +first book "Exile," "A Neglected Heart," "Bisclavaret," "The Fountain of +Tears," "Barcarolle," make a new mixture of the fair and strange in +meaning, a new valuation of the eternal possibilities of language in +sound. _Music and Moonlight_--O'Shaughnessy was one of the few poets who +have been devoted to music--is almost more remote, and even less +popularly beautiful; but the opening "Ode," some of the lyrics in the +title poem (such as "Once in a hundred years"), the song "Has summer +come without the rose," and not a few others, renew for those who can +receive it the strange attraction, the attraction most happily hinted by +the very title of this book itself, which O'Shaughnessy could exercise. +That there was not a little that is morbid in him--as perhaps in the +school generally--sane criticism cannot deny. But though it is as unwise +as it is unsafe to prefer morbidness for itself or to give it too great +way, there are undoubted charms in it, and O'Shaughnessy could give +poetical form to these as few others could. Two of his own lines-- + + Oh! exquisite malady of the soul, + How hast thou marred me-- + +put the thing well. Those who have once tasted his poetry return, and +probably, though they are never likely to be numerous, always when they +have once tasted will return, to the visions and the melodies-- + + Of a dreamer who slumbers, + And a singer who sings no more. + +Another poet whose death brings him within our range, and who may be +said to belong, with some striking differences of circumstance as well +as individual genius, to the same school, was James Thomson, second of +the name in English poetry, but a curious and melancholy contrast to +that Epicurean animal, the poet of _The Seasons_. He was born at +Port-Glasgow on 23rd November 1834, and was the son of a sailor. His +parents being in poor circumstances, he obtained, as a child, a place in +the Royal Caledonian Asylum, and, after a good education there, became +an army schoolmaster--a post which he held for a considerable time. But +Thomson's natural character was recalcitrant to discipline and +distinguished by a morbid social jealousy. He gradually, under the +influence of, or at any rate in company with, the notorious Charles +Bradlaugh, adopted atheistic and republican opinions, and in 1862 an act +of insubordination led to his dismissal from the army, for which he had +long lost, if he ever had, any liking. It is also said that the death of +a girl to whom he was passionately attached had much to do with the +development of the morbid pessimism by which he became distinguished. +For some time Thomson tried various occupations, being by turns a +lawyer's clerk, a mining agent, and war correspondent of a newspaper +with the Carlists. But even before he left the army he had, partly with +Mr. Bradlaugh's help, obtained work on the press, and such income as he +had during the last twenty years of his life was chiefly derived from +it. He might undoubtedly have made a comfortable living in this way, for +his abilities were great and his knowledge not small. But in addition to +the specially poetical weakness of disliking "collar-work," he was +hampered by the same intractable and morose temper which he had shown in +the army, by the violence of his religious and political views, and +lastly and most fatally by an increasing slavery to drink and chloral. +At last, in 1882, he--after having been for some time in the very worst +health--burst a blood-vessel while visiting his friend the blind poet +Philip Bourke Marston, and died in University College Hospital on 3rd +June. + +This melancholy story is to be found sufficiently reflected in his +works. Those in prose, though not contemptible, neither deserve nor are +likely to receive long remembrance, being for the most part critical +studies, animated by a real love for literature and informed by +respectable knowledge, but of necessity lacking in strict scholarship, +distinguished by more acuteness than wisdom, and marred by the sectarian +violence and narrowness of a small anti-orthodox clique. They may +perhaps be not unfairly compared to the work of a clever but +ill-conditioned schoolboy. The verse is very different. He began to +write it early, and it chiefly appeared in Mr. Bradlaugh's _National +Reformer_ with the signature "B. V.," the initials of "Bysshe Vanolis," +a rather characteristic _nom de guerre_ which Thomson had taken to +express his admiration for Shelley directly, and for Novalis by anagram. +Some of it, however, emerged into a wider hearing, and attracted the +favourable attention of men like Kingsley and Froude. But Thomson did +nothing of importance till 1874, when "The City of Dreadful Night" +appeared in the _National Reformer_, to the no small bewilderment +probably of its readers. Six years later the poem was printed with +others in a volume, quickly followed by a second, _Vane's Story_, +_etc._ Thomson's melancholy death attracted fresh attention to him, and +much--perhaps a good deal too much--of his writings has been +republished since. His claims, however, must rest on a comparatively +small body of work, which will no doubt one day be selected and issued +alone. "The City of Dreadful Night" itself, incomparably the best of the +longer poems, is a pessimist and nihilist effusion of the deepest gloom +amounting to despair, but couched in stately verse of an absolute +sincerity and containing some splendid passages. With this is connected +one of the latest pieces, the terrible "Insomnia." Of lighter strain, +written when the poet could still be happy, are "Sunday at Hampstead" +and "Sunday up the River," "The Naked Goddess," and one or two others; +while other things, such as "The fire that filled my heart of old," must +also be cited. Even against these the charge of a monotonous, narrow, +and irrational misery has been brought. But what saves Thomson is the +perfection with which he expresses, the negative and hopeless side of +the sense of mystery, of the Unseen; just as Miss Rossetti expresses the +positive and hopeful one. No two contemporary poets perhaps ever +completed each other in a more curious way than this Bohemian atheist +and this devout lady. + +So far in this chapter the story of poetry, from Tennyson downwards, has +been conducted in regular fashion, and by citing the principal names +which represent the chief schools or sub-schools. But we must now return +to notice a very considerable company of other verse-writers, without +mention of whom this history would be wofully incomplete. Nor must it by +any means be supposed that they are to be regarded invariably as +constituting a "second class." On the contrary, some of them are the +equals, one or two the superiors, of Thomson or of O'Shaughnessy. But +they have been postponed, either because they belong to schools of which +the poets already mentioned are masters, to choruses of which others are +the leaders, or because they show rather blended influences than a +distinct and direct advance in the main poetical line of development. +Others again rank here, and not earlier, because they are of the second +class, or a lower one. + +Of these, though he leaves a name certain to live in English literary +history, if not perhaps quite in the way in which its author wished, is +Martin Farquhar Tupper, who was born, in 1810, of a very respectable +family in the Channel Islands, his father being a surgeon of eminence. +Tupper was educated at the Charterhouse and at Christ Church, and was +called to the bar. But he gave himself up to literature, especially +poetry or verse, of which he wrote an enormous quantity. His most famous +book appeared originally in 1839, though it was afterwards continued. It +was called _Proverbial Philosophy_, and criticised life in rhythmical +rather than metrical lines, with a great deal of orthodoxy. Almost from +the first the critics and the wits waged unceasing war against it; but +the public, at least for many years, bought it with avidity, and perhaps +read it, so that it went through forty editions and is said to have +brought in twenty thousand pounds. Nor is it at all certain that any +genuine conception of its pretentious triviality had much to do with the +decay which, after many years, it, like other human things, experienced. +Mr. Tupper, who did not die till 1889, is understood to have been +privately an amiable and rather accomplished person; and some of his +innumerable minor copies of verse attain a very fair standard of minor +poetry. But _Proverbial Philosophy_ remains as one of the bright and +shining examples of the absolute want of connection between literary +merit and popular success. + +It has been said that Lord Tennyson's first work appeared in _Poems by +Two Brothers_, and it is now known that this book was actually by the +_three_,--Frederick, Charles, and Alfred. Frederick, the eldest, who, at +a great age, is still alive, has never ceased verse-writing. Charles, +who afterwards took the name of Turner, and, having been born in 1808, +died in 1879, was particularly famous as a sonneteer, producing in this +form many good and some excellent examples. Arthur Hallam, whom _In +Memoriam_ has made immortal, was credited by the partial judgment of his +friends with talents which, they would fain think, were actually shown +both in verse and prose. A wiser criticism will content itself with +saying that in one sense he produced _In Memoriam_ itself, and that +this is enough connection with literature for any man. His own work has +a suspicious absence of faults, without the presence of any great +positive merit,--a combination almost certainly indicating precocity, to +be followed by sterility. But this consummation he was spared. John +Sterling, who has been already referred to, and who stands to Carlyle in +what may be called a prose version of the relation between Tennyson and +Hallam, wrote some verse which is at least interesting; and Sir Francis +Doyle, also elsewhere mentioned, belongs to the brood of the remarkable +years 1807-14, having been born in 1810. But his splendid war-songs were +written not very early in life. + +Of the years just mentioned, the first, 1807, contributed, besides Mr. +Frederick Tennyson, the very considerable talent of Archbishop Trench, a +Harrow and Trinity (Cambridge) man who had an actual part in the +expedition to Spain from which Sterling retreated, took orders, and +ended a series of ecclesiastical promotions by the Archbishopric of +Dublin, to which he was consecrated in 1864, which he held with great +dignity and address during the extremely trying period of +Disestablishment, and which he resigned in 1884, dying two years later. +Trench wrote always well, and always as a scholar, on a wide range of +subjects. He was an interesting philologist,--his _Study of Words_ being +the most popular of scholarly and the most scholarly of popular works on +the subject,--a valuable introducer of the exquisite sacred Latin poetry +of the Middle Ages to Englishmen, a sound divine in preaching and +teaching. His original English verse was chiefly written before the +middle of the century, though perhaps his best known (not his best) +verses are on the Battle of the Alma. He was a good sonneteer and an +excellent hymn-writer. + +1809 contributed three writers of curiously contrasted character. One +was Professor Blackie, an eccentric and amiable man, a translator of +Ęschylus, and a writer of songs of a healthy and spirited kind. The +second, Dr. Thomas Gordon Hake, a poet of Parables, has never been +popular, and perhaps seldom arrived at that point of projection in which +poetical alchemy finally and successfully transmutes the rebel +materials of thought and phrase into manifest gold; but he had very high +and distinctly rare, poetical qualities. Such things as "Old Souls," +"The Snake Charmer," "The Palmist," three capital examples of his work, +are often, and not quite wrongly, objected to in different forms of some +such a phrase as this: "Poetry that is perfect poetry ought never to +subject any tolerable intellect to the necessity of searching for its +meaning. It is not necessary that it should yield up the whole treasures +of that meaning at once, but it must carry on the face of it such a +competent quantity as will relieve the reader from postponing the poetic +enjoyment in order to solve the intellectual riddle." The truth of this +in the main, and the demurrers and exceptions to it in part, are pretty +clear; nor is this the place to state them at length. It is sufficient +to say that in Dr. Hake's verse, especially that part of it published +between 1870 and 1880 under the titles _Madeline_, _Parables and Tales_, +_New Symbols_, _Legends of the Morrow_ and _Maiden Ecstasy_, the reader +of some poetical experience will seldom fail to find satisfaction. + +It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that of this poet +with Lord Houghton, earlier known to everybody as Richard Monckton +Milnes, who died in 1885. He was of the golden age of Trinity during +this century, the age of Tennyson, and throughout life he had an amiable +fancy for making the acquaintance of everybody who made any name in +literature, and of many who made none. A practical and active +politician, and a constant figure in society, he was also a very +considerable man of letters. His critical work (principally but not +wholly collected in _Monographs_) is not great in bulk but is +exceedingly good, both in substance and in style. His verse, on the +other hand, which was chiefly the produce of the years before he came to +middle life, is a little slight, and perhaps appears slighter than it +really is. Few poets have ever been more successful with songs for +music: the "Brookside" (commonly called from its refrain, "The beating +of my own heart"), the famous and really fine "Strangers Yet," are the +best known, but there are many others. Lord Houghton undoubtedly had no +strong vein of poetry. But it was always an entire mistake to represent +him as either a fribble or a sentimentalist, while with more inducements +to write he would probably have been one of the very best critics of his +age. + +It is necessary once more to approach the unsatisfactory brevity of a +catalogue in order to mention, since it would be wrong to omit, Sir +Samuel Ferguson (1810-86), an Irish writer who produced some pleasant +and spirited work of ordinary kinds, and laboured very hard to achieve +that often tried but seldom achieved adventure, the rendering into +English poetry of Irish Celtic legends and literature; Alfred Domett +(1811-87), author of the New Zealand epic of _Ranulf and Amohia_ and +much other verse, but most safely grappled to English poetry as +Browning's "Waring"; W. B. Scott (1812-90), an outlying member of the +Prę-Raphaelite School in art and letters, in whom for the most part +execution lagged behind conception both with pen and pencil; Charles +Mackay (1814-89), an active journalist who wrote a vast deal in verse +and prose, his best things perhaps being the mid-century "Cholera +Chant," the once well-known song of "A good time coming," and in a +sentimental strain the piece called "O, ye Tears"; and Mrs. Archer +Clive, the author of the remarkable novel of _Paul Ferroll_, whose _IX. +Poems by V._ attracted much attention from competent critics in the +doubtful time of poetry about the middle of the century, and are really +good. + +Not many writers, either in prose or poetry, give the impression of +never having done what was in them more than William Edmonstoune Aytoun, +who was born in 1813 and died in 1865. He was a son-in-law of +"Christopher North," and like him a pillar of _Blackwood's Magazine_, in +which some of his best things in prose and verse appeared. He divided +himself between law and literature, and in his rather short life rose to +a Professorship in the latter and a Sheriffdom in the former, deserving +the credit of admirably stimulating influence in the first capacity and +competent performance in the second. He published poems when he was +only seventeen. But his best work consists of the famous _Bon Gaultier +Ballads_--a collection of parodies and light poems of all kinds written +in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, and one of the pleasantest +books of the kind that the century has seen--and the more serious _Lays +of the Scottish Cavaliers_, both dating from the forties, the +satirically curious _Firmilian_ (see below), 1854, and some _Blackwood_ +stories of which the very best perhaps is _The Glenmutchkin Railway_. +His long poem of _Bothwell_, 1855, and his novel of _Norman Sinclair_, +1861, are less successful. + +The _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, on which his chief serious claim +must rest, is an interesting book, if hardly a great one. The style is +modelled with extreme closeness upon that of Scott, which even Sir +Walter, with all his originality and genius, had not been able always to +preserve from flatness. In Aytoun's hands the flats are too frequent, +though they are relieved and broken at times by really splendid bursts, +the best of which perhaps are "The Island of the Scots" and "The Heart +of the Bruce." For Aytoun's poetic vein, except in the lighter kinds, +was of no very great strength; and an ardent patriotism, a genuine and +gallant devotion to the Tory cause, and a keen appreciation of the +chivalrous and romantic, did not always suffice to supply the want of +actual inspiration. + +If it had been true, as is commonly said, that the before-mentioned +_Firmilian_ killed the so-called Spasmodic School, Aytoun's failure to +attain the upper regions of poetry would have been a just judgment; for +the persons whom he satirised, though less clever and humorous, were +undoubtedly more poetical than himself. But nothing is ever killed in +this way, and as a matter of fact the Spasmodic School of the early +fifties was little more than one of the periodical outbursts of poetic +velleity, more genuine than vigorous and more audacious than organic, +which are constantly witnessed. It is, as usual, not very easy to find +out who were the supposed scholars in this school. Mr. P. H. Bailey, the +author of _Festus_, who still survives, is sometimes classed with them; +but the chief members are admitted to have been Sydney Dobell and +Alexander Smith, both remarkable persons, both failures of something +which might in each case have been a considerable poet, and both +illustrating the "second middle" period of the poetry of the century +which corresponds to that illustrated earlier by Darley, Horne, and +Beddoes. + +Of this pair, Sydney Dobell had some, and Alexander Smith had others, of +the excuses which charity not divorced from critical judgment makes for +imperfect poets. Dobell, with sufficient leisure for poetical +production, had a rather unfortunate education and exceedingly bad +health. Smith had something of both of these, and the necessity of +writing for bread as well. Dobell, the elder of the two, and the longer +lived, though both died comparatively young, was a Kentish man, born at +Cranbrook on 5th April 1824. When he was of age his father established +himself as a wine-merchant at Cheltenham, and Sydney afterwards +exercised the same not unpoetical trade. He went to no school and to no +University, privations especially dangerous to a person inclined as he +was to a kind of passionate priggishness. He was always ill; and his +wife, to whom he engaged himself while a boy, and whom he married before +he had ceased to be one, was always ill likewise. He travelled a good +deal, with results more beneficial to his poetry than to his health; +and, the latter becoming ever worse, he died near Cheltenham on 22nd +August 1874. His first work, an "Italomaniac" closet drama entitled _The +Roman_, was published in 1850; his second, _Balder_, in 1853. This +latter has been compared to Ibsen's _Brand_: I do not know whether any +one has noticed other odd, though slight, resemblances between _Peer +Gynt_ and Beddoes' chief work. The Crimean War had a strong influence on +Dobell, and besides joining Smith in _Sonnets on the War_ (1855), he +wrote by himself _England in Time of War_, next year. He did not publish +anything else; but his works were edited shortly after his death by +Professor Nichol. + +Alexander Smith, like so many of the modern poets of Scotland, was born +in quite humble life, and had not even the full advantages open to a +Scottish "lad o' pairts." His birthplace, however, was Kilmarnock, a +place not alien to the Muses; and before he was twenty-one (his birth +year is diversely given as 1829 and 1830) the Rev. George Gilfillan, an +amiable and fluent critic of the middle of the century, who loved +literature very much and praised its practitioners with more zeal than +discrimination, procured the publication of the _Life Drama_. It sold +enormously; it is necessary to have been acquainted with those who were +young at the time of its appearance to believe in the enthusiasm with +which it was received; but a little intelligence and a very little +goodwill will enable the critic to understand, if not to share their +raptures. For a time Smith was deliberately pitted against Tennyson by +"the younger sort" as Dennis says of the faction for Settle against +Dryden in his days at Cambridge. The reaction which, mercifully for the +chances of literature if not quite pleasantly for the poet, always comes +in such cases, was pretty rapid, and Smith, ridiculed in _Firmilian_, +was more seriously taxed with crudity (which was just), plagiarism +(which was absurd), and want of measure (which, like the crudity, can +hardly be denied). Smith, however, was not by any means a weakling +except physically; he could even satirise himself sensibly and +good-humouredly enough; and his popularity had the solid result of +giving him a post in the University of Edinburgh--not lucrative and by +no means a sinecure, but not too uncongenial, and allowing him a chance +both to read and to write. For some time he stuck to poetry, publishing +_City Poems_ in 1857 and _Edwin of Deira_ in 1861. But the taste for his +wares had dwindled: perhaps his own poetic impulse, a true but not very +strong one, was waning; and he turned to prose, in which he produced a +story or two and some pleasant descriptive work--_Dreamthorpe_ (1863), +and _A Summer in Skye_ (1865). Consumption showed itself, and he died on +8th January 1867. + +It has already been said that there is much less of a distinct +brotherhood in Dobell and Smith, or of any membership of a larger but +special "Spasmodic school," than of the well-known and superficially +varying but generally kindred spirit of periods and persons in which +and in whom poetic yearning does not find organs or opportunities +thoroughly suited to satisfy itself. Dobell is the more unequal, but the +better of the two in snatches. His two most frequently quoted +things--"Tommy's Dead" and the untitled ballad where the refrain-- + + Oh, Keith of Ravelston, + The sorrows of thy line! + +occurs at irregular intervals--are for once fair samples of their +author's genius. "Tommy's dead," the lament of a father over his son, is +too long, it has frequent flatnesses, repetitions that do not add to the +effect, bits of mere gush, trivialities. The tragic and echoing +magnificence of the Ravelston refrain is not quite seconded by the text: +both to a certain extent deserve the epithet (which I have repudiated +for Beddoes in another place) of "artificial." And yet both have the +fragmentary, not to be analysed, almost uncanny charm and grandeur which +have been spoken of in that place. Nor do this charm, this grandeur, +fail to reappear (always more or less closely accompanied by the faults +just mentioned, and also by a kind of flatulent rant which is worse than +any of them) both in Dobell's war-songs, which may be said in a way to +hand the torch on from Campbell to Mr. Kipling, and in his marvellously +unequal blank verse, where the most excellent thought and phrase +alternate with sheer balderdash--a pun which (it need hardly be said) +was not spared by contemporary critics to the author of _Balder_. + +Alexander Smith never rises to the heights nor strikes the distinct +notes of Dobell; but the _Life Drama_ is really on the whole better than +either _Balder_ or _The Roman_, and is full of what may be called, from +opposite points of view, happy thoughts and quaint conceits, expressed +in a stamp of verse certainly not quite original, but melodious always, +and sometimes very striking. He has not yet had his critical +resurrection, and perhaps none such will ever exalt him to a very high +prominent position. He seems to suffer from the operation of that +mysterious but very real law which decrees that undeserved popularity +shall be followed by neglect sometimes even more undeserved. But when he +does finally find his level, it will not be a very low one. + +To the Spasmodics may be appended yet another list of bards who can +claim here but the notice of a sentence or a clause, though by no means +uninteresting to the student, and often very interesting indeed to the +student-lover of poetry:--the two Joneses--Ernest (1819-69), a rather +silly victim of Chartism, for which he went to prison, but a generous +person and master of a pretty twitter enough; and Ebenezer (1820-60), a +London clerk, author of _Studies of Sensation and Event_, a rather +curious link between the Cockney school of the beginning of the century +and some minor poets of our own times, but overpraised by his +rediscoverers some years ago; W. C. Bennett, a popular song-writer; +William Cory ( -1892), earlier and better known as Johnson, an Eton +master, a scholar, an admirable writer of prose and in _Ionica_ of verse +slightly effeminate but with a note in it not unworthy of one glance of +its punning title; W. C. Roscoe (1823-59), grandson of the historian, a +minor poet in the best sense of the term; William Allingham (1824-89), +sometime editor of _Fraser_, and a writer of verse from whom at one time +something might have been expected; Thomas Woolner, a sculptor of great, +and--in _My Beautiful Lady_, _Pygmalion_, etc.--a poet of estimable +merit, whose first-named volume attracted rather disproportionate praise +at its first appearance. As one thinks of the work of these and +others--often enjoyable, sometimes admirable, and long ago or later +admired and enjoyed--the unceremoniousness of despatching them so +slightly brings a twinge of shame. But it is impossible to do justice to +their work, or to the lyrics, merry or sensuous, of Mortimer Collins, +who was nearly a real poet of _vers de société_, and had a capital +satiric and a winning romantic touch; the stirring ballads of Walter +Thornbury (which, however, would hardly have been written but for +Macaulay on the one hand and Barham on the other) and the +ill-conditioned but clever Radical railing of Robert Brough at +"Gentlemen." But if they cannot be discussed, they shall at least be +mentioned. On three others, Frederick Locker, Arthur Hugh Clough, and +"Owen Meredith" (Lord Lytton), we must dwell longer. + +Clough has been called by persons of distinction a "bad poet"; but this +was only a joke, and, with all respect to those who made it, a rather +bad joke. The author of "Qua Cursum Ventus," of the marvellous picture +of the advancing tide in "Say not the struggle," and of not a few other +things, was certainly no bad poet, though it would not be uncritical to +call him a thin one. He was born at Liverpool on New Year's Day 1819, +spent part of his childhood in America, went to Rugby very young and +distinguished himself there greatly, though it may be doubted whether +the peculiar system which Arnold had just brought into full play was the +healthiest for a self-conscious and rather morbid nature like Clough's. +From Rugby he went to Balliol, and was entirely upset, not, as is +sometimes most unjustly said, by Newman, but by the influence of W. G. +Ward, a genial Puck of Theology, who, himself caring for nothing but +mathematics, philosophy, and play-acting, disturbed the consciences of +others by metaphysical quibbles, and then took refuge in the Church of +Rome. Clough, who had been elected to an Oriel fellowship, threw it up +in 1848, turned freethinker, and became the head of an educational +institution in London called University Hall. He did not hold this very +long, receiving a post in the Education Office, which he held in various +forms till his death in 1861 at Florence. + +It is not necessary to be biassed by Matthew Arnold's musical epicede of +"Thyrsis" in order to admit, nor should any bias against his theological +views and his rather restless character be sufficient to induce any one +to deny, a distinct vein of poetry in Clough. His earliest and most +popular considerable work, _The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_ (the title +of which was originally rather different,) is written in hexameters +which do not, like Kingsley's, escape the curse of that "pestilent +heresy"; and the later _Amours de Voyage_ and _Dipsychus_, though there +are fine passages in both, bring him very close to the Spasmodic +school, of which in fact he was an unattached and more cultivated +member, with fancies directed rather to religiosity than to strict +literature. _Ambarvalia_ had preceded the _Bothie_, and other things +followed. On the whole, Clough is one of the most unsatisfactory +products of that well-known form of nineteenth century scepticism which +has neither the strength to believe nor the courage to disbelieve "and +have done with it." He hankers and looks back, his "two souls" are +always warring with each other, and though the clash and conflict +sometimes bring out fine things (as in the two pieces above cited and +the still finer poem at Naples with the refrain "Christ is not risen"), +though his "Latest Decalogue" has satirical merit, and some of his +country poems, written without undercurrent of thought, are fresh and +genial, he is on the whole a failure. But he is a failure of a +considerable poet, and some fragments of success chequer him. + +Frederick Locker, who on his second marriage took the additional name of +Lampson, was born in 1821 of a family long connected with the Navy and +with Greenwich Hospital. He himself held for some years a post in the +Admiralty; but he was much more addicted to society and to literature +than to official work. His first marriage with Lady Charlotte Bruce +strengthened his social position, and his second gave him wealth. He +published, as early as 1857, a volume of light verse entitled _London +Lyrics_, which, with the work of Prior, Praed, and Mr. Austin Dobson, +stands at the head of its kind in English. But--an exceedingly rare +thing for amateur as well as for professional writers in our time--he +was not tempted either by profit or fame to write copiously. He added +during his not short life, which closed in May 1895, a few more poems to +_London Lyrics_. He edited in 1867 an anthology of his own kind of verse +called _Lyra Elegantiarum_, and in 1879 he produced a miscellany of +verse and prose, original and selected, called _Patchwork_, in which +some have seen his most accomplished and characteristic production. In +form it is something like Southey's _Omniana_, partly a commonplace +book, partly full of original things; but the extracts are so choicely +made and the original part is so delightful that it is not quite like +any book in the language. If Charles Lamb had been of Mr. Locker's time +and circumstances he might have made its fellow. "My Guardian Angel," a +short prose anecdote, is, as nearly as the present writer knows, unique. +Latterly its author was chiefly known as a man of much hospitality and a +collector of choice books. He would not do anything bad, and apparently +he did not feel inclined to do anything good. And as this is a century +when almost everybody must still be doing, and taking the chance of +goodness and badness, such an exception to the rule should meet with +honour. + +No poet of the period, perhaps none of the century, occupies a position +less settled by general criticism, or more difficult to settle, than +that of Edward Robert, first Earl of Lytton, for a long time known in +poetry as "Owen Meredith." The only son of the novelist, he was born on +8th November 1831, and after going to Harrow, but not to either +university, entered the diplomatic service at the age of eighteen. In +this he filled a great many different offices at a great many different +places for nearly thirty years, till, after succeeding to his father's +title, he was made First Minister at Lisbon, and then in 1876 Viceroy of +India. This post he gave up in 1880, and after the return of the Tory +party to power, was sent in 1887 as Ambassador to Paris, where he was +very popular, and where he died in 1892. + +Despite the fact that his time, save for the interval of 1880-87, was +thus uninterruptedly occupied with business, Lord Lytton was an +indefatigable writer of verse; while in _The Ring of Amasis_ he tried +the prose romance. His chief poetical books were _Clytemnestra_ (1855); +_The Wanderer_ (1859), which contains some charming lyrical work; +_Lucile_ (1860), a verse story; _Songs of Servia_ (_Serbski Pesme_) +(1861); _Orval, or the Fool of Time_ and _Chronicles and Characters_ +(1869); _Fables in Song_ (1874); _Glenaveril_, a very long modern epic +(1885); and _After Paradise, or Legends of Exile_ (1887). Besides these +he collaborated in 1861 with his friend Julian Fane in a poem, +_Tannhäuser_, which, though too much of a Tennysonian echo, has good +passages; and after his death two volumes equal if not superior to +anything he had done, _Marah_, a collection of short poems, and _King +Poppy_, a fantastic epic, were published. This extensive and not always +easily accessible work is conveniently represented by two volumes of +selections, one representing chiefly the earlier and shorter works, +edited by Miss Betham-Edwards in 1890, the other drawn mostly from the +later and longer, edited by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, in 1894. +This latter was accompanied by reprints of _The Wanderer_ and _Lucile_. + +The difficulties in criticism above referred to arise, not merely from +the voluminousness of this work, nor from the fact that Lord Lytton +shares with all the poets of his special generation, except Rossetti, +that inability to hit upon a definite and distinct manner of his own +which is so frequently and strangely remarkable in what may be called +intermediate poetical periods. Indeed in his later years he did strike +out something like a very distinct style. But he suffers more than any +other poet of anything like his gifts from two faults, one of which is +perhaps the fault that hurts a poet most with the vulgar, and the other +that which does him most harm with critics. He was so frankly pleased +with, and so apt at imitating the work of his great contemporaries, that +he would publish things to which fools gave the name of +plagiarisms--when they were in fact studies in the manner of Tennyson, +Heine, Browning, and others. And in the second place, though he +frequently rewrote, it seemed impossible for him to retrench and +concentrate. To this may be added his fondness for extremely long +narrative poems, the taste for which has certainly gone out, while it +may be doubted whether, unless they are pure romances of adventure, they +are ever good things. + +The consequence of all this, and perhaps of other things less +legitimately literary, such as political partnership, has hitherto been +that Lord Lytton has been ranked very far indeed below his proper place. +For he had two poetical gifts, the higher of them in a high, the lower +in an eminent degree. The first was the gift of true lyric, not seldom +indeed marred by the lack of polish above noticed, but real, true, and +constant, from the "Fata Morgana" and "Buried Heart" of _The Wanderer_ +to the "Experientia Docet" and "Selenites" of _Marah_, more than thirty +years later. The other was a much more individual power, and by some +might be ranked higher. It is the gift of what can best generally be +called ironical narration, using irony in its proper sense of covert +suggestive speech. This took various forms, indicated with more or less +clearness in the very titles of _Chronicles and Characters_ and _Fables +in Song_,--symbolic-mystical in _Legends of Exile_ (where not only some +of the legends but the poems called "Uriel" and "Strangers" are among +the best things of the author and highly typical of his later manner), +and fantastically romantic, with a strong touch of symbolism, in _King +Poppy_. And when, as happens in most of the pieces mentioned above and +many others, the combination welds itself into a kind of passionate +allegory, few poets show a better power of transporting the reader in +the due poetic manner. There can be no doubt that if Lord Lytton had +developed this faculty somewhat earlier (there are traces of it very +early), had made its exercises rather more clear and direct, and had +subjected their expression to severer thinning and compression, he would +have made a great reputation as a poet. As it is, it cannot be denied +that he had the positive faculties of poetry in kind and degree only +inferior to those possessed by at most four or five of his English +contemporaries from Tennyson downwards. + +Nor should there perhaps lack mention of Roden Noel and Thomas Ashe, two +writers in whom, from their earlier work, it was not unreasonable to +expect poets of a distinct kind, and who, though they never improved on +this early work, can never be said exactly to have declined from it. The +first and elder was a son of the Earl of Gainsborough, was born in 1834, +went to Cambridge, travelled a good deal, and at various times, till his +death at the age of sixty, published much verse and not a little prose, +both showing a distinctly poetical imagination without a sufficient +organ of expression. Nor did he ever develop this except in _A Little +Child's Monument_, where the passionate personal agony injures as much +as it helps the poetical result. Mr. Ashe, who was born in 1836, and +died in 1889, also a Cambridge man, had a much less ambitious and rather +less interesting but somewhat better-organised talent for verse, and his +_Sorrows of Hypsipyle_, published in 1866, caused and authorised at the +time considerable expectations from him. But his vein was rather the +result of classical culture working on a slight original talent than +anything better, and he did not rise beyond a pleasant competence in +verse which was never that of a poetaster, but hardly ever that of a +distinct poet. In which respect he may appear here as the representative +of no scanty company dead and living. For even the longest chapter of a +book must have an end; and it is impossible to find room in it for the +discussion of the question, whether the friends of Oliver Madox Brown, +son of the famous Prę-Raphaelite painter, were or were not wrong in +seeing extraordinary promise in his boyish work; whether the sonnets of +Ernest Lefroy (1855-91) were exercises or works of art. A few more +remarks on humorous poets and women-poets must close the record. + +In the art of merely or mainly humorous singing two names, those of +Edward Lear and Charles Stuart Calverley, entirely dominate the rest +among dead writers in the last part of the century. Lear, a good deal +the elder man of the two, was born in 1813, was a painter by profession, +and was the "E. L." of a well-known poem of Tennyson's. It was not till +1861 that his delightful nonsense-verses, known to his friends in +private, were first published, and they received various additions at +intervals till his death in 1888. The sheer nonsense-verse--the +_amphigouri_ as the French call it--has been tried in various countries +and at various times, but never with such success as in England, and it +has seldom, if ever, been cultivated in England with such success as by +Lear. His happy concoction of fantastic names, the easy slipping flow of +his verse, and above all, the irresistible parody of sense and pathos +that he contrived to instil into his rigmarole are unapproachable. In a +new and not in the least opprobrious sense he was "within the realms of +Nonsense absolute." + +Calverley attempted less "uttermost isles" of fun. Born in 1831 of an +excellent Yorkshire family, he was educated at Harrow, and--a thing as +rare in the nineteenth as common in the seventeenth century--at both +universities, gaining at both a great reputation for scholarship, +eccentricity, and bodily strength. After some time he married and began +to work at the Bar; but an accident on the ice in 1867 brought on +concussion of the brain, though he lingered in constantly weakening +health till 1884. His _Verses and Translations_ twenty-two years earlier +had made him the model of all literary undergraduates with a turn for +humour; and he was able in spite of his affliction to issue some things +later, the chief being _Fly Leaves_ in 1872. Calverley, as has been +said, was a scholar, and his versions both from and into the classical +languages would of themselves have given him a reputation; but his forte +lay partly in the easier vein of parody, wherein few excelled him, +partly in the more difficult one of original light verse, wherein he had +a turn (as in his famous eulogy on tobacco) quite his own. He has never +been equalled in this, or even approached, except by James Kenneth +Stephen (1859-92), whose premature death deprived his friends of a most +amiable personality, and literature, in all probability, of a +considerable ornament. As it was, "J. K. S." left next to nothing but +two tiny collections of verse, showing an inspiration midway between +Calverley and Praed, but with quite sufficient personal note. + +Two other writers of less scholarly style, but belonging to the London +Bohemian school of the third quarter of the century, W. J. Prowse, +"Nicholas" (1836-70), and H. S. Leigh (1837-83), may be noticed. Prowse, +whose career was very short, was the author of the charming lines on +"The beautiful City of Prague," which have been attributed to others: +while Leigh's _Carols of Cockayne_ (he was also a playwright) vary the +note of Hood happily, and now and then with a real originality. + +Except Miss Rossetti, no woman during this time approached the poetical +excellence of Mrs. Barrett Browning. But the whole period has been +unprecedentedly fertile in poetesses, and whereas we had but five or six +to mention in the earlier chapter devoted to verse, we have here at +least a dozen, though no one who requires very extended notice here. +Lady Dufferin (1807-1867), mother of the well-known diplomatist, a +member of the Sheridan family, and her sister, and junior by a year, +Mrs. Norton (1808-1876), were both writers of facile and elegant verse, +with the Irish note of easy melody. The former was the less known to the +general reader, though a few of her pieces, such as "The Irish Emigrant" +and "Katie's Letter," have always been favourite numbers for recitation. +Mrs. Norton at one time enjoyed a considerable reputation as a poetess +by contributions to "Annuals" and "Souvenirs," chiefly in the +sentimental ballad style which pleased the second quarter of the +century. "The Outward Bound," "Bingen on the Rhine," and other things +are at least passable, and one of the author's latest and most ambitious +poems, _The Lady of La Garaye_, has a sustained respectability. To a few +fanatical admirers the scanty verse of Emily Brontė has seemed worthy of +such high praise that only mass of work would appear to be wanting to +put her in the first rank of poetesses if not of poets. Part of this, +however, it is to be feared, is due to admiration of the supposed +freedom of thought in her celebrated "Last Lines," which either in +sincerity or bravado pronounce that "vain are the thousand creeds," and +declare for a sort of vague Pantheism, immanent at once in self and the +world. At thirty, however, a genuine poetess should have produced more +than a mere handful of verse, and its best things should be independent +of polemical partisanship either for or against orthodoxy. As a matter +of fact, her exquisite "Remembrance," and the slightly rhetorical but +brave and swinging epigram of "The Old Stoic," give her better claims +than the "Last Lines," and with them and a few others place her as a +remarkable though not by any means a supreme figure. + +The more prudent admirers of Marian Evans (George Eliot), who wrote a +good deal of verse, either admit that her verse was not poetry, or hold +up a much-quoted passage, "Oh, may I join the choir invisible," which, +like the far superior piece just referred to, is only a hymn on the side +which generally dispenses with hymns; and not a very good one, though +couched in fair Wordsworthian blank verse. They would no doubt indulge +in derisive scorn at the idea of the mild muse of Adelaide Anne Procter, +daughter of "Barry Cornwall," receiving praise denied to Miss Brontė and +Miss Evans; and it must be admitted that Miss Procter never did anything +so good as "Remembrance." On the other hand, she was quite free from the +"sawdust" and heaviness which mar George Eliot's verse. Her style was +akin to that which has been noticed in speaking of Mrs. Norton, though +of a somewhat later fashion, and like those of her father, her songs, +especially the famous "Message," had the knack of suiting composers. +Menella Bute Stedley and Dora Greenwell, a respectable pair, somewhat +older than Miss Procter (she was born in 1825 and died in 1864), +considerably outlived her, Miss Stedley's life lasting from 1820 to +1877, and Miss Greenwell's from 1821 to 1882. Both were invalids, and +soothed their cares with verse, the latter to the better effect, though +both in no despicable strain. Augusta Webster (1840-94) and Emily +Pfeiffer ( -1890) were later poetesses of the same kind, but lower rank, +though both were greatly praised by certain critics. Sarah Williams, a +short-lived writer of some sweetness (1841-68), commended herself +chiefly to those who enjoy verse religious but "broad"; Constance Naden +to those who like pessimist agnosticism; Amy Levy to those who can +deplore a sad fate and admire notes few and not soaring, but passionate +and genuine. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE NOVEL SINCE 1850 + + +Certain novelists who were mentioned at the end of chapter iii., though +they all lived far into the last half of the century, not only belonged +essentially to its first division, but strictly speaking fell out of +strict chronological arrangement of any kind, being of the class of more +or less eccentric men of genius who may appear at any time and belong to +none in particular; and certain others of the earlier time, less +eccentric, lived on far towards our own. About 1850 however, a little +before or a little after it, there appeared a group of novelists of +great talent, and in some cases of genius itself, who were less +self-centred, and exemplified to a greater degree the special tendencies +of the time. These tendencies were variously connected with the Oxford +or Tractarian Movement; the transfer of political power from the upper +to the middle classes by the first Reform Bill; the rise of what is for +shortness called Science; the greater esteem accorded to and the more +general practice of what is, again for shortness, called Art; the +extension in a certain sense of education; the re-engagement of England, +long severed from continental politics, in those politics by the Crimean +war; the enormous development of commerce by the use of steam navigation +and of railways; the opening up of Australia and its neighbourhood; the +change effected in the East by the removal, gradual for some time, then +rapid and complete after the Indian Mutiny, of the power of the East +India Company; and the "Liberal" movement generally. + +To work and counterwork out the influence of these various causes on +separate authors, and the connection of the authors with the causes, +would take a volume in itself. But on the scale and within the limits +possible here, the names of Charlotte Brontė, Marian Evans (commonly +called George Eliot), Charles Kingsley, Anthony Trollope, and Charles +Reade will give us such central points as can be most safely utilised. +Another, Miss Charlotte Yonge, the chief practitioner of the religious +novel, was contemporary with almost the earliest of these, but falls out +of this book as still living. + +The members of this group were, as happens with a repeated coincidence +in literary history too distinct to be altogether neglected, born within +a very few years of each other: Reade in 1814, Trollope in 1815, Miss +Brontė next year, Kingsley and Miss Evans in 1819; but as generally +happens likewise, their appearance as authors, or at least as novelists, +did not follow in exact sequel. The first-renowned, the shortest-lived, +and though by no means the most brilliant or powerful, in a certain way +the freshest and most independent, was Charlotte Brontė, the daughter of +a Yorkshire clergyman of eccentric and not altogether amiable character +and of Irish blood. She was born on 21st April 1816. The origin of the +Brontės or Pruntys has, as well as their family history generally, been +discussed with the curiously disproportionate minuteness characteristic +of our time; but hardly anything need be said of the results of the +investigation, except that they were undoubtedly Irish. Charlotte's +mother died soon after the Rev. Patrick Brontė had received the living +of Haworth, and Charlotte herself was sent to school at a place called +Cowan's Bridge, her experiences at which have in the same way been the +subject of endless inquiry into the infinitely little, in connection +with the "Lowood" of _Jane Eyre_. After two of her sisters had died, and +she herself had been very ill, she was taken away and educated partly at +home, partly elsewhere. Her two surviving sisters, who were her juniors, +Emily by two years and Anne by four, were both of more or less literary +leanings, and as they were all intended to be governesses, the sole +profession for poor gentlewomen in the middle of the century, Emily and +Charlotte were sent to Brussels to qualify. In 1846 the three published +a joint volume of _Poems_ under the pseudonyms (which kept their +initials) of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, and to people over middle +age Charlotte Brontė is still perhaps most familiar as Currer Bell. +Emily's poems are elsewhere commented upon. The eldest and youngest +sister had no poetical vocation, and Anne had not much for prose. But +she, like the others, attempted it after the failure of their verse in a +triad of novels, _The Professor_, by Charlotte; _Wuthering Heights_ +(very much praised by those who look first for unconventionality and +force), by Emily, who followed it with _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_; +and _Agnes Grey_, by Anne. But Charlotte could not get _The Professor_ +published--indeed it is anything but a good book--and set to work at the +famous _Jane Eyre_, which after being freely refused by publishers, was +accepted by Messrs. Smith and Elder and published in 1847, with the +result of violent attacks and very considerable popularity. Death the +next year and the year after robbed her of both her sisters and of her +brother Patrick, a ne'er-do-weel, who, on the strength of his +Bohemianism and his sisters, is sometimes supposed to have had genius. +_Shirley_ appeared in 1849, and _Villette_ in 1852. In 1854 Charlotte +married her father's curate, Mr. Nicholls, but died next year, on 31st +March 1855. + +Perhaps the most interesting way of looking at Charlotte Brontė, who, as +has been said, has been violently attacked, and who has also been +extravagantly praised (though not so extravagantly as her sister Emily), +is to look at her in the light of a precursor or transition-novelist, +representing the time when the followers of Scott had wearied the public +with second-rate romances, when Thackeray had not arisen, or had only +just arisen, and when the modern domestic novel in its various kinds, +from the religious to the problematic, was for the most part in embryo, +or in very early stages. This latter novel she in fact anticipated in +many of its kinds, and partly to the fact of this anticipation, partly +to the vividness which her representation of personal experiences gave +to her work, may the popularity which it at first had, and such of it as +has survived, be assigned. In this latter point, however, lay danger as +well as safety. It seems very improbable that if Charlotte Brontė had +lived, and if she had continued to write, her stock of experiences would +have sufficed her; and it would not appear that she had much else. She +is indeed credited with inventing the "ugly hero" in the Mr. Rochester +of _Jane Eyre_, but in the long-run ugliness palls almost as much as +beauty, perhaps sooner. Except in touches probably due to suggestions +from Emily, the "weirdness" of the younger sister was not exhibited by +the elder. The more melodramatic parts of the book would not have borne +repetition, and its main appeal now lies in the Lowood scenes and the +character of Jane herself, which are both admittedly autobiographical. +So also Shirley is her sister Emily, the curates who pester her appear +to have been almost in case to enter libel actions if they thought +proper, and _Villette_ is little more than an embroidered version of the +Brussels sojourn. How successful an appeal of this kind is, the +experience of Byron and many others has shown; how dangerous it is, +could not be better shown than by the same experience. It was Charlotte +Brontė's good fortune that she died before she had utterly exhausted her +vein, though those who fail to regard Paul Emanuel with the affection +which he seems to inspire in some, may think that she went perilously +near it. But fate was kind to her: some interesting biographies and +brilliant essays at different periods have revived and championed her +fame: and her books--at least _Jane Eyre_ almost as a whole and parts of +the others--will always be simply interesting to the novel-reader, and +interesting in a more indirect fashion to the critic. For this last will +perceive that, thin and crude as they are, they are original, they +belong to their own present and future, not to their past, and that so +they hold in the history of literature a greater place than many books +of greater accomplishment which are simply worked on already projected +and accepted lines. Emily's work, though too small in bulk and too +limited in character to be put really high, has this original character +in intense equality. + +The mantle of Charlotte Brontė fell almost directly from her shoulders +on those of another novelist of her sex. The author of _Jane Eyre_ died, +as has been said, in the spring of 1855. In the autumn of the next year +was written, and in the January issue of _Blackwood's Magazine_ for 1857 +appeared, the first of a series of _Scenes of Clerical Life_. The +author, then and for some time afterwards unknown, was Mary Ann or +Marian Evans, who took various styles during her life, but wrote +habitually under the _nom de guerre_ of "George Eliot." Miss Brontė had +not been a very precocious novelist; but Miss Evans did not begin to +write novels till she was nearly as old as Miss Brontė was when she +died. Her time, however, had been by no means wasted. Born on 22nd +November 1819, at Arbury in Warwickshire, where her father was +land-steward to Mr. Newdigate, she moved, after twenty years' life in +the country or at school, with her father into Coventry, and became +acquainted with a set of Unitarians who had practically broken all +connection with Christianity. She accepted their opinions with the +curious docility and reflexiveness which, strong as was her mind in a +way, always distinguished her; and as a sign of profession she undertook +the translation of Strauss' _Leben Jesu_. In 1849 she went abroad, and +stayed for some time at Geneva, studying hard, and not returning to +England till next year. Then establishing herself in London, she began +to write for the _Westminster Review_, which she helped to edit, and +translated Feuerbach's _Wesen des Christenthums_. It is highly probable +that she would never have been known except as an essayist and +translator, if she had not formed an irregular union with George Henry +Lewes, a very clever and versatile journalist, who was almost a +philosopher, almost a man of science, and perhaps quite a man of letters +of the less creative kind. Under his influence (he had been a novelist +himself, though an unsuccessful one, and was an excellent critic) the +docility above remarked on turned itself into the channel of +novel-writing, with immediate and amazing success. + +Some good judges have thought that Miss Evans never exceeded, in her own +special way, the _Scenes of Clerical Life_. But it was far exceeded in +popularity by _Adam Bede_, which, oddly enough, was claimed by or at +least for an impostor after its triumphant appearance in 1858. The +position of the author may be said to have been finally established by +_The Mill on the Floss_ (1860), though the opening part of _Silas +Marner_ (1861) is at least equal if not superior to anything she ever +did. Her later works were _Romola_, a story of the Italian Renaissance +(1863); _Felix Holt, the Radical_ (1866); some poems (the _Spanish +Gypsy_, _Jubal_, etc., 1868-74); _Middlemarch_ (1871); and _Daniel +Deronda_ (1876). This last was followed by a volume of essays entitled +the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Mr. Lewes having died in 1878, +Miss Evans, in May 1880, married Mr. John Cross, and died herself in +December of the same year. Her _Life and Letters_ were subsequently +published by her husband, but the letters proved extremely disappointing +to her admirers, and the life was not very illuminative, except as to +that docility and capacity for taking colour and pressure from +surroundings which have been noticed above. + +As a poet George Eliot has been noticed elsewhere. She merely put some +of the thoughtful commonplaces of her time and school into wooden verse, +occasionally grandiose but never grand, and her purple passages have the +purple of plush not of velvet. Nor is she very remarkable as an +essayist, though some of her early articles have merit, and though +_Theophrastus Such_, appearing at a time when her general hold on the +public was loosening, not commending itself in form to her special +admirers, and injured in parts by the astonishing pseudo-scientific +jargon which she had acquired, was received rather more coldly than it +deserved. But as a novelist she is worthy of careful attention. Between +1860 and 1870, a decade in which Thackeray passed away early and during +which Dickens did no first-class work, she had some claims to be +regarded as the chief English novelist who had given much and from whom +more was to be expected; after Dickens' death probably four critics out +of five would have given her the place of greatest English novelist +without hesitation. Nevertheless, even from the first there were +dissidents: while at the time of the issue of _Middlemarch_ her fame was +at the very highest, the publication of _Daniel Deronda_ made it fall +rapidly; and a considerable reaction (perhaps to be reversed, perhaps +not) has set in against her since her death. + +The analysis of George Eliot's genius is indeed exceedingly curious. +There are in her two currents or characters which are more or less +mingled in all her books, but of which the one dominates in those up to +and including _Silas Marner_, while the other is chiefly noticeable in +those from _Romola_ onward. The first, the more characteristic and +infinitely the more healthy and happy, is a quite extraordinary faculty +of humorous observation and presentation of the small facts and oddities +of (especially provincial) life. The _Scenes of Clerical Life_ show this +strongly, together with a fund of untheatrical pathos which scarcely +appears in so genuine a form afterwards. In _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on +the Floss_ it combines with a somewhat less successful vein of tragedy +to make two admirable, if not faultless, novels; it lends a wonderful +charm to the slight and simple study of _Silas Marner_. But, abundant as +it is, it would seem that this is observation, not invention, nor that +happiest blending of observation and invention which we find in +Shakespeare and Scott. The accumulated experiences of her long and +passive youth were now poured out with a fortunate result. But in +default of invention, and in presence of the scientific or +pseudo-scientific spirit which was partly natural to her and partly +imbibed from those who surrounded her, she began, after _Silas Marner_, +to draw always in part and sometimes mainly upon quite different +storehouses. It is probable that the selection of the Italian +Renaissance subject of _Romola_ was a very disastrous one. She herself +said that she "was a young woman when she began the book and an old one +when she finished it." It is a very remarkable _tour de force_, but it +is a _tour de force_ executed entirely against the grain. It is not +alive: it is a work of erudition not of genius, of painful manufacture +not of joyous creation or even observation. And this note of labour +deepened and became more obvious even when she returned to modern and +English subjects, by reason of the increased "purpose" which marked her +later works. It has been noted by all critics of any perception as +extremely piquant, though not to careful students of life and letters at +all surprising, that George Eliot, whose history was always well known, +is in almost every one of her books the advocate of the strictest union +of love and marriage--no love without marriage and no marriage without +love. But she was not satisfied with defending this thesis, beneficial, +comparatively simple, and, in the situations which it suggests, not +unfriendly to art. In her last book, _Daniel Deronda_, she embarked on a +scheme, equally hopeless and gratuitous, of endeavouring to enlist the +public sympathies in certain visions of neo-Judaism. In all these books +indeed, even in _Deronda_, the old faculty of racy presentation of the +humours of life recurred. But it became fainter and less frequent; and +it was latterly obscured, as has been hinted, by a most portentous +jargon borrowed from the not very admirable lingo of the philosophers +and men of science of the last half of the nineteenth century. All these +things together made the later books conspicuously, what even the +earlier had been to some extent, lifeless structures. They were +constructed no doubt with much art and of material not seldom precious, +but they were not lively growths, and they were fatally tinged with +evanescent "forms in chalk," fancies of the day and hour, not less +ephemeral for being grave in subject and seeming, and almost more jejune +or even disgusting to posterity on that account. + +Almost as much of the time, though curiously different in the aspect of +it which he represented, was Charles Kingsley, who was born in the same +year as George Eliot, on the 18th of June 1819. A fanciful critic might +indulge in a contrast between the sober though not exactly dull scenery +of the Midlands which saw her birth, and that of the most beautiful part +of Devonshire (Holne, on the south-eastern fringe of Dartmoor) where, at +the vicarage which his father held, Kingsley was born. He was educated +at King's College, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, took a very +good degree, and very soon after his appointment to the curacy of +Eversley, in Hampshire, became rector thereof in 1844. He held the +living for the rest of his life, dying there on the 23rd January 1875. +It was not, however, by any means his only preferment. In 1860 he was +made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, not the most fortunate of +appointments; for, with a tendency to small slips in fact at least equal +to that of his friend and brother-in-law Mr. Froude, Kingsley, though +capable of presenting separate aspects and facets of the past admirably, +had not the general historic grasp which redeemed Froude. Nine years +later he resigned the post and was made a Canon of Chester, while in +1873 this was exchanged for a Canonry at Westminster and a Chaplaincy to +the Queen. Otherwise Kingsley's private life was happy and uneventful, +its chief incident being a voyage to the West Indies (which, though +unvisited, he had long before so brilliantly described) in 1871. + +His literary work was very large, much varied, and of an excellence +almost more varied than its kinds. He began, of course, with verse, and +his _Saint's Tragedy_ (1848), a drama on the story of St. Elizabeth of +Hungary, was followed by shorter poems (far too few) at different times, +most of them previous to 1858, though the later books contain some +charming fragments, and some appeared posthumously. Of all men who have +written so little verse during as long a life in our time, Kingsley is +probably the best poet. The _Saint's Tragedy_ is a little "viewy" and +fluent. But in _Andromeda_ he has written the very best English +hexameters ever produced, and perhaps the only ones in which that alien +or rebel takes on at least the semblance of a loyal subject to the +English tongue. The rise of the breeze after the passage of the Nereids, +the expostulation of Andromeda with Perseus, and the approach of the +monster, are simply admirable. "The Last Buccaneer" and "The Red +King"--call them "Wardour Street," as some critics may--are among the +best of their kind; and scores of songs, snatches, etc., from "The Three +Fishers" and "The Starlings" of a very early date to the "When all the +world is young" ballad of the _Water Babies_ and the posthumous fragment +in rhyme of "Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorrče"--one of the triumphs of that +pure poetry which has the minimum of meaning, yet enough--are of +extraordinary vigour, freshness, and charm. + +But Kingsley was one of those darlings--perhaps the rarest--of the Muses +to whom they grant the gift not only of doing a little poetry +exquisitely, but the further gift of abstaining from doing anything ill; +and he seems to have recognised almost at once that "the other harmony," +that of prose, was the one meant for him to do his day's work in. An +enthusiast for the people, and an eager disciple of Carlyle, he produced +in the fateful year 1849 two novels, _Alton Locke_ and _Yeast_, a little +crude, immature, and violent, but of wonderful power and beauty as +literature, and putting current ideas of Chartism, the Tractarian +movement, the woes of the working classes, and what not, with that most +uncommon touch which takes out of the expression all its ephemerality. +He had joined Maurice in the "Christian Socialist" movement, and was a +frequent newspaper writer in the same sense as that of his novels; while +he soon began to contribute to _Fraser's Magazine_ a series of extremely +brilliant essays, since collected in various forms, on literature, +scenery, sport (he was an ardent fisherman), and things in general. His +next novel, _Hypatia_, is still shot with Christian Socialism, but is +much less crude; and a further sobering down without any loss of force +appears in the great Elizabethan novel of _Westward Ho!_ usually, and +perhaps rightly, thought his masterpiece (1855). _Two Years Ago_ (1857), +the title of which refers to the Crimean War, is much more unequal, and +exhibits signs of a certain declension, though to a level still very +high. His last novel, _Hereward the Wake_ (1866), was and is very +variously judged. + +But even the poems, the essays, and the novels, do not by any means fill +up the list of the results of Kingsley's activity. He was a constant, +and at his best a very good, sermon-writer for publication. He produced +in the first flush of the rage for seashore studies (1854) a very +pleasant little book called _Glaucus_; he collected some of his +historical lectures in _The Roman and the Teuton_; and he wrote in 1863 +the delightful nondescript of _The Water Babies_, part story, part +satire, part Rabelaisian _fatrasie_, but almost all charming, and +perhaps the latest book in which his powers appear at their very best. +These powers, as exhibited in his novels, with a not dissimilar +exhibition in little in his essays, are so remarkable that in certain +senses Kingsley may, with a little kindness, be put in the very first +class of English novelists, and might be put there by the sternest +critical impartiality were it not for his concomitant defects. These +defects are fairly numerous, and they are unfortunately of a kind not +likely to escape attention. He was a rather violent, though a very +generous partisan, and was perpetually going out of his way to provoke +those on the other side by "flings" of this or that kind. He was +extremely fond of arguing, but was a most poor and unhappy logician. One +of the best known and most unfortunate episodes of his literary life was +the controversy into which he plunged with Newman in 1864. Kingsley had +before on various occasions spoken enthusiastically of Newman's genius +and character: the reference to the peculiar estimate of truth held by +some Roman Catholics, and approved, or supposed to be approved, by +Newman, which was the text for the latter's wrath, was anything but +offensive, and it afterwards became certain, through the publication of +the _Apologia_, that the future Cardinal, with the inspiration of a born +controversialist, had simply made Kingsley the handle for which he had +been waiting. A very little dialectical skill would have brought +Kingsley out of the contest with honours at least divided; but, as it +was, he played like a child into Newman's hands, and not only did much +to re-establish that great man in public opinion, but subjected himself +at the time, and to some extent since, to an obloquy at least as unjust +as that which had rested upon Newman. This maladroitness appears +constantly in the novels themselves, and it is accompanied not merely by +the most curious and outrageous blunders in fact (such as that which +represents Marlowe as dying in the time of James the First, not that of +Elizabeth), but by odd lapses of taste in certain points, and in some +(chiefly his later) books by a haphazard and inartistic construction. + +We must, of course, allow for these things, which are the more annoying +in that they are simply a case of those which _incuria fudit_. But when +they are allowed for, there will remain such a gallery of scenes, +characters, and incidents, as few English novelists can show. The best +passages of Kingsley's description, from _Alton Locke_ to _Hereward_, +are almost unequalled and certainly unsurpassed. The shadows of London +low life and of working-class thought in _Alton Locke_, imitated with +increasing energy for half a century, have never been quite reached, and +are most brilliantly contrasted with the lighter Cambridge scenes. +_Yeast_, perhaps the least general favourite among his books, and +certainly the crudest, has a depth of passion and power, a life, an +intensity, the tenth part of which would make the fortune of a novel +now; and the variety and brilliancy of _Hypatia_ are equalled by its +tragedy. Unequal as _Two Years Ago_ is, and weak in parts, it still has +admirable passages; and _Hereward_ to some extent recovers the strange +panoramic and phantasmagoric charm of _Hypatia_. But where _Westward +Ho!_ deserves the preference, and where Kingsley vindicates his claim to +be the author not merely of good passages but of a good book, is in the +sustained passion of patriotism, the heroic height of adventure and +chivalry, which pervades it from first to last. Few better historical +novels have ever been written; and though, with one exception, that of +Salvation Yeo, the author has drawn better characters elsewhere, he has +nowhere knitted his incidents into such a consistent whole, or worked +characters and scenes together into such a genuine and thorough work of +art. + +Anthony Trollope, one of the most typical novelists of the century, or +at least of the half-century, in England, if not one of the greatest, +was a member of a literary family whose other members, of more or less +distinction, may for convenience' sake best be mentioned here. Little is +recorded of his father, who was, however, a barrister, and a Fellow of +New College, Oxford. But Anthony's mother, the "Mrs. Trollope" of two +generations ago, who was born a Miss Milton in 1780, was herself very +well known in print, especially by her novel of _The Widow Barnaby_ +(1839), which had sequels, and by her very severe _Domestic Manners of +the Americans_, which appeared in 1832, after she had qualified herself +to write it by a three years' residence in the United States. She wrote +a great deal at this period, and survived till 1863; but her work hardly +survived as long as she did. It has, however, been said, and not without +justice, that much of the more vivid if coarser substance of her younger +son's humour is to be traced in it. The elder son, Thomas Adolphus, who +was born in 1810, and lived from 1841 for some half-century onwards in +Italy, was also a prolific novelist, and wrote much on Italian history; +while perhaps his best work was to be found in some short pieces, +combining history with a quasi-fictitious interest, which he contributed +to the periodicals edited by Dickens. + +But neither mother nor elder brother could vie with Anthony, who was +born in 1815, was educated at Winchester and Harrow, spent the greater +part of his life as an official of the Post Office, and died in December +1882, leaving an enormous number of novels, which at one time were the +most popular, or almost the most popular, of their day, and to which +rather fastidious judges have found it difficult to refuse all but the +highest praise. Almost immediately after Trollope's death appeared an +_Autobiography_ in which, with praiseworthy but rather indiscreet +frankness, he detailed habits of work of a mechanical kind, the +confession of which played into the hands of those who had already begun +to depreciate him as a mere book-maker. It is difficult to say how many +novels he wrote, persevering as he did in composition up to the very +time of his death; and it is certain that the productions of his last +decade were, as a rule, very inferior to his best. This best is to be +found chiefly, but not entirely, in what is called the "Barsetshire" +series, clustering round a county and city which are more or less +exactly Hampshire and Winchester, beginning in 1855 with _The Warden_, a +good but rather immature sketch, and continuing through _Barchester +Towers_ (perhaps his masterpiece), _Doctor Thorne_, _Framley Parsonage_, +and _The Small House at Allington_ (the two latter among the early +triumphs of the _Cornhill Magazine_), to _The Last Chronicle of Barset_ +(1867), which runs _Barchester Towers_ very hard, if it does not surpass +it. Other favourite books of his were _The Three Clerks_, _Orley Farm_, +_Can You Forgive Her_, and _Phineas Finn_--nor does this by any means +exhaust the list even of his good books. + +It has been said that Trollope is a typical novelist, and the type is of +sufficient importance to receive a little attention, even in space so +jealously allotted as ours must be. The novel craved by and provided for +the public of this second period (it has also been said) was a novel of +more or less ordinary life, ranging from the lower middle to the upper +class, correctly observed, diversified by sufficient incident not of an +extravagant kind, and furnished with description and conversation not +too epigrammatic but natural and fairly clever. This norm Trollope hit +with surprising justness, and till the demand altered a little or his +own hand failed (perhaps there was something of both) he continued to +hit it. His interests and experiences were fairly wide; for, besides +being active in his Post Office duties at home and abroad, he was an +enthusiastic fox-hunter, fairly fond of society and of club-life, +ambitious enough at least to try other paths than those of fiction in +his _Thackeray_ (a failure), his _Cicero_ (a worse failure), and other +things. And everything that he saw he could turn into excellent +novel-material. No one has touched him in depicting the humours of a +public office, few in drawing those of cathedral cities and the +hunting-field. If his stories, as stories, are not of enthralling +interest or of very artfully constructed plots, their craftsmanship in +this respect leaves very little to complain of. And he can sometimes, as +in the Stanhope family of _Barchester Towers_, in Mrs. Proudie _passim_, +in Madalina Demolines, and in others, draw characters very little +removed from those who live with us for ever. It is extremely improbable +that there will ever be a much better workman of his own class; and his +books are certainly, at their best, far better than all but one or two +that appear, not merely in any given year nowadays, but in any given +lustrum. Yet the special kind of their excellence, the facts that they +reflect their time without transcending it, and that in the way of +merely reflective work each time prefers its own workmen and is never +likely to find itself short of them, together with the great volume of +Trollope's production, are certainly against him; and it is hard even +for those who enjoyed him most, and who can still enjoy him, to declare +positively that there is enough of the permanent and immortal in him to +justify the hope of a resurrection. + +In Charles Reade, on the other hand, there is undoubtedly something of +this permanent or transcendent element, though less perhaps than some +fervent admirers of his have claimed. He was born on June 1814 at Ipsden +in Oxfordshire, where his family had been some time seated as squires. +He had no public school education, but was elected first to a Demyship +and then to a Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was called to +the Bar in 1842; but his Fellowship made him independent, and he pursued +many crazes--he was one of the most eccentric of those English authors +who are noticed in this volume--but no profession. He did not even begin +to write very early, and when he did it was drama, not prose or fiction. +He was not very successful with the stage, though he never quite gave it +up. It was about 1852 when he began to write, or at least to publish, +novels; and between the _Peg Woffington_ of that year and his death on +1st April 1884 he produced nearly a score, diversifying the publication +with law-suits, eccentric newspaper correspondences, and other things. +Indeed he has in more than one of his books introduced mental delusions +with such startling subtlety and truth, and was so entirely odd in the +ordinary relations of life, that some have not hesitated to insinuate a +slight want of sanity. + +If there was any madness in him, the hackneyed alliance of great wits +was certainly not refused. A novelist of violent likes and dislikes +himself, he has found violent partisans and scornful pooh-poohers. Among +the former there is perhaps hardly one of his chief books--the quaint +and brilliant _Peg Woffington_, the pathetic _Christie Johnstone_, _Hard +Cash_, _Griffith Gaunt_, _Put Yourself in his Place_, _A Terrible +Temptation_, and the rest--which has not special sectaries. But catholic +criticism would undoubtedly put _It is Never too Late to Mend_ (1856) +and _The Cloister and the Hearth_ (1861) at the head of all. The former +is a tale of the moment, based chiefly on some stories which had got +abroad of tyranny in gaols, and on the Australian gold fever of a few +years earlier. The latter is a pure romance, purporting to tell the +adventures of Erasmus' father in the fifteenth century. The contrast of +these subjects illustrates admirably a curious combination in Reade's +genius which, for the matter of that, might be independently exemplified +from either book. On the one side he was one of the earliest and one of +the most industrious of those who have been called the "document" or +"reporter" novelists--now collecting enormous stores of newspaper +cuttings and busying himself with keenest interest in the things of the +day; now, as in _The Cloister and the Hearth_, not disdaining to impart +realism and vividness to his pictures by adapting and almost translating +whole passages from Erasmus' own _Colloquies_. On the other, he was a +poetic seer and dreamer, of the strongest romantic force, and capable of +extraordinary flights of power, passion, and pathos. But there was +another thing that he was _not_, and that was a critic. His taste and +judgment were extremely deficient; he had no sense of general proportion +in his work; and was quite as likely to be melodramatic as to be +tragical, to be coarse as to be strong, to be tedious as to be amusing, +to be merely revolting as to purify by pity and terror. Both the books +just specially mentioned may be thought too long: it is certain that +_The Cloister and the Hearth_ is. That a freshness still evident in +_Christie Johnstone_ has been lost in both (having been killed by "the +document") is also true. But still, Reade undoubtedly had genius, and to +genius most things can without much trouble be forgiven. + +The chief novelist of what is rather loosely called the School of +Dickens, was Wilkie Collins, son of the painter of that name, who was +born in London on 8th January 1824, and died in 1889. His greatest +popularity was in the decade between 1857 and 1866, when _The Dead +Secret_, _The Woman in White_, _No Name_, and _Armadale_, especially the +second, had an immense vogue. Perhaps _The Moonstone_, which is later, +is also better than any of these. The strictly literary merit of none +could be put high, and the method, that of forwarding the result by a +complicated intertwist of letters and narratives, though it took the +public fancy for a time, was clumsy; while the author followed his +master in more than one aberration of taste and sentiment. His brother +Charles Collins, who had a much shorter life, had a much more delicate +style and fancy; and the _Cruise upon Wheels_, a record of an actual +tour slightly embellished and thrown into fictitious form, is one of the +books which have, and are not, unless they drop entirely out of sight, +likely to lose, a firm following of friends, few perhaps but faithful. +Mortimer Collins, a contemporary, but no relation of these, whose poems +have already been mentioned, was born in 1827 and died in 1876, the last +twenty years of his life having been occupied by various and voluminous +literary work. He was one of the last of the so-called Bohemian school +in letters and journalism, something of a scholar, a fertile novelist, +and a versatile journalist in most of the kinds which make up modern +journalism. + +Henry Kingsley, younger brother of Charles, was himself a prolific and +vigorous novelist; and though a recent attempt to put him above his +brother cannot possibly be allowed by sound criticism, he had perhaps a +more various command of fiction, certainly a truer humour, and if a +less passionate, perhaps a more thoroughly healthy literary temperament. +But his life was not long, and he was unfortunately compelled during +most of it to write for a living. Born in 1830, he was educated at +King's College, London, and Worcester College, Oxford, on leaving which +latter he went to Australia and lived there for five years. Returning in +1859, he wrote the admirable Australian story of _Geoffrey Hamlyn_, +which, with _Ravenshoe_ two years later, contains most of his work that +can be called really first rate. He returned to Australia for his +subject in _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, and wrote several other +novels before his death in 1876, having been during part of the time a +newspaper editor, a newspaper correspondent, and a journalist generally. +The absence of composition, which Flaubert deplored in English novels +generally, shows at its height in Henry Kingsley, whose _Ravenshoe_, for +instance, has scarcely any plot at all, and certainly owes nothing to +what it has; while he was a rapid and careless writer. But he had, in a +somewhat less elaborate form, all his brother's talents for description +of scene and action, and his characters, if more in the way of ordinary +life, are also truer to that life. Also he is particularly to be +commended for having, without the slightest strait-lacedness, and indeed +with a good deal of positive Bohemianism, exhibited the nineteenth +century English notion of what constitutes a gentleman perhaps better +than any one else. "There are some things a fellow _can't_ do"--the +chance utterance of his not ungenerous scamp Lord Welter--is a memorable +sentence, whereon a great sermon might be preached. + +A little older than Henry Kingsley (he died in the same year), much more +popular for a time, and the exerter of an influence which has not ceased +yet, and has been on the whole distinctly undervalued, was George Henry +Lawrence, who was educated at Rugby and Balliol, was called to the Bar, +but was generally known in his own time as Major Lawrence from a militia +commission which he held. He also fought in, or at least was present +during, the war of independence of the southern states of America. +Lawrence, who was born in 1827, published in his thirtieth year a +novel, _Guy Livingstone_, which was very popular, and much denounced as +the Gospel of "muscular blackguardism"--a parody on the phrase "muscular +Christianity," which had been applied to and not unwelcomed by Charles +Kingsley. The book exhibited a very curious blend of divers of the +motives and interests which have been specified as actuating the novel +about this time. Lawrence, who was really a scholar, felt to the full +the Prę-Raphaelite influence in art, though by no means in religion, and +wrote in a style which is a sort of transition between the excessive +floridness of the first Lord Lytton and the later Corinthianism of Mr. +Symonds. But he retained also from his prototype, and new modelled, the +tendency to take "society" and the manners, especially the amatory +manners, of society very much as his province. And thus he rather +shocked the moralists, not only in _Guy Livingstone_ itself, but in its +successors _Sword and Gown_, _Barren Honour_, _Sans Merci_, etc. That +Lawrence's total ideal, both in style and sentiment, was artificial, +false, and flawed, may be admitted. But he has to a great extent been +made to bear the blame of exaggerations of his own scheme by others; and +he was really a novelist and a writer of great talent, which somehow +came short, but not so very far short, of genius. + +Mrs. Gaskell was older than most of those hitherto mentioned in this +chapter, having been born in 1810; but she did not begin to write very +early. _Mary Barton_, her first and nearly her best book, appeared in +1848, and its vivid picture of Manchester life, assisted by its great +pathos, naturally attracted attention at that particular time. +_Cranford_ (1853), in a very different style, something like a blend of +Miss Mitford and Miss Austen, has been the most permanently popular of +her works. _Ruth_, of the same year, shocked precisians (which it need +not have done), but is of much less literary value than _Mary Barton_ or +_Cranford_. Mrs. Gaskell, who was the biographer of Charlotte Brontė, +produced novels regularly till her death in 1865, and never wrote +anything bad, though it may be doubted whether anything but _Cranford_ +will retain permanent rank. + +The year 1857, which saw _Guy Livingstone_, saw a book as different as +possible in ideal, but also one of no common merit, in _John Halifax, +Gentleman_. The author of this was Dinah Maria Mulock, who afterwards +became Mrs. Craik. She was born at Stoke-upon-Trent in 1826, and had +written for nearly ten years when _John Halifax_ appeared. She died in +1888, having written a very great deal both in prose and verse; the +former part including many novels, of which the best perhaps is _A Life +for a Life_. Mrs. Craik was an example of the influence, so often +noticed and to be noticed in the latter part of our period, of the great +demand for books on writers of any popularity. Her work was never bad; +but it was to a very great extent work which was, as the French say, the +"small change" for what would probably in other circumstances have been +a very much smaller quantity of much better work. How this state of +things--which has been brought about on the one hand by the printing +press, newspapers, and the spread of education, on the other by the +disuse of sinecures, patronage, pensions, and easy living generally--is +to be prevented from affecting literature very disastrously is not +clear. Its negative or rather privative effect cannot but be bad; if its +positive effect is always as good as the works of Mrs. Craik, it will be +fortunate. + +It is difficult, in a book of this kind, to know how far to attempt the +subdivisions of specialist novels which have been common, such as for +instance the sporting novel, the practitioners of which have been +innumerable. The chief perhaps were Robert Surtees, the author of the +facetious series of which "Mr. Jorrocks" is the central and best figure, +and Major Whyte-Melville. The former, about the middle of the century, +carried out with much knowledge, not inconsiderable wit, and the +advantage of admirable illustrations from the pencil of John Leech, +something like the original idea of _Pickwick_ as a sporting romance, +and there is a strong following of Dickens in him. Major Whyte-Melville, +born near St. Andrews in 1821 and heir to property there, was educated +at Eton, served for some years in the Guards, and with the Turkish +Contingent in the Crimean War, and was killed in the hunting-field in +1878. He touched various styles, chiefly those of Lever and Bulwer, +while he had a sort of contact with George Lawrence. He was never +happier than in depicting his favourite pastime, which figures in most +of his novels and inspired him with some capital verse. But in _Holmby +House_, _Sarchedon_, the _Gladiators_, etc., he tried the historical +style also. + +Nor must the brief life, embittered by physical suffering, but +productive of not a little very cheerful work, of Francis Edward +Smedley, a relation of the poetess mentioned in the last chapter, be +forgotten. He, born in 1818, went to Cambridge, and then became a +novelist and journalist, dying in 1864. His best work belongs to exactly +the period with which this chapter begins, the early fifties, and had +the advantage, like other novels of the time, of illustration by "Phiz." +The three chief books are _Frank Fairleigh_ (1850), _Lewis Arundel_ +(1852), and _Harry Coverdale's Courtship_ (1854). With a touch of +Bulwerian romance, something of the sporting novel, and a good deal of +the adventure story, Smedley united plenty of pleasant humour and +occasionally not a little real wit. + +It will have been observed that more than one of the more distinguished +novelists of this time attempted, and that at least one of them +achieved, the historical novel; nor was it at all likely that a kind so +attractive in itself, illustrated by such remarkable genius, and +discovered at last after many centuries of futile endeavour, should +immediately or entirely lose its popularity. Yet it is certain that for +about a quarter of a century, from 1845 to 1870, not merely the +historical novel, but the romance generally, did lose general practice +and general attention, while, though about the latter date at least one +novel of brilliant quality, Mr. Blackmore's _Lorna Doone_, vindicated +romance, and historical romance, it was still something of an exception. +Those who are old enough, and who paid sufficient attention to +contemporary criticism, will remember that for many years the advent of +a historical novel was greeted in reviews with a note not exactly of +contempt, but of the sort of surprise with which men greet something out +of the way and old fashioned. + +This was the inevitable result of that popularity of the domestic and +usual novel which this chapter has hitherto described, and it was as +natural and as inevitable that the domestic and usual novel should in +its turn undergo the same law. Not that this, again, was summarily, much +less finally displaced; on the contrary, the enormous and +ever-increasing demand for fiction--which the establishment of public +free libraries, and the custom of printing in cheaper form for sale, has +encouraged _pari passu_ with the apparent discouragement given to it by +the fall of circulating libraries from the absolutely paramount place +which they occupied not long ago--maintained the call for this as for +other kinds of story. But partly mere love of change, partly the +observations of those critics who were not content to follow the fashion +merely, and partly also the familiar but inexplicable rise at the same +time of divers persons whose talent inclined in a new direction, brought +in, about 1880 or later, a demand for romance, for historical romance, +and for the short story--three things against which the taste of the +circulating-library reader during the generation then expiring had +distinctly set itself. The greater part of the results of this change +falls out of our subject; but one remarkable name, perhaps the most +remarkable of all, is given to us by the Fates. + +For one of the pillars of this new building of romance was only too soon +removed. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (more commonly known to the +public by the first two, and to his friends by the second of his +Christian names) belonged to the famous family of lighthouse architects +who so long carried on the traditions of Smeaton in that department of +engineering; and he was to have been an engineer himself. But he was +incurably literary; and after school and college at Edinburgh, was +called to the Bar, with no more practical results in that profession +than in the other. Born on 13th November 1850, he was not extremely +precocious in publication; and it was not till nearly the end of the +seventies that his essays in the _Cornhill Magazine_ and his stories in +a periodical called _London_, short lived and not widely circulated, +but noteworthy in its way, attracted attention. He followed them up +with two volumes of somewhat Sternian travel, _An Inland Voyage_ (1878) +and _Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_ (1879); next collecting his +_Cornhill Essays_ in two other volumes, _Virginibus Puerisque_ (1881) +and _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ (1882), and his _London_ stories +in _The New Arabian Nights_ (1882). But he did not get hold of the +public till a year later than the latest of these dates, with his famous +_Treasure Island_, the best boys' story since Marryat, and one of a +literary excellence to which Marryat could make no pretensions. The vein +of romance which he then struck, and the older and more fanciful one of +_The New Arabian Nights_, were followed up alternately or together in an +almost annual succession of books--_Prince Otto_ (1885), _The Strange +Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ (1886), _Kidnapped_ (1886), _The Black +Arrow_ (a wonderfully good, though not very generally popular, +York-and-Lancaster story) (1888), _The Master of Ballantrę_ (1889), the +exquisite _Catriona_ (1893). It also pleased him to write, in +collaboration with others, _The Dynamiter_, _The Wrecker_, _The Ebb +Tide_, etc., where the tracing of the several shares is not unamusing. +Stevenson also attempted poetry, and his _Child's Garden of Verse_ +(1885) has very warm admirers, who are often more doubtful about +_Underwoods_ (1887) and _Ballads_ (1891). The list of his work is not +exhausted, and one of the latest additions to it was _A Footnote to +History_ (1892), containing an account of the intestine troubles of the +island of Samoa, where Mr. Stevenson, long a victim to lung disease, +latterly fixed his abode, and where he died suddenly in the winter of +1894. + +As has been the case with most of the distinguished writers of recent +years, Mr. Stevenson has been praised by some of his contemporaries and +juniors with an uncritical fervour which has naturally provoked +depreciation from others; and the charm of his personality was so great +that it is extremely difficult for any one who knew him to hold the +scales quite even. As the most brilliant and interesting by far, +however, of those English writers whose life was comprised in the last +half of the century he absolutely demands critical treatment here, and +it so happens that his method and results were extremely typical of the +literary movement and character of our time. He has left somewhat minute +accounts of his own apprenticeship, but they are almost unnecessary: no +critic of the slightest competence could fail to divine the facts. +Adopting to the full, and something more than the full, the modern +doctrine of the all-importance of art, of manner, of style in +literature, Mr. Stevenson early made the most elaborate studies in +imitative composition. There is no doubt that he at last succeeded in +acquiring a style which was quite his own: but it was complained, and +with justice, that even to the last he never attained complete ease in +this style; that its mannerism was not only excessive, but bore, as even +excessive mannerism by no means always does, the marks of distinct and +obvious effort. This was perhaps most noticeable in his essays, which +were further marred by the fact that much of them was occupied by +criticism, for which, though his taste was original and delicate, +Stevenson's knowledge was not quite solid enough, and his range of +sympathies a little deficient in width. In his stories, on the other +hand, the devil's advocate detected certain weak points, the chief of +them being an incapacity to finish, and either a distaste or an +incapacity for introducing women. This last charge was finally refuted +by _Catriona_, not merely in the heroine, but in the much more charming +and lifelike figure of Barbara Grant; but the other was something of a +true bill to the last. It was Stevenson's weakness (as by the way it +also was Scott's) to huddle up his stories rather than to wind them off +to an orderly conclusion. + +But against this allowance--a just but an ample one--for defects, must +be set to Stevenson's credit such a combination of literary and +story-telling charm as perhaps no writer except Mérimée has ever +equalled; while, if the literary side of him had not the golden +perfection, the accomplished ease of the Frenchman, his romance has a +more genial, a fresher, a more natural quality. Generally, as in the +famous examples of Scott, of Dumas, and of Balzac, the great +story-tellers have been a little deficient in mere style; the fault in +Stevenson, if it could be called a fault, was that the style was in +excess. But this only set off and enhanced, it did not account for, the +magic of his scene and character, from John Silver to Barbara Grant, +from "The Suicide Club" to the escapes of Alan Breck. Very early, when +most of his critical friends were urging him to cultivate the essay +mainly, others discerned the supremacy of his story-telling faculty, +and, years before the public fell in love with _Treasure Island_, bade +him cultivate that. Fortunately he did so; and his too short life has +left a fairly ample store of work, not always quite equal, seldom quite +without a flaw, but charming, stimulating, distinguished as few things +in this last quarter of a century have been. + +Nearly all of Mr. Stevenson's contemporaries in novel-writing, as well +as many distinguished persons far his seniors whose names will occur to +every one, lie outside our limits. And in no chapter of this book, +perhaps, is it so necessary to turn the back sternly on much interesting +performance once famous and popular--not once only of interest to the +reader of time and chance but put by this cause or that out of our +reach. We cannot talk here of _Emilia Wyndham_ or _Paul Ferroll_, both +emphatically novels of their day, and that no short one; and in the +latter case, if not in the former, books deserving to be read at +intervals by more than the bookworm. The exquisite _Story without an +End_, which Sarah Austin half adapted, half translated, and which, with +some unusually good translations from Fouqué and others, set a whole +fashion fifty years ago, must pass with mere allusion; the abundant and +not seldom excellent fiction of the earlier High Church movement pleads +in vain for detailed treatment. For all doors must be shut or open; and +this door must now be shut. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY + + +It is the constant difficulty of the literary historian, especially if +he is working on no very great scale, that he is confronted with what +may be called "applied" literature, in which not only is the matter of +superior importance to the form, but the importance of the matter itself +disappears to a greater or less extent with time. In these cases it is +only possible for him to take notice of those writers who, whatever the +subject they handled, would have written literature, and perhaps of +those who from the unusual eminence and permanence of their position in +their own subjects have attained as it were an honorary position in +literature itself. + +The literary importance and claim, however, of these applied branches +varies considerably; and there have been times when the two divisions +whose names stand at the head of this chapter even surpassed--there have +been not a few in which they equalled--any section of the purest _belles +lettres_ in strictly literary attractions. With rare exceptions this has +not been the case during the present century; poetry, fiction, history, +and essay-writing having drawn off the best hands on the one side, while +science has attracted them on the other. But the great Oxford Movement +in the second quarter created no small amount of theological or +ecclesiastical writing of unusual interest, while there had been +earlier, and continued to be till almost the time when the occupation of +the field by living writers warns us off, philosophers proper of great +excellence. Latterly (indeed till quite recently, when a certain +renaissance of philosophical writing not in jargon has taken place with +a corresponding depression of the better kind of literary theology) the +philosophers of Britain have not held a prominent place in her +literature. Whether this was because they have mostly been content to +Germanise, or because they have not been provided with sufficient +individual talent, it is fortunately unnecessary for us to attempt to +determine in this place and at this time. + +Among the dead writers of the century who are known wholly or mainly for +the cultivation of philosophical studies, Bentham, Mackintosh, John +Stuart Mill (to whom some would add his father James), Sir William +Hamilton, Dean Mansel, are likely to hold a place in history, while at +present many might be disposed to add the name of Mr. T. H. Green, a +tutor of Balliol College, who between 1870 and his death propagated in +Oxford a sort of neo-Hegelianism much tinctured with political and +social Liberalism, and obtained a remarkable personal position. It is +however as yet too early to assign a distinct historical place to one +whose philosophy was in no sense original, though it was somewhat +originally combined and applied, and who exhibited very small literary +skill in setting forth. The others are already set "in the firm +perspective of the past," and, with yet others who, still living, escape +our grasp, have their names clearly marked for a place in an adequate +history. + +Jeremy Bentham, a curious person who reminds one of a Hobbes without the +literary genius, was born in London, near Houndsditch, as far back as +5th February 1748. He was the son of a solicitor who was very well off, +and wished his son to take to the superior branch of the law. Jeremy was +sent to Westminster, and thence to Queen's College, Oxford, in his +thirteenth year. He was a Master of Arts at eighteen, and was called to +the Bar six years later; but he never practised. He must have been very +early drawn to the study of the French _philosophes_; much indeed of the +doctrine which afterwards made him famous was either taken from, or +incidentally anticipated by, Turgot and others of them, and it was a +common remark, half in earnest half in gibe, that Bentham's views had +made the tour of Europe in the French versions of Dumont before they +attained to any attention in England. In 1776 he wrote a _Fragment on +Government_, a kind of critique of Blackstone, which is distinguished by +acute one-sided deduction from Whig principles; and he became a sort of +prophet of the Whigs, who sometimes plagiarised and popularised, +sometimes neglected, his opinions. He never married, though he would +have liked to do so; and lived on his means till 1832, when he died in +the eighty-fifth year of his age. His chief books after the _Fragment_ +had been his _Theory of Punishments and Rewards_; 1787, _Letters on +Usury_; 1789, _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and +Legislation_; 1813, _Treatise on Evidence_; and 1824, _Fallacies_. + +The central pillar and hinge of all Bentham's doctrines in politics, +morals, and law is the famous principle of Utility, or to use the cant +phrase which he borrowed from Priestley, "the greatest happiness of the +greatest number." What the greatest number is--for instance whether in a +convict settlement of forty thieves and ten honest men, the thieves are +to be consulted--and what happiness means, what is utility, what things +have brought existing arrangements about, and what the loss of altering +them might be, as well as a vast number of other points, Bentham never +deigned to consider. Starting from a few crude phrases such as this, he +raised a system remarkable for a sort of apparent consistency and +thoroughness, and having the luck or the merit to hit off in parts not a +few of the popular desires and fads of the age of the French Revolution +and its sequel. But he was a political theorist rather than a political +philosopher, his neglect of all the nobler elements of thought and +feeling was complete, and latterly at least he wrote atrocious English, +clumsy in composition and crammed with technical jargon. The brilliant +fashion in which Sydney Smith has compressed and spirited his +_Fallacies_ into the famous "Noodle's Oration" is an example of the kind +of treatment which Bentham requires in order to be made tolerable in +form; and even then he remains one-sided in fact. + +Sir James Mackintosh has been mentioned before, and is less of a +philosopher pure and simple than any person included in this +list--indeed his philosophical reputation rests almost wholly upon his +brilliant, though rather slight, _Dissertation on Ethics_ for the +_Encyclopędia Britannica_. The greater part by far of his by no means +short life (1765-1832) was occupied in practising medicine and law, in +defending the French Revolution against Burke (_Vindicię Gallicę_, +1791); in defending the French Royalists in the person of Peltier +against Bonaparte, 1803; in acting as Recorder and Judge in India, +1804-1811; and in political and literary work at home for the last +twenty years, his literature being chiefly history, and contributions to +the _Edinburgh Review_. But there has been a certain tendency, both in +his own time and since, to regard Mackintosh as a sort of philosopher +thrown away. If he was so, he would probably have made his mark rather +in the history of philosophy than in philosophy itself, for there are no +signs in him of much original depth. But he wrote very well, and was a +sound and on the whole a fair critic. + +Of the two Mills, the elder, James, was like Mackintosh only an +_interim_ philosopher: his son John belongs wholly to our present +subject. James was the son of a farmer, was born near Montrose in 1773, +and intended to enter the ministry, but became a journalist instead. In +the ten years or so after 1806, he composed a _History of British +India_, which was long regarded as authoritative, but on which the +gravest suspicions have recently been cast. Mill, in fact, was a violent +politician of the Radical type, and his opinions of ethics were so +peculiar that it is uncertain how far he might have carried them in +dealing with historical characters. His book, however, gained him a high +post in the East India Company, the Directors of which just at that time +were animated by a wish to secure distinguished men of letters as +servants. He nevertheless continued to write a good deal both in +periodicals and in book form, the chief examples of the latter being his +_Political Economy_, his _Analysis of the Human Mind_, and his _Fragment +on Mackintosh_. James Mill, of whom most people have conceived a rather +unfavourable idea since the appearance of his son's _Autobiography_, was +an early disciple of Bentham, and to a certain extent resembled him in +hard clearness and superficial consistency. + +His son John Stuart was born in London on 20th May 1806, and educated by +his father in the unnatural fashion which he has himself recorded. +Intellectually, however, he was not neglected, and after some years, +spent mainly in France, he was, through his father's influence, +appointed at seventeen to a clerkship in the India House, which gave him +a competence for the rest of his life and a main occupation for +thirty-four years of it. He was early brought into contact (by his +father's friendship with Grote and others) with the Philosophical +Radicals, as well as with many men of letters, especially Carlyle, of +the destruction of the first version of whose _French Revolution_ Mill +(having lent it to his friend Mrs. Taylor) was the innocent cause. To +this Mrs. Taylor, whom he afterwards married, Mill was fanatically +attached, the attachment being the cause of some curious flights in his +later work. His character was very amiable, and the immense influence +which, especially in the later years of his life, he exercised, was +partly helped by his personal friendships. But it was unfortunate for +him that in 1865 he was returned to Parliament. His political views, +though it was the eve of the triumph of what might be called his party, +were _doctrinaire_ and out of date, and his life had given him no +practical hold of affairs, so that he more than fulfilled the usual +prophecy of failure in the case of men of thought who are brought late +in life into action. Fortunately for him he was defeated in 1868, and +passed the rest of his life mostly in France, dying at Avignon on 8th +May 1873. + +Brought up in an atmosphere of discussion and of books, Mill soon took +to periodical writing, and in early middle life was for some years +editor of the _London and Westminster Review_; but his literary +ambition, which directed itself not to pure literature but to +philosophical and political discussion, was not content with periodical +writing as an exercise, and his circumstances enabled him to do without +it as a business. In 1843 he published what is undoubtedly his chief +work, _A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive_, five years later +a companion treatise on _Political Economy_ which may perhaps rank +second. In 1859 his essay on _Liberty_, a short but very attractive +exposition of his political principles, appeared; next year a collection +of essays entitled _Dissertations and Discussions_. After lesser works +on _Utilitarianism_ and on Comte, of whom he had been a supporter in +more senses than one, but whose later eccentricities revolted him, he +issued in 1865 his _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_, +which ranks as the third of his chief works, and completes his system, +as far as a system so negative can be said to be completed, on the side +of theology and metaphysics. Among his smaller works may be mentioned +_Representative Government_, and (very late) the fanatical and curious +_Subjection of Women_. His _Autobiography_, an interesting but +melancholy book, appeared shortly after his death. + +Mill must be accounted on the whole by good judges, even if they are +utterly opposed to his whole system of philosophy, the chief +philosophical _writer_ of England in this century; and the enormous +though not permanent influence which he attained about its middle was +deserved, partly by qualities purely literary, but partly also by some +purely philosophical. He had inherited from his father not merely the +theoretical exaltation of liberty (except in the philosophical sense) +which characterised eighteenth century philosophers, but also that +arrogant and pragmatical impatience of the supernatural which was to a +still greater extent that century's characteristic. The arrogance and +the pragmaticality changed in John Stuart Mill's milder nature to a sort +of nervous dread of admitting even the possibility of things not +numerable, ponderable, and measurable; and it may be observed with +amusement that for the usual division of logic into Deductive and +Inductive he substituted _Ratiocinative_ for the first member, so as not +even by implication to admit the possibility of deduction from any +principles not inductively given. So, too, later, in his _Examination +of Sir William Hamilton_, between the opposing spectres of Realism and +Idealism, he was driven to take refuge in what he called "permanent +possibilities" of Sensation, though logicians vainly asked how he +assured himself of the permanence, and jesters rudely observed that to +call a bottle of gin a "permanent possibility of drunkenness" was an +unnecessary complication of language for a very small end or meaning. +His great philosophical weapon (borrowed from though of course not +invented by his father) was the Association of Ideas, just as his clue +in political economy was in the main though not exclusively +_laissez-faire_, in ethics a modified utilitarianism, and in politics an +absolute deference to, tempered by a resigned distrust of, the majority. +The defect in a higher and more architectonic theory of the world with +which he has been charged is not quite justly chargeable, for from his +point of view no such theory was possible. + +Even those, however, who, as the present writer acknowledges in his own +case, are totally opposed to the whole Millian conception of logic and +politics, of metaphysics and morality, must, unless prejudiced, admit +his great merits of method and treatment. He not only very seldom +smuggles in sophistry into the middle of his arguments, but even +paralogisms are not common with him; it is with his premises, not with +his conclusions, that you must deal if you wish to upset him. Unlike +most contemners of formal logic, he is not in much danger, as far as his +merely dialectic processes go, from formal logic itself; and it is in +the arbitrary and partial character of his preliminary admissions, +assumptions, and exclusions that the weak points of his system are to be +found. + +His style has also very considerable merits. It is not brilliant or +charming; it has neither great strength nor great stateliness. But it is +perfectly clear, it is impossible to mistake its meaning, and its +simplicity is unattended by any of the down-at-heel neglect of neatness +and elegance which is to be found, for instance, in Locke. Little +scholastic as he was in most ways, Mill had far outgrown the ignorant +eighteenth century contempt of the Schoolmen, and had learnt from them +an exact precision of statement and argument, while he had managed to +keep (without its concomitant looseness and vulgarity) much of the +eighteenth century's wholesome aversion to jargon and to excess of +terminology. In presenting complicated statements of detail, as in the +_Political Economy_, the _Representative Government_, and elsewhere, he +has as much lucidity as Macaulay, with an almost total freedom from +Macaulay's misleading and delusive suppression of material details. And +besides his usual kind of calm and measured argument, he can +occasionally, as in divers passages of the _Sir William Hamilton_ and +the political books, rise or sink from the logical and rhetorical points +of view respectively to an impassioned advocacy, which, though it may be +rarely proof against criticism, is very agreeable so far as it goes. +That Mill wholly escaped the defects of the popular philosopher, I do +not suppose that even those who sympathise with his views would contend; +though they might not admit, as others would, that these defects were +inseparable from his philosophy in itself. But it may be doubtful +whether, all things considered, a better _literary_ type of the popular +philosopher exists in modern English; and it certainly is not surprising +that, falling in as he did with the current mode of thought, and +providing it with a defence specious in reasoning and attractive in +language, he should have attained an influence perhaps greater than that +of which any English philosophical writer has been able during his +lifetime to boast. + +The convenience of noticing the Mills together, and of putting Sir +William Hamilton next to his most famous disciples, seems to justify a +certain departure from strict chronological order. Hamilton was indeed +considerably the senior of his critic, having been born on 8th March +1788. His father and grandfather, both professors at the University of +Glasgow, had been plain "Dr. Hamilton." But they inherited, and Sir +William made good, the claim to a baronetcy which had been in abeyance +since the days of Robert Hamilton, the Covenanting leader. He himself +proceeded from Glasgow, with a Snell Exhibition, to Balliol in 1809. He +was called to the Scottish Bar, but never practised, though some +business came to him as Crown solicitor in the Court of Teinds (tithes). +He competed in 1820 for the Chair of Moral Philosophy, which Wilson, +with far inferior claims, obtained; but it is fair to say that at the +time the one candidate had given no more public proofs of fitness than +the other. Soon, however, he began to make his mark as a contributor of +philosophical articles to the _Edinburgh Review_, and in 1836 he +obtained a professorship in the University for which he was even better +fitted--that of Logic and Metaphysics. His lectures became celebrated, +but he never published them; indeed his only publication of any +importance during his lifetime was a collection of his articles under +the title of _Dissertations_, with the exception of his monumental +edition of Reid, on which he spent, and on which it has sometimes been +held that he wasted, most of his time. He died in 1856, and his lectures +were published after his death by his successor, Professor Veitch +(himself an enthusiastic devotee of literature, especially Border +literature, as well as of philosophy), and his greatest disciple, +Mansel, between 1859 and 1861. And this was how Mill's _Examination_ +came to be posthumous. The "Philosophy of the Conditioned," as +Hamilton's is for shortness called, could not be described in any brief, +and perhaps not with propriety in any, space of the present volume. It +is enough to say that it was an attempt to reinforce the so-called +"Scotch Philosophy" of Reid against Hume by the help of Kant, as well as +at once to continue and evade the latter without resorting either to +Transcendentalism or to the experience-philosophy popular in England. In +logic, Hamilton was a great and justly honoured defender of the formal +view of the science which had been in persistent disrepute during the +eighteenth century; but some of the warmest lovers of logic doubt +whether his technical inventions or discoveries, such as the famous +Quantification of the Predicate, are more than "pretty" in the sense of +mathematicians and wine-merchants. This part of his doctrine, by the +way, attracted special attention, and was carefully elaborated by +another disciple, Professor Thomas Spencer Baynes (1823-1887), who, +after chequering philosophy with journalism, became editor of the +_Encyclopędia Britannica_, and a careful Shakespearian student. Yet +another disciple, and the most distinguished save one, was James +Frederick Ferrier, nephew of Susan Ferrier, to whom we owe three most +brilliant novels, who was born in 1808 and died in 1864 at St. Andrews, +where he had for nearly twenty years been Professor of Moral Philosophy, +after previously holding for a short time a History Professorship at +Edinburgh. Of this latter University Ferrier had been an alumnus, as +well as of Oxford. He edited his father-in-law Wilson's works, and was a +contributor to _Blackwood's Magazine_, but his chief book was his +_Institutes of Metaphysic_, published in 1854. Too strong a Hamiltonian +influence (not in style but in some other ways), and an attempt at an +almost Spinosian rigidity of method, have sometimes been held to have +marred Ferrier's philosophical performance; but it is certain that he +had the makings of a great metaphysician, and that he was actually no +small one. + +The great merit of Hamilton was that he, in a somewhat irregular and +informal way (for, as has been said, he was ostensibly more a +commentator and critic than an independent theorist), introduced German +speculation into England after a fashion far more thorough than the +earlier but dilettante and haphazard attempts of De Quincey and +Coleridge, and contributed vastly to the lifting of the whole tone and +strain of English philosophic disputation from the slovenly commonsense +into which it had fallen. In fact, he restored metaphysics proper as a +part of English current thought; and helped (though here he was not +alone) to restore logic. His defects were, in the first place, that he +was at once too systematic and two piecemeal in theory, and worse still, +that his philosophical style was one of the very worst existing, or that +could exist. That this may have been in some degree a designed reaction +from ostentatious popularity is probable; and that it was in great part +caught from his studious frequentation of that Hercynian forest, which +takes the place of the groves of Academe in German philosophical +writing, is certain. But the hideousness of his dialect is a melancholy +fact; and it may be said to have contributed at least as much to the +decadence of his philosophical vogue as any defects in the philosophy +itself. He was, in fact, at the antipodes from Mill in attractiveness of +form as well as in character of doctrine. + +There are some who think that Henry Longueville Mansel was actually in +more than one respect, and might, with some slight changes of accidental +circumstance, have been indisputably, the greatest philosopher of +Britain in the nineteenth century. Of the opinion entertained by +contemporaries of great intellectual gifts, that of Mark Pattison, a +bitter political and academical opponent, and the most acrimonious +critic of his time, that Mansel was, though according to Pattison's +view, an "arch-jobber," an "acute thinker, and a metaphysician" seems +pretty conclusive. But Mansel died in middle age, he was much occupied +in various kinds of University business, and he is said by those who +knew him to have been personally rather indolent. He was born in +Northamptonshire on 6th October 1820, and after school-days at Merchant +Taylors' passed in the then natural course to St. John's College, +Oxford, of which he became fellow. He was an active opponent of the +first University Commission, in reference to which he wrote the most +brilliant satire of the kind proper to University wits which this +century has produced--the Aristophanic parody entitled _Phrontisterion_. +But the Commission returned him good for evil, insomuch as he became the +first Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, a post +created in consequence of it. In 1859 he was Bampton Lecturer, and his +sermons in this office again attained the first excellence in style, +though they were made the subject of severe criticism not merely by the +disciples of Liberal philosophy, but by some timid defenders of +orthodoxy, for their bold application of the philosophy of the +conditioned, on scholastic lines, to the problems of theodicy. Mansel +was not a more frequent lecturer than the somewhat indulgent conditions +of the English Universities, especially Oxford, even after the +Commission, required; but his deliverances were of exceptional +importance, both in conception and expression. At the death of Milman, +his political friends being in power, he was made Dean of St. Paul's, +but enjoyed the dignity only a short time, and died in 1870. Besides +_Phrontisterion_ and his _Bampton Lectures_, which bring him under both +the divisions of this chapter, he had published in his lifetime an +excellent edition of Aldrich's "Logic," _Prolegomena Logica_ (the +principal work of the Hamiltonian school, though quite independent in +main points), and an enlarged edition of an Encyclopędia dissertation on +_Metaphysics_. His essays, chiefly from the _Quarterly Review_, were +published after his death, with _Phrontisterion_ and other things. + +It will appear from this brief summary that Mansel was a many-sided man; +and it may be added that he possessed an exceptionally keen wit, by no +means confined to professional subjects, and was altogether far more of +a man of the world than is usual in a philosopher. But though this +man-of-the-worldliness may have affected the extent and quantity of his +philosophical work, it did not touch the quality of it. It may be +contended that Mansel was on the whole rather intended for a critic or +historian of philosophy than for an independent philosophical teacher; +and in this he would but have exhibited a tendency of his century. Yet +he was very far from mere slavish following even of Hamilton, while the +copying, with a little travesty and adjustment of German originals, on +which so much philosophical repute has been founded in England, was +entirely foreign to his nature and thought. In Mill's _Examination of +Hamilton_, the _Bampton Lectures_, above referred to, came in for the +most vehement protest, for Mill, less blind than the orthodox objectors, +perceived that their drift was to steer clear of some of the commonest +and most dangerous reefs and shoals on which the orthodoxy of +intelligent but not far-sighted minds has for some generations past been +wrecked. But Mansel's rejoinder, written at a time when he was more than +ever distracted by avocations, and hampered certainly by the necessity +of speaking for his master as well as for himself, and probably by +considerations of expediency in respect to the duller of the faithful, +was not his happiest work. In fact he was too clear and profound a +thinker to be first-rate in controversy--a function which requires +either unusual dishonesty or one-sidedness in an unusual degree. He may +sometimes have been a very little of a sophist--it is perhaps impossible +to be a great philosopher without some such touch. But of paralogism--of +that sincere advancing of false argument which from the time of Plato +has been justly regarded as the most fatal of philosophic +drawbacks--there is no trace in Mansel. His natural genius, moreover, +assisted by his practice in miscellaneous writing, which though much +less in amount of result than Mill's was even more various in kind, +equipped him with a most admirable philosophical style, hitting the +exact mean between the over-popular and the over-technical, endowing +even the _Prolegomena Logica_ with a perfect readableness, and in the +_Metaphysics_ and large parts of the editorial matter of the _Aldrich_ +showing capacities which make it deeply to be regretted that he never +undertook a regular history of philosophy. + +The place which might have been thus filled, was accepted but partially +and with no capital success by divers writers. Frederick Denison +Maurice, who will be mentioned again in this chapter, wrote on _Moral +and Metaphysical Philosophy_, but the book, though like all his work +attractively written, does not show very wide or very profound knowledge +of the subject. The _Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy_, by +William Archer Butler, a Dublin professor, who died prematurely, would +probably, had the author lived, have formed the best history of the +subject in English, and even in their fragmentary condition make an +admirable book, free from jargon, not unduly popular, but at once sound +and literary. The most ambitious attempt at the whole subject was that +of George Henry Lewes, the companion of George Eliot, a versatile man of +letters of great ability, who brought out on a small scale in 1845, and +afterwards on a much larger one, a _Biographical History of +Philosophy_. This, though occasionally superficial, and too much tinged +with a sort of second-hand Positivism, had, as the qualities of these +defects, an excellent though sometimes a rather treacherous clearness, +and a unity of vision which is perhaps more valuable for fairly +intelligent readers than desultory profundity. But it can hardly take +rank as a book of philosophical scholarship, though it is almost a +brilliant specimen of popular philosophical literature. + +Philosophy, science, and perhaps theology may dispute between them two +remarkable figures, nearly contemporary, the one an Oxford and the other +a Cambridge man--Whately and Whewell. Besides the differences which +their respective universities impress upon nearly all strong characters, +there were others between them, Whately being the better bred, the more +accomplished writer, and the more original, Whewell the more widely +informed, and perhaps the more thoroughgoing. But both were curiously +English in a sort of knock-me-down Johnsonian dogmatism; and both were +in consequence extremely intolerant. For Whately's so-called +impartiality consisted in being equally biassed against Evangelicals and +Tractarians; and both were accused by their unfriends of being a little +addicted to the encouragement of flatterers and toadies. Richard +Whately, the elder, was born in London in 1787, his father being a +clergyman in the enjoyment of several pluralities. He went to Oriel, +gained a fellowship there in 1811, and was with intervals a resident in +Oxford for some twenty years, being latterly Principal of St. Alban Hall +(where he made Newman his Vice-Principal), and in 1829 Professor of +Political Economy. In 1831 the Whigs made him Archbishop of Dublin, +which difficult post he held for more than thirty years till his death +in 1863. His work is not very extensive, but it is remarkable. His +_Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte_ was an exceedingly +clever "skit" on the Rationalist position in regard to miracles and +biblical criticism generally; though Whately's orthodoxy was none of the +strictest. His Bampton Lectures on _Party Feeling in Religion_ preceded +rather curiously the greatest outburst of the said party feeling which +had been seen in England since the seventeenth century. But the books by +which he is or was most widely known are his _Logic_ and _Rhetoric_, +expansions of Encyclopędia articles (1826 and 1828) intentionally +popular and perhaps almost unnecessarily exoteric, but extremely +stimulating and clear. Whately, who had some points in common with +Sydney Smith, was, like him, in part the victim of the extreme want of +accuracy and range in the Oxford education of his youth; but his mental +and literary powers were great. + +William Whewell, the son of a carpenter, showed talent for mathematics +early, and obtaining an exhibition at Trinity, Cambridge, became fellow, +tutor, and Master of his College. He had the advantage, which his +special studies gave, of more thorough training, and extended his +attention from pure and applied mathematics to science and a kind of +philosophy. His chief works were _The History_ (1837) and _The +Philosophy_ (1840) _of the Inductive Sciences_, his Bridgewater Treatise +on _Astronomy and Physic in Reference to Natural Philosophy_ (1833) and +his _Plurality of Worlds_ (1853) being also famous in their day; but he +wrote voluminously in various kinds. He was rather a bully, and his work +has no extraordinary merit of style, but it is interesting as being +among the latest in which science permitted her votaries not to +specialise very much, and rather to apply the ancient education to the +new subjects than to be wholly theirs. + +If the difficulty of deciding on rejection or admission be great in the +case of philosophers proper, much greater is it in the numerous +subdivisions which are themselves applied philosophy as philosophy is +applied literature. The two chief of these perhaps are Jurisprudence and +Political Economy. Under the head of the first, three remarkable writers +at least absolutely demand notice--Austin, Maine, and Stephen. The first +of these was in respect of influence, if not also of actual +accomplishment, one of the most noteworthy Englishmen of the century. +Born in 1790, he died in 1859, having begun life in the Army which he +exchanged for the Bar not long after Waterloo. He was made Professor of +Jurisprudence in the new University College of London in 1827. He held +this post for five years only; but it resulted in his famous _Province +of Jurisprudence Determined_, a book standing more or less alone in +English. He did not publish much else, though he did some official work; +and his _Lectures on Jurisprudence_ were posthumously edited by his +wife, a Miss Taylor of Norwich, who has been referred to as translator +of the _Story without an End_, and who did much other good work. Austin +(whose younger brother Charles (1799-1874) left little if anything in +print but accumulated a great fortune at the Parliamentary Bar, and left +a greater, though vague, conversational reputation) had bad health +almost throughout his life, and his work is not large in bulk. At first +pooh-poohed and neglected, almost extravagantly prized later, and later +still, according to the usual round, a little cavilled at, it presents +Utilitarian theory at its best in the intellectual way; and its +disciplinary value, if it is not taken for gospel, can hardly be +overrated. But its extreme clearness, closeness, and logical precision +carry with them the almost inevitable defects of hardness, narrowness, +and want of "play," as well as of that most fatal of intellectual +attitudes which takes for granted that everything is explicable. Still, +these were the defects of Austin's school and time; his merits were +individual, and indeed very nearly unique. + +Sir Henry James Summer Maine was born in 1822, and educated first as a +Blue Coat boy and then at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After a quite +exceptional career as an undergraduate, he became fellow of Trinity +Hall, of which he died Master in 1888. But he had only held this latter +post for eleven years, and the midmost of his career was occupied with +quite different work. He had been made Professor of Civil Law in his +University in 1847, at a very early age, when he had not even been +called to the Bar; but he supplied this omission three years later, and +a little later still exchanged his Cambridge Professorship for a +Readership at Lincoln's Inn. In 1862 he obtained the appointment, famous +from its connection with letters, of Legal Member of the Viceroy's +Council in India. On quitting it after seven years he was transferred to +the Council at Home, and became Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence +at Oxford. Besides his work as a reviewer, which was considerable, Maine +wrote--in an admirable style, and with a scholarship and sense which, in +the recrudescence of more barbaric thought, have brought down socialist +and other curses on his head--many works on the philosophy of law, +politics, and history, the chief of which were his famous _Ancient Law_ +(1861), _Village Communities_ (1871), _Early Law and Custom_ (1883), +with a severe criticism on Democracy called _Popular Government_ (1885). +Few writers of our time could claim the phrase _mitis sapentia_ as Maine +could, though it is possible that he was a little too much given to +theorise. But his influence in checking that of Austin was admirable. + +A colleague of Maine's on the _Saturday Review_, his successor in his +Indian post, like him a _malleus demagogorum_, but in some ways no small +contrast, was Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94), the most +distinguished member of a family unusually distinguished during the past +century in the public service and in literature. His father, Sir James +Stephen, was himself well known as a reviewer, as a civil servant, as +Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, and as author of _Essays in +Ecclesiastical History_ and _Lectures on the History of France_ (1849 +and 1851). The second Sir James was born at Kensington in 1829, went to +Eton, thence to King's College, London, and thence to Trinity, +Cambridge, and was called to the Bar in 1854. His legal career was +brilliant and varied, and led him to the Bench, which he resigned +shortly before his death. Sir James Stephen published some works of +capital importance on his own subject, the chief relating the Criminal +Law, collected both earlier and later a good deal of his _Saturday_ +work, discussed a famous passage of Indian History in the _Story of +Nuncomar_ (1885), and wrote not a little criticism--political, +theological, and other--of a somewhat negative but admirably +clear-headed kind--the chief expression of which is _Liberty, Equality, +and Fraternity_ (1873). + +Even less room can be given to the Political Economists than to the +"Jurisprudents," partly because the best writers of them, such as J. S. +Mill, have figured or will figure elsewhere; partly because, from +Ricardo to Jevons and Cliffe Leslie, though they have often displayed no +mean literary power, the necessities or supposed necessities of their +subject have usually kept their books further away from _belles lettres_ +than the documents of any other department of what is widely called +philosophy. But a paragraph must at least be given to one of the +earliest and one of the most famous of them. + +If a prize were offered to the best-abused person in English literature, +few competitors would have much chance with Thomas Robert Malthus, +author of the _Essay on the Principles of Population_ (1798), and of +divers works on Political Economy, of which he was Professor in the East +India College at Haileybury. To judge from the references which for many +years used to be, and to some extent still are, made to Malthus, still +more from the way in which the term "Malthusian" is still often used, he +might be supposed to have been a reprobate anarchist and revolutionary, +who had before his eyes neither the fear of God, nor the love of man, +nor the respect of morality and public opinion. As a matter of fact +Malthus was a most respectable and amiable clergyman, orthodox I believe +in religion, Tory I believe in politics, who incurred odium chiefly by +his inculcation of the most disagreeable lessons of the new and +cheerless science which he professed. Born on 24th February 1766 near +Dorking, of a very respectable family, he went to Cambridge, took +honours, a fellowship at his college (Jesus), and orders, obtained a +benefice, and spent most of the last thirty years of his life in the +Professorship above referred to, dying in 1854. His _Essay_ was one of +the numerous counter-blasts to Godwin's anarchic perfectibilism, and its +general drift was simply to show that the increase of population, unless +counter-acted by individual and moral self-restraint, must reduce +humanity to misery. The special formula that "population increases in a +geometrical, food in a arithmetical ratio," is overstrained and a +little absurd; the general principle is sound beyond all question, and +not only consistent with, but absolutely deducible from, the purest +Christian doctrines. Malthus wrote well, he knew thoroughly what he was +writing about, and he suffers only from the inevitable drawback to all +writers on such subjects who have not positive genius of form, that a +time comes when their contentions appear self-evident to all who are not +ignorant or prejudiced. + +The greatest _theological_ interest of the century belongs to what is +diversely called the Oxford and the Tractarian Movement; while, even if +this statement be challenged on non-literary grounds, it will scarcely +be so by any one on grounds literary. For the present purpose, of +course, nothing like a full account of the Movement can be attempted. It +is enough to say that it arose partly in reaction from the Evangelical +tendency which had dominated the more active section of the Church of +England for many years, partly in protest against the Liberalising and +Latitudinarian tendency in matters both temporal and spiritual. In +contradistinction to its predecessor (for the Evangelicals had been the +reverse of literary), it was from the first--_i.e._ about 1830, or +earlier if we take _The Christian Year_ as a harbinger of it--a very +literary movement both in verse and prose. Of its three leaders, +Pusey--whose name, given to it in derision and sometimes contested by +sympathisers as unappropriate, unquestionably ranks of right as that of +its greatest theologian, its most steadfast character, and the most of a +born leader engaged in it--was something less of a pure man of letters +than either Keble or Newman. But he was a man of letters; and perhaps a +greater one than is usually thought. + +Edward Bouverie Pusey, who belonged to the family of Lord Folkestone by +blood, his father having become by bequest the representative of the +very old Berkshire house of Pusey, was born at the seat of this family +in 1800. He went to Eton and to Christ Church, and became a fellow of +Oriel, studied theology and oriental languages in Germany, and was made +Professor of Hebrew at the early age of twenty-seven. He was a thorough +scholar, and even in the times of his greatest unpopularity no charge of +want of competence for his post was brought against him by any one who +knew. It is, however, somewhat comic that charges of Rationalism were +brought against his first book, a study of contemporary German theology. +In or soon after 1833 he joined Newman and Keble in the famous _Tracts +for the Times_, at the same time urging the return to a more primitive +and catholic theology in his sermons, and by means of the great +enterprise in translation called the _Oxford Library of the Fathers_, of +which he executed part and sedulously edited others. Pusey first came +before general public notice outside Oxford in 1843, in consequence of a +very high-handed exertion of power by the authorities of the University, +who, without allowing him a hearing, suspended him for a sermon on the +Eucharist from preaching for three years. His mouth was thus closed at +the very moment when Newman "went over"; and when some of the enemies of +the movement declared that Pusey would go too. Others were equally +certain that if he stayed it was either from base motives of +self-interest, or, still more basely, in order to do underhand damage to +the Church. But all who unite knowledge and fairness now admit, not only +his perfect loyalty, but the almost unexampled heroism and steadfastness +with which for some ten or fifteen years after Newman's secession, +against popular obloquy, against something very like persecution from +the authorities of the Church and the University, and against the +constant and repeated discouragement given by the desertion of friends +and colleagues, he upheld his cause and made the despised and reproached +"Puseyites" of his middle life what he lived to see them--the greatest +and almost the dominant party in the Anglican Church. He was less +fortunate in his opposition to the secularising of the Universities, and +in his attempts (which ill-willers did not fail to liken to the attempts +made to stifle his own teaching) to check by legal means the spread of +Rationalism. But he was nearly as full of honours as of years when he +died on 16th September 1882. + +Many of the constituents of this remarkable and perhaps unexampled +success--Pusey's personal saintliness, his unselfish use of his +considerable income, his unwearied benevolence in other than pecuniary +ways--do not concern us here. But his works, which are numerous, and the +most literary of which are his _Sermons_ and his _Eirenicon_, +contributed not a little to it. Pusey's style was accused by some of +bareness and by others of obscurity; but these accusations may be safely +dismissed as due merely to the prevalent fancy for florid expression, +and to the impatience of somewhat scholastically arranged argument which +has also distinguished our times. + +The second of this remarkable trio, John Keble, was the eldest, having +been born on 24th April 1792, at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, with +which county his family had for some centuries been connected. Keble's +father was a clergyman, and there was a clerical feeling and tradition +in the whole family. John went to no public school, but was very +carefully educated at home, obtained an open scholarship at Corpus +Christi College, Oxford, when he was only fourteen, and went into +residence next year--for just at this time extremely early entrance at +the University was much commoner than a little earlier or later. He had +only just entered his nineteenth year when he took a double first, and +had not concluded it when he was elected, at the same time with Whately, +to an Oriel fellowship. He followed this up by winning both the +Chancellor's Essays, English and Latin, and established his reputation +as the most brilliant man of his day. He was ordained as soon as he +could be, and served the usual offices of tutor in his College and +examiner in the University. But even such semi-public life as this was +distasteful to him, and he soon gave up his Oriel tutorship for a +country curacy and private pupils. Indeed the note, some would say the +fault, of Keble's whole life was an almost morbid retiringness, which +made him in 1827 refuse even to compete with Hawkins for the Provostship +of Oriel. It is possible that he would not have been elected, for oddly +enough his two future colleagues in the triumvirate, both Fellows, were +both in favour of his rival; but his shunning the contest has been +deeply deplored, and by some even blamed as a _gran rifiuto_. The +publication of _The Christian Year_, however, which immediately +followed, probably did more for the Movement and for the spiritual life +of England than any office-holding could have done; and in 1831, Keble, +being elected Professor of Poetry, distinguished himself almost as much +in criticism as he had already done in poetry. He obtained, and was +contented with, the living of Hursley, in Hampshire, where he resided +till his death on 29th March 1866. + +Keble's very generally granted character as one of the holiest persons +of modern times, and even his influence on the Oxford Movement, concern +us less here than his literary work, which was of almost the first +importance merely as literature. The reaction from an enormous +popularity of nearly seventy years' date, and the growth of +anti-dogmatic opinions, have brought about a sort of tendency in some +quarters to belittle, if not positively to sneer at, _The Christian +Year_, which, with the _Lyra Innocentium_ and a collection of +_Miscellaneous Poems_, contains Keble's poetical work. There never was +anything more uncritical. The famous reference which Thackeray--the +least ecclesiastically inclined, if by no means the least religious, of +English men of letters of genius in this century--makes to its +appearance in _Pendennis_, shows what the thoughts of unbiassed +contemporaries were. And no very different judgment can be formed by +unbiassed posterity. With Herbert and Miss Rossetti, Keble ranks as the +greatest of English writers in sacred verse, the irregular and unequal +efforts of Vaughan and Crashaw sometimes transcending, oftener sinking +below the three. If Keble has not the exquisite poetical mysticism of +Christina Rossetti he is more copious and more strictly scholarly, while +he escapes the quaint triviality, or the triviality sometimes not even +quaint, which mars Herbert. The influence of Wordsworth is strongly +shown, but it is rendered and redirected in an entirely original manner. +The lack of taste which mars so much religious poetry never shows +itself even for a moment in Keble; yet the correctness of his diction, +like the orthodoxy of his thought, is never frigid or tame. There are +few poets who so well deserve the nickname of a Christian Horace, though +the phrase may seem to have something of the paradox of "prose +Shakespeare." The careful melody of the versification and the exact +felicity of the diction exclude, it may be, those highest flights which +create most enthusiasm, at any rate in this century. But for measure, +proportion, successful attainment of the proposed end, Keble has few +superiors. + +It would indeed be surprising if he had many, for, with his gift of +verse, he was also one of the most accomplished of critics. His +_Pręlectiones Academicę_, written, as the rule then was, in Latin, is +unfortunately a sealed book to too many persons whom modern practice +calls and strives to consider "educated"; but he did not confine himself +even in these to classical subjects, and he wrote not a few reviews in +English dealing with modern poetry. His ęsthetics are of course deeply +tinged with ethic; but he does not in the least allow moral +prepossessions to twist his poetic theory, which may be generally +described as the Aristotelian teaching on the subject, supplied and +assisted by the aid of a wide study of the literatures not open to +Aristotle. There can be no doubt that if Keble's mind had not been more +and more absorbed by religious subjects he would have been one of the +very greatest of English critics of literature; and he is not far from +being a great one as it is. He did not publish many sermons, though one +of his, the Assize Sermon at Oxford in 1833, is considered to have +started the Movement; and opinions as to his pulpit powers have varied. +But it is certainly not too much to say that it was impossible for Keble +not to make everything that he wrote, whether in verse or prose, +literature of the most perfect academic kind, informed by the spirit of +scholarship and strengthened by individual talent. + +John Henry Newman was the eldest son of a man of business of some means +(who came of a family of Cambridgeshire yeomen) and of a lady of +Huguenot descent. He was born in London on 21st February 1801, was +educated privately at Ealing, imbibed strong evangelical principles, and +went up to Oxford (Trinity College) so early that he went in for +"Greats" (in which he only obtained a third class) before he was +nineteen. He continued, however, to reside at Trinity, where he held a +scholarship, and more than made up for his mishap in the schools by +winning an Oriel fellowship in 1823. In three successive years he took +orders and a curacy in the first, the Vice-Principalship of St. Alban's +Hall under Whately in the second, and an Oriel tutorship in the third; +while in 1827 he succeeded Hawkins, who became Provost, in the Vicarage +of St. Mary's, the most important post of the kind--to a man who chose +to make it important--in Oxford. + +Newman did so choose, and his sermons--not those to the University, +though these also are notable, but those nominally "Parochial," really +addressed to the undergraduates who soon flocked to hear him--were the +foundation and mainstay of his influence, constitute the largest single +division of his printed work, and perhaps present that work in the best +and fairest light. His history for the next sixteen years cannot be +attempted here; it is the history of the famous thing called the Oxford +Movement, which changed the intellectual as well as the ecclesiastical +face of England, on which libraries have been written, and which, even +yet, has not been satisfactorily or finally judged. His travels with +Hurrell Froude in the Mediterranean during 1832-33 seem to have been the +special turning-point of his career. After ten years, perhaps of +"development," certainly of hard fighting, he resigned St. Mary's in +1843, and after two years more of halting between two opinions he was +received into the Church of Rome in October 1845. He left Oxford, never +to return to it as a residence, and not to visit it for thirty-two +years, in the following February. + +His first public appearance after this was in the once famous Achilli +trial for libel, in which the plaintiff, an anti-Roman lecturer, +recovered damages from Newman for an utterly damning description of +Achilli's career in the Roman Church itself. Impartial judges generally +thought and think that the verdict was against the weight of evidence. +At any rate it produced a decided revulsion in Newman's favour, of which +he was both too convinced of his own position and too astute not to take +advantage. He had hitherto since his secession resided (he had been +re-ordained in Rome) at Birmingham, London, and Dublin, but he now took +up his abode, practically for the rest of his life, at Birmingham or +rather Edgbaston. In 1864 the great opportunity, presented by Kingsley's +unguarded words (_vide supra_), occurred, and he availed himself of it +at once. Most of those who read the _Apologia pro Vitā Suā_ were not +familiar with Newman's masterly English, and his competent, if not +supreme, dialectic and sophistic. They were not, as a former generation +had been, prejudiced against him; the untiring work of those of his +former friends who remained faithful to the Church of England had of +itself secured him a fair hearing. During the remaining twenty-five +years of his life he had never again to complain of ostracism or unfair +prejudice. The controversy as to the Vatican Council brought him once +more forward, and into collision with Mr. Gladstone, but into no odium +of any kind. Indeed he was considerably less popular at Rome than at +home, the more supple and less English character of Manning finding +greater favour with Pius IX. The late seventies, however, were a time of +triumph for Newman. In 1877 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of his own +College, Trinity, and next year paid what may be called a visit of +restoration to Oxford, while in 1879 the new Pope Leo XIII., a man of +great abilities and wide piety, raised Newman to the cardinalate. He +visited Rome on the occasion, but returned to Birmingham, where the +Edgbaston Oratory was still his home for the remaining years of his +life. This did not end till 11th August 1890, when almost all men spoke +almost all good things over his grave, though some did not spare to +interpose a sober criticism. The books composed during this long and +eventful career, especially in the first half of it, were very +numerous, Cardinal Newman's works at the time of his death, and before +the addition of Letters, etc., extending to nearly forty volumes. Much +of the matter of these is still _cinis dolosissimus_, not to be trodden +on save in the most gingerly manner in such a book as this. Yet there +are probably few qualified and impartial judges who would refuse Newman, +all things considered, the title of the greatest theological writer in +English during this century; and there are some who uphold him for one +of the very greatest of English prose writers. It is therefore +impossible not to give him a place, and no mean place, here. + +Although his chief work, indeed all but a very small part of it, was in +prose, he was a good verse writer. The beautiful poem or hymn usually +called from its first words "Lead, kindly Light," but entitled by its +author "The Pillar of Cloud," is not merely as widely known as any piece +of sacred verse written during the century, but may challenge anything +of that class (out of the work of Miss Christina Rossetti) for really +poetical decoction and concoction of religious ideas. It was written, +with much else, during a voyage in a sailing ship from Sicily to +Marseilles at the close (June 1833) of that continental tour which was +of such moment in Newman's life; and the whole batch ferments with +spiritual excitement. Earlier, and indeed later, Newman, besides plenty +of serious verse, contributed to the _Lyra Apostolica_ or written +independently, was a graceful writer of verse trifles; but his largest +and best poetical work, _The Dream of Gerontius_, was not produced till +he was approaching old age, and had long passed the crisis of his +career. Possibly the new ferment of soul into which the composition of +the _Apologia_ had thrown him, may have been responsible for this, which +is dated a year later. It is the recital in lyrical-dramatic form of an +anticipatory vision, just before death, of the Last Things, and unites +dignity and melody in a remarkable manner. The only other parts of his +work to which Newman himself attached the title "literature" were the +prose romances of _Callista_ and _Loss and Gain_. They display his power +over language, but are exposed on one side to the charges usually +incurred by novels with a purpose, and on the other to a suspicion of +bad taste, incurred in the effort to be popular. + +By far the larger bulk of the works, however, belongs to theology. This +includes twelve volumes of Sermons, all but a small part delivered +before Newman's change of creed, and eight of them the _Parochial and +Plain Sermons_, preached in the pulpit of St. Mary's but not to the +University; four of treatises, including the most famous and +characteristic of Newman's works except the _Apologia_, _The Grammar of +Assent_, and _The Development of Christian Doctrine_; four of Essays; +three of Historical Sketches; four theological, chiefly on Arianism, and +translations of St. Athanasius; and six Polemical, which culminate in +the _Apologia_. With respect to the substance of this work it is soon +easy, putting controversial matters as much as possible apart, to +discover where Newman's strength and weakness respectively lay. He was +distinctly deficient in the historic sense; and in the _Apologia_ itself +he threw curious light on this deficiency, and startled even friends and +fellow-converts, by speaking contemptuously of "antiquarian arguments." +The same defect is quaintly illustrated by a naļf and evidently sincere +complaint that he should have been complained of for (in his own words) +"attributing to the middle of the third century what is certainly to be +found in the fourth." And it is understood that he was not regarded +either by Anglican or by Roman Catholic experts as a very deep +theologian in either of his stages. The special characteristic--the +_ethos_ as his own contemporaries and immediate successors at Oxford +would have said--of Newman seems to have been strangely combined. He was +perhaps the last of the very great preachers in English--of those who +combined a thoroughly classical training, a scholarly form, with the +incommunicable and almost inexplicable power to move audiences and +readers. And he was one of the first of that class of journalists who in +the new age have succeeded the preachers, whether for good or ill, as +the prophets of the illiterate. It may seem strange to speak of Newman +as a journalist; but if any one will read his essays, his _Apologia_, +above all the curious set of articles called _The Tamworth +Reading-Room_, he will see what a journalist was lost, or only partly +developed, in this cardinal. He had the conviction, which is far more +necessary to a journalist than is generally thought; and yet his +convictions were not of that extremely systematic and far-reaching kind +which no doubt often stands in the journalist's way. He had the faculty +of mixing bad and good argument, which is far more effective with mixed +audiences than unbated logic. And, little as he is thought of as +sympathising with the common people, he was entirely free from that +contempt of them which always prevents a man from gaining their ear +unless he is a consummately clever scoundrel. + +It may however be retorted that if Newman was a born journalist, sermons +and theology must be a much better school of style in journalism than +articles and politics. And it is quite true that his writing at its best +is of extraordinary charm, while that charm is not, as in the case of +some of his contemporaries and successors, derived from dubiously +legitimate ornament and flourish, but observes the purest classical +limitations of proportion and form. It has perhaps sometimes been a +little over-valued, either by those who in this way or that--out of love +for what he joined or hate to what he left--were in uncritical sympathy +with Newman, or by others it may be from pure ignorance of the fact that +much of this charm is the common property of the more scholarly writers +of the time, and is only eminently, not specially, present in him. But +of the fact of it there is no doubt. In such a sermon for instance as +that on "The Individuality of the Soul," a thought or series of +thoughts, in itself poetically grandiose enough for Taylor or even for +Donne, is presented in the simplest but in the most marvellously +impressive language. The sentences are neither volleying in their +shortness, nor do they roll thundrously; the cadences though perfect are +not engineered with elaborate musical art; there are in proportion very +few adjectives; the writer exercises the most extreme continence in +metaphor, simile, illustration, all the tricks and frounces of literary +art. Yet Taylor, though he might have attained more sweetness or more +grandeur, could hardly have been more beautiful; and though Donne might +have been so, it would have been at the expense of clearness. Newman is +so clear that he has often been accused of being, and sometimes is, a +little hard; but this is not always or often the case: it is especially +not so when he is dealing with things which, as in the sermon just +referred to and that other on "The Intermediate State," admit the +diffusion of religious awe. The presence of that awe, and of a constant +sense and dread of Sin, have been said, and probably with truth, to be +keynotes of Newman's religious ideas, and of his religious history; but +they did not harden, as in thinkers of another temper has often been the +case, his style or his thought. On the contrary, they softened both; and +it is when he is least under the influence of them that unction chiefly +deserts him. Yet he by no means often sought to excite his hearers. He +held, as he himself somewhere says, that "impassioned thoughts and +sublime imaginings have no strength in them." And this conviction of his +can hardly be strange to the fact that few writers indulge so little as +Newman in what is called fine writing. He has "organ passages," but they +are such as the wind blowing as it lists draws from him, not such as are +produced by deliberate playing on himself. + +In a wider space it would be interesting to comment on numerous other +exponents of the Movement. Archdeacon afterwards Cardinal Manning +(1807-93), the successful rival of Newman among those Anglican clergymen +who joined the Church of Rome, was less a man of letters than a very +astute man of business; but his sermons before he left the Church had +merit, and he afterwards wrote a good deal. Richard Hurrell Froude +(1803-36), elder brother of the historian, had a very great and not +perhaps a very beneficent influence on Newman, and through Newman on +others; but he died too soon to leave much work. His chief +distinguishing note was a vigorous and daring humour allied to a strong +reactionary sentiment. Isaac Williams, the second poet of the Movement +(1802-65), was in most respects, as well as in poetry, a minor Keble. +W. G. Ward, commonly called "Ideal" Ward from his famous, very +ill-written, very ill-digested, but important _Ideal of a Christian +Church_, which was the alarm-bell for the flight to Rome, was a +curiously constituted person of whom something has been said in +reference to Clough. He had little connection with pure letters, and +after his secession to Rome and his succession to a large fortune he +finally devoted himself to metaphysics of a kind. His acuteness was +great, and he had a scholastic subtlety and logical deftness which made +him very formidable to the loose thinkers and reasoners of +Utilitarianism and anti-Supernaturalism. One of the latest important +survivors was Dean Church (1815-91), who, as Proctor, had arrested the +persecution of the Tractarians, with which it was sought to complete the +condemnation of Ward's _Ideal_, and who afterwards, both in a country +cure and as Dean of St. Paul's, acquired very high literary rank by work +on Dante, Anselm, Spenser, and other subjects, leaving also the best +though unfortunately an incomplete history of the Movement itself; while +the two Mozleys, the one a considerable theologian, the other an active +journalist, brothers-in-law of Newman, also deserve mention. Last of all +perhaps we must notice Henry Parry Liddon (1829-90), of a younger +generation, but the right-hand man of Pusey in his later day, and his +biographer afterwards--a popular and pleasing, though rather rhetorical +than argumentative or original, preacher, and a man very much affected +by his friends. Even this list is nothing like complete, but it is +impossible to enlarge it. + +Midway between the Movement and its enemies, a partial sympathiser in +early days, almost an enemy when the popular tide turned against it, +almost a leader when public favour once more set in in its favour, was +Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester (1805-73). The third +son of the celebrated emancipationist and evangelical, he had brothers +who were more attracted than himself by the centripetal force of Roman +doctrine, and succumbed to it. Worldly perhaps as much as spiritual +motives kept him steadier. He did invaluable work as a bishop; and at +all times of his life he was in literature a distinct supporter of the +High Church cause, though with declensions and defections of Erastian +and evangelical backsliding. He was a very admirable preacher, though +his sermons do not read as well as they "heard"; some of his devotional +manuals are of great excellence; and in the heyday of High Church +allegory (an interesting by-walk of literature which can only be glanced +at here, but which was trodden by some estimable and even some eminent +writers) he produced the well hit-off tale of _Agathos_ (1839). But it +may be that he will, as a writer, chiefly survive in the remarkable +letters and diaries in his _Life_, which are not only most valuable for +the political and ecclesiastical history of the time, but precious +always as human documents and sometimes as literary compositions. + +Three remarkable persons must be mentioned among the opponents of (and +in one case harsh judgment might say the deserters of) the Movement. +These were Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Mark Pattison, and Benjamin Jowett. +Stanley, born in 1815, was the son of the (afterwards) Bishop of Norwich +and a nephew of the first Lord Stanley of Alderley, and was brought up +very much under the influence of Arnold, whose biographer he became. But +he went further than Arnold in Broad Church ways. His career at Rugby +and at Oxford was distinguished, and after being fellow and tutor of +University College for some ten years, he became successively Canon of +Canterbury, Canon of Christ Church, and Professor of Ecclesiastical +History at Oxford, and Dean of Westminster, in which last post he had +almost greater opportunities than any bishop, and used them to the full. +He also wrote busily, devoting himself especially to the geography of +Palestine and the history of the Eastern Church, which he handled in a +florid and popular style, though not with much accuracy or scholarship. +Personally, Stanley was much liked, though his conception of his duties +as a sworn servant of the Church has seemed strange to some. He died in +July 1881. + +Mark Pattison (1813-84), Fellow and Rector of Lincoln College, had a +less amiable character than Stanley's, but a greater intellect and far +nicer, profounder, and wider scholarship, though he actually did very +little. He fell under the influence of Newman early, and was one of that +leader's closest associates in his monastic retreat at Littlemore. But +when Newman "went over," the wave swept Pattison neither to Rome nor +safely on to higher English ground, but into a religious scepticism, the +exact extent of which was nowhere definitely announced, but which was +regarded by some as nearly total. He did not nominally leave the Church, +but he acted always with the extreme Liberal party in the University, +and he was one of the famous Seven who contributed to _Essays and +Reviews_[11]. The shock of his religious revolution was completed by a +secular disappointment--his defeat for the office of Rector, which he +actually attained much later; and a temper always morbid, appears, to +judge from his painful but extraordinarily interesting and +characteristic _Memoirs_, to have been permanently soured. Even active +study became difficult to him, and though he was understood to have a +more extensive acquaintance with the humanists of the late Renaissance +than any man of his day, his knowledge took little written form except a +volume on Isaac Casaubon. He also wrote an admirable little book on +_Milton_ for the _English Men of Letters_, edited parts of Milton and +Pope, and contributed a not inconsiderable number of essays and articles +to the _Quarterly_ and _Saturday Reviews_, and other papers. The +autobiography mentioned was published after his death. + +Despite Pattison's peculiar temper he had warm and devoted friends, and +it was impossible for any one, whether personally liking him or not, to +deny him the possession of most unusual gifts. Whether his small +performance was due to the shocks just referred to, to genuine +fastidiousness and resolve to do nothing but the best, or to these +things mixed with a strong dash of downright indolence and want of +energy, is hard to say. But it would be entirely unjust to regard him as +merely a man who was "going to do something." His actual work though not +large is admirable, and his style is the perfection of academic +correctness, not destitute of either vigour or grace. + +There were some resemblances between Pattison and Jowett (1817-94); but +the latter, unlike Pattison, had never had any sympathies with the +religious renaissance of his time. Like Pattison he passed his entire +life (after he obtained a Balliol fellowship) in his College, and like +him became head of it; while he was a much more prominent member of the +Liberal party in Oxford. His position as Regius Professor of Greek gave +him considerable influence even beyond Balliol. He, too, was an +_Essayist and Reviewer_, and he exercised a quiet but pervading +influence in University matters. He even acquired no mean name in +literature, though his work, after an early _Commentary_ on some +Epistles of St. Paul, was almost entirely confined to translations, +especially of Plato, and though in these translations he was much +assisted by pupils. He wrote well, but with much less distinction and +elegance than Pattison, nor had he by any means the same taste for +literature and erudition in it. But, as an influence on the class of +persons from whom men of letters are drawn, no one has exceeded him in +his day. + +The dramatic catastrophe of the Disruption of the Scotch Kirk, which, by +a strange coincidence, was nearly contemporary with the crisis of the +Oxford Movement, set the final seal upon the reputation of Thomas +Chalmers, who headed the seceders. But this reputation had been made +long before, and indeed Chalmers died 30th May 1847, only four years +after he "went out." He was a much older man than the Oxford leaders, +having been born in 1780, and after having for some years, though a +minister, devoted himself chiefly to secular studies, he became famous +as a preacher at the Tron Church, Glasgow. In 1823 he was appointed +Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, and (shortly afterwards) +of Theology in Edinburgh. He was one of the Bridgewater treatise +writers--a group of distinguished persons endowed to produce tractates +on Natural Theology--and his work, _The Adaptation of External Nature to +the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man_, was one of the most +famous of that set, procuring for him a correspondence-membership from +the French Institute and a D.C.L. from Oxford. Chalmers' works are +extremely voluminous; the testimony as to the effect of his preaching is +tolerably uniform; he was a man of very wide range of thought, and of +remarkable faculty of popularisation; and there is no doubt that he was +a born leader of men. But as literature his works have hardly maintained +the reputation which they once had, and even those who revere him, +unless they let reverence stifle criticism, are apt to acknowledge that +there is more rhetoric than logic in him, and that the rhetoric itself +is not of the finest. + +Edward Irving, at one time an assistant to Chalmers, and an early friend +of Carlyle, was twelve years the junior of Chalmers himself, and died +thirteen years before him. But at nearly the time when Chalmers was at +the height of his reputation as a preacher in Glasgow, Irving was +drawing crowds to the unfashionable quarter of Hatton Garden, London, by +sermons of extraordinary brilliancy. Later he developed eccentricities +of doctrine which do not concern us, and his preaching has not worn much +better than that of his old superior. Irving, however, had more strictly +literary affinities than Chalmers; he came under the influence of +Coleridge (which probably had not a little to do both with his eloquence +and with his vagaries); and he may be regarded as having been much more +of a man of letters who had lost his way and strayed into theology than +as a theologian proper. + +To what extent this great and famous influence of Coleridge actually +worked upon Frederick Denison Maurice has been debated. It is however +generally stated that he, like his friend Sterling, was induced to take +orders in the Church of England by this influence. He was not a very +young man when in 1834, the year of Irving's death, he did this, for he +had been born in 1805, and had been educated at Cambridge, though being +then a Unitarian he did not take a degree. He afterwards went to Oxford +and took an M.A. degree there, and he was regarded for a time as a sort +of outlying sympathiser with the Tractarian Movement. But his opinions +took a very different line of development not merely from those of +Newman, but from those of Keble and Pusey. He indeed never left the +Church, in which he held divers preferments; and though his views on +eternal punishment lost him a professorship in King's College, London, +he met with no formal ecclesiastical censure. But he came to be regarded +as a champion of the Broad Church school, and upheld eloquently and +vehemently, if not always with a sufficiency either of logic or of +learning, a curious conglomerate of "advanced" views, ranging from +Christian Socialism to something like the views of the Atonement +attributed to Origen, and from deprecation of dogma to deprecation of +the then fashionable political economy. He was made Professor of Moral +Philosophy at Cambridge in 1866, and died in 1872. Maurice's sermons +were effective, and his other works numerous. A very generous and +amiable person with a deficient sense of history, Maurice in his writing +is a sort of elder, less gifted, and more exclusively theological +Charles Kingsley, on whom he exercised great and rather unfortunate +influence. But his looseness of thought, wayward eclecticism of system, +and want of accurate learning, were not remedied by Kingsley's splendid +pictorial faculty, his creative imagination, or his brilliant style. + +Somewhat akin to Maurice, but of a more feminine and less robust +temperament, was Frederick Robertson, generally called "Robertson of +Brighton," from the place of his last cure. Robertson, who was the son +of a soldier, was born in London on 3rd February 1816. After a rather +eccentric education and some vacillations about a profession, he went, +rather late, to Oxford, and was ordained in 1840. He had very bad +health, but did duty, chiefly at Cheltenham and at Brighton, pretty +valiantly, and died on August 1853. He published next to nothing in his +lifetime, but after his death there appeared several volumes of sermons +which gained great popularity, and were followed by other posthumous +works. Robertson's preaching is not very easy to judge, because the +published sermons are admittedly not what was actually delivered, but +after-reminiscences or summaries, and the judgment is not rendered +easier by the injudicious and gushing laudation of which he has been +made the subject. He certainly possessed a happy gift of phrase now and +then, and remarkable earnestness. + + NOTE.--In no chapter, perhaps, has there been greater + difficulty as to inclusion and exclusion than in the + present. The names of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, of Dean + Alford, of Bishop Lightfoot for England, of Bishop Charles + Wordsworth, of Dean Ramsay, of Drs. Candlish, Guthrie, and + Macleod for Scotland, may seem to clamour among orthodox + theologians, those of W. R. Greg, of James Hinton, of W. K. + Clifford among not always orthodox lay dealers with the + problems of philosophy, or of theology, or both. With less + tyrannous limits of space Principal Tulloch, who was + noteworthy in both these and in pure literature as well (he + was the last editor of _Fraser_), must have received at + least brief notice in this chapter, as must his brother + Principal, J. C. Shairp (an amiable poet, an agreeable + critic, and Professor of Poetry at Oxford), in others. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] This famous book, published in 1860, was a collection of papers by +six clergymen and a layman, some of which undoubtedly were, and the rest +of which were by association thought to be, unorthodox. It was condemned +by Convocation, and actual legal proceedings were taken against two of +the writers, but without final effect. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +LATER JOURNALISM AND CRITICISM IN ART AND LETTERS + + +In a former chapter we conducted the history of criticism, especially +literary criticism, and that chiefly as displayed in the periodicals +which were reorganized and refreshed in the early years of the century, +to about 1850. We have now to take it up at that point and conduct +it--subject to the limitations of our plan as regards living authors, +and in one extremely important case taking the license of outstepping +these limits--to the present or almost the present day. We shall have to +consider the rise and performances of two great individual writers, one +of whom entirely re-created, if he may not almost be said to have +created, the criticism of art in England, while the other gave a new +temper, if not exactly a new direction, to the criticism of literature; +and we shall have, in regard to periodicals, to observe the rise, in the +first place of the weekly newspaper, and then of the daily, as +competitors in strictly critical and literary work with the quarterly +and monthly reviews, as well as some changes in these latter. + +For just as we found that the first development of nineteenth century +criticism coincided with or followed upon a new departure or development +in periodicals, so we shall find that a similar change accompanied or +caused changes in the middle of the century. Although the popularity of +the quarterly and monthly reviews and magazines which had been headed +respectively by the _Edinburgh_ and _Blackwood_ did not exactly wane, +and though some of the most brilliant work of the middle of the +century--George Eliot's novels, Kingsley's and Froude's essays, and the +like--appeared in them, the ever fickle appetite of readers seemed to +desire something else in shape, something different in price, style, and +form. Why this sort of change, which is perpetually recurring, should +usually bring with it a corresponding change, and sometimes a +corresponding improvement, of literary production, is more than any one +can say, but the fact is not easily disputable. + +On the present occasion the change took three successive forms--first, +the raising, or rather restoring, of the weekly sixpenny critical +newspaper to a higher pitch of popularity than it had ever held; +secondly, the cheapening and multiplying of the monthly magazines; +thirdly, the establishment of new monthly reviews, somewhat more +resembling the old quarterlies than anything else, but with signed +instead of anonymous articles. + +The uprising of the weekly newspaper took shape in two remarkably +different forms, represented respectively by _Household Words_, which +Dickens started early in the fifties, and by the _Saturday Review_, +which came a little later. The former might best be described as a +monthly of the _Blackwood_ and _London_ kind cheapened, made more +frequent in issue, and adjusted to a considerably lower and more popular +standard of interest and culture--politics, moreover, being ostensibly +though not quite really excluded. Dickens contributed to it largely +himself. He received contributions from writers of established repute +like Bulwer and Lever; but he made his chief mark with the paper by +breeding up a school of younger writers who wrote to his own pattern in +fiction, miscellaneous essay, and other things. Wilkie Collins was the +chief of these, but there were many others. In particular the periodical +developed a sort of popular, jocular, and picturesque-descriptive manner +of treating places, travels, ceremonies, and what not, which took the +public fancy immensely. It was not quite original (for Leigh Hunt, +Wainewright the murderer-miscellanist of the _London_, some of the +_Blackwood_ men, and others, had anticipated it to a certain extent), +and it was vulgarised as regards all its models; but it was distinct +and remarkable. The ęsthetic and literary tone of _Household Words_, and +of its successor _All the Year Round_ to a somewhat less extent, was +distinctly what is called Philistine; and though Dickens always had a +moral purpose, he did not aim much higher than amusement that should not +be morbid, and instruction of the middle-class diffusion-of-knowledge +kind. But there was very little harm and much good to be said of +_Household Words_; and if some of the imitations of it were far from +being happy, its own popularity and that of its successor were very +fairly deserved. + +The aims, the character, and the success of the _Saturday Review_ were +of the most widely different character. It was less novel in form, for +the weekly review was an established thing, and had at least two very +respectable examples--the _Examiner_, which (under the Hunts, under +Fonblanque, under Forster, and under the late Mr. Minto) had a +brilliant, if never an extremely prosperous, career for three-quarters +of the century, and the _Spectator_, which attained a reputation for +unswerving honesty under the editorship of Mr. Rentoul, and has +increased it under that of its present conductors. But both these were +Liberal papers first of all; the _Saturday Review_, at first and +accidentally Peelite, was really (throughout the nearly forty years +during which it remained in the possession of the same family and was +directed by a succession of editors each of whom had been trained under +his predecessor) Independent Tory, or (to use a rather unhappy and now +half-forgotten name) Liberal-Conservative. It never tied itself to party +chariot-wheels, and from the first to the last of the period just +referred to very distinguished writers of Liberal and Radical opinions +contributed to it. But the general attitude of the paper during this +time expressed that peculiar tone of mainly Conservative persiflage +which has distinguished in literature the great line of writers +beginning with Aristophanes. Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from +the two Universities (though there was no kind of exclusion for the +unmatriculated; as a matter of fact, neither of its first two editors +was a son either of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the +necessity of classical culture. It eschewed the private personality +which had been too apt to disfigure newspapers of a satirical kind +during the first half of the century; but it claimed and exercised to +the full the privilege of commenting on every public writing, utterance, +or record of the subjects of its criticism. It observed, for perhaps a +longer time than any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity +(real as well as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular +articles; and those who knew were constantly amused at the public +mistakes on this subject. + +Applying this kind of criticism,--perfectly fearless, on the whole +fairly impartial, informed, human errors excepted, by a rather +exceptionally high degree of intelligence and education, and above all +keeping before it the motto, framed by its "sweet enemy" Thackeray, of +being written "by gentlemen for gentlemen,"--the _Saturday Review_ +quickly attained, and for many years held, the very highest place in +English critical journalism as regards literature, in a somewhat less +degree politics, and in a degree even greater the farrago of social and +miscellaneous matters. By consent too general and too unbiassed to be +questioned, it gave and maintained a certain tone of comment which +prevailed for the seventh, eighth, and ninth decades of the century, and +of which the general note may be said to have been a coolly scornful +intolerance of ignorance and folly. There were those who accused it even +in its palmiest days of being insufficiently positive and constructive; +but on the negative side it was generally sound in intention, and in +execution admirably thorough. It may sometimes have mishandled an honest +man, it may sometimes have forgiven a knave; but it always hated a fool, +and struck at him with might and with main. + +The second change began with the establishment of the _Cornhill_ and +_Macmillan's Magazine_, two or three years later. There was no +perceptible difference in the general scheme of these periodicals from +that of the earlier ones, of which _Blackwood_ and _Fraser_ were the +most famous; but their price was lowered from half a crown to a +shilling, and the principle of signed articles and of long novels by +famous names was adopted. The editorship of Thackeray in the _Cornhill_, +with the contributions of Matthew Arnold and others, quickly gave a +character to it; while _Macmillan's_ could boast contributions from the +Kingsleys, Henry and Charles, as well as from many others. From this +time the monthly magazine, with the exception of _Blackwood_, found a +shilling, which attempts have been recently made to lower to sixpence, +its almost necessary tariff, while the equal necessity of addressing the +largest possible audience made pure politics, with occasional +exceptions, unwelcome in it. It is to the credit of the English +magazines of this class, however, that they have never relinquished the +tradition of serious literary studies. Many of the essays of Mr. Arnold +appeared first either in one or the other of the two just mentioned; the +_Cornhill_ even ventured upon Mr. Ruskin's _Unto this Last_; and other +famous books of a permanent character saw the light in these, in _Temple +Bar_, started by Mr. Bentley, in the rather short-lived _St. Paul's_, of +which Anthony Trollope was editor, and in others. + +Whether the starting of the monthly "Review" as distinguished from the +"Magazine," which came again a little later towards the middle or end of +the sixties, be traceable to a parallel popularisation of the quarterly +ideal--to the need for the political and "heavy" articles which the +lightened monthlies had extruded--or to a mere imitation of the famous +French _Revue des Deux Mondes_, is an academic question. The first of +these new Reviews was the _Fortnightly_, which found the exact French +model unsuitable to the meridian of Greenwich, and dropped the +fortnightly issue, while retaining the title. It was followed by the +_Contemporary_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and others. The exclusion of +fiction in these was not invariable--the _Fortnightly_, in particular, +has published many of Mr. Meredith's novels. But, as a rule, these +reviews have busied themselves with more or less serious subjects, and +have encouraged signed publication. + +It would, of course, be impossible here to go through all, or even all +the most noteworthy, of the periodicals of the century. We are dealing +with classes, not individuals, and the only class yet to be +noticed--daily newspapers falling out of our ken almost entirely--are +those weekly newspapers which have eschewed politics altogether. The +oldest and most famous of these is the _Athenęum_, which still +flourishes after a life of nearly seventy years, while between forty and +fifty years later the _Academy_ was founded on the same general +principles. But the _Athenęum_ has always cleaved, as far as its main +articles went, to the unsigned system, while the _Academy_ started at a +period which leant the other way. Of late years, too, criticism proper, +that is to say, of letters and art, has played a larger and larger part +in daily newspapers, some of which attempt a complete review of books as +they appear, while others give reviews of selected works as full as +those of the weeklies. If any distinct setting of example is necessary +to be attributed in this case, the credit is perhaps mainly due to the +original _Pall Mall Gazette_, an evening newspaper started in 1864 with +one of the most brilliant staffs ever known, including many of the +original _Saturday_ writers and others. + +The result of this combined opportunity and stimulus in so many forms +has been that almost the whole of the critical work of the latter part +of the century has passed through periodicals--that, except as regards +Mr. Ruskin, a writer always indocile to editing, every one who will +shortly be mentioned in this chapter has either won his spurs or +exercised them in this kind, and that of the others, mentioned in other +chapters and in connection with other subjects, a very small proportion +can be said to have been entirely disdainful of periodical publication. +At the very middle of the century, and later, the older Quarterlies were +supported by men like John Wilson Croker, a survival of their first +generation Nassau W. Senior, and Abraham Hayward, the last a famous +talker and "diner-out." Other chief critics and essayists, besides +Kingsley and Froude, were George Brimley, Librarian of Trinity College, +Cambridge; Henry Lancaster, a Balliol man and a Scotch barrister; and +Walter Bagehot, a banker, and not a member of either University. +Brimley has left us what is perhaps the best appreciation of Tennyson in +the time between the days when that poet was flouted or doubted by the +usual critic, and those when he was accepted as a matter of course or +cavilled at as a matter of paradox; and Lancaster occupies pretty much +the same position with regard to Thackeray. It is not so easy to single +out any particular and distinguishing critical effort of Bagehot's, who +wrote on all subjects, from Lombard Street to Tennyson, and from the +_Coup d'État_ (which he saw) to Browning. But his distinction of the +poetical art of Wordsworth and that of these other poets as "pure, +ornate, and grotesque" will suffice to show his standpoint, which was a +sort of middle place between the classical and the Romantic. Bagehot +wrote well, and possessed a most keen intelligence. Also to be classed +here are Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, the very agreeable author of _Horę +Subsecivę_, and James Hannay, a brilliant journalist, a novelist of some +merit and an essayist of more, and author of _A Course of English +Literature_ which, though a little popular and desultory, is full of +sense and stimulus. + +Most popular of all at the time was Sir Arthur Helps (1813-75), a +country gentleman of some means and of the usual education, who took to +a mixed life of official and literary work, did some useful work in +regard to Spanish-American history, but acquired most popularity by a +series of dialogues, mostly occupied by ethical and ęsthetic criticism, +called _Friends in Council_. This contains plenty of knowledge of books, +touches of wit and humour, a satisfactory standard of morals and +manners, a certain effort at philosophy, but suffers from the +limitations of its date. In different ways enough--for he was as quiet +as the other was showy--Helps was the counterpart of Kinglake, as +exhibiting a certain stage in the progress of English culture during the +middle of the century--a stage in which the Briton was considerably more +alive to foreign things than he had been, had enlarged his sphere in +many ways, and was at least striving to be cosmopolitan, but had lost +insular strength without acquiring Continental suppleness. + +Of the literary critic who attracted most public attention during this +period,--the late Mr. Matthew Arnold,--considerable mention has already +been made in dealing with his poetry, and biographical details must be +looked for there. It will be remembered that Mr. Arnold was not very +early a popular writer either as poet or prose-man, that his poetical +exercises preceded by a good deal his prose, and that these latter were, +if not determined, largely influenced by his appointment to the +Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. He began, however, towards the end of +the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, to be much noticed, not +merely as the deliverer of lectures, but as the contributor of essays of +an exceedingly novel, piquant, and provocative kind; and in 1865 these, +or some of them, were collected and published under the title of _Essays +in Criticism_. These _Essays_--nine in number, besides a characteristic +preface--dealt ostensibly for the most part, if not wholly, with +literary subjects,--"The Function of Criticism," "The Literary Influence +of Academies," "The Guérins" (brother and sister), "Heine," "Pagan and +Medięval Religious Sentiment," "Joubert," "Spinoza," and "Marcus +Aurelius,"--but they extended the purport of the title of the first of +them in the widest possible way. Mr. Arnold did not meddle with art, but +he extended the province of literature outside of it even more widely +than Mr. Ruskin did, and was, under a guise of pleasant scepticism, as +dogmatic within the literary province as Mr. Ruskin in the artistic. It +might almost be said that Mr. Arnold put himself forth, with a becoming +attempt at modesty of manner, but with very uncompromising intentions, +as "Socrates in London," questioning, probing, rebuking with ironical +faithfulness, the British Philistine--a German term which he, though not +the first to import it, made first popular--in literature, in +newspapers, in manners, in politics, in philosophy. Foreign, and +specially French, ways were sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, +held up as examples for our improvement; and the want of "ideas," the +want of "light," the want of "culture," was dwelt on with a mixture of +sorrow and satire. All this was couched in a very peculiar and (till its +mannerism became irritating) a very captivating style, which cannot be +assigned to any single original, but which is a sort of compound or +eclectic outcome of the old Oxford academic style as it may be seen at +times in Newman, of French persiflage, and of some elements peculiar to +Mr. Arnold himself. The strongest, though the most dangerous, of these +elements was a trick of iterating words and phrases, sometimes exactly, +sometimes with a very slight variation, which inevitably arrested +attention, and perhaps at first produced conviction, on the principle +formulated by a satirist (also of Oxford) a little later in the words-- + + What I tell you three times is true. + +But besides and underneath all this flourish, all this wide-ranging +scatter of sometimes rather haphazard arrows, there was a solid literary +value in Mr. Arnold's method. As has been noticed earlier in this +chapter, the literary essay of the best kind had somewhat gone off in +England during the middle of the century, and the short, crisp +criticisms which had appeared to take its place in weekly papers were +almost necessarily exposed to grave faults and inadequacies. It was Mr. +Arnold's great merit that by holding up Sainte-Beuve, from whom he had +learnt much, and other French critics, and by urging successfully the +revival of the practice of "introducing" editions of classics by a sound +biographical and critical essay from the pen of some contemporary, he +did much to cure this state of things. So that, whereas the _corpus_ of +English essay-criticism between 1800 and 1835 or thereabouts is +admirable, and that of 1835 to 1865 rather thin and scanty, the last +third of the century is not on such very bad terms as regards the first. +And he gave example as well as precept, showing--though his subjects, as +in the case of the Guérins, were sometimes most eccentrically +selected--a great deal of critical acuteness, coupled, it may be, with +something of critical "will-worship," with a capricious and unargued +preference of this and rejection of that, but exhibiting wide if not +extraordinarily deep reading, an honest enthusiasm for the best things, +and above all a fascinating rhetoric. + +The immediate effect of this remarkable book was good almost unmixedly +on two of the three parties concerned. It was more than time for the +flower of middle-class complacency, which horticulturists of all +degrees, from Macaulay downwards, had successively striven to cultivate, +and which was already overblown, to drop from its stalk; and the whiff +of pleasant scorn which Mr. Arnold directed at it was just the thing to +puff it off. So the public, upon which he was never likely to produce +too much effect, had reason to thank him for the effect that he did +produce, or helped to produce. And on the critics too his effect, or the +effect of which he was the symptom and voice, was also good, recalling +them on the one hand from the dulness of the long reviews of the period, +and on the other from the flippancy of the short, while inculcating a +wider if not always a sounder comparison. Practically German poetry had +nothing left to do in Mr. Arnold's day, and French had much: he thought +just the other way, and reserved his encomium of France for its prose, +in which it was drooping and failing. But this did not matter: it is the +general scope of the critic's advice which is valuable in such cases, +and the general scope of Mr. Arnold's was sound. On the third party, +however,--himself,--the effect was a little disastrous. The reception +which, after long waiting, he had attained, encouraged him not so much +to continue in his proper sphere of literary criticism as to embark on a +wide and far-ranging enterprise of general censure, which narrowed +itself pretty rapidly to an attempt to establish undogmatic on the ruins +of dogmatic Christianity. It would be very improper to discuss such an +undertaking on the merits here; or to criticise narrowly the series of +singular treatises which absorbed (with exceptions, no doubt, such as +the quaint sally of _Friendship's Garland_ on the occasion of the +Franco-German War) Mr. Arnold's energies for some fifteen or sixteen +years. The titles--_Culture and Anarchy_, _God and the Bible_, _St. Paul +and Protestantism_, _Literature and Dogma_, etc.--are well known. Of the +contents it is enough to say that, apart from the popular audacity of +their wit and the interesting spectacle of a pure man of letters +confidently attacking thorny questions without any apparatus of special +knowledge and study, they have not been generally thought quite worthy +of their author. There are many brilliant passages in these books as +writing, just as there are some astonishing lapses of taste and logic; +but the real fault of the whole set is that they are popular, that they +undergo the very curse, of speaking without qualification and without +true culture, which Mr. Arnold had himself so freely pronounced. + +Fortunately, however, he never quite abandoned the old ways; and in his +last years he returned to them almost wholly. Nothing better of the kind +(individual crotchets always excepted) has ever been written than his +introductions to selected lives from Johnson's _Poets_, to Byron, to +Shelley (the most crotchety and unsound of all), to Wordsworth +(incomparably the best). He aided others; and a collection of his purely +or mainly literary work is still eagerly expected. Even this would be +extremely unequal and open to exception here and there. But it would +contain some of the very best things to be found in any English critic. +And this after all, if not the absolutely highest, is one of the highest +things that can be said of a critic, and one of the rarest. Undoubtedly +the influence of Mr. Arnold did not make for good entirely. He +discouraged--without in the least meaning to do so, and indeed meaning +quite the contrary--seriousness, thoroughness, scholarship in criticism. +He discouraged--without in the least meaning to do so, and indeed +meaning quite the contrary--simplicity and unaffectedness in style. But +he was a most powerful stimulus, and in some ways, if not in all, a +great example. Some at least of the things he said were in the very +greatest need of saying, and some of the ways in which he said them were +inimitably charming. + +Contemporary with Mr. Arnold, and his complement in critical influence, +was John Ruskin, the sole living author of whom it has seemed proper to +treat here at length, and, since the death of Mr. Froude, the sole +surviving man of letters of the first class who had published before the +middle of the century. He was born in 1819: he has given copious +accounts of his family, of his youth at Denmark Hill, and so forth, and +all the world knows that his father was a sherry merchant who, though he +lived rather plainly, was able to give his son an early and plentiful +indulgence in that Continental travel which had so much to do with +developing his genius. Mr. Ruskin's education was oddly combined; for, +after going to no school, he was sent to Christ Church as a +gentleman-commoner and took his degree in 1842, having gained the +Newdigate three years earlier. He wrote a good deal of other verse in +his early years,--and he made himself a not inconsiderable draughtsman. +But his real vocation was as little the practice of art as it was the +practice of poetry. As early as 1843 there appeared, by "a Graduate of +Oxford," the first volume of the famous _Modern Painters_, which ran to +five large volumes, which covered seventeen years in its original period +of publication, and which was very largely altered and remodelled by the +author during and after this period. But Mr. Ruskin by no means confined +his energies before 1860 to this extensive task. The _Seven Lamps of +Architecture_ (1849), and (between 1851 and 1853) the larger _Stones of +Venice_, did for architecture what the companion work did for painting. +The Prę-Raphaelite movement of the middle of the century found in Mr. +Ruskin an ardent encomiast and literary apostle, and between 1850 and +1860 he delivered divers lectures, the text of which--_Architecture and +Painting_ (1854), _Political Economy of Art_ (1858)--was subsequently +published in as elaborately magnificent a style as his other works. As +_Modern Painters_ drew to its close he became prolific of more numerous +and shorter works, generally with somewhat fantastic but agreeable +titles--_Unto this Last_ (1861), _Munera Pulveris_ (1862), _Sesame and +Lilies_ (1865), _The Cestus of Aglaia_ (1865), _The Ethics of the Dust_ +(1866), _The Crown of Wild Olive_ (1866), _Time and Tide by Wear and +Tyne_ (1867), _The Queen of the Air_ (1869), _Aratra Pentelici_ and _The +Eagle's Nest_ (1872), _Ariadne Florentina_ (1873), _Proserpina and +Deucalion_ (1875 _seq._), _St. Mark's Rest_ and _Pręterita_ (1885). Not +a few of these were issued in parts and numbers, but Mr. Ruskin's +bulkiest and most characteristic venture in this kind was _Fors +Clavigera_, which was published at irregular intervals from 1871 to +1884. He has written many other things even in book form, besides +innumerable essays and letters, some of which have been collected in two +gatherings--_Arrows of the Chace_ and _On the Old Road_. + +Two things are mainly perceptible in this immense and at first sight +rather bewildering production. The first, the most disputable and +probably the least important, though the most at the author's heart, is +a vast, fluctuating, but on the whole pretty coherent body of doctrine +in reference to Art. Up to Mr. Ruskin's day, ęsthetics had been little +cultivated in England, and such handlings of the subject as +existed--Burke's, Adam Smith's, Alison's, and a few others--were of a +jejune and academic character. Even writers of distinct literary genius +and of great taste for the matter, who had not resided abroad long, such +as Hazlitt, much more such as Charles Lamb and Hartley Coleridge, betray +the want of range and practice in examples. Even the valuable and +interesting work of Mrs. Jameson (1794-1860) was more occupied with +careful arrangement and attractive illustration than with original +theory; and, well as she wrote, her _Characteristics of Shakespeare's +Women_ (1832) is perhaps more important as literature than the series of +volumes--_Sacred and Legendary Art_, etc.--which she executed between +1845 and her death. The sense of the endless and priceless illustration +of the best art which was provided by Gothic domestic and ecclesiastical +architecture was only wakening; as for painting, the examples publicly +visible in England were very few, and even private collections were +mostly limited to one or two fashionable schools--Raphael and his +successors, the later Low Country schools, the French painters in the +grand style, and a few Spaniards. + +Strongly impressed by the Romantic revival (he has all his life been the +staunchest of Sir Walter's devotees), a passionate lover of Gothic +architecture both at home and abroad, and early drawn both to the +romantic nature-painting of Turner and the gorgeous colouring of the +early Italian schools, Mr. Ruskin heralded Art with a passion of which +eighteenth century "gusto" had had no notion. But he was by no means +satisfied with heralding Art alone. Anathematising at once the doctrine +that utility is beauty--that beauty is utility he would always have +cheerfully admitted--and the doctrine that the beautiful is not +necessarily connected either with utility, with goodness, or with truth, +he from the first and to the last has endeavoured to work ethics and +ęsthetics into a sort of single texture of warp and woof respectively, +pushing his endeavours into the most multiform, the most curious, and it +must be owned sometimes the most grotesque ramifications and +extremities. But he was not satisfied with this bold attempt at the +marriage of two things sometimes deemed hostile to, and generally held +to be independent of, one another. He must needs be bolder still, and +actually attempt to ally with Art, if not to subject to her, the +youngest, the most rebellious, and, as it might seem, the most +matter-of-fact and utilitarian of all the sciences--that of Political +Economy. As we have seen, he had brought the subjects together in +lectures pretty early in his career, and he developed the combination +further in the eccentric book called _Unto this Last_, originally +published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ as noted above. In this Ęsthetics +and Economics combined took a distinctly Socialist turn; and as England +was under the very fullest dominion of the Liberal middle-class regime, +with its belief in _laissez-faire_ and in supply-and-demand, Mr. Ruskin +was not a little pooh-poohed. It would be improper here to attack or to +defend his views, but it is part of the historian's duty to say that, +for good or for ill, they have, though in forms different from his and +doubtless by no means always meeting his approval, made constant +headway, and that much legislation and still more agitation on the +extreme Liberal side, and not there only, may be said to represent, with +very slight transformation, Ruskinian doctrine applied, now and then, to +very anti-Ruskinian purposes. + +With regard to ęsthetics proper, it might be contended, without too much +rashness, that the history of Ruskinism has not been different; but to +some observers it seems to have described rather a curve than a steady +ascent. After being, between 1840 and 1860, laughed at, despised, +attacked all at once, Mr. Ruskin found his influence as an art teacher +rise steadily during the seventh decade of the century, and attain its +highest point about the close thereof, when he was made Slade Professor +in his own university, and caused young Oxford to do many fantastic +things. But, as always happens, the hour of triumph was the hour, not, +perhaps, of downfall, but of opposition and renegation. Side by side +with Mr. Ruskin's own theories had risen the doctrine of Art-for-Art's +sake, which, itself as usual half truth and half nonsense, cut at the +very root of Ruskinism. On the other hand, the practical centre of +art-schools had shifted from Italy and Germany to Paris and its +neighbourhood, where morality has seldom been able to make anything like +a home; and the younger painters and sculptors, full of realism, +impressionism, and what not, would have none of the doctrines which, as +a matter of fact, stood in immediate relationship of antecedence to +their own. Lastly, it must be admitted that the extreme dogmatism on all +the subjects of the encyclopedia in which Mr. Ruskin had seen fit to +indulge, was certain to provoke a revolt. But with the substance of +Ruskinism, further than is necessary for comprehension, we are not +concerned. + +Yet there are not many things in the English nineteenth century with +which a historian is more concerned than with the style of the +deliverance of these ideas. We have noticed in former chapters--we shall +have to notice yet more in the conclusion--the attempts made in the +years just preceding and immediately following Mr. Ruskin's birth, by +Landor, by De Quincey, by Wilson, and by others in the direction of +ornate, of--as some call it--_flamboyant_ English prose. All the +tendencies thus enumerated found their crown and flower in Mr. Ruskin +himself. That later the crowns and the flowers were, so to speak, +divided, varied, and multiplied by later practitioners, some of whom +will presently be noticed, while more are still alive, is quite true. +But in 1895 it is not very unsafe to prophesy that the _flamboyant_ +style of the nineteenth century will be found by posterity to have +reached its highest exposition in prose with Mr. Ruskin himself. + +Like all great prose styles--and the difference between prose and poetry +here is very remarkable--this was born nearly full grown. The instances +of comparison in those who have tried both harmonies are rare; those in +poets only are delusive and uncertain. But with the three greatest poets +of England who have also been great prose writers, Milton, Dryden, +Shelley, the assertion that the distinctive quality of their prose +developed itself earlier than the distinctive quality of their verse is +only disputable in the case of Milton. And Milton, as it happened, wrote +prose and verse in manners more nearly approaching each other than any +one on record. Mr. Ruskin has not been a poet, except in extreme +minority; but he has been a great prose writer from the first. It is +almost inconceivable that good judges can ever have had any doubt about +him. It is perfectly--it is, indeed, childishly easy to pick faults, +even if matter be kept wholly out of sight. In Mr. Ruskin's later books +a certain tendency to conversational familiarity sometimes mocks those, +and not those only, who hold to the tradition of dignified and _ex +cathedra_ pronouncement; in his earlier, and in all, it is possible for +Momus to note an undue floridness, an inclination to blank verse in +prose, tricks and manners of this or that kind unduly exuberant and +protuberant. + +But when all these things have been allowed for to the very fullest, +what an enormous advance there is on anything that had gone before! The +ornate prose writers of the seventeenth century had too frequently +regarded their libraries only; they had seldom looked abroad to the vast +field of nature, and of art other than literary art. The ornate writers +of the eighteenth, great as they were, had been as afraid of +introspection as of looking outwards, and had spun their webs, so far as +style and ornament were concerned, of words only. Those of the early +nineteenth had been conscious of revolt, and, like all conscious +revolters, had not possessed their souls in sufficient quietness and +confidence. Landor, half a classic and half a Romantic, had been too +much the slave of phrase,--though of a great phrase. Wilson, impatient +in everything, had fluctuated between grandeur and _galimatias_, bathos +and bad taste; De Quincey, at times supreme, had at others simply +succumbed to "rigmarole." Mr. Ruskin had a gift of expression equal to +the best of these men; and, unlike them, he had an immense, a steady, a +uniform group of models before him. Indulge as he might in extravagance, +there were always before him, as on a vastly extended dais set before +the student, the glories of nature and of art, the great personalities +and productions of the great artists. He had seen, and he could see +(which is a different thing), the perennial beauties of mountain and +cloud, of tree, and sea, and river; the beauties long, if not perennial, +of architecture and painting. A man may say foolish things,--Mr. Ruskin +has said plenty; but when he has Venice and Amiens and Salisbury, the +Alps and the Jura and the Rhine, Scott and Wordsworth, Turner and +Lionardo, always silently present before his mind's eye, he can never, +if he is a man of genius, go wholly wrong. And he can never go more than +a little wrong when he is furnished by his genius with such a gift of +expression as Mr. Ruskin has had. + +For this gift of expression was such as had never been seen before, and +such as, for all the copying and vulgarising of it, has never been seen +since. It is a commonplace of literary history that description, as +such, is not common or far advanced in the earlier English prose. We +find Gray, far on in the eighteenth century, trying to describe a +sunrise, and evidently vexed at the little "figure it makes on paper." +Then the tourists and the travellers of the end of that age made valiant +but not always well directed efforts to induce "it" to make a figure on +paper. Then came the experts or student-interpreters in ornate prose who +have been mentioned. And then came Mr. Ruskin. "Never so before and +never quite so since," must be the repeated verdict. The first +sprightly runnings in these, as in other kinds, are never surpassed. +Kingsley, an almost contemporary, Mr. Swinburne, a younger rival, have +come near; others have done creditably in imitation; none have equalled, +and certainly none have surpassed. Let the reader read the "Wave +Studies" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_, more than fifty years +old; the "Pine Forest in the Jura," almost forty; the "Angel of the +Sea," fully thirty-five, and say, if he has any knowledge of English +literature, whether there had been anything like any of these before. +Shelley, perhaps, in some of his prose had gone near it. Shelley was +almost as great a prose writer as he was a poet. No one else could even +be mentioned. + +Nor was it mere description, great as Mr. Ruskin is in that, which +differentiated him so strongly. He is a bad arguer; but his arguments +are couched in rhetoric so persuasive that the very critics who detect +his fallacies would almost consent to forfeit the power of detecting, if +they could acquire that of constructing, such delightful paralogisms. +His crotchets of all sorts are sometimes merely childish, and not even +always or very often original; for, like all fertile minds, he never +could receive any seed of thought from another but it bore plant and +fruit at once. But the statement of them is at its best so captivating +that weaklings may pardonably accept, and strong men may justly +tolerate, the worthless kernel for the sake of the exquisite husk. Few +men have less of the true spirit of criticism than Mr. Ruskin, for in +his enthusiasm he will compass sea and land to exalt his favourite, +often for reasons which are perfectly invalid; and in his appreciation +he is not to be trusted at all, having a feminine rather than a +masculine faculty of unreasoned dislike. But praise or blame, argue or +paralogise as he may, the golden beauty of his form redeems his matter +in the eyes of all but those who are unhappy enough not to see it. + +That his influence has been wholly good no one can say. There is +scarcely a page of him that can be safely accepted on the whole as +matter, and the unwary have accepted whole volumes; his form is +peculiarly liable to abuse in the way of imitation, and it has actually +been abused to nausea and to ridicule. But this is not his fault. There +is so little subtlety about Mr. Ruskin that he can hardly deceive even +an intelligent child when he goes wrong. There is so much genius about +him that the most practised student of English can never have done with +admiration at the effects that he produces, after all these centuries, +with the old material and the old tools. He is constantly provocative of +adverse, even of severe criticism; of half the heresies from which he +has suffered--not only that of impressionism--he was himself the +unconscious heresiarch. And yet the more one reads him the more one +feels inclined almost to let him go uncriticised, to vote him the +primacy in nineteenth-century prose by simple acclamation. + +Richard (or as his full name ran), John Richard Jefferies, occupies, +though an infinitely smaller and a considerably lower place than Mr. +Ruskin's, yet one almost as distinctly isolated in a particular +department of ęsthetic description. The son of a farmer at Coate, in +North Wiltshire, and born in November 1848, he began journalism at +eighteen, and was a contributor to the _North Wilts Herald_ till he was +nearly thirty. Then he went to London, and in 1878 published some +sketches (previously contributed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_) under the +title of _The Game-Keeper at Home_. These, though not much bought, were +very much admired; and Jefferies was encouraged to devote himself to +work of the same kind, which he varied with curious and not very +vigorous semi-philosophic speculations and attempts at downright novels +(a kind which he had also tried in his youth). Unfortunately the +peculiar sort of descriptive writing in which he excelled was not very +widely called for, could hardly under the most favourable circumstances +have brought in any great sums of money, and was peculiarly liable to +depreciate when written to order. It does not appear that Jefferies had +the rare though sometimes recorded power of accommodating himself to +ordinary newspaper hack-work, while reserving himself for better things +now and then; and finally, he had not been long in London before +painful and ultimately fatal disease added to his troubles. He died in +August 1887, being not yet forty. A burst of popularity followed; his +books, _The Game-Keeper at Home_, _Wild Life in a Southern Country_, +_The Amateur Poacher_, _Round about a Great Estate_, etc., none of which +had been printed in large numbers, were sold at four or five times their +published price; and, worst of all, cheap imitations of his style began +to flood the newspapers. Nay, the yet later results of this imitation +was that another reaction set in, and even Jefferies' own work was once +more pooh-poohed. + +The neglect, the over-valuation, and the shift back to injustice, were +all examples of the evils which beset literature at the present time, +and which the much-blamed critic is almost powerless to cause or cure. +In other days Jefferies was quite as likely to have been insufficiently +rewarded at first by the public; but he would then have had no +temptation to over-write himself, or try alien tasks, and he would have +stood a very good chance of a pension, or a sinecure, or an easy office +in church or state, on one or other of which he might have lived at ease +and written at leisure. Nothing else could really have been of service +to him, for his talent, though rare and exquisite, was neither rich nor +versatile. It consisted in a power of observing nature more than +Wordsworthian in delicacy, and almost Wordsworthian in the presence of a +sentimental philosophic background of thought. Unluckily for Jefferies, +his philosophic background was not like Wordsworth's, clear and +cheerful, but wholly vague and partly gloomy. Writing, too, in prose not +verse, and after Mr. Ruskin, he attempted an exceedingly florid style, +which at its happiest was happy enough, but which was not always at that +point, and which when it was not was apt to become trivial or tawdry, or +both. It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will +dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of +descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their +particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stand Gilbert White and +Gray. + +Mr. Arnold, it has been said, abstained almost entirely from dealing +with art. Mr. Ruskin, who has abstained from dealing with nothing, did +not abstain from criticism of literature, but his utterances in it have +been more than usually _obiter dicta_. Yet we must take the two together +if we are to understand the most powerful influence and the most +flourishing school of criticism, literary and other, which has existed +for the last thirty years. This school may be said to halt in a way +between purely literary and generally ęsthetic handling, and when it can +to mix the two. Most of its scholars--men obviously under the influence +both of Arnold and of Ruskin, either in submission or in revolt, are +alive, and we reason not of them. But, as it happens, the two most +famous, one of whom was a prose writer, pure and simple, the other a +copious artist in prose and verse, have died recently and call for +judgment. These were Walter Horatio Pater and John Addington Symonds. + +The first-named was born in 1839, and went to Oxford, where he was +elected to a fellowship at Brasenose. He spent the whole of the rest of +his life either at that college or in London, practising no profession, +competing for no preferment, and for many years at least producing +literature itself with extreme sparingness. It was in 1873 that Mr. +Pater first collected a volume of _Studies in the History of +Renaissance_, which attracted the keenest attention both as to its +manner and as to its matter. The point of view, which was that of an +exceedingly refined and carefully guarded Hedonism, was in a way and at +least in its formulation novel. Mr. Pater did not meddle with any +question of religion; he did not (though there were some who scented +immorality in his attitude) offend directly any ethical prejudice or +principle. But he laid it down explicitly in some places, implicitly +throughout, that the object of life should be to extract to the utmost +the pleasure of living in the more refined way, and expressly and +especially the pleasure to be derived from education and art. The +indebtedness of this both to the Arnoldian and Ruskinian creeds, its +advance (in the main a legitimate advance) on the former, and its +heretical deviation from the development of the latter, require no +comment. But this propaganda, if so violent a word may be used, of Mr. +Pater's placid creed, called to aid a most remarkable style--a style of +the new kind, lavish of adjective and the _mot de lumičre_, but not +exceedingly florid, and aiming especially at such an arrangement of the +clause, the sentence, and the paragraph, such a concerted harmony of +cadence and symphony, as had not been deliberately tried before in +prose. The effects which it produced on different tastes were themselves +sufficiently different. Some found the purport too distasteful to give a +dispassionate attention to the presentment; others disliked the manner +itself as formal, effeminate, and "precious." But there were others who, +while recognising the danger of excess in this direction, thought and +think that a distinct and remarkable experiment had been made in English +prose, and that the best examples of it deserved a place with the best +examples of the ornater styles at any previous time and in any other +kind. + +Mr. Pater was not tempted by such popularity as his book received to +hasten publication; indeed it was understood that after beginning to +print a second collection of Essays, he became dissatisfied with them, +and caused the type to be broken up. But the advance of so-called +Ęstheticism was too strong an invitation, and prepared for him too large +and eager an audience, so that the last decade of his life saw several +books, _Marius the Epicurean_, _Imaginary Portraits_, _Appreciations_, +while others appeared posthumously. Of these the first-named is +unquestionably the best and most important. Although Greek had been the +indispensable--almost the cardinal--principle in Mr. Pater's own +literary development, he had been so strongly affected by modern thought +and taste, that he could hardly recover a dispassionate view of the +older classics. _Imaginary Portraits_, an attempt at constructive rather +than critical art, required qualities which he did not possess, and even +made him temporarily forget his impeccable style: _Appreciations_, good +in itself, was inferior to the first book. But _Marius the Epicurean_ +far excelled all these. It, too, took the form of fiction, but the story +went for so little in it that deficiencies therein were not felt. The +book was in effect a reconstruction, partly imaginative, but still more +critical, of a period with which Mr. Pater was probably more in sympathy +than with any other, even the Renaissance itself, to wit the extremely +interesting and strangely modern period when classicism and modernity, +Christianity and Paganism, touched and blended in the second century +after Christ after the fashion revealed to us in the works of Apuleius +most of all, of Lucian to some extent, and of a few others. Mr. Pater +indeed actually introduced the philosopher-novelist of Madaura in the +book, though he was not the hero; and his own peculiar style proved +itself admirably suited to the period and subject, whether in +description and conversation, or in such translation or paraphrase as +that of the famous and exquisite _Pervigilium Veneris_. + +For this style, however, in perfection we must still go back to the +_Studies of the Renaissance_, which is what Mr. Arnold liked to call a +_point de repčre_. The style, less exuberant, less far-reaching and +versatile, and, if any one pleases to say so, less healthy than Mr. +Ruskin's, is much more chastened, finished, and exquisite. It never at +its best neglects the difference between the rhythm of prose and the +metre of verse; if it is sometimes, and indeed usually, wanting in +simplicity, it is never overloaded or gaudy. The words are picked; but +they are seldom or never, as has been the case with others, not only +picked but wrenched, not only adjusted to a somewhat unusual society and +use, but deliberately forced into uses and societies wholly different +from those to which readers are accustomed. Above all, no one, it must +be repeated, has ever surpassed, and scarcely any one has ever equalled +Mr. Pater in deliberate and successful architecture of the +prose-paragraph--in what may, for the sake of a necessary difference, be +called the scriptorial in opposition to the oratorical manner. He may +fall short of the poetic grandeur of Sir Thomas Browne, of the +phantasmagoric charm of De Quincey at his rare best, of the gorgeous +panoramas of Mr. Ruskin. But his happiest paragraphs are like +_flamboyant_ chantries, not imposing, not quite supreme in quality, but +in their own kind showing wonderful perfection of craftsmanship. + +Of the same school, though a less exact and careful practitioner in it, +was John Addington Symonds, who was born in Bristol on the 5th of +October 1840, and died at Rome on 19th April 1893. He was the son of a +famous doctor whose name figures often in literary history, inasmuch as +he made Clifton a frequent resort for persons of consumptive tendencies. +Mr. Symonds himself lived there for a great part of his life. +Unfortunately the disease which his father had combated revenged itself +upon him; and it was only by spending the greater part of his later +years at Davos that he staved it off as long as he did. Educated at +Harrow and at Balliol, a Fellow of Magdalen, and succeeding tolerably +young to an affluent fortune, Mr. Symonds was able to indulge his +tastes, literary and other, pretty much as he chose. The result was +fortunate in one way, unfortunate in another. He could hardly have made +a living by literature, in which though an eager worker he was a +thorough dilettante. But if he had been at less liberty to write what +and howsoever he pleased, he might or rather would have been obliged to +compress and chasten the extreme prolixity and efflorescence of his +style. + +His largest work, the _History of the Renaissance in Italy_, is actually +one of great value in information, thought, and style; but its extreme +redundance cannot be denied, and has indeed already necessitated a sort +of boiling down into an abstract. Both in prose essays (which he wrote +in great numbers, chiefly on Greek or Renaissance subjects) and in verse +(where he was not so successful as in prose) Mr. Symonds was one of the +most characteristic and copious members of the rather foolishly named +"ęsthetic" school of the last third of the century, the school which, +originally deriving more or less from Mr. Ruskin, more and more rejected +the ethical side of his teaching. But Mr. Symonds, who had been very +much under the influence of Professor Jowett, had philosophical +velleities, which have become more generally known than they once were +through the interesting biography published after his death by Mr. +Horatio Brown. But for the redundance above mentioned, which is all +pervading with him both in thought and style, and which once suggested +to a not unfriendly critic the remark that he should like "to squeeze +him like a sponge," Symonds would probably or rather certainly occupy a +much higher place than he has held or ever will hold. For his +appreciation both of books and of nature was intense, and his faculty of +description abundant. But the _ventosa et enormis loquacitas_ of his +style was everywhere, so that even selection would be hard put to it to +present him really at his best. + +William Minto, who was born in 1846 and died in 1893, Professor of Logic +and English Literature at Aberdeen, showed fewer marks of the joint +direction of "ęsthetic" criticism to art and letters than these two, and +had less distinct and original literary talent. He had his education +mainly at Aberdeen itself, where he was born and died; but he made a +short visit to Oxford. Subsequently taking to journalism, he became +editor of the _Examiner_, and considerably raised the standard of +literary criticism in that periodical, while after quitting it he wrote +for some time on the _Daily News_. His appointment to the professorship +enabled him to devote himself entirely to literature, and he produced +some novels, the best of which was _The Crack of Doom_. He had much +earlier executed two extremely creditable books, one on _English Prose_, +and one on part of the History of English verse, the only drawbacks to +which were a rather pedagogic and stiff arrangement; he was a frequent +contributor to the _Encyclopędia Britannica_, and after his death some +of his professorial Lectures on the Georgian era were published, but +without his final revision. The strongest side of Minto's criticism lay +in his combination of sufficiently sound and wide knowledge of the past +with a distinct and rather unusual sympathy with the latest schools of +literature as they rose. He was untainted by the florid style of his +day, but wrote solidly and well. If it were necessary to look for +defects in his work they would probably be found in a slight deficiency +of comparative estimate, and in a tendency to look at things rather from +the point of view of modern than from that of universal criticism. But +this tendency was not in him, as it so often is, associated with +ignorance or presumptuous judgment. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE + + +The remarks which were made at the beginning of the chapter on +Philosophy and Theology apply with increasing force to the present +chapter; indeed, they need to be restated in a much more stringent and +exclusive form. To give some history of English philosophy and theology +in the nineteenth century, by noticing its literary expression, was +possible, though it had to be done, so to speak, in shorthand. To do the +same thing with science, or even with what is technically called +scholarship, would be simply impossible. Much of their expression is +hardly susceptible of literary form at all, hardly any ever receives +such form, while the subdivision of the branches of physical science is +now so great and their shadow so wide that no systematic sketch of them +is to be thought of. It is only possible to mention a few distinguished +writers, writers who would have been distinguished whatever their +subject, but who happen to have devoted themselves, solely or mainly, to +scientific writing, or to classical criticism and philology. + +A curious independent study might be made of the literary gradations of +classical scholarship. In the Middle Ages, though the complete ignorance +of the classics, once imagined as prevailing, has been shown to be a +figment, scarcely anybody could claim to be a scholar. During the +Renaissance almost every man of letters had necessarily some tinge of +scholarship, and some of the greatest in its earlier period, such as +Erasmus, were scholars first of all. The growth of vernacular +literature, the constant increase and subdivision of subjects, and the +advance in minute study of the Greek and Latin languages, brought about +an inevitable cleavage, and from the seventeenth century onwards +scholarship became an independent profession or vocation. For some +considerable time, however, it was the almost indispensable novitiate of +a literary career, and the tradition that a scholar must be first +applied to, for no matter what literary work, was still potent in the +times of Salmasius, and cannot be said to have been discredited in those +of Bentley, who would undoubtedly have been as formidable in purely +political or general controversy as he was on _Phalaris_ or on his own +private interests. The eighteenth century, however, saw the divorce +nearly completed, and by the period of our present volume it was an +accomplished fact. + +Even then, however, though for men of letters it was not customary to +turn first to scholars, scholars had not ceased to be men of letters, +and philology (or the mere study of language, as apart from literature) +had not absorbed them. + +During that part of our period which is still concerned with the last +century, there were many excellent scholars in England, but perhaps only +three--two of whom as scholars were of no great account--who make much +figure in purely literary history. Jacob Bryant (1715-1804), an odd +person of uncritical judgment but great learning, who belongs more to +the last volume than to the present, devoted himself chiefly to +mythology, a subject which had not yet attracted general interest, and +which was treated by him and others in a somewhat unhistorical manner. +Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801) was one of the characteristic figures of +the Revolutionary time. He was a Cambridge man, and took orders, but +left the church, became a violent Jacobin, and went to prison for a +seditious libel. He was one of those not very uncommon men who, +personally amiable, become merely vixenish when they write: and his +erudition was much more extensive than sound. But he edited several +classical authors, not wholly without intelligence and scholarship, and +his _Silva Critica_, a sort of _variorum_ commentary from profane +literature on the Bible, was the forerunner, at least in scheme, of a +great deal of work which has been seen since. + +A very different person from these in scholarly attainments, in natural +gifts, and (it must unfortunately be added) in personal respectability, +was Richard Porson, who is generally bracketed with Bentley as the +greatest of English scholars, not of our own day, and who might have +been one of the most brilliant of men of letters. He was born in Norfolk +on Christmas Day 1759, of low station, but was well educated by the +parson of the parish, and sent to Eton by a neighbouring squire. In 1779 +he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, obtained a scholarship, did +brilliantly in University contests and became fellow in 1782. Although +he was almost a boy the genius of his papers in scholarship attracted +notice at home and abroad, and he made some excursions into general +literature wherein, as in his recorded conversations, he showed +epigrammatic wit of the first rank. He lost his fellowship because he +would not take orders; but was made Regius Professor of Greek, an +appointment which unluckily was then, in both Universities, almost +honorary as regards income. The Whig party accepted his partisanship, +but had no opportunity of rewarding it, and after receiving the +Librarianship of the London Institution in Moorfields, he died of +apoplexy in 1808. He possessed in almost the highest degree that power +of divination, based on accurate knowledge, which distinguishes the +scholar, and it is, as has been said, nearly certain that he would have +been a brilliant writer in English on any subject he chose to take up. +But he was a hopeless drunkard, an offensive sloven, rude and aggressive +in society--in short a survival of the Grub Street pattern of the +century of his birth. This period, which was that of Burney, Elmsley, +Gaisford, and other scholars, robust but not very literary (except in +the case of Elmsley, who was a contributor both to the _Edinburgh_ and +the _Quarterly Reviews_), was succeeded by one in which the English +Universities did not greatly distinguish themselves in this department. +Gaisford indeed lived till 1855 at Oxford, and Cambridge produced among +other respectable scholars the already mentioned Malden and George Long +(1800-79), a Lancashire man, who went to Trinity, distinguished himself +greatly, but found such preferment as he met with outside his +university, in America, at University College, London, and elsewhere. +Long was a great diffusion-of-useful-knowledge man, and edited the +_Penny Cyclopędia_: but he did more germane work later in editing the +_Bibliotheca Classica_, an unequal but at its best excellent series of +classics, and in dealing with the great stoics Marcus Aurelius and +Epictetus. He was also one of the mainstays of the most important +enterprise of the middle of the century in classical scholarship, the +_Classical Dictionaries_ edited by the late Sir William Smith and +published by Mr. Murray; and he wrote an extensive but not +extraordinarily valuable _Decline of the Roman Republic_. Long appears +to have been one of those men who, with great ability, vast knowledge, +and untiring industry, somehow or other miss their proper place, whether +by fault or fate it is hard to say. + +About 1860 three remarkable persons illustrated scholarship in the +Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh respectively, with a +combination of literary and linguistic knowledge which had been growing +rarer up to their time, and which has grown rarer still since. + +The Oxford representative was John Conington, who was born at Boston on +10th August 1825. He went to Rugby and to Magdalen College, Oxford, +whence he migrated to University College, and there obtained a +fellowship, making nearly a clean sweep of the chief University prizes +meanwhile. He became in 1854 the first Professor of Latin, and held the +post till his death in 1869. He edited Virgil, Ęschylus (part) and +Persius, translated Horace, Homer, and Virgil, and did a certain amount +of miscellaneous literary work. He was neither a very exact nor a very +great scholar: his scholarship indeed took rather the character of that +of foreign nations, other than Germany, than the dogged minuteness of +German, or the large but solid strength of English study of the +classics. But he was an exceedingly stimulating professor; and coming at +the time when it did, his work was valuable as a reminder that the +classics are live literature, and not so much dead material for science. + +Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro, a native of Elgin, where he was born in +1819, a Shrewsbury boy and a scholar and fellow of Trinity College, +Cambridge, who became Professor of Latin there in 1869 and died in 1882, +was an incomparably greater verbal scholar than Conington, and may +fairly be said to have taken up the torch of Bentley and Porson. His +great edition (with a less great translation) of Lucretius, his work on +Horace and Catullus, and his scattered papers, all come up to a very +high standard; and in the delightful art of Greek and Latin composition +in verse, where England has long stood paramount, and which, since she +has abandoned it, remains uncultivated throughout Europe, he was almost +supreme. But Munro, though he never surrendered wholly to the +philological heresy, was affected thereby; and some of his Lucretian +readings were charged with a deficiency in ear such as that with which +he justly reproached his German predecessors. + +The most strictly literary of the three has yet to be mentioned. William +Young Sellar, born near Golspie in the same year as Conington, was +educated at the Edinburgh Academy, at the University of Glasgow, and (as +a Snell exhibitioner) at Balliol. After holding an Oriel fellowship for +some years, and doing professorial or assistant-professorial work at +Durham and St. Andrews, he became in 1863 Professor of Humanity at +Edinburgh, and remained so till his death in 1890. In the year of his +election to the professorship appeared his _Roman Poets of the +Republic_, quite the best book of its kind existing in English; and this +was followed up by others on Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and +Propertius--good, but less good, the mannered correctness of the +Augustans evidently appealing to the author less than the more strictly +poetic excellence of Lucretius and Catullus. Attempts, too few but +noteworthy, have since been made to handle classical literature in the +style of the _Roman Poets of the Republic_, but it has never been +surpassed, and it has very seldom been equalled. + +On another scheme and in other circumstances names like those of Kennedy +and Shilleto, of Linwood and Burges, of Monk and Blomfield, would cry +for admission here, but as it is they must be ruled out. And it is not +possible to widen the scope much, so as to take in some eminent students +who have given not unliterary expression to the study of languages and +subjects other than the classical. It has indeed been a constantly +increasing feature of the century that fresh studies--Ęgyptology, the +study of the Semitic languages, the study of the older forms not merely +of English but of the other modern tongues, the enormous range of +knowledge opened to Englishmen, and as it were forced on them by our +possession of India and our commerce and connection with other nations +of the East, as well as the newer subjects of comparative mythology, +folk-lore, and the like, all more or less offshoots of what may be +generally termed scholarship, have been added to the outer range of the +Humanities. Some of these appeal to very few, none of them to more than +few persons; and literature, in its best description if not exactly +definition, is that which does or should appeal to all persons of +liberal education and sympathies. Yet one exponent of these studies (and +of more than one of them) must have a place here, as well for the more +than professionally encyclopędic character of his knowledge as for his +intellectual vigour and his services to letters. + +William Robertson Smith was born in 1846, and died in 1894. A native of +Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Kirk minister, and educated at Aberdeen +and elsewhere, he became Professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College +of that city, and for some years discussed his subject, in the manner of +the Germans, without hindrance. His articles in the _Encyclopędia +Britannica_, however, gave offence, and after much controversy he was +deprived of his chair in 1881. Two years later, however, he was made +Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, where he also became +Fellow of Christ's and University Librarian. And from a contributor he +proceeded to be first assistant-editor and then editor in chief of the +_Encyclopędia_. His health, never very strong, became worse and worse, +and he finally succumbed to a complication of diseases. It was +understood that the theological scandal connected with his name was +anything but a pleasure to him, and the justice of it does not concern +us; but his repute as an Orientalist is uncontested. Besides works +directly bearing on the Bible, he wrote two important books on _Kinship +and Marriage in Early Arabia_ and on _The Religion of the Semites_. He +was at least as remarkable for general as for special learning, and if +not actually a great man of letters, had a knowledge of literature +rivalled by few of his contemporaries. + +To turn to physical science, Sir Humphry Davy, a great chemist and no +mean writer, was born at Penzance in December 1778. His father was a +wood-carver, but he himself was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary, and +betook himself seriously to chemistry. Fortunately for him, Dr. Beddoes, +the father of the poet, a physician of great repute at Clifton, took him +to be his assistant there, and Davy, in his twentieth year, not only had +much improved opportunities of study, but made valuable friends, both +among the persons of rank who then frequented Clifton for health, and +among the literary society of which Coleridge and Southey were then the +ornaments in Bristol. This part of his sojourn was noteworthy for his +experiments with nitrous oxide ("laughing gas"). These attracted a great +deal of attention, and in 1801, being then barely twenty-three, he was +appointed to a lectureship in the Royal Institution, London. His +appointment was the beginning of a series of brilliant lectures in the +same place during almost the whole of the century, first by Davy +himself, then by his assistant Faraday, and then by Faraday's assistant +Tyndall. He was knighted in 1812, and soon afterwards married Mrs. +Apreece, a lively, pretty, and wealthy widow. His later years were +occupied, first by the investigations which led to the perfecting of +his famous safety-lamp for coal-mines (these brought him a handsome +testimonial and a baronetcy), and later by electrical researches. He had +not reached middle age when his health began to fail, and he died in +1829, aged little more than fifty. In connection with literary science +or scientific literature Davy was perhaps more remarkable as a lecturer +than as a writer, but his accomplishments as the latter were +considerable, and in his later years he wrote two non-scientific books, +_Salmonia_ and _Consolations in Travel_. These (though the former was +attacked as the work of an amateur and a milksop by Christopher North) +were very popular in their day. Davy always kept up his friendship with +men of letters, especially the Lake Poets and Scott (who was a +connection of his wife's), and he was no very small man of letters +himself. + +A contemporary (though very much longer lived) of Davy's and the most +famous Englishwoman who has ever written on scientific subjects, was +Mary Fairfax, better known from the name of her second husband as Mrs. +Somerville. She was born at Jedburgh on 26th December 1780, and when +twenty-four married her cousin, Captain Greig, a member of a family of +Scotchmen who had settled in the Russian navy. Her first husband died +two years afterwards, and six years later she married Dr. William +Somerville, also her cousin. She had already devoted much attention, +especially during her widowhood, to mathematics and astronomy; and after +her second marriage she had no difficulty in pursuing these studies. She +adapted Laplace's _Mécanique Céleste_ in 1823, and followed it up by +more original work on physics, astronomy, and physical geography. Her +life was prolonged till 1872, and an interesting autobiography appeared +a year later. It is possible that Mrs. Somerville profited somewhat in +reputation by her coincidence with the period of "diffusion of useful +knowledge." But she had real scientific knowledge and real literary +gifts; and she made good use of both. + +Of at least respectable literary merit, though hardly of enough to +justify the devoting of much space to them here, were Sir David +Brewster (1781-1868), Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), Sir Charles Lyell +(1797-1875), Sir Roderick Murchison (1792-1871), the first a +mathematician and physicist, the second an astronomer, the third and +fourth geologists, and all more or less copious writers on their several +subjects. John Tyndall (1820-1893), a younger man than any of these, had +perhaps a more distinctly literary talent. Born in Ireland, and for some +time a railway engineer, he gave himself up about 1847 to the study and +teaching of physics, was remarkable for the effect of his lecturing, and +held several Government appointments. His Presidential Address to the +British Association at Belfast in 1874 was not less noteworthy for +materialism in substance than for a brilliant if somewhat brassy style. + +But the chief Englishmen of science who were men of letters during our +period were Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley. The opinions of the first +of these, their origin, the circumstances of their first expression, and +the probabilities of their future, have been the subject of about as +much controversy as in a given time has been bestowed upon any subject, +certainly on any similar subject. But we enjoy here the privilege of +neglecting this almost entirely. Darwin is to the literary historian a +very interesting subject, for he was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, who +himself, besides being the capital example of the polished mediocrity of +eighteenth century verse when all freshness had gone out of it, was a +man of science and an evolutionist in his way. Charles (who was also +christened Robert) was the son of yet another Dr. Darwin, an F.R.S. He +was born on 12th February 1809 at Shrewsbury, and his mother was (as was +afterwards his wife) a daughter of the Wedgwoods of Etruria. After +passing through the famous school of his native town, Darwin went to +Edinburgh for some years and then entered Christ's College, Cambridge, +in 1828. Here he devoted himself to physical science, and after taking +his degree was, in 1831, appointed to the _Beagle_, which was starting +on a scientific cruise. He spent five years in the South Seas and did +not return to England till late in 1836--a voyage which perhaps +prejudicially affected his health, but established his knowledge of +nature. After his return he settled down to scientific work, alone and +in the scientific societies, married in 1839, and was busy for many +years afterwards in publishing the results of the voyage. He possessed +considerable means, and for the last forty years of his life lived at +his ease at Down near Beckenham, experimenting in crossing species and +maturing his views. These took form, under circumstances interesting but +foreign to our theme, in the famous _Origin of Species_, published in +1859, and this was followed by a great number of other books, the most +noteworthy of which, if not the scientifically soundest, was _The +Descent of Man_ (1871). Darwin died after many years of continuous +ill-health on 19th April 1882. + +Late in life he is said to have confessed that his relish for +Shakespeare and for pure literature generally, which had in earlier days +been keen, had entirely vanished. But there was perhaps nothing very +surprising in this, seeing that he had for half a century given himself +up with extraordinary and ever-increasing thoroughness to a class of +investigations the most remote possible from literature, and yet not, as +pure mathematical study not seldom induces its votaries, inducing men to +cultivate letters by mere contrast. Yet the ancestral literary tendency +had only fallen dormant in him then; and earlier it had been active. It +can indeed hardly be said that either his contribution to the _Voyage of +the Beagle_, or _The Origin of Species_, or _The Descent of Man_, or any +of the others, is absolutely remarkable for style in the ordinary sense +of that phrase. The style of Darwin attempts no ornateness, and on the +other hand it is not of those extremely simple styles which are +independent of ornament and to which ornament would be simply a +defacement. But it is very clear; it is not in the least slovenly; and +there is about it the indefinable sense that the writer might have been +a much greater writer, simply as such, than he is, if he had cared to +take the trouble, and had not been almost solely intent upon his matter. +Such writers are not so common that they should be neglected, and they +may at least stand in the Court of the Gentiles, the "provincial band" +of literature. + +A very remarkable book which was in a way Darwinism before Darwin, which +attracted much attention and violent opposition in 1844, the year of its +publication, and which for a long time remained unowned, was the +_Vestiges of Creation_, subsequently known to be the work of Robert +Chambers, the younger of two brothers who did great things in the +popular publishing trade at Edinburgh, and who founded a house which has +always been foremost in the diffusion of sound and cheap literature, +information, and amusement. Robert was born at Peebles in 1802 and died +at St. Andrews in 1871, having been, besides his publishing labours, a +voluminous author and compiler. Nothing he did was quite equal to the +_Vestiges_, a book rather literary than scientific, and treating the +still crude evolution theory rather from the point of view of popular +philosophy than from that of strict biological investigation; but +curiously stimulating and enthusiastic, with a touch of poetry in it not +often to be found in such books, and attractive as showing the way in +which doctrines which are about to take a strong hold of the general +mind not infrequently communicate themselves, in an unfinished but +inspiring form, to persons who, except general literary culture and +interest, do not seem to offer any specially favourable soil for their +germination. Purely scientific men have usually rather pooh-poohed the +_Vestiges_, but there is the Platonic quality in it. + +The _Vestiges_, like its more famous successor, was violently attacked +as irreligious. One of its opponents, from a point of view half orthodox +and half scientific, was Hugh Miller, a man of sterling excellence, of +an interesting and in its close melancholy career, of real importance as +a geologist, and possessed of an extremely agreeable literary faculty. +Miller was born at Cromarty in 1802, and though more than fairly +educated, held till he was past thirty no higher position than that of a +stone-mason. He had begun to write, however, earlier than this, and, +engaging in particular in the two rather dissimilar subjects of geology +and "Free Kirk" polemic, he was made editor of the _Witness_, a +newspaper started in the interest of the new principles. After nearly +twenty busy years of journalism and authorship he shot himself in +December 1856, as it is supposed in a fit of insanity brought on by +overwork. Miller was a very careful observer, and his _Old Red +Sandstone_ (1841) made a great addition to the knowledge of fossils. He +followed this up by a great number of other works, some merely +polemical, others descriptive of his own life and travels. In all the +better parts of Hugh Miller's writings there is a remarkable style, +extremely popular and unpretentious but never trivial or slipshod, which +is not far below the best styles of the century for its special purpose, +though in some respects it smacks more of the eighteenth, and has a +certain relation with that of White of Selborne. + +The most considerable literary gifts of the century among men of science +probably belonged to a man more than twenty years younger than Miller, +and more than fifteen younger than Darwin, who died so recently that +until the greater part of this book was written it seemed that he would +have no place in it. Thomas Henry Huxley, born in May 1825, at Ealing, +studied medicine, and becoming a navy doctor, executed like Darwin a +voyage to the South Seas. His scientific work, though early +distinguished, met with no great encouragement from the Admiralty, and +he left the service, though he held many public appointments in later +life. He became F.R.S. at six-and-twenty, and from that time onwards +till his sixtieth year he was a busy professor, lecturer, member of +commissions, and (for a time) inspector of fisheries. In the ever +greater and greater specialising of science which has taken place, +Huxley was chiefly a morphologist. But outside the range of special +studies he was chiefly known as a vigorous champion of Darwinism and a +something more than vigorous aggressor in the cause of Agnosticism (a +word which he himself did much to spread), attacking supernaturalism of +every kind, and (though disclaiming materialism and not choosing to call +himself an atheist) unceasingly demanding that all things should submit +themselves to naturalist criticism. A great number of brilliant essays +and lectures were composed by him on different parts of what may be +called the debateable land between science, philosophy, and theology. +And one of his most characteristic and masterly single studies was a +little book on Hume, contributed to the series of "English Men of +Letters" in 1879. + +This varied, copious, and brilliant polemic may or may not have been +open in substance to the charge which the bolder and more thoroughgoing +defenders of orthodoxy brought against it, that it committed the logical +error of demanding submission on the part of supernaturalism to laws and +limits to which, by its very essence, supernaturalism disclaimed +allegiance. But the form of it was excellent. Mr. Huxley had read much, +and had borrowed weapons and armour from more than one Schoolman and +Father as well as from purely profane authors. He had an admirable +style, free alike from the great faults of his contemporaries, +"preciousness" and slipshodness, and a knack of crisp but not too +mannered phrase recalling that of Swift or, still more, of Bentley. It +has been said, with some truth as well as with some paradox, that a +literary critic of the very first class was lost in him, at the salvage +only of some scientific monographs, which like all their kind will be +antiquated some day, and of some polemics which must suffer equally from +the touch of time. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +DRAMA + + +At no period, probably, in the history of English literature, from the +sixteenth century until that with which we are now dealing, would it +have been possible to compress the history of the drama during a hundred +years into the space which it is here proposed to give it. If we were +dealing with the works of living men the historian might be justly +charged with arrogant incompetence in not taking more notice of them. +But, fortunately, that is not the case; and the brevity of the treatment +is equally compatible with a belief that the plays of the present day +are masterpieces, and with a suspicion that they are not. As to the past +we have, with the exception of a few protesters, general consent that +the English drama of the nineteenth century has displayed one curious +and disastrous characteristic. The plays, as a rule, which have been +good literature have either never been acted or have seldom succeeded as +plays; the plays that have been acted and have been successful have +seldom been good literature. + +The best idea of the state of the drama between 1790 and 1810 may +perhaps be obtained by any one who cares to look through--it would +require a monomania, a desert island, or at least a succession of wet +days in a country inn to enable any one to _read_ through--the ten +volumes of Mrs. Inchbald's _Modern British Theatre_, printed in 1811 +"from the prompt-books of the Theatres Royal." This publication, +supplementing the larger _British Theatre_ of the same editor, contains +more than two volumes of the works of Frederick Reynolds, a prolific +playwright who was responsible for the English version of _Werther_ in +drama; another of Mrs. Inchbald's own writing and adaptation; one of +Holcroft's later works; one of Cumberland's; and the other five made up +of lesser pieces by Colman the younger, Dibdin, and others, serious +plays in blank verse such as Hannah More's _Percy_, and the Honourable +John St. John's _Mary Queen of Scots_, etc. More than one of these was a +person of talent, more than one a person even of very great talent; +while Holcroft and Colman, if not others, had displayed special ability +for drama. Yet there is, perhaps, in the fifty plays of the ten volumes +only one that can be called a good play, only one which is readable, and +that is the _Trip to Scarborough_, which Sheridan simply adapted, which +he did little more than edit, from Vanbrugh's _Relapse_. Outside these +volumes the acting drama of the period may be best studied in the other +and better work of the pair just mentioned, and in O'Keefe. + +John O'Keefe, or O'Keeffe (for the name is spelt both ways), was a very +long-lived man, who was born at Dublin in 1748 and died at Southampton +in 1833. But in the later years of his life he suffered from blindness; +and the period of his greatest dramatic activity almost exactly +coincided with that of our first chapter. He is said to have written +some fifty pieces, of various kinds, between 1781 and 1798; and in the +latter year he published a collection of about thirty, referring in the +preface to others which "an inconsiderate disposal of the copyright" +prevented him from including. O'Keefe was to a certain extent a follower +of Foote; but his pieces--though he was a practised actor--depended less +upon his own powers of exposition than Foote's. They range from rather +farcical comedies to pure farces and comediettas much interspersed with +songs for music; and their strictly literary merit is not often great, +while for sheer extravagance they require the utmost license of the +boards to excuse them. There is, however, something much more taking in +them than in most of the dramatic work of the time. For instance, the +"wild farce" (referred to but not named by Lamb in his paper on Munden) +of _The Merry Mourners_, though as "improbable" as Mrs. Barbauld thought +_The Ancient Mariner_ to be, has a singular hustle and bustle of +sustained interest, and not a few shrewd strokes such as the following, +which perhaps does not only apply to the end of the _eighteenth_ +century. "Your London ladies are so mannified with their switch rattans +and coats, and watch-chain nibbities, and their tip-top hats and their +cauliflower cravats, that, ecod! there's no mark of their being women +except the petticoat." _The Castle of Andalusia_ (1782) is an early and +capital example of the bandit drama, and _The Poor Soldier_ of the Irish +comic opera. _Wild Oats_ supplied favourite parts to the actors of the +time in Rover and Ephraim Smooth; and, with a little good will, one may +read even slight things like _A Beggar on Horseback_ and _The Doldrum_ +with some amusement. But O'Keefe has few gifts beyond knowledge of the +stage, Irish shrewdness, Irish rattle, and an honest, straightforward +simplicity; and that one turns to him from other dramatists of the +period with some relief, is even more to their discredit than to his +credit. + +A curious and early fruit of this gradual divorce between drama and +literature was Joanna Baillie, a lady whose virtues, amiability, and in +a way talents, caused her to be spoken of by her own contemporaries with +an admiration which posterity has found it hard to echo as concerns her +strictly literary position in drama--some of her shorter poems were +good. She was born in 1762 at Bothwell, of a good Scotch family, and her +mother was a sister of the great surgeon Hunter. This gift descended to +her elder brother Matthew, who was very famous in his own day as an +anatomist and physician. Partly to be near him, Joanna and her sister +Agnes established themselves at Hampstead, where she often entertained +Scott and other great people, and where she lived till 23rd February +1851. In 1798 she published the first of a series of _Plays on the +Passions_, in which the eighteenth century theory of the ruling passion +was carried out to the uncompromising and even whimsical extent of +supplying a brace of dramas, a tragedy and a comedy, on each of the +stronger passions, Hatred, Fear, Love, etc. The first volume, which +opened with the rather striking closet drama of _Basil_, sometimes +spoken of as _Count Basil_, was prefaced by an introductory discourse of +considerable ability. The book, coming at a dead season of literature, +was well received. It reached its third edition in the second year from +its appearance, and one of its plays, _De Montfort_, was acted, with +Kemble in the title part, not without success. A second volume followed +in 1802, and a third in 1812. In 1804 one of _Miscellaneous Plays_ had +been issued, while others and some poems were added later. Joanna's +plays in general, it was admitted, would not act (though the Ettrick +Shepherd in the _Noctes Ambrosianę_ denies this), and it requires some +effort to read them. The blank verse of the tragedies, though +respectable, is uninspired; the local and historical colour, whether of +Byzantine, Saxon, or Renaissance times, is of that fatal "property" +character which has been noticed in the novel before Scott; and the +passion-scheme is obviously inartistic. The comedies are sometimes +genuinely funny; but they do not display either the direct and fresh +observation of manners, or the genial creation of character, which alone +can make comedy last. In short Miss Baillie was fortunate in the moment +of her appearance, but she cannot be called either a great dramatist or +a good one. + +The school of Artificial Tragedy--the phrase, though not a consecrated +one, is as legitimate as that of artificial comedy--which sprung up soon +after the beginning of this century, and which continued during its +first half or thereabouts, if not later, is a curious phenomenon in +English history, and has hardly yet received the attention it deserves. +The tragedy of the eighteenth century is almost beneath contempt, being +for the most part pale French echo or else transpontine melodrama, with +a few plaster-cast attempts to reproduce an entirely misunderstood +Shakespeare. It was impossible that the Romantic movement in itself, and +the study of the Elizabethan drama which it induced, should not lead to +the practise of tragedy, while the existence of the Kembles as players +and managers, might be thought to promise well for the tragic stage. + +Yet there has always been something out of joint with English nineteenth +century tragedy. Of Lamb's _John Woodvil_ and Godwin's _Antonio_ mention +has been made. Byron's tragedies are indeed by no means the worst part +of his work; but they also shared the defects of that work as poetry, +and they were not eminently distinguished for acting qualities. Scott +had no dramatic faculty; Shelley's _Cenci_, despite its splendid poetry, +is not actable; indeed the only one of the great English nineteenth +century _Pléiade_ who was successful on the stage was Coleridge; and +_Remorse_ and _Zapolya_ are not masterpieces. + +Yet the fascination of the theatre, or at least of the drama, seemed to +continue unaltered, and the attempts on or in it varied from the wild +fantasy pieces of Beddoes (which no stage but the Elizabethan--if even +that--could ever have welcomed) to the curious academic drama of which +types extend not merely from Milman's _Fazio_ in 1815 to Talfourd's +_Ion_ twenty years later, but further still. Of Milman notice has been +taken in his far truer vocation as historian. Talfourd was a good +lawyer, a worthy man, and as noted above, the friend and editor of Lamb. +But his tragedies are very cold, and it is difficult to believe that +_Ion_ can have had any other attraction besides the popularity and skill +of Macready, who indeed was greatly responsible for the appearance both +of this and of better plays. In particular he stood usher to divers +productions of Browning's which have been mentioned, such as the rather +involved and impossible _Strafford_, and the intensely pathetic but not +wholly straightforward _Blot in the 'Scutcheon_. This last is the one +play of the century which--with a certain unsubstantiality of matter, a +defect almost total in character, and a constant provocation to the +fatal question, "Why are all these people behaving in this way?"--has +the actual tragic _vis_ in its central point. + +The character, however, and the condemnation of the English drama of the +first half of this century from the literary point of view, are summed +up in the single statement that its most prominent and successful +dramatist was James Sheridan Knowles. Born in 1784, and son of the great +Sheridan's cousin at Cork, Knowles was introduced to London literary +society pretty early. He tried soldiering (at least the militia) and +medicine; but his bent towards the stage was too strong, and he became +an actor, though never a very successful one, and a teacher of acting, +though never a manager. He was about thirty when he turned dramatist, +and though his plays justify the theatrical maxim that no one who has +not practical knowledge of the stage can write a good acting play, they +also justify the maxim of the study that in his day literary excellence +had in some mysterious way obtained or suffered a divorce from dramatic +merit. Not that these plays are exactly contemptible as literature, but +that as literature they are not in the least remarkable. The most famous +of his tragedies is _Virginius_, which dates, as performed in London at +least, from 1820. It was preceded and followed by others, of which the +best are perhaps _Caius Gracchus_ (1815), and _William Tell_ (1834). His +comedies have worn better, and _The Hunchback_ (1832), and the _Love +Chase_ (1836), are still interesting examples of last-century artificial +comedy slightly refreshed. Independently of his technical knowledge, +Knowles really had that knowledge of human nature without which drama is +impossible, and he could write very respectable English. But the fatal +thing about him is that he is content to dwell in decencies for ever. +There is no inspiration in him; his style, his verse, his theme, his +character, his treatment are all emphatically mediocre, and his +technique as a dramatist deserves only a little, though a little, warmer +praise. + +Better as literature, and at least as good as drama, are the best plays +of the first Lord Lytton, another of the eminent hands of Macready, who +undoubtedly counted for something in the success of _The Lady of Lyons_, +_Richelieu_, and _Money_, the two first produced in 1838, and the last +in 1840. _Richelieu_ is the nearest to Knowles in competence without +excellence, the other two perhaps excel if not positively yet +relatively. Many spectators quite recently, while unable to check +laughter at the grandiloquent sentimentality and the stock situations of +_The Lady of Lyons_, have been unable to avoid being touched by its real +though ordinary pathos, and moved by its astonishing cleverness; while +_Money_ is probably the very best comic example of the hybrid kind above +referred to, the modernised artificial comedy. But Bulwer's other plays, +though the unsuccessful _Duchesse de la Valličre_ is not bad reading, +were less fortunate, and one of them is the subject of perhaps the most +successful of Thackeray's early reviews in the grotesque style, +preserved in the _Yellowplush Papers_. + +It will be observed that, with the single and not very notable exception +of Sheridan Knowles, almost all the names already mentioned are those of +persons to whom drama was a mere by-work. Another exception may be found +in James R. Planché (1796-1880), a man of no very exalted birth or +elaborate education, but an archęologist of some merit, and from 1854 +onwards an official representative of the honourable though discredited +science of Heraldry as Rouge Croix Pursuivant and Somerset Herald. From +1818 onward Planché was the author, adapter, translator, and what not, +of innumerable--they certainly run to hundreds--dramatic pieces of every +possible sort from regular plays to sheer extravaganzas. He was happiest +perhaps in the lighter and freer kinds, having a pleasant and never +vulgar style of jocularity, a fair lyrical gift, and the indefinable +knowledge of what is a play. But he stands only on the verge of +literature proper, and the propriety, indeed the necessity, of including +him here is the strongest possible evidence of the poverty of dramatic +literature in our period. It would indeed only be possible to extend +this chapter much by including men who have no real claim to appear, and +who would too forcibly suggest the hired guests of story, introduced in +order to avoid a too obtrusive confession of the absence of guests +entitled to be present. + +The greater and more strictly literary names of those who have tried the +stage in the intervals of happier studies, from Miss Mitford and R. H. +Horne to Tennyson, have been mentioned elsewhere; and there is no need +to return to them. Dr. James Westland Marston (1820-90) was once much +praised, and was an author of Macready's. Miss Isabella Harwood, +daughter of the second editor of the _Saturday Review_, produced under +the pseudonym of "Ross Neil" a series of closet-dramas of excellent +composition and really poetical fancy, but wanting the one thing +needful. Perhaps a few other writers might with pains be added; and of +course every reviewer knows that the flow of five-act tragedies, though +less abundant than of old, has continued. But, on the whole, the +sentence already put in more than one form remains true and firm--that +in this period the dramatic work of those who have been really men and +women of letters is generally far inferior to their other work, and +that, with the rarest exceptions, the dramatic work of those who have +not excelled in other kinds of literature is not literature at all. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +CONCLUSION + + +A conclusion which avows that it might almost as well have presented +itself as a preface may seem to be self-condemned; it must be the +business of the following pages to justify it. In summing up on such a +great matter as this it is desirable--it is indeed necessary--to +indicate, in broader lines than at the mere outset would have seemed +appropriate or indeed possible, the general course of thought and of +speech, of literary matter and literary form, during the century and +more which is submitted to the view. We can thus place individuals in +their position to each other and to the whole more boldly and with less +reserve; we can sketch the general character of existing movements, the +movers in which have been exempt from individual consideration by virtue +of their life and work being incomplete; we can at once record +accomplishment and indicate tendency. + +The period dealt with in the first chapter of this book illustrates the +differences in appeal of such periods to the merely dilettante and +"tasting" critic, and to the student of literature in the historical and +comparative fashion. To the former it is one of the most ungrateful of +all such sub-periods or sub-divisions in English literature. He finds in +it none, or at most Boswell's _Johnson_, Burns, and the _Lyrical +Ballads_ (this last at its extreme end), of the chief and principal +things on which alone he delights to fix his attention. Its better +poetry, such as that of Cowper and Crabbe, he regards at best with a +forced esteem; its worse is almost below his disgust. Its fiction is +preposterous and childish; it contributes nothing even to the less +"bellettristic" departments of literature that is worth his attention; +it is a tedious dead season about which there is nothing tolerable +except the prospect of getting rid of it before very long. + +To the latter--to the historical and comparative student--on the other +hand, it has an interest of an absolutely unique kind. As was observed +in a former volume of this history, the other great blossoming time of +English literature--that which we call Elizabethan, and by which we mean +the last five and twenty years of the Queen's reign and the fifty or +sixty after her death--was preceded by no certain signs except those of +restless seeking. Here, on the contrary, with no greater advantage of +looking back, we can see the old fruit dropping off and the new forming, +in a dozen different kinds and a hundred different ways. Extravagance on +one side always provokes extravagance on the other; and because the +impatient revolt of Coleridge and some others of the actual leaders into +the Promised Land chose to present the eighteenth century as a mere +wilderness in respect of poetry, enjoyment of nature, and so forth, +there have been of late years critics who maintained that the poetical +decadence of that century is all a delusion; in other words (it may be +supposed) that Akenside and Mason are the poetical equals of Herrick and +Donne. The _via media_, as almost always, is here also the _via +veritatis_. The poets of the eighteenth century were poets; but the +poetical stream did not, as a rule, run very high or strong in their +channels, and they were tempted to make up for the sluggishness and +shallowness of the water by playing rather artificial and rococo tricks +with the banks. The fiction of the eighteenth century was, at its +greatest, equal to the greatest ever seen; but it was as yet advancing +with uncertain steps, and had not nearly explored its own domain. The +history of the eighteenth century had returned to the true sense of +history, and was endeavouring to be accurate; but it only once +attained--it is true that with Gibbon it probably attained once for +all--a perfect combination of diligence and range, of matter and of +style. + +In all these respects the list might, if it were proper, be extended to +much greater length. The twenty years from 1780 to 1800 show us in the +most fascinating manner the turn of the tide, not as yet coming in three +feet abreast, rather creeping up by tortuous channels and chance +depressions, but rising and forcing a way wherever it could. In the +poets, major and minor, of the period, omitting, and even not wholly +omitting, Burns and Blake--who are of no time intrinsically, but who, as +it happens, belong accidentally to this time as exponents, the one of +the refreshing influence of dialect and freedom from literary +convention, the other of the refreshing influence of sympathy with old +models and mystical dreaming--all the restlessness of the approaching +crisis is seen. Nothing in literature is more interesting than to watch +the effect of the half-unconscious aims and desires of Cowper and +Crabbe, to see how they try to put the new wine in the old bottles, to +compare them with Goldsmith and Thomson on the one hand, with Wordsworth +and Coleridge on the other. Hayley perhaps alone, or almost alone, is +rebel to the comparative method. Hayley is one of these hopeless +creatures who abound at all periods, and whose native cast of +nothingness takes a faint fashion from the time. But even in the verse +of "Monk" Lewis we see the itch for new measures, the craving for lyric +movement; even in the day-flies of the Della Crusca group the desire to +be "something different." And then in Bowles, with his sonnets of +places, in Sayers, with his rhymeless Pindarics, we come upon the actual +guides to the right way, guides the oddest, the blindest, the most +stumbling, but still--as not merely chronology but the positive +testimony and the still more positive practice of those who followed +them show--real guides and no misleaders. + +Least studied, perhaps, because of its want of positive savour in +comparison with their later achievements, but more interesting than all +of these, is the early work of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth +themselves, and the work, not merely early but later, of men like +Rogers and Campbell. Here the spectacle already presented in Crabbe and +Cowper is repeated; but the process is in a further stage, and the +fermentation is determining, according to the nature of the fermenting +material. On Rogers it is nearly powerless; in Campbell only in his +lyrics does it succeed in breaking up and dissolving the old crust; in +Southey the effect is never quite complete; in Coleridge and Wordsworth, +but especially in Coleridge, the leaven changes all the latter lump. +Thenceforward the process is reversed. Instead of instances of advance +amid a mass of inertia or aimless wandering we have instances of +reaction amid a mass of advance. The work of the revolutionary time is +done; the scholar, contrary to Goethe's dictum, has now not merely to +exercise himself but to perfect. + +The phenomena of the time in fiction are of the same character, but they +lead as yet to no such distinct turn. The tale-telling of Beckford is +like the singing of Burns, not uncoloured by the time, but still in the +main purely individual; the purpose of the novels of Holcroft, Godwin, +and Bage is groping in the dark; the Radcliffian romance and its +exaggeration by Lewis exhibit the same uncertainty, the same application +of the Rule of False. And there is for once a more philosophical and +less cowardly explanation--that Scott, the Joshua in this instance, as +Coleridge and Wordsworth were in the other, was occupied elsewhere +before he sought the Palestine of the novel. For it must be remembered +that prose fiction, though it had been cultivated in a scattered and +tentative way for thousands of years, was up to this time the most +inorganic of literary kinds. Poets, when they chose to give themselves +up to poetry and to turn their backs on convention, were almost as well +off then as now. They had but to open the great Greeks of the fifth and +fourth centuries before Christ, the Latins such as Lucretius and +Catullus, the great medięval, the great Renaissance examples of their +own art, to see, as soon as they chose to see, where and how to go +right. The adventurer in fiction was destitute of any such assistance. +Only a few examples of much real excellence in his art were before him; +many of those existing (including most of the medięval instances) were +hardly before him at all; and none of these, with the exception of the +eighteenth century novel of manners and character (which, in the nature +of the case, was at that special time the last thing he wanted to +imitate), and the short tale of France and Italy, could be said to have +been brought to anything like perfection. Hence the wanderings and the +stumblings here were far greater, the touch of the groping hands far +feebler and less sure than even in poetry; but the crying for the light +was there too, and it was to be heard in time. Even as it was, before +the century closed, Miss Edgeworth had given important new lines to +fiction, and was on the eve of opening the most fertile of all its seams +or veins, that of national or provincial character; the purpose-novel +just referred to was full of future, though it might be a future of a +perilous and disputable kind; the terror-romance, subdued to saner +limits and informed with greater knowledge and greater genius, was not +soon to cease out of the land; and, a detail not to be neglected, the +ever increasing popularity of the novel was making it more and more +certain that it would number good intellects sooner or later. + +In all other directions, with the single exception of drama, in which +there was neither performance nor promise, so far as literature was +concerned, to any great extent, the same restlessness of effort, and not +always the same incompetence of result was seen. The fact of the +revolutionary war abroad and the coercive policy thereby necessitated at +home may have somewhat postponed the appearance of the new kind of +periodical, in all shapes from quarterly to daily, which was to be so +great a feature of the next age; but the same causes increased the +desire for it and prepared not a few of its constituents. It is +impossible for any tolerably careful reader not to notice how much more +"modern," to use an unphilosophical but indispensable term, is the +political satire both in verse and prose, which has been noticed in the +first chapter of this book, than the things of more or less the same +kind that immediately preceded it. It was an accident, no doubt, that +made the _Anti-Jacobin_ ridicule Darwin's caricature of eighteenth +century style in poetry; yet that ridicule did far more to put this +particular convention out of fashion than all the attacks of the same +paper on innovators like Coleridge (who at that time had hardly +attempted their literary innovations) could do harm. The very interest +in foreign affairs, brought about by the most universal war that had +ever been known, helped to introduce the foreign element which was to +play so large a part in literature; and little affection as the critic +may have for the principles of Godwin or of Paine, he cannot deny that +the spirit of inquiry, the rally and shock of attack and defence, are +things a great deal better for literature than a placid contentment with +accepted conventions. + +Theology indeed may share with drama the reproach of having very little +that is good to show from this time, or indeed for a long time to come. +For the non-conformist sects and the Low Church party, which had +resulted from the Evangelical movement in the earlier eighteenth +century, were, the Unitarians excepted, for the most part illiterate. +The Deist controversy had ceased, or, as conducted against Paine, +required no literary skill; and the High Church movement had not begun. +Philosophy, not productive of very much, was more active; and the +intensely alien and novel styles of German thought were certain in time +to produce their effect, while their working was in exact line with all +the other tendencies we have been surveying. + +In short, during these twenty years, literature in almost all its parts +was being thoroughly "boxed about." The hands that stirred it were not +of the strongest as yet, they were absolutely unskilled, and for the +most part they had not even any very clear conception of what they +wanted to do. But almost everybody felt that something had to be done, +and was anxious--even childishly anxious--to do something. It by no +means always happens that such anxiety is rewarded or is a good sign; +but it is always a noteworthy one, and in this instance there is no +doubt about either the fact of the reward or its goodness. + +The subsequent history of poetry during the century divides itself in an +exceedingly interesting way, which has not perhaps yet been subjected to +full critical comment. There are in it five pretty sharply marked +periods of some ten or fifteen years each, which are distinguished, the +first, third, and fifth, by the appearance in more or less numbers of +poets of very high merit, and of characteristics more or less distinctly +original; the second and fourth by poetic growths, not indeed scanty in +amount and sometimes exquisite in quality, but tentative, fragmentary, +and undecided. It will of course be understood that in this, as in all +literary classifications, mathematical accuracy must not be expected, +and that the lives of many of the poets mentioned necessarily extend +long before and after the periods which their poetical production +specially distinguishes. In fact the life of Wordsworth covers as nearly +as possible the whole five sub-periods mentioned, reckoning from his own +birth-year to that of almost the youngest of the poets, of whom we shall +here take account. And perhaps there are few better ways of realising +the extraordinary eminence of English nineteenth century poetry than by +observing, that during these eighty years there was never a single one +at which more or fewer persons were not in existence, who had produced +or were to produce poetry of the first class. And the more the five-fold +division indicated is examined and analysed the more curious and +interesting will its phenomena appear. + +The divisions or batches of birth-years are worth indicating separately: +the first comprises the eighth and ninth decades of the eighteenth +century, from the birth of Scott and the Lakers to that of Shelley, with +Keats as a belated and so to speak posthumous but most genuine child of +it; the second covers about fifteen years from the birth of George +Darley, who was of the same year (1795) with Keats, to the eve of that +of Tennyson; the third goes from 1810 or thereabouts, throwing back to +include the elder Tennysons and Mrs. Browning; the fourth extends from +about 1825 to 1836; the fifth from the birth of Mr. Morris (throwing +back as before to admit Rossetti) to the end. + +In the first of these we see the Romantic revolt or renaissance, +whichever word may be preferred, growing up under the joint influences +of the opening of medięval and foreign literature; of the excitement of +the wars of the French Revolution; of the more hidden but perhaps more +potent force of simple ebb-and-flow which governs the world in all +things, though some fondly call it Progress; and of the even more +mysterious chance or choice, which from time to time brings into the +world, generally in groups, persons suited to effect the necessary +changes. The "Return to Nature," or to be less question-begging let us +say the taking up of a new standpoint in regard to nature, made half +unconsciously by men like Cowper and Crabbe, assisted without intending +it by men like Burns and Blake, effected in intention if not in full +achievement by feeble but lucky pioneers like Bowles, asserts itself +once for all in the _Lyrical Ballads_, and then works itself out in +different--in almost all possibly different--ways through the varying +administration of the same spirit by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley +and Keats, in the highest and primary rank, by Scott and Byron in the +next, by Southey, Campbell, Leigh Hunt, Moore, and others in the third. +And it is again most interesting to watch how the exertion of influence +and the character of it are by no means in proportion to the exact +poetical strength of the agent. Scott and Byron, certainly inferior as +poets to the first four mentioned, have probably had a greater bulk of +poetical influence and poetical action on mankind at large certainly, +and a vastly earlier, more immediate and more sweeping influence on +other poets than their betters. Leigh Hunt, a poet quite of the third +rank, exercised directly and indirectly, through Shelley and Keats, an +influence on the form of poetry, on metre, cadence, phrase, greater than +any of the others, save Wordsworth and Byron, and perhaps more than +these. In all ways, however, by this channel and that, in +straightforward or stealthy fashion, the poetic flood comes up, and by +the death of Byron, Shelley and Keats having still more prematurely gone +before, it is at its very highest spring. Six and twenty years passed, +from 1798 to 1824, from the time when the _Lyrical Ballads_ were +brought out to take their chance to the time when Mr. Beddoes, Mr. +Procter, and somebody else clubbed to publish Shelley's posthumous poems +at their own expense or at least guarantee, and justly objected to +paying for more than 250 copies, because more were not likely to be +sold. In these six and twenty years such an addition had been made to +English poetry as five times the space had not previously seen, as +perhaps was not far from equalling the glorious gains of a not very +different though somewhat longer space of time between the appearance of +the _Shepherd's Calendar_ and the death of Shakespeare. + +But the sequel of this abnormally high tide is hardly less interesting +than itself. We generally expect at such moments in literature either a +decided falling off, or else a period of decent imitation, of "school +work." It would be absurd to say that there is no contrast, no falling +off, and no imitation in the group of poets noticed at the end of the +second chapter in this volume. But they are not utterly decadent, and +they are by no means purely or merely imitative. On the contrary, their +note is quite different from that of mere school work, and in a sort of +eccentric and spasmodic fashion they attain to singular excellence. +Hood, Praed, Macaulay, Taylor, Darley, Beddoes, Hartley Coleridge, +Horne, are not to Wordsworth or Coleridge, to Byron or to Shelley, what +the later so-called Elizabethan playwrights are to Jonson and Fletcher, +the later poets of the same time to Spenser and Donne. But they almost +all, perhaps all, seem forced to turn into some bye-way or backwater of +poetry, to be unable or unwilling to keep the crown of the causeway, the +flood of the tide. Hood and Praed--the former after actually attempting +great poetry, and coming nearer to it than some great poets come in +their first attempts--wander into the special borderland of humorous and +grotesque verse, achieving in different parts of it something not unlike +absolute and unsurpassed success. Beddoes, and to some extent Darley, +adopt fantastic varieties, grim in the former's hands, playful chiefly +in the latter's, but alike remote from everyday interests and broad +appeals; while the incomparable lyrics of Beddoes are of no special +time or school, their very Elizabethanism being somewhat delusive. +Taylor and Horne attempt the serious moral play with hardly any stage +purposes or possibilities, and Horne in _Orion_ tries an eccentric kind +of ethical or satirical epic. Macaulay--the most prominent of all, and +the most popular in his tastes and aims--is perhaps the nearest to a +"schoolman," adapting Scott as he does in his _Lays_; yet even here +there is no mere imitation. + +Thus the people of this minor transition exhibit--in a most interesting +way, rendered even more interesting by the repetition of it which, as we +have seen and shall see, came about twenty years later--the mixed +phenomena of an after-piece and a _lever de rideau_, of precursorship +and what we must for want of a better word call decadence. They were not +strong enough in themselves, or were not favourably enough +circumstanced, entirely to refresh or redirect the main current of +poetry; so they deviated from it. But hardly in the least of them is +there absent the sign and symptom of the poetic spirit being still +about, of the poetic craft still in full working order. And their +occasional efforts, their experiments in the half-kinds they affected, +have a curious charm. English poetry would be undeniably poorer without +the unearthly snatches of Beddoes, the exquisitely urbane +verse-of-society of Praed, the pathetic-grotesque of Hood, even the +stately tirades of Horne and Taylor. Some of them, if not all, may at +this or that time have been exaggerated in value, by caprice, by +reaction, by mere personal sympathy. But no universal critic will refuse +admiration to them in and for themselves. + +In the next stage we are again face to face, not with half-talents, +uncertain of their direction, but with whole genius, inevitably working +on its predestined lines. Nothing quite like the poetical career and the +poetical conception of Alfred Tennyson and of Robert Browning, so +different in all respects, except that of duration and coincidence in +time, meets us in English, perhaps nothing similar meets us in any +literature. It is easy to overestimate both; and both have been +over-estimated. It is still easier to depreciate both; and both have +been depreciated. Both wrote constantly, and at frequent intervals, for +some sixty years--the same sixty years--and, with not more than fair +allowance for the effects of time, both wrote at the end better than at +the beginning, and nearly as well as at the best time of each. +Wordsworth, it is true, wrote for nearly as long, but no one can assert +the same duration of equality in his production. + +In a certain sense, no doubt, neither can claim the same distinct +individuality, the same unmistakable and elementary _quality_, as that +which distinguishes Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley. +The work of each is always at once recognisable by any tolerably +competent judge; but the signs of identity are more composite than +atomic, more derived and literary than essentially native. Browning's +unconventional mannerisms, and his wide range of subject, have made him +seem even less of a mere scholar than Tennyson; but, as a fact, each is +independent enough to a certain extent and to a certain extent only. In +both appears, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time +in combination with distinct original genius, that indebtedness to the +past, that relapse upon it in the very act of forming vast schemes for +the future, which is more the note of the nineteenth century than +anything else. They not merely have all literature and all history +behind them; but they know it. Yet this knowledge does not weigh on +them. They do not exactly neglect it as Wordsworth and Shelley were +still able to do, but they keep it under. It is the attendant fiend for +which they must find work, but which they never, as too many of their +contemporaries and followers have done, allow to become their master. +And so they two, as it seems to me, do actually win their way to the +first class, not perhaps to the absolutely first division of it, but to +a first class still pretty rigidly limited. + +It is not the object of this Conclusion to deal with the performances of +individuals at any length, and therefore I must refer back to the text +for a detailed indication of the position of Keats as the summer-up of +the tradition of the first of the groups or periods here noticed, and +the begetter, master, and teacher of the third, as well as for +descriptions of the different manners in which Tennyson and Browning +respectively shared and distributed between themselves that catholic +curiosity in poetical subject, that exploration of all history and art +and literature, which is the main characteristic of strictly nineteenth +century poetry. But it is very pertinent here to point out the +remarkable way in which these two poets, from the unexampled combination +of length and potency in their poetical period of influence, governed +all the poetry that has followed them. We shall now see that under their +shadow at least two well-marked groups arose, each of magnitude and +individuality sufficient to justify the assignment to it of a separate +position. Yet it was in their shadow that these rose and flourished, and +though the trees themselves have at length fallen, the shadow of their +names is almost as great as ever. + +The first of these two groups, the fourth of our present classification, +renews, as has been said before, the features of its twenty or thirty +years older forerunner, the group between Keats and Tennyson, in a most +curious and attractive fashion. Once more we find the notes of +uncertainty, of straying into paths,--not always quite blind-alleys, but +bye-paths certainly,--the presence of isolated burst and flash, of +effort unsuccessful or unequal as a whole. But here we find, what in the +earlier chapter or section we do not find, distinct imitativeness and +positive school-following. This imitation, attempting Shelley at times +with little success (for, let it be repeated, Shelley is not imitable), +selected in regular chronological order, three masters, Wordsworth, +Tennyson, and Browning, though in each stage the master of the preceding +rather shared than yielded his chair. It has been said in a famous +passage that Wordsworth was more read about sixty years ago than at any +time before or since, and this may perhaps be true. But his influence on +writers has not depended on his popularity with readers, and from Sir +Aubrey de Vere, who was born more than a century ago, to verse-writers +who have only just published, his unmistakable tone, the tone which, so +far as we can see, would never have been if Wordsworth had never +existed, shows itself. The writing influence of Tennyson did not begin +till the issue of the _Poems_ of 1842, but it began almost immediately +then, and has remained in full force to the present day. It is an +influence somewhat more external and technical than Wordsworth's, but +for that reason even more unmistakable, and some of its results are +among the most curious of school-copies in literature. As for Browning, +imitation there tried both the outside and the inside, not very often +with happy results, but, of course, with results even more obvious to +the most uncritical eye than the results of the imitation of Tennyson +itself. + +The attempts to be original and to break away from these and their +imitations--the principal of them being that of the so-called Spasmodic +school, which flourished at the dead waist and middle of the +century--were not particularly happy, and those who incline to gloomy +views may say that the imitation was less happy still. In Mr. Matthew +Arnold, a recalcitrant but unmistakable Wordsworthian, sharing a partly +reluctant allegiance between Wordsworth, the ancients, Goethe, and +Tennyson himself, it is impossible not to think that a freer attitude, a +more independent and less literary aim, might have strengthened his +elegance, supplied his curious mixture of stiffness and grace, and even +made him less unequal than he actually is. And yet he is much the +greatest poet of the period. Its effect was more disastrous still upon +the second Lord Lytton, who was content to employ an excellent lyrical +vein, and a gift of verse satire of the fantastic kind so distinct and +fascinating, that it approaches the merit of fantasists in other kinds +of the former group, like Beddoes and Darley, to far too great an extent +on echoes. The fact is, that by this time, to speak conceitedly, the +obsession of the book was getting oppressive. Men could hardly sing for +remembering, or, at least, without remembering, what others had sung +before them, and became either slavishly imitative or wilfully +recalcitrant to imitation. The great leaders indeed continued to sing +each in his own way, and, though with perfect knowledge of their +forerunners, not in the least hampered by that knowledge. But something +else was needed to freshen the middle regions of song. + +It was found in that remarkable completion of the English Romantic +movement, which is in relation to art called prę-Raphaelitism, and which +is represented in literature, to mention only the greatest names, by +Rossetti, his sister, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Swinburne. The death of the +two former, and the fact that the movement itself, still active in art, +has in a manner rounded itself off, though it is not necessarily +finished, in literature, enable us to discuss it here as a whole, though +its two chief poets are luckily still alive. + +The first thing of interest in general history which strikes us, in +regard to this delightful chapter of English poetry, is its +illustration--a common one in life and letters--of the fact that there +is a false as well as a true side to the question quoted by Aristotle: +"If water chokes you, what are you to drink on the top of it?" "Wine," +one kind of humourist might answer; "More water," another: and both +rightly. It has been said that the group which preceded this suffered +from the pressure of too constant, wide, and various reminiscence, +literary, artistic, and other. The prę-Raphaelites refreshed themselves +and the world by applying still more strenuously to the particular kind +and period of such reminiscence which had been hitherto, despite the +medięval excursions of many from Percy to Tennyson, imperfectly +utilised. The literary practitioners of the school (with whom alone we +are concerned) were not indeed by any means purely medięval in their +choice of subject, in their founts of inspiration, or in their method of +treatment. English poetry has known few if any more accomplished +scholars both in the classics and in the modern languages than Mr. +Swinburne, for instance; and something similar might be said of others. +But, on the whole, the return of this school--for all new things in +literature are returns--was to a medięvalism different from the +tentative and scrappy medięvalism of Percy, from the genial but slightly +superficial medięvalism of Scott, and even from the more exact but +narrow and distinctly conventionalised medięvalism of Tennyson. They +had other appeals, but this was their chief. + +It may seem that mere or main archaism is not a very charming or +powerful thing, and in weaker hands it would not have been either one or +the other; but it so happened that these hands were very strong indeed. +Mr. Rossetti had one of the most astonishing combinations ever known of +artistically separate gifts, as well as a singular blend of passion and +humour. His sister was one of the great religious poets of the world. +Mr. Swinburne has never been surpassed, if he has ever been equalled, by +any poet in any language for command of the more rushing and flowing +forms of verse. Mr. Morris has few equals in any time or country for +narrative at once decorative and musical. Moreover, though it may seem +whimsical or extravagant to say so, these poets added to the very charm +of medięval literature which they thus revived a subtle something which +differentiates it from--which to our perhaps blind sight seems to be +wanting in--medięval literature itself. It is constantly complained (and +some of those who cannot go all the way with the complainants can see +what they mean) that the graceful and labyrinthine stories, the sweet +snatches of song, the quaint drama and legend of the Middle Ages +lack--to us--life; that they are shadowy, unreal, tapestry on the wall, +not alive even as living pageants are. By the strong touch of modernness +which these poets and the best of their followers introduced into their +work, they have given the vivification required. + +Beyond them we must not go, nor inquire whether the poets who have not +come to forty years represent a new school of the masterful and supreme +kind, or one of the experimental and striving sort, or something a good +deal worse than this, a period of sheer interval and suspense, +unenlivened even by considerable attempt. Not only our scheme, not only +common prudence and politeness, but most of all the conditions of +critical necessity insist on the curtain being here dropped. It is +possible that a critic may be able to isolate and project himself +sufficiently to judge, as posterity will judge them, the actually +accomplished work of his own contemporaries and juniors. But even such a +skilful and fortunate person cannot judge the work which they have not +yet produced, and which may in all cases, and must in some, modify their +position and alter their rank. + +But what has been has been, and on this mass (not in the actual case +"vulgar" by any means) of things done it is possible to pronounce +securely. And with security it may be said that for total amount, total +merit, total claims of freshness and distinctness, no period of poetical +literature can much, if at all, exceed the ninety years of English verse +from _The Ancient Mariner_ to _Crossing the Bar_. The world has had few +poets better than the best of ours during this time in degree; it has +had none like Shelley, perhaps none exactly like Wordsworth, in kind. +The secret of long narrative poems that should interest has been +recovered; the sonnet, one of the smallest but one of the most perfect +of poetic forms, has been recovered likewise. Attempts to recover the +poetic drama have been mostly failures; and serious satire has hardly +reappeared. But lighter satire, with other "applied" poetry, has shown +variety and excellence. Above all lyric, the most poetic kind of poetry, +has attained a perfection never known before, except once in England and +once in Greece. It has been impossible hitherto to make a full and free +anthology of the lyric poets from Burns and Blake to Tennyson and +Browning to match the anthologies often made of those from Surrey or +Sidney to Herrick or Vaughan. But when it can be done it is a question +whether the later volume will not even excel the earlier in intensity +and variety, if not perhaps in freshness of charm. + +And then it is needful once more to insist, even at the risk of +disgusting, on the additional interest given by the subtle and delicate, +but still distinctly traceable gradations, the swell and sinking, the +flow and ebb, of poetical production and character during the time. As +no other flourishing time of any poetry has lasted so long, so none has +had the chance of developing these mutations in so extensive and +attractive a manner; in none has it been possible to feel the pulse of +poetry, so to speak, in so connected and considerable a succession of +experiment. Poetical criticism can never be scientific; but it can +seldom have had an opportunity of going nearer to a scientific process +than here, owing to the volume, the connection, the duration, the +accessibility of the phenomena submitted to the critic. The actual +secret as usual escapes; but we can hunt the fugitive by a closer trail +than usual through the chambers of her flight. + +Of the highest poetry, however, as of other highest things, Goethe's +famous axiom _Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh_ holds good. Although there is +a difference between the expressions of this highest poetry in the fifth +and fourth centuries before Christ, in the fourteenth, seventeenth, and +nineteenth after Christ there is also a certain quiet sameness, not +indiscernibility but still identity. The lower kinds of literature admit +of more apparent and striking freshness of exterior. And perhaps the +most strikingly fresh, some might even say the distinctive, product of +the nineteenth century, is its prose fiction. + +This, as has been shown in detail, is much later in date than the poetry +in anything like a characteristic and fully developed state. Although it +was busily produced during the last twenty years of the eighteenth +century and the first fifteen of the nineteenth, the very best work of +the time, except such purely isolated things as _Vathek_, are +experiments, and all but the very best--the novels of Miss Edgeworth, +those written but not till quite the end of the time published by Miss +Austen, and a very few others--are experiments of singular lameness and +ill success. + +With Scott's change from verse to prose, the modern romance admittedly, +and to a greater extent than is generally thought the modern novel, came +into being; and neither has gone out of being since. In the two chapters +which have been devoted to the subject we have seen how the overpowering +success of _Waverley_ bred a whole generation of historical novels; how +side by side with this the older novel of manners, slightly altered, +continued to be issued, with comic deviations chiefly, as in the hands +of Theodore Hook; how Bulwer attempted a sort of cross between the two; +how about the middle of the century the historical novel either ceased +or changed, to revive later after a middle period illustrated by the +brilliant romances of Kingsley; how about the same time the strictly +modern novel of manners came into being in the hands of Thackeray, Miss +Brontė, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope, Dickens overlapping both +periods in a fantastic and nondescript style of his own; and how more +recently still both romance and novel have spread out and ramified into +endless subdivisions. + +There is, however, this broad line of demarcation between poetry and the +novel, that they are written for different ends and from different +motives. It is natural to man to write poetry; it does not appear to be +by any means so certainly or unvaryingly necessary to him to read it. +Except at rare periods and for short times, poetry has never offered the +slightest chance of livelihood to any considerable number of persons; +and it is tolerably certain that if the aggregate number of poets since +the foundation of the world had had nothing to live on but their +aggregate gains as poets, starvation would have been the commonplace +rule, instead of the dramatic exception, among the sons of Apollo. + +On the other hand, it is no doubt also natural to man to tell prose +stories, and it seems, though it was a late-discovered aptitude, that it +is not unnatural to him to read them; but the writing of them does not +seem to be at all an innate or widely disseminated need. Until some +hundred or two hundred years ago very few were written at all; the +instances of persons who do but write novels because they must are +exceedingly rare, and it is as certain as anything can be that of the +enormous production of the last three-quarters of a century not 5, +perhaps not 1 per cent would have been produced if the producing had not +led, during the whole of that time, in most cases but those of hopeless +incompetence to some sort of a livelihood, in many to very comfortable +income, and in some to positive wealth and fame. In other words, poetry +is the creation of supply and novel-writing of demand; poetry can hardly +ever be a trade and in very rare cases a profession, while novel-writing +is commonly a very respectable profession, and unfortunately sometimes a +rather disreputable trade. + +Like other professions, however, it enlists genius sometimes, talent +often; and the several and successive ways in which this genius and this +talent show themselves are of more than sufficient interest. But the +steady demand, and the inevitable answer to it, work adversely to such +spontaneous and interesting fluctuations of production as those which we +have traced in reference to poetry. There have been times, particularly +that between the cessation of Sir Walter's best work and the perfecting +of that of Thackeray, in which the average value of even the best novels +was much lower than at other times. But even in these the average volume +maintained itself very well, and, indeed, steadily increased. + +It is this which, with another to be mentioned shortly, will, so far as +it is possible for a contemporary to judge, be noted in the literary +history of the future as the distinguishing crop or field of the +nineteenth century. Sermons, essays, plays, no doubt, continue to be +written; but the novel has supplanted the sermon, the essay, the play in +the place which each at different times held as the _popular_ form of +literature. It may be added, or repeated, that it has in part at least +achieved this result by trespassing upon the provinces of all these +three forms and of many others. This is true, but is of somewhat less +importance than might be thought. The fable has an old trick of +adjusting itself to almost every possible kind of literary use, and the +novel is only an enlarged and more fully organised fable. It does not, +no doubt, do best when it abuses this privilege of its ancestor, and +saturates itself overmuch with "purpose," but it has at least an +ancestral right to do so. + +There is no doubt also that the popularity of the novel has been very +directly connected with a cause which has had all manner of effects +fathered upon it--often with no just causation or filiation whatever--to +wit, the spread of education. In the proper sense of course the spread +of education must always be strictly limited. The number of educable +persons probably bears a pretty constant ratio to the population, and +when the education reaches the level of the individual's containing +power, it simply runs over and is lost. But it is possible to teach +nearly everybody reading and writing; and it is a curious but exact +observation that a very large proportion of those who have been taught +reading require something to read. Now the older departments of +literature do not lend themselves with any facility to constant reading +by the average man or woman, whose requirements may be said to be +amusement rather than positive delight, occupation much rather than +intellectual exertion, and above all, something to pass time. For these +requirements, or this compound requirement, the hearing of some new +thing has been of old recognised as the surest and most generally useful +specific. And the novel holds itself out, not indeed always quite truly, +as being new or nothing by name and nature. Accordingly the demand for +novels has gone on ever increasing, and the supply has never failed to +keep up with it. + +Nor would it be just to say that the quality has sunk appreciably. The +absolutely palmy day of the English nineteenth century in novel-writing +was no doubt some thirty-five or forty years ago. Not even the +contemporary France of that date can show such a "galaxy-gallery" as the +British novelists--Dickens, Thackeray, Miss Brontė, George Eliot, +Trollope, Kingsley, Bulwer, Disraeli, Lever, Mr. Meredith, and +others--who all wrote in the fifties. But at the beginning of the period +the towering genius of Scott and the perfect art of Miss Austen, if we +add to them Miss Edgeworth's genial talent, did not find very much of +even good second-rate matter to back them; there was, as has been said, +a positively barren time succeeding this first stage and preceding the +"fifty" period; and twenty years or a little more ago, when Thackeray +and Dickens were dead, Trollope and George Eliot past their best, +Kingsley and Bulwer moribund, Mr. Meredith writing sparely and +unnoticed, the new romantic school not arisen, and no recruit of +distinction except Mr. Blackmore firmly set, things were apparently a +great deal worse with us in point of novel-writing than they are at +present. Whether, with a return of promise and an increase of +performance, with a variation of styles and an abundance of experiment, +there has also been a relapse into the extravagances which we have had +in this very book to chronicle as characterising the fiction of exactly +a century ago,--whether we have had over-luxuriant and non-natural +style, attempts to attract by loose morality, novels of purpose, novels +of problem, and so forth,--and whether the coming age will dismiss much +of our most modern work as not superior in literary and inferior in +other appeal to the work of Godwin and Lewis, Holcroft and Bage, it is +not necessary distinctly to say. But our best is certainly better than +the best of that time, our worst is perhaps not worse; and the novel +occupies a far higher place in general estimation than it did then. +Indeed it has been observed by the sarcastic that to some readers of +novels, and even to some writers of them, "novel" and "book" seem to be +synonymous terms, and that when such persons speak of "literature," they +mean and pretty distinctly indicate that they mean novel-writing, and +novel-writing only. This at least shows that the seed which Scott sowed, +or the plant which he grafted, has not lost its vitality. + +Certainly not less, perhaps even more, distinctive of the time in +history must be that development and transformation of what is broadly +called the newspaper, of which the facts and details have occupied two +more of these chapters. It is true that at times considerably earlier +than even the earliest that here concerns us, periodical writing had +been something of a power in England as regards politics, had enlisted +eminent hands, and had even served once or twice as the means of +introduction of considerable works in _belles lettres_. But the +Addisonian Essay had been something of an accident; Swift's +participation in the _Examiner_ was another; Defoe's abundant journalism +brought him more discredit than profit or praise; and though Pulteney +and the Opposition worked the press against Walpole, the process brought +little benefit to the persons concerned. Reviewing was meagrely done and +wretchedly paid; the examples of _Robinson Crusoe_ earlier and _Sir +Launcelot Greaves_ later are exceptions which prove the rule that the +_feuilleton_ was not in demand; in fact before our present period +newspaper-writing was rather dangerous, was more than rather +disreputable, and offered exceedingly little encouragement to any one to +make it the occasion of work in pure literature, or even to employ it as +a means of livelihood, while attempting other and higher, though less +paying kinds. + +The period of the French Revolution, if not the French Revolution +itself, changed all this, assisted no doubt by the natural and +inevitable effects of the spread of reading and the multiplication of +books. People wanted to see the news; papers sprang up in competition to +enable them to see the news; and the competitors strove to make +themselves more agreeable than their rivals by adding new attractions. +Again, the activity of the Jacobin party, which early and of course +directed itself to the press, necessitated activity on the other side. +The keenest intellects, the best-trained wits of the nation, sometimes +under some disguise, sometimes openly, took to journalism, and it became +simply absurd to regard the journalist as a disreputable garreteer when +Windham and Canning were journalists. The larger sale of books and the +formation of a regular system of "pushing" them also developed +reviews--too frequently, no doubt, in the direction of mere puffing, but +even thus with the beneficent result that other reviews came into +existence which were not mere puff-engines. + +Even these causes and others will not entirely explain the extraordinary +development of periodicals of all kinds from quarterly to daily, of +which the _Edinburgh_, _Blackwood_, the _Examiner_, and the _Times_ were +respectively the most remarkable examples and pioneers in the earlier +years of the century, though as a literary organ the _Morning Post_ had +at first rather the advantage of the _Times_. But, as has been said here +constantly, you can never explain everything in literary history; and +it would be extremely dull if you could. The newspaper press had, for +good or for ill, to come; external events to some obvious extent helped +its coming; individual talents and aptitudes helped it likewise; but the +main determining force was the force of hidden destiny. + +There is, however, no mistake possible about the results. It is but a +slight exaggeration to say that the periodical rapidly swallowed up all +other forms of literature, to this extent and in this sense, that there +is hardly a single one of these forms capital performance in which has +not at one time or another formed part of the stuff of periodicals, and +has not by them been first introduced to the world. Not a little of our +poetry; probably the major part of our best fiction; all but a very +small part of our essay-writing, critical, meditative, and +miscellaneous; and a portion, much larger than would at one time have +seemed conceivable, of serious writing in history, philosophy, theology, +science, and scholarship, have passed through the mint or mill of the +newspaper press before presenting themselves in book form. A certain +appreciable, though small part of the best, with much of the worst, has +never got beyond that form. + +To attempt to collect the result of this change is to attempt something +not at all easy, something perhaps which may be regarded as not +particularly valuable. The distinction between literature and journalism +which is so often heard is, like most such things, a fallacy, or at +least capable of being made fallacious. Put as it usually is when the +intention is disobliging to the journalist, it comes to this:--that the +_Essays of Elia_, that Southey's _Life of Nelson_, that some of the best +work of Carlyle, Tennyson, Thackeray, and others the list of whom might +be prolonged at pleasure, is not literature. Put as it sometimes is by +extremely foolish people, it would go to the extent that anything which +has _not_ been published in a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly +publication is literature. + +There is probably no subject on which it is more necessary to clear the +mind of cant than this. Of course there is journalism in the sense +opposed to literature, though not necessarily opposed in any bad sense. +No wise man intends, and no wise man will ever suffer, articles which +are in the strict sense articles, which are intended to comment on +merely passing events, and to produce a merely immediate effect, to be +extracted from journals and put on record as books. Not only is the +treatment unsuitable for such record, but it may almost be said that the +treatment suitable for things so to be recorded is actually unsuitable +for things ephemeral. But there is a very large amount of writing to +which this does not in the least apply, and in which it can make no kind +of real difference whether the result appears by itself in a bound cloth +volume as a whole, or in parts with other things in a pamphlet, covered +with paper, or not covered at all. The grain of truth which the fallacy +carries is really this:--that the habit of treating some subjects in the +peculiar fashion most effective in journalism may spread disastrously to +the treatment of other subjects which ought to be treated as literature. +This is a truth, but not a large one. There have been at all times, at +least since the invention of printing and probably before it, persons +who, though they may be guiltless of having ever written an article in +their lives, have turned out more or less ponderous library volumes in +which the very worst sins of the worst kind of journalist are rampant. + +There are, however, more thoughtful reasons for regarding the +development of periodicals as not an unmixed boon to letters. The more +evanescent kinds of writing are, putting fiction out of the question, so +much the more profitable in journalism that it certainly may tempt--that +it certainly has tempted--men who could produce, and would otherwise +have produced, solid literature. And there is so much more room in it +for light things than for things which the average reader regards as +heavy, that the heavy contributor is apt to be at a discount, and the +light at a premium. But all this is exceedingly obvious. And it may be +met on the other side by the equally obvious consideration already +referred to, that periodicals have made the literary life possible in a +vast number of cases where it was not possible before; that whereas +"toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol" was not a very exaggerated +description of its prospects little more than a hundred years ago, the +patron has become superfluous, want and the gaol rather unlikely, except +in cases of extreme misconduct, incompetence, or ill-luck, while if toil +and envy remain unvanquished, they are not specially fated to the +literary lot. Indeed the more paradoxical of Devil's Advocates against +the press usually urge that it has made the literary life too easy, has +tempted too many into it, and has thereby increased the flood of +mediocrity. + +The most serious objection of all perhaps, though even this is rather +idle in face of accomplished facts, is that the perpetual mincing up and +boiling down of the constituents of the diet of reading have produced, +in the appetite and digestive faculties of the modern reader, an +inability to cope with a really solid meal of perhaps slightly tough +matter, and that periodicals not merely eschew the provision of this +solid stuff themselves, but do their best to make things worse by +manipulating the contents of books that do contain it. + +The fact, however, once more, concerns us much more than moralisings +about the fact; and the fact of the prominence, the extraordinary +prominence, of the periodical press in the nineteenth century, is as +little open to dispute as the prominence in that century's later +mechanical history of discoveries in electricity, or in its earlier of +experiments with steam. Occasionally one may hear enthusiasts of one +kind or another announcing with joy or horror that the periodical is +killing the book. But if it is, it is very impartially engaged in +begetting it at the same time that it kills; and it may be very +seriously doubted whether this killing of a book is an easy act of +murder to commit. With the printing press to produce, the curiosity of +man to demand, and his vanity and greed--if not also his genius and +ambition--to supply, the book is in all probability pretty safe. In the +forms and varieties of this periodical publication we have seen some +interesting changes. As might have been expected, the tendency has been +for the intervals of publication to be shortened--for the quarterly to +give way as the fashionable form to the monthly, the monthly to the +weekly, the weekly to the daily. Many years ago Macaulay, in a mild +protest against having his articles altered by Macvey Napier, suggested +in effect that the bloom might be left on poor things destined to be +read only for a month or so. The duration of an article now may be +measured rather by hours than by weeks. Still many of these changes are +more apparent than real; and just as the institution of the graver +monthly reviews twenty years ago simply reintroduced the quarterly +article in a scarcely altered form after it had been pushed out of +favour by the slighter magazine, so other introductions have been in +fact reintroductions. + +One point, however, of real importance in literary history remains to be +noticed, and that is the conflict between signed and anonymous writing. +Partly from the causes above enumerated as having conduced to the +keeping of journalism in a condition of discredit and danger, partly +owing to national idiosyncrasies, the habit of anonymous writing was +almost universal in the English press at the beginning of the century. +It may have been perfectly well known that such and such an article in +the _Quarterly_ was by Southey or Croker, such another in the +_Edinburgh_ by Sydney Smith or Macaulay, but the knowledge was, so to +speak, unofficial. The question of the identity of "Zeta" in _Blackwood_ +cost a man's life; and the system resulted (in daily papers especially) +in so much editorial inter-mixture and refashioning, that sometimes it +would really have been impossible to assign a single and authentic +paternity. Even about the editorship of the great periodicals a sort of +coquetry of veiling was preserved, and editors' names, though in most +cases perfectly well known, seldom or never appeared. + +It is difficult to say exactly when or how this system began to be +infringed. But there is no doubt that the prominence given in _Household +Words_ to the name and personality of Dickens, who was not unfriendly to +self-advertisement, had a good deal to do with it; and when, a little +later, the cheap shilling magazines appeared, writing with names became +the rule, without them the exception. Criticism, however, for obvious +reasons still held back; and it was not till about five and twenty years +ago that the example, taken more or less directly from the French, of +signed reviews was set by the _Academy_ among weekly papers, and the +_Fortnightly_ among monthly reviews. It has been very largely followed +even in daily newspapers, and the _Saturday Review_ was probably the +last newspaper of mark that maintained an absolutely rigid system of +anonymity. It should, however, be observed that the change, while not +even yet complete--leading articles being still very rarely signed--has +by no means united all suffrages, and has even lost some that it had. +Mr. John Morley, for instance, who had espoused it warmly as editor of +the _Fortnightly_, and had, perhaps, done more than any other man to +spread it, has avowed in a very interesting paper grave doubts about the +result. Still it undoubtedly has increased, and is increasing, and in +such cases it is much easier to express an opinion that things ought to +be diminished, than either to expect that they will, or to devise any +means whereby the diminution is to be effected. As for what is desirable +as distinguished from what is likely, the weight of opinion may be +thought to be in favour of the absence of signature. Anonymous +criticism, if abused, may no doubt be abused to a graver extent than is +possible with signed criticism. But such a hackneyed maxim as _corruptio +optimi_ shows that this is of itself no argument. On the other hand, +signed criticism diminishes both the responsibility and the authority of +the editor; it adds either an unhealthy gag or an unhealthy stimulus to +the tongue and pen of the contributor; it lessens the general weight of +the verdict; and it provokes the worst fault of criticism, the aim at +showing off the critic's cleverness rather than at exhibiting the real +value and character of the thing criticised. And perhaps some may think +the most serious objection of all to be that it encourages the +employment of critics, and the reception of what they say, rather for +their names than for their competence. + +In that very important department of literature which stands midway +between Belles Lettres and Science, the department of History, the +century cannot indeed claim such striking and popularly effective +innovations as in the departments of prose fiction and of periodical +writing. Yet it may be questioned whether the change of this old kind is +not in itself almost as noteworthy as in the other cases is the +practical introduction of a new. What the change is was +epigrammatically, if somewhat paradoxically, summed up recently by a +great authority, Lord Acton. "History," the Cambridge Professor of that +art or science said in his inaugural lecture, "has become independent of +the historian." + +It is possible to demur to the fact, but it is not difficult to explain +the meaning. From the necessity of the case, the earliest history, at +least in the West, is almost independent of documents and records. +Thucydides and Herodotus wrote, the one from what he had actually seen +and heard of contemporary events, the other partly from the same sources +and partly from tradition of short date. Somewhat later historians of +course had their predecessors before them, and in a few cases a certain +amount of document, but never a large amount. When history, vernacular +or Latin, began to be written again in the dark and middle ages, the +absence of documents was complicated (except in the case of those early +chroniclers, English and Irish chiefly, who merely put down local +events) by that more peculiar and unaccountable, though possibly +kindred, absence of critical spirit, which, of the many things more or +less fancifully attributed to the medięval mind, is perhaps the most +certain. It is a constant puzzle to modern readers how to account +exactly for the fashion in which men, evidently of great intellectual +ability, managed to be without any sense of the value of evidence, or +any faculty of distinguishing palpable and undoubted fiction from what +either was, or reasonably might be held to be, history. But by degrees +this sense came into being side by side with the multiplication of the +document itself. Even then, however, it was very long before the average +historian either could or would regard himself as bound first to consult +all the documents available, and then to sift and adjust them in +accordance rather with the laws of evidence and the teachings of the +philosophy of history than with his own predilections, or with the +necessities of an agreeable narrative. But the patient industry of the +French school of historical scholars, at the end of the seventeenth and +the beginning of the eighteenth century, founded this new tradition; the +magnificent genius of Gibbon showed how the observance of it might not +be incompatible with history-writing of the most literary kind; the +national and natural tendency of German study adopted it; and shortly +after Gibbon's own day the school of historians, which is nothing if not +documentary, began gradually to oust that of which the picturesque, if +not strictly historical, legend about the Abbé Vertot and his "Mon sičge +est fait" is the anecdotic _locus classicus_ of characterisation. + +It has been shown, in the chapter devoted to the subject, how this +school of documentary historians grew and flourished in England itself, +from the days of Turner and Palgrave to those of Froude and Freeman. +Certainly there could not, at least for some time, be said to be any +very sensible tendency in history to dispense with the historian, or, in +other and perhaps rather more intelligible words, of history ceasing to +be literary. No historians have been more omnilegent, more careful of +the document, than Carlyle and Macaulay, much as they differed in other +respects, and in no histories has the "historian"--that is to say, the +personal writer as opposed to the mere "diplomatist"--been more evident +than he is in theirs. Nor is it very easy to see why the mere study of +the document, still less why the mere accumulation of the document, +should ever render superfluous the intelligent shaping which the +historian alone can give. In the first place, documents are +contradictory and want shifting and harmonising; in the second they want +grasping and interpreting; in the third (and most important of all) they +need to be made alive. + +Nevertheless Lord Acton's somewhat enigmatic utterance points, however +vaguely, to real dangers, and it would be idle to say that these dangers +have not been exemplified in the period and department we are +considering. In the first place, the ever-increasing burden of the +documents to be consulted is more and more crushing, and more and more +likely to induce any one but a mere drudge either to relinquish the task +in despair, or to perform it with a constant fear before his eyes, which +prevents freedom and breadth of work. In the second it leads, on the one +hand, to enormous extension of the scale of histories, on the other to +an undue restraining and limiting of their subjects. Macaulay took four +large volumes to do, nominally at least, not more than a dozen years; +Froude twelve to cover fifty or sixty; Grote as many to deal with the +important, but neither long nor richly documented, period of Greek, or +rather Athenian, flourishing. To this has to be added the very serious +drawback that when examination of documents is ranked before everything, +even the slightest questioning of that examination becomes fatal, and a +historian is discredited because some one of his critics has found a +document unknown to him, or a flaw, possibly of the slightest +importance, in his interpretation of the texts. + +Nevertheless it is necessary to lay our account with this new style of +history, and it is fortunately possible to admit that the gains of it +have not been small. Thanks to its practitioners, we know infinitely +more than our fathers did, though it may not be so certain that we make +as good a use of our knowledge. And the evil of multiplication of +particulars, like other evils, brings its own cure. The work of mere +rough-hewing, of examination into the brute facts, is being done--has to +no small extent actually been done--as it never was done before. The +"inedited" has ceased to be inedited--is put on record for anybody to +examine with little trouble. The mere loss of valuable material, which +has gone on in former ages to an extent only partially compensated by +the welcome destruction of material that has no value at all, has been +stopped. The pioneers of the historical summer (to borrow a decorative +phrase from Charles of Orleans) have been very widely abroad, and there +is no particular reason why the summer itself should not come. + +When it does it will perhaps discard some ways and fashions which have +been lately in vogue; but it will assuredly profit by much that has been +done during the period we survey, no less in form than in matter. The +methods have been to a certain extent improved, the examples have been +multiplied, the historical sense has certainly taken a wider and deeper +hold of mankind. Very little is wanting but some one _ausus contemnere +vana_; and when the future Thucydides or the future Carlyle sets to +work, he will be freed, by the labour of others, alike from the paucity +of materials that a little weakened Thucydides, and from the brute mass +of them that embittered the life of Carlyle. + +Not so much is to be said of the remaining divisions or departments +individually. If the drama of the century is not, in so far as acting +drama is concerned, almost a blank from the point of view of literature, +the literary drama of the century is almost a blank as regards acting +qualities. It is true that there have been at times attempts to obtain +restitution of conjugal rights on one side or on the other. In the +second and third decades, perhaps a little later, a strong effort was +made to give vogue to, and some vogue was obtained for, the scholarly if +pale attempts of Milman and Talfourd, and the respectable work of +others. Bulwer, his natural genius assisted by the stage-craft of +Macready, brought the acting and the literary play perhaps nearer +together than any one else did. Much later still, the mighty authority +of Tennyson, taking to dramatic writing at the time when he was the +unquestioned head of English poetry and English literature, and assisted +by the active efforts of the most popular actor and manager of the day, +succeeded in holding the stage fairly well with plays which are not very +dramatic among dramas, and which are certainly not very poetical among +their author's poems. With more recent times we have luckily nothing to +do, and the assertions of some authors that they themselves or others +have brought back literature to the stage may be left confronted with +the assertions of not a few actors that, for reasons which they do not +themselves profess entirely to comprehend, a modern drama is almost +bound not to be literary if it is to act, and not to act if it is +literary. Some have boldly solved the difficulty by hinting, if not +declaring, that the drama is an outworn form except as mere spectacle or +entertainment; others have exhausted themselves in solutions of a less +trenchant kind; none, it may safely be said, has really solved it. And +though it is quite true that what has happened was predicted sixty or +seventy years ago, as a result of the breach of the monopoly of Covent +Garden and Drury Lane, it is fair to say that the condition of the drama +of at least a quarter of a century earlier had been little if at all +better than it has been since. It is a simple fact that since Sheridan +we have had no dramatist who combined very high acting with very high +literary merit. + +Of what have been called the applied departments of literature, a +somewhat less melancholy account has to be given; but, except in their +enormous multiplication of quantity, they present few opportunities for +remarks of a general character. + +Very great names have been added to the list of theological writers, but +these names on the whole belong to the earlier rather than to the later +portion of the period, and even then something of a change has been +observable in the kinds of their writing. The sermon, that is to say the +literary sermon, has become more and more uncommon; and the popular ear +which calls upon itself to hear sermons at all prefers usually what are +styled practical discourses, often deviating very considerably from the +sermon norm, or else extremely florid addresses modelled on later +Continental patterns, and having as a rule few good literary qualities. +So, too, the elaborate theological treatise has gone out of fashion, and +it may be doubted whether, at least for the last half century, a single +book of the kind has been added to the first class of Anglican +theological writing. This writing has thus taken the form either of +discourses of the older kind, maintained in existence by endowment or by +old prescription, such as the Bampton Lectures, or of rather popular +polemics, or of what may be called without disrespect theological +journalism of various kinds. The general historical energy of the +century, moreover, has not displayed itself least in the theological +department, and valuable additions have been made, not merely to general +church history, but to a vast body of biography and journal-history, as +well as to a certain amount of Biblical scholarship. In this latter +direction English scholars have distinguished themselves by somewhat +less violation of the rules of criticism in general than their foreign +brethren and masters. But it cannot be said that the nineteenth century +is ever likely to rank high in the history of English theology. Even its +greatest names--Irving, Chalmers, the Oxford leaders, and others, with +perhaps the single exception of Newman--are important much more +personally and as influences than as literary figures; while the rank +and file, putting history aside, have been distinctly less noteworthy +than in any of the three preceding centuries. + +The "handmaid of theology" has received, at any rate during the first +half of the period, or even the first three-quarters, more distinguished +attentions than her mistress; and the additions made to the list headed +by Erigena and Anselm, if we allow Latin to count, by Bacon and Hobbes, +if we stick to the vernacular, have been many and great. Yet it would +not be unreasonable laudation of times past to say that there hardly, +after Hume's death, arose any philosopher who combined the originality, +the acuteness, and the literary skill of Hume during the first half of +this century, while certainly, at least till within a period forbidden +to our scheme, the latter part of the time has not seen any writer who +could vie even with those of the earlier. To a certain extent the +historical and critical tendencies so often noticed have here been +unfortunate, inasmuch as they have diverted philosophical students from +original writing--or at least from writing as original as the somewhat +narrow and self-repeating paths of philosophy admit--to historical and +critical exercises. But there is also no doubt that the immense +authority which the too long neglected writers of Germany attained, a +little before the middle of the century, has been unfortunate in at +least one respect, if not also in others. The ignorant contempt of +technicalities, and the determination to refer all things to common +sense employing common language, which distinguished the eighteenth +century with us, was certain to provoke a reaction; and this reaction, +assisted by imitation of the Germans, produced in the decades from 1840 +onwards an ever-increasing tendency among English philosophers or +students of philosophy to employ a jargon often as merely technical as +the language of the schoolmen, and not seldom far emptier of any real +argument. It is not too much to say that if the rough methods of Hobbes +with a terminology far less fallacious, were employed with this jargon, +it would look much poorer than Bramhall's scholasticisms look in the +hands of the redoubtable Nominalist. Fortunately of late there have been +more signs than one of yet another turn of tide, and of a fresh appeal +to the _communis sensus_, not it may be hoped of the obstinately and +deafly exoteric character of the eighteenth century, but such as will +refuse to pay itself with words, and will exercise a judicious criticism +in a language understanded of all educated people. Then, and not till +then, we may expect to meet philosophy that is literature and literature +that is philosophic. + +Science, that is to say physical science, which has sometimes openly +boasted itself as about to take, and has much more commonly made silent +preparations for taking, the place both of philosophy and of theology, +will hardly be said by the hardiest of her adherents to have done very +much to justify these claims to seats not yet quite vacant from the +point of view of the purely literary critic. We have had some excellent +scientific writers, from Bishop Watson to Professor Huxley; and some of +the books of the century which would deserve remembrance and reading, +whatever their subject matter, have been books of science. Yet it is +scarcely rash to assert that the essential characteristics of science +and the essential characteristics of literature are, if not so +diametrically opposed as some have thought, at any rate very far apart +from one another. Literature can never be scientific; and though science +may be literary, yet it is rather in the fashion in which a man borrows +some alien vesture in order to present himself, in compliance with +decency and custom, at a foreign court. Mathematics give us the +example--perhaps the only example--of pure science, of what all science +would be if it could, and of what it approaches, ever more nearly, as +far as it can. It is needless to say that the perfect presentation of +mathematics is in pure symbols, divested of all form and colour, of all +personal tincture and bias. And it should be equally superfluous to add +that it is in form and colour, in suggestion of sound rather than in +precise expression and sense, in personal bias and personal tincture, +that not merely the attraction but the very essence of literature +consists. + +By so much as verbal science or scholarship, which would seem to be more +especially bound to be literature, claims to be and endeavours to be +strictly scientific, by so much also necessarily does it divorce itself +from the literature which it studies. This, if not an enormously great, +is certainly rather a sore evil; and it is one of the most considerable +and characteristic signs of the period we are discussing. The older +scholarship, though sufficiently minute, still clung to the literary +side proper: it was even, in the technical dialect of one of the +universities, opposed to "science," which word indeed was itself used in +a rather technical way. The invention of comparative philology, with its +even more recent off-shoot phonetics, has changed all this, and we now +find "linguistic" and "literary" used by common consent as things not +merely different but hostile, with a further tendency on the part of +linguistics to claim the term "scholarship" exclusively for itself. + +This could hardly in any case be healthy. What may be the abstract value +of the science, or group of sciences, called philology, it is perhaps +not necessary here to inquire. It is sufficient to say that it clearly +has nothing to do with literature except in accidental and remote +applications, that it stands thereto much as geology does to +architecture. Unfortunately, while the scientific side of scholarship is +thus becoming, if it has not become, wholly unliterary, the ęsthetic +side has shown signs of becoming, to far too great an extent, +unscientific in the bad and baneful sense. With some honourable +exceptions, we find critics of literature too often divided into +linguists who seem neither to think nor to be capable of thinking of the +meaning or the melody, of the individual and technical mastery, of an +author, a book, or a passage, and into loose ęsthetic rhetoricians who +will sometimes discourse on Ęschylus without knowing a second aorist +from an Attic perfect, and pronounce eulogies or depreciations on Virgil +without having the faintest idea whether there is or is not any +authority for _quamvis_ with one mood rather than another. Nor is it +possible to see what eirenicon is likely to present itself between two +parties, of whom the extremists on the one side may justly point to such +things as have here been quoted, while the extremists on the other feel +it a duty to pronounce phonetics the merest "hariolation," and a very +large part of what goes by the name of philology ingenious guesswork, +some of which may possibly not be false, but hardly any of which can on +principles of sound general criticism be demonstrated to be true. It is +not wonderful, though it is in the highest degree unhealthy, that the +stricter scholars should be more or less scornfully relinquishing the +province of literary criticism altogether, while the looser ęsthetics +consider themselves entitled to neglect scholarship in any proper sense +with a similarly scornful indifference. + +It is, however, impossible that offences of this sort should not come +now and then in the history of literature, and fortunately, in that +history, they disappear as they appear. For the present purpose it is +more important to conclude this conclusion with a few general remarks on +the past, fewer on the present, and fewest of all on the future. + +On this last head, indeed, no words were perhaps even better than even +fewest; though something of the sort may be expected. Rash as prophecy +always is, it is never quite so rash as in literature; and though we can +sometimes, looking backward, say--perhaps even then with some +rashness--that such and such a change might or ought to have been +expected, it is very seldom that we can, when deprived of this +illegitimate advantage, vaticinate on such subjects with any safety. Yet +the study of the present always, so to speak, includes and overlaps +something of the future, and by comparison at least of other presents we +can discern what it is at least not improbable that the future may be. +What, then, is the present of literature in England? + +It can be described with the greater freedom that, as constantly +repeated, we are not merely at liberty _ex hypothesi_ to omit references +to individuals, but are _ex hypothesi_ bound to exclude them. And no +writer, as it happens rather curiously, of anything like great promise +or performance who was born later than the beginning of the fifties has +died as yet, though the century is so near its close. Yet again, all the +greatest men of the first quarter of the century, with the single +exception of Mr. Ruskin, are gone; and not many of the second remain. By +putting these simple and unmistakable facts together it will be seen, in +a fashion equally free from liability to cavil and from disobliging +glances towards persons, that the present is at best a stationary state +in our literary history. Were we distinctly on the mounting hand, it is, +on the general calculation of the liabilities of human life, certain +that we must have had our Shelley or our Keats side by side with our +Wordsworth and our Coleridge. That we have much excellent work is +certain; that we have much of the absolutely first class not so. And if +we examine even the good work of our younger writers we shall find in +much of it two notes or symptoms--one of imitation or exaggeration, the +other of uncertain and eccentric quest for novelty--which have been +already noted above as signs of decadence or transition. + +Whether it is to be transition or decadence, that is the question. For +the solution of it we can only advance with safety a few considerations, +such as that in no literary history have periods of fresh and first-rate +production ever continued longer than--that they have seldom continued +so long as--the period now under notice, and that it is reasonable, it +is almost certain, that, though by no means an absolutely dead season, +yet a period of comparatively faint life and illustration should +follow. To this it may be added as a consideration not without +philosophical weight that the motives, the thoughts, the hopes, the +fears, perhaps even the manners, which have defrayed the expense of the +literary production of this generation, together with the literary forms +in which, according to custom, they have embodied and ensconced +themselves, have been treated with unexampled, certainly with +unsurpassed, thoroughness, and must now be near exhaustion; while it is +by no means clear that any fresh set is ready to take their place. It is +on this last point, no doubt, that the more sanguine prophets would like +to fight the battle, urging that new social ideas, and so forth, _are_ +in possession of the ground. But this is not the field for that battle. + +In dealing with what has been, with the secular hour that we have +actually and securely had, we are on far safer, if not on positively +safe ground. Here the sheaves are actually reaped and brought home; and +if the teller of them makes a mistake, his judgment, and his judgment +only, need be at fault. Not all ways of such telling are of equal value. +It may be tempting, for instance, but can hardly be very profitable, to +attempt to strike an exact balance between the production of the century +from 1780 to 1880 with that of the other great English literary century +from 1580 to 1680. Dear as the exercise is to some literary accountants, +there is perhaps no satisfactory system of book-keeping by which we can +really set the assets and the liabilities of the period from the +appearance of Spenser to the death of Browne against the assets and +liabilities of that from the appearance of Burns to the death of +Tennyson, and say which has the greater sum to its credit. Still more +vague and futile would it be to attempt to set with any exactness this +balance-sheet against that of the other great literary periods of other +countries, languages, and times. Here again, most emphatically, accuracy +of this kind is _not_ to be expected. + +But what we can say with confidence and profit is that the nineteenth +century in England and English is of these great periods, and of the +greatest of them; that it has taken its place finally and certainly, +with a right never likely to be seriously challenged, and in a rank +never likely to be much surpassed. + +The period which lisped its numbers in Burns and Blake and Cowper, which +broke out into full song with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, +Shelley, and Keats, which, not to mention scores of minor singers, took +up the tale with Tennyson and Browning and passed it on to Arnold, +Rossetti, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Swinburne, need fear no comparisons in the +matter of poetry. In prose fiction, as we have seen, it stands alone. It +is almost a century of origins as regards the most important kinds; it +is quite a century of capital and classical performance in them. In +"making"--prose or verse--no time leaves record of performance more +distinguished or more various. + +That in one great literary kind, drama, it exhibits lamentable +deficiency, that indeed in that kind it hardly counts at all, has been +admitted; and it is not probable that in any of the serious prose kinds, +except history, it will ever rank very high when compared with others. +Its theology has, as far as literature is concerned, been a little +wanting in dignity, in finish, and even in fervour, its philosophy +either commonplace or jargonish, its exercises in science and +scholarship ever divorcing themselves further from literary ideals. But +in the quality of its miscellaneous writing, as well as in the +facilities given to such writing by its special growth--some would say +its special fungus--of the periodical, it again rises to the first +class. Hardly the period of Montaigne and Bacon, certainly not that of +Dryden, Cowley, and Temple, nor that of Addison and Steele, nor that of +Johnson and Goldsmith, can vie with the century of Charles Lamb and +William Hazlitt, of Leigh Hunt and Thomas de Quincey, of Macaulay and +Thackeray and Carlyle, of Arnold and Mr. Ruskin. Miscellaneous we have +been,--perhaps too much so,--but we should be a little saved by the +excellence of some of our miscellanists. + +Pessimists would probably say that the distinguishing and not altogether +favourable notes of the century are a somewhat vagabond curiosity in +matter and a tormented unrest of style. The former concerns us little, +and is chiefly noticeable here because of the effect which it has had on +the great transformation of historical writing so often noticed; the +latter concerns us intimately. And no doubt there is hardly a single +feature--not even the growth of the novel, not even the development of +the newspaper--which will so distinctly and permanently distinguish this +century in English literary history as the great changes which have come +over style, and especially prose style. There has been less opportunity +to notice these collectively in any of the former chapters than there +has been to notice some other changes: nor was this of much importance, +for the present is the right place for gathering up the fragments. + +The change of style in prose is undoubtedly as much the leading feature +of the century as is in poetry the change of thought and outlook, on +which latter enough perhaps has been said elsewhere; the whole of our +two long chapters on poetry being indeed, with great part of this +conclusion, a continuous exposition of it. But the change in prose was +neither confined to, nor specially connected with, any single department +of literature. Indirectly indeed, and distantly, it may be said to have +been connected with the growth of the essay and the popularity of +periodicals; and yet it is not quite certain that this was anything more +than a coincidence due to the actual fact that the first extensive +practitioners of ornate prose, Wilson and De Quincey, were in a way +journalists. + +That the sudden ornateness, in part a mere ordinary reaction, was also +in part due to a reflection of the greater gorgeousness of poetry, +though it was in itself less a matter of thought than of style, is true. +But literary reactions are always in part at least literary +developments; and after the prose of Burke and Gibbon, even after that +of Johnson, it was certain that the excessive plainness reached in the +mid-eighteenth century would be exchanged for something else. But it +could not possibly have been anticipated that the change would exhibit +the extent or the variety that it has actually shown. + +That it has enriched English literature with a great deal of admirable +matter is certain; that it has not merely produced a great deal of sad +stuff, but has perhaps inflicted some permanent or at least lasting +damage on the purity, the simplicity, and in the best sense the strength +of style, is at least equally certain. It is less easy to say whether it +is, as a movement, near its close, or with what sort of reaction it is +likely to be followed. On the one hand the indication of particular +follies and excesses may not seem decisive; for there is little doubt +that in all the stages of this _flamboyant_ movement--from De Quincey to +Carlyle, from Carlyle to Mr. Ruskin, from Mr. Ruskin to persons whom it +is unnecessary to mention--the advocates of the sober styles thought and +said that the force of extravagance could no further go, and that the +last outrages had been committed on the dignity and simplicity of +English. On the other hand there are signs, which are very unlikely to +deceive the practised critic, tending to show that the mode is likely to +change. When actual frippery is seen hanging up in Monmouth Street or +Monmouth Street's successors, when cheap imitations of fashionable +garments crowd the shop windows and decorate the bodies of the +vulgar--then the wise know that this fashion will shortly change. And +certainly something similar may be observed in literature to-day. +Cacophony jostles preciousness in novel and newspaper; attempts at +contorted epigram appear side by side with slips showing that the writer +has not the slightest knowledge of the classics in the old sense, and +knows exceedingly little of anything that can be called classic in the +widest possible acceptation of the term. Tyrannies cease when the +cobblers begin to fear them; fashions, especially literary fashions, +when the cobblers take them up. + +Yet the production of what must or may be called literature is now so +large, and in consequence of the spread of what is called education the +appetite so largely exceeds the taste for it, that it is not so easy as +it would once have been to forecast the extent and validity of any +reaction that may take place. + +If, without undue praising of times past, without pleading guilty to +the prejudices sometimes attributed to an academic education, and also +without trespassing beyond the proper limits of this book, it may be +permitted to express an opinion on the present state of English +literature, that opinion, while it need not be very gloomy, can hardly +be very sanguine. And one ground for discouragement, which very +especially concerns us, lies in the fact that on the whole we are now +_too_ "literary." Not, as has been said, that the general taste is too +refined, but that there is a too indiscriminate appetite in the general; +not that the actual original force of our writers is, with rare +exceptions, at all alarming, but that a certain amount of literary +craftsmanship, a certain knowledge of the past and present of +literature, is with us in a rather inconvenient degree. The public +demands quantity, not quality; and it is ready, for a time at any rate, +to pay for its quantity with almost unheard of returns, both, as the +homely old phrase goes, in praise and in pudding. And the writer, though +seldom hampered by too exact an education in form, has had books, as a +rule, too much with him. Sometimes he simply copies, and knows that he +copies; oftener, without knowing it, he follows and imitates, while he +thinks that he is doing original work. + +And worse than all this, the abundance of reading has created an +altogether artificial habit--a habit quite as artificial as any that can +ever have prevailed at other periods--of regarding the main stuff and +substance of literature. Much reading of novels, which are to the +ordinary reader his books, and his only books, has induced him to take +their standards as the standards of both nature and life. And this is +all the more dangerous because in all probability the writers of these +very novels have themselves acquired their knowledge, formed their +standards, in a manner little if at all more first-hand. We have nature, +not as Jones or Brown saw it for himself, but as he saw it through the +spectacles of Mr. Ruskin or of Jefferies; art, not as he saw it himself, +but as he saw it through those of Mr. Ruskin again or of Mr. Pater; +literary criticism as he learnt it from Mr. Arnold or from +Sainte-Beuve; criticism of life as he took it from Thackeray or from +Mr. Meredith. + +Something like this has occurred at least three times before in the +history of European literature. It happened in late Gręco-Roman times, +and all the world knows what the cure was then, and how the +much-discussed barbarian cleared the mind of Europe of its literary cant +by very nearly clearing out all the literature as well. It happened on a +much smaller scale, and with a less tremendous purgation, at the close +of the Middle Ages, when the world suddenly, as it were, shut up one +library and opened another; and at the end of the seventeenth and +beginning of the eighteenth century, when it shut both of these or the +greater part of them, and took to a small bookshelf of "classics," a +slender stock of carefully observed formulę and--common sense. + +What it will take to now, nobody can say; but that it will in one +fashion or another change most of its recent wear, shut most of its +recent books, and perhaps give itself something of a holiday from +literature, except in scholastic shapes, may be not quite impossible. +Another _Lyrical Ballads_ may be coming for this decade, as it came a +hundred years ago: all we can say is that it apparently has not come +yet. But whether it does come or does not, the moment is certainly no +bad one, even if chronology did not make it inviting, for setting in +order the actual, the certain, the past and registered production of the +century since the dawn of the great change which ended its vigil. The +historian, as he closes his record, is only too conscious of the +objections to omission that may probably be brought against him, and of +those of too liberal admission which certainly will be brought. It is +possible that for some tastes even this chapter may not contain enough +of _Tendenz_-discussion, that they may miss the broader sweeps and more +confident generalisations of another school of criticism. But the old +objection to fighting with armour which you have not proved has always +seemed a sound one, and has seldom failed to be justified of those who +set it at nought. Careful arrangement of detail and premiss, cautious +drawing of conclusions, and constant subjection of these conclusions to +that process of literary comparison which I believe to be the strongest, +the safest, the best engine of literary criticism altogether--these are +the things which I have endeavoured to observe here. It might have shown +greater strength of mind to reject a large number of the authors here +named, and so bring the matter into case for more extended treatment of +interesting individuals. But there is something, as it seems to me, a +little presumptuous in a too peremptory anticipation of the operations +of Time the Scavenger. The critic may pretty well foresee the operations +of the wallet-bearer, but he is not to dictate to him the particular +"alms for oblivion" which he shall give. As it used to be the custom for +a dramatic author, even though damned, to have his entrées at the +theatre, so those who have once made an actual figure on the literary +stage are entitled, until some considerable time has elapsed, to +book-room. They lose it gradually and almost automatically; and as I +have left out many writers of the end of last century whom, if I had +been writing sixty years since, I should doubtless have put in, many of +the first half of it whom I should have admitted if I had been writing +thirty years since, so in another generation others will no doubt +exercise a similar thinning on my own passed or pressed men. + +But few, however, I think, appear here without more or less right of +admission to the mind-map of the century's literature which a +well-furnished mind should at this moment contain. That such a mind-map, +quite irrespective of examinations and lecture-courses, and of literary +bread-study generally, is a valuable thing, I have no doubt. And I +think, without wishing to magnify mine office, that the general +possession of it might do something to counteract these disastrous +influences which have been referred to a little earlier. A man should +surely be a little less apt to take the pinchbeck poetry of his own day +for gold when he remembers the Della Cruscans and Sentimentalists, the +Montgomerys and the Tuppers; the terror-novel and the Minerva Press +should surely be useful skeletons to him at his feast of fiction in +kinds which it would be beyond my province to describe more +particularly. He will not clamour, as I have known very excellent +persons clamour, for the "raising of English to a new power" when he has +before him the long procession of ingenious jargonists whose jargon has +been in its turn hailed as a revelation and dismissed as an old song. +And he will neither overexalt the dignity of literature, nor be a +self-tormentor and a tormentor of others about its approaching decline +and fall, when he sees how constantly, how incessantly, the kissed mouth +has renewed its freshness, the apparently dying flower has shed seed and +shot suckers for a new growth. + + + + +INDEX + +(_It has been endeavoured in this Index to include the name (with dates) +of every author, and the title of every book, discussed in detail. But +in order to avoid unnecessary bulk, books and authors merely referred +to, as well as parts of books, are not usually given._) + + +_Academy_, 383 + +_Adam Bede_, 322 _sq._ + +_Adam Blair_, 194 + +_Age of Reason, The_, 30 _sq._ + +Ainsworth, Harrison (1805-82), 138, 139 + +Alison, Sir Archibald (1792-1867), 217, 218 + +Allingham, William (1824-89), 307 + +_Alton Locke_, 326 _sq._ + +_Ancient Law_, 358 + +_Ancient Mariner, The Rime of the_, 61-63 + +_Andromeda_, 325 + +_Anna St. Ives_, 39 + +_Annals of the Parish_, 140 + +_Anti-Jacobin_, 2 + +_Apologia pro Vitā Suā_, 327, 368 + +Arnold, Matthew (1822-88), 15, 52, 281-287, 385-388 + +Arnold, Thomas (1795-1842), 223, 224 + +Ashe, Thomas, 1836-89, 313 + +_Asolando_, 271 _sq._ + +_Athenęum_, 383 + +Atherstone, Edwin (1788-1872), 124 + +_Aurora Leigh_, 280 + +Austen, Jane (1775-1817), 43, 128-131 + +Austen, Lady, 4 + +Austin, John (1790-1859), 357, 358 + +Austin, Sarah (1793-1867), 358 + +Aytoun, William Edmonstoune (1813-65), 302-304 + + +Bage, Robert (1728-1801), 41, 42 + +Bagehot, Walter (1826-77), 383-384 + +Baillie, Joanna (1762-1851), 419, 420 + +Barbauld, Mrs. (1743-1825), 19, 62 + +_Barchester Towers_, 330 + +Barham, Richard Harris (1788-1845), 209, 210 + +_Barnaby Rudge_, 149 + +Barnes, William (1800-86), 118 + +Barry Cornwall, see Procter, B. W. + +Barrow, Sir John (1764-1848), 179 + +Barton, Bernard (1784-1849), 107 + +Baynes, Thomas Spencer (1823-87), 351 + +Beckford, William (1759-1844), 40, 41 + +Beddoes, Thomas Lovell (1803-49), 114-116 + +_Bells and Pomegranates_, 270 + +Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), 343, 344 + +_Biographia Borealis_, 201 + +Blackie, John Stuart (1809-95), 300 + +_Blackwood's Magazine_, 168 _sqq._ + +Blake, William (1757-1827), 1-3, 9-13 + +_Bleak House_, 150 + +Bloomfield, Robert (1766-1823), 107 + +_Bon Gaultier Ballads_, 303 + +Borrow, George (1803-81), 162, 163 + +Bowles, Caroline (1787-1854), 65, 124 + +Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850), 19, 105, 106 + +Brimley, George (1819-57), 383, 384 + +Brontė, Anne (1820-49), 319 + +Brontė, Charlotte (1816-55), 319-321 + +Brontė, Emily (1818-48), 315, 321 + +Brown, Dr. John (1810-82), 384 + +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1809-61), 276-281 + +Browning, Robert (1812-89), 90, 268-277 + +Bryant, Jacob (1715-1804), 405 + +Buckle, Henry Thomas (1821-62), 243, 244 + +Bulwer, see Lytton + +Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824), 48 + +Burke, 1, 7 + +Burney, Miss (1752-1840), 125 + +Burns, Robert (1759-96), 1-3, 9, 10, 13-18 + +Burton, John Hill (1809-81), 240 + +Burton, Sir Richard (1821-90), vi + +Byron, 6 + +Byron, Lord (1788-1824), 6, 75-81 + + +_Caleb Williams_, 32 _sq._ + +Calverley, Charles Stuart (1831-84), 314 + +Campbell, Mr. Dykes, 57 + +Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844), 92-94 + +Canning, George (1770-1827), 19 + +Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881), 232-240 + +Cary, Henry (1772-1844), 110 + +_Castle Rackrent_, 127 + +Chalmers, Thomas (1780-1847), 374, 375 + +Chambers, Robert (1802-71), 414 + +Chamier, Captain, 159 + +_Chartism_, 235 _sqq._ + +_Christabel_, 61-63 + +_Christian Year_, 362-364 + +"Christopher North," see Wilson, John + +Church, Richard (1815-90), 371 + +Churchill, 3, 5 + +_City of Dreadful Night, The_, 298 + +Clive, Mrs. Archer (1801-73), 302 + +_Cloister and the Hearth, The_, 332 + +Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819-61), 309, 310 + +Cobbett, William (1762-1835), 2, 168-172 + +Coleridge, Hartley (1796-1849), 51, 200-203 + +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834), 56-63 + +Coleridge, Sara (1802-52), 119 + +Collins, Charles Alston (1828-73), 333 + +Collins, Mortimer (1827-76), 307 + +Collins, Wilkie (1824-89), 333 + +Combe, William (1741-1823), 47 + +_Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, 100 + +_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, 145 _sq._ + +Congreve, 6 + +Conington, John (1825-69), 407, 408 + +_Cornhill Magazine_, 382 + +"Corn-Law Rhymer, The," see Elliott, Ebenezer + +Cornwall, Barry, see Procter, B. W. + +Cory, William, see Johnson, William + +Cottle, Joseph (1770-1853), 57 + +Cowper, William (1731-1800), 1-7 + +Coxe, Archdeacon, 252 _note_ + +Crabbe, George (1754-1832), 1-3, 7-9 + +Craik, Dinah Maria (1826-87), 336 + +_Cranford_, 335 + +Croker, Crofton (1798-1854), 141 + +Croker, John Wilson (1780-1857), 383 + +_Crotchet Castle_, 162 + +_Cruise upon Wheels, A_, 333 + +Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811), 42 + +Cunningham, Allan (1784-1842), 108 + +_Curiosities of Literature_, 179 + + +_Daniel Deronda_, 324 + +D'Arblay, Madame (1752-1840), 125 + +Darley, George (1795-1846), 114 + +Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-82), 412-414 + +Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802), 3, 19, 412 + +_David Copperfield_, 150 + +Davy, Sir Humphry (1778-1829), 410, 411 + +_Death's Jest-Book_, 115 + +"Della Crusca," see Merry + +"Delta," see Moir, D. M. + +De Quincey, Thomas (1785-1859), 194-198 + +Dickens, Charles (1812-70), 145-151 + +Digby, Kenelm, vi + +Disraeli, Benjamin (1804-81), 160, 161 + +Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848), 179 + +Dobell, Sydney (1824-74), 304-307 + +_Dombey and Son_, 149 + +Domett, Alfred (1811-87), 302 + +Doyle, Sir Francis (1810-88), 206 + +_Dramatis Personę_, 271 _sqq._ + +_Dream of Gerontius, The_, 367 + +Dryden, 5, 8 + +Dufferin, Lady (1807-67), 315 + +Dunbar, 9 + + +Edgeworth, Maria (1767-1849), 126-128 + +_Edinburgh Review_, 167 _sqq._ + +_Elia, The Essays of_, 182 + +Eliot, George, see Evans, Mary Ann + +Elliott, Ebenezer ("The Corn-Law Rhymer") (1781-1849), 110, 111 + +Ellis, George (1753-1815), 20 + +Emerson, 68 + +_Enoch Arden_, 265 + +_Eothen_, 241 + +_Epic of Women, The_, 295 + +_Esmond_, 152, 155 + +_Essays and Reviews_, 373 + +_Essays in Criticism_, 385 + +"Ettrick Shepherd," The, 100 + +Evans, Mary Ann (1819-80), 316, 321-324 + +_Examiner_, 98, 168 _sq._ + + +_Fazio_, 421 + +Ferguson, 15 + +Ferguson, Sir Samuel (1810-86), 302 + +Ferrier, James Frederick (1808-64), 351 + +Ferrier, Susan (1782-1854), 351 + +Finlay, George (1795-1875), 252 _note_ + +FitzGerald, Edward (1809-83), 207-209 + +Forster, John (1812-76), 242, 243 + +_Fortnightly Review_, 382 + +Foster, John (1770-1843), vi + +"Fraserians," The, 204 + +_Fraser's Magazine_, 168 _sqq._, 203 _sq._ + +_Frederick the Great, History of_, 235 _sqq._ + +Freeman, Edward Augustus (1823-92), 244, 245 + +_French Revolution, History of the_, 234 _sqq._ + +Frere, John Hookham, 19 + +Froude, James Anthony (1818-94), 246-252 + +Froude, Richard Hurrell (1803-36), 370 + + +Galt, John (1779-1839), 139-141 + +_Gamekeeper at Home, The_, 396 + +Gaskell, Mrs. (1810-65), 335 + +Gibbon, 1 + +Gifford, William (1756-1826), 19, 23-25 + +Gilpin, William (1724-1804), 46, 47 + +Glascock, Captain, 159 + +Godwin, William (1756-1836), 2, 32-37 + +Goldsmith, 1 + +Gray, 6 + +_Great Expectations_, 150 + +Green, John Richard (1837-83), 245, 246 + +Greenwell, Dora (1821-82), 316 + +Greville, Charles, vi + +Grosart, Dr., 52 _note_ + +Grote, George (1794-1871), 220-222 + +_Guy Livingstone_, 335 + + +Hake, Thomas Gordon (1809-94), 301 + +Hall, Captain Basil (1788-1844), 159 + +Hallam, Henry (1777-1859), 212-214 + +Hallam, Arthur Henry (1811-33), 299, 300 + +Hamilton, Sir William (1788-1856), 349-352 + +Hannay, James (1827-73), 383 + +_Hard Times_, 150 + +_Haunted and the Haunters, The_, 143 + +Hawker, Robert Stephen (1803-75), 118 + +Hayley, William (1745-1820), 3, 18, 19 + +Hayward, Abraham (1801-84), 383 + +Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), 34, 184-187 + +Head, Sir Edmund (1805-68), 206 + +Head, Sir Francis (1793-1875), 206 + +Headley, Henry (1765-88), 47, 106 _note_ + +Heber, Reginald (1783-1826), 110 + +Helps, Sir Arthur (1813-75), 384 + +Hemans, Mrs. (1793-1835), 112 + +_Henrietta Temple_, 161 + +_Heroes and Hero-Worship_, 235 _sq._ + +Hogg, James (1770-1835), 99-101 + +Hogg, T. J., 82 + +Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809), 38, 39 + +Hood, Thomas (1799-1845), 121-124 + +Hook, Theodore (1788-1841), 140, 141 + +Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-90), 294 + +Horne, Richard H. (1803-84), 117 + +Horne Tooke (1736-1812), 46 + +Houghton, Lord (Milnes, R. M.) (1809-85), 301, 302 + +_Household Words_, 379, 380 + +Hunt, Leigh (1784-1859), 81, 86, 88; + his verse and life, 98, 99; + his prose, 198-200 + +Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-95), 415, 416 + + +_Ideal of a Christian Church, The_, 371 + +_Idylls of the King_, 264, 265 + +_Imaginary Conversations_, 102 _sq._ + +_Imaginary Portraits_, 399 + +_Ingoldsby Legends, The_, 210 + +_In Memoriam_, 262, 263 + +_Ion_, 421 + +Irving, Edward (1792-1834), 375 + +_It is Never too Late to Mend_, 332 + + +James, G. P. R. (1801-60), 138, 139 + +Jameson, Mrs. (1794-1860), 397 + +_Jane Eyre_, 318 + +Jefferies, John Richard (1848-87), 396, 397 + +Jeffrey, Francis (1773-1850), 71, 172-176 + +Jerrold, Douglas (1803-57), 210 + +Johnson, S., 1, 6, 8 + +Johnson, William (1784-1864), 246 + +Jones, Ebenezer (1820-60), 307 + +Jones, Ernest (1819-68), 307 + +Jowett, Benjamin (1817-93), 374 + + +Keats, John (1795-1821), 86-91 + +Keble, John (1792-1866), 362-364 + +Kinglake, Alexander (1809-91), 241, 242 + +Kingsley, Charles (1819-75), 324-328 + +Kingsley, Henry (1830-76), 333, 334 + +Knowles, James Sheridan (1784-1862), 422 + +_Kubla Khan_, 61-63 + + +_Lady of Lyons, The_, 423 + +Lamb, Charles (1775-1834), 13, 33, 38, 181-184 + +Lancaster, Henry (1829-75), 384 + +Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, "L. E. L." (1802-38), 118, 119 + +Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864), 68, 101-104 + +_Latin Christianity, History of_, 220 + +_Latter-Day Pamphlets_, 235 _sqq._ + +Lawrence, Dr., 21 + +Lawrence, George Alfred (1827-76), 334, 335 + +_Lays of Ancient Rome_, 226, 227 + +_Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, 303 + +Lear, Edward (1812-88), 313, 314 + +Lee, the Misses, 45 + +Lever, Charles (1806-72), 158, 159 + +Levy, Amy (1861-89), 316 + +Lewes, George Henry (1817-78), 354, 355 + +Lewis, Sir George Cornewall (1806-63), 206, 207 + +Lewis, Matthew ("Monk") (1775-1818), 2, 44 + +Liddon, Henry Parry (1829-90), 371 + +_Life Drama, A_, 305 + +Lingard, John (1771-1851), 215 + +_Little Dorrit_, 150 + +Lloyd (the elder), 3 + +Lloyd, Charles (1775-1839), 181 + +Locker, Frederick (1821-95), 309, 310 + +Lockhart, John Gibson (1794-1854), 191-194; + his _Life of Scott_, 193 + +_London Magazine_, 168 _sqq._ + +Long, George (1800-79), 407 + +_Lyrical Ballads_, 48, 56 + +Lytton, the first Lord (1803-73), 142-145, 422, 423 + +Lytton, Edward Robert, first Earl of (1831-91), 310-312 + + +Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800-59), 34, 67, 68, 224-232 + +M'Crie, Thomas (1772-1835), 216, 217 + +Mackay, Charles (1814-89), 302 + +Mackenzie, 17, 18 + +Mackintosh, Sir James (1765-1832), 345 + +_Macmillan's Magazine_, 382 + +Maginn, William (1793-1842), 203-205 + +Mahon, Lord, see Stanhope + +Maine, Sir Henry J. S. (1822-88), 357, 358 + +Malone, Edmund (1741-1812), 47 + +Malthus, Thomas Robert (1766-1834), 46 + +Mangan, James Clarence (1803-49), 118 + +Manning, Henry Edward (1808-92), 370 + +Mansel, Henry Longueville (1820-71), 352-354 + +_Marius the Epicurean_, 400 + +Marryat, Frederick (1792-1848), 157, 158 + +Marston, Philip Bourke (1850-87), 294, 297 + +Marston, Westland (1819-90), 424 + +_Martin Chuzzlewit_, 149 + +Martineau, Harriet (1802-76), 163, 164 + +Mathias, Thomas James (1754?-1835), 20, 23, 25, 26 + +Maturin, Charles Robert (1782-1824), 125, 126 + +_Maud_, 263, 264 + +Maurice, Frederick Denison (1805-72), 354, 375 + +Maxwell, Sir William Stirling (1818-78), 252 _note_ + +_Melmoth the Wanderer_, 126 + +_Men and Women_, 271 _sq._ + +Merivale, Charles (1808-93), 240, 241 + +Merry, Robert ("Della Crusca") (1755-98), 19, 24 _note_ + +Mill, James (1773-1836), 345 + +Mill, John Stuart (1806-73), 344-349 + +Miller, Hugh (1802-56), 414, 415 + +Milman, Henry Hart (1791-1868), 219, 220 + +Milnes, R. M., see Houghton, Lord + +Minto, William (1845-93), 402 + +Mitford, Mary Russell (1787-1855), 164, 165 + +Mitford, William (1744-1827), 215 + +_Modern British Theatre_, 417 + +_Modern Painters_, 389 + +Moir, D. M. ("Delta") (1798-1851), 140 + +_Monk, The_, 44 + +Montgomery, James (1771-1854), 107 + +Montgomery, Robert (1807-55), 187 _note_ + +Moore, John (1729-1802), 2, 26-28 + +Moore, Thomas (1779-1852), 94-98 + +More, Hannah (1745-1833), 45 + +Morris, Mr., 90 + +Motherwell, William (1797-1835), 109 + +Movement, The Oxford, 342 _sq._ + +Munro, Hugh A. J. (1819-85), 408 + +_Music and Moonlight_, 295 + + +NAPIER, SIR WILLIAM (1785-1860), 212 + +_Newcomes, The_, 152, 155 + +Newman, John Henry (1801-90), 364-370 + +_Nicholas Nickleby_, 148 + +_Noctes Ambrosianę_, 188 + +Noel, Roden (1834-94), 312, 313 + +Norton, Mrs. (1808-77), 315 + + +_ODE on Intimations of Immortality_, 54 + +O'Keefe, John (1747-1833), 46, 418-419 + +_Old Curiosity Shop, The_, 149 + +Oliphant, Laurence, vi + +_Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_, 235 _sq._ + +_Oliver Twist_, 148 + +_Orion_, 117 + +O'Shaughnessy, Arthur (1844-81), 294-296 + +_Our Mutual Friend_, 150 + +_Our Village_, 164 + + +Paine, Thomas (1737-1809), 2, 30-32 + +Palgrave, Mr., 87 + +Palgrave, Sir Francis (1788-1861), 216 + +Palgrave, William Gifford (1826-88), 216 + +_Pall Mall Gazette_, 383 + +_Paracelsus_, 269, 270 + +_Past and Present_, 255, _sqq._ + +_Patchwork_, 309, 310 + +Pater, Walter H. (1839-94), 398-401 + +Pattison, Mark (1813-84), 373, 374 + +Paul, Mr. Kegan, 34 + +_Paul Ferroll_, 341 + +_Pauline_, 269 + +Peacock, Thomas Love (1785-1866), 161, 162 + +_Pelham_, 143 + +_Pendennis_, 152, 155 + +_Peter Plymley's Letters_, 177 + +_Peter's Letters_, 192, 194 + +_Philip Van Artevelde_, 119 + +_Pickwick Papers, The_, 146 + +Pindar, Peter, see Wolcot, John + +Planché, James R. (1796-1880), 423 + +_Plays on the Passions_, 419 + +_Poetical Sketches_, 10, 11 + +_Political Justice_, 32 _sq._ + +Pollock, Sir F. (1815-88), 207 + +Pope, 5, 7 + +Porson, Richard (1759-1808), 406, 407 + +Praed, Winthrop Markworth (1802-39), 121-124 + +_Pręlectiones Academicę_, 364 + +Price, 26 + +_Pride and Prejudice_, 129 + +Priestley, 2, 26 + +_Princess, The_, 261, 262 + +Procter, Adelaide Anne (1825-64), 316 + +Procter, B. W. ("Barry Cornwall") (1790-1874), 109 + +_Prolegomena Logica_, 353 + +Prowse, W. J. (1836-70), 314 + +_Pursuits of Literature, The_, 25, 26 + +Pusey, Edward Bouverie (1800-82), 360-362 + +Pusey, Philip (1799-1855), 207 + +Pye, 19 + + +_Quarterly Review_, 168 _sq._ + + +Radcliffe, Mrs. (1764-1823), 2, 43, 44 + +_Ravenshoe_, 334 + +Reade, Charles (1814-84), 331-333 + +Reeve, Henry, vi + +_Renaissance in Italy, The_, 401 + +_Rights of Man, The_, 30 _sq._ + +_Rights of Woman, The_, 37, 38 + +_Ring and the Book, The_, 271 _sq._ + +Robertson, Frederick (1816-53), 376, 377 + +Robinson, H. Crabb, vi + +Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855), 91, 92 + +_Rolliad, The_, 20, 21 + +_Roman Poets of the Republic_, 408 + +_Rondeaux_, 21 + +Roscoe, William (1753-1831), 214 + +Rossetti, D. G. (1828-82), 97, 288-292 + +Rossetti, Miss (1830-94), 293, 294 + +Ruskin, John (1819), v, 388-397 + + +_Sartor Resartus_, 234 _sqq._ + +_Saturday Review_, 380, 381 + +Sayers, Dr. (1763-1817), 19, 45 + +_Sayings and Doings_, 141 + +_Schiller, Life of_, 233 _sqq._ + +Scots, the literary virtues of, 15; + poets in, 13-18, 108, 109 + +Scott, John (1730-83), 185 + +Scott, Michael (1789-1835), 160 + +Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832), 34, 63, 69-75, 131-138 + +Scott, William Bell (1811-90), 302 + +Seeley, Sir J. R. (1834-94), 252 note + +Sellar, William Young (1825-90), 408, 409 + +Senior, Nassau W. (1790-1864), 383 + +Seward, Miss (1747-1809), 19 + +Shairp, Principal (1819-85), 15 + +Shelley, Mrs. (1798-1851), 38 + +Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), 81-86 + +Skene, William Forbes (1809-92), 240 + +Smedley, Frank E. (1818-64), 337 + +Smedley, Menella Bute (1820-77), 316 + +Smith, Alexander (1830-67), 304-307 + +Smith, Sydney (1771-1845), 176-178 + +Smith, William Robertson (1846-94), 409, 410 + +Somerville, Mrs. (1780-1872), 411 + +_Songs of Innocence and Experience_, 11, 12 + +_Sordello_, 270 + +Southey, Robert (1774-1843), 3, 13, 63-69, 107, 110 + +_Spectator_, 380 + +Stanhope, Philip Henry, Earl (1805-75), 246 + +Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (1815-81), 372 + +Stephen, James Kenneth (1859-92), 314 + +Stephen, Sir James (1789-1859), 358 + +Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames (1829-94), 358 + +"Sterling Club," The, 206 _sq._ + +Sterling, John (1806-44), 205, 206, 300 + +_Sterling, Life of John_, 205, 235 _sqq._ + +Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-94), 338-341 + +_St. Leon_, 34, 36 + +_Story without an End, A_, 341 + +Strafford, 270 + +_Studies in the History of the Renaissance_, 398 _sqq._ + +Surtees, Robert (?-1864), 336 + +Swift, 6 + +Swinburne, Mr., 90 + +Symonds, John Addington (1840-93), 294, 401, 402 + +_Syntax, Dr._, 47 + + +_Tale of Two Cities, A_, 150 + +_Tales of a Grandfather_, 212 + +_Tamworth Reading-Room_, 369 + +Tannahill, Robert (1774-1810), 108 + +Taylor, Sir Henry (1800-86), 119-121 + +Taylor, Thomas (the Platonist) (1758-1835), 46 + +Taylor, William (of Norwich) (1765-1836), 45 + +Tennant, William (1784-1848), 109 + +Tennyson, Alfred (1809-92), 89, 90, 253-268 + +Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-63), 151-156 + +Thirlwall, Connop (1797-1875), 220-222 + +Thom, William (1789-1848), 109 + +Thomson, James (1834-82), 296-298 + +_Tracts for the Times_, 361 + +_Treasure Island_, 339 + +Trench, Richard Chenevix (1807-86), 300 + +Trollope, Anthony (1815-82), 329, 330 + +Trollope, Mrs. (1780-1863), 329 + +Trollope, Thomas Adolphus (1810-92), 329 + +Tupper, Martin Farquhar (1810-89), 299 + +Turner, Sharon (1768-1847), 215, 216 + +Twisleton, Edward (1809-74), 207 + +Tyndall, John (1820-93), 412 + +Tytler, Alexander (1747-1813), 217 + +Tytler, Patrick Fraser (1791-1849), 217 + +Tytler, William (1711-92), 217 + + +_Uncommercial Traveller, The_, 148 + +_Unto this Last_, 391 + + +_Vanity Fair_, 155 + +_Vathek_, 41 + +Venables, George S. (1811-88), 207 + +Vere, Sir Aubrey de (1788-1846), 111 + +_Verses and Translations_, 314 + +_Vestiges of Creation_, 414 + +_Virginians, The_, 155 + + +Wade, Thomas (1805-75), 113 + +Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths (1794-1852), 198 + +Wakefield, Gilbert (1756-1801), 405 + +Walpole, 1, 6 + +Ward, William George (1812-82), 371 + +_Waverley Novels, The_, 131-138 + +Wells, Charles Jeremiah (1800-79), 113 + +_Westward Ho!_ 326 _sq._ + +Whately, Richard (1787-1863), 355, 356 + +Whewell, William (1794-1866), 356 + +White, Henry Kirke (1785-1806), 107, 108 + +Whitehead, Charles (1804-62), 113 + +Whyte-Melville, Major (1821-78), 336, 337 + +Wilberforce, Samuel (1805-73), 371, 372 + +Williams, Helen Maria (1762-1827), 29, 30 + +Williams, Isaac (1802-65), 370, 371 + +Wilson, John (1785-1854), 188-191 + +Wolcot, John ("Peter Pindar") (1738-1819), 20, 21-23 + +Wolfe, Charles (1791-1823), 124 + +Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-97), 37, 38 + +Wordsworth, Dorothy (1771-1855), 50, 54 + +Wordsworth, William (1770-1850), 49-56 + + +_Yeast_, 326 _sq._ + +Young, Arthur (1741-1820), 2, 28, 29 + + +_Zeluco_, 26, 27, 28 + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Nineteenth Century +Literature (1780-1895), by George Saintsbury + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 31698-8.txt or 31698-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/9/31698/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895) + +Author: George Saintsbury + +Release Date: March 19, 2010 [EBook #31698] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h3>A HISTORY</h3> + +<h5>OF</h5> + +<h1>NINETEENTH CENTURY</h1> + +<h1>LITERATURE</h1> + +<h3>(1780-1895)</h3> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>GEORGE SAINTSBURY</h2> + +<h4>PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF +EDINBURGH</h4> + +<p class="center"><i>New York</i><br /> + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> + +LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.<br /> + +1906<br /> + +<i>All rights reserved</i><br /><br /> + +<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1896,<br /> +By MACMILLAN AND CO.</span><br /> +<br /> +Set up and electrotyped, January, 1896. Reprinted October,<br /> +1896; August, 1898; September, 1899; April, 1902; March, 1904;<br /> +November, 1906.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Norwood Press</i><br /> +J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith<br /> +Norwood Mass. U.S.A.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>In the execution of the present task (which I took over about two years +ago from hands worthier than mine, but then more occupied) some +difficulties of necessity occurred which did not present themselves to +myself when I undertook the volume of Elizabethan Literature, or to my +immediate predecessor in grappling with the period between 1660 and +1780.</p> + +<p>The most obvious and serious of these was the question, "What should be +done with living authors?" Independently of certain perils of selection +and exclusion, of proportion and of freedom of speech, I believe it will +be recognised by every one who has ever attempted it, that to mix +estimates of work which is done and of work which is unfinished is to +the last degree unsatisfactory. I therefore resolved to include no +living writer, except Mr. Ruskin, in this volume for the purpose of +detailed criticism, though some may be now and then mentioned in +passing.</p> + +<p>Even with this limitation the task remained a rather formidable one. +Those who are least disposed to overvalue literary work in proportion as +it approaches their own time will still acknowledge that the last +hundred and fifteen years are fuller furnished than either of the +periods of not very dissimilar length which have been already dealt +with. The proportion of names<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> of the first, or of a very high second +class, is distinctly larger than in the eighteenth century; the bulk of +literary production is infinitely greater than in the Elizabethan time. +Further, save in regard to the earliest subsections of this period, Time +has not performed his office, beneficent to the reader but more +beneficent to the historian, of sifting and riddling out writers whom it +is no longer necessary to consider, save in a spirit of adventurous or +affectionate antiquarianism. I must ask the reader to believe me when I +say that many who do not appear here at all, or who are dismissed in a +few lines, have yet been the subjects of careful reading on my part. If +some exclusions (not due to mere oversight) appear arbitrary or unjust, +I would urge that this is not a Dictionary of Authors, nor a Catalogue +of Books, but a History of Literature; and that to mention everybody is +as impossible as to say everything. As I have revised the sheets the old +query has recurred to myself only too often, and sometimes in reference +to very favourite books and authors of my own. Where, it may be asked, +is Kenelm Digby and the <i>Broad Stone of Honour</i>? Where Sir Richard +Burton (as great a contrast to Digby as can well be imagined)? Where +Laurence Oliphant, who, but the other day, seemed to many clever men the +cleverest man they knew? Where John Foster, who provided food for the +thoughtful public two generations ago? Where Greville of the caustic +diaries, and his editor (latest deceased) Mr. Reeve, and Crabb Robinson, +and many others? Some of these and others are really <i>neiges d'antan</i>; +some baffle the historian in miniature by being rebels to brief and +exact characterisation; some, nay many, are simply crowded out.</p> + +<p>I must also ask pardon for having exercised apparently arbitrary +discretion in alternately separating the work of the same writer under +different chapter-headings, and grouping it with a certain disregard of +the strict limits of the chapter-heading itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> I think I shall obtain +this pardon from those who remember the advantage obtainable from a +connected view of the progress of distinct literary kinds, and that, +sometimes not to be foregone, of considering the whole work of certain +writers together.</p> + +<p>To provide room for the greater press of material, it was necessary to +make some slight changes of omission in the scheme of the earlier +volumes. The opportunity of considerable gain was suggested in the +department of extract—which obviously became less necessary in the case +of authors many of whom are familiar, and hardly any accessible with +real difficulty. Nor did it seem necessary to take up room with the +bibliographical index, the utility of which in my Elizabethan volume I +was glad to find almost universally recognised. This would have had to +be greatly more voluminous here; and it was much less necessary. With a +very few exceptions, all the writers here included are either kept in +print, or can be obtained without much trouble at the second-hand +bookshops.</p> + +<p>To what has thus been said as to the principles of arrangement it cannot +be necessary to add very much as to the principles of criticism. They +are the same as those which I have always endeavoured to maintain—that +is to say, I have attempted to preserve a perfectly independent, and, as +far as possible, a rationally uniform judgment, taking account of none +but literary characteristics, but taking account of all characteristics +that are literary. It may be, and it probably is, more and more +difficult to take achromatic views of literature as it becomes more and +more modern; it is certainly more difficult to get this achromatic +character, even where it exists, acknowledged by contemporaries. But it +has at least been my constant effort to attain it.</p> + +<p>In the circumstances, and with a view to avoid not merely repetition but +confusion and dislocation in the body of the book,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> I have thought it +better to make the concluding chapter one of considerably greater length +than the corresponding part of the Elizabethan volume, and to reserve +for it the greater part of what may be called connecting and +comprehensive criticism. In this will be found what may be not +improperly described from one point of view as the opening of the case, +and from another as its summing up—the evidence which justifies both +being contained in the earlier chapters.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps not improper to add that the completion of this book has +been made a little difficult by the incidence of new duties, not in +themselves unconnected with its subject. But I have done my best to +prevent or supply oversight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<h3>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<h4>THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</h4> + +<p><span class="tocnum">PAGE</span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The Starting-point—Cowper—Crabbe—Blake—Burns—Minor +Poets—The Political Satirists—Gifford—Mathias—Dr. Moore, +etc.—Paine—Godwin—Holcroft—Beckford, etc.—Mrs. +Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis—Hannah More—Gilpin <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<h4>THE NEW POETRY</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Wordsworth—Coleridge—Southey—Scott—Byron—Shelley—Keats— +Rogers—Campbell—Moore—Leigh Hunt—Hogg—Landor—Minor +Poets born before Tennyson—Beddoes—Sir Henry Taylor—Mrs. +Hemans and L, E. L.—Hood and Praed <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_49'>49</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<h4>THE NEW FICTION</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Interval—Maturin—Miss Edgeworth—Miss Austen—The +<i>Waverley +Novels</i>—Hook—Bulwer—Dickens—Thackeray—Marryat—Lever—Minor +Naval Novelists—Disraeli—Peacock—Borrow—Miss +Martineau—Miss Mitford <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></span></p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p> + + +<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<h4>THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS.</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>New Periodicals at the beginning of the +Century—Cobbett—The <i>Edinburgh Review</i>—Jeffrey—Sydney +Smith—The <i>Quarterly</i>—<i>Blackwood's</i> and the <i>London +Magazines</i>—Lamb—Hazlitt—Wilson—Lockhart—De +Quincey—Leigh Hunt—Hartley Coleridge—Maginn and +<i>Fraser</i>—Sterling and the Sterling Club—Edward +FitzGerald—Barham <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_166'>166</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<h4>THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Occasional +Historians—Hallam—Roscoe—Mitford—Lingard—Turner—Palgrave—The +Tytlers—Alison—Milman—Grote and +Thirlwall—Arnold—Macaulay—Carlyle—Minor +Figures—Buckle—Kinglake—Freeman and Green—Froude <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_211'>211</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<h4>THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Tennyson—Mr. and Mrs. Browning—Matthew Arnold—The +Præ-Raphaelite Movement—Rossetti—Miss +Rossetti—O'Shaughnessy—Thomson—Minor Poets—Lord +Houghton—Aytoun—The Spasmodics—Minor +Poets—Clough—Locker—The Earl of Lytton—Humorous +Verse-Writers—Poetesses <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<h4>THE NOVEL SINCE 1850</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Changes in the Novel—Miss Brontë—George Eliot—Charles +Kingsley—The Trollopes—Reade—Minor Novelists—Stevenson <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_317'>317</a></span></p></div> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p> + + +<h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<h4>PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Limits of this and following +Chapters—Bentham—Mackintosh—The Mills—Hamilton and the +Hamiltonians—Mansel—Other Philosophers—Jurisprudents: +Austin, Maine, Stephen—Political Economists and +Malthus—The Oxford Movement—Pusey—Keble—Newman—The +Scottish Disruption—Chalmers—Irving—Other +Divines—Maurice—Robertson <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_342'>342</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<h4>LATER JOURNALISM AND CRITICISM IN ART AND LETTERS</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Changes in Periodicals—The <i>Saturday Review</i>—Critics of +the middle of the Century—Helps—Matthew Arnold in +Prose—Mr. Ruskin—Jefferies—Pater—Symonds—Minto <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_378'>378</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<h4>SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Increasing Difficulty of +Selection—Porson—Conington—Munro—Sellar—Robertson +Smith—Davy—Mrs. Somerville—Other Scientific +Writers—Darwin—<i>Vestiges of Creation</i>—Hugh Miller—Huxley <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_404'>404</a></span></p></div> + + +<h3>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<h4>DRAMA</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Weakness of this department throughout—O'Keefe—Joanna +Baillie—Knowles—Bulwer—Planché <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_417'>417</a></span></p> +</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></p> + + +<h3>CHAPTER XII</h3> + +<h4>CONCLUSION</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Survey and Analysis of the Period in the several +divisions—Revolutions in Style—The present state of +Literature <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_425'>425</a></span></p></div> + + +<p>INDEX <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_471'>471</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</h3> + + +<p>The period of English literary history which is dealt with in the +opening part of the present volume includes, of necessity, among its +most illustrious names, not a few whose work will not be the subject of +formal discussion here, because the major part of it was done within the +scope of the volume which preceded. Thus, to mention only one of these +names, the most splendid displays of Burke's power—the efforts in which +he at last gave to mankind what had previously been too often devoted to +party—date from this time, and even from the later part of it; while +Gibbon did not die till 1794, and Horace Walpole not till 1797. Even +Johnson, the type and dictator at once of the eighteenth century in +literary England, survived the date of 1780 by four years.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless the beginning of the ninth decade of the century did +actually correspond with a real change, a real line of demarcation. Not +only did the old writers drop off one by one, not only did no new +writers of utterly distinct idiosyncrasy (Burns and Blake excepted) make +their appearance till quite the end of it, but it was also marked by the +appearance of men of letters and of literary styles which announced, if +not very distinctly, the coming of changes of the most sweeping kind. +Hard as it may be to exhibit the exact contrast between, say, Goldsmith +and men like Cowper on the one side and Crabbe on the other, that +contrast cannot but be felt by every reader who has used himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> in the +very least to the consideration of literary differences. And as with +individuals, so with kinds. No special production of these twenty years +may be of the highest value; but there is a certain idiosyncrasy, if +only an idiosyncrasy of transition—an unlikeness to anything that comes +before, and to anything, unless directly imitated, that comes +after—which is equally distinguishable in the curious succession of +poetical satires from Peter Pindar to the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i>, in the +terror-and-mystery novels of the school of Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk +Lewis, in the large, if not from the literary point of view extremely +noteworthy, department of politics and economics which in various ways +employed the pens of writers so different as Moore, Young, Godwin, +Priestley, Horne, Tooke, Cobbett, and Paine.</p> + +<p>Giving poetry, as usual, the precedence even in the most unpoetical +periods, we shall find in the four names already cited—those of Crabbe, +Cowper, Blake, and Burns—examples of which even the most poetical +period need not be ashamed. In what may be called the absolute spirit of +poetry, the <i>nescio quid</i> which makes the greatest poets, no one has +ever surpassed Burns and Blake at their best; though the perfection of +Burns is limited in kind, and the perfection of Blake still more limited +in duration and sustained force. Cowper would have been a great poet of +the second class at any time, and in some times might have attained the +first. As for Crabbe, he very seldom has the absolute spirit of poetry +just mentioned; but the vigour and the distinction of his verse, as well +as his wonderful faculty of observation in rendering scene and +character, are undeniable. And it is not perhaps childish to point out +that there is something odd and out of the way about the poetical career +of all these poets of the transition. Cowper's terrible malady postpones +his first efforts in song to an age when most poets are losing their +voices; Crabbe, beginning brilliantly and popularly, relapses into a +silence of nearly a quarter of a century before breaking out with +greater power and skill than ever; Burns runs one of the shortest, if +one of the most brilliant, Blake one of the longest, the strangest, the +most intermittent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> of poetical careers. Nor is it superfluous to draw +attention further to the fact that when we leave this little company—at +the best august, at the worst more than respectable—we drop suddenly to +the flattest and most hopeless bog of poesiless verse that lies anywhere +on the map of England's literature. Passing from the ethereal music of +the Scottish ploughman and the English painter, from Cowper's noble or +gentle thought and his accomplished versification, from Crabbe's manly +vigour and his Rembrandt touch, we find nothing, unless it be the +ingenious but not strictly poetical burlesque of the Wolcots and the +Lawrences, till we come to the drivel of Hayley and the drought of +Darwin.</p> + +<p>Of the quartette, William Cowper was by far the oldest; the other three +being contemporaries within a few years. He was born on 26th November +1731 at Great Berkhampstead. His father was a clergyman and a royal +chaplain, his mother one of the Norfolk Donnes. Her early death, and +that school discomfort which afterwards found vent in <i>Tirocinium</i>, +appear to have aggravated a natural melancholia; though after leaving +Westminster, and during his normal studies at both branches of the law, +he seems to have been cheerful enough. How what should have been the +making of his fortune,—his appointment as Clerk of the Journals to the +House of Lords,—not unassisted by religious mania, drove him through +sheer nervousness to attempt suicide, is one of the best known things in +English literary biography, as indeed are most of the few events of his +sad life,—owing partly to his own charming letters, partly to the +biographies of Southey and others. His latest days were his unhappiest, +and after years of more or less complete loss of reason he died on 27th +April 1800.</p> + +<p>It has been said that Cowper did not take to writing till late in life. +He had had literary friends—Churchill, Lloyd, and others—in youth, and +must always have had literary sympathies; but it was not till he was +nearly fifty, nor till the greater part of twenty years after his first +mental seizure, that he attempted composition at the instance of his +friend Newton and the Unwins.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> Beginning with hymns and trifles, he +before long undertook, at this or that person's suggestion, longer +poems, such as <i>Truth</i>, <i>The Progress of Error</i>, and <i>Expostulation</i>, +which were finished by 1781 and published next year, to be followed by +the still better and more famous <i>Task</i>, suggested to him by Lady +Austen. This appeared in 1785, and was very popular. He had already +begun to translate Homer, which occupied him for the greater part of +seven years. Nothing perhaps settled him more in the public affections +than "John Gilpin," the subject of which he also owed to Lady Austen; +and he continued to write occasional pieces of exquisite accomplishment. +Almost the last, if not actually the last, of these, written just before +the final obscuration of his faculties, was the beautiful and terrible +"Castaway," an avowed allegory of his own condition.</p> + +<p>Cowper, even more than most writers, deserves and requites consideration +under the double aspect of matter and form. In both he did much to alter +the generally accepted conditions of English poetry; and if his formal +services have perhaps received less attention than they merit, his +material achievements have never been denied. His disposition—in which, +by a common enough contrast, the blackest and most hopeless melancholy +was accompanied by the merriest and most playful humour—reflected +itself unequally in his verse, the lighter side chiefly being exhibited. +Except in "The Castaway," and a few—not many—of the hymns, Cowper is +the very reverse of a gloomy poet. His amiability, however, could also +pass into very strong moral indignation, and he endeavoured to give +voice to this in a somewhat novel kind of satire, more serious and +earnest than that of Pope, much less political and personal than that of +Dryden, lighter and more restrained than that of the Elizabethans. His +own unworldly disposition, together with the excessively retired life +which he had led since early manhood, rather damaged the chances of +Cowper as a satirist. We always feel that his censure wants actuality, +that it is an exercise rather than an experience. His efforts in it, +however, no doubt assisted, and were assisted by, that alteration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> of +the fashionable Popian couplet which, after the example partly of +Churchill and with a considerable return to Dryden, he attempted, made +popular, and handed on to the next generation to dis-Pope yet further. +This couplet, paralleled by a not wholly dissimilar refashioning of +blank verse, in which, though not deserting Milton, he beat out for +himself a scheme quite different from Thomson's, perhaps show at their +best in the descriptive matter of <i>The Task</i> and similar poems. It was +in these that Cowper chiefly displayed that faculty of "bringing back +the eye to the object" and the object to the eye, in which he has been +commonly and justly thought to be the great English restorer. Long +before the end of the Elizabethan period, poetical observation of nature +had ceased to be just; and, after substituting for justness the wildest +eccentricities of conceit, it went for a long time into another +extreme—that of copying and recopying certain academic +conventionalities, instead of even attempting the natural model. It is +not true, as Wordsworth and others have said, that Dryden himself could +not draw from the life. He could and did; but his genius was not +specially attracted to such drawing, his subjects did not usually call +for it, and his readers did not want it. It is not true that Thomson +could not "see"; nor is it true of all his contemporaries and immediate +followers that they were blind. But the eighteenth century had slipped +into a fault which was at least as fatal as that of the +Idealist-Impressionists of the seventeenth, or as that of the +Realist-Impressionists of our own time. The former neglected +universality in their hunt after personal conceits; the latter neglect +it in the endeavour to add nothing to rigidly elaborated personal +sensation. The one kind outstrips nature; the other comes short of art. +From Dryden to Cowper the fault was different from both of these. It +neglected the personal impression and the attention to nature too much. +It dared not present either without stewing them in a sauce of stock +ideas, stock conventions, stock words and phrases, which equally missed +the universal and the particular. Cowper and the other great men who +were his contemporaries by publication<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> if not by birth, set to work to +cure this fault. Even the weakest of them could never have been guilty +of such a passage as that famous one which Congreve (as clever a man as +any) wrote, and which Johnson (as clever a man as any) admired. The +sentiment which actuated them was, if we may trust Coleridge's account +of Boyer or Bowyer, the famous tyrant of Christ's Hospital, well +diffused. "'Nymph,' boy? You mean your nurse's daughter," puts in a +somewhat brutal and narrow form the correction which the time needed, +and which these four in their different ways applied.</p> + +<p>We have already glanced at the way in which Cowper applied it in his +larger poems: he did it equally well, and perhaps more tellingly, in his +smaller. The day on which a poet of no mean pretensions, one belonging +altogether to the upper classes of English society, and one whose lack +of university education mattered the less because the universities were +just then at their nadir, dared to write of the snake he killed</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And taught him never to come there no more"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>was an epoch-making day. Swift would have done it; but Swift was in many +ways a voice crying in the wilderness, and Swift was not, strictly +speaking, a poet at all. Byrom would have done it; but Byrom was +emphatically a minor poet. Cowper could—at least in and for his +day—boast the major afflatus, and Cowper did not disdain vernacular +truth. He never could have been vulgar; there is not in the whole range +of English literature quite such a gentleman in his own way as Cowper. +But he has escaped almost entirely from the genteel style—from the +notion of things as below the dignity of literature.</p> + +<p>His prose in this respect is at least equal to his verse, though, as it +was known much later, it has greater tendency than influence. All good +critics have agreed that his letters are not surpassed, perhaps not +surpassable. He has more freedom than Gray; he has none of the coxcombry +of Walpole and Byron; and there is no fifth name that can be put even +into competition with him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> Ease, correctness, facility of expression, +freedom from convention within his range, harmony, truth to nature, +truth to art:—these things meet in the hapless recluse of Olney as they +had not met for a century—perhaps as they had never met—in English +epistles. The one thing that he wanted was strength: as his madness was +melancholy, not raving, so was his sanity mild but not triumphant.</p> + +<p>George Crabbe was three and twenty years younger than Cowper, having +been born on Christmas Eve 1754. But his first publication, <i>The +Library</i>, the success of which was due to the generous and quick-sighted +patronage of Burke after the poet had wrestled with a hard youth, +coincided almost exactly with the first appearance of Cowper, and indeed +a little anticipated it. <i>The Village</i> appeared in 1783, and <i>The +Newspaper</i> in 1785, and then Crabbe (who had taken orders, had been +instituted to livings in the East of England, and had married, after a +long engagement, his first love) was silent for two and twenty years. He +began again in 1807 with <i>The Parish Register</i>. <i>The Borough</i>, his +greatest work, appeared in 1810. Shifting from the East of England to +the West in 1813, he spent the last twenty years of his long life at +Trowbridge in Wiltshire, and died in 1832 at the age of seventy-eight.</p> + +<p>The external (and, as will be presently remarked, something more than +the external) uniformity of his work is great, and its external +conformity to the traditions and expectations of the time at which it +first appeared is almost greater. A hasty judgment, and even one which, +though not hasty, is not very keen-sighted, might see little difference +between Crabbe and any poet from Pope to Goldsmith except the +innovators. He is all but constant to the heroic couplet—the Spenserian +introduction to <i>The Birth of Flattery</i>, the variously-grouped +octosyllabic quatrains of <i>Reflections</i>, <i>Sir Eustace Grey</i>, <i>The Hall +of Justice</i>, and <i>Woman</i>, with a few other deviations, being merely +islets among a wide sea of rhymed decasyllabics constituting at least +nineteen-twentieths of the poet's outpouring. Moreover, he was as a rule +constant, not merely to the couplet, but to what has been called the +"shut"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> couplet—the couplet more or less rigidly confined to itself, +and not overlapping. But he did sometimes overlap, and either in fealty +to Dryden, or from a secret feeling of the craving for freedom which his +more lawless contemporaries expressed in other ways, he reverted to the +Drydenian triplet and Alexandrine on which Pope had frowned. In Crabbe's +couplet, too, there is something which distinguishes it from almost all +others. This something varies very much in appeal. It is sometimes, nay, +too often, a rather ludicrous something, possessing a sort of awkward +prosaic "flop," which is excellently caricatured in <i>Rejected +Addresses</i>. But it always shows signs of a desire to throw the emphasis +with more variation than the icy uniformity of the Popian cadence +admitted; and it is sometimes curiously effective.</p> + +<p>Crabbe's position, independently of the strange gap in his publication +(which has been variously accounted for), is not a little singular. The +greater and the better part of his work was composed when the Romantic +revival was in full swing, but it shows little or no trace of the +influence of that revival in versification or diction. His earliest +attempts do indeed show the same reaction from Pope to Dryden (of whom +we know that he was an eager student) which is visible in Cowper and +Churchill; and throughout his work, both earlier and later, there is a +ruthless discarding of conventional imagery and a stern attention to the +realities of scenery and character. But Crabbe has none of the Grace of +the new dispensation, if he has some glimpses of its Law. He sails so +close to the wind of poetry that he is sometimes merely prosaic and +often nearly so. His conception of life is anti-idealist almost to +pessimism, and he has no fancy. The "jewels five words long" are not +his: indeed there clung to him a certain obscurity of expression which +Johnson is said to have good-naturedly smoothed out in his first work to +some extent, but from which he never got quite free. The extravagances +as well as the graces of the new poetry were quite alien from him; its +exotic tastes touched him not; its love for antiquity (though he knew +old English poetry by no means ill) seems to have left him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> wholly cold. +The anxieties and sufferings of lower and middle-class life, the +"natural death of love" (which, there seems some reason to fear, he had +experienced), the common English country scenery and society of his +time—these were his subjects, and he dealt with them in a fashion the +mastery of which is to this day a joy to all competent readers. No +writer of his time had an influence which so made for truth pure and +simple, yet not untouched by the necessary "disprosing" processes of +art. For Crabbe is not a mere realist; and whoso considers him as such +has not apprehended him. But he was a realist to this extent, that he +always went to the model and never to the pattern-drawing on the Academy +walls. And that was what his time needed. His general characteristics +are extremely uniform: even the external shape and internal +subject-matter of his poems are almost confined to the shape and matter +of the verse-tale. He need not, and indeed cannot, in a book like this, +be dealt with at much length. But he is a very great writer, and a most +important figure at this turning-point of English literature.</p> + +<p>Yet, however one may sympathise with Cowper, however much one may admire +Crabbe, it is difficult for any true lover of poetry not to feel the +sense of a "Pisgah sight," and something more, of the promised land of +poetry, in passing from these writers to William Blake and Robert Burns. +Here there is no more allowance necessary, except in the first case for +imperfection of accomplishment, in the second for shortness of life and +comparative narrowness of range. The quality and opportuneness of poetry +are in each case undeniable. Since the deaths of Herrick and Vaughan, +England had not seen any one who had the finer lyrical gifts of the poet +as Blake had them. Since the death of Dunbar, Scotland had not seen such +strength and intensity of poetic genius (joined in this case to a gift +of melody which Dunbar never had) as were shown by Burns. There was +scarcely more than a twelvemonth between their births; for Blake was +born in 1757 (the day appears not to be known), and Burns in January +1759. But Blake long outlived Burns, and did not die till 1828, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> +Burns was no more in July 1796. Neither the long life nor the short one +provided any events which demand chronicling here. Both poets were +rather fortunate in their wives, though Blake clave to Catherine Boucher +more constantly than Burns to his Jean. Neither was well provided with +this world's goods; Burns wearing out his short life in difficulties as +farmer and as excise-man, while all the piety of biographers has left it +something of a mystery how Blake got through his long life with no +better resources than a few very poorly paid private commissions for his +works of design, the sale of his hand-made books of poetry and prophecy, +and such occasional employment in engraving as his unconventional style +and his still more unconventional habits and temper allowed him to +accept or to keep. In some respects the two were different enough +according to commonplace standards, less so perhaps according to others. +The forty years of Burns, and the more than seventy of Blake, were +equally passed in a rapture; but morality has less quarrel with Blake, +who was essentially a "God-intoxicated man" and spent his life in one +long dream of art and prophecy, than with Burns, who was generally in +love, and not unfrequently in liquor. But we need no more either of +antithesis or of comparison: the purely literary matter calls us.</p> + +<p>It was in 1783—a date which, in its close approximation to the first +appearances of Crabbe and Cowper, makes the literary student think of +another group of first appearances in the early "eighties" of the +sixteenth century foreshadowing the outburst of Elizabethan +literature—that Blake's first book appeared. His <i>Poetical Sketches</i>, +now one of the rarest volumes of English poetry, was printed by +subscription among a literary coterie who met at the house of Mr. and +Mrs. Mathew; but the whole edition was given to the author. He had +avowedly taken little or no trouble to correct it, and the text is +nearly as corrupt as that of the <i>Supplices</i>; nor does it seem that he +took any trouble to make it "go off," nor that it did go off in any +appreciable manner. Yet if many ears had then been open to true poetical +music, some of them could not have mistaken sounds the like of which +had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> not, as has been said, been heard since the deaths of Herrick and +Vaughan. The merit of the contents is unequal to a degree not to be +accounted for by the mere neglect to prepare carefully for press, and +the influence of <i>Ossian</i> is, as throughout Blake's work, much more +prominent for evil than for good. But the chaotic play of <i>Edward the +Third</i> is not mere Elizabethan imitation; and at least half a dozen of +the songs and lyrical pieces are of the most exquisite quality—snatches +of Shakespeare or Fletcher as Shakespeare or Fletcher might have written +them in Blake's time. The finest of all no doubt is the magnificent "Mad +Song." But others—"How sweet I roamed from Field to Field" (the most +eighteenth century in manner, but showing how even that manner could be +strengthened and sweetened); "My Silks and Fine Array," beautiful, but +more like an Elizabethan imitation than most; "Memory Hither Come," a +piece of ineffable melody—these are things which at once showed Blake +to be free of the very first company of poets, to be a poet who for real +essence of poetry excelled everything the century had yet seen, and +everything, with the solitary exception of the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> at its +extreme end, that it was to see.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately it was not by any means as a poet that Blake regarded +himself. He knew that he was an artist, and he thought that he was a +prophet; and for the rest of his life, deviating only now and then into +engraving as a mere breadwinner, he devoted himself to the joint +cultivation of these two gifts, inventing for the purpose a method or +vehicle of publication excellently suited to his genius, but in other +respects hardly convenient. This method was to execute text and +illustrations at once on copper-plates, which were then treated in +slightly different fashions. Impressions worked off from these by +hand-press were coloured by hand, Blake and his wife executing the +entire process. In this fashion were produced the lovely little gems of +literature and design called <i>Songs of Innocence</i> (1789) and <i>Songs of +Experience</i> (1794); in this way for the most part, but with some +modifications, the vast and formidable mass of the so-called +"Prophetic"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> Books. With the artistic qualities of Blake we are not here +concerned, but it is permissible to remark that they resemble his +literary qualities with a closeness which at once explains and is +explained by their strangely combined method of production. That Blake +was not entirely sane has never been doubted except by a few fanatics of +mysticism, who seem to think that the denial of complete sanity implies +a complete denial of genius. And though he was never, in the common +phrase, "incapable of managing" such very modest affairs as were his, +the defect appears most in the obstinate fashion in which he refused to +perfect and co-ordinate his work. He could, when he chose and would give +himself the trouble, draw quite exquisitely; and he always drew with +marvellous vigour and imagination. But he would often permit himself +faults of drawing quite inexplicable and not very tolerable. So, too, +though he had the finest gift of literary expression, he chose often to +babble and still oftener to rant at large. Even the <i>Songs of Innocence +and Experience</i>—despite their double charm to the eye and the ear, and +the presence of such things as the famous "Tiger," as the two +"Introductions" (two of Blake's best things), and as "The Little Girl +Lost"—show a certain poetical declension from the highest heights of +the <i>Poetical Sketches</i>. The poet is no longer a poet pure and simple; +he has got purposes and messages, and these partly strangle and partly +render turbid the clear and spontaneous jets of poetry which refresh us +in the "Mad Song" and the "Memory." And after the <i>Songs</i> Blake did not +care to put forth anything bearing the ordinary form of poetry. We +possess indeed other poetical work of his, recovered in scraps and +fragments from MSS., and some of it is beautiful. But it is as a rule +more chaotic than the <i>Sketches</i> themselves; it is sometimes defaced +(being indeed mere private jottings never intended for print) by +personality and coarseness; and it is constantly puddled with the jargon +of Blake's mystical philosophy, which, borrowing some of its method from +Swedenborg and much of its imagery and nomenclature from <i>Ossian</i>, +spreads itself unhampered by any form whatever over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> Prophetic +Books. The literary merit of these in parts is often very high, and +their theosophy (for that is the best single word for it) is not seldom +majestic. But despite the attempts of some disciples to evolve a regular +system from them, students of philosophy as well as of literature are +never likely to be at much odds as to their real character. "Ravings" +they are not, and they are very often the reverse of "nonsense." But +they are the work of a man who in the first place was very slightly +acquainted with the literature and antecedents of his subject, who in +the second was distinctly <i>non compos</i> on the critical, though admirably +gifted on the creative side of his brain, and who in the third had the +ill luck to fall under the fullest sway of the Ossianic influence. To +any one who loves and admires Blake—and the present writer deliberately +ranks him as the greatest and most delectable poet of the eighteenth +century proper in England, reserving Burns as specially Scotch—it must +always be tempting to say more of him than can be allowed on such a +scale as the present; but the scale must be observed.</p> + +<p>There is all the more reason for the observance that Blake exercised on +the literary <i>history</i> of his time no influence, and occupied in it no +position. He always had a few faithful friends and patrons who kept him +from starvation by their commissions, admired him, believed in him, and +did him such good turns as his intensely independent and rather +irritable disposition would allow. But the public had little opportunity +of seeing his pictures, and less of reading his books; and though the +admiration of Lamb led to some appreciation from Southey and others, he +was practically an unread man. This cannot be said of Robert Burns, who, +born as was said a year or two after Blake, made his first literary +venture three years after him, in 1786. Most people know that the +publication, now famous and costly, called "the Kilmarnock Edition," was +originally issued in the main hope of paying the poet's passage to +Jamaica after an unfortunate youth of struggle, and latterly of +dissipation. Nay, even after the appearance of the <i>Poems</i> and their +welcome he still proposed to go abroad. He was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> summoned back to +Edinburgh to reprint them, to make a considerable profit by them, and to +be lionised without stint by the society of the Scottish capital. He +then settled down, marrying Jean Armour, at Ellisland in Dumfriesshire, +on a small farm and a post in the Excise, which, when his farming failed +and he moved to Dumfries itself, became his only regular means of +support. He might have increased this considerably by literature; but as +it was he actually gave away, or disposed of for trifling equivalents, +most of the exquisite songs which he wrote in his later years. These +years were unhappy. He hailed the French Revolution with a perfectly +innocent, because obviously ignorant, Jacobinism which, putting all +other considerations aside, was clearly improper in a salaried official +of the Crown, and thereby got into disgrace with the authorities, and +also with society in and about Dumfries. His habits of living, though +their recklessness has been vastly exaggerated, were not careful, and +helped to injure both his reputation and his health. Before long he +broke down completely, and died on the first of July 1796, his poetical +powers being to the very last in fullest perfection.</p> + +<p>Burns' work, which even in bulk—its least remarkable characteristic—is +very considerable when his short life and his unfavourable education and +circumstances are reckoned, falls at once into three sharply contrasted +sections. There are his poems in Scots; there are the verses that, in +obedience partly to the incompetent criticism of his time, partly to a +very natural mistake of ambition and ignorance, he tried to write in +conventional literary English; and there is his prose, taking the form +of more or less studied letters. The second class of the poems is almost +worthless, and fortunately it is not bulky. The letters are of unequal +value, and have been variously estimated. They show indeed that, like +almost all poets, he might, if choice and fate had united, have become a +very considerable prose-writer, and they have immense autobiographic +value. But they are sometimes, and perhaps often, written as much in +falsetto as the division of verse just ruled out; their artificiality +does not take very good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> models; and their literary attraction is +altogether second-rate. How far different the value of the Scots poems +is, four generations have on the whole securely agreed. The moral +discomfort of Principal Shairp, the academic distaste of Mr. Matthew +Arnold for a world of "Scotch wit, Scotch religion, and Scotch drink," +and the purely indolent and ignorant reluctance of others to grapple +with Scottish dialect, need not trouble the catholic critic much. The +two first may be of some use as cautions and drags; the third may be +thrown aside at once. Scots, though a dialect, is not a patois; it has a +great and continuous literature; it combines in an extraordinary degree +the consonant virtues of English and the vowel range of the Latin +tongues. It is true that Burns' range of subject, as distinct from that +of sound, was not extremely wide. He could give a voice to +passion—passion of war, passion of conviviality, passion above all of +love—as none but the very greatest poets ever have given or will give +it; he had also an extraordinary command of <i>genre</i>-painting of all +kinds, ranging from the merely descriptive and observant to the most +intensely satirical. Perhaps he could only do these two things—could +not be (as he certainly has not been) philosophical, deeply meditative, +elaborately in command of the great possibilities of nature, political, +moral, argumentative. But what an "only" have we here! It amounts to +this, that Burns could "only" seize, could "only" convey the charms of +poetical expression to, the more primitive thought and feeling of the +natural man, and that he could do this supremely. His ideas are—to use +the rough old Lockian division—ideas of sensation, not of reflection; +and when he goes beyond them he is sensible, healthy, respectable, but +not deep or high. In his own range there are few depths or heights to +which he has not soared or plunged.</p> + +<p>That he owed a good deal to his own Scottish predecessors, especially to +Ferguson, is not now denied; and his methods of composing his songs are +very different from those which a lesser man, using more academic forms, +could venture upon without the certainty of the charge of plagiarism. We +shall never understand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> Burns aright if we do not grasp the fact that he +was a "folk-poet," into whom the soul of a poet of all time and all +space had entered. In all times and countries where folk-poetry has a +genuine existence, its forms and expressions are much less the property +of the individual than of the race. The business of collecting ballads +is one of the most difficult and doubtful, not to say dangerous, open to +the amateur. But it is certain that any collector who was not a mere +simpleton would at once reject as spurious a version which he heard in +identically the same terms from two different subjects. He would know +that they must have got it from a printed or at least written source. +Now Burns is, if not our only example, our only example of the very +first quality, of the poet who takes existing work and hands it on +shaped to his own fashion. Not that he was not perfectly competent to do +without any existing canvas; while, when he had it, he treated it +without the very slightest punctilio. Of some of the songs which he +reshaped into masterpieces for Johnson and Thomson he took no more than +the air and measure; of others only the refrain or the first few lines; +of others again stanzas or parts of stanzas. But everywhere he has +stamped the version with something of his own—something thenceforward +inseparable from it, and yet characteristic of him. In the expression of +the triumph and despair of love, not sicklied over with any thought as +in most modern poets, only Catullus and Sappho can touch Burns. "Green +grow the Rashes O," "Yestreen I had a Pint of Wine," the farewell to +Clarinda, and the famous death-bed verses to Jessie Lewars, make any +advance on them impossible in point of spontaneous and unreflecting +emotion; while a thousand others (the number is hardly rhetorical) come +but little behind. "Willie brew'd a Peck o' Maut" in the same way rides +sovereign at the head of a troop of Bacchanalian verses; and the touches +of rhetoric and convention in "Scots wha hae" cannot spoil, can hardly +even injure it. To some it really seems that the much praised lines "To +Mary in Heaven" and others where the mood is less boisterous, show Burns +at less advantage, not because the kind is inferior, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> because he was +less at home in it; but it is almost impossible to praise too highly the +equally famous "Mouse," and some other things. It was in this tremendous +force of natural passion and affection, and in his simple observation of +common things, that Burns' great lesson for his age and country lay. +None even of the reformers had dared to be passionate as yet. In Cowper +indeed there was no passion except of religious despair, in Crabbe none +except that of a grim contemplation of the miseries and disappointments +of life, while although there was plenty of passion in Blake it had all +conveyed itself into the channel of mystical dreaming. It is a little +pathetic, and more than a little curious, to compare "The Star that +shines on Anna's Breast," the one approach to passionate expression of +Cowper's one decided love, with any one of a hundred outbursts of Burns, +sometimes to the very same name.</p> + +<p>The other division of the Poems, at the head of which stand <i>The Jolly +Beggars</i>, <i>Tam o' Shanter</i>, and <i>The Holy Fair</i>, exhibit an equal power +of vivid feeling and expression with a greater creative and observant +faculty, and were almost equally important as a corrective and +alterative to their generation. The age was not ill either at drama, at +manners-painting, or at satire; but the special kind of dramatic, +pictorial, and satiric presentation which Burns manifested was quite +unfamiliar to it and in direct contradiction to its habits and +crotchets. It had had a tendency to look only at upper and middle-class +life, to be conventional in its very indecorum, to be ironic, indirect, +parabolical. It admired the Dutch painters, it had dabbled in the +occult, it was Voltairian enough; but it had never dared to outvie +Teniers and Steen as in <i>The Jolly Beggars</i>, to blend naturalism and +<i>diablerie</i> with the overwhelming <i>verve</i> of <i>Tam o' Shanter</i>, to change +the jejune freethinking of two generations into an outspoken and +particular attack on personal hypocrisy in religion as in <i>Holy Willie's +Prayer</i> and <i>The Holy Fair</i>. Even to Scotsmen, we may suspect (or rather +we pretty well know, from the way in which Robertson and Blair, Hume and +Mackenzie, write), this burst of genial racy humour from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> the <i>terræ +filius</i> of Kilmarnock must have been somewhat startling; and it speaks +volumes for the amiable author of the <i>Man of Feeling</i> that, in the very +periodical where he was wont to air his mild Addisonian hobbies, he +should have warmly commended the Ayrshire ploughman.</p> + +<p>In a period where we have so many great or almost great names to notice, +it cannot be necessary to give the weakest writers of its weakest part +more than that summary mention which is at once necessary and sufficient +to complete the picture of the literary movement of the time. And this +is more especially the case with reference to the minor verse of the end +of the eighteenth century. The earliest work of the really great men who +re-created English poetry, though in some cases chronologically <i>in</i>, is +not in the least <i>of</i> it. For the rest, it would be almost enough to say +that William Hayley, the preface to whose <i>Triumphs of Temper</i> is dated +January 1781, and therefore synchronised very closely with the literary +appearance of Cowper, Crabbe, and Blake, was one of the most +conspicuous, and remains one of the most characteristic of them. +Hayley's personal relations with the first and last of these +poets—relations which have kept and will keep his name in some measure +alive long after the natural death of his verse—were in both cases +conditioned by circumstances in a rather trying way, but were not +otherwise than creditable to him. His verse itself is impossible and +intolerable to any but the student of literary history, who knows that +all things are possible, and finds the realisation of all in its measure +interesting. The heights, or at least the average levels, of Hayley may +be fairly taken from the following quotation:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Her lips involuntary catch the chime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And half articulate the soothing rhyme;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till weary thought no longer watch can keep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But sinks reluctant in the folds of sleep—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>of which it can only be said that any schoolboy could write it; his not +infrequent depths from the couplet:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Her airy guard prepares the softest down<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Peace's wing to line the nuptial crown.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>where the image of a guardian angel holding Peace with the firmness of +an Irish housewife, and plucking her steadily in order to line a nuptial +crown (which must have been a sort of sun-bonnet) with the down thereof, +will probably be admitted to be not easily surpassable. Of Hayley's +companions in song, I have been dispensed by my predecessor from +troubling myself with Erasmus Darwin, who was perhaps intellectually the +ablest of them, though the extreme absurdity of the scheme of his +<i>Botanic Garden</i> brought him, as the representative of the whole school, +under the lash of the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i> in never-dying lines. Darwin's +friend and townswoman, Anna Seward; Mrs. Barbauld, the author of the +noble lines, "Life, we've been long together"—the nobility of which is +rather in its sentiment than in its expression—and of much tame and +unimportant stuff; Merry, who called himself Della Crusca and gathered +round him the school of gosling imitators that drew on itself the lash +of Gifford; the Laureate Pye; and others who, less fortunate than the +victims of Canning and Frere, have suffered a second death in the +forgetting of the very satires in which they met their deserts, can be +barely named now. Two, however, may claim, if no great performance, a +remarkable influence on great performers. Dr. Sayers, a member of the +interesting Norwich school, directly affected Southey, and not Southey +only, by his unrhymed verse; while the sonnets of William Lisle Bowles, +now only to be read with a mild esteem by the friendliest critic most +conscious of the historic allowance, roused Coleridge to the wildest +enthusiasm and did much to form his poetic taste. To Bowles, and perhaps +to one or two others, we may find occasion to return hereafter.</p> + +<p>The satires, however, which have been more than once referred to in the +preceding paragraph, form a most important feature, and a perhaps almost +more important symptom, of the literary state of the time. They show, +indeed, that its weakness did not escape the notice of contemporaries; +but they also show that the very contemporaries who noticed it had +nothing better to give in the way of poetry proper than that which they +satirised.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> In fact, one of the chief of these satirists, Wolcot, has +left a considerable mass of not definitely satirical work which is +little if at all better than the productions of the authors he +lampooned.</p> + +<p>This very remarkable body of satirical verse, which extends from the +<i>Rolliad</i> and the early satires of Peter Pindar at the extreme beginning +of our present time to the <i>Pursuits of Literature</i> and the +<i>Anti-Jacobin</i> towards its close, was partly literary and partly +political, diverging indeed into other subjects, but keeping chiefly to +these two and intermixing them rather inextricably. The <i>Pursuits of +Literature</i>, though mainly devoted to the subject of its title, is also +to a great extent political; the <i>Rolliad</i> and the <i>Probationary Odes</i>, +intensely political, were also to no small extent literary. The chief +examples were among the most popular literary productions of the time; +and though few of them except the selected <i>Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin</i> +are now read, almost all the major productions deserve reading. The +great defect of contemporary satire—that it becomes by mere lapse of +time unintelligible—is obviated to no small extent here by the crotchet +(rather fortunate, though sometimes a little tedious) which these +writers, almost without exception, had for elaborate annotation. Of the +chief of them, already indicated more than once by reference or +allusion, some account may be given.</p> + +<p><i>The Rolliad</i> is the name generally given for shortness to a collection +of political satires originating in the great Westminster election of +1784, when Fox was the Whig candidate. It derived its name from a +Devonshire squire, Mr. Rolle, who was a great supporter of Pitt; and, +with the <i>Political Eclogues</i>, the mock <i>Probationary Odes</i> for the +laureateship (vacant by Whitehead's death), and the <i>Political +Miscellanies</i>, which closed the series, was directed against the young +Prime Minister and his adherents by a knot of members of Brooks' Club, +who are identified rather by tradition and assertion than by positive +evidence. Sheridan, Tierney, Burgoyne, Lord John Townshend, Burke's +brother Richard, and other public men probably or certainly contributed, +as did Ellis—afterwards to figure so conspicuously in the same way on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> +the other side. But the chief writers were a certain Dr. Lawrence, a +great friend of Burke, who was in a way the editor; Tickel, a descendant +of Addison's friend and a connection of the Sheridans; and another +Irishman named Fitzpatrick. The various "skits" of which the book or +series is composed show considerable literary skill, and there is a +non-political and extraneous interest in the fact that it contains some +<i>rondeaux</i> believed to be the only, or almost the only, examples of that +form written in England between Cotton in the seventeenth century and +the revival of it not very many years ago. The fun is often very good +fun, and there is a lightness and brightness about the verse and +phrasing which had been little seen in English since Prior. But the tone +is purely personal; there are no principles at stake, and the book, +besides being pretty coarse in tone, is a sort of object lesson in the +merely intriguing style of politics which had become characteristic of +England under the great seventy years' reign of the Whigs.</p> + +<p>Coarseness and personality, however, are in the <i>Rolliad</i> refined and +high-minded in comparison with the work of "Peter Pindar," which has the +redeeming merit of being even funnier, with the defect of being much +more voluminous and unequal. John Wolcot was a Devonshire man, born in +May 1738 at Kingsbridge, or rather its suburb Dodbrooke, in Devonshire. +He was educated as a physician, and after practising some time at home +was taken by Sir William Trelawney to Jamaica. Here he took orders and +received a benefice; but when he returned to England after Trelawney's +death he practically unfrocked himself and resumed the cure of bodies. +Although he had dabbled both in letters and in art, it was not till 1782 +that he made any name; and he did it then by the rather unexpected way +of writing poetical satires in the form of letters to the members of the +infant Royal Academy. From this he glided into satire of the political +kind, which, however, though he was a strong Whig and something more, +did not so much devote itself to the attack or support of either of the +great parties as to personal lampoons on the king,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> his family, and his +friends. Neither Charles the Second at the hands of Marvell, nor George +the Fourth at the hands of Moore, received anything like the steady fire +of lampoon which Wolcot for years poured upon the most harmless and +respectable of English monarchs. George the Third had indeed no +vices,—unless a certain parsimony may be dignified by that name,—but +he had many foibles of the kind that is more useful to the satirist than +even vice. Wolcot's extreme coarseness, his triviality of subject, and a +vulgarity of thought which is quite a different thing from either, are +undeniable. But <i>The Lousiad</i> (a perfect triumph of cleverness expended +on what the Greeks called rhyparography), the famous pieces on George +and the Apple Dumplings and on the King's visit to Whitbread's Brewery, +with scores of other things of the same kind (the best of all, perhaps, +being the record of the Devonshire Progress), exhibit incredible +felicity and fertility in the lower kinds of satire. This satire Wolcot +could apply with remarkable width of range. His artistic satires (and it +must be admitted that he had not bad taste here) have been noticed. He +riddled the new devotion to physical science in the unlucky person of +Sir Joseph Banks; the chief of his literary lampoons, a thing which is +quite a masterpiece in its way, is his "Bozzy and Piozzi," wherein +Boswell and Mrs. Thrale are made to string in am[oe]bean fashion the +most absurd or the most laughable of their respective reminiscences of +Johnson into verses which, for lightness and liveliness of burlesque +representation, have hardly a superior. Until the severe legislation +which followed the Jacobin terror in France cowed him, and to some +extent even subsequently, Wolcot maintained a sort of Ishmaelite +attitude, by turns attacking and defending himself against men of +eminence in literature and politics, after a fashion the savagery +whereof was excused sometimes by its courage and nearly always by an +exuberant good-humour which both here and elsewhere accompanies very +distinct ill-nature. His literary life in London covered about a quarter +of a century, after which, losing his sight, he retired once more to the +West, though he is said to have died at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Somers Town in 1819. The best +edition of his works is in five good-sized volumes, but it is known not +to be complete.</p> + +<p>Both the <i>Rolliad</i> men and Wolcot had been on the Whig, Wolcot almost on +the Republican side; and for some years they had met with no sufficient +adversaries, though Gifford soon engaged "Peter" on fairly equal terms. +The great revulsion of feeling, however, which the acts of the French +Revolution induced among Englishmen generally drew on a signal rally on +the Tory part. The <i>Anti-Jacobin</i> newspaper, with Gifford as its editor, +and Canning, Ellis (now a convert), and Frere as its chief contributors, +not merely had at its back the national sentiment and the official +power, but far outstripped in literary vigour and brilliancy the +achievements of the other side. The famous collection above referred to, +<i>The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin</i>, which has been again and again +reprinted, shows no signs of losing its attraction,—a thing almost +unparalleled in the case of satirical work nearly a century old. Its +very familiarity makes it unnecessary to dwell much on it, but it is +safe to say that nothing of the kind more brilliant has ever been +written, or is very likely ever to be written, than the parodies of +Southey's Sapphics and "Henry Martin" sonnet, the litany of the +Jacobins, French and English, the "skits" on Payne Knight and Darwin, +<i>The Rovers</i>,—mocking the new German sentimentalism and +mediævalism,—and the stately satire of "The New Morality,"—where, +almost alone, the writers become serious, and reach a height not +attained since Dryden.</p> + +<p>Gifford and Mathias differ from the others just mentioned in being less +directly political in writing and inspiration, though Gifford at least +was a strong politician. He was, like Wolcot, a Devonshire man, born at +Ashburton in 1757, and, as his numerous enemies and victims took care +often to remind him, of extremely humble birth and early breeding, +having been a shoemaker's apprentice. Attracting attention as a clever +boy, he was sent to Exeter College and soon attained to influential +patronage. To do him justice, however, he made his reputation by the +work of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> own hand,—his satires of <i>The Baviad</i>, 1794, and <i>The +Mæviad</i> next year, attacking and pretty nearly extinguishing Merry and +his Della Cruscans, a set of minor bards and mutual admirers who had +infested the magazines and the libraries for some years.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The +<i>Anti-Jacobin</i> and the editing of divers English classics put Gifford +still higher; and when the <i>Quarterly Review</i> was established in +opposition to the <i>Edinburgh</i>, his appointment (1809) to the editorship, +which he held almost till his death (he gave it up in 1824 and died in +1826), completed his literary position. Gifford is little read nowadays, +and a name which was not a very popular one even on his own side during +his lifetime has, since the triumph of the politics and of some of the +literary styles which he opposed, become almost a byword for savage and +unfair criticism. The penalty of unfairness is usually and rightly paid +in kind, and Gifford has paid it very amply. The struggles of his youth +and lifelong ill-health no doubt aggravated a disposition at no time +very sweet; and the feuds of the day, both literary and political, were +apt to be waged, even by men far superior to Gifford in early and +natural advantages, with the extremest asperity and without too much +scruple. But Gifford is perhaps our capital example in English of a cast +of mind which is popularly identified with that of the critic, though in +truth nothing is more fatal to the attainment of the highest critical +competence. It was apparently impossible for him (as it has been, and, +it would seem, is for others,) to regard the author whom he was +criticising, the editor who had preceded him in his labours, or the +adversary with whom he was carrying on a polemic, as anything but a +being partly idiotic and partly villainous, who must be soundly scolded, +first for having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> done what he did, and secondly to prevent him from +doing it again. So ingrained was this habit in Gifford that he could +refrain from indulging it, neither in editing the essays of his most +distinguished contributors, nor in commenting on the work of these +contributors, outside the periodicals which he directed. Yet he was a +really useful influence in more ways than one. The service that he did +in forcibly suppressing the Della Cruscan nuisance is even yet admitted, +and there has been plentiful occasion, not always taken, for similar +literary <i>dragonnades</i> since. And his work as an editor of English +classics was, blemishes of manner and temper excepted, in the main very +good work.</p> + +<p>Thomas James Mathias, the author of <i>The Pursuits of Literature</i>, was a +much nearer approach to the pedant pure and simple. For he did not, like +Gifford, redeem his rather indiscriminate attacks on contemporaries by a +sincere and intelligent devotion to older work; and he was, much more +than Gifford, ostentatious of such learning as he possessed. Accordingly +the immense popularity of his only book of moment is a most remarkable +sign of the times. De Quincey, who had seen its rise and its fall, +declares that for a certain time, and not a very short one, at the end +of the last century and the beginning of this, <i>The Pursuits of +Literature</i> was the most popular book of its own day, and as popular as +any which had appeared since; and that there is not very much hyperbole +in this is proved by its numerous editions, and by the constant +references to it in the books of the time. Colman, who was one of +Mathias' victims, declared that the verse was a "peg to hang the notes +on"; and the habit above referred to certainly justified the gibe to no +small extent. If the book is rather hard reading nowadays (and it is +certainly rather difficult to recognise in it even the "demon of +originality" which De Quincey himself grants rather grudgingly as an +offset to its defects of taste and scholarship), it is perhaps chiefly +obscured by the extreme desultoriness of the author's attacks and the +absence of any consistent and persistent target. Much that Mathias +reprehends in Godwin and Priestley, in Colman and Wolcot, and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> whole +crowd of lesser men, is justifiably censured; much that he lays down is +sound and good enough. But the whole—which, after the wont of the time, +consists of several pieces jointed on to each other and all flooded with +notes—suffers from the twin vices of negation and divagation. Indeed, +its chief value is that, both by its composition and its reception, it +shows the general sense that literature was not in a healthy state, and +that some renaissance, some reaction, was necessary.</p> + +<p>The prominence of the French Revolution, which has already appeared more +than once in the above account of late eighteenth century poetry, is +still more strongly reflected in the prose writing of the period. +Indeed, many of its principal writers devoted their chief attention +either to describing, to attacking, or to defending the events and +principles of this portentous phenomenon. The chief of them were John +Moore, Arthur Young, Helen Maria Williams, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, +Richard Price, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Holcroft. Of these Price, +a veteran who had nearly reached his sixtieth year when our period +commences, chiefly belongs to literature as an antagonist of Burke, as +does Priestley, whose writing was very extensive, but who was as much +more a "natural philosopher" than a man of letters as Price was much +less a man of letters than a moralist and a statistician. Both, +moreover, have been mentioned in the preceding volume, and it is not +necessary to say much about them, or about John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), +philologist and firebrand.</p> + +<p>Of the others something may, and in some cases not a little must, +appear. Dr. John Moore, sometimes called "Zeluco" Moore (from his most +popular book), and father of the general who fell at Corunna, was born +at Stirling in the winter of 1729-30. Studying medicine at Glasgow, he +was apprenticed (as Smollett had been earlier) to Dr. John Gordon, and +entered the army as surgeon's mate for the Laufeldt campaign. He then +lived two years in Paris, perfecting himself in medicine, after which he +established himself in Glasgow. After many years' practice there, he +accompanied the young Duke of Hamilton on various travels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> through +Europe, and in 1778 settled in London. This was his headquarters for the +rest of his life, till his death at Richmond on 21st January 1803. The +chief interruption to his residence there was his memorable journey with +Lord Lauderdale to Paris in the latter half of 1792, which resulted in +one of the most vivid and trustworthy accounts by an eyewitness of the +opening scenes of the Terror. This <i>Journal during a Residence in +France</i> was published during the next two years. But Moore had earlier +than this, though not very early in his own life, become an author. His +<i>View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany</i>, the +result of his journeyings with the Duke, appeared in 1779, with a +continuation relating to Italy two years later; and in 1786 he published +his one famous novel <i>Zeluco</i>. After the <i>Journal</i> he returned to novel +writing in <i>Edward</i> (1796) and <i>Mordaunt</i> (1800)—books by no means +contemptible, but suffering from the want of a central interest and of a +more universal grasp of character and manners. He contributed a Life of +Smollett and an Essay on Romance to an edition of his friend's works in +1797. One or two medical books also stand to his credit, while he had +rather unadvisedly added to his admirable <i>Journal</i> a <i>View of the +Causes of the French Revolution</i> which is not worthy of it. His complete +works fill seven volumes.</p> + +<p>Of these, the earlier travels are readable enough, and sometimes very +noteworthy in matter. It is almost enough to say that they contain some +of the latest accounts by an Englishman of France while it was still +merry, and of Venice while it was still independent; an early picture of +Alpine travel; very interesting personal sketches of Voltaire and +Frederick the Great; and one memorable passage (remembered and borrowed +by Scott in <i>Redgauntlet</i>) telling how at Florence the shadow of Prince +Charlie, passing the Duke of Hamilton in the public walks, fixed his +eyes earnestly on the Duke, as though saying, "Our ancestors were better +acquainted." <i>Zeluco</i> and the <i>Journal</i> alone deserve much attention +from any one but a professed student of literature. The value of the +latter has been admitted by all competent authorities, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> it is +enhanced by the fact that Moore was a strong Whig, and was even accused +by some zealots of favouring Jacobinism. His picture, therefore, of the +way in which political revolution glides into ethical anarchy is +certainly unbiassed the other way. Of <i>Zeluco</i> everybody, without +perhaps a very clear knowledge of its authorship, knows one passage—the +extremely humorous letter containing the John Bull contempt of the +sailor Dawson for the foolish nation which clothes its troops in "white, +which is absurd, and blue, which is only fit for the artillery and the +blue horse." But few know much more, though there is close by a much +more elaborate and equally good piece of Smollettian fun in the quarrel +of Buchanan and Targe, the Scotch Whig and Jacobite, over the reputation +of Queen Mary. The book, however, besides the unlucky drawback that +almost all its interest lies in the latter part, has for hero a sort of +lifeless monster of wickedness, who is quite as uninteresting as a +faultless one, and shows little veracity of character except in the +minor personages and episodes. In these, and indeed throughout Moore's +work, there is a curious mixture of convention with extreme shrewdness, +of somewhat commonplace expression with a remarkably pregnant and +humorous conception. But he lacks concentration and finish, and is +therefore never likely to be much read again as a whole.</p> + +<p>There may appear to be some slight inconsistency in giving a paragraph, +if only a short one, to Arthur Young where distinct mention has been +refused to Price and Priestley. But Olivier de Serres has secured a +place in all histories of French literature as a representative of +agricultural writing, and Young is our English Serres. Moreover, his +<i>Survey of France</i> has permanent attraction for its picture of the state +of that country just before, and in the earliest days of, the +Revolution. And though his writing is extremely incorrect and unequal, +though its literary effect is much injured by the insertion of +statistical details which sometimes turn it for pages together into a +mere set of tables, he has constant racy phrases, some of which have +passed into the most honourable state of all—that of unidentified +quotation—while more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> deserve it. He was born in 1741, the son of a +Suffolk clergyman, was connected by marriage with the Burneys, and very +early developed the passion for agricultural theory and practice which +marked his whole life, even when in his later years (he lived till 1820) +he fell under the influence of religious crotchets. His French travels +were published in 1792-94, and form by far his most attractive book, +though his surveys of England and Ireland contain much that is good. +Young was a keen, though not a very consistent or clear-sighted +politician, especially on the side of political economy. But, like other +men of his time, he soon fell away from his first love for the French +Revolution. In the literary, historical, and antiquarian associations of +the places he visited, he seems to have felt no interest whatever.</p> + +<p>Helen Maria Williams, with Young and Moore, is our chief English witness +for the state of France and Paris just before and during the early years +of the Revolution. She was one of Johnson's girl pets in his latest +years, but Boswell is certainly justified in suggesting that if the sage +had lived a little longer he would certainly not have repeated his +elegant compliment: "If I am so ill when you are near, what should I be +when you are away?" She outlived this phase also of her life, and did +not die till 1828, being then sixty-five. Even in the early days she had +been a Girondist, not a Jacobin; but she happened to live in Paris +during the outbreak of the Revolution, wrote <i>Letters from France</i>, +which had a great popularity, and was hand in glove with most of the +English and Irish revolutionary leaders. Wolfe Tone in his diary speaks +of her as "Miss Jane Bull completely," but neither prudery nor +patriotism would have struck persons less prejudiced than the leader of +the United Irishmen as the leading points of Helen Maria. Her poems, +published in 1786, during her pre-revolutionary days, are dedicated to +Queen Charlotte, and nearly half the first of the two pretty little +volumes (which have a horrific frontispiece of the Princes in the Tower, +by Maria Cosway) is occupied by a stately list of subscribers, with the +Prince of Wales at their head. They have little merit, but are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> not +uninteresting for their "signs of the times": sonnets, a tale called +<i>Edwin and Eltruda</i>, an address to Sensibility, and so forth. But the +longest, <i>Peru</i>, is in the full eighteenth century couplet with no sign +of innovation. The <i>Letters from France</i>, which extend to eight volumes, +possess, besides the interest of their subject, the advantage of a more +than fair proficiency on the author's part in the formal but not +ungraceful prose of her time, neither unduly Johnsonian nor in any way +slipshod. But it may perhaps be conceded that, but for the interest of +the subject, they would not be of much importance.</p> + +<p>The most distinguished members of the Jacobin school, from the literary +point of view, were Thomas Paine and William Godwin. Paine was only a +literary man by accident. He was born at Thetford on 29th January 1737, +in the rank of small tradesman, and subsequently became a custom-house +officer. But he lost his place for debt and dubious conduct in 1774, and +found a more congenial home in America, where he defended the rebellion +of the Colonies in a pamphlet entitled <i>Common Sense</i>. His new +compatriots rewarded him pretty handsomely, and after about a dozen +years he returned to Europe, visiting England, which, however, he left +again very shortly (it is said owing to the persuasion of Blake), just +in time to escape arrest. He had already made friends in France, and his +publication of <i>The Rights of Man</i> (1791-92), in answer to Burke's +attack on the Revolution, made him enormously popular in that country. +He was made a French citizen, and elected by the Pas de Calais to the +Convention. His part here was not discreditable. He opposed the King's +execution, and, being expelled the Convention and imprisoned by the +Jacobins, wrote his other notorious work, <i>The Age of Reason</i> (1794-95), +in which he maintained the Deist position against both Atheism and +Christianity. He recovered his liberty and his seat, and was rather a +favourite with Napoleon. In 1802 he went back to America, and died there +(a confirmed drunkard it is said and denied) seven years later. A few +years later still, Cobbett, in one of his sillier moods, brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> +Paine's bones back to England, which did not in the least want them.</p> + +<p>The coarse and violent expression, as well as the unpopular matter, of +Paine's works may have led to his being rather unfairly treated in the +hot fights of the Revolutionary period; but the attempts which have +recently been made to whitewash him are a mere mistake of reaction, or +paradox, or pure stupidity. The charges which used to be brought against +his moral character matter little; for neither side in these days had, +or in any days has, a monopoly of loose or of holy living. But two facts +will always remain: first, that Paine attacked subjects which all +require calm, and some of them reverent, treatment, in a tone of the +coarsest violence; and, secondly, that he engaged in questions of the +widest reach, and requiring endless thought and reading, with the scanty +equipments and the superabundant confidence of a self-educated man. No +better instance of this latter characteristic could be produced or +required than a sentence in the preface to the second part of the <i>Age +of Reason</i>. Here Paine (who admitted that he had written the first part +hastily, in expectation of imprisonment, without a library, and without +so much as a copy of the Scriptures he was attacking at hand, and who +further confessed that he knew neither Hebrew nor Greek nor even Latin) +observes: "I have produced a work that no Bible-believer, though writing +at his ease and with a library of Church books about him, can refute." +In this charming self-satisfaction, which only natural temper assisted +by sufficient ignorance can attain in perfection, Paine strongly +resembles his disciple Cobbett. But the two were also alike in the +effect which this undoubting dogmatism, joined to a very clear, simple, +and forcible style, less correct in Paine's case than in Cobbett's, +produced upon readers even more ignorant than themselves, and greatly +their inferiors in mental strength and literary skill. Paine, indeed, +was as much superior to Cobbett in logical faculty as he was his +inferior in range of attainments and charm of style; while his ignorance +and his arbitrary assumption and exclusion of premises passed unnoticed +by the classes whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> he more particularly addressed. He was thus among +the lower and lower middle classes by far the most formidable propagator +of anarchist ideas in religion and politics that England produced; and +his influence lasted till far into the present century, being, it is +said, only superseded by new forms of a similar spirit. But he never +could have had much on persons of education, unless they were prepared +to sympathise with him, or were of singularly weak mind.</p> + +<p>William Godwin, on the other hand, affected the "educated persons," and +those of more or less intellectual power, even more forcibly than Paine +affected the vulgar. This influence of his, indeed, is a thing almost +unique, and it has perhaps never yet been succinctly examined and +appraised. Born at Wisbech in 1756, the son of a dissenting minister, he +himself was thoroughly educated for the Presbyterian ministry, and for +some five years discharged its functions. Then in 1783 (again the +critical period) he became unorthodox in theology, and took to +literature, addicting himself to Whig politics. He also did a certain +amount of tutoring. It was not, however, till nearly ten years after he +had first taken to writing that he made his mark, and attained the +influence above referred to by a series of works rather remarkably +different in character. 1793 saw the famous <i>Inquiry concerning +Political Justice</i>, which for a time carried away many of the best and +brightest of the youth of England. Next year came the equally famous and +more long-lived novel of <i>Caleb Williams</i>, and an extensive criticism +(now much forgotten, but at the time of almost equal importance with +these), published in the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, of the charge of Lord +Chief-Justice Eyre in the trial of Horne Tooke, Holcroft, and others for +high treason. Godwin himself ran some risk of prosecution; and that he +was left unmolested shows that the Pitt government did not strain its +powers, as is sometimes alleged. In 1797 he published <i>The Enquirer</i>, a +collection of essays on many different subjects; and in 1799 his second +remarkable novel (it should be said that in his early years of struggle +he had written others which are quite forgotten)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> <i>St. Leon</i>. The +closing years of the period also saw first his connection and then his +marriage with Mary Wollstonecraft, who will be noticed immediately after +him.</p> + +<p>It is rather curious that Godwin, who was but forty-four at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and continued to be a diligent +writer as well as a publisher and bookseller till his death in 1836, his +last years being made comfortable by a place under the Reform Ministry, +never did anything really good after the eighteenth century had closed. +His tragedy <i>Antonio</i> only deserves remembrance because of Lamb's +exquisite account of its damnation. His <i>Life of Chaucer</i> (1801) was one +of the earliest examples of that style of padding and guesswork in +literary biography with which literature has been flooded since. His +later novels—<i>Fleetwood</i>, <i>Mandeville</i>, <i>Cloudesley</i>, etc.—are far +inferior to <i>Caleb Williams</i> (1794) and <i>St. Leon</i> (1799). His <i>Treatise +of Population</i> (1820), in answer to Malthus, was belated and +ineffective; and his <i>History of the Commonwealth</i>, in four volumes, +though a very respectable compilation, is nothing more. Godwin's +character was peculiar, and cannot be said to be pleasing. Though +regarded (or at least described) by his enemies as an apostle of +license, he seems to have been a rather cold-blooded person, whose one +passion for Mary Wollstonecraft was at least as much an affair of the +head as of the heart. He was decidedly vain, and as decidedly priggish; +but the worst thing about him was his tendency to "sponge"—a tendency +which he indulged not merely on his generous son-in-law Shelley, but on +almost everybody with whom he came in contact. It is, however, fair to +admit that this tendency (which was probably a legacy of the patronage +system) was very wide-spread at the time; that the mighty genius of +Coleridge succumbed to it to a worse extent even than Godwin did; and +that Southey himself, who for general uprightness and independence has +no superior in literary history, was content for years to live upon the +liberality not merely of an uncle, but of a school comrade, in a way +which in our own days would probably make men of not half his moral +worth seriously uncomfortable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> + +<p>Estimates of the strictly formal excellence of Godwin's writing have +differed rather remarkably. To take two only, his most recent +biographer, Mr. Kegan Paul, is never weary of praising the "beauty" of +Godwin's style; while Scott, a very competent and certainly not a very +savage critic, speaks of the style of the Chaucer as "uncommonly +depraved, exhibiting the opposite defects of meanness and of bombast." +This last is too severe; but I am unable often to see the great beauty, +the charm, and so forth, which Godwin's admirers have found in his +writings. He shows perhaps at his best in this respect in <i>St. Leon</i>, +where there are some passages of a rather artificial, but solemn and +grandiose beauty; and he can seldom be refused the praise of a capable +and easily wielded fashion of writing, equally adapted to exposition, +description, and argument. But that Godwin's taste and style were by no +means impeccable is proved by his elaborate essay on the subject in the +<i>Enquirer</i>, where he endeavours to show that the progress of English +prose-writing had been one of unbroken improvement since the time of +Queen Elizabeth, and pours contempt on passages of Shakespeare and +others where more catholic appreciation could not fail to see the +beauty. In practice his special characteristic, which Scott (or Jeffrey, +for the criticism appeared in the <i>Edinburgh</i>) selected for special +reprobation in the context of the passage quoted above, was the +accumulation of short sentences, very much in the manner of which, in +the two generations since his death, Macaulay and the late Mr. J. R. +Green, have been the chief exponents. Hazlitt probably learnt this from +Godwin; and I think there is no doubt that Macaulay learnt it from +Hazlitt.</p> + +<p>It may, however, be freely admitted that whatever Godwin had to say was +at least likely not to be prejudicially affected by the manner in which +he said it. And he had, as we have seen, a great deal to say in a great +many kinds. The "New Philosophy," as it was called, of the <i>Political +Justice</i> was to a great extent softened, if not positively retracted, in +subsequent editions and publications; but its quality as first set forth +accounts both for the conquest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> which it, temporarily at least, obtained +over such minds as those of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and for the horror +with which it was regarded elsewhere. Godwin's system was not too +consistent, and many of its parts were borrowed more or less directly +from others: from Locke, from Hume, from the French materialists, from +Jonathan Edwards, and, by way of reaction as well as imitation, from +Rousseau. But Godwin's distinctive claim, if not exactly glory, is that +he was the first systematic Anarchist. His cardinal principle was that +government in itself, and with all its consequences of law, restriction, +punishment, etc., is bad, and to be got rid of. He combined this +(logically enough) with perfectibilism—supposing the individual to be +infinitely susceptible of "melioration" by the right use of reason—and +(rather illogically) with necessarianism. In carrying out his views he +not only did not hesitate at condemning religion, marriage, and all +other restrictions of the kind, but indulged in many curious crotchets +as to the uselessness, if not mischievousness, of gratitude and other +sentiments generally considered virtuous. The indefinite development of +the individual by reason and liberty, and the general welfare of the +community at large, were the only standards that he admitted. And it +should be said, to his credit, that he condemned the use of violence and +physical force <i>against</i> government quite as strongly as their use <i>by</i> +government. The establishment of absolute liberty, in the confidence +that it will lead to absolute happiness, was, at first at any rate, the +main idea of the <i>Political Justice</i>, and it is easy to understand what +wild work it must have made with heads already heated by the +thunder-weather of change that was pervading Europe.</p> + +<p>Godwin has been frequently charged with alarm at the anarchist phantom +he had raised. It is certain not merely that he altered and softened the +<i>Political Justice</i> not a little, but that in his next work of the same +kind, <i>The Enquirer</i>, he took both a very different line of +investigation and a different tone of handling. In the preface he +represents it as a sort of inductive complement to the high <i>a priori</i> +scheme of his former work; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> this is not a sufficient account of the +matter. It is true that his paradoxical rebellion against conventions +appears here and there; and his literary criticism, which was never +strong, may be typified by his contrast of the "hide-bound sportiveness" +of Fielding with the "flowing and graceful hilarity" of Sterne. Indeed, +this sentence takes Godwin's measure pretty finally, and shows that he +was of his age, not for all time. But, on the other hand, it is fair to +say that the essays on "The Study of the Classics" and the "Choice of +Reading," dealing with subjects on which, both then and since, oceans of +cant and nonsense have been poured forth, are nearly as sound as they +can be.</p> + +<p>In his purely imaginative work he presents a contrast not much less +strange. We may confine attention here to the two capital examples of +it. <i>Caleb Williams</i> alone has survived as a book of popular reading, +and it is no small tribute to its power that, a full century after its +publication, it is still kept on sale in sixpenny editions. Yet on no +novel perhaps is it so difficult to adjust critical judgment, either by +the historical or the personal methods. Both its general theme—the +discovery of a crime committed by a man of high reputation and unusual +moral worth, and the persecution of the discoverer by the criminal—and +its details, are thoroughly leavened and coloured by Godwin's political +and social views at the time; and either this or some other defect has +made it readable with great difficulty at all times by some persons, +among whom I am bound to enrol myself. Yet the ingenuity of its +construction, in spite of the most glaring impossibilities, the striking +situations it contains, and no doubt other merits, have always secured +readers for it. <i>St. Leon</i>, a romance of the <i>elixir vitæ</i>, has no +corresponding central interest, and, save in the amiable but very +conventional figure of the heroine Marguerite, who is said to have been +studied from Mary Wollstonecraft, no interest of character; while its +defects of local colour and historical truth are glaring. But Godwin, +who was in so many ways a mirror of the new thought of the time, had +caught by anticipation something of its nascent spirit of romance. He is +altogether a rather puzzling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> person; and perhaps the truest explanation +of the puzzle, as well as certainly the most comfortable to the critic, +is that his genius and literary temperament were emphatically crude and +undeveloped, that he was a prophet rather than anything else, and that +he had the incoherencies and the inconsistencies almost inseparable from +prophecy.</p> + +<p>Even if fate and metaphysical aid had not conjoined Godwin and Mary +Wollstonecraft in the closest bond possible between man and woman, it +would have been proper to mention their names together as authors. For +as Godwin's "New Philosophy" was the boldest attempt made by any man of +the time in print to overthrow received conventions of the relations of +man to man, and incidentally of man to woman, so was his wife's +<i>Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> a complement of it in relation to +the status of the other sex as such. She was rather hardly treated in +her own time; Horace Walpole calling her, it is said (I have not +verified the quotation), a "hyena in petticoats": it would be at least +as just to call Lord Orford a baboon in breeches. And though of late +years she has been made something of a heroine, it is to be feared that +admiration has been directed rather to her crotchets than to her +character. This last appears to have been as lovable as her hap was ill. +The daughter of an Irishman of means, who squandered them and became a +burden on his children; the sister of an attorney who was selfishly +indifferent to his sisters—she had to fend for herself almost entirely. +At one time she and her sisters kept school; then she was, thanks to the +recommendation of Mr. Prior, a master at Eton, introduced as governess +to the family of Lord Kingsborough; then, after doing hack-work for +Johnson, the chief Liberal publisher of the period, she went to Paris, +and unluckily fell in with a handsome scoundrel, Gilbert Imlay, an +American soldier. She lived with him, he deserted her, and she nearly +committed the suicide which was actually the fate of her unfortunate +daughter by him, Fanny Imlay or Godwin. Only at the last had she a +glimpse of happiness. Godwin, who had some weaknesses, but who was not a +scoundrel, met her, and fell in love with her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and as both had +independently demonstrated that marriage was a failure, they naturally +married; but she died a week after giving birth to a daughter—the +future Mrs. Shelley. The <i>Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i>, on which +Mary Wollstonecraft's fame as an author almost wholly rests, is in some +ways a book nearly as faulty as it can be. It is not well written; it is +full of prejudices quite as wrong-headed as those it combats; it shows +very little knowledge either of human nature or of good society; and its +"niceness," to use the word in what was then its proper sense, often +goes near to the nasty. But its protest on the one hand against the +"proper" sentimentality of such English guides of female youth as Drs. +Fordyce and Gregory, on the other against the "improper" sentimentality +of Rousseau, is genuine and generous. Many of its positions and +contentions may be accepted unhesitatingly to-day by those who are by no +means enamoured of advanced womanhood; and Mary, as contrasted with most +of her rights-of-women followers, is curiously free from bumptiousness +and the general qualities of the virago. She had but ill luck in life, +and perhaps showed no very good judgment in letters, but she had neither +bad brains nor bad blood; and the references to her, long after her +death, by such men as Southey, show the charm which she exercised.</p> + +<p>With Godwin also is very commonly connected Thomas Holcroft (or, as Lamb +always preferred to spell the name, "<i>Ould</i>craft"), a curiosity of +literature and a rather typical figure of the time. Holcroft was born in +London in December 1745, quite in the lowest ranks, and himself rose +from being stable-boy at Newmarket, through the generally democratic +trade of shoemaking, to quasi-literary positions as schoolmaster and +clerk, and then to the dignity of actor. He was about thirty-five when +he first began regular authorship; and during the rest of his life he +wrote four novels, some score and a half of plays, and divers other +works, none of which is so good as his Autobiography, published after +his death by Hazlitt, and said to be in part that writer's work. It +would have been fortunate for Holcroft if he had confined himself to +literature; for some of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> his plays, notably <i>The Road to Ruin</i>, brought +him in positively large sums of money, and his novels were fairly +popular. But he was a violent democrat,—some indeed attributed to him +the origination of most of the startling things in Godwin's <i>Political +Justice</i>,—and in 1794 he was tried, though with no result, for high +treason, with Horne Tooke and others. This brought him into the society +of the young Jacobin school,—Coleridge, and the rest,—but was +disastrous to the success of his plays; and when he went abroad in 1799 +he entered on an extraordinary business of buying old masters (which +were rubbish) and sending them to England, where they generally sold for +nothing. He returned, however, and died on 23rd March 1809.</p> + +<p>Holcroft's theatre will best receive such notice as it requires in +connection with the other drama of the century. Of his novels, <i>Alwyn</i>, +the first, had to do with his experiences as an actor, and <i>Hugh Trevor</i> +is also supposed to have been more or less autobiographical. Holcroft's +chief novel, however, is <i>Anna St. Ives</i>, a book in no less than seven +volumes, though not very large ones, which was published in 1792, and +which exhibits no small affinities to Godwin's <i>Caleb Williams</i>, and +indeed to the <i>Political Justice</i> itself. And Godwin, who was not above +acknowledging mental obligations, if he was rather ill at discharging +pecuniary ones, admits the influence which Holcroft had upon him. <i>Anna +St. Ives</i>, which, like so many of the other novels of its day, is in +letters, is worth reading by those who can spare the time. But it cannot +compare, for mere amusement, with the very remarkable <i>Memoir</i> above +referred to. Only about a fourth of this is said to be in Holcroft's own +words; but Hazlitt has made excellent matter of the rest, and it +includes a good deal of diary and other authentic work. In his own part +Holcroft shows himself a master of the vernacular, as well as (what he +undoubtedly was) a man of singular shrewdness and strength of mental +temper.</p> + +<p>The Novel school of the period (to which Holcroft introduces us) is full +and decidedly interesting, though it contains at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> best one +masterpiece, <i>Vathek</i>, and a large number of more or less meritorious +attempts in false styles. The kind was very largely written—much more +so than is generally thought. Thus Godwin, in his early struggling days, +and long before the complete success of <i>Caleb Williams</i>, wrote, as has +been mentioned, for trifling sums of money (five and ten guineas), two +or three novels which even the zeal of his enthusiastic biographer does +not seem to have been able to recover. Nor did the circulating library, +even then a flourishing institution, lack hands more or less eminent to +work for it, or customers to take off its products. The Minerva Press, +much cited but little read, had its origin in this our time; and this +time is entitled to the sole and single credit of starting and carrying +far a bastard growth of fiction, the "tale of terror," which continued +to be cultivated in its simplest form for at least half a century, and +which can hardly be said to be quite obsolete yet. But as usual we must +proceed by special names, and there is certainly no lack of them. +"Zeluco" Moore has been dealt with already; Day, the eccentric author of +<i>Sanford and Merton</i>, belongs mainly to an earlier period, and died, +still a young man, in the year of the French Revolution; but, besides, +Holcroft, Beckford, Bage, Cumberland, Mrs. Radcliffe, and Monk Lewis, +with Mrs. Inchbald, are distinctly "illustrations" of the time, and must +have more or less separate mention.</p> + +<p>William Beckford is one of the problems of English literature. He was +one of the richest men in England, and his long life—1760 to 1844—was +occupied for the most part not merely with the collection, but with the +reading of books. That he could write as well as read he showed as a +mere boy by his satirical <i>Memoirs of Painters</i>, and by the +great-in-little novel of <i>Vathek</i> (1783), respecting the composition of +which in French or English divers fables are told. Then he published +nothing for forty years, till in 1834 and 1835 he issued his <i>Travels in +Italy, Spain, and Portugal</i>, recollections of his earliest youth. These +travels have extraordinary merits of their kind; but <i>Vathek</i> is a kind +almost to itself. The history of the Caliph, in so far as it is a satire +on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> unlimited power, is an eighteenth century commonplace; while many +traits in it are obviously imitated from Voltaire. But the figure of +Nouronihar, which Byron perhaps would have equalled if he could, stands +alone in literature as a fantastic projection of the potentiality of +evil magnificence in feminine character; and the closing scenes in the +domain of Eblis have the grandeur of Blake combined with that finish +which Blake's temperament, joined to his ignorance of literature and his +lack of scholarship, made it impossible for him to give. The book is +quite unique. It could hardly, in some of its weaker parts especially, +have been written at any other time; and yet its greater characteristics +have nothing to do with that time. In the florid kind of supernatural +story it has no equal. Only Dante, Beckford, and Scott in <i>Wandering +Willie's Tale</i> have given us Hells that are worthy of the idea of Hell.</p> + +<p>Except that both were very much of their time, it would be impossible to +imagine a more complete contrast than that which exists between Beckford +and Bage. The former was, as has been said, one of the richest men in +England, the creator of two "Paradises" at Fonthill and Cintra, the +absolute arbiter of his time and his pleasures, a Member of Parliament +while he chose to be so, a student, fierce and recluse, the husband of a +daughter of the Gordons, and the father of a mother of the Hamiltons, +the collector, disperser, bequeather of libraries almost unequalled in +magnificence and choice. Robert Bage, who was born in 1728 and died in +1801, was in some ways a typical middle-class Englishman. He was a +papermaker, and the son of a papermaker; he was never exactly affluent +nor exactly needy; he was apparently a Quaker by education and a +freethinker by choice; and between 1781 and 1796, obliged by this reason +or that to stain the paper which he made, he produced six novels: <i>Mount +Henneth</i>, <i>Barham Downs</i>, <i>The Fair Syrian</i>, <i>James Wallace</i>, <i>Man as he +is</i>, and <i>Hermsprong</i>. The first, second, and fourth of these were +admitted by Scott to the "Ballantyne Novels," the others, though +<i>Hermsprong</i> is admittedly Bage's best work, were not.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> It is impossible +to say that there is genius in Bage; yet he is a very remarkable writer, +and there is noticeable in him that singular <i>fin de siècle</i> tendency +which has reasserted itself a century later. An imitator of Fielding and +Smollett in general plan,—of the latter specially in the dangerous +scheme of narrative by letter,—Bage added to their methods the purpose +of advocating a looser scheme of morals and a more anarchical system of +government. In other words, Bage, though a man well advanced in years at +the date of the Revolution, exhibits for us distinctly the spirit which +brought the Revolution about. He is a companion of Godwin and of Mary +Wollstonecraft; and though it must be admitted that, as in other cases, +the presence of "impropriety" in him by no means implies the absence of +dulness, he is full of a queer sort of undeveloped and irregular +cleverness.</p> + +<p>The most famous, though not the only novel of Richard Cumberland; +<i>Henry</i>, shows the same tendency to break loose from British decorum, +even such decorum as had really been in the main observed by the +much-abused pens of Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne himself; but it has +little purpose and indeed little vigour of any kind. Cumberland clung as +close as he could to the method of Fielding, including the preliminary +dissertation or meditation, but he would be a very strange reader who +should mistake the two.</p> + +<p>The school of Bage and Cumberland, the former of whom bears some little +resemblance to his countrywoman George Eliot, was, with or without +Bage's purpose, continued more or less steadily; indeed, it may be said +to be little more than a variant, with local colour, of the ordinary +school of novel-writing. But it was not this school which was to give +tone to the period. The "tale of terror" had been started by Horace +Walpole in the <i>Castle of Otranto</i>, and had, as we have seen, received a +new and brilliant illustration in the hands of Beckford. But the genius +of the author of <i>Vathek</i> could not be followed; the talent of the +author of the <i>Castle of Otranto</i> was more easily imitated. How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> far the +practice of the Germans (who had themselves imitated Walpole, and whose +work began in the two last decades of the century to have a great reflex +influence upon England) was responsible for the style of story which, +after Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis had set the fashion, dominated the +circulating libraries for years, is a question not easy and perhaps not +necessary to answer positively. I believe myself that no foreign +influence ever causes a change in national taste; it merely coincides +therewith. But the fact of the set in the tide is unmistakable and +undeniable. For some years the two authors just mentioned rode paramount +in the affections of English novel readers; before long Miss Austen +devoted her early and delightful effort, <i>Northanger Abbey</i>, to +satirising the taste for them, and quoted or invented a well-known list +of blood-curdling titles;<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> the morbid talent of Maturin gave a fresh +impulse to it, even after the healthier genius of Scott had already +revolutionised the general scheme of novel-writing; and yet later still +an industrious literary hack, Leitch Ritchie, was able to issue, and it +may be presumed to find readers for, a variety of romance the titles of +which might strike a hasty practitioner of the kind of censure usual in +biblical criticism as a designed parody of Miss Austen's own catalogue. +The style, indeed, in the wide sense has never lost favour. But in the +special Radcliffian form it reigned for some thirty years, and was +widely popular for nearly fifty.</p> + +<p>Anne Radcliffe, whose maiden name was Ward, was born on 9th July 1764 +and died on 7th February 1822. One of her novels, <i>Gaston de +Blondeville</i>, was published posthumously; but otherwise her whole +literary production took place between the years 1789 and 1797. The +first of these years saw <i>The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne</i>, a very +immature work; the last <i>The Italian</i>, which is perhaps the best. +Between them appeared <i>A Sicilian Romance</i> (1790), <i>The Romance of the +Forest</i> (1791), and the far-famed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> <i>Mysteries of Udolpho</i> in 1795. +Matthew Gregory Lewis, who, like Beckford, was a West-Indian landowner +and member for Hindon, and was well-to-do if not extremely wealthy, was +nine years younger than Mrs. Radcliffe, and did not produce his famous +<i>Monk</i> till the same year which saw <i>Udolpho</i>. He published a good deal +of other work in prose, verse, and drama; the most noteworthy of the +second class being <i>Tales of Terror</i>, to which Scott contributed, and +the most noteworthy of the third <i>The Castle Spectre</i>. Lewis, who, +despite some foibles, was decidedly popular in the literary and +fashionable society of his time, died in 1818 at the age of forty-five +on his way home from the West Indies. Although he would have us +understand that <i>The Monk</i> was written some time before its actual +publication, Lewis' position as a direct imitator of Mrs. Radcliffe is +unmistakable; and although he added to the characteristics of her novels +a certain appeal to "Lubricity" from which she was completely free, the +general scheme of the two writers, as well as that of all their school, +varies hardly at all. The supernatural in Mrs. Radcliffe's case is +mainly, if not wholly, what has been called "the explained +supernatural,"—that is to say, the apparently ghostly, and certainly +ghastly, effects are usually if not always traced to natural causes, +while in most if not all of her followers the demand for more highly +spiced fare in the reader, and perhaps a defect of ingenuity in the +writer, leaves the devils and witches as they were. In all, without +exception, castles with secret passages, trap-doors, forests, banditti, +abductions, sliding panels, and other apparatus and paraphernalia of the +kind play the main part. The actual literary value is, on the whole, +low; though Mrs. Radcliffe is not without glimmerings, and it is +exceedingly curious to note that, just before the historical novel was +once for all started by Scott, there is in all these writers an absolute +and utter want of comprehension of historical propriety, of local and +temporal colour, and of all the marks which were so soon to distinguish +fiction. Yet at the very same time the yearning after the historical is +shown in the most unmistakable fashion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> from Godwin down to the Misses +Lee, Harriet and Sophia (the latter of whom in 1783 produced, in <i>The +Recess</i>, a preposterous Elizabethan story, which would have liked to be +a historical novel), and other known and unknown writers.</p> + +<p>Another lady deserves somewhat longer notice. Hannah More, once a +substantially famous person in literature, is now chiefly remembered by +her association with great men of letters, such as Johnson in her youth, +Macaulay and De Quincey in her old age. She was born as early as 1745 +near Bristol, and all her life was a Somerset worthy. She began—a +curious beginning for so serious a lady, but with reforming +intentions—to write for the stage, published <i>The Search after +Happiness</i> when she was seventeen, and had two rather dreary tragedies, +<i>Percy</i> and the <i>Fatal Secret</i>, acted, Garrick being a family friend of +hers. Becoming, as her day said, "pious," she wrote "Sacred Dramas," and +at Cowslip Green, Barley Wood, and Clifton produced "Moral Essays," the +once famous novel of <i>C[oe]lebs in Search of a Wife</i>, and many tracts, +the best known of which is <i>The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain</i>. She died +at a great age on 7th September 1833. Hannah More is not to be spoken of +with contempt, except by ignorance or incompetence. She had real +abilities, and was a woman of the world. But she was very unfortunately +parted in respect of time, coming just before the days when it became +possible for a lady to be decent in literature without being dull.</p> + +<p>If a book and not a chapter were allowed about this curious, and on the +whole rather neglected and undervalued, Fifth Act of the eighteenth +century, many of its minor literary phenomena would have to be noticed: +such as the last state of periodicals before the uprising of the +<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, and the local literary coteries, the most notable of +which was that of Norwich, with the Aldersons, Sayers the poet, who +taught Southey and others to try blank verse in other measures than the +decasyllabic, William Taylor, the apostle of German literature in +England, and others. But, as it is, we must concentrate our attention on +its main lines.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> + +<p>In these lines the poetical pioneers, the political and other satirists, +the revolutionary propagandists, and the novelists of terror, are the +four classes of writers that distinguish the period 1780 to 1800; and +perhaps they distinguish it sufficiently, at least for those with whom +historical genesis and connection atone to some extent for want of the +first order of intrinsic interest. In less characteristic classes and in +isolated literary personalities the time was not extremely rich, though +it was not quite barren. We can here only notice cursorily the +theological controversialists who, like Paley, Horsley, and Watson, +waged war against the fresh outburst of aggressive Deism coinciding with +the French Revolution: the scholars, such as, in their different ways, +Dr. Parr, the Whig "moon" of Dr. Johnson; Porson, the famous Cambridge +Grecian, drinker, and democrat; Taylor the Platonist, a strange person +who translated most of the works of Plato and was said to have carried +his discipleship to the extent of a positive Paganism; Gilbert +Wakefield, a miscellaneous writer who wrote rapidly and with little +judgment, but with some scholarship and even some touches of genius, on +a great variety of subjects; Jacob Bryant, mythologist, theologian, and +historical critic, a man of vast learning but rather weak critical +power; and many others. Of some of these we may indeed have more to say +later, as also of the much-abused Malthus, whose famous book, in part +one of the consequences of Godwin, appeared in 1798; while as for drama, +we shall return to that too. Sheridan survived through the whole of the +time and a good deal beyond it; but his best work was done, and the +chief dramatists of the actual day were Colman, Holcroft, Cumberland, +and the farce-writer O'Keefe, a man of humour and a lively fancy.</p> + +<p>One, however, of these minor writers has too much of what has been +called "the interest of origins" not to have a paragraph to himself. +William Gilpin, who prided himself on his connection with Bernard +Gilpin, the so-called "Apostle of the North" in the sixteenth century, +was born at Carlisle. But he is best known in connection with the New +Forest, where, after taking his degree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> at Oxford, receiving orders, and +keeping a school for some time, he was appointed to the living of +Boldre. This he held till his death in 1814. Gilpin was not a +secularly-minded parson by any means; but his literary fame is derived +from the series of Picturesque Tours (<i>The Highlands</i>, 1778; <i>The Wye +and South Wales</i>, 1782; <i>The Lakes</i>, 1789; <i>Forest Scenery</i>, 1791; and +<i>The West of England and the Isle of Wight</i>, 1798) which he published in +the last quarter of the century. They were extremely popular, they set a +fashion which may be said never to have died out since, and they +attained the seal of parody in the famous <i>Dr. Syntax</i> of William Combe +(1741-1823), an Eton and Oxford man who spent a fortune and then wrote +an enormous amount of the most widely various work in verse and prose, +of which little but <i>Syntax</i> itself (1812 <i>sqq.</i>) is remembered. Gilpin +himself is interesting as an important member of "the naturals," as they +have been oddly and equivocally called. His style is much more florid +and less just than Gilbert White's, and his observation correspondingly +less true. But he had a keen sense of natural beauty and did much to +instill it into others.</p> + +<p>In all the work of the time, however, great and small, from +the half-unconscious inspiration of Burns and Blake to the +common journey-work of book-making, we shall find the same +character—incessantly recurring, and unmistakable afterwards if not +always recognisable at the time—of transition, of decay and seed-time +mingled with and crossing each other. There are no distinct spontaneous +literary schools: the forms which literature takes are either occasional +and dependent upon outward events, such as the wide and varied attack +and defence consequent upon the French Revolution, or else fantastic, +trivial, reflex. Sometimes the absence of any distinct and creative +impulse reveals itself in work really good and useful, such as the +editing of old writers, of which the labours of Malone are the chief +example and the forgeries of Ireland the corresponding corruption; or +the return to their study æsthetically, in which Headley, a now +forgotten critic, did good work. Sometimes it resulted in such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> things +as the literary reputation (which was an actual thing after a kind) of +persons like Sir James Bland Burges, Under-Secretary of State, +poetaster, connoisseur, and general fribble. Yet all the while, in +schools and universities, in London garrets and country villages, there +was growing up, and sometimes showing itself pretty unmistakably, the +generation which was to substitute for this trying and trifling the +greatest work in verse, and not the least in prose, that had been done +for two hundred years. The <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> of 1798, the clarion-call +of the new poetry, so clearly sounded, so inattentively heard, might +have told all, and did tell some, what this generation was about to do.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Although <i>The Baviad</i> and <i>The Mæviad</i> are well worth +reading, it may be questioned whether they are as amusing as their chief +quarry, <i>The British Album</i>, "containing the poems of Della Crusca, Anna +Matilda, Benedict, Cesario, The Bard, etc.," the two little volumes of +which attained their third edition in 1790. "Della Crusca," or Robert +Merry (1755-98), was a gentleman by birth, and of means, with a Harrow +and Oxford training, and some service in the army. Strange to say, there +is testimony of good wits that he was by no means a fool; yet such +drivelling rubbish as he and his coadjutors wrote even the present day +has hardly seen.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> I used to think these titles sprouts of the author's brain; +but a correspondent assured me that one or two at least are certainly +genuine. Possibly, therefore all are.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE NEW POETRY</h3> + + +<p>The opening years of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century saw, in +unusually close conjunction, the births of the men who were to be the +chief exponents, and in their turn the chief determining forces, of the +new movement. The three greatest were born, Wordsworth in 1770, Scott in +1771, and Coleridge in 1772; Southey, who partly through accident was to +form a trinity with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and who was perhaps the +most typical instance of a certain new kind of man of letters, followed +in 1774; while Lamb and Hazlitt, the chief romantic pioneers in +criticism, Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, the chief classical reactionaries +therein, were all born within the decade. But the influence of Scott was +for various reasons delayed a little; and critics naturally come after +creators. So that the time-honoured eminence of the "Lake +Poets"—Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey—need not be disturbed.</p> + +<p>The day of the birth of William Wordsworth was the 7th of April, the +place Cockermouth. His father was an attorney, and, as Lord Lonsdale's +agent, a man of some means and position; but on his death in 1783 the +eccentric and unamiable character of the then Lord Lonsdale, by delaying +the settlement of accounts, put the family in considerable difficulties. +Wordsworth, however, was thoroughly educated at Hawkshead Grammar School +and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in +1791. He travelled in France, and for a time, like many young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> men, was +a fervent Republican; but, like all the nobler of those who had "hailed +the dawn of the French Revolution," he lived to curse its noon. He +published early, his first volume of poems bearing the date 1793; but, +though that attention to nature which was always his chief note appeared +here, the work is not by any means of an epoch-making character. He was +averse from every profession; but the fates were kind to him, and a +legacy of £900 from his friend Raisley Calvert made a man of such simple +tastes as his independent, for a time at least. On the strength of it he +settled first at Racedown in Dorset, and then at Alfoxden in Somerset, +in the companionship of his sister Dorothy; and at the second of the two +places in the neighbourhood of Coleridge. Massive and original as +Wordsworth's own genius was, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the +effect, both in stimulus and guidance, of the influence of these two; +for Dorothy Wordsworth was a woman of a million, and Coleridge, +marvellous as were his own powers, was almost more marvellous in the +unique Socratic character of his effect on those who possessed anything +to work upon. The two poets produced in 1798 the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, +among the contents of which it is sufficient to mention <i>Tintern Abbey</i> +and <i>The Ancient Mariner;</i> and they subsequently travelled together in +Germany. Then Wordsworth returned to his native lakes and never left +them for long, abiding first at or near Grasmere, and from 1813 at his +well-known home of Rydal Mount. When Lord Lonsdale died in 1802, his +successor promptly and liberally settled the Wordsworth claims. The poet +soon married his cousin Mary Hutchinson; and Lord Lonsdale, not +satisfied with atoning for his predecessor's injustice, procured him, in +the year of his migration to Rydal, the office of Distributor of Stamps +for Westmoreland—an office which was almost a sinecure, and was, for a +man of Wordsworth's tastes, more than amply paid. It is curious, and a +capital instance to prove that the malignity of fortune has itself been +maligned, that the one English poet who was constitutionally incapable +of writing for bread never was under any necessity to do so. For full +sixty years Wordsworth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> wandered much, read little, meditated without +stint, and wrote, though never hurriedly, yet almost incessantly. The +dates of his chief publications may be best given in a note.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> For some +years his poems were greeted by the general public and by a few of its +critical guides with storms of obloquy and ridicule; but Wordsworth, +though never indifferent to criticism, was severely disdainful of it, +and held on his way. From the first the brightest spirits of England had +been his passionate though by no means always undiscriminating admirers; +and about the end of the first quarter of the century the public began +to come round. Oxford, always first to recognise, if not always first to +produce, the greatest achievements of English literature, gave him its +D.C.L. in 1839. He received a pension of £300 a year in 1842 from Sir +Robert Peel, who, unlike most English Prime Ministers, cared for men of +letters; the laureateship fell to him in right of right on Southey's +death in 1843, and he died on the 23rd of April 1850, having come to +fourscore years almost without labour, and without many heavy sorrows.</p> + +<p>Of his character not much need be said. Like that of Milton, whom he in +many ways resembled (they had even both, as Hartley Coleridge has +pointed out, brothers named Christopher), it was not wholly amiable, and +the defects in it were no doubt aggravated by his early condition (for +it must be remembered that till he was two and thirty his prospects were +of the most disquieting character), by the unjust opposition which the +rise of his reputation met with, and by his solitary life in contact +only with worshipping friends and connections. One of these very +worshippers confesses that he was "inhumanly arrogant"; and he was also, +what all arrogant men are not, rude. He was entirely self-centred, and +his own circle of interests and tastes was not wide. It is said that he +would cut books with a buttery knife, and after that it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> probably +unnecessary to say any more, for the fact "surprises by itself" an +indictment of almost infinite counts.</p> + +<p>But his genius is not so easily despatched. I have said that it is now +as a whole universally recognised, and I cannot but think that Mr. +Matthew Arnold was wrong when he gave a contrary opinion some fifteen +years ago. He must have been biassed by his own remembrance of earlier +years, when Wordsworth was still a bone of contention. I should say that +never since I myself was an undergraduate, that is to say, for the last +thirty years, has there been any dispute among Englishmen whose opinion +was worth taking, and who cared for poetry at all, on the general merits +of Wordsworth. But this agreement is compatible with a vast amount of +disagreement in detail; and Mr. Arnold's own estimate, as where he +compares Wordsworth with Molière (who was not a poet at all, though he +sometimes wrote very tolerable verse), weighs him with poets of the +second class like Gray and Manzoni, and finally admits him for his +dealings with "life," introduces fresh puzzlements into the valuation. +There is only one principle on which that valuation can properly +proceed, and this is the question, "Is the poet rich in essentially +poetical moments of the highest power and kind?" And by poetical moments +I mean those instances of expression which, no matter what their +subject, their intention, or their context may be, cause instantaneously +in the fit reader a poetical impression of the intensest and most moving +quality.</p> + +<p>Let us consider the matter from this point of view.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<p>The chief poetical influences under which Wordsworth began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> to write +appear to have been those of Burns and Milton; both were upon him to the +last, and both did him harm as well as good. It was probably in direct +imitation of Burns, as well as in direct opposition to the prevailing +habits of the eighteenth century, that he conceived the theory of poetic +diction which he defended in prose and exemplified in verse. The chief +point of this theory was the use of the simplest and most familiar +language, and the double fallacy is sufficiently obvious. Wordsworth +forgot that the reason why the poetic diction of the three preceding +generations had become loathsome was precisely this, that it had become +familiar; while the familiar Scots of Burns was in itself unfamiliar to +the English ear. On the other hand, he borrowed from Milton, and used +more and more as he grew older, a distinctly stiff and unvernacular form +of poetic diction itself. Few except extreme and hopeless Wordsworthians +now deny that the result of his attempts at simple language was and is +far more ludicrous than touching. The wonderful <i>Affliction of Margaret</i> +does not draw its power from the neglect of poetic diction, but from the +intensity of emotion which would carry off almost any diction, simple or +affected; while on the other hand such pieces as "We are Seven," as the +"Anecdote for Fathers," and as "Alice Fell," not to mention "Betty Foy" +and others, which specially infuriated Wordsworth's own contemporaries, +certainly gain nothing from their namby-pamby dialect, and sometimes go +near to losing the beauty that really is in them by dint of it. +Moreover, the Miltonic blank verse and sonnets—at their best of a +stately magnificence surpassed by no poet—have a tendency to become +heavy and even dull when the poetic fire fails to fuse and shine through +them. In fact it may be said of Wordsworth, as of most poets with +theories, that his theories helped him very little, and sometimes +hindered him a great deal.</p> + +<p>His real poetical merits are threefold, and lie first in the +inexplicable, the ultimate, felicity of phrase which all great poets +must have, and which only great poets have; secondly, in his matchless +power of delineating natural objects; and lastly, more properly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> and +with most special rarity of all, in the half-pantheistic mysticism which +always lies behind this observation, and which every now and then breaks +through it, puts it, as mere observation, aside, and blazes in unmasked +fire of rapture. The summits of Wordsworth's poetry, the "Lines Written +at Tintern Abbey" and the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"—poems of +such astonishing magnificence that it is only more astonishing that any +one should have read them and failed to see what a poet had come before +the world,—are the greatest of many of these revelations or +inspirations. It is indeed necessary to read Wordsworth straight +through—a proceeding which requires that the reader shall be in good +literary training, but is then feasible, profitable, and even pleasant +enough—to discern the enormous height at which the great Ode stands +above its author's other work. The <i>Tintern Abbey</i> lines certainly +approach it nearest: many smaller things—"The Affliction of Margaret," +"The Daffodils," and others—group well under its shadow, and +innumerable passages and even single lines, such as that which all good +critics have noted as lightening the darkness of the <i>Prelude</i>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>must of course be added to the poet's credit. But the Ode remains not +merely the greatest, but the one really, dazzlingly, supremely great +thing he ever did. Its theory has been scorned or impugned by some; +parts of it have even been called nonsense by critics of weight. But, +sound or unsound, sense or nonsense, it is poetry, and magnificent +poetry, from the first line to the last—poetry than which there is none +better in any language, poetry such as there is not perhaps more than a +small volume-full in all languages. The second class of merit, that of +vivid observation, abounds whereever the poems are opened. But the +examples of the first are chiefly found in the lyrics "My Heart Leaps +up," "The Sparrow's Nest"; the famous daffodil poem which Jeffrey +thought "stuff," which some say Dorothy wrote chiefly, and which is +almost perfect of its kind; the splendid opening of the "Lines to +Hartley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> Coleridge," which connect themselves with the "Immortality +Ode"; the exquisite group of the "Cuckoo," the best patches of the Burns +poems, and the three "Yarrows"; the "Peel Castle" stanzas; and, to cut a +tedious catalogue short, the hideously named but in parts perfectly +beautiful "Effusion on the Death of James Hogg," the last really +masterly thing that the poet did. In some of these we may care little +for the poem as a whole, nothing for the moral the poet wishes to draw. +But the poetic moments seize us, the poetic flash dazzles our eyes, and +the whole divine despair or not more divine rapture which poetry causes +comes upon us.</p> + +<p>One division of Wordsworth's work is so remarkable that it must have +such special and separate mention as it is here possible to give it; and +that is his exercises in the sonnet, wherein to some tastes he stands +only below Shakespeare and on a level with Milton. The sonnet, after +being long out of favour, paying for its popularity between Wyatt and +Milton by neglect, had, principally it would seem on the very inadequate +example of Bowles (see <i>infra</i>), become a very favourite form with the +new Romantics. But none of them wrote it with the steady persistence, +and none except Keats with the occasional felicity, of Wordsworth. Its +thoughtfulness suited his bent, and its limits frustrated his prolixity, +though, it must be owned, he somewhat evaded this benign influence by +writing in series. And the sonnets on "The Venetian Republic," on the +"Subjugation of Switzerland," that beginning "The world is too much with +us," that in November 1806, the first "Personal Talk," the magnificent +"Westminster Bridge," and the opening at least of that on Scott's +departure from Abbotsford, are not merely among the glories of +Wordsworth, they are among the glories of English poetry.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately these moments of perfection are, in the poet's whole work, +and especially in that part of it which was composed in the later half +of his long life, by no means very frequent. Wordsworth was absolutely +destitute of humour, from which it necessarily followed that his +self-criticism was either non-existent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> or constantly at fault. His +verse was so little facile, it paid so little regard to any of the +common allurements of narrative-interest or varied subject, it was so +necessary for it to reach the full white heat, the absolute instant of +poetic projection, that when it was not very good it was apt to be +scarcely tolerable. It is nearly impossible to be duller than Wordsworth +at his dullest, and unluckily it is as impossible to find a poet of +anything like his powers who has given himself the license to be dull so +often and at such length. The famous "Would he had blotted a thousand" +applies to him with as much justice as it was unjust in its original +application; and it is sometimes for pages together a positive struggle +to remember that one is reading one of the greatest of English poets, +and a poet whose influence in making other poets has been second hardly +to that of Spenser, of Keats, or of the friend who follows him in our +survey.</p> + +<p>Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devonshire, at Ottery St. Mary, of +which place his father was vicar, on the 21st October 1772. The family +was merely respectable before his day, but since it has been of very +unusual distinction, intellectual and other. He went to Christ's +Hospital when he was not quite ten years old, and in 1791 was admitted +to an exhibition at Jesus College, Cambridge, with his thoughts already +directed to poetry by the sonnets of Bowles above mentioned, and with a +reputation, exaggerated perhaps, but certainly not invented, in Lamb's +famous "Elia" paper on his old school. Indeed, high as is Coleridge's +literary position on the strength of his writing alone, his talk and its +influence on hearers have been unanimously set higher still. He did very +well at first, gaining the Browne Medal for Greek Verse and +distinguishing himself for the Craven Scholarship; but he speedily fell +in love, in debt, it is suspected in drink, and it is known into various +political and theological heresies. He left Cambridge and enlisted at +Reading in the 15th Light Dragoons. He obtained his discharge, however, +in three or four months, and no notice except a formal admonition +appears to have been taken of his resuming his position at Cambridge. +Indeed he was shortly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> after elected to a Foundation Scholarship. But in +the summer of 1794 he visited Oxford, and after he had fallen in with +Southey, whose views were already Jacobinical, the pair engaged +themselves to Pantisocracy<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and the Miss Frickers. This curious and +often told story cannot be even summarised here. Its immediate result +was that Coleridge left the University without taking a degree, and, +though not at once, married Sarah Fricker on October 1795. Thenceforward +he lived on literature and his friends, especially the latter. He tried +Unitarian preaching and newspaper work, of which at one time or another +he did a good deal. The curious ins and outs of Coleridge's strange +though hardly eventful life have, after being long most imperfectly +known, been set forth in fullest measure by Mr. Dykes Campbell. It must +suffice here to say that, after much wandering, being unable or +unwilling to keep house with his own family, he found asylums, first +with some kind folk named Morgan, and then in the house of Mr. Gillman +at Hampstead, where for years he held forth to rising men of letters, +and where he died on the 25th June 1834. His too notorious craving for +opium had never been conquered, though it had latterly been kept in some +check.</p> + +<p>Despite this unfortunate failing and his general inability to carry out +any schemes of work on the great scale, Coleridge's literary production +was very considerable, and, except the verse, it has never been +completely collected or systematically edited. He began verse-writing +very early, and early found a vent for it in the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, +then a Radical organ. He wrote <i>The Fall of Robespierre</i> in conjunction +with Southey in 1794, and published it. Some prose pamphlets followed, +and then Cottle, the Bristol providence of this group of men of letters, +offered thirty guineas for a volume of poems, which duly appeared in +1796. Meanwhile Coleridge had started a singular newspaper called <i>The +Watchman</i>, which saw ten numbers, appearing every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> eighth day. The +<i>Lyrical Ballads</i> followed in 1798, and meanwhile Coleridge had written +the play of <i>Osorio</i> (to appear long afterwards as <i>Remorse</i>), had begun +<i>Christabel</i>, and had contributed some of his best poems to the <i>Morning +Post</i>. His German visit (see <i>ante</i>) produced among other things the +translation of <i>Wallenstein</i>, a translation far above the original. Some +poetry and much newspaper work filled the next ten years, with endless +schemes; but in 1807 Coleridge began to lecture at the Royal +Institution—a course somewhat irregularly delivered, and almost +entirely unreported. 1809 saw his second independent periodical venture, +<i>The Friend</i>, the subsequent reprint of which as a book is completely +rewritten. In 1811-12 he delivered his second course of lectures, this +time on his own account. It was followed by two others, and in 1813 +<i>Remorse</i> was produced at Drury Lane, had a fair success, and brought +the author some money. <i>Christabel</i>, with <i>Kubla Khan</i>, appeared in +1816, and the <i>Biographia Literaria</i> next year; <i>Zapolya</i> and the +rewritten <i>Friend</i> the year after, when also Coleridge gave a new course +of lectures, and yet another, the last. <i>Aids to Reflection</i>, in 1825, +was the latest important work he issued himself, though in 1828 he +superintended a collection of his poems. Such of the rest of his work as +is in existence in a collected form has been printed or reprinted since.</p> + +<p>A more full account of the appearance of Coleridge's work than is +desirable or indeed possible in most cases here has been given, because +it is important to convey some idea of the astonishingly piecemeal +fashion in which it reached the world. To those who have studied the +author's life of opium-eating; of constant wandering from place to +place; of impecuniousness so utter that, after all the painstaking of +the modern biographer, and after full allowance for the ravens who seem +always to have been ready to feed him, it is a mystery how he escaped +the workhouse; of endless schemes and endless non-performance—it is +only a wonder that anything of Coleridge's ever reached the public +except in newspaper columns. As it was, while his most ambitiously +planned books were never written at all, most of those which did reach +the press were years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> in getting through it; and Southey, on one +occasion, after waiting fifteen months for the conclusion of a +contribution of Coleridge's to <i>Omniana</i>, had to cancel the sheet in +despair. The collection, after many years, by Mr. Ernest Coleridge of +his grandfather's letters has by no means completely removed the mystery +which hangs over Coleridge's life and character. We see a little more, +but we do not see the whole; and we are still unable to understand what +strange impediments there were to the junction of the two ends of power +and performance. A rigid judge might almost say, that if friends had not +been so kind, fate had been kinder, and that instead of helping they +hindered, just as a child who is never allowed to tumble will never +learn to walk.</p> + +<p>The enormous tolerance of friends, however, which alone enabled him to +produce anything, was justified by the astonishing genius to which its +possessor gave so unfair a chance. As a thinker, although the evidence +is too imperfect to justify very dogmatic conclusions, the opinion of +the best authorities, from which there is little reason for differing, +is that Coleridge was much more stimulating than intrinsically valuable. +His <i>Aids to Reflection</i>, his most systematic work, is disappointing; +and, with <i>The Friend</i> and the rest, is principally valuable as +exhibiting and inculcating an attitude of mind in which the use of logic +is not, as in most eighteenth century philosophers, destructive, but is +made to consist with a wide license for the employment of imagination +and faith. He borrowed a great deal from the Germans, and he at least +sometimes forgot that he had borrowed a great deal from our own older +writers.</p> + +<p>So, too, precise examination of his numerous but fragmentary remains as +a literary critic makes it necessary to take a great deal for granted. +Here, also, he Germanised much; and it is not certain, even with the aid +of his fragments, that he was the equal either of Lamb or of Hazlitt in +insight. Perhaps his highest claim is that, in the criticism of +philosophy, of religion, and of literature alike he expressed, and was +even a little ahead of, the nobler bent and sympathy of his +contemporaries. We are still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> content to assign to Coleridge, perhaps +without any very certain title-deeds, the invention of that more +catholic way of looking at English literature which can relish the +Middle Ages without doing injustice to contemporaries, and can be +enthusiastic for the seventeenth century without contemning the +eighteenth.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> To him more than to any single man is also assigned (and +perhaps rightly, though some of his remarks on the Church, even after +his rally to orthodoxy, are odd) the great ecclesiastical revival of the +Oxford movement; and it is certain that he had not a little to do with +the abrupt discarding of the whole tradition of Locke, Berkeley and +Hartley only excepted. Difficult as it may be to give distinct chapter +and verse for these assignments from the formless welter of his prose +works, no good judge has ever doubted their validity, with the above and +other exceptions and guards. It may be very difficult to present +Coleridge's assets in prose in a liquid form; but few doubt their value.</p> + +<p>It is very different with his poetry. Here, too, the disastrous, the +almost ruinous results of his weaknesses appear. When one begins to sift +and riddle the not small mass of his verse, it shrinks almost +appallingly in bulk. <i>Wallenstein</i>, though better than the original, is +after all only a translation. <i>Remorse</i> (either under that name or as +<i>Osorio</i>) and <i>Zapolya</i> are not very much better than the contemporary +or slightly later work of Talfourd and Milman. <i>The Fall of Robespierre</i> +is as absurd and not so amusing as Southey's unassisted <i>Wat Tyler</i>. Of +the miscellaneous verse with which, after these huge deductions, we are +left, much is verse-impromptu, often learned and often witty, for +Coleridge was (in early days at any rate) abundantly provided with both +wit and humour, but quite occasional. Much more consists of mere +Juvenilia. Even of the productions of his best times (the last lustrum +of the eighteenth century and a lucid interval about 1816)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> much is not +very good. <i>Religious Musings</i>, though it has had its admirers, is +terribly poor stuff. <i>The Monody on the Death of Chatterton</i> might have +been written by fifty people during the century before it. <i>The Destiny +of Nations</i> is a feeble rant; but the <i>Ode on the Departing Year</i>, +though still unequal, still conventional, strikes a very different note. +<i>The Three Graves</i>, though injured by the namby-pambiness which was +still thought incumbent in ballads, again shows no vulgar touch. And +then, omitting for the moment <i>Kubla Khan</i>, which Coleridge said he +wrote in 1797, but of which no mortal ever heard till 1816, we come to +<i>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</i> and the birth of the new poetry in +England. Here the stutters and flashes of Blake became coherent speech +and steady blaze; here poetry, which for a century and a half had been +curbing her voice to a genteel whisper or raising it only to a forensic +declamation, which had at best allowed a few wood-notes to escape here +and there as if by mistake, spoke out loud and clear.</p> + +<p>If this statement seems exaggerated (and it is certain that at the time +of the appearance of the <i>Ancient Mariner</i> not even Wordsworth, not even +Southey quite relished it, while there has always been a sect of +dissidents against it), two others will perhaps seem more extravagant +still. The second is that, with the exception of this poem, of <i>Kubla +Khan</i>, of <i>Christabel</i>, and of <i>Love</i>, all of them according to +Coleridge written within a few months of each other in 1797-98, he never +did anything of the first class in poetry. The third is that these +four—though <i>Christabel</i> itself does not exceed some fifteen hundred +lines and is decidedly unequal, though the <i>Ancient Mariner</i> is just +over six hundred and the other two are quite short—are sufficient +between them to rank their author among the very greatest of English +poets. It is not possible to make any compromise on this point; for upon +it turns an entire theory and system of poetical criticism. Those who +demand from poetry a "criticism of life," those who will have it that +"all depends on the subject," those who want "moral" or "construction" +or a dozen other things,—all good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> in their way, most of them +compatible with poetry and even helpful to it, but none of them +essential thereto,—can of course never accept this estimate. Mrs. +Barbauld said that <i>The Ancient Mariner</i> was "improbable"; and to this +charge it must plead guilty at once. <i>Kubla Khan</i>, which I should rank +as almost the best of the four, is very brief, and is nothing but a +dream, and a fragment of a dream. <i>Love</i> is very short too, and is +flawed by some of the aforesaid namby-pambiness, from which none of the +Lake school escaped when they tried passion. <i>Christabel</i>, the most +ambitious if also the most unequal, does really underlie the criticism +that, professing itself to be a narrative and holding out the promise of +something like a connected story, it tells none, and does not even offer +very distinct hints or suggestions or what its story, if it had ever +been told, might have been. A thousand faults are in it; a good part of +the thousand in all four.</p> + +<p>But there is also there something which would atone for faults ten +thousand times ten thousand; there is what one hears at most three or +four times in English, at most ten or twelve times in all +literature—the first note, with its endless echo-promise, of a new +poetry. The wonderful cadence-changes of <i>Kubla Khan</i>, its phrases, +culminating in the famous distich so well descriptive of Coleridge +himself—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For he on honey dew hath fed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And drunk the milk of Paradise,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the splendid crash of the</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ancestral voices prophesying war,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>are all part of this note and cry. You will find them nowhere from +Chaucer to Cowper—not even in the poets where you will find greater +things as you may please to call them. Then in the <i>Mariner</i> comes the +gorgeous metre,—freed at once and for the first time from the +"butter-woman's rank to market" which had distinguished all imitations +of the ballad hitherto,—the more gorgeous imagery and pageantry here, +the simple directness there, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> tameless range of imagination and +fancy, the fierce rush of rhythm:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The furrow followed free:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We were the first that ever burst<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Into that silent sea.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And thereafter the spectre of Life-in-Death, the water-snakes, the +rising of the dead men, the snapping of the spell. There had been +nothing like all this before; and in all the hundred years, for all the +great poetry we have seen, we have seen nothing so <i>new</i> as it. <i>Love</i> +gave the magnificent opening stanza, the motto and defence at once of +the largest, the most genuine, the most delightful part of poetry. And +<i>Christabel</i>, independently of its purple patches, such as the famous +descant on the quarrels of friends, and the portents that mark the +passage of Geraldine, gave what was far more important—a new metre, +destined to have no less great and much more copious influence than the +Spenserian stanza itself. It might of course be easy to pick out +anticipations in part of this combination of iambic dimeter, trochaic, +and anapæstic; but it never had taken thorough form before. And how it +seized on the imagination of those who heard it is best shown by the +well-known anecdote of Scott, who, merely hearing a little of it +recited, at once developed it and established it in <i>The Lay of the Last +Minstrel</i>. In verse at least, if not in prose, there is no greater +<i>master</i> than Coleridge.</p> + +<p>Robert Southey, the third of this curiously dissimilar trio whom partly +chance and partly choice have bound together for all time, was born at +Bristol on 12th August 1774. His father was only a linen-draper, and a +very unprosperous one; but the Southeys were a respectable family, +entitled to arms, and possessed of considerable landed property in +Somerset, some of which was left away from the poet by unfriendly uncles +to strangers, while more escaped him by a flaw in the entail. His +mother's family, the Hills, were in much better circumstances than his +father, and like the other two Lake Poets he was singularly lucky in +finding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> helpers. First his mother's brother the Rev. Herbert Hill, +chaplain to the English factory at Lisbon, sent him to Westminster, +where he did very well and made invaluable friends, but lost the regular +advancement to Christ Church owing to the wrath of the head-master Dr. +Vincent at an article which Southey had contributed to a school +magazine, the <i>Flagellant</i>. He was in fact expelled; but the gravest +consequences of expulsion from a public school of the first rank did not +fall upon him, and he matriculated without objection at Balliol in 1793. +His college, however, which was then distinguished for loose living and +intellectual dulness, was not congenial to him; and developing extreme +opinions in politics and religion, he decided that he could not take +orders, and left without even taking a degree. His disgrace with his own +friends was completed by his engaging in the Pantisocratic scheme, and +by his attachment to Edith Fricker, a penniless girl (though not at all +a "milliner at Bath") whose sisters became Mrs. Coleridge and Mrs. +Lovell. And when the ever-charitable Hill invited him to Portugal he +married Miss Fricker the very day before he started. After a residence +at Lisbon, in which he laid the foundation of his unrivalled +acquaintance with Peninsular history and literature, he returned and +lived with his wife at various places, nominally studying for the law, +which he liked not better but worse than the Church. After divers +vicissitudes, including a fresh visit (this time not as a bachelor) to +Portugal, and an experience of official work as secretary to Corry the +Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, he at last, at the age of thirty, +established himself at Greta Hall, close to Keswick, where Coleridge had +already taken up his abode. This, as well as much else in his career, +was made possible by the rare generosity of his friend of school-days +and all days, Charles Wynn, brother of the then Sir Watkin, and later a +pretty well known politician, who on coming of age gave him an annuity +of £160 a year. This in 1807 he relinquished on receiving a government +pension of practically the same amount. The Laureateship in 1813 brought +him less than another hundred; but many years afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> Sir Robert +Peel, in 1835, after offering a baronetcy, put his declining years out +of anxiety by conferring a further pension of £300 a year on him. These +declining years were in part unhappy. As early as 1816 his eldest son +Herbert, a boy of great promise, died; the shock was repeated some years +later by the death of his youngest and prettiest daughter Isabel; while +in the same year as that in which his pension was increased his wife +became insane, and died two years later. A second marriage in 1839 to +the poetess Caroline Bowles brought him some comfort; but his own brain +became more and more affected, and for a considerable time before his +death on 21st March 1843 he had been mentally incapable.</p> + +<p>Many morals have been drawn from this melancholy end as to the wisdom of +too prolonged literary labour, which in Southey's case had certainly +been prodigious, and had been carried so far that he actually read while +he was taking constitutional walks. It is fair to say, however, that, +just as in the case of Scott the terrible shock of the downfall of his +fortunes has to be considered, so in that of Southey the successive +trials to which he, a man of exceptionally strong domestic affections, +was exposed, must be taken into account. At the same time it must be +admitted that Southey's production was enormous. His complete works +never have been, and are never likely to be collected; and, from the +scattered and irregular form in which they appeared, it is difficult if +not impossible to make even a guess at the total. The list of books and +articles (the latter for the most part written for the <i>Quarterly +Review</i>, and of very great length) at the end of his son's <i>Life</i> fills +nearly six closely printed pages. Two of these entries—<i>the Histories +of Brazil</i> and of the <i>Peninsular War</i>—alone represent six large +volumes. The Poems by themselves occupy a royal octavo in double columns +of small print running to eight hundred pages; the correspondence, very +closely printed in the six volumes of the <i>Life</i>, and the four more of +<i>Letters</i> edited by the Rev. J. W. Warter, some five thousand pages in +all; while a good deal of his early periodical work has never been +identified,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> and there are large stores of additional letters—some +printed, more in MS. Nor was Southey by any means a careless or an easy +writer. He always founded his work on immense reading, some of the +results of which, showing the laborious fashion in which he performed +it, were published after his death in his <i>Commonplace Book</i>. He did not +write very rapidly; and he corrected, both in MS. and in proof, with the +utmost sedulity. Of the nearly 14,000 books which he possessed at his +death, it is safe to say that all had been methodically read, and most +read many times; while his almost mediæval diligence did not hesitate at +working through a set of folios to obtain the information or the +corrections necessary for a single article.</p> + +<p>It is here impossible to mention more than the chief items of this +portentous list. They are in verse—<i>Poems</i>, by R. Southey and R. +Lovell, 1794; <i>Joan of Arc</i>, 1795; <i>Minor Poems</i>, 1797-99; <i>Thalaba</i>, +1801; <i>Metrical Tales</i> and <i>Madoc</i>, 1805; <i>The Curse of Kehama</i>, 1810; +<i>Roderick</i>, 1814; with a few later volumes, the chief being the unlucky +<i>Vision of Judgment</i>, 1821, in hexameters. A complete edition of the +Poems, except one or two posthumously printed, was published by himself +in ten volumes in 1837, and collected into one ten years later with the +additions. This also includes <i>Wat Tyler</i>, a rhapsody of the poet's +youth, which was (piratically and to his infinite annoyance) published +in 1817.</p> + +<p>In prose Southey's most important works are the <i>History of Brazil</i>, +1810-19 (this, large as it is, is only a kind of off-shoot of the +projected <i>History of Portugal</i>, which in a way occupied his whole life, +and never got published at all); the <i>History of the Peninsular War</i>, +1822-32; the <i>Letters from England by Don Manuel Espriella</i>, 1812; the +<i>Life of Nelson</i> (usually thought his masterpiece), 1813; the <i>Life of +Wesley</i>, 1820; <i>The Book of the Church</i>, 1824; <i>Colloquies on Society</i> +(well known, if not in itself, for Macaulay's review of it), 1829; +<i>Naval History</i>, 1833-40; and the great humorous miscellany of <i>The +Doctor</i> (seven volumes), 1834-47; to which must be added editions, often +containing some of his best work, of Chatterton, Amadis of Gaul, +Palmerin of England,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> Kirke White, Bunyan, and Cowper, with divers +<i>Specimens</i> of the British Poets, the charming prose and verse +<i>Chronicle of the Cid</i>, the miscellany of <i>Omniana</i>, half-way between +table- and commonplace-book, the <i>Commonplace Book</i> itself, and not a +little else, besides letters and articles innumerable.</p> + +<p>Certain things about Southey are uncontested and uncontestable. The +uprightness and beauty of his character, his wonderful helpfulness to +others, and the uncomplaining way in which he bore what was almost +poverty,—for, high as was his reputation, his receipts were never a +tithe of the rewards not merely of Scott or Byron or Tom Moore, but of +much lesser men—are not more generally acknowledged than the singular +and pervading excellence of his English prose style, the robustness of +his literary genius, and his unique devotion to literature. But when we +leave these accepted things he becomes more difficult if not less +interesting. He himself had not the slightest doubt that he was a great +poet, and would be recognised as such by posterity, though with a proud +humility he reconciled himself to temporary lack of vogue. This might be +set down to an egotistic delusion. But such an easy explanation is +negatived by even a slight comparison of the opinions of his greatest +contemporaries. It is somewhat staggering to find that Scott, the +greatest Tory man of letters who had strong political sympathies, and +Fox, the greatest Whig politician who had keen literary tastes, enjoyed +his long poems enthusiastically. But it may be said that the eighteenth +century leaven which was so strong in each, and which is also noticeable +in Southey, conciliated them. What then are we to say of Macaulay, a +much younger man, a violent political opponent of Southey, and a by no +means indiscriminate lover of verse, who, admitting that he doubted +whether Southey's long poems would be read after half a century, had no +doubt that if read they would be admired? And what are we to say of the +avowals of admiration wrung as it were from Byron, who succeeded in +working himself up, from personal, political, and literary motives +combined, into a frantic hatred of Southey, lampooned him in print, sent +him a challenge (which luckily was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> delivered) in private, and was +what the late Mr. Mark Pattison would have called "his Satan"?</p> + +<p>The half century of Macaulay's prophecy has come, and that prophecy has +been fulfilled as to the rarity of Southey's readers as a poet. Has the +other part come true too? I should hesitate to say that it has. Esteem +not merely for the man but for the writer can never fail Southey +whenever he is read by competent persons: admiration may be less prompt +to come at call. Two among his smaller pieces—the beautiful "Holly +Tree," and the much later but exquisite stanzas "My days among the dead +are past"—can never be in any danger; the grasp of the +grotesque-terrific, which the poet shows in the "Old Woman of Berkley" +and a great many other places, anticipates the <i>Ingoldsby Legends</i> with +equal ease but with a finer literary gift; some other things are really +admirable and not a little pleasing. But the longer poems, if they are +ever to live, are still dry bones. <i>Thalaba</i>, one of the best, is spoilt +by the dogged craze against rhyme, which is more, not less, needed in +irregular than in regular verse. <i>Joan of Arc</i>, <i>Madoc</i>, <i>Roderick</i>, +have not escaped that curse of blank verse which only Milton, and he not +always, has conquered in really long poems. <i>Kehama</i>, the only great +poem in which the poet no longer disdains the almost indispensable aid +to poetry in our modern and loosely quantified tongue, is much better +than any of the others. The Curse itself is about as good as it can be, +and many other passages are not far below it; but to the general taste +the piece suffers from the remote character of the subject, which is not +generally and humanly interesting, and from the mass of tedious detail.</p> + +<p>To get out of the difficulty thus presented by indulging in contemptuous +ignoring of Southey's merits has been attempted many times since Emerson +foolishly asked "Who is Southey?" in his jottings of his conversation +with Landor, Southey's most dissimilar but constant friend and +panegyrist. It is extremely easy to say who Southey is. He is the +possessor of perhaps the purest and most perfect English prose style, of +a kind at once simple and scholarly, to be found in the language. He has +written<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> (in the <i>Life of Nelson</i>) perhaps the best short biography in +that language, and other things not far behind this. No Englishman has +ever excelled him in range of reading or in intelligent comprehension +and memory of what he read. Unlike many book-worms, he had an +exceedingly lively and active humour. He has scarcely an equal, and +certainly no superior, in the rare and difficult art of discerning and +ranging the material parts of an historical account: the pedant may +glean, but the true historian will rarely reap after him. And in poetry +his gifts, if they are never of the very highest, are so various and +often so high that it is absolutely absurd to pooh-pooh him as a poet. +The man who could write the verses "In my Library" and the best parts of +<i>Thalaba</i> and <i>Kehama</i> certainly had it in his power to write other +things as good, probably to write other things better. Had it been in +his nature to take no thought not merely for the morrow but even for the +day, like Coleridge, or in his fate to be provided for without any +trouble on his own part, and to take the provision with self-centred +indifference, like Wordsworth, his actual production might have been +different and better. But his strenuous and generous nature could not be +idle; and idleness of some sort is, it may be very seriously laid down, +absolutely necessary to the poet who is to be supreme.</p> + +<p>The poet who, though, according to the canons of poetical criticism most +in favour during this century, he ranks lower than either Wordsworth or +Coleridge, did far more to popularise the general theory of Romantic +poetry than either, was a slightly older man than two of the trio just +noticed; but he did not begin his poetical career (save by one volume of +translation) till some years after all of them had published. Walter +Scott was born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. His father, of +the same name as himself, was a Writer to the Signet; his mother was +Anne Rutherford, and the future poet and novelist had much excellent +Border blood in him, besides that of his direct ancestors the Scotts of +Harden. He was a very sickly child; and though he grew out of this he +was permanently lame. His early childhood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> was principally spent on the +Border itself, with a considerable interval at Bath; and he was duly +sent to the High School and University of Edinburgh, where, like a good +many other future men of letters, he was not extremely remarkable for +what is called scholarship. He was early imprisoned in his father's +office, where the state of relations between father and son is supposed +to be pretty accurately represented by the story of those between Alan +Fairford and his father in <i>Redgauntlet</i>; and, like Alan, he was called +to the bar. But even in the inferior branch of the profession he enjoyed +tolerable liberty of wandering about and sporting, besides sometimes +making expeditions on business into the Highlands and other +out-of-the-way parts of the country.</p> + +<p>He thus acquired great knowledge of his fatherland; while (for he was, +if not exactly a scholar, the most omnivorous of readers) he was also +acquiring great knowledge of books. And it ought not to be omitted that +Edinburgh, in addition to the literary and professional society which +made it then and afterwards so famous, was still to no small extent the +headquarters of the Scotch nobility, and that Scott, long before his +books made him famous, was familiar with society of every rank. His +first love affair did not run smooth, and he seems never to have +entirely forgotten the object of it, who is identified (on somewhat more +solid grounds than in the case of other novelists) with more than one of +his heroines. But he consoled himself to a certain extent with a young +lady half French, half English, Miss Charlotte Carpenter or Charpentier, +whom he met at Gilsland and married at Carlisle on Christmas Eve 1797. +Scott was an active member of the yeomanry as well as a barrister, an +enthusiastic student of German as well as a sportsman; and the book of +translations (from Bürger) above referred to appeared in 1796. But he +did nothing important till after the beginning of the present century, +when the starting of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> and some other things +brought him forward; though he showed what he could do by contributing +two ballads, "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John," to a collection of +terror-pieces started by Monk Lewis, and added Goethe's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> <i>Götz von +Berlichingen</i> to his translations. He had become in 1799 independent, +though not rich, by being appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire.</p> + +<p>His beginnings as an author proper were connected, as was all his +subsequent career, partly for good but more for ill, with a school +friendship he had early formed for two brothers named Ballantyne at +Kelso. He induced James, the elder, to start a printing business at +Edinburgh, and unfortunately he entered into a secret partnership with +this firm, which never did him much good, which caused him infinite +trouble, and which finally ruined him. But into this complicated and +still much debated business it is impossible to enter here. James +Ballantyne printed the <i>Border Minstrelsy</i>, which appeared in 1802,—a +book ranking with Percy's <i>Reliques</i> in its influence on the form and +matter of subsequent poetry,—and then Scott at last undertook original +work of magnitude. His task was <i>The Lay of the Last Minstrel</i>, +published in 1805. It may almost be said that from that day to his death +he was the foremost—he was certainly, with the exception of Byron, the +most popular—man of letters in Great Britain. His next poems—<i>Marmion</i> +(1808) and <i>The Lady of the Lake</i> (1810)—brought him fame and money +such as no English poet had gained before; and though Byron's +following—for following it was—for the time eclipsed his master, the +latter's <i>Rokeby, The Lord of the Isles</i>, and others, would have been +triumphs for any one else.</p> + +<p>How, when the taste for his verse seemed to cool, he struck out a new +line in prose and achieved yet more fame and yet more money than the +verse had ever given him, will concern us in the next chapter. But as it +would be cumbrous to make yet a third division of his work, the part of +his prose which is not fiction may be included here, as well as the rest +of his life. He had written much criticism for the <i>Edinburgh</i>, until he +was partly disgusted by an uncivil review of <i>Marmion</i>, partly (and +more) by the tone of increasing Whiggery and non-intervention which +Jeffrey was imposing on the paper; and when the <i>Quarterly</i> was founded +in opposition he transferred his services to that. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> edited a splendid +and admirably done issue of Dryden (1808) and another not quite so +thoroughly executed of Swift (1814), and his secret connection with the +Ballantynes induced him to do much other editing and miscellaneous work. +In the sad last years of his life he laboured with desperation at a +great <i>Life of Napoleon</i>, which was a success pecuniarily but not in +many other ways, produced the exquisite <i>Tales of a Grandfather</i> on +Scottish history, and did much else. He even wrote plays, which have +very little merit, and, except abstract philosophy, there is hardly a +division of literature that he did not touch; for he composed a sermon +or two of merit, and his political pamphlets, the <i>Letters of Malachi +Malagrowther</i>, opposing what he thought an interference with Scottish +privileges in currency matters, are among the best of their kind.</p> + +<p>His life was for many years a very happy one; for his marriage, if not +passionately, was fairly successful, he was extremely fond of his +children, and while his poems and novels began before he had fully +reached middle life to make him a rich man, his Sheriffship, and a +Clerkship of Session which was afterwards added (though he had to wait +some time for its emoluments), had already made him secure of bread and +expectant of affluence. From a modest cottage at Lasswade he expanded +himself to a rented country house at Ashestiel on the Tweed, having +besides a comfortable town mansion in Edinburgh; and when he was turned +out of Ashestiel he bought land and began to build at Abbotsford on the +same river. The estate was an ill-chosen and unprofitable one. The house +grew with the owner's fortunes, which, founded in part as they were on +the hardest and most honest work that author ever gave, were in part +also founded on the quicksand of his treacherous connection with men, +reckless, ill-judging, and, though perhaps not in intention dishonest, +perpetually trading on their secret partner's industry and fame. In the +great commercial crash of 1825, Constable, the publisher of most of the +novels, was involved; he dragged the Ballantynes down with him; and the +whole of Scott's fortune, except his appointments and the little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> +settled on his wife and children, was liable for the Ballantynes' debts. +But he was not satisfied with ruin. He must needs set to work at the +hopeless task of paying debts which he had never, except technically, +incurred, and he actually in the remaining years of his life cleared off +the greater part of them. It was at the cost of his life itself. His +wife died, his children were scattered; but he worked on till the +thankless, hopeless toil broke down his strength, and after a fruitless +visit to Italy, he returned, to die at Abbotsford on 21st September +1832.</p> + +<p>Scott's poetry has gone through various stages of estimate, and it can +hardly be said even now, a hundred years after the publication of his +first verses, to have attained the position, practically accepted by all +but paradoxers, which in that time a poet usually gains, unless, as the +poets of the seventeenth century did in the eighteenth, he falls, owing +to some freak of popular taste, out of really critical consideration +altogether. The immense popularity which it at first obtained has been +noted, as well as the fact that it was only ousted from that popularity +by, so to speak, a variety of itself. But the rise of Byron in the long +run did it far less harm than the long-delayed vogue of Wordsworth and +Coleridge and the success even of the later schools, of which Tennyson +was at once the pioneer and the commander-in-chief. At an uncertain time +in the century, but comparatively early, it became fashionable to take +Scott's verse as clever and spirited improvisation, to dwell on its +over-fluency and facility, its lack of passages in the grand style +(whatever the grand style may be), to indicate its frequent blemishes in +strictly correct form and phrase. And it can hardly be said that there +has been much reaction from this tone among professed and competent +critics.</p> + +<p>To a certain extent, indeed, this undervaluation is justified, and Scott +himself, who was more free from literary vanity than any man of letters +of whom we have record, pleaded guilty again and again. Dropping as he +did almost by accident on a style which had absolutely no forerunners in +elaborate formal literature, a style almost absolutely destitute of any +restrictions or limits, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> which the length of lines and stanzas, the +position of rhymes, the change from narrative to dialogue, and so forth, +depended wholly and solely on the caprice of the author, it would have +been extremely strange if a man whose education had been a little +lacking in scholastic strictness, and who began to write at a time when +the first object of almost every writer was to burst old bonds, had not +been somewhat lawless, even somewhat slipshod. <i>Christabel</i> itself, the +first in time, and, though not published till long afterwards, the model +of his <i>Lay</i>, has but a few score verses that can pretend to the grand +style (whatever that may be). Nor yet again can it be denied that, acute +as was the sense which bade Scott stop, he wrote as it was a little too +much in this style, while he tried others for which he had far less +aptitude.</p> + +<p>Yet it seems to me impossible, on any just theory of poetry or of +literature, to rank him low as a poet. He can afford to take his trial +under more than one statute. To those who say that all depends on the +subject, or that the handling and arrangement of the subject are, if not +everything, yet something to be ranked far above mere detached beauties, +he can produce not merely the first long narrative poems in English, +which for more than a century had honestly enthralled and fixed popular +taste, but some of the very few long narrative poems which deserve to do +so. Wordsworth, in a characteristic note on the <i>White Doe of Rylstone</i>, +contrasts, with oblique depreciation of Scott, that poem and its famous +predecessors in the style across the border; but he omits to notice one +point of difference—that in Scott the <i>story</i> interests, and in himself +it does not. For the belated "classical" criticism of the <i>Edinburgh +Review</i>, which thought the story of the <i>Last Minstrel</i> childish, and +that of <i>Marmion</i> not much better, it may have been at least consistent +to undervalue these poems. But the assumptions of that criticism no +longer pass muster. On the other hand, to those who pin their poetical +faith on "patches," the great mass of Scott's poetical work presents +examples of certainly no common beauty. The set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> pieces of the larger +poems, the Melrose description in <i>The Lay</i>, the battle in <i>Marmion</i>, +the Fiery Cross in the <i>Lady of the Lake</i>, are indeed inferior in this +respect to the mere snatches which the author scattered about his +novels, some of which, especially the famous "Proud Maisie," have a +beauty not inferior to that of the best things of his greatest +contemporaries. And in swinging and dashing lyric, again, Scott can hold +his own with the best, if indeed "the best" can hold <i>their</i> own in this +particular division with "Lochinvar" and "Bonnie Dundee," with Elspeth's +ballad in the <i>Antiquary</i>, and the White Lady's comfortable words to +poor Father Philip.</p> + +<p>The most really damaging things to be said against Scott as a poet are +two. First, that his genius did not incline him either to the expression +of the highest passion or to that of the deepest meditation, in which +directions the utterances of the very greatest poetry are wont to lie. +In the second place, that the extreme fertility and fluency which cannot +be said to have improved even his prose work are, from the nature of the +case, far more evident, and far more damagingly evident, in his verse. +He is a poet of description, of action, of narration, rather than of +intense feeling or thought. Yet in his own special divisions of the +simpler lyric and of lyrical narrative he sometimes attains the +exquisite, and rarely sinks below a quality which is fitted to give the +poetical delight to a very large number of by no means contemptible +persons. It appears to me at least, that on no sound theory of poetical +criticism can Scott be ranked as a poet below Byron, who was his +imitator in narrative and his inferior in lyric. But it may be admitted +that this was not the opinion of most contemporaries of the two, and +that, much as the poetry of Byron has sunk in critical estimation during +the last half century, and slight as are the signs of its recovery, +those who do not think very highly of the poetry of the pupil do not, as +a rule, show much greater enthusiasm for that of the master.</p> + +<p>Byron, it is true, was only half a pupil of Scott's, and (oddly enough +for the poet, who, with Scott, was recognised as leader by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> the Romantic +schools of all Europe) had more than a hankering after the classical +ideals in literature. Yet how much of this was due to wilful "pose" and +a desire not to follow the prevailing school of the day is a question +difficult to answer—as indeed are many connected with Byron, whose +utterances, even in private letters, are very seldom to be taken with +absolute confidence in their sincerity. The poet's character did no +discredit to the doctrines of heredity. His family was one of +considerable distinction and great age; but his father, Captain John +Byron, who never came to the title, was a <i>roué</i> of the worst character, +and the cousin whom the poet succeeded had earned the name of the Wicked +Lord. His mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight, was of an excellent Scotch +stock, and an heiress; though her rascally husband made away with her +money. But she had a most violent temper, and seems to have had +absolutely no claims except those of birth to the title of lady. Byron +was born in Holles Street, Cavendish Square, on 22nd January 1788; and +his early youth, which was spent with his mother at Aberdeen, was one of +not much indulgence or happiness. But he came to the title, and to an +extremely impoverished succession, at ten years old, and three years +later was sent to Harrow. Here he made many friends, distinguishing +himself by obtruding mentions and memories of his rank in a way not +common with the English aristocracy, and hence, in 1805, he proceeded to +Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent about the usual time there, but +took no degree, and while he was still an undergraduate printed his +<i>Hours of Idleness</i>, first called <i>Juvenilia</i>. It appeared publicly in +March 1807, and a year later was the subject of a criticism, rather +excessive than unjust, in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. Byron, who had plenty +of pluck, and who all his life long inclined in his heart to the Popian +school, spent a considerable time upon a verse-answer, <i>English Bards +and Scotch Reviewers</i>, in which he ran amuck generally, but displayed +ability which it was hopeless to seek in his first production. Then he +went abroad, and the excitement of his sojourn in the countries round +the Mediterranean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> for the next two years not only aroused, but finally +determined and almost fully developed, his genius.</p> + +<p>On his return home he took his seat and went into society with the +success likely to attend an extremely handsome young man of +twenty-three, with a vague reputation both for ability and naughtiness, +a fairly old title, and something of an estate. But his position as a +"lion" was not thoroughly asserted till the publication, in February +1812, of <i>Childe Harold</i>, which with some difficulty he had been induced +by his friend Dallas, his publisher Murray, and the critic Gifford to +put before some frigid and trivial <i>Hints from Horace</i>. Over <i>Childe +Harold</i> the English public went simply mad, buying seven editions in +five weeks; and during the next three years Byron produced, in rapid +succession, <i>The Giaour</i>, <i>The Bride of Abydos</i>, <i>The Corsair</i>, <i>Lara</i>, +<i>The Siege of Corinth</i>, and <i>Hebrew Melodies</i>. He could hardly write +fast enough for the public to buy. Then the day after New Year's Day +1814, he married Miss Milbanke, a great heiress, a future baroness in +her own right, and handsome after a fashion, but of a cold, prim, and +reserved disposition, as well as of a very unforgiving temper. It +probably did not surprise any one who knew the pair when, a year later, +they separated for ever.</p> + +<p>The scandals and discussions connected with this event are fortunately +foreign to our subject here. The only important result of the matter for +literature is that Byron (upon whom public opinion in one of its sudden +fits of virtuous versatility threw even more of the blame than was +probably just) left the country and journeyed leisurely, in the company +of Mr. and Mrs. Shelley for the most part, to Venice. He never returned +alive to England; and Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa were successively +his headquarters till 1823. Then the Greek Insurrection attracted him, +he raised what money he could, set out for Greece, showed in the +distracted counsels of the insurgents much more practical and +untheatrical heroism than he had hitherto been credited with, and died +of fever at Missolonghi on the 19th of April 1824. His body was brought +home to England and buried in the parish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> church of Hucknall Torkard, +near Newstead Abbey, his Nottinghamshire seat, which, however, he had +sold some time before. The best of Byron's poems by far date from this +latter period of his life: the later cantos of <i>Childe Harold</i>, the +beautiful short poems of <i>The Dream</i> and <i>Darkness</i>, many pieces in +dramatic form (the chief of which are <i>Manfred</i>, <i>Cain</i>, <i>Marino +Faliero</i>, and <i>Sardanapalus</i>), <i>Mazeppa</i>, a piece more in his earlier +style but greatly superior to his earlier work, a short burlesque poem +<i>Beppo</i>, and an immense and at his death unfinished narrative satire +entitled <i>Don Juan</i>.</p> + +<p>Although opinions about Byron differ very much, there is one point about +him which does not admit of difference of opinion. No English poet, +perhaps no English writer except Scott (or rather "The Author of +Waverley"), has ever equalled him in popularity at home; and no English +writer, with Richardson and Scott again as seconds, and those not very +close ones, has equalled him in contemporary popularity abroad. The +vogue of Byron in England, though overpowering for the moment, was even +at its height resisted by some good judges and more strait-laced +moralists; and it ebbed, if not as rapidly as it flowed, with a much +more enduring movement. But abroad he simply took possession of the +Continent of Europe and kept it. He was one of the dominant influences +and determining causes of the French Romantic movement; in Germany, +though the failure of literary talent and activity of the first order in +that country early in this century made his school less important, he +had great power over Heine, its one towering genius; and he was almost +the sole master of young Russia, young Italy, young Spain, in poetry. +Nor, though his active and direct influence has of course been exhausted +by time, can his reputation on the Continent be said to have ever waned.</p> + +<p>These various facts, besides being certain in themselves, are also very +valuable as guiding the inquirer in regions which are more of opinion. +The rapidity of Byron's success everywhere, the extent of it abroad +(where few English writers before him had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> had any at all), and the +decline at home, are all easily connected with certain peculiarities of +his work. That work is almost as fluent and facile as Scott's, to which, +as has been said, it owes immense debts of scheme and manner; and it is +quite as faulty. Indeed Scott, with all his indifference to a strictly +academic correctness, never permitted himself the bad rhymes, the bad +grammar, the slipshod phrase in which Byron unblushingly indulges. But +Byron is much more monotonous than Scott, and it was this very monotony, +assisted by an appearance of intensity, which for the time gave him +power. The appeal of Byron consists very mainly, though no doubt not +wholly, in two things: the lavish use of the foreign and then unfamiliar +scenery, vocabulary, and manners of the Levant, and the installation, as +principal character, of a personage who was speedily recognised as a +sort of fancy portrait, a sketch in cap and yataghan, of Byron himself +as he would like to be thought. This Byronic hero has an ostentatious +indifference to moral laws, for the most part a mysterious past which +inspires him with deep melancholy, great personal beauty, strength, and +bravery, and he is an all-conquering lover. He is not quite so original +as he seemed, for he is in effect very little more than the older +Romantic villain-hero of Mrs. Radcliffe, the Germans, and Monk Lewis, +costumed much more effectively, placed in scheme and companionship more +picturesquely, and managed with infinitely greater genius. But it is a +common experience in literary history that a type more or less familiar +already, and presented with striking additions, is likely to be more +popular than something absolutely new. And accordingly Byron's bastard +and second-hand Romanticism, though it owed a great deal to the +terrorists and a great deal more to Scott, for the moment altogether +eclipsed the pure and original Romanticism of his elders Coleridge and +Wordsworth, of his juniors Shelley and Keats.</p> + +<p>But although the more extreme admirers of Byron would no doubt dissent +strongly from even this judgment, it would probably be subscribed, with +some reservations and guards, by not a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> good critics from whom I am +compelled to part company as to other parts of Byron's poetical claim. +It is on the question how much of true poetry lies behind and +independent of the scenery and properties of Byronism, that the great +debate arises. Was the author of the poems from <i>Childe Harold</i> to <i>Don +Juan</i> really gifted with the poetical "sincerity and strength" which +have been awarded him by a critic of leanings so little Byronic in the +ordinary sense of Matthew Arnold? Is he a poetic star of the first +magnitude, a poetic force of the first power, at all? There may seem to +be rashness, there may even seem to be puerile insolence and absurdity, +in denying or even doubting this in the face of such a European concert +as has been described and admitted above. Yet the critical conscience +admits of no transaction; and after all, as it was doubted by a great +thinker whether nations might not go mad like individuals, I do not know +why it should be regarded as impossible that continents should go mad +like nations.</p> + +<p>At any rate the qualities of Byron are very much of a piece, and, even +by the contention of his warmest reasonable admirers, not much varied or +very subtle, not necessitating much analysis or disquisition. They can +be fairly pronounced upon in a judgment of few words. Byron, then, seems +to me a poet distinctly of the second class, and not even of the best +kind of second, inasmuch as his greatness is chiefly derived from a sort +of parody, a sort of imitation, of the qualities of the first. His verse +is to the greatest poetry what melodrama is to tragedy, what plaster is +to marble, what pinchbeck is to gold. He is not indeed an impostor; for +his sense of the beauty of nature and of the unsatisfactoriness of life +is real, and his power of conveying this sense to others is real also. +He has great, though uncertain, and never very <i>fine</i>, command of poetic +sound, and a considerable though less command of poetic vision. But in +all this there is a singular touch of illusion, of what his +contemporaries had learnt from Scott to call gramarye. The often cited +parallel of the false and true Florimels in Spenser applies here also. +The really great poets do not injure each other in the very least by +comparison, different as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> they are. Milton does not "kill" Wordsworth; +Spenser does not injure Shelley; there is no danger in reading Keats +immediately after Coleridge. But read Byron in close juxtaposition with +any of these, or with not a few others, and the effect, to any good +poetic taste, must surely be disastrous; to my own, whether good or bad, +it is perfectly fatal. The light is not that which never was on land or +sea; it is that which is habitually just in front of the stage: the +roses are rouged, the cries of passion even sometimes (not always) ring +false. I have read Byron again and again; I have sometimes, by reading +Byron only and putting a strong constraint upon myself, got nearly into +the mood to enjoy him. But let eye or ear once catch sight or sound of +real poetry, and the enchantment vanishes.</p> + +<p>Attention has already been called to the fact that Byron, though +generally ranking with the poets who have been placed before him in this +chapter as a leader in the nineteenth century renaissance of poetry, was +a direct scholar of Scott, and in point of age represented, if not a new +generation, a second division of the old. This was still more the case +in point of age, and almost infinitely more so in point of quality, as +regards Shelley and Keats. There was nothing really new in Byron; there +was only a great personal force directing itself, half involuntarily and +more than half because of personal lack of initiative, into contemporary +ways. The other two poets just mentioned were really new powers. They +took some colour from their elders; but they added more than they took, +and they would unquestionably have been great figures at any time of +English literature and history. Scott had little or no influence on +them, and Wordsworth not much; but they were rather close to Coleridge, +and they owed something to a poet of much less genius than his or than +their own—Leigh Hunt.</p> + +<p>Percy Bysshe Shelley, the elder of the two, was Byron's junior by four +years, and was born at Field Place in Sussex in August 1792. He was the +heir of a very respectable and ancient though not very distinguished +family of the squirearchy; and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> had every advantage of education, +being sent to Eton in 1804, and to University College, Oxford, six years +later. The unconquerable unconventionality of his character and his +literary tastes had shown themselves while he was still a schoolboy, and +in the last year of his Etonian and the first of his Oxonian residence +he published two of the most absurd novels of the most absurd novel kind +that ever appeared, <i>Zastrozzi</i> and <i>St. Irvyne</i>, imitations of Monk +Lewis. He also in the same year collaborated in two volumes of verse, +<i>The Wandering Jew</i> (partly represented by <i>Queen Mab</i>), and "<i>Poems</i> by +Victor and Cazire" (which has vindicated the existence of reviewers by +surviving only in its reviews, all copies having mysteriously perished). +His stay at Oxford was not long; for having, in conjunction with a +clever but rather worthless friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg (afterwards +his biographer), issued a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism" and +sent it to the heads of colleges, he was, by a much greater necessity, +expelled from University on 25th March 1811. Later in the same year he +married Harriet Westbrook, a pretty and lively girl of sixteen, who had +been a school-fellow of his sister's, but came from the lower middle +class. His apologists have said that Harriet threw herself at his head, +and that Shelley explained to her that she or he might depart when +either pleased. The responsibility and the validity of this defence may +be left to these advocates.</p> + +<p>For nearly three years Shelley and his wife led an exceedingly wandering +life in Ireland, Wales, Devonshire, Berkshire, the Lake District, and +elsewhere, Shelley attempting all sorts of eccentric propagandism in +politics and religion, and completing the crude but absolutely original +<i>Queen Mab</i>. Before the third anniversary of his wedding-day came round +he had parted with Harriet, against whose character his apologists, as +above, have attempted to bring charges. The fact is that he had fallen +in love with Mary Godwin, daughter of the author of <i>Political Justice</i> +(whose writings had always had a great influence on Shelley, and who +spunged on him pitilessly) and of Mary Wollstonecraft. The pair fled to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> +the Continent together in July 1814; and two years later, when the +unhappy wife, a girl of twenty-one, had drowned herself in the +Serpentine, they were married. Meanwhile Shelley had wandered back to +England, had, owing to the death of his grandfather, received a +considerable independent income by arrangement, and in 1815 had written +<i>Alastor</i>, which, though not so clearly indicative of a new departure +when compared with <i>Queen Mab</i> as some critics have tried to make out, +no other living poet, perhaps no other poet, could have written. He was +refused the guardianship, though he was allowed to appoint guardians, of +his children by the luckless Harriet, and was (for him naturally, though +for most men unreasonably) indignant. But his poetical vocation and +course were both clear henceforward, though he never during his life had +much command of the public, and had frequent difficulties with +publishers, while the then attitude of the law made piracy very easy. +For a time he lived at Marlow, where he wrote or began <i>Prince +Athanase</i>, <i>Rosalind and Helen</i>, and above all <i>Laon and Cythna</i>, called +later and permanently <i>The Revolt of Islam</i>. In April 1818 he left +England for Italy, and never returned.</p> + +<p>The short remains of his life were spent chiefly at Lucca, Florence, and +Pisa, with visits to most of the other chief Italian cities; Byron being +often, and Leigh Hunt at the last, his companion. All his greatest poems +were now written. At last, in July 1821, when the Shelleys were staying +at a lonely house named Casa Magni, on the Bay of Spezia, he and his +friend Lieutenant Williams set out in a boat from Leghorn. The boat +either foundered in a squall or was run down. At any rate Shelley's body +was washed ashore on the 19th, and burnt on a pyre in the presence of +Byron, Hunt, and Trelawny.</p> + +<p>Little need be said of Shelley's character. If it had not been for the +disgusting efforts of his maladroit adorers to blacken that not merely +of his hapless young wife, but of every one with whom he came in +contact, it might be treated with the extremest indulgence. Almost a boy +in years at the time of his death, he was, with some late flashes of +sobering, wholly a boy in inability<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> to understand the responsibilities +and the burdens of life. An enthusiast for humanity generally, and +towards individuals a man of infinite generosity and kindliness, he yet +did some of the cruellest and some of not the least disgraceful things +from mere childish want of realising the <i>pacta conventa</i> of the world. +He, wholly ignorant, would, if he could, have turned the wheel of +society the other way, reckless of the horrible confusion and suffering +that he must occasion.</p> + +<p>But in pure literary estimation we need take no note of this. In +literature, Shelley, if not of the first three or four, is certainly of +the first ten or twelve. He has, as no poet in England except Blake and +Coleridge in a few flashes had had before him for some century and a +half, the ineffable, the divine intoxication which only the <i>di majores</i> +of poetry can communicate to their worshippers. Once again, after all +these generations, it became unnecessary to agree or disagree with the +substance, to take interest or not to take interest in it, to admit or +to contest the presence of faults and blemishes—to do anything except +recognise and submit to the strong pleasure of poetry, the charm of the +highest poetical inspiration.</p> + +<p>I think myself, though the opinion is not common among critics, that +this touch is unmistakable even so early as <i>Queen Mab</i>. That poem is no +doubt to a certain extent modelled upon Southey, especially upon +<i>Kehama</i>, which, as has been observed above, is a far greater poem than +is usually allowed. But the motive was different: the sails might be the +same, but the wind that impelled them was another. By the time of +<i>Alastor</i> it is generally admitted that there could or should have been +little mistake. Nothing, indeed, but the deafening blare of Byron's +brazen trumpet could have silenced this music of the spheres. The +meaning is not very much, though it is passable; but the music is +exquisite. There is just a foundation of Wordsworthian scheme in the +blank verse; but the structure built on it is not Wordsworth's at all, +and there are merely a few borrowed strokes of <i>technique</i>, such as the +placing of a long adjective before a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> monosyllabic noun at the end of +the line, and a strong cæsura about two-thirds through that line. All +the rest is Shelley, and wonderful.</p> + +<p>It may be questioned whether, fine as <i>The Revolt of Islam</i> is, the +Spenserian stanza was quite so well suited as the "Pindaric" or as blank +verse, or as lyrical measures, to Shelley's genius. It is certainly far +excelled both in the lyrics and in the blank verse of <i>Prometheus +Unbound</i>, the first poem which distinctly showed that one of the +greatest lyric poets of the world had been born to England. <i>The Cenci</i> +relies more on subject, and, abandoning the lyric appeal, abandons what +Shelley is strongest in; but <i>Hellas</i> restores this. Of his comic +efforts, the chief of which are <i>Swellfoot the Tyrant</i> and <i>Peter Bell +the Third</i>, it is perhaps enough to say that his humour, though it +existed, was fitful, and that he was too much of a partisan to keep +sufficiently above his theme. The poems midway between, large and +small—<i>Prince Athanase</i>, <i>The Witch of Atlas</i> (an exquisite +and glorious fantasy piece), <i>Rosalind and Helen</i>, <i>Adonais</i>, +<i>Epipsychidion</i>, and the <i>Triumph of Life</i>—would alone have made his +fame. But it is in Shelley's smallest poems that his greatest virtue +lies. Not even in the seventeenth century had any writer given so much +that was so purely exquisite. "To Constantia Singing," the "Ozymandias" +sonnet, the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills," the "Stanzas +written in Dejection," the "Ode to the West Wind," the hackneyed +"Cloud," and "Skylark," "Arethusa," the "World's Wanderers," "Music, +when soft voices die," "The flower that smiles to-day," "Rarely, rarely, +comest thou," the "Lament," "One word is too often profaned," the +"Indian Air," the second "Lament," "O world! O life! O time!" (the most +perfect thing of its kind perhaps, in the strict sense of +perfection, that all poetry contains), the "Invitation," and the +"Recollection,"—this long list, which might have been made longer, +contains things absolutely consummate, absolutely unsurpassed, only +rivalled by a few other things as perfect as themselves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<p>Shelley has been foolishly praised, and it is very likely that the +praise given here may seem to some foolish. It is as hard for praise to +keep the law of the head as for blame to keep the law of the heart. He +has been mischievously and tastelessly excused for errors both in and +out of his writings which need only a kindly silence. In irritation at +the "chatter" over him some have even tried to make out that his +prose—very fine prose indeed, and preserved to us in some welcome +letters and miscellaneous treatises, but capable of being dispensed +with—is more worthy of attention than his verse, which has no parallel +and few peers. But that one thing will remain true in the general +estimate of competent posterity I have no doubt. There are two English +poets, and two only, in whom the purely poetical attraction, exclusive +of and sufficient without all others, is supreme, and these two are +Spenser and Shelley.</p> + +<p>The life of John Keats was even shorter and even less marked by striking +events than that of Shelley, and he belonged in point of extraction and +education to a somewhat lower class of society than any of the poets +hitherto mentioned in this chapter. He was the son of a livery stable +keeper who was fairly well off, and he went to no school but a private +one, where, however, he received tolerable instruction and had good +comrades. Born in 1795, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at the age of +fifteen, and even did some work in his profession, till in 1817 his +overmastering passion for literature had its way. He became intimate +with the so-called "Cockney school," or rather with its leaders Leigh +Hunt and Hazlitt—an intimacy, as far as the former was concerned, not +likely to chasten his own taste, but chiefly unfortunate because it led, +in the rancorous state of criticism then existing, to his own efforts +being branded with the same epithet. His first book was published in the +year above mentioned: it did not contain all the verse he had written up +to that time, or the best of it, but it confirmed him in his vocation. +He broke away from surgery, and, having some little means, travelled to +the Isle of Wight, Devonshire, and other parts of England, besides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> +becoming more and more familiar with men of letters. It was in the Isle +of Wight chiefly that he wrote <i>Endymion</i>, which appeared in 1818. This +was savagely and stupidly attacked in <i>Blackwood</i> and the <i>Quarterly</i>; +the former article being by some attributed, without a tittle of +evidence, to Lockhart. But the supposed effect of these attacks on +Keats' health was widely exaggerated by some contemporaries, especially +by Byron. The fact was that he had almost from his childhood shown +symptoms of lung disease, which developed itself very rapidly. The sense +of his almost certain fate combined with the ordinary effects of passion +to throw a somewhat hectic air over his correspondence with Miss Fanny +Brawne. His letters to her contain nothing discreditable to him, but +ought never to have been published. He was, however, to bring out his +third and greatest book of verse in 1820; and then he sailed for Italy, +to die on the 23rd of February 1821. He spoke of his name as "writ in +water." Posterity has agreed with him that it is—but in the Water of +Life.</p> + +<p>Nothing is more interesting, even in the endless and delightful task of +literary comparison, than to contrast the work of Shelley and Keats, so +alike and yet so different. A little longer space of work, much greater +advantages of means and education, and a happier though less blameless +experience of passion, enabled Shelley to produce a much larger body of +work than Keats has to his name, even when this is swollen by what Mr. +Palgrave has justly stigmatised as "the incomplete and inferior work" +withheld by Keats himself, but made public by the cruel kindness of +admirers. And this difference in bulk probably coincides with a +difference in the volume of genius of the two writers. Further, while it +is not at all improbable that if Shelley had lived he would have gone on +writing better and better, the same probability is, I think, to be more +sparingly predicated of Keats.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, by a not uncommon connection or consequence, Keats +has proved much more of a "germinal"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> poet than Shelley. Although the +latter was, I think, by far the greater, his poetry had little that was +national and very little that was imitable about it. He has had a vast +influence; but it has been in the main the influence, the inspiration of +his unsurpassed exciting power. No one has borrowed or carried further +any specially Shelleian turns of phrase, rhythm, or thought. Those who +have attempted to copy and urge further the Shelleian attitude towards +politics, philosophy, ethics, and the like, have made it generally +ludicrous and sometimes disgusting. He is, in his own famous words, +"something remote and afar." His poetry is almost poetry in its +elements, uncoloured by race, language, time, circumstance, or creed. He +is not even so much a poet as Poetry accidentally impersonated and +incarnate.</p> + +<p>With Keats it is very different. He had scarcely reached maturity of any +kind when he died, and he laboured under the very serious disadvantages, +first of an insufficient acquaintance with the great masters, and +secondly of coming early under the influence of a rather small master, +yet a master, Leigh Hunt, who taught him the fluent, gushing, slipshod +style that brought not merely upon him, but upon his mighty successor +Tennyson, the harsh but not in this respect wholly unjust lash of +conservative and academic criticism. But he, as no one of his own +contemporaries did, felt, expressed, and handed on the exact change +wrought in English poetry by the great Romantic movement. Coleridge, +Wordsworth, Scott, and even Southey to some extent, were the authors of +this; but, being the authors, they were necessarily not the results of +it. Byron was fundamentally out of sympathy with it, though by accidents +of time and chance he had to enlist; Shelley, an angel, and an effectual +angel, of poetry, was hardly a man, and still less an Englishman. But +Keats felt it all, expressed what of it he had time and strength to +express, and left the rest to his successors, helped, guided, furthered +by his own example. Keats, in short, is the father, directly or at short +stages of descent, of every English poet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> born within the present +century who has not been a mere "sport" or exception. He begat Tennyson, +and Tennyson begat all the rest.</p> + +<p>The evidences of this are to be seen in almost his earliest poems—not +necessarily in those contained in his earliest volume. Of course they +are not everywhere. There were sure to be, and there were, mere echoes +of eighteenth century verse and mere imitations of earlier writers. But +these may be simply neglected. It is in such pieces as "Calidore" that +the new note is heard; and though something in this note may be due to +Hunt (who had caught the original of it from Wither and Browne), Keats +changed, enriched, and refashioned the thing to such an extent that it +became his own. It is less apparent (though perhaps not less really +present) in his sonnets, despite the magnificence of the famous one on +Chapman's <i>Homer</i>, than in the couplet poems, which are written in an +extremely fluent and peculiar verse, very much "enjambed" or overlapped, +and with a frequent indulgence in double rhymes. Hunt had to a certain +extent started this, but he had not succeeded in giving it anything like +the distinct character which it took in Keats' hands.</p> + +<p><i>Endymion</i> was written in this measure, with rare breaks; and there is +little doubt that the lusciousness of the rhythm, combined as it was +with a certain lusciousness both of subject and (again in unlucky +imitation of Hunt) of handling, had a bad effect on some readers, as +also that the attacks on it were to a certain extent, though not a very +large one, prompted by genuine disgust at the mawkishness, as its author +called it, of the tone. Keats, who was always an admirable critic of his +own work, judged it correctly enough later, except that he was too harsh +to it. But it is a delightful poem to this day, and I do not think that +it is quite just to call it, as it has been called, "not Greek, but +Elizabethan-Romantic." It seems to me quite different from Marlowe or +the author of <i>Britain's Ida</i>, and really Greek, but Greek mediæval, +Greek of the late romance type, refreshed with a wonderful new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> blood of +English romanticism. And this once more was to be the note of all the +best poetry of the century, the pouring of this new English blood +through the veins of old subjects—classical, mediæval, foreign, modern. +We were to conquer the whole world of poetical matter with our English +armies, and Keats was the first leader who started the adventure.</p> + +<p>The exquisite poetry of his later work showed this general tendency in +all its latest pieces,—clearly in the larger poems, the fine but +perhaps somewhat overpraised <i>Hyperion</i>, the admirable <i>Lamia</i>, the +exquisite <i>Eve of St. Agnes</i>, but still more in the smaller, and most of +all in those twin peaks of all his poetry, the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" +and "La Belle Dame sans Merci." He need indeed have written nothing but +these two to show himself not merely an exquisite poet but a captain and +leader of English poetry for many a year, almost for many a generation +to come. Wordsworth may have given him a little, a very quiet hint for +the first, the more Classical masterpiece; Coleridge something a little +louder for the second, the Romantic. But in neither case did the summons +amount to anything like a cue or a call-bell; it was at best seed that, +if it had not fallen on fresh and fruitful soil, could have come to +nothing.</p> + +<p>As it is, and if we wish to see what it came to, we must simply look at +the whole later poetry of the nineteenth century in England. The +operations of the spirit are not to be limited, and it is of course +quite possible that if Keats had not been, something or somebody would +have done his work instead of him. But as it is, it is to Keats that we +must trace Tennyson, Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Morris; to Keats that +even not a little of Browning has to be affiliated; to Keats, directly +or indirectly, that the greater part of the poetry of nearly three +generations owes royalty and allegiance.</p> + +<p>Of him, as of Shelley, some foolish and hurtful things have been said. +In life he was no effeminate "æsthetic" or "decadent," divided between +sensual gratification and unmanly <i>Katzenjammer</i>, between paganism and +puerility, but an honest, manly Englishman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> whose strength only yielded +to unconquerable disease, whose impulses were always healthy and +generous. Despite his origin,—and, it must be added, some of his +friendships,—there was not a touch of vulgarity about him; and if his +comic vein was not very full-pulsed, he had a merry laugh in him. There +is no "poisonous honey stolen" from anywhere or extracted by himself +from anything in Keats; his sensuousness is nothing more than is, in the +circumstances, "necessary and voluptuous and right." But these moral +excellences, while they may add to the satisfaction with which one +contemplates him, hardly enhance—though his morbid admirers seem to +think that the absence of them would enhance—the greatness and the +value of his poetical position, both in the elaboration of a new poetic +style and language, and still more in the indication of a new road +whereby the great poetic exploration could be carried on.</p> + +<p>Round or under these great Seven—for that Byron was great in a way need +not be denied; Southey, the weakest of all as a poet, had a very strong +influence, and was one of the very greatest of English men of +letters—must be mentioned a not inconsiderable number of men who in any +other age would have been reckoned great. The eldest of these, both in +years and in reputation, holds his position, and perhaps always held it, +rather by courtesy than by strict right. Samuel Rogers<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> was born in +London on 30th July 1763, and was the son of a dissenting banker, from +whom he derived Whig principles and a comfortable fortune. It is said +that he once, as a very young man, went to call on Dr. Johnson, but was +afraid to knock; but though shyness accompanied him through life, the +amiability which it is sometimes supposed to betoken did not. He +published a volume of poems in 1786, and his famous <i>Pleasures of +Memory</i>, the piece that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> made his reputation, in 1792. Twenty years +afterwards <i>Columbus</i> followed, and yet two years later, in 1814, +<i>Jacqueline</i>; while in 1822 <i>Italy</i>, on which, with the <i>Pleasures of +Memory</i>, such fame as he has rests, was published, to be reissued some +years afterwards in a magnificent illustrated edition, and to have a +chance (in a classical French jest) <i>se sauver de planche en planche</i>. +He did not die till 1855, in his ninety-third year: the last, as he had +been the first, of his group.</p> + +<p>Rogers had the good luck to publish his best piece at a time when the +general and popular level of English poetry was at the lowest point it +has reached since the sixteenth century, and to be for many years +afterwards a rich and rather hospitable man, the acquaintance if not +exactly the friend of most men of letters, of considerable influence in +political and general society, and master of an excessively sharp +tongue. A useful friend and a dangerous enemy, it was simpler to court +or to let him alone than to attack him, and his fame was derived from +pieces too different from any work of the actual generation to give them +much umbrage. It may be questioned whether Rogers ever wrote a single +line of poetry. But he wrote some polished and pleasant verse, which was +vigorous by the side of Hayley and "correct" by the side of Keats. In +literature he has very little interest; in literary history he has some.</p> + +<p><i>Felix opportunitate</i> in the same way, but a far greater poet, was +Thomas Campbell, who, like Rogers, was a Whig, like him belonged rather +to the classical than to the romantic school in style if not in choice +of subject, and like him had the good luck to obtain, by a poem with a +title very similar to that of Rogers' masterpiece, a high reputation at +a time when there was very little poetry put before the public. Campbell +was not nearly so old a man as Rogers, and was even the junior of the +Lake poets and Scott, having been born at Glasgow on the 27th July 1777. +His father was a real Campbell, and as a merchant had at one time been +of some fortune; but the American War had impoverished him, and the poet +was born to comparative indigence. He did, however, well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> at the college +of his native city, and on leaving it took a tutorship in Mull. His +<i>Pleasures of Hope</i> was published in 1799 and was extremely popular, nor +after it had its author much difficulty in following literature. He was +never exactly rich, but pensions, legacies, editorships, high prices for +his not extensive poetical work, and higher for certain exercises in +prose book-making which are now almost forgotten, maintained him very +comfortably. Indeed, of the many recorded ingratitudes of authors to +publishers, Campbell's celebrated health to Napoleon because "he shot a +bookseller" is one of the most ungrateful. In the last year of the +eighteenth century he went to Germany, and was present at (or in the +close neighbourhood of) the battle of Hohenlinden. This he afterwards +celebrated in really immortal verse, which, with "Ye Mariners of +England" and the "Battle of the Baltic," represents his greatest +achievement. In 1809 he published <i>Gertrude of Wyoming</i>, a short-long +poem of respectable <i>technique</i> and graceful sentiment. In 1824 appeared +a volume of poems, of which the chief, <i>Theodric</i> (not as it is +constantly misspelled <i>Theodoric</i>), is bad; and in 1842 another, of +which the chief, <i>The Pilgrim of Glencoe</i>, is worse. He died in 1844 at +Boulogne, after a life which, if not entirely happy (for he had +ill-health, not improved by incautious habits, some domestic +misfortunes, and a rather sour disposition), had been full of honours of +all kinds, both in his own country, of where he was Lord Rector of +Glasgow University, and out of it.</p> + +<p>If Campbell had written nothing but his longer poems, the comparison +above made with Rogers would be wholly, instead of partly, justified. +Although both still retain a sort of conventional respect, it is +impossible to call either the <i>Pleasures of Hope</i> or <i>Gertrude of +Wyoming</i> very good poetry, while enough has been said of their +successors. Nor can very high praise be given to most of the minor +pieces. But the three splendid war-songs above named—the equals, if not +the superiors, of anything of the kind in English, and therefore in any +language—set him in a position from which he is never likely to be +ousted. In a handful of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> others—"Lochiel," the exquisite lines on "A +Deserted Garden in Argyleshire," with, for some flashes at least, the +rather over-famed "Exile of Erin," "Lord Ullin's Daughter," and a few +more—he also displays very high, though rather unequal and by no means +unalloyed, poetical faculty; and "The Last Man," which, by the way, is +the latest of his good things, is not the least. But his best work will +go into a very small compass: a single octavo sheet would very nearly +hold it, and it was almost all written before he was thirty. He is thus +an instance of a kind of poet, not by any means rare in literature, but +also not very common, who appears to have a faculty distinct in class +but not great in volume, who can do certain things better than almost +anybody else, but cannot do them very often, and is not quite to be +trusted to do them with complete sureness of touch. For it is to be +noted that even in Campbell's greatest things there are distinct +blemishes, and that these blemishes are greatest in that which in its +best parts reaches the highest level—"The Battle of the Baltic." Many +third and some tenth rate poets would never have left in their work such +things as "The might of England flushed <i>To anticipate the scene</i>," +which is half fustian and half nonsense: no very great poet could +possibly have been guilty of it. Yet for all this Campbell holds, as has +been said, the place of best singer of war in a race and language which +are those of the best singers and not the worst fighters in the history +of the world—in the race of Nelson and the language of Shakespeare. Not +easily shall a man win higher praise than this.</p> + +<p>In politics, as well as in a certain general kind of literary attitude +and school, another Thomas, Moore, classes himself both historically and +naturally with Rogers and Campbell; but he was a very much better poet +than Rogers, and, though he never reached quite the same height as +Campbell at his narrow and exceptional best, a far more voluminous verse +writer and a much freer writer of good verse of many different kinds. He +was born in Dublin on 28th May 1779; his father being a grocer, his +mother somewhat higher in social rank. He was well educated, and was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> +sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he had but surmounted political +difficulties; for his time as an undergraduate coincided with +"Ninety-eight," and though it does not seem that he had meddled with +anything distinctly treasonable, he had "Nationalist" friends and +leanings. Partly to sever inconvenient associations, partly in quest of +fortune, he was sent to London in that year, and entered at the Temple. +In a manner not very clearly explained, but connected no doubt with his +leaning to the Whig party, which was then much in need of literary help, +he became a protégé of Lord Moira's, by whom he was introduced to the +Prince of Wales. The Prince accepted the dedication of some translations +of Anacreon, etc., which Moore had brought over with him, and which were +published in 1800; while two years later the <i>Poems of Thomas Little</i>, a +punning pseudonym, appeared, and at once charmed the public by their +sugared versification and shocked it by their looseness of tone—a +looseness which is not to be judged from the comparatively decorous +appearance they make in modern editions. But there was never much harm +in them. Next year, in 1803, Moore received a valuable appointment at +Bermuda, which, though he actually went out to take possession of it and +travelled some time in North America, he was allowed to transfer to a +deputy. He came back to England, published another volume of poems, and +fought a rather famously futile duel with Jeffrey about a criticism on +it in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. He began the <i>Irish Melodies</i> in 1807, +married four years later, and from that time fixed his headquarters +mostly in the country: first near Ashbourne in Derbyshire, then near +Devizes in Wiltshire, to be near his patrons Lord Moira and Lord +Lansdowne. But he was constantly in London on visits, and much in the +society of men of letters, not merely of his own party. In particular he +became, on the whole, Byron's most intimate friend, and preserved +towards that very difficult person an attitude (tinged neither with the +servility nor with the exaggerated independence of the <i>parvenu</i>) which +did him a great deal of credit. He was rather a strong partisan, and, +having a brilliant vein of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> poetical satire, he wrote in 1813 <i>The +Twopenny Post Bag</i>—the best satiric verse of the poetical kind since +the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i>, and the best on the Whig side since the <i>Rolliad</i>.</p> + +<p>Nor did he fail to take advantage of the popular appetite for long poems +which Scott and Byron had created; his <i>Lalla Rookh</i>, published in 1817, +being very popular and very profitable. It was succeeded by another and +his best satirical work, <i>The Fudge Family</i>, a charming thing.</p> + +<p>Up to this time he had been an exceedingly fortunate man; and his good +luck, aided it must be said by his good conduct,—for Moore, with all +his apparent weaknesses, was thoroughly sound at the core,—enabled him +to surmount a very serious reverse of fortune. His Bermuda deputy was +guilty of malversation so considerable that Moore could not meet the +debt, and he had to go abroad. But Lord Lansdowne discharged his +obligations; and Moore paid Lord Lansdowne. He returned to England in +1823, and was a busy writer for all but the last years of the thirty +that remained to him; but the best of his work was done, with one +exception. Byron left him his <i>Memoirs</i>, which would of course have been +enormously profitable. But Lady Byron and others of the poet's +connections were so horrified at the idea of the book appearing that, by +an arrangement which has been variously judged, but which can hardly be +regarded as other than disinterested on Moore's part, the MS. was +destroyed, and instead of it Moore brought out in 1830 his well-known +<i>Life of Byron</i>. This, some not incompetent judges have regarded as +ranking next to Lockhart's <i>Scott</i> and Boswell's <i>Johnson</i>, and though +its main attraction may be derived from Byron's very remarkable letters, +still shows on the part of the biographer very unusual dexterity, good +feeling, and taste. The lives of <i>Sheridan</i> and <i>Lord Edward Fitzgerald</i> +had, and deserved to have, less success; while a <i>History of Ireland</i> +was, and was bound to be, an almost complete failure. For, though a very +good prose writer, Moore had little of the erudition required, no grasp +or faculty of political argument, and was at this time of his life, if +not earlier,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> something of a trimmer, certain to satisfy neither the +"ascendency" nor the "nationalist" parties. His prose romance of <i>The +Epicurean</i> is much better, and a really remarkable, piece of work; and +though the <i>Loves of the Angels</i>, his last long poem, is not very good, +he did not lose his command either of sentimental or of facetious lyric +till quite his last days. These were clouded; for, like his +contemporaries Scott and Southey, he suffered from brain disease for +some time before his death, on 25th February 1852.</p> + +<p>During his lifetime, especially during the first half or two-thirds of +his literary career, Moore had a great popularity, and won no small +esteem even among critics; such discredit as attached to him being +chiefly of the moral kind, and that entertained only by very +strait-laced persons. But as the more high-flown and impassioned muses +of Wordsworth, of Shelley, and of Keats gained the public ear in the +third and later decades of the century, a fashion set in of regarding +him as a mere melodious trifler; and this has accentuated itself during +the last twenty years or so, though quite recently some efforts have +been made in protest. This estimate is demonstrably unjust. It is true +that of the strange and high notes of poetry he has very few, of the +very strangest and highest none at all. But his long poems, <i>Lalla +Rookh</i> especially, though somewhat over-burdened with the then +fashionable deck cargo of erudite or would-be erudite notes, possess +merit which none but a very prejudiced critic can, or at least ought to, +overlook. And in other respects he is very nearly, if not quite, at the +top of at least two trees, which, if not quite cedars of Lebanon, are +not mere grass of Parnassus. Moore was a born as well as a trained +musician. But whereas most musicians have since the seventeenth century +been exceedingly ill at verbal numbers, he had a quite extraordinary +knack of composing what are rather disrespectfully called "words." Among +his innumerable songs there are not one or two dozens or scores, but +almost hundreds of quite charmingly melodious things, admirably adjusted +to their music, and delightful by themselves without any kind of +instrument, and as said not sung. And, what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> is more, among these there +is a very respectable number to which it would be absolutely absurd to +give the name of trifle. "I saw from the beach" is not a trifle, nor +"When in death I shall calm recline," nor "Oft in the stilly night," nor +"Tell me, kind sage, I pray thee," nor many others. They have become so +hackneyed to us in various ways, and some of them happen to be pitched +in a key of diction which, though not better or worse than others, is so +out of fashion, that it seems as if some very respectable judges could +not "focus" Moore at all. To those who can he will seem, not of course +the equal, or anything like the equal, of Burns or Shelley, of Blake or +Keats, but in his own way,—and that a way legitimate and not low,—one +of the first lyrical writers in English. And they will admit a +considerable addition to his claims in his delightful satirical verse, +mainly but not in the least offensively political, in which kind he is +as easily first as in the sentimental song to music.</p> + +<p>Something not dissimilar to the position which Moore occupies on the +more classical wing of the poets of the period is occupied on the other +by Leigh Hunt. Hunt (Henry James Leigh, who called himself and is +generally known by the third only of his Christian names) was born in +London on the 19th October 1784, was educated at Christ's Hospital, +began writing very early, held for a short time a clerkship in a public +office, and then joined his brother in conducting the <i>Examiner</i> +newspaper. Fined and imprisoned for a personal libel on the Prince +Regent (1812), Hunt became the fashion with the Opposition; and the +<i>Story of Rimini</i>, which he published when he came out of gaol, and +which was written in it, had a good deal of influence. He spent some +years in Italy, to which place he had gone with his family in 1822 to +edit <i>The Liberal</i> and to keep house with Byron—a very disastrous +experiment, the results of which he recorded in an offensive book on his +return. Hunt lived to 18th August 1859, and was rescued from the chronic +state of impecuniosity in which, despite constant literary work, he had +long lived, by a Crown pension and some other assistance in his latest +days. Personally, Leigh Hunt was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> an agreeable and amiable being enough, +with certain foibles which were rather unfairly magnified in the famous +caricature of him as Harold Skimpole by his friend Dickens, but which +were accompanied by some faults of taste of which Mr. Skimpole is not +accused.</p> + +<p>In letters he was a very considerable person; though the best and far +the largest part of his work is in prose, and will be noticed hereafter. +His verse is not great in bulk, and is perhaps more original and +stimulating than positively good. His wide and ardent study of the older +English poets and of those of Italy had enabled him to hit on a novel +style of phrase and rhythm, which has been partly referred to above in +the notice of Keats; his narrative faculty was strong, and some of his +smaller pieces, from his sonnets downwards, are delightful things. "Abou +ben Adhem" unites (a rare thing for its author) amiability with dignity, +stateliness with ease; the "Nile" sonnet is splendid; "Jenny kissed me," +charming, if not faultless; "The Man and the Fish," far above vulgarity. +The lack of delicate taste which characterised his manners also marred +his verse, which is not unfrequently slipshod, or gushing, or trivially +fluent, and perhaps never relatively so good as the best of his prose. +But he owed little to any but the old masters, and many contemporaries +owed not a little to him.</p> + +<p>A quaint and interesting if not supremely important figure among the +poets of this period, and, if his poetry and prose be taken together, a +very considerable man of letters,—perhaps the most considerable man of +letters in English who was almost totally uneducated,—was James Hogg, +who was born in Ettrick Forest in the year 1772. He was taken from +school to mind sheep so early that much later he had to teach himself +even reading and writing afresh; and, though he must have had the +song-gift early, it was not till he was nearly thirty that he published +anything. He was discovered by Scott, to whom he and his mother supplied +a good deal of matter for the <i>Border Minstrelsy</i>, and he published +again in 1803. The rest of his life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> was divided between writing—with +fair success, though with some ill-luck from bankrupt publishers—and +sheep-farming, on which he constantly lost, though latterly he sat rent +free under the Duke of Buccleuch. He died on 21st November 1835.</p> + +<p>Even during his life Hogg underwent a curious process of mythop[oe]ia at +the hands of Wilson and the other wits of <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, who +made him—partly with his own consent, partly not—into the famous +"Ettrick Shepherd" of the <i>Noctes Ambrosianæ</i>. "The Shepherd" has Hogg's +exterior features and a good many of his foibles, but is endowed with +considerably more than his genius. Even in his published and +acknowledged works, which are numerous, it is not always quite easy to +be sure of his authorship; for he constantly solicited, frequently +received, and sometimes took without asking, assistance from Lockhart +and others. But enough remains that is different from the work of any of +his known or possible coadjutors to enable us to distinguish his +idiosyncrasy pretty well. In verse he was a very fluent and an +exceedingly unequal writer, who in his long poems chiefly, and not too +happily, followed Scott, but who in the fairy poem of "Kilmeny" +displayed an extraordinary command of a rare form of poetry, and who has +written some dozens of the best songs in the language. The best, but +only a few of the best, of these are "Donald Macdonald," "Donald +M'Gillavry," "The Village of Balmanhapple," and the "Boy's Song." In +prose he chiefly attempted novels, which have no construction at all, +and few merits of dialogue or style, but contain some powerful passages; +while one of them, <i>The Confessions of a Justified Sinner</i>, if it is +entirely his, which is very doubtful, is by far the greatest thing he +wrote, being a story of <i>diablerie</i> very well designed, wonderfully +fresh and enthralling in detail, and kept up with hardly a slip to the +end. His other chief prose works are entitled <i>The Brownie of Bodsbeck</i>, +<i>The Three Perils of Man</i>, <i>The Three Perils of Woman</i>, and <i>Altrive +Tales</i>, while he also wrote some important, and in parts very offensive, +but also in parts amusing, <i>Recollections of Sir Walter Scott</i>. His +verse volumes, no one of which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> good throughout, though hardly one is +without good things, were <i>The Mountain Bard</i>, <i>The Queen's Wake</i>, +<i>Mador of the Moor</i>, <i>The Pilgrims of the Sun</i>, <i>Jacobite Relics</i> (some +of the best forged by himself), <i>Queen Hynde</i>, and <i>The Border Garland</i>.</p> + +<p>A greater writer, if his work be taken as a whole, than any who has been +mentioned since Keats, was Walter Savage Landor, much of whose +composition was in prose, but who was so alike in prose and verse that +the whole had better be noticed together here. Landor (who was of a +family of some standing in Warwickshire, and was heir to considerable +property, much of which he wasted later by selling his inheritance and +buying a large but unprofitable estate in Wales) was born at Ipsley +Court, in 1775. He went to school at Rugby, and thence to Trinity +College, Oxford, at both of which places he gained considerable +scholarship but was frequently in trouble owing to the intractable and +headstrong temper which distinguished him through life. He was indeed +rusticated from his college, and subsequently, owing to his extravagant +political views, was refused a commission in the Warwickshire Militia. +He began to write early, but the poem of <i>Gebir</i>, which contains in germ +or miniature nearly all his characteristics of style, passed almost +unnoticed by the public, though it was appreciated by good wits like +Southey and De Quincey. After various private adventures he came into +his property and volunteered in the service of Spain, where he failed, +as usual, from impracticableness. In 1811, recklessly as always, he +married a very young girl of whom he knew next to nothing, and the +marriage proved anything but a happy one. The rest of his long life was +divided into three residences: first with his family at Florence; then, +when he had quarrelled with his wife, at Bath; and lastly (when he had +been obliged to quit Bath and England owing to an outrageous lampoon on +one lady, which he had written, as he conceived, in chivalrous defence +of another) at Florence again. Here he died in September 1864, aged very +nearly ninety.</p> + +<p>Landor's poetical productions, which are numerous, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> spread over the +greater part of his life; his prose, by which he is chiefly known, dates +in the main from the last forty years of it, the best being written +between 1820 and 1840. The greater part of this prose takes the form of +"Imaginary Conversations"—sometimes published under separate general +headings, sometimes under the common title—between characters of all +ages, from the classical times to Landor's. Their bulk is very great; +their perfection of style at the best extraordinary, and on the whole +remarkably uniform; their value, when considerations of matter are added +to that of form, exceedingly unequal. For in them Landor not only +allowed the fullest play to the ungovernable temper and the childish +crotchets already mentioned, but availed himself of his opportunities +(for, though he endeavoured to maintain a pretence of dramatic +treatment, his work is nearly as personal as that of Byron) to deliver +his sentiments on a vast number of subjects, sometimes without too much +knowledge, and constantly with a plentiful lack of judgment. In +politics, in satiric treatment, and especially in satiric treatment of +politics, he is very nearly valueless. But his intense familiarity with +and appreciation of classical subjects gave to almost all his dealings +with them a value which, for parallel reasons, is also possessed by +those touching Italy. And throughout this enormous collection of work +(which in the compactest edition fills five large octavo volumes in +small print), whensoever the author forgets his crotchets and his rages, +when he touches on the great and human things, his utterance reaches the +very highest water-mark of English literature that is not absolutely the +work of supreme genius.</p> + +<p>For supreme genius Landor had not. His brain was not a great brain, and +he did not possess the exquisite alertness to his own weaknesses, or the +stubborn knack of confinement to things suitable to him, which some +natures much smaller than the great ones have enjoyed. But he had the +faculty of elaborate style—of style elaborated by a careful education +after the best models and vivified by a certain natural gift—as no one +since the seventeenth century had had it, and as no one except Mr. +Ruskin and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> the late Mr. Pater has had since. Also, he was as much wider +in his range and more fertile in his production than Mr. Pater as he was +more solidly grounded on the best models than Mr. Ruskin. Where Landor +is quite unique is in the apparent indifference with which he was able +to direct this gift of his into the channels of prose and poetry—a +point on which he parts company from both the writers to whom he has +been compared, and in which his only analogue, so far as I am able to +judge, is Victor Hugo. The style of no Englishman is so alike in the two +harmonies as is that of Landor. And it is perhaps not surprising that, +this being the case, he shows at his best in prose when he tries long +pieces, in verse when he tries short ones. Some of Landor's prose +performances in <i>Pericles and Aspasia</i>, in the <i>Pentameron</i> (where +Boccaccio and Petrarch are the chief interlocutors), and in not a few of +the separate conversations, are altogether unparalleled in any other +language, and not easy to parallel in English. They are never entirely +or perfectly natural; there is always a slight "smell of the lamp," but +of a lamp perfumed and undying. The charm is so powerful, the grace so +stately, that it is impossible for any one to miss it who has the +faculty of recognising charm and grace at all. In particular, Landor is +remarkable—and, excellent as are many of the prose writers whom we have +had since, he is perhaps the most remarkable—for the weight, the +beauty, and the absolute finish of his phrase. Sometimes these splendid +phrases do not mean very much; occasionally they mean nothing or +nonsense. But their value as phrase survives, and the judge in such +things is often inclined and entitled to say that there is none like +them.</p> + +<p>This will prepare the reader who has some familiarity with literature +for what is to be said about Landor's verse. It always has a certain +quality of exquisiteness, but this quality is and could not but be +unequally displayed in the short poems and the long. The latter can +hardly attain, with entirely competent and impartial judges, more than a +success of esteem. <i>Gebir</i> is couched in a Miltonic form of verse (very +slightly shot and varied by Romantic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> admixture) which, as is natural to +a young adventurer, caricatures the harder and more ossified style of +the master. Sometimes it is great; more usually it intends greatness. +The "Dialogues in Verse" (very honestly named, for they are in fact +rather dialogues in verse than poems), though executed by the hand of a +master both of verse and dialogue, differ in form rather than in fact +from the Conversations in prose. The <i>Hellenics</i> are mainly dialogues in +verse with a Greek subject. All have a quality of nobility which may be +sought in vain in almost any other poet; but all have a certain +stiffness and frigidity, some a certain emptiness. They are never +plaster, as some modern antiques have been; but they never make the +marble of which they are composed wholly flesh. Landor was but a +half-Pygmalion.</p> + +<p>The vast collection of his miscellaneous poems contains many more +fortunate attempts, some of which have, by common consent of the +fittest, attained a repute which they are never likely to lose. "Rose +Aylmer" and "Dirce," trifles in length as both of them are, are very +jewels of poetic quality. And among the hundreds and almost thousands of +pieces which Landor produced there are some which come not far short of +these, and very many which attain a height magnificent as compared with +the ordinary work of others. But the hackneyed comparison of amber does +something gall this remarkable poet and writer. Everything, great and +small, is enshrined in an imperishable coating of beautiful style; but +the small things are somewhat out of proportion to the great, and, what +is more, the amber itself always has a certain air of being deliberately +and elaborately produced—not of growing naturally. Landor—much more +than Dryden, of whom he used the phrase, but in the same class as +Dryden—is one of those who "wrestle with and conquer time." He has +conquered, but it is rather as a giant of celestial nurture than as an +unquestioned god.</p> + +<p>Even after enumerating these two sets of names—the first all of the +greatest, and the greatest of the second, Landor, equalling the least of +the first—we have not exhausted the poetical riches of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> this remarkable +period. It is indeed almost dangerous to embark on the third class of +poets; yet its members here would in some cases have been highly +respectable earlier, and even at this time deserve notice either for +influence, or for intensity of poetic vein, or sometimes for the mere +fact of having been once famous and having secured a "place in the +story." The story of literature has no popular ingratitude; and, except +in the case of distinct impostors, it turns out with reluctance those +who have once been admitted to it. Sometimes even impostors deserve a +renewal of the brand, if not a freshening up of the honourable +inscription.</p> + +<p>The first of this third class in date, and perhaps the first in +influence, though far indeed from being the first in merit, was William +Lisle Bowles, already once or twice referred to. He was born on 24th +September 1762; so that, but for the character and influence of his +verse, he belongs to the last chapter rather than to this. Educated at +Winchester, and at Trinity College, Oxford, he took orders, and spent +nearly the last half century of his very long life (he did not die till +1850) in Wiltshire, as Prebendary of Salisbury and Rector of Bremhill. +It was in the year of the French Revolution that he published his +<i>Fourteen Sonnets</i> [afterwards enlarged in number], <i>written chiefly on +Picturesque Spots during a Journey</i>. These fell early into Coleridge's +hands; he copied and recopied them for his friends when he was a +blue-coat boy, and in so far as poetical rivers have any single source, +the first tricklings of the stream which welled into fulness with the +Lyrical Ballads, and some few years later swept all before it, may be +assigned to this very feeble fount. For in truth it is exceedingly +feeble. In the fifth edition (1796), which lies before me exquisitely +printed, with a pretty aquatint frontispiece by Alken, and a dedication +of the previous year to Dean Ogle of Winchester, the Sonnets have +increased to twenty-seven, and are supplemented by fifteen +"miscellaneous pieces." One of these latter is itself a sonnet "written +at Southampton," and in all respects similar to the rest. The +others—"On Leaving Winchester," "On the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> Death of Mr. Headley" the +critic, a man of worth,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> "To Mr. Burke on his Reflections," and so +forth—are of little note. The same may be said of Bowles' later +poetical productions, which were numerous; but his edition of Pope, +finished in 1807, brought about a hot controversy not yet forgotten +(nor, to tell the truth, quite settled) on the question Whether Pope was +a poet? That Bowles can have had scant sympathy with Pope is evident +from the very first glance at the famous sonnets themselves. Besides +their form, which, as has been said, was of itself something of a +reactionary challenge, they bear strong traces of Gray, and still +stronger traces of the picturesque mania which was at the same time +working so strongly in the books of Gilpin and others. But their real +note is the note which, ringing in Coleridge's ear, echoed in all the +poetry of the generation, the note of unison between the aspect of +nature and the thought and emotion of man. In the sonnets "At +Tynemouth," "At Bamborough Castle," and indeed in all, more or less, +there is first the attempt to paint directly what the eye sees, not the +generalised and academic view of the type-scene by a type-poet which had +been the fashion for so long; and secondly, the attempt to connect this +vision with personal experience, passion, or meditation. Bowles does not +do this very well, but he tries to do it; and the others, seeing him +try, went and did it.</p> + +<p>His extreme importance as an at least admitted "origin" has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> procured +him notice somewhat beyond his real deserts; over others we must pass +more rapidly. Robert Bloomfield, born in 1760, was one of those +unfortunate "prodigy" poets whom mistaken kindness encourages. He was +the son of a tailor, went early to agricultural labour, and then became +a shoemaker. His <i>Farmer's Boy</i>, an estimable but much overpraised +piece, was published in 1800, and he did other things later. He died +mad, or nearly so, in 1823—a melancholy history repeated pretty closely +a generation later by John Clare. Clare, however, was a better poet than +Bloomfield, and some of the "Poems written in an Asylum" have more than +merely touching merit. James Montgomery,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> born at Irvine on 4th +November 1771, was the son of a Moravian minister, and intended for his +father's calling. He, however, preferred literature and journalism, +establishing himself chiefly at Sheffield, where he died as late as 1854 +(30th April). He had, as editor of the <i>Sheffield Iris</i>, some troubles +with the law, and in 1835 was rewarded with a pension. Montgomery was a +rather copious and fairly pleasing minor bard, no bad hand at hymns and +short occasional pieces, and the author of longer things called <i>The +Wanderer of Switzerland</i>, <i>The West Indies</i>, <i>The World before the +Flood</i>, and <i>The Pelican Island</i>. Bernard Barton, an amiable Quaker +poet, will probably always be remembered as the friend and correspondent +of Charles Lamb; perhaps also as the father-in-law of Edward FitzGerald. +His verse commended itself both to Southey (who had a kindly but rather +disastrous weakness for minor bards) and to Byron, but has little value. +Barton died in 1849.</p> + +<p>The same pair of enemies joined in praising Henry Kirke White, who was +born in 1785 and died when barely twenty-one. Here indeed Southey's +unsurpassed biographical skill enforced the poetaster's merit in a +charming <i>Memoir</i>, which assisted White's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> rather pathetic story. He was +the son of a butcher, a diligent but reluctant lawyer's clerk, an +enthusiastic student, a creditable undergraduate at St. John's, +Cambridge, and a victim of consumption. All this made his verse for a +time popular. But he really deserved the name just affixed to him: he +was a poetaster, and nothing more. The "genius" attributed to him in +Byron's well-known and noble though rather rhetorical lines may be +discovered on an average in about half a dozen poets during any two or +three years of any tolerable poetic period. His best things are +imitations of Cowper in his sacred mood, such as the familiar "Star of +Bethlehem," and even these are generally spoilt by some feebleness or +false note. At his worst he is not far from Della Crusca.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> + +<p>In the same year with Kirke White was born a much better poet, and a +much robuster person in all ways, mental and physical. Allan Cunningham +was a Dumfriesshire man born in the lowest rank, and apprenticed to a +stone-mason, whence in after years he rose to be Chantrey's foreman. +Cunningham began—following a taste very rife at the time—with +imitated, or to speak plainly, forged ballads; but the merit of them +deserved on true grounds the recognition it obtained on false, and he +became a not inconsiderable man of letters of all work. His best known +prose work is the "Lives of the Painters." In verse he is ranked, as a +song writer in Scots, by some next to Burns, and by few lower than Hogg. +Some of his pieces, such as "Fair shines the sun in France," have the +real, the inexplicable, the irresistible song-gift. Cunningham, who was +the friend of many good men and was liked by all of them, died on 29th +October 1842. His elder by eleven years, Robert Tannahill, who was born +in 1774 and died (probably by suicide) in 1810, deserves a few lines in +this tale of Scots singers. Tannahill, like Cunningham in humble +circumstances originally, never became more than a weaver. His verse has +not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> the <i>gusto</i> of Allan or of Hogg, but is sweet and tender enough. +William Motherwell too, as much younger than Allan as Tannahill was +older (he was born in 1797 and died young in 1835), deserves mention, +and may best receive it here. He was a Conservative journalist, an +antiquary of some mark, and a useful editor of Minstrelsy. Of his +original work, "Jeanie Morrison" is the best known; and those who have +read, especially if they have read it in youth, "The Sword Chant of +Thorstein Raudi," will not dismiss it as Wardour Street; while he did +some other delightful things. Earlier (1812) the heroicomic <i>Anster +Fair</i> of William Tennant (1784-1848) received very high and deserved no +low praise; while William Thom, a weaver like Tannahill, who was a year +younger than Motherwell and lived till 1848, wrote many simple ballads +in the vernacular, of which the most touching are perhaps "The Song of +the Forsaken" and "The Mitherless Bairn."</p> + +<p>To return to England, Bryan Waller Procter, who claimed kindred with the +poet from whom he took his second name, was born in 1790, went to +Harrow, and, becoming a lawyer, was made a Commissioner of Lunacy. He +did not die till 1874; and he, and still more his wife, were the last +sources of direct information about the great race of the first third of +the century. He was, under the pseudonym of "Barry Cornwall," a fluent +verse writer of the so-called cockney school, and had not a little +reputation, especially for songs about the sea and things in general. +They still, occasionally from critics who are not generally under the +bondage of traditional opinion, receive high praise, which the present +writer is totally unable to echo. A loyal junior friend to Lamb, a wise +and kindly senior to Beddoes, liked and respected by many or by all, +Procter, as a man, must always deserve respect. If</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The sea, the sea, the open sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blue, the fresh, the ever free,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and things like it are poetry, I admit myself, with a sad humility, to +be wholly destitute of poetical appreciation.</p> + +<p>The Church of England contributed two admirable verse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> writers of this +period in Henry Cary and Reginald Heber. Cary, who was born in 1772 and +was a Christ Church man, was long an assistant librarian in the British +Museum. His famous translation of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>, published in +1814, is not only one of the best verse translations in English, but, +after the lapse of eighty years, during which the study of Dante has +been constantly increasing in England, in which poetic ideas have +changed not a little, and in which numerous other translations have +appeared, still attracts admiration from all competent scholars for its +combination of fidelity and vigour. Heber, born in 1783 and educated at +Brasenose, gained the Newdigate with <i>Palestine</i>, a piece which ranks +with <i>Timbuctoo</i> and a few others among unforgotten prize poems. He took +orders, succeeding to the family living of Hodnet, and for some years +bid fair to be one of the most shining lights of the English Church, +combining admirable parochial work with good literature, and with much +distinction as a preacher. Unfortunately he thought it his duty to take +the Bishopric of Calcutta when it was offered him; and, arriving there +in 1824, worked incessantly for nearly two years and then died. His +<i>Journal in India</i> is very pleasant reading, and some of his hymns rank +with the best in English.</p> + +<p>Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer," was born in Yorkshire on 7th +March 1781. His father was a clerk in an iron-foundry. He himself was +early sent to foundry work, and he afterwards became a master-founder at +Sheffield. From different points of view it may be thought a +palliation—and the reverse—of the extreme virulence with which Elliott +took the side of workmen against landowners and men of property, that he +attained to affluence himself as an employer, and was never in the least +incommoded by the "condition-of-England" question. He early displayed a +considerable affection for literature, and was one, and about the last, +of the prodigies whom Southey, in his inexhaustible kindness for +struggling men of letters, accepted. Many years later the Laureate wrote +good-naturedly to Wynn: "I mean to read the Corn-Law Rhymer a lecture, +not without some hope,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> that as I taught him the art of poetry I may +teach him something better." The "something better" was not in Elliott's +way; for he is a violent and crude thinker, with more smoke than fire in +his violence, though not without generosity of feeling now and then, and +with a keen admiration of the scenery—still beautiful in parts, and +then exquisite—which surrounded the smoky Hades of Sheffield. He +himself acknowledges the influence of Crabbe and disclaims that of +Wordsworth, from which the cunning may anticipate the fact that he is +deeply indebted to both. His earliest publication or at least +composition, "The Vernal Walk," is said to date from the very year of +the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, and of course owes no royalty to Wordsworth, but +is in blank verse, a sort of compound of Thomson and Crabbe. "Love" (in +Crabbian couplets slightly tinged with overlapping) and "The Village +Patriarch" (still smacking of Crabbe in form, though irregularly +arranged in rhymed decasyllables) are his chief other long poems. He +tried dramas, but he is best known by his "Corn-Law Rhymes" and +"Corn-Law Hymns," and deserves to be best known by a few lyrics of real +beauty, and many descriptions. How a man who could write "The Wonders of +the Lane" and "The Dying Boy to the Sloe Blossom" could stoop to +malignant drivel about "palaced worms," "this syllabub-throated +logician," and so forth, is strange enough to understand, especially as +he had no excuse of personal suffering. Even in longer poems the mystery +is renewed in "They Met Again" and "Withered Wild Flowers" compared with +such things as "The Ranter," though the last exhibits the author at both +his best and worst. However, Elliott is entitled to the charity he did +not show; and the author of such clumsy Billingsgate as "Arthur +Bread-Tax Winner," "Faminton," and so forth, may be forgiven for the +flashes of poetry which he exhibits. Even in his political poems they do +not always desert him, and his somewhat famous Chartist (or +ante-Chartist) "Battle-Song" is as right-noted as it is wrong-headed.</p> + +<p>Sir Aubrey de Vere (1788-1846), a poet and the father of a poet still +alive, was a friend and follower of Wordsworth, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> author of +sonnets good in the Wordsworthian kind. But he cannot be spared much +room here; nor can much even be given to the mild shade of a poetess far +more famous in her day than he. "Time that breaks all things," according +to the dictum of a great poet still living, does not happily break all +in literature; but it is to be feared that he has reduced to fragments +the once not inconsiderable fame of Felicia Hemans. She was born (her +maiden name was Felicia Dorothea Browne) at Liverpool on 25th September +1794, and when she was only eighteen she married a Captain Hemans. It +was not a fortunate union, and by far the greater part of Mrs. Hemans' +married life was spent, owing to no known fault of hers, apart from her +husband. She did not live to old age, dying on 26th April 1835. But she +wrote a good deal of verse meanwhile—plays, poems, "songs of the +affections," and what not. Her blameless character (she wrote chiefly to +support her children) and a certain ingenuous tenderness in her verse, +saved its extreme feebleness from severe condemnation in an age which +was still avid of verse rather than discriminating in it; and children +still learn "The boy stood on the burning deck," and other things. It is +impossible, on any really critical scheme, to allow her genius; but she +need not be spoken of with any elaborate disrespect, while it must be +admitted that her latest work is her best—always a notable sign. +"Despondency and Aspiration," dating from her death-year, soars close to +real sublimity; and of her smaller pieces "England's Dead" is no vulgar +thing.</p> + +<p>Between the death of Byron and the distinct appearance of Tennyson and +the Brownings there was a kind of interregnum or twilight of poetry, of +which one of its strangest if not least illuminative stars or meteors, +Beddoes, has given a graphic but uncomplimentary picture in a letter: +"owls' light" he calls it, with adjuncts. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and +Southey; Scott, Campbell, and Moore, were all living, but the poetic +production of all had on the whole ceased. Shelley and Keats would have +been in time the natural, and in genius the more than sufficient sun +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> moon of the time; but they had died before Byron. So the firmament +was occupied by rather wandering stars: some of them elders already +noticed, others born in the ten or twelve years between Keats (1795) and +the eldest of the Tennysons (1807). The chief of these were the pair of +half-serious, half-humorous singers, Hood and Praed. Next in public +estimation come Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, Macaulay, Sir Henry Taylor, +the Irish poet Mangan, R. H. Horne, and the first Lord Lytton; while a +third class—of critics' rather than readers' favourites—varying in +merit, but, at the best of the best of them, ranking higher than any of +the above, may be made up of George Darley, C. J. Wells, the Dorsetshire +poet Barnes, Beddoes, Charles Whitehead, R. S. Hawker, and Thomas Wade. +To the second class must be added "L. E. L.," the poetess who filled the +interval between Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Browning.</p> + +<p>Wells, Whitehead, and Wade may be dismissed without disrespect as, if +not critical mares'-nests, at any rate critical hobbies. Persons of more +or less distinction (and of less or more crotchet) have at different +times paid very high compliments to the <i>Joseph and his Brethren</i> (1823, +revised later) of Charles Jeremiah Wells (1800-1879), a friend of Keats, +and a person who seems to have lived much as he pleased; to the +<i>Solitary</i> of Charles Whitehead (1804-1862), a Bohemian ne'er-do-weel, +who also showed talent as a novelist and miscellanist; and to the <i>Mundi +et Cordis Carmina</i> (1835) of Thomas Wade (1805-1875), a playwright and +journalist. Of the three, Wade appears to me to have had the greatest +poetical talent. But I do not think that any one who on the one hand +uses epithets in poetical criticism with caution, and on the other has +read a great deal of minor poetry as it appears, could put any one of +them very high. All were born late enough to breathe the atmosphere of +the new poetry young; all had poetical velleities, and a certain amount, +if not of originality, of capacity to write poetry. But they were not +poets; they were only poetical curiosities.</p> + +<p>Darley, Beddoes, and Horne belong in the main to the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> class, but +rise high, in one case immeasurably, above them. George Darley +(1795-1846) is perhaps our chief English example of "the poet who dies +in youth while the man survives," and who becomes a critic. In him, +however, the generation of the critic did not wait for the corruption of +the poet. An Irishman, and of Trinity College, Dublin, he was one of the +staff of the <i>London Magazine</i>, and wrote much verse bad and good, +including the once famous "I've been Roaming," of which it is safe to +say that not one in ten of those who have sung it could tell the author. +His best work is contained in the charming pastoral drama of <i>Sylvia</i> +(1827) and the poem entitled <i>Nepenthe</i> (1839). He was a good but rather +a savage critic, and edited Beaumont and Fletcher. His work has never +been collected, nor, it is believed, ever fully published; and it has +the marks of a talent that never did what was in it to do, and came at +an unfortunate time. Some not bad judges in the forties ranked Darley +with Tennyson in poetic possibilities, and thought the former the more +promising of the two.</p> + +<p>Except Donne, there is perhaps no English poet more difficult to write +about, so as to preserve the due pitch of enthusiasm on the one hand and +criticism on the other, than Thomas Lovell Beddoes, born at Clifton on +20th July 1803. He was the son of a very famous physician, and of Anna +Edgeworth, the youngest sister of the whole blood to the novelist. +Beddoes, left fatherless at six years old, was educated at the +Charterhouse and at Pembroke College, Oxford, and when he was barely of +age went to Germany to study medicine, living thenceforth almost +entirely on the Continent. Before this he had published two volumes, +<i>The Improvisatore</i> and <i>The Bride's Tragedy</i>; but his principal work is +a wild Elizabethan play called <i>Death's Jest-Book</i> or <i>The Fool's +Tragedy</i>, which he never absolutely finished. He died in 1848 at Basle +by a complicated and ghastly kind of suicide. Three years later his +Poems appeared, and they have been recently republished, with additions +and a curious collection of letters.</p> + +<p>Beddoes has sometimes been treated as a mainly bookish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> poet deriving +from the Elizabethans and Shelley. I cannot agree with this. His very +earliest work, written when he could not know much either of Shelley or +Keats, shows as they do technique perhaps caught from Leigh Hunt. But +this is quite dropped later; and his Elizabethanism is not imitation but +inspiration. In this inspiration he does not follow, but shares with, +his greater contemporaries. He is a younger and tragic counterpart to +Charles Lamb in the intensity with which he has imbibed the Elizabethan +spirit, rather from the nightshade of Webster and Tourneur than from the +vine of Shakespeare. As wholes, his works are naught, or naught but +nightmares; though <i>Death's Jest-Book</i>, despite its infinite +disadvantages from constant rewriting and uncertainty of final form, has +a strong grasp. But they contain passages, especially lyrics, of the +most exquisite fancy and music, such as since the seventeenth century +none but Blake and Coleridge had given. Beddoes does not seem to have +been at all a pleasant person, and in his later days at any rate he +would appear to have been a good deal less than sane. But the author of +such things as the "Dirge for Wolfram" ("If thou wilt ease thine heart") +in <i>Death's Jest-Book</i>, and the stanza beginning "Dream-Pedlary," "If +there were dreams to sell," with not a few others of the same kind, +attains to that small and disputed—but not to those who have thought +out the nature of poetry disputable—class of poets who, including +Sappho, Catullus, some mediæval hymn-writers, and a few moderns, +especially Coleridge, have, by virtue of fragments only, attained a +higher position than many authors of large, substantive, and important +poems. They may be shockingly lacking in bulk, in organisation, in +proper choice of subject, in intelligent criticism of life; but they are +like the summer lightning or the northern aurora, which, though they +shine only now and then, and only it may be for a few moments, shine, +when they do shine, with a beauty unapproachable by gas or candle, +hardly approached by sun or moon, and illuminate the whole of their +world.</p> + +<p>Although quotation is in the main impossible in this book,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> Beddoes, +despite the efforts of his friend Kelsall, of Mr. Swinburne, of Mr. +Gosse (thanks to whom a quasi-complete edition has at last appeared), +and others, is still so little known, that a short one may be allowed in +his case. I have known a critic who said deliberately of the +above-mentioned stanza in "Dream-Pedlary"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If there were dreams to sell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What would you buy?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some cost a passing bell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Some a light sigh<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shakes from Life's fresh crown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only a roseleaf down.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If there were dreams to sell—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Merry and sad to tell—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the crier rung the bell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What would you buy?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>that these ten lines contain more pure poetry than the entire works of +Byron. And the same touch will be found not merely in the "Wolfram +Dirge" mentioned—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If thou wilt ease thine heart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Love and all its smart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then sleep, dear, sleep.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">...<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But wilt thou <i>cure</i> thine heart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Love and all its smart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then die, dear, die—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but in several other dirges (for the dirge is the form natural to +Beddoes), in the "Song from Torrismond," in "Love in Idleness," in the +"Song on the Water" (which is pure early Tennyson), in the exquisite +"Threnody," and in many other things. They have been called artificial: +the epithet can be allowed in no other sense than in that in which it +applies to all the best poetry. And they have the note, which only a few +true but imperfect poets have, of anticipation. Shadows before, both of +Tennyson and Browning, especially of the latter, appear in Beddoes. But +after all his main note is his own: not theirs, not the Elizabethan, not +Shelley's, not another's. And this is what makes a poet.</p> + +<p>As Beddoes' forte lay in short and rather uncanny snatches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> so that of +Richard Hengist Horne lay in sustained and dignified composition. He was +not christened Hengist at all, but Henry. He had a curious life. In +youth he knew Keats and Wells, having been, like them, at the private +school of Mr. Clarke at Edmonton. He went to Sandhurst and was expelled +for insubordination; joined the Mexican navy in the war of liberation; +travelled widely; but seemed at about five and twenty to be settling +down to literature and journalism in England. After writing various +things, he produced in 1837 the fine but not quite "live" plays of +<i>Cosmo de Medici</i> and <i>The Death of Marlowe</i>, and in 1843 the famous +farthing epic, <i>Orion</i>, which was literally published at a farthing. +This was the smallest part of a great literary baggage of very unequal +value. In 1852 Horne, resuming the life of adventure, went to Australia, +served in the gold police, and stayed at the Antipodes till 1869. Then +he came home again and lived for fifteen years longer, still writing +almost to his very death on 13th March 1884.</p> + +<p>It is not true that <i>Orion</i> is Horne's only work of value; but it is so +much better than anything else of his, and so characteristic of him, +that by all but students the rest may be neglected. And it is an example +of the melancholy but frequently exemplified truth, that few things are +so dangerous, nay, so fatal to enduring literary fame, as the production +of some very good work among a mass of, if not exactly rubbish, yet +inferior stuff. I do not think it extravagant to say that if Horne had +written nothing but <i>Orion</i> and had died comparatively young after +writing it, he would have enjoyed very high rank among English poets. +For, though doubtless a little weighted with "purpose," it is a very +fine poem indeed, couched in a strain of stately and not second-hand +blank verse, abounding in finished and effective passages, by no means +destitute of force and meaning as a whole, and mixing some passion with +more than some real satire. But the rather childish freak of its first +publication probably did it no good, and it is quite certain that the +author's long life and unflagging production did it much harm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> + +<p>Of the other persons in the list above, Macaulay, Hartley Coleridge, and +Lord Lytton are mainly something else than poets, and Talfourd, as a +dramatist, will also be noticed elsewhere. Barnes and Hawker were both +clergymen of the West of England: the former very highly ranked by some +for his studies in Dorset dialect; the latter the author of the famous +"Song of the Western Men" (long thought a genuine antique), of the +exquisite "Queen Gwennyvar's Round," of the fine "Silent Tower of +Bottreaux," of some beautiful sonnets, and of the stately "Quest of the +Sangreal." Whether James Clarence Mangan, whose most famous poem is +"Dark Rosaleen," a musical and mystic celebration of the charms and +wrongs of Erin, is a great poet to whom Saxon jealousy has refused +greatness for political reasons, or a not ungifted but not consummately +distinguished singer who added some study to the common Irish gift of +fluent, melodious verse-making, is a question best solved by reading his +work and judging for the reader's self. It is not by any sane account so +important that to dismiss it thus is a serious <i>rifiuto</i>, and it is +probably impossible for Irish enthusiasm and English judgment ever to +agree on the subject. Of "L. E. L." Sir Henry Taylor, Hood, and Praed, +some more substantive account must be given.</p> + +<p>Although it is not easy, after two generations, to decide such a point +accurately, it is probable that "L. E. L." was the most popular of all +the writers of verse who made any mark between the death of Byron in +1824 and the time when Tennyson definitely asserted himself in 1842. She +paid for this popularity (which was earned not merely by her verse, but +by a pretty face, an odd social position, and a sad and apparently, +though it seems not really, mysterious end) by a good deal of slightly +unchivalrous satire at the time and a rather swift and complete oblivion +afterwards. She was born (her full name being Letitia Elizabeth Landon) +in London on 14th August 1802, and was fairly well connected and +educated. William Jerdan, the editor of the <i>Literary Gazette</i> (a man +whose name constantly occurs in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> literary history of this time, +though he has left no special work except an <i>Autobiography</i>), was a +friend of her family, and she began to write very early, producing +novels and criticisms as well as verse in newspapers, in the albums and +<i>Souvenirs</i> which were such a feature of the twenties and thirties, and +in independent volumes. She was particularly active as a poet about +1824-35, when appeared the works whose titles—<i>The Improvisatore</i>, <i>The +Troubadour</i>, <i>The Golden Violet</i>—suggested parodies to Thackeray. Her +best novel is held to be <i>Ethel Churchill</i>, published in 1837. Next year +she married Mr. Maclean, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle; and, going +out with him to that not very salubrious clime, died suddenly in about +two months. All sorts of ill-natured suggestions were of course made; +but the late Colonel Ellis, the historian of the colony, seems to have +established beyond the possibility of doubt that she accidentally +poisoned herself with prussic acid, which she used to take for spasms of +the heart.</p> + +<p>It is tolerably exact, and it is not harsh, to say that "L. E. L." is a +Mrs. Hemans with the influence of Byron added, not to the extent of any +"impropriety," but to the heightening of the Romantic tone and of a +native sentimentality. Her verse is generally musical and sweet: it is +only sometimes silly. But it is too often characterised by what can but +be called the "gush" which seems to have affected all the poetesses of +this period except Sara Coleridge (1802-50) (who has some verses worthy +of even her name in <i>Phantasmion</i>, her only independent book), and which +appears in very large measure in the work of Mrs. Browning.</p> + +<p>Sir Henry Taylor's poetical repute illustrates the converse of the +proposition which is illustrated by that of Horne. It is probable that, +if each is measured by his best things, <i>Orion</i> and <i>Philip Van +Artevelde</i>, Horne must be allowed to be a good deal the better poet. But +a placid official life enabled Taylor both to gain powerful friends and +to devote himself to literature merely when and how he pleased. And so +he has burdened his baggage with no mere hack-work. He was indeed a +singularly lucky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> person. The son of a man of fair family but reduced +fortune who had taken to farming, Henry Taylor began in the navy. But he +disliked the service very much, and either obtained or received his +discharge after only nine months' sea life as a mid-shipman during the +year 1814. Then he entered the public store-keeper's department, but was +ousted by rearrangements after four years' service. These beginnings +were not very promising; but his father allowed him to stay quietly at +home till by pure luck he obtained a third post under Government in the +Colonial Office. This he held for nearly fifty years, during which it +gave him affluence and by degrees a very high position, and left him +abundance of time for society and letters. He resigned it in 1872, and +died on 27th March 1886. He wrote some prose of various kinds, and just +before his death published a pleasant autobiography. But his literary +fame rests on a handful of plays and poems, all of them, except <i>St. +Clement's Eve</i>, which did not appear till 1862, produced at leisurely +intervals between 1827 (<i>Isaac Comnenus</i>) and 1847 (<i>The Eve of the +Conquest</i> and other poems). The intervening works were <i>Philip Van +Artevelde</i> (his masterpiece, 1834), <i>Edwin the Fair</i> (1842), some minor +poems, and the romantic comedy of <i>A Sicilian Summer</i> (first called <i>The +Virgin Widow</i>), which was published with <i>St. Clement's Eve</i>. He had +(as, it may be noted curiously, had so many of the men of the transition +decade in which he was born) a singular though scanty vein of original +lyric snatch, the best example of which is perhaps the song "Quoth +tongue of neither maid nor wife" in <i>Van Artevelde</i>; but his chief +appeal lay in a very careful study of character and the presentation of +it in verse less icy than Talfourd's and less rhetorical than Milman's. +Yet he had, unlike either of these, very little direct eye to the stage, +and therefore is classed here as a poet rather than as a dramatist. +There is always a public for what is called "thoughtful" poetry, and +Taylor's is more than merely thoughtful. But it may be suspected by +observers that when Robert Browning came into fashion Henry Taylor went +out. Citations of <i>Van Artevelde</i>, if not of the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> pieces (none of +which are contemptible, while the two last, inferior in weight to their +predecessors, show advance in ease and grace), are very frequent between +1835 and 1865: rare I think between 1865 and 1895.</p> + +<p>And so we come at last to the twin poets, in the proper sense +humorous,—that is to say, jesting with serious thoughts behind,—of the +first division of this class. They were very close in many ways—indeed +it is yet a moot point which of the two borrowed certain rhythms and +turns of word and verse from the other, or whether both hit upon these +independently. But their careers were curiously different; and, except +in comparative length of life (if that be an advantage), Praed was +luckier than his comrade. Thomas Hood, who was slightly the elder, was +born in 1798 or 1799 (for both dates are given) in the Poultry; his +father being a bookseller and publisher. This father died, not in good +circumstances, when the son was a boy, and Thomas, after receiving some +though not much education, became first a merchant's clerk and then an +engraver, but was lucky enough to enjoy between these uncongenial +pursuits a long holiday, owing to ill-health, of some three years in +Scotland. It was in 1820 or thereabouts that he fell into his proper +vocation, and, as sub-editor of the <i>London Magazine</i>, found vent for +his own talents and made acquaintance with most of its famous staff. He +married, wrote some of his best serious poems and some good comic work, +and found that while the former were neglected the latter was eagerly +welcomed. It was settled that, in his own pathetic pun, he was to be "a +lively Hood for a livelihood" thenceforward. It is difficult to say +whether English literature lost or gained, except from one very +practical point of view; for Hood did manage to live after a fashion by +his fun as he certainly could not have lived by his poetry. He had, +however, a bare pittance, much bad health, and some extremely bad luck, +which for a time made him, through no fault of his own, an exile. His +last five years were again spent in England, and in comparative, though +very comparative, prosperity; for he was editor first of the <i>New +Monthly Magazine</i>, then of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> magazine of his own, <i>Hood's Monthly</i>, and +not long before his death he received from Sir Robert Peel a civil list +pension of £100 a year. The death was due to consumption, inherited and +long valiantly struggled with.</p> + +<p>The still shorter life of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, on the other hand, +was passed under sufficiently favourable stars. He was born in 1802, and +his father, Serjeant Praed, possessed property, practice at the bar, and +official position. Praed was sent to Eton, where he became a pillar of +the famous school magazine <i>The Etonian</i>, and thence to Trinity College, +Cambridge, where he did extremely well, made the acquaintance of +Macaulay, and wrote in <i>Knight's Quarterly</i>. After a short interval of +tutoring and reading for the bar he entered Parliament in 1830, and +remained in it for the rest of his life, which closed on 15th July 1839. +He had latterly been secretary to the Board of Control, and it was +thought that, had he lived, he might have made a considerable political +reputation both as speaker and administrator.</p> + +<p>The almost unchequered sunshine of one of these careers and the little +sun and much shadow of the other have left traces—natural though less +than might be supposed—of difference between the produce of the two +men; but perhaps the difference is less striking than the resemblance. +That Hood—obliged to write for bread, and outliving Praed by something +like a decade at the two ends—wrote a great deal more than Praed did is +of little consequence, for the more leisurely writer is as unequal as +the duty labourer. Hood had the deeper and stronger genius: of this +there is no doubt, and the advantage more than made up for Praed's +advantages in scholarship and in social standing and accomplishment. In +this serious work of Hood's—<i>Lycus the Centaur</i>, <i>The Plea of the +Midsummer Fairies</i>, <i>The Elm Tree</i>, <i>The Haunted House</i>—there is +observable—to a degree never surpassed by any of the poets of this +group except Beddoes, and more sustained and human, though less weird +and sweet, than his—a strain of the true, the real, the ineffable tone +of poetry proper. At this Praed never arrives: there are at most in him +touches which may seem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> to a very charitable judgment to show that in +other circumstances sorrow, passion, or the like might have roused him +to display the hidden fire. On the other hand, neither Hood's breeding, +nor, I think, his nature, allowed him to display the exquisite airiness, +the delicate artificial bloom and perfection, of Praed's best <i>vers de +société</i>—the <i>Season</i>, the <i>Letter of Advice</i>, and the rest. This last +bloom has never been quite equalled—even Prior's touch is coarse to it, +even that of the late Mr. Locker is laboured and deliberate. So too as +there is nothing in Praed of the popular indignation—generous and fine +but a little theatrical—which endears Hood to the general in <i>The +Bridge of Sighs</i> and <i>The Song of the Shirt</i>, so there is nothing in +Hood of the sound political sense, underlying apparent banter, of +Praed's <i>Speaker Asleep</i> and other things.</p> + +<p>But where the two poets come together, on a ground which they have +almost to themselves, is in a certain kind of humorous poetry ranging +from the terrific-grotesque, as in Hood's <i>Miss Kilmansegg</i> and Praed's +<i>Red Fisherman</i>, to the simple, humorously tender study of characters, +as in a hundred things of Hood's and in not a few of Praed's with <i>The +Vicar</i> at their head. The resemblance here is less in special points +than in a certain general view of life, conditioned in each case by the +poet's breeding, temperament, and circumstance, but alike in essence and +quality: in a certain variety of the essentially English fashion of +taking life with a mixture of jest and earnest, of humour and sentiment. +Hood, partly influenced by the need of caring for the public, partly by +his pupilship to Lamb, perhaps went to further extremes both in mere fun +and in mere sentiment than Praed did, but the central substance is the +same in both.</p> + +<p>Yet one gift which Hood has and Praed has not remains to be noticed—the +gift of exquisite song writing. Compared with the admired inanities of +Barry Cornwall, his praised contemporary, Hood's "Fair Ines," his "Time +of Roses," his exquisite "Last Stanzas," and not a few other things, are +as gold to gilt copper. Praed has nothing to show against these; but he, +like Hood, was no inconsiderable prose writer, while the latter, thanks +to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> apprenticeship to the burin, had an extraordinary faculty of +illustrating his own work with cuts, contrary to all the canons, but +inimitably grotesque.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It is probable that even in this long survey of the great poetical +production of the first third of this century some gaps may be detected +by specialists. But it seemed to me impossible to give more than the +barest mention here to the "single speech" accident of Charles Wolfe, +the author of the "Burial of Sir John Moore," which everybody knows, and +of absolutely nothing else that is worth a single person's knowing; to +the gigantic and impossible labours of Edwin Atherstone; to the +industrious translation of Rose and Sotheby; to the decent worth of +Caroline Bowles, and the Hood-and-water of Laman Blanchard. And there +are others perhaps who cannot be even mentioned; for there must be an +end.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, 1798, and with additions 1800; <i>Poems</i>, +1807 (in these four volumes even adorers have allowed all his greatest +work to be included); <i>The Excursion</i>, 1814; <i>The White Doe of Rylston</i>, +1815; <i>Sonnets on the River Duddon</i>, and others, 1819-20. In 1836 he +brought out a collected edition of his poems in six volumes. <i>The +Prelude</i> was posthumous.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It must be remembered that Wordsworth was a prose writer of +considerable excellence and of no small volume. Many people no doubt +were surprised when Dr. Grosart, by collecting his pamphlets, his +essays, his notes, and his letters, managed to fill three large octavo +volumes. But his poetry so far outweighs his prose (though, like most +poets, he could write admirably in his pedestrian style when he chose) +that his utterances in "the other harmony" need not be specially +considered. The two most considerable examples of this prose are the +pamphlet on <i>The Convention of Cintra</i> and the five and twenty years +later <i>Guide to the Lakes</i>. But minor essays, letters of a more or less +formal character, and prefaces and notes to the poems, make up a goodly +total; and always display a genius germane to that of the poems.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> This word, as well as "Aspheterism," which has had a less +general currency, was a characteristic coinage of Coleridge's to +designate a kind of Communism, partly based on the speculations of +Godwin, and intended to be carried into practice in America.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Yet this praise can only be assigned to Coleridge with +large allowance. He was always unjust to his own <i>immediate</i> +predecessors, Johnson, Gibbon, etc.; and he was not too sensible of the +real merits of Pope or even of Dryden. In this respect Leigh Hunt, an +immeasurably weaker thinker, had a much more catholic taste. And it is +not certain that, as a mere prose writer, Coleridge was a very good +prose writer.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Curiously enough, there was another and slightly older +Samuel Rogers, a clergyman, who published verse in 1782, just before his +namesake, and who dealt with Hope— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Hope springs eternal in the <i>aspiring</i> breast.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His verse, of which specimens are given in Southey's <i>Modern English +Poets</i>, is purely eighteenth century. He died in 1790.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Henry Headley, who, like Bowles and Landor, was a member of +Trinity College, Oxford, and who died young, after publishing a few +original poems of no great value, deserves more credit for his <i>Select +Beauties of Ancient English Poetry</i>, published in two volumes, with an +exquisite title-page vignette, by Cadell in 1787, than has sometimes +been allowed him by the not numerous critics who have noticed him +recently, or by those who immediately followed him. His knowledge was +soon outgrown, and therefore looked down upon; and his taste was a very +little indiscriminate. But it was something to put before an age which +was just awakening to the appetite for such things two volumes full of +selections from the too little read poets of the seventeenth, with a few +of the sixteenth century. Moreover, Headley's biographical information +shows very praiseworthy industry, and his critical remarks a great deal +of taste at once nice and fairly catholic. A man who in his day could, +while selecting and putting forth Drayton and Carew, Daniel and King, +speak enthusiastically of Dryden and even of Goldsmith, must have had +the root of the matter in him as few critics have had.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Not to be confounded with <i>Robert</i>, or "Satan" Montgomery, +his junior by many years, and a much worse poet, the victim of +Macaulay's famous classical example of what is called in English +"slating," and in French <i>éreintement</i>. There is really nothing to be +said about this person that Macaulay has not said; though perhaps one or +two of the things he has said are a little strained.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Some fifteen years ago, in a little book on Dryden, I +called Kirke White a "miserable poetaster," and was rebuked for it by +those who perhaps knew Byron's lines and nothing more. Quite recently +Mr. Gosse was rebuked more loudly for a less severe denunciation. I +determined that I would read Kirke White again; and the above judgment +is the mildest I can possibly pronounce after the reading. A good young +man with a pathetic career; but a poetaster merely.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE NEW FICTION</h3> + + +<p>Although, as was shown in the first chapter, the amount of novel writing +in the last decades of the eighteenth century was very considerable, and +the talent displayed by at least some of the practitioners of the form +distinctly great, it can hardly have been possible for any careful +observer of it, either during the last ten years of the old age or the +first fifteen of the new, to be satisfied with it on the whole, or to +think that it had reached a settled or even a promising condition. Miss +Burney (now Madame d'Arblay), whose brilliant début with <i>Evelina</i> was +made just before the date at which this book begins, had just after that +date produced <i>Cecilia</i>, in which partial and contemporary judges +professed to see no falling off. But though she was still living and +writing,—though she lived and wrote till the present century was nearly +half over,—<i>Camilla</i> (1796) was acknowledged as a doubtful success, and +<i>The Wanderer</i> (1814) as a disastrous failure; nor after this did she +attempt the style again.</p> + +<p>The unpopularity of Jacobinism and the growing distaste for the +philosophy of the eighteenth century prevented much attempt being made +to follow up the half political, half philosophical novel of Godwin, +Holcroft, and Bage. No such causes, however, were in operation as +concerning the "Tale of Terror," the second founder of which, Monk +Lewis, was indeed no inconsiderable figure during the earlier part of +the great age of 1810-30, while Charles Robert Maturin improved +considerably upon Lewis himself. Maturin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> was born in Ireland (where he +principally lived) in 1782, and died there in 1824. He took orders, but +was too eccentric for success in his profession, and his whole heart was +set on literature and the drama. Befriended by Scott and Byron, though +very severely criticised by Coleridge, he succeeded in getting his +tragedy of <i>Bertram</i> acted at Drury Lane with success; but his later +theatrical ventures (<i>Manuel</i>, <i>Fredolpho</i>) were less fortunate. He also +published sermons; but he lives in literature only by his novels, and +not very securely by these. He produced three of them—<i>The Fatal +Vengeance: or, The Family of Montorio</i>, <i>The Wild Irish Boy</i>, and the +<i>Milesian Chief</i>—under a pseudonym before he was thirty; while after +the success of <i>Bertram</i> he avowed <i>Women</i> (1818), <i>Melmoth the +Wanderer</i> (1820), and <i>The Albigenses</i> (1824), the last in a sort of +cross style between his earlier patterns and Scott. But his fame had +best be allowed to rest wholly on <i>Melmoth</i>, a remarkable book dealing +with the supposed selling of a soul to the devil in return for prolonged +life; the bargain, however, being terminable if the seller can induce +some one else to take it off his hands. Although far too long, +marvellously involved with tales within tales, and disfigured in parts +by the rant and the gush of its class, <i>Melmoth</i> is really a powerful +book, which gave something more than a passing shudder to its own +generation (it specially influenced Balzac), and which has not lost its +force even now. But the usual novel of this kind, which was written in +vast numbers, was simply beneath contempt.</p> + +<p>The exquisite artist who, as mentioned formerly, had taken these tales +of terror as part subject of her youthful satire, had begun to write +some years before the close of the eighteenth century. But Miss Austen's +books were long withheld from the press, and she was considerably +preceded in publication by Maria Edgeworth. These last are the only +novels of the first decade of the nineteenth century which have held any +ground, though they were but few among the crowds not merely of tales of +terror but of fashionable novels, "Minerva Press" inanities,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> attempts +in the bastard and unsuccessful kind of historical romance which +preceded Scott's, and others. Miss Edgeworth, who was born in 1767, the +daughter of an eccentric busybody of good family and property in +Ireland, and who lived till 1848, had a great fame in her own day, +deserved it, never entirely lost it, and has lately had it revived; +while Scott declared (but in such matters Scott was a little apt to let +his good-nature and his freedom from personal vanity get the better of +strict critical truth) that her Irish novels had supplied the suggestion +of his Scotch ones. Her chief works in this kind were <i>Castle Rackrent</i> +(1801), a book with little interest of the strictly "novel" kind, but a +wonderful picture of the varieties of recklessness and misconduct which +in the course of a generation or two ruined or crippled most of the +landlords of Ireland; <i>Belinda</i> (1803), her most ambitious and elaborate +if not her most successful effort, which includes a very vivid and +pregnant sketch of the feminine dissipation of the end of the last +century; <i>Tales of Fashionable Life</i>, including the admirable +<i>Absentee</i>; and <i>Ormond</i>, the most vivid of her Irish stories next to +<i>Castle Rackrent</i>. She continued to write novels as late as 1834 +(<i>Helen</i>), while some very charming letters of hers, though privately +printed a good many years ago, were not published till 1894. Miss +Edgeworth's father, Richard, was himself something of a man of letters, +and belonged to the class of Englishmen who, without imbibing French +freethinking, had eagerly embraced the "utility" doctrines, the +political economy, and some of the educational and social crazes of the +French <i>philosophes</i>; and he did his daughter no good by thrusting into +her earlier work a strain of his own crotchet and purpose. Indirectly, +however, this brought about in <i>The Parent's Assistant</i>, in other books +for children, and in the <i>Moral Tales</i>, some of her most delightful +work. In the novels (which besides these mentioned include <i>Leonora</i>, +<i>Harrington</i>, <i>Ennui</i>, and <i>Patronage</i>, the longest of all) Miss +Edgeworth occupies a kind of middle position between the eighteenth +century novelists, of whom Miss Burney is the last, and those of the +nineteenth, of whom Miss Austen is the first.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> This is not merely, +though no doubt it is partly, due to the fact that the society which she +saw (and she mixed in a great deal, from the highest downwards) was +itself in a kind of transition state: it was at least as much owing to a +certain want of distinct modernness and distinct universality in her own +character, thought, and style. Miss Edgeworth, though possessed of +delightful talents falling little short of genius, and of much humour +(which last is shown in the charming <i>Essay on Irish Bulls</i>, as well as +in her novels and her letters), missed, as a rule, the last and greatest +touches; and, except some of her Irish characters, who are rather types +than individuals, she has not created many live persons, while sometimes +she wanders very far from life. Her touch, in short, though extremely +pleasant, was rather uncertain. She can tell a story to perfection, but +does not often invent it perfectly; and by herself she can hardly be +said to have originated anything, though of course, if we could accept +the above quoted statement of Scott's, she indirectly originated a very +great deal.</p> + +<p>Very different is the position occupied by Jane Austen, who was born at +Steventon in Hampshire on 16th December 1775, being the daughter of the +rector of that place, lived a quiet life chiefly at various places in +her native county, frequented good society in the rank of not the +richest country squires, to which her own family belonged, and died at +Winchester unmarried on 24th July 1817. Of her six completed novels, +<i>Sense and Sensibility</i>, <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, <i>Mansfield Park</i>, and +<i>Emma</i> were published during the last seven years of her life, while +<i>Northanger Abbey</i> and <i>Persuasion</i> appeared, for the first time with an +author's name, the year after her death. They had no enormous or sudden +popularity, but the best judges, from Scott downwards, at once +recognised their extraordinary merit; and it is not too much to say that +by the best judges, with rare exceptions, that merit has been +acknowledged with ever increasing fulness at once of enthusiasm and +discrimination to the present day. With Scott, Miss Austen is the parent +of nineteenth century fiction; or, to speak with greater exactness, she +is the mother of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> nineteenth century novel, just as he is the father +of the nineteenth century romance.</p> + +<p>One indeed of the most wonderful things about her is her earliness. Even +the dates of publication of her first books precede those of any +novelist of the same rank and the same modernity; but these dates are +misleading. <i>Northanger Abbey</i> was written more than twenty years before +it appeared, and the bulk of <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> (which some hold to +be the best and most characteristic of all) is known to have been as old +at least as <i>Northanger Abbey</i>. That is to say, almost at the very time +of the appearance of <i>Camilla</i> (to which, by the way, Miss Austen was an +original subscriber), a book not strikingly more nineteenth century in +tone than the novels of Richardson, though a little more so in manners, +a girl even younger than Miss Burney herself had been when she wrote +<i>Evelina</i> was drawing other girls, who, putting aside the most trivial +details of dress, speech, and so forth, might be living girls to-day.</p> + +<p>The charm and the genius of Miss Austen are not universally admitted; +the touch of old fashion in external detail apparently discontenting +some readers, the delicate and ever-present irony either escaping or +being distasteful to others, while the extreme quietness of the action +and the entire absence of excitement probably revolt a third class. But +the decriers do not usually attempt formal criticism. However, they +sometimes do, and such an attempt once came under the notice of the +present historian. It was urged that to extol Miss Austen's method is a +masculine delusion, that method being nothing but the throwing into +literature of the habit of minute and semi-satiric observation natural +to womankind. It did not apparently occur to this critic that he (or +she) was in the first place paying Miss Austen an extraordinarily high +compliment—a compliment almost greater than the most enthusiastic +"Janites" have ventured—inasmuch as no higher literary triumph can be +even conceived than thus to focus, formulate, and crystallise the +special talent and gift of an entire sex into a literary method. Nor did +it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> probably occur to him that he was laying himself open to the +damaging, or rather ruinous retort, "Then how is it that, of all the +women who have preceded and followed Miss Austen as novelists, no other +has displayed this specially and universally feminine gift?"</p> + +<p>It is no doubt true that there is something feminine about the method, +which, with the addition of a certain <i>nescio quid</i>, giving it its +modern difference, may be said to combine the peculiarities of Fielding +and of Richardson, though it works on a much smaller scale than either. +It has the intense and pervading, though not the exuberant and +full-blooded, <i>livingness</i> of Fielding, and it also has something not +unlike a feminine counterpart and complement of his pervading irony; +while it is not unlike Richardson in building up the characters and the +stories partly by an infinity of tiny strokes of detail, often +communicated in conversation, partly by the use of an exceedingly nice +and delicate analysis of motive and temperament. It is in the former +respect that Miss Austen stands apart from most, if not from all, women +who have written novels. Irony is by no means a frequent feminine gift; +and as women do not often possess it in any great degree, so they do not +as a rule enjoy it. Miss Austen is only inferior among English writers +to Swift, to Fielding, and to Thackeray—even if it be not improper to +use the term inferiority at all for what is after all not much more than +difference—in the use of this potent but most double-edged weapon. Her +irony indeed is so subtle that it requires a certain dose of subtlety to +appreciate it, and it is not uncommon to find those who consider such +personages as Mr. Collins in <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> to be merely +farcical, instead of, as they are in fact, preachers of the highest and +most Shakespearian comedy. But there would be no room here to examine +Miss Austen's perfections in detail; the important thing for the +purposes of this history is to observe again that she "set the clock," +so to speak, of pure novel writing to the time which was to be +nineteenth century time to this present hour. She discarded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> violent and +romantic adventure. She did not rely in the very least degree on +describing popular or passing fashions, amusements, politics; but +confined herself to the most strictly ordinary life. Yet she managed in +some fashion so to extract the characteristics of that life which are +perennial and human, that there never can be any doubt to fit readers in +any age finding themselves at home with her, just as they find +themselves at home with all the greatest writers of bygone ages. And +lastly, by some analogous process she hit upon a style which, though +again true to the ordinary speech of her own day, and therefore now +reviled as "stilted" and formal by those who have not the gift of +literary detachment, again possesses the universal quality, and, save in +the merest externals, is neither ancient nor modern.</p> + +<p>For the moment, however, Miss Austen's example had not so much little +influence as none at all. A more powerful and popular force, coming +immediately afterwards and coinciding with the bent of general taste, +threw for the time the whole current of English novel writing into quite +a different channel; and it was not till the first rush of this current +had expended itself, after an interval of thirty or forty years, that +the novel, as distinguished from the romance and from nondescript styles +partaking now of the romance itself, now of something like the +eighteenth century story, engaged the popular ear. This new development +was the historical novel proper; and the hand that started it at last +was that of Scott. At last—for both men and women had been trying to +write historical novels for about two thousand years, and for some +twenty or thirty the attempts had come tolerably thick and fast. But +before Scott no one, ancient or modern, Englishman or foreigner, had +really succeeded. In the first place, until the eighteenth century was +pretty far advanced, the conception and the knowledge of history as +distinguished from the mere writing and reading of chronicles had been +in a very rudimentary condition. Exceedingly few historians and no +readers of history, as a class and as a rule, had practised or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> acquired +the art of looking at bygone ages with any attempt to realise and revive +the ideas of those ages themselves, or even, while looking at them with +the eyes of the present, to keep in mind that these were quite different +eyes from those of contemporaries. In the same way no attempt at getting +"local colour," at appropriateness of dialect, and so forth, had been +made. These negligences in the hands of genius had been as unimportant +as the negligences of genius always are. If Shakespeare's "godlike +Romans" are not entirely free from anachronism, nobody of sense would +exchange them for anything else than themselves; and though Dante +practically repeated in the <i>Commedia</i> the curious confusion which in +less gifted <i>trouvères</i> and romances mixed up Alexander with Charlemagne +and blended Greek and Gothic notions in one inextricable tangle, this +also was supremely unimportant, if not even in a manner interesting. But +when, at the end of the eighteenth century, writers, of secondary powers +at best, engaging in a new and unengineered way, endeavoured to write +historical novels, they all, from Godwin and Mrs. Radcliffe to Miss +Reeves and the Misses Lee, made the merest gallimaufries of inaccurate +history, questionable fiction, manners heedlessly jumbled, and above all +dialogue destitute of the slightest semblance of verisimilitude, and +drawn chiefly from that of the decadent tragic and comic drama of the +time.</p> + +<p>It is not possible—it never is in such cases—to give a very exact +account of the causes which led Walter Scott, when the public seemed to +be a little tiring of the verse-romances which have been discussed in +the last chapter, to take to romances in prose. The example of Miss +Edgeworth, if a true cause at all, could affect only his selection of +Scotch manners to illustrate his histories, not his adoption of the +historical style itself. But he did adopt it; and, fishing out from an +old desk the beginnings of a story which he had left unfinished, or +rather had scarce commenced, years earlier, he fashioned it into +<i>Waverley</i>. This appearing in the year 1814 at a serious crisis in his +own affairs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> opened at once a new career of fame and fortune to him, +and a previously unknown field of exploit and popularity to the English +novel.</p> + +<p>The extraordinary greatness of Scott—who in everything but pure style, +and the expression of the highest raptures of love, thought, and nature, +ranks with the greatest writers of the world—is not better indicated by +any single fact than by the fact that it is impossible to describe his +novels in any simple formula. He practically created the historical +novel; and, what is more, he elaborated it to such an extent that no +really important additions to his scheme have been made since. But not +all his novels are historical. The two which immediately succeeded +<i>Waverley</i>, and which perhaps the best judges consider his best,—<i>Guy +Mannering</i> and <i>The Antiquary</i>,—have only the faintest touch of history +about them, and might have none at all without affecting their +excellence; while one of the most powerful of his later books, <i>St. +Ronan's Well</i>, is almost absolutely virgin of fact. So also, though his +incomparable delineation of national manners, speech, and character, of +the <i>cosas de Escócia</i> generally, is one of the principal sources of his +interest, <i>Ivanhoe</i>, which has perhaps been the most popular of all his +books, <i>Kenilworth</i>, which is not far below it in popularity or in +merit, and one or two others, have nothing at all of Scotland in them; +and the altogether admirable romance of <i>Quentin Durward</i>, one of his +four or five masterpieces, so little that what there is plays the +smallest part in the success. So yet again, historical novelist as Scott +is, and admirably as he has utilised and revivified history, he is by no +means an extremely accurate historical scholar, and is wont not merely +to play tricks with history to suit his story,—that is probably always +allowable,—but to commit anachronisms which are quite unnecessary and +even a little teasing.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that the single gift underlying all these and other +things—the gift which enabled Scott not merely, as has been said, to +create the historical novel, but to give the novel generally an entirely +new start and direction, to establish its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> popularity, to clear its +reputation from the smirch of frivolity on the one side and immorality +on the other, to put it in the position occupied at other times or in +other countries by the drama and the sermon, and to make it a rival of +the very newspaper which was being refashioned at the same moment, while +providing opportunities for the production of literature proper not +inferior to those of any literary kind except poetry—that this was a +gift of higher scope, if of vaguer definition, than any of those +referred to. It was that gift which no one except Shakespeare has ever +possessed in larger measure, though others have possessed it in greater +partial intensity and perfection—the gift of communicating life to the +persons, the story, the dialogue. To some extent Scott had this treasure +in an earthen vessel. He could not, like Thackeray, like Fielding, like +Miss Austen even, make everybody that he touched alive: his heroes very +generally are examples to the contrary. And as a rule, when he did +perform this function of the wizard,—a name given to him by a more than +popular appropriateness,—he usually did it, not by the accumulation of +a vast number of small strokes, but by throwing on the canvas, or rather +panel, large outlines, free sweeps of line, and breadths of colour, +instinct with vivacity and movement. Yet he managed wholly to avoid that +fault of some creative imaginations which consists in personifying and +individualising their figures by some easily recognisable label of +mannerism. Even his most mannered characters, his humourists in the +seventeenth century sense, of whom Dugald Dalgetty is the prince +and chief—the true commander of the whole <i>stift</i> of this +<i>Dunkelspiel</i>—stand poles asunder from those inventions of Dickens and +of some others who are ticketed for us by a gesture or a phrase repeated +<i>ad nauseam</i>. And this gift probably is most closely connected with +another: the extraordinary variety of Scott's scene, character, and—so +far as the term is applicable to his very effective but rather loose +fashion of story-telling—plot. It is a common and a just complaint of +novelists, especially when they are fertile rather than barren, that +with them scene, plot, and character all run into a kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> mould, that +their stories with a little trouble can be thrown into a sort of common +form, that their persons simply "change from the blue bed to the brown," +and that the blue and brown beds themselves are seen, under their +diverse colours, to have a singular and not very welcome uniformity of +pattern and furniture. Even Scott does not escape this almost invariable +law of the brain-artist: it is one of the sole Shakespearian +characteristics that Shakespeare does escape it entirely and altogether. +A certain form of huddled and not altogether probable catastrophe, a +knack of introducing in the earlier part of the story, as if big with +fate, personages who afterwards play but a subordinate part, and one or +two other things, might be urged against Sir Walter. But, on the whole, +no artist is less chargeable with stereotype than he. His characters are +hardly ever doubles; their relationships (certain general connections +excepted, which are practically the scaffolding of the romance in +itself) do not repeat themselves; the backgrounds, however much or +however little strict local colour they may have, are always +sufficiently differentiated. They have the variety, as they have the +truth, of nature.</p> + +<p>No detailed account can here be attempted of the marvellous rapidity and +popularity of the series of novels from the appearance of <i>Waverley</i> +till just before the author's death eighteen years later. The anecdotage +of the matter is enormous. The books were from the first anonymous, and +for some time the secret of their authorship was carefully and on the +whole successfully preserved. Even several years after the beginning, so +acute a judge as Hazlitt, though he did not entertain, thought it +necessary seriously to discuss, the suggestion that Godwin wrote +them,—a suggestion which, absurd as, with our illegitimate advantage of +distance and perspective, we see it to be, was less nonsensical than it +seems to those who forget that at the date of the appearance of +<i>Waverley</i> there was no novelist who could have been selected with more +plausibility. After a time this and that were put together, and a critic +of the name of Adolphus constructed an argument of much ingenuity and +shrewdness to show that the author of <i>Marmion</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> and the <i>Lady of the +Lake</i> must be the author of <i>Waverley</i>. But the secret was never +regularly divulged till Sir Walter's misfortunes, referred to in the +section on his poetry, made further concealment not so much useless as +impossible in the first place, and positively detrimental in the second. +The series was dauntlessly continued, despite the drag of the +<i>Napoleon</i>, the necessity of attempting other work that would bring in +money, and above all the strain on the faculties both of imagination and +labour which domestic as well as pecuniary misfortunes imposed. Nor did +Scott, it may be fearlessly, asserted, though it is not perhaps the +general opinion, ever publish any "dotages," with the possible exception +of <i>Castle Dangerous</i>, which was not only finished but begun when the +fatal disease of the brain which killed him had got the upper hand. The +introduction to the <i>Chronicles of the Canongate</i>, written in 1827, is +one of the most exquisite and masterly things that he ever did, though, +from its not actually forming part of one of the novels, it is +comparatively little known. The <i>Fair Maid of Perth</i>, a year later, has +been one of the most popular of all abroad, and not the least so at +home; and there are critics who rank <i>Anne of Geierstein</i>, in 1829, very +high indeed. Few defenders are found for <i>Count Robert of Paris</i>, which +was in fact written in the valley of the shadow; and it may be admitted +that in his earlier days Scott would certainly have been able to give it +a fuller development and a livelier turn. Yet the opening scene, though +a little too long, the escape from the vaults of the Blachernal, and not +a few other things, would be recognised as marvellous if they could be +put before a competent but unbiassed taste, which knew nothing of Sir +Walter's other work, but was able to compare it not merely with the work +of his predecessors but with that of his imitators, numerous and +enterprising as they were, at the time that <i>Count Robert</i> appeared.</p> + +<p>In such a comparison Scott at his worst excels all others at their best. +It is not merely that in this detail and in that he has the mastery, but +that he has succeeded in making novel writing in general turn over a +completely new leaf, enter upon a distinctly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> different competition. +With the masterpieces of the eighteenth century novel he does not enter +into comparison at all: he is working on a different scene, addressing a +different audience, using different tools, colours, methods. Every +successful novelist up to his time had, whatever his ostensible "<i>temp.</i> +of tale," quietly assumed the thoughts, the speech, the manners, even to +a great extent the dress and details of his own day. And in this +assumption all but the greatest had inevitably estranged from them the +ears and eyes of days that were not their own, which days, no doubt, +were in turn themselves rapidly hastening to change, but never to revert +to the original surroundings. Scott had done in prose fiction what the +poets and the dramatists had sometimes done, what very rare philosophers +had sometimes done likewise. Ostensibly going to the past, and to some +extent really borrowing its circumstances, he had in reality gone +straight to man as man; he had varied the particular trapping only to +exhibit the universal substance. The Baron of Bradwardine, Dandie +Dinmont, Edie Ochiltree, Mause Headrigg, Bailie Jarvie, and the long +list of originals down to Oliver Proudfute and even later, their less +eccentric companions from Fergus MacIvor to Queen Margaret, may derive +part of their appeal from dialect and colouring, from picturesque +"business" and properties. But the chief of that appeal lies in the fact +that they are all men and women of the world, of life, of time in +general; that even when their garments, even when their words are a +little out of fashion, there is real flesh and blood beneath the +garments, real thought and feeling behind the words. It may be urged by +the Devil's Advocate, and is not wholly susceptible of denial by his +opponent, that, after the first four or five books, the enormous gains +open to Scott first tempted, and the heroic efforts afterwards demanded +of him later compelled, the author to put not quite enough of himself +and his knowledge into his work, to "pad" if not exactly to "scamp" a +little. Yet it is the fact that some of his very best work was not only +very rapidly written, but written under such circumstances of bodily +suffering and mental worry as would have made any work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> at all +impossible to most men. And, on the whole, it is perhaps as idle to +speculate whether this work might have been better, as it is ungenerous +to grumble that it ought to have been. For after all it is such a body +of literature as, for complete liberation from any debts to models, +fertility and abundance of invention, nobility of sentiment, variety and +keenness of delight, nowhere else exists as the work of a single author +in prose.</p> + +<p>It was certain that an example so fascinating in itself, and of such +extraordinary profit in fame and fortune to the author, would be +followed. It was said with sufficient accuracy that Scott's novels, at +the best of his career, brought him in about £15,000 a year, a sum +previously undreamt of by authors; while their reputation overshadowed +not only all others in England, but all others throughout Europe. And it +is rather surprising, and shows how entirely Scott had the priority in +this field, that it was not for six or seven years at least that any +noteworthy attempts in his manner appeared, while it can scarcely be +said that in England anything of very great value was published in it +before his death. In the last ten years of his life, however, +imitations, chiefly of his historical style, did appear in great +numbers; and he has left in his diary an extremely interesting, a very +good-natured, but a very shrewd and just criticism upon them in general, +and upon two in particular—the <i>Brambletye House</i> of Horace Smith, one +of the authors of the delightful parodies called <i>Rejected Addresses</i>, +and the first book, <i>Sir John Chiverton</i>, of an author who was to +continue writing for some half century, and at times to attain very +great popularity. This was Harrison Ainsworth, and G. P. R. James also +began to publish pretty early in the third decade of the century. James' +<i>Richelieu</i>, his first work of mark, appeared in 1825, the same year as +<i>Sir John Chiverton</i>; but he was rather the older man of the two, having +been born in 1801, while Ainsworth's birth year was 1805. The latter, +too, long outlived James, who died in 1860, while holding the post of +English Consul in Venice, while Ainsworth survived till 1882. Both were +exceedingly prolific, James writing history and other work as well as +the novels—<i>Darnley</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> <i>Mary of Burgundy</i>, <i>Henry Masterton</i>, <i>John +Marston Hall</i>, and dozens of others—which made his fame; while +Ainsworth (<i>Jack Sheppard</i>, <i>The Tower of London</i>, <i>Crichton</i>, +<i>Rookwood</i>, <i>Old St. Paul's</i>, etc.) was a novelist only. Both, +especially between 1830 and 1850, achieved considerable popularity with +the general public; and they kept it much longer (if indeed they have +yet lost it) with schoolboys. But while the attempt of both to imitate +Scott was palpable always, the success of neither could be ranked very +high by severe criticism. James wrote better than Ainsworth: his +historical knowledge was of a much wider and more accurate kind, and he +was not unimbued with the spirit of romance. But the sameness of his +situations (it became a stock joke to speak of the "two horsemen" who so +often appeared in his opening scenes), the exceedingly conventional +character of his handling, and the theatrical feebleness of his +dialogue, were always reprehended and open to reprehension. Harrison +Ainsworth, on the other hand, had a real knack of arresting and keeping +the interest of those readers who read for mere excitement: he was +decidedly skilful at gleaning from memoirs and other documents scraps of +decoration suitable for his purpose, he could in his better days string +incidents together with a very decided knack, and, till latterly, his +books rarely languished. But his writing was very poor in strictly +literary merit, his style was at best bustling prose melodrama, and his +characters were scarcely ever alive.</p> + +<p>The chief follower of Sir Walter Scott in "Scotch" novels—for Miss +Ferrier, the Scottish counterpart of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen, +was, though his friend, hardly his follower, and <i>Marriage</i> was mainly +written before <i>Waverley</i>—was John Galt, who also has some claim to +priority. He was born (2nd May 1779) at Irvine in Ayrshire, the scene of +his best work, but passed most of his youth at Greenock. His father was +a retired West India captain; and Galt's biographers do not make it very +clear whence he obtained the capital for the various travels and +enterprises which occupied his not exactly eventful, but busy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> +varied life. He had entered the Custom-house; but went to London in +1804, and tried literature in many forms, and for the most part with +very little success. While travelling in the Levant he met Byron, of +whom long afterwards he published a rather absurd life; and after his +return home his <i>Ayrshire Legatees</i> found welcome and popularity in +<i>Blackwood</i>. This was in 1821, and after five years' busy writing Galt +went to Canada in charge of a great scheme of colonisation and commerce +called the Canada Company. This, after fair prospects, broke down +completely. He came back again, wrote hard, and schemed incessantly. But +fortune was not kind to him; and he died, in a way a broken man, at +Greenock on 11th April 1839.</p> + +<p>Galt, though with some of the national characteristics which have not +always made Scotchmen popular, appears to have been a person of worth +and amiability. He got on well with Byron, a very uncommon thing; and +from Carlyle, whom he met when they were both on the staff of <i>Fraser</i>, +he receives unwontedly amiable notice. His literary production was vast +and totally uncritical; his poems, dramas, etc., being admittedly +worthless, his miscellaneous writing mostly book-making, while his +historical novels are given up by all but devotees. He had, however, a +special walk—the delineation of the small humours and ways of his +native town and county—in which, if not exactly supreme, he has seldom +been equalled. The <i>Ayrshire Legatees</i> is in main scheme a pretty direct +and not very brilliant following of <i>Humphrey Clinker</i>; but the letters +of the worthy family who visit London are read in a home circle which +shows Galt's peculiar talent. It is shown better still in his next +published work, <i>The Annals of the Parish</i>, which is said to have been +written long before, and in the pre-Waverley days to have been rejected +by the publishers because "<i>Scotch</i> novels could not pay." It is not +exactly a novel, being literally what its title holds out—the annals of +a Western Parish by its minister, the Rev. Mr. Balwhidder, a +Presbyterian Parson Adams of a less robust type, whose description of +himself and parishioners is always good, and at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> times charming. <i>Sir +Andrew Wylie</i> (a fantastic book of much good fun and much good feeling), +<i>The Entail</i>, and <i>The Provost</i> (the last two sometimes ranked next to +the <i>Annals</i>), followed rapidly, and are all good in a way which has +been oddly revived of late years by some of our most popular novelists. +A better writer than Galt, though a less fertile, was Dr. Moir +("Delta"), another <i>Blackwood</i> man, whose chief single performance is +<i>Mansie Wauch</i>, but who wrote both prose and verse, both tales and +essays, with considerable accomplishment of style, and with a very +agreeable mixture of serious and comic power.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the historical novel did not by any means absorb the +attention of the crowds of aspirants who hurried to try their fortune in +the wake of Scott. Lady Morgan (or rather Miss Sydney Owenson) did, in +<i>The Wild Irish Girl</i> (1806) and other things, some "rattling Hibernian +stories" quite early; John Banim (1798-1842) coincided with the two +Englishmen and exceeded them in <i>goût du terroir</i>; and the <i>Fairy +Legends</i> (1826) of Crofton Croker (1798-1854) are at their best simply +exquisite. But the older styles continued after a fashion, or underwent +slight changes, before the novel of purely ordinary life, on a plan +midway between Scott and Miss Austen, triumphed in the middle of the +century. One of the most popular of novelists in the reigns of George +IV. and William IV. was Theodore Hook (1788-1841), a man of respectable +connections and excellent education, who, having made himself a +favourite with the Regent and many persons of quality as a diner-out and +improvisatore, received a valuable appointment at the Mauritius, laid +himself open by carelessness to a prosecution for malversation, and, +returning to England, never entirely escaped from the effects of this, +though he was extremely successful both as a novelist, and as a +newspaper writer and editor, in the <i>John Bull</i> chiefly. Some of Hook's +political squibs and light verses still retain attraction; and the +tradition of his extraordinary faculties in improvising both words, +music, and dramatic arrangement remains. But his novels (<i>Sayings and +Doings</i>, <i>Gilbert Gurney</i>, <i>Gurney Married</i>, <i>Maxwell</i>, etc.) have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +become very dead-alive. They have little plot; a sort of rattling +adventure in a modernised following of Smollett, which is their chief +source of interest; manners true enough to their own day to be +out-of-date now, but not handled with sufficient art ever to regain the +attraction of revived antiquity; and a very careless and undistinguished +style.</p> + +<p>The first series of Hook's <i>Sayings and Doings</i> appeared in 1824, the +year before that of the novels of James and Ainsworth above noticed. +Three years later, and five before Scott's death, appeared <i>Falkland</i>, +the first (anonymous) novel of a writer far surpassing any of the hour +in talent, and credited by some with positive genius. Edward George +Earle Lytton Bulwer, afterwards Sir Edward Lytton-Bulwer, and later +still Lord Lytton (born in 1800), was the youngest son of General Bulwer +of Wood Dalling and Haydon in Norfolk, while he on his mother's side +represented an ancient Hertfordshire family seated at Knebworth. He was +a Cambridge man: he obtained the Chancellor's prize for English verse in +1825, and his first books were in poetical form. He became a Member of +Parliament, being returned in the Whig interest for St. Ives before the +Reform Bill passed, and in the first Reform Parliament for Lincoln, and +he held this seat for a decade, receiving his baronetcy in 1835. For +another decade he was out of the House of Commons, though he succeeded +to the Knebworth estate in 1844. He was returned for Hertfordshire in +1852, and, joining Lord Derby's reconstituted party, ranked for the rest +of his life as a Conservative of a somewhat Liberal kind. In the second +Derby administration he was Colonial Secretary, but took no part in that +of 1867, and died just before the return of the Tories to power in 1873.</p> + +<p>This sufficiently brilliant political career was complicated by literary +production and success in a manner not equalled by any Englishman of his +time, and only approached by Macaulay and by Mr. Disraeli. <i>Falkland</i> +was succeeded by <i>Pelham</i>, which was published with his name, and which +was the first, perhaps the most successful, and by far the most +brilliant, of the novels in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> which authors have endeavoured to secure +the rank of man of the world even more than that of man of letters, +taking the method chiefly of fashionable, and therefore somewhat +ephemeral, epigram. Nor did Bulwer (as he was known in the heyday of his +popularity) ever cease novel writing for the forty-five years which were +left to him, while the styles of his production varied with fashion in a +manner impossible to a man of less consummate versatility and talent, +though perhaps equally impossible to one of a very decided turn of +genius. The fashionable novel, the crime novel, the romance of mystery, +the romance of classical times, the historical novel, by turns occupied +him; and it is more easy to discover faults in <i>Paul Clifford</i>, <i>Eugene +Aram</i>, <i>The Pilgrims of the Rhine</i>, <i>The Last Days of Pompeii</i>, <i>Ernest +Maltravers</i>, <i>Zanoni</i>, <i>Rienzi</i>, <i>The Last of the Barons</i>, and <i>Harold</i>, +than to refuse admiration to their extraordinary qualities. Then their +author, recognising the public taste, as he always did, or perhaps +exemplifying it with an almost unexampled quickness, turned to the +domestic kind, which was at last, more than thirty years after Miss +Austen's death, forcing its way, and wrote <i>The Caxtons</i>, <i>My Novel</i>, +and <i>What will he do with it?</i>—books which to some have seemed his +greatest triumphs. The veering of that taste back again to tales of +terror was acknowledged by <i>A Strange Story</i>, which, in 1861, created an +excitement rarely, if ever, caused by the work of a man who had been +writing for more than a generation; while <i>The Haunted and the +Haunters</i>, a brief ghost-story contributed to <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, +has always seemed to the present writer the most perfect thing that he +ever did, and one of the most perfect things of its kind ever done. In +the very last years of his life, the wonderful <i>girouette</i> of his +imagination felt other popular gales, and produced—partly as novels of +actual society, partly as Janus-faced satires of what was and what might +be—<i>The Coming Race</i>, <i>Kenelm Chillingly</i>, and the posthumous +<i>Parisians</i>.</p> + +<p>But this list of novels, which does not include by name much more than +two-thirds of his actual production, by no means exhausts Lord Lytton's +literary work. For some years, chiefly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> before he had passed middle +life, he was an active dramatist, and at least three of his plays—<i>The +Lady of Lyons</i>, <i>Richelieu</i>, and <i>Money</i>—had a success (not merely +passing, and in the first case at least permanent) which few if any +other plays of the century have had. He was always returning to verse, +though never with real poetical success; the exceptions which may be +urged most forcibly being his translations from Schiller, a congenial +original. He was at one time editor of the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>. He +translated freely, he wrote much criticism,—which is often in isolated +passages, if not so often in general drift and grasp, extremely +good,—and he was a constant essayist in very various kinds. It is +probable that if his entire works were ever collected, which is not +likely, few, if any, authors of the nineteenth century, though it be one +of unbridled writing and printing, could equal him in volume; while it +is certain that very few indeed could produce more numerous testimonials +of the kind given by the immediate, and not merely immediate, success of +separate works.</p> + +<p>Yet it has been sometimes complained, sometimes boasted, that "with the +critics Bulwer is dead"; and it is not very certain that with the +faithful herd of uncritical readers the first Lord Lytton keeps any +great place. Even many years ago he had ceased to be, if he ever was, a +general favourite with those who specially loved literature; and it is +rather doubtful whether he will ever regain even a considerable vogue of +esteem. Perhaps this may be unjust, for he certainly possessed ability +in bulk, and perhaps here and there in detail, far surpassing that of +all but the very greatest of his contemporaries. Even the things which +were most urged against him by contemporary satirists, and which it is +to be feared are remembered at second-hand when the first-hand knowledge +of his work has declined, need not be fatal. A man may write such things +as "There is an eloquence in Memory because it is the nurse of Hope" +without its being necessary to cast up his capital letters against him +in perpetuity, or to inquire without ceasing whether eloquence is an +inseparable property of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> nurses. But he had two great faults—want of +concentration and want of reality; and the very keenness, the very +delicacy of his appreciation of the shiftings of popular taste may seem +without unfairness to argue a certain shallowness of individual soil, a +literary compost wherein things spring up rapidly because they have no +depth of earth, but also because they have no depth of earth, rapidly +vanish and wither away. The novel and the magazine have beyond all doubt +given us much admirable work which without them we should not have had; +they have almost as certainly, and in no case much more certainly than +in Bulwer's, over-forced and over-coaxed into hasty and ephemeral +production talents which, with a little more hardening and under less +exacting circumstances, might have become undoubted genius. Sentimental +grandiloquence is not by itself fatal: the fashion which tempts to it, +which turns on it, may return to it again; and it is never impossible to +make allowance for its excesses, especially when, as in the case under +discussion, it is accompanied by a rare and true satiric grasp of life. +In these early externals of his, Bulwer was only the most illustrious of +the innumerable victims of Byron. But his failure to make his figures +thoroughly alive is more serious; and this must be put down partly to +incapacity to take pains.</p> + +<p>It was nearly ten years after the first success of Bulwer, and more than +half as much after the death of Scott, that a novelist greater than any +the century had seen, except Scott himself and Miss Austen, appeared. +Charles Dickens and Lord Lytton became rather intimate friends; but +their origins and early experiences were curiously different. Dickens' +father had been in a government office; but after the Peace he took to +the press, and his son (born in 1812), after some uncomfortable early +experiences which have left their mark on <i>David Copperfield</i>, fled to +the same refuge of the destitute in our times. He was a precocious, but +not an extraordinary precocious writer; for he was four and twenty when +the <i>Sketches by Boz</i> were printed in a volume after appearing in the +<i>Morning Chronicle</i>. But the <i>Sketches</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> <i>by Boz</i>, though containing +some very sprightly things, are but as farthing candles to sunlight when +compared with the wonderful and wholly novel humour of <i>The Pickwick +Papers</i>, which (Dickens having been first (1836) employed to write them +as mere letter-press to the sporting sketches of the caricaturist +Seymour) appeared as a book in 1838. From that time their author had a +success which in money came second to that of Scott, and which both +pecuniarily and otherwise enabled him to write pretty much as he +pleased. So to the last the style of his novels never bore much +reference to any public taste or demand; and he developed himself more +strictly according to his own bent than almost any writer of English who +was not born to fortune. During the last twenty years of his life, which +ended suddenly on 9th June 1870, he was a newspaper editor—first of +<i>Household Words</i>, then of <i>All the Year Round</i>; but these very +periodicals were of his own making and design. He made two journeys to +America: one very early in 1842, with a literary result (<i>American +Notes</i>) of very sharp criticism of its people; the other late in 1867, +when he made large sums by reading from his works—a style of +entertainment which, again, was almost of his own invention, and which +gave employment to a very strong dramatic and histrionic faculty that +found little other vent. But his life was extremely uneventful, being +for its last two and thirty years simply one long spell of hard though +lavishly rewarded literary labour.</p> + +<p>The brilliancy and the originality of the product of this can never be +denied. True to his general character of independence, Dickens owes +hardly anything to any predecessor except Smollett, to whom his debts +are rather large, and perhaps to Theodore Hook, to whom, although the +fact has not been generally recognised, they exist. He had had no +regular education, had read as a boy little but the old novelists, and +never became as a man one of either wide learning or much strictly +literary taste. His temperament indeed was of that insubordinate +middle-class variety which rather resents the supremacy of any classics; +and he carried the same feeling into art, into politics, and into the +discussion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> of the vague problems of social existence which have so much +occupied the last three-quarters of the century. Had this iconoclastic +but ignorant zeal of his (which showed itself in his second novel, +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, and was apparent in his last completed one, <i>Our +Mutual Friend</i>) been united with less original genius, the result must +have been infinitely tedious, and could not have been in any way +profitable. For Dickens' knowledge, as has been said, was very limited; +his logical faculties were not strong; and while constantly attempting +to satirise the upper classes, he knew extremely little about them, and +has never drawn a single "aristocrat," high government official, or +"big-wig" generally, who presents the remotest resemblance to a living +being. But he knew the lower and lower middle classes of his own day +with wonderful accuracy; he could inform this knowledge of his with that +indefinable comprehension of man as man which has been so often noted; +and over and above this he possessed an imagination, now humorous, now +terrible, now simply grotesque, of a range and volume rarely equalled, +and of a quality which stands entirely by itself, or is approached at a +distance, and with a difference, only by that of his great French +contemporary Balzac. This imagination, essentially plastic, so far +outran the strictly critical knowledge of mankind as mankind just +mentioned that it has invested Dickens' books and characters with a +peculiarity found nowhere else, or only in the instance just excepted. +They are never quite real: we never experience or meet anything or +anybody quite like them in the actual world. And yet in their own world +they hold their position and play their parts quite perfectly and +completely: they obey their own laws, they are consistent with their own +surroundings. Occasionally the work is marred by too many and too +glaring tricks of mannerism: this was especially the case with the +productions of the period between 1855 and 1865. The pathos of Dickens +was always regarded as slightly conventional and unreal by critical +judges. But his humour, though never again attaining the same marvellous +flow of unforced merriment which the <i>Pickwick Papers</i> had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> shown, was +almost unfailing; and, thanks to the gift of projecting imaginative +character, above noticed, it was never exactly the same.</p> + +<p>These and other gifts were shown in a long line of novels covering just +thirty years, from <i>Boz to Our Mutual Friend</i>; for the last few years of +his life, disturbed by his American tour, by increasing ill-health, and +other things, produced nothing but the beginnings of an unfinished +novel, <i>Edwin Drood</i>. He attempted little besides novels, and what he +did attempt outside of them was not very fortunate, except the +delightful <i>Uncommercial Traveller</i>, wherein in his later days he +achieved a sort of mellowed version of the <i>Boz</i> sketches, subdued more +to the actual, but not in the least tamed or weakened. Although a keen +lover of the theatre and an amateur actor of remarkable merit, he had +the sense and self-denial never to attempt plays except in an indirect +fashion and in one or two instances, nor ever in his own name solely. +His <i>Child's History of England</i> (1854) is probably the worst book ever +written by a man of genius, except Shelley's novels, and has not, like +them, the excuse of extreme youth. His <i>Pictures from Italy</i> (1845), +despite vivid passages, are quite unworthy of him; and even the +<i>American Notes</i> could be dispensed with without a sigh, seeing that we +have <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. But his novels, despite their many faults, +could not be dispensed with,—no one who understands literary value +would give up even the worst of them,—while his earlier "Christmas +Books" (during the fancy for these things in the forties) and his later +contributions to the Christmas numbers of his periodicals contain some +of his best fantastic and pathetic work. <i>Pickwick</i> was immediately +followed by <i>Oliver Twist</i>,—a very popular book, and in parts a very +powerful one, but containing in germ most of the faults which afterwards +developed themselves, and, with the exception of the "Artful Dodger," +not bringing out any of his great character-creations. <i>Nicholas +Nickleby</i> (1838) is a story designed to fix a stigma on cheap private +schools, and marred by some satire as cheap as the schools themselves on +the fashionable and aristocratic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> society of which to his dying day +Dickens never knew anything; but it is of great interest as a story, and +full of admirable humoristic sketches, which almost if not quite excused +not merely the defect of knowledge just referred to, but the author's +unfortunate proneness to attempt irony, of which he had no command, and +argument, of which he had if possible less. His next two stories, <i>The +Old Curiosity Shop</i> and <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, were enshrined (1840-41) in an +odd framework of fantastic presentation, under the general title of +<i>Master Humphrey's Clock</i>,—a form afterwards discarded with some +advantage, but also with some loss. <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>, strongly +commended to its own public and seriously hampered since by some rather +maudlin pathos, improved even upon <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> in the humoristic +vein; and while Dick Swiveller, Codlin and Short, Mr. Chuckster, and +others remain as some of the best of Dickens' peculiar characters of the +lighter sort, the dwarf Quilp is perhaps his only thoroughly successful +excursion into the grimmer and more horrible kind of humour. <i>Barnaby +Rudge</i> is in part a historical novel, and the description of the riots +of Eighty is of extraordinary power; but the real appeal of the book +lies in the characters of the Varden family, with the handmaid Miss +Miggs and the ferocious apprentice Tappertit. Sir John Chester, a sort +of study from Chesterfield, is one of the most disastrous of this +author's failures; but Dennis the Hangman may have a place by Quilp. +Then (1843) came <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, which, as observed, embodied his +American experiences in a manner which may or may not have been fair, +but which was exquisitely funny. It also added the immortal figure of +Mrs. Gamp (not unattended by any means) to the glorious list of his +comic creations. It was in <i>Dombey and Son</i> (1846-48) that the Dickens +of the decadence first appeared; the maudlin strain of <i>The Old +Curiosity Shop</i> being repeated in Paul Dombey, while a new and very +inauspicious element appeared in certain mechanical tricks of phrase, +and in a totally unreal style of character exemplified in the Bagstocks, +the Carkers, and so forth. Yet Captain Cuttle, his friend Bunsby,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> Miss +Nipper, and the inestimable Toots put in ample bail for this also. And +it was followed (1849-50) by <i>David Copperfield</i>, one of the capital +books of English fiction. This was to some extent obviously +autobiographic; but, setting some questions of taste aside, not unduly +so. Even the hero is too real to be frigid; and of the two heroines, +Dora, if an idiot, is saved by pathos different from that of Paul and +Nell, while the insipidity of Agnes does not greatly spoil the story, +and the commonplace theatricality of the Steerforth and Little Em'ly +episode can be neglected. On the other hand, Miss Trotwood, David +Copperfield's schools and schoolfellows, Uriah Heap (not wholly good as +he is), and above all the priceless Mr. Micawber, would suffice to keep +twenty books alive.</p> + +<p>But this book, though by no means Dickens' Corunna or even his +Malplaquet, was certainly the climax of his career, and no impartial and +competent critic could ever give him the same praise again. In two long +stories, <i>Bleak House</i> and <i>Little Dorrit</i>, and in a shorter one, <i>Hard +Times</i>, which appeared between 1852 and 1857, the mania of "purpose" and +the blemish of mechanical mannerism appeared to a far worse degree than +previously, though in the first named at any rate there were numerous +consolations of the old kind. The <i>Tale of Two Cities</i> (1859) has been +more differently judged than any other of his works; some extolling it +as a great romance, if not quite a great historical novel, while others +see in it little more than mixed mannerism and melodrama. Something of +the same difference prevails about <i>Great Expectations</i> (1860-61), the +parties as a rule changing sides, and those who dislike the <i>Tale of Two +Cities</i> rejoicing in <i>Great Expectations</i>, Dickens' closest attempt at +real modern life (with a fantastic admixture of course), and in its +heroine, Estella, his almost sole creation of a live girl. <i>Our Mutual +Friend</i> (1864-65), though not a return to the great days, brought these +parties somewhat together again, thanks to the Doll's Dressmaker and +Rogue Riderhood. And then, for it is impossible to found any sound +critical judgment on the fragment of <i>Edwin Drood</i>, the building<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> of the +most extraordinary monument of the fantastic in literature ceased +abruptly.</p> + +<p>That exactly the same fate befell the great successor, rival, and foil +of Dickens in novel writing during the middle of the century was due to +no metaphysical aid but to the simple and prosaic fact that at the time +publication in parts, independently or in periodicals, was the usual +method. Although the life of William Makepeace Thackeray was as little +eventful as Dickens' own, their origin and circumstances were as +different as their work. Dickens, as has been said, was born in +distinctly the lower section of the middle class, and had, if any +education, a very irregular one. Thackeray, who was born at Calcutta in +1811, belonged to a good family, regularly connected with English public +schools and universities, inherited a small but comfortable fortune, and +was himself educated at the Charterhouse and at Trinity College, +Cambridge, though he took no degree. Unsuccessful as an artist (it is +one of the chief pieces of literary anecdote of our times that he +offered himself fruitlessly to Dickens as an illustrator), and having by +imprudence or accident lost his private means, he began to write, +especially in the then new and audacious <i>Fraser's Magazine</i>. For this, +for other periodicals, and for <i>Punch</i> later, he performed a vast amount +of miscellaneous work, part only of which, even with the considerable +addition made some ten years ago, has ever been enshrined in his +collected works. It is all very remarkable, and can easily be seen now +to be quite different from any other work of the time (the later +thirties); but it is very unequal and distinctly uncertain in touch. +These qualities or defects also appear in his first publications in +volume—the <i>Paris</i> (1840) and <i>Irish</i> (1843) <i>Sketch Books</i>, and the +novels of <i>Catherine</i> and <i>Barry Lyndon</i>. The <i>Punch</i> work (which +included the famous <i>Book of Snobs</i> and the admirable attempts in +misspelling on the model of Swift and Smollett known as the <i>Memoirs of +Mr. Yellowplush</i>, with much else) marked a distinct advance in firmness +of handling and raciness of humour; while the author, who, though now a +very poor man, had access to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> the best society, was constantly adding to +his stock of observation as well as to his literary practice. It was +not, however, till 1846, when he began <i>Vanity Fair</i>, that any very +large number of persons began to understand what a star had risen in +English letters; nor can even <i>Vanity Fair</i> be said to have had any +enormous popularity, though its author's powers were shown in a +different way during its publication in parts by the appearance of a +third sketch book, the <i>Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo</i>, more +perfect than either of its forerunners, and by divers extremely +brilliant Christmas books. <i>Vanity Fair</i> was succeeded in 1849 (for +Thackeray, a man fond of society and a little indolent, was fortunately +never a very rapid writer) by <i>Pendennis</i>, which holds as autobiography, +though not perhaps in creative excellence, the same place among his +works as <i>Copperfield</i> does among those of Dickens. Several slighter +things accompanied or followed this, Thackeray showing himself at once +an admirable lecturer, and an admirable though not always quite judicial +critic, in a series of discourses afterwards published as a volume on +<i>The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century</i>. But it was not till +1852 that the marvellous historical novel of <i>Esmond</i>—the greatest book +in its own special kind ever written—appeared, and showed at once the +fashion in which the author had assimilated the Queen Anne period and +his grasp of character and story. He returned to modern times in <i>The +Newcomes</i> (1853-55), which some put at the head of his work as a +contemporary painter of manners. After this he had seven years of life +which were well filled. He followed up <i>Esmond</i> with The <i>Virginians</i> +(1857-58), a novel of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, which +has not been generally rated high, but which contains some of his very +best things; he went to America and lectured on <i>The Four Georges</i> +(lectures again brilliant in their kind); he became (1860) editor of the +<i>Cornhill Magazine</i> and wrote in it two stories, <i>Lovel the Widower</i> and +<i>Philip</i>; while he struck out a new line in a certain series of +contributions called <i>The Roundabout Papers</i>, some of which were among +his very last, and nearly all of them among his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> most characteristic and +perfect work. He had begun yet another novel, <i>Denis Duval</i>, which was +to deal with the last quarter of the century he knew so well; but he +died suddenly two days before Christmas 1863, leaving it a mere +fragment. He had unsuccessfully attempted play writing in <i>The Wolves +and the Lamb</i>, an earlier and dramatic version of <i>Lovel the Widower</i>. +And during almost his whole literary career he had been a sparing but an +exquisite writer of a peculiar kind of verse, half serious half comic, +which is scarcely inferior in excellence to his best prose. "The Ballad +of Bouillabaisse" and "The Age of Wisdom," to take only two examples, +are unmatched in their presentation of pathos that always keeps clear of +the maudlin, and is wide-eyed if not dry-eyed in view of all sides of +life; while such things as "Lyra Hibernica" and "The Ballads of +Policeman X" have never been surpassed as verse examples of pure, broad, +roaring farce that still retains a certain reserve and well-bred +scholarship of tone.</p> + +<p>But his verse, however charming and unique, could never have given him +the exalted and massive pedestal which his prose writings, and +especially his novels, provide. Even without the novels, as without the +verse, he would still occupy a high place among English writers for the +sake of his singular and delightful style, and for the attitude both to +life and to letters, corresponding with that style, which his essays and +miscellanies exhibit. This style is not by any means free from minor +blemishes, though it discarded many of these as time went on. But it has +an extraordinary vivacity; a manner entirely its own, which yet seldom +or never approaches mannerism; a quality of humour for which no word +would be so fit as the old-fashioned "archness," if that had not been so +hopelessly degraded before even the present century opened; at need, an +unsurpassed pathos which never by any chance or exception succumbs to +the demon of the gushing or maudlin; a flexibility and facility of +adaptation to almost all (not quite all) subjects which is hard to +parallel.</p> + +<p>And this style reflects with more than common exactness, even in these +minor works, the attitude above spoken of, which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> not less unique and +not less inestimable than the style itself. Towards some of the "great +subjects" Thackeray indeed adopts not quite a Shakespearian silence, but +a slightly uneasy respect. Never irreligious as he was, there was +something in him of his own beloved eighteenth century's dislike and +discomfort in face of religious dogma and religious enthusiasm; he had +no metaphysical head; his politics (he once stood for Parliament) were a +little childish. It was his, in short, not so much to argue as to +observe, to feel, to laugh with no unkindness but with infinite +comprehension, to enjoy, to suffer. Of all the innumerable cants that +ever were canted, the cant about Thackeray's "cynicism" was the silliest +and the most erroneous. He knew the weakness of man, and laughed at it +as the wise knows and laughs, "knowing also," as the poet says, "that he +himself must die." But he did not even despise this weakness, much less +is he harsh to it. On the contrary, he is milder not only than Swift, +but even than Addison or Miss Austen, and he is never wroth with human +nature save when it is not only weak but base.</p> + +<p>All these good gifts and others, such as incomparable power of +presenting scene and personage to the necessary extent and with telling +detail, appear in his novels, with the addition of a greater gift than +any of them—the gift most indispensable of all others to the +novelist—the gift of creating and immortalising character. Of mere +story, of mere plot, Thackeray was not a great master; and he has made +himself appear a less great master than he was by his fancy for +interlarding his narratives with long addresses to the reader, and by +his other fancy for extending them over very great spaces of time. The +unities are no doubt in fiction, if not in drama, something of a +caricature; but it is seldom possible to neglect them to the extent of +years and decades without paying the penalty; and Thackeray is not of +those who have evaded payment. But in the creation of living character +he stands simply alone among novelists: above even Fielding, though his +characters may have something less of massiveness; much above Scott, +whose consummate successes are accompanied by not a few failures;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> and +out of sight of almost every one else except Miss Austen, whose world is +different, and, as a world, somewhat less of flesh and blood. In <i>Vanity +Fair</i> he is still in this respect not quite at his acme; and the +magnificent character of Becky Sharp (the attempt to rival whom by her +almost exact contemporary, Valerie Marneffe, is a singular critical +error), supported as it is by the lesser successes of Jos and Rawdon, of +George Osborne and Lord Steyne, does not find itself, save now and then, +especially in the crowning scene of the scandal in Curzon Street, +completely parted or completely put in scene. And so at the other end of +the list, from <i>The Virginians</i>, fine as much of that is, onwards, it is +permissible, without unreason or want of generosity, to discern a +slight, a very slight, flagging, not in the quality or kind of the +power, but in the vigour and freshness with which it is applied. But in +<i>Pendennis</i>, in <i>Esmond</i>, and in <i>The Newcomes</i>, it appears as it does +nowhere else in English, or in any literature. It is not so much the +holding up of the mirror to life as the presentation of life itself. +Although the figures, the scheme of thought and sentiment and sense, +differ from what we find in Shakespeare by the whole difference between +poetry and prose, there is, on the lower level, a positive gain in +vividness by the absence of the restraints and conventions of the drama +and the measured line. Every act, every scene, every person in these +three books is real with a reality which has been idealised just up to +and not beyond the necessities of literature. It does not matter what +the acts, the scenes, the personages may be. Whether we are at the +height of romantic passion with Esmond's devotion to Beatrix, and his +transactions with the duke and the prince over diamonds and title deeds; +whether the note is that of the simplest human pathos, as in Colonel +Newcome's death-bed; whether we are indulged with society at Baymouth +and Oxbridge; whether we take part in Marlborough's campaigns or assist +at the Back Kitchen—we are in the House of Life, a mansion not too +frequently opened to us by the writers of prose fiction. It was +impossible that Thackeray should live long or write very many novels +when he had once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> found his way. The lesson of the greatest imagination +of his great contemporary and master settles that. Not the "Peau de +Chagrin" itself could have enabled any man to produce a long succession +of novels such as <i>Vanity Fair</i> and <i>Esmond</i>.</p> + +<p>During the time before the century reached its middle, in which Bulwer +and Dickens were the most popular of novelists, while Thackeray was +slowly making his way to the place that was properly his, the demand for +novels, thoroughly implanted in the public by the success of Scott, was +constantly met by work of all sorts, very little of which survives +except in country circulating libraries and on the shelves of houses the +ownership of which has not changed hands for some considerable time. +Very little of it, indeed, much deserved to survive. Lockhart, an +exceedingly judicious critic, thought it necessary not long after the +appearance of <i>Vanity Fair</i> to apologise for the apparent extravagance +of the praise which he had given to his friend Theodore Hook by +observing that, except Dickens, there was no novelist of the first class +between the death of Scott and the rise of Thackeray himself. But about +the time of that rise, and for a good many years after it, what may be +called the third generation of the novelists of the century began to +make its appearance, and, as has been partly observed above, to devote +itself to a somewhat different description of work, which will be +noticed in a future chapter.</p> + +<p>The historical novel, though some of its very best representatives were +still to make their appearance, ceased to occupy the first place in +popular esteem; and the later varieties of the novel of more or less +humorous adventure, whether in the rather commonplace form of Hook or in +the highly individual and eccentric form of Dickens, also ceased to be +much cultivated, save by Dickens himself and his direct imitators. The +vogue set in for a novel of more or less ordinary life of the upper +middle class, and this vogue lasted during the whole of the third +quarter, if not of the second half, of the century, though about 1870 +the historical novel revived, and, after some years of uncertain popular +taste, seems in the last decade to have acquired almost as great +popularity (with its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> companion study of purely fantastic adventure) as +ever. Yet we must, before passing to other departments, and interrupting +the account of fiction, notice not a few other writers of the time +previous to 1850.</p> + +<p>The descent, in purely literary merit, from Dickens and Thackeray, and +perhaps from Bulwer, to some of those who must now be mentioned, is +great. Yet the chief naval and the chief military novelist of England +need surely not appear by allowance; and if affection and frequent +reading count for anything, it is not certain that some technically much +greater names might not shine with lesser lustre than those of Marryat +and Lever. Frederick Marryat, the elder of the pair, was born in 1792, +early enough to see a good deal of service in the later years of the +Great War, partly under the brilliant if eccentric leadership of Lord +Cochrane. His promotion was fairly rapid: he became a commander in 1815, +and afterwards distinguished himself as a post captain in the Burmese +War, being made a C.B. in 1825. But the increasing dearth of active +service was not suitable to a character like that of Marryat, who, +moreover, was not likely to be popular with "My Lords"; and his +discovery of a faculty for writing opened up to him, both as novelist +and magazine editor, a very busy and profitable literary career, which +lasted from 1830 to 1848, when he died. Marryat's works, which are very +numerous (the best being perhaps <i>Peter Simple</i>, <i>Mr. Midshipman Easy</i>, +and <i>Jacob Faithful</i>, though there is hardly one that has not special +adherents), resemble Smollett's more than those of any other writer, not +merely in their sea-scenes, but in general scheme and character. Some of +Smollett's faults, too, which are not necessarily connected with the +sea—a certain ferocity, an over-fondness for practical jokes, and the +like—appear in Marryat, who is, moreover, a rather careless and +incorrect writer, and liable to fits both of extravagance and of +dulness. But the spirit and humour of the best of his books throughout, +and the best parts of the others, are unmistakable and unsurpassed. Nor +should it be forgotten that he had a rough but racy gift of verse,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> the +best, though by no means the only good example of which is the piece +beginning, "The Captain stood on the carronade."</p> + +<p>The range of Charles Lever, who was born in 1806, was as much wider than +Marryat's as his life was longer and his experience (though in a purely +literary view oddly similar) more varied. He was educated at Trinity +College, Dublin, and after some sojourn both on the Continent and in +America became (1837) physician to the British Embassy at Brussels. At +this time the Continent was crowded with veterans, English and other, of +the Great War; while Lever's Irish youth had filled him with stories of +the last generation of madcap Irish squires and squireens. He combined +the two in a series of novels of wonderful <i>verve</i> and spirit, first of +a military character, the chief of which were <i>Harry Lorrequer</i>, +<i>Charles O'Malley</i> (his masterpiece), and <i>Tom Burke of Ours</i>. He had, +after no long tenure of the Brussels appointment, become (1842) editor +of the <i>Dublin University Magazine</i>, where for many years his books +appeared. After a time, when his stores of military anecdote were +falling low and the public taste had changed, he substituted novels +partly of Irish partly of Continental bearing (<i>Roland Cashel</i>, <i>The +Knight of Gwynne</i>, and many others); while in the early days of Dickens' +<i>All the Year Round</i> he adventured a singular piece entitled <i>A Day's +Ride, a Life's Romance</i>, which the public did not relish, but which was +much to the taste of some good judges. He had by this time gone to +Florence, became Vice-Consul at Spezzia in 1852, whence, in 1867, he was +transferred as British Consul to Trieste, and died there in 1872.</p> + +<p>For some years before his death he had been industrious in a third and +again different kind of novel, not merely more thoughtful and less +"rollicking," but adjusted much more closely to actual life and +character. Indeed Lever at different times of his life manifested almost +all the gifts which the novelist requires, though unfortunately he never +quite managed to exhibit them all together. His earlier works, amusing +as they are and full of dash and a certain kind of life, sin not only by +superficiality but by a reckless disregard of the simplest requirements +of story-telling, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> the most rudimentary attention to chronology, +probability, and general keeping. His later, vastly amended in this +respect, and exhibiting, moreover, a deeper comprehension of human +character as distinguished from mere outward "humours," almost +necessarily present the blunted and blurred strokes which come from the +loss of youth and the frequent repetition of literary production. Indeed +Lever, with Bulwer, was the first to exemplify the evil effects of the +great demand for novels, and the facilities for producing them given by +the spread of periodicals.</p> + +<p>To descend to the third, or even the lower second class in fiction is +almost more dangerous here than a similar laxity in any other +department; and we can no more admit Lord John Russell because he wrote +a story called <i>The Nun of Arrouca</i>, than we can exhume any equally +forgotten production of writers less known in non-literary respects. It +can hardly, however, be improper to mention in connection with Marryat, +the greatest of them all, some other members of the interesting school +of naval writers who not unnaturally arose after the peace had turned +large numbers of officers adrift, and the rise of the demand for essays, +novels, and miscellaneous articles had offered temptation to writing. +The chief of these were, in order of rising excellence, Captains +Glascock, Chamier, and Basil Hall, and Michael Scott, a civilian, but by +far the greatest writer of the four. Glascock, an officer of +distinction, was the author of the <i>Naval Sketch Book</i>, a curious +olla-podrida of "galley" stories, criticisms on naval books, and +miscellanies, which appeared in 1826. It is not very well written, and +in parts very dull, but provides some genuine things. Chamier, who was +born in 1796 and did not die till 1870, was a post captain and a direct +imitator of Marryat, as also was Captain Howard, Marryat's sub-editor +for a time on the <i>Metropolitan</i>, and the part author with him of some +books which have caused trouble to bibliographers. Chamier's books—<i>Ben +Brace</i>, <i>The Arethusa</i>, <i>Tom Bowling</i>, etc.—are better than Howard's +<i>Rattlin the Reefer</i> (commonly ascribed to Marryat), <i>Jack Ashton</i>, and +others, but neither can be called a master.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p> + +<p>Captain Basil Hall, who was born of a good Scotch family at Edinburgh in +1788 and died at Haslar Hospital in 1844, was a better writer than +either of these three; but he dealt in travels, not novels, and appears +here as a sort of honorary member of the class. His <i>Travels in America</i> +was one of the books which, in the second quarter of the century, +rightly or wrongly, excited American wrath against Englishmen; but his +last book, <i>Fragments of Voyages and Travels</i>, was his most popular and +perhaps his best. Captain Basil Hall was a very amiable person, and +though perhaps a little flimsy as a writer, is yet certainly not to be +spoken of with harshness.</p> + +<p>A very much stronger talent than any of these was Michael Scott, who was +born in Glasgow in 1789 and died in 1835, having passed the end of his +boyhood and the beginning of his manhood in Jamaica. He employed his +experiences in composing for <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, and afterwards +reducing to book shape, the admirable miscellanies in fiction entitled +<i>Tom Cringle's Log</i> and <i>The Cruise of the Midge</i>, which contain some of +the best fighting, fun, tropical scenery, and description generally, to +be found outside the greatest masters. Very little is known of Scott, +and he wrote nothing else.</p> + +<p>One unique figure remains to be noticed among novelists of the first +half of the century, though as a matter of fact his last novel was not +published till within twenty years of its close. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl +of Beaconsfield, belongs, as a special person, to another story than +this. But this would be very incomplete without him and his novels. They +were naturally written for the most part before, in 1852, he was called +to the leadership of the House of Commons, but in two vacations of +office later he added to them <i>Lothair</i> (1870) and <i>Endymion</i> (1881). It +is, however, in his earlier work that his chief virtue is to be found. +It is especially in its first division,—the stories of <i>Vivian Grey</i>, +<i>The Young Duke</i>, <i>Contarini Fleming</i>, <i>Alroy</i>, <i>Venetia</i>, and +<i>Henrietta Temple</i>,—published between 1827 and 1837. They are more like +Bulwer's than like anybody else's work, but <i>Vivian Grey</i> appeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> +in the same year with <i>Falkland</i> and before <i>Pelham</i>. Later +novels—<i>Coningsby</i> (1844), <i>Sybil</i> (1845), and <i>Tancred</i> (1847)—are +more directly political; while certain smaller and chiefly early +tales—<i>Ixion</i>, <i>The Infernal Marriage</i>, <i>Popanilla</i>, etc.—are pure +fantasy pieces with a satirical intent, and the first of them is, with +perhaps Bedford's <i>Vathek</i> as a companion, the most brilliant thing of +its kind in English. In these more particularly, but in all more or +less, a strong Voltairian influence is perceptible; but on the whole the +set of books may be said to be like nothing else. They have grave +faults, being sometimes tawdry in phrase and imagery, sometimes too +personal, frequently a little unreal, and scarcely ever finally and +completely adjusted to the language in which and the people of whom they +are written. Yet the attraction of them is singular; and good judges, +differing very widely in political and literary tastes, have found +themselves at one as to the strange way in which the reader comes back +to them as he advances in life, and as to the marvellous cleverness +which they display. Let it be added that <i>Henrietta Temple</i>, a mere and +sheer love story written in a dangerous style of sentimentalism, is one +of the most effective things of its kind in English, and holds its +ground despite all drawbacks of fashion in speech and manners, which +never tell more heavily than in the case of a book of the kind; while in +<i>Venetia</i> the story of Byron is handled with remarkable closeness, and +yet in good taste.</p> + +<p>Two other novelists belonging to the first half of the century, and +standing even further out of the general current than did Disraeli, both +of them also possessing greater purely literary genius than his, must +also be mentioned here. Thomas Love Peacock, the elder of them, born a +long way within the eighteenth century (in 1785), passed a studious +though irregularly educated youth and an idle early manhood, but at a +little more than thirty (1817) produced, after some verse, the curious +little satirical romance of <i>Headlong Hall</i>. This he followed up with +others—<i>Melincourt</i>, <i>Nightmare Abbey</i>, <i>Maid Marian</i>, <i>The Misfortunes +of Elphin</i>, and <i>Crotchet Castle</i>—at no great intervals until 1830, +after which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> having in the meantime been appointed to a valuable and +important office under the East India Company, he published no other +book for thirty years. Then in 1860 he put forth <i>Gryll Grange</i>, and +some five years later died, a very old man, in 1866. Peacock at all +times was a writer of verse, and the songs which diversify his novels +are among their most delightful features; but his more ambitious +poetical efforts, which date from his earlier years, <i>The Genius of the +Thames</i> and <i>Rhododaphne</i>, are not of much mark. The novels themselves, +however, have a singular relish, and are written in a style always +piquant and attractive and latterly quite admirable. They may all be +described as belonging to the fantastic-satirical order of which the +French tale-tellers (instigated, however, by an Englishman, Anthony +Hamilton) had set the example during the previous century. Social, +political, economic, and other fads and crazes are all touched in them; +but this satire is combined with a strictly realistic presentation of +character, and, except in the romances of <i>Maid Marian</i> and <i>Elphin</i>, +with actual modern manners. Peacock's satire is always very sharp, and +in his earlier books a little rough as well; but as he went on he +acquired urbanity without losing point, and became one of the most +consummate practitioners of Lucianic humour adjusted to the English +scheme and taste. More than thirty years after date <i>Gryll Grange</i> is +not obsolete even as a picture of manners; while <i>Crotchet Castle</i>, +obsolete in a few externals, is as fresh as ever in substance, owing to +its close grasp of essential humanity. In verse Peacock was the last, +and one of the best, of the masters of the English drinking-song; and +some of his examples are unmatched for their mixture of joviality, +taste, sense, and wit.</p> + +<p>George Borrow, who was eighteen years Peacock's junior, and outlived him +by fifteen, was a curious counterpart-analogue to him. Like Peacock, he +was irregularly educated, and yet a wide and deep student; but, unlike +Peacock, he devoted himself not so much to the ancient as to the more +out-of-the-way modern tongues, and became a proficient not merely in +Welsh, the Scandinavian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> tongues, Russian, Spanish, and other literary +languages, but in Romany or Gipsy, having associated much with the "folk +of Egypt" during his youth. After some very imperfectly known youthful +experiences, which formed at least the basis of his later novels, +<i>Lavengro</i> (1851) and <i>The Romany Rye</i> (1857), he received an +appointment as colporteur to the Bible Society, first in Russia, then in +Spain; and his adventures in the latter country formed the basis of a +study called <i>The Gipsies of Spain</i> (1840), which has much, and a volume +of travel and autobiography, <i>The Bible in Spain</i> (1843), which has +unique interest. Returning home, he married a wife with some money, and +spent the remainder of a long life in his native county of Norfolk, +producing, besides the books just named, <i>Wild Wales</i> (1862), and dying +in 1881. There is, in fact, not very much difference between Borrow's +novels and his travel-books. The former had at least some autobiographic +foundation, and the latter invest actual occurrences with the most +singular flavour of romance. For his mere style Borrow was a little +indebted to Cobbett, though he coloured Cobbett's somewhat drab canvas +with the most brilliant fantastic hues. But his attitude, his main +literary quality, is quite unique. It might be called, without too much +affectation, an adjustment of the picaresque novel to dreamland, +retaining frequent touches of solid and everyday fact. Peacock's style +has found a good many, though no very successful, imitators; Borrow's is +quite inimitable.</p> + +<p>Harriet Martineau, one of the numerous writers, of both sexes, whom the +polygraphic habits of this century make it hard to "class," was born at +Norwich in 1802, and belonged to one of the families that made up the +remarkable literary society which distinguished that city at the end of +the last century and the beginning of this. She began as a religious +writer according to the Unitarian persuasion; she ended as a tolerably +active opponent of religion. But she found her chief vocation (before, +as she did in her middle and later days, becoming a regular journalist) +in writing stories on political economy, a proceeding doubtless +determined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> by the previous exercises in didactic story-telling of Miss +Edgeworth and Mrs. Marcet. These <i>Illustrations of Political Economy</i> +(1832) exactly hit the taste of their time and were very popular. Her +less adulterated children's books (of which the best perhaps is <i>Feats +on the Fiord</i>) and her novel <i>Deerbrook</i> (1839), owing much to Miss +Edgeworth in conception, display a good faculty of narrative, and she +did a great deal of miscellaneous work. As she became less religious she +became more superstitious, and indulged in curious crazes. She lived +latterly at the Lakes, and died on 27th June 1876. Harriet Martineau was +the object of rather absurd obloquy from Conservative critics as an +advanced woman in her day, and of still more absurd eulogy by Liberal +sympathisers both in that day and since. Personally she seems to have +been amiable and estimable enough. Intellectually she had no genius; but +she had a good deal of the versatile talent and craftsmanship for which +the literary conditions of this century have produced unusual stimulus +and a fair reward.</p> + +<p>There was something (though not so much as has been represented) of the +masculine element about Miss Martineau; a contemporary Miss M. was +delightfully feminine. Mary Russell Mitford, born at Alresford, the town +of Wither, on 16th December 1786, was the daughter of a doctor and a +rascal, who, when she was a child, had the incredible meanness to +squander twenty thousand pounds which she won in a lottery, and later +the constant courage to live on her earnings. She published poems as +early as 1810; then wrote plays which were acted with some success; and +later, gravitating to the <i>London Magazine</i>, wrote for it essays only +second to those of Elia—the delightful papers collectively called <i>Our +Village</i>, and not completed till long after the death of the <i>London</i> in +1832. The scenery of these is derived from the banks of the Loddon, for +the neighbourhood of Reading was in various places her home, and she +died at Swallowfield on 10th January 1855. Latterly she had a civil-list +pension; but, on the whole, she supported herself and her parents by +writing. Not much, if anything, of her work is likely to survive except +<i>Our</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> <i>Village</i>; but this is charming, and seems, from the published +<i>Life</i> of her and the numerous references in contemporary biography, to +express very happily the character and genius of its author—curiously +sunny, healthy, and cheerful, not in the least namby-pamby, and +coinciding with a faculty of artistic presentation of observed results, +not very imaginative but wonderfully pleasing.</p> + +<p>To these authors and books, others of more or less "single-speech" fame +might be added: the vivid and accurate Persian tale of <i>Hajji Baba</i> by +James Morier, the <i>Anastatius</i> of Thomas Hope, excellently written and +once very much admired, the fashionable <i>Granby</i> and <i>Tremaine</i> of +Lister, the famous <i>Frankenstein</i> of Mrs. Shelley, are examples. But +even these, and much more other things not so good as they, compose in +regard to the scheme of such a book as this the <i>numerus</i>, the crowd, +which, out of no disrespect, but for obvious and imperative reasons, +must be not so much neglected as omitted. All classes of literature +contribute to this, but, with the exception of mere compilations and +books in science or art which are outgrown, none so much as prose +fiction. The safest of life (except poetry) of all literary kinds when +it is first rate, it is the most certain of death when it is not; and it +pays for the popularity which it often receives to-day by the oblivion +of an unending morrow.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS</h3> + + +<p>Perhaps there is no single feature of the English literary history of +the nineteenth century, not even the enormous popularisation and +multiplication of the novel, which is so distinctive and characteristic +as the development in it of periodical literature. For this did not, as +the extension of novel writing did, concern a single department only. +The periodical—it may almost for shortness' sake be said the +newspaper—not only became infinitely multiplied, but it gradually +absorbed almost every department, or a share of almost every department, +into itself. Very large numbers of the best as well as of the worst +novels themselves have originally appeared in periodicals; not a very +small proportion of the most noteworthy nineteenth century poetry has +had the same origin; it may almost be said that all the best work in +essay, whether critical, meditative, or miscellaneous, has thus been +ushered into the world. Even the severer and more academic divisions of +history, philosophy, theology, and their sisters, have condescended to +avail themselves of this means of obtaining a public audience; and +though there is still a certain conventional decency in apologising for +reprints from periodicals, it is quite certain that, had such reprints +not taken place, more than half the most valuable books of the age in +some departments, and a considerable minority of the most valuable in +others, would never have appeared as books at all.</p> + +<p>The first division of our time, the last twenty years of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> eighteenth +century, though it witnessed a very great development of the mere +newspaper, with which we have little to do, did not see very much of +this actual "development of periodical literature" which concerns us. +These twenty years saw the last attempts in the line of the Addisonian +essay; they saw the beginnings of some modern newspapers which exist at +the present day; they beheld in the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i> perhaps the most +brilliant specimen of political persiflage in newspaper form that had or +has ever been seen. But they did not see—though they saw some fumbling +attempts at it—anything like those strangely different but mutually +complementary examples of periodical criticism which were given just +after the opening of the new age by <i>The Edinburgh Review</i> (1802) and +Cobbett's <i>Weekly Register</i>; and they saw nothing at all like the +magazine, or combination of critical and creative matter, in which +<i>Blackwood</i> was, some years later, to lead the way. At the close of the +eighteenth century such magazines were in an exceedingly rudimentary +state, and criticism was mainly still in the hands of the old <i>Monthly</i> +and <i>Critical Reviews</i>, the respective methods of which had drawn from +Johnson the odd remark that the <i>Critical</i> men, being clever, said +little about their books, which the <i>Monthly</i> men, being "duller +fellows," were glad to read and analyse. These Reviews and their various +contemporaries had indeed from time to time enjoyed the services of men +of the greatest talent, such as Smollett earlier and Southey just at the +last. But, as a rule, they were in the hands of mere hacks; they paid so +wretchedly that no one, unless forced by want or bitten by an amateurish +desire to see himself in print, would contribute to them; they were by +no means beyond suspicion of political and commercial favouritism; and +their critiques were very commonly either mere summaries or scrappy +"puffs" and "slatings," seldom possessing much grace of style, and +scarcely ever adjusted to any scheme of artistic criticism.</p> + +<p>This is a history of literature, not of the newspaper press, and it is +necessary to proceed rather by giving account of the authors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> who were +introduced to the public by—or who, being otherwise known, availed +themselves of—this new development of periodicals. It may be sufficient +to say here that the landmarks of the period, in point of the birth of +papers, are, besides the two above mentioned, the starting of the +<i>Quarterly Review</i> as a Tory opponent to the more and more Whiggish +<i>Edinburgh</i> in 1809, of the <i>Examiner</i> as a Radical weekly in 1808, of +<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> as a Tory monthly in 1817, of the <i>London +Magazine</i> about the same time, and of <i>Fraser</i> in 1830.</p> + +<p>It was a matter of course that in the direction or on the staff of these +new periodicals some of the veterans of the older system, or of the men +who had at any rate already some experience in journalism, should be +enlisted. Gifford, the first editor of the <i>Quarterly</i>, was in all +respects a writer of the old rather than of the new age. Southey had at +one time wholly, and for years partly, supported himself by writing for +periodicals; Coleridge was at different times not merely a contributor +to these, but an actual daily journalist; and so with others. But, as +always happens when a really new development of literature takes place, +new regiments raised themselves to carry out the new tactics, as it +were, spontaneously. Many of the great names and the small mentioned in +the last three chapters—perhaps indeed most of them—took the +periodical shilling at one time or other in their lives. But those whom +I shall now proceed to mention—William Cobbett, Francis Jeffrey, Sydney +Smith, John Wilson, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt as a prose writer, William +Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, John Gibson Lockhart, and some others—were, +if not exactly journalists (an incorrect, but the only single +designation), at any rate such frequent contributors to periodical +literature of one kind or another that in some cases nothing, in most +comparatively little, would be left of their work if contributions to +newspapers, reviews, and magazines were to be excluded from it.</p> + +<p>William Cobbett, not the greatest, but the most singular and original of +the group, with the exception of Lamb, and as superior to Lamb in +fertility and massive vigour as he was inferior to him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> in exquisite +delicacy and finish, was the son of a very small farmer little above the +labouring rank, and was born near Farnham in 1762. He was first a +ploughboy, next an attorney's clerk, and then he enlisted in the 24th +regiment. He served very creditably for seven or eight years, became +serjeant-major, improved himself very much in education, and obtained +his discharge. But, by one of the extraordinary freaks which mark his +whole career, he first took it into his head to charge the officers of +his regiment with malversation, and then ran away from his own charge +with his newly married wife, first to France and then to America. Here +he stayed till the end of the century, and here he began his newspaper +experiments, keeping up in <i>Peter Porcupine's Journal</i> a violent crusade +against French Jacobins and American Democrats. He returned to England +in June 1800, and was encouraged by the Government to set up what soon +became his famous <i>Weekly Register</i>—a paper which, after being (as +Cobbett's politics had been up to this time) strongly Tory, lapsed by +rapid degrees into a strange kind of fantastic Radicalism shot with Tory +gleams. This remained Cobbett's creed till his death. The paper was very +profitable, and for some time Cobbett was able to lead something like a +country gentleman's life at Botley in Hampshire. But he met with two +years' imprisonment for a violent article on flogging in the army, he +subsequently got into money difficulties, and in 1817 he made a second +voyage to America, which was in fact a flight both from his creditors +and from the risk of another Government prosecution under the Six Acts. +Through all his troubles the <i>Register</i>, except for a month or two, had +continued to appear; and so it did to the last. Its proprietor, editor, +and in the main author, stood for Parliament several times, and, after a +trial for sedition in 1831, was at last returned for Oldham in 1832. He +was not much of a success there, and died on 18th June 1835 near +Guildford; for he always clung to the marches of Surrey and Hampshire.</p> + +<p>Some such details of Cobbett's life are necessary even in the most +confined space, because they are intimately connected with his singular +character and his remarkable works. These latter are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> enormous in bulk +and of the most widely diversified character. <i>Peter Porcupine</i> fills +twelve not small volumes; the mere selections from the <i>Register</i>, which +are all that has been republished of it, six very bulky ones; with a +wilderness of separate works besides—<i>Rural Rides</i>, a <i>History of the +Reformation</i>, books on husbandry, gardening, and rural economy +generally, some on the currency, an <i>English Grammar</i>, and dozens of +others. Of these the <i>Rural Rides</i> is the most interesting in matter and +the most picturesque in style, while it affords a fair panorama of its +author's rugged but wonderfully varied and picturesque mind and +character; the <i>History of the Reformation</i> is the most wrong-headed and +unfair; the currency writings the most singular example of the delusion +that strong prejudices and a good deal of mother-wit will enable a man +to write, without any knowledge, about the most abstruse and complicated +subjects; the agricultural books and the <i>English Grammar</i> the best +instances of genial humours, shrewdness, and (when crotchets do not come +in too much) sound sense. But hardly anything that Cobbett writes is +contemptible in form, however weak he may often be in argument, +knowledge, and taste. He was the last, and he was not far below the +greatest, of the line of vernacular English writers of whom Latimer in +the sixteenth, Bunyan in the seventeenth, and Defoe in the eighteenth, +are the other emerging personalities. To a great extent Cobbett's style +was based on Swift; but the character of his education, which was not in +the very least degree academic, and still more the idiosyncrasy of his +genius, imposed on it almost from the first, but with ever-increasing +clearness, a manner quite different from Swift's, and, though often +imitated since, never reproduced. The "Letter to Jack Harrow," the +"Letter to the People of Botley," the "Letters to Old George Rose," and +that to "Alexander Baring, Loan Monger," to take examples almost at +random from the <i>Register</i>, are quite unlike anything before them or +anything after them. The best-known parody of Cobbett, that in <i>Rejected +Addresses</i>, gives rather a poor idea of his style; exhibiting no doubt +his intense egotism, his habit of half trivial divagation, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> his use +of strong language, but quite failing to give the immense force, the +vivid clearness, and the sterling though not precisely scholarly English +which characterise his good work. The best imitation to be found is in +some of the anonymous pamphlets in which, in his later days, government +writers replied to his powerful and mischievous political diatribes, and +which in some cases, if internal evidence may be trusted, must have been +by no mean hands.</p> + +<p>Irrational as Cobbett's views were,—he would have adjusted the entire +concerns of the nation with a view to the sole benefit of the +agricultural interest, would have done away with the standing army, +wiped out the national debt, and effected a few other trifling changes +with a perfectly light heart, while in minor matters his crotchets were +not only wild but simply irreconcilable with each other,—his intense if +narrow earnestness, his undoubting belief in himself, and a certain +geniality which could co-exist with very rough language towards his +opponents, would give his books a certain attraction even if their mere +style were less remarkable than it is. But it is in itself, if the most +plebeian, not the least virile, nor even the least finished on its own +scheme of the great styles in English. For the irony of Swift, of which, +except in its very roughest and most rudimentary forms, Cobbett had no +command or indeed conception, it substitutes a slogging directness +nowhere else to be found equalled for combination of strength and, in +the pugilistic sense, "science"; while its powers of description, within +certain limits, are amazing. Although Cobbett's newspaper was itself as +much of an Ishmaelite and an outsider as its director, it is almost +impossible to exaggerate the effect which it had in developing +newspapers generally, by the popularity which it acquired, and the +example of hammer-and-tongs treatment of political and economic subjects +which it set. The faint academic far-off-ness of the eighteenth century +handling, which is visible even in the much-praised <i>Letters of Junius</i>, +which is visible in the very ferocity of Smollett's <i>Adventures of an +Atom</i>, which put up with "Debates of the Senate of Lilliput" and so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> +forth, has been blown away to limbo, and the newspaper (at first at some +risk) takes men and measures, politics and policies, directly and in +their own names, to be its province and its prey.</p> + +<p>It is a far cry from Cobbett to the founders of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, +who, very nearly at the same time as that at which he launched his +<i>Register</i>, did for the higher and more literary kind of periodical what +he was doing for the lower and vernacular kind. I say the founders, +because there is a still not quite settled dispute whether Francis +Jeffrey or Sydney Smith was the actual founder of the famous "Blue and +Yellow." This dispute is not uninteresting; because the one was as +typically Scotch, with some remarkable differences from other Scotchmen, +as the other was essentially English, with some points not commonly +found in men of English blood. Jeffrey, the younger of the two by a +couple of years, was still a member of the remarkable band who, as has +been noticed so often already, were all born in the early seventies of +the eighteenth century; and his own birthday was 23rd October 1773. He +was an Edinburgh man; and his father, who was of a respectable though +not distinguished family, held office in the Court of Session and was a +strong Tory. Jeffrey does not seem to have objected to his father's +profession, though he early revolted from his politics; and, after due +study at the High School of his birthplace, and the Universities of +Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Oxford (at which latter, however, he only +remained a year, deriving very little benefit or pleasure from his +sojourn at Queen's College), he was called to the Scottish bar. He +practised at first with very little success, and in 1798 had serious +thoughts of taking up literary life in London. But he could obtain no +footing, and, returning to Edinburgh and marrying a cousin, he fell into +the company of Sydney Smith, who was there with a pupil. It seems to be +admitted that the idea of a new <i>Review</i>—to be entirely free from the +control or influence of publishers, to adopt an independent line of +criticism (independent, but somewhat mistaken; for the motto <i>Judex +damnatur cum nocens absolvitur</i> gives a very one-sided view of the +critic's office), and to be written for fair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> remuneration by persons of +more or less distinct position, and at any rate of education—originated +with Sydney Smith. He is also sometimes spoken of as the first "editor," +which would appear to be a mistake. At first (the original issue was in +October 1802) the review appears to have been a kind of republic; the +contributors being, besides Jeffrey and Sydney, a certain Francis Horner +(who died too soon to demonstrate the complete falsity of the golden +opinions entertained of him by his friends), Brougham, and some +Professors of Edinburgh University. But no such plan has ever succeeded, +though it has been more than once tried, and very soon accident or +design showed that Jeffrey was the right man to take the command of the +ship. The <i>Review</i> was not ostensibly a political one at first, and for +some years Tories, the greatest of whom was Scott, wrote in it. But the +majority of the contributors were Whigs, and the whole cast of the +periodical became more and more of that complexion, till at last, +private matters helping public, a formidable secession took place, and +the <i>Quarterly</i> was founded.</p> + +<p>From time to time students of literature turn to the early numbers of +these famous periodicals, of the <i>Edinburgh</i> especially, with the +result, usually of a certain, sometimes of a considerable, +disappointment. With the exception of a few things already known from +their inclusion in their authors' collected works, the material as a +whole is apt to seem anything but extraordinarily good; and some wonder +is often expressed at the effect which it originally had. This arises +from insufficient attention to a few obvious, but for that very reason +easily neglected, truths. The inquirers as a rule have in their minds +much more what has followed than what has gone before; and they contrast +the early numbers of the <i>Edinburgh</i>, not with its jejune forerunners, +but with such matured instances as Macaulay's later essays; the early +numbers of the <i>Quarterly</i>, not with the early numbers of the +<i>Edinburgh</i>, but with their own successors. Again it is apt to be +forgotten that the characteristics of joint-stock periodical-writing +make as much for general inequality as for occasional goodness. That +which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> is written by many hands will seldom be as bad, but can never be +as good, as that which is written by one; that which takes its texts and +starting-points from suggested matters of the moment will generally +escape the occasional dulness, but can rarely attain the occasional +excellence, of the meditated and original sprout of an individual brain.</p> + +<p>The <i>Edinburgh</i> in its early years was undoubtedly surpassed by itself +later and by its rivals; but it was a far greater advance upon anything +that had gone before it. It had the refreshing audacity, the fly-at-all +character of youth and of intellectual opposition to established ideas; +it was, if even from the first not free from partisanship, at any rate +not chargeable with the dull venal unfairness of the mere bookseller's +hack who attacks Mr. Bungay's books because he is employed by Mr. Bacon, +or <i>vice versa</i>. And it had a very remarkable staff, comprising the +learning and trained intelligence of men like Leslie and Playfair, the +unrivalled wit of Sydney Smith, the restless energy and occasional +genius of Brougham, the solid profundity of Horner, the wide reading and +always generous temper of Scott, and other good qualities of others, +besides the talents of its editor Jeffrey himself.</p> + +<p>Of these talents there is no doubt, though they were initially somewhat +limited and not seldom misdirected afterwards. Jeffrey's entire energies +were absorbed by the <i>Review</i> between its foundation and his resignation +of the editorship after nearly thirty years' tenure, soon after which, +his party at last coming into power, he was rewarded first by the Lord +Advocateship and then by a seat on the Bench. He made a very fair judge, +and held the post almost till his death in 1850. But his life, for the +purposes of literature, is practically comprised between 1802 and 1829, +during which he was far more than titularly the guiding spirit of the +<i>Review</i>. Recently, or at any rate until quite recently (for there has +been some reaction in the very latest days), the conception of an editor +has been of one who writes not very much, and, though choosing his +contributors with the best care he can give, does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> interfere very +much with them when they are chosen. This was very far from being the +Jeffreyan ideal. He wrote a great deal,—often in the earlier years as +many as half a dozen articles in a number,—and he "doctored" his +contributors' articles (except in the case of persons like Sydney Smith, +who were of too unconquerable idiosyncrasy and too valuable) with the +utmost freedom. At the present day, however, his management of the +<i>Review</i> is less interesting than his own work, which he himself in his +later years collected and selected in an ample definitive edition. It is +exceedingly interesting, and for a good many years past it has been +distinctly undervalued; the common, though very uncritical, mistake +having been made of asking, not whether Jeffrey made a good fight for +his own conclusions from his own premises, but whether he approved or +disapproved authors whom we now consider great. From this latter point +of view he has no doubt small chance. He began by snubbing Byron, and +did not change his tone till politics and circumstances combined made +the change obligatory; he pooh-poohed and belittled his own contributor +and personal friend Scott; he pursued Wordsworth with equal +relentlessness and ill-success. And these three great examples might be +reinforced with whole regiments of smaller ones. A more serious fault +perhaps was the tone which he, more than any one else, impressed on the +<i>Review</i>, and which its very motto expressed, as though an author +necessarily came before the critic with a rope about his neck, and was +only entitled to be exempted from being strung up <i>speciali gratia</i>. +This notion, as presumptuous as it is foolish, is not extinct yet, and +has done a great deal of harm to criticism, both by prejudicing those +who are not critical against critics, and by perverting and twisting the +critic's own notion of his province and duty.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Jeffrey had great merits. His literary standpoint was a +little unfortunate. Up to a certain extent he had thoroughly sympathised +with the Romantic movement, and he never was an advocate for the +Augustan period in English. But either some curiosity of idiosyncrasy, +or the fact that Scott<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> and the Lake Poets were all in different ways +pillars of Toryism, set him against his own Romantic contemporaries in a +very strange fashion. Still, in some ways he was a very great critic. +His faculty of summarising a period of literature has rarely been +equalled, and perhaps never surpassed; he had, when prejudice of some +sort did not blind him, an extraordinary faculty of picking out the best +passages in a book; and, above all, he arranged his critical judgments +on something like a regular and co-ordinated system. Even his prejudices +and injustices were systematic: they were linked to each other by +arguments which might sometimes be questionable, but which were always +arguments. And though, even when, as in the cases of Keats and Shelley, +his extra-literary bias was not present to induce him wrong, he showed a +deplorable insensibility to the finer strokes of poetry, he was in +general, and taking literature all round, as considerable a critic as we +have had in English.</p> + +<p>Sydney Smith was a curious contrast to Jeffrey in almost every respect +except in politics, and even there the resemblance was rather fortuitous +than essential. The second son of a man of eccentric character and some +means, he was born in 1771, was sent to Winchester, and proceeded thence +to New College, Oxford, where he became Fellow and resided for a +considerable time; but unusually little is recorded either of his school +or of his college days. He took orders and was appointed to a curacy on +Salisbury Plain, where the squire of the parish took a fancy to him and +made him tutor to his eldest son. Tutor and pupil went to Edinburgh, +just then in great vogue as an educational centre, in 1798; and there +Sydney, besides doing clerical duty, stumbled upon his vocation as +reviewer. He abode in the Scottish capital for about five years, during +which he married, and then removed to London, where he again did duty of +various kinds, lectured on Moral Philosophy, and, when the Grenville +administration came in, received a fairly valuable Yorkshire living, +that of Foston. Here, after a time, he had, owing to new legislation +about clerical absentees, to take up his residence, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> involved +building a parsonage. He had repaid his Whig patrons by writing the +exceedingly brilliant and passably scurrilous <i>Letters of Peter Plymley +on Catholic Emancipation</i>, and he reviewed steadily for the <i>Edinburgh</i>, +as indeed he did during almost the whole editorship of Jeffrey. At last +Lord Lyndhurst, a Tory, gave him a stall at Bristol, and he was able to +exchange Foston for Combe-Florey, in the more genial latitude of +Somerset. The rest of his life was fortunate in worldly ways; for the +Reform Ministry, though they would not give him a bishopric, gave him a +canonry at St. Paul's, and divers legacies and successions made him +relatively a rich man. He died five years before Jeffrey, in February +1845.</p> + +<p>Besides the differences of their Scotch and English nationality and +education, the contrast between the two friends and founders of the +"Blue and Yellow" was curiously pervading. Jeffrey, for all his supposed +critical savagery, was a sentimentalist, and had the keenest love of +literature as literature; Sydney cared very little for books as books, +and had not a grain of sentiment in his composition. Jeffrey had little +wit and no humour; Smith abounded in both, and was one of the very +wittiest of Englishmen. Even in his <i>Review</i> articles he constantly +shocked his more solemn and pedagogic editor by the stream of banter +which he poured not merely upon Tories and High Churchmen, but on +Methodists and Non-conformists; his letters are full of the most +untiring and to this day the most sparkling pleasantry; and his two +chief works outside his reviews, the earlier <i>Peter Plymley's Letters</i> +and the later <i>Letters to Archdeacon Singleton</i> (written when the +author's early Whiggism had crystallised into something different, and +when he was stoutly resisting the attempts of the reformed government to +meddle with cathedral establishments), rank among the capital light +pamphlets of the world, in company with those of Pascal and Swift and +Courier. The too few remnants of his abundant conversation preserve +faint sparks of the blaze of impromptu fun for which in his day he was +almost more famous than as a writer. Sydney Smith had below the surface +of wit a very solid substratum of good sense and good feeling; but his +literary appeal consisted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> almost wholly in his shrewd pleasantry, +which, as it has been observed, might with even more appropriateness +than Coleridge said it of Fuller, have been said to be "the stuff and +substance of his intellectual nature." This wit was scarcely ever in +writing—it seems to have been sometimes in conversation—forced or +trivial; it was most ingeniously adjusted to the purpose of the moment, +whether that purpose was a political argument, a light summary of a book +of travels, or a mere gossiping letter to a friend; and it had a quality +of its own which could only be displayed by extensive and elaborate +citation. But if it be possible to put the finger on a single note, it +is one distinguishing Sydney Smith widely from Fuller himself, bringing +him a little nearer to Voltaire, and, save for the want of certain +earnestness, nearer still to Swift—the perfect facility of his jokes, +and the casual, easy man-of-the-worldliness with which he sets them +before the reader and passes on. Amid the vigorous but slightly +ponderous manners of the other early contributors to the <i>Review</i>, this +must have been of inestimable value; but it is a higher credit to Sydney +Smith that it does not lose its charm when collected together and set by +itself, as the more extravagant and rollicking kinds of periodical +humour are wont to do. It was probably his want of serious +preoccupations of any kind (for his politics were merely an accident; he +was, though a sincere Christian, no enthusiast in religion; and he had +few special interests, though he had an honest general enjoyment of +life) which enabled Sydney Smith so to perfect a quality, or set of +qualities, which, as a rule, is more valuable as an occasional set-off +than as the staple and solid of a man's literary fare and ware. If so, +he points much the same general moral as Cobbett, though in a way as +different as possible. But in any case he was a very delightful person, +an ornament of English literature, such as few other literatures +possess, in his invariable abstinence from unworthy means of raising a +laugh, and, among the group of founders of the new periodical, the +representative of one of its most important constituents—polished +<i>persiflage</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p> + +<p>The other contributors of the first generation to the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> +do not require much notice here; for Brougham was not really a man of +letters, and belongs to political and social, not to literary history, +while Mackintosh, though no one would contest his claims, will be better +noticed under the head of philosophy. Nor do many of the first staff of +the <i>Edinburgh's</i> great rival, the <i>Quarterly</i>, require notice; for +Gifford, Canning, Ellis, Scott, Southey have all been noticed under +other heads.</p> + +<p>Two, however, not of the absolutely first rank, may be mentioned here +more conveniently than anywhere else—Sir John Barrow and Isaac +Disraeli. The former had a rather remarkable career; for he was born, in +1764, quite of the lower rank, and was successively a clerk in a +workshop, a sailor, a teacher of mathematics, and secretary to Macartney +on his famous embassy to China. After following the same patron to South +Africa, Barrow, at the age of forty, became Secretary of the Admiralty, +which post he held with one short break for more than forty years +longer. He was made a baronet in 1835, and died in 1848. Barrow was a +considerable writer on geography and naval history; and one of the +pillars of the <i>Quarterly</i>. Isaac Disraeli, son of one Benjamin of that +name and father of another, seems to have been as unlike his famous +offspring as any father could be to any son. Born at Enfield in 1766, he +showed absolutely no taste for business of any kind, and after some +opposition was allowed to cultivate letters. His original work was worth +little; indeed, one of the amiable sayings attributed to his friend +Rogers was that Isaac Disraeli had "only half an intellect." He fell, +however, pretty early (1791) into an odd but pleasant and profitable +course of writing which amused himself during the remainder of a long +life (he died blind in the same year with Barrow), and has amused a vast +number of readers for more than a century. The <i>Curiosities of +Literature</i>, the first part of which appeared at the date above +mentioned, to be supplemented by others for more than forty years, were +followed by the <i>Calamities of Authors</i> and the <i>Quarrels of Authors</i> +(1812-14), a book on <i>Charles I.</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> and the <i>Amenities of Literature</i> +(1840). Of these the <i>Curiosities</i> is the type, and it is also the best +of them. Isaac Disraeli was not a good writer; and his original +reflections may sometimes make the reader doubt for a moment whether +Rogers was not more wrong in granting him half an intellect than in +denying him a whole one. But his anecdotage, though, as perhaps such +anecdotage is bound to be, not extremely accurate, is almost +inexhaustibly amusing, and indicates a real love as well as a wide +knowledge of letters.</p> + +<p>The next periodicals, the founding of which enlisted or brought out +journalists or essay-writers of the true kind, were <i>Blackwood's +Magazine</i>, founded at Edinburgh in 1817, and the <i>London Magazine</i>, of +about the same date, the first with one of the longest as well as the +most brilliant careers to run that any periodical can boast of, the +latter as short-lived as it was brilliant. Indeed, the two had an odd +and—in the Shakespearian sense—metaphysical opposition. Scotland and +England, the country and the Cockney schools, Toryism and Liberalism +(though the <i>London</i> was by no means so thoroughgoing on the Liberal +side as <i>Blackwood</i> was on the Tory, and some of its most distinguished +contributors were either Tory, as De Quincey, or neutral, as Lamb) +fought out their differences under the two flags. And by a climax of +coincidence, the fate of the <i>London</i> was practically decided by the +duel which killed John Scott, its editor, this duel being the direct +result of an editorial or contributorial quarrel between the two +periodicals.</p> + +<p>Both these magazines, besides being more frequent in appearance than the +<i>Edinburgh</i> and the <i>Quarterly</i>, attempted, as their very title of +"magazine" expressed, a much wider and more miscellaneous collection of +subjects than the strict "review" theory permitted. From the very first +<i>Blackwood</i> gave a welcome to fiction, to poetry, and to the widest +possible construction of the essay, while, in almost every respect, the +<i>London</i> was equally hospitable. Both had staffs of unusual strength, +and of still more unusual personality; and while the <i>London</i> could +boast of Charles Lamb, of Hazlitt, of De Quincey, of Hood, of Miss +Mitford,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> besides many lesser names, <i>Blackwood</i> was practically +launched by the triumvirate of Wilson, Lockhart, and the Ettrick +Shepherd, with the speedy collaboration of Maginn.</p> + +<p>The eldest of these, and if not the most vigorous, if very nearly the +least prolific, yet the most exquisite and singular in literary genius, +was Charles Lamb. He also was of the "Seventy Club," as we may call it, +which founded the literature of the nineteenth century, and he was born +in London on 18th February 1775. He was of rather lower birth than most +of its other members (if membership can be predicated of a purely +imaginary body), being the son of a lawyer's clerk and confidential +servant; but he was educated at Christ's Hospital, and, through the +interest of his father's employer, obtained, at the age of seventeen, a +berth in the East India House, which assured his modest fortunes through +life. But there was the curse of madness in his family, and though he +himself escaped with but one slight and passing attack of actual lunacy, +and at the cost of an eccentricity which only imparted a rarer touch to +his genius, his elder sister Mary was subject to constant seizures, in +one of which she stabbed her mother to the heart. She was more gently +dealt with than perhaps would have been the case at present, and Lamb +undertook the entire charge of her. She repaid him by unfailing care and +affection during her lucid intervals (which were long and frequent), and +by a sympathy with his own literary tastes, which not seldom made her a +valuable collaborator as well as sympathiser. But the shadow was on his +whole life: it made it impossible for him to marry, as he evidently +would have done if it had not existed; and it perhaps had something to +do with a venial but actual tendency on his part to take, rather fully, +the convivial license of the time. But Lamb had no other weakness, and +had not this in any ruinous degree. The quality of his genius was +unique. He had from the first been a diligent and affectionate student +of sixteenth and seventeenth century writers, and some of his first +literary efforts, after some early sonnets (written with Coleridge and +their friend Lloyd, and much fallen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> foul of by the Tory wits of the +<i>Anti-Jacobin</i>), were connected with these studies. He and his sister +wrote <i>Tales from Shakespeare</i>, which, almost alone of such things, are +not unworthy of the original. He executed an Elizabethan tragedy, <i>John +Woodvil</i>, which is rather better than it has been generally said to be; +and he arranged a series (or rather two) of scenes from the Elizabethan +drama itself, the short, interspersed, critical remarks of which, though +occasionally a very little fanciful, contain the most exquisitely +sympathetic criticism to be found anywhere in English literature.</p> + +<p>It was not, however, till he had well reached middle age that the +establishment of the <i>London</i>, the later publishers of which, Taylor and +Hessey, were his friends, gave him that half accidental, and yet it +would seem necessary, opening which has so often made the fame of men of +genius, and which apparently they are by no means often able to make for +themselves. Lamb's poems have occasionally an exquisite pathos and more +frequently a pleasant humour, but they would not by themselves justify a +very high estimate of him; and it is at least possible that, if we had +nothing but the brief critical remarks on the dramatists above noticed, +they would, independently of their extreme brevity, have failed to +obtain for him the just reputation which they now hold, thanks partly to +the fact that we have, as comments on them, the <i>Essays of Elia</i> and the +delightful correspondence. This latter, after being first published soon +after Lamb's death in 1834 (nine years after he had been pensioned off +from the India House), by Mr., afterwards Serjeant and Sir Thomas +Talfourd, has been gradually augmented, till it has at last found an +excellent and probably final editor in Canon Ainger.</p> + +<p>It is in these two collections that Lamb presents himself in the +character which alone can confer on any man the first rank in +literature, the character of unicity—of being some one and giving +something which no one before him has given or has been. The <i>Essays of +Elia</i> (a <i>nom de guerre</i> said to have been taken from an Italian comrade +of the writer's elder brother John in the South<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> Sea House, and directed +by Lamb himself to be pronounced "Ell-ia") elude definition not merely +as almost all works of genius do, but by virtue of something essentially +elvish and tricksy in their own nature. It is easy to detect in them—or +rather the things there are so obvious that there is no need of +detection—an extraordinary familiarity with the great "quaint" writers +of the seventeenth century—Burton, Fuller, Browne—which has supplied a +diction of unsurpassed brilliancy and charm; a familiarity with the +eighteenth century essayists which has enabled the writer to construct a +form very different from theirs in appearance but closely connected with +it in reality; an unequalled command over that kind of humour which +unites the most fantastic merriment to the most exquisite pathos; a +perfect humanity; a cast of thought which, though completely conscious +of itself, and not in any grovelling sense humble (Lamb, forgiving and +gentle as he was, could turn sharply even upon Coleridge, even upon +Southey, when he thought liberties had been taken with him), was a +thousand miles removed from arrogance or bumptiousness; an endlessly +various and attractive set of crotchets and whimsies, never divorced +from the power of seeing the ludicrous side of themselves; a fervent +love for literature and a wonderful gift of expounding it; imagination +in a high, and fancy almost in the highest degree. But when all this has +been duly set down, how much remains both in the essays and in the +letters, which in fact are chiefly distinguished from one another by the +fact that the essays are letters somewhat less discursive and somewhat +in fuller dress, the letters essays in the rough. For the style of Lamb +is as indefinable as it is inimitable, and his matter and method defy +selection and specification as much as the flutterings of a butterfly. +One thing he has always, and that is charm; as for the rest he is an +epitome of the lighter side of <i>belles lettres</i>, and not always of the +lighter side only.</p> + +<p>No one who studies Lamb can fail to see the enormous advantage which was +given him by his possession of an official employment which brought him +a small but sufficient income<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> without very hard labour. Such literary +work as his could never be done (at any rate for a length of time) as +"collar-work," and even if the best of it had by chance been so +performed, it must necessarily have been mixed, as that of Leigh Hunt +is, with a far larger quantity of mere work to order. No such advantage +was possessed by the third of the great trio of Cockney critics, or at +least critics of the so-called Cockney school; for William Hazlitt, as +much the greatest of English critics in a certain way as Lamb is in +another and Jeffrey in a third (though a lower than either), was a +Cockney neither by extraction nor by birth, nor by early sojourn, nor +even by continuous residence in later life. His family was Irish, his +father a Unitarian minister; he was born at Maidstone in 1778. When his +father was officiating at Wem in Shropshire, in Hazlitt's twentieth +year, Coleridge, who at times affected the same denomination, visited +the place, and Hazlitt was most powerfully impressed by him. He was, +however, divided between art and literature as professions, and his +first essays were in the former, which he practised for some time, +visiting the Louvre during the peace, or rather armistice, of Amiens, to +copy pictures for some English collectors, and to study them on his own +account. Returning to London, he met Lamb and others of the literary set +in the capital, and, after some newspaper work, married Miss Stoddart, a +friend of Mary Lamb's, and a lady of some property. He and his wife +lived for some years at her estate of Winterslow on Salisbury Plain +(long afterwards still a favourite resort of Hazlitt's), and then he +went in 1812 once more to London, where abundant work on periodicals of +all kinds, on the Liberal side, from daily newspapers to the <i>Edinburgh +Review</i>, soon fell into his hands. But after a time he gave up most +kinds of writing except literary, theatrical, and art criticism, the +delivery of lectures on literature, and the composition of essays of a +character less fanciful and less purely original than Lamb's, but almost +as miscellaneous.</p> + +<p>He lived till September 1830, the first of those early thirties of the +nineteenth century which were to be as generally fatal to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> +generation of great English men of letters as the seventies of the +eighteenth had been prolific of them; and his dying words, "Well, I have +had a happy life," are noteworthy. For certainly that life would hardly +have seemed happy to many. He quarrelled with his first wife, was +divorced from her in Scotland, discreditably enough; published to the +world with astounding lack of reticence the details of a frantic passion +for Sarah Walker, a lodginghouse-keeper's daughter, who jilted him; and +after marrying a second time, was left by his second wife. He had never +been rich, and during the last years of his life was in positive +difficulties, while for almost the whole period of his second sojourn in +London he was the object of the most virulent abuse from the Tory +organs, especially the <i>Quarterly</i> and <i>Blackwood</i>—abuse which, it must +be confessed, he was both ready and able to repay in kind with handsome +interest. He appears to have played the part of firebrand and makebate +in the John Scott duel already referred to. Even with his friends he +could not keep upon good terms, and the sincere gentleness of Lamb broke +down at least once, as the easy good-nature of Leigh Hunt did many +times, under the strain of his perverse and savage wrong-headedness.</p> + +<p>But whether the critical and the unamiable temper are, as some would +have it, essentially one, or whether their combination in the same +person be mere coincidence, Hazlitt was beyond all question a great, a +very great, critic—in not a few respects our very greatest. All his +work, or almost all that has much merit, is small in individual bulk, +though the total is very respectable. His longest book, his <i>Life of +Napoleon</i>, which was written late and as a counterblast to Scott's, from +the singular standpoint of a Republican who was an admirer of Bonaparte, +has next to no value; and his earliest, a philosophical work in +eighteenth century style on <i>The Principles of Human Action</i>, has not +much. But his essays and lectures, which, though probably not as yet by +any means exhaustively collected or capable of being identified, fill +nine or ten volumes, are of extraordinary goodness. They may be divided +roughly into three classes. The first, dealing with art and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> the drama, +must take the lowest room, for theatrical criticism is of necessity, +except in so far as it touches on literature rather than acting, of very +ephemeral interest; and Hazlitt's education in art and knowledge of it +were not quite extensive enough, nor the examples which in the first +quarter of this century he had before him in England important enough, +to make his work of this kind of the first importance. The best of it is +the <i>Conversations with Northcote</i>, a painter of no very great merit, +but a survivor of the Reynolds studio; and these conversations very +frequently and very widely diverge from painting into literary and +miscellaneous matters. The second class contains the miscellaneous +essays proper, and these have by some been put at the head of Hazlitt's +work. But although some of them, indeed, nearly all, display a spirit, a +command of the subject, and a faculty of literary treatment which had +never been given to the same subjects in the same way before, although +such things as the famous "Going to a Fight," "Going a Journey," "The +Indian Jugglers," "Merry England," "Sundials," "On Taste," and not a few +more would, put together and freed from good but less good companions, +make a most memorable collection, still his real strength is not here.</p> + +<p>Great as Hazlitt was as a miscellaneous and Montaignesque essayist, he +was greater as a literary critic. Literature was, though he coquetted +with art, his first and most constant love; it was the subject on which, +as far as English literature is concerned (and he knew little and is +still less worth consulting about any other), he had acquired the +largest and soundest knowledge; and it is that for which he had the most +original and essential genius. His intense prejudices and his occasional +inadequacy make themselves felt here as they do everywhere, and even +here it is necessary to give the caution that Hazlitt is never to be +trusted when he shows the least evidence of dislike for which he gives +no reason. But to any one who has made a little progress in criticism +himself, to any one who has either read for himself or is capable of +reading for himself, of being guided by what is helpful and of +neglecting what is not, there is no greater critic than Hazlitt in any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> +language. He will sometimes miss—he is never perhaps so certain as his +friends Lamb and Hunt were to find—exquisite individual points. +Prejudice, accidental ignorance, or other causes may sometimes +invalidate his account of authors or of subjects in general. But still +the four great collections of his criticism, <i>The Characters of +Shakespeare</i>, <i>The Elizabethan Dramatists</i>, <i>The English Poets</i>, and +<i>The English Comic Writers</i>, with not a few scattered things in his +other writings, make what is on the whole the best corpus of criticism +by a single writer in English on English. He is the critics' critic as +Spenser is the poets' poet; that is to say, he has, errors excepted and +deficiencies allowed, the greatest proportion of the strictly critical +excellencies—of the qualities which make a critic—that any English +writer of his craft has ever possessed.</p> + +<p><i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, the headquarters, the citadel, the <i>place +d'armes</i> of the opposition to the Cockney school and of criticism and +journalism that were Tory first of all, enlisted a younger set of +recruits than those hitherto mentioned, and the special style of writing +which it introduced, though exceedingly clever and stimulating, lent +itself rather less to dispassionate literary appreciation than even the +avowedly partisan methods of the <i>Edinburgh</i>. In its successful form +(for it had a short and inglorious existence before it found out the +way) it was launched by an audacious "skit" on the literati of Edinburgh +written by John Wilson, John Gibson Lockhart, and James Hogg, while very +soon after its establishment it was joined by a wild and witty Bohemian +scholar from the south of Ireland, William Maginn, who, though before +long he drifted away to other resorts, and ere many years established in +<i>Fraser</i> a new abode of guerilla journalism, impressed on <i>Blackwood</i> +itself, before he left it, several of its best-known features, and in +particular is said to have practically started the famous <i>Noctes +Ambrosianæ</i>. Of Hogg, enough has been said in a former chapter. For the +critical purpose of "Maga," as <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> loved to call +itself, he was rather a butt, or, to speak less despiteously, a +stimulant, than an originator; and he had neither the education nor +indeed the gifts of a critic. Of each of the others some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> account must +be given, and Maginn will introduce yet another flight of brilliant +journalists, some of whom, especially the greatest of all, Carlyle, +lived till far into the last quarter of the present century.</p> + +<p>Wilson, the eldest of those just mentioned, though a younger man than +any one as yet noticed in this chapter, and for many years the guiding +spirit (there never has been any "editor" of <i>Blackwood</i> except the +members of the firm who have published it) of <i>Maga</i>, must at some time +or other have taken to literature, and would probably in any case have +sooner or later written the poems and stories which exist under his +name, but do not in the very least degree constitute its eminence. It +was the chapter of accidents that made him a journalist and a critic. He +was born in 1785, his father being a rich manufacturer of Paisley, was +educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, came early into a +considerable fortune, married at twenty-six, and having established +himself at Elleray on Windermere, lived there the life of a country +gentleman, with more or less literary tastes. His fortune being lost by +bad luck and dishonest agency, he betook himself to Edinburgh, and +finding it impossible to get on with Jeffrey (which was not surprising), +threw himself heart and soul into the opposition venture of <i>Blackwood</i>. +He had, moreover, the extraordinary good luck to obtain, certainly on no +very solid grounds (though he made at least as good a professor as +another), the valuable chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of +Edinburgh, which of itself secured him from any fear of want or narrow +means. But no penniless barrister on his promotion could have flung +himself into militant journalism with more ardour than did Wilson. He +re-created, if he did not invent, the <i>Noctes Ambrosianæ</i>—a series of +convivial conversations on food, drink, politics, literature, and things +in general, with interlocutors at first rather numerous, and not very +distinct, but latterly narrowed down to "Christopher North" (Wilson +himself), the "Ettrick Shepherd" (Hogg), and a certain "Timothy +Tickler," less distinctly identified with Wilson's mother's brother, an +Edinburgh lawyer of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> the name of Sym. A few outsiders, sometimes real +(as De Quincey), sometimes imaginary, were, till the last, added now and +then. And besides these conversations, which are his great title to +fame, he contributed, also under the <i>nom de guerre</i> of Christopher +North, an immense number of articles, in part collected as <i>Christopher +North in his Sporting Jacket</i>, substantive collections on Homer, on +Spenser, and others, and almost innumerable single papers and essays on +things in general. From the time when Lockhart (see below) went to +London, no influence on <i>Blackwood</i> could match Wilson's for some ten or +twelve years, or nearly till the end of the thirties. Latterly +ill-health, the death of friends and of his wife, and other causes, +lessened his energy, and for some years before his death in 1854 he +wrote little. Two years before that time his increasing ailments caused +him even to resign his professorship.</p> + +<p>Wilson—whose stories are merely mediocre, and whose poems, <i>The Isle of +Palms</i> (1812) and <i>The City of the Plague</i> (1816), merely show that he +was an intelligent contemporary of Scott and Byron, and a neighbour of +the Lake poets—developed in his miscellaneous journalism one of the +most puissant and luxuriant literary faculties of the time; and in +particular was among the first in one, and perhaps the very first in +another, kind of writing. The first and less valuable of the two was the +subjection of most, if not all, of the topics of the newspaper to a +boisterous but fresh and vigorous style of critical handling, which +bears some remote resemblance to the styles of L'Estrange towards the +end of the seventeenth century, and Bentley a little later, but is in +all important points new. The second and higher was the attempt to +substitute for the correct, balanced, exactly-proportioned, but even in +the hands of Gibbon, even in those of Burke, somewhat colourless and +jejune prose of the past age, a new style of writing, exuberant in +diction, semi-poetical in rhythm, confounding, or at least alternating +very sharply between, the styles of high-strung enthusiasm and +extravagant burlesque, and setting at naught all precepts of the +immediate elders. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> would be too much, no doubt, to attribute the +invention of this style to Wilson. It was "in the air"; it was the +inevitable complement of romantic diction in poetry; it had been +anticipated to some extent by others, and it displayed itself in various +forms almost simultaneously in the hands of Landor, who kept to a more +classical form, and of De Quincey, who was modern. But Wilson, unless in +conversation with De Quincey, cannot be said to have learnt it from any +one else: he preceded most in the time, and greatly exceeded all in the +bulk and influence of his exercises, owing to his position on the staff +of a popular and widely-read periodical.</p> + +<p>The defect of both these qualities of Wilson's style (a defect which +extends largely to the matter of his writings in criticism and in other +departments) was a defect of sureness of taste; while his criticism was +more vigorous than safe. Except his Toryism (which, however, was shot +with odd flashes of democratic sentiment and a cross-vein of crotchety +dislike not to England but to London), he had not many pervading +prejudices. But at the same time he had not many clear principles: he +was the slave of whim and caprice in his individual opinions; and he +never seems to have been able to distinguish between a really fine thing +and a piece of fustian, between an urbane jest and a piece of gross +buffoonery, between eloquence and rant, between a reasoned condemnation +and a spiteful personal fling. Accordingly the ten reprinted volumes of +his contributions to <i>Blackwood</i> and the mass of his still uncollected +articles contain the strangest jumble of good and bad in matter and form +that exists anywhere. By turns trivial and magnificent, exquisite and +disgusting, a hierophant of literature and a mere railer at men of +letters, a prince of describers, jesters, enthusiasts, and the author of +tedious and commonplace newspaper "copy," Wilson is one of the most +unequal, one of the most puzzling, but also one of the most stimulating +and delightful, figures in English literature. Perhaps slightly +over-valued for a time, he has for many years been distinctly neglected, +if not depreciated and despised; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> the voluminousness of his work, +coupled with the fact that it is difficult to select from it owing to +the pervading inequality of its merits, may be thought likely to keep +him in the general judgment at a lower plane than he deserves. But the +influence which he exerted during many years both upon writers and +readers by his work in <i>Blackwood</i> cannot be over-estimated. And it may +be said without fear that no one with tolerably wide sympathies, who is +able to appreciate good literature, will ever seriously undertake the +reading of his various works without equal satisfaction and profit.</p> + +<p>Wilson's principal coadjutor in the early days of <i>Blackwood</i>, and his +friend of all days (though the mania for crying down not so much England +as London made "Christopher North" indulge in some girds at his old +comrade's editorship of the <i>Quarterly</i>), was a curious contrast to +Wilson himself. This contrast may may have been due partly, but by no +means wholly, to the fact that there was ten years between them. John +Gibson Lockhart was born at Cambusnethan, where his father was minister, +on 14th July 1794. Like Wilson, he was educated at Glasgow and at +Oxford, where he took a first-class at a very early age, and whence he +went to Germany, a completion of "study-years" which the revolutionary +wars had for a long time rendered difficult, if not dangerous. On +returning home he was called to the Scottish Bar, where it would seem +that he might have made some figure, but for his inability to speak in +public. <i>Blackwood</i> gave him the very opening suited to his genius; and +for years he was one of its chief contributors, and perhaps the most +dangerous wielder of the pretty sharp weapons in which its staff +indulged. Shortly afterwards, in 1819, he published (perhaps with some +slight assistance from Wilson) his first original book (he had +translated Schlegel's <i>Lectures on History</i> earlier), <i>Peter's Letters +to his Kinsfolk</i>. The title was a parody on Scott's account of his +continental journey after Waterloo, the substance an exceedingly +vivacious account of the things and men of Edinburgh at the time, +something after the fashion of <i>Humphrey</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> <i>Clinker</i>. Next year, on 29th +April, Lockhart married Sophia, Scott's elder daughter; and the pair +lived for some years to come either in Edinburgh or at the cottage of +Chiefswood, near Abbotsford, Lockhart contributing freely to +<i>Blackwood</i>, and writing his four novels and his <i>Spanish Ballads</i>. At +the end of 1825 or the beginning of 1826, just at the time when his +father-in-law's financial troubles set in, he received the appointment +of editor of the <i>Quarterly Review</i> in succession, though not in +immediate succession, to Gifford. He then removed to London, where he +continued to direct the <i>Review</i>, to contribute for a time to <i>Fraser</i>, +to be a very important figure in literary and political life, and after +Scott's death to write an admirable <i>Life</i>. Domestic troubles came +rather thickly on him after Scott's death, which indeed was preceded by +that of Lockhart's own eldest son, the "Hugh Littlejohn" of the <i>Tales +of a Grandfather</i>. Mrs. Lockhart herself died in 1837. In 1843 Lockhart +received the auditorship of the duchy of Lancaster, a post of some +value. Ten years later, in broken health, he resigned the editorship of +the <i>Quarterly</i>, and died towards the end of the year.</p> + +<p>Lockhart's works, at present uncollected, and perhaps in no small +proportion irrecoverable, must have been of far greater bulk than those +of any one yet mentioned in this chapter except Wilson, and not +inconsiderably greater than his. They are also of a remarkable variety, +and of an extraordinary level of excellence in their different kinds. +Lockhart was not, like Wilson, an advocate or a practitioner of very +ornate or revolutionary prose. On the contrary, he both practised, +preached, and most formidably defended by bitter criticism of opposite +styles, a manner in prose and verse which was almost classical, or which +at least admitted no further Romantic innovation than that of the Lake +poets and Scott. His authorship of the savage onslaught upon Keats in +<i>Blackwood</i> is not proven; but there is no doubt that he wrote the +scarcely less ferocious, though much more discriminating and +better-deserved, attack on Tennyson's early poems in the <i>Quarterly</i>. He +was himself no mean writer of verse. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> <i>Spanish Ballads</i> (1823), in +which he had both Southey and Scott as models before him, are of great +excellence; and some of his occasional pieces display not merely much +humour (which nobody ever denied him), but no mean share of the feeling +which is certainly not often associated with his name. But verse was +only an occasional pastime with him: his vocation was to write prose, +and he wrote it with admirable skill and a seldom surpassed faculty of +adaptation to the particular task. It is indeed probable—and it would +be no discredit to him—that his reputation with readers as opposed to +students will mainly depend, as it depends at present, upon his <i>Life of +Scott</i>. Nor would even thus his plumes be borrowed over much. For though +no doubt the letters and the diary of Sir Walter himself count for much +in the interest of the book, though the beauty and nobility of Scott's +character, his wonderful achievements, the pathetic revolution of his +fortune, form a subject not easily matched, yet to be equal to such a +subject is to be in another sense on an equality with it. Admiration for +the book is not chequered or tempered, as it almost necessarily must be +in the case of its only possible rival, Boswell's <i>Johnson</i>, with more +or less contempt for the author; still less is it (as some have +contended that admiration for Boswell is) due to that contempt. The +taste and spirit of Lockhart's book are not less admirable than the +skill of its arrangement and the competency of its writing; nor would it +be easily possible to find a happier adjustment in this respect in the +whole annals of biography.</p> + +<p>But this great book ought not to obscure the other work which Lockhart +has done. His biography of Burns is of remarkable merit; it may be +questioned whether to this day, though it may be deficient in a few +modern discoveries of fact (and these have been mostly supplied in the +edition by the late Mr. Scott Douglas), it is not the best book on the +subject. The taste and judgment, the clear vision and sound sense, which +distinguished Lockhart, are in few places more apparent than here. His +abridgment of Scott's <i>Life of Napoleon</i> is no ordinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> abridgment, and +is a work of thorough craft, if not even of art. His novels, with one +exception, have ceased to be much read; and perhaps even that one can +hardly be said to enjoy frequent perusal. <i>Valerius</i>, the first, is a +classical novel, and suffers under the drawbacks which have generally +attended its kind. <i>Reginald Dalton</i>, a novel in part of actual life at +Oxford, and intended to be wholly of actual life, still shows something +of the artificial handling, of the supposed necessity for adventure, +which is observable in Hook and others of the time, and which has been +sufficiently noticed in the last chapter. <i>Matthew Wald</i>, the last of +the four, is both too gloomy and too extravagant: it deals with a mad +hero. But <i>Adam Blair</i>, which was published in the same year (1821) with +<i>Valerius</i>, is a wonderful little book. The story is not well told; but +the characters and the principal situation—a violent passion +entertained by a pious widowed minister for his neighbour's wife—are +handled with extraordinary power. <i>Peter's Letters</i>, which is half a +book and half journalism, may be said to be, with rare exceptions (such +as an obituary article on Hook, which was reprinted from the +<i>Quarterly</i>), the only specimen of Lockhart's miscellaneous writing that +is easily accessible or authentically known. He was still but in his +apprenticeship here; but his remarkable gifts are already apparent. +These gifts included a faculty of sarcastic comment so formidable that +it early earned him the title of "the Scorpion"; a very wide and sound +knowledge of literature, old and new, English and foreign; some +acquirements in art and in other matters; an excellent style, and a +solid if rather strait-laced theory of criticism. Except that he was, as +almost everybody was then, too much given to violent personalities in +his anonymous work, he was a very great journalist indeed, and he was +also a very great man of letters.</p> + +<p>Thomas de Quincey was not of the earliest <i>Blackwood</i> staff (in that +respect Maginn should be mentioned before him), but he was the older as +well as the more important man of the two, and there is the additional +reason for postponing the founder of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> <i>Fraser</i>, that this latter +periodical introduced a fresh flight of birds of passage (as journalists +both fortunate and unfortunate may peculiarly be called) to English +literature. De Quincey was born in 1785 (the same year as his friend +Wilson) at Manchester, where his father was a merchant of means. He was +educated at the Grammar School of his native town, after some +preliminary teaching at or near Bath, whither his mother had moved after +his father's death. He did not like Manchester, and when he had nearly +served his time for an exhibition to Brasenose College, Oxford, he ran +away and hid himself. He went to Oxford after all, entering at +Worcester, where he made a long though rather intermittent residence, +but took no degree. In 1809 he took up his abode at Grasmere, married +after a time, and lived there, at least as his headquarters, for more +than twenty years. In 1830 he moved to Edinburgh, where, or in its +neighbourhood, he resided for the rest of his long life, and where he +died in December 1859. He has given various autobiographic handlings of +this life—in the main it would seem quite trustworthy, but invested +with an air of fantastic unreality by his manner of relation.</p> + +<p>His life, however, and his personality, and even the whole of his +voluminous published work, have in all probability taken colour in the +general thought from his first literary work of any consequence, the +wonderful <i>Confessions of an English Opium Eater</i>, which, with the +<i>Essays of Elia</i>, were the chief flowers of the <i>London Magazine</i>, and +appeared in that periodical during the year 1821. He had acquired this +habit during his sojourn at Oxford, and it had grown upon him during his +at first solitary residence at the Lakes to an enormous extent. Until he +thus committed the results of his dreams, or of his fancy and literary +genius working on his dreams, or of his fancy and genius by themselves, +to print and paper, in his thirty-sixth year, he had been, though a +great reader, hardly anything of a writer. But thenceforward, and +especially after, in 1825, he had visited his Lake neighbour Wilson at +Edinburgh, and had been by him introduced to <i>Blackwood</i>, he became a +frequent contributor to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> different magazines, and continued to be so, +writing far more even than he published, till his death. He wrote very +few books, the chief being a very free translation of a German novel, +forged as Scott's, and called <i>Walladmor</i>; a more original and stable, +though not very brilliant, effort in fiction, entitled <i>Klosterheim</i>; +and the <i>Logic of Political Economy</i>. Towards the end of his life he +superintended an English collection—there had already been one in +America—of his essays, and this has been supplemented more than once +since.</p> + +<p>It may, indeed, fairly be doubted whether so large a collection, of +miscellaneous, heterogeneous, and, to tell the truth, very unequally +interesting and meritorious matter, has ever been received with greater +or more lasting popular favour, a fresh edition of the fourteen or +sixteen volumes of the <i>Works</i> having been called for on an average +every decade. There have been dissidents: and recently in particular +something of a set has been made against De Quincey—a set to some +extent helped by the gradual addition to the <i>Works</i> of a great deal of +unimportant matter which he had not himself cared to reproduce. This, +indeed, is perhaps the greatest danger to which the periodical writer is +after his death exposed, and is even the most serious drawback to +periodical writing. It is impossible that any man who lives by such +writing can always be at his best in form, and he will sometimes be +compelled to execute what Carlyle has called "honest journey-work in +default of better,"—work which, though perfectly honest and perfectly +respectable, is mere journey-work, and has no claim to be disturbed from +its rest when its journey is accomplished. Of this there was some even +in De Quincey's own collection, and the proportion has been much +increased since. Moreover, even at his very best, he was not a writer +who could be trusted to keep himself at that best. His reading was +enormous,—nearly as great perhaps as Southey's, though in still less +popular directions,—and he would sometimes drag it in rather +inappropriately. He had an unconquerable and sometimes very irritating +habit of digression, of divagation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> of aside. And, worst of all, his +humour, which in its own peculiar vein of imaginative grotesque has +seldom been surpassed, was liable constantly to degenerate into a kind +of laboured trifling, inexpressibly exasperating to the nerves. He could +be simply dull; and he can seldom be credited with the possession of +what may be called literary tact.</p> + +<p>Yet his merits were such as to give him no superior in his own manner +among the essayists, and hardly any among the prose writers of the +century. He, like Wilson, and probably before Wilson, deliberately aimed +at a style of gorgeous elaboration, intended not exactly for constant +use, but for use when required; and he achieved it. Certain well-known +passages, as well as others which have not become hackneyed, in the +<i>Confessions of an Opium Eater</i>, in the <i>Autobiography</i>, in <i>The English +Mail Coach</i>, in <i>Our Ladies of Sorrow</i>, and elsewhere, are unsurpassed +in English or out of it for imaginative splendour of imagery, suitably +reproduced in words. Nor was this De Quincey's only, though it was his +most precious gift. He had a singular, though, as has been said, a very +untrustworthy faculty of humour, both grim and quaint. He was possessed +of extraordinary dialectic ingenuity, a little alloyed no doubt by a +tendency to wire-drawn and over subtle minuteness such as besets the +born logician who is not warned of his danger either by a strong vein of +common sense or by constant sojourn in the world. He could expound and +describe admirably; he had a thorough grasp of the most complicated +subjects when he did not allow will-o'-the-wisps to lure him into +letting it go, and could narrate the most diverse kinds of action, such +as the struggles of Bentley with Trinity College, the journey of the +Tartars from the Ukraine to Siberia, and the fortunes of the Spanish +Nun, Catalina, with singular adaptability. In his biographical articles +on friends and contemporaries, which are rather numerous, he has been +charged both with ill-nature and with inaccuracy. The first charge may +be peremptorily dismissed, the second requires much argument and sifting +in particular cases. To some who have given not a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> attention to +the matter it seems that De Quincey was never guilty of deliberate +fabrication, and that he was not even careless in statement. But he was +first of all a dreamer; and when it is true of a man that, in the words +of the exquisite passage where Calderon has come at one with +Shakespeare, his very dreams are a dream, it will often happen that his +facts are not exactly a fact.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, De Quincey is a great writer and a great figure in +literature, while it may plausibly be contended that journalism may make +all the more boast of him in that it is probable that without it he +would never have written at all. And he has one peculiarity not yet +mentioned. Although his chief excellences may not be fully perceptible +except to mature tastes, he is specially attractive to the young. +Probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love +of literature proper by De Quincey than by any other writer whatever.</p> + +<p>Of other contributors to these periodicals much might be said in larger +space, as for instance of the poisoner-critic Thomas Griffiths +Wainewright, the "Janus Weathercock" of the <i>London</i>, the original of +certain well-known heroes of Bulwer and Dickens, and the object of a +more than once recurrent and distinctly morbid attention from young men +of letters since. Lamb, who was not given to think evil of his friends, +was certainly unlucky in calling Wainewright "warm- as light-hearted"; +for the man (who died a convict in Australia, though he cheated the +gallows which was his due) was both an affected coxcomb and a callous +scoundrel. But he was a very clever fellow, though indignant morality +has sometimes endeavoured to deny this. That he anticipated by sixty +years and more certain depravations in style and taste notorious in our +own day is something: it is more that his achievement in gaudy writing +and in the literary treatment of art was really considerable.</p> + +<p>Wainewright, however, is only "curious" in more than one sense of that +term: Leigh Hunt, who, though quite incapable of poisoning anybody, had +certain points in common with Wainewright on the latter's more excusable +sides, and whose prose must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> now be treated, is distinguished. He +reappears with even better right here than some others of the more +important constituents of this chapter. For all his best work in prose +appeared in periodicals, though it is impossible to say that all his +work that appeared in periodicals was his best work. He was for fourteen +years editor of, and a large contributor to, the <i>Examiner</i>, which he +and his brother started in 1808. After his liberation from prison he not +merely edited, but in the older fashion practically wrote the +<i>Reflector</i> (1810), the <i>Indicator</i> (1819-21), and the <i>Companion</i> +(1828). His rather unlucky journey to Italy was undertaken to edit the +<i>Liberal</i>. He was one of the rare and rash men of letters who have tried +to keep up a daily journal unassisted—a new <i>Tatler</i>, which lasted for +some eighteen months (1830-32); and a little later (1834-35) he +supported for full two years a similar but weekly venture, in part +original, in part compiled or borrowed, called <i>Leigh Hunt's London +Journal</i>. These were not his only ventures of the kind: he was an +indefatigable contributor to periodicals conducted by others; and most +of his books now known by independent titles are in fact collections of +"articles"—sometimes reprinted, sometimes published for the first time.</p> + +<p>It was impossible that such a mass of matter should be all good; and it +is equally impossible to deny that the combined fact of so much +production and of so little concentration argues a certain idiosyncrasy +of defect. In fact the butterfly character which every unprejudiced +critic of Leigh Hunt has noticed, made it impossible for him to plan or +to execute any work on a great scale. He never could have troubled +himself to complete missing knowledge, to fill in gaps, to co-ordinate +thinking, as the literary historian, whose vocation in some respects he +might seem to have possessed eminently, must do—to weave fancy into the +novelist's solid texture, and not to leave it in thrums or in gossamer. +But he was, though in both ways a most unequal, a delightful +miscellanist and critic. In both respects it is natural, and indeed +unavoidable, to compare him with Lamb and with Hazlitt, whom, however, +he really preceded, forming a link between them and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> eighteenth +century essayists. His greater voluminousness, induced by necessity, +puts him at a rather unfair disadvantage with the first; and we may +perhaps never find in him those exquisite felicities which delight and +justify the true "Agnist." Yet he has found some things that Lamb missed +in Lamb's own subjects; and though his prejudices (of the middle-class +Liberal and freethinking kind) were sometimes more damaging than any to +which Lamb was exposed, he was free from the somewhat wilful eclecticism +of that inimitable person. He could like nearly all things that were +good—in which respect he stands above both his rivals in criticism. But +he stands below them in his miscellaneous work; though here also, as in +his poetry, he was a master, not a scholar. Lamb and Hazlitt improved +upon him here, as Keats and Shelley improved upon him there. But what a +position is it to be "improved upon" by Keats and Shelley in poetry, by +Hazlitt and Lamb in prose!</p> + +<p>Hartley Coleridge might with about equal propriety have been treated in +the last chapter and in this; but the already formidable length of the +catalogue of bards perhaps turns the scale in favour of placing him with +other contributors to <i>Blackwood</i>, to which, thanks to his early +friendship with Wilson, he enjoyed access, and in which he might have +written much more than he did, and did actually write most of what he +published himself, except the <i>Biographia Borealis</i>.</p> + +<p>The life of Hartley was a strange and sad variant of his father's, +though, if he lacked a good deal of S. T. C.'s genius, his character was +entirely free from the baser stains which darkened that great man's +weakness. Born (1796) at Clevedon, the first-fruits of the marriage of +Coleridge and Sara, he was early celebrated by Wordsworth and by his +father in immortal verse, and by Southey, his uncle, in charming prose, +for his wonderful dreamy precocity; but he never was a great reader. +Southey took care of him with the rest of the family when Coleridge +disappeared into the vague; and Hartley, after schooling at Ambleside, +was elected to a post-mastership at Merton College, Oxford. He missed +the Newdigate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> thrice, and only got a second in the schools, but was +more than consoled by a Fellowship at Oriel. Unfortunately Oriel was not +only gaining great honour, but was very jealous of it; and the +probationary Fellows were subjected to a most rigid system of +observation, which seems to have gone near to espionage. If ever there +was a man born to be a Fellow under the old English University scheme, +that man was Hartley Coleridge; and it is extremely probable that if he +had been let alone he would have produced, in one form or another, a +justification of that scheme, worthy to rank with Burton's <i>Anatomy</i>. +But he was accused of various shortcomings, of which intemperance seems +to have been the most serious, though it is doubtful whether it would +have sunk the beam if divers peccadilloes, political, social, and +miscellaneous, had not been thrown in. Strong interest was made in +favour of mercy, but the College deprived him of his Fellowship, +granting him, not too consistently, a <i>solatium</i> of £300. This was +apparently in 1820. Hartley lived for nearly thirty years longer, but +his career was closed. He was, as his brother Derwent admits, one of +those whom the pressure of necessity does not spur but numbs. He wrote a +little for <i>Blackwood</i>; he took pupils unsuccessfully, and +school-mastered with a little better success; and during a short time he +lived with a Leeds publisher who took a fancy to him and induced him to +write his only large book, the <i>Biographia Borealis</i>. But for the most +part he abode at Grasmere, where his failing (it was not much more) of +occasional intemperance was winked at by all, even by the austere +Wordsworth, where he wandered about, annotated a copy of Anderson's +<i>Poets</i> and some other books, and supported himself (with the curious +Coleridgean faculty of subsisting like the bird of paradise, without +either foot or foothold) till, at his mother's death, an annuity made +his prospects secure. He died on 6th January 1849, a little before +Wordsworth, and shortly afterwards his work was collected by his brother +Derwent in seven small volumes; the <i>Poems</i> filling two, the <i>Essays and +Fragments</i> two, and the <i>Biographia Borealis</i> three.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> + +<p>This last (which appeared in its second form as <i>Lives of Northern +Worthies</i>, with some extremely interesting notes by S. T. C.) is an +excellent book of its kind, and shows that under more favourable +circumstances Hartley might have been a great literary historian. But it +is on the whole less characteristic than the volumes of <i>Poems</i> and +<i>Essays</i>. In the former Hartley has no kind of <i>souffle</i> (or +long-breathed inspiration), nor has he those exquisite lyrical touches +of his father's which put Coleridge's scanty and unequal work on a level +with that of the greatest names in English poetry. But he has a singular +melancholy sweetness, and a meditative grace which finds its special +home in the sonnet. In the "Posthumous Sonnets" especially, the +sound—not an echo of, but a true response to, Elizabethan music—is +unmistakable, and that to Shakespeare ("the soul of man is larger than +the sky"), that on himself ("When I survey the course that I have run"), +and not a few others, rank among the very best in English. Many of the +miscellaneous poems contain beautiful things. But on the whole the +greatest interest of Hartley Coleridge is that he is the first and one +of the best examples of a kind of poet who is sometimes contemned, who +has been very frequent in this century, but who is dear to the lover of +poetry, and productive of delightful things. This kind of poet is +wanting, it may be, in what is briefly, if not brutally, called +originality. He might not sing much if others had not sung and were not +singing around him; he does not sing very much even as it is, and the +notes of his song are not extraordinarily piercing or novel. But they +are true, they are not copied, and the lover of poetry could not spare +them.</p> + +<p>It is improbable that Hartley Coleridge would ever have been a great +poet: he might, if Fate or even if the Oriel dons had been a little +kinder, have been a great critic. As it is, his essays, his introduction +to Massinger and Ford, and his <i>Marginalia</i>, suffer on the one side from +certain defects of reading; for his access to books was latterly small, +and even when it had been ample, as at Oxford, in London, or at +Southey's house, he confesses that he had availed himself of it but +little. Hence he is often wrong, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> more often incomplete, from sheer +lack of information. Secondly, much of his work is mere jotting, never +in the very least degree intended for publication, and sometimes +explicitly corrected or retracted by later jottings of the same kind. In +such a case we can rather augur of the might-have-been than pronounce on +the actual. But the two volumes are full of delicate critical views on +literature; and the longest series, "Ignoramus on the Fine Arts," shows +how widely, with better luck and more opportunity, he might have +extended his critical performances. In short, Hartley Coleridge, if a +"sair sicht" to the moralist, is an interesting and far from a wholly +painful one to the lover of literature, which he himself loved so much, +and practised, with all his disadvantages, so successfully.</p> + +<p>All the persons hitherto mentioned in this chapter appear by undoubted +right in any history of English Literature: it may cause a little +surprise to see that of Maginn figuring with them. Yet his abilities +were scarcely inferior to those of any; and he was kept back from +sharing their fame only by infirmities of character and by his +succumbing to that fatal Bohemianism which, constantly recurring among +men of letters, exercised its attractions with special force in the +early days of journalism in this century. William Maginn (1793), who was +the son of a schoolmaster at Cork, took a brilliant degree at Trinity +College, Dublin, and for some years followed his father's profession. +The establishment, however, and the style of <i>Blackwood</i> were an +irresistible attraction to him, and he drifted to Edinburgh, wrote a +great deal in the earlier and more boisterous days of <i>Maga</i> under the +pseudonym of Ensign O'Doherty, and has, as has been said, some claims to +be considered the originator of the <i>Noctes</i>. Then, as he had gone from +Ireland to Edinburgh, he went from Edinburgh to London, and took part in +divers Tory periodicals, acting as Paris correspondent for some of them +till, about 1830, he started, or helped in starting, a London +<i>Blackwood</i> in <i>Fraser</i>. He had now every opportunity, and he gathered +round him a staff almost more brilliant than that of the <i>Edinburgh</i>, of +the <i>London</i>, of the <i>Quarterly</i>, or of <i>Blackwood</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> itself. But he was +equally reckless of his health and of his money. The acknowledged +original of Thackeray's Captain Shandon, he was not seldom in jail; and +at last, assisted by Sir Robert Peel almost too late, he died at Walton +on Thames in August 1842, not yet fifty, but an utter wreck.</p> + +<p>The collections of Maginn's work are anything but exhaustive, and the +work itself suffers from all the drawbacks, probable if not inevitable, +of work written in the intervals of carouse, at the last moment, for +ephemeral purposes. Yet it is instinct with a perhaps brighter genius +than the more accomplished productions of some much more famous men. The +<i>Homeric Ballads</i>, though they have been praised by some, are nearly +worthless; and the longer attempts in fiction are not happy. But +Maginn's shorter stories in <i>Blackwood</i>, especially the inimitable +"Story without a Tail," are charming; his more serious critical work, +especially that on Shakespeare, displays a remarkable combination of +wide reading, critical acumen, and sound sense; and his miscellanies in +prose and verse, especially the latter, are characterised by a mixture +of fantastic humour, adaptive wit, and rare but real pathos and melody, +which is the best note of the specially Irish mode. It must be said, +however, that Maginn is chiefly important to the literary historian as +the captain of a band of distinguished persons, and as in a way the link +between the journalism of the first and the journalism of the second +third of the century. A famous plate by Maclise, entitled "The +Fraserians," contains, seated round abundant bottles, with Maginn as +president, portraits (in order by "the way of the sun," and omitting +minor personages) of Irving, Gleig the Chaplain-General, Sir Egerton +Brydges, Allan Cunningham, Carlyle, Count D'Orsay, Brewster, Theodore +Hook, Lockhart, Crofton Croker of the Irish Fairy Tales, Jerdan, Dunlop +of the "History of Fiction," Gait, Hogg, Coleridge, Harrison Ainsworth, +Thackeray, Southey, and Barry Cornwall. It is improbable that all these +contributed at one time, and tolerably certain that some of them were +very sparing and infrequent contributors at any time, but the important +point is the juxtaposition of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> generation which was departing and +the generation which was coming on—of Southey with Thackeray and of +Coleridge with Carlyle. Yet it will be noticed (and the point is of some +importance) that these new-comers are, at least the best of them, much +less merely periodical writers than those who came immediately before +them. In part no doubt this was accident; in part it was due to the +greater prominence which novels and serial works of other kinds were +beginning to assume; in part it may be to the fact that the great +increase in the number of magazines and newspapers had lowered their +individual dignity and perhaps their profitableness. But it is certain +that of the list just mentioned, Thackeray and Carlyle, of the +contemporary new generation of the <i>Edinburgh</i> Macaulay, of the nascent +<i>Westminster</i> Mill, and others, were not, like Jeffrey, like Sydney +Smith, like Wilson, and like De Quincey, content to write articles. They +aspired to write, and they did write, books; and, that being so, they +will all be treated in chapters other than the present, appropriated to +the kinds in which their chief books were designed.</p> + +<p>The name of John Sterling is that of a man who, with no great literary +claims of his own, managed to connect it durably and in a double fashion +with literature, first as the subject of an immortal biography by +Carlyle, secondly as the name-giver of the famous Sterling Club, which +about 1838, and hardly numbering more members than the century did +years, included a surprising proportion of the most rising men of +letters of the day, while all but a very few of its members were of +literary mark. John Sterling himself was the son of a rather eccentric +father, Edward Sterling, who, after trying soldiering with no great, and +farming with decidedly ill, success, turned to journalism and succeeded +brilliantly on the <i>Times</i>. His son was born in the Isle of Bute on 20th +July 1806, was educated, first privately, then at Glasgow, and when +about nineteen went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he fell in with +a famous and brilliant set. He migrated from Trinity College to Trinity +Hall, took no degree, wrote a little for the then young <i>Athenæum</i>, was +engaged in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> romantic and in all ways rather unfortunate business of +encouraging a rebellion in Spain, but married instead of taking active +part in it, and went to the West Indies. When he came home he, it is +said under Coleridgean influence, took orders, but soon developed +heterodox views and gave up active duty. He lived, though under sentence +of death by consumption, till 1843, spending much time abroad, but +writing a little, chiefly for periodicals.</p> + +<p>The chief characteristic of Sterling in life and thought appears to have +been a vacillating impulsiveness, while in letters his production, small +in bulk, is anything but strong in substance or form. But, like some +other men who do not, in the common phrase, "do much," he seems to have +been singularly effectual as a centre of literary friendship and +following. The Sterling Club included not merely Tennyson, John Stuart +Mill, Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, Lord Houghton, Sir Francis Palgrave, +Bishop Thirlwall, who all receive separate notice elsewhere, but others +who, being of less general fame, may best be noticed together here. +There were the scholars Blakesley, Worsley, and Hepworth Thompson +(afterwards Master of Trinity); H. N. Coleridge, the poet's nephew, +son-in-law, and editor; Sir Francis Doyle, afterwards Professor of +Poetry at Oxford, the author of some interesting reminiscences in prose, +and in verse of some of the best songs and poems on military subjects to +be found in the language, such as "The Loss of the Birkenhead," the +"Private of the Buffs," and above all the noble and consummate "Red +Thread of Honour"; Sir Edmund Head, Fellow of Merton and +Governor-General of Canada, and a writer on art (not to be confounded +with his namesake Sir Francis, the agreeable miscellanist, reviewer, and +travel writer, who was also a baronet and also connected with Canada, +where he was Governor of the Upper Province at the time of the Rebellion +of 1835). There was Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a keen scholar and a +fastidious writer, whose somewhat short life (1806-63) was chiefly +occupied by politics; for he was a Poor-Law Commissioner, a Member of +Parliament, and a holder of numerous offices up to those of Chancellor +of the Exchequer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> and Secretary of State. Lewis, who edited the +<i>Edinburgh</i> for a short time, wrote no very long work, but many on a +great variety of subjects, the chief perhaps being <i>On the Influence of +Authority in Matters of Opinion</i>, 1850 (a book interesting to contrast +with one by a living statesman forty-five years later), the <i>Inquiry +into the Credibility of the Ancient Roman History</i> (1855), and later +treatises on <i>The Government of Dependencies</i> and the <i>Best Form of +Government</i>. He was also an exact verbal scholar, was, despite the +addiction to "dry" subjects which this list may seem to show, the author +of not a few <i>jeux d'esprit</i>, and was famous for his conversational +sayings, the most hackneyed of which is probably "Life would be +tolerable if it were not for its amusements."</p> + +<p>But even this did not exhaust the Sterling Club. There was another +scholar, Malden, who should have been mentioned with the group above; +the second Sir Frederick Pollock, who wrote too little but left an +excellent translation of Dante, besides some reminiscences and other +work; Philip Pusey, elder brother of the theologian, and a man of +remarkable ability; James Spedding, who devoted almost the whole of his +literary life to the study, championship, and editing of Bacon, but left +other essays and reviews of great merit; Twisleton, who undertook with +singular patience and shrewdness the solution of literary and historical +problems like the Junius question and that of the African martyrs; and +lastly George Stovin Venables, who for some five and thirty years was +the main pillar in political writing of the <i>Saturday Review</i>, was a +parliamentary lawyer of great diligence and success, and combined a +singularly exact and wide knowledge of books and men in politics and +literature with a keen judgment, an admirably forcible if somewhat +mannered style, a disposition far more kindly than the world was apt to +credit him with, and a famous power of conversation. All these men, +almost without exception, were more or less contributors to periodicals; +and it may certainly be said that, but for periodicals, it is rather +unlikely that some of them would have contributed to literature at all.</p> + +<p>Not as a member of the Sterling Club, but as the intimate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> friend of all +its greatest members, as a contributor, though a rather unfrequent one, +to papers, and as a writer of singular and extraordinary quality but +difficult to class under a more precise head, may be noticed Edward +FitzGerald, who, long a recluse, unstintedly admired by his friends but +quite unknown to the public, became famous late in life by his +translation of Omar Khayyám, and familiar somewhat after his death +through the publication of his charming letters by Mr. Aldis Wright. He +was born on 31st March 1809, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, the +neighbourhood which was his headquarters for almost his entire life, +till his death on a visit to a grandson of the poet Crabbe at Merton in +Norfolk, 14th June 1883. He went to school at Bury, and thence to +Cambridge, where he laid the foundation of his acquaintance with the +famous Trinity set of 1825-30. But on taking his degree in the last +named year and leaving college, he took to no profession, but entered on +the life of reading, thinking, gardening, and boating, which he pursued +for more than half a century. Besides his Trinity contemporaries, from +Tennyson and Thackeray downwards, he had Carlyle for an intimate friend, +and he married the daughter of Bernard Barton, the poet-Quaker and +friend of Lamb. He published nothing till the second half of the century +had opened, when <i>Euphranor</i>, written long before at Cambridge, or with +reference to it, appeared. Then he learnt Spanish, and first showed his +extraordinary faculty of translation by Englishing divers dramas of +Calderon. Spanish gave way to Persian, and after some exercises +elsewhere the famous version, paraphrase, or whatever it is to be +called, of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám appeared in 1859, to be much +altered in subsequent editions.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald's works in the collected edition of 1889 fill three pretty +stout volumes, to which a considerable number of letters (he was first +of all and almost solely a letter-writer and translator) have been +added. In his prose (no disrespect being intended to <i>Euphranor</i>, a +dialogue Berkeleian in form and of great beauty, and other things) he +interests us doubly as a character and as a critic, for the letters +contain much criticism. Personally FitzGerald<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> was a man of rather few +and not obtrusive, but deep and warm sympathies, slow to make new +friends but intensely tenacious of and affectionate towards the old, +with a very strong distaste for crowds and general society, and +undoubtedly somewhat of what the French call a <i>maniaque</i>, that is to +say, a slightly hypochondriac crotcheteer. These characteristics, which +make him interesting as a man, are still more interestingly reflected in +his criticism, which is often one-sided and unjust, sometimes crotchety +(as when he would not admit that even his beloved Alfred Tennyson had +ever been at his best since the collection of 1842), but often also +wonderfully delicate and true.</p> + +<p>As a translator he stands almost alone, his peculiar virtue, noticeable +alike in his versions from the Spanish and Greek, being so capitally and +once for all illustrated in that of Omar Khayyám that in narrow space it +is not necessary to go beyond this. From the purist and pedantic point +of view FitzGerald, no doubt, is wildly unfaithful. He scarcely ever +renders word for word, and will insert, omit, alter, with perfect +freedom; yet the total effect is reproduced as perhaps no other +translator has ever reproduced it. Whether his version of the Rubaiyat, +with its sensuous fatalism, its ridicule of asceticism and renunciation, +and its bewildering kaleidoscope of mysticism that becomes materialist +and materialism that becomes mystical, has not indirectly had +influences, practical and literary, the results of which would have been +more abhorrent to FitzGerald than to almost any one else, may be +suggested. But the beauty of the poem as a poem is unmistakable and +altogether astounding. The melancholy richness of the rolling quatrain +with its unicorn rhymes, the quaint mixture of farce and solemnity, +passion and playfulness, the abundance of the imagery, the power of the +thought, the seduction of the rhetoric, make the poem actually, though +not original or English, one of the greatest of English poems.</p> + +<p>Of the periodical too, if not entirely, was Richard Harris Barham, +"Thomas Ingoldsby," the author of the most popular book of light verse +that ever issued from the press. His one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> novel, <i>My Cousin Nicholas</i>, +was written for <i>Blackwood</i>; the immortal <i>Ingoldsby Legends</i> appeared +in <i>Bentley</i> and <i>Colburn</i>. Born at Canterbury in 1788, of a family +possessed of landed property, though not of much, and educated at St. +Paul's School and Brasenose College, Barham took orders, and, working +with thorough conscience as a clergyman, despite his light literature, +became a minor canon in St. Paul's Cathedral. He died in 1845. Hardly +any book is more widely known than the collected <i>Ingoldsby Legends</i>, +which originally appeared in the last eight years of their author's +life. Very recently they have met with a little priggish depreciation, +the natural and indeed inevitable result, first of a certain change in +speech and manners, and then of their long and vast popularity. Nor +would any one contend that they are exactly great literature. But for +inexhaustible fun that never gets flat and scarcely ever simply +uproarious, for a facility and felicity in rhyme and rhythm which is +almost miraculous, and for a blending of the grotesque and the terrible +which, if less <i>fine</i> than Praed's or Hood's, is only inferior to +theirs—no one competent to judge and enjoy will ever go to Barham in +vain.</p> + +<p>The same difficulty which beset us at the end of the last chapter recurs +here, the difficulty arising from the existence of large numbers of +persons of the third or lower ranks whose inclusion may be desired or +their exclusion resented. At the head, or near it, of this class stand +such figures as that of Douglas Jerrold, a sort of very inferior Hook on +the other side of politics, with a dash (also very inferior) of Hood, +whose <i>Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures</i> and similar things were very +popular at and a little before the middle of the century, but whose +permanent literary value is of the smallest, if indeed it can be said to +exist. But of these—not a few of them more worthy if less prominent in +their day than Jerrold—there could be no end; and there would be little +profit in trying to reach any. The successful "contributor," by the laws +of the case, climbs on the shoulders of his less successful mates even +more than elsewhere; and the very impetus which lands him on the height +rejects them into the depths.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY</h3> + + +<p>After the brilliant group of historians whose work illustrated the close +of the period covered by the preceding volume, it was some time before a +historical writer of the first rank again appeared in England; and there +were reasons for this. Not that, as in the case of purely creative +literature, in prose as in verse, there is any natural or actual lull +between different successive periods in this case; on the contrary the +writing of history is more likely to be stimulated by example, and +requires rather the utmost talent than positive genius, except in those +rare cases which, as in other departments, are not to be accounted for, +either in their presence or in their absence, by observation or +inference. But in the first place the greatest minds of the first +generation of which we have to take account, who were born about the +beginning of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, were, partly +by time and partly by chance, directed for the most part either into +poetry, or into politics, or into active life; and the five and twenty +years of the Revolutionary War in which they passed their manhood were +more likely to provide materials for history, than history itself.</p> + +<p>Yet history, after the example given by Hume, by Robertson, and above +all by Gibbon, was not at all likely to cease, nor did some men of great +talents in other ways fail to betake themselves to it. Godwin was a +historian, and, considering his strong prejudices, the unkindness of +fortune (for history demands leisure almost as much as poetry), and some +defects of knowledge, not a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> contemptible historian in his way. +Mackintosh, intended for a philosopher, was a historian. Southey was a +very considerable historian, and master of one of the most admirable +historical styles on record. But he was signally unfortunate in having +that work of his which should have been most popular, the <i>History of +the Peninsular War</i>, pitted against another by a younger man of +professional competence, of actual experience, and of brilliant literary +powers, Sir William Napier (1786-1860). The literary value of these two +histories is more even than a generation which probably reads neither +much and has almost forgotten Southey is apt to imagine; and though +there is no doubt that the Poet Laureate was strongly prejudiced on the +Tory side, his competitor was even more partial and biassed against that +side. But the difference between the two books is the difference between +a task admirably performed, and performed to a certain extent <i>con +amore</i>, by a skilled practitioner in task-work, and the special effort +of one who was at once an enthusiast and an expert in his subject. It is +customary to call <i>Napier's History of the Peninsular War</i> "the finest +military history in the English language," and so, perhaps, it is. The +famous description of the Battle of Albuera is only one of many showing +eloquence without any mere fine writing, and with the knowledge of the +soldier covering the artist's exaggeration.</p> + +<p>Moore, Campbell, Scott himself, were all, as has been previously +recorded in the notices of their proper work, historians by trade, +though hardly, even to the extent to which Southey was, historians by +craft. But an exception must be made for the exquisite <i>Tales of a +Grandfather</i>, in which Sir Walter, without perhaps a very strict +application of historical criticism, applied his creative powers, +refreshed in their decay by combined affection for the subject and for +the presumed auditor, to fashioning the traditional history of old +Scotland into one of the most delightful narratives of any language or +time. But Henry Hallam, a contemporary of these men (1778-1859), unlike +them lives as a historian only, or as a historian and literary +critic—occupations so frequently combined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> during the present century +that perhaps an apology is due for the presentation of some writers +under the general head of one class rather than under that of the other. +Hallam, the son of a Dean of Bristol, educated at Eton and Christ +Church, an early <i>Edinburgh</i> reviewer, and an honoured pundit and +champion of the Whig party, possessing also great literary tastes, much +industry, and considerable faculty both of judging and writing, united +almost all the qualifications for a high reputation; while his +abstinence from public affairs, and from participation in the violent +half-personal, half-political squabbles which were common among the +literary men of his day, freed him from most of the disadvantages, while +retaining for him all the advantages, of party connections. Early, too, +he obtained a post in the Civil Service (a Commissionership of Audit), +which gave him a comfortable subsistence while leaving him plenty of +leisure. For thirty years, between 1818 and 1848, he produced a series +of books on political and literary history which at once attained a very +high reputation, and can hardly be said to have yet lost it. These were +a <i>View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages</i>, published in the +first, and supplemented by a volume of notes and corrections in the +last, of the years just mentioned; a <i>Constitutional History of England</i> +from Henry VII. to George II. (1827); and an <i>Introduction to the +Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth +Centuries</i> (1837-39).</p> + +<p>The value of Hallam as a political and as a literary historian is by no +means the same. In the former capacity he was perhaps too much +influenced by that artificial and rather curious ideal of politics which +distinguished the Whig party of the later eighteenth century, which was +exaggerated, celebrated brilliantly, and perhaps buried by his pupil and +younger contemporary, Macaulay, and which practically erects the result +of a coincidence of accidents in English history into a permanent and +rationally defensible form of government, comparable with and preferable +to the earlier and unchanging forms of monarchy, aristocracy, and +democracy with their sub-varieties. A certain coldness and sluggishness +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> temperament and sympathy also marred this part of Hallam's work, +though less mischievously than elsewhere. But to balance these drawbacks +handsomely in his favour, he possessed an industry which, immense as +have been the pains spent on his subjects since he wrote, leaves him in +possession of a very fair part of the field as a still trustworthy +authority; a mind, on the whole, judicial and fair; and an excellently +clear and scholarly if not exactly brilliant or engaging style.</p> + +<p>As a literary historian and critic Hallam deserves, except on the score +of industry and width of reading, rather less praise; and his dicta, +once quoted with veneration even by good authorities, and borrowed, with +or without acknowledgment, by nearly all second-hand writers, are being +more and more neglected by both. Nor is this unjust, for Hallam, though +possessed, as has been said, of sound and wide scholarship, and of a +taste fairly trustworthy in accepted and recognised matters, was too apt +to be at a loss when confronted with an abnormal or eccentric literary +personality, shared far too much the hide-bound narrowness of the rules +which guided his friend Jeffrey, lacked the enthusiasm which not seldom +melted Jeffrey's chains of ice, and was constantly apt to intrude into +the court of literary judgments, methods, procedures, and codes of law +which have no business there.</p> + +<p>Many other estimable, and some excellent writers fill up the space of +fifty years, which may be described best, both for remembrance and for +accuracy, as the space between Gibbon and Carlyle. William Roscoe, who +was born as far back as 1753 and did not die till 1831, was the son of a +market-gardener near Liverpool, and had few advantages of education, but +became an attorney, attached himself strenuously to literature, +especially Italian literature, and in 1796 published his <i>Life of +Lorenzo de Medici</i>, which, after finishing it, he followed up nine years +later with the <i>Life of Leo the Tenth</i>. Both obtained not merely an +English but a continental reputation, both became in a manner classics, +and both retain value to this day, though the Italian Renaissance has +been a specially favourite subject of modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> inquiry. Roscoe was a +violent Whig, and not a very dispassionate student in some respects; but +he wrote well, and he is an early example of the diffusion of the +historic spirit proper, in which Gibbon had at once set the example and, +with some lapses, attained nearly to perfection.</p> + +<p>William Mitford (1744-1827) was even an older man than Roscoe, and +belonged to a slightly less modern school of history-writing. He was a +man of means, a friend of Gibbon, his fellow-officer in the militia, and +like him a strong Tory, though unlike him he could not keep his politics +out of his history. Although Mitford's hatred of democracy, whether +well- or ill-founded, makes him sometimes unfair, and though his +<i>History of Greece</i> contains some blunders, it is on the whole rather a +pity that it should have been superseded to the extent to which it +actually has been by those of Grote and Thirlwall. For it is not more +prejudiced and much better written than Grote's, while it has greater +liveliness and zest than the Bishop's. It occupied more than thirty +years in publication, the first volume appearing in 1784, the last in +1818.</p> + +<p>While Roscoe and Mitford were thus dealing with foreign and ancient +subjects, English history became the theme of a somewhat younger pair of +historians, one of whom, Sharon Turner, was born in 1768 and died in +1847; while John Lingard, born three years later, outlived Turner by +four. Lingard was a Roman Catholic priest, and after being educated at +Douai, divided most of his time between pastoral work and teaching at +the newly founded Roman Catholic school of Ushaw. He was the author of +what still retains the credit of being the best history of England on +the great scale, in point of the union of accuracy, skilful arrangement, +fairness (despite his inevitable prepossessions), and competent literary +form,—no mean credit for a member of an unpopular minority to have +attained in a century of the most active historical investigation. +Turner was more of a specialist and particularist, and his style is not +very estimable. He wrote many books on English history, those on the +later periods being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> of little value. But his <i>History of the +Anglo-Saxons</i>, first issued in 1799, was based on thorough research, and +may be said to have for the first time rescued the period of origins of +English history from the discreditable condition of perfunctory, +traditional, and second- or third-hand treatment in which most, if not +all, previous historians of England had been content to leave it.</p> + +<p>Sir Francis Palgrave, another historian to whom the student of early +English history is deeply indebted, was born in London in 1788, his +paternal name being Cohen. He took to the law, and early devoted himself +both within and outside his profession to genealogical and antiquarian +research. Before much attention had been paid in France itself to Old +French, he published a collection of Anglo-Norman poems in 1818, and +from these studies he passed to that of English history as such. He was +knighted in 1832, and made Deputy-Keeper of the Records in 1838; his +tenure of this post being only terminated by his death in 1861. Palgrave +edited many State documents (writs, calendars, rolls, and so forth), and +in his last years executed a <i>History of Normandy and England</i> of great +value. His considerable literary power became more considerable still in +two of his sons: the eldest, for some time past Professor of Poetry at +Oxford, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, being still alive, and therefore merely to +be mentioned; while the second, William Gifford, who was born in 1826 +and died in 1888, Minister at Monte Video, was a man of the most +brilliant talents and the most varied career. He was a soldier, a +Jesuit, a traveller in the most forbidden parts of Arabia at the expense +of a foreign country, and for nearly a quarter of a century a member of +the consular and diplomatic service of his own. His <i>Narrative</i> of his +Arabian journey, his <i>Dutch Guiana</i>, and some remarkable poems are only +a few of his works, all of which have strong character.</p> + +<p>Nearly contemporary with these was Dr. Thomas M'Crie (1772-1835), whose +<i>Lives of Knox</i> (1812) and <i>Melville</i> (1819) entitle him to something +like the title of Historian of Scotch Presbyterianism in its militant +period. M'Crie, who was styled by Hallam (a person<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> not given to +nicknames), "the Protestant Hildebrand," was a worthy and learned man of +untiring industry, and his subjects so intimately concern not merely +Scottish but British history for nearly two centuries, that his handling +of them could not but be important. But he was desperately prejudiced, +and his furious attack on Sir Walter Scott's <i>Old Mortality</i>, by which +he is perhaps known to more persons than by his own far from +uninteresting works, argues a crass deficiency in intellectual and +æsthetic comprehension.</p> + +<p>The tenth decade of the eighteenth century was as much a decade of +historians as the eighth had been a decade of poets; and with Milman and +Tytler born in 1791, Alison in 1792, Grote in 1794, Arnold and Carlyle +in 1795, Thirlwall in 1797, and Macaulay in 1800, it may probably +challenge comparison with any period of equal length. The batch falls +into three pretty distinct classes, and the individual members of it are +also pretty widely separated in importance, so that it may be more +convenient to discuss them in the inverse order of their merit rather +than in the direct order of their births.</p> + +<p>Patrick Fraser Tytler, son and grandson of historians (his grandfather +William being the first and not the worst champion of Queen Mary against +the somewhat Philistine estimates of Hume and Robertson, and his father +Alexander a Professor of History, a Scotch Judge, and an excellent +writer in various kinds of <i>belles lettres</i>), was a man of the finest +character, the friend of most of the great men of letters at Edinburgh +in the age of Scott and Jeffrey, and the author of an excellent <i>History +of Scotland</i> from Alexander the Third to the Union of the Crowns. He was +born in 1791, was called to the Scotch Bar in 1813, and died young for a +historian (a class which has so much to do with Time that he is apt to +be merciful to it) in 1849. He was perhaps hardly a man of genius, but +he commanded universal respect. Sir Archibald Alison was the son of a +clergyman of the same name, who, after taking orders in England and +holding some benefices there, became known as the author of <i>Essays on +the Principles of Taste</i>, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> possess a good deal of formal and some +real merit. Archibald the younger was highly distinguished at the +University of Edinburgh, was called to the Scotch Bar, and distinguished +himself there also, being ultimately appointed Sheriff of Lanarkshire. +Like most of the brighter wits among his immediate contemporaries in +Scotland (we have the indisputable testimony of Jeffrey to the fact) +Alison was an out-and-out Tory, and a constant contributor to +<i>Blackwood</i>, while his literary activity took very numerous shapes. At +last he began, and in the twenty years from 1839 to 1859 carried +through, a <i>History of Europe during the French Revolution</i>, completed +by one of <i>Europe from the Fall of the First to the Accession of the +Third Napoleon</i>. He died in 1867. It was rather unfortunate for Alison +that he did not undertake this great work until the period of Liberal +triumph which marked the middle decades of the century had well set in. +It was still more unlucky, and it could less be set down to the +operations of unkind chance, that in many of the qualifications of the +writer in general, and the historical writer in particular, he was +deficient. He had energy and industry; he was much less inaccurate than +it was long the fashion to represent him; a high sense of patriotism and +the political virtues generally, a very fair faculty of judging +evidence, and a thorough interest in his subject were his. But his book +was most unfortunately diffuse, earning its author the <i>sobriquet</i> of +"Mr. Wordy," and it was conspicuously lacking in grasp, both in the +marshalling of events and in the depicting of characters. Critics, even +when they sympathised, have never liked it; but contrary to the wont of +very lengthy histories, it found considerable favour with the public, +who, as the French gibe has it, were not "hampered by the style," and +who probably found in the popular explanation of a great series of +important and interesting affairs all that they cared for. Nor is it +unlikely that this popularity rather exaggerated the ill-will of the +critics themselves. Alison is not quotable; he is, even after youth, +read with no small difficulty; but it would be no bad thing if other +periods of history had been treated in his manner and spirit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> + +<p>Henry Hart Milman belongs to very much the same class of historian as +Hallam, but unlike Hallam he was a poet, and, though a Broad Churchman +of the days before the nickname was given, more of an adherent to the +imaginative and traditional side of things. His father was a King's +Physician, and he was educated at Eton and Brasenose. He obtained the +Newdigate, and after bringing out his best play <i>Fazio</i> (of which more +will be said later), took orders and received the vicarage of St. +Mary's, Reading. Some poems of merit in the second class, including some +hymns very nearly in the first, followed, and in 1821 he became +Professor of Poetry at Oxford, where six years later he was Bampton +Lecturer. It was in 1829 that Milman, who had been a frequent +contributor to the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, began the series of his works on +ecclesiastical history with the <i>History of the Jews</i>, the weakest of +them (for Milman was not a very great Hebraist, and while endeavouring +to avoid rigid orthodoxy did not satisfy the demands of the newer +heterodox criticism). The <i>History of Christianity to the Abolition of +Paganism</i> was better (1840), and the <i>History of Latin Christianity</i> +(1854) better still. This last indeed, based on an erudition which +enabled Milman to re-edit Gibbon with advantage, is a great book, and +will probably live. For Milman here really <i>knew</i>; he had (like most +poets who write prose with fair practice) an excellent style; and he was +able—as many men who have had knowledge have not been able, and as many +who have had style have not tried or have failed to do—to rise to the +height of a really great argument, and treat it with the grasp and ease +which are the soul of history. That he owed much to Gibbon himself is +certain; that he did not fail to use his pupilage to that greatest of +historians so as to rank among the best of his followers is not less +certain, and is high enough praise for any man. He received the Deanery +of St. Paul's in 1849, and held it till his death in 1868, having +worthily sustained the glory of this the most literary of all great +preferments in the Church of England by tradition, and having earned +among English ecclesiastical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> historians a place like that of Napier +among their military comrades.</p> + +<p>Hallam and Milman were both, as has been said, Oxford men, and the +unmistakable impress of that University was on both, though less on +Hallam than on Milman. It is all the more interesting that their chief +historical contemporaries of the same class were, the one a Cambridge +man, and one of the most distinguished, the other not a University man +at all. Both Grote and Thirlwall, as it happens, were educated at the +same public school, Charterhouse. George Grote, the elder of them, born +in 1794, was the son of a banker, and himself carried on that business +for many years of his life. He was an extreme Liberal, or as it then +began to be called, Radical, and a chief of the Philosophical Radicals +of his time—persons who followed Bentham and the elder Mill. He was +elected member for the City in the first Reform Parliament and held the +seat for nine years; though if he had not retired he would probably have +been turned out. Leaving Parliament in 1841, he left business two years +later, and gave himself up to his <i>History of Greece</i>, which was +published in the ten years between 1846 and 1856. He died in 1871, and +was buried in Westminster Abbey. So was, four years later, his +school-fellow, fellow-historian of Greece, and junior by three years, +Connop Thirlwall. Thirlwall was one of the rare examples of +extraordinary infant precocity (he could read Latin at three and Greek +at four) who have been great scholars and men of distinction in after +life, and to a ripe age. He was of a Northumbrian family, but was born +at Stepney. From Charterhouse he went rather early (in 1814) to Trinity +College, Cambridge, where he had almost the most brilliant undergraduate +career on record, and duly gained his fellowship. He entered Lincoln's +Inn, was actually called to the Bar, but preferred the Church, and took +orders in his thirtieth year. He had already shown a strong leaning to +theology, and had translated Schleiermacher. He now returned to +Cambridge, taking both tutorial work and cure of souls; but in 1834 his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> +Liberal views attracted the disfavour of Christopher Wordsworth, Master +of Trinity, and Thirlwall, resigning his tutorship, was consoled by +Brougham with a Yorkshire living. Nor was this long his only preferment, +for the Whigs were not too well off for clergymen who united +scholarship, character, and piety, and he was made Bishop of St. David's +in 1840. He held the see for thirty-four years, working untiringly, +earning justly (though his orthodoxy was of a somewhat Broad character, +and he could reconcile his conscience to voting for the disestablishment +of the Irish Church) the character of one of the most exemplary bishops +of the century, and seldom dining without a cat on his shoulder.</p> + +<p>Thirlwall wrote many Charges, some of them famous, some delightful +letters, part of a translation of Niebuhr, and some essays, while Grote, +besides his historical work, produced some political and other work +before it, with a large but not very good book on Plato, and the +beginning of another on Aristotle after it. But it is by their +<i>Histories of Greece</i> that they must live in literature. These histories +(of which Grote's was planned and begun as early as 1823, though not +completed till long afterwards, while Thirlwall's began to appear in +1835, and was finished just after Grote's saw the light) were both +written with a certain general similarity of point of view as antidotes +to Mitford, and as putting the Liberal view of the ever memorable and +ever typical history of the Greek states. But in other respects they +diverge widely; and it has been a constant source of regret to scholars +that the more popular, and as the French would say <i>tapageur</i>, of the +two, to a considerable extent eclipsed the solid worth and the excellent +form of Thirlwall. Grote's history displays immense painstaking and no +inconsiderable scholarship, though it is very nearly as much a "party +pamphlet" as Macaulay's own, the advocate's client being in this case +not merely the Athenian democracy but even the Athenian demagogue. Yet +it to a great extent redeems this by the vivid way in which it makes the +subject alive, and turns Herodotus and Thucydides,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> Demosthenes and +Xenophon, from dead texts and school-books into theses of eager and +stimulating interest. But it has absolutely no style; its scale is much +too great; the endless discussions and arguments on quite minor points +tend to throw the whole out of focus, and to disaccustom the student's +eye and mind to impartial and judicial handling; and the reader +constantly sighs for the placid Olympian grasp of Gibbon, nay, even for +the confident dogmatism of Macaulay himself, instead of the perpetual +singlestick of argument which clatters and flourishes away to the utter +discomposure of the dignity of the Historic Muse.</p> + +<p>It is possible, on the other hand, that Thirlwall may have sacrificed a +little too much, considering his age and its demands, to mere +dispassionate dignity. He is seldom picturesque, and indeed he never +tries to be so. But to a scholarship naturally far superior to Grote's, +he united a much fairer and more judicial mind, and the faculty of +writing—instead of loose stuff not exactly ungrammatical nor always +uncomely, but entirely devoid of any grace of style—an excellent kind +of classical English, but slightly changed from the best eighteenth +century models. And he had what Grote lacked, the gift of seeing that +the historian need not—nay, that he ought not to—parade every detail +of the arguments by which he has reached his conclusions; but should +state those conclusions themselves, reserving himself for occasional +emergencies in which process as well as result may be properly +exhibited. It is fair to say, in putting this curious pair forward as +examples respectively of the popular and scholarly methods of historical +writing, that Grote's learning and industry were very much more than +popular, while Thirlwall's sense and style might with advantage have put +on, now and then, a little more pomp and circumstance. But still the +contrast holds; and until fresh discoveries like that of the <i>Athenian +Polity</i> accumulate to an extent which calls for and obtains a new real +historian of Greece, it is Thirlwall and not Grote who deserves the +first rank as such in English.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> + +<p>Intimately connected with all these historians in time and style, but +having over them the temporary advantage of being famous in another way, +and the, as some think, permanent disadvantage of falling prematurely +out of public favour, was Thomas Arnold. He was born at Cowes, in the +Isle of Wight, on 13th June 1795, and was educated at Winchester and at +Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At the age of twenty he was elected a +fellow of Oriel—a distinction which was, and remained for two decades, +almost the highest in the University—and he gained both Chancellor's +Essay prizes, for Latin and English. Oriel was not in his time, as it +was very shortly afterwards, a centre of ecclesiastical orthodoxy; but +rather the home of a curious transition blend of thought which in +different persons took the high-and-dry or the Rationalist direction, +and was only generally opposed to Evangelicalism. Arnold himself +inclined to the Liberal side, and had also strong personal gifts for +teaching. He took orders, but neither became a tutor nor took a living, +and established himself at Laleham, on the Thames, to take private +pupils. After ten years' practice here he was elected to the +Head-mastership of Rugby, a school then, after vicissitudes, holding +little if anything more than a medium place among those English Grammar +Schools which ranked below the great schools of Eton, Harrow, +Westminster, Winchester, and Charterhouse. How he succeeded in placing +it on something like an equality with these, and how on the other hand +he became, as it were, the apostle of the infant Broad Church School +which held aloof alike from Evangelicals and Tractarians, are points +which do not directly concern us. His more than indirect influence on +literature was great; for few schools have contributed to it, in the +same time, a greater number of famous writers than Rugby did under his +head-mastership. His direct connection with it was limited to a fair +number of miscellaneous works, many sermons, an edition of Thucydides, +and a <i>History of Rome</i> which did not proceed (owing to his death in +1842, just after he had been appointed Regius Professor of Modern +History at Oxford) beyond the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> Second Punic War. Arnold, once perhaps +injudiciously extolled by adoring pupils, and the defender of a theory +of churchmanship which strains rather to the uttermost the principle of +unorthodox economy, has rather sunk between the undying disapproval of +the orthodox and the fact that the unorthodox have long left his +standpoint. But his style is undoubtedly of its own kind scholarly and +excellent; the matter of his history suffers from the common fault of +taking Niebuhr at too high a valuation.</p> + +<p>Thomas Babington Macaulay (who may be conveniently discussed before +Carlyle, though he was Carlyle's junior by five years, inasmuch as, even +putting relative critical estimate aside, he died much earlier and +represented on the whole an older style of thought) was born at Rothley +Temple in Leicestershire on 25th October 1800. His father, Zachary +Macaulay, though a very active agitator against the Slave Trade, was a +strong Tory; and the son's conversion to Whig opinions was effected at +some not clearly ascertained period after he had reached manhood. A very +precocious child, he was at first privately educated, but entered +Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of eighteen. Here he fell in with +a set somewhat but not much less distinguished than that of the famous +time, about ten years later, of which Tennyson was the centre—a set the +most brilliant member of which, besides Macaulay, was the poet Praed. +Praed had been accustomed to journalism before he left Eton, and had +made acquaintance at Windsor with the bookseller Knight, for whose +<i>Quarterly Magazine</i> both he and Macaulay wrote some very good things. +Macaulay himself obtained the Chancellor's prize for English poems on +"Pompeii" and "Evening," in two successive years 1819 and 1820; and +after a very distinguished undergraduate career was elected fellow of +his college. He went to the Bar, and his father's fortune, which had +been a good one, being lost, his chances were for a time uncertain. In +1825, however, he won the admiration of Jeffrey and a place on the +<i>Edinburgh Review</i> by his well-known, and slightly gaudy, but +wonderfully fresh and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> stimulating article on Milton; and literature, +which had always been his ideal employment, seemed already likely to +yield him a fair subsistence—for review-writing was at that time much +more highly paid than it is at present. Moreover the Whigs, on the eve +of their long postponed triumph, were looking out for young men of +talent; and Macaulay, being recruited by them, was put into Lord +Lansdowne's pocket-borough of Calne. In the Reform debates themselves he +distinguished himself greatly, and after the Bill was carried, having +been elected for Leeds, he was not long in receiving his reward. It was +munificent, for he, a man of little more than thirty, who had made no +reputation at the Bar, though much elsewhere, was appointed Legal Member +of Council in India with a salary very much of which could in those days +be saved by a careful man, especially if, like Macaulay, he was +unmarried. Accordingly when, after between four and five years' stay, +Macaulay in 1838 returned home, he was in possession of means sufficient +to enable him to devote himself without fear or hindrance to literary +and political pursuits, while his fame had been raised higher during his +absence by his contributions to the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. Indeed his +Indian experiences furnished the information—erroneous in some cases +and partisan in others, but brilliantly used—enabling him to write the +famous essays on Clive and on Hastings, where his historical method is +at almost its best. He was elected member for Edinburgh, a very high +compliment, in 1839; and next year became Secretary for War. In 1842 and +1843 respectively he established his position in verse and prose by +publishing the <i>Lays of Ancient Rome</i> and a collection of his <i>Essays</i>; +and in 1846 he was made Postmaster-General. But his support of the +Maynooth Grant offended the Protestantism of his constituents, and he +lost his seat, and for the time his political opportunities, in 1847. +The disaster was no disaster for literature: he had long been employed +on a <i>History of England from the Accession of James II.</i>, and being now +able to devote his whole time to it, he published the first volumes in +1848 with astonishing success.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p> + +<p>He was re-elected for Edinburgh in 1852, published the third and fourth +volumes of his History in 1855 with success greater in pecuniary ways +and otherwise than even that of their forerunners, was raised to the +Upper House as Lord Macaulay of Rothley in 1857, and died two years +later, on 28th December 1859, of heart disease. Some personal +peculiarities of Macaulay's—his extraordinary reading and memory, his +brilliant but rather tyrannical conversation, his undoubting +self-confidence—were pretty well known in his lifetime, and did not +always create a prejudice in his favour. But a great revolution in this +respect was brought about by the <i>Life</i> of him, produced a good many +years later by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan—a Life, standing for +the interest of its matter and the skill and taste of its manner, not +too far below the masterpieces of Boswell and Lockhart.</p> + +<p>The literary personality of Macaulay, though a great one in all +respects, is neither complex nor unequally present, and it is therefore +desirable to discuss all its manifestations together. In the order of +importance and of bulk his work may be divided into verse, prose-essays, +and history, for his speeches less directly concern us, and are very +little more than essays adroitly enough adjusted so as not to be tedious +to the hearer. In all three capacities he was eminently popular; and in +all three his popularity has brought with it a sort of reaction, partly +justified, partly unjust. The worst brunt of this reaction has fallen +upon his verse, the capital division of which, the <i>Lays of Ancient +Rome</i>, was persistently decried by Mr. Matthew Arnold, the critic of +most authority in the generation immediately succeeding Macaulay's. A +poet of the very highest class Macaulay was not; his way of thought was +too positive, too clear, too destitute either of mystery or of dream, to +command or to impart the true poetical mirage, to "make the common as if +it were not common." His best efforts of this kind are in small and not +very generally known things, the "Jacobite's Epitaph," "The Last +Buccaneer." But his ballads earlier and later, <i>Ivry</i>, <i>The Armada</i>, +<i>Naseby</i>, and the Roman quartet, exhibit the result of a consummate +literary faculty with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> real native gift for rhythm and metre, applying +the lessons of the great Romantic generation with extraordinary vigour +and success, and not without considerable eloquence and refinement. It +is a gross and vulgar critical error to deem Macaulay's poetical effects +vulgar or gross. They are <i>popular</i>; they hit exactly that scheme of +poetry which the general ear can appreciate and the general brain +understand. They are coin for general circulation; but they are not base +coin. Hundreds and thousands of immature and 'prentice tastes have been +educated to the enjoyment of better things by them; thousands and tens +of thousands of tastes, respectable at least, have found in them the +kind of poetry which they can like, and beyond which they are not fitted +to go. And it would be a very great pity if there were ever wanting +critical appreciations which, while relishing things more exquisite and +understanding things more esoteric, can still taste and savour the +simple genuine fare of poetry which Macaulay offers. There are few wiser +proverbs than that which cautions us against demanding "better bread +than is made of wheat," and the poetical bread of the <i>Lays of Ancient +Rome</i> is an honest household loaf that no healthy palate will reject.</p> + +<p>In the second division, that of essay writing, Macaulay occupies a +position both absolutely and relatively higher. That the best verse +ranks above even the best prose is not easily disputable; that prose +which is among the very best of its own particular kind ranks above +verse which though good is not the best, may be asserted without any +fear. And in their own kind of essay, Macaulay's are quite supreme. +Jeffrey, a master of writing and a still greater master of editing, with +more than twenty years' practice in criticism, asked him "where he got +that style?" The question was not entirely unanswerable. Macaulay had +taken not a little from Gibbon; he had taken something from a then still +living contributor of Jeffrey's own, Hazlitt. But his private and +personal note was after all uppermost in the compound. It had appeared +early (it can be seen in things of his written when he was an +undergraduate). It owed much to the general atmosphere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> of the century, +to the habit of drawing phrase, illustration, idea, not merely from the +vernacular or from classical authorities, but from the great writers of +earlier European literature. And it would probably have been impossible +without the considerable body of forerunners which the <i>Edinburgh</i>, the +<i>Quarterly</i>, and other things of which some notice has been given in a +former chapter, had supplied. But still the individual character reigns +supreme.</p> + +<p>Macaulay's Essays are in something more than the ordinary loose +acceptation of the term a household word; and it cannot be necessary to +single out individual instances where almost all are famous, and where +all deserve their fame. The "Milton" and the "Southey," the "Pitt" and +the "Chatham," the "Addison" and the "Horace Walpole," the "Clive" and +the "Hastings," the "Frederick the Great" and the "Madame D'Arblay," the +"Restoration Dramatists" and the "Boswell," the "Hallam" and the +"Ranke," present with a marvellous consistency the same merits and the +same defects. The defects are serious enough. In the first place the +system, which Macaulay did not invent, but which he carried to +perfection, of regarding the particular book in hand less as a subject +of elaborate and minute criticism and exposition than as a mere +starting-point from which to pursue the critic's own views of the +subject, inevitably leads to unfairness, especially in matters of pure +literature. Macaulay's most famous performance in this latter kind, the +crushing review of the unlucky Robert Montgomery, though well enough +deserved in the particular case, escapes this condemnation only to fall +under another, that of looking at the parts rather than at the whole. It +is quite certain that, given their plan, the two famous critiques of +Tennyson and Keats, in the <i>Quarterly</i> and in <i>Blackwood</i>, are well +enough justified. The critic looks only at the weak parts, and he judges +the weak parts only by the stop-watch. But, on his own wide and more +apparently generous method, Macaulay was exposed to equal dangers, and +succumbed to them less excusably. He had strong prejudices, and it is +impossible for any one who reads him with knowledge not to see that the +vindication of those prejudices, rather than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> exposition and +valuation of the subject, was what he had first at heart. He was too +well informed (though, especially in the Indian Essays, he was sometimes +led astray by his authorities), and he was too honest a man, to be +untrustworthy in positive statement. But though he practised little in +the courts, he had the born advocate's gift, or drawback, of inclination +to <i>suppressio veri</i> and <i>suggestio falsi</i>, and he has a heavy account +to make up under these heads. Even under them perhaps he has less to +answer for than on the charge of a general superficiality and +shallowness, which is all the more dangerous because of the apparently +transparent thoroughness of his handling, and because of the actual +clearness and force with which he both sees and puts his view. For a +first draft of a subject Macaulay is incomparable, if his readers will +only be content to take it for a first draft, and to feel that they must +fill up and verify, that they must deepen and widen. But the heights and +depths of the subject he never gives, and perhaps he never saw them.</p> + +<p>Part of this is no doubt to be set down to the quality of his style; +part to a weakness of his, which was not so much readiness to accept any +conclusion that was convenient as a constitutional incapacity for not +making up his mind. To leave a thing in half lights, in compromise, to +take it, as the legal phrase of the country of his ancestors has it, <i>ad +avizandum</i>, was to Macaulay abhorrent and impossible. He must +"conclude," and he was rather too apt to do so by "quailing, crushing, +and quelling" all difficulties of opposing arguments and qualifications. +He simply would not have an unsolved problem mystery. Strafford was a +"rancorous renegade"; Swift a sort of gifted Judas; Bacon a mean fellow +with a great intellect; Dryden again a renegade, though not rancorous; +Marlborough a self-seeking traitor of genius. And all these conclusions +were enforced in their own style—the style of <i>l'homme même</i>. It was +rather teasingly antithetical, "Tom's snip-snap" as the jealous +smartness of Brougham called it; it was somewhat mechanical in its +arrangement of narrative, set passages of finer writing, cunningly +devised summaries of facts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> comparisons, contrasts (to show the +writer's learning and dazzle the reader with names), exordium, +iteration, peroration, and so forth. But it observed a very high +standard of classical English, a little intolerant of neologism, but not +stiff nor jejune. It had an almost unexampled—a certainly +unsurpassed—power (slightly helped by repetition perhaps) of bringing +the picture that the writer saw, the argument that he thought, the +sentiment that he felt, before the reader's eyes, mind, and feeling. +And, as indeed follows from this, it was pre-eminently clear. It is +perhaps the clearest style in English that does not, like those of Swift +and Cobbett, deliberately or scornfully eschew rhetorical ornament. What +Macaulay means you never, being any degree short of an idiot, can fail +to understand; and yet he gives you the sense, equipped with a very +considerable amount of preparation and trimming. It would not merely +have been ungrateful, it would have been positively wrong, if his +audience, specially trained as most of them were to his standpoint of +Whig Reformer, had failed to hail him as one of the greatest writers +that had ever been known. Nor would it be much less wrong if judges very +differently equipped and constituted were to refuse him a high place +among great writers.</p> + +<p>The characteristics of the <i>Essays</i> reproduce themselves on a magnified +scale so exactly in the <i>History</i> that the foregoing criticism applies +with absolute fidelity to the later and larger, as well as to the +earlier and more minute work. But it would not be quite fair to say that +no new merits appear. There are no new defects; though the difference of +the scope and character of the undertaking intensifies in degree, as +well as magnifies in bulk, the faults of advocacy and of partiality +which have caused the book to be dismissed, with a flippancy only too +well deserved by its own treatment of opponents, as "a Whig pamphlet in +four octavo volumes." Yet the width of study and the grasp of results, +which, though remarkable, were not exactly extraordinary, in the compass +and employed on the subject of a <i>Review</i> article, became altogether +amazing and little short of miraculous in this enlarged field. One of +the earliest and one of the best passages, the view of the state of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> +England at the death of Charles the Second, may challenge comparison, as +a clearly arranged and perfectly mastered collection of innumerable +minute facts sifted out of a thousand different sources, with anything +in history ancient or modern. The scale of the book is undoubtedly too +great; and if it had been carried, as the author originally intended, to +a date "within the memory of" his contemporaries, it would have required +the life of Old Parr to complete it and the patience of Job to read it +through. The necessity of a hero is a necessity felt by all the nobler +sort of writers. But the choice of William of Orange for the purpose +was, to say the least, unlucky; and the low morality which he had +himself, in an earlier work, confessed as to the statesmen of the period +imparted an additional stimulus to the historian's natural tendency to +be unfair to his political opponents, in the vain hope, by deepening the +blacks, to get a sort of whiteness upon the grays. It has further to be +confessed that independent examination of separate points is not very +favourable to Macaulay's trustworthiness. He never tells a falsehood; +but he not seldom contrives to convey one, and he constantly conceals +the truth. Still, the general picture is so vivid and stimulating, the +mastery of materials is so consummate, and the beauty of occasional +passages—the story of Monmouth's Conspiracy, that of James' insane +persecution of Magdalen College, that of the Trial of the Seven Bishops, +that of the Siege of Londonderry—so seductive, that the most hostile +criticism which is not prepared to shut eyes and ears to anything but +faults cannot refuse admiration. And it ought not to be omitted that +Macaulay was practically the first historian who not merely examined the +literature of his subject with unfailing care and attention, but took +the trouble to inspect the actual places with the zeal of a topographer +or an antiquary. That this added greatly to the vividness and +picturesque character of his descriptions need hardly be said; that it +often resulted in a distinct gain to historical knowledge is certain. +But perhaps not its least merit was the putting down in a practically +imperishable form, and in the clearest possible manner, of a vast number +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> interesting details which time is only too quick to sweep away. The +face of England has changed more since Macaulay's time, though a bare +generation since, than it had changed in the four or five generations +between the day of his theme and his own; and thus he rescued for us at +once the present and the past.</p> + +<p>It is almost impossible to imagine a greater contrast between two +contemporaries of the same nation, both men of letters of the first +rank, than that which exists between Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle. +In the subjects to which both had affinity there was a rather remarkable +connection. Macaulay's education rather than his sympathies made him +something of a master of at least the formal part of poetry, in which +Carlyle could do nothing. But essentially they were both writers of +prose; they were both men in whom the historico-politico-social +interests were much greater than the purely literary, the purely +artistic, or the purely scientific—though just as Carlyle was a bad +verse-writer or none at all, Macaulay a good one, so Carlyle was a good +mathematician, Macaulay a bad one or none at all. But in the point of +view from which they regarded the subjects with which they dealt, and in +the style in which they treated them, they were poles asunder. Indeed it +may be questioned whether "the style is the point of view" would not be +a better form of the famous deliverance than that which, in full or +truncated form, has obtained currency.</p> + +<p>Carlyle was born on the 4th December 1795 at Ecclefechan (the Entepfuhl +of the <i>Sartor</i>), in Dumfriesshire, being the son of a stone-mason. He +was educated first at the parish school, then at that of Annan (the +nearest town), and was about fifteen when he was sent, in the usual way +of Scotch boys with some wits and no money, to the University of +Edinburgh. His destination was equally of course the Church, but he very +early developed that dislike to all fixed formularies which +characterised him through life, and which perhaps was not his greatest +characteristic. To mathematics, on the other hand, he took pretty +kindly, though he seems to have early exhausted the fascinations of +them. Like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> most men of no means who have little fancy for any of the +regular professions, he attempted teaching; and as a schoolmaster at +Annan, Haddington, and Kirkcaldy, or a private tutor (his chief +experience in which art was with Charles Buller), he spent no small +number of years, doing also some hack-work in the way of translating, +writing for Brewster's <i>Encyclopædia</i>, and contributing to the <i>London +Magazine</i>, that short-lived but fertile nurse of genius. The most +remarkable of these productions was the <i>Life of Schiller</i>, which was +published as a volume in 1825, his thirtieth year, at which time he was +a resident in London and a frequenter—a not too amiable one—of +Coleridge's circle at Highgate and of other literary places.</p> + +<p>The most important event in his life took place in 1826, when he married +Miss Jane Welsh, a young lady who traced her descent to John Knox, who +had some property, who had a genius of her own, and who was all the more +determined to marry a man of genius. She had hesitated between Irving +and Carlyle, and, whatever came of it, there can be no doubt that she +was right in preferring the somewhat uncouth and extremely undeveloped +tutor who had taught her several things,—whether love in the proper +sense was among them or not will always be a moot point. The <i>Edinburgh +Review</i> was kind to Carlyle after its fashion, and he wrote for it; but +Jeffrey, though very well disposed both to Carlyle and to his wife, +could not endure the changes which soon came on his style, and might +have addressed the celebrated query which, as mentioned, just at the +same time he addressed in delighted surprise to Macaulay, "Where did you +get that style," to Carlyle in the identical words but with a very +different meaning. Even had it been different, it was impossible that +Carlyle should serve anywhere or any one; and his mind, not an early +ripening one, was even yet, at the age of thirty-two, in a very +unorganised condition. He resolved to retire to his wife's farm of +Craigenputtock in Nithsdale; and Mrs. Carlyle had the almost +unparalleled heroism to consent to this. For it must be remembered that +her husband, with the exception of the revenue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> of a few essays, was +living on her means, that he undertook no professional duties, and that +in the farmhouse she had to perform those of a servant as well as those +of a wife. Whatever other opinions may be passed on this episode of +Carlyle's life, which lasted from 1828 to 1834, there can be no doubt +that it "made" him. He did much positive work there, including all his +best purely literary essays. There he wrote <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, his +manifesto and proclamation, a wild book which, to its eternal honour, +<i>Fraser's Magazine</i> accepted, probably under the influence of Lockhart, +with whom, strangely different as they were, Carlyle was always on good, +though never on intimate terms. There too was written great part of the +earlier form of the <i>French Revolution</i>. But the greatest thing that he +did at Craigenputtock was the thorough fermentation, clearing, and +settling of himself. When he went there, at nearly thirty-three, it was +more uncertain what would come of him than it is in the case of many a +man when he leaves the University at three and twenty. When he left it, +at close on his fortieth year, the drama of his literary life was +complete, though only a few lines of it were written.</p> + +<p>That drama lasted in actual time for forty-seven years longer; and for +more than the first thirty of them fresh and ever fresh acts and scenes +carried it on. For the public his place was taken once and for all by +the <i>History of the French Revolution</i>, which, after alarming +vicissitudes (John Stuart Mill having borrowed the first volume in MS. +and lent it to a lady, to be destroyed by her housemaid), appeared in +1837. From at least that time Mrs. Carlyle's aspiration was fulfilled. +There were gain-sayers of course,—it may almost be said that genius +which is not gainsaid is not genius,—there were furious decriers of +style, temper, and so forth. But nine out of every ten men at least +whose opinion was worth taking knew that a new star of the first +magnitude had been added to English literature, however much they might +think its rays in some respects baleful.</p> + +<p>Lecturing, after the example set chiefly by Coleridge and Hazlitt, was +at this time a favourite resource for those men of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> letters whose line +of composition was not of the gainfulest; and Carlyle delivered several +courses, some of which are unreported while others survive only in +inadequate shapes. But <i>Heroes and Hero-Worship</i> was at first delivered +orally, though it was not printed till 1841; and about the same time, or +rather earlier, appeared the <i>Miscellaneous Essays</i>—a collection of his +work at its freshest, least mannered, most varied, and in some respects +best. <i>Chartism</i> (1839) and <i>Past and Present</i> (1843) reflected the +political problems of the time and Carlyle's interest in them. But it +was not till 1845 that a second, in the ordinary sense, great work, +<i>Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches</i>, was published. Five years +passed without anything substantive from him, but in 1850 appeared +<i>Latter-Day Pamphlets</i>, the most brilliantly satiric, and in 1851 the +softest, most finished, and (save theologically) least debatable of all +his books, the exquisite biography in miniature called the <i>Life of +Sterling</i>. Then he engaged, it is difficult to say whether by ill-luck +or not, on the last and largest of his great single undertakings, the +<i>History of Frederick the Great</i>. Fourteen years were passed, as a +matter of composition, in "the valley of the shadow of Frederick," as +his wife put it: half the time (from 1858 to 1865) saw the actual +publication. Shortly after the completion of this, Carlyle visited +Edinburgh to receive the Lord Rectorship of his University, and soon +after his wife died. He survived her fifteen years, but did nothing more +of great importance; indeed, he was seventy-one when this loss happened. +Some short things on "John Knox," on "The Early Kings of Norway," and a +famous letter on "Shooting Niagara" (the Reform Bill of 1867), with a +few more, appeared; but he was chiefly occupied (as far as he was +occupied at all) in writing reminiscences, and arranging memorials of +Mrs. Carlyle. The publication of these books after his death by the late +Mr. Froude led to a violent conflict of opinion both as to the propriety +of the publication and as to the character of Carlyle himself.</p> + +<p>This conflict fortunately concerns us but little here. It is certain +that Carlyle—springing from the lower ranks of society,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> educated +excellently as far as the intellect was concerned, but without attention +to such trifles as the habit (which his future wife early remarked in +him) of putting bread and butter in his tea, a martyr from very early +years to dyspepsia, fostering a retiring spirit and not too social +temper, thoroughly convinced that the times were out of joint and not at +all thoroughly convinced that he or any one could set them right, +finally possessed of an intensely religious nature which by accident or +waywardness had somehow thrown itself out of gear with religion—was not +a happy man himself or likely to make any one else happy who lived with +him. But it is certain also that both in respect to his wife and to +those men, famous or not famous, of whom he has left too often unkindly +record, his bark was much worse than his bite. And it is further certain +that Mrs. Carlyle was no down-trodden drudge, but a woman of brains +almost as alert as her husband's and a tongue almost as sharp as his, +who had deliberately made her election of the vocation of being "wife to +a man of genius," and who received what she had bargained for to the +uttermost farthing. There will always be those who will think that Mr. +Froude, doubtless with the best intentions, made a very great mistake; +that, at any rate for many years after Carlyle's death, only a strictly +genuine but judicious selection of the Reminiscences and Memorials +should have been published, or else that the whole should have been +worked into a real biography in which the frame and setting could have +given the relief that the text required. But already, after more than +the due voices, there is some peace on the subject; and a temporary wave +of neglect, partly occasioned by this very controversy, was to be +expected.</p> + +<p>That this wave will pass may be asserted with a fulness and calmness of +assurance not to be surpassed in any similar case. Carlyle's influence +during a great part of the second and the whole of the third quarter of +this century was so enormous, his life was so prolonged, and the general +tone of public thought and public policy which has prevailed since some +time before his death has been so adverse to his temper, that the +reaction which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> is all but inevitable in all cases was certain to be +severe in his. And if this were a history of thought instead of being a +history of the verbal expression of thought, it would be possible and +interesting to explain this reaction, and to forecast the certain +rebound from it. As it is, however, we have to do with Carlyle as a man +of letters only; and if his position as the greatest English man of +letters of the century in prose be disputed, it will generally be found +that the opposition is due to some not strictly literary cause, while it +is certain that any competitor who is set up can be dislodged by a +fervent and well-equipped Carlylian without very much difficulty.</p> + +<p>He has been classed here as a historian, and though the bulk of his work +is very great and its apparent variety considerable, it will be found +that history and her sister biography, even when his subjects bore an +appearance of difference, always in reality engaged his attention. His +three greatest books, containing more than half his work in bulk,—<i>The +French Revolution</i>, the <i>Cromwell</i>, and the <i>Frederick</i>,—are all openly +and avowedly historical. The <i>Schiller</i> and the <i>Sterling</i> are +biographies; the <i>Sartor Resartus</i> a fantastic autobiography. Nearly all +the <i>Essays</i>, even those which are most literary in subject—all the +<i>Lectures on Heroes</i>, the greater part of <i>Past and Present</i>, <i>The Early +Kings of Norway</i>, the <i>John Knox</i>, are more or less plainly and strictly +historical or biographical. Even <i>Chartism</i>, the non-antique part of +<i>Past and Present</i>, and the <i>Latter-Day Pamphlets</i>, deal with politics +in the sense in which politics are the principal agent in making +history, regard them constantly and almost solely in their actual or +probable effect on the life-story of the nation, and to no small extent +of its individual members. Out of the historic relation of nation or +individual Carlyle would very rarely attempt to place, and hardly ever +succeeded in placing, any thing or person. He could not in the least +judge literature—of which he was so great a practitioner always, and +sometimes so great a judge—from the point of view of form: he would +have scorned to do so, and did scorn those who did so. His deficiencies +in abstract philosophy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> whether political, theological, metaphysical, +or other, arise directly from this—that he could never contemplate any +of these things as abstract, but only in the common conduct of men +towards their fellows, towards themselves, and towards God. For Carlyle +never "forgot God," though he might speak unadvisedly with his lips of +other men's ways of remembering Him. The "human document," as later +slang has it, was in effect the only thing that interested him; and he +was content to employ it in constructing human history. More than once +he put his idea of this history formally under a formal title. But his +entire work is a much better exposition of that idea than these +particular essays; and it is not easy to open any page of it in which +the idea itself is not vividly illustrated and enforced upon the reader.</p> + +<p>But once more, this is no place for even a summary, much less for a +discussion, of the much discussed Carlylian "Gospel of Work"; of its +apostle's less vague, but also less disputable, condemnations of shams +and cants; or of the innumerable applications and uses to which he put +these doctrines. The important thing for our purpose is that these +applications took form in thirty volumes of the most brilliant, the most +stimulating, the most varied, the most original work in English +literature. The titles of this work have been given; to give here any +notion of their contents would take the chapter. Carlyle could be—as in +the <i>Cromwell</i>, where he sets himself and confines himself to the double +task of elucidating his hero's rugged or crafty obscurities of speech +and writing and of piecing them into a connected history, or where he +wrestles with the huge accumulation of documents about Frederick—as +practical as the driest of Dry-as-dusts. But others could equal, though +few surpass him, in this. Where he stands alone is in a fantastic +fertility of divagation and comment which is as much his own as the +clear, neat directness of Macaulay is his. Much of it is due to his +gospel, or temper, or whatever it is to be called, of earnest suasion to +work and scornful denunciation of cant; something to his wide reading +and apt faculty of illustration; but most to his style.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the early days of his unpopularity this style used to be abused with +heat or dismissed with scorn as mere falsetto, copied to a great extent +from Richter. It is certain that in Carlyle's very earliest works there +is small trace of it; and that he writes in a fashion not very +startlingly different from that of any well-read and well-taught author +of his time. And it is certain also that it was after his special +addiction to German studies that the new manner appeared. Yet it is very +far indeed from being copied from any single model, or even from any +single language; and a great deal that is in it is not German at all. +Something may even be traced to our own more fantastic writers in the +seventeenth century, such as Sir Thomas Urquhart in Scotland and Sir +Roger L'Estrange in England; much to a Scottish fervour and quaintness +blending itself with and utilising a wider range of reading than had +been usual with Scotsmen; most to the idiosyncrasy of the individual.</p> + +<p>Carlyle's style is not seldom spoken of as compact of tricks and +manners; and no doubt these are present in it. Yet a narrow inspection +will show that its effect is by no means due so much in reality as in +appearance to the retaining of capital letters, the violent breaches and +aposiopeses, the omission of pronouns and colourless parts of speech +generally, the coining of new words, and the introduction of unusual +forms. These things are often there, but they are not always; and even +when they are, there is something else much more important, much more +characteristic, but also much harder to put the finger on. There is in +Carlyle's fiercer and more serious passages a fiery glow of enthusiasm +or indignation, in his lighter ones a quaint felicity of unexpected +humour, in his expositions a vividness of presentment, in his arguments +a sledge-hammer force, all of which are not to be found together +anywhere else, and none of which is to be found anywhere in quite the +same form. And despite the savagery, both of his indignation and his +laughter, there is no greater master of tenderness. Wherever he is at +home, and he seldom wanders far from it, the weapon of Carlyle is like +none other,—it is the very sword of Goliath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p> + +<p>And this sword pierces to the joints and marrow as no other of the +second division of our authors of the nineteenth century proper pierces, +with the exception of that of Tennyson in verse. It is possible to +disagree with Carlyle intensely; perhaps it is not possible to agree +with him in any detailed manner, unless the agreer be somewhat destitute +of individual taste and judgment. But on his whole aspect and tendency, +reserving individual expressions, he is, as few are, great. The +<i>diathesis</i> is there—the general disposition towards noble and high +things. The expression is there—the capacity of putting what is felt +and meant in a manner always contemptuous of mediocrity, yet seldom +disdainful of common sense. To speak on the best things in an original +way, in a distinguished style, is the privilege of the elect in +literature; and none of those who were born within, or closely upon, the +beginning of the century has had these gifts in English as have the +authors of <i>The Lotos Eaters</i> and <i>Sartor Resartus</i>.</p> + +<p>Only one other writer of history during the century, himself the latest +to die of his generation except Mr. Ruskin, deserves, for the union of +historical and literary merit, to be placed, if not on a level with +Macaulay and Carlyle, yet not far below them; but a not inconsiderable +number of historians and biographers of value who distinguished +themselves about or since the middle of the century must be chronicled +more or less briefly. Two Scottish scholars of eminence, both in turn +Historiographers Royal of Scotland, John Hill Burton and William Forbes +Skene, were born in the same year, 1809. Burton, who died in 1881, +busied himself with the history of his country at large, beginning with +the period since the Revolution, and tackling the earlier and more +distinctively national time afterwards. He was not a very good writer, +but displayed very great industry and learning with a sound and +impartial judgment. Skene, on the other hand, was the greatest authority +of his time (he lived till 1892) on "Celtic Scotland," which is the +title of his principal book. In the same year (or in 1808) was born +Charles Merivale, afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, +and Dean of Ely, who, besides other work, established himself in the +same class of historians with Hallam and Milman, Thirlwall and Grote, by +his extensive <i>History of the Romans under the Empire</i>. On the whole, +Merivale (who died in 1894) ranks, both for historical and literary +gifts, somewhat below the other members of this remarkable group—a +position which is still a very honourable one.</p> + +<p>Shortly after these three was born Alexander Kinglake (1811-1891)—a man +of very remarkable talents, but something of a "terrible example" in +regard to the practice, which has already been noticed as characteristic +of the century, of devoting enormously long histories to special +subjects and points. Kinglake, who was a native of Somerset, an Eton and +Cambridge man, a barrister subsequently, for some years a Member of +Parliament, and a man of independent means, first distinguished himself +in letters by the very brilliant and popular book of travels in the East +called <i>Eothen</i> which was published in 1847. That there is something of +manner and trick about this is not to be denied; but it must be allowed +that the trick and manner have been followed, apparently with success, +in travel-writing for about half a century, while it cannot be fairly +said that Kinglake himself had any exact models, though he may have owed +something to Beckford and a little to Sterne. It is not very easy to say +whether Kinglake's literary reputation would have stood higher or lower +if he had written nothing else; but as a matter of fact, before many +years were over, he attempted a much more ambitious task in the <i>History +of the Crimean War</i>, the first two volumes of which appeared in 1863, +though the book was not finished till twenty years later. That this +history shows no small literary faculties no competent judge can deny. +The art of word-painting—a dubious and dangerous art—is pushed to +almost its furthest limits; the writer has a wonderful gift of combining +the minutest and most numerous details into an orderly and intelligible +whole; and the quality which the French untranslatably call <i>diable au +corps</i>, or, as we more pedantically say, "dæmonic energy," is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> present +everywhere. But the book is monstrously out of proportion,—a single +battle has something like an entire volume, and the events of some two +years occupy eight,—and, clear as the individual pictures are, the +panorama is of such endless length that the mind's eye retains no proper +notion of it. In the second place, the style, though brilliant, is hard +and brassy, full of points that are more suitable to the platform or the +newspaper than to the historic page,—not so much polished as varnished, +and after a short time intolerably fatiguing. In the third,—and this is +the gravest fault of all,—the author's private or patriotic likes or +dislikes pervade the whole performance and reduce too much of it to a +tissue of extravagant advocacy or depreciation, made more disgusting by +the repetition of catch phrases and pet labels somewhat after the manner +of Dickens. Sir Stratford Canning, "the great Eltchi," is one of +Kinglake's divinities, Lord Raglan another; and an acute and energetic, +but not quite heaven-born diplomatist, a most honest, modest, and in +difficult circumstances steadfast, if not always judicious soldier, +become, the one Marlborough in the council-chamber, the other +Marlborough in the field. On the other hand, for this or that reason, +Mr. Kinglake had taken a violent dislike to the Emperor Napoleon the +Third, and affected, as did some other English Liberals, to consider the +<i>coup d'état</i> as not merely a dubious piece of statecraft, but a hideous +and abominable crime. Consequently, he abused all those who took part in +it with tedious virulence, which has probably made not a few Englishmen +look on them with much more leniency than they deserved. In short, +Kinglake, with many of the qualities of the craftsman in an +extraordinary degree, was almost entirely deficient in those of the +artist. He served as a favourite example to Mr. Matthew Arnold of the +deficiency of the British literary temper in accomplishment and grace, +and it cannot be denied that Mr. Arnold's strictures were here justified +to an extent which was not always the case when he assumed the office of +censor.</p> + +<p>John Forster, who was born a year later than Kinglake, and died fifteen +years before him, was an industrious writer of biographies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> and +biographical history, the friend of a good many men of letters, editor +for many years of the <i>Examiner</i>, and secretary to the Lunacy +Commissioners. He paid particular attention to the period of the +Rebellion; his <i>Arrest of the Five Members</i> being his chief work, among +several devoted to it. He wrote a <i>Life of Goldsmith</i>, and began one of +Swift. In contemporary biography his chief performances were lives of +Landor and of Dickens, with both of whom he was extremely intimate. In +private life Forster had the character of a bumptious busybody, which +character indeed the two books just mentioned, even without the +anecdotes abundant in more recent books of biography, abundantly +establish. And towards the men of letters with whom he was intimate +(Carlyle and Browning may be added to Landor and Dickens) he seems to +have behaved like a Boswell-Podsnap, while in the latter half of the +character he no doubt sat to Dickens himself. But he was an +indefatigable literary inquirer, and seems, in a patronising kind of +way, to have been liberal enough of the result of his inquiries. He had +a real interest both in history and literature, and he wrote fairly +enough.</p> + +<p>One of the most curious figures among the historians of this century was +Henry Thomas Buckle, who was born near Blackheath in 1823, and privately +educated. He had ample means, and was fond of books; and in 1857 he +brought out the first volume (which was followed by a second in 1861) of +a <i>History of Civilisation</i>. He did not nearly complete—in fact he only +began—his scheme, in which the European part was ultimately intended to +be subordinate to the English, and he died of typhus at Damascus in May +1862. The book attained at once, and for some time kept, an +extraordinary popularity, which has been succeeded by a rather unjust +depreciation. Both are to be accounted for by the fact that it is in +many ways a book rather of the French than of the English type, and +displays in fuller measure than almost any of Buckle's contemporaries in +France itself, with the possible exception of Taine, could boast, the +frank and fearless, some would say the headlong and headstrong, habit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> +of generalisation—scorning particulars, or merely impressing into +service such as are useful to it and drumming the others out—on which +Frenchmen pride themselves, and for the lack of which they are apt to +pronounce English historians, and indeed English men of letters of all +kinds, plodding and unilluminated craftsmen rather than artists. In +Buckle's reflections on Spain and Scotland, he accounts for the whole +history of both countries and the whole character of both peoples by +local conditions in the first place, and by forms of civil and +ecclesiastical government. In respect to these last, his views were +crude Voltairianism; but perhaps this is the best and most +characteristic example of his method. He was extremely prejudiced; his +lack of solid disciplinary education made him unapt to understand the +true force and relative value of his facts and arguments; and as his +premises are for the most part capriciously selected facts cemented +together with an untempered mortar of theory, his actual conclusions are +rarely of much value. But his style is clear and vigorous; the +aggressive <i>raiding</i> character of his argument is agreeably stimulating, +and excellent to make his readers clear up their minds on the other +side; while the dread of over-generalisation, however healthy in itself, +has been so long a dominant force in English letters and philosophy that +a little excess the other way might be decidedly useful as an +alterative. The worst fault of Buckle was the Voltairianism above +referred to, causing or caused by, as is always the case, a deplorable +lack of taste, which is not confined to religious matters.</p> + +<p>Edward Augustus Freeman, who was a little younger than Buckle and +survived him for thirty years, had some points in common with the +historian of civilisation, though his education, interests, and tone in +reference to religion were wholly different. Mr. Freeman, who was not at +any public school but was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, very soon +devoted himself to the study of early English history, and secured a +durable position by his elaborate <i>History of the Norman Conquest</i> +(1867-76), which, even though the largest and most important, was only +one among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> scores of works, ending in an unfinished <i>History of Sicily</i>. +He was, when he died in 1892, Regius Professor of Modern History at +Oxford, and he had for many years been very influential in determining +the course of historical study. He was also, for many years of his life, +an active journalist, being especially known as a contributor to the +<i>Saturday Review</i>, and he sometimes took a very busy part in politics. +Mr. Freeman was a student of untiring energy, and will always deserve +honourable memory as the first historian who recognised and utilised the +value of architecture in supplying historical documents and +illustrations. His style was at times picturesque but too diffuse, and +disfigured by a habit of allusion as teasing as Macaulay's antithesis or +Kinglake's stock phrases. That he was apt to pronounce very strong +opinions on almost any question with which he dealt, was perhaps a less +drawback to his excellence as a historian than the violently +controversial tone in which he was wont to deal with those who happened +to hold opinions different from his own. Putting defects of manner +aside, there is no question that, for his own special period of English +history (the eleventh and twelfth centuries), Mr. Freeman did more than +any man had done before him, and as much as any man has done for any +other period; while in relation to his further subjects of study, his +work, though less trustworthy, is full of stimulus and of information.</p> + +<p>His chief pupil John Richard Green, who was born in 1837 and died of +consumption in 1883, was a native of Oxford, and was educated there at +Magdalen College School and Jesus College. Mr. Green, like Mr. Freeman, +was a frequent contributor to the <i>Saturday Review</i>, and did some +clerical duty in the east of London; but he is best known by his +historical work on English subjects, especially the famous <i>Short +History of the English People</i>, perhaps the most popular work of its +class and kind ever written. Mr. Green professed, on a principle which +had been growing in favour for some time, to extend the usual conception +of historical dealing to social, literary, and other matters. These, +however, had never as a fact been overlooked by historians, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> +popularity of the book was chiefly due to its judicious selection of +interesting facts, to the spirit of the narrative, and to the style, +based partly on Macaulay, but infused with a modernness which exactly +hit the taste of the readers of our time. Mr. Green afterwards expanded +this book somewhat; and his early death cut short a series of more +extended monographs, <i>The Making of England</i>, <i>The Conquest of England</i>, +etc., which would have enabled him to display the minute knowledge on +which his more summary treatment of the general theme had been based.</p> + +<p>Among historians to whom in larger space more extended notice than is +here possible would have to be given, perhaps the first place is due to +Philip Henry, sixth Earl Stanhope (1805-75), who (chiefly under the +title of Lord Mahon, which he bore before his succession to the earldom +in 1855) was an active historical writer of great diligence and +impartiality, and possessed of a fair though not very distinguished +style. The first notable work,—a <i>History of the War of the Succession +in Spain</i> (1832),—of Lord Stanhope (who was an Oxford man, took some +part in politics, and was a devoted Peelite) was reviewed by Macaulay, +and he wrote later several other and minor historical books. But his +reputation rests on his <i>History of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht to +the Peace of Versailles</i>, which occupied him for some twenty years, +finishing in 1854. Very much less known to the general, but of singular +ability, was William Johnson or Cory, who under the earlier name had +attracted considerable public attention as an Eton master and as author +of a small but remarkable volume of poems called <i>Ionica</i>. After his +retirement from Eton and the change of his name, Mr. Cory amused himself +with the composition of a <i>History of England</i>, or rather a long essay +thereon, which was very little read and falls completely out of the +ordinary conception of such a book, but is distinguished by an +exceptionally good and scholarly style, as well as by views and +expressions of great originality. Many others must pass wholly unnoticed +that we may finish this chapter with one capital name.</p> + +<p>One of the greatest historians of the century, except for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> one curious +and unfortunate defect, and (without any drawback) one of the greatest +writers of English prose during that century, was James Anthony Froude, +who was born at Dartington near Totnes in 1818, on 23rd April +(Shakespeare's birthday and St. George's Day), and died in 1894 at the +Molt near Salcombe in his native county. Mr. Froude (the youngest son of +the Archdeacon of Totnes and the brother of Richard Hurrell Froude who +played so remarkable a part in the Oxford Movement, and of William +Froude the distinguished naval engineer) was a Westminster boy, and went +to Oriel College, Oxford, afterwards obtaining a fellowship at Exeter. +Like his elder brother he engaged in the Tractarian Movement, and was +specially under the influence of Newman, taking orders in 1844. The +great convulsion, however, of Newman's secession sent him, not as it +sent some with Newman, but like Mark Pattison and a few more, into +scepticism if not exactly negation, on all religious matters. He put his +change of opinions (he had previously written under the pseudonym of +"Zeta" a novel called <i>Shadows of the Clouds</i>) into a book entitled <i>The +Nemesis of Faith</i>, published in 1849, resigned his fellowship, gave up +or lost (to his great good fortune) a post which had been offered him in +Tasmania, and betook himself to literature, being very much, except in +point of style, under the influence of Carlyle. He wrote for <i>Fraser</i>, +the <i>Westminster</i>, and other periodicals; but was not content with +fugitive compositions, and soon planned a <i>History of England from the +Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada</i>. The first volumes of this +appeared in 1856, and it was finished in 1869. Meanwhile Froude from +time to time collected his essays into volumes called <i>Short Studies</i>, +which contain some of his very best writing. His next large work was +<i>The English in Ireland</i>, which was published in three volumes +(1871-74). In 1874-75 Lord Carnarvon sent him on Government missions to +the Cape, an importation of a French practice into England which was not +very well justified by the particular instance. Between 1881 and 1884 he +was occupied as Carlyle's literary executor in issuing his biographical +remains.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> Later <i>Oceana</i> and <i>The English in the West Indies</i> contained +at once sketches of travel and political reflections; and in 1889 he +published an Irish historical romance, <i>The Two Chiefs of Dunboy</i>. He +was made Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in succession to +Mr. Freeman, and his two latest works, <i>Erasmus</i>, published just before, +and <i>English Seamen</i> some months after his death, contain in part the +results of the appointment.</p> + +<p>It is a vulgar observation that the natural element of some men appears +to be hot water. No English author of the century justifies this better +than Mr. Froude. His early change of faith attracted to him a very +considerable share of the obloquy which usually (and perhaps not so +unreasonably as is sometimes thought) attaches to violent revolutions of +opinion on important points. His <i>History</i> was no sooner published than +most acrimonious attacks were made upon it, and continued for many +years, by a school of historical students with the late Mr. Freeman at +their head. His Irish book, coinciding with the rise of "Home Rule" +sentiment in Ireland, brought upon him furious enmity from the Irish +Nationalist party and from those who, at first or by and by, sympathised +with them in England. His colonial visits and criticisms not merely +attracted to him the animosity of all those Englishmen who espoused the +politics of non-intervention and non-aggrandisement, but aroused lively +irritation in the Colonies themselves. About his discharge of his duties +as Carlyle's executor, a perfect tempest of indignation arose; it being +alleged that he had either carelessly, or through bad taste, or with +deliberate treachery, revealed his dead friend's and master's weaknesses +and domestic troubles to the public view.</p> + +<p>With some of the causes of this odium we are fortunately here dispensed +from dealing. Theological and political matters, in so far as they are +controversial, are altogether outside of our scope. The question of the +dealing with Carlyle's "Remains" is one rather of ethics than of +literature proper, and it is perhaps sufficient to make, in reference to +it, the warning observation that Lockhart, who is now considered by +almost all competent critics as a very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> pattern of the union of fidelity +and good taste towards both his subject and his readers, was accused, at +the appearance of his book, of treachery towards Scott.</p> + +<p>But it must be confessed that if Mr. Froude's critics were unfair (and +they certainly were) he himself gave only too abundant opening to fair +criticism. That his first great book (not perhaps any of his others) was +planned on an unduly large scale, and indulged in far too extensive +dissertation, divagation, and so forth, was rather the fault of his time +than of himself. Grote and Macaulay had obtained, the first +considerable, the latter immense popularity by similar prolixity; and +Carlyle was about, in the <i>Frederick</i>, to follow the fashion. But +whereas all these three, according to the information open to them, were +and are among the most painfully laborious researchers and, with a fair +allowance, the most faithful recorders among historians, Mr. Froude +displayed an attention to accuracy which his warmest admirers must allow +to be sadly, and which enemies asserted to be scandalously insufficient. +He has been called by well-affected critics "congenitally inaccurate," +and there is warrant for it. Nor did any one of his three great models +come short of him in partiality, in advocacy, in the determination to +make the reader accept his own view first of all.</p> + +<p>He was, in the earlier part of his career at any rate, a very poor man, +whereas Macaulay was in easy, and Grote in affluent circumstances, and +he had not Carlyle's Scotch thrift. But the carelessness of his dealing +with documents had more in it than lack of pence to purchase assistance, +or even than lack of dogged resolve to do the drudgery himself. His +enemies of course asserted, or hinted, that the added cause was +dishonesty at the worst, indifference to truth at the best. As far as +dishonesty goes they may be summarily non-suited. The present writer +once detected, in a preface of Mr. Froude's to a book with which the +introducer was thoroughly in sympathy, repeated errors of quotation or +allusion which actually weakened Mr. Froude's own argument—cases where +he made his own case<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> worse by miscitation. To the very last, in his +<i>Erasmus</i> itself, which he had prepared at some pains for the press, his +work would always abound in the most astonishing slips of memory, +oversights of fact, hastinesses of statement. There is probably no +historian of anything like his calibre in the whole history of +literature who is so dangerous to trust for mere matters of fact, who +gives such bad books of reference, who is so little to be read with +implicit confidence in detail. Had his critics confined themselves to +pointing this out, and done him justice in his other and real merits, +little fault could have been found with them. But it is impossible not +to see that these merits were, at least in some cases, part of his +crime, in the eyes of those who did not like him; in others were of a +kind which their natural abilities did not qualify them to detect.</p> + +<p>The first of these merits—the least it may be in some eyes, not so in +others—was a steadfast, intense, fiery patriotism, which may remind us +of that which Macaulay in a famous passage has ascribed to Chatham in +modern times and to Demosthenes of old. This quality differed as much +from the flowery and conventional rhetoric not uncommon in writers of +some foreign nations, as from the smug self-satisfaction which was so +frequent in English speakers and authors of his own earlier time. No one +probably of Mr. Froude's day was less blind to English faults than he +was; no one more thoroughly grasped and more ardently admired the +greatness of England, or more steadfastly did his utmost in his own +vocation to keep her great.</p> + +<p>His second excellence—an excellence still contested and in a way +contestable, but less subject than the first to personal and particular +opinion—was his command of the historic grasp, his share of the +historic sense. I have seen these terms referred to as if they were +chatter or claptrap; while the qualities which they denote are very +often confounded with qualities which, sometimes found in connection +with them, may exist without either. The historic sense may be roughly +described as the power of seizing, and so of portraying, a historic +character, incident, or period as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> it were alive not dead; in such a +manner that the fit reader, whether he is convinced or not that the +things ever did happen, sees that they might and probably must have +happened. Some of the most estimable and excellent of historians have +not had even a glimmering of this sense: they have at best laboriously +assembled the materials out of which, sooner or later, some one with the +sense will make a live history. But Thucydides and Herodotus had it; +Tacitus had it, and even Sallust; it betrays itself in the most artless +fashion in Villehardouin and Joinville, less artlessly in Comines; +Clarendon had it; Gibbon had it; Carlyle had it as none has had it +before or since. And Mr. Froude had it; not much less though more +fitfully than Carlyle. It is not in the least necessary to agree with +his views; it is possible to regard his facts with the most anxious +suspicion. You may think that the case made out for King Henry is pretty +weak, and the case made out against Queen Mary is much weaker. But Mr. +Froude is among the rare Deucalions of historic literature: he cannot +cast a stone but it becomes alive.</p> + +<p>Thirdly, and still rising in the scale of incontestability, though even +so contested, I believe, by some, is the merit of style. I have +sometimes doubted whether Mr. Froude at his best has any superior among +the prose writers of the last half of this century. His is not a +catching style; and in particular it does not perhaps impress itself +upon green tastes. It has neither the popular and slightly brusque +appeal of Macaulay or Kinglake, nor the unique magnificence of Mr. +Ruskin, nor the fretted and iridescent delicacy of some other writers. +It must be frankly confessed that, the bulk of his work being very great +and his industry not being untiring, it is unequal, and sometimes not +above (it is never below) good journey-work. But at its best it is of a +simply wonderful attraction—simply in the pure sense, for it is never +very ornate, and does not proceed in point of "tricks" much beyond the +best varieties of the latest Georgian form. That strange quality of +"liveliness" which has been noticed in reference to its author's view of +history, animates it throughout. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> never flat; never merely +popular; never merely scholarly; never merely "precious" and eccentric. +And at its very best it is excelled by no style in this century, and +approached by few in this or any other, as a perfect harmony of +unpretentious music, adjusted to the matter that it conveys, and +lingering on the ear that it reaches.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—As examples of the almost enforced omissions referred +to in the text may be mentioned earlier Archdeacon Coxe, the +biographer of Marlborough and the historian of the House of +Austria; later, Finlay (1799-1875), the valiant successor of +Gibbon, and the chronicler of the obscure and thankless +fortunes of the country called Greece, after it had ceased +to be living. Professor Sir J. R. Seeley, Kingsley's +successor at Cambridge (1834-94), equally distinguished in +his professional business, and as a lay theologian in a +sense rather extra-orthodox than unorthodox; and Sir John +Stirling-Maxwell, no mean historian either in the general +sense or in the special department of Art. It is open to any +one to contend that each and all of these as well deserve +notice as not a few dealt with above; yet if they were +admitted others still could hardly be excluded.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD</h3> + + +<p>The second period of English poetry in the nineteenth century displays a +variety and abundance of poetical accomplishment which must rank it very +little below either its immediate predecessor, or even the great +so-called Elizabethan era. But it is distinguished from both these +periods, and, indeed, from almost all others by the extraordinary +predominance of a single poet in excellence, in influence, and in +duration. There is probably no other instance anywhere of a poet who for +more than sixty years wrote better poetry than any one of his +contemporaries who were not very old men when he began, and for exactly +fifty of those years was recognised by the best judges as the chief poet +of his country if not of his time.</p> + +<p>Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where his +father, a member of a good county family, was rector. He was the third +son, and his two elder brothers, Frederick and Charles, both possessed +considerable poetical gifts, though it cannot be said that the <i>Poems by +Two Brothers</i> (it seems that it should really have been "three"), which +appeared in 1826, display much of this or anything whatever of Alfred's +subsequent charm. From the Grammar School of Louth the poet went to +Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was contemporary, and in most cases +intimate, with an unusually distinguished set of undergraduates, many of +whom afterwards figured in the famous Sterling Club (see chapter iv). He +also did what not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> many great future poets have done, he obtained the +Chancellor's prize for English verse with a poem on "Timbuctoo," where +again his special note is almost, though perhaps not quite, absent: it +appears faintly and fitfully in another juvenile poem not formally +published till long afterwards, "The Lover's Tale."</p> + +<p>It was in 1830 that he made his first substantive appearance with a book +of <i>Poems</i>. This volume was afterwards subjected to a severe handling by +the poet in the way of revision and omission—processes which through +life he continued with such perseverance and rigour, that the final +critical edition of him, when it appears, will be one of the most +complicated of the kind in English literature. So did he also with +another which appeared two years (or a little more) later. It is not +therefore quite just to judge the criticism which these books received, +by the present condition of the poems which figured in them; for though +most of the beauties were there then, they were accompanied by many +defects which are not there now. Criticism, however, was undoubtedly +unfavourable, and even unfair. Although Tennyson was not, either at this +time or at any other, a party politician, the two great Tory +periodicals, the <i>Quarterly Review</i> and <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, were +still animated, the former by a dislike to the Romantic school in +poetry, the latter by a dislike to "Cockneys"—though how anybody could +have discovered a Cockney in Tennyson may seem marvellous enough. +Accordingly Lockhart in the one and Wilson in the other fell foul +(though in Wilson's case, at least, not indiscriminately) of work which +beyond all question offered very numerous and very convenient handles, +in ways which will be mentioned presently, to merely carping criticism. +Some attempts at reply were made by the poet's friends, notably A. H. +Hallam, but the public did not take to him, and even well-affected and +competent older judges, such as Coleridge, expressed very qualified +admiration.</p> + +<p>But during the next decade, in which he gave himself up silently to the +task of perfecting his art, attempting no profession or literary +occupation of profit, and living (partly in London, partly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> in the +country at High Beach and elsewhere) with extreme simplicity and economy +on his own small means and a pension which was provided for him, the +leaven of an almost fanatical admiration was spreading among readers of +his own age or a little younger. And his next publication, a new issue +of <i>Poems</i> in 1842—containing the final selection and revision of the +others already mentioned, and a large reinforcement of admirable +work—was received, not indeed with the popular avidity which had been +displayed towards Scott and Byron in the generation before, and which +revived in the case of his own later work, but with an immense enjoyment +by almost all true lovers of poetry. Even Wordsworth, the most +ungracious critic of other men's work in his own art of whom the history +of literature gives record, acknowledged Tennyson in the amplest terms.</p> + +<p>This was, as has been hinted above, exactly fifty years before his +death, and though in the first of these five decades the pudding if not +the praise was still rather scanty, his reputation waxed steadily and +never waned. To keep for the present to chronicle in biography and +bibliography, he published in 1847 the exquisite "medley" of <i>The +Princess</i>, his first attempt at a poem of any length. 1850 was a great +year in his career, for in it he published the collection of elegiacs on +his friend Arthur Hallam, in which some have seen his most perfect work, +and he became Poet Laureate. Three years later he bought a house at +Farringford, near Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, which was for the +rest of his life his occasional and, until 1870 (when to avoid intrusion +he built himself another at Aldworth near Haslemere), his main house. +His poetry now was beginning to bring in some profit, the editions of it +multiplying every year; and during the last thirty years of his life, if +not more, he was probably at least as richly provided with mere gold as +any poet has ever been. He was, however, never seduced into hasty +writing; and he never gave himself to any other occupation save poetry, +while during his entire life he was a hater of what is commonly called +society. In 1855 there appeared <i>Maud</i>, the reception of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> seemed +at first something of a relapse in welcome, which was in its first form +open to some criticism, and which he touched up to one of the finest as +a whole, as it was in parts one of the most passionate and melodious of +his works. But the <i>Idylls of the King</i>, the first and best instalment +of which appeared in 1858, completely revived even his popular vogue, +and made him indeed popular as no poet had been since Byron. It was said +at the time that 17,000 copies of <i>Enoch Arden</i>, his next volume (1864), +were sold on the morning of publication.</p> + +<p>For the rest of his life his issues were pretty frequent, though the +individual volumes were never large. A series of dramas beginning with +<i>Queen Mary</i> in 1875, and continuing through <i>Harold</i>, <i>The Falcon</i>, +<i>The Cup</i>, the unlucky <i>Promise of May</i>, <i>Becket</i>, and <i>The Foresters</i>, +though fine enough for any other man, could be better spared by his +critical admirers than any other portion of his works. But the volumes +of poems proper, which appeared between 1864 and his death, <i>Lucretius</i>, +<i>Tiresias</i>, the successive instalments of the <i>Idylls</i>, <i>Locksley Hall +Sixty Years After</i>, <i>Demeter</i>, <i>The Death of [OE]none</i>, and perhaps +above all the splendid <i>Ballads</i> of 1880, never failed to contain with +matter necessarily of varying excellence things altogether +incomparable—one of the last, the finest and fortunately also the most +popular, being the famous "Crossing the Bar," which appeared in his +penultimate, but last not posthumous, volume in 1889. He died at +Aldworth in October 1892, and was buried with an unequalled solemnity in +Westminster Abbey.</p> + +<p>In the case of no English poet is it more important and interesting than +in the case of Tennyson, considering the excellence of his own work in +the first place, and the altogether unparalleled extent of his influence +in the second, to trace the nature and character of his poetical +quality. Nor is this difficult, though strange to say it has not always +been done. In his very earliest work, so soon as this quality appeared +at all, it is to be discovered side by side with other things which are +not native. Undoubtedly the tradition which, in the general filiation +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> English poetry, connects Tennyson with Keats, is not wholly wrong. +In many of the weaker things, and not a few of the better, of the +volumes of 1830 and 1832, there is to be seen both the wonderful music +which Keats attained by a combination of the classical and romantic +appeals—the appeals which in his own case are singly exhibited at their +best in the "Grecian Urn" and in "La Belle Dame sans Merci,"—and the +sometimes faulty and illegitimate means which Keats took to produce this +effect. But to any one who compares rationally (and it may be permitted +to remark parenthetically, that nothing seems to be more misunderstood +than the comparative point of view) the difference between Keats and +Tennyson will emerge at once. Both being great poets, there is the +inexplicable in both; while as Keats undoubtedly died before he had any +chance of applying to his own powers and products the unequalled process +of clarifying and self-criticism which went on with Tennyson in the ten +years' silence between the second of the volumes just mentioned and his +issue of 1842, it is impossible to say that Keats himself could not have +done something similar. Nothing that he ever did is worse in point of +"gush," of undisciplined fluency, of mistakes in point of taste and of +other defects than the notorious piece about "the darling little room," +on which the future Poet Laureate's critics were so justly severe; while +in the single point of passion it is very doubtful whether Tennyson ever +approached the author of "La Belle Dame sans Merci." There was not +perhaps much to choose between the two in their natural power of +associating pictorial with musical expression; while both had that gift +of simple humanity, of plain honest healthy understanding of common +things, the absence of which gives to Shelley—in some ways a greater +poet than either of them—a certain unearthliness and unreality.</p> + +<p>But Tennyson had from the first a wider range of interest and capacity +than Keats, and he had the enormous advantage of thorough and regular +literary training. No poet ever improved his own work as Tennyson did; +nor has any, while never allowing his genius to be daunted by +self-comparison with his predecessors,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> had such a faculty of availing +himself of what they had done without copying, of seeing what they had +not done and supplying the gap himself. And besides this he had the +inexplicable, the incommunicable, the unique, the personal gift. In the +very earliest things, in "Claribel," in "Mariana," in the "Recollections +of the Arabian Nights," in the "Ode to Memory," in the "Dirge," in the +"Dying Swan," in "Oriana," there is even to those who were born long +after they were written, even to those who have for years sedulously +compared them with almost all things before and with all things since, +the unmistakable note of the new, of the new that never can be old. It +is there in the rhythms, it is there in the phrase. The poet may take +things that had previously existed—the Keatsian and Shelleian lyric, +the Wordsworthian attitude to Nature, the Miltonic blank verse; but +inevitably, invariably, each under his hands becomes different, becomes +individual and original. The result cannot be accounted for by +mannerisms, from which at no time was Tennyson free, and after the +thousands and ten thousands of imitations which have been seen since, it +stands out untouched, unrivalled.</p> + +<p>In the next instalment this quality of intense poetical individuality +strengthened and deepened. As we read "The Two Voices," "[OE]none," "The +Palace of Art," "The Lotos Eaters," "A Dream of Fair Women," it becomes +almost incomprehensible how any one who ever read them even in forms +less perfect than those that we possess, should have mistaken their +incomparable excellence. But the student of literary history knows +better. He knows that nearly always the poet has to create his audience, +that he sings before the dawn of the day in which he is to be sovereign.</p> + +<p>And then with the 1842 book came practically the completion of Tennyson +in the sense of the indication of his powers. Edward FitzGerald, as is +elsewhere noticed, thought, or at least said, that everything his friend +had done after this was more or less a declension. This is a common and +not an ignoble Fallacy of Companionship—the delusion of those who have +hailed and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> accompanied a poet or a prophet in his early struggles. It +is not even wholly a fallacy, inasmuch as, in the case of the class of +poets to which Tennyson belongs, there does come a time when the rest of +the products of their genius is so to speak <i>applied</i>: it ceases to +reveal them in new aspects. They do not repeat themselves; but they +chiefly vary. Now came the magnificent "Morte D'Arthur" (the "Idylls of +the King" in microcosm, with all their merits and none of their +defects), "St. Simeon Stylites," "Ulysses," "Locksley Hall," "St. Agnes' +Eve," and other exquisite things; while to this period, as the +subsequent arrangement shows, belong not a few, such as "Tithonus" and +"The Voyage," which were not actually published till later, and in which +keen observers at the time of their publication detected as it were an +older ring, a more genuine and unblended vintage.</p> + +<p>It is not improper therefore to break off here for a moment and to +endeavour to state—leaving out the graces that can never be stated, and +are more important than all the others—the points in which this new +excellence of Tennyson differed from the excellences of his forerunners. +One of them, not the least important, but the least truly original, +because something distantly resembling it had been seen before in Keats +and Shelley, is the combined application of pictorial and musical +handling. Not, of course, that all poets had not endeavoured to depict +their subjects vividly and to arrange the picture in a melodious frame +of sound, not that the best of them had not also endeavoured to convey, +if it were possible, the colours into the sense, the sense into the +music. But partly as a result of the natural development and acquired +practice of the language, partly for the very reason that the arts both +of painting and music had themselves made independent progress, most of +all, perhaps, because Tennyson was the first poet in English of the very +greatest genius who dared not to attempt work on the great scale, but +put into short pieces (admitting, of course, of infinite formal variety) +what most of his forerunners would have spun into long poems—the result +here is, as a rule, far in advance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> of those forerunners in this +respect, and as an exception on a level with the very best of their +exceptions. With Shakespeare there is no comparison; Shakespeare can +send to every poet an "O of Giotto" in his own style to which that poet +must bow. But of others only Spenser had hitherto drawn such pictures as +those of the "Palace" and the "Dream," and Spenser had done them in far +less terse fashion than Tennyson. Only Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, +perhaps Beddoes, and a few Elizabethans had poured into the veins of +language the ineffable musical throb of a score of pieces from +"Claribel" to "Break! Break!" and not one of them had done it in quite +the same way. Only Milton, with Thomson as a far distant second, had +impressed upon non-dramatic blank verse such a swell and surge as that +of "[OE]none." And about all these different kinds and others there +clung and rang a peculiar dreamy slow music which was heard for the +first time, and which has never been reproduced,—a music which in "The +Lotos Eaters," impossible as it might have seemed, adds a new charm +after the <i>Faerie Queen</i>, after the <i>Castle of Indolence</i>, after the +<i>Revolt of Islam</i> to the Spenserian stanza, which makes the stately +verses of the "Palace" and the "Dream" tremble and cry with melodious +emotion, and which accomplishes the miracle of the poet's own dying swan +in a hundred other poems all "flooded over with eddying song."</p> + +<p>But there is something more to be noted still. The poet had caught and +was utilising the spirit of his time in two ways, one of them almost +entirely new. That he constantly sang the subjective view of nature may +be set down to the fact that he came after Wordsworth, though the fact +that he sang it without the Wordsworthian dryness and dulness must be +set down to his own credit. But in that sense of the history of former +times which is perhaps the chief glory of the nineteenth century in +matters of thought he had been anticipated by no one. He might not have +attained it without Scott and Byron, but his expression of it was hardly +conditioned in the very slightest degree by the expression either of +Byron or of Scott. They were not in strictness men of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> nineteenth +century; he was, and he represented the very best features of his time +in attending, from its point of view mainly, to the features of better +times.</p> + +<p>But if FitzGerald's dictum were taken in the sense that Tennyson's +poetical career might, with advantage or with anything but the greatest +possible loss, have been closed in 1842, then certainly it would be +something more than a crotchet. Nothing perhaps appeared subsequently +(with unimportant exceptions such as the plays, and as the dialect +pieces of which the "Northern Farmer" was the first and best) the +possibility of which could not have been divined from the earlier work. +The tree had blossomed; it had almost, to keep up the metaphor, set; but +by far the greater part of the fruit was yet to ripen, and very much of +it was to be of quality not inferior, of quantity far greater, than +anything that had yet been given.</p> + +<p><i>The Princess</i> and <i>In Memoriam</i>, the two first-fruits of this later +crop, were certainly not the least important. Indeed they may be said to +have shown for the first time that the poet was capable of producing, in +lighter and severer styles respectively, work not limited to short +flights and exemplifying what (perhaps mistakenly) is called "thought," +as well as style and feeling, colour and music. <i>The Princess</i> is +undoubtedly Tennyson's greatest effort, if not exactly in comedy, in a +vein verging towards the comic—a side on which he was not so well +equipped for offence or for defence as on the other. But it is a +masterpiece. Exquisite as its author's verse always is, it was never +more exquisite than here, whether in blank verse or in the (superadded) +lyrics, while none of his deliberately arranged plays contains +characters half so good as those of the Princess herself, of Lady +Blanche and Lady Psyche, of Cyril, of the two Kings, and even of one or +two others. And that unequalled dream-faculty of his, which has been +more than once glanced at, enabled him to carry off whatever was +fantastical in the conception with almost unparalleled felicity. It may +or may not be agreed that the question of the equality of the sexes is +one of the distinguishing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> questions of this century; and some of those +who would give it that position may or may not maintain, if they think +it worth while, that it is treated here too lightly, while their +opponents may wish that it had been treated more lightly still. But this +very difference will point the unbiassed critic to the same conclusion, +that Tennyson has hit the golden mean; while that, whatever he has hit +or missed in subject, the verse of his essay is golden, no one who is +competent will doubt. Such lyrics as "The splendour falls" and "Tears, +idle tears," such blank verse as that of the closing passage, would +raise to the topmost heights of poetry whatever subject it was spent +upon.</p> + +<p><i>In Memoriam</i> attacked two subjects in the main,—the one perennial, the +other of the time,—just as <i>The Princess</i> had done. The perennial, +which is often but another, if not an exclusive, word for the poetical, +was in the first case aspirant and happy love, in the other mourning +friendship. The ephemeral was, in the latter, the sort of half doubting +religiosity which has occupied so much of the thought of our day. On +this latter point, as on the other just mentioned and on most beside, +the attitude of Tennyson was "Liberal-Conservatism" (if political slang +may be generalised), inclining always to the Conservative rather than to +the Liberal side, but giving Liberalism a sufficient footing and +hearing. Here again opinions may be divided; and here again those who +think that in poetry the mere fancies of the moment are nothing may be +disposed to pay little attention to the particular fancies which have +occupied the poet. But here again the manner, as always with real poets, +carries off, dissolves, annihilates the special matter for poetical +readers. Tennyson had here taken (not invented) a remarkable and not +frequently used stanza, the iambic dimeter quatrain with the rhymes not +alternated, but arranged <i>a b b a</i>. It is probable that if a +well-instructed critic had been asked beforehand what would be the +effect of this employed with a certain monotone of temper and subject in +a book of some three thousand lines or so, he would have shaken his head +and hinted that the substantive would probably justify<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> its adjective +and the monotone become monotonous. And if he had been really a deacon +in his craft he would have added: "But to a poet there is nothing +impossible." The difficulty was no impossibility to Tennyson. He has not +only, in the rather more than six score poems of this wonderful book, +adjusted his medium to a wide range of subjects, all themselves adjusted +to the general theme, but he has achieved that poetic miracle, the +communication to the same metre and to no very different scheme of +phrase of an infinite variety of interior movement. There is scarcely a +bad line in <i>In Memoriam</i>; there are few lines that do not contain a +noble thought, a passionate sentiment, a beautiful picture; but there is +nothing greater about it than the way in which, side by side with the +prevailing undertone of the stanza, the individual pieces vary the music +and accompany it, so to speak, in duet with a particular melody. It must +have been already obvious to good ears that no greater master of English +harmonics—perhaps that none so great—had ever lived; but <i>In Memoriam</i> +set the fact finally and irrevocably on record.</p> + +<p><i>Maud</i> was the third, and perhaps it may be said to have been, on a +great scale, the last experiment in thus combining the temporal with the +eternal. It was also probably the weakest as a whole, though the poet +had never done more poetical things than the passage beginning, "Cold +and clear-cut face"; than the prothalamium, never to have its due +sequel, "I have led her home"; than the incomparable and +never-to-be-hackneyed "Come into the garden"; or than the best of all, +"Oh! that 'twere possible." It may even be contended that if it were +ever allowable to put the finger down and say, "Here is the highest," +these, and not the best things of the 1842 volumes, are the absolute +summit of the poet's effort, the point which, though he was often near +it, he never again quite reached. But the piece, as a whole, is +certainly less of a success, less smooth and finished as it comes from +its own lathe, than either <i>The Princess</i> or <i>In Memoriam</i>. It looks too +like an essay in competition with the "Spasmodic School" of its own day; +it drags in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> merely casual things—adulteration, popular politics, and +ephemera of all kinds—too assiduously, and its characterisations are +not happy. There is a tradition that the poet met a critic, and a very +accomplished critic too, who was one of his own oldest friends, and +said, "What do you mean by calling <i>Maud</i> vulgar?" "I didn't," said the +critic, quite truly. "No, but you meant it," growled Tennyson. And there +was something of a confession in the growl.</p> + +<p>But these slight relapses (and, after all, what sort of a relapse is it +which gives us not merely the incomparable things referred to, but +others hardly less exquisite?) never, in the great writers, serve as +anything but retreats before an advance; and certainly, in a sense, the +<i>Idylls of the King</i> were an advance, though not, perhaps, in all +senses. No total so brilliant, so varied within a certain general unity, +so perfectly polished in style, so cunningly adjusted to meet the +popular without disappointing the critical ear, had ever come from +Tennyson's pen as the first quartet of Idylls, <i>Enid</i>, <i>Vivien</i>, +<i>Elaine</i>, and <i>Guinevere</i>. No such book of English blank verse, with the +doubtful exception of the <i>Seasons</i>, had been seen since Milton. Nothing +more adroitly selected than the contrast of the four special pieces—a +contrast lost to those who only read them in the completed +Arthuriad—has been often attempted or ever achieved. It is true that +the inner faithful, the sacred band of Tennysonians, old and young, +grumbled a little that polish had been almost too much attended to; that +there was a certain hardish mannerism, glittering but cold, about the +style; that there was noticeable a certain compromise in the appeal, a +certain trimming of the sail to the popular breeze. These criticisms +were not entirely without foundation, and they were more justified than +their authors could know by the later instalments of the poem, which, +the latest not published till twenty-seven years afterwards, rounded it +off to its present bulk of twelve books, fifteen separate pieces, and +over ten thousand lines. Another, more pedantic in appearance, but not +entirely destitute of weight, was that which urged that in handling the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> +Arthurian story the author had, so to speak, "bastardised it," and had +given neither mediæval nor modern sentiment or colouring, but a sort of +amalgamation of both. Yet the charm of the thing was so great, and the +separate passages were so consummate, that even critics were loth to +quarrel with such a gift.</p> + +<p>The later instalments of the poem—some of them, as has been said, very +much later, but still so closely connected as to be best noticed +here—were of somewhat less even excellence. It was an inevitable, but +certainly an unfortunate thing, that the poet republished the +magnificent early fragment above noticed in a setting which, fine as it +would have been for any one else, was inferior to this work of the very +best time. Some of the lighter passages, as in <i>Gareth and Lynette</i>, +showed less grace than their forerunners in <i>The Princess</i>; and in +<i>Pelleas and Ettarre</i> and <i>Balin and Balan</i> the poet sometimes seemed to +be attempting alien moods which younger poets than himself had made +their own. But the best passages of some of these later Idylls, notably +those of <i>The Holy Grail</i> and <i>The Last Tournament</i>, were among the +finest, not merely of the book, but of the poet. Nowhere has he caught +the real, the best, spirit of the legends he followed more happily; +nowhere has he written more magnificent verse than in Percivale's +account of his constantly baffled quest and of Lancelot's visit to the +"enchanted towers of Carbonek."</p> + +<p>Far earlier than these, <i>Enoch Arden</i> and its companion poems were +something more of a return to the scheme of the earlier books—no very +long single composition, but a medley of blank verse pieces and lyrics, +the former partly expansions of the scheme of the earlier "English +Idyll," the latter various and generally beautiful; one or two, such as +"In the Valley of Cauterets," of the most beautiful. Here, too, were +some interesting translations, with the dialect pieces above referred +to; and all the later volumes, except those containing the plays, +preserved this mixed manner. Their contents are too numerous for many to +be mentioned here. Only in the <i>Ballads and Other Poems</i> was something +like a distinctly new note struck in the two splendid patriotic pieces +on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> "The Last Fight of the <i>Revenge</i>" and the "Defence of Lucknow," +which, even more than the poet's earlier "Charge of the Light Brigade," +deserve the title of the best English war-songs since Campbell; in +"Rizpah," an idyll of a sterner and more tragic kind than anything he +had previously attempted; and in the "Voyage of Maeldune," this last in +some respects the most interesting of the whole. For the marvellous +power which great poets possess of melting, of "founding," so to speak, +minor styles and kinds of poetry to their own image, while not losing a +certain character of the original, has never been shown better than +here. Attention had, even before the date of this poem, been drawn to +the peculiar character of early Celtic poetry,—-not the adulterated +style of Ossian, but the genuine method of the old Irish singers. And, +since, a whole band of young and very clever writers have set +themselves, with a mixture of political and poetical enthusiasm, the +task of reviving these notes if possible. They have rarely succeeded in +getting very close to them without mere archaic pastiche. Tennyson in +this poem carried away the whole genius of the Celtic legend, infused it +into his own verse, branded it with his own seal, and yet left the +character of the vintage as unmistakable as if he had been an Irishman +of the tenth century, instead of an Englishman of the nineteenth. And +indeed there are no times, or countries, or languages in the kingdom of +poetry.</p> + +<p>A very little more may, perhaps, still be said about this great +poet,—great in the character and variety of his accomplishment, in the +volume of it, and, above all, in the extraordinarily sustained quality +of his genius and the length of time during which it dominated and +pervaded the literature of his country. The influences of Pope and +Dryden were weak in force and merely external in effect, the influence +of Byron was short-lived, that of Wordsworth was partial and limited, in +comparison with the influence of Tennyson. Of this, as of a mere +historical fact, there can be no dispute among those who care to inform +themselves of the facts and to consider them coolly. Of his intrinsic +merit, as opposed to his influential importance, it is not of course<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> +possible to speak so peremptorily. Among the great volume of more or +less unfavourable criticism which such a career was sure to call forth, +two notes perhaps were the most dominant, the most constant, and (even +fervent admirers may admit) the least unjust. He was accused of a +somewhat excessive prettiness, a sort of dandyism and coquetry in form, +and of a certain want of profundity in matter. The last charge is the +more unprofitable in discussion, for it turns mainly on vast and vague +questions of previous definition. "What is thought?" "What is +profundity?" a by no means jesting demurrer may object, and he will not +soon be cleared out of the way. And it will perhaps seem to some that +what is called Tennyson's lack of profundity consists only in a +disinclination on his part to indulge in what the Germans call the +<i>Schwätzerei</i>, the endless, aimless talkee-talkee about "thoughtful" +things in which the nineteenth century has indulged beyond the record of +any since what used to be called the Dark Ages. On the real "great +questions" Tennyson was not loth to speak, and spoke gravely enough; +even to the ephemeralities, as we have said, he paid rather too much +than too little attention. But he did not go into the ins and outs of +them as some of his contemporaries did, and as other contemporaries +thought fitting. He usually neglected the negligible; and perhaps it +would not hurt him with posterity if he had neglected it a little more, +though it hurt him a little with contemporaries that he neglected it as +much as he did.</p> + +<p>The charge of prettiness is to be less completely ruled out; though it +shows even greater mistake in those who do more than touch very lightly +on it. In the earliest forms of the earlier poems not seldom, and +occasionally in even the latest forms of the later, the exquisiteness of +the poet's touch in music and in painting, in fancy and in form, did +sometimes pass into something like finicalness, into what is called in +another language <i>mignardise</i>. But this was only the necessary, and, +after he was out of his apprenticeship, the minimised effect of his +great poetical quality—that very quality of exquisiteness in form, in +fancy, in painting, and in music which has just been stated. We have, it +must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> be admitted, had greater poets than Tennyson. Shakespeare, +Spenser, Milton, Shelley, undoubtedly deserve this preference to him; +Wordsworth and Keats may deserve it. But we have had none so uniformly, +and over such a large mass of work, exquisite. In the lighter fantastic +veins he may sometimes be a little unsure in touch and taste; in satire +and argument a little heavy, a little empty, a little rhetorical; in +domestic and ethical subjects a little tame. But his handlings of these +things form a very small part of his work. And in the rest none of all +these faults appears, and their absence is due to the fact that nothing +interferes with the exquisite perfection of the form. Some faults have +been found with Tennyson's rhymes, though this is generally +hypercriticism; and in his later years he was a little too apt to +accumulate tribrachs in his blank verse, a result of a mistaken sense of +the true fact that he was better at slow rhythms than at quick, and of +an attempt to cheat nature. But in all other respects his versification +is by far the most perfect of any English poet, and results in a harmony +positively incomparable. So also his colour and outline in conveying the +visual image are based on a study of natural fact and a practice in +transferring it to words which are equally beyond comparison. Take any +one of a myriad of lines of Tennyson, and the mere arrangement of vowels +and consonants will be a delight to the ear; let any one of a thousand +of his descriptions body itself before the eye, and the picture will be +like the things seen in a dream, but firmer and clearer.</p> + +<p>Although, as has been said, the popularity of Lord Tennyson itself was +not a plant of very rapid growth, and though but a short time before his +position was undisputed it was admitted only by a minority, imposing in +quality but far from strong in mere numbers, his chief rival during the +latter part of their joint lives was vastly slower in gaining the public +ear. It is not quite pleasant to think that the well-merited but +comparatively accidental distinction of the Laureateship perhaps did +more even for Tennyson in this respect than the intrinsic value of his +work. Robert Browning had no such aid, his verse was even more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> +abhorrent than Tennyson's to the tradition of the elders, and until he +found a sort of back-way to please, he was even more indifferent to +pleasing. So that while Tennyson became in a manner popular soon after +1850, two decades more had to pass before anything that could be called +popularity came to Browning. It is, though the actual dates are well +enough known to most people, still something of a surprise to remember +that at that time he had been writing for very nearly forty years, and +that his first book, though a little later than Tennyson's, actually +appeared before the death of Coleridge and not more than a few months +after that of Scott. Browning, about whose ancestry and parentage a good +deal of mostly superfluous ink has been shed, was born, the son of a +city man, on 7th May 1812, in the, according to the elder Mr. Weller, +exceptional district of Camberwell. He was himself exceptional enough in +more ways than one. His parents had means; but Browning did not receive +the ordinary education of a well-to-do Englishman at school and college, +and his learning, though sufficiently various, was privately obtained. +<i>Pauline</i>, his first poem, appeared in 1833, but had been written about +two years earlier. He did not reprint it in the first general collection +of his verse, nor till after his popularity had been established; and it +cannot be said to be of great intrinsic excellence. But it was +distinctly characteristic:—first, in a strongly dramatic tone and +strain without regular dramatic form; secondly, in a peculiar fluency of +decasyllabic verse that could not be directly traced to any model; and, +thirdly, in a certain quality of thought, which in later days for a long +time received, and never entirely lost from the vulgar, the name of +"obscurity," but which perhaps might be more justly termed +breathlessness—the expression, if not the conception, of a man who +either did not stop at all to pick his words, or was only careful to +pick them out of the first choice that presented itself to him of +something not commonplace.</p> + +<p>In <i>Pauline</i>, however, there is little positive beauty. In the next +book, <i>Paracelsus</i> (1835), there is a great deal. Here the dramatic form +was much more definite, though still not attempting acted or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> actable +drama. The poet's appetite for "soul-dissection" was amply shown in the +characters not merely of Paracelsus himself, but of his soberer friends +Festus and Michal, and of the Italian poet Aprile, a sort of Euphorion +pretty evidently suggested by, though greatly enlarged from, the actual +Euphorion of the second part of <i>Faust</i>, then not long finished. The +rapid, breathless blank verse, the crowding rush of simile and +illustration, and the positive plethora of meaning, more often glanced +and hinted at than fully worked out, were as noteworthy as before in +kind, and as much more so in degree as in scale. Here too were lyrics, +not anticipating the full splendour of the poet's later lyrical verse, +but again quite original. Here, in fact, to anybody who chose to pay +attention, was a real "new poet" pretty plainly announced.</p> + +<p>Very few did choose to pay attention; and Browning's next attempt was +not of a kind to conciliate halting or hostile opinion, though it might +please the initiated. He wrote for his friend Macready a play intended +at least to be of the regular acting kind. This play, <i>Strafford</i> +(1837), contains fine things; but the involution and unexpectedness of +the poet's thought now and always showed themselves least engagingly +when they were even imagined as being spoken not read. After yet another +three years <i>Sordello</i> followed, and here the most peculiar but the +least estimable side of the author's genius attained a prominence not +elsewhere equalled, till in his latest stage he began to parody himself, +and scarcely even then. Although this book does not deserve the +disgusted contempt which used to be poured on it, though it contains +many noble passages, and as the "story of a soul" is perfectly +intelligible to moderate intellects, it must have occasioned some doubts +and qualms to intelligent admirers of the poet as to whether he would +lose himself in the paths on which he was entering. Such doubts must +have been soon set at rest by the curious medley issued in parts, under +the general title of <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, between 1841 and 1846. +The plays here, though often striking and showing that the author's +disabilities, though never likely to leave, were also not likely to +master him, showed also, with the possible exception<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> of the charming +nondescript of <i>Pippa Passes</i>, no new or positively unexpected faculty. +But certain shorter things, lyrical and other, at last made it clear +that Browning could sing as well as say: and from this time, 1846 (which +also was the year of his marriage with Miss Elizabeth Barrett), he could +claim rank as a great poet. He had been hitherto more or less a +wanderer, but with headquarters in England; he now went to Florence, +which in turn was his headquarters till his wife's death in 1861. His +publications during the time were only two—<i>Christmas Eve and Easter +Day</i> in 1850, and <i>Men and Women</i> in 1855. But these were both +masterpieces. He never did better work, and, with <i>Bells and +Pomegranates</i> and <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, which appeared in 1864 (when, +after Mrs. Browning's death, he had returned to London), they perhaps +contain all his very best work.</p> + +<p>Up to this time, the thirty-first year from the publication of +<i>Pauline</i>, Browning's work, though by no means scanty, could hardly be +called voluminous as the result of half a lifetime of absolute leisure. +A little before <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>—itself not a long book, though of +hardly surpassed quality—the whole of the poems except <i>Pauline</i> had +been gathered into three small but thick volumes, which undoubtedly did +very much to spread the poet's fame—a spread much helped by their +immediate successors. The enormous poem of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, +originally issued in four volumes and containing more than twenty +thousand verses, was published in 1869, and, the public being by this +time well prepared for it, received a welcome not below its merits. +Having at last gained the public ear, Mr. Browning did not fail to +improve the occasion, and of the next fifteen years few passed without a +volume, while some saw two, from his pen. These, including translations +of the <i>Alcestis</i> and the <i>Agamemnon</i> (for the poet was at this time +seized with a great fancy for Greek, which he rendered with much fluency +and a very singular indulgence in a sort of hybrid and pedantic spelling +of proper names), were <i>Balaustion's Adventure</i> and <i>Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> (1871), <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> (1872), <i>Red Cotton +Night-Cap Country</i> (1873),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> <i>Aristophanes' Apology</i> and <i>The Inn Album</i> +(1875), <i>Pacchiarotto and how he Worked in Distemper</i> (1876), <i>La +Saisiaz</i> (1878), <i>Dramatic Idylls</i>, two volumes (1879-80), <i>Jocoseria</i> +(1883), and <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> (1884). The five remaining years of +Browning's long life were somewhat less fruitful; but <i>Parleyings with +Certain People of Importance</i> came in 1887, and at the end of 1889, +almost simultaneously with his death in Italy, <i>Asolando</i>, which some +think by far his best volume since <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, a quarter of a +century older. These volumes occasionally contained a few, and +<i>Asolando</i> contained several, of the lovely lyrics above referred to. +But the great bulk of them consisted of the curious blank verse, now +narrative, now ostensibly dramatic monologue, which the poet had always +affected, and which he now seemed to affect more and more. In them, too, +from <i>The Ring and the Book</i> onwards, there appeared a tendency stronger +than ever to an eccentric and almost burlesque phraseology, which at one +time threatened to drown all his good qualities, as involution of +thought had threatened to drown them in the <i>Sordello</i> period. But this +danger also was averted at the last.</p> + +<p>Critical estimate of Browning's poetry was for years hampered by, and +cannot even yet be said to have been quite cleared from, the violent +prepossessions of public opinion respecting him. For more than a +generation, in the ordinary sense, he was more or less passionately +admired by a few devotees, stupidly or blindly ignored by the public in +general, and persistently sneered at, lectured, or simply disliked by +the majority of academically educated critics. The sharp revulsion of +his later years has been noticed; and it amounted almost to this, that +while dislike to him in those who had intelligently, if somewhat +narrowly, disapproved of his ways was not much affected, a Browning +<i>cultus</i>, almost as blind as the former pooh-poohing or ignoring, set +in, and extended from a considerable circle of ardent worshippers to the +public at large. A "Browning Society" was founded in 1881, and received +from the poet a kind of countenance which would certainly not have been +extended to it by most English men of letters. During<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> his later years +handbooks solemnly addressed to neophytes in Browningism, as if the cult +were a formal science or art, appeared with some frequency; and there +has been even a bulky <i>Browning Dictionary</i>, which not only expounds the +more recondite (and, it is fair to say, tolerably frequent) allusions of +the master, but provides for his disciples something to make up for the +ordinary classical and other dictionaries with which, it seemed to be +presumed, their previous education would have made them little +conversant.</p> + +<p>This not very wise adulation in its turn not unnaturally excited a sort +of irritation and dislike, to a certain extent renewing the old +prejudice in a new form. To those who could discard extraneous +considerations and take Browning simply as he was, he must, from a +period which only very old men can now remember, have always appeared a +very great, though also a very far from perfect poet. His imperfections +were always on the surface, though perhaps they were not always confined +to it; and only uncritical partisanship could at any time have denied +them, while some of them became noticeably worse in the period of rapid +composition or publication from 1870 to 1885. A large license of +unconventionality, and even of defiance of convention, may be claimed +by, and should be allowed to, persons of genius such as Mr. Browning +undoubtedly possessed. But it can hardly be denied that he, like his +older contemporary Carlyle, whose example may not have been without +influence upon him, did set at naught not merely the traditions, but the +sound norms and rules of English phrase to a rather unnecessary extent. +A beginning of deliberate provocation and challenge, passing into an +after-period of more or less involuntary persistence in an exaggeration +of the mannerisms at first more or less deliberately adopted, is apt to +be shown by persons who set themselves in this way to innovate; and it +was shown by Mr. Browning. It is impossible for any intelligent admirer +to maintain, except as a paradox, that his strange modulations, his +cacophonies of rhythm and rhyme, his occasional adoption of the +foreshortened language of the telegraph or the comic stage, and many +other peculiarities of his, were not things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> which a more perfect art +would have either absorbed and transformed, or at least have indulged in +with far less luxuriance. Nor does it seem much more reasonable for +anybody to contend that his fashion of soul-dissection at a hand-gallop, +in drama, in monologue, in lay sermon, was not largely, even grossly, +abused. Sometimes the thing was not worth doing at all—there are at +least half a dozen of the books between <i>The Ring and the Book</i> and +<i>Asolando</i> from the whole of which a judicious lover of poetry would not +care to save more than the bulk of the smallest of them should they be +menaced with entire destruction. Even in the best of these what is good +could generally, if not always, have been put at the length of the +shorter <i>Men and Women</i> with no loss, nay, with great advantage. The +obscurity so much talked of was to some extent from the very first, and +to the last continued to be, in varying degrees, an excuse, or at least +an occasion, for putting at great length thought that was not always so +far from commonplace as it looked into expression which was very often +not so much original as unkempt. "Less matter with more art" was the +demand which might have been made of Mr. Browning from first to last, +and with increasing instance as he became more popular.</p> + +<p>But though no competent lover of poetry can ever have denied the truth +and cogency of these objections, the admission of them can never, in any +competent lover of poetry, have obscured or prevented an admiration of +Browning none the less intense because not wholly unreserved. Even his +longer poems, in which his faults were most apparent, possessed an +individuality of the first order, combined the intellectual with no +small part of the sensual attraction of poetry after a fashion not +otherwise paralleled in England since Dryden, and provided an +extraordinary body of poetical exercise and amusement. The pathos, the +power, at times the humour, of the singular soul-studies which he was so +fond of projecting with little accessory of background upon his canvas, +could not be denied, and have not often been excelled. If he was not +exactly what is commonly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> called orthodox in religion, and if his +philosophy was of a distinctly vague order, he was always "on the side +of the angels" in theology, in metaphysics, in ethics; and his politics, +if exceedingly indistinct and unpractical, were always noble and +generous. Further, though he seems to have been utterly destitute of the +slightest gift of dramatic construction, he had no mean share of a much +rarer gift, that of dramatic character; and in a century of descriptions +of nature his, if not the most exquisite, have a freedom and truth, a +largeness of outline combined with felicity of colour, not elsewhere to +be discovered.</p> + +<p>But it is as a lyric poet that Browning ranks highest; and in this +highest class it is impossible to refuse him all but the highest rank, +in some few cases the very highest. He understood love pretty +thoroughly; and when a lyric poet understands love thoroughly there is +little doubt of his position. But he understood many other things as +well, and could give strange and delightful voice to them. Even his +lyrics, still more his short non-lyrical poems, admirable as they often +are, and closely as they group with the lyrics proper, are not untouched +by his inseparable defect. He cannot be prevented from inserting now and +then in the midst of exquisite passages more or fewer of his quirks and +cranks of thought and phrase, of his vernacularity or his euphuism, of +his outrageous rhymes (which, however, are seldom or never absolutely +bad), of those fantastic tricks of his in general which remind one of +nothing so much as of dashing a bladder with rattling peas in the +reader's face just at the height of the passion or the argument.</p> + +<p>Yet the beauty, the charm, the variety, the vigour of these short poems +are as wonderful as the number of them. He never lost the secret of them +to his latest years. The delicious lines "Never the time and the place, +And the loved one all together" are late; and there are half a dozen +pieces in <i>Asolando</i>, latest of all, which exhibit to the full the +almost bewildering beauty of combined sound, thought, and sight, the +clash of castanets and the thrill of flutes, the glow of flower and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> +sunset, the subtle appeal for sympathy in feeling or assent in judgment. +The song snatches in <i>Pippa Passes</i>, "Through the Metidja," "The Lost +Leader," "In a Gondola," "Earth's Immortalities," "Mesmerism," "Women +and Roses," "Love Among the Ruins," "A Toccata of Galuppis," "Prospice," +"Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Porphyria's Lover," "After," with scores of others, +and the "Last Ride Together," the poet's most perfect thing, at the head +of the list, are such poems as a very few—Shakespeare, Shelley, Burns, +Coleridge—may surpass now and then in pure lyrical perfection, as +Tennyson may excel in dreamy ecstasy, as some seventeenth century +songsters may outgo in quaint and perfect fineness of touch, but such as +are nowhere to be surpassed or equalled for a certain volume and variety +of appeal, for fulness of life and thought, of action and passion.</p> + +<p>Mr. Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett, was older than himself by six +years, and her period of popularity considerably anticipated his. But +except one very juvenile book she published nothing of importance till +1838, when Browning, whom she did not then know, had already manifested +his idiosyncrasy. Miss Barrett, whose father's original name was +Moulton, was born at Carlton Hall, Durham, on 6th March 1806. The change +of name was brought on by succession to estates in the West Indies; and +the family were wealthy. For the greater part of Miss Barrett's youth +they lived in Herefordshire at a place, Hope End, which has left great +traces on her early poetry; later her headquarters were in London, with +long excursions to Devonshire. These excursions were mainly caused by +bad health, from which, as well as from family bereavements, Miss +Barrett was a great sufferer. She had read widely; she began to write as +a mere child; and her studies extended even to Greek, though in a rather +amateurish and desultory fashion. Her <i>Essay on Mind</i> and other poems +appeared in 1825; but a considerable interval, as noted above, elapsed +before, in <i>The Seraphim</i> and other poems, she gave, if not a truer, a +more characteristic note. And two more intervals of exactly the same +length gave <i>Poems</i> 1846 and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> <i>Poems</i> 1850, containing most of her best +work. Meanwhile she had met Robert Browning, and had married him, rather +against the wish of her family, in 1846. The rest of her life was spent +mostly at Florence, where, in 1849, the only child of the marriage was +born. Two years later appeared <i>Casa Guidi Windows</i> and the long +"sociological" romance of Aurora Leigh. In these, and still more in the +<i>Poems before Congress</i> (1860), a not unnatural tendency to echo the +peculiar form and spirit of her husband's work is observable, not by any +means always or frequently to advantage. She died at Florence on 30th +June 1861, and next year a volume of <i>Last Poems</i> was issued. The most +interesting document in regard to her since has been her Letters to R. +H. Horne, the author of <i>Orion</i>, which were published in 1876.</p> + +<p>It has been said that Mrs. Browning's popularity long anticipated her +husband's; indeed, years after her death, and on the very eve of the +publication of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, it was possible to meet persons, +not uncultivated, who were fairly well acquainted with her verse and +entirely ignorant of his. The case has since been altered; but it is +believed that Mrs. Browning still retains, and it is probable that she +will always retain, no small measure of general favour. It has been +usual to speak of her as the chief English poetess, which she certainly +is if bulk and character of work as distinguished from perfection of +workmanship are considered. Otherwise, she must as certainly give place +to Miss Christina Rossetti. But Mrs. Browning no doubt combined, in very +unusual and interesting manner, the qualities which appeal to what may +be called, with no disdainful intention, the crowd of readers of poetry, +and those which appeal to the elect. Even the peculiarities which lent +themselves so easily to parody—and some of the happiest parodies ever +written were devoted to her in <i>Bon Gaultier</i> and other books—did not +serve her badly with the general, for a parody always in a way attracts +attention to the original. Although her expression was not always of the +very clearest, its general drift was never easily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> mistakable; and +though she was wont to enshrine her emotions in something of a mist of +mysticism, they were in the main simple and human enough. It must also +be admitted that pathetic sentiment is almost the surest of popular +appeals in poetry; and Miss Barrett—partly through physical suffering, +partly through the bereavements above referred to, but very mainly it +may be suspected by temperament and preference—was much more a visitant +of the House of Mourning than of the House of Mirth. She was, yet again, +profoundly and sincerely, if a little vaguely, religious: and her sacred +poems, of which the famous and beautiful "Cowper's Grace" is the chief +example, secured one portion of the public to her as firmly as the +humanitarianism of "The Cry of the Children," chiming in with famous +things of Hood and Dickens, did another; "Isobel's Child," a pathetic +domesticity, a third; the somewhat gushing and undistinguished +Romanticism of "The Duchess May" and "The Brown Rosary," a fourth; and +the ethical and political "noble sentiments" of "Lady Geraldine's +Courtship," a fifth.</p> + +<p>But it would argue gross unfairness in an advocate, and gross +incompetence in a critic, to let it be supposed that these popular +attractions were the only ones that Mrs. Browning possessed. Despite and +besides the faults which will be presently noticed, and which, +critically speaking, are very grave faults, she had poetical merits of a +very high order. Her metrical faculty, though constantly flawed and +imperfect, was very original and full of musical variety. Although her +choice of words could by no means always be commended, her supply of +them was extraordinary. Before her imprisonment in sick-rooms she had +pored on nature with the eagerest and most observant eye, and that +imprisonment itself only deepened the intensity of her remembered +nature-worship. Her pathos, if it sometimes over-flowed into gush, was +quite unquestionable in sincerity and most powerful in appeal; her +sentiment was always pure and generous; and it is most curious to see +how in the noble directness of such a piece as "Lord Walter's Wife," not +only her little faults of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> <i>sensiblerie</i>, but her errors of diction, are +burnt and smelted out by the fire of the expressed impression. Her +verse-pictures—for instance those in the "Vision of Poets"—vie, in +beauty if not in clearness of composition and definition, with +Tennyson's own. The Romantic pieces already glanced at, obnoxious and +obvious as are their defects, unite the pathos and the picturesqueness +just assigned to her in a most remarkable manner. And when, especially +in the Sonnet, she consented to undergo the limitations of a form which +almost automatically restrained her voluble facility, the effect was +often simply of the first order. The exquisite "Sonnets from the +Portuguese" (which are not from the Portuguese, and are understood to +have been addressed to Mr. Browning), especially that glorious one +beginning—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Except for love's sake only—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>(which is not far below Shakespeare's or the great thing which was +published as Drayton's), rank with the noblest efforts of the 16th-17th +century in this exquisite form. And if this, instead of having to +conform to the requirements of a connected history, were a separate +study of Mrs. Browning, it would be necessary to mention scores of +separate pieces full of varied beauty.</p> + +<p>But in no poet, perhaps not even in Byron, are such great beauties +associated with such astonishing defects as in Mrs. Browning; some of +these defects being so disgusting as well as so strange that it requires +not a little critical detachment to put her, on the whole, as high as +she deserves to be put. Like almost all women who have written, she was +extremely deficient in self-criticism, and positively pampered and +abused her natural tendency towards fluent volubility. There is hardly +one of the pieces named above, outside the sonnets, with the exception +certainly of "Lord Walter's Wife" and possibly of "Cowper's Grave," +which would not be immensely improved by compression and curtailment, +"The Rhyme of the Duchess May" being a special example. In other pieces +not yet specified, such as "The Romaunt of Margret,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> "Bianca among the +Nightingales," and especially "The Poet's Vow," the same defect is +painfully felt. That the poetess frequently, and especially in her later +poetical work, touches subjects which she does not very well comprehend, +and which are very doubtfully suited for poetical treatment at all, is a +less important because a more controversial objection; and the merits of +such a book as <i>Aurora Leigh</i> depend so much upon the arguing out of the +general question whether what is practically a modern novel has any +business to be written in verse, that they perhaps can receive no +adequate treatment here. But as to the fatal fluency of Mrs. Browning +there can be no question before any tribunal which knows its own +jurisdiction and its own code. And that fluency extends to more than +length. The vocabulary is wilfully and tastelessly unusual,—"abele" +rhymed "abeel" for "poplar"; American forms such as "human" for +"humanity" and "weaken" for a neuter verb; fustianish words like +"reboant"; awkward suggestions of phrase, such as "droppings of warm +tears."</p> + +<p>But all these things, and others put together, are not so fatal as her +extraordinary dulness of ear in the matter of rhyme. She endeavoured to +defend her practice in this respect in the correspondence with Horne, +but it is absolutely indefensible. What is known as assonance, that is +to say, vowel rhyme only, as in Old French and in Spanish, is not in +itself objectionable, though it is questionably suited to English. But +Mrs. Browning's eccentricities do not as a rule, though they sometimes +do, lie in the direction of assonance. They are simply bad and vulgar +rhymes—rhymes which set the teeth on edge. Thus, when she rhymes +"palace" and "chalice," "evermore" and "emperor," "Onora" and "o'er +her," or, most appalling of all, "mountain" and "daunting," it is +impossible not to remember with a shudder that every omnibus conductor +does shout "Pal<i>lis</i>," that the common Cockney would pronounce it +"Onorer," that the vulgar ear is deaf to the difference between <i>ore</i> +and <i>or</i>, and that it is possible to find persons not always of the +costermonger class<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> who would make of "mountain" something very like +"mauunting." In other words, Mrs. Browning deliberately, or lazily, or +for want of ear, admits false pronunciation to save her the trouble of +an exact rhyme. Nay, more, despite her Greek, she will rhyme "idyll" to +"middle," and "pyramidal" to "idle," though nothing can be longer than +the <i>i</i> in the first case, and nothing shorter than the <i>i</i> in the +second. The positive anguish which such hideous false notes as these +must cause to any one with a delicate ear, the maddening interruption to +the delight of these really beautiful pieces of poetry, cannot be +over-estimated. It is fair to say that among the later fruit of her +poetical tree there are fewer of these Dead Sea apples,—her husband, +who, though audacious, was not vulgar in his rhymes, may have taught her +better. But to her earlier, more spontaneous, and more characteristic +verse they are a most terrible drawback, such as no other English poet +exhibits or suffers.</p> + +<p>No poets at all approaching the first class can be said to have been +born within a decade either way of Tennyson and Browning, though some +extremely interesting writers of verse of about the same date will have +to be noticed in the latter part of this chapter. The next year that +produced a poet almost if not quite great, though one of odd lapses and +limitations, was 1822, the birth-year of Matthew Arnold. When a writer +has produced both prose and verse, or prose of distinctly different +kinds in which one division or kind was very far superior in intrinsic +value and extrinsic importance to the others, it has seemed best here to +notice all his work together. But in the case of Mr. Arnold, as in some +others, this is not possible, the volume, the character, and the +influence of his work in creative verse and critical prose alike +demanding separate treatment for the two sections. He was the eldest son +of Dr. Arnold, the famous head-master of Rugby, and was educated first +at the two schools, Winchester and Rugby itself, with which his father +was connected as scholar and master, and then at Balliol, where he +obtained a scholarship in 1840. He took the Newdigate in 1844, and was +elected a fellow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> of Oriel in 1845. After some work as private +secretary, he received an inspectorship of schools, and held it until +nearly the time of his death in 1888. He had been Professor of Poetry at +Oxford from 1857-67. He published poetry early, and though his fame at +this time was never very wide, he was known to those interested in +poetry, and especially to Oxford men, for more than twenty years before +he acquired popularity as a critic and began the remarkable series of +prose works which will be noticed in a later chapter. So early as 1849 +he had published, under the initial of his surname only, <i>The Strayed +Reveller, and other Poems</i>; but his poetical building was not securely +founded until 1853, when there appeared, with a very remarkable preface, +a collection of Poems, which was certainly the best thing that had been +produced by any one younger than the two masters already discussed. +<i>Merope</i>, which followed in 1858, was an attempt at an English-Greek +drama, which, with Mr. Swinburne's <i>Atalanta in Calydon</i> and +<i>Erechtheus</i>, is perhaps the best of a somewhat mistaken kind, for +Shelley's <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> soars far above the kind itself. Official +duty first, and the growing vogue of his prose writing later, prevented +Mr. Arnold from issuing very many volumes of verse. But his <i>New Poems</i> +in 1867 made important additions, and in this way and that his poetical +production reached by the time of his death no inconsiderable +volume—perhaps five hundred pages averaging thirty lines each, or very +much more than has made the reputation of some English poets of very +high rank. Until late in his own life the general tendency was not to +take Mr. Arnold very seriously as a poet; and there are still those who +reproach him with too literary a character, who find fault with him as +thin and wanting in spontaneity. On the other hand, there are some who +not only think him happier in verse than in prose, but consider him +likely to take, when the "firm perspective of the past" has dispelled +mirages and false estimates, a position very decidedly on the right side +of the line which divides the great from the not great.</p> + +<p>Family, local, and personal reasons (for Dr. Arnold had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> house in the +immediate vicinity of Rydal), as well as the strong contemporary set in +favour of Wordsworth which prevailed in both universities between 1830 +and 1845, caused Mr. Arnold early to take a distinctly Wordsworthian +bent. He was, later, somewhat outspoken in his criticism of Wordsworth's +weaker points; but it is impossible for any one to read his own poems +without perceiving that Arnold stands in a line of filiation from +Milton, with a slight deviation by way of Gray, through Wordsworth, +though with a strong personal element in his verse. This personal +element, besides other things, represents perhaps more powerfully than +it represents anything else, and than anything else represents this, a +certain reaction from the ornate and fluent Romanticism of the school of +Keats and Tennyson. Both, especially the latter, influenced Mr. Arnold +consciously and unconsciously. But consciously he was striving against +both to set up a neo-classic ideal as against the Romantic; and +unconsciously he was endeavouring to express a very decided, though a +perhaps not entirely genial or masculine, personal temperament. In other +words, Mr. Arnold is on one side a poet of "correctness"—a new +correctness as different from that of Pope as his own time, character, +and cultivation were from Pope's, but still correctness, that is to say +a scheme of literature which picks and chooses according to standards, +precedents, systems, rather than one which, given an abundant stream of +original music and representation, limits the criticising province in +the main to making the thing given the best possible of its kind. And it +is not a little curious that his own work is by no means always the best +of its kind—that it would often be not a little the better for a +stricter application of critical rules to itself.</p> + +<p>But when it is at its best it has a wonderful charm—a charm nowhere +else to be matched among our dead poets of this century. Coleridge was +perhaps, allowing for the fifty years between them, as good a scholar as +Mr. Arnold, and he was a greater poet; but save for a limited time he +never had his faculties under due command, or gave the best of his work. +Scott, Byron, Keats,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> were not scholars at all; Shelley and Tennyson not +critical scholars; Rossetti a scholar only in modern languages. And none +of these except Coleridge, whatever their mere knowledge or instruction, +had the critical vein, the knack of comparing and adjusting, at all +strongly developed. Many attempts have been made at a formula of which +the following words are certainly not a perfect expression, that a poet +without criticism is a failure, and that a critic who is a poet is a +miracle. Mr. Arnold is beyond all doubt the writer who has most nearly +combined the two gifts. But for the present we are only concerned with +his poetry.</p> + +<p>This shows itself distinctly enough, and perhaps at not far from its +best, in almost his earliest work. Among this earliest is the +magnificent sonnet on Shakespeare which perhaps better deserves to be +set as an epigraph and introduction to Shakespeare's own work than +anything else in the libraries that have been written on him except +Dryden's famous sentence; "Mycerinus," a stately blending of +well-arranged six-lined stanzas with a splendid finale of blank verse +not quite un-Tennysonian, but slightly different from Tennyson's; "The +Church of Brou," unequal but beautiful in the close (it is a curious and +almost a characteristic thing that Matthew Arnold's finales, his +perorations, were always his best); "Requiescat," an exquisite dirge. To +this early collection, too, belongs almost the whole of the singular +poem or collection of poems called "Switzerland," a collection much +rehandled in the successive editions of Mr. Arnold's work, and +exceedingly unequal, but containing, in the piece which begins—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yes! in the sea of life enisled,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>one of the noblest poems of its class which the century has produced; +the mono-dramatic "Strayed Reveller," which as mentioned above is one of +the very earliest of all; and the more fully dramatised and longer +"Empedocles on Etna," in regard to which Mr. Arnold showed a singular +vacillation, issuing it, withdrawing nearly all of it, and than issuing +it again. Its design, like that of the somewhat later "Merope," is not +of the happiest, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> it contains some lyrical pieces which are among +the best-known and the best of their author's work. Early too, if not of +the earliest, are certain longer narrative or semi-narrative poems, not +seldom varied with or breaking into lyric—"Sohrab and Rustum" with +another of the fine closes referred to, perhaps indeed the finest of +all; "The Sick King in Bokhara"; "Balder Dead"; "Tristram and Iseult"; +"The Scholar-Gipsy," a most admirable "poem of place," being chiefly +devoted to the country round Oxford; "Thyrsis" (an elegy on Clough which +by some is ranked not far below <i>Lycidas</i> and <i>Adonais</i>). But perhaps +Mr. Arnold's happiest vein, like that of most of the poets of the last +two-thirds of the century, lay, not in long poems but in shorter pieces, +more or less lyrical in form but not precisely lyrics—in short of the +same general class (though differing often widely enough in subject and +handling) as those in which the main appeal of Tennyson himself has been +said to consist. Such is "The Forsaken Merman," the poet's most original +and perhaps most charming if not his deepest or most elaborate thing—a +piece of exquisite and passionate music modulated with art as touching +as it is consummate; "Dover Beach," where the peculiar religious +attitude, with the expression of which so much of Mr. Arnold's prose is +concerned, finds a more restrained and a very melodious voice; the +half-satiric, half-meditative "Bacchanalia"; the fine "Summer Night"; +the Memorial Verses (Mr. Arnold was a frequent and a skilled attempter +of epicedes) on Wordsworth, on Heine, and on the dog <i>Geist</i>; with, +almost latest of all and not least noble, "Westminster Abbey," the +opening passages of which vie in metre (though of a more complicated +mould) and in majesty with Milton's "Nativity Ode," and show a wonderful +ability to bear this heavy burden of comparison.</p> + +<p>Perhaps these last words may not unfairly hint at a defect—if not <i>the</i> +defect—of this refined, this accomplished, but this often disappointing +poetry. Quite early, in the preface before referred to, the poet had run +up and nailed to the mast a flag-theory of poetic art to which he always +adhered as far as theory went, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> which it may be reasonably supposed +he always endeavoured to exemplify in practice. According to this "all +depends on the subject," and the fault of most modern poetry and of +nearly all modern criticism is that the poets strive to produce and the +critics expect to receive, not an elaborately planned and adjusted +treatment of a great subject, but touches or bursts of more or less +beautiful thought and writing. Now of course it need not be said that in +the very highest poetry the excellence of the subject, the complete +appropriateness of the treatment, and the beauty of patches and +passages, all meet together. But it will also happen that this is not +so. And then the poet of "the subject" will not only miss the happy +"jewels five words long," the gracious puffs and cat's paws of the wind +of the spirit, that his less austere brother secures, but will not make +so very much of his subjects, of his schemes of treatment themselves. +His ambition, as ambition so often does, will over-reach itself, and he +will have nothing to show but the unfinished fragments of a poetical +Escurial instead of the finished chantries and altar-tombs which a less +formal architect is able to boast.</p> + +<p>However this may be, two things are certain, the first that the best +work of Matthew Arnold in verse bears a somewhat small proportion to the +work that is not his best, and that his worst is sometimes strangely +unworthy of him; the second, that the best where it appears is of +surpassing charm—uniting in a way, of which Andrew Marvell is perhaps +the best other example in English lyric, romantic grace, feeling, and +music to a classical and austere precision of style, combining nobility +of thought with grace of expression, and presenting the most +characteristically modern ideas of his own particular day with an almost +perfect freedom from the jargon of that day, and in a key always +suggesting the great masters, the great thinkers, the great poets of the +past. To those who are in sympathy with his own way of thinking he must +always possess an extraordinary attraction; perhaps he is not least, +though he may be more discriminatingly, admired by those who are very +much out of sympathy with him on not a few points of subject, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> who +are one with him in the Humanities—in the sense and the love of the +great things in literature.</p> + +<p>The natural and logical line of development, however, from the +originators of the Romantic movement through Keats and Tennyson did not +lie through Matthew Arnold; and the time was not yet ripe—it can +perhaps hardly be said to be ripe yet—for a reaction in his sense. He +was, as has been said, a branch from Wordsworth, only slightly +influenced by Tennyson himself, than whom indeed he was not so very much +younger. The direct male line of descent lay in another direction; and +its next most important stage was determined by the same causes which +almost at the middle of the century or a little before brought about +Præ-Raphaelitism in art. Both of these were closely connected with the +set of events called the Oxford Movement, about which much has been +written, but of which the far-reaching significance, not merely in +religion but in literature, politics, art, and almost things in general, +has never yet been fully estimated. As far as literature is concerned, +and this special part of literature with which we are here dealing, this +movement had partly shown and partly shaped the direction of the best +minds towards the Middle Ages, which had been begun by Percy's +<i>Reliques</i> in a vague and blind sort of way, and which had been +strengthened, directed, but still not altogether fashioned according to +knowledge, by Scott and Coleridge.</p> + +<p>This movement which dominates the whole English poetry of the later half +of the century with the exception of that produced by a few survivors of +the older time, and to which no successor of equal brilliancy and +fertility has yet made its appearance, is popularly represented by three +writers, two of whom, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Swinburne, are +fortunately still alive, and therefore fall out of our province. +Rossetti, the eldest of the three, a great influence on both, and as it +happens an example unique in all history of combined excellence in +poetry and painting, has passed away for some years, and will give us +quite sufficient text for explaining the development and illustrating +its results without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> outstripping the limits traced in the preface to +this book; while his sister, and a distinguished junior member of the +school, also dead, Mr. Arthur O'Shaughnessy, may profitably be brought +in to complete the illustration.</p> + +<p>Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel +Rossetti, was born in London on 12th May 1828. He was the son of an +Italian poet and critic of eminence, who, like so many of his countrymen +of literary tastes during the early part of the century, had fallen into +the Carbonaro movement, and who had to fly first to Malta and then to +England. Here he married Miss Polidori, whose mother was an +Englishwoman; and his four children—the two exquisite poets below dealt +with, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a competent critic, and Maria Francesca, the +eldest daughter, who wrote an excellent introduction to Dante—all made +contributions, and two of them great contributions, to English +literature. The father himself, who was Professor of Italian at King's +College, London, was an enthusiastic though rather a fantastic Dantist, +and somewhat of a visionary generally, with wild notions about mediæval +secret societies; but a man of the greatest honesty and honour, and a +brilliant contrast to the various patriot-charlatans, from Ugo Foscolo +downwards, who brought discredit on the Italian name in his time in +England. These particulars, of a kind seldom given in this book, are not +otiose; for they have much to do with the singular personality of our +English Rossetti himself.</p> + +<p>He was educated at King's College School; but his leanings towards art +were so strong that at the age of fifteen he began the study of it, +leaving school to draw at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. His art +career and the formation of the P.R.B. (Præ-Raphaelite Brotherhood) +unfortunately fall outside our sphere. It is enough to say that for some +twenty years Rossetti, if he was known at all (and he was never known +very widely nor did he ever seek notoriety) was known as a painter only, +though many who only knew his poems later conceived the most passionate +admiration for his painting. Yet he wrote almost as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> early as he +painted, contributing to the famous Præ-Raphaelite magazine, the <i>Germ</i>, +in 1850, to the remarkable <i>Oxford and Cambridge Magazine</i>, which also +saw the early work of Mr. Morris, in 1856, and publishing some +translations from <i>The Early Italian Poets</i> in 1861. He had married the +year before this last date and was about to publish <i>Poems</i> which he had +been writing from an early age. But his wife died in 1862, and in a fit +of despair he buried his MSS. in her coffin. They were years afterwards +exhumed and the <i>Poems</i> appeared in 1870. Eleven years later another +volume of <i>Ballads and Sonnets</i> was published, and Rossetti, whose +health in the interval had been much shattered, and who had +unfortunately sought refuge from insomnia in chloral, died next year in +April 1882. The last years of his life were not happy, and he was most +unnecessarily affected by attacks on the first arrangement of his +<i>Poems</i>.</p> + +<p>These poems had a certain advantage in being presented to a public +already acquainted with the work of Mr. Morris and Mr. Swinburne; but +Rossetti was not merely older than his two friends, he was also to some +extent their master. At the same time the influences which acted on him +were naturally diverse from those which, independently of his own +influence, acted on them. For the French and English mediæval +inspirations of Mr. Morris, for the classical and general study of Mr. +Swinburne, he had his ancestral Italians almost for sole teachers; and +for their varied interests he had his own art of painting for a +continual companion, reminder, and model. Yet the mediæval impulse is +almost equally strong on all three, and its intensity shows that it was +the real dominant of the moment in English poetry. The opening poem of +Rossetti's first book, "The Blessed Damozel," which is understood to +have been written very early, though afterwards wrought up by touches +both of his love for his wife while living and of his regret for her +when dead, is almost a typical example of the whole style and school, +though it is individualised by the strong pictorial element rarely +absent from his work. The "Blessed Damozel" herself, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> "leaned out +From the gold Bar of Heaven," is a figure from the <i>Paradiso</i>, divested +of the excessive abstraction of that part of Dante, and clothed partly +in the gayer colours and more fleshly personality of English and French +mediævalism, partly in a mystical halo which is peculiar to these +nineteenth century re-creations of mediæval thought and feeling. The +poem is of extreme beauty, and ornate as is its language in parts there +are touches, such as the poet's reflection</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To one it is ten years of years,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which utter the simplest truth and tenderness; while others, such as the +enumeration of the Virgin's handmaidens (over which at the time the +hoofs of earless critics danced)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">With her five handmaidens, whose names<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are five sweet symphonies—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Margaret and Rosalys—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>are consummate triumphs of the word-music brought by Tennyson into +English poetry. Indeed this couplet of names might be made a sort of +text to expound the great appeal to the ear of this kind of poetry, +which any one who is deaf to the exceptional and golden harmony of the +arrangement need never hope to appreciate. It is perfectly easy to +change the order in many ways without affecting the verse; there is +absolutely none of these combinations which approaches the actual one in +beauty of sound and suggestion.</p> + +<p>"Love's Nocturn" which follows is more of the early Italian school pure +and simple; and "Troy Town," a ballad with burdens, is one of a class of +poem much affected by Rossetti and ever since, which has produced some +admirable work, but is perhaps a little open to the charge of too +deliberate archaism. It is at any rate far inferior to his own "Sister +Helen." But "The Burden of Nineveh" which follows is in a quite +different style, and besides its intrinsic excellence is noteworthy as +showing how very far Rossetti was from being limited in his choice of +manners. But to go through the whole contents of this very remarkable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> +volume would be impossible, and we can only particularise the great +sonnet-sequence "The House of Life" (which was attacked for want of +decency with as little intelligence as "The Blessed Damozel" had been +attacked for want of sense), and a set "for pictures." The first, +somewhat thorny and obscure in language, is of extreme poetical and +philosophical beauty. The latter, beautiful enough, may be said to lend +themselves a little to the attacks of those critics who charged Rossetti +with, in the Aristotelian phrase, "shifting his ground to another kind" +or (to vary the words) of taking the quotation <i>ut pictura poesis</i> in +too literal a sense. Some songs, especially "Penumbra" and "The +Woodspurge," of intense sweetness and sadness, were also included; and +the simple directness of "Jenny" showed, like "Nineveh," capacities in +the poet not easily to be inferred from the bulk of his poems.</p> + +<p>Rossetti's second volume, while it added only too little to the bulk of +his work—for much of it consisted of a revised issue of "The House of +Life"—added greatly to its enjoyment. But it produced no new kind, +unless certain extensions of the ballad-scheme into narrative poems of +considerable length—"Rose-Mary," "The White Ship," and "The King's +Tragedy"—be counted as such. "Rose-Mary" in particular exhibits the +merits and defects of the poet in almost the clearest possible light, +and it may be safely said that no English poet, not the very greatest, +need have been ashamed of such a stanza as this, where there is no +affectation worth speaking of, where the eternal and immortal +commonplaces of poetry are touched to newness as only a master touches, +and where the turn of the phrase and verse is impeccable and supreme:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And lo! on the ground Rose-Mary lay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a cold brow like the snows ere May,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a cold breast like the earth till Spring—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With such a smile as the June days bring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the year grows warm for harvesting.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here, as elsewhere, it has seemed better to postpone most of the +necessary general criticism of schools and groups till the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> concluding +chapter, but in this particular respect the paucity of individuals which +our scheme leaves (though Miss Rossetti and Mr. O'Shaughnessy will give +valuable assistance presently), may make a few words desirable, even if +they be partly repetition and partly anticipation. We find in Rossetti a +strong influence of pictorial on poetic art; an overpowering tendency to +revert to the forms and figures, the sense and sentiment of the past, +especially the mediæval past; and a further tendency to a mysticism +which is very often, if not always, poetic in character, as indeed +mysticism generally if not always is. We find in point of form a +distinct preference for lyric over other kinds, a fancy for archaic +language and schemes of verse, a further fancy for elaborate and ornate +language (which does not, however, exclude perfect simplicity when the +poet chooses), and above all, a predilection for attempting and a +faculty for achieving effects of verbal music by cunning adjustment of +vowel and consonant sound which, though it had been anticipated +partially, and as it were accidentally in the seventeenth century, and +had been after the Romantic revival displayed admirably by Coleridge and +Keats, and brought to a high pitch by Tennyson, was even further +elaborated and polished by the present school. Indeed, they may be said +to have absolutely finished this poetical appeal as a distinct and +deliberate one. All poets have always attempted, and all poets always +will attempt, and when they are great, achieve these enchanting effects +of mere sound. But for some considerable time it will not be possible +(indeed it will be quite impossible until the structure, the intonation, +the phrase of English have taken such turns as will develop physical +possibilities as different from those of our language as ours are from +those of the seventeenth century) for any poets to get distinctly great +effects in the same way. It is proof enough of this that, except the +masters, no poet for many years now <i>has</i> achieved a great effect by +this means, and that the most promising of the newer school, whether +they may or may not have found a substitute, are abandoning it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> + +<p>Rossetti's younger, but very little younger, sister, Christina Georgina, +was born in 1830, sat to her brother early for the charming picture of +"The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and is said also to figure in his +illustration of the weeping queens in Tennyson's <i>Morte D' Arthur</i>. But +she lived an exceedingly quiet life, mainly occupied in attention to her +mother and in devotion; for she had been brought up, and all her life +remained, a member of the Church of England. Her religious feelings more +and more coloured her poetical work, which was produced at intervals +from 1861 till close upon her death in the winter of 1894-95. It was not +hastily written, and latterly formed mainly the embellishment of certain +prose books of religious reflection or excerpt. But it was always of an +exquisite quality. Its first expression in book form was <i>Goblin Market, +and other Poems</i> (1861), which, as well as her next volume, <i>The +Prince's Progress</i> (1866), was illustrated by her brother's pencil. A +rather considerable time then passed without anything of importance (a +book called <i>Sing-Song</i> excepted), till in 1881 <i>A Pageant, and other +Poems</i> was added. A collection of all these was issued nine years later, +but with this the gleanings from the devotional works above mentioned +(the chief of which were <i>Time Flies</i> and <i>The Face of the Deep</i>) have +still to be united.</p> + +<p>There are those who seriously maintain Miss Rossetti's claim to the +highest rank among English poetesses, urging that she excels Mrs. +Browning, her only possible competitor, in freedom from blemishes of +form and from the liability to fall into silliness and maudlin gush, at +least as much as she falls short of her in variety and in power of +shaping a poem of considerable bulk. But without attempting a too rigid +classification we may certainly say that Miss Rossetti has no superior +among Englishwomen who have had the gift of poetry. In the title-piece +of her first book the merely quaint side of Præ-Raphaelitism perhaps +appears rather too strongly, though very agreeably to some. But +"Dreamland," "Winter Rain," "An End," "Echo," the exquisite song for +music "When I am dead, my dearest," and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> wonderful devotional pieces +called "The Three Enemies" and "Sleep at Sea," with many charming +sonnets, adorned a volume which, on the whole, showed more of the +tendencies of the school than any which had yet appeared. For it was +less exclusively mediæval than Mr. Morris' <i>Defence of Guinevere</i>, and +very much more varied as well as more mature than Mr. Swinburne's <i>Queen +Mother</i> and <i>Rosamond</i>. <i>The Prince's Progress</i> showed a great advance +on <i>Goblin Market</i> in dignity and freedom from mannerism, and the minor +poems in general rivalled those in the earlier collection, though the +poetess perhaps never quite equalled "Sleep at Sea." The contents of <i>A +Pageant, and other Poems</i> were at once more serious and lighter than +those of the two former books (for Miss Rossetti, like her brother, had +a strong touch of humour), while the <i>Collected Poems</i> added some +excellent pieces. But the note of the whole had been struck, as is +usually the case with good poets who do not publish too early, at the +very first.</p> + +<p>The most distinguished members, with the exception of Mr. and Miss +Rossetti, of this school are still alive; and, as it did not become +fashionable until about five-and-twenty years ago, even the junior +members of it have in but few cases been sent to that majority of which +alone we treat. Mr. John Addington Symonds, an important writer of +prose, began early and never abandoned the practice of verse, but his +accomplishment in it was never more than an accomplishment. Mr. Philip +Bourke Marston, son of Dr. Westland Marston, the dramatist, was highly +reputed as a poet by his friends, but friendship and compassion (he was +blind) had perhaps more to do with this reputation than strict +criticism. The remarkable talents of Mr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, which +could never be mistaken by any one who knew him, and of which some +memorials remain in verse, were mainly lost to English poetry by the +fact of his passing the last twenty years of his life as a Jesuit +priest. But the most characteristic figure now passed away was Arthur +O'Shaughnessy (1844-81). He was an official of the British Museum, and +published three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> volumes of poetry—<i>The Epic of Women</i> (1870), <i>Lays of +France</i> (1872), and <i>Music and Moonlight</i> (1874)—which were completed +in the year of his death by a posthumous volume entitled <i>Songs of a +Worker</i>. Of these the <i>Lays of France</i> are merely paraphrases of Marie: +great part of the <i>Songs of a Worker</i> is occupied with mere translation +of modern French verses—poor work for a poet at all times. But <i>The +Epic of Women</i> and <i>Music and Moonlight</i> contain stuff which it is not +extravagant to call extraordinary.</p> + +<p>It was never widely popular, for O'Shaughnessy pushed the fancy of the +Præ-Raphaelites for a dreamy remoteness to its very furthest, and the +charge (usually an uncritical one, but usually also explaining with a +certain justice a poet's unpopularity) of "lack of human interest" was +brought against him. Sometimes, too, either of deliberate conviction or +through corrupt following of others, he indulged in expressions of +opinion about matters on which the poet is not called upon to express +any, in a manner which was always unnecessary and sometimes offensive. +But judged as a poet he has the <i>unum necessarium</i>, the individual note +of song. Like Keats, he was not quite individual—there are echoes, +especially of Edgar Poe, in him. But the genuine and authentic +contribution is sufficient, and is of the most unmistakable kind. In the +first book "Exile," "A Neglected Heart," "Bisclavaret," "The Fountain of +Tears," "Barcarolle," make a new mixture of the fair and strange in +meaning, a new valuation of the eternal possibilities of language in +sound. <i>Music and Moonlight</i>—O'Shaughnessy was one of the few poets who +have been devoted to music—is almost more remote, and even less +popularly beautiful; but the opening "Ode," some of the lyrics in the +title poem (such as "Once in a hundred years"), the song "Has summer +come without the rose," and not a few others, renew for those who can +receive it the strange attraction, the attraction most happily hinted by +the very title of this book itself, which O'Shaughnessy could exercise. +That there was not a little that is morbid in him—as perhaps in the +school generally—sane criticism cannot deny. But though it is as unwise +as it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> unsafe to prefer morbidness for itself or to give it too great +way, there are undoubted charms in it, and O'Shaughnessy could give +poetical form to these as few others could. Two of his own lines—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh! exquisite malady of the soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How hast thou marred me—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>put the thing well. Those who have once tasted his poetry return, and +probably, though they are never likely to be numerous, always when they +have once tasted will return, to the visions and the melodies—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">Of a dreamer who slumbers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a singer who sings no more.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Another poet whose death brings him within our range, and who may be +said to belong, with some striking differences of circumstance as well +as individual genius, to the same school, was James Thomson, second of +the name in English poetry, but a curious and melancholy contrast to +that Epicurean animal, the poet of <i>The Seasons</i>. He was born at +Port-Glasgow on 23rd November 1834, and was the son of a sailor. His +parents being in poor circumstances, he obtained, as a child, a place in +the Royal Caledonian Asylum, and, after a good education there, became +an army schoolmaster—a post which he held for a considerable time. But +Thomson's natural character was recalcitrant to discipline and +distinguished by a morbid social jealousy. He gradually, under the +influence of, or at any rate in company with, the notorious Charles +Bradlaugh, adopted atheistic and republican opinions, and in 1862 an act +of insubordination led to his dismissal from the army, for which he had +long lost, if he ever had, any liking. It is also said that the death of +a girl to whom he was passionately attached had much to do with the +development of the morbid pessimism by which he became distinguished. +For some time Thomson tried various occupations, being by turns a +lawyer's clerk, a mining agent, and war correspondent of a newspaper +with the Carlists. But even before he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> left the army he had, partly with +Mr. Bradlaugh's help, obtained work on the press, and such income as he +had during the last twenty years of his life was chiefly derived from +it. He might undoubtedly have made a comfortable living in this way, for +his abilities were great and his knowledge not small. But in addition to +the specially poetical weakness of disliking "collar-work," he was +hampered by the same intractable and morose temper which he had shown in +the army, by the violence of his religious and political views, and +lastly and most fatally by an increasing slavery to drink and chloral. +At last, in 1882, he—after having been for some time in the very worst +health—burst a blood-vessel while visiting his friend the blind poet +Philip Bourke Marston, and died in University College Hospital on 3rd +June.</p> + +<p>This melancholy story is to be found sufficiently reflected in his +works. Those in prose, though not contemptible, neither deserve nor are +likely to receive long remembrance, being for the most part critical +studies, animated by a real love for literature and informed by +respectable knowledge, but of necessity lacking in strict scholarship, +distinguished by more acuteness than wisdom, and marred by the sectarian +violence and narrowness of a small anti-orthodox clique. They may +perhaps be not unfairly compared to the work of a clever but +ill-conditioned schoolboy. The verse is very different. He began to +write it early, and it chiefly appeared in Mr. Bradlaugh's <i>National +Reformer</i> with the signature "B. V.," the initials of "Bysshe Vanolis," +a rather characteristic <i>nom de guerre</i> which Thomson had taken to +express his admiration for Shelley directly, and for Novalis by anagram. +Some of it, however, emerged into a wider hearing, and attracted the +favourable attention of men like Kingsley and Froude. But Thomson did +nothing of importance till 1874, when "The City of Dreadful Night" +appeared in the <i>National Reformer</i>, to the no small bewilderment +probably of its readers. Six years later the poem was printed with +others in a volume, quickly followed by a second, <i>Vane's Story</i>, +<i>etc.</i> Thomson's melancholy death attracted fresh attention to him, and +much—perhaps a good deal too much—of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> his writings has been +republished since. His claims, however, must rest on a comparatively +small body of work, which will no doubt one day be selected and issued +alone. "The City of Dreadful Night" itself, incomparably the best of the +longer poems, is a pessimist and nihilist effusion of the deepest gloom +amounting to despair, but couched in stately verse of an absolute +sincerity and containing some splendid passages. With this is connected +one of the latest pieces, the terrible "Insomnia." Of lighter strain, +written when the poet could still be happy, are "Sunday at Hampstead" +and "Sunday up the River," "The Naked Goddess," and one or two others; +while other things, such as "The fire that filled my heart of old," must +also be cited. Even against these the charge of a monotonous, narrow, +and irrational misery has been brought. But what saves Thomson is the +perfection with which he expresses, the negative and hopeless side of +the sense of mystery, of the Unseen; just as Miss Rossetti expresses the +positive and hopeful one. No two contemporary poets perhaps ever +completed each other in a more curious way than this Bohemian atheist +and this devout lady.</p> + +<p>So far in this chapter the story of poetry, from Tennyson downwards, has +been conducted in regular fashion, and by citing the principal names +which represent the chief schools or sub-schools. But we must now return +to notice a very considerable company of other verse-writers, without +mention of whom this history would be wofully incomplete. Nor must it by +any means be supposed that they are to be regarded invariably as +constituting a "second class." On the contrary, some of them are the +equals, one or two the superiors, of Thomson or of O'Shaughnessy. But +they have been postponed, either because they belong to schools of which +the poets already mentioned are masters, to choruses of which others are +the leaders, or because they show rather blended influences than a +distinct and direct advance in the main poetical line of development. +Others again rank here, and not earlier, because they are of the second +class, or a lower one.</p> + +<p>Of these, though he leaves a name certain to live in English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> literary +history, if not perhaps quite in the way in which its author wished, is +Martin Farquhar Tupper, who was born, in 1810, of a very respectable +family in the Channel Islands, his father being a surgeon of eminence. +Tupper was educated at the Charterhouse and at Christ Church, and was +called to the bar. But he gave himself up to literature, especially +poetry or verse, of which he wrote an enormous quantity. His most famous +book appeared originally in 1839, though it was afterwards continued. It +was called <i>Proverbial Philosophy</i>, and criticised life in rhythmical +rather than metrical lines, with a great deal of orthodoxy. Almost from +the first the critics and the wits waged unceasing war against it; but +the public, at least for many years, bought it with avidity, and perhaps +read it, so that it went through forty editions and is said to have +brought in twenty thousand pounds. Nor is it at all certain that any +genuine conception of its pretentious triviality had much to do with the +decay which, after many years, it, like other human things, experienced. +Mr. Tupper, who did not die till 1889, is understood to have been +privately an amiable and rather accomplished person; and some of his +innumerable minor copies of verse attain a very fair standard of minor +poetry. But <i>Proverbial Philosophy</i> remains as one of the bright and +shining examples of the absolute want of connection between literary +merit and popular success.</p> + +<p>It has been said that Lord Tennyson's first work appeared in <i>Poems by +Two Brothers</i>, and it is now known that this book was actually by the +<i>three</i>,—Frederick, Charles, and Alfred. Frederick, the eldest, who, at +a great age, is still alive, has never ceased verse-writing. Charles, +who afterwards took the name of Turner, and, having been born in 1808, +died in 1879, was particularly famous as a sonneteer, producing in this +form many good and some excellent examples. Arthur Hallam, whom <i>In +Memoriam</i> has made immortal, was credited by the partial judgment of his +friends with talents which, they would fain think, were actually shown +both in verse and prose. A wiser criticism will content itself with +saying that in one sense he produced <i>In Memoriam</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> itself, and that +this is enough connection with literature for any man. His own work has +a suspicious absence of faults, without the presence of any great +positive merit,—a combination almost certainly indicating precocity, to +be followed by sterility. But this consummation he was spared. John +Sterling, who has been already referred to, and who stands to Carlyle in +what may be called a prose version of the relation between Tennyson and +Hallam, wrote some verse which is at least interesting; and Sir Francis +Doyle, also elsewhere mentioned, belongs to the brood of the remarkable +years 1807-14, having been born in 1810. But his splendid war-songs were +written not very early in life.</p> + +<p>Of the years just mentioned, the first, 1807, contributed, besides Mr. +Frederick Tennyson, the very considerable talent of Archbishop Trench, a +Harrow and Trinity (Cambridge) man who had an actual part in the +expedition to Spain from which Sterling retreated, took orders, and +ended a series of ecclesiastical promotions by the Archbishopric of +Dublin, to which he was consecrated in 1864, which he held with great +dignity and address during the extremely trying period of +Disestablishment, and which he resigned in 1884, dying two years later. +Trench wrote always well, and always as a scholar, on a wide range of +subjects. He was an interesting philologist,—his <i>Study of Words</i> being +the most popular of scholarly and the most scholarly of popular works on +the subject,—a valuable introducer of the exquisite sacred Latin poetry +of the Middle Ages to Englishmen, a sound divine in preaching and +teaching. His original English verse was chiefly written before the +middle of the century, though perhaps his best known (not his best) +verses are on the Battle of the Alma. He was a good sonneteer and an +excellent hymn-writer.</p> + +<p>1809 contributed three writers of curiously contrasted character. One +was Professor Blackie, an eccentric and amiable man, a translator of +Æschylus, and a writer of songs of a healthy and spirited kind. The +second, Dr. Thomas Gordon Hake, a poet of Parables, has never been +popular, and perhaps seldom arrived at that point of projection in which +poetical alchemy finally and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> successfully transmutes the rebel +materials of thought and phrase into manifest gold; but he had very high +and distinctly rare, poetical qualities. Such things as "Old Souls," +"The Snake Charmer," "The Palmist," three capital examples of his work, +are often, and not quite wrongly, objected to in different forms of some +such a phrase as this: "Poetry that is perfect poetry ought never to +subject any tolerable intellect to the necessity of searching for its +meaning. It is not necessary that it should yield up the whole treasures +of that meaning at once, but it must carry on the face of it such a +competent quantity as will relieve the reader from postponing the poetic +enjoyment in order to solve the intellectual riddle." The truth of this +in the main, and the demurrers and exceptions to it in part, are pretty +clear; nor is this the place to state them at length. It is sufficient +to say that in Dr. Hake's verse, especially that part of it published +between 1870 and 1880 under the titles <i>Madeline</i>, <i>Parables and Tales</i>, +<i>New Symbols</i>, <i>Legends of the Morrow</i> and <i>Maiden Ecstasy</i>, the reader +of some poetical experience will seldom fail to find satisfaction.</p> + +<p>It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that of this poet +with Lord Houghton, earlier known to everybody as Richard Monckton +Milnes, who died in 1885. He was of the golden age of Trinity during +this century, the age of Tennyson, and throughout life he had an amiable +fancy for making the acquaintance of everybody who made any name in +literature, and of many who made none. A practical and active +politician, and a constant figure in society, he was also a very +considerable man of letters. His critical work (principally but not +wholly collected in <i>Monographs</i>) is not great in bulk but is +exceedingly good, both in substance and in style. His verse, on the +other hand, which was chiefly the produce of the years before he came to +middle life, is a little slight, and perhaps appears slighter than it +really is. Few poets have ever been more successful with songs for +music: the "Brookside" (commonly called from its refrain, "The beating +of my own heart"), the famous and really fine "Strangers Yet," are the +best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> known, but there are many others. Lord Houghton undoubtedly had no +strong vein of poetry. But it was always an entire mistake to represent +him as either a fribble or a sentimentalist, while with more inducements +to write he would probably have been one of the very best critics of his +age.</p> + +<p>It is necessary once more to approach the unsatisfactory brevity of a +catalogue in order to mention, since it would be wrong to omit, Sir +Samuel Ferguson (1810-86), an Irish writer who produced some pleasant +and spirited work of ordinary kinds, and laboured very hard to achieve +that often tried but seldom achieved adventure, the rendering into +English poetry of Irish Celtic legends and literature; Alfred Domett +(1811-87), author of the New Zealand epic of <i>Ranulf and Amohia</i> and +much other verse, but most safely grappled to English poetry as +Browning's "Waring"; W. B. Scott (1812-90), an outlying member of the +Præ-Raphaelite School in art and letters, in whom for the most part +execution lagged behind conception both with pen and pencil; Charles +Mackay (1814-89), an active journalist who wrote a vast deal in verse +and prose, his best things perhaps being the mid-century "Cholera +Chant," the once well-known song of "A good time coming," and in a +sentimental strain the piece called "O, ye Tears"; and Mrs. Archer +Clive, the author of the remarkable novel of <i>Paul Ferroll</i>, whose <i>IX. +Poems by V.</i> attracted much attention from competent critics in the +doubtful time of poetry about the middle of the century, and are really +good.</p> + +<p>Not many writers, either in prose or poetry, give the impression of +never having done what was in them more than William Edmonstoune Aytoun, +who was born in 1813 and died in 1865. He was a son-in-law of +"Christopher North," and like him a pillar of <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, in +which some of his best things in prose and verse appeared. He divided +himself between law and literature, and in his rather short life rose to +a Professorship in the latter and a Sheriffdom in the former, deserving +the credit of admirably stimulating influence in the first capacity and +competent performance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> in the second. He published poems when he was +only seventeen. But his best work consists of the famous <i>Bon Gaultier +Ballads</i>—a collection of parodies and light poems of all kinds written +in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, and one of the pleasantest +books of the kind that the century has seen—and the more serious <i>Lays +of the Scottish Cavaliers</i>, both dating from the forties, the +satirically curious <i>Firmilian</i> (see below), 1854, and some <i>Blackwood</i> +stories of which the very best perhaps is <i>The Glenmutchkin Railway</i>. +His long poem of <i>Bothwell</i>, 1855, and his novel of <i>Norman Sinclair</i>, +1861, are less successful.</p> + +<p>The <i>Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers</i>, on which his chief serious claim +must rest, is an interesting book, if hardly a great one. The style is +modelled with extreme closeness upon that of Scott, which even Sir +Walter, with all his originality and genius, had not been able always to +preserve from flatness. In Aytoun's hands the flats are too frequent, +though they are relieved and broken at times by really splendid bursts, +the best of which perhaps are "The Island of the Scots" and "The Heart +of the Bruce." For Aytoun's poetic vein, except in the lighter kinds, +was of no very great strength; and an ardent patriotism, a genuine and +gallant devotion to the Tory cause, and a keen appreciation of the +chivalrous and romantic, did not always suffice to supply the want of +actual inspiration.</p> + +<p>If it had been true, as is commonly said, that the before-mentioned +<i>Firmilian</i> killed the so-called Spasmodic School, Aytoun's failure to +attain the upper regions of poetry would have been a just judgment; for +the persons whom he satirised, though less clever and humorous, were +undoubtedly more poetical than himself. But nothing is ever killed in +this way, and as a matter of fact the Spasmodic School of the early +fifties was little more than one of the periodical outbursts of poetic +velleity, more genuine than vigorous and more audacious than organic, +which are constantly witnessed. It is, as usual, not very easy to find +out who were the supposed scholars in this school. Mr. P. H. Bailey, the +author of <i>Festus</i>, who still survives, is sometimes classed with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> them; +but the chief members are admitted to have been Sydney Dobell and +Alexander Smith, both remarkable persons, both failures of something +which might in each case have been a considerable poet, and both +illustrating the "second middle" period of the poetry of the century +which corresponds to that illustrated earlier by Darley, Horne, and +Beddoes.</p> + +<p>Of this pair, Sydney Dobell had some, and Alexander Smith had others, of +the excuses which charity not divorced from critical judgment makes for +imperfect poets. Dobell, with sufficient leisure for poetical +production, had a rather unfortunate education and exceedingly bad +health. Smith had something of both of these, and the necessity of +writing for bread as well. Dobell, the elder of the two, and the longer +lived, though both died comparatively young, was a Kentish man, born at +Cranbrook on 5th April 1824. When he was of age his father established +himself as a wine-merchant at Cheltenham, and Sydney afterwards +exercised the same not unpoetical trade. He went to no school and to no +University, privations especially dangerous to a person inclined as he +was to a kind of passionate priggishness. He was always ill; and his +wife, to whom he engaged himself while a boy, and whom he married before +he had ceased to be one, was always ill likewise. He travelled a good +deal, with results more beneficial to his poetry than to his health; +and, the latter becoming ever worse, he died near Cheltenham on 22nd +August 1874. His first work, an "Italomaniac" closet drama entitled <i>The +Roman</i>, was published in 1850; his second, <i>Balder</i>, in 1853. This +latter has been compared to Ibsen's <i>Brand</i>: I do not know whether any +one has noticed other odd, though slight, resemblances between <i>Peer +Gynt</i> and Beddoes' chief work. The Crimean War had a strong influence on +Dobell, and besides joining Smith in <i>Sonnets on the War</i> (1855), he +wrote by himself <i>England in Time of War</i>, next year. He did not publish +anything else; but his works were edited shortly after his death by +Professor Nichol.</p> + +<p>Alexander Smith, like so many of the modern poets of Scotland, was born +in quite humble life, and had not even the full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> advantages open to a +Scottish "lad o' pairts." His birthplace, however, was Kilmarnock, a +place not alien to the Muses; and before he was twenty-one (his birth +year is diversely given as 1829 and 1830) the Rev. George Gilfillan, an +amiable and fluent critic of the middle of the century, who loved +literature very much and praised its practitioners with more zeal than +discrimination, procured the publication of the <i>Life Drama</i>. It sold +enormously; it is necessary to have been acquainted with those who were +young at the time of its appearance to believe in the enthusiasm with +which it was received; but a little intelligence and a very little +goodwill will enable the critic to understand, if not to share their +raptures. For a time Smith was deliberately pitted against Tennyson by +"the younger sort" as Dennis says of the faction for Settle against +Dryden in his days at Cambridge. The reaction which, mercifully for the +chances of literature if not quite pleasantly for the poet, always comes +in such cases, was pretty rapid, and Smith, ridiculed in <i>Firmilian</i>, +was more seriously taxed with crudity (which was just), plagiarism +(which was absurd), and want of measure (which, like the crudity, can +hardly be denied). Smith, however, was not by any means a weakling +except physically; he could even satirise himself sensibly and +good-humouredly enough; and his popularity had the solid result of +giving him a post in the University of Edinburgh—not lucrative and by +no means a sinecure, but not too uncongenial, and allowing him a chance +both to read and to write. For some time he stuck to poetry, publishing +<i>City Poems</i> in 1857 and <i>Edwin of Deira</i> in 1861. But the taste for his +wares had dwindled: perhaps his own poetic impulse, a true but not very +strong one, was waning; and he turned to prose, in which he produced a +story or two and some pleasant descriptive work—<i>Dreamthorpe</i> (1863), +and <i>A Summer in Skye</i> (1865). Consumption showed itself, and he died on +8th January 1867.</p> + +<p>It has already been said that there is much less of a distinct +brotherhood in Dobell and Smith, or of any membership of a larger but +special "Spasmodic school," than of the well-known and superficially +varying but generally kindred spirit of periods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> and persons in which +and in whom poetic yearning does not find organs or opportunities +thoroughly suited to satisfy itself. Dobell is the more unequal, but the +better of the two in snatches. His two most frequently quoted +things—"Tommy's Dead" and the untitled ballad where the refrain—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh, Keith of Ravelston,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The sorrows of thy line!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>occurs at irregular intervals—are for once fair samples of their +author's genius. "Tommy's dead," the lament of a father over his son, is +too long, it has frequent flatnesses, repetitions that do not add to the +effect, bits of mere gush, trivialities. The tragic and echoing +magnificence of the Ravelston refrain is not quite seconded by the text: +both to a certain extent deserve the epithet (which I have repudiated +for Beddoes in another place) of "artificial." And yet both have the +fragmentary, not to be analysed, almost uncanny charm and grandeur which +have been spoken of in that place. Nor do this charm, this grandeur, +fail to reappear (always more or less closely accompanied by the faults +just mentioned, and also by a kind of flatulent rant which is worse than +any of them) both in Dobell's war-songs, which may be said in a way to +hand the torch on from Campbell to Mr. Kipling, and in his marvellously +unequal blank verse, where the most excellent thought and phrase +alternate with sheer balderdash—a pun which (it need hardly be said) +was not spared by contemporary critics to the author of <i>Balder</i>.</p> + +<p>Alexander Smith never rises to the heights nor strikes the distinct +notes of Dobell; but the <i>Life Drama</i> is really on the whole better than +either <i>Balder</i> or <i>The Roman</i>, and is full of what may be called, from +opposite points of view, happy thoughts and quaint conceits, expressed +in a stamp of verse certainly not quite original, but melodious always, +and sometimes very striking. He has not yet had his critical +resurrection, and perhaps none such will ever exalt him to a very high +prominent position. He seems to suffer from the operation of that +mysterious but very real law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> which decrees that undeserved popularity +shall be followed by neglect sometimes even more undeserved. But when he +does finally find his level, it will not be a very low one.</p> + +<p>To the Spasmodics may be appended yet another list of bards who can +claim here but the notice of a sentence or a clause, though by no means +uninteresting to the student, and often very interesting indeed to the +student-lover of poetry:—the two Joneses—Ernest (1819-69), a rather +silly victim of Chartism, for which he went to prison, but a generous +person and master of a pretty twitter enough; and Ebenezer (1820-60), a +London clerk, author of <i>Studies of Sensation and Event</i>, a rather +curious link between the Cockney school of the beginning of the century +and some minor poets of our own times, but overpraised by his +rediscoverers some years ago; W. C. Bennett, a popular song-writer; +William Cory ( -1892), earlier and better known as Johnson, an Eton +master, a scholar, an admirable writer of prose and in <i>Ionica</i> of verse +slightly effeminate but with a note in it not unworthy of one glance of +its punning title; W. C. Roscoe (1823-59), grandson of the historian, a +minor poet in the best sense of the term; William Allingham (1824-89), +sometime editor of <i>Fraser</i>, and a writer of verse from whom at one time +something might have been expected; Thomas Woolner, a sculptor of great, +and—in <i>My Beautiful Lady</i>, <i>Pygmalion</i>, etc.—a poet of estimable +merit, whose first-named volume attracted rather disproportionate praise +at its first appearance. As one thinks of the work of these and +others—often enjoyable, sometimes admirable, and long ago or later +admired and enjoyed—the unceremoniousness of despatching them so +slightly brings a twinge of shame. But it is impossible to do justice to +their work, or to the lyrics, merry or sensuous, of Mortimer Collins, +who was nearly a real poet of <i>vers de société</i>, and had a capital +satiric and a winning romantic touch; the stirring ballads of Walter +Thornbury (which, however, would hardly have been written but for +Macaulay on the one hand and Barham on the other) and the +ill-conditioned but clever Radical railing of Robert Brough at +"Gentlemen." But if they cannot be discussed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> they shall at least be +mentioned. On three others, Frederick Locker, Arthur Hugh Clough, and +"Owen Meredith" (Lord Lytton), we must dwell longer.</p> + +<p>Clough has been called by persons of distinction a "bad poet"; but this +was only a joke, and, with all respect to those who made it, a rather +bad joke. The author of "Qua Cursum Ventus," of the marvellous picture +of the advancing tide in "Say not the struggle," and of not a few other +things, was certainly no bad poet, though it would not be uncritical to +call him a thin one. He was born at Liverpool on New Year's Day 1819, +spent part of his childhood in America, went to Rugby very young and +distinguished himself there greatly, though it may be doubted whether +the peculiar system which Arnold had just brought into full play was the +healthiest for a self-conscious and rather morbid nature like Clough's. +From Rugby he went to Balliol, and was entirely upset, not, as is +sometimes most unjustly said, by Newman, but by the influence of W. G. +Ward, a genial Puck of Theology, who, himself caring for nothing but +mathematics, philosophy, and play-acting, disturbed the consciences of +others by metaphysical quibbles, and then took refuge in the Church of +Rome. Clough, who had been elected to an Oriel fellowship, threw it up +in 1848, turned freethinker, and became the head of an educational +institution in London called University Hall. He did not hold this very +long, receiving a post in the Education Office, which he held in various +forms till his death in 1861 at Florence.</p> + +<p>It is not necessary to be biassed by Matthew Arnold's musical epicede of +"Thyrsis" in order to admit, nor should any bias against his theological +views and his rather restless character be sufficient to induce any one +to deny, a distinct vein of poetry in Clough. His earliest and most +popular considerable work, <i>The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich</i> (the title +of which was originally rather different,) is written in hexameters +which do not, like Kingsley's, escape the curse of that "pestilent +heresy"; and the later <i>Amours de Voyage</i> and <i>Dipsychus</i>, though there +are fine passages in both, bring him very close to the Spasmodic +school,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> of which in fact he was an unattached and more cultivated +member, with fancies directed rather to religiosity than to strict +literature. <i>Ambarvalia</i> had preceded the <i>Bothie</i>, and other things +followed. On the whole, Clough is one of the most unsatisfactory +products of that well-known form of nineteenth century scepticism which +has neither the strength to believe nor the courage to disbelieve "and +have done with it." He hankers and looks back, his "two souls" are +always warring with each other, and though the clash and conflict +sometimes bring out fine things (as in the two pieces above cited and +the still finer poem at Naples with the refrain "Christ is not risen"), +though his "Latest Decalogue" has satirical merit, and some of his +country poems, written without undercurrent of thought, are fresh and +genial, he is on the whole a failure. But he is a failure of a +considerable poet, and some fragments of success chequer him.</p> + +<p>Frederick Locker, who on his second marriage took the additional name of +Lampson, was born in 1821 of a family long connected with the Navy and +with Greenwich Hospital. He himself held for some years a post in the +Admiralty; but he was much more addicted to society and to literature +than to official work. His first marriage with Lady Charlotte Bruce +strengthened his social position, and his second gave him wealth. He +published, as early as 1857, a volume of light verse entitled <i>London +Lyrics</i>, which, with the work of Prior, Praed, and Mr. Austin Dobson, +stands at the head of its kind in English. But—an exceedingly rare +thing for amateur as well as for professional writers in our time—he +was not tempted either by profit or fame to write copiously. He added +during his not short life, which closed in May 1895, a few more poems to +<i>London Lyrics</i>. He edited in 1867 an anthology of his own kind of verse +called <i>Lyra Elegantiarum</i>, and in 1879 he produced a miscellany of +verse and prose, original and selected, called <i>Patchwork</i>, in which +some have seen his most accomplished and characteristic production. In +form it is something like Southey's <i>Omniana</i>, partly a commonplace +book, partly full of original things; but the extracts are so choicely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> +made and the original part is so delightful that it is not quite like +any book in the language. If Charles Lamb had been of Mr. Locker's time +and circumstances he might have made its fellow. "My Guardian Angel," a +short prose anecdote, is, as nearly as the present writer knows, unique. +Latterly its author was chiefly known as a man of much hospitality and a +collector of choice books. He would not do anything bad, and apparently +he did not feel inclined to do anything good. And as this is a century +when almost everybody must still be doing, and taking the chance of +goodness and badness, such an exception to the rule should meet with +honour.</p> + +<p>No poet of the period, perhaps none of the century, occupies a position +less settled by general criticism, or more difficult to settle, than +that of Edward Robert, first Earl of Lytton, for a long time known in +poetry as "Owen Meredith." The only son of the novelist, he was born on +8th November 1831, and after going to Harrow, but not to either +university, entered the diplomatic service at the age of eighteen. In +this he filled a great many different offices at a great many different +places for nearly thirty years, till, after succeeding to his father's +title, he was made First Minister at Lisbon, and then in 1876 Viceroy of +India. This post he gave up in 1880, and after the return of the Tory +party to power, was sent in 1887 as Ambassador to Paris, where he was +very popular, and where he died in 1892.</p> + +<p>Despite the fact that his time, save for the interval of 1880-87, was +thus uninterruptedly occupied with business, Lord Lytton was an +indefatigable writer of verse; while in <i>The Ring of Amasis</i> he tried +the prose romance. His chief poetical books were <i>Clytemnestra</i> (1855); +<i>The Wanderer</i> (1859), which contains some charming lyrical work; +<i>Lucile</i> (1860), a verse story; <i>Songs of Servia</i> (<i>Serbski Pesme</i>) +(1861); <i>Orval, or the Fool of Time</i> and <i>Chronicles and Characters</i> +(1869); <i>Fables in Song</i> (1874); <i>Glenaveril</i>, a very long modern epic +(1885); and <i>After Paradise, or Legends of Exile</i> (1887). Besides these +he collaborated in 1861 with his friend Julian Fane in a poem, +<i>Tannhäuser</i>, which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> though too much of a Tennysonian echo, has good +passages; and after his death two volumes equal if not superior to +anything he had done, <i>Marah</i>, a collection of short poems, and <i>King +Poppy</i>, a fantastic epic, were published. This extensive and not always +easily accessible work is conveniently represented by two volumes of +selections, one representing chiefly the earlier and shorter works, +edited by Miss Betham-Edwards in 1890, the other drawn mostly from the +later and longer, edited by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, in 1894. +This latter was accompanied by reprints of <i>The Wanderer</i> and <i>Lucile</i>.</p> + +<p>The difficulties in criticism above referred to arise, not merely from +the voluminousness of this work, nor from the fact that Lord Lytton +shares with all the poets of his special generation, except Rossetti, +that inability to hit upon a definite and distinct manner of his own +which is so frequently and strangely remarkable in what may be called +intermediate poetical periods. Indeed in his later years he did strike +out something like a very distinct style. But he suffers more than any +other poet of anything like his gifts from two faults, one of which is +perhaps the fault that hurts a poet most with the vulgar, and the other +that which does him most harm with critics. He was so frankly pleased +with, and so apt at imitating the work of his great contemporaries, that +he would publish things to which fools gave the name of +plagiarisms—when they were in fact studies in the manner of Tennyson, +Heine, Browning, and others. And in the second place, though he +frequently rewrote, it seemed impossible for him to retrench and +concentrate. To this may be added his fondness for extremely long +narrative poems, the taste for which has certainly gone out, while it +may be doubted whether, unless they are pure romances of adventure, they +are ever good things.</p> + +<p>The consequence of all this, and perhaps of other things less +legitimately literary, such as political partnership, has hitherto been +that Lord Lytton has been ranked very far indeed below his proper place. +For he had two poetical gifts, the higher of them in a high, the lower +in an eminent degree. The first was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> the gift of true lyric, not seldom +indeed marred by the lack of polish above noticed, but real, true, and +constant, from the "Fata Morgana" and "Buried Heart" of <i>The Wanderer</i> +to the "Experientia Docet" and "Selenites" of <i>Marah</i>, more than thirty +years later. The other was a much more individual power, and by some +might be ranked higher. It is the gift of what can best generally be +called ironical narration, using irony in its proper sense of covert +suggestive speech. This took various forms, indicated with more or less +clearness in the very titles of <i>Chronicles and Characters</i> and <i>Fables +in Song</i>,—symbolic-mystical in <i>Legends of Exile</i> (where not only some +of the legends but the poems called "Uriel" and "Strangers" are among +the best things of the author and highly typical of his later manner), +and fantastically romantic, with a strong touch of symbolism, in <i>King +Poppy</i>. And when, as happens in most of the pieces mentioned above and +many others, the combination welds itself into a kind of passionate +allegory, few poets show a better power of transporting the reader in +the due poetic manner. There can be no doubt that if Lord Lytton had +developed this faculty somewhat earlier (there are traces of it very +early), had made its exercises rather more clear and direct, and had +subjected their expression to severer thinning and compression, he would +have made a great reputation as a poet. As it is, it cannot be denied +that he had the positive faculties of poetry in kind and degree only +inferior to those possessed by at most four or five of his English +contemporaries from Tennyson downwards.</p> + +<p>Nor should there perhaps lack mention of Roden Noel and Thomas Ashe, two +writers in whom, from their earlier work, it was not unreasonable to +expect poets of a distinct kind, and who, though they never improved on +this early work, can never be said exactly to have declined from it. The +first and elder was a son of the Earl of Gainsborough, was born in 1834, +went to Cambridge, travelled a good deal, and at various times, till his +death at the age of sixty, published much verse and not a little prose, +both showing a distinctly poetical imagination without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> a sufficient +organ of expression. Nor did he ever develop this except in <i>A Little +Child's Monument</i>, where the passionate personal agony injures as much +as it helps the poetical result. Mr. Ashe, who was born in 1836, and +died in 1889, also a Cambridge man, had a much less ambitious and rather +less interesting but somewhat better-organised talent for verse, and his +<i>Sorrows of Hypsipyle</i>, published in 1866, caused and authorised at the +time considerable expectations from him. But his vein was rather the +result of classical culture working on a slight original talent than +anything better, and he did not rise beyond a pleasant competence in +verse which was never that of a poetaster, but hardly ever that of a +distinct poet. In which respect he may appear here as the representative +of no scanty company dead and living. For even the longest chapter of a +book must have an end; and it is impossible to find room in it for the +discussion of the question, whether the friends of Oliver Madox Brown, +son of the famous Præ-Raphaelite painter, were or were not wrong in +seeing extraordinary promise in his boyish work; whether the sonnets of +Ernest Lefroy (1855-91) were exercises or works of art. A few more +remarks on humorous poets and women-poets must close the record.</p> + +<p>In the art of merely or mainly humorous singing two names, those of +Edward Lear and Charles Stuart Calverley, entirely dominate the rest +among dead writers in the last part of the century. Lear, a good deal +the elder man of the two, was born in 1813, was a painter by profession, +and was the "E. L." of a well-known poem of Tennyson's. It was not till +1861 that his delightful nonsense-verses, known to his friends in +private, were first published, and they received various additions at +intervals till his death in 1888. The sheer nonsense-verse—the +<i>amphigouri</i> as the French call it—has been tried in various countries +and at various times, but never with such success as in England, and it +has seldom, if ever, been cultivated in England with such success as by +Lear. His happy concoction of fantastic names, the easy slipping flow of +his verse, and above all, the irresistible parody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> of sense and pathos +that he contrived to instil into his rigmarole are unapproachable. In a +new and not in the least opprobrious sense he was "within the realms of +Nonsense absolute."</p> + +<p>Calverley attempted less "uttermost isles" of fun. Born in 1831 of an +excellent Yorkshire family, he was educated at Harrow, and—a thing as +rare in the nineteenth as common in the seventeenth century—at both +universities, gaining at both a great reputation for scholarship, +eccentricity, and bodily strength. After some time he married and began +to work at the Bar; but an accident on the ice in 1867 brought on +concussion of the brain, though he lingered in constantly weakening +health till 1884. His <i>Verses and Translations</i> twenty-two years earlier +had made him the model of all literary undergraduates with a turn for +humour; and he was able in spite of his affliction to issue some things +later, the chief being <i>Fly Leaves</i> in 1872. Calverley, as has been +said, was a scholar, and his versions both from and into the classical +languages would of themselves have given him a reputation; but his forte +lay partly in the easier vein of parody, wherein few excelled him, +partly in the more difficult one of original light verse, wherein he had +a turn (as in his famous eulogy on tobacco) quite his own. He has never +been equalled in this, or even approached, except by James Kenneth +Stephen (1859-92), whose premature death deprived his friends of a most +amiable personality, and literature, in all probability, of a +considerable ornament. As it was, "J. K. S." left next to nothing but +two tiny collections of verse, showing an inspiration midway between +Calverley and Praed, but with quite sufficient personal note.</p> + +<p>Two other writers of less scholarly style, but belonging to the London +Bohemian school of the third quarter of the century, W. J. Prowse, +"Nicholas" (1836-70), and H. S. Leigh (1837-83), may be noticed. Prowse, +whose career was very short, was the author of the charming lines on +"The beautiful City of Prague," which have been attributed to others: +while Leigh's <i>Carols of Cockayne</i> (he was also a playwright)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> vary the +note of Hood happily, and now and then with a real originality.</p> + +<p>Except Miss Rossetti, no woman during this time approached the poetical +excellence of Mrs. Barrett Browning. But the whole period has been +unprecedentedly fertile in poetesses, and whereas we had but five or six +to mention in the earlier chapter devoted to verse, we have here at +least a dozen, though no one who requires very extended notice here. +Lady Dufferin (1807-1867), mother of the well-known diplomatist, a +member of the Sheridan family, and her sister, and junior by a year, +Mrs. Norton (1808-1876), were both writers of facile and elegant verse, +with the Irish note of easy melody. The former was the less known to the +general reader, though a few of her pieces, such as "The Irish Emigrant" +and "Katie's Letter," have always been favourite numbers for recitation. +Mrs. Norton at one time enjoyed a considerable reputation as a poetess +by contributions to "Annuals" and "Souvenirs," chiefly in the +sentimental ballad style which pleased the second quarter of the +century. "The Outward Bound," "Bingen on the Rhine," and other things +are at least passable, and one of the author's latest and most ambitious +poems, <i>The Lady of La Garaye</i>, has a sustained respectability. To a few +fanatical admirers the scanty verse of Emily Brontë has seemed worthy of +such high praise that only mass of work would appear to be wanting to +put her in the first rank of poetesses if not of poets. Part of this, +however, it is to be feared, is due to admiration of the supposed +freedom of thought in her celebrated "Last Lines," which either in +sincerity or bravado pronounce that "vain are the thousand creeds," and +declare for a sort of vague Pantheism, immanent at once in self and the +world. At thirty, however, a genuine poetess should have produced more +than a mere handful of verse, and its best things should be independent +of polemical partisanship either for or against orthodoxy. As a matter +of fact, her exquisite "Remembrance," and the slightly rhetorical but +brave and swinging epigram of "The Old Stoic," give her better claims +than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> "Last Lines," and with them and a few others place her as a +remarkable though not by any means a supreme figure.</p> + +<p>The more prudent admirers of Marian Evans (George Eliot), who wrote a +good deal of verse, either admit that her verse was not poetry, or hold +up a much-quoted passage, "Oh, may I join the choir invisible," which, +like the far superior piece just referred to, is only a hymn on the side +which generally dispenses with hymns; and not a very good one, though +couched in fair Wordsworthian blank verse. They would no doubt indulge +in derisive scorn at the idea of the mild muse of Adelaide Anne Procter, +daughter of "Barry Cornwall," receiving praise denied to Miss Brontë and +Miss Evans; and it must be admitted that Miss Procter never did anything +so good as "Remembrance." On the other hand, she was quite free from the +"sawdust" and heaviness which mar George Eliot's verse. Her style was +akin to that which has been noticed in speaking of Mrs. Norton, though +of a somewhat later fashion, and like those of her father, her songs, +especially the famous "Message," had the knack of suiting composers. +Menella Bute Stedley and Dora Greenwell, a respectable pair, somewhat +older than Miss Procter (she was born in 1825 and died in 1864), +considerably outlived her, Miss Stedley's life lasting from 1820 to +1877, and Miss Greenwell's from 1821 to 1882. Both were invalids, and +soothed their cares with verse, the latter to the better effect, though +both in no despicable strain. Augusta Webster (1840-94) and Emily +Pfeiffer ( -1890) were later poetesses of the same kind, but lower rank, +though both were greatly praised by certain critics. Sarah Williams, a +short-lived writer of some sweetness (1841-68), commended herself +chiefly to those who enjoy verse religious but "broad"; Constance Naden +to those who like pessimist agnosticism; Amy Levy to those who can +deplore a sad fate and admire notes few and not soaring, but passionate +and genuine.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>THE NOVEL SINCE 1850</h3> + + +<p>Certain novelists who were mentioned at the end of chapter iii., though +they all lived far into the last half of the century, not only belonged +essentially to its first division, but strictly speaking fell out of +strict chronological arrangement of any kind, being of the class of more +or less eccentric men of genius who may appear at any time and belong to +none in particular; and certain others of the earlier time, less +eccentric, lived on far towards our own. About 1850 however, a little +before or a little after it, there appeared a group of novelists of +great talent, and in some cases of genius itself, who were less +self-centred, and exemplified to a greater degree the special tendencies +of the time. These tendencies were variously connected with the Oxford +or Tractarian Movement; the transfer of political power from the upper +to the middle classes by the first Reform Bill; the rise of what is for +shortness called Science; the greater esteem accorded to and the more +general practice of what is, again for shortness, called Art; the +extension in a certain sense of education; the re-engagement of England, +long severed from continental politics, in those politics by the Crimean +war; the enormous development of commerce by the use of steam navigation +and of railways; the opening up of Australia and its neighbourhood; the +change effected in the East by the removal, gradual for some time, then +rapid and complete after the Indian Mutiny, of the power of the East +India Company; and the "Liberal" movement generally.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> + +<p>To work and counterwork out the influence of these various causes on +separate authors, and the connection of the authors with the causes, +would take a volume in itself. But on the scale and within the limits +possible here, the names of Charlotte Brontë, Marian Evans (commonly +called George Eliot), Charles Kingsley, Anthony Trollope, and Charles +Reade will give us such central points as can be most safely utilised. +Another, Miss Charlotte Yonge, the chief practitioner of the religious +novel, was contemporary with almost the earliest of these, but falls out +of this book as still living.</p> + +<p>The members of this group were, as happens with a repeated coincidence +in literary history too distinct to be altogether neglected, born within +a very few years of each other: Reade in 1814, Trollope in 1815, Miss +Brontë next year, Kingsley and Miss Evans in 1819; but as generally +happens likewise, their appearance as authors, or at least as novelists, +did not follow in exact sequel. The first-renowned, the shortest-lived, +and though by no means the most brilliant or powerful, in a certain way +the freshest and most independent, was Charlotte Brontë, the daughter of +a Yorkshire clergyman of eccentric and not altogether amiable character +and of Irish blood. She was born on 21st April 1816. The origin of the +Brontës or Pruntys has, as well as their family history generally, been +discussed with the curiously disproportionate minuteness characteristic +of our time; but hardly anything need be said of the results of the +investigation, except that they were undoubtedly Irish. Charlotte's +mother died soon after the Rev. Patrick Brontë had received the living +of Haworth, and Charlotte herself was sent to school at a place called +Cowan's Bridge, her experiences at which have in the same way been the +subject of endless inquiry into the infinitely little, in connection +with the "Lowood" of <i>Jane Eyre</i>. After two of her sisters had died, and +she herself had been very ill, she was taken away and educated partly at +home, partly elsewhere. Her two surviving sisters, who were her juniors, +Emily by two years and Anne by four, were both of more or less literary +leanings, and as they were all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> intended to be governesses, the sole +profession for poor gentlewomen in the middle of the century, Emily and +Charlotte were sent to Brussels to qualify. In 1846 the three published +a joint volume of <i>Poems</i> under the pseudonyms (which kept their +initials) of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, and to people over middle +age Charlotte Brontë is still perhaps most familiar as Currer Bell. +Emily's poems are elsewhere commented upon. The eldest and youngest +sister had no poetical vocation, and Anne had not much for prose. But +she, like the others, attempted it after the failure of their verse in a +triad of novels, <i>The Professor</i>, by Charlotte; <i>Wuthering Heights</i> +(very much praised by those who look first for unconventionality and +force), by Emily, who followed it with <i>The Tenant of Wildfell Hall</i>; +and <i>Agnes Grey</i>, by Anne. But Charlotte could not get <i>The Professor</i> +published—indeed it is anything but a good book—and set to work at the +famous <i>Jane Eyre</i>, which after being freely refused by publishers, was +accepted by Messrs. Smith and Elder and published in 1847, with the +result of violent attacks and very considerable popularity. Death the +next year and the year after robbed her of both her sisters and of her +brother Patrick, a ne'er-do-weel, who, on the strength of his +Bohemianism and his sisters, is sometimes supposed to have had genius. +<i>Shirley</i> appeared in 1849, and <i>Villette</i> in 1852. In 1854 Charlotte +married her father's curate, Mr. Nicholls, but died next year, on 31st +March 1855.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most interesting way of looking at Charlotte Brontë, who, as +has been said, has been violently attacked, and who has also been +extravagantly praised (though not so extravagantly as her sister Emily), +is to look at her in the light of a precursor or transition-novelist, +representing the time when the followers of Scott had wearied the public +with second-rate romances, when Thackeray had not arisen, or had only +just arisen, and when the modern domestic novel in its various kinds, +from the religious to the problematic, was for the most part in embryo, +or in very early stages. This latter novel she in fact anticipated in +many of its kinds, and partly to the fact of this anticipation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> partly +to the vividness which her representation of personal experiences gave +to her work, may the popularity which it at first had, and such of it as +has survived, be assigned. In this latter point, however, lay danger as +well as safety. It seems very improbable that if Charlotte Brontë had +lived, and if she had continued to write, her stock of experiences would +have sufficed her; and it would not appear that she had much else. She +is indeed credited with inventing the "ugly hero" in the Mr. Rochester +of <i>Jane Eyre</i>, but in the long-run ugliness palls almost as much as +beauty, perhaps sooner. Except in touches probably due to suggestions +from Emily, the "weirdness" of the younger sister was not exhibited by +the elder. The more melodramatic parts of the book would not have borne +repetition, and its main appeal now lies in the Lowood scenes and the +character of Jane herself, which are both admittedly autobiographical. +So also Shirley is her sister Emily, the curates who pester her appear +to have been almost in case to enter libel actions if they thought +proper, and <i>Villette</i> is little more than an embroidered version of the +Brussels sojourn. How successful an appeal of this kind is, the +experience of Byron and many others has shown; how dangerous it is, +could not be better shown than by the same experience. It was Charlotte +Brontë's good fortune that she died before she had utterly exhausted her +vein, though those who fail to regard Paul Emanuel with the affection +which he seems to inspire in some, may think that she went perilously +near it. But fate was kind to her: some interesting biographies and +brilliant essays at different periods have revived and championed her +fame: and her books—at least <i>Jane Eyre</i> almost as a whole and parts of +the others—will always be simply interesting to the novel-reader, and +interesting in a more indirect fashion to the critic. For this last will +perceive that, thin and crude as they are, they are original, they +belong to their own present and future, not to their past, and that so +they hold in the history of literature a greater place than many books +of greater accomplishment which are simply worked on already projected +and accepted lines.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> Emily's work, though too small in bulk and too +limited in character to be put really high, has this original character +in intense equality.</p> + +<p>The mantle of Charlotte Brontë fell almost directly from her shoulders +on those of another novelist of her sex. The author of <i>Jane Eyre</i> died, +as has been said, in the spring of 1855. In the autumn of the next year +was written, and in the January issue of <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> for 1857 +appeared, the first of a series of <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i>. The +author, then and for some time afterwards unknown, was Mary Ann or +Marian Evans, who took various styles during her life, but wrote +habitually under the <i>nom de guerre</i> of "George Eliot." Miss Brontë had +not been a very precocious novelist; but Miss Evans did not begin to +write novels till she was nearly as old as Miss Brontë was when she +died. Her time, however, had been by no means wasted. Born on 22nd +November 1819, at Arbury in Warwickshire, where her father was +land-steward to Mr. Newdigate, she moved, after twenty years' life in +the country or at school, with her father into Coventry, and became +acquainted with a set of Unitarians who had practically broken all +connection with Christianity. She accepted their opinions with the +curious docility and reflexiveness which, strong as was her mind in a +way, always distinguished her; and as a sign of profession she undertook +the translation of Strauss' <i>Leben Jesu</i>. In 1849 she went abroad, and +stayed for some time at Geneva, studying hard, and not returning to +England till next year. Then establishing herself in London, she began +to write for the <i>Westminster Review</i>, which she helped to edit, and +translated Feuerbach's <i>Wesen des Christenthums</i>. It is highly probable +that she would never have been known except as an essayist and +translator, if she had not formed an irregular union with George Henry +Lewes, a very clever and versatile journalist, who was almost a +philosopher, almost a man of science, and perhaps quite a man of letters +of the less creative kind. Under his influence (he had been a novelist +himself, though an unsuccessful one, and was an excellent critic) the +docility above remarked on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> turned itself into the channel of +novel-writing, with immediate and amazing success.</p> + +<p>Some good judges have thought that Miss Evans never exceeded, in her own +special way, the <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i>. But it was far exceeded in +popularity by <i>Adam Bede</i>, which, oddly enough, was claimed by or at +least for an impostor after its triumphant appearance in 1858. The +position of the author may be said to have been finally established by +<i>The Mill on the Floss</i> (1860), though the opening part of <i>Silas +Marner</i> (1861) is at least equal if not superior to anything she ever +did. Her later works were <i>Romola</i>, a story of the Italian Renaissance +(1863); <i>Felix Holt, the Radical</i> (1866); some poems (the <i>Spanish +Gypsy</i>, <i>Jubal</i>, etc., 1868-74); <i>Middlemarch</i> (1871); and <i>Daniel +Deronda</i> (1876). This last was followed by a volume of essays entitled +the <i>Impressions of Theophrastus Such</i>. Mr. Lewes having died in 1878, +Miss Evans, in May 1880, married Mr. John Cross, and died herself in +December of the same year. Her <i>Life and Letters</i> were subsequently +published by her husband, but the letters proved extremely disappointing +to her admirers, and the life was not very illuminative, except as to +that docility and capacity for taking colour and pressure from +surroundings which have been noticed above.</p> + +<p>As a poet George Eliot has been noticed elsewhere. She merely put some +of the thoughtful commonplaces of her time and school into wooden verse, +occasionally grandiose but never grand, and her purple passages have the +purple of plush not of velvet. Nor is she very remarkable as an +essayist, though some of her early articles have merit, and though +<i>Theophrastus Such</i>, appearing at a time when her general hold on the +public was loosening, not commending itself in form to her special +admirers, and injured in parts by the astonishing pseudo-scientific +jargon which she had acquired, was received rather more coldly than it +deserved. But as a novelist she is worthy of careful attention. Between +1860 and 1870, a decade in which Thackeray passed away early and during +which Dickens did no first-class work, she had some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> claims to be +regarded as the chief English novelist who had given much and from whom +more was to be expected; after Dickens' death probably four critics out +of five would have given her the place of greatest English novelist +without hesitation. Nevertheless, even from the first there were +dissidents: while at the time of the issue of <i>Middlemarch</i> her fame was +at the very highest, the publication of <i>Daniel Deronda</i> made it fall +rapidly; and a considerable reaction (perhaps to be reversed, perhaps +not) has set in against her since her death.</p> + +<p>The analysis of George Eliot's genius is indeed exceedingly curious. +There are in her two currents or characters which are more or less +mingled in all her books, but of which the one dominates in those up to +and including <i>Silas Marner</i>, while the other is chiefly noticeable in +those from <i>Romola</i> onward. The first, the more characteristic and +infinitely the more healthy and happy, is a quite extraordinary faculty +of humorous observation and presentation of the small facts and oddities +of (especially provincial) life. The <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i> show this +strongly, together with a fund of untheatrical pathos which scarcely +appears in so genuine a form afterwards. In <i>Adam Bede</i> and <i>The Mill on +the Floss</i> it combines with a somewhat less successful vein of tragedy +to make two admirable, if not faultless, novels; it lends a wonderful +charm to the slight and simple study of <i>Silas Marner</i>. But, abundant as +it is, it would seem that this is observation, not invention, nor that +happiest blending of observation and invention which we find in +Shakespeare and Scott. The accumulated experiences of her long and +passive youth were now poured out with a fortunate result. But in +default of invention, and in presence of the scientific or +pseudo-scientific spirit which was partly natural to her and partly +imbibed from those who surrounded her, she began, after <i>Silas Marner</i>, +to draw always in part and sometimes mainly upon quite different +storehouses. It is probable that the selection of the Italian +Renaissance subject of <i>Romola</i> was a very disastrous one. She herself +said that she "was a young woman when she began the book and an old one +when she finished it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> It is a very remarkable <i>tour de force</i>, but it +is a <i>tour de force</i> executed entirely against the grain. It is not +alive: it is a work of erudition not of genius, of painful manufacture +not of joyous creation or even observation. And this note of labour +deepened and became more obvious even when she returned to modern and +English subjects, by reason of the increased "purpose" which marked her +later works. It has been noted by all critics of any perception as +extremely piquant, though not to careful students of life and letters at +all surprising, that George Eliot, whose history was always well known, +is in almost every one of her books the advocate of the strictest union +of love and marriage—no love without marriage and no marriage without +love. But she was not satisfied with defending this thesis, beneficial, +comparatively simple, and, in the situations which it suggests, not +unfriendly to art. In her last book, <i>Daniel Deronda</i>, she embarked on a +scheme, equally hopeless and gratuitous, of endeavouring to enlist the +public sympathies in certain visions of neo-Judaism. In all these books +indeed, even in <i>Deronda</i>, the old faculty of racy presentation of the +humours of life recurred. But it became fainter and less frequent; and +it was latterly obscured, as has been hinted, by a most portentous +jargon borrowed from the not very admirable lingo of the philosophers +and men of science of the last half of the nineteenth century. All these +things together made the later books conspicuously, what even the +earlier had been to some extent, lifeless structures. They were +constructed no doubt with much art and of material not seldom precious, +but they were not lively growths, and they were fatally tinged with +evanescent "forms in chalk," fancies of the day and hour, not less +ephemeral for being grave in subject and seeming, and almost more jejune +or even disgusting to posterity on that account.</p> + +<p>Almost as much of the time, though curiously different in the aspect of +it which he represented, was Charles Kingsley, who was born in the same +year as George Eliot, on the 18th of June 1819. A fanciful critic might +indulge in a contrast between the sober<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> though not exactly dull scenery +of the Midlands which saw her birth, and that of the most beautiful part +of Devonshire (Holne, on the south-eastern fringe of Dartmoor) where, at +the vicarage which his father held, Kingsley was born. He was educated +at King's College, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, took a very +good degree, and very soon after his appointment to the curacy of +Eversley, in Hampshire, became rector thereof in 1844. He held the +living for the rest of his life, dying there on the 23rd January 1875. +It was not, however, by any means his only preferment. In 1860 he was +made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, not the most fortunate of +appointments; for, with a tendency to small slips in fact at least equal +to that of his friend and brother-in-law Mr. Froude, Kingsley, though +capable of presenting separate aspects and facets of the past admirably, +had not the general historic grasp which redeemed Froude. Nine years +later he resigned the post and was made a Canon of Chester, while in +1873 this was exchanged for a Canonry at Westminster and a Chaplaincy to +the Queen. Otherwise Kingsley's private life was happy and uneventful, +its chief incident being a voyage to the West Indies (which, though +unvisited, he had long before so brilliantly described) in 1871.</p> + +<p>His literary work was very large, much varied, and of an excellence +almost more varied than its kinds. He began, of course, with verse, and +his <i>Saint's Tragedy</i> (1848), a drama on the story of St. Elizabeth of +Hungary, was followed by shorter poems (far too few) at different times, +most of them previous to 1858, though the later books contain some +charming fragments, and some appeared posthumously. Of all men who have +written so little verse during as long a life in our time, Kingsley is +probably the best poet. The <i>Saint's Tragedy</i> is a little "viewy" and +fluent. But in <i>Andromeda</i> he has written the very best English +hexameters ever produced, and perhaps the only ones in which that alien +or rebel takes on at least the semblance of a loyal subject to the +English tongue. The rise of the breeze after the passage of the Nereids, +the expostulation of Andromeda<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> with Perseus, and the approach of the +monster, are simply admirable. "The Last Buccaneer" and "The Red +King"—call them "Wardour Street," as some critics may—are among the +best of their kind; and scores of songs, snatches, etc., from "The Three +Fishers" and "The Starlings" of a very early date to the "When all the +world is young" ballad of the <i>Water Babies</i> and the posthumous fragment +in rhyme of "Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorrèe"—one of the triumphs of that +pure poetry which has the minimum of meaning, yet enough—are of +extraordinary vigour, freshness, and charm.</p> + +<p>But Kingsley was one of those darlings—perhaps the rarest—of the Muses +to whom they grant the gift not only of doing a little poetry +exquisitely, but the further gift of abstaining from doing anything ill; +and he seems to have recognised almost at once that "the other harmony," +that of prose, was the one meant for him to do his day's work in. An +enthusiast for the people, and an eager disciple of Carlyle, he produced +in the fateful year 1849 two novels, <i>Alton Locke</i> and <i>Yeast</i>, a little +crude, immature, and violent, but of wonderful power and beauty as +literature, and putting current ideas of Chartism, the Tractarian +movement, the woes of the working classes, and what not, with that most +uncommon touch which takes out of the expression all its ephemerality. +He had joined Maurice in the "Christian Socialist" movement, and was a +frequent newspaper writer in the same sense as that of his novels; while +he soon began to contribute to <i>Fraser's Magazine</i> a series of extremely +brilliant essays, since collected in various forms, on literature, +scenery, sport (he was an ardent fisherman), and things in general. His +next novel, <i>Hypatia</i>, is still shot with Christian Socialism, but is +much less crude; and a further sobering down without any loss of force +appears in the great Elizabethan novel of <i>Westward Ho!</i> usually, and +perhaps rightly, thought his masterpiece (1855). <i>Two Years Ago</i> (1857), +the title of which refers to the Crimean War, is much more unequal, and +exhibits signs of a certain declension, though to a level still very +high. His last novel, <i>Hereward the Wake</i> (1866), was and is very +variously judged.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p> + +<p>But even the poems, the essays, and the novels, do not by any means fill +up the list of the results of Kingsley's activity. He was a constant, +and at his best a very good, sermon-writer for publication. He produced +in the first flush of the rage for seashore studies (1854) a very +pleasant little book called <i>Glaucus</i>; he collected some of his +historical lectures in <i>The Roman and the Teuton</i>; and he wrote in 1863 +the delightful nondescript of <i>The Water Babies</i>, part story, part +satire, part Rabelaisian <i>fatrasie</i>, but almost all charming, and +perhaps the latest book in which his powers appear at their very best. +These powers, as exhibited in his novels, with a not dissimilar +exhibition in little in his essays, are so remarkable that in certain +senses Kingsley may, with a little kindness, be put in the very first +class of English novelists, and might be put there by the sternest +critical impartiality were it not for his concomitant defects. These +defects are fairly numerous, and they are unfortunately of a kind not +likely to escape attention. He was a rather violent, though a very +generous partisan, and was perpetually going out of his way to provoke +those on the other side by "flings" of this or that kind. He was +extremely fond of arguing, but was a most poor and unhappy logician. One +of the best known and most unfortunate episodes of his literary life was +the controversy into which he plunged with Newman in 1864. Kingsley had +before on various occasions spoken enthusiastically of Newman's genius +and character: the reference to the peculiar estimate of truth held by +some Roman Catholics, and approved, or supposed to be approved, by +Newman, which was the text for the latter's wrath, was anything but +offensive, and it afterwards became certain, through the publication of +the <i>Apologia</i>, that the future Cardinal, with the inspiration of a born +controversialist, had simply made Kingsley the handle for which he had +been waiting. A very little dialectical skill would have brought +Kingsley out of the contest with honours at least divided; but, as it +was, he played like a child into Newman's hands, and not only did much +to re-establish that great man in public opinion, but subjected himself +at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> time, and to some extent since, to an obloquy at least as unjust +as that which had rested upon Newman. This maladroitness appears +constantly in the novels themselves, and it is accompanied not merely by +the most curious and outrageous blunders in fact (such as that which +represents Marlowe as dying in the time of James the First, not that of +Elizabeth), but by odd lapses of taste in certain points, and in some +(chiefly his later) books by a haphazard and inartistic construction.</p> + +<p>We must, of course, allow for these things, which are the more annoying +in that they are simply a case of those which <i>incuria fudit</i>. But when +they are allowed for, there will remain such a gallery of scenes, +characters, and incidents, as few English novelists can show. The best +passages of Kingsley's description, from <i>Alton Locke</i> to <i>Hereward</i>, +are almost unequalled and certainly unsurpassed. The shadows of London +low life and of working-class thought in <i>Alton Locke</i>, imitated with +increasing energy for half a century, have never been quite reached, and +are most brilliantly contrasted with the lighter Cambridge scenes. +<i>Yeast</i>, perhaps the least general favourite among his books, and +certainly the crudest, has a depth of passion and power, a life, an +intensity, the tenth part of which would make the fortune of a novel +now; and the variety and brilliancy of <i>Hypatia</i> are equalled by its +tragedy. Unequal as <i>Two Years Ago</i> is, and weak in parts, it still has +admirable passages; and <i>Hereward</i> to some extent recovers the strange +panoramic and phantasmagoric charm of <i>Hypatia</i>. But where <i>Westward +Ho!</i> deserves the preference, and where Kingsley vindicates his claim to +be the author not merely of good passages but of a good book, is in the +sustained passion of patriotism, the heroic height of adventure and +chivalry, which pervades it from first to last. Few better historical +novels have ever been written; and though, with one exception, that of +Salvation Yeo, the author has drawn better characters elsewhere, he has +nowhere knitted his incidents into such a consistent whole, or worked +characters and scenes together into such a genuine and thorough work of +art.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p> + +<p>Anthony Trollope, one of the most typical novelists of the century, or +at least of the half-century, in England, if not one of the greatest, +was a member of a literary family whose other members, of more or less +distinction, may for convenience' sake best be mentioned here. Little is +recorded of his father, who was, however, a barrister, and a Fellow of +New College, Oxford. But Anthony's mother, the "Mrs. Trollope" of two +generations ago, who was born a Miss Milton in 1780, was herself very +well known in print, especially by her novel of <i>The Widow Barnaby</i> +(1839), which had sequels, and by her very severe <i>Domestic Manners of +the Americans</i>, which appeared in 1832, after she had qualified herself +to write it by a three years' residence in the United States. She wrote +a great deal at this period, and survived till 1863; but her work hardly +survived as long as she did. It has, however, been said, and not without +justice, that much of the more vivid if coarser substance of her younger +son's humour is to be traced in it. The elder son, Thomas Adolphus, who +was born in 1810, and lived from 1841 for some half-century onwards in +Italy, was also a prolific novelist, and wrote much on Italian history; +while perhaps his best work was to be found in some short pieces, +combining history with a quasi-fictitious interest, which he contributed +to the periodicals edited by Dickens.</p> + +<p>But neither mother nor elder brother could vie with Anthony, who was +born in 1815, was educated at Winchester and Harrow, spent the greater +part of his life as an official of the Post Office, and died in December +1882, leaving an enormous number of novels, which at one time were the +most popular, or almost the most popular, of their day, and to which +rather fastidious judges have found it difficult to refuse all but the +highest praise. Almost immediately after Trollope's death appeared an +<i>Autobiography</i> in which, with praiseworthy but rather indiscreet +frankness, he detailed habits of work of a mechanical kind, the +confession of which played into the hands of those who had already begun +to depreciate him as a mere book-maker. It is difficult to say how many +novels he wrote, persevering as he did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> in composition up to the very +time of his death; and it is certain that the productions of his last +decade were, as a rule, very inferior to his best. This best is to be +found chiefly, but not entirely, in what is called the "Barsetshire" +series, clustering round a county and city which are more or less +exactly Hampshire and Winchester, beginning in 1855 with <i>The Warden</i>, a +good but rather immature sketch, and continuing through <i>Barchester +Towers</i> (perhaps his masterpiece), <i>Doctor Thorne</i>, <i>Framley Parsonage</i>, +and <i>The Small House at Allington</i> (the two latter among the early +triumphs of the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>), to <i>The Last Chronicle of Barset</i> +(1867), which runs <i>Barchester Towers</i> very hard, if it does not surpass +it. Other favourite books of his were <i>The Three Clerks</i>, <i>Orley Farm</i>, +<i>Can You Forgive Her</i>, and <i>Phineas Finn</i>—nor does this by any means +exhaust the list even of his good books.</p> + +<p>It has been said that Trollope is a typical novelist, and the type is of +sufficient importance to receive a little attention, even in space so +jealously allotted as ours must be. The novel craved by and provided for +the public of this second period (it has also been said) was a novel of +more or less ordinary life, ranging from the lower middle to the upper +class, correctly observed, diversified by sufficient incident not of an +extravagant kind, and furnished with description and conversation not +too epigrammatic but natural and fairly clever. This norm Trollope hit +with surprising justness, and till the demand altered a little or his +own hand failed (perhaps there was something of both) he continued to +hit it. His interests and experiences were fairly wide; for, besides +being active in his Post Office duties at home and abroad, he was an +enthusiastic fox-hunter, fairly fond of society and of club-life, +ambitious enough at least to try other paths than those of fiction in +his <i>Thackeray</i> (a failure), his <i>Cicero</i> (a worse failure), and other +things. And everything that he saw he could turn into excellent +novel-material. No one has touched him in depicting the humours of a +public office, few in drawing those of cathedral cities and the +hunting-field. If his stories, as stories, are not of enthralling +interest or of very artfully constructed plots, their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> craftsmanship in +this respect leaves very little to complain of. And he can sometimes, as +in the Stanhope family of <i>Barchester Towers</i>, in Mrs. Proudie <i>passim</i>, +in Madalina Demolines, and in others, draw characters very little +removed from those who live with us for ever. It is extremely improbable +that there will ever be a much better workman of his own class; and his +books are certainly, at their best, far better than all but one or two +that appear, not merely in any given year nowadays, but in any given +lustrum. Yet the special kind of their excellence, the facts that they +reflect their time without transcending it, and that in the way of +merely reflective work each time prefers its own workmen and is never +likely to find itself short of them, together with the great volume of +Trollope's production, are certainly against him; and it is hard even +for those who enjoyed him most, and who can still enjoy him, to declare +positively that there is enough of the permanent and immortal in him to +justify the hope of a resurrection.</p> + +<p>In Charles Reade, on the other hand, there is undoubtedly something of +this permanent or transcendent element, though less perhaps than some +fervent admirers of his have claimed. He was born on June 1814 at Ipsden +in Oxfordshire, where his family had been some time seated as squires. +He had no public school education, but was elected first to a Demyship +and then to a Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was called to +the Bar in 1842; but his Fellowship made him independent, and he pursued +many crazes—he was one of the most eccentric of those English authors +who are noticed in this volume—but no profession. He did not even begin +to write very early, and when he did it was drama, not prose or fiction. +He was not very successful with the stage, though he never quite gave it +up. It was about 1852 when he began to write, or at least to publish, +novels; and between the <i>Peg Woffington</i> of that year and his death on +1st April 1884 he produced nearly a score, diversifying the publication +with law-suits, eccentric newspaper correspondences, and other things. +Indeed he has in more than one of his books introduced mental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> delusions +with such startling subtlety and truth, and was so entirely odd in the +ordinary relations of life, that some have not hesitated to insinuate a +slight want of sanity.</p> + +<p>If there was any madness in him, the hackneyed alliance of great wits +was certainly not refused. A novelist of violent likes and dislikes +himself, he has found violent partisans and scornful pooh-poohers. Among +the former there is perhaps hardly one of his chief books—the quaint +and brilliant <i>Peg Woffington</i>, the pathetic <i>Christie Johnstone</i>, <i>Hard +Cash</i>, <i>Griffith Gaunt</i>, <i>Put Yourself in his Place</i>, <i>A Terrible +Temptation</i>, and the rest—which has not special sectaries. But catholic +criticism would undoubtedly put <i>It is Never too Late to Mend</i> (1856) +and <i>The Cloister and the Hearth</i> (1861) at the head of all. The former +is a tale of the moment, based chiefly on some stories which had got +abroad of tyranny in gaols, and on the Australian gold fever of a few +years earlier. The latter is a pure romance, purporting to tell the +adventures of Erasmus' father in the fifteenth century. The contrast of +these subjects illustrates admirably a curious combination in Reade's +genius which, for the matter of that, might be independently exemplified +from either book. On the one side he was one of the earliest and one of +the most industrious of those who have been called the "document" or +"reporter" novelists—now collecting enormous stores of newspaper +cuttings and busying himself with keenest interest in the things of the +day; now, as in <i>The Cloister and the Hearth</i>, not disdaining to impart +realism and vividness to his pictures by adapting and almost translating +whole passages from Erasmus' own <i>Colloquies</i>. On the other, he was a +poetic seer and dreamer, of the strongest romantic force, and capable of +extraordinary flights of power, passion, and pathos. But there was +another thing that he was <i>not</i>, and that was a critic. His taste and +judgment were extremely deficient; he had no sense of general proportion +in his work; and was quite as likely to be melodramatic as to be +tragical, to be coarse as to be strong, to be tedious as to be amusing, +to be merely revolting as to purify by pity and terror. Both the books +just specially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> mentioned may be thought too long: it is certain that +<i>The Cloister and the Hearth</i> is. That a freshness still evident in +<i>Christie Johnstone</i> has been lost in both (having been killed by "the +document") is also true. But still, Reade undoubtedly had genius, and to +genius most things can without much trouble be forgiven.</p> + +<p>The chief novelist of what is rather loosely called the School of +Dickens, was Wilkie Collins, son of the painter of that name, who was +born in London on 8th January 1824, and died in 1889. His greatest +popularity was in the decade between 1857 and 1866, when <i>The Dead +Secret</i>, <i>The Woman in White</i>, <i>No Name</i>, and <i>Armadale</i>, especially the +second, had an immense vogue. Perhaps <i>The Moonstone</i>, which is later, +is also better than any of these. The strictly literary merit of none +could be put high, and the method, that of forwarding the result by a +complicated intertwist of letters and narratives, though it took the +public fancy for a time, was clumsy; while the author followed his +master in more than one aberration of taste and sentiment. His brother +Charles Collins, who had a much shorter life, had a much more delicate +style and fancy; and the <i>Cruise upon Wheels</i>, a record of an actual +tour slightly embellished and thrown into fictitious form, is one of the +books which have, and are not, unless they drop entirely out of sight, +likely to lose, a firm following of friends, few perhaps but faithful. +Mortimer Collins, a contemporary, but no relation of these, whose poems +have already been mentioned, was born in 1827 and died in 1876, the last +twenty years of his life having been occupied by various and voluminous +literary work. He was one of the last of the so-called Bohemian school +in letters and journalism, something of a scholar, a fertile novelist, +and a versatile journalist in most of the kinds which make up modern +journalism.</p> + +<p>Henry Kingsley, younger brother of Charles, was himself a prolific and +vigorous novelist; and though a recent attempt to put him above his +brother cannot possibly be allowed by sound criticism, he had perhaps a +more various command of fiction, certainly a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> truer humour, and if a +less passionate, perhaps a more thoroughly healthy literary temperament. +But his life was not long, and he was unfortunately compelled during +most of it to write for a living. Born in 1830, he was educated at +King's College, London, and Worcester College, Oxford, on leaving which +latter he went to Australia and lived there for five years. Returning in +1859, he wrote the admirable Australian story of <i>Geoffrey Hamlyn</i>, +which, with <i>Ravenshoe</i> two years later, contains most of his work that +can be called really first rate. He returned to Australia for his +subject in <i>The Hillyars and the Burtons</i>, and wrote several other +novels before his death in 1876, having been during part of the time a +newspaper editor, a newspaper correspondent, and a journalist generally. +The absence of composition, which Flaubert deplored in English novels +generally, shows at its height in Henry Kingsley, whose <i>Ravenshoe</i>, for +instance, has scarcely any plot at all, and certainly owes nothing to +what it has; while he was a rapid and careless writer. But he had, in a +somewhat less elaborate form, all his brother's talents for description +of scene and action, and his characters, if more in the way of ordinary +life, are also truer to that life. Also he is particularly to be +commended for having, without the slightest strait-lacedness, and indeed +with a good deal of positive Bohemianism, exhibited the nineteenth +century English notion of what constitutes a gentleman perhaps better +than any one else. "There are some things a fellow <i>can't</i> do"—the +chance utterance of his not ungenerous scamp Lord Welter—is a memorable +sentence, whereon a great sermon might be preached.</p> + +<p>A little older than Henry Kingsley (he died in the same year), much more +popular for a time, and the exerter of an influence which has not ceased +yet, and has been on the whole distinctly undervalued, was George Henry +Lawrence, who was educated at Rugby and Balliol, was called to the Bar, +but was generally known in his own time as Major Lawrence from a militia +commission which he held. He also fought in, or at least was present +during, the war of independence of the southern states of America. +Lawrence, who was born in 1827, published in his thirtieth year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> a +novel, <i>Guy Livingstone</i>, which was very popular, and much denounced as +the Gospel of "muscular blackguardism"—a parody on the phrase "muscular +Christianity," which had been applied to and not unwelcomed by Charles +Kingsley. The book exhibited a very curious blend of divers of the +motives and interests which have been specified as actuating the novel +about this time. Lawrence, who was really a scholar, felt to the full +the Præ-Raphaelite influence in art, though by no means in religion, and +wrote in a style which is a sort of transition between the excessive +floridness of the first Lord Lytton and the later Corinthianism of Mr. +Symonds. But he retained also from his prototype, and new modelled, the +tendency to take "society" and the manners, especially the amatory +manners, of society very much as his province. And thus he rather +shocked the moralists, not only in <i>Guy Livingstone</i> itself, but in its +successors <i>Sword and Gown</i>, <i>Barren Honour</i>, <i>Sans Merci</i>, etc. That +Lawrence's total ideal, both in style and sentiment, was artificial, +false, and flawed, may be admitted. But he has to a great extent been +made to bear the blame of exaggerations of his own scheme by others; and +he was really a novelist and a writer of great talent, which somehow +came short, but not so very far short, of genius.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gaskell was older than most of those hitherto mentioned in this +chapter, having been born in 1810; but she did not begin to write very +early. <i>Mary Barton</i>, her first and nearly her best book, appeared in +1848, and its vivid picture of Manchester life, assisted by its great +pathos, naturally attracted attention at that particular time. +<i>Cranford</i> (1853), in a very different style, something like a blend of +Miss Mitford and Miss Austen, has been the most permanently popular of +her works. <i>Ruth</i>, of the same year, shocked precisians (which it need +not have done), but is of much less literary value than <i>Mary Barton</i> or +<i>Cranford</i>. Mrs. Gaskell, who was the biographer of Charlotte Brontë, +produced novels regularly till her death in 1865, and never wrote +anything bad, though it may be doubted whether anything but <i>Cranford</i> +will retain permanent rank.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p> + +<p>The year 1857, which saw <i>Guy Livingstone</i>, saw a book as different as +possible in ideal, but also one of no common merit, in <i>John Halifax, +Gentleman</i>. The author of this was Dinah Maria Mulock, who afterwards +became Mrs. Craik. She was born at Stoke-upon-Trent in 1826, and had +written for nearly ten years when <i>John Halifax</i> appeared. She died in +1888, having written a very great deal both in prose and verse; the +former part including many novels, of which the best perhaps is <i>A Life +for a Life</i>. Mrs. Craik was an example of the influence, so often +noticed and to be noticed in the latter part of our period, of the great +demand for books on writers of any popularity. Her work was never bad; +but it was to a very great extent work which was, as the French say, the +"small change" for what would probably in other circumstances have been +a very much smaller quantity of much better work. How this state of +things—which has been brought about on the one hand by the printing +press, newspapers, and the spread of education, on the other by the +disuse of sinecures, patronage, pensions, and easy living generally—is +to be prevented from affecting literature very disastrously is not +clear. Its negative or rather privative effect cannot but be bad; if its +positive effect is always as good as the works of Mrs. Craik, it will be +fortunate.</p> + +<p>It is difficult, in a book of this kind, to know how far to attempt the +subdivisions of specialist novels which have been common, such as for +instance the sporting novel, the practitioners of which have been +innumerable. The chief perhaps were Robert Surtees, the author of the +facetious series of which "Mr. Jorrocks" is the central and best figure, +and Major Whyte-Melville. The former, about the middle of the century, +carried out with much knowledge, not inconsiderable wit, and the +advantage of admirable illustrations from the pencil of John Leech, +something like the original idea of <i>Pickwick</i> as a sporting romance, +and there is a strong following of Dickens in him. Major Whyte-Melville, +born near St. Andrews in 1821 and heir to property there, was educated +at Eton, served for some years in the Guards, and with the Turkish +Contingent in the Crimean War, and was killed in the hunting-field<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> in +1878. He touched various styles, chiefly those of Lever and Bulwer, +while he had a sort of contact with George Lawrence. He was never +happier than in depicting his favourite pastime, which figures in most +of his novels and inspired him with some capital verse. But in <i>Holmby +House</i>, <i>Sarchedon</i>, the <i>Gladiators</i>, etc., he tried the historical +style also.</p> + +<p>Nor must the brief life, embittered by physical suffering, but +productive of not a little very cheerful work, of Francis Edward +Smedley, a relation of the poetess mentioned in the last chapter, be +forgotten. He, born in 1818, went to Cambridge, and then became a +novelist and journalist, dying in 1864. His best work belongs to exactly +the period with which this chapter begins, the early fifties, and had +the advantage, like other novels of the time, of illustration by "Phiz." +The three chief books are <i>Frank Fairleigh</i> (1850), <i>Lewis Arundel</i> +(1852), and <i>Harry Coverdale's Courtship</i> (1854). With a touch of +Bulwerian romance, something of the sporting novel, and a good deal of +the adventure story, Smedley united plenty of pleasant humour and +occasionally not a little real wit.</p> + +<p>It will have been observed that more than one of the more distinguished +novelists of this time attempted, and that at least one of them +achieved, the historical novel; nor was it at all likely that a kind so +attractive in itself, illustrated by such remarkable genius, and +discovered at last after many centuries of futile endeavour, should +immediately or entirely lose its popularity. Yet it is certain that for +about a quarter of a century, from 1845 to 1870, not merely the +historical novel, but the romance generally, did lose general practice +and general attention, while, though about the latter date at least one +novel of brilliant quality, Mr. Blackmore's <i>Lorna Doone</i>, vindicated +romance, and historical romance, it was still something of an exception. +Those who are old enough, and who paid sufficient attention to +contemporary criticism, will remember that for many years the advent of +a historical novel was greeted in reviews with a note not exactly of +contempt, but of the sort of surprise with which men greet something out +of the way and old fashioned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p> + +<p>This was the inevitable result of that popularity of the domestic and +usual novel which this chapter has hitherto described, and it was as +natural and as inevitable that the domestic and usual novel should in +its turn undergo the same law. Not that this, again, was summarily, much +less finally displaced; on the contrary, the enormous and +ever-increasing demand for fiction—which the establishment of public +free libraries, and the custom of printing in cheaper form for sale, has +encouraged <i>pari passu</i> with the apparent discouragement given to it by +the fall of circulating libraries from the absolutely paramount place +which they occupied not long ago—maintained the call for this as for +other kinds of story. But partly mere love of change, partly the +observations of those critics who were not content to follow the fashion +merely, and partly also the familiar but inexplicable rise at the same +time of divers persons whose talent inclined in a new direction, brought +in, about 1880 or later, a demand for romance, for historical romance, +and for the short story—three things against which the taste of the +circulating-library reader during the generation then expiring had +distinctly set itself. The greater part of the results of this change +falls out of our subject; but one remarkable name, perhaps the most +remarkable of all, is given to us by the Fates.</p> + +<p>For one of the pillars of this new building of romance was only too soon +removed. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (more commonly known to the +public by the first two, and to his friends by the second of his +Christian names) belonged to the famous family of lighthouse architects +who so long carried on the traditions of Smeaton in that department of +engineering; and he was to have been an engineer himself. But he was +incurably literary; and after school and college at Edinburgh, was +called to the Bar, with no more practical results in that profession +than in the other. Born on 13th November 1850, he was not extremely +precocious in publication; and it was not till nearly the end of the +seventies that his essays in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i> and his stories in +a periodical called <i>London</i>, short lived and not widely circulated, +but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> noteworthy in its way, attracted attention. He followed them up +with two volumes of somewhat Sternian travel, <i>An Inland Voyage</i> (1878) +and <i>Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes</i> (1879); next collecting his +<i>Cornhill Essays</i> in two other volumes, <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i> (1881) +and <i>Familiar Studies of Men and Books</i> (1882), and his <i>London</i> stories +in <i>The New Arabian Nights</i> (1882). But he did not get hold of the +public till a year later than the latest of these dates, with his famous +<i>Treasure Island</i>, the best boys' story since Marryat, and one of a +literary excellence to which Marryat could make no pretensions. The vein +of romance which he then struck, and the older and more fanciful one of +<i>The New Arabian Nights</i>, were followed up alternately or together in an +almost annual succession of books—<i>Prince Otto</i> (1885), <i>The Strange +Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> (1886), <i>Kidnapped</i> (1886), <i>The Black +Arrow</i> (a wonderfully good, though not very generally popular, +York-and-Lancaster story) (1888), <i>The Master of Ballantræ</i> (1889), the +exquisite <i>Catriona</i> (1893). It also pleased him to write, in +collaboration with others, <i>The Dynamiter</i>, <i>The Wrecker</i>, <i>The Ebb +Tide</i>, etc., where the tracing of the several shares is not unamusing. +Stevenson also attempted poetry, and his <i>Child's Garden of Verse</i> +(1885) has very warm admirers, who are often more doubtful about +<i>Underwoods</i> (1887) and <i>Ballads</i> (1891). The list of his work is not +exhausted, and one of the latest additions to it was <i>A Footnote to +History</i> (1892), containing an account of the intestine troubles of the +island of Samoa, where Mr. Stevenson, long a victim to lung disease, +latterly fixed his abode, and where he died suddenly in the winter of +1894.</p> + +<p>As has been the case with most of the distinguished writers of recent +years, Mr. Stevenson has been praised by some of his contemporaries and +juniors with an uncritical fervour which has naturally provoked +depreciation from others; and the charm of his personality was so great +that it is extremely difficult for any one who knew him to hold the +scales quite even. As the most brilliant and interesting by far, +however, of those English writers whose life was comprised in the last +half of the century he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> absolutely demands critical treatment here, and +it so happens that his method and results were extremely typical of the +literary movement and character of our time. He has left somewhat minute +accounts of his own apprenticeship, but they are almost unnecessary: no +critic of the slightest competence could fail to divine the facts. +Adopting to the full, and something more than the full, the modern +doctrine of the all-importance of art, of manner, of style in +literature, Mr. Stevenson early made the most elaborate studies in +imitative composition. There is no doubt that he at last succeeded in +acquiring a style which was quite his own: but it was complained, and +with justice, that even to the last he never attained complete ease in +this style; that its mannerism was not only excessive, but bore, as even +excessive mannerism by no means always does, the marks of distinct and +obvious effort. This was perhaps most noticeable in his essays, which +were further marred by the fact that much of them was occupied by +criticism, for which, though his taste was original and delicate, +Stevenson's knowledge was not quite solid enough, and his range of +sympathies a little deficient in width. In his stories, on the other +hand, the devil's advocate detected certain weak points, the chief of +them being an incapacity to finish, and either a distaste or an +incapacity for introducing women. This last charge was finally refuted +by <i>Catriona</i>, not merely in the heroine, but in the much more charming +and lifelike figure of Barbara Grant; but the other was something of a +true bill to the last. It was Stevenson's weakness (as by the way it +also was Scott's) to huddle up his stories rather than to wind them off +to an orderly conclusion.</p> + +<p>But against this allowance—a just but an ample one—for defects, must +be set to Stevenson's credit such a combination of literary and +story-telling charm as perhaps no writer except Mérimée has ever +equalled; while, if the literary side of him had not the golden +perfection, the accomplished ease of the Frenchman, his romance has a +more genial, a fresher, a more natural quality. Generally, as in the +famous examples of Scott, of Dumas, and of Balzac, the great +story-tellers have been a little deficient in mere style; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> fault in +Stevenson, if it could be called a fault, was that the style was in +excess. But this only set off and enhanced, it did not account for, the +magic of his scene and character, from John Silver to Barbara Grant, +from "The Suicide Club" to the escapes of Alan Breck. Very early, when +most of his critical friends were urging him to cultivate the essay +mainly, others discerned the supremacy of his story-telling faculty, +and, years before the public fell in love with <i>Treasure Island</i>, bade +him cultivate that. Fortunately he did so; and his too short life has +left a fairly ample store of work, not always quite equal, seldom quite +without a flaw, but charming, stimulating, distinguished as few things +in this last quarter of a century have been.</p> + +<p>Nearly all of Mr. Stevenson's contemporaries in novel-writing, as well +as many distinguished persons far his seniors whose names will occur to +every one, lie outside our limits. And in no chapter of this book, +perhaps, is it so necessary to turn the back sternly on much interesting +performance once famous and popular—not once only of interest to the +reader of time and chance but put by this cause or that out of our +reach. We cannot talk here of <i>Emilia Wyndham</i> or <i>Paul Ferroll</i>, both +emphatically novels of their day, and that no short one; and in the +latter case, if not in the former, books deserving to be read at +intervals by more than the bookworm. The exquisite <i>Story without an +End</i>, which Sarah Austin half adapted, half translated, and which, with +some unusually good translations from Fouqué and others, set a whole +fashion fifty years ago, must pass with mere allusion; the abundant and +not seldom excellent fiction of the earlier High Church movement pleads +in vain for detailed treatment. For all doors must be shut or open; and +this door must now be shut.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY</h3> + + +<p>It is the constant difficulty of the literary historian, especially if +he is working on no very great scale, that he is confronted with what +may be called "applied" literature, in which not only is the matter of +superior importance to the form, but the importance of the matter itself +disappears to a greater or less extent with time. In these cases it is +only possible for him to take notice of those writers who, whatever the +subject they handled, would have written literature, and perhaps of +those who from the unusual eminence and permanence of their position in +their own subjects have attained as it were an honorary position in +literature itself.</p> + +<p>The literary importance and claim, however, of these applied branches +varies considerably; and there have been times when the two divisions +whose names stand at the head of this chapter even surpassed—there have +been not a few in which they equalled—any section of the purest <i>belles +lettres</i> in strictly literary attractions. With rare exceptions this has +not been the case during the present century; poetry, fiction, history, +and essay-writing having drawn off the best hands on the one side, while +science has attracted them on the other. But the great Oxford Movement +in the second quarter created no small amount of theological or +ecclesiastical writing of unusual interest, while there had been +earlier, and continued to be till almost the time when the occupation of +the field by living writers warns us off, philosophers proper of great +excellence. Latterly (indeed till<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> quite recently, when a certain +renaissance of philosophical writing not in jargon has taken place with +a corresponding depression of the better kind of literary theology) the +philosophers of Britain have not held a prominent place in her +literature. Whether this was because they have mostly been content to +Germanise, or because they have not been provided with sufficient +individual talent, it is fortunately unnecessary for us to attempt to +determine in this place and at this time.</p> + +<p>Among the dead writers of the century who are known wholly or mainly for +the cultivation of philosophical studies, Bentham, Mackintosh, John +Stuart Mill (to whom some would add his father James), Sir William +Hamilton, Dean Mansel, are likely to hold a place in history, while at +present many might be disposed to add the name of Mr. T. H. Green, a +tutor of Balliol College, who between 1870 and his death propagated in +Oxford a sort of neo-Hegelianism much tinctured with political and +social Liberalism, and obtained a remarkable personal position. It is +however as yet too early to assign a distinct historical place to one +whose philosophy was in no sense original, though it was somewhat +originally combined and applied, and who exhibited very small literary +skill in setting forth. The others are already set "in the firm +perspective of the past," and, with yet others who, still living, escape +our grasp, have their names clearly marked for a place in an adequate +history.</p> + +<p>Jeremy Bentham, a curious person who reminds one of a Hobbes without the +literary genius, was born in London, near Houndsditch, as far back as +5th February 1748. He was the son of a solicitor who was very well off, +and wished his son to take to the superior branch of the law. Jeremy was +sent to Westminster, and thence to Queen's College, Oxford, in his +thirteenth year. He was a Master of Arts at eighteen, and was called to +the Bar six years later; but he never practised. He must have been very +early drawn to the study of the French <i>philosophes</i>; much indeed of the +doctrine which afterwards made him famous was either taken from, or +incidentally anticipated by, Turgot and others of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> them, and it was a +common remark, half in earnest half in gibe, that Bentham's views had +made the tour of Europe in the French versions of Dumont before they +attained to any attention in England. In 1776 he wrote a <i>Fragment on +Government</i>, a kind of critique of Blackstone, which is distinguished by +acute one-sided deduction from Whig principles; and he became a sort of +prophet of the Whigs, who sometimes plagiarised and popularised, +sometimes neglected, his opinions. He never married, though he would +have liked to do so; and lived on his means till 1832, when he died in +the eighty-fifth year of his age. His chief books after the <i>Fragment</i> +had been his <i>Theory of Punishments and Rewards</i>; 1787, <i>Letters on +Usury</i>; 1789, <i>Introduction to the Principles of Morals and +Legislation</i>; 1813, <i>Treatise on Evidence</i>; and 1824, <i>Fallacies</i>.</p> + +<p>The central pillar and hinge of all Bentham's doctrines in politics, +morals, and law is the famous principle of Utility, or to use the cant +phrase which he borrowed from Priestley, "the greatest happiness of the +greatest number." What the greatest number is—for instance whether in a +convict settlement of forty thieves and ten honest men, the thieves are +to be consulted—and what happiness means, what is utility, what things +have brought existing arrangements about, and what the loss of altering +them might be, as well as a vast number of other points, Bentham never +deigned to consider. Starting from a few crude phrases such as this, he +raised a system remarkable for a sort of apparent consistency and +thoroughness, and having the luck or the merit to hit off in parts not a +few of the popular desires and fads of the age of the French Revolution +and its sequel. But he was a political theorist rather than a political +philosopher, his neglect of all the nobler elements of thought and +feeling was complete, and latterly at least he wrote atrocious English, +clumsy in composition and crammed with technical jargon. The brilliant +fashion in which Sydney Smith has compressed and spirited his +<i>Fallacies</i> into the famous "Noodle's Oration" is an example of the kind +of treatment which Bentham requires in order to be made tolerable in +form; and even then he remains one-sided in fact.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p> + +<p>Sir James Mackintosh has been mentioned before, and is less of a +philosopher pure and simple than any person included in this +list—indeed his philosophical reputation rests almost wholly upon his +brilliant, though rather slight, <i>Dissertation on Ethics</i> for the +<i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>. The greater part by far of his by no means +short life (1765-1832) was occupied in practising medicine and law, in +defending the French Revolution against Burke (<i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ</i>, +1791); in defending the French Royalists in the person of Peltier +against Bonaparte, 1803; in acting as Recorder and Judge in India, +1804-1811; and in political and literary work at home for the last +twenty years, his literature being chiefly history, and contributions to +the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. But there has been a certain tendency, both in +his own time and since, to regard Mackintosh as a sort of philosopher +thrown away. If he was so, he would probably have made his mark rather +in the history of philosophy than in philosophy itself, for there are no +signs in him of much original depth. But he wrote very well, and was a +sound and on the whole a fair critic.</p> + +<p>Of the two Mills, the elder, James, was like Mackintosh only an +<i>interim</i> philosopher: his son John belongs wholly to our present +subject. James was the son of a farmer, was born near Montrose in 1773, +and intended to enter the ministry, but became a journalist instead. In +the ten years or so after 1806, he composed a <i>History of British +India</i>, which was long regarded as authoritative, but on which the +gravest suspicions have recently been cast. Mill, in fact, was a violent +politician of the Radical type, and his opinions of ethics were so +peculiar that it is uncertain how far he might have carried them in +dealing with historical characters. His book, however, gained him a high +post in the East India Company, the Directors of which just at that time +were animated by a wish to secure distinguished men of letters as +servants. He nevertheless continued to write a good deal both in +periodicals and in book form, the chief examples of the latter being his +<i>Political Economy</i>, his <i>Analysis of the Human Mind</i>, and his <i>Fragment +on Mackintosh</i>. James Mill, of whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> most people have conceived a rather +unfavourable idea since the appearance of his son's <i>Autobiography</i>, was +an early disciple of Bentham, and to a certain extent resembled him in +hard clearness and superficial consistency.</p> + +<p>His son John Stuart was born in London on 20th May 1806, and educated by +his father in the unnatural fashion which he has himself recorded. +Intellectually, however, he was not neglected, and after some years, +spent mainly in France, he was, through his father's influence, +appointed at seventeen to a clerkship in the India House, which gave him +a competence for the rest of his life and a main occupation for +thirty-four years of it. He was early brought into contact (by his +father's friendship with Grote and others) with the Philosophical +Radicals, as well as with many men of letters, especially Carlyle, of +the destruction of the first version of whose <i>French Revolution</i> Mill +(having lent it to his friend Mrs. Taylor) was the innocent cause. To +this Mrs. Taylor, whom he afterwards married, Mill was fanatically +attached, the attachment being the cause of some curious flights in his +later work. His character was very amiable, and the immense influence +which, especially in the later years of his life, he exercised, was +partly helped by his personal friendships. But it was unfortunate for +him that in 1865 he was returned to Parliament. His political views, +though it was the eve of the triumph of what might be called his party, +were <i>doctrinaire</i> and out of date, and his life had given him no +practical hold of affairs, so that he more than fulfilled the usual +prophecy of failure in the case of men of thought who are brought late +in life into action. Fortunately for him he was defeated in 1868, and +passed the rest of his life mostly in France, dying at Avignon on 8th +May 1873.</p> + +<p>Brought up in an atmosphere of discussion and of books, Mill soon took +to periodical writing, and in early middle life was for some years +editor of the <i>London and Westminster Review</i>; but his literary +ambition, which directed itself not to pure literature but to +philosophical and political discussion, was not content with periodical +writing as an exercise, and his circumstances enabled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> him to do without +it as a business. In 1843 he published what is undoubtedly his chief +work, <i>A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive</i>, five years later +a companion treatise on <i>Political Economy</i> which may perhaps rank +second. In 1859 his essay on <i>Liberty</i>, a short but very attractive +exposition of his political principles, appeared; next year a collection +of essays entitled <i>Dissertations and Discussions</i>. After lesser works +on <i>Utilitarianism</i> and on Comte, of whom he had been a supporter in +more senses than one, but whose later eccentricities revolted him, he +issued in 1865 his <i>Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy</i>, +which ranks as the third of his chief works, and completes his system, +as far as a system so negative can be said to be completed, on the side +of theology and metaphysics. Among his smaller works may be mentioned +<i>Representative Government</i>, and (very late) the fanatical and curious +<i>Subjection of Women</i>. His <i>Autobiography</i>, an interesting but +melancholy book, appeared shortly after his death.</p> + +<p>Mill must be accounted on the whole by good judges, even if they are +utterly opposed to his whole system of philosophy, the chief +philosophical <i>writer</i> of England in this century; and the enormous +though not permanent influence which he attained about its middle was +deserved, partly by qualities purely literary, but partly also by some +purely philosophical. He had inherited from his father not merely the +theoretical exaltation of liberty (except in the philosophical sense) +which characterised eighteenth century philosophers, but also that +arrogant and pragmatical impatience of the supernatural which was to a +still greater extent that century's characteristic. The arrogance and +the pragmaticality changed in John Stuart Mill's milder nature to a sort +of nervous dread of admitting even the possibility of things not +numerable, ponderable, and measurable; and it may be observed with +amusement that for the usual division of logic into Deductive and +Inductive he substituted <i>Ratiocinative</i> for the first member, so as not +even by implication to admit the possibility of deduction from any +principles not inductively given. So, too, later, in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> <i>Examination +of Sir William Hamilton</i>, between the opposing spectres of Realism and +Idealism, he was driven to take refuge in what he called "permanent +possibilities" of Sensation, though logicians vainly asked how he +assured himself of the permanence, and jesters rudely observed that to +call a bottle of gin a "permanent possibility of drunkenness" was an +unnecessary complication of language for a very small end or meaning. +His great philosophical weapon (borrowed from though of course not +invented by his father) was the Association of Ideas, just as his clue +in political economy was in the main though not exclusively +<i>laissez-faire</i>, in ethics a modified utilitarianism, and in politics an +absolute deference to, tempered by a resigned distrust of, the majority. +The defect in a higher and more architectonic theory of the world with +which he has been charged is not quite justly chargeable, for from his +point of view no such theory was possible.</p> + +<p>Even those, however, who, as the present writer acknowledges in his own +case, are totally opposed to the whole Millian conception of logic and +politics, of metaphysics and morality, must, unless prejudiced, admit +his great merits of method and treatment. He not only very seldom +smuggles in sophistry into the middle of his arguments, but even +paralogisms are not common with him; it is with his premises, not with +his conclusions, that you must deal if you wish to upset him. Unlike +most contemners of formal logic, he is not in much danger, as far as his +merely dialectic processes go, from formal logic itself; and it is in +the arbitrary and partial character of his preliminary admissions, +assumptions, and exclusions that the weak points of his system are to be +found.</p> + +<p>His style has also very considerable merits. It is not brilliant or +charming; it has neither great strength nor great stateliness. But it is +perfectly clear, it is impossible to mistake its meaning, and its +simplicity is unattended by any of the down-at-heel neglect of neatness +and elegance which is to be found, for instance, in Locke. Little +scholastic as he was in most ways, Mill had far outgrown the ignorant +eighteenth century contempt of the Schoolmen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> and had learnt from them +an exact precision of statement and argument, while he had managed to +keep (without its concomitant looseness and vulgarity) much of the +eighteenth century's wholesome aversion to jargon and to excess of +terminology. In presenting complicated statements of detail, as in the +<i>Political Economy</i>, the <i>Representative Government</i>, and elsewhere, he +has as much lucidity as Macaulay, with an almost total freedom from +Macaulay's misleading and delusive suppression of material details. And +besides his usual kind of calm and measured argument, he can +occasionally, as in divers passages of the <i>Sir William Hamilton</i> and +the political books, rise or sink from the logical and rhetorical points +of view respectively to an impassioned advocacy, which, though it may be +rarely proof against criticism, is very agreeable so far as it goes. +That Mill wholly escaped the defects of the popular philosopher, I do +not suppose that even those who sympathise with his views would contend; +though they might not admit, as others would, that these defects were +inseparable from his philosophy in itself. But it may be doubtful +whether, all things considered, a better <i>literary</i> type of the popular +philosopher exists in modern English; and it certainly is not surprising +that, falling in as he did with the current mode of thought, and +providing it with a defence specious in reasoning and attractive in +language, he should have attained an influence perhaps greater than that +of which any English philosophical writer has been able during his +lifetime to boast.</p> + +<p>The convenience of noticing the Mills together, and of putting Sir +William Hamilton next to his most famous disciples, seems to justify a +certain departure from strict chronological order. Hamilton was indeed +considerably the senior of his critic, having been born on 8th March +1788. His father and grandfather, both professors at the University of +Glasgow, had been plain "Dr. Hamilton." But they inherited, and Sir +William made good, the claim to a baronetcy which had been in abeyance +since the days of Robert Hamilton, the Covenanting leader. He himself +proceeded from Glasgow, with a Snell Exhibition, to Balliol in 1809.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> He +was called to the Scottish Bar, but never practised, though some +business came to him as Crown solicitor in the Court of Teinds (tithes). +He competed in 1820 for the Chair of Moral Philosophy, which Wilson, +with far inferior claims, obtained; but it is fair to say that at the +time the one candidate had given no more public proofs of fitness than +the other. Soon, however, he began to make his mark as a contributor of +philosophical articles to the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, and in 1836 he +obtained a professorship in the University for which he was even better +fitted—that of Logic and Metaphysics. His lectures became celebrated, +but he never published them; indeed his only publication of any +importance during his lifetime was a collection of his articles under +the title of <i>Dissertations</i>, with the exception of his monumental +edition of Reid, on which he spent, and on which it has sometimes been +held that he wasted, most of his time. He died in 1856, and his lectures +were published after his death by his successor, Professor Veitch +(himself an enthusiastic devotee of literature, especially Border +literature, as well as of philosophy), and his greatest disciple, +Mansel, between 1859 and 1861. And this was how Mill's <i>Examination</i> +came to be posthumous. The "Philosophy of the Conditioned," as +Hamilton's is for shortness called, could not be described in any brief, +and perhaps not with propriety in any, space of the present volume. It +is enough to say that it was an attempt to reinforce the so-called +"Scotch Philosophy" of Reid against Hume by the help of Kant, as well as +at once to continue and evade the latter without resorting either to +Transcendentalism or to the experience-philosophy popular in England. In +logic, Hamilton was a great and justly honoured defender of the formal +view of the science which had been in persistent disrepute during the +eighteenth century; but some of the warmest lovers of logic doubt +whether his technical inventions or discoveries, such as the famous +Quantification of the Predicate, are more than "pretty" in the sense of +mathematicians and wine-merchants. This part of his doctrine, by the +way, attracted special attention, and was carefully elaborated by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> +another disciple, Professor Thomas Spencer Baynes (1823-1887), who, +after chequering philosophy with journalism, became editor of the +<i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, and a careful Shakespearian student. Yet +another disciple, and the most distinguished save one, was James +Frederick Ferrier, nephew of Susan Ferrier, to whom we owe three most +brilliant novels, who was born in 1808 and died in 1864 at St. Andrews, +where he had for nearly twenty years been Professor of Moral Philosophy, +after previously holding for a short time a History Professorship at +Edinburgh. Of this latter University Ferrier had been an alumnus, as +well as of Oxford. He edited his father-in-law Wilson's works, and was a +contributor to <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, but his chief book was his +<i>Institutes of Metaphysic</i>, published in 1854. Too strong a Hamiltonian +influence (not in style but in some other ways), and an attempt at an +almost Spinosian rigidity of method, have sometimes been held to have +marred Ferrier's philosophical performance; but it is certain that he +had the makings of a great metaphysician, and that he was actually no +small one.</p> + +<p>The great merit of Hamilton was that he, in a somewhat irregular and +informal way (for, as has been said, he was ostensibly more a +commentator and critic than an independent theorist), introduced German +speculation into England after a fashion far more thorough than the +earlier but dilettante and haphazard attempts of De Quincey and +Coleridge, and contributed vastly to the lifting of the whole tone and +strain of English philosophic disputation from the slovenly commonsense +into which it had fallen. In fact, he restored metaphysics proper as a +part of English current thought; and helped (though here he was not +alone) to restore logic. His defects were, in the first place, that he +was at once too systematic and two piecemeal in theory, and worse still, +that his philosophical style was one of the very worst existing, or that +could exist. That this may have been in some degree a designed reaction +from ostentatious popularity is probable; and that it was in great part +caught from his studious frequentation of that Hercynian forest, which +takes the place of the groves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> of Academe in German philosophical +writing, is certain. But the hideousness of his dialect is a melancholy +fact; and it may be said to have contributed at least as much to the +decadence of his philosophical vogue as any defects in the philosophy +itself. He was, in fact, at the antipodes from Mill in attractiveness of +form as well as in character of doctrine.</p> + +<p>There are some who think that Henry Longueville Mansel was actually in +more than one respect, and might, with some slight changes of accidental +circumstance, have been indisputably, the greatest philosopher of +Britain in the nineteenth century. Of the opinion entertained by +contemporaries of great intellectual gifts, that of Mark Pattison, a +bitter political and academical opponent, and the most acrimonious +critic of his time, that Mansel was, though according to Pattison's +view, an "arch-jobber," an "acute thinker, and a metaphysician" seems +pretty conclusive. But Mansel died in middle age, he was much occupied +in various kinds of University business, and he is said by those who +knew him to have been personally rather indolent. He was born in +Northamptonshire on 6th October 1820, and after school-days at Merchant +Taylors' passed in the then natural course to St. John's College, +Oxford, of which he became fellow. He was an active opponent of the +first University Commission, in reference to which he wrote the most +brilliant satire of the kind proper to University wits which this +century has produced—the Aristophanic parody entitled <i>Phrontisterion</i>. +But the Commission returned him good for evil, insomuch as he became the +first Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, a post +created in consequence of it. In 1859 he was Bampton Lecturer, and his +sermons in this office again attained the first excellence in style, +though they were made the subject of severe criticism not merely by the +disciples of Liberal philosophy, but by some timid defenders of +orthodoxy, for their bold application of the philosophy of the +conditioned, on scholastic lines, to the problems of theodicy. Mansel +was not a more frequent lecturer than the somewhat indulgent conditions +of the English Universities, especially Oxford, even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> after the +Commission, required; but his deliverances were of exceptional +importance, both in conception and expression. At the death of Milman, +his political friends being in power, he was made Dean of St. Paul's, +but enjoyed the dignity only a short time, and died in 1870. Besides +<i>Phrontisterion</i> and his <i>Bampton Lectures</i>, which bring him under both +the divisions of this chapter, he had published in his lifetime an +excellent edition of Aldrich's "Logic," <i>Prolegomena Logica</i> (the +principal work of the Hamiltonian school, though quite independent in +main points), and an enlarged edition of an Encyclopædia dissertation on +<i>Metaphysics</i>. His essays, chiefly from the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, were +published after his death, with <i>Phrontisterion</i> and other things.</p> + +<p>It will appear from this brief summary that Mansel was a many-sided man; +and it may be added that he possessed an exceptionally keen wit, by no +means confined to professional subjects, and was altogether far more of +a man of the world than is usual in a philosopher. But though this +man-of-the-worldliness may have affected the extent and quantity of his +philosophical work, it did not touch the quality of it. It may be +contended that Mansel was on the whole rather intended for a critic or +historian of philosophy than for an independent philosophical teacher; +and in this he would but have exhibited a tendency of his century. Yet +he was very far from mere slavish following even of Hamilton, while the +copying, with a little travesty and adjustment of German originals, on +which so much philosophical repute has been founded in England, was +entirely foreign to his nature and thought. In Mill's <i>Examination of +Hamilton</i>, the <i>Bampton Lectures</i>, above referred to, came in for the +most vehement protest, for Mill, less blind than the orthodox objectors, +perceived that their drift was to steer clear of some of the commonest +and most dangerous reefs and shoals on which the orthodoxy of +intelligent but not far-sighted minds has for some generations past been +wrecked. But Mansel's rejoinder, written at a time when he was more than +ever distracted by avocations, and hampered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> certainly by the necessity +of speaking for his master as well as for himself, and probably by +considerations of expediency in respect to the duller of the faithful, +was not his happiest work. In fact he was too clear and profound a +thinker to be first-rate in controversy—a function which requires +either unusual dishonesty or one-sidedness in an unusual degree. He may +sometimes have been a very little of a sophist—it is perhaps impossible +to be a great philosopher without some such touch. But of paralogism—of +that sincere advancing of false argument which from the time of Plato +has been justly regarded as the most fatal of philosophic +drawbacks—there is no trace in Mansel. His natural genius, moreover, +assisted by his practice in miscellaneous writing, which though much +less in amount of result than Mill's was even more various in kind, +equipped him with a most admirable philosophical style, hitting the +exact mean between the over-popular and the over-technical, endowing +even the <i>Prolegomena Logica</i> with a perfect readableness, and in the +<i>Metaphysics</i> and large parts of the editorial matter of the <i>Aldrich</i> +showing capacities which make it deeply to be regretted that he never +undertook a regular history of philosophy.</p> + +<p>The place which might have been thus filled, was accepted but partially +and with no capital success by divers writers. Frederick Denison +Maurice, who will be mentioned again in this chapter, wrote on <i>Moral +and Metaphysical Philosophy</i>, but the book, though like all his work +attractively written, does not show very wide or very profound knowledge +of the subject. The <i>Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy</i>, by +William Archer Butler, a Dublin professor, who died prematurely, would +probably, had the author lived, have formed the best history of the +subject in English, and even in their fragmentary condition make an +admirable book, free from jargon, not unduly popular, but at once sound +and literary. The most ambitious attempt at the whole subject was that +of George Henry Lewes, the companion of George Eliot, a versatile man of +letters of great ability, who brought out on a small scale in 1845, and +afterwards on a much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> larger one, a <i>Biographical History of +Philosophy</i>. This, though occasionally superficial, and too much tinged +with a sort of second-hand Positivism, had, as the qualities of these +defects, an excellent though sometimes a rather treacherous clearness, +and a unity of vision which is perhaps more valuable for fairly +intelligent readers than desultory profundity. But it can hardly take +rank as a book of philosophical scholarship, though it is almost a +brilliant specimen of popular philosophical literature.</p> + +<p>Philosophy, science, and perhaps theology may dispute between them two +remarkable figures, nearly contemporary, the one an Oxford and the other +a Cambridge man—Whately and Whewell. Besides the differences which +their respective universities impress upon nearly all strong characters, +there were others between them, Whately being the better bred, the more +accomplished writer, and the more original, Whewell the more widely +informed, and perhaps the more thoroughgoing. But both were curiously +English in a sort of knock-me-down Johnsonian dogmatism; and both were +in consequence extremely intolerant. For Whately's so-called +impartiality consisted in being equally biassed against Evangelicals and +Tractarians; and both were accused by their unfriends of being a little +addicted to the encouragement of flatterers and toadies. Richard +Whately, the elder, was born in London in 1787, his father being a +clergyman in the enjoyment of several pluralities. He went to Oriel, +gained a fellowship there in 1811, and was with intervals a resident in +Oxford for some twenty years, being latterly Principal of St. Alban Hall +(where he made Newman his Vice-Principal), and in 1829 Professor of +Political Economy. In 1831 the Whigs made him Archbishop of Dublin, +which difficult post he held for more than thirty years till his death +in 1863. His work is not very extensive, but it is remarkable. His +<i>Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte</i> was an exceedingly +clever "skit" on the Rationalist position in regard to miracles and +biblical criticism generally; though Whately's orthodoxy was none of the +strictest. His Bampton Lectures on <i>Party Feeling in Religion</i> preceded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> +rather curiously the greatest outburst of the said party feeling which +had been seen in England since the seventeenth century. But the books by +which he is or was most widely known are his <i>Logic</i> and <i>Rhetoric</i>, +expansions of Encyclopædia articles (1826 and 1828) intentionally +popular and perhaps almost unnecessarily exoteric, but extremely +stimulating and clear. Whately, who had some points in common with +Sydney Smith, was, like him, in part the victim of the extreme want of +accuracy and range in the Oxford education of his youth; but his mental +and literary powers were great.</p> + +<p>William Whewell, the son of a carpenter, showed talent for mathematics +early, and obtaining an exhibition at Trinity, Cambridge, became fellow, +tutor, and Master of his College. He had the advantage, which his +special studies gave, of more thorough training, and extended his +attention from pure and applied mathematics to science and a kind of +philosophy. His chief works were <i>The History</i> (1837) and <i>The +Philosophy</i> (1840) <i>of the Inductive Sciences</i>, his Bridgewater Treatise +on <i>Astronomy and Physic in Reference to Natural Philosophy</i> (1833) and +his <i>Plurality of Worlds</i> (1853) being also famous in their day; but he +wrote voluminously in various kinds. He was rather a bully, and his work +has no extraordinary merit of style, but it is interesting as being +among the latest in which science permitted her votaries not to +specialise very much, and rather to apply the ancient education to the +new subjects than to be wholly theirs.</p> + +<p>If the difficulty of deciding on rejection or admission be great in the +case of philosophers proper, much greater is it in the numerous +subdivisions which are themselves applied philosophy as philosophy is +applied literature. The two chief of these perhaps are Jurisprudence and +Political Economy. Under the head of the first, three remarkable writers +at least absolutely demand notice—Austin, Maine, and Stephen. The first +of these was in respect of influence, if not also of actual +accomplishment, one of the most noteworthy Englishmen of the century. +Born in 1790, he died in 1859, having begun life in the Army which he +exchanged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> for the Bar not long after Waterloo. He was made Professor of +Jurisprudence in the new University College of London in 1827. He held +this post for five years only; but it resulted in his famous <i>Province +of Jurisprudence Determined</i>, a book standing more or less alone in +English. He did not publish much else, though he did some official work; +and his <i>Lectures on Jurisprudence</i> were posthumously edited by his +wife, a Miss Taylor of Norwich, who has been referred to as translator +of the <i>Story without an End</i>, and who did much other good work. Austin +(whose younger brother Charles (1799-1874) left little if anything in +print but accumulated a great fortune at the Parliamentary Bar, and left +a greater, though vague, conversational reputation) had bad health +almost throughout his life, and his work is not large in bulk. At first +pooh-poohed and neglected, almost extravagantly prized later, and later +still, according to the usual round, a little cavilled at, it presents +Utilitarian theory at its best in the intellectual way; and its +disciplinary value, if it is not taken for gospel, can hardly be +overrated. But its extreme clearness, closeness, and logical precision +carry with them the almost inevitable defects of hardness, narrowness, +and want of "play," as well as of that most fatal of intellectual +attitudes which takes for granted that everything is explicable. Still, +these were the defects of Austin's school and time; his merits were +individual, and indeed very nearly unique.</p> + +<p>Sir Henry James Summer Maine was born in 1822, and educated first as a +Blue Coat boy and then at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After a quite +exceptional career as an undergraduate, he became fellow of Trinity +Hall, of which he died Master in 1888. But he had only held this latter +post for eleven years, and the midmost of his career was occupied with +quite different work. He had been made Professor of Civil Law in his +University in 1847, at a very early age, when he had not even been +called to the Bar; but he supplied this omission three years later, and +a little later still exchanged his Cambridge Professorship for a +Readership at Lincoln's Inn. In 1862 he obtained the appointment, famous +from its connection with letters, of Legal Member of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> Viceroy's +Council in India. On quitting it after seven years he was transferred to +the Council at Home, and became Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence +at Oxford. Besides his work as a reviewer, which was considerable, Maine +wrote—in an admirable style, and with a scholarship and sense which, in +the recrudescence of more barbaric thought, have brought down socialist +and other curses on his head—many works on the philosophy of law, +politics, and history, the chief of which were his famous <i>Ancient Law</i> +(1861), <i>Village Communities</i> (1871), <i>Early Law and Custom</i> (1883), +with a severe criticism on Democracy called <i>Popular Government</i> (1885). +Few writers of our time could claim the phrase <i>mitis sapentia</i> as Maine +could, though it is possible that he was a little too much given to +theorise. But his influence in checking that of Austin was admirable.</p> + +<p>A colleague of Maine's on the <i>Saturday Review</i>, his successor in his +Indian post, like him a <i>malleus demagogorum</i>, but in some ways no small +contrast, was Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94), the most +distinguished member of a family unusually distinguished during the past +century in the public service and in literature. His father, Sir James +Stephen, was himself well known as a reviewer, as a civil servant, as +Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, and as author of <i>Essays in +Ecclesiastical History</i> and <i>Lectures on the History of France</i> (1849 +and 1851). The second Sir James was born at Kensington in 1829, went to +Eton, thence to King's College, London, and thence to Trinity, +Cambridge, and was called to the Bar in 1854. His legal career was +brilliant and varied, and led him to the Bench, which he resigned +shortly before his death. Sir James Stephen published some works of +capital importance on his own subject, the chief relating the Criminal +Law, collected both earlier and later a good deal of his <i>Saturday</i> +work, discussed a famous passage of Indian History in the <i>Story of +Nuncomar</i> (1885), and wrote not a little criticism—political, +theological, and other—of a somewhat negative but admirably +clear-headed kind—the chief expression of which is <i>Liberty, Equality, +and Fraternity</i> (1873).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p> + +<p>Even less room can be given to the Political Economists than to the +"Jurisprudents," partly because the best writers of them, such as J. S. +Mill, have figured or will figure elsewhere; partly because, from +Ricardo to Jevons and Cliffe Leslie, though they have often displayed no +mean literary power, the necessities or supposed necessities of their +subject have usually kept their books further away from <i>belles lettres</i> +than the documents of any other department of what is widely called +philosophy. But a paragraph must at least be given to one of the +earliest and one of the most famous of them.</p> + +<p>If a prize were offered to the best-abused person in English literature, +few competitors would have much chance with Thomas Robert Malthus, +author of the <i>Essay on the Principles of Population</i> (1798), and of +divers works on Political Economy, of which he was Professor in the East +India College at Haileybury. To judge from the references which for many +years used to be, and to some extent still are, made to Malthus, still +more from the way in which the term "Malthusian" is still often used, he +might be supposed to have been a reprobate anarchist and revolutionary, +who had before his eyes neither the fear of God, nor the love of man, +nor the respect of morality and public opinion. As a matter of fact +Malthus was a most respectable and amiable clergyman, orthodox I believe +in religion, Tory I believe in politics, who incurred odium chiefly by +his inculcation of the most disagreeable lessons of the new and +cheerless science which he professed. Born on 24th February 1766 near +Dorking, of a very respectable family, he went to Cambridge, took +honours, a fellowship at his college (Jesus), and orders, obtained a +benefice, and spent most of the last thirty years of his life in the +Professorship above referred to, dying in 1854. His <i>Essay</i> was one of +the numerous counter-blasts to Godwin's anarchic perfectibilism, and its +general drift was simply to show that the increase of population, unless +counter-acted by individual and moral self-restraint, must reduce +humanity to misery. The special formula that "population increases in a +geometrical, food in a arithmetical ratio," is overstrained and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> +little absurd; the general principle is sound beyond all question, and +not only consistent with, but absolutely deducible from, the purest +Christian doctrines. Malthus wrote well, he knew thoroughly what he was +writing about, and he suffers only from the inevitable drawback to all +writers on such subjects who have not positive genius of form, that a +time comes when their contentions appear self-evident to all who are not +ignorant or prejudiced.</p> + +<p>The greatest <i>theological</i> interest of the century belongs to what is +diversely called the Oxford and the Tractarian Movement; while, even if +this statement be challenged on non-literary grounds, it will scarcely +be so by any one on grounds literary. For the present purpose, of +course, nothing like a full account of the Movement can be attempted. It +is enough to say that it arose partly in reaction from the Evangelical +tendency which had dominated the more active section of the Church of +England for many years, partly in protest against the Liberalising and +Latitudinarian tendency in matters both temporal and spiritual. In +contradistinction to its predecessor (for the Evangelicals had been the +reverse of literary), it was from the first—<i>i.e.</i> about 1830, or +earlier if we take <i>The Christian Year</i> as a harbinger of it—a very +literary movement both in verse and prose. Of its three leaders, +Pusey—whose name, given to it in derision and sometimes contested by +sympathisers as unappropriate, unquestionably ranks of right as that of +its greatest theologian, its most steadfast character, and the most of a +born leader engaged in it—was something less of a pure man of letters +than either Keble or Newman. But he was a man of letters; and perhaps a +greater one than is usually thought.</p> + +<p>Edward Bouverie Pusey, who belonged to the family of Lord Folkestone by +blood, his father having become by bequest the representative of the +very old Berkshire house of Pusey, was born at the seat of this family +in 1800. He went to Eton and to Christ Church, and became a fellow of +Oriel, studied theology and oriental languages in Germany, and was made +Professor of Hebrew at the early age of twenty-seven. He was a thorough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> +scholar, and even in the times of his greatest unpopularity no charge of +want of competence for his post was brought against him by any one who +knew. It is, however, somewhat comic that charges of Rationalism were +brought against his first book, a study of contemporary German theology. +In or soon after 1833 he joined Newman and Keble in the famous <i>Tracts +for the Times</i>, at the same time urging the return to a more primitive +and catholic theology in his sermons, and by means of the great +enterprise in translation called the <i>Oxford Library of the Fathers</i>, of +which he executed part and sedulously edited others. Pusey first came +before general public notice outside Oxford in 1843, in consequence of a +very high-handed exertion of power by the authorities of the University, +who, without allowing him a hearing, suspended him for a sermon on the +Eucharist from preaching for three years. His mouth was thus closed at +the very moment when Newman "went over"; and when some of the enemies of +the movement declared that Pusey would go too. Others were equally +certain that if he stayed it was either from base motives of +self-interest, or, still more basely, in order to do underhand damage to +the Church. But all who unite knowledge and fairness now admit, not only +his perfect loyalty, but the almost unexampled heroism and steadfastness +with which for some ten or fifteen years after Newman's secession, +against popular obloquy, against something very like persecution from +the authorities of the Church and the University, and against the +constant and repeated discouragement given by the desertion of friends +and colleagues, he upheld his cause and made the despised and reproached +"Puseyites" of his middle life what he lived to see them—the greatest +and almost the dominant party in the Anglican Church. He was less +fortunate in his opposition to the secularising of the Universities, and +in his attempts (which ill-willers did not fail to liken to the attempts +made to stifle his own teaching) to check by legal means the spread of +Rationalism. But he was nearly as full of honours as of years when he +died on 16th September 1882.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p> + +<p>Many of the constituents of this remarkable and perhaps unexampled +success—Pusey's personal saintliness, his unselfish use of his +considerable income, his unwearied benevolence in other than pecuniary +ways—do not concern us here. But his works, which are numerous, and the +most literary of which are his <i>Sermons</i> and his <i>Eirenicon</i>, +contributed not a little to it. Pusey's style was accused by some of +bareness and by others of obscurity; but these accusations may be safely +dismissed as due merely to the prevalent fancy for florid expression, +and to the impatience of somewhat scholastically arranged argument which +has also distinguished our times.</p> + +<p>The second of this remarkable trio, John Keble, was the eldest, having +been born on 24th April 1792, at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, with +which county his family had for some centuries been connected. Keble's +father was a clergyman, and there was a clerical feeling and tradition +in the whole family. John went to no public school, but was very +carefully educated at home, obtained an open scholarship at Corpus +Christi College, Oxford, when he was only fourteen, and went into +residence next year—for just at this time extremely early entrance at +the University was much commoner than a little earlier or later. He had +only just entered his nineteenth year when he took a double first, and +had not concluded it when he was elected, at the same time with Whately, +to an Oriel fellowship. He followed this up by winning both the +Chancellor's Essays, English and Latin, and established his reputation +as the most brilliant man of his day. He was ordained as soon as he +could be, and served the usual offices of tutor in his College and +examiner in the University. But even such semi-public life as this was +distasteful to him, and he soon gave up his Oriel tutorship for a +country curacy and private pupils. Indeed the note, some would say the +fault, of Keble's whole life was an almost morbid retiringness, which +made him in 1827 refuse even to compete with Hawkins for the Provostship +of Oriel. It is possible that he would not have been elected, for oddly +enough his two future colleagues in the triumvirate, both Fellows, were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> +both in favour of his rival; but his shunning the contest has been +deeply deplored, and by some even blamed as a <i>gran rifiuto</i>. The +publication of <i>The Christian Year</i>, however, which immediately +followed, probably did more for the Movement and for the spiritual life +of England than any office-holding could have done; and in 1831, Keble, +being elected Professor of Poetry, distinguished himself almost as much +in criticism as he had already done in poetry. He obtained, and was +contented with, the living of Hursley, in Hampshire, where he resided +till his death on 29th March 1866.</p> + +<p>Keble's very generally granted character as one of the holiest persons +of modern times, and even his influence on the Oxford Movement, concern +us less here than his literary work, which was of almost the first +importance merely as literature. The reaction from an enormous +popularity of nearly seventy years' date, and the growth of +anti-dogmatic opinions, have brought about a sort of tendency in some +quarters to belittle, if not positively to sneer at, <i>The Christian +Year</i>, which, with the <i>Lyra Innocentium</i> and a collection of +<i>Miscellaneous Poems</i>, contains Keble's poetical work. There never was +anything more uncritical. The famous reference which Thackeray—the +least ecclesiastically inclined, if by no means the least religious, of +English men of letters of genius in this century—makes to its +appearance in <i>Pendennis</i>, shows what the thoughts of unbiassed +contemporaries were. And no very different judgment can be formed by +unbiassed posterity. With Herbert and Miss Rossetti, Keble ranks as the +greatest of English writers in sacred verse, the irregular and unequal +efforts of Vaughan and Crashaw sometimes transcending, oftener sinking +below the three. If Keble has not the exquisite poetical mysticism of +Christina Rossetti he is more copious and more strictly scholarly, while +he escapes the quaint triviality, or the triviality sometimes not even +quaint, which mars Herbert. The influence of Wordsworth is strongly +shown, but it is rendered and redirected in an entirely original manner. +The lack of taste which mars so much religious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> poetry never shows +itself even for a moment in Keble; yet the correctness of his diction, +like the orthodoxy of his thought, is never frigid or tame. There are +few poets who so well deserve the nickname of a Christian Horace, though +the phrase may seem to have something of the paradox of "prose +Shakespeare." The careful melody of the versification and the exact +felicity of the diction exclude, it may be, those highest flights which +create most enthusiasm, at any rate in this century. But for measure, +proportion, successful attainment of the proposed end, Keble has few +superiors.</p> + +<p>It would indeed be surprising if he had many, for, with his gift of +verse, he was also one of the most accomplished of critics. His +<i>Prælectiones Academicæ</i>, written, as the rule then was, in Latin, is +unfortunately a sealed book to too many persons whom modern practice +calls and strives to consider "educated"; but he did not confine himself +even in these to classical subjects, and he wrote not a few reviews in +English dealing with modern poetry. His æsthetics are of course deeply +tinged with ethic; but he does not in the least allow moral +prepossessions to twist his poetic theory, which may be generally +described as the Aristotelian teaching on the subject, supplied and +assisted by the aid of a wide study of the literatures not open to +Aristotle. There can be no doubt that if Keble's mind had not been more +and more absorbed by religious subjects he would have been one of the +very greatest of English critics of literature; and he is not far from +being a great one as it is. He did not publish many sermons, though one +of his, the Assize Sermon at Oxford in 1833, is considered to have +started the Movement; and opinions as to his pulpit powers have varied. +But it is certainly not too much to say that it was impossible for Keble +not to make everything that he wrote, whether in verse or prose, +literature of the most perfect academic kind, informed by the spirit of +scholarship and strengthened by individual talent.</p> + +<p>John Henry Newman was the eldest son of a man of business of some means +(who came of a family of Cambridgeshire yeomen)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> and of a lady of +Huguenot descent. He was born in London on 21st February 1801, was +educated privately at Ealing, imbibed strong evangelical principles, and +went up to Oxford (Trinity College) so early that he went in for +"Greats" (in which he only obtained a third class) before he was +nineteen. He continued, however, to reside at Trinity, where he held a +scholarship, and more than made up for his mishap in the schools by +winning an Oriel fellowship in 1823. In three successive years he took +orders and a curacy in the first, the Vice-Principalship of St. Alban's +Hall under Whately in the second, and an Oriel tutorship in the third; +while in 1827 he succeeded Hawkins, who became Provost, in the Vicarage +of St. Mary's, the most important post of the kind—to a man who chose +to make it important—in Oxford.</p> + +<p>Newman did so choose, and his sermons—not those to the University, +though these also are notable, but those nominally "Parochial," really +addressed to the undergraduates who soon flocked to hear him—were the +foundation and mainstay of his influence, constitute the largest single +division of his printed work, and perhaps present that work in the best +and fairest light. His history for the next sixteen years cannot be +attempted here; it is the history of the famous thing called the Oxford +Movement, which changed the intellectual as well as the ecclesiastical +face of England, on which libraries have been written, and which, even +yet, has not been satisfactorily or finally judged. His travels with +Hurrell Froude in the Mediterranean during 1832-33 seem to have been the +special turning-point of his career. After ten years, perhaps of +"development," certainly of hard fighting, he resigned St. Mary's in +1843, and after two years more of halting between two opinions he was +received into the Church of Rome in October 1845. He left Oxford, never +to return to it as a residence, and not to visit it for thirty-two +years, in the following February.</p> + +<p>His first public appearance after this was in the once famous Achilli +trial for libel, in which the plaintiff, an anti-Roman lecturer, +recovered damages from Newman for an utterly damning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> description of +Achilli's career in the Roman Church itself. Impartial judges generally +thought and think that the verdict was against the weight of evidence. +At any rate it produced a decided revulsion in Newman's favour, of which +he was both too convinced of his own position and too astute not to take +advantage. He had hitherto since his secession resided (he had been +re-ordained in Rome) at Birmingham, London, and Dublin, but he now took +up his abode, practically for the rest of his life, at Birmingham or +rather Edgbaston. In 1864 the great opportunity, presented by Kingsley's +unguarded words (<i>vide supra</i>), occurred, and he availed himself of it +at once. Most of those who read the <i>Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ</i> were not +familiar with Newman's masterly English, and his competent, if not +supreme, dialectic and sophistic. They were not, as a former generation +had been, prejudiced against him; the untiring work of those of his +former friends who remained faithful to the Church of England had of +itself secured him a fair hearing. During the remaining twenty-five +years of his life he had never again to complain of ostracism or unfair +prejudice. The controversy as to the Vatican Council brought him once +more forward, and into collision with Mr. Gladstone, but into no odium +of any kind. Indeed he was considerably less popular at Rome than at +home, the more supple and less English character of Manning finding +greater favour with Pius IX. The late seventies, however, were a time of +triumph for Newman. In 1877 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of his own +College, Trinity, and next year paid what may be called a visit of +restoration to Oxford, while in 1879 the new Pope Leo XIII., a man of +great abilities and wide piety, raised Newman to the cardinalate. He +visited Rome on the occasion, but returned to Birmingham, where the +Edgbaston Oratory was still his home for the remaining years of his +life. This did not end till 11th August 1890, when almost all men spoke +almost all good things over his grave, though some did not spare to +interpose a sober criticism. The books composed during this long and +eventful career, especially in the first half of it, were very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> +numerous, Cardinal Newman's works at the time of his death, and before +the addition of Letters, etc., extending to nearly forty volumes. Much +of the matter of these is still <i>cinis dolosissimus</i>, not to be trodden +on save in the most gingerly manner in such a book as this. Yet there +are probably few qualified and impartial judges who would refuse Newman, +all things considered, the title of the greatest theological writer in +English during this century; and there are some who uphold him for one +of the very greatest of English prose writers. It is therefore +impossible not to give him a place, and no mean place, here.</p> + +<p>Although his chief work, indeed all but a very small part of it, was in +prose, he was a good verse writer. The beautiful poem or hymn usually +called from its first words "Lead, kindly Light," but entitled by its +author "The Pillar of Cloud," is not merely as widely known as any piece +of sacred verse written during the century, but may challenge anything +of that class (out of the work of Miss Christina Rossetti) for really +poetical decoction and concoction of religious ideas. It was written, +with much else, during a voyage in a sailing ship from Sicily to +Marseilles at the close (June 1833) of that continental tour which was +of such moment in Newman's life; and the whole batch ferments with +spiritual excitement. Earlier, and indeed later, Newman, besides plenty +of serious verse, contributed to the <i>Lyra Apostolica</i> or written +independently, was a graceful writer of verse trifles; but his largest +and best poetical work, <i>The Dream of Gerontius</i>, was not produced till +he was approaching old age, and had long passed the crisis of his +career. Possibly the new ferment of soul into which the composition of +the <i>Apologia</i> had thrown him, may have been responsible for this, which +is dated a year later. It is the recital in lyrical-dramatic form of an +anticipatory vision, just before death, of the Last Things, and unites +dignity and melody in a remarkable manner. The only other parts of his +work to which Newman himself attached the title "literature" were the +prose romances of <i>Callista</i> and <i>Loss and Gain</i>. They display his power +over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> language, but are exposed on one side to the charges usually +incurred by novels with a purpose, and on the other to a suspicion of +bad taste, incurred in the effort to be popular.</p> + +<p>By far the larger bulk of the works, however, belongs to theology. This +includes twelve volumes of Sermons, all but a small part delivered +before Newman's change of creed, and eight of them the <i>Parochial and +Plain Sermons</i>, preached in the pulpit of St. Mary's but not to the +University; four of treatises, including the most famous and +characteristic of Newman's works except the <i>Apologia</i>, <i>The Grammar of +Assent</i>, and <i>The Development of Christian Doctrine</i>; four of Essays; +three of Historical Sketches; four theological, chiefly on Arianism, and +translations of St. Athanasius; and six Polemical, which culminate in +the <i>Apologia</i>. With respect to the substance of this work it is soon +easy, putting controversial matters as much as possible apart, to +discover where Newman's strength and weakness respectively lay. He was +distinctly deficient in the historic sense; and in the <i>Apologia</i> itself +he threw curious light on this deficiency, and startled even friends and +fellow-converts, by speaking contemptuously of "antiquarian arguments." +The same defect is quaintly illustrated by a naïf and evidently sincere +complaint that he should have been complained of for (in his own words) +"attributing to the middle of the third century what is certainly to be +found in the fourth." And it is understood that he was not regarded +either by Anglican or by Roman Catholic experts as a very deep +theologian in either of his stages. The special characteristic—the +<i>ethos</i> as his own contemporaries and immediate successors at Oxford +would have said—of Newman seems to have been strangely combined. He was +perhaps the last of the very great preachers in English—of those who +combined a thoroughly classical training, a scholarly form, with the +incommunicable and almost inexplicable power to move audiences and +readers. And he was one of the first of that class of journalists who in +the new age have succeeded the preachers, whether for good or ill, as +the prophets of the illiterate. It may seem strange to speak of Newman +as a journalist; but if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> any one will read his essays, his <i>Apologia</i>, +above all the curious set of articles called <i>The Tamworth +Reading-Room</i>, he will see what a journalist was lost, or only partly +developed, in this cardinal. He had the conviction, which is far more +necessary to a journalist than is generally thought; and yet his +convictions were not of that extremely systematic and far-reaching kind +which no doubt often stands in the journalist's way. He had the faculty +of mixing bad and good argument, which is far more effective with mixed +audiences than unbated logic. And, little as he is thought of as +sympathising with the common people, he was entirely free from that +contempt of them which always prevents a man from gaining their ear +unless he is a consummately clever scoundrel.</p> + +<p>It may however be retorted that if Newman was a born journalist, sermons +and theology must be a much better school of style in journalism than +articles and politics. And it is quite true that his writing at its best +is of extraordinary charm, while that charm is not, as in the case of +some of his contemporaries and successors, derived from dubiously +legitimate ornament and flourish, but observes the purest classical +limitations of proportion and form. It has perhaps sometimes been a +little over-valued, either by those who in this way or that—out of love +for what he joined or hate to what he left—were in uncritical sympathy +with Newman, or by others it may be from pure ignorance of the fact that +much of this charm is the common property of the more scholarly writers +of the time, and is only eminently, not specially, present in him. But +of the fact of it there is no doubt. In such a sermon for instance as +that on "The Individuality of the Soul," a thought or series of +thoughts, in itself poetically grandiose enough for Taylor or even for +Donne, is presented in the simplest but in the most marvellously +impressive language. The sentences are neither volleying in their +shortness, nor do they roll thundrously; the cadences though perfect are +not engineered with elaborate musical art; there are in proportion very +few adjectives; the writer exercises the most extreme continence in +metaphor, simile, illustration, all the tricks and frounces of literary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> +art. Yet Taylor, though he might have attained more sweetness or more +grandeur, could hardly have been more beautiful; and though Donne might +have been so, it would have been at the expense of clearness. Newman is +so clear that he has often been accused of being, and sometimes is, a +little hard; but this is not always or often the case: it is especially +not so when he is dealing with things which, as in the sermon just +referred to and that other on "The Intermediate State," admit the +diffusion of religious awe. The presence of that awe, and of a constant +sense and dread of Sin, have been said, and probably with truth, to be +keynotes of Newman's religious ideas, and of his religious history; but +they did not harden, as in thinkers of another temper has often been the +case, his style or his thought. On the contrary, they softened both; and +it is when he is least under the influence of them that unction chiefly +deserts him. Yet he by no means often sought to excite his hearers. He +held, as he himself somewhere says, that "impassioned thoughts and +sublime imaginings have no strength in them." And this conviction of his +can hardly be strange to the fact that few writers indulge so little as +Newman in what is called fine writing. He has "organ passages," but they +are such as the wind blowing as it lists draws from him, not such as are +produced by deliberate playing on himself.</p> + +<p>In a wider space it would be interesting to comment on numerous other +exponents of the Movement. Archdeacon afterwards Cardinal Manning +(1807-93), the successful rival of Newman among those Anglican clergymen +who joined the Church of Rome, was less a man of letters than a very +astute man of business; but his sermons before he left the Church had +merit, and he afterwards wrote a good deal. Richard Hurrell Froude +(1803-36), elder brother of the historian, had a very great and not +perhaps a very beneficent influence on Newman, and through Newman on +others; but he died too soon to leave much work. His chief +distinguishing note was a vigorous and daring humour allied to a strong +reactionary sentiment. Isaac Williams, the second poet of the Movement +(1802-65), was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> most respects, as well as in poetry, a minor Keble. +W. G. Ward, commonly called "Ideal" Ward from his famous, very +ill-written, very ill-digested, but important <i>Ideal of a Christian +Church</i>, which was the alarm-bell for the flight to Rome, was a +curiously constituted person of whom something has been said in +reference to Clough. He had little connection with pure letters, and +after his secession to Rome and his succession to a large fortune he +finally devoted himself to metaphysics of a kind. His acuteness was +great, and he had a scholastic subtlety and logical deftness which made +him very formidable to the loose thinkers and reasoners of +Utilitarianism and anti-Supernaturalism. One of the latest important +survivors was Dean Church (1815-91), who, as Proctor, had arrested the +persecution of the Tractarians, with which it was sought to complete the +condemnation of Ward's <i>Ideal</i>, and who afterwards, both in a country +cure and as Dean of St. Paul's, acquired very high literary rank by work +on Dante, Anselm, Spenser, and other subjects, leaving also the best +though unfortunately an incomplete history of the Movement itself; while +the two Mozleys, the one a considerable theologian, the other an active +journalist, brothers-in-law of Newman, also deserve mention. Last of all +perhaps we must notice Henry Parry Liddon (1829-90), of a younger +generation, but the right-hand man of Pusey in his later day, and his +biographer afterwards—a popular and pleasing, though rather rhetorical +than argumentative or original, preacher, and a man very much affected +by his friends. Even this list is nothing like complete, but it is +impossible to enlarge it.</p> + +<p>Midway between the Movement and its enemies, a partial sympathiser in +early days, almost an enemy when the popular tide turned against it, +almost a leader when public favour once more set in in its favour, was +Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester (1805-73). The third +son of the celebrated emancipationist and evangelical, he had brothers +who were more attracted than himself by the centripetal force of Roman +doctrine, and succumbed to it. Worldly perhaps as much as spiritual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> +motives kept him steadier. He did invaluable work as a bishop; and at +all times of his life he was in literature a distinct supporter of the +High Church cause, though with declensions and defections of Erastian +and evangelical backsliding. He was a very admirable preacher, though +his sermons do not read as well as they "heard"; some of his devotional +manuals are of great excellence; and in the heyday of High Church +allegory (an interesting by-walk of literature which can only be glanced +at here, but which was trodden by some estimable and even some eminent +writers) he produced the well hit-off tale of <i>Agathos</i> (1839). But it +may be that he will, as a writer, chiefly survive in the remarkable +letters and diaries in his <i>Life</i>, which are not only most valuable for +the political and ecclesiastical history of the time, but precious +always as human documents and sometimes as literary compositions.</p> + +<p>Three remarkable persons must be mentioned among the opponents of (and +in one case harsh judgment might say the deserters of) the Movement. +These were Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Mark Pattison, and Benjamin Jowett. +Stanley, born in 1815, was the son of the (afterwards) Bishop of Norwich +and a nephew of the first Lord Stanley of Alderley, and was brought up +very much under the influence of Arnold, whose biographer he became. But +he went further than Arnold in Broad Church ways. His career at Rugby +and at Oxford was distinguished, and after being fellow and tutor of +University College for some ten years, he became successively Canon of +Canterbury, Canon of Christ Church, and Professor of Ecclesiastical +History at Oxford, and Dean of Westminster, in which last post he had +almost greater opportunities than any bishop, and used them to the full. +He also wrote busily, devoting himself especially to the geography of +Palestine and the history of the Eastern Church, which he handled in a +florid and popular style, though not with much accuracy or scholarship. +Personally, Stanley was much liked, though his conception of his duties +as a sworn servant of the Church has seemed strange to some. He died in +July 1881.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mark Pattison (1813-84), Fellow and Rector of Lincoln College, had a +less amiable character than Stanley's, but a greater intellect and far +nicer, profounder, and wider scholarship, though he actually did very +little. He fell under the influence of Newman early, and was one of that +leader's closest associates in his monastic retreat at Littlemore. But +when Newman "went over," the wave swept Pattison neither to Rome nor +safely on to higher English ground, but into a religious scepticism, the +exact extent of which was nowhere definitely announced, but which was +regarded by some as nearly total. He did not nominally leave the Church, +but he acted always with the extreme Liberal party in the University, +and he was one of the famous Seven who contributed to <i>Essays and +Reviews</i><a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>. The shock of his religious revolution was completed by a +secular disappointment—his defeat for the office of Rector, which he +actually attained much later; and a temper always morbid, appears, to +judge from his painful but extraordinarily interesting and +characteristic <i>Memoirs</i>, to have been permanently soured. Even active +study became difficult to him, and though he was understood to have a +more extensive acquaintance with the humanists of the late Renaissance +than any man of his day, his knowledge took little written form except a +volume on Isaac Casaubon. He also wrote an admirable little book on +<i>Milton</i> for the <i>English Men of Letters</i>, edited parts of Milton and +Pope, and contributed a not inconsiderable number of essays and articles +to the <i>Quarterly</i> and <i>Saturday Reviews</i>, and other papers. The +autobiography mentioned was published after his death.</p> + +<p>Despite Pattison's peculiar temper he had warm and devoted friends, and +it was impossible for any one, whether personally liking him or not, to +deny him the possession of most unusual gifts. Whether his small +performance was due to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> shocks just referred to, to genuine +fastidiousness and resolve to do nothing but the best, or to these +things mixed with a strong dash of downright indolence and want of +energy, is hard to say. But it would be entirely unjust to regard him as +merely a man who was "going to do something." His actual work though not +large is admirable, and his style is the perfection of academic +correctness, not destitute of either vigour or grace.</p> + +<p>There were some resemblances between Pattison and Jowett (1817-94); but +the latter, unlike Pattison, had never had any sympathies with the +religious renaissance of his time. Like Pattison he passed his entire +life (after he obtained a Balliol fellowship) in his College, and like +him became head of it; while he was a much more prominent member of the +Liberal party in Oxford. His position as Regius Professor of Greek gave +him considerable influence even beyond Balliol. He, too, was an +<i>Essayist and Reviewer</i>, and he exercised a quiet but pervading +influence in University matters. He even acquired no mean name in +literature, though his work, after an early <i>Commentary</i> on some +Epistles of St. Paul, was almost entirely confined to translations, +especially of Plato, and though in these translations he was much +assisted by pupils. He wrote well, but with much less distinction and +elegance than Pattison, nor had he by any means the same taste for +literature and erudition in it. But, as an influence on the class of +persons from whom men of letters are drawn, no one has exceeded him in +his day.</p> + +<p>The dramatic catastrophe of the Disruption of the Scotch Kirk, which, by +a strange coincidence, was nearly contemporary with the crisis of the +Oxford Movement, set the final seal upon the reputation of Thomas +Chalmers, who headed the seceders. But this reputation had been made +long before, and indeed Chalmers died 30th May 1847, only four years +after he "went out." He was a much older man than the Oxford leaders, +having been born in 1780, and after having for some years, though a +minister, devoted himself chiefly to secular studies, he became famous +as a preacher at the Tron Church, Glasgow. In 1823<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> he was appointed +Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, and (shortly afterwards) +of Theology in Edinburgh. He was one of the Bridgewater treatise +writers—a group of distinguished persons endowed to produce tractates +on Natural Theology—and his work, <i>The Adaptation of External Nature to +the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man</i>, was one of the most +famous of that set, procuring for him a correspondence-membership from +the French Institute and a D.C.L. from Oxford. Chalmers' works are +extremely voluminous; the testimony as to the effect of his preaching is +tolerably uniform; he was a man of very wide range of thought, and of +remarkable faculty of popularisation; and there is no doubt that he was +a born leader of men. But as literature his works have hardly maintained +the reputation which they once had, and even those who revere him, +unless they let reverence stifle criticism, are apt to acknowledge that +there is more rhetoric than logic in him, and that the rhetoric itself +is not of the finest.</p> + +<p>Edward Irving, at one time an assistant to Chalmers, and an early friend +of Carlyle, was twelve years the junior of Chalmers himself, and died +thirteen years before him. But at nearly the time when Chalmers was at +the height of his reputation as a preacher in Glasgow, Irving was +drawing crowds to the unfashionable quarter of Hatton Garden, London, by +sermons of extraordinary brilliancy. Later he developed eccentricities +of doctrine which do not concern us, and his preaching has not worn much +better than that of his old superior. Irving, however, had more strictly +literary affinities than Chalmers; he came under the influence of +Coleridge (which probably had not a little to do both with his eloquence +and with his vagaries); and he may be regarded as having been much more +of a man of letters who had lost his way and strayed into theology than +as a theologian proper.</p> + +<p>To what extent this great and famous influence of Coleridge actually +worked upon Frederick Denison Maurice has been debated. It is however +generally stated that he, like his friend Sterling, was induced to take +orders in the Church of England by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> this influence. He was not a very +young man when in 1834, the year of Irving's death, he did this, for he +had been born in 1805, and had been educated at Cambridge, though being +then a Unitarian he did not take a degree. He afterwards went to Oxford +and took an M.A. degree there, and he was regarded for a time as a sort +of outlying sympathiser with the Tractarian Movement. But his opinions +took a very different line of development not merely from those of +Newman, but from those of Keble and Pusey. He indeed never left the +Church, in which he held divers preferments; and though his views on +eternal punishment lost him a professorship in King's College, London, +he met with no formal ecclesiastical censure. But he came to be regarded +as a champion of the Broad Church school, and upheld eloquently and +vehemently, if not always with a sufficiency either of logic or of +learning, a curious conglomerate of "advanced" views, ranging from +Christian Socialism to something like the views of the Atonement +attributed to Origen, and from deprecation of dogma to deprecation of +the then fashionable political economy. He was made Professor of Moral +Philosophy at Cambridge in 1866, and died in 1872. Maurice's sermons +were effective, and his other works numerous. A very generous and +amiable person with a deficient sense of history, Maurice in his writing +is a sort of elder, less gifted, and more exclusively theological +Charles Kingsley, on whom he exercised great and rather unfortunate +influence. But his looseness of thought, wayward eclecticism of system, +and want of accurate learning, were not remedied by Kingsley's splendid +pictorial faculty, his creative imagination, or his brilliant style.</p> + +<p>Somewhat akin to Maurice, but of a more feminine and less robust +temperament, was Frederick Robertson, generally called "Robertson of +Brighton," from the place of his last cure. Robertson, who was the son +of a soldier, was born in London on 3rd February 1816. After a rather +eccentric education and some vacillations about a profession, he went, +rather late, to Oxford, and was ordained in 1840. He had very bad +health, but did duty, chiefly at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> Cheltenham and at Brighton, pretty +valiantly, and died on August 1853. He published next to nothing in his +lifetime, but after his death there appeared several volumes of sermons +which gained great popularity, and were followed by other posthumous +works. Robertson's preaching is not very easy to judge, because the +published sermons are admittedly not what was actually delivered, but +after-reminiscences or summaries, and the judgment is not rendered +easier by the injudicious and gushing laudation of which he has been +made the subject. He certainly possessed a happy gift of phrase now and +then, and remarkable earnestness.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—In no chapter, perhaps, has there been greater +difficulty as to inclusion and exclusion than in the +present. The names of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, of Dean +Alford, of Bishop Lightfoot for England, of Bishop Charles +Wordsworth, of Dean Ramsay, of Drs. Candlish, Guthrie, and +Macleod for Scotland, may seem to clamour among orthodox +theologians, those of W. R. Greg, of James Hinton, of W. K. +Clifford among not always orthodox lay dealers with the +problems of philosophy, or of theology, or both. With less +tyrannous limits of space Principal Tulloch, who was +noteworthy in both these and in pure literature as well (he +was the last editor of <i>Fraser</i>), must have received at +least brief notice in this chapter, as must his brother +Principal, J. C. Shairp (an amiable poet, an agreeable +critic, and Professor of Poetry at Oxford), in others.</p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> This famous book, published in 1860, was a collection of +papers by six clergymen and a layman, some of which undoubtedly were, +and the rest of which were by association thought to be, unorthodox. It +was condemned by Convocation, and actual legal proceedings were taken +against two of the writers, but without final effect.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>LATER JOURNALISM AND CRITICISM IN ART AND LETTERS</h3> + + +<p>In a former chapter we conducted the history of criticism, especially +literary criticism, and that chiefly as displayed in the periodicals +which were reorganized and refreshed in the early years of the century, +to about 1850. We have now to take it up at that point and conduct +it—subject to the limitations of our plan as regards living authors, +and in one extremely important case taking the license of outstepping +these limits—to the present or almost the present day. We shall have to +consider the rise and performances of two great individual writers, one +of whom entirely re-created, if he may not almost be said to have +created, the criticism of art in England, while the other gave a new +temper, if not exactly a new direction, to the criticism of literature; +and we shall have, in regard to periodicals, to observe the rise, in the +first place of the weekly newspaper, and then of the daily, as +competitors in strictly critical and literary work with the quarterly +and monthly reviews, as well as some changes in these latter.</p> + +<p>For just as we found that the first development of nineteenth century +criticism coincided with or followed upon a new departure or development +in periodicals, so we shall find that a similar change accompanied or +caused changes in the middle of the century. Although the popularity of +the quarterly and monthly reviews and magazines which had been headed +respectively by the <i>Edinburgh</i> and <i>Blackwood</i> did not exactly wane, +and though some of the most brilliant work of the middle of the +century—George<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> Eliot's novels, Kingsley's and Froude's essays, and the +like—appeared in them, the ever fickle appetite of readers seemed to +desire something else in shape, something different in price, style, and +form. Why this sort of change, which is perpetually recurring, should +usually bring with it a corresponding change, and sometimes a +corresponding improvement, of literary production, is more than any one +can say, but the fact is not easily disputable.</p> + +<p>On the present occasion the change took three successive forms—first, +the raising, or rather restoring, of the weekly sixpenny critical +newspaper to a higher pitch of popularity than it had ever held; +secondly, the cheapening and multiplying of the monthly magazines; +thirdly, the establishment of new monthly reviews, somewhat more +resembling the old quarterlies than anything else, but with signed +instead of anonymous articles.</p> + +<p>The uprising of the weekly newspaper took shape in two remarkably +different forms, represented respectively by <i>Household Words</i>, which +Dickens started early in the fifties, and by the <i>Saturday Review</i>, +which came a little later. The former might best be described as a +monthly of the <i>Blackwood</i> and <i>London</i> kind cheapened, made more +frequent in issue, and adjusted to a considerably lower and more popular +standard of interest and culture—politics, moreover, being ostensibly +though not quite really excluded. Dickens contributed to it largely +himself. He received contributions from writers of established repute +like Bulwer and Lever; but he made his chief mark with the paper by +breeding up a school of younger writers who wrote to his own pattern in +fiction, miscellaneous essay, and other things. Wilkie Collins was the +chief of these, but there were many others. In particular the periodical +developed a sort of popular, jocular, and picturesque-descriptive manner +of treating places, travels, ceremonies, and what not, which took the +public fancy immensely. It was not quite original (for Leigh Hunt, +Wainewright the murderer-miscellanist of the <i>London</i>, some of the +<i>Blackwood</i> men, and others, had anticipated it to a certain extent), +and it was vulgarised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> as regards all its models; but it was distinct +and remarkable. The æsthetic and literary tone of <i>Household Words</i>, and +of its successor <i>All the Year Round</i> to a somewhat less extent, was +distinctly what is called Philistine; and though Dickens always had a +moral purpose, he did not aim much higher than amusement that should not +be morbid, and instruction of the middle-class diffusion-of-knowledge +kind. But there was very little harm and much good to be said of +<i>Household Words</i>; and if some of the imitations of it were far from +being happy, its own popularity and that of its successor were very +fairly deserved.</p> + +<p>The aims, the character, and the success of the <i>Saturday Review</i> were +of the most widely different character. It was less novel in form, for +the weekly review was an established thing, and had at least two very +respectable examples—the <i>Examiner</i>, which (under the Hunts, under +Fonblanque, under Forster, and under the late Mr. Minto) had a +brilliant, if never an extremely prosperous, career for three-quarters +of the century, and the <i>Spectator</i>, which attained a reputation for +unswerving honesty under the editorship of Mr. Rentoul, and has +increased it under that of its present conductors. But both these were +Liberal papers first of all; the <i>Saturday Review</i>, at first and +accidentally Peelite, was really (throughout the nearly forty years +during which it remained in the possession of the same family and was +directed by a succession of editors each of whom had been trained under +his predecessor) Independent Tory, or (to use a rather unhappy and now +half-forgotten name) Liberal-Conservative. It never tied itself to party +chariot-wheels, and from the first to the last of the period just +referred to very distinguished writers of Liberal and Radical opinions +contributed to it. But the general attitude of the paper during this +time expressed that peculiar tone of mainly Conservative persiflage +which has distinguished in literature the great line of writers +beginning with Aristophanes. Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from +the two Universities (though there was no kind of exclusion for the +unmatriculated; as a matter of fact, neither of its first two editors +was a son either of Oxford or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> Cambridge), and it always insisted on the +necessity of classical culture. It eschewed the private personality +which had been too apt to disfigure newspapers of a satirical kind +during the first half of the century; but it claimed and exercised to +the full the privilege of commenting on every public writing, utterance, +or record of the subjects of its criticism. It observed, for perhaps a +longer time than any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity +(real as well as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular +articles; and those who knew were constantly amused at the public +mistakes on this subject.</p> + +<p>Applying this kind of criticism,—perfectly fearless, on the whole +fairly impartial, informed, human errors excepted, by a rather +exceptionally high degree of intelligence and education, and above all +keeping before it the motto, framed by its "sweet enemy" Thackeray, of +being written "by gentlemen for gentlemen,"—the <i>Saturday Review</i> +quickly attained, and for many years held, the very highest place in +English critical journalism as regards literature, in a somewhat less +degree politics, and in a degree even greater the farrago of social and +miscellaneous matters. By consent too general and too unbiassed to be +questioned, it gave and maintained a certain tone of comment which +prevailed for the seventh, eighth, and ninth decades of the century, and +of which the general note may be said to have been a coolly scornful +intolerance of ignorance and folly. There were those who accused it even +in its palmiest days of being insufficiently positive and constructive; +but on the negative side it was generally sound in intention, and in +execution admirably thorough. It may sometimes have mishandled an honest +man, it may sometimes have forgiven a knave; but it always hated a fool, +and struck at him with might and with main.</p> + +<p>The second change began with the establishment of the <i>Cornhill</i> and +<i>Macmillan's Magazine</i>, two or three years later. There was no +perceptible difference in the general scheme of these periodicals from +that of the earlier ones, of which <i>Blackwood</i> and <i>Fraser</i> were the +most famous; but their price was lowered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> from half a crown to a +shilling, and the principle of signed articles and of long novels by +famous names was adopted. The editorship of Thackeray in the <i>Cornhill</i>, +with the contributions of Matthew Arnold and others, quickly gave a +character to it; while <i>Macmillan's</i> could boast contributions from the +Kingsleys, Henry and Charles, as well as from many others. From this +time the monthly magazine, with the exception of <i>Blackwood</i>, found a +shilling, which attempts have been recently made to lower to sixpence, +its almost necessary tariff, while the equal necessity of addressing the +largest possible audience made pure politics, with occasional +exceptions, unwelcome in it. It is to the credit of the English +magazines of this class, however, that they have never relinquished the +tradition of serious literary studies. Many of the essays of Mr. Arnold +appeared first either in one or the other of the two just mentioned; the +<i>Cornhill</i> even ventured upon Mr. Ruskin's <i>Unto this Last</i>; and other +famous books of a permanent character saw the light in these, in <i>Temple +Bar</i>, started by Mr. Bentley, in the rather short-lived <i>St. Paul's</i>, of +which Anthony Trollope was editor, and in others.</p> + +<p>Whether the starting of the monthly "Review" as distinguished from the +"Magazine," which came again a little later towards the middle or end of +the sixties, be traceable to a parallel popularisation of the quarterly +ideal—to the need for the political and "heavy" articles which the +lightened monthlies had extruded—or to a mere imitation of the famous +French <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, is an academic question. The first of +these new Reviews was the <i>Fortnightly</i>, which found the exact French +model unsuitable to the meridian of Greenwich, and dropped the +fortnightly issue, while retaining the title. It was followed by the +<i>Contemporary</i>, the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and others. The exclusion of +fiction in these was not invariable—the <i>Fortnightly</i>, in particular, +has published many of Mr. Meredith's novels. But, as a rule, these +reviews have busied themselves with more or less serious subjects, and +have encouraged signed publication.</p> + +<p>It would, of course, be impossible here to go through all, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> even all +the most noteworthy, of the periodicals of the century. We are dealing +with classes, not individuals, and the only class yet to be +noticed—daily newspapers falling out of our ken almost entirely—are +those weekly newspapers which have eschewed politics altogether. The +oldest and most famous of these is the <i>Athenæum</i>, which still +flourishes after a life of nearly seventy years, while between forty and +fifty years later the <i>Academy</i> was founded on the same general +principles. But the <i>Athenæum</i> has always cleaved, as far as its main +articles went, to the unsigned system, while the <i>Academy</i> started at a +period which leant the other way. Of late years, too, criticism proper, +that is to say, of letters and art, has played a larger and larger part +in daily newspapers, some of which attempt a complete review of books as +they appear, while others give reviews of selected works as full as +those of the weeklies. If any distinct setting of example is necessary +to be attributed in this case, the credit is perhaps mainly due to the +original <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, an evening newspaper started in 1864 with +one of the most brilliant staffs ever known, including many of the +original <i>Saturday</i> writers and others.</p> + +<p>The result of this combined opportunity and stimulus in so many forms +has been that almost the whole of the critical work of the latter part +of the century has passed through periodicals—that, except as regards +Mr. Ruskin, a writer always indocile to editing, every one who will +shortly be mentioned in this chapter has either won his spurs or +exercised them in this kind, and that of the others, mentioned in other +chapters and in connection with other subjects, a very small proportion +can be said to have been entirely disdainful of periodical publication. +At the very middle of the century, and later, the older Quarterlies were +supported by men like John Wilson Croker, a survival of their first +generation Nassau W. Senior, and Abraham Hayward, the last a famous +talker and "diner-out." Other chief critics and essayists, besides +Kingsley and Froude, were George Brimley, Librarian of Trinity College, +Cambridge; Henry Lancaster, a Balliol man and a Scotch barrister; and +Walter Bagehot, a banker,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> and not a member of either University. +Brimley has left us what is perhaps the best appreciation of Tennyson in +the time between the days when that poet was flouted or doubted by the +usual critic, and those when he was accepted as a matter of course or +cavilled at as a matter of paradox; and Lancaster occupies pretty much +the same position with regard to Thackeray. It is not so easy to single +out any particular and distinguishing critical effort of Bagehot's, who +wrote on all subjects, from Lombard Street to Tennyson, and from the +<i>Coup d'État</i> (which he saw) to Browning. But his distinction of the +poetical art of Wordsworth and that of these other poets as "pure, +ornate, and grotesque" will suffice to show his standpoint, which was a +sort of middle place between the classical and the Romantic. Bagehot +wrote well, and possessed a most keen intelligence. Also to be classed +here are Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, the very agreeable author of <i>Horæ +Subsecivæ</i>, and James Hannay, a brilliant journalist, a novelist of some +merit and an essayist of more, and author of <i>A Course of English +Literature</i> which, though a little popular and desultory, is full of +sense and stimulus.</p> + +<p>Most popular of all at the time was Sir Arthur Helps (1813-75), a +country gentleman of some means and of the usual education, who took to +a mixed life of official and literary work, did some useful work in +regard to Spanish-American history, but acquired most popularity by a +series of dialogues, mostly occupied by ethical and æsthetic criticism, +called <i>Friends in Council</i>. This contains plenty of knowledge of books, +touches of wit and humour, a satisfactory standard of morals and +manners, a certain effort at philosophy, but suffers from the +limitations of its date. In different ways enough—for he was as quiet +as the other was showy—Helps was the counterpart of Kinglake, as +exhibiting a certain stage in the progress of English culture during the +middle of the century—a stage in which the Briton was considerably more +alive to foreign things than he had been, had enlarged his sphere in +many ways, and was at least striving to be cosmopolitan, but had lost +insular strength without acquiring Continental suppleness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p> + +<p>Of the literary critic who attracted most public attention during this +period,—the late Mr. Matthew Arnold,—considerable mention has already +been made in dealing with his poetry, and biographical details must be +looked for there. It will be remembered that Mr. Arnold was not very +early a popular writer either as poet or prose-man, that his poetical +exercises preceded by a good deal his prose, and that these latter were, +if not determined, largely influenced by his appointment to the +Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. He began, however, towards the end of +the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, to be much noticed, not +merely as the deliverer of lectures, but as the contributor of essays of +an exceedingly novel, piquant, and provocative kind; and in 1865 these, +or some of them, were collected and published under the title of <i>Essays +in Criticism</i>. These <i>Essays</i>—nine in number, besides a characteristic +preface—dealt ostensibly for the most part, if not wholly, with +literary subjects,—"The Function of Criticism," "The Literary Influence +of Academies," "The Guérins" (brother and sister), "Heine," "Pagan and +Mediæval Religious Sentiment," "Joubert," "Spinoza," and "Marcus +Aurelius,"—but they extended the purport of the title of the first of +them in the widest possible way. Mr. Arnold did not meddle with art, but +he extended the province of literature outside of it even more widely +than Mr. Ruskin did, and was, under a guise of pleasant scepticism, as +dogmatic within the literary province as Mr. Ruskin in the artistic. It +might almost be said that Mr. Arnold put himself forth, with a becoming +attempt at modesty of manner, but with very uncompromising intentions, +as "Socrates in London," questioning, probing, rebuking with ironical +faithfulness, the British Philistine—a German term which he, though not +the first to import it, made first popular—in literature, in +newspapers, in manners, in politics, in philosophy. Foreign, and +specially French, ways were sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, +held up as examples for our improvement; and the want of "ideas," the +want of "light," the want of "culture," was dwelt on with a mixture of +sorrow and satire. All this was couched in a very peculiar and (till its +mannerism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> became irritating) a very captivating style, which cannot be +assigned to any single original, but which is a sort of compound or +eclectic outcome of the old Oxford academic style as it may be seen at +times in Newman, of French persiflage, and of some elements peculiar to +Mr. Arnold himself. The strongest, though the most dangerous, of these +elements was a trick of iterating words and phrases, sometimes exactly, +sometimes with a very slight variation, which inevitably arrested +attention, and perhaps at first produced conviction, on the principle +formulated by a satirist (also of Oxford) a little later in the words—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What I tell you three times is true.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But besides and underneath all this flourish, all this wide-ranging +scatter of sometimes rather haphazard arrows, there was a solid literary +value in Mr. Arnold's method. As has been noticed earlier in this +chapter, the literary essay of the best kind had somewhat gone off in +England during the middle of the century, and the short, crisp +criticisms which had appeared to take its place in weekly papers were +almost necessarily exposed to grave faults and inadequacies. It was Mr. +Arnold's great merit that by holding up Sainte-Beuve, from whom he had +learnt much, and other French critics, and by urging successfully the +revival of the practice of "introducing" editions of classics by a sound +biographical and critical essay from the pen of some contemporary, he +did much to cure this state of things. So that, whereas the <i>corpus</i> of +English essay-criticism between 1800 and 1835 or thereabouts is +admirable, and that of 1835 to 1865 rather thin and scanty, the last +third of the century is not on such very bad terms as regards the first. +And he gave example as well as precept, showing—though his subjects, as +in the case of the Guérins, were sometimes most eccentrically +selected—a great deal of critical acuteness, coupled, it may be, with +something of critical "will-worship," with a capricious and unargued +preference of this and rejection of that, but exhibiting wide if not +extraordinarily deep reading, an honest enthusiasm for the best things, +and above all a fascinating rhetoric.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p> + +<p>The immediate effect of this remarkable book was good almost unmixedly +on two of the three parties concerned. It was more than time for the +flower of middle-class complacency, which horticulturists of all +degrees, from Macaulay downwards, had successively striven to cultivate, +and which was already overblown, to drop from its stalk; and the whiff +of pleasant scorn which Mr. Arnold directed at it was just the thing to +puff it off. So the public, upon which he was never likely to produce +too much effect, had reason to thank him for the effect that he did +produce, or helped to produce. And on the critics too his effect, or the +effect of which he was the symptom and voice, was also good, recalling +them on the one hand from the dulness of the long reviews of the period, +and on the other from the flippancy of the short, while inculcating a +wider if not always a sounder comparison. Practically German poetry had +nothing left to do in Mr. Arnold's day, and French had much: he thought +just the other way, and reserved his encomium of France for its prose, +in which it was drooping and failing. But this did not matter: it is the +general scope of the critic's advice which is valuable in such cases, +and the general scope of Mr. Arnold's was sound. On the third party, +however,—himself,—the effect was a little disastrous. The reception +which, after long waiting, he had attained, encouraged him not so much +to continue in his proper sphere of literary criticism as to embark on a +wide and far-ranging enterprise of general censure, which narrowed +itself pretty rapidly to an attempt to establish undogmatic on the ruins +of dogmatic Christianity. It would be very improper to discuss such an +undertaking on the merits here; or to criticise narrowly the series of +singular treatises which absorbed (with exceptions, no doubt, such as +the quaint sally of <i>Friendship's Garland</i> on the occasion of the +Franco-German War) Mr. Arnold's energies for some fifteen or sixteen +years. The titles—<i>Culture and Anarchy</i>, <i>God and the Bible</i>, <i>St. Paul +and Protestantism</i>, <i>Literature and Dogma</i>, etc.—are well known. Of the +contents it is enough to say that, apart from the popular audacity of +their wit and the interesting spectacle of a pure man of letters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> +confidently attacking thorny questions without any apparatus of special +knowledge and study, they have not been generally thought quite worthy +of their author. There are many brilliant passages in these books as +writing, just as there are some astonishing lapses of taste and logic; +but the real fault of the whole set is that they are popular, that they +undergo the very curse, of speaking without qualification and without +true culture, which Mr. Arnold had himself so freely pronounced.</p> + +<p>Fortunately, however, he never quite abandoned the old ways; and in his +last years he returned to them almost wholly. Nothing better of the kind +(individual crotchets always excepted) has ever been written than his +introductions to selected lives from Johnson's <i>Poets</i>, to Byron, to +Shelley (the most crotchety and unsound of all), to Wordsworth +(incomparably the best). He aided others; and a collection of his purely +or mainly literary work is still eagerly expected. Even this would be +extremely unequal and open to exception here and there. But it would +contain some of the very best things to be found in any English critic. +And this after all, if not the absolutely highest, is one of the highest +things that can be said of a critic, and one of the rarest. Undoubtedly +the influence of Mr. Arnold did not make for good entirely. He +discouraged—without in the least meaning to do so, and indeed meaning +quite the contrary—seriousness, thoroughness, scholarship in criticism. +He discouraged—without in the least meaning to do so, and indeed +meaning quite the contrary—simplicity and unaffectedness in style. But +he was a most powerful stimulus, and in some ways, if not in all, a +great example. Some at least of the things he said were in the very +greatest need of saying, and some of the ways in which he said them were +inimitably charming.</p> + +<p>Contemporary with Mr. Arnold, and his complement in critical influence, +was John Ruskin, the sole living author of whom it has seemed proper to +treat here at length, and, since the death of Mr. Froude, the sole +surviving man of letters of the first class who had published before the +middle of the century. He was born in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> 1819: he has given copious +accounts of his family, of his youth at Denmark Hill, and so forth, and +all the world knows that his father was a sherry merchant who, though he +lived rather plainly, was able to give his son an early and plentiful +indulgence in that Continental travel which had so much to do with +developing his genius. Mr. Ruskin's education was oddly combined; for, +after going to no school, he was sent to Christ Church as a +gentleman-commoner and took his degree in 1842, having gained the +Newdigate three years earlier. He wrote a good deal of other verse in +his early years,—and he made himself a not inconsiderable draughtsman. +But his real vocation was as little the practice of art as it was the +practice of poetry. As early as 1843 there appeared, by "a Graduate of +Oxford," the first volume of the famous <i>Modern Painters</i>, which ran to +five large volumes, which covered seventeen years in its original period +of publication, and which was very largely altered and remodelled by the +author during and after this period. But Mr. Ruskin by no means confined +his energies before 1860 to this extensive task. The <i>Seven Lamps of +Architecture</i> (1849), and (between 1851 and 1853) the larger <i>Stones of +Venice</i>, did for architecture what the companion work did for painting. +The Præ-Raphaelite movement of the middle of the century found in Mr. +Ruskin an ardent encomiast and literary apostle, and between 1850 and +1860 he delivered divers lectures, the text of which—<i>Architecture and +Painting</i> (1854), <i>Political Economy of Art</i> (1858)—was subsequently +published in as elaborately magnificent a style as his other works. As +<i>Modern Painters</i> drew to its close he became prolific of more numerous +and shorter works, generally with somewhat fantastic but agreeable +titles—<i>Unto this Last</i> (1861), <i>Munera Pulveris</i> (1862), <i>Sesame and +Lilies</i> (1865), <i>The Cestus of Aglaia</i> (1865), <i>The Ethics of the Dust</i> +(1866), <i>The Crown of Wild Olive</i> (1866), <i>Time and Tide by Wear and +Tyne</i> (1867), <i>The Queen of the Air</i> (1869), <i>Aratra Pentelici</i> and <i>The +Eagle's Nest</i> (1872), <i>Ariadne Florentina</i> (1873), <i>Proserpina and +Deucalion</i> (1875 <i>seq.</i>), <i>St. Mark's Rest</i> and <i>Præterita</i> (1885). Not +a few of these were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> issued in parts and numbers, but Mr. Ruskin's +bulkiest and most characteristic venture in this kind was <i>Fors +Clavigera</i>, which was published at irregular intervals from 1871 to +1884. He has written many other things even in book form, besides +innumerable essays and letters, some of which have been collected in two +gatherings—<i>Arrows of the Chace</i> and <i>On the Old Road</i>.</p> + +<p>Two things are mainly perceptible in this immense and at first sight +rather bewildering production. The first, the most disputable and +probably the least important, though the most at the author's heart, is +a vast, fluctuating, but on the whole pretty coherent body of doctrine +in reference to Art. Up to Mr. Ruskin's day, æsthetics had been little +cultivated in England, and such handlings of the subject as +existed—Burke's, Adam Smith's, Alison's, and a few others—were of a +jejune and academic character. Even writers of distinct literary genius +and of great taste for the matter, who had not resided abroad long, such +as Hazlitt, much more such as Charles Lamb and Hartley Coleridge, betray +the want of range and practice in examples. Even the valuable and +interesting work of Mrs. Jameson (1794-1860) was more occupied with +careful arrangement and attractive illustration than with original +theory; and, well as she wrote, her <i>Characteristics of Shakespeare's +Women</i> (1832) is perhaps more important as literature than the series of +volumes—<i>Sacred and Legendary Art</i>, etc.—which she executed between +1845 and her death. The sense of the endless and priceless illustration +of the best art which was provided by Gothic domestic and ecclesiastical +architecture was only wakening; as for painting, the examples publicly +visible in England were very few, and even private collections were +mostly limited to one or two fashionable schools—Raphael and his +successors, the later Low Country schools, the French painters in the +grand style, and a few Spaniards.</p> + +<p>Strongly impressed by the Romantic revival (he has all his life been the +staunchest of Sir Walter's devotees), a passionate lover of Gothic +architecture both at home and abroad, and early drawn both to the +romantic nature-painting of Turner and the gorgeous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> colouring of the +early Italian schools, Mr. Ruskin heralded Art with a passion of which +eighteenth century "gusto" had had no notion. But he was by no means +satisfied with heralding Art alone. Anathematising at once the doctrine +that utility is beauty—that beauty is utility he would always have +cheerfully admitted—and the doctrine that the beautiful is not +necessarily connected either with utility, with goodness, or with truth, +he from the first and to the last has endeavoured to work ethics and +æsthetics into a sort of single texture of warp and woof respectively, +pushing his endeavours into the most multiform, the most curious, and it +must be owned sometimes the most grotesque ramifications and +extremities. But he was not satisfied with this bold attempt at the +marriage of two things sometimes deemed hostile to, and generally held +to be independent of, one another. He must needs be bolder still, and +actually attempt to ally with Art, if not to subject to her, the +youngest, the most rebellious, and, as it might seem, the most +matter-of-fact and utilitarian of all the sciences—that of Political +Economy. As we have seen, he had brought the subjects together in +lectures pretty early in his career, and he developed the combination +further in the eccentric book called <i>Unto this Last</i>, originally +published in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i> as noted above. In this Æsthetics +and Economics combined took a distinctly Socialist turn; and as England +was under the very fullest dominion of the Liberal middle-class regime, +with its belief in <i>laissez-faire</i> and in supply-and-demand, Mr. Ruskin +was not a little pooh-poohed. It would be improper here to attack or to +defend his views, but it is part of the historian's duty to say that, +for good or for ill, they have, though in forms different from his and +doubtless by no means always meeting his approval, made constant +headway, and that much legislation and still more agitation on the +extreme Liberal side, and not there only, may be said to represent, with +very slight transformation, Ruskinian doctrine applied, now and then, to +very anti-Ruskinian purposes.</p> + +<p>With regard to æsthetics proper, it might be contended, without too much +rashness, that the history of Ruskinism has not been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> different; but to +some observers it seems to have described rather a curve than a steady +ascent. After being, between 1840 and 1860, laughed at, despised, +attacked all at once, Mr. Ruskin found his influence as an art teacher +rise steadily during the seventh decade of the century, and attain its +highest point about the close thereof, when he was made Slade Professor +in his own university, and caused young Oxford to do many fantastic +things. But, as always happens, the hour of triumph was the hour, not, +perhaps, of downfall, but of opposition and renegation. Side by side +with Mr. Ruskin's own theories had risen the doctrine of Art-for-Art's +sake, which, itself as usual half truth and half nonsense, cut at the +very root of Ruskinism. On the other hand, the practical centre of +art-schools had shifted from Italy and Germany to Paris and its +neighbourhood, where morality has seldom been able to make anything like +a home; and the younger painters and sculptors, full of realism, +impressionism, and what not, would have none of the doctrines which, as +a matter of fact, stood in immediate relationship of antecedence to +their own. Lastly, it must be admitted that the extreme dogmatism on all +the subjects of the encyclopedia in which Mr. Ruskin had seen fit to +indulge, was certain to provoke a revolt. But with the substance of +Ruskinism, further than is necessary for comprehension, we are not +concerned.</p> + +<p>Yet there are not many things in the English nineteenth century with +which a historian is more concerned than with the style of the +deliverance of these ideas. We have noticed in former chapters—we shall +have to notice yet more in the conclusion—the attempts made in the +years just preceding and immediately following Mr. Ruskin's birth, by +Landor, by De Quincey, by Wilson, and by others in the direction of +ornate, of—as some call it—<i>flamboyant</i> English prose. All the +tendencies thus enumerated found their crown and flower in Mr. Ruskin +himself. That later the crowns and the flowers were, so to speak, +divided, varied, and multiplied by later practitioners, some of whom +will presently be noticed, while more are still alive, is quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> true. +But in 1895 it is not very unsafe to prophesy that the <i>flamboyant</i> +style of the nineteenth century will be found by posterity to have +reached its highest exposition in prose with Mr. Ruskin himself.</p> + +<p>Like all great prose styles—and the difference between prose and poetry +here is very remarkable—this was born nearly full grown. The instances +of comparison in those who have tried both harmonies are rare; those in +poets only are delusive and uncertain. But with the three greatest poets +of England who have also been great prose writers, Milton, Dryden, +Shelley, the assertion that the distinctive quality of their prose +developed itself earlier than the distinctive quality of their verse is +only disputable in the case of Milton. And Milton, as it happened, wrote +prose and verse in manners more nearly approaching each other than any +one on record. Mr. Ruskin has not been a poet, except in extreme +minority; but he has been a great prose writer from the first. It is +almost inconceivable that good judges can ever have had any doubt about +him. It is perfectly—it is, indeed, childishly easy to pick faults, +even if matter be kept wholly out of sight. In Mr. Ruskin's later books +a certain tendency to conversational familiarity sometimes mocks those, +and not those only, who hold to the tradition of dignified and <i>ex +cathedra</i> pronouncement; in his earlier, and in all, it is possible for +Momus to note an undue floridness, an inclination to blank verse in +prose, tricks and manners of this or that kind unduly exuberant and +protuberant.</p> + +<p>But when all these things have been allowed for to the very fullest, +what an enormous advance there is on anything that had gone before! The +ornate prose writers of the seventeenth century had too frequently +regarded their libraries only; they had seldom looked abroad to the vast +field of nature, and of art other than literary art. The ornate writers +of the eighteenth, great as they were, had been as afraid of +introspection as of looking outwards, and had spun their webs, so far as +style and ornament were concerned, of words only. Those of the early +nineteenth had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> conscious of revolt, and, like all conscious +revolters, had not possessed their souls in sufficient quietness and +confidence. Landor, half a classic and half a Romantic, had been too +much the slave of phrase,—though of a great phrase. Wilson, impatient +in everything, had fluctuated between grandeur and <i>galimatias</i>, bathos +and bad taste; De Quincey, at times supreme, had at others simply +succumbed to "rigmarole." Mr. Ruskin had a gift of expression equal to +the best of these men; and, unlike them, he had an immense, a steady, a +uniform group of models before him. Indulge as he might in extravagance, +there were always before him, as on a vastly extended dais set before +the student, the glories of nature and of art, the great personalities +and productions of the great artists. He had seen, and he could see +(which is a different thing), the perennial beauties of mountain and +cloud, of tree, and sea, and river; the beauties long, if not perennial, +of architecture and painting. A man may say foolish things,—Mr. Ruskin +has said plenty; but when he has Venice and Amiens and Salisbury, the +Alps and the Jura and the Rhine, Scott and Wordsworth, Turner and +Lionardo, always silently present before his mind's eye, he can never, +if he is a man of genius, go wholly wrong. And he can never go more than +a little wrong when he is furnished by his genius with such a gift of +expression as Mr. Ruskin has had.</p> + +<p>For this gift of expression was such as had never been seen before, and +such as, for all the copying and vulgarising of it, has never been seen +since. It is a commonplace of literary history that description, as +such, is not common or far advanced in the earlier English prose. We +find Gray, far on in the eighteenth century, trying to describe a +sunrise, and evidently vexed at the little "figure it makes on paper." +Then the tourists and the travellers of the end of that age made valiant +but not always well directed efforts to induce "it" to make a figure on +paper. Then came the experts or student-interpreters in ornate prose who +have been mentioned. And then came Mr. Ruskin. "Never so before and +never quite so since," must be the repeated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> verdict. The first +sprightly runnings in these, as in other kinds, are never surpassed. +Kingsley, an almost contemporary, Mr. Swinburne, a younger rival, have +come near; others have done creditably in imitation; none have equalled, +and certainly none have surpassed. Let the reader read the "Wave +Studies" in the first volume of <i>Modern Painters</i>, more than fifty years +old; the "Pine Forest in the Jura," almost forty; the "Angel of the +Sea," fully thirty-five, and say, if he has any knowledge of English +literature, whether there had been anything like any of these before. +Shelley, perhaps, in some of his prose had gone near it. Shelley was +almost as great a prose writer as he was a poet. No one else could even +be mentioned.</p> + +<p>Nor was it mere description, great as Mr. Ruskin is in that, which +differentiated him so strongly. He is a bad arguer; but his arguments +are couched in rhetoric so persuasive that the very critics who detect +his fallacies would almost consent to forfeit the power of detecting, if +they could acquire that of constructing, such delightful paralogisms. +His crotchets of all sorts are sometimes merely childish, and not even +always or very often original; for, like all fertile minds, he never +could receive any seed of thought from another but it bore plant and +fruit at once. But the statement of them is at its best so captivating +that weaklings may pardonably accept, and strong men may justly +tolerate, the worthless kernel for the sake of the exquisite husk. Few +men have less of the true spirit of criticism than Mr. Ruskin, for in +his enthusiasm he will compass sea and land to exalt his favourite, +often for reasons which are perfectly invalid; and in his appreciation +he is not to be trusted at all, having a feminine rather than a +masculine faculty of unreasoned dislike. But praise or blame, argue or +paralogise as he may, the golden beauty of his form redeems his matter +in the eyes of all but those who are unhappy enough not to see it.</p> + +<p>That his influence has been wholly good no one can say. There is +scarcely a page of him that can be safely accepted on the whole as +matter, and the unwary have accepted whole volumes;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> his form is +peculiarly liable to abuse in the way of imitation, and it has actually +been abused to nausea and to ridicule. But this is not his fault. There +is so little subtlety about Mr. Ruskin that he can hardly deceive even +an intelligent child when he goes wrong. There is so much genius about +him that the most practised student of English can never have done with +admiration at the effects that he produces, after all these centuries, +with the old material and the old tools. He is constantly provocative of +adverse, even of severe criticism; of half the heresies from which he +has suffered—not only that of impressionism—he was himself the +unconscious heresiarch. And yet the more one reads him the more one +feels inclined almost to let him go uncriticised, to vote him the +primacy in nineteenth-century prose by simple acclamation.</p> + +<p>Richard (or as his full name ran), John Richard Jefferies, occupies, +though an infinitely smaller and a considerably lower place than Mr. +Ruskin's, yet one almost as distinctly isolated in a particular +department of æsthetic description. The son of a farmer at Coate, in +North Wiltshire, and born in November 1848, he began journalism at +eighteen, and was a contributor to the <i>North Wilts Herald</i> till he was +nearly thirty. Then he went to London, and in 1878 published some +sketches (previously contributed to the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>) under the +title of <i>The Game-Keeper at Home</i>. These, though not much bought, were +very much admired; and Jefferies was encouraged to devote himself to +work of the same kind, which he varied with curious and not very +vigorous semi-philosophic speculations and attempts at downright novels +(a kind which he had also tried in his youth). Unfortunately the +peculiar sort of descriptive writing in which he excelled was not very +widely called for, could hardly under the most favourable circumstances +have brought in any great sums of money, and was peculiarly liable to +depreciate when written to order. It does not appear that Jefferies had +the rare though sometimes recorded power of accommodating himself to +ordinary newspaper hack-work, while reserving himself for better things +now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> and then; and finally, he had not been long in London before +painful and ultimately fatal disease added to his troubles. He died in +August 1887, being not yet forty. A burst of popularity followed; his +books, <i>The Game-Keeper at Home</i>, <i>Wild Life in a Southern Country</i>, +<i>The Amateur Poacher</i>, <i>Round about a Great Estate</i>, etc., none of which +had been printed in large numbers, were sold at four or five times their +published price; and, worst of all, cheap imitations of his style began +to flood the newspapers. Nay, the yet later results of this imitation +was that another reaction set in, and even Jefferies' own work was once +more pooh-poohed.</p> + +<p>The neglect, the over-valuation, and the shift back to injustice, were +all examples of the evils which beset literature at the present time, +and which the much-blamed critic is almost powerless to cause or cure. +In other days Jefferies was quite as likely to have been insufficiently +rewarded at first by the public; but he would then have had no +temptation to over-write himself, or try alien tasks, and he would have +stood a very good chance of a pension, or a sinecure, or an easy office +in church or state, on one or other of which he might have lived at ease +and written at leisure. Nothing else could really have been of service +to him, for his talent, though rare and exquisite, was neither rich nor +versatile. It consisted in a power of observing nature more than +Wordsworthian in delicacy, and almost Wordsworthian in the presence of a +sentimental philosophic background of thought. Unluckily for Jefferies, +his philosophic background was not like Wordsworth's, clear and +cheerful, but wholly vague and partly gloomy. Writing, too, in prose not +verse, and after Mr. Ruskin, he attempted an exceedingly florid style, +which at its happiest was happy enough, but which was not always at that +point, and which when it was not was apt to become trivial or tawdry, or +both. It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will +dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of +descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their +particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stand Gilbert White and +Gray.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mr. Arnold, it has been said, abstained almost entirely from dealing +with art. Mr. Ruskin, who has abstained from dealing with nothing, did +not abstain from criticism of literature, but his utterances in it have +been more than usually <i>obiter dicta</i>. Yet we must take the two together +if we are to understand the most powerful influence and the most +flourishing school of criticism, literary and other, which has existed +for the last thirty years. This school may be said to halt in a way +between purely literary and generally æsthetic handling, and when it can +to mix the two. Most of its scholars—men obviously under the influence +both of Arnold and of Ruskin, either in submission or in revolt, are +alive, and we reason not of them. But, as it happens, the two most +famous, one of whom was a prose writer, pure and simple, the other a +copious artist in prose and verse, have died recently and call for +judgment. These were Walter Horatio Pater and John Addington Symonds.</p> + +<p>The first-named was born in 1839, and went to Oxford, where he was +elected to a fellowship at Brasenose. He spent the whole of the rest of +his life either at that college or in London, practising no profession, +competing for no preferment, and for many years at least producing +literature itself with extreme sparingness. It was in 1873 that Mr. +Pater first collected a volume of <i>Studies in the History of +Renaissance</i>, which attracted the keenest attention both as to its +manner and as to its matter. The point of view, which was that of an +exceedingly refined and carefully guarded Hedonism, was in a way and at +least in its formulation novel. Mr. Pater did not meddle with any +question of religion; he did not (though there were some who scented +immorality in his attitude) offend directly any ethical prejudice or +principle. But he laid it down explicitly in some places, implicitly +throughout, that the object of life should be to extract to the utmost +the pleasure of living in the more refined way, and expressly and +especially the pleasure to be derived from education and art. The +indebtedness of this both to the Arnoldian and Ruskinian creeds, its +advance (in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> main a legitimate advance) on the former, and its +heretical deviation from the development of the latter, require no +comment. But this propaganda, if so violent a word may be used, of Mr. +Pater's placid creed, called to aid a most remarkable style—a style of +the new kind, lavish of adjective and the <i>mot de lumière</i>, but not +exceedingly florid, and aiming especially at such an arrangement of the +clause, the sentence, and the paragraph, such a concerted harmony of +cadence and symphony, as had not been deliberately tried before in +prose. The effects which it produced on different tastes were themselves +sufficiently different. Some found the purport too distasteful to give a +dispassionate attention to the presentment; others disliked the manner +itself as formal, effeminate, and "precious." But there were others who, +while recognising the danger of excess in this direction, thought and +think that a distinct and remarkable experiment had been made in English +prose, and that the best examples of it deserved a place with the best +examples of the ornater styles at any previous time and in any other +kind.</p> + +<p>Mr. Pater was not tempted by such popularity as his book received to +hasten publication; indeed it was understood that after beginning to +print a second collection of Essays, he became dissatisfied with them, +and caused the type to be broken up. But the advance of so-called +Æstheticism was too strong an invitation, and prepared for him too large +and eager an audience, so that the last decade of his life saw several +books, <i>Marius the Epicurean</i>, <i>Imaginary Portraits</i>, <i>Appreciations</i>, +while others appeared posthumously. Of these the first-named is +unquestionably the best and most important. Although Greek had been the +indispensable—almost the cardinal—principle in Mr. Pater's own +literary development, he had been so strongly affected by modern thought +and taste, that he could hardly recover a dispassionate view of the +older classics. <i>Imaginary Portraits</i>, an attempt at constructive rather +than critical art, required qualities which he did not possess, and even +made him temporarily forget his impeccable style: <i>Appreciations</i>, good +in itself, was inferior to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> the first book. But <i>Marius the Epicurean</i> +far excelled all these. It, too, took the form of fiction, but the story +went for so little in it that deficiencies therein were not felt. The +book was in effect a reconstruction, partly imaginative, but still more +critical, of a period with which Mr. Pater was probably more in sympathy +than with any other, even the Renaissance itself, to wit the extremely +interesting and strangely modern period when classicism and modernity, +Christianity and Paganism, touched and blended in the second century +after Christ after the fashion revealed to us in the works of Apuleius +most of all, of Lucian to some extent, and of a few others. Mr. Pater +indeed actually introduced the philosopher-novelist of Madaura in the +book, though he was not the hero; and his own peculiar style proved +itself admirably suited to the period and subject, whether in +description and conversation, or in such translation or paraphrase as +that of the famous and exquisite <i>Pervigilium Veneris</i>.</p> + +<p>For this style, however, in perfection we must still go back to the +<i>Studies of the Renaissance</i>, which is what Mr. Arnold liked to call a +<i>point de repère</i>. The style, less exuberant, less far-reaching and +versatile, and, if any one pleases to say so, less healthy than Mr. +Ruskin's, is much more chastened, finished, and exquisite. It never at +its best neglects the difference between the rhythm of prose and the +metre of verse; if it is sometimes, and indeed usually, wanting in +simplicity, it is never overloaded or gaudy. The words are picked; but +they are seldom or never, as has been the case with others, not only +picked but wrenched, not only adjusted to a somewhat unusual society and +use, but deliberately forced into uses and societies wholly different +from those to which readers are accustomed. Above all, no one, it must +be repeated, has ever surpassed, and scarcely any one has ever equalled +Mr. Pater in deliberate and successful architecture of the +prose-paragraph—in what may, for the sake of a necessary difference, be +called the scriptorial in opposition to the oratorical manner. He may +fall short of the poetic grandeur of Sir Thomas Browne, of the +phantasmagoric charm of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> De Quincey at his rare best, of the gorgeous +panoramas of Mr. Ruskin. But his happiest paragraphs are like +<i>flamboyant</i> chantries, not imposing, not quite supreme in quality, but +in their own kind showing wonderful perfection of craftsmanship.</p> + +<p>Of the same school, though a less exact and careful practitioner in it, +was John Addington Symonds, who was born in Bristol on the 5th of +October 1840, and died at Rome on 19th April 1893. He was the son of a +famous doctor whose name figures often in literary history, inasmuch as +he made Clifton a frequent resort for persons of consumptive tendencies. +Mr. Symonds himself lived there for a great part of his life. +Unfortunately the disease which his father had combated revenged itself +upon him; and it was only by spending the greater part of his later +years at Davos that he staved it off as long as he did. Educated at +Harrow and at Balliol, a Fellow of Magdalen, and succeeding tolerably +young to an affluent fortune, Mr. Symonds was able to indulge his +tastes, literary and other, pretty much as he chose. The result was +fortunate in one way, unfortunate in another. He could hardly have made +a living by literature, in which though an eager worker he was a +thorough dilettante. But if he had been at less liberty to write what +and howsoever he pleased, he might or rather would have been obliged to +compress and chasten the extreme prolixity and efflorescence of his +style.</p> + +<p>His largest work, the <i>History of the Renaissance in Italy</i>, is actually +one of great value in information, thought, and style; but its extreme +redundance cannot be denied, and has indeed already necessitated a sort +of boiling down into an abstract. Both in prose essays (which he wrote +in great numbers, chiefly on Greek or Renaissance subjects) and in verse +(where he was not so successful as in prose) Mr. Symonds was one of the +most characteristic and copious members of the rather foolishly named +"æsthetic" school of the last third of the century, the school which, +originally deriving more or less from Mr. Ruskin, more and more rejected +the ethical side of his teaching. But Mr. Symonds, who had been very +much under the influence of Professor Jowett, had philosophical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> +velleities, which have become more generally known than they once were +through the interesting biography published after his death by Mr. +Horatio Brown. But for the redundance above mentioned, which is all +pervading with him both in thought and style, and which once suggested +to a not unfriendly critic the remark that he should like "to squeeze +him like a sponge," Symonds would probably or rather certainly occupy a +much higher place than he has held or ever will hold. For his +appreciation both of books and of nature was intense, and his faculty of +description abundant. But the <i>ventosa et enormis loquacitas</i> of his +style was everywhere, so that even selection would be hard put to it to +present him really at his best.</p> + +<p>William Minto, who was born in 1846 and died in 1893, Professor of Logic +and English Literature at Aberdeen, showed fewer marks of the joint +direction of "æsthetic" criticism to art and letters than these two, and +had less distinct and original literary talent. He had his education +mainly at Aberdeen itself, where he was born and died; but he made a +short visit to Oxford. Subsequently taking to journalism, he became +editor of the <i>Examiner</i>, and considerably raised the standard of +literary criticism in that periodical, while after quitting it he wrote +for some time on the <i>Daily News</i>. His appointment to the professorship +enabled him to devote himself entirely to literature, and he produced +some novels, the best of which was <i>The Crack of Doom</i>. He had much +earlier executed two extremely creditable books, one on <i>English Prose</i>, +and one on part of the History of English verse, the only drawbacks to +which were a rather pedagogic and stiff arrangement; he was a frequent +contributor to the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, and after his death some +of his professorial Lectures on the Georgian era were published, but +without his final revision. The strongest side of Minto's criticism lay +in his combination of sufficiently sound and wide knowledge of the past +with a distinct and rather unusual sympathy with the latest schools of +literature as they rose. He was untainted by the florid style of his +day, but wrote solidly and well. If it were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> necessary to look for +defects in his work they would probably be found in a slight deficiency +of comparative estimate, and in a tendency to look at things rather from +the point of view of modern than from that of universal criticism. But +this tendency was not in him, as it so often is, associated with +ignorance or presumptuous judgment.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE</h3> + + +<p>The remarks which were made at the beginning of the chapter on +Philosophy and Theology apply with increasing force to the present +chapter; indeed, they need to be restated in a much more stringent and +exclusive form. To give some history of English philosophy and theology +in the nineteenth century, by noticing its literary expression, was +possible, though it had to be done, so to speak, in shorthand. To do the +same thing with science, or even with what is technically called +scholarship, would be simply impossible. Much of their expression is +hardly susceptible of literary form at all, hardly any ever receives +such form, while the subdivision of the branches of physical science is +now so great and their shadow so wide that no systematic sketch of them +is to be thought of. It is only possible to mention a few distinguished +writers, writers who would have been distinguished whatever their +subject, but who happen to have devoted themselves, solely or mainly, to +scientific writing, or to classical criticism and philology.</p> + +<p>A curious independent study might be made of the literary gradations of +classical scholarship. In the Middle Ages, though the complete ignorance +of the classics, once imagined as prevailing, has been shown to be a +figment, scarcely anybody could claim to be a scholar. During the +Renaissance almost every man of letters had necessarily some tinge of +scholarship, and some of the greatest in its earlier period, such as +Erasmus, were scholars<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> first of all. The growth of vernacular +literature, the constant increase and subdivision of subjects, and the +advance in minute study of the Greek and Latin languages, brought about +an inevitable cleavage, and from the seventeenth century onwards +scholarship became an independent profession or vocation. For some +considerable time, however, it was the almost indispensable novitiate of +a literary career, and the tradition that a scholar must be first +applied to, for no matter what literary work, was still potent in the +times of Salmasius, and cannot be said to have been discredited in those +of Bentley, who would undoubtedly have been as formidable in purely +political or general controversy as he was on <i>Phalaris</i> or on his own +private interests. The eighteenth century, however, saw the divorce +nearly completed, and by the period of our present volume it was an +accomplished fact.</p> + +<p>Even then, however, though for men of letters it was not customary to +turn first to scholars, scholars had not ceased to be men of letters, +and philology (or the mere study of language, as apart from literature) +had not absorbed them.</p> + +<p>During that part of our period which is still concerned with the last +century, there were many excellent scholars in England, but perhaps only +three—two of whom as scholars were of no great account—who make much +figure in purely literary history. Jacob Bryant (1715-1804), an odd +person of uncritical judgment but great learning, who belongs more to +the last volume than to the present, devoted himself chiefly to +mythology, a subject which had not yet attracted general interest, and +which was treated by him and others in a somewhat unhistorical manner. +Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801) was one of the characteristic figures of +the Revolutionary time. He was a Cambridge man, and took orders, but +left the church, became a violent Jacobin, and went to prison for a +seditious libel. He was one of those not very uncommon men who, +personally amiable, become merely vixenish when they write: and his +erudition was much more extensive than sound. But he edited several +classical authors, not wholly without intelligence and scholarship, and +his <i>Silva Critica</i>, a sort of <i>variorum</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> commentary from profane +literature on the Bible, was the forerunner, at least in scheme, of a +great deal of work which has been seen since.</p> + +<p>A very different person from these in scholarly attainments, in natural +gifts, and (it must unfortunately be added) in personal respectability, +was Richard Porson, who is generally bracketed with Bentley as the +greatest of English scholars, not of our own day, and who might have +been one of the most brilliant of men of letters. He was born in Norfolk +on Christmas Day 1759, of low station, but was well educated by the +parson of the parish, and sent to Eton by a neighbouring squire. In 1779 +he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, obtained a scholarship, did +brilliantly in University contests and became fellow in 1782. Although +he was almost a boy the genius of his papers in scholarship attracted +notice at home and abroad, and he made some excursions into general +literature wherein, as in his recorded conversations, he showed +epigrammatic wit of the first rank. He lost his fellowship because he +would not take orders; but was made Regius Professor of Greek, an +appointment which unluckily was then, in both Universities, almost +honorary as regards income. The Whig party accepted his partisanship, +but had no opportunity of rewarding it, and after receiving the +Librarianship of the London Institution in Moorfields, he died of +apoplexy in 1808. He possessed in almost the highest degree that power +of divination, based on accurate knowledge, which distinguishes the +scholar, and it is, as has been said, nearly certain that he would have +been a brilliant writer in English on any subject he chose to take up. +But he was a hopeless drunkard, an offensive sloven, rude and aggressive +in society—in short a survival of the Grub Street pattern of the +century of his birth. This period, which was that of Burney, Elmsley, +Gaisford, and other scholars, robust but not very literary (except in +the case of Elmsley, who was a contributor both to the <i>Edinburgh</i> and +the <i>Quarterly Reviews</i>), was succeeded by one in which the English +Universities did not greatly distinguish themselves in this department. +Gaisford indeed lived till 1855 at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> Oxford, and Cambridge produced among +other respectable scholars the already mentioned Malden and George Long +(1800-79), a Lancashire man, who went to Trinity, distinguished himself +greatly, but found such preferment as he met with outside his +university, in America, at University College, London, and elsewhere. +Long was a great diffusion-of-useful-knowledge man, and edited the +<i>Penny Cyclopædia</i>: but he did more germane work later in editing the +<i>Bibliotheca Classica</i>, an unequal but at its best excellent series of +classics, and in dealing with the great stoics Marcus Aurelius and +Epictetus. He was also one of the mainstays of the most important +enterprise of the middle of the century in classical scholarship, the +<i>Classical Dictionaries</i> edited by the late Sir William Smith and +published by Mr. Murray; and he wrote an extensive but not +extraordinarily valuable <i>Decline of the Roman Republic</i>. Long appears +to have been one of those men who, with great ability, vast knowledge, +and untiring industry, somehow or other miss their proper place, whether +by fault or fate it is hard to say.</p> + +<p>About 1860 three remarkable persons illustrated scholarship in the +Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh respectively, with a +combination of literary and linguistic knowledge which had been growing +rarer up to their time, and which has grown rarer still since.</p> + +<p>The Oxford representative was John Conington, who was born at Boston on +10th August 1825. He went to Rugby and to Magdalen College, Oxford, +whence he migrated to University College, and there obtained a +fellowship, making nearly a clean sweep of the chief University prizes +meanwhile. He became in 1854 the first Professor of Latin, and held the +post till his death in 1869. He edited Virgil, Æschylus (part) and +Persius, translated Horace, Homer, and Virgil, and did a certain amount +of miscellaneous literary work. He was neither a very exact nor a very +great scholar: his scholarship indeed took rather the character of that +of foreign nations, other than Germany, than the dogged minuteness of +German, or the large but solid strength of English study<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> of the +classics. But he was an exceedingly stimulating professor; and coming at +the time when it did, his work was valuable as a reminder that the +classics are live literature, and not so much dead material for science.</p> + +<p>Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro, a native of Elgin, where he was born in +1819, a Shrewsbury boy and a scholar and fellow of Trinity College, +Cambridge, who became Professor of Latin there in 1869 and died in 1882, +was an incomparably greater verbal scholar than Conington, and may +fairly be said to have taken up the torch of Bentley and Porson. His +great edition (with a less great translation) of Lucretius, his work on +Horace and Catullus, and his scattered papers, all come up to a very +high standard; and in the delightful art of Greek and Latin composition +in verse, where England has long stood paramount, and which, since she +has abandoned it, remains uncultivated throughout Europe, he was almost +supreme. But Munro, though he never surrendered wholly to the +philological heresy, was affected thereby; and some of his Lucretian +readings were charged with a deficiency in ear such as that with which +he justly reproached his German predecessors.</p> + +<p>The most strictly literary of the three has yet to be mentioned. William +Young Sellar, born near Golspie in the same year as Conington, was +educated at the Edinburgh Academy, at the University of Glasgow, and (as +a Snell exhibitioner) at Balliol. After holding an Oriel fellowship for +some years, and doing professorial or assistant-professorial work at +Durham and St. Andrews, he became in 1863 Professor of Humanity at +Edinburgh, and remained so till his death in 1890. In the year of his +election to the professorship appeared his <i>Roman Poets of the +Republic</i>, quite the best book of its kind existing in English; and this +was followed up by others on Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and +Propertius—good, but less good, the mannered correctness of the +Augustans evidently appealing to the author less than the more strictly +poetic excellence of Lucretius and Catullus. Attempts, too few but +noteworthy, have since been made to handle classical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> literature in the +style of the <i>Roman Poets of the Republic</i>, but it has never been +surpassed, and it has very seldom been equalled.</p> + +<p>On another scheme and in other circumstances names like those of Kennedy +and Shilleto, of Linwood and Burges, of Monk and Blomfield, would cry +for admission here, but as it is they must be ruled out. And it is not +possible to widen the scope much, so as to take in some eminent students +who have given not unliterary expression to the study of languages and +subjects other than the classical. It has indeed been a constantly +increasing feature of the century that fresh studies—Ægyptology, the +study of the Semitic languages, the study of the older forms not merely +of English but of the other modern tongues, the enormous range of +knowledge opened to Englishmen, and as it were forced on them by our +possession of India and our commerce and connection with other nations +of the East, as well as the newer subjects of comparative mythology, +folk-lore, and the like, all more or less offshoots of what may be +generally termed scholarship, have been added to the outer range of the +Humanities. Some of these appeal to very few, none of them to more than +few persons; and literature, in its best description if not exactly +definition, is that which does or should appeal to all persons of +liberal education and sympathies. Yet one exponent of these studies (and +of more than one of them) must have a place here, as well for the more +than professionally encyclopædic character of his knowledge as for his +intellectual vigour and his services to letters.</p> + +<p>William Robertson Smith was born in 1846, and died in 1894. A native of +Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Kirk minister, and educated at Aberdeen +and elsewhere, he became Professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College +of that city, and for some years discussed his subject, in the manner of +the Germans, without hindrance. His articles in the <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i>, however, gave offence, and after much controversy he was +deprived of his chair in 1881. Two years later, however, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> was made +Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, where he also became +Fellow of Christ's and University Librarian. And from a contributor he +proceeded to be first assistant-editor and then editor in chief of the +<i>Encyclopædia</i>. His health, never very strong, became worse and worse, +and he finally succumbed to a complication of diseases. It was +understood that the theological scandal connected with his name was +anything but a pleasure to him, and the justice of it does not concern +us; but his repute as an Orientalist is uncontested. Besides works +directly bearing on the Bible, he wrote two important books on <i>Kinship +and Marriage in Early Arabia</i> and on <i>The Religion of the Semites</i>. He +was at least as remarkable for general as for special learning, and if +not actually a great man of letters, had a knowledge of literature +rivalled by few of his contemporaries.</p> + +<p>To turn to physical science, Sir Humphry Davy, a great chemist and no +mean writer, was born at Penzance in December 1778. His father was a +wood-carver, but he himself was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary, and +betook himself seriously to chemistry. Fortunately for him, Dr. Beddoes, +the father of the poet, a physician of great repute at Clifton, took him +to be his assistant there, and Davy, in his twentieth year, not only had +much improved opportunities of study, but made valuable friends, both +among the persons of rank who then frequented Clifton for health, and +among the literary society of which Coleridge and Southey were then the +ornaments in Bristol. This part of his sojourn was noteworthy for his +experiments with nitrous oxide ("laughing gas"). These attracted a great +deal of attention, and in 1801, being then barely twenty-three, he was +appointed to a lectureship in the Royal Institution, London. His +appointment was the beginning of a series of brilliant lectures in the +same place during almost the whole of the century, first by Davy +himself, then by his assistant Faraday, and then by Faraday's assistant +Tyndall. He was knighted in 1812, and soon afterwards married Mrs. +Apreece, a lively, pretty, and wealthy widow. His later years were +occupied, first by the investigations which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> led to the perfecting of +his famous safety-lamp for coal-mines (these brought him a handsome +testimonial and a baronetcy), and later by electrical researches. He had +not reached middle age when his health began to fail, and he died in +1829, aged little more than fifty. In connection with literary science +or scientific literature Davy was perhaps more remarkable as a lecturer +than as a writer, but his accomplishments as the latter were +considerable, and in his later years he wrote two non-scientific books, +<i>Salmonia</i> and <i>Consolations in Travel</i>. These (though the former was +attacked as the work of an amateur and a milksop by Christopher North) +were very popular in their day. Davy always kept up his friendship with +men of letters, especially the Lake Poets and Scott (who was a +connection of his wife's), and he was no very small man of letters +himself.</p> + +<p>A contemporary (though very much longer lived) of Davy's and the most +famous Englishwoman who has ever written on scientific subjects, was +Mary Fairfax, better known from the name of her second husband as Mrs. +Somerville. She was born at Jedburgh on 26th December 1780, and when +twenty-four married her cousin, Captain Greig, a member of a family of +Scotchmen who had settled in the Russian navy. Her first husband died +two years afterwards, and six years later she married Dr. William +Somerville, also her cousin. She had already devoted much attention, +especially during her widowhood, to mathematics and astronomy; and after +her second marriage she had no difficulty in pursuing these studies. She +adapted Laplace's <i>Mécanique Céleste</i> in 1823, and followed it up by +more original work on physics, astronomy, and physical geography. Her +life was prolonged till 1872, and an interesting autobiography appeared +a year later. It is possible that Mrs. Somerville profited somewhat in +reputation by her coincidence with the period of "diffusion of useful +knowledge." But she had real scientific knowledge and real literary +gifts; and she made good use of both.</p> + +<p>Of at least respectable literary merit, though hardly of enough to +justify the devoting of much space to them here, were Sir David<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> +Brewster (1781-1868), Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), Sir Charles Lyell +(1797-1875), Sir Roderick Murchison (1792-1871), the first a +mathematician and physicist, the second an astronomer, the third and +fourth geologists, and all more or less copious writers on their several +subjects. John Tyndall (1820-1893), a younger man than any of these, had +perhaps a more distinctly literary talent. Born in Ireland, and for some +time a railway engineer, he gave himself up about 1847 to the study and +teaching of physics, was remarkable for the effect of his lecturing, and +held several Government appointments. His Presidential Address to the +British Association at Belfast in 1874 was not less noteworthy for +materialism in substance than for a brilliant if somewhat brassy style.</p> + +<p>But the chief Englishmen of science who were men of letters during our +period were Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley. The opinions of the first +of these, their origin, the circumstances of their first expression, and +the probabilities of their future, have been the subject of about as +much controversy as in a given time has been bestowed upon any subject, +certainly on any similar subject. But we enjoy here the privilege of +neglecting this almost entirely. Darwin is to the literary historian a +very interesting subject, for he was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, who +himself, besides being the capital example of the polished mediocrity of +eighteenth century verse when all freshness had gone out of it, was a +man of science and an evolutionist in his way. Charles (who was also +christened Robert) was the son of yet another Dr. Darwin, an F.R.S. He +was born on 12th February 1809 at Shrewsbury, and his mother was (as was +afterwards his wife) a daughter of the Wedgwoods of Etruria. After +passing through the famous school of his native town, Darwin went to +Edinburgh for some years and then entered Christ's College, Cambridge, +in 1828. Here he devoted himself to physical science, and after taking +his degree was, in 1831, appointed to the <i>Beagle</i>, which was starting +on a scientific cruise. He spent five years in the South Seas and did +not return to England till late in 1836—a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> voyage which perhaps +prejudicially affected his health, but established his knowledge of +nature. After his return he settled down to scientific work, alone and +in the scientific societies, married in 1839, and was busy for many +years afterwards in publishing the results of the voyage. He possessed +considerable means, and for the last forty years of his life lived at +his ease at Down near Beckenham, experimenting in crossing species and +maturing his views. These took form, under circumstances interesting but +foreign to our theme, in the famous <i>Origin of Species</i>, published in +1859, and this was followed by a great number of other books, the most +noteworthy of which, if not the scientifically soundest, was <i>The +Descent of Man</i> (1871). Darwin died after many years of continuous +ill-health on 19th April 1882.</p> + +<p>Late in life he is said to have confessed that his relish for +Shakespeare and for pure literature generally, which had in earlier days +been keen, had entirely vanished. But there was perhaps nothing very +surprising in this, seeing that he had for half a century given himself +up with extraordinary and ever-increasing thoroughness to a class of +investigations the most remote possible from literature, and yet not, as +pure mathematical study not seldom induces its votaries, inducing men to +cultivate letters by mere contrast. Yet the ancestral literary tendency +had only fallen dormant in him then; and earlier it had been active. It +can indeed hardly be said that either his contribution to the <i>Voyage of +the Beagle</i>, or <i>The Origin of Species</i>, or <i>The Descent of Man</i>, or any +of the others, is absolutely remarkable for style in the ordinary sense +of that phrase. The style of Darwin attempts no ornateness, and on the +other hand it is not of those extremely simple styles which are +independent of ornament and to which ornament would be simply a +defacement. But it is very clear; it is not in the least slovenly; and +there is about it the indefinable sense that the writer might have been +a much greater writer, simply as such, than he is, if he had cared to +take the trouble, and had not been almost solely intent upon his matter. +Such writers are not so common that they should be neglected, and they +may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> at least stand in the Court of the Gentiles, the "provincial band" +of literature.</p> + +<p>A very remarkable book which was in a way Darwinism before Darwin, which +attracted much attention and violent opposition in 1844, the year of its +publication, and which for a long time remained unowned, was the +<i>Vestiges of Creation</i>, subsequently known to be the work of Robert +Chambers, the younger of two brothers who did great things in the +popular publishing trade at Edinburgh, and who founded a house which has +always been foremost in the diffusion of sound and cheap literature, +information, and amusement. Robert was born at Peebles in 1802 and died +at St. Andrews in 1871, having been, besides his publishing labours, a +voluminous author and compiler. Nothing he did was quite equal to the +<i>Vestiges</i>, a book rather literary than scientific, and treating the +still crude evolution theory rather from the point of view of popular +philosophy than from that of strict biological investigation; but +curiously stimulating and enthusiastic, with a touch of poetry in it not +often to be found in such books, and attractive as showing the way in +which doctrines which are about to take a strong hold of the general +mind not infrequently communicate themselves, in an unfinished but +inspiring form, to persons who, except general literary culture and +interest, do not seem to offer any specially favourable soil for their +germination. Purely scientific men have usually rather pooh-poohed the +<i>Vestiges</i>, but there is the Platonic quality in it.</p> + +<p>The <i>Vestiges</i>, like its more famous successor, was violently attacked +as irreligious. One of its opponents, from a point of view half orthodox +and half scientific, was Hugh Miller, a man of sterling excellence, of +an interesting and in its close melancholy career, of real importance as +a geologist, and possessed of an extremely agreeable literary faculty. +Miller was born at Cromarty in 1802, and though more than fairly +educated, held till he was past thirty no higher position than that of a +stone-mason. He had begun to write, however, earlier than this, and, +engaging in particular in the two rather dissimilar subjects of geology +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> "Free Kirk" polemic, he was made editor of the <i>Witness</i>, a +newspaper started in the interest of the new principles. After nearly +twenty busy years of journalism and authorship he shot himself in +December 1856, as it is supposed in a fit of insanity brought on by +overwork. Miller was a very careful observer, and his <i>Old Red +Sandstone</i> (1841) made a great addition to the knowledge of fossils. He +followed this up by a great number of other works, some merely +polemical, others descriptive of his own life and travels. In all the +better parts of Hugh Miller's writings there is a remarkable style, +extremely popular and unpretentious but never trivial or slipshod, which +is not far below the best styles of the century for its special purpose, +though in some respects it smacks more of the eighteenth, and has a +certain relation with that of White of Selborne.</p> + +<p>The most considerable literary gifts of the century among men of science +probably belonged to a man more than twenty years younger than Miller, +and more than fifteen younger than Darwin, who died so recently that +until the greater part of this book was written it seemed that he would +have no place in it. Thomas Henry Huxley, born in May 1825, at Ealing, +studied medicine, and becoming a navy doctor, executed like Darwin a +voyage to the South Seas. His scientific work, though early +distinguished, met with no great encouragement from the Admiralty, and +he left the service, though he held many public appointments in later +life. He became F.R.S. at six-and-twenty, and from that time onwards +till his sixtieth year he was a busy professor, lecturer, member of +commissions, and (for a time) inspector of fisheries. In the ever +greater and greater specialising of science which has taken place, +Huxley was chiefly a morphologist. But outside the range of special +studies he was chiefly known as a vigorous champion of Darwinism and a +something more than vigorous aggressor in the cause of Agnosticism (a +word which he himself did much to spread), attacking supernaturalism of +every kind, and (though disclaiming materialism and not choosing to call +himself an atheist) unceasingly demanding that all things should submit +themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> to naturalist criticism. A great number of brilliant essays +and lectures were composed by him on different parts of what may be +called the debateable land between science, philosophy, and theology. +And one of his most characteristic and masterly single studies was a +little book on Hume, contributed to the series of "English Men of +Letters" in 1879.</p> + +<p>This varied, copious, and brilliant polemic may or may not have been +open in substance to the charge which the bolder and more thoroughgoing +defenders of orthodoxy brought against it, that it committed the logical +error of demanding submission on the part of supernaturalism to laws and +limits to which, by its very essence, supernaturalism disclaimed +allegiance. But the form of it was excellent. Mr. Huxley had read much, +and had borrowed weapons and armour from more than one Schoolman and +Father as well as from purely profane authors. He had an admirable +style, free alike from the great faults of his contemporaries, +"preciousness" and slipshodness, and a knack of crisp but not too +mannered phrase recalling that of Swift or, still more, of Bentley. It +has been said, with some truth as well as with some paradox, that a +literary critic of the very first class was lost in him, at the salvage +only of some scientific monographs, which like all their kind will be +antiquated some day, and of some polemics which must suffer equally from +the touch of time.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>DRAMA</h3> + + +<p>At no period, probably, in the history of English literature, from the +sixteenth century until that with which we are now dealing, would it +have been possible to compress the history of the drama during a hundred +years into the space which it is here proposed to give it. If we were +dealing with the works of living men the historian might be justly +charged with arrogant incompetence in not taking more notice of them. +But, fortunately, that is not the case; and the brevity of the treatment +is equally compatible with a belief that the plays of the present day +are masterpieces, and with a suspicion that they are not. As to the past +we have, with the exception of a few protesters, general consent that +the English drama of the nineteenth century has displayed one curious +and disastrous characteristic. The plays, as a rule, which have been +good literature have either never been acted or have seldom succeeded as +plays; the plays that have been acted and have been successful have +seldom been good literature.</p> + +<p>The best idea of the state of the drama between 1790 and 1810 may +perhaps be obtained by any one who cares to look through—it would +require a monomania, a desert island, or at least a succession of wet +days in a country inn to enable any one to <i>read</i> through—the ten +volumes of Mrs. Inchbald's <i>Modern British Theatre</i>, printed in 1811 +"from the prompt-books of the Theatres Royal." This publication, +supplementing the larger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> <i>British Theatre</i> of the same editor, contains +more than two volumes of the works of Frederick Reynolds, a prolific +playwright who was responsible for the English version of <i>Werther</i> in +drama; another of Mrs. Inchbald's own writing and adaptation; one of +Holcroft's later works; one of Cumberland's; and the other five made up +of lesser pieces by Colman the younger, Dibdin, and others, serious +plays in blank verse such as Hannah More's <i>Percy</i>, and the Honourable +John St. John's <i>Mary Queen of Scots</i>, etc. More than one of these was a +person of talent, more than one a person even of very great talent; +while Holcroft and Colman, if not others, had displayed special ability +for drama. Yet there is, perhaps, in the fifty plays of the ten volumes +only one that can be called a good play, only one which is readable, and +that is the <i>Trip to Scarborough</i>, which Sheridan simply adapted, which +he did little more than edit, from Vanbrugh's <i>Relapse</i>. Outside these +volumes the acting drama of the period may be best studied in the other +and better work of the pair just mentioned, and in O'Keefe.</p> + +<p>John O'Keefe, or O'Keeffe (for the name is spelt both ways), was a very +long-lived man, who was born at Dublin in 1748 and died at Southampton +in 1833. But in the later years of his life he suffered from blindness; +and the period of his greatest dramatic activity almost exactly +coincided with that of our first chapter. He is said to have written +some fifty pieces, of various kinds, between 1781 and 1798; and in the +latter year he published a collection of about thirty, referring in the +preface to others which "an inconsiderate disposal of the copyright" +prevented him from including. O'Keefe was to a certain extent a follower +of Foote; but his pieces—though he was a practised actor—depended less +upon his own powers of exposition than Foote's. They range from rather +farcical comedies to pure farces and comediettas much interspersed with +songs for music; and their strictly literary merit is not often great, +while for sheer extravagance they require the utmost license of the +boards to excuse them. There is, however, something much more taking in +them than in most of the dramatic work of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> the time. For instance, the +"wild farce" (referred to but not named by Lamb in his paper on Munden) +of <i>The Merry Mourners</i>, though as "improbable" as Mrs. Barbauld thought +<i>The Ancient Mariner</i> to be, has a singular hustle and bustle of +sustained interest, and not a few shrewd strokes such as the following, +which perhaps does not only apply to the end of the <i>eighteenth</i> +century. "Your London ladies are so mannified with their switch rattans +and coats, and watch-chain nibbities, and their tip-top hats and their +cauliflower cravats, that, ecod! there's no mark of their being women +except the petticoat." <i>The Castle of Andalusia</i> (1782) is an early and +capital example of the bandit drama, and <i>The Poor Soldier</i> of the Irish +comic opera. <i>Wild Oats</i> supplied favourite parts to the actors of the +time in Rover and Ephraim Smooth; and, with a little good will, one may +read even slight things like <i>A Beggar on Horseback</i> and <i>The Doldrum</i> +with some amusement. But O'Keefe has few gifts beyond knowledge of the +stage, Irish shrewdness, Irish rattle, and an honest, straightforward +simplicity; and that one turns to him from other dramatists of the +period with some relief, is even more to their discredit than to his +credit.</p> + +<p>A curious and early fruit of this gradual divorce between drama and +literature was Joanna Baillie, a lady whose virtues, amiability, and in +a way talents, caused her to be spoken of by her own contemporaries with +an admiration which posterity has found it hard to echo as concerns her +strictly literary position in drama—some of her shorter poems were +good. She was born in 1762 at Bothwell, of a good Scotch family, and her +mother was a sister of the great surgeon Hunter. This gift descended to +her elder brother Matthew, who was very famous in his own day as an +anatomist and physician. Partly to be near him, Joanna and her sister +Agnes established themselves at Hampstead, where she often entertained +Scott and other great people, and where she lived till 23rd February +1851. In 1798 she published the first of a series of <i>Plays on the +Passions</i>, in which the eighteenth century theory of the ruling passion +was carried out to the uncompromising and even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> whimsical extent of +supplying a brace of dramas, a tragedy and a comedy, on each of the +stronger passions, Hatred, Fear, Love, etc. The first volume, which +opened with the rather striking closet drama of <i>Basil</i>, sometimes +spoken of as <i>Count Basil</i>, was prefaced by an introductory discourse of +considerable ability. The book, coming at a dead season of literature, +was well received. It reached its third edition in the second year from +its appearance, and one of its plays, <i>De Montfort</i>, was acted, with +Kemble in the title part, not without success. A second volume followed +in 1802, and a third in 1812. In 1804 one of <i>Miscellaneous Plays</i> had +been issued, while others and some poems were added later. Joanna's +plays in general, it was admitted, would not act (though the Ettrick +Shepherd in the <i>Noctes Ambrosianæ</i> denies this), and it requires some +effort to read them. The blank verse of the tragedies, though +respectable, is uninspired; the local and historical colour, whether of +Byzantine, Saxon, or Renaissance times, is of that fatal "property" +character which has been noticed in the novel before Scott; and the +passion-scheme is obviously inartistic. The comedies are sometimes +genuinely funny; but they do not display either the direct and fresh +observation of manners, or the genial creation of character, which alone +can make comedy last. In short Miss Baillie was fortunate in the moment +of her appearance, but she cannot be called either a great dramatist or +a good one.</p> + +<p>The school of Artificial Tragedy—the phrase, though not a consecrated +one, is as legitimate as that of artificial comedy—which sprung up soon +after the beginning of this century, and which continued during its +first half or thereabouts, if not later, is a curious phenomenon in +English history, and has hardly yet received the attention it deserves. +The tragedy of the eighteenth century is almost beneath contempt, being +for the most part pale French echo or else transpontine melodrama, with +a few plaster-cast attempts to reproduce an entirely misunderstood +Shakespeare. It was impossible that the Romantic movement in itself, and +the study of the Elizabethan drama which it induced, should not lead to +the practise of tragedy, while the existence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> the Kembles as players +and managers, might be thought to promise well for the tragic stage.</p> + +<p>Yet there has always been something out of joint with English nineteenth +century tragedy. Of Lamb's <i>John Woodvil</i> and Godwin's <i>Antonio</i> mention +has been made. Byron's tragedies are indeed by no means the worst part +of his work; but they also shared the defects of that work as poetry, +and they were not eminently distinguished for acting qualities. Scott +had no dramatic faculty; Shelley's <i>Cenci</i>, despite its splendid poetry, +is not actable; indeed the only one of the great English nineteenth +century <i>Pléiade</i> who was successful on the stage was Coleridge; and +<i>Remorse</i> and <i>Zapolya</i> are not masterpieces.</p> + +<p>Yet the fascination of the theatre, or at least of the drama, seemed to +continue unaltered, and the attempts on or in it varied from the wild +fantasy pieces of Beddoes (which no stage but the Elizabethan—if even +that—could ever have welcomed) to the curious academic drama of which +types extend not merely from Milman's <i>Fazio</i> in 1815 to Talfourd's +<i>Ion</i> twenty years later, but further still. Of Milman notice has been +taken in his far truer vocation as historian. Talfourd was a good +lawyer, a worthy man, and as noted above, the friend and editor of Lamb. +But his tragedies are very cold, and it is difficult to believe that +<i>Ion</i> can have had any other attraction besides the popularity and skill +of Macready, who indeed was greatly responsible for the appearance both +of this and of better plays. In particular he stood usher to divers +productions of Browning's which have been mentioned, such as the rather +involved and impossible <i>Strafford</i>, and the intensely pathetic but not +wholly straightforward <i>Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i>. This last is the one +play of the century which—with a certain unsubstantiality of matter, a +defect almost total in character, and a constant provocation to the +fatal question, "Why are all these people behaving in this way?"—has +the actual tragic <i>vis</i> in its central point.</p> + +<p>The character, however, and the condemnation of the English drama of the +first half of this century from the literary point of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> view, are summed +up in the single statement that its most prominent and successful +dramatist was James Sheridan Knowles. Born in 1784, and son of the great +Sheridan's cousin at Cork, Knowles was introduced to London literary +society pretty early. He tried soldiering (at least the militia) and +medicine; but his bent towards the stage was too strong, and he became +an actor, though never a very successful one, and a teacher of acting, +though never a manager. He was about thirty when he turned dramatist, +and though his plays justify the theatrical maxim that no one who has +not practical knowledge of the stage can write a good acting play, they +also justify the maxim of the study that in his day literary excellence +had in some mysterious way obtained or suffered a divorce from dramatic +merit. Not that these plays are exactly contemptible as literature, but +that as literature they are not in the least remarkable. The most famous +of his tragedies is <i>Virginius</i>, which dates, as performed in London at +least, from 1820. It was preceded and followed by others, of which the +best are perhaps <i>Caius Gracchus</i> (1815), and <i>William Tell</i> (1834). His +comedies have worn better, and <i>The Hunchback</i> (1832), and the <i>Love +Chase</i> (1836), are still interesting examples of last-century artificial +comedy slightly refreshed. Independently of his technical knowledge, +Knowles really had that knowledge of human nature without which drama is +impossible, and he could write very respectable English. But the fatal +thing about him is that he is content to dwell in decencies for ever. +There is no inspiration in him; his style, his verse, his theme, his +character, his treatment are all emphatically mediocre, and his +technique as a dramatist deserves only a little, though a little, warmer +praise.</p> + +<p>Better as literature, and at least as good as drama, are the best plays +of the first Lord Lytton, another of the eminent hands of Macready, who +undoubtedly counted for something in the success of <i>The Lady of Lyons</i>, +<i>Richelieu</i>, and <i>Money</i>, the two first produced in 1838, and the last +in 1840. <i>Richelieu</i> is the nearest to Knowles in competence without +excellence, the other two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> perhaps excel if not positively yet +relatively. Many spectators quite recently, while unable to check +laughter at the grandiloquent sentimentality and the stock situations of +<i>The Lady of Lyons</i>, have been unable to avoid being touched by its real +though ordinary pathos, and moved by its astonishing cleverness; while +<i>Money</i> is probably the very best comic example of the hybrid kind above +referred to, the modernised artificial comedy. But Bulwer's other plays, +though the unsuccessful <i>Duchesse de la Vallière</i> is not bad reading, +were less fortunate, and one of them is the subject of perhaps the most +successful of Thackeray's early reviews in the grotesque style, +preserved in the <i>Yellowplush Papers</i>.</p> + +<p>It will be observed that, with the single and not very notable exception +of Sheridan Knowles, almost all the names already mentioned are those of +persons to whom drama was a mere by-work. Another exception may be found +in James R. Planché (1796-1880), a man of no very exalted birth or +elaborate education, but an archæologist of some merit, and from 1854 +onwards an official representative of the honourable though discredited +science of Heraldry as Rouge Croix Pursuivant and Somerset Herald. From +1818 onward Planché was the author, adapter, translator, and what not, +of innumerable—they certainly run to hundreds—dramatic pieces of every +possible sort from regular plays to sheer extravaganzas. He was happiest +perhaps in the lighter and freer kinds, having a pleasant and never +vulgar style of jocularity, a fair lyrical gift, and the indefinable +knowledge of what is a play. But he stands only on the verge of +literature proper, and the propriety, indeed the necessity, of including +him here is the strongest possible evidence of the poverty of dramatic +literature in our period. It would indeed only be possible to extend +this chapter much by including men who have no real claim to appear, and +who would too forcibly suggest the hired guests of story, introduced in +order to avoid a too obtrusive confession of the absence of guests +entitled to be present.</p> + +<p>The greater and more strictly literary names of those who have tried the +stage in the intervals of happier studies, from Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> Mitford and R. H. +Horne to Tennyson, have been mentioned elsewhere; and there is no need +to return to them. Dr. James Westland Marston (1820-90) was once much +praised, and was an author of Macready's. Miss Isabella Harwood, +daughter of the second editor of the <i>Saturday Review</i>, produced under +the pseudonym of "Ross Neil" a series of closet-dramas of excellent +composition and really poetical fancy, but wanting the one thing +needful. Perhaps a few other writers might with pains be added; and of +course every reviewer knows that the flow of five-act tragedies, though +less abundant than of old, has continued. But, on the whole, the +sentence already put in more than one form remains true and firm—that +in this period the dramatic work of those who have been really men and +women of letters is generally far inferior to their other work, and +that, with the rarest exceptions, the dramatic work of those who have +not excelled in other kinds of literature is not literature at all.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>CONCLUSION</h3> + + +<p>A conclusion which avows that it might almost as well have presented +itself as a preface may seem to be self-condemned; it must be the +business of the following pages to justify it. In summing up on such a +great matter as this it is desirable—it is indeed necessary—to +indicate, in broader lines than at the mere outset would have seemed +appropriate or indeed possible, the general course of thought and of +speech, of literary matter and literary form, during the century and +more which is submitted to the view. We can thus place individuals in +their position to each other and to the whole more boldly and with less +reserve; we can sketch the general character of existing movements, the +movers in which have been exempt from individual consideration by virtue +of their life and work being incomplete; we can at once record +accomplishment and indicate tendency.</p> + +<p>The period dealt with in the first chapter of this book illustrates the +differences in appeal of such periods to the merely dilettante and +"tasting" critic, and to the student of literature in the historical and +comparative fashion. To the former it is one of the most ungrateful of +all such sub-periods or sub-divisions in English literature. He finds in +it none, or at most Boswell's <i>Johnson</i>, Burns, and the <i>Lyrical +Ballads</i> (this last at its extreme end), of the chief and principal +things on which alone he delights to fix his attention. Its better +poetry, such as that of Cowper and Crabbe, he regards at best with a +forced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> esteem; its worse is almost below his disgust. Its fiction is +preposterous and childish; it contributes nothing even to the less +"bellettristic" departments of literature that is worth his attention; +it is a tedious dead season about which there is nothing tolerable +except the prospect of getting rid of it before very long.</p> + +<p>To the latter—to the historical and comparative student—on the other +hand, it has an interest of an absolutely unique kind. As was observed +in a former volume of this history, the other great blossoming time of +English literature—that which we call Elizabethan, and by which we mean +the last five and twenty years of the Queen's reign and the fifty or +sixty after her death—was preceded by no certain signs except those of +restless seeking. Here, on the contrary, with no greater advantage of +looking back, we can see the old fruit dropping off and the new forming, +in a dozen different kinds and a hundred different ways. Extravagance on +one side always provokes extravagance on the other; and because the +impatient revolt of Coleridge and some others of the actual leaders into +the Promised Land chose to present the eighteenth century as a mere +wilderness in respect of poetry, enjoyment of nature, and so forth, +there have been of late years critics who maintained that the poetical +decadence of that century is all a delusion; in other words (it may be +supposed) that Akenside and Mason are the poetical equals of Herrick and +Donne. The <i>via media</i>, as almost always, is here also the <i>via +veritatis</i>. The poets of the eighteenth century were poets; but the +poetical stream did not, as a rule, run very high or strong in their +channels, and they were tempted to make up for the sluggishness and +shallowness of the water by playing rather artificial and rococo tricks +with the banks. The fiction of the eighteenth century was, at its +greatest, equal to the greatest ever seen; but it was as yet advancing +with uncertain steps, and had not nearly explored its own domain. The +history of the eighteenth century had returned to the true sense of +history, and was endeavouring to be accurate; but it only once +attained—it is true that with Gibbon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> it probably attained once for +all—a perfect combination of diligence and range, of matter and of +style.</p> + +<p>In all these respects the list might, if it were proper, be extended to +much greater length. The twenty years from 1780 to 1800 show us in the +most fascinating manner the turn of the tide, not as yet coming in three +feet abreast, rather creeping up by tortuous channels and chance +depressions, but rising and forcing a way wherever it could. In the +poets, major and minor, of the period, omitting, and even not wholly +omitting, Burns and Blake—who are of no time intrinsically, but who, as +it happens, belong accidentally to this time as exponents, the one of +the refreshing influence of dialect and freedom from literary +convention, the other of the refreshing influence of sympathy with old +models and mystical dreaming—all the restlessness of the approaching +crisis is seen. Nothing in literature is more interesting than to watch +the effect of the half-unconscious aims and desires of Cowper and +Crabbe, to see how they try to put the new wine in the old bottles, to +compare them with Goldsmith and Thomson on the one hand, with Wordsworth +and Coleridge on the other. Hayley perhaps alone, or almost alone, is +rebel to the comparative method. Hayley is one of these hopeless +creatures who abound at all periods, and whose native cast of +nothingness takes a faint fashion from the time. But even in the verse +of "Monk" Lewis we see the itch for new measures, the craving for lyric +movement; even in the day-flies of the Della Crusca group the desire to +be "something different." And then in Bowles, with his sonnets of +places, in Sayers, with his rhymeless Pindarics, we come upon the actual +guides to the right way, guides the oddest, the blindest, the most +stumbling, but still—as not merely chronology but the positive +testimony and the still more positive practice of those who followed +them show—real guides and no misleaders.</p> + +<p>Least studied, perhaps, because of its want of positive savour in +comparison with their later achievements, but more interesting than all +of these, is the early work of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth +themselves, and the work, not merely early but later,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> of men like +Rogers and Campbell. Here the spectacle already presented in Crabbe and +Cowper is repeated; but the process is in a further stage, and the +fermentation is determining, according to the nature of the fermenting +material. On Rogers it is nearly powerless; in Campbell only in his +lyrics does it succeed in breaking up and dissolving the old crust; in +Southey the effect is never quite complete; in Coleridge and Wordsworth, +but especially in Coleridge, the leaven changes all the latter lump. +Thenceforward the process is reversed. Instead of instances of advance +amid a mass of inertia or aimless wandering we have instances of +reaction amid a mass of advance. The work of the revolutionary time is +done; the scholar, contrary to Goethe's dictum, has now not merely to +exercise himself but to perfect.</p> + +<p>The phenomena of the time in fiction are of the same character, but they +lead as yet to no such distinct turn. The tale-telling of Beckford is +like the singing of Burns, not uncoloured by the time, but still in the +main purely individual; the purpose of the novels of Holcroft, Godwin, +and Bage is groping in the dark; the Radcliffian romance and its +exaggeration by Lewis exhibit the same uncertainty, the same application +of the Rule of False. And there is for once a more philosophical and +less cowardly explanation—that Scott, the Joshua in this instance, as +Coleridge and Wordsworth were in the other, was occupied elsewhere +before he sought the Palestine of the novel. For it must be remembered +that prose fiction, though it had been cultivated in a scattered and +tentative way for thousands of years, was up to this time the most +inorganic of literary kinds. Poets, when they chose to give themselves +up to poetry and to turn their backs on convention, were almost as well +off then as now. They had but to open the great Greeks of the fifth and +fourth centuries before Christ, the Latins such as Lucretius and +Catullus, the great mediæval, the great Renaissance examples of their +own art, to see, as soon as they chose to see, where and how to go +right. The adventurer in fiction was destitute of any such assistance. +Only a few examples of much real excellence in his art were before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> him; +many of those existing (including most of the mediæval instances) were +hardly before him at all; and none of these, with the exception of the +eighteenth century novel of manners and character (which, in the nature +of the case, was at that special time the last thing he wanted to +imitate), and the short tale of France and Italy, could be said to have +been brought to anything like perfection. Hence the wanderings and the +stumblings here were far greater, the touch of the groping hands far +feebler and less sure than even in poetry; but the crying for the light +was there too, and it was to be heard in time. Even as it was, before +the century closed, Miss Edgeworth had given important new lines to +fiction, and was on the eve of opening the most fertile of all its seams +or veins, that of national or provincial character; the purpose-novel +just referred to was full of future, though it might be a future of a +perilous and disputable kind; the terror-romance, subdued to saner +limits and informed with greater knowledge and greater genius, was not +soon to cease out of the land; and, a detail not to be neglected, the +ever increasing popularity of the novel was making it more and more +certain that it would number good intellects sooner or later.</p> + +<p>In all other directions, with the single exception of drama, in which +there was neither performance nor promise, so far as literature was +concerned, to any great extent, the same restlessness of effort, and not +always the same incompetence of result was seen. The fact of the +revolutionary war abroad and the coercive policy thereby necessitated at +home may have somewhat postponed the appearance of the new kind of +periodical, in all shapes from quarterly to daily, which was to be so +great a feature of the next age; but the same causes increased the +desire for it and prepared not a few of its constituents. It is +impossible for any tolerably careful reader not to notice how much more +"modern," to use an unphilosophical but indispensable term, is the +political satire both in verse and prose, which has been noticed in the +first chapter of this book, than the things of more or less the same +kind that immediately preceded it. It was an accident,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> no doubt, that +made the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i> ridicule Darwin's caricature of eighteenth +century style in poetry; yet that ridicule did far more to put this +particular convention out of fashion than all the attacks of the same +paper on innovators like Coleridge (who at that time had hardly +attempted their literary innovations) could do harm. The very interest +in foreign affairs, brought about by the most universal war that had +ever been known, helped to introduce the foreign element which was to +play so large a part in literature; and little affection as the critic +may have for the principles of Godwin or of Paine, he cannot deny that +the spirit of inquiry, the rally and shock of attack and defence, are +things a great deal better for literature than a placid contentment with +accepted conventions.</p> + +<p>Theology indeed may share with drama the reproach of having very little +that is good to show from this time, or indeed for a long time to come. +For the non-conformist sects and the Low Church party, which had +resulted from the Evangelical movement in the earlier eighteenth +century, were, the Unitarians excepted, for the most part illiterate. +The Deist controversy had ceased, or, as conducted against Paine, +required no literary skill; and the High Church movement had not begun. +Philosophy, not productive of very much, was more active; and the +intensely alien and novel styles of German thought were certain in time +to produce their effect, while their working was in exact line with all +the other tendencies we have been surveying.</p> + +<p>In short, during these twenty years, literature in almost all its parts +was being thoroughly "boxed about." The hands that stirred it were not +of the strongest as yet, they were absolutely unskilled, and for the +most part they had not even any very clear conception of what they +wanted to do. But almost everybody felt that something had to be done, +and was anxious—even childishly anxious—to do something. It by no +means always happens that such anxiety is rewarded or is a good sign; +but it is always a noteworthy one, and in this instance there is no +doubt about either the fact of the reward or its goodness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p> + +<p>The subsequent history of poetry during the century divides itself in an +exceedingly interesting way, which has not perhaps yet been subjected to +full critical comment. There are in it five pretty sharply marked +periods of some ten or fifteen years each, which are distinguished, the +first, third, and fifth, by the appearance in more or less numbers of +poets of very high merit, and of characteristics more or less distinctly +original; the second and fourth by poetic growths, not indeed scanty in +amount and sometimes exquisite in quality, but tentative, fragmentary, +and undecided. It will of course be understood that in this, as in all +literary classifications, mathematical accuracy must not be expected, +and that the lives of many of the poets mentioned necessarily extend +long before and after the periods which their poetical production +specially distinguishes. In fact the life of Wordsworth covers as nearly +as possible the whole five sub-periods mentioned, reckoning from his own +birth-year to that of almost the youngest of the poets, of whom we shall +here take account. And perhaps there are few better ways of realising +the extraordinary eminence of English nineteenth century poetry than by +observing, that during these eighty years there was never a single one +at which more or fewer persons were not in existence, who had produced +or were to produce poetry of the first class. And the more the five-fold +division indicated is examined and analysed the more curious and +interesting will its phenomena appear.</p> + +<p>The divisions or batches of birth-years are worth indicating separately: +the first comprises the eighth and ninth decades of the eighteenth +century, from the birth of Scott and the Lakers to that of Shelley, with +Keats as a belated and so to speak posthumous but most genuine child of +it; the second covers about fifteen years from the birth of George +Darley, who was of the same year (1795) with Keats, to the eve of that +of Tennyson; the third goes from 1810 or thereabouts, throwing back to +include the elder Tennysons and Mrs. Browning; the fourth extends from +about 1825 to 1836; the fifth from the birth of Mr. Morris (throwing +back as before to admit Rossetti) to the end.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the first of these we see the Romantic revolt or renaissance, +whichever word may be preferred, growing up under the joint influences +of the opening of mediæval and foreign literature; of the excitement of +the wars of the French Revolution; of the more hidden but perhaps more +potent force of simple ebb-and-flow which governs the world in all +things, though some fondly call it Progress; and of the even more +mysterious chance or choice, which from time to time brings into the +world, generally in groups, persons suited to effect the necessary +changes. The "Return to Nature," or to be less question-begging let us +say the taking up of a new standpoint in regard to nature, made half +unconsciously by men like Cowper and Crabbe, assisted without intending +it by men like Burns and Blake, effected in intention if not in full +achievement by feeble but lucky pioneers like Bowles, asserts itself +once for all in the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, and then works itself out in +different—in almost all possibly different—ways through the varying +administration of the same spirit by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley +and Keats, in the highest and primary rank, by Scott and Byron in the +next, by Southey, Campbell, Leigh Hunt, Moore, and others in the third. +And it is again most interesting to watch how the exertion of influence +and the character of it are by no means in proportion to the exact +poetical strength of the agent. Scott and Byron, certainly inferior as +poets to the first four mentioned, have probably had a greater bulk of +poetical influence and poetical action on mankind at large certainly, +and a vastly earlier, more immediate and more sweeping influence on +other poets than their betters. Leigh Hunt, a poet quite of the third +rank, exercised directly and indirectly, through Shelley and Keats, an +influence on the form of poetry, on metre, cadence, phrase, greater than +any of the others, save Wordsworth and Byron, and perhaps more than +these. In all ways, however, by this channel and that, in +straightforward or stealthy fashion, the poetic flood comes up, and by +the death of Byron, Shelley and Keats having still more prematurely gone +before, it is at its very highest spring. Six and twenty years passed, +from 1798 to 1824, from the time when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> were +brought out to take their chance to the time when Mr. Beddoes, Mr. +Procter, and somebody else clubbed to publish Shelley's posthumous poems +at their own expense or at least guarantee, and justly objected to +paying for more than 250 copies, because more were not likely to be +sold. In these six and twenty years such an addition had been made to +English poetry as five times the space had not previously seen, as +perhaps was not far from equalling the glorious gains of a not very +different though somewhat longer space of time between the appearance of +the <i>Shepherd's Calendar</i> and the death of Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>But the sequel of this abnormally high tide is hardly less interesting +than itself. We generally expect at such moments in literature either a +decided falling off, or else a period of decent imitation, of "school +work." It would be absurd to say that there is no contrast, no falling +off, and no imitation in the group of poets noticed at the end of the +second chapter in this volume. But they are not utterly decadent, and +they are by no means purely or merely imitative. On the contrary, their +note is quite different from that of mere school work, and in a sort of +eccentric and spasmodic fashion they attain to singular excellence. +Hood, Praed, Macaulay, Taylor, Darley, Beddoes, Hartley Coleridge, +Horne, are not to Wordsworth or Coleridge, to Byron or to Shelley, what +the later so-called Elizabethan playwrights are to Jonson and Fletcher, +the later poets of the same time to Spenser and Donne. But they almost +all, perhaps all, seem forced to turn into some bye-way or backwater of +poetry, to be unable or unwilling to keep the crown of the causeway, the +flood of the tide. Hood and Praed—the former after actually attempting +great poetry, and coming nearer to it than some great poets come in +their first attempts—wander into the special borderland of humorous and +grotesque verse, achieving in different parts of it something not unlike +absolute and unsurpassed success. Beddoes, and to some extent Darley, +adopt fantastic varieties, grim in the former's hands, playful chiefly +in the latter's, but alike remote from everyday interests and broad +appeals; while the incomparable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> lyrics of Beddoes are of no special +time or school, their very Elizabethanism being somewhat delusive. +Taylor and Horne attempt the serious moral play with hardly any stage +purposes or possibilities, and Horne in <i>Orion</i> tries an eccentric kind +of ethical or satirical epic. Macaulay—the most prominent of all, and +the most popular in his tastes and aims—is perhaps the nearest to a +"schoolman," adapting Scott as he does in his <i>Lays</i>; yet even here +there is no mere imitation.</p> + +<p>Thus the people of this minor transition exhibit—in a most interesting +way, rendered even more interesting by the repetition of it which, as we +have seen and shall see, came about twenty years later—the mixed +phenomena of an after-piece and a <i>lever de rideau</i>, of precursorship +and what we must for want of a better word call decadence. They were not +strong enough in themselves, or were not favourably enough +circumstanced, entirely to refresh or redirect the main current of +poetry; so they deviated from it. But hardly in the least of them is +there absent the sign and symptom of the poetic spirit being still +about, of the poetic craft still in full working order. And their +occasional efforts, their experiments in the half-kinds they affected, +have a curious charm. English poetry would be undeniably poorer without +the unearthly snatches of Beddoes, the exquisitely urbane +verse-of-society of Praed, the pathetic-grotesque of Hood, even the +stately tirades of Horne and Taylor. Some of them, if not all, may at +this or that time have been exaggerated in value, by caprice, by +reaction, by mere personal sympathy. But no universal critic will refuse +admiration to them in and for themselves.</p> + +<p>In the next stage we are again face to face, not with half-talents, +uncertain of their direction, but with whole genius, inevitably working +on its predestined lines. Nothing quite like the poetical career and the +poetical conception of Alfred Tennyson and of Robert Browning, so +different in all respects, except that of duration and coincidence in +time, meets us in English, perhaps nothing similar meets us in any +literature. It is easy to overestimate both; and both have been +over-estimated. It is still easier<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> to depreciate both; and both have +been depreciated. Both wrote constantly, and at frequent intervals, for +some sixty years—the same sixty years—and, with not more than fair +allowance for the effects of time, both wrote at the end better than at +the beginning, and nearly as well as at the best time of each. +Wordsworth, it is true, wrote for nearly as long, but no one can assert +the same duration of equality in his production.</p> + +<p>In a certain sense, no doubt, neither can claim the same distinct +individuality, the same unmistakable and elementary <i>quality</i>, as that +which distinguishes Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley. +The work of each is always at once recognisable by any tolerably +competent judge; but the signs of identity are more composite than +atomic, more derived and literary than essentially native. Browning's +unconventional mannerisms, and his wide range of subject, have made him +seem even less of a mere scholar than Tennyson; but, as a fact, each is +independent enough to a certain extent and to a certain extent only. In +both appears, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time +in combination with distinct original genius, that indebtedness to the +past, that relapse upon it in the very act of forming vast schemes for +the future, which is more the note of the nineteenth century than +anything else. They not merely have all literature and all history +behind them; but they know it. Yet this knowledge does not weigh on +them. They do not exactly neglect it as Wordsworth and Shelley were +still able to do, but they keep it under. It is the attendant fiend for +which they must find work, but which they never, as too many of their +contemporaries and followers have done, allow to become their master. +And so they two, as it seems to me, do actually win their way to the +first class, not perhaps to the absolutely first division of it, but to +a first class still pretty rigidly limited.</p> + +<p>It is not the object of this Conclusion to deal with the performances of +individuals at any length, and therefore I must refer back to the text +for a detailed indication of the position of Keats as the summer-up of +the tradition of the first of the groups or periods here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> noticed, and +the begetter, master, and teacher of the third, as well as for +descriptions of the different manners in which Tennyson and Browning +respectively shared and distributed between themselves that catholic +curiosity in poetical subject, that exploration of all history and art +and literature, which is the main characteristic of strictly nineteenth +century poetry. But it is very pertinent here to point out the +remarkable way in which these two poets, from the unexampled combination +of length and potency in their poetical period of influence, governed +all the poetry that has followed them. We shall now see that under their +shadow at least two well-marked groups arose, each of magnitude and +individuality sufficient to justify the assignment to it of a separate +position. Yet it was in their shadow that these rose and flourished, and +though the trees themselves have at length fallen, the shadow of their +names is almost as great as ever.</p> + +<p>The first of these two groups, the fourth of our present classification, +renews, as has been said before, the features of its twenty or thirty +years older forerunner, the group between Keats and Tennyson, in a most +curious and attractive fashion. Once more we find the notes of +uncertainty, of straying into paths,—not always quite blind-alleys, but +bye-paths certainly,—the presence of isolated burst and flash, of +effort unsuccessful or unequal as a whole. But here we find, what in the +earlier chapter or section we do not find, distinct imitativeness and +positive school-following. This imitation, attempting Shelley at times +with little success (for, let it be repeated, Shelley is not imitable), +selected in regular chronological order, three masters, Wordsworth, +Tennyson, and Browning, though in each stage the master of the preceding +rather shared than yielded his chair. It has been said in a famous +passage that Wordsworth was more read about sixty years ago than at any +time before or since, and this may perhaps be true. But his influence on +writers has not depended on his popularity with readers, and from Sir +Aubrey de Vere, who was born more than a century ago, to verse-writers +who have only just published, his unmistakable tone, the tone which, so +far as we can see, would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> never have been if Wordsworth had never +existed, shows itself. The writing influence of Tennyson did not begin +till the issue of the <i>Poems</i> of 1842, but it began almost immediately +then, and has remained in full force to the present day. It is an +influence somewhat more external and technical than Wordsworth's, but +for that reason even more unmistakable, and some of its results are +among the most curious of school-copies in literature. As for Browning, +imitation there tried both the outside and the inside, not very often +with happy results, but, of course, with results even more obvious to +the most uncritical eye than the results of the imitation of Tennyson +itself.</p> + +<p>The attempts to be original and to break away from these and their +imitations—the principal of them being that of the so-called Spasmodic +school, which flourished at the dead waist and middle of the +century—were not particularly happy, and those who incline to gloomy +views may say that the imitation was less happy still. In Mr. Matthew +Arnold, a recalcitrant but unmistakable Wordsworthian, sharing a partly +reluctant allegiance between Wordsworth, the ancients, Goethe, and +Tennyson himself, it is impossible not to think that a freer attitude, a +more independent and less literary aim, might have strengthened his +elegance, supplied his curious mixture of stiffness and grace, and even +made him less unequal than he actually is. And yet he is much the +greatest poet of the period. Its effect was more disastrous still upon +the second Lord Lytton, who was content to employ an excellent lyrical +vein, and a gift of verse satire of the fantastic kind so distinct and +fascinating, that it approaches the merit of fantasists in other kinds +of the former group, like Beddoes and Darley, to far too great an extent +on echoes. The fact is, that by this time, to speak conceitedly, the +obsession of the book was getting oppressive. Men could hardly sing for +remembering, or, at least, without remembering, what others had sung +before them, and became either slavishly imitative or wilfully +recalcitrant to imitation. The great leaders indeed continued to sing +each in his own way, and, though with perfect knowledge of their +forerunners,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> not in the least hampered by that knowledge. But something +else was needed to freshen the middle regions of song.</p> + +<p>It was found in that remarkable completion of the English Romantic +movement, which is in relation to art called præ-Raphaelitism, and which +is represented in literature, to mention only the greatest names, by +Rossetti, his sister, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Swinburne. The death of the +two former, and the fact that the movement itself, still active in art, +has in a manner rounded itself off, though it is not necessarily +finished, in literature, enable us to discuss it here as a whole, though +its two chief poets are luckily still alive.</p> + +<p>The first thing of interest in general history which strikes us, in +regard to this delightful chapter of English poetry, is its +illustration—a common one in life and letters—of the fact that there +is a false as well as a true side to the question quoted by Aristotle: +"If water chokes you, what are you to drink on the top of it?" "Wine," +one kind of humourist might answer; "More water," another: and both +rightly. It has been said that the group which preceded this suffered +from the pressure of too constant, wide, and various reminiscence, +literary, artistic, and other. The præ-Raphaelites refreshed themselves +and the world by applying still more strenuously to the particular kind +and period of such reminiscence which had been hitherto, despite the +mediæval excursions of many from Percy to Tennyson, imperfectly +utilised. The literary practitioners of the school (with whom alone we +are concerned) were not indeed by any means purely mediæval in their +choice of subject, in their founts of inspiration, or in their method of +treatment. English poetry has known few if any more accomplished +scholars both in the classics and in the modern languages than Mr. +Swinburne, for instance; and something similar might be said of others. +But, on the whole, the return of this school—for all new things in +literature are returns—was to a mediævalism different from the +tentative and scrappy mediævalism of Percy, from the genial but slightly +superficial mediævalism of Scott, and even from the more exact but +narrow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> and distinctly conventionalised mediævalism of Tennyson. They +had other appeals, but this was their chief.</p> + +<p>It may seem that mere or main archaism is not a very charming or +powerful thing, and in weaker hands it would not have been either one or +the other; but it so happened that these hands were very strong indeed. +Mr. Rossetti had one of the most astonishing combinations ever known of +artistically separate gifts, as well as a singular blend of passion and +humour. His sister was one of the great religious poets of the world. +Mr. Swinburne has never been surpassed, if he has ever been equalled, by +any poet in any language for command of the more rushing and flowing +forms of verse. Mr. Morris has few equals in any time or country for +narrative at once decorative and musical. Moreover, though it may seem +whimsical or extravagant to say so, these poets added to the very charm +of mediæval literature which they thus revived a subtle something which +differentiates it from—which to our perhaps blind sight seems to be +wanting in—mediæval literature itself. It is constantly complained (and +some of those who cannot go all the way with the complainants can see +what they mean) that the graceful and labyrinthine stories, the sweet +snatches of song, the quaint drama and legend of the Middle Ages +lack—to us—life; that they are shadowy, unreal, tapestry on the wall, +not alive even as living pageants are. By the strong touch of modernness +which these poets and the best of their followers introduced into their +work, they have given the vivification required.</p> + +<p>Beyond them we must not go, nor inquire whether the poets who have not +come to forty years represent a new school of the masterful and supreme +kind, or one of the experimental and striving sort, or something a good +deal worse than this, a period of sheer interval and suspense, +unenlivened even by considerable attempt. Not only our scheme, not only +common prudence and politeness, but most of all the conditions of +critical necessity insist on the curtain being here dropped. It is +possible that a critic may be able to isolate and project himself +sufficiently to judge, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> posterity will judge them, the actually +accomplished work of his own contemporaries and juniors. But even such a +skilful and fortunate person cannot judge the work which they have not +yet produced, and which may in all cases, and must in some, modify their +position and alter their rank.</p> + +<p>But what has been has been, and on this mass (not in the actual case +"vulgar" by any means) of things done it is possible to pronounce +securely. And with security it may be said that for total amount, total +merit, total claims of freshness and distinctness, no period of poetical +literature can much, if at all, exceed the ninety years of English verse +from <i>The Ancient Mariner</i> to <i>Crossing the Bar</i>. The world has had few +poets better than the best of ours during this time in degree; it has +had none like Shelley, perhaps none exactly like Wordsworth, in kind. +The secret of long narrative poems that should interest has been +recovered; the sonnet, one of the smallest but one of the most perfect +of poetic forms, has been recovered likewise. Attempts to recover the +poetic drama have been mostly failures; and serious satire has hardly +reappeared. But lighter satire, with other "applied" poetry, has shown +variety and excellence. Above all lyric, the most poetic kind of poetry, +has attained a perfection never known before, except once in England and +once in Greece. It has been impossible hitherto to make a full and free +anthology of the lyric poets from Burns and Blake to Tennyson and +Browning to match the anthologies often made of those from Surrey or +Sidney to Herrick or Vaughan. But when it can be done it is a question +whether the later volume will not even excel the earlier in intensity +and variety, if not perhaps in freshness of charm.</p> + +<p>And then it is needful once more to insist, even at the risk of +disgusting, on the additional interest given by the subtle and delicate, +but still distinctly traceable gradations, the swell and sinking, the +flow and ebb, of poetical production and character during the time. As +no other flourishing time of any poetry has lasted so long, so none has +had the chance of developing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> these mutations in so extensive and +attractive a manner; in none has it been possible to feel the pulse of +poetry, so to speak, in so connected and considerable a succession of +experiment. Poetical criticism can never be scientific; but it can +seldom have had an opportunity of going nearer to a scientific process +than here, owing to the volume, the connection, the duration, the +accessibility of the phenomena submitted to the critic. The actual +secret as usual escapes; but we can hunt the fugitive by a closer trail +than usual through the chambers of her flight.</p> + +<p>Of the highest poetry, however, as of other highest things, Goethe's +famous axiom <i>Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh</i> holds good. Although there is +a difference between the expressions of this highest poetry in the fifth +and fourth centuries before Christ, in the fourteenth, seventeenth, and +nineteenth after Christ there is also a certain quiet sameness, not +indiscernibility but still identity. The lower kinds of literature admit +of more apparent and striking freshness of exterior. And perhaps the +most strikingly fresh, some might even say the distinctive, product of +the nineteenth century, is its prose fiction.</p> + +<p>This, as has been shown in detail, is much later in date than the poetry +in anything like a characteristic and fully developed state. Although it +was busily produced during the last twenty years of the eighteenth +century and the first fifteen of the nineteenth, the very best work of +the time, except such purely isolated things as <i>Vathek</i>, are +experiments, and all but the very best—the novels of Miss Edgeworth, +those written but not till quite the end of the time published by Miss +Austen, and a very few others—are experiments of singular lameness and +ill success.</p> + +<p>With Scott's change from verse to prose, the modern romance admittedly, +and to a greater extent than is generally thought the modern novel, came +into being; and neither has gone out of being since. In the two chapters +which have been devoted to the subject we have seen how the overpowering +success of <i>Waverley</i> bred a whole generation of historical novels; how +side by side with this the older novel of manners, slightly altered, +continued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> to be issued, with comic deviations chiefly, as in the hands +of Theodore Hook; how Bulwer attempted a sort of cross between the two; +how about the middle of the century the historical novel either ceased +or changed, to revive later after a middle period illustrated by the +brilliant romances of Kingsley; how about the same time the strictly +modern novel of manners came into being in the hands of Thackeray, Miss +Brontë, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope, Dickens overlapping both +periods in a fantastic and nondescript style of his own; and how more +recently still both romance and novel have spread out and ramified into +endless subdivisions.</p> + +<p>There is, however, this broad line of demarcation between poetry and the +novel, that they are written for different ends and from different +motives. It is natural to man to write poetry; it does not appear to be +by any means so certainly or unvaryingly necessary to him to read it. +Except at rare periods and for short times, poetry has never offered the +slightest chance of livelihood to any considerable number of persons; +and it is tolerably certain that if the aggregate number of poets since +the foundation of the world had had nothing to live on but their +aggregate gains as poets, starvation would have been the commonplace +rule, instead of the dramatic exception, among the sons of Apollo.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, it is no doubt also natural to man to tell prose +stories, and it seems, though it was a late-discovered aptitude, that it +is not unnatural to him to read them; but the writing of them does not +seem to be at all an innate or widely disseminated need. Until some +hundred or two hundred years ago very few were written at all; the +instances of persons who do but write novels because they must are +exceedingly rare, and it is as certain as anything can be that of the +enormous production of the last three-quarters of a century not 5, +perhaps not 1 per cent would have been produced if the producing had not +led, during the whole of that time, in most cases but those of hopeless +incompetence to some sort of a livelihood, in many to very comfortable +income, and in some to positive wealth and fame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> In other words, poetry +is the creation of supply and novel-writing of demand; poetry can hardly +ever be a trade and in very rare cases a profession, while novel-writing +is commonly a very respectable profession, and unfortunately sometimes a +rather disreputable trade.</p> + +<p>Like other professions, however, it enlists genius sometimes, talent +often; and the several and successive ways in which this genius and this +talent show themselves are of more than sufficient interest. But the +steady demand, and the inevitable answer to it, work adversely to such +spontaneous and interesting fluctuations of production as those which we +have traced in reference to poetry. There have been times, particularly +that between the cessation of Sir Walter's best work and the perfecting +of that of Thackeray, in which the average value of even the best novels +was much lower than at other times. But even in these the average volume +maintained itself very well, and, indeed, steadily increased.</p> + +<p>It is this which, with another to be mentioned shortly, will, so far as +it is possible for a contemporary to judge, be noted in the literary +history of the future as the distinguishing crop or field of the +nineteenth century. Sermons, essays, plays, no doubt, continue to be +written; but the novel has supplanted the sermon, the essay, the play in +the place which each at different times held as the <i>popular</i> form of +literature. It may be added, or repeated, that it has in part at least +achieved this result by trespassing upon the provinces of all these +three forms and of many others. This is true, but is of somewhat less +importance than might be thought. The fable has an old trick of +adjusting itself to almost every possible kind of literary use, and the +novel is only an enlarged and more fully organised fable. It does not, +no doubt, do best when it abuses this privilege of its ancestor, and +saturates itself overmuch with "purpose," but it has at least an +ancestral right to do so.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt also that the popularity of the novel has been very +directly connected with a cause which has had all manner of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> effects +fathered upon it—often with no just causation or filiation whatever—to +wit, the spread of education. In the proper sense of course the spread +of education must always be strictly limited. The number of educable +persons probably bears a pretty constant ratio to the population, and +when the education reaches the level of the individual's containing +power, it simply runs over and is lost. But it is possible to teach +nearly everybody reading and writing; and it is a curious but exact +observation that a very large proportion of those who have been taught +reading require something to read. Now the older departments of +literature do not lend themselves with any facility to constant reading +by the average man or woman, whose requirements may be said to be +amusement rather than positive delight, occupation much rather than +intellectual exertion, and above all, something to pass time. For these +requirements, or this compound requirement, the hearing of some new +thing has been of old recognised as the surest and most generally useful +specific. And the novel holds itself out, not indeed always quite truly, +as being new or nothing by name and nature. Accordingly the demand for +novels has gone on ever increasing, and the supply has never failed to +keep up with it.</p> + +<p>Nor would it be just to say that the quality has sunk appreciably. The +absolutely palmy day of the English nineteenth century in novel-writing +was no doubt some thirty-five or forty years ago. Not even the +contemporary France of that date can show such a "galaxy-gallery" as the +British novelists—Dickens, Thackeray, Miss Brontë, George Eliot, +Trollope, Kingsley, Bulwer, Disraeli, Lever, Mr. Meredith, and +others—who all wrote in the fifties. But at the beginning of the period +the towering genius of Scott and the perfect art of Miss Austen, if we +add to them Miss Edgeworth's genial talent, did not find very much of +even good second-rate matter to back them; there was, as has been said, +a positively barren time succeeding this first stage and preceding the +"fifty" period; and twenty years or a little more ago, when Thackeray +and Dickens were dead, Trollope and George<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> Eliot past their best, +Kingsley and Bulwer moribund, Mr. Meredith writing sparely and +unnoticed, the new romantic school not arisen, and no recruit of +distinction except Mr. Blackmore firmly set, things were apparently a +great deal worse with us in point of novel-writing than they are at +present. Whether, with a return of promise and an increase of +performance, with a variation of styles and an abundance of experiment, +there has also been a relapse into the extravagances which we have had +in this very book to chronicle as characterising the fiction of exactly +a century ago,—whether we have had over-luxuriant and non-natural +style, attempts to attract by loose morality, novels of purpose, novels +of problem, and so forth,—and whether the coming age will dismiss much +of our most modern work as not superior in literary and inferior in +other appeal to the work of Godwin and Lewis, Holcroft and Bage, it is +not necessary distinctly to say. But our best is certainly better than +the best of that time, our worst is perhaps not worse; and the novel +occupies a far higher place in general estimation than it did then. +Indeed it has been observed by the sarcastic that to some readers of +novels, and even to some writers of them, "novel" and "book" seem to be +synonymous terms, and that when such persons speak of "literature," they +mean and pretty distinctly indicate that they mean novel-writing, and +novel-writing only. This at least shows that the seed which Scott sowed, +or the plant which he grafted, has not lost its vitality.</p> + +<p>Certainly not less, perhaps even more, distinctive of the time in +history must be that development and transformation of what is broadly +called the newspaper, of which the facts and details have occupied two +more of these chapters. It is true that at times considerably earlier +than even the earliest that here concerns us, periodical writing had +been something of a power in England as regards politics, had enlisted +eminent hands, and had even served once or twice as the means of +introduction of considerable works in <i>belles lettres</i>. But the +Addisonian Essay had been something of an accident; Swift's +participation in the <i>Examiner</i> was another; Defoe's abundant journalism +brought him more discredit than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> profit or praise; and though Pulteney +and the Opposition worked the press against Walpole, the process brought +little benefit to the persons concerned. Reviewing was meagrely done and +wretchedly paid; the examples of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> earlier and <i>Sir +Launcelot Greaves</i> later are exceptions which prove the rule that the +<i>feuilleton</i> was not in demand; in fact before our present period +newspaper-writing was rather dangerous, was more than rather +disreputable, and offered exceedingly little encouragement to any one to +make it the occasion of work in pure literature, or even to employ it as +a means of livelihood, while attempting other and higher, though less +paying kinds.</p> + +<p>The period of the French Revolution, if not the French Revolution +itself, changed all this, assisted no doubt by the natural and +inevitable effects of the spread of reading and the multiplication of +books. People wanted to see the news; papers sprang up in competition to +enable them to see the news; and the competitors strove to make +themselves more agreeable than their rivals by adding new attractions. +Again, the activity of the Jacobin party, which early and of course +directed itself to the press, necessitated activity on the other side. +The keenest intellects, the best-trained wits of the nation, sometimes +under some disguise, sometimes openly, took to journalism, and it became +simply absurd to regard the journalist as a disreputable garreteer when +Windham and Canning were journalists. The larger sale of books and the +formation of a regular system of "pushing" them also developed +reviews—too frequently, no doubt, in the direction of mere puffing, but +even thus with the beneficent result that other reviews came into +existence which were not mere puff-engines.</p> + +<p>Even these causes and others will not entirely explain the extraordinary +development of periodicals of all kinds from quarterly to daily, of +which the <i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Blackwood</i>, the <i>Examiner</i>, and the <i>Times</i> were +respectively the most remarkable examples and pioneers in the earlier +years of the century, though as a literary organ the <i>Morning Post</i> had +at first rather the advantage of the <i>Times</i>. But, as has been said here +constantly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> you can never explain everything in literary history; and +it would be extremely dull if you could. The newspaper press had, for +good or for ill, to come; external events to some obvious extent helped +its coming; individual talents and aptitudes helped it likewise; but the +main determining force was the force of hidden destiny.</p> + +<p>There is, however, no mistake possible about the results. It is but a +slight exaggeration to say that the periodical rapidly swallowed up all +other forms of literature, to this extent and in this sense, that there +is hardly a single one of these forms capital performance in which has +not at one time or another formed part of the stuff of periodicals, and +has not by them been first introduced to the world. Not a little of our +poetry; probably the major part of our best fiction; all but a very +small part of our essay-writing, critical, meditative, and +miscellaneous; and a portion, much larger than would at one time have +seemed conceivable, of serious writing in history, philosophy, theology, +science, and scholarship, have passed through the mint or mill of the +newspaper press before presenting themselves in book form. A certain +appreciable, though small part of the best, with much of the worst, has +never got beyond that form.</p> + +<p>To attempt to collect the result of this change is to attempt something +not at all easy, something perhaps which may be regarded as not +particularly valuable. The distinction between literature and journalism +which is so often heard is, like most such things, a fallacy, or at +least capable of being made fallacious. Put as it usually is when the +intention is disobliging to the journalist, it comes to this:—that the +<i>Essays of Elia</i>, that Southey's <i>Life of Nelson</i>, that some of the best +work of Carlyle, Tennyson, Thackeray, and others the list of whom might +be prolonged at pleasure, is not literature. Put as it sometimes is by +extremely foolish people, it would go to the extent that anything which +has <i>not</i> been published in a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly +publication is literature.</p> + +<p>There is probably no subject on which it is more necessary to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> clear the +mind of cant than this. Of course there is journalism in the sense +opposed to literature, though not necessarily opposed in any bad sense. +No wise man intends, and no wise man will ever suffer, articles which +are in the strict sense articles, which are intended to comment on +merely passing events, and to produce a merely immediate effect, to be +extracted from journals and put on record as books. Not only is the +treatment unsuitable for such record, but it may almost be said that the +treatment suitable for things so to be recorded is actually unsuitable +for things ephemeral. But there is a very large amount of writing to +which this does not in the least apply, and in which it can make no kind +of real difference whether the result appears by itself in a bound cloth +volume as a whole, or in parts with other things in a pamphlet, covered +with paper, or not covered at all. The grain of truth which the fallacy +carries is really this:—that the habit of treating some subjects in the +peculiar fashion most effective in journalism may spread disastrously to +the treatment of other subjects which ought to be treated as literature. +This is a truth, but not a large one. There have been at all times, at +least since the invention of printing and probably before it, persons +who, though they may be guiltless of having ever written an article in +their lives, have turned out more or less ponderous library volumes in +which the very worst sins of the worst kind of journalist are rampant.</p> + +<p>There are, however, more thoughtful reasons for regarding the +development of periodicals as not an unmixed boon to letters. The more +evanescent kinds of writing are, putting fiction out of the question, so +much the more profitable in journalism that it certainly may tempt—that +it certainly has tempted—men who could produce, and would otherwise +have produced, solid literature. And there is so much more room in it +for light things than for things which the average reader regards as +heavy, that the heavy contributor is apt to be at a discount, and the +light at a premium. But all this is exceedingly obvious. And it may be +met on the other side by the equally obvious consideration already +referred to, that periodicals have made the literary life possible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> in a +vast number of cases where it was not possible before; that whereas +"toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol" was not a very exaggerated +description of its prospects little more than a hundred years ago, the +patron has become superfluous, want and the gaol rather unlikely, except +in cases of extreme misconduct, incompetence, or ill-luck, while if toil +and envy remain unvanquished, they are not specially fated to the +literary lot. Indeed the more paradoxical of Devil's Advocates against +the press usually urge that it has made the literary life too easy, has +tempted too many into it, and has thereby increased the flood of +mediocrity.</p> + +<p>The most serious objection of all perhaps, though even this is rather +idle in face of accomplished facts, is that the perpetual mincing up and +boiling down of the constituents of the diet of reading have produced, +in the appetite and digestive faculties of the modern reader, an +inability to cope with a really solid meal of perhaps slightly tough +matter, and that periodicals not merely eschew the provision of this +solid stuff themselves, but do their best to make things worse by +manipulating the contents of books that do contain it.</p> + +<p>The fact, however, once more, concerns us much more than moralisings +about the fact; and the fact of the prominence, the extraordinary +prominence, of the periodical press in the nineteenth century, is as +little open to dispute as the prominence in that century's later +mechanical history of discoveries in electricity, or in its earlier of +experiments with steam. Occasionally one may hear enthusiasts of one +kind or another announcing with joy or horror that the periodical is +killing the book. But if it is, it is very impartially engaged in +begetting it at the same time that it kills; and it may be very +seriously doubted whether this killing of a book is an easy act of +murder to commit. With the printing press to produce, the curiosity of +man to demand, and his vanity and greed—if not also his genius and +ambition—to supply, the book is in all probability pretty safe. In the +forms and varieties of this periodical publication we have seen some +interesting changes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> As might have been expected, the tendency has been +for the intervals of publication to be shortened—for the quarterly to +give way as the fashionable form to the monthly, the monthly to the +weekly, the weekly to the daily. Many years ago Macaulay, in a mild +protest against having his articles altered by Macvey Napier, suggested +in effect that the bloom might be left on poor things destined to be +read only for a month or so. The duration of an article now may be +measured rather by hours than by weeks. Still many of these changes are +more apparent than real; and just as the institution of the graver +monthly reviews twenty years ago simply reintroduced the quarterly +article in a scarcely altered form after it had been pushed out of +favour by the slighter magazine, so other introductions have been in +fact reintroductions.</p> + +<p>One point, however, of real importance in literary history remains to be +noticed, and that is the conflict between signed and anonymous writing. +Partly from the causes above enumerated as having conduced to the +keeping of journalism in a condition of discredit and danger, partly +owing to national idiosyncrasies, the habit of anonymous writing was +almost universal in the English press at the beginning of the century. +It may have been perfectly well known that such and such an article in +the <i>Quarterly</i> was by Southey or Croker, such another in the +<i>Edinburgh</i> by Sydney Smith or Macaulay, but the knowledge was, so to +speak, unofficial. The question of the identity of "Zeta" in <i>Blackwood</i> +cost a man's life; and the system resulted (in daily papers especially) +in so much editorial inter-mixture and refashioning, that sometimes it +would really have been impossible to assign a single and authentic +paternity. Even about the editorship of the great periodicals a sort of +coquetry of veiling was preserved, and editors' names, though in most +cases perfectly well known, seldom or never appeared.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to say exactly when or how this system began to be +infringed. But there is no doubt that the prominence given in <i>Household +Words</i> to the name and personality of Dickens, who was not unfriendly to +self-advertisement, had a good deal to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> do with it; and when, a little +later, the cheap shilling magazines appeared, writing with names became +the rule, without them the exception. Criticism, however, for obvious +reasons still held back; and it was not till about five and twenty years +ago that the example, taken more or less directly from the French, of +signed reviews was set by the <i>Academy</i> among weekly papers, and the +<i>Fortnightly</i> among monthly reviews. It has been very largely followed +even in daily newspapers, and the <i>Saturday Review</i> was probably the +last newspaper of mark that maintained an absolutely rigid system of +anonymity. It should, however, be observed that the change, while not +even yet complete—leading articles being still very rarely signed—has +by no means united all suffrages, and has even lost some that it had. +Mr. John Morley, for instance, who had espoused it warmly as editor of +the <i>Fortnightly</i>, and had, perhaps, done more than any other man to +spread it, has avowed in a very interesting paper grave doubts about the +result. Still it undoubtedly has increased, and is increasing, and in +such cases it is much easier to express an opinion that things ought to +be diminished, than either to expect that they will, or to devise any +means whereby the diminution is to be effected. As for what is desirable +as distinguished from what is likely, the weight of opinion may be +thought to be in favour of the absence of signature. Anonymous +criticism, if abused, may no doubt be abused to a graver extent than is +possible with signed criticism. But such a hackneyed maxim as <i>corruptio +optimi</i> shows that this is of itself no argument. On the other hand, +signed criticism diminishes both the responsibility and the authority of +the editor; it adds either an unhealthy gag or an unhealthy stimulus to +the tongue and pen of the contributor; it lessens the general weight of +the verdict; and it provokes the worst fault of criticism, the aim at +showing off the critic's cleverness rather than at exhibiting the real +value and character of the thing criticised. And perhaps some may think +the most serious objection of all to be that it encourages the +employment of critics, and the reception of what they say, rather for +their names than for their competence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span></p> + +<p>In that very important department of literature which stands midway +between Belles Lettres and Science, the department of History, the +century cannot indeed claim such striking and popularly effective +innovations as in the departments of prose fiction and of periodical +writing. Yet it may be questioned whether the change of this old kind is +not in itself almost as noteworthy as in the other cases is the +practical introduction of a new. What the change is was +epigrammatically, if somewhat paradoxically, summed up recently by a +great authority, Lord Acton. "History," the Cambridge Professor of that +art or science said in his inaugural lecture, "has become independent of +the historian."</p> + +<p>It is possible to demur to the fact, but it is not difficult to explain +the meaning. From the necessity of the case, the earliest history, at +least in the West, is almost independent of documents and records. +Thucydides and Herodotus wrote, the one from what he had actually seen +and heard of contemporary events, the other partly from the same sources +and partly from tradition of short date. Somewhat later historians of +course had their predecessors before them, and in a few cases a certain +amount of document, but never a large amount. When history, vernacular +or Latin, began to be written again in the dark and middle ages, the +absence of documents was complicated (except in the case of those early +chroniclers, English and Irish chiefly, who merely put down local +events) by that more peculiar and unaccountable, though possibly +kindred, absence of critical spirit, which, of the many things more or +less fancifully attributed to the mediæval mind, is perhaps the most +certain. It is a constant puzzle to modern readers how to account +exactly for the fashion in which men, evidently of great intellectual +ability, managed to be without any sense of the value of evidence, or +any faculty of distinguishing palpable and undoubted fiction from what +either was, or reasonably might be held to be, history. But by degrees +this sense came into being side by side with the multiplication of the +document itself. Even then, however, it was very long before the average +historian either could or would regard himself as bound first to consult +all the documents available,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> and then to sift and adjust them in +accordance rather with the laws of evidence and the teachings of the +philosophy of history than with his own predilections, or with the +necessities of an agreeable narrative. But the patient industry of the +French school of historical scholars, at the end of the seventeenth and +the beginning of the eighteenth century, founded this new tradition; the +magnificent genius of Gibbon showed how the observance of it might not +be incompatible with history-writing of the most literary kind; the +national and natural tendency of German study adopted it; and shortly +after Gibbon's own day the school of historians, which is nothing if not +documentary, began gradually to oust that of which the picturesque, if +not strictly historical, legend about the Abbé Vertot and his "Mon siège +est fait" is the anecdotic <i>locus classicus</i> of characterisation.</p> + +<p>It has been shown, in the chapter devoted to the subject, how this +school of documentary historians grew and flourished in England itself, +from the days of Turner and Palgrave to those of Froude and Freeman. +Certainly there could not, at least for some time, be said to be any +very sensible tendency in history to dispense with the historian, or, in +other and perhaps rather more intelligible words, of history ceasing to +be literary. No historians have been more omnilegent, more careful of +the document, than Carlyle and Macaulay, much as they differed in other +respects, and in no histories has the "historian"—that is to say, the +personal writer as opposed to the mere "diplomatist"—been more evident +than he is in theirs. Nor is it very easy to see why the mere study of +the document, still less why the mere accumulation of the document, +should ever render superfluous the intelligent shaping which the +historian alone can give. In the first place, documents are +contradictory and want shifting and harmonising; in the second they want +grasping and interpreting; in the third (and most important of all) they +need to be made alive.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless Lord Acton's somewhat enigmatic utterance points, however +vaguely, to real dangers, and it would be idle to say that these dangers +have not been exemplified in the period and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> department we are +considering. In the first place, the ever-increasing burden of the +documents to be consulted is more and more crushing, and more and more +likely to induce any one but a mere drudge either to relinquish the task +in despair, or to perform it with a constant fear before his eyes, which +prevents freedom and breadth of work. In the second it leads, on the one +hand, to enormous extension of the scale of histories, on the other to +an undue restraining and limiting of their subjects. Macaulay took four +large volumes to do, nominally at least, not more than a dozen years; +Froude twelve to cover fifty or sixty; Grote as many to deal with the +important, but neither long nor richly documented, period of Greek, or +rather Athenian, flourishing. To this has to be added the very serious +drawback that when examination of documents is ranked before everything, +even the slightest questioning of that examination becomes fatal, and a +historian is discredited because some one of his critics has found a +document unknown to him, or a flaw, possibly of the slightest +importance, in his interpretation of the texts.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless it is necessary to lay our account with this new style of +history, and it is fortunately possible to admit that the gains of it +have not been small. Thanks to its practitioners, we know infinitely +more than our fathers did, though it may not be so certain that we make +as good a use of our knowledge. And the evil of multiplication of +particulars, like other evils, brings its own cure. The work of mere +rough-hewing, of examination into the brute facts, is being done—has to +no small extent actually been done—as it never was done before. The +"inedited" has ceased to be inedited—is put on record for anybody to +examine with little trouble. The mere loss of valuable material, which +has gone on in former ages to an extent only partially compensated by +the welcome destruction of material that has no value at all, has been +stopped. The pioneers of the historical summer (to borrow a decorative +phrase from Charles of Orleans) have been very widely abroad, and there +is no particular reason why the summer itself should not come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span></p> + +<p>When it does it will perhaps discard some ways and fashions which have +been lately in vogue; but it will assuredly profit by much that has been +done during the period we survey, no less in form than in matter. The +methods have been to a certain extent improved, the examples have been +multiplied, the historical sense has certainly taken a wider and deeper +hold of mankind. Very little is wanting but some one <i>ausus contemnere +vana</i>; and when the future Thucydides or the future Carlyle sets to +work, he will be freed, by the labour of others, alike from the paucity +of materials that a little weakened Thucydides, and from the brute mass +of them that embittered the life of Carlyle.</p> + +<p>Not so much is to be said of the remaining divisions or departments +individually. If the drama of the century is not, in so far as acting +drama is concerned, almost a blank from the point of view of literature, +the literary drama of the century is almost a blank as regards acting +qualities. It is true that there have been at times attempts to obtain +restitution of conjugal rights on one side or on the other. In the +second and third decades, perhaps a little later, a strong effort was +made to give vogue to, and some vogue was obtained for, the scholarly if +pale attempts of Milman and Talfourd, and the respectable work of +others. Bulwer, his natural genius assisted by the stage-craft of +Macready, brought the acting and the literary play perhaps nearer +together than any one else did. Much later still, the mighty authority +of Tennyson, taking to dramatic writing at the time when he was the +unquestioned head of English poetry and English literature, and assisted +by the active efforts of the most popular actor and manager of the day, +succeeded in holding the stage fairly well with plays which are not very +dramatic among dramas, and which are certainly not very poetical among +their author's poems. With more recent times we have luckily nothing to +do, and the assertions of some authors that they themselves or others +have brought back literature to the stage may be left confronted with +the assertions of not a few actors that, for reasons which they do not +themselves profess entirely to comprehend, a modern drama is almost +bound not to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> be literary if it is to act, and not to act if it is +literary. Some have boldly solved the difficulty by hinting, if not +declaring, that the drama is an outworn form except as mere spectacle or +entertainment; others have exhausted themselves in solutions of a less +trenchant kind; none, it may safely be said, has really solved it. And +though it is quite true that what has happened was predicted sixty or +seventy years ago, as a result of the breach of the monopoly of Covent +Garden and Drury Lane, it is fair to say that the condition of the drama +of at least a quarter of a century earlier had been little if at all +better than it has been since. It is a simple fact that since Sheridan +we have had no dramatist who combined very high acting with very high +literary merit.</p> + +<p>Of what have been called the applied departments of literature, a +somewhat less melancholy account has to be given; but, except in their +enormous multiplication of quantity, they present few opportunities for +remarks of a general character.</p> + +<p>Very great names have been added to the list of theological writers, but +these names on the whole belong to the earlier rather than to the later +portion of the period, and even then something of a change has been +observable in the kinds of their writing. The sermon, that is to say the +literary sermon, has become more and more uncommon; and the popular ear +which calls upon itself to hear sermons at all prefers usually what are +styled practical discourses, often deviating very considerably from the +sermon norm, or else extremely florid addresses modelled on later +Continental patterns, and having as a rule few good literary qualities. +So, too, the elaborate theological treatise has gone out of fashion, and +it may be doubted whether, at least for the last half century, a single +book of the kind has been added to the first class of Anglican +theological writing. This writing has thus taken the form either of +discourses of the older kind, maintained in existence by endowment or by +old prescription, such as the Bampton Lectures, or of rather popular +polemics, or of what may be called without disrespect theological +journalism of various kinds. The general historical energy of the +century, moreover, has not displayed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> itself least in the theological +department, and valuable additions have been made, not merely to general +church history, but to a vast body of biography and journal-history, as +well as to a certain amount of Biblical scholarship. In this latter +direction English scholars have distinguished themselves by somewhat +less violation of the rules of criticism in general than their foreign +brethren and masters. But it cannot be said that the nineteenth century +is ever likely to rank high in the history of English theology. Even its +greatest names—Irving, Chalmers, the Oxford leaders, and others, with +perhaps the single exception of Newman—are important much more +personally and as influences than as literary figures; while the rank +and file, putting history aside, have been distinctly less noteworthy +than in any of the three preceding centuries.</p> + +<p>The "handmaid of theology" has received, at any rate during the first +half of the period, or even the first three-quarters, more distinguished +attentions than her mistress; and the additions made to the list headed +by Erigena and Anselm, if we allow Latin to count, by Bacon and Hobbes, +if we stick to the vernacular, have been many and great. Yet it would +not be unreasonable laudation of times past to say that there hardly, +after Hume's death, arose any philosopher who combined the originality, +the acuteness, and the literary skill of Hume during the first half of +this century, while certainly, at least till within a period forbidden +to our scheme, the latter part of the time has not seen any writer who +could vie even with those of the earlier. To a certain extent the +historical and critical tendencies so often noticed have here been +unfortunate, inasmuch as they have diverted philosophical students from +original writing—or at least from writing as original as the somewhat +narrow and self-repeating paths of philosophy admit—to historical and +critical exercises. But there is also no doubt that the immense +authority which the too long neglected writers of Germany attained, a +little before the middle of the century, has been unfortunate in at +least one respect, if not also in others. The ignorant contempt of +technicalities, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> the determination to refer all things to common +sense employing common language, which distinguished the eighteenth +century with us, was certain to provoke a reaction; and this reaction, +assisted by imitation of the Germans, produced in the decades from 1840 +onwards an ever-increasing tendency among English philosophers or +students of philosophy to employ a jargon often as merely technical as +the language of the schoolmen, and not seldom far emptier of any real +argument. It is not too much to say that if the rough methods of Hobbes +with a terminology far less fallacious, were employed with this jargon, +it would look much poorer than Bramhall's scholasticisms look in the +hands of the redoubtable Nominalist. Fortunately of late there have been +more signs than one of yet another turn of tide, and of a fresh appeal +to the <i>communis sensus</i>, not it may be hoped of the obstinately and +deafly exoteric character of the eighteenth century, but such as will +refuse to pay itself with words, and will exercise a judicious criticism +in a language understanded of all educated people. Then, and not till +then, we may expect to meet philosophy that is literature and literature +that is philosophic.</p> + +<p>Science, that is to say physical science, which has sometimes openly +boasted itself as about to take, and has much more commonly made silent +preparations for taking, the place both of philosophy and of theology, +will hardly be said by the hardiest of her adherents to have done very +much to justify these claims to seats not yet quite vacant from the +point of view of the purely literary critic. We have had some excellent +scientific writers, from Bishop Watson to Professor Huxley; and some of +the books of the century which would deserve remembrance and reading, +whatever their subject matter, have been books of science. Yet it is +scarcely rash to assert that the essential characteristics of science +and the essential characteristics of literature are, if not so +diametrically opposed as some have thought, at any rate very far apart +from one another. Literature can never be scientific; and though science +may be literary, yet it is rather in the fashion in which a man borrows +some alien vesture in order to present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> himself, in compliance with +decency and custom, at a foreign court. Mathematics give us the +example—perhaps the only example—of pure science, of what all science +would be if it could, and of what it approaches, ever more nearly, as +far as it can. It is needless to say that the perfect presentation of +mathematics is in pure symbols, divested of all form and colour, of all +personal tincture and bias. And it should be equally superfluous to add +that it is in form and colour, in suggestion of sound rather than in +precise expression and sense, in personal bias and personal tincture, +that not merely the attraction but the very essence of literature +consists.</p> + +<p>By so much as verbal science or scholarship, which would seem to be more +especially bound to be literature, claims to be and endeavours to be +strictly scientific, by so much also necessarily does it divorce itself +from the literature which it studies. This, if not an enormously great, +is certainly rather a sore evil; and it is one of the most considerable +and characteristic signs of the period we are discussing. The older +scholarship, though sufficiently minute, still clung to the literary +side proper: it was even, in the technical dialect of one of the +universities, opposed to "science," which word indeed was itself used in +a rather technical way. The invention of comparative philology, with its +even more recent off-shoot phonetics, has changed all this, and we now +find "linguistic" and "literary" used by common consent as things not +merely different but hostile, with a further tendency on the part of +linguistics to claim the term "scholarship" exclusively for itself.</p> + +<p>This could hardly in any case be healthy. What may be the abstract value +of the science, or group of sciences, called philology, it is perhaps +not necessary here to inquire. It is sufficient to say that it clearly +has nothing to do with literature except in accidental and remote +applications, that it stands thereto much as geology does to +architecture. Unfortunately, while the scientific side of scholarship is +thus becoming, if it has not become, wholly unliterary, the æsthetic +side has shown signs of becoming, to far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> too great an extent, +unscientific in the bad and baneful sense. With some honourable +exceptions, we find critics of literature too often divided into +linguists who seem neither to think nor to be capable of thinking of the +meaning or the melody, of the individual and technical mastery, of an +author, a book, or a passage, and into loose æsthetic rhetoricians who +will sometimes discourse on Æschylus without knowing a second aorist +from an Attic perfect, and pronounce eulogies or depreciations on Virgil +without having the faintest idea whether there is or is not any +authority for <i>quamvis</i> with one mood rather than another. Nor is it +possible to see what eirenicon is likely to present itself between two +parties, of whom the extremists on the one side may justly point to such +things as have here been quoted, while the extremists on the other feel +it a duty to pronounce phonetics the merest "hariolation," and a very +large part of what goes by the name of philology ingenious guesswork, +some of which may possibly not be false, but hardly any of which can on +principles of sound general criticism be demonstrated to be true. It is +not wonderful, though it is in the highest degree unhealthy, that the +stricter scholars should be more or less scornfully relinquishing the +province of literary criticism altogether, while the looser æsthetics +consider themselves entitled to neglect scholarship in any proper sense +with a similarly scornful indifference.</p> + +<p>It is, however, impossible that offences of this sort should not come +now and then in the history of literature, and fortunately, in that +history, they disappear as they appear. For the present purpose it is +more important to conclude this conclusion with a few general remarks on +the past, fewer on the present, and fewest of all on the future.</p> + +<p>On this last head, indeed, no words were perhaps even better than even +fewest; though something of the sort may be expected. Rash as prophecy +always is, it is never quite so rash as in literature; and though we can +sometimes, looking backward, say—perhaps even then with some +rashness—that such and such a change might or ought to have been +expected, it is very seldom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> that we can, when deprived of this +illegitimate advantage, vaticinate on such subjects with any safety. Yet +the study of the present always, so to speak, includes and overlaps +something of the future, and by comparison at least of other presents we +can discern what it is at least not improbable that the future may be. +What, then, is the present of literature in England?</p> + +<p>It can be described with the greater freedom that, as constantly +repeated, we are not merely at liberty <i>ex hypothesi</i> to omit references +to individuals, but are <i>ex hypothesi</i> bound to exclude them. And no +writer, as it happens rather curiously, of anything like great promise +or performance who was born later than the beginning of the fifties has +died as yet, though the century is so near its close. Yet again, all the +greatest men of the first quarter of the century, with the single +exception of Mr. Ruskin, are gone; and not many of the second remain. By +putting these simple and unmistakable facts together it will be seen, in +a fashion equally free from liability to cavil and from disobliging +glances towards persons, that the present is at best a stationary state +in our literary history. Were we distinctly on the mounting hand, it is, +on the general calculation of the liabilities of human life, certain +that we must have had our Shelley or our Keats side by side with our +Wordsworth and our Coleridge. That we have much excellent work is +certain; that we have much of the absolutely first class not so. And if +we examine even the good work of our younger writers we shall find in +much of it two notes or symptoms—one of imitation or exaggeration, the +other of uncertain and eccentric quest for novelty—which have been +already noted above as signs of decadence or transition.</p> + +<p>Whether it is to be transition or decadence, that is the question. For +the solution of it we can only advance with safety a few considerations, +such as that in no literary history have periods of fresh and first-rate +production ever continued longer than—that they have seldom continued +so long as—the period now under notice, and that it is reasonable, it +is almost certain, that, though by no means an absolutely dead season, +yet a period<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> of comparatively faint life and illustration should +follow. To this it may be added as a consideration not without +philosophical weight that the motives, the thoughts, the hopes, the +fears, perhaps even the manners, which have defrayed the expense of the +literary production of this generation, together with the literary forms +in which, according to custom, they have embodied and ensconced +themselves, have been treated with unexampled, certainly with +unsurpassed, thoroughness, and must now be near exhaustion; while it is +by no means clear that any fresh set is ready to take their place. It is +on this last point, no doubt, that the more sanguine prophets would like +to fight the battle, urging that new social ideas, and so forth, <i>are</i> +in possession of the ground. But this is not the field for that battle.</p> + +<p>In dealing with what has been, with the secular hour that we have +actually and securely had, we are on far safer, if not on positively +safe ground. Here the sheaves are actually reaped and brought home; and +if the teller of them makes a mistake, his judgment, and his judgment +only, need be at fault. Not all ways of such telling are of equal value. +It may be tempting, for instance, but can hardly be very profitable, to +attempt to strike an exact balance between the production of the century +from 1780 to 1880 with that of the other great English literary century +from 1580 to 1680. Dear as the exercise is to some literary accountants, +there is perhaps no satisfactory system of book-keeping by which we can +really set the assets and the liabilities of the period from the +appearance of Spenser to the death of Browne against the assets and +liabilities of that from the appearance of Burns to the death of +Tennyson, and say which has the greater sum to its credit. Still more +vague and futile would it be to attempt to set with any exactness this +balance-sheet against that of the other great literary periods of other +countries, languages, and times. Here again, most emphatically, accuracy +of this kind is <i>not</i> to be expected.</p> + +<p>But what we can say with confidence and profit is that the nineteenth +century in England and English is of these great periods, and of the +greatest of them; that it has taken its place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> finally and certainly, +with a right never likely to be seriously challenged, and in a rank +never likely to be much surpassed.</p> + +<p>The period which lisped its numbers in Burns and Blake and Cowper, which +broke out into full song with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, +Shelley, and Keats, which, not to mention scores of minor singers, took +up the tale with Tennyson and Browning and passed it on to Arnold, +Rossetti, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Swinburne, need fear no comparisons in the +matter of poetry. In prose fiction, as we have seen, it stands alone. It +is almost a century of origins as regards the most important kinds; it +is quite a century of capital and classical performance in them. In +"making"—prose or verse—no time leaves record of performance more +distinguished or more various.</p> + +<p>That in one great literary kind, drama, it exhibits lamentable +deficiency, that indeed in that kind it hardly counts at all, has been +admitted; and it is not probable that in any of the serious prose kinds, +except history, it will ever rank very high when compared with others. +Its theology has, as far as literature is concerned, been a little +wanting in dignity, in finish, and even in fervour, its philosophy +either commonplace or jargonish, its exercises in science and +scholarship ever divorcing themselves further from literary ideals. But +in the quality of its miscellaneous writing, as well as in the +facilities given to such writing by its special growth—some would say +its special fungus—of the periodical, it again rises to the first +class. Hardly the period of Montaigne and Bacon, certainly not that of +Dryden, Cowley, and Temple, nor that of Addison and Steele, nor that of +Johnson and Goldsmith, can vie with the century of Charles Lamb and +William Hazlitt, of Leigh Hunt and Thomas de Quincey, of Macaulay and +Thackeray and Carlyle, of Arnold and Mr. Ruskin. Miscellaneous we have +been,—perhaps too much so,—but we should be a little saved by the +excellence of some of our miscellanists.</p> + +<p>Pessimists would probably say that the distinguishing and not altogether +favourable notes of the century are a somewhat vagabond curiosity in +matter and a tormented unrest of style. The former<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> concerns us little, +and is chiefly noticeable here because of the effect which it has had on +the great transformation of historical writing so often noticed; the +latter concerns us intimately. And no doubt there is hardly a single +feature—not even the growth of the novel, not even the development of +the newspaper—which will so distinctly and permanently distinguish this +century in English literary history as the great changes which have come +over style, and especially prose style. There has been less opportunity +to notice these collectively in any of the former chapters than there +has been to notice some other changes: nor was this of much importance, +for the present is the right place for gathering up the fragments.</p> + +<p>The change of style in prose is undoubtedly as much the leading feature +of the century as is in poetry the change of thought and outlook, on +which latter enough perhaps has been said elsewhere; the whole of our +two long chapters on poetry being indeed, with great part of this +conclusion, a continuous exposition of it. But the change in prose was +neither confined to, nor specially connected with, any single department +of literature. Indirectly indeed, and distantly, it may be said to have +been connected with the growth of the essay and the popularity of +periodicals; and yet it is not quite certain that this was anything more +than a coincidence due to the actual fact that the first extensive +practitioners of ornate prose, Wilson and De Quincey, were in a way +journalists.</p> + +<p>That the sudden ornateness, in part a mere ordinary reaction, was also +in part due to a reflection of the greater gorgeousness of poetry, +though it was in itself less a matter of thought than of style, is true. +But literary reactions are always in part at least literary +developments; and after the prose of Burke and Gibbon, even after that +of Johnson, it was certain that the excessive plainness reached in the +mid-eighteenth century would be exchanged for something else. But it +could not possibly have been anticipated that the change would exhibit +the extent or the variety that it has actually shown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span></p> + +<p>That it has enriched English literature with a great deal of admirable +matter is certain; that it has not merely produced a great deal of sad +stuff, but has perhaps inflicted some permanent or at least lasting +damage on the purity, the simplicity, and in the best sense the strength +of style, is at least equally certain. It is less easy to say whether it +is, as a movement, near its close, or with what sort of reaction it is +likely to be followed. On the one hand the indication of particular +follies and excesses may not seem decisive; for there is little doubt +that in all the stages of this <i>flamboyant</i> movement—from De Quincey to +Carlyle, from Carlyle to Mr. Ruskin, from Mr. Ruskin to persons whom it +is unnecessary to mention—the advocates of the sober styles thought and +said that the force of extravagance could no further go, and that the +last outrages had been committed on the dignity and simplicity of +English. On the other hand there are signs, which are very unlikely to +deceive the practised critic, tending to show that the mode is likely to +change. When actual frippery is seen hanging up in Monmouth Street or +Monmouth Street's successors, when cheap imitations of fashionable +garments crowd the shop windows and decorate the bodies of the +vulgar—then the wise know that this fashion will shortly change. And +certainly something similar may be observed in literature to-day. +Cacophony jostles preciousness in novel and newspaper; attempts at +contorted epigram appear side by side with slips showing that the writer +has not the slightest knowledge of the classics in the old sense, and +knows exceedingly little of anything that can be called classic in the +widest possible acceptation of the term. Tyrannies cease when the +cobblers begin to fear them; fashions, especially literary fashions, +when the cobblers take them up.</p> + +<p>Yet the production of what must or may be called literature is now so +large, and in consequence of the spread of what is called education the +appetite so largely exceeds the taste for it, that it is not so easy as +it would once have been to forecast the extent and validity of any +reaction that may take place.</p> + +<p>If, without undue praising of times past, without pleading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> guilty to +the prejudices sometimes attributed to an academic education, and also +without trespassing beyond the proper limits of this book, it may be +permitted to express an opinion on the present state of English +literature, that opinion, while it need not be very gloomy, can hardly +be very sanguine. And one ground for discouragement, which very +especially concerns us, lies in the fact that on the whole we are now +<i>too</i> "literary." Not, as has been said, that the general taste is too +refined, but that there is a too indiscriminate appetite in the general; +not that the actual original force of our writers is, with rare +exceptions, at all alarming, but that a certain amount of literary +craftsmanship, a certain knowledge of the past and present of +literature, is with us in a rather inconvenient degree. The public +demands quantity, not quality; and it is ready, for a time at any rate, +to pay for its quantity with almost unheard of returns, both, as the +homely old phrase goes, in praise and in pudding. And the writer, though +seldom hampered by too exact an education in form, has had books, as a +rule, too much with him. Sometimes he simply copies, and knows that he +copies; oftener, without knowing it, he follows and imitates, while he +thinks that he is doing original work.</p> + +<p>And worse than all this, the abundance of reading has created an +altogether artificial habit—a habit quite as artificial as any that can +ever have prevailed at other periods—of regarding the main stuff and +substance of literature. Much reading of novels, which are to the +ordinary reader his books, and his only books, has induced him to take +their standards as the standards of both nature and life. And this is +all the more dangerous because in all probability the writers of these +very novels have themselves acquired their knowledge, formed their +standards, in a manner little if at all more first-hand. We have nature, +not as Jones or Brown saw it for himself, but as he saw it through the +spectacles of Mr. Ruskin or of Jefferies; art, not as he saw it himself, +but as he saw it through those of Mr. Ruskin again or of Mr. Pater; +literary criticism as he learnt it from Mr. Arnold or from +Sainte-Beuve;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> criticism of life as he took it from Thackeray or from +Mr. Meredith.</p> + +<p>Something like this has occurred at least three times before in the +history of European literature. It happened in late Græco-Roman times, +and all the world knows what the cure was then, and how the +much-discussed barbarian cleared the mind of Europe of its literary cant +by very nearly clearing out all the literature as well. It happened on a +much smaller scale, and with a less tremendous purgation, at the close +of the Middle Ages, when the world suddenly, as it were, shut up one +library and opened another; and at the end of the seventeenth and +beginning of the eighteenth century, when it shut both of these or the +greater part of them, and took to a small bookshelf of "classics," a +slender stock of carefully observed formulæ and—common sense.</p> + +<p>What it will take to now, nobody can say; but that it will in one +fashion or another change most of its recent wear, shut most of its +recent books, and perhaps give itself something of a holiday from +literature, except in scholastic shapes, may be not quite impossible. +Another <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> may be coming for this decade, as it came a +hundred years ago: all we can say is that it apparently has not come +yet. But whether it does come or does not, the moment is certainly no +bad one, even if chronology did not make it inviting, for setting in +order the actual, the certain, the past and registered production of the +century since the dawn of the great change which ended its vigil. The +historian, as he closes his record, is only too conscious of the +objections to omission that may probably be brought against him, and of +those of too liberal admission which certainly will be brought. It is +possible that for some tastes even this chapter may not contain enough +of <i>Tendenz</i>-discussion, that they may miss the broader sweeps and more +confident generalisations of another school of criticism. But the old +objection to fighting with armour which you have not proved has always +seemed a sound one, and has seldom failed to be justified of those who +set it at nought. Careful arrangement of detail and premiss, cautious +drawing of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> conclusions, and constant subjection of these conclusions to +that process of literary comparison which I believe to be the strongest, +the safest, the best engine of literary criticism altogether—these are +the things which I have endeavoured to observe here. It might have shown +greater strength of mind to reject a large number of the authors here +named, and so bring the matter into case for more extended treatment of +interesting individuals. But there is something, as it seems to me, a +little presumptuous in a too peremptory anticipation of the operations +of Time the Scavenger. The critic may pretty well foresee the operations +of the wallet-bearer, but he is not to dictate to him the particular +"alms for oblivion" which he shall give. As it used to be the custom for +a dramatic author, even though damned, to have his entrées at the +theatre, so those who have once made an actual figure on the literary +stage are entitled, until some considerable time has elapsed, to +book-room. They lose it gradually and almost automatically; and as I +have left out many writers of the end of last century whom, if I had +been writing sixty years since, I should doubtless have put in, many of +the first half of it whom I should have admitted if I had been writing +thirty years since, so in another generation others will no doubt +exercise a similar thinning on my own passed or pressed men.</p> + +<p>But few, however, I think, appear here without more or less right of +admission to the mind-map of the century's literature which a +well-furnished mind should at this moment contain. That such a mind-map, +quite irrespective of examinations and lecture-courses, and of literary +bread-study generally, is a valuable thing, I have no doubt. And I +think, without wishing to magnify mine office, that the general +possession of it might do something to counteract these disastrous +influences which have been referred to a little earlier. A man should +surely be a little less apt to take the pinchbeck poetry of his own day +for gold when he remembers the Della Cruscans and Sentimentalists, the +Montgomerys and the Tuppers; the terror-novel and the Minerva Press +should surely be useful skeletons to him at his feast of fiction in +kinds which it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> would be beyond my province to describe more +particularly. He will not clamour, as I have known very excellent +persons clamour, for the "raising of English to a new power" when he has +before him the long procession of ingenious jargonists whose jargon has +been in its turn hailed as a revelation and dismissed as an old song. +And he will neither overexalt the dignity of literature, nor be a +self-tormentor and a tormentor of others about its approaching decline +and fall, when he sees how constantly, how incessantly, the kissed mouth +has renewed its freshness, the apparently dying flower has shed seed and +shot suckers for a new growth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span></p> +<h2>INDEX</h2> + +<p>(<i>It has been endeavoured in this Index to include the name (with dates) +of every author, and the title of every book, discussed in detail. But +in order to avoid unnecessary bulk, books and authors merely referred +to, as well as parts of books, are not usually given.</i>)</p> + + +<p> +<i>Academy</i>, <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Adam Bede</i>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Adam Blair</i>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Age of Reason, The</i>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Ainsworth, Harrison (1805-82), <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a><br /> +<br /> +Alison, Sir Archibald (1792-1867), <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a><br /> +<br /> +Allingham, William (1824-89), <a href='#Page_307'>307</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Alton Locke</i>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Ancient Law</i>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Ancient Mariner, The Rime of the</i>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>-63<br /> +<br /> +<i>Andromeda</i>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Anna St. Ives</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Annals of the Parish</i>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Anti-Jacobin</i>, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ</i>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a><br /> +<br /> +Arnold, Matthew (1822-88), <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>-287, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>-388<br /> +<br /> +Arnold, Thomas (1795-1842), <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a><br /> +<br /> +Ashe, Thomas, 1836-89, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Asolando</i>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Athenæum</i>, <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br /> +<br /> +Atherstone, Edwin (1788-1872), <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Aurora Leigh</i>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a><br /> +<br /> +Austen, Jane (1775-1817), <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>-131<br /> +<br /> +Austen, Lady, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a><br /> +<br /> +Austin, John (1790-1859), <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a><br /> +<br /> +Austin, Sarah (1793-1867), <a href='#Page_358'>358</a><br /> +<br /> +Aytoun, William Edmonstoune (1813-65), <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>-304<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Bage, Robert (1728-1801), <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a><br /> +<br /> +Bagehot, Walter (1826-77), <a href='#Page_383'>383</a>-384<br /> +<br /> +Baillie, Joanna (1762-1851), <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#Page_420'>420</a><br /> +<br /> +Barbauld, Mrs. (1743-1825), <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Barchester Towers</i>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a><br /> +<br /> +Barham, Richard Harris (1788-1845), <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a><br /> +<br /> +Barnes, William (1800-86), <a href='#Page_118'>118</a><br /> +<br /> +Barry Cornwall, see Procter, B. W.<br /> +<br /> +Barrow, Sir John (1764-1848), <a href='#Page_179'>179</a><br /> +<br /> +Barton, Bernard (1784-1849), <a href='#Page_107'>107</a><br /> +<br /> +Baynes, Thomas Spencer (1823-87), <a href='#Page_351'>351</a><br /> +<br /> +Beckford, William (1759-1844), <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a><br /> +<br /> +Beddoes, Thomas Lovell (1803-49), <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>-116<br /> +<br /> +<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a><br /> +<br /> +Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Biographia Borealis</i>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a><br /> +<br /> +Blackie, John Stuart (1809-95), <a href='#Page_300'>300</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Blake, William (1757-1827), <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-3, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>-13<br /> +<br /> +<i>Bleak House</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> +<br /> +Bloomfield, Robert (1766-1823), <a href='#Page_107'>107</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Bon Gaultier Ballads</i>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a><br /> +<br /> +Borrow, George (1803-81), <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a><br /> +<br /> +Bowles, Caroline (1787-1854), <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br /> +<br /> +Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850), <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a><br /> +<br /> +Brimley, George (1819-57), <a href='#Page_383'>383</a>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br /> +<br /> +Brontë, Anne (1820-49), <a href='#Page_319'>319</a><br /> +<br /> +Brontë, Charlotte (1816-55), <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>-321<br /> +<br /> +Brontë, Emily (1818-48), <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span>Brown, Dr. John (1810-82), <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br /> +<br /> +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1809-61), <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>-281<br /> +<br /> +Browning, Robert (1812-89), <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>-277<br /> +<br /> +Bryant, Jacob (1715-1804), <a href='#Page_405'>405</a><br /> +<br /> +Buckle, Henry Thomas (1821-62), <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a><br /> +<br /> +Bulwer, see Lytton<br /> +<br /> +Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824), <a href='#Page_48'>48</a><br /> +<br /> +Burke, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a><br /> +<br /> +Burney, Miss (1752-1840), <a href='#Page_125'>125</a><br /> +<br /> +Burns, Robert (1759-96), <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-3, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>-18<br /> +<br /> +Burton, John Hill (1809-81), <a href='#Page_240'>240</a><br /> +<br /> +Burton, Sir Richard (1821-90), <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a><br /> +<br /> +Byron, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a><br /> +<br /> +Byron, Lord (1788-1824), <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>-81<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Caleb Williams</i>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Calverley, Charles Stuart (1831-84), <a href='#Page_314'>314</a><br /> +<br /> +Campbell, Mr. Dykes, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a><br /> +<br /> +Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844), <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>-94<br /> +<br /> +Canning, George (1770-1827), <a href='#Page_19'>19</a><br /> +<br /> +Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881), <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>-240<br /> +<br /> +Cary, Henry (1772-1844), <a href='#Page_110'>110</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Castle Rackrent</i>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a><br /> +<br /> +Chalmers, Thomas (1780-1847), <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a><br /> +<br /> +Chambers, Robert (1802-71), <a href='#Page_414'>414</a><br /> +<br /> +Chamier, Captain, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Chartism</i>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Christabel</i>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>-63<br /> +<br /> +<i>Christian Year</i>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>-364<br /> +<br /> +"Christopher North," see Wilson, John<br /> +<br /> +Church, Richard (1815-90), <a href='#Page_371'>371</a><br /> +<br /> +Churchill, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>City of Dreadful Night, The</i>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a><br /> +<br /> +Clive, Mrs. Archer (1801-73), <a href='#Page_302'>302</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Cloister and the Hearth, The</i>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a><br /> +<br /> +Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819-61), <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a><br /> +<br /> +Cobbett, William (1762-1835), <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>-172<br /> +<br /> +Coleridge, Hartley (1796-1849), <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>-203<br /> +<br /> +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834), <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>-63<br /> +<br /> +Coleridge, Sara (1802-52), <a href='#Page_119'>119</a><br /> +<br /> +Collins, Charles Alston (1828-73), <a href='#Page_333'>333</a><br /> +<br /> +Collins, Mortimer (1827-76), <a href='#Page_307'>307</a><br /> +<br /> +Collins, Wilkie (1824-89), <a href='#Page_333'>333</a><br /> +<br /> +Combe, William (1741-1823), <a href='#Page_47'>47</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Confessions of a Justified Sinner</i>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Confessions of an English Opium-Eater</i>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Congreve, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a><br /> +<br /> +Conington, John (1825-69), <a href='#Page_407'>407</a>, <a href='#Page_408'>408</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a><br /> +<br /> +"Corn-Law Rhymer, The," see Elliott, Ebenezer<br /> +<br /> +Cornwall, Barry, see Procter, B. W.<br /> +<br /> +Cory, William, see Johnson, William<br /> +<br /> +Cottle, Joseph (1770-1853), <a href='#Page_57'>57</a><br /> +<br /> +Cowper, William (1731-1800), <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-7<br /> +<br /> +Coxe, Archdeacon, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a> <i>note</i><br /> +<br /> +Crabbe, George (1754-1832), <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-3, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>-9<br /> +<br /> +Craik, Dinah Maria (1826-87), <a href='#Page_336'>336</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Cranford</i>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a><br /> +<br /> +Croker, Crofton (1798-1854), <a href='#Page_141'>141</a><br /> +<br /> +Croker, John Wilson (1780-1857), <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Crotchet Castle</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Cruise upon Wheels, A</i>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a><br /> +<br /> +Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811), <a href='#Page_42'>42</a><br /> +<br /> +Cunningham, Allan (1784-1842), <a href='#Page_108'>108</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Curiosities of Literature</i>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Daniel Deronda</i>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a><br /> +<br /> +D'Arblay, Madame (1752-1840), <a href='#Page_125'>125</a><br /> +<br /> +Darley, George (1795-1846), <a href='#Page_114'>114</a><br /> +<br /> +Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-82), <a href='#Page_412'>412</a>-414<br /> +<br /> +Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802), <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>David Copperfield</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> +<br /> +Davy, Sir Humphry (1778-1829), <a href='#Page_410'>410</a>, <a href='#Page_411'>411</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Death's Jest-Book</i>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a><br /> +<br /> +"Della Crusca," see Merry<br /> +<br /> +"Delta," see Moir, D. M.<br /> +<br /> +De Quincey, Thomas (1785-1859), <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>-198<br /> +<br /> +Dickens, Charles (1812-70), <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>-151<br /> +<br /> +Digby, Kenelm, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a><br /> +<br /> +Disraeli, Benjamin (1804-81), <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br /> +<br /> +Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848), <a href='#Page_179'>179</a><br /> +<br /> +Dobell, Sydney (1824-74), <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>-307<br /> +<br /> +<i>Dombey and Son</i>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a><br /> +<br /> +Domett, Alfred (1811-87), <a href='#Page_302'>302</a><br /> +<br /> +Doyle, Sir Francis (1810-88), <a href='#Page_206'>206</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Dream of Gerontius, The</i>, <a href='#Page_367'>367</a><br /> +<br /> +Dryden, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a><br /> +<br /> +Dufferin, Lady (1807-67), <a href='#Page_315'>315</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span>Dunbar, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Edgeworth, Maria (1767-1849), <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>-128<br /> +<br /> +<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Elia, The Essays of</i>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a><br /> +<br /> +Eliot, George, see Evans, Mary Ann<br /> +<br /> +Elliott, Ebenezer ("The Corn-Law Rhymer") (1781-1849), <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a><br /> +<br /> +Ellis, George (1753-1815), <a href='#Page_20'>20</a><br /> +<br /> +Emerson, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Enoch Arden</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Eothen</i>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Epic of Women, The</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Esmond</i>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Essays and Reviews</i>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Essays in Criticism</i>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a><br /> +<br /> +"Ettrick Shepherd," The, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a><br /> +<br /> +Evans, Mary Ann (1819-80), <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>-324<br /> +<br /> +<i>Examiner</i>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Fazio</i>, <a href='#Page_421'>421</a><br /> +<br /> +Ferguson, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a><br /> +<br /> +Ferguson, Sir Samuel (1810-86), <a href='#Page_302'>302</a><br /> +<br /> +Ferrier, James Frederick (1808-64), <a href='#Page_351'>351</a><br /> +<br /> +Ferrier, Susan (1782-1854), <a href='#Page_351'>351</a><br /> +<br /> +Finlay, George (1795-1875), <a href='#Page_252'>252</a> <i>note</i><br /> +<br /> +FitzGerald, Edward (1809-83), <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>-209<br /> +<br /> +Forster, John (1812-76), <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Fortnightly Review</i>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a><br /> +<br /> +Foster, John (1770-1843), <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a><br /> +<br /> +"Fraserians," The, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a> <i>sqq.</i>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Frederick the Great, History of</i>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Freeman, Edward Augustus (1823-92), <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>French Revolution, History of the</i>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Frere, John Hookham, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a><br /> +<br /> +Froude, James Anthony (1818-94), <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>-252<br /> +<br /> +Froude, Richard Hurrell (1803-36), <a href='#Page_370'>370</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Galt, John (1779-1839), <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>-141<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gamekeeper at Home, The</i>, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a><br /> +<br /> +Gaskell, Mrs. (1810-65), <a href='#Page_335'>335</a><br /> +<br /> +Gibbon, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a><br /> +<br /> +Gifford, William (1756-1826), <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>-25<br /> +<br /> +Gilpin, William (1724-1804), <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a><br /> +<br /> +Glascock, Captain, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a><br /> +<br /> +Godwin, William (1756-1836), <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>-37<br /> +<br /> +Goldsmith, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a><br /> +<br /> +Gray, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Great Expectations</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> +<br /> +Green, John Richard (1837-83), <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a><br /> +<br /> +Greenwell, Dora (1821-82), <a href='#Page_316'>316</a><br /> +<br /> +Greville, Charles, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a><br /> +<br /> +Grosart, Dr., <a href='#Page_52'>52</a> <i>note</i><br /> +<br /> +Grote, George (1794-1871), <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>-222<br /> +<br /> +<i>Guy Livingstone</i>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Hake, Thomas Gordon (1809-94), <a href='#Page_301'>301</a><br /> +<br /> +Hall, Captain Basil (1788-1844), <a href='#Page_159'>159</a><br /> +<br /> +Hallam, Henry (1777-1859), <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>-214<br /> +<br /> +Hallam, Arthur Henry (1811-33), <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a><br /> +<br /> +Hamilton, Sir William (1788-1856), <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>-352<br /> +<br /> +Hannay, James (1827-73), <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Hard Times</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Haunted and the Haunters, The</i>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a><br /> +<br /> +Hawker, Robert Stephen (1803-75), <a href='#Page_118'>118</a><br /> +<br /> +Hayley, William (1745-1820), <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a><br /> +<br /> +Hayward, Abraham (1801-84), <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br /> +<br /> +Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>-187<br /> +<br /> +Head, Sir Edmund (1805-68), <a href='#Page_206'>206</a><br /> +<br /> +Head, Sir Francis (1793-1875), <a href='#Page_206'>206</a><br /> +<br /> +Headley, Henry (1765-88), <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a> <i>note</i><br /> +<br /> +Heber, Reginald (1783-1826), <a href='#Page_110'>110</a><br /> +<br /> +Helps, Sir Arthur (1813-75), <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br /> +<br /> +Hemans, Mrs. (1793-1835), <a href='#Page_112'>112</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Henrietta Temple</i>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Heroes and Hero-Worship</i>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Hogg, James (1770-1835), <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>-101<br /> +<br /> +Hogg, T. J., <a href='#Page_82'>82</a><br /> +<br /> +Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809), <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a><br /> +<br /> +Hood, Thomas (1799-1845), <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>-124<br /> +<br /> +Hook, Theodore (1788-1841), <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a><br /> +<br /> +Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-90), <a href='#Page_294'>294</a><br /> +<br /> +Horne, Richard H. (1803-84), <a href='#Page_117'>117</a><br /> +<br /> +Horne Tooke (1736-1812), <a href='#Page_46'>46</a><br /> +<br /> +Houghton, Lord (Milnes, R. M.) (1809-85), <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Household Words</i>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a><br /> +<br /> +Hunt, Leigh (1784-1859), <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his verse and life, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his prose, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>-200</span><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span>Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-95), <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>, <a href='#Page_416'>416</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Ideal of a Christian Church, The</i>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Idylls of the King</i>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Imaginary Conversations</i>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Imaginary Portraits</i>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Ingoldsby Legends, The</i>, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>In Memoriam</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Ion</i>, <a href='#Page_421'>421</a><br /> +<br /> +Irving, Edward (1792-1834), <a href='#Page_375'>375</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>It is Never too Late to Mend</i>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +James, G. P. R. (1801-60), <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a><br /> +<br /> +Jameson, Mrs. (1794-1860), <a href='#Page_397'>397</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Jane Eyre</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a><br /> +<br /> +Jefferies, John Richard (1848-87), <a href='#Page_396'>396</a>, <a href='#Page_397'>397</a><br /> +<br /> +Jeffrey, Francis (1773-1850), <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>-176<br /> +<br /> +Jerrold, Douglas (1803-57), <a href='#Page_210'>210</a><br /> +<br /> +Johnson, S., <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a><br /> +<br /> +Johnson, William (1784-1864), <a href='#Page_246'>246</a><br /> +<br /> +Jones, Ebenezer (1820-60), <a href='#Page_307'>307</a><br /> +<br /> +Jones, Ernest (1819-68), <a href='#Page_307'>307</a><br /> +<br /> +Jowett, Benjamin (1817-93), <a href='#Page_374'>374</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Keats, John (1795-1821), <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>-91<br /> +<br /> +Keble, John (1792-1866), <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>-364<br /> +<br /> +Kinglake, Alexander (1809-91), <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a><br /> +<br /> +Kingsley, Charles (1819-75), <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>-328<br /> +<br /> +Kingsley, Henry (1830-76), <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a><br /> +<br /> +Knowles, James Sheridan (1784-1862), <a href='#Page_422'>422</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Kubla Khan</i>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>-63<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Lady of Lyons, The</i>, <a href='#Page_423'>423</a><br /> +<br /> +Lamb, Charles (1775-1834), <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>-184<br /> +<br /> +Lancaster, Henry (1829-75), <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br /> +<br /> +Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, "L. E. L." (1802-38), <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a><br /> +<br /> +Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864), <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>-104<br /> +<br /> +<i>Latin Christianity, History of</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Latter-Day Pamphlets</i>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Lawrence, Dr., <a href='#Page_21'>21</a><br /> +<br /> +Lawrence, George Alfred (1827-76), <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Lays of Ancient Rome</i>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers</i>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a><br /> +<br /> +Lear, Edward (1812-88), <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a><br /> +<br /> +Lee, the Misses, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a><br /> +<br /> +Lever, Charles (1806-72), <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a><br /> +<br /> +Levy, Amy (1861-89), <a href='#Page_316'>316</a><br /> +<br /> +Lewes, George Henry (1817-78), <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a><br /> +<br /> +Lewis, Sir George Cornewall (1806-63), <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a><br /> +<br /> +Lewis, Matthew ("Monk") (1775-1818), <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a><br /> +<br /> +Liddon, Henry Parry (1829-90), <a href='#Page_371'>371</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Life Drama, A</i>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a><br /> +<br /> +Lingard, John (1771-1851), <a href='#Page_215'>215</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Little Dorrit</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> +<br /> +Lloyd (the elder), <a href='#Page_3'>3</a><br /> +<br /> +Lloyd, Charles (1775-1839), <a href='#Page_181'>181</a><br /> +<br /> +Locker, Frederick (1821-95), <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a><br /> +<br /> +Lockhart, John Gibson (1794-1854), <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>-194;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his <i>Life of Scott</i>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>London Magazine</i>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Long, George (1800-79), <a href='#Page_407'>407</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a><br /> +<br /> +Lytton, the first Lord (1803-73), <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>-145, <a href='#Page_422'>422</a>, <a href='#Page_423'>423</a><br /> +<br /> +Lytton, Edward Robert, first Earl of (1831-91), <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>-312<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800-59), <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>-232<br /> +<br /> +M'Crie, Thomas (1772-1835), <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a><br /> +<br /> +Mackay, Charles (1814-89), <a href='#Page_302'>302</a><br /> +<br /> +Mackenzie, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a><br /> +<br /> +Mackintosh, Sir James (1765-1832), <a href='#Page_345'>345</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Macmillan's Magazine</i>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a><br /> +<br /> +Maginn, William (1793-1842), <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>-205<br /> +<br /> +Mahon, Lord, see Stanhope<br /> +<br /> +Maine, Sir Henry J. S. (1822-88), <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a><br /> +<br /> +Malone, Edmund (1741-1812), <a href='#Page_47'>47</a><br /> +<br /> +Malthus, Thomas Robert (1766-1834), <a href='#Page_46'>46</a><br /> +<br /> +Mangan, James Clarence (1803-49), <a href='#Page_118'>118</a><br /> +<br /> +Manning, Henry Edward (1808-92), <a href='#Page_370'>370</a><br /> +<br /> +Mansel, Henry Longueville (1820-71), <a href='#Page_352'>352</a>-354<br /> +<br /> +<i>Marius the Epicurean</i>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a><br /> +<br /> +Marryat, Frederick (1792-1848), <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a><br /> +<br /> +Marston, Philip Bourke (1850-87), <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a><br /> +<br /> +Marston, Westland (1819-90), <a href='#Page_424'>424</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span>Martineau, Harriet (1802-76), <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a><br /> +<br /> +Mathias, Thomas James (1754?-1835), <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a><br /> +<br /> +Maturin, Charles Robert (1782-1824), <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Maud</i>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a><br /> +<br /> +Maurice, Frederick Denison (1805-72), <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a><br /> +<br /> +Maxwell, Sir William Stirling (1818-78), <a href='#Page_252'>252</a> <i>note</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Melmoth the Wanderer</i>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Men and Women</i>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Merivale, Charles (1808-93), <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br /> +<br /> +Merry, Robert ("Della Crusca") (1755-98), <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a> <i>note</i><br /> +<br /> +Mill, James (1773-1836), <a href='#Page_345'>345</a><br /> +<br /> +Mill, John Stuart (1806-73), <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>-349<br /> +<br /> +Miller, Hugh (1802-56), <a href='#Page_414'>414</a>, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a><br /> +<br /> +Milman, Henry Hart (1791-1868), <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a><br /> +<br /> +Milnes, R. M., see Houghton, Lord<br /> +<br /> +Minto, William (1845-93), <a href='#Page_402'>402</a><br /> +<br /> +Mitford, Mary Russell (1787-1855), <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a><br /> +<br /> +Mitford, William (1744-1827), <a href='#Page_215'>215</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Modern British Theatre</i>, <a href='#Page_417'>417</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Modern Painters</i>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a><br /> +<br /> +Moir, D. M. ("Delta") (1798-1851), <a href='#Page_140'>140</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Monk, The</i>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a><br /> +<br /> +Montgomery, James (1771-1854), <a href='#Page_107'>107</a><br /> +<br /> +Montgomery, Robert (1807-55), <a href='#Page_187'>187</a> <i>note</i><br /> +<br /> +Moore, John (1729-1802), <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>-28<br /> +<br /> +Moore, Thomas (1779-1852), <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-98<br /> +<br /> +More, Hannah (1745-1833), <a href='#Page_45'>45</a><br /> +<br /> +Morris, Mr., <a href='#Page_90'>90</a><br /> +<br /> +Motherwell, William (1797-1835), <a href='#Page_109'>109</a><br /> +<br /> +Movement, The Oxford, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Munro, Hugh A. J. (1819-85), <a href='#Page_408'>408</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Music and Moonlight</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Napier, Sir William</span> (1785-1860), <a href='#Page_212'>212</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Newcomes, The</i>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br /> +<br /> +Newman, John Henry (1801-90), <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>-370<br /> +<br /> +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Noctes Ambrosianæ</i>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a><br /> +<br /> +Noel, Roden (1834-94), <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a><br /> +<br /> +Norton, Mrs. (1808-77), <a href='#Page_315'>315</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>ODE on Intimations of Immortality</i>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a><br /> +<br /> +O'Keefe, John (1747-1833), <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_418'>418</a>-419<br /> +<br /> +<i>Old Curiosity Shop, The</i>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a><br /> +<br /> +Oliphant, Laurence, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches</i>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Oliver Twist</i>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Orion</i>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a><br /> +<br /> +O'Shaughnessy, Arthur (1844-81), <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>-296<br /> +<br /> +<i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Our Village</i>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Paine, Thomas (1737-1809), <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>-32<br /> +<br /> +Palgrave, Mr., <a href='#Page_87'>87</a><br /> +<br /> +Palgrave, Sir Francis (1788-1861), <a href='#Page_216'>216</a><br /> +<br /> +Palgrave, William Gifford (1826-88), <a href='#Page_216'>216</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Paracelsus</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Past and Present</i>, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Patchwork</i>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a><br /> +<br /> +Pater, Walter H. (1839-94), <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>-401<br /> +<br /> +Pattison, Mark (1813-84), <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a><br /> +<br /> +Paul, Mr. Kegan, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Paul Ferroll</i>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pauline</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a><br /> +<br /> +Peacock, Thomas Love (1785-1866), <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pelham</i>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pendennis</i>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Peter Plymley's Letters</i>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Peter's Letters</i>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Philip Van Artevelde</i>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pickwick Papers, The</i>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a><br /> +<br /> +Pindar, Peter, see Wolcot, John<br /> +<br /> +Planché, James R. (1796-1880), <a href='#Page_423'>423</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Plays on the Passions</i>, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Poetical Sketches</i>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Political Justice</i>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Pollock, Sir F. (1815-88), <a href='#Page_207'>207</a><br /> +<br /> +Pope, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a><br /> +<br /> +Porson, Richard (1759-1808), <a href='#Page_406'>406</a>, <a href='#Page_407'>407</a><br /> +<br /> +Praed, Winthrop Markworth (1802-39), <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>-124<br /> +<br /> +<i>Prælectiones Academicæ</i>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a><br /> +<br /> +Price, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a><br /> +<br /> +Priestley, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Princess, The</i>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a><br /> +<br /> +Procter, Adelaide Anne (1825-64), <a href='#Page_316'>316</a><br /> +<br /> +Procter, B. W. ("Barry Cornwall") (1790-1874), <a href='#Page_109'>109</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Prolegomena Logica</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span>Prowse, W. J. (1836-70), <a href='#Page_314'>314</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pursuits of Literature, The</i>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a><br /> +<br /> +Pusey, Edward Bouverie (1800-82), <a href='#Page_360'>360</a>-362<br /> +<br /> +Pusey, Philip (1799-1855), <a href='#Page_207'>207</a><br /> +<br /> +Pye, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Quarterly Review</i>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Radcliffe, Mrs. (1764-1823), <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Ravenshoe</i>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a><br /> +<br /> +Reade, Charles (1814-84), <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>-333<br /> +<br /> +Reeve, Henry, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Renaissance in Italy, The</i>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Rights of Man, The</i>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Rights of Woman, The</i>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Ring and the Book, The</i>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Robertson, Frederick (1816-53), <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a><br /> +<br /> +Robinson, H. Crabb, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a><br /> +<br /> +Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855), <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Rolliad, The</i>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Roman Poets of the Republic</i>, <a href='#Page_408'>408</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Rondeaux</i>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a><br /> +<br /> +Roscoe, William (1753-1831), <a href='#Page_214'>214</a><br /> +<br /> +Rossetti, D. G. (1828-82), <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>-292<br /> +<br /> +Rossetti, Miss (1830-94), <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a><br /> +<br /> +Ruskin, John (1819), <a href="#Page_v">v</a>, <a href='#Page_388'>388</a>-397<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Sartor Resartus</i>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>Saturday Review</i>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a>, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a><br /> +<br /> +Sayers, Dr. (1763-1817), <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Sayings and Doings</i>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Schiller, Life of</i>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Scots, the literary virtues of, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poets in, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>-18, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Scott, John (1730-83), <a href='#Page_185'>185</a><br /> +<br /> +Scott, Michael (1789-1835), <a href='#Page_160'>160</a><br /> +<br /> +Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832), <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>-75, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>-138<br /> +<br /> +Scott, William Bell (1811-90), <a href='#Page_302'>302</a><br /> +<br /> +Seeley, Sir J. R. (1834-94), <a href='#Page_252'>252</a> note<br /> +<br /> +Sellar, William Young (1825-90), <a href='#Page_408'>408</a>, <a href='#Page_409'>409</a><br /> +<br /> +Senior, Nassau W. (1790-1864), <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br /> +<br /> +Seward, Miss (1747-1809), <a href='#Page_19'>19</a><br /> +<br /> +Shairp, Principal (1819-85), <a href='#Page_15'>15</a><br /> +<br /> +Shelley, Mrs. (1798-1851), <a href='#Page_38'>38</a><br /> +<br /> +Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>-86<br /> +<br /> +Skene, William Forbes (1809-92), <a href='#Page_240'>240</a><br /> +<br /> +Smedley, Frank E. (1818-64), <a href='#Page_337'>337</a><br /> +<br /> +Smedley, Menella Bute (1820-77), <a href='#Page_316'>316</a><br /> +<br /> +Smith, Alexander (1830-67), <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>-307<br /> +<br /> +Smith, Sydney (1771-1845), <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>-178<br /> +<br /> +Smith, William Robertson (1846-94), <a href='#Page_409'>409</a>, <a href='#Page_410'>410</a><br /> +<br /> +Somerville, Mrs. (1780-1872), <a href='#Page_411'>411</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Songs of Innocence and Experience</i>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Sordello</i>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a><br /> +<br /> +Southey, Robert (1774-1843), <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>-69, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Spectator</i>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a><br /> +<br /> +Stanhope, Philip Henry, Earl (1805-75), <a href='#Page_246'>246</a><br /> +<br /> +Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (1815-81), <a href='#Page_372'>372</a><br /> +<br /> +Stephen, James Kenneth (1859-92), <a href='#Page_314'>314</a><br /> +<br /> +Stephen, Sir James (1789-1859), <a href='#Page_358'>358</a><br /> +<br /> +Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames (1829-94), <a href='#Page_358'>358</a><br /> +<br /> +"Sterling Club," The, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Sterling, John (1806-44), <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Sterling, Life of John</i>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-94), <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>-341<br /> +<br /> +<i>St. Leon</i>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Story without an End, A</i>, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a><br /> +<br /> +Strafford, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Studies in the History of the Renaissance</i>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a> <i>sqq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Surtees, Robert (?-1864), <a href='#Page_336'>336</a><br /> +<br /> +Swift, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a><br /> +<br /> +Swinburne, Mr., <a href='#Page_90'>90</a><br /> +<br /> +Symonds, John Addington (1840-93), <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Syntax, Dr.</i>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Tale of Two Cities, A</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Tales of a Grandfather</i>, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Tamworth Reading-Room</i>, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a><br /> +<br /> +Tannahill, Robert (1774-1810), <a href='#Page_108'>108</a><br /> +<br /> +Taylor, Sir Henry (1800-86), <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>-121<br /> +<br /> +Taylor, Thomas (the Platonist) (1758-1835), <a href='#Page_46'>46</a><br /> +<br /> +Taylor, William (of Norwich) (1765-1836), <a href='#Page_45'>45</a><br /> +<br /> +Tennant, William (1784-1848), <a href='#Page_109'>109</a><br /> +<br /> +Tennyson, Alfred (1809-92), <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>-268<br /> +<br /> +Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-63), <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>-156<br /> +<br /> +Thirlwall, Connop (1797-1875), <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>-222<br /> +<br /> +Thom, William (1789-1848), <a href='#Page_109'>109</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span>Thomson, James (1834-82), <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>-298<br /> +<br /> +<i>Tracts for the Times</i>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Treasure Island</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a><br /> +<br /> +Trench, Richard Chenevix (1807-86), <a href='#Page_300'>300</a><br /> +<br /> +Trollope, Anthony (1815-82), <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a><br /> +<br /> +Trollope, Mrs. (1780-1863), <a href='#Page_329'>329</a><br /> +<br /> +Trollope, Thomas Adolphus (1810-92), <a href='#Page_329'>329</a><br /> +<br /> +Tupper, Martin Farquhar (1810-89), <a href='#Page_299'>299</a><br /> +<br /> +Turner, Sharon (1768-1847), <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a><br /> +<br /> +Twisleton, Edward (1809-74), <a href='#Page_207'>207</a><br /> +<br /> +Tyndall, John (1820-93), <a href='#Page_412'>412</a><br /> +<br /> +Tytler, Alexander (1747-1813), <a href='#Page_217'>217</a><br /> +<br /> +Tytler, Patrick Fraser (1791-1849), <a href='#Page_217'>217</a><br /> +<br /> +Tytler, William (1711-92), <a href='#Page_217'>217</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Uncommercial Traveller, The</i>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Unto this Last</i>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Vanity Fair</i>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Vathek</i>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a><br /> +<br /> +Venables, George S. (1811-88), <a href='#Page_207'>207</a><br /> +<br /> +Vere, Sir Aubrey de (1788-1846), <a href='#Page_111'>111</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Verses and Translations</i>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Vestiges of Creation</i>, <a href='#Page_414'>414</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Virginians, The</i>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Wade, Thomas (1805-75), <a href='#Page_113'>113</a><br /> +<br /> +Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths (1794-1852), <a href='#Page_198'>198</a><br /> +<br /> +Wakefield, Gilbert (1756-1801), <a href='#Page_405'>405</a><br /> +<br /> +Walpole, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a><br /> +<br /> +Ward, William George (1812-82), <a href='#Page_371'>371</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Waverley Novels, The</i>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>-138<br /> +<br /> +Wells, Charles Jeremiah (1800-79), <a href='#Page_113'>113</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Westward Ho!</i> <a href='#Page_326'>326</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Whately, Richard (1787-1863), <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a><br /> +<br /> +Whewell, William (1794-1866), <a href='#Page_356'>356</a><br /> +<br /> +White, Henry Kirke (1785-1806), <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a><br /> +<br /> +Whitehead, Charles (1804-62), <a href='#Page_113'>113</a><br /> +<br /> +Whyte-Melville, Major (1821-78), <a href='#Page_336'>336</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a><br /> +<br /> +Wilberforce, Samuel (1805-73), <a href='#Page_371'>371</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a><br /> +<br /> +Williams, Helen Maria (1762-1827), <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a><br /> +<br /> +Williams, Isaac (1802-65), <a href='#Page_370'>370</a>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a><br /> +<br /> +Wilson, John (1785-1854), <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-191<br /> +<br /> +Wolcot, John ("Peter Pindar") (1738-1819), <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>-23<br /> +<br /> +Wolfe, Charles (1791-1823), <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br /> +<br /> +Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-97), <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a><br /> +<br /> +Wordsworth, Dorothy (1771-1855), <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a><br /> +<br /> +Wordsworth, William (1770-1850), <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>-56<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Yeast</i>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a> <i>sq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Young, Arthur (1741-1820), <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Zeluco</i>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a><br /> +</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Nineteenth Century +Literature (1780-1895), by George Saintsbury + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 31698-h.htm or 31698-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/9/31698/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895) + +Author: George Saintsbury + +Release Date: March 19, 2010 [EBook #31698] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + + +A HISTORY + +OF + +NINETEENTH CENTURY + +LITERATURE + +(1780-1895) + +BY + +GEORGE SAINTSBURY + +PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF +EDINBURGH + +_New York_ + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + +LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. + +1906 + +_All rights reserved_ + + +COPYRIGHT, 1896, +BY MACMILLAN AND CO. + +Set up and electrotyped, January, 1896. Reprinted October, +1896; August, 1898; September, 1899; April, 1902; March, 1904; +November, 1906. + +_Norwood Press_ +J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith +Norwood Mass. U.S.A. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In the execution of the present task (which I took over about two years +ago from hands worthier than mine, but then more occupied) some +difficulties of necessity occurred which did not present themselves to +myself when I undertook the volume of Elizabethan Literature, or to my +immediate predecessor in grappling with the period between 1660 and +1780. + +The most obvious and serious of these was the question, "What should be +done with living authors?" Independently of certain perils of selection +and exclusion, of proportion and of freedom of speech, I believe it will +be recognised by every one who has ever attempted it, that to mix +estimates of work which is done and of work which is unfinished is to +the last degree unsatisfactory. I therefore resolved to include no +living writer, except Mr. Ruskin, in this volume for the purpose of +detailed criticism, though some may be now and then mentioned in +passing. + +Even with this limitation the task remained a rather formidable one. +Those who are least disposed to overvalue literary work in proportion as +it approaches their own time will still acknowledge that the last +hundred and fifteen years are fuller furnished than either of the +periods of not very dissimilar length which have been already dealt +with. The proportion of names of the first, or of a very high second +class, is distinctly larger than in the eighteenth century; the bulk of +literary production is infinitely greater than in the Elizabethan time. +Further, save in regard to the earliest subsections of this period, Time +has not performed his office, beneficent to the reader but more +beneficent to the historian, of sifting and riddling out writers whom it +is no longer necessary to consider, save in a spirit of adventurous or +affectionate antiquarianism. I must ask the reader to believe me when I +say that many who do not appear here at all, or who are dismissed in a +few lines, have yet been the subjects of careful reading on my part. If +some exclusions (not due to mere oversight) appear arbitrary or unjust, +I would urge that this is not a Dictionary of Authors, nor a Catalogue +of Books, but a History of Literature; and that to mention everybody is +as impossible as to say everything. As I have revised the sheets the old +query has recurred to myself only too often, and sometimes in reference +to very favourite books and authors of my own. Where, it may be asked, +is Kenelm Digby and the _Broad Stone of Honour_? Where Sir Richard +Burton (as great a contrast to Digby as can well be imagined)? Where +Laurence Oliphant, who, but the other day, seemed to many clever men the +cleverest man they knew? Where John Foster, who provided food for the +thoughtful public two generations ago? Where Greville of the caustic +diaries, and his editor (latest deceased) Mr. Reeve, and Crabb Robinson, +and many others? Some of these and others are really _neiges d'antan_; +some baffle the historian in miniature by being rebels to brief and +exact characterisation; some, nay many, are simply crowded out. + +I must also ask pardon for having exercised apparently arbitrary +discretion in alternately separating the work of the same writer under +different chapter-headings, and grouping it with a certain disregard of +the strict limits of the chapter-heading itself. I think I shall obtain +this pardon from those who remember the advantage obtainable from a +connected view of the progress of distinct literary kinds, and that, +sometimes not to be foregone, of considering the whole work of certain +writers together. + +To provide room for the greater press of material, it was necessary to +make some slight changes of omission in the scheme of the earlier +volumes. The opportunity of considerable gain was suggested in the +department of extract--which obviously became less necessary in the case +of authors many of whom are familiar, and hardly any accessible with +real difficulty. Nor did it seem necessary to take up room with the +bibliographical index, the utility of which in my Elizabethan volume I +was glad to find almost universally recognised. This would have had to +be greatly more voluminous here; and it was much less necessary. With a +very few exceptions, all the writers here included are either kept in +print, or can be obtained without much trouble at the second-hand +bookshops. + +To what has thus been said as to the principles of arrangement it cannot +be necessary to add very much as to the principles of criticism. They +are the same as those which I have always endeavoured to maintain--that +is to say, I have attempted to preserve a perfectly independent, and, as +far as possible, a rationally uniform judgment, taking account of none +but literary characteristics, but taking account of all characteristics +that are literary. It may be, and it probably is, more and more +difficult to take achromatic views of literature as it becomes more and +more modern; it is certainly more difficult to get this achromatic +character, even where it exists, acknowledged by contemporaries. But it +has at least been my constant effort to attain it. + +In the circumstances, and with a view to avoid not merely repetition but +confusion and dislocation in the body of the book, I have thought it +better to make the concluding chapter one of considerably greater length +than the corresponding part of the Elizabethan volume, and to reserve +for it the greater part of what may be called connecting and +comprehensive criticism. In this will be found what may be not +improperly described from one point of view as the opening of the case, +and from another as its summing up--the evidence which justifies both +being contained in the earlier chapters. + +It is perhaps not improper to add that the completion of this book has +been made a little difficult by the incidence of new duties, not in +themselves unconnected with its subject. But I have done my best to +prevent or supply oversight. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER I + +THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + +PAGE + + The Starting-point--Cowper--Crabbe--Blake--Burns--Minor + Poets--The Political Satirists--Gifford--Mathias--Dr. Moore, + etc.--Paine--Godwin--Holcroft--Beckford, etc.--Mrs. + Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis--Hannah More--Gilpin 1 + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NEW POETRY + + Wordsworth--Coleridge--Southey--Scott--Byron--Shelley--Keats-- + Rogers--Campbell--Moore--Leigh Hunt--Hogg--Landor--Minor + Poets born before Tennyson--Beddoes--Sir Henry Taylor--Mrs. + Hemans and L, E. L.--Hood and Praed 49 + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE NEW FICTION + + Interval--Maturin--Miss Edgeworth--Miss Austen--The _Waverley + Novels_--Hook--Bulwer--Dickens--Thackeray--Marryat--Lever--Minor + Naval Novelists--Disraeli--Peacock--Borrow--Miss + Martineau--Miss Mitford 125 + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS. + + New Periodicals at the beginning of the + Century--Cobbett--The _Edinburgh Review_--Jeffrey--Sydney + Smith--The _Quarterly_--_Blackwood's_ and the _London + Magazines_--Lamb--Hazlitt--Wilson--Lockhart--De + Quincey--Leigh Hunt--Hartley Coleridge--Maginn and + _Fraser_--Sterling and the Sterling Club--Edward + FitzGerald--Barham 166 + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY + + Occasional + Historians--Hallam--Roscoe--Mitford--Lingard--Turner-- + Palgrave--The Tytlers--Alison--Milman--Grote and + Thirlwall--Arnold--Macaulay--Carlyle--Minor + Figures--Buckle--Kinglake--Freeman and Green--Froude 211 + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD + + Tennyson--Mr. and Mrs. Browning--Matthew Arnold--The + Prae-Raphaelite Movement--Rossetti--Miss + Rossetti--O'Shaughnessy--Thomson--Minor Poets--Lord + Houghton--Aytoun--The Spasmodics--Minor + Poets--Clough--Locker--The Earl of Lytton--Humorous + Verse-Writers--Poetesses 253 + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE NOVEL SINCE 1850 + + Changes in the Novel--Miss Bronte--George Eliot--Charles + Kingsley--The Trollopes--Reade--Minor Novelists--Stevenson 317 + + +CHAPTER VIII + +PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY + + Limits of this and following Chapters--Bentham-- + Mackintosh--The Mills--Hamilton and the Hamiltonians-- + Mansel--Other Philosophers--Jurisprudents: + Austin, Maine, Stephen--Political Economists and + Malthus--The Oxford Movement--Pusey--Keble--Newman--The + Scottish Disruption--Chalmers--Irving--Other + Divines--Maurice--Robertson 342 + + +CHAPTER IX + +LATER JOURNALISM AND CRITICISM IN ART AND LETTERS + + Changes in Periodicals--The _Saturday Review_--Critics of + the middle of the Century--Helps--Matthew Arnold in + Prose--Mr. Ruskin--Jefferies--Pater--Symonds--Minto 378 + + +CHAPTER X + +SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE + + Increasing Difficulty of + Selection--Porson--Conington--Munro--Sellar--Robertson + Smith--Davy--Mrs. Somerville--Other Scientific Writers-- + Darwin--_Vestiges of Creation_--Hugh Miller--Huxley 404 + + +CHAPTER XI + +DRAMA + + Weakness of this department throughout--O'Keefe--Joanna + Baillie--Knowles--Bulwer--Planche 417 + + +CHAPTER XII + +CONCLUSION + + Survey and Analysis of the Period in the several + divisions--Revolutions in Style--The present state of + Literature 425 + + +INDEX 471 + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + + +The period of English literary history which is dealt with in the +opening part of the present volume includes, of necessity, among its +most illustrious names, not a few whose work will not be the subject of +formal discussion here, because the major part of it was done within the +scope of the volume which preceded. Thus, to mention only one of these +names, the most splendid displays of Burke's power--the efforts in which +he at last gave to mankind what had previously been too often devoted to +party--date from this time, and even from the later part of it; while +Gibbon did not die till 1794, and Horace Walpole not till 1797. Even +Johnson, the type and dictator at once of the eighteenth century in +literary England, survived the date of 1780 by four years. + +Nevertheless the beginning of the ninth decade of the century did +actually correspond with a real change, a real line of demarcation. Not +only did the old writers drop off one by one, not only did no new +writers of utterly distinct idiosyncrasy (Burns and Blake excepted) make +their appearance till quite the end of it, but it was also marked by the +appearance of men of letters and of literary styles which announced, if +not very distinctly, the coming of changes of the most sweeping kind. +Hard as it may be to exhibit the exact contrast between, say, Goldsmith +and men like Cowper on the one side and Crabbe on the other, that +contrast cannot but be felt by every reader who has used himself in the +very least to the consideration of literary differences. And as with +individuals, so with kinds. No special production of these twenty years +may be of the highest value; but there is a certain idiosyncrasy, if +only an idiosyncrasy of transition--an unlikeness to anything that comes +before, and to anything, unless directly imitated, that comes +after--which is equally distinguishable in the curious succession of +poetical satires from Peter Pindar to the _Anti-Jacobin_, in the +terror-and-mystery novels of the school of Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk +Lewis, in the large, if not from the literary point of view extremely +noteworthy, department of politics and economics which in various ways +employed the pens of writers so different as Moore, Young, Godwin, +Priestley, Horne, Tooke, Cobbett, and Paine. + +Giving poetry, as usual, the precedence even in the most unpoetical +periods, we shall find in the four names already cited--those of Crabbe, +Cowper, Blake, and Burns--examples of which even the most poetical +period need not be ashamed. In what may be called the absolute spirit of +poetry, the _nescio quid_ which makes the greatest poets, no one has +ever surpassed Burns and Blake at their best; though the perfection of +Burns is limited in kind, and the perfection of Blake still more limited +in duration and sustained force. Cowper would have been a great poet of +the second class at any time, and in some times might have attained the +first. As for Crabbe, he very seldom has the absolute spirit of poetry +just mentioned; but the vigour and the distinction of his verse, as well +as his wonderful faculty of observation in rendering scene and +character, are undeniable. And it is not perhaps childish to point out +that there is something odd and out of the way about the poetical career +of all these poets of the transition. Cowper's terrible malady postpones +his first efforts in song to an age when most poets are losing their +voices; Crabbe, beginning brilliantly and popularly, relapses into a +silence of nearly a quarter of a century before breaking out with +greater power and skill than ever; Burns runs one of the shortest, if +one of the most brilliant, Blake one of the longest, the strangest, the +most intermittent, of poetical careers. Nor is it superfluous to draw +attention further to the fact that when we leave this little company--at +the best august, at the worst more than respectable--we drop suddenly to +the flattest and most hopeless bog of poesiless verse that lies anywhere +on the map of England's literature. Passing from the ethereal music of +the Scottish ploughman and the English painter, from Cowper's noble or +gentle thought and his accomplished versification, from Crabbe's manly +vigour and his Rembrandt touch, we find nothing, unless it be the +ingenious but not strictly poetical burlesque of the Wolcots and the +Lawrences, till we come to the drivel of Hayley and the drought of +Darwin. + +Of the quartette, William Cowper was by far the oldest; the other three +being contemporaries within a few years. He was born on 26th November +1731 at Great Berkhampstead. His father was a clergyman and a royal +chaplain, his mother one of the Norfolk Donnes. Her early death, and +that school discomfort which afterwards found vent in _Tirocinium_, +appear to have aggravated a natural melancholia; though after leaving +Westminster, and during his normal studies at both branches of the law, +he seems to have been cheerful enough. How what should have been the +making of his fortune,--his appointment as Clerk of the Journals to the +House of Lords,--not unassisted by religious mania, drove him through +sheer nervousness to attempt suicide, is one of the best known things in +English literary biography, as indeed are most of the few events of his +sad life,--owing partly to his own charming letters, partly to the +biographies of Southey and others. His latest days were his unhappiest, +and after years of more or less complete loss of reason he died on 27th +April 1800. + +It has been said that Cowper did not take to writing till late in life. +He had had literary friends--Churchill, Lloyd, and others--in youth, and +must always have had literary sympathies; but it was not till he was +nearly fifty, nor till the greater part of twenty years after his first +mental seizure, that he attempted composition at the instance of his +friend Newton and the Unwins. Beginning with hymns and trifles, he +before long undertook, at this or that person's suggestion, longer +poems, such as _Truth_, _The Progress of Error_, and _Expostulation_, +which were finished by 1781 and published next year, to be followed by +the still better and more famous _Task_, suggested to him by Lady +Austen. This appeared in 1785, and was very popular. He had already +begun to translate Homer, which occupied him for the greater part of +seven years. Nothing perhaps settled him more in the public affections +than "John Gilpin," the subject of which he also owed to Lady Austen; +and he continued to write occasional pieces of exquisite accomplishment. +Almost the last, if not actually the last, of these, written just before +the final obscuration of his faculties, was the beautiful and terrible +"Castaway," an avowed allegory of his own condition. + +Cowper, even more than most writers, deserves and requites consideration +under the double aspect of matter and form. In both he did much to alter +the generally accepted conditions of English poetry; and if his formal +services have perhaps received less attention than they merit, his +material achievements have never been denied. His disposition--in which, +by a common enough contrast, the blackest and most hopeless melancholy +was accompanied by the merriest and most playful humour--reflected +itself unequally in his verse, the lighter side chiefly being exhibited. +Except in "The Castaway," and a few--not many--of the hymns, Cowper is +the very reverse of a gloomy poet. His amiability, however, could also +pass into very strong moral indignation, and he endeavoured to give +voice to this in a somewhat novel kind of satire, more serious and +earnest than that of Pope, much less political and personal than that of +Dryden, lighter and more restrained than that of the Elizabethans. His +own unworldly disposition, together with the excessively retired life +which he had led since early manhood, rather damaged the chances of +Cowper as a satirist. We always feel that his censure wants actuality, +that it is an exercise rather than an experience. His efforts in it, +however, no doubt assisted, and were assisted by, that alteration of +the fashionable Popian couplet which, after the example partly of +Churchill and with a considerable return to Dryden, he attempted, made +popular, and handed on to the next generation to dis-Pope yet further. +This couplet, paralleled by a not wholly dissimilar refashioning of +blank verse, in which, though not deserting Milton, he beat out for +himself a scheme quite different from Thomson's, perhaps show at their +best in the descriptive matter of _The Task_ and similar poems. It was +in these that Cowper chiefly displayed that faculty of "bringing back +the eye to the object" and the object to the eye, in which he has been +commonly and justly thought to be the great English restorer. Long +before the end of the Elizabethan period, poetical observation of nature +had ceased to be just; and, after substituting for justness the wildest +eccentricities of conceit, it went for a long time into another +extreme--that of copying and recopying certain academic +conventionalities, instead of even attempting the natural model. It is +not true, as Wordsworth and others have said, that Dryden himself could +not draw from the life. He could and did; but his genius was not +specially attracted to such drawing, his subjects did not usually call +for it, and his readers did not want it. It is not true that Thomson +could not "see"; nor is it true of all his contemporaries and immediate +followers that they were blind. But the eighteenth century had slipped +into a fault which was at least as fatal as that of the +Idealist-Impressionists of the seventeenth, or as that of the +Realist-Impressionists of our own time. The former neglected +universality in their hunt after personal conceits; the latter neglect +it in the endeavour to add nothing to rigidly elaborated personal +sensation. The one kind outstrips nature; the other comes short of art. +From Dryden to Cowper the fault was different from both of these. It +neglected the personal impression and the attention to nature too much. +It dared not present either without stewing them in a sauce of stock +ideas, stock conventions, stock words and phrases, which equally missed +the universal and the particular. Cowper and the other great men who +were his contemporaries by publication if not by birth, set to work to +cure this fault. Even the weakest of them could never have been guilty +of such a passage as that famous one which Congreve (as clever a man as +any) wrote, and which Johnson (as clever a man as any) admired. The +sentiment which actuated them was, if we may trust Coleridge's account +of Boyer or Bowyer, the famous tyrant of Christ's Hospital, well +diffused. "'Nymph,' boy? You mean your nurse's daughter," puts in a +somewhat brutal and narrow form the correction which the time needed, +and which these four in their different ways applied. + +We have already glanced at the way in which Cowper applied it in his +larger poems: he did it equally well, and perhaps more tellingly, in his +smaller. The day on which a poet of no mean pretensions, one belonging +altogether to the upper classes of English society, and one whose lack +of university education mattered the less because the universities were +just then at their nadir, dared to write of the snake he killed + + "And taught him never to come there no more" + +was an epoch-making day. Swift would have done it; but Swift was in many +ways a voice crying in the wilderness, and Swift was not, strictly +speaking, a poet at all. Byrom would have done it; but Byrom was +emphatically a minor poet. Cowper could--at least in and for his +day--boast the major afflatus, and Cowper did not disdain vernacular +truth. He never could have been vulgar; there is not in the whole range +of English literature quite such a gentleman in his own way as Cowper. +But he has escaped almost entirely from the genteel style--from the +notion of things as below the dignity of literature. + +His prose in this respect is at least equal to his verse, though, as it +was known much later, it has greater tendency than influence. All good +critics have agreed that his letters are not surpassed, perhaps not +surpassable. He has more freedom than Gray; he has none of the coxcombry +of Walpole and Byron; and there is no fifth name that can be put even +into competition with him. Ease, correctness, facility of expression, +freedom from convention within his range, harmony, truth to nature, +truth to art:--these things meet in the hapless recluse of Olney as they +had not met for a century--perhaps as they had never met--in English +epistles. The one thing that he wanted was strength: as his madness was +melancholy, not raving, so was his sanity mild but not triumphant. + +George Crabbe was three and twenty years younger than Cowper, having +been born on Christmas Eve 1754. But his first publication, _The +Library_, the success of which was due to the generous and quick-sighted +patronage of Burke after the poet had wrestled with a hard youth, +coincided almost exactly with the first appearance of Cowper, and indeed +a little anticipated it. _The Village_ appeared in 1783, and _The +Newspaper_ in 1785, and then Crabbe (who had taken orders, had been +instituted to livings in the East of England, and had married, after a +long engagement, his first love) was silent for two and twenty years. He +began again in 1807 with _The Parish Register_. _The Borough_, his +greatest work, appeared in 1810. Shifting from the East of England to +the West in 1813, he spent the last twenty years of his long life at +Trowbridge in Wiltshire, and died in 1832 at the age of seventy-eight. + +The external (and, as will be presently remarked, something more than +the external) uniformity of his work is great, and its external +conformity to the traditions and expectations of the time at which it +first appeared is almost greater. A hasty judgment, and even one which, +though not hasty, is not very keen-sighted, might see little difference +between Crabbe and any poet from Pope to Goldsmith except the +innovators. He is all but constant to the heroic couplet--the Spenserian +introduction to _The Birth of Flattery_, the variously-grouped +octosyllabic quatrains of _Reflections_, _Sir Eustace Grey_, _The Hall +of Justice_, and _Woman_, with a few other deviations, being merely +islets among a wide sea of rhymed decasyllabics constituting at least +nineteen-twentieths of the poet's outpouring. Moreover, he was as a rule +constant, not merely to the couplet, but to what has been called the +"shut" couplet--the couplet more or less rigidly confined to itself, +and not overlapping. But he did sometimes overlap, and either in fealty +to Dryden, or from a secret feeling of the craving for freedom which his +more lawless contemporaries expressed in other ways, he reverted to the +Drydenian triplet and Alexandrine on which Pope had frowned. In Crabbe's +couplet, too, there is something which distinguishes it from almost all +others. This something varies very much in appeal. It is sometimes, nay, +too often, a rather ludicrous something, possessing a sort of awkward +prosaic "flop," which is excellently caricatured in _Rejected +Addresses_. But it always shows signs of a desire to throw the emphasis +with more variation than the icy uniformity of the Popian cadence +admitted; and it is sometimes curiously effective. + +Crabbe's position, independently of the strange gap in his publication +(which has been variously accounted for), is not a little singular. The +greater and the better part of his work was composed when the Romantic +revival was in full swing, but it shows little or no trace of the +influence of that revival in versification or diction. His earliest +attempts do indeed show the same reaction from Pope to Dryden (of whom +we know that he was an eager student) which is visible in Cowper and +Churchill; and throughout his work, both earlier and later, there is a +ruthless discarding of conventional imagery and a stern attention to the +realities of scenery and character. But Crabbe has none of the Grace of +the new dispensation, if he has some glimpses of its Law. He sails so +close to the wind of poetry that he is sometimes merely prosaic and +often nearly so. His conception of life is anti-idealist almost to +pessimism, and he has no fancy. The "jewels five words long" are not +his: indeed there clung to him a certain obscurity of expression which +Johnson is said to have good-naturedly smoothed out in his first work to +some extent, but from which he never got quite free. The extravagances +as well as the graces of the new poetry were quite alien from him; its +exotic tastes touched him not; its love for antiquity (though he knew +old English poetry by no means ill) seems to have left him wholly cold. +The anxieties and sufferings of lower and middle-class life, the +"natural death of love" (which, there seems some reason to fear, he had +experienced), the common English country scenery and society of his +time--these were his subjects, and he dealt with them in a fashion the +mastery of which is to this day a joy to all competent readers. No +writer of his time had an influence which so made for truth pure and +simple, yet not untouched by the necessary "disprosing" processes of +art. For Crabbe is not a mere realist; and whoso considers him as such +has not apprehended him. But he was a realist to this extent, that he +always went to the model and never to the pattern-drawing on the Academy +walls. And that was what his time needed. His general characteristics +are extremely uniform: even the external shape and internal +subject-matter of his poems are almost confined to the shape and matter +of the verse-tale. He need not, and indeed cannot, in a book like this, +be dealt with at much length. But he is a very great writer, and a most +important figure at this turning-point of English literature. + +Yet, however one may sympathise with Cowper, however much one may admire +Crabbe, it is difficult for any true lover of poetry not to feel the +sense of a "Pisgah sight," and something more, of the promised land of +poetry, in passing from these writers to William Blake and Robert Burns. +Here there is no more allowance necessary, except in the first case for +imperfection of accomplishment, in the second for shortness of life and +comparative narrowness of range. The quality and opportuneness of poetry +are in each case undeniable. Since the deaths of Herrick and Vaughan, +England had not seen any one who had the finer lyrical gifts of the poet +as Blake had them. Since the death of Dunbar, Scotland had not seen such +strength and intensity of poetic genius (joined in this case to a gift +of melody which Dunbar never had) as were shown by Burns. There was +scarcely more than a twelvemonth between their births; for Blake was +born in 1757 (the day appears not to be known), and Burns in January +1759. But Blake long outlived Burns, and did not die till 1828, while +Burns was no more in July 1796. Neither the long life nor the short one +provided any events which demand chronicling here. Both poets were +rather fortunate in their wives, though Blake clave to Catherine Boucher +more constantly than Burns to his Jean. Neither was well provided with +this world's goods; Burns wearing out his short life in difficulties as +farmer and as excise-man, while all the piety of biographers has left it +something of a mystery how Blake got through his long life with no +better resources than a few very poorly paid private commissions for his +works of design, the sale of his hand-made books of poetry and prophecy, +and such occasional employment in engraving as his unconventional style +and his still more unconventional habits and temper allowed him to +accept or to keep. In some respects the two were different enough +according to commonplace standards, less so perhaps according to others. +The forty years of Burns, and the more than seventy of Blake, were +equally passed in a rapture; but morality has less quarrel with Blake, +who was essentially a "God-intoxicated man" and spent his life in one +long dream of art and prophecy, than with Burns, who was generally in +love, and not unfrequently in liquor. But we need no more either of +antithesis or of comparison: the purely literary matter calls us. + +It was in 1783--a date which, in its close approximation to the first +appearances of Crabbe and Cowper, makes the literary student think of +another group of first appearances in the early "eighties" of the +sixteenth century foreshadowing the outburst of Elizabethan +literature--that Blake's first book appeared. His _Poetical Sketches_, +now one of the rarest volumes of English poetry, was printed by +subscription among a literary coterie who met at the house of Mr. and +Mrs. Mathew; but the whole edition was given to the author. He had +avowedly taken little or no trouble to correct it, and the text is +nearly as corrupt as that of the _Supplices_; nor does it seem that he +took any trouble to make it "go off," nor that it did go off in any +appreciable manner. Yet if many ears had then been open to true poetical +music, some of them could not have mistaken sounds the like of which +had not, as has been said, been heard since the deaths of Herrick and +Vaughan. The merit of the contents is unequal to a degree not to be +accounted for by the mere neglect to prepare carefully for press, and +the influence of _Ossian_ is, as throughout Blake's work, much more +prominent for evil than for good. But the chaotic play of _Edward the +Third_ is not mere Elizabethan imitation; and at least half a dozen of +the songs and lyrical pieces are of the most exquisite quality--snatches +of Shakespeare or Fletcher as Shakespeare or Fletcher might have written +them in Blake's time. The finest of all no doubt is the magnificent "Mad +Song." But others--"How sweet I roamed from Field to Field" (the most +eighteenth century in manner, but showing how even that manner could be +strengthened and sweetened); "My Silks and Fine Array," beautiful, but +more like an Elizabethan imitation than most; "Memory Hither Come," a +piece of ineffable melody--these are things which at once showed Blake +to be free of the very first company of poets, to be a poet who for real +essence of poetry excelled everything the century had yet seen, and +everything, with the solitary exception of the _Lyrical Ballads_ at its +extreme end, that it was to see. + +Unfortunately it was not by any means as a poet that Blake regarded +himself. He knew that he was an artist, and he thought that he was a +prophet; and for the rest of his life, deviating only now and then into +engraving as a mere breadwinner, he devoted himself to the joint +cultivation of these two gifts, inventing for the purpose a method or +vehicle of publication excellently suited to his genius, but in other +respects hardly convenient. This method was to execute text and +illustrations at once on copper-plates, which were then treated in +slightly different fashions. Impressions worked off from these by +hand-press were coloured by hand, Blake and his wife executing the +entire process. In this fashion were produced the lovely little gems of +literature and design called _Songs of Innocence_ (1789) and _Songs of +Experience_ (1794); in this way for the most part, but with some +modifications, the vast and formidable mass of the so-called +"Prophetic" Books. With the artistic qualities of Blake we are not here +concerned, but it is permissible to remark that they resemble his +literary qualities with a closeness which at once explains and is +explained by their strangely combined method of production. That Blake +was not entirely sane has never been doubted except by a few fanatics of +mysticism, who seem to think that the denial of complete sanity implies +a complete denial of genius. And though he was never, in the common +phrase, "incapable of managing" such very modest affairs as were his, +the defect appears most in the obstinate fashion in which he refused to +perfect and co-ordinate his work. He could, when he chose and would give +himself the trouble, draw quite exquisitely; and he always drew with +marvellous vigour and imagination. But he would often permit himself +faults of drawing quite inexplicable and not very tolerable. So, too, +though he had the finest gift of literary expression, he chose often to +babble and still oftener to rant at large. Even the _Songs of Innocence +and Experience_--despite their double charm to the eye and the ear, and +the presence of such things as the famous "Tiger," as the two +"Introductions" (two of Blake's best things), and as "The Little Girl +Lost"--show a certain poetical declension from the highest heights of +the _Poetical Sketches_. The poet is no longer a poet pure and simple; +he has got purposes and messages, and these partly strangle and partly +render turbid the clear and spontaneous jets of poetry which refresh us +in the "Mad Song" and the "Memory." And after the _Songs_ Blake did not +care to put forth anything bearing the ordinary form of poetry. We +possess indeed other poetical work of his, recovered in scraps and +fragments from MSS., and some of it is beautiful. But it is as a rule +more chaotic than the _Sketches_ themselves; it is sometimes defaced +(being indeed mere private jottings never intended for print) by +personality and coarseness; and it is constantly puddled with the jargon +of Blake's mystical philosophy, which, borrowing some of its method from +Swedenborg and much of its imagery and nomenclature from _Ossian_, +spreads itself unhampered by any form whatever over the Prophetic +Books. The literary merit of these in parts is often very high, and +their theosophy (for that is the best single word for it) is not seldom +majestic. But despite the attempts of some disciples to evolve a regular +system from them, students of philosophy as well as of literature are +never likely to be at much odds as to their real character. "Ravings" +they are not, and they are very often the reverse of "nonsense." But +they are the work of a man who in the first place was very slightly +acquainted with the literature and antecedents of his subject, who in +the second was distinctly _non compos_ on the critical, though admirably +gifted on the creative side of his brain, and who in the third had the +ill luck to fall under the fullest sway of the Ossianic influence. To +any one who loves and admires Blake--and the present writer deliberately +ranks him as the greatest and most delectable poet of the eighteenth +century proper in England, reserving Burns as specially Scotch--it must +always be tempting to say more of him than can be allowed on such a +scale as the present; but the scale must be observed. + +There is all the more reason for the observance that Blake exercised on +the literary _history_ of his time no influence, and occupied in it no +position. He always had a few faithful friends and patrons who kept him +from starvation by their commissions, admired him, believed in him, and +did him such good turns as his intensely independent and rather +irritable disposition would allow. But the public had little opportunity +of seeing his pictures, and less of reading his books; and though the +admiration of Lamb led to some appreciation from Southey and others, he +was practically an unread man. This cannot be said of Robert Burns, who, +born as was said a year or two after Blake, made his first literary +venture three years after him, in 1786. Most people know that the +publication, now famous and costly, called "the Kilmarnock Edition," was +originally issued in the main hope of paying the poet's passage to +Jamaica after an unfortunate youth of struggle, and latterly of +dissipation. Nay, even after the appearance of the _Poems_ and their +welcome he still proposed to go abroad. He was summoned back to +Edinburgh to reprint them, to make a considerable profit by them, and to +be lionised without stint by the society of the Scottish capital. He +then settled down, marrying Jean Armour, at Ellisland in Dumfriesshire, +on a small farm and a post in the Excise, which, when his farming failed +and he moved to Dumfries itself, became his only regular means of +support. He might have increased this considerably by literature; but as +it was he actually gave away, or disposed of for trifling equivalents, +most of the exquisite songs which he wrote in his later years. These +years were unhappy. He hailed the French Revolution with a perfectly +innocent, because obviously ignorant, Jacobinism which, putting all +other considerations aside, was clearly improper in a salaried official +of the Crown, and thereby got into disgrace with the authorities, and +also with society in and about Dumfries. His habits of living, though +their recklessness has been vastly exaggerated, were not careful, and +helped to injure both his reputation and his health. Before long he +broke down completely, and died on the first of July 1796, his poetical +powers being to the very last in fullest perfection. + +Burns' work, which even in bulk--its least remarkable characteristic--is +very considerable when his short life and his unfavourable education and +circumstances are reckoned, falls at once into three sharply contrasted +sections. There are his poems in Scots; there are the verses that, in +obedience partly to the incompetent criticism of his time, partly to a +very natural mistake of ambition and ignorance, he tried to write in +conventional literary English; and there is his prose, taking the form +of more or less studied letters. The second class of the poems is almost +worthless, and fortunately it is not bulky. The letters are of unequal +value, and have been variously estimated. They show indeed that, like +almost all poets, he might, if choice and fate had united, have become a +very considerable prose-writer, and they have immense autobiographic +value. But they are sometimes, and perhaps often, written as much in +falsetto as the division of verse just ruled out; their artificiality +does not take very good models; and their literary attraction is +altogether second-rate. How far different the value of the Scots poems +is, four generations have on the whole securely agreed. The moral +discomfort of Principal Shairp, the academic distaste of Mr. Matthew +Arnold for a world of "Scotch wit, Scotch religion, and Scotch drink," +and the purely indolent and ignorant reluctance of others to grapple +with Scottish dialect, need not trouble the catholic critic much. The +two first may be of some use as cautions and drags; the third may be +thrown aside at once. Scots, though a dialect, is not a patois; it has a +great and continuous literature; it combines in an extraordinary degree +the consonant virtues of English and the vowel range of the Latin +tongues. It is true that Burns' range of subject, as distinct from that +of sound, was not extremely wide. He could give a voice to +passion--passion of war, passion of conviviality, passion above all of +love--as none but the very greatest poets ever have given or will give +it; he had also an extraordinary command of _genre_-painting of all +kinds, ranging from the merely descriptive and observant to the most +intensely satirical. Perhaps he could only do these two things--could +not be (as he certainly has not been) philosophical, deeply meditative, +elaborately in command of the great possibilities of nature, political, +moral, argumentative. But what an "only" have we here! It amounts to +this, that Burns could "only" seize, could "only" convey the charms of +poetical expression to, the more primitive thought and feeling of the +natural man, and that he could do this supremely. His ideas are--to use +the rough old Lockian division--ideas of sensation, not of reflection; +and when he goes beyond them he is sensible, healthy, respectable, but +not deep or high. In his own range there are few depths or heights to +which he has not soared or plunged. + +That he owed a good deal to his own Scottish predecessors, especially to +Ferguson, is not now denied; and his methods of composing his songs are +very different from those which a lesser man, using more academic forms, +could venture upon without the certainty of the charge of plagiarism. We +shall never understand Burns aright if we do not grasp the fact that he +was a "folk-poet," into whom the soul of a poet of all time and all +space had entered. In all times and countries where folk-poetry has a +genuine existence, its forms and expressions are much less the property +of the individual than of the race. The business of collecting ballads +is one of the most difficult and doubtful, not to say dangerous, open to +the amateur. But it is certain that any collector who was not a mere +simpleton would at once reject as spurious a version which he heard in +identically the same terms from two different subjects. He would know +that they must have got it from a printed or at least written source. +Now Burns is, if not our only example, our only example of the very +first quality, of the poet who takes existing work and hands it on +shaped to his own fashion. Not that he was not perfectly competent to do +without any existing canvas; while, when he had it, he treated it +without the very slightest punctilio. Of some of the songs which he +reshaped into masterpieces for Johnson and Thomson he took no more than +the air and measure; of others only the refrain or the first few lines; +of others again stanzas or parts of stanzas. But everywhere he has +stamped the version with something of his own--something thenceforward +inseparable from it, and yet characteristic of him. In the expression of +the triumph and despair of love, not sicklied over with any thought as +in most modern poets, only Catullus and Sappho can touch Burns. "Green +grow the Rashes O," "Yestreen I had a Pint of Wine," the farewell to +Clarinda, and the famous death-bed verses to Jessie Lewars, make any +advance on them impossible in point of spontaneous and unreflecting +emotion; while a thousand others (the number is hardly rhetorical) come +but little behind. "Willie brew'd a Peck o' Maut" in the same way rides +sovereign at the head of a troop of Bacchanalian verses; and the touches +of rhetoric and convention in "Scots wha hae" cannot spoil, can hardly +even injure it. To some it really seems that the much praised lines "To +Mary in Heaven" and others where the mood is less boisterous, show Burns +at less advantage, not because the kind is inferior, but because he was +less at home in it; but it is almost impossible to praise too highly the +equally famous "Mouse," and some other things. It was in this tremendous +force of natural passion and affection, and in his simple observation of +common things, that Burns' great lesson for his age and country lay. +None even of the reformers had dared to be passionate as yet. In Cowper +indeed there was no passion except of religious despair, in Crabbe none +except that of a grim contemplation of the miseries and disappointments +of life, while although there was plenty of passion in Blake it had all +conveyed itself into the channel of mystical dreaming. It is a little +pathetic, and more than a little curious, to compare "The Star that +shines on Anna's Breast," the one approach to passionate expression of +Cowper's one decided love, with any one of a hundred outbursts of Burns, +sometimes to the very same name. + +The other division of the Poems, at the head of which stand _The Jolly +Beggars_, _Tam o' Shanter_, and _The Holy Fair_, exhibit an equal power +of vivid feeling and expression with a greater creative and observant +faculty, and were almost equally important as a corrective and +alterative to their generation. The age was not ill either at drama, at +manners-painting, or at satire; but the special kind of dramatic, +pictorial, and satiric presentation which Burns manifested was quite +unfamiliar to it and in direct contradiction to its habits and +crotchets. It had had a tendency to look only at upper and middle-class +life, to be conventional in its very indecorum, to be ironic, indirect, +parabolical. It admired the Dutch painters, it had dabbled in the +occult, it was Voltairian enough; but it had never dared to outvie +Teniers and Steen as in _The Jolly Beggars_, to blend naturalism and +_diablerie_ with the overwhelming _verve_ of _Tam o' Shanter_, to change +the jejune freethinking of two generations into an outspoken and +particular attack on personal hypocrisy in religion as in _Holy Willie's +Prayer_ and _The Holy Fair_. Even to Scotsmen, we may suspect (or rather +we pretty well know, from the way in which Robertson and Blair, Hume and +Mackenzie, write), this burst of genial racy humour from the _terrae +filius_ of Kilmarnock must have been somewhat startling; and it speaks +volumes for the amiable author of the _Man of Feeling_ that, in the very +periodical where he was wont to air his mild Addisonian hobbies, he +should have warmly commended the Ayrshire ploughman. + +In a period where we have so many great or almost great names to notice, +it cannot be necessary to give the weakest writers of its weakest part +more than that summary mention which is at once necessary and sufficient +to complete the picture of the literary movement of the time. And this +is more especially the case with reference to the minor verse of the end +of the eighteenth century. The earliest work of the really great men who +re-created English poetry, though in some cases chronologically _in_, is +not in the least _of_ it. For the rest, it would be almost enough to say +that William Hayley, the preface to whose _Triumphs of Temper_ is dated +January 1781, and therefore synchronised very closely with the literary +appearance of Cowper, Crabbe, and Blake, was one of the most +conspicuous, and remains one of the most characteristic of them. +Hayley's personal relations with the first and last of these +poets--relations which have kept and will keep his name in some measure +alive long after the natural death of his verse--were in both cases +conditioned by circumstances in a rather trying way, but were not +otherwise than creditable to him. His verse itself is impossible and +intolerable to any but the student of literary history, who knows that +all things are possible, and finds the realisation of all in its measure +interesting. The heights, or at least the average levels, of Hayley may +be fairly taken from the following quotation:-- + + Her lips involuntary catch the chime + And half articulate the soothing rhyme; + Till weary thought no longer watch can keep, + But sinks reluctant in the folds of sleep-- + +of which it can only be said that any schoolboy could write it; his not +infrequent depths from the couplet:-- + + Her airy guard prepares the softest down + From Peace's wing to line the nuptial crown. + +where the image of a guardian angel holding Peace with the firmness of +an Irish housewife, and plucking her steadily in order to line a nuptial +crown (which must have been a sort of sun-bonnet) with the down thereof, +will probably be admitted to be not easily surpassable. Of Hayley's +companions in song, I have been dispensed by my predecessor from +troubling myself with Erasmus Darwin, who was perhaps intellectually the +ablest of them, though the extreme absurdity of the scheme of his +_Botanic Garden_ brought him, as the representative of the whole school, +under the lash of the _Anti-Jacobin_ in never-dying lines. Darwin's +friend and townswoman, Anna Seward; Mrs. Barbauld, the author of the +noble lines, "Life, we've been long together"--the nobility of which is +rather in its sentiment than in its expression--and of much tame and +unimportant stuff; Merry, who called himself Della Crusca and gathered +round him the school of gosling imitators that drew on itself the lash +of Gifford; the Laureate Pye; and others who, less fortunate than the +victims of Canning and Frere, have suffered a second death in the +forgetting of the very satires in which they met their deserts, can be +barely named now. Two, however, may claim, if no great performance, a +remarkable influence on great performers. Dr. Sayers, a member of the +interesting Norwich school, directly affected Southey, and not Southey +only, by his unrhymed verse; while the sonnets of William Lisle Bowles, +now only to be read with a mild esteem by the friendliest critic most +conscious of the historic allowance, roused Coleridge to the wildest +enthusiasm and did much to form his poetic taste. To Bowles, and perhaps +to one or two others, we may find occasion to return hereafter. + +The satires, however, which have been more than once referred to in the +preceding paragraph, form a most important feature, and a perhaps almost +more important symptom, of the literary state of the time. They show, +indeed, that its weakness did not escape the notice of contemporaries; +but they also show that the very contemporaries who noticed it had +nothing better to give in the way of poetry proper than that which they +satirised. In fact, one of the chief of these satirists, Wolcot, has +left a considerable mass of not definitely satirical work which is +little if at all better than the productions of the authors he +lampooned. + +This very remarkable body of satirical verse, which extends from the +_Rolliad_ and the early satires of Peter Pindar at the extreme beginning +of our present time to the _Pursuits of Literature_ and the +_Anti-Jacobin_ towards its close, was partly literary and partly +political, diverging indeed into other subjects, but keeping chiefly to +these two and intermixing them rather inextricably. The _Pursuits of +Literature_, though mainly devoted to the subject of its title, is also +to a great extent political; the _Rolliad_ and the _Probationary Odes_, +intensely political, were also to no small extent literary. The chief +examples were among the most popular literary productions of the time; +and though few of them except the selected _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_ +are now read, almost all the major productions deserve reading. The +great defect of contemporary satire--that it becomes by mere lapse of +time unintelligible--is obviated to no small extent here by the crotchet +(rather fortunate, though sometimes a little tedious) which these +writers, almost without exception, had for elaborate annotation. Of the +chief of them, already indicated more than once by reference or +allusion, some account may be given. + +_The Rolliad_ is the name generally given for shortness to a collection +of political satires originating in the great Westminster election of +1784, when Fox was the Whig candidate. It derived its name from a +Devonshire squire, Mr. Rolle, who was a great supporter of Pitt; and, +with the _Political Eclogues_, the mock _Probationary Odes_ for the +laureateship (vacant by Whitehead's death), and the _Political +Miscellanies_, which closed the series, was directed against the young +Prime Minister and his adherents by a knot of members of Brooks' Club, +who are identified rather by tradition and assertion than by positive +evidence. Sheridan, Tierney, Burgoyne, Lord John Townshend, Burke's +brother Richard, and other public men probably or certainly contributed, +as did Ellis--afterwards to figure so conspicuously in the same way on +the other side. But the chief writers were a certain Dr. Lawrence, a +great friend of Burke, who was in a way the editor; Tickel, a descendant +of Addison's friend and a connection of the Sheridans; and another +Irishman named Fitzpatrick. The various "skits" of which the book or +series is composed show considerable literary skill, and there is a +non-political and extraneous interest in the fact that it contains some +_rondeaux_ believed to be the only, or almost the only, examples of that +form written in England between Cotton in the seventeenth century and +the revival of it not very many years ago. The fun is often very good +fun, and there is a lightness and brightness about the verse and +phrasing which had been little seen in English since Prior. But the tone +is purely personal; there are no principles at stake, and the book, +besides being pretty coarse in tone, is a sort of object lesson in the +merely intriguing style of politics which had become characteristic of +England under the great seventy years' reign of the Whigs. + +Coarseness and personality, however, are in the _Rolliad_ refined and +high-minded in comparison with the work of "Peter Pindar," which has the +redeeming merit of being even funnier, with the defect of being much +more voluminous and unequal. John Wolcot was a Devonshire man, born in +May 1738 at Kingsbridge, or rather its suburb Dodbrooke, in Devonshire. +He was educated as a physician, and after practising some time at home +was taken by Sir William Trelawney to Jamaica. Here he took orders and +received a benefice; but when he returned to England after Trelawney's +death he practically unfrocked himself and resumed the cure of bodies. +Although he had dabbled both in letters and in art, it was not till 1782 +that he made any name; and he did it then by the rather unexpected way +of writing poetical satires in the form of letters to the members of the +infant Royal Academy. From this he glided into satire of the political +kind, which, however, though he was a strong Whig and something more, +did not so much devote itself to the attack or support of either of the +great parties as to personal lampoons on the king, his family, and his +friends. Neither Charles the Second at the hands of Marvell, nor George +the Fourth at the hands of Moore, received anything like the steady fire +of lampoon which Wolcot for years poured upon the most harmless and +respectable of English monarchs. George the Third had indeed no +vices,--unless a certain parsimony may be dignified by that name,--but +he had many foibles of the kind that is more useful to the satirist than +even vice. Wolcot's extreme coarseness, his triviality of subject, and a +vulgarity of thought which is quite a different thing from either, are +undeniable. But _The Lousiad_ (a perfect triumph of cleverness expended +on what the Greeks called rhyparography), the famous pieces on George +and the Apple Dumplings and on the King's visit to Whitbread's Brewery, +with scores of other things of the same kind (the best of all, perhaps, +being the record of the Devonshire Progress), exhibit incredible +felicity and fertility in the lower kinds of satire. This satire Wolcot +could apply with remarkable width of range. His artistic satires (and it +must be admitted that he had not bad taste here) have been noticed. He +riddled the new devotion to physical science in the unlucky person of +Sir Joseph Banks; the chief of his literary lampoons, a thing which is +quite a masterpiece in its way, is his "Bozzy and Piozzi," wherein +Boswell and Mrs. Thrale are made to string in amoebean fashion the +most absurd or the most laughable of their respective reminiscences of +Johnson into verses which, for lightness and liveliness of burlesque +representation, have hardly a superior. Until the severe legislation +which followed the Jacobin terror in France cowed him, and to some +extent even subsequently, Wolcot maintained a sort of Ishmaelite +attitude, by turns attacking and defending himself against men of +eminence in literature and politics, after a fashion the savagery +whereof was excused sometimes by its courage and nearly always by an +exuberant good-humour which both here and elsewhere accompanies very +distinct ill-nature. His literary life in London covered about a quarter +of a century, after which, losing his sight, he retired once more to the +West, though he is said to have died at Somers Town in 1819. The best +edition of his works is in five good-sized volumes, but it is known not +to be complete. + +Both the _Rolliad_ men and Wolcot had been on the Whig, Wolcot almost on +the Republican side; and for some years they had met with no sufficient +adversaries, though Gifford soon engaged "Peter" on fairly equal terms. +The great revulsion of feeling, however, which the acts of the French +Revolution induced among Englishmen generally drew on a signal rally on +the Tory part. The _Anti-Jacobin_ newspaper, with Gifford as its editor, +and Canning, Ellis (now a convert), and Frere as its chief contributors, +not merely had at its back the national sentiment and the official +power, but far outstripped in literary vigour and brilliancy the +achievements of the other side. The famous collection above referred to, +_The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_, which has been again and again +reprinted, shows no signs of losing its attraction,--a thing almost +unparalleled in the case of satirical work nearly a century old. Its +very familiarity makes it unnecessary to dwell much on it, but it is +safe to say that nothing of the kind more brilliant has ever been +written, or is very likely ever to be written, than the parodies of +Southey's Sapphics and "Henry Martin" sonnet, the litany of the +Jacobins, French and English, the "skits" on Payne Knight and Darwin, +_The Rovers_,--mocking the new German sentimentalism and +mediaevalism,--and the stately satire of "The New Morality,"--where, +almost alone, the writers become serious, and reach a height not +attained since Dryden. + +Gifford and Mathias differ from the others just mentioned in being less +directly political in writing and inspiration, though Gifford at least +was a strong politician. He was, like Wolcot, a Devonshire man, born at +Ashburton in 1757, and, as his numerous enemies and victims took care +often to remind him, of extremely humble birth and early breeding, +having been a shoemaker's apprentice. Attracting attention as a clever +boy, he was sent to Exeter College and soon attained to influential +patronage. To do him justice, however, he made his reputation by the +work of his own hand,--his satires of _The Baviad_, 1794, and _The +Maeviad_ next year, attacking and pretty nearly extinguishing Merry and +his Della Cruscans, a set of minor bards and mutual admirers who had +infested the magazines and the libraries for some years.[1] The +_Anti-Jacobin_ and the editing of divers English classics put Gifford +still higher; and when the _Quarterly Review_ was established in +opposition to the _Edinburgh_, his appointment (1809) to the editorship, +which he held almost till his death (he gave it up in 1824 and died in +1826), completed his literary position. Gifford is little read nowadays, +and a name which was not a very popular one even on his own side during +his lifetime has, since the triumph of the politics and of some of the +literary styles which he opposed, become almost a byword for savage and +unfair criticism. The penalty of unfairness is usually and rightly paid +in kind, and Gifford has paid it very amply. The struggles of his youth +and lifelong ill-health no doubt aggravated a disposition at no time +very sweet; and the feuds of the day, both literary and political, were +apt to be waged, even by men far superior to Gifford in early and +natural advantages, with the extremest asperity and without too much +scruple. But Gifford is perhaps our capital example in English of a cast +of mind which is popularly identified with that of the critic, though in +truth nothing is more fatal to the attainment of the highest critical +competence. It was apparently impossible for him (as it has been, and, +it would seem, is for others,) to regard the author whom he was +criticising, the editor who had preceded him in his labours, or the +adversary with whom he was carrying on a polemic, as anything but a +being partly idiotic and partly villainous, who must be soundly scolded, +first for having done what he did, and secondly to prevent him from +doing it again. So ingrained was this habit in Gifford that he could +refrain from indulging it, neither in editing the essays of his most +distinguished contributors, nor in commenting on the work of these +contributors, outside the periodicals which he directed. Yet he was a +really useful influence in more ways than one. The service that he did +in forcibly suppressing the Della Cruscan nuisance is even yet admitted, +and there has been plentiful occasion, not always taken, for similar +literary _dragonnades_ since. And his work as an editor of English +classics was, blemishes of manner and temper excepted, in the main very +good work. + +Thomas James Mathias, the author of _The Pursuits of Literature_, was a +much nearer approach to the pedant pure and simple. For he did not, like +Gifford, redeem his rather indiscriminate attacks on contemporaries by a +sincere and intelligent devotion to older work; and he was, much more +than Gifford, ostentatious of such learning as he possessed. Accordingly +the immense popularity of his only book of moment is a most remarkable +sign of the times. De Quincey, who had seen its rise and its fall, +declares that for a certain time, and not a very short one, at the end +of the last century and the beginning of this, _The Pursuits of +Literature_ was the most popular book of its own day, and as popular as +any which had appeared since; and that there is not very much hyperbole +in this is proved by its numerous editions, and by the constant +references to it in the books of the time. Colman, who was one of +Mathias' victims, declared that the verse was a "peg to hang the notes +on"; and the habit above referred to certainly justified the gibe to no +small extent. If the book is rather hard reading nowadays (and it is +certainly rather difficult to recognise in it even the "demon of +originality" which De Quincey himself grants rather grudgingly as an +offset to its defects of taste and scholarship), it is perhaps chiefly +obscured by the extreme desultoriness of the author's attacks and the +absence of any consistent and persistent target. Much that Mathias +reprehends in Godwin and Priestley, in Colman and Wolcot, and a whole +crowd of lesser men, is justifiably censured; much that he lays down is +sound and good enough. But the whole--which, after the wont of the time, +consists of several pieces jointed on to each other and all flooded with +notes--suffers from the twin vices of negation and divagation. Indeed, +its chief value is that, both by its composition and its reception, it +shows the general sense that literature was not in a healthy state, and +that some renaissance, some reaction, was necessary. + +The prominence of the French Revolution, which has already appeared more +than once in the above account of late eighteenth century poetry, is +still more strongly reflected in the prose writing of the period. +Indeed, many of its principal writers devoted their chief attention +either to describing, to attacking, or to defending the events and +principles of this portentous phenomenon. The chief of them were John +Moore, Arthur Young, Helen Maria Williams, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, +Richard Price, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Holcroft. Of these Price, +a veteran who had nearly reached his sixtieth year when our period +commences, chiefly belongs to literature as an antagonist of Burke, as +does Priestley, whose writing was very extensive, but who was as much +more a "natural philosopher" than a man of letters as Price was much +less a man of letters than a moralist and a statistician. Both, +moreover, have been mentioned in the preceding volume, and it is not +necessary to say much about them, or about John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), +philologist and firebrand. + +Of the others something may, and in some cases not a little must, +appear. Dr. John Moore, sometimes called "Zeluco" Moore (from his most +popular book), and father of the general who fell at Corunna, was born +at Stirling in the winter of 1729-30. Studying medicine at Glasgow, he +was apprenticed (as Smollett had been earlier) to Dr. John Gordon, and +entered the army as surgeon's mate for the Laufeldt campaign. He then +lived two years in Paris, perfecting himself in medicine, after which he +established himself in Glasgow. After many years' practice there, he +accompanied the young Duke of Hamilton on various travels through +Europe, and in 1778 settled in London. This was his headquarters for the +rest of his life, till his death at Richmond on 21st January 1803. The +chief interruption to his residence there was his memorable journey with +Lord Lauderdale to Paris in the latter half of 1792, which resulted in +one of the most vivid and trustworthy accounts by an eyewitness of the +opening scenes of the Terror. This _Journal during a Residence in +France_ was published during the next two years. But Moore had earlier +than this, though not very early in his own life, become an author. His +_View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany_, the +result of his journeyings with the Duke, appeared in 1779, with a +continuation relating to Italy two years later; and in 1786 he published +his one famous novel _Zeluco_. After the _Journal_ he returned to novel +writing in _Edward_ (1796) and _Mordaunt_ (1800)--books by no means +contemptible, but suffering from the want of a central interest and of a +more universal grasp of character and manners. He contributed a Life of +Smollett and an Essay on Romance to an edition of his friend's works in +1797. One or two medical books also stand to his credit, while he had +rather unadvisedly added to his admirable _Journal_ a _View of the +Causes of the French Revolution_ which is not worthy of it. His complete +works fill seven volumes. + +Of these, the earlier travels are readable enough, and sometimes very +noteworthy in matter. It is almost enough to say that they contain some +of the latest accounts by an Englishman of France while it was still +merry, and of Venice while it was still independent; an early picture of +Alpine travel; very interesting personal sketches of Voltaire and +Frederick the Great; and one memorable passage (remembered and borrowed +by Scott in _Redgauntlet_) telling how at Florence the shadow of Prince +Charlie, passing the Duke of Hamilton in the public walks, fixed his +eyes earnestly on the Duke, as though saying, "Our ancestors were better +acquainted." _Zeluco_ and the _Journal_ alone deserve much attention +from any one but a professed student of literature. The value of the +latter has been admitted by all competent authorities, and it is +enhanced by the fact that Moore was a strong Whig, and was even accused +by some zealots of favouring Jacobinism. His picture, therefore, of the +way in which political revolution glides into ethical anarchy is +certainly unbiassed the other way. Of _Zeluco_ everybody, without +perhaps a very clear knowledge of its authorship, knows one passage--the +extremely humorous letter containing the John Bull contempt of the +sailor Dawson for the foolish nation which clothes its troops in "white, +which is absurd, and blue, which is only fit for the artillery and the +blue horse." But few know much more, though there is close by a much +more elaborate and equally good piece of Smollettian fun in the quarrel +of Buchanan and Targe, the Scotch Whig and Jacobite, over the reputation +of Queen Mary. The book, however, besides the unlucky drawback that +almost all its interest lies in the latter part, has for hero a sort of +lifeless monster of wickedness, who is quite as uninteresting as a +faultless one, and shows little veracity of character except in the +minor personages and episodes. In these, and indeed throughout Moore's +work, there is a curious mixture of convention with extreme shrewdness, +of somewhat commonplace expression with a remarkably pregnant and +humorous conception. But he lacks concentration and finish, and is +therefore never likely to be much read again as a whole. + +There may appear to be some slight inconsistency in giving a paragraph, +if only a short one, to Arthur Young where distinct mention has been +refused to Price and Priestley. But Olivier de Serres has secured a +place in all histories of French literature as a representative of +agricultural writing, and Young is our English Serres. Moreover, his +_Survey of France_ has permanent attraction for its picture of the state +of that country just before, and in the earliest days of, the +Revolution. And though his writing is extremely incorrect and unequal, +though its literary effect is much injured by the insertion of +statistical details which sometimes turn it for pages together into a +mere set of tables, he has constant racy phrases, some of which have +passed into the most honourable state of all--that of unidentified +quotation--while more deserve it. He was born in 1741, the son of a +Suffolk clergyman, was connected by marriage with the Burneys, and very +early developed the passion for agricultural theory and practice which +marked his whole life, even when in his later years (he lived till 1820) +he fell under the influence of religious crotchets. His French travels +were published in 1792-94, and form by far his most attractive book, +though his surveys of England and Ireland contain much that is good. +Young was a keen, though not a very consistent or clear-sighted +politician, especially on the side of political economy. But, like other +men of his time, he soon fell away from his first love for the French +Revolution. In the literary, historical, and antiquarian associations of +the places he visited, he seems to have felt no interest whatever. + +Helen Maria Williams, with Young and Moore, is our chief English witness +for the state of France and Paris just before and during the early years +of the Revolution. She was one of Johnson's girl pets in his latest +years, but Boswell is certainly justified in suggesting that if the sage +had lived a little longer he would certainly not have repeated his +elegant compliment: "If I am so ill when you are near, what should I be +when you are away?" She outlived this phase also of her life, and did +not die till 1828, being then sixty-five. Even in the early days she had +been a Girondist, not a Jacobin; but she happened to live in Paris +during the outbreak of the Revolution, wrote _Letters from France_, +which had a great popularity, and was hand in glove with most of the +English and Irish revolutionary leaders. Wolfe Tone in his diary speaks +of her as "Miss Jane Bull completely," but neither prudery nor +patriotism would have struck persons less prejudiced than the leader of +the United Irishmen as the leading points of Helen Maria. Her poems, +published in 1786, during her pre-revolutionary days, are dedicated to +Queen Charlotte, and nearly half the first of the two pretty little +volumes (which have a horrific frontispiece of the Princes in the Tower, +by Maria Cosway) is occupied by a stately list of subscribers, with the +Prince of Wales at their head. They have little merit, but are not +uninteresting for their "signs of the times": sonnets, a tale called +_Edwin and Eltruda_, an address to Sensibility, and so forth. But the +longest, _Peru_, is in the full eighteenth century couplet with no sign +of innovation. The _Letters from France_, which extend to eight volumes, +possess, besides the interest of their subject, the advantage of a more +than fair proficiency on the author's part in the formal but not +ungraceful prose of her time, neither unduly Johnsonian nor in any way +slipshod. But it may perhaps be conceded that, but for the interest of +the subject, they would not be of much importance. + +The most distinguished members of the Jacobin school, from the literary +point of view, were Thomas Paine and William Godwin. Paine was only a +literary man by accident. He was born at Thetford on 29th January 1737, +in the rank of small tradesman, and subsequently became a custom-house +officer. But he lost his place for debt and dubious conduct in 1774, and +found a more congenial home in America, where he defended the rebellion +of the Colonies in a pamphlet entitled _Common Sense_. His new +compatriots rewarded him pretty handsomely, and after about a dozen +years he returned to Europe, visiting England, which, however, he left +again very shortly (it is said owing to the persuasion of Blake), just +in time to escape arrest. He had already made friends in France, and his +publication of _The Rights of Man_ (1791-92), in answer to Burke's +attack on the Revolution, made him enormously popular in that country. +He was made a French citizen, and elected by the Pas de Calais to the +Convention. His part here was not discreditable. He opposed the King's +execution, and, being expelled the Convention and imprisoned by the +Jacobins, wrote his other notorious work, _The Age of Reason_ (1794-95), +in which he maintained the Deist position against both Atheism and +Christianity. He recovered his liberty and his seat, and was rather a +favourite with Napoleon. In 1802 he went back to America, and died there +(a confirmed drunkard it is said and denied) seven years later. A few +years later still, Cobbett, in one of his sillier moods, brought +Paine's bones back to England, which did not in the least want them. + +The coarse and violent expression, as well as the unpopular matter, of +Paine's works may have led to his being rather unfairly treated in the +hot fights of the Revolutionary period; but the attempts which have +recently been made to whitewash him are a mere mistake of reaction, or +paradox, or pure stupidity. The charges which used to be brought against +his moral character matter little; for neither side in these days had, +or in any days has, a monopoly of loose or of holy living. But two facts +will always remain: first, that Paine attacked subjects which all +require calm, and some of them reverent, treatment, in a tone of the +coarsest violence; and, secondly, that he engaged in questions of the +widest reach, and requiring endless thought and reading, with the scanty +equipments and the superabundant confidence of a self-educated man. No +better instance of this latter characteristic could be produced or +required than a sentence in the preface to the second part of the _Age +of Reason_. Here Paine (who admitted that he had written the first part +hastily, in expectation of imprisonment, without a library, and without +so much as a copy of the Scriptures he was attacking at hand, and who +further confessed that he knew neither Hebrew nor Greek nor even Latin) +observes: "I have produced a work that no Bible-believer, though writing +at his ease and with a library of Church books about him, can refute." +In this charming self-satisfaction, which only natural temper assisted +by sufficient ignorance can attain in perfection, Paine strongly +resembles his disciple Cobbett. But the two were also alike in the +effect which this undoubting dogmatism, joined to a very clear, simple, +and forcible style, less correct in Paine's case than in Cobbett's, +produced upon readers even more ignorant than themselves, and greatly +their inferiors in mental strength and literary skill. Paine, indeed, +was as much superior to Cobbett in logical faculty as he was his +inferior in range of attainments and charm of style; while his ignorance +and his arbitrary assumption and exclusion of premises passed unnoticed +by the classes whom he more particularly addressed. He was thus among +the lower and lower middle classes by far the most formidable propagator +of anarchist ideas in religion and politics that England produced; and +his influence lasted till far into the present century, being, it is +said, only superseded by new forms of a similar spirit. But he never +could have had much on persons of education, unless they were prepared +to sympathise with him, or were of singularly weak mind. + +William Godwin, on the other hand, affected the "educated persons," and +those of more or less intellectual power, even more forcibly than Paine +affected the vulgar. This influence of his, indeed, is a thing almost +unique, and it has perhaps never yet been succinctly examined and +appraised. Born at Wisbech in 1756, the son of a dissenting minister, he +himself was thoroughly educated for the Presbyterian ministry, and for +some five years discharged its functions. Then in 1783 (again the +critical period) he became unorthodox in theology, and took to +literature, addicting himself to Whig politics. He also did a certain +amount of tutoring. It was not, however, till nearly ten years after he +had first taken to writing that he made his mark, and attained the +influence above referred to by a series of works rather remarkably +different in character. 1793 saw the famous _Inquiry concerning +Political Justice_, which for a time carried away many of the best and +brightest of the youth of England. Next year came the equally famous and +more long-lived novel of _Caleb Williams_, and an extensive criticism +(now much forgotten, but at the time of almost equal importance with +these), published in the _Morning Chronicle_, of the charge of Lord +Chief-Justice Eyre in the trial of Horne Tooke, Holcroft, and others for +high treason. Godwin himself ran some risk of prosecution; and that he +was left unmolested shows that the Pitt government did not strain its +powers, as is sometimes alleged. In 1797 he published _The Enquirer_, a +collection of essays on many different subjects; and in 1799 his second +remarkable novel (it should be said that in his early years of struggle +he had written others which are quite forgotten) _St. Leon_. The +closing years of the period also saw first his connection and then his +marriage with Mary Wollstonecraft, who will be noticed immediately after +him. + +It is rather curious that Godwin, who was but forty-four at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and continued to be a diligent +writer as well as a publisher and bookseller till his death in 1836, his +last years being made comfortable by a place under the Reform Ministry, +never did anything really good after the eighteenth century had closed. +His tragedy _Antonio_ only deserves remembrance because of Lamb's +exquisite account of its damnation. His _Life of Chaucer_ (1801) was one +of the earliest examples of that style of padding and guesswork in +literary biography with which literature has been flooded since. His +later novels--_Fleetwood_, _Mandeville_, _Cloudesley_, etc.--are far +inferior to _Caleb Williams_ (1794) and _St. Leon_ (1799). His _Treatise +of Population_ (1820), in answer to Malthus, was belated and +ineffective; and his _History of the Commonwealth_, in four volumes, +though a very respectable compilation, is nothing more. Godwin's +character was peculiar, and cannot be said to be pleasing. Though +regarded (or at least described) by his enemies as an apostle of +license, he seems to have been a rather cold-blooded person, whose one +passion for Mary Wollstonecraft was at least as much an affair of the +head as of the heart. He was decidedly vain, and as decidedly priggish; +but the worst thing about him was his tendency to "sponge"--a tendency +which he indulged not merely on his generous son-in-law Shelley, but on +almost everybody with whom he came in contact. It is, however, fair to +admit that this tendency (which was probably a legacy of the patronage +system) was very wide-spread at the time; that the mighty genius of +Coleridge succumbed to it to a worse extent even than Godwin did; and +that Southey himself, who for general uprightness and independence has +no superior in literary history, was content for years to live upon the +liberality not merely of an uncle, but of a school comrade, in a way +which in our own days would probably make men of not half his moral +worth seriously uncomfortable. + +Estimates of the strictly formal excellence of Godwin's writing have +differed rather remarkably. To take two only, his most recent +biographer, Mr. Kegan Paul, is never weary of praising the "beauty" of +Godwin's style; while Scott, a very competent and certainly not a very +savage critic, speaks of the style of the Chaucer as "uncommonly +depraved, exhibiting the opposite defects of meanness and of bombast." +This last is too severe; but I am unable often to see the great beauty, +the charm, and so forth, which Godwin's admirers have found in his +writings. He shows perhaps at his best in this respect in _St. Leon_, +where there are some passages of a rather artificial, but solemn and +grandiose beauty; and he can seldom be refused the praise of a capable +and easily wielded fashion of writing, equally adapted to exposition, +description, and argument. But that Godwin's taste and style were by no +means impeccable is proved by his elaborate essay on the subject in the +_Enquirer_, where he endeavours to show that the progress of English +prose-writing had been one of unbroken improvement since the time of +Queen Elizabeth, and pours contempt on passages of Shakespeare and +others where more catholic appreciation could not fail to see the +beauty. In practice his special characteristic, which Scott (or Jeffrey, +for the criticism appeared in the _Edinburgh_) selected for special +reprobation in the context of the passage quoted above, was the +accumulation of short sentences, very much in the manner of which, in +the two generations since his death, Macaulay and the late Mr. J. R. +Green, have been the chief exponents. Hazlitt probably learnt this from +Godwin; and I think there is no doubt that Macaulay learnt it from +Hazlitt. + +It may, however, be freely admitted that whatever Godwin had to say was +at least likely not to be prejudicially affected by the manner in which +he said it. And he had, as we have seen, a great deal to say in a great +many kinds. The "New Philosophy," as it was called, of the _Political +Justice_ was to a great extent softened, if not positively retracted, in +subsequent editions and publications; but its quality as first set forth +accounts both for the conquest which it, temporarily at least, obtained +over such minds as those of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and for the horror +with which it was regarded elsewhere. Godwin's system was not too +consistent, and many of its parts were borrowed more or less directly +from others: from Locke, from Hume, from the French materialists, from +Jonathan Edwards, and, by way of reaction as well as imitation, from +Rousseau. But Godwin's distinctive claim, if not exactly glory, is that +he was the first systematic Anarchist. His cardinal principle was that +government in itself, and with all its consequences of law, restriction, +punishment, etc., is bad, and to be got rid of. He combined this +(logically enough) with perfectibilism--supposing the individual to be +infinitely susceptible of "melioration" by the right use of reason--and +(rather illogically) with necessarianism. In carrying out his views he +not only did not hesitate at condemning religion, marriage, and all +other restrictions of the kind, but indulged in many curious crotchets +as to the uselessness, if not mischievousness, of gratitude and other +sentiments generally considered virtuous. The indefinite development of +the individual by reason and liberty, and the general welfare of the +community at large, were the only standards that he admitted. And it +should be said, to his credit, that he condemned the use of violence and +physical force _against_ government quite as strongly as their use _by_ +government. The establishment of absolute liberty, in the confidence +that it will lead to absolute happiness, was, at first at any rate, the +main idea of the _Political Justice_, and it is easy to understand what +wild work it must have made with heads already heated by the +thunder-weather of change that was pervading Europe. + +Godwin has been frequently charged with alarm at the anarchist phantom +he had raised. It is certain not merely that he altered and softened the +_Political Justice_ not a little, but that in his next work of the same +kind, _The Enquirer_, he took both a very different line of +investigation and a different tone of handling. In the preface he +represents it as a sort of inductive complement to the high _a priori_ +scheme of his former work; but this is not a sufficient account of the +matter. It is true that his paradoxical rebellion against conventions +appears here and there; and his literary criticism, which was never +strong, may be typified by his contrast of the "hide-bound sportiveness" +of Fielding with the "flowing and graceful hilarity" of Sterne. Indeed, +this sentence takes Godwin's measure pretty finally, and shows that he +was of his age, not for all time. But, on the other hand, it is fair to +say that the essays on "The Study of the Classics" and the "Choice of +Reading," dealing with subjects on which, both then and since, oceans of +cant and nonsense have been poured forth, are nearly as sound as they +can be. + +In his purely imaginative work he presents a contrast not much less +strange. We may confine attention here to the two capital examples of +it. _Caleb Williams_ alone has survived as a book of popular reading, +and it is no small tribute to its power that, a full century after its +publication, it is still kept on sale in sixpenny editions. Yet on no +novel perhaps is it so difficult to adjust critical judgment, either by +the historical or the personal methods. Both its general theme--the +discovery of a crime committed by a man of high reputation and unusual +moral worth, and the persecution of the discoverer by the criminal--and +its details, are thoroughly leavened and coloured by Godwin's political +and social views at the time; and either this or some other defect has +made it readable with great difficulty at all times by some persons, +among whom I am bound to enrol myself. Yet the ingenuity of its +construction, in spite of the most glaring impossibilities, the striking +situations it contains, and no doubt other merits, have always secured +readers for it. _St. Leon_, a romance of the _elixir vitae_, has no +corresponding central interest, and, save in the amiable but very +conventional figure of the heroine Marguerite, who is said to have been +studied from Mary Wollstonecraft, no interest of character; while its +defects of local colour and historical truth are glaring. But Godwin, +who was in so many ways a mirror of the new thought of the time, had +caught by anticipation something of its nascent spirit of romance. He is +altogether a rather puzzling person; and perhaps the truest explanation +of the puzzle, as well as certainly the most comfortable to the critic, +is that his genius and literary temperament were emphatically crude and +undeveloped, that he was a prophet rather than anything else, and that +he had the incoherencies and the inconsistencies almost inseparable from +prophecy. + +Even if fate and metaphysical aid had not conjoined Godwin and Mary +Wollstonecraft in the closest bond possible between man and woman, it +would have been proper to mention their names together as authors. For +as Godwin's "New Philosophy" was the boldest attempt made by any man of +the time in print to overthrow received conventions of the relations of +man to man, and incidentally of man to woman, so was his wife's +_Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ a complement of it in relation to +the status of the other sex as such. She was rather hardly treated in +her own time; Horace Walpole calling her, it is said (I have not +verified the quotation), a "hyena in petticoats": it would be at least +as just to call Lord Orford a baboon in breeches. And though of late +years she has been made something of a heroine, it is to be feared that +admiration has been directed rather to her crotchets than to her +character. This last appears to have been as lovable as her hap was ill. +The daughter of an Irishman of means, who squandered them and became a +burden on his children; the sister of an attorney who was selfishly +indifferent to his sisters--she had to fend for herself almost entirely. +At one time she and her sisters kept school; then she was, thanks to the +recommendation of Mr. Prior, a master at Eton, introduced as governess +to the family of Lord Kingsborough; then, after doing hack-work for +Johnson, the chief Liberal publisher of the period, she went to Paris, +and unluckily fell in with a handsome scoundrel, Gilbert Imlay, an +American soldier. She lived with him, he deserted her, and she nearly +committed the suicide which was actually the fate of her unfortunate +daughter by him, Fanny Imlay or Godwin. Only at the last had she a +glimpse of happiness. Godwin, who had some weaknesses, but who was not a +scoundrel, met her, and fell in love with her, and as both had +independently demonstrated that marriage was a failure, they naturally +married; but she died a week after giving birth to a daughter--the +future Mrs. Shelley. The _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_, on which +Mary Wollstonecraft's fame as an author almost wholly rests, is in some +ways a book nearly as faulty as it can be. It is not well written; it is +full of prejudices quite as wrong-headed as those it combats; it shows +very little knowledge either of human nature or of good society; and its +"niceness," to use the word in what was then its proper sense, often +goes near to the nasty. But its protest on the one hand against the +"proper" sentimentality of such English guides of female youth as Drs. +Fordyce and Gregory, on the other against the "improper" sentimentality +of Rousseau, is genuine and generous. Many of its positions and +contentions may be accepted unhesitatingly to-day by those who are by no +means enamoured of advanced womanhood; and Mary, as contrasted with most +of her rights-of-women followers, is curiously free from bumptiousness +and the general qualities of the virago. She had but ill luck in life, +and perhaps showed no very good judgment in letters, but she had neither +bad brains nor bad blood; and the references to her, long after her +death, by such men as Southey, show the charm which she exercised. + +With Godwin also is very commonly connected Thomas Holcroft (or, as Lamb +always preferred to spell the name, "_Ould_craft"), a curiosity of +literature and a rather typical figure of the time. Holcroft was born in +London in December 1745, quite in the lowest ranks, and himself rose +from being stable-boy at Newmarket, through the generally democratic +trade of shoemaking, to quasi-literary positions as schoolmaster and +clerk, and then to the dignity of actor. He was about thirty-five when +he first began regular authorship; and during the rest of his life he +wrote four novels, some score and a half of plays, and divers other +works, none of which is so good as his Autobiography, published after +his death by Hazlitt, and said to be in part that writer's work. It +would have been fortunate for Holcroft if he had confined himself to +literature; for some of his plays, notably _The Road to Ruin_, brought +him in positively large sums of money, and his novels were fairly +popular. But he was a violent democrat,--some indeed attributed to him +the origination of most of the startling things in Godwin's _Political +Justice_,--and in 1794 he was tried, though with no result, for high +treason, with Horne Tooke and others. This brought him into the society +of the young Jacobin school,--Coleridge, and the rest,--but was +disastrous to the success of his plays; and when he went abroad in 1799 +he entered on an extraordinary business of buying old masters (which +were rubbish) and sending them to England, where they generally sold for +nothing. He returned, however, and died on 23rd March 1809. + +Holcroft's theatre will best receive such notice as it requires in +connection with the other drama of the century. Of his novels, _Alwyn_, +the first, had to do with his experiences as an actor, and _Hugh Trevor_ +is also supposed to have been more or less autobiographical. Holcroft's +chief novel, however, is _Anna St. Ives_, a book in no less than seven +volumes, though not very large ones, which was published in 1792, and +which exhibits no small affinities to Godwin's _Caleb Williams_, and +indeed to the _Political Justice_ itself. And Godwin, who was not above +acknowledging mental obligations, if he was rather ill at discharging +pecuniary ones, admits the influence which Holcroft had upon him. _Anna +St. Ives_, which, like so many of the other novels of its day, is in +letters, is worth reading by those who can spare the time. But it cannot +compare, for mere amusement, with the very remarkable _Memoir_ above +referred to. Only about a fourth of this is said to be in Holcroft's own +words; but Hazlitt has made excellent matter of the rest, and it +includes a good deal of diary and other authentic work. In his own part +Holcroft shows himself a master of the vernacular, as well as (what he +undoubtedly was) a man of singular shrewdness and strength of mental +temper. + +The Novel school of the period (to which Holcroft introduces us) is full +and decidedly interesting, though it contains at the best one +masterpiece, _Vathek_, and a large number of more or less meritorious +attempts in false styles. The kind was very largely written--much more +so than is generally thought. Thus Godwin, in his early struggling days, +and long before the complete success of _Caleb Williams_, wrote, as has +been mentioned, for trifling sums of money (five and ten guineas), two +or three novels which even the zeal of his enthusiastic biographer does +not seem to have been able to recover. Nor did the circulating library, +even then a flourishing institution, lack hands more or less eminent to +work for it, or customers to take off its products. The Minerva Press, +much cited but little read, had its origin in this our time; and this +time is entitled to the sole and single credit of starting and carrying +far a bastard growth of fiction, the "tale of terror," which continued +to be cultivated in its simplest form for at least half a century, and +which can hardly be said to be quite obsolete yet. But as usual we must +proceed by special names, and there is certainly no lack of them. +"Zeluco" Moore has been dealt with already; Day, the eccentric author of +_Sanford and Merton_, belongs mainly to an earlier period, and died, +still a young man, in the year of the French Revolution; but, besides, +Holcroft, Beckford, Bage, Cumberland, Mrs. Radcliffe, and Monk Lewis, +with Mrs. Inchbald, are distinctly "illustrations" of the time, and must +have more or less separate mention. + +William Beckford is one of the problems of English literature. He was +one of the richest men in England, and his long life--1760 to 1844--was +occupied for the most part not merely with the collection, but with the +reading of books. That he could write as well as read he showed as a +mere boy by his satirical _Memoirs of Painters_, and by the +great-in-little novel of _Vathek_ (1783), respecting the composition of +which in French or English divers fables are told. Then he published +nothing for forty years, till in 1834 and 1835 he issued his _Travels in +Italy, Spain, and Portugal_, recollections of his earliest youth. These +travels have extraordinary merits of their kind; but _Vathek_ is a kind +almost to itself. The history of the Caliph, in so far as it is a satire +on unlimited power, is an eighteenth century commonplace; while many +traits in it are obviously imitated from Voltaire. But the figure of +Nouronihar, which Byron perhaps would have equalled if he could, stands +alone in literature as a fantastic projection of the potentiality of +evil magnificence in feminine character; and the closing scenes in the +domain of Eblis have the grandeur of Blake combined with that finish +which Blake's temperament, joined to his ignorance of literature and his +lack of scholarship, made it impossible for him to give. The book is +quite unique. It could hardly, in some of its weaker parts especially, +have been written at any other time; and yet its greater characteristics +have nothing to do with that time. In the florid kind of supernatural +story it has no equal. Only Dante, Beckford, and Scott in _Wandering +Willie's Tale_ have given us Hells that are worthy of the idea of Hell. + +Except that both were very much of their time, it would be impossible to +imagine a more complete contrast than that which exists between Beckford +and Bage. The former was, as has been said, one of the richest men in +England, the creator of two "Paradises" at Fonthill and Cintra, the +absolute arbiter of his time and his pleasures, a Member of Parliament +while he chose to be so, a student, fierce and recluse, the husband of a +daughter of the Gordons, and the father of a mother of the Hamiltons, +the collector, disperser, bequeather of libraries almost unequalled in +magnificence and choice. Robert Bage, who was born in 1728 and died in +1801, was in some ways a typical middle-class Englishman. He was a +papermaker, and the son of a papermaker; he was never exactly affluent +nor exactly needy; he was apparently a Quaker by education and a +freethinker by choice; and between 1781 and 1796, obliged by this reason +or that to stain the paper which he made, he produced six novels: _Mount +Henneth_, _Barham Downs_, _The Fair Syrian_, _James Wallace_, _Man as he +is_, and _Hermsprong_. The first, second, and fourth of these were +admitted by Scott to the "Ballantyne Novels," the others, though +_Hermsprong_ is admittedly Bage's best work, were not. It is impossible +to say that there is genius in Bage; yet he is a very remarkable writer, +and there is noticeable in him that singular _fin de siecle_ tendency +which has reasserted itself a century later. An imitator of Fielding and +Smollett in general plan,--of the latter specially in the dangerous +scheme of narrative by letter,--Bage added to their methods the purpose +of advocating a looser scheme of morals and a more anarchical system of +government. In other words, Bage, though a man well advanced in years at +the date of the Revolution, exhibits for us distinctly the spirit which +brought the Revolution about. He is a companion of Godwin and of Mary +Wollstonecraft; and though it must be admitted that, as in other cases, +the presence of "impropriety" in him by no means implies the absence of +dulness, he is full of a queer sort of undeveloped and irregular +cleverness. + +The most famous, though not the only novel of Richard Cumberland; +_Henry_, shows the same tendency to break loose from British decorum, +even such decorum as had really been in the main observed by the +much-abused pens of Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne himself; but it has +little purpose and indeed little vigour of any kind. Cumberland clung as +close as he could to the method of Fielding, including the preliminary +dissertation or meditation, but he would be a very strange reader who +should mistake the two. + +The school of Bage and Cumberland, the former of whom bears some little +resemblance to his countrywoman George Eliot, was, with or without +Bage's purpose, continued more or less steadily; indeed, it may be said +to be little more than a variant, with local colour, of the ordinary +school of novel-writing. But it was not this school which was to give +tone to the period. The "tale of terror" had been started by Horace +Walpole in the _Castle of Otranto_, and had, as we have seen, received a +new and brilliant illustration in the hands of Beckford. But the genius +of the author of _Vathek_ could not be followed; the talent of the +author of the _Castle of Otranto_ was more easily imitated. How far the +practice of the Germans (who had themselves imitated Walpole, and whose +work began in the two last decades of the century to have a great reflex +influence upon England) was responsible for the style of story which, +after Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis had set the fashion, dominated the +circulating libraries for years, is a question not easy and perhaps not +necessary to answer positively. I believe myself that no foreign +influence ever causes a change in national taste; it merely coincides +therewith. But the fact of the set in the tide is unmistakable and +undeniable. For some years the two authors just mentioned rode paramount +in the affections of English novel readers; before long Miss Austen +devoted her early and delightful effort, _Northanger Abbey_, to +satirising the taste for them, and quoted or invented a well-known list +of blood-curdling titles;[2] the morbid talent of Maturin gave a fresh +impulse to it, even after the healthier genius of Scott had already +revolutionised the general scheme of novel-writing; and yet later still +an industrious literary hack, Leitch Ritchie, was able to issue, and it +may be presumed to find readers for, a variety of romance the titles of +which might strike a hasty practitioner of the kind of censure usual in +biblical criticism as a designed parody of Miss Austen's own catalogue. +The style, indeed, in the wide sense has never lost favour. But in the +special Radcliffian form it reigned for some thirty years, and was +widely popular for nearly fifty. + +Anne Radcliffe, whose maiden name was Ward, was born on 9th July 1764 +and died on 7th February 1822. One of her novels, _Gaston de +Blondeville_, was published posthumously; but otherwise her whole +literary production took place between the years 1789 and 1797. The +first of these years saw _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, a very +immature work; the last _The Italian_, which is perhaps the best. +Between them appeared _A Sicilian Romance_ (1790), _The Romance of the +Forest_ (1791), and the far-famed _Mysteries of Udolpho_ in 1795. +Matthew Gregory Lewis, who, like Beckford, was a West-Indian landowner +and member for Hindon, and was well-to-do if not extremely wealthy, was +nine years younger than Mrs. Radcliffe, and did not produce his famous +_Monk_ till the same year which saw _Udolpho_. He published a good deal +of other work in prose, verse, and drama; the most noteworthy of the +second class being _Tales of Terror_, to which Scott contributed, and +the most noteworthy of the third _The Castle Spectre_. Lewis, who, +despite some foibles, was decidedly popular in the literary and +fashionable society of his time, died in 1818 at the age of forty-five +on his way home from the West Indies. Although he would have us +understand that _The Monk_ was written some time before its actual +publication, Lewis' position as a direct imitator of Mrs. Radcliffe is +unmistakable; and although he added to the characteristics of her novels +a certain appeal to "Lubricity" from which she was completely free, the +general scheme of the two writers, as well as that of all their school, +varies hardly at all. The supernatural in Mrs. Radcliffe's case is +mainly, if not wholly, what has been called "the explained +supernatural,"--that is to say, the apparently ghostly, and certainly +ghastly, effects are usually if not always traced to natural causes, +while in most if not all of her followers the demand for more highly +spiced fare in the reader, and perhaps a defect of ingenuity in the +writer, leaves the devils and witches as they were. In all, without +exception, castles with secret passages, trap-doors, forests, banditti, +abductions, sliding panels, and other apparatus and paraphernalia of the +kind play the main part. The actual literary value is, on the whole, +low; though Mrs. Radcliffe is not without glimmerings, and it is +exceedingly curious to note that, just before the historical novel was +once for all started by Scott, there is in all these writers an absolute +and utter want of comprehension of historical propriety, of local and +temporal colour, and of all the marks which were so soon to distinguish +fiction. Yet at the very same time the yearning after the historical is +shown in the most unmistakable fashion from Godwin down to the Misses +Lee, Harriet and Sophia (the latter of whom in 1783 produced, in _The +Recess_, a preposterous Elizabethan story, which would have liked to be +a historical novel), and other known and unknown writers. + +Another lady deserves somewhat longer notice. Hannah More, once a +substantially famous person in literature, is now chiefly remembered by +her association with great men of letters, such as Johnson in her youth, +Macaulay and De Quincey in her old age. She was born as early as 1745 +near Bristol, and all her life was a Somerset worthy. She began--a +curious beginning for so serious a lady, but with reforming +intentions--to write for the stage, published _The Search after +Happiness_ when she was seventeen, and had two rather dreary tragedies, +_Percy_ and the _Fatal Secret_, acted, Garrick being a family friend of +hers. Becoming, as her day said, "pious," she wrote "Sacred Dramas," and +at Cowslip Green, Barley Wood, and Clifton produced "Moral Essays," the +once famous novel of _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_, and many tracts, +the best known of which is _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_. She died +at a great age on 7th September 1833. Hannah More is not to be spoken of +with contempt, except by ignorance or incompetence. She had real +abilities, and was a woman of the world. But she was very unfortunately +parted in respect of time, coming just before the days when it became +possible for a lady to be decent in literature without being dull. + +If a book and not a chapter were allowed about this curious, and on the +whole rather neglected and undervalued, Fifth Act of the eighteenth +century, many of its minor literary phenomena would have to be noticed: +such as the last state of periodicals before the uprising of the +_Edinburgh Review_, and the local literary coteries, the most notable of +which was that of Norwich, with the Aldersons, Sayers the poet, who +taught Southey and others to try blank verse in other measures than the +decasyllabic, William Taylor, the apostle of German literature in +England, and others. But, as it is, we must concentrate our attention on +its main lines. + +In these lines the poetical pioneers, the political and other satirists, +the revolutionary propagandists, and the novelists of terror, are the +four classes of writers that distinguish the period 1780 to 1800; and +perhaps they distinguish it sufficiently, at least for those with whom +historical genesis and connection atone to some extent for want of the +first order of intrinsic interest. In less characteristic classes and in +isolated literary personalities the time was not extremely rich, though +it was not quite barren. We can here only notice cursorily the +theological controversialists who, like Paley, Horsley, and Watson, +waged war against the fresh outburst of aggressive Deism coinciding with +the French Revolution: the scholars, such as, in their different ways, +Dr. Parr, the Whig "moon" of Dr. Johnson; Porson, the famous Cambridge +Grecian, drinker, and democrat; Taylor the Platonist, a strange person +who translated most of the works of Plato and was said to have carried +his discipleship to the extent of a positive Paganism; Gilbert +Wakefield, a miscellaneous writer who wrote rapidly and with little +judgment, but with some scholarship and even some touches of genius, on +a great variety of subjects; Jacob Bryant, mythologist, theologian, and +historical critic, a man of vast learning but rather weak critical +power; and many others. Of some of these we may indeed have more to say +later, as also of the much-abused Malthus, whose famous book, in part +one of the consequences of Godwin, appeared in 1798; while as for drama, +we shall return to that too. Sheridan survived through the whole of the +time and a good deal beyond it; but his best work was done, and the +chief dramatists of the actual day were Colman, Holcroft, Cumberland, +and the farce-writer O'Keefe, a man of humour and a lively fancy. + +One, however, of these minor writers has too much of what has been +called "the interest of origins" not to have a paragraph to himself. +William Gilpin, who prided himself on his connection with Bernard +Gilpin, the so-called "Apostle of the North" in the sixteenth century, +was born at Carlisle. But he is best known in connection with the New +Forest, where, after taking his degree at Oxford, receiving orders, and +keeping a school for some time, he was appointed to the living of +Boldre. This he held till his death in 1814. Gilpin was not a +secularly-minded parson by any means; but his literary fame is derived +from the series of Picturesque Tours (_The Highlands_, 1778; _The Wye +and South Wales_, 1782; _The Lakes_, 1789; _Forest Scenery_, 1791; and +_The West of England and the Isle of Wight_, 1798) which he published in +the last quarter of the century. They were extremely popular, they set a +fashion which may be said never to have died out since, and they +attained the seal of parody in the famous _Dr. Syntax_ of William Combe +(1741-1823), an Eton and Oxford man who spent a fortune and then wrote +an enormous amount of the most widely various work in verse and prose, +of which little but _Syntax_ itself (1812 _sqq._) is remembered. Gilpin +himself is interesting as an important member of "the naturals," as they +have been oddly and equivocally called. His style is much more florid +and less just than Gilbert White's, and his observation correspondingly +less true. But he had a keen sense of natural beauty and did much to +instill it into others. + +In all the work of the time, however, great and small, from +the half-unconscious inspiration of Burns and Blake to the +common journey-work of book-making, we shall find the same +character--incessantly recurring, and unmistakable afterwards if not +always recognisable at the time--of transition, of decay and seed-time +mingled with and crossing each other. There are no distinct spontaneous +literary schools: the forms which literature takes are either occasional +and dependent upon outward events, such as the wide and varied attack +and defence consequent upon the French Revolution, or else fantastic, +trivial, reflex. Sometimes the absence of any distinct and creative +impulse reveals itself in work really good and useful, such as the +editing of old writers, of which the labours of Malone are the chief +example and the forgeries of Ireland the corresponding corruption; or +the return to their study aesthetically, in which Headley, a now +forgotten critic, did good work. Sometimes it resulted in such things +as the literary reputation (which was an actual thing after a kind) of +persons like Sir James Bland Burges, Under-Secretary of State, +poetaster, connoisseur, and general fribble. Yet all the while, in +schools and universities, in London garrets and country villages, there +was growing up, and sometimes showing itself pretty unmistakably, the +generation which was to substitute for this trying and trifling the +greatest work in verse, and not the least in prose, that had been done +for two hundred years. The _Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798, the clarion-call +of the new poetry, so clearly sounded, so inattentively heard, might +have told all, and did tell some, what this generation was about to do. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Although _The Baviad_ and _The Maeviad_ are well worth reading, it +may be questioned whether they are as amusing as their chief quarry, +_The British Album_, "containing the poems of Della Crusca, Anna +Matilda, Benedict, Cesario, The Bard, etc.," the two little volumes of +which attained their third edition in 1790. "Della Crusca," or Robert +Merry (1755-98), was a gentleman by birth, and of means, with a Harrow +and Oxford training, and some service in the army. Strange to say, there +is testimony of good wits that he was by no means a fool; yet such +drivelling rubbish as he and his coadjutors wrote even the present day +has hardly seen. + +[2] I used to think these titles sprouts of the author's brain; but a +correspondent assured me that one or two at least are certainly genuine. +Possibly, therefore all are. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE NEW POETRY + + +The opening years of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century saw, in +unusually close conjunction, the births of the men who were to be the +chief exponents, and in their turn the chief determining forces, of the +new movement. The three greatest were born, Wordsworth in 1770, Scott in +1771, and Coleridge in 1772; Southey, who partly through accident was to +form a trinity with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and who was perhaps the +most typical instance of a certain new kind of man of letters, followed +in 1774; while Lamb and Hazlitt, the chief romantic pioneers in +criticism, Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, the chief classical reactionaries +therein, were all born within the decade. But the influence of Scott was +for various reasons delayed a little; and critics naturally come after +creators. So that the time-honoured eminence of the "Lake +Poets"--Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey--need not be disturbed. + +The day of the birth of William Wordsworth was the 7th of April, the +place Cockermouth. His father was an attorney, and, as Lord Lonsdale's +agent, a man of some means and position; but on his death in 1783 the +eccentric and unamiable character of the then Lord Lonsdale, by delaying +the settlement of accounts, put the family in considerable difficulties. +Wordsworth, however, was thoroughly educated at Hawkshead Grammar School +and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in +1791. He travelled in France, and for a time, like many young men, was +a fervent Republican; but, like all the nobler of those who had "hailed +the dawn of the French Revolution," he lived to curse its noon. He +published early, his first volume of poems bearing the date 1793; but, +though that attention to nature which was always his chief note appeared +here, the work is not by any means of an epoch-making character. He was +averse from every profession; but the fates were kind to him, and a +legacy of L900 from his friend Raisley Calvert made a man of such simple +tastes as his independent, for a time at least. On the strength of it he +settled first at Racedown in Dorset, and then at Alfoxden in Somerset, +in the companionship of his sister Dorothy; and at the second of the two +places in the neighbourhood of Coleridge. Massive and original as +Wordsworth's own genius was, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the +effect, both in stimulus and guidance, of the influence of these two; +for Dorothy Wordsworth was a woman of a million, and Coleridge, +marvellous as were his own powers, was almost more marvellous in the +unique Socratic character of his effect on those who possessed anything +to work upon. The two poets produced in 1798 the _Lyrical Ballads_, +among the contents of which it is sufficient to mention _Tintern Abbey_ +and _The Ancient Mariner;_ and they subsequently travelled together in +Germany. Then Wordsworth returned to his native lakes and never left +them for long, abiding first at or near Grasmere, and from 1813 at his +well-known home of Rydal Mount. When Lord Lonsdale died in 1802, his +successor promptly and liberally settled the Wordsworth claims. The poet +soon married his cousin Mary Hutchinson; and Lord Lonsdale, not +satisfied with atoning for his predecessor's injustice, procured him, in +the year of his migration to Rydal, the office of Distributor of Stamps +for Westmoreland--an office which was almost a sinecure, and was, for a +man of Wordsworth's tastes, more than amply paid. It is curious, and a +capital instance to prove that the malignity of fortune has itself been +maligned, that the one English poet who was constitutionally incapable +of writing for bread never was under any necessity to do so. For full +sixty years Wordsworth wandered much, read little, meditated without +stint, and wrote, though never hurriedly, yet almost incessantly. The +dates of his chief publications may be best given in a note.[3] For some +years his poems were greeted by the general public and by a few of its +critical guides with storms of obloquy and ridicule; but Wordsworth, +though never indifferent to criticism, was severely disdainful of it, +and held on his way. From the first the brightest spirits of England had +been his passionate though by no means always undiscriminating admirers; +and about the end of the first quarter of the century the public began +to come round. Oxford, always first to recognise, if not always first to +produce, the greatest achievements of English literature, gave him its +D.C.L. in 1839. He received a pension of L300 a year in 1842 from Sir +Robert Peel, who, unlike most English Prime Ministers, cared for men of +letters; the laureateship fell to him in right of right on Southey's +death in 1843, and he died on the 23rd of April 1850, having come to +fourscore years almost without labour, and without many heavy sorrows. + +Of his character not much need be said. Like that of Milton, whom he in +many ways resembled (they had even both, as Hartley Coleridge has +pointed out, brothers named Christopher), it was not wholly amiable, and +the defects in it were no doubt aggravated by his early condition (for +it must be remembered that till he was two and thirty his prospects were +of the most disquieting character), by the unjust opposition which the +rise of his reputation met with, and by his solitary life in contact +only with worshipping friends and connections. One of these very +worshippers confesses that he was "inhumanly arrogant"; and he was also, +what all arrogant men are not, rude. He was entirely self-centred, and +his own circle of interests and tastes was not wide. It is said that he +would cut books with a buttery knife, and after that it is probably +unnecessary to say any more, for the fact "surprises by itself" an +indictment of almost infinite counts. + +But his genius is not so easily despatched. I have said that it is now +as a whole universally recognised, and I cannot but think that Mr. +Matthew Arnold was wrong when he gave a contrary opinion some fifteen +years ago. He must have been biassed by his own remembrance of earlier +years, when Wordsworth was still a bone of contention. I should say that +never since I myself was an undergraduate, that is to say, for the last +thirty years, has there been any dispute among Englishmen whose opinion +was worth taking, and who cared for poetry at all, on the general merits +of Wordsworth. But this agreement is compatible with a vast amount of +disagreement in detail; and Mr. Arnold's own estimate, as where he +compares Wordsworth with Moliere (who was not a poet at all, though he +sometimes wrote very tolerable verse), weighs him with poets of the +second class like Gray and Manzoni, and finally admits him for his +dealings with "life," introduces fresh puzzlements into the valuation. +There is only one principle on which that valuation can properly +proceed, and this is the question, "Is the poet rich in essentially +poetical moments of the highest power and kind?" And by poetical moments +I mean those instances of expression which, no matter what their +subject, their intention, or their context may be, cause instantaneously +in the fit reader a poetical impression of the intensest and most moving +quality. + +Let us consider the matter from this point of view.[4] + +The chief poetical influences under which Wordsworth began to write +appear to have been those of Burns and Milton; both were upon him to the +last, and both did him harm as well as good. It was probably in direct +imitation of Burns, as well as in direct opposition to the prevailing +habits of the eighteenth century, that he conceived the theory of poetic +diction which he defended in prose and exemplified in verse. The chief +point of this theory was the use of the simplest and most familiar +language, and the double fallacy is sufficiently obvious. Wordsworth +forgot that the reason why the poetic diction of the three preceding +generations had become loathsome was precisely this, that it had become +familiar; while the familiar Scots of Burns was in itself unfamiliar to +the English ear. On the other hand, he borrowed from Milton, and used +more and more as he grew older, a distinctly stiff and unvernacular form +of poetic diction itself. Few except extreme and hopeless Wordsworthians +now deny that the result of his attempts at simple language was and is +far more ludicrous than touching. The wonderful _Affliction of Margaret_ +does not draw its power from the neglect of poetic diction, but from the +intensity of emotion which would carry off almost any diction, simple or +affected; while on the other hand such pieces as "We are Seven," as the +"Anecdote for Fathers," and as "Alice Fell," not to mention "Betty Foy" +and others, which specially infuriated Wordsworth's own contemporaries, +certainly gain nothing from their namby-pamby dialect, and sometimes go +near to losing the beauty that really is in them by dint of it. +Moreover, the Miltonic blank verse and sonnets--at their best of a +stately magnificence surpassed by no poet--have a tendency to become +heavy and even dull when the poetic fire fails to fuse and shine through +them. In fact it may be said of Wordsworth, as of most poets with +theories, that his theories helped him very little, and sometimes +hindered him a great deal. + +His real poetical merits are threefold, and lie first in the +inexplicable, the ultimate, felicity of phrase which all great poets +must have, and which only great poets have; secondly, in his matchless +power of delineating natural objects; and lastly, more properly, and +with most special rarity of all, in the half-pantheistic mysticism which +always lies behind this observation, and which every now and then breaks +through it, puts it, as mere observation, aside, and blazes in unmasked +fire of rapture. The summits of Wordsworth's poetry, the "Lines Written +at Tintern Abbey" and the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"--poems of +such astonishing magnificence that it is only more astonishing that any +one should have read them and failed to see what a poet had come before +the world,--are the greatest of many of these revelations or +inspirations. It is indeed necessary to read Wordsworth straight +through--a proceeding which requires that the reader shall be in good +literary training, but is then feasible, profitable, and even pleasant +enough--to discern the enormous height at which the great Ode stands +above its author's other work. The _Tintern Abbey_ lines certainly +approach it nearest: many smaller things--"The Affliction of Margaret," +"The Daffodils," and others--group well under its shadow, and +innumerable passages and even single lines, such as that which all good +critics have noted as lightening the darkness of the _Prelude_-- + + Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone-- + +must of course be added to the poet's credit. But the Ode remains not +merely the greatest, but the one really, dazzlingly, supremely great +thing he ever did. Its theory has been scorned or impugned by some; +parts of it have even been called nonsense by critics of weight. But, +sound or unsound, sense or nonsense, it is poetry, and magnificent +poetry, from the first line to the last--poetry than which there is none +better in any language, poetry such as there is not perhaps more than a +small volume-full in all languages. The second class of merit, that of +vivid observation, abounds whereever the poems are opened. But the +examples of the first are chiefly found in the lyrics "My Heart Leaps +up," "The Sparrow's Nest"; the famous daffodil poem which Jeffrey +thought "stuff," which some say Dorothy wrote chiefly, and which is +almost perfect of its kind; the splendid opening of the "Lines to +Hartley Coleridge," which connect themselves with the "Immortality +Ode"; the exquisite group of the "Cuckoo," the best patches of the Burns +poems, and the three "Yarrows"; the "Peel Castle" stanzas; and, to cut a +tedious catalogue short, the hideously named but in parts perfectly +beautiful "Effusion on the Death of James Hogg," the last really +masterly thing that the poet did. In some of these we may care little +for the poem as a whole, nothing for the moral the poet wishes to draw. +But the poetic moments seize us, the poetic flash dazzles our eyes, and +the whole divine despair or not more divine rapture which poetry causes +comes upon us. + +One division of Wordsworth's work is so remarkable that it must have +such special and separate mention as it is here possible to give it; and +that is his exercises in the sonnet, wherein to some tastes he stands +only below Shakespeare and on a level with Milton. The sonnet, after +being long out of favour, paying for its popularity between Wyatt and +Milton by neglect, had, principally it would seem on the very inadequate +example of Bowles (see _infra_), become a very favourite form with the +new Romantics. But none of them wrote it with the steady persistence, +and none except Keats with the occasional felicity, of Wordsworth. Its +thoughtfulness suited his bent, and its limits frustrated his prolixity, +though, it must be owned, he somewhat evaded this benign influence by +writing in series. And the sonnets on "The Venetian Republic," on the +"Subjugation of Switzerland," that beginning "The world is too much with +us," that in November 1806, the first "Personal Talk," the magnificent +"Westminster Bridge," and the opening at least of that on Scott's +departure from Abbotsford, are not merely among the glories of +Wordsworth, they are among the glories of English poetry. + +Unfortunately these moments of perfection are, in the poet's whole work, +and especially in that part of it which was composed in the later half +of his long life, by no means very frequent. Wordsworth was absolutely +destitute of humour, from which it necessarily followed that his +self-criticism was either non-existent or constantly at fault. His +verse was so little facile, it paid so little regard to any of the +common allurements of narrative-interest or varied subject, it was so +necessary for it to reach the full white heat, the absolute instant of +poetic projection, that when it was not very good it was apt to be +scarcely tolerable. It is nearly impossible to be duller than Wordsworth +at his dullest, and unluckily it is as impossible to find a poet of +anything like his powers who has given himself the license to be dull so +often and at such length. The famous "Would he had blotted a thousand" +applies to him with as much justice as it was unjust in its original +application; and it is sometimes for pages together a positive struggle +to remember that one is reading one of the greatest of English poets, +and a poet whose influence in making other poets has been second hardly +to that of Spenser, of Keats, or of the friend who follows him in our +survey. + +Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devonshire, at Ottery St. Mary, of +which place his father was vicar, on the 21st October 1772. The family +was merely respectable before his day, but since it has been of very +unusual distinction, intellectual and other. He went to Christ's +Hospital when he was not quite ten years old, and in 1791 was admitted +to an exhibition at Jesus College, Cambridge, with his thoughts already +directed to poetry by the sonnets of Bowles above mentioned, and with a +reputation, exaggerated perhaps, but certainly not invented, in Lamb's +famous "Elia" paper on his old school. Indeed, high as is Coleridge's +literary position on the strength of his writing alone, his talk and its +influence on hearers have been unanimously set higher still. He did very +well at first, gaining the Browne Medal for Greek Verse and +distinguishing himself for the Craven Scholarship; but he speedily fell +in love, in debt, it is suspected in drink, and it is known into various +political and theological heresies. He left Cambridge and enlisted at +Reading in the 15th Light Dragoons. He obtained his discharge, however, +in three or four months, and no notice except a formal admonition +appears to have been taken of his resuming his position at Cambridge. +Indeed he was shortly after elected to a Foundation Scholarship. But in +the summer of 1794 he visited Oxford, and after he had fallen in with +Southey, whose views were already Jacobinical, the pair engaged +themselves to Pantisocracy[5] and the Miss Frickers. This curious and +often told story cannot be even summarised here. Its immediate result +was that Coleridge left the University without taking a degree, and, +though not at once, married Sarah Fricker on October 1795. Thenceforward +he lived on literature and his friends, especially the latter. He tried +Unitarian preaching and newspaper work, of which at one time or another +he did a good deal. The curious ins and outs of Coleridge's strange +though hardly eventful life have, after being long most imperfectly +known, been set forth in fullest measure by Mr. Dykes Campbell. It must +suffice here to say that, after much wandering, being unable or +unwilling to keep house with his own family, he found asylums, first +with some kind folk named Morgan, and then in the house of Mr. Gillman +at Hampstead, where for years he held forth to rising men of letters, +and where he died on the 25th June 1834. His too notorious craving for +opium had never been conquered, though it had latterly been kept in some +check. + +Despite this unfortunate failing and his general inability to carry out +any schemes of work on the great scale, Coleridge's literary production +was very considerable, and, except the verse, it has never been +completely collected or systematically edited. He began verse-writing +very early, and early found a vent for it in the _Morning Chronicle_, +then a Radical organ. He wrote _The Fall of Robespierre_ in conjunction +with Southey in 1794, and published it. Some prose pamphlets followed, +and then Cottle, the Bristol providence of this group of men of letters, +offered thirty guineas for a volume of poems, which duly appeared in +1796. Meanwhile Coleridge had started a singular newspaper called _The +Watchman_, which saw ten numbers, appearing every eighth day. The +_Lyrical Ballads_ followed in 1798, and meanwhile Coleridge had written +the play of _Osorio_ (to appear long afterwards as _Remorse_), had begun +_Christabel_, and had contributed some of his best poems to the _Morning +Post_. His German visit (see _ante_) produced among other things the +translation of _Wallenstein_, a translation far above the original. Some +poetry and much newspaper work filled the next ten years, with endless +schemes; but in 1807 Coleridge began to lecture at the Royal +Institution--a course somewhat irregularly delivered, and almost +entirely unreported. 1809 saw his second independent periodical venture, +_The Friend_, the subsequent reprint of which as a book is completely +rewritten. In 1811-12 he delivered his second course of lectures, this +time on his own account. It was followed by two others, and in 1813 +_Remorse_ was produced at Drury Lane, had a fair success, and brought +the author some money. _Christabel_, with _Kubla Khan_, appeared in +1816, and the _Biographia Literaria_ next year; _Zapolya_ and the +rewritten _Friend_ the year after, when also Coleridge gave a new course +of lectures, and yet another, the last. _Aids to Reflection_, in 1825, +was the latest important work he issued himself, though in 1828 he +superintended a collection of his poems. Such of the rest of his work as +is in existence in a collected form has been printed or reprinted since. + +A more full account of the appearance of Coleridge's work than is +desirable or indeed possible in most cases here has been given, because +it is important to convey some idea of the astonishingly piecemeal +fashion in which it reached the world. To those who have studied the +author's life of opium-eating; of constant wandering from place to +place; of impecuniousness so utter that, after all the painstaking of +the modern biographer, and after full allowance for the ravens who seem +always to have been ready to feed him, it is a mystery how he escaped +the workhouse; of endless schemes and endless non-performance--it is +only a wonder that anything of Coleridge's ever reached the public +except in newspaper columns. As it was, while his most ambitiously +planned books were never written at all, most of those which did reach +the press were years in getting through it; and Southey, on one +occasion, after waiting fifteen months for the conclusion of a +contribution of Coleridge's to _Omniana_, had to cancel the sheet in +despair. The collection, after many years, by Mr. Ernest Coleridge of +his grandfather's letters has by no means completely removed the mystery +which hangs over Coleridge's life and character. We see a little more, +but we do not see the whole; and we are still unable to understand what +strange impediments there were to the junction of the two ends of power +and performance. A rigid judge might almost say, that if friends had not +been so kind, fate had been kinder, and that instead of helping they +hindered, just as a child who is never allowed to tumble will never +learn to walk. + +The enormous tolerance of friends, however, which alone enabled him to +produce anything, was justified by the astonishing genius to which its +possessor gave so unfair a chance. As a thinker, although the evidence +is too imperfect to justify very dogmatic conclusions, the opinion of +the best authorities, from which there is little reason for differing, +is that Coleridge was much more stimulating than intrinsically valuable. +His _Aids to Reflection_, his most systematic work, is disappointing; +and, with _The Friend_ and the rest, is principally valuable as +exhibiting and inculcating an attitude of mind in which the use of logic +is not, as in most eighteenth century philosophers, destructive, but is +made to consist with a wide license for the employment of imagination +and faith. He borrowed a great deal from the Germans, and he at least +sometimes forgot that he had borrowed a great deal from our own older +writers. + +So, too, precise examination of his numerous but fragmentary remains as +a literary critic makes it necessary to take a great deal for granted. +Here, also, he Germanised much; and it is not certain, even with the aid +of his fragments, that he was the equal either of Lamb or of Hazlitt in +insight. Perhaps his highest claim is that, in the criticism of +philosophy, of religion, and of literature alike he expressed, and was +even a little ahead of, the nobler bent and sympathy of his +contemporaries. We are still content to assign to Coleridge, perhaps +without any very certain title-deeds, the invention of that more +catholic way of looking at English literature which can relish the +Middle Ages without doing injustice to contemporaries, and can be +enthusiastic for the seventeenth century without contemning the +eighteenth.[6] To him more than to any single man is also assigned (and +perhaps rightly, though some of his remarks on the Church, even after +his rally to orthodoxy, are odd) the great ecclesiastical revival of the +Oxford movement; and it is certain that he had not a little to do with +the abrupt discarding of the whole tradition of Locke, Berkeley and +Hartley only excepted. Difficult as it may be to give distinct chapter +and verse for these assignments from the formless welter of his prose +works, no good judge has ever doubted their validity, with the above and +other exceptions and guards. It may be very difficult to present +Coleridge's assets in prose in a liquid form; but few doubt their value. + +It is very different with his poetry. Here, too, the disastrous, the +almost ruinous results of his weaknesses appear. When one begins to sift +and riddle the not small mass of his verse, it shrinks almost +appallingly in bulk. _Wallenstein_, though better than the original, is +after all only a translation. _Remorse_ (either under that name or as +_Osorio_) and _Zapolya_ are not very much better than the contemporary +or slightly later work of Talfourd and Milman. _The Fall of Robespierre_ +is as absurd and not so amusing as Southey's unassisted _Wat Tyler_. Of +the miscellaneous verse with which, after these huge deductions, we are +left, much is verse-impromptu, often learned and often witty, for +Coleridge was (in early days at any rate) abundantly provided with both +wit and humour, but quite occasional. Much more consists of mere +Juvenilia. Even of the productions of his best times (the last lustrum +of the eighteenth century and a lucid interval about 1816) much is not +very good. _Religious Musings_, though it has had its admirers, is +terribly poor stuff. _The Monody on the Death of Chatterton_ might have +been written by fifty people during the century before it. _The Destiny +of Nations_ is a feeble rant; but the _Ode on the Departing Year_, +though still unequal, still conventional, strikes a very different note. +_The Three Graves_, though injured by the namby-pambiness which was +still thought incumbent in ballads, again shows no vulgar touch. And +then, omitting for the moment _Kubla Khan_, which Coleridge said he +wrote in 1797, but of which no mortal ever heard till 1816, we come to +_The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ and the birth of the new poetry in +England. Here the stutters and flashes of Blake became coherent speech +and steady blaze; here poetry, which for a century and a half had been +curbing her voice to a genteel whisper or raising it only to a forensic +declamation, which had at best allowed a few wood-notes to escape here +and there as if by mistake, spoke out loud and clear. + +If this statement seems exaggerated (and it is certain that at the time +of the appearance of the _Ancient Mariner_ not even Wordsworth, not even +Southey quite relished it, while there has always been a sect of +dissidents against it), two others will perhaps seem more extravagant +still. The second is that, with the exception of this poem, of _Kubla +Khan_, of _Christabel_, and of _Love_, all of them according to +Coleridge written within a few months of each other in 1797-98, he never +did anything of the first class in poetry. The third is that these +four--though _Christabel_ itself does not exceed some fifteen hundred +lines and is decidedly unequal, though the _Ancient Mariner_ is just +over six hundred and the other two are quite short--are sufficient +between them to rank their author among the very greatest of English +poets. It is not possible to make any compromise on this point; for upon +it turns an entire theory and system of poetical criticism. Those who +demand from poetry a "criticism of life," those who will have it that +"all depends on the subject," those who want "moral" or "construction" +or a dozen other things,--all good in their way, most of them +compatible with poetry and even helpful to it, but none of them +essential thereto,--can of course never accept this estimate. Mrs. +Barbauld said that _The Ancient Mariner_ was "improbable"; and to this +charge it must plead guilty at once. _Kubla Khan_, which I should rank +as almost the best of the four, is very brief, and is nothing but a +dream, and a fragment of a dream. _Love_ is very short too, and is +flawed by some of the aforesaid namby-pambiness, from which none of the +Lake school escaped when they tried passion. _Christabel_, the most +ambitious if also the most unequal, does really underlie the criticism +that, professing itself to be a narrative and holding out the promise of +something like a connected story, it tells none, and does not even offer +very distinct hints or suggestions or what its story, if it had ever +been told, might have been. A thousand faults are in it; a good part of +the thousand in all four. + +But there is also there something which would atone for faults ten +thousand times ten thousand; there is what one hears at most three or +four times in English, at most ten or twelve times in all +literature--the first note, with its endless echo-promise, of a new +poetry. The wonderful cadence-changes of _Kubla Khan_, its phrases, +culminating in the famous distich so well descriptive of Coleridge +himself-- + + For he on honey dew hath fed, + And drunk the milk of Paradise, + +the splendid crash of the + + Ancestral voices prophesying war, + +are all part of this note and cry. You will find them nowhere from +Chaucer to Cowper--not even in the poets where you will find greater +things as you may please to call them. Then in the _Mariner_ comes the +gorgeous metre,--freed at once and for the first time from the +"butter-woman's rank to market" which had distinguished all imitations +of the ballad hitherto,--the more gorgeous imagery and pageantry here, +the simple directness there, the tameless range of imagination and +fancy, the fierce rush of rhythm:-- + + The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, + The furrow followed free: + We were the first that ever burst + Into that silent sea. + +And thereafter the spectre of Life-in-Death, the water-snakes, the +rising of the dead men, the snapping of the spell. There had been +nothing like all this before; and in all the hundred years, for all the +great poetry we have seen, we have seen nothing so _new_ as it. _Love_ +gave the magnificent opening stanza, the motto and defence at once of +the largest, the most genuine, the most delightful part of poetry. And +_Christabel_, independently of its purple patches, such as the famous +descant on the quarrels of friends, and the portents that mark the +passage of Geraldine, gave what was far more important--a new metre, +destined to have no less great and much more copious influence than the +Spenserian stanza itself. It might of course be easy to pick out +anticipations in part of this combination of iambic dimeter, trochaic, +and anapaestic; but it never had taken thorough form before. And how it +seized on the imagination of those who heard it is best shown by the +well-known anecdote of Scott, who, merely hearing a little of it +recited, at once developed it and established it in _The Lay of the Last +Minstrel_. In verse at least, if not in prose, there is no greater +_master_ than Coleridge. + +Robert Southey, the third of this curiously dissimilar trio whom partly +chance and partly choice have bound together for all time, was born at +Bristol on 12th August 1774. His father was only a linen-draper, and a +very unprosperous one; but the Southeys were a respectable family, +entitled to arms, and possessed of considerable landed property in +Somerset, some of which was left away from the poet by unfriendly uncles +to strangers, while more escaped him by a flaw in the entail. His +mother's family, the Hills, were in much better circumstances than his +father, and like the other two Lake Poets he was singularly lucky in +finding helpers. First his mother's brother the Rev. Herbert Hill, +chaplain to the English factory at Lisbon, sent him to Westminster, +where he did very well and made invaluable friends, but lost the regular +advancement to Christ Church owing to the wrath of the head-master Dr. +Vincent at an article which Southey had contributed to a school +magazine, the _Flagellant_. He was in fact expelled; but the gravest +consequences of expulsion from a public school of the first rank did not +fall upon him, and he matriculated without objection at Balliol in 1793. +His college, however, which was then distinguished for loose living and +intellectual dulness, was not congenial to him; and developing extreme +opinions in politics and religion, he decided that he could not take +orders, and left without even taking a degree. His disgrace with his own +friends was completed by his engaging in the Pantisocratic scheme, and +by his attachment to Edith Fricker, a penniless girl (though not at all +a "milliner at Bath") whose sisters became Mrs. Coleridge and Mrs. +Lovell. And when the ever-charitable Hill invited him to Portugal he +married Miss Fricker the very day before he started. After a residence +at Lisbon, in which he laid the foundation of his unrivalled +acquaintance with Peninsular history and literature, he returned and +lived with his wife at various places, nominally studying for the law, +which he liked not better but worse than the Church. After divers +vicissitudes, including a fresh visit (this time not as a bachelor) to +Portugal, and an experience of official work as secretary to Corry the +Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, he at last, at the age of thirty, +established himself at Greta Hall, close to Keswick, where Coleridge had +already taken up his abode. This, as well as much else in his career, +was made possible by the rare generosity of his friend of school-days +and all days, Charles Wynn, brother of the then Sir Watkin, and later a +pretty well known politician, who on coming of age gave him an annuity +of L160 a year. This in 1807 he relinquished on receiving a government +pension of practically the same amount. The Laureateship in 1813 brought +him less than another hundred; but many years afterwards Sir Robert +Peel, in 1835, after offering a baronetcy, put his declining years out +of anxiety by conferring a further pension of L300 a year on him. These +declining years were in part unhappy. As early as 1816 his eldest son +Herbert, a boy of great promise, died; the shock was repeated some years +later by the death of his youngest and prettiest daughter Isabel; while +in the same year as that in which his pension was increased his wife +became insane, and died two years later. A second marriage in 1839 to +the poetess Caroline Bowles brought him some comfort; but his own brain +became more and more affected, and for a considerable time before his +death on 21st March 1843 he had been mentally incapable. + +Many morals have been drawn from this melancholy end as to the wisdom of +too prolonged literary labour, which in Southey's case had certainly +been prodigious, and had been carried so far that he actually read while +he was taking constitutional walks. It is fair to say, however, that, +just as in the case of Scott the terrible shock of the downfall of his +fortunes has to be considered, so in that of Southey the successive +trials to which he, a man of exceptionally strong domestic affections, +was exposed, must be taken into account. At the same time it must be +admitted that Southey's production was enormous. His complete works +never have been, and are never likely to be collected; and, from the +scattered and irregular form in which they appeared, it is difficult if +not impossible to make even a guess at the total. The list of books and +articles (the latter for the most part written for the _Quarterly +Review_, and of very great length) at the end of his son's _Life_ fills +nearly six closely printed pages. Two of these entries--_the Histories +of Brazil_ and of the _Peninsular War_--alone represent six large +volumes. The Poems by themselves occupy a royal octavo in double columns +of small print running to eight hundred pages; the correspondence, very +closely printed in the six volumes of the _Life_, and the four more of +_Letters_ edited by the Rev. J. W. Warter, some five thousand pages in +all; while a good deal of his early periodical work has never been +identified, and there are large stores of additional letters--some +printed, more in MS. Nor was Southey by any means a careless or an easy +writer. He always founded his work on immense reading, some of the +results of which, showing the laborious fashion in which he performed +it, were published after his death in his _Commonplace Book_. He did not +write very rapidly; and he corrected, both in MS. and in proof, with the +utmost sedulity. Of the nearly 14,000 books which he possessed at his +death, it is safe to say that all had been methodically read, and most +read many times; while his almost mediaeval diligence did not hesitate at +working through a set of folios to obtain the information or the +corrections necessary for a single article. + +It is here impossible to mention more than the chief items of this +portentous list. They are in verse--_Poems_, by R. Southey and R. +Lovell, 1794; _Joan of Arc_, 1795; _Minor Poems_, 1797-99; _Thalaba_, +1801; _Metrical Tales_ and _Madoc_, 1805; _The Curse of Kehama_, 1810; +_Roderick_, 1814; with a few later volumes, the chief being the unlucky +_Vision of Judgment_, 1821, in hexameters. A complete edition of the +Poems, except one or two posthumously printed, was published by himself +in ten volumes in 1837, and collected into one ten years later with the +additions. This also includes _Wat Tyler_, a rhapsody of the poet's +youth, which was (piratically and to his infinite annoyance) published +in 1817. + +In prose Southey's most important works are the _History of Brazil_, +1810-19 (this, large as it is, is only a kind of off-shoot of the +projected _History of Portugal_, which in a way occupied his whole life, +and never got published at all); the _History of the Peninsular War_, +1822-32; the _Letters from England by Don Manuel Espriella_, 1812; the +_Life of Nelson_ (usually thought his masterpiece), 1813; the _Life of +Wesley_, 1820; _The Book of the Church_, 1824; _Colloquies on Society_ +(well known, if not in itself, for Macaulay's review of it), 1829; +_Naval History_, 1833-40; and the great humorous miscellany of _The +Doctor_ (seven volumes), 1834-47; to which must be added editions, often +containing some of his best work, of Chatterton, Amadis of Gaul, +Palmerin of England, Kirke White, Bunyan, and Cowper, with divers +_Specimens_ of the British Poets, the charming prose and verse +_Chronicle of the Cid_, the miscellany of _Omniana_, half-way between +table- and commonplace-book, the _Commonplace Book_ itself, and not a +little else, besides letters and articles innumerable. + +Certain things about Southey are uncontested and uncontestable. The +uprightness and beauty of his character, his wonderful helpfulness to +others, and the uncomplaining way in which he bore what was almost +poverty,--for, high as was his reputation, his receipts were never a +tithe of the rewards not merely of Scott or Byron or Tom Moore, but of +much lesser men--are not more generally acknowledged than the singular +and pervading excellence of his English prose style, the robustness of +his literary genius, and his unique devotion to literature. But when we +leave these accepted things he becomes more difficult if not less +interesting. He himself had not the slightest doubt that he was a great +poet, and would be recognised as such by posterity, though with a proud +humility he reconciled himself to temporary lack of vogue. This might be +set down to an egotistic delusion. But such an easy explanation is +negatived by even a slight comparison of the opinions of his greatest +contemporaries. It is somewhat staggering to find that Scott, the +greatest Tory man of letters who had strong political sympathies, and +Fox, the greatest Whig politician who had keen literary tastes, enjoyed +his long poems enthusiastically. But it may be said that the eighteenth +century leaven which was so strong in each, and which is also noticeable +in Southey, conciliated them. What then are we to say of Macaulay, a +much younger man, a violent political opponent of Southey, and a by no +means indiscriminate lover of verse, who, admitting that he doubted +whether Southey's long poems would be read after half a century, had no +doubt that if read they would be admired? And what are we to say of the +avowals of admiration wrung as it were from Byron, who succeeded in +working himself up, from personal, political, and literary motives +combined, into a frantic hatred of Southey, lampooned him in print, sent +him a challenge (which luckily was not delivered) in private, and was +what the late Mr. Mark Pattison would have called "his Satan"? + +The half century of Macaulay's prophecy has come, and that prophecy has +been fulfilled as to the rarity of Southey's readers as a poet. Has the +other part come true too? I should hesitate to say that it has. Esteem +not merely for the man but for the writer can never fail Southey +whenever he is read by competent persons: admiration may be less prompt +to come at call. Two among his smaller pieces--the beautiful "Holly +Tree," and the much later but exquisite stanzas "My days among the dead +are past"--can never be in any danger; the grasp of the +grotesque-terrific, which the poet shows in the "Old Woman of Berkley" +and a great many other places, anticipates the _Ingoldsby Legends_ with +equal ease but with a finer literary gift; some other things are really +admirable and not a little pleasing. But the longer poems, if they are +ever to live, are still dry bones. _Thalaba_, one of the best, is spoilt +by the dogged craze against rhyme, which is more, not less, needed in +irregular than in regular verse. _Joan of Arc_, _Madoc_, _Roderick_, +have not escaped that curse of blank verse which only Milton, and he not +always, has conquered in really long poems. _Kehama_, the only great +poem in which the poet no longer disdains the almost indispensable aid +to poetry in our modern and loosely quantified tongue, is much better +than any of the others. The Curse itself is about as good as it can be, +and many other passages are not far below it; but to the general taste +the piece suffers from the remote character of the subject, which is not +generally and humanly interesting, and from the mass of tedious detail. + +To get out of the difficulty thus presented by indulging in contemptuous +ignoring of Southey's merits has been attempted many times since Emerson +foolishly asked "Who is Southey?" in his jottings of his conversation +with Landor, Southey's most dissimilar but constant friend and +panegyrist. It is extremely easy to say who Southey is. He is the +possessor of perhaps the purest and most perfect English prose style, of +a kind at once simple and scholarly, to be found in the language. He has +written (in the _Life of Nelson_) perhaps the best short biography in +that language, and other things not far behind this. No Englishman has +ever excelled him in range of reading or in intelligent comprehension +and memory of what he read. Unlike many book-worms, he had an +exceedingly lively and active humour. He has scarcely an equal, and +certainly no superior, in the rare and difficult art of discerning and +ranging the material parts of an historical account: the pedant may +glean, but the true historian will rarely reap after him. And in poetry +his gifts, if they are never of the very highest, are so various and +often so high that it is absolutely absurd to pooh-pooh him as a poet. +The man who could write the verses "In my Library" and the best parts of +_Thalaba_ and _Kehama_ certainly had it in his power to write other +things as good, probably to write other things better. Had it been in +his nature to take no thought not merely for the morrow but even for the +day, like Coleridge, or in his fate to be provided for without any +trouble on his own part, and to take the provision with self-centred +indifference, like Wordsworth, his actual production might have been +different and better. But his strenuous and generous nature could not be +idle; and idleness of some sort is, it may be very seriously laid down, +absolutely necessary to the poet who is to be supreme. + +The poet who, though, according to the canons of poetical criticism most +in favour during this century, he ranks lower than either Wordsworth or +Coleridge, did far more to popularise the general theory of Romantic +poetry than either, was a slightly older man than two of the trio just +noticed; but he did not begin his poetical career (save by one volume of +translation) till some years after all of them had published. Walter +Scott was born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. His father, of +the same name as himself, was a Writer to the Signet; his mother was +Anne Rutherford, and the future poet and novelist had much excellent +Border blood in him, besides that of his direct ancestors the Scotts of +Harden. He was a very sickly child; and though he grew out of this he +was permanently lame. His early childhood was principally spent on the +Border itself, with a considerable interval at Bath; and he was duly +sent to the High School and University of Edinburgh, where, like a good +many other future men of letters, he was not extremely remarkable for +what is called scholarship. He was early imprisoned in his father's +office, where the state of relations between father and son is supposed +to be pretty accurately represented by the story of those between Alan +Fairford and his father in _Redgauntlet_; and, like Alan, he was called +to the bar. But even in the inferior branch of the profession he enjoyed +tolerable liberty of wandering about and sporting, besides sometimes +making expeditions on business into the Highlands and other +out-of-the-way parts of the country. + +He thus acquired great knowledge of his fatherland; while (for he was, +if not exactly a scholar, the most omnivorous of readers) he was also +acquiring great knowledge of books. And it ought not to be omitted that +Edinburgh, in addition to the literary and professional society which +made it then and afterwards so famous, was still to no small extent the +headquarters of the Scotch nobility, and that Scott, long before his +books made him famous, was familiar with society of every rank. His +first love affair did not run smooth, and he seems never to have +entirely forgotten the object of it, who is identified (on somewhat more +solid grounds than in the case of other novelists) with more than one of +his heroines. But he consoled himself to a certain extent with a young +lady half French, half English, Miss Charlotte Carpenter or Charpentier, +whom he met at Gilsland and married at Carlisle on Christmas Eve 1797. +Scott was an active member of the yeomanry as well as a barrister, an +enthusiastic student of German as well as a sportsman; and the book of +translations (from Buerger) above referred to appeared in 1796. But he +did nothing important till after the beginning of the present century, +when the starting of the _Edinburgh Review_ and some other things +brought him forward; though he showed what he could do by contributing +two ballads, "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John," to a collection of +terror-pieces started by Monk Lewis, and added Goethe's _Goetz von +Berlichingen_ to his translations. He had become in 1799 independent, +though not rich, by being appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire. + +His beginnings as an author proper were connected, as was all his +subsequent career, partly for good but more for ill, with a school +friendship he had early formed for two brothers named Ballantyne at +Kelso. He induced James, the elder, to start a printing business at +Edinburgh, and unfortunately he entered into a secret partnership with +this firm, which never did him much good, which caused him infinite +trouble, and which finally ruined him. But into this complicated and +still much debated business it is impossible to enter here. James +Ballantyne printed the _Border Minstrelsy_, which appeared in 1802,--a +book ranking with Percy's _Reliques_ in its influence on the form and +matter of subsequent poetry,--and then Scott at last undertook original +work of magnitude. His task was _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, +published in 1805. It may almost be said that from that day to his death +he was the foremost--he was certainly, with the exception of Byron, the +most popular--man of letters in Great Britain. His next poems--_Marmion_ +(1808) and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810)--brought him fame and money +such as no English poet had gained before; and though Byron's +following--for following it was--for the time eclipsed his master, the +latter's _Rokeby, The Lord of the Isles_, and others, would have been +triumphs for any one else. + +How, when the taste for his verse seemed to cool, he struck out a new +line in prose and achieved yet more fame and yet more money than the +verse had ever given him, will concern us in the next chapter. But as it +would be cumbrous to make yet a third division of his work, the part of +his prose which is not fiction may be included here, as well as the rest +of his life. He had written much criticism for the _Edinburgh_, until he +was partly disgusted by an uncivil review of _Marmion_, partly (and +more) by the tone of increasing Whiggery and non-intervention which +Jeffrey was imposing on the paper; and when the _Quarterly_ was founded +in opposition he transferred his services to that. He edited a splendid +and admirably done issue of Dryden (1808) and another not quite so +thoroughly executed of Swift (1814), and his secret connection with the +Ballantynes induced him to do much other editing and miscellaneous work. +In the sad last years of his life he laboured with desperation at a +great _Life of Napoleon_, which was a success pecuniarily but not in +many other ways, produced the exquisite _Tales of a Grandfather_ on +Scottish history, and did much else. He even wrote plays, which have +very little merit, and, except abstract philosophy, there is hardly a +division of literature that he did not touch; for he composed a sermon +or two of merit, and his political pamphlets, the _Letters of Malachi +Malagrowther_, opposing what he thought an interference with Scottish +privileges in currency matters, are among the best of their kind. + +His life was for many years a very happy one; for his marriage, if not +passionately, was fairly successful, he was extremely fond of his +children, and while his poems and novels began before he had fully +reached middle life to make him a rich man, his Sheriffship, and a +Clerkship of Session which was afterwards added (though he had to wait +some time for its emoluments), had already made him secure of bread and +expectant of affluence. From a modest cottage at Lasswade he expanded +himself to a rented country house at Ashestiel on the Tweed, having +besides a comfortable town mansion in Edinburgh; and when he was turned +out of Ashestiel he bought land and began to build at Abbotsford on the +same river. The estate was an ill-chosen and unprofitable one. The house +grew with the owner's fortunes, which, founded in part as they were on +the hardest and most honest work that author ever gave, were in part +also founded on the quicksand of his treacherous connection with men, +reckless, ill-judging, and, though perhaps not in intention dishonest, +perpetually trading on their secret partner's industry and fame. In the +great commercial crash of 1825, Constable, the publisher of most of the +novels, was involved; he dragged the Ballantynes down with him; and the +whole of Scott's fortune, except his appointments and the little +settled on his wife and children, was liable for the Ballantynes' debts. +But he was not satisfied with ruin. He must needs set to work at the +hopeless task of paying debts which he had never, except technically, +incurred, and he actually in the remaining years of his life cleared off +the greater part of them. It was at the cost of his life itself. His +wife died, his children were scattered; but he worked on till the +thankless, hopeless toil broke down his strength, and after a fruitless +visit to Italy, he returned, to die at Abbotsford on 21st September +1832. + +Scott's poetry has gone through various stages of estimate, and it can +hardly be said even now, a hundred years after the publication of his +first verses, to have attained the position, practically accepted by all +but paradoxers, which in that time a poet usually gains, unless, as the +poets of the seventeenth century did in the eighteenth, he falls, owing +to some freak of popular taste, out of really critical consideration +altogether. The immense popularity which it at first obtained has been +noted, as well as the fact that it was only ousted from that popularity +by, so to speak, a variety of itself. But the rise of Byron in the long +run did it far less harm than the long-delayed vogue of Wordsworth and +Coleridge and the success even of the later schools, of which Tennyson +was at once the pioneer and the commander-in-chief. At an uncertain time +in the century, but comparatively early, it became fashionable to take +Scott's verse as clever and spirited improvisation, to dwell on its +over-fluency and facility, its lack of passages in the grand style +(whatever the grand style may be), to indicate its frequent blemishes in +strictly correct form and phrase. And it can hardly be said that there +has been much reaction from this tone among professed and competent +critics. + +To a certain extent, indeed, this undervaluation is justified, and Scott +himself, who was more free from literary vanity than any man of letters +of whom we have record, pleaded guilty again and again. Dropping as he +did almost by accident on a style which had absolutely no forerunners in +elaborate formal literature, a style almost absolutely destitute of any +restrictions or limits, in which the length of lines and stanzas, the +position of rhymes, the change from narrative to dialogue, and so forth, +depended wholly and solely on the caprice of the author, it would have +been extremely strange if a man whose education had been a little +lacking in scholastic strictness, and who began to write at a time when +the first object of almost every writer was to burst old bonds, had not +been somewhat lawless, even somewhat slipshod. _Christabel_ itself, the +first in time, and, though not published till long afterwards, the model +of his _Lay_, has but a few score verses that can pretend to the grand +style (whatever that may be). Nor yet again can it be denied that, acute +as was the sense which bade Scott stop, he wrote as it was a little too +much in this style, while he tried others for which he had far less +aptitude. + +Yet it seems to me impossible, on any just theory of poetry or of +literature, to rank him low as a poet. He can afford to take his trial +under more than one statute. To those who say that all depends on the +subject, or that the handling and arrangement of the subject are, if not +everything, yet something to be ranked far above mere detached beauties, +he can produce not merely the first long narrative poems in English, +which for more than a century had honestly enthralled and fixed popular +taste, but some of the very few long narrative poems which deserve to do +so. Wordsworth, in a characteristic note on the _White Doe of Rylstone_, +contrasts, with oblique depreciation of Scott, that poem and its famous +predecessors in the style across the border; but he omits to notice one +point of difference--that in Scott the _story_ interests, and in himself +it does not. For the belated "classical" criticism of the _Edinburgh +Review_, which thought the story of the _Last Minstrel_ childish, and +that of _Marmion_ not much better, it may have been at least consistent +to undervalue these poems. But the assumptions of that criticism no +longer pass muster. On the other hand, to those who pin their poetical +faith on "patches," the great mass of Scott's poetical work presents +examples of certainly no common beauty. The set pieces of the larger +poems, the Melrose description in _The Lay_, the battle in _Marmion_, +the Fiery Cross in the _Lady of the Lake_, are indeed inferior in this +respect to the mere snatches which the author scattered about his +novels, some of which, especially the famous "Proud Maisie," have a +beauty not inferior to that of the best things of his greatest +contemporaries. And in swinging and dashing lyric, again, Scott can hold +his own with the best, if indeed "the best" can hold _their_ own in this +particular division with "Lochinvar" and "Bonnie Dundee," with Elspeth's +ballad in the _Antiquary_, and the White Lady's comfortable words to +poor Father Philip. + +The most really damaging things to be said against Scott as a poet are +two. First, that his genius did not incline him either to the expression +of the highest passion or to that of the deepest meditation, in which +directions the utterances of the very greatest poetry are wont to lie. +In the second place, that the extreme fertility and fluency which cannot +be said to have improved even his prose work are, from the nature of the +case, far more evident, and far more damagingly evident, in his verse. +He is a poet of description, of action, of narration, rather than of +intense feeling or thought. Yet in his own special divisions of the +simpler lyric and of lyrical narrative he sometimes attains the +exquisite, and rarely sinks below a quality which is fitted to give the +poetical delight to a very large number of by no means contemptible +persons. It appears to me at least, that on no sound theory of poetical +criticism can Scott be ranked as a poet below Byron, who was his +imitator in narrative and his inferior in lyric. But it may be admitted +that this was not the opinion of most contemporaries of the two, and +that, much as the poetry of Byron has sunk in critical estimation during +the last half century, and slight as are the signs of its recovery, +those who do not think very highly of the poetry of the pupil do not, as +a rule, show much greater enthusiasm for that of the master. + +Byron, it is true, was only half a pupil of Scott's, and (oddly enough +for the poet, who, with Scott, was recognised as leader by the Romantic +schools of all Europe) had more than a hankering after the classical +ideals in literature. Yet how much of this was due to wilful "pose" and +a desire not to follow the prevailing school of the day is a question +difficult to answer--as indeed are many connected with Byron, whose +utterances, even in private letters, are very seldom to be taken with +absolute confidence in their sincerity. The poet's character did no +discredit to the doctrines of heredity. His family was one of +considerable distinction and great age; but his father, Captain John +Byron, who never came to the title, was a _roue_ of the worst character, +and the cousin whom the poet succeeded had earned the name of the Wicked +Lord. His mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight, was of an excellent Scotch +stock, and an heiress; though her rascally husband made away with her +money. But she had a most violent temper, and seems to have had +absolutely no claims except those of birth to the title of lady. Byron +was born in Holles Street, Cavendish Square, on 22nd January 1788; and +his early youth, which was spent with his mother at Aberdeen, was one of +not much indulgence or happiness. But he came to the title, and to an +extremely impoverished succession, at ten years old, and three years +later was sent to Harrow. Here he made many friends, distinguishing +himself by obtruding mentions and memories of his rank in a way not +common with the English aristocracy, and hence, in 1805, he proceeded to +Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent about the usual time there, but +took no degree, and while he was still an undergraduate printed his +_Hours of Idleness_, first called _Juvenilia_. It appeared publicly in +March 1807, and a year later was the subject of a criticism, rather +excessive than unjust, in the _Edinburgh Review_. Byron, who had plenty +of pluck, and who all his life long inclined in his heart to the Popian +school, spent a considerable time upon a verse-answer, _English Bards +and Scotch Reviewers_, in which he ran amuck generally, but displayed +ability which it was hopeless to seek in his first production. Then he +went abroad, and the excitement of his sojourn in the countries round +the Mediterranean for the next two years not only aroused, but finally +determined and almost fully developed, his genius. + +On his return home he took his seat and went into society with the +success likely to attend an extremely handsome young man of +twenty-three, with a vague reputation both for ability and naughtiness, +a fairly old title, and something of an estate. But his position as a +"lion" was not thoroughly asserted till the publication, in February +1812, of _Childe Harold_, which with some difficulty he had been induced +by his friend Dallas, his publisher Murray, and the critic Gifford to +put before some frigid and trivial _Hints from Horace_. Over _Childe +Harold_ the English public went simply mad, buying seven editions in +five weeks; and during the next three years Byron produced, in rapid +succession, _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, _The Corsair_, _Lara_, +_The Siege of Corinth_, and _Hebrew Melodies_. He could hardly write +fast enough for the public to buy. Then the day after New Year's Day +1814, he married Miss Milbanke, a great heiress, a future baroness in +her own right, and handsome after a fashion, but of a cold, prim, and +reserved disposition, as well as of a very unforgiving temper. It +probably did not surprise any one who knew the pair when, a year later, +they separated for ever. + +The scandals and discussions connected with this event are fortunately +foreign to our subject here. The only important result of the matter for +literature is that Byron (upon whom public opinion in one of its sudden +fits of virtuous versatility threw even more of the blame than was +probably just) left the country and journeyed leisurely, in the company +of Mr. and Mrs. Shelley for the most part, to Venice. He never returned +alive to England; and Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa were successively +his headquarters till 1823. Then the Greek Insurrection attracted him, +he raised what money he could, set out for Greece, showed in the +distracted counsels of the insurgents much more practical and +untheatrical heroism than he had hitherto been credited with, and died +of fever at Missolonghi on the 19th of April 1824. His body was brought +home to England and buried in the parish church of Hucknall Torkard, +near Newstead Abbey, his Nottinghamshire seat, which, however, he had +sold some time before. The best of Byron's poems by far date from this +latter period of his life: the later cantos of _Childe Harold_, the +beautiful short poems of _The Dream_ and _Darkness_, many pieces in +dramatic form (the chief of which are _Manfred_, _Cain_, _Marino +Faliero_, and _Sardanapalus_), _Mazeppa_, a piece more in his earlier +style but greatly superior to his earlier work, a short burlesque poem +_Beppo_, and an immense and at his death unfinished narrative satire +entitled _Don Juan_. + +Although opinions about Byron differ very much, there is one point about +him which does not admit of difference of opinion. No English poet, +perhaps no English writer except Scott (or rather "The Author of +Waverley"), has ever equalled him in popularity at home; and no English +writer, with Richardson and Scott again as seconds, and those not very +close ones, has equalled him in contemporary popularity abroad. The +vogue of Byron in England, though overpowering for the moment, was even +at its height resisted by some good judges and more strait-laced +moralists; and it ebbed, if not as rapidly as it flowed, with a much +more enduring movement. But abroad he simply took possession of the +Continent of Europe and kept it. He was one of the dominant influences +and determining causes of the French Romantic movement; in Germany, +though the failure of literary talent and activity of the first order in +that country early in this century made his school less important, he +had great power over Heine, its one towering genius; and he was almost +the sole master of young Russia, young Italy, young Spain, in poetry. +Nor, though his active and direct influence has of course been exhausted +by time, can his reputation on the Continent be said to have ever waned. + +These various facts, besides being certain in themselves, are also very +valuable as guiding the inquirer in regions which are more of opinion. +The rapidity of Byron's success everywhere, the extent of it abroad +(where few English writers before him had had any at all), and the +decline at home, are all easily connected with certain peculiarities of +his work. That work is almost as fluent and facile as Scott's, to which, +as has been said, it owes immense debts of scheme and manner; and it is +quite as faulty. Indeed Scott, with all his indifference to a strictly +academic correctness, never permitted himself the bad rhymes, the bad +grammar, the slipshod phrase in which Byron unblushingly indulges. But +Byron is much more monotonous than Scott, and it was this very monotony, +assisted by an appearance of intensity, which for the time gave him +power. The appeal of Byron consists very mainly, though no doubt not +wholly, in two things: the lavish use of the foreign and then unfamiliar +scenery, vocabulary, and manners of the Levant, and the installation, as +principal character, of a personage who was speedily recognised as a +sort of fancy portrait, a sketch in cap and yataghan, of Byron himself +as he would like to be thought. This Byronic hero has an ostentatious +indifference to moral laws, for the most part a mysterious past which +inspires him with deep melancholy, great personal beauty, strength, and +bravery, and he is an all-conquering lover. He is not quite so original +as he seemed, for he is in effect very little more than the older +Romantic villain-hero of Mrs. Radcliffe, the Germans, and Monk Lewis, +costumed much more effectively, placed in scheme and companionship more +picturesquely, and managed with infinitely greater genius. But it is a +common experience in literary history that a type more or less familiar +already, and presented with striking additions, is likely to be more +popular than something absolutely new. And accordingly Byron's bastard +and second-hand Romanticism, though it owed a great deal to the +terrorists and a great deal more to Scott, for the moment altogether +eclipsed the pure and original Romanticism of his elders Coleridge and +Wordsworth, of his juniors Shelley and Keats. + +But although the more extreme admirers of Byron would no doubt dissent +strongly from even this judgment, it would probably be subscribed, with +some reservations and guards, by not a few good critics from whom I am +compelled to part company as to other parts of Byron's poetical claim. +It is on the question how much of true poetry lies behind and +independent of the scenery and properties of Byronism, that the great +debate arises. Was the author of the poems from _Childe Harold_ to _Don +Juan_ really gifted with the poetical "sincerity and strength" which +have been awarded him by a critic of leanings so little Byronic in the +ordinary sense of Matthew Arnold? Is he a poetic star of the first +magnitude, a poetic force of the first power, at all? There may seem to +be rashness, there may even seem to be puerile insolence and absurdity, +in denying or even doubting this in the face of such a European concert +as has been described and admitted above. Yet the critical conscience +admits of no transaction; and after all, as it was doubted by a great +thinker whether nations might not go mad like individuals, I do not know +why it should be regarded as impossible that continents should go mad +like nations. + +At any rate the qualities of Byron are very much of a piece, and, even +by the contention of his warmest reasonable admirers, not much varied or +very subtle, not necessitating much analysis or disquisition. They can +be fairly pronounced upon in a judgment of few words. Byron, then, seems +to me a poet distinctly of the second class, and not even of the best +kind of second, inasmuch as his greatness is chiefly derived from a sort +of parody, a sort of imitation, of the qualities of the first. His verse +is to the greatest poetry what melodrama is to tragedy, what plaster is +to marble, what pinchbeck is to gold. He is not indeed an impostor; for +his sense of the beauty of nature and of the unsatisfactoriness of life +is real, and his power of conveying this sense to others is real also. +He has great, though uncertain, and never very _fine_, command of poetic +sound, and a considerable though less command of poetic vision. But in +all this there is a singular touch of illusion, of what his +contemporaries had learnt from Scott to call gramarye. The often cited +parallel of the false and true Florimels in Spenser applies here also. +The really great poets do not injure each other in the very least by +comparison, different as they are. Milton does not "kill" Wordsworth; +Spenser does not injure Shelley; there is no danger in reading Keats +immediately after Coleridge. But read Byron in close juxtaposition with +any of these, or with not a few others, and the effect, to any good +poetic taste, must surely be disastrous; to my own, whether good or bad, +it is perfectly fatal. The light is not that which never was on land or +sea; it is that which is habitually just in front of the stage: the +roses are rouged, the cries of passion even sometimes (not always) ring +false. I have read Byron again and again; I have sometimes, by reading +Byron only and putting a strong constraint upon myself, got nearly into +the mood to enjoy him. But let eye or ear once catch sight or sound of +real poetry, and the enchantment vanishes. + +Attention has already been called to the fact that Byron, though +generally ranking with the poets who have been placed before him in this +chapter as a leader in the nineteenth century renaissance of poetry, was +a direct scholar of Scott, and in point of age represented, if not a new +generation, a second division of the old. This was still more the case +in point of age, and almost infinitely more so in point of quality, as +regards Shelley and Keats. There was nothing really new in Byron; there +was only a great personal force directing itself, half involuntarily and +more than half because of personal lack of initiative, into contemporary +ways. The other two poets just mentioned were really new powers. They +took some colour from their elders; but they added more than they took, +and they would unquestionably have been great figures at any time of +English literature and history. Scott had little or no influence on +them, and Wordsworth not much; but they were rather close to Coleridge, +and they owed something to a poet of much less genius than his or than +their own--Leigh Hunt. + +Percy Bysshe Shelley, the elder of the two, was Byron's junior by four +years, and was born at Field Place in Sussex in August 1792. He was the +heir of a very respectable and ancient though not very distinguished +family of the squirearchy; and he had every advantage of education, +being sent to Eton in 1804, and to University College, Oxford, six years +later. The unconquerable unconventionality of his character and his +literary tastes had shown themselves while he was still a schoolboy, and +in the last year of his Etonian and the first of his Oxonian residence +he published two of the most absurd novels of the most absurd novel kind +that ever appeared, _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_, imitations of Monk +Lewis. He also in the same year collaborated in two volumes of verse, +_The Wandering Jew_ (partly represented by _Queen Mab_), and "_Poems_ by +Victor and Cazire" (which has vindicated the existence of reviewers by +surviving only in its reviews, all copies having mysteriously perished). +His stay at Oxford was not long; for having, in conjunction with a +clever but rather worthless friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg (afterwards +his biographer), issued a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism" and +sent it to the heads of colleges, he was, by a much greater necessity, +expelled from University on 25th March 1811. Later in the same year he +married Harriet Westbrook, a pretty and lively girl of sixteen, who had +been a school-fellow of his sister's, but came from the lower middle +class. His apologists have said that Harriet threw herself at his head, +and that Shelley explained to her that she or he might depart when +either pleased. The responsibility and the validity of this defence may +be left to these advocates. + +For nearly three years Shelley and his wife led an exceedingly wandering +life in Ireland, Wales, Devonshire, Berkshire, the Lake District, and +elsewhere, Shelley attempting all sorts of eccentric propagandism in +politics and religion, and completing the crude but absolutely original +_Queen Mab_. Before the third anniversary of his wedding-day came round +he had parted with Harriet, against whose character his apologists, as +above, have attempted to bring charges. The fact is that he had fallen +in love with Mary Godwin, daughter of the author of _Political Justice_ +(whose writings had always had a great influence on Shelley, and who +spunged on him pitilessly) and of Mary Wollstonecraft. The pair fled to +the Continent together in July 1814; and two years later, when the +unhappy wife, a girl of twenty-one, had drowned herself in the +Serpentine, they were married. Meanwhile Shelley had wandered back to +England, had, owing to the death of his grandfather, received a +considerable independent income by arrangement, and in 1815 had written +_Alastor_, which, though not so clearly indicative of a new departure +when compared with _Queen Mab_ as some critics have tried to make out, +no other living poet, perhaps no other poet, could have written. He was +refused the guardianship, though he was allowed to appoint guardians, of +his children by the luckless Harriet, and was (for him naturally, though +for most men unreasonably) indignant. But his poetical vocation and +course were both clear henceforward, though he never during his life had +much command of the public, and had frequent difficulties with +publishers, while the then attitude of the law made piracy very easy. +For a time he lived at Marlow, where he wrote or began _Prince +Athanase_, _Rosalind and Helen_, and above all _Laon and Cythna_, called +later and permanently _The Revolt of Islam_. In April 1818 he left +England for Italy, and never returned. + +The short remains of his life were spent chiefly at Lucca, Florence, and +Pisa, with visits to most of the other chief Italian cities; Byron being +often, and Leigh Hunt at the last, his companion. All his greatest poems +were now written. At last, in July 1821, when the Shelleys were staying +at a lonely house named Casa Magni, on the Bay of Spezia, he and his +friend Lieutenant Williams set out in a boat from Leghorn. The boat +either foundered in a squall or was run down. At any rate Shelley's body +was washed ashore on the 19th, and burnt on a pyre in the presence of +Byron, Hunt, and Trelawny. + +Little need be said of Shelley's character. If it had not been for the +disgusting efforts of his maladroit adorers to blacken that not merely +of his hapless young wife, but of every one with whom he came in +contact, it might be treated with the extremest indulgence. Almost a boy +in years at the time of his death, he was, with some late flashes of +sobering, wholly a boy in inability to understand the responsibilities +and the burdens of life. An enthusiast for humanity generally, and +towards individuals a man of infinite generosity and kindliness, he yet +did some of the cruellest and some of not the least disgraceful things +from mere childish want of realising the _pacta conventa_ of the world. +He, wholly ignorant, would, if he could, have turned the wheel of +society the other way, reckless of the horrible confusion and suffering +that he must occasion. + +But in pure literary estimation we need take no note of this. In +literature, Shelley, if not of the first three or four, is certainly of +the first ten or twelve. He has, as no poet in England except Blake and +Coleridge in a few flashes had had before him for some century and a +half, the ineffable, the divine intoxication which only the _di majores_ +of poetry can communicate to their worshippers. Once again, after all +these generations, it became unnecessary to agree or disagree with the +substance, to take interest or not to take interest in it, to admit or +to contest the presence of faults and blemishes--to do anything except +recognise and submit to the strong pleasure of poetry, the charm of the +highest poetical inspiration. + +I think myself, though the opinion is not common among critics, that +this touch is unmistakable even so early as _Queen Mab_. That poem is no +doubt to a certain extent modelled upon Southey, especially upon +_Kehama_, which, as has been observed above, is a far greater poem than +is usually allowed. But the motive was different: the sails might be the +same, but the wind that impelled them was another. By the time of +_Alastor_ it is generally admitted that there could or should have been +little mistake. Nothing, indeed, but the deafening blare of Byron's +brazen trumpet could have silenced this music of the spheres. The +meaning is not very much, though it is passable; but the music is +exquisite. There is just a foundation of Wordsworthian scheme in the +blank verse; but the structure built on it is not Wordsworth's at all, +and there are merely a few borrowed strokes of _technique_, such as the +placing of a long adjective before a monosyllabic noun at the end of +the line, and a strong caesura about two-thirds through that line. All +the rest is Shelley, and wonderful. + +It may be questioned whether, fine as _The Revolt of Islam_ is, the +Spenserian stanza was quite so well suited as the "Pindaric" or as blank +verse, or as lyrical measures, to Shelley's genius. It is certainly far +excelled both in the lyrics and in the blank verse of _Prometheus +Unbound_, the first poem which distinctly showed that one of the +greatest lyric poets of the world had been born to England. _The Cenci_ +relies more on subject, and, abandoning the lyric appeal, abandons what +Shelley is strongest in; but _Hellas_ restores this. Of his comic +efforts, the chief of which are _Swellfoot the Tyrant_ and _Peter Bell +the Third_, it is perhaps enough to say that his humour, though it +existed, was fitful, and that he was too much of a partisan to keep +sufficiently above his theme. The poems midway between, large and +small--_Prince Athanase_, _The Witch of Atlas_ (an exquisite +and glorious fantasy piece), _Rosalind and Helen_, _Adonais_, +_Epipsychidion_, and the _Triumph of Life_--would alone have made his +fame. But it is in Shelley's smallest poems that his greatest virtue +lies. Not even in the seventeenth century had any writer given so much +that was so purely exquisite. "To Constantia Singing," the "Ozymandias" +sonnet, the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills," the "Stanzas +written in Dejection," the "Ode to the West Wind," the hackneyed +"Cloud," and "Skylark," "Arethusa," the "World's Wanderers," "Music, +when soft voices die," "The flower that smiles to-day," "Rarely, rarely, +comest thou," the "Lament," "One word is too often profaned," the +"Indian Air," the second "Lament," "O world! O life! O time!" (the most +perfect thing of its kind perhaps, in the strict sense of +perfection, that all poetry contains), the "Invitation," and the +"Recollection,"--this long list, which might have been made longer, +contains things absolutely consummate, absolutely unsurpassed, only +rivalled by a few other things as perfect as themselves. + +Shelley has been foolishly praised, and it is very likely that the +praise given here may seem to some foolish. It is as hard for praise to +keep the law of the head as for blame to keep the law of the heart. He +has been mischievously and tastelessly excused for errors both in and +out of his writings which need only a kindly silence. In irritation at +the "chatter" over him some have even tried to make out that his +prose--very fine prose indeed, and preserved to us in some welcome +letters and miscellaneous treatises, but capable of being dispensed +with--is more worthy of attention than his verse, which has no parallel +and few peers. But that one thing will remain true in the general +estimate of competent posterity I have no doubt. There are two English +poets, and two only, in whom the purely poetical attraction, exclusive +of and sufficient without all others, is supreme, and these two are +Spenser and Shelley. + +The life of John Keats was even shorter and even less marked by striking +events than that of Shelley, and he belonged in point of extraction and +education to a somewhat lower class of society than any of the poets +hitherto mentioned in this chapter. He was the son of a livery stable +keeper who was fairly well off, and he went to no school but a private +one, where, however, he received tolerable instruction and had good +comrades. Born in 1795, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at the age of +fifteen, and even did some work in his profession, till in 1817 his +overmastering passion for literature had its way. He became intimate +with the so-called "Cockney school," or rather with its leaders Leigh +Hunt and Hazlitt--an intimacy, as far as the former was concerned, not +likely to chasten his own taste, but chiefly unfortunate because it led, +in the rancorous state of criticism then existing, to his own efforts +being branded with the same epithet. His first book was published in the +year above mentioned: it did not contain all the verse he had written up +to that time, or the best of it, but it confirmed him in his vocation. +He broke away from surgery, and, having some little means, travelled to +the Isle of Wight, Devonshire, and other parts of England, besides +becoming more and more familiar with men of letters. It was in the Isle +of Wight chiefly that he wrote _Endymion_, which appeared in 1818. This +was savagely and stupidly attacked in _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_; +the former article being by some attributed, without a tittle of +evidence, to Lockhart. But the supposed effect of these attacks on +Keats' health was widely exaggerated by some contemporaries, especially +by Byron. The fact was that he had almost from his childhood shown +symptoms of lung disease, which developed itself very rapidly. The sense +of his almost certain fate combined with the ordinary effects of passion +to throw a somewhat hectic air over his correspondence with Miss Fanny +Brawne. His letters to her contain nothing discreditable to him, but +ought never to have been published. He was, however, to bring out his +third and greatest book of verse in 1820; and then he sailed for Italy, +to die on the 23rd of February 1821. He spoke of his name as "writ in +water." Posterity has agreed with him that it is--but in the Water of +Life. + +Nothing is more interesting, even in the endless and delightful task of +literary comparison, than to contrast the work of Shelley and Keats, so +alike and yet so different. A little longer space of work, much greater +advantages of means and education, and a happier though less blameless +experience of passion, enabled Shelley to produce a much larger body of +work than Keats has to his name, even when this is swollen by what Mr. +Palgrave has justly stigmatised as "the incomplete and inferior work" +withheld by Keats himself, but made public by the cruel kindness of +admirers. And this difference in bulk probably coincides with a +difference in the volume of genius of the two writers. Further, while it +is not at all improbable that if Shelley had lived he would have gone on +writing better and better, the same probability is, I think, to be more +sparingly predicated of Keats. + +On the other hand, by a not uncommon connection or consequence, Keats +has proved much more of a "germinal" poet than Shelley. Although the +latter was, I think, by far the greater, his poetry had little that was +national and very little that was imitable about it. He has had a vast +influence; but it has been in the main the influence, the inspiration of +his unsurpassed exciting power. No one has borrowed or carried further +any specially Shelleian turns of phrase, rhythm, or thought. Those who +have attempted to copy and urge further the Shelleian attitude towards +politics, philosophy, ethics, and the like, have made it generally +ludicrous and sometimes disgusting. He is, in his own famous words, +"something remote and afar." His poetry is almost poetry in its +elements, uncoloured by race, language, time, circumstance, or creed. He +is not even so much a poet as Poetry accidentally impersonated and +incarnate. + +With Keats it is very different. He had scarcely reached maturity of any +kind when he died, and he laboured under the very serious disadvantages, +first of an insufficient acquaintance with the great masters, and +secondly of coming early under the influence of a rather small master, +yet a master, Leigh Hunt, who taught him the fluent, gushing, slipshod +style that brought not merely upon him, but upon his mighty successor +Tennyson, the harsh but not in this respect wholly unjust lash of +conservative and academic criticism. But he, as no one of his own +contemporaries did, felt, expressed, and handed on the exact change +wrought in English poetry by the great Romantic movement. Coleridge, +Wordsworth, Scott, and even Southey to some extent, were the authors of +this; but, being the authors, they were necessarily not the results of +it. Byron was fundamentally out of sympathy with it, though by accidents +of time and chance he had to enlist; Shelley, an angel, and an effectual +angel, of poetry, was hardly a man, and still less an Englishman. But +Keats felt it all, expressed what of it he had time and strength to +express, and left the rest to his successors, helped, guided, furthered +by his own example. Keats, in short, is the father, directly or at short +stages of descent, of every English poet born within the present +century who has not been a mere "sport" or exception. He begat Tennyson, +and Tennyson begat all the rest. + +The evidences of this are to be seen in almost his earliest poems--not +necessarily in those contained in his earliest volume. Of course they +are not everywhere. There were sure to be, and there were, mere echoes +of eighteenth century verse and mere imitations of earlier writers. But +these may be simply neglected. It is in such pieces as "Calidore" that +the new note is heard; and though something in this note may be due to +Hunt (who had caught the original of it from Wither and Browne), Keats +changed, enriched, and refashioned the thing to such an extent that it +became his own. It is less apparent (though perhaps not less really +present) in his sonnets, despite the magnificence of the famous one on +Chapman's _Homer_, than in the couplet poems, which are written in an +extremely fluent and peculiar verse, very much "enjambed" or overlapped, +and with a frequent indulgence in double rhymes. Hunt had to a certain +extent started this, but he had not succeeded in giving it anything like +the distinct character which it took in Keats' hands. + +_Endymion_ was written in this measure, with rare breaks; and there is +little doubt that the lusciousness of the rhythm, combined as it was +with a certain lusciousness both of subject and (again in unlucky +imitation of Hunt) of handling, had a bad effect on some readers, as +also that the attacks on it were to a certain extent, though not a very +large one, prompted by genuine disgust at the mawkishness, as its author +called it, of the tone. Keats, who was always an admirable critic of his +own work, judged it correctly enough later, except that he was too harsh +to it. But it is a delightful poem to this day, and I do not think that +it is quite just to call it, as it has been called, "not Greek, but +Elizabethan-Romantic." It seems to me quite different from Marlowe or +the author of _Britain's Ida_, and really Greek, but Greek mediaeval, +Greek of the late romance type, refreshed with a wonderful new blood of +English romanticism. And this once more was to be the note of all the +best poetry of the century, the pouring of this new English blood +through the veins of old subjects--classical, mediaeval, foreign, modern. +We were to conquer the whole world of poetical matter with our English +armies, and Keats was the first leader who started the adventure. + +The exquisite poetry of his later work showed this general tendency in +all its latest pieces,--clearly in the larger poems, the fine but +perhaps somewhat overpraised _Hyperion_, the admirable _Lamia_, the +exquisite _Eve of St. Agnes_, but still more in the smaller, and most of +all in those twin peaks of all his poetry, the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" +and "La Belle Dame sans Merci." He need indeed have written nothing but +these two to show himself not merely an exquisite poet but a captain and +leader of English poetry for many a year, almost for many a generation +to come. Wordsworth may have given him a little, a very quiet hint for +the first, the more Classical masterpiece; Coleridge something a little +louder for the second, the Romantic. But in neither case did the summons +amount to anything like a cue or a call-bell; it was at best seed that, +if it had not fallen on fresh and fruitful soil, could have come to +nothing. + +As it is, and if we wish to see what it came to, we must simply look at +the whole later poetry of the nineteenth century in England. The +operations of the spirit are not to be limited, and it is of course +quite possible that if Keats had not been, something or somebody would +have done his work instead of him. But as it is, it is to Keats that we +must trace Tennyson, Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Morris; to Keats that +even not a little of Browning has to be affiliated; to Keats, directly +or indirectly, that the greater part of the poetry of nearly three +generations owes royalty and allegiance. + +Of him, as of Shelley, some foolish and hurtful things have been said. +In life he was no effeminate "aesthetic" or "decadent," divided between +sensual gratification and unmanly _Katzenjammer_, between paganism and +puerility, but an honest, manly Englishman, whose strength only yielded +to unconquerable disease, whose impulses were always healthy and +generous. Despite his origin,--and, it must be added, some of his +friendships,--there was not a touch of vulgarity about him; and if his +comic vein was not very full-pulsed, he had a merry laugh in him. There +is no "poisonous honey stolen" from anywhere or extracted by himself +from anything in Keats; his sensuousness is nothing more than is, in the +circumstances, "necessary and voluptuous and right." But these moral +excellences, while they may add to the satisfaction with which one +contemplates him, hardly enhance--though his morbid admirers seem to +think that the absence of them would enhance--the greatness and the +value of his poetical position, both in the elaboration of a new poetic +style and language, and still more in the indication of a new road +whereby the great poetic exploration could be carried on. + +Round or under these great Seven--for that Byron was great in a way need +not be denied; Southey, the weakest of all as a poet, had a very strong +influence, and was one of the very greatest of English men of +letters--must be mentioned a not inconsiderable number of men who in any +other age would have been reckoned great. The eldest of these, both in +years and in reputation, holds his position, and perhaps always held it, +rather by courtesy than by strict right. Samuel Rogers[7] was born in +London on 30th July 1763, and was the son of a dissenting banker, from +whom he derived Whig principles and a comfortable fortune. It is said +that he once, as a very young man, went to call on Dr. Johnson, but was +afraid to knock; but though shyness accompanied him through life, the +amiability which it is sometimes supposed to betoken did not. He +published a volume of poems in 1786, and his famous _Pleasures of +Memory_, the piece that made his reputation, in 1792. Twenty years +afterwards _Columbus_ followed, and yet two years later, in 1814, +_Jacqueline_; while in 1822 _Italy_, on which, with the _Pleasures of +Memory_, such fame as he has rests, was published, to be reissued some +years afterwards in a magnificent illustrated edition, and to have a +chance (in a classical French jest) _se sauver de planche en planche_. +He did not die till 1855, in his ninety-third year: the last, as he had +been the first, of his group. + +Rogers had the good luck to publish his best piece at a time when the +general and popular level of English poetry was at the lowest point it +has reached since the sixteenth century, and to be for many years +afterwards a rich and rather hospitable man, the acquaintance if not +exactly the friend of most men of letters, of considerable influence in +political and general society, and master of an excessively sharp +tongue. A useful friend and a dangerous enemy, it was simpler to court +or to let him alone than to attack him, and his fame was derived from +pieces too different from any work of the actual generation to give them +much umbrage. It may be questioned whether Rogers ever wrote a single +line of poetry. But he wrote some polished and pleasant verse, which was +vigorous by the side of Hayley and "correct" by the side of Keats. In +literature he has very little interest; in literary history he has some. + +_Felix opportunitate_ in the same way, but a far greater poet, was +Thomas Campbell, who, like Rogers, was a Whig, like him belonged rather +to the classical than to the romantic school in style if not in choice +of subject, and like him had the good luck to obtain, by a poem with a +title very similar to that of Rogers' masterpiece, a high reputation at +a time when there was very little poetry put before the public. Campbell +was not nearly so old a man as Rogers, and was even the junior of the +Lake poets and Scott, having been born at Glasgow on the 27th July 1777. +His father was a real Campbell, and as a merchant had at one time been +of some fortune; but the American War had impoverished him, and the poet +was born to comparative indigence. He did, however, well at the college +of his native city, and on leaving it took a tutorship in Mull. His +_Pleasures of Hope_ was published in 1799 and was extremely popular, nor +after it had its author much difficulty in following literature. He was +never exactly rich, but pensions, legacies, editorships, high prices for +his not extensive poetical work, and higher for certain exercises in +prose book-making which are now almost forgotten, maintained him very +comfortably. Indeed, of the many recorded ingratitudes of authors to +publishers, Campbell's celebrated health to Napoleon because "he shot a +bookseller" is one of the most ungrateful. In the last year of the +eighteenth century he went to Germany, and was present at (or in the +close neighbourhood of) the battle of Hohenlinden. This he afterwards +celebrated in really immortal verse, which, with "Ye Mariners of +England" and the "Battle of the Baltic," represents his greatest +achievement. In 1809 he published _Gertrude of Wyoming_, a short-long +poem of respectable _technique_ and graceful sentiment. In 1824 appeared +a volume of poems, of which the chief, _Theodric_ (not as it is +constantly misspelled _Theodoric_), is bad; and in 1842 another, of +which the chief, _The Pilgrim of Glencoe_, is worse. He died in 1844 at +Boulogne, after a life which, if not entirely happy (for he had +ill-health, not improved by incautious habits, some domestic +misfortunes, and a rather sour disposition), had been full of honours of +all kinds, both in his own country, of where he was Lord Rector of +Glasgow University, and out of it. + +If Campbell had written nothing but his longer poems, the comparison +above made with Rogers would be wholly, instead of partly, justified. +Although both still retain a sort of conventional respect, it is +impossible to call either the _Pleasures of Hope_ or _Gertrude of +Wyoming_ very good poetry, while enough has been said of their +successors. Nor can very high praise be given to most of the minor +pieces. But the three splendid war-songs above named--the equals, if not +the superiors, of anything of the kind in English, and therefore in any +language--set him in a position from which he is never likely to be +ousted. In a handful of others--"Lochiel," the exquisite lines on "A +Deserted Garden in Argyleshire," with, for some flashes at least, the +rather over-famed "Exile of Erin," "Lord Ullin's Daughter," and a few +more--he also displays very high, though rather unequal and by no means +unalloyed, poetical faculty; and "The Last Man," which, by the way, is +the latest of his good things, is not the least. But his best work will +go into a very small compass: a single octavo sheet would very nearly +hold it, and it was almost all written before he was thirty. He is thus +an instance of a kind of poet, not by any means rare in literature, but +also not very common, who appears to have a faculty distinct in class +but not great in volume, who can do certain things better than almost +anybody else, but cannot do them very often, and is not quite to be +trusted to do them with complete sureness of touch. For it is to be +noted that even in Campbell's greatest things there are distinct +blemishes, and that these blemishes are greatest in that which in its +best parts reaches the highest level--"The Battle of the Baltic." Many +third and some tenth rate poets would never have left in their work such +things as "The might of England flushed _To anticipate the scene_," +which is half fustian and half nonsense: no very great poet could +possibly have been guilty of it. Yet for all this Campbell holds, as has +been said, the place of best singer of war in a race and language which +are those of the best singers and not the worst fighters in the history +of the world--in the race of Nelson and the language of Shakespeare. Not +easily shall a man win higher praise than this. + +In politics, as well as in a certain general kind of literary attitude +and school, another Thomas, Moore, classes himself both historically and +naturally with Rogers and Campbell; but he was a very much better poet +than Rogers, and, though he never reached quite the same height as +Campbell at his narrow and exceptional best, a far more voluminous verse +writer and a much freer writer of good verse of many different kinds. He +was born in Dublin on 28th May 1779; his father being a grocer, his +mother somewhat higher in social rank. He was well educated, and was +sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he had but surmounted political +difficulties; for his time as an undergraduate coincided with +"Ninety-eight," and though it does not seem that he had meddled with +anything distinctly treasonable, he had "Nationalist" friends and +leanings. Partly to sever inconvenient associations, partly in quest of +fortune, he was sent to London in that year, and entered at the Temple. +In a manner not very clearly explained, but connected no doubt with his +leaning to the Whig party, which was then much in need of literary help, +he became a protege of Lord Moira's, by whom he was introduced to the +Prince of Wales. The Prince accepted the dedication of some translations +of Anacreon, etc., which Moore had brought over with him, and which were +published in 1800; while two years later the _Poems of Thomas Little_, a +punning pseudonym, appeared, and at once charmed the public by their +sugared versification and shocked it by their looseness of tone--a +looseness which is not to be judged from the comparatively decorous +appearance they make in modern editions. But there was never much harm +in them. Next year, in 1803, Moore received a valuable appointment at +Bermuda, which, though he actually went out to take possession of it and +travelled some time in North America, he was allowed to transfer to a +deputy. He came back to England, published another volume of poems, and +fought a rather famously futile duel with Jeffrey about a criticism on +it in the _Edinburgh Review_. He began the _Irish Melodies_ in 1807, +married four years later, and from that time fixed his headquarters +mostly in the country: first near Ashbourne in Derbyshire, then near +Devizes in Wiltshire, to be near his patrons Lord Moira and Lord +Lansdowne. But he was constantly in London on visits, and much in the +society of men of letters, not merely of his own party. In particular he +became, on the whole, Byron's most intimate friend, and preserved +towards that very difficult person an attitude (tinged neither with the +servility nor with the exaggerated independence of the _parvenu_) which +did him a great deal of credit. He was rather a strong partisan, and, +having a brilliant vein of poetical satire, he wrote in 1813 _The +Twopenny Post Bag_--the best satiric verse of the poetical kind since +the _Anti-Jacobin_, and the best on the Whig side since the _Rolliad_. + +Nor did he fail to take advantage of the popular appetite for long poems +which Scott and Byron had created; his _Lalla Rookh_, published in 1817, +being very popular and very profitable. It was succeeded by another and +his best satirical work, _The Fudge Family_, a charming thing. + +Up to this time he had been an exceedingly fortunate man; and his good +luck, aided it must be said by his good conduct,--for Moore, with all +his apparent weaknesses, was thoroughly sound at the core,--enabled him +to surmount a very serious reverse of fortune. His Bermuda deputy was +guilty of malversation so considerable that Moore could not meet the +debt, and he had to go abroad. But Lord Lansdowne discharged his +obligations; and Moore paid Lord Lansdowne. He returned to England in +1823, and was a busy writer for all but the last years of the thirty +that remained to him; but the best of his work was done, with one +exception. Byron left him his _Memoirs_, which would of course have been +enormously profitable. But Lady Byron and others of the poet's +connections were so horrified at the idea of the book appearing that, by +an arrangement which has been variously judged, but which can hardly be +regarded as other than disinterested on Moore's part, the MS. was +destroyed, and instead of it Moore brought out in 1830 his well-known +_Life of Byron_. This, some not incompetent judges have regarded as +ranking next to Lockhart's _Scott_ and Boswell's _Johnson_, and though +its main attraction may be derived from Byron's very remarkable letters, +still shows on the part of the biographer very unusual dexterity, good +feeling, and taste. The lives of _Sheridan_ and _Lord Edward Fitzgerald_ +had, and deserved to have, less success; while a _History of Ireland_ +was, and was bound to be, an almost complete failure. For, though a very +good prose writer, Moore had little of the erudition required, no grasp +or faculty of political argument, and was at this time of his life, if +not earlier, something of a trimmer, certain to satisfy neither the +"ascendency" nor the "nationalist" parties. His prose romance of _The +Epicurean_ is much better, and a really remarkable, piece of work; and +though the _Loves of the Angels_, his last long poem, is not very good, +he did not lose his command either of sentimental or of facetious lyric +till quite his last days. These were clouded; for, like his +contemporaries Scott and Southey, he suffered from brain disease for +some time before his death, on 25th February 1852. + +During his lifetime, especially during the first half or two-thirds of +his literary career, Moore had a great popularity, and won no small +esteem even among critics; such discredit as attached to him being +chiefly of the moral kind, and that entertained only by very +strait-laced persons. But as the more high-flown and impassioned muses +of Wordsworth, of Shelley, and of Keats gained the public ear in the +third and later decades of the century, a fashion set in of regarding +him as a mere melodious trifler; and this has accentuated itself during +the last twenty years or so, though quite recently some efforts have +been made in protest. This estimate is demonstrably unjust. It is true +that of the strange and high notes of poetry he has very few, of the +very strangest and highest none at all. But his long poems, _Lalla +Rookh_ especially, though somewhat over-burdened with the then +fashionable deck cargo of erudite or would-be erudite notes, possess +merit which none but a very prejudiced critic can, or at least ought to, +overlook. And in other respects he is very nearly, if not quite, at the +top of at least two trees, which, if not quite cedars of Lebanon, are +not mere grass of Parnassus. Moore was a born as well as a trained +musician. But whereas most musicians have since the seventeenth century +been exceedingly ill at verbal numbers, he had a quite extraordinary +knack of composing what are rather disrespectfully called "words." Among +his innumerable songs there are not one or two dozens or scores, but +almost hundreds of quite charmingly melodious things, admirably adjusted +to their music, and delightful by themselves without any kind of +instrument, and as said not sung. And, what is more, among these there +is a very respectable number to which it would be absolutely absurd to +give the name of trifle. "I saw from the beach" is not a trifle, nor +"When in death I shall calm recline," nor "Oft in the stilly night," nor +"Tell me, kind sage, I pray thee," nor many others. They have become so +hackneyed to us in various ways, and some of them happen to be pitched +in a key of diction which, though not better or worse than others, is so +out of fashion, that it seems as if some very respectable judges could +not "focus" Moore at all. To those who can he will seem, not of course +the equal, or anything like the equal, of Burns or Shelley, of Blake or +Keats, but in his own way,--and that a way legitimate and not low,--one +of the first lyrical writers in English. And they will admit a +considerable addition to his claims in his delightful satirical verse, +mainly but not in the least offensively political, in which kind he is +as easily first as in the sentimental song to music. + +Something not dissimilar to the position which Moore occupies on the +more classical wing of the poets of the period is occupied on the other +by Leigh Hunt. Hunt (Henry James Leigh, who called himself and is +generally known by the third only of his Christian names) was born in +London on the 19th October 1784, was educated at Christ's Hospital, +began writing very early, held for a short time a clerkship in a public +office, and then joined his brother in conducting the _Examiner_ +newspaper. Fined and imprisoned for a personal libel on the Prince +Regent (1812), Hunt became the fashion with the Opposition; and the +_Story of Rimini_, which he published when he came out of gaol, and +which was written in it, had a good deal of influence. He spent some +years in Italy, to which place he had gone with his family in 1822 to +edit _The Liberal_ and to keep house with Byron--a very disastrous +experiment, the results of which he recorded in an offensive book on his +return. Hunt lived to 18th August 1859, and was rescued from the chronic +state of impecuniosity in which, despite constant literary work, he had +long lived, by a Crown pension and some other assistance in his latest +days. Personally, Leigh Hunt was an agreeable and amiable being enough, +with certain foibles which were rather unfairly magnified in the famous +caricature of him as Harold Skimpole by his friend Dickens, but which +were accompanied by some faults of taste of which Mr. Skimpole is not +accused. + +In letters he was a very considerable person; though the best and far +the largest part of his work is in prose, and will be noticed hereafter. +His verse is not great in bulk, and is perhaps more original and +stimulating than positively good. His wide and ardent study of the older +English poets and of those of Italy had enabled him to hit on a novel +style of phrase and rhythm, which has been partly referred to above in +the notice of Keats; his narrative faculty was strong, and some of his +smaller pieces, from his sonnets downwards, are delightful things. "Abou +ben Adhem" unites (a rare thing for its author) amiability with dignity, +stateliness with ease; the "Nile" sonnet is splendid; "Jenny kissed me," +charming, if not faultless; "The Man and the Fish," far above vulgarity. +The lack of delicate taste which characterised his manners also marred +his verse, which is not unfrequently slipshod, or gushing, or trivially +fluent, and perhaps never relatively so good as the best of his prose. +But he owed little to any but the old masters, and many contemporaries +owed not a little to him. + +A quaint and interesting if not supremely important figure among the +poets of this period, and, if his poetry and prose be taken together, a +very considerable man of letters,--perhaps the most considerable man of +letters in English who was almost totally uneducated,--was James Hogg, +who was born in Ettrick Forest in the year 1772. He was taken from +school to mind sheep so early that much later he had to teach himself +even reading and writing afresh; and, though he must have had the +song-gift early, it was not till he was nearly thirty that he published +anything. He was discovered by Scott, to whom he and his mother supplied +a good deal of matter for the _Border Minstrelsy_, and he published +again in 1803. The rest of his life was divided between writing--with +fair success, though with some ill-luck from bankrupt publishers--and +sheep-farming, on which he constantly lost, though latterly he sat rent +free under the Duke of Buccleuch. He died on 21st November 1835. + +Even during his life Hogg underwent a curious process of mythopoeia at +the hands of Wilson and the other wits of _Blackwood's Magazine_, who +made him--partly with his own consent, partly not--into the famous +"Ettrick Shepherd" of the _Noctes Ambrosianae_. "The Shepherd" has Hogg's +exterior features and a good many of his foibles, but is endowed with +considerably more than his genius. Even in his published and +acknowledged works, which are numerous, it is not always quite easy to +be sure of his authorship; for he constantly solicited, frequently +received, and sometimes took without asking, assistance from Lockhart +and others. But enough remains that is different from the work of any of +his known or possible coadjutors to enable us to distinguish his +idiosyncrasy pretty well. In verse he was a very fluent and an +exceedingly unequal writer, who in his long poems chiefly, and not too +happily, followed Scott, but who in the fairy poem of "Kilmeny" +displayed an extraordinary command of a rare form of poetry, and who has +written some dozens of the best songs in the language. The best, but +only a few of the best, of these are "Donald Macdonald," "Donald +M'Gillavry," "The Village of Balmanhapple," and the "Boy's Song." In +prose he chiefly attempted novels, which have no construction at all, +and few merits of dialogue or style, but contain some powerful passages; +while one of them, _The Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, if it is +entirely his, which is very doubtful, is by far the greatest thing he +wrote, being a story of _diablerie_ very well designed, wonderfully +fresh and enthralling in detail, and kept up with hardly a slip to the +end. His other chief prose works are entitled _The Brownie of Bodsbeck_, +_The Three Perils of Man_, _The Three Perils of Woman_, and _Altrive +Tales_, while he also wrote some important, and in parts very offensive, +but also in parts amusing, _Recollections of Sir Walter Scott_. His +verse volumes, no one of which is good throughout, though hardly one is +without good things, were _The Mountain Bard_, _The Queen's Wake_, +_Mador of the Moor_, _The Pilgrims of the Sun_, _Jacobite Relics_ (some +of the best forged by himself), _Queen Hynde_, and _The Border Garland_. + +A greater writer, if his work be taken as a whole, than any who has been +mentioned since Keats, was Walter Savage Landor, much of whose +composition was in prose, but who was so alike in prose and verse that +the whole had better be noticed together here. Landor (who was of a +family of some standing in Warwickshire, and was heir to considerable +property, much of which he wasted later by selling his inheritance and +buying a large but unprofitable estate in Wales) was born at Ipsley +Court, in 1775. He went to school at Rugby, and thence to Trinity +College, Oxford, at both of which places he gained considerable +scholarship but was frequently in trouble owing to the intractable and +headstrong temper which distinguished him through life. He was indeed +rusticated from his college, and subsequently, owing to his extravagant +political views, was refused a commission in the Warwickshire Militia. +He began to write early, but the poem of _Gebir_, which contains in germ +or miniature nearly all his characteristics of style, passed almost +unnoticed by the public, though it was appreciated by good wits like +Southey and De Quincey. After various private adventures he came into +his property and volunteered in the service of Spain, where he failed, +as usual, from impracticableness. In 1811, recklessly as always, he +married a very young girl of whom he knew next to nothing, and the +marriage proved anything but a happy one. The rest of his long life was +divided into three residences: first with his family at Florence; then, +when he had quarrelled with his wife, at Bath; and lastly (when he had +been obliged to quit Bath and England owing to an outrageous lampoon on +one lady, which he had written, as he conceived, in chivalrous defence +of another) at Florence again. Here he died in September 1864, aged very +nearly ninety. + +Landor's poetical productions, which are numerous, are spread over the +greater part of his life; his prose, by which he is chiefly known, dates +in the main from the last forty years of it, the best being written +between 1820 and 1840. The greater part of this prose takes the form of +"Imaginary Conversations"--sometimes published under separate general +headings, sometimes under the common title--between characters of all +ages, from the classical times to Landor's. Their bulk is very great; +their perfection of style at the best extraordinary, and on the whole +remarkably uniform; their value, when considerations of matter are added +to that of form, exceedingly unequal. For in them Landor not only +allowed the fullest play to the ungovernable temper and the childish +crotchets already mentioned, but availed himself of his opportunities +(for, though he endeavoured to maintain a pretence of dramatic +treatment, his work is nearly as personal as that of Byron) to deliver +his sentiments on a vast number of subjects, sometimes without too much +knowledge, and constantly with a plentiful lack of judgment. In +politics, in satiric treatment, and especially in satiric treatment of +politics, he is very nearly valueless. But his intense familiarity with +and appreciation of classical subjects gave to almost all his dealings +with them a value which, for parallel reasons, is also possessed by +those touching Italy. And throughout this enormous collection of work +(which in the compactest edition fills five large octavo volumes in +small print), whensoever the author forgets his crotchets and his rages, +when he touches on the great and human things, his utterance reaches the +very highest water-mark of English literature that is not absolutely the +work of supreme genius. + +For supreme genius Landor had not. His brain was not a great brain, and +he did not possess the exquisite alertness to his own weaknesses, or the +stubborn knack of confinement to things suitable to him, which some +natures much smaller than the great ones have enjoyed. But he had the +faculty of elaborate style--of style elaborated by a careful education +after the best models and vivified by a certain natural gift--as no one +since the seventeenth century had had it, and as no one except Mr. +Ruskin and the late Mr. Pater has had since. Also, he was as much wider +in his range and more fertile in his production than Mr. Pater as he was +more solidly grounded on the best models than Mr. Ruskin. Where Landor +is quite unique is in the apparent indifference with which he was able +to direct this gift of his into the channels of prose and poetry--a +point on which he parts company from both the writers to whom he has +been compared, and in which his only analogue, so far as I am able to +judge, is Victor Hugo. The style of no Englishman is so alike in the two +harmonies as is that of Landor. And it is perhaps not surprising that, +this being the case, he shows at his best in prose when he tries long +pieces, in verse when he tries short ones. Some of Landor's prose +performances in _Pericles and Aspasia_, in the _Pentameron_ (where +Boccaccio and Petrarch are the chief interlocutors), and in not a few of +the separate conversations, are altogether unparalleled in any other +language, and not easy to parallel in English. They are never entirely +or perfectly natural; there is always a slight "smell of the lamp," but +of a lamp perfumed and undying. The charm is so powerful, the grace so +stately, that it is impossible for any one to miss it who has the +faculty of recognising charm and grace at all. In particular, Landor is +remarkable--and, excellent as are many of the prose writers whom we have +had since, he is perhaps the most remarkable--for the weight, the +beauty, and the absolute finish of his phrase. Sometimes these splendid +phrases do not mean very much; occasionally they mean nothing or +nonsense. But their value as phrase survives, and the judge in such +things is often inclined and entitled to say that there is none like +them. + +This will prepare the reader who has some familiarity with literature +for what is to be said about Landor's verse. It always has a certain +quality of exquisiteness, but this quality is and could not but be +unequally displayed in the short poems and the long. The latter can +hardly attain, with entirely competent and impartial judges, more than a +success of esteem. _Gebir_ is couched in a Miltonic form of verse (very +slightly shot and varied by Romantic admixture) which, as is natural to +a young adventurer, caricatures the harder and more ossified style of +the master. Sometimes it is great; more usually it intends greatness. +The "Dialogues in Verse" (very honestly named, for they are in fact +rather dialogues in verse than poems), though executed by the hand of a +master both of verse and dialogue, differ in form rather than in fact +from the Conversations in prose. The _Hellenics_ are mainly dialogues in +verse with a Greek subject. All have a quality of nobility which may be +sought in vain in almost any other poet; but all have a certain +stiffness and frigidity, some a certain emptiness. They are never +plaster, as some modern antiques have been; but they never make the +marble of which they are composed wholly flesh. Landor was but a +half-Pygmalion. + +The vast collection of his miscellaneous poems contains many more +fortunate attempts, some of which have, by common consent of the +fittest, attained a repute which they are never likely to lose. "Rose +Aylmer" and "Dirce," trifles in length as both of them are, are very +jewels of poetic quality. And among the hundreds and almost thousands of +pieces which Landor produced there are some which come not far short of +these, and very many which attain a height magnificent as compared with +the ordinary work of others. But the hackneyed comparison of amber does +something gall this remarkable poet and writer. Everything, great and +small, is enshrined in an imperishable coating of beautiful style; but +the small things are somewhat out of proportion to the great, and, what +is more, the amber itself always has a certain air of being deliberately +and elaborately produced--not of growing naturally. Landor--much more +than Dryden, of whom he used the phrase, but in the same class as +Dryden--is one of those who "wrestle with and conquer time." He has +conquered, but it is rather as a giant of celestial nurture than as an +unquestioned god. + +Even after enumerating these two sets of names--the first all of the +greatest, and the greatest of the second, Landor, equalling the least of +the first--we have not exhausted the poetical riches of this remarkable +period. It is indeed almost dangerous to embark on the third class of +poets; yet its members here would in some cases have been highly +respectable earlier, and even at this time deserve notice either for +influence, or for intensity of poetic vein, or sometimes for the mere +fact of having been once famous and having secured a "place in the +story." The story of literature has no popular ingratitude; and, except +in the case of distinct impostors, it turns out with reluctance those +who have once been admitted to it. Sometimes even impostors deserve a +renewal of the brand, if not a freshening up of the honourable +inscription. + +The first of this third class in date, and perhaps the first in +influence, though far indeed from being the first in merit, was William +Lisle Bowles, already once or twice referred to. He was born on 24th +September 1762; so that, but for the character and influence of his +verse, he belongs to the last chapter rather than to this. Educated at +Winchester, and at Trinity College, Oxford, he took orders, and spent +nearly the last half century of his very long life (he did not die till +1850) in Wiltshire, as Prebendary of Salisbury and Rector of Bremhill. +It was in the year of the French Revolution that he published his +_Fourteen Sonnets_ [afterwards enlarged in number], _written chiefly on +Picturesque Spots during a Journey_. These fell early into Coleridge's +hands; he copied and recopied them for his friends when he was a +blue-coat boy, and in so far as poetical rivers have any single source, +the first tricklings of the stream which welled into fulness with the +Lyrical Ballads, and some few years later swept all before it, may be +assigned to this very feeble fount. For in truth it is exceedingly +feeble. In the fifth edition (1796), which lies before me exquisitely +printed, with a pretty aquatint frontispiece by Alken, and a dedication +of the previous year to Dean Ogle of Winchester, the Sonnets have +increased to twenty-seven, and are supplemented by fifteen +"miscellaneous pieces." One of these latter is itself a sonnet "written +at Southampton," and in all respects similar to the rest. The +others--"On Leaving Winchester," "On the Death of Mr. Headley" the +critic, a man of worth,[8] "To Mr. Burke on his Reflections," and so +forth--are of little note. The same may be said of Bowles' later +poetical productions, which were numerous; but his edition of Pope, +finished in 1807, brought about a hot controversy not yet forgotten +(nor, to tell the truth, quite settled) on the question Whether Pope was +a poet? That Bowles can have had scant sympathy with Pope is evident +from the very first glance at the famous sonnets themselves. Besides +their form, which, as has been said, was of itself something of a +reactionary challenge, they bear strong traces of Gray, and still +stronger traces of the picturesque mania which was at the same time +working so strongly in the books of Gilpin and others. But their real +note is the note which, ringing in Coleridge's ear, echoed in all the +poetry of the generation, the note of unison between the aspect of +nature and the thought and emotion of man. In the sonnets "At +Tynemouth," "At Bamborough Castle," and indeed in all, more or less, +there is first the attempt to paint directly what the eye sees, not the +generalised and academic view of the type-scene by a type-poet which had +been the fashion for so long; and secondly, the attempt to connect this +vision with personal experience, passion, or meditation. Bowles does not +do this very well, but he tries to do it; and the others, seeing him +try, went and did it. + +His extreme importance as an at least admitted "origin" has procured +him notice somewhat beyond his real deserts; over others we must pass +more rapidly. Robert Bloomfield, born in 1760, was one of those +unfortunate "prodigy" poets whom mistaken kindness encourages. He was +the son of a tailor, went early to agricultural labour, and then became +a shoemaker. His _Farmer's Boy_, an estimable but much overpraised +piece, was published in 1800, and he did other things later. He died +mad, or nearly so, in 1823--a melancholy history repeated pretty closely +a generation later by John Clare. Clare, however, was a better poet than +Bloomfield, and some of the "Poems written in an Asylum" have more than +merely touching merit. James Montgomery,[9] born at Irvine on 4th +November 1771, was the son of a Moravian minister, and intended for his +father's calling. He, however, preferred literature and journalism, +establishing himself chiefly at Sheffield, where he died as late as 1854 +(30th April). He had, as editor of the _Sheffield Iris_, some troubles +with the law, and in 1835 was rewarded with a pension. Montgomery was a +rather copious and fairly pleasing minor bard, no bad hand at hymns and +short occasional pieces, and the author of longer things called _The +Wanderer of Switzerland_, _The West Indies_, _The World before the +Flood_, and _The Pelican Island_. Bernard Barton, an amiable Quaker +poet, will probably always be remembered as the friend and correspondent +of Charles Lamb; perhaps also as the father-in-law of Edward FitzGerald. +His verse commended itself both to Southey (who had a kindly but rather +disastrous weakness for minor bards) and to Byron, but has little value. +Barton died in 1849. + +The same pair of enemies joined in praising Henry Kirke White, who was +born in 1785 and died when barely twenty-one. Here indeed Southey's +unsurpassed biographical skill enforced the poetaster's merit in a +charming _Memoir_, which assisted White's rather pathetic story. He was +the son of a butcher, a diligent but reluctant lawyer's clerk, an +enthusiastic student, a creditable undergraduate at St. John's, +Cambridge, and a victim of consumption. All this made his verse for a +time popular. But he really deserved the name just affixed to him: he +was a poetaster, and nothing more. The "genius" attributed to him in +Byron's well-known and noble though rather rhetorical lines may be +discovered on an average in about half a dozen poets during any two or +three years of any tolerable poetic period. His best things are +imitations of Cowper in his sacred mood, such as the familiar "Star of +Bethlehem," and even these are generally spoilt by some feebleness or +false note. At his worst he is not far from Della Crusca.[10] + +In the same year with Kirke White was born a much better poet, and a +much robuster person in all ways, mental and physical. Allan Cunningham +was a Dumfriesshire man born in the lowest rank, and apprenticed to a +stone-mason, whence in after years he rose to be Chantrey's foreman. +Cunningham began--following a taste very rife at the time--with +imitated, or to speak plainly, forged ballads; but the merit of them +deserved on true grounds the recognition it obtained on false, and he +became a not inconsiderable man of letters of all work. His best known +prose work is the "Lives of the Painters." In verse he is ranked, as a +song writer in Scots, by some next to Burns, and by few lower than Hogg. +Some of his pieces, such as "Fair shines the sun in France," have the +real, the inexplicable, the irresistible song-gift. Cunningham, who was +the friend of many good men and was liked by all of them, died on 29th +October 1842. His elder by eleven years, Robert Tannahill, who was born +in 1774 and died (probably by suicide) in 1810, deserves a few lines in +this tale of Scots singers. Tannahill, like Cunningham in humble +circumstances originally, never became more than a weaver. His verse has +not the _gusto_ of Allan or of Hogg, but is sweet and tender enough. +William Motherwell too, as much younger than Allan as Tannahill was +older (he was born in 1797 and died young in 1835), deserves mention, +and may best receive it here. He was a Conservative journalist, an +antiquary of some mark, and a useful editor of Minstrelsy. Of his +original work, "Jeanie Morrison" is the best known; and those who have +read, especially if they have read it in youth, "The Sword Chant of +Thorstein Raudi," will not dismiss it as Wardour Street; while he did +some other delightful things. Earlier (1812) the heroicomic _Anster +Fair_ of William Tennant (1784-1848) received very high and deserved no +low praise; while William Thom, a weaver like Tannahill, who was a year +younger than Motherwell and lived till 1848, wrote many simple ballads +in the vernacular, of which the most touching are perhaps "The Song of +the Forsaken" and "The Mitherless Bairn." + +To return to England, Bryan Waller Procter, who claimed kindred with the +poet from whom he took his second name, was born in 1790, went to +Harrow, and, becoming a lawyer, was made a Commissioner of Lunacy. He +did not die till 1874; and he, and still more his wife, were the last +sources of direct information about the great race of the first third of +the century. He was, under the pseudonym of "Barry Cornwall," a fluent +verse writer of the so-called cockney school, and had not a little +reputation, especially for songs about the sea and things in general. +They still, occasionally from critics who are not generally under the +bondage of traditional opinion, receive high praise, which the present +writer is totally unable to echo. A loyal junior friend to Lamb, a wise +and kindly senior to Beddoes, liked and respected by many or by all, +Procter, as a man, must always deserve respect. If + + The sea, the sea, the open sea, + The blue, the fresh, the ever free, + +and things like it are poetry, I admit myself, with a sad humility, to +be wholly destitute of poetical appreciation. + +The Church of England contributed two admirable verse writers of this +period in Henry Cary and Reginald Heber. Cary, who was born in 1772 and +was a Christ Church man, was long an assistant librarian in the British +Museum. His famous translation of the _Divina Commedia_, published in +1814, is not only one of the best verse translations in English, but, +after the lapse of eighty years, during which the study of Dante has +been constantly increasing in England, in which poetic ideas have +changed not a little, and in which numerous other translations have +appeared, still attracts admiration from all competent scholars for its +combination of fidelity and vigour. Heber, born in 1783 and educated at +Brasenose, gained the Newdigate with _Palestine_, a piece which ranks +with _Timbuctoo_ and a few others among unforgotten prize poems. He took +orders, succeeding to the family living of Hodnet, and for some years +bid fair to be one of the most shining lights of the English Church, +combining admirable parochial work with good literature, and with much +distinction as a preacher. Unfortunately he thought it his duty to take +the Bishopric of Calcutta when it was offered him; and, arriving there +in 1824, worked incessantly for nearly two years and then died. His +_Journal in India_ is very pleasant reading, and some of his hymns rank +with the best in English. + +Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer," was born in Yorkshire on 7th +March 1781. His father was a clerk in an iron-foundry. He himself was +early sent to foundry work, and he afterwards became a master-founder at +Sheffield. From different points of view it may be thought a +palliation--and the reverse--of the extreme virulence with which Elliott +took the side of workmen against landowners and men of property, that he +attained to affluence himself as an employer, and was never in the least +incommoded by the "condition-of-England" question. He early displayed a +considerable affection for literature, and was one, and about the last, +of the prodigies whom Southey, in his inexhaustible kindness for +struggling men of letters, accepted. Many years later the Laureate wrote +good-naturedly to Wynn: "I mean to read the Corn-Law Rhymer a lecture, +not without some hope, that as I taught him the art of poetry I may +teach him something better." The "something better" was not in Elliott's +way; for he is a violent and crude thinker, with more smoke than fire in +his violence, though not without generosity of feeling now and then, and +with a keen admiration of the scenery--still beautiful in parts, and +then exquisite--which surrounded the smoky Hades of Sheffield. He +himself acknowledges the influence of Crabbe and disclaims that of +Wordsworth, from which the cunning may anticipate the fact that he is +deeply indebted to both. His earliest publication or at least +composition, "The Vernal Walk," is said to date from the very year of +the _Lyrical Ballads_, and of course owes no royalty to Wordsworth, but +is in blank verse, a sort of compound of Thomson and Crabbe. "Love" (in +Crabbian couplets slightly tinged with overlapping) and "The Village +Patriarch" (still smacking of Crabbe in form, though irregularly +arranged in rhymed decasyllables) are his chief other long poems. He +tried dramas, but he is best known by his "Corn-Law Rhymes" and +"Corn-Law Hymns," and deserves to be best known by a few lyrics of real +beauty, and many descriptions. How a man who could write "The Wonders of +the Lane" and "The Dying Boy to the Sloe Blossom" could stoop to +malignant drivel about "palaced worms," "this syllabub-throated +logician," and so forth, is strange enough to understand, especially as +he had no excuse of personal suffering. Even in longer poems the mystery +is renewed in "They Met Again" and "Withered Wild Flowers" compared with +such things as "The Ranter," though the last exhibits the author at both +his best and worst. However, Elliott is entitled to the charity he did +not show; and the author of such clumsy Billingsgate as "Arthur +Bread-Tax Winner," "Faminton," and so forth, may be forgiven for the +flashes of poetry which he exhibits. Even in his political poems they do +not always desert him, and his somewhat famous Chartist (or +ante-Chartist) "Battle-Song" is as right-noted as it is wrong-headed. + +Sir Aubrey de Vere (1788-1846), a poet and the father of a poet still +alive, was a friend and follower of Wordsworth, and the author of +sonnets good in the Wordsworthian kind. But he cannot be spared much +room here; nor can much even be given to the mild shade of a poetess far +more famous in her day than he. "Time that breaks all things," according +to the dictum of a great poet still living, does not happily break all +in literature; but it is to be feared that he has reduced to fragments +the once not inconsiderable fame of Felicia Hemans. She was born (her +maiden name was Felicia Dorothea Browne) at Liverpool on 25th September +1794, and when she was only eighteen she married a Captain Hemans. It +was not a fortunate union, and by far the greater part of Mrs. Hemans' +married life was spent, owing to no known fault of hers, apart from her +husband. She did not live to old age, dying on 26th April 1835. But she +wrote a good deal of verse meanwhile--plays, poems, "songs of the +affections," and what not. Her blameless character (she wrote chiefly to +support her children) and a certain ingenuous tenderness in her verse, +saved its extreme feebleness from severe condemnation in an age which +was still avid of verse rather than discriminating in it; and children +still learn "The boy stood on the burning deck," and other things. It is +impossible, on any really critical scheme, to allow her genius; but she +need not be spoken of with any elaborate disrespect, while it must be +admitted that her latest work is her best--always a notable sign. +"Despondency and Aspiration," dating from her death-year, soars close to +real sublimity; and of her smaller pieces "England's Dead" is no vulgar +thing. + +Between the death of Byron and the distinct appearance of Tennyson and +the Brownings there was a kind of interregnum or twilight of poetry, of +which one of its strangest if not least illuminative stars or meteors, +Beddoes, has given a graphic but uncomplimentary picture in a letter: +"owls' light" he calls it, with adjuncts. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and +Southey; Scott, Campbell, and Moore, were all living, but the poetic +production of all had on the whole ceased. Shelley and Keats would have +been in time the natural, and in genius the more than sufficient sun +and moon of the time; but they had died before Byron. So the firmament +was occupied by rather wandering stars: some of them elders already +noticed, others born in the ten or twelve years between Keats (1795) and +the eldest of the Tennysons (1807). The chief of these were the pair of +half-serious, half-humorous singers, Hood and Praed. Next in public +estimation come Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, Macaulay, Sir Henry Taylor, +the Irish poet Mangan, R. H. Horne, and the first Lord Lytton; while a +third class--of critics' rather than readers' favourites--varying in +merit, but, at the best of the best of them, ranking higher than any of +the above, may be made up of George Darley, C. J. Wells, the Dorsetshire +poet Barnes, Beddoes, Charles Whitehead, R. S. Hawker, and Thomas Wade. +To the second class must be added "L. E. L.," the poetess who filled the +interval between Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Browning. + +Wells, Whitehead, and Wade may be dismissed without disrespect as, if +not critical mares'-nests, at any rate critical hobbies. Persons of more +or less distinction (and of less or more crotchet) have at different +times paid very high compliments to the _Joseph and his Brethren_ (1823, +revised later) of Charles Jeremiah Wells (1800-1879), a friend of Keats, +and a person who seems to have lived much as he pleased; to the +_Solitary_ of Charles Whitehead (1804-1862), a Bohemian ne'er-do-weel, +who also showed talent as a novelist and miscellanist; and to the _Mundi +et Cordis Carmina_ (1835) of Thomas Wade (1805-1875), a playwright and +journalist. Of the three, Wade appears to me to have had the greatest +poetical talent. But I do not think that any one who on the one hand +uses epithets in poetical criticism with caution, and on the other has +read a great deal of minor poetry as it appears, could put any one of +them very high. All were born late enough to breathe the atmosphere of +the new poetry young; all had poetical velleities, and a certain amount, +if not of originality, of capacity to write poetry. But they were not +poets; they were only poetical curiosities. + +Darley, Beddoes, and Horne belong in the main to the same class, but +rise high, in one case immeasurably, above them. George Darley +(1795-1846) is perhaps our chief English example of "the poet who dies +in youth while the man survives," and who becomes a critic. In him, +however, the generation of the critic did not wait for the corruption of +the poet. An Irishman, and of Trinity College, Dublin, he was one of the +staff of the _London Magazine_, and wrote much verse bad and good, +including the once famous "I've been Roaming," of which it is safe to +say that not one in ten of those who have sung it could tell the author. +His best work is contained in the charming pastoral drama of _Sylvia_ +(1827) and the poem entitled _Nepenthe_ (1839). He was a good but rather +a savage critic, and edited Beaumont and Fletcher. His work has never +been collected, nor, it is believed, ever fully published; and it has +the marks of a talent that never did what was in it to do, and came at +an unfortunate time. Some not bad judges in the forties ranked Darley +with Tennyson in poetic possibilities, and thought the former the more +promising of the two. + +Except Donne, there is perhaps no English poet more difficult to write +about, so as to preserve the due pitch of enthusiasm on the one hand and +criticism on the other, than Thomas Lovell Beddoes, born at Clifton on +20th July 1803. He was the son of a very famous physician, and of Anna +Edgeworth, the youngest sister of the whole blood to the novelist. +Beddoes, left fatherless at six years old, was educated at the +Charterhouse and at Pembroke College, Oxford, and when he was barely of +age went to Germany to study medicine, living thenceforth almost +entirely on the Continent. Before this he had published two volumes, +_The Improvisatore_ and _The Bride's Tragedy_; but his principal work is +a wild Elizabethan play called _Death's Jest-Book_ or _The Fool's +Tragedy_, which he never absolutely finished. He died in 1848 at Basle +by a complicated and ghastly kind of suicide. Three years later his +Poems appeared, and they have been recently republished, with additions +and a curious collection of letters. + +Beddoes has sometimes been treated as a mainly bookish poet deriving +from the Elizabethans and Shelley. I cannot agree with this. His very +earliest work, written when he could not know much either of Shelley or +Keats, shows as they do technique perhaps caught from Leigh Hunt. But +this is quite dropped later; and his Elizabethanism is not imitation but +inspiration. In this inspiration he does not follow, but shares with, +his greater contemporaries. He is a younger and tragic counterpart to +Charles Lamb in the intensity with which he has imbibed the Elizabethan +spirit, rather from the nightshade of Webster and Tourneur than from the +vine of Shakespeare. As wholes, his works are naught, or naught but +nightmares; though _Death's Jest-Book_, despite its infinite +disadvantages from constant rewriting and uncertainty of final form, has +a strong grasp. But they contain passages, especially lyrics, of the +most exquisite fancy and music, such as since the seventeenth century +none but Blake and Coleridge had given. Beddoes does not seem to have +been at all a pleasant person, and in his later days at any rate he +would appear to have been a good deal less than sane. But the author of +such things as the "Dirge for Wolfram" ("If thou wilt ease thine heart") +in _Death's Jest-Book_, and the stanza beginning "Dream-Pedlary," "If +there were dreams to sell," with not a few others of the same kind, +attains to that small and disputed--but not to those who have thought +out the nature of poetry disputable--class of poets who, including +Sappho, Catullus, some mediaeval hymn-writers, and a few moderns, +especially Coleridge, have, by virtue of fragments only, attained a +higher position than many authors of large, substantive, and important +poems. They may be shockingly lacking in bulk, in organisation, in +proper choice of subject, in intelligent criticism of life; but they are +like the summer lightning or the northern aurora, which, though they +shine only now and then, and only it may be for a few moments, shine, +when they do shine, with a beauty unapproachable by gas or candle, +hardly approached by sun or moon, and illuminate the whole of their +world. + +Although quotation is in the main impossible in this book, Beddoes, +despite the efforts of his friend Kelsall, of Mr. Swinburne, of Mr. +Gosse (thanks to whom a quasi-complete edition has at last appeared), +and others, is still so little known, that a short one may be allowed in +his case. I have known a critic who said deliberately of the +above-mentioned stanza in "Dream-Pedlary"-- + + If there were dreams to sell, + What would you buy? + Some cost a passing bell, + Some a light sigh + That shakes from Life's fresh crown + Only a roseleaf down. + If there were dreams to sell-- + Merry and sad to tell-- + And the crier rung the bell, + What would you buy? + +that these ten lines contain more pure poetry than the entire works of +Byron. And the same touch will be found not merely in the "Wolfram +Dirge" mentioned-- + + If thou wilt ease thine heart + Of Love and all its smart, + Then sleep, dear, sleep. + + ... + + But wilt thou _cure_ thine heart + Of Love and all its smart, + Then die, dear, die-- + +but in several other dirges (for the dirge is the form natural to +Beddoes), in the "Song from Torrismond," in "Love in Idleness," in the +"Song on the Water" (which is pure early Tennyson), in the exquisite +"Threnody," and in many other things. They have been called artificial: +the epithet can be allowed in no other sense than in that in which it +applies to all the best poetry. And they have the note, which only a few +true but imperfect poets have, of anticipation. Shadows before, both of +Tennyson and Browning, especially of the latter, appear in Beddoes. But +after all his main note is his own: not theirs, not the Elizabethan, not +Shelley's, not another's. And this is what makes a poet. + +As Beddoes' forte lay in short and rather uncanny snatches, so that of +Richard Hengist Horne lay in sustained and dignified composition. He was +not christened Hengist at all, but Henry. He had a curious life. In +youth he knew Keats and Wells, having been, like them, at the private +school of Mr. Clarke at Edmonton. He went to Sandhurst and was expelled +for insubordination; joined the Mexican navy in the war of liberation; +travelled widely; but seemed at about five and twenty to be settling +down to literature and journalism in England. After writing various +things, he produced in 1837 the fine but not quite "live" plays of +_Cosmo de Medici_ and _The Death of Marlowe_, and in 1843 the famous +farthing epic, _Orion_, which was literally published at a farthing. +This was the smallest part of a great literary baggage of very unequal +value. In 1852 Horne, resuming the life of adventure, went to Australia, +served in the gold police, and stayed at the Antipodes till 1869. Then +he came home again and lived for fifteen years longer, still writing +almost to his very death on 13th March 1884. + +It is not true that _Orion_ is Horne's only work of value; but it is so +much better than anything else of his, and so characteristic of him, +that by all but students the rest may be neglected. And it is an example +of the melancholy but frequently exemplified truth, that few things are +so dangerous, nay, so fatal to enduring literary fame, as the production +of some very good work among a mass of, if not exactly rubbish, yet +inferior stuff. I do not think it extravagant to say that if Horne had +written nothing but _Orion_ and had died comparatively young after +writing it, he would have enjoyed very high rank among English poets. +For, though doubtless a little weighted with "purpose," it is a very +fine poem indeed, couched in a strain of stately and not second-hand +blank verse, abounding in finished and effective passages, by no means +destitute of force and meaning as a whole, and mixing some passion with +more than some real satire. But the rather childish freak of its first +publication probably did it no good, and it is quite certain that the +author's long life and unflagging production did it much harm. + +Of the other persons in the list above, Macaulay, Hartley Coleridge, and +Lord Lytton are mainly something else than poets, and Talfourd, as a +dramatist, will also be noticed elsewhere. Barnes and Hawker were both +clergymen of the West of England: the former very highly ranked by some +for his studies in Dorset dialect; the latter the author of the famous +"Song of the Western Men" (long thought a genuine antique), of the +exquisite "Queen Gwennyvar's Round," of the fine "Silent Tower of +Bottreaux," of some beautiful sonnets, and of the stately "Quest of the +Sangreal." Whether James Clarence Mangan, whose most famous poem is +"Dark Rosaleen," a musical and mystic celebration of the charms and +wrongs of Erin, is a great poet to whom Saxon jealousy has refused +greatness for political reasons, or a not ungifted but not consummately +distinguished singer who added some study to the common Irish gift of +fluent, melodious verse-making, is a question best solved by reading his +work and judging for the reader's self. It is not by any sane account so +important that to dismiss it thus is a serious _rifiuto_, and it is +probably impossible for Irish enthusiasm and English judgment ever to +agree on the subject. Of "L. E. L." Sir Henry Taylor, Hood, and Praed, +some more substantive account must be given. + +Although it is not easy, after two generations, to decide such a point +accurately, it is probable that "L. E. L." was the most popular of all +the writers of verse who made any mark between the death of Byron in +1824 and the time when Tennyson definitely asserted himself in 1842. She +paid for this popularity (which was earned not merely by her verse, but +by a pretty face, an odd social position, and a sad and apparently, +though it seems not really, mysterious end) by a good deal of slightly +unchivalrous satire at the time and a rather swift and complete oblivion +afterwards. She was born (her full name being Letitia Elizabeth Landon) +in London on 14th August 1802, and was fairly well connected and +educated. William Jerdan, the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ (a man +whose name constantly occurs in the literary history of this time, +though he has left no special work except an _Autobiography_), was a +friend of her family, and she began to write very early, producing +novels and criticisms as well as verse in newspapers, in the albums and +_Souvenirs_ which were such a feature of the twenties and thirties, and +in independent volumes. She was particularly active as a poet about +1824-35, when appeared the works whose titles--_The Improvisatore_, _The +Troubadour_, _The Golden Violet_--suggested parodies to Thackeray. Her +best novel is held to be _Ethel Churchill_, published in 1837. Next year +she married Mr. Maclean, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle; and, going +out with him to that not very salubrious clime, died suddenly in about +two months. All sorts of ill-natured suggestions were of course made; +but the late Colonel Ellis, the historian of the colony, seems to have +established beyond the possibility of doubt that she accidentally +poisoned herself with prussic acid, which she used to take for spasms of +the heart. + +It is tolerably exact, and it is not harsh, to say that "L. E. L." is a +Mrs. Hemans with the influence of Byron added, not to the extent of any +"impropriety," but to the heightening of the Romantic tone and of a +native sentimentality. Her verse is generally musical and sweet: it is +only sometimes silly. But it is too often characterised by what can but +be called the "gush" which seems to have affected all the poetesses of +this period except Sara Coleridge (1802-50) (who has some verses worthy +of even her name in _Phantasmion_, her only independent book), and which +appears in very large measure in the work of Mrs. Browning. + +Sir Henry Taylor's poetical repute illustrates the converse of the +proposition which is illustrated by that of Horne. It is probable that, +if each is measured by his best things, _Orion_ and _Philip Van +Artevelde_, Horne must be allowed to be a good deal the better poet. But +a placid official life enabled Taylor both to gain powerful friends and +to devote himself to literature merely when and how he pleased. And so +he has burdened his baggage with no mere hack-work. He was indeed a +singularly lucky person. The son of a man of fair family but reduced +fortune who had taken to farming, Henry Taylor began in the navy. But he +disliked the service very much, and either obtained or received his +discharge after only nine months' sea life as a mid-shipman during the +year 1814. Then he entered the public store-keeper's department, but was +ousted by rearrangements after four years' service. These beginnings +were not very promising; but his father allowed him to stay quietly at +home till by pure luck he obtained a third post under Government in the +Colonial Office. This he held for nearly fifty years, during which it +gave him affluence and by degrees a very high position, and left him +abundance of time for society and letters. He resigned it in 1872, and +died on 27th March 1886. He wrote some prose of various kinds, and just +before his death published a pleasant autobiography. But his literary +fame rests on a handful of plays and poems, all of them, except _St. +Clement's Eve_, which did not appear till 1862, produced at leisurely +intervals between 1827 (_Isaac Comnenus_) and 1847 (_The Eve of the +Conquest_ and other poems). The intervening works were _Philip Van +Artevelde_ (his masterpiece, 1834), _Edwin the Fair_ (1842), some minor +poems, and the romantic comedy of _A Sicilian Summer_ (first called _The +Virgin Widow_), which was published with _St. Clement's Eve_. He had +(as, it may be noted curiously, had so many of the men of the transition +decade in which he was born) a singular though scanty vein of original +lyric snatch, the best example of which is perhaps the song "Quoth +tongue of neither maid nor wife" in _Van Artevelde_; but his chief +appeal lay in a very careful study of character and the presentation of +it in verse less icy than Talfourd's and less rhetorical than Milman's. +Yet he had, unlike either of these, very little direct eye to the stage, +and therefore is classed here as a poet rather than as a dramatist. +There is always a public for what is called "thoughtful" poetry, and +Taylor's is more than merely thoughtful. But it may be suspected by +observers that when Robert Browning came into fashion Henry Taylor went +out. Citations of _Van Artevelde_, if not of the other pieces (none of +which are contemptible, while the two last, inferior in weight to their +predecessors, show advance in ease and grace), are very frequent between +1835 and 1865: rare I think between 1865 and 1895. + +And so we come at last to the twin poets, in the proper sense +humorous,--that is to say, jesting with serious thoughts behind,--of the +first division of this class. They were very close in many ways--indeed +it is yet a moot point which of the two borrowed certain rhythms and +turns of word and verse from the other, or whether both hit upon these +independently. But their careers were curiously different; and, except +in comparative length of life (if that be an advantage), Praed was +luckier than his comrade. Thomas Hood, who was slightly the elder, was +born in 1798 or 1799 (for both dates are given) in the Poultry; his +father being a bookseller and publisher. This father died, not in good +circumstances, when the son was a boy, and Thomas, after receiving some +though not much education, became first a merchant's clerk and then an +engraver, but was lucky enough to enjoy between these uncongenial +pursuits a long holiday, owing to ill-health, of some three years in +Scotland. It was in 1820 or thereabouts that he fell into his proper +vocation, and, as sub-editor of the _London Magazine_, found vent for +his own talents and made acquaintance with most of its famous staff. He +married, wrote some of his best serious poems and some good comic work, +and found that while the former were neglected the latter was eagerly +welcomed. It was settled that, in his own pathetic pun, he was to be "a +lively Hood for a livelihood" thenceforward. It is difficult to say +whether English literature lost or gained, except from one very +practical point of view; for Hood did manage to live after a fashion by +his fun as he certainly could not have lived by his poetry. He had, +however, a bare pittance, much bad health, and some extremely bad luck, +which for a time made him, through no fault of his own, an exile. His +last five years were again spent in England, and in comparative, though +very comparative, prosperity; for he was editor first of the _New +Monthly Magazine_, then of a magazine of his own, _Hood's Monthly_, and +not long before his death he received from Sir Robert Peel a civil list +pension of L100 a year. The death was due to consumption, inherited and +long valiantly struggled with. + +The still shorter life of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, on the other hand, +was passed under sufficiently favourable stars. He was born in 1802, and +his father, Serjeant Praed, possessed property, practice at the bar, and +official position. Praed was sent to Eton, where he became a pillar of +the famous school magazine _The Etonian_, and thence to Trinity College, +Cambridge, where he did extremely well, made the acquaintance of +Macaulay, and wrote in _Knight's Quarterly_. After a short interval of +tutoring and reading for the bar he entered Parliament in 1830, and +remained in it for the rest of his life, which closed on 15th July 1839. +He had latterly been secretary to the Board of Control, and it was +thought that, had he lived, he might have made a considerable political +reputation both as speaker and administrator. + +The almost unchequered sunshine of one of these careers and the little +sun and much shadow of the other have left traces--natural though less +than might be supposed--of difference between the produce of the two +men; but perhaps the difference is less striking than the resemblance. +That Hood--obliged to write for bread, and outliving Praed by something +like a decade at the two ends--wrote a great deal more than Praed did is +of little consequence, for the more leisurely writer is as unequal as +the duty labourer. Hood had the deeper and stronger genius: of this +there is no doubt, and the advantage more than made up for Praed's +advantages in scholarship and in social standing and accomplishment. In +this serious work of Hood's--_Lycus the Centaur_, _The Plea of the +Midsummer Fairies_, _The Elm Tree_, _The Haunted House_--there is +observable--to a degree never surpassed by any of the poets of this +group except Beddoes, and more sustained and human, though less weird +and sweet, than his--a strain of the true, the real, the ineffable tone +of poetry proper. At this Praed never arrives: there are at most in him +touches which may seem to a very charitable judgment to show that in +other circumstances sorrow, passion, or the like might have roused him +to display the hidden fire. On the other hand, neither Hood's breeding, +nor, I think, his nature, allowed him to display the exquisite airiness, +the delicate artificial bloom and perfection, of Praed's best _vers de +societe_--the _Season_, the _Letter of Advice_, and the rest. This last +bloom has never been quite equalled--even Prior's touch is coarse to it, +even that of the late Mr. Locker is laboured and deliberate. So too as +there is nothing in Praed of the popular indignation--generous and fine +but a little theatrical--which endears Hood to the general in _The +Bridge of Sighs_ and _The Song of the Shirt_, so there is nothing in +Hood of the sound political sense, underlying apparent banter, of +Praed's _Speaker Asleep_ and other things. + +But where the two poets come together, on a ground which they have +almost to themselves, is in a certain kind of humorous poetry ranging +from the terrific-grotesque, as in Hood's _Miss Kilmansegg_ and Praed's +_Red Fisherman_, to the simple, humorously tender study of characters, +as in a hundred things of Hood's and in not a few of Praed's with _The +Vicar_ at their head. The resemblance here is less in special points +than in a certain general view of life, conditioned in each case by the +poet's breeding, temperament, and circumstance, but alike in essence and +quality: in a certain variety of the essentially English fashion of +taking life with a mixture of jest and earnest, of humour and sentiment. +Hood, partly influenced by the need of caring for the public, partly by +his pupilship to Lamb, perhaps went to further extremes both in mere fun +and in mere sentiment than Praed did, but the central substance is the +same in both. + +Yet one gift which Hood has and Praed has not remains to be noticed--the +gift of exquisite song writing. Compared with the admired inanities of +Barry Cornwall, his praised contemporary, Hood's "Fair Ines," his "Time +of Roses," his exquisite "Last Stanzas," and not a few other things, are +as gold to gilt copper. Praed has nothing to show against these; but he, +like Hood, was no inconsiderable prose writer, while the latter, thanks +to his apprenticeship to the burin, had an extraordinary faculty of +illustrating his own work with cuts, contrary to all the canons, but +inimitably grotesque. + + * * * * * + +It is probable that even in this long survey of the great poetical +production of the first third of this century some gaps may be detected +by specialists. But it seemed to me impossible to give more than the +barest mention here to the "single speech" accident of Charles Wolfe, +the author of the "Burial of Sir John Moore," which everybody knows, and +of absolutely nothing else that is worth a single person's knowing; to +the gigantic and impossible labours of Edwin Atherstone; to the +industrious translation of Rose and Sotheby; to the decent worth of +Caroline Bowles, and the Hood-and-water of Laman Blanchard. And there +are others perhaps who cannot be even mentioned; for there must be an +end. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[3] _Lyrical Ballads_, 1798, and with additions 1800; _Poems_, 1807 (in +these four volumes even adorers have allowed all his greatest work to be +included); _The Excursion_, 1814; _The White Doe of Rylston_, 1815; +_Sonnets on the River Duddon_, and others, 1819-20. In 1836 he brought +out a collected edition of his poems in six volumes. _The Prelude_ was +posthumous. + +[4] It must be remembered that Wordsworth was a prose writer of +considerable excellence and of no small volume. Many people no doubt +were surprised when Dr. Grosart, by collecting his pamphlets, his +essays, his notes, and his letters, managed to fill three large octavo +volumes. But his poetry so far outweighs his prose (though, like most +poets, he could write admirably in his pedestrian style when he chose) +that his utterances in "the other harmony" need not be specially +considered. The two most considerable examples of this prose are the +pamphlet on _The Convention of Cintra_ and the five and twenty years +later _Guide to the Lakes_. But minor essays, letters of a more or less +formal character, and prefaces and notes to the poems, make up a goodly +total; and always display a genius germane to that of the poems. + +[5] This word, as well as "Aspheterism," which has had a less general +currency, was a characteristic coinage of Coleridge's to designate a +kind of Communism, partly based on the speculations of Godwin, and +intended to be carried into practice in America. + +[6] Yet this praise can only be assigned to Coleridge with large +allowance. He was always unjust to his own _immediate_ predecessors, +Johnson, Gibbon, etc.; and he was not too sensible of the real merits of +Pope or even of Dryden. In this respect Leigh Hunt, an immeasurably +weaker thinker, had a much more catholic taste. And it is not certain +that, as a mere prose writer, Coleridge was a very good prose writer. + +[7] Curiously enough, there was another and slightly older Samuel +Rogers, a clergyman, who published verse in 1782, just before his +namesake, and who dealt with Hope-- + + Hope springs eternal in the _aspiring_ breast. + +His verse, of which specimens are given in Southey's _Modern English +Poets_, is purely eighteenth century. He died in 1790. + +[8] Henry Headley, who, like Bowles and Landor, was a member of Trinity +College, Oxford, and who died young, after publishing a few original +poems of no great value, deserves more credit for his _Select Beauties +of Ancient English Poetry_, published in two volumes, with an exquisite +title-page vignette, by Cadell in 1787, than has sometimes been allowed +him by the not numerous critics who have noticed him recently, or by +those who immediately followed him. His knowledge was soon outgrown, and +therefore looked down upon; and his taste was a very little +indiscriminate. But it was something to put before an age which was just +awakening to the appetite for such things two volumes full of selections +from the too little read poets of the seventeenth, with a few of the +sixteenth century. Moreover, Headley's biographical information shows +very praiseworthy industry, and his critical remarks a great deal of +taste at once nice and fairly catholic. A man who in his day could, +while selecting and putting forth Drayton and Carew, Daniel and King, +speak enthusiastically of Dryden and even of Goldsmith, must have had +the root of the matter in him as few critics have had. + +[9] Not to be confounded with _Robert_, or "Satan" Montgomery, his +junior by many years, and a much worse poet, the victim of Macaulay's +famous classical example of what is called in English "slating," and in +French _ereintement_. There is really nothing to be said about this +person that Macaulay has not said; though perhaps one or two of the +things he has said are a little strained. + +[10] Some fifteen years ago, in a little book on Dryden, I called Kirke +White a "miserable poetaster," and was rebuked for it by those who +perhaps knew Byron's lines and nothing more. Quite recently Mr. Gosse +was rebuked more loudly for a less severe denunciation. I determined +that I would read Kirke White again; and the above judgment is the +mildest I can possibly pronounce after the reading. A good young man +with a pathetic career; but a poetaster merely. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE NEW FICTION + + +Although, as was shown in the first chapter, the amount of novel writing +in the last decades of the eighteenth century was very considerable, and +the talent displayed by at least some of the practitioners of the form +distinctly great, it can hardly have been possible for any careful +observer of it, either during the last ten years of the old age or the +first fifteen of the new, to be satisfied with it on the whole, or to +think that it had reached a settled or even a promising condition. Miss +Burney (now Madame d'Arblay), whose brilliant debut with _Evelina_ was +made just before the date at which this book begins, had just after that +date produced _Cecilia_, in which partial and contemporary judges +professed to see no falling off. But though she was still living and +writing,--though she lived and wrote till the present century was nearly +half over,--_Camilla_ (1796) was acknowledged as a doubtful success, and +_The Wanderer_ (1814) as a disastrous failure; nor after this did she +attempt the style again. + +The unpopularity of Jacobinism and the growing distaste for the +philosophy of the eighteenth century prevented much attempt being made +to follow up the half political, half philosophical novel of Godwin, +Holcroft, and Bage. No such causes, however, were in operation as +concerning the "Tale of Terror," the second founder of which, Monk +Lewis, was indeed no inconsiderable figure during the earlier part of +the great age of 1810-30, while Charles Robert Maturin improved +considerably upon Lewis himself. Maturin was born in Ireland (where he +principally lived) in 1782, and died there in 1824. He took orders, but +was too eccentric for success in his profession, and his whole heart was +set on literature and the drama. Befriended by Scott and Byron, though +very severely criticised by Coleridge, he succeeded in getting his +tragedy of _Bertram_ acted at Drury Lane with success; but his later +theatrical ventures (_Manuel_, _Fredolpho_) were less fortunate. He also +published sermons; but he lives in literature only by his novels, and +not very securely by these. He produced three of them--_The Fatal +Vengeance: or, The Family of Montorio_, _The Wild Irish Boy_, and the +_Milesian Chief_--under a pseudonym before he was thirty; while after +the success of _Bertram_ he avowed _Women_ (1818), _Melmoth the +Wanderer_ (1820), and _The Albigenses_ (1824), the last in a sort of +cross style between his earlier patterns and Scott. But his fame had +best be allowed to rest wholly on _Melmoth_, a remarkable book dealing +with the supposed selling of a soul to the devil in return for prolonged +life; the bargain, however, being terminable if the seller can induce +some one else to take it off his hands. Although far too long, +marvellously involved with tales within tales, and disfigured in parts +by the rant and the gush of its class, _Melmoth_ is really a powerful +book, which gave something more than a passing shudder to its own +generation (it specially influenced Balzac), and which has not lost its +force even now. But the usual novel of this kind, which was written in +vast numbers, was simply beneath contempt. + +The exquisite artist who, as mentioned formerly, had taken these tales +of terror as part subject of her youthful satire, had begun to write +some years before the close of the eighteenth century. But Miss Austen's +books were long withheld from the press, and she was considerably +preceded in publication by Maria Edgeworth. These last are the only +novels of the first decade of the nineteenth century which have held any +ground, though they were but few among the crowds not merely of tales of +terror but of fashionable novels, "Minerva Press" inanities, attempts +in the bastard and unsuccessful kind of historical romance which +preceded Scott's, and others. Miss Edgeworth, who was born in 1767, the +daughter of an eccentric busybody of good family and property in +Ireland, and who lived till 1848, had a great fame in her own day, +deserved it, never entirely lost it, and has lately had it revived; +while Scott declared (but in such matters Scott was a little apt to let +his good-nature and his freedom from personal vanity get the better of +strict critical truth) that her Irish novels had supplied the suggestion +of his Scotch ones. Her chief works in this kind were _Castle Rackrent_ +(1801), a book with little interest of the strictly "novel" kind, but a +wonderful picture of the varieties of recklessness and misconduct which +in the course of a generation or two ruined or crippled most of the +landlords of Ireland; _Belinda_ (1803), her most ambitious and elaborate +if not her most successful effort, which includes a very vivid and +pregnant sketch of the feminine dissipation of the end of the last +century; _Tales of Fashionable Life_, including the admirable +_Absentee_; and _Ormond_, the most vivid of her Irish stories next to +_Castle Rackrent_. She continued to write novels as late as 1834 +(_Helen_), while some very charming letters of hers, though privately +printed a good many years ago, were not published till 1894. Miss +Edgeworth's father, Richard, was himself something of a man of letters, +and belonged to the class of Englishmen who, without imbibing French +freethinking, had eagerly embraced the "utility" doctrines, the +political economy, and some of the educational and social crazes of the +French _philosophes_; and he did his daughter no good by thrusting into +her earlier work a strain of his own crotchet and purpose. Indirectly, +however, this brought about in _The Parent's Assistant_, in other books +for children, and in the _Moral Tales_, some of her most delightful +work. In the novels (which besides these mentioned include _Leonora_, +_Harrington_, _Ennui_, and _Patronage_, the longest of all) Miss +Edgeworth occupies a kind of middle position between the eighteenth +century novelists, of whom Miss Burney is the last, and those of the +nineteenth, of whom Miss Austen is the first. This is not merely, +though no doubt it is partly, due to the fact that the society which she +saw (and she mixed in a great deal, from the highest downwards) was +itself in a kind of transition state: it was at least as much owing to a +certain want of distinct modernness and distinct universality in her own +character, thought, and style. Miss Edgeworth, though possessed of +delightful talents falling little short of genius, and of much humour +(which last is shown in the charming _Essay on Irish Bulls_, as well as +in her novels and her letters), missed, as a rule, the last and greatest +touches; and, except some of her Irish characters, who are rather types +than individuals, she has not created many live persons, while sometimes +she wanders very far from life. Her touch, in short, though extremely +pleasant, was rather uncertain. She can tell a story to perfection, but +does not often invent it perfectly; and by herself she can hardly be +said to have originated anything, though of course, if we could accept +the above quoted statement of Scott's, she indirectly originated a very +great deal. + +Very different is the position occupied by Jane Austen, who was born at +Steventon in Hampshire on 16th December 1775, being the daughter of the +rector of that place, lived a quiet life chiefly at various places in +her native county, frequented good society in the rank of not the +richest country squires, to which her own family belonged, and died at +Winchester unmarried on 24th July 1817. Of her six completed novels, +_Sense and Sensibility_, _Pride and Prejudice_, _Mansfield Park_, and +_Emma_ were published during the last seven years of her life, while +_Northanger Abbey_ and _Persuasion_ appeared, for the first time with an +author's name, the year after her death. They had no enormous or sudden +popularity, but the best judges, from Scott downwards, at once +recognised their extraordinary merit; and it is not too much to say that +by the best judges, with rare exceptions, that merit has been +acknowledged with ever increasing fulness at once of enthusiasm and +discrimination to the present day. With Scott, Miss Austen is the parent +of nineteenth century fiction; or, to speak with greater exactness, she +is the mother of the nineteenth century novel, just as he is the father +of the nineteenth century romance. + +One indeed of the most wonderful things about her is her earliness. Even +the dates of publication of her first books precede those of any +novelist of the same rank and the same modernity; but these dates are +misleading. _Northanger Abbey_ was written more than twenty years before +it appeared, and the bulk of _Pride and Prejudice_ (which some hold to +be the best and most characteristic of all) is known to have been as old +at least as _Northanger Abbey_. That is to say, almost at the very time +of the appearance of _Camilla_ (to which, by the way, Miss Austen was an +original subscriber), a book not strikingly more nineteenth century in +tone than the novels of Richardson, though a little more so in manners, +a girl even younger than Miss Burney herself had been when she wrote +_Evelina_ was drawing other girls, who, putting aside the most trivial +details of dress, speech, and so forth, might be living girls to-day. + +The charm and the genius of Miss Austen are not universally admitted; +the touch of old fashion in external detail apparently discontenting +some readers, the delicate and ever-present irony either escaping or +being distasteful to others, while the extreme quietness of the action +and the entire absence of excitement probably revolt a third class. But +the decriers do not usually attempt formal criticism. However, they +sometimes do, and such an attempt once came under the notice of the +present historian. It was urged that to extol Miss Austen's method is a +masculine delusion, that method being nothing but the throwing into +literature of the habit of minute and semi-satiric observation natural +to womankind. It did not apparently occur to this critic that he (or +she) was in the first place paying Miss Austen an extraordinarily high +compliment--a compliment almost greater than the most enthusiastic +"Janites" have ventured--inasmuch as no higher literary triumph can be +even conceived than thus to focus, formulate, and crystallise the +special talent and gift of an entire sex into a literary method. Nor did +it probably occur to him that he was laying himself open to the +damaging, or rather ruinous retort, "Then how is it that, of all the +women who have preceded and followed Miss Austen as novelists, no other +has displayed this specially and universally feminine gift?" + +It is no doubt true that there is something feminine about the method, +which, with the addition of a certain _nescio quid_, giving it its +modern difference, may be said to combine the peculiarities of Fielding +and of Richardson, though it works on a much smaller scale than either. +It has the intense and pervading, though not the exuberant and +full-blooded, _livingness_ of Fielding, and it also has something not +unlike a feminine counterpart and complement of his pervading irony; +while it is not unlike Richardson in building up the characters and the +stories partly by an infinity of tiny strokes of detail, often +communicated in conversation, partly by the use of an exceedingly nice +and delicate analysis of motive and temperament. It is in the former +respect that Miss Austen stands apart from most, if not from all, women +who have written novels. Irony is by no means a frequent feminine gift; +and as women do not often possess it in any great degree, so they do not +as a rule enjoy it. Miss Austen is only inferior among English writers +to Swift, to Fielding, and to Thackeray--even if it be not improper to +use the term inferiority at all for what is after all not much more than +difference--in the use of this potent but most double-edged weapon. Her +irony indeed is so subtle that it requires a certain dose of subtlety to +appreciate it, and it is not uncommon to find those who consider such +personages as Mr. Collins in _Pride and Prejudice_ to be merely +farcical, instead of, as they are in fact, preachers of the highest and +most Shakespearian comedy. But there would be no room here to examine +Miss Austen's perfections in detail; the important thing for the +purposes of this history is to observe again that she "set the clock," +so to speak, of pure novel writing to the time which was to be +nineteenth century time to this present hour. She discarded violent and +romantic adventure. She did not rely in the very least degree on +describing popular or passing fashions, amusements, politics; but +confined herself to the most strictly ordinary life. Yet she managed in +some fashion so to extract the characteristics of that life which are +perennial and human, that there never can be any doubt to fit readers in +any age finding themselves at home with her, just as they find +themselves at home with all the greatest writers of bygone ages. And +lastly, by some analogous process she hit upon a style which, though +again true to the ordinary speech of her own day, and therefore now +reviled as "stilted" and formal by those who have not the gift of +literary detachment, again possesses the universal quality, and, save in +the merest externals, is neither ancient nor modern. + +For the moment, however, Miss Austen's example had not so much little +influence as none at all. A more powerful and popular force, coming +immediately afterwards and coinciding with the bent of general taste, +threw for the time the whole current of English novel writing into quite +a different channel; and it was not till the first rush of this current +had expended itself, after an interval of thirty or forty years, that +the novel, as distinguished from the romance and from nondescript styles +partaking now of the romance itself, now of something like the +eighteenth century story, engaged the popular ear. This new development +was the historical novel proper; and the hand that started it at last +was that of Scott. At last--for both men and women had been trying to +write historical novels for about two thousand years, and for some +twenty or thirty the attempts had come tolerably thick and fast. But +before Scott no one, ancient or modern, Englishman or foreigner, had +really succeeded. In the first place, until the eighteenth century was +pretty far advanced, the conception and the knowledge of history as +distinguished from the mere writing and reading of chronicles had been +in a very rudimentary condition. Exceedingly few historians and no +readers of history, as a class and as a rule, had practised or acquired +the art of looking at bygone ages with any attempt to realise and revive +the ideas of those ages themselves, or even, while looking at them with +the eyes of the present, to keep in mind that these were quite different +eyes from those of contemporaries. In the same way no attempt at getting +"local colour," at appropriateness of dialect, and so forth, had been +made. These negligences in the hands of genius had been as unimportant +as the negligences of genius always are. If Shakespeare's "godlike +Romans" are not entirely free from anachronism, nobody of sense would +exchange them for anything else than themselves; and though Dante +practically repeated in the _Commedia_ the curious confusion which in +less gifted _trouveres_ and romances mixed up Alexander with Charlemagne +and blended Greek and Gothic notions in one inextricable tangle, this +also was supremely unimportant, if not even in a manner interesting. But +when, at the end of the eighteenth century, writers, of secondary powers +at best, engaging in a new and unengineered way, endeavoured to write +historical novels, they all, from Godwin and Mrs. Radcliffe to Miss +Reeves and the Misses Lee, made the merest gallimaufries of inaccurate +history, questionable fiction, manners heedlessly jumbled, and above all +dialogue destitute of the slightest semblance of verisimilitude, and +drawn chiefly from that of the decadent tragic and comic drama of the +time. + +It is not possible--it never is in such cases--to give a very exact +account of the causes which led Walter Scott, when the public seemed to +be a little tiring of the verse-romances which have been discussed in +the last chapter, to take to romances in prose. The example of Miss +Edgeworth, if a true cause at all, could affect only his selection of +Scotch manners to illustrate his histories, not his adoption of the +historical style itself. But he did adopt it; and, fishing out from an +old desk the beginnings of a story which he had left unfinished, or +rather had scarce commenced, years earlier, he fashioned it into +_Waverley_. This appearing in the year 1814 at a serious crisis in his +own affairs, opened at once a new career of fame and fortune to him, +and a previously unknown field of exploit and popularity to the English +novel. + +The extraordinary greatness of Scott--who in everything but pure style, +and the expression of the highest raptures of love, thought, and nature, +ranks with the greatest writers of the world--is not better indicated by +any single fact than by the fact that it is impossible to describe his +novels in any simple formula. He practically created the historical +novel; and, what is more, he elaborated it to such an extent that no +really important additions to his scheme have been made since. But not +all his novels are historical. The two which immediately succeeded +_Waverley_, and which perhaps the best judges consider his best,--_Guy +Mannering_ and _The Antiquary_,--have only the faintest touch of history +about them, and might have none at all without affecting their +excellence; while one of the most powerful of his later books, _St. +Ronan's Well_, is almost absolutely virgin of fact. So also, though his +incomparable delineation of national manners, speech, and character, of +the _cosas de Escocia_ generally, is one of the principal sources of his +interest, _Ivanhoe_, which has perhaps been the most popular of all his +books, _Kenilworth_, which is not far below it in popularity or in +merit, and one or two others, have nothing at all of Scotland in them; +and the altogether admirable romance of _Quentin Durward_, one of his +four or five masterpieces, so little that what there is plays the +smallest part in the success. So yet again, historical novelist as Scott +is, and admirably as he has utilised and revivified history, he is by no +means an extremely accurate historical scholar, and is wont not merely +to play tricks with history to suit his story,--that is probably always +allowable,--but to commit anachronisms which are quite unnecessary and +even a little teasing. + +There is no doubt that the single gift underlying all these and other +things--the gift which enabled Scott not merely, as has been said, to +create the historical novel, but to give the novel generally an entirely +new start and direction, to establish its popularity, to clear its +reputation from the smirch of frivolity on the one side and immorality +on the other, to put it in the position occupied at other times or in +other countries by the drama and the sermon, and to make it a rival of +the very newspaper which was being refashioned at the same moment, while +providing opportunities for the production of literature proper not +inferior to those of any literary kind except poetry--that this was a +gift of higher scope, if of vaguer definition, than any of those +referred to. It was that gift which no one except Shakespeare has ever +possessed in larger measure, though others have possessed it in greater +partial intensity and perfection--the gift of communicating life to the +persons, the story, the dialogue. To some extent Scott had this treasure +in an earthen vessel. He could not, like Thackeray, like Fielding, like +Miss Austen even, make everybody that he touched alive: his heroes very +generally are examples to the contrary. And as a rule, when he did +perform this function of the wizard,--a name given to him by a more than +popular appropriateness,--he usually did it, not by the accumulation of +a vast number of small strokes, but by throwing on the canvas, or rather +panel, large outlines, free sweeps of line, and breadths of colour, +instinct with vivacity and movement. Yet he managed wholly to avoid that +fault of some creative imaginations which consists in personifying and +individualising their figures by some easily recognisable label of +mannerism. Even his most mannered characters, his humourists in the +seventeenth century sense, of whom Dugald Dalgetty is the prince +and chief--the true commander of the whole _stift_ of this +_Dunkelspiel_--stand poles asunder from those inventions of Dickens and +of some others who are ticketed for us by a gesture or a phrase repeated +_ad nauseam_. And this gift probably is most closely connected with +another: the extraordinary variety of Scott's scene, character, and--so +far as the term is applicable to his very effective but rather loose +fashion of story-telling--plot. It is a common and a just complaint of +novelists, especially when they are fertile rather than barren, that +with them scene, plot, and character all run into a kind of mould, that +their stories with a little trouble can be thrown into a sort of common +form, that their persons simply "change from the blue bed to the brown," +and that the blue and brown beds themselves are seen, under their +diverse colours, to have a singular and not very welcome uniformity of +pattern and furniture. Even Scott does not escape this almost invariable +law of the brain-artist: it is one of the sole Shakespearian +characteristics that Shakespeare does escape it entirely and altogether. +A certain form of huddled and not altogether probable catastrophe, a +knack of introducing in the earlier part of the story, as if big with +fate, personages who afterwards play but a subordinate part, and one or +two other things, might be urged against Sir Walter. But, on the whole, +no artist is less chargeable with stereotype than he. His characters are +hardly ever doubles; their relationships (certain general connections +excepted, which are practically the scaffolding of the romance in +itself) do not repeat themselves; the backgrounds, however much or +however little strict local colour they may have, are always +sufficiently differentiated. They have the variety, as they have the +truth, of nature. + +No detailed account can here be attempted of the marvellous rapidity and +popularity of the series of novels from the appearance of _Waverley_ +till just before the author's death eighteen years later. The anecdotage +of the matter is enormous. The books were from the first anonymous, and +for some time the secret of their authorship was carefully and on the +whole successfully preserved. Even several years after the beginning, so +acute a judge as Hazlitt, though he did not entertain, thought it +necessary seriously to discuss, the suggestion that Godwin wrote +them,--a suggestion which, absurd as, with our illegitimate advantage of +distance and perspective, we see it to be, was less nonsensical than it +seems to those who forget that at the date of the appearance of +_Waverley_ there was no novelist who could have been selected with more +plausibility. After a time this and that were put together, and a critic +of the name of Adolphus constructed an argument of much ingenuity and +shrewdness to show that the author of _Marmion_ and the _Lady of the +Lake_ must be the author of _Waverley_. But the secret was never +regularly divulged till Sir Walter's misfortunes, referred to in the +section on his poetry, made further concealment not so much useless as +impossible in the first place, and positively detrimental in the second. +The series was dauntlessly continued, despite the drag of the +_Napoleon_, the necessity of attempting other work that would bring in +money, and above all the strain on the faculties both of imagination and +labour which domestic as well as pecuniary misfortunes imposed. Nor did +Scott, it may be fearlessly, asserted, though it is not perhaps the +general opinion, ever publish any "dotages," with the possible exception +of _Castle Dangerous_, which was not only finished but begun when the +fatal disease of the brain which killed him had got the upper hand. The +introduction to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, written in 1827, is +one of the most exquisite and masterly things that he ever did, though, +from its not actually forming part of one of the novels, it is +comparatively little known. The _Fair Maid of Perth_, a year later, has +been one of the most popular of all abroad, and not the least so at +home; and there are critics who rank _Anne of Geierstein_, in 1829, very +high indeed. Few defenders are found for _Count Robert of Paris_, which +was in fact written in the valley of the shadow; and it may be admitted +that in his earlier days Scott would certainly have been able to give it +a fuller development and a livelier turn. Yet the opening scene, though +a little too long, the escape from the vaults of the Blachernal, and not +a few other things, would be recognised as marvellous if they could be +put before a competent but unbiassed taste, which knew nothing of Sir +Walter's other work, but was able to compare it not merely with the work +of his predecessors but with that of his imitators, numerous and +enterprising as they were, at the time that _Count Robert_ appeared. + +In such a comparison Scott at his worst excels all others at their best. +It is not merely that in this detail and in that he has the mastery, but +that he has succeeded in making novel writing in general turn over a +completely new leaf, enter upon a distinctly different competition. +With the masterpieces of the eighteenth century novel he does not enter +into comparison at all: he is working on a different scene, addressing a +different audience, using different tools, colours, methods. Every +successful novelist up to his time had, whatever his ostensible "_temp._ +of tale," quietly assumed the thoughts, the speech, the manners, even to +a great extent the dress and details of his own day. And in this +assumption all but the greatest had inevitably estranged from them the +ears and eyes of days that were not their own, which days, no doubt, +were in turn themselves rapidly hastening to change, but never to revert +to the original surroundings. Scott had done in prose fiction what the +poets and the dramatists had sometimes done, what very rare philosophers +had sometimes done likewise. Ostensibly going to the past, and to some +extent really borrowing its circumstances, he had in reality gone +straight to man as man; he had varied the particular trapping only to +exhibit the universal substance. The Baron of Bradwardine, Dandie +Dinmont, Edie Ochiltree, Mause Headrigg, Bailie Jarvie, and the long +list of originals down to Oliver Proudfute and even later, their less +eccentric companions from Fergus MacIvor to Queen Margaret, may derive +part of their appeal from dialect and colouring, from picturesque +"business" and properties. But the chief of that appeal lies in the fact +that they are all men and women of the world, of life, of time in +general; that even when their garments, even when their words are a +little out of fashion, there is real flesh and blood beneath the +garments, real thought and feeling behind the words. It may be urged by +the Devil's Advocate, and is not wholly susceptible of denial by his +opponent, that, after the first four or five books, the enormous gains +open to Scott first tempted, and the heroic efforts afterwards demanded +of him later compelled, the author to put not quite enough of himself +and his knowledge into his work, to "pad" if not exactly to "scamp" a +little. Yet it is the fact that some of his very best work was not only +very rapidly written, but written under such circumstances of bodily +suffering and mental worry as would have made any work at all +impossible to most men. And, on the whole, it is perhaps as idle to +speculate whether this work might have been better, as it is ungenerous +to grumble that it ought to have been. For after all it is such a body +of literature as, for complete liberation from any debts to models, +fertility and abundance of invention, nobility of sentiment, variety and +keenness of delight, nowhere else exists as the work of a single author +in prose. + +It was certain that an example so fascinating in itself, and of such +extraordinary profit in fame and fortune to the author, would be +followed. It was said with sufficient accuracy that Scott's novels, at +the best of his career, brought him in about L15,000 a year, a sum +previously undreamt of by authors; while their reputation overshadowed +not only all others in England, but all others throughout Europe. And it +is rather surprising, and shows how entirely Scott had the priority in +this field, that it was not for six or seven years at least that any +noteworthy attempts in his manner appeared, while it can scarcely be +said that in England anything of very great value was published in it +before his death. In the last ten years of his life, however, +imitations, chiefly of his historical style, did appear in great +numbers; and he has left in his diary an extremely interesting, a very +good-natured, but a very shrewd and just criticism upon them in general, +and upon two in particular--the _Brambletye House_ of Horace Smith, one +of the authors of the delightful parodies called _Rejected Addresses_, +and the first book, _Sir John Chiverton_, of an author who was to +continue writing for some half century, and at times to attain very +great popularity. This was Harrison Ainsworth, and G. P. R. James also +began to publish pretty early in the third decade of the century. James' +_Richelieu_, his first work of mark, appeared in 1825, the same year as +_Sir John Chiverton_; but he was rather the older man of the two, having +been born in 1801, while Ainsworth's birth year was 1805. The latter, +too, long outlived James, who died in 1860, while holding the post of +English Consul in Venice, while Ainsworth survived till 1882. Both were +exceedingly prolific, James writing history and other work as well as +the novels--_Darnley_, _Mary of Burgundy_, _Henry Masterton_, _John +Marston Hall_, and dozens of others--which made his fame; while +Ainsworth (_Jack Sheppard_, _The Tower of London_, _Crichton_, +_Rookwood_, _Old St. Paul's_, etc.) was a novelist only. Both, +especially between 1830 and 1850, achieved considerable popularity with +the general public; and they kept it much longer (if indeed they have +yet lost it) with schoolboys. But while the attempt of both to imitate +Scott was palpable always, the success of neither could be ranked very +high by severe criticism. James wrote better than Ainsworth: his +historical knowledge was of a much wider and more accurate kind, and he +was not unimbued with the spirit of romance. But the sameness of his +situations (it became a stock joke to speak of the "two horsemen" who so +often appeared in his opening scenes), the exceedingly conventional +character of his handling, and the theatrical feebleness of his +dialogue, were always reprehended and open to reprehension. Harrison +Ainsworth, on the other hand, had a real knack of arresting and keeping +the interest of those readers who read for mere excitement: he was +decidedly skilful at gleaning from memoirs and other documents scraps of +decoration suitable for his purpose, he could in his better days string +incidents together with a very decided knack, and, till latterly, his +books rarely languished. But his writing was very poor in strictly +literary merit, his style was at best bustling prose melodrama, and his +characters were scarcely ever alive. + +The chief follower of Sir Walter Scott in "Scotch" novels--for Miss +Ferrier, the Scottish counterpart of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen, +was, though his friend, hardly his follower, and _Marriage_ was mainly +written before _Waverley_--was John Galt, who also has some claim to +priority. He was born (2nd May 1779) at Irvine in Ayrshire, the scene of +his best work, but passed most of his youth at Greenock. His father was +a retired West India captain; and Galt's biographers do not make it very +clear whence he obtained the capital for the various travels and +enterprises which occupied his not exactly eventful, but busy and +varied life. He had entered the Custom-house; but went to London in +1804, and tried literature in many forms, and for the most part with +very little success. While travelling in the Levant he met Byron, of +whom long afterwards he published a rather absurd life; and after his +return home his _Ayrshire Legatees_ found welcome and popularity in +_Blackwood_. This was in 1821, and after five years' busy writing Galt +went to Canada in charge of a great scheme of colonisation and commerce +called the Canada Company. This, after fair prospects, broke down +completely. He came back again, wrote hard, and schemed incessantly. But +fortune was not kind to him; and he died, in a way a broken man, at +Greenock on 11th April 1839. + +Galt, though with some of the national characteristics which have not +always made Scotchmen popular, appears to have been a person of worth +and amiability. He got on well with Byron, a very uncommon thing; and +from Carlyle, whom he met when they were both on the staff of _Fraser_, +he receives unwontedly amiable notice. His literary production was vast +and totally uncritical; his poems, dramas, etc., being admittedly +worthless, his miscellaneous writing mostly book-making, while his +historical novels are given up by all but devotees. He had, however, a +special walk--the delineation of the small humours and ways of his +native town and county--in which, if not exactly supreme, he has seldom +been equalled. The _Ayrshire Legatees_ is in main scheme a pretty direct +and not very brilliant following of _Humphrey Clinker_; but the letters +of the worthy family who visit London are read in a home circle which +shows Galt's peculiar talent. It is shown better still in his next +published work, _The Annals of the Parish_, which is said to have been +written long before, and in the pre-Waverley days to have been rejected +by the publishers because "_Scotch_ novels could not pay." It is not +exactly a novel, being literally what its title holds out--the annals of +a Western Parish by its minister, the Rev. Mr. Balwhidder, a +Presbyterian Parson Adams of a less robust type, whose description of +himself and parishioners is always good, and at times charming. _Sir +Andrew Wylie_ (a fantastic book of much good fun and much good feeling), +_The Entail_, and _The Provost_ (the last two sometimes ranked next to +the _Annals_), followed rapidly, and are all good in a way which has +been oddly revived of late years by some of our most popular novelists. +A better writer than Galt, though a less fertile, was Dr. Moir +("Delta"), another _Blackwood_ man, whose chief single performance is +_Mansie Wauch_, but who wrote both prose and verse, both tales and +essays, with considerable accomplishment of style, and with a very +agreeable mixture of serious and comic power. + +Meanwhile, the historical novel did not by any means absorb the +attention of the crowds of aspirants who hurried to try their fortune in +the wake of Scott. Lady Morgan (or rather Miss Sydney Owenson) did, in +_The Wild Irish Girl_ (1806) and other things, some "rattling Hibernian +stories" quite early; John Banim (1798-1842) coincided with the two +Englishmen and exceeded them in _gout du terroir_; and the _Fairy +Legends_ (1826) of Crofton Croker (1798-1854) are at their best simply +exquisite. But the older styles continued after a fashion, or underwent +slight changes, before the novel of purely ordinary life, on a plan +midway between Scott and Miss Austen, triumphed in the middle of the +century. One of the most popular of novelists in the reigns of George +IV. and William IV. was Theodore Hook (1788-1841), a man of respectable +connections and excellent education, who, having made himself a +favourite with the Regent and many persons of quality as a diner-out and +improvisatore, received a valuable appointment at the Mauritius, laid +himself open by carelessness to a prosecution for malversation, and, +returning to England, never entirely escaped from the effects of this, +though he was extremely successful both as a novelist, and as a +newspaper writer and editor, in the _John Bull_ chiefly. Some of Hook's +political squibs and light verses still retain attraction; and the +tradition of his extraordinary faculties in improvising both words, +music, and dramatic arrangement remains. But his novels (_Sayings and +Doings_, _Gilbert Gurney_, _Gurney Married_, _Maxwell_, etc.) have +become very dead-alive. They have little plot; a sort of rattling +adventure in a modernised following of Smollett, which is their chief +source of interest; manners true enough to their own day to be +out-of-date now, but not handled with sufficient art ever to regain the +attraction of revived antiquity; and a very careless and undistinguished +style. + +The first series of Hook's _Sayings and Doings_ appeared in 1824, the +year before that of the novels of James and Ainsworth above noticed. +Three years later, and five before Scott's death, appeared _Falkland_, +the first (anonymous) novel of a writer far surpassing any of the hour +in talent, and credited by some with positive genius. Edward George +Earle Lytton Bulwer, afterwards Sir Edward Lytton-Bulwer, and later +still Lord Lytton (born in 1800), was the youngest son of General Bulwer +of Wood Dalling and Haydon in Norfolk, while he on his mother's side +represented an ancient Hertfordshire family seated at Knebworth. He was +a Cambridge man: he obtained the Chancellor's prize for English verse in +1825, and his first books were in poetical form. He became a Member of +Parliament, being returned in the Whig interest for St. Ives before the +Reform Bill passed, and in the first Reform Parliament for Lincoln, and +he held this seat for a decade, receiving his baronetcy in 1835. For +another decade he was out of the House of Commons, though he succeeded +to the Knebworth estate in 1844. He was returned for Hertfordshire in +1852, and, joining Lord Derby's reconstituted party, ranked for the rest +of his life as a Conservative of a somewhat Liberal kind. In the second +Derby administration he was Colonial Secretary, but took no part in that +of 1867, and died just before the return of the Tories to power in 1873. + +This sufficiently brilliant political career was complicated by literary +production and success in a manner not equalled by any Englishman of his +time, and only approached by Macaulay and by Mr. Disraeli. _Falkland_ +was succeeded by _Pelham_, which was published with his name, and which +was the first, perhaps the most successful, and by far the most +brilliant, of the novels in which authors have endeavoured to secure +the rank of man of the world even more than that of man of letters, +taking the method chiefly of fashionable, and therefore somewhat +ephemeral, epigram. Nor did Bulwer (as he was known in the heyday of his +popularity) ever cease novel writing for the forty-five years which were +left to him, while the styles of his production varied with fashion in a +manner impossible to a man of less consummate versatility and talent, +though perhaps equally impossible to one of a very decided turn of +genius. The fashionable novel, the crime novel, the romance of mystery, +the romance of classical times, the historical novel, by turns occupied +him; and it is more easy to discover faults in _Paul Clifford_, _Eugene +Aram_, _The Pilgrims of the Rhine_, _The Last Days of Pompeii_, _Ernest +Maltravers_, _Zanoni_, _Rienzi_, _The Last of the Barons_, and _Harold_, +than to refuse admiration to their extraordinary qualities. Then their +author, recognising the public taste, as he always did, or perhaps +exemplifying it with an almost unexampled quickness, turned to the +domestic kind, which was at last, more than thirty years after Miss +Austen's death, forcing its way, and wrote _The Caxtons_, _My Novel_, +and _What will he do with it?_--books which to some have seemed his +greatest triumphs. The veering of that taste back again to tales of +terror was acknowledged by _A Strange Story_, which, in 1861, created an +excitement rarely, if ever, caused by the work of a man who had been +writing for more than a generation; while _The Haunted and the +Haunters_, a brief ghost-story contributed to _Blackwood's Magazine_, +has always seemed to the present writer the most perfect thing that he +ever did, and one of the most perfect things of its kind ever done. In +the very last years of his life, the wonderful _girouette_ of his +imagination felt other popular gales, and produced--partly as novels of +actual society, partly as Janus-faced satires of what was and what might +be--_The Coming Race_, _Kenelm Chillingly_, and the posthumous +_Parisians_. + +But this list of novels, which does not include by name much more than +two-thirds of his actual production, by no means exhausts Lord Lytton's +literary work. For some years, chiefly before he had passed middle +life, he was an active dramatist, and at least three of his plays--_The +Lady of Lyons_, _Richelieu_, and _Money_--had a success (not merely +passing, and in the first case at least permanent) which few if any +other plays of the century have had. He was always returning to verse, +though never with real poetical success; the exceptions which may be +urged most forcibly being his translations from Schiller, a congenial +original. He was at one time editor of the _New Monthly Magazine_. He +translated freely, he wrote much criticism,--which is often in isolated +passages, if not so often in general drift and grasp, extremely +good,--and he was a constant essayist in very various kinds. It is +probable that if his entire works were ever collected, which is not +likely, few, if any, authors of the nineteenth century, though it be one +of unbridled writing and printing, could equal him in volume; while it +is certain that very few indeed could produce more numerous testimonials +of the kind given by the immediate, and not merely immediate, success of +separate works. + +Yet it has been sometimes complained, sometimes boasted, that "with the +critics Bulwer is dead"; and it is not very certain that with the +faithful herd of uncritical readers the first Lord Lytton keeps any +great place. Even many years ago he had ceased to be, if he ever was, a +general favourite with those who specially loved literature; and it is +rather doubtful whether he will ever regain even a considerable vogue of +esteem. Perhaps this may be unjust, for he certainly possessed ability +in bulk, and perhaps here and there in detail, far surpassing that of +all but the very greatest of his contemporaries. Even the things which +were most urged against him by contemporary satirists, and which it is +to be feared are remembered at second-hand when the first-hand knowledge +of his work has declined, need not be fatal. A man may write such things +as "There is an eloquence in Memory because it is the nurse of Hope" +without its being necessary to cast up his capital letters against him +in perpetuity, or to inquire without ceasing whether eloquence is an +inseparable property of nurses. But he had two great faults--want of +concentration and want of reality; and the very keenness, the very +delicacy of his appreciation of the shiftings of popular taste may seem +without unfairness to argue a certain shallowness of individual soil, a +literary compost wherein things spring up rapidly because they have no +depth of earth, but also because they have no depth of earth, rapidly +vanish and wither away. The novel and the magazine have beyond all doubt +given us much admirable work which without them we should not have had; +they have almost as certainly, and in no case much more certainly than +in Bulwer's, over-forced and over-coaxed into hasty and ephemeral +production talents which, with a little more hardening and under less +exacting circumstances, might have become undoubted genius. Sentimental +grandiloquence is not by itself fatal: the fashion which tempts to it, +which turns on it, may return to it again; and it is never impossible to +make allowance for its excesses, especially when, as in the case under +discussion, it is accompanied by a rare and true satiric grasp of life. +In these early externals of his, Bulwer was only the most illustrious of +the innumerable victims of Byron. But his failure to make his figures +thoroughly alive is more serious; and this must be put down partly to +incapacity to take pains. + +It was nearly ten years after the first success of Bulwer, and more than +half as much after the death of Scott, that a novelist greater than any +the century had seen, except Scott himself and Miss Austen, appeared. +Charles Dickens and Lord Lytton became rather intimate friends; but +their origins and early experiences were curiously different. Dickens' +father had been in a government office; but after the Peace he took to +the press, and his son (born in 1812), after some uncomfortable early +experiences which have left their mark on _David Copperfield_, fled to +the same refuge of the destitute in our times. He was a precocious, but +not an extraordinary precocious writer; for he was four and twenty when +the _Sketches by Boz_ were printed in a volume after appearing in the +_Morning Chronicle_. But the _Sketches_ _by Boz_, though containing +some very sprightly things, are but as farthing candles to sunlight when +compared with the wonderful and wholly novel humour of _The Pickwick +Papers_, which (Dickens having been first (1836) employed to write them +as mere letter-press to the sporting sketches of the caricaturist +Seymour) appeared as a book in 1838. From that time their author had a +success which in money came second to that of Scott, and which both +pecuniarily and otherwise enabled him to write pretty much as he +pleased. So to the last the style of his novels never bore much +reference to any public taste or demand; and he developed himself more +strictly according to his own bent than almost any writer of English who +was not born to fortune. During the last twenty years of his life, which +ended suddenly on 9th June 1870, he was a newspaper editor--first of +_Household Words_, then of _All the Year Round_; but these very +periodicals were of his own making and design. He made two journeys to +America: one very early in 1842, with a literary result (_American +Notes_) of very sharp criticism of its people; the other late in 1867, +when he made large sums by reading from his works--a style of +entertainment which, again, was almost of his own invention, and which +gave employment to a very strong dramatic and histrionic faculty that +found little other vent. But his life was extremely uneventful, being +for its last two and thirty years simply one long spell of hard though +lavishly rewarded literary labour. + +The brilliancy and the originality of the product of this can never be +denied. True to his general character of independence, Dickens owes +hardly anything to any predecessor except Smollett, to whom his debts +are rather large, and perhaps to Theodore Hook, to whom, although the +fact has not been generally recognised, they exist. He had had no +regular education, had read as a boy little but the old novelists, and +never became as a man one of either wide learning or much strictly +literary taste. His temperament indeed was of that insubordinate +middle-class variety which rather resents the supremacy of any classics; +and he carried the same feeling into art, into politics, and into the +discussion of the vague problems of social existence which have so much +occupied the last three-quarters of the century. Had this iconoclastic +but ignorant zeal of his (which showed itself in his second novel, +_Nicholas Nickleby_, and was apparent in his last completed one, _Our +Mutual Friend_) been united with less original genius, the result must +have been infinitely tedious, and could not have been in any way +profitable. For Dickens' knowledge, as has been said, was very limited; +his logical faculties were not strong; and while constantly attempting +to satirise the upper classes, he knew extremely little about them, and +has never drawn a single "aristocrat," high government official, or +"big-wig" generally, who presents the remotest resemblance to a living +being. But he knew the lower and lower middle classes of his own day +with wonderful accuracy; he could inform this knowledge of his with that +indefinable comprehension of man as man which has been so often noted; +and over and above this he possessed an imagination, now humorous, now +terrible, now simply grotesque, of a range and volume rarely equalled, +and of a quality which stands entirely by itself, or is approached at a +distance, and with a difference, only by that of his great French +contemporary Balzac. This imagination, essentially plastic, so far +outran the strictly critical knowledge of mankind as mankind just +mentioned that it has invested Dickens' books and characters with a +peculiarity found nowhere else, or only in the instance just excepted. +They are never quite real: we never experience or meet anything or +anybody quite like them in the actual world. And yet in their own world +they hold their position and play their parts quite perfectly and +completely: they obey their own laws, they are consistent with their own +surroundings. Occasionally the work is marred by too many and too +glaring tricks of mannerism: this was especially the case with the +productions of the period between 1855 and 1865. The pathos of Dickens +was always regarded as slightly conventional and unreal by critical +judges. But his humour, though never again attaining the same marvellous +flow of unforced merriment which the _Pickwick Papers_ had shown, was +almost unfailing; and, thanks to the gift of projecting imaginative +character, above noticed, it was never exactly the same. + +These and other gifts were shown in a long line of novels covering just +thirty years, from _Boz to Our Mutual Friend_; for the last few years of +his life, disturbed by his American tour, by increasing ill-health, and +other things, produced nothing but the beginnings of an unfinished +novel, _Edwin Drood_. He attempted little besides novels, and what he +did attempt outside of them was not very fortunate, except the +delightful _Uncommercial Traveller_, wherein in his later days he +achieved a sort of mellowed version of the _Boz_ sketches, subdued more +to the actual, but not in the least tamed or weakened. Although a keen +lover of the theatre and an amateur actor of remarkable merit, he had +the sense and self-denial never to attempt plays except in an indirect +fashion and in one or two instances, nor ever in his own name solely. +His _Child's History of England_ (1854) is probably the worst book ever +written by a man of genius, except Shelley's novels, and has not, like +them, the excuse of extreme youth. His _Pictures from Italy_ (1845), +despite vivid passages, are quite unworthy of him; and even the +_American Notes_ could be dispensed with without a sigh, seeing that we +have _Martin Chuzzlewit_. But his novels, despite their many faults, +could not be dispensed with,--no one who understands literary value +would give up even the worst of them,--while his earlier "Christmas +Books" (during the fancy for these things in the forties) and his later +contributions to the Christmas numbers of his periodicals contain some +of his best fantastic and pathetic work. _Pickwick_ was immediately +followed by _Oliver Twist_,--a very popular book, and in parts a very +powerful one, but containing in germ most of the faults which afterwards +developed themselves, and, with the exception of the "Artful Dodger," +not bringing out any of his great character-creations. _Nicholas +Nickleby_ (1838) is a story designed to fix a stigma on cheap private +schools, and marred by some satire as cheap as the schools themselves on +the fashionable and aristocratic society of which to his dying day +Dickens never knew anything; but it is of great interest as a story, and +full of admirable humoristic sketches, which almost if not quite excused +not merely the defect of knowledge just referred to, but the author's +unfortunate proneness to attempt irony, of which he had no command, and +argument, of which he had if possible less. His next two stories, _The +Old Curiosity Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_, were enshrined (1840-41) in an +odd framework of fantastic presentation, under the general title of +_Master Humphrey's Clock_,--a form afterwards discarded with some +advantage, but also with some loss. _The Old Curiosity Shop_, strongly +commended to its own public and seriously hampered since by some rather +maudlin pathos, improved even upon _Nicholas Nickleby_ in the humoristic +vein; and while Dick Swiveller, Codlin and Short, Mr. Chuckster, and +others remain as some of the best of Dickens' peculiar characters of the +lighter sort, the dwarf Quilp is perhaps his only thoroughly successful +excursion into the grimmer and more horrible kind of humour. _Barnaby +Rudge_ is in part a historical novel, and the description of the riots +of Eighty is of extraordinary power; but the real appeal of the book +lies in the characters of the Varden family, with the handmaid Miss +Miggs and the ferocious apprentice Tappertit. Sir John Chester, a sort +of study from Chesterfield, is one of the most disastrous of this +author's failures; but Dennis the Hangman may have a place by Quilp. +Then (1843) came _Martin Chuzzlewit_, which, as observed, embodied his +American experiences in a manner which may or may not have been fair, +but which was exquisitely funny. It also added the immortal figure of +Mrs. Gamp (not unattended by any means) to the glorious list of his +comic creations. It was in _Dombey and Son_ (1846-48) that the Dickens +of the decadence first appeared; the maudlin strain of _The Old +Curiosity Shop_ being repeated in Paul Dombey, while a new and very +inauspicious element appeared in certain mechanical tricks of phrase, +and in a totally unreal style of character exemplified in the Bagstocks, +the Carkers, and so forth. Yet Captain Cuttle, his friend Bunsby, Miss +Nipper, and the inestimable Toots put in ample bail for this also. And +it was followed (1849-50) by _David Copperfield_, one of the capital +books of English fiction. This was to some extent obviously +autobiographic; but, setting some questions of taste aside, not unduly +so. Even the hero is too real to be frigid; and of the two heroines, +Dora, if an idiot, is saved by pathos different from that of Paul and +Nell, while the insipidity of Agnes does not greatly spoil the story, +and the commonplace theatricality of the Steerforth and Little Em'ly +episode can be neglected. On the other hand, Miss Trotwood, David +Copperfield's schools and schoolfellows, Uriah Heap (not wholly good as +he is), and above all the priceless Mr. Micawber, would suffice to keep +twenty books alive. + +But this book, though by no means Dickens' Corunna or even his +Malplaquet, was certainly the climax of his career, and no impartial and +competent critic could ever give him the same praise again. In two long +stories, _Bleak House_ and _Little Dorrit_, and in a shorter one, _Hard +Times_, which appeared between 1852 and 1857, the mania of "purpose" and +the blemish of mechanical mannerism appeared to a far worse degree than +previously, though in the first named at any rate there were numerous +consolations of the old kind. The _Tale of Two Cities_ (1859) has been +more differently judged than any other of his works; some extolling it +as a great romance, if not quite a great historical novel, while others +see in it little more than mixed mannerism and melodrama. Something of +the same difference prevails about _Great Expectations_ (1860-61), the +parties as a rule changing sides, and those who dislike the _Tale of Two +Cities_ rejoicing in _Great Expectations_, Dickens' closest attempt at +real modern life (with a fantastic admixture of course), and in its +heroine, Estella, his almost sole creation of a live girl. _Our Mutual +Friend_ (1864-65), though not a return to the great days, brought these +parties somewhat together again, thanks to the Doll's Dressmaker and +Rogue Riderhood. And then, for it is impossible to found any sound +critical judgment on the fragment of _Edwin Drood_, the building of the +most extraordinary monument of the fantastic in literature ceased +abruptly. + +That exactly the same fate befell the great successor, rival, and foil +of Dickens in novel writing during the middle of the century was due to +no metaphysical aid but to the simple and prosaic fact that at the time +publication in parts, independently or in periodicals, was the usual +method. Although the life of William Makepeace Thackeray was as little +eventful as Dickens' own, their origin and circumstances were as +different as their work. Dickens, as has been said, was born in +distinctly the lower section of the middle class, and had, if any +education, a very irregular one. Thackeray, who was born at Calcutta in +1811, belonged to a good family, regularly connected with English public +schools and universities, inherited a small but comfortable fortune, and +was himself educated at the Charterhouse and at Trinity College, +Cambridge, though he took no degree. Unsuccessful as an artist (it is +one of the chief pieces of literary anecdote of our times that he +offered himself fruitlessly to Dickens as an illustrator), and having by +imprudence or accident lost his private means, he began to write, +especially in the then new and audacious _Fraser's Magazine_. For this, +for other periodicals, and for _Punch_ later, he performed a vast amount +of miscellaneous work, part only of which, even with the considerable +addition made some ten years ago, has ever been enshrined in his +collected works. It is all very remarkable, and can easily be seen now +to be quite different from any other work of the time (the later +thirties); but it is very unequal and distinctly uncertain in touch. +These qualities or defects also appear in his first publications in +volume--the _Paris_ (1840) and _Irish_ (1843) _Sketch Books_, and the +novels of _Catherine_ and _Barry Lyndon_. The _Punch_ work (which +included the famous _Book of Snobs_ and the admirable attempts in +misspelling on the model of Swift and Smollett known as the _Memoirs of +Mr. Yellowplush_, with much else) marked a distinct advance in firmness +of handling and raciness of humour; while the author, who, though now a +very poor man, had access to the best society, was constantly adding to +his stock of observation as well as to his literary practice. It was +not, however, till 1846, when he began _Vanity Fair_, that any very +large number of persons began to understand what a star had risen in +English letters; nor can even _Vanity Fair_ be said to have had any +enormous popularity, though its author's powers were shown in a +different way during its publication in parts by the appearance of a +third sketch book, the _Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo_, more +perfect than either of its forerunners, and by divers extremely +brilliant Christmas books. _Vanity Fair_ was succeeded in 1849 (for +Thackeray, a man fond of society and a little indolent, was fortunately +never a very rapid writer) by _Pendennis_, which holds as autobiography, +though not perhaps in creative excellence, the same place among his +works as _Copperfield_ does among those of Dickens. Several slighter +things accompanied or followed this, Thackeray showing himself at once +an admirable lecturer, and an admirable though not always quite judicial +critic, in a series of discourses afterwards published as a volume on +_The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_. But it was not till +1852 that the marvellous historical novel of _Esmond_--the greatest book +in its own special kind ever written--appeared, and showed at once the +fashion in which the author had assimilated the Queen Anne period and +his grasp of character and story. He returned to modern times in _The +Newcomes_ (1853-55), which some put at the head of his work as a +contemporary painter of manners. After this he had seven years of life +which were well filled. He followed up _Esmond_ with The _Virginians_ +(1857-58), a novel of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, which +has not been generally rated high, but which contains some of his very +best things; he went to America and lectured on _The Four Georges_ +(lectures again brilliant in their kind); he became (1860) editor of the +_Cornhill Magazine_ and wrote in it two stories, _Lovel the Widower_ and +_Philip_; while he struck out a new line in a certain series of +contributions called _The Roundabout Papers_, some of which were among +his very last, and nearly all of them among his most characteristic and +perfect work. He had begun yet another novel, _Denis Duval_, which was +to deal with the last quarter of the century he knew so well; but he +died suddenly two days before Christmas 1863, leaving it a mere +fragment. He had unsuccessfully attempted play writing in _The Wolves +and the Lamb_, an earlier and dramatic version of _Lovel the Widower_. +And during almost his whole literary career he had been a sparing but an +exquisite writer of a peculiar kind of verse, half serious half comic, +which is scarcely inferior in excellence to his best prose. "The Ballad +of Bouillabaisse" and "The Age of Wisdom," to take only two examples, +are unmatched in their presentation of pathos that always keeps clear of +the maudlin, and is wide-eyed if not dry-eyed in view of all sides of +life; while such things as "Lyra Hibernica" and "The Ballads of +Policeman X" have never been surpassed as verse examples of pure, broad, +roaring farce that still retains a certain reserve and well-bred +scholarship of tone. + +But his verse, however charming and unique, could never have given him +the exalted and massive pedestal which his prose writings, and +especially his novels, provide. Even without the novels, as without the +verse, he would still occupy a high place among English writers for the +sake of his singular and delightful style, and for the attitude both to +life and to letters, corresponding with that style, which his essays and +miscellanies exhibit. This style is not by any means free from minor +blemishes, though it discarded many of these as time went on. But it has +an extraordinary vivacity; a manner entirely its own, which yet seldom +or never approaches mannerism; a quality of humour for which no word +would be so fit as the old-fashioned "archness," if that had not been so +hopelessly degraded before even the present century opened; at need, an +unsurpassed pathos which never by any chance or exception succumbs to +the demon of the gushing or maudlin; a flexibility and facility of +adaptation to almost all (not quite all) subjects which is hard to +parallel. + +And this style reflects with more than common exactness, even in these +minor works, the attitude above spoken of, which is not less unique and +not less inestimable than the style itself. Towards some of the "great +subjects" Thackeray indeed adopts not quite a Shakespearian silence, but +a slightly uneasy respect. Never irreligious as he was, there was +something in him of his own beloved eighteenth century's dislike and +discomfort in face of religious dogma and religious enthusiasm; he had +no metaphysical head; his politics (he once stood for Parliament) were a +little childish. It was his, in short, not so much to argue as to +observe, to feel, to laugh with no unkindness but with infinite +comprehension, to enjoy, to suffer. Of all the innumerable cants that +ever were canted, the cant about Thackeray's "cynicism" was the silliest +and the most erroneous. He knew the weakness of man, and laughed at it +as the wise knows and laughs, "knowing also," as the poet says, "that he +himself must die." But he did not even despise this weakness, much less +is he harsh to it. On the contrary, he is milder not only than Swift, +but even than Addison or Miss Austen, and he is never wroth with human +nature save when it is not only weak but base. + +All these good gifts and others, such as incomparable power of +presenting scene and personage to the necessary extent and with telling +detail, appear in his novels, with the addition of a greater gift than +any of them--the gift most indispensable of all others to the +novelist--the gift of creating and immortalising character. Of mere +story, of mere plot, Thackeray was not a great master; and he has made +himself appear a less great master than he was by his fancy for +interlarding his narratives with long addresses to the reader, and by +his other fancy for extending them over very great spaces of time. The +unities are no doubt in fiction, if not in drama, something of a +caricature; but it is seldom possible to neglect them to the extent of +years and decades without paying the penalty; and Thackeray is not of +those who have evaded payment. But in the creation of living character +he stands simply alone among novelists: above even Fielding, though his +characters may have something less of massiveness; much above Scott, +whose consummate successes are accompanied by not a few failures; and +out of sight of almost every one else except Miss Austen, whose world is +different, and, as a world, somewhat less of flesh and blood. In _Vanity +Fair_ he is still in this respect not quite at his acme; and the +magnificent character of Becky Sharp (the attempt to rival whom by her +almost exact contemporary, Valerie Marneffe, is a singular critical +error), supported as it is by the lesser successes of Jos and Rawdon, of +George Osborne and Lord Steyne, does not find itself, save now and then, +especially in the crowning scene of the scandal in Curzon Street, +completely parted or completely put in scene. And so at the other end of +the list, from _The Virginians_, fine as much of that is, onwards, it is +permissible, without unreason or want of generosity, to discern a +slight, a very slight, flagging, not in the quality or kind of the +power, but in the vigour and freshness with which it is applied. But in +_Pendennis_, in _Esmond_, and in _The Newcomes_, it appears as it does +nowhere else in English, or in any literature. It is not so much the +holding up of the mirror to life as the presentation of life itself. +Although the figures, the scheme of thought and sentiment and sense, +differ from what we find in Shakespeare by the whole difference between +poetry and prose, there is, on the lower level, a positive gain in +vividness by the absence of the restraints and conventions of the drama +and the measured line. Every act, every scene, every person in these +three books is real with a reality which has been idealised just up to +and not beyond the necessities of literature. It does not matter what +the acts, the scenes, the personages may be. Whether we are at the +height of romantic passion with Esmond's devotion to Beatrix, and his +transactions with the duke and the prince over diamonds and title deeds; +whether the note is that of the simplest human pathos, as in Colonel +Newcome's death-bed; whether we are indulged with society at Baymouth +and Oxbridge; whether we take part in Marlborough's campaigns or assist +at the Back Kitchen--we are in the House of Life, a mansion not too +frequently opened to us by the writers of prose fiction. It was +impossible that Thackeray should live long or write very many novels +when he had once found his way. The lesson of the greatest imagination +of his great contemporary and master settles that. Not the "Peau de +Chagrin" itself could have enabled any man to produce a long succession +of novels such as _Vanity Fair_ and _Esmond_. + +During the time before the century reached its middle, in which Bulwer +and Dickens were the most popular of novelists, while Thackeray was +slowly making his way to the place that was properly his, the demand for +novels, thoroughly implanted in the public by the success of Scott, was +constantly met by work of all sorts, very little of which survives +except in country circulating libraries and on the shelves of houses the +ownership of which has not changed hands for some considerable time. +Very little of it, indeed, much deserved to survive. Lockhart, an +exceedingly judicious critic, thought it necessary not long after the +appearance of _Vanity Fair_ to apologise for the apparent extravagance +of the praise which he had given to his friend Theodore Hook by +observing that, except Dickens, there was no novelist of the first class +between the death of Scott and the rise of Thackeray himself. But about +the time of that rise, and for a good many years after it, what may be +called the third generation of the novelists of the century began to +make its appearance, and, as has been partly observed above, to devote +itself to a somewhat different description of work, which will be +noticed in a future chapter. + +The historical novel, though some of its very best representatives were +still to make their appearance, ceased to occupy the first place in +popular esteem; and the later varieties of the novel of more or less +humorous adventure, whether in the rather commonplace form of Hook or in +the highly individual and eccentric form of Dickens, also ceased to be +much cultivated, save by Dickens himself and his direct imitators. The +vogue set in for a novel of more or less ordinary life of the upper +middle class, and this vogue lasted during the whole of the third +quarter, if not of the second half, of the century, though about 1870 +the historical novel revived, and, after some years of uncertain popular +taste, seems in the last decade to have acquired almost as great +popularity (with its companion study of purely fantastic adventure) as +ever. Yet we must, before passing to other departments, and interrupting +the account of fiction, notice not a few other writers of the time +previous to 1850. + +The descent, in purely literary merit, from Dickens and Thackeray, and +perhaps from Bulwer, to some of those who must now be mentioned, is +great. Yet the chief naval and the chief military novelist of England +need surely not appear by allowance; and if affection and frequent +reading count for anything, it is not certain that some technically much +greater names might not shine with lesser lustre than those of Marryat +and Lever. Frederick Marryat, the elder of the pair, was born in 1792, +early enough to see a good deal of service in the later years of the +Great War, partly under the brilliant if eccentric leadership of Lord +Cochrane. His promotion was fairly rapid: he became a commander in 1815, +and afterwards distinguished himself as a post captain in the Burmese +War, being made a C.B. in 1825. But the increasing dearth of active +service was not suitable to a character like that of Marryat, who, +moreover, was not likely to be popular with "My Lords"; and his +discovery of a faculty for writing opened up to him, both as novelist +and magazine editor, a very busy and profitable literary career, which +lasted from 1830 to 1848, when he died. Marryat's works, which are very +numerous (the best being perhaps _Peter Simple_, _Mr. Midshipman Easy_, +and _Jacob Faithful_, though there is hardly one that has not special +adherents), resemble Smollett's more than those of any other writer, not +merely in their sea-scenes, but in general scheme and character. Some of +Smollett's faults, too, which are not necessarily connected with the +sea--a certain ferocity, an over-fondness for practical jokes, and the +like--appear in Marryat, who is, moreover, a rather careless and +incorrect writer, and liable to fits both of extravagance and of +dulness. But the spirit and humour of the best of his books throughout, +and the best parts of the others, are unmistakable and unsurpassed. Nor +should it be forgotten that he had a rough but racy gift of verse, the +best, though by no means the only good example of which is the piece +beginning, "The Captain stood on the carronade." + +The range of Charles Lever, who was born in 1806, was as much wider than +Marryat's as his life was longer and his experience (though in a purely +literary view oddly similar) more varied. He was educated at Trinity +College, Dublin, and after some sojourn both on the Continent and in +America became (1837) physician to the British Embassy at Brussels. At +this time the Continent was crowded with veterans, English and other, of +the Great War; while Lever's Irish youth had filled him with stories of +the last generation of madcap Irish squires and squireens. He combined +the two in a series of novels of wonderful _verve_ and spirit, first of +a military character, the chief of which were _Harry Lorrequer_, +_Charles O'Malley_ (his masterpiece), and _Tom Burke of Ours_. He had, +after no long tenure of the Brussels appointment, become (1842) editor +of the _Dublin University Magazine_, where for many years his books +appeared. After a time, when his stores of military anecdote were +falling low and the public taste had changed, he substituted novels +partly of Irish partly of Continental bearing (_Roland Cashel_, _The +Knight of Gwynne_, and many others); while in the early days of Dickens' +_All the Year Round_ he adventured a singular piece entitled _A Day's +Ride, a Life's Romance_, which the public did not relish, but which was +much to the taste of some good judges. He had by this time gone to +Florence, became Vice-Consul at Spezzia in 1852, whence, in 1867, he was +transferred as British Consul to Trieste, and died there in 1872. + +For some years before his death he had been industrious in a third and +again different kind of novel, not merely more thoughtful and less +"rollicking," but adjusted much more closely to actual life and +character. Indeed Lever at different times of his life manifested almost +all the gifts which the novelist requires, though unfortunately he never +quite managed to exhibit them all together. His earlier works, amusing +as they are and full of dash and a certain kind of life, sin not only by +superficiality but by a reckless disregard of the simplest requirements +of story-telling, of the most rudimentary attention to chronology, +probability, and general keeping. His later, vastly amended in this +respect, and exhibiting, moreover, a deeper comprehension of human +character as distinguished from mere outward "humours," almost +necessarily present the blunted and blurred strokes which come from the +loss of youth and the frequent repetition of literary production. Indeed +Lever, with Bulwer, was the first to exemplify the evil effects of the +great demand for novels, and the facilities for producing them given by +the spread of periodicals. + +To descend to the third, or even the lower second class in fiction is +almost more dangerous here than a similar laxity in any other +department; and we can no more admit Lord John Russell because he wrote +a story called _The Nun of Arrouca_, than we can exhume any equally +forgotten production of writers less known in non-literary respects. It +can hardly, however, be improper to mention in connection with Marryat, +the greatest of them all, some other members of the interesting school +of naval writers who not unnaturally arose after the peace had turned +large numbers of officers adrift, and the rise of the demand for essays, +novels, and miscellaneous articles had offered temptation to writing. +The chief of these were, in order of rising excellence, Captains +Glascock, Chamier, and Basil Hall, and Michael Scott, a civilian, but by +far the greatest writer of the four. Glascock, an officer of +distinction, was the author of the _Naval Sketch Book_, a curious +olla-podrida of "galley" stories, criticisms on naval books, and +miscellanies, which appeared in 1826. It is not very well written, and +in parts very dull, but provides some genuine things. Chamier, who was +born in 1796 and did not die till 1870, was a post captain and a direct +imitator of Marryat, as also was Captain Howard, Marryat's sub-editor +for a time on the _Metropolitan_, and the part author with him of some +books which have caused trouble to bibliographers. Chamier's books--_Ben +Brace_, _The Arethusa_, _Tom Bowling_, etc.--are better than Howard's +_Rattlin the Reefer_ (commonly ascribed to Marryat), _Jack Ashton_, and +others, but neither can be called a master. + +Captain Basil Hall, who was born of a good Scotch family at Edinburgh in +1788 and died at Haslar Hospital in 1844, was a better writer than +either of these three; but he dealt in travels, not novels, and appears +here as a sort of honorary member of the class. His _Travels in America_ +was one of the books which, in the second quarter of the century, +rightly or wrongly, excited American wrath against Englishmen; but his +last book, _Fragments of Voyages and Travels_, was his most popular and +perhaps his best. Captain Basil Hall was a very amiable person, and +though perhaps a little flimsy as a writer, is yet certainly not to be +spoken of with harshness. + +A very much stronger talent than any of these was Michael Scott, who was +born in Glasgow in 1789 and died in 1835, having passed the end of his +boyhood and the beginning of his manhood in Jamaica. He employed his +experiences in composing for _Blackwood's Magazine_, and afterwards +reducing to book shape, the admirable miscellanies in fiction entitled +_Tom Cringle's Log_ and _The Cruise of the Midge_, which contain some of +the best fighting, fun, tropical scenery, and description generally, to +be found outside the greatest masters. Very little is known of Scott, +and he wrote nothing else. + +One unique figure remains to be noticed among novelists of the first +half of the century, though as a matter of fact his last novel was not +published till within twenty years of its close. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl +of Beaconsfield, belongs, as a special person, to another story than +this. But this would be very incomplete without him and his novels. They +were naturally written for the most part before, in 1852, he was called +to the leadership of the House of Commons, but in two vacations of +office later he added to them _Lothair_ (1870) and _Endymion_ (1881). It +is, however, in his earlier work that his chief virtue is to be found. +It is especially in its first division,--the stories of _Vivian Grey_, +_The Young Duke_, _Contarini Fleming_, _Alroy_, _Venetia_, and +_Henrietta Temple_,--published between 1827 and 1837. They are more like +Bulwer's than like anybody else's work, but _Vivian Grey_ appeared +in the same year with _Falkland_ and before _Pelham_. Later +novels--_Coningsby_ (1844), _Sybil_ (1845), and _Tancred_ (1847)--are +more directly political; while certain smaller and chiefly early +tales--_Ixion_, _The Infernal Marriage_, _Popanilla_, etc.--are pure +fantasy pieces with a satirical intent, and the first of them is, with +perhaps Bedford's _Vathek_ as a companion, the most brilliant thing of +its kind in English. In these more particularly, but in all more or +less, a strong Voltairian influence is perceptible; but on the whole the +set of books may be said to be like nothing else. They have grave +faults, being sometimes tawdry in phrase and imagery, sometimes too +personal, frequently a little unreal, and scarcely ever finally and +completely adjusted to the language in which and the people of whom they +are written. Yet the attraction of them is singular; and good judges, +differing very widely in political and literary tastes, have found +themselves at one as to the strange way in which the reader comes back +to them as he advances in life, and as to the marvellous cleverness +which they display. Let it be added that _Henrietta Temple_, a mere and +sheer love story written in a dangerous style of sentimentalism, is one +of the most effective things of its kind in English, and holds its +ground despite all drawbacks of fashion in speech and manners, which +never tell more heavily than in the case of a book of the kind; while in +_Venetia_ the story of Byron is handled with remarkable closeness, and +yet in good taste. + +Two other novelists belonging to the first half of the century, and +standing even further out of the general current than did Disraeli, both +of them also possessing greater purely literary genius than his, must +also be mentioned here. Thomas Love Peacock, the elder of them, born a +long way within the eighteenth century (in 1785), passed a studious +though irregularly educated youth and an idle early manhood, but at a +little more than thirty (1817) produced, after some verse, the curious +little satirical romance of _Headlong Hall_. This he followed up with +others--_Melincourt_, _Nightmare Abbey_, _Maid Marian_, _The Misfortunes +of Elphin_, and _Crotchet Castle_--at no great intervals until 1830, +after which, having in the meantime been appointed to a valuable and +important office under the East India Company, he published no other +book for thirty years. Then in 1860 he put forth _Gryll Grange_, and +some five years later died, a very old man, in 1866. Peacock at all +times was a writer of verse, and the songs which diversify his novels +are among their most delightful features; but his more ambitious +poetical efforts, which date from his earlier years, _The Genius of the +Thames_ and _Rhododaphne_, are not of much mark. The novels themselves, +however, have a singular relish, and are written in a style always +piquant and attractive and latterly quite admirable. They may all be +described as belonging to the fantastic-satirical order of which the +French tale-tellers (instigated, however, by an Englishman, Anthony +Hamilton) had set the example during the previous century. Social, +political, economic, and other fads and crazes are all touched in them; +but this satire is combined with a strictly realistic presentation of +character, and, except in the romances of _Maid Marian_ and _Elphin_, +with actual modern manners. Peacock's satire is always very sharp, and +in his earlier books a little rough as well; but as he went on he +acquired urbanity without losing point, and became one of the most +consummate practitioners of Lucianic humour adjusted to the English +scheme and taste. More than thirty years after date _Gryll Grange_ is +not obsolete even as a picture of manners; while _Crotchet Castle_, +obsolete in a few externals, is as fresh as ever in substance, owing to +its close grasp of essential humanity. In verse Peacock was the last, +and one of the best, of the masters of the English drinking-song; and +some of his examples are unmatched for their mixture of joviality, +taste, sense, and wit. + +George Borrow, who was eighteen years Peacock's junior, and outlived him +by fifteen, was a curious counterpart-analogue to him. Like Peacock, he +was irregularly educated, and yet a wide and deep student; but, unlike +Peacock, he devoted himself not so much to the ancient as to the more +out-of-the-way modern tongues, and became a proficient not merely in +Welsh, the Scandinavian tongues, Russian, Spanish, and other literary +languages, but in Romany or Gipsy, having associated much with the "folk +of Egypt" during his youth. After some very imperfectly known youthful +experiences, which formed at least the basis of his later novels, +_Lavengro_ (1851) and _The Romany Rye_ (1857), he received an +appointment as colporteur to the Bible Society, first in Russia, then in +Spain; and his adventures in the latter country formed the basis of a +study called _The Gipsies of Spain_ (1840), which has much, and a volume +of travel and autobiography, _The Bible in Spain_ (1843), which has +unique interest. Returning home, he married a wife with some money, and +spent the remainder of a long life in his native county of Norfolk, +producing, besides the books just named, _Wild Wales_ (1862), and dying +in 1881. There is, in fact, not very much difference between Borrow's +novels and his travel-books. The former had at least some autobiographic +foundation, and the latter invest actual occurrences with the most +singular flavour of romance. For his mere style Borrow was a little +indebted to Cobbett, though he coloured Cobbett's somewhat drab canvas +with the most brilliant fantastic hues. But his attitude, his main +literary quality, is quite unique. It might be called, without too much +affectation, an adjustment of the picaresque novel to dreamland, +retaining frequent touches of solid and everyday fact. Peacock's style +has found a good many, though no very successful, imitators; Borrow's is +quite inimitable. + +Harriet Martineau, one of the numerous writers, of both sexes, whom the +polygraphic habits of this century make it hard to "class," was born at +Norwich in 1802, and belonged to one of the families that made up the +remarkable literary society which distinguished that city at the end of +the last century and the beginning of this. She began as a religious +writer according to the Unitarian persuasion; she ended as a tolerably +active opponent of religion. But she found her chief vocation (before, +as she did in her middle and later days, becoming a regular journalist) +in writing stories on political economy, a proceeding doubtless +determined by the previous exercises in didactic story-telling of Miss +Edgeworth and Mrs. Marcet. These _Illustrations of Political Economy_ +(1832) exactly hit the taste of their time and were very popular. Her +less adulterated children's books (of which the best perhaps is _Feats +on the Fiord_) and her novel _Deerbrook_ (1839), owing much to Miss +Edgeworth in conception, display a good faculty of narrative, and she +did a great deal of miscellaneous work. As she became less religious she +became more superstitious, and indulged in curious crazes. She lived +latterly at the Lakes, and died on 27th June 1876. Harriet Martineau was +the object of rather absurd obloquy from Conservative critics as an +advanced woman in her day, and of still more absurd eulogy by Liberal +sympathisers both in that day and since. Personally she seems to have +been amiable and estimable enough. Intellectually she had no genius; but +she had a good deal of the versatile talent and craftsmanship for which +the literary conditions of this century have produced unusual stimulus +and a fair reward. + +There was something (though not so much as has been represented) of the +masculine element about Miss Martineau; a contemporary Miss M. was +delightfully feminine. Mary Russell Mitford, born at Alresford, the town +of Wither, on 16th December 1786, was the daughter of a doctor and a +rascal, who, when she was a child, had the incredible meanness to +squander twenty thousand pounds which she won in a lottery, and later +the constant courage to live on her earnings. She published poems as +early as 1810; then wrote plays which were acted with some success; and +later, gravitating to the _London Magazine_, wrote for it essays only +second to those of Elia--the delightful papers collectively called _Our +Village_, and not completed till long after the death of the _London_ in +1832. The scenery of these is derived from the banks of the Loddon, for +the neighbourhood of Reading was in various places her home, and she +died at Swallowfield on 10th January 1855. Latterly she had a civil-list +pension; but, on the whole, she supported herself and her parents by +writing. Not much, if anything, of her work is likely to survive except +_Our_ _Village_; but this is charming, and seems, from the published +_Life_ of her and the numerous references in contemporary biography, to +express very happily the character and genius of its author--curiously +sunny, healthy, and cheerful, not in the least namby-pamby, and +coinciding with a faculty of artistic presentation of observed results, +not very imaginative but wonderfully pleasing. + +To these authors and books, others of more or less "single-speech" fame +might be added: the vivid and accurate Persian tale of _Hajji Baba_ by +James Morier, the _Anastatius_ of Thomas Hope, excellently written and +once very much admired, the fashionable _Granby_ and _Tremaine_ of +Lister, the famous _Frankenstein_ of Mrs. Shelley, are examples. But +even these, and much more other things not so good as they, compose in +regard to the scheme of such a book as this the _numerus_, the crowd, +which, out of no disrespect, but for obvious and imperative reasons, +must be not so much neglected as omitted. All classes of literature +contribute to this, but, with the exception of mere compilations and +books in science or art which are outgrown, none so much as prose +fiction. The safest of life (except poetry) of all literary kinds when +it is first rate, it is the most certain of death when it is not; and it +pays for the popularity which it often receives to-day by the oblivion +of an unending morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS + + +Perhaps there is no single feature of the English literary history of +the nineteenth century, not even the enormous popularisation and +multiplication of the novel, which is so distinctive and characteristic +as the development in it of periodical literature. For this did not, as +the extension of novel writing did, concern a single department only. +The periodical--it may almost for shortness' sake be said the +newspaper--not only became infinitely multiplied, but it gradually +absorbed almost every department, or a share of almost every department, +into itself. Very large numbers of the best as well as of the worst +novels themselves have originally appeared in periodicals; not a very +small proportion of the most noteworthy nineteenth century poetry has +had the same origin; it may almost be said that all the best work in +essay, whether critical, meditative, or miscellaneous, has thus been +ushered into the world. Even the severer and more academic divisions of +history, philosophy, theology, and their sisters, have condescended to +avail themselves of this means of obtaining a public audience; and +though there is still a certain conventional decency in apologising for +reprints from periodicals, it is quite certain that, had such reprints +not taken place, more than half the most valuable books of the age in +some departments, and a considerable minority of the most valuable in +others, would never have appeared as books at all. + +The first division of our time, the last twenty years of the eighteenth +century, though it witnessed a very great development of the mere +newspaper, with which we have little to do, did not see very much of +this actual "development of periodical literature" which concerns us. +These twenty years saw the last attempts in the line of the Addisonian +essay; they saw the beginnings of some modern newspapers which exist at +the present day; they beheld in the _Anti-Jacobin_ perhaps the most +brilliant specimen of political persiflage in newspaper form that had or +has ever been seen. But they did not see--though they saw some fumbling +attempts at it--anything like those strangely different but mutually +complementary examples of periodical criticism which were given just +after the opening of the new age by _The Edinburgh Review_ (1802) and +Cobbett's _Weekly Register_; and they saw nothing at all like the +magazine, or combination of critical and creative matter, in which +_Blackwood_ was, some years later, to lead the way. At the close of the +eighteenth century such magazines were in an exceedingly rudimentary +state, and criticism was mainly still in the hands of the old _Monthly_ +and _Critical Reviews_, the respective methods of which had drawn from +Johnson the odd remark that the _Critical_ men, being clever, said +little about their books, which the _Monthly_ men, being "duller +fellows," were glad to read and analyse. These Reviews and their various +contemporaries had indeed from time to time enjoyed the services of men +of the greatest talent, such as Smollett earlier and Southey just at the +last. But, as a rule, they were in the hands of mere hacks; they paid so +wretchedly that no one, unless forced by want or bitten by an amateurish +desire to see himself in print, would contribute to them; they were by +no means beyond suspicion of political and commercial favouritism; and +their critiques were very commonly either mere summaries or scrappy +"puffs" and "slatings," seldom possessing much grace of style, and +scarcely ever adjusted to any scheme of artistic criticism. + +This is a history of literature, not of the newspaper press, and it is +necessary to proceed rather by giving account of the authors who were +introduced to the public by--or who, being otherwise known, availed +themselves of--this new development of periodicals. It may be sufficient +to say here that the landmarks of the period, in point of the birth of +papers, are, besides the two above mentioned, the starting of the +_Quarterly Review_ as a Tory opponent to the more and more Whiggish +_Edinburgh_ in 1809, of the _Examiner_ as a Radical weekly in 1808, of +_Blackwood's Magazine_ as a Tory monthly in 1817, of the _London +Magazine_ about the same time, and of _Fraser_ in 1830. + +It was a matter of course that in the direction or on the staff of these +new periodicals some of the veterans of the older system, or of the men +who had at any rate already some experience in journalism, should be +enlisted. Gifford, the first editor of the _Quarterly_, was in all +respects a writer of the old rather than of the new age. Southey had at +one time wholly, and for years partly, supported himself by writing for +periodicals; Coleridge was at different times not merely a contributor +to these, but an actual daily journalist; and so with others. But, as +always happens when a really new development of literature takes place, +new regiments raised themselves to carry out the new tactics, as it +were, spontaneously. Many of the great names and the small mentioned in +the last three chapters--perhaps indeed most of them--took the +periodical shilling at one time or other in their lives. But those whom +I shall now proceed to mention--William Cobbett, Francis Jeffrey, Sydney +Smith, John Wilson, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt as a prose writer, William +Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, John Gibson Lockhart, and some others--were, +if not exactly journalists (an incorrect, but the only single +designation), at any rate such frequent contributors to periodical +literature of one kind or another that in some cases nothing, in most +comparatively little, would be left of their work if contributions to +newspapers, reviews, and magazines were to be excluded from it. + +William Cobbett, not the greatest, but the most singular and original of +the group, with the exception of Lamb, and as superior to Lamb in +fertility and massive vigour as he was inferior to him in exquisite +delicacy and finish, was the son of a very small farmer little above the +labouring rank, and was born near Farnham in 1762. He was first a +ploughboy, next an attorney's clerk, and then he enlisted in the 24th +regiment. He served very creditably for seven or eight years, became +serjeant-major, improved himself very much in education, and obtained +his discharge. But, by one of the extraordinary freaks which mark his +whole career, he first took it into his head to charge the officers of +his regiment with malversation, and then ran away from his own charge +with his newly married wife, first to France and then to America. Here +he stayed till the end of the century, and here he began his newspaper +experiments, keeping up in _Peter Porcupine's Journal_ a violent crusade +against French Jacobins and American Democrats. He returned to England +in June 1800, and was encouraged by the Government to set up what soon +became his famous _Weekly Register_--a paper which, after being (as +Cobbett's politics had been up to this time) strongly Tory, lapsed by +rapid degrees into a strange kind of fantastic Radicalism shot with Tory +gleams. This remained Cobbett's creed till his death. The paper was very +profitable, and for some time Cobbett was able to lead something like a +country gentleman's life at Botley in Hampshire. But he met with two +years' imprisonment for a violent article on flogging in the army, he +subsequently got into money difficulties, and in 1817 he made a second +voyage to America, which was in fact a flight both from his creditors +and from the risk of another Government prosecution under the Six Acts. +Through all his troubles the _Register_, except for a month or two, had +continued to appear; and so it did to the last. Its proprietor, editor, +and in the main author, stood for Parliament several times, and, after a +trial for sedition in 1831, was at last returned for Oldham in 1832. He +was not much of a success there, and died on 18th June 1835 near +Guildford; for he always clung to the marches of Surrey and Hampshire. + +Some such details of Cobbett's life are necessary even in the most +confined space, because they are intimately connected with his singular +character and his remarkable works. These latter are enormous in bulk +and of the most widely diversified character. _Peter Porcupine_ fills +twelve not small volumes; the mere selections from the _Register_, which +are all that has been republished of it, six very bulky ones; with a +wilderness of separate works besides--_Rural Rides_, a _History of the +Reformation_, books on husbandry, gardening, and rural economy +generally, some on the currency, an _English Grammar_, and dozens of +others. Of these the _Rural Rides_ is the most interesting in matter and +the most picturesque in style, while it affords a fair panorama of its +author's rugged but wonderfully varied and picturesque mind and +character; the _History of the Reformation_ is the most wrong-headed and +unfair; the currency writings the most singular example of the delusion +that strong prejudices and a good deal of mother-wit will enable a man +to write, without any knowledge, about the most abstruse and complicated +subjects; the agricultural books and the _English Grammar_ the best +instances of genial humours, shrewdness, and (when crotchets do not come +in too much) sound sense. But hardly anything that Cobbett writes is +contemptible in form, however weak he may often be in argument, +knowledge, and taste. He was the last, and he was not far below the +greatest, of the line of vernacular English writers of whom Latimer in +the sixteenth, Bunyan in the seventeenth, and Defoe in the eighteenth, +are the other emerging personalities. To a great extent Cobbett's style +was based on Swift; but the character of his education, which was not in +the very least degree academic, and still more the idiosyncrasy of his +genius, imposed on it almost from the first, but with ever-increasing +clearness, a manner quite different from Swift's, and, though often +imitated since, never reproduced. The "Letter to Jack Harrow," the +"Letter to the People of Botley," the "Letters to Old George Rose," and +that to "Alexander Baring, Loan Monger," to take examples almost at +random from the _Register_, are quite unlike anything before them or +anything after them. The best-known parody of Cobbett, that in _Rejected +Addresses_, gives rather a poor idea of his style; exhibiting no doubt +his intense egotism, his habit of half trivial divagation, and his use +of strong language, but quite failing to give the immense force, the +vivid clearness, and the sterling though not precisely scholarly English +which characterise his good work. The best imitation to be found is in +some of the anonymous pamphlets in which, in his later days, government +writers replied to his powerful and mischievous political diatribes, and +which in some cases, if internal evidence may be trusted, must have been +by no mean hands. + +Irrational as Cobbett's views were,--he would have adjusted the entire +concerns of the nation with a view to the sole benefit of the +agricultural interest, would have done away with the standing army, +wiped out the national debt, and effected a few other trifling changes +with a perfectly light heart, while in minor matters his crotchets were +not only wild but simply irreconcilable with each other,--his intense if +narrow earnestness, his undoubting belief in himself, and a certain +geniality which could co-exist with very rough language towards his +opponents, would give his books a certain attraction even if their mere +style were less remarkable than it is. But it is in itself, if the most +plebeian, not the least virile, nor even the least finished on its own +scheme of the great styles in English. For the irony of Swift, of which, +except in its very roughest and most rudimentary forms, Cobbett had no +command or indeed conception, it substitutes a slogging directness +nowhere else to be found equalled for combination of strength and, in +the pugilistic sense, "science"; while its powers of description, within +certain limits, are amazing. Although Cobbett's newspaper was itself as +much of an Ishmaelite and an outsider as its director, it is almost +impossible to exaggerate the effect which it had in developing +newspapers generally, by the popularity which it acquired, and the +example of hammer-and-tongs treatment of political and economic subjects +which it set. The faint academic far-off-ness of the eighteenth century +handling, which is visible even in the much-praised _Letters of Junius_, +which is visible in the very ferocity of Smollett's _Adventures of an +Atom_, which put up with "Debates of the Senate of Lilliput" and so +forth, has been blown away to limbo, and the newspaper (at first at some +risk) takes men and measures, politics and policies, directly and in +their own names, to be its province and its prey. + +It is a far cry from Cobbett to the founders of the _Edinburgh Review_, +who, very nearly at the same time as that at which he launched his +_Register_, did for the higher and more literary kind of periodical what +he was doing for the lower and vernacular kind. I say the founders, +because there is a still not quite settled dispute whether Francis +Jeffrey or Sydney Smith was the actual founder of the famous "Blue and +Yellow." This dispute is not uninteresting; because the one was as +typically Scotch, with some remarkable differences from other Scotchmen, +as the other was essentially English, with some points not commonly +found in men of English blood. Jeffrey, the younger of the two by a +couple of years, was still a member of the remarkable band who, as has +been noticed so often already, were all born in the early seventies of +the eighteenth century; and his own birthday was 23rd October 1773. He +was an Edinburgh man; and his father, who was of a respectable though +not distinguished family, held office in the Court of Session and was a +strong Tory. Jeffrey does not seem to have objected to his father's +profession, though he early revolted from his politics; and, after due +study at the High School of his birthplace, and the Universities of +Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Oxford (at which latter, however, he only +remained a year, deriving very little benefit or pleasure from his +sojourn at Queen's College), he was called to the Scottish bar. He +practised at first with very little success, and in 1798 had serious +thoughts of taking up literary life in London. But he could obtain no +footing, and, returning to Edinburgh and marrying a cousin, he fell into +the company of Sydney Smith, who was there with a pupil. It seems to be +admitted that the idea of a new _Review_--to be entirely free from the +control or influence of publishers, to adopt an independent line of +criticism (independent, but somewhat mistaken; for the motto _Judex +damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_ gives a very one-sided view of the +critic's office), and to be written for fair remuneration by persons of +more or less distinct position, and at any rate of education--originated +with Sydney Smith. He is also sometimes spoken of as the first "editor," +which would appear to be a mistake. At first (the original issue was in +October 1802) the review appears to have been a kind of republic; the +contributors being, besides Jeffrey and Sydney, a certain Francis Horner +(who died too soon to demonstrate the complete falsity of the golden +opinions entertained of him by his friends), Brougham, and some +Professors of Edinburgh University. But no such plan has ever succeeded, +though it has been more than once tried, and very soon accident or +design showed that Jeffrey was the right man to take the command of the +ship. The _Review_ was not ostensibly a political one at first, and for +some years Tories, the greatest of whom was Scott, wrote in it. But the +majority of the contributors were Whigs, and the whole cast of the +periodical became more and more of that complexion, till at last, +private matters helping public, a formidable secession took place, and +the _Quarterly_ was founded. + +From time to time students of literature turn to the early numbers of +these famous periodicals, of the _Edinburgh_ especially, with the +result, usually of a certain, sometimes of a considerable, +disappointment. With the exception of a few things already known from +their inclusion in their authors' collected works, the material as a +whole is apt to seem anything but extraordinarily good; and some wonder +is often expressed at the effect which it originally had. This arises +from insufficient attention to a few obvious, but for that very reason +easily neglected, truths. The inquirers as a rule have in their minds +much more what has followed than what has gone before; and they contrast +the early numbers of the _Edinburgh_, not with its jejune forerunners, +but with such matured instances as Macaulay's later essays; the early +numbers of the _Quarterly_, not with the early numbers of the +_Edinburgh_, but with their own successors. Again it is apt to be +forgotten that the characteristics of joint-stock periodical-writing +make as much for general inequality as for occasional goodness. That +which is written by many hands will seldom be as bad, but can never be +as good, as that which is written by one; that which takes its texts and +starting-points from suggested matters of the moment will generally +escape the occasional dulness, but can rarely attain the occasional +excellence, of the meditated and original sprout of an individual brain. + +The _Edinburgh_ in its early years was undoubtedly surpassed by itself +later and by its rivals; but it was a far greater advance upon anything +that had gone before it. It had the refreshing audacity, the fly-at-all +character of youth and of intellectual opposition to established ideas; +it was, if even from the first not free from partisanship, at any rate +not chargeable with the dull venal unfairness of the mere bookseller's +hack who attacks Mr. Bungay's books because he is employed by Mr. Bacon, +or _vice versa_. And it had a very remarkable staff, comprising the +learning and trained intelligence of men like Leslie and Playfair, the +unrivalled wit of Sydney Smith, the restless energy and occasional +genius of Brougham, the solid profundity of Horner, the wide reading and +always generous temper of Scott, and other good qualities of others, +besides the talents of its editor Jeffrey himself. + +Of these talents there is no doubt, though they were initially somewhat +limited and not seldom misdirected afterwards. Jeffrey's entire energies +were absorbed by the _Review_ between its foundation and his resignation +of the editorship after nearly thirty years' tenure, soon after which, +his party at last coming into power, he was rewarded first by the Lord +Advocateship and then by a seat on the Bench. He made a very fair judge, +and held the post almost till his death in 1850. But his life, for the +purposes of literature, is practically comprised between 1802 and 1829, +during which he was far more than titularly the guiding spirit of the +_Review_. Recently, or at any rate until quite recently (for there has +been some reaction in the very latest days), the conception of an editor +has been of one who writes not very much, and, though choosing his +contributors with the best care he can give, does not interfere very +much with them when they are chosen. This was very far from being the +Jeffreyan ideal. He wrote a great deal,--often in the earlier years as +many as half a dozen articles in a number,--and he "doctored" his +contributors' articles (except in the case of persons like Sydney Smith, +who were of too unconquerable idiosyncrasy and too valuable) with the +utmost freedom. At the present day, however, his management of the +_Review_ is less interesting than his own work, which he himself in his +later years collected and selected in an ample definitive edition. It is +exceedingly interesting, and for a good many years past it has been +distinctly undervalued; the common, though very uncritical, mistake +having been made of asking, not whether Jeffrey made a good fight for +his own conclusions from his own premises, but whether he approved or +disapproved authors whom we now consider great. From this latter point +of view he has no doubt small chance. He began by snubbing Byron, and +did not change his tone till politics and circumstances combined made +the change obligatory; he pooh-poohed and belittled his own contributor +and personal friend Scott; he pursued Wordsworth with equal +relentlessness and ill-success. And these three great examples might be +reinforced with whole regiments of smaller ones. A more serious fault +perhaps was the tone which he, more than any one else, impressed on the +_Review_, and which its very motto expressed, as though an author +necessarily came before the critic with a rope about his neck, and was +only entitled to be exempted from being strung up _speciali gratia_. +This notion, as presumptuous as it is foolish, is not extinct yet, and +has done a great deal of harm to criticism, both by prejudicing those +who are not critical against critics, and by perverting and twisting the +critic's own notion of his province and duty. + +Nevertheless, Jeffrey had great merits. His literary standpoint was a +little unfortunate. Up to a certain extent he had thoroughly sympathised +with the Romantic movement, and he never was an advocate for the +Augustan period in English. But either some curiosity of idiosyncrasy, +or the fact that Scott and the Lake Poets were all in different ways +pillars of Toryism, set him against his own Romantic contemporaries in a +very strange fashion. Still, in some ways he was a very great critic. +His faculty of summarising a period of literature has rarely been +equalled, and perhaps never surpassed; he had, when prejudice of some +sort did not blind him, an extraordinary faculty of picking out the best +passages in a book; and, above all, he arranged his critical judgments +on something like a regular and co-ordinated system. Even his prejudices +and injustices were systematic: they were linked to each other by +arguments which might sometimes be questionable, but which were always +arguments. And though, even when, as in the cases of Keats and Shelley, +his extra-literary bias was not present to induce him wrong, he showed a +deplorable insensibility to the finer strokes of poetry, he was in +general, and taking literature all round, as considerable a critic as we +have had in English. + +Sydney Smith was a curious contrast to Jeffrey in almost every respect +except in politics, and even there the resemblance was rather fortuitous +than essential. The second son of a man of eccentric character and some +means, he was born in 1771, was sent to Winchester, and proceeded thence +to New College, Oxford, where he became Fellow and resided for a +considerable time; but unusually little is recorded either of his school +or of his college days. He took orders and was appointed to a curacy on +Salisbury Plain, where the squire of the parish took a fancy to him and +made him tutor to his eldest son. Tutor and pupil went to Edinburgh, +just then in great vogue as an educational centre, in 1798; and there +Sydney, besides doing clerical duty, stumbled upon his vocation as +reviewer. He abode in the Scottish capital for about five years, during +which he married, and then removed to London, where he again did duty of +various kinds, lectured on Moral Philosophy, and, when the Grenville +administration came in, received a fairly valuable Yorkshire living, +that of Foston. Here, after a time, he had, owing to new legislation +about clerical absentees, to take up his residence, which involved +building a parsonage. He had repaid his Whig patrons by writing the +exceedingly brilliant and passably scurrilous _Letters of Peter Plymley +on Catholic Emancipation_, and he reviewed steadily for the _Edinburgh_, +as indeed he did during almost the whole editorship of Jeffrey. At last +Lord Lyndhurst, a Tory, gave him a stall at Bristol, and he was able to +exchange Foston for Combe-Florey, in the more genial latitude of +Somerset. The rest of his life was fortunate in worldly ways; for the +Reform Ministry, though they would not give him a bishopric, gave him a +canonry at St. Paul's, and divers legacies and successions made him +relatively a rich man. He died five years before Jeffrey, in February +1845. + +Besides the differences of their Scotch and English nationality and +education, the contrast between the two friends and founders of the +"Blue and Yellow" was curiously pervading. Jeffrey, for all his supposed +critical savagery, was a sentimentalist, and had the keenest love of +literature as literature; Sydney cared very little for books as books, +and had not a grain of sentiment in his composition. Jeffrey had little +wit and no humour; Smith abounded in both, and was one of the very +wittiest of Englishmen. Even in his _Review_ articles he constantly +shocked his more solemn and pedagogic editor by the stream of banter +which he poured not merely upon Tories and High Churchmen, but on +Methodists and Non-conformists; his letters are full of the most +untiring and to this day the most sparkling pleasantry; and his two +chief works outside his reviews, the earlier _Peter Plymley's Letters_ +and the later _Letters to Archdeacon Singleton_ (written when the +author's early Whiggism had crystallised into something different, and +when he was stoutly resisting the attempts of the reformed government to +meddle with cathedral establishments), rank among the capital light +pamphlets of the world, in company with those of Pascal and Swift and +Courier. The too few remnants of his abundant conversation preserve +faint sparks of the blaze of impromptu fun for which in his day he was +almost more famous than as a writer. Sydney Smith had below the surface +of wit a very solid substratum of good sense and good feeling; but his +literary appeal consisted almost wholly in his shrewd pleasantry, +which, as it has been observed, might with even more appropriateness +than Coleridge said it of Fuller, have been said to be "the stuff and +substance of his intellectual nature." This wit was scarcely ever in +writing--it seems to have been sometimes in conversation--forced or +trivial; it was most ingeniously adjusted to the purpose of the moment, +whether that purpose was a political argument, a light summary of a book +of travels, or a mere gossiping letter to a friend; and it had a quality +of its own which could only be displayed by extensive and elaborate +citation. But if it be possible to put the finger on a single note, it +is one distinguishing Sydney Smith widely from Fuller himself, bringing +him a little nearer to Voltaire, and, save for the want of certain +earnestness, nearer still to Swift--the perfect facility of his jokes, +and the casual, easy man-of-the-worldliness with which he sets them +before the reader and passes on. Amid the vigorous but slightly +ponderous manners of the other early contributors to the _Review_, this +must have been of inestimable value; but it is a higher credit to Sydney +Smith that it does not lose its charm when collected together and set by +itself, as the more extravagant and rollicking kinds of periodical +humour are wont to do. It was probably his want of serious +preoccupations of any kind (for his politics were merely an accident; he +was, though a sincere Christian, no enthusiast in religion; and he had +few special interests, though he had an honest general enjoyment of +life) which enabled Sydney Smith so to perfect a quality, or set of +qualities, which, as a rule, is more valuable as an occasional set-off +than as the staple and solid of a man's literary fare and ware. If so, +he points much the same general moral as Cobbett, though in a way as +different as possible. But in any case he was a very delightful person, +an ornament of English literature, such as few other literatures +possess, in his invariable abstinence from unworthy means of raising a +laugh, and, among the group of founders of the new periodical, the +representative of one of its most important constituents--polished +_persiflage_. + +The other contributors of the first generation to the _Edinburgh Review_ +do not require much notice here; for Brougham was not really a man of +letters, and belongs to political and social, not to literary history, +while Mackintosh, though no one would contest his claims, will be better +noticed under the head of philosophy. Nor do many of the first staff of +the _Edinburgh's_ great rival, the _Quarterly_, require notice; for +Gifford, Canning, Ellis, Scott, Southey have all been noticed under +other heads. + +Two, however, not of the absolutely first rank, may be mentioned here +more conveniently than anywhere else--Sir John Barrow and Isaac +Disraeli. The former had a rather remarkable career; for he was born, in +1764, quite of the lower rank, and was successively a clerk in a +workshop, a sailor, a teacher of mathematics, and secretary to Macartney +on his famous embassy to China. After following the same patron to South +Africa, Barrow, at the age of forty, became Secretary of the Admiralty, +which post he held with one short break for more than forty years +longer. He was made a baronet in 1835, and died in 1848. Barrow was a +considerable writer on geography and naval history; and one of the +pillars of the _Quarterly_. Isaac Disraeli, son of one Benjamin of that +name and father of another, seems to have been as unlike his famous +offspring as any father could be to any son. Born at Enfield in 1766, he +showed absolutely no taste for business of any kind, and after some +opposition was allowed to cultivate letters. His original work was worth +little; indeed, one of the amiable sayings attributed to his friend +Rogers was that Isaac Disraeli had "only half an intellect." He fell, +however, pretty early (1791) into an odd but pleasant and profitable +course of writing which amused himself during the remainder of a long +life (he died blind in the same year with Barrow), and has amused a vast +number of readers for more than a century. The _Curiosities of +Literature_, the first part of which appeared at the date above +mentioned, to be supplemented by others for more than forty years, were +followed by the _Calamities of Authors_ and the _Quarrels of Authors_ +(1812-14), a book on _Charles I._, and the _Amenities of Literature_ +(1840). Of these the _Curiosities_ is the type, and it is also the best +of them. Isaac Disraeli was not a good writer; and his original +reflections may sometimes make the reader doubt for a moment whether +Rogers was not more wrong in granting him half an intellect than in +denying him a whole one. But his anecdotage, though, as perhaps such +anecdotage is bound to be, not extremely accurate, is almost +inexhaustibly amusing, and indicates a real love as well as a wide +knowledge of letters. + +The next periodicals, the founding of which enlisted or brought out +journalists or essay-writers of the true kind, were _Blackwood's +Magazine_, founded at Edinburgh in 1817, and the _London Magazine_, of +about the same date, the first with one of the longest as well as the +most brilliant careers to run that any periodical can boast of, the +latter as short-lived as it was brilliant. Indeed, the two had an odd +and--in the Shakespearian sense--metaphysical opposition. Scotland and +England, the country and the Cockney schools, Toryism and Liberalism +(though the _London_ was by no means so thoroughgoing on the Liberal +side as _Blackwood_ was on the Tory, and some of its most distinguished +contributors were either Tory, as De Quincey, or neutral, as Lamb) +fought out their differences under the two flags. And by a climax of +coincidence, the fate of the _London_ was practically decided by the +duel which killed John Scott, its editor, this duel being the direct +result of an editorial or contributorial quarrel between the two +periodicals. + +Both these magazines, besides being more frequent in appearance than the +_Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_, attempted, as their very title of +"magazine" expressed, a much wider and more miscellaneous collection of +subjects than the strict "review" theory permitted. From the very first +_Blackwood_ gave a welcome to fiction, to poetry, and to the widest +possible construction of the essay, while, in almost every respect, the +_London_ was equally hospitable. Both had staffs of unusual strength, +and of still more unusual personality; and while the _London_ could +boast of Charles Lamb, of Hazlitt, of De Quincey, of Hood, of Miss +Mitford, besides many lesser names, _Blackwood_ was practically +launched by the triumvirate of Wilson, Lockhart, and the Ettrick +Shepherd, with the speedy collaboration of Maginn. + +The eldest of these, and if not the most vigorous, if very nearly the +least prolific, yet the most exquisite and singular in literary genius, +was Charles Lamb. He also was of the "Seventy Club," as we may call it, +which founded the literature of the nineteenth century, and he was born +in London on 18th February 1775. He was of rather lower birth than most +of its other members (if membership can be predicated of a purely +imaginary body), being the son of a lawyer's clerk and confidential +servant; but he was educated at Christ's Hospital, and, through the +interest of his father's employer, obtained, at the age of seventeen, a +berth in the East India House, which assured his modest fortunes through +life. But there was the curse of madness in his family, and though he +himself escaped with but one slight and passing attack of actual lunacy, +and at the cost of an eccentricity which only imparted a rarer touch to +his genius, his elder sister Mary was subject to constant seizures, in +one of which she stabbed her mother to the heart. She was more gently +dealt with than perhaps would have been the case at present, and Lamb +undertook the entire charge of her. She repaid him by unfailing care and +affection during her lucid intervals (which were long and frequent), and +by a sympathy with his own literary tastes, which not seldom made her a +valuable collaborator as well as sympathiser. But the shadow was on his +whole life: it made it impossible for him to marry, as he evidently +would have done if it had not existed; and it perhaps had something to +do with a venial but actual tendency on his part to take, rather fully, +the convivial license of the time. But Lamb had no other weakness, and +had not this in any ruinous degree. The quality of his genius was +unique. He had from the first been a diligent and affectionate student +of sixteenth and seventeenth century writers, and some of his first +literary efforts, after some early sonnets (written with Coleridge and +their friend Lloyd, and much fallen foul of by the Tory wits of the +_Anti-Jacobin_), were connected with these studies. He and his sister +wrote _Tales from Shakespeare_, which, almost alone of such things, are +not unworthy of the original. He executed an Elizabethan tragedy, _John +Woodvil_, which is rather better than it has been generally said to be; +and he arranged a series (or rather two) of scenes from the Elizabethan +drama itself, the short, interspersed, critical remarks of which, though +occasionally a very little fanciful, contain the most exquisitely +sympathetic criticism to be found anywhere in English literature. + +It was not, however, till he had well reached middle age that the +establishment of the _London_, the later publishers of which, Taylor and +Hessey, were his friends, gave him that half accidental, and yet it +would seem necessary, opening which has so often made the fame of men of +genius, and which apparently they are by no means often able to make for +themselves. Lamb's poems have occasionally an exquisite pathos and more +frequently a pleasant humour, but they would not by themselves justify a +very high estimate of him; and it is at least possible that, if we had +nothing but the brief critical remarks on the dramatists above noticed, +they would, independently of their extreme brevity, have failed to +obtain for him the just reputation which they now hold, thanks partly to +the fact that we have, as comments on them, the _Essays of Elia_ and the +delightful correspondence. This latter, after being first published soon +after Lamb's death in 1834 (nine years after he had been pensioned off +from the India House), by Mr., afterwards Serjeant and Sir Thomas +Talfourd, has been gradually augmented, till it has at last found an +excellent and probably final editor in Canon Ainger. + +It is in these two collections that Lamb presents himself in the +character which alone can confer on any man the first rank in +literature, the character of unicity--of being some one and giving +something which no one before him has given or has been. The _Essays of +Elia_ (a _nom de guerre_ said to have been taken from an Italian comrade +of the writer's elder brother John in the South Sea House, and directed +by Lamb himself to be pronounced "Ell-ia") elude definition not merely +as almost all works of genius do, but by virtue of something essentially +elvish and tricksy in their own nature. It is easy to detect in them--or +rather the things there are so obvious that there is no need of +detection--an extraordinary familiarity with the great "quaint" writers +of the seventeenth century--Burton, Fuller, Browne--which has supplied a +diction of unsurpassed brilliancy and charm; a familiarity with the +eighteenth century essayists which has enabled the writer to construct a +form very different from theirs in appearance but closely connected with +it in reality; an unequalled command over that kind of humour which +unites the most fantastic merriment to the most exquisite pathos; a +perfect humanity; a cast of thought which, though completely conscious +of itself, and not in any grovelling sense humble (Lamb, forgiving and +gentle as he was, could turn sharply even upon Coleridge, even upon +Southey, when he thought liberties had been taken with him), was a +thousand miles removed from arrogance or bumptiousness; an endlessly +various and attractive set of crotchets and whimsies, never divorced +from the power of seeing the ludicrous side of themselves; a fervent +love for literature and a wonderful gift of expounding it; imagination +in a high, and fancy almost in the highest degree. But when all this has +been duly set down, how much remains both in the essays and in the +letters, which in fact are chiefly distinguished from one another by the +fact that the essays are letters somewhat less discursive and somewhat +in fuller dress, the letters essays in the rough. For the style of Lamb +is as indefinable as it is inimitable, and his matter and method defy +selection and specification as much as the flutterings of a butterfly. +One thing he has always, and that is charm; as for the rest he is an +epitome of the lighter side of _belles lettres_, and not always of the +lighter side only. + +No one who studies Lamb can fail to see the enormous advantage which was +given him by his possession of an official employment which brought him +a small but sufficient income without very hard labour. Such literary +work as his could never be done (at any rate for a length of time) as +"collar-work," and even if the best of it had by chance been so +performed, it must necessarily have been mixed, as that of Leigh Hunt +is, with a far larger quantity of mere work to order. No such advantage +was possessed by the third of the great trio of Cockney critics, or at +least critics of the so-called Cockney school; for William Hazlitt, as +much the greatest of English critics in a certain way as Lamb is in +another and Jeffrey in a third (though a lower than either), was a +Cockney neither by extraction nor by birth, nor by early sojourn, nor +even by continuous residence in later life. His family was Irish, his +father a Unitarian minister; he was born at Maidstone in 1778. When his +father was officiating at Wem in Shropshire, in Hazlitt's twentieth +year, Coleridge, who at times affected the same denomination, visited +the place, and Hazlitt was most powerfully impressed by him. He was, +however, divided between art and literature as professions, and his +first essays were in the former, which he practised for some time, +visiting the Louvre during the peace, or rather armistice, of Amiens, to +copy pictures for some English collectors, and to study them on his own +account. Returning to London, he met Lamb and others of the literary set +in the capital, and, after some newspaper work, married Miss Stoddart, a +friend of Mary Lamb's, and a lady of some property. He and his wife +lived for some years at her estate of Winterslow on Salisbury Plain +(long afterwards still a favourite resort of Hazlitt's), and then he +went in 1812 once more to London, where abundant work on periodicals of +all kinds, on the Liberal side, from daily newspapers to the _Edinburgh +Review_, soon fell into his hands. But after a time he gave up most +kinds of writing except literary, theatrical, and art criticism, the +delivery of lectures on literature, and the composition of essays of a +character less fanciful and less purely original than Lamb's, but almost +as miscellaneous. + +He lived till September 1830, the first of those early thirties of the +nineteenth century which were to be as generally fatal to his +generation of great English men of letters as the seventies of the +eighteenth had been prolific of them; and his dying words, "Well, I have +had a happy life," are noteworthy. For certainly that life would hardly +have seemed happy to many. He quarrelled with his first wife, was +divorced from her in Scotland, discreditably enough; published to the +world with astounding lack of reticence the details of a frantic passion +for Sarah Walker, a lodginghouse-keeper's daughter, who jilted him; and +after marrying a second time, was left by his second wife. He had never +been rich, and during the last years of his life was in positive +difficulties, while for almost the whole period of his second sojourn in +London he was the object of the most virulent abuse from the Tory +organs, especially the _Quarterly_ and _Blackwood_--abuse which, it must +be confessed, he was both ready and able to repay in kind with handsome +interest. He appears to have played the part of firebrand and makebate +in the John Scott duel already referred to. Even with his friends he +could not keep upon good terms, and the sincere gentleness of Lamb broke +down at least once, as the easy good-nature of Leigh Hunt did many +times, under the strain of his perverse and savage wrong-headedness. + +But whether the critical and the unamiable temper are, as some would +have it, essentially one, or whether their combination in the same +person be mere coincidence, Hazlitt was beyond all question a great, a +very great, critic--in not a few respects our very greatest. All his +work, or almost all that has much merit, is small in individual bulk, +though the total is very respectable. His longest book, his _Life of +Napoleon_, which was written late and as a counterblast to Scott's, from +the singular standpoint of a Republican who was an admirer of Bonaparte, +has next to no value; and his earliest, a philosophical work in +eighteenth century style on _The Principles of Human Action_, has not +much. But his essays and lectures, which, though probably not as yet by +any means exhaustively collected or capable of being identified, fill +nine or ten volumes, are of extraordinary goodness. They may be divided +roughly into three classes. The first, dealing with art and the drama, +must take the lowest room, for theatrical criticism is of necessity, +except in so far as it touches on literature rather than acting, of very +ephemeral interest; and Hazlitt's education in art and knowledge of it +were not quite extensive enough, nor the examples which in the first +quarter of this century he had before him in England important enough, +to make his work of this kind of the first importance. The best of it is +the _Conversations with Northcote_, a painter of no very great merit, +but a survivor of the Reynolds studio; and these conversations very +frequently and very widely diverge from painting into literary and +miscellaneous matters. The second class contains the miscellaneous +essays proper, and these have by some been put at the head of Hazlitt's +work. But although some of them, indeed, nearly all, display a spirit, a +command of the subject, and a faculty of literary treatment which had +never been given to the same subjects in the same way before, although +such things as the famous "Going to a Fight," "Going a Journey," "The +Indian Jugglers," "Merry England," "Sundials," "On Taste," and not a few +more would, put together and freed from good but less good companions, +make a most memorable collection, still his real strength is not here. + +Great as Hazlitt was as a miscellaneous and Montaignesque essayist, he +was greater as a literary critic. Literature was, though he coquetted +with art, his first and most constant love; it was the subject on which, +as far as English literature is concerned (and he knew little and is +still less worth consulting about any other), he had acquired the +largest and soundest knowledge; and it is that for which he had the most +original and essential genius. His intense prejudices and his occasional +inadequacy make themselves felt here as they do everywhere, and even +here it is necessary to give the caution that Hazlitt is never to be +trusted when he shows the least evidence of dislike for which he gives +no reason. But to any one who has made a little progress in criticism +himself, to any one who has either read for himself or is capable of +reading for himself, of being guided by what is helpful and of +neglecting what is not, there is no greater critic than Hazlitt in any +language. He will sometimes miss--he is never perhaps so certain as his +friends Lamb and Hunt were to find--exquisite individual points. +Prejudice, accidental ignorance, or other causes may sometimes +invalidate his account of authors or of subjects in general. But still +the four great collections of his criticism, _The Characters of +Shakespeare_, _The Elizabethan Dramatists_, _The English Poets_, and +_The English Comic Writers_, with not a few scattered things in his +other writings, make what is on the whole the best corpus of criticism +by a single writer in English on English. He is the critics' critic as +Spenser is the poets' poet; that is to say, he has, errors excepted and +deficiencies allowed, the greatest proportion of the strictly critical +excellencies--of the qualities which make a critic--that any English +writer of his craft has ever possessed. + +_Blackwood's Magazine_, the headquarters, the citadel, the _place +d'armes_ of the opposition to the Cockney school and of criticism and +journalism that were Tory first of all, enlisted a younger set of +recruits than those hitherto mentioned, and the special style of writing +which it introduced, though exceedingly clever and stimulating, lent +itself rather less to dispassionate literary appreciation than even the +avowedly partisan methods of the _Edinburgh_. In its successful form +(for it had a short and inglorious existence before it found out the +way) it was launched by an audacious "skit" on the literati of Edinburgh +written by John Wilson, John Gibson Lockhart, and James Hogg, while very +soon after its establishment it was joined by a wild and witty Bohemian +scholar from the south of Ireland, William Maginn, who, though before +long he drifted away to other resorts, and ere many years established in +_Fraser_ a new abode of guerilla journalism, impressed on _Blackwood_ +itself, before he left it, several of its best-known features, and in +particular is said to have practically started the famous _Noctes +Ambrosianae_. Of Hogg, enough has been said in a former chapter. For the +critical purpose of "Maga," as _Blackwood's Magazine_ loved to call +itself, he was rather a butt, or, to speak less despiteously, a +stimulant, than an originator; and he had neither the education nor +indeed the gifts of a critic. Of each of the others some account must +be given, and Maginn will introduce yet another flight of brilliant +journalists, some of whom, especially the greatest of all, Carlyle, +lived till far into the last quarter of the present century. + +Wilson, the eldest of those just mentioned, though a younger man than +any one as yet noticed in this chapter, and for many years the guiding +spirit (there never has been any "editor" of _Blackwood_ except the +members of the firm who have published it) of _Maga_, must at some time +or other have taken to literature, and would probably in any case have +sooner or later written the poems and stories which exist under his +name, but do not in the very least degree constitute its eminence. It +was the chapter of accidents that made him a journalist and a critic. He +was born in 1785, his father being a rich manufacturer of Paisley, was +educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, came early into a +considerable fortune, married at twenty-six, and having established +himself at Elleray on Windermere, lived there the life of a country +gentleman, with more or less literary tastes. His fortune being lost by +bad luck and dishonest agency, he betook himself to Edinburgh, and +finding it impossible to get on with Jeffrey (which was not surprising), +threw himself heart and soul into the opposition venture of _Blackwood_. +He had, moreover, the extraordinary good luck to obtain, certainly on no +very solid grounds (though he made at least as good a professor as +another), the valuable chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of +Edinburgh, which of itself secured him from any fear of want or narrow +means. But no penniless barrister on his promotion could have flung +himself into militant journalism with more ardour than did Wilson. He +re-created, if he did not invent, the _Noctes Ambrosianae_--a series of +convivial conversations on food, drink, politics, literature, and things +in general, with interlocutors at first rather numerous, and not very +distinct, but latterly narrowed down to "Christopher North" (Wilson +himself), the "Ettrick Shepherd" (Hogg), and a certain "Timothy +Tickler," less distinctly identified with Wilson's mother's brother, an +Edinburgh lawyer of the name of Sym. A few outsiders, sometimes real +(as De Quincey), sometimes imaginary, were, till the last, added now and +then. And besides these conversations, which are his great title to +fame, he contributed, also under the _nom de guerre_ of Christopher +North, an immense number of articles, in part collected as _Christopher +North in his Sporting Jacket_, substantive collections on Homer, on +Spenser, and others, and almost innumerable single papers and essays on +things in general. From the time when Lockhart (see below) went to +London, no influence on _Blackwood_ could match Wilson's for some ten or +twelve years, or nearly till the end of the thirties. Latterly +ill-health, the death of friends and of his wife, and other causes, +lessened his energy, and for some years before his death in 1854 he +wrote little. Two years before that time his increasing ailments caused +him even to resign his professorship. + +Wilson--whose stories are merely mediocre, and whose poems, _The Isle of +Palms_ (1812) and _The City of the Plague_ (1816), merely show that he +was an intelligent contemporary of Scott and Byron, and a neighbour of +the Lake poets--developed in his miscellaneous journalism one of the +most puissant and luxuriant literary faculties of the time; and in +particular was among the first in one, and perhaps the very first in +another, kind of writing. The first and less valuable of the two was the +subjection of most, if not all, of the topics of the newspaper to a +boisterous but fresh and vigorous style of critical handling, which +bears some remote resemblance to the styles of L'Estrange towards the +end of the seventeenth century, and Bentley a little later, but is in +all important points new. The second and higher was the attempt to +substitute for the correct, balanced, exactly-proportioned, but even in +the hands of Gibbon, even in those of Burke, somewhat colourless and +jejune prose of the past age, a new style of writing, exuberant in +diction, semi-poetical in rhythm, confounding, or at least alternating +very sharply between, the styles of high-strung enthusiasm and +extravagant burlesque, and setting at naught all precepts of the +immediate elders. It would be too much, no doubt, to attribute the +invention of this style to Wilson. It was "in the air"; it was the +inevitable complement of romantic diction in poetry; it had been +anticipated to some extent by others, and it displayed itself in various +forms almost simultaneously in the hands of Landor, who kept to a more +classical form, and of De Quincey, who was modern. But Wilson, unless in +conversation with De Quincey, cannot be said to have learnt it from any +one else: he preceded most in the time, and greatly exceeded all in the +bulk and influence of his exercises, owing to his position on the staff +of a popular and widely-read periodical. + +The defect of both these qualities of Wilson's style (a defect which +extends largely to the matter of his writings in criticism and in other +departments) was a defect of sureness of taste; while his criticism was +more vigorous than safe. Except his Toryism (which, however, was shot +with odd flashes of democratic sentiment and a cross-vein of crotchety +dislike not to England but to London), he had not many pervading +prejudices. But at the same time he had not many clear principles: he +was the slave of whim and caprice in his individual opinions; and he +never seems to have been able to distinguish between a really fine thing +and a piece of fustian, between an urbane jest and a piece of gross +buffoonery, between eloquence and rant, between a reasoned condemnation +and a spiteful personal fling. Accordingly the ten reprinted volumes of +his contributions to _Blackwood_ and the mass of his still uncollected +articles contain the strangest jumble of good and bad in matter and form +that exists anywhere. By turns trivial and magnificent, exquisite and +disgusting, a hierophant of literature and a mere railer at men of +letters, a prince of describers, jesters, enthusiasts, and the author of +tedious and commonplace newspaper "copy," Wilson is one of the most +unequal, one of the most puzzling, but also one of the most stimulating +and delightful, figures in English literature. Perhaps slightly +over-valued for a time, he has for many years been distinctly neglected, +if not depreciated and despised; and the voluminousness of his work, +coupled with the fact that it is difficult to select from it owing to +the pervading inequality of its merits, may be thought likely to keep +him in the general judgment at a lower plane than he deserves. But the +influence which he exerted during many years both upon writers and +readers by his work in _Blackwood_ cannot be over-estimated. And it may +be said without fear that no one with tolerably wide sympathies, who is +able to appreciate good literature, will ever seriously undertake the +reading of his various works without equal satisfaction and profit. + +Wilson's principal coadjutor in the early days of _Blackwood_, and his +friend of all days (though the mania for crying down not so much England +as London made "Christopher North" indulge in some girds at his old +comrade's editorship of the _Quarterly_), was a curious contrast to +Wilson himself. This contrast may may have been due partly, but by no +means wholly, to the fact that there was ten years between them. John +Gibson Lockhart was born at Cambusnethan, where his father was minister, +on 14th July 1794. Like Wilson, he was educated at Glasgow and at +Oxford, where he took a first-class at a very early age, and whence he +went to Germany, a completion of "study-years" which the revolutionary +wars had for a long time rendered difficult, if not dangerous. On +returning home he was called to the Scottish Bar, where it would seem +that he might have made some figure, but for his inability to speak in +public. _Blackwood_ gave him the very opening suited to his genius; and +for years he was one of its chief contributors, and perhaps the most +dangerous wielder of the pretty sharp weapons in which its staff +indulged. Shortly afterwards, in 1819, he published (perhaps with some +slight assistance from Wilson) his first original book (he had +translated Schlegel's _Lectures on History_ earlier), _Peter's Letters +to his Kinsfolk_. The title was a parody on Scott's account of his +continental journey after Waterloo, the substance an exceedingly +vivacious account of the things and men of Edinburgh at the time, +something after the fashion of _Humphrey_ _Clinker_. Next year, on 29th +April, Lockhart married Sophia, Scott's elder daughter; and the pair +lived for some years to come either in Edinburgh or at the cottage of +Chiefswood, near Abbotsford, Lockhart contributing freely to +_Blackwood_, and writing his four novels and his _Spanish Ballads_. At +the end of 1825 or the beginning of 1826, just at the time when his +father-in-law's financial troubles set in, he received the appointment +of editor of the _Quarterly Review_ in succession, though not in +immediate succession, to Gifford. He then removed to London, where he +continued to direct the _Review_, to contribute for a time to _Fraser_, +to be a very important figure in literary and political life, and after +Scott's death to write an admirable _Life_. Domestic troubles came +rather thickly on him after Scott's death, which indeed was preceded by +that of Lockhart's own eldest son, the "Hugh Littlejohn" of the _Tales +of a Grandfather_. Mrs. Lockhart herself died in 1837. In 1843 Lockhart +received the auditorship of the duchy of Lancaster, a post of some +value. Ten years later, in broken health, he resigned the editorship of +the _Quarterly_, and died towards the end of the year. + +Lockhart's works, at present uncollected, and perhaps in no small +proportion irrecoverable, must have been of far greater bulk than those +of any one yet mentioned in this chapter except Wilson, and not +inconsiderably greater than his. They are also of a remarkable variety, +and of an extraordinary level of excellence in their different kinds. +Lockhart was not, like Wilson, an advocate or a practitioner of very +ornate or revolutionary prose. On the contrary, he both practised, +preached, and most formidably defended by bitter criticism of opposite +styles, a manner in prose and verse which was almost classical, or which +at least admitted no further Romantic innovation than that of the Lake +poets and Scott. His authorship of the savage onslaught upon Keats in +_Blackwood_ is not proven; but there is no doubt that he wrote the +scarcely less ferocious, though much more discriminating and +better-deserved, attack on Tennyson's early poems in the _Quarterly_. He +was himself no mean writer of verse. His _Spanish Ballads_ (1823), in +which he had both Southey and Scott as models before him, are of great +excellence; and some of his occasional pieces display not merely much +humour (which nobody ever denied him), but no mean share of the feeling +which is certainly not often associated with his name. But verse was +only an occasional pastime with him: his vocation was to write prose, +and he wrote it with admirable skill and a seldom surpassed faculty of +adaptation to the particular task. It is indeed probable--and it would +be no discredit to him--that his reputation with readers as opposed to +students will mainly depend, as it depends at present, upon his _Life of +Scott_. Nor would even thus his plumes be borrowed over much. For though +no doubt the letters and the diary of Sir Walter himself count for much +in the interest of the book, though the beauty and nobility of Scott's +character, his wonderful achievements, the pathetic revolution of his +fortune, form a subject not easily matched, yet to be equal to such a +subject is to be in another sense on an equality with it. Admiration for +the book is not chequered or tempered, as it almost necessarily must be +in the case of its only possible rival, Boswell's _Johnson_, with more +or less contempt for the author; still less is it (as some have +contended that admiration for Boswell is) due to that contempt. The +taste and spirit of Lockhart's book are not less admirable than the +skill of its arrangement and the competency of its writing; nor would it +be easily possible to find a happier adjustment in this respect in the +whole annals of biography. + +But this great book ought not to obscure the other work which Lockhart +has done. His biography of Burns is of remarkable merit; it may be +questioned whether to this day, though it may be deficient in a few +modern discoveries of fact (and these have been mostly supplied in the +edition by the late Mr. Scott Douglas), it is not the best book on the +subject. The taste and judgment, the clear vision and sound sense, which +distinguished Lockhart, are in few places more apparent than here. His +abridgment of Scott's _Life of Napoleon_ is no ordinary abridgment, and +is a work of thorough craft, if not even of art. His novels, with one +exception, have ceased to be much read; and perhaps even that one can +hardly be said to enjoy frequent perusal. _Valerius_, the first, is a +classical novel, and suffers under the drawbacks which have generally +attended its kind. _Reginald Dalton_, a novel in part of actual life at +Oxford, and intended to be wholly of actual life, still shows something +of the artificial handling, of the supposed necessity for adventure, +which is observable in Hook and others of the time, and which has been +sufficiently noticed in the last chapter. _Matthew Wald_, the last of +the four, is both too gloomy and too extravagant: it deals with a mad +hero. But _Adam Blair_, which was published in the same year (1821) with +_Valerius_, is a wonderful little book. The story is not well told; but +the characters and the principal situation--a violent passion +entertained by a pious widowed minister for his neighbour's wife--are +handled with extraordinary power. _Peter's Letters_, which is half a +book and half journalism, may be said to be, with rare exceptions (such +as an obituary article on Hook, which was reprinted from the +_Quarterly_), the only specimen of Lockhart's miscellaneous writing that +is easily accessible or authentically known. He was still but in his +apprenticeship here; but his remarkable gifts are already apparent. +These gifts included a faculty of sarcastic comment so formidable that +it early earned him the title of "the Scorpion"; a very wide and sound +knowledge of literature, old and new, English and foreign; some +acquirements in art and in other matters; an excellent style, and a +solid if rather strait-laced theory of criticism. Except that he was, as +almost everybody was then, too much given to violent personalities in +his anonymous work, he was a very great journalist indeed, and he was +also a very great man of letters. + +Thomas de Quincey was not of the earliest _Blackwood_ staff (in that +respect Maginn should be mentioned before him), but he was the older as +well as the more important man of the two, and there is the additional +reason for postponing the founder of _Fraser_, that this latter +periodical introduced a fresh flight of birds of passage (as journalists +both fortunate and unfortunate may peculiarly be called) to English +literature. De Quincey was born in 1785 (the same year as his friend +Wilson) at Manchester, where his father was a merchant of means. He was +educated at the Grammar School of his native town, after some +preliminary teaching at or near Bath, whither his mother had moved after +his father's death. He did not like Manchester, and when he had nearly +served his time for an exhibition to Brasenose College, Oxford, he ran +away and hid himself. He went to Oxford after all, entering at +Worcester, where he made a long though rather intermittent residence, +but took no degree. In 1809 he took up his abode at Grasmere, married +after a time, and lived there, at least as his headquarters, for more +than twenty years. In 1830 he moved to Edinburgh, where, or in its +neighbourhood, he resided for the rest of his long life, and where he +died in December 1859. He has given various autobiographic handlings of +this life--in the main it would seem quite trustworthy, but invested +with an air of fantastic unreality by his manner of relation. + +His life, however, and his personality, and even the whole of his +voluminous published work, have in all probability taken colour in the +general thought from his first literary work of any consequence, the +wonderful _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_, which, with the +_Essays of Elia_, were the chief flowers of the _London Magazine_, and +appeared in that periodical during the year 1821. He had acquired this +habit during his sojourn at Oxford, and it had grown upon him during his +at first solitary residence at the Lakes to an enormous extent. Until he +thus committed the results of his dreams, or of his fancy and literary +genius working on his dreams, or of his fancy and genius by themselves, +to print and paper, in his thirty-sixth year, he had been, though a +great reader, hardly anything of a writer. But thenceforward, and +especially after, in 1825, he had visited his Lake neighbour Wilson at +Edinburgh, and had been by him introduced to _Blackwood_, he became a +frequent contributor to different magazines, and continued to be so, +writing far more even than he published, till his death. He wrote very +few books, the chief being a very free translation of a German novel, +forged as Scott's, and called _Walladmor_; a more original and stable, +though not very brilliant, effort in fiction, entitled _Klosterheim_; +and the _Logic of Political Economy_. Towards the end of his life he +superintended an English collection--there had already been one in +America--of his essays, and this has been supplemented more than once +since. + +It may, indeed, fairly be doubted whether so large a collection, of +miscellaneous, heterogeneous, and, to tell the truth, very unequally +interesting and meritorious matter, has ever been received with greater +or more lasting popular favour, a fresh edition of the fourteen or +sixteen volumes of the _Works_ having been called for on an average +every decade. There have been dissidents: and recently in particular +something of a set has been made against De Quincey--a set to some +extent helped by the gradual addition to the _Works_ of a great deal of +unimportant matter which he had not himself cared to reproduce. This, +indeed, is perhaps the greatest danger to which the periodical writer is +after his death exposed, and is even the most serious drawback to +periodical writing. It is impossible that any man who lives by such +writing can always be at his best in form, and he will sometimes be +compelled to execute what Carlyle has called "honest journey-work in +default of better,"--work which, though perfectly honest and perfectly +respectable, is mere journey-work, and has no claim to be disturbed from +its rest when its journey is accomplished. Of this there was some even +in De Quincey's own collection, and the proportion has been much +increased since. Moreover, even at his very best, he was not a writer +who could be trusted to keep himself at that best. His reading was +enormous,--nearly as great perhaps as Southey's, though in still less +popular directions,--and he would sometimes drag it in rather +inappropriately. He had an unconquerable and sometimes very irritating +habit of digression, of divagation, of aside. And, worst of all, his +humour, which in its own peculiar vein of imaginative grotesque has +seldom been surpassed, was liable constantly to degenerate into a kind +of laboured trifling, inexpressibly exasperating to the nerves. He could +be simply dull; and he can seldom be credited with the possession of +what may be called literary tact. + +Yet his merits were such as to give him no superior in his own manner +among the essayists, and hardly any among the prose writers of the +century. He, like Wilson, and probably before Wilson, deliberately aimed +at a style of gorgeous elaboration, intended not exactly for constant +use, but for use when required; and he achieved it. Certain well-known +passages, as well as others which have not become hackneyed, in the +_Confessions of an Opium Eater_, in the _Autobiography_, in _The English +Mail Coach_, in _Our Ladies of Sorrow_, and elsewhere, are unsurpassed +in English or out of it for imaginative splendour of imagery, suitably +reproduced in words. Nor was this De Quincey's only, though it was his +most precious gift. He had a singular, though, as has been said, a very +untrustworthy faculty of humour, both grim and quaint. He was possessed +of extraordinary dialectic ingenuity, a little alloyed no doubt by a +tendency to wire-drawn and over subtle minuteness such as besets the +born logician who is not warned of his danger either by a strong vein of +common sense or by constant sojourn in the world. He could expound and +describe admirably; he had a thorough grasp of the most complicated +subjects when he did not allow will-o'-the-wisps to lure him into +letting it go, and could narrate the most diverse kinds of action, such +as the struggles of Bentley with Trinity College, the journey of the +Tartars from the Ukraine to Siberia, and the fortunes of the Spanish +Nun, Catalina, with singular adaptability. In his biographical articles +on friends and contemporaries, which are rather numerous, he has been +charged both with ill-nature and with inaccuracy. The first charge may +be peremptorily dismissed, the second requires much argument and sifting +in particular cases. To some who have given not a little attention to +the matter it seems that De Quincey was never guilty of deliberate +fabrication, and that he was not even careless in statement. But he was +first of all a dreamer; and when it is true of a man that, in the words +of the exquisite passage where Calderon has come at one with +Shakespeare, his very dreams are a dream, it will often happen that his +facts are not exactly a fact. + +Nevertheless, De Quincey is a great writer and a great figure in +literature, while it may plausibly be contended that journalism may make +all the more boast of him in that it is probable that without it he +would never have written at all. And he has one peculiarity not yet +mentioned. Although his chief excellences may not be fully perceptible +except to mature tastes, he is specially attractive to the young. +Probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love +of literature proper by De Quincey than by any other writer whatever. + +Of other contributors to these periodicals much might be said in larger +space, as for instance of the poisoner-critic Thomas Griffiths +Wainewright, the "Janus Weathercock" of the _London_, the original of +certain well-known heroes of Bulwer and Dickens, and the object of a +more than once recurrent and distinctly morbid attention from young men +of letters since. Lamb, who was not given to think evil of his friends, +was certainly unlucky in calling Wainewright "warm- as light-hearted"; +for the man (who died a convict in Australia, though he cheated the +gallows which was his due) was both an affected coxcomb and a callous +scoundrel. But he was a very clever fellow, though indignant morality +has sometimes endeavoured to deny this. That he anticipated by sixty +years and more certain depravations in style and taste notorious in our +own day is something: it is more that his achievement in gaudy writing +and in the literary treatment of art was really considerable. + +Wainewright, however, is only "curious" in more than one sense of that +term: Leigh Hunt, who, though quite incapable of poisoning anybody, had +certain points in common with Wainewright on the latter's more excusable +sides, and whose prose must now be treated, is distinguished. He +reappears with even better right here than some others of the more +important constituents of this chapter. For all his best work in prose +appeared in periodicals, though it is impossible to say that all his +work that appeared in periodicals was his best work. He was for fourteen +years editor of, and a large contributor to, the _Examiner_, which he +and his brother started in 1808. After his liberation from prison he not +merely edited, but in the older fashion practically wrote the +_Reflector_ (1810), the _Indicator_ (1819-21), and the _Companion_ +(1828). His rather unlucky journey to Italy was undertaken to edit the +_Liberal_. He was one of the rare and rash men of letters who have tried +to keep up a daily journal unassisted--a new _Tatler_, which lasted for +some eighteen months (1830-32); and a little later (1834-35) he +supported for full two years a similar but weekly venture, in part +original, in part compiled or borrowed, called _Leigh Hunt's London +Journal_. These were not his only ventures of the kind: he was an +indefatigable contributor to periodicals conducted by others; and most +of his books now known by independent titles are in fact collections of +"articles"--sometimes reprinted, sometimes published for the first time. + +It was impossible that such a mass of matter should be all good; and it +is equally impossible to deny that the combined fact of so much +production and of so little concentration argues a certain idiosyncrasy +of defect. In fact the butterfly character which every unprejudiced +critic of Leigh Hunt has noticed, made it impossible for him to plan or +to execute any work on a great scale. He never could have troubled +himself to complete missing knowledge, to fill in gaps, to co-ordinate +thinking, as the literary historian, whose vocation in some respects he +might seem to have possessed eminently, must do--to weave fancy into the +novelist's solid texture, and not to leave it in thrums or in gossamer. +But he was, though in both ways a most unequal, a delightful +miscellanist and critic. In both respects it is natural, and indeed +unavoidable, to compare him with Lamb and with Hazlitt, whom, however, +he really preceded, forming a link between them and the eighteenth +century essayists. His greater voluminousness, induced by necessity, +puts him at a rather unfair disadvantage with the first; and we may +perhaps never find in him those exquisite felicities which delight and +justify the true "Agnist." Yet he has found some things that Lamb missed +in Lamb's own subjects; and though his prejudices (of the middle-class +Liberal and freethinking kind) were sometimes more damaging than any to +which Lamb was exposed, he was free from the somewhat wilful eclecticism +of that inimitable person. He could like nearly all things that were +good--in which respect he stands above both his rivals in criticism. But +he stands below them in his miscellaneous work; though here also, as in +his poetry, he was a master, not a scholar. Lamb and Hazlitt improved +upon him here, as Keats and Shelley improved upon him there. But what a +position is it to be "improved upon" by Keats and Shelley in poetry, by +Hazlitt and Lamb in prose! + +Hartley Coleridge might with about equal propriety have been treated in +the last chapter and in this; but the already formidable length of the +catalogue of bards perhaps turns the scale in favour of placing him with +other contributors to _Blackwood_, to which, thanks to his early +friendship with Wilson, he enjoyed access, and in which he might have +written much more than he did, and did actually write most of what he +published himself, except the _Biographia Borealis_. + +The life of Hartley was a strange and sad variant of his father's, +though, if he lacked a good deal of S. T. C.'s genius, his character was +entirely free from the baser stains which darkened that great man's +weakness. Born (1796) at Clevedon, the first-fruits of the marriage of +Coleridge and Sara, he was early celebrated by Wordsworth and by his +father in immortal verse, and by Southey, his uncle, in charming prose, +for his wonderful dreamy precocity; but he never was a great reader. +Southey took care of him with the rest of the family when Coleridge +disappeared into the vague; and Hartley, after schooling at Ambleside, +was elected to a post-mastership at Merton College, Oxford. He missed +the Newdigate thrice, and only got a second in the schools, but was +more than consoled by a Fellowship at Oriel. Unfortunately Oriel was not +only gaining great honour, but was very jealous of it; and the +probationary Fellows were subjected to a most rigid system of +observation, which seems to have gone near to espionage. If ever there +was a man born to be a Fellow under the old English University scheme, +that man was Hartley Coleridge; and it is extremely probable that if he +had been let alone he would have produced, in one form or another, a +justification of that scheme, worthy to rank with Burton's _Anatomy_. +But he was accused of various shortcomings, of which intemperance seems +to have been the most serious, though it is doubtful whether it would +have sunk the beam if divers peccadilloes, political, social, and +miscellaneous, had not been thrown in. Strong interest was made in +favour of mercy, but the College deprived him of his Fellowship, +granting him, not too consistently, a _solatium_ of L300. This was +apparently in 1820. Hartley lived for nearly thirty years longer, but +his career was closed. He was, as his brother Derwent admits, one of +those whom the pressure of necessity does not spur but numbs. He wrote a +little for _Blackwood_; he took pupils unsuccessfully, and +school-mastered with a little better success; and during a short time he +lived with a Leeds publisher who took a fancy to him and induced him to +write his only large book, the _Biographia Borealis_. But for the most +part he abode at Grasmere, where his failing (it was not much more) of +occasional intemperance was winked at by all, even by the austere +Wordsworth, where he wandered about, annotated a copy of Anderson's +_Poets_ and some other books, and supported himself (with the curious +Coleridgean faculty of subsisting like the bird of paradise, without +either foot or foothold) till, at his mother's death, an annuity made +his prospects secure. He died on 6th January 1849, a little before +Wordsworth, and shortly afterwards his work was collected by his brother +Derwent in seven small volumes; the _Poems_ filling two, the _Essays and +Fragments_ two, and the _Biographia Borealis_ three. + +This last (which appeared in its second form as _Lives of Northern +Worthies_, with some extremely interesting notes by S. T. C.) is an +excellent book of its kind, and shows that under more favourable +circumstances Hartley might have been a great literary historian. But it +is on the whole less characteristic than the volumes of _Poems_ and +_Essays_. In the former Hartley has no kind of _souffle_ (or +long-breathed inspiration), nor has he those exquisite lyrical touches +of his father's which put Coleridge's scanty and unequal work on a level +with that of the greatest names in English poetry. But he has a singular +melancholy sweetness, and a meditative grace which finds its special +home in the sonnet. In the "Posthumous Sonnets" especially, the +sound--not an echo of, but a true response to, Elizabethan music--is +unmistakable, and that to Shakespeare ("the soul of man is larger than +the sky"), that on himself ("When I survey the course that I have run"), +and not a few others, rank among the very best in English. Many of the +miscellaneous poems contain beautiful things. But on the whole the +greatest interest of Hartley Coleridge is that he is the first and one +of the best examples of a kind of poet who is sometimes contemned, who +has been very frequent in this century, but who is dear to the lover of +poetry, and productive of delightful things. This kind of poet is +wanting, it may be, in what is briefly, if not brutally, called +originality. He might not sing much if others had not sung and were not +singing around him; he does not sing very much even as it is, and the +notes of his song are not extraordinarily piercing or novel. But they +are true, they are not copied, and the lover of poetry could not spare +them. + +It is improbable that Hartley Coleridge would ever have been a great +poet: he might, if Fate or even if the Oriel dons had been a little +kinder, have been a great critic. As it is, his essays, his introduction +to Massinger and Ford, and his _Marginalia_, suffer on the one side from +certain defects of reading; for his access to books was latterly small, +and even when it had been ample, as at Oxford, in London, or at +Southey's house, he confesses that he had availed himself of it but +little. Hence he is often wrong, and more often incomplete, from sheer +lack of information. Secondly, much of his work is mere jotting, never +in the very least degree intended for publication, and sometimes +explicitly corrected or retracted by later jottings of the same kind. In +such a case we can rather augur of the might-have-been than pronounce on +the actual. But the two volumes are full of delicate critical views on +literature; and the longest series, "Ignoramus on the Fine Arts," shows +how widely, with better luck and more opportunity, he might have +extended his critical performances. In short, Hartley Coleridge, if a +"sair sicht" to the moralist, is an interesting and far from a wholly +painful one to the lover of literature, which he himself loved so much, +and practised, with all his disadvantages, so successfully. + +All the persons hitherto mentioned in this chapter appear by undoubted +right in any history of English Literature: it may cause a little +surprise to see that of Maginn figuring with them. Yet his abilities +were scarcely inferior to those of any; and he was kept back from +sharing their fame only by infirmities of character and by his +succumbing to that fatal Bohemianism which, constantly recurring among +men of letters, exercised its attractions with special force in the +early days of journalism in this century. William Maginn (1793), who was +the son of a schoolmaster at Cork, took a brilliant degree at Trinity +College, Dublin, and for some years followed his father's profession. +The establishment, however, and the style of _Blackwood_ were an +irresistible attraction to him, and he drifted to Edinburgh, wrote a +great deal in the earlier and more boisterous days of _Maga_ under the +pseudonym of Ensign O'Doherty, and has, as has been said, some claims to +be considered the originator of the _Noctes_. Then, as he had gone from +Ireland to Edinburgh, he went from Edinburgh to London, and took part in +divers Tory periodicals, acting as Paris correspondent for some of them +till, about 1830, he started, or helped in starting, a London +_Blackwood_ in _Fraser_. He had now every opportunity, and he gathered +round him a staff almost more brilliant than that of the _Edinburgh_, of +the _London_, of the _Quarterly_, or of _Blackwood_ itself. But he was +equally reckless of his health and of his money. The acknowledged +original of Thackeray's Captain Shandon, he was not seldom in jail; and +at last, assisted by Sir Robert Peel almost too late, he died at Walton +on Thames in August 1842, not yet fifty, but an utter wreck. + +The collections of Maginn's work are anything but exhaustive, and the +work itself suffers from all the drawbacks, probable if not inevitable, +of work written in the intervals of carouse, at the last moment, for +ephemeral purposes. Yet it is instinct with a perhaps brighter genius +than the more accomplished productions of some much more famous men. The +_Homeric Ballads_, though they have been praised by some, are nearly +worthless; and the longer attempts in fiction are not happy. But +Maginn's shorter stories in _Blackwood_, especially the inimitable +"Story without a Tail," are charming; his more serious critical work, +especially that on Shakespeare, displays a remarkable combination of +wide reading, critical acumen, and sound sense; and his miscellanies in +prose and verse, especially the latter, are characterised by a mixture +of fantastic humour, adaptive wit, and rare but real pathos and melody, +which is the best note of the specially Irish mode. It must be said, +however, that Maginn is chiefly important to the literary historian as +the captain of a band of distinguished persons, and as in a way the link +between the journalism of the first and the journalism of the second +third of the century. A famous plate by Maclise, entitled "The +Fraserians," contains, seated round abundant bottles, with Maginn as +president, portraits (in order by "the way of the sun," and omitting +minor personages) of Irving, Gleig the Chaplain-General, Sir Egerton +Brydges, Allan Cunningham, Carlyle, Count D'Orsay, Brewster, Theodore +Hook, Lockhart, Crofton Croker of the Irish Fairy Tales, Jerdan, Dunlop +of the "History of Fiction," Gait, Hogg, Coleridge, Harrison Ainsworth, +Thackeray, Southey, and Barry Cornwall. It is improbable that all these +contributed at one time, and tolerably certain that some of them were +very sparing and infrequent contributors at any time, but the important +point is the juxtaposition of the generation which was departing and +the generation which was coming on--of Southey with Thackeray and of +Coleridge with Carlyle. Yet it will be noticed (and the point is of some +importance) that these new-comers are, at least the best of them, much +less merely periodical writers than those who came immediately before +them. In part no doubt this was accident; in part it was due to the +greater prominence which novels and serial works of other kinds were +beginning to assume; in part it may be to the fact that the great +increase in the number of magazines and newspapers had lowered their +individual dignity and perhaps their profitableness. But it is certain +that of the list just mentioned, Thackeray and Carlyle, of the +contemporary new generation of the _Edinburgh_ Macaulay, of the nascent +_Westminster_ Mill, and others, were not, like Jeffrey, like Sydney +Smith, like Wilson, and like De Quincey, content to write articles. They +aspired to write, and they did write, books; and, that being so, they +will all be treated in chapters other than the present, appropriated to +the kinds in which their chief books were designed. + +The name of John Sterling is that of a man who, with no great literary +claims of his own, managed to connect it durably and in a double fashion +with literature, first as the subject of an immortal biography by +Carlyle, secondly as the name-giver of the famous Sterling Club, which +about 1838, and hardly numbering more members than the century did +years, included a surprising proportion of the most rising men of +letters of the day, while all but a very few of its members were of +literary mark. John Sterling himself was the son of a rather eccentric +father, Edward Sterling, who, after trying soldiering with no great, and +farming with decidedly ill, success, turned to journalism and succeeded +brilliantly on the _Times_. His son was born in the Isle of Bute on 20th +July 1806, was educated, first privately, then at Glasgow, and when +about nineteen went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he fell in with +a famous and brilliant set. He migrated from Trinity College to Trinity +Hall, took no degree, wrote a little for the then young _Athenaeum_, was +engaged in a romantic and in all ways rather unfortunate business of +encouraging a rebellion in Spain, but married instead of taking active +part in it, and went to the West Indies. When he came home he, it is +said under Coleridgean influence, took orders, but soon developed +heterodox views and gave up active duty. He lived, though under sentence +of death by consumption, till 1843, spending much time abroad, but +writing a little, chiefly for periodicals. + +The chief characteristic of Sterling in life and thought appears to have +been a vacillating impulsiveness, while in letters his production, small +in bulk, is anything but strong in substance or form. But, like some +other men who do not, in the common phrase, "do much," he seems to have +been singularly effectual as a centre of literary friendship and +following. The Sterling Club included not merely Tennyson, John Stuart +Mill, Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, Lord Houghton, Sir Francis Palgrave, +Bishop Thirlwall, who all receive separate notice elsewhere, but others +who, being of less general fame, may best be noticed together here. +There were the scholars Blakesley, Worsley, and Hepworth Thompson +(afterwards Master of Trinity); H. N. Coleridge, the poet's nephew, +son-in-law, and editor; Sir Francis Doyle, afterwards Professor of +Poetry at Oxford, the author of some interesting reminiscences in prose, +and in verse of some of the best songs and poems on military subjects to +be found in the language, such as "The Loss of the Birkenhead," the +"Private of the Buffs," and above all the noble and consummate "Red +Thread of Honour"; Sir Edmund Head, Fellow of Merton and +Governor-General of Canada, and a writer on art (not to be confounded +with his namesake Sir Francis, the agreeable miscellanist, reviewer, and +travel writer, who was also a baronet and also connected with Canada, +where he was Governor of the Upper Province at the time of the Rebellion +of 1835). There was Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a keen scholar and a +fastidious writer, whose somewhat short life (1806-63) was chiefly +occupied by politics; for he was a Poor-Law Commissioner, a Member of +Parliament, and a holder of numerous offices up to those of Chancellor +of the Exchequer and Secretary of State. Lewis, who edited the +_Edinburgh_ for a short time, wrote no very long work, but many on a +great variety of subjects, the chief perhaps being _On the Influence of +Authority in Matters of Opinion_, 1850 (a book interesting to contrast +with one by a living statesman forty-five years later), the _Inquiry +into the Credibility of the Ancient Roman History_ (1855), and later +treatises on _The Government of Dependencies_ and the _Best Form of +Government_. He was also an exact verbal scholar, was, despite the +addiction to "dry" subjects which this list may seem to show, the author +of not a few _jeux d'esprit_, and was famous for his conversational +sayings, the most hackneyed of which is probably "Life would be +tolerable if it were not for its amusements." + +But even this did not exhaust the Sterling Club. There was another +scholar, Malden, who should have been mentioned with the group above; +the second Sir Frederick Pollock, who wrote too little but left an +excellent translation of Dante, besides some reminiscences and other +work; Philip Pusey, elder brother of the theologian, and a man of +remarkable ability; James Spedding, who devoted almost the whole of his +literary life to the study, championship, and editing of Bacon, but left +other essays and reviews of great merit; Twisleton, who undertook with +singular patience and shrewdness the solution of literary and historical +problems like the Junius question and that of the African martyrs; and +lastly George Stovin Venables, who for some five and thirty years was +the main pillar in political writing of the _Saturday Review_, was a +parliamentary lawyer of great diligence and success, and combined a +singularly exact and wide knowledge of books and men in politics and +literature with a keen judgment, an admirably forcible if somewhat +mannered style, a disposition far more kindly than the world was apt to +credit him with, and a famous power of conversation. All these men, +almost without exception, were more or less contributors to periodicals; +and it may certainly be said that, but for periodicals, it is rather +unlikely that some of them would have contributed to literature at all. + +Not as a member of the Sterling Club, but as the intimate friend of all +its greatest members, as a contributor, though a rather unfrequent one, +to papers, and as a writer of singular and extraordinary quality but +difficult to class under a more precise head, may be noticed Edward +FitzGerald, who, long a recluse, unstintedly admired by his friends but +quite unknown to the public, became famous late in life by his +translation of Omar Khayyam, and familiar somewhat after his death +through the publication of his charming letters by Mr. Aldis Wright. He +was born on 31st March 1809, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, the +neighbourhood which was his headquarters for almost his entire life, +till his death on a visit to a grandson of the poet Crabbe at Merton in +Norfolk, 14th June 1883. He went to school at Bury, and thence to +Cambridge, where he laid the foundation of his acquaintance with the +famous Trinity set of 1825-30. But on taking his degree in the last +named year and leaving college, he took to no profession, but entered on +the life of reading, thinking, gardening, and boating, which he pursued +for more than half a century. Besides his Trinity contemporaries, from +Tennyson and Thackeray downwards, he had Carlyle for an intimate friend, +and he married the daughter of Bernard Barton, the poet-Quaker and +friend of Lamb. He published nothing till the second half of the century +had opened, when _Euphranor_, written long before at Cambridge, or with +reference to it, appeared. Then he learnt Spanish, and first showed his +extraordinary faculty of translation by Englishing divers dramas of +Calderon. Spanish gave way to Persian, and after some exercises +elsewhere the famous version, paraphrase, or whatever it is to be +called, of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam appeared in 1859, to be much +altered in subsequent editions. + +FitzGerald's works in the collected edition of 1889 fill three pretty +stout volumes, to which a considerable number of letters (he was first +of all and almost solely a letter-writer and translator) have been +added. In his prose (no disrespect being intended to _Euphranor_, a +dialogue Berkeleian in form and of great beauty, and other things) he +interests us doubly as a character and as a critic, for the letters +contain much criticism. Personally FitzGerald was a man of rather few +and not obtrusive, but deep and warm sympathies, slow to make new +friends but intensely tenacious of and affectionate towards the old, +with a very strong distaste for crowds and general society, and +undoubtedly somewhat of what the French call a _maniaque_, that is to +say, a slightly hypochondriac crotcheteer. These characteristics, which +make him interesting as a man, are still more interestingly reflected in +his criticism, which is often one-sided and unjust, sometimes crotchety +(as when he would not admit that even his beloved Alfred Tennyson had +ever been at his best since the collection of 1842), but often also +wonderfully delicate and true. + +As a translator he stands almost alone, his peculiar virtue, noticeable +alike in his versions from the Spanish and Greek, being so capitally and +once for all illustrated in that of Omar Khayyam that in narrow space it +is not necessary to go beyond this. From the purist and pedantic point +of view FitzGerald, no doubt, is wildly unfaithful. He scarcely ever +renders word for word, and will insert, omit, alter, with perfect +freedom; yet the total effect is reproduced as perhaps no other +translator has ever reproduced it. Whether his version of the Rubaiyat, +with its sensuous fatalism, its ridicule of asceticism and renunciation, +and its bewildering kaleidoscope of mysticism that becomes materialist +and materialism that becomes mystical, has not indirectly had +influences, practical and literary, the results of which would have been +more abhorrent to FitzGerald than to almost any one else, may be +suggested. But the beauty of the poem as a poem is unmistakable and +altogether astounding. The melancholy richness of the rolling quatrain +with its unicorn rhymes, the quaint mixture of farce and solemnity, +passion and playfulness, the abundance of the imagery, the power of the +thought, the seduction of the rhetoric, make the poem actually, though +not original or English, one of the greatest of English poems. + +Of the periodical too, if not entirely, was Richard Harris Barham, +"Thomas Ingoldsby," the author of the most popular book of light verse +that ever issued from the press. His one novel, _My Cousin Nicholas_, +was written for _Blackwood_; the immortal _Ingoldsby Legends_ appeared +in _Bentley_ and _Colburn_. Born at Canterbury in 1788, of a family +possessed of landed property, though not of much, and educated at St. +Paul's School and Brasenose College, Barham took orders, and, working +with thorough conscience as a clergyman, despite his light literature, +became a minor canon in St. Paul's Cathedral. He died in 1845. Hardly +any book is more widely known than the collected _Ingoldsby Legends_, +which originally appeared in the last eight years of their author's +life. Very recently they have met with a little priggish depreciation, +the natural and indeed inevitable result, first of a certain change in +speech and manners, and then of their long and vast popularity. Nor +would any one contend that they are exactly great literature. But for +inexhaustible fun that never gets flat and scarcely ever simply +uproarious, for a facility and felicity in rhyme and rhythm which is +almost miraculous, and for a blending of the grotesque and the terrible +which, if less _fine_ than Praed's or Hood's, is only inferior to +theirs--no one competent to judge and enjoy will ever go to Barham in +vain. + +The same difficulty which beset us at the end of the last chapter recurs +here, the difficulty arising from the existence of large numbers of +persons of the third or lower ranks whose inclusion may be desired or +their exclusion resented. At the head, or near it, of this class stand +such figures as that of Douglas Jerrold, a sort of very inferior Hook on +the other side of politics, with a dash (also very inferior) of Hood, +whose _Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures_ and similar things were very +popular at and a little before the middle of the century, but whose +permanent literary value is of the smallest, if indeed it can be said to +exist. But of these--not a few of them more worthy if less prominent in +their day than Jerrold--there could be no end; and there would be little +profit in trying to reach any. The successful "contributor," by the laws +of the case, climbs on the shoulders of his less successful mates even +more than elsewhere; and the very impetus which lands him on the height +rejects them into the depths. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY + + +After the brilliant group of historians whose work illustrated the close +of the period covered by the preceding volume, it was some time before a +historical writer of the first rank again appeared in England; and there +were reasons for this. Not that, as in the case of purely creative +literature, in prose as in verse, there is any natural or actual lull +between different successive periods in this case; on the contrary the +writing of history is more likely to be stimulated by example, and +requires rather the utmost talent than positive genius, except in those +rare cases which, as in other departments, are not to be accounted for, +either in their presence or in their absence, by observation or +inference. But in the first place the greatest minds of the first +generation of which we have to take account, who were born about the +beginning of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, were, partly +by time and partly by chance, directed for the most part either into +poetry, or into politics, or into active life; and the five and twenty +years of the Revolutionary War in which they passed their manhood were +more likely to provide materials for history, than history itself. + +Yet history, after the example given by Hume, by Robertson, and above +all by Gibbon, was not at all likely to cease, nor did some men of great +talents in other ways fail to betake themselves to it. Godwin was a +historian, and, considering his strong prejudices, the unkindness of +fortune (for history demands leisure almost as much as poetry), and some +defects of knowledge, not a contemptible historian in his way. +Mackintosh, intended for a philosopher, was a historian. Southey was a +very considerable historian, and master of one of the most admirable +historical styles on record. But he was signally unfortunate in having +that work of his which should have been most popular, the _History of +the Peninsular War_, pitted against another by a younger man of +professional competence, of actual experience, and of brilliant literary +powers, Sir William Napier (1786-1860). The literary value of these two +histories is more even than a generation which probably reads neither +much and has almost forgotten Southey is apt to imagine; and though +there is no doubt that the Poet Laureate was strongly prejudiced on the +Tory side, his competitor was even more partial and biassed against that +side. But the difference between the two books is the difference between +a task admirably performed, and performed to a certain extent _con +amore_, by a skilled practitioner in task-work, and the special effort +of one who was at once an enthusiast and an expert in his subject. It is +customary to call _Napier's History of the Peninsular War_ "the finest +military history in the English language," and so, perhaps, it is. The +famous description of the Battle of Albuera is only one of many showing +eloquence without any mere fine writing, and with the knowledge of the +soldier covering the artist's exaggeration. + +Moore, Campbell, Scott himself, were all, as has been previously +recorded in the notices of their proper work, historians by trade, +though hardly, even to the extent to which Southey was, historians by +craft. But an exception must be made for the exquisite _Tales of a +Grandfather_, in which Sir Walter, without perhaps a very strict +application of historical criticism, applied his creative powers, +refreshed in their decay by combined affection for the subject and for +the presumed auditor, to fashioning the traditional history of old +Scotland into one of the most delightful narratives of any language or +time. But Henry Hallam, a contemporary of these men (1778-1859), unlike +them lives as a historian only, or as a historian and literary +critic--occupations so frequently combined during the present century +that perhaps an apology is due for the presentation of some writers +under the general head of one class rather than under that of the other. +Hallam, the son of a Dean of Bristol, educated at Eton and Christ +Church, an early _Edinburgh_ reviewer, and an honoured pundit and +champion of the Whig party, possessing also great literary tastes, much +industry, and considerable faculty both of judging and writing, united +almost all the qualifications for a high reputation; while his +abstinence from public affairs, and from participation in the violent +half-personal, half-political squabbles which were common among the +literary men of his day, freed him from most of the disadvantages, while +retaining for him all the advantages, of party connections. Early, too, +he obtained a post in the Civil Service (a Commissionership of Audit), +which gave him a comfortable subsistence while leaving him plenty of +leisure. For thirty years, between 1818 and 1848, he produced a series +of books on political and literary history which at once attained a very +high reputation, and can hardly be said to have yet lost it. These were +a _View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages_, published in the +first, and supplemented by a volume of notes and corrections in the +last, of the years just mentioned; a _Constitutional History of England_ +from Henry VII. to George II. (1827); and an _Introduction to the +Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth +Centuries_ (1837-39). + +The value of Hallam as a political and as a literary historian is by no +means the same. In the former capacity he was perhaps too much +influenced by that artificial and rather curious ideal of politics which +distinguished the Whig party of the later eighteenth century, which was +exaggerated, celebrated brilliantly, and perhaps buried by his pupil and +younger contemporary, Macaulay, and which practically erects the result +of a coincidence of accidents in English history into a permanent and +rationally defensible form of government, comparable with and preferable +to the earlier and unchanging forms of monarchy, aristocracy, and +democracy with their sub-varieties. A certain coldness and sluggishness +of temperament and sympathy also marred this part of Hallam's work, +though less mischievously than elsewhere. But to balance these drawbacks +handsomely in his favour, he possessed an industry which, immense as +have been the pains spent on his subjects since he wrote, leaves him in +possession of a very fair part of the field as a still trustworthy +authority; a mind, on the whole, judicial and fair; and an excellently +clear and scholarly if not exactly brilliant or engaging style. + +As a literary historian and critic Hallam deserves, except on the score +of industry and width of reading, rather less praise; and his dicta, +once quoted with veneration even by good authorities, and borrowed, with +or without acknowledgment, by nearly all second-hand writers, are being +more and more neglected by both. Nor is this unjust, for Hallam, though +possessed, as has been said, of sound and wide scholarship, and of a +taste fairly trustworthy in accepted and recognised matters, was too apt +to be at a loss when confronted with an abnormal or eccentric literary +personality, shared far too much the hide-bound narrowness of the rules +which guided his friend Jeffrey, lacked the enthusiasm which not seldom +melted Jeffrey's chains of ice, and was constantly apt to intrude into +the court of literary judgments, methods, procedures, and codes of law +which have no business there. + +Many other estimable, and some excellent writers fill up the space of +fifty years, which may be described best, both for remembrance and for +accuracy, as the space between Gibbon and Carlyle. William Roscoe, who +was born as far back as 1753 and did not die till 1831, was the son of a +market-gardener near Liverpool, and had few advantages of education, but +became an attorney, attached himself strenuously to literature, +especially Italian literature, and in 1796 published his _Life of +Lorenzo de Medici_, which, after finishing it, he followed up nine years +later with the _Life of Leo the Tenth_. Both obtained not merely an +English but a continental reputation, both became in a manner classics, +and both retain value to this day, though the Italian Renaissance has +been a specially favourite subject of modern inquiry. Roscoe was a +violent Whig, and not a very dispassionate student in some respects; but +he wrote well, and he is an early example of the diffusion of the +historic spirit proper, in which Gibbon had at once set the example and, +with some lapses, attained nearly to perfection. + +William Mitford (1744-1827) was even an older man than Roscoe, and +belonged to a slightly less modern school of history-writing. He was a +man of means, a friend of Gibbon, his fellow-officer in the militia, and +like him a strong Tory, though unlike him he could not keep his politics +out of his history. Although Mitford's hatred of democracy, whether +well- or ill-founded, makes him sometimes unfair, and though his +_History of Greece_ contains some blunders, it is on the whole rather a +pity that it should have been superseded to the extent to which it +actually has been by those of Grote and Thirlwall. For it is not more +prejudiced and much better written than Grote's, while it has greater +liveliness and zest than the Bishop's. It occupied more than thirty +years in publication, the first volume appearing in 1784, the last in +1818. + +While Roscoe and Mitford were thus dealing with foreign and ancient +subjects, English history became the theme of a somewhat younger pair of +historians, one of whom, Sharon Turner, was born in 1768 and died in +1847; while John Lingard, born three years later, outlived Turner by +four. Lingard was a Roman Catholic priest, and after being educated at +Douai, divided most of his time between pastoral work and teaching at +the newly founded Roman Catholic school of Ushaw. He was the author of +what still retains the credit of being the best history of England on +the great scale, in point of the union of accuracy, skilful arrangement, +fairness (despite his inevitable prepossessions), and competent literary +form,--no mean credit for a member of an unpopular minority to have +attained in a century of the most active historical investigation. +Turner was more of a specialist and particularist, and his style is not +very estimable. He wrote many books on English history, those on the +later periods being of little value. But his _History of the +Anglo-Saxons_, first issued in 1799, was based on thorough research, and +may be said to have for the first time rescued the period of origins of +English history from the discreditable condition of perfunctory, +traditional, and second- or third-hand treatment in which most, if not +all, previous historians of England had been content to leave it. + +Sir Francis Palgrave, another historian to whom the student of early +English history is deeply indebted, was born in London in 1788, his +paternal name being Cohen. He took to the law, and early devoted himself +both within and outside his profession to genealogical and antiquarian +research. Before much attention had been paid in France itself to Old +French, he published a collection of Anglo-Norman poems in 1818, and +from these studies he passed to that of English history as such. He was +knighted in 1832, and made Deputy-Keeper of the Records in 1838; his +tenure of this post being only terminated by his death in 1861. Palgrave +edited many State documents (writs, calendars, rolls, and so forth), and +in his last years executed a _History of Normandy and England_ of great +value. His considerable literary power became more considerable still in +two of his sons: the eldest, for some time past Professor of Poetry at +Oxford, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, being still alive, and therefore merely to +be mentioned; while the second, William Gifford, who was born in 1826 +and died in 1888, Minister at Monte Video, was a man of the most +brilliant talents and the most varied career. He was a soldier, a +Jesuit, a traveller in the most forbidden parts of Arabia at the expense +of a foreign country, and for nearly a quarter of a century a member of +the consular and diplomatic service of his own. His _Narrative_ of his +Arabian journey, his _Dutch Guiana_, and some remarkable poems are only +a few of his works, all of which have strong character. + +Nearly contemporary with these was Dr. Thomas M'Crie (1772-1835), whose +_Lives of Knox_ (1812) and _Melville_ (1819) entitle him to something +like the title of Historian of Scotch Presbyterianism in its militant +period. M'Crie, who was styled by Hallam (a person not given to +nicknames), "the Protestant Hildebrand," was a worthy and learned man of +untiring industry, and his subjects so intimately concern not merely +Scottish but British history for nearly two centuries, that his handling +of them could not but be important. But he was desperately prejudiced, +and his furious attack on Sir Walter Scott's _Old Mortality_, by which +he is perhaps known to more persons than by his own far from +uninteresting works, argues a crass deficiency in intellectual and +aesthetic comprehension. + +The tenth decade of the eighteenth century was as much a decade of +historians as the eighth had been a decade of poets; and with Milman and +Tytler born in 1791, Alison in 1792, Grote in 1794, Arnold and Carlyle +in 1795, Thirlwall in 1797, and Macaulay in 1800, it may probably +challenge comparison with any period of equal length. The batch falls +into three pretty distinct classes, and the individual members of it are +also pretty widely separated in importance, so that it may be more +convenient to discuss them in the inverse order of their merit rather +than in the direct order of their births. + +Patrick Fraser Tytler, son and grandson of historians (his grandfather +William being the first and not the worst champion of Queen Mary against +the somewhat Philistine estimates of Hume and Robertson, and his father +Alexander a Professor of History, a Scotch Judge, and an excellent +writer in various kinds of _belles lettres_), was a man of the finest +character, the friend of most of the great men of letters at Edinburgh +in the age of Scott and Jeffrey, and the author of an excellent _History +of Scotland_ from Alexander the Third to the Union of the Crowns. He was +born in 1791, was called to the Scotch Bar in 1813, and died young for a +historian (a class which has so much to do with Time that he is apt to +be merciful to it) in 1849. He was perhaps hardly a man of genius, but +he commanded universal respect. Sir Archibald Alison was the son of a +clergyman of the same name, who, after taking orders in England and +holding some benefices there, became known as the author of _Essays on +the Principles of Taste_, which possess a good deal of formal and some +real merit. Archibald the younger was highly distinguished at the +University of Edinburgh, was called to the Scotch Bar, and distinguished +himself there also, being ultimately appointed Sheriff of Lanarkshire. +Like most of the brighter wits among his immediate contemporaries in +Scotland (we have the indisputable testimony of Jeffrey to the fact) +Alison was an out-and-out Tory, and a constant contributor to +_Blackwood_, while his literary activity took very numerous shapes. At +last he began, and in the twenty years from 1839 to 1859 carried +through, a _History of Europe during the French Revolution_, completed +by one of _Europe from the Fall of the First to the Accession of the +Third Napoleon_. He died in 1867. It was rather unfortunate for Alison +that he did not undertake this great work until the period of Liberal +triumph which marked the middle decades of the century had well set in. +It was still more unlucky, and it could less be set down to the +operations of unkind chance, that in many of the qualifications of the +writer in general, and the historical writer in particular, he was +deficient. He had energy and industry; he was much less inaccurate than +it was long the fashion to represent him; a high sense of patriotism and +the political virtues generally, a very fair faculty of judging +evidence, and a thorough interest in his subject were his. But his book +was most unfortunately diffuse, earning its author the _sobriquet_ of +"Mr. Wordy," and it was conspicuously lacking in grasp, both in the +marshalling of events and in the depicting of characters. Critics, even +when they sympathised, have never liked it; but contrary to the wont of +very lengthy histories, it found considerable favour with the public, +who, as the French gibe has it, were not "hampered by the style," and +who probably found in the popular explanation of a great series of +important and interesting affairs all that they cared for. Nor is it +unlikely that this popularity rather exaggerated the ill-will of the +critics themselves. Alison is not quotable; he is, even after youth, +read with no small difficulty; but it would be no bad thing if other +periods of history had been treated in his manner and spirit. + +Henry Hart Milman belongs to very much the same class of historian as +Hallam, but unlike Hallam he was a poet, and, though a Broad Churchman +of the days before the nickname was given, more of an adherent to the +imaginative and traditional side of things. His father was a King's +Physician, and he was educated at Eton and Brasenose. He obtained the +Newdigate, and after bringing out his best play _Fazio_ (of which more +will be said later), took orders and received the vicarage of St. +Mary's, Reading. Some poems of merit in the second class, including some +hymns very nearly in the first, followed, and in 1821 he became +Professor of Poetry at Oxford, where six years later he was Bampton +Lecturer. It was in 1829 that Milman, who had been a frequent +contributor to the _Quarterly Review_, began the series of his works on +ecclesiastical history with the _History of the Jews_, the weakest of +them (for Milman was not a very great Hebraist, and while endeavouring +to avoid rigid orthodoxy did not satisfy the demands of the newer +heterodox criticism). The _History of Christianity to the Abolition of +Paganism_ was better (1840), and the _History of Latin Christianity_ +(1854) better still. This last indeed, based on an erudition which +enabled Milman to re-edit Gibbon with advantage, is a great book, and +will probably live. For Milman here really _knew_; he had (like most +poets who write prose with fair practice) an excellent style; and he was +able--as many men who have had knowledge have not been able, and as many +who have had style have not tried or have failed to do--to rise to the +height of a really great argument, and treat it with the grasp and ease +which are the soul of history. That he owed much to Gibbon himself is +certain; that he did not fail to use his pupilage to that greatest of +historians so as to rank among the best of his followers is not less +certain, and is high enough praise for any man. He received the Deanery +of St. Paul's in 1849, and held it till his death in 1868, having +worthily sustained the glory of this the most literary of all great +preferments in the Church of England by tradition, and having earned +among English ecclesiastical historians a place like that of Napier +among their military comrades. + +Hallam and Milman were both, as has been said, Oxford men, and the +unmistakable impress of that University was on both, though less on +Hallam than on Milman. It is all the more interesting that their chief +historical contemporaries of the same class were, the one a Cambridge +man, and one of the most distinguished, the other not a University man +at all. Both Grote and Thirlwall, as it happens, were educated at the +same public school, Charterhouse. George Grote, the elder of them, born +in 1794, was the son of a banker, and himself carried on that business +for many years of his life. He was an extreme Liberal, or as it then +began to be called, Radical, and a chief of the Philosophical Radicals +of his time--persons who followed Bentham and the elder Mill. He was +elected member for the City in the first Reform Parliament and held the +seat for nine years; though if he had not retired he would probably have +been turned out. Leaving Parliament in 1841, he left business two years +later, and gave himself up to his _History of Greece_, which was +published in the ten years between 1846 and 1856. He died in 1871, and +was buried in Westminster Abbey. So was, four years later, his +school-fellow, fellow-historian of Greece, and junior by three years, +Connop Thirlwall. Thirlwall was one of the rare examples of +extraordinary infant precocity (he could read Latin at three and Greek +at four) who have been great scholars and men of distinction in after +life, and to a ripe age. He was of a Northumbrian family, but was born +at Stepney. From Charterhouse he went rather early (in 1814) to Trinity +College, Cambridge, where he had almost the most brilliant undergraduate +career on record, and duly gained his fellowship. He entered Lincoln's +Inn, was actually called to the Bar, but preferred the Church, and took +orders in his thirtieth year. He had already shown a strong leaning to +theology, and had translated Schleiermacher. He now returned to +Cambridge, taking both tutorial work and cure of souls; but in 1834 his +Liberal views attracted the disfavour of Christopher Wordsworth, Master +of Trinity, and Thirlwall, resigning his tutorship, was consoled by +Brougham with a Yorkshire living. Nor was this long his only preferment, +for the Whigs were not too well off for clergymen who united +scholarship, character, and piety, and he was made Bishop of St. David's +in 1840. He held the see for thirty-four years, working untiringly, +earning justly (though his orthodoxy was of a somewhat Broad character, +and he could reconcile his conscience to voting for the disestablishment +of the Irish Church) the character of one of the most exemplary bishops +of the century, and seldom dining without a cat on his shoulder. + +Thirlwall wrote many Charges, some of them famous, some delightful +letters, part of a translation of Niebuhr, and some essays, while Grote, +besides his historical work, produced some political and other work +before it, with a large but not very good book on Plato, and the +beginning of another on Aristotle after it. But it is by their +_Histories of Greece_ that they must live in literature. These histories +(of which Grote's was planned and begun as early as 1823, though not +completed till long afterwards, while Thirlwall's began to appear in +1835, and was finished just after Grote's saw the light) were both +written with a certain general similarity of point of view as antidotes +to Mitford, and as putting the Liberal view of the ever memorable and +ever typical history of the Greek states. But in other respects they +diverge widely; and it has been a constant source of regret to scholars +that the more popular, and as the French would say _tapageur_, of the +two, to a considerable extent eclipsed the solid worth and the excellent +form of Thirlwall. Grote's history displays immense painstaking and no +inconsiderable scholarship, though it is very nearly as much a "party +pamphlet" as Macaulay's own, the advocate's client being in this case +not merely the Athenian democracy but even the Athenian demagogue. Yet +it to a great extent redeems this by the vivid way in which it makes the +subject alive, and turns Herodotus and Thucydides, Demosthenes and +Xenophon, from dead texts and school-books into theses of eager and +stimulating interest. But it has absolutely no style; its scale is much +too great; the endless discussions and arguments on quite minor points +tend to throw the whole out of focus, and to disaccustom the student's +eye and mind to impartial and judicial handling; and the reader +constantly sighs for the placid Olympian grasp of Gibbon, nay, even for +the confident dogmatism of Macaulay himself, instead of the perpetual +singlestick of argument which clatters and flourishes away to the utter +discomposure of the dignity of the Historic Muse. + +It is possible, on the other hand, that Thirlwall may have sacrificed a +little too much, considering his age and its demands, to mere +dispassionate dignity. He is seldom picturesque, and indeed he never +tries to be so. But to a scholarship naturally far superior to Grote's, +he united a much fairer and more judicial mind, and the faculty of +writing--instead of loose stuff not exactly ungrammatical nor always +uncomely, but entirely devoid of any grace of style--an excellent kind +of classical English, but slightly changed from the best eighteenth +century models. And he had what Grote lacked, the gift of seeing that +the historian need not--nay, that he ought not to--parade every detail +of the arguments by which he has reached his conclusions; but should +state those conclusions themselves, reserving himself for occasional +emergencies in which process as well as result may be properly +exhibited. It is fair to say, in putting this curious pair forward as +examples respectively of the popular and scholarly methods of historical +writing, that Grote's learning and industry were very much more than +popular, while Thirlwall's sense and style might with advantage have put +on, now and then, a little more pomp and circumstance. But still the +contrast holds; and until fresh discoveries like that of the _Athenian +Polity_ accumulate to an extent which calls for and obtains a new real +historian of Greece, it is Thirlwall and not Grote who deserves the +first rank as such in English. + +Intimately connected with all these historians in time and style, but +having over them the temporary advantage of being famous in another way, +and the, as some think, permanent disadvantage of falling prematurely +out of public favour, was Thomas Arnold. He was born at Cowes, in the +Isle of Wight, on 13th June 1795, and was educated at Winchester and at +Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At the age of twenty he was elected a +fellow of Oriel--a distinction which was, and remained for two decades, +almost the highest in the University--and he gained both Chancellor's +Essay prizes, for Latin and English. Oriel was not in his time, as it +was very shortly afterwards, a centre of ecclesiastical orthodoxy; but +rather the home of a curious transition blend of thought which in +different persons took the high-and-dry or the Rationalist direction, +and was only generally opposed to Evangelicalism. Arnold himself +inclined to the Liberal side, and had also strong personal gifts for +teaching. He took orders, but neither became a tutor nor took a living, +and established himself at Laleham, on the Thames, to take private +pupils. After ten years' practice here he was elected to the +Head-mastership of Rugby, a school then, after vicissitudes, holding +little if anything more than a medium place among those English Grammar +Schools which ranked below the great schools of Eton, Harrow, +Westminster, Winchester, and Charterhouse. How he succeeded in placing +it on something like an equality with these, and how on the other hand +he became, as it were, the apostle of the infant Broad Church School +which held aloof alike from Evangelicals and Tractarians, are points +which do not directly concern us. His more than indirect influence on +literature was great; for few schools have contributed to it, in the +same time, a greater number of famous writers than Rugby did under his +head-mastership. His direct connection with it was limited to a fair +number of miscellaneous works, many sermons, an edition of Thucydides, +and a _History of Rome_ which did not proceed (owing to his death in +1842, just after he had been appointed Regius Professor of Modern +History at Oxford) beyond the Second Punic War. Arnold, once perhaps +injudiciously extolled by adoring pupils, and the defender of a theory +of churchmanship which strains rather to the uttermost the principle of +unorthodox economy, has rather sunk between the undying disapproval of +the orthodox and the fact that the unorthodox have long left his +standpoint. But his style is undoubtedly of its own kind scholarly and +excellent; the matter of his history suffers from the common fault of +taking Niebuhr at too high a valuation. + +Thomas Babington Macaulay (who may be conveniently discussed before +Carlyle, though he was Carlyle's junior by five years, inasmuch as, even +putting relative critical estimate aside, he died much earlier and +represented on the whole an older style of thought) was born at Rothley +Temple in Leicestershire on 25th October 1800. His father, Zachary +Macaulay, though a very active agitator against the Slave Trade, was a +strong Tory; and the son's conversion to Whig opinions was effected at +some not clearly ascertained period after he had reached manhood. A very +precocious child, he was at first privately educated, but entered +Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of eighteen. Here he fell in with +a set somewhat but not much less distinguished than that of the famous +time, about ten years later, of which Tennyson was the centre--a set the +most brilliant member of which, besides Macaulay, was the poet Praed. +Praed had been accustomed to journalism before he left Eton, and had +made acquaintance at Windsor with the bookseller Knight, for whose +_Quarterly Magazine_ both he and Macaulay wrote some very good things. +Macaulay himself obtained the Chancellor's prize for English poems on +"Pompeii" and "Evening," in two successive years 1819 and 1820; and +after a very distinguished undergraduate career was elected fellow of +his college. He went to the Bar, and his father's fortune, which had +been a good one, being lost, his chances were for a time uncertain. In +1825, however, he won the admiration of Jeffrey and a place on the +_Edinburgh Review_ by his well-known, and slightly gaudy, but +wonderfully fresh and stimulating article on Milton; and literature, +which had always been his ideal employment, seemed already likely to +yield him a fair subsistence--for review-writing was at that time much +more highly paid than it is at present. Moreover the Whigs, on the eve +of their long postponed triumph, were looking out for young men of +talent; and Macaulay, being recruited by them, was put into Lord +Lansdowne's pocket-borough of Calne. In the Reform debates themselves he +distinguished himself greatly, and after the Bill was carried, having +been elected for Leeds, he was not long in receiving his reward. It was +munificent, for he, a man of little more than thirty, who had made no +reputation at the Bar, though much elsewhere, was appointed Legal Member +of Council in India with a salary very much of which could in those days +be saved by a careful man, especially if, like Macaulay, he was +unmarried. Accordingly when, after between four and five years' stay, +Macaulay in 1838 returned home, he was in possession of means sufficient +to enable him to devote himself without fear or hindrance to literary +and political pursuits, while his fame had been raised higher during his +absence by his contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_. Indeed his +Indian experiences furnished the information--erroneous in some cases +and partisan in others, but brilliantly used--enabling him to write the +famous essays on Clive and on Hastings, where his historical method is +at almost its best. He was elected member for Edinburgh, a very high +compliment, in 1839; and next year became Secretary for War. In 1842 and +1843 respectively he established his position in verse and prose by +publishing the _Lays of Ancient Rome_ and a collection of his _Essays_; +and in 1846 he was made Postmaster-General. But his support of the +Maynooth Grant offended the Protestantism of his constituents, and he +lost his seat, and for the time his political opportunities, in 1847. +The disaster was no disaster for literature: he had long been employed +on a _History of England from the Accession of James II._, and being now +able to devote his whole time to it, he published the first volumes in +1848 with astonishing success. + +He was re-elected for Edinburgh in 1852, published the third and fourth +volumes of his History in 1855 with success greater in pecuniary ways +and otherwise than even that of their forerunners, was raised to the +Upper House as Lord Macaulay of Rothley in 1857, and died two years +later, on 28th December 1859, of heart disease. Some personal +peculiarities of Macaulay's--his extraordinary reading and memory, his +brilliant but rather tyrannical conversation, his undoubting +self-confidence--were pretty well known in his lifetime, and did not +always create a prejudice in his favour. But a great revolution in this +respect was brought about by the _Life_ of him, produced a good many +years later by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan--a Life, standing for +the interest of its matter and the skill and taste of its manner, not +too far below the masterpieces of Boswell and Lockhart. + +The literary personality of Macaulay, though a great one in all +respects, is neither complex nor unequally present, and it is therefore +desirable to discuss all its manifestations together. In the order of +importance and of bulk his work may be divided into verse, prose-essays, +and history, for his speeches less directly concern us, and are very +little more than essays adroitly enough adjusted so as not to be tedious +to the hearer. In all three capacities he was eminently popular; and in +all three his popularity has brought with it a sort of reaction, partly +justified, partly unjust. The worst brunt of this reaction has fallen +upon his verse, the capital division of which, the _Lays of Ancient +Rome_, was persistently decried by Mr. Matthew Arnold, the critic of +most authority in the generation immediately succeeding Macaulay's. A +poet of the very highest class Macaulay was not; his way of thought was +too positive, too clear, too destitute either of mystery or of dream, to +command or to impart the true poetical mirage, to "make the common as if +it were not common." His best efforts of this kind are in small and not +very generally known things, the "Jacobite's Epitaph," "The Last +Buccaneer." But his ballads earlier and later, _Ivry_, _The Armada_, +_Naseby_, and the Roman quartet, exhibit the result of a consummate +literary faculty with a real native gift for rhythm and metre, applying +the lessons of the great Romantic generation with extraordinary vigour +and success, and not without considerable eloquence and refinement. It +is a gross and vulgar critical error to deem Macaulay's poetical effects +vulgar or gross. They are _popular_; they hit exactly that scheme of +poetry which the general ear can appreciate and the general brain +understand. They are coin for general circulation; but they are not base +coin. Hundreds and thousands of immature and 'prentice tastes have been +educated to the enjoyment of better things by them; thousands and tens +of thousands of tastes, respectable at least, have found in them the +kind of poetry which they can like, and beyond which they are not fitted +to go. And it would be a very great pity if there were ever wanting +critical appreciations which, while relishing things more exquisite and +understanding things more esoteric, can still taste and savour the +simple genuine fare of poetry which Macaulay offers. There are few wiser +proverbs than that which cautions us against demanding "better bread +than is made of wheat," and the poetical bread of the _Lays of Ancient +Rome_ is an honest household loaf that no healthy palate will reject. + +In the second division, that of essay writing, Macaulay occupies a +position both absolutely and relatively higher. That the best verse +ranks above even the best prose is not easily disputable; that prose +which is among the very best of its own particular kind ranks above +verse which though good is not the best, may be asserted without any +fear. And in their own kind of essay, Macaulay's are quite supreme. +Jeffrey, a master of writing and a still greater master of editing, with +more than twenty years' practice in criticism, asked him "where he got +that style?" The question was not entirely unanswerable. Macaulay had +taken not a little from Gibbon; he had taken something from a then still +living contributor of Jeffrey's own, Hazlitt. But his private and +personal note was after all uppermost in the compound. It had appeared +early (it can be seen in things of his written when he was an +undergraduate). It owed much to the general atmosphere of the century, +to the habit of drawing phrase, illustration, idea, not merely from the +vernacular or from classical authorities, but from the great writers of +earlier European literature. And it would probably have been impossible +without the considerable body of forerunners which the _Edinburgh_, the +_Quarterly_, and other things of which some notice has been given in a +former chapter, had supplied. But still the individual character reigns +supreme. + +Macaulay's Essays are in something more than the ordinary loose +acceptation of the term a household word; and it cannot be necessary to +single out individual instances where almost all are famous, and where +all deserve their fame. The "Milton" and the "Southey," the "Pitt" and +the "Chatham," the "Addison" and the "Horace Walpole," the "Clive" and +the "Hastings," the "Frederick the Great" and the "Madame D'Arblay," the +"Restoration Dramatists" and the "Boswell," the "Hallam" and the +"Ranke," present with a marvellous consistency the same merits and the +same defects. The defects are serious enough. In the first place the +system, which Macaulay did not invent, but which he carried to +perfection, of regarding the particular book in hand less as a subject +of elaborate and minute criticism and exposition than as a mere +starting-point from which to pursue the critic's own views of the +subject, inevitably leads to unfairness, especially in matters of pure +literature. Macaulay's most famous performance in this latter kind, the +crushing review of the unlucky Robert Montgomery, though well enough +deserved in the particular case, escapes this condemnation only to fall +under another, that of looking at the parts rather than at the whole. It +is quite certain that, given their plan, the two famous critiques of +Tennyson and Keats, in the _Quarterly_ and in _Blackwood_, are well +enough justified. The critic looks only at the weak parts, and he judges +the weak parts only by the stop-watch. But, on his own wide and more +apparently generous method, Macaulay was exposed to equal dangers, and +succumbed to them less excusably. He had strong prejudices, and it is +impossible for any one who reads him with knowledge not to see that the +vindication of those prejudices, rather than the exposition and +valuation of the subject, was what he had first at heart. He was too +well informed (though, especially in the Indian Essays, he was sometimes +led astray by his authorities), and he was too honest a man, to be +untrustworthy in positive statement. But though he practised little in +the courts, he had the born advocate's gift, or drawback, of inclination +to _suppressio veri_ and _suggestio falsi_, and he has a heavy account +to make up under these heads. Even under them perhaps he has less to +answer for than on the charge of a general superficiality and +shallowness, which is all the more dangerous because of the apparently +transparent thoroughness of his handling, and because of the actual +clearness and force with which he both sees and puts his view. For a +first draft of a subject Macaulay is incomparable, if his readers will +only be content to take it for a first draft, and to feel that they must +fill up and verify, that they must deepen and widen. But the heights and +depths of the subject he never gives, and perhaps he never saw them. + +Part of this is no doubt to be set down to the quality of his style; +part to a weakness of his, which was not so much readiness to accept any +conclusion that was convenient as a constitutional incapacity for not +making up his mind. To leave a thing in half lights, in compromise, to +take it, as the legal phrase of the country of his ancestors has it, _ad +avizandum_, was to Macaulay abhorrent and impossible. He must +"conclude," and he was rather too apt to do so by "quailing, crushing, +and quelling" all difficulties of opposing arguments and qualifications. +He simply would not have an unsolved problem mystery. Strafford was a +"rancorous renegade"; Swift a sort of gifted Judas; Bacon a mean fellow +with a great intellect; Dryden again a renegade, though not rancorous; +Marlborough a self-seeking traitor of genius. And all these conclusions +were enforced in their own style--the style of _l'homme meme_. It was +rather teasingly antithetical, "Tom's snip-snap" as the jealous +smartness of Brougham called it; it was somewhat mechanical in its +arrangement of narrative, set passages of finer writing, cunningly +devised summaries of facts, comparisons, contrasts (to show the +writer's learning and dazzle the reader with names), exordium, +iteration, peroration, and so forth. But it observed a very high +standard of classical English, a little intolerant of neologism, but not +stiff nor jejune. It had an almost unexampled--a certainly +unsurpassed--power (slightly helped by repetition perhaps) of bringing +the picture that the writer saw, the argument that he thought, the +sentiment that he felt, before the reader's eyes, mind, and feeling. +And, as indeed follows from this, it was pre-eminently clear. It is +perhaps the clearest style in English that does not, like those of Swift +and Cobbett, deliberately or scornfully eschew rhetorical ornament. What +Macaulay means you never, being any degree short of an idiot, can fail +to understand; and yet he gives you the sense, equipped with a very +considerable amount of preparation and trimming. It would not merely +have been ungrateful, it would have been positively wrong, if his +audience, specially trained as most of them were to his standpoint of +Whig Reformer, had failed to hail him as one of the greatest writers +that had ever been known. Nor would it be much less wrong if judges very +differently equipped and constituted were to refuse him a high place +among great writers. + +The characteristics of the _Essays_ reproduce themselves on a magnified +scale so exactly in the _History_ that the foregoing criticism applies +with absolute fidelity to the later and larger, as well as to the +earlier and more minute work. But it would not be quite fair to say that +no new merits appear. There are no new defects; though the difference of +the scope and character of the undertaking intensifies in degree, as +well as magnifies in bulk, the faults of advocacy and of partiality +which have caused the book to be dismissed, with a flippancy only too +well deserved by its own treatment of opponents, as "a Whig pamphlet in +four octavo volumes." Yet the width of study and the grasp of results, +which, though remarkable, were not exactly extraordinary, in the compass +and employed on the subject of a _Review_ article, became altogether +amazing and little short of miraculous in this enlarged field. One of +the earliest and one of the best passages, the view of the state of +England at the death of Charles the Second, may challenge comparison, as +a clearly arranged and perfectly mastered collection of innumerable +minute facts sifted out of a thousand different sources, with anything +in history ancient or modern. The scale of the book is undoubtedly too +great; and if it had been carried, as the author originally intended, to +a date "within the memory of" his contemporaries, it would have required +the life of Old Parr to complete it and the patience of Job to read it +through. The necessity of a hero is a necessity felt by all the nobler +sort of writers. But the choice of William of Orange for the purpose +was, to say the least, unlucky; and the low morality which he had +himself, in an earlier work, confessed as to the statesmen of the period +imparted an additional stimulus to the historian's natural tendency to +be unfair to his political opponents, in the vain hope, by deepening the +blacks, to get a sort of whiteness upon the grays. It has further to be +confessed that independent examination of separate points is not very +favourable to Macaulay's trustworthiness. He never tells a falsehood; +but he not seldom contrives to convey one, and he constantly conceals +the truth. Still, the general picture is so vivid and stimulating, the +mastery of materials is so consummate, and the beauty of occasional +passages--the story of Monmouth's Conspiracy, that of James' insane +persecution of Magdalen College, that of the Trial of the Seven Bishops, +that of the Siege of Londonderry--so seductive, that the most hostile +criticism which is not prepared to shut eyes and ears to anything but +faults cannot refuse admiration. And it ought not to be omitted that +Macaulay was practically the first historian who not merely examined the +literature of his subject with unfailing care and attention, but took +the trouble to inspect the actual places with the zeal of a topographer +or an antiquary. That this added greatly to the vividness and +picturesque character of his descriptions need hardly be said; that it +often resulted in a distinct gain to historical knowledge is certain. +But perhaps not its least merit was the putting down in a practically +imperishable form, and in the clearest possible manner, of a vast number +of interesting details which time is only too quick to sweep away. The +face of England has changed more since Macaulay's time, though a bare +generation since, than it had changed in the four or five generations +between the day of his theme and his own; and thus he rescued for us at +once the present and the past. + +It is almost impossible to imagine a greater contrast between two +contemporaries of the same nation, both men of letters of the first +rank, than that which exists between Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle. +In the subjects to which both had affinity there was a rather remarkable +connection. Macaulay's education rather than his sympathies made him +something of a master of at least the formal part of poetry, in which +Carlyle could do nothing. But essentially they were both writers of +prose; they were both men in whom the historico-politico-social +interests were much greater than the purely literary, the purely +artistic, or the purely scientific--though just as Carlyle was a bad +verse-writer or none at all, Macaulay a good one, so Carlyle was a good +mathematician, Macaulay a bad one or none at all. But in the point of +view from which they regarded the subjects with which they dealt, and in +the style in which they treated them, they were poles asunder. Indeed it +may be questioned whether "the style is the point of view" would not be +a better form of the famous deliverance than that which, in full or +truncated form, has obtained currency. + +Carlyle was born on the 4th December 1795 at Ecclefechan (the Entepfuhl +of the _Sartor_), in Dumfriesshire, being the son of a stone-mason. He +was educated first at the parish school, then at that of Annan (the +nearest town), and was about fifteen when he was sent, in the usual way +of Scotch boys with some wits and no money, to the University of +Edinburgh. His destination was equally of course the Church, but he very +early developed that dislike to all fixed formularies which +characterised him through life, and which perhaps was not his greatest +characteristic. To mathematics, on the other hand, he took pretty +kindly, though he seems to have early exhausted the fascinations of +them. Like most men of no means who have little fancy for any of the +regular professions, he attempted teaching; and as a schoolmaster at +Annan, Haddington, and Kirkcaldy, or a private tutor (his chief +experience in which art was with Charles Buller), he spent no small +number of years, doing also some hack-work in the way of translating, +writing for Brewster's _Encyclopaedia_, and contributing to the _London +Magazine_, that short-lived but fertile nurse of genius. The most +remarkable of these productions was the _Life of Schiller_, which was +published as a volume in 1825, his thirtieth year, at which time he was +a resident in London and a frequenter--a not too amiable one--of +Coleridge's circle at Highgate and of other literary places. + +The most important event in his life took place in 1826, when he married +Miss Jane Welsh, a young lady who traced her descent to John Knox, who +had some property, who had a genius of her own, and who was all the more +determined to marry a man of genius. She had hesitated between Irving +and Carlyle, and, whatever came of it, there can be no doubt that she +was right in preferring the somewhat uncouth and extremely undeveloped +tutor who had taught her several things,--whether love in the proper +sense was among them or not will always be a moot point. The _Edinburgh +Review_ was kind to Carlyle after its fashion, and he wrote for it; but +Jeffrey, though very well disposed both to Carlyle and to his wife, +could not endure the changes which soon came on his style, and might +have addressed the celebrated query which, as mentioned, just at the +same time he addressed in delighted surprise to Macaulay, "Where did you +get that style," to Carlyle in the identical words but with a very +different meaning. Even had it been different, it was impossible that +Carlyle should serve anywhere or any one; and his mind, not an early +ripening one, was even yet, at the age of thirty-two, in a very +unorganised condition. He resolved to retire to his wife's farm of +Craigenputtock in Nithsdale; and Mrs. Carlyle had the almost +unparalleled heroism to consent to this. For it must be remembered that +her husband, with the exception of the revenue of a few essays, was +living on her means, that he undertook no professional duties, and that +in the farmhouse she had to perform those of a servant as well as those +of a wife. Whatever other opinions may be passed on this episode of +Carlyle's life, which lasted from 1828 to 1834, there can be no doubt +that it "made" him. He did much positive work there, including all his +best purely literary essays. There he wrote _Sartor Resartus_, his +manifesto and proclamation, a wild book which, to its eternal honour, +_Fraser's Magazine_ accepted, probably under the influence of Lockhart, +with whom, strangely different as they were, Carlyle was always on good, +though never on intimate terms. There too was written great part of the +earlier form of the _French Revolution_. But the greatest thing that he +did at Craigenputtock was the thorough fermentation, clearing, and +settling of himself. When he went there, at nearly thirty-three, it was +more uncertain what would come of him than it is in the case of many a +man when he leaves the University at three and twenty. When he left it, +at close on his fortieth year, the drama of his literary life was +complete, though only a few lines of it were written. + +That drama lasted in actual time for forty-seven years longer; and for +more than the first thirty of them fresh and ever fresh acts and scenes +carried it on. For the public his place was taken once and for all by +the _History of the French Revolution_, which, after alarming +vicissitudes (John Stuart Mill having borrowed the first volume in MS. +and lent it to a lady, to be destroyed by her housemaid), appeared in +1837. From at least that time Mrs. Carlyle's aspiration was fulfilled. +There were gain-sayers of course,--it may almost be said that genius +which is not gainsaid is not genius,--there were furious decriers of +style, temper, and so forth. But nine out of every ten men at least +whose opinion was worth taking knew that a new star of the first +magnitude had been added to English literature, however much they might +think its rays in some respects baleful. + +Lecturing, after the example set chiefly by Coleridge and Hazlitt, was +at this time a favourite resource for those men of letters whose line +of composition was not of the gainfulest; and Carlyle delivered several +courses, some of which are unreported while others survive only in +inadequate shapes. But _Heroes and Hero-Worship_ was at first delivered +orally, though it was not printed till 1841; and about the same time, or +rather earlier, appeared the _Miscellaneous Essays_--a collection of his +work at its freshest, least mannered, most varied, and in some respects +best. _Chartism_ (1839) and _Past and Present_ (1843) reflected the +political problems of the time and Carlyle's interest in them. But it +was not till 1845 that a second, in the ordinary sense, great work, +_Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_, was published. Five years +passed without anything substantive from him, but in 1850 appeared +_Latter-Day Pamphlets_, the most brilliantly satiric, and in 1851 the +softest, most finished, and (save theologically) least debatable of all +his books, the exquisite biography in miniature called the _Life of +Sterling_. Then he engaged, it is difficult to say whether by ill-luck +or not, on the last and largest of his great single undertakings, the +_History of Frederick the Great_. Fourteen years were passed, as a +matter of composition, in "the valley of the shadow of Frederick," as +his wife put it: half the time (from 1858 to 1865) saw the actual +publication. Shortly after the completion of this, Carlyle visited +Edinburgh to receive the Lord Rectorship of his University, and soon +after his wife died. He survived her fifteen years, but did nothing more +of great importance; indeed, he was seventy-one when this loss happened. +Some short things on "John Knox," on "The Early Kings of Norway," and a +famous letter on "Shooting Niagara" (the Reform Bill of 1867), with a +few more, appeared; but he was chiefly occupied (as far as he was +occupied at all) in writing reminiscences, and arranging memorials of +Mrs. Carlyle. The publication of these books after his death by the late +Mr. Froude led to a violent conflict of opinion both as to the propriety +of the publication and as to the character of Carlyle himself. + +This conflict fortunately concerns us but little here. It is certain +that Carlyle--springing from the lower ranks of society, educated +excellently as far as the intellect was concerned, but without attention +to such trifles as the habit (which his future wife early remarked in +him) of putting bread and butter in his tea, a martyr from very early +years to dyspepsia, fostering a retiring spirit and not too social +temper, thoroughly convinced that the times were out of joint and not at +all thoroughly convinced that he or any one could set them right, +finally possessed of an intensely religious nature which by accident or +waywardness had somehow thrown itself out of gear with religion--was not +a happy man himself or likely to make any one else happy who lived with +him. But it is certain also that both in respect to his wife and to +those men, famous or not famous, of whom he has left too often unkindly +record, his bark was much worse than his bite. And it is further certain +that Mrs. Carlyle was no down-trodden drudge, but a woman of brains +almost as alert as her husband's and a tongue almost as sharp as his, +who had deliberately made her election of the vocation of being "wife to +a man of genius," and who received what she had bargained for to the +uttermost farthing. There will always be those who will think that Mr. +Froude, doubtless with the best intentions, made a very great mistake; +that, at any rate for many years after Carlyle's death, only a strictly +genuine but judicious selection of the Reminiscences and Memorials +should have been published, or else that the whole should have been +worked into a real biography in which the frame and setting could have +given the relief that the text required. But already, after more than +the due voices, there is some peace on the subject; and a temporary wave +of neglect, partly occasioned by this very controversy, was to be +expected. + +That this wave will pass may be asserted with a fulness and calmness of +assurance not to be surpassed in any similar case. Carlyle's influence +during a great part of the second and the whole of the third quarter of +this century was so enormous, his life was so prolonged, and the general +tone of public thought and public policy which has prevailed since some +time before his death has been so adverse to his temper, that the +reaction which is all but inevitable in all cases was certain to be +severe in his. And if this were a history of thought instead of being a +history of the verbal expression of thought, it would be possible and +interesting to explain this reaction, and to forecast the certain +rebound from it. As it is, however, we have to do with Carlyle as a man +of letters only; and if his position as the greatest English man of +letters of the century in prose be disputed, it will generally be found +that the opposition is due to some not strictly literary cause, while it +is certain that any competitor who is set up can be dislodged by a +fervent and well-equipped Carlylian without very much difficulty. + +He has been classed here as a historian, and though the bulk of his work +is very great and its apparent variety considerable, it will be found +that history and her sister biography, even when his subjects bore an +appearance of difference, always in reality engaged his attention. His +three greatest books, containing more than half his work in bulk,--_The +French Revolution_, the _Cromwell_, and the _Frederick_,--are all openly +and avowedly historical. The _Schiller_ and the _Sterling_ are +biographies; the _Sartor Resartus_ a fantastic autobiography. Nearly all +the _Essays_, even those which are most literary in subject--all the +_Lectures on Heroes_, the greater part of _Past and Present_, _The Early +Kings of Norway_, the _John Knox_, are more or less plainly and strictly +historical or biographical. Even _Chartism_, the non-antique part of +_Past and Present_, and the _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, deal with politics +in the sense in which politics are the principal agent in making +history, regard them constantly and almost solely in their actual or +probable effect on the life-story of the nation, and to no small extent +of its individual members. Out of the historic relation of nation or +individual Carlyle would very rarely attempt to place, and hardly ever +succeeded in placing, any thing or person. He could not in the least +judge literature--of which he was so great a practitioner always, and +sometimes so great a judge--from the point of view of form: he would +have scorned to do so, and did scorn those who did so. His deficiencies +in abstract philosophy, whether political, theological, metaphysical, +or other, arise directly from this--that he could never contemplate any +of these things as abstract, but only in the common conduct of men +towards their fellows, towards themselves, and towards God. For Carlyle +never "forgot God," though he might speak unadvisedly with his lips of +other men's ways of remembering Him. The "human document," as later +slang has it, was in effect the only thing that interested him; and he +was content to employ it in constructing human history. More than once +he put his idea of this history formally under a formal title. But his +entire work is a much better exposition of that idea than these +particular essays; and it is not easy to open any page of it in which +the idea itself is not vividly illustrated and enforced upon the reader. + +But once more, this is no place for even a summary, much less for a +discussion, of the much discussed Carlylian "Gospel of Work"; of its +apostle's less vague, but also less disputable, condemnations of shams +and cants; or of the innumerable applications and uses to which he put +these doctrines. The important thing for our purpose is that these +applications took form in thirty volumes of the most brilliant, the most +stimulating, the most varied, the most original work in English +literature. The titles of this work have been given; to give here any +notion of their contents would take the chapter. Carlyle could be--as in +the _Cromwell_, where he sets himself and confines himself to the double +task of elucidating his hero's rugged or crafty obscurities of speech +and writing and of piecing them into a connected history, or where he +wrestles with the huge accumulation of documents about Frederick--as +practical as the driest of Dry-as-dusts. But others could equal, though +few surpass him, in this. Where he stands alone is in a fantastic +fertility of divagation and comment which is as much his own as the +clear, neat directness of Macaulay is his. Much of it is due to his +gospel, or temper, or whatever it is to be called, of earnest suasion to +work and scornful denunciation of cant; something to his wide reading +and apt faculty of illustration; but most to his style. + +In the early days of his unpopularity this style used to be abused with +heat or dismissed with scorn as mere falsetto, copied to a great extent +from Richter. It is certain that in Carlyle's very earliest works there +is small trace of it; and that he writes in a fashion not very +startlingly different from that of any well-read and well-taught author +of his time. And it is certain also that it was after his special +addiction to German studies that the new manner appeared. Yet it is very +far indeed from being copied from any single model, or even from any +single language; and a great deal that is in it is not German at all. +Something may even be traced to our own more fantastic writers in the +seventeenth century, such as Sir Thomas Urquhart in Scotland and Sir +Roger L'Estrange in England; much to a Scottish fervour and quaintness +blending itself with and utilising a wider range of reading than had +been usual with Scotsmen; most to the idiosyncrasy of the individual. + +Carlyle's style is not seldom spoken of as compact of tricks and +manners; and no doubt these are present in it. Yet a narrow inspection +will show that its effect is by no means due so much in reality as in +appearance to the retaining of capital letters, the violent breaches and +aposiopeses, the omission of pronouns and colourless parts of speech +generally, the coining of new words, and the introduction of unusual +forms. These things are often there, but they are not always; and even +when they are, there is something else much more important, much more +characteristic, but also much harder to put the finger on. There is in +Carlyle's fiercer and more serious passages a fiery glow of enthusiasm +or indignation, in his lighter ones a quaint felicity of unexpected +humour, in his expositions a vividness of presentment, in his arguments +a sledge-hammer force, all of which are not to be found together +anywhere else, and none of which is to be found anywhere in quite the +same form. And despite the savagery, both of his indignation and his +laughter, there is no greater master of tenderness. Wherever he is at +home, and he seldom wanders far from it, the weapon of Carlyle is like +none other,--it is the very sword of Goliath. + +And this sword pierces to the joints and marrow as no other of the +second division of our authors of the nineteenth century proper pierces, +with the exception of that of Tennyson in verse. It is possible to +disagree with Carlyle intensely; perhaps it is not possible to agree +with him in any detailed manner, unless the agreer be somewhat destitute +of individual taste and judgment. But on his whole aspect and tendency, +reserving individual expressions, he is, as few are, great. The +_diathesis_ is there--the general disposition towards noble and high +things. The expression is there--the capacity of putting what is felt +and meant in a manner always contemptuous of mediocrity, yet seldom +disdainful of common sense. To speak on the best things in an original +way, in a distinguished style, is the privilege of the elect in +literature; and none of those who were born within, or closely upon, the +beginning of the century has had these gifts in English as have the +authors of _The Lotos Eaters_ and _Sartor Resartus_. + +Only one other writer of history during the century, himself the latest +to die of his generation except Mr. Ruskin, deserves, for the union of +historical and literary merit, to be placed, if not on a level with +Macaulay and Carlyle, yet not far below them; but a not inconsiderable +number of historians and biographers of value who distinguished +themselves about or since the middle of the century must be chronicled +more or less briefly. Two Scottish scholars of eminence, both in turn +Historiographers Royal of Scotland, John Hill Burton and William Forbes +Skene, were born in the same year, 1809. Burton, who died in 1881, +busied himself with the history of his country at large, beginning with +the period since the Revolution, and tackling the earlier and more +distinctively national time afterwards. He was not a very good writer, +but displayed very great industry and learning with a sound and +impartial judgment. Skene, on the other hand, was the greatest authority +of his time (he lived till 1892) on "Celtic Scotland," which is the +title of his principal book. In the same year (or in 1808) was born +Charles Merivale, afterwards Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, +and Dean of Ely, who, besides other work, established himself in the +same class of historians with Hallam and Milman, Thirlwall and Grote, by +his extensive _History of the Romans under the Empire_. On the whole, +Merivale (who died in 1894) ranks, both for historical and literary +gifts, somewhat below the other members of this remarkable group--a +position which is still a very honourable one. + +Shortly after these three was born Alexander Kinglake (1811-1891)--a man +of very remarkable talents, but something of a "terrible example" in +regard to the practice, which has already been noticed as characteristic +of the century, of devoting enormously long histories to special +subjects and points. Kinglake, who was a native of Somerset, an Eton and +Cambridge man, a barrister subsequently, for some years a Member of +Parliament, and a man of independent means, first distinguished himself +in letters by the very brilliant and popular book of travels in the East +called _Eothen_ which was published in 1847. That there is something of +manner and trick about this is not to be denied; but it must be allowed +that the trick and manner have been followed, apparently with success, +in travel-writing for about half a century, while it cannot be fairly +said that Kinglake himself had any exact models, though he may have owed +something to Beckford and a little to Sterne. It is not very easy to say +whether Kinglake's literary reputation would have stood higher or lower +if he had written nothing else; but as a matter of fact, before many +years were over, he attempted a much more ambitious task in the _History +of the Crimean War_, the first two volumes of which appeared in 1863, +though the book was not finished till twenty years later. That this +history shows no small literary faculties no competent judge can deny. +The art of word-painting--a dubious and dangerous art--is pushed to +almost its furthest limits; the writer has a wonderful gift of combining +the minutest and most numerous details into an orderly and intelligible +whole; and the quality which the French untranslatably call _diable au +corps_, or, as we more pedantically say, "daemonic energy," is present +everywhere. But the book is monstrously out of proportion,--a single +battle has something like an entire volume, and the events of some two +years occupy eight,--and, clear as the individual pictures are, the +panorama is of such endless length that the mind's eye retains no proper +notion of it. In the second place, the style, though brilliant, is hard +and brassy, full of points that are more suitable to the platform or the +newspaper than to the historic page,--not so much polished as varnished, +and after a short time intolerably fatiguing. In the third,--and this is +the gravest fault of all,--the author's private or patriotic likes or +dislikes pervade the whole performance and reduce too much of it to a +tissue of extravagant advocacy or depreciation, made more disgusting by +the repetition of catch phrases and pet labels somewhat after the manner +of Dickens. Sir Stratford Canning, "the great Eltchi," is one of +Kinglake's divinities, Lord Raglan another; and an acute and energetic, +but not quite heaven-born diplomatist, a most honest, modest, and in +difficult circumstances steadfast, if not always judicious soldier, +become, the one Marlborough in the council-chamber, the other +Marlborough in the field. On the other hand, for this or that reason, +Mr. Kinglake had taken a violent dislike to the Emperor Napoleon the +Third, and affected, as did some other English Liberals, to consider the +_coup d'etat_ as not merely a dubious piece of statecraft, but a hideous +and abominable crime. Consequently, he abused all those who took part in +it with tedious virulence, which has probably made not a few Englishmen +look on them with much more leniency than they deserved. In short, +Kinglake, with many of the qualities of the craftsman in an +extraordinary degree, was almost entirely deficient in those of the +artist. He served as a favourite example to Mr. Matthew Arnold of the +deficiency of the British literary temper in accomplishment and grace, +and it cannot be denied that Mr. Arnold's strictures were here justified +to an extent which was not always the case when he assumed the office of +censor. + +John Forster, who was born a year later than Kinglake, and died fifteen +years before him, was an industrious writer of biographies and +biographical history, the friend of a good many men of letters, editor +for many years of the _Examiner_, and secretary to the Lunacy +Commissioners. He paid particular attention to the period of the +Rebellion; his _Arrest of the Five Members_ being his chief work, among +several devoted to it. He wrote a _Life of Goldsmith_, and began one of +Swift. In contemporary biography his chief performances were lives of +Landor and of Dickens, with both of whom he was extremely intimate. In +private life Forster had the character of a bumptious busybody, which +character indeed the two books just mentioned, even without the +anecdotes abundant in more recent books of biography, abundantly +establish. And towards the men of letters with whom he was intimate +(Carlyle and Browning may be added to Landor and Dickens) he seems to +have behaved like a Boswell-Podsnap, while in the latter half of the +character he no doubt sat to Dickens himself. But he was an +indefatigable literary inquirer, and seems, in a patronising kind of +way, to have been liberal enough of the result of his inquiries. He had +a real interest both in history and literature, and he wrote fairly +enough. + +One of the most curious figures among the historians of this century was +Henry Thomas Buckle, who was born near Blackheath in 1823, and privately +educated. He had ample means, and was fond of books; and in 1857 he +brought out the first volume (which was followed by a second in 1861) of +a _History of Civilisation_. He did not nearly complete--in fact he only +began--his scheme, in which the European part was ultimately intended to +be subordinate to the English, and he died of typhus at Damascus in May +1862. The book attained at once, and for some time kept, an +extraordinary popularity, which has been succeeded by a rather unjust +depreciation. Both are to be accounted for by the fact that it is in +many ways a book rather of the French than of the English type, and +displays in fuller measure than almost any of Buckle's contemporaries in +France itself, with the possible exception of Taine, could boast, the +frank and fearless, some would say the headlong and headstrong, habit +of generalisation--scorning particulars, or merely impressing into +service such as are useful to it and drumming the others out--on which +Frenchmen pride themselves, and for the lack of which they are apt to +pronounce English historians, and indeed English men of letters of all +kinds, plodding and unilluminated craftsmen rather than artists. In +Buckle's reflections on Spain and Scotland, he accounts for the whole +history of both countries and the whole character of both peoples by +local conditions in the first place, and by forms of civil and +ecclesiastical government. In respect to these last, his views were +crude Voltairianism; but perhaps this is the best and most +characteristic example of his method. He was extremely prejudiced; his +lack of solid disciplinary education made him unapt to understand the +true force and relative value of his facts and arguments; and as his +premises are for the most part capriciously selected facts cemented +together with an untempered mortar of theory, his actual conclusions are +rarely of much value. But his style is clear and vigorous; the +aggressive _raiding_ character of his argument is agreeably stimulating, +and excellent to make his readers clear up their minds on the other +side; while the dread of over-generalisation, however healthy in itself, +has been so long a dominant force in English letters and philosophy that +a little excess the other way might be decidedly useful as an +alterative. The worst fault of Buckle was the Voltairianism above +referred to, causing or caused by, as is always the case, a deplorable +lack of taste, which is not confined to religious matters. + +Edward Augustus Freeman, who was a little younger than Buckle and +survived him for thirty years, had some points in common with the +historian of civilisation, though his education, interests, and tone in +reference to religion were wholly different. Mr. Freeman, who was not at +any public school but was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, very soon +devoted himself to the study of early English history, and secured a +durable position by his elaborate _History of the Norman Conquest_ +(1867-76), which, even though the largest and most important, was only +one among scores of works, ending in an unfinished _History of Sicily_. +He was, when he died in 1892, Regius Professor of Modern History at +Oxford, and he had for many years been very influential in determining +the course of historical study. He was also, for many years of his life, +an active journalist, being especially known as a contributor to the +_Saturday Review_, and he sometimes took a very busy part in politics. +Mr. Freeman was a student of untiring energy, and will always deserve +honourable memory as the first historian who recognised and utilised the +value of architecture in supplying historical documents and +illustrations. His style was at times picturesque but too diffuse, and +disfigured by a habit of allusion as teasing as Macaulay's antithesis or +Kinglake's stock phrases. That he was apt to pronounce very strong +opinions on almost any question with which he dealt, was perhaps a less +drawback to his excellence as a historian than the violently +controversial tone in which he was wont to deal with those who happened +to hold opinions different from his own. Putting defects of manner +aside, there is no question that, for his own special period of English +history (the eleventh and twelfth centuries), Mr. Freeman did more than +any man had done before him, and as much as any man has done for any +other period; while in relation to his further subjects of study, his +work, though less trustworthy, is full of stimulus and of information. + +His chief pupil John Richard Green, who was born in 1837 and died of +consumption in 1883, was a native of Oxford, and was educated there at +Magdalen College School and Jesus College. Mr. Green, like Mr. Freeman, +was a frequent contributor to the _Saturday Review_, and did some +clerical duty in the east of London; but he is best known by his +historical work on English subjects, especially the famous _Short +History of the English People_, perhaps the most popular work of its +class and kind ever written. Mr. Green professed, on a principle which +had been growing in favour for some time, to extend the usual conception +of historical dealing to social, literary, and other matters. These, +however, had never as a fact been overlooked by historians, and the +popularity of the book was chiefly due to its judicious selection of +interesting facts, to the spirit of the narrative, and to the style, +based partly on Macaulay, but infused with a modernness which exactly +hit the taste of the readers of our time. Mr. Green afterwards expanded +this book somewhat; and his early death cut short a series of more +extended monographs, _The Making of England_, _The Conquest of England_, +etc., which would have enabled him to display the minute knowledge on +which his more summary treatment of the general theme had been based. + +Among historians to whom in larger space more extended notice than is +here possible would have to be given, perhaps the first place is due to +Philip Henry, sixth Earl Stanhope (1805-75), who (chiefly under the +title of Lord Mahon, which he bore before his succession to the earldom +in 1855) was an active historical writer of great diligence and +impartiality, and possessed of a fair though not very distinguished +style. The first notable work,--a _History of the War of the Succession +in Spain_ (1832),--of Lord Stanhope (who was an Oxford man, took some +part in politics, and was a devoted Peelite) was reviewed by Macaulay, +and he wrote later several other and minor historical books. But his +reputation rests on his _History of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht to +the Peace of Versailles_, which occupied him for some twenty years, +finishing in 1854. Very much less known to the general, but of singular +ability, was William Johnson or Cory, who under the earlier name had +attracted considerable public attention as an Eton master and as author +of a small but remarkable volume of poems called _Ionica_. After his +retirement from Eton and the change of his name, Mr. Cory amused himself +with the composition of a _History of England_, or rather a long essay +thereon, which was very little read and falls completely out of the +ordinary conception of such a book, but is distinguished by an +exceptionally good and scholarly style, as well as by views and +expressions of great originality. Many others must pass wholly unnoticed +that we may finish this chapter with one capital name. + +One of the greatest historians of the century, except for one curious +and unfortunate defect, and (without any drawback) one of the greatest +writers of English prose during that century, was James Anthony Froude, +who was born at Dartington near Totnes in 1818, on 23rd April +(Shakespeare's birthday and St. George's Day), and died in 1894 at the +Molt near Salcombe in his native county. Mr. Froude (the youngest son of +the Archdeacon of Totnes and the brother of Richard Hurrell Froude who +played so remarkable a part in the Oxford Movement, and of William +Froude the distinguished naval engineer) was a Westminster boy, and went +to Oriel College, Oxford, afterwards obtaining a fellowship at Exeter. +Like his elder brother he engaged in the Tractarian Movement, and was +specially under the influence of Newman, taking orders in 1844. The +great convulsion, however, of Newman's secession sent him, not as it +sent some with Newman, but like Mark Pattison and a few more, into +scepticism if not exactly negation, on all religious matters. He put his +change of opinions (he had previously written under the pseudonym of +"Zeta" a novel called _Shadows of the Clouds_) into a book entitled _The +Nemesis of Faith_, published in 1849, resigned his fellowship, gave up +or lost (to his great good fortune) a post which had been offered him in +Tasmania, and betook himself to literature, being very much, except in +point of style, under the influence of Carlyle. He wrote for _Fraser_, +the _Westminster_, and other periodicals; but was not content with +fugitive compositions, and soon planned a _History of England from the +Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada_. The first volumes of this +appeared in 1856, and it was finished in 1869. Meanwhile Froude from +time to time collected his essays into volumes called _Short Studies_, +which contain some of his very best writing. His next large work was +_The English in Ireland_, which was published in three volumes +(1871-74). In 1874-75 Lord Carnarvon sent him on Government missions to +the Cape, an importation of a French practice into England which was not +very well justified by the particular instance. Between 1881 and 1884 he +was occupied as Carlyle's literary executor in issuing his biographical +remains. Later _Oceana_ and _The English in the West Indies_ contained +at once sketches of travel and political reflections; and in 1889 he +published an Irish historical romance, _The Two Chiefs of Dunboy_. He +was made Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in succession to +Mr. Freeman, and his two latest works, _Erasmus_, published just before, +and _English Seamen_ some months after his death, contain in part the +results of the appointment. + +It is a vulgar observation that the natural element of some men appears +to be hot water. No English author of the century justifies this better +than Mr. Froude. His early change of faith attracted to him a very +considerable share of the obloquy which usually (and perhaps not so +unreasonably as is sometimes thought) attaches to violent revolutions of +opinion on important points. His _History_ was no sooner published than +most acrimonious attacks were made upon it, and continued for many +years, by a school of historical students with the late Mr. Freeman at +their head. His Irish book, coinciding with the rise of "Home Rule" +sentiment in Ireland, brought upon him furious enmity from the Irish +Nationalist party and from those who, at first or by and by, sympathised +with them in England. His colonial visits and criticisms not merely +attracted to him the animosity of all those Englishmen who espoused the +politics of non-intervention and non-aggrandisement, but aroused lively +irritation in the Colonies themselves. About his discharge of his duties +as Carlyle's executor, a perfect tempest of indignation arose; it being +alleged that he had either carelessly, or through bad taste, or with +deliberate treachery, revealed his dead friend's and master's weaknesses +and domestic troubles to the public view. + +With some of the causes of this odium we are fortunately here dispensed +from dealing. Theological and political matters, in so far as they are +controversial, are altogether outside of our scope. The question of the +dealing with Carlyle's "Remains" is one rather of ethics than of +literature proper, and it is perhaps sufficient to make, in reference to +it, the warning observation that Lockhart, who is now considered by +almost all competent critics as a very pattern of the union of fidelity +and good taste towards both his subject and his readers, was accused, at +the appearance of his book, of treachery towards Scott. + +But it must be confessed that if Mr. Froude's critics were unfair (and +they certainly were) he himself gave only too abundant opening to fair +criticism. That his first great book (not perhaps any of his others) was +planned on an unduly large scale, and indulged in far too extensive +dissertation, divagation, and so forth, was rather the fault of his time +than of himself. Grote and Macaulay had obtained, the first +considerable, the latter immense popularity by similar prolixity; and +Carlyle was about, in the _Frederick_, to follow the fashion. But +whereas all these three, according to the information open to them, were +and are among the most painfully laborious researchers and, with a fair +allowance, the most faithful recorders among historians, Mr. Froude +displayed an attention to accuracy which his warmest admirers must allow +to be sadly, and which enemies asserted to be scandalously insufficient. +He has been called by well-affected critics "congenitally inaccurate," +and there is warrant for it. Nor did any one of his three great models +come short of him in partiality, in advocacy, in the determination to +make the reader accept his own view first of all. + +He was, in the earlier part of his career at any rate, a very poor man, +whereas Macaulay was in easy, and Grote in affluent circumstances, and +he had not Carlyle's Scotch thrift. But the carelessness of his dealing +with documents had more in it than lack of pence to purchase assistance, +or even than lack of dogged resolve to do the drudgery himself. His +enemies of course asserted, or hinted, that the added cause was +dishonesty at the worst, indifference to truth at the best. As far as +dishonesty goes they may be summarily non-suited. The present writer +once detected, in a preface of Mr. Froude's to a book with which the +introducer was thoroughly in sympathy, repeated errors of quotation or +allusion which actually weakened Mr. Froude's own argument--cases where +he made his own case worse by miscitation. To the very last, in his +_Erasmus_ itself, which he had prepared at some pains for the press, his +work would always abound in the most astonishing slips of memory, +oversights of fact, hastinesses of statement. There is probably no +historian of anything like his calibre in the whole history of +literature who is so dangerous to trust for mere matters of fact, who +gives such bad books of reference, who is so little to be read with +implicit confidence in detail. Had his critics confined themselves to +pointing this out, and done him justice in his other and real merits, +little fault could have been found with them. But it is impossible not +to see that these merits were, at least in some cases, part of his +crime, in the eyes of those who did not like him; in others were of a +kind which their natural abilities did not qualify them to detect. + +The first of these merits--the least it may be in some eyes, not so in +others--was a steadfast, intense, fiery patriotism, which may remind us +of that which Macaulay in a famous passage has ascribed to Chatham in +modern times and to Demosthenes of old. This quality differed as much +from the flowery and conventional rhetoric not uncommon in writers of +some foreign nations, as from the smug self-satisfaction which was so +frequent in English speakers and authors of his own earlier time. No one +probably of Mr. Froude's day was less blind to English faults than he +was; no one more thoroughly grasped and more ardently admired the +greatness of England, or more steadfastly did his utmost in his own +vocation to keep her great. + +His second excellence--an excellence still contested and in a way +contestable, but less subject than the first to personal and particular +opinion--was his command of the historic grasp, his share of the +historic sense. I have seen these terms referred to as if they were +chatter or claptrap; while the qualities which they denote are very +often confounded with qualities which, sometimes found in connection +with them, may exist without either. The historic sense may be roughly +described as the power of seizing, and so of portraying, a historic +character, incident, or period as if it were alive not dead; in such a +manner that the fit reader, whether he is convinced or not that the +things ever did happen, sees that they might and probably must have +happened. Some of the most estimable and excellent of historians have +not had even a glimmering of this sense: they have at best laboriously +assembled the materials out of which, sooner or later, some one with the +sense will make a live history. But Thucydides and Herodotus had it; +Tacitus had it, and even Sallust; it betrays itself in the most artless +fashion in Villehardouin and Joinville, less artlessly in Comines; +Clarendon had it; Gibbon had it; Carlyle had it as none has had it +before or since. And Mr. Froude had it; not much less though more +fitfully than Carlyle. It is not in the least necessary to agree with +his views; it is possible to regard his facts with the most anxious +suspicion. You may think that the case made out for King Henry is pretty +weak, and the case made out against Queen Mary is much weaker. But Mr. +Froude is among the rare Deucalions of historic literature: he cannot +cast a stone but it becomes alive. + +Thirdly, and still rising in the scale of incontestability, though even +so contested, I believe, by some, is the merit of style. I have +sometimes doubted whether Mr. Froude at his best has any superior among +the prose writers of the last half of this century. His is not a +catching style; and in particular it does not perhaps impress itself +upon green tastes. It has neither the popular and slightly brusque +appeal of Macaulay or Kinglake, nor the unique magnificence of Mr. +Ruskin, nor the fretted and iridescent delicacy of some other writers. +It must be frankly confessed that, the bulk of his work being very great +and his industry not being untiring, it is unequal, and sometimes not +above (it is never below) good journey-work. But at its best it is of a +simply wonderful attraction--simply in the pure sense, for it is never +very ornate, and does not proceed in point of "tricks" much beyond the +best varieties of the latest Georgian form. That strange quality of +"liveliness" which has been noticed in reference to its author's view of +history, animates it throughout. It is never flat; never merely +popular; never merely scholarly; never merely "precious" and eccentric. +And at its very best it is excelled by no style in this century, and +approached by few in this or any other, as a perfect harmony of +unpretentious music, adjusted to the matter that it conveys, and +lingering on the ear that it reaches. + + NOTE.--As examples of the almost enforced omissions referred + to in the text may be mentioned earlier Archdeacon Coxe, the + biographer of Marlborough and the historian of the House of + Austria; later, Finlay (1799-1875), the valiant successor of + Gibbon, and the chronicler of the obscure and thankless + fortunes of the country called Greece, after it had ceased + to be living. Professor Sir J. R. Seeley, Kingsley's + successor at Cambridge (1834-94), equally distinguished in + his professional business, and as a lay theologian in a + sense rather extra-orthodox than unorthodox; and Sir John + Stirling-Maxwell, no mean historian either in the general + sense or in the special department of Art. It is open to any + one to contend that each and all of these as well deserve + notice as not a few dealt with above; yet if they were + admitted others still could hardly be excluded. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD + + +The second period of English poetry in the nineteenth century displays a +variety and abundance of poetical accomplishment which must rank it very +little below either its immediate predecessor, or even the great +so-called Elizabethan era. But it is distinguished from both these +periods, and, indeed, from almost all others by the extraordinary +predominance of a single poet in excellence, in influence, and in +duration. There is probably no other instance anywhere of a poet who for +more than sixty years wrote better poetry than any one of his +contemporaries who were not very old men when he began, and for exactly +fifty of those years was recognised by the best judges as the chief poet +of his country if not of his time. + +Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where his +father, a member of a good county family, was rector. He was the third +son, and his two elder brothers, Frederick and Charles, both possessed +considerable poetical gifts, though it cannot be said that the _Poems by +Two Brothers_ (it seems that it should really have been "three"), which +appeared in 1826, display much of this or anything whatever of Alfred's +subsequent charm. From the Grammar School of Louth the poet went to +Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was contemporary, and in most cases +intimate, with an unusually distinguished set of undergraduates, many of +whom afterwards figured in the famous Sterling Club (see chapter iv). He +also did what not many great future poets have done, he obtained the +Chancellor's prize for English verse with a poem on "Timbuctoo," where +again his special note is almost, though perhaps not quite, absent: it +appears faintly and fitfully in another juvenile poem not formally +published till long afterwards, "The Lover's Tale." + +It was in 1830 that he made his first substantive appearance with a book +of _Poems_. This volume was afterwards subjected to a severe handling by +the poet in the way of revision and omission--processes which through +life he continued with such perseverance and rigour, that the final +critical edition of him, when it appears, will be one of the most +complicated of the kind in English literature. So did he also with +another which appeared two years (or a little more) later. It is not +therefore quite just to judge the criticism which these books received, +by the present condition of the poems which figured in them; for though +most of the beauties were there then, they were accompanied by many +defects which are not there now. Criticism, however, was undoubtedly +unfavourable, and even unfair. Although Tennyson was not, either at this +time or at any other, a party politician, the two great Tory +periodicals, the _Quarterly Review_ and _Blackwood's Magazine_, were +still animated, the former by a dislike to the Romantic school in +poetry, the latter by a dislike to "Cockneys"--though how anybody could +have discovered a Cockney in Tennyson may seem marvellous enough. +Accordingly Lockhart in the one and Wilson in the other fell foul +(though in Wilson's case, at least, not indiscriminately) of work which +beyond all question offered very numerous and very convenient handles, +in ways which will be mentioned presently, to merely carping criticism. +Some attempts at reply were made by the poet's friends, notably A. H. +Hallam, but the public did not take to him, and even well-affected and +competent older judges, such as Coleridge, expressed very qualified +admiration. + +But during the next decade, in which he gave himself up silently to the +task of perfecting his art, attempting no profession or literary +occupation of profit, and living (partly in London, partly in the +country at High Beach and elsewhere) with extreme simplicity and economy +on his own small means and a pension which was provided for him, the +leaven of an almost fanatical admiration was spreading among readers of +his own age or a little younger. And his next publication, a new issue +of _Poems_ in 1842--containing the final selection and revision of the +others already mentioned, and a large reinforcement of admirable +work--was received, not indeed with the popular avidity which had been +displayed towards Scott and Byron in the generation before, and which +revived in the case of his own later work, but with an immense enjoyment +by almost all true lovers of poetry. Even Wordsworth, the most +ungracious critic of other men's work in his own art of whom the history +of literature gives record, acknowledged Tennyson in the amplest terms. + +This was, as has been hinted above, exactly fifty years before his +death, and though in the first of these five decades the pudding if not +the praise was still rather scanty, his reputation waxed steadily and +never waned. To keep for the present to chronicle in biography and +bibliography, he published in 1847 the exquisite "medley" of _The +Princess_, his first attempt at a poem of any length. 1850 was a great +year in his career, for in it he published the collection of elegiacs on +his friend Arthur Hallam, in which some have seen his most perfect work, +and he became Poet Laureate. Three years later he bought a house at +Farringford, near Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, which was for the +rest of his life his occasional and, until 1870 (when to avoid intrusion +he built himself another at Aldworth near Haslemere), his main house. +His poetry now was beginning to bring in some profit, the editions of it +multiplying every year; and during the last thirty years of his life, if +not more, he was probably at least as richly provided with mere gold as +any poet has ever been. He was, however, never seduced into hasty +writing; and he never gave himself to any other occupation save poetry, +while during his entire life he was a hater of what is commonly called +society. In 1855 there appeared _Maud_, the reception of which seemed +at first something of a relapse in welcome, which was in its first form +open to some criticism, and which he touched up to one of the finest as +a whole, as it was in parts one of the most passionate and melodious of +his works. But the _Idylls of the King_, the first and best instalment +of which appeared in 1858, completely revived even his popular vogue, +and made him indeed popular as no poet had been since Byron. It was said +at the time that 17,000 copies of _Enoch Arden_, his next volume (1864), +were sold on the morning of publication. + +For the rest of his life his issues were pretty frequent, though the +individual volumes were never large. A series of dramas beginning with +_Queen Mary_ in 1875, and continuing through _Harold_, _The Falcon_, +_The Cup_, the unlucky _Promise of May_, _Becket_, and _The Foresters_, +though fine enough for any other man, could be better spared by his +critical admirers than any other portion of his works. But the volumes +of poems proper, which appeared between 1864 and his death, _Lucretius_, +_Tiresias_, the successive instalments of the _Idylls_, _Locksley Hall +Sixty Years After_, _Demeter_, _The Death of Oenone_, and perhaps +above all the splendid _Ballads_ of 1880, never failed to contain with +matter necessarily of varying excellence things altogether +incomparable--one of the last, the finest and fortunately also the most +popular, being the famous "Crossing the Bar," which appeared in his +penultimate, but last not posthumous, volume in 1889. He died at +Aldworth in October 1892, and was buried with an unequalled solemnity in +Westminster Abbey. + +In the case of no English poet is it more important and interesting than +in the case of Tennyson, considering the excellence of his own work in +the first place, and the altogether unparalleled extent of his influence +in the second, to trace the nature and character of his poetical +quality. Nor is this difficult, though strange to say it has not always +been done. In his very earliest work, so soon as this quality appeared +at all, it is to be discovered side by side with other things which are +not native. Undoubtedly the tradition which, in the general filiation +of English poetry, connects Tennyson with Keats, is not wholly wrong. +In many of the weaker things, and not a few of the better, of the +volumes of 1830 and 1832, there is to be seen both the wonderful music +which Keats attained by a combination of the classical and romantic +appeals--the appeals which in his own case are singly exhibited at their +best in the "Grecian Urn" and in "La Belle Dame sans Merci,"--and the +sometimes faulty and illegitimate means which Keats took to produce this +effect. But to any one who compares rationally (and it may be permitted +to remark parenthetically, that nothing seems to be more misunderstood +than the comparative point of view) the difference between Keats and +Tennyson will emerge at once. Both being great poets, there is the +inexplicable in both; while as Keats undoubtedly died before he had any +chance of applying to his own powers and products the unequalled process +of clarifying and self-criticism which went on with Tennyson in the ten +years' silence between the second of the volumes just mentioned and his +issue of 1842, it is impossible to say that Keats himself could not have +done something similar. Nothing that he ever did is worse in point of +"gush," of undisciplined fluency, of mistakes in point of taste and of +other defects than the notorious piece about "the darling little room," +on which the future Poet Laureate's critics were so justly severe; while +in the single point of passion it is very doubtful whether Tennyson ever +approached the author of "La Belle Dame sans Merci." There was not +perhaps much to choose between the two in their natural power of +associating pictorial with musical expression; while both had that gift +of simple humanity, of plain honest healthy understanding of common +things, the absence of which gives to Shelley--in some ways a greater +poet than either of them--a certain unearthliness and unreality. + +But Tennyson had from the first a wider range of interest and capacity +than Keats, and he had the enormous advantage of thorough and regular +literary training. No poet ever improved his own work as Tennyson did; +nor has any, while never allowing his genius to be daunted by +self-comparison with his predecessors, had such a faculty of availing +himself of what they had done without copying, of seeing what they had +not done and supplying the gap himself. And besides this he had the +inexplicable, the incommunicable, the unique, the personal gift. In the +very earliest things, in "Claribel," in "Mariana," in the "Recollections +of the Arabian Nights," in the "Ode to Memory," in the "Dirge," in the +"Dying Swan," in "Oriana," there is even to those who were born long +after they were written, even to those who have for years sedulously +compared them with almost all things before and with all things since, +the unmistakable note of the new, of the new that never can be old. It +is there in the rhythms, it is there in the phrase. The poet may take +things that had previously existed--the Keatsian and Shelleian lyric, +the Wordsworthian attitude to Nature, the Miltonic blank verse; but +inevitably, invariably, each under his hands becomes different, becomes +individual and original. The result cannot be accounted for by +mannerisms, from which at no time was Tennyson free, and after the +thousands and ten thousands of imitations which have been seen since, it +stands out untouched, unrivalled. + +In the next instalment this quality of intense poetical individuality +strengthened and deepened. As we read "The Two Voices," "Oenone," "The +Palace of Art," "The Lotos Eaters," "A Dream of Fair Women," it becomes +almost incomprehensible how any one who ever read them even in forms +less perfect than those that we possess, should have mistaken their +incomparable excellence. But the student of literary history knows +better. He knows that nearly always the poet has to create his audience, +that he sings before the dawn of the day in which he is to be sovereign. + +And then with the 1842 book came practically the completion of Tennyson +in the sense of the indication of his powers. Edward FitzGerald, as is +elsewhere noticed, thought, or at least said, that everything his friend +had done after this was more or less a declension. This is a common and +not an ignoble Fallacy of Companionship--the delusion of those who have +hailed and accompanied a poet or a prophet in his early struggles. It +is not even wholly a fallacy, inasmuch as, in the case of the class of +poets to which Tennyson belongs, there does come a time when the rest of +the products of their genius is so to speak _applied_: it ceases to +reveal them in new aspects. They do not repeat themselves; but they +chiefly vary. Now came the magnificent "Morte D'Arthur" (the "Idylls of +the King" in microcosm, with all their merits and none of their +defects), "St. Simeon Stylites," "Ulysses," "Locksley Hall," "St. Agnes' +Eve," and other exquisite things; while to this period, as the +subsequent arrangement shows, belong not a few, such as "Tithonus" and +"The Voyage," which were not actually published till later, and in which +keen observers at the time of their publication detected as it were an +older ring, a more genuine and unblended vintage. + +It is not improper therefore to break off here for a moment and to +endeavour to state--leaving out the graces that can never be stated, and +are more important than all the others--the points in which this new +excellence of Tennyson differed from the excellences of his forerunners. +One of them, not the least important, but the least truly original, +because something distantly resembling it had been seen before in Keats +and Shelley, is the combined application of pictorial and musical +handling. Not, of course, that all poets had not endeavoured to depict +their subjects vividly and to arrange the picture in a melodious frame +of sound, not that the best of them had not also endeavoured to convey, +if it were possible, the colours into the sense, the sense into the +music. But partly as a result of the natural development and acquired +practice of the language, partly for the very reason that the arts both +of painting and music had themselves made independent progress, most of +all, perhaps, because Tennyson was the first poet in English of the very +greatest genius who dared not to attempt work on the great scale, but +put into short pieces (admitting, of course, of infinite formal variety) +what most of his forerunners would have spun into long poems--the result +here is, as a rule, far in advance of those forerunners in this +respect, and as an exception on a level with the very best of their +exceptions. With Shakespeare there is no comparison; Shakespeare can +send to every poet an "O of Giotto" in his own style to which that poet +must bow. But of others only Spenser had hitherto drawn such pictures as +those of the "Palace" and the "Dream," and Spenser had done them in far +less terse fashion than Tennyson. Only Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, +perhaps Beddoes, and a few Elizabethans had poured into the veins of +language the ineffable musical throb of a score of pieces from +"Claribel" to "Break! Break!" and not one of them had done it in quite +the same way. Only Milton, with Thomson as a far distant second, had +impressed upon non-dramatic blank verse such a swell and surge as that +of "Oenone." And about all these different kinds and others there +clung and rang a peculiar dreamy slow music which was heard for the +first time, and which has never been reproduced,--a music which in "The +Lotos Eaters," impossible as it might have seemed, adds a new charm +after the _Faerie Queen_, after the _Castle of Indolence_, after the +_Revolt of Islam_ to the Spenserian stanza, which makes the stately +verses of the "Palace" and the "Dream" tremble and cry with melodious +emotion, and which accomplishes the miracle of the poet's own dying swan +in a hundred other poems all "flooded over with eddying song." + +But there is something more to be noted still. The poet had caught and +was utilising the spirit of his time in two ways, one of them almost +entirely new. That he constantly sang the subjective view of nature may +be set down to the fact that he came after Wordsworth, though the fact +that he sang it without the Wordsworthian dryness and dulness must be +set down to his own credit. But in that sense of the history of former +times which is perhaps the chief glory of the nineteenth century in +matters of thought he had been anticipated by no one. He might not have +attained it without Scott and Byron, but his expression of it was hardly +conditioned in the very slightest degree by the expression either of +Byron or of Scott. They were not in strictness men of the nineteenth +century; he was, and he represented the very best features of his time +in attending, from its point of view mainly, to the features of better +times. + +But if FitzGerald's dictum were taken in the sense that Tennyson's +poetical career might, with advantage or with anything but the greatest +possible loss, have been closed in 1842, then certainly it would be +something more than a crotchet. Nothing perhaps appeared subsequently +(with unimportant exceptions such as the plays, and as the dialect +pieces of which the "Northern Farmer" was the first and best) the +possibility of which could not have been divined from the earlier work. +The tree had blossomed; it had almost, to keep up the metaphor, set; but +by far the greater part of the fruit was yet to ripen, and very much of +it was to be of quality not inferior, of quantity far greater, than +anything that had yet been given. + +_The Princess_ and _In Memoriam_, the two first-fruits of this later +crop, were certainly not the least important. Indeed they may be said to +have shown for the first time that the poet was capable of producing, in +lighter and severer styles respectively, work not limited to short +flights and exemplifying what (perhaps mistakenly) is called "thought," +as well as style and feeling, colour and music. _The Princess_ is +undoubtedly Tennyson's greatest effort, if not exactly in comedy, in a +vein verging towards the comic--a side on which he was not so well +equipped for offence or for defence as on the other. But it is a +masterpiece. Exquisite as its author's verse always is, it was never +more exquisite than here, whether in blank verse or in the (superadded) +lyrics, while none of his deliberately arranged plays contains +characters half so good as those of the Princess herself, of Lady +Blanche and Lady Psyche, of Cyril, of the two Kings, and even of one or +two others. And that unequalled dream-faculty of his, which has been +more than once glanced at, enabled him to carry off whatever was +fantastical in the conception with almost unparalleled felicity. It may +or may not be agreed that the question of the equality of the sexes is +one of the distinguishing questions of this century; and some of those +who would give it that position may or may not maintain, if they think +it worth while, that it is treated here too lightly, while their +opponents may wish that it had been treated more lightly still. But this +very difference will point the unbiassed critic to the same conclusion, +that Tennyson has hit the golden mean; while that, whatever he has hit +or missed in subject, the verse of his essay is golden, no one who is +competent will doubt. Such lyrics as "The splendour falls" and "Tears, +idle tears," such blank verse as that of the closing passage, would +raise to the topmost heights of poetry whatever subject it was spent +upon. + +_In Memoriam_ attacked two subjects in the main,--the one perennial, the +other of the time,--just as _The Princess_ had done. The perennial, +which is often but another, if not an exclusive, word for the poetical, +was in the first case aspirant and happy love, in the other mourning +friendship. The ephemeral was, in the latter, the sort of half doubting +religiosity which has occupied so much of the thought of our day. On +this latter point, as on the other just mentioned and on most beside, +the attitude of Tennyson was "Liberal-Conservatism" (if political slang +may be generalised), inclining always to the Conservative rather than to +the Liberal side, but giving Liberalism a sufficient footing and +hearing. Here again opinions may be divided; and here again those who +think that in poetry the mere fancies of the moment are nothing may be +disposed to pay little attention to the particular fancies which have +occupied the poet. But here again the manner, as always with real poets, +carries off, dissolves, annihilates the special matter for poetical +readers. Tennyson had here taken (not invented) a remarkable and not +frequently used stanza, the iambic dimeter quatrain with the rhymes not +alternated, but arranged _a b b a_. It is probable that if a +well-instructed critic had been asked beforehand what would be the +effect of this employed with a certain monotone of temper and subject in +a book of some three thousand lines or so, he would have shaken his head +and hinted that the substantive would probably justify its adjective +and the monotone become monotonous. And if he had been really a deacon +in his craft he would have added: "But to a poet there is nothing +impossible." The difficulty was no impossibility to Tennyson. He has not +only, in the rather more than six score poems of this wonderful book, +adjusted his medium to a wide range of subjects, all themselves adjusted +to the general theme, but he has achieved that poetic miracle, the +communication to the same metre and to no very different scheme of +phrase of an infinite variety of interior movement. There is scarcely a +bad line in _In Memoriam_; there are few lines that do not contain a +noble thought, a passionate sentiment, a beautiful picture; but there is +nothing greater about it than the way in which, side by side with the +prevailing undertone of the stanza, the individual pieces vary the music +and accompany it, so to speak, in duet with a particular melody. It must +have been already obvious to good ears that no greater master of English +harmonics--perhaps that none so great--had ever lived; but _In Memoriam_ +set the fact finally and irrevocably on record. + +_Maud_ was the third, and perhaps it may be said to have been, on a +great scale, the last experiment in thus combining the temporal with the +eternal. It was also probably the weakest as a whole, though the poet +had never done more poetical things than the passage beginning, "Cold +and clear-cut face"; than the prothalamium, never to have its due +sequel, "I have led her home"; than the incomparable and +never-to-be-hackneyed "Come into the garden"; or than the best of all, +"Oh! that 'twere possible." It may even be contended that if it were +ever allowable to put the finger down and say, "Here is the highest," +these, and not the best things of the 1842 volumes, are the absolute +summit of the poet's effort, the point which, though he was often near +it, he never again quite reached. But the piece, as a whole, is +certainly less of a success, less smooth and finished as it comes from +its own lathe, than either _The Princess_ or _In Memoriam_. It looks too +like an essay in competition with the "Spasmodic School" of its own day; +it drags in merely casual things--adulteration, popular politics, and +ephemera of all kinds--too assiduously, and its characterisations are +not happy. There is a tradition that the poet met a critic, and a very +accomplished critic too, who was one of his own oldest friends, and +said, "What do you mean by calling _Maud_ vulgar?" "I didn't," said the +critic, quite truly. "No, but you meant it," growled Tennyson. And there +was something of a confession in the growl. + +But these slight relapses (and, after all, what sort of a relapse is it +which gives us not merely the incomparable things referred to, but +others hardly less exquisite?) never, in the great writers, serve as +anything but retreats before an advance; and certainly, in a sense, the +_Idylls of the King_ were an advance, though not, perhaps, in all +senses. No total so brilliant, so varied within a certain general unity, +so perfectly polished in style, so cunningly adjusted to meet the +popular without disappointing the critical ear, had ever come from +Tennyson's pen as the first quartet of Idylls, _Enid_, _Vivien_, +_Elaine_, and _Guinevere_. No such book of English blank verse, with the +doubtful exception of the _Seasons_, had been seen since Milton. Nothing +more adroitly selected than the contrast of the four special pieces--a +contrast lost to those who only read them in the completed +Arthuriad--has been often attempted or ever achieved. It is true that +the inner faithful, the sacred band of Tennysonians, old and young, +grumbled a little that polish had been almost too much attended to; that +there was a certain hardish mannerism, glittering but cold, about the +style; that there was noticeable a certain compromise in the appeal, a +certain trimming of the sail to the popular breeze. These criticisms +were not entirely without foundation, and they were more justified than +their authors could know by the later instalments of the poem, which, +the latest not published till twenty-seven years afterwards, rounded it +off to its present bulk of twelve books, fifteen separate pieces, and +over ten thousand lines. Another, more pedantic in appearance, but not +entirely destitute of weight, was that which urged that in handling the +Arthurian story the author had, so to speak, "bastardised it," and had +given neither mediaeval nor modern sentiment or colouring, but a sort of +amalgamation of both. Yet the charm of the thing was so great, and the +separate passages were so consummate, that even critics were loth to +quarrel with such a gift. + +The later instalments of the poem--some of them, as has been said, very +much later, but still so closely connected as to be best noticed +here--were of somewhat less even excellence. It was an inevitable, but +certainly an unfortunate thing, that the poet republished the +magnificent early fragment above noticed in a setting which, fine as it +would have been for any one else, was inferior to this work of the very +best time. Some of the lighter passages, as in _Gareth and Lynette_, +showed less grace than their forerunners in _The Princess_; and in +_Pelleas and Ettarre_ and _Balin and Balan_ the poet sometimes seemed to +be attempting alien moods which younger poets than himself had made +their own. But the best passages of some of these later Idylls, notably +those of _The Holy Grail_ and _The Last Tournament_, were among the +finest, not merely of the book, but of the poet. Nowhere has he caught +the real, the best, spirit of the legends he followed more happily; +nowhere has he written more magnificent verse than in Percivale's +account of his constantly baffled quest and of Lancelot's visit to the +"enchanted towers of Carbonek." + +Far earlier than these, _Enoch Arden_ and its companion poems were +something more of a return to the scheme of the earlier books--no very +long single composition, but a medley of blank verse pieces and lyrics, +the former partly expansions of the scheme of the earlier "English +Idyll," the latter various and generally beautiful; one or two, such as +"In the Valley of Cauterets," of the most beautiful. Here, too, were +some interesting translations, with the dialect pieces above referred +to; and all the later volumes, except those containing the plays, +preserved this mixed manner. Their contents are too numerous for many to +be mentioned here. Only in the _Ballads and Other Poems_ was something +like a distinctly new note struck in the two splendid patriotic pieces +on "The Last Fight of the _Revenge_" and the "Defence of Lucknow," +which, even more than the poet's earlier "Charge of the Light Brigade," +deserve the title of the best English war-songs since Campbell; in +"Rizpah," an idyll of a sterner and more tragic kind than anything he +had previously attempted; and in the "Voyage of Maeldune," this last in +some respects the most interesting of the whole. For the marvellous +power which great poets possess of melting, of "founding," so to speak, +minor styles and kinds of poetry to their own image, while not losing a +certain character of the original, has never been shown better than +here. Attention had, even before the date of this poem, been drawn to +the peculiar character of early Celtic poetry,---not the adulterated +style of Ossian, but the genuine method of the old Irish singers. And, +since, a whole band of young and very clever writers have set +themselves, with a mixture of political and poetical enthusiasm, the +task of reviving these notes if possible. They have rarely succeeded in +getting very close to them without mere archaic pastiche. Tennyson in +this poem carried away the whole genius of the Celtic legend, infused it +into his own verse, branded it with his own seal, and yet left the +character of the vintage as unmistakable as if he had been an Irishman +of the tenth century, instead of an Englishman of the nineteenth. And +indeed there are no times, or countries, or languages in the kingdom of +poetry. + +A very little more may, perhaps, still be said about this great +poet,--great in the character and variety of his accomplishment, in the +volume of it, and, above all, in the extraordinarily sustained quality +of his genius and the length of time during which it dominated and +pervaded the literature of his country. The influences of Pope and +Dryden were weak in force and merely external in effect, the influence +of Byron was short-lived, that of Wordsworth was partial and limited, in +comparison with the influence of Tennyson. Of this, as of a mere +historical fact, there can be no dispute among those who care to inform +themselves of the facts and to consider them coolly. Of his intrinsic +merit, as opposed to his influential importance, it is not of course +possible to speak so peremptorily. Among the great volume of more or +less unfavourable criticism which such a career was sure to call forth, +two notes perhaps were the most dominant, the most constant, and (even +fervent admirers may admit) the least unjust. He was accused of a +somewhat excessive prettiness, a sort of dandyism and coquetry in form, +and of a certain want of profundity in matter. The last charge is the +more unprofitable in discussion, for it turns mainly on vast and vague +questions of previous definition. "What is thought?" "What is +profundity?" a by no means jesting demurrer may object, and he will not +soon be cleared out of the way. And it will perhaps seem to some that +what is called Tennyson's lack of profundity consists only in a +disinclination on his part to indulge in what the Germans call the +_Schwaetzerei_, the endless, aimless talkee-talkee about "thoughtful" +things in which the nineteenth century has indulged beyond the record of +any since what used to be called the Dark Ages. On the real "great +questions" Tennyson was not loth to speak, and spoke gravely enough; +even to the ephemeralities, as we have said, he paid rather too much +than too little attention. But he did not go into the ins and outs of +them as some of his contemporaries did, and as other contemporaries +thought fitting. He usually neglected the negligible; and perhaps it +would not hurt him with posterity if he had neglected it a little more, +though it hurt him a little with contemporaries that he neglected it as +much as he did. + +The charge of prettiness is to be less completely ruled out; though it +shows even greater mistake in those who do more than touch very lightly +on it. In the earliest forms of the earlier poems not seldom, and +occasionally in even the latest forms of the later, the exquisiteness of +the poet's touch in music and in painting, in fancy and in form, did +sometimes pass into something like finicalness, into what is called in +another language _mignardise_. But this was only the necessary, and, +after he was out of his apprenticeship, the minimised effect of his +great poetical quality--that very quality of exquisiteness in form, in +fancy, in painting, and in music which has just been stated. We have, it +must be admitted, had greater poets than Tennyson. Shakespeare, +Spenser, Milton, Shelley, undoubtedly deserve this preference to him; +Wordsworth and Keats may deserve it. But we have had none so uniformly, +and over such a large mass of work, exquisite. In the lighter fantastic +veins he may sometimes be a little unsure in touch and taste; in satire +and argument a little heavy, a little empty, a little rhetorical; in +domestic and ethical subjects a little tame. But his handlings of these +things form a very small part of his work. And in the rest none of all +these faults appears, and their absence is due to the fact that nothing +interferes with the exquisite perfection of the form. Some faults have +been found with Tennyson's rhymes, though this is generally +hypercriticism; and in his later years he was a little too apt to +accumulate tribrachs in his blank verse, a result of a mistaken sense of +the true fact that he was better at slow rhythms than at quick, and of +an attempt to cheat nature. But in all other respects his versification +is by far the most perfect of any English poet, and results in a harmony +positively incomparable. So also his colour and outline in conveying the +visual image are based on a study of natural fact and a practice in +transferring it to words which are equally beyond comparison. Take any +one of a myriad of lines of Tennyson, and the mere arrangement of vowels +and consonants will be a delight to the ear; let any one of a thousand +of his descriptions body itself before the eye, and the picture will be +like the things seen in a dream, but firmer and clearer. + +Although, as has been said, the popularity of Lord Tennyson itself was +not a plant of very rapid growth, and though but a short time before his +position was undisputed it was admitted only by a minority, imposing in +quality but far from strong in mere numbers, his chief rival during the +latter part of their joint lives was vastly slower in gaining the public +ear. It is not quite pleasant to think that the well-merited but +comparatively accidental distinction of the Laureateship perhaps did +more even for Tennyson in this respect than the intrinsic value of his +work. Robert Browning had no such aid, his verse was even more +abhorrent than Tennyson's to the tradition of the elders, and until he +found a sort of back-way to please, he was even more indifferent to +pleasing. So that while Tennyson became in a manner popular soon after +1850, two decades more had to pass before anything that could be called +popularity came to Browning. It is, though the actual dates are well +enough known to most people, still something of a surprise to remember +that at that time he had been writing for very nearly forty years, and +that his first book, though a little later than Tennyson's, actually +appeared before the death of Coleridge and not more than a few months +after that of Scott. Browning, about whose ancestry and parentage a good +deal of mostly superfluous ink has been shed, was born, the son of a +city man, on 7th May 1812, in the, according to the elder Mr. Weller, +exceptional district of Camberwell. He was himself exceptional enough in +more ways than one. His parents had means; but Browning did not receive +the ordinary education of a well-to-do Englishman at school and college, +and his learning, though sufficiently various, was privately obtained. +_Pauline_, his first poem, appeared in 1833, but had been written about +two years earlier. He did not reprint it in the first general collection +of his verse, nor till after his popularity had been established; and it +cannot be said to be of great intrinsic excellence. But it was +distinctly characteristic:--first, in a strongly dramatic tone and +strain without regular dramatic form; secondly, in a peculiar fluency of +decasyllabic verse that could not be directly traced to any model; and, +thirdly, in a certain quality of thought, which in later days for a long +time received, and never entirely lost from the vulgar, the name of +"obscurity," but which perhaps might be more justly termed +breathlessness--the expression, if not the conception, of a man who +either did not stop at all to pick his words, or was only careful to +pick them out of the first choice that presented itself to him of +something not commonplace. + +In _Pauline_, however, there is little positive beauty. In the next +book, _Paracelsus_ (1835), there is a great deal. Here the dramatic form +was much more definite, though still not attempting acted or actable +drama. The poet's appetite for "soul-dissection" was amply shown in the +characters not merely of Paracelsus himself, but of his soberer friends +Festus and Michal, and of the Italian poet Aprile, a sort of Euphorion +pretty evidently suggested by, though greatly enlarged from, the actual +Euphorion of the second part of _Faust_, then not long finished. The +rapid, breathless blank verse, the crowding rush of simile and +illustration, and the positive plethora of meaning, more often glanced +and hinted at than fully worked out, were as noteworthy as before in +kind, and as much more so in degree as in scale. Here too were lyrics, +not anticipating the full splendour of the poet's later lyrical verse, +but again quite original. Here, in fact, to anybody who chose to pay +attention, was a real "new poet" pretty plainly announced. + +Very few did choose to pay attention; and Browning's next attempt was +not of a kind to conciliate halting or hostile opinion, though it might +please the initiated. He wrote for his friend Macready a play intended +at least to be of the regular acting kind. This play, _Strafford_ +(1837), contains fine things; but the involution and unexpectedness of +the poet's thought now and always showed themselves least engagingly +when they were even imagined as being spoken not read. After yet another +three years _Sordello_ followed, and here the most peculiar but the +least estimable side of the author's genius attained a prominence not +elsewhere equalled, till in his latest stage he began to parody himself, +and scarcely even then. Although this book does not deserve the +disgusted contempt which used to be poured on it, though it contains +many noble passages, and as the "story of a soul" is perfectly +intelligible to moderate intellects, it must have occasioned some doubts +and qualms to intelligent admirers of the poet as to whether he would +lose himself in the paths on which he was entering. Such doubts must +have been soon set at rest by the curious medley issued in parts, under +the general title of _Bells and Pomegranates_, between 1841 and 1846. +The plays here, though often striking and showing that the author's +disabilities, though never likely to leave, were also not likely to +master him, showed also, with the possible exception of the charming +nondescript of _Pippa Passes_, no new or positively unexpected faculty. +But certain shorter things, lyrical and other, at last made it clear +that Browning could sing as well as say: and from this time, 1846 (which +also was the year of his marriage with Miss Elizabeth Barrett), he could +claim rank as a great poet. He had been hitherto more or less a +wanderer, but with headquarters in England; he now went to Florence, +which in turn was his headquarters till his wife's death in 1861. His +publications during the time were only two--_Christmas Eve and Easter +Day_ in 1850, and _Men and Women_ in 1855. But these were both +masterpieces. He never did better work, and, with _Bells and +Pomegranates_ and _Dramatis Personae_, which appeared in 1864 (when, +after Mrs. Browning's death, he had returned to London), they perhaps +contain all his very best work. + +Up to this time, the thirty-first year from the publication of +_Pauline_, Browning's work, though by no means scanty, could hardly be +called voluminous as the result of half a lifetime of absolute leisure. +A little before _Dramatis Personae_--itself not a long book, though of +hardly surpassed quality--the whole of the poems except _Pauline_ had +been gathered into three small but thick volumes, which undoubtedly did +very much to spread the poet's fame--a spread much helped by their +immediate successors. The enormous poem of _The Ring and the Book_, +originally issued in four volumes and containing more than twenty +thousand verses, was published in 1869, and, the public being by this +time well prepared for it, received a welcome not below its merits. +Having at last gained the public ear, Mr. Browning did not fail to +improve the occasion, and of the next fifteen years few passed without a +volume, while some saw two, from his pen. These, including translations +of the _Alcestis_ and the _Agamemnon_ (for the poet was at this time +seized with a great fancy for Greek, which he rendered with much fluency +and a very singular indulgence in a sort of hybrid and pedantic spelling +of proper names), were _Balaustion's Adventure_ and _Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ (1871), _Fifine at the Fair_ (1872), _Red Cotton +Night-Cap Country_ (1873), _Aristophanes' Apology_ and _The Inn Album_ +(1875), _Pacchiarotto and how he Worked in Distemper_ (1876), _La +Saisiaz_ (1878), _Dramatic Idylls_, two volumes (1879-80), _Jocoseria_ +(1883), and _Ferishtah's Fancies_ (1884). The five remaining years of +Browning's long life were somewhat less fruitful; but _Parleyings with +Certain People of Importance_ came in 1887, and at the end of 1889, +almost simultaneously with his death in Italy, _Asolando_, which some +think by far his best volume since _Dramatis Personae_, a quarter of a +century older. These volumes occasionally contained a few, and +_Asolando_ contained several, of the lovely lyrics above referred to. +But the great bulk of them consisted of the curious blank verse, now +narrative, now ostensibly dramatic monologue, which the poet had always +affected, and which he now seemed to affect more and more. In them, too, +from _The Ring and the Book_ onwards, there appeared a tendency stronger +than ever to an eccentric and almost burlesque phraseology, which at one +time threatened to drown all his good qualities, as involution of +thought had threatened to drown them in the _Sordello_ period. But this +danger also was averted at the last. + +Critical estimate of Browning's poetry was for years hampered by, and +cannot even yet be said to have been quite cleared from, the violent +prepossessions of public opinion respecting him. For more than a +generation, in the ordinary sense, he was more or less passionately +admired by a few devotees, stupidly or blindly ignored by the public in +general, and persistently sneered at, lectured, or simply disliked by +the majority of academically educated critics. The sharp revulsion of +his later years has been noticed; and it amounted almost to this, that +while dislike to him in those who had intelligently, if somewhat +narrowly, disapproved of his ways was not much affected, a Browning +_cultus_, almost as blind as the former pooh-poohing or ignoring, set +in, and extended from a considerable circle of ardent worshippers to the +public at large. A "Browning Society" was founded in 1881, and received +from the poet a kind of countenance which would certainly not have been +extended to it by most English men of letters. During his later years +handbooks solemnly addressed to neophytes in Browningism, as if the cult +were a formal science or art, appeared with some frequency; and there +has been even a bulky _Browning Dictionary_, which not only expounds the +more recondite (and, it is fair to say, tolerably frequent) allusions of +the master, but provides for his disciples something to make up for the +ordinary classical and other dictionaries with which, it seemed to be +presumed, their previous education would have made them little +conversant. + +This not very wise adulation in its turn not unnaturally excited a sort +of irritation and dislike, to a certain extent renewing the old +prejudice in a new form. To those who could discard extraneous +considerations and take Browning simply as he was, he must, from a +period which only very old men can now remember, have always appeared a +very great, though also a very far from perfect poet. His imperfections +were always on the surface, though perhaps they were not always confined +to it; and only uncritical partisanship could at any time have denied +them, while some of them became noticeably worse in the period of rapid +composition or publication from 1870 to 1885. A large license of +unconventionality, and even of defiance of convention, may be claimed +by, and should be allowed to, persons of genius such as Mr. Browning +undoubtedly possessed. But it can hardly be denied that he, like his +older contemporary Carlyle, whose example may not have been without +influence upon him, did set at naught not merely the traditions, but the +sound norms and rules of English phrase to a rather unnecessary extent. +A beginning of deliberate provocation and challenge, passing into an +after-period of more or less involuntary persistence in an exaggeration +of the mannerisms at first more or less deliberately adopted, is apt to +be shown by persons who set themselves in this way to innovate; and it +was shown by Mr. Browning. It is impossible for any intelligent admirer +to maintain, except as a paradox, that his strange modulations, his +cacophonies of rhythm and rhyme, his occasional adoption of the +foreshortened language of the telegraph or the comic stage, and many +other peculiarities of his, were not things which a more perfect art +would have either absorbed and transformed, or at least have indulged in +with far less luxuriance. Nor does it seem much more reasonable for +anybody to contend that his fashion of soul-dissection at a hand-gallop, +in drama, in monologue, in lay sermon, was not largely, even grossly, +abused. Sometimes the thing was not worth doing at all--there are at +least half a dozen of the books between _The Ring and the Book_ and +_Asolando_ from the whole of which a judicious lover of poetry would not +care to save more than the bulk of the smallest of them should they be +menaced with entire destruction. Even in the best of these what is good +could generally, if not always, have been put at the length of the +shorter _Men and Women_ with no loss, nay, with great advantage. The +obscurity so much talked of was to some extent from the very first, and +to the last continued to be, in varying degrees, an excuse, or at least +an occasion, for putting at great length thought that was not always so +far from commonplace as it looked into expression which was very often +not so much original as unkempt. "Less matter with more art" was the +demand which might have been made of Mr. Browning from first to last, +and with increasing instance as he became more popular. + +But though no competent lover of poetry can ever have denied the truth +and cogency of these objections, the admission of them can never, in any +competent lover of poetry, have obscured or prevented an admiration of +Browning none the less intense because not wholly unreserved. Even his +longer poems, in which his faults were most apparent, possessed an +individuality of the first order, combined the intellectual with no +small part of the sensual attraction of poetry after a fashion not +otherwise paralleled in England since Dryden, and provided an +extraordinary body of poetical exercise and amusement. The pathos, the +power, at times the humour, of the singular soul-studies which he was so +fond of projecting with little accessory of background upon his canvas, +could not be denied, and have not often been excelled. If he was not +exactly what is commonly called orthodox in religion, and if his +philosophy was of a distinctly vague order, he was always "on the side +of the angels" in theology, in metaphysics, in ethics; and his politics, +if exceedingly indistinct and unpractical, were always noble and +generous. Further, though he seems to have been utterly destitute of the +slightest gift of dramatic construction, he had no mean share of a much +rarer gift, that of dramatic character; and in a century of descriptions +of nature his, if not the most exquisite, have a freedom and truth, a +largeness of outline combined with felicity of colour, not elsewhere to +be discovered. + +But it is as a lyric poet that Browning ranks highest; and in this +highest class it is impossible to refuse him all but the highest rank, +in some few cases the very highest. He understood love pretty +thoroughly; and when a lyric poet understands love thoroughly there is +little doubt of his position. But he understood many other things as +well, and could give strange and delightful voice to them. Even his +lyrics, still more his short non-lyrical poems, admirable as they often +are, and closely as they group with the lyrics proper, are not untouched +by his inseparable defect. He cannot be prevented from inserting now and +then in the midst of exquisite passages more or fewer of his quirks and +cranks of thought and phrase, of his vernacularity or his euphuism, of +his outrageous rhymes (which, however, are seldom or never absolutely +bad), of those fantastic tricks of his in general which remind one of +nothing so much as of dashing a bladder with rattling peas in the +reader's face just at the height of the passion or the argument. + +Yet the beauty, the charm, the variety, the vigour of these short poems +are as wonderful as the number of them. He never lost the secret of them +to his latest years. The delicious lines "Never the time and the place, +And the loved one all together" are late; and there are half a dozen +pieces in _Asolando_, latest of all, which exhibit to the full the +almost bewildering beauty of combined sound, thought, and sight, the +clash of castanets and the thrill of flutes, the glow of flower and +sunset, the subtle appeal for sympathy in feeling or assent in judgment. +The song snatches in _Pippa Passes_, "Through the Metidja," "The Lost +Leader," "In a Gondola," "Earth's Immortalities," "Mesmerism," "Women +and Roses," "Love Among the Ruins," "A Toccata of Galuppis," "Prospice," +"Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Porphyria's Lover," "After," with scores of others, +and the "Last Ride Together," the poet's most perfect thing, at the head +of the list, are such poems as a very few--Shakespeare, Shelley, Burns, +Coleridge--may surpass now and then in pure lyrical perfection, as +Tennyson may excel in dreamy ecstasy, as some seventeenth century +songsters may outgo in quaint and perfect fineness of touch, but such as +are nowhere to be surpassed or equalled for a certain volume and variety +of appeal, for fulness of life and thought, of action and passion. + +Mr. Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett, was older than himself by six +years, and her period of popularity considerably anticipated his. But +except one very juvenile book she published nothing of importance till +1838, when Browning, whom she did not then know, had already manifested +his idiosyncrasy. Miss Barrett, whose father's original name was +Moulton, was born at Carlton Hall, Durham, on 6th March 1806. The change +of name was brought on by succession to estates in the West Indies; and +the family were wealthy. For the greater part of Miss Barrett's youth +they lived in Herefordshire at a place, Hope End, which has left great +traces on her early poetry; later her headquarters were in London, with +long excursions to Devonshire. These excursions were mainly caused by +bad health, from which, as well as from family bereavements, Miss +Barrett was a great sufferer. She had read widely; she began to write as +a mere child; and her studies extended even to Greek, though in a rather +amateurish and desultory fashion. Her _Essay on Mind_ and other poems +appeared in 1825; but a considerable interval, as noted above, elapsed +before, in _The Seraphim_ and other poems, she gave, if not a truer, a +more characteristic note. And two more intervals of exactly the same +length gave _Poems_ 1846 and _Poems_ 1850, containing most of her best +work. Meanwhile she had met Robert Browning, and had married him, rather +against the wish of her family, in 1846. The rest of her life was spent +mostly at Florence, where, in 1849, the only child of the marriage was +born. Two years later appeared _Casa Guidi Windows_ and the long +"sociological" romance of Aurora Leigh. In these, and still more in the +_Poems before Congress_ (1860), a not unnatural tendency to echo the +peculiar form and spirit of her husband's work is observable, not by any +means always or frequently to advantage. She died at Florence on 30th +June 1861, and next year a volume of _Last Poems_ was issued. The most +interesting document in regard to her since has been her Letters to R. +H. Horne, the author of _Orion_, which were published in 1876. + +It has been said that Mrs. Browning's popularity long anticipated her +husband's; indeed, years after her death, and on the very eve of the +publication of _The Ring and the Book_, it was possible to meet persons, +not uncultivated, who were fairly well acquainted with her verse and +entirely ignorant of his. The case has since been altered; but it is +believed that Mrs. Browning still retains, and it is probable that she +will always retain, no small measure of general favour. It has been +usual to speak of her as the chief English poetess, which she certainly +is if bulk and character of work as distinguished from perfection of +workmanship are considered. Otherwise, she must as certainly give place +to Miss Christina Rossetti. But Mrs. Browning no doubt combined, in very +unusual and interesting manner, the qualities which appeal to what may +be called, with no disdainful intention, the crowd of readers of poetry, +and those which appeal to the elect. Even the peculiarities which lent +themselves so easily to parody--and some of the happiest parodies ever +written were devoted to her in _Bon Gaultier_ and other books--did not +serve her badly with the general, for a parody always in a way attracts +attention to the original. Although her expression was not always of the +very clearest, its general drift was never easily mistakable; and +though she was wont to enshrine her emotions in something of a mist of +mysticism, they were in the main simple and human enough. It must also +be admitted that pathetic sentiment is almost the surest of popular +appeals in poetry; and Miss Barrett--partly through physical suffering, +partly through the bereavements above referred to, but very mainly it +may be suspected by temperament and preference--was much more a visitant +of the House of Mourning than of the House of Mirth. She was, yet again, +profoundly and sincerely, if a little vaguely, religious: and her sacred +poems, of which the famous and beautiful "Cowper's Grace" is the chief +example, secured one portion of the public to her as firmly as the +humanitarianism of "The Cry of the Children," chiming in with famous +things of Hood and Dickens, did another; "Isobel's Child," a pathetic +domesticity, a third; the somewhat gushing and undistinguished +Romanticism of "The Duchess May" and "The Brown Rosary," a fourth; and +the ethical and political "noble sentiments" of "Lady Geraldine's +Courtship," a fifth. + +But it would argue gross unfairness in an advocate, and gross +incompetence in a critic, to let it be supposed that these popular +attractions were the only ones that Mrs. Browning possessed. Despite and +besides the faults which will be presently noticed, and which, +critically speaking, are very grave faults, she had poetical merits of a +very high order. Her metrical faculty, though constantly flawed and +imperfect, was very original and full of musical variety. Although her +choice of words could by no means always be commended, her supply of +them was extraordinary. Before her imprisonment in sick-rooms she had +pored on nature with the eagerest and most observant eye, and that +imprisonment itself only deepened the intensity of her remembered +nature-worship. Her pathos, if it sometimes over-flowed into gush, was +quite unquestionable in sincerity and most powerful in appeal; her +sentiment was always pure and generous; and it is most curious to see +how in the noble directness of such a piece as "Lord Walter's Wife," not +only her little faults of _sensiblerie_, but her errors of diction, are +burnt and smelted out by the fire of the expressed impression. Her +verse-pictures--for instance those in the "Vision of Poets"--vie, in +beauty if not in clearness of composition and definition, with +Tennyson's own. The Romantic pieces already glanced at, obnoxious and +obvious as are their defects, unite the pathos and the picturesqueness +just assigned to her in a most remarkable manner. And when, especially +in the Sonnet, she consented to undergo the limitations of a form which +almost automatically restrained her voluble facility, the effect was +often simply of the first order. The exquisite "Sonnets from the +Portuguese" (which are not from the Portuguese, and are understood to +have been addressed to Mr. Browning), especially that glorious one +beginning-- + + If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught + Except for love's sake only-- + +(which is not far below Shakespeare's or the great thing which was +published as Drayton's), rank with the noblest efforts of the 16th-17th +century in this exquisite form. And if this, instead of having to +conform to the requirements of a connected history, were a separate +study of Mrs. Browning, it would be necessary to mention scores of +separate pieces full of varied beauty. + +But in no poet, perhaps not even in Byron, are such great beauties +associated with such astonishing defects as in Mrs. Browning; some of +these defects being so disgusting as well as so strange that it requires +not a little critical detachment to put her, on the whole, as high as +she deserves to be put. Like almost all women who have written, she was +extremely deficient in self-criticism, and positively pampered and +abused her natural tendency towards fluent volubility. There is hardly +one of the pieces named above, outside the sonnets, with the exception +certainly of "Lord Walter's Wife" and possibly of "Cowper's Grave," +which would not be immensely improved by compression and curtailment, +"The Rhyme of the Duchess May" being a special example. In other pieces +not yet specified, such as "The Romaunt of Margret," "Bianca among the +Nightingales," and especially "The Poet's Vow," the same defect is +painfully felt. That the poetess frequently, and especially in her later +poetical work, touches subjects which she does not very well comprehend, +and which are very doubtfully suited for poetical treatment at all, is a +less important because a more controversial objection; and the merits of +such a book as _Aurora Leigh_ depend so much upon the arguing out of the +general question whether what is practically a modern novel has any +business to be written in verse, that they perhaps can receive no +adequate treatment here. But as to the fatal fluency of Mrs. Browning +there can be no question before any tribunal which knows its own +jurisdiction and its own code. And that fluency extends to more than +length. The vocabulary is wilfully and tastelessly unusual,--"abele" +rhymed "abeel" for "poplar"; American forms such as "human" for +"humanity" and "weaken" for a neuter verb; fustianish words like +"reboant"; awkward suggestions of phrase, such as "droppings of warm +tears." + +But all these things, and others put together, are not so fatal as her +extraordinary dulness of ear in the matter of rhyme. She endeavoured to +defend her practice in this respect in the correspondence with Horne, +but it is absolutely indefensible. What is known as assonance, that is +to say, vowel rhyme only, as in Old French and in Spanish, is not in +itself objectionable, though it is questionably suited to English. But +Mrs. Browning's eccentricities do not as a rule, though they sometimes +do, lie in the direction of assonance. They are simply bad and vulgar +rhymes--rhymes which set the teeth on edge. Thus, when she rhymes +"palace" and "chalice," "evermore" and "emperor," "Onora" and "o'er +her," or, most appalling of all, "mountain" and "daunting," it is +impossible not to remember with a shudder that every omnibus conductor +does shout "Pal_lis_," that the common Cockney would pronounce it +"Onorer," that the vulgar ear is deaf to the difference between _ore_ +and _or_, and that it is possible to find persons not always of the +costermonger class who would make of "mountain" something very like +"mauunting." In other words, Mrs. Browning deliberately, or lazily, or +for want of ear, admits false pronunciation to save her the trouble of +an exact rhyme. Nay, more, despite her Greek, she will rhyme "idyll" to +"middle," and "pyramidal" to "idle," though nothing can be longer than +the _i_ in the first case, and nothing shorter than the _i_ in the +second. The positive anguish which such hideous false notes as these +must cause to any one with a delicate ear, the maddening interruption to +the delight of these really beautiful pieces of poetry, cannot be +over-estimated. It is fair to say that among the later fruit of her +poetical tree there are fewer of these Dead Sea apples,--her husband, +who, though audacious, was not vulgar in his rhymes, may have taught her +better. But to her earlier, more spontaneous, and more characteristic +verse they are a most terrible drawback, such as no other English poet +exhibits or suffers. + +No poets at all approaching the first class can be said to have been +born within a decade either way of Tennyson and Browning, though some +extremely interesting writers of verse of about the same date will have +to be noticed in the latter part of this chapter. The next year that +produced a poet almost if not quite great, though one of odd lapses and +limitations, was 1822, the birth-year of Matthew Arnold. When a writer +has produced both prose and verse, or prose of distinctly different +kinds in which one division or kind was very far superior in intrinsic +value and extrinsic importance to the others, it has seemed best here to +notice all his work together. But in the case of Mr. Arnold, as in some +others, this is not possible, the volume, the character, and the +influence of his work in creative verse and critical prose alike +demanding separate treatment for the two sections. He was the eldest son +of Dr. Arnold, the famous head-master of Rugby, and was educated first +at the two schools, Winchester and Rugby itself, with which his father +was connected as scholar and master, and then at Balliol, where he +obtained a scholarship in 1840. He took the Newdigate in 1844, and was +elected a fellow of Oriel in 1845. After some work as private +secretary, he received an inspectorship of schools, and held it until +nearly the time of his death in 1888. He had been Professor of Poetry at +Oxford from 1857-67. He published poetry early, and though his fame at +this time was never very wide, he was known to those interested in +poetry, and especially to Oxford men, for more than twenty years before +he acquired popularity as a critic and began the remarkable series of +prose works which will be noticed in a later chapter. So early as 1849 +he had published, under the initial of his surname only, _The Strayed +Reveller, and other Poems_; but his poetical building was not securely +founded until 1853, when there appeared, with a very remarkable preface, +a collection of Poems, which was certainly the best thing that had been +produced by any one younger than the two masters already discussed. +_Merope_, which followed in 1858, was an attempt at an English-Greek +drama, which, with Mr. Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_ and +_Erechtheus_, is perhaps the best of a somewhat mistaken kind, for +Shelley's _Prometheus Unbound_ soars far above the kind itself. Official +duty first, and the growing vogue of his prose writing later, prevented +Mr. Arnold from issuing very many volumes of verse. But his _New Poems_ +in 1867 made important additions, and in this way and that his poetical +production reached by the time of his death no inconsiderable +volume--perhaps five hundred pages averaging thirty lines each, or very +much more than has made the reputation of some English poets of very +high rank. Until late in his own life the general tendency was not to +take Mr. Arnold very seriously as a poet; and there are still those who +reproach him with too literary a character, who find fault with him as +thin and wanting in spontaneity. On the other hand, there are some who +not only think him happier in verse than in prose, but consider him +likely to take, when the "firm perspective of the past" has dispelled +mirages and false estimates, a position very decidedly on the right side +of the line which divides the great from the not great. + +Family, local, and personal reasons (for Dr. Arnold had a house in the +immediate vicinity of Rydal), as well as the strong contemporary set in +favour of Wordsworth which prevailed in both universities between 1830 +and 1845, caused Mr. Arnold early to take a distinctly Wordsworthian +bent. He was, later, somewhat outspoken in his criticism of Wordsworth's +weaker points; but it is impossible for any one to read his own poems +without perceiving that Arnold stands in a line of filiation from +Milton, with a slight deviation by way of Gray, through Wordsworth, +though with a strong personal element in his verse. This personal +element, besides other things, represents perhaps more powerfully than +it represents anything else, and than anything else represents this, a +certain reaction from the ornate and fluent Romanticism of the school of +Keats and Tennyson. Both, especially the latter, influenced Mr. Arnold +consciously and unconsciously. But consciously he was striving against +both to set up a neo-classic ideal as against the Romantic; and +unconsciously he was endeavouring to express a very decided, though a +perhaps not entirely genial or masculine, personal temperament. In other +words, Mr. Arnold is on one side a poet of "correctness"--a new +correctness as different from that of Pope as his own time, character, +and cultivation were from Pope's, but still correctness, that is to say +a scheme of literature which picks and chooses according to standards, +precedents, systems, rather than one which, given an abundant stream of +original music and representation, limits the criticising province in +the main to making the thing given the best possible of its kind. And it +is not a little curious that his own work is by no means always the best +of its kind--that it would often be not a little the better for a +stricter application of critical rules to itself. + +But when it is at its best it has a wonderful charm--a charm nowhere +else to be matched among our dead poets of this century. Coleridge was +perhaps, allowing for the fifty years between them, as good a scholar as +Mr. Arnold, and he was a greater poet; but save for a limited time he +never had his faculties under due command, or gave the best of his work. +Scott, Byron, Keats, were not scholars at all; Shelley and Tennyson not +critical scholars; Rossetti a scholar only in modern languages. And none +of these except Coleridge, whatever their mere knowledge or instruction, +had the critical vein, the knack of comparing and adjusting, at all +strongly developed. Many attempts have been made at a formula of which +the following words are certainly not a perfect expression, that a poet +without criticism is a failure, and that a critic who is a poet is a +miracle. Mr. Arnold is beyond all doubt the writer who has most nearly +combined the two gifts. But for the present we are only concerned with +his poetry. + +This shows itself distinctly enough, and perhaps at not far from its +best, in almost his earliest work. Among this earliest is the +magnificent sonnet on Shakespeare which perhaps better deserves to be +set as an epigraph and introduction to Shakespeare's own work than +anything else in the libraries that have been written on him except +Dryden's famous sentence; "Mycerinus," a stately blending of +well-arranged six-lined stanzas with a splendid finale of blank verse +not quite un-Tennysonian, but slightly different from Tennyson's; "The +Church of Brou," unequal but beautiful in the close (it is a curious and +almost a characteristic thing that Matthew Arnold's finales, his +perorations, were always his best); "Requiescat," an exquisite dirge. To +this early collection, too, belongs almost the whole of the singular +poem or collection of poems called "Switzerland," a collection much +rehandled in the successive editions of Mr. Arnold's work, and +exceedingly unequal, but containing, in the piece which begins-- + + Yes! in the sea of life enisled, + +one of the noblest poems of its class which the century has produced; +the mono-dramatic "Strayed Reveller," which as mentioned above is one of +the very earliest of all; and the more fully dramatised and longer +"Empedocles on Etna," in regard to which Mr. Arnold showed a singular +vacillation, issuing it, withdrawing nearly all of it, and than issuing +it again. Its design, like that of the somewhat later "Merope," is not +of the happiest, but it contains some lyrical pieces which are among +the best-known and the best of their author's work. Early too, if not of +the earliest, are certain longer narrative or semi-narrative poems, not +seldom varied with or breaking into lyric--"Sohrab and Rustum" with +another of the fine closes referred to, perhaps indeed the finest of +all; "The Sick King in Bokhara"; "Balder Dead"; "Tristram and Iseult"; +"The Scholar-Gipsy," a most admirable "poem of place," being chiefly +devoted to the country round Oxford; "Thyrsis" (an elegy on Clough which +by some is ranked not far below _Lycidas_ and _Adonais_). But perhaps +Mr. Arnold's happiest vein, like that of most of the poets of the last +two-thirds of the century, lay, not in long poems but in shorter pieces, +more or less lyrical in form but not precisely lyrics--in short of the +same general class (though differing often widely enough in subject and +handling) as those in which the main appeal of Tennyson himself has been +said to consist. Such is "The Forsaken Merman," the poet's most original +and perhaps most charming if not his deepest or most elaborate thing--a +piece of exquisite and passionate music modulated with art as touching +as it is consummate; "Dover Beach," where the peculiar religious +attitude, with the expression of which so much of Mr. Arnold's prose is +concerned, finds a more restrained and a very melodious voice; the +half-satiric, half-meditative "Bacchanalia"; the fine "Summer Night"; +the Memorial Verses (Mr. Arnold was a frequent and a skilled attempter +of epicedes) on Wordsworth, on Heine, and on the dog _Geist_; with, +almost latest of all and not least noble, "Westminster Abbey," the +opening passages of which vie in metre (though of a more complicated +mould) and in majesty with Milton's "Nativity Ode," and show a wonderful +ability to bear this heavy burden of comparison. + +Perhaps these last words may not unfairly hint at a defect--if not _the_ +defect--of this refined, this accomplished, but this often disappointing +poetry. Quite early, in the preface before referred to, the poet had run +up and nailed to the mast a flag-theory of poetic art to which he always +adhered as far as theory went, and which it may be reasonably supposed +he always endeavoured to exemplify in practice. According to this "all +depends on the subject," and the fault of most modern poetry and of +nearly all modern criticism is that the poets strive to produce and the +critics expect to receive, not an elaborately planned and adjusted +treatment of a great subject, but touches or bursts of more or less +beautiful thought and writing. Now of course it need not be said that in +the very highest poetry the excellence of the subject, the complete +appropriateness of the treatment, and the beauty of patches and +passages, all meet together. But it will also happen that this is not +so. And then the poet of "the subject" will not only miss the happy +"jewels five words long," the gracious puffs and cat's paws of the wind +of the spirit, that his less austere brother secures, but will not make +so very much of his subjects, of his schemes of treatment themselves. +His ambition, as ambition so often does, will over-reach itself, and he +will have nothing to show but the unfinished fragments of a poetical +Escurial instead of the finished chantries and altar-tombs which a less +formal architect is able to boast. + +However this may be, two things are certain, the first that the best +work of Matthew Arnold in verse bears a somewhat small proportion to the +work that is not his best, and that his worst is sometimes strangely +unworthy of him; the second, that the best where it appears is of +surpassing charm--uniting in a way, of which Andrew Marvell is perhaps +the best other example in English lyric, romantic grace, feeling, and +music to a classical and austere precision of style, combining nobility +of thought with grace of expression, and presenting the most +characteristically modern ideas of his own particular day with an almost +perfect freedom from the jargon of that day, and in a key always +suggesting the great masters, the great thinkers, the great poets of the +past. To those who are in sympathy with his own way of thinking he must +always possess an extraordinary attraction; perhaps he is not least, +though he may be more discriminatingly, admired by those who are very +much out of sympathy with him on not a few points of subject, but who +are one with him in the Humanities--in the sense and the love of the +great things in literature. + +The natural and logical line of development, however, from the +originators of the Romantic movement through Keats and Tennyson did not +lie through Matthew Arnold; and the time was not yet ripe--it can +perhaps hardly be said to be ripe yet--for a reaction in his sense. He +was, as has been said, a branch from Wordsworth, only slightly +influenced by Tennyson himself, than whom indeed he was not so very much +younger. The direct male line of descent lay in another direction; and +its next most important stage was determined by the same causes which +almost at the middle of the century or a little before brought about +Prae-Raphaelitism in art. Both of these were closely connected with the +set of events called the Oxford Movement, about which much has been +written, but of which the far-reaching significance, not merely in +religion but in literature, politics, art, and almost things in general, +has never yet been fully estimated. As far as literature is concerned, +and this special part of literature with which we are here dealing, this +movement had partly shown and partly shaped the direction of the best +minds towards the Middle Ages, which had been begun by Percy's +_Reliques_ in a vague and blind sort of way, and which had been +strengthened, directed, but still not altogether fashioned according to +knowledge, by Scott and Coleridge. + +This movement which dominates the whole English poetry of the later half +of the century with the exception of that produced by a few survivors of +the older time, and to which no successor of equal brilliancy and +fertility has yet made its appearance, is popularly represented by three +writers, two of whom, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Swinburne, are +fortunately still alive, and therefore fall out of our province. +Rossetti, the eldest of the three, a great influence on both, and as it +happens an example unique in all history of combined excellence in +poetry and painting, has passed away for some years, and will give us +quite sufficient text for explaining the development and illustrating +its results without outstripping the limits traced in the preface to +this book; while his sister, and a distinguished junior member of the +school, also dead, Mr. Arthur O'Shaughnessy, may profitably be brought +in to complete the illustration. + +Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel +Rossetti, was born in London on 12th May 1828. He was the son of an +Italian poet and critic of eminence, who, like so many of his countrymen +of literary tastes during the early part of the century, had fallen into +the Carbonaro movement, and who had to fly first to Malta and then to +England. Here he married Miss Polidori, whose mother was an +Englishwoman; and his four children--the two exquisite poets below dealt +with, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a competent critic, and Maria Francesca, the +eldest daughter, who wrote an excellent introduction to Dante--all made +contributions, and two of them great contributions, to English +literature. The father himself, who was Professor of Italian at King's +College, London, was an enthusiastic though rather a fantastic Dantist, +and somewhat of a visionary generally, with wild notions about mediaeval +secret societies; but a man of the greatest honesty and honour, and a +brilliant contrast to the various patriot-charlatans, from Ugo Foscolo +downwards, who brought discredit on the Italian name in his time in +England. These particulars, of a kind seldom given in this book, are not +otiose; for they have much to do with the singular personality of our +English Rossetti himself. + +He was educated at King's College School; but his leanings towards art +were so strong that at the age of fifteen he began the study of it, +leaving school to draw at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. His art +career and the formation of the P.R.B. (Prae-Raphaelite Brotherhood) +unfortunately fall outside our sphere. It is enough to say that for some +twenty years Rossetti, if he was known at all (and he was never known +very widely nor did he ever seek notoriety) was known as a painter only, +though many who only knew his poems later conceived the most passionate +admiration for his painting. Yet he wrote almost as early as he +painted, contributing to the famous Prae-Raphaelite magazine, the _Germ_, +in 1850, to the remarkable _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_, which also +saw the early work of Mr. Morris, in 1856, and publishing some +translations from _The Early Italian Poets_ in 1861. He had married the +year before this last date and was about to publish _Poems_ which he had +been writing from an early age. But his wife died in 1862, and in a fit +of despair he buried his MSS. in her coffin. They were years afterwards +exhumed and the _Poems_ appeared in 1870. Eleven years later another +volume of _Ballads and Sonnets_ was published, and Rossetti, whose +health in the interval had been much shattered, and who had +unfortunately sought refuge from insomnia in chloral, died next year in +April 1882. The last years of his life were not happy, and he was most +unnecessarily affected by attacks on the first arrangement of his +_Poems_. + +These poems had a certain advantage in being presented to a public +already acquainted with the work of Mr. Morris and Mr. Swinburne; but +Rossetti was not merely older than his two friends, he was also to some +extent their master. At the same time the influences which acted on him +were naturally diverse from those which, independently of his own +influence, acted on them. For the French and English mediaeval +inspirations of Mr. Morris, for the classical and general study of Mr. +Swinburne, he had his ancestral Italians almost for sole teachers; and +for their varied interests he had his own art of painting for a +continual companion, reminder, and model. Yet the mediaeval impulse is +almost equally strong on all three, and its intensity shows that it was +the real dominant of the moment in English poetry. The opening poem of +Rossetti's first book, "The Blessed Damozel," which is understood to +have been written very early, though afterwards wrought up by touches +both of his love for his wife while living and of his regret for her +when dead, is almost a typical example of the whole style and school, +though it is individualised by the strong pictorial element rarely +absent from his work. The "Blessed Damozel" herself, who "leaned out +From the gold Bar of Heaven," is a figure from the _Paradiso_, divested +of the excessive abstraction of that part of Dante, and clothed partly +in the gayer colours and more fleshly personality of English and French +mediaevalism, partly in a mystical halo which is peculiar to these +nineteenth century re-creations of mediaeval thought and feeling. The +poem is of extreme beauty, and ornate as is its language in parts there +are touches, such as the poet's reflection + + To one it is ten years of years, + +which utter the simplest truth and tenderness; while others, such as the +enumeration of the Virgin's handmaidens (over which at the time the +hoofs of earless critics danced)-- + + With her five handmaidens, whose names + Are five sweet symphonies-- + Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, + Margaret and Rosalys-- + +are consummate triumphs of the word-music brought by Tennyson into +English poetry. Indeed this couplet of names might be made a sort of +text to expound the great appeal to the ear of this kind of poetry, +which any one who is deaf to the exceptional and golden harmony of the +arrangement need never hope to appreciate. It is perfectly easy to +change the order in many ways without affecting the verse; there is +absolutely none of these combinations which approaches the actual one in +beauty of sound and suggestion. + +"Love's Nocturn" which follows is more of the early Italian school pure +and simple; and "Troy Town," a ballad with burdens, is one of a class of +poem much affected by Rossetti and ever since, which has produced some +admirable work, but is perhaps a little open to the charge of too +deliberate archaism. It is at any rate far inferior to his own "Sister +Helen." But "The Burden of Nineveh" which follows is in a quite +different style, and besides its intrinsic excellence is noteworthy as +showing how very far Rossetti was from being limited in his choice of +manners. But to go through the whole contents of this very remarkable +volume would be impossible, and we can only particularise the great +sonnet-sequence "The House of Life" (which was attacked for want of +decency with as little intelligence as "The Blessed Damozel" had been +attacked for want of sense), and a set "for pictures." The first, +somewhat thorny and obscure in language, is of extreme poetical and +philosophical beauty. The latter, beautiful enough, may be said to lend +themselves a little to the attacks of those critics who charged Rossetti +with, in the Aristotelian phrase, "shifting his ground to another kind" +or (to vary the words) of taking the quotation _ut pictura poesis_ in +too literal a sense. Some songs, especially "Penumbra" and "The +Woodspurge," of intense sweetness and sadness, were also included; and +the simple directness of "Jenny" showed, like "Nineveh," capacities in +the poet not easily to be inferred from the bulk of his poems. + +Rossetti's second volume, while it added only too little to the bulk of +his work--for much of it consisted of a revised issue of "The House of +Life"--added greatly to its enjoyment. But it produced no new kind, +unless certain extensions of the ballad-scheme into narrative poems of +considerable length--"Rose-Mary," "The White Ship," and "The King's +Tragedy"--be counted as such. "Rose-Mary" in particular exhibits the +merits and defects of the poet in almost the clearest possible light, +and it may be safely said that no English poet, not the very greatest, +need have been ashamed of such a stanza as this, where there is no +affectation worth speaking of, where the eternal and immortal +commonplaces of poetry are touched to newness as only a master touches, +and where the turn of the phrase and verse is impeccable and supreme:-- + + And lo! on the ground Rose-Mary lay, + With a cold brow like the snows ere May, + With a cold breast like the earth till Spring-- + With such a smile as the June days bring + When the year grows warm for harvesting. + +Here, as elsewhere, it has seemed better to postpone most of the +necessary general criticism of schools and groups till the concluding +chapter, but in this particular respect the paucity of individuals which +our scheme leaves (though Miss Rossetti and Mr. O'Shaughnessy will give +valuable assistance presently), may make a few words desirable, even if +they be partly repetition and partly anticipation. We find in Rossetti a +strong influence of pictorial on poetic art; an overpowering tendency to +revert to the forms and figures, the sense and sentiment of the past, +especially the mediaeval past; and a further tendency to a mysticism +which is very often, if not always, poetic in character, as indeed +mysticism generally if not always is. We find in point of form a +distinct preference for lyric over other kinds, a fancy for archaic +language and schemes of verse, a further fancy for elaborate and ornate +language (which does not, however, exclude perfect simplicity when the +poet chooses), and above all, a predilection for attempting and a +faculty for achieving effects of verbal music by cunning adjustment of +vowel and consonant sound which, though it had been anticipated +partially, and as it were accidentally in the seventeenth century, and +had been after the Romantic revival displayed admirably by Coleridge and +Keats, and brought to a high pitch by Tennyson, was even further +elaborated and polished by the present school. Indeed, they may be said +to have absolutely finished this poetical appeal as a distinct and +deliberate one. All poets have always attempted, and all poets always +will attempt, and when they are great, achieve these enchanting effects +of mere sound. But for some considerable time it will not be possible +(indeed it will be quite impossible until the structure, the intonation, +the phrase of English have taken such turns as will develop physical +possibilities as different from those of our language as ours are from +those of the seventeenth century) for any poets to get distinctly great +effects in the same way. It is proof enough of this that, except the +masters, no poet for many years now _has_ achieved a great effect by +this means, and that the most promising of the newer school, whether +they may or may not have found a substitute, are abandoning it. + +Rossetti's younger, but very little younger, sister, Christina Georgina, +was born in 1830, sat to her brother early for the charming picture of +"The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and is said also to figure in his +illustration of the weeping queens in Tennyson's _Morte D' Arthur_. But +she lived an exceedingly quiet life, mainly occupied in attention to her +mother and in devotion; for she had been brought up, and all her life +remained, a member of the Church of England. Her religious feelings more +and more coloured her poetical work, which was produced at intervals +from 1861 till close upon her death in the winter of 1894-95. It was not +hastily written, and latterly formed mainly the embellishment of certain +prose books of religious reflection or excerpt. But it was always of an +exquisite quality. Its first expression in book form was _Goblin Market, +and other Poems_ (1861), which, as well as her next volume, _The +Prince's Progress_ (1866), was illustrated by her brother's pencil. A +rather considerable time then passed without anything of importance (a +book called _Sing-Song_ excepted), till in 1881 _A Pageant, and other +Poems_ was added. A collection of all these was issued nine years later, +but with this the gleanings from the devotional works above mentioned +(the chief of which were _Time Flies_ and _The Face of the Deep_) have +still to be united. + +There are those who seriously maintain Miss Rossetti's claim to the +highest rank among English poetesses, urging that she excels Mrs. +Browning, her only possible competitor, in freedom from blemishes of +form and from the liability to fall into silliness and maudlin gush, at +least as much as she falls short of her in variety and in power of +shaping a poem of considerable bulk. But without attempting a too rigid +classification we may certainly say that Miss Rossetti has no superior +among Englishwomen who have had the gift of poetry. In the title-piece +of her first book the merely quaint side of Prae-Raphaelitism perhaps +appears rather too strongly, though very agreeably to some. But +"Dreamland," "Winter Rain," "An End," "Echo," the exquisite song for +music "When I am dead, my dearest," and the wonderful devotional pieces +called "The Three Enemies" and "Sleep at Sea," with many charming +sonnets, adorned a volume which, on the whole, showed more of the +tendencies of the school than any which had yet appeared. For it was +less exclusively mediaeval than Mr. Morris' _Defence of Guinevere_, and +very much more varied as well as more mature than Mr. Swinburne's _Queen +Mother_ and _Rosamond_. _The Prince's Progress_ showed a great advance +on _Goblin Market_ in dignity and freedom from mannerism, and the minor +poems in general rivalled those in the earlier collection, though the +poetess perhaps never quite equalled "Sleep at Sea." The contents of _A +Pageant, and other Poems_ were at once more serious and lighter than +those of the two former books (for Miss Rossetti, like her brother, had +a strong touch of humour), while the _Collected Poems_ added some +excellent pieces. But the note of the whole had been struck, as is +usually the case with good poets who do not publish too early, at the +very first. + +The most distinguished members, with the exception of Mr. and Miss +Rossetti, of this school are still alive; and, as it did not become +fashionable until about five-and-twenty years ago, even the junior +members of it have in but few cases been sent to that majority of which +alone we treat. Mr. John Addington Symonds, an important writer of +prose, began early and never abandoned the practice of verse, but his +accomplishment in it was never more than an accomplishment. Mr. Philip +Bourke Marston, son of Dr. Westland Marston, the dramatist, was highly +reputed as a poet by his friends, but friendship and compassion (he was +blind) had perhaps more to do with this reputation than strict +criticism. The remarkable talents of Mr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, which +could never be mistaken by any one who knew him, and of which some +memorials remain in verse, were mainly lost to English poetry by the +fact of his passing the last twenty years of his life as a Jesuit +priest. But the most characteristic figure now passed away was Arthur +O'Shaughnessy (1844-81). He was an official of the British Museum, and +published three volumes of poetry--_The Epic of Women_ (1870), _Lays of +France_ (1872), and _Music and Moonlight_ (1874)--which were completed +in the year of his death by a posthumous volume entitled _Songs of a +Worker_. Of these the _Lays of France_ are merely paraphrases of Marie: +great part of the _Songs of a Worker_ is occupied with mere translation +of modern French verses--poor work for a poet at all times. But _The +Epic of Women_ and _Music and Moonlight_ contain stuff which it is not +extravagant to call extraordinary. + +It was never widely popular, for O'Shaughnessy pushed the fancy of the +Prae-Raphaelites for a dreamy remoteness to its very furthest, and the +charge (usually an uncritical one, but usually also explaining with a +certain justice a poet's unpopularity) of "lack of human interest" was +brought against him. Sometimes, too, either of deliberate conviction or +through corrupt following of others, he indulged in expressions of +opinion about matters on which the poet is not called upon to express +any, in a manner which was always unnecessary and sometimes offensive. +But judged as a poet he has the _unum necessarium_, the individual note +of song. Like Keats, he was not quite individual--there are echoes, +especially of Edgar Poe, in him. But the genuine and authentic +contribution is sufficient, and is of the most unmistakable kind. In the +first book "Exile," "A Neglected Heart," "Bisclavaret," "The Fountain of +Tears," "Barcarolle," make a new mixture of the fair and strange in +meaning, a new valuation of the eternal possibilities of language in +sound. _Music and Moonlight_--O'Shaughnessy was one of the few poets who +have been devoted to music--is almost more remote, and even less +popularly beautiful; but the opening "Ode," some of the lyrics in the +title poem (such as "Once in a hundred years"), the song "Has summer +come without the rose," and not a few others, renew for those who can +receive it the strange attraction, the attraction most happily hinted by +the very title of this book itself, which O'Shaughnessy could exercise. +That there was not a little that is morbid in him--as perhaps in the +school generally--sane criticism cannot deny. But though it is as unwise +as it is unsafe to prefer morbidness for itself or to give it too great +way, there are undoubted charms in it, and O'Shaughnessy could give +poetical form to these as few others could. Two of his own lines-- + + Oh! exquisite malady of the soul, + How hast thou marred me-- + +put the thing well. Those who have once tasted his poetry return, and +probably, though they are never likely to be numerous, always when they +have once tasted will return, to the visions and the melodies-- + + Of a dreamer who slumbers, + And a singer who sings no more. + +Another poet whose death brings him within our range, and who may be +said to belong, with some striking differences of circumstance as well +as individual genius, to the same school, was James Thomson, second of +the name in English poetry, but a curious and melancholy contrast to +that Epicurean animal, the poet of _The Seasons_. He was born at +Port-Glasgow on 23rd November 1834, and was the son of a sailor. His +parents being in poor circumstances, he obtained, as a child, a place in +the Royal Caledonian Asylum, and, after a good education there, became +an army schoolmaster--a post which he held for a considerable time. But +Thomson's natural character was recalcitrant to discipline and +distinguished by a morbid social jealousy. He gradually, under the +influence of, or at any rate in company with, the notorious Charles +Bradlaugh, adopted atheistic and republican opinions, and in 1862 an act +of insubordination led to his dismissal from the army, for which he had +long lost, if he ever had, any liking. It is also said that the death of +a girl to whom he was passionately attached had much to do with the +development of the morbid pessimism by which he became distinguished. +For some time Thomson tried various occupations, being by turns a +lawyer's clerk, a mining agent, and war correspondent of a newspaper +with the Carlists. But even before he left the army he had, partly with +Mr. Bradlaugh's help, obtained work on the press, and such income as he +had during the last twenty years of his life was chiefly derived from +it. He might undoubtedly have made a comfortable living in this way, for +his abilities were great and his knowledge not small. But in addition to +the specially poetical weakness of disliking "collar-work," he was +hampered by the same intractable and morose temper which he had shown in +the army, by the violence of his religious and political views, and +lastly and most fatally by an increasing slavery to drink and chloral. +At last, in 1882, he--after having been for some time in the very worst +health--burst a blood-vessel while visiting his friend the blind poet +Philip Bourke Marston, and died in University College Hospital on 3rd +June. + +This melancholy story is to be found sufficiently reflected in his +works. Those in prose, though not contemptible, neither deserve nor are +likely to receive long remembrance, being for the most part critical +studies, animated by a real love for literature and informed by +respectable knowledge, but of necessity lacking in strict scholarship, +distinguished by more acuteness than wisdom, and marred by the sectarian +violence and narrowness of a small anti-orthodox clique. They may +perhaps be not unfairly compared to the work of a clever but +ill-conditioned schoolboy. The verse is very different. He began to +write it early, and it chiefly appeared in Mr. Bradlaugh's _National +Reformer_ with the signature "B. V.," the initials of "Bysshe Vanolis," +a rather characteristic _nom de guerre_ which Thomson had taken to +express his admiration for Shelley directly, and for Novalis by anagram. +Some of it, however, emerged into a wider hearing, and attracted the +favourable attention of men like Kingsley and Froude. But Thomson did +nothing of importance till 1874, when "The City of Dreadful Night" +appeared in the _National Reformer_, to the no small bewilderment +probably of its readers. Six years later the poem was printed with +others in a volume, quickly followed by a second, _Vane's Story_, +_etc._ Thomson's melancholy death attracted fresh attention to him, and +much--perhaps a good deal too much--of his writings has been +republished since. His claims, however, must rest on a comparatively +small body of work, which will no doubt one day be selected and issued +alone. "The City of Dreadful Night" itself, incomparably the best of the +longer poems, is a pessimist and nihilist effusion of the deepest gloom +amounting to despair, but couched in stately verse of an absolute +sincerity and containing some splendid passages. With this is connected +one of the latest pieces, the terrible "Insomnia." Of lighter strain, +written when the poet could still be happy, are "Sunday at Hampstead" +and "Sunday up the River," "The Naked Goddess," and one or two others; +while other things, such as "The fire that filled my heart of old," must +also be cited. Even against these the charge of a monotonous, narrow, +and irrational misery has been brought. But what saves Thomson is the +perfection with which he expresses, the negative and hopeless side of +the sense of mystery, of the Unseen; just as Miss Rossetti expresses the +positive and hopeful one. No two contemporary poets perhaps ever +completed each other in a more curious way than this Bohemian atheist +and this devout lady. + +So far in this chapter the story of poetry, from Tennyson downwards, has +been conducted in regular fashion, and by citing the principal names +which represent the chief schools or sub-schools. But we must now return +to notice a very considerable company of other verse-writers, without +mention of whom this history would be wofully incomplete. Nor must it by +any means be supposed that they are to be regarded invariably as +constituting a "second class." On the contrary, some of them are the +equals, one or two the superiors, of Thomson or of O'Shaughnessy. But +they have been postponed, either because they belong to schools of which +the poets already mentioned are masters, to choruses of which others are +the leaders, or because they show rather blended influences than a +distinct and direct advance in the main poetical line of development. +Others again rank here, and not earlier, because they are of the second +class, or a lower one. + +Of these, though he leaves a name certain to live in English literary +history, if not perhaps quite in the way in which its author wished, is +Martin Farquhar Tupper, who was born, in 1810, of a very respectable +family in the Channel Islands, his father being a surgeon of eminence. +Tupper was educated at the Charterhouse and at Christ Church, and was +called to the bar. But he gave himself up to literature, especially +poetry or verse, of which he wrote an enormous quantity. His most famous +book appeared originally in 1839, though it was afterwards continued. It +was called _Proverbial Philosophy_, and criticised life in rhythmical +rather than metrical lines, with a great deal of orthodoxy. Almost from +the first the critics and the wits waged unceasing war against it; but +the public, at least for many years, bought it with avidity, and perhaps +read it, so that it went through forty editions and is said to have +brought in twenty thousand pounds. Nor is it at all certain that any +genuine conception of its pretentious triviality had much to do with the +decay which, after many years, it, like other human things, experienced. +Mr. Tupper, who did not die till 1889, is understood to have been +privately an amiable and rather accomplished person; and some of his +innumerable minor copies of verse attain a very fair standard of minor +poetry. But _Proverbial Philosophy_ remains as one of the bright and +shining examples of the absolute want of connection between literary +merit and popular success. + +It has been said that Lord Tennyson's first work appeared in _Poems by +Two Brothers_, and it is now known that this book was actually by the +_three_,--Frederick, Charles, and Alfred. Frederick, the eldest, who, at +a great age, is still alive, has never ceased verse-writing. Charles, +who afterwards took the name of Turner, and, having been born in 1808, +died in 1879, was particularly famous as a sonneteer, producing in this +form many good and some excellent examples. Arthur Hallam, whom _In +Memoriam_ has made immortal, was credited by the partial judgment of his +friends with talents which, they would fain think, were actually shown +both in verse and prose. A wiser criticism will content itself with +saying that in one sense he produced _In Memoriam_ itself, and that +this is enough connection with literature for any man. His own work has +a suspicious absence of faults, without the presence of any great +positive merit,--a combination almost certainly indicating precocity, to +be followed by sterility. But this consummation he was spared. John +Sterling, who has been already referred to, and who stands to Carlyle in +what may be called a prose version of the relation between Tennyson and +Hallam, wrote some verse which is at least interesting; and Sir Francis +Doyle, also elsewhere mentioned, belongs to the brood of the remarkable +years 1807-14, having been born in 1810. But his splendid war-songs were +written not very early in life. + +Of the years just mentioned, the first, 1807, contributed, besides Mr. +Frederick Tennyson, the very considerable talent of Archbishop Trench, a +Harrow and Trinity (Cambridge) man who had an actual part in the +expedition to Spain from which Sterling retreated, took orders, and +ended a series of ecclesiastical promotions by the Archbishopric of +Dublin, to which he was consecrated in 1864, which he held with great +dignity and address during the extremely trying period of +Disestablishment, and which he resigned in 1884, dying two years later. +Trench wrote always well, and always as a scholar, on a wide range of +subjects. He was an interesting philologist,--his _Study of Words_ being +the most popular of scholarly and the most scholarly of popular works on +the subject,--a valuable introducer of the exquisite sacred Latin poetry +of the Middle Ages to Englishmen, a sound divine in preaching and +teaching. His original English verse was chiefly written before the +middle of the century, though perhaps his best known (not his best) +verses are on the Battle of the Alma. He was a good sonneteer and an +excellent hymn-writer. + +1809 contributed three writers of curiously contrasted character. One +was Professor Blackie, an eccentric and amiable man, a translator of +AEschylus, and a writer of songs of a healthy and spirited kind. The +second, Dr. Thomas Gordon Hake, a poet of Parables, has never been +popular, and perhaps seldom arrived at that point of projection in which +poetical alchemy finally and successfully transmutes the rebel +materials of thought and phrase into manifest gold; but he had very high +and distinctly rare, poetical qualities. Such things as "Old Souls," +"The Snake Charmer," "The Palmist," three capital examples of his work, +are often, and not quite wrongly, objected to in different forms of some +such a phrase as this: "Poetry that is perfect poetry ought never to +subject any tolerable intellect to the necessity of searching for its +meaning. It is not necessary that it should yield up the whole treasures +of that meaning at once, but it must carry on the face of it such a +competent quantity as will relieve the reader from postponing the poetic +enjoyment in order to solve the intellectual riddle." The truth of this +in the main, and the demurrers and exceptions to it in part, are pretty +clear; nor is this the place to state them at length. It is sufficient +to say that in Dr. Hake's verse, especially that part of it published +between 1870 and 1880 under the titles _Madeline_, _Parables and Tales_, +_New Symbols_, _Legends of the Morrow_ and _Maiden Ecstasy_, the reader +of some poetical experience will seldom fail to find satisfaction. + +It is impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that of this poet +with Lord Houghton, earlier known to everybody as Richard Monckton +Milnes, who died in 1885. He was of the golden age of Trinity during +this century, the age of Tennyson, and throughout life he had an amiable +fancy for making the acquaintance of everybody who made any name in +literature, and of many who made none. A practical and active +politician, and a constant figure in society, he was also a very +considerable man of letters. His critical work (principally but not +wholly collected in _Monographs_) is not great in bulk but is +exceedingly good, both in substance and in style. His verse, on the +other hand, which was chiefly the produce of the years before he came to +middle life, is a little slight, and perhaps appears slighter than it +really is. Few poets have ever been more successful with songs for +music: the "Brookside" (commonly called from its refrain, "The beating +of my own heart"), the famous and really fine "Strangers Yet," are the +best known, but there are many others. Lord Houghton undoubtedly had no +strong vein of poetry. But it was always an entire mistake to represent +him as either a fribble or a sentimentalist, while with more inducements +to write he would probably have been one of the very best critics of his +age. + +It is necessary once more to approach the unsatisfactory brevity of a +catalogue in order to mention, since it would be wrong to omit, Sir +Samuel Ferguson (1810-86), an Irish writer who produced some pleasant +and spirited work of ordinary kinds, and laboured very hard to achieve +that often tried but seldom achieved adventure, the rendering into +English poetry of Irish Celtic legends and literature; Alfred Domett +(1811-87), author of the New Zealand epic of _Ranulf and Amohia_ and +much other verse, but most safely grappled to English poetry as +Browning's "Waring"; W. B. Scott (1812-90), an outlying member of the +Prae-Raphaelite School in art and letters, in whom for the most part +execution lagged behind conception both with pen and pencil; Charles +Mackay (1814-89), an active journalist who wrote a vast deal in verse +and prose, his best things perhaps being the mid-century "Cholera +Chant," the once well-known song of "A good time coming," and in a +sentimental strain the piece called "O, ye Tears"; and Mrs. Archer +Clive, the author of the remarkable novel of _Paul Ferroll_, whose _IX. +Poems by V._ attracted much attention from competent critics in the +doubtful time of poetry about the middle of the century, and are really +good. + +Not many writers, either in prose or poetry, give the impression of +never having done what was in them more than William Edmonstoune Aytoun, +who was born in 1813 and died in 1865. He was a son-in-law of +"Christopher North," and like him a pillar of _Blackwood's Magazine_, in +which some of his best things in prose and verse appeared. He divided +himself between law and literature, and in his rather short life rose to +a Professorship in the latter and a Sheriffdom in the former, deserving +the credit of admirably stimulating influence in the first capacity and +competent performance in the second. He published poems when he was +only seventeen. But his best work consists of the famous _Bon Gaultier +Ballads_--a collection of parodies and light poems of all kinds written +in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, and one of the pleasantest +books of the kind that the century has seen--and the more serious _Lays +of the Scottish Cavaliers_, both dating from the forties, the +satirically curious _Firmilian_ (see below), 1854, and some _Blackwood_ +stories of which the very best perhaps is _The Glenmutchkin Railway_. +His long poem of _Bothwell_, 1855, and his novel of _Norman Sinclair_, +1861, are less successful. + +The _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, on which his chief serious claim +must rest, is an interesting book, if hardly a great one. The style is +modelled with extreme closeness upon that of Scott, which even Sir +Walter, with all his originality and genius, had not been able always to +preserve from flatness. In Aytoun's hands the flats are too frequent, +though they are relieved and broken at times by really splendid bursts, +the best of which perhaps are "The Island of the Scots" and "The Heart +of the Bruce." For Aytoun's poetic vein, except in the lighter kinds, +was of no very great strength; and an ardent patriotism, a genuine and +gallant devotion to the Tory cause, and a keen appreciation of the +chivalrous and romantic, did not always suffice to supply the want of +actual inspiration. + +If it had been true, as is commonly said, that the before-mentioned +_Firmilian_ killed the so-called Spasmodic School, Aytoun's failure to +attain the upper regions of poetry would have been a just judgment; for +the persons whom he satirised, though less clever and humorous, were +undoubtedly more poetical than himself. But nothing is ever killed in +this way, and as a matter of fact the Spasmodic School of the early +fifties was little more than one of the periodical outbursts of poetic +velleity, more genuine than vigorous and more audacious than organic, +which are constantly witnessed. It is, as usual, not very easy to find +out who were the supposed scholars in this school. Mr. P. H. Bailey, the +author of _Festus_, who still survives, is sometimes classed with them; +but the chief members are admitted to have been Sydney Dobell and +Alexander Smith, both remarkable persons, both failures of something +which might in each case have been a considerable poet, and both +illustrating the "second middle" period of the poetry of the century +which corresponds to that illustrated earlier by Darley, Horne, and +Beddoes. + +Of this pair, Sydney Dobell had some, and Alexander Smith had others, of +the excuses which charity not divorced from critical judgment makes for +imperfect poets. Dobell, with sufficient leisure for poetical +production, had a rather unfortunate education and exceedingly bad +health. Smith had something of both of these, and the necessity of +writing for bread as well. Dobell, the elder of the two, and the longer +lived, though both died comparatively young, was a Kentish man, born at +Cranbrook on 5th April 1824. When he was of age his father established +himself as a wine-merchant at Cheltenham, and Sydney afterwards +exercised the same not unpoetical trade. He went to no school and to no +University, privations especially dangerous to a person inclined as he +was to a kind of passionate priggishness. He was always ill; and his +wife, to whom he engaged himself while a boy, and whom he married before +he had ceased to be one, was always ill likewise. He travelled a good +deal, with results more beneficial to his poetry than to his health; +and, the latter becoming ever worse, he died near Cheltenham on 22nd +August 1874. His first work, an "Italomaniac" closet drama entitled _The +Roman_, was published in 1850; his second, _Balder_, in 1853. This +latter has been compared to Ibsen's _Brand_: I do not know whether any +one has noticed other odd, though slight, resemblances between _Peer +Gynt_ and Beddoes' chief work. The Crimean War had a strong influence on +Dobell, and besides joining Smith in _Sonnets on the War_ (1855), he +wrote by himself _England in Time of War_, next year. He did not publish +anything else; but his works were edited shortly after his death by +Professor Nichol. + +Alexander Smith, like so many of the modern poets of Scotland, was born +in quite humble life, and had not even the full advantages open to a +Scottish "lad o' pairts." His birthplace, however, was Kilmarnock, a +place not alien to the Muses; and before he was twenty-one (his birth +year is diversely given as 1829 and 1830) the Rev. George Gilfillan, an +amiable and fluent critic of the middle of the century, who loved +literature very much and praised its practitioners with more zeal than +discrimination, procured the publication of the _Life Drama_. It sold +enormously; it is necessary to have been acquainted with those who were +young at the time of its appearance to believe in the enthusiasm with +which it was received; but a little intelligence and a very little +goodwill will enable the critic to understand, if not to share their +raptures. For a time Smith was deliberately pitted against Tennyson by +"the younger sort" as Dennis says of the faction for Settle against +Dryden in his days at Cambridge. The reaction which, mercifully for the +chances of literature if not quite pleasantly for the poet, always comes +in such cases, was pretty rapid, and Smith, ridiculed in _Firmilian_, +was more seriously taxed with crudity (which was just), plagiarism +(which was absurd), and want of measure (which, like the crudity, can +hardly be denied). Smith, however, was not by any means a weakling +except physically; he could even satirise himself sensibly and +good-humouredly enough; and his popularity had the solid result of +giving him a post in the University of Edinburgh--not lucrative and by +no means a sinecure, but not too uncongenial, and allowing him a chance +both to read and to write. For some time he stuck to poetry, publishing +_City Poems_ in 1857 and _Edwin of Deira_ in 1861. But the taste for his +wares had dwindled: perhaps his own poetic impulse, a true but not very +strong one, was waning; and he turned to prose, in which he produced a +story or two and some pleasant descriptive work--_Dreamthorpe_ (1863), +and _A Summer in Skye_ (1865). Consumption showed itself, and he died on +8th January 1867. + +It has already been said that there is much less of a distinct +brotherhood in Dobell and Smith, or of any membership of a larger but +special "Spasmodic school," than of the well-known and superficially +varying but generally kindred spirit of periods and persons in which +and in whom poetic yearning does not find organs or opportunities +thoroughly suited to satisfy itself. Dobell is the more unequal, but the +better of the two in snatches. His two most frequently quoted +things--"Tommy's Dead" and the untitled ballad where the refrain-- + + Oh, Keith of Ravelston, + The sorrows of thy line! + +occurs at irregular intervals--are for once fair samples of their +author's genius. "Tommy's dead," the lament of a father over his son, is +too long, it has frequent flatnesses, repetitions that do not add to the +effect, bits of mere gush, trivialities. The tragic and echoing +magnificence of the Ravelston refrain is not quite seconded by the text: +both to a certain extent deserve the epithet (which I have repudiated +for Beddoes in another place) of "artificial." And yet both have the +fragmentary, not to be analysed, almost uncanny charm and grandeur which +have been spoken of in that place. Nor do this charm, this grandeur, +fail to reappear (always more or less closely accompanied by the faults +just mentioned, and also by a kind of flatulent rant which is worse than +any of them) both in Dobell's war-songs, which may be said in a way to +hand the torch on from Campbell to Mr. Kipling, and in his marvellously +unequal blank verse, where the most excellent thought and phrase +alternate with sheer balderdash--a pun which (it need hardly be said) +was not spared by contemporary critics to the author of _Balder_. + +Alexander Smith never rises to the heights nor strikes the distinct +notes of Dobell; but the _Life Drama_ is really on the whole better than +either _Balder_ or _The Roman_, and is full of what may be called, from +opposite points of view, happy thoughts and quaint conceits, expressed +in a stamp of verse certainly not quite original, but melodious always, +and sometimes very striking. He has not yet had his critical +resurrection, and perhaps none such will ever exalt him to a very high +prominent position. He seems to suffer from the operation of that +mysterious but very real law which decrees that undeserved popularity +shall be followed by neglect sometimes even more undeserved. But when he +does finally find his level, it will not be a very low one. + +To the Spasmodics may be appended yet another list of bards who can +claim here but the notice of a sentence or a clause, though by no means +uninteresting to the student, and often very interesting indeed to the +student-lover of poetry:--the two Joneses--Ernest (1819-69), a rather +silly victim of Chartism, for which he went to prison, but a generous +person and master of a pretty twitter enough; and Ebenezer (1820-60), a +London clerk, author of _Studies of Sensation and Event_, a rather +curious link between the Cockney school of the beginning of the century +and some minor poets of our own times, but overpraised by his +rediscoverers some years ago; W. C. Bennett, a popular song-writer; +William Cory ( -1892), earlier and better known as Johnson, an Eton +master, a scholar, an admirable writer of prose and in _Ionica_ of verse +slightly effeminate but with a note in it not unworthy of one glance of +its punning title; W. C. Roscoe (1823-59), grandson of the historian, a +minor poet in the best sense of the term; William Allingham (1824-89), +sometime editor of _Fraser_, and a writer of verse from whom at one time +something might have been expected; Thomas Woolner, a sculptor of great, +and--in _My Beautiful Lady_, _Pygmalion_, etc.--a poet of estimable +merit, whose first-named volume attracted rather disproportionate praise +at its first appearance. As one thinks of the work of these and +others--often enjoyable, sometimes admirable, and long ago or later +admired and enjoyed--the unceremoniousness of despatching them so +slightly brings a twinge of shame. But it is impossible to do justice to +their work, or to the lyrics, merry or sensuous, of Mortimer Collins, +who was nearly a real poet of _vers de societe_, and had a capital +satiric and a winning romantic touch; the stirring ballads of Walter +Thornbury (which, however, would hardly have been written but for +Macaulay on the one hand and Barham on the other) and the +ill-conditioned but clever Radical railing of Robert Brough at +"Gentlemen." But if they cannot be discussed, they shall at least be +mentioned. On three others, Frederick Locker, Arthur Hugh Clough, and +"Owen Meredith" (Lord Lytton), we must dwell longer. + +Clough has been called by persons of distinction a "bad poet"; but this +was only a joke, and, with all respect to those who made it, a rather +bad joke. The author of "Qua Cursum Ventus," of the marvellous picture +of the advancing tide in "Say not the struggle," and of not a few other +things, was certainly no bad poet, though it would not be uncritical to +call him a thin one. He was born at Liverpool on New Year's Day 1819, +spent part of his childhood in America, went to Rugby very young and +distinguished himself there greatly, though it may be doubted whether +the peculiar system which Arnold had just brought into full play was the +healthiest for a self-conscious and rather morbid nature like Clough's. +From Rugby he went to Balliol, and was entirely upset, not, as is +sometimes most unjustly said, by Newman, but by the influence of W. G. +Ward, a genial Puck of Theology, who, himself caring for nothing but +mathematics, philosophy, and play-acting, disturbed the consciences of +others by metaphysical quibbles, and then took refuge in the Church of +Rome. Clough, who had been elected to an Oriel fellowship, threw it up +in 1848, turned freethinker, and became the head of an educational +institution in London called University Hall. He did not hold this very +long, receiving a post in the Education Office, which he held in various +forms till his death in 1861 at Florence. + +It is not necessary to be biassed by Matthew Arnold's musical epicede of +"Thyrsis" in order to admit, nor should any bias against his theological +views and his rather restless character be sufficient to induce any one +to deny, a distinct vein of poetry in Clough. His earliest and most +popular considerable work, _The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_ (the title +of which was originally rather different,) is written in hexameters +which do not, like Kingsley's, escape the curse of that "pestilent +heresy"; and the later _Amours de Voyage_ and _Dipsychus_, though there +are fine passages in both, bring him very close to the Spasmodic +school, of which in fact he was an unattached and more cultivated +member, with fancies directed rather to religiosity than to strict +literature. _Ambarvalia_ had preceded the _Bothie_, and other things +followed. On the whole, Clough is one of the most unsatisfactory +products of that well-known form of nineteenth century scepticism which +has neither the strength to believe nor the courage to disbelieve "and +have done with it." He hankers and looks back, his "two souls" are +always warring with each other, and though the clash and conflict +sometimes bring out fine things (as in the two pieces above cited and +the still finer poem at Naples with the refrain "Christ is not risen"), +though his "Latest Decalogue" has satirical merit, and some of his +country poems, written without undercurrent of thought, are fresh and +genial, he is on the whole a failure. But he is a failure of a +considerable poet, and some fragments of success chequer him. + +Frederick Locker, who on his second marriage took the additional name of +Lampson, was born in 1821 of a family long connected with the Navy and +with Greenwich Hospital. He himself held for some years a post in the +Admiralty; but he was much more addicted to society and to literature +than to official work. His first marriage with Lady Charlotte Bruce +strengthened his social position, and his second gave him wealth. He +published, as early as 1857, a volume of light verse entitled _London +Lyrics_, which, with the work of Prior, Praed, and Mr. Austin Dobson, +stands at the head of its kind in English. But--an exceedingly rare +thing for amateur as well as for professional writers in our time--he +was not tempted either by profit or fame to write copiously. He added +during his not short life, which closed in May 1895, a few more poems to +_London Lyrics_. He edited in 1867 an anthology of his own kind of verse +called _Lyra Elegantiarum_, and in 1879 he produced a miscellany of +verse and prose, original and selected, called _Patchwork_, in which +some have seen his most accomplished and characteristic production. In +form it is something like Southey's _Omniana_, partly a commonplace +book, partly full of original things; but the extracts are so choicely +made and the original part is so delightful that it is not quite like +any book in the language. If Charles Lamb had been of Mr. Locker's time +and circumstances he might have made its fellow. "My Guardian Angel," a +short prose anecdote, is, as nearly as the present writer knows, unique. +Latterly its author was chiefly known as a man of much hospitality and a +collector of choice books. He would not do anything bad, and apparently +he did not feel inclined to do anything good. And as this is a century +when almost everybody must still be doing, and taking the chance of +goodness and badness, such an exception to the rule should meet with +honour. + +No poet of the period, perhaps none of the century, occupies a position +less settled by general criticism, or more difficult to settle, than +that of Edward Robert, first Earl of Lytton, for a long time known in +poetry as "Owen Meredith." The only son of the novelist, he was born on +8th November 1831, and after going to Harrow, but not to either +university, entered the diplomatic service at the age of eighteen. In +this he filled a great many different offices at a great many different +places for nearly thirty years, till, after succeeding to his father's +title, he was made First Minister at Lisbon, and then in 1876 Viceroy of +India. This post he gave up in 1880, and after the return of the Tory +party to power, was sent in 1887 as Ambassador to Paris, where he was +very popular, and where he died in 1892. + +Despite the fact that his time, save for the interval of 1880-87, was +thus uninterruptedly occupied with business, Lord Lytton was an +indefatigable writer of verse; while in _The Ring of Amasis_ he tried +the prose romance. His chief poetical books were _Clytemnestra_ (1855); +_The Wanderer_ (1859), which contains some charming lyrical work; +_Lucile_ (1860), a verse story; _Songs of Servia_ (_Serbski Pesme_) +(1861); _Orval, or the Fool of Time_ and _Chronicles and Characters_ +(1869); _Fables in Song_ (1874); _Glenaveril_, a very long modern epic +(1885); and _After Paradise, or Legends of Exile_ (1887). Besides these +he collaborated in 1861 with his friend Julian Fane in a poem, +_Tannhaeuser_, which, though too much of a Tennysonian echo, has good +passages; and after his death two volumes equal if not superior to +anything he had done, _Marah_, a collection of short poems, and _King +Poppy_, a fantastic epic, were published. This extensive and not always +easily accessible work is conveniently represented by two volumes of +selections, one representing chiefly the earlier and shorter works, +edited by Miss Betham-Edwards in 1890, the other drawn mostly from the +later and longer, edited by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, in 1894. +This latter was accompanied by reprints of _The Wanderer_ and _Lucile_. + +The difficulties in criticism above referred to arise, not merely from +the voluminousness of this work, nor from the fact that Lord Lytton +shares with all the poets of his special generation, except Rossetti, +that inability to hit upon a definite and distinct manner of his own +which is so frequently and strangely remarkable in what may be called +intermediate poetical periods. Indeed in his later years he did strike +out something like a very distinct style. But he suffers more than any +other poet of anything like his gifts from two faults, one of which is +perhaps the fault that hurts a poet most with the vulgar, and the other +that which does him most harm with critics. He was so frankly pleased +with, and so apt at imitating the work of his great contemporaries, that +he would publish things to which fools gave the name of +plagiarisms--when they were in fact studies in the manner of Tennyson, +Heine, Browning, and others. And in the second place, though he +frequently rewrote, it seemed impossible for him to retrench and +concentrate. To this may be added his fondness for extremely long +narrative poems, the taste for which has certainly gone out, while it +may be doubted whether, unless they are pure romances of adventure, they +are ever good things. + +The consequence of all this, and perhaps of other things less +legitimately literary, such as political partnership, has hitherto been +that Lord Lytton has been ranked very far indeed below his proper place. +For he had two poetical gifts, the higher of them in a high, the lower +in an eminent degree. The first was the gift of true lyric, not seldom +indeed marred by the lack of polish above noticed, but real, true, and +constant, from the "Fata Morgana" and "Buried Heart" of _The Wanderer_ +to the "Experientia Docet" and "Selenites" of _Marah_, more than thirty +years later. The other was a much more individual power, and by some +might be ranked higher. It is the gift of what can best generally be +called ironical narration, using irony in its proper sense of covert +suggestive speech. This took various forms, indicated with more or less +clearness in the very titles of _Chronicles and Characters_ and _Fables +in Song_,--symbolic-mystical in _Legends of Exile_ (where not only some +of the legends but the poems called "Uriel" and "Strangers" are among +the best things of the author and highly typical of his later manner), +and fantastically romantic, with a strong touch of symbolism, in _King +Poppy_. And when, as happens in most of the pieces mentioned above and +many others, the combination welds itself into a kind of passionate +allegory, few poets show a better power of transporting the reader in +the due poetic manner. There can be no doubt that if Lord Lytton had +developed this faculty somewhat earlier (there are traces of it very +early), had made its exercises rather more clear and direct, and had +subjected their expression to severer thinning and compression, he would +have made a great reputation as a poet. As it is, it cannot be denied +that he had the positive faculties of poetry in kind and degree only +inferior to those possessed by at most four or five of his English +contemporaries from Tennyson downwards. + +Nor should there perhaps lack mention of Roden Noel and Thomas Ashe, two +writers in whom, from their earlier work, it was not unreasonable to +expect poets of a distinct kind, and who, though they never improved on +this early work, can never be said exactly to have declined from it. The +first and elder was a son of the Earl of Gainsborough, was born in 1834, +went to Cambridge, travelled a good deal, and at various times, till his +death at the age of sixty, published much verse and not a little prose, +both showing a distinctly poetical imagination without a sufficient +organ of expression. Nor did he ever develop this except in _A Little +Child's Monument_, where the passionate personal agony injures as much +as it helps the poetical result. Mr. Ashe, who was born in 1836, and +died in 1889, also a Cambridge man, had a much less ambitious and rather +less interesting but somewhat better-organised talent for verse, and his +_Sorrows of Hypsipyle_, published in 1866, caused and authorised at the +time considerable expectations from him. But his vein was rather the +result of classical culture working on a slight original talent than +anything better, and he did not rise beyond a pleasant competence in +verse which was never that of a poetaster, but hardly ever that of a +distinct poet. In which respect he may appear here as the representative +of no scanty company dead and living. For even the longest chapter of a +book must have an end; and it is impossible to find room in it for the +discussion of the question, whether the friends of Oliver Madox Brown, +son of the famous Prae-Raphaelite painter, were or were not wrong in +seeing extraordinary promise in his boyish work; whether the sonnets of +Ernest Lefroy (1855-91) were exercises or works of art. A few more +remarks on humorous poets and women-poets must close the record. + +In the art of merely or mainly humorous singing two names, those of +Edward Lear and Charles Stuart Calverley, entirely dominate the rest +among dead writers in the last part of the century. Lear, a good deal +the elder man of the two, was born in 1813, was a painter by profession, +and was the "E. L." of a well-known poem of Tennyson's. It was not till +1861 that his delightful nonsense-verses, known to his friends in +private, were first published, and they received various additions at +intervals till his death in 1888. The sheer nonsense-verse--the +_amphigouri_ as the French call it--has been tried in various countries +and at various times, but never with such success as in England, and it +has seldom, if ever, been cultivated in England with such success as by +Lear. His happy concoction of fantastic names, the easy slipping flow of +his verse, and above all, the irresistible parody of sense and pathos +that he contrived to instil into his rigmarole are unapproachable. In a +new and not in the least opprobrious sense he was "within the realms of +Nonsense absolute." + +Calverley attempted less "uttermost isles" of fun. Born in 1831 of an +excellent Yorkshire family, he was educated at Harrow, and--a thing as +rare in the nineteenth as common in the seventeenth century--at both +universities, gaining at both a great reputation for scholarship, +eccentricity, and bodily strength. After some time he married and began +to work at the Bar; but an accident on the ice in 1867 brought on +concussion of the brain, though he lingered in constantly weakening +health till 1884. His _Verses and Translations_ twenty-two years earlier +had made him the model of all literary undergraduates with a turn for +humour; and he was able in spite of his affliction to issue some things +later, the chief being _Fly Leaves_ in 1872. Calverley, as has been +said, was a scholar, and his versions both from and into the classical +languages would of themselves have given him a reputation; but his forte +lay partly in the easier vein of parody, wherein few excelled him, +partly in the more difficult one of original light verse, wherein he had +a turn (as in his famous eulogy on tobacco) quite his own. He has never +been equalled in this, or even approached, except by James Kenneth +Stephen (1859-92), whose premature death deprived his friends of a most +amiable personality, and literature, in all probability, of a +considerable ornament. As it was, "J. K. S." left next to nothing but +two tiny collections of verse, showing an inspiration midway between +Calverley and Praed, but with quite sufficient personal note. + +Two other writers of less scholarly style, but belonging to the London +Bohemian school of the third quarter of the century, W. J. Prowse, +"Nicholas" (1836-70), and H. S. Leigh (1837-83), may be noticed. Prowse, +whose career was very short, was the author of the charming lines on +"The beautiful City of Prague," which have been attributed to others: +while Leigh's _Carols of Cockayne_ (he was also a playwright) vary the +note of Hood happily, and now and then with a real originality. + +Except Miss Rossetti, no woman during this time approached the poetical +excellence of Mrs. Barrett Browning. But the whole period has been +unprecedentedly fertile in poetesses, and whereas we had but five or six +to mention in the earlier chapter devoted to verse, we have here at +least a dozen, though no one who requires very extended notice here. +Lady Dufferin (1807-1867), mother of the well-known diplomatist, a +member of the Sheridan family, and her sister, and junior by a year, +Mrs. Norton (1808-1876), were both writers of facile and elegant verse, +with the Irish note of easy melody. The former was the less known to the +general reader, though a few of her pieces, such as "The Irish Emigrant" +and "Katie's Letter," have always been favourite numbers for recitation. +Mrs. Norton at one time enjoyed a considerable reputation as a poetess +by contributions to "Annuals" and "Souvenirs," chiefly in the +sentimental ballad style which pleased the second quarter of the +century. "The Outward Bound," "Bingen on the Rhine," and other things +are at least passable, and one of the author's latest and most ambitious +poems, _The Lady of La Garaye_, has a sustained respectability. To a few +fanatical admirers the scanty verse of Emily Bronte has seemed worthy of +such high praise that only mass of work would appear to be wanting to +put her in the first rank of poetesses if not of poets. Part of this, +however, it is to be feared, is due to admiration of the supposed +freedom of thought in her celebrated "Last Lines," which either in +sincerity or bravado pronounce that "vain are the thousand creeds," and +declare for a sort of vague Pantheism, immanent at once in self and the +world. At thirty, however, a genuine poetess should have produced more +than a mere handful of verse, and its best things should be independent +of polemical partisanship either for or against orthodoxy. As a matter +of fact, her exquisite "Remembrance," and the slightly rhetorical but +brave and swinging epigram of "The Old Stoic," give her better claims +than the "Last Lines," and with them and a few others place her as a +remarkable though not by any means a supreme figure. + +The more prudent admirers of Marian Evans (George Eliot), who wrote a +good deal of verse, either admit that her verse was not poetry, or hold +up a much-quoted passage, "Oh, may I join the choir invisible," which, +like the far superior piece just referred to, is only a hymn on the side +which generally dispenses with hymns; and not a very good one, though +couched in fair Wordsworthian blank verse. They would no doubt indulge +in derisive scorn at the idea of the mild muse of Adelaide Anne Procter, +daughter of "Barry Cornwall," receiving praise denied to Miss Bronte and +Miss Evans; and it must be admitted that Miss Procter never did anything +so good as "Remembrance." On the other hand, she was quite free from the +"sawdust" and heaviness which mar George Eliot's verse. Her style was +akin to that which has been noticed in speaking of Mrs. Norton, though +of a somewhat later fashion, and like those of her father, her songs, +especially the famous "Message," had the knack of suiting composers. +Menella Bute Stedley and Dora Greenwell, a respectable pair, somewhat +older than Miss Procter (she was born in 1825 and died in 1864), +considerably outlived her, Miss Stedley's life lasting from 1820 to +1877, and Miss Greenwell's from 1821 to 1882. Both were invalids, and +soothed their cares with verse, the latter to the better effect, though +both in no despicable strain. Augusta Webster (1840-94) and Emily +Pfeiffer ( -1890) were later poetesses of the same kind, but lower rank, +though both were greatly praised by certain critics. Sarah Williams, a +short-lived writer of some sweetness (1841-68), commended herself +chiefly to those who enjoy verse religious but "broad"; Constance Naden +to those who like pessimist agnosticism; Amy Levy to those who can +deplore a sad fate and admire notes few and not soaring, but passionate +and genuine. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE NOVEL SINCE 1850 + + +Certain novelists who were mentioned at the end of chapter iii., though +they all lived far into the last half of the century, not only belonged +essentially to its first division, but strictly speaking fell out of +strict chronological arrangement of any kind, being of the class of more +or less eccentric men of genius who may appear at any time and belong to +none in particular; and certain others of the earlier time, less +eccentric, lived on far towards our own. About 1850 however, a little +before or a little after it, there appeared a group of novelists of +great talent, and in some cases of genius itself, who were less +self-centred, and exemplified to a greater degree the special tendencies +of the time. These tendencies were variously connected with the Oxford +or Tractarian Movement; the transfer of political power from the upper +to the middle classes by the first Reform Bill; the rise of what is for +shortness called Science; the greater esteem accorded to and the more +general practice of what is, again for shortness, called Art; the +extension in a certain sense of education; the re-engagement of England, +long severed from continental politics, in those politics by the Crimean +war; the enormous development of commerce by the use of steam navigation +and of railways; the opening up of Australia and its neighbourhood; the +change effected in the East by the removal, gradual for some time, then +rapid and complete after the Indian Mutiny, of the power of the East +India Company; and the "Liberal" movement generally. + +To work and counterwork out the influence of these various causes on +separate authors, and the connection of the authors with the causes, +would take a volume in itself. But on the scale and within the limits +possible here, the names of Charlotte Bronte, Marian Evans (commonly +called George Eliot), Charles Kingsley, Anthony Trollope, and Charles +Reade will give us such central points as can be most safely utilised. +Another, Miss Charlotte Yonge, the chief practitioner of the religious +novel, was contemporary with almost the earliest of these, but falls out +of this book as still living. + +The members of this group were, as happens with a repeated coincidence +in literary history too distinct to be altogether neglected, born within +a very few years of each other: Reade in 1814, Trollope in 1815, Miss +Bronte next year, Kingsley and Miss Evans in 1819; but as generally +happens likewise, their appearance as authors, or at least as novelists, +did not follow in exact sequel. The first-renowned, the shortest-lived, +and though by no means the most brilliant or powerful, in a certain way +the freshest and most independent, was Charlotte Bronte, the daughter of +a Yorkshire clergyman of eccentric and not altogether amiable character +and of Irish blood. She was born on 21st April 1816. The origin of the +Brontes or Pruntys has, as well as their family history generally, been +discussed with the curiously disproportionate minuteness characteristic +of our time; but hardly anything need be said of the results of the +investigation, except that they were undoubtedly Irish. Charlotte's +mother died soon after the Rev. Patrick Bronte had received the living +of Haworth, and Charlotte herself was sent to school at a place called +Cowan's Bridge, her experiences at which have in the same way been the +subject of endless inquiry into the infinitely little, in connection +with the "Lowood" of _Jane Eyre_. After two of her sisters had died, and +she herself had been very ill, she was taken away and educated partly at +home, partly elsewhere. Her two surviving sisters, who were her juniors, +Emily by two years and Anne by four, were both of more or less literary +leanings, and as they were all intended to be governesses, the sole +profession for poor gentlewomen in the middle of the century, Emily and +Charlotte were sent to Brussels to qualify. In 1846 the three published +a joint volume of _Poems_ under the pseudonyms (which kept their +initials) of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, and to people over middle +age Charlotte Bronte is still perhaps most familiar as Currer Bell. +Emily's poems are elsewhere commented upon. The eldest and youngest +sister had no poetical vocation, and Anne had not much for prose. But +she, like the others, attempted it after the failure of their verse in a +triad of novels, _The Professor_, by Charlotte; _Wuthering Heights_ +(very much praised by those who look first for unconventionality and +force), by Emily, who followed it with _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_; +and _Agnes Grey_, by Anne. But Charlotte could not get _The Professor_ +published--indeed it is anything but a good book--and set to work at the +famous _Jane Eyre_, which after being freely refused by publishers, was +accepted by Messrs. Smith and Elder and published in 1847, with the +result of violent attacks and very considerable popularity. Death the +next year and the year after robbed her of both her sisters and of her +brother Patrick, a ne'er-do-weel, who, on the strength of his +Bohemianism and his sisters, is sometimes supposed to have had genius. +_Shirley_ appeared in 1849, and _Villette_ in 1852. In 1854 Charlotte +married her father's curate, Mr. Nicholls, but died next year, on 31st +March 1855. + +Perhaps the most interesting way of looking at Charlotte Bronte, who, as +has been said, has been violently attacked, and who has also been +extravagantly praised (though not so extravagantly as her sister Emily), +is to look at her in the light of a precursor or transition-novelist, +representing the time when the followers of Scott had wearied the public +with second-rate romances, when Thackeray had not arisen, or had only +just arisen, and when the modern domestic novel in its various kinds, +from the religious to the problematic, was for the most part in embryo, +or in very early stages. This latter novel she in fact anticipated in +many of its kinds, and partly to the fact of this anticipation, partly +to the vividness which her representation of personal experiences gave +to her work, may the popularity which it at first had, and such of it as +has survived, be assigned. In this latter point, however, lay danger as +well as safety. It seems very improbable that if Charlotte Bronte had +lived, and if she had continued to write, her stock of experiences would +have sufficed her; and it would not appear that she had much else. She +is indeed credited with inventing the "ugly hero" in the Mr. Rochester +of _Jane Eyre_, but in the long-run ugliness palls almost as much as +beauty, perhaps sooner. Except in touches probably due to suggestions +from Emily, the "weirdness" of the younger sister was not exhibited by +the elder. The more melodramatic parts of the book would not have borne +repetition, and its main appeal now lies in the Lowood scenes and the +character of Jane herself, which are both admittedly autobiographical. +So also Shirley is her sister Emily, the curates who pester her appear +to have been almost in case to enter libel actions if they thought +proper, and _Villette_ is little more than an embroidered version of the +Brussels sojourn. How successful an appeal of this kind is, the +experience of Byron and many others has shown; how dangerous it is, +could not be better shown than by the same experience. It was Charlotte +Bronte's good fortune that she died before she had utterly exhausted her +vein, though those who fail to regard Paul Emanuel with the affection +which he seems to inspire in some, may think that she went perilously +near it. But fate was kind to her: some interesting biographies and +brilliant essays at different periods have revived and championed her +fame: and her books--at least _Jane Eyre_ almost as a whole and parts of +the others--will always be simply interesting to the novel-reader, and +interesting in a more indirect fashion to the critic. For this last will +perceive that, thin and crude as they are, they are original, they +belong to their own present and future, not to their past, and that so +they hold in the history of literature a greater place than many books +of greater accomplishment which are simply worked on already projected +and accepted lines. Emily's work, though too small in bulk and too +limited in character to be put really high, has this original character +in intense equality. + +The mantle of Charlotte Bronte fell almost directly from her shoulders +on those of another novelist of her sex. The author of _Jane Eyre_ died, +as has been said, in the spring of 1855. In the autumn of the next year +was written, and in the January issue of _Blackwood's Magazine_ for 1857 +appeared, the first of a series of _Scenes of Clerical Life_. The +author, then and for some time afterwards unknown, was Mary Ann or +Marian Evans, who took various styles during her life, but wrote +habitually under the _nom de guerre_ of "George Eliot." Miss Bronte had +not been a very precocious novelist; but Miss Evans did not begin to +write novels till she was nearly as old as Miss Bronte was when she +died. Her time, however, had been by no means wasted. Born on 22nd +November 1819, at Arbury in Warwickshire, where her father was +land-steward to Mr. Newdigate, she moved, after twenty years' life in +the country or at school, with her father into Coventry, and became +acquainted with a set of Unitarians who had practically broken all +connection with Christianity. She accepted their opinions with the +curious docility and reflexiveness which, strong as was her mind in a +way, always distinguished her; and as a sign of profession she undertook +the translation of Strauss' _Leben Jesu_. In 1849 she went abroad, and +stayed for some time at Geneva, studying hard, and not returning to +England till next year. Then establishing herself in London, she began +to write for the _Westminster Review_, which she helped to edit, and +translated Feuerbach's _Wesen des Christenthums_. It is highly probable +that she would never have been known except as an essayist and +translator, if she had not formed an irregular union with George Henry +Lewes, a very clever and versatile journalist, who was almost a +philosopher, almost a man of science, and perhaps quite a man of letters +of the less creative kind. Under his influence (he had been a novelist +himself, though an unsuccessful one, and was an excellent critic) the +docility above remarked on turned itself into the channel of +novel-writing, with immediate and amazing success. + +Some good judges have thought that Miss Evans never exceeded, in her own +special way, the _Scenes of Clerical Life_. But it was far exceeded in +popularity by _Adam Bede_, which, oddly enough, was claimed by or at +least for an impostor after its triumphant appearance in 1858. The +position of the author may be said to have been finally established by +_The Mill on the Floss_ (1860), though the opening part of _Silas +Marner_ (1861) is at least equal if not superior to anything she ever +did. Her later works were _Romola_, a story of the Italian Renaissance +(1863); _Felix Holt, the Radical_ (1866); some poems (the _Spanish +Gypsy_, _Jubal_, etc., 1868-74); _Middlemarch_ (1871); and _Daniel +Deronda_ (1876). This last was followed by a volume of essays entitled +the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Mr. Lewes having died in 1878, +Miss Evans, in May 1880, married Mr. John Cross, and died herself in +December of the same year. Her _Life and Letters_ were subsequently +published by her husband, but the letters proved extremely disappointing +to her admirers, and the life was not very illuminative, except as to +that docility and capacity for taking colour and pressure from +surroundings which have been noticed above. + +As a poet George Eliot has been noticed elsewhere. She merely put some +of the thoughtful commonplaces of her time and school into wooden verse, +occasionally grandiose but never grand, and her purple passages have the +purple of plush not of velvet. Nor is she very remarkable as an +essayist, though some of her early articles have merit, and though +_Theophrastus Such_, appearing at a time when her general hold on the +public was loosening, not commending itself in form to her special +admirers, and injured in parts by the astonishing pseudo-scientific +jargon which she had acquired, was received rather more coldly than it +deserved. But as a novelist she is worthy of careful attention. Between +1860 and 1870, a decade in which Thackeray passed away early and during +which Dickens did no first-class work, she had some claims to be +regarded as the chief English novelist who had given much and from whom +more was to be expected; after Dickens' death probably four critics out +of five would have given her the place of greatest English novelist +without hesitation. Nevertheless, even from the first there were +dissidents: while at the time of the issue of _Middlemarch_ her fame was +at the very highest, the publication of _Daniel Deronda_ made it fall +rapidly; and a considerable reaction (perhaps to be reversed, perhaps +not) has set in against her since her death. + +The analysis of George Eliot's genius is indeed exceedingly curious. +There are in her two currents or characters which are more or less +mingled in all her books, but of which the one dominates in those up to +and including _Silas Marner_, while the other is chiefly noticeable in +those from _Romola_ onward. The first, the more characteristic and +infinitely the more healthy and happy, is a quite extraordinary faculty +of humorous observation and presentation of the small facts and oddities +of (especially provincial) life. The _Scenes of Clerical Life_ show this +strongly, together with a fund of untheatrical pathos which scarcely +appears in so genuine a form afterwards. In _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on +the Floss_ it combines with a somewhat less successful vein of tragedy +to make two admirable, if not faultless, novels; it lends a wonderful +charm to the slight and simple study of _Silas Marner_. But, abundant as +it is, it would seem that this is observation, not invention, nor that +happiest blending of observation and invention which we find in +Shakespeare and Scott. The accumulated experiences of her long and +passive youth were now poured out with a fortunate result. But in +default of invention, and in presence of the scientific or +pseudo-scientific spirit which was partly natural to her and partly +imbibed from those who surrounded her, she began, after _Silas Marner_, +to draw always in part and sometimes mainly upon quite different +storehouses. It is probable that the selection of the Italian +Renaissance subject of _Romola_ was a very disastrous one. She herself +said that she "was a young woman when she began the book and an old one +when she finished it." It is a very remarkable _tour de force_, but it +is a _tour de force_ executed entirely against the grain. It is not +alive: it is a work of erudition not of genius, of painful manufacture +not of joyous creation or even observation. And this note of labour +deepened and became more obvious even when she returned to modern and +English subjects, by reason of the increased "purpose" which marked her +later works. It has been noted by all critics of any perception as +extremely piquant, though not to careful students of life and letters at +all surprising, that George Eliot, whose history was always well known, +is in almost every one of her books the advocate of the strictest union +of love and marriage--no love without marriage and no marriage without +love. But she was not satisfied with defending this thesis, beneficial, +comparatively simple, and, in the situations which it suggests, not +unfriendly to art. In her last book, _Daniel Deronda_, she embarked on a +scheme, equally hopeless and gratuitous, of endeavouring to enlist the +public sympathies in certain visions of neo-Judaism. In all these books +indeed, even in _Deronda_, the old faculty of racy presentation of the +humours of life recurred. But it became fainter and less frequent; and +it was latterly obscured, as has been hinted, by a most portentous +jargon borrowed from the not very admirable lingo of the philosophers +and men of science of the last half of the nineteenth century. All these +things together made the later books conspicuously, what even the +earlier had been to some extent, lifeless structures. They were +constructed no doubt with much art and of material not seldom precious, +but they were not lively growths, and they were fatally tinged with +evanescent "forms in chalk," fancies of the day and hour, not less +ephemeral for being grave in subject and seeming, and almost more jejune +or even disgusting to posterity on that account. + +Almost as much of the time, though curiously different in the aspect of +it which he represented, was Charles Kingsley, who was born in the same +year as George Eliot, on the 18th of June 1819. A fanciful critic might +indulge in a contrast between the sober though not exactly dull scenery +of the Midlands which saw her birth, and that of the most beautiful part +of Devonshire (Holne, on the south-eastern fringe of Dartmoor) where, at +the vicarage which his father held, Kingsley was born. He was educated +at King's College, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, took a very +good degree, and very soon after his appointment to the curacy of +Eversley, in Hampshire, became rector thereof in 1844. He held the +living for the rest of his life, dying there on the 23rd January 1875. +It was not, however, by any means his only preferment. In 1860 he was +made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, not the most fortunate of +appointments; for, with a tendency to small slips in fact at least equal +to that of his friend and brother-in-law Mr. Froude, Kingsley, though +capable of presenting separate aspects and facets of the past admirably, +had not the general historic grasp which redeemed Froude. Nine years +later he resigned the post and was made a Canon of Chester, while in +1873 this was exchanged for a Canonry at Westminster and a Chaplaincy to +the Queen. Otherwise Kingsley's private life was happy and uneventful, +its chief incident being a voyage to the West Indies (which, though +unvisited, he had long before so brilliantly described) in 1871. + +His literary work was very large, much varied, and of an excellence +almost more varied than its kinds. He began, of course, with verse, and +his _Saint's Tragedy_ (1848), a drama on the story of St. Elizabeth of +Hungary, was followed by shorter poems (far too few) at different times, +most of them previous to 1858, though the later books contain some +charming fragments, and some appeared posthumously. Of all men who have +written so little verse during as long a life in our time, Kingsley is +probably the best poet. The _Saint's Tragedy_ is a little "viewy" and +fluent. But in _Andromeda_ he has written the very best English +hexameters ever produced, and perhaps the only ones in which that alien +or rebel takes on at least the semblance of a loyal subject to the +English tongue. The rise of the breeze after the passage of the Nereids, +the expostulation of Andromeda with Perseus, and the approach of the +monster, are simply admirable. "The Last Buccaneer" and "The Red +King"--call them "Wardour Street," as some critics may--are among the +best of their kind; and scores of songs, snatches, etc., from "The Three +Fishers" and "The Starlings" of a very early date to the "When all the +world is young" ballad of the _Water Babies_ and the posthumous fragment +in rhyme of "Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree"--one of the triumphs of that +pure poetry which has the minimum of meaning, yet enough--are of +extraordinary vigour, freshness, and charm. + +But Kingsley was one of those darlings--perhaps the rarest--of the Muses +to whom they grant the gift not only of doing a little poetry +exquisitely, but the further gift of abstaining from doing anything ill; +and he seems to have recognised almost at once that "the other harmony," +that of prose, was the one meant for him to do his day's work in. An +enthusiast for the people, and an eager disciple of Carlyle, he produced +in the fateful year 1849 two novels, _Alton Locke_ and _Yeast_, a little +crude, immature, and violent, but of wonderful power and beauty as +literature, and putting current ideas of Chartism, the Tractarian +movement, the woes of the working classes, and what not, with that most +uncommon touch which takes out of the expression all its ephemerality. +He had joined Maurice in the "Christian Socialist" movement, and was a +frequent newspaper writer in the same sense as that of his novels; while +he soon began to contribute to _Fraser's Magazine_ a series of extremely +brilliant essays, since collected in various forms, on literature, +scenery, sport (he was an ardent fisherman), and things in general. His +next novel, _Hypatia_, is still shot with Christian Socialism, but is +much less crude; and a further sobering down without any loss of force +appears in the great Elizabethan novel of _Westward Ho!_ usually, and +perhaps rightly, thought his masterpiece (1855). _Two Years Ago_ (1857), +the title of which refers to the Crimean War, is much more unequal, and +exhibits signs of a certain declension, though to a level still very +high. His last novel, _Hereward the Wake_ (1866), was and is very +variously judged. + +But even the poems, the essays, and the novels, do not by any means fill +up the list of the results of Kingsley's activity. He was a constant, +and at his best a very good, sermon-writer for publication. He produced +in the first flush of the rage for seashore studies (1854) a very +pleasant little book called _Glaucus_; he collected some of his +historical lectures in _The Roman and the Teuton_; and he wrote in 1863 +the delightful nondescript of _The Water Babies_, part story, part +satire, part Rabelaisian _fatrasie_, but almost all charming, and +perhaps the latest book in which his powers appear at their very best. +These powers, as exhibited in his novels, with a not dissimilar +exhibition in little in his essays, are so remarkable that in certain +senses Kingsley may, with a little kindness, be put in the very first +class of English novelists, and might be put there by the sternest +critical impartiality were it not for his concomitant defects. These +defects are fairly numerous, and they are unfortunately of a kind not +likely to escape attention. He was a rather violent, though a very +generous partisan, and was perpetually going out of his way to provoke +those on the other side by "flings" of this or that kind. He was +extremely fond of arguing, but was a most poor and unhappy logician. One +of the best known and most unfortunate episodes of his literary life was +the controversy into which he plunged with Newman in 1864. Kingsley had +before on various occasions spoken enthusiastically of Newman's genius +and character: the reference to the peculiar estimate of truth held by +some Roman Catholics, and approved, or supposed to be approved, by +Newman, which was the text for the latter's wrath, was anything but +offensive, and it afterwards became certain, through the publication of +the _Apologia_, that the future Cardinal, with the inspiration of a born +controversialist, had simply made Kingsley the handle for which he had +been waiting. A very little dialectical skill would have brought +Kingsley out of the contest with honours at least divided; but, as it +was, he played like a child into Newman's hands, and not only did much +to re-establish that great man in public opinion, but subjected himself +at the time, and to some extent since, to an obloquy at least as unjust +as that which had rested upon Newman. This maladroitness appears +constantly in the novels themselves, and it is accompanied not merely by +the most curious and outrageous blunders in fact (such as that which +represents Marlowe as dying in the time of James the First, not that of +Elizabeth), but by odd lapses of taste in certain points, and in some +(chiefly his later) books by a haphazard and inartistic construction. + +We must, of course, allow for these things, which are the more annoying +in that they are simply a case of those which _incuria fudit_. But when +they are allowed for, there will remain such a gallery of scenes, +characters, and incidents, as few English novelists can show. The best +passages of Kingsley's description, from _Alton Locke_ to _Hereward_, +are almost unequalled and certainly unsurpassed. The shadows of London +low life and of working-class thought in _Alton Locke_, imitated with +increasing energy for half a century, have never been quite reached, and +are most brilliantly contrasted with the lighter Cambridge scenes. +_Yeast_, perhaps the least general favourite among his books, and +certainly the crudest, has a depth of passion and power, a life, an +intensity, the tenth part of which would make the fortune of a novel +now; and the variety and brilliancy of _Hypatia_ are equalled by its +tragedy. Unequal as _Two Years Ago_ is, and weak in parts, it still has +admirable passages; and _Hereward_ to some extent recovers the strange +panoramic and phantasmagoric charm of _Hypatia_. But where _Westward +Ho!_ deserves the preference, and where Kingsley vindicates his claim to +be the author not merely of good passages but of a good book, is in the +sustained passion of patriotism, the heroic height of adventure and +chivalry, which pervades it from first to last. Few better historical +novels have ever been written; and though, with one exception, that of +Salvation Yeo, the author has drawn better characters elsewhere, he has +nowhere knitted his incidents into such a consistent whole, or worked +characters and scenes together into such a genuine and thorough work of +art. + +Anthony Trollope, one of the most typical novelists of the century, or +at least of the half-century, in England, if not one of the greatest, +was a member of a literary family whose other members, of more or less +distinction, may for convenience' sake best be mentioned here. Little is +recorded of his father, who was, however, a barrister, and a Fellow of +New College, Oxford. But Anthony's mother, the "Mrs. Trollope" of two +generations ago, who was born a Miss Milton in 1780, was herself very +well known in print, especially by her novel of _The Widow Barnaby_ +(1839), which had sequels, and by her very severe _Domestic Manners of +the Americans_, which appeared in 1832, after she had qualified herself +to write it by a three years' residence in the United States. She wrote +a great deal at this period, and survived till 1863; but her work hardly +survived as long as she did. It has, however, been said, and not without +justice, that much of the more vivid if coarser substance of her younger +son's humour is to be traced in it. The elder son, Thomas Adolphus, who +was born in 1810, and lived from 1841 for some half-century onwards in +Italy, was also a prolific novelist, and wrote much on Italian history; +while perhaps his best work was to be found in some short pieces, +combining history with a quasi-fictitious interest, which he contributed +to the periodicals edited by Dickens. + +But neither mother nor elder brother could vie with Anthony, who was +born in 1815, was educated at Winchester and Harrow, spent the greater +part of his life as an official of the Post Office, and died in December +1882, leaving an enormous number of novels, which at one time were the +most popular, or almost the most popular, of their day, and to which +rather fastidious judges have found it difficult to refuse all but the +highest praise. Almost immediately after Trollope's death appeared an +_Autobiography_ in which, with praiseworthy but rather indiscreet +frankness, he detailed habits of work of a mechanical kind, the +confession of which played into the hands of those who had already begun +to depreciate him as a mere book-maker. It is difficult to say how many +novels he wrote, persevering as he did in composition up to the very +time of his death; and it is certain that the productions of his last +decade were, as a rule, very inferior to his best. This best is to be +found chiefly, but not entirely, in what is called the "Barsetshire" +series, clustering round a county and city which are more or less +exactly Hampshire and Winchester, beginning in 1855 with _The Warden_, a +good but rather immature sketch, and continuing through _Barchester +Towers_ (perhaps his masterpiece), _Doctor Thorne_, _Framley Parsonage_, +and _The Small House at Allington_ (the two latter among the early +triumphs of the _Cornhill Magazine_), to _The Last Chronicle of Barset_ +(1867), which runs _Barchester Towers_ very hard, if it does not surpass +it. Other favourite books of his were _The Three Clerks_, _Orley Farm_, +_Can You Forgive Her_, and _Phineas Finn_--nor does this by any means +exhaust the list even of his good books. + +It has been said that Trollope is a typical novelist, and the type is of +sufficient importance to receive a little attention, even in space so +jealously allotted as ours must be. The novel craved by and provided for +the public of this second period (it has also been said) was a novel of +more or less ordinary life, ranging from the lower middle to the upper +class, correctly observed, diversified by sufficient incident not of an +extravagant kind, and furnished with description and conversation not +too epigrammatic but natural and fairly clever. This norm Trollope hit +with surprising justness, and till the demand altered a little or his +own hand failed (perhaps there was something of both) he continued to +hit it. His interests and experiences were fairly wide; for, besides +being active in his Post Office duties at home and abroad, he was an +enthusiastic fox-hunter, fairly fond of society and of club-life, +ambitious enough at least to try other paths than those of fiction in +his _Thackeray_ (a failure), his _Cicero_ (a worse failure), and other +things. And everything that he saw he could turn into excellent +novel-material. No one has touched him in depicting the humours of a +public office, few in drawing those of cathedral cities and the +hunting-field. If his stories, as stories, are not of enthralling +interest or of very artfully constructed plots, their craftsmanship in +this respect leaves very little to complain of. And he can sometimes, as +in the Stanhope family of _Barchester Towers_, in Mrs. Proudie _passim_, +in Madalina Demolines, and in others, draw characters very little +removed from those who live with us for ever. It is extremely improbable +that there will ever be a much better workman of his own class; and his +books are certainly, at their best, far better than all but one or two +that appear, not merely in any given year nowadays, but in any given +lustrum. Yet the special kind of their excellence, the facts that they +reflect their time without transcending it, and that in the way of +merely reflective work each time prefers its own workmen and is never +likely to find itself short of them, together with the great volume of +Trollope's production, are certainly against him; and it is hard even +for those who enjoyed him most, and who can still enjoy him, to declare +positively that there is enough of the permanent and immortal in him to +justify the hope of a resurrection. + +In Charles Reade, on the other hand, there is undoubtedly something of +this permanent or transcendent element, though less perhaps than some +fervent admirers of his have claimed. He was born on June 1814 at Ipsden +in Oxfordshire, where his family had been some time seated as squires. +He had no public school education, but was elected first to a Demyship +and then to a Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was called to +the Bar in 1842; but his Fellowship made him independent, and he pursued +many crazes--he was one of the most eccentric of those English authors +who are noticed in this volume--but no profession. He did not even begin +to write very early, and when he did it was drama, not prose or fiction. +He was not very successful with the stage, though he never quite gave it +up. It was about 1852 when he began to write, or at least to publish, +novels; and between the _Peg Woffington_ of that year and his death on +1st April 1884 he produced nearly a score, diversifying the publication +with law-suits, eccentric newspaper correspondences, and other things. +Indeed he has in more than one of his books introduced mental delusions +with such startling subtlety and truth, and was so entirely odd in the +ordinary relations of life, that some have not hesitated to insinuate a +slight want of sanity. + +If there was any madness in him, the hackneyed alliance of great wits +was certainly not refused. A novelist of violent likes and dislikes +himself, he has found violent partisans and scornful pooh-poohers. Among +the former there is perhaps hardly one of his chief books--the quaint +and brilliant _Peg Woffington_, the pathetic _Christie Johnstone_, _Hard +Cash_, _Griffith Gaunt_, _Put Yourself in his Place_, _A Terrible +Temptation_, and the rest--which has not special sectaries. But catholic +criticism would undoubtedly put _It is Never too Late to Mend_ (1856) +and _The Cloister and the Hearth_ (1861) at the head of all. The former +is a tale of the moment, based chiefly on some stories which had got +abroad of tyranny in gaols, and on the Australian gold fever of a few +years earlier. The latter is a pure romance, purporting to tell the +adventures of Erasmus' father in the fifteenth century. The contrast of +these subjects illustrates admirably a curious combination in Reade's +genius which, for the matter of that, might be independently exemplified +from either book. On the one side he was one of the earliest and one of +the most industrious of those who have been called the "document" or +"reporter" novelists--now collecting enormous stores of newspaper +cuttings and busying himself with keenest interest in the things of the +day; now, as in _The Cloister and the Hearth_, not disdaining to impart +realism and vividness to his pictures by adapting and almost translating +whole passages from Erasmus' own _Colloquies_. On the other, he was a +poetic seer and dreamer, of the strongest romantic force, and capable of +extraordinary flights of power, passion, and pathos. But there was +another thing that he was _not_, and that was a critic. His taste and +judgment were extremely deficient; he had no sense of general proportion +in his work; and was quite as likely to be melodramatic as to be +tragical, to be coarse as to be strong, to be tedious as to be amusing, +to be merely revolting as to purify by pity and terror. Both the books +just specially mentioned may be thought too long: it is certain that +_The Cloister and the Hearth_ is. That a freshness still evident in +_Christie Johnstone_ has been lost in both (having been killed by "the +document") is also true. But still, Reade undoubtedly had genius, and to +genius most things can without much trouble be forgiven. + +The chief novelist of what is rather loosely called the School of +Dickens, was Wilkie Collins, son of the painter of that name, who was +born in London on 8th January 1824, and died in 1889. His greatest +popularity was in the decade between 1857 and 1866, when _The Dead +Secret_, _The Woman in White_, _No Name_, and _Armadale_, especially the +second, had an immense vogue. Perhaps _The Moonstone_, which is later, +is also better than any of these. The strictly literary merit of none +could be put high, and the method, that of forwarding the result by a +complicated intertwist of letters and narratives, though it took the +public fancy for a time, was clumsy; while the author followed his +master in more than one aberration of taste and sentiment. His brother +Charles Collins, who had a much shorter life, had a much more delicate +style and fancy; and the _Cruise upon Wheels_, a record of an actual +tour slightly embellished and thrown into fictitious form, is one of the +books which have, and are not, unless they drop entirely out of sight, +likely to lose, a firm following of friends, few perhaps but faithful. +Mortimer Collins, a contemporary, but no relation of these, whose poems +have already been mentioned, was born in 1827 and died in 1876, the last +twenty years of his life having been occupied by various and voluminous +literary work. He was one of the last of the so-called Bohemian school +in letters and journalism, something of a scholar, a fertile novelist, +and a versatile journalist in most of the kinds which make up modern +journalism. + +Henry Kingsley, younger brother of Charles, was himself a prolific and +vigorous novelist; and though a recent attempt to put him above his +brother cannot possibly be allowed by sound criticism, he had perhaps a +more various command of fiction, certainly a truer humour, and if a +less passionate, perhaps a more thoroughly healthy literary temperament. +But his life was not long, and he was unfortunately compelled during +most of it to write for a living. Born in 1830, he was educated at +King's College, London, and Worcester College, Oxford, on leaving which +latter he went to Australia and lived there for five years. Returning in +1859, he wrote the admirable Australian story of _Geoffrey Hamlyn_, +which, with _Ravenshoe_ two years later, contains most of his work that +can be called really first rate. He returned to Australia for his +subject in _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, and wrote several other +novels before his death in 1876, having been during part of the time a +newspaper editor, a newspaper correspondent, and a journalist generally. +The absence of composition, which Flaubert deplored in English novels +generally, shows at its height in Henry Kingsley, whose _Ravenshoe_, for +instance, has scarcely any plot at all, and certainly owes nothing to +what it has; while he was a rapid and careless writer. But he had, in a +somewhat less elaborate form, all his brother's talents for description +of scene and action, and his characters, if more in the way of ordinary +life, are also truer to that life. Also he is particularly to be +commended for having, without the slightest strait-lacedness, and indeed +with a good deal of positive Bohemianism, exhibited the nineteenth +century English notion of what constitutes a gentleman perhaps better +than any one else. "There are some things a fellow _can't_ do"--the +chance utterance of his not ungenerous scamp Lord Welter--is a memorable +sentence, whereon a great sermon might be preached. + +A little older than Henry Kingsley (he died in the same year), much more +popular for a time, and the exerter of an influence which has not ceased +yet, and has been on the whole distinctly undervalued, was George Henry +Lawrence, who was educated at Rugby and Balliol, was called to the Bar, +but was generally known in his own time as Major Lawrence from a militia +commission which he held. He also fought in, or at least was present +during, the war of independence of the southern states of America. +Lawrence, who was born in 1827, published in his thirtieth year a +novel, _Guy Livingstone_, which was very popular, and much denounced as +the Gospel of "muscular blackguardism"--a parody on the phrase "muscular +Christianity," which had been applied to and not unwelcomed by Charles +Kingsley. The book exhibited a very curious blend of divers of the +motives and interests which have been specified as actuating the novel +about this time. Lawrence, who was really a scholar, felt to the full +the Prae-Raphaelite influence in art, though by no means in religion, and +wrote in a style which is a sort of transition between the excessive +floridness of the first Lord Lytton and the later Corinthianism of Mr. +Symonds. But he retained also from his prototype, and new modelled, the +tendency to take "society" and the manners, especially the amatory +manners, of society very much as his province. And thus he rather +shocked the moralists, not only in _Guy Livingstone_ itself, but in its +successors _Sword and Gown_, _Barren Honour_, _Sans Merci_, etc. That +Lawrence's total ideal, both in style and sentiment, was artificial, +false, and flawed, may be admitted. But he has to a great extent been +made to bear the blame of exaggerations of his own scheme by others; and +he was really a novelist and a writer of great talent, which somehow +came short, but not so very far short, of genius. + +Mrs. Gaskell was older than most of those hitherto mentioned in this +chapter, having been born in 1810; but she did not begin to write very +early. _Mary Barton_, her first and nearly her best book, appeared in +1848, and its vivid picture of Manchester life, assisted by its great +pathos, naturally attracted attention at that particular time. +_Cranford_ (1853), in a very different style, something like a blend of +Miss Mitford and Miss Austen, has been the most permanently popular of +her works. _Ruth_, of the same year, shocked precisians (which it need +not have done), but is of much less literary value than _Mary Barton_ or +_Cranford_. Mrs. Gaskell, who was the biographer of Charlotte Bronte, +produced novels regularly till her death in 1865, and never wrote +anything bad, though it may be doubted whether anything but _Cranford_ +will retain permanent rank. + +The year 1857, which saw _Guy Livingstone_, saw a book as different as +possible in ideal, but also one of no common merit, in _John Halifax, +Gentleman_. The author of this was Dinah Maria Mulock, who afterwards +became Mrs. Craik. She was born at Stoke-upon-Trent in 1826, and had +written for nearly ten years when _John Halifax_ appeared. She died in +1888, having written a very great deal both in prose and verse; the +former part including many novels, of which the best perhaps is _A Life +for a Life_. Mrs. Craik was an example of the influence, so often +noticed and to be noticed in the latter part of our period, of the great +demand for books on writers of any popularity. Her work was never bad; +but it was to a very great extent work which was, as the French say, the +"small change" for what would probably in other circumstances have been +a very much smaller quantity of much better work. How this state of +things--which has been brought about on the one hand by the printing +press, newspapers, and the spread of education, on the other by the +disuse of sinecures, patronage, pensions, and easy living generally--is +to be prevented from affecting literature very disastrously is not +clear. Its negative or rather privative effect cannot but be bad; if its +positive effect is always as good as the works of Mrs. Craik, it will be +fortunate. + +It is difficult, in a book of this kind, to know how far to attempt the +subdivisions of specialist novels which have been common, such as for +instance the sporting novel, the practitioners of which have been +innumerable. The chief perhaps were Robert Surtees, the author of the +facetious series of which "Mr. Jorrocks" is the central and best figure, +and Major Whyte-Melville. The former, about the middle of the century, +carried out with much knowledge, not inconsiderable wit, and the +advantage of admirable illustrations from the pencil of John Leech, +something like the original idea of _Pickwick_ as a sporting romance, +and there is a strong following of Dickens in him. Major Whyte-Melville, +born near St. Andrews in 1821 and heir to property there, was educated +at Eton, served for some years in the Guards, and with the Turkish +Contingent in the Crimean War, and was killed in the hunting-field in +1878. He touched various styles, chiefly those of Lever and Bulwer, +while he had a sort of contact with George Lawrence. He was never +happier than in depicting his favourite pastime, which figures in most +of his novels and inspired him with some capital verse. But in _Holmby +House_, _Sarchedon_, the _Gladiators_, etc., he tried the historical +style also. + +Nor must the brief life, embittered by physical suffering, but +productive of not a little very cheerful work, of Francis Edward +Smedley, a relation of the poetess mentioned in the last chapter, be +forgotten. He, born in 1818, went to Cambridge, and then became a +novelist and journalist, dying in 1864. His best work belongs to exactly +the period with which this chapter begins, the early fifties, and had +the advantage, like other novels of the time, of illustration by "Phiz." +The three chief books are _Frank Fairleigh_ (1850), _Lewis Arundel_ +(1852), and _Harry Coverdale's Courtship_ (1854). With a touch of +Bulwerian romance, something of the sporting novel, and a good deal of +the adventure story, Smedley united plenty of pleasant humour and +occasionally not a little real wit. + +It will have been observed that more than one of the more distinguished +novelists of this time attempted, and that at least one of them +achieved, the historical novel; nor was it at all likely that a kind so +attractive in itself, illustrated by such remarkable genius, and +discovered at last after many centuries of futile endeavour, should +immediately or entirely lose its popularity. Yet it is certain that for +about a quarter of a century, from 1845 to 1870, not merely the +historical novel, but the romance generally, did lose general practice +and general attention, while, though about the latter date at least one +novel of brilliant quality, Mr. Blackmore's _Lorna Doone_, vindicated +romance, and historical romance, it was still something of an exception. +Those who are old enough, and who paid sufficient attention to +contemporary criticism, will remember that for many years the advent of +a historical novel was greeted in reviews with a note not exactly of +contempt, but of the sort of surprise with which men greet something out +of the way and old fashioned. + +This was the inevitable result of that popularity of the domestic and +usual novel which this chapter has hitherto described, and it was as +natural and as inevitable that the domestic and usual novel should in +its turn undergo the same law. Not that this, again, was summarily, much +less finally displaced; on the contrary, the enormous and +ever-increasing demand for fiction--which the establishment of public +free libraries, and the custom of printing in cheaper form for sale, has +encouraged _pari passu_ with the apparent discouragement given to it by +the fall of circulating libraries from the absolutely paramount place +which they occupied not long ago--maintained the call for this as for +other kinds of story. But partly mere love of change, partly the +observations of those critics who were not content to follow the fashion +merely, and partly also the familiar but inexplicable rise at the same +time of divers persons whose talent inclined in a new direction, brought +in, about 1880 or later, a demand for romance, for historical romance, +and for the short story--three things against which the taste of the +circulating-library reader during the generation then expiring had +distinctly set itself. The greater part of the results of this change +falls out of our subject; but one remarkable name, perhaps the most +remarkable of all, is given to us by the Fates. + +For one of the pillars of this new building of romance was only too soon +removed. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (more commonly known to the +public by the first two, and to his friends by the second of his +Christian names) belonged to the famous family of lighthouse architects +who so long carried on the traditions of Smeaton in that department of +engineering; and he was to have been an engineer himself. But he was +incurably literary; and after school and college at Edinburgh, was +called to the Bar, with no more practical results in that profession +than in the other. Born on 13th November 1850, he was not extremely +precocious in publication; and it was not till nearly the end of the +seventies that his essays in the _Cornhill Magazine_ and his stories in +a periodical called _London_, short lived and not widely circulated, +but noteworthy in its way, attracted attention. He followed them up +with two volumes of somewhat Sternian travel, _An Inland Voyage_ (1878) +and _Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_ (1879); next collecting his +_Cornhill Essays_ in two other volumes, _Virginibus Puerisque_ (1881) +and _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ (1882), and his _London_ stories +in _The New Arabian Nights_ (1882). But he did not get hold of the +public till a year later than the latest of these dates, with his famous +_Treasure Island_, the best boys' story since Marryat, and one of a +literary excellence to which Marryat could make no pretensions. The vein +of romance which he then struck, and the older and more fanciful one of +_The New Arabian Nights_, were followed up alternately or together in an +almost annual succession of books--_Prince Otto_ (1885), _The Strange +Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ (1886), _Kidnapped_ (1886), _The Black +Arrow_ (a wonderfully good, though not very generally popular, +York-and-Lancaster story) (1888), _The Master of Ballantrae_ (1889), the +exquisite _Catriona_ (1893). It also pleased him to write, in +collaboration with others, _The Dynamiter_, _The Wrecker_, _The Ebb +Tide_, etc., where the tracing of the several shares is not unamusing. +Stevenson also attempted poetry, and his _Child's Garden of Verse_ +(1885) has very warm admirers, who are often more doubtful about +_Underwoods_ (1887) and _Ballads_ (1891). The list of his work is not +exhausted, and one of the latest additions to it was _A Footnote to +History_ (1892), containing an account of the intestine troubles of the +island of Samoa, where Mr. Stevenson, long a victim to lung disease, +latterly fixed his abode, and where he died suddenly in the winter of +1894. + +As has been the case with most of the distinguished writers of recent +years, Mr. Stevenson has been praised by some of his contemporaries and +juniors with an uncritical fervour which has naturally provoked +depreciation from others; and the charm of his personality was so great +that it is extremely difficult for any one who knew him to hold the +scales quite even. As the most brilliant and interesting by far, +however, of those English writers whose life was comprised in the last +half of the century he absolutely demands critical treatment here, and +it so happens that his method and results were extremely typical of the +literary movement and character of our time. He has left somewhat minute +accounts of his own apprenticeship, but they are almost unnecessary: no +critic of the slightest competence could fail to divine the facts. +Adopting to the full, and something more than the full, the modern +doctrine of the all-importance of art, of manner, of style in +literature, Mr. Stevenson early made the most elaborate studies in +imitative composition. There is no doubt that he at last succeeded in +acquiring a style which was quite his own: but it was complained, and +with justice, that even to the last he never attained complete ease in +this style; that its mannerism was not only excessive, but bore, as even +excessive mannerism by no means always does, the marks of distinct and +obvious effort. This was perhaps most noticeable in his essays, which +were further marred by the fact that much of them was occupied by +criticism, for which, though his taste was original and delicate, +Stevenson's knowledge was not quite solid enough, and his range of +sympathies a little deficient in width. In his stories, on the other +hand, the devil's advocate detected certain weak points, the chief of +them being an incapacity to finish, and either a distaste or an +incapacity for introducing women. This last charge was finally refuted +by _Catriona_, not merely in the heroine, but in the much more charming +and lifelike figure of Barbara Grant; but the other was something of a +true bill to the last. It was Stevenson's weakness (as by the way it +also was Scott's) to huddle up his stories rather than to wind them off +to an orderly conclusion. + +But against this allowance--a just but an ample one--for defects, must +be set to Stevenson's credit such a combination of literary and +story-telling charm as perhaps no writer except Merimee has ever +equalled; while, if the literary side of him had not the golden +perfection, the accomplished ease of the Frenchman, his romance has a +more genial, a fresher, a more natural quality. Generally, as in the +famous examples of Scott, of Dumas, and of Balzac, the great +story-tellers have been a little deficient in mere style; the fault in +Stevenson, if it could be called a fault, was that the style was in +excess. But this only set off and enhanced, it did not account for, the +magic of his scene and character, from John Silver to Barbara Grant, +from "The Suicide Club" to the escapes of Alan Breck. Very early, when +most of his critical friends were urging him to cultivate the essay +mainly, others discerned the supremacy of his story-telling faculty, +and, years before the public fell in love with _Treasure Island_, bade +him cultivate that. Fortunately he did so; and his too short life has +left a fairly ample store of work, not always quite equal, seldom quite +without a flaw, but charming, stimulating, distinguished as few things +in this last quarter of a century have been. + +Nearly all of Mr. Stevenson's contemporaries in novel-writing, as well +as many distinguished persons far his seniors whose names will occur to +every one, lie outside our limits. And in no chapter of this book, +perhaps, is it so necessary to turn the back sternly on much interesting +performance once famous and popular--not once only of interest to the +reader of time and chance but put by this cause or that out of our +reach. We cannot talk here of _Emilia Wyndham_ or _Paul Ferroll_, both +emphatically novels of their day, and that no short one; and in the +latter case, if not in the former, books deserving to be read at +intervals by more than the bookworm. The exquisite _Story without an +End_, which Sarah Austin half adapted, half translated, and which, with +some unusually good translations from Fouque and others, set a whole +fashion fifty years ago, must pass with mere allusion; the abundant and +not seldom excellent fiction of the earlier High Church movement pleads +in vain for detailed treatment. For all doors must be shut or open; and +this door must now be shut. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY + + +It is the constant difficulty of the literary historian, especially if +he is working on no very great scale, that he is confronted with what +may be called "applied" literature, in which not only is the matter of +superior importance to the form, but the importance of the matter itself +disappears to a greater or less extent with time. In these cases it is +only possible for him to take notice of those writers who, whatever the +subject they handled, would have written literature, and perhaps of +those who from the unusual eminence and permanence of their position in +their own subjects have attained as it were an honorary position in +literature itself. + +The literary importance and claim, however, of these applied branches +varies considerably; and there have been times when the two divisions +whose names stand at the head of this chapter even surpassed--there have +been not a few in which they equalled--any section of the purest _belles +lettres_ in strictly literary attractions. With rare exceptions this has +not been the case during the present century; poetry, fiction, history, +and essay-writing having drawn off the best hands on the one side, while +science has attracted them on the other. But the great Oxford Movement +in the second quarter created no small amount of theological or +ecclesiastical writing of unusual interest, while there had been +earlier, and continued to be till almost the time when the occupation of +the field by living writers warns us off, philosophers proper of great +excellence. Latterly (indeed till quite recently, when a certain +renaissance of philosophical writing not in jargon has taken place with +a corresponding depression of the better kind of literary theology) the +philosophers of Britain have not held a prominent place in her +literature. Whether this was because they have mostly been content to +Germanise, or because they have not been provided with sufficient +individual talent, it is fortunately unnecessary for us to attempt to +determine in this place and at this time. + +Among the dead writers of the century who are known wholly or mainly for +the cultivation of philosophical studies, Bentham, Mackintosh, John +Stuart Mill (to whom some would add his father James), Sir William +Hamilton, Dean Mansel, are likely to hold a place in history, while at +present many might be disposed to add the name of Mr. T. H. Green, a +tutor of Balliol College, who between 1870 and his death propagated in +Oxford a sort of neo-Hegelianism much tinctured with political and +social Liberalism, and obtained a remarkable personal position. It is +however as yet too early to assign a distinct historical place to one +whose philosophy was in no sense original, though it was somewhat +originally combined and applied, and who exhibited very small literary +skill in setting forth. The others are already set "in the firm +perspective of the past," and, with yet others who, still living, escape +our grasp, have their names clearly marked for a place in an adequate +history. + +Jeremy Bentham, a curious person who reminds one of a Hobbes without the +literary genius, was born in London, near Houndsditch, as far back as +5th February 1748. He was the son of a solicitor who was very well off, +and wished his son to take to the superior branch of the law. Jeremy was +sent to Westminster, and thence to Queen's College, Oxford, in his +thirteenth year. He was a Master of Arts at eighteen, and was called to +the Bar six years later; but he never practised. He must have been very +early drawn to the study of the French _philosophes_; much indeed of the +doctrine which afterwards made him famous was either taken from, or +incidentally anticipated by, Turgot and others of them, and it was a +common remark, half in earnest half in gibe, that Bentham's views had +made the tour of Europe in the French versions of Dumont before they +attained to any attention in England. In 1776 he wrote a _Fragment on +Government_, a kind of critique of Blackstone, which is distinguished by +acute one-sided deduction from Whig principles; and he became a sort of +prophet of the Whigs, who sometimes plagiarised and popularised, +sometimes neglected, his opinions. He never married, though he would +have liked to do so; and lived on his means till 1832, when he died in +the eighty-fifth year of his age. His chief books after the _Fragment_ +had been his _Theory of Punishments and Rewards_; 1787, _Letters on +Usury_; 1789, _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and +Legislation_; 1813, _Treatise on Evidence_; and 1824, _Fallacies_. + +The central pillar and hinge of all Bentham's doctrines in politics, +morals, and law is the famous principle of Utility, or to use the cant +phrase which he borrowed from Priestley, "the greatest happiness of the +greatest number." What the greatest number is--for instance whether in a +convict settlement of forty thieves and ten honest men, the thieves are +to be consulted--and what happiness means, what is utility, what things +have brought existing arrangements about, and what the loss of altering +them might be, as well as a vast number of other points, Bentham never +deigned to consider. Starting from a few crude phrases such as this, he +raised a system remarkable for a sort of apparent consistency and +thoroughness, and having the luck or the merit to hit off in parts not a +few of the popular desires and fads of the age of the French Revolution +and its sequel. But he was a political theorist rather than a political +philosopher, his neglect of all the nobler elements of thought and +feeling was complete, and latterly at least he wrote atrocious English, +clumsy in composition and crammed with technical jargon. The brilliant +fashion in which Sydney Smith has compressed and spirited his +_Fallacies_ into the famous "Noodle's Oration" is an example of the kind +of treatment which Bentham requires in order to be made tolerable in +form; and even then he remains one-sided in fact. + +Sir James Mackintosh has been mentioned before, and is less of a +philosopher pure and simple than any person included in this +list--indeed his philosophical reputation rests almost wholly upon his +brilliant, though rather slight, _Dissertation on Ethics_ for the +_Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The greater part by far of his by no means +short life (1765-1832) was occupied in practising medicine and law, in +defending the French Revolution against Burke (_Vindiciae Gallicae_, +1791); in defending the French Royalists in the person of Peltier +against Bonaparte, 1803; in acting as Recorder and Judge in India, +1804-1811; and in political and literary work at home for the last +twenty years, his literature being chiefly history, and contributions to +the _Edinburgh Review_. But there has been a certain tendency, both in +his own time and since, to regard Mackintosh as a sort of philosopher +thrown away. If he was so, he would probably have made his mark rather +in the history of philosophy than in philosophy itself, for there are no +signs in him of much original depth. But he wrote very well, and was a +sound and on the whole a fair critic. + +Of the two Mills, the elder, James, was like Mackintosh only an +_interim_ philosopher: his son John belongs wholly to our present +subject. James was the son of a farmer, was born near Montrose in 1773, +and intended to enter the ministry, but became a journalist instead. In +the ten years or so after 1806, he composed a _History of British +India_, which was long regarded as authoritative, but on which the +gravest suspicions have recently been cast. Mill, in fact, was a violent +politician of the Radical type, and his opinions of ethics were so +peculiar that it is uncertain how far he might have carried them in +dealing with historical characters. His book, however, gained him a high +post in the East India Company, the Directors of which just at that time +were animated by a wish to secure distinguished men of letters as +servants. He nevertheless continued to write a good deal both in +periodicals and in book form, the chief examples of the latter being his +_Political Economy_, his _Analysis of the Human Mind_, and his _Fragment +on Mackintosh_. James Mill, of whom most people have conceived a rather +unfavourable idea since the appearance of his son's _Autobiography_, was +an early disciple of Bentham, and to a certain extent resembled him in +hard clearness and superficial consistency. + +His son John Stuart was born in London on 20th May 1806, and educated by +his father in the unnatural fashion which he has himself recorded. +Intellectually, however, he was not neglected, and after some years, +spent mainly in France, he was, through his father's influence, +appointed at seventeen to a clerkship in the India House, which gave him +a competence for the rest of his life and a main occupation for +thirty-four years of it. He was early brought into contact (by his +father's friendship with Grote and others) with the Philosophical +Radicals, as well as with many men of letters, especially Carlyle, of +the destruction of the first version of whose _French Revolution_ Mill +(having lent it to his friend Mrs. Taylor) was the innocent cause. To +this Mrs. Taylor, whom he afterwards married, Mill was fanatically +attached, the attachment being the cause of some curious flights in his +later work. His character was very amiable, and the immense influence +which, especially in the later years of his life, he exercised, was +partly helped by his personal friendships. But it was unfortunate for +him that in 1865 he was returned to Parliament. His political views, +though it was the eve of the triumph of what might be called his party, +were _doctrinaire_ and out of date, and his life had given him no +practical hold of affairs, so that he more than fulfilled the usual +prophecy of failure in the case of men of thought who are brought late +in life into action. Fortunately for him he was defeated in 1868, and +passed the rest of his life mostly in France, dying at Avignon on 8th +May 1873. + +Brought up in an atmosphere of discussion and of books, Mill soon took +to periodical writing, and in early middle life was for some years +editor of the _London and Westminster Review_; but his literary +ambition, which directed itself not to pure literature but to +philosophical and political discussion, was not content with periodical +writing as an exercise, and his circumstances enabled him to do without +it as a business. In 1843 he published what is undoubtedly his chief +work, _A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive_, five years later +a companion treatise on _Political Economy_ which may perhaps rank +second. In 1859 his essay on _Liberty_, a short but very attractive +exposition of his political principles, appeared; next year a collection +of essays entitled _Dissertations and Discussions_. After lesser works +on _Utilitarianism_ and on Comte, of whom he had been a supporter in +more senses than one, but whose later eccentricities revolted him, he +issued in 1865 his _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_, +which ranks as the third of his chief works, and completes his system, +as far as a system so negative can be said to be completed, on the side +of theology and metaphysics. Among his smaller works may be mentioned +_Representative Government_, and (very late) the fanatical and curious +_Subjection of Women_. His _Autobiography_, an interesting but +melancholy book, appeared shortly after his death. + +Mill must be accounted on the whole by good judges, even if they are +utterly opposed to his whole system of philosophy, the chief +philosophical _writer_ of England in this century; and the enormous +though not permanent influence which he attained about its middle was +deserved, partly by qualities purely literary, but partly also by some +purely philosophical. He had inherited from his father not merely the +theoretical exaltation of liberty (except in the philosophical sense) +which characterised eighteenth century philosophers, but also that +arrogant and pragmatical impatience of the supernatural which was to a +still greater extent that century's characteristic. The arrogance and +the pragmaticality changed in John Stuart Mill's milder nature to a sort +of nervous dread of admitting even the possibility of things not +numerable, ponderable, and measurable; and it may be observed with +amusement that for the usual division of logic into Deductive and +Inductive he substituted _Ratiocinative_ for the first member, so as not +even by implication to admit the possibility of deduction from any +principles not inductively given. So, too, later, in his _Examination +of Sir William Hamilton_, between the opposing spectres of Realism and +Idealism, he was driven to take refuge in what he called "permanent +possibilities" of Sensation, though logicians vainly asked how he +assured himself of the permanence, and jesters rudely observed that to +call a bottle of gin a "permanent possibility of drunkenness" was an +unnecessary complication of language for a very small end or meaning. +His great philosophical weapon (borrowed from though of course not +invented by his father) was the Association of Ideas, just as his clue +in political economy was in the main though not exclusively +_laissez-faire_, in ethics a modified utilitarianism, and in politics an +absolute deference to, tempered by a resigned distrust of, the majority. +The defect in a higher and more architectonic theory of the world with +which he has been charged is not quite justly chargeable, for from his +point of view no such theory was possible. + +Even those, however, who, as the present writer acknowledges in his own +case, are totally opposed to the whole Millian conception of logic and +politics, of metaphysics and morality, must, unless prejudiced, admit +his great merits of method and treatment. He not only very seldom +smuggles in sophistry into the middle of his arguments, but even +paralogisms are not common with him; it is with his premises, not with +his conclusions, that you must deal if you wish to upset him. Unlike +most contemners of formal logic, he is not in much danger, as far as his +merely dialectic processes go, from formal logic itself; and it is in +the arbitrary and partial character of his preliminary admissions, +assumptions, and exclusions that the weak points of his system are to be +found. + +His style has also very considerable merits. It is not brilliant or +charming; it has neither great strength nor great stateliness. But it is +perfectly clear, it is impossible to mistake its meaning, and its +simplicity is unattended by any of the down-at-heel neglect of neatness +and elegance which is to be found, for instance, in Locke. Little +scholastic as he was in most ways, Mill had far outgrown the ignorant +eighteenth century contempt of the Schoolmen, and had learnt from them +an exact precision of statement and argument, while he had managed to +keep (without its concomitant looseness and vulgarity) much of the +eighteenth century's wholesome aversion to jargon and to excess of +terminology. In presenting complicated statements of detail, as in the +_Political Economy_, the _Representative Government_, and elsewhere, he +has as much lucidity as Macaulay, with an almost total freedom from +Macaulay's misleading and delusive suppression of material details. And +besides his usual kind of calm and measured argument, he can +occasionally, as in divers passages of the _Sir William Hamilton_ and +the political books, rise or sink from the logical and rhetorical points +of view respectively to an impassioned advocacy, which, though it may be +rarely proof against criticism, is very agreeable so far as it goes. +That Mill wholly escaped the defects of the popular philosopher, I do +not suppose that even those who sympathise with his views would contend; +though they might not admit, as others would, that these defects were +inseparable from his philosophy in itself. But it may be doubtful +whether, all things considered, a better _literary_ type of the popular +philosopher exists in modern English; and it certainly is not surprising +that, falling in as he did with the current mode of thought, and +providing it with a defence specious in reasoning and attractive in +language, he should have attained an influence perhaps greater than that +of which any English philosophical writer has been able during his +lifetime to boast. + +The convenience of noticing the Mills together, and of putting Sir +William Hamilton next to his most famous disciples, seems to justify a +certain departure from strict chronological order. Hamilton was indeed +considerably the senior of his critic, having been born on 8th March +1788. His father and grandfather, both professors at the University of +Glasgow, had been plain "Dr. Hamilton." But they inherited, and Sir +William made good, the claim to a baronetcy which had been in abeyance +since the days of Robert Hamilton, the Covenanting leader. He himself +proceeded from Glasgow, with a Snell Exhibition, to Balliol in 1809. He +was called to the Scottish Bar, but never practised, though some +business came to him as Crown solicitor in the Court of Teinds (tithes). +He competed in 1820 for the Chair of Moral Philosophy, which Wilson, +with far inferior claims, obtained; but it is fair to say that at the +time the one candidate had given no more public proofs of fitness than +the other. Soon, however, he began to make his mark as a contributor of +philosophical articles to the _Edinburgh Review_, and in 1836 he +obtained a professorship in the University for which he was even better +fitted--that of Logic and Metaphysics. His lectures became celebrated, +but he never published them; indeed his only publication of any +importance during his lifetime was a collection of his articles under +the title of _Dissertations_, with the exception of his monumental +edition of Reid, on which he spent, and on which it has sometimes been +held that he wasted, most of his time. He died in 1856, and his lectures +were published after his death by his successor, Professor Veitch +(himself an enthusiastic devotee of literature, especially Border +literature, as well as of philosophy), and his greatest disciple, +Mansel, between 1859 and 1861. And this was how Mill's _Examination_ +came to be posthumous. The "Philosophy of the Conditioned," as +Hamilton's is for shortness called, could not be described in any brief, +and perhaps not with propriety in any, space of the present volume. It +is enough to say that it was an attempt to reinforce the so-called +"Scotch Philosophy" of Reid against Hume by the help of Kant, as well as +at once to continue and evade the latter without resorting either to +Transcendentalism or to the experience-philosophy popular in England. In +logic, Hamilton was a great and justly honoured defender of the formal +view of the science which had been in persistent disrepute during the +eighteenth century; but some of the warmest lovers of logic doubt +whether his technical inventions or discoveries, such as the famous +Quantification of the Predicate, are more than "pretty" in the sense of +mathematicians and wine-merchants. This part of his doctrine, by the +way, attracted special attention, and was carefully elaborated by +another disciple, Professor Thomas Spencer Baynes (1823-1887), who, +after chequering philosophy with journalism, became editor of the +_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and a careful Shakespearian student. Yet +another disciple, and the most distinguished save one, was James +Frederick Ferrier, nephew of Susan Ferrier, to whom we owe three most +brilliant novels, who was born in 1808 and died in 1864 at St. Andrews, +where he had for nearly twenty years been Professor of Moral Philosophy, +after previously holding for a short time a History Professorship at +Edinburgh. Of this latter University Ferrier had been an alumnus, as +well as of Oxford. He edited his father-in-law Wilson's works, and was a +contributor to _Blackwood's Magazine_, but his chief book was his +_Institutes of Metaphysic_, published in 1854. Too strong a Hamiltonian +influence (not in style but in some other ways), and an attempt at an +almost Spinosian rigidity of method, have sometimes been held to have +marred Ferrier's philosophical performance; but it is certain that he +had the makings of a great metaphysician, and that he was actually no +small one. + +The great merit of Hamilton was that he, in a somewhat irregular and +informal way (for, as has been said, he was ostensibly more a +commentator and critic than an independent theorist), introduced German +speculation into England after a fashion far more thorough than the +earlier but dilettante and haphazard attempts of De Quincey and +Coleridge, and contributed vastly to the lifting of the whole tone and +strain of English philosophic disputation from the slovenly commonsense +into which it had fallen. In fact, he restored metaphysics proper as a +part of English current thought; and helped (though here he was not +alone) to restore logic. His defects were, in the first place, that he +was at once too systematic and two piecemeal in theory, and worse still, +that his philosophical style was one of the very worst existing, or that +could exist. That this may have been in some degree a designed reaction +from ostentatious popularity is probable; and that it was in great part +caught from his studious frequentation of that Hercynian forest, which +takes the place of the groves of Academe in German philosophical +writing, is certain. But the hideousness of his dialect is a melancholy +fact; and it may be said to have contributed at least as much to the +decadence of his philosophical vogue as any defects in the philosophy +itself. He was, in fact, at the antipodes from Mill in attractiveness of +form as well as in character of doctrine. + +There are some who think that Henry Longueville Mansel was actually in +more than one respect, and might, with some slight changes of accidental +circumstance, have been indisputably, the greatest philosopher of +Britain in the nineteenth century. Of the opinion entertained by +contemporaries of great intellectual gifts, that of Mark Pattison, a +bitter political and academical opponent, and the most acrimonious +critic of his time, that Mansel was, though according to Pattison's +view, an "arch-jobber," an "acute thinker, and a metaphysician" seems +pretty conclusive. But Mansel died in middle age, he was much occupied +in various kinds of University business, and he is said by those who +knew him to have been personally rather indolent. He was born in +Northamptonshire on 6th October 1820, and after school-days at Merchant +Taylors' passed in the then natural course to St. John's College, +Oxford, of which he became fellow. He was an active opponent of the +first University Commission, in reference to which he wrote the most +brilliant satire of the kind proper to University wits which this +century has produced--the Aristophanic parody entitled _Phrontisterion_. +But the Commission returned him good for evil, insomuch as he became the +first Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, a post +created in consequence of it. In 1859 he was Bampton Lecturer, and his +sermons in this office again attained the first excellence in style, +though they were made the subject of severe criticism not merely by the +disciples of Liberal philosophy, but by some timid defenders of +orthodoxy, for their bold application of the philosophy of the +conditioned, on scholastic lines, to the problems of theodicy. Mansel +was not a more frequent lecturer than the somewhat indulgent conditions +of the English Universities, especially Oxford, even after the +Commission, required; but his deliverances were of exceptional +importance, both in conception and expression. At the death of Milman, +his political friends being in power, he was made Dean of St. Paul's, +but enjoyed the dignity only a short time, and died in 1870. Besides +_Phrontisterion_ and his _Bampton Lectures_, which bring him under both +the divisions of this chapter, he had published in his lifetime an +excellent edition of Aldrich's "Logic," _Prolegomena Logica_ (the +principal work of the Hamiltonian school, though quite independent in +main points), and an enlarged edition of an Encyclopaedia dissertation on +_Metaphysics_. His essays, chiefly from the _Quarterly Review_, were +published after his death, with _Phrontisterion_ and other things. + +It will appear from this brief summary that Mansel was a many-sided man; +and it may be added that he possessed an exceptionally keen wit, by no +means confined to professional subjects, and was altogether far more of +a man of the world than is usual in a philosopher. But though this +man-of-the-worldliness may have affected the extent and quantity of his +philosophical work, it did not touch the quality of it. It may be +contended that Mansel was on the whole rather intended for a critic or +historian of philosophy than for an independent philosophical teacher; +and in this he would but have exhibited a tendency of his century. Yet +he was very far from mere slavish following even of Hamilton, while the +copying, with a little travesty and adjustment of German originals, on +which so much philosophical repute has been founded in England, was +entirely foreign to his nature and thought. In Mill's _Examination of +Hamilton_, the _Bampton Lectures_, above referred to, came in for the +most vehement protest, for Mill, less blind than the orthodox objectors, +perceived that their drift was to steer clear of some of the commonest +and most dangerous reefs and shoals on which the orthodoxy of +intelligent but not far-sighted minds has for some generations past been +wrecked. But Mansel's rejoinder, written at a time when he was more than +ever distracted by avocations, and hampered certainly by the necessity +of speaking for his master as well as for himself, and probably by +considerations of expediency in respect to the duller of the faithful, +was not his happiest work. In fact he was too clear and profound a +thinker to be first-rate in controversy--a function which requires +either unusual dishonesty or one-sidedness in an unusual degree. He may +sometimes have been a very little of a sophist--it is perhaps impossible +to be a great philosopher without some such touch. But of paralogism--of +that sincere advancing of false argument which from the time of Plato +has been justly regarded as the most fatal of philosophic +drawbacks--there is no trace in Mansel. His natural genius, moreover, +assisted by his practice in miscellaneous writing, which though much +less in amount of result than Mill's was even more various in kind, +equipped him with a most admirable philosophical style, hitting the +exact mean between the over-popular and the over-technical, endowing +even the _Prolegomena Logica_ with a perfect readableness, and in the +_Metaphysics_ and large parts of the editorial matter of the _Aldrich_ +showing capacities which make it deeply to be regretted that he never +undertook a regular history of philosophy. + +The place which might have been thus filled, was accepted but partially +and with no capital success by divers writers. Frederick Denison +Maurice, who will be mentioned again in this chapter, wrote on _Moral +and Metaphysical Philosophy_, but the book, though like all his work +attractively written, does not show very wide or very profound knowledge +of the subject. The _Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy_, by +William Archer Butler, a Dublin professor, who died prematurely, would +probably, had the author lived, have formed the best history of the +subject in English, and even in their fragmentary condition make an +admirable book, free from jargon, not unduly popular, but at once sound +and literary. The most ambitious attempt at the whole subject was that +of George Henry Lewes, the companion of George Eliot, a versatile man of +letters of great ability, who brought out on a small scale in 1845, and +afterwards on a much larger one, a _Biographical History of +Philosophy_. This, though occasionally superficial, and too much tinged +with a sort of second-hand Positivism, had, as the qualities of these +defects, an excellent though sometimes a rather treacherous clearness, +and a unity of vision which is perhaps more valuable for fairly +intelligent readers than desultory profundity. But it can hardly take +rank as a book of philosophical scholarship, though it is almost a +brilliant specimen of popular philosophical literature. + +Philosophy, science, and perhaps theology may dispute between them two +remarkable figures, nearly contemporary, the one an Oxford and the other +a Cambridge man--Whately and Whewell. Besides the differences which +their respective universities impress upon nearly all strong characters, +there were others between them, Whately being the better bred, the more +accomplished writer, and the more original, Whewell the more widely +informed, and perhaps the more thoroughgoing. But both were curiously +English in a sort of knock-me-down Johnsonian dogmatism; and both were +in consequence extremely intolerant. For Whately's so-called +impartiality consisted in being equally biassed against Evangelicals and +Tractarians; and both were accused by their unfriends of being a little +addicted to the encouragement of flatterers and toadies. Richard +Whately, the elder, was born in London in 1787, his father being a +clergyman in the enjoyment of several pluralities. He went to Oriel, +gained a fellowship there in 1811, and was with intervals a resident in +Oxford for some twenty years, being latterly Principal of St. Alban Hall +(where he made Newman his Vice-Principal), and in 1829 Professor of +Political Economy. In 1831 the Whigs made him Archbishop of Dublin, +which difficult post he held for more than thirty years till his death +in 1863. His work is not very extensive, but it is remarkable. His +_Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte_ was an exceedingly +clever "skit" on the Rationalist position in regard to miracles and +biblical criticism generally; though Whately's orthodoxy was none of the +strictest. His Bampton Lectures on _Party Feeling in Religion_ preceded +rather curiously the greatest outburst of the said party feeling which +had been seen in England since the seventeenth century. But the books by +which he is or was most widely known are his _Logic_ and _Rhetoric_, +expansions of Encyclopaedia articles (1826 and 1828) intentionally +popular and perhaps almost unnecessarily exoteric, but extremely +stimulating and clear. Whately, who had some points in common with +Sydney Smith, was, like him, in part the victim of the extreme want of +accuracy and range in the Oxford education of his youth; but his mental +and literary powers were great. + +William Whewell, the son of a carpenter, showed talent for mathematics +early, and obtaining an exhibition at Trinity, Cambridge, became fellow, +tutor, and Master of his College. He had the advantage, which his +special studies gave, of more thorough training, and extended his +attention from pure and applied mathematics to science and a kind of +philosophy. His chief works were _The History_ (1837) and _The +Philosophy_ (1840) _of the Inductive Sciences_, his Bridgewater Treatise +on _Astronomy and Physic in Reference to Natural Philosophy_ (1833) and +his _Plurality of Worlds_ (1853) being also famous in their day; but he +wrote voluminously in various kinds. He was rather a bully, and his work +has no extraordinary merit of style, but it is interesting as being +among the latest in which science permitted her votaries not to +specialise very much, and rather to apply the ancient education to the +new subjects than to be wholly theirs. + +If the difficulty of deciding on rejection or admission be great in the +case of philosophers proper, much greater is it in the numerous +subdivisions which are themselves applied philosophy as philosophy is +applied literature. The two chief of these perhaps are Jurisprudence and +Political Economy. Under the head of the first, three remarkable writers +at least absolutely demand notice--Austin, Maine, and Stephen. The first +of these was in respect of influence, if not also of actual +accomplishment, one of the most noteworthy Englishmen of the century. +Born in 1790, he died in 1859, having begun life in the Army which he +exchanged for the Bar not long after Waterloo. He was made Professor of +Jurisprudence in the new University College of London in 1827. He held +this post for five years only; but it resulted in his famous _Province +of Jurisprudence Determined_, a book standing more or less alone in +English. He did not publish much else, though he did some official work; +and his _Lectures on Jurisprudence_ were posthumously edited by his +wife, a Miss Taylor of Norwich, who has been referred to as translator +of the _Story without an End_, and who did much other good work. Austin +(whose younger brother Charles (1799-1874) left little if anything in +print but accumulated a great fortune at the Parliamentary Bar, and left +a greater, though vague, conversational reputation) had bad health +almost throughout his life, and his work is not large in bulk. At first +pooh-poohed and neglected, almost extravagantly prized later, and later +still, according to the usual round, a little cavilled at, it presents +Utilitarian theory at its best in the intellectual way; and its +disciplinary value, if it is not taken for gospel, can hardly be +overrated. But its extreme clearness, closeness, and logical precision +carry with them the almost inevitable defects of hardness, narrowness, +and want of "play," as well as of that most fatal of intellectual +attitudes which takes for granted that everything is explicable. Still, +these were the defects of Austin's school and time; his merits were +individual, and indeed very nearly unique. + +Sir Henry James Summer Maine was born in 1822, and educated first as a +Blue Coat boy and then at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After a quite +exceptional career as an undergraduate, he became fellow of Trinity +Hall, of which he died Master in 1888. But he had only held this latter +post for eleven years, and the midmost of his career was occupied with +quite different work. He had been made Professor of Civil Law in his +University in 1847, at a very early age, when he had not even been +called to the Bar; but he supplied this omission three years later, and +a little later still exchanged his Cambridge Professorship for a +Readership at Lincoln's Inn. In 1862 he obtained the appointment, famous +from its connection with letters, of Legal Member of the Viceroy's +Council in India. On quitting it after seven years he was transferred to +the Council at Home, and became Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence +at Oxford. Besides his work as a reviewer, which was considerable, Maine +wrote--in an admirable style, and with a scholarship and sense which, in +the recrudescence of more barbaric thought, have brought down socialist +and other curses on his head--many works on the philosophy of law, +politics, and history, the chief of which were his famous _Ancient Law_ +(1861), _Village Communities_ (1871), _Early Law and Custom_ (1883), +with a severe criticism on Democracy called _Popular Government_ (1885). +Few writers of our time could claim the phrase _mitis sapentia_ as Maine +could, though it is possible that he was a little too much given to +theorise. But his influence in checking that of Austin was admirable. + +A colleague of Maine's on the _Saturday Review_, his successor in his +Indian post, like him a _malleus demagogorum_, but in some ways no small +contrast, was Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94), the most +distinguished member of a family unusually distinguished during the past +century in the public service and in literature. His father, Sir James +Stephen, was himself well known as a reviewer, as a civil servant, as +Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, and as author of _Essays in +Ecclesiastical History_ and _Lectures on the History of France_ (1849 +and 1851). The second Sir James was born at Kensington in 1829, went to +Eton, thence to King's College, London, and thence to Trinity, +Cambridge, and was called to the Bar in 1854. His legal career was +brilliant and varied, and led him to the Bench, which he resigned +shortly before his death. Sir James Stephen published some works of +capital importance on his own subject, the chief relating the Criminal +Law, collected both earlier and later a good deal of his _Saturday_ +work, discussed a famous passage of Indian History in the _Story of +Nuncomar_ (1885), and wrote not a little criticism--political, +theological, and other--of a somewhat negative but admirably +clear-headed kind--the chief expression of which is _Liberty, Equality, +and Fraternity_ (1873). + +Even less room can be given to the Political Economists than to the +"Jurisprudents," partly because the best writers of them, such as J. S. +Mill, have figured or will figure elsewhere; partly because, from +Ricardo to Jevons and Cliffe Leslie, though they have often displayed no +mean literary power, the necessities or supposed necessities of their +subject have usually kept their books further away from _belles lettres_ +than the documents of any other department of what is widely called +philosophy. But a paragraph must at least be given to one of the +earliest and one of the most famous of them. + +If a prize were offered to the best-abused person in English literature, +few competitors would have much chance with Thomas Robert Malthus, +author of the _Essay on the Principles of Population_ (1798), and of +divers works on Political Economy, of which he was Professor in the East +India College at Haileybury. To judge from the references which for many +years used to be, and to some extent still are, made to Malthus, still +more from the way in which the term "Malthusian" is still often used, he +might be supposed to have been a reprobate anarchist and revolutionary, +who had before his eyes neither the fear of God, nor the love of man, +nor the respect of morality and public opinion. As a matter of fact +Malthus was a most respectable and amiable clergyman, orthodox I believe +in religion, Tory I believe in politics, who incurred odium chiefly by +his inculcation of the most disagreeable lessons of the new and +cheerless science which he professed. Born on 24th February 1766 near +Dorking, of a very respectable family, he went to Cambridge, took +honours, a fellowship at his college (Jesus), and orders, obtained a +benefice, and spent most of the last thirty years of his life in the +Professorship above referred to, dying in 1854. His _Essay_ was one of +the numerous counter-blasts to Godwin's anarchic perfectibilism, and its +general drift was simply to show that the increase of population, unless +counter-acted by individual and moral self-restraint, must reduce +humanity to misery. The special formula that "population increases in a +geometrical, food in a arithmetical ratio," is overstrained and a +little absurd; the general principle is sound beyond all question, and +not only consistent with, but absolutely deducible from, the purest +Christian doctrines. Malthus wrote well, he knew thoroughly what he was +writing about, and he suffers only from the inevitable drawback to all +writers on such subjects who have not positive genius of form, that a +time comes when their contentions appear self-evident to all who are not +ignorant or prejudiced. + +The greatest _theological_ interest of the century belongs to what is +diversely called the Oxford and the Tractarian Movement; while, even if +this statement be challenged on non-literary grounds, it will scarcely +be so by any one on grounds literary. For the present purpose, of +course, nothing like a full account of the Movement can be attempted. It +is enough to say that it arose partly in reaction from the Evangelical +tendency which had dominated the more active section of the Church of +England for many years, partly in protest against the Liberalising and +Latitudinarian tendency in matters both temporal and spiritual. In +contradistinction to its predecessor (for the Evangelicals had been the +reverse of literary), it was from the first--_i.e._ about 1830, or +earlier if we take _The Christian Year_ as a harbinger of it--a very +literary movement both in verse and prose. Of its three leaders, +Pusey--whose name, given to it in derision and sometimes contested by +sympathisers as unappropriate, unquestionably ranks of right as that of +its greatest theologian, its most steadfast character, and the most of a +born leader engaged in it--was something less of a pure man of letters +than either Keble or Newman. But he was a man of letters; and perhaps a +greater one than is usually thought. + +Edward Bouverie Pusey, who belonged to the family of Lord Folkestone by +blood, his father having become by bequest the representative of the +very old Berkshire house of Pusey, was born at the seat of this family +in 1800. He went to Eton and to Christ Church, and became a fellow of +Oriel, studied theology and oriental languages in Germany, and was made +Professor of Hebrew at the early age of twenty-seven. He was a thorough +scholar, and even in the times of his greatest unpopularity no charge of +want of competence for his post was brought against him by any one who +knew. It is, however, somewhat comic that charges of Rationalism were +brought against his first book, a study of contemporary German theology. +In or soon after 1833 he joined Newman and Keble in the famous _Tracts +for the Times_, at the same time urging the return to a more primitive +and catholic theology in his sermons, and by means of the great +enterprise in translation called the _Oxford Library of the Fathers_, of +which he executed part and sedulously edited others. Pusey first came +before general public notice outside Oxford in 1843, in consequence of a +very high-handed exertion of power by the authorities of the University, +who, without allowing him a hearing, suspended him for a sermon on the +Eucharist from preaching for three years. His mouth was thus closed at +the very moment when Newman "went over"; and when some of the enemies of +the movement declared that Pusey would go too. Others were equally +certain that if he stayed it was either from base motives of +self-interest, or, still more basely, in order to do underhand damage to +the Church. But all who unite knowledge and fairness now admit, not only +his perfect loyalty, but the almost unexampled heroism and steadfastness +with which for some ten or fifteen years after Newman's secession, +against popular obloquy, against something very like persecution from +the authorities of the Church and the University, and against the +constant and repeated discouragement given by the desertion of friends +and colleagues, he upheld his cause and made the despised and reproached +"Puseyites" of his middle life what he lived to see them--the greatest +and almost the dominant party in the Anglican Church. He was less +fortunate in his opposition to the secularising of the Universities, and +in his attempts (which ill-willers did not fail to liken to the attempts +made to stifle his own teaching) to check by legal means the spread of +Rationalism. But he was nearly as full of honours as of years when he +died on 16th September 1882. + +Many of the constituents of this remarkable and perhaps unexampled +success--Pusey's personal saintliness, his unselfish use of his +considerable income, his unwearied benevolence in other than pecuniary +ways--do not concern us here. But his works, which are numerous, and the +most literary of which are his _Sermons_ and his _Eirenicon_, +contributed not a little to it. Pusey's style was accused by some of +bareness and by others of obscurity; but these accusations may be safely +dismissed as due merely to the prevalent fancy for florid expression, +and to the impatience of somewhat scholastically arranged argument which +has also distinguished our times. + +The second of this remarkable trio, John Keble, was the eldest, having +been born on 24th April 1792, at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, with +which county his family had for some centuries been connected. Keble's +father was a clergyman, and there was a clerical feeling and tradition +in the whole family. John went to no public school, but was very +carefully educated at home, obtained an open scholarship at Corpus +Christi College, Oxford, when he was only fourteen, and went into +residence next year--for just at this time extremely early entrance at +the University was much commoner than a little earlier or later. He had +only just entered his nineteenth year when he took a double first, and +had not concluded it when he was elected, at the same time with Whately, +to an Oriel fellowship. He followed this up by winning both the +Chancellor's Essays, English and Latin, and established his reputation +as the most brilliant man of his day. He was ordained as soon as he +could be, and served the usual offices of tutor in his College and +examiner in the University. But even such semi-public life as this was +distasteful to him, and he soon gave up his Oriel tutorship for a +country curacy and private pupils. Indeed the note, some would say the +fault, of Keble's whole life was an almost morbid retiringness, which +made him in 1827 refuse even to compete with Hawkins for the Provostship +of Oriel. It is possible that he would not have been elected, for oddly +enough his two future colleagues in the triumvirate, both Fellows, were +both in favour of his rival; but his shunning the contest has been +deeply deplored, and by some even blamed as a _gran rifiuto_. The +publication of _The Christian Year_, however, which immediately +followed, probably did more for the Movement and for the spiritual life +of England than any office-holding could have done; and in 1831, Keble, +being elected Professor of Poetry, distinguished himself almost as much +in criticism as he had already done in poetry. He obtained, and was +contented with, the living of Hursley, in Hampshire, where he resided +till his death on 29th March 1866. + +Keble's very generally granted character as one of the holiest persons +of modern times, and even his influence on the Oxford Movement, concern +us less here than his literary work, which was of almost the first +importance merely as literature. The reaction from an enormous +popularity of nearly seventy years' date, and the growth of +anti-dogmatic opinions, have brought about a sort of tendency in some +quarters to belittle, if not positively to sneer at, _The Christian +Year_, which, with the _Lyra Innocentium_ and a collection of +_Miscellaneous Poems_, contains Keble's poetical work. There never was +anything more uncritical. The famous reference which Thackeray--the +least ecclesiastically inclined, if by no means the least religious, of +English men of letters of genius in this century--makes to its +appearance in _Pendennis_, shows what the thoughts of unbiassed +contemporaries were. And no very different judgment can be formed by +unbiassed posterity. With Herbert and Miss Rossetti, Keble ranks as the +greatest of English writers in sacred verse, the irregular and unequal +efforts of Vaughan and Crashaw sometimes transcending, oftener sinking +below the three. If Keble has not the exquisite poetical mysticism of +Christina Rossetti he is more copious and more strictly scholarly, while +he escapes the quaint triviality, or the triviality sometimes not even +quaint, which mars Herbert. The influence of Wordsworth is strongly +shown, but it is rendered and redirected in an entirely original manner. +The lack of taste which mars so much religious poetry never shows +itself even for a moment in Keble; yet the correctness of his diction, +like the orthodoxy of his thought, is never frigid or tame. There are +few poets who so well deserve the nickname of a Christian Horace, though +the phrase may seem to have something of the paradox of "prose +Shakespeare." The careful melody of the versification and the exact +felicity of the diction exclude, it may be, those highest flights which +create most enthusiasm, at any rate in this century. But for measure, +proportion, successful attainment of the proposed end, Keble has few +superiors. + +It would indeed be surprising if he had many, for, with his gift of +verse, he was also one of the most accomplished of critics. His +_Praelectiones Academicae_, written, as the rule then was, in Latin, is +unfortunately a sealed book to too many persons whom modern practice +calls and strives to consider "educated"; but he did not confine himself +even in these to classical subjects, and he wrote not a few reviews in +English dealing with modern poetry. His aesthetics are of course deeply +tinged with ethic; but he does not in the least allow moral +prepossessions to twist his poetic theory, which may be generally +described as the Aristotelian teaching on the subject, supplied and +assisted by the aid of a wide study of the literatures not open to +Aristotle. There can be no doubt that if Keble's mind had not been more +and more absorbed by religious subjects he would have been one of the +very greatest of English critics of literature; and he is not far from +being a great one as it is. He did not publish many sermons, though one +of his, the Assize Sermon at Oxford in 1833, is considered to have +started the Movement; and opinions as to his pulpit powers have varied. +But it is certainly not too much to say that it was impossible for Keble +not to make everything that he wrote, whether in verse or prose, +literature of the most perfect academic kind, informed by the spirit of +scholarship and strengthened by individual talent. + +John Henry Newman was the eldest son of a man of business of some means +(who came of a family of Cambridgeshire yeomen) and of a lady of +Huguenot descent. He was born in London on 21st February 1801, was +educated privately at Ealing, imbibed strong evangelical principles, and +went up to Oxford (Trinity College) so early that he went in for +"Greats" (in which he only obtained a third class) before he was +nineteen. He continued, however, to reside at Trinity, where he held a +scholarship, and more than made up for his mishap in the schools by +winning an Oriel fellowship in 1823. In three successive years he took +orders and a curacy in the first, the Vice-Principalship of St. Alban's +Hall under Whately in the second, and an Oriel tutorship in the third; +while in 1827 he succeeded Hawkins, who became Provost, in the Vicarage +of St. Mary's, the most important post of the kind--to a man who chose +to make it important--in Oxford. + +Newman did so choose, and his sermons--not those to the University, +though these also are notable, but those nominally "Parochial," really +addressed to the undergraduates who soon flocked to hear him--were the +foundation and mainstay of his influence, constitute the largest single +division of his printed work, and perhaps present that work in the best +and fairest light. His history for the next sixteen years cannot be +attempted here; it is the history of the famous thing called the Oxford +Movement, which changed the intellectual as well as the ecclesiastical +face of England, on which libraries have been written, and which, even +yet, has not been satisfactorily or finally judged. His travels with +Hurrell Froude in the Mediterranean during 1832-33 seem to have been the +special turning-point of his career. After ten years, perhaps of +"development," certainly of hard fighting, he resigned St. Mary's in +1843, and after two years more of halting between two opinions he was +received into the Church of Rome in October 1845. He left Oxford, never +to return to it as a residence, and not to visit it for thirty-two +years, in the following February. + +His first public appearance after this was in the once famous Achilli +trial for libel, in which the plaintiff, an anti-Roman lecturer, +recovered damages from Newman for an utterly damning description of +Achilli's career in the Roman Church itself. Impartial judges generally +thought and think that the verdict was against the weight of evidence. +At any rate it produced a decided revulsion in Newman's favour, of which +he was both too convinced of his own position and too astute not to take +advantage. He had hitherto since his secession resided (he had been +re-ordained in Rome) at Birmingham, London, and Dublin, but he now took +up his abode, practically for the rest of his life, at Birmingham or +rather Edgbaston. In 1864 the great opportunity, presented by Kingsley's +unguarded words (_vide supra_), occurred, and he availed himself of it +at once. Most of those who read the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_ were not +familiar with Newman's masterly English, and his competent, if not +supreme, dialectic and sophistic. They were not, as a former generation +had been, prejudiced against him; the untiring work of those of his +former friends who remained faithful to the Church of England had of +itself secured him a fair hearing. During the remaining twenty-five +years of his life he had never again to complain of ostracism or unfair +prejudice. The controversy as to the Vatican Council brought him once +more forward, and into collision with Mr. Gladstone, but into no odium +of any kind. Indeed he was considerably less popular at Rome than at +home, the more supple and less English character of Manning finding +greater favour with Pius IX. The late seventies, however, were a time of +triumph for Newman. In 1877 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of his own +College, Trinity, and next year paid what may be called a visit of +restoration to Oxford, while in 1879 the new Pope Leo XIII., a man of +great abilities and wide piety, raised Newman to the cardinalate. He +visited Rome on the occasion, but returned to Birmingham, where the +Edgbaston Oratory was still his home for the remaining years of his +life. This did not end till 11th August 1890, when almost all men spoke +almost all good things over his grave, though some did not spare to +interpose a sober criticism. The books composed during this long and +eventful career, especially in the first half of it, were very +numerous, Cardinal Newman's works at the time of his death, and before +the addition of Letters, etc., extending to nearly forty volumes. Much +of the matter of these is still _cinis dolosissimus_, not to be trodden +on save in the most gingerly manner in such a book as this. Yet there +are probably few qualified and impartial judges who would refuse Newman, +all things considered, the title of the greatest theological writer in +English during this century; and there are some who uphold him for one +of the very greatest of English prose writers. It is therefore +impossible not to give him a place, and no mean place, here. + +Although his chief work, indeed all but a very small part of it, was in +prose, he was a good verse writer. The beautiful poem or hymn usually +called from its first words "Lead, kindly Light," but entitled by its +author "The Pillar of Cloud," is not merely as widely known as any piece +of sacred verse written during the century, but may challenge anything +of that class (out of the work of Miss Christina Rossetti) for really +poetical decoction and concoction of religious ideas. It was written, +with much else, during a voyage in a sailing ship from Sicily to +Marseilles at the close (June 1833) of that continental tour which was +of such moment in Newman's life; and the whole batch ferments with +spiritual excitement. Earlier, and indeed later, Newman, besides plenty +of serious verse, contributed to the _Lyra Apostolica_ or written +independently, was a graceful writer of verse trifles; but his largest +and best poetical work, _The Dream of Gerontius_, was not produced till +he was approaching old age, and had long passed the crisis of his +career. Possibly the new ferment of soul into which the composition of +the _Apologia_ had thrown him, may have been responsible for this, which +is dated a year later. It is the recital in lyrical-dramatic form of an +anticipatory vision, just before death, of the Last Things, and unites +dignity and melody in a remarkable manner. The only other parts of his +work to which Newman himself attached the title "literature" were the +prose romances of _Callista_ and _Loss and Gain_. They display his power +over language, but are exposed on one side to the charges usually +incurred by novels with a purpose, and on the other to a suspicion of +bad taste, incurred in the effort to be popular. + +By far the larger bulk of the works, however, belongs to theology. This +includes twelve volumes of Sermons, all but a small part delivered +before Newman's change of creed, and eight of them the _Parochial and +Plain Sermons_, preached in the pulpit of St. Mary's but not to the +University; four of treatises, including the most famous and +characteristic of Newman's works except the _Apologia_, _The Grammar of +Assent_, and _The Development of Christian Doctrine_; four of Essays; +three of Historical Sketches; four theological, chiefly on Arianism, and +translations of St. Athanasius; and six Polemical, which culminate in +the _Apologia_. With respect to the substance of this work it is soon +easy, putting controversial matters as much as possible apart, to +discover where Newman's strength and weakness respectively lay. He was +distinctly deficient in the historic sense; and in the _Apologia_ itself +he threw curious light on this deficiency, and startled even friends and +fellow-converts, by speaking contemptuously of "antiquarian arguments." +The same defect is quaintly illustrated by a naif and evidently sincere +complaint that he should have been complained of for (in his own words) +"attributing to the middle of the third century what is certainly to be +found in the fourth." And it is understood that he was not regarded +either by Anglican or by Roman Catholic experts as a very deep +theologian in either of his stages. The special characteristic--the +_ethos_ as his own contemporaries and immediate successors at Oxford +would have said--of Newman seems to have been strangely combined. He was +perhaps the last of the very great preachers in English--of those who +combined a thoroughly classical training, a scholarly form, with the +incommunicable and almost inexplicable power to move audiences and +readers. And he was one of the first of that class of journalists who in +the new age have succeeded the preachers, whether for good or ill, as +the prophets of the illiterate. It may seem strange to speak of Newman +as a journalist; but if any one will read his essays, his _Apologia_, +above all the curious set of articles called _The Tamworth +Reading-Room_, he will see what a journalist was lost, or only partly +developed, in this cardinal. He had the conviction, which is far more +necessary to a journalist than is generally thought; and yet his +convictions were not of that extremely systematic and far-reaching kind +which no doubt often stands in the journalist's way. He had the faculty +of mixing bad and good argument, which is far more effective with mixed +audiences than unbated logic. And, little as he is thought of as +sympathising with the common people, he was entirely free from that +contempt of them which always prevents a man from gaining their ear +unless he is a consummately clever scoundrel. + +It may however be retorted that if Newman was a born journalist, sermons +and theology must be a much better school of style in journalism than +articles and politics. And it is quite true that his writing at its best +is of extraordinary charm, while that charm is not, as in the case of +some of his contemporaries and successors, derived from dubiously +legitimate ornament and flourish, but observes the purest classical +limitations of proportion and form. It has perhaps sometimes been a +little over-valued, either by those who in this way or that--out of love +for what he joined or hate to what he left--were in uncritical sympathy +with Newman, or by others it may be from pure ignorance of the fact that +much of this charm is the common property of the more scholarly writers +of the time, and is only eminently, not specially, present in him. But +of the fact of it there is no doubt. In such a sermon for instance as +that on "The Individuality of the Soul," a thought or series of +thoughts, in itself poetically grandiose enough for Taylor or even for +Donne, is presented in the simplest but in the most marvellously +impressive language. The sentences are neither volleying in their +shortness, nor do they roll thundrously; the cadences though perfect are +not engineered with elaborate musical art; there are in proportion very +few adjectives; the writer exercises the most extreme continence in +metaphor, simile, illustration, all the tricks and frounces of literary +art. Yet Taylor, though he might have attained more sweetness or more +grandeur, could hardly have been more beautiful; and though Donne might +have been so, it would have been at the expense of clearness. Newman is +so clear that he has often been accused of being, and sometimes is, a +little hard; but this is not always or often the case: it is especially +not so when he is dealing with things which, as in the sermon just +referred to and that other on "The Intermediate State," admit the +diffusion of religious awe. The presence of that awe, and of a constant +sense and dread of Sin, have been said, and probably with truth, to be +keynotes of Newman's religious ideas, and of his religious history; but +they did not harden, as in thinkers of another temper has often been the +case, his style or his thought. On the contrary, they softened both; and +it is when he is least under the influence of them that unction chiefly +deserts him. Yet he by no means often sought to excite his hearers. He +held, as he himself somewhere says, that "impassioned thoughts and +sublime imaginings have no strength in them." And this conviction of his +can hardly be strange to the fact that few writers indulge so little as +Newman in what is called fine writing. He has "organ passages," but they +are such as the wind blowing as it lists draws from him, not such as are +produced by deliberate playing on himself. + +In a wider space it would be interesting to comment on numerous other +exponents of the Movement. Archdeacon afterwards Cardinal Manning +(1807-93), the successful rival of Newman among those Anglican clergymen +who joined the Church of Rome, was less a man of letters than a very +astute man of business; but his sermons before he left the Church had +merit, and he afterwards wrote a good deal. Richard Hurrell Froude +(1803-36), elder brother of the historian, had a very great and not +perhaps a very beneficent influence on Newman, and through Newman on +others; but he died too soon to leave much work. His chief +distinguishing note was a vigorous and daring humour allied to a strong +reactionary sentiment. Isaac Williams, the second poet of the Movement +(1802-65), was in most respects, as well as in poetry, a minor Keble. +W. G. Ward, commonly called "Ideal" Ward from his famous, very +ill-written, very ill-digested, but important _Ideal of a Christian +Church_, which was the alarm-bell for the flight to Rome, was a +curiously constituted person of whom something has been said in +reference to Clough. He had little connection with pure letters, and +after his secession to Rome and his succession to a large fortune he +finally devoted himself to metaphysics of a kind. His acuteness was +great, and he had a scholastic subtlety and logical deftness which made +him very formidable to the loose thinkers and reasoners of +Utilitarianism and anti-Supernaturalism. One of the latest important +survivors was Dean Church (1815-91), who, as Proctor, had arrested the +persecution of the Tractarians, with which it was sought to complete the +condemnation of Ward's _Ideal_, and who afterwards, both in a country +cure and as Dean of St. Paul's, acquired very high literary rank by work +on Dante, Anselm, Spenser, and other subjects, leaving also the best +though unfortunately an incomplete history of the Movement itself; while +the two Mozleys, the one a considerable theologian, the other an active +journalist, brothers-in-law of Newman, also deserve mention. Last of all +perhaps we must notice Henry Parry Liddon (1829-90), of a younger +generation, but the right-hand man of Pusey in his later day, and his +biographer afterwards--a popular and pleasing, though rather rhetorical +than argumentative or original, preacher, and a man very much affected +by his friends. Even this list is nothing like complete, but it is +impossible to enlarge it. + +Midway between the Movement and its enemies, a partial sympathiser in +early days, almost an enemy when the popular tide turned against it, +almost a leader when public favour once more set in in its favour, was +Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester (1805-73). The third +son of the celebrated emancipationist and evangelical, he had brothers +who were more attracted than himself by the centripetal force of Roman +doctrine, and succumbed to it. Worldly perhaps as much as spiritual +motives kept him steadier. He did invaluable work as a bishop; and at +all times of his life he was in literature a distinct supporter of the +High Church cause, though with declensions and defections of Erastian +and evangelical backsliding. He was a very admirable preacher, though +his sermons do not read as well as they "heard"; some of his devotional +manuals are of great excellence; and in the heyday of High Church +allegory (an interesting by-walk of literature which can only be glanced +at here, but which was trodden by some estimable and even some eminent +writers) he produced the well hit-off tale of _Agathos_ (1839). But it +may be that he will, as a writer, chiefly survive in the remarkable +letters and diaries in his _Life_, which are not only most valuable for +the political and ecclesiastical history of the time, but precious +always as human documents and sometimes as literary compositions. + +Three remarkable persons must be mentioned among the opponents of (and +in one case harsh judgment might say the deserters of) the Movement. +These were Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Mark Pattison, and Benjamin Jowett. +Stanley, born in 1815, was the son of the (afterwards) Bishop of Norwich +and a nephew of the first Lord Stanley of Alderley, and was brought up +very much under the influence of Arnold, whose biographer he became. But +he went further than Arnold in Broad Church ways. His career at Rugby +and at Oxford was distinguished, and after being fellow and tutor of +University College for some ten years, he became successively Canon of +Canterbury, Canon of Christ Church, and Professor of Ecclesiastical +History at Oxford, and Dean of Westminster, in which last post he had +almost greater opportunities than any bishop, and used them to the full. +He also wrote busily, devoting himself especially to the geography of +Palestine and the history of the Eastern Church, which he handled in a +florid and popular style, though not with much accuracy or scholarship. +Personally, Stanley was much liked, though his conception of his duties +as a sworn servant of the Church has seemed strange to some. He died in +July 1881. + +Mark Pattison (1813-84), Fellow and Rector of Lincoln College, had a +less amiable character than Stanley's, but a greater intellect and far +nicer, profounder, and wider scholarship, though he actually did very +little. He fell under the influence of Newman early, and was one of that +leader's closest associates in his monastic retreat at Littlemore. But +when Newman "went over," the wave swept Pattison neither to Rome nor +safely on to higher English ground, but into a religious scepticism, the +exact extent of which was nowhere definitely announced, but which was +regarded by some as nearly total. He did not nominally leave the Church, +but he acted always with the extreme Liberal party in the University, +and he was one of the famous Seven who contributed to _Essays and +Reviews_[11]. The shock of his religious revolution was completed by a +secular disappointment--his defeat for the office of Rector, which he +actually attained much later; and a temper always morbid, appears, to +judge from his painful but extraordinarily interesting and +characteristic _Memoirs_, to have been permanently soured. Even active +study became difficult to him, and though he was understood to have a +more extensive acquaintance with the humanists of the late Renaissance +than any man of his day, his knowledge took little written form except a +volume on Isaac Casaubon. He also wrote an admirable little book on +_Milton_ for the _English Men of Letters_, edited parts of Milton and +Pope, and contributed a not inconsiderable number of essays and articles +to the _Quarterly_ and _Saturday Reviews_, and other papers. The +autobiography mentioned was published after his death. + +Despite Pattison's peculiar temper he had warm and devoted friends, and +it was impossible for any one, whether personally liking him or not, to +deny him the possession of most unusual gifts. Whether his small +performance was due to the shocks just referred to, to genuine +fastidiousness and resolve to do nothing but the best, or to these +things mixed with a strong dash of downright indolence and want of +energy, is hard to say. But it would be entirely unjust to regard him as +merely a man who was "going to do something." His actual work though not +large is admirable, and his style is the perfection of academic +correctness, not destitute of either vigour or grace. + +There were some resemblances between Pattison and Jowett (1817-94); but +the latter, unlike Pattison, had never had any sympathies with the +religious renaissance of his time. Like Pattison he passed his entire +life (after he obtained a Balliol fellowship) in his College, and like +him became head of it; while he was a much more prominent member of the +Liberal party in Oxford. His position as Regius Professor of Greek gave +him considerable influence even beyond Balliol. He, too, was an +_Essayist and Reviewer_, and he exercised a quiet but pervading +influence in University matters. He even acquired no mean name in +literature, though his work, after an early _Commentary_ on some +Epistles of St. Paul, was almost entirely confined to translations, +especially of Plato, and though in these translations he was much +assisted by pupils. He wrote well, but with much less distinction and +elegance than Pattison, nor had he by any means the same taste for +literature and erudition in it. But, as an influence on the class of +persons from whom men of letters are drawn, no one has exceeded him in +his day. + +The dramatic catastrophe of the Disruption of the Scotch Kirk, which, by +a strange coincidence, was nearly contemporary with the crisis of the +Oxford Movement, set the final seal upon the reputation of Thomas +Chalmers, who headed the seceders. But this reputation had been made +long before, and indeed Chalmers died 30th May 1847, only four years +after he "went out." He was a much older man than the Oxford leaders, +having been born in 1780, and after having for some years, though a +minister, devoted himself chiefly to secular studies, he became famous +as a preacher at the Tron Church, Glasgow. In 1823 he was appointed +Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, and (shortly afterwards) +of Theology in Edinburgh. He was one of the Bridgewater treatise +writers--a group of distinguished persons endowed to produce tractates +on Natural Theology--and his work, _The Adaptation of External Nature to +the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man_, was one of the most +famous of that set, procuring for him a correspondence-membership from +the French Institute and a D.C.L. from Oxford. Chalmers' works are +extremely voluminous; the testimony as to the effect of his preaching is +tolerably uniform; he was a man of very wide range of thought, and of +remarkable faculty of popularisation; and there is no doubt that he was +a born leader of men. But as literature his works have hardly maintained +the reputation which they once had, and even those who revere him, +unless they let reverence stifle criticism, are apt to acknowledge that +there is more rhetoric than logic in him, and that the rhetoric itself +is not of the finest. + +Edward Irving, at one time an assistant to Chalmers, and an early friend +of Carlyle, was twelve years the junior of Chalmers himself, and died +thirteen years before him. But at nearly the time when Chalmers was at +the height of his reputation as a preacher in Glasgow, Irving was +drawing crowds to the unfashionable quarter of Hatton Garden, London, by +sermons of extraordinary brilliancy. Later he developed eccentricities +of doctrine which do not concern us, and his preaching has not worn much +better than that of his old superior. Irving, however, had more strictly +literary affinities than Chalmers; he came under the influence of +Coleridge (which probably had not a little to do both with his eloquence +and with his vagaries); and he may be regarded as having been much more +of a man of letters who had lost his way and strayed into theology than +as a theologian proper. + +To what extent this great and famous influence of Coleridge actually +worked upon Frederick Denison Maurice has been debated. It is however +generally stated that he, like his friend Sterling, was induced to take +orders in the Church of England by this influence. He was not a very +young man when in 1834, the year of Irving's death, he did this, for he +had been born in 1805, and had been educated at Cambridge, though being +then a Unitarian he did not take a degree. He afterwards went to Oxford +and took an M.A. degree there, and he was regarded for a time as a sort +of outlying sympathiser with the Tractarian Movement. But his opinions +took a very different line of development not merely from those of +Newman, but from those of Keble and Pusey. He indeed never left the +Church, in which he held divers preferments; and though his views on +eternal punishment lost him a professorship in King's College, London, +he met with no formal ecclesiastical censure. But he came to be regarded +as a champion of the Broad Church school, and upheld eloquently and +vehemently, if not always with a sufficiency either of logic or of +learning, a curious conglomerate of "advanced" views, ranging from +Christian Socialism to something like the views of the Atonement +attributed to Origen, and from deprecation of dogma to deprecation of +the then fashionable political economy. He was made Professor of Moral +Philosophy at Cambridge in 1866, and died in 1872. Maurice's sermons +were effective, and his other works numerous. A very generous and +amiable person with a deficient sense of history, Maurice in his writing +is a sort of elder, less gifted, and more exclusively theological +Charles Kingsley, on whom he exercised great and rather unfortunate +influence. But his looseness of thought, wayward eclecticism of system, +and want of accurate learning, were not remedied by Kingsley's splendid +pictorial faculty, his creative imagination, or his brilliant style. + +Somewhat akin to Maurice, but of a more feminine and less robust +temperament, was Frederick Robertson, generally called "Robertson of +Brighton," from the place of his last cure. Robertson, who was the son +of a soldier, was born in London on 3rd February 1816. After a rather +eccentric education and some vacillations about a profession, he went, +rather late, to Oxford, and was ordained in 1840. He had very bad +health, but did duty, chiefly at Cheltenham and at Brighton, pretty +valiantly, and died on August 1853. He published next to nothing in his +lifetime, but after his death there appeared several volumes of sermons +which gained great popularity, and were followed by other posthumous +works. Robertson's preaching is not very easy to judge, because the +published sermons are admittedly not what was actually delivered, but +after-reminiscences or summaries, and the judgment is not rendered +easier by the injudicious and gushing laudation of which he has been +made the subject. He certainly possessed a happy gift of phrase now and +then, and remarkable earnestness. + + NOTE.--In no chapter, perhaps, has there been greater + difficulty as to inclusion and exclusion than in the + present. The names of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, of Dean + Alford, of Bishop Lightfoot for England, of Bishop Charles + Wordsworth, of Dean Ramsay, of Drs. Candlish, Guthrie, and + Macleod for Scotland, may seem to clamour among orthodox + theologians, those of W. R. Greg, of James Hinton, of W. K. + Clifford among not always orthodox lay dealers with the + problems of philosophy, or of theology, or both. With less + tyrannous limits of space Principal Tulloch, who was + noteworthy in both these and in pure literature as well (he + was the last editor of _Fraser_), must have received at + least brief notice in this chapter, as must his brother + Principal, J. C. Shairp (an amiable poet, an agreeable + critic, and Professor of Poetry at Oxford), in others. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] This famous book, published in 1860, was a collection of papers by +six clergymen and a layman, some of which undoubtedly were, and the rest +of which were by association thought to be, unorthodox. It was condemned +by Convocation, and actual legal proceedings were taken against two of +the writers, but without final effect. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +LATER JOURNALISM AND CRITICISM IN ART AND LETTERS + + +In a former chapter we conducted the history of criticism, especially +literary criticism, and that chiefly as displayed in the periodicals +which were reorganized and refreshed in the early years of the century, +to about 1850. We have now to take it up at that point and conduct +it--subject to the limitations of our plan as regards living authors, +and in one extremely important case taking the license of outstepping +these limits--to the present or almost the present day. We shall have to +consider the rise and performances of two great individual writers, one +of whom entirely re-created, if he may not almost be said to have +created, the criticism of art in England, while the other gave a new +temper, if not exactly a new direction, to the criticism of literature; +and we shall have, in regard to periodicals, to observe the rise, in the +first place of the weekly newspaper, and then of the daily, as +competitors in strictly critical and literary work with the quarterly +and monthly reviews, as well as some changes in these latter. + +For just as we found that the first development of nineteenth century +criticism coincided with or followed upon a new departure or development +in periodicals, so we shall find that a similar change accompanied or +caused changes in the middle of the century. Although the popularity of +the quarterly and monthly reviews and magazines which had been headed +respectively by the _Edinburgh_ and _Blackwood_ did not exactly wane, +and though some of the most brilliant work of the middle of the +century--George Eliot's novels, Kingsley's and Froude's essays, and the +like--appeared in them, the ever fickle appetite of readers seemed to +desire something else in shape, something different in price, style, and +form. Why this sort of change, which is perpetually recurring, should +usually bring with it a corresponding change, and sometimes a +corresponding improvement, of literary production, is more than any one +can say, but the fact is not easily disputable. + +On the present occasion the change took three successive forms--first, +the raising, or rather restoring, of the weekly sixpenny critical +newspaper to a higher pitch of popularity than it had ever held; +secondly, the cheapening and multiplying of the monthly magazines; +thirdly, the establishment of new monthly reviews, somewhat more +resembling the old quarterlies than anything else, but with signed +instead of anonymous articles. + +The uprising of the weekly newspaper took shape in two remarkably +different forms, represented respectively by _Household Words_, which +Dickens started early in the fifties, and by the _Saturday Review_, +which came a little later. The former might best be described as a +monthly of the _Blackwood_ and _London_ kind cheapened, made more +frequent in issue, and adjusted to a considerably lower and more popular +standard of interest and culture--politics, moreover, being ostensibly +though not quite really excluded. Dickens contributed to it largely +himself. He received contributions from writers of established repute +like Bulwer and Lever; but he made his chief mark with the paper by +breeding up a school of younger writers who wrote to his own pattern in +fiction, miscellaneous essay, and other things. Wilkie Collins was the +chief of these, but there were many others. In particular the periodical +developed a sort of popular, jocular, and picturesque-descriptive manner +of treating places, travels, ceremonies, and what not, which took the +public fancy immensely. It was not quite original (for Leigh Hunt, +Wainewright the murderer-miscellanist of the _London_, some of the +_Blackwood_ men, and others, had anticipated it to a certain extent), +and it was vulgarised as regards all its models; but it was distinct +and remarkable. The aesthetic and literary tone of _Household Words_, and +of its successor _All the Year Round_ to a somewhat less extent, was +distinctly what is called Philistine; and though Dickens always had a +moral purpose, he did not aim much higher than amusement that should not +be morbid, and instruction of the middle-class diffusion-of-knowledge +kind. But there was very little harm and much good to be said of +_Household Words_; and if some of the imitations of it were far from +being happy, its own popularity and that of its successor were very +fairly deserved. + +The aims, the character, and the success of the _Saturday Review_ were +of the most widely different character. It was less novel in form, for +the weekly review was an established thing, and had at least two very +respectable examples--the _Examiner_, which (under the Hunts, under +Fonblanque, under Forster, and under the late Mr. Minto) had a +brilliant, if never an extremely prosperous, career for three-quarters +of the century, and the _Spectator_, which attained a reputation for +unswerving honesty under the editorship of Mr. Rentoul, and has +increased it under that of its present conductors. But both these were +Liberal papers first of all; the _Saturday Review_, at first and +accidentally Peelite, was really (throughout the nearly forty years +during which it remained in the possession of the same family and was +directed by a succession of editors each of whom had been trained under +his predecessor) Independent Tory, or (to use a rather unhappy and now +half-forgotten name) Liberal-Conservative. It never tied itself to party +chariot-wheels, and from the first to the last of the period just +referred to very distinguished writers of Liberal and Radical opinions +contributed to it. But the general attitude of the paper during this +time expressed that peculiar tone of mainly Conservative persiflage +which has distinguished in literature the great line of writers +beginning with Aristophanes. Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from +the two Universities (though there was no kind of exclusion for the +unmatriculated; as a matter of fact, neither of its first two editors +was a son either of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the +necessity of classical culture. It eschewed the private personality +which had been too apt to disfigure newspapers of a satirical kind +during the first half of the century; but it claimed and exercised to +the full the privilege of commenting on every public writing, utterance, +or record of the subjects of its criticism. It observed, for perhaps a +longer time than any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity +(real as well as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular +articles; and those who knew were constantly amused at the public +mistakes on this subject. + +Applying this kind of criticism,--perfectly fearless, on the whole +fairly impartial, informed, human errors excepted, by a rather +exceptionally high degree of intelligence and education, and above all +keeping before it the motto, framed by its "sweet enemy" Thackeray, of +being written "by gentlemen for gentlemen,"--the _Saturday Review_ +quickly attained, and for many years held, the very highest place in +English critical journalism as regards literature, in a somewhat less +degree politics, and in a degree even greater the farrago of social and +miscellaneous matters. By consent too general and too unbiassed to be +questioned, it gave and maintained a certain tone of comment which +prevailed for the seventh, eighth, and ninth decades of the century, and +of which the general note may be said to have been a coolly scornful +intolerance of ignorance and folly. There were those who accused it even +in its palmiest days of being insufficiently positive and constructive; +but on the negative side it was generally sound in intention, and in +execution admirably thorough. It may sometimes have mishandled an honest +man, it may sometimes have forgiven a knave; but it always hated a fool, +and struck at him with might and with main. + +The second change began with the establishment of the _Cornhill_ and +_Macmillan's Magazine_, two or three years later. There was no +perceptible difference in the general scheme of these periodicals from +that of the earlier ones, of which _Blackwood_ and _Fraser_ were the +most famous; but their price was lowered from half a crown to a +shilling, and the principle of signed articles and of long novels by +famous names was adopted. The editorship of Thackeray in the _Cornhill_, +with the contributions of Matthew Arnold and others, quickly gave a +character to it; while _Macmillan's_ could boast contributions from the +Kingsleys, Henry and Charles, as well as from many others. From this +time the monthly magazine, with the exception of _Blackwood_, found a +shilling, which attempts have been recently made to lower to sixpence, +its almost necessary tariff, while the equal necessity of addressing the +largest possible audience made pure politics, with occasional +exceptions, unwelcome in it. It is to the credit of the English +magazines of this class, however, that they have never relinquished the +tradition of serious literary studies. Many of the essays of Mr. Arnold +appeared first either in one or the other of the two just mentioned; the +_Cornhill_ even ventured upon Mr. Ruskin's _Unto this Last_; and other +famous books of a permanent character saw the light in these, in _Temple +Bar_, started by Mr. Bentley, in the rather short-lived _St. Paul's_, of +which Anthony Trollope was editor, and in others. + +Whether the starting of the monthly "Review" as distinguished from the +"Magazine," which came again a little later towards the middle or end of +the sixties, be traceable to a parallel popularisation of the quarterly +ideal--to the need for the political and "heavy" articles which the +lightened monthlies had extruded--or to a mere imitation of the famous +French _Revue des Deux Mondes_, is an academic question. The first of +these new Reviews was the _Fortnightly_, which found the exact French +model unsuitable to the meridian of Greenwich, and dropped the +fortnightly issue, while retaining the title. It was followed by the +_Contemporary_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and others. The exclusion of +fiction in these was not invariable--the _Fortnightly_, in particular, +has published many of Mr. Meredith's novels. But, as a rule, these +reviews have busied themselves with more or less serious subjects, and +have encouraged signed publication. + +It would, of course, be impossible here to go through all, or even all +the most noteworthy, of the periodicals of the century. We are dealing +with classes, not individuals, and the only class yet to be +noticed--daily newspapers falling out of our ken almost entirely--are +those weekly newspapers which have eschewed politics altogether. The +oldest and most famous of these is the _Athenaeum_, which still +flourishes after a life of nearly seventy years, while between forty and +fifty years later the _Academy_ was founded on the same general +principles. But the _Athenaeum_ has always cleaved, as far as its main +articles went, to the unsigned system, while the _Academy_ started at a +period which leant the other way. Of late years, too, criticism proper, +that is to say, of letters and art, has played a larger and larger part +in daily newspapers, some of which attempt a complete review of books as +they appear, while others give reviews of selected works as full as +those of the weeklies. If any distinct setting of example is necessary +to be attributed in this case, the credit is perhaps mainly due to the +original _Pall Mall Gazette_, an evening newspaper started in 1864 with +one of the most brilliant staffs ever known, including many of the +original _Saturday_ writers and others. + +The result of this combined opportunity and stimulus in so many forms +has been that almost the whole of the critical work of the latter part +of the century has passed through periodicals--that, except as regards +Mr. Ruskin, a writer always indocile to editing, every one who will +shortly be mentioned in this chapter has either won his spurs or +exercised them in this kind, and that of the others, mentioned in other +chapters and in connection with other subjects, a very small proportion +can be said to have been entirely disdainful of periodical publication. +At the very middle of the century, and later, the older Quarterlies were +supported by men like John Wilson Croker, a survival of their first +generation Nassau W. Senior, and Abraham Hayward, the last a famous +talker and "diner-out." Other chief critics and essayists, besides +Kingsley and Froude, were George Brimley, Librarian of Trinity College, +Cambridge; Henry Lancaster, a Balliol man and a Scotch barrister; and +Walter Bagehot, a banker, and not a member of either University. +Brimley has left us what is perhaps the best appreciation of Tennyson in +the time between the days when that poet was flouted or doubted by the +usual critic, and those when he was accepted as a matter of course or +cavilled at as a matter of paradox; and Lancaster occupies pretty much +the same position with regard to Thackeray. It is not so easy to single +out any particular and distinguishing critical effort of Bagehot's, who +wrote on all subjects, from Lombard Street to Tennyson, and from the +_Coup d'Etat_ (which he saw) to Browning. But his distinction of the +poetical art of Wordsworth and that of these other poets as "pure, +ornate, and grotesque" will suffice to show his standpoint, which was a +sort of middle place between the classical and the Romantic. Bagehot +wrote well, and possessed a most keen intelligence. Also to be classed +here are Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, the very agreeable author of _Horae +Subsecivae_, and James Hannay, a brilliant journalist, a novelist of some +merit and an essayist of more, and author of _A Course of English +Literature_ which, though a little popular and desultory, is full of +sense and stimulus. + +Most popular of all at the time was Sir Arthur Helps (1813-75), a +country gentleman of some means and of the usual education, who took to +a mixed life of official and literary work, did some useful work in +regard to Spanish-American history, but acquired most popularity by a +series of dialogues, mostly occupied by ethical and aesthetic criticism, +called _Friends in Council_. This contains plenty of knowledge of books, +touches of wit and humour, a satisfactory standard of morals and +manners, a certain effort at philosophy, but suffers from the +limitations of its date. In different ways enough--for he was as quiet +as the other was showy--Helps was the counterpart of Kinglake, as +exhibiting a certain stage in the progress of English culture during the +middle of the century--a stage in which the Briton was considerably more +alive to foreign things than he had been, had enlarged his sphere in +many ways, and was at least striving to be cosmopolitan, but had lost +insular strength without acquiring Continental suppleness. + +Of the literary critic who attracted most public attention during this +period,--the late Mr. Matthew Arnold,--considerable mention has already +been made in dealing with his poetry, and biographical details must be +looked for there. It will be remembered that Mr. Arnold was not very +early a popular writer either as poet or prose-man, that his poetical +exercises preceded by a good deal his prose, and that these latter were, +if not determined, largely influenced by his appointment to the +Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. He began, however, towards the end of +the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, to be much noticed, not +merely as the deliverer of lectures, but as the contributor of essays of +an exceedingly novel, piquant, and provocative kind; and in 1865 these, +or some of them, were collected and published under the title of _Essays +in Criticism_. These _Essays_--nine in number, besides a characteristic +preface--dealt ostensibly for the most part, if not wholly, with +literary subjects,--"The Function of Criticism," "The Literary Influence +of Academies," "The Guerins" (brother and sister), "Heine," "Pagan and +Mediaeval Religious Sentiment," "Joubert," "Spinoza," and "Marcus +Aurelius,"--but they extended the purport of the title of the first of +them in the widest possible way. Mr. Arnold did not meddle with art, but +he extended the province of literature outside of it even more widely +than Mr. Ruskin did, and was, under a guise of pleasant scepticism, as +dogmatic within the literary province as Mr. Ruskin in the artistic. It +might almost be said that Mr. Arnold put himself forth, with a becoming +attempt at modesty of manner, but with very uncompromising intentions, +as "Socrates in London," questioning, probing, rebuking with ironical +faithfulness, the British Philistine--a German term which he, though not +the first to import it, made first popular--in literature, in +newspapers, in manners, in politics, in philosophy. Foreign, and +specially French, ways were sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, +held up as examples for our improvement; and the want of "ideas," the +want of "light," the want of "culture," was dwelt on with a mixture of +sorrow and satire. All this was couched in a very peculiar and (till its +mannerism became irritating) a very captivating style, which cannot be +assigned to any single original, but which is a sort of compound or +eclectic outcome of the old Oxford academic style as it may be seen at +times in Newman, of French persiflage, and of some elements peculiar to +Mr. Arnold himself. The strongest, though the most dangerous, of these +elements was a trick of iterating words and phrases, sometimes exactly, +sometimes with a very slight variation, which inevitably arrested +attention, and perhaps at first produced conviction, on the principle +formulated by a satirist (also of Oxford) a little later in the words-- + + What I tell you three times is true. + +But besides and underneath all this flourish, all this wide-ranging +scatter of sometimes rather haphazard arrows, there was a solid literary +value in Mr. Arnold's method. As has been noticed earlier in this +chapter, the literary essay of the best kind had somewhat gone off in +England during the middle of the century, and the short, crisp +criticisms which had appeared to take its place in weekly papers were +almost necessarily exposed to grave faults and inadequacies. It was Mr. +Arnold's great merit that by holding up Sainte-Beuve, from whom he had +learnt much, and other French critics, and by urging successfully the +revival of the practice of "introducing" editions of classics by a sound +biographical and critical essay from the pen of some contemporary, he +did much to cure this state of things. So that, whereas the _corpus_ of +English essay-criticism between 1800 and 1835 or thereabouts is +admirable, and that of 1835 to 1865 rather thin and scanty, the last +third of the century is not on such very bad terms as regards the first. +And he gave example as well as precept, showing--though his subjects, as +in the case of the Guerins, were sometimes most eccentrically +selected--a great deal of critical acuteness, coupled, it may be, with +something of critical "will-worship," with a capricious and unargued +preference of this and rejection of that, but exhibiting wide if not +extraordinarily deep reading, an honest enthusiasm for the best things, +and above all a fascinating rhetoric. + +The immediate effect of this remarkable book was good almost unmixedly +on two of the three parties concerned. It was more than time for the +flower of middle-class complacency, which horticulturists of all +degrees, from Macaulay downwards, had successively striven to cultivate, +and which was already overblown, to drop from its stalk; and the whiff +of pleasant scorn which Mr. Arnold directed at it was just the thing to +puff it off. So the public, upon which he was never likely to produce +too much effect, had reason to thank him for the effect that he did +produce, or helped to produce. And on the critics too his effect, or the +effect of which he was the symptom and voice, was also good, recalling +them on the one hand from the dulness of the long reviews of the period, +and on the other from the flippancy of the short, while inculcating a +wider if not always a sounder comparison. Practically German poetry had +nothing left to do in Mr. Arnold's day, and French had much: he thought +just the other way, and reserved his encomium of France for its prose, +in which it was drooping and failing. But this did not matter: it is the +general scope of the critic's advice which is valuable in such cases, +and the general scope of Mr. Arnold's was sound. On the third party, +however,--himself,--the effect was a little disastrous. The reception +which, after long waiting, he had attained, encouraged him not so much +to continue in his proper sphere of literary criticism as to embark on a +wide and far-ranging enterprise of general censure, which narrowed +itself pretty rapidly to an attempt to establish undogmatic on the ruins +of dogmatic Christianity. It would be very improper to discuss such an +undertaking on the merits here; or to criticise narrowly the series of +singular treatises which absorbed (with exceptions, no doubt, such as +the quaint sally of _Friendship's Garland_ on the occasion of the +Franco-German War) Mr. Arnold's energies for some fifteen or sixteen +years. The titles--_Culture and Anarchy_, _God and the Bible_, _St. Paul +and Protestantism_, _Literature and Dogma_, etc.--are well known. Of the +contents it is enough to say that, apart from the popular audacity of +their wit and the interesting spectacle of a pure man of letters +confidently attacking thorny questions without any apparatus of special +knowledge and study, they have not been generally thought quite worthy +of their author. There are many brilliant passages in these books as +writing, just as there are some astonishing lapses of taste and logic; +but the real fault of the whole set is that they are popular, that they +undergo the very curse, of speaking without qualification and without +true culture, which Mr. Arnold had himself so freely pronounced. + +Fortunately, however, he never quite abandoned the old ways; and in his +last years he returned to them almost wholly. Nothing better of the kind +(individual crotchets always excepted) has ever been written than his +introductions to selected lives from Johnson's _Poets_, to Byron, to +Shelley (the most crotchety and unsound of all), to Wordsworth +(incomparably the best). He aided others; and a collection of his purely +or mainly literary work is still eagerly expected. Even this would be +extremely unequal and open to exception here and there. But it would +contain some of the very best things to be found in any English critic. +And this after all, if not the absolutely highest, is one of the highest +things that can be said of a critic, and one of the rarest. Undoubtedly +the influence of Mr. Arnold did not make for good entirely. He +discouraged--without in the least meaning to do so, and indeed meaning +quite the contrary--seriousness, thoroughness, scholarship in criticism. +He discouraged--without in the least meaning to do so, and indeed +meaning quite the contrary--simplicity and unaffectedness in style. But +he was a most powerful stimulus, and in some ways, if not in all, a +great example. Some at least of the things he said were in the very +greatest need of saying, and some of the ways in which he said them were +inimitably charming. + +Contemporary with Mr. Arnold, and his complement in critical influence, +was John Ruskin, the sole living author of whom it has seemed proper to +treat here at length, and, since the death of Mr. Froude, the sole +surviving man of letters of the first class who had published before the +middle of the century. He was born in 1819: he has given copious +accounts of his family, of his youth at Denmark Hill, and so forth, and +all the world knows that his father was a sherry merchant who, though he +lived rather plainly, was able to give his son an early and plentiful +indulgence in that Continental travel which had so much to do with +developing his genius. Mr. Ruskin's education was oddly combined; for, +after going to no school, he was sent to Christ Church as a +gentleman-commoner and took his degree in 1842, having gained the +Newdigate three years earlier. He wrote a good deal of other verse in +his early years,--and he made himself a not inconsiderable draughtsman. +But his real vocation was as little the practice of art as it was the +practice of poetry. As early as 1843 there appeared, by "a Graduate of +Oxford," the first volume of the famous _Modern Painters_, which ran to +five large volumes, which covered seventeen years in its original period +of publication, and which was very largely altered and remodelled by the +author during and after this period. But Mr. Ruskin by no means confined +his energies before 1860 to this extensive task. The _Seven Lamps of +Architecture_ (1849), and (between 1851 and 1853) the larger _Stones of +Venice_, did for architecture what the companion work did for painting. +The Prae-Raphaelite movement of the middle of the century found in Mr. +Ruskin an ardent encomiast and literary apostle, and between 1850 and +1860 he delivered divers lectures, the text of which--_Architecture and +Painting_ (1854), _Political Economy of Art_ (1858)--was subsequently +published in as elaborately magnificent a style as his other works. As +_Modern Painters_ drew to its close he became prolific of more numerous +and shorter works, generally with somewhat fantastic but agreeable +titles--_Unto this Last_ (1861), _Munera Pulveris_ (1862), _Sesame and +Lilies_ (1865), _The Cestus of Aglaia_ (1865), _The Ethics of the Dust_ +(1866), _The Crown of Wild Olive_ (1866), _Time and Tide by Wear and +Tyne_ (1867), _The Queen of the Air_ (1869), _Aratra Pentelici_ and _The +Eagle's Nest_ (1872), _Ariadne Florentina_ (1873), _Proserpina and +Deucalion_ (1875 _seq._), _St. Mark's Rest_ and _Praeterita_ (1885). Not +a few of these were issued in parts and numbers, but Mr. Ruskin's +bulkiest and most characteristic venture in this kind was _Fors +Clavigera_, which was published at irregular intervals from 1871 to +1884. He has written many other things even in book form, besides +innumerable essays and letters, some of which have been collected in two +gatherings--_Arrows of the Chace_ and _On the Old Road_. + +Two things are mainly perceptible in this immense and at first sight +rather bewildering production. The first, the most disputable and +probably the least important, though the most at the author's heart, is +a vast, fluctuating, but on the whole pretty coherent body of doctrine +in reference to Art. Up to Mr. Ruskin's day, aesthetics had been little +cultivated in England, and such handlings of the subject as +existed--Burke's, Adam Smith's, Alison's, and a few others--were of a +jejune and academic character. Even writers of distinct literary genius +and of great taste for the matter, who had not resided abroad long, such +as Hazlitt, much more such as Charles Lamb and Hartley Coleridge, betray +the want of range and practice in examples. Even the valuable and +interesting work of Mrs. Jameson (1794-1860) was more occupied with +careful arrangement and attractive illustration than with original +theory; and, well as she wrote, her _Characteristics of Shakespeare's +Women_ (1832) is perhaps more important as literature than the series of +volumes--_Sacred and Legendary Art_, etc.--which she executed between +1845 and her death. The sense of the endless and priceless illustration +of the best art which was provided by Gothic domestic and ecclesiastical +architecture was only wakening; as for painting, the examples publicly +visible in England were very few, and even private collections were +mostly limited to one or two fashionable schools--Raphael and his +successors, the later Low Country schools, the French painters in the +grand style, and a few Spaniards. + +Strongly impressed by the Romantic revival (he has all his life been the +staunchest of Sir Walter's devotees), a passionate lover of Gothic +architecture both at home and abroad, and early drawn both to the +romantic nature-painting of Turner and the gorgeous colouring of the +early Italian schools, Mr. Ruskin heralded Art with a passion of which +eighteenth century "gusto" had had no notion. But he was by no means +satisfied with heralding Art alone. Anathematising at once the doctrine +that utility is beauty--that beauty is utility he would always have +cheerfully admitted--and the doctrine that the beautiful is not +necessarily connected either with utility, with goodness, or with truth, +he from the first and to the last has endeavoured to work ethics and +aesthetics into a sort of single texture of warp and woof respectively, +pushing his endeavours into the most multiform, the most curious, and it +must be owned sometimes the most grotesque ramifications and +extremities. But he was not satisfied with this bold attempt at the +marriage of two things sometimes deemed hostile to, and generally held +to be independent of, one another. He must needs be bolder still, and +actually attempt to ally with Art, if not to subject to her, the +youngest, the most rebellious, and, as it might seem, the most +matter-of-fact and utilitarian of all the sciences--that of Political +Economy. As we have seen, he had brought the subjects together in +lectures pretty early in his career, and he developed the combination +further in the eccentric book called _Unto this Last_, originally +published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ as noted above. In this AEsthetics +and Economics combined took a distinctly Socialist turn; and as England +was under the very fullest dominion of the Liberal middle-class regime, +with its belief in _laissez-faire_ and in supply-and-demand, Mr. Ruskin +was not a little pooh-poohed. It would be improper here to attack or to +defend his views, but it is part of the historian's duty to say that, +for good or for ill, they have, though in forms different from his and +doubtless by no means always meeting his approval, made constant +headway, and that much legislation and still more agitation on the +extreme Liberal side, and not there only, may be said to represent, with +very slight transformation, Ruskinian doctrine applied, now and then, to +very anti-Ruskinian purposes. + +With regard to aesthetics proper, it might be contended, without too much +rashness, that the history of Ruskinism has not been different; but to +some observers it seems to have described rather a curve than a steady +ascent. After being, between 1840 and 1860, laughed at, despised, +attacked all at once, Mr. Ruskin found his influence as an art teacher +rise steadily during the seventh decade of the century, and attain its +highest point about the close thereof, when he was made Slade Professor +in his own university, and caused young Oxford to do many fantastic +things. But, as always happens, the hour of triumph was the hour, not, +perhaps, of downfall, but of opposition and renegation. Side by side +with Mr. Ruskin's own theories had risen the doctrine of Art-for-Art's +sake, which, itself as usual half truth and half nonsense, cut at the +very root of Ruskinism. On the other hand, the practical centre of +art-schools had shifted from Italy and Germany to Paris and its +neighbourhood, where morality has seldom been able to make anything like +a home; and the younger painters and sculptors, full of realism, +impressionism, and what not, would have none of the doctrines which, as +a matter of fact, stood in immediate relationship of antecedence to +their own. Lastly, it must be admitted that the extreme dogmatism on all +the subjects of the encyclopedia in which Mr. Ruskin had seen fit to +indulge, was certain to provoke a revolt. But with the substance of +Ruskinism, further than is necessary for comprehension, we are not +concerned. + +Yet there are not many things in the English nineteenth century with +which a historian is more concerned than with the style of the +deliverance of these ideas. We have noticed in former chapters--we shall +have to notice yet more in the conclusion--the attempts made in the +years just preceding and immediately following Mr. Ruskin's birth, by +Landor, by De Quincey, by Wilson, and by others in the direction of +ornate, of--as some call it--_flamboyant_ English prose. All the +tendencies thus enumerated found their crown and flower in Mr. Ruskin +himself. That later the crowns and the flowers were, so to speak, +divided, varied, and multiplied by later practitioners, some of whom +will presently be noticed, while more are still alive, is quite true. +But in 1895 it is not very unsafe to prophesy that the _flamboyant_ +style of the nineteenth century will be found by posterity to have +reached its highest exposition in prose with Mr. Ruskin himself. + +Like all great prose styles--and the difference between prose and poetry +here is very remarkable--this was born nearly full grown. The instances +of comparison in those who have tried both harmonies are rare; those in +poets only are delusive and uncertain. But with the three greatest poets +of England who have also been great prose writers, Milton, Dryden, +Shelley, the assertion that the distinctive quality of their prose +developed itself earlier than the distinctive quality of their verse is +only disputable in the case of Milton. And Milton, as it happened, wrote +prose and verse in manners more nearly approaching each other than any +one on record. Mr. Ruskin has not been a poet, except in extreme +minority; but he has been a great prose writer from the first. It is +almost inconceivable that good judges can ever have had any doubt about +him. It is perfectly--it is, indeed, childishly easy to pick faults, +even if matter be kept wholly out of sight. In Mr. Ruskin's later books +a certain tendency to conversational familiarity sometimes mocks those, +and not those only, who hold to the tradition of dignified and _ex +cathedra_ pronouncement; in his earlier, and in all, it is possible for +Momus to note an undue floridness, an inclination to blank verse in +prose, tricks and manners of this or that kind unduly exuberant and +protuberant. + +But when all these things have been allowed for to the very fullest, +what an enormous advance there is on anything that had gone before! The +ornate prose writers of the seventeenth century had too frequently +regarded their libraries only; they had seldom looked abroad to the vast +field of nature, and of art other than literary art. The ornate writers +of the eighteenth, great as they were, had been as afraid of +introspection as of looking outwards, and had spun their webs, so far as +style and ornament were concerned, of words only. Those of the early +nineteenth had been conscious of revolt, and, like all conscious +revolters, had not possessed their souls in sufficient quietness and +confidence. Landor, half a classic and half a Romantic, had been too +much the slave of phrase,--though of a great phrase. Wilson, impatient +in everything, had fluctuated between grandeur and _galimatias_, bathos +and bad taste; De Quincey, at times supreme, had at others simply +succumbed to "rigmarole." Mr. Ruskin had a gift of expression equal to +the best of these men; and, unlike them, he had an immense, a steady, a +uniform group of models before him. Indulge as he might in extravagance, +there were always before him, as on a vastly extended dais set before +the student, the glories of nature and of art, the great personalities +and productions of the great artists. He had seen, and he could see +(which is a different thing), the perennial beauties of mountain and +cloud, of tree, and sea, and river; the beauties long, if not perennial, +of architecture and painting. A man may say foolish things,--Mr. Ruskin +has said plenty; but when he has Venice and Amiens and Salisbury, the +Alps and the Jura and the Rhine, Scott and Wordsworth, Turner and +Lionardo, always silently present before his mind's eye, he can never, +if he is a man of genius, go wholly wrong. And he can never go more than +a little wrong when he is furnished by his genius with such a gift of +expression as Mr. Ruskin has had. + +For this gift of expression was such as had never been seen before, and +such as, for all the copying and vulgarising of it, has never been seen +since. It is a commonplace of literary history that description, as +such, is not common or far advanced in the earlier English prose. We +find Gray, far on in the eighteenth century, trying to describe a +sunrise, and evidently vexed at the little "figure it makes on paper." +Then the tourists and the travellers of the end of that age made valiant +but not always well directed efforts to induce "it" to make a figure on +paper. Then came the experts or student-interpreters in ornate prose who +have been mentioned. And then came Mr. Ruskin. "Never so before and +never quite so since," must be the repeated verdict. The first +sprightly runnings in these, as in other kinds, are never surpassed. +Kingsley, an almost contemporary, Mr. Swinburne, a younger rival, have +come near; others have done creditably in imitation; none have equalled, +and certainly none have surpassed. Let the reader read the "Wave +Studies" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_, more than fifty years +old; the "Pine Forest in the Jura," almost forty; the "Angel of the +Sea," fully thirty-five, and say, if he has any knowledge of English +literature, whether there had been anything like any of these before. +Shelley, perhaps, in some of his prose had gone near it. Shelley was +almost as great a prose writer as he was a poet. No one else could even +be mentioned. + +Nor was it mere description, great as Mr. Ruskin is in that, which +differentiated him so strongly. He is a bad arguer; but his arguments +are couched in rhetoric so persuasive that the very critics who detect +his fallacies would almost consent to forfeit the power of detecting, if +they could acquire that of constructing, such delightful paralogisms. +His crotchets of all sorts are sometimes merely childish, and not even +always or very often original; for, like all fertile minds, he never +could receive any seed of thought from another but it bore plant and +fruit at once. But the statement of them is at its best so captivating +that weaklings may pardonably accept, and strong men may justly +tolerate, the worthless kernel for the sake of the exquisite husk. Few +men have less of the true spirit of criticism than Mr. Ruskin, for in +his enthusiasm he will compass sea and land to exalt his favourite, +often for reasons which are perfectly invalid; and in his appreciation +he is not to be trusted at all, having a feminine rather than a +masculine faculty of unreasoned dislike. But praise or blame, argue or +paralogise as he may, the golden beauty of his form redeems his matter +in the eyes of all but those who are unhappy enough not to see it. + +That his influence has been wholly good no one can say. There is +scarcely a page of him that can be safely accepted on the whole as +matter, and the unwary have accepted whole volumes; his form is +peculiarly liable to abuse in the way of imitation, and it has actually +been abused to nausea and to ridicule. But this is not his fault. There +is so little subtlety about Mr. Ruskin that he can hardly deceive even +an intelligent child when he goes wrong. There is so much genius about +him that the most practised student of English can never have done with +admiration at the effects that he produces, after all these centuries, +with the old material and the old tools. He is constantly provocative of +adverse, even of severe criticism; of half the heresies from which he +has suffered--not only that of impressionism--he was himself the +unconscious heresiarch. And yet the more one reads him the more one +feels inclined almost to let him go uncriticised, to vote him the +primacy in nineteenth-century prose by simple acclamation. + +Richard (or as his full name ran), John Richard Jefferies, occupies, +though an infinitely smaller and a considerably lower place than Mr. +Ruskin's, yet one almost as distinctly isolated in a particular +department of aesthetic description. The son of a farmer at Coate, in +North Wiltshire, and born in November 1848, he began journalism at +eighteen, and was a contributor to the _North Wilts Herald_ till he was +nearly thirty. Then he went to London, and in 1878 published some +sketches (previously contributed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_) under the +title of _The Game-Keeper at Home_. These, though not much bought, were +very much admired; and Jefferies was encouraged to devote himself to +work of the same kind, which he varied with curious and not very +vigorous semi-philosophic speculations and attempts at downright novels +(a kind which he had also tried in his youth). Unfortunately the +peculiar sort of descriptive writing in which he excelled was not very +widely called for, could hardly under the most favourable circumstances +have brought in any great sums of money, and was peculiarly liable to +depreciate when written to order. It does not appear that Jefferies had +the rare though sometimes recorded power of accommodating himself to +ordinary newspaper hack-work, while reserving himself for better things +now and then; and finally, he had not been long in London before +painful and ultimately fatal disease added to his troubles. He died in +August 1887, being not yet forty. A burst of popularity followed; his +books, _The Game-Keeper at Home_, _Wild Life in a Southern Country_, +_The Amateur Poacher_, _Round about a Great Estate_, etc., none of which +had been printed in large numbers, were sold at four or five times their +published price; and, worst of all, cheap imitations of his style began +to flood the newspapers. Nay, the yet later results of this imitation +was that another reaction set in, and even Jefferies' own work was once +more pooh-poohed. + +The neglect, the over-valuation, and the shift back to injustice, were +all examples of the evils which beset literature at the present time, +and which the much-blamed critic is almost powerless to cause or cure. +In other days Jefferies was quite as likely to have been insufficiently +rewarded at first by the public; but he would then have had no +temptation to over-write himself, or try alien tasks, and he would have +stood a very good chance of a pension, or a sinecure, or an easy office +in church or state, on one or other of which he might have lived at ease +and written at leisure. Nothing else could really have been of service +to him, for his talent, though rare and exquisite, was neither rich nor +versatile. It consisted in a power of observing nature more than +Wordsworthian in delicacy, and almost Wordsworthian in the presence of a +sentimental philosophic background of thought. Unluckily for Jefferies, +his philosophic background was not like Wordsworth's, clear and +cheerful, but wholly vague and partly gloomy. Writing, too, in prose not +verse, and after Mr. Ruskin, he attempted an exceedingly florid style, +which at its happiest was happy enough, but which was not always at that +point, and which when it was not was apt to become trivial or tawdry, or +both. It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will +dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of +descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their +particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stand Gilbert White and +Gray. + +Mr. Arnold, it has been said, abstained almost entirely from dealing +with art. Mr. Ruskin, who has abstained from dealing with nothing, did +not abstain from criticism of literature, but his utterances in it have +been more than usually _obiter dicta_. Yet we must take the two together +if we are to understand the most powerful influence and the most +flourishing school of criticism, literary and other, which has existed +for the last thirty years. This school may be said to halt in a way +between purely literary and generally aesthetic handling, and when it can +to mix the two. Most of its scholars--men obviously under the influence +both of Arnold and of Ruskin, either in submission or in revolt, are +alive, and we reason not of them. But, as it happens, the two most +famous, one of whom was a prose writer, pure and simple, the other a +copious artist in prose and verse, have died recently and call for +judgment. These were Walter Horatio Pater and John Addington Symonds. + +The first-named was born in 1839, and went to Oxford, where he was +elected to a fellowship at Brasenose. He spent the whole of the rest of +his life either at that college or in London, practising no profession, +competing for no preferment, and for many years at least producing +literature itself with extreme sparingness. It was in 1873 that Mr. +Pater first collected a volume of _Studies in the History of +Renaissance_, which attracted the keenest attention both as to its +manner and as to its matter. The point of view, which was that of an +exceedingly refined and carefully guarded Hedonism, was in a way and at +least in its formulation novel. Mr. Pater did not meddle with any +question of religion; he did not (though there were some who scented +immorality in his attitude) offend directly any ethical prejudice or +principle. But he laid it down explicitly in some places, implicitly +throughout, that the object of life should be to extract to the utmost +the pleasure of living in the more refined way, and expressly and +especially the pleasure to be derived from education and art. The +indebtedness of this both to the Arnoldian and Ruskinian creeds, its +advance (in the main a legitimate advance) on the former, and its +heretical deviation from the development of the latter, require no +comment. But this propaganda, if so violent a word may be used, of Mr. +Pater's placid creed, called to aid a most remarkable style--a style of +the new kind, lavish of adjective and the _mot de lumiere_, but not +exceedingly florid, and aiming especially at such an arrangement of the +clause, the sentence, and the paragraph, such a concerted harmony of +cadence and symphony, as had not been deliberately tried before in +prose. The effects which it produced on different tastes were themselves +sufficiently different. Some found the purport too distasteful to give a +dispassionate attention to the presentment; others disliked the manner +itself as formal, effeminate, and "precious." But there were others who, +while recognising the danger of excess in this direction, thought and +think that a distinct and remarkable experiment had been made in English +prose, and that the best examples of it deserved a place with the best +examples of the ornater styles at any previous time and in any other +kind. + +Mr. Pater was not tempted by such popularity as his book received to +hasten publication; indeed it was understood that after beginning to +print a second collection of Essays, he became dissatisfied with them, +and caused the type to be broken up. But the advance of so-called +AEstheticism was too strong an invitation, and prepared for him too large +and eager an audience, so that the last decade of his life saw several +books, _Marius the Epicurean_, _Imaginary Portraits_, _Appreciations_, +while others appeared posthumously. Of these the first-named is +unquestionably the best and most important. Although Greek had been the +indispensable--almost the cardinal--principle in Mr. Pater's own +literary development, he had been so strongly affected by modern thought +and taste, that he could hardly recover a dispassionate view of the +older classics. _Imaginary Portraits_, an attempt at constructive rather +than critical art, required qualities which he did not possess, and even +made him temporarily forget his impeccable style: _Appreciations_, good +in itself, was inferior to the first book. But _Marius the Epicurean_ +far excelled all these. It, too, took the form of fiction, but the story +went for so little in it that deficiencies therein were not felt. The +book was in effect a reconstruction, partly imaginative, but still more +critical, of a period with which Mr. Pater was probably more in sympathy +than with any other, even the Renaissance itself, to wit the extremely +interesting and strangely modern period when classicism and modernity, +Christianity and Paganism, touched and blended in the second century +after Christ after the fashion revealed to us in the works of Apuleius +most of all, of Lucian to some extent, and of a few others. Mr. Pater +indeed actually introduced the philosopher-novelist of Madaura in the +book, though he was not the hero; and his own peculiar style proved +itself admirably suited to the period and subject, whether in +description and conversation, or in such translation or paraphrase as +that of the famous and exquisite _Pervigilium Veneris_. + +For this style, however, in perfection we must still go back to the +_Studies of the Renaissance_, which is what Mr. Arnold liked to call a +_point de repere_. The style, less exuberant, less far-reaching and +versatile, and, if any one pleases to say so, less healthy than Mr. +Ruskin's, is much more chastened, finished, and exquisite. It never at +its best neglects the difference between the rhythm of prose and the +metre of verse; if it is sometimes, and indeed usually, wanting in +simplicity, it is never overloaded or gaudy. The words are picked; but +they are seldom or never, as has been the case with others, not only +picked but wrenched, not only adjusted to a somewhat unusual society and +use, but deliberately forced into uses and societies wholly different +from those to which readers are accustomed. Above all, no one, it must +be repeated, has ever surpassed, and scarcely any one has ever equalled +Mr. Pater in deliberate and successful architecture of the +prose-paragraph--in what may, for the sake of a necessary difference, be +called the scriptorial in opposition to the oratorical manner. He may +fall short of the poetic grandeur of Sir Thomas Browne, of the +phantasmagoric charm of De Quincey at his rare best, of the gorgeous +panoramas of Mr. Ruskin. But his happiest paragraphs are like +_flamboyant_ chantries, not imposing, not quite supreme in quality, but +in their own kind showing wonderful perfection of craftsmanship. + +Of the same school, though a less exact and careful practitioner in it, +was John Addington Symonds, who was born in Bristol on the 5th of +October 1840, and died at Rome on 19th April 1893. He was the son of a +famous doctor whose name figures often in literary history, inasmuch as +he made Clifton a frequent resort for persons of consumptive tendencies. +Mr. Symonds himself lived there for a great part of his life. +Unfortunately the disease which his father had combated revenged itself +upon him; and it was only by spending the greater part of his later +years at Davos that he staved it off as long as he did. Educated at +Harrow and at Balliol, a Fellow of Magdalen, and succeeding tolerably +young to an affluent fortune, Mr. Symonds was able to indulge his +tastes, literary and other, pretty much as he chose. The result was +fortunate in one way, unfortunate in another. He could hardly have made +a living by literature, in which though an eager worker he was a +thorough dilettante. But if he had been at less liberty to write what +and howsoever he pleased, he might or rather would have been obliged to +compress and chasten the extreme prolixity and efflorescence of his +style. + +His largest work, the _History of the Renaissance in Italy_, is actually +one of great value in information, thought, and style; but its extreme +redundance cannot be denied, and has indeed already necessitated a sort +of boiling down into an abstract. Both in prose essays (which he wrote +in great numbers, chiefly on Greek or Renaissance subjects) and in verse +(where he was not so successful as in prose) Mr. Symonds was one of the +most characteristic and copious members of the rather foolishly named +"aesthetic" school of the last third of the century, the school which, +originally deriving more or less from Mr. Ruskin, more and more rejected +the ethical side of his teaching. But Mr. Symonds, who had been very +much under the influence of Professor Jowett, had philosophical +velleities, which have become more generally known than they once were +through the interesting biography published after his death by Mr. +Horatio Brown. But for the redundance above mentioned, which is all +pervading with him both in thought and style, and which once suggested +to a not unfriendly critic the remark that he should like "to squeeze +him like a sponge," Symonds would probably or rather certainly occupy a +much higher place than he has held or ever will hold. For his +appreciation both of books and of nature was intense, and his faculty of +description abundant. But the _ventosa et enormis loquacitas_ of his +style was everywhere, so that even selection would be hard put to it to +present him really at his best. + +William Minto, who was born in 1846 and died in 1893, Professor of Logic +and English Literature at Aberdeen, showed fewer marks of the joint +direction of "aesthetic" criticism to art and letters than these two, and +had less distinct and original literary talent. He had his education +mainly at Aberdeen itself, where he was born and died; but he made a +short visit to Oxford. Subsequently taking to journalism, he became +editor of the _Examiner_, and considerably raised the standard of +literary criticism in that periodical, while after quitting it he wrote +for some time on the _Daily News_. His appointment to the professorship +enabled him to devote himself entirely to literature, and he produced +some novels, the best of which was _The Crack of Doom_. He had much +earlier executed two extremely creditable books, one on _English Prose_, +and one on part of the History of English verse, the only drawbacks to +which were a rather pedagogic and stiff arrangement; he was a frequent +contributor to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and after his death some +of his professorial Lectures on the Georgian era were published, but +without his final revision. The strongest side of Minto's criticism lay +in his combination of sufficiently sound and wide knowledge of the past +with a distinct and rather unusual sympathy with the latest schools of +literature as they rose. He was untainted by the florid style of his +day, but wrote solidly and well. If it were necessary to look for +defects in his work they would probably be found in a slight deficiency +of comparative estimate, and in a tendency to look at things rather from +the point of view of modern than from that of universal criticism. But +this tendency was not in him, as it so often is, associated with +ignorance or presumptuous judgment. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE + + +The remarks which were made at the beginning of the chapter on +Philosophy and Theology apply with increasing force to the present +chapter; indeed, they need to be restated in a much more stringent and +exclusive form. To give some history of English philosophy and theology +in the nineteenth century, by noticing its literary expression, was +possible, though it had to be done, so to speak, in shorthand. To do the +same thing with science, or even with what is technically called +scholarship, would be simply impossible. Much of their expression is +hardly susceptible of literary form at all, hardly any ever receives +such form, while the subdivision of the branches of physical science is +now so great and their shadow so wide that no systematic sketch of them +is to be thought of. It is only possible to mention a few distinguished +writers, writers who would have been distinguished whatever their +subject, but who happen to have devoted themselves, solely or mainly, to +scientific writing, or to classical criticism and philology. + +A curious independent study might be made of the literary gradations of +classical scholarship. In the Middle Ages, though the complete ignorance +of the classics, once imagined as prevailing, has been shown to be a +figment, scarcely anybody could claim to be a scholar. During the +Renaissance almost every man of letters had necessarily some tinge of +scholarship, and some of the greatest in its earlier period, such as +Erasmus, were scholars first of all. The growth of vernacular +literature, the constant increase and subdivision of subjects, and the +advance in minute study of the Greek and Latin languages, brought about +an inevitable cleavage, and from the seventeenth century onwards +scholarship became an independent profession or vocation. For some +considerable time, however, it was the almost indispensable novitiate of +a literary career, and the tradition that a scholar must be first +applied to, for no matter what literary work, was still potent in the +times of Salmasius, and cannot be said to have been discredited in those +of Bentley, who would undoubtedly have been as formidable in purely +political or general controversy as he was on _Phalaris_ or on his own +private interests. The eighteenth century, however, saw the divorce +nearly completed, and by the period of our present volume it was an +accomplished fact. + +Even then, however, though for men of letters it was not customary to +turn first to scholars, scholars had not ceased to be men of letters, +and philology (or the mere study of language, as apart from literature) +had not absorbed them. + +During that part of our period which is still concerned with the last +century, there were many excellent scholars in England, but perhaps only +three--two of whom as scholars were of no great account--who make much +figure in purely literary history. Jacob Bryant (1715-1804), an odd +person of uncritical judgment but great learning, who belongs more to +the last volume than to the present, devoted himself chiefly to +mythology, a subject which had not yet attracted general interest, and +which was treated by him and others in a somewhat unhistorical manner. +Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801) was one of the characteristic figures of +the Revolutionary time. He was a Cambridge man, and took orders, but +left the church, became a violent Jacobin, and went to prison for a +seditious libel. He was one of those not very uncommon men who, +personally amiable, become merely vixenish when they write: and his +erudition was much more extensive than sound. But he edited several +classical authors, not wholly without intelligence and scholarship, and +his _Silva Critica_, a sort of _variorum_ commentary from profane +literature on the Bible, was the forerunner, at least in scheme, of a +great deal of work which has been seen since. + +A very different person from these in scholarly attainments, in natural +gifts, and (it must unfortunately be added) in personal respectability, +was Richard Porson, who is generally bracketed with Bentley as the +greatest of English scholars, not of our own day, and who might have +been one of the most brilliant of men of letters. He was born in Norfolk +on Christmas Day 1759, of low station, but was well educated by the +parson of the parish, and sent to Eton by a neighbouring squire. In 1779 +he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, obtained a scholarship, did +brilliantly in University contests and became fellow in 1782. Although +he was almost a boy the genius of his papers in scholarship attracted +notice at home and abroad, and he made some excursions into general +literature wherein, as in his recorded conversations, he showed +epigrammatic wit of the first rank. He lost his fellowship because he +would not take orders; but was made Regius Professor of Greek, an +appointment which unluckily was then, in both Universities, almost +honorary as regards income. The Whig party accepted his partisanship, +but had no opportunity of rewarding it, and after receiving the +Librarianship of the London Institution in Moorfields, he died of +apoplexy in 1808. He possessed in almost the highest degree that power +of divination, based on accurate knowledge, which distinguishes the +scholar, and it is, as has been said, nearly certain that he would have +been a brilliant writer in English on any subject he chose to take up. +But he was a hopeless drunkard, an offensive sloven, rude and aggressive +in society--in short a survival of the Grub Street pattern of the +century of his birth. This period, which was that of Burney, Elmsley, +Gaisford, and other scholars, robust but not very literary (except in +the case of Elmsley, who was a contributor both to the _Edinburgh_ and +the _Quarterly Reviews_), was succeeded by one in which the English +Universities did not greatly distinguish themselves in this department. +Gaisford indeed lived till 1855 at Oxford, and Cambridge produced among +other respectable scholars the already mentioned Malden and George Long +(1800-79), a Lancashire man, who went to Trinity, distinguished himself +greatly, but found such preferment as he met with outside his +university, in America, at University College, London, and elsewhere. +Long was a great diffusion-of-useful-knowledge man, and edited the +_Penny Cyclopaedia_: but he did more germane work later in editing the +_Bibliotheca Classica_, an unequal but at its best excellent series of +classics, and in dealing with the great stoics Marcus Aurelius and +Epictetus. He was also one of the mainstays of the most important +enterprise of the middle of the century in classical scholarship, the +_Classical Dictionaries_ edited by the late Sir William Smith and +published by Mr. Murray; and he wrote an extensive but not +extraordinarily valuable _Decline of the Roman Republic_. Long appears +to have been one of those men who, with great ability, vast knowledge, +and untiring industry, somehow or other miss their proper place, whether +by fault or fate it is hard to say. + +About 1860 three remarkable persons illustrated scholarship in the +Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh respectively, with a +combination of literary and linguistic knowledge which had been growing +rarer up to their time, and which has grown rarer still since. + +The Oxford representative was John Conington, who was born at Boston on +10th August 1825. He went to Rugby and to Magdalen College, Oxford, +whence he migrated to University College, and there obtained a +fellowship, making nearly a clean sweep of the chief University prizes +meanwhile. He became in 1854 the first Professor of Latin, and held the +post till his death in 1869. He edited Virgil, AEschylus (part) and +Persius, translated Horace, Homer, and Virgil, and did a certain amount +of miscellaneous literary work. He was neither a very exact nor a very +great scholar: his scholarship indeed took rather the character of that +of foreign nations, other than Germany, than the dogged minuteness of +German, or the large but solid strength of English study of the +classics. But he was an exceedingly stimulating professor; and coming at +the time when it did, his work was valuable as a reminder that the +classics are live literature, and not so much dead material for science. + +Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro, a native of Elgin, where he was born in +1819, a Shrewsbury boy and a scholar and fellow of Trinity College, +Cambridge, who became Professor of Latin there in 1869 and died in 1882, +was an incomparably greater verbal scholar than Conington, and may +fairly be said to have taken up the torch of Bentley and Porson. His +great edition (with a less great translation) of Lucretius, his work on +Horace and Catullus, and his scattered papers, all come up to a very +high standard; and in the delightful art of Greek and Latin composition +in verse, where England has long stood paramount, and which, since she +has abandoned it, remains uncultivated throughout Europe, he was almost +supreme. But Munro, though he never surrendered wholly to the +philological heresy, was affected thereby; and some of his Lucretian +readings were charged with a deficiency in ear such as that with which +he justly reproached his German predecessors. + +The most strictly literary of the three has yet to be mentioned. William +Young Sellar, born near Golspie in the same year as Conington, was +educated at the Edinburgh Academy, at the University of Glasgow, and (as +a Snell exhibitioner) at Balliol. After holding an Oriel fellowship for +some years, and doing professorial or assistant-professorial work at +Durham and St. Andrews, he became in 1863 Professor of Humanity at +Edinburgh, and remained so till his death in 1890. In the year of his +election to the professorship appeared his _Roman Poets of the +Republic_, quite the best book of its kind existing in English; and this +was followed up by others on Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and +Propertius--good, but less good, the mannered correctness of the +Augustans evidently appealing to the author less than the more strictly +poetic excellence of Lucretius and Catullus. Attempts, too few but +noteworthy, have since been made to handle classical literature in the +style of the _Roman Poets of the Republic_, but it has never been +surpassed, and it has very seldom been equalled. + +On another scheme and in other circumstances names like those of Kennedy +and Shilleto, of Linwood and Burges, of Monk and Blomfield, would cry +for admission here, but as it is they must be ruled out. And it is not +possible to widen the scope much, so as to take in some eminent students +who have given not unliterary expression to the study of languages and +subjects other than the classical. It has indeed been a constantly +increasing feature of the century that fresh studies--AEgyptology, the +study of the Semitic languages, the study of the older forms not merely +of English but of the other modern tongues, the enormous range of +knowledge opened to Englishmen, and as it were forced on them by our +possession of India and our commerce and connection with other nations +of the East, as well as the newer subjects of comparative mythology, +folk-lore, and the like, all more or less offshoots of what may be +generally termed scholarship, have been added to the outer range of the +Humanities. Some of these appeal to very few, none of them to more than +few persons; and literature, in its best description if not exactly +definition, is that which does or should appeal to all persons of +liberal education and sympathies. Yet one exponent of these studies (and +of more than one of them) must have a place here, as well for the more +than professionally encyclopaedic character of his knowledge as for his +intellectual vigour and his services to letters. + +William Robertson Smith was born in 1846, and died in 1894. A native of +Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Kirk minister, and educated at Aberdeen +and elsewhere, he became Professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College +of that city, and for some years discussed his subject, in the manner of +the Germans, without hindrance. His articles in the _Encyclopaedia +Britannica_, however, gave offence, and after much controversy he was +deprived of his chair in 1881. Two years later, however, he was made +Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, where he also became +Fellow of Christ's and University Librarian. And from a contributor he +proceeded to be first assistant-editor and then editor in chief of the +_Encyclopaedia_. His health, never very strong, became worse and worse, +and he finally succumbed to a complication of diseases. It was +understood that the theological scandal connected with his name was +anything but a pleasure to him, and the justice of it does not concern +us; but his repute as an Orientalist is uncontested. Besides works +directly bearing on the Bible, he wrote two important books on _Kinship +and Marriage in Early Arabia_ and on _The Religion of the Semites_. He +was at least as remarkable for general as for special learning, and if +not actually a great man of letters, had a knowledge of literature +rivalled by few of his contemporaries. + +To turn to physical science, Sir Humphry Davy, a great chemist and no +mean writer, was born at Penzance in December 1778. His father was a +wood-carver, but he himself was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary, and +betook himself seriously to chemistry. Fortunately for him, Dr. Beddoes, +the father of the poet, a physician of great repute at Clifton, took him +to be his assistant there, and Davy, in his twentieth year, not only had +much improved opportunities of study, but made valuable friends, both +among the persons of rank who then frequented Clifton for health, and +among the literary society of which Coleridge and Southey were then the +ornaments in Bristol. This part of his sojourn was noteworthy for his +experiments with nitrous oxide ("laughing gas"). These attracted a great +deal of attention, and in 1801, being then barely twenty-three, he was +appointed to a lectureship in the Royal Institution, London. His +appointment was the beginning of a series of brilliant lectures in the +same place during almost the whole of the century, first by Davy +himself, then by his assistant Faraday, and then by Faraday's assistant +Tyndall. He was knighted in 1812, and soon afterwards married Mrs. +Apreece, a lively, pretty, and wealthy widow. His later years were +occupied, first by the investigations which led to the perfecting of +his famous safety-lamp for coal-mines (these brought him a handsome +testimonial and a baronetcy), and later by electrical researches. He had +not reached middle age when his health began to fail, and he died in +1829, aged little more than fifty. In connection with literary science +or scientific literature Davy was perhaps more remarkable as a lecturer +than as a writer, but his accomplishments as the latter were +considerable, and in his later years he wrote two non-scientific books, +_Salmonia_ and _Consolations in Travel_. These (though the former was +attacked as the work of an amateur and a milksop by Christopher North) +were very popular in their day. Davy always kept up his friendship with +men of letters, especially the Lake Poets and Scott (who was a +connection of his wife's), and he was no very small man of letters +himself. + +A contemporary (though very much longer lived) of Davy's and the most +famous Englishwoman who has ever written on scientific subjects, was +Mary Fairfax, better known from the name of her second husband as Mrs. +Somerville. She was born at Jedburgh on 26th December 1780, and when +twenty-four married her cousin, Captain Greig, a member of a family of +Scotchmen who had settled in the Russian navy. Her first husband died +two years afterwards, and six years later she married Dr. William +Somerville, also her cousin. She had already devoted much attention, +especially during her widowhood, to mathematics and astronomy; and after +her second marriage she had no difficulty in pursuing these studies. She +adapted Laplace's _Mecanique Celeste_ in 1823, and followed it up by +more original work on physics, astronomy, and physical geography. Her +life was prolonged till 1872, and an interesting autobiography appeared +a year later. It is possible that Mrs. Somerville profited somewhat in +reputation by her coincidence with the period of "diffusion of useful +knowledge." But she had real scientific knowledge and real literary +gifts; and she made good use of both. + +Of at least respectable literary merit, though hardly of enough to +justify the devoting of much space to them here, were Sir David +Brewster (1781-1868), Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), Sir Charles Lyell +(1797-1875), Sir Roderick Murchison (1792-1871), the first a +mathematician and physicist, the second an astronomer, the third and +fourth geologists, and all more or less copious writers on their several +subjects. John Tyndall (1820-1893), a younger man than any of these, had +perhaps a more distinctly literary talent. Born in Ireland, and for some +time a railway engineer, he gave himself up about 1847 to the study and +teaching of physics, was remarkable for the effect of his lecturing, and +held several Government appointments. His Presidential Address to the +British Association at Belfast in 1874 was not less noteworthy for +materialism in substance than for a brilliant if somewhat brassy style. + +But the chief Englishmen of science who were men of letters during our +period were Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley. The opinions of the first +of these, their origin, the circumstances of their first expression, and +the probabilities of their future, have been the subject of about as +much controversy as in a given time has been bestowed upon any subject, +certainly on any similar subject. But we enjoy here the privilege of +neglecting this almost entirely. Darwin is to the literary historian a +very interesting subject, for he was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, who +himself, besides being the capital example of the polished mediocrity of +eighteenth century verse when all freshness had gone out of it, was a +man of science and an evolutionist in his way. Charles (who was also +christened Robert) was the son of yet another Dr. Darwin, an F.R.S. He +was born on 12th February 1809 at Shrewsbury, and his mother was (as was +afterwards his wife) a daughter of the Wedgwoods of Etruria. After +passing through the famous school of his native town, Darwin went to +Edinburgh for some years and then entered Christ's College, Cambridge, +in 1828. Here he devoted himself to physical science, and after taking +his degree was, in 1831, appointed to the _Beagle_, which was starting +on a scientific cruise. He spent five years in the South Seas and did +not return to England till late in 1836--a voyage which perhaps +prejudicially affected his health, but established his knowledge of +nature. After his return he settled down to scientific work, alone and +in the scientific societies, married in 1839, and was busy for many +years afterwards in publishing the results of the voyage. He possessed +considerable means, and for the last forty years of his life lived at +his ease at Down near Beckenham, experimenting in crossing species and +maturing his views. These took form, under circumstances interesting but +foreign to our theme, in the famous _Origin of Species_, published in +1859, and this was followed by a great number of other books, the most +noteworthy of which, if not the scientifically soundest, was _The +Descent of Man_ (1871). Darwin died after many years of continuous +ill-health on 19th April 1882. + +Late in life he is said to have confessed that his relish for +Shakespeare and for pure literature generally, which had in earlier days +been keen, had entirely vanished. But there was perhaps nothing very +surprising in this, seeing that he had for half a century given himself +up with extraordinary and ever-increasing thoroughness to a class of +investigations the most remote possible from literature, and yet not, as +pure mathematical study not seldom induces its votaries, inducing men to +cultivate letters by mere contrast. Yet the ancestral literary tendency +had only fallen dormant in him then; and earlier it had been active. It +can indeed hardly be said that either his contribution to the _Voyage of +the Beagle_, or _The Origin of Species_, or _The Descent of Man_, or any +of the others, is absolutely remarkable for style in the ordinary sense +of that phrase. The style of Darwin attempts no ornateness, and on the +other hand it is not of those extremely simple styles which are +independent of ornament and to which ornament would be simply a +defacement. But it is very clear; it is not in the least slovenly; and +there is about it the indefinable sense that the writer might have been +a much greater writer, simply as such, than he is, if he had cared to +take the trouble, and had not been almost solely intent upon his matter. +Such writers are not so common that they should be neglected, and they +may at least stand in the Court of the Gentiles, the "provincial band" +of literature. + +A very remarkable book which was in a way Darwinism before Darwin, which +attracted much attention and violent opposition in 1844, the year of its +publication, and which for a long time remained unowned, was the +_Vestiges of Creation_, subsequently known to be the work of Robert +Chambers, the younger of two brothers who did great things in the +popular publishing trade at Edinburgh, and who founded a house which has +always been foremost in the diffusion of sound and cheap literature, +information, and amusement. Robert was born at Peebles in 1802 and died +at St. Andrews in 1871, having been, besides his publishing labours, a +voluminous author and compiler. Nothing he did was quite equal to the +_Vestiges_, a book rather literary than scientific, and treating the +still crude evolution theory rather from the point of view of popular +philosophy than from that of strict biological investigation; but +curiously stimulating and enthusiastic, with a touch of poetry in it not +often to be found in such books, and attractive as showing the way in +which doctrines which are about to take a strong hold of the general +mind not infrequently communicate themselves, in an unfinished but +inspiring form, to persons who, except general literary culture and +interest, do not seem to offer any specially favourable soil for their +germination. Purely scientific men have usually rather pooh-poohed the +_Vestiges_, but there is the Platonic quality in it. + +The _Vestiges_, like its more famous successor, was violently attacked +as irreligious. One of its opponents, from a point of view half orthodox +and half scientific, was Hugh Miller, a man of sterling excellence, of +an interesting and in its close melancholy career, of real importance as +a geologist, and possessed of an extremely agreeable literary faculty. +Miller was born at Cromarty in 1802, and though more than fairly +educated, held till he was past thirty no higher position than that of a +stone-mason. He had begun to write, however, earlier than this, and, +engaging in particular in the two rather dissimilar subjects of geology +and "Free Kirk" polemic, he was made editor of the _Witness_, a +newspaper started in the interest of the new principles. After nearly +twenty busy years of journalism and authorship he shot himself in +December 1856, as it is supposed in a fit of insanity brought on by +overwork. Miller was a very careful observer, and his _Old Red +Sandstone_ (1841) made a great addition to the knowledge of fossils. He +followed this up by a great number of other works, some merely +polemical, others descriptive of his own life and travels. In all the +better parts of Hugh Miller's writings there is a remarkable style, +extremely popular and unpretentious but never trivial or slipshod, which +is not far below the best styles of the century for its special purpose, +though in some respects it smacks more of the eighteenth, and has a +certain relation with that of White of Selborne. + +The most considerable literary gifts of the century among men of science +probably belonged to a man more than twenty years younger than Miller, +and more than fifteen younger than Darwin, who died so recently that +until the greater part of this book was written it seemed that he would +have no place in it. Thomas Henry Huxley, born in May 1825, at Ealing, +studied medicine, and becoming a navy doctor, executed like Darwin a +voyage to the South Seas. His scientific work, though early +distinguished, met with no great encouragement from the Admiralty, and +he left the service, though he held many public appointments in later +life. He became F.R.S. at six-and-twenty, and from that time onwards +till his sixtieth year he was a busy professor, lecturer, member of +commissions, and (for a time) inspector of fisheries. In the ever +greater and greater specialising of science which has taken place, +Huxley was chiefly a morphologist. But outside the range of special +studies he was chiefly known as a vigorous champion of Darwinism and a +something more than vigorous aggressor in the cause of Agnosticism (a +word which he himself did much to spread), attacking supernaturalism of +every kind, and (though disclaiming materialism and not choosing to call +himself an atheist) unceasingly demanding that all things should submit +themselves to naturalist criticism. A great number of brilliant essays +and lectures were composed by him on different parts of what may be +called the debateable land between science, philosophy, and theology. +And one of his most characteristic and masterly single studies was a +little book on Hume, contributed to the series of "English Men of +Letters" in 1879. + +This varied, copious, and brilliant polemic may or may not have been +open in substance to the charge which the bolder and more thoroughgoing +defenders of orthodoxy brought against it, that it committed the logical +error of demanding submission on the part of supernaturalism to laws and +limits to which, by its very essence, supernaturalism disclaimed +allegiance. But the form of it was excellent. Mr. Huxley had read much, +and had borrowed weapons and armour from more than one Schoolman and +Father as well as from purely profane authors. He had an admirable +style, free alike from the great faults of his contemporaries, +"preciousness" and slipshodness, and a knack of crisp but not too +mannered phrase recalling that of Swift or, still more, of Bentley. It +has been said, with some truth as well as with some paradox, that a +literary critic of the very first class was lost in him, at the salvage +only of some scientific monographs, which like all their kind will be +antiquated some day, and of some polemics which must suffer equally from +the touch of time. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +DRAMA + + +At no period, probably, in the history of English literature, from the +sixteenth century until that with which we are now dealing, would it +have been possible to compress the history of the drama during a hundred +years into the space which it is here proposed to give it. If we were +dealing with the works of living men the historian might be justly +charged with arrogant incompetence in not taking more notice of them. +But, fortunately, that is not the case; and the brevity of the treatment +is equally compatible with a belief that the plays of the present day +are masterpieces, and with a suspicion that they are not. As to the past +we have, with the exception of a few protesters, general consent that +the English drama of the nineteenth century has displayed one curious +and disastrous characteristic. The plays, as a rule, which have been +good literature have either never been acted or have seldom succeeded as +plays; the plays that have been acted and have been successful have +seldom been good literature. + +The best idea of the state of the drama between 1790 and 1810 may +perhaps be obtained by any one who cares to look through--it would +require a monomania, a desert island, or at least a succession of wet +days in a country inn to enable any one to _read_ through--the ten +volumes of Mrs. Inchbald's _Modern British Theatre_, printed in 1811 +"from the prompt-books of the Theatres Royal." This publication, +supplementing the larger _British Theatre_ of the same editor, contains +more than two volumes of the works of Frederick Reynolds, a prolific +playwright who was responsible for the English version of _Werther_ in +drama; another of Mrs. Inchbald's own writing and adaptation; one of +Holcroft's later works; one of Cumberland's; and the other five made up +of lesser pieces by Colman the younger, Dibdin, and others, serious +plays in blank verse such as Hannah More's _Percy_, and the Honourable +John St. John's _Mary Queen of Scots_, etc. More than one of these was a +person of talent, more than one a person even of very great talent; +while Holcroft and Colman, if not others, had displayed special ability +for drama. Yet there is, perhaps, in the fifty plays of the ten volumes +only one that can be called a good play, only one which is readable, and +that is the _Trip to Scarborough_, which Sheridan simply adapted, which +he did little more than edit, from Vanbrugh's _Relapse_. Outside these +volumes the acting drama of the period may be best studied in the other +and better work of the pair just mentioned, and in O'Keefe. + +John O'Keefe, or O'Keeffe (for the name is spelt both ways), was a very +long-lived man, who was born at Dublin in 1748 and died at Southampton +in 1833. But in the later years of his life he suffered from blindness; +and the period of his greatest dramatic activity almost exactly +coincided with that of our first chapter. He is said to have written +some fifty pieces, of various kinds, between 1781 and 1798; and in the +latter year he published a collection of about thirty, referring in the +preface to others which "an inconsiderate disposal of the copyright" +prevented him from including. O'Keefe was to a certain extent a follower +of Foote; but his pieces--though he was a practised actor--depended less +upon his own powers of exposition than Foote's. They range from rather +farcical comedies to pure farces and comediettas much interspersed with +songs for music; and their strictly literary merit is not often great, +while for sheer extravagance they require the utmost license of the +boards to excuse them. There is, however, something much more taking in +them than in most of the dramatic work of the time. For instance, the +"wild farce" (referred to but not named by Lamb in his paper on Munden) +of _The Merry Mourners_, though as "improbable" as Mrs. Barbauld thought +_The Ancient Mariner_ to be, has a singular hustle and bustle of +sustained interest, and not a few shrewd strokes such as the following, +which perhaps does not only apply to the end of the _eighteenth_ +century. "Your London ladies are so mannified with their switch rattans +and coats, and watch-chain nibbities, and their tip-top hats and their +cauliflower cravats, that, ecod! there's no mark of their being women +except the petticoat." _The Castle of Andalusia_ (1782) is an early and +capital example of the bandit drama, and _The Poor Soldier_ of the Irish +comic opera. _Wild Oats_ supplied favourite parts to the actors of the +time in Rover and Ephraim Smooth; and, with a little good will, one may +read even slight things like _A Beggar on Horseback_ and _The Doldrum_ +with some amusement. But O'Keefe has few gifts beyond knowledge of the +stage, Irish shrewdness, Irish rattle, and an honest, straightforward +simplicity; and that one turns to him from other dramatists of the +period with some relief, is even more to their discredit than to his +credit. + +A curious and early fruit of this gradual divorce between drama and +literature was Joanna Baillie, a lady whose virtues, amiability, and in +a way talents, caused her to be spoken of by her own contemporaries with +an admiration which posterity has found it hard to echo as concerns her +strictly literary position in drama--some of her shorter poems were +good. She was born in 1762 at Bothwell, of a good Scotch family, and her +mother was a sister of the great surgeon Hunter. This gift descended to +her elder brother Matthew, who was very famous in his own day as an +anatomist and physician. Partly to be near him, Joanna and her sister +Agnes established themselves at Hampstead, where she often entertained +Scott and other great people, and where she lived till 23rd February +1851. In 1798 she published the first of a series of _Plays on the +Passions_, in which the eighteenth century theory of the ruling passion +was carried out to the uncompromising and even whimsical extent of +supplying a brace of dramas, a tragedy and a comedy, on each of the +stronger passions, Hatred, Fear, Love, etc. The first volume, which +opened with the rather striking closet drama of _Basil_, sometimes +spoken of as _Count Basil_, was prefaced by an introductory discourse of +considerable ability. The book, coming at a dead season of literature, +was well received. It reached its third edition in the second year from +its appearance, and one of its plays, _De Montfort_, was acted, with +Kemble in the title part, not without success. A second volume followed +in 1802, and a third in 1812. In 1804 one of _Miscellaneous Plays_ had +been issued, while others and some poems were added later. Joanna's +plays in general, it was admitted, would not act (though the Ettrick +Shepherd in the _Noctes Ambrosianae_ denies this), and it requires some +effort to read them. The blank verse of the tragedies, though +respectable, is uninspired; the local and historical colour, whether of +Byzantine, Saxon, or Renaissance times, is of that fatal "property" +character which has been noticed in the novel before Scott; and the +passion-scheme is obviously inartistic. The comedies are sometimes +genuinely funny; but they do not display either the direct and fresh +observation of manners, or the genial creation of character, which alone +can make comedy last. In short Miss Baillie was fortunate in the moment +of her appearance, but she cannot be called either a great dramatist or +a good one. + +The school of Artificial Tragedy--the phrase, though not a consecrated +one, is as legitimate as that of artificial comedy--which sprung up soon +after the beginning of this century, and which continued during its +first half or thereabouts, if not later, is a curious phenomenon in +English history, and has hardly yet received the attention it deserves. +The tragedy of the eighteenth century is almost beneath contempt, being +for the most part pale French echo or else transpontine melodrama, with +a few plaster-cast attempts to reproduce an entirely misunderstood +Shakespeare. It was impossible that the Romantic movement in itself, and +the study of the Elizabethan drama which it induced, should not lead to +the practise of tragedy, while the existence of the Kembles as players +and managers, might be thought to promise well for the tragic stage. + +Yet there has always been something out of joint with English nineteenth +century tragedy. Of Lamb's _John Woodvil_ and Godwin's _Antonio_ mention +has been made. Byron's tragedies are indeed by no means the worst part +of his work; but they also shared the defects of that work as poetry, +and they were not eminently distinguished for acting qualities. Scott +had no dramatic faculty; Shelley's _Cenci_, despite its splendid poetry, +is not actable; indeed the only one of the great English nineteenth +century _Pleiade_ who was successful on the stage was Coleridge; and +_Remorse_ and _Zapolya_ are not masterpieces. + +Yet the fascination of the theatre, or at least of the drama, seemed to +continue unaltered, and the attempts on or in it varied from the wild +fantasy pieces of Beddoes (which no stage but the Elizabethan--if even +that--could ever have welcomed) to the curious academic drama of which +types extend not merely from Milman's _Fazio_ in 1815 to Talfourd's +_Ion_ twenty years later, but further still. Of Milman notice has been +taken in his far truer vocation as historian. Talfourd was a good +lawyer, a worthy man, and as noted above, the friend and editor of Lamb. +But his tragedies are very cold, and it is difficult to believe that +_Ion_ can have had any other attraction besides the popularity and skill +of Macready, who indeed was greatly responsible for the appearance both +of this and of better plays. In particular he stood usher to divers +productions of Browning's which have been mentioned, such as the rather +involved and impossible _Strafford_, and the intensely pathetic but not +wholly straightforward _Blot in the 'Scutcheon_. This last is the one +play of the century which--with a certain unsubstantiality of matter, a +defect almost total in character, and a constant provocation to the +fatal question, "Why are all these people behaving in this way?"--has +the actual tragic _vis_ in its central point. + +The character, however, and the condemnation of the English drama of the +first half of this century from the literary point of view, are summed +up in the single statement that its most prominent and successful +dramatist was James Sheridan Knowles. Born in 1784, and son of the great +Sheridan's cousin at Cork, Knowles was introduced to London literary +society pretty early. He tried soldiering (at least the militia) and +medicine; but his bent towards the stage was too strong, and he became +an actor, though never a very successful one, and a teacher of acting, +though never a manager. He was about thirty when he turned dramatist, +and though his plays justify the theatrical maxim that no one who has +not practical knowledge of the stage can write a good acting play, they +also justify the maxim of the study that in his day literary excellence +had in some mysterious way obtained or suffered a divorce from dramatic +merit. Not that these plays are exactly contemptible as literature, but +that as literature they are not in the least remarkable. The most famous +of his tragedies is _Virginius_, which dates, as performed in London at +least, from 1820. It was preceded and followed by others, of which the +best are perhaps _Caius Gracchus_ (1815), and _William Tell_ (1834). His +comedies have worn better, and _The Hunchback_ (1832), and the _Love +Chase_ (1836), are still interesting examples of last-century artificial +comedy slightly refreshed. Independently of his technical knowledge, +Knowles really had that knowledge of human nature without which drama is +impossible, and he could write very respectable English. But the fatal +thing about him is that he is content to dwell in decencies for ever. +There is no inspiration in him; his style, his verse, his theme, his +character, his treatment are all emphatically mediocre, and his +technique as a dramatist deserves only a little, though a little, warmer +praise. + +Better as literature, and at least as good as drama, are the best plays +of the first Lord Lytton, another of the eminent hands of Macready, who +undoubtedly counted for something in the success of _The Lady of Lyons_, +_Richelieu_, and _Money_, the two first produced in 1838, and the last +in 1840. _Richelieu_ is the nearest to Knowles in competence without +excellence, the other two perhaps excel if not positively yet +relatively. Many spectators quite recently, while unable to check +laughter at the grandiloquent sentimentality and the stock situations of +_The Lady of Lyons_, have been unable to avoid being touched by its real +though ordinary pathos, and moved by its astonishing cleverness; while +_Money_ is probably the very best comic example of the hybrid kind above +referred to, the modernised artificial comedy. But Bulwer's other plays, +though the unsuccessful _Duchesse de la Valliere_ is not bad reading, +were less fortunate, and one of them is the subject of perhaps the most +successful of Thackeray's early reviews in the grotesque style, +preserved in the _Yellowplush Papers_. + +It will be observed that, with the single and not very notable exception +of Sheridan Knowles, almost all the names already mentioned are those of +persons to whom drama was a mere by-work. Another exception may be found +in James R. Planche (1796-1880), a man of no very exalted birth or +elaborate education, but an archaeologist of some merit, and from 1854 +onwards an official representative of the honourable though discredited +science of Heraldry as Rouge Croix Pursuivant and Somerset Herald. From +1818 onward Planche was the author, adapter, translator, and what not, +of innumerable--they certainly run to hundreds--dramatic pieces of every +possible sort from regular plays to sheer extravaganzas. He was happiest +perhaps in the lighter and freer kinds, having a pleasant and never +vulgar style of jocularity, a fair lyrical gift, and the indefinable +knowledge of what is a play. But he stands only on the verge of +literature proper, and the propriety, indeed the necessity, of including +him here is the strongest possible evidence of the poverty of dramatic +literature in our period. It would indeed only be possible to extend +this chapter much by including men who have no real claim to appear, and +who would too forcibly suggest the hired guests of story, introduced in +order to avoid a too obtrusive confession of the absence of guests +entitled to be present. + +The greater and more strictly literary names of those who have tried the +stage in the intervals of happier studies, from Miss Mitford and R. H. +Horne to Tennyson, have been mentioned elsewhere; and there is no need +to return to them. Dr. James Westland Marston (1820-90) was once much +praised, and was an author of Macready's. Miss Isabella Harwood, +daughter of the second editor of the _Saturday Review_, produced under +the pseudonym of "Ross Neil" a series of closet-dramas of excellent +composition and really poetical fancy, but wanting the one thing +needful. Perhaps a few other writers might with pains be added; and of +course every reviewer knows that the flow of five-act tragedies, though +less abundant than of old, has continued. But, on the whole, the +sentence already put in more than one form remains true and firm--that +in this period the dramatic work of those who have been really men and +women of letters is generally far inferior to their other work, and +that, with the rarest exceptions, the dramatic work of those who have +not excelled in other kinds of literature is not literature at all. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +CONCLUSION + + +A conclusion which avows that it might almost as well have presented +itself as a preface may seem to be self-condemned; it must be the +business of the following pages to justify it. In summing up on such a +great matter as this it is desirable--it is indeed necessary--to +indicate, in broader lines than at the mere outset would have seemed +appropriate or indeed possible, the general course of thought and of +speech, of literary matter and literary form, during the century and +more which is submitted to the view. We can thus place individuals in +their position to each other and to the whole more boldly and with less +reserve; we can sketch the general character of existing movements, the +movers in which have been exempt from individual consideration by virtue +of their life and work being incomplete; we can at once record +accomplishment and indicate tendency. + +The period dealt with in the first chapter of this book illustrates the +differences in appeal of such periods to the merely dilettante and +"tasting" critic, and to the student of literature in the historical and +comparative fashion. To the former it is one of the most ungrateful of +all such sub-periods or sub-divisions in English literature. He finds in +it none, or at most Boswell's _Johnson_, Burns, and the _Lyrical +Ballads_ (this last at its extreme end), of the chief and principal +things on which alone he delights to fix his attention. Its better +poetry, such as that of Cowper and Crabbe, he regards at best with a +forced esteem; its worse is almost below his disgust. Its fiction is +preposterous and childish; it contributes nothing even to the less +"bellettristic" departments of literature that is worth his attention; +it is a tedious dead season about which there is nothing tolerable +except the prospect of getting rid of it before very long. + +To the latter--to the historical and comparative student--on the other +hand, it has an interest of an absolutely unique kind. As was observed +in a former volume of this history, the other great blossoming time of +English literature--that which we call Elizabethan, and by which we mean +the last five and twenty years of the Queen's reign and the fifty or +sixty after her death--was preceded by no certain signs except those of +restless seeking. Here, on the contrary, with no greater advantage of +looking back, we can see the old fruit dropping off and the new forming, +in a dozen different kinds and a hundred different ways. Extravagance on +one side always provokes extravagance on the other; and because the +impatient revolt of Coleridge and some others of the actual leaders into +the Promised Land chose to present the eighteenth century as a mere +wilderness in respect of poetry, enjoyment of nature, and so forth, +there have been of late years critics who maintained that the poetical +decadence of that century is all a delusion; in other words (it may be +supposed) that Akenside and Mason are the poetical equals of Herrick and +Donne. The _via media_, as almost always, is here also the _via +veritatis_. The poets of the eighteenth century were poets; but the +poetical stream did not, as a rule, run very high or strong in their +channels, and they were tempted to make up for the sluggishness and +shallowness of the water by playing rather artificial and rococo tricks +with the banks. The fiction of the eighteenth century was, at its +greatest, equal to the greatest ever seen; but it was as yet advancing +with uncertain steps, and had not nearly explored its own domain. The +history of the eighteenth century had returned to the true sense of +history, and was endeavouring to be accurate; but it only once +attained--it is true that with Gibbon it probably attained once for +all--a perfect combination of diligence and range, of matter and of +style. + +In all these respects the list might, if it were proper, be extended to +much greater length. The twenty years from 1780 to 1800 show us in the +most fascinating manner the turn of the tide, not as yet coming in three +feet abreast, rather creeping up by tortuous channels and chance +depressions, but rising and forcing a way wherever it could. In the +poets, major and minor, of the period, omitting, and even not wholly +omitting, Burns and Blake--who are of no time intrinsically, but who, as +it happens, belong accidentally to this time as exponents, the one of +the refreshing influence of dialect and freedom from literary +convention, the other of the refreshing influence of sympathy with old +models and mystical dreaming--all the restlessness of the approaching +crisis is seen. Nothing in literature is more interesting than to watch +the effect of the half-unconscious aims and desires of Cowper and +Crabbe, to see how they try to put the new wine in the old bottles, to +compare them with Goldsmith and Thomson on the one hand, with Wordsworth +and Coleridge on the other. Hayley perhaps alone, or almost alone, is +rebel to the comparative method. Hayley is one of these hopeless +creatures who abound at all periods, and whose native cast of +nothingness takes a faint fashion from the time. But even in the verse +of "Monk" Lewis we see the itch for new measures, the craving for lyric +movement; even in the day-flies of the Della Crusca group the desire to +be "something different." And then in Bowles, with his sonnets of +places, in Sayers, with his rhymeless Pindarics, we come upon the actual +guides to the right way, guides the oddest, the blindest, the most +stumbling, but still--as not merely chronology but the positive +testimony and the still more positive practice of those who followed +them show--real guides and no misleaders. + +Least studied, perhaps, because of its want of positive savour in +comparison with their later achievements, but more interesting than all +of these, is the early work of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth +themselves, and the work, not merely early but later, of men like +Rogers and Campbell. Here the spectacle already presented in Crabbe and +Cowper is repeated; but the process is in a further stage, and the +fermentation is determining, according to the nature of the fermenting +material. On Rogers it is nearly powerless; in Campbell only in his +lyrics does it succeed in breaking up and dissolving the old crust; in +Southey the effect is never quite complete; in Coleridge and Wordsworth, +but especially in Coleridge, the leaven changes all the latter lump. +Thenceforward the process is reversed. Instead of instances of advance +amid a mass of inertia or aimless wandering we have instances of +reaction amid a mass of advance. The work of the revolutionary time is +done; the scholar, contrary to Goethe's dictum, has now not merely to +exercise himself but to perfect. + +The phenomena of the time in fiction are of the same character, but they +lead as yet to no such distinct turn. The tale-telling of Beckford is +like the singing of Burns, not uncoloured by the time, but still in the +main purely individual; the purpose of the novels of Holcroft, Godwin, +and Bage is groping in the dark; the Radcliffian romance and its +exaggeration by Lewis exhibit the same uncertainty, the same application +of the Rule of False. And there is for once a more philosophical and +less cowardly explanation--that Scott, the Joshua in this instance, as +Coleridge and Wordsworth were in the other, was occupied elsewhere +before he sought the Palestine of the novel. For it must be remembered +that prose fiction, though it had been cultivated in a scattered and +tentative way for thousands of years, was up to this time the most +inorganic of literary kinds. Poets, when they chose to give themselves +up to poetry and to turn their backs on convention, were almost as well +off then as now. They had but to open the great Greeks of the fifth and +fourth centuries before Christ, the Latins such as Lucretius and +Catullus, the great mediaeval, the great Renaissance examples of their +own art, to see, as soon as they chose to see, where and how to go +right. The adventurer in fiction was destitute of any such assistance. +Only a few examples of much real excellence in his art were before him; +many of those existing (including most of the mediaeval instances) were +hardly before him at all; and none of these, with the exception of the +eighteenth century novel of manners and character (which, in the nature +of the case, was at that special time the last thing he wanted to +imitate), and the short tale of France and Italy, could be said to have +been brought to anything like perfection. Hence the wanderings and the +stumblings here were far greater, the touch of the groping hands far +feebler and less sure than even in poetry; but the crying for the light +was there too, and it was to be heard in time. Even as it was, before +the century closed, Miss Edgeworth had given important new lines to +fiction, and was on the eve of opening the most fertile of all its seams +or veins, that of national or provincial character; the purpose-novel +just referred to was full of future, though it might be a future of a +perilous and disputable kind; the terror-romance, subdued to saner +limits and informed with greater knowledge and greater genius, was not +soon to cease out of the land; and, a detail not to be neglected, the +ever increasing popularity of the novel was making it more and more +certain that it would number good intellects sooner or later. + +In all other directions, with the single exception of drama, in which +there was neither performance nor promise, so far as literature was +concerned, to any great extent, the same restlessness of effort, and not +always the same incompetence of result was seen. The fact of the +revolutionary war abroad and the coercive policy thereby necessitated at +home may have somewhat postponed the appearance of the new kind of +periodical, in all shapes from quarterly to daily, which was to be so +great a feature of the next age; but the same causes increased the +desire for it and prepared not a few of its constituents. It is +impossible for any tolerably careful reader not to notice how much more +"modern," to use an unphilosophical but indispensable term, is the +political satire both in verse and prose, which has been noticed in the +first chapter of this book, than the things of more or less the same +kind that immediately preceded it. It was an accident, no doubt, that +made the _Anti-Jacobin_ ridicule Darwin's caricature of eighteenth +century style in poetry; yet that ridicule did far more to put this +particular convention out of fashion than all the attacks of the same +paper on innovators like Coleridge (who at that time had hardly +attempted their literary innovations) could do harm. The very interest +in foreign affairs, brought about by the most universal war that had +ever been known, helped to introduce the foreign element which was to +play so large a part in literature; and little affection as the critic +may have for the principles of Godwin or of Paine, he cannot deny that +the spirit of inquiry, the rally and shock of attack and defence, are +things a great deal better for literature than a placid contentment with +accepted conventions. + +Theology indeed may share with drama the reproach of having very little +that is good to show from this time, or indeed for a long time to come. +For the non-conformist sects and the Low Church party, which had +resulted from the Evangelical movement in the earlier eighteenth +century, were, the Unitarians excepted, for the most part illiterate. +The Deist controversy had ceased, or, as conducted against Paine, +required no literary skill; and the High Church movement had not begun. +Philosophy, not productive of very much, was more active; and the +intensely alien and novel styles of German thought were certain in time +to produce their effect, while their working was in exact line with all +the other tendencies we have been surveying. + +In short, during these twenty years, literature in almost all its parts +was being thoroughly "boxed about." The hands that stirred it were not +of the strongest as yet, they were absolutely unskilled, and for the +most part they had not even any very clear conception of what they +wanted to do. But almost everybody felt that something had to be done, +and was anxious--even childishly anxious--to do something. It by no +means always happens that such anxiety is rewarded or is a good sign; +but it is always a noteworthy one, and in this instance there is no +doubt about either the fact of the reward or its goodness. + +The subsequent history of poetry during the century divides itself in an +exceedingly interesting way, which has not perhaps yet been subjected to +full critical comment. There are in it five pretty sharply marked +periods of some ten or fifteen years each, which are distinguished, the +first, third, and fifth, by the appearance in more or less numbers of +poets of very high merit, and of characteristics more or less distinctly +original; the second and fourth by poetic growths, not indeed scanty in +amount and sometimes exquisite in quality, but tentative, fragmentary, +and undecided. It will of course be understood that in this, as in all +literary classifications, mathematical accuracy must not be expected, +and that the lives of many of the poets mentioned necessarily extend +long before and after the periods which their poetical production +specially distinguishes. In fact the life of Wordsworth covers as nearly +as possible the whole five sub-periods mentioned, reckoning from his own +birth-year to that of almost the youngest of the poets, of whom we shall +here take account. And perhaps there are few better ways of realising +the extraordinary eminence of English nineteenth century poetry than by +observing, that during these eighty years there was never a single one +at which more or fewer persons were not in existence, who had produced +or were to produce poetry of the first class. And the more the five-fold +division indicated is examined and analysed the more curious and +interesting will its phenomena appear. + +The divisions or batches of birth-years are worth indicating separately: +the first comprises the eighth and ninth decades of the eighteenth +century, from the birth of Scott and the Lakers to that of Shelley, with +Keats as a belated and so to speak posthumous but most genuine child of +it; the second covers about fifteen years from the birth of George +Darley, who was of the same year (1795) with Keats, to the eve of that +of Tennyson; the third goes from 1810 or thereabouts, throwing back to +include the elder Tennysons and Mrs. Browning; the fourth extends from +about 1825 to 1836; the fifth from the birth of Mr. Morris (throwing +back as before to admit Rossetti) to the end. + +In the first of these we see the Romantic revolt or renaissance, +whichever word may be preferred, growing up under the joint influences +of the opening of mediaeval and foreign literature; of the excitement of +the wars of the French Revolution; of the more hidden but perhaps more +potent force of simple ebb-and-flow which governs the world in all +things, though some fondly call it Progress; and of the even more +mysterious chance or choice, which from time to time brings into the +world, generally in groups, persons suited to effect the necessary +changes. The "Return to Nature," or to be less question-begging let us +say the taking up of a new standpoint in regard to nature, made half +unconsciously by men like Cowper and Crabbe, assisted without intending +it by men like Burns and Blake, effected in intention if not in full +achievement by feeble but lucky pioneers like Bowles, asserts itself +once for all in the _Lyrical Ballads_, and then works itself out in +different--in almost all possibly different--ways through the varying +administration of the same spirit by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley +and Keats, in the highest and primary rank, by Scott and Byron in the +next, by Southey, Campbell, Leigh Hunt, Moore, and others in the third. +And it is again most interesting to watch how the exertion of influence +and the character of it are by no means in proportion to the exact +poetical strength of the agent. Scott and Byron, certainly inferior as +poets to the first four mentioned, have probably had a greater bulk of +poetical influence and poetical action on mankind at large certainly, +and a vastly earlier, more immediate and more sweeping influence on +other poets than their betters. Leigh Hunt, a poet quite of the third +rank, exercised directly and indirectly, through Shelley and Keats, an +influence on the form of poetry, on metre, cadence, phrase, greater than +any of the others, save Wordsworth and Byron, and perhaps more than +these. In all ways, however, by this channel and that, in +straightforward or stealthy fashion, the poetic flood comes up, and by +the death of Byron, Shelley and Keats having still more prematurely gone +before, it is at its very highest spring. Six and twenty years passed, +from 1798 to 1824, from the time when the _Lyrical Ballads_ were +brought out to take their chance to the time when Mr. Beddoes, Mr. +Procter, and somebody else clubbed to publish Shelley's posthumous poems +at their own expense or at least guarantee, and justly objected to +paying for more than 250 copies, because more were not likely to be +sold. In these six and twenty years such an addition had been made to +English poetry as five times the space had not previously seen, as +perhaps was not far from equalling the glorious gains of a not very +different though somewhat longer space of time between the appearance of +the _Shepherd's Calendar_ and the death of Shakespeare. + +But the sequel of this abnormally high tide is hardly less interesting +than itself. We generally expect at such moments in literature either a +decided falling off, or else a period of decent imitation, of "school +work." It would be absurd to say that there is no contrast, no falling +off, and no imitation in the group of poets noticed at the end of the +second chapter in this volume. But they are not utterly decadent, and +they are by no means purely or merely imitative. On the contrary, their +note is quite different from that of mere school work, and in a sort of +eccentric and spasmodic fashion they attain to singular excellence. +Hood, Praed, Macaulay, Taylor, Darley, Beddoes, Hartley Coleridge, +Horne, are not to Wordsworth or Coleridge, to Byron or to Shelley, what +the later so-called Elizabethan playwrights are to Jonson and Fletcher, +the later poets of the same time to Spenser and Donne. But they almost +all, perhaps all, seem forced to turn into some bye-way or backwater of +poetry, to be unable or unwilling to keep the crown of the causeway, the +flood of the tide. Hood and Praed--the former after actually attempting +great poetry, and coming nearer to it than some great poets come in +their first attempts--wander into the special borderland of humorous and +grotesque verse, achieving in different parts of it something not unlike +absolute and unsurpassed success. Beddoes, and to some extent Darley, +adopt fantastic varieties, grim in the former's hands, playful chiefly +in the latter's, but alike remote from everyday interests and broad +appeals; while the incomparable lyrics of Beddoes are of no special +time or school, their very Elizabethanism being somewhat delusive. +Taylor and Horne attempt the serious moral play with hardly any stage +purposes or possibilities, and Horne in _Orion_ tries an eccentric kind +of ethical or satirical epic. Macaulay--the most prominent of all, and +the most popular in his tastes and aims--is perhaps the nearest to a +"schoolman," adapting Scott as he does in his _Lays_; yet even here +there is no mere imitation. + +Thus the people of this minor transition exhibit--in a most interesting +way, rendered even more interesting by the repetition of it which, as we +have seen and shall see, came about twenty years later--the mixed +phenomena of an after-piece and a _lever de rideau_, of precursorship +and what we must for want of a better word call decadence. They were not +strong enough in themselves, or were not favourably enough +circumstanced, entirely to refresh or redirect the main current of +poetry; so they deviated from it. But hardly in the least of them is +there absent the sign and symptom of the poetic spirit being still +about, of the poetic craft still in full working order. And their +occasional efforts, their experiments in the half-kinds they affected, +have a curious charm. English poetry would be undeniably poorer without +the unearthly snatches of Beddoes, the exquisitely urbane +verse-of-society of Praed, the pathetic-grotesque of Hood, even the +stately tirades of Horne and Taylor. Some of them, if not all, may at +this or that time have been exaggerated in value, by caprice, by +reaction, by mere personal sympathy. But no universal critic will refuse +admiration to them in and for themselves. + +In the next stage we are again face to face, not with half-talents, +uncertain of their direction, but with whole genius, inevitably working +on its predestined lines. Nothing quite like the poetical career and the +poetical conception of Alfred Tennyson and of Robert Browning, so +different in all respects, except that of duration and coincidence in +time, meets us in English, perhaps nothing similar meets us in any +literature. It is easy to overestimate both; and both have been +over-estimated. It is still easier to depreciate both; and both have +been depreciated. Both wrote constantly, and at frequent intervals, for +some sixty years--the same sixty years--and, with not more than fair +allowance for the effects of time, both wrote at the end better than at +the beginning, and nearly as well as at the best time of each. +Wordsworth, it is true, wrote for nearly as long, but no one can assert +the same duration of equality in his production. + +In a certain sense, no doubt, neither can claim the same distinct +individuality, the same unmistakable and elementary _quality_, as that +which distinguishes Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley. +The work of each is always at once recognisable by any tolerably +competent judge; but the signs of identity are more composite than +atomic, more derived and literary than essentially native. Browning's +unconventional mannerisms, and his wide range of subject, have made him +seem even less of a mere scholar than Tennyson; but, as a fact, each is +independent enough to a certain extent and to a certain extent only. In +both appears, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time +in combination with distinct original genius, that indebtedness to the +past, that relapse upon it in the very act of forming vast schemes for +the future, which is more the note of the nineteenth century than +anything else. They not merely have all literature and all history +behind them; but they know it. Yet this knowledge does not weigh on +them. They do not exactly neglect it as Wordsworth and Shelley were +still able to do, but they keep it under. It is the attendant fiend for +which they must find work, but which they never, as too many of their +contemporaries and followers have done, allow to become their master. +And so they two, as it seems to me, do actually win their way to the +first class, not perhaps to the absolutely first division of it, but to +a first class still pretty rigidly limited. + +It is not the object of this Conclusion to deal with the performances of +individuals at any length, and therefore I must refer back to the text +for a detailed indication of the position of Keats as the summer-up of +the tradition of the first of the groups or periods here noticed, and +the begetter, master, and teacher of the third, as well as for +descriptions of the different manners in which Tennyson and Browning +respectively shared and distributed between themselves that catholic +curiosity in poetical subject, that exploration of all history and art +and literature, which is the main characteristic of strictly nineteenth +century poetry. But it is very pertinent here to point out the +remarkable way in which these two poets, from the unexampled combination +of length and potency in their poetical period of influence, governed +all the poetry that has followed them. We shall now see that under their +shadow at least two well-marked groups arose, each of magnitude and +individuality sufficient to justify the assignment to it of a separate +position. Yet it was in their shadow that these rose and flourished, and +though the trees themselves have at length fallen, the shadow of their +names is almost as great as ever. + +The first of these two groups, the fourth of our present classification, +renews, as has been said before, the features of its twenty or thirty +years older forerunner, the group between Keats and Tennyson, in a most +curious and attractive fashion. Once more we find the notes of +uncertainty, of straying into paths,--not always quite blind-alleys, but +bye-paths certainly,--the presence of isolated burst and flash, of +effort unsuccessful or unequal as a whole. But here we find, what in the +earlier chapter or section we do not find, distinct imitativeness and +positive school-following. This imitation, attempting Shelley at times +with little success (for, let it be repeated, Shelley is not imitable), +selected in regular chronological order, three masters, Wordsworth, +Tennyson, and Browning, though in each stage the master of the preceding +rather shared than yielded his chair. It has been said in a famous +passage that Wordsworth was more read about sixty years ago than at any +time before or since, and this may perhaps be true. But his influence on +writers has not depended on his popularity with readers, and from Sir +Aubrey de Vere, who was born more than a century ago, to verse-writers +who have only just published, his unmistakable tone, the tone which, so +far as we can see, would never have been if Wordsworth had never +existed, shows itself. The writing influence of Tennyson did not begin +till the issue of the _Poems_ of 1842, but it began almost immediately +then, and has remained in full force to the present day. It is an +influence somewhat more external and technical than Wordsworth's, but +for that reason even more unmistakable, and some of its results are +among the most curious of school-copies in literature. As for Browning, +imitation there tried both the outside and the inside, not very often +with happy results, but, of course, with results even more obvious to +the most uncritical eye than the results of the imitation of Tennyson +itself. + +The attempts to be original and to break away from these and their +imitations--the principal of them being that of the so-called Spasmodic +school, which flourished at the dead waist and middle of the +century--were not particularly happy, and those who incline to gloomy +views may say that the imitation was less happy still. In Mr. Matthew +Arnold, a recalcitrant but unmistakable Wordsworthian, sharing a partly +reluctant allegiance between Wordsworth, the ancients, Goethe, and +Tennyson himself, it is impossible not to think that a freer attitude, a +more independent and less literary aim, might have strengthened his +elegance, supplied his curious mixture of stiffness and grace, and even +made him less unequal than he actually is. And yet he is much the +greatest poet of the period. Its effect was more disastrous still upon +the second Lord Lytton, who was content to employ an excellent lyrical +vein, and a gift of verse satire of the fantastic kind so distinct and +fascinating, that it approaches the merit of fantasists in other kinds +of the former group, like Beddoes and Darley, to far too great an extent +on echoes. The fact is, that by this time, to speak conceitedly, the +obsession of the book was getting oppressive. Men could hardly sing for +remembering, or, at least, without remembering, what others had sung +before them, and became either slavishly imitative or wilfully +recalcitrant to imitation. The great leaders indeed continued to sing +each in his own way, and, though with perfect knowledge of their +forerunners, not in the least hampered by that knowledge. But something +else was needed to freshen the middle regions of song. + +It was found in that remarkable completion of the English Romantic +movement, which is in relation to art called prae-Raphaelitism, and which +is represented in literature, to mention only the greatest names, by +Rossetti, his sister, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Swinburne. The death of the +two former, and the fact that the movement itself, still active in art, +has in a manner rounded itself off, though it is not necessarily +finished, in literature, enable us to discuss it here as a whole, though +its two chief poets are luckily still alive. + +The first thing of interest in general history which strikes us, in +regard to this delightful chapter of English poetry, is its +illustration--a common one in life and letters--of the fact that there +is a false as well as a true side to the question quoted by Aristotle: +"If water chokes you, what are you to drink on the top of it?" "Wine," +one kind of humourist might answer; "More water," another: and both +rightly. It has been said that the group which preceded this suffered +from the pressure of too constant, wide, and various reminiscence, +literary, artistic, and other. The prae-Raphaelites refreshed themselves +and the world by applying still more strenuously to the particular kind +and period of such reminiscence which had been hitherto, despite the +mediaeval excursions of many from Percy to Tennyson, imperfectly +utilised. The literary practitioners of the school (with whom alone we +are concerned) were not indeed by any means purely mediaeval in their +choice of subject, in their founts of inspiration, or in their method of +treatment. English poetry has known few if any more accomplished +scholars both in the classics and in the modern languages than Mr. +Swinburne, for instance; and something similar might be said of others. +But, on the whole, the return of this school--for all new things in +literature are returns--was to a mediaevalism different from the +tentative and scrappy mediaevalism of Percy, from the genial but slightly +superficial mediaevalism of Scott, and even from the more exact but +narrow and distinctly conventionalised mediaevalism of Tennyson. They +had other appeals, but this was their chief. + +It may seem that mere or main archaism is not a very charming or +powerful thing, and in weaker hands it would not have been either one or +the other; but it so happened that these hands were very strong indeed. +Mr. Rossetti had one of the most astonishing combinations ever known of +artistically separate gifts, as well as a singular blend of passion and +humour. His sister was one of the great religious poets of the world. +Mr. Swinburne has never been surpassed, if he has ever been equalled, by +any poet in any language for command of the more rushing and flowing +forms of verse. Mr. Morris has few equals in any time or country for +narrative at once decorative and musical. Moreover, though it may seem +whimsical or extravagant to say so, these poets added to the very charm +of mediaeval literature which they thus revived a subtle something which +differentiates it from--which to our perhaps blind sight seems to be +wanting in--mediaeval literature itself. It is constantly complained (and +some of those who cannot go all the way with the complainants can see +what they mean) that the graceful and labyrinthine stories, the sweet +snatches of song, the quaint drama and legend of the Middle Ages +lack--to us--life; that they are shadowy, unreal, tapestry on the wall, +not alive even as living pageants are. By the strong touch of modernness +which these poets and the best of their followers introduced into their +work, they have given the vivification required. + +Beyond them we must not go, nor inquire whether the poets who have not +come to forty years represent a new school of the masterful and supreme +kind, or one of the experimental and striving sort, or something a good +deal worse than this, a period of sheer interval and suspense, +unenlivened even by considerable attempt. Not only our scheme, not only +common prudence and politeness, but most of all the conditions of +critical necessity insist on the curtain being here dropped. It is +possible that a critic may be able to isolate and project himself +sufficiently to judge, as posterity will judge them, the actually +accomplished work of his own contemporaries and juniors. But even such a +skilful and fortunate person cannot judge the work which they have not +yet produced, and which may in all cases, and must in some, modify their +position and alter their rank. + +But what has been has been, and on this mass (not in the actual case +"vulgar" by any means) of things done it is possible to pronounce +securely. And with security it may be said that for total amount, total +merit, total claims of freshness and distinctness, no period of poetical +literature can much, if at all, exceed the ninety years of English verse +from _The Ancient Mariner_ to _Crossing the Bar_. The world has had few +poets better than the best of ours during this time in degree; it has +had none like Shelley, perhaps none exactly like Wordsworth, in kind. +The secret of long narrative poems that should interest has been +recovered; the sonnet, one of the smallest but one of the most perfect +of poetic forms, has been recovered likewise. Attempts to recover the +poetic drama have been mostly failures; and serious satire has hardly +reappeared. But lighter satire, with other "applied" poetry, has shown +variety and excellence. Above all lyric, the most poetic kind of poetry, +has attained a perfection never known before, except once in England and +once in Greece. It has been impossible hitherto to make a full and free +anthology of the lyric poets from Burns and Blake to Tennyson and +Browning to match the anthologies often made of those from Surrey or +Sidney to Herrick or Vaughan. But when it can be done it is a question +whether the later volume will not even excel the earlier in intensity +and variety, if not perhaps in freshness of charm. + +And then it is needful once more to insist, even at the risk of +disgusting, on the additional interest given by the subtle and delicate, +but still distinctly traceable gradations, the swell and sinking, the +flow and ebb, of poetical production and character during the time. As +no other flourishing time of any poetry has lasted so long, so none has +had the chance of developing these mutations in so extensive and +attractive a manner; in none has it been possible to feel the pulse of +poetry, so to speak, in so connected and considerable a succession of +experiment. Poetical criticism can never be scientific; but it can +seldom have had an opportunity of going nearer to a scientific process +than here, owing to the volume, the connection, the duration, the +accessibility of the phenomena submitted to the critic. The actual +secret as usual escapes; but we can hunt the fugitive by a closer trail +than usual through the chambers of her flight. + +Of the highest poetry, however, as of other highest things, Goethe's +famous axiom _Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh_ holds good. Although there is +a difference between the expressions of this highest poetry in the fifth +and fourth centuries before Christ, in the fourteenth, seventeenth, and +nineteenth after Christ there is also a certain quiet sameness, not +indiscernibility but still identity. The lower kinds of literature admit +of more apparent and striking freshness of exterior. And perhaps the +most strikingly fresh, some might even say the distinctive, product of +the nineteenth century, is its prose fiction. + +This, as has been shown in detail, is much later in date than the poetry +in anything like a characteristic and fully developed state. Although it +was busily produced during the last twenty years of the eighteenth +century and the first fifteen of the nineteenth, the very best work of +the time, except such purely isolated things as _Vathek_, are +experiments, and all but the very best--the novels of Miss Edgeworth, +those written but not till quite the end of the time published by Miss +Austen, and a very few others--are experiments of singular lameness and +ill success. + +With Scott's change from verse to prose, the modern romance admittedly, +and to a greater extent than is generally thought the modern novel, came +into being; and neither has gone out of being since. In the two chapters +which have been devoted to the subject we have seen how the overpowering +success of _Waverley_ bred a whole generation of historical novels; how +side by side with this the older novel of manners, slightly altered, +continued to be issued, with comic deviations chiefly, as in the hands +of Theodore Hook; how Bulwer attempted a sort of cross between the two; +how about the middle of the century the historical novel either ceased +or changed, to revive later after a middle period illustrated by the +brilliant romances of Kingsley; how about the same time the strictly +modern novel of manners came into being in the hands of Thackeray, Miss +Bronte, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope, Dickens overlapping both +periods in a fantastic and nondescript style of his own; and how more +recently still both romance and novel have spread out and ramified into +endless subdivisions. + +There is, however, this broad line of demarcation between poetry and the +novel, that they are written for different ends and from different +motives. It is natural to man to write poetry; it does not appear to be +by any means so certainly or unvaryingly necessary to him to read it. +Except at rare periods and for short times, poetry has never offered the +slightest chance of livelihood to any considerable number of persons; +and it is tolerably certain that if the aggregate number of poets since +the foundation of the world had had nothing to live on but their +aggregate gains as poets, starvation would have been the commonplace +rule, instead of the dramatic exception, among the sons of Apollo. + +On the other hand, it is no doubt also natural to man to tell prose +stories, and it seems, though it was a late-discovered aptitude, that it +is not unnatural to him to read them; but the writing of them does not +seem to be at all an innate or widely disseminated need. Until some +hundred or two hundred years ago very few were written at all; the +instances of persons who do but write novels because they must are +exceedingly rare, and it is as certain as anything can be that of the +enormous production of the last three-quarters of a century not 5, +perhaps not 1 per cent would have been produced if the producing had not +led, during the whole of that time, in most cases but those of hopeless +incompetence to some sort of a livelihood, in many to very comfortable +income, and in some to positive wealth and fame. In other words, poetry +is the creation of supply and novel-writing of demand; poetry can hardly +ever be a trade and in very rare cases a profession, while novel-writing +is commonly a very respectable profession, and unfortunately sometimes a +rather disreputable trade. + +Like other professions, however, it enlists genius sometimes, talent +often; and the several and successive ways in which this genius and this +talent show themselves are of more than sufficient interest. But the +steady demand, and the inevitable answer to it, work adversely to such +spontaneous and interesting fluctuations of production as those which we +have traced in reference to poetry. There have been times, particularly +that between the cessation of Sir Walter's best work and the perfecting +of that of Thackeray, in which the average value of even the best novels +was much lower than at other times. But even in these the average volume +maintained itself very well, and, indeed, steadily increased. + +It is this which, with another to be mentioned shortly, will, so far as +it is possible for a contemporary to judge, be noted in the literary +history of the future as the distinguishing crop or field of the +nineteenth century. Sermons, essays, plays, no doubt, continue to be +written; but the novel has supplanted the sermon, the essay, the play in +the place which each at different times held as the _popular_ form of +literature. It may be added, or repeated, that it has in part at least +achieved this result by trespassing upon the provinces of all these +three forms and of many others. This is true, but is of somewhat less +importance than might be thought. The fable has an old trick of +adjusting itself to almost every possible kind of literary use, and the +novel is only an enlarged and more fully organised fable. It does not, +no doubt, do best when it abuses this privilege of its ancestor, and +saturates itself overmuch with "purpose," but it has at least an +ancestral right to do so. + +There is no doubt also that the popularity of the novel has been very +directly connected with a cause which has had all manner of effects +fathered upon it--often with no just causation or filiation whatever--to +wit, the spread of education. In the proper sense of course the spread +of education must always be strictly limited. The number of educable +persons probably bears a pretty constant ratio to the population, and +when the education reaches the level of the individual's containing +power, it simply runs over and is lost. But it is possible to teach +nearly everybody reading and writing; and it is a curious but exact +observation that a very large proportion of those who have been taught +reading require something to read. Now the older departments of +literature do not lend themselves with any facility to constant reading +by the average man or woman, whose requirements may be said to be +amusement rather than positive delight, occupation much rather than +intellectual exertion, and above all, something to pass time. For these +requirements, or this compound requirement, the hearing of some new +thing has been of old recognised as the surest and most generally useful +specific. And the novel holds itself out, not indeed always quite truly, +as being new or nothing by name and nature. Accordingly the demand for +novels has gone on ever increasing, and the supply has never failed to +keep up with it. + +Nor would it be just to say that the quality has sunk appreciably. The +absolutely palmy day of the English nineteenth century in novel-writing +was no doubt some thirty-five or forty years ago. Not even the +contemporary France of that date can show such a "galaxy-gallery" as the +British novelists--Dickens, Thackeray, Miss Bronte, George Eliot, +Trollope, Kingsley, Bulwer, Disraeli, Lever, Mr. Meredith, and +others--who all wrote in the fifties. But at the beginning of the period +the towering genius of Scott and the perfect art of Miss Austen, if we +add to them Miss Edgeworth's genial talent, did not find very much of +even good second-rate matter to back them; there was, as has been said, +a positively barren time succeeding this first stage and preceding the +"fifty" period; and twenty years or a little more ago, when Thackeray +and Dickens were dead, Trollope and George Eliot past their best, +Kingsley and Bulwer moribund, Mr. Meredith writing sparely and +unnoticed, the new romantic school not arisen, and no recruit of +distinction except Mr. Blackmore firmly set, things were apparently a +great deal worse with us in point of novel-writing than they are at +present. Whether, with a return of promise and an increase of +performance, with a variation of styles and an abundance of experiment, +there has also been a relapse into the extravagances which we have had +in this very book to chronicle as characterising the fiction of exactly +a century ago,--whether we have had over-luxuriant and non-natural +style, attempts to attract by loose morality, novels of purpose, novels +of problem, and so forth,--and whether the coming age will dismiss much +of our most modern work as not superior in literary and inferior in +other appeal to the work of Godwin and Lewis, Holcroft and Bage, it is +not necessary distinctly to say. But our best is certainly better than +the best of that time, our worst is perhaps not worse; and the novel +occupies a far higher place in general estimation than it did then. +Indeed it has been observed by the sarcastic that to some readers of +novels, and even to some writers of them, "novel" and "book" seem to be +synonymous terms, and that when such persons speak of "literature," they +mean and pretty distinctly indicate that they mean novel-writing, and +novel-writing only. This at least shows that the seed which Scott sowed, +or the plant which he grafted, has not lost its vitality. + +Certainly not less, perhaps even more, distinctive of the time in +history must be that development and transformation of what is broadly +called the newspaper, of which the facts and details have occupied two +more of these chapters. It is true that at times considerably earlier +than even the earliest that here concerns us, periodical writing had +been something of a power in England as regards politics, had enlisted +eminent hands, and had even served once or twice as the means of +introduction of considerable works in _belles lettres_. But the +Addisonian Essay had been something of an accident; Swift's +participation in the _Examiner_ was another; Defoe's abundant journalism +brought him more discredit than profit or praise; and though Pulteney +and the Opposition worked the press against Walpole, the process brought +little benefit to the persons concerned. Reviewing was meagrely done and +wretchedly paid; the examples of _Robinson Crusoe_ earlier and _Sir +Launcelot Greaves_ later are exceptions which prove the rule that the +_feuilleton_ was not in demand; in fact before our present period +newspaper-writing was rather dangerous, was more than rather +disreputable, and offered exceedingly little encouragement to any one to +make it the occasion of work in pure literature, or even to employ it as +a means of livelihood, while attempting other and higher, though less +paying kinds. + +The period of the French Revolution, if not the French Revolution +itself, changed all this, assisted no doubt by the natural and +inevitable effects of the spread of reading and the multiplication of +books. People wanted to see the news; papers sprang up in competition to +enable them to see the news; and the competitors strove to make +themselves more agreeable than their rivals by adding new attractions. +Again, the activity of the Jacobin party, which early and of course +directed itself to the press, necessitated activity on the other side. +The keenest intellects, the best-trained wits of the nation, sometimes +under some disguise, sometimes openly, took to journalism, and it became +simply absurd to regard the journalist as a disreputable garreteer when +Windham and Canning were journalists. The larger sale of books and the +formation of a regular system of "pushing" them also developed +reviews--too frequently, no doubt, in the direction of mere puffing, but +even thus with the beneficent result that other reviews came into +existence which were not mere puff-engines. + +Even these causes and others will not entirely explain the extraordinary +development of periodicals of all kinds from quarterly to daily, of +which the _Edinburgh_, _Blackwood_, the _Examiner_, and the _Times_ were +respectively the most remarkable examples and pioneers in the earlier +years of the century, though as a literary organ the _Morning Post_ had +at first rather the advantage of the _Times_. But, as has been said here +constantly, you can never explain everything in literary history; and +it would be extremely dull if you could. The newspaper press had, for +good or for ill, to come; external events to some obvious extent helped +its coming; individual talents and aptitudes helped it likewise; but the +main determining force was the force of hidden destiny. + +There is, however, no mistake possible about the results. It is but a +slight exaggeration to say that the periodical rapidly swallowed up all +other forms of literature, to this extent and in this sense, that there +is hardly a single one of these forms capital performance in which has +not at one time or another formed part of the stuff of periodicals, and +has not by them been first introduced to the world. Not a little of our +poetry; probably the major part of our best fiction; all but a very +small part of our essay-writing, critical, meditative, and +miscellaneous; and a portion, much larger than would at one time have +seemed conceivable, of serious writing in history, philosophy, theology, +science, and scholarship, have passed through the mint or mill of the +newspaper press before presenting themselves in book form. A certain +appreciable, though small part of the best, with much of the worst, has +never got beyond that form. + +To attempt to collect the result of this change is to attempt something +not at all easy, something perhaps which may be regarded as not +particularly valuable. The distinction between literature and journalism +which is so often heard is, like most such things, a fallacy, or at +least capable of being made fallacious. Put as it usually is when the +intention is disobliging to the journalist, it comes to this:--that the +_Essays of Elia_, that Southey's _Life of Nelson_, that some of the best +work of Carlyle, Tennyson, Thackeray, and others the list of whom might +be prolonged at pleasure, is not literature. Put as it sometimes is by +extremely foolish people, it would go to the extent that anything which +has _not_ been published in a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly +publication is literature. + +There is probably no subject on which it is more necessary to clear the +mind of cant than this. Of course there is journalism in the sense +opposed to literature, though not necessarily opposed in any bad sense. +No wise man intends, and no wise man will ever suffer, articles which +are in the strict sense articles, which are intended to comment on +merely passing events, and to produce a merely immediate effect, to be +extracted from journals and put on record as books. Not only is the +treatment unsuitable for such record, but it may almost be said that the +treatment suitable for things so to be recorded is actually unsuitable +for things ephemeral. But there is a very large amount of writing to +which this does not in the least apply, and in which it can make no kind +of real difference whether the result appears by itself in a bound cloth +volume as a whole, or in parts with other things in a pamphlet, covered +with paper, or not covered at all. The grain of truth which the fallacy +carries is really this:--that the habit of treating some subjects in the +peculiar fashion most effective in journalism may spread disastrously to +the treatment of other subjects which ought to be treated as literature. +This is a truth, but not a large one. There have been at all times, at +least since the invention of printing and probably before it, persons +who, though they may be guiltless of having ever written an article in +their lives, have turned out more or less ponderous library volumes in +which the very worst sins of the worst kind of journalist are rampant. + +There are, however, more thoughtful reasons for regarding the +development of periodicals as not an unmixed boon to letters. The more +evanescent kinds of writing are, putting fiction out of the question, so +much the more profitable in journalism that it certainly may tempt--that +it certainly has tempted--men who could produce, and would otherwise +have produced, solid literature. And there is so much more room in it +for light things than for things which the average reader regards as +heavy, that the heavy contributor is apt to be at a discount, and the +light at a premium. But all this is exceedingly obvious. And it may be +met on the other side by the equally obvious consideration already +referred to, that periodicals have made the literary life possible in a +vast number of cases where it was not possible before; that whereas +"toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol" was not a very exaggerated +description of its prospects little more than a hundred years ago, the +patron has become superfluous, want and the gaol rather unlikely, except +in cases of extreme misconduct, incompetence, or ill-luck, while if toil +and envy remain unvanquished, they are not specially fated to the +literary lot. Indeed the more paradoxical of Devil's Advocates against +the press usually urge that it has made the literary life too easy, has +tempted too many into it, and has thereby increased the flood of +mediocrity. + +The most serious objection of all perhaps, though even this is rather +idle in face of accomplished facts, is that the perpetual mincing up and +boiling down of the constituents of the diet of reading have produced, +in the appetite and digestive faculties of the modern reader, an +inability to cope with a really solid meal of perhaps slightly tough +matter, and that periodicals not merely eschew the provision of this +solid stuff themselves, but do their best to make things worse by +manipulating the contents of books that do contain it. + +The fact, however, once more, concerns us much more than moralisings +about the fact; and the fact of the prominence, the extraordinary +prominence, of the periodical press in the nineteenth century, is as +little open to dispute as the prominence in that century's later +mechanical history of discoveries in electricity, or in its earlier of +experiments with steam. Occasionally one may hear enthusiasts of one +kind or another announcing with joy or horror that the periodical is +killing the book. But if it is, it is very impartially engaged in +begetting it at the same time that it kills; and it may be very +seriously doubted whether this killing of a book is an easy act of +murder to commit. With the printing press to produce, the curiosity of +man to demand, and his vanity and greed--if not also his genius and +ambition--to supply, the book is in all probability pretty safe. In the +forms and varieties of this periodical publication we have seen some +interesting changes. As might have been expected, the tendency has been +for the intervals of publication to be shortened--for the quarterly to +give way as the fashionable form to the monthly, the monthly to the +weekly, the weekly to the daily. Many years ago Macaulay, in a mild +protest against having his articles altered by Macvey Napier, suggested +in effect that the bloom might be left on poor things destined to be +read only for a month or so. The duration of an article now may be +measured rather by hours than by weeks. Still many of these changes are +more apparent than real; and just as the institution of the graver +monthly reviews twenty years ago simply reintroduced the quarterly +article in a scarcely altered form after it had been pushed out of +favour by the slighter magazine, so other introductions have been in +fact reintroductions. + +One point, however, of real importance in literary history remains to be +noticed, and that is the conflict between signed and anonymous writing. +Partly from the causes above enumerated as having conduced to the +keeping of journalism in a condition of discredit and danger, partly +owing to national idiosyncrasies, the habit of anonymous writing was +almost universal in the English press at the beginning of the century. +It may have been perfectly well known that such and such an article in +the _Quarterly_ was by Southey or Croker, such another in the +_Edinburgh_ by Sydney Smith or Macaulay, but the knowledge was, so to +speak, unofficial. The question of the identity of "Zeta" in _Blackwood_ +cost a man's life; and the system resulted (in daily papers especially) +in so much editorial inter-mixture and refashioning, that sometimes it +would really have been impossible to assign a single and authentic +paternity. Even about the editorship of the great periodicals a sort of +coquetry of veiling was preserved, and editors' names, though in most +cases perfectly well known, seldom or never appeared. + +It is difficult to say exactly when or how this system began to be +infringed. But there is no doubt that the prominence given in _Household +Words_ to the name and personality of Dickens, who was not unfriendly to +self-advertisement, had a good deal to do with it; and when, a little +later, the cheap shilling magazines appeared, writing with names became +the rule, without them the exception. Criticism, however, for obvious +reasons still held back; and it was not till about five and twenty years +ago that the example, taken more or less directly from the French, of +signed reviews was set by the _Academy_ among weekly papers, and the +_Fortnightly_ among monthly reviews. It has been very largely followed +even in daily newspapers, and the _Saturday Review_ was probably the +last newspaper of mark that maintained an absolutely rigid system of +anonymity. It should, however, be observed that the change, while not +even yet complete--leading articles being still very rarely signed--has +by no means united all suffrages, and has even lost some that it had. +Mr. John Morley, for instance, who had espoused it warmly as editor of +the _Fortnightly_, and had, perhaps, done more than any other man to +spread it, has avowed in a very interesting paper grave doubts about the +result. Still it undoubtedly has increased, and is increasing, and in +such cases it is much easier to express an opinion that things ought to +be diminished, than either to expect that they will, or to devise any +means whereby the diminution is to be effected. As for what is desirable +as distinguished from what is likely, the weight of opinion may be +thought to be in favour of the absence of signature. Anonymous +criticism, if abused, may no doubt be abused to a graver extent than is +possible with signed criticism. But such a hackneyed maxim as _corruptio +optimi_ shows that this is of itself no argument. On the other hand, +signed criticism diminishes both the responsibility and the authority of +the editor; it adds either an unhealthy gag or an unhealthy stimulus to +the tongue and pen of the contributor; it lessens the general weight of +the verdict; and it provokes the worst fault of criticism, the aim at +showing off the critic's cleverness rather than at exhibiting the real +value and character of the thing criticised. And perhaps some may think +the most serious objection of all to be that it encourages the +employment of critics, and the reception of what they say, rather for +their names than for their competence. + +In that very important department of literature which stands midway +between Belles Lettres and Science, the department of History, the +century cannot indeed claim such striking and popularly effective +innovations as in the departments of prose fiction and of periodical +writing. Yet it may be questioned whether the change of this old kind is +not in itself almost as noteworthy as in the other cases is the +practical introduction of a new. What the change is was +epigrammatically, if somewhat paradoxically, summed up recently by a +great authority, Lord Acton. "History," the Cambridge Professor of that +art or science said in his inaugural lecture, "has become independent of +the historian." + +It is possible to demur to the fact, but it is not difficult to explain +the meaning. From the necessity of the case, the earliest history, at +least in the West, is almost independent of documents and records. +Thucydides and Herodotus wrote, the one from what he had actually seen +and heard of contemporary events, the other partly from the same sources +and partly from tradition of short date. Somewhat later historians of +course had their predecessors before them, and in a few cases a certain +amount of document, but never a large amount. When history, vernacular +or Latin, began to be written again in the dark and middle ages, the +absence of documents was complicated (except in the case of those early +chroniclers, English and Irish chiefly, who merely put down local +events) by that more peculiar and unaccountable, though possibly +kindred, absence of critical spirit, which, of the many things more or +less fancifully attributed to the mediaeval mind, is perhaps the most +certain. It is a constant puzzle to modern readers how to account +exactly for the fashion in which men, evidently of great intellectual +ability, managed to be without any sense of the value of evidence, or +any faculty of distinguishing palpable and undoubted fiction from what +either was, or reasonably might be held to be, history. But by degrees +this sense came into being side by side with the multiplication of the +document itself. Even then, however, it was very long before the average +historian either could or would regard himself as bound first to consult +all the documents available, and then to sift and adjust them in +accordance rather with the laws of evidence and the teachings of the +philosophy of history than with his own predilections, or with the +necessities of an agreeable narrative. But the patient industry of the +French school of historical scholars, at the end of the seventeenth and +the beginning of the eighteenth century, founded this new tradition; the +magnificent genius of Gibbon showed how the observance of it might not +be incompatible with history-writing of the most literary kind; the +national and natural tendency of German study adopted it; and shortly +after Gibbon's own day the school of historians, which is nothing if not +documentary, began gradually to oust that of which the picturesque, if +not strictly historical, legend about the Abbe Vertot and his "Mon siege +est fait" is the anecdotic _locus classicus_ of characterisation. + +It has been shown, in the chapter devoted to the subject, how this +school of documentary historians grew and flourished in England itself, +from the days of Turner and Palgrave to those of Froude and Freeman. +Certainly there could not, at least for some time, be said to be any +very sensible tendency in history to dispense with the historian, or, in +other and perhaps rather more intelligible words, of history ceasing to +be literary. No historians have been more omnilegent, more careful of +the document, than Carlyle and Macaulay, much as they differed in other +respects, and in no histories has the "historian"--that is to say, the +personal writer as opposed to the mere "diplomatist"--been more evident +than he is in theirs. Nor is it very easy to see why the mere study of +the document, still less why the mere accumulation of the document, +should ever render superfluous the intelligent shaping which the +historian alone can give. In the first place, documents are +contradictory and want shifting and harmonising; in the second they want +grasping and interpreting; in the third (and most important of all) they +need to be made alive. + +Nevertheless Lord Acton's somewhat enigmatic utterance points, however +vaguely, to real dangers, and it would be idle to say that these dangers +have not been exemplified in the period and department we are +considering. In the first place, the ever-increasing burden of the +documents to be consulted is more and more crushing, and more and more +likely to induce any one but a mere drudge either to relinquish the task +in despair, or to perform it with a constant fear before his eyes, which +prevents freedom and breadth of work. In the second it leads, on the one +hand, to enormous extension of the scale of histories, on the other to +an undue restraining and limiting of their subjects. Macaulay took four +large volumes to do, nominally at least, not more than a dozen years; +Froude twelve to cover fifty or sixty; Grote as many to deal with the +important, but neither long nor richly documented, period of Greek, or +rather Athenian, flourishing. To this has to be added the very serious +drawback that when examination of documents is ranked before everything, +even the slightest questioning of that examination becomes fatal, and a +historian is discredited because some one of his critics has found a +document unknown to him, or a flaw, possibly of the slightest +importance, in his interpretation of the texts. + +Nevertheless it is necessary to lay our account with this new style of +history, and it is fortunately possible to admit that the gains of it +have not been small. Thanks to its practitioners, we know infinitely +more than our fathers did, though it may not be so certain that we make +as good a use of our knowledge. And the evil of multiplication of +particulars, like other evils, brings its own cure. The work of mere +rough-hewing, of examination into the brute facts, is being done--has to +no small extent actually been done--as it never was done before. The +"inedited" has ceased to be inedited--is put on record for anybody to +examine with little trouble. The mere loss of valuable material, which +has gone on in former ages to an extent only partially compensated by +the welcome destruction of material that has no value at all, has been +stopped. The pioneers of the historical summer (to borrow a decorative +phrase from Charles of Orleans) have been very widely abroad, and there +is no particular reason why the summer itself should not come. + +When it does it will perhaps discard some ways and fashions which have +been lately in vogue; but it will assuredly profit by much that has been +done during the period we survey, no less in form than in matter. The +methods have been to a certain extent improved, the examples have been +multiplied, the historical sense has certainly taken a wider and deeper +hold of mankind. Very little is wanting but some one _ausus contemnere +vana_; and when the future Thucydides or the future Carlyle sets to +work, he will be freed, by the labour of others, alike from the paucity +of materials that a little weakened Thucydides, and from the brute mass +of them that embittered the life of Carlyle. + +Not so much is to be said of the remaining divisions or departments +individually. If the drama of the century is not, in so far as acting +drama is concerned, almost a blank from the point of view of literature, +the literary drama of the century is almost a blank as regards acting +qualities. It is true that there have been at times attempts to obtain +restitution of conjugal rights on one side or on the other. In the +second and third decades, perhaps a little later, a strong effort was +made to give vogue to, and some vogue was obtained for, the scholarly if +pale attempts of Milman and Talfourd, and the respectable work of +others. Bulwer, his natural genius assisted by the stage-craft of +Macready, brought the acting and the literary play perhaps nearer +together than any one else did. Much later still, the mighty authority +of Tennyson, taking to dramatic writing at the time when he was the +unquestioned head of English poetry and English literature, and assisted +by the active efforts of the most popular actor and manager of the day, +succeeded in holding the stage fairly well with plays which are not very +dramatic among dramas, and which are certainly not very poetical among +their author's poems. With more recent times we have luckily nothing to +do, and the assertions of some authors that they themselves or others +have brought back literature to the stage may be left confronted with +the assertions of not a few actors that, for reasons which they do not +themselves profess entirely to comprehend, a modern drama is almost +bound not to be literary if it is to act, and not to act if it is +literary. Some have boldly solved the difficulty by hinting, if not +declaring, that the drama is an outworn form except as mere spectacle or +entertainment; others have exhausted themselves in solutions of a less +trenchant kind; none, it may safely be said, has really solved it. And +though it is quite true that what has happened was predicted sixty or +seventy years ago, as a result of the breach of the monopoly of Covent +Garden and Drury Lane, it is fair to say that the condition of the drama +of at least a quarter of a century earlier had been little if at all +better than it has been since. It is a simple fact that since Sheridan +we have had no dramatist who combined very high acting with very high +literary merit. + +Of what have been called the applied departments of literature, a +somewhat less melancholy account has to be given; but, except in their +enormous multiplication of quantity, they present few opportunities for +remarks of a general character. + +Very great names have been added to the list of theological writers, but +these names on the whole belong to the earlier rather than to the later +portion of the period, and even then something of a change has been +observable in the kinds of their writing. The sermon, that is to say the +literary sermon, has become more and more uncommon; and the popular ear +which calls upon itself to hear sermons at all prefers usually what are +styled practical discourses, often deviating very considerably from the +sermon norm, or else extremely florid addresses modelled on later +Continental patterns, and having as a rule few good literary qualities. +So, too, the elaborate theological treatise has gone out of fashion, and +it may be doubted whether, at least for the last half century, a single +book of the kind has been added to the first class of Anglican +theological writing. This writing has thus taken the form either of +discourses of the older kind, maintained in existence by endowment or by +old prescription, such as the Bampton Lectures, or of rather popular +polemics, or of what may be called without disrespect theological +journalism of various kinds. The general historical energy of the +century, moreover, has not displayed itself least in the theological +department, and valuable additions have been made, not merely to general +church history, but to a vast body of biography and journal-history, as +well as to a certain amount of Biblical scholarship. In this latter +direction English scholars have distinguished themselves by somewhat +less violation of the rules of criticism in general than their foreign +brethren and masters. But it cannot be said that the nineteenth century +is ever likely to rank high in the history of English theology. Even its +greatest names--Irving, Chalmers, the Oxford leaders, and others, with +perhaps the single exception of Newman--are important much more +personally and as influences than as literary figures; while the rank +and file, putting history aside, have been distinctly less noteworthy +than in any of the three preceding centuries. + +The "handmaid of theology" has received, at any rate during the first +half of the period, or even the first three-quarters, more distinguished +attentions than her mistress; and the additions made to the list headed +by Erigena and Anselm, if we allow Latin to count, by Bacon and Hobbes, +if we stick to the vernacular, have been many and great. Yet it would +not be unreasonable laudation of times past to say that there hardly, +after Hume's death, arose any philosopher who combined the originality, +the acuteness, and the literary skill of Hume during the first half of +this century, while certainly, at least till within a period forbidden +to our scheme, the latter part of the time has not seen any writer who +could vie even with those of the earlier. To a certain extent the +historical and critical tendencies so often noticed have here been +unfortunate, inasmuch as they have diverted philosophical students from +original writing--or at least from writing as original as the somewhat +narrow and self-repeating paths of philosophy admit--to historical and +critical exercises. But there is also no doubt that the immense +authority which the too long neglected writers of Germany attained, a +little before the middle of the century, has been unfortunate in at +least one respect, if not also in others. The ignorant contempt of +technicalities, and the determination to refer all things to common +sense employing common language, which distinguished the eighteenth +century with us, was certain to provoke a reaction; and this reaction, +assisted by imitation of the Germans, produced in the decades from 1840 +onwards an ever-increasing tendency among English philosophers or +students of philosophy to employ a jargon often as merely technical as +the language of the schoolmen, and not seldom far emptier of any real +argument. It is not too much to say that if the rough methods of Hobbes +with a terminology far less fallacious, were employed with this jargon, +it would look much poorer than Bramhall's scholasticisms look in the +hands of the redoubtable Nominalist. Fortunately of late there have been +more signs than one of yet another turn of tide, and of a fresh appeal +to the _communis sensus_, not it may be hoped of the obstinately and +deafly exoteric character of the eighteenth century, but such as will +refuse to pay itself with words, and will exercise a judicious criticism +in a language understanded of all educated people. Then, and not till +then, we may expect to meet philosophy that is literature and literature +that is philosophic. + +Science, that is to say physical science, which has sometimes openly +boasted itself as about to take, and has much more commonly made silent +preparations for taking, the place both of philosophy and of theology, +will hardly be said by the hardiest of her adherents to have done very +much to justify these claims to seats not yet quite vacant from the +point of view of the purely literary critic. We have had some excellent +scientific writers, from Bishop Watson to Professor Huxley; and some of +the books of the century which would deserve remembrance and reading, +whatever their subject matter, have been books of science. Yet it is +scarcely rash to assert that the essential characteristics of science +and the essential characteristics of literature are, if not so +diametrically opposed as some have thought, at any rate very far apart +from one another. Literature can never be scientific; and though science +may be literary, yet it is rather in the fashion in which a man borrows +some alien vesture in order to present himself, in compliance with +decency and custom, at a foreign court. Mathematics give us the +example--perhaps the only example--of pure science, of what all science +would be if it could, and of what it approaches, ever more nearly, as +far as it can. It is needless to say that the perfect presentation of +mathematics is in pure symbols, divested of all form and colour, of all +personal tincture and bias. And it should be equally superfluous to add +that it is in form and colour, in suggestion of sound rather than in +precise expression and sense, in personal bias and personal tincture, +that not merely the attraction but the very essence of literature +consists. + +By so much as verbal science or scholarship, which would seem to be more +especially bound to be literature, claims to be and endeavours to be +strictly scientific, by so much also necessarily does it divorce itself +from the literature which it studies. This, if not an enormously great, +is certainly rather a sore evil; and it is one of the most considerable +and characteristic signs of the period we are discussing. The older +scholarship, though sufficiently minute, still clung to the literary +side proper: it was even, in the technical dialect of one of the +universities, opposed to "science," which word indeed was itself used in +a rather technical way. The invention of comparative philology, with its +even more recent off-shoot phonetics, has changed all this, and we now +find "linguistic" and "literary" used by common consent as things not +merely different but hostile, with a further tendency on the part of +linguistics to claim the term "scholarship" exclusively for itself. + +This could hardly in any case be healthy. What may be the abstract value +of the science, or group of sciences, called philology, it is perhaps +not necessary here to inquire. It is sufficient to say that it clearly +has nothing to do with literature except in accidental and remote +applications, that it stands thereto much as geology does to +architecture. Unfortunately, while the scientific side of scholarship is +thus becoming, if it has not become, wholly unliterary, the aesthetic +side has shown signs of becoming, to far too great an extent, +unscientific in the bad and baneful sense. With some honourable +exceptions, we find critics of literature too often divided into +linguists who seem neither to think nor to be capable of thinking of the +meaning or the melody, of the individual and technical mastery, of an +author, a book, or a passage, and into loose aesthetic rhetoricians who +will sometimes discourse on AEschylus without knowing a second aorist +from an Attic perfect, and pronounce eulogies or depreciations on Virgil +without having the faintest idea whether there is or is not any +authority for _quamvis_ with one mood rather than another. Nor is it +possible to see what eirenicon is likely to present itself between two +parties, of whom the extremists on the one side may justly point to such +things as have here been quoted, while the extremists on the other feel +it a duty to pronounce phonetics the merest "hariolation," and a very +large part of what goes by the name of philology ingenious guesswork, +some of which may possibly not be false, but hardly any of which can on +principles of sound general criticism be demonstrated to be true. It is +not wonderful, though it is in the highest degree unhealthy, that the +stricter scholars should be more or less scornfully relinquishing the +province of literary criticism altogether, while the looser aesthetics +consider themselves entitled to neglect scholarship in any proper sense +with a similarly scornful indifference. + +It is, however, impossible that offences of this sort should not come +now and then in the history of literature, and fortunately, in that +history, they disappear as they appear. For the present purpose it is +more important to conclude this conclusion with a few general remarks on +the past, fewer on the present, and fewest of all on the future. + +On this last head, indeed, no words were perhaps even better than even +fewest; though something of the sort may be expected. Rash as prophecy +always is, it is never quite so rash as in literature; and though we can +sometimes, looking backward, say--perhaps even then with some +rashness--that such and such a change might or ought to have been +expected, it is very seldom that we can, when deprived of this +illegitimate advantage, vaticinate on such subjects with any safety. Yet +the study of the present always, so to speak, includes and overlaps +something of the future, and by comparison at least of other presents we +can discern what it is at least not improbable that the future may be. +What, then, is the present of literature in England? + +It can be described with the greater freedom that, as constantly +repeated, we are not merely at liberty _ex hypothesi_ to omit references +to individuals, but are _ex hypothesi_ bound to exclude them. And no +writer, as it happens rather curiously, of anything like great promise +or performance who was born later than the beginning of the fifties has +died as yet, though the century is so near its close. Yet again, all the +greatest men of the first quarter of the century, with the single +exception of Mr. Ruskin, are gone; and not many of the second remain. By +putting these simple and unmistakable facts together it will be seen, in +a fashion equally free from liability to cavil and from disobliging +glances towards persons, that the present is at best a stationary state +in our literary history. Were we distinctly on the mounting hand, it is, +on the general calculation of the liabilities of human life, certain +that we must have had our Shelley or our Keats side by side with our +Wordsworth and our Coleridge. That we have much excellent work is +certain; that we have much of the absolutely first class not so. And if +we examine even the good work of our younger writers we shall find in +much of it two notes or symptoms--one of imitation or exaggeration, the +other of uncertain and eccentric quest for novelty--which have been +already noted above as signs of decadence or transition. + +Whether it is to be transition or decadence, that is the question. For +the solution of it we can only advance with safety a few considerations, +such as that in no literary history have periods of fresh and first-rate +production ever continued longer than--that they have seldom continued +so long as--the period now under notice, and that it is reasonable, it +is almost certain, that, though by no means an absolutely dead season, +yet a period of comparatively faint life and illustration should +follow. To this it may be added as a consideration not without +philosophical weight that the motives, the thoughts, the hopes, the +fears, perhaps even the manners, which have defrayed the expense of the +literary production of this generation, together with the literary forms +in which, according to custom, they have embodied and ensconced +themselves, have been treated with unexampled, certainly with +unsurpassed, thoroughness, and must now be near exhaustion; while it is +by no means clear that any fresh set is ready to take their place. It is +on this last point, no doubt, that the more sanguine prophets would like +to fight the battle, urging that new social ideas, and so forth, _are_ +in possession of the ground. But this is not the field for that battle. + +In dealing with what has been, with the secular hour that we have +actually and securely had, we are on far safer, if not on positively +safe ground. Here the sheaves are actually reaped and brought home; and +if the teller of them makes a mistake, his judgment, and his judgment +only, need be at fault. Not all ways of such telling are of equal value. +It may be tempting, for instance, but can hardly be very profitable, to +attempt to strike an exact balance between the production of the century +from 1780 to 1880 with that of the other great English literary century +from 1580 to 1680. Dear as the exercise is to some literary accountants, +there is perhaps no satisfactory system of book-keeping by which we can +really set the assets and the liabilities of the period from the +appearance of Spenser to the death of Browne against the assets and +liabilities of that from the appearance of Burns to the death of +Tennyson, and say which has the greater sum to its credit. Still more +vague and futile would it be to attempt to set with any exactness this +balance-sheet against that of the other great literary periods of other +countries, languages, and times. Here again, most emphatically, accuracy +of this kind is _not_ to be expected. + +But what we can say with confidence and profit is that the nineteenth +century in England and English is of these great periods, and of the +greatest of them; that it has taken its place finally and certainly, +with a right never likely to be seriously challenged, and in a rank +never likely to be much surpassed. + +The period which lisped its numbers in Burns and Blake and Cowper, which +broke out into full song with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, +Shelley, and Keats, which, not to mention scores of minor singers, took +up the tale with Tennyson and Browning and passed it on to Arnold, +Rossetti, Mr. Morris, and Mr. Swinburne, need fear no comparisons in the +matter of poetry. In prose fiction, as we have seen, it stands alone. It +is almost a century of origins as regards the most important kinds; it +is quite a century of capital and classical performance in them. In +"making"--prose or verse--no time leaves record of performance more +distinguished or more various. + +That in one great literary kind, drama, it exhibits lamentable +deficiency, that indeed in that kind it hardly counts at all, has been +admitted; and it is not probable that in any of the serious prose kinds, +except history, it will ever rank very high when compared with others. +Its theology has, as far as literature is concerned, been a little +wanting in dignity, in finish, and even in fervour, its philosophy +either commonplace or jargonish, its exercises in science and +scholarship ever divorcing themselves further from literary ideals. But +in the quality of its miscellaneous writing, as well as in the +facilities given to such writing by its special growth--some would say +its special fungus--of the periodical, it again rises to the first +class. Hardly the period of Montaigne and Bacon, certainly not that of +Dryden, Cowley, and Temple, nor that of Addison and Steele, nor that of +Johnson and Goldsmith, can vie with the century of Charles Lamb and +William Hazlitt, of Leigh Hunt and Thomas de Quincey, of Macaulay and +Thackeray and Carlyle, of Arnold and Mr. Ruskin. Miscellaneous we have +been,--perhaps too much so,--but we should be a little saved by the +excellence of some of our miscellanists. + +Pessimists would probably say that the distinguishing and not altogether +favourable notes of the century are a somewhat vagabond curiosity in +matter and a tormented unrest of style. The former concerns us little, +and is chiefly noticeable here because of the effect which it has had on +the great transformation of historical writing so often noticed; the +latter concerns us intimately. And no doubt there is hardly a single +feature--not even the growth of the novel, not even the development of +the newspaper--which will so distinctly and permanently distinguish this +century in English literary history as the great changes which have come +over style, and especially prose style. There has been less opportunity +to notice these collectively in any of the former chapters than there +has been to notice some other changes: nor was this of much importance, +for the present is the right place for gathering up the fragments. + +The change of style in prose is undoubtedly as much the leading feature +of the century as is in poetry the change of thought and outlook, on +which latter enough perhaps has been said elsewhere; the whole of our +two long chapters on poetry being indeed, with great part of this +conclusion, a continuous exposition of it. But the change in prose was +neither confined to, nor specially connected with, any single department +of literature. Indirectly indeed, and distantly, it may be said to have +been connected with the growth of the essay and the popularity of +periodicals; and yet it is not quite certain that this was anything more +than a coincidence due to the actual fact that the first extensive +practitioners of ornate prose, Wilson and De Quincey, were in a way +journalists. + +That the sudden ornateness, in part a mere ordinary reaction, was also +in part due to a reflection of the greater gorgeousness of poetry, +though it was in itself less a matter of thought than of style, is true. +But literary reactions are always in part at least literary +developments; and after the prose of Burke and Gibbon, even after that +of Johnson, it was certain that the excessive plainness reached in the +mid-eighteenth century would be exchanged for something else. But it +could not possibly have been anticipated that the change would exhibit +the extent or the variety that it has actually shown. + +That it has enriched English literature with a great deal of admirable +matter is certain; that it has not merely produced a great deal of sad +stuff, but has perhaps inflicted some permanent or at least lasting +damage on the purity, the simplicity, and in the best sense the strength +of style, is at least equally certain. It is less easy to say whether it +is, as a movement, near its close, or with what sort of reaction it is +likely to be followed. On the one hand the indication of particular +follies and excesses may not seem decisive; for there is little doubt +that in all the stages of this _flamboyant_ movement--from De Quincey to +Carlyle, from Carlyle to Mr. Ruskin, from Mr. Ruskin to persons whom it +is unnecessary to mention--the advocates of the sober styles thought and +said that the force of extravagance could no further go, and that the +last outrages had been committed on the dignity and simplicity of +English. On the other hand there are signs, which are very unlikely to +deceive the practised critic, tending to show that the mode is likely to +change. When actual frippery is seen hanging up in Monmouth Street or +Monmouth Street's successors, when cheap imitations of fashionable +garments crowd the shop windows and decorate the bodies of the +vulgar--then the wise know that this fashion will shortly change. And +certainly something similar may be observed in literature to-day. +Cacophony jostles preciousness in novel and newspaper; attempts at +contorted epigram appear side by side with slips showing that the writer +has not the slightest knowledge of the classics in the old sense, and +knows exceedingly little of anything that can be called classic in the +widest possible acceptation of the term. Tyrannies cease when the +cobblers begin to fear them; fashions, especially literary fashions, +when the cobblers take them up. + +Yet the production of what must or may be called literature is now so +large, and in consequence of the spread of what is called education the +appetite so largely exceeds the taste for it, that it is not so easy as +it would once have been to forecast the extent and validity of any +reaction that may take place. + +If, without undue praising of times past, without pleading guilty to +the prejudices sometimes attributed to an academic education, and also +without trespassing beyond the proper limits of this book, it may be +permitted to express an opinion on the present state of English +literature, that opinion, while it need not be very gloomy, can hardly +be very sanguine. And one ground for discouragement, which very +especially concerns us, lies in the fact that on the whole we are now +_too_ "literary." Not, as has been said, that the general taste is too +refined, but that there is a too indiscriminate appetite in the general; +not that the actual original force of our writers is, with rare +exceptions, at all alarming, but that a certain amount of literary +craftsmanship, a certain knowledge of the past and present of +literature, is with us in a rather inconvenient degree. The public +demands quantity, not quality; and it is ready, for a time at any rate, +to pay for its quantity with almost unheard of returns, both, as the +homely old phrase goes, in praise and in pudding. And the writer, though +seldom hampered by too exact an education in form, has had books, as a +rule, too much with him. Sometimes he simply copies, and knows that he +copies; oftener, without knowing it, he follows and imitates, while he +thinks that he is doing original work. + +And worse than all this, the abundance of reading has created an +altogether artificial habit--a habit quite as artificial as any that can +ever have prevailed at other periods--of regarding the main stuff and +substance of literature. Much reading of novels, which are to the +ordinary reader his books, and his only books, has induced him to take +their standards as the standards of both nature and life. And this is +all the more dangerous because in all probability the writers of these +very novels have themselves acquired their knowledge, formed their +standards, in a manner little if at all more first-hand. We have nature, +not as Jones or Brown saw it for himself, but as he saw it through the +spectacles of Mr. Ruskin or of Jefferies; art, not as he saw it himself, +but as he saw it through those of Mr. Ruskin again or of Mr. Pater; +literary criticism as he learnt it from Mr. Arnold or from +Sainte-Beuve; criticism of life as he took it from Thackeray or from +Mr. Meredith. + +Something like this has occurred at least three times before in the +history of European literature. It happened in late Graeco-Roman times, +and all the world knows what the cure was then, and how the +much-discussed barbarian cleared the mind of Europe of its literary cant +by very nearly clearing out all the literature as well. It happened on a +much smaller scale, and with a less tremendous purgation, at the close +of the Middle Ages, when the world suddenly, as it were, shut up one +library and opened another; and at the end of the seventeenth and +beginning of the eighteenth century, when it shut both of these or the +greater part of them, and took to a small bookshelf of "classics," a +slender stock of carefully observed formulae and--common sense. + +What it will take to now, nobody can say; but that it will in one +fashion or another change most of its recent wear, shut most of its +recent books, and perhaps give itself something of a holiday from +literature, except in scholastic shapes, may be not quite impossible. +Another _Lyrical Ballads_ may be coming for this decade, as it came a +hundred years ago: all we can say is that it apparently has not come +yet. But whether it does come or does not, the moment is certainly no +bad one, even if chronology did not make it inviting, for setting in +order the actual, the certain, the past and registered production of the +century since the dawn of the great change which ended its vigil. The +historian, as he closes his record, is only too conscious of the +objections to omission that may probably be brought against him, and of +those of too liberal admission which certainly will be brought. It is +possible that for some tastes even this chapter may not contain enough +of _Tendenz_-discussion, that they may miss the broader sweeps and more +confident generalisations of another school of criticism. But the old +objection to fighting with armour which you have not proved has always +seemed a sound one, and has seldom failed to be justified of those who +set it at nought. Careful arrangement of detail and premiss, cautious +drawing of conclusions, and constant subjection of these conclusions to +that process of literary comparison which I believe to be the strongest, +the safest, the best engine of literary criticism altogether--these are +the things which I have endeavoured to observe here. It might have shown +greater strength of mind to reject a large number of the authors here +named, and so bring the matter into case for more extended treatment of +interesting individuals. But there is something, as it seems to me, a +little presumptuous in a too peremptory anticipation of the operations +of Time the Scavenger. The critic may pretty well foresee the operations +of the wallet-bearer, but he is not to dictate to him the particular +"alms for oblivion" which he shall give. As it used to be the custom for +a dramatic author, even though damned, to have his entrees at the +theatre, so those who have once made an actual figure on the literary +stage are entitled, until some considerable time has elapsed, to +book-room. They lose it gradually and almost automatically; and as I +have left out many writers of the end of last century whom, if I had +been writing sixty years since, I should doubtless have put in, many of +the first half of it whom I should have admitted if I had been writing +thirty years since, so in another generation others will no doubt +exercise a similar thinning on my own passed or pressed men. + +But few, however, I think, appear here without more or less right of +admission to the mind-map of the century's literature which a +well-furnished mind should at this moment contain. That such a mind-map, +quite irrespective of examinations and lecture-courses, and of literary +bread-study generally, is a valuable thing, I have no doubt. And I +think, without wishing to magnify mine office, that the general +possession of it might do something to counteract these disastrous +influences which have been referred to a little earlier. A man should +surely be a little less apt to take the pinchbeck poetry of his own day +for gold when he remembers the Della Cruscans and Sentimentalists, the +Montgomerys and the Tuppers; the terror-novel and the Minerva Press +should surely be useful skeletons to him at his feast of fiction in +kinds which it would be beyond my province to describe more +particularly. He will not clamour, as I have known very excellent +persons clamour, for the "raising of English to a new power" when he has +before him the long procession of ingenious jargonists whose jargon has +been in its turn hailed as a revelation and dismissed as an old song. +And he will neither overexalt the dignity of literature, nor be a +self-tormentor and a tormentor of others about its approaching decline +and fall, when he sees how constantly, how incessantly, the kissed mouth +has renewed its freshness, the apparently dying flower has shed seed and +shot suckers for a new growth. + + + + +INDEX + +(_It has been endeavoured in this Index to include the name (with dates) +of every author, and the title of every book, discussed in detail. But +in order to avoid unnecessary bulk, books and authors merely referred +to, as well as parts of books, are not usually given._) + + +_Academy_, 383 + +_Adam Bede_, 322 _sq._ + +_Adam Blair_, 194 + +_Age of Reason, The_, 30 _sq._ + +Ainsworth, Harrison (1805-82), 138, 139 + +Alison, Sir Archibald (1792-1867), 217, 218 + +Allingham, William (1824-89), 307 + +_Alton Locke_, 326 _sq._ + +_Ancient Law_, 358 + +_Ancient Mariner, The Rime of the_, 61-63 + +_Andromeda_, 325 + +_Anna St. Ives_, 39 + +_Annals of the Parish_, 140 + +_Anti-Jacobin_, 2 + +_Apologia pro Vita Sua_, 327, 368 + +Arnold, Matthew (1822-88), 15, 52, 281-287, 385-388 + +Arnold, Thomas (1795-1842), 223, 224 + +Ashe, Thomas, 1836-89, 313 + +_Asolando_, 271 _sq._ + +_Athenaeum_, 383 + +Atherstone, Edwin (1788-1872), 124 + +_Aurora Leigh_, 280 + +Austen, Jane (1775-1817), 43, 128-131 + +Austen, Lady, 4 + +Austin, John (1790-1859), 357, 358 + +Austin, Sarah (1793-1867), 358 + +Aytoun, William Edmonstoune (1813-65), 302-304 + + +Bage, Robert (1728-1801), 41, 42 + +Bagehot, Walter (1826-77), 383-384 + +Baillie, Joanna (1762-1851), 419, 420 + +Barbauld, Mrs. (1743-1825), 19, 62 + +_Barchester Towers_, 330 + +Barham, Richard Harris (1788-1845), 209, 210 + +_Barnaby Rudge_, 149 + +Barnes, William (1800-86), 118 + +Barry Cornwall, see Procter, B. W. + +Barrow, Sir John (1764-1848), 179 + +Barton, Bernard (1784-1849), 107 + +Baynes, Thomas Spencer (1823-87), 351 + +Beckford, William (1759-1844), 40, 41 + +Beddoes, Thomas Lovell (1803-49), 114-116 + +_Bells and Pomegranates_, 270 + +Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), 343, 344 + +_Biographia Borealis_, 201 + +Blackie, John Stuart (1809-95), 300 + +_Blackwood's Magazine_, 168 _sqq._ + +Blake, William (1757-1827), 1-3, 9-13 + +_Bleak House_, 150 + +Bloomfield, Robert (1766-1823), 107 + +_Bon Gaultier Ballads_, 303 + +Borrow, George (1803-81), 162, 163 + +Bowles, Caroline (1787-1854), 65, 124 + +Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850), 19, 105, 106 + +Brimley, George (1819-57), 383, 384 + +Bronte, Anne (1820-49), 319 + +Bronte, Charlotte (1816-55), 319-321 + +Bronte, Emily (1818-48), 315, 321 + +Brown, Dr. John (1810-82), 384 + +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1809-61), 276-281 + +Browning, Robert (1812-89), 90, 268-277 + +Bryant, Jacob (1715-1804), 405 + +Buckle, Henry Thomas (1821-62), 243, 244 + +Bulwer, see Lytton + +Burges, Sir James Bland (1752-1824), 48 + +Burke, 1, 7 + +Burney, Miss (1752-1840), 125 + +Burns, Robert (1759-96), 1-3, 9, 10, 13-18 + +Burton, John Hill (1809-81), 240 + +Burton, Sir Richard (1821-90), vi + +Byron, 6 + +Byron, Lord (1788-1824), 6, 75-81 + + +_Caleb Williams_, 32 _sq._ + +Calverley, Charles Stuart (1831-84), 314 + +Campbell, Mr. Dykes, 57 + +Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844), 92-94 + +Canning, George (1770-1827), 19 + +Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881), 232-240 + +Cary, Henry (1772-1844), 110 + +_Castle Rackrent_, 127 + +Chalmers, Thomas (1780-1847), 374, 375 + +Chambers, Robert (1802-71), 414 + +Chamier, Captain, 159 + +_Chartism_, 235 _sqq._ + +_Christabel_, 61-63 + +_Christian Year_, 362-364 + +"Christopher North," see Wilson, John + +Church, Richard (1815-90), 371 + +Churchill, 3, 5 + +_City of Dreadful Night, The_, 298 + +Clive, Mrs. Archer (1801-73), 302 + +_Cloister and the Hearth, The_, 332 + +Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819-61), 309, 310 + +Cobbett, William (1762-1835), 2, 168-172 + +Coleridge, Hartley (1796-1849), 51, 200-203 + +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834), 56-63 + +Coleridge, Sara (1802-52), 119 + +Collins, Charles Alston (1828-73), 333 + +Collins, Mortimer (1827-76), 307 + +Collins, Wilkie (1824-89), 333 + +Combe, William (1741-1823), 47 + +_Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, 100 + +_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, 145 _sq._ + +Congreve, 6 + +Conington, John (1825-69), 407, 408 + +_Cornhill Magazine_, 382 + +"Corn-Law Rhymer, The," see Elliott, Ebenezer + +Cornwall, Barry, see Procter, B. W. + +Cory, William, see Johnson, William + +Cottle, Joseph (1770-1853), 57 + +Cowper, William (1731-1800), 1-7 + +Coxe, Archdeacon, 252 _note_ + +Crabbe, George (1754-1832), 1-3, 7-9 + +Craik, Dinah Maria (1826-87), 336 + +_Cranford_, 335 + +Croker, Crofton (1798-1854), 141 + +Croker, John Wilson (1780-1857), 383 + +_Crotchet Castle_, 162 + +_Cruise upon Wheels, A_, 333 + +Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811), 42 + +Cunningham, Allan (1784-1842), 108 + +_Curiosities of Literature_, 179 + + +_Daniel Deronda_, 324 + +D'Arblay, Madame (1752-1840), 125 + +Darley, George (1795-1846), 114 + +Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-82), 412-414 + +Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802), 3, 19, 412 + +_David Copperfield_, 150 + +Davy, Sir Humphry (1778-1829), 410, 411 + +_Death's Jest-Book_, 115 + +"Della Crusca," see Merry + +"Delta," see Moir, D. M. + +De Quincey, Thomas (1785-1859), 194-198 + +Dickens, Charles (1812-70), 145-151 + +Digby, Kenelm, vi + +Disraeli, Benjamin (1804-81), 160, 161 + +Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848), 179 + +Dobell, Sydney (1824-74), 304-307 + +_Dombey and Son_, 149 + +Domett, Alfred (1811-87), 302 + +Doyle, Sir Francis (1810-88), 206 + +_Dramatis Personae_, 271 _sqq._ + +_Dream of Gerontius, The_, 367 + +Dryden, 5, 8 + +Dufferin, Lady (1807-67), 315 + +Dunbar, 9 + + +Edgeworth, Maria (1767-1849), 126-128 + +_Edinburgh Review_, 167 _sqq._ + +_Elia, The Essays of_, 182 + +Eliot, George, see Evans, Mary Ann + +Elliott, Ebenezer ("The Corn-Law Rhymer") (1781-1849), 110, 111 + +Ellis, George (1753-1815), 20 + +Emerson, 68 + +_Enoch Arden_, 265 + +_Eothen_, 241 + +_Epic of Women, The_, 295 + +_Esmond_, 152, 155 + +_Essays and Reviews_, 373 + +_Essays in Criticism_, 385 + +"Ettrick Shepherd," The, 100 + +Evans, Mary Ann (1819-80), 316, 321-324 + +_Examiner_, 98, 168 _sq._ + + +_Fazio_, 421 + +Ferguson, 15 + +Ferguson, Sir Samuel (1810-86), 302 + +Ferrier, James Frederick (1808-64), 351 + +Ferrier, Susan (1782-1854), 351 + +Finlay, George (1795-1875), 252 _note_ + +FitzGerald, Edward (1809-83), 207-209 + +Forster, John (1812-76), 242, 243 + +_Fortnightly Review_, 382 + +Foster, John (1770-1843), vi + +"Fraserians," The, 204 + +_Fraser's Magazine_, 168 _sqq._, 203 _sq._ + +_Frederick the Great, History of_, 235 _sqq._ + +Freeman, Edward Augustus (1823-92), 244, 245 + +_French Revolution, History of the_, 234 _sqq._ + +Frere, John Hookham, 19 + +Froude, James Anthony (1818-94), 246-252 + +Froude, Richard Hurrell (1803-36), 370 + + +Galt, John (1779-1839), 139-141 + +_Gamekeeper at Home, The_, 396 + +Gaskell, Mrs. (1810-65), 335 + +Gibbon, 1 + +Gifford, William (1756-1826), 19, 23-25 + +Gilpin, William (1724-1804), 46, 47 + +Glascock, Captain, 159 + +Godwin, William (1756-1836), 2, 32-37 + +Goldsmith, 1 + +Gray, 6 + +_Great Expectations_, 150 + +Green, John Richard (1837-83), 245, 246 + +Greenwell, Dora (1821-82), 316 + +Greville, Charles, vi + +Grosart, Dr., 52 _note_ + +Grote, George (1794-1871), 220-222 + +_Guy Livingstone_, 335 + + +Hake, Thomas Gordon (1809-94), 301 + +Hall, Captain Basil (1788-1844), 159 + +Hallam, Henry (1777-1859), 212-214 + +Hallam, Arthur Henry (1811-33), 299, 300 + +Hamilton, Sir William (1788-1856), 349-352 + +Hannay, James (1827-73), 383 + +_Hard Times_, 150 + +_Haunted and the Haunters, The_, 143 + +Hawker, Robert Stephen (1803-75), 118 + +Hayley, William (1745-1820), 3, 18, 19 + +Hayward, Abraham (1801-84), 383 + +Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), 34, 184-187 + +Head, Sir Edmund (1805-68), 206 + +Head, Sir Francis (1793-1875), 206 + +Headley, Henry (1765-88), 47, 106 _note_ + +Heber, Reginald (1783-1826), 110 + +Helps, Sir Arthur (1813-75), 384 + +Hemans, Mrs. (1793-1835), 112 + +_Henrietta Temple_, 161 + +_Heroes and Hero-Worship_, 235 _sq._ + +Hogg, James (1770-1835), 99-101 + +Hogg, T. J., 82 + +Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809), 38, 39 + +Hood, Thomas (1799-1845), 121-124 + +Hook, Theodore (1788-1841), 140, 141 + +Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-90), 294 + +Horne, Richard H. (1803-84), 117 + +Horne Tooke (1736-1812), 46 + +Houghton, Lord (Milnes, R. M.) (1809-85), 301, 302 + +_Household Words_, 379, 380 + +Hunt, Leigh (1784-1859), 81, 86, 88; + his verse and life, 98, 99; + his prose, 198-200 + +Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-95), 415, 416 + + +_Ideal of a Christian Church, The_, 371 + +_Idylls of the King_, 264, 265 + +_Imaginary Conversations_, 102 _sq._ + +_Imaginary Portraits_, 399 + +_Ingoldsby Legends, The_, 210 + +_In Memoriam_, 262, 263 + +_Ion_, 421 + +Irving, Edward (1792-1834), 375 + +_It is Never too Late to Mend_, 332 + + +James, G. P. R. (1801-60), 138, 139 + +Jameson, Mrs. (1794-1860), 397 + +_Jane Eyre_, 318 + +Jefferies, John Richard (1848-87), 396, 397 + +Jeffrey, Francis (1773-1850), 71, 172-176 + +Jerrold, Douglas (1803-57), 210 + +Johnson, S., 1, 6, 8 + +Johnson, William (1784-1864), 246 + +Jones, Ebenezer (1820-60), 307 + +Jones, Ernest (1819-68), 307 + +Jowett, Benjamin (1817-93), 374 + + +Keats, John (1795-1821), 86-91 + +Keble, John (1792-1866), 362-364 + +Kinglake, Alexander (1809-91), 241, 242 + +Kingsley, Charles (1819-75), 324-328 + +Kingsley, Henry (1830-76), 333, 334 + +Knowles, James Sheridan (1784-1862), 422 + +_Kubla Khan_, 61-63 + + +_Lady of Lyons, The_, 423 + +Lamb, Charles (1775-1834), 13, 33, 38, 181-184 + +Lancaster, Henry (1829-75), 384 + +Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, "L. E. L." (1802-38), 118, 119 + +Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864), 68, 101-104 + +_Latin Christianity, History of_, 220 + +_Latter-Day Pamphlets_, 235 _sqq._ + +Lawrence, Dr., 21 + +Lawrence, George Alfred (1827-76), 334, 335 + +_Lays of Ancient Rome_, 226, 227 + +_Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, 303 + +Lear, Edward (1812-88), 313, 314 + +Lee, the Misses, 45 + +Lever, Charles (1806-72), 158, 159 + +Levy, Amy (1861-89), 316 + +Lewes, George Henry (1817-78), 354, 355 + +Lewis, Sir George Cornewall (1806-63), 206, 207 + +Lewis, Matthew ("Monk") (1775-1818), 2, 44 + +Liddon, Henry Parry (1829-90), 371 + +_Life Drama, A_, 305 + +Lingard, John (1771-1851), 215 + +_Little Dorrit_, 150 + +Lloyd (the elder), 3 + +Lloyd, Charles (1775-1839), 181 + +Locker, Frederick (1821-95), 309, 310 + +Lockhart, John Gibson (1794-1854), 191-194; + his _Life of Scott_, 193 + +_London Magazine_, 168 _sqq._ + +Long, George (1800-79), 407 + +_Lyrical Ballads_, 48, 56 + +Lytton, the first Lord (1803-73), 142-145, 422, 423 + +Lytton, Edward Robert, first Earl of (1831-91), 310-312 + + +Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800-59), 34, 67, 68, 224-232 + +M'Crie, Thomas (1772-1835), 216, 217 + +Mackay, Charles (1814-89), 302 + +Mackenzie, 17, 18 + +Mackintosh, Sir James (1765-1832), 345 + +_Macmillan's Magazine_, 382 + +Maginn, William (1793-1842), 203-205 + +Mahon, Lord, see Stanhope + +Maine, Sir Henry J. S. (1822-88), 357, 358 + +Malone, Edmund (1741-1812), 47 + +Malthus, Thomas Robert (1766-1834), 46 + +Mangan, James Clarence (1803-49), 118 + +Manning, Henry Edward (1808-92), 370 + +Mansel, Henry Longueville (1820-71), 352-354 + +_Marius the Epicurean_, 400 + +Marryat, Frederick (1792-1848), 157, 158 + +Marston, Philip Bourke (1850-87), 294, 297 + +Marston, Westland (1819-90), 424 + +_Martin Chuzzlewit_, 149 + +Martineau, Harriet (1802-76), 163, 164 + +Mathias, Thomas James (1754?-1835), 20, 23, 25, 26 + +Maturin, Charles Robert (1782-1824), 125, 126 + +_Maud_, 263, 264 + +Maurice, Frederick Denison (1805-72), 354, 375 + +Maxwell, Sir William Stirling (1818-78), 252 _note_ + +_Melmoth the Wanderer_, 126 + +_Men and Women_, 271 _sq._ + +Merivale, Charles (1808-93), 240, 241 + +Merry, Robert ("Della Crusca") (1755-98), 19, 24 _note_ + +Mill, James (1773-1836), 345 + +Mill, John Stuart (1806-73), 344-349 + +Miller, Hugh (1802-56), 414, 415 + +Milman, Henry Hart (1791-1868), 219, 220 + +Milnes, R. M., see Houghton, Lord + +Minto, William (1845-93), 402 + +Mitford, Mary Russell (1787-1855), 164, 165 + +Mitford, William (1744-1827), 215 + +_Modern British Theatre_, 417 + +_Modern Painters_, 389 + +Moir, D. M. ("Delta") (1798-1851), 140 + +_Monk, The_, 44 + +Montgomery, James (1771-1854), 107 + +Montgomery, Robert (1807-55), 187 _note_ + +Moore, John (1729-1802), 2, 26-28 + +Moore, Thomas (1779-1852), 94-98 + +More, Hannah (1745-1833), 45 + +Morris, Mr., 90 + +Motherwell, William (1797-1835), 109 + +Movement, The Oxford, 342 _sq._ + +Munro, Hugh A. J. (1819-85), 408 + +_Music and Moonlight_, 295 + + +NAPIER, SIR WILLIAM (1785-1860), 212 + +_Newcomes, The_, 152, 155 + +Newman, John Henry (1801-90), 364-370 + +_Nicholas Nickleby_, 148 + +_Noctes Ambrosianae_, 188 + +Noel, Roden (1834-94), 312, 313 + +Norton, Mrs. (1808-77), 315 + + +_ODE on Intimations of Immortality_, 54 + +O'Keefe, John (1747-1833), 46, 418-419 + +_Old Curiosity Shop, The_, 149 + +Oliphant, Laurence, vi + +_Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_, 235 _sq._ + +_Oliver Twist_, 148 + +_Orion_, 117 + +O'Shaughnessy, Arthur (1844-81), 294-296 + +_Our Mutual Friend_, 150 + +_Our Village_, 164 + + +Paine, Thomas (1737-1809), 2, 30-32 + +Palgrave, Mr., 87 + +Palgrave, Sir Francis (1788-1861), 216 + +Palgrave, William Gifford (1826-88), 216 + +_Pall Mall Gazette_, 383 + +_Paracelsus_, 269, 270 + +_Past and Present_, 255, _sqq._ + +_Patchwork_, 309, 310 + +Pater, Walter H. (1839-94), 398-401 + +Pattison, Mark (1813-84), 373, 374 + +Paul, Mr. Kegan, 34 + +_Paul Ferroll_, 341 + +_Pauline_, 269 + +Peacock, Thomas Love (1785-1866), 161, 162 + +_Pelham_, 143 + +_Pendennis_, 152, 155 + +_Peter Plymley's Letters_, 177 + +_Peter's Letters_, 192, 194 + +_Philip Van Artevelde_, 119 + +_Pickwick Papers, The_, 146 + +Pindar, Peter, see Wolcot, John + +Planche, James R. (1796-1880), 423 + +_Plays on the Passions_, 419 + +_Poetical Sketches_, 10, 11 + +_Political Justice_, 32 _sq._ + +Pollock, Sir F. (1815-88), 207 + +Pope, 5, 7 + +Porson, Richard (1759-1808), 406, 407 + +Praed, Winthrop Markworth (1802-39), 121-124 + +_Praelectiones Academicae_, 364 + +Price, 26 + +_Pride and Prejudice_, 129 + +Priestley, 2, 26 + +_Princess, The_, 261, 262 + +Procter, Adelaide Anne (1825-64), 316 + +Procter, B. W. ("Barry Cornwall") (1790-1874), 109 + +_Prolegomena Logica_, 353 + +Prowse, W. J. (1836-70), 314 + +_Pursuits of Literature, The_, 25, 26 + +Pusey, Edward Bouverie (1800-82), 360-362 + +Pusey, Philip (1799-1855), 207 + +Pye, 19 + + +_Quarterly Review_, 168 _sq._ + + +Radcliffe, Mrs. (1764-1823), 2, 43, 44 + +_Ravenshoe_, 334 + +Reade, Charles (1814-84), 331-333 + +Reeve, Henry, vi + +_Renaissance in Italy, The_, 401 + +_Rights of Man, The_, 30 _sq._ + +_Rights of Woman, The_, 37, 38 + +_Ring and the Book, The_, 271 _sq._ + +Robertson, Frederick (1816-53), 376, 377 + +Robinson, H. Crabb, vi + +Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855), 91, 92 + +_Rolliad, The_, 20, 21 + +_Roman Poets of the Republic_, 408 + +_Rondeaux_, 21 + +Roscoe, William (1753-1831), 214 + +Rossetti, D. G. (1828-82), 97, 288-292 + +Rossetti, Miss (1830-94), 293, 294 + +Ruskin, John (1819), v, 388-397 + + +_Sartor Resartus_, 234 _sqq._ + +_Saturday Review_, 380, 381 + +Sayers, Dr. (1763-1817), 19, 45 + +_Sayings and Doings_, 141 + +_Schiller, Life of_, 233 _sqq._ + +Scots, the literary virtues of, 15; + poets in, 13-18, 108, 109 + +Scott, John (1730-83), 185 + +Scott, Michael (1789-1835), 160 + +Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832), 34, 63, 69-75, 131-138 + +Scott, William Bell (1811-90), 302 + +Seeley, Sir J. R. (1834-94), 252 note + +Sellar, William Young (1825-90), 408, 409 + +Senior, Nassau W. (1790-1864), 383 + +Seward, Miss (1747-1809), 19 + +Shairp, Principal (1819-85), 15 + +Shelley, Mrs. (1798-1851), 38 + +Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), 81-86 + +Skene, William Forbes (1809-92), 240 + +Smedley, Frank E. (1818-64), 337 + +Smedley, Menella Bute (1820-77), 316 + +Smith, Alexander (1830-67), 304-307 + +Smith, Sydney (1771-1845), 176-178 + +Smith, William Robertson (1846-94), 409, 410 + +Somerville, Mrs. (1780-1872), 411 + +_Songs of Innocence and Experience_, 11, 12 + +_Sordello_, 270 + +Southey, Robert (1774-1843), 3, 13, 63-69, 107, 110 + +_Spectator_, 380 + +Stanhope, Philip Henry, Earl (1805-75), 246 + +Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (1815-81), 372 + +Stephen, James Kenneth (1859-92), 314 + +Stephen, Sir James (1789-1859), 358 + +Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames (1829-94), 358 + +"Sterling Club," The, 206 _sq._ + +Sterling, John (1806-44), 205, 206, 300 + +_Sterling, Life of John_, 205, 235 _sqq._ + +Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-94), 338-341 + +_St. Leon_, 34, 36 + +_Story without an End, A_, 341 + +Strafford, 270 + +_Studies in the History of the Renaissance_, 398 _sqq._ + +Surtees, Robert (?-1864), 336 + +Swift, 6 + +Swinburne, Mr., 90 + +Symonds, John Addington (1840-93), 294, 401, 402 + +_Syntax, Dr._, 47 + + +_Tale of Two Cities, A_, 150 + +_Tales of a Grandfather_, 212 + +_Tamworth Reading-Room_, 369 + +Tannahill, Robert (1774-1810), 108 + +Taylor, Sir Henry (1800-86), 119-121 + +Taylor, Thomas (the Platonist) (1758-1835), 46 + +Taylor, William (of Norwich) (1765-1836), 45 + +Tennant, William (1784-1848), 109 + +Tennyson, Alfred (1809-92), 89, 90, 253-268 + +Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-63), 151-156 + +Thirlwall, Connop (1797-1875), 220-222 + +Thom, William (1789-1848), 109 + +Thomson, James (1834-82), 296-298 + +_Tracts for the Times_, 361 + +_Treasure Island_, 339 + +Trench, Richard Chenevix (1807-86), 300 + +Trollope, Anthony (1815-82), 329, 330 + +Trollope, Mrs. (1780-1863), 329 + +Trollope, Thomas Adolphus (1810-92), 329 + +Tupper, Martin Farquhar (1810-89), 299 + +Turner, Sharon (1768-1847), 215, 216 + +Twisleton, Edward (1809-74), 207 + +Tyndall, John (1820-93), 412 + +Tytler, Alexander (1747-1813), 217 + +Tytler, Patrick Fraser (1791-1849), 217 + +Tytler, William (1711-92), 217 + + +_Uncommercial Traveller, The_, 148 + +_Unto this Last_, 391 + + +_Vanity Fair_, 155 + +_Vathek_, 41 + +Venables, George S. (1811-88), 207 + +Vere, Sir Aubrey de (1788-1846), 111 + +_Verses and Translations_, 314 + +_Vestiges of Creation_, 414 + +_Virginians, The_, 155 + + +Wade, Thomas (1805-75), 113 + +Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths (1794-1852), 198 + +Wakefield, Gilbert (1756-1801), 405 + +Walpole, 1, 6 + +Ward, William George (1812-82), 371 + +_Waverley Novels, The_, 131-138 + +Wells, Charles Jeremiah (1800-79), 113 + +_Westward Ho!_ 326 _sq._ + +Whately, Richard (1787-1863), 355, 356 + +Whewell, William (1794-1866), 356 + +White, Henry Kirke (1785-1806), 107, 108 + +Whitehead, Charles (1804-62), 113 + +Whyte-Melville, Major (1821-78), 336, 337 + +Wilberforce, Samuel (1805-73), 371, 372 + +Williams, Helen Maria (1762-1827), 29, 30 + +Williams, Isaac (1802-65), 370, 371 + +Wilson, John (1785-1854), 188-191 + +Wolcot, John ("Peter Pindar") (1738-1819), 20, 21-23 + +Wolfe, Charles (1791-1823), 124 + +Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-97), 37, 38 + +Wordsworth, Dorothy (1771-1855), 50, 54 + +Wordsworth, William (1770-1850), 49-56 + + +_Yeast_, 326 _sq._ + +Young, Arthur (1741-1820), 2, 28, 29 + + +_Zeluco_, 26, 27, 28 + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Nineteenth Century +Literature (1780-1895), by George Saintsbury + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 31698.txt or 31698.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/9/31698/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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