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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Age of Tennyson, by Hugh Walker
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Age of Tennyson
+
+
+Author: Hugh Walker
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 29, 2011  [eBook #36274]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF TENNYSON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/ageoftennyson00walkiala
+
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES.
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. With an Introduction
+by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1579). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I.
+The Poets. Vol. II. The Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an Introduction
+by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN
+With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and Prose.
+Vol. II. The Drama. _8th Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. Canon J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A.
+With Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. _8th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. _8th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS. _10th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. _7th Edition,
+revised._
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By Professor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D.
+_12th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor HUGH WALKER. _9th Edition._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.2.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Handbooks of English Literature
+Edited by Professor Hales
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
+NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE & HOWE
+BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER AND CO.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+by HUGH WALKER, M.A.
+
+Professor of English Literature at St. David's College
+Lampeter
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.
+1921
+
+First Published, September, 1897.
+Reprinted, December, 1897; 1900, 1904, 1908, 1909, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The age of Tennyson is defined, for the purpose of the present volume, as
+extending from 1830 to 1870. The date selected as the beginning of the
+period needs no explanation; but perhaps the question may be asked why the
+age of Tennyson should be supposed to end more than twenty years before
+Tennyson died. The answer is twofold. First, I may plead the strong law of
+necessity. Sixty years, among the most fertile and varied in our literary
+history, could be compressed within the limits of a volume like the
+present only by completely changing the scale of treatment; and this again
+would have put it out of harmony with the other volumes of the series.
+But, secondly, about the year 1870 or before it there took place a change
+in the _personnel_ of literature, less complete perhaps than that which
+marked the beginning of the epoch, but still sufficiently remarkable.
+Among the historians, Macaulay was dead and Carlyle had done his work.
+Among the novelists, Dickens died in 1870, Thackeray seven years before,
+and Charlotte Brontë still earlier; while, though George Eliot survived
+till 1880, the only great work of hers which lies beyond the limits of the
+period is _Middlemarch_. Mill, who had been so long the dominant power in
+philosophy, died in 1873. The poets, Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold
+and Rossetti, survived. In poetry however Arnold's voice was by this time
+almost dumb. Browning continued to produce copiously; but after _The Ring
+and the Book_ his style changed, and changed decidedly for the worse.
+Tennyson changed too, but in his case there was some gain to balance what
+was lost. The best of the younger poets, like William Morris and
+Swinburne, clearly show the influence of new ideals. The old order was
+changing, and new ambitions were beginning to sway men's minds. In short,
+if by the age of Tennyson we mean the period during which the influences
+which formed Tennyson and his contemporaries were dominant, we find that
+it came to an end long before Tennyson's life closed.
+
+Tennyson and Browning, Arnold and Ruskin, therefore, have to be treated as
+survivors into a new period. But it is obviously undesirable to split a
+man's work in two; and consequently, though my period ends at 1870, I have
+included a sketch of the later work of these men as well. I have very
+rarely treated only a part of a man's work. I have preferred to leave
+wholly to my successor those writers who, though they had begun to write
+before 1870, seem on the whole to belong rather to the period still
+current.
+
+In the plan of this book I have tried to follow out as faithfully as
+possible the general idea of the series to which it belongs; and thus I
+have been led rather to emphasise the thought of the greater men than to
+concern myself about including notices of a great number of minor writers.
+In a period so prolific it has therefore been necessary to enforce a
+somewhat rigid law of exclusion. The law has been made especially rigid in
+the case of fiction; because there is nothing that bears the test of time
+so ill as bad or mediocre fiction.
+
+Variety is, after copiousness, the most striking feature of the period
+under review; and this variety somewhat obscures the operation of ruling
+principles and ideas. I have taken as my guide the conviction that the key
+to the period is to be found in its search for truth and its resolve to
+understand. We see this everywhere, in the development of science, in the
+inquiry into the causes of the growth and decay of nations, in the
+intellectual quality of the best poetry, in the analytical psychology of
+so much prose fiction. It is the reaction against the extreme romanticism
+of the revolutionary period. The writers of the Revolution sought to grasp
+truth by an act of faith. In the Victorian period emotion plays a less and
+logic a greater part. Or we may describe the change as a partial reversion
+to the spirit of the eighteenth century. The imaginative glamour of the
+romantic movement is not lost, but there is conjoined with it a juster
+appreciation of the clearness and precision and the logical coherency of
+the age of Pope. Next to the eighteenth century the age of Tennyson has
+been the most critical in our literature.
+
+I owe thanks to Professor Hales for his uniform courtesy and kindness in
+reading and considering my proofs, and for many valuable and helpful
+suggestions.
+
+H. W.
+
+  LAMPETER,
+    _July, 1897_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                PAGE
+
+  INTRODUCTION                                                     1
+
+  Depression after the Napoleonic struggle--Social
+  problems--Spread of democracy--Popular education--Rise of
+  periodical literature--Physical science--Tractarianism--
+  Pre-Raphaelitism.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I. THOMAS CARLYLE                                       12
+
+
+  CHAPTER II. POETRY FROM 1830 TO 1850. THE GREATER POETS:
+  TENNYSON AND BROWNING                                           36
+
+  Introduction--Tennyson's first period--Browning's first
+  period
+
+
+  CHAPTER III. THE MINOR POETS, 1830 TO 1850                      52
+
+  Mrs. Hemans and L. E. Landon--Charles Tennyson Turner--
+  Thomas Hood--Laman Blanchard--Praed--Lord Houghton--R. H.
+  Barham--Hartley Coleridge--Sara Coleridge--William
+  Motherwell--Henry Taylor--Philip James Bailey--R. H.
+  Horne--William Barnes--Mangan--Whitehead--Wade--Ebenezer
+  Jones.
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV. THE EARLIER FICTION                                 68
+
+  Introduction--Maginn--Lord Lytton--Disraeli--Ainsworth--G.
+  P. R. James--Marryat--Michael Scott--Warren.
+
+
+  CHAPTER V. FICTION: THE INTERMEDIATE PERIOD                     82
+
+  Dickens--Thackeray--The Brontës--Mrs. Gaskell.
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI. THE HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS                     109
+
+  Introduction--Macaulay--Thomas Arnold--Thirlwall--Grote--
+  Milman--Finlay--Neale--Merivale--Froude--Kinglake--
+  Buckle--Maine--Lockhart--Stanley--Minor Historians and
+  Biographers.
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII. THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY                           144
+
+  Keble--Newman--Pusey--Wilberforce--Maurice--F. W.
+  Robertson--Mark Pattison--Jowett--Mill--N. W. Senior--
+  J. E. Cairnes--Whewell--Sir W. Hamilton--Ferrier--Mansel--
+  Harriet Martineau--G. H. Lewes--Sir G. Cornewall Lewis--
+  Herbert Spencer.
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII. SCIENCE                                          175
+
+  Introduction--Lyell--Hugh Miller--Robert Chambers--Darwin--
+  A. R. Wallace.
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX. CRITICISM, SCHOLARSHIP, AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE    191
+
+  Introduction--J. P. Collier--Mrs. Jameson--J. O.
+  Halliwell-Phillipps--Helps--Ruskin--Matthew Arnold--Dr. John
+  Brown--Rands--George Borrow.
+
+
+  CHAPTER X. POETRY FROM 1850 TO 1870: THE INTELLECTUAL
+  MOVEMENT                                                       213
+
+  Introduction--Matthew Arnold--Clough--Tennyson--Robert
+  Browning--E. B. Browning--Edward FitzGerald.
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI. POETRY FROM 1850 TO 1870: THE PRE-RAPHAELITES;
+  THE SPASMODIC SCHOOL; MINOR POETS                              240
+
+  D. G. Rossetti--Christina Rossetti--W. E. Aytoun--Dobell--
+  Alexander Smith--Coventry Patmore--'Owen Meredith'--Lord de
+  Tabley--William Morris--Minor Poets.
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII. THE LATER FICTION                                 262
+
+  Introduction--George Eliot--Mrs. Henry Wood--D. M. Craik--
+  Charles Kingsley--Anthony Trollope--James Grant--
+  Whyte-Melville--Wilkie Collins--G. A. Lawrence--Charles
+  Reade--Conclusion.
+
+
+  CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                                            279
+
+  ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS                                   289
+
+  INDEX                                                          295
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The epoch of literature which opened about the year 1830 is perhaps best
+described, in the first place, by negatives. It is distinguished from the
+previous period, when the spirit which gave rise to the French Revolution
+was dominant, by the absence of certain characteristics then conspicuous.
+First and chiefly, it is distinguished by the failure of the hopes which
+at once produced and were produced by the Revolution. On the border-land
+between the two centuries literature was marked by buoyant and often
+extravagant expectation. Even pessimists like Byron were somewhat
+superficial in their pessimism. Byron looked upon the evils from which he
+and others suffered as due largely to the perversity of society. But this
+perversity might be cured, and if it were cured an earthly Elysium seemed
+a thing not wholly unreasonable to expect. To all who were animated by the
+spirit of Rousseau the problem, how to secure happiness, appeared almost
+identical with the comparatively simple one, how to remove obstructions.
+Nature unimpeded was perfect: it was the vain imaginings and evil
+contrivances of man that did the mischief. There were not wanting, even in
+the Revolutionary period, men who thought more deeply and who saw more
+clearly. The speculations of Malthus, destined afterwards, both directly,
+and still more through the impulse they gave to Darwin, to prove among the
+most influential of the century, showed that some, at least, of the roots
+of evil reached far deeper than the orthodox Revolutionists and
+speculators of the type of Godwin had imagined. The exhaustion of Europe
+after the great struggle with Napoleon brought dimly home to multitudes
+who knew nothing about and cared nothing for abstruse speculation a sense
+of the difficulty and complexity of social problems. Exaggerated
+expectations bring their own Nemesis in the shape of proportionate
+depression and gloom; and the men of the new era set themselves somewhat
+wearily and with little elasticity of spirit to climb the toilsome steep
+of progress. The way seemed all the rougher because they had hoped to win
+the summit by a rush. Failure left them in the mood of Cleopatra on the
+death of Antony,--
+
+            'There is nothing left remarkable
+  Beneath the visiting moon.'
+
+Hence in the beginning of the period there is on the part of all but the
+greatest a tendency to trifle. Sometimes even the greatest are not quite
+free from it; and in the early poetry of Tennyson we may detect evidence
+that the writer was as yet unmoved by any great interest.
+
+But, though it was not clear at the moment, sixty years of subsequent
+history make it manifest that the generation then beginning had great work
+to do. In the first place, it had to work out, not the ideal of the
+Revolution as conceived by the Revolutionists, but that in it which was
+vital, and which had given it the power to move Europe. Modern democracy,
+though its roots stretch farther into the past, has been, as a realised
+political system, the work of the Age of Tennyson. The process whereby
+democracy has become dominant in the West of Europe has been marked by no
+great political convulsion comparable to the French Revolution. Even on
+the Continent the movement which in 1848 shook so many thrones was
+trifling in comparison with it; and in England the agitations of the
+Reform Bill, of the Anti-Corn Law League, and even of the Chartists,
+either kept within the limits of the law or merely rippled the surface of
+social order. Nevertheless, the work done has been momentous. At the
+opening of the period we see political power placed by the first Reform
+Bill in the hands of the middle class; at its close, this power is by the
+operation of the second Reform Bill, logically completed by the third,
+transferred to the working class. If we believe at all in the influence of
+social circumstances upon literature, we must believe that great changes
+such as these have left their stamp upon it; and there is ample evidence
+that they have done so. Though Carlyle had little faith in popular
+government, his writings are everywhere influenced by the democratic
+movement. John Stuart Mill's works, and the whole literature of sociology,
+indicate how pressing the problem of the structure of society has been
+felt to be. Hood's _Song of the Shirt_, Mrs. Browning's _Cry of the
+Children_, Ebenezer Elliott's _Corn Law Rhymes_ and Kingsley's _Alton
+Locke_, are a few examples of the way in which the social, political and
+economic condition of the poor pressed upon the imaginative writers of the
+time. Others in earlier days had been interested too. No reader of the
+_Canterbury Tales_ can doubt that Chaucer was keenly alive to the state of
+all the grades of society. Shakespeare by a few vivid words in _King Lear_
+proves himself a humanitarian before humanitarianism became fashionable.
+Crabbe was the stern, and perhaps, after all, only half-truthful painter
+of humble life in the generation which had just closed. Burns gave to the
+peasant a citizenship in literature more sure than that conferred by
+Crabbe, because he knew from personal experience that the life hardest
+pressed by poverty need not be wholly sordid. The interest is not new, but
+it has become more universal and has grown in importance, and the
+proportion it bears to other things is changed. The political revolution
+brought this in its train. He who possesses power is sure of consideration
+and respect; and the classes which, to the Elizabethans, were the 'rascal
+multitude,' have for sixty years been struggling towards mastership, and
+have at last attained it.
+
+Among other results incident to this process, there has been a great
+change in the character of the audience appealed to by literature. That
+audience is now far wider than it ever before was. The spread of education
+through all classes has vastly increased the number of those who must and
+will read something. It was not till the year 1870 that the State took the
+great step which brought primary education fully under its control; but
+for many years before that date the elementary schools had been partially
+supervised by the State, and from the year 1851 one of the greatest men of
+letters of the time, Matthew Arnold, had laboured as an inspector in the
+cause of popular education. The movement for the education of women and
+for political equality between the sexes, if it has not added a new class
+of readers, has certainly tended to widen the range of interest among
+female readers.
+
+It would be rash to assert that this increase in the number of readers has
+been an unmixed benefit to literature. The proportion of those who have
+neither the culture nor the time and inclination to study serious books is
+probably greater now than at any former period. The taste of such persons
+is gratified by the mass of fiction and of periodicals which has grown and
+is still growing year by year, not only in absolute, but in relative
+quantity; and it cannot be considered satisfactory that growth is most
+vigorous just in those forms of literature which are least able to stand
+the test of time. It may be freely conceded that much of this growth would
+have taken place apart from any democratic movement or any extension of
+popular education; but nevertheless it has been stimulated by these
+causes.
+
+In respect of periodicals the change, as compared with even the generation
+immediately preceding 1830, has been very great. The _Edinburgh Review_
+was for some years the only great critical periodical in Britain. The
+_Quarterly Review_ was established to redress the political balance,
+shaken by the organ of the Whigs. A little later, _Blackwood's Magazine_
+gave scope to the fun and humour for which there was no place in the
+graver pages of its contemporaries. The _London Magazine_ and the
+_Westminster Review_ likewise did valuable service to literature and
+thought. But the great development of the magazines and critical journals
+has taken place during the last sixty years. In the course of it two
+tendencies have become manifest: first, a tendency to shorten the
+intervals of publication; and secondly, a tendency to multiply the organs
+of this periodical literature. The old quarterly has almost given place to
+the monthly magazine; the latter in its turn has had to abandon no small
+share of its province to the weekly journal; and recently the daily
+newspaper has been encroaching more and more upon the sphere of the
+weekly. Partly, no doubt, the change has been due to differentiation of
+function; partly too it has been brought about by impatience, and
+necessarily implies greater hurry and less mature consideration. The
+multiplication of organs has been equally remarkable. In early days a few
+magazines held the field alone; now their name is legion. One result is
+that there will probably never again be concentrated on a single paper as
+much talent and genius as we find in the early numbers of _Fraser's
+Magazine_. Another is that in ever growing ratio the literary talent of
+the age finds its outlet in the periodical. If Horace was right in his
+celebrated maxim, the change is not one to rejoice over.
+
+The increase of the magazines has influenced all literature, but
+especially fiction. It has greatly stimulated the demand, and it has
+changed the manner of publication. In earlier days a book was as a matter
+of course finished before the publication began. Chiefly by reason of the
+example of Dickens it became common to publish in parts; and the magazines
+have made this the normal rather than the exceptional form of publication,
+at least for authors of sufficient reputation to command an audience first
+in the periodical and afterwards when the parts are gathered into a
+volume. Lately there have been indications that this may come to be the
+mode of publication, not of fiction only, but of serious historical and
+biographical works as well.
+
+We see then that a large popular audience, the majority with little time,
+little money and little culture, is the environment in which the man of
+letters in these days has to live. For purposes of art it is neither the
+best nor the worst possible. It is not so good as that of the Elizabethan
+dramatists; for while many of the drawbacks are common to the two, there
+is wanting in this later time that living contact between author and
+public which invigorated almost every page written then. Still less is it
+equal to that of the golden age of Athens, when, as the commonest remains
+of art still indicate, the mere journey-work of the ordinary artisan
+proved the existence of culture in the man himself, and of culture
+generally diffused among those to whom his work appealed. In a less
+degree, but for similar reasons, it is inferior to the environment of the
+Italian Renaissance. On the other hand, it is better than patronage,
+whether individual or political, and better than the terrible struggle out
+of patronage through which Johnson passed. It is, in fact, the logical
+development of that freedom which Johnson's struggle won. But the kind of
+'natural selection' it implies is rough in its process and crude in its
+results. The popular audience nourishes and feeds fat a few classes who
+minister to its wants, but there are many others, in a literary sense
+nobler and more valuable, whom it barely enables to live. Darwin himself,
+though he made earthworms far more fascinating than many novelists can
+make the most romantic tale of love, could not have lived if he had been
+really subject to this competition. As late as the year 1870 Matthew
+Arnold was assessed for £1,000 a year; but the evidence satisfied the
+Commissioners that the assessment must be cut down to £200; and the author
+said that he must write more articles to prevent his being a loser even on
+the smaller sum. Browning's _Paracelsus_, _Sordello_ and _Bells and
+Pomegranates_ were all published at his father's expense and brought no
+return whatever. Edward FitzGerald, one of the greatest poets of the age,
+lived and died almost unknown, and is even now known to comparatively few.
+Tennyson alone among the greater poets of the time was really successful
+in the financial sense. Even in fiction there has been but little
+proportion between merit and remuneration. Dickens and George Eliot
+deserved and won success; Thackeray's reward was comparatively inadequate;
+and it is hardly probable that Mr. George Meredith ever received anything
+approaching the sums paid to not a few of the favourites of a day. Evils
+such as these--the accumulation of material rewards upon one class of
+writers, want of discrimination even within that class, and neglect, more
+or less complete, of others--must necessarily tend to cramp and fetter
+literature. They are not new; perhaps they have been as bad in former
+times; but at best we have done little or nothing towards finding a
+remedy.
+
+The development of physical science is another feature of the time plainly
+visible in its literature. It is needless to discuss its effect upon the
+material conditions of life; for that has been not only fully recognised,
+but its importance, for the present purpose, has been greatly exaggerated.
+Besides this however, the direct contributions of science to literature
+have been considerable, and some of them possess literary qualities rarely
+equalled among the scientific writings of past times. Moreover, science
+has so filled the minds and possessed the imagination of men that its
+indirect has been far greater than its direct influence. Whatever its
+ultimate creed may prove to be, science has certainly been in part
+responsible for the growth of a spirit of materialism, and has caused
+those who do not share that spirit to examine themselves and to remould
+their arguments. Science has therefore tended to depress and to give a
+tone of stoic resignation if not of pessimism to many who, without
+accepting materialistic opinions, have been affected by them.
+
+But in another way science has been an elevating and inspiring power. Its
+discoveries have stimulated men's minds, and have done more than anything
+else to rouse them from the lethargy consequent upon the apparent failure
+of the Revolution. They have profoundly influenced literature, both
+directly, and also through those philosophical and theological
+speculations which inevitably colour all poetry and all imaginative prose.
+The new facts of astronomy and geology have shaken many old theories and
+suggested many new ones; and the results of biological discovery have
+been still more striking. The transforming power upon thought of the
+theory of evolution may be measured by the fact that the majority even of
+those who dislike and deny Darwinian evolution still believe that there
+has been evolution of some kind. For thoughtful men, unless they are
+heavily fettered by preconceptions, the old view has become impossible;
+and no other except an evolutionary one has hitherto been even imagined.
+Here therefore there is a great unsettlement of popular ideas, and no
+little energy has been expended in fitting men's minds to the new
+conditions. Tractarianism, Pre-Raphaelitism, the satire, tempered with
+mysticism, of Carlyle, the idealistic optimism of Browning, and the
+creedless Christianity of Matthew Arnold, are all attempts to satisfy
+either the intellectual or the moral and artistic needs of modern times,
+and all show the influence of the scientific thought of the age.
+
+Some of these forces however have been in the main reactionary. Side by
+side with the movement of science, which has on the whole tended to
+positivism, agnosticism, and in a word to negative views of things
+spiritual, there has gone on a remarkable revival of conceptions
+diametrically opposed to these. The old narrow Protestantism of England
+was powerful enough to struggle against Catholic Emancipation until the
+delay became a danger to the state. Yet hardly was this act of justice
+done when the great reaction known as the Oxford Movement began. It was,
+as its consummate literary expression, the _Apologia_ of Newman, proves,
+the product of a double discontent,--a discontent, on the one hand, with
+that movement of science just spoken of; and a discontent, on the other
+hand, with what was felt to be the 'creed outworn' of English
+Protestantism. As against the latter it has achieved, among those who
+hungered for a more emotional religion, a wonderful success. As against
+the former its utter failure has been veiled only by that success.
+
+Kindred in spirit and almost contemporaneous in origin was the movement of
+the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. On the surface, this seems quite unrelated
+to Tractarianism; for while the Tractarians were all for dogma, the
+Pre-Raphaelites were indifferent to it. But both movements were in essence
+protests on behalf of the imaginative and æsthetic in human nature against
+the exclusive nourishment of the intellectual element; and they proved
+their kinship by each in its own way seeking to bring about a revival of
+Mediævalism. In this fact moreover we see wherein their value consisted.
+They fought a battle on behalf of aspects of the truth temporarily
+threatened with neglect. In so far as they asserted or implied the
+incompleteness of the scientific view of life they were almost wholly
+right. In so far as they asserted its positive falsity they were almost
+wholly wrong. The latter was however the error principally of the
+religious movement. The Pre-Raphaelites may have been wrong in many
+respects in their conceptions of art; but at least they generally confined
+themselves within their own domain.
+
+Both of these schools, though they differ in degree of guilt, are
+chargeable with the sin of 'rending the seamless garment of thought.' The
+Pre-Raphaelite, implicitly if not in words, teaches that there is an
+intellectual world _and_ an æsthetic world. The Tractarians not merely
+implied but insisted that there is a domain of reason _and_ a domain of
+authority.[1] Because of this fundamental error we must look for the main
+current of modern thought elsewhere; for if there is any one thing that
+modern philosophy unequivocally teaches, it is that all such divisions
+are unsound. And we find that all the greatest men of letters of the
+period are on this point in agreement with the philosophers. Carlyle,
+Browning, Matthew Arnold, Thackeray and George Eliot, all in various ways
+teach that art must not ignore the intellectual problem. Tennyson seemed
+for a time to hold aloof and to live in a lotos-land of artistic beauty,
+but he soon became restless, and all his greater works are charged with an
+intellectual as well as an artistic meaning. These men are not in all
+respects self-consistent. Browning in particular turned his back in his
+old age upon the principle which inspired his more youthful work. But in
+spite of inconsistencies he and the rest must all be classed as teaching,
+with the philosophers, the unity of intellectual and spiritual life, and
+the impossibility of ministering to the one without satisfying the other;
+and for this reason it is to them rather than to writers of more limited
+view that we must look for guidance in the labyrinth of contemporary
+life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE.
+
+
+Poetry is so clearly the head and front of literature that in most periods
+the first and chief attention must be paid to the poets. The Victorian age
+is an exception, at least as regards the order in which prose and poetry
+claim notice, and perhaps partly as regards their relative prominence. The
+man who first gives us a key to the significance of the age of Tennyson is
+not Tennyson himself, nor Browning, nor any writer of verse, but one who
+believed that the day of poetry was past,--Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).
+Considerably older than the poets, he had, notwithstanding his early
+difficulties, notwithstanding too the slow ripening of his own genius,
+made a name in literature and stamped his mark on his generation before
+either of them was widely known.
+
+Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan (the Entepfuhl of _Sartor Resartus_) in
+Dumfriesshire. He was educated first at the local schools, and afterwards
+at the University of Edinburgh, to which he refers in _Sartor_ as 'the
+worst of all hitherto discovered universities.' The purpose he had in view
+was to take the divinity course and enter the ministry of the Scottish
+Church. But this was rather the design of his parents than his own; as
+time went on 'grave prohibitive doubts' accumulated; and about the year
+1817 Carlyle definitely abandoned his purpose. He was already supporting
+himself by school-mastering, an occupation which grew more and more
+irksome, and which in turn was thrown up in December, 1818. For some time
+he drifted, oppressed by doubts and dyspepsia, until in 1821 occurred the
+one fact recorded in _Sartor Resartus_, the incident in the Rue St. Thomas
+de l'Enfer (Leith Walk), wherein Carlyle, shaking off his doubts, stands
+up and confronts the Everlasting No and its claim, 'Behold, thou art
+fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's),' with the
+answer, '_I_ am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee.' This he ranks
+as his 'spiritual new birth;' and as such it ought to receive attention in
+any account, however brief, of a life which was mainly inward and
+spiritual.
+
+But spiritual regeneration could not supply the need of daily bread.
+Carlyle supported himself partly by the tutorship of private pupils, a
+form of teaching less distasteful to him than his school work had been. He
+was at the same time studying hard and reading widely, in French, Italian,
+Spanish, and afterwards in German, as well as in English, and was slowly
+gravitating towards the profession of literature. He contributed articles
+to Brewster's _Encyclopædia_. Through Edward Irving, who had been for
+several years a generous friend, he was introduced to Taylor, the
+proprietor of the _London Magazine_, who published for him the _Life of
+Schiller_. About the same time the translation of _Wilhelm Meister_ was
+issued through the agency of an Edinburgh publisher.
+
+Carlyle's marriage occurred in 1826, and he was for a short time happy.
+But there still remained difficulties of finance as well as difficulties
+of temper. Literary occupation did not prove either as easy to get or as
+remunerative as Carlyle had hoped. His _German Romance_ was financially a
+failure, and publishers were on that account the less disposed to
+consider his books. He made unsuccessful attempts to find employment as a
+professor, first in the London University, and again at St. Andrews. He
+had lived since his marriage at Comely Bank, but had cherished more or
+less all the time the purpose of retiring to his wife's farm of
+Craigenputtock, a solitary moorland place in Dumfriesshire. Moved probably
+by these disappointments, he carried out his purpose in 1828. 'Hinaus ins
+freie Feld,' to escape that necessity which 'makes blue-stockings of
+women, magazine hacks of men,'--this had been the impulse which drove him
+thither. In less than four months it was 'this Devil's den,
+Craigenputtock.' But 'this Devil's den' was his home from 1828 to 1834,
+and, whatever doubts may be entertained as to the wisdom and kindness of
+Carlyle in taking his wife there, if we judge by the result, we must
+pronounce that he did what was best for his own literary development. It
+was during those years that Carlyle grew to his full intellectual stature.
+There and then were composed a great number of his essays; notably, among
+the literary class, the essay on Burns, written at the beginning of the
+Craigenputtock period, and, among the historical class, _The Diamond
+Necklace_, written near the end. There too was written that autobiography
+of 'symbolical myth' which, after being hawked in vain from one publisher
+to another, at last appeared piecemeal in _Fraser's Magazine_. There too
+the _French Revolution_ was, not indeed written, but planned and brooded
+over; and it was with a mind already full of the subject that Carlyle in
+1834 made his migration to London, his home for the rest of his life. His
+character, moral and literary, was now formed; all the influences
+subsequently brought to bear upon it were of subordinate importance; and
+though in length of years the future period exceeded the period past, it
+may be briefly dismissed.
+
+The _History of the French Revolution_, delayed though it was by the
+accidental burning of the manuscript of the first volume, was finished in
+January, 1837, and published shortly afterwards. It was the turning point
+in Carlyle's literary life. Hitherto it had been a long, hard, almost
+fierce struggle; but the _History_ at once established him as one of the
+foremost men of letters of his day. Success came none too soon. His
+resources were all but exhausted, and, like his countryman Burns, so close
+to him in some of the circumstances of his early life, he contemplated
+emigration to America. From this he was saved by the project, devised by
+Harriet Martineau, which produced his lectures on German literature. The
+popularity of the _History_ reacted on his earlier works; publishers
+sought him instead of waiting to be approached; a proposal was made for
+republishing even _Sartor_; and for the future Carlyle was sure, at any
+rate, of a competence. His next work of moment was _Chartism_ (1839),
+written with a view to publication in the _Quarterly Review_. It was
+declined by Lockhart, but in such a way that the author and the editor
+retained for the future a strong mutual regard. In the year following
+Carlyle delivered the last of his courses of lectures, afterwards (1841)
+printed as _Heroes and Hero-Worship_. He was already deep in study for his
+_Cromwell_, and finding, as usual, great difficulty in beginning. Very
+different was his experience with _Past and Present_. This book, inspired
+by the same sense of social evils to which we owe _Chartism_, 'was written
+off with singular ease in the first seven weeks of 1843.' _Cromwell_ was
+not finished till 1845. It was no sooner out than Carlyle began to think
+of _Frederick_; but of all the long 'valleys of the shadow' of his
+literary life, that was the longest. Before it took shape there appeared
+his _Latter-Day Pamphlets_ (1850), of which the celebrated paper on _The
+Nigger Question_ was the precursor. The _Life of Sterling_ (1851) is a
+strange contrast in tone and temper; for while the _Pamphlets_ are among
+the most violent of Carlyle's writings, the _Life of Sterling_ is one of
+the calmest. It was not until after the publication of _Sterling_ that he
+seriously took to _Frederick the Great_, which had hitherto been only a
+project floating in his mind with many others. He visited Germany to see
+the scenes with which he had to deal and to gather materials. The first
+and second volumes were published in 1858, and the third followed in 1862.
+In the interval Carlyle had visited Germany a second time. _Frederick_,
+finished in January, 1865, set the seal on Carlyle's reputation as the
+head of the literature, at least the prose literature, of his time. It was
+also practically the end of his literary career. The world was ready to
+shower honours upon him. He was chosen Rector of the University of
+Edinburgh; but the triumph of his great inaugural speech was dashed almost
+immediately by the news of the sudden death of his wife. He wrote one or
+two minor articles, such as _Shooting Niagara_, and left the vivid and
+interesting, but frequently uncharitable, _Reminiscences_. With such
+exceptions, he lived henceforth, till his death on the 5th of February,
+1881, the quiet, retired life of a man whose work was done.
+
+This man, so long neglected, was during a considerable part of his life,
+and especially in the years between the publication of the _Frederick the
+Great_ and his death, the greatest literary force in England. The reasons
+which ultimately secured for him this power are in part just the reasons
+which so long stood in the way of his advancement. He was eminently
+original in his matter, and perhaps even more in his style. But there is
+always some difficulty in appraising the value of originality; and the
+difficulty is all the greater when the originality is defiant and even
+borders on eccentricity. To a great extent Carlyle's early struggles were
+necessary because no party, creed or faction could attach him to itself or
+claim him as its champion. Every party in turn found it possible to assent
+to his negations, yet each in turn had to disapprove of what he affirmed.
+In politics, how could such an explosive force work in harmony with
+orthodox Toryism? He was constantly ridiculing and denouncing a mere
+fox-hunting and partridge-shooting aristocracy. 'Si monumentum quaeris,
+fimetum adspice.' On the other hand, if the Radicals thought they had his
+sympathy, they soon found that the gulf between him and them was even
+wider, if possible, than that which separated him from their opponents. It
+was the disclosure of this gulf which led to the breach with their best
+man, and one of his best friends, Mill. They believed almost wholly in the
+machinery of government, and he believed in it not at all. They were
+economists, and he denounced economics as a mere pretended science. They
+believed in government by majorities, and he considered it 'the most
+absurd superstition which had ever bewitched the human imagination--at
+least, outside Africa.' Again, he would admit no accepted theological
+creed, and was consequently looked on askance by the accredited leaders of
+religion. Anything like superstition he abominated. Newman, he thought,
+had 'not the intellect of a moderate-sized rabbit.' On the other hand, he
+had no sympathy with the liberal party of the Church of England. He
+condemned the writers of _Essays and Reviews_. He respected Thirlwall, but
+wished him anywhere but where he was. 'There goes Stanley,' said he of a
+man whom he personally liked, 'boring holes in the bottom of the Church of
+England.' He thought Arnold of Rugby fortunate in being taken away before
+he was forced to choose between an honest abandonment of an untenable
+position and a trifling with his own conscience. He liked best the
+clergymen who could still honestly and literally and without misgiving
+accept the Prayer Book, but he did not respect their intellect. Again, if
+he did not like the 'liberals' within the Church, he liked still less the
+liberals outside it. However much he dissented from the champions of
+belief, he dissented still more from the apostles of unbelief. He had a
+faith, though not a creed. Separated thus from the orthodox by what he did
+not believe, and from the heterodox by what he believed, from one
+political party because he saw it would be fatal to remain inactive and
+leave _ill_ alone, and from the other because he was convinced that
+movement in the direction they desired would be futile or worse, Carlyle
+stood alone. He had to create his own party, and the process was
+necessarily a slow one. But the very cause which made the work slow made
+it also great when it was accomplished.
+
+One aspect of Carlyle's work not always duly recognised is its
+concentration of purpose. Superficially viewed, it has the appearance of a
+heterogeneous miscellany. Essays, literary, historical and mixed,
+biographies and mythical autobiography, histories drawn from different
+centuries and different peoples, idealised pictures of the past, and
+fierce pamphlets, not at all idealised, on questions emphatically of the
+present, succeed each other in his volumes. The very records of his
+literary life help to confirm this impression. No sooner has he finished
+one important work than he casts about to discover a subject for another.
+He makes no nation and no century specially his own, as it is the custom
+of the modern historian to do. In his longer works he jumps from the
+French Revolution to Cromwell, and from Cromwell to Frederick the Great.
+He seems to have been turned to the second subject almost by accident. He
+had been asked by Mill to write on Cromwell in the _London and
+Westminster Review_. 'There is nothing,' says his biographer, 'in his
+journals or letters to show that Cromwell had been hitherto an interesting
+figure to him.' The projected magazine article was turned into a book
+through the impertinence of Mill's substitute, who in the absence of his
+superior wrote to Carlyle that he 'need not go on, for "he meant to do
+Cromwell himself."' The choice of Frederick seems to have been hardly less
+fortuitous, and in itself it was more surprising than the choice of
+Cromwell.
+
+Yet under this diversity it is always possible to detect a unity both of
+purpose and of effect. In the first place, there is the unity of Carlyle's
+own character. Everything he wrote was self-revealing; and it is scarcely
+too much to say that his whole works are an expansion and, as
+circumstances demanded, a modification, of the autobiographic _Sartor
+Resartus_. We see this in many ways. Carlyle is best when the conditions
+under which he works are such as to allow himself to appear freely,
+naturally, spontaneously, without fierce invectives and exaggeration.
+This, in his case, generally implies similarity without personal contact,
+or with contact from which the aspect of possible competition is removed.
+He is worst of all where there is a partial similarity without sympathy.
+Thus, the best perhaps of Carlyle's literary essays is that on Burns; and
+the reason why it is best is that Burns was in some ways so like himself.
+Both sprang from the Scottish peasantry, and the minds of both were deeply
+coloured by the experiences of their early youth. In writing of Burns and
+his father, Carlyle never forgets himself and his own father. On the other
+hand, the essay on Scott is certainly among the worst of his essays, just
+because Scott is at once too near to him and too far from him. Scott
+belonged to a different class in society, pursued different aims, and had
+a widely different literary history from Carlyle. Yet both were Scotch,
+and in the blood which they inherited as well as in the mental and moral
+food on which they were nourished there was much to bring them together.
+The same contrast is illustrated by the _Reminiscences_. There, every
+reference to his own family is distinguished by clear comprehension and
+profound sympathy; while, unfortunately, nearly every reference to
+contemporaries not related to him by blood is disfigured by acrimony and
+depreciation. In the _Life of Sterling_ friendship performs the function
+which blood-relationship performs in the _Reminiscences_. The essays on
+foreign writers, both French and German, deal with men much farther
+removed from Carlyle than Scott was; and if they have not that depth of
+sympathy and that fineness of perception which are the charm of the essay
+on Burns, they are free from the bitterness and ungenerous depreciation
+which mar the essay on Scott. Take, for example, Carlyle's treatment of
+Goethe. In many ways the great German was almost as far removed as it was
+possible to be from his Scotch disciple. Yet Carlyle's comprehension is
+clear, his appreciation ready, his criticism wise. We see himself in it
+all, but just because of their wide differences his own image never blurs
+that of Goethe.
+
+It will be found that the principle underlying Carlyle's choice of
+historical themes was similar. He was bound to reveal _himself_; but
+Carlyle's _self_ was a particular view of the universe. His subject
+therefore must illustrate this. He was naturally attracted to the French
+Revolution. It is the greatest movement of recent history; and Carlyle
+invariably sought for lessons for the present. It dealt the death-blow to
+many shams and hypocrisies; and Carlyle waged a life-long war against
+these. While its creed was the equality of men, no great movement has
+ever more vividly illustrated their great and inevitable inequality; and
+Carlyle rejoiced to see the truth assert itself in spite of the
+prepossessions of a victorious mob, and rejoiced to point to the
+confirmation of his own favourite doctrine. Again, though Cromwell seems
+to have been brought to his mind almost by chance, the points of contact
+between the hero and his historian are sufficiently obvious. Cromwell's
+strength, his thoroughness, his roughness, his veracity, his piety, all
+contributed to endear him to Carlyle. The 'Calvinist without the theology'
+was fundamentally in sympathy with the great English Puritan. His boyhood
+and early training fitted him, better perhaps than any other training of
+the nineteenth century could possibly have done, to sympathise with the
+opinions of the Puritan of the seventeenth. It was the instinct which
+draws like to like that made him welcome the first suggestion of Cromwell
+as a subject; just as the same instinct made him afterwards ponder upon
+Knox as another possible subject.
+
+The choice of Frederick is certainly that which requires most explanation,
+for in many ways his character seems strangely foreign to anything likely,
+_a priori_, to attract Carlyle. Complete explanation is perhaps not
+possible, but partial explanation certainly is. We must remember Carlyle's
+worship of force. He had been preaching all his life a form of the
+doctrine, might is right; and, as was usual with him, the doctrine had
+grown more extreme under contradiction and opposition. Thus we have the
+_Nigger Question_ and the _Iliad in a Nutshell_. There is an element of
+truth in the doctrine, and under Carlyle's original application of it
+there had been a well-marked moral foundation, so that it could have been
+in many cases altered to read, 'right is might.' He meant not merely that
+'Providence is on the side of the heaviest battalion,' but quite as much
+that the battalion is heaviest because Providence is on its side. In
+other words, he believed that the forces of the universe are moral forces
+and that true and permanent success mean being in harmony with them. As
+time went on however the qualifications were gradually stripped off, and
+latterly what Carlyle worshipped was little better than naked force. Now,
+in all the eighteenth century he could hardly have found a better example
+of successful force than Frederick. Destitute as he was of the piety of
+Carlyle's previous hero, he was at least an eminently successful governor,
+and Carlyle respected nothing so much as the faculty for the genuine
+government of men, not what he would have called sham government, the kind
+of government which follows while it seems to lead. If Frederick had not
+created a state, he had raised it from a position bordering on
+insignificance to one not far from the front in the European system.
+Moreover, this state was peculiarly interesting to Carlyle, for he saw in
+Prussia the future head of Germany, and in Germany a possible leader of
+Europe. These reasons induced him to turn to Frederick, and perhaps
+tempted him to clothe Frederick with attributes which were not all his.
+For the method of hero-worship has its dangers, and only prejudice would
+assert that the great hero-worshipper, keen as was his insight into
+character, has wholly escaped those dangers.
+
+It was through these barriers, the barriers of an original and not
+infrequently eccentric genius, and of a personality strange and uncouth to
+the majority of his readers, that Carlyle had to fight his way to fame. It
+is true that at first the uncouthness and eccentricity were less
+prominent. The style of his earliest writings--the _Life of Schiller_ for
+example--is simple and almost limpid; the arrangement is orderly, the
+development obeys the rules of a logic easily comprehended. But Carlyle
+speedily worked his way out of this style, and seldom used it afterwards.
+_Sartor Resartus_, the great product of the Craigenputtock period,
+presents all his peculiarities in their most aggressive form. Partly in
+fact, but still more in appearance, it is lawless and chaotic. Its style,
+difficult even now to a generation accustomed to and partly formed by
+Carlyle, was then unparalleled and, except after serious study, almost
+incomprehensible. It is full of evidences of German studies, German
+sympathies, and the influence of German thought. Carlyle has done more
+than anyone else to make these familiar in England; but before _Sartor_
+was published almost the only interpreters of Germany to England were men
+like Coleridge and De Quincey, who not only made the form English, but
+gave an English stamp to the matter as well. _Sartor_, moreover, was full
+of a humour deep and genuine but unfamiliar in kind, and, as regards the
+first impression produced, almost sardonic in character. Its subject was
+not calculated to arrest immediate attention. It was not the history of a
+nation or of a national hero. What it actually was could not be
+immediately perceived; but after bestowing some attention the reader
+discovered it to be the spiritual biography of a man then unknown, and his
+thoughts on human life and human society, presented humorously,
+whimsically, often enigmatically. It is not therefore altogether matter
+for wonder that this strange book with difficulty found a publisher, nor
+even that it threatened with ruin the magazine which at last received it.
+America, more tolerant of novelties, to her honour welcomed it; but in
+England the current opinion seems to have been expressed by the 'oldest
+subscriber,' who said to Fraser, 'If there is any more of that d----d
+stuff, I will, etc., etc.' We frequently boast of our progress. Is it
+certain that even now a phenomenon as strange as _Sartor_ would meet with
+any better reception? John Stuart Mill, a man as open-minded as he was
+intelligent, for a long time saw nothing in Carlyle's early essays but
+'insane rhapsody;' and, though he was afterwards one of the warmest
+panegyrists of _Sartor_, which he thought Carlyle's greatest work, he read
+the manuscript unmoved. Not once nor twice, either in this island's story
+or in the history of the world, has the prophet been rejected by the
+generation he was sent to serve. Rather, rejection has been the general
+fate of prophets ever since the time when the children of Israel rebelled
+against Moses in the wilderness.
+
+What redeemed _Sartor_ in the eyes of those who had the patience to study
+it, was the discovery that the inner history of this unknown man had, in
+the first place, the interest which always belongs to human experiences
+told with absolute sincerity. For though _Sartor_ contains little or no
+truth of fact, it is wholly true in idea. Carlyle, now as always, was
+intolerant of the very shadow of falsehood; and it was to his unswerving
+truth that he ultimately owed the greater part of his influence.
+
+In the second place, the small band of careful readers discovered that
+_Sartor_ was not only true and sincere, but that its truth was capable of
+an immediate and practical application. It was not something applicable
+only to a distant past or to another state of existence; its sphere was
+here and now. This is characteristic of Carlyle in all his works. He was
+always in intention, and generally in effect, the teacher first of his own
+generation, and secondly of the future. His interest in ancient history
+and literature was comparatively feeble, because he saw not how to bring
+them to bear so directly on the present. It was modern England, France and
+Germany, rather than ancient Greece and Rome, that nourished his mind. And
+for this reason, though his influence was of slow growth, it was deep
+rooted when it did spring.
+
+_Sartor Resartus_ is peculiarly important because of its chronological
+position. We have seen in the Introduction that the failure of the
+revolutionary ideal gives to the new period its most prominent
+characteristic. 'The gospel according to Jean Jacques' was accepted no
+longer. _Sartor_ may be called a grim sort of gospel according to Thomas
+Carlyle. Carlyle himself had written before this; Macaulay had begun his
+brilliant career; among the poets, Tennyson, Browning and Elizabeth
+Barrett had published their earlier works; but _Sartor_ is the first great
+book which faces the difficulties, and, in a way, embodies the aspirations
+of the new period. Its grimness no one will dispute. It is also a gospel,
+because the Everlasting No is routed, and under all the enigmas there is
+the promise of success and, if not Happiness, Blessedness, in work. It
+deals with quite a surprising range of modern problems. All the principal
+social, political and religious questions of the century are treated in
+greater or less detail. Carlyle's attitude towards economic and other
+science, his views on religion, the outline of his opinions as to the
+position and proper treatment of the poor, his conviction of the need of a
+better and stronger government, may all be seen in _Sartor_. He expanded
+greatly and illustrated in his later writings, but he did not add much.
+_Sartor_ is his most original and probably his greatest work. It is
+peculiarly interesting to notice that in it the central point of his creed
+is the need of reconstruction. Religion must be reconstructed: the 'Hebrew
+old-clothes' have had their day and will serve for human garments no
+longer. But this is equally true of the tailoring of the French
+Revolution: society itself has to be reconstructed. And the
+reconstruction, in Carlyle's view, is a complex task. The salvation of
+mankind must be sought by the positive, not by the negative method. The
+way will be long and difficult, not short and simple as the
+Revolutionists supposed. Neither will any amount of political machinery
+suffice. Not by majorities, however numerous, nor by ballot-boxes, however
+ingenious, can sound government be carried on, but only by something which
+goes to the root of character. Carlyle, writing in the midst of a great
+agitation for improvement in political machinery, merely looks on in
+contemptuous indifference, convinced that at least the true solution lies
+not there. He was too contemptuous, for the true solution lies not in any
+one thing but in the union of many, and of these political machinery is
+one.
+
+Carlyle was not the only writer of this period who gave thought to such
+problems, nor the only one who appreciated their complexity, but it was he
+who first adequately expressed them; and it is _Sartor Resartus_, written
+in solitude on the Dumfriesshire moors, that summons the crowds of modern
+cities to face and solve them. If the voice is the voice of one crying in
+the wilderness, it is addressed to the multitudes of human society
+wherever they are gathered together.
+
+The principle at the root of all Carlyle's other works is the same. It has
+been already pointed out how his own character forms, as it were, a
+background even to his histories. As that character had been built up in
+the struggle with, and continued to be absorbed in the contemplation of,
+those problems, it follows that the histories are just the presentation of
+the same problems under the wider and more varied conditions of national
+existence. There was artistic gain to Carlyle in the new conditions. A
+longer dwelling in the regions of _Sartor_ would have fed the morbid blood
+in him. History, without smothering his own personality, took him
+sufficiently out of it to check this tendency. The _History of the French
+Revolution_ is much purer as an artistic conception than _Sartor_. It is
+more orderly in development, it has more artistic unity. Indeed, with the
+exception of one or two of Carlyle's smaller works, like the _Life of
+Sterling_, it is in this respect the best he ever wrote. Among histories
+it is quite singular for its coherence. Few histories have the unity of
+works of imaginative art. Among early works we may find one or two, like
+the history of Herodotus, which simulate the character and rival the
+proportions of a national epic. Among later works we may find one or two,
+like Gibbon's, which derive an impressive unity from the stately march of
+events to a great far-off catastrophe. But probably nowhere is there a
+history which in every chapter, and almost in every sentence, breathes the
+artistic purpose as Carlyle's _History of the French Revolution_ does. It
+has been frequently called the 'epic' of the Revolution. In point of fact,
+as Froude justly says, the conception is rather dramatic, and the best
+comparison is to Æschylus.
+
+Carlyle had an infinite respect for facts, and as far as he could by
+industry and care, he assured himself that all he wrote as history was
+exactly true. It is of small moment that, like all the historians who have
+ever lived or ever will live, he has been proved to have made mistakes.
+But it is well to notice that, much as he revered facts, no one is farther
+removed than he from the school of Dryasdust. Few were so bold in making
+selection of their facts. The artistic principle always underlying his
+work saved him from the mistake into which so many recent historians seem
+prone to fall, the mistake of attempting to tell everything. To Carlyle,
+the fact must be illuminative, or he cast it aside. Moreover, while he
+denounced theorists, few bolder theorists than himself have ever written.
+Behind almost every sentence of his _French Revolution_ there lies a
+theory, of character or motive, if not of cause and effect. The difference
+between him and the theorists he railed at was really that he presented
+poetically what, they presented logically. He was aware of the limited
+truth attainable by their method; he was not perhaps fully aware of the
+dangers of his own. We see this imaginative element in the great part
+which character plays in the development of the French Revolution as
+Carlyle conceived it. It is in men, not in political machinery, that we
+must seek the clue to it. Hence the prominence, perhaps exaggerated, given
+to Mirabeau. Carlyle's facts are never left bare facts. He reverences
+them, not so much in themselves, as for the insight they give into the
+souls of men. This is the key-note of Carlyle's histories. They are
+essentially imaginative; and the writer spends his strength less in a
+narrative of events than in delineation of characters, and in the tracing
+of moral forces.
+
+Carlyle's _Cromwell_ is, more than either of the other histories, an
+illustration of his own doctrine of heroes, and less than either of the
+others is it a history of a nation as well as of a man. Cromwell to a
+great extent speaks for himself, and Carlyle expounds and comments on his
+uncouth and sometimes obsolete manner of expression. The commentary is
+free and even ample, yet there is less of Carlyle himself in this than in
+any other of his works. The great features of it are its delineation of
+the man Cromwell and the proof it presents of Carlyle's skill in the use
+of documents. Carlyle has not converted everybody to his own view of
+Cromwell, but he has at least coloured the opinion of everybody who has
+since studied the period.
+
+If _Cromwell_ is narrower in its scope than the _French Revolution_,
+_Frederick the Great_ is even wider. The Revolution expanded into a
+European movement, but within the limits Carlyle set to himself it was
+essentially French. Frederick was the centre of a movement which Carlyle
+found could only be treated as a European one. He was led by the
+relations, alliances and wars of his hero, to deal at greater or less
+length with all the principal countries of Europe, and his book, instead
+of being merely the history of a man, became the history of one of the
+most momentous series of events of the eighteenth century. In this respect
+therefore the history of Frederick is his most ambitious historical work;
+and either to it or to the _French Revolution_ must be adjudged the palm
+of excellence in its class. Various arguments might be adduced on both
+sides, and it would be rash to pronounce definitely. For the earlier work
+it might be pleaded that it is clearly the more perfect in artistic
+conception. It is also true that, interesting as is the Seven Years' War,
+and interesting as, in Carlyle's hands, the growth of the Prussian
+Monarchy becomes, there is nothing in the subject-matter of _Frederick_
+quite as enthralling as the volcanic scenes of the _French Revolution_. It
+may also be pleaded that passages of eloquent writing are more frequent,
+and individual passages probably greater in the latter. The art in it
+moreover is purer, less intermixed with the grotesque, and with what can
+only be set down to Carlyle's individual eccentricities. On the other
+hand, _Frederick_ is even more forcible than the _French Revolution_.
+Carlyle gathered power as years went on, and he never expended it more
+lavishly than on this latest and most ambitious of his works. Nowhere,
+except perhaps in _Sartor_, are all his peculiarities more conspicuous;
+nowhere is his gospel preached with more uncompromising energy; nowhere is
+his strange style more unrestrained and less amenable to the ordinary laws
+of English composition. For these reasons, combined with the wide range of
+the work, which tasked his power of construction as it had never been
+tasked before, _Frederick the Great_ will probably always win the
+suffrages of a large proportion of Carlylean devotees. For the same
+reasons, those who, acknowledging Carlyle's original genius and admiring
+his power, are only half reconciled to his sometimes wanton
+eccentricities, will doubtless continue to prefer the more regular _French
+Revolution_.
+
+Regarding the purely historical essays as minor examples of the kind of
+works just discussed, Carlyle's remaining writings may be divided into two
+classes. These, in the order of their importance in his own eyes, and
+probably to the world, are, (1) works dealing with or bearing directly
+upon contemporary social and political problems; and (2) literary essays,
+including under the latter head the translations and the two biographies
+of Schiller and Sterling.
+
+Under the first class rank such works as _Chartism_, _Past and Present_
+and _Latter-day Pamphlets_. Under it too might be fairly brought some of
+the essays, such, for example, as the essay on the _Corn Law Rhymes_,
+which, though it deals primarily with a literary subject, was written
+because that subject opened immediately into a social one. But indeed all
+Carlyle's works are closely cognate to this section; for if he was not
+directly treating of such themes, his thoughts were never far away from
+them. Still, there is a difference between dealing directly with a subject
+and illustrating it by a borrowed light. In Carlyle's case the latter was
+the preferable method, and his wisest teaching on matters of immediate
+practical moment is not contained in the class of works here considered.
+The reason is that in discussing such questions he usually became violent
+and one-sided. Carlyle, as much as any man who ever lived, had 'the
+defects of his qualities.' We see in his own life how force and
+directness, his greatest qualities both literary and personal, become on
+occasion vices instead of virtues. He recognised the fact himself, and
+once humorously warned his own people, whom he had alarmed by his
+outcries, that they ought to know him too well to believe that he was
+being killed merely because he cried murder. But this habit of crying
+murder, trifling perhaps in itself, had no little influence for evil on
+his own life and on the life of her who was most closely associated with
+him. Just the same fault may be observed in all his works to some degree,
+but especially in the section of them now under discussion. Carlyle
+habitually saw through a magnifying glass. As he made an outcry if his own
+finger ached, so he did in the case of the evils of his own time. The
+'something in the state of Denmark' he could contemplate with comparative
+equanimity, and the lesson he drew from that state was apt to be more just
+because more temperate than that which he drew directly from the present
+time itself. Compare, for instance, the 'past' with the 'present' in _Past
+and Present_. The former is calm, pure, beautiful, and, we feel convinced,
+true. The latter is lurid, turbid, exaggerated, repellent, only in part
+true. We cannot accept as true at all the contrast between the one age and
+the other; only a most enthusiastic disciple can fail to note that a
+select specimen of the past is pitted against the average, or worse than
+the average, of the present. But not thus is truth reached, and not thus
+is conviction carried to the candid mind. Doubtless Carlyle wished to
+reform, and the way to reform, it may be urged, is rather to point out
+what needs amendment than to insist upon the advantages of 'our
+incomparable civilisation.' This is true, but justice is the prime
+requisite as a preliminary to reform. The way to win men's acquiescence is
+not to paint Hyperion on the one hand and a satyr on the other. The better
+way is to point out how a society faulty, troubled, but, it may be, not
+hopelessly corrupt, may be made in this point and in that a little less
+faulty, less troubled, less corrupt.
+
+There is no such contrast in Carlyle's other works to drive the sense of
+his error home; but the same error is present in them. It is far from
+being the case that their matter is essentially bad, or that Carlyle is
+essentially wrong. There is much that is wholly sound and good in
+_Chartism_; but it is unrelieved and unbalanced. The same is true of the
+_Latter-day Pamphlets_. Even the much-abused _Nigger Question_ is
+fundamentally right. What it means is that unless we organise free labour
+we had better give up boasting that we have set it free. The liberation of
+the West Indian slaves had brought to the verge of bankruptcy what had
+previously been the richest of British colonial possessions, robbed them
+of a prosperity which they have never fully recovered, ruined the whites,
+and deprived the blacks themselves of a government and discipline which
+Carlyle believed to be morally necessary to them, and therefore their
+right. There are several points of contact between this and the theory of
+Aristotle; there is also a general resemblance between it and the bold
+doctrine of Carlyle's countryman, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who,
+impressed by the evil of unorganised free labour degenerating into
+vagabondage, advocated the re-introduction of slavery. It does not follow
+from the evils pointed out by Carlyle that slavery ought to have been
+maintained; but it does seem a fair inference that the process of
+liberation actually adopted was ill considered, and was no subject for
+unqualified jubilation. If Carlyle had advanced such ideas in a moderate
+and conciliatory way he might have made converts. Instead of that, he was
+aggressive. He sowed the wind of provocation, and he reaped the whirlwind
+of opposition, rejection, sometimes of vituperation. It is vain to wish
+that he had done otherwise; he could only do as his character allowed him
+to do; but we shall do well to recognise that violence proved to be not
+strength but weakness, and that with more self-control he would probably
+have produced greater practical effect.
+
+The class of writings dealing with literature and literary men is that to
+which Carlyle himself would have attached least importance. He was a man
+of letters by necessity rather than by choice. He would do nothing which
+did not promise him an opening into the sphere of the ideal, and
+literature was the only profession within his reach which seemed to do
+that. He would have preferred a life of action, provided the action had
+not for its end mere money-getting; and he declared there were few
+occupations for which he was not better fitted by nature than for that in
+which he spent his life. There may have been some exaggeration in this. If
+Carlyle had not by nature the faculty for writing, he made a marvellous
+faculty for himself. In favour of his own view, however, we may call to
+mind his well-known contempt for poetry, or rather verse, as it existed,
+and as he conceived it could alone exist, in his own day. Probably no born
+man of letters ever cherished such contempt, or ever submitted to be a
+writer of prose without some regret that he could not be a poet. Carlyle's
+half-dislike and more than half-disbelief in his own profession shows
+itself in the fact that he escapes as soon as possible from the region of
+pure literature; and, while he remains himself a man of letters, he writes
+by preference about action and as little as may be about books and
+authors. His literary essays therefore belong principally to the first
+period of his authorship. Moreover, he betrays his tendency by his choice
+of subjects. He writes with most satisfaction on authors whom he can
+regard as teachers; on others he writes only of necessity and with little
+sympathy.
+
+Carlyle's creed was that a critic must first stand where his subject stood
+before criticism could be other than misleading. The way to write either
+fruitful criticism or true history was to read and reflect until it was
+possible to think the thoughts of men of the time or of the country to be
+commented on. He carried out these precepts by way of biography as well as
+of critical essays. Of his two biographies, the _Life of Schiller_, though
+good, is much the less interesting and valuable. The _Life of Sterling_ by
+common consent ranks among the best in English literature. Carlyle's work
+is, as a rule, remarkable rather for the presence of merits than for the
+absence of faults, but the _Life of Sterling_ has few faults. It is
+exceedingly well proportioned, both in its several parts and with
+reference to its subject. Carlyle has moreover, while showing sincere
+friendship everywhere, preserved a wonderful sanity of judgment. It is
+impossible to rank Sterling's performances high, and his biographer, while
+respecting the man and steadily believing him greater than his works,
+steadily refuses to eulogise mediocre writings. An air of moderation, of
+charity and of kindliness breathes over the whole, as if Carlyle still
+felt the influence of his dead friend. He has written greater things, but
+none perhaps equally delightful.
+
+It is necessary to add a word about Carlyle's much-debated style. But, in
+the first place, we ought in propriety to speak of Carlyle's _styles_. He
+had two, practised mainly, though not exclusively, in different periods of
+his life. His early style was a clear, strong, simple English, almost
+wholly free from the ellipses, inversions and mannerisms associated with
+his name. These gradually grew, and appeared fully developed for the first
+time in _Sartor Resartus_. Carlyle retained but seldom exercised the power
+of writing in his earlier style. The _Life of Sterling_ has more affinity
+to it than to his later mode. But when Carlyle's style is spoken of, what
+is meant is invariably the style of his later books. It is over this that
+the battle has raged. There is no style more strange and unexampled in
+English, or more at war with ordinary rules. It is in the highest degree
+mannered, it seems to be affected, it is anything but simple. Certainly it
+is the last and worst of all styles to select for imitation. No man would
+ever advise another to give his days and nights to the study of Carlyle in
+order to learn how to write English. In the abstract, if it were possible
+to take it in the abstract, it would be described as an exceedingly bad
+style; but whether it was bad for Carlyle is less clear. Though it is not
+natural in the sense of being born with him, it is natural in the sense
+that it seems peculiarly adapted to his turn of thought. Could Carlyle
+have expressed his humour and irony otherwise? It is difficult to say; but
+at least he never did it with perfect success until he developed this
+style. If the style was really necessary to the complete expression of
+what was in Carlyle, then that is its sufficient justification. Among the
+various 'supreme virtues' which have been assigned to style, the only
+genuine one is just this, that it and it alone, whether simple or ornate,
+curt or periodic, best expresses the thought of the writer. Yet we are apt
+to exclaim after all, 'the pity of it!' If only the humour and irony, the
+intensity and passion, could have found a voice more nearly in the key of
+other voices! This style will almost certainly tell against the permanence
+of Carlyle's fame. The world is a busy world, and the simple, clear,
+direct writer, the man whom he who runs may read, has a double chance of
+the busy world's attention. Swift, whom Carlyle resembled in not a few
+ways, wrote a style unsurpassed for clearness and simplicity, yet he is
+not much read. How much less would he be read were _Gulliver's Travels_
+written in the style of _Sartor Resartus_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+POETRY FROM 1830 TO 1850. THE GREATER POETS: TENNYSON AND BROWNING.
+
+
+While it is in the prose of Thomas Carlyle that we first find a key to the
+ultimate and deeper tendencies of literature, it is in verse that we see
+most clearly its characteristics for the moment. In the interesting
+preface to _Philip van Artevelde_, published in 1834, Henry (afterwards
+Sir Henry) Taylor remarked that the poetry which had been recently
+popular, of which he took Byron's as typical, was marked by great
+sensibility and fervour, profusion of imagery and easy and adroit
+versification; while it showed inadequate appreciation of what he called
+the intellectual and immortal part, and a want of subject-matter. 'No
+man,' he adds, 'can be a very great poet who is not also a great
+philosopher.' About the poetry of his own days, he says that 'whilst it is
+greatly inferior in quality, it continues to be like his [Byron's] in
+kind.'
+
+The criticism is just, and the aspiration is not only towards a desirable
+reform, but towards that which in point of fact has redeemed literature in
+the later decades of the century, and has given the Victorian age a
+position among the great poetic epochs of English literature. At the
+moment when Taylor wrote, the sinking so frequently noticeable between two
+great periods of literature was plainly to be seen, and it was far deeper
+in poetry than in prose. The great poets were somewhat later in coming
+than their brethren in prose, Macaulay and Carlyle; and, still more, it
+was longer before they proved to the satisfaction of criticism their title
+to be considered great. The field was for the time in possession of a band
+of minor poets, some of them not merely minor but insignificant. It is not
+enough to say that they are inferior to Byron, they belong to a different
+order altogether; for Byron, with all his faults, was great. It was
+however in his footsteps that they trod. As Keats and Shelley and
+Wordsworth have been the ruling powers since 1840, so during his brilliant
+life, and from his death down to about that year, was Byron. The poetry of
+the opening years of this period is therefore rightly affiliated to him.
+Even Tennyson, a man of wholly alien genius, felt the influence, as the
+_Poems by Two Brothers_ shows; while the verse of Letitia Elizabeth Landon
+proves that sex was no barrier to it.
+
+Want of subject-matter and of capacity for the intellectual and immortal
+part is precisely the defect of the poetry of those years. It is
+essentially trivial. It leaves the impression that the poet is writing not
+because he must, but because he has determined to do so. For the present
+purpose it is safer to draw conclusions from the work of a single great
+man than from that of many mediocre writers; and when we find Tennyson,
+already great in technical skill and graceful in style, sinking to
+triviality in subject and to commonplace sentiment, we look for an
+explanation not wholly confined to himself. We find it in the fact that
+those years were an interregnum between the philosophy of Rousseau and
+that gospel of work of which even Carlyle was as yet only half master, and
+which no one else had then grasped at all. Men were oppressed by a sense
+that the Revolution had shattered the old foundations of society; and they
+had scarcely gathered courage to attempt the task of reconstruction. To
+call therefore for a philosophy in poetry was right; but to supply it was
+impossible until the hour had come, and the man. Meanwhile the ordinary
+writer of verse groped in darkness or walked by a borrowed light. But in a
+sense, the man, or the men, had come, and the hour was rapidly
+approaching. Just three years before the beginning of the period Alfred
+Tennyson began to write, and just three years after it Robert Browning
+published his first poem.
+
+[Sidenote: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).]
+
+Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born at Somersby in Lincolnshire, of which
+place his father was rector. He was educated at Trinity College,
+Cambridge, where he was contemporary with and made the acquaintance of an
+unusual number of men afterwards highly distinguished. Tennyson's most
+intimate friend was Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833), son of the historian,
+and himself a writer of high promise, both in verse and prose. The
+literary remains published after Hallam's death can only be regarded as
+the promise of something that might have been. There is nothing great in
+them, but there is evidence of power which would probably have led the
+writer to greatness. Dying so young however, Hallam is memorable not so
+much for anything he did himself, as for his influence on his friend, and
+especially for the fact that he inspired _In Memoriam_.
+
+During his course at Cambridge Tennyson won the Chancellor's prize with
+the poem of _Timbuctoo_, a piece above the ordinary prize-poem level, but
+not in itself remarkable. Still earlier, in 1827, he had joined with his
+brother Charles in a small volume entitled _Poems by Two Brothers_. But
+these compositions were merely boyish, and Tennyson's first noteworthy
+contribution to literature was the _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_, of 1830. This
+was followed by another volume bearing the date 1833, and entitled simply
+_Poems_. Then came nine years of almost complete silence, broken, in 1842,
+by two volumes entitled once more, _Poems_. These mark the end of
+Tennyson's first period of authorship. In the volumes of 1830 and 1833 we
+may look upon him as in many respects an apprentice in poetry; in those of
+1842 he has passed far beyond mere apprenticeship. _The Princess_ (1847)
+indicates a change in his method and in the nature of his ambitions; while
+_In Memoriam_ (1850), though it has its roots in the early life of
+Tennyson, and was in part at least written when the grief it commemorates
+was fresh, is connected by its subject-matter rather with Tennyson's later
+work and with the interests of the second half of the century. In the year
+when _In Memoriam_ was published Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth in the
+laureateship, an office which he held for a longer period than any of his
+predecessors. His appointment was the public recognition of him as the
+chief poet of his time.
+
+The most interesting feature of Tennyson's writings during those years is
+the evidence of development they present; and this is especially important
+in any attempt to gauge the tendencies of the time. This evidence has been
+much obscured by changes and omissions. Part of the contents of the
+volumes of 1830 and 1833 has been incorporated in the collected editions
+of Tennyson's poems. About half of the collection of 1842 consisted of
+select poems from the earlier volumes; but many pieces were omitted, and
+of those retained almost all were freely changed, and some nearly
+re-written. For this reason it is difficult for the reader of the present
+day to appreciate fairly the early criticisms of Tennyson. It is well
+known that he was severely handled, especially by Lockhart in the
+_Quarterly Review_; and it is supposed, on the ground of the poet's great
+achievements, that this is only another example of perverse and utterly
+mistaken criticism. But such a judgment is hardly fair to the critic.
+Carlyle long afterwards condensed the criticism in his expressive way into
+a word,--'lollipops.' A great many of Tennyson's early poems were
+'lollipops,' dainty, exquisite, delicious to taste, but not food. They are
+elegant, not strong. They are deficient in two things essential to great
+poetry, depth of thought, and fervour of passion. The need of passion to
+poetry will be universally admitted; and to the need of thought,
+especially in the present century, one of the greatest of English critics
+has borne emphatic testimony. 'I do not think,' says Matthew Arnold in his
+_Letters_, 'that any poet of our day can make much of his business unless
+he is intellectual.'
+
+Now, among the early poems of Tennyson there are many pieces in which the
+want of these qualities is felt. He was certainly not in those days a poet
+of passion. His pulse temperately keeps time all the while he is drawing
+his Lilian, his Margaret and his Adeline. Though these pieces deserve,
+within certain limits, warm praise, they cannot be ranked as great poetry.
+They are masterpieces of grace, but they want depth. The writer is himself
+unmoved, and in consequence he leaves his readers equally calm. The same
+holds true of the thought in these volumes. It is usually cold and
+somewhat superficial. The critics, alive to these defects, were, it is
+true, both incautious and unfair. The early volumes contained a few poems
+showing no small force of mind, as well as a technical skill remarkable in
+so young a man. They contained, in particular, _The Palace of Art_ and _A
+Dream of Fair Women_, both, even in their original shape, indubitably the
+productions of a strong intellect. In them also we find the exquisite
+_Lotos-Eaters_, with its wonderful melody, one of the most poetic poems
+Tennyson ever wrote, and one which, for suggestive beauty of thought as
+well as for rhythm, ranks among the masterpieces of the English language.
+
+Tennyson then, judged by those early volumes, was a man who might prove to
+be less gifted intellectually than artistically. He certainly had grace,
+but it might be reasonably questioned whether he had much strength. On the
+other hand, it might prove that the surface show of weakness was the fault
+rather of the time than the man. For the production of truly great poetry
+two things must co-operate,--great gifts in the individual, and a great
+life in the community in which his lot is cast. Without the latter the
+former will lie dormant, like the strength of Samson till the Philistines
+are upon him. Now, this is exactly what has been described as the position
+of matters when Tennyson began to write. The old impulse which had stirred
+the giants of the Revolution was failing or was undergoing transformation;
+the new impulse was only beginning to be felt.
+
+As the poet was, so to speak, in the balance, his next publication is an
+object of special interest. He had taken plenty of time; and an interval
+of nine years, considerable at any time of life, is great in the space
+between twenty and thirty. He had moreover undergone a great personal
+sorrow in the death of his friend Hallam. If any change was ever to take
+place in his work it might be expected now. And we do find a great change,
+partly in the tone of the new poems, and hardly less in the omissions and
+revisions of the old. The purely trivial pieces are not reprinted. It is
+hardly less instructive to note that in the lighter pieces which are
+retained the changes made are comparatively slight; for they were already
+nearly perfect of their kind. Very different is the treatment of the more
+weighty poems. Tennyson evidently felt that he had been less successful
+with these; and accordingly he freely revised all, and nearly rewrote some
+of them. The new pieces present similar evidence of development. The poet
+is still an artist first of all, but in a large proportion of the pieces
+he is a thinker as well. The whole tone of these volumes is therefore more
+thoughtful and more profoundly serious than that of their predecessors.
+_Ulysses_, _Locksley Hall_, _Morte d'Arthur_ and the _Vision of Sin_ may
+be mentioned as typical of the new work. Edward FitzGerald thought that
+Tennyson never rose above, nor even equalled, the poems of 1842; and, if
+we judge by the perfect balance of thought and expression, much might be
+said in defence of this view. At any rate, he had proved himself a poet
+who must be taken seriously, and it is from this date that we may regard
+his position among the greater English poets as assured. We have glimpses
+of artistic ideals to be realised and of intellectual problems to be
+solved. On the artistic side, the ideals are fundamentally a development
+from Keats, but they are a development by an original genius. On the
+intellectual side, _Locksley Hall_ presents social problems, and the
+_Vision of Sin_ raises moral and religious difficulties similar, it is
+true, in essence to those which men had discussed in former days, but seen
+in the light of the poet's own time.
+
+Hitherto Tennyson's pieces had all been short. In 1847 he published his
+first long poem, the medley of _The Princess_. This serio-comic production
+on what is called 'the woman question' will probably not hold for long a
+high place among Tennyson's works. The main body of it contains no great
+illuminating thought. The reflexions upon the position of women and the
+relations of the sexes are not beyond the range of an intelligence
+considerably short of genius, and the jest and earnest are not very
+happily mingled. The poem is remarkable rather for fine passages than for
+greatness as a whole. In point of length it was the most important
+experiment Tennyson had yet made in the most difficult but most flexible
+form of English metre, blank verse. There is however no part of _The
+Princess_ of similar length which can be ranked as equal to _Morte
+d'Arthur_; and its best feature, the lyrics between the parts, were a
+subsequent addition. But whatever may be the intrinsic merit of _The
+Princess_, it is valuable as a symptom. The poet who had at first held so
+far aloof from the interests of everyday life is now found devoting his
+longest work to a social question of the day. He is at least endeavouring
+to be what Sir Henry Taylor says the great poet must be, a philosopher as
+well as an artist. If 'art for art's sake' be the proper creed of the
+poet, then Tennyson is wrong, and he remains wrong all the rest of his
+life. We must rank him among those poets who seek to base their work on an
+intellectual foundation, not among those who hold that feeling alone is
+sufficient. He seeks to see Truth as well as Beauty, instead of resting
+satisfied, like Keats, with their ultimate identity.
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Browning (1812-1889).]
+
+Robert Browning is the only poet of that time who can be placed beside
+Tennyson, and it is only in respect of greatness that the two can be
+conjoined; for in the great features of his poetry Browning stands apart,
+not only from Tennyson, but from all contemporary writers. The Browning
+family were dissenters in religion, and in those days dissenters were to a
+large extent cut off from society and from the usual course of education.
+The young poet went to no public school, and his higher education was
+given not at Oxford or Cambridge, but in the University of London,
+afterwards University College. There he remained only one year, and the
+travels on the continent which followed were unquestionably more important
+for his intellectual development. On his return he settled down to a
+literary life, and, notwithstanding narrow means and want of appreciation,
+became a poet by profession. His works consequently are the landmarks of
+his life. The most important event, outside the record of his
+publications, is his marriage in 1846 to Elizabeth Moulton Barrett, who
+was already known as a poetess. This union is unique in the records of
+English literature, and indeed, it would be hardly too much to say, of all
+literature. It has been said that men of genius usually marry commonplace
+wives. The two Brownings were, the one certainly among the greatest of
+nineteenth century poets, the other generally regarded as the greatest of
+English poetesses. The health of Mrs. Browning necessitated their living
+abroad; and the works of both bear deep marks of the influence of their
+long residence of fifteen years at Florence.
+
+Browning, like Tennyson, lived and worked all through the present period,
+and far beyond its lower limit; but, unlike Tennyson, he neither
+illustrates in his own writings the characteristic influence of the time,
+nor did he in the early years make any deep mark upon it. One reason for
+his escape from the influence was that his interests were during those
+years more purely intellectual than those of any other poet. He had
+moreover a native buoyancy which saved him from the paralysing effect of
+disappointment and of fading hopes. He was an idealistic optimist born
+into a world where pessimism, or faith only in material prosperity and
+material progress, prevailed. Hence we find that from the start his works,
+unlike those of Tennyson or his contemporaries in general, were
+characterised by an even extravagant largeness of design. His first work,
+_Pauline_ (1833), though it contains more than one thousand lines, is a
+mere fragment of a most ambitious scheme, which the poet afterwards
+admitted to have been far beyond his strength. _Paracelsus_, _Sordello_,
+_Strafford_, and the other dramas, all exhibit a similar boldness. While
+the other poets of the time had to be slowly made conscious of their
+strength and encouraged to undertake great things, Browning had by degrees
+to become aware of the limits of his powers, and to learn that he must
+reach through small things up to great. It was after what we may call an
+apprenticeship in the shorter dramatic monologue, such as we find in
+_Dramatic Romances_, _Dramatic Lyrics_ and _Men and Women_, that he
+achieved his greatest triumph, _The Ring and the Book_.
+
+_Pauline_ is interesting chiefly for the evidence it presents of the
+poet's early tastes. Shelley was the poet to whom in this piece he owed
+most; but Shelley's genius was not in harmony with Browning's, and
+afterwards his influence vanished almost as completely as did that of
+Byron from the works of Tennyson. _Pauline_ was followed by _Paracelsus_
+(1835), a poem in which the writer seemed to spring all at once to the
+full maturity of his powers. He failed however to maintain his ground.
+_Strafford_ (1837) was the first of a series of dramas published between
+that year and 1846, when the last number of _Bells and Pomegranates_,
+containing _Luria_ and _A Soul's Tragedy_, appeared. Browning never
+afterwards attempted the drama proper, for _In a Balcony_, first published
+among _Men and Women_, is rather a dramatic episode than a drama. Besides
+the dramas, there had appeared during those years _Sordello_ (1840), the
+most enigmatical poem Browning ever wrote. Despite the beauty of the
+descriptive passages in the poem, it may be questioned whether the enigma
+is worth the trouble of solution; at any rate, all the ingenuity bestowed
+upon it has not yet suggested a satisfactory explanation. There had
+appeared also, as parts of the series of _Bells and Pomegranates_,
+_Dramatic Lyrics_ (1842) and _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845).
+_Pippa Passes_ (1841) is sometimes misleadingly classed as a drama. It is
+far more closely akin to the dramatic romances and dramatic lyrics.
+
+The decade between _Strafford_ and _A Soul's Tragedy_ may be described
+then as, for Browning, a period of dramatic experiment. The result was to
+demonstrate that, though his genius was in some respects intensely
+dramatic, he was not fitted to write for the stage. His failure is all the
+more remarkable because of his keen interest in character and his great
+success, under certain conditions, in understanding and interpreting it.
+The question naturally arises whether there is any connexion between
+Browning's failure and the often noted incapacity of the present century
+to nourish a dramatic literature. This incapacity is conspicuous in the
+preceding period as well as in that now under discussion. Scott failed
+completely as a dramatist. The once great reputation of Joanna Baillie has
+withered away. The dramas of Byron are striking, but their centre is
+always George Gordon. Shelley succeeded once, in _The Cenci_; for, great
+as is _Prometheus Unbound_, its greatness is not dramatic. With respect to
+the present period, the most convincing proof of the scarcity of dramatic
+talent is the fact that there is no need to devote a separate section to
+the criticism of this form of literature. To most writers the drama has
+been a mere interlude among other literary work, and this in spite of the
+fact that fiction alone can compare with it in respect of the material
+rewards it offers. Almost the sole exception, among those who can be
+regarded as rising into the ranks of literature, is James Sheridan Knowles
+who belongs more to the preceding period than to this. As literature, his
+plays are far from remarkable. His tragedies are of little interest, and
+his comedies, while ingenious, are pieces of skilful mechanism rather
+than works inspired by the poetic spirit. Men like Tom Taylor and James
+Robinson Planché and Douglas Jerrold, gifted with fluency, and capable of
+writing as many dramas as the theatres might demand, have a place only in
+ephemeral literature. Even better men, such as Thomas Noon Talfourd
+(1795-1854) and John Westland Marston (1819-1890), hold but a low position
+in its annals. The cold dignity of Talfourd's style hardly atones for the
+commonplace character of his thought; and Marston betrays an incapacity,
+fatal in a dramatist, to draw clear and consistent characters. Henry
+Taylor, who ranks much higher, will be considered elsewhere. As a rule,
+such drama as there is in the period comes under names more conspicuous in
+other departments. Great as are his literary defects, Bulwer Lytton is
+pretty nearly the best in the dramatic list; and, like Charles Reade, he
+is a novelist first and a dramatist only in the second place.
+
+In some of these cases it might be fairly urged that the cause of failure
+is want of dramatic talent in the man himself; but this does not explain
+the strange fact that in one age, the Elizabethan, nearly all writers
+should prove themselves capable of producing dramas, always respectable
+and often great; while in another, our own, no one, except Tennyson in his
+old age, has written a drama that is likely to rank permanently among the
+treasures of literature. We can only account for this by the operation of
+the law of development in literature. We observe, in point of fact, that
+particular literary forms flourish at particular times. We observe,
+further, that in ancient Greece and in modern France and Spain, as well as
+in England, the golden age of the drama is neither at the beginning nor at
+the end, and that in each case it coincides with a period of great
+national activity and exaltation. The fact is susceptible of a
+psychological explanation. The drama requires an even balance between the
+spirit of action and the spirit of reflexion. On the one hand, we can
+hardly conceive of the drama being as naïve as the poems of Homer; on the
+other hand, the growth of self-consciousness is apt to interfere, as it
+did in Byron's case, with true dramatic portraiture.
+
+Herein we find the secret of Browning's failure. Though he rightly
+proclaimed that all his poetry was 'dramatic in principle,' yet he never
+wrote a successful drama. The reason is that in him the spirit of
+reflexion predominates unduly over the spirit of action. In his plays the
+action stagnates, because he has no interest in it. All his wealth of
+intellect is devoted to the unfolding of motive and inner feeling,
+because, little as he cares for what a man does, he cares very much for
+what he _is_ and _why_ he does it. The characters therefore, in Browning's
+mode of conception, are seen individually, each in himself; they are not
+developed, in accordance with the true dramatic method, by mutual
+interaction. Hence too it comes that Browning's stage is never more than
+half filled, and that even of the sparse _dramatis personæ_ only one as a
+rule, or at most two or three, are brought out with tolerable fulness of
+detail.
+
+In the dramas then we may say that Browning was merely learning what he
+could not do. Side by side with them he was doing work which taught him
+what he could do eminently well. His name is associated, more than that of
+any other poet, with the dramatic monologue. Excluding the regular dramas,
+nearly all his work of the period under consideration is either dramatic
+monologue or closely akin to it. _Pippa Passes_ is only slightly
+different, a series of dramatic scenes, bound together by a lyric thread
+and by the character and doings of the girl Pippa. Most of the _Dramatic
+Lyrics_ and _Dramatic Romances_ are pure monologues. _Paracelsus_ may be
+described as modified monologue. And not only during these years, but
+throughout his life, Browning's success depended principally upon two
+things; first, on the fidelity with which he kept to monologue; and
+secondly, on his remembrance of the fact that the poet must be not only
+intellectual, but artistic. With few exceptions Browning's greatest
+things--in _Men and Women_, in _Dramatis Personæ_ and in _The Ring and the
+Book_, as well as in the works above named--are monologues in which he
+bears this fact in mind. With few exceptions his failures in later days
+are due to the fact that he forgets the poet in the philosopher.
+
+Reasons may easily be found to account for the fact that dramatic
+monologue proved so much more suitable to the genius of Browning than
+either the regular drama or any other form of verse. It gave scope to his
+interest in character, without demanding of him that interest in action
+which he only showed spasmodically. Moreover, it suited his analytic
+method. For Browning is not, like Shakespeare, an intuitive but a
+reflective artist. His delineations are the result of a conscious mental
+process; and hence he can hardly call up more than one character at a
+time. Further, he does not care to trace character through a train of
+events. His pictures are usually limited to moments of time, to single
+moods. They reveal the inner depth seen through some crisis in life; and
+therefore, though they are highly impressive, they do not exhibit growth.
+Now, for purposes such as these the monologue is admirably adapted. It
+leaves the poet free to choose his own moment, to begin when he likes and
+end when he likes; and this is essential to the effect of many of
+Browning's poems, as for instance _In a Gondola_ and _The Lost Mistress_.
+It explains likewise the extraordinary suddenness of his style, which is
+one among the many causes of the difficulty so often felt in understanding
+him. There is no preparation, no working up to the crisis. The scene
+opens abruptly on some tempest of the soul, and the reader has to
+penetrate the mystery amidst thunder-claps and lightning-flashes. Yet the
+method does not always give rise to difficulty. There is no better example
+of it in Browning than the magnificent sketch of _Ottima and Sebald_ in
+_Pippa Passes_. It is not a monologue, for there are two interlocutors;
+but they stand isolated from all the world, bound together by crime, and
+are seen only in their moment of supreme tension. Yet everything is so
+clear that dulness itself could hardly mistake the meaning.
+
+_Paracelsus_ is so much the most important of the works of this period
+that it demands separate notice. Although several characters appear in the
+course of it the method is fundamentally that of monologue. The whole
+interest is concentrated on the fortunes and spiritual development of
+Paracelsus; but in this instance they are followed through a life. The
+poem may be described as a poetical treatise on the necessity of a union
+of love with knowledge and of feeling with thought. But though loaded with
+reflexion it never, like Browning's later works, ceases to be poetical,
+and it must be ranked very nearly at the head of its author's writings.
+The intellectual theory of the universe which underlies all Browning's
+poetry is never afterwards as fairly stated, nor are the difficulties as
+fully faced, as in _Paracelsus_. It has the advantage therefore, not only
+as poetry but also as philosophy, over the works written after _The Ring
+and the Book_.
+
+Boldness of design then, and an even excessive opulence of intellect, were
+from the first the characteristics of Browning. He did not acquire them,
+they were his birthright. Carlyle stood out from among his contemporaries
+by virtue of conquests won through toil and pain, Browning entered into
+his inheritance at once and without effort. The one might have said, like
+the chief captain, "With a great sum obtained I this freedom;" and the
+other might have answered, with St. Paul, "But I was free born." Yet the
+advantage was not all on one side. Carlyle had the deeper sympathy with
+the difficulties of the time, and laborious as was his way upwards he had
+far more power over his own generation than Browning. The latter was for
+many years one of the least popular of poets, and what influence he
+possessed operated slowly and unseen. It was men of less vigorous
+intellect who stamped their character upon this early part of the period.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE MINOR POETS, 1830 to 1850.
+
+
+The view presented in the last chapter is that even Tennyson in his early
+works displays the qualities to be expected in a time of lowered energy,
+and gradually, by native force, rises superior to its limits. If this view
+be sound we should expect the characteristics in question to be much more
+prominent in lesser men. And this we find to be the case. Besides Tennyson
+himself and his brothers, the principal poets who had begun to write
+before 1830, and who may be taken as representative of the early years of
+the period, were: Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mrs. Hemans, Elizabeth Moulton
+Barrett, Thomas Hood, Henry Taylor, and William Motherwell. We may include
+also Winthrop Mackworth Praed, for, though his poems were not collected
+and published till long afterwards, a number of them were written before
+this date. The _Poems_ of Hartley Coleridge came a little later; and in
+the last year of the decade then beginning Philip James Bailey won by the
+long and ambitious poem of _Festus_, a great reputation which has for many
+years been fading away.
+
+These writers are unusually hard to classify, because of the absence of
+any dominant note or of any absorbing interest. The two women first named,
+Mrs. Hemans and 'L. E. L.,' belong rather to the preceding period, though
+they overlap this. Both are sentimentalists, and time has taken from
+their work the charm it once possessed. Mrs. Hemans is now unduly
+depreciated, but the difference between the most favourable and the least
+favourable critic can only be with regard to the degree of weakness
+charged against her. L. E. Landon (1802-1838), who became by marriage Mrs.
+Maclean, was in her own day even more popular than Mrs. Hemans, but she
+has since been much more completely forgotten. Even the mystery of her
+death, which was believed by many to be due to foul play, but which in all
+probability occurred through misadventure, has failed to keep alive the
+interest in her. Yet, though her verse is of little value, she is one of
+the best examples of the tendencies of the time. She followed Byron as far
+as her talents and the restraints of her sex would allow. Her longer poems
+are on the whole poor; some of her shorter pieces are very readable, but
+they are chargeable with the fault of an excess of rhetoric. Such as she
+was in poetry, her work was mostly done before 1830. After that date she
+wrote some mediocre prose stories, but was comparatively inactive in
+verse.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-1879).]
+
+Both of Tennyson's brothers, Charles and Frederick, were, like himself,
+poets. It has but recently become known that Frederick as well as Charles
+had a share in the _Poems by Two Brothers_. Except for this the eldest
+brother's publications were of much later date; but Charles Tennyson,
+afterwards Charles Tennyson Turner, followed up the joint venture with
+another of his own, a slim volume of _Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces_,
+published in 1830. This attracted the attention of Coleridge, who bestowed
+warm but discriminating praise upon the sonnets. Both as to fame, and
+probably as to his own productiveness, Charles Tennyson Turner was
+crushed, as it were, under his greater brother. He wrote little more,
+though he carefully revised and in some respects decidedly improved his
+sonnets. It is by virtue of them that he takes his place among English
+poets. They are graceful and sweet, but the substance is not always worthy
+of the form. They reveal everywhere the interests and the pursuits of the
+Vicar of Grasby, and they are honourable to his peaceful piety. It is
+evident that both Charles and Frederick Tennyson, and especially the
+latter, might have been disposed to adapt to themselves the humorous
+complaint of the second Duke of Wellington, and exclaim, 'What can a man
+do with such a brother?' Though the eldest of the three, Mr. Frederick
+Tennyson belongs by the date of his publications rather to the period
+after than to the period before 1870.
+
+Of the other writers, Praed, accomplished and exceedingly clever, but
+never impelled to do anything really great, may be regarded as a victim of
+the prevalent want of purpose. So may Hood, in respect of that section of
+his works which naturally goes along with those of Praed. Hood, it is
+true, was too great a man to be dismissed as merely a writer of the
+transition; yet, just because of his greatness, his history shows better
+than that of any other man how earnestness was discouraged and triviality
+fostered. Seldom have so great poetic gifts been so squandered--with no
+dishonour to Hood--on mere puns. The poet, as an early critic pointed out,
+was a man of essentially serious mind; but he had to earn bread for
+himself and his children, and as jesting paid, while serious poetry did
+not, he was compelled to jest.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Hood (1799-1845).]
+
+Thomas Hood inherited from a consumptive family a feeble constitution, and
+the latter part of his life was a gallant but painful struggle against
+disease. His literary life began in 1821, when he was made 'a sort of
+sub-editor' of the _London Magazine_. _Lycus the Centaur_, a boldly
+imaginative piece for so young a man, appeared in 1822. _The Plea of the
+Midsummer Fairies_, a fine specimen of graceful fancy deservedly ranked
+high by himself, and the powerful and terrible _Eugene Aram's Dream_, were
+likewise early pieces. The latter may be contrasted for its treatment of
+crime with Bulwer Lytton's well-known novel on the story of the same
+murderer. The advantage in imaginative force and insight, as well as in
+moral wholesomeness, is all on the side of Hood.
+
+These pieces prove that the vein of serious poetry was present from the
+first in Hood. The vein of jest and pun was equally natural to him. Jokes
+of all kinds, practical and other, enlivened and sometimes distracted his
+own household. This liking for fun inspired the _Odes and Addresses to
+Great People_, written in conjunction with John Hamilton Reynolds, the
+_Whims and Oddities_, and the succession of _Comic Annuals_, the first of
+which appeared in 1830. The presence of such a light and playful element
+in a great man's work is by no means to be regretted; but in Hood's case,
+unfortunately, there was for many years little else. Hood was blameless,
+for he had to live. With characteristic modesty he seems for a time to
+have been persuaded that the public were right, and that nature meant him
+for a professional jester. It was fortunate that he lived to change this
+opinion, for much of his finest poetry belongs to his closing years.
+
+Perhaps the most original fruit of Hood's genius is _Miss Kilmansegg_,
+which conceals under a grotesque exterior deep feeling and effective
+satire. It has been sometimes ranked as Hood's greatest work; and if
+comparison be made with his longer pieces only, or if we look principally
+to the uniqueness of the poem, the judgment will hardly be disputed; but
+probably the popular instinct which has seized upon _The Song of the
+Shirt_ and _The Bridge of Sighs_, and the criticism which exalts _The
+Haunted House_, are in this instance sounder. The grotesque element cannot
+be employed freely without damage to the pure poetic beauty of the piece
+in which it occurs; and _Miss Kilmansegg_ certainly does suffer such
+damage.
+
+The _Song of the Shirt_ and _The Bridge of Sighs_ are by far the most
+popular of Hood's poems. They have the great merit of perfect truth of
+feeling. Handling subjects which tempt to sentiment, and even to that
+excess of sentiment known in the language of slang as 'gush,' they are
+wholly free from anything false or weak or merely lachrymose. Pity makes
+the verse, but it is the pity of a manly man. _The Haunted House_, first
+published in the opening number of _Hood's Magazine_, stands at the head
+of the writer's poetry of pure imagination. Few pieces can rival it for
+eeriness of impression, and few exhibit such delicate skill in the choice
+of details in description. The centipede, the spider, the maggots, the
+emmets, the bats, the rusty armour and the tattered flags, all help to
+deepen the sense of desolation and decay. This piece, with the more
+serious ones already mentioned, and a few others, such as _Ruth_ and _The
+Death-Bed_, are Hood's best title to fame. The growth in their relative
+number as time went on, the increasing wealth of imagination and the
+greater flexibility of verse, all show that Hood was to the end a
+progressive poet. If he had lived longer and enjoyed better health his
+fame might have been very great. He was the victim of the transition, and
+through tardiness of recognition and the want of any influence to draw him
+out, he failed to leave a sufficient body of pure and great poetry to
+sustain permanently a high reputation. As the author of a few pieces with
+the unmistakable note of poetry he can never be quite forgotten.
+
+[Sidenote: Laman Blanchard (1804-1845).]
+
+Passing mention may be accorded along with Hood to Laman Blanchard, a very
+minor poet, who showed the same combination of seriousness with fun. He
+was an agreeable writer, but not, even at his best, a distinguished one.
+
+[Sidenote: Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839).]
+
+The man of closest affinity to Hood was Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who
+began by contributing at school to _The Etonian_, and continued at
+Cambridge to write for Knight's _Quarterly Magazine_. He entered
+Parliament, and if he had lived he would probably have risen to eminence
+there. Praed belongs to the class of writers of _vers de société_ of which
+Prior is the earlier and Locker-Lampson the later master; and it is not
+too much to say that he surpasses both. It is a species of verse well
+adapted to such a period as that in which Praed lived. Great earnestness
+is not required, and is even fatal to it. The qualities essential to
+success are culture, good-breeding, wit and lightness of touch. Praed had
+them all. The cleverness and wit and delicacy which nature had given him
+were all increased by the influence of his school and university, where he
+acquired all the grace of scholarship without any of the ponderosity of
+learning. But Praed had one more gift, without which his verses must have
+taken a lower place--the gift of a refined poetic fancy. It is this that
+gives his wit its special charm, and it is this too that saves his verse
+from being that merely of a very clever and refined jester. The well-known
+character of _The Vicar_ is one of the best examples of this combination
+of feeling with lightness. Herein we detect the difference between Praed's
+wit and the wit of Hood. The latter commonly separated jest from earnest,
+and gave himself wholly over to one or the other. He is far the more
+pronounced punster. The pleasant surprises of Praed's verse usually arise
+from some delicate turn of thought rather than from a twisting of words.
+Hood's fun is sometimes almost boisterous, Praed's is never so. As regards
+the lighter verse, the advantage on comparison is all on the side of the
+younger man. But there is no other aspect to Praed. Notwithstanding the
+undertone of seriousness, notwithstanding too the strange power of that
+masterpiece of the grotesque, _The Red Fisherman_, it remains doubtful
+whether he had the capacity to be more than what he is, the prince of
+elegant and refined writers of light verse. Hood is indubitably a poet.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809-1885).]
+
+It is likewise as a writer of _vers de société_ that Richard Monckton
+Milnes, Lord Houghton, is best known, and is happiest. But though he
+shines as a writer of what may be called, without disparagement, poetical
+trifles, there is also a serious strain by no means contemptible in his
+verse. _Strangers Yet_ is a fine specimen of pathos. In _Poems, Legendary
+and Historical_, however, Houghton is less successful, and the best of
+them do not bear comparison with Aytoun's _Lays of the Scottish
+Cavaliers_, which belong to the same class. Houghton's critical work in
+prose is on the whole more valuable than his verse, for there his culture
+told, and the lack of high imagination is less felt.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845).]
+
+Richard Harris Barham represents a type of humour much broader than that
+of Praed. His _Ingoldsby Legends_ have enjoyed a popularity wider,
+probably, than that of any other humorous verse of the century. They are
+clever, rapid in narrative, and resourceful in phrase and in rhyme. Yet a
+certain want of delicacy in the wit and of melody in the verse is evident
+when we compare them with the work of Hood and Praed, or that of such
+later humorists as Calverley, or J. K. Stephen, or Lewis Carroll.
+Barham's last composition, 'As I laye a-thynkynge,' contains the promise
+of success if he had written serious poetry.
+
+[Sidenote: Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849).]
+
+Hartley Coleridge was a poet of a totally different type; and we must
+ascribe the fact that he never redeemed his early promise to hereditary
+weakness of will rather than to any adverse influence of the time. Against
+the latter he had a defence that did not in the same measure shield any
+other contemporary. He was the special inheritor of the great traditions
+of the so-called Lake school; and he was cradled in poetry. His infancy
+and childhood are celebrated both by his father and by Wordsworth. Derwent
+Coleridge tells a story of his brother, which shows that Wordsworth
+accurately described Hartley as one 'whose fancies from afar are brought,'
+and who made 'a mock apparel' of his words. 'Hartley, when about five
+years old, was asked a question about himself being called Hartley. "Which
+Hartley?" asked the boy. "Why! is there more than one Hartley?" "Yes," he
+replied, "there's a deal of Hartleys." "How so?" "There's Picture-Hartley
+(Hazlitt had painted a portrait of him) and Shadow-Hartley, and there's
+Echo-Hartley, and there's Catch-me-fast Hartley"; at the same time seizing
+his own arm very eagerly.' Evidently this boy lived in a world of
+day-dreams, in a 'perpetual perspective.' The problem of the education of
+such a young idealist is a difficult one; but it seems clear that its
+principle ought to have been a judicious, not a harsh or pedantic,
+regularity. His father's aspiration of 'wandering like a breeze' was not
+for him. But instead, Hartley's actual education was irregular and
+desultory. Nothing was done to improve his natural defect and to
+discipline his will; and weakness of will wrecked his life. The
+fellowship he had won at Oriel College was forfeited for intemperance, and
+he never conquered the habit, but sank from depth to depth, a pitiable
+example of genius gone to waste.
+
+Though Hartley Coleridge wrote prose as well, his name is now associated
+only with his poems. A volume of these was published in 1833. It was
+marked Vol. I., but no second ever appeared. The poems however were
+re-edited, with additions, by Derwent Coleridge, in 1851. Hartley
+Coleridge nowhere shows the supreme poetic gift his father possessed; but
+as in sheer genius the elder Coleridge was probably superior to any
+contemporary, so Hartley seems to have been the superior by endowment of
+any poet then writing, Tennyson and Browning alone excepted. Weakness of
+will, unfortunately, doomed him to excel only in short pieces, and to be
+far from uniform in these. It would have been wiser to omit the section of
+'playful and humorous' pieces. But the sonnets are very good, and some of
+them are excellent. A few of the songs take an equally high rank,
+especially the well-known _She is not fair to outward view_, and _'Tis
+sweet to hear the merry lark_. There are many suggestions of Wordsworth,
+but Hartley Coleridge is not an imitative poet. Without any striking
+originality he is fresh and independent. His verse betrays a gentle and
+kindly as well as a sensitive character. He evidently felt affection for
+all living things, and especially for all that was weak, whether from
+nature, age, or circumstance. Some of this feeling turns back, as it were,
+upon himself, in the numerous and often pathetic poems in which he appears
+to be contemplating his own history. He is of the school of Wordsworth in
+his love for and his familiar communion with nature; and here at least he
+gathered some fruit from the 'unchartered freedom' of his existence.
+
+[Sidenote: Sara Coleridge (1802-1852).]
+
+Hartley Coleridge belonged to a family unique in its power of
+transmitting genius. His sister Sara likewise inherited intellectual and
+imaginative gifts probably little if at all inferior to his; but
+circumstances prevented her from making a great name. She married another
+Coleridge of genius, her cousin, Henry Nelson, whose untimely death threw
+a burden upon her, as editor of her father's literary remains, that
+absorbed her time and energies. Her only book is _Phantasmion_, a fairy
+tale, whose lyric snatches prove her worthy of remembrance among English
+poetesses.
+
+[Sidenote: William Motherwell (1797-1835).]
+
+Of the other poets who have been named, William Motherwell was the least
+considerable both in achievement and in gifts. He had a taste for research
+in old popular poetry, but he took such liberties that his versions are
+not to be trusted. He also allowed the pseudo-antique to mar some of his
+own work, especially the fine _Cavalier Song_. He is happiest in the vein
+of pathetic Scotch verse, of which the best specimen he left is his
+_Jeanie Morison_. He had the feeling and sensibility of a minor Burns, but
+not the force. Contemporary with Motherwell and, on the Scotch side of his
+work, not dissimilar, was William Thom (1798-1848), 'the weaver poet,'
+best known for _The Blind Boy's Pranks_. Dialect alone unites with these
+two George Outram (1805-1856) a man little known out of Scotland, but, in
+his best pieces, one of the most irresistibly humorous of comic poets.
+Nothing but unfamiliarity with the legal processes and phrases on which
+the wit frequently turns, prevents him from being widely popular. For rich
+fun _The Annuity_, his masterpiece, has seldom been surpassed.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry Taylor (1800-1886).]
+
+Henry Taylor lifts us once more into a higher sphere of art. He lived an
+even and unruffled life, the spirit of which seems to have passed into his
+works. The son of a country gentleman, he procured an appointment in the
+Colonial office, gradually rose in it, was knighted, and after nearly half
+a century of service, retired in 1872. The comfortable and easy life of
+office permitted Taylor to develop his powers to the uttermost. For a
+greater man its very smoothness might have been damaging. Great poetry
+requires passion: either the passion of the emotional nature, or that
+passion of thought which, as Mr. William Watson has lately reminded the
+world, is no less valuable for the purposes of art. Official life fosters
+neither; but it would seem that Sir Henry Taylor's nature contained the
+germ of neither. Hence perhaps, in part, his disapproval of the school of
+Byron. His practice would have been as excellent as his theory had he been
+one of those who know
+
+  'A deeper transport and a mightier thrill
+  Than comes of commerce with mortality.'
+
+But he was wanting in the second kind of passion, as well as in the first.
+His work is like his life, smooth, calm, unchargeable with faults; but it
+is not the kind that animates mankind.
+
+Sir Henry Taylor wrote prose as well as verse, in particular a very
+readable autobiography. It is however chiefly as a dramatist that he is
+memorable. His plays are the closet studies of a cultured man of letters,
+who knew little and cared little about the conditions of the stage. _Isaac
+Comnenus_ (1827) was followed by his masterpiece, _Philip Van Artevelde_
+(1834). _Edwin the Fair_ appeared in 1842, and his last play, _St.
+Clement's Eve_, in 1862. He also wrote one other piece, _A Sicilian
+Summer_, a kind of comedy, not very successful.
+
+_Philip Van Artevelde_ is so clearly Taylor's best work that his literary
+faculty may be judged, certainly without danger of depreciation, from it
+alone. It is a historical drama, and the title sufficiently indicates the
+age and country in which the scene is laid. The whole drama is long, and
+the slow movement adapts it rather for reading than for representation. It
+is composed of two parts, separated by _The Lay of Elena_, a lyrical piece
+in which may be detected echoes both of Wordsworth and Coleridge, with an
+occasional suggestion of Scott. The weakest element of the drama is the
+treatment of passion. Taylor's incapacity to comprehend it is strikingly
+illustrated in the passage where Philip, immediately after his declaration
+of love to Elena, reflects upon the caprice of a woman's fancy which
+
+                  'Takes no distinction but of sex,
+  And ridicules the very name of choice.'
+
+The thought is a little trite, and the words are extraordinary in the
+mouth of a newly-accepted lover. We may confidently look to Taylor for
+careful and workmanlike delineation of character, but we shall find in him
+no profound insight. Philip proses about the burden he takes up and the
+cares he endures. But notwithstanding defects, the interest is fairly well
+sustained, some of the situations are impressive, and the verse is
+frequently lit with flashes of imaginative power. A man of talent with a
+touch of genius, Taylor saw clearly what the poetry of his time needed,
+but for want of the 'passion of thought' he failed to supply it.
+
+[Sidenote: Philip James Bailey (1816-1902).]
+
+One contemporary at least showed by his practice that he agreed with
+Taylor as to the necessity of setting poetry on a philosophical basis.
+Philip James Bailey published _Festus_ in 1839. It has been the work of
+his life, for though he wrote other pieces afterwards, most of them have
+been incorporated, wholly or in part, with _Festus_. The consequence is
+that the poem, long originally, has grown to enormous dimensions. It is an
+ambitious attempt to settle all the fundamental problems of the universe,
+and it was once hailed with a chorus of praise that would almost have
+sufficed for Homer or Milton. This praise remains one of the curiosities
+of criticism for later days to marvel at. _Festus_ is not profound
+philosophy, and still less is it true poetry. The thought when probed is
+commonplace. A vigorous expression here and there is hardly enough to
+redeem the weak echoes of Goethe and Byron. Frequently the verse is
+distinguishable from prose only by the manner of printing. 'Swearers and
+swaggerers jeer at my name' is supposed to be an iambic line. We are told
+that a thing is in our 'soul-blood' and our 'soul-bones;' and we hear of
+'marmoreal floods' that 'spread their couch of perdurable snow.' Yet this
+passes for poetry, and _Festus_ has gone through many editions in this
+country, and still more in America. The aberration of taste is not quite
+as great as that which raised Martin Farquhar Tupper and his _Proverbial
+Philosophy_ to the highest popularity, but it is similar in kind.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Hengist Horne (1803-1884).]
+
+A more interesting and far superior example of the class of thoughtful
+poets was Richard Henry, or, as he called himself in later life, Richard
+Hengist Horne. Horne was a man of versatile talent who, after an
+adventurous youth in which he saw something of warfare and passed through
+many adventures on the coasts of America and, at a later date, in the
+Australian bush, settled down to a literary life. His first memorable
+works were two tragedies, _Cosmo de' Medici_ and _The Death of Marlowe_,
+both published in the year 1837. A third tragedy, _Gregory VII._, appeared
+in 1840. Horne's dramas are thoughtful, and they have the vigour which
+marked his own character. Yet Horne seems to have felt that there was
+something not wholly satisfactory in his dramatic work, and, except _Judas
+Iscariot_ (1848), his more noteworthy writings in later days are either
+prose, or lyrical verse, or epic blank verse. He is best known by _Orion,
+an Epic Poem_ (1843). It is an epic with a philosophic groundwork,
+'intended,' as the author himself explains, 'to work out a special design,
+applicable to all time, by means of antique or classical imagery and
+associations.... Orion, the hero of my fable, is meant to present a type
+of the struggle of man with himself, _i.e._, the contest between the
+intellect and the senses.' Horne sarcastically hinted his sense of the
+improbability that such a poem would find a sale by publishing the first
+three editions at a farthing, with the explanation that he did so 'to
+avoid the trouble and greatly additional expense of forwarding
+presentation copies.'
+
+_Orion_ is Horne's masterpiece. The philosophic thought clogs the epic
+movement, but the thought is weighty enough, and expressed with sufficient
+terseness and force, to be worthy of attention for its own sake. The verse
+is almost always good and sometimes excellent. Horne is indebted more to
+Keats than to anyone else. Sometimes he appears to echo him consciously;
+at other times the reminiscence is probably unconscious. But as Horne was
+always a bold and original thinker his discipleship was altogether good
+for him. The sonorous quality of his verse is partly due to his model; the
+meaning remains his own.
+
+[Sidenote: William Barnes (1801-1886).]
+
+Another true poet whose work belongs largely to this early period was
+William Barnes, author of _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_.
+This collection, published in 1879, and embracing the work of more than
+forty years, may be said to sum up his literary life; for, though he
+wrote prose as well as poetry, it is only by his verses in dialect that he
+has any chance to be remembered. Barnes began writing his Dorset poems in
+1833, and continued to do so at intervals all through his life. The great
+charm of his poetry is its perfect freshness. The Dorset poems are
+eclogues, wholly free from the artificiality which commonly mars
+compositions of that class; they are clear, simple, rapid and natural.
+There is no affectation of profound thought, and no straining after
+passion, but a wholly unaffected love for the country and all that lives
+and grows there. The vital importance of language to poetry is nowhere
+more clearly seen than in Barnes, for all the spirit of the Dorset poems
+evaporates, and all the colour fades from the specimens the poet was
+induced to publish in literary English.
+
+There were numerous inferior writers, a few of whom claim a passing
+notice. James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) is one of those Irishmen with
+regard to whose work a wide difference of opinion exists between his
+countrymen and English critics. He had certainly an ear for verse and a
+gift for making it, and if his equipment of ideas had been proportionate
+he would have been a great poet. His weakness is that, while he can say
+things pleasantly, he has but little to say. Charles Whitehead (1804-1862)
+was one of those who attempted dramatic composition, but his best work was
+_The Solitary_ (1831), a reflective poem in the Spenserian stanza,
+thoughtful but slow in movement, and as a whole somewhat tiring. Thomas
+Wade (1805-1875) was likewise a mediocre dramatist, whose name is now
+associated only with _Mundi et Cordis Carmina_, a book which bears many
+traces of the influence of Shelley.
+
+Ebenezer Jones (1820-1860) also, though much younger than these men,
+falls, by reason of his principal work, _Studies of Sensation and Event_
+(1843), within the same period. Jones was crushed by circumstances and the
+want of appreciation, otherwise his sensitive nature might have produced
+good, though hardly great poetry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EARLIER FICTION.
+
+
+The characteristic literary form of the last two generations has been the
+novel. After a certain interval Scott was followed zealously, and by
+constantly increasing numbers; so that for every novelist who was writing
+in the first decade of the century, there were probably ten in the fourth;
+and, as the great increase of readers has been principally in the readers
+of fiction, the growth has naturally continued down to the present day. No
+one can believe that this immense preponderance of fiction has been
+altogether wholesome. It is questionable whether the novel is capable of
+producing the highest results in art; certainly we do not find in prose
+fiction the equivalent of _Hamlet_ or of _Faust_, of the _Iliad_ or the
+_Divine Comedy_. It may be that the Shakespeare of novelists has not yet
+come; but it may also be that the form is inherently inferior to the drama
+and the epic. The latter is the conclusion suggested by the fact that of
+all kinds of imaginative art the novel is the one which has least
+permanence. Novels are like light wine in respect that, while pleasant to
+the taste, they do not keep long; they resemble it too in the fact that a
+man may read much, as the disappointed toper found he could drink much,
+without making great progress. Notwithstanding the hostility, avouched by
+Horace, of gods and men and booksellers to the mediocre poet, the
+versifier who has just a little of the poetic spirit is, after two or
+three generations, far more readable than the merely competent novelist.
+There are few literary experiences more melancholy than to turn to an old
+novel, once famous, but not quite the work of genius. Moreover, the novel
+has yielded more than any other form of literature to certain influences
+of the time inimical to high art. It is in fiction above all that the
+periodical system of publication has been adopted; and we can trace its
+evil effects in the work even of men like Thackeray and Dickens. The novel
+tends at the best to looseness of structure, and periodical publication
+fosters the tendency.
+
+In at least one other way the influence of the novel must have been partly
+evil. The gains of literature have been to an altogether disproportionate
+extent showered upon novelists; and the ordinary laws of human action
+force us to believe that some talent must have been thus diverted to
+fiction which would have been better employed otherwise. Theologians like
+Newman and historians like Froude are tempted from their own domain into
+the field of fiction. Yet on the other hand it must be said that the
+greater writers have been on the whole remarkably faithful to their true
+vocation. The leading novelists are those whose talents find freest scope
+in fiction. Historians, philosophers, novelists, poets, the great men
+everywhere remain what nature intended them to be. Still, the evil, though
+not as great as it might have been expected to be, is real. Matthew
+Arnold, it is said, ceased to write verse because he could not afford it.
+But for the absorption of the mass of readers in fiction he probably could
+have afforded it.
+
+[Sidenote: William Maginn (1793-1842).]
+
+In the year 1830 literature in general, but especially fiction and the
+more fugitive forms both of verse and prose, received a notable stimulus
+from the establishment of _Fraser's Magazine_. The idea of the magazine
+originated with William Maginn and a Bohemian acquaintance of his, Hugh
+Fraser, from whom, and not from the publisher James Fraser, it received
+its name. Maginn had been a contributor to _Blackwood_, and partly through
+his connexions with its staff he soon drew around him a band as brilliant
+as that of _Blackwood_ itself. Coleridge, Carlyle, Lockhart, Thackeray and
+Southey were among the early contributors. Theodore Hook, famous for his
+somewhat coarse but copious and ready wit, also wrote for it. He was at
+that time one of the most popular of the novelists; but though he could
+tell a story well he could not draw a character, and it is for impromptu
+jests and for the clever fun of his articles that he is now remembered.
+Maginn himself was no mean contributor. He was never the editor of the
+magazine, but he was one of the most energetic and effective of its staff.
+Thackeray has immortalised him in Captain Shandon; but if he had the
+weaknesses of that well-known character he had certainly all his
+cleverness and more than all his accomplishments. For Maginn's more
+serious articles show no inconsiderable learning; while his best humorous
+articles are simply excellent. _Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady_ is a
+model of what the Irish story ought to be. Maginn was helped by others in
+giving an Irish flavour to the early _Fraser_. Crofton Croker, author of
+the _Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland_, was one of his
+colleagues; and the witty Francis Mahony was another. The famous _Reliques
+of Father Prout_ first appeared in _Fraser_.
+
+Men like Theodore Hook and Mahony were however merely the free lances of
+fiction, and it was Scott who moulded the legitimate novel. It is strange
+that his great success did not more speedily produce a crop of imitations.
+A few appeared during the twenties, but Scott's life was near its close
+before any writers came forward of calibre sufficient to be called his
+successors. Of those who had begun to write before 1830, the chief were
+Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli and Marryat. Two others, worthy of mention though
+inferior to these, were the prolific but commonplace G. P. R. James and
+Harrison Ainsworth. All of these men were stimulated by Scott, but the
+greater ones were more than mere imitators.
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Lytton (1803-1873).]
+
+The first Lord Lytton was by baptism Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer. On
+succeeding to his mother's estate of Knebworth he became Bulwer Lytton;
+and in 1866 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Lytton. The union of
+politics with fiction is one of the points of contact between him and
+Disraeli; but while in the case of Disraeli the politician is first and
+the man of letters second, the order of importance is reversed in the case
+of Lytton. In politics, Lytton was at the start a Whig, but afterwards
+attached himself to the Conservative party, and became, under Lord Derby,
+Colonial Secretary.
+
+Lytton's literary career began in boyhood with _Ismail and other Poems_
+(1820), and it ended only with his death. Perhaps fluency and versatility
+were his most remarkable characteristics. He distinguished himself as a
+novelist and as a dramatist, achieved a certain success as a lyric poet,
+believed that his greatest work was an epic, and attempted criticism and
+history. He had however the good sense and good taste to leave his
+historical work, _Athens, its Rise and Fall_, unfinished on the appearance
+of the histories of Thirlwall and Grote. It is only as a novelist and
+dramatist that he demands serious consideration; and in these departments
+he is the more worthy of attention because he is perhaps the best literary
+weather-gauge of his time.
+
+Lytton's first novel was _Falkland_ (1827), which he afterwards called
+his Sorrows of Werther. It proves his literary affiliation to Byron, and
+the proof is strengthened by subsequent works. Lytton, who was not proud
+of the relationship, both thought and said that he had done much to put
+Byron out of fashion. Possibly he was right, but the kinship is none the
+less real. The posing and foppery of _Pelham_ are both like and unlike the
+attitudinising of Byron; and the similarity of the sentimental and
+romantic criminals, Eugene Aram and Paul Clifford, to the heroes of
+Byron's tales is obvious. Moreover, as Lytton once at least, in _Pelham_,
+sat for his own portrait, and Byron did so many times, the likeness was
+recognised as a personal one, so that one of Lytton's early lady
+correspondents nicknamed him Childe Harold. Lytton was too sensitive to
+influences to escape the Byronic fever. But his Byronism is Byronism a
+little damaged. 'The Hero as Criminal,' as presented by him, is a being
+more sentimental and sickly, less violent and less forcible, but not a
+whit less dangerous to society, than his Byronic prototype.
+
+Lytton's excursions into the domains of dandyism and criminality drew down
+upon him the satire of Carlyle and Thackeray, both sworn foes of
+affectation, from which Lytton was never free. But in spite of hostile
+criticism the new novelist had caught the popular taste; and he retained
+it, perhaps because his own never remained long constant. Shortly after
+the publication of _Eugene Aram_ (1832) he underwent a marked change, due
+immediately to a journey to Italy, the influence of which is seen both in
+the subject and the treatment of _The Last Days of Pompeii_ (1834), and of
+_Rienzi_ (1835). These, with _The Last of the Barons_ (1843), form a group
+of historical romances, glittering and clever, but destitute of charm.
+The strength and the weakness of Lytton is nowhere more easily detected
+than in these novels. They show abundance of talent, supported by
+a quality not usually associated with such powers as those of Lord
+Lytton--indefatigable industry. Yet they fall short of excellence. To
+say that Lytton's treatment of history will not bear comparison with
+Shakespeare's, or with Scott's, or with Thackeray's, is only to say that
+he is not equal to the greatest masters. But there are other men, markedly
+inferior to these, who yet overtop Lytton. Such, for instance, is Charles
+Reade, in his _Cloister and the Hearth_. What Reade has in common with his
+greater brethren, and Lytton has not, is the light and shade of life. In
+Lytton all is polished glittering brilliance. The light is neither the
+sunlight of common day nor 'the moonlight of romance,' but the glare of
+innumerable gas lamps,--the rays from the footlights to which he was about
+to betake himself. All the softer shades disappear, and quiet effects are
+impossible. There is nowhere in these novels, and there is rarely in
+Lytton's later works, that atmosphere of a home which we always breathe in
+the novels of the greater writers.
+
+After the Italian novels Lytton for a time turned his energies to dramatic
+writing. The fantastic romance of _Zanoni_ (1842) and _The Last of the
+Barons_, which followed it, are exceptions. With _The Caxtons_ (1849) we
+find him entering upon a new period of prose fiction. _My Novel_ (1853)
+was a sequel to it; and these two are generally ranked with _What will He
+do with It?_ (1859) as a group devoted to contemporary life. Perhaps
+_Kenelm Chillingly_ (1873) ought to be added. These novels are altogether
+mellower than the historical romances, and wholesomer than what may be
+called the criminal group. To a great extent the theatrical glare has
+disappeared. It is clear that in writing these novels Lytton was catering
+for the taste which had been partly indicated and partly created by
+Dickens and Thackeray. The difference is that, whereas Dickens and
+Thackeray are habitually in touch with nature, Lytton is so only in
+moments of inspiration. His true field was not the natural, but rather the
+fanciful and fantastic. Two of his most successful works are _Zanoni_,
+which flings probability to the winds, and _The Coming Race_ (1871), in
+which the faculty exercised is that of prophecy. In the latter Lytton
+showed again his extraordinary sensitiveness. Forecasts like _The Coming
+Race_ have been characteristic of recent literature, and he seems to have
+divined their approach.
+
+Lytton's dramas are remarkably like in tone to his novels, and the
+popularity they have enjoyed has been due to much the same causes. But
+whereas the novels are overshadowed, in critical opinion at least, and
+largely even in popularity, the dramas remain what they were when they
+were written, among the best plays of a non-dramatic age. Not that they
+can compare in literary merit with even such semi-failures as Browning's
+plays, still less with Tennyson's one great success, _Becket_. They are
+melodramatic, and the striving for stage effect is evident; but yet they
+are interesting and well adapted for representation, and the melodrama is
+good of its kind. Lytton's first play, _The Duchess de la Vallière_, was a
+failure; but _The Lady of Lyons_ (1838) speedily became, and still
+remains, a favourite on the stage. It is the best specimen of Lytton's
+dramatic work. Attempts have been made to put the prose comedy, _Money_
+(1840) above it; but, though effective, _Money_ is very flimsy in
+construction and characterisation. Lytton's third drama, _Cardinal
+Richelieu_ (1838), is like one of the historical novels adapted to the
+stage; though, curiously enough, it is less meretricious than they are.
+
+The epic of _King Arthur_ is scarcely worthy of mention; but Lytton's
+lyrics deserve a few words, if only because they are in danger of being
+forgotten. They are not original; perhaps indeed it is as echoes that
+they are most interesting. We have already seen how Lytton appears to veer
+with every breath of popular taste; and it is curious to detect in a man
+so different by nature the occasional echo of the pensive reflexion of
+Arnold, and sometimes even a suggestion of the philosophy of Browning. It
+will appear hereafter that this faculty proved hereditary and descended to
+Owen Meredith. Two stanzas from _Is it all Vanity?_ deserve to be quoted,
+because the modern note sounds so clear in them:
+
+  'Rise, then, my soul, take comfort from thy sorrow;
+    Thou feel'st thy treasure when thou feel'st thy load;
+  Life without thought, the day without the morrow,
+                    God on the brute bestow'd;
+
+  'Longings obscure as for a native clime,
+    Flight from what is to live in what may be,
+  God gave the Soul;--thy discontent with time
+                    Proves thine eternity.'
+
+[Sidenote: Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881).]
+
+Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, was the man of letters most
+closely related in spirit and methods to Lytton; but even from the
+beginning his ambition was for eminence in the state. Political interests
+and a political purpose are features in his earlier works, and they are
+the essence of the intermediate novels, _Coningsby_ and _Sybil_. Disraeli
+began his career with _Vivian Grey_, the first part of which was published
+in 1826, and the second in the following year. He next spent three years
+in the south of Europe; after which, in the interval between his return
+and his entrance into Parliament in 1837, came the period of his greatest
+literary activity. Between 1831 and 1837 there appeared, besides some
+minor works, five novels,--_The Young Duke_, _Contarini Fleming_, _The
+Wondrous Tale of Alroy_, _Venetia_ and _Henrietta Temple_. Parliamentary
+work checked his pen and profoundly influenced what he did write, as we
+see in _Coningsby_ (1844), _Sybil_ (1845), and _Tancred_ (1847). After
+_Tancred_ Disraeli wrote no fiction till _Lothair_ appeared in 1870,
+followed by the disappointing _Endymion_ (1880).
+
+As literature, Disraeli's novels are not great, because, using the word in
+an artistic and not in a moral sense, they are not pure. They are
+pretentious and unreal, and the rhetoric rings false. The impression of
+insincerity, conveyed to so many by his statesmanship, is conveyed also by
+his novels. But notwithstanding all defects, Disraeli's novels have that
+interest which must belong to the works of a man who has played a great
+part in history. They throw light upon his character, they mark the
+development of his ambition, it may even be said that they have helped to
+make English history. It is worth remembering that _Tancred_ foretells the
+occupation of Cyprus; and it is quite consistent with the character of
+Disraeli to believe that, when the opportunity came, the desire to make
+his own prophecy come to pass influenced him to add to the British crown
+one of its most worthless possessions, and to burden it with one of its
+most intolerable responsibilities, the care of Armenia. Indeed, the most
+remarkable feature in Disraeli's novels is the way in which they reflect
+his life and interpret his statesmanship. The magniloquence, the flash and
+the glitter of the early novels seem of a piece with the tales current
+regarding the author's manners and character, his dress designed to
+attract attention, and his opinions cut after the pattern of his dress. So
+in the _Coningsby_ group we are struck with the forecast of the writer's
+future political action. His later policy seems to be just the realisation
+of his earlier dreams.
+
+Impartially considered, these novels, notwithstanding their air of
+unreality, tell in favour of Disraeli's sincerity. Many even of his own
+party believed him to be cynically indifferent to the real effect of his
+measures, and to aim only at party, and, above all, at personal success.
+But it ought to be remembered that the originator of Tory democracy was
+also the leader of Young England. _Coningsby_, and still more _Sybil_,
+advocate the claims of the people to a more careful consideration than
+they had hitherto received at the hands of government; and their advocacy
+was no mere passing thought. In the case of _Sybil_, at least, Disraeli's
+views were the outcome of personal observation during a tour in the north
+of England. When he afterwards declared that sanitation and the social
+improvement of the working classes were the real task of government, he
+was only repeating what he had written many years before. Men who knew
+Disraeli well have said that his most wonderful quality was an almost
+portentous power of forecast. This is certainly confirmed by his literary
+works. There are no writings of the century which so distinctly foreshadow
+the actual course of politics and legislation as this group of Disraeli's
+novels.
+
+Of the other men selected as representative of this early period,
+Ainsworth and James, though younger than Marryat, claim treatment first,
+because their work is more closely connected with the novels of the
+preceding period. They were direct imitators of Scott, as Scott himself
+perceived in the case of Ainsworth at least;[2] and criticism of one side
+of their work could not be better expressed than in his words. The great
+novelist compares himself to Captain Bobadil, who trained up a hundred
+gentlemen to fight very nearly, if not quite, as well as himself. He goes
+on: 'One advantage, I think, I still have over all of them. They may do
+their fooling with a better grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it
+more natural. They have to read old books and consult antiquarian
+collections to get their knowledge; I write because I have long since read
+such works, and possess, thanks to a strong memory, the information they
+have to seek for. This leads to a dragging-in of historical details by
+head and shoulders, so that the interest of the main piece is lost in
+minute descriptions of events which do not affect its progress.'
+
+[Sidenote: William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882).]
+
+Little or nothing need be added about the historical novels of William
+Harrison Ainsworth. What Scott says is strictly true of _The Tower of
+London_ (1840), reputed to be Ainsworth's masterpiece, of _Old St. Paul's_
+(1841), and of _St. James's, or the Court of Queen Anne_ (1844). The
+censure is indeed too mildly expressed.
+
+Ainsworth had another side. Like Lytton, he showed a kind of perverse
+regard for interesting criminals. _Rookwood_ (1834), with its famous
+description of Turpin's ride to York, and _Jack Sheppard_ (1839), are
+studies of the highwayman. The latter was severely criticised as
+demoralising in tendency, and the censure induced Ainsworth to abandon
+this species of story.
+
+[Sidenote: George Paine Rainsford James (1801-1860).]
+
+George Paine Rainsford James was even more prolific than Ainsworth. He is
+said to have written more than one hundred novels, besides historical
+books and poetry. No wonder therefore that the name of James became a
+by-word for conventionality of opening and for diffuse weakness of style.
+More perhaps than Ainsworth he has suffered from time, because he remains
+more constantly on a dead level of mediocrity. James trusted, and in his
+own day trusted not in vain, to adventure; but unless there is some saving
+virtue of style, or of thought, or of character, each generation insists
+on making its own adventures. James has sunk under the operation of this
+law, and he is not likely to be revived.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick Marryat (1792-1848).]
+
+Frederick Marryat was a man of altogether higher merit than these two.
+Indeed there are several points, of vital moment for permanence of fame,
+wherein he surpasses Disraeli and Lytton as well. He was by far the most
+natural and genuine of the whole group. He was also, _qua_ novelist, the
+most original. There is no affectation, no pretentiousness, in Marryat.
+Through his breezy style there blows the freshness of an Atlantic gale,
+rude and boisterous, but invigorating. He is moreover the best painter of
+the naval life of that day, and the fact that it has passed away for ever,
+by closing the subject to future writers, or condemning them to write at
+second-hand, gives to his works a special promise of permanence.
+
+Marryat's literary career reaches from _Frank Mildmay_ (1829) to the
+posthumous _Valerie_ (1849). His stories embody many incidents of his own
+life, and his characters are often reproductions of actual men. Thus, the
+Captain Savage of Peter Simple is partly a picture of Marryat's first
+commander, the great Cochrane, to whose adventurous spirit he owed an
+experience richer, though crowded within a few years, than a lifetime of
+the 'weak piping time of peace.' This was his literary stock-in-trade. His
+rattling adventure, his energetic description, his fun and liveliness, are
+the charm of his best books--_Peter Simple_, _Jacob Faithful_, _Midshipman
+Easy_, _Japhet in Search of a Father_. His plots are rough but sufficient;
+his characters show little penetration; but the habit of drawing from the
+life prevented him from going far wrong.
+
+From the nature of his subjects and from his mode of treatment Marryat
+invites comparison with his predecessors, Smollett and Fenimore Cooper, as
+well as with his contemporary, Michael Scott, who, next to Marryat
+himself, is the best of the naval story-tellers of that time. Marryat is
+by no means the equal of Smollett in richness of humour. His is rather the
+humour of boisterous spirits than that intellectual quality which gives so
+fine a flavour to books. On the other hand, Marryat is much more humane
+than Smollett. The life depicted by both is rough to the last degree. In
+Smollett, the roughness frequently passes over into brutality; while
+Marryat, though he depicts brutality, never seems to share it. As against
+the American, Cooper, Marryat has the advantage, in his sea stories, of
+greater familiarity with the life he paints; Cooper's strength is
+elsewhere, and there he reaches higher than Marryat's highest point.
+
+[Sidenote: Michael Scott (1789-1835).]
+
+Michael Scott, one of the _Blackwood_ group of writers, would be not
+unworthy to be bracketed with Marryat if a man could be judged by parts of
+his books without regard to the whole; but unfortunately _Tom Cringle's
+Log_ (1829-30) and _The Cruise of the Midge_ (1836) are little more than
+scenes and incidents loosely strung together. Perhaps Scott was influenced
+by the _genius loci_; at any rate his books resemble the _Noctes
+Ambrosianæ_ in so far as they are the outlet to every riotous fancy and
+every lawless freak of the writer's humour.
+
+Marryat had several imitators, the best of whom were Glascock and Chamier,
+the latter still fairly well known by name as the author of _Ben Brace_
+and _The Arethusa_. But though they had practical experience of sea life,
+like Marryat, Glascock and Chamier had not his literary faculty. At a
+later date, James Hannay, the essayist and critic, essayed the naval tale
+with more literary skill, but without the practical knowledge possessed by
+these men.
+
+[Sidenote: Samuel Warren (1807-1877).]
+
+To a wholly different class belonged the once famous Samuel Warren. He was
+a barrister and the author of several legal works, but his literary career
+was determined rather by a short period of medical study in Edinburgh,
+before he resolved to be a barrister. His acquaintance with Christopher
+North opened the pages of _Blackwood_ to him, and he utilised his medical
+training in the _Diary of a Late Physician_, an unpleasantly realistic
+book which first appeared in that magazine. _Ten Thousand a Year_ (1841),
+though commonplace in substance, was interesting. Warren lived upon the
+reputation of this book. His subsequent attempts were failures, and he was
+known through life as the author of _Ten Thousand a Year_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FICTION: THE INTERMEDIATE PERIOD.
+
+
+Where dates so overlap it is impossible to find, and therefore misleading
+to seek for, absolute divisions. Some of the writers to be treated in this
+chapter began to publish only a few years after those dealt with in the
+last, and great part of their career was strictly contemporaneous. The
+division only means that, on the whole, we can recognise in the earlier
+writers a closer relationship with the preceding period, a more direct
+debt to Scott and Byron. In the fourth decade of the century we begin to
+see the romance of the Middle Ages and of the East giving place to the
+humours of low life in Dickens, to satire on society in Thackeray, and to
+the novel of passion in the Brontës. These writers may be said to form
+ideals of their own, and though they do not constitute a school they are
+each distinguished by characteristics which we recognise as the growth of
+the present period.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles Dickens (1812-1870).]
+
+The difference between good work and excellent work is seen when we turn
+from even the best of the earlier writers to Charles Dickens. The
+novelist's father, John Dickens, was a clerk in the navy pay-office; and
+the circumstances of the lad's early life are universally known from
+_David Copperfield_, a novel largely autobiographical. Forster's biography
+proves that the picture of the miserable little drudge, David, is even
+painfully accurate. The sordid life, both of his home, with its mysterious
+'deeds' leading up to his father's imprisonment in the Marshalsea, and of
+the London streets and the blacking warehouse, was the best possible for
+the development of his talents; but the bitterness of it never faded from
+his memory. Neither can it be denied that certain of the faults of Dickens
+may with probability be explained by his early life. His many fine
+qualities were marred by a slight strain of vulgarity, visible both in his
+works and in his life, from which the surroundings of a happier home would
+almost certainly have preserved a nature so sensitive.
+
+The family circumstances improved, and in 1824 Dickens was sent to a
+school at once poor and pretentious, where he remained for two years. He
+afterwards spent some time in a lawyer's office, but left it to become a
+reporter. After much toil he became, in his own words, which are confirmed
+by the estimate of others, 'the best and most rapid reporter ever known.'
+Journalism is akin to literature, and Dickens gradually drifted into
+authorship. His first article, _A Dinner at Poplar Walk_, now entitled
+_Mr. Minns and his Cousin_, appeared in the old _Monthly Magazine_ for
+December, 1833; and the collected papers were published in 1836, under the
+title of _Sketches by Boz_. They were in some respects crude, but they
+contained the promise of genius. The first drafts of some of Dickens's
+best characters are to be found in them, and the sketches are eminently
+fresh and independent. Few books owe less to other books than the early
+works of Dickens. His book was the streets of London; and even what he
+read was best assimilated if it had some connexion with them. George
+Colman's description of Covent Garden captivated him. 'He remembered,'
+says Forster, 'snuffing up the flavour of the faded cabbage-leaves as if
+it were the very breath of comic fiction;' and Forster adds, with
+justice, 'it was reserved for himself to give a sweeter and fresher breath
+to it.' For to the honour of Dickens it may be said that, despite certain
+lapses of taste, he seldom forgot that 'there is as much reality in the
+scent of a rose as in the smell of a sewer.'
+
+The extraordinary rapidity with which Dickens rose to popularity is
+indicated by the advance in the value of his copyrights. He sold the
+copyright of _Sketches by Boz_ for £150, and before _Pickwick_ was
+finished in the following year, he found reason to buy it back for no less
+than £2,000. _Pickwick_, scarcely equalled for broad humour in the English
+language, was published in monthly parts, and finished in November, 1837.
+It was _Pickwick_ that led to the first meeting between Dickens and
+Thackeray; for on the suicide of Seymour, the original illustrator,
+Thackeray was one of those who offered to execute the sketches. _Oliver
+Twist_ was begun before _Pickwick_ was finished; and in the same way
+_Nicholas Nickleby_ overlapped _Oliver_. Thus the stream flowed on for
+many years; and though towards the close of his life the rate of
+production was slower, Dickens, like Thackeray, was writing to the last.
+
+The life of Dickens was purely literary, and was diversified by few
+incidents. But he was liable to overstrain, as men of great nervous energy
+are apt to be, and was consequently forced to allow himself occasional
+holidays. During one of these, in 1842, he visited America, and wrote, in
+consequence, the not very wise or generous _American Notes_. This journey
+bore fruit in _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Two years later he made a journey to
+Italy, and subsequently he was several times on the continent and once
+again in America. The influence of the continental journeys can be traced
+in _A Tale of Two Cities_, though the story is rather due to Carlyle's
+_French Revolution_ than to the personal observation of Dickens. A more
+serious interruption than any holiday he ever allowed himself was his
+indulgence, for so it may be described, in public readings. They increased
+his wealth, and they gratified the vanity which, in spite of his
+biographer, was one of the weaknesses of Dickens; but they impaired his
+literary work, and in all probability they hastened his death. Besides
+these readings, the nervous strain of which was very great, Dickens
+encumbered himself with editorial work. He conducted _Household Words_
+from its start in 1850; and when it stopped in 1859 he started _All the
+Year Round_, with which he was connected till his death. Through these
+various distractions both the quantity and the quality of his original
+work declined. Probably after _David Copperfield_ he never wrote anything
+altogether first-rate. His health too gave way under the strain, and he
+died at the age of 58, on June 9th, 1870.
+
+Dickens has enjoyed a popularity probably unparalleled among English
+writers. Forster has calculated that during the twelve years succeeding
+his death no fewer than 4,239,000 volumes of his works were sold in
+Britain. The secret was in the first place originality. Dickens had lived
+the life he depicted. With a strong memory and keen powers of observation
+he had been storing up from early boyhood information which in his maturer
+years served him well. 'Sam's knowledge of London was extensive and
+peculiar,' he writes of Weller, when Mr. Pickwick addresses him with a
+sudden query about the nearest public house; and he illustrates Sam's
+knowledge by making him answer without a moment's hesitation. Dickens
+himself, if put down suddenly in any quarter of London, could probably
+have answered the question with equal readiness. He was emphatically a man
+of cities, was restless when he was long away from streets, and loved
+above all things the streets of London.
+
+But he was still more an observer of persons than an observer of places.
+Even in boyhood he judged men with great accuracy; and after he had won
+fame he asserted that he had never seen cause to change the secret
+impression of his boyhood with regard to anyone whom he had known then.
+Moreover, he never forgot. In his troubled and wretched boyhood,
+therefore, he was 'making himself,' though involuntarily and in an
+unpleasant fashion, as much as Scott was by his Liddesdale raids.
+
+It is however the something added to observation that gives literary
+value; and had Dickens added nothing he would have been far on the way to
+oblivion now. Shakespeare may have based Falstaff on observation; but
+probably no man, except Shakespeare himself, was ever quite as humorous as
+the fat knight. Similarly, it is safe to assert that Dickens never met a
+Londoner with all the wit and resource of Sam Weller. 'The little more,
+and how much it is.' What the artist adds creates the character. Incidents
+he has seen, phrases he has heard, are only the raw material for his
+imagination. Humour is practically non-existent unless it is understood;
+and, as a more recent humourist has whimsically insisted, there may be
+here a kind of division of labour, the humour being lodged in one mind and
+the comprehension of it in another. It is so with Dickens. He sympathises,
+appreciates, interprets, and thus in part creates. He frequently makes the
+fun by his own keen sense of it.
+
+But while Dickens was excellent within his own sphere, that sphere was
+comparatively small. He was good only as a painter of his own generation
+and of what had come under his own experience. Living in the days of the
+historical novel, Dickens nevertheless felt that his talent lay in the
+delineation of contemporary manners. Neither his education nor the bent of
+his mind fitted him to excel in the historical romance. Twice he tried
+the experiment--in _Barnaby Rudge_, and in _A Tale of Two Cities_; but on
+both occasions he wisely kept pretty close to his own time. _Barnaby
+Rudge_ is, by general consent, second-rate, and whatever may be the true
+value of _A Tale of Two Cities_, its merit is not essentially of the
+historical kind. It is Scott who has written the history of the Porteous
+riot and of the rebellion of '45; and our most vivid impression of society
+in Queen Anne's time comes from _Esmond_. But there is no danger of
+Carlyle's _French Revolution_ being superseded by _A Tale of Two Cities_.
+
+Neither has Dickens command over a wide range of character. He is
+completely at home only in one grade of society, and, as a rule, the
+farther he moves from the lower ranks of Londoners the more he falls short
+of excellence. Coachmen, showmen, servants of all kinds, beadles,
+self-made men of imperfect education, he could depict with wonderful force
+and vivacity; but his triumphs in the higher ranks are few. The reason
+lies partly in the character of the experience he had acquired, partly in
+his manner of conception. Dickens was theatrical and had a tendency to
+farce; above all, he was by nature a caricaturist. If anyone, man or
+woman, presented some conspicuous peculiarity, whether of disposition, or
+of physical appearance, or of dress, Dickens was happy and made the most
+of it. But education and social convention tend to smooth away
+angularities and prominences, and hence among the classes influenced by
+them he rarely found the material he needed.
+
+The characters of Dickens, then, are personified humours, his method is
+the method not of Shakespeare, but of Ben Jonson. Pecksniff is just
+another name for hypocrisy, Jonas Chuzzlewit for avarice, Quilp for
+cruelty. The result is excellent of its kind. The repetitions and
+catch-words are, within limits, highly effective. Sometimes they are
+genuinely illuminative; but sometimes, on the other hand, they reveal
+nothing and are used to weariness. The 'waiting for something to turn up'
+of the Micawber family goes to the root of their character. But 'ain't I
+volatile?' 'Donkeys, Janet,' the sleepiness of the Fat Boy, Pecksniff and
+Salisbury Cathedral, even the jollity of Mark Tapley, are worn threadbare.
+Mrs. Harris herself is heard of rather too often. Exaggeration has no law,
+it is rather the abrogation of law; and the writer who adopts the method
+of exaggeration pays the price in losing all check upon himself.
+
+In exaggeration too we find the defect of Dickens's highest quality. His
+humour, like the humour of the country he at first satirised so bitterly,
+rests too much on exaggeration. It is ready, copious, irresistible; but,
+while it wins and deserves admiration, it rarely provokes the exclamation,
+'how natural,' or 'how true.' Micawber is one of the most comical
+characters in fiction, but we are not struck by his fidelity to nature.
+Though he is drawn from the life he is not representative, but rather
+belongs to the class of curiosities whose natural resting-place is a
+museum.
+
+The mannerism of which this is one form runs through the whole of the work
+of Dickens, affecting style as well as substance, the description of
+nature as well as the delineation of character. The English is nervous and
+vivid, but little regard is paid to proportion. The minutest detail, if it
+happens to strike the writer's fancy, is elaborated as if it were vital to
+the story. The moaning of the sea, the freaks of the wind, the fluttering
+of a leaf, are dilated upon in paragraph after paragraph. It is the
+romantic method liberated from all restraint. There is no poetry more
+heavily charged with the 'pathetic fallacy' than the prose of Dickens;
+and in prose it is more dangerous because of the absence of the trammels
+of verse.
+
+The dangers of this style and this manner of conception become more
+conspicuous when we turn to other manifestations of them. Dickens was in
+his own time thought to be a master of the pathetic equally with the
+mirthful strain. It was correct taste to weep over little Nell; and
+Jeffrey, no very indulgent critic of contemporaries, declared that there
+had been nothing so good since Cordelia. Dickens has been dead only a
+quarter of a century, but few critics would pronounce such a judgment now.
+His humour so far retains its power; but the veneer has already worn off
+his pathos. Little Nell and little Emily may still draw tears, more tears
+perhaps than were ever shed for the fate of Cordelia. But this is not the
+best test of the quality of pathos. That which, from Homer to Shakespeare,
+has conquered the suffrages of the world, is solemnising and saddening,
+rather than tear-compelling. Tears are within the range of a very ordinary
+writer, but to produce a tragic Cordelia or Antigone is only possible to a
+Shakespeare or a Sophocles. The truth is that the faults of Dickens,
+apparent in his humour but pardonable there, become offensive in his
+pathos. His touch is not sufficiently delicate, he does not know when to
+leave off, he unduly prolongs the agony. The death-scene of Cordelia and
+Lear, perhaps the most tragically pathetic in all literature, occupies
+some sixty or seventy lines. How different from this are the scenes
+relating to the death of Little Nell! Their very diffuseness has
+contributed to their popularity, but it damages them as literature.
+
+Many of the other faults of Dickens are cognate to this. He sacrifices
+everything for effect, and hence his proneness to horrors. The pictures
+are often wonderfully done, but they are unwholesome. The murder by Jonas
+Chuzzlewit, and still more the murder of Nancy, are examples. Sometimes
+Dickens goes wholly beyond the reach of pardon, as in the purely horrible
+and sickening description of spontaneous combustion in _Bleak House_. More
+frequently the sin is rather against proportion. We hear too much of the
+dragging of the river for dead bodies in _Our Mutual Friend_. Dickens
+never could learn where to stop. His highly pictorial imagination
+presented to him every detail of the scene; and, like a Pre-Raphaelite, he
+forgot that to the reader a general impression conveyed more truth than
+minute accuracy in every detail.
+
+The faults of Dickens grew with time, his merits tended to decline; but
+even to the end the characteristic merits are to be found. It was not
+unjustly said that his death had once more eclipsed the gaiety of nations.
+
+[Sidenote: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).]
+
+While Dickens, as has been seen, leaped into fame, his only contemporary
+rival, William Makepeace Thackeray, slowly and with difficulty forced his
+way to it. He was the senior of Dickens by rather more than half a year,
+having been born at Calcutta on July 18th, 1811. He was educated at the
+Charterhouse; and if his feelings may be inferred from his works they must
+have changed considerably. In his earlier writings it is Slaughter House;
+in _The Newcomes_ it is the celebrated Grey Friars. After leaving school
+Thackeray went in 1829 to Cambridge, but he left the University in 1830
+without taking his degree. While he was there he contributed to _The
+Snob_, the name of which suggested to him a title in after years. One of
+his papers was an amusing burlesque on _Timbuctoo_, the subject for the
+prize poem, won by Tennyson, for 1829. In 1830 Thackeray went to Weimar,
+and he spent a considerable time there and in Paris training himself as an
+artist. The inaccuracy of his drawing was a fatal bar to his success in
+art; but he turned his studies to account afterwards in illustrating his
+own books; and there are probably no works in English in which the
+illustrations throw more light upon the text. In 1832 he became master of
+his little fortune of about £500 per annum, all of which was lost within a
+year or two. Most of it was sunk in an unprofitable newspaper adventure,
+reference to which is made in _Lovel the Widower_, and, with less accuracy
+of circumstance, in _Pendennis_. But if he lost his money by a newspaper,
+it was by journalism that he first gained his livelihood. He wrote for
+_The Times_, for _Fraser's Magazine_, and for the _New Monthly Magazine_,
+contributing to the second some of the most important of his early works;
+and for about eight years (1842-1850) he was one of the principal literary
+contributors to _Punch_. In these periodicals there appeared during the
+ten years, 1837-1847, _The Yellowplush Papers_, _The Great Hoggarty
+Diamond_, _Barry Lyndon_, _The Book of Snobs_ and _The Ballads of
+Policeman X_. Thackeray had also published independently _The Paris
+Sketch-Book_ and _The Irish Sketch-Book_.
+
+_Vanity Fair_ (1847-1848) was Thackeray's first novel on the great scale.
+_Barry Lyndon_ was indeed an exhibition of the highest intellectual power;
+but it was not of the orthodox length, and it failed to bring the writer
+wide fame. _Vanity Fair_ did bring him fame among the more thoughtful
+readers, though not a popularity rivalling that of Dickens. It was
+followed by _Pendennis_ (1849-1850), _Esmond_ (1852) and _The Newcomes_
+(1854-1855). _Esmond_ was the only one that was published as a whole, and
+it is significant that it is by far the best constructed of the four
+usually accepted as Thackeray's greatest novels. The periodical method of
+publication had peculiar dangers for him. He was constitutionally
+indolent, almost always left his work to the last moment, and sometimes
+had to patch up his part anyhow.
+
+In 1851 Thackeray delivered the lectures on the _Humourists of the
+Eighteenth Century_, and repeated the course in America in 1852-1853. The
+lectures on _The Four Georges_ were delivered first in America
+(1855-1856). Of all Thackeray's writings these two courses have probably
+had the most scanty justice meted out to them. Critics are frequently
+apologetic, sometimes condescending. Nobody need apologise, and few can
+afford to condescend with respect to what are really among the richest and
+best criticisms of this century. Thackeray knew not only the literature
+but the life of the eighteenth century as few have known it. In minute
+acquaintance with facts he has doubtless been surpassed by many
+professional historians; but there is no book to be compared to _Esmond_
+as a picture of life in the age of Queen Anne; and the lectures on the
+humourists are saturated, as _Esmond_ is, with the eighteenth century
+spirit. The figures of the humourists live and move before our eyes. We
+may not always agree with the critic's opinion, but we can hardly fail to
+understand the subject better through his mode of treatment. Strong
+objection has been taken, perhaps in some respects with justice, to his
+handling of Swift. Yet, much as has been written about Swift, where does
+there exist a picture of him so vivid, so suggestive and so memorable? Who
+else has done such justice to Steele? Who has written better about
+Hogarth? Thackeray succeeded because he not only knew the work of these
+men but felt with them. He was at bottom of the eighteenth century type.
+Much of Swift himself, softened and humanised, something of Fielding, whom
+he justly regarded as a model, and a great deal of Hogarth may be detected
+in Thackeray. The best criticism is always sympathetic; and it is because
+sympathy is so easy to him here that Thackeray is so excellent. The
+treatment even of Swift is far from being unsympathetic.
+
+With the four Georges Thackeray was certainly not in sympathy. But they
+afforded him an ample field for the exercise of his satiric gifts, and he
+found occasion in his treatment of them for some passages of his most
+eloquent writing. The objection taken to this course of lectures has been
+as much political as literary. Thackeray is supposed to have treated the
+throne with scanty reverence; but it is the throne itself that is lacking
+in reverence when such lives are led; and the day for the concealment of
+disagreeable truths has long gone by.
+
+_The Virginians_, a continuation of _Esmond_, ran its periodical course
+from 1857 to 1859. In the latter year Thackeray became editor of the
+_Cornhill_, for which he wrote _Lovel the Widower_ (1860), _The Adventures
+of Philip_ (1861-1862), and the delicious _Roundabout Papers_, which he
+contributed occasionally from the beginning of his editorship to his
+death. _Denis Duval_ had not even begun to appear in the magazine, and
+only a small part had been written when the author was suddenly cut off at
+the age of fifty-two.
+
+It would not be easy to name two great contemporary writers, working in
+the same field of letters, more radically unlike than Dickens and
+Thackeray. Even the qualities they possess in common diverge as far as
+qualities bearing the same name can do. Both are humourists; but the
+humour of Thackeray is permeated through and through with satire; that of
+Dickens has not infrequently a touch of satire, but its essential
+principle is pure fun, and it is largely burlesque. We look for it in the
+absurdities of the Micawber family, in the Jarley wax-works, in the
+ridiculous adventures of the Pickwick Club, and in the solemn fatuity of
+Silas Wegg. Thackeray was a master of burlesque too, as his imitations of
+contemporary novels--_Phil Fogarty_, _Codlingsby_, _Rebecca and
+Rowena_--and his _Ballads of Policeman X_ prove. But it is a totally
+different burlesque. That of Dickens moves to laughter, and the laughter
+is frequently uproarious; Thackeray only excites a smile and a chuckle of
+intellectual enjoyment.
+
+The two writers differ equally in their pathos. Dickens, as we have seen,
+draws it out, paragraph after paragraph, chapter piled on chapter.
+Thackeray concentrates, partly from the artist's knowledge that
+concentration is necessary to permanent effect, in greater degree because
+of a personal dignity, accompanied by reticence, in which Dickens was
+certainly deficient. Just as there are substances which will not bear
+light, so there are feelings which seem to be profaned if they are too
+long exposed to view. All art involves exposure; but the difference
+between perfect taste and defective taste lies in knowing just in what
+manner and how long to make the exposure. In _The Four Georges_ two
+paragraphs contain all we are told about the last tragic years of George
+III.; and just a few lines of eloquence and pathos rarely equalled close
+the story.
+
+When we search back from symptom to cause we find the secret of these and
+many other differences in the fact that the work of Dickens is primarily
+sentimental, while Thackeray's is primarily intellectual. This is by no
+means equivalent to saying that Dickens is deficient in intellect, or
+Thackeray in sentiment. It means rather that the strong intellect of
+Dickens is the servant of sentiment, the strong sentiment of Thackeray the
+servant of intellect. It is another way of saying that Thackeray is
+essentially of the eighteenth century, the century of predominant
+understanding. It follows from his satirical way of viewing life; for the
+satirist must not wholly lose himself even in his _sæva indignatio_. The
+effect of his satire depends upon his keeping aloof, critical, superior.
+The Romans were great satirists because they did so; the English are great
+satirists in so far as they do so likewise. Something is lost in emotion,
+as art, something is gained in comprehension, for practical application.
+
+No one can doubt that Thackeray is thus reflective and satirical. Critic
+after critic has called attention to his habit of staying the course of
+his story for comment and exposition. Not only so, but there is subdued
+and disguised comment all through. The artist makes each character
+criticise itself; and the effect is as if we were walking constantly in
+the light of those rays which pierce through the opaque and reveal what
+lies beneath. Thackeray's satire plays continually over the characters he
+creates for warning and example. Blanche Amory, Becky Sharp, Major
+Pendennis, all have their inner motives exposed by this searching and
+pitiless light. So much is this the case that Thackeray has been described
+as not properly a novelist at all, but first of all a satirist. The
+difference is that the novelist primarily exhibits life as it is, while
+the satirist comments upon it. That Thackeray does the latter is obvious;
+but it seems an exaggeration to say that he is not properly a novelist.
+Though most of his stories are loosely constructed, though plot and
+incident are of subordinate importance, yet without the story his books
+would be vitally different. Moreover, the pure satirist commonly deals
+with types rather than individuals. Juvenal does so, Horace does so, Swift
+does so. So does Thackeray himself in _The Book of Snobs_. But Becky Sharp
+and Major Pendennis and Beatrix Esmond all have individuality.
+
+Further, in what may fairly be regarded as Thackeray's highest effort,
+satire sinks to a secondary place. _Esmond_, though not the best known of
+Thackeray's works, is his purest piece of art. It is so, partly at least,
+because the conditions presupposed by the story put a curb upon the
+satirical tendency, in which undeniably Thackeray was too prone to
+indulge. In _Esmond_ the writer is restrained in two ways. First, as the
+hero is himself the narrator, the sentiments have to be fitted to his
+character. And Henry Esmond was not the familiar compound of weakness and
+selfishness, crossed with some good nature and with occasional higher
+impulses, but, on the contrary, Thackeray's ideal man. He is endowed with
+a power of satire, but it is rarely exercised. The second restraint arose
+from the need of unceasing watchfulness to use language consistent with
+the time in which the story is laid. If Thackeray was tempted to be
+careless, this necessity must have kept him constantly in check. And so
+well did he satisfy the requirements that _Esmond_ is admitted on all
+hands to be, of all books in English, that which most accurately
+reproduces the style of a past age.
+
+It is remarkable that the same book which contains the noblest figure
+Thackeray ever drew contains also the most lovable of his good women, and
+the most brilliant and fascinating of the class that cannot be called
+good. All critics have been struck with Thackeray's tendency to make his
+good women weak and colourless, or else sermons incarnate. Amelia and
+Helen Pendennis are examples of the former class, Laura of the latter.
+Lady Castlewood escapes the censure. She has greater strength of character
+than Amelia or Helen; and her human weaknesses win a sympathy Laura does
+not command. Moreover, there is no other woman of her type shown in the
+light of passion as she is in that perfect chapter, _The 29th December_.
+Beatrix, on the contrary, ranks among the reprobate. She is not so
+wonderfully clever as Becky Sharp, but she has what Becky has not,
+fascination. Becky has only her intellect. Beatrix, clever too, has,
+besides her social position, splendid beauty, and above all the
+indescribable magnetic power of attraction. She can win men against
+themselves, and though they are alive to all the evil of her character.
+Becky can only win those whom she has blinded.
+
+The other novels, less perfect as pictures of life, are not inferior in
+sheer intellect. _Vanity Fair_ and _Barry Lyndon_ are superlative examples
+of force of mind. The latter is so faithfully written from the scoundrel's
+point of view that only the excess of scoundrelism prevents Barry from
+commanding sympathy. The former contains in Becky Sharp the cleverest and
+most resourceful of all Thackeray's characters. It also contains,
+especially in the chapters on the Waterloo campaign, some of the finest
+English he ever wrote. _Pendennis_ has its special interest in the thread
+of autobiography interwoven with it; while _The Newcomes_ has its crowning
+glory in the old colonel, and in the famous scene in Grey Friars. After
+_The Newcomes_ the quality of Thackeray's work, or at least of his novels
+(for the lectures and the _Roundabout Papers_ stand apart) declined. He
+did not live long enough to demonstrate whether the decline was permanent
+or not; but certainly there is no lack of power in the _Roundabout
+Papers_; and in spite of his own dictum that no man ought to write a novel
+after fifty, Thackeray should have been just at his best when he died.
+
+Thackeray was a poet and an artist as well as a novelist; and sometimes in
+a copy of verses or in a sketch the inner spirit of the man may be seen
+more compendiously, if not more truly and surely, than in longer and more
+ambitious works. It is so here. The spirit that pervades _Vanity Fair_ is
+the same that inspired the _Ballad of Bouillabaisse_, the concluding
+stanzas of _The Chronicle of the Drum_, _The End of the Play_, _Vanitas
+Vanitatum_, and others of his more serious verses. There is a touch of
+satire in these verses, but there is far more of pity than scorn. Still
+more vividly this spirit shines through a triplet of sketches labelled
+respectively Ludovicus, Rex and Ludovicus Rex, the shivering little atom
+of humanity, the imposing trappings of royalty, and then the poor little
+mortal clothed in this magnificence. Here we have the quintessence of
+Thackeray's sermon through all his books, the difference between the
+humble reality and the vast pretensions, moral, intellectual and social,
+too often based on it. There is frequently scorn in the sermon, the more
+in proportion to the greatness of the pretensions. But there is almost
+always pity behind the scorn. Ludovicus Rex is, after all, the sport of
+fate. It is fate that decrees
+
+  'How very weak the very wise,
+  How very small the very great are!'
+
+It is the neglect of this fact that has led to the common judgment that
+Thackeray is a cynic. The gulf that divides him from cynicism is seen when
+we compare him with Swift. There is always in Thackeray a sensitive
+kindliness not to be found in the older writer. Thackeray's bitterest
+satire is on individuals who are worse than their neighbours. There is
+something amiss with society when Barry Lyndon and Becky Sharp are
+possible; but we are not led to think that all men are Barry Lyndons, or
+all women Becky Sharps. _Gulliver_, on the contrary, is a satire on the
+human race.
+
+[Sidenote: William Carleton (1794-1869).]
+
+[Sidenote: Samuel Lover (1797-1868).]
+
+A group of Irish novelists, rather older than Thackeray and Dickens, may
+be noticed together for the sake of certain features they have in common.
+If fineness of literary quality alone were in question, the first place
+must be assigned to William Carleton, whose _Traits and Stories of the
+Irish Peasantry_ are the most carefully executed of their class. Carleton
+however had neither the verve nor the copiousness of Lever, who has been
+fixed upon by popular judgment as the leading Irish novelist of his time.
+Still less can the versatile Samuel Lover, song-writer, dramatist and
+painter as well as novelist, compete with Lever; for although the former
+did many things with a certain dexterity he did nothing really well. His
+_Handy Andy_ is a formless book, and the fun of it grows tedious.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles James Lever (1806-1872).]
+
+Charles James Lever came in direct literary descent from neither of these,
+but from William Hamilton Maxwell (1792-1850), whose _Stories from
+Waterloo_ turned Lever's attention to the literary possibilities of the
+great war. This book begot _Harry Lorrequer_, begun in the _Dublin
+University Magazine_ in 1837; and _Lorrequer_ was followed by _Charles
+O'Malley_ (1840). The former derived its name from the 'rollicking'
+quality generally recognised as characteristic of Lever. Both books have
+whatever attraction high spirits and plenty of fun and fighting and
+adventure can give; but in the literary sense they are rough and
+unpolished to the last degree. _Tom Burke of Ours_ (1844) shows the same
+qualities slightly chastened and reduced to a more literary shape. The
+change went on, and Lever paid more and more attention to construction and
+to literary law and rule. He himself considered _Sir Brook Fossbrooke_
+(1866) his best book; but it may be questioned whether the gain in
+smoothness and regularity is sufficient to compensate for the partial loss
+of that rush of adventure and copiousness of anecdote which won for Lever
+his reputation, and still preserves it.
+
+[Sidenote: Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855),
+
+Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848),
+
+Anne Brontë (1820-1849).]
+
+It is singular that this typically Irish novelist was by blood more
+English than Irish. But the debt which Ireland owed to England in Lever
+was repaid with interest in that family of genius, the Brontës. Their
+father, himself a minor poet, left behind him, when he left Ireland, the
+name by which he was known, Brunty, from O'Prunty, and was afterwards
+known as Brontë. He married a Cornish girl, and settled as a clergyman at
+Haworth, on the wild moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire. All his
+children who grew to maturity possessed talent, if not genius. His son,
+Patrick Branwell Brontë, who was in boyhood considered the most promising
+of all, squandered his own life and clouded the lives of his sisters by
+his debauchery. The three sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, all won
+a place in literature, and two of them a conspicuous one. Their lives were
+uneventful, but gloomy and sometimes tragic. They were poor, they had a
+dissipated brother, they were constitutionally liable to consumption, and
+their story is a record of dauntless efforts frustrated by failing health.
+Their works bear deep marks of the people and the place amidst which they
+were conceived, but even more of their own family history. This was in
+fact inevitable. The sisters had no wide culture; still less were they
+accustomed to mingle in society and meet many types of men and women.
+Besides their few books, greedily read until the favourites were so
+tattered and worn that they had to be hidden away on private shelves, the
+men dwelling near them, the scenes around them and the tales current in
+their family were the only food for their imagination.
+
+An outline of Charlotte's life can be easily traced in her writings. Her
+first place of education, Cowan Bridge School, for the daughters of
+clergymen, appears in _Jane Eyre_; and Helen Burns represents her hapless
+eldest sister Maria, who died at eleven. A residence in Brussels to
+improve their French and qualify them for higher teaching, furnished much
+matter for _The Professor_ and _Villette_. They meant to receive pupils at
+the parsonage; but their brother's intemperance made that impossible, even
+if pupils had offered themselves, and, until his death in 1848, he was a
+heavy burden and a bitter grief.
+
+The sisters had long loved to write as well as to read; and Charlotte has
+told how, in the autumn of 1845, the thought of publication was suggested
+by a MS. volume of Emily's poetry. Her criticism of the verses is
+generous, but by no means extravagant. 'I thought them,' she says,
+'condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a
+peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating.' The other sisters had
+written poems also, and after various difficulties a small volume of
+_Poems_ by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell was published in 1846. It
+attracted little attention, and Charlotte says with truth that only the
+poems of Emily deserved much. Hers display a genuine poetic gift. Had she
+lived to write much more verse she would certainly have been one of the
+greatest of English poetesses, and might have been the first of all.
+Strength, sincerity and directness are the characteristics of her verse;
+and the individuality of the writer gives it distinction:
+
+  'I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
+    It vexes me to choose another guide:
+  Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
+    Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
+
+  'What have these lonely mountains worth revealing?
+    More glory and more grief than I can tell:
+  The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling
+    Can centre both the worlds of heaven and hell.'
+
+The volume of verse was followed by several volumes of prose. Each sister
+had a story ready, and the three were offered simultaneously for
+publication. Emily's novel, _Wuthering Heights_, and Anne's, _Agnes Grey_,
+were accepted, though 'on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two
+authors.' Charlotte's, _The Professor_, was rejected by one publisher
+after another, and ten years passed before it appeared. Meanwhile the
+dauntless author set to work and wrote _Jane Eyre_. This was accepted, and
+was published, like the stories by the other sisters, in 1847. Unlike
+theirs, it won a rapid and remarkable success and finally fixed the career
+of Charlotte Brontë.
+
+It will be convenient to take the work of the three sisters in the reverse
+order. That of Anne Brontë may be speedily dismissed. She was a gentle,
+delicate creature both in mind and body; and but for her greater sisters
+her writings would now be forgotten. Her pleasing but commonplace tale of
+_Agnes Grey_ was followed by _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, in which she
+attempted, without success, to depict a profligate.
+
+In sheer genius Emily Brontë probably surpassed Charlotte, though in art
+she was certainly the inferior of her elder sister. All that she wrote
+bears the stamp of her sombre imagination and of the gloomy strength of
+her character. Despite the Celtic strain in her blood, she, like the rest
+of her family, had more in common with the austere Yorkshire character
+than with that of the typical Irishman. She had a perfect comprehension of
+it. She was, as the northern character is by so many felt to be,
+personally unattractive. She was almost savagely reserved. Even her
+sisters, in her last illness, dared not notice 'the failing step, the
+laboured breathing, the frequent pauses' with which she climbed the
+staircase. But she had also the better qualities of the northern nature.
+She never shrank from duty or evaded a burden; and her courage was
+boundless. With her own hand she applied cautery to the bite of a dog she
+believed to be mad; and she conquered a savage bull-dog by beating it with
+the bare hands, though she had been warned that if struck it would fly at
+her throat.
+
+Such a character explains all that Emily Brontë is in literature.
+_Wuthering Heights_ is her only novel, for she died the year after its
+publication. It remains therefore uncertain whether she would have
+mastered her errors, or whether, as in her sister's case, her first work
+was to be her greatest. The probability is that she would have improved.
+She was only thirty; and the defects of _Wuthering Heights_ are
+artistic,--faulty construction, want of proportion, absence of restraint.
+These are defects which experience might be expected to overcome;
+especially as Emily Brontë's verse showed that she was by no means without
+taste. There are flaws in the substance too; and it is less likely that
+these would have disappeared. Even Mrs. Gaskell could not deny that there
+is some foundation for the charge of coarseness brought against Charlotte;
+and there is more in the case of Emily. It is not merely that her
+characters are harsh and repulsive: there are not a few such characters in
+life, and there were many of them within the experience of the Brontë
+family. But besides, Emily Brontë appears to sympathise with, and
+sometimes to admire, the harsher and less lovable features of the
+characters she draws. Heathcliff is spoilt for most readers by the
+seemingly loving minuteness with which the author elaborates the worst
+characteristics of his nature, characteristics familiar to her from family
+legend.
+
+For several reasons Charlotte Brontë holds a higher place in literature
+than her sister. She has not to be judged by one work only. _Jane Eyre_
+was followed by _Shirley_ (1849), by _Villette_ (1853), by _The Professor_
+(1857), published posthumously, and by the fragment, _Emma_ (1860). In
+none of these did she equal her first novel, but she exhibited different
+sides and aspects of her genius, she multiplied her creations, and she
+proved, as long as life was given her, that she had what in the language
+of sport is called 'staying power.' Moreover, Charlotte was decidedly more
+of the artist than Emily. She understood better the importance of relief.
+Her imagination too was prevailingly sombre; yet though _Jane Eyre_ is
+sufficiently gloomy, it is less uniformly so than _Wuthering Heights_. The
+shadow is flecked here and there with light. Again, Charlotte is more
+versatile in her imagination and much more pictorial than Emily. All the
+members of the Brontë family had a love and apparently some talent for
+art; but it is in the works of Charlotte that this talent leaves the
+clearest traces. There are few things in _Jane Eyre_ more impressive than
+her description in words of the picture her imagination, if not her brush,
+drew. More ample scope, greater variety, a more humane tone,--these then
+are the points in which Charlotte surpasses Emily.
+
+Notwithstanding the wonderful force and vividness of their imagination,
+the Brontës were in several respects singularly limited, largely because
+their experience was so limited. It was only genius that saved them from
+the narrowest provinciality. Even genius did not enable them to reach
+beyond a few well-marked types of character, nor did it save them from
+errors in the drawing of these. Both Rochester and Heathcliff would have
+been more endurable, as members of society, if their creators had
+themselves known more of society. They are brutal because the Brontës had
+seen and heard about much brutality, and had not learned that polish is by
+no means synonymous with weakness, and that gentleness is quite consistent
+with manliness and strength of will.
+
+Partly however the narrowness was in the Brontës themselves. They show
+little power of invention. Not only are their types few, but the
+individual characters are nearly all reproductions from life. Probably no
+English writer of equal rank has transcribed so much from experience as
+Charlotte Brontë. Many of her characters were so like the originals as to
+be immediately recognised by themselves or by their neighbours. Shirley
+Keeldar was her sister Emily, Mr. Helstone was her father, the three
+curates were real men, and some of Charlotte's school friends were
+depicted, it is said, with the accuracy of daguerreotypes. This minute
+fidelity to fact occasionally brought Miss Brontë into trouble; for she
+was not particularly sagacious in estimating the effect of what she wrote.
+We may argue from it, moreover, that if she had lived she would soon have
+exhausted her material.
+
+Charlotte Brontë was likewise deficient in humour. This might be safely
+inferred from her works, where there are hardly any humorous characters or
+situations; and the inference would be confirmed by her life. Her letters,
+often excellent for their common sense and their high standard of duty,
+and sometimes for their dignity, are almost destitute of playfulness.
+Neither does she seem to have readily recognised humour in others. She
+admired Thackeray above almost all men of her time, but she was completely
+puzzled by him when they met. She lectured him on his faults, and quaintly
+adds that his excuses made them worse. The humourist was playing with the
+too serious mind. Had Miss Brontë been as Irish in nature as she was by
+blood she would not have made this mistake.
+
+In the case of the Brontës it would be peculiarly ungenerous to insist on
+defects. All life long they fought against odds. With inadequate means and
+imperfect training, without friends and without advice, they won by their
+own force and genius alone a position in literature which is higher now
+than it was forty years ago. Charlotte is one of the half-dozen or so of
+great English novelists of the present century; and in all probability it
+is only her early death that has made Emily's place somewhat lower.
+
+[Sidenote: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865).]
+
+Senior in years to the Brontës was the biographer of Charlotte, Elizabeth
+Cleghorn Gaskell. Mrs. Gaskell's fame was won chiefly as a novelist, but,
+both for its intrinsic merits and as a memorial of a most interesting
+literary friendship, her _Life of Charlotte Brontë_ deserves mention. If
+not equal to the best biographies in the language, it is worthy of a place
+in the class nearest to that small group. It gives a delightful impression
+both of the subject of the memoir and of her biographer. There was
+sufficient difference between the two to make Mrs. Gaskell's generous
+appreciation peculiarly creditable to her. Two contemporaries of the same
+sex, reared amidst men closely akin in character, and confronted, as _Mary
+Barton_ and _Shirley_ prove, by similar social problems, could hardly
+present a greater contrast than there is between Charlotte Brontë and Mrs.
+Gaskell; the former austere, intense, prone to exaggeration and deficient
+in humour; the latter genial, balanced, and among the most successful of
+female humourists. The contrast extended to the personal appearance of the
+two women. Charlotte Brontë was plain and diminutive, while in her youth
+Mrs. Gaskell was strikingly beautiful.
+
+The events of Mrs. Gaskell's life were almost wholly literary. Her first
+novel, _Mary Barton_, published in 1848, remains to this day probably her
+best known, though not her most perfect book. It deals with the industrial
+state of Lancashire during the crisis of 1842, and it won, by its vivid
+and touching picture of the life of the poor, the admiration of some of
+the most distinguished literary men of the time. The subject was
+gradually drawing more attention. The evils which begot the socialism of
+Robert Owen and drew the protests of Carlyle and of Ebenezer Elliott had
+been brought into prominence by the Luddite riots and by Chartism. Most of
+the novelists were awakening to a sense of them. Disraeli had anticipated
+Mrs. Gaskell; and Kingsley as well as Charlotte Brontë followed her. The
+treatment varies greatly. Mrs. Gaskell, like Kingsley, has much more
+sympathy with socialism than Charlotte Brontë has. The social aspects of
+_Mary Barton_ caused it to be admired and praised on the one hand, and to
+be censured on the other, for reasons outside the domain of art; but on
+the whole they certainly increased its popularity.
+
+The success of _Mary Barton_ won for Mrs. Gaskell an invitation from
+Dickens to contribute to _Household Words_, and some of her best work,
+including _Cranford_ (1851-1853) and _North and South_ (1854-1855), first
+appeared there. She was also a contributor to the _Cornhill_, where her
+last story, _Wives and Daughters_, was running when she died, with
+startling suddenness, in 1865.
+
+'George Sand, only a few months before Mrs. Gaskell's death, observed to
+Lord Houghton: "Mrs. Gaskell has done what neither I nor other female
+writers in France can accomplish; she has written novels which excite the
+deepest interest in men of the world, and yet which every girl will be the
+better for reading."' This is high praise; and it is deserved. It must not
+indeed be pressed to mean that Mrs. Gaskell is the equal in genius, far
+less the superior, of writers like George Sand or George Eliot. Neither is
+she the equal of her friend, Charlotte Brontë. There is a sweep of
+imagination and a touch of poetry in _Jane Eyre_ quite beyond the reach of
+Mrs. Gaskell. But her work is at once free from weakness and wholly
+innocent. She is of all the more remarkable female novelists of this
+period the most feminine. The traits of sex are numerous in her books, but
+they never appear unpleasantly. Her women are generally better than her
+men; yet her men are not such monsters as the Brontës loved to depict. On
+the contrary, she is fond of painting men of quiet worth, such as the
+country doctor whose 'virtues walk their narrow round,' who lives unknown,
+but who is sadly missed when he dies. Her best stories are quiet tales of
+the life of villages and small towns, and they show the shrewd, kindly,
+genial observation with which all her life she regarded those around her.
+She was happy in her own domestic life, and she believed that life in
+general, though chequered, was happy too. In her picture of human nature
+the virtues on the whole prevail over the vices.
+
+Mrs. Gaskell saw everything in the light of a sympathetic humour. It is
+this quality that has served hitherto as salt to her books and has
+preserved their flavour while that of a great deal of more ambitious
+literature has been lost. If her humour is not equal to the best specimens
+of that of George Eliot, it is more diffused; if less powerful, it is
+gentler and quite as subtle. In style she is easy and flowing; and her
+later books show more freedom than her first attempt. At the same time,
+her writing rarely rises to eloquence. She had more talent than genius.
+She has created many good, but no great characters; and she stands midway
+between Thackeray and Dickens, who are emphatically men of genius, and
+writers like Trollope who, with abundant talent and exhaustless industry,
+have no genius whatever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS.
+
+
+Carlyle was so much besides being a historian, and seems, when we look
+back from a distance of sixty years, so clearly the leader of thought in
+the early part of this period, that it has been deemed advisable to treat
+him by himself. But even without him the volume and the quality of
+historical work accomplished during those forty years is very great.
+Besides Macaulay, who surpassed Carlyle in popular estimation, Thomas
+Arnold, Grote, Thirlwall and Froude were all men who, in most periods,
+might well have filled the first place in historical literature.
+
+Several reasons may be assigned for the concentration of talent upon
+history. In the first place, the circumstances of the time made an
+examination of the foundations of society imperative. This necessity
+reveals itself everywhere, in poetry, in philosophy, and in theology, as
+well as in history. The cry is on all sides for reconstruction; and there
+is a growing sense that the reconstruction must take place upon a
+groundwork of fact, discoverable only by a study of the past. The
+pre-Revolutionary writers had relied upon _a priori_ theory, but the
+immediate results were so different from their anticipations that their
+successors were little disposed to repeat the mistake. Modern history
+teaches above all things the lesson of continuity. Institutions change and
+grow, but they never spring up suddenly like a Jonah's gourd; and even
+revolutions only modify, they do not annul the past.
+
+Science too has had a powerful influence, and the success of the
+scientific method has encouraged the application of a method similar in
+principle, though necessarily different in minor points, to the facts of
+history. The last two generations have witnessed a great extension of the
+principle of induction in the sphere of history; and as the first step in
+a complex process of induction is the accumulation of masses of facts, we
+have here perhaps an explanation of some of the weaknesses of the modern
+school of history. It is apt to lose itself in detail. The reach of
+Tacitus or of Gibbon seems no longer attainable, because their successors
+must know everything, and can with difficulty restrain themselves from
+stating everything. Some one, doubtless, whether he be called a
+philosopher or a historian, will ultimately assimilate the masses of
+information thus laboriously compiled, and the world will once more have
+the principal results compactly stated and in orderly sequence. Buckle's
+experiment proves that it is possible to attempt this too soon; but at the
+same time the welcome that experiment received is an indication that we
+shall not be permanently satisfied with the fragments and aspects of
+history which alone the new method as yet yields. Unity of treatment is
+ultimately as essential in history as codification is in law; and it is
+essential for much the same reason. The old proverb tells us that the wood
+may be invisible by reason of the trees.
+
+We may trace the influence of science also in the greatly deepened sense
+of the importance of origins. In science the chief triumphs have been won
+by tracing things to their beginnings; in physical structure to atoms and
+molecules, in animal life to nerve cells, protoplasm, or whatever is
+simplest and most primitive. Exactly the same effort is made in modern
+history; and nothing is more distinctive of it, in contrast with the
+comparatively superficial historical school of the eighteenth century,
+than the determination to trace the starting-point and original meaning of
+institutions. Ages which had been previously left to legend and myth have
+been patiently investigated, and it is to them that we are now referred
+for the explanation of our own times.
+
+But not only has the ideal of history changed; the material from which it
+is written, old in one sense, is to a large extent new in the sense that
+it is now for the first time accessible. The men of earlier times, even
+when they had the industry and the will for minute investigation, had
+seldom the means. The vast increase of accessible documents has caused
+history to be written afresh, to an extent best measured by the fact that,
+except those who rank as original authorities, Gibbon alone among
+historians prior to the present century still holds his ground.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859).]
+
+Thomas Babington Macaulay felt these modern influences, though not quite
+in their full force. He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, celebrated for
+his exertions in the Anti-Slavery crusade. At Cambridge, whither he went
+in 1818, young Macaulay had for contemporaries a very brilliant set of
+young men, including Derwent and Henry Nelson Coleridge, Moultrie, Praed
+and Charles Austin, 'the only man,' says Sir George Trevelyan, 'who ever
+succeeded in dominating Macaulay,' the man who weaned him from the Toryism
+in which he had been brought up, and 'brought him nearer to Radicalism
+than he ever was before or since.' A constitutional incapacity for and
+hatred of mathematics was punished by the omission of his name from the
+Tripos list of 1822. He had been 'gulfed.' Nevertheless, in 1824, he was
+elected to a Fellowship of Trinity College. He was called to the bar in
+1826, but never took seriously to the law as a profession. He had received
+an earlier call to another profession, and during his stay at Cambridge he
+had been a frequent contributor to _Knights Quarterly Magazine_. But we
+may date from 1825, when his essay on Milton appeared in the _Edinburgh
+Review_, the opening of his career in literature. For many years
+afterwards he was a frequent and certainly the most effective contributor
+to the review.
+
+Macaulay's connexion with Jeffrey's review was profitable in several ways
+to himself as well as to it. He gained money, and fame, and political
+connexions which determined the course of his life for many years, and
+which by doing so unquestionably influenced his historical work. Through
+the influence of Lord Lansdowne, who had been struck by his articles on
+Mill, Macaulay became, in 1830, member for Calne. He soon made his mark,
+rather as a speaker of set speeches than as a debater. His speeches have
+much the character of his essays, the rhetorical style of which is not ill
+adapted to verbal utterance. The clearness which Macaulay never failed to
+give made the rhetoric effective. His great knowledge, and especially his
+wonderful command of historical illustration, enabled him often to clinch
+his argument where abstract discussion would have failed. The most telling
+passage in one of his best known speeches, the speech on copyright, is a
+long list of concrete instances of the effect of the proposal he was
+advocating as contrasted with that of the proposal he was combating. At
+the close, with well-founded confidence, he challenges his opponent to
+match it. While therefore Macaulay had but a small share of the highest
+faculty of the orator, the power to sway the passions of his audience, he
+had in a high degree the power to interest their intellect. For neat,
+crisp statement, apt and copious illustration, and effective rhetoric
+occasionally rising into eloquence, his speeches have few equals.
+
+As a reward for his services in the cause of reform Macaulay was appointed
+a member of the Supreme Council of India. In 1834 he sailed from England,
+and he resided in India till the beginning of 1838. Soon after his return
+to England he was elected M.P. for Edinburgh, and in 1839 was raised to
+the Cabinet as Secretary at War. But he gradually became absorbed in his
+history and devoted less and less time to politics. His defeat in 1847 in
+the parliamentary election for Edinburgh contributed to wean him still
+more from public life. He was hurt, and the smart of wounded pride is
+apparent in the most beautiful verses he ever wrote. They were composed on
+the night of his defeat, and they declare that the writer's true
+allegiance belongs to that Spirit of Literature who, when all the 'wayward
+sprites' of Gain, Fashion, Power and Pleasure have passed away, draws near
+to bless his first infant sleep. The verses are transparently sincere.
+Macaulay's love for letters was the passion of his life; and, acting on
+such a character as his, the unmerited rebuff dealt by Edinburgh proved a
+turning point in his career. He retired into private life, and though
+after the repentance of Edinburgh in 1852 he sat again for his old
+constituency, it was with the fixed intention not to immerse himself in
+parliamentary work, and above all not to accept office. He was now
+completely absorbed in his history; and as he gradually became conscious
+of the greatness of his task, and felt that life was slipping away with
+only a fragment of it accomplished, he grudged more and more any deduction
+from the time which, he foresaw, must be too short at best. For his
+previously excellent health had broken down soon after his election, and
+he never fully recovered it. He resigned his seat in 1856. In the
+following year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley,
+and he died on December 28th, 1859, leaving his history a fragment.
+
+The works of Macaulay are remarkably easy to classify and not very
+difficult to appraise. They fall under four heads,--speeches, essays,
+including the biographical articles contributed to the _Encyclopædia
+Britannica_, the _History of England_, and poetry.
+
+The speeches have been already noticed. The essays, which are described as
+'critical and historical,' are only to a very minor degree critical. The
+well-known paper on Robert Montgomery, irresistibly amusing in its
+severity, is exceptional in the fact that, starting with a literary
+subject, it treats that subject throughout from a literary point of view.
+In most of his essays, as he himself confessed, Macaulay escapes as soon
+as possible from criticism and glides into history. This is the case even
+in the essay on Milton, who would have enchained him to criticism if
+anyone could. Where he is really critical, Macaulay always shows the
+qualities of good sense, sound judgment and extensive knowledge; but few
+will think that he shows any remarkable fineness of critical faculty. On
+occasion he could characterise a style exceedingly well. His contrast
+between the simple, nervous and picturesque expression of Johnson's
+familiar letters and his Latinised pomposity when his sentences are done
+out of English into Johnsonese, cannot be forgotten; and his treatment of
+Bacon's style is as sound and excellent as his treatment of Bacon's
+philosophy is mistaken and false. But his mind was of too positive a type
+to admit of the finest kind of criticism. He saw nothing in half-light,
+and he was deficient in sympathy. His criticism of the Queen Anne writers,
+whom he knew best, will not bear comparison, in respect of insight and
+sensitive appreciation, with Thackeray's criticism of them in the _English
+Humourists_.
+
+Macaulay's strength lay elsewhere; and though he carried into all he did
+the deficiencies revealed by his criticism, as well as deficiencies due to
+political prejudice and personal bias, yet all faults are forgotten, for
+the time at least, in admiration of wide knowledge, boundless energy and
+brilliant style. Macaulay's extensive reading, backed by his wonderful
+memory, served him well. His knowledge was always at hand. If he wanted a
+reference or an allusion he could in a moment supply it. Yet his
+quotations, references and allusions are never pedantic, nor are they
+allowed to clog and weight his style. They serve their proper purpose of
+illustrating and enforcing his point. He defends his position by parallel
+after parallel, contrast after contrast. It was this wealth of
+illustration that forced acquiescence from men of less knowledge among his
+contemporaries; it is the suspicion that the parallels are not always
+accurate, and the contrasts not always sound, that has since caused so
+many of his conclusions to be regarded with suspicion. But frequently the
+historical illustrations are poured out, not to defend any thesis, but
+simply because they crowd spontaneously into the writer's mind; and some
+of the most effective passages in Macaulay's writings are of this
+character. Take, for example, the well-known passage from _Warren
+Hastings_ beginning, 'The place was worthy of such a trial,' or the
+description in the _History_ of the spot where the dust of Monmouth was
+laid. Less crowded with historical names and details, but still deriving
+most of its charm from the same cause, is the almost equally well-known
+paragraph in the essay on _Ranke's History of the Popes_, beginning,
+'There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy
+so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church.' There is a
+rapidity, fire and vividness in such passages by which we may in great
+measure account for Macaulay's popularity. He had no more marked literary
+gift. It shows itself even more spontaneously in his letters than in his
+formal writings; and the letters have sometimes moreover a touch of humour
+rare in the works he intended for publication. Few things of his are more
+purely delightful than the letter to his friend Ellis, describing the
+division in the House of Commons in 1831, when the Reform Bill was carried
+by a majority of one: 'You might have heard a pin drop as Duncannon read
+the numbers. Then, again, the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears.
+And the jaw of Peel fell; and the face of Twiss was as the face of a
+damned soul; and Herries looked like Judas taking his necktie off for the
+last operation.'
+
+It is true that the vivid colouring of the essays sometimes becomes too
+glaring, that the characters, especially when they have relation to
+politics, are apt to be too dark or too bright for human nature, and that
+the writing is throughout that of a partisan. But if this detracts from it
+is far from destroying their value; and Macaulay's biographer is
+pardonably proud of their popularity, and insists, with justice, that it
+is an element in their greatness as well as an evidence of it.
+
+The first two volumes of the _History of England_ were published in 1848,
+and the third and fourth in 1855, while the fifth was left unfinished at
+Macaulay's death. The history repeats in great measure both the merits and
+the defects of the essays. Written with a steady eye to permanence, it is
+far purer and more perfect, better proportioned, more restrained and more
+harmonious than they; but it is marked still by the same limitations. We
+find the writer's strength in a great command of facts and in clearness
+and force of style. His weaknesses are partisan bias, exaggeration and a
+certain want of depth.
+
+The story of Macaulay's ambition to write a history which every young lady
+should read in preference to the latest novel has been often repeated and
+often ridiculed. The ridicule is ill judged. To aim at popularity is in
+itself innocent and even laudable; in truth it is universal. Carlyle
+himself with reason felt aggrieved that he remained so long unrecognised.
+The desire for popularity becomes vicious only when it leads the man who
+cherishes it to pander to a taste which he knows to be depraved, or to
+write something worse than his best, because he knows that his best would
+not be as popular. There is no trace of such conduct in Macaulay. His
+faults were inherent in his nature, and could have been eradicated only by
+making him anew.
+
+Of late years Macaulay's history has been often challenged on the score of
+inaccuracy and untruth. The charge is brought against every historian in
+turn; and we must remember, on the other hand, that Freeman, one of the
+most competent of judges, warmly praised Macaulay for his command of
+facts. It is necessary to distinguish three things: falsity of statement,
+incompleteness of statement, and the drawing of disputable conclusions. In
+the first respect Macaulay was rarely, in the second and third he was
+frequently, at fault. His omissions are often indefensible. The whole
+evidence of his character is against the supposition that they were due to
+conscious dishonesty. It is far more probable that, approaching his
+subject with a strong prepossession, he was positively blind to anything
+that told against his own view. Partly for the same reason, and partly
+because his philosophic endowment was not equal to his literary talent,
+his inferences too are often questionable. And this perhaps will prove in
+the end a more serious objection to his history than his partisanship;
+for, after all, there are worse things, even in historical writing, than
+partisanship. The man who is free from all temptation to take a side, if
+not from political affinity then from moral sympathy, must run some risk
+of being dull and colourless.
+
+Macaulay did much to enlarge and liberalise the conception of history.
+More than any of his predecessors, he attempted to base his views on a
+wide consideration of the literature and life of the people, as well as on
+their constitution and campaigns and treaties. He cast all pseudo-dignity
+to the winds. His method was sound; and herein Carlyle, though he applied
+the principle differently, was quite at one with Macaulay. Another
+honourable characteristic, wherein the two historians likewise agreed, was
+their care in visiting the scenes about which they had to write; and both
+have gained in vividness and in topographical accuracy from this habit.
+Macaulay's notes on the scenes of the Irish war were 'equal in bulk to a
+first-class article in the _Edinburgh_ or _Quarterly Review_.'
+
+The style of Macaulay is at its best in the _History_, where it is more
+chastened, more varied and sonorous than in the _Essays_. The same tricks
+and mannerisms reappear, but they are softened and restrained. The trick
+of a rapid succession of curt sentences, at times so effective, but also
+at times monotonous and jarring, is kept within bounds. Short and simple
+are mingled with comparatively long and complex sentences; for Macaulay,
+scornful of 'the dignity of history' when it is merely cramping and
+obstructive, is scrupulously mindful of it when the phrase has a
+legitimate application. He rejects as meretricious ornament and
+illustration which, as he himself declared, he would have considered not
+only admissible but desirable in a review. The just censure that his style
+is hard and metallic applies with far more force against the _Essays_
+than against the _History_. Greater care and higher finish deepen and
+enrich the tone.
+
+Macaulay's verse must be dismissed with few words. He is best known by his
+_Lays of Ancient Rome_, compositions which, like his prose writings, are
+historical in principle. They neither are nor pretend to be great, but
+they rank high among the modern imitations of popular poetry. At the same
+time, they display no such sympathetic genius as, for example, Scott's
+ballad of Harlaw, no such loftiness of mind as his _Cadyow Castle_. They
+are clear, rapid and vigorous, like their author's prose. The generous
+judgment of Elizabeth Barrett, quoted in Ward's _English Poets_, is
+essentially just: 'He has a noble, clear, metallic note in his soul, and
+makes us ready by it for battle.' That he makes us ready by it for battle
+is eminently true of the splendidly martial _Battle of Naseby_, the most
+stirring piece of verse Macaulay ever wrote. It is interesting to note
+that the historian of England thus, at the age of twenty-four, reached his
+highest point in ballad verse in a subject taken from the country and the
+century which all his life long attracted his most serious study.
+
+In several respects Macaulay is the natural antithesis to Carlyle: to some
+extent they may even be regarded as complementary. We may correct the
+excess of the one by the opposite excess of the other. Macaulay was an
+optimist, Carlyle a pessimist; Macaulay was the panegyrist of his own
+time, Carlyle was its merciless critic; Macaulay devoutly believed all the
+formulas of the Whig creed, and had great faith in Reform Bills and
+improvements in parliamentary machinery, Carlyle accepted no formulas
+whatsoever, and set small store by any reforms that were merely
+parliamentary; Macaulay was orthodox in his literary tastes and methods,
+Carlyle was revolutionary and scornful of rule. The contrast applies
+equally to their personal history and character. Macaulay was sunny,
+genial and healthy, Carlyle dyspeptic, irascible, 'gey ill to deal wi';'
+Macaulay suddenly sprang into fame, Carlyle slowly and with difficulty
+fought his way to it. They are contrasted in their very biographies.
+Macaulay's is one of the pleasantest in the language; Carlyle's awoke an
+acrimonious discussion, due in part certainly to the sins of the subject,
+but in part also to his injudicious treatment by the biographer.
+
+The truth lay between them. If Macaulay was too easily optimistic, Carlyle
+was too gloomy. To paint a picture all shadow is as untrue to art, and
+generally to fact, as it is to paint one all light. It is true that the
+great problem of society, wise government, cannot be solved by franchises
+and ballot-boxes; but proper regulations as to these may help to solve it.
+Carlyle sometimes forgot that the practical problem usually is, not to
+secure that complex and difficult thing, wise government, but to effect
+some little improvement which will conduce to the comparative, wiser
+government, if it does not lead us to the unattainable positive.
+
+The example of German thoroughness had no small influence in fostering the
+new movement in history. It acted most directly on the students of ancient
+history, and Niebuhr was the channel through which it was transmitted to
+England. Before the middle of the century his authority was hardly
+questioned, though a little later we can trace the reaction in the works
+of Sir George Cornewall Lewis and others; and now it is no longer possible
+to conjure with the Pelasgians. But whatever doubts may cloud some of the
+conclusions of Niebuhr, it was he who enabled the English historians to
+breathe life into the dry bones of ancient history. Thomas Arnold,
+Thirlwall and Grote were all inspired by him. Taking these writers as a
+group, we may remark one important difference between them and the
+writers of modern history. The historians of the ancient world are wider
+in their range, and in their works it is still possible to trace the whole
+life of a people. Thirlwall and Grote embrace all the history of Greece
+down to the period of decay, and only Arnold's early death prevented him
+from being equally comprehensive. The reason is that there is a certain
+finality about ancient history. The materials are manageable in quantity,
+and there neither have been nor can be such additions to them as to those
+on which modern history is based.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Arnold (1795-1842).]
+
+Thomas Arnold was a man of untiring energy, and he found for his energies
+three channels, two of them practical and one literary. It is as a
+schoolmaster that he has won his widest, and what will probably prove his
+most enduring fame. Some unfavourable critics have insisted that Arnold's
+Rugby boy could only be described by the slang term, prig. But such
+criticism is merely the revolt against excessive praise. There may have
+been some intellectual and moral coxcombry developed in early years by
+many of Arnold's pupils; but that is not the mature characteristic of men
+like Clough and Stanley and Dean Vaughan. Moreover, Thomas Arnold was
+emphatically one of those men from whom virtue goes out; and a result due
+to affectation can hardly have come from a character so simple and so
+sincere.
+
+But Arnold was ambitious likewise to have a hand in determining the
+doctrines and shaping the thought of England. He, a clergyman, naturally
+took an ecclesiastical view of what would do that; but it was at the same
+time a broad view. His position was singularly interesting. The two great
+evils of the age, in his eyes, were that materialism which he believed to
+be centred in the University of London, and the Catholic revival
+associated with the University of Oxford. He stood upon a ground of
+rationalism, but it was a rationalism which he firmly believed to be
+consistent with faith. He hated materialism because it left no room for a
+religious creed; he hated Tractarianism because it was irreconcilable with
+reason, and he was convinced that whatever was irrational must and ought
+to go to ruin. He would have accepted the aphorism of a living writer,
+'Nothing that is intellectually unsound can be morally sound.' 'It is,'
+says he, 'because I so earnestly desire the revival of the Church that I
+abhor the doctrine of the priesthood.' It was this, the combination of
+faith with fearless loyalty to reason, that gave him his peculiar interest
+in the eyes of observers. The keenest of these however thought the
+permanent maintenance of that position impossible; and Dr. Arnold's son,
+Matthew, in his _Letters_ expresses in another way an opinion
+substantially identical with that which Carlyle had expressed before.
+
+Arnold's _History of Rome_, published between the years 1838 and 1843, has
+in great part lost its importance through the researches of Mommsen and
+other German scholars; but there are portions which can never lose their
+importance. The point of view is essentially Arnold's own. The impulse to
+write came to him because he found in Rome the ancient analogue to the
+'kingly commonwealth of England.' He found in the great republic lessons
+both of encouragement and of warning to his own country; but he sinned
+less than some others, notably Grote, in the way of drawing these lessons
+direct from the ancient state to the modern. In another respect, dignity
+of style, he had an immense advantage over his more widely-read
+contemporary. Arnold's English is always forcible, and in the best
+passages it is eloquent. He is strongest in his account of military
+operations, and his description of the campaigns of the Second Punic War
+remains still the most vivid and readable in our language, and probably in
+modern literature. Certainly Mommsen, powerful as his work is, cannot
+rival Arnold as a military historian. It is rather in depth of
+scholarship, in mastery of facts, in comprehension of the early history,
+and consequently of the subsequent working, of the constitution, that
+Arnold has been surpassed.
+
+[Sidenote: Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875).]
+
+The other two historians of the ancient world both chose Greece for their
+subject. The more interesting and abler man of the two, and the profounder
+scholar, had the singular ill fortune to see his work superseded, almost
+as soon as he had written it, by that of his rival. Connop Thirlwall was
+celebrated in his day as one of the best of English scholars; but no man
+was ever less of the mere grammarian. Trenchant intellect and sound
+judgment were his characteristics. He impressed all who encountered him
+with his capacity to be a leader of men; and his early enterprises seemed
+a guarantee that he would redeem his promise. As one of the translators of
+Niebuhr he moulded English historical thought; and his translation of
+Schleiermacher's essay on St. Luke made an equally deep impression on
+English theology. It almost stopped his professional advancement. When, in
+1840, Thirlwall was suggested to Lord Melbourne for the bishopric of St.
+David's, Melbourne, with the characteristic oath, objected: 'He is not
+orthodox in that preface to Schleiermacher.' After some investigation the
+pious minister convinced himself that the writer of the preface was
+sufficiently orthodox for the purpose. Thirlwall, perhaps to the cost of
+his permanent fame, became Bishop of St. David's, and held the office till
+the year before his death. As Bishop he was bold and independent in
+judgment. On two memorable occasions he stood alone among his order. He
+was the solitary bishop who refused to sign the address calling upon
+Colenso to resign, and he alone voted for the disestablishment of the
+Irish Church. Nevertheless he was in a position unfortunate for himself.
+His nature demanded unfettered freedom of thought; and the controversy
+with Rowland Williams over the question of _Essays and Reviews_ proved
+that such freedom was not to be found on a bishop's throne.
+
+Thirlwall's principal contribution to literature is his _History of
+Greece_ (1835-1847). The completed work is unfortunately marred by traces
+of the original design. It had been meant for _Lardner's Cyclopædia_, but
+overflowed the limits set. Thirlwall thereupon revised the scheme; but he
+never attained the freedom he would have had if he had begun to write on
+his own plan and his own scale. His profound scholarship, penetrating
+judgment, nervous though severe style, and critical acumen, all show to
+advantage in the _History_. He is far more concentrated than Grote; and
+though the latter caught the meaning of certain movements and certain
+institutions which Thirlwall neglected or misinterpreted, he presents a
+more luminous and a less prejudiced view of Greek history than his
+successful rival.
+
+But if the _History of Greece_ is Thirlwall's most solid contribution to
+literature, that which gives the best impression of the man, regarded by
+contemporaries as a rival of the greatest, is his _Letters to a Young
+Friend_.[3] Few collections of letters give a more charming view of a
+relation of pure friendship between two people of widely different age.
+They are weighty too because they touch at many points on questions of
+universal interest. It has been said that the letters a man writes ought
+to be ascribed to his correspondent in equal measure with himself; and it
+is certain that from the sympathy he found in this friendship Thirlwall
+drew an inspiration nothing else in his life ever gave him.
+
+[Sidenote: George Grote (1794-1871).]
+
+George Grote, the schoolfellow, friend and rival of Thirlwall, was a man
+in most respects widely different from the great Bishop. Thirlwall's
+thought was German in origin, though it was coloured by English
+ecclesiastical opinion. Grote was a Benthamite, and had all the hardness
+without quite all the force of that school. It was the rising school, and
+part of Grote's success was due to the fact that he was moving along the
+line of least resistance. He was a persevering, clear-sighted, determined
+man. As a historian of Greece he was patient and thorough. He had marked
+out the subject as his own more than twenty years before the publication,
+in 1846, of his first two volumes; and ten years more passed before the
+work was finished. Indeed, we may say that his whole life was devoted to
+it; for, according to his conception of history, _Plato and the other
+Companions of Sokrates_ (1865), and the incomplete Aristotelian studies
+issued posthumously in 1872, were parts and appendages of the history.
+
+Grote was spurred on to this work by political feelings more nearly
+related to the present time. He was irritated by the Toryism of Mitford's
+_History of Greece_, which he exposed in an article in the _Westminster
+Review_. Yet one of his own most conspicuous defects is that he too
+evidently holds a brief on the opposite side. He does not slur facts,
+still less does he falsify, but his arguments have sometimes the character
+of special pleading. Democracy becomes a kind of fetish to him. Its
+success in the Athens of the fifth century B.C. is made an argument for
+extending the English franchise in the nineteenth century A.D.; and Grote
+is wholly blind to the fact that the wide difference of circumstances
+makes futile all reasoning from the one case to the other.
+
+Grote's style is heavy and ungainly. He plods along, correct as a rule,
+but uninspiring and unattractive. He is similarly clumsy in the use of
+materials. Skilful selection might have appreciably shortened his history;
+but Grote rarely prunes with sufficient severity, and often he does not
+prune at all. His habit of pouring out the whole mass of his material in
+the shape of notes lightens the labour of his successors, but injures his
+own work as an artistic history. Nevertheless, though Grote had no genius,
+and nothing that deserves to be called a style, his _History of Greece_
+holds the field. It does so because of its solidity and conscientious
+thoroughness, because of its patient investigation of the origin and
+meaning of institutions, and because its very faults were, after all,
+faults which sprang from sympathy. Grote was the first who did full
+justice to the Athenian people; and he may be pardoned if he sometimes did
+them more than justice.
+
+As these three, Arnold, Thirlwall and Grote, dealt with the ancient world
+in its glory and greatness, so there were two, Milman and Finlay, who
+traced its decay, or the process of transition from the ancient to the
+modern world.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868).]
+
+Henry Hart Milman in his earlier days wrote poetry. The turning-point in
+his literary career was the publication of the _History of the Jews_
+(1830), the first English work which adequately treats the Jews in their
+actual historical setting, not in the traditional way as a 'peculiar
+people' with practically no historical setting at all. Milman afterwards
+edited Gibbon and wrote a life of the historian; and in 1840 the result of
+his studies appeared in the _History of Christianity under the Empire_.
+In 1855 the _History of Latin Christianity down to the Death of Pope
+Nicholas V._ set the crown upon his labours. This work is Milman's best
+title to remembrance, and though errors have been detected in it, the tone
+and spirit are good, the method sound and the scholarship admirable.
+
+[Sidenote: George Finlay (1799-1875).]
+
+George Finlay has suffered from an unattractive theme, for few care about
+the obscure fortunes of Greece after its conquest by the Romans. But
+Finlay was an enthusiast who not only wrote about Greece but lived in it;
+and this residence (continuous after 1854) imparts to his history its most
+valuable qualities. Finlay published a series of works on Greece between
+1844 and 1861, all of which were summed up in his _History of Greece from
+its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time_ (1877).
+
+[Sidenote: John Mason Neale (1818-1866).]
+
+[Sidenote: Charles Merivale (1808-1893).]
+
+Among historians of less importance, John Mason Neale did for the Holy
+Eastern Church a service similar to that performed by Milman for the Latin
+Church; but he is more likely to be remembered as a hymn-writer than as a
+historian. Charles Merivale was likewise a subordinate member of the group
+of ancient historians. His principal work was a _History of the Romans
+under the Empire_ (1850-1862). Its worst defect is that the author is not
+quite equal to his subject. Merivale was a respectable historian, but the
+successful treatment of the Romans under the Empire demanded a great one.
+
+[Sidenote: James Anthony Froude (1818-1894).]
+
+Among the writers of modern history the next in rank after Macaulay and
+Carlyle is James Anthony Froude, the brother of Richard Hurrell Froude,
+famous for his connexion with the Oxford movement. For a time J. A. Froude
+himself was a Tractarian, and he took orders. But Newman's drift to Rome
+forced him in the opposite direction. His first considerable book, _The
+Nemesis of Faith_ (1849), records his change of mind and indicates how
+impossible it must always have been for him to rest permanently in the
+position of the Tractarians.
+
+Leaving Oxford and the Tractarians, Froude fell under the spell of
+Carlyle. They were introduced to each other soon after this, but it was
+not till Froude's settlement in London in 1860 that they became intimate.
+Carlyle's influence upon his disciple was almost wholly good. The younger
+man had the good sense not to imitate his master's style, while he learnt
+from him clear, sharply-outlined, fearless judgment; and the mists of
+Tractarianism rolled away for ever.
+
+The great work of Froude's life was his _History of England from the Fall
+of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada_ (1856-1870). It was written
+under the direct inspiration of Carlyle. 'If I wrote anything,' says
+Froude, 'I fancied myself writing it to him, reflecting at each word what
+he would think of it, as a check on affectations.' He submitted the first
+two chapters, in print, to Carlyle; and the verdict, 'though not wanting
+in severity,' was on the whole favourable. The critics were divided.
+Froude was a man who usually either carried his readers wholly with him or
+alienated them. Those who loved clear, vigorous, pointed English, keen
+intelligence and life-like portraiture, were delighted with the book.
+Students, familiar with the original documents and able to criticise
+details, regarded it with very different eyes.
+
+Both sides were right in their principal assertions, and both were prone
+to forget that there was another aspect of the case. On the one hand, it
+has been established beyond the reach of reasonable dispute that Froude
+was habitually and grossly inaccurate. It is indeed doubtful whether any
+other historian, with any title to be considered great, can be charged
+with so many grave errors. Froude is inaccurate first of all in his facts.
+He does not take the trouble to verify, he misquotes, he is not careful to
+weigh evidence. But moreover, he is inaccurate in what may be called his
+colour. He paints his picture in the light of his own emotions and
+prejudices, he is rather the impassioned advocate than the calm judge. He
+would not only have acknowledged this, but he would have defended himself;
+and there is something to be said for his view. Absolute impartiality is,
+in the first place, unattainable; and in the second place, so far as it is
+attained, it is not always an unmixed good. Pure disinterestedness is apt
+to mean absence of interest. It is certainly true that some of the
+greatest histories in the world are all alive with the passions of the
+writers. Those of Tacitus are so, and likewise those of Carlyle; and
+Herodotus had undoubtedly a partiality for Athens. Froude therefore is not
+to be wholly condemned on this score; but he ought to have remembered that
+the adoption of such a theory of history made it doubly incumbent on him
+to examine carefully the grounds upon which his opinions rested. His
+cardinal defect was a disregard of this precaution.
+
+Froude moreover was given to paradox. It has been repeatedly pointed out
+that one of the great tasks of the century has been the whitewashing of
+scoundrels. De Quincey undertook Judas. Carlyle in his later days
+performed the service for Frederick. Froude in his justification of Henry
+VIII. was only following a fashion. Nevertheless, the twisting of facts,
+the exaggeration of all that tells on the one side and the slurring or
+suppression of arguments on the other, are grave faults in history. And
+these are the almost inevitable results of the indulgence in paradox and
+the advocacy of weak causes. All the cleverness is unconvincing, and the
+detection of the sophistry brings discredit upon the whole work into which
+it is admitted.
+
+This is the case of the _advocatus diaboli_ against Froude. It is a
+re-statement of the main points in Freeman's indictment. But a history is
+a piece of literature as well as a record of facts; and as literature
+Froude's work stands very high. In the first place, he is great in style.
+Not that his English is of the kind that calls attention to itself. It is
+seldom magnificent, but it is always adequate, and the reader never feels
+himself jarred by want of taste or befogged by obscurity either of thought
+or expression. It is wholly free from affectation. Froude concerned
+himself merely to express his meaning, and wrote a good style because he
+did not trouble himself about style. He answered impatiently those who
+inquired into the secret of his prose, telling them that he only wrote
+what he thought and let the style take care of itself.
+
+Froude had moreover a great talent for the delineation of character.
+Whether his characters are always true to fact may be questioned; but his
+Henry VIII., his Queen Mary and his Queen Elizabeth certainly leave the
+impression of living human beings, and the charm of his history is largely
+due to the vividness with which he paints them.
+
+Froude never undertook another work on such a scale as the _History_.
+Perhaps he realised that the scale was too large. The plan of the _Short
+Studies on Great Subjects_ (1867-1883) was in some respects better suited
+to him. In these essays he gives with unsurpassed vigour the thoughts of a
+powerful mind on themes of special interest; and as they do not pretend to
+be exhaustive the writer's weaknesses are not brought into prominence.
+_The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_ (1872-1874) was, next
+to the great _History_, his largest work. But Irish history has been and
+is the source of so much passion that the present generation is no
+favourable time for either writing or criticising such a work. Later, in
+1889, the historical romance, _The Two Chiefs of Dunboy_, showed that his
+interest in the country still survived; and those who know Ireland are the
+readiest to acknowledge that Froude has not only written an interesting
+story, but has shown great insight into the country and its inhabitants.
+
+But the principal work of Froude's later years was his biography of
+Carlyle, the first instalment of which was published in 1882, and the
+second two years later. No biography has ever raised a greater storm of
+indignation; nor can it be denied that for this Froude was partly to
+blame. His method is ruthless, and in some cases its justice is
+questionable. At the same time, the condemnation passed upon him has been
+unmeasured; and no small part of it has been due to the disappointment of
+worshippers of Carlyle at the discovery that if the head of their idol was
+pure gold the feet were miry clay. Froude has written, perhaps one of the
+least judicious, but certainly one of the most readable of English
+biographies.
+
+The other works of Froude are of inferior consequence. Neither his _Julius
+Cæsar_ nor his _Erasmus_ is calculated to increase his reputation; while
+the very interesting _Oceana_ indicates, more clearly than any of his
+other writings, the source of his greatest errors--a habit of jumping to
+conclusions from insufficient premisses. Froude pronounces confidently
+upon the colonies on no better ground than a hurried visit and a few
+conversations with chance residents, who might not always be
+disinterested. Yet _Oceana_ had more influence than many a better book.
+Like Seeley's _Expansion of England_ it was partly the consequence, but
+also partly the cause of the great change in public opinion whereby the
+colonies, regarded thirty years ago as little better than a burden, have
+come to be considered the principal support of the greatness of England.
+
+[Sidenote: Alexander William Kinglake (1809-1891).]
+
+The historian generally prefers to work upon a subject removed to some
+distance from his own time, but the intense interest of a great armed
+struggle not infrequently makes it an exception. Thus, the Peninsular War
+found a contemporary historian in Napier, and similarly Alexander William
+Kinglake wrote the story of the next great European contest in which
+England was engaged after the fall of Napoleon. He had previously won a
+purer literary fame in the fascinating volume of travel, _Eothen_,
+published in 1844. The journey of which it is a record had been made about
+nine years earlier, and _Eothen_ as finally published was the result of
+long thought and of fastidious care in literary workmanship. It is little
+concerned with facts and occurrences, attempting rather to reproduce the
+effect of the life and the scenes of the East.
+
+The reputation acquired by this book opened up for Kinglake the larger
+subject of the Crimean War. He had accompanied the expedition from love of
+adventure, and chance made him acquainted with Lord Raglan, whose papers
+were ultimately intrusted to him. _The Invasion of the Crimea_ (1863-1887)
+is open to several serious objections. It is far too long, and the style
+is florid, diffuse and highly mannered. Moreover, Kinglake is a most
+prejudiced historian. There is no mean in his judgment; he either can see
+no faults, or he can see nothing else. Raglan and St. Arnaud are examples
+of the two extremes. But frequently the historian supplies the corrective
+to his own judgment. If the battle of the Alma was won as Kinglake says it
+was, then it was won not by generalship but by hard fighting plus a lucky
+blunder on the part of the general. On the other hand, Kinglake sustains
+the interest with great skill, especially in the battle volumes. Long as
+are the accounts of the Alma and of Balaclava, they are perfectly clear,
+and the impression left is indelible.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862).]
+
+It has been already hinted that the chief defect in this great mass of
+historical work is the want of a philosophy of history. The unmanageable
+volume of material almost smothers the intellect. An attempt to make good
+the defect was made by Henry Thomas Buckle, in his _History of
+Civilisation_ (1857-1861), with results not altogether satisfactory.
+Buckle was a man of vast reading and tenacious memory; but no knowledge,
+however extensive, could at that time have sufficed to do what he
+attempted. He soon discovered this himself, and what he has executed is a
+mere fragment of his daring design. Even so, it is larger than his
+materials justified. In accounting for Buckle's failure, stress has often
+been laid upon the fact that his education was private. This is a little
+pedantic. Grote, whose history has been accepted at the universities as
+the best available, was of no university. Mill, one of the men who have
+most influenced thought in this century, was of none either. Gibbon,
+perhaps the greatest of historians, has put on record how little he owed
+to Oxford; and Carlyle has told us with characteristic vigour how
+unprofitable he thought his university of Edinburgh. The men who did not
+go to a university have done good work; and the men who did go to one have
+declared that they owed little or nothing to the education there received.
+In the face of such facts it is impossible to account so for the failure
+of Buckle. The real reason, besides the cardinal fact that the attempt was
+premature, is that Buckle, though he had the daring of the speculator's
+temperament, had neither its caution nor its breadth. The great
+speculative geniuses of the world have been prudent as well as bold. No
+one is bolder than Aristotle, but no one is more careful to lay first a
+broad foundation for his speculations. Buckle did not use his great
+knowledge so. His account of the causes of things always rouses suspicion
+because it is far too simple. He never understood how complex the life of
+a nation is; and when he came to write he practically rejected the greater
+part of his knowledge and used only the small remainder. He was moreover a
+man of strong prejudices. He could not endure the ecclesiastical type of
+mind or the ecclesiastical view of things; and his account of civilisation
+in Scotland is completely vitiated by his determination to regard the
+Church, before the Reformation and after the Reformation alike, as merely
+a weight on the wheel, not a source of energy and forward movement.
+
+Buckle then illustrates the tendency of the mind, noted by Bacon, to grasp
+prematurely at unity. This very fact, conjoined with the clearness and
+vigour of his style, was the reason of his popularity. When the inadequacy
+of his theories began to be perceived there came a reaction. But
+inevitably those theories will be replaced by others. To some extent they
+have been replaced already by the theories of two writers, Sir Henry Maine
+and Mr. W. E. Hartpole Lecky, of whom the latter belongs, however, rather
+to the period still current than to the Age of Tennyson.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Henry Maine (1822-1888).]
+
+The majority of Maine's works too were published after the year 1870, but
+as his most awakening and original book, _Ancient Law_, appeared as early
+as 1861, we may fairly regard him as belonging to the period under
+consideration. Sir Henry Maine was a great teacher as well as a great
+writer, and he had already acquired a considerable reputation before the
+appearance of his _Ancient Law_. But it was that book which established
+his name as an original thinker. It has two great merits. It is written
+in a most lucid, pleasant style, and it is decidedly original in
+substance. Maine's design is far less ambitious than Buckle's; but for
+that very reason his performance is more adequate. The most conspicuous
+distinction between the two is that the later writer shows in far greater
+measure than his predecessor the modern sense of the importance of
+origins. It was this that gave his work importance. To a great extent the
+task of recent historians has been to trace institutions to their source,
+and explain their later development by means of the germs out of which
+they have grown. In this respect Maine was a pioneer, and his later work
+was just a fuller exposition of the principles at the root of _Ancient
+Law_. His _Village Communities_ (1871) and his _Early History of
+Institutions_ (1875) are both inspired by the same idea. In his _Popular
+Government_ (1885) he may be said to break new ground; but it is easy to
+see the influence on that book of the author's prolonged study of early
+forms of society. These later books are not perhaps intrinsically inferior
+to _Ancient Law_, but they are less suggestive, just because so much of
+the work had been already done by it.
+
+Biography is another form of history, and it is not surprising that a
+period so rich in historical writings should also be distinguished in
+biography. If Boswell's _Johnson_ is still supreme, the Age of Tennyson
+has produced several lives surpassed only by it. Two of the best of these
+lives, Carlyle's _Sterling_ and Froude's _Carlyle_, were written by
+historians, and have been noticed along with their other works. Another
+remarkable book, the _Autobiography_ of John Stuart Mill, is likewise best
+taken along with the more formal works of the philosopher. But even after
+these large deductions, and after a rigid exclusion of everything that is
+not, both in form and substance, of very high quality, there remain at
+least two men of great distinction in literature, J. G. Lockhart and A. P.
+Stanley, who must be treated as first and chiefly biographers.
+
+[Sidenote: John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854).]
+
+John Gibson Lockhart was a man of many gifts and accomplishments, a good
+scholar, a keen satirist and critic, a powerful novelist, an excellent
+translator. He was accomplished with the pencil as well as with the pen,
+and some of his caricatures are at once irresistibly amusing and
+profoundly true. His 'Scotch judge' and 'Scotch minister' would make the
+reputation of a number of _Punch_. His biting wit won for him the
+_sobriquet_ of 'the Scorpion;' but notwithstanding his sting he won and
+retained through life many warm friends. He was trained for the Scottish
+bar, but attached himself to the literary set of _Blackwood_, in which
+Christopher North was the most striking figure. With him and Hogg Lockhart
+was concerned in an exceedingly amusing skit, the famous _Chaldee
+Manuscript_; but the joke gave so much offence that this 'promising babe'
+was strangled in the cradle. A good deal of more serious literary work
+belongs to the period before 1830,--the novels, a mass of criticism, and
+the _Spanish Ballads_. Then too was formed the connexion which opened to
+Lockhart the great work of his life. He was introduced to Scott in 1818.
+The acquaintance prospered. Scott liked the clever young man, Scott's
+daughter liked him still better, and in 1820 Lockhart married Sophia
+Scott. Largely through her father's influence he was appointed editor of
+the _Quarterly Review_, an office which he held until 1853, and in which
+he became to a very great degree, both by reason of what he wrote and of
+what he printed, responsible for the tone of criticism at the time.
+
+Lockhart undoubtedly shared that excessive personality which was the blot
+of criticism, and especially of the _Blackwood_ school, in his
+generation. He has been charged with the _Blackwood_ article on Keats, and
+with the _Quarterly_ article on _Jane Eyre_, but he may now be acquitted
+of both these sins. It was however Lockhart who wrote the _Quarterly_
+article on Tennyson's early poems; but this, though bad in tone and
+excessively severe, is to a large extent critically sound. So far as they
+can be traced, Lockhart's criticisms are such as might be expected from
+his mind,--clear, incisive and vigorous. They are however often
+unsympathetic and harsh, because criticism was then too apt to be
+interpreted as fault-finding, and Lockhart could not wholly free himself
+from the influence of a vicious tradition.
+
+But it is by his _Life of Scott_ (1836-1838) that Lockhart will live in
+literature. He had in an ample measure the first of all requirements in a
+biographer, personal acquaintance with the man whose life he wrote. Almost
+from the time of his introduction, and certainly from the date of his
+marriage, Lockhart's relations with Scott were of the closest; and though
+he was not personally familiar with the facts of Scott's earlier life, he
+knew quite enough to understand the springs of the man's character.
+Moreover, in the autobiographical fragment and in the endless stores of
+family and friendly anecdote open to him he had ample means of making good
+the deficiency. For among Lockhart's advantages is to be reckoned the fact
+that he had not merely married into the family, but had married, as it
+were, into the circle of friends. The _Life of Scott_ shows that the
+families of Abbotsford, of Chiefswood and of Huntley Burn (the last
+Scott's great friends the Fergusons) were for many purposes only one
+larger family.
+
+There are certain dangers, as well as great advantages, to the biographer
+even in intimate friendship. Misused in one way, it lowers the
+biographer's own character; misused in another, it either lowers or
+unnaturally exalts that of his subject. Boswell, employing his materials
+with excellent effect for the purposes of his book, degrades himself.
+Froude, making a mistake of another sort, exaggerates all the less lovable
+characteristics of Carlyle; while there are multitudes who paint pictures
+not of flesh and blood, but of impossible saints and heroes. 'A love
+passing the love of biographers' was Macaulay's phrase for the excess of
+hero-worship. Lockhart has avoided all these errors. When his book was
+read the contradictory charges were brought against him, on the one hand
+of having exaggerated Scott's virtues and concealed his faults, and on the
+other of ungenerous and derogatory criticism. We may be sure that
+Lockhart's temptation, if he felt any, was rather to 'extenuate' than to
+'set down in malice.' But, with a noble confidence in a noble character,
+he does not extenuate. To describe Scott as a mere money-lover would be
+untrue; yet many have felt that there is a fault in his relation to
+wealth, and Lockhart uses just the right words when he says, 'I dare not
+deny that he set more of his affections, during great part of his life,
+upon worldly things, wealth among others, than might have become such an
+intellect;' and he gives just the right explanation when he goes on to
+trace this defect to its root in the imagination. In his treatment of the
+commercial matters in which Scott was involved, Lockhart is equally
+judicial.
+
+The tact of Lockhart deserves as much praise as his fairness of judgment.
+As regards part of his work, he was put to the test a few years ago by the
+publication of Scott's _Journal_. Lockhart had made liberal extracts from
+this journal, explaining at the same time that passages were necessarily
+suppressed because of their bearing upon persons then alive. A comparison
+of his extracts with the journal now accessible _in extenso_ shows how
+skilfully he suppressed what was likely to give pain, while at the same
+time producing much the same general impression as the whole document
+leaves.
+
+A biography, like a letter, may be said to have two authors, the man
+written about and the person who writes. Scott certainly gave Lockhart the
+greatest assistance, both by what he wrote and by what he was. At the
+beginning the delightful fragment of autobiography, towards the end the
+profoundly interesting _Journal_, and all through the free, manly,
+large-hearted letters, were materials of the choicest sort. Scott himself
+moreover, genial, cordial, of manifold activity, a centre of racy
+anecdote, was a person whom it was far more easy to set in an attractive
+frame than any mere literary recluse. Many could have produced a good life
+of such a man. Lockhart's special praise is that he has written a great
+one. Except Johnson, there is no English man of letters so well depicted
+as Scott. Lockhart's taste and style are excellent. The caustic wit which
+ran riot in the young _Blackwood_ reviewer is restrained by the experience
+of years and by the necessities of the subject. Lockhart's own part of the
+narrative is told in grave, temperate English, simple almost to severity,
+but in a high degree flexible. In the brighter parts there is a pleasant
+lightness in Lockhart's touch; in the more serious parts he is weighty and
+powerful; and on occasion, especially towards the end, there is a
+restrained emotion which proves that part of his wonderful success is due
+to the fact that his heart was in his work.
+
+[Sidenote: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881).]
+
+Arthur Penrhyn Stanley ranks considerably below Lockhart, yet his _Life of
+Arnold_ (1844) is inferior only to the few unapproachable masterpieces of
+biography. Stanley was a fluent and able writer in several fields, but in
+most respects his work is now somewhat discredited. His _Commentary on
+the Epistles to the Corinthians_ (1855) has been severely handled for
+inaccuracy and defective scholarship. His _Lectures on the Eastern Church_
+(1861) and _On the Jewish Church_ (1863-1876), and his book of Eastern
+travel, _Sinai and Palestine_ (1856) are delightful in literary execution,
+but they are popular rather than solid. Stanley neither was nor,
+apparently, cared to be exact. He trusted too much to his gift of making
+things interesting, and had an inadequate conception of the duty he owed
+to his readers of writing what was true. Other travellers who have
+followed his footsteps in the East have sometimes found that the scenes he
+describes, in charming English, are such as are visible only to those
+whose eyes can penetrate rocks and mountains. This constitutional
+inaccuracy is a blot upon nearly all his works, and his one permanent
+contribution to literature will probably prove to be the _Life of Dr.
+Arnold_. There is here, as Stanley's biographer justly says, 'a glow of
+repressed enthusiasm which gives to the work one of its greatest charms.'
+Stanley loved Arnold, and threw himself with unwonted thoroughness into
+the task of depicting him. For two years, we are told, he abandoned for it
+every other occupation that was not an absolute duty. The principal defect
+of the _Life_ is that the plan--a portion of narrative, and then a body of
+letters--is too rigid and mechanical. But the narrative is exceedingly
+good, giving within moderate compass a clear impression of Arnold; and the
+letters are well selected and full of interest.
+
+
+MINOR HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867).]
+
+Sir Archibald Alison was the son of a clergyman who won a name for a work
+on the _Principles of Taste_. Alison practised at the Scottish bar, became
+Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and was knighted for his services to literature.
+His _magnum opus_ is a _History of Europe during the French Revolution_,
+which he afterwards continued to the accession of Napoleon III. It is
+laborious and honest, though not unprejudiced. Disraeli sneeringly said
+that 'Mr. Wordy' had proved by his twenty volumes that Providence was on
+the side of the Tories.
+
+[Sidenote: John Hill Burton (1809-1881).]
+
+John Hill Burton, best known as the historian of Scotland, was an
+industrious man of letters, who wrote on many subjects,--_The Scot
+Abroad_, _The Book Hunter_, and _The Age of Queen Anne_, as well as the
+_History of Scotland_. The last is the work of a capable and careful
+writer rather than of a great historian. Burton is sensible and
+dispassionate, and he has collected and put into shape the principal
+results of modern research as applied to Scotland.
+
+[Sidenote: John Forster (1812-1876).]
+
+John Forster was a laborious but somewhat commonplace writer. He was the
+author of a _Life of Goldsmith_ (1848) and a _Life of Sir John Eliot_
+(1864). But his most valuable works are two biographies of contemporaries,
+the _Life of Landor_ (1869) and the _Life of Dickens_ (1872-1874). Forster
+had little power of realising character, and the subjects of his
+biographies are never clearly outlined. His _Life of Dickens_ has an
+importance beyond its intrinsic merits, because it is the most
+authoritative book on the great novelist.
+
+[Sidenote: Walter Farquhar Hook (1798-1875).]
+
+Walter Farquhar Hook was a prominent clergyman, whose doctrine, that the
+English Roman Catholics were really seceders from the Church of England,
+caused a great stir when it was first promulgated. His vast design of the
+_Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_ (1860-1876) was ultimately
+executed in twelve big volumes. The plan was too large and the characters
+treated too multifarious for really good biography, but it is solid and
+valuable work.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir John William Kaye (1814-1876).]
+
+Sir John William Kaye wrote two meritorious books of military history,
+_The History of the War in Afghanistan_ (1851), and _The History of the
+Sepoy War in India_ (1864-1876). The latter, which roused some
+controversy, was left unfinished at Kaye's death, and was afterwards
+completed by Colonel Malleson.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Francis Palgrave (1788-1861).]
+
+Sir Francis Palgrave was in the early part of his life an active
+contributor to the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, and a diligent
+editor of state documents. His _Rise and Progress of the English
+Commonwealth_ (1832) threw much light on the early history of England.
+Palgrave was in his day one of the most earnest students of mediæval
+history.
+
+[Sidenote: Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope (1805-1875).]
+
+Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope, wrote the _History of the War of the
+Succession in Spain_, the _History of the Reign of Queen Anne_, and the
+_History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles_.
+He took great pains with his work, but he does not reach distinction
+either of thought or style.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir William Stirling-Maxwell (1818-1878).]
+
+Sir William Stirling-Maxwell is less widely known than he deserves to be,
+but this is partly due to the expensiveness of his works. He wrote _Annals
+of the Artists of Spain_, _The Cloister Life of Charles V._, _Velasquez
+and his Work_, and a posthumous book, _Don John of Austria_. All his work
+is distinguished for learning and good taste.
+
+[Sidenote: Agnes Strickland (1806-1874)]
+
+Agnes Strickland was a popular writer whose work is readable rather than
+profound or original. Her principal books are the _Lives of the Queens of
+England_, followed up by _Lives of the Queens of Scotland_.
+
+[Sidenote: Patrick Fraser Tytler (1791-1849).]
+
+Patrick Fraser Tytler, another historian of Scotland, came of a family
+distinguished both in literature and in law. His _History of Scotland_ has
+been superseded in general favour by Burton's, which has the advantage of
+embodying more recent research. Tytler however was the abler man of the
+two, and he had a higher literary gift than Burton. Except where the
+narrative has to be re-written in the light of later discoveries, his
+judgment is always worth weighing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+The early part of the nineteenth century was not very prolific in the
+department of speculative thought, but signs of movement may be detected
+in the third decade. Each of the English universities became the centre of
+a very active intellectual society. The Cambridge men showed a bent
+towards general literature and philosophy, or to theology of a type
+cognate to philosophy. In the works of Whately Oxford gave signs of a
+philosophical revival; but she devoted herself mainly to theology, and the
+practical isolation of Whately, a hard and arid though a vigorous man,
+calls the more attention to her speculative poverty. The celebrated
+'Oxford movement,' whose roots are in the twenties, though its visible
+growth dates only from the thirties, is of incomparably greater importance
+than this feeble revival.
+
+[Sidenote: John Keble (1792-1866).]
+
+Newman, the great artificer of the movement, rightly traces its inception
+to the influence of John Keble. But Keble's true literary form is poetry,
+and his principal contribution to poetry belongs to the preceding period.
+His prose works are not in themselves of great importance. As Professor of
+Poetry at Oxford he delivered lectures (in Latin) on critical subjects. In
+his character of pastor he preached many sermons, and a selection from
+them was published in 1847. The most famous of his pulpit utterances was
+one preached in 1833 on 'National Apostasy.' 'I have ever considered and
+kept the day,' says Newman, with regard to the delivery of this sermon,
+'as the start of the religious movement of 1833.' Finally, in 1863,
+appeared Keble's latest work of importance, a _Life of Bishop Wilson_.
+
+Keble's influence was essentially personal, and was due to his saintly
+life more than to anything he wrote, even in poetry. The Tractarian
+movement took its rise in a longing for saintliness, of which Keble
+furnished a living example. He was not to any considerable extent an
+originator of theory. Certain germs of theory about the Church, about its
+relation to pre-Reformation times, about authority in religion, were in
+the air, and they became absorbed in Keble's system. But his was not a
+creative mind, and his position at the head of the Anglo-Catholic movement
+was little more than an accident. He was like a child who by a thrust of
+his hand sends a finely-poised rock thundering down a hill. In his
+literary aspects he is disappointing. A brilliant boy and a most blameless
+man, he remains throughout too little of this world. The pale perfection
+of his life is reflected in his works. He would have been better had he
+been less good; he would have been much better had he been less feminine.
+
+In the ranks of the movement so initiated were included an unusual number
+of men who must be classed among the 'might-have-beens' of literature; men
+of great reputation eclipsed by premature death, men who never wrote, or
+men whose writings disappointed expectation. Nearly all its members had
+literary tastes, a fact not surprising when we consider how large a part
+imagination played in its start and development. But Hurrell Froude, one
+of the most daring-minded men engaged in it, died early, leaving only
+inadequate remains as evidence of his great gifts. W. G. Ward lived, but
+only to prove by his _Ideal of a Christian Church_ that the power of
+writing good English was not among his endowments; and if the poetry of
+Keble is only second or even third-rate, that of Isaac Williams, a
+versifier of the movement, is of lower grade still. Manning was more the
+man of action than the man of letters; while the work of Dean Church and
+Canon Liddon, both of whom had marked literary talents, falls principally
+outside the limits of this period. There remain two remarkable men, one
+the very soul of the movement, the other its greatest recruit, who have
+attained, the first a great, the second a respectable place in letters.
+These are Cardinal Newman and Pusey, of whom the latter may be considered
+the exception to the rule that the Tractarians were by nature and instinct
+men of letters. Pusey was not; he was rather the technical theologian with
+no direct interest in letters at all.
+
+[Sidenote: John Henry Newman (1801-1890).]
+
+John Henry Newman has been described by J. A. Froude, in language hardly
+too strong, as 'the indicating number' of the movement, all the others
+being, in comparison with him, but as cyphers. The story of Newman's inner
+life has been told with inimitable grace in the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_,
+and this is not only his greatest contribution to literature, but the best
+document for his life and doctrines. There are few studies more
+interesting than the contrast presented by this book on the one side, and
+the _Phases of Faith_ by its author's brother, F. W. Newman, on the other.
+The younger Newman too has a mind prone to religion, but he decides to
+rest in reason, while his brother leans upon authority. Not unnaturally
+they drift very far apart; not unnaturally too the author of the _Phases
+of Faith_ is amazed that it took his brother ten years to discover whither
+he was going.
+
+Newman's education was private till he went to Oxford, where, in 1822, he
+won a fellowship at Oriel, then the great intellectual college of the
+university. He was at this time a Calvinist in his religious views, and
+held, among other things, that the Pope was Antichrist. At Oxford he came
+under the influence of Whately, who, he says, taught him to think. But the
+two men were essentially antipathetic and foredoomed to part, not the best
+of friends. Newman drew gradually closer to men of a very different
+stamp--R. J. Wilberforce, Hurrell Froude and Keble. His _Arians of the
+Fourth Century_ was finished in 1832, and he took rest after the fatigue
+of writing it in a memorable journey with Hurrell Froude in the
+Mediterranean. During this journey he composed most of his verses printed
+in the _Lyra Apostolica_, and towards the end of it the exquisite hymn,
+'Lead, kindly light.'
+
+After his return, in 1833, Newman began, 'out of his own head,' the
+_Tracts for the Times_. They culminated in the celebrated _Tract XC_
+(1841), which raised such a storm of opposition that the series had to be
+closed. Contemporaneously with the _Tracts_, Newman was busied with other
+works in defence of the _Via Media_. To this class belong _The Prophetical
+Office of the Church_ (1837) and the _Lectures on Justification_ (1838).
+He was moreover building up a great reputation as a preacher; and, as if
+all this was not enough, he was for several years editor of _The British
+Critic_. The storm raised by his opinions, and especially by _Tract XC_,
+drove him into retirement at Littlemore in 1841. He called it his Torres
+Vedras, in the conviction that he, like Wellington, was destined to 'issue
+forth anew,' and to conquer. But the actual course was different. In 1843
+he retracted his former strictures on Rome, and resigned his charge of St.
+Mary's. For two years more he lingered in the Church of England,
+foreseeing the inevitable end, but slow to take a step of such importance
+without absolute assurance. In 1845 he was received into the Roman
+communion. Here the history of his spiritual development may be said to
+close. 'It was,' he says, 'like coming into port after a rough sea.' He
+repudiates the idea that his mind was afterwards idle; but there was no
+change, no anxiety, no doubt. He seems to be unconscious that this
+individual peace may be dear bought for the human race, and that the
+absence of doubt is, to use his own favourite word, the 'note' of a low
+type.
+
+Among the voluminous works of Newman, in addition to those of his Anglican
+period already mentioned, the most important are _The Development of
+Christian Doctrine_ (1845), the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_ (1864), _The Dream
+of Gerontius_ (1865), and the _Grammar of Assent_ (1870).
+
+Except the _Apologia_, no work of Newman's is more valuable or more
+helpful to an understanding of him than _The Dream of Gerontius_, subtle,
+mystical, imaginative. Newman's great reputation for prose, and the
+supreme interest attaching to his life, seem to have obscured the fame he
+might have won, and deserved, as a poet. His poetry is religious without
+the weakness, or at any rate the limitedness, which mars so much religious
+verse. He was, in poetry as well as in theology, a greater and more
+masculine Keble, one with all the real purity of Keble, but with also the
+indispensable flavour of earth. 'I was in a humour, certainly,' he says of
+the Anglican divines, 'to bite off their ears;' and one loves him for it.
+It is worth remembering also that he taught the need of hatred as well as
+love; and though he explained and limited the teaching, there is meaning
+in the very form of expression. There was iron in Newman's frame and gall
+in his blood.
+
+Newman's mind was fundamentally imaginative, and in him imagination,
+though of an intellectual cast, was conjoined with an acutely sensitive
+organisation. Moreover, he had a tendency to solitude which powerfully
+influenced his development. Finally, along with his sensitiveness and
+power of imagination there went a subtle gift of logic, subordinate upon
+the whole to imagination, but clamorous until it had received what might
+at least plausibly pass for satisfaction. These characteristics together
+explain Newman's work.
+
+There can be no dispute about the imaginative cast of Newman's mind. He
+had, besides the poet's, the philosopher's or speculative imagination. He
+pondered habitually over the secret of the universe. There is an often
+quoted sentence at the beginning of the _Apologia_ which is vital to a
+comprehension of him. 'I thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and
+all this world a deception, my fellow-angels by a playful device
+concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a
+material world.' It has been said that no one has any genuine gift for
+philosophy who has never doubted the reality of material things. Newman
+evidently had the necessary 'note' of philosophy, but he had it with a
+morbid addition which, without careful control, might lead to strange and
+even disastrous results. If Newman had only known German he would have
+found in the German philosophers an idealism far more profound and more
+rational than any he was ever able to frame for himself. But in England
+the dominant philosophy was Benthamism, the dominant theology was equally
+hard, and Newman turned from both in disgust, took to the theological
+road-making of the _Via Media_, and finally found refuge in Rome, driven
+by the conviction that 'there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome
+and the way to atheism.'
+
+Newman's sensitiveness produced a shrinking from intercourse and
+strengthened a love of solitude probably constitutional and not altogether
+wholesome. He was believed to be, and to have the ambition to be, the head
+of a party. In truth, he shrank almost morbidly from the idea of
+leadership, and it was in spite of himself that he gathered followers.
+Even the few friends with whom he lived in familiar intercourse came
+'unasked, unhoped.' It would have been better for him had he been able to
+speak out more freely and to harmonise himself with the world around him.
+Instead, he fell back upon himself and upon a study of the Fathers, hoping
+to find the full truth in the primitive days of Christianity. This is a
+fatal error which, in theory, vitiates most theology, but from the effects
+of which a great deal of it is saved by inconsistency. Newman himself was
+afterwards led in his course towards Rome to recognise development in
+doctrine. The Fathers are doubtless excellent reading, but they are safe
+reading to him only who can read them in the light of the present day. It
+is vain to think of stopping the wheels of change even in theology. A
+creed which meant one thing in the first century, even though its verbal
+expression remain the same, means something widely different in the
+nineteenth. Newman unfortunately could conceive of modern thought only as
+a detestable and soul-deadening 'liberalism,' a halfway house to atheism,
+as Anglicanism was, in his mature view, a halfway house to Rome. Had he
+been more a real participant in contemporary life, his conceptions would
+insensibly have taken their bent from the 'liberalism' he hated; and,
+little as he thought it, he had something to learn from that liberalism,
+just as it had something to learn from him.
+
+Newman was moreover a logician, though he ultimately found refuge in a
+communion where the _science_ of logic is little needed. The subtlety of
+his logic is unquestionable. The doubt which some feel is rather with
+regard to its honesty. This doubt however is only felt by those who fail
+to understand how behind and beneath and above his logic there spread and
+towered his imagination and his emotions. Newman was compelled by the law
+of his nature to find a foundation for his religion; he neither understood
+nor respected those who let it exist as a mere sentiment. 'I determined,'
+says he with reference to a time of crisis, 'to be guided, not by my
+imagination, but by my reason.' It was this resolve that kept him so long
+out of the Church of Rome. He is wholly, even transparently sincere.
+Nevertheless, in spite of himself, he _is_ guided by imagination after
+all. The conclusion is at every point a foregone one; and his pause
+results, not in genuine reasons for the change, but in increased strength
+of feeling compelling it. This is what observers have noted in Newman's
+logic, and what has led them to doubt his sincerity. His dice are always
+loaded, but they are loaded against his own will. The absolute need for
+him to rest on authority makes it certain from the start that authority
+will win.
+
+There is no way of using reason except by consenting to be wholly guided
+by it. Newman never consented. He always knew the general character of the
+answer he must receive, though he did not know the precise terms of it,
+whether those of the _Via Media_ or those of Rome. This is the secret of
+Newman's power, in his argumentative works, over those who already
+fundamentally agree with him, and of his failure to move those who do not.
+For surely it is remarkable how little real effect followed from his
+secession, that blow under which, it has been said, the Church of England
+reeled. Newman, unlike both his friends and his enemies, was well aware
+that few would follow him to Rome; and he paused for years because he
+believed, on the other hand, that his secession would shatter the party
+for which he had so long toiled. The character of the Oxford movement was
+changed by Newman's secession, because by that step many were awakened to
+the fact that his brilliant logic had no sound foundation in reason.
+Others had been awakened before. J. A. Froude in his _Nemesis of Faith_
+tells how his eyes were opened by a sentence in one of Newman's sermons:
+'Scripture says the earth is stationary and the sun moves; science, that
+the sun is stationary and that the earth moves, and we shall never know
+which is true until we know what _motion_ is.' Froude adds the common
+sense criticism that if Scripture uses the word motion in a transcendental
+sense it may equally use other words so, and we can never know what it
+means.
+
+When we add to this Newman's impulsiveness we have a sufficient
+explanation of the aberrations of his reasoning. He tried to be and
+thought he was cautious; but he was mistaken. The pause he was accustomed
+to make before taking decisive action had only the appearance of caution;
+and the real impulsiveness of his nature is indicated by several things in
+his own narrative. For example, the phrase of St. Augustine, _Securus
+judicat orbis terrarum_, rings in his ears and recurs to his mind and
+produces more effect than volumes of argument. 'By those great words of
+the ancient Father, interpreting and summing up the long and varied course
+of ecclesiastical history, the theory of the _Via Media_ was absolutely
+pulverised.' Was such a result ever before produced by such a cause? or
+was it that the _Via Media_ was in truth built of loose rubbish over
+shifting sand?
+
+The fact is that Newman's talent for philosophy, though considerable, nay,
+almost great even in a strict use of the word great, was insufficient to
+construct a comprehensive system without better guidance than he could
+find. He was
+
+  'Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
+  The other powerless to be born;'
+
+and, unable himself to bring about the birth, he turned back upon the dead
+old world, a conspicuous, though personally blameless and most attractive,
+specimen of the class of those who sink 'from the van and the freemen'
+back 'to the rear and the slaves.'
+
+Great part of Newman's power and attractiveness depended upon his
+exquisite literary gifts. His mind grew up at Oxford, and few have shown
+so much of the _genius loci_. He is academical in the best sense. There is
+a polished scholarliness in all his work, and very little English prose
+can be ranked as superior to his. Yet it is perfectly simple. With the
+true scholar's instinct he strives for lucidity rather than magnificence.
+His writings frequently breathe passion, but there could be nothing less
+like what is commonly called 'impassioned prose.' Compare him with De
+Quincey or with Ruskin. They frequently betray a straining for effect,
+Newman rarely or never. His passages of eloquence come, like his friends,
+'unasked, unhoped,' because the fervour of his own thought, or the
+pressure of circumstances, like the calumnies that provoked the
+_Apologia_, wrings them from him. Always clear, faultless in taste,
+capable of great elevation but never too high for the occasion, Newman's
+prose is as likely to be permanently satisfying as any of this century.
+
+[Sidenote: Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882).]
+
+Edward Bouverie Pusey was, as regards his contributions to formal
+theology, superior to Newman; both as a man and as a writer he was
+indefinitely smaller. Pusey early won a great reputation for learning, and
+Newman considered his accession to the movement an event of the first
+importance. He had great tenacity, and his adhesion, once given, was sure.
+Notwithstanding suspicions at the time of Newman's perversion, there never
+was the least chance that Pusey would go over to Rome; the _Via Media_,
+which had crumbled under Newman's feet, was solid enough for him. He was
+not sufficiently imaginative to push his way into the bog which, like
+another Chat's Moss, swallowed up all the material Newman could collect.
+On the contrary, for the forty years of his life after Newman's secession,
+he went on diligently stopping the holes which Stanley and others were
+'boring in the bottom of the Church of England.' And it is certainly a
+wonderful tribute to the strength of Pusey's character that, never
+quailing beneath the blow of Newman's perversion, never yielding to the
+opposition which looked so formidable when his party was small and feeble
+and despised, unretarded and unhurried, he should have steadily pursued
+his course and raised that party to a foremost place in the Church. One or
+two events of his life make it matter of thankfulness that its temporal
+power was not equal to its spiritual fervour. He did all he could to
+maintain the Anglican exclusiveness of the universities; and he would, if
+he could, have used the civil power to suppress opinions he deemed
+dangerous.
+
+Pusey's writings are purely technical theology, not literature like those
+of Newman. Of their value diverse opinions will long be entertained. They
+are oracles to the High Church party; but it is well to consider what
+opponents think, especially such as have some grounds of sympathy. Pius
+IX. compared Pusey to 'a bell, which always sounds to invite the faithful
+to Church, and itself always remains outside.' In a similar spirit another
+great Romish ecclesiastic, when questioned as to Pusey's chance of
+salvation, is said to have playfully replied, 'Oh, yes, he will be saved
+_propter magnam implicationem_.' These are just the criticisms of those
+who have attacked the Puseyite position from the point of view of free
+thought. They are also the criticisms implied in Newman's action. It is at
+least remarkable that critics from both extreme parties, together with the
+ablest of all the men who have ever maintained the views in question,
+should concur in the same judgment.
+
+[Sidenote: Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873).]
+
+Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, deserves a passing mention, though
+he was more remarkable as a man of affairs than as a man of letters. He
+was of the High Church, but was opposed to the extreme Tractarians. He was
+still more opposed to the advanced Liberals. He wrote an article in the
+_Quarterly Review_ against _Essays and Reviews_, he framed the indictment
+against Colenso, and he was one of the chief opponents of evolution before
+it had been discovered that evolution is all contained in Genesis. His
+most formal literary work is the allegorical tale of _Agathos_; but his
+wit and power of expression find their best outlet in the letters which
+give to his _Life_ a zest rare in ecclesiastical biography.
+
+[Sidenote: John Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872).]
+
+There is no other theological sect as compact as the Oxford school, but
+there are two others of considerable importance and distinguished by
+fairly well-marked characteristics. Both are imbued with that German
+thought of which Newman was so unfortunately ignorant; and one of them
+especially had what he would have considered a deep taint of the hated
+'liberalism.' John Frederick Denison Maurice was the chief of the first
+section, while Kingsley, who was more of a novelist than a theologian, and
+perhaps F. W. Robertson, may be regarded as affiliated to it. Maurice went
+to Cambridge, but was prevented by the Unitarian faith he then held from
+proceeding to his degree, and ultimately he graduated at Oxford. He became
+Professor of English Literature and History at King's College, London, but
+fell into trouble because his views on eternal punishment were unsound. At
+a later date Cambridge honoured him and herself by appointing him
+Professor of Moral Philosophy.
+
+Maurice's theology was always a little indefinite, but it seems best
+described by the word broad. His friendship for the remarkable Scotch
+theologian, Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, who, though not a Calvinist,
+thanked heaven for his Calvinistic training, is significant on one side;
+his position as a disciple of Coleridge on another. Coleridge made Maurice
+more orthodox than he had previously been, but also preserved him from
+narrowness. Thanks to Coleridge, reason fills a greater space in Maurice
+than it does in the Tractarians. From Coleridge also Maurice derived some
+of the mysticism, if not mistiness, which characterised his thought. The
+want of clear outline is one of his chief defects. Though always
+suggestive, he is often somewhat elusive; and perhaps it is for this
+reason that his influence seems to dissipate itself without producing
+anything like the effect anticipated from it. The practical outcome of the
+school of Maurice is poor in comparison with that of the school of Pusey.
+This however was not wholly Maurice's fault. The Oxford school has drawn
+strength from what, nevertheless, may ultimately prove to be its
+weakness,--the appeal to authority, so tempting to many minds for the
+relief it promises. Maurice is not chargeable with this fault to the same
+degree. But neither is he entirely free from a kindred fault. He too, like
+Newman, argues to a foregone conclusion. In Mill's opinion, more
+intellectual power was wasted in Maurice than in any other of his
+contemporaries, and it was wasted because all Maurice's subtlety and
+power of generalisation served only 'for proving to his own mind that the
+Church of England had known everything from the first.'
+
+The principal theological works of Maurice are _The Kingdom of Christ_
+(1838), _The Doctrine of Sacrifice_ (1854), and _The Claims of the Bible
+and of Science_ (1863). He wrote also a not very valuable treatise on
+_Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy_ (1848-1862). And finally he wrote a
+number of tracts on Christian Socialism, of which he was the originator.
+
+The Christian Socialists made a well-meant but not very wise attempt to
+raise the condition of the working classes. The name is unfortunate. If
+the party had thought a little more carefully they must have seen that if
+their socialism was economically sound there was nothing specially
+Christian about it; while, if it was not sound, neither it nor
+Christianity was benefited by the addition of the adjective. The Christian
+Socialists had no more thought out their principles than they had
+considered the name they chose, and for want of solid ground-work they
+failed. Nevertheless, Christian Socialism has left a mark on literature,
+in the works of Maurice himself, in the novels of Charles Kingsley, and to
+some extent in the writings of John Sterling, who was for a time of the
+school of Maurice.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853).]
+
+Frederick William Robertson owes his position entirely to the celebrated
+sermons which he preached at Brighton during the last six years of his
+life. They are not great in scholarship, nor even in eloquence, but they
+exhibit a character of many-sided attractiveness which was the real secret
+of Robertson's power.
+
+[Sidenote: Mark Pattison (1813-1884).]
+
+[Sidenote: Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893).]
+
+The other section of theologians made a much firmer stand for freedom of
+thought than Maurice. Their leader in the earlier days of opposition to
+Tractarianism was Dr. Arnold of Rugby. Some of them were his pupils, and
+all were influenced by his spirit. In many cases however they came to hold
+very different ground from his, and supposing him to have lived and to
+have remained stable in his opinions, he might have regarded his disciples
+with as much disquiet and fear as he regarded the Tractarians. One of his
+pupils was A. P. Stanley, who entered the Church and remained in it;
+another was Clough, the story of whose doubts and unrest is written in his
+poems; and the author of _Literature and Dogma_ was a third. Outside the
+circle of Arnold's pupils but in general sympathy with them were Mark
+Pattison, a quondam follower of Newman, and Benjamin Jowett, the
+celebrated Master of Balliol, whose most important literary work, the
+translation of Plato, comes after 1870, but whose struggle for freedom of
+opinion and whose persecution in its cause belong to the period under
+consideration. Jowett was Regius Professor of Greek, and the animosity of
+those who detested his opinions took the contemptible shape of withholding
+a reasonable salary. They mistook their man and their means. Jowett was no
+money-lover; his enemies could not starve him out; and the effect followed
+which experience proves to attend persecution when it cannot be made
+crushingly severe. He became the hero of the more liberal-minded, and he
+moulded almost as he pleased the best intellects of the most intellectual
+college of the university.
+
+Both Jowett and Pattison were writers in the celebrated volume entitled
+_Essays and Reviews_ (1860). This was a collection of seven papers on
+theological subjects, united only by a common liberalism of view. Few
+books, in the main so harmless, have caused such a commotion. The volume
+is valuable chiefly as a landmark. Some of the opinions would still be
+considered heterodox, but they would be received now, if not with
+satisfaction, at least with calmness. At that time however people were
+sensitive on the point of orthodoxy. Darwin had just been promulgating an
+obnoxious doctrine, and it seemed hard that the faith, in danger from
+without, should be assailed also from within; for six of the seven
+essayists were clergymen. Legal proceedings were taken against two of
+them, but they only let off harmlessly humours which, if suppressed, might
+have been dangerous. It was with respect to the Gorham controversy, ten
+years earlier, that a Frenchman 'congratulated Stanley on the fact that
+the English revolution had taken the shape of "_le père_ Gorham."' The
+truth underlying this remark applies to other things besides the Gorham
+case.
+
+In 1862 the excitement was renewed by the publication of Colenso's book on
+the Pentateuch. It seems arid now, for there is nothing attractive in the
+application of arithmetical formulas to Noah's Ark; but it was just the
+kind of argument needed for the time and for the audience addressed. It is
+commonly objected that criticisms of the Bible are a wanton unsettlement
+of the faith of simple folk. One striking fact will demonstrate the need
+of some liberalising work. In 1864 the Oxford Declaration on Inspiration
+and Eternal Punishment was signed by 11,000 clergy; and according to
+Bishop Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the effect of this
+declaration was that 'all questions of physical science should be referred
+to the written words of Holy Scripture.'
+
+[Sidenote: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).]
+
+The society in which such a thing as this was possible stood in crying
+need of an intelligent philosophy. The matter was all the worse because
+this incident came after the great English school, dominant during the
+first three quarters of the century, had grown and flourished, and was on
+the point of decay. This was the school which in the early years of the
+century had for its prophet Jeremy Bentham, and as inferior lights James
+Mill and the economists. During the third decade we see the thinkers who
+were in sympathy with these men gradually grouping themselves round John
+Stuart Mill, whose family connexions, as well as his own ability, made him
+a centre of the school. He was the son of the hard, dry, but able and
+clear-headed Scotch philosopher and historian, James Mill, who, almost
+from his son's cradle, set about the task of fashioning him in his own
+image. In some respects James Mill's success was wonderful. 'I started,'
+says J. S. Mill, 'I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a
+century over my contemporaries.' But even he was aware of the concomitant
+defects of the system. A want of tenderness on the part of James Mill led
+to the educational error of neglecting the cultivation of feeling, and
+hence to 'an undervaluing of poetry, and of imagination generally, as an
+element of human nature.' There are indications all through the younger
+Mill's life as of a warm-hearted, affectionate nature struggling to burst
+the fetters linked around him by his early education; and there is a touch
+of irony in the fact that in an early mental crisis John Mill found relief
+in the 'healing influence' of Wordsworth.
+
+[Sidenote: John Austin (1790-1859).]
+
+Among those who frequented James Mill's house were Grote and the two
+Austins, John and Charles, the latter a man of almost unequalled
+reputation for brilliant talents, who contented himself with extraordinary
+pecuniary success at the bar, and early retired with a fortune. The elder
+brother, John Austin, was rather an independent thinker who adopted many
+of the same views, than a disciple of James Mill. He never achieved what
+was expected of him.
+
+S. Mill says that his error was over-elaboration: he wore himself out
+before his work was accomplished through incapacity to satisfy himself.
+His writings are nevertheless full of redundancies; but he did a great
+deal towards forming a terminology for scientific jurisprudence. His
+works, _The Province of Jurisprudence Determined_ (1832), and _Lectures on
+Jurisprudence_ (1863), are, like nearly all the writings of his school,
+deficient in human interest.
+
+Partly stimulated by and partly stimulating these men, John Mill began to
+think for himself and to initiate movements. It was he who in the winter
+of 1822-1823 founded the Utilitarian Society, the name of which was
+borrowed from Galt's _Annals of the Parish_. A little later he was
+brought, through the agency of a debating society, into contact with a
+wider circle. The battles were originally between the philosophic Radicals
+and the Tory lawyers; but afterwards they were joined by those whom Mill
+describes as the Coleridgians, Maurice and Sterling. It was under the
+attrition of these friendships and friendly discussions that Mill's mind
+was formed and polished after it passed from under the immediate control
+of his father. His interest from the start centred in philosophy. Before
+1830 he had begun to write on logic, but his first important publication
+was the _System of Logic_ (1843). For some years he edited the _London
+Review_, afterwards entitled the _London and Westminster_. His _Political
+Economy_ appeared in 1848. In 1851 he married a widow, Mrs. Taylor, to
+whom he ascribes a share in some of his works scarcely inferior to his
+own. Her influence is especially strong in the essay _On Liberty_ (1859),
+though this was not published until after her death.
+
+About this time Mill took up the question of parliamentary reform, and in
+1861 published his _Considerations on Representative Government_. Nearly
+contemporaneous in composition, though eight years later in publication,
+was the _Subjection of Women_; while _Utilitarianism_ (1862) was the
+result of a revision of papers written towards the close of Mill's married
+life. _Auguste Comte and Positivism_ (reprinted from _The Westminster
+Review_) and the _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_ both
+appeared in 1865. There remain to mention only the _Autobiography_ and a
+collection of essays, both posthumous. During these later years Mill's
+life was for a time more public than it had previously been. In 1865 the
+electors of Westminster asked him to be their representative, and he was
+elected without the ordinary incident of a canvass. In the election of
+1868 however he was defeated, and the constituency never had an
+opportunity of redeeming its error.
+
+Mill's writings may be grouped under the heads of philosophical, economic,
+and political. The highly interesting but depressing and melancholy
+_Autobiography_ stands outside these classes. Perhaps it is his best
+composition from the point of view of literature; and certainly it is the
+most valuable document for a study of the growth of his school. The three
+divisions are not mutually exclusive, for, strictly speaking, the first
+would embrace the other two. In it an attempt is made to lay down general
+principles which are applied in them.
+
+Mill's theory is contained in his _Logic_, his _Utilitarianism_, and his
+books on Comte and Hamilton. It has become known by the name he gave it as
+Utilitarianism; and as Bentham was the founder and first leader of the
+school, so was Mill the successor to his position and authority. It is a
+modern form of the theory associated with the name of the philosopher
+Epicurus; and on that ground it has been subjected to moral censure.
+Perhaps ultimately, as directed against the principle, the censure is
+sound; but it cannot be fairly turned against individuals. Certainly no
+thinkers of their time laboured more strenuously for the good of the
+community than Mill and Bentham. In Bentham's exposition, the philosophy
+crystallised itself in the often-quoted phrase, 'the greatest happiness of
+the greatest number.' His contribution consists in the introduction of the
+idea of the greatest number. Whether that idea is logically consistent
+with a philosophy of pleasure may be questioned; but it was to Bentham's
+addition that the maxim owed its power and its practical influence on
+legislation. It was moreover this consideration, in addition to the fact
+that he breathed Benthamite ideas from the cradle, that attracted Mill.
+For he was a typically English philosopher. He never of his own choice
+dwelt long on purely metaphysical problems, nor did he succeed well when
+he was forced to attempt them. His attitude towards Hume's theory of
+cause, after Kant's criticism of it, is vividly illustrative of his
+speculative limitations. If Oxford is the place where German philosophies
+go when they die, apparently London in Mill's time was the place where
+German philosophies did not go at all; and even dead German philosophies
+are better than the English predecessors which they slew in the day of
+their vigour.
+
+As a Utilitarian, Mill was more valuable for exposition than for the
+original elements of his thought. In all his writings he is clear in
+expression and abundant in illustration. This abundance, in truth, appears
+to the reader not wholly ignorant of the subject to be cognate to
+verbosity. It was however part of the secret of Mill's great influence. He
+forced people to understand him. He talked round and round the subject,
+looked at it from every point of view and piled example upon example,
+until it was impossible to miss his meaning. When we add wide knowledge,
+patient study, keen intelligence and a considerable, if not exactly a
+great talent for original speculation, Mill's influence as a philosopher
+is explained. He wielded, from the publication of his _Logic_ till his
+death, a greater power than any other English thinker, unless Sir William
+Hamilton is to be excepted for the earlier part of the period.
+
+These characteristics, combined perhaps with a greater share of
+originality, appear in the _System of Logic_ as well as in the Utilitarian
+treatises. Its merit is proved by the fact that through many years of
+adverse criticism it has maintained its ground at the universities as one
+of the most useful books on the subject. The freshest section is that
+which is devoted to Induction. The _Examination of Hamilton_ shows Mill to
+have possessed the gift of acute and powerful criticism of philosophy. He
+may not have succeeded in establishing his own position, but he certainly
+damaged very seriously the rival system of Hamilton.
+
+Mill's _Political Economy_ is, like his general philosophy, lucid, full
+and thorough. Though cautious here, as always, in the admission of new
+principles, Mill made considerable contributions to economics. The theory
+of international exchanges is almost wholly his, and many particular turns
+and details of economic doctrine are due to him. In a still greater number
+of cases he has been, not the originator, but the best exponent of
+economic theory. The caution and judiciousness of his reasoning were
+qualities peculiarly valuable in this sphere; and where the views of
+'orthodox' political economy are accepted at all, Mill's opinions are
+treated with respect.
+
+The time when Mill's authority was at its height was also the time when
+political economy was held in greatest honour as a science. The writers on
+it were numerous; and though, with the exception of Mill, they were not
+individually very distinguished, their collective work was important. They
+developed the doctrines of Adam Smith and Ricardo and Mill; while the
+speculations of Malthus acquired through Darwin a new importance, until a
+reaction, brought about more by sentiment than reason, led many to the
+conviction, or the faith, that they could not possibly be sound. The
+doctrine of _laissez faire_, so influential on government during the third
+quarter of the century, was the work partly of the economists and partly
+of the practical politicians of the Manchester school. It was never
+followed out logically, and before the close of the period there were
+signs of a movement which has since led to an opposite excess. Of the men
+who did this work Nassau W. Senior (1790-1864), in the earlier part of the
+period, and J. E. Cairnes (1823-1875) in the later deserve individual
+mention. The former was a great upholder of the deductive theory of
+political economy. The latter, in his treatise on _The Slave Power_
+(1862), produced one of the most noteworthy special studies in economics,
+and also one of the most powerful arguments in favour of the action of the
+Northern States of America.
+
+It was the practical aspect of the science that chiefly interested Mill in
+economics. It was this still more, if possible, that inspired him in his
+more specifically political works, the treatises on _Liberty_, on the
+_Subjection of Women_, and on _Representative Government_. In his schemes
+of reform Mill was, in his own time, considered extreme; he would now be
+thought moderate. The caution of his speculation is nowhere more clearly
+marked than in his _Liberty_. It pleads certainly for more power to the
+state than the Manchester School would have granted; but it does so only
+in order to preserve the real freedom of the individual. In the
+_Subjection of Women_ Mill was a pioneer on a road which has been well
+trodden since; and, for good or ill, there has been steady progress
+towards the triumph of his ideas. In _Representative Government_ he shows
+a faith, probably excessive, in political machinery; but, whether it can
+do all Mill supposed or not, such machinery is necessary, and his labour
+tended to make it better.
+
+[Sidenote: William Whewell (1794-1866).]
+
+Over against Mill, with some points of resemblance, but more of
+difference, may be set William Whewell, who, in 1841, became Master of
+Trinity College, Cambridge, and who acquired an immense reputation both
+for encyclopædic knowledge and for brilliant wit. On the human side he was
+certainly more attractive than Mill. Like the latter, he was fascinated by
+the great performances and the boundless promise of science; and he is one
+of those whose task it has been to formulate a philosophy of science. To
+this task he devoted himself more exclusively than Mill, and he brought to
+it a greater knowledge of scientific processes and discoveries. Moreover,
+his point of view was different. Mill was a pure empiricist. Whewell held
+that empiricism alone could not explain even itself; and he therefore
+taught that there was necessary truth as well as empirical truth. This was
+at once the starting point of his controversy with Mill and the
+ground-work of his writings, the _History of the Inductive Sciences_
+(1837) and the _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_ (1840). He is best
+known by his _Novum Organum Renovatum_, which was originally a portion of
+the second work.
+
+Whewell's strong point is his great knowledge of the history of science.
+His inductive theory is somewhat loose. It amounts to no more than a
+succession of tests of hypotheses; and of these tests the most stringent,
+prediction and consilience of inductions, are open to the fatal objection
+that they are not and cannot be applied to all inductions. Mill's
+inductive methods also are more stringent in appearance than they prove to
+be in reality; but they at least point to an ideal towards which it is
+always possible to strive.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856).]
+
+Of a widely different school of thought was Sir William Hamilton,
+Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Edinburgh from 1836 to his death.
+Hamilton was a man of vast reading, and though it has been questioned
+whether his learning was as exact and profound as it appeared to be, there
+can hardly be a doubt that it was great enough to hamper the free play of
+his thought, and that it explains two of his characteristic faults. One is
+the excessive technicality of his diction. His style, otherwise clear and
+good, is overloaded with words specially coined for the purposes of the
+logician and metaphysician. The second fault is his inability to resist
+the temptation of calling a 'cloud of witnesses,' without making any
+serious attempt to weigh their evidence. Hamilton was a disciple of the
+Scottish school of philosophy, and a great part of his life was devoted to
+an elucidation of Reid, of whose works he published an elaborate edition
+in 1853. But Reid's principle of Common Sense, as an answer to the
+philosophic scepticism of Hume, is little better than an evasion; and
+Hamilton had not much to add to it. Besides the edition of Reid Hamilton
+published _Discussions on Philosophy and Literature_ (1852); and after his
+death there appeared the _Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic_ (1859-1861),
+by which he is best known.
+
+[Sidenote: James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864).]
+
+Hamilton had a great and not altogether a wholesome influence on James
+Frederick Ferrier, who in the domain of purely metaphysical thought was
+probably the most gifted man of his time. Ferrier describes his own
+philosophy as Scotch to the core. There is in it, nevertheless, a
+considerable tincture from the German, and Ferrier deserves the credit of
+being one of the earliest professional philosophers who really grappled
+with German thought. He was also the master of a very clear and attractive
+style, which makes the reading of his philosophy a pleasure rather than a
+toil.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871).]
+
+Henry Longueville Mansel, a pupil of Hamilton's, and joint editor of his
+lectures along with John Veitch, afterwards Professor of Logic in Glasgow
+University, was the ablest exponent of the Hamiltonian philosophy in
+England. Mansel's power of acute and lucid reasoning was shown in his
+_Prolegomena Logica_ (1851), and afterwards in his _Philosophy of the
+Conditioned_ (1866). Both were developments of Hamilton's principles, and
+they have suffered from the general discredit of the Hamiltonian school.
+Mansel is better known now, by name at least, on account of his _Limits of
+Religious Thought_, (constituting the Bampton lectures for 1858), which
+was the occasion of a controversy between him and Maurice.
+
+[Sidenote: Harriet Martineau (1802-1876).]
+
+The other philosophical writers of the period were, with one exception, of
+minor importance. Harriet Martineau was a woman of varied activity. She
+wrote political economy, history and fiction; and her story, _Deerbrook_
+(1839), is among the best and freshest of her works. She is however most
+memorable, not as an original thinker, but as a translator and expounder.
+She translated and condensed the philosophy of Comte, and did as much as
+anyone to make it known in England. She had the great merits of
+unshrinking courage, perfect sincerity and undoubting loyalty to truth.
+
+[Sidenote: George Henry Lewes (1817-1878).]
+
+Another miscellaneous writer of the Comtist school was George Henry Lewes,
+who has been elsewhere mentioned in connexion with George Eliot. He was an
+active-minded, energetic man, whose life touches literature at many
+points. He too wrote novels, but they did not succeed. He was a critic of
+no mean power. He took great interest in and possessed considerable
+knowledge of science, and in 1859-1860 published a popular scientific
+work, _The Physiology of Common Life_. But his best known book is the
+_Life of Goethe_ (1855). It is an able biography and pleasant to read,
+though perhaps, considering the calibre of the subject, rather lacking in
+weight. It is however no small compliment to Lewes's work that it was for
+many years accepted, both in Germany and in England, as the standard
+biography of Goethe. Lewes's principal contributions to philosophy were _A
+Biographical History of Philosophy_ (1845-1846), _Comte's Philosophy of
+the Sciences_ (1853), and _Problems of Life and Mind_ (1873-1879). In all
+of them Lewes shows himself an unswerving Positivist. He accepts and
+reiterates his master's doctrine that the day of metaphysics is past, so
+that his philosophy is, in a sense, the negation of philosophy.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1806-1863).]
+
+In the sphere of political science, the man next in power to Mill was Sir
+George Cornewall Lewis. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first
+administration of Lord Palmerston, Lewis had the opportunity of making a
+practical acquaintance with his subject; but his theories were formed
+earlier. Extensive knowledge, combined with clearness of intellect and
+independence of judgment, gives value to his work. His _Inquiry into the
+Credibility of Early Roman History_ (1855) was remarkable for its attack
+upon the theories of Niebuhr, which were in those days accepted with an
+almost superstitious reverence. But previous to this Lewis had written his
+most important book, _The Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion_
+(1849), a well reasoned and well written argument, worthy of attention in
+these days when there seems to be a disposition to forget the limits
+beyond which the influence is illegitimate. Lewis teaches the wisdom and
+even the necessity of submitting to 'authority' where we cannot
+investigate for ourselves, and where all who are competent to form an
+opinion are agreed; but he is careful not to set up any absolute and
+indefeasible authority which might dictate to reason and against reason.
+
+Towards the close of the period there are noticeable traces of a new
+school superseding both Utilitarianism and Positivism. This school,
+nourished upon German idealism, had its centre at Oxford, and the men who
+have done the principal work in it were pupils of Jowett. They belong
+however to the later period and come within our present scope only as an
+indication of tendency.
+
+[Sidenote: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903).]
+
+The root of thought in all these men is the idea of development, the great
+formative idea of the present century. This idea however had an English as
+well as a German growth. In England it is best known through Darwin. But
+while Darwin shows its scientific side, the most celebrated of recent
+English philosophers, Mr. Herbert Spencer (1820), makes it the basis of a
+philosophy. _The Synthetic Philosophy_, just completed, is distinguished
+for the vastness of its design, the accomplishment of which gives Mr.
+Spencer a place among the few encyclopædic thinkers of the world. His
+philosophy is interesting also because it concentrates and reflects the
+spirit of the time. No other thinker has so strenuously laboured to gather
+together all the accumulations of modern knowledge and _to_ unite them
+under general conceptions. The alliance between the Spencerian philosophy
+and physical science is unusually close; and Mr. Spencer in his
+illustrations shows an all-embracing range of knowledge, which becomes
+minute in those branches of science bearing directly upon the phenomena of
+life. The future only can determine the exact value of this knowledge, for
+there are grave differences of opinion between Mr. Spencer and some of the
+leading biologists, like Weismann; but it may at least be said of him that
+he is the first philosopher since Bacon ('who wrote on science like a Lord
+Chancellor'), or at latest Leibnitz, who has met men of science on
+something like equal terms within the domain of science. Mr. Spencer's
+unique interest is that he has attempted an exhaustive survey of all the
+facts relating to the development of life and of society. He does not go
+beyond that, to the origin of all things; for it is one of his cardinal
+principles that behind the Knowable there is dimly visible a something not
+only unknown but unknowable. We are compelled to regard every phenomenon
+as the manifestation of an infinite and incomprehensible Power. In this
+the philosopher finds the reconciliation of religion with science; a
+reconciliation for which the religious have seldom shown much gratitude,
+because they are forbidden to say anything specific about the Power whose
+existence they may, and indeed must, assume. On this point there is a
+quarrel between Mr. Spencer and the metaphysicians, who dispute the right
+of any man to assert the existence of an Unknowable. If we can assert its
+existence surely we know it at least in part; and if so may we not by
+investigation come to know it better?
+
+The Spencerian philosophy is the most comprehensive and ambitious
+application of the principle of evolution ever attempted. Without showing
+anywhere that mastery of detail and that power of marshalling facts in
+evidence which give Darwin's great work its unequalled significance, the
+_Synthetic Philosophy_ yet reaches at both ends beyond the limits Darwin
+set himself. Mr. Spencer begins by recognising three kinds of evolution,
+in the spheres of the inorganic, the organic and the super-organic; and
+all the parts of the _Synthetic Philosophy_ find a place under one or
+other of these; but the treatment of the first part is omitted as less
+pressing and as adding too greatly to the magnitude of the scheme. After
+the _First Principles_, in which are laid down the limits of the knowable
+and the unknowable, there follows therefore the _Principles of Biology_
+(1864-1867), where the evolution of life, the gradual differentiation of
+functions and kindred topics are treated. Still within the sphere of the
+evolution of the organic we have next the _Principles of Psychology_
+(1855), where organisms exhibiting the phenomena of mind are examined from
+various points of view to determine so far as possible the nature of mind,
+its relations with the universe, the composition of its simpler elements,
+etc. From psychology we step to super-organic evolution in the _Principles
+of Sociology_ (1876-1896), which is probably regarded by the majority as
+the most characteristic part of the Spencerian philosophy. It is certainly
+one of the most interesting; for it combines in an unusual measure the
+best results of ancient thought with full justice to modern individualism.
+Mr. Spencer is a consistent individualist, but a far-sighted one. He sees
+that 'the survival of the fittest,' and with it progress, are impossible
+unless 'the fittest' both wins and keeps advantage to himself. Unlimited
+altruism would be as bad as unlimited egoism, and would indeed foster
+egoism, for it would in the end mean the stripping of generosity to pamper
+greed. On the other hand, pure egoism is fatal to society; and the animal
+for whom gregariousness is an advantage must fail in the struggle if he is
+unfaithful to the social principle. Hence there arises a society which is
+a balance between the two principles. It demands sacrifices from the
+individual in return for benefits; but the law of its existence prohibits
+the extension of this demand beyond the point where the individual
+'fittest' survives and prospers. If the demand goes beyond this the course
+is downwards; for, as society is composed of individuals, a society in
+which the strongest has no advantage is a society in which progress is
+impossible, but, on the contrary, deterioration is sooner or later
+certain. There is no room on Spencerian principles for any socialism which
+does not recognise difference of reward according to difference of
+capacity.
+
+In the _Principles of Ethics_ (1892-1893) Mr. Spencer attempts to apply
+the results reached in the earlier parts of his scheme to the enunciation
+of a theory of right living. It is here that an evolutionary system based
+upon science is felt to be least convincing. There is a gulf never
+satisfactorily bridged between ethical principles as gradually evolved out
+of the non-moral state, and the 'moral imperative' as it is felt by the
+human conscience. Hence, the man of religion insists, the necessity of
+being specific about that vague Power dimly seen behind the philosophy of
+evolution; and hence the necessity, in the view of the metaphysician, of
+regarding evolution from above as well as from below. We learn much by
+tracing things to their origin; but to learn all we must consider as well
+what they ultimately become. It is in fact the final form that gives
+importance to the question of origin. The temptation of evolution is
+certainly to underrate the significance of the later stages; and the
+higher we go the greater are the effects of such an error.
+
+But whatever its faults the _Synthetic Philosophy_ remains unequalled in
+the present age for boldness of conception and for the solidity derived
+from its league with science. No other philosophy is so eminently modern
+in spirit and method; and whatever modifications may prove to be required,
+thought at once so daring and so patient can never be ignored.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SCIENCE.
+
+
+The achievements of science as a rule hardly come within the purview of
+the critic of literature, for language is commonly used by science for a
+purpose other than that of literary expression, and even when science is
+popularised by writers like Mary Somerville the result is apt to be
+something not very valuable for its substance nor yet for its style.
+Nevertheless, all science may indirectly, and some of it does directly,
+influence literature. In point of fact, this influence has been one of the
+great features of the present century. We see it on the one hand as a
+force of attraction, on the other as a force of repulsion; for while some
+have been fired with the hope of human progress, others have been chilled
+by the fear of its materialising tendency. Both classes have been prone to
+exaggerate the mere mechanical results of science and to forget that its
+true aim is knowledge, not machines. It is however in the sphere of ideas
+that we must look for its effect upon literature. Whether we travel by
+railways or by stage-coaches, whether we transmit our messages by letter
+or by telegraph, matters little; but it matters much whether we are
+hopeful or despondent, whether we feel that there is no new thing under
+the sun, or are inspired by ideas that seem to open new worlds to our
+intellect. We must ask then, in the first place, what is the effect of
+science on the spirit of men and their view of life; and in the second
+place, what are the scientific ideas which directly and in themselves
+influence popular thought and colour literature.
+
+It is obvious that there are certain departments of science which from
+their very nature can have little or no direct influence. The mathematical
+researches of men like Sir William Rowan Hamilton are far too technical,
+too difficult and too abstruse for popular apprehension. They remain a
+mere name, and not even their general import is understood. The same
+remark applies to the mathematical work of Augustus de Morgan, who, by the
+way, gave valuable hints for Hamilton's great work on quaternions. But De
+Morgan was a logician as well, and the author of the _Budget of Paradoxes_
+is worthy of remembrance in literature. In physics the case is somewhat
+different. The processes by which physicists like Joule and Faraday attain
+their results remain mysterious, but the general character of the results
+becomes known, their great importance is obvious, and they generate a
+confidence in the powers of man which in the present day goes far towards
+counteracting tendencies to pessimism.
+
+There are however certain sciences whose influence upon life and thought
+is direct, because their results bear upon man's own position in the
+universe. Astronomy, through its relation to the Mosaic cosmogony, belongs
+to this class; but its force had been felt long before the opening of the
+period. It is especially the sciences of geology and biology that have
+changed men's minds, and it is they that have produced the most books
+which, apart from the scientific value of their contents, might claim to
+rank as literature.
+
+Geology was at the opening of the period practically a new science. What
+had previously been done in it was trifling compared with what has been
+accomplished since, and its bearing upon questions of universal interest
+was not even suspected by the multitude. Darwin in his brief autobiography
+relates an anecdote illustrative of the primitive state of the science in
+his youth. 'I,' says he, 'though now only sixty-seven years old, heard the
+Professor [of Geology in Edinburgh], in a field lecture at Salisbury
+Crags, discoursing on a trap-dyke, with amygdaloidal margins and the
+strata indurated on each side, with volcanic rocks all around us, say that
+it was a fissure filled with sediment from above, adding with a sneer that
+there were men who maintained that it had been injected from beneath in a
+molten condition.' Even more striking than any aberration of an individual
+is the general fact that the prevailing theory at that time in geology was
+the 'catastrophic,' and a science with an unlimited command of
+catastrophes is no more scientific in spirit than a theology with an
+unlimited command of miracles.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875).]
+
+The first need of a science in this state is the accumulation of facts,
+and most of the older geologists of the time, like Sedgwick, Murchison and
+Buckland, bent themselves to this task. But the man who dealt the
+death-blow to the old uncritical view of geology was Sir Charles Lyell,
+whose _Principles of Geology_ (1830-1833) marks an epoch in the science.
+Lyell's central doctrine is that the past history of the earth must be
+inferred by ordinary processes of observation and reasoning from the
+present, and that it is possible to interpret 'the testimony of the rocks'
+by means of principles which we still see at work. In other words, he was
+a 'uniformitarian.' The victory of his view established 'the reign of law'
+over the field of geology, and went far towards convincing men of its
+universality. Assuming no causes except such as he could point to in
+experience, Lyell showed how the geological formations of the earth
+arose. According to Darwin, the effect of Lyell's work could formerly be
+seen in the much more rapid progress of geology in England than in France;
+and the _Principles of Geology_ was most helpful to Darwin himself.
+
+In his _Antiquity of Man_ (1863) Lyell touched the verge of the problem of
+organic life. He did so in a spirit of open-minded conservatism. He had
+now to guide him the great light of the _Origin of Species_, and even
+before its publication he had had glimmerings of evolution. He saw that
+Darwin only extended to the animal and vegetable world his own central
+principle. But he felt a deep objection to tracing the descent of man
+through some ape-like creature, and hence, while _The Antiquity of Man_
+recognises the long history of the race upon earth, it contains no avowal
+of belief in his descent from inferior forms of life.
+
+[Sidenote: Hugh Miller (1802-1856).]
+
+Another geologist, who was rather a popular expositor than a profound man
+of science, was Hugh Miller. Miller was bred as a mason, and it was in the
+quarries where he pursued his trade (quarrying being in his time and
+district associated with stone-cutting) that he laid the foundation of his
+geological knowledge. But Miller was more than a geologist. He threw
+himself energetically into the contest which culminated in the Scottish
+Disruption of 1843; and for the last sixteen years of his life he was
+editor of the bi-weekly paper, _The Witness_, which had been established
+by the leaders of the Free Church movement as the organ of their opinions.
+The sad close of Miller's life by suicide is well known. His health had
+been undermined by early hardships and by subsequent overwork, and an
+examination after death proved that the brain was diseased.
+
+A great deal of Miller's work was done for _The Witness_. He was a most
+conscientious as well as a most able journalist, and he brought to his
+occupation a rare literary power. There was an imaginative and poetic
+strain in his nature which sometimes showed itself in the weaker form of
+fine writing, but often gave eloquence to his descriptions and fervour to
+his argument. This is the living part of him; for it is certainly not
+their scientific value that causes Hugh Miller's books to be still read.
+
+Miller's most important works are _The Old Red Sandstone_ (1841),
+_Footprints of the Creator_ (1847), _My Schools and Schoolmasters_ (1854),
+and _The Testimony of the Rocks_ (1857). In their geological aspect they
+merely supply the raw material of science. Miller had not the previous
+training requisite to give his work the highest value. He knew little or
+nothing about comparative anatomy, and therefore could not himself deal
+with the fossils he discovered. In the view of modern experts his
+scientific value lies in his strong common sense and his keen powers of
+observation amounting almost to genius. His function is to stimulate
+others rather than to sway thought by great discoveries. A liberal in
+politics, he was something of a conservative in science. _The Footprints
+of the Creator_ was written in answer to the _Vestiges of Creation_, and
+its author figures as one of the numerous reconcilers of the text of
+Genesis with the discoveries of geology. His value in literature is higher
+than in science, for he wrote a style always pleasant, and sometimes
+eloquent. _My Schools and Schoolmasters_, a volume of autobiography, is
+one of the best of its class in the language, and is the work by which
+Miller will be longest remembered.
+
+Related to geology, and even more influential upon modern thought, has
+been the theory of biological evolution, represented within the present
+period by Robert Chambers, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
+Thomas Huxley too, though so much of his work is of a later date, demands
+mention for his long polemic on behalf of evolution, begun immediately
+after the publication of _The Origin of Species_ and continued till his
+death. The work of Sir Richard Owen the great anatomist had an important
+bearing upon this theory, but he was neither a Darwinian nor are his
+scientific writings literature.
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Chambers (1802-1871).]
+
+Robert Chambers stands by himself. He was of the best class of self-made
+men, and as a publisher perhaps even more than as a writer did service to
+literature. He had great talent for not only acquiring information but
+making it popular. His most remarkable book, the _Vestiges of the Natural
+History of Creation_ (1844), was published anonymously, and, in fear of
+the outcry of orthodoxy, extraordinary precautions were taken to guard the
+secret of the authorship. For a long time the efforts were successful,
+and, though the secret gradually became an open one, it was not till 1884
+that his responsibility for the book was authoritatively avowed. The
+_Vestiges of Creation_ has been unduly depreciated since the time of
+Darwin. The gaps in the argument, and still more perhaps the untenable
+assumptions and mistaken assertions, are easy to detect now; but it is at
+least ungracious to insist upon them. Chambers was not an accomplished
+naturalist; on the contrary, Huxley charges him with 'prodigious
+ignorance.' He had not laboured as long, as patiently or as strenuously at
+the subject as Darwin; but at the same time his book is in an uncommon
+degree bold and suggestive. The best minds were already dallying with the
+idea of evolution, but in 1844 there nowhere existed in English such a
+concrete and clear presentation of it as Chambers gave. Judged in
+relation to what was known and thought then, his work was a memorable,
+though, from lack of a sufficiently firm foundation, hardly a great one.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882).]
+
+Charles Robert Darwin is the true father of evolution as applied in modern
+science, and of all the men of science of the century he most demands and
+deserves attention in connexion with literature. No recent doctrine,
+either in science or philosophy, has produced anything comparable to the
+revolution in thought caused by _The Origin of Species_. Its central ideas
+have been applied not merely in the department of biology, but everywhere
+in the world of thought,--in philosophy, in religion, in literature and
+literary criticism. We cannot refer all this to Darwin alone, for the
+conception of evolution can be traced for two thousand years or more; but
+it was Darwin who first planted it firmly in the human mind, and
+consequently he is the chief though not the sole cause of the revolution.
+Another element of his greatness, important in a criticism of literature,
+is that his works are themselves literature. Writing a perfectly plain
+style, he yet succeeds in so expressing his meaning that the manner is no
+inconsiderable part of his charm. Some of the less compressed works, like
+the _Naturalist's Voyage round the World_ and the monograph on earthworms,
+are as fascinating and as difficult to relinquish as a skilful story of
+adventure; and if this cannot be said of _The Origin of Species_ itself,
+the reason is that it is so packed with thought that the reader is
+compelled to pause over it.
+
+Darwin, the son of a physician, was originally destined to follow his
+father's profession, and went to study in Edinburgh; but he liked neither
+the teaching nor the profession. In 1828 he went to Cambridge, and though
+he derived no great benefit from the regular studies of the place, the
+connexions he formed influenced the course of his life. He began the study
+of geology under Sedgwick, and he was on very intimate terms with
+Professor Henslow, through whom he became naturalist of the 'Beagle.' The
+voyage of this ship laid the foundations of his fame but permanently
+injured his health. In 1839 Darwin married, and in 1842 he settled at Down
+in Kent, where he lived an exceptionally retired and quiet life,
+compulsorily sequestered from society because of his health.
+
+Darwin's literary life had begun before this. In 1839 his _Journal of
+Researches_ (better known as _A Naturalist's Voyage round the World_) was
+printed as part of the narrative of the voyage of the 'Beagle,' and in
+1845 a second edition was called for. It is full to overflowing of the
+results of observation set down in a delightfully easy narrative style.
+Darwin was not yet an evolutionist, though the materials are there out of
+which the evolutionist grew, and occasional remarks indicate that the
+subject was not foreign to his mind. _The Structure and Distribution of
+Coral Reefs_ (1842) was another product of this memorable voyage. The
+theory maintained is that the reefs are the result of gradual subsidence,
+and form the last relics of submerged continents. Geologists were
+impressed by the boldness and originality of the speculation and by the
+great mass of facts with which, in Darwin's invariable way, it was
+supported. This was followed by two other publications on volcanic
+islands, and on the geology of South America. These writings won for
+Darwin a high position among men of science; but it was not until the
+appearance of the second edition of the _Naturalist's Voyage_ that he
+became widely known.
+
+The highly characteristic and instructive story of the incubation and
+writing of _The Origin of Species_ has been told by Darwin himself. He had
+been long haunted by the idea of a possible modification of species; and
+shortly after his return in the 'Beagle' he began to collect all facts
+bearing on the variation of animals and plants. His first note-book was
+opened in July, 1837. He read widely, conversed with breeders and
+gardeners, and addressed printed enquiries to such as seemed likely to
+give him information. He was led to the conclusion that 'selection was the
+keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants;'
+but he could not understand how selection could be applied in a state of
+nature. The reading for amusement of Malthus on _Population_ gave him the
+clue. In the fierce competition for life among animals and plants,
+favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to
+be destroyed. He read Malthus in October, 1838. But, to avoid prejudice,
+for three years and a half, till June, 1842, he refrained from writing
+even the briefest sketch of his theory. In 1844 the first sketch was
+enlarged. In 1856 he began to write out his views on a scale much more
+extensive than that finally adopted; and yet, even so, it was only an
+abstract of the materials collected. In 1858 Mr. Wallace, then in the
+Malay Archipelago, sent Darwin an essay which proved to contain exactly
+his own theory. On the advice of Lyell and the great botanist Hooker an
+abstract from Darwin's manuscript was published in 1858, simultaneously
+with Mr. Wallace's essay. The concurrence of ideas between Mr. Wallace and
+himself set Darwin vigorously to work. He undertook once more to make an
+abstract of the manuscript begun in 1856, and in 1859 published the
+celebrated _Origin of Species_.
+
+The book owes much of its effect to this process of gradual expansion and
+gradual contraction. The reader is struck with three things in it: first,
+the great range, combined with sobriety, of speculation; secondly, the
+wonderful mastery of detail; and thirdly, the beautiful balance and
+proportion, the sufficiency without undue length of the arguments. Hardly
+any other pioneer in untravelled realms of thought has left such an
+impression of wholeness.[4] Neither could Darwin have done so without the
+long preliminary training. The _Origin_ bears on almost every page the
+marks that it too is a product of selection. Darwin sifts his mass of
+examples and chooses those best suited for his purpose. The completeness
+of the book moreover is largely owing to the fact, noted by Darwin
+himself, that for many years he had made a memorandum, at the moment, of
+every fact, observation or thought _opposed_ to his results; because he
+had found that such facts and thoughts were more apt to be forgotten than
+favourable ones. 'Owing to this habit,' he says, with truth, 'very few
+objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed
+and attempted to answer.'
+
+No book of this century has roused such a tempest as _The Origin of
+Species_. A number of the younger men of science hailed the theory with
+eagerness, and one or two of the older were extremely friendly; but many
+were startled and were unprepared to accept views so novel. Still more,
+the exponents of orthodox religion were wild against the theory; and in
+the British Association meeting in 1860, at Oxford, Bishop Wilberforce, by
+an unmannerly attack, drew down upon himself a crushing rebuke from
+Huxley. Gradually a calmer temper prevailed, and the problems were
+discussed fairly on both sides, as questions of science, not matters of
+faith to be determined by an appeal to Genesis.
+
+The time has not yet come for a final verdict upon _The Origin of
+Species_; but even if Darwin's theory should in the end prove to need
+great modification, his book will still be one of first-rate importance.
+It has proved itself already the most stimulating book of the century.
+Those who oppose Darwin oppose him now with his own weapons: they are
+evolutionists, though they think some other scheme of evolution the true
+one. The change is vast from the almost universally prevalent belief in
+special acts of creation and fixed types to a belief, nearly as
+widespread, in the gradual development of all the variety of life from at
+most a few primordial forms. And this result has been, more than almost
+any result equally great, the work of one man.
+
+This great book was followed by some of those special studies which Darwin
+had the gift of making almost as interesting as his discussions of central
+principles. This is partly because he makes all his work illustrative of
+those principles. No one was ever more steadfastly guided by a single
+idea; and hence his works have an unusually intimate connexion with one
+another. Thus, _The Fertilisation of Orchids_ (1862) is a detailed study
+of a subject which occupies one or two paragraphs in the _Origin_. In _The
+Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants_ (1865) Darwin broke new ground;
+for it was after the publication of _The Origin of Species_ that he was
+led to notice these phenomena. The new material however served the purpose
+of the theory, and the author was 'pleased to find what a capital guide
+for observations a full conviction of the change of species is.' The book
+on climbing plants was the outcome of observations carried on in broken
+health. 'All this work about climbers,' says Darwin, 'would hurt my
+conscience, did I think I could do harder work.' In _The Variation of
+Animals and Plants under Domestication_ (1868), on the other hand, he was
+reverting to that department of investigation in which he had first seen
+clear light on the question of species. The most debated point in this
+book is the celebrated speculation of Pangenesis. Darwin advanced it, not
+as something proved, but because 'it is a relief to have some feasible
+explanation of the facts, which can be given up as soon as any better
+hypothesis is formed.' It throws light however on the essentially
+speculative character of his intellect to find that this admittedly
+doubtful hypothesis of Pangenesis is the part of the book on which he
+looks with the greatest affection,--'my beloved child,' as he phrases it.
+
+_The Descent of Man_ (1871) ranks next in wide importance to _The Origin
+of Species_. It is the application in detail of the same principles to the
+human race. That the application was inevitable was already evident in the
+earlier book; and it was this that brought upon the _Origin_ the most
+virulent abuse. Just because it is so inevitable, _The Descent of Man_ has
+not the unique interest of _The Origin of Species_. Once we are familiar
+with the view that all the species of animals have been produced by the
+accumulation of minute variations, there is no surprise in the idea that
+man and all his powers may have been so produced likewise. Nevertheless,
+Darwin differs on this point from the man who shares with him the honour
+of discovering the theory of evolution. Mr. Wallace, while arguing with
+Darwin that man has been evolved out of some lower form, holds that
+'natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a
+little superior to that of an ape,' and that in the higher human faculties
+there is evidence of the working of a supernatural power. The position is
+a strange one. If the whole creation moves harmoniously through all its
+grades by the action of one law, it will need overwhelming evidence to
+show that just at the end this law is superseded by another altogether
+unlike it. Either the supernatural governs the whole of life, or its
+introduction to explain one stage is gratuitous.
+
+After _The Descent of Man_ came _The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
+Animals_ (1872); and that again was followed by _Insectivorous Plants_
+(1875). The former was originally intended merely to form a chapter in the
+_Descent_; but the materials grew, and the result is one of the most
+readable of books. The _Insectivorous Plants_ embodies one of the most
+remarkable of Darwin's discoveries. Its richness is due to the patience
+and skill with which the facts were accumulated. Sixteen years passed
+between the time when Darwin first noticed that plants lived on insects
+and the appearance of the book. In the interval he had done many things;
+but, whenever he had leisure, he was always adding to his store of facts
+relating to this class of plants; and, as he justly says, 'a man after a
+long interval can criticise his own work, almost as well as if it were
+that of another person.'
+
+Later, Darwin wrote on the fertilisation of plants, in order to
+demonstrate the importance of cross-fertilisation; on the forms of
+flowers; and on the movements of plants,--the last a kind of extension and
+generalisation of the book on climbing plants, endeavouring to co-ordinate
+all the movements of plants as variations of an inherent tendency of the
+parts to a revolving motion. The theory has not been accepted by
+botanists. Last of all, in 1881, appeared the monograph on _The Formation
+of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms_. This book is just the
+expansion and completion of a paper read by Darwin to a scientific society
+as far back as 1837. All that time the subject dwelt in his mind; and when
+at last leisure permitted, he developed it into what is perhaps the most
+purely delightful of all his books. In greatness it does not come into
+competition with some of them at all; but the familiarity of the
+phenomena, the care with which they are examined, the skill of the
+arrangement and the charm of finding meaning in what had been so
+meaningless, have made the volume one of the most widely read of all
+Darwin's works.
+
+That which distinguishes Darwin from other naturalists is the combination
+of extraordinary speculative power with great knowledge of detail and
+unlimited patience. These qualities have been combined in others as well,
+but never, within the field of natural history, in the same degree. More
+commonly they are found separate. The ordinary type of naturalist is the
+man who knows an immense number of facts about plants and animals, and who
+rests content with that knowledge. He may be master of everything about
+the great subject of scarabees, but it scarcely occurs to him to _explain_
+the scarabees themselves, still less to use them in explaining other
+creatures. On the other hand, the opposite type, the type which speculates
+only without first laying the foundation of fact, is likewise common
+enough. How ineffectual this is may be seen from the history of earlier
+speculations on evolution. The _Vestiges of Creation_ and the theory of
+Lamarck are superseded, not so much because of deficiency in speculative
+power, as because the theories are not sufficiently buttressed by facts.
+Even though Darwin's own theory should ultimately be, in one sense, as
+dead as that of Chambers, it will always remain one of the landmarks of
+thought.
+
+Undoubtedly Darwin's intellect was fundamentally speculative. We have seen
+how in the book on _Variation under Domestication_ his affection clung to
+Pangenesis, perhaps the most questionable part of its contents. He was
+restless under the sense of an unexplained fact, and thankful for even a
+provisional explanation. He notes the effect upon him of the discovery
+that science cannot remain content with facts alone. Geologising with
+Sedgwick in North Wales, he heard about a tropical shell which had been
+picked up in a neighbouring quarry. 'I told Sedgwick of the fact, and he
+at once said (no doubt truly) that it must have been thrown away by some
+one into the pit; but then added, if really embedded there it would be the
+greatest misfortune to geology, as it would overthrow all that we know
+about the superficial deposits of the Midland Counties.... I was then
+utterly astonished at Sedgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact
+as a tropical shell being found near the surface in the middle of England.
+Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read
+various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that
+general laws or conclusions can be drawn from them.' It is this conception
+that he kept steadily before his eyes, and his glory lies in his success
+in drawing general laws from his facts.
+
+[Sidenote: Alfred Russel Wallace (1822).]
+
+The work of the other evolutionists, so far as it is not technical rather
+than literary, is almost accounted for when Darwin's is described. With
+respect to one indeed, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, an inevitable injustice
+is done whatever course be pursued. He is the co-discoverer with Darwin of
+the scheme of evolution associated with the name of the latter; and though
+the fame has gone to the elder man, it seems clear that if not Darwin then
+Mr. Wallace was destined to stir the mind of the age with this great
+conception. Mr. Wallace has been an extensive traveller; he published, in
+1853, a volume of _Travels on the Amazon_, giving an account of journeys
+in that region during part of which he was the companion of Mr. Henry
+Walter Bates, whose _Naturalist on the Amazon_ (1863) is well known as one
+of the most interesting and valuable books of travel and natural history
+in the language. It was however his observations in the Malay Archipelago
+that led Mr. Wallace to the theory of evolution, and perhaps he is best
+known by his book, _The Malay Archipelago_ (1869).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CRITICISM, SCHOLARSHIP, AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE.
+
+
+It was a maxim of Matthew Arnold's that the main effort of the mind of
+Europe in our time was a critical one. By this he meant something more
+than merely literary criticism; but he certainly included that. All will
+agree with him that one of the characteristics of recent times is the
+desire to understand the meaning and the historical order of the forms of
+literature. The great development of journalism has done much to foster
+critical work; for a critical view of individual men or of isolated works
+can be conveniently expressed within the compass permitted by the
+periodical form of publication. The quality of this periodical criticism
+is uneven. Much of it is worthless, but the fact that the best critics of
+the present century--Lamb, Carlyle, Macaulay, Lockhart, Ruskin and Matthew
+Arnold--have all written for periodicals, is proof sufficient that the
+best as well as the worst is to be found there.
+
+One of the features of this journalistic criticism is its anonymity, and
+this doubtless encouraged the ferocity characteristic of the early school
+of the _Edinburgh_, the _Quarterly_ and _Blackwood_. But the evil seems to
+have worked its own cure. It would be rash to assert that there is not
+incompetence and unfairness still; but at least the bludgeon school of
+criticism has passed away. The cause is twofold: the fixing of an ethical
+standard, and the discovery, which Matthew Arnold did much both by precept
+and example to spread, that the rapier is the more deadly weapon. The
+critics of the early periodicals had no tradition to guide them, and, like
+settlers in a new country, they ran riot.
+
+A good deal of uncertainty necessarily attaches to anonymous writing, and
+all that is possible here is to notice shortly a few of the more eminent
+names, avoiding any minute discussion. Some, like Carlyle, Macaulay and
+Lockhart, have been mentioned elsewhere. It was however under their
+influence, and under the gradually growing influence of Lamb, Coleridge
+and Hazlitt, that the criticism of this period grew up. There has also to
+be taken into account the spread of German thought, which gave to
+criticism greater breath and a firmer foundation in principle, and
+conduced likewise to a more careful and patient scholarship. The Germans
+have not only themselves done a great work in Shakespearian criticism, but
+they have induced the English to do the same. Still, an exclusive
+following of the Germans would have led to mischief, and fortunately for
+English criticism this tendency has been corrected by the opposite
+influence of the French school. Thanks largely to Matthew Arnold, and to
+the charm of Ste. Beuve, whom he helped to make known in England, the
+lucidity, good form and sanity of French criticism have had their effect
+as well as the laborious learning and sometimes rash theorising of the
+Germans.
+
+[Sidenote: John Payne Collier (1789-1883).]
+
+[Sidenote: Mrs. Anna Jameson (1794-1860).]
+
+[Sidenote: J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-1889).]
+
+Shakespearian criticism might almost be said to be in its infancy when the
+period opened. The highest reputation was speedily acquired by John Payne
+Collier, whose _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1831) was a really
+valuable contribution to the study of the drama. A later work of
+Collier's however brought dishonour on his name, and threw doubt upon all
+his conclusions unless they could be proved from other authorities. His
+_Notes and Emendations to the Plays of Shakespeare_ (1853) professed to
+give all the 'essential' readings of the Perkins Folio; but when the
+mystery which for a time hung over this folio was penetrated, it proved
+that the emendations in question were forgeries. Unfortunately these
+'emendations' do not stand alone. Nearly all through Collier's work is
+tainted with falsehood. He attempted to vitiate the old ballads as well as
+Shakespeare, and perhaps even now his evil influence in retarding the
+progress of sound scholarship is not wholly annulled. Mrs. Anna Jameson
+was a better writer than Collier, and she enjoys an unclouded reputation.
+Her _Characteristics of Shakespeare's Women_ (1832) still holds its ground
+as a fine example of the critical analysis of character. She wrote other
+books afterwards--_Sacred and Legendary Art_, _Legends of the Monastic
+Orders_, and _Legends of the Madonna_--but none so good as her
+Shakespearian criticisms. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps did great service to
+the study of English literature in general, especially by his elucidation
+of the life of Shakespeare; and Alexander Dyce deserves mention for one of
+the most useful editions of Shakespeare's works. The palm for learning and
+research must however be assigned to the great Cambridge Shakespeare,
+published between 1863 and 1866, under the editorship of W. G. Clark and
+W. Aldis Wright. Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke likewise deserve to be
+remembered. The _Concordance_ of the latter was until lately the standard
+work of its class, and must always remain an honourable monument of
+patience and thoroughness.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1875).]
+
+In the sphere of general criticism, a man of great reputation in the
+middle of the century was Sir Arthur Helps, author of _Friends in
+Council_, a collection of social and critical dialogues and essays,
+published between 1847 and 1859. Many of these essays are essentially
+commonplace, and the book is so long drawn out that it would be
+intolerable, but for occasional vivid and forcible passages and
+epigrammatic expressions. Such, for example, are the imaginary picture of
+the woman taken in adultery, and the description of a great cathedral,
+with a thin congregation lost in a little corner of it, a bad sermon and a
+dull service: 'We look about, thinking when piety filled every corner, and
+feel that the cathedral is too big for the religion, which is a dried-up
+thing that rattles in that empty space.'
+
+There remain two writers, John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, who are as
+distinctly leaders of criticism in the middle and later portions of the
+period, as Carlyle and Macaulay were at the opening of it.
+
+[Sidenote: John Ruskin (1819-1900).]
+
+John Ruskin is an author whose multifarious activity makes it somewhat
+difficult to classify him. He has written on art, literature, morals,
+economics, society, in short, on nearly everything. He has written verse
+as well as prose, and the unwise enthusiasm of disciples has lately
+gathered together the rhymes of his youth. If however we regard Ruskin's
+work as a whole, we see that its principal motive is critical, and that
+his criticism is mainly directed to art. This is the case with what still
+remains his greatest work, _Modern Painters_. The first volume of this
+book, magnificently illustrated, excellently printed, and written with an
+elaborate splendour of style almost unexampled in English, was published
+in 1843 with the simple inscription, 'by a Graduate of Oxford.' The fifth
+and last volume did not appear until 1860. The _Modern Painters_ is easily
+first among all the English works that treat of painting. Its full merit
+can hardly be appreciated until we realise how daringly original it was;
+and to realise this is difficult, because of the very success of
+Ruskinism. The young graduate of Oxford preached a new gospel, and set
+himself in opposition at once to the established canons of art-criticism,
+and to the established philosophy of his time. In the former convention
+reigned supreme. 'The man who in the pre-Ruskinian era was the high priest
+among connoisseurs was Sir George Beaumont; and Sir George, admirable man
+as he was in other respects, when he looked at a landscape, asked, not
+whether it was true to the facts of nature, but whether it accorded with
+the fictions of convention. "But where is your brown tree?" he asked of
+Constable when that painter gave in his adherence to the then
+revolutionary course of proclaiming that trees were green.' Ruskin too
+proclaimed that trees were green, and no one has done more than he to
+vindicate nature's right to be what she is. It was their championship of
+truth and their earnestness that drew him towards the Pre-Raphaelites, and
+made him their formidable and efficient champion in _Pre-Raphaelitism_
+(1851), as well as in many detached passages of his writings.
+
+While Ruskin was elaborating and completing his _Modern Painters_, he was
+likewise engaged upon works bearing on the kindred art of architecture.
+His chief writings upon it are _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ (1849)
+and _The Stones of Venice_ (1851-1853). His appointment in 1869 as Slade
+Professor of Fine Art at Oxford greatly stimulated his activity. His
+reputation had then reached nearly its highest point. He interpreted his
+duties seriously, and threw himself with ardour into the work. Quite a
+number of his smaller publications--among them _Aratra Pentelici_, _The
+Eagle's Nest_, _Ariadne Florentina_ and _Love's Meinie_--are the outcome
+of his tenure of the professorship. His second tenure of office, beginning
+in 1883, produced _The Art of England_ and _The Pleasures of England_. He
+moreover made himself an art-guide to travellers in Italy; and hence his
+_Mornings in Florence_ and _St. Mark's Rest_.
+
+This great body of art-criticism is all bound together by a few
+fundamental principles; and it is perhaps his fidelity to principle,
+hardly less than the magnificence of his style, that has won for Ruskin a
+popularity denied to other critics of art. It will be useful to regard his
+critical work from two points of view: its rise in negation and
+opposition, and its issue in positive doctrine.
+
+Ruskin, like every man who has had much to teach, begins by being a
+protestant. He finds that all is _not_ for the best in the best of all
+possible worlds, and his effort is first to uproot what is bad, and
+secondly to encourage and foster what is good. The objects of his dislike
+have been so often denounced by him that all know what they are.
+Materialism, utilitarianism, a sordid industry merely concerned with the
+accumulation of wealth, and caring little either for its use or for the
+quality of the thing produced--these have been the objects of Ruskin's
+life-long hatred. The merits of his method of dealing with them must be
+touched on later; here it is enough to notice that the motive for his work
+on art is the pressing need to find some foundation, other than these, for
+the beautiful and good. Though Ruskin was not of the Oxford movement, he
+was stimulated by much the same sympathies and dislikes that produced it;
+and it is interesting to note how Pre-Raphaelitism in art, Ruskin's
+art-criticism, and the poetic and religious movements of the middle of
+the century, all show various forms of the same revolt against the
+deification of matter.
+
+Starting with this opposition to mere material utility, Ruskin is careful
+always to define art so as to bring out its spiritual significance. 'All
+great Art,' he says, 'is Praise.' To him, art and religion, or art and
+morality, are not so much different things as different phases of the same
+thing. Beauty is measured, not by economic utility, or capacity to satisfy
+a material want, but rather by transcendental utility, or capacity to
+satisfy a spiritual want. In proportion as it embodies the conceptions of
+a great spirit, art is great. The artist ought to be faithful to nature,
+but mere imitation is not enough. Greatness consists in the something
+which the artist does not exactly add to nature, but rather educes from
+nature, the something which the gifted eye only can see, but which the
+gifted hand can make visible to others less splendidly endowed.
+
+In his application of these principles Ruskin is sometimes capricious,
+sometimes, perhaps, presumptuous, and very often dogmatic. His caprice is
+visible in his changes of opinion. We find judgments pronounced in one
+edition of his works with the confidence of omniscience, and retracted in
+another with frank self-contempt, but with unabated confidence. The
+reasons for the one opinion seem, as a rule, just as convincing as the
+reasons for the other; and while all men may legitimately change their
+views, frequency of change ought to beget a certain amount of diffidence.
+That Ruskin's criticism is sometimes presumptuous follows from its extreme
+confidence. He discovers the meaning of every stone in a building, and of
+every line and colour in a painting, in a manner hardly granted to mere
+man; for, after all, the most sympathetic of critics cannot enter into
+another man's mind, nor can the most learned completely realise a past
+age. This dogmatism, though irritating, is generally harmless enough; but
+it is not so when it results in underrating an artist like Michael Angelo,
+because he will not fit into the preconceived theory, and in undue
+exaltation of the comparatively little, because they sometimes furnish
+just the illustrations needed.
+
+From the same root springs the cognate fault of the intensely subjective
+character of Ruskin's criticism. In a celebrated passage on the Jura in
+the _Seven Lamps_, after an eloquent description of the scene, the writer
+imagines it transported to some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. In
+an instant it loses all its impressiveness--to him. The reason is that the
+element of human association is lost; and he instantly jumps to the
+conclusion that this element is an essential part of the charm of nature
+to all. Few will dispute that such association is to many an important
+factor in the delight in nature. But this has not been a universal
+feeling. Some travellers, like Darwin on the Cordilleras or in the
+Brazilian forests, have felt, in the midst of untrodden solitude and
+unbroken desolation, a sense of the sublime nowhere else to be
+experienced.
+
+That which, in spite of faults, gives Ruskin's art-criticism its
+superiority over all rivals is, in the first place, the fulness of
+knowledge whence it springs, and, in the second place, the magnificence of
+the style in which it finds expression. Ruskin's continental travels in
+early manhood gave him an acquaintance with the best models, such as could
+not otherwise be acquired. He was moreover himself an artist, capable of
+good and accurate, if not of great work, and aware of what is possible and
+what is not possible in art; and his steady confidence in the existence of
+an inner meaning and a serious purpose in all art worthy of the name
+saved him from the thinness of substance and the dilettante trifling too
+apt to be seen in writings of that class.
+
+But it is, first of all, beauty of style that the name of Ruskin suggests.
+His prose has been lauded as the finest in the English language. The
+English language contains so much that the absolutely finest is not easy
+to discover; nor will men ever agree as to the relative merits of simple
+and of ornate styles. There is not a little to be said for Oliver
+Goldsmith, even as against John Ruskin. The latter writes what is known as
+'poetic prose;' and in doing so, though he is no mere imitator, he follows
+in the footsteps of men like De Quincey, who sought to obtain by prose
+effects commonly associated with poetry. This was in part a reversion, but
+a reversion with a difference. The eighteenth century had evolved a clear,
+direct, simple structure of sentence, well adapted to appeal to the
+understanding. It was not unfitted too, as many passages in Addison and
+Steele and other acknowledged masters prove, for an appeal to the
+emotions. Nevertheless, this was its weak side; and just as the lucid,
+bright, highly intellectual verse of the eighteenth century gave place to
+poetry more emotional and more varied, so the prose of the eighteenth
+century had to receive its complement in a prose more ambitious in design,
+more complex in structure and richer in tone. It was romanticism
+overflowing, as it were, the bounds of verse. The change was not so much
+the introduction of something wholly new as the grafting of old tendencies
+on a new stock. The complex structure and involved harmonies and wealth of
+imagination which the new writers hungered for were to be found in the
+prose of Milton and of Jeremy Taylor. On the other hand, the type of
+sentence established by the eighteenth century writers was too sound to be
+set aside. It remained the basis, while the older magnificence and daring
+were brought back and wedded to it.
+
+Of this type of poetic prose Ruskin is the acknowledged master. Others,
+like De Quincey, have rivalled, and perhaps equalled his best passages.
+But excellent passages in De Quincey are much rarer than in Ruskin. The
+latter has built upon a broader foundation. All the field of nature and
+great part of the field of knowledge have been his. Ornate prose tends to
+be descriptive; and in his descriptions Ruskin has, over the mere literary
+man, the great advantage which the study of art gives. He had been
+educated to observe, and he naturally saw more than others who, even if
+they possessed equal sensibility, had less of this special culture.
+
+Next in importance to his art criticisms must be ranked Ruskin's writings
+on social subjects. Here his interest has been keen and his energy great.
+Most of his special ideas have been denounced as Quixotic nonsense, and
+some of them, it must be added, deserve a description not much more
+flattering. Yet great is the merit of earnestness. Ruskin has always been
+fired by indignation against wrong and falsehood, and has always believed
+profoundly in the truth of his own gospel. He has had, both as a writer
+and as a man, the gift of fascination. Hence, even when his audience was
+scanty, it was enthusiastic; and few, whose ideas seem so unpractical,
+have succeeded in persuading so many to try them. The story of his
+inducing his Oxford pupils to engage in road-making is well known. The
+fact that the road was and is, as he laughingly admitted, one of the worst
+in the three kingdoms, does not weaken its testimony to his personal
+influence; though it may throw doubt on the wisdom of his guidance. In a
+similar spirit he founded the St. George's Guild. This however was no mere
+by-work. It was the direct outcome of his writings on social questions,
+and it was more remotely connected with his teaching of art. It was
+connected with the latter through his conviction that only to a people
+living wholesome lives is sound art possible. It was connected with his
+social writings because his studies for them convinced him that mere
+writing would do little to cure the evils he saw. Hence in the _Fors
+Clavigera_ in 1871 he launched the scheme of the St. George's Guild. The
+idea was to restore happiness to England. 'We will try,' said he, 'to make
+some small piece of English ground beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We
+will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no
+untended and unthought of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick;
+none idle, but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it, but instant
+obedience to known law and appointed persons; no equality upon it, but
+recognition of every betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every
+worseness.' It is not surprising that plans so visionary have failed to
+regenerate society; it is surprising that men should have been willing to
+join in the effort to realise such a Utopia. The agricultural ventures of
+the Guild are an admitted failure; one or two of the efforts to plant
+village industries have had some measure of success, and seem capable of
+doing good within narrow limits.
+
+Prominent among the faults of Ruskin's social writings is a disregard of
+practically unalterable facts. Railways and steam-engines may not be
+objects of beauty, but until they find swifter means of locomotion and
+production men will use them. To regulate their use and to reform abuse
+would be the ideal of the practical social reformer. Denunciation and
+banishment are the cures which occur to Ruskin. Similar faults mark his
+extremely eccentric political economy; as for example his condemnation of
+interest on capital and his ascription of property 'to whom proper.' This
+would be attractive if we could only find some one to tell us infallibly,
+or with some approach to infallibility, to whom it _is_ proper.
+Historically, the stronger man has generally proved the person 'to whom
+proper.' The condemnation of competition and the praise of co-operation
+are open to a similar objection. They ignore the facts of human nature.
+There is doubtless room for valuable work in promoting co-operation and in
+regulating competition; but no worse service could be done to the human
+race than to supplant the latter. Fortunately, no effort is more hopeless:
+it is like that sin which Macaulay declared would be unspeakably shocking
+if it could be committed, but which, happily, Providence had not put
+within the reach of fallen humanity.
+
+Ruskin's economic and social writings are certainly not to be valued for
+soundness of thought or for sobriety of judgment. They have however the
+beauty of style which characterises all his works, they are enriched with
+memorable sentences and weighty sayings, and they are inspired by a
+nobility of purpose which redeems even the most indefensible doctrine.
+Unworkable as his economic principles are, it is impossible to withhold
+admiration from the man who has so generously endeavoured to carry them
+out; and however numerous may be his crotchets, the laugh at them must be
+kindly when he has himself so genially led the laughter. It is moreover
+only just to say that, however unsound his own views may be, he was one of
+the first to point out the unsoundness of the old political economy. There
+is no answer to his contention that a science so abstract, a science which
+leaves out of account so many considerations essential to human welfare,
+has no right to pronounce authoritatively upon it. The modern economist
+would agree with Ruskin that we must reintroduce the factors eliminated
+before we can draw conclusions trustworthy for practice.
+
+[Sidenote: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).]
+
+Matthew Arnold rose into prominence as a critic somewhat later than
+Ruskin, and he did his work in a different sphere. He has the unusual
+distinction of being almost equally celebrated in prose and in poetry.
+There are numerous writers who have won a considerable, and some even a
+great reputation in both; but generally, as in the case of Scott, there is
+no difficulty in subordinating the one to the other. In Arnold's case
+there is a difficulty, and though the prediction may be ventured that he
+will in the end take rank as a poet, he is probably best known at present
+as a writer of prose.
+
+Matthew Arnold was educated at Winchester and Rugby. He went up to Balliol
+College, Oxford, in 1841, and won a fellowship at Oriel in 1845. In 1851
+he became inspector of schools. Besides his ordinary routine work as
+inspector he discharged the important duty of visiting and reporting upon
+the schools and universities of France and Germany. From 1857 to 1867 he
+was professor of poetry at Oxford. In his later years he made two visits
+to America, where also he lectured. He afterwards published the addresses
+under the title of _Discourses in America_.
+
+The prose writings of Matthew Arnold may be classed under three heads.
+They are all critical in spirit. In the first division the criticism is of
+literature, in the second of theology, in the third of society. As regards
+their chronology, the literary criticism is mainly the product of the
+decade between 1860 and 1870, but from time to time all through his
+literary career Arnold wrote criticism. In theology the period of his
+greatest activity was from _St. Paul and Protestantism_ (1870) to _Last
+Essays on Church and Religion_ (1877). Social essays, including the
+educational writings under this head, are interspersed all through, but
+the period of greatest activity, as regards publication, was from the
+_Mixed Essays_ (1879) to the _Discourses in America_ (1885). In respect of
+merit these writings can also be classified with confidence. The literary
+essays are unquestionably the most valuable, the social essays rank next,
+while the theological works have the least permanent worth.
+
+Arnold's critical work may be said to begin in his poems, and these for
+the most part precede his prose writings. It may be doubted whether any
+English poet has written as much fine criticism in verse as Arnold.
+Besides the penetrating judgments on individual writers, like Goethe,
+Wordsworth and Heine, we have a discussion of the principles of art in the
+_Epilogue to Lessing's Laocoön_ and, throughout, a critical view of life
+as well as of literature. The volume of poems published in 1853 contained
+moreover a critical preface in prose, short but highly suggestive. When
+therefore Arnold was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford, he was
+already a critic of proved capacity, and he fully justified his
+appointment by the lectures _On Translating Homer_ (1861), certainly the
+most valuable ever delivered from that chair. But most of Arnold's
+critical work was originally written for periodicals; and the scattered
+essays, gathered up into volumes, are known to the world as the _Essays in
+Criticism_ (1865) and the _Essays in Criticism: Second Series_ (1888).
+These, with a few essays scattered through other volumes, constitute the
+body of Arnold's critical work. What is its spirit and method?
+
+To comprehend Arnold as a critic we must grasp his conception of culture.
+His aim is to know the best that has been thought and said in all ages and
+by all nations. No criticism was ever less negative. He sees indeed that
+the pointing out of deficiencies, indirectly if not directly, is an
+essential part of criticism, but it is not the end in view. Again,
+Arnold's purpose is always practical. He was long regarded as a dreamer,
+a 'superior person' sitting on a solitary height and on the whole proud of
+the isolation. On the contrary, it was just because he was at heart
+essentially English, and therefore practical, that he acquired this
+reputation. Two of his favourite dogmas in criticism were the necessity of
+going back to and studying the classics, and the equally crying necessity
+of going beyond our own island and studying the mind of Europe. He was
+never content unless he brought English opinion to the test of foreign
+opinion. Hence his interest in knowing how Milton appears to a French
+critic. For a similar reason he frequently went to foreign writers for the
+subjects of his own criticism. In the first series of _Essays in
+Criticism_, the most characteristic and the most valuable, as a whole, of
+his critical writings, the subjects are principally foreign--the two de
+Guérins, Heine, Joubert, Marcus Aurelius. He turns to these, not because
+he thinks them better than the writers of his own country, but because he
+thinks more good will come, both to himself and to England, from an
+investigation of what is foreign and unfamiliar, than from an examination
+of writings illustrating our own merits and charged with our own defects.
+The impulse which determines his choice in criticism is revealed in his
+_Letters_. He condemned Carlyle in England and Gambetta in France, each
+for 'carrying coals to Newcastle;' Carlyle, because he preached
+earnestness to a nation that already had enough of it, but was not equally
+endowed with other good qualities; Gambetta, just because he evaporated in
+words and failed to teach that very earnestness to a nation that would
+have been all the better for more.
+
+The same principle explains Arnold's insistence on the study of the
+ancients. 'They can help to cure us of what is ... the great vice of our
+intellect, manifesting itself in our incredible vagaries in literature, in
+art, in religion, in morals: namely, that it is _fantastic_, and wants
+sanity.' It was for this reason that he dwelt on things distasteful to his
+countrymen, or to whomsoever he was addressing. He was eager to carry the
+coals of Newcastle where they were needed, the earnestness and practical
+sense of England to France, the lucidity of France and her love of ideas
+to England. This, combined no doubt with personal taste, accounts for his
+devotion to French literature. No one saw French weaknesses more
+clearly,--'France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.' But
+irrespective of the relative merits of French and German writings, he
+thought the Germans a bad model for the English to follow, and the French
+a good one, because they, a race of Latin culture, differ from us more
+than another branch of the Teutonic stock can do. So too, in his eyes, the
+highest value of the classics is just that they present us with ideals
+unlike our own. 'We can hardly at the present day understand what Menander
+meant when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy
+that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he
+had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have
+assured him that the merit of the piece depended on the brilliant things
+that arose under his pen as he went along.' The width of the difference
+measures the value of the lesson to be learnt.
+
+We can thus understand the seeming eccentricity, sometimes, of Arnold's
+choice of subjects, and also the superficial appearance of negation in his
+criticism. It is only superficial; the essence of the criticism is always
+sympathy, agreement rather than difference, the recognition of merit in
+preference to censure for defects. Carlyle had already placed criticism on
+the basis of sympathy, but it was shown in a different way. Carlyle had a
+large share of the dramatic faculty, and an intense interest in the
+individual soul. Arnold's genius was social, but not dramatic. He had no
+such mastery as Carlyle of the springs of individual character; but he set
+himself to understand the society in which the man lived, to grasp his
+idea, to look at things from his point of view, and so to explain what
+otherwise would be inexplicable. It is the fruitfulness of Arnold's method
+that has made the reading of the _Essays in Criticism_ an epoch in the
+lives of many men who have now reached middle life.
+
+Equally high praise must be accorded to the temper of this criticism. No
+writer was ever more uniformly urbane than Arnold. 'The great thing is,'
+says he, 'to write without a particle of vice or malice;' and he never
+forgets his own precept. He often gave rise to controversy, and was
+sometimes the object of vituperation; but, though he could write with
+cutting irony, the controversy was never on his side embittered, and he
+never replied in kind to the vituperation.
+
+In his criticism Arnold laid little stress on rules, and those he did
+appeal to were wide and elastic. The one thing he greatly insisted upon
+was the necessity of unity of impression. No work of art could be called
+great that did not produce a deep and abiding impression as a whole, and
+not merely in its parts. In the details of criticism he trusted to no
+rules, but rather to a taste saturated with 'the best of what has been
+thought and said.' His sentiment is expressed in the well-known essay on
+the study of poetry, introductory to _Ward's English Poets_. 'There can be
+no more useful help,' says he, 'for discovering what poetry belongs to the
+class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to
+have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and
+to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry.' He followed in practice
+his own precept, and determined to finish up with Shakespeare's _King
+Lear_, before writing this very essay, in order to have a proper taste in
+his mind while he was at work.
+
+The rest of Arnold's works in prose are conceived in the same frame of
+mind, but deal with matter less tractable to the author. The social essays
+are of high quality. Arnold's campaign against Philistinism, his
+insistence on lucidity, not in literature alone but in all the relations
+of life, his championship of urbanity, his polemic against narrow
+sectarianism, whether religious, or social, or political--all this is
+important as well as interesting. The playfulness of Arnold's habitual
+mode of expression helped to conceal the real earnestness of his purpose.
+But in all this he had very much at heart the improvement of his
+countrymen. He was by nature and instinct a teacher; and, though he was
+too much an artist to obtrude it or let it spoil his work, there was a
+didactic purpose under nearly all he wrote, verse as well as prose. For
+this he sacrificed popularity. Knowing well that to say what is agreeable
+is a surer and easier road to favour than to say what is helpful, he yet
+chose the latter course.
+
+The same purpose animates likewise Arnold's theological writings; but in
+this case the want of special equipment is more serious. It is unwise of
+anyone, without long years of special training, to undertake biblical
+criticism. The opinion of a great Hebraist as to the facts about the book
+of Isaiah is valuable; the opinion of anyone else is that of an amateur.
+The motive which animated Arnold however is easily understood, and for
+certain purposes his judgment is quite as worthy of respect as that of the
+most accomplished theologian. Arnold's position was peculiar. While
+retaining a great deal of religious sentiment he had thrown aside entirely
+the positive dogmas of religion. He was strongly attached to the religion
+of the Bible, Old Testament as well as New; and just because of this
+attachment he wished to remove the crumbling foundation of theological
+systems and find a safer basis for it. 'Our popular religion at present
+conceives the birth, ministry, and death of Christ, as altogether steeped
+in prodigy, brimful of miracle;--_and miracles do not happen_.' Arnold's
+object was to set free Christianity, which had hardened in the mistaken
+fact, and to establish it on the living idea. Undoubtedly he was well
+qualified to form opinions on these fundamental questions. Neither the
+clergy, nor the churches, nor specialists in biblical lore, have any
+monopoly here, or any peculiar right to respect. The ultimate questions of
+religion are to be settled by a review of the whole of life, for which
+every man has his own special advantages as well as his own special
+limitations.
+
+Arnold's style, in prose as in poetry, is one of the elements of his
+power. Though not free from mannerisms, it is easy, harmonious, scholarly
+and scrupulously pure. He is content to write about plain things in a
+plain manner. His great charm is the constant play of wit and humour, of
+irony and satire, over his prose. The wit and irony are, as a rule,
+lambent rather than piercing, but they are sometimes exceedingly keen.
+Occasionally he rises to a high pitch of eloquence. There are few passages
+of English prose more memorable than the celebrated apostrophe to Oxford,
+the 'home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and
+impossible loyalties.' Yet even there, when his feelings are most highly
+strung, the comic touch comes in: 'There are our young barbarians, all at
+play.' Arnold smiles at himself as he smiles at others, and by doing so
+takes all offence from his wit.
+
+[Sidenote: Dr. John Brown (1810-1882).]
+
+[Sidenote: William Brighty Rands (1823-1882).]
+
+Two minor names, those of Dr. John Brown and William Brighty Rands, are,
+perhaps, best included among the critics. The former is most widely known
+as the author of _Rab and his Friends_, a piece not easily surpassed for
+mingled pathos and humour. Brown wrote a style of very high merit. In the
+miscellaneous collection of his writings, which he entitled _Horæ
+Subsecivæ_, there is much to remind the reader of Lamb. Yet he was
+guiltless of imitation, and the resemblance exists because he had the same
+fine humour and the same sensitiveness of perception as the earlier
+writer. No one has written better than Brown about dogs; and his
+comprehension of them and his power of depicting them are seen even better
+in _Our Dogs_ than in the famous essay on Rab, where the human figures
+divide the interest with the great mastiff. Brown's critical papers are
+few, but they show that he knew how to get at the heart of his subject.
+
+Rands is a man much less known than he deserves to be. He wrote on many
+subjects, but generally under assumed names. His children's verse in
+_Lilliput Levee_ (1864) is very good, and his opinions on 'life and
+philosophy' in _Henry Holbeach_ (1865) are still better. This book is
+thoughtful, acute in criticism, and enriched with not a few memorable
+sayings. Perhaps the best essay in it is that on _Cavaliers and
+Roundheads_, where the description of the Tory or Cavalier mind, with no
+opinions, only dogmas, and a genial superstition which answers the purpose
+of religion, is admirable; and in another essay there is an even more
+delicious description of the minister of the Little Meeting, 'his heart
+amply supplied with the milk of human kindness, and his creed blazing with
+damnation.' Rich as English literature is, it is sensibly impoverished
+when work of this quality is forgotten.
+
+The present period has been fruitful also in departments of scholarship
+cognate to literary criticism. Among scholars in the old sense of the term
+the most distinguished were John Conington at Oxford and H. A. J. Munro at
+Cambridge. The former had the more versatile literary gift, but the latter
+was far more 'high built' in learning, and his edition of Lucretius is
+admittedly one of the triumphs of English classical culture. In the same
+sphere the great statesman, W. E. Gladstone, deserves mention, less
+perhaps for the positive value of his _Juventus Mundi_ and Homeric
+studies, than for the extraordinary energy which made such work possible
+amidst the distractions of party politics. More characteristic of the age
+has been the development of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English lore. Benjamin
+Thorpe and Joseph Bosworth both did valuable work in this sphere. The
+former edited Caedmon in 1832, and in the course of his long life
+supervised editions of nearly all the more important remains of
+Anglo-Saxon literature. Bosworth's name is identified with the Anglo-Saxon
+Dictionary, which, though now philologically rather antiquated, was in its
+time a bold undertaking. Sir Frederick Madden, a somewhat younger man,
+performed for a later period the work Thorpe did for the beginning of our
+literature. The accomplished Richard Chenevix Trench, for twenty years
+Archbishop of Dublin, was not only an agreeable poet, but did great
+service to the study of the English language. His _Study of Words_ and
+_English Past and Present_ have done more to popularise philology than,
+probably, any other books we possess.
+
+The study of Eastern civilisation has been another special line of modern
+research. The explorations of Layard threw a flood of light upon Nineveh,
+and, in the still more remote East, Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson
+achieved the remarkable feat of deciphering the Persian cuneiform
+inscriptions. Curiously enough, the same thing was done independently and
+almost simultaneously by Dr. Edward Hincks. Another portion of the East
+was studied by E. W. Lane, the greatest English Arabic scholar of his
+time, the best translator before Sir Richard Burton of the _Arabian
+Nights_, and author of one of the best books on life in the East, the
+_Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_.
+
+[Sidenote: George Borrow (1803-1881).]
+
+Among travellers who were not scholars, David Livingstone deserves mention
+for the greatness of his African discoveries, and McClintock as the chief
+in his time of Arctic explorers. But in the literary sense both were far
+surpassed by George Borrow, an author very hard to classify, but whom some
+would be disposed, for more reasons than one, to rank among the writers of
+fiction. Borrow did write stories, _Lavengro_ (1851), and its sequel, _The
+Romany Rye_ (1857), where facts of his own life are bewilderingly mingled
+with fiction; while it is strongly suspected that there is no small
+element of romance in the books of travel on which his fame chiefly rests.
+He had a remarkable gift for languages. Among other little-known tongues,
+he studied the Gipsy speech, and published a volume on _The Gipsies in
+Spain_ (1841), and a word-book of the English Gipsy dialect. His best book
+however is _The Bible in Spain_ (1843), an exceedingly readable account of
+his travels as colporteur in that country. Whether it be trustworthy as a
+record of facts or not, _The Bible in Spain_ has at least induced some
+whose whole interest was in tracts and colportage to read a piece of good
+literature, and has delighted with entertaining adventures others who
+looked for nothing better than an enlarged specimen of the tract kind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+POETRY FROM 1850 TO 1870: THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT.
+
+
+We have already seen that traces of change in the spirit of poetry
+manifest themselves soon after the opening of the present period. They
+appear in the works of men like Bailey and Sir Henry Taylor, and they grow
+steadily stronger in the successive volumes of Tennyson. We have also seen
+that a spirit cognate to this manifests itself in other departments of
+literature as well. It attains its full growth, especially in poetry and
+art, about the middle of the century; and so marked is the difference from
+the previous four-and-twenty years that it has been called the English
+Renaissance. The name is too ambitious and grandiloquent, yet if we do not
+press it unduly it will be useful in reminding us that literature had in
+nearly all departments come to be dominated by new ideals. Nowhere do we
+see them more conspicuous than in poetry. Their influence is visible in
+the rise of new schools; first, the 'Spasmodic School,' stronger in
+passion than in intellect, and greater in promise than in performance; and
+secondly, the Pre-Raphaelites, who were primarily artists, but who were
+also men of letters. The first article of their creed was to be true to
+nature; but they were far from being realists as the word is now commonly
+understood. More important than either of these were those whose task may
+be described as that of wedding intellect to imagination. They were not a
+new school, for their leaders, Browning and Tennyson, had been active all
+through the first part of the period. But their power and their influence
+had now grown to maturity; both in their choice of subject and in their
+treatment they were swayed by the spirit of the time; and they were
+reinforced by some new writers who took a similar view of the functions of
+poetry.
+
+The greatest of these new writers is Matthew Arnold, and his thought is so
+eminently representative of the generation that it may be well to consider
+him even before his seniors. It was as a poet that Arnold began his
+literary career. He won prizes for poetry at Rugby and at Oxford, and in
+1849 he published his first volume, _The Strayed Reveller, and Other
+Poems_. _Empedocles on Etna_, also accompanied by other poems, followed in
+1852, and another volume of poems the year after. A few additions to the
+pieces thus published were gradually made, and in 1867 appeared the _New
+Poems_. From that date Arnold wrote poetry sparingly. His career was
+therefore comparatively short, and the bulk of his verse is not great. He
+was frozen into silence by 'that dull indifference to his gifts and
+services which stirred the fruitless indignation of his friends.' But in
+poetry quality counts for more than quantity. Small in bulk as is his
+contribution, Gray has nevertheless a secure place among the immortals.
+Arnold's contribution is much larger than Gray's, and it has the same
+purity and beauty of finish.
+
+Arnold was born just at the proper time to feel the forces of change
+working around him, and the sense of change is from the first deeply
+impressed upon his poetry. It is this, combined with his critical attitude
+of mind, that makes him specially the voice of the doubts and difficulties
+of his generation. The critical aspect of Arnold's verse has been already
+noted. It is critical of human existence as well as of other poetry. In
+_Obermann Once More_, in _Thyrsis_, in _The Scholar Gipsy_, in
+_Mycerinus_, in _Resignation_, in the lines _To a Gipsy Child_, and in
+numerous other pieces we see the workings of this critical spirit. We see
+too that he is most of all weighed down with the profound sense of change.
+He finds himself in a world where all things have to be made new, and
+where the power that promised to renew them remains unseen. This is the
+case with religion, for the conviction of the decay of Christianity in the
+dogmatic sense is as plainly visible in Arnold's verse as in his prose. It
+is the case also with politics and the social system. The French
+Revolution had shaken these, and had left to the next generation the task
+of rebuilding them. Its tremendous magnitude awes Arnold. He has none of
+that confident optimism which in Browning springs from breadth of
+intellect; still less does he share that which, in the panegyrists of
+material progress, is begotten of narrowness. He thinks the conditions of
+the time unfavourable to spiritual growth. It does not afford that
+'shelter to grow ripe,' and that 'leisure to grow wise,' which even Goethe
+found in his youth, exposed though he was in maturer years to 'the blasts
+of a tremendous time.'
+
+This conception of the conflict, and especially of the unparalleled
+complexity, of modern life, is the dominant thought of Arnold. It is the
+warfare of so many elements that in his eyes distinguishes his own from
+all previous ages. In former times each civilisation stood by itself, not
+vitally affected by the puzzling elements of alien civilisations. The
+modern task is to fuse all together. The actress Rachel is typical, and as
+in her birth, and life, and death, and in her physical, mental and moral
+nature, there met and clashed 'Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens,
+Rome,'--so do they meet and clash in the lives of all Arnold offers no
+solution of the problem. He points out the difficulty, he cherishes an
+ultimate hopefulness, but none of the answers to the riddle satisfies him.
+
+The tone most characteristic of Arnold is in harmony with such fundamental
+conceptions. It is a tone of refined and thoughtful melancholy. This made
+him a supreme elegiac poet. _Thyrsis_, the memorial poem on his friend
+Clough, is generally ranked with the masterpieces in the same type of
+Tennyson and Shelley and Milton. But _Thyrsis_ does not stand alone. _The
+Scholar Gipsy_, the _Obermann_ poems, _Rugby Chapel_, _A Southern Night_,
+and several others of Arnold's finest pieces likewise belong to this
+class. The elegiac spirit is his special gift, and he shows it in a
+characteristic way. His poems are not elegiacs for the individual; they
+are not so even when, as in _Rugby Chapel_ and _A Southern Night_, the
+subjects are most intimately related in blood to Arnold. He habitually
+looks beyond the individual to the race, and rather mourns 'the something
+that infects the world.'
+
+Arnold was a student of Wordsworth, and was among the most discriminating
+admirers of that great poet. One of the best of the critical essays is
+devoted to him; and the finest selection ever made from the poetry of
+Wordsworth was made by Arnold. The skill of that selection proves that
+Arnold was capable of benefiting from Wordsworth without being tempted to
+follow him where his guidance would have been dangerous. He admired
+Wordsworth's calm, he admired him for his power to 'possess his soul,' he
+admired him as a student of nature. The calm and rest in himself were with
+Arnold rather an aspiration than a thing attained: it was part of his
+creed that in these latter days such calm was unattainable. But he
+followed Wordsworth as a student of nature. The love of nature was with
+Arnold an inborn passion, the strength of which is proved not only by his
+poetry, but in one sense even more convincingly by his familiar letters.
+Wordsworth gave him a point of view and strengthened his power of vision.
+But Arnold writes his nature-poetry for a new age under new conditions.
+The very fact that the calm of Wordsworth is unattainable imparts to his
+verse a subdued tone. He stands between Wordsworth and his other favourite
+Senancour, sharing the spiritual force of the one and the reflective
+melancholy of the other. Arnold's best descriptions are tinged with this
+melancholy. The 'infinite desire of all which might have been' inspires
+_Resignation_, one of the poems of his earliest volume. We see it again in
+the lovely closing lines of _The Church of Brou_. It determines Arnold's
+preference for pale colours, soft lights and subdued sounds, for moonlight
+effects, and for the hum of 'brooding mountain bee.' In the beautiful
+_Dover Beach_ it is associated with his sense of the decay of faith. Even
+in the lyric rapture of the description of the sea-caverns in _The
+Forsaken Merman_, the melancholy is still present. To many it is
+oppressive, and perhaps it is the absence of it from the song of Callicles
+in _Empedocles on Etna_ that has caused some sympathetic critics to
+pronounce that the finest of all Arnold's poems.
+
+Arnold's longer pieces fall into two classes: the dramatic, including
+_Merope_ and _Empedocles on Etna_; and the narrative, best represented by
+_Sohrab and Rustum_ and _Balder Dead_, for _Tristram and Iseult_ is as
+much lyrical as narrative. As a dramatist Arnold was not successful. His
+_Merope_, a play on the Greek model, is frigid; and fine as is _Empedocles
+on Etna_, its merits are in the thought and the beautiful verse rather
+than the dramatic structure. The truth is that Arnold had neither the eye
+for fine shades of character nor the interest in action essential to the
+drama. His treatment of character has already been commented upon in
+connexion with his prose. With regard to action, Arnold himself withdrew
+_Empedocles on Etna_ shortly after its publication, on the ground that it
+was a poem in which all was to be endured and nothing to be done.
+
+The same want of action appears in the narratives. The charm of these
+beautiful poems resides not in what takes place in them, but in the
+restful pictures they present. There is no breathless speed such as we
+feel in the narratives of Scott and Byron, but, on the contrary, the calm
+of a reflective spirit. _Sohrab and Rustum_ (1853) and _Balder Dead_
+(1855) seemed to open out to Arnold a wider field of productiveness than
+any he had hitherto found. They took him outside himself, and gave variety
+to his poetry; and perhaps the thing most to be regretted in his literary
+history is that he wrote no more pieces of this class. Not that they are
+altogether the best of his poems; but blank verse so beautiful as his
+never cloys, and it seemed as if he might have found innumerable subjects
+suitable to his genius, subjects inviting quiet reflexion and not injured
+by the absence of rapid movement.
+
+There are two features of special value in the work of Arnold. One is his
+unshrinking intellectual sincerity. The bent of his mind compelled him to
+endeavour to understand the world in which he lived. He found much in it
+that was unwelcome to him. His scepticism as to dogmatic religion was a
+source of great pain to himself. Life would have been far more smooth and
+easy if he had been able to believe more; and hence that sympathy with
+many things he did _not_ believe which Newman noted in him. Yet he never
+shows the slightest sign of yielding to the temptation and playing false
+with his intellect. Wherever it leads him Arnold goes; and he has taught
+no higher lesson than that of unvarying trust in reason and loyalty to
+'the high white star of truth.' It may be doubted whether any of his
+poetic contemporaries has pursued a path so undeviatingly straight. Even
+Browning is bribed by his feelings to play questionable tricks with his
+intellect.
+
+The second feature is the style of Arnold. He presents one of the best
+examples in English of the classical spirit. He is always measured and
+restrained. He detested 'haste, half-work, and disarray,' and certainly
+his own example tended to discourage them. Lucidity and flexibility and
+sanity were the qualities he specially strove to embody in his work. It
+was because he found them in Goethe that he specially admired the great
+German poet. It was because of the absence of them that he uttered his
+most severe criticisms upon his countrymen both in the present and in the
+past.
+
+[Sidenote: Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861).]
+
+Arthur Hugh Clough is in so many respects associated with Arnold that they
+are best taken together. But just because of the similarities there is the
+less need to dwell upon the inferior poet. Clough, who spent his early
+boyhood in America, was educated under Dr. Arnold at Rugby and at Balliol
+College, Oxford. At Oxford he was for a time carried away by the
+Tractarian movement, in his own words, 'like a straw drawn up the chimney
+by a draught.' In this he was influenced doubtless by his friendship for
+W. G. Ward. But Clough was not born for unquestioning belief, and the
+reaction shook his whole faith. The story of his separation from Ward is
+told in the beautiful allegorical poem, _Qua Cursum Ventus_; and in
+another of his finest poems, _Easter Day, Naples_, 1849, we see the
+position to which Clough ultimately came. To use Arnold's distinction, it
+is a faith which gives up the fact, but clings to the idea. Had Clough
+written much in the strain of these pieces he might have had some title to
+the name of a great poet. But he is seldom wholly satisfactory. He was
+prone to choose themes beyond his strength. Thus _Dipsychus_ is a
+colourless and weak reproduction of _Faust_. The author has not sufficient
+force to deal with the battlings of a spirit with faith and doubt,
+pleasure and virtue, good and evil, and all the most complex problems of
+life. Defects fundamentally the same take a different shape in _Amours de
+Voyage_. Clough's presentation, in Claude, of the doubts, distrust and
+dilettantism of the century fails to give the sense of power. The poet is
+happier in his 'long vacation pastoral,' the _Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_
+(1848), with its glimpses of nature, its easy light touch, and its
+underlying seriousness. But the verse is unfortunate. The hexameter in
+English is an exotic, and has never yet been used in any long poem with
+complete success. The reader tires at last of what might otherwise have
+been a most successful story in verse.
+
+The same movement visible in the poetry of Arnold and Clough may be
+detected still moulding and modifying the works of Tennyson. In the year
+1850 _In Memoriam_ appeared. It was the product of long meditation, and
+part is known to have been written as early as 1833. Nevertheless it is
+remarkable that just in the year when Browning published his _Christmas
+Eve and Easter Day_, and just about the time when Arnold's verse was
+exhibiting another aspect of the interest in religion, Tennyson too should
+have made his greatest contribution in this kind to literature. For while
+_In Memoriam_ is of all great English elegies the most closely associated
+with the man to whom it is dedicated, still the treatment opens up the
+questions of death and immortality; and the passages of the poem which
+have clung to the popular memory are those in which the poet expresses his
+convictions or his hopes on these subjects. Perhaps the greatest weakness
+of _In Memoriam_ is its length. It is difficult if not impossible to
+dwell on the subject of death long, and to preserve perfect healthiness of
+tone. The other great English elegies are in the first place much shorter,
+and in the second place the writers find more relief to them than Tennyson
+does. The intensity of his friendship for Arthur Hallam kept him perhaps
+even too strictly to his subject.
+
+_In Memoriam_ is essentially a lyrical poem, and the years immediately
+before and after its publication are those in which Tennyson's lyrical
+genius was in fullest flower. _Maud_ (1855) is a lyrical poem. The
+beautiful songs interspersed between the parts of _The Princess_ belong to
+this period, and so does the grand _Ode on the Death of the Duke of
+Wellington_. The lyrics of these years are on the whole superior both in
+fervour of passion and in weight of thought to the earlier lyrics. Some of
+the songs, like 'Tears, idle tears,' are, as songs, almost overcharged
+with thought, yet they are beautifully melodious; and Tennyson never wrote
+anything more full of exquisite sound than 'The splendour falls on castle
+walls.'
+
+The _Ode on the Death of Wellington_ is worthy of study, because it is the
+best specimen of a class of poems for which Tennyson was distinguished
+from first to last. He was always a patriot, and there is no feeling he
+expresses more fervently than that of pride in England. He contrasts her
+stability with the fickleness of France. He is proud of her freedom slowly
+won and surely kept. Patriotic ballads like _The Revenge_ and _The Defence
+of Lucknow_ are among the most prominent characteristics of his later
+volumes. His great success in the case of the _Ode_ is due to the fact,
+first that his heart is stirred by the sense that 'the last great
+Englishman is low;' and secondly, to the fact that he saw in Wellington an
+impersonation of all that he had admired in England. The picture he draws
+of the duke is identical in its great features with that he had painted
+of the nation, and it has the advantage of being concrete.
+
+The passionate fervour of which Tennyson's lyric strain was capable is
+best illustrated from _Maud_, a poem which it is more easy to praise in
+parts than as a whole; for it must be admitted that the character of the
+hero is deficient in greatness and self-restraint; and the part which
+depicts his madness is poor. A good deal of at best exaggerated blame has
+likewise been meted out to the references to war in the course of the
+poem. But these faults are more than redeemed by such lyric outbursts as
+'Come into the garden, Maud,' and 'O that 'twere possible.' The first is
+perhaps the most splendid, as it is one of the most justly popular, of all
+Tennyson's lyrics; while the second is among the most exquisite and
+delicately finished. These pieces have a deeper tone of feeling and more
+reality of passion than we find in Tennyson's earlier lyrics.
+
+The _Idylls of the King_ are the outcome of an interest in Arthurian
+legends that seems to have gradually developed. _The Lady of Shalott_
+proves that Tennyson's mind was dallying with the story of Arthur as early
+as 1833; and _Sir Galahad_ and _Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_ attest
+the continuance of the interest in the volumes of 1842. Another piece, the
+_Morte d'Arthur_, published along with these, was afterwards embodied in
+the _Idylls_. It was professedly a fragment, and the epic of which it was
+described as the sole relic was spoken of disparagingly as 'faint Homeric
+echoes, nothing-worth.' Notwithstanding the disparagement, _The Passing of
+Arthur_ is the gem of the _Idylls_; but the reference serves at least to
+direct attention to an actual difference between Tennyson's earlier and
+later work. Though the _Morte d'Arthur_ is far from being a mere echo of
+Homer, there are numerous lines and phrases in it directly recalling
+Homer, and different in tone from the context. In the later _Idylls_ the
+classical allusions seem to be one with the piece, they do not call
+attention to themselves but are transformed and made Tennyson's own.
+
+There is no clear evidence before 1859 of an intention to treat the
+Arthurian story as a whole. In that year four of the idylls were
+published; but they were still fragments, and great gaps were left
+between. Gradually the gaps were filled, until in 1885 the poem was
+completed. Still, the connexion of the parts is loose. Each idyll is a
+separate story, related to the others because all are parts of one greater
+story. But the idylls have not the coherence required in the books of an
+epic. Tennyson was conscious of the want of unity, and he sought for a
+principle of connexion in allegory. At best the allegory is very
+indistinct; it appears chiefly in the parts later in order of publication;
+and we may suspect that it was an after-thought meant to supply a defect
+to which the author slowly awakened. The very name, _Idylls of the King_,
+serves as a warning not to expect too much unity. An 'idyll' is a short
+story, and the word therefore indicates the essentially episodic character
+of the whole poem.
+
+The _Idylls_ were, as they still are, Tennyson's greatest experiment in
+blank verse; and next to Milton's _Paradise Lost_ they are the finest body
+of non-dramatic blank verse in the language. The form had gone out of
+fashion in the eighteenth century. Thomson, it is true, revived it, and
+the poets of the period of the Revolution followed his example. But
+through the early death of Keats, through that feebleness of will which
+robbed the world of an untold wealth of poetry in Coleridge, and through
+the fate that forbade Wordsworth to write long poems well, it remained
+true that no very great and sustained modern English poem was written in
+blank verse. The measure attracted Tennyson, and he soon mastered it. A
+number of pieces prior to the _Idylls_ seem to be experiments in
+preparation for a bolder flight. The _English Idylls_, _Ulysses_,
+_Aylmer's Field_, _Sea Dreams_ and _Lucretius_ are specimens. The measure
+is used on a larger scale in _The Princess_. But Tennyson's supreme
+success was in the _Idylls of the King_. They cannot be said to rise
+higher than the best of the early poems; for the _English Idylls_ include
+the _Morte d'Arthur_, and _Ulysses_ is among the finest of Tennyson's
+poems. These pieces show the same exquisite grace, the same smoothness,
+the same variety of pause, the same skill in the use of adjuncts, such as
+alliteration. But there is necessarily more scope and variety in a long
+poem; and one of the finest features of Tennyson's verse is the
+flexibility with which it adapts itself to the soft idyllic tone
+appropriate to _Enid_, to the darkness of moral degradation in _The Last
+Tournament_, to the crisis of the parting of Arthur and Guinevere, to the
+spiritual rapture of _The Holy Grail_, and to the mysticism of _The
+Passing of Arthur_. Tennyson cannot equal the stateliness of Milton; but
+Milton is the only poet with whom, in respect of blank verse, he need
+greatly fear comparison.
+
+When we come down to later years the principal change visible in
+Tennyson's work is the development of the dramatic element. The dramas
+proper have been the most neglected of all sections of his work; but 'the
+dramatic element' is by no means confined to them. They are rather just
+the final result of a process which had been long going on. Tennyson, as
+we have already seen, gradually put more and more thought into his verse.
+In doing so he felt the need of a closer grip of reality, and he found, as
+other poets have found too, that the dramatic mode of conception brought
+him closest to the real. This is all the more remarkable because nothing
+could well be more foreign to the dramatic spirit than his early work. His
+youthful character sketches are not in the least dramatic. Neither is
+there much trace of humour, a quality without which true dramatic
+conception is impossible. The change begins to show itself about the
+middle of the century. In _The Grandmother_ and _The Northern Farmer_ we
+have genuine dramatic sketches of character. The poet does not regard them
+from his own point of view, he speaks from theirs. _The Northern Farmer_
+is moreover rich in humour. Tennyson never surpassed this creation, but he
+multiplied similar sketches. All his poems in dialect are of a like kind.
+They are in dialect not from mere caprice, but because the characters
+could only be painted to the life by using their own speech. Other pieces,
+not in dialect, like _Sir John Oldcastle_ and _Columbus_, are likewise
+dramatic in their nature. Less prominent, but not less genuine, is the
+dramatic element in the patriotic ballads, such as _The Revenge_. The
+greater part of the work of Tennyson's last twenty years is, in fact, of
+this nature, and herein we detect the principal cause of the change of
+which all must be sensible in that work as compared with the work of his
+youth. The old smoothness and melody are in great part gone, but a number
+of pieces prove that Tennyson retained the skill though he did not always
+choose to exercise it. It is the early style with which his name is still
+associated, and probably the majority of his readers have never been quite
+reconciled to the change. But while we may legitimately mourn for what
+time took away, we ought to rejoice over what it added, rather than left.
+If there is less melody there is more strength; if the delightful dreamy
+languor of _The Lotos-Eaters_ is gone, we have the vivid truth of _The
+Northern Farmer_ and _The Northern Cobbler_, and the tragic pathos of
+_Rizpah_; if the romantic sentiment of _Locksley Hall_ is lost, something
+more valuable has taken its place in the criticism of life in _Locksley
+Hall Sixty Years After_.
+
+Tennyson's dramas then, surprising as they were when they first appeared,
+are merely the legitimate and almost the inevitable outcome of his course
+of development. Inevitable he seems to have felt them, for he persevered
+in the face of censure or half-hearted approval, perhaps it should be
+said, in the face of failure. A deep-rooted scepticism of his dramatic
+powers has stood in the way of a fair appreciation. The fame of his
+earlier poetry has cast a shadow over these later fruits of his genius;
+and the question, 'Is Saul also among the prophets?' was hardly asked with
+greater surprise than the question whether Tennyson could possibly be a
+dramatist. And, in truth, at sixty-six he had still to learn the rudiments
+of his business. _Queen Mary_ (1875) is a failure. It is not a great poem,
+and still less is it a great drama. The stage is overcrowded with
+_dramatis personæ_ who jostle each other and hide one another's features.
+_Harold_ (1876) showed a marked advance; but _Becket_ (1884) was the
+triumph which justified all the other experiments. It is a truly great
+drama, and, though not yet recognised as such, will probably rank finally
+among the greatest of Tennyson's works. The characters are firmly and
+clearly delineated. Becket and Henry, closely akin in some of their
+natural gifts, are different in circumstances and develop into very
+different men. Rosamond and Eleanor are widely contrasted types of female
+character, the former a little commonplace, the latter a subtle conception
+excellently worked out. All the materials out of which the play is built
+are great. No finer theme could be found than the mediæval conflict
+between Church and State; and Tennyson has seized it in the true dramatic
+way, as concentrated in the single soul of Becket, torn between his duty
+to the Church and his duty to the King, whose Chancellor and trusted
+friend he had been and to whom he owed his promotion.
+
+The minor dramatic pieces are of inferior worth, and in some of them, as
+for example, _The Promise of May_ and _The Falcon_, Tennyson showed a
+certain infelicity in his choice of subjects. But their failure leaves
+unimpaired the interest of the dramatic period. It seemed an almost wanton
+experiment on the part of Tennyson. But he was an artist all his life, and
+here too he was only obeying the inherent law of development of his art.
+Instead of wantonness, there is deep pathos in the old man's perseverance
+under unfamiliar conditions, and there can only be joy at his final
+success. There is surprise too that he who, from his earlier work, would
+have been judged one of the least dramatic of poets, should have so
+decidedly surpassed a poet so markedly dramatic as Browning.
+
+Tennyson wrote up to the very close of his long life. His last
+publications were _The Foresters_ and _The Death of OEnone_. They show
+some decline of power. _Demeter_ too (1889) was probably a little below
+his level. But previous to that, though there had been change, there had
+been nothing that can be called decay. For the long period of sixty years
+and upwards Tennyson had written, and with rare exceptions he had written
+greatly. From the death of Wordsworth to his own death he was almost
+universally looked upon as the first poet of his time. No one else has
+wielded so great an influence. In no other poet's work is the record of
+change during the period so clearly written. In part he made the age, in
+still larger measure it made him. The hesitancy of his early work was
+typical of the spirit of the time. The gradual awakening, the deeper
+thought, the larger subjects, the more varied interests of the
+intermediate period, were typical too. In this last period, while
+Tennyson was as faithful as ever to the law of his own development, he did
+not move precisely with the time. Another race was rising and other palms
+were to be won.
+
+Browning could not go through the same phase of development, for in him
+the intellectual element from the first was even abnormally prominent. Yet
+in Browning too the influence of the time is felt. _Christmas Eve and
+Easter Day_ (1850) handles topics to which he is perpetually recurring;
+but in it they are seen in a new light. The poet had heard the noise of
+the Tractarian controversy, and in _Christmas Eve_ he passes in review the
+three principal phases of contemporary opinion regarding religion,--the
+evangelical, represented by the Nonconformist Chapel, the Catholic,
+represented by Rome, and the critical, represented by the German professor
+in his lecture-room. It is significant that while Browning can accept
+neither of the two former, he prefers both to the third. Both are
+intellectually indefensible, yet in both the vital thing, love, is
+present, while it is not to be found in the lecture-room. Both 'poison the
+air for healthy breathing,' but the critic 'leaves no air to poison.'
+There is throughout the poem an unquestionable bias towards finding as
+much true as will by any means pass muster with the intellect. Long
+afterwards, in _La Saisiaz_ (1878), Browning handled the same problems in
+a more boldly speculative spirit, though still with the same bias. The
+difference is largely due to time; for before the date of _La Saisiaz_
+Browning had adopted a method more philosophical than artistic. But
+partly, perhaps, it was due to his wife, who was alive when _Christmas
+Eve_ was written, and dead long before _La Saisiaz_.
+
+In the period between these two poems the same problems were frequently in
+Browning's mind, and no section of his work is richer in thought and
+poetic beauty than that which expresses them. In _Karshish_, with its
+vivid realisation of the mind of a thoughtful heathen longing for a faith,
+in _A Death in the Desert_, where the St. John is rather a man of the age
+of Strauss than of the first century, in _The Pope_ and in _Rabbi Ben
+Ezra_, we have Browning's deepest treatment of the problems which
+interested him most, and we have not that sacrifice of poetry to
+philosophy which mars _La Saisiaz_. We may say that about this time
+Browning discovered the vital interest of his generation, and discovered
+also where his own strength lay. The effect is seen in the uniform
+excellence of his work. The publications of the twenty years between 1850
+and 1870, taken as a whole, certainly surpass what he had done before or
+what he did afterwards. _Men and Women_ (1855) has been probably the most
+popular and the most widely read of all his writings; _Dramatis Personæ_
+(1864) is even richer in poetry, but has been commonly felt to be more
+difficult in thought; while _The Ring and the Book_ (1868-1869) is by
+almost all competent judges pronounced his masterpiece.
+
+The plan of The _Ring and the Book_, whereby the same story is told ten
+times over from ten different points of view, is defensible only on the
+ground that it succeeds. Nearly half the poem is hardly worth reading; yet
+the other half so splendidly redeems it that _The Ring and the Book_ ranks
+among the great poems of modern times. The pictures of Caponsacchi, of
+Guido, of Pompilia and of the Pope are all great. Guido has the interest,
+unique in this poem, of appearing twice; and there is no better
+illustration of the subtlety of Browning's thought than the difference
+between the Count, plausible, supple and polished, pleading for his life,
+and the man Guido, stripped of all but bare humanity, condemned to death,
+first desperately petitioning, then tearing off the veil of hypocrisy and
+uttering his terrible truths both about himself and the messengers who
+bear his sentence. Pompilia is Browning's most perfect female character;
+but, though a beautiful creation, she illustrates one of the defects in
+his dramatic art. She speaks Browning's speech, and she thinks his
+thought. Simple child as she is, there is a depth of philosophy in her
+utterances that is not in strict keeping with her character; and she, like
+all Browning's men and women, uses the abrupt vivid language of the poet.
+Notwithstanding his almost passionate repudiation of the idea, Browning is
+a self-revealing poet; and nowhere does he reveal himself more than in the
+Pope, the greatest character in _The Ring and the Book_. In him the
+resemblance to Browning himself does not matter, it rather adds a new
+interest. The mind can conceive and picture nothing higher than its own
+ideal best; and the Pope is Browning's ideal man, great in intellect, in
+morals and in faith. In two other cases, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ and _A Death in
+the Desert_, Browning has given similar glimpses of his own ideal, but
+they are less full than the view we get in _The Pope_.
+
+To Browning's middle period belong likewise many of his love-poems, and
+these are unique in the English language. Others, like Shakespeare and
+Burns and Shelley, have given a more purely captivating expression to the
+ardour of love; no one else has so worked out its philosophy. Not that
+Browning's poems are deficient in feeling; the expressions of his own love
+for his wife, 'O lyric love' and _One Word More_, would suffice to refute
+such a criticism. But he prefers to take an aspect of passion and to
+explain it by the way of thought. He is analytical. The best example is
+_James Lee's Wife_, which goes through a whole drama of passion, and might
+be described, like Tennyson's _Maud_, as 'a lyrical mono-drama.' This, for
+good or evil, is another method from that of 'Take, oh take those lips
+away,' or 'I arise from dreams of thee,' or 'Of a' the airts.' There is
+both gain and loss in Browning's way of treatment. On the one hand, the
+lyric strain is less pure. If poetry ought to be 'simple, sensuous and
+impassioned,' and it has been generally thought that lyric poetry in
+particular should be so, then is Browning's less in harmony with the
+ideal. On the other hand, because his is a new way Browning impresses the
+reader with his originality; and because it is a thoughtful way he has a
+wide range. Moreover, it is a purifying and ennobling way. No poet free,
+as Browning is, from the taint of asceticism has ever treated the passion
+of love in a manner so little physical as he. There are in his works
+errors of taste that cause a shudder; but they are not here.
+
+It was likewise during this period that Browning was at his dramatic best.
+Nearly all his best pieces are dramatic in conception, though sometimes,
+as in the love-poems, we are confined to single aspects of character. Not
+to speak of the great figures of _The Ring and the Book_, there is ample
+variety in _Men and Women_ and in _Dramatis Personæ_. There are few
+figures more clearly drawn or more easily remembered than _Andrea del
+Sarto_; and _My Last Duchess_ is equally fine. In these two pieces
+Browning has succeeded better than elsewhere in keeping himself in the
+background. _Fra Lippo Lippi_ has likewise the stamp of dramatic truth,
+and is rich in humour; and _Bishop Blougram_ is at once an excellent
+character, and, though a satirical conception, the mouthpiece of some
+serious thought.
+
+In the last twenty years of his life Browning, on the whole, appears at
+his worst. We have seen how the development of Tennyson, though not
+unattended with loss, carried with it much compensating gain. There are
+some indications that Tennyson felt the influence of his great
+contemporary. The metrical effects of his later poems, as well as the
+studies of character, are sometimes suggestive of Browning. It would have
+been well if Browning had in turn borrowed a few hints from Tennyson; but
+unfortunately he went steadily along his own course, bringing into ever
+greater prominence characteristics that rather needed repression. He
+should have nourished the artistic rather than the intellectual element.
+Instead, the former dwindled and the latter grew; and some of his later
+writings may be not unfairly described as merely treatises in verse. Such
+is _Fifine at the Fair_ (1872); such is _La Saisiaz_ (1878); such are many
+parts of _Ferishtah's Fancies_ (1884), and of the _Parleyings with Certain
+People of Importance_ (1887). Such too is _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_
+(1871); for there the dramatic conception of Louis Napoleon is smothered
+beneath the arguments of the Saviour of Society. In all of these the
+philosophy overloads the poetry, a state of matters all the less
+satisfactory because the philosophy itself is not so sound as that of the
+earlier periods.
+
+There is nevertheless some fine work belonging to this late period. The
+translations from the Greek are interesting; but their value is outweighed
+by that of the beautiful romance of _Balaustion_, in which they are set,
+and by the discussion of the principles of art in _Aristophanes' Apology_
+(1875). Still better is _The Inn Album_ (1875), remarkable for the
+magnificent character of the heroine, and for some of the most powerful
+reasoning to be found in Browning's works. His last volume, _Asolando_
+(1889), will always have a special interest for its publication
+coincidently with his death; and it illustrates how his favourite ideas
+remained fixed to the end. There is nothing more characteristic of him
+than the thought that evil is necessary to the evolution of good. We can
+trace this all through his work. It is present in _Sordello_, where we
+find evil described as 'the scheme by which, through ignorance, good
+labours to exist;' and the poet even modifies the prayer, 'Lead us not
+into temptation,' because, if we are strong enough to overcome it, the
+temptation will only do us good. It is indeed Bishop Blougram whom he
+causes to speak of 'the blessed evil;' but Browning could consistently
+have used the phrase himself. Nowhere is this doctrine, at first so
+strange, yet so suggestive, more fully and clearly expressed than in the
+poem _Rephan_ in _Asolando_. Earth is superior to Rephan just because evil
+blended with good is better than 'a neutral best,' and it is progress to
+move from the sphere where wrong is impossible to one where through the
+risk of evil, and often through evil itself, a higher good may be
+attained.
+
+Browning's last word to the world, the epilogue to _Asolando_, is most
+distinctive of his style and tone of thought. He held throughout a steady
+optimism, all the more cheering because it is the optimism of a man of
+wide knowledge of the world, and one who has looked evil in the face. The
+note is never clearer than in the epilogue, where he describes himself as
+
+    'One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
+      Never doubted clouds would break,
+  Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
+      Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
+            Sleep to wake.
+
+    'No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
+      Greet the unseen with a cheer!
+  Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
+      Strive and thrive! Cry, "Speed,--fight on, fare ever
+            There as here."'
+
+[Sidenote: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861).]
+
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an author at an earlier date than her
+husband. As early as 1826 she published a poetical _Essay on Mind_, along
+with other pieces; but her first work of any note was _The Seraphim_
+(1838). Her introduction to Browning took place in 1846. She was prepared
+to admire him, for she already admired his work, and had expressed her
+opinion of it in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_. An accident in girlhood had
+made her a confirmed invalid; but in spite of this the two poets fell in
+love, and were married in the autumn of the year when they first met. They
+left England and settled at Florence for the sake of Mrs. Browning's
+health; and there, in 1861, she died.
+
+There are two points of special and peculiar interest in connexion with
+Mrs. Browning. She has only one possible rival, Christina Rossetti, for
+the honour of being the greatest poetess who has written in English; and
+her marriage with Browning formed a union without parallel in literature.
+Moreover, in relation to Mrs. Browning's works, sex is not a mere
+accident. She is a woman in all her modes of thought and feeling, and she
+is so especially in her very finest work. Her greatest contribution to
+literature, _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, derives its unique interest
+from being the expression of the woman's love; and _A Child's Grave at
+Florence_ could hardly have been written but by a woman and a mother.
+
+Mrs. Browning's influence upon her husband was remarkably slight; his
+influence upon her was of mixed effect, but good predominated. The
+questionable element is seen when we compare _The Seraphim_ with poems
+like _Casa Guidi Windows_ (1851) and _Aurora Leigh_ (1857). _The
+Seraphim_, a lyrical drama, though immature, is of high promise. It is,
+above all, right in tone and method; for the writer, Mrs. Browning, was
+not really a thinker; woman-like, she felt first, and the attempt to
+translate her feeling into thought was an error. She was by nature prone
+to this error, and Browning strengthened her innate ambition. But she
+never succeeds where thought is suffered to predominate. _Casa Guidi
+Windows_ is sadly wanting in force and concentration; and the ambitious
+metrical romance of _Aurora Leigh_ would be much improved by being
+compressed within half its bulk. It is moreover always the thought, the
+social discussions, the parts meant to be especially profound, that are
+wrong; the poetic feeling is sound and just, and its expression is often
+excellent. Minor influences of Browning may be traced in his wife's rhymes
+and rhythms; but while his effects, though often grotesque and uncouth,
+are striking and memorable, hers are feeble and commonplace.
+
+But if Browning inspired his wife with a false ideal, he, on the other
+hand, lifted the shadow from her life, and gave her courage and hope, and
+the measure of health without which her work could not have been
+accomplished. Her best poems are related to him directly, like the
+_Sonnets from the Portuguese_, or indirectly, like _A Child's Grave at
+Florence_; for there her own child is an influence.
+
+Beyond question, the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ (1850) are Mrs.
+Browning's most valuable contribution to literature. They are valuable
+even beyond their intrinsic merits. Good as they are, these sonnets have
+neither massiveness and subtlety of thought on the one hand, nor melody
+and charm on the other, sufficient to secure a place beside the greatest
+poetry. But they are the genuine utterance of a woman's heart, at once
+humbled and exalted by love; and in this respect they are unique. The
+woman's passion, from the woman's point of view, has seldom found
+expression at all in literature, and this particular aspect of it never.
+Hence, while it would be absurd to say that these sonnets are, as pieces
+of poetry, equal to the sonnets of Wordsworth or of Milton, it is not so
+unreasonable to question whether their removal would not leave a more
+irreparable gap in literature.
+
+Mrs. Browning is on the whole happiest as a sonnet-writer. The sonnet form
+restrained that tendency to diffuseness which was her besetting sin, and
+so the fetters proved, as they so often do, to be the means whereby she
+moved more freely. Her purpose however frequently required the use of
+other forms. Thus, she sometimes aimed at romantic effects. She did so
+with no great success in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, a kind of _Lord of
+Burleigh_ from the other side, spoilt by excessive length. _The Rhyme of
+the Duchess May_ is much better. _The Romaunt of Margret_ altogether fails
+to catch the weird effect aimed at, while _The Lay of the Brown Rosary_
+succeeds. But apart from the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ and some of the
+miscellaneous sonnets, her truest note is pathos. _Bertha in the Lane_, a
+simple story, sentimental but not weak, is an example of one aspect of it;
+_A Child's Grave_, already mentioned, of another; and, perhaps highest of
+all, _The Cry of the Children_ of a third.
+
+Mrs. Browning had a dangerous facility of composition, and much that she
+wrote is poor. Few poets gain more by selection. A small volume of pieces
+judiciously chosen would convince the reader that he was listening to the
+voice of a true and even a great poet; but his sense of this is lost in
+the flatness and weariness of the five superfluous volumes.
+
+[Sidenote: Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883).]
+
+There remains one very remarkable poet, Edward FitzGerald, whom it is
+difficult to place. Formally, he ought to be classed merely as an
+interpreter of other men's thoughts; but in reality he is an original poet
+of no mean rank, and his friendship with Tennyson, together with the
+strong intellectual quality of his principal work, gives him an affinity
+to the group now under discussion. His first noteworthy publication was a
+fine prose dialogue, _Euphranor_ (1851), but his principal work was the
+translation of poetry. He translated six dramas of Calderon (1853), the
+_Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám (1859), _Salámán and Absál_ (1856), and the
+_Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, which, having been first privately printed, was
+published anonymously in 1876.
+
+Probably no other translator ever showed equal originality. As a rule, the
+reader of a version of poetry, even if he be unacquainted with the
+original, feels a sense of loss. Pope's Homer is 'a pretty poem;' but not
+only is it not Homer, we feel that it is not worthy of the great
+reputation of Homer; and there is not one of the numerous versions of
+_Faust_ but falls far short of the force and suggestiveness of the
+original. It is not so with FitzGerald. To some extent in the case of all
+his poems, but eminently in the case of the _Rubáiyát_, we feel that we
+are in the presence of a man of native power; and some Persian scholars
+hold that in this instance the order of merit is reversed, and that
+FitzGerald is greater than Omar.
+
+That his success was partly due to an inborn gift for rendering verse is
+proved by FitzGerald's high, though not equal felicity, as a translator of
+poets so different as Æschylus, Calderon, and Omar Khayyám. But partly
+also it was due to a very liberal theory of translation, outlined by
+himself in the prefaces to Calderon and the _Agamemnon_. In the former he
+says, 'I have, while faithfully trying to retain what was fine and
+efficient, sunk, reduced, altered, and replaced much that seemed not;
+simplified some perplexities, and curtailed or omitted scenes that seemed
+to mar the general effect, supplying such omissions by some lines of
+after-narrative; and in some measure have tried to compensate for the
+fulness of sonorous Spanish, which Saxon English at least must forego, by
+a compression which has its own charms to Saxon ears.' The extent to
+which he allowed himself liberties may be partly gauged by the differences
+between the first and fourth editions of the _Rubáiyát_. In short,
+FitzGerald was more properly a paraphrast than a translator. He got into
+his mind a conception of the central meaning of the work and of the
+author's character where, as in the case of Omar, that was of importance
+as a key to the meaning; and he then, without troubling himself about
+exact equivalence of word or phrase, or even of whole sections, proceeded
+to create a similar impression in the new language. Hence his work is
+wholly free from the impression of cramped movement so common in
+translations.
+
+With reference to Omar, FitzGerald had first to decide whether his
+quatrains were to be interpreted literally, or as the utterances of a
+mystic Sufism, in which the wine so frequently sung of really meant Deity,
+and all the sensual images covered a spiritual meaning. Fortunately, he
+decided for the former alternative; and whatever the real Omar may have
+been, FitzGerald's Omar is an epicurean. The original Omar has been
+compared to Lucretius; as FitzGerald represents him he is far more
+suggestive of Horace. His touch is lighter than the elder Roman's; and he
+has no system, nor any ambition to frame one. Rather it is his conviction
+of the futility of systems that makes him what he is. He is a thoughtful
+man, questioning the meaning of life, finding no answer except in the
+philosophy of 'eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die,' and
+drawing thence the inevitable melancholy it must impart to the reflective
+mind.
+
+  'There was the Door to which I found no Key;
+  There was the Veil through which I might not see;
+  Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE
+  There was--and then no more of THEE and ME.'
+
+Herein lies the charm of his epicureanism, and herein too its kinship
+with that of Horace. In both, the moral, _carpe diem_, is the advice of
+men who, in spite of themselves, must live for more than the day.
+
+Thanks to the deeply human element in his philosophy, Horace after
+nineteen centuries is one of the most modern of poets. He has been
+emphatically the guide of the man of the world, whose experience, as it
+broadens, more and more convinces him of the poet's truth. FitzGerald's
+Omar has the same modern tone, perhaps in a degree even higher. His
+necessitarianism is modern, his scepticism is modern, and the difficulties
+in which it arises are modern too. His stinging quatrains answer a
+theology familiar enough to the readers of Burns, and seem to breathe the
+spirit of the Scotch poet's satires on the Kirk:
+
+  'Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
+  Beset the Road I was to wander in,
+    Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
+  Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
+
+  'Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
+  And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
+    For all the Sin wherewith the face of Man
+  Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!'
+
+Except perhaps in America, FitzGerald is not yet appreciated as he ought
+to be. When he is so appreciated he will rank only under the greatest of
+his time, and his chief work will be classed little below their best.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+POETRY FROM 1850 TO 1870: THE PRE-RAPHAELITES; THE SPASMODIC SCHOOL; MINOR
+POETS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).]
+
+Contemporary with the great poets, who seem to feel first of all the
+imperative necessity of understanding and interpreting the intellectual
+movement of the age, were others, some of them great too, in whose work
+passion takes a prior place to intellect. Of these the most talented group
+were the Pre-Raphaelites, and the greatest man was Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
+The celebrated founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a man who had
+the rare fortune to be highly distinguished in two arts. Other
+artists--Thomas Woolner and William Bell Scott and Sir Joseph Noel Paton
+are contemporary examples--have been poets also; but no one has attained a
+level at once as high and as equal in both as Rossetti. He has also been
+influential upon others in a degree rare even among men of as great
+calibre; and finally, he was only the greatest of a family all highly
+gifted in literature.
+
+Rossetti, though English by birth, was more Italian than English by blood,
+and he was brought up in an atmosphere largely Italian. Both his literary
+and his artistic talents showed themselves early. The literary organ of
+the Pre-Raphaelites, _The Germ_, received some of his earliest writings;
+but he had begun to compose even earlier, the two well-known pieces, _The
+Blessed Damozel_ and _My Sister's Sleep_, having both been written in his
+nineteenth year. The greater part of his poetry was composed in early
+manhood. On the death of his wife, in 1862, Rossetti, in the transport of
+his grief, buried the MSS. in her coffin. They were exhumed in 1869 and
+published under the simple title of _Poems_ in 1870. After his wife's
+death Rossetti for a long time wrote little poetry, though he continued
+his artistic work. In later years the complete breakdown of his health
+checked his production. He suffered from insomnia and attempted to cure it
+by the use of chloral, with the usual result. Nevertheless, some very fine
+pieces, notably _The King's Tragedy_, are of late composition. The later
+poems were gathered together in the _Ballads and Sonnets_ of 1881.
+Rossetti was also a translator, and in 1861 had published, under the title
+of _The Early Italian Poets_, the collection now known as _Dante and his
+Circle_. He likewise occasionally wrote prose, his most considerable work
+being a story, poetical in spirit, entitled _Hand and Soul_.
+
+Mr. W. D. Howells (quoted in Sharp's _Dante Gabriel Rossetti_) says it
+will always be a question whether Rossetti 'had not better have painted
+his poems and written his pictures; there is so much that is purely
+sensuous in the former and so much that is intellectual in the latter.'
+There is certainly an element of truth in this judgment. The sensuousness
+was the cause of the celebrated attack entitled _The Fleshly School of
+Poetry_, which was met by Rossetti's effective rejoinder, _The Stealthy
+School of Criticism_. The poet showed that the attack was in great measure
+unjust, but he would not have sought to deny that there was sensuousness
+in his poetry. He would have held, on the contrary, that poetry not only
+might legitimately be, but ought to be, sensuous. This conception
+influenced Rossetti's whole style of poetical portraiture. We see its
+effect in the fine description of a girl in _A Last Confession_,
+beginning, 'She had a mouth made to bring death to life.' It is all so
+written that from it the painter could easily put the portrait on canvas.
+
+But with respect to the allegation of sensuousness, the question for
+criticism is one of degree. There are two aspects of it, the moral and the
+artistic, which, though not entirely distinct, are best treated apart.
+Rossetti's answer was most successful upon the moral side, though even in
+this respect there remained one or two pieces not easily justified. From
+the artistic point of view, it must be said that the sensuousness is
+sometimes so great as to blur the intellectual outlines. We see this
+particularly in the sonnets, which many regard as Rossetti's best work in
+poetry. He certainly does put into the sonnet a fulness of melody and a
+wealth of colour not surpassed and perhaps, in their conjunction, hardly
+equalled in the language. But when we ask if the idea of the sonnet stands
+out with due clearness, the answer must be in the negative. In the best
+sonnets of Milton and Wordsworth, and in a less degree in those of
+Drummond of Hawthornden, of Mrs. Browning and of Christina Rossetti, the
+idea is precise and definite. Dante Rossetti is a poet who 'deals in
+meanings,' but he sometimes darkens, if he does not altogether bury, the
+meaning under a wealth of sonorous words. The fault of over-elaboration,
+which is chargeable also against the pictorial art of the Pre-Raphaelites,
+is visible here. We see it in other aspects too. The sense of spontaneity
+is lost; the poet seems to be perpetually aiming at a mark just beyond his
+reach; and there is an excessive addiction to some of the subordinate
+artifices of verse. Among these Rossetti's favourite is alliteration; and
+the reader is not infrequently troubled with the suspicion that a word is
+used, not because it is the best, but because it begins with a particular
+letter.
+
+A defect kindred in origin, but more serious, is shown in Rossetti's
+treatment of nature. One of his best poems of this class is _The Stream's
+Secret_. The poet certainly wrote it 'with his eye on the object,' for the
+stream in question was no figment of the brain, but the Penwhapple in
+Ayrshire. All the more for that reason it illustrates the difference
+between inspiration and conscientious study. Rossetti did not feel natural
+beauty like Wordsworth, and his descriptions have not the easy grace of
+the true poet of nature. He deliberately set out to make a poem, with the
+result that he produced a fine piece of skilled workmanship.
+
+Next perhaps to Rossetti's reputation as a writer of sonnets stands his
+reputation as a balladist; and it may be questioned whether the order
+ought not to be reversed. Rossetti's art was far too elaborate for a
+ballad of the genuine old type. Even in _The White Ship_ there is a note
+which distinguishes it not only from the true popular ballad, but from
+such approximations as the ballads of Scott. But poetry ought to be valued
+for what it is, not for conformity with what may possibly be a misleading
+standard; and Rossetti's ballads are noble poetry. He imbibed enough of
+the ballad spirit to check his habitual faults, and of all his
+compositions the ballads are the simplest and most natural. The universal
+favourite, _The King's Tragedy_ is a grand story told with great fire and
+energy. So, too, _Rose Mary_ is a powerful and beautiful poem, less
+uniform however than _The King's Tragedy_, for the lyrics between the
+parts are at best second-rate. It is in pieces like these, and in some of
+the more clearly-thought sonnets, like _Lost Days_, that Rossetti proves
+himself the true poet. The more deeply sensuous sonnets, and such
+characteristic pieces as _The Blessed Damozel_, are representative rather
+of the dangers and defects of his poetry.
+
+[Sidenote: Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894).]
+
+Less great but hardly less interesting than her brother was Christina
+Georgina Rossetti, who, like him, wrote for _The Germ_, though she
+published no volume of poems for many years afterwards. Though her course
+extends far beyond the limits of the period, the poetical work for which
+she is most memorable was chiefly done within it, and her closest
+connexions belong to it too. Her first published volume was _Goblin
+Market, and other Poems_ (1862); her second, _The Prince's Progress, and
+other Poems_ (1866). Then, after some prose tales, came the book of
+nursery rhymes, _Sing-Song_ (1872). From this time onwards, except for _A
+Pageant, and other Poems_ (1881), Miss Rossetti's books were chiefly of a
+devotional character; but one of them, _Time Flies_ (1885), contains some
+of the finest of her verse.
+
+The religious poems form a most important section of Christina Rossetti's
+works. She is one of the most profoundly devotional of modern writers.
+Unlike Arnold and Clough, she is not a poet of doubt but of faith; unlike
+Browning's, her creed is rather a creed of feeling than of intellect. But
+while she is not touched with the doubt of the age she is touched with its
+sadness. Her devotional pieces have sometimes, as in _Advent_, the ring of
+conquering faith, but more often they have in them something of a wail.
+What Dr. John Brown called the 'inevitable melancholy' of women seems to
+find a voice in Christina Rossetti; and though she is bound by her faith
+to an ultimately optimistic view, her habitual tone of mind is gloomy.
+'Vanity of vanities' is the title of her finest sonnet, and it is also the
+conclusion she draws from the life of this world.
+
+One of the praiseworthy points of Christina Rossetti's work is that, while
+invariably imaginative, it never fails to be clear. In this respect she
+far surpasses her brother. The marks of the artist's chisel are, as we
+have seen, too conspicuous in his work; in hers they are invisible. Yet
+few writers are more carefully artistic than she. Less ambitious in her
+aims than Dante Rossetti, her work impresses the reader with its adequacy
+to those aims. Herein she has an advantage over Mrs. Browning also. The
+latter has produced a far greater body of work, and at her best writes
+with far more strength than Miss Rossetti; but on the other hand Miss
+Rossetti is free from those astonishing lapses into bathos or triviality
+or mere bad taste which disfigure Mrs. Browning's poetry. The two
+poetesses meet most closely in their respective series of sonnets--_Monna
+Innominata_ and the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_. These are among the
+masterpieces of each, for both were peculiarly happy in the sonnet form;
+Christina Rossetti because she was an artist by nature, Mrs. Browning
+probably because the form compelled her to be an artist. The comparison is
+unquestionably in favour of Mrs. Browning. The _Sonnets from the
+Portuguese_ are richer and deeper than _Monna Innominata_. They record a
+love actually felt; and they are the product of an intellect wider, though
+perhaps less fine than Christina Rossetti's. But as regards the form, it
+is by no means clear that the advantage lies with the elder writer. Mrs.
+Browning's sonnets are sometimes laboured in expression; Christina
+Rossetti's have an inimitable ease, all the more delightful because in
+modern poetry it is rare. Her beautifully pure style is one of her
+greatest merits; and it is also one of the most striking points of
+contrast between her and her brother. A sonorous richness is
+characteristic of his style, a fine simplicity of hers. This simplicity,
+and the fineness of touch and delicacy of taste which accompanied it,
+served her well in those poems of the supernatural where her imaginative
+flight is highest. She is a mistress in the fairy realm, and in its own
+class _Goblin Market_ is unsurpassed.
+
+[Sidenote: William Edmondstoune Aytoun (1813-1865).]
+
+Another school which sprang up about the middle of the century, taking its
+rise in the longing for something deeper and more satisfying than had been
+recently in vogue, was that nicknamed 'the Spasmodic.' The name was fixed
+upon the school by the extremely clever satirist of it, William
+Edmondstoune Aytoun, himself a poet of a very different family, that of
+Scott. Aytoun is best known from his _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_
+(1848), narratives of martial exploit and tragic sorrow written in
+animated but excessively rhetorical verse. He was also, in conjunction
+with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Theodore Martin, the author of the _Bon Gaultier
+Ballads_ (1845), one of the most amusing collections of comic verse of
+this century. His satire of the Spasmodic School is contained in
+_Firmilian_ (1854), a mock-serious piece purporting to be by a member of
+the school. It was at the time customary to say that Aytoun had killed the
+Spasmodic School. If he had done so he would hardly have deserved well of
+literature. But though it is true that the Spasmodic Poets shot up like a
+rocket only to come down like the spent stick, both the rise and the fall
+were due partly to whims of popular taste, while the main cause of the
+fall lay in defects of the writers which satire did not make and could do
+little to remedy. On the whole, _Firmilian_ was more likely to have helped
+the school than to have hurt it if it had contained in itself the seeds of
+long life. But the name 'spasmodic' was only too accurately descriptive of
+more than its style,--unfortunately so, for both the chief members,
+Sydney Dobell and Alexander Smith, possessed talents for poetry in some
+respects very high.
+
+[Sidenote: Sydney Dobell (1824-1874).]
+
+Sydney Dobell had the misfortune to be born a member of a narrow and
+intense religious sect, in which his talents caused him to be regarded as
+the destined instrument for some grand design of providence. He outgrew
+the sect, but never quite outgrew the education it had given him and the
+ideas it had instilled. From about 1850 he devoted himself chiefly to
+literature. His writings are _The Roman_ (1850), _Balder_ (1853), _Sonnets
+on the War_ (1855), in which he collaborated with Alexander Smith, and
+_England in Time of War_ (1856). But his health failed, and though he
+lived eighteen years longer he wrote little more of consequence.
+
+'He never weeded his garden,' wrote Dr. John Brown of him, 'and will, I
+fear, be therefore strangled in his waste fertility.' This is the central
+truth about Dobell. Few poets are so uneven, perhaps hardly any poet
+capable of rising so high has ever sunk so low. Many passages are mere
+fustian, some are outrages against all taste; but others have a sublimity
+not often surpassed.
+
+At the beginning Dobell gave promise of development which, if fulfilled,
+would have led him very high indeed. In the short interval between _The
+Roman_ and _Balder_ the youthful author had grown surprisingly. _The
+Roman_, a fervid poem carrying on a Byronic tradition of interest in
+Italy, has all the faults of youth. It is too long, and it is bombastic.
+Its chief merit is width of sympathy; and it also contains here and there
+hints that promise in the future reach of thought. In _Balder_ we see this
+promise redeemed. It is far more forcible than _The Roman_ and it is
+loaded with thought. _Balder_ was a poem of vast design. It was to be in
+three parts, of which only one was ever published. The purpose was, in
+the words of the author's preface, to trace 'the progress of a human being
+from Doubt to Faith, from Chaos to Order. Not of Doubt incarnate to Faith
+incarnate, but of a doubtful mind to a faithful mind.' The design
+therefore bears a certain general resemblance to that of _Paracelsus_.
+_Balder_ is not equal to that great poem. It is even more difficult while
+less profound, and it is especially far less of a unity. It is, strictly
+speaking, paradoxical to regard as a whole what proclaims itself as a
+part; but a part of a great design may have completeness in itself, and
+this _Balder_ has not.
+
+Again, if we regard the poem in the light most favourable to it, as a
+collection of passages in verse, we have to admit the most amazing
+inequalities. Few passages in literature are more hideous than the
+description of the monster on which Tyranny rides; but, on the other hand,
+the best passages may challenge comparison with all but the greatest
+poetry. Even this comparison has been sometimes made. The description of
+Chamouni has been said to rival the great hymn of Coleridge, and that of
+the Coliseum the celebrated stanzas of Byron on the same subject. The
+comparison, especially with Coleridge, is unkind to Dobell. At his best he
+cannot rival one of the most poetic minds in all literature in one of its
+highest flights. Nevertheless, both passages are exceedingly good. The
+subjects moreover are characteristic. Magnitude and massiveness are
+congenial to Dobell, and almost necessary to draw out his best. 'Alone
+among our modern poets,' says Dr. Garnett, 'he finds the sublime a
+congenial element.' It is in such passages as those named, and in Balder's
+magnificent vision of war, that Dobell shows the grand material of poetry
+that was in him.
+
+For this reason it might have been expected that Dobell's next volumes,
+_Sonnets on the War_ and _England in Time of War_, would have been more
+uniformly good. _The Roman_ proves that he had the fire of patriotism in
+his veins, and many passages of his verse show that this fire was not all
+spent, as most of Byron's was, to warm other nations than his own. Of all
+the poets then living, Dobell had the largest share of Tennyson's
+patriotic fervour and of his love for warlike themes. Nevertheless, the
+_Sonnets on the War_ are of but moderate merit; and though _England in
+Time of War_ contains some powerful pieces, it has all the inequality of
+Dobell's earlier poetry. Dobell had learnt little of the art of
+self-criticism, and whether he had the capacity to learn must remain
+doubtful. He afterwards wrote a few fine poems, such as _The Magyar's
+New-Year-Eve_ and _The Youth of England to Garibaldi's Legion_, but broken
+health prevented him from undertaking any great work. He remains therefore
+a poet great by snatches. A selection, including the passages already
+mentioned, _An Evening Dream_, with its stirring ring of heroism, the
+fascinating ballad, _Keith of Ravelston_, and some others, might be made,
+which would greatly raise his reputation. The volume would not be large,
+but the contents would be excellent.
+
+[Sidenote: Alexander Smith (1829-1867).]
+
+Next in importance among the Spasmodic Poets to Dobell was Alexander
+Smith. He was the son of a pattern-designer of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and
+in his now little known but quietly pleasing novel, _Alfred Hagart's
+Household_, he has embodied a good deal of autobiographic matter. He was
+also the author of a thoughtful and well-written volume of essays,
+_Dreamthorp_. But he is first and chiefly a poet. His earliest volume was
+_A Life Drama_ (1853), which excited a degree of interest rarely roused by
+the first work of a young author. It was warmly praised and loudly
+condemned; and the result of the controversy that raged over it was to
+make the author for a short time one of the most prominent writers in the
+kingdom. But his fame speedily declined, and _City Poems_ (1857), though
+it contains some of his best work, was coldly received. _Edwin of Deira_
+(1861) was somewhat more successful, but was far from reviving the
+interest which had centred in _A Life Drama_.
+
+The present generation, which has been unjust to Dobell, has dealt still
+more hardly with Alexander Smith. The Nemesis of excessive praise is
+unjust depreciation, and both have been Smith's lot. He has been denied
+the title of poet altogether; but he is a poet, and even a considerable
+one. He shares both the defects and the excellences of Dobell, never
+sinking so low, and, on the other hand, never rising as high. His
+execution is unequal, he rants, he uses metaphor to excess, he is by no
+means free from affectation. But though the _Life Drama_ is crude and
+unequal, there is plenty of promise in it. There was ground to hope that
+the spirit from which it proceeded was like a turbid torrent which would
+by-and-by deposit its mud and flow on strong and clear. To those who hoped
+thus _Edwin of Deira_ was disappointing. A good deal of the mud had been
+deposited, the execution was more perfect, but there was less strength and
+less volume of thought than might have been expected. It is in his minor
+pieces and in occasional lines and passages that Smith shows best. There
+is rare beauty in the melancholy close of the lyric _Barbara_ in _Horton_.
+The picture of the sphinx, 'staring right on with calm eternal eyes,' has
+the true touch of imagination; and so has the image of the wind smiting
+'his thunder-harp of pines.' _Glasgow_ in the _City Poems_, is a strong as
+well as a beautiful piece. There can be no question of the imaginative
+power of this picture of the city in its cloud of smoke pierced by
+sunlight:
+
+  'When sunset bathes thee in his gold,
+  In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,
+    Thy smoke is dusky fire;
+  And, from the glory round thee poured,
+  A sunbeam like an angel's sword
+    Shivers upon a spire.
+  Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!
+  While the blue night crept up the stream.'
+
+[Sidenote: Coventry Patmore (1823-1896).]
+
+There remain two or three considerable poets whom it is difficult to
+classify. Coventry Patmore cannot be placed in either the Pre-Raphaelite
+or the Spasmodic School, and though he has some points of affinity with
+the poets of the intellectual movement, they are not close enough to
+justify ranking him with them. Patmore is especially the poet of domestic
+love. His greatest work, _The Angel in the House_ (1854-1856), was meant
+to be a poem on married life. In the opening the poet congratulates
+himself that he, though born so late, has had the good fortune to discover
+'the first of themes sung last of all.' As he proceeded however he found
+his mistake, and never carried out his design; but it imparted the
+characteristic tone of quiet domestic affection to his verse. He may be
+described as the Wordsworth of the home. He is seldom if ever great, but
+his verse at its best has a simple sweetness, with an occasional dignity,
+that is exceedingly pleasing. It is unfortunate that against the merits of
+the better passages of _The Angel in the House_ there has to be set the
+weakness of the letters of Jane. Patmore's purpose was to fit the thought
+to the character; but merely weak thought and merely weak character have
+no right to a place in poetry such as this. There is no dramatic
+realisation and no humour to justify them.
+
+_The Unknown Eros_ (1877) is a work strangely different from _The Angel
+in the House_; it is more lyrical and more ambitiously imaginative; and
+for this very reason it brings into greater prominence Patmore's
+weaknesses. There is a frequent sense of effort. The meaning is often
+obscure, and there are here and there, as in the earlier poem, surprising
+lapses of taste. The poem recalls Drummond of Hawthornden, not only by the
+rhythm, but also by a certain 'preciosity' of diction and imagery.
+
+[Sidenote: The second Lord Lytton (1831-1891).]
+
+The second Lord Lytton, best known in literature by his pseudonym of Owen
+Meredith, must also be ranked among 'the unattached' of literature. He had
+a distinguished diplomatic career which more than once interrupted his
+pen. But, except for the intervals caused by his various ambassadorships
+and his eventful tenure of the Viceroyalty of India, Lytton was, from 1855
+to his death, a diligent writer. In 1855 _Clytemnestra and other Poems_
+appeared, while _Marah_ was a posthumous work. The greater part of
+Lytton's writings is poetical, and their total bulk is very great. It is
+indeed too great for his fame, and most of his poems would be improved by
+condensation. Lytton presents a singular example of heredity, which, in
+his case, showed itself in a manner damaging to his reputation. We have
+seen how the first Lord Lytton veered with every turn of the popular
+taste. The second Lord Lytton changed his style, chameleon-like, with
+almost every poet he happened to be reading. The consequence is, in the
+first place, that his own style is not easily discovered; and in the
+second place that he has been accused of plagiarism with more show of
+reason than almost any other man of equal literary rank. It is not merely
+that he echoes successively the pensive sentiment and melancholy
+reflectiveness of Arnold, the rich diction of Tennyson, the headlong
+abundance of Browning, the lyrical sweetness of Shelley, or that he in a
+snatch or two almost paraphrases Byron. In _Lucile_, his indebtedness to
+George Sand is far more extensive. It is true he avowed that he had taken
+from her the story of the piece; but the story is the principal part of
+it, and no writer ought to borrow quite so much from another. The fault is
+a serious one, and it is reason sufficient for the belief that Owen
+Meredith will never take a high place in poetry; yet his endowments were
+almost great, his taste was purer than his father's, and had he been more
+independent-minded he might have stood high in the second class of the
+poets of the century.
+
+[Sidenote: J. B. Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley (1835-1895).]
+
+J. B. Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley, was a man of richer poetic gifts,
+who might have done very great work had he met with popular encouragement.
+He began his poetic career as early as 1859, but his first volume of
+importance was _Præterita_, issued under the pseudonym of William
+Lancaster, in 1863. For the next ten years he was an active writer. Partly
+his own taste and partly admiration for _Atalanta in Calydon_ induced him
+to attempt the classical drama; and his two experiments, _Philoctetes_
+(1866) and _Orestes_ (1867), rank among the most finished of their class.
+They secured the warm approval of the best judges, but they did not become
+popular. He tried novels, also without winning popularity; and after two
+more experiments in verse--_Rehearsals_ (1870) and _Searching the Net_
+(1873)--he almost disappeared from the ranks of authors for twenty years;
+for the _Soldier of Fortune_, though bulky, can hardly be considered
+important. It was the reissue in 1893 of his best pieces under the title
+of _Poems Dramatic and Lyrical_ that first made Lord de Tabley's name
+widely known. So marked was the success of this collection that it was
+followed two years later by another, which was less successful because it
+was the result of a less rigid selection.
+
+These volumes represent Lord de Tabley at his best, and that best is very
+good indeed. Such pieces as the _Hymn to Astarte_, the _Woodland Grave_
+and _Jael_, would do honour to any poet. There is intense dramatic power
+in the last-named piece, and a rich magnificence of style in the others. A
+tendency to sameness may sometimes be detected. He has, for example, one
+favourite colour, and the whole world is seen by him bathed in an amber
+light. There are also here and there echoes of contemporary poets, such as
+Browning, and still more, Swinburne, whose fulness of sound attracted De
+Tabley. But he is an essentially independent poet, and had he been
+encouraged to write he would doubtless have grown increasingly
+independent. Few losses in contemporary literature are more serious than
+that occasioned by his almost complete silence between 1873 and 1893, just
+the years when, by reason of his age, his work ought to have been best. He
+was a great man unrecognised, and the failure to recognise is sometimes
+severely punished.
+
+[Sidenote: William Morris (1834-1896).]
+
+Most of Lord de Tabley's contemporaries by birth belong rather to the
+subsequent period than to the Age of Tennyson. Even Swinburne did so,
+though before 1870 he had, by the publication of _Atalanta in Calydon_
+(1865), enriched English literature with one of its most perfect dramas on
+the Greek model, and by the _Poems and Ballads_ (1866) had 'raised a
+storm, and founded a school.' The fact that he founded a school makes him
+rather the poetical leader of the present generation than a member of the
+preceding one. In some ways Lord de Tabley has more affinity to this later
+band than to those who were under the dominion of Carlyle and Browning and
+Tennyson. He certainly shows the workings of a new spirit, and seems to
+feel the old ideals insufficient; but his twenty years of literary eclipse
+serve to fix him chronologically rather among the older men. For a
+different reason William Morris, a man just one year older than De Tabley,
+also belongs, as a poet, to this period. Morris was a man who played many
+parts in life, and he played them not concurrently, but rather
+successively. In his characters as high priest of domestic art and as
+prophet to the Socialists he is identified with the closing quarter of the
+century; while his greatest achievements in poetry belong to the third
+quarter. _The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems_ (1858) was his first
+volume of verse. Then after nine years came _The Life and Death of Jason_,
+followed almost immediately by _The Earthly Paradise_ (1868-1870). Morris
+afterwards translated the _Æneid_ and the _Odyssey_, and he also did much
+to make familiar in England the spirit of Icelandic literature. His
+_Sigurd the Volsung_ (1876) is certainly the finest English poem inspired
+by Scandinavia, and perhaps his greatest work.
+
+Morris is the most prominent example in these later days of that revival
+of the mediæval spirit which was initiated by the Romanticists of the
+latter part of last century, which attained its fullest flower in Scott,
+and which shows itself in such varied aspects in Rossetti's poetry, in the
+Pre-Raphaelite painters, and in the Oxford theologians. Morris exhibits it
+in a way quite his own. Chaucer more than any one else is his master in
+poetry. To him Morris reverted for the model of his verse, and the old
+poet's influence is seen in the disciple's mode of conception as well as
+in many turns of expression. One thing however Morris could not learn,
+though Chaucer was eminently qualified to teach it, and that was the true
+narrative spirit. Morris chose the narrative form, but the interest of
+his poetry rarely lies in the story. He does not himself care greatly for
+the story. He is never passionate; he is too calm to enter deeply into the
+feelings or to be absorbed in the fortunes of his characters. The charm of
+his poetry resides rather in leisurely and restful beauty of description.
+In this respect it ranks high, but seldom attains absolute mastery. Nearly
+all of Morris is readable and enjoyable, but few of his lines linger in
+the memory, and perhaps the only one frequently quoted is that in which he
+describes himself as 'the idle singer of an empty day.' Morris was more
+than this, but it may be questioned whether there is enough either of the
+substance of thought in his verse or of melody and pure poetic beauty to
+keep it long alive.
+
+
+MINOR POETS.
+
+[Sidenote: Sarah Flower Adams (1805-1848).]
+
+Sarah Flower Adams is sure of at least a small niche in the temple of the
+English poets were it but for the beautiful hymn, 'Nearer, my God, to
+thee.' Her _Vivia Perpetua_ is an ill-constructed drama, partly redeemed
+by fine passages.
+
+[Sidenote: William Allingham (1824-1889).]
+
+William Allingham was an Irish poet, of much taste, but of no great power.
+His inspiration is strangely fitful and uncertain, and after his removal
+to London, in consequence of the success of his earlier verses, it seemed
+almost wholly to desert him. He was for a time editor of _Fraser's
+Magazine_.
+
+[Sidenote: John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895).]
+
+John Stuart Blackie, for many years Professor of Greek in Edinburgh
+University, was a very vigorous miscellaneous writer. He translated
+Æschylus, the _Iliad_ and _Faust_. He was very successful in the lighter
+lyrical strain, and appears at his best in his rollicking and amusing
+university songs.
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Barnabas Brough (1828-1860).]
+
+Robert Barnabas Brough was the author of _Songs of the Governing Classes_
+(1859), a small collection of pieces, chiefly satirical, and remarkable
+for their vigour, point and sincerity. Strength of feeling, clearness of
+intellect and wit are his characteristics. Brough was generally very much
+in earnest, but in his _Neighbour Nellie_ he showed that he could touch
+lighter themes very charmingly.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884).]
+
+Charles Stuart Calverley, the scholarly and witty author of _Verses and
+Translations_ (1862) and _Fly Leaves_ (1872), had a faculty for more
+serious things, but, partly from indifference, partly because of the
+accident which made great effort in his later years impossible, he never
+wrote anything worthy of his talents. What he has left however is the very
+best of its kind. He is one of the most skilful of translators; and his
+parodies and satiric verse are excellent.
+
+[Sidenote: Mortimer Collins (1827-1876).]
+
+Mortimer Collins, poet and novelist, had a very happy knack for the
+lighter kinds of lyrical verse, half playful and half serious. Under
+pressure of circumstances he wrote too much, and the failure to 'polish
+and refine' tells against a great deal of his work.
+
+[Sidenote: William Cory (1823-1892).]
+
+William Cory, originally Johnson, for many years one of the masters of
+Eton, was the author of a small volume of Poems entitled _Ionica_ (1858),
+which, after long neglect, won, in its third edition of 1891, the
+attention due to thoughtfulness and scholarly expression. Cory's best
+pieces, such as _Mimnermus in Church_, soar beyond the range of the minor
+poet, and show that it only needed quantity to insure him a considerable
+place in literature. But he wrote few such pieces, and indeed little verse
+of any kind after _Ionica_.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Francis Hastings Doyle (1810-1888).]
+
+Sir Francis Hastings Doyle succeeded Matthew Arnold in the chair of poetry
+at Oxford. Doyle is distinguished for the spirit and the martial ring of
+the ballads in which he celebrates deeds of daring. _The Red Thread of
+Honour_, _The Private of the Buffs_, and _Mehrab Khan_ are pieces that
+take high rank among poems inspired by sympathy with the heroism of the
+soldier.
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886).]
+
+Sir Samuel Ferguson has been called the national poet of Ireland, on the
+score of _Congal_, an epic published in 1872. He is really more remarkable
+for his shorter pieces, some of the best of which deal with subjects not
+specially Irish. He was an active contributor to the _Dublin University
+Magazine_ at the beginning of the period.
+
+[Sidenote: Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870).]
+
+Adam Lindsay Gordon divides with Charles Harpur and Alfred Domett
+(Browning's 'Waring') the honour of being laureate of the Antipodes.
+Wildness in youth drove him to Australia. It is probably true that but for
+the stirring and adventurous life there he never would have written
+anything of note; nevertheless, what we find in his verse is rather the
+spirit of the English hunting field and of English adventure the world
+over, than much that is distinctively Australian.
+
+[Sidenote: David Gray (1838-1861).]
+
+David Gray, author of _The Luggie_, a poem on a small stream which flowed
+near his home, was cut off too soon to do much in literature. His verse
+however is pleasant, and it might have acquired power. It retains a
+pathetic interest on account of the author's fate. He was drawn by the
+hope of fame from his native village to London, caught a cold there, and
+died while his poem was in process of printing.
+
+[Sidenote: Dora Greenwell (1821-1882).]
+
+Dora Greenwell is chiefly remarkable as a writer of religious verse, the
+best of which is to be found in _Carmina Crucis_. She also wrote prose of
+considerable merit.
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875).]
+
+Robert Stephen Hawker, a clergyman who spent his life in the remote parish
+of Morwenstow, in Cornwall, is best known for his _Cornish Ballads_
+(1869). The spirited and stirring _Song of the Western Men_, printed as
+early as 1826, and accepted by Scott as a genuine old ballad, is the most
+celebrated of all his compositions. Hawker wrote also _The Quest of the
+Sangraal_ (1863), a poem displaying a mysticism which must have been
+deep-seated in the author's character; for it led to his reception, just
+before he died, into the Roman Catholic Church.
+
+[Sidenote: Jean Ingelow (1820-1897).]
+
+Jean Ingelow is one of the best of recent poetesses, and has also acquired
+a considerable, though a less conspicuous name as a writer of fiction. She
+is best as a lyrist, and some of her poems are touched with a very fine
+and true pathos. She likewise excels in the modern ballad form.
+
+[Sidenote: Edward Lear (1812-1888).]
+
+Edward Lear, author of the _Nonsense Rhymes_ (1861) stands high in the
+very peculiar and difficult kind of writing indicated by the title of his
+book. There are other writers of humorous verse, like Lewis Carroll, who
+possess greater qualities, but the _Nonsense Rhymes_ are unique for rich
+whimsical inventiveness. Lear was an artist as well as a writer, and
+illustrated his own books.
+
+[Sidenote: Gerald Massey (1828-1907).]
+
+Gerald Massey is a minor poet of unusual range. His attachment to the
+Christian Socialists gives a clue to his work; but in him the enthusiasm
+of humanity is concentrated in an intense patriotism. Massey's martial
+verse is fine, but not quite excellent. _Sir Richard Grenville's Last
+Fight_ suggests comparison with Tennyson's _Revenge_; and the comparison
+illustrates the difference between good art and consummate art. Neither is
+Massey the equal of Doyle on this side; but he is far more varied and
+copious.
+
+[Sidenote: The Honourable Mrs. Norton (1808-1877).]
+
+The Honourable Mrs. Norton was a grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley
+Sheridan, and inherited some of the family genius. Her poetic gift was not
+great, but her verse is spirited, and has frequently a ring of genuine
+pathos. Her sister, Lady Dufferin, also wrote verse, which, though less
+brilliant than Mrs. Norton's, is on the whole of a more poetic quality.
+
+[Sidenote: Adelaide Anne Procter (1825-1864).]
+
+Adelaide Anne Procter, daughter of Barry Cornwall, was a pleasing writer
+of the type of Mrs. Hemans, that is to say, feminine in the less
+flattering sense. There is a certain grace in her verse, but it is
+altogether destitute of weight and power of thought. Most of her poems
+were originally contributed to Dickens's papers, _Household Words_ and
+_All the Year Round_.
+
+[Sidenote: William Caldwell Roscoe (1823-1859).]
+
+William Caldwell Roscoe was at once lyrist, dramatist and critic, but
+failed to achieve greatness in any of these lines. If Roscoe had lived
+longer he might possibly have justified the opinion of his friends; but
+his actual performance, though graceful, is not weighty.
+
+[Sidenote: William Bell Scott (1811-1890).]
+
+William Bell Scott was a poet-painter, related to and in general sympathy
+with the Pre-Raphaelites, but never a member of the brotherhood. Scott's
+verse is characterised by mysticism; but mysticism in verse demands very
+skilful expression, and Scott's power over language was not sufficient.
+Perhaps his best poem is _The Sphinx_.
+
+[Sidenote: Menella Bute Smedley (1820-1877).]
+
+Menella Bute Smedley wrote both prose and verse well, and occasionally
+with distinction. Though an invalid, she published several volumes of
+poetry, and contributed to her sister, Mrs. Hart's _Child-World_ and
+_Poems written for a Child_. Miss Smedley, like so many female writers, is
+in many of her poems markedly patriotic, and, though sometimes too
+rhetorical, she is, when stirred, successful in pieces of this type.
+
+[Sidenote: George Walter Thornbury (1828-1876).]
+
+George Walter Thornbury, historian of the buccaneers, was also a poet who,
+in his _Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads_ (1857) showed considerable
+skill in rapid and spirited narrative. The best of his later poems are
+gathered up in _Legendary and Historic Ballads_ (1875).
+
+[Sidenote: Aubrey de Vere (1814-1902).]
+
+Aubrey de Vere, an Irish poet, has written, in the course of his long
+career, a good deal of pleasing and thoughtful verse. His sonnets are
+especially good, as were also his father's, but they would be still better
+if they were more terse. Much of his verse is religious, and the mystical
+tone of mind, indicative of the tendency which led him, as it led Hawker,
+into the Roman Catholic Church, is the one most distinctive of him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE LATER FICTION.
+
+
+After the turn of the century fiction passes through a change similar to
+that of which we have seen evidence in poetry. The increased tendency to
+analysis, the greater frequency of the novel of purpose, and the
+philosophic strain conspicuous in George Eliot, all point to the operation
+of the forces which stimulated the intellectual movement in verse. The
+novelists, on the whole, take themselves more seriously than their
+predecessors--not always to their own advantage or that of their readers.
+Dickens, in his later days, is more of a reformer than at the opening of
+his career; and Charles Reade and Kingsley likewise make a conscious
+attempt to benefit society. In the case of the greatest novelist yet to be
+discussed this tendency to seriousness of aim grew till it injured her
+art. George Eliot was always serious in mind, but there is a great
+difference in treatment between _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Daniel
+Deronda_.
+
+[Sidenote: George Eliot (1819-1880).]
+
+Mary Ann Evans, who adopted the _nom de plume_ of George Eliot, was the
+daughter of an estate agent. After the death of her mother in 1836 she was
+charged with the care of her father's house. But she continued to study,
+her subject at this period being language, German and Italian, Latin and
+Greek. Her father moved in 1841 from Griff, near Nuneaton, to Coventry.
+There Miss Evans came under influences which affected her whole life.
+Intercourse with certain friends named Bray, and the reading of books like
+Hennell's _Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity_ overthrew her
+hitherto unquestioning orthodoxy, gave to her thought a permanent bent,
+and introduced her to literature. A project for translating Strauss's
+_Leben Jesu_ into English had been for some time entertained; the person
+who originally undertook the work had to abandon it; and Miss Evans took
+her place. _The Life of Jesus_ was published in 1846. Miss Evans
+afterwards translated also Feuerbach's _Essence of Christianity_ (1854),
+the only book ever published under her own name.
+
+The death of her father in 1849 left her without domestic ties, and in
+1850 or 1851 she accepted the position of assistant editor of the
+_Westminster Review_. In 1854 she took the most questionable step of her
+life. She went to live with George Henry Lewes, not only without the
+ceremony of marriage, but while he had a wife still living. All that can
+be said in defence has been said by herself; but there are several
+passages in her works which show that she was permanently uneasy, and was
+not fully convinced that what she had done was right either towards
+herself or towards society.
+
+Apart from the moral and social aspects of the question, the influence of
+Lewes upon George Eliot's literary career seems to have been mixed. On the
+one hand, it must be said that he acted with a delicate generosity for
+which his general character hardly prepares us. He encouraged her efforts,
+recognised her genius, avowed that all he was and all he did himself were
+due to her, and voluntarily sank into the second place. It is at least
+possible that without such fostering care the genius of George Eliot would
+not have run so smooth and successful a course. Further, the very
+difficulties due to the relation add a deeper note to her voice. There is
+often a solemn, almost tragic tone in her utterances about domestic life
+which might have been absent had all been smooth between the world and
+herself.
+
+On the other hand, Lewes, loyally as he effaced himself, could not but
+foster tendencies in her mind which were strong enough without his
+encouragement. He was a philosopher, imbued with the tenets of positivism;
+and she was naturally prone to be fascinated by abstract thought. Not that
+she was ever exactly original in philosophic speculation: the danger would
+have been less had she been so. But she hungered for philosophy, took the
+results proclaimed for absolute truth, and wove them into the fabric of
+her own work. From the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ to _Daniel Deronda_ and
+_Theophrastus Such_ her writings became more and more loaded with
+philosophy. The two last-named books are decidedly overloaded; and even
+_Middlemarch_, the most massive, and probably on the whole the greatest
+outcome of her genius, would be still greater were it somewhat lightened
+of the burden.
+
+_Blackwood_, the nurse of so much genius, in January, 1857, contained the
+first part of what became the _Scenes of Clerical Life_. _Adam Bede_
+appeared in 1859, _The Mill on the Floss_ in the following year, and
+_Silas Marner_ in 1861. _Romola_ (1863) was the outcome of a journey to
+Italy in 1860. After _Felix Holt_ (1866) George Eliot attempted poetry,
+and visited Spain to gather materials for _The Spanish Gypsy_ (1868). Her
+only other long poem, _The Legend of Jubal_, was published with other
+pieces in 1874. _Middlemarch_ was issued in eight parts in 1871 and 1872.
+_Daniel Deronda_ (1876) was her last novel; and the _Impressions of
+Theophrastus Such_ (1879) was her last work. In 1878 Lewes died; and in
+April, 1880, George Eliot married Mr. J. W. Cross, but survived the union
+less than a year, dying December 22, 1880.
+
+George Eliot's place is certainly among the great novelists. At the
+lowest, she is classed after Scott, Dickens and Thackeray (and a few might
+add Jane Austen); at the highest, she is placed above them all. She
+carried by storm the intellect of one of the most thoughtful and weighty
+of critics, Edmond Scherer, who in his _Études sur la Littérature
+Contemporaine_ devoted three essays to her, which have been admirably
+translated by Professor Saintsbury. In the last of these Scherer goes so
+far as to say that for her 'was reserved the honour of writing the most
+perfect novels yet known.' In spite of the note of exaggeration this
+judgment is significant. Only a writer, not merely of genius, but of great
+genius, could have drawn it from a critic so sober-minded; a foreigner,
+unbiassed by the predilections of patriotism; a man of wide knowledge,
+well aware of all that his sweeping assertion implied.
+
+Most writers, even the greatest, have loaded themselves with a weight of
+literary lumber. George Eliot carries less of such _impedimenta_ than
+many, but it will be well nevertheless to put aside at once such works as
+are neither in her special field nor in her best manner. Under this head
+fall the heavy and laboured volume of essays entitled _Impression of
+Theophrastus Such_, and also the poems. The latter, thoughtful, and
+occasionally eloquent, nevertheless prove that the writer had not the gift
+of verse. Richard Congreve described _The Spanish Gypsy_ as 'a mass of
+positivism.' The description is accurate; and perhaps the fact that it is
+so is, to others who are not positivists, a heavier objection than it was
+to him. _The Legend of Jubal_, though better, is not great poetry.
+
+Leaving these works then aside, the novels of George Eliot fall pretty
+clearly into three groups, which conform to the divisions of chronology.
+In the first we have at one extreme the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, and at
+the other _Silas Marner_; in the second _Romola_ stands alone; in the
+third, _Felix Holt_, the weakest if not the least readable of all, is
+transitional; while _Middlemarch_ and _Daniel Deronda_ illustrate her
+later manner respectively in full flower and in decay.
+
+Each of these groups has found special admirers among critics. George
+Eliot herself was disposed to prefer _Romola_ to all her other works; but
+she seems to have been swayed by the consideration that it had cost her
+more than any other book. _Romola_ has been praised also as a marvellous
+picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth century. Only men who are
+profoundly versed in Italian character, literature and history are
+entitled to pronounce upon the question; and they are few in number. But
+if the statement be true the fact is wonderful, for George Eliot had only
+spent about six weeks in Florence before she wrote the book. In any case
+it smells of the lamp, and we may therefore suspect that it will give less
+permanent pleasure than most of her novels. Tito Melema is admitted to be
+a masterpiece of subtle delineation; but for the most part the picture of
+Romola, her home and her associates, is laboured to a degree almost
+painful.
+
+Of the two other groups, if we take them as wholes, there can be little
+hesitation in assigning the palm to the earlier. The excellence here is
+evener, the artistic skill finer, the style more uniformly pleasing. The
+evenness of quality is proved by the fact that each work in turn has been
+praised as the author's best, or at least as equal to her best; whereas
+there can be no reasonable doubt about the pre-eminence of _Middlemarch_
+in the last group. The artistic excellence, again, of _Silas Marner_,
+perhaps the most faultless (which does not necessarily mean the best) of
+English novels, is as conspicuous as are the artistic defects of
+_Middlemarch_. And as to style, nearly all readers have felt how the
+fresh, easy grace, the flexibility of language, the lightness of touch,
+gradually disappear from the works of George Eliot; and how in her later
+books passages of genuine eloquence, masterly dialogue or description or
+reflexion, are mingled with leaden paragraphs wherein the author seems to
+be struggling under a burden too great for her strength.
+
+The early novels then have the advantage of grace, spontaneity, and the
+charm exercised by a great writer when the great work is done without
+apparent effort. Like a giant wielding a club, George Eliot seems to
+execute the heavy tasks imposed by _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on the Floss_
+with an ease possible only because there is a reserve of strength behind.
+But some of these early products of genius, and among them the most
+charming of all, could hardly be repeated. Has child-life ever been as
+delightfully represented in literature as in the first part of _The Mill
+on the Floss_? But one secret of the charm is that the book, especially in
+this part, is autobiographical. Again, in the _Scenes of Clerical Life_
+and in _Adam Bede_ the writer moves easily among characters with whom she
+had been familiar from girlhood. The religious enthusiasm of Dinah Morris
+is partly a reminiscence of her own early feelings, and partly a picture
+of her aunt Elizabeth; while in Adam Bede, as afterwards in Caleb Garth,
+may be seen the features of her own father. In those early years George
+Eliot skimmed the cream of her experience. Like Scott, she began to write
+novels rather late. Her powers were therefore mature, and in her first
+books she combines the perfect freshness of a new writer with the weight
+and the range of an experienced one.
+
+Thoughtfulness and serious purpose were from the start conspicuous in the
+writings of George Eliot. It is the overgrowth of these qualities, to the
+detriment of the artistic element, that mars her later works. _Daniel
+Deronda_ is ruined by its philosophy and its didactic purpose. The style
+is ponderous and often clumsy, and the question of heredity is made too
+prominent. _Middlemarch_ too shows signs of failure on the part of the
+artist. More than almost any other great novel, it sins against the law of
+unity. The stories of Dorothea and Casaubon and Ladislaw, of Lydgate and
+Rosamond, of the Garths, and of Bulstrode, are tacked together by the most
+flimsy external bonds. They all illustrate a single thesis; but it is for
+this, and not for their natural connexion, that they are chosen. The
+keynote of the whole novel is struck in the prelude; and, as in the case
+of the young Saint Theresa and her brother, we see throughout 'domestic
+reality,' in diverse shapes, meeting the idealist and turning him back
+from his great resolve. But even want of unity will be pardoned, provided
+the details are conceived and presented in the manner of an artist, as
+they are in _Middlemarch_. Some of George Eliot's books contain fresher
+pictures than we find here, but none contains more that dwell in the mind,
+and in none is her maturest thought so well expressed. _Middlemarch_ gives
+us one of the rarest things in literature, the philosophy of a powerful
+mind presented with all the charm of art. For this reason it at least
+rivals the best work of her first period.
+
+[Sidenote: Mrs. Henry Wood (1814-1887).]
+
+[Sidenote: Dinah Maria Craik (1826-1887).]
+
+George Eliot was the last of the race of giants in fiction. Some good
+novelists remain to be noticed, but none who can without hesitation be
+called great. Those who did respectable work are so numerous that the task
+of selection becomes exceedingly difficult; and moreover, as we draw near
+the dividing-line, it proves sometimes doubtful whether a man should be
+included in the present period, or viewed as belonging to that still
+current. It is safe to say however that of all forms of literature,
+fiction is the one in which a rigorous law of selection is the most
+necessary. Many popular writers must be passed over in silence. Mrs. Henry
+Wood, notwithstanding the success of her _East Lynne_, can be barely
+mentioned; and little more is possible in the case of Dinah Maria Craik,
+best known as the author of _John Halifax, Gentleman_, a pleasing but
+somewhat namby-pamby story, ranked by some unaccountably high. Mrs. Craik
+never shocks, never startles, nor does she ever invigorate. She is one of
+those writers who appeal to the taste of the middle class, not perhaps as
+it is now, but as it was a generation ago.
+
+Three detached novels, by men who cannot be classed as writers of fiction,
+may be named for the sake of their authors--_Eustace Conway_ (1834), by F.
+D. Maurice, and _Loss and Gain_ (1848) and _Callista_ (1856), by J. H.
+Newman. Maurice's story was written when, a young man, he was still
+groping his way; but Newman's deliberately and when the bent of his mind
+had been long taken. His novels are among the symptoms of the passing of
+theological interest into general literature, but they have in themselves
+no value.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875).]
+
+Charles Kingsley was also by profession a theologian, and his disastrous
+controversy with Newman remains as a proof of the interest he took in the
+movement Newman sought to serve by _Callista_. But fortunately Kingsley
+did not allow this interest to dominate his books. Tractarianism is indeed
+one of the themes of his earliest novels, _Alton Locke_ (1850) and _Yeast_
+(1848), but socialism, to which his attention had been turned by the
+personal influence of Maurice, is a far more prominent one. _Yeast_
+pictures the condition of agricultural labour, _Alton Locke_ that of
+labour in crowded cities. Both books are immature, sometimes rash, and on
+the whole not well constructed; but they have the merits of vigour,
+earnestness and knowledge at first-hand; for Kingsley had personally taken
+part in the labour movements in London which resulted in Chartism.
+_Hypatia_ (1853) is an ambitious novel, at once historical and
+philosophical, impressive in parts, but on the whole heavy. Kingsley, a
+man whose physical nature and instincts were quite as well developed as
+his intellect, is happiest where he can bring to play the experiences of
+his life, and where he can describe scenes familiar to him. About his best
+work there is always a breath of the moor, of the fen or of the sea; for
+he had lived by them all and had learnt to love them. This is shown by his
+verse as well as his prose. His _Ode to the North-East Wind_, his _Sands
+of Dee_, and the images scattered everywhere through his poems, prove how
+the features of the scenery and of the weather had sunk into his mind. So
+do such novels as _Westward Ho!_ (1855) and _Hereward the Wake_ (1866).
+The former, a historical romance, the scene of which is laid in the time
+of Elizabeth, is generally considered Kingsley's best work; and it is only
+a small minority, to which the writer happens to belong, who find it
+dreary. The power of some of the descriptions must be acknowledged; but
+whether _Westward Ho!_ will live is a question on which there may be
+difference of opinion. _Hereward the Wake_, generally ranked much lower,
+is certainly uneven and in parts dull. But it has two great merits: it
+reproduces in a marvellous way the impression of the fen country; and, by
+vivid flashes, though not constantly, the reader seems to see before his
+eyes the very life of the old vikings.
+
+Kingsley's work was most varied. Besides his novels, his professional
+work, such as sermons, and his lectures as Professor of History at
+Cambridge, we may mention his beautiful fairy-tale, _The Water Babies_
+(1863), with its exquisite snatches of verse, 'Clear and Cool,' and 'When
+all the world is young.' His poetry, if it were as copious as it is often
+high in quality, would place him among the great. But it was only
+occasional. Besides short pieces, he was the author of a drama, _The
+Saint's Tragedy_ (1848), somewhat immature, and of _Andromeda_ (1858), one
+of the few specimens of English hexameters that are readable, and that
+seem to naturalise the metre in our language. It is however noticeable
+that Kingsley's success is won at the cost of wholly altering the
+character of the measure. _Andromeda_ is true and fine poetry, but its
+effect is not that of 'the long roll of the hexameter.' There is a very
+great preponderance of dactyls. This is the case with almost all English
+hexameters; and the fact goes far to prove that the hexameter, as
+understood by the ancients, a fairly balanced mixture of dactyls and
+spondees, is not suited to the genius of English.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry Kingsley (1830-1876).]
+
+Henry Kingsley, the younger brother of Charles, was a novelist likewise,
+but one of considerably less merit. He passed some years in Australia, and
+his experiences there supplied materials for one of his best stories,
+_Geoffrey Hamlyn_. That by which he is best known is however _Ravenshoe_
+(1862). His novels are extremely loose in construction, and he is no rival
+to his brother in that exuberance of spirits which gives to the writings
+of the latter their most characteristic excellence.
+
+[Sidenote: Anthony Trollope (1815-1882).]
+
+Senior to both the brothers, alike in years and as a writer, was Anthony
+Trollope. Coming of a literary family (both his mother and his elder
+brother wrote novels), he proved himself, from 1847, when he published
+_The Macdermotts of Ballycloran_, to his death, one of the most prolific
+of novelists. No recent writer illustrates better than he the function of
+the novel when it is something less than a work of genius. The demand for
+amusement is the explanation of the enormous growth of modern fiction. But
+pure amusement is inconsistent with either profound thought or tragic
+emotion, while, on the other hand, it requires competent literary
+workmanship. Anthony Trollope exactly satisfied this demand. He wrote
+fluently and fairly well. He drew characters which, if they were never
+very profound or subtle, were at any rate tolerably good representations
+of human nature. He had a pleasant humour, could tell a story well, and
+could, without becoming dull, continue it through any number of volumes
+that might be desired. Perhaps no one has ever equalled him at
+continuations. What are commonly known as the Barsetshire novels are his
+best group. There are some half-dozen stories in the group, yet four of
+them, _Barchester Towers_, _Doctor Thorne_, _Framley Parsonage_, and _The
+Last Chronicle of Barset_, extending over a period of ten years
+(1857-1867), must all be classed with his best work. Perhaps it was the
+touch of the commonplace that made it possible for him thus frequently to
+repeat his successes. Trollope's description of his own methods of work in
+his _Autobiography_ shows that he worked himself as a manufacturer works
+his steam-engine, and with the same result, so much of a given pattern
+produced _per diem_. His monograph on Thackeray proves him capable of
+comparing his methods with the methods of a man of genius, by no means to
+the advantage of the latter.
+
+[Sidenote: James Grant (1822-1887).]
+
+[Sidenote: George John Whyte-Melville (1821-1878).]
+
+[Sidenote: Wilkie Collins (1824-1889).]
+
+[Sidenote: George Alfred Lawrence (1827-1876).]
+
+Among the minor writers a few, typical of different classes, may be
+briefly mentioned. James Grant wrote some historical works as well as many
+novels well spiced with adventure. His best book is perhaps _The Romance
+of War_ (1845). It follows the fortunes of a regiment through the
+Peninsula; but while the plan gives it a good groundwork of reality and an
+abundance of stirring scenes, it is inartistic. George John Whyte-Melville
+was similarly fond of adventure, but, though he was a soldier who had seen
+service in the Crimea, he is specially identified with sporting rather
+than with military novels. His best work is descriptive of fox-hunting, a
+sport to which he was passionately devoted. He also wrote historical
+novels, of which the best known is _The Gladiators_. Both of these writers
+relied for their effect upon the feeling of interest produced by the
+situations in which they placed their characters. So, but in a totally
+different way, did Wilkie Collins. He was a master of sensational
+narrative. He excelled in the skilful construction and the skilful
+unravelling of plot, and in his own domain he is among the best of recent
+writers. His best known book is _The Woman in White_, while perhaps that
+which best deserves to be known is _The Moonstone_. In neither is there a
+single character worth remembering; the story is everything. The novel of
+society, again, is represented by George Alfred Lawrence, the author of
+_Guy Livingstone_, who repeats many of the faults of Bulwer Lytton, and
+has not the genius which in Lytton's case partly redeems the faults.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles Reade (1814-1884).]
+
+There remains one man of genius, Charles Reade, who towers over all these
+men of talent. Reade was mature in years before he began his literary
+career with a group of dramas, of which _Gold_, acted with moderate
+success in 1853, was the best. His easy circumstances as the son of an
+Oxfordshire squire, and fellow of Magdalen College, exempted him from the
+necessity of pushing his way in the world. In literature he had one great
+ambition and one great gift, and unfortunately the two diverged. His
+talent lay in prose fiction, while his ambition drew him towards the
+stage. It was the advice of an actress that caused him to turn _Masks and
+Faces_, a drama written in collaboration with Tom Taylor, into the prose
+story of _Peg Woffington_ (1853), and so to find his true vocation. But he
+remained unsatisfied, and through his whole career he continued to make
+experiments in the drama, never with much success except in the case of
+_Drink_ (1879), founded on Zola's _L'Assommoir_. So strong was his
+predilection, that he desired that in the inscription on his tombstone the
+word 'dramatist' should be put first in the specification of his pursuits.
+
+Those who study Reade can have no difficulty in detecting the cause of his
+failure in the drama. He is fertile of incident, but he has not the art of
+selecting a few striking scenes rising out of one another and leading
+rapidly up to a catastrophe. His copiousness finds room in the freer field
+of prose fiction, and his want of skill in selection is less noticeable
+there. Accordingly he soon won as a novelist the popularity he never
+secured as a playwright. _Christie Johnstone_ (1853), one of his best
+stories, was the successor of _Peg Woffington_, and after _It is Never Too
+Late to Mend_ (1856) he took his place as one of the first writers of
+fiction of the time.
+
+Charles Reade was a man of strong individuality, intense in all his
+opinions, and bent on making them known. Hence he gives us perhaps the
+best examples of the novel with a purpose. Dickens had done much work of
+this description, but Reade went beyond him. Many of his novels are
+devoted to special questions. Thus _It is Never Too Late to Mend_ deals
+with prison administration, _Hard Cash_ with lunatic asylums, and _Put
+Yourself in his Place_ with trade-unions. Moreover, Reade was by no means
+the man to approach these questions with a few _a priori_ impressions only
+in his head. He was thorough, and he made an elaborate study of each
+before he wrote about it. Every incident reported in the newspapers, every
+trial in the courts of law, every fact wherever recorded, he made it his
+business to master. He cared less for theories, at least for the theories
+of other people: he made his own, and loved them. But his survey of the
+evidence was as nearly exhaustive as it could be. No other writer of
+fiction ever left such an apparatus of note-books, newspaper cuttings,
+etc., all digested and systematically arranged. It has been commonly held
+that Reade's work was injured by this laborious method; and no doubt the
+opinion is in part sound. Yet his merits as well as his defects are
+closely related to his method. His variety and his inexhaustible resource
+are due to the enormous accumulation of his facts. He loved to illustrate
+the saying that truth is stranger than fiction, and he held that no man's
+invention could supply incidents equal to those which patient
+investigation would reveal. There is no novelist with respect to whom it
+is so dangerous to say, 'this is unnatural or impossible.' Probably the
+seeming impossibility is a hard fact, disclosed by some forgotten trial or
+recorded in some old newspaper.
+
+While however this backbone of reality gives strength to Reade's novels,
+his devotion to fact sometimes leads him to forget unity and proportion.
+The violence of his convictions was apt to overbalance his judgment. He
+is at his best in his calmer and less didactic moods. For this reason _The
+Cloister and the Hearth_ (1861) is his masterpiece. In a historical novel,
+of which the scene is laid in the fifteenth century and the hero is the
+father of Erasmus, there is ample scope for Reade's love of investigation,
+and he has with great skill woven into the narrative the results of wide
+reading and patient study. The works of Erasmus are appropriately laid
+under contribution. But Reade has here no thesis to defend, no abuse to
+attack. The book is consequently better balanced than the novels of the
+class already mentioned; and the adventures are diversified with touches
+of pathos and with scenes of domestic life in the Dutch home, such as are
+hardly to be found elsewhere in Reade's works. The delineation of
+character also is subtler. In many of Reade's novels the characters are
+wholly subordinate to the purpose of the story. It is not Mr. Eden who
+interests us in _It is Never Too Late to Mend_, but rather his theories
+and methods.
+
+There is no rival among Reade's novels to _The Cloister and the Hearth_;
+but several of them nevertheless are of high quality. _Christie
+Johnstone_, a remarkably clever and successful study of the fisher
+population of the east of Scotland, is perhaps the freshest and least
+laboured of all his works; and _Griffith Gaunt_, an analysis of the
+workings of the passion of jealousy, is the subtlest as a psychological
+study; while _It is Never Too Late to Mend_ stands pretty near the head of
+its own class, the novel of purpose. Except the greatest of the writers
+already dealt with, and one other, Mr. George Meredith, who belongs rather
+to the next period, there was no contemporary writer who could do work
+equal to any one of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have now traced the course of literature through a period of forty
+years, distinguished for their fertility and for the variety of the talent
+displayed in them. In the prominence given to history, in the drift of
+philosophic speculation, in the prevalence of the novel of purpose, and in
+the spirit of the later poetry, we see the influence of social problems
+clamouring for solution. The Age of Tennyson has been essentially an age
+of reconstruction. It inherited from the preceding generation a gigantic
+task, which it has earnestly and laboriously striven to accomplish. What
+measure of success has been won is still doubtful; how long the literary
+expression of the effort will remain satisfying may be doubtful too. It is
+said to-day that we no longer read Carlyle; it may be said to-morrow that
+we no longer read Tennyson or Browning either. But there is substance in
+the work of all these men, and of all the leaders of the period. If they
+are no longer read it is because their thought has penetrated the life of
+the time; and we may be sure that they will revive and have a second vogue
+when they are old enough to be partly forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
+
+
+  1831. Disraeli: _The Young Duke_.
+        Ebenezer Elliott: _Corn Law Rhymes_.
+        Peacock: _Crotchet Castle_.
+        Scott: _Count Robert of Paris_.
+        Scott: _Castle Dangerous_.
+
+  1832. John Austin: _The Province of Jurisprudence Determined_.
+        E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _Eugene Aram_.
+        Disraeli: _Contarini Fleming_.
+        Samuel Warren: _The Diary of a Late Physician_.
+        Bentham died.
+        Crabbe died.
+        Scott died.
+
+  1833. Robert Browning: _Pauline_.
+        Carlyle: _Sartor Resartus_ (finished 1834).
+        Hartley Coleridge: _Poems_.
+        Disraeli: _The Wondrous Tale of Alroy_.
+        Lamb: _Last Essays of Elia_.
+        Lyell: _Principles of Geology_ (completed).
+        J. H. Newman: _Arians of the Fourth Century_.
+        Newman and others: _Tracts for the Times_ (begun).
+        Tennyson: _Poems_.
+
+  1834. E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _The Last Days of Pompeii_.
+        Landor: _The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare_.
+        Marryat: _Peter Simple_.
+        Marryat: _Jacob Faithful_.
+        Henry Taylor: _Philip van Artevelde_.
+        S. T. Coleridge died.
+        Charles Lamb died.
+        Malthus died.
+
+  1835. Robert Browning: _Paracelsus_.
+        E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _Rienzi_.
+        Dickens: _Sketches by Boz_ (finished 1836).
+        Thirlwall: _History of Greece_ (finished 1847).
+        Wordsworth: _Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems_.
+        Mrs. Hemans died.
+        James Hogg died.
+
+  1836. Dickens: _Pickwick_ (finished 1837).
+        Landor: _Pericles and Aspasia_.
+        Lockhart: _Life of Sir Walter Scott_ (finished 1838).
+        Marryat: _Mr. Midshipman Easy_.
+        Marryat: _Japhet in Search of a Father_.
+        W. Godwin died.
+        James Mill died.
+
+  1837. Robert Browning: _Strafford_.
+        Carlyle: _History of the French Revolution_.
+        Dickens: _Oliver Twist_ (finished 1838).
+        Disraeli: _Henrietta Temple_.
+        Disraeli: _Venetia_.
+        Hallam: _Literature of Europe_ (finished 1839).
+        Landor: _The Pentameron_.
+        Thackeray: _The Yellowplush Papers_ (finished 1838).
+
+  1838. Thomas Arnold: _History of Rome_ (last volume, 1843).
+        E. Barrett (Browning): _The Seraphim_.
+        E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _The Lady of Lyons_.
+        Dickens: _Nicholas Nickleby_ (finished 1839).
+        Maurice: _The Kingdom of Christ_ (enlarged 1842).
+        Newman: _Lectures on Justification_.
+
+  1839. Bailey: _Festus_.
+        E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _Cardinal Richelieu_.
+        Carlyle: _Chartism_.
+        Carlyle: _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_.
+        Lever: _Harry Lorrequer_.
+        Thackeray: _Catherine_ (finished 1840).
+        John Galt died.
+        W. M. Praed died.
+
+  1840. Robert Browning: _Sordello_.
+        E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _Money_.
+        Dickens: _The Old Curiosity Shop_ (finished 1841).
+        Frere: _Translation of Aristophanes_.
+        Thackeray: _The Paris Sketch Book_.
+        Madame D'Arblay died.
+
+  1841. Robert Browning: _Pippa Passes_.
+        Carlyle: _Heroes and Hero-Worship_.
+        Dickens: _Barnaby Rudge_.
+        Lever: _Charles O'Malley_.
+        Hugh Miller: _The Old Red Sandstone_.
+        Newman: _Tract XC_.
+        Thackeray: _The Great Hoggarty Diamond_.
+        Warren: _Ten Thousand a Year_.
+
+  1842. Robert Browning: _Dramatic Lyrics_.
+        E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _Zanoni_.
+        Dickens: _American Notes_.
+        Macaulay: _Lays of Ancient Rome_.
+        Marryat: _Percival Keene_.
+        Henry Taylor: _Edwin the Fair_.
+        Tennyson: _Poems_.
+        Wilson: _The Recreations of Christopher North_.
+        Wordsworth: _The Borderers_.
+        Thomas Arnold died.
+
+  1843. Robert Browning: _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_.
+        Carlyle: _Past and Present_.
+        Dickens: _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (finished 1844).
+        Horne: _Orion_.
+        E. L. Bulwer (Lord Lytton): _The Last of the Barons_.
+        Macaulay: _Critical and Historical Essays_ (collected).
+        Mill: _A System of Logic_.
+        Ruskin: _Modern Painters_ (finished 1860).
+        Thackeray: _The Irish Sketch Book_.
+        Southey died.
+
+  1844. Barnes: _Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect_.
+        E. Barrett (Browning): _Poems_.
+        Robert Browning: _Colombe's Birthday_.
+        Disraeli: _Coningsby_.
+        Kinglake: _Eothen_.
+        Stanley: _Life of Arnold_.
+        Thackeray: _Barry Lyndon_.
+        Thomas Campbell died.
+
+  1845. Robert Browning: _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_.
+        Carlyle: _Cromwell_.
+        Disraeli: _Sybil_.
+        Thomas Hood died.
+        Sydney Smith died.
+
+  1846. Dickens: _Dombey and Son_ (finished 1848).
+        Grote: _History of Greece_ (finished 1856).
+        Newman: _The Development of Christian Doctrine_.
+
+  1847. Charlotte Brontë: _Jane Eyre_.
+        Emily Brontë: _Wuthering Heights_.
+        Disraeli: _Tancred_.
+        Helps: _Friends in Council_.
+        Landor: _Hellenics_.
+        Tennyson: _The Princess_.
+        Thackeray: _Vanity Fair_ (finished 1848).
+        Trollope: _The Macdermotts of Ballycloran_.
+
+  1848. Clough: _The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_.
+        Mrs. Gaskell: _Mary Barton_.
+        Charles Kingsley: _Yeast_.
+        Macaulay: _History of England_, vols. i. and ii. (last volume,
+            1860).
+        Mill: _Political Economy_.
+        Thackeray: _The Book of Snobs_ (reprinted from _Punch_).
+        Emily Brontë died.
+        Marryat died.
+
+  1849. Matthew Arnold: _The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems_.
+        W. E. Aytoun: _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_.
+        Charlotte Brontë: _Shirley_.
+        Clough: _Ambarvalia_.
+        Dickens: _David Copperfield_ (finished 1850).
+        Lytton: _The Caxtons_.
+        Ruskin: _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_.
+        Thackeray: _Pendennis_ (finished 1850).
+        T. L. Beddoes died.
+        Hartley Coleridge died.
+        Maria Edgeworth died.
+
+  1850. Beddoes: _Death's Jest-Book_.
+        E. B. Browning: _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.
+        Robert Browning: _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_.
+        Carlyle: _Latter-Day Pamphlets_.
+        Dobell: _The Roman_.
+        Charles Kingsley: _Alton Locke_.
+        D. G. Rossetti and others: _The Germ_.
+        Tennyson: _In Memoriam_.
+        Wordsworth: _The Prelude_.
+        Francis Jeffrey died.
+        Wordsworth died.
+
+  1851. E. B. Browning: _Casa Guidi Windows_.
+        Carlyle: _Life of Sterling_.
+        Ruskin: _The Stones of Venice_ (finished 1853).
+        Joanna Baillie died.
+
+  1852. Matthew Arnold: _Empedocles on Etna_.
+        Dickens: _Bleak House_ (finished 1853).
+        Thackeray: _Esmond_.
+        Moore died.
+
+  1853. Matthew Arnold: _Poems_.
+        Charlotte Brontë: _Villette_.
+        Dobell: _Balder_.
+        Mrs. Gaskell: _Cranford_.
+        Charles Kingsley: _Hypatia_.
+        W. S. Landor: _The Last Fruit off an Old Tree_.
+        Lytton: _My Novel_.
+        Charles Reade: _Peg Woffington_.
+        Charles Reade: _Christie Johnstone_.
+        Alexander Smith: _A Life Drama_.
+        Thackeray: _The English Humourists of the Eighteenth
+            Century_ (printed).
+
+  1854. Hugh Miller: _My Schools and Schoolmasters_.
+        Milman: _History of Latin Christianity_.
+        Patmore: _The Angel in the House_ (Part I.).
+        Thackeray: _The Newcomes_ (finished 1855).
+        Susan Ferrier died.
+        Lockhart died.
+        John Wilson died.
+
+  1855. Matthew Arnold: _Poems_.
+        Robert Browning: _Men and Women_.
+        Mrs. Gaskell: _North and South_.
+        Charles Kingsley: _Westward Ho!_
+        Lewes: _Life of Goethe_.
+        Herbert Spencer: _Principles of Psychology_.
+        Tennyson: _Maud_.
+        Charlotte Brontë died.
+        Samuel Rogers died.
+
+  1856. Dobell: _England in Time of War_.
+        Froude: _History of England_ (finished 1870).
+        Charles Reade: _It is Never Too Late to Mend_.
+        Sir W. Hamilton died.
+        Hugh Miller died.
+
+  1857. E. B. Browning: _Aurora Leigh_.
+        Buckle: _History of Civilization_ (vol. ii. in 1861).
+        Hugh Miller: _The Testimony of the Rocks_.
+        Alexander Smith: _City Poems_.
+        Thackeray: _The Virginians_ (finished 1859).
+        Trollope: _Barchester Towers_.
+
+  1858. Carlyle: _Frederick the Great_ (finished 1865).
+        George Eliot: _Scenes of Clerical Life_ (serially, 1857).
+        Lytton: _What will He do with It?_
+        William Morris: _The Defence of Guenevere_.
+
+  1859. Barnes: _Hwomely Rhymes_.
+        Darwin: _The Origin of Species_.
+        Dickens: _A Tale of Two Cities_.
+        George Eliot: _The Mill on the Floss_.
+        Edward FitzGerald: _Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám_.
+        George Meredith: _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_.
+        Mill: _Liberty_.
+        Tennyson: _Idylls of the King_ (part).
+        De Quincey died.
+        Henry Hallam died.
+        Leigh Hunt died.
+        Macaulay died.
+
+  1860. George Eliot: _The Mill on the Floss_.
+        _Essays and Reviews_ (various authors).
+        Swinburne: _The Queen Mother_.
+        Swinburne: _Rosamond_.
+        Thackeray: _The Four Georges_ (printed).
+        Sir W. Napier died.
+
+  1861. Matthew Arnold: _On Translating Homer_.
+        George Eliot: _Silas Marner_.
+        Maine: _Ancient Law_.
+        May: _Constitutional History of England_ (finished 1863).
+        Mill: _Representative Government_.
+        Charles Reade: _The Cloister and the Hearth_.
+        D. G. Rossetti: _The Early Italian Poets_.
+        Thackeray: _The Adventures of Philip_ (finished 1862).
+        Trollope: _Framley Parsonage_.
+        E. Barrett Browning died.
+
+  1862. Alfred Austin: _The Human Tragedy_.
+        Colenso: _The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Examined_
+            (finished 1879).
+        George Meredith: _Modern Love, and Poems of the English
+            Roadside, with Poems and Ballads_.
+        Mill: _Utilitarianism_.
+        Christina Rossetti: _Goblin Market, and other Poems_.
+        Henry Taylor: _St. Clement's Eve_.
+        Buckle died.
+
+  1863. George Eliot: _Romola_.
+        Freeman: _History of Federal Government_.
+        Kinglake: _The Invasion of the Crimea_ (finished 1887).
+        Lyell: _The Antiquity of Man_.
+        George Macdonald: _David Elginbrod_.
+        Margaret Oliphant: _Chronicles of Carlingford_ (begun).
+        Thackeray died.
+        Whately died.
+
+  1864. Robert Browning: _Dramatis Personæ_.
+        Dickens: _Our Mutual Friend_ (finished 1865).
+        Newman: _Apologia pro Vita Sua_.
+        Herbert Spencer: _Principles of Biology_ (finished 1867).
+        Tennyson: _Enoch Arden_.
+        Landor died.
+
+  1865. Matthew Arnold: _Essays in Criticism_ (collected).
+        Lewis Carroll: _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_.
+        Grote: _Plato and the other Companions of Socrates_.
+        Lecky: _History of Rationalism_.
+        Lightfoot: _St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians_.
+        George Meredith: _Rhoda Fleming_.
+        Ruskin: _Ethics of the Dust_.
+        Ruskin: _Sesame and Lilies_.
+        Seeley: _Ecce Homo!_
+        Swinburne: _Atalanta in Calydon_.
+        Swinburne: _Chastelard_.
+        Aytoun died.
+        Mrs. Gaskell died.
+
+  1866. Matthew Arnold: _Thyrsis_.
+        Lord de Tabley: _Philoctetes_.
+        Mrs. Gaskell: _Wives and Daughters_.
+        Charles Kingsley: _Hereward the Wake_.
+        Charles Reade: _Griffith Gaunt_.
+        Christina Rossetti: _The Prince's Progress, and other Poems_.
+        Ruskin: _Crown of Wild Olive_.
+        Swinburne: _Poems and Ballads_.
+        Keble died.
+        Whewell died.
+
+  1867. Matthew Arnold: _New Poems_.
+        Bagehot: _The English Constitution_.
+        Lord de Tabley: _Orestes_.
+        Freeman: _History of the Norman Conquest_ (finished 1876).
+        Froude: _Short Studies on Great Subjects_ (last series, 1883).
+        William Morris: _The Life and Death of Jason_.
+        Thackeray: _Denis Duval_.
+        Trollope: _The Last Chronicle of Barset_.
+        Alex. Smith died.
+
+  1868. Robert Browning: _The Ring and the Book_ (finished 1869).
+        George Eliot: _The Spanish Gypsy_.
+        Lightfoot: _St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians_.
+        William Morris: _The Earthly Paradise_ (finished 1870).
+        Milman died.
+
+  1869. Matthew Arnold: _Culture and Anarchy_.
+        Blackmore: _Lorna Doone_.
+        Lecky: _History of European Morals_.
+        George Macdonald: _Robert Falconer_.
+        Mill: _The Subjection of Women_.
+        Tennyson: _The Holy Grail, and other Poems_.
+        Wallace: _The Malay Archipelago_.
+
+  1870. Matthew Arnold: _St. Paul and Protestantism_.
+        Dickens: _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_.
+        Disraeli: _Lothair_.
+        Huxley: _Lay Sermons_.
+        Newman: _Grammar of Assent_.
+        D. G. Rossetti: _Poems_.
+        Dickens died.
+
+
+
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS.
+
+
+  ADAMS, SARAH FLOWER                           1805-1848
+
+  AINSWORTH, WILLIAM HARRISON                   1805-1882
+
+  ALISON, SIR ARCHIBALD                         1792-1867
+
+  ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM                            1824-1889
+
+  ARNOLD, MATTHEW                               1822-1888
+
+  ARNOLD, THOMAS                                1795-1842
+
+  AUSTIN, JOHN                                  1790-1859
+
+  AYTOUN, WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE                  1813-1865
+
+  BAILEY, PHILIP JAMES                          1816-1902
+
+  BARHAM, RICHARD HARRIS                        1788-1845
+
+  BARNES, WILLIAM                               1801-1886
+
+  BATES, HENRY WALTER                           1825-1892
+
+  BLACKIE, JOHN STUART                          1809-1895
+
+  BLANCHARD, SAMUEL LAMAN                       1804-1845
+
+  BORROW, GEORGE                                1803-1881
+
+  BOSWORTH, JOSEPH                              1789-1876
+
+  BRONTË, ANNE                                  1820-1849
+
+  BRONTË, CHARLOTTE                             1816-1855
+
+  BRONTË, EMILY JANE                            1818-1848
+
+  BROUGH, ROBERT BARNABAS                       1828-1860
+
+  BROWN, DR. JOHN                               1810-1882
+
+  BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT                   1806-1861
+
+  BROWNING, ROBERT                              1812-1889
+
+  BUCKLE, HENRY THOMAS                          1821-1862
+
+  BURTON, JOHN HILL                             1809-1881
+
+  CAIRNES, JOHN ELLIOT                          1823-1875
+
+  CALVERLEY, CHARLES STUART                     1831-1884
+
+  CARLETON, WILLIAM                             1794-1869
+
+  CARLYLE, THOMAS                               1795-1881
+
+  CHAMBERS, ROBERT                              1802-1871
+
+  CHAMIER, FREDERICK                            1796-1870
+
+  CLARK, WILLIAM GEORGE                         1821-1878
+
+  CLARKE, CHARLES COWDEN                        1787-1877
+
+  CLARKE, MARY COWDEN                           1809-1897
+
+  CLOUGH, ARTHUR HUGH                           1819-1861
+
+  COLENSO, JOHN WILLIAM                         1814-1883
+
+  COLERIDGE, HARTLEY                            1796-1849
+
+  COLERIDGE, SARA                               1802-1852
+
+  COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE                           1789-1883
+
+  COLLINS, MORTIMER                             1827-1876
+
+  COLLINS, WILLIAM WILKIE                       1824-1889
+
+  CONINGTON, JOHN                               1825-1869
+
+  CORY, WILLIAM                                 1823-1892
+
+  CRAIK, DINAH MARIA                            1826-1887
+
+  CROKER, THOMAS CROFTON                        1798-1854
+
+  DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT                        1809-1882
+
+  DE MORGAN, AUGUSTUS                           1806-1871
+
+  DE TABLEY, J. B. LEICESTER WARREN, LORD       1835-1895
+
+  DE VERE, AUBREY                               1814-1902
+
+  DICKENS, CHARLES                              1812-1870
+
+  DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD      1804-1881
+
+  DOBELL, SYDNEY THOMPSON                       1824-1874
+
+  DOYLE, SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS                   1810-1888
+
+  DUFFERIN, HELEN SELINA SHERIDAN, LADY         1807-1867
+
+  DYCE, ALEXANDER                               1798-1869
+
+  ELIOT, GEORGE                                 1819-1880
+
+  FERGUSON, SIR SAMUEL                          1810-1886
+
+  FERRIER, JAMES FREDERICK                      1808-1864
+
+  FINLAY, GEORGE                                1799-1875
+
+  FITZGERALD, EDWARD                            1809-1883
+
+  FORSTER, JOHN                                 1812-1876
+
+  FROUDE, RICHARD HURRELL                       1803-1836
+
+  FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY                         1818-1894
+
+  GASKELL, ELIZABETH CLEGHORN                   1810-1865
+
+  GLADSTONE, WILLIAM EWART                      1809-1898
+
+  GLASCOCK, WILLIAM NUGENT                      1787?-1867
+
+  GORDON, ADAM LINDSAY                          1833-1870
+
+  GRANT, JAMES                                  1822-1887
+
+  GRAY, DAVID                                   1838-1861
+
+  GREENWELL, DORA                               1821-1882
+
+  GROTE, GEORGE                                 1794-1871
+
+  HALLAM, ARTHUR HENRY                          1811-1833
+
+  HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS, JAMES ORCHARD            1820-1889
+
+  HAMILTON, SIR WILLIAM                         1788-1856
+
+  HANNAY, JAMES                                 1827-1873
+
+  HAWKER, ROBERT STEPHEN                        1803-1875
+
+  HELPS, SIR ARTHUR                             1813-1875
+
+  HINCKS, EDWARD                                1792-1866
+
+  HOOD, THOMAS                                  1799-1845
+
+  HOOK, THEODORE EDWARD                         1788-1841
+
+  HOOK, WALTER FARQUHAR                         1798-1875
+
+  HORNE, RICHARD HENGIST                        1803-1884
+
+  INGELOW, JEAN                                 1820-1897
+
+  JAMES, GEORGE PAINE RAINSFORD                 1801-1860
+
+  JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL                        1794-1860
+
+  JERROLD, DOUGLAS WILLIAM                      1803-1857
+
+  JONES, EBENEZER                               1820-1860
+
+  JOWETT, BENJAMIN                              1817-1893
+
+  KAYE, SIR JOHN WILLIAM                        1814-1876
+
+  KEBLE, JOHN                                   1792-1866
+
+  KINGLAKE, ALEXANDER WILLIAM                   1809-1891
+
+  KINGSLEY, CHARLES                             1819-1875
+
+  KINGSLEY, HENRY                               1830-1876
+
+  LANDON, LETITIA ELIZABETH                     1802-1838
+
+  LANE, EDWARD WILLIAM                          1801-1876
+
+  LAWRENCE, GEORGE ALFRED                       1827-1876
+
+  LAYARD, SIR AUSTEN HENRY                      1817-1894
+
+  LEAR, EDWARD                                  1812-1888
+
+  LEVER, CHARLES JAMES                          1806-1872
+
+  LEWES, GEORGE HENRY                           1817-1878
+
+  LEWIS, SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL                   1806-1863
+
+  LIVINGSTONE, DAVID                            1813-1873
+
+  LOCKER-LAMPSON, FREDERICK                     1821-1895
+
+  LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON                         1794-1854
+
+  LOVER, SAMUEL                                 1797-1868
+
+  LYELL, SIR CHARLES                            1797-1875
+
+  LYTTON, EDWARD BULWER, LORD                   1803-1873
+
+  LYTTON, EDWARD ROBERT, LORD                   1831-1891
+
+  MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON                    1800-1859
+
+  McCLINTOCK, SIR FRANCIS LEOPOLD               1819-
+
+  MADDEN, SIR FREDERICK                         1801-1873
+
+  MAGINN, WILLIAM                               1793-1842
+
+  MAHONY, FRANCIS SYLVESTER                     1804-1866
+
+  MAINE, SIR HENRY JAMES SUMNER                 1822-1888
+
+  MANGAN, JAMES CLARENCE                        1803-1849
+
+  MANSEL, HENRY LONGUEVILLE                     1820-1871
+
+  MARRYAT, FREDERICK                            1792-1848
+
+  MARSTON, JOHN WESTLAND                        1819-1890
+
+  MARTINEAU, HARRIET                            1802-1876
+
+  MASSEY, GERALD                                1828-1907
+
+  MAURICE, JOHN FREDERICK DENISON               1805-1872
+
+  MAXWELL, WILLIAM HAMILTON                     1792-1850
+
+  MERIVALE, CHARLES                             1808-1893
+
+  MILL, JOHN STUART                             1806-1873
+
+  MILLER, HUGH                                  1802-1856
+
+  MILMAN, HENRY HART                            1791-1868
+
+  MILNES, RICHARD MONCKTON, LORD HOUGHTON       1809-1885
+
+  MORRIS, WILLIAM                               1834-1896
+
+  MOTHERWELL, WILLIAM                           1797-1835
+
+  MUNRO, HUGH ANDREW JOHNSTONE                  1819-1885
+
+  NEALE, JOHN MASON                             1818-1866
+
+  NEWMAN, FRANCIS WILLIAM                       1805-1897
+
+  NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY                            1801-1890
+
+  NORTON, HON. MRS.                             1808-1877
+
+  OUTRAM, GEORGE                                1805-1856
+
+  OWEN, SIR RICHARD                             1804-1892
+
+  PALGRAVE, SIR FRANCIS                         1788-1861
+
+  PATMORE, COVENTRY                             1823-1896
+
+  PATTISON, MARK                                1813-1884
+
+  PLANCHÉ, JAMES ROBINSON                       1796-1880
+
+  PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH                     1802-1839
+
+  PROCTER, ADELAIDE ANNE                        1825-1864
+
+  PUSEY, EDWARD BOUVERIE                        1800-1882
+
+  RANDS, WILLIAM BRIGHTY                        1823-1882
+
+  RAWLINSON, SIR HENRY CRESWICKE                1810-1895
+
+  READE, CHARLES                                1814-1884
+
+  REYNOLDS, JOHN HAMILTON                       1796-1852
+
+  ROBERTSON, FREDERICK WILLIAM                  1816-1853
+
+  ROSCOE, WILLIAM CALDWELL                      1823-1859
+
+  ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA GEORGINA                  1830-1894
+
+  ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL                       1828-1882
+
+  RUSKIN, JOHN                                  1819-1900
+
+  SCOTT, MICHAEL                                1789-1835
+
+  SCOTT, WILLIAM BELL                           1811-1890
+
+  SENIOR, NASSAU W.                             1790-1864
+
+  SMEDLEY, MENELLA BUTE                         1820-1877
+
+  SMITH, ALEXANDER                              1829-1867
+
+  SPENCER, HERBERT                              1820-1903
+
+  STANHOPE, PHILIP HENRY, EARL                  1805-1875
+
+  STANLEY, ARTHUR PENRHYN                       1815-1881
+
+  STERLING, JOHN                                1806-1844
+
+  STIRLING-MAXWELL, SIR WILLIAM                 1818-1878
+
+  STRICKLAND, AGNES                             1806-1874
+
+  TALFOURD, SIR THOMAS NOON                     1795-1854
+
+  TAYLOR, SIR HENRY                             1800-1886
+
+  TAYLOR, TOM                                   1817-1880
+
+  TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD                        1809-1892
+
+  THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE                  1811-1863
+
+  THIRLWALL, CONNOP                             1797-1875
+
+  THOM, WILLIAM                                 1798-1848
+
+  THORNBURY, GEORGE WALTER                      1828-1876
+
+  TRENCH, RICHARD CHENEVIX                      1807-1886
+
+  TROLLOPE, ANTHONY                             1815-1882
+
+  TUPPER, MARTIN FARQUHAR                       1810-1889
+
+  TURNER, CHARLES TENNYSON                      1808-1879
+
+  WADE, THOMAS                                  1805-1875
+
+  WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL                        1822-
+
+  WARD, WILLIAM GEORGE                          1812-1882
+
+  WARREN, SAMUEL                                1807-1877
+
+  WHATELY, RICHARD                              1787-1863
+
+  WHITEHEAD, CHARLES                            1804-1862
+
+  WHEWELL, WILLIAM                              1794-1866
+
+  WHYTE-MELVILLE, GEORGE JOHN                   1821-1878
+
+  WILBERFORCE, SAMUEL                           1805-1873
+
+  WOOD, MRS. HENRY                              1814-1887
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  _Adam Bede_, 264, 267.
+
+  Adams, Sarah Flower, 256.
+
+  _Advent Sunday_, 244.
+
+  _Adventures of Philip, The_, 93.
+
+  _Agamemnon_, 237.
+
+  _Age of Queen Anne, The_, 141.
+
+  _Agnes Grey_, 102.
+
+  Ainsworth, W. H., 71;
+    Scott's criticism on, 77-78.
+
+  _Alfred Hagart's Household_, 249.
+
+  Alison, Sir Archibald, 140, 141.
+
+  Allingham, William, 256.
+
+  _All the Year Round_, 85.
+
+  _Alton Locke_, 3, 269, 270.
+
+  _American Iliad in a Nutshell, The_, 21.
+
+  _American Notes_, 84.
+
+  _Amours de Voyage_, 220.
+
+  _Ancient Law_, 134-135.
+
+  _Andrea del Sarto_, 231.
+
+  _Andromeda_, 271.
+
+  _Angel in the House, The_, 251.
+
+  _Annals of the Parish_, 161.
+
+  _Annuity, The_, 61.
+
+  _Antiquity of Man, The_, 178.
+
+  _Apologia pro Vita Sua_, 9, 146, 148, 149, 153.
+
+  _Aratra Pentelici_, 196.
+
+  _Archbishops of Canterbury, Lives of the_, 141-142.
+
+  _Arethusa, The_, 80.
+
+  _Ariadne Florentina_, 196.
+
+  _Arians of the Fourth Century, The_, 147.
+
+  _Aristophanes' Apology_, 232.
+
+  Arnold, Matthew, 40, 69, 122, 191, 192;
+    his prose, 203-209;
+    and French literature, 205-206;
+    on Gambetta, 205;
+    on the classics, 205, 206;
+    and Carlyle, 205, 206-207;
+    his theological writings, 208-209;
+    his poetry, 214-219;
+    its critical aspect, 214-215;
+    his elegiacs, 216;
+    and Wordsworth, 216-217;
+    his dramatic poems, 217-218;
+    his narrative poems, 218;
+    244.
+
+  Arnold, Thomas, 17, 120, 121-123, 140, 157-158.
+
+  _Arnold, Life of Thomas_, 139, 140.
+
+  _Artists of Spain, Annals of the_, 142.
+
+  _Art of England, The_, 196,
+
+  'As I laye a-thynkynge,' 59.
+
+  _Asolando_, 232, 233.
+
+  _Atalanta in Calydon_, 253, 254.
+
+  _Athens, its Rise and Fall_, 71.
+
+  _Auguste Comte and Positivism_, 162.
+
+  _Aurora Leigh_, 234, 235.
+
+  Austin, Charles, 111, 160.
+
+  Austin, John, 160-161.
+
+  _Autobiography of J. S. Mill_, 135, 162.
+
+  _Autobiography of Anthony Trollope_, 272.
+
+  _Aylmer's Field_, 224.
+
+  Aytoun, W. E., 246.
+
+
+  Bailey, Philip James, 52, 63-64.
+
+  Baillie, Joanna, 46.
+
+  _Balaustion's Adventure_, 232.
+
+  _Balder_, 247-248.
+
+  _Balder Dead_, 217, 218.
+
+  _Ballad of Bouillabaisse, The_, 97.
+
+  _Ballad of Harlaw_, Scott's, 119.
+
+  _Ballads and Sonnets_, 241.
+
+  _Ballads of Policeman X, The_, 91, 94.
+
+  _Barchester Towers_, 272.
+
+  Barham, R. H., 58.
+
+  _Barnaby Rudge_, 87.
+
+  Barnes, William, 65-66.
+
+  _Barry Lyndon_, 91, 97.
+
+  Bates, H. W., 189.
+
+  _Battle of Naseby_, 119.
+
+  _Becket_, 74, 226-227.
+
+  _Bells and Pomegranates_, 7, 45.
+
+  _Ben Brace_, 80.
+
+  Bentham, Jeremy, 160, 162-163.
+
+  _Bertha in the Lane_, 236.
+
+  _Bible in Spain, The_, 212.
+
+  _Biographical History of Philosophy, A_, 169.
+
+  _Bishop Blougram_, 231.
+
+  Blackie, John Stuart, 256.
+
+  Blanchard, Laman, 57.
+
+  _Blessed Damozel, The_, 241, 243.
+
+  _Blind Boy's Pranks, The_, 61.
+
+  _Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady_, 70.
+
+  _Bon Gaultier Ballads_, 246.
+
+  _Book Hunter, The_, 141.
+
+  _Book of Snobs, The_, 91, 95.
+
+  Borrow, George, 212.
+
+  Bosworth, Joseph, 211.
+
+  _Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, The_, 220.
+
+  _Bridge of Sighs, The_, 56.
+
+  Brontë, Anne, 100, 102.
+
+  Brontë, Charlotte, 100-102, 103-106;
+    and Thackeray, 105;
+    and Mrs. Gaskell, 106, 107.
+
+  Brontë, Emily Jane, 100, 101, 102-103.
+
+  _Brontë, Life of Charlotte_, 106.
+
+  Brough, R. B., 257.
+
+  Brown, Dr. John, 210, 244.
+
+  Browning, E. B., 44, 119, 233-236, 242;
+    and Christina Rossetti, 245.
+
+  Browning Robert, 11, 43-51;
+    life, 43-44;
+    his relation to contemporaries, 44-45;
+    and Shelley, 45;
+    his dramatic experiments, 46-48;
+    his dramatic monologues, 48-50;
+    and Carlyle, 50-51;
+    220, 228-233;
+    and religious controversy, 228-229;
+    his self-revelation, 230;
+    his love-poems, 230-231;
+    his closing period, 231-233;
+    244.
+
+  Buckle, Henry Thomas, 110, 133-134.
+
+  _Budget of Paradoxes, A_, 176.
+
+  Burns, Robert, 239.
+
+  Burton, John Hill, 141.
+
+  Byron, Lord, 1, 36, 37, 46.
+
+
+  _Cadyow Castle_, 119.
+
+  Cairnes, J. E., 165.
+
+  Calderon, 237.
+
+  _Callista_, 269.
+
+  Calverley, C. S. 257.
+
+  _Cardinal Richelieu_, 74.
+
+  Carleton, William, 98-99.
+
+  Carlyle, Thomas, 12-35;
+    his life, 12-16;
+    his relation to contemporaries, 16-18;
+    and Mill, 17, 18, 24;
+    unity of his work, 18;
+    on Burns, 19;
+    on Scott, 19;
+    on Goethe, 20;
+    his choice of historical subjects, 20-22;
+    and German thought, 23;
+    his treatment of facts, 27;
+    of social and political problems, 30-33;
+    and Fletcher of Saltoun, 32;
+    his critical writings, 33-34;
+    his style, 34-35;
+    and Browning, 50-51; 72;
+    118;
+    and Macaulay, 119-120;
+    205;
+    and Matthew Arnold, 206-207.
+
+  _Carlyle, Life of Thomas_, 135.
+
+  _Carmina Crucis_, 259.
+
+  _Casa Guidi Windows_, 234, 235.
+
+  _Cavaliers and Roundheads_, 210.
+
+  _Cavalier Song_, 61.
+
+  _Caxtons, The_, 73.
+
+  _Cenci, The_, 46.
+
+  _Chaldee Manuscript, The_, 136.
+
+  Chambers, Robert, 180-181.
+
+  Chamier, F., 80.
+
+  _Characteristics of Shakespeare's Women_, 193.
+
+  CHARLES O'MALLEY, 99.
+
+  _Chartism_, 15, 30, 32.
+
+  _Child's Grave at Florence, A_, 234, 235, 236.
+
+  _Christianity under the Empire, History of_, 126-127.
+
+  Christian Socialism, 157.
+
+  _Christie Johnstone_, 274, 276.
+
+  _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, 220, 228
+
+  _Chronicle of the Drum, The_, 97.
+
+  _Church of Brou, The_, 217.
+
+  _City Poems_, 250.
+
+  _Claims of the Bible and of Science, The_, 157.
+
+  Clark, W. G., 193.
+
+  Clarke, C. Cowden, 193.
+
+  Clarke, M. Cowden, 193.
+
+  _Cloister Life of Charles V., The_, 142.
+
+  Clough, A. H., 158, 219-220, 244.
+
+  _Clytemnestra_, 252.
+
+  _Codlingsby_, 94.
+
+  Colenso, J. W., 159.
+
+  Coleridge, Hartley, 59-60.
+
+  Coleridge, Henry Nelson, 61.
+
+  Coleridge, S. T., 156.
+
+  Coleridge, Sara, 61.
+
+  Collier, J. P., 192-193.
+
+  Collins, Mortimer, 257.
+
+  Collins, Wilkie, 273.
+
+  Colman, George, 83.
+
+  _Columbus_, 225.
+
+  _Comic Annual, Hood's_, 55.
+
+  _Coming Race, The_, 74.
+
+  Comte, 168, 169.
+
+  _Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences_, 169.
+
+  _Concordance to Shakespeare_, 193.
+
+  _Congal_, 258.
+
+  _Coningsby_, 75, 76.
+
+  Conington, John, 211.
+
+  _Contarini Fleming_, 75.
+
+  Cooper, Fenimore, 80.
+
+  _Cornhill Magazine, The_, 93.
+
+  _Cornish Ballads_, 259.
+
+  _Corn Law Rhymes_, 3.
+
+  Cory, William, 257.
+
+  _Cosmo de' Medici_, 64.
+
+  Craik, Dinah Maria, 269.
+
+  _Cranford_, 107.
+
+  _Critical and Historical Essays_ (Macaulay's), 114, 118.
+
+  Criticism, Journalistic, 191-192.
+
+  Croker, Crofton, 70.
+
+  _Cromwell_, 15, 28.
+
+  _Cruise of the Midge, The_, 80.
+
+  _Cry of the Children, The_, 3, 236.
+
+
+  _Daniel Deronda_, 262, 264, 266, 268.
+
+  _Dante and his Circle_, 241.
+
+  _Dante Gabriel Rossetti_ (Sharp's), 241.
+
+  Darwin, Charles, 170, 172, 177, 178, 180, 181-189;
+    and A. R. Wallace, 183, 186, 189;
+    198.
+
+  _David Copperfield_, 82, 85.
+
+  _Death-Bed, The_, 56.
+
+  _Death in the Desert, A_, 229, 230.
+
+  _Death of Marlowe, The_, 64.
+
+  _Death of OEnone, The_, 227.
+
+  _Deerbrook_, 168.
+
+  _Defence of Guenevere, The_, 255.
+
+  _Defence of Lucknow, The_, 221.
+
+  _Demeter_, 227.
+
+  Democratic Movement, The, 2-5.
+
+  De Morgan, A., 176.
+
+  _Denis Duval_, 93.
+
+  De Quincey, 153, 199, 200.
+
+  _Descent of Man, The_, 186.
+
+  De Tabley, Lord, 253-254.
+
+  _Development of Christian Doctrine, The_, 148.
+
+  De Vere, Aubrey, 261.
+
+  _Diamond Necklace, The_, 14.
+
+  _Diary of a late Physician, The_, 81.
+
+  Dickens, Charles, 69, 82-90;
+    his life, 82-85;
+    and George Colman, 83;
+    his public readings, 85;
+    his characters, 86-88;
+    his humour and pathos, 88-89;
+    262.
+
+  _Dickens, Life of_, 141.
+
+  _Dipsychus_, 220.
+
+  _Discourses in America_, 203, 204.
+
+  _Discussions on Philosophy and Literature_, 167.
+
+  Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, 71, 75-78.
+
+  Dobell, Sydney, 247-249.
+
+  _Doctor Thorne_, 272.
+
+  _Doctrine of Sacrifice, The_, 157.
+
+  _Don John of Austria_, 142.
+
+  _Dover Beach_, 217.
+
+  Doyle, Sir F. H., 258.
+
+  _Dramatic Lyrics_, 45.
+
+  _Dramatic Romances_, 45.
+
+  _Dramatis Personæ_, 49, 229, 231.
+
+  _Dream of Fair Women, A_, 40.
+
+  _Dream of Gerontius, The_, 148.
+
+  _Dreamthorp_, 249.
+
+  _Drink_, 274.
+
+  _Duchess de la Vallière, The_, 74.
+
+  Dufferin, Lady, 260.
+
+  Dyce, Alexander, 193.
+
+
+  _Eagle's Nest, The_, 196.
+
+  _Early History of Institutions, The_, 135.
+
+  _Early Italian Poets, The_, 241.
+
+  _Earthly Paradise, The_, 255.
+
+  _Easter Day, Naples_, 219.
+
+  _Eastern Church, Lectures on the_, 140.
+
+  _East Lynne_, 269.
+
+  _Edwin of Deira_, 250.
+
+  _Edwin the Fair_, 62.
+
+  Eliot, George, and Mrs. Gaskell, 108;
+    262-268;
+    and G. H. Lewes, 263-264;
+    Edmond Scherer on, 265.
+
+  _Eliot, Life of Sir John_, 141.
+
+  _Emma_, 103.
+
+  _Empedocles on Etna_, 214, 217.
+
+  _End of the Play, The_, 98.
+
+  _England, History of_ (Froude's), 128-130.
+
+  _England, History of_ (Macaulay's), 116-119.
+
+  _England, History of_ (Stanhope's), 142.
+
+  _England in Time of War_, 247, 249.
+
+  _English Commonwealth, Rise and Progress of the_, 142.
+
+  _English Dramatic Poetry, History of_, 192.
+
+  _English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, The_, 92, 114.
+
+  _English Idylls_, 224.
+
+  _English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, The_, 130-131.
+
+  _English Past and Present_, 211.
+
+  _Enquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History, An_, 169.
+
+  _Enid_, 224.
+
+  _Eothen_, 132.
+
+  _Epilogue to Lessing's Laocoön_, 204.
+
+  _Epistles to the Corinthians, Commentary on the_, 140.
+
+  _Erasmus_, 131.
+
+  Erskine, Thomas, of Linlathen, 156.
+
+  _Esmond_, 87, 91, 92, 95-96.
+
+  _Essay on Mind_, 234.
+
+  _Essays and Reviews_, 124, 158-159.
+
+  _Essays in Criticism_, 204, 205, 207.
+
+  _Essence of Christianity, The_, 263.
+
+  _Etonian, The_, 57.
+
+  _Eugene Aram_, 72.
+
+  _Eugene Aram's Dream_, 55.
+
+  _Euphranor_, 237.
+
+  _Europe during the French Revolution, History of_, 141.
+
+  Evans, Mary Ann. _See_ Eliot, George.
+
+  _Evening Dream, An_, 249.
+
+  _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, An_, 162, 164.
+
+  _Expansion of England, The_, 131.
+
+  _Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, The_, 187.
+
+
+  _Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland_, 70.
+
+  _Falcon, The_, 227.
+
+  _Falkland_, 71-72.
+
+  _Felix Holt_, 264, 266.
+
+  Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 258.
+
+  _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 232.
+
+  Ferrier, J. F., 167-168.
+
+  _Fertilisation of Orchids, The_, 185.
+
+  _Fifine at the Fair_, 232.
+
+  Finlay, George, 127.
+
+  _Firmilian_, 246.
+
+  _First Principles_, 172.
+
+  Fitzgerald, Edward, 42, 236-239.
+
+  _Fleshly School of Poetry, The_, 241.
+
+  Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 32.
+
+  _Fly Leaves_, 257.
+
+  _Footprints of the Creator_, 179.
+
+  _Foresters, The_, 227.
+
+  _Forsaken Merman, The_, 217.
+
+  _Fors Clavigera_, 201.
+
+  _Forster, John_, 85, 141.
+
+  _Four Georges, The_, 92, 93, 94.
+
+  _Fra Lippo Lippi_, 231.
+
+  _Framley Parsonage_, 272.
+
+  Fraser, Hugh, 70.
+
+  _Fraser's Magazine_, 69-70.
+
+  _Frederick the Great_, 15, 16, 28-30.
+
+  Freeman, E. A., 117, 130.
+
+  French Revolution, The, 1-2, 37.
+
+  _French Revolution, History of the_, 14, 15, 26-28, 29, 84.
+
+  _Friends in Council_, 194.
+
+  Froude, Hurrell, 145, 147.
+
+  Froude, J. A., 127-132;
+    and Freeman, 130;
+    on Carlyle, 131;
+    146, 152.
+
+
+  Galt, John, 161.
+
+  Garnett, Dr. Richard, quoted, 248.
+
+  Gaskell, E. C., 106-108;
+    George Sand on, 107;
+    and Charlotte Brontë, 106, 107;
+    and George Eliot, 108.
+
+  _Geoffrey Hamlyn_, 271.
+
+  _Germ, The_, 240, 244.
+
+  _German Romance_, 13.
+
+  _Gipsies in Spain, The_, 212.
+
+  _Gladiators, The_, 273.
+
+  Gladstone, W. E., 211.
+
+  Glascock, W. N., 80.
+
+  _Glasgow_, 250.
+
+  _Goblin Market_, 244, 246.
+
+  _Goethe, Life of_, 169.
+
+  _Gold_, 274.
+
+  _Goldsmith, Life of_, 141.
+
+  Gordon, A. L., 258.
+
+  _Grammar of Assent, Essay in Aid of a_, 148.
+
+  _Grandmother, The_, 225.
+
+  Grant, James, 273.
+
+  Gray, David, 258.
+
+  _Great Hoggarty Diamond, The_, 91.
+
+  _Greece, History of_ (Finlay's), 127.
+
+  _Greece, History of_ (Grote's), 125-126.
+
+  _Greece, History of_ (Thirlwall's), 124.
+
+  Greenwell, Dora, 259.
+
+  _Gregory VII._, 64.
+
+  _Griffith Gaunt_, 276.
+
+  Grote, George, 122, 125-126.
+
+  _Gulliver's Travels_, 98.
+
+  _Guy Livingstone_, 273.
+
+
+  Hallam, A. H., 38.
+
+  Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., 193.
+
+  Hamilton, Sir William, 167.
+
+  Hamilton, Sir W. Rowan, 176.
+
+  _Hand and Soul_, 241.
+
+  _Handy Andy_, 99.
+
+  Hannay, James, 80-81.
+
+  _Hard Cash_, 275.
+
+  _Harold_, 226.
+
+  _Harry Lorrequer_, 99.
+
+  _Haunted House, The_, 56.
+
+  Hawker, R. S., 259.
+
+  Helps, Sir Arthur, 194.
+
+  Hemans, Felicia, 52, 53.
+
+  _Henrietta Temple_, 76.
+
+  _Henry Holbeach_, 210.
+
+  _Hereward the Wake_, 270.
+
+  _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, 15.
+
+  Hincks, Edward, 212.
+
+  _Holy Grail, The_, 224.
+
+  _Hood's Magazine_, 56.
+
+  Hood, Thomas, 54-56;
+    and Praed, 57-58.
+
+  Hook, Theodore, 70.
+
+  Hook, W. F., 141-142.
+
+  Horace, 238, 239.
+
+  _Horæ Subsecivæ_, 210.
+
+  Horne, R. H., 64-65.
+
+  _Horton_, 250.
+
+  _Household Words_, 85.
+
+  Howells, Mr. W. D., quoted, 241.
+
+  Huxley, Thomas, 180, 184.
+
+  _Hymn to Astarte_, 254.
+
+  _Hypatia_, 270.
+
+
+  _Ideal of a Christian Church, The_, 146.
+
+  _Idylls of the King_, 222-224.
+
+  _In a Balcony_, 45.
+
+  _In a Gondola_, 49.
+
+  _Inductive Sciences, History of the_, 166.
+
+  _Inductive Sciences, Philosophy of The_, 166.
+
+  _Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion, The_, 170.
+
+  Ingelow, Jean, 259.
+
+  _Ingoldsby Legends, The_, 58.
+
+  _In Memoriam_, 38, 39, 220-221.
+
+  _Inn Album, The_, 232.
+
+  _Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity_, 263.
+
+  _Insectivorous Plants_, 187.
+
+  _Invasion of the Crimea, The_, 132-133.
+
+  _Ionica_, 257.
+
+  _Irish Sketch Book, The_, 91.
+
+  _Isaac Comnenus_, 62.
+
+  _Is it all Vanity?_, 75.
+
+  _Ismail and other Poems_, 71.
+
+  _It is Never Too Late to Mend_, 274, 275, 276.
+
+
+  _Jael_, 254.
+
+  James, G. P. R., 71, 78-79.
+
+  _James Lee's Wife_, 230.
+
+  Jameson, Anna, 193.
+
+  _Jane Eyre_, 100, 102, 103, 104, 137.
+
+  _Jeanie Morison_, 61.
+
+  Jerrold, Douglas, 47.
+
+  _Jewish Church, Lectures on the_, 140.
+
+  _Jews, History of the_, 126.
+
+  _John Halifax, Gentleman_, 269.
+
+  Jones, Ebenezer, 66-67.
+
+  Jowett, Benjamin, 158.
+
+  _Julius Cæsar_, 131.
+
+  _Jurisprudence, Lectures on_, 161.
+
+  _Justification, Lectures on_, 147.
+
+  _Juventus Mundi_, 211.
+
+
+  _Karshish_, 229.
+
+  Kaye, Sir J. W., 142.
+
+  Keble, John, 144-145, 147.
+
+  _Keith of Ravelston_, 249.
+
+  _Kenelm Chillingly_, 73.
+
+  _King Arthur_, 74.
+
+  _Kingdom of Christ, The_, 157.
+
+  Kinglake, A. W., 132-133.
+
+  Kingsley, Charles, 155, 157, 262, 269-271.
+
+  Kingsley, Henry, 271.
+
+  _King's Tragedy, The_, 241, 243.
+
+  _Knight's Quarterly Magazine_, 57.
+
+  Knowles, James Sheridan, 46.
+
+
+  _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, 234, 236.
+
+  _Lady of Lyons, The_, 74.
+
+  _Lady of Shalott, The_, 222.
+
+  Lamarck, 188.
+
+  Lancaster, William, pseudonym for Lord de Tabley, _q. v._
+
+  Landon, L. E., 52, 53.
+
+  _Landor, Life of_, 141.
+
+  Lane, E. W., 212.
+
+  _La Saisiaz_, 228, 229, 232.
+
+  _Last Confession, A_, 242.
+
+  _Last Chronicle of Barset, The_, 272.
+
+  _Last Days of Pompeii, The_, 72.
+
+  _Last Essays on Church and Religion_, 203.
+
+  _Last of the Barons, The_, 72, 73.
+
+  _Last Tournament, The_, 224.
+
+  _Latin Christianity, History of_, 127.
+
+  _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, 15, 16, 30, 32.
+
+  _Lavengro_, 212.
+
+  Lawrence, G. A., 273.
+
+  Layard, Sir A. H., 211.
+
+  _Lay of Elena, The_, 63.
+
+  _Lay of the Brown Rosary, The_, 236.
+
+  _Lays of Ancient Rome_, 119.
+
+  _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, 58, 246.
+
+  Lear, Edward, 259.
+
+  _Legendary and Historic Ballads_, 261.
+
+  _Legend of Jubal, The_, 264, 265.
+
+  _Legends of the Madonna_, 193.
+
+  _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, 193.
+
+  _Letters of Matthew Arnold_, 40, 122, 205.
+
+  _Letters to a Young Friend_, 124.
+
+  Lever, Charles James, 99-100.
+
+  Lewes, George Henry, 169;
+    and George Eliot, 263-264.
+
+  Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 120, 169-170.
+
+  _Liberty_, 161, 165.
+
+  _Life and Death of Jason, The_, 255.
+
+  _Life Drama, A_, 249-250.
+
+  _Life of Jesus, The_, 263.
+
+  _Lilliput Levée_, 210.
+
+  _Limits of Religious Thought, The_, 168.
+
+  Livingstone, David, 212.
+
+  Locker-Lampson, F., 57.
+
+  Lockhart, J. G., 39, 136-139.
+
+  _Locksley Hall_, 42, 226.
+
+  _Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_, 226.
+
+  _London Magazine_, 55.
+
+  _Lord of Burleigh, The_, 236.
+
+  _Loss and Gain_, 269.
+
+  _Lost Days_, 243.
+
+  _Lost Mistress, The_, 49.
+
+  _Lothair_, 76.
+
+  _Lotos-Eaters, The_, 40, 225.
+
+  _Lovel the Widower_, 91, 93.
+
+  Lover, Samuel, 99.
+
+  _Love's Meinie_, 196.
+
+  _Lucile_, 253.
+
+  _Lucretius_, 224.
+
+  _Luggie, The_, 258.
+
+  _Luria_, 45.
+
+  _Lycus the Centaur_, 55.
+
+  Lyell, Sir Charles, 177-178;
+    and Darwin, 178.
+
+  _Lyra Apostolica_, 147.
+
+  Lytton, Edward Bulwer, first Lord, 47, 71-75;
+    and Byron, 72;
+    and Charles Reade, 73;
+    252.
+
+  Lytton, Edward Robert, Earl of ('Owen Meredith'), 75, 252-253.
+
+
+  Macaulay, T. B., 111-120;
+    his life, 111-114;
+    and Charles Austin, 111;
+    and Carlyle, 119-120.
+
+  McClintock, 212.
+
+  _Macdermotts of Ballycloran, The_, 272.
+
+  Madden, Sir F., 211.
+
+  Maginn, William, 70.
+
+  _Magyar's New-Year-Eve, The_, 249.
+
+  Mahony, Francis, 70.
+
+  Maine, Sir Henry, 134-135.
+
+  _Malay Archipelago, The_, 190.
+
+  Malthus, 1, 165, 183.
+
+  Mangan, James Clarence, 66.
+
+  _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Account of the_, 212.
+
+  Mansel, H. L., 168.
+
+  _Marah_, 252.
+
+  Marryat, Frederick, 71, 79-80;
+    and Smollett, 80;
+    and Fenimore Cooper, 80.
+
+  Marston, J. Westland, 47.
+
+  _Martin Chuzzlewit_, 84.
+
+  Martin, Sir Theodore, 246.
+
+  Martineau, Harriet, 168.
+
+  _Mary Barton_, 106, 107.
+
+  _Masks and Faces_, 274.
+
+  Massey, Gerald, 259.
+
+  _Maud_, 221, 222, 230.
+
+  Maurice, J. F. D., 155-157, 161, 269.
+
+  Maxwell, W. H., 99.
+
+  _Mehrab Khan_, 258.
+
+  Melbourne, Lord, 123.
+
+  _Men and Women_, 45, 49, 229, 231.
+
+  Meredith, Owen. _See_ Lytton, Edward Robert, Earl of.
+
+  Merivale, Charles, 127.
+
+  _Merope_, 217.
+
+  _Metaphysics and Logic, Lectures on_, 167.
+
+  _Middlemarch_, 264, 266, 267, 268.
+
+  Mill, James, 160.
+
+  Mill, John Stuart, 17, 18, 24, 156, 160, 161-166, 167.
+
+  _Mill on the Floss, The_, 264, 267.
+
+  Miller, Hugh, 178-179.
+
+  Milman, H. H., 126-127.
+
+  Milnes, Richard Monckton, Lord Houghton, 58.
+
+  _Mimnermus in Church_, 257.
+
+  _Miss Kilmansegg_, 55, 56.
+
+  _Mr. Minns and his Cousin_, 83.
+
+  Mitford, William, 125.
+
+  _Mixed Essays_, 204.
+
+  _Modern Painters_, 194-195.
+
+  Mommsen, Dr. Theodor, 122, 123.
+
+  _Monna Innominata_, 245.
+
+  _Moonstone, The_, 273.
+
+  _Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy_, 157.
+
+  _Mornings in Florence_, 196.
+
+  Morris, William, 255-256.
+
+  _Morte d'Arthur_, 42, 43, 222, 224.
+
+  Motherwell, William, 61.
+
+  _Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants, The_, 185.
+
+  _Mundi et Cordis Carmina_, 66.
+
+  Munro, H. A. J., 211.
+
+  _Mycerinus_, 215.
+
+  _My Last Duchess_, 231.
+
+  _My Novel_, 73.
+
+  _My Schools and Schoolmasters_, 179.
+
+  _My Sister's Sleep_, 241.
+
+
+  _National Apostasy_, 145.
+
+  _Naturalist on the Amazons, The_, 189.
+
+  _Naturalist's Voyage round the World, A_, 181, 182.
+
+  Neale, John Mason, 127.
+
+  _Nemesis of Faith, The_, 128, 152.
+
+  _Newcomes, The_, 90, 91, 97.
+
+  Newman, F. W., 146.
+
+  Newman, J. H., 17, 146-153, 154, 156, 269.
+
+  _New Poems_, 214.
+
+  _Nicholas Nickleby_, 84.
+
+  Niebuhr, 120, 123.
+
+  _Nigger Question, The_, 15, 21, 32.
+
+  _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, 80.
+
+  _Nonsense Rhymes_, 259.
+
+  _North and South_, 107.
+
+  _Northern Cobbler, The_, 225.
+
+  _Northern Farmer, The_, 225.
+
+  Norton, the Hon. Mrs., 260.
+
+  _Notes and Emendations to the Plays of Shakespeare_, 193.
+
+  _Novum Organum Renovatum_, 166.
+
+
+  _Obermann Once More_, 215, 216.
+
+  _Oceana_, 131.
+
+  _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, 221-222.
+
+  _Odes and Addresses to Great People_, 55.
+
+  _Ode to the North-East Wind_, 270.
+
+  _Old Red Sandstone, The_, 179.
+
+  _Oliver Twist_, 84.
+
+  'O lyric love,' 230.
+
+  Omar Khayyám, 237, 238-239;
+    and Horace, 238-239;
+    and Burns, 239.
+
+  _One Word More_, 230.
+
+  _Orestes_, 253.
+
+  _Origin of Species, The_, 178, 180, 181, 182-185.
+
+  _Our Dogs_, 210.
+
+  _Our Mutual Friend_, 90.
+
+  Outram, George, 61.
+
+  Owen, Sir Richard, 180.
+
+  Oxford Movement, The, 9, 144.
+
+
+  _Pageant, A_, 244.
+
+  _Palace of Art, The_, 40.
+
+  Palgrave, Sir Francis, 142.
+
+  _Paracelsus_, 7, 44, 45, 50, 248.
+
+  _Paris Sketch-Book, The_, 91.
+
+  _Parleyings with certain People of Importance_, 232.
+
+  _Passing of Arthur, The_, 222, 224.
+
+  _Past and Present_, 15, 30, 31.
+
+  Patmore, Coventry, 251-252.
+
+  Paton, Sir J. Noel, 240.
+
+  Pattison, Mark, 158.
+
+  _Pauline_, 44, 45.
+
+  _Peg Woffington_, 274.
+
+  _Pelham_, 72.
+
+  _Pendennis_, 91, 97.
+
+  Periodicals, 5-6.
+
+  _Phantasmion_, 61.
+
+  _Phases of Faith_, 146.
+
+  _Phil Fogarty_, 94.
+
+  _Philip van Artevelde_, 36, 62-63.
+
+  _Philoctetes_, 253.
+
+  _Philosophy of the Conditioned, The_, 168.
+
+  _Physiology of Common Life, The_, 169.
+
+  _Pickwick_, 84.
+
+  _Pippa Passes_, 46, 50.
+
+  Planché, James R., 47.
+
+  _Plato and the other Companions of Socrates_, 125.
+
+  _Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, The_, 55.
+
+  _Pleasures of England, The_, 196.
+
+  _Poems_, by C. E. and A. Bell, 101.
+
+  _Poems_ (1833, by Tennyson), 39.
+
+  _Poems_ (1842, by Tennyson), 39.
+
+  _Poems and Ballads_, 254.
+
+  _Poems by Two Brothers_, 37, 38, 53.
+
+  _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_, 38.
+
+  _Poems Dramatic and Lyrical_, 253-254.
+
+  _Poems, Legendary and Historical_, 58.
+
+  _Political Economy_ (Mill's), 161, 164.
+
+  _Pope, The_, 229, 230.
+
+  _Popular Government_, 135.
+
+  Praed, W. M., 54, 57-58.
+
+  _Praeterita_, 253.
+
+  Pre-Raphaelites, The, 10, 213, 240.
+
+  _Pre-Raphaelitism_, 195.
+
+  _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, 232.
+
+  _Prince's Progress, The_, 244.
+
+  _Princess, The_, 39, 42-43, 221, 224.
+
+  _Principles of Biology_, 172.
+
+  _Principles of Ethics_, 173.
+
+  _Principles of Geology_, 177-178.
+
+  _Principles of Psychology_, 172.
+
+  _Principles of Sociology_, 172.
+
+  _Principles of Taste_, 140.
+
+  _Private of the Buffs, The_, 258.
+
+  _Problems of Life and Mind_, 169.
+
+  Procter, Adelaide Anne, 260.
+
+  _Professor, The_, 101, 103.
+
+  _Prolegomena Logica_, 168.
+
+  _Prometheus Unbound_, 46.
+
+  _Promise of May, The_, 227.
+
+  _Prophetical Office of the Church, The_, 147.
+
+  _Proverbial Philosophy_, 64.
+
+  _Province of Jurisprudence Determined, The_, 161.
+
+  Pusey, E. B., 153-155;
+    Pius IX. on, 154;
+    156.
+
+  _Put Yourself in his Place_, 275.
+
+
+  _Qua Cursum Ventus_, 219.
+
+  _Queen Mary_, 226.
+
+  _Queens of England, Lives of the_, 142.
+
+  _Queens of Scotland, Lives of the_, 142.
+
+  _Quest of the Sangraal, The_, 259.
+
+
+  _Rab and his Friends_, 210.
+
+  _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, 229, 230.
+
+  _Rands, W. B._, 210.
+
+  _Ranke's History of the Popes_, Macaulay's essay on, 115.
+
+  _Ravenshoe_, 271.
+
+  Rawlinson, Sir H. C., 211-212.
+
+  Reade, Charles, 73, 262, 273-276.
+
+  _Rebecca and Rowena_, 94.
+
+  _Red Fisherman, The_, 58.
+
+  _Red Thread of Honour, The_, 258.
+
+  _Rehearsals_, 253.
+
+  _Reign of Queen Anne, History of the_, 142.
+
+  _Reliques of Father Prout_, 70.
+
+  _Reminiscences_, by Carlyle, 16, 20.
+
+  _Rephan_, 233.
+
+  _Representative Government, Considerations on_, 162, 165, 166.
+
+  _Resignation_, 215, 217.
+
+  _Revenge, The_, 221, 225, 260.
+
+  Reynolds, John Hamilton, 55.
+
+  _Rhyme of the Duchess May, The_, 236.
+
+  _Ring and the Book, The_, 45, 49, 50, 229-230, 231.
+
+  _Rizpah_, 226.
+
+  Robertson, F. W., 155, 157.
+
+  _Roman, The_, 247.
+
+  _Romance of War, The_, 273.
+
+  _Romans under the Empire, History of the_, 127.
+
+  _Romany Rye, The_, 212.
+
+  _Romaunt of Margret, The_, 236.
+
+  _Rome, History of_, 122-123.
+
+  _Romola_, 264, 266.
+
+  Roscoe, William Caldwell, 260.
+
+  _Rose Mary_, 243.
+
+  Rossetti, Christina, 234, 242, 244-246;
+    and Mrs. Browning, 245;
+    and D. G. Rossetti, 245.
+
+  Rossetti, D. G., 240-244;
+    his sensuousness, 241-242;
+    his treatment of nature, 243;
+    his ballads, 243;
+    and Christina Rossetti, 245.
+
+  _Roundabout Papers_, 93, 97.
+
+  _Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám, 237, 238-239.
+
+  _Rugby Chapel_, 216.
+
+  Ruskin, John, 153, 194-202;
+    his art criticism, 196-199;
+    his style, 199-200;
+    his social theories, 200-202.
+
+  _Ruth_, 56.
+
+
+  _Sacred and Legendary Art_, 193.
+
+  _St. Clement's Eve_, 62.
+
+  Ste. Beuve, 192.
+
+  _St. Mark's Rest_, 196.
+
+  _St. Paul and Protestantism_, 203.
+
+  _Saint's Tragedy, The_, 271.
+
+  _Salámán and Absál_, 237.
+
+  Sand, George, quoted, 107;
+    253.
+
+  _Sands of Dee, The_, 270.
+
+  _Sartor Resartus_, 12, 13, 15, 19, 23-26, 34, 35.
+
+  _Scenes of Clerical Life_, 262, 264, 266, 267.
+
+  Scherer, Edmond, on George Eliot, 265.
+
+  _Schiller, Life of_, 13, 22, 34.
+
+  Schleiermacher, 123.
+
+  _Scholar Gipsy, The_, 215, 216.
+
+  Science and literature, 8-9;
+    influence of science on the method of history, 110.
+
+  _Scot Abroad, The_, 141.
+
+  _Scotland, History of_ (Burton's), 141.
+
+  _Scotland, History of_ (Tytler's), 143.
+
+  _Scott's Journal_, 138, 139.
+
+  _Scott, Life of Sir Walter_, 137-139.
+
+  Scott, Michael, 80.
+
+  Scott, William Bell, 240, 260.
+
+  _Sea Dreams_, 224.
+
+  _Searching the Net_, 253.
+
+  Sedgwick, Adam, 189.
+
+  Seeley, J. R., 131.
+
+  Senancour, 217.
+
+  Senior, N. W., 165.
+
+  _Sepoy War in India, History of the_, 142.
+
+  _Seraphim, The_, 234.
+
+  _Seven Lamps of Architecture, The_, 195, 198.
+
+  'She is not fair to outward view,' 60.
+
+  Shelley, 45, 46.
+
+  _Shirley_, 103, 106.
+
+  _Shooting Niagara_, 16.
+
+  _Short Studies on Great Subjects_, 130.
+
+  _Sicilian Summer, A_, 62.
+
+  _Silas Marner_, 264, 266.
+
+  _Sinai and Palestine_, 140.
+
+  _Sing-Song_, 244.
+
+  _Sir Brook Fossbrooke_, 99.
+
+  _Sir Galahad_, 222.
+
+  _Sir John Oldcastle_, 225.
+
+  _Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_, 222.
+
+  _Sir Richard Grenville's Last Fight_, 260.
+
+  _Sketches by Boz_, 83, 84.
+
+  _Slave Power, The_, 165.
+
+  Smedley, Menella B., 261.
+
+  Smith, Alexander, 247, 249-251.
+
+  Smollett, 80.
+
+  _Snob, The_, 90.
+
+  _Sohrab and Rustum_, 217, 218.
+
+  _Soldier of Fortune, The_, 253.
+
+  _Solitary, The_, 66.
+
+  Somerville, Mary, 175.
+
+  _Song of the Shirt, The_, 3, 56.
+
+  _Song of the Western Men, The_, 259.
+
+  _Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads_, 261.
+
+  _Songs of the Governing Classes_, 257.
+
+  _Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces_, 53.
+
+  _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, 234, 235-236, 245.
+
+  _Sonnets on the War_, 247, 249.
+
+  _Sordello_, 7, 45, 232.
+
+  _Soul's Tragedy, A_, 45, 46.
+
+  _Southern Night, A_, 216.
+
+  _Spanish Ballads_, 136.
+
+  _Spanish Gypsy, The_, 264, 265.
+
+  Spasmodic School, The, 213, 246.
+
+  Spencer, Herbert, 170-174.
+
+  _Sphinx, The_, 260.
+
+  Stanley, A. P., 17, 136, 139-140, 158.
+
+  Stanhope, Earl, 142.
+
+  _Stealthy School of Criticism, The_, 241.
+
+  Sterling, John, 34, 157, 161.
+
+  _Sterling, Life of_, 16, 20, 27, 34, 135.
+
+  Stirling-Maxwell, Sir William, 142.
+
+  _Stones of Venice, The_, 195.
+
+  _Stories from Waterloo_, 99.
+
+  _Strafford_, 45, 46.
+
+  _Strangers Yet_, 58.
+
+  _Strayed Reveller, The_, 214.
+
+  _Stream's Secret, The_, 243.
+
+  Strickland, Agnes, 142.
+
+  _Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, The_, 182.
+
+  _Studies of Sensation and Event_, 67.
+
+  _Study of Words, The_, 211.
+
+  _Subjection of Women, The_, 162, 165.
+
+  Swift, Jonathan, 35, 92, 98.
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 254.
+
+  _Sybil_, 75, 76, 77.
+
+  _Synthetic Philosophy, The_, 170-174.
+
+  _System of Logic, A_, 161, 162, 164.
+
+
+  Tait, Archibald C., 159.
+
+  _Tale of Two Cities, A_, 84, 87.
+
+  Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 47.
+
+  _Tancred_, 76.
+
+  Taylor, Sir Henry, 36, 61-63.
+
+  Taylor, Tom, 47, 274.
+
+  _Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The_, 102.
+
+  Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 37, 38-43;
+    his early poems, 38;
+    his development, 39-42;
+    Lockhart on, 39;
+    Carlyle on, 40;
+    Edward Fitzgerald on, 42;
+    and Keats, 42;
+    220-228;
+    his patriotism, 221;
+    and the Arthurian legends, 222-223;
+    his blank verse, 223-224;
+    his dramatic poems, 224-227.
+
+  Tennyson, Frederick, 54.
+
+  _Ten Thousand a Year_, 81.
+
+  _Testimony of the Rocks, The_, 179.
+
+  Thackeray, W. M., 69, 70, 90-98;
+    his early life, 90-91;
+    and the eighteenth century humourists, 92;
+    and Dickens, 93-94;
+    his satire, 95-96;
+    his women, 96-97;
+    and Swift, 92, 98;
+    105.
+
+  _Theophrastus Such, Impressions of_, 264.
+
+  Thirlwall, Connop, 120, 123-125.
+
+  Thom, William, 61.
+
+  Thornbury, G. W., 261.
+
+  Thorpe, Benjamin, 211.
+
+  _Thyrsis_, 215, 216.
+
+  _Timbuctoo_, 38.
+
+  _Timbuctoo_ (Thackeray's), 90.
+
+  _Time Flies_, 244.
+
+  ''Tis sweet to hear the merry lark,' 60.
+
+  _To a Gipsy Child_, 215.
+
+  _Tom Burke of Ours_, 99.
+
+  _Tom Cringle's Log_, 80.
+
+  _Tracts for the Times_, 147.
+
+  _Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, 99.
+
+  _Translating Homer, On_, 204.
+
+  _Travels on the Amazon_, 189.
+
+  Trench, R. C., 211.
+
+  Trevelyan, Sir George, 111, 116.
+
+  _Tristram and Iseult_, 217.
+
+  Trollope, Anthony, 272.
+
+  Tupper, M. F., 64.
+
+  Turner, Charles Tennyson, 38, 53-54.
+
+  _Two Chiefs of Dunboy, The_, 131.
+
+
+  _Ulysses_, 224.
+
+  _Unknown Eros, The_, 251-252.
+
+  _Utilitarianism_, 162.
+
+
+  _Vanitas Vanitatum_, 98.
+
+  _Vanity Fair_, 91, 97.
+
+  _Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, The_, 185, 188.
+
+  _Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, The Formation of_, 187.
+
+  _Velasquez and his Work_, 142.
+
+  _Venetia_, 76.
+
+  _Verses and Translations_, 257.
+
+  _Vestiges of Creation_, 179, 180, 188.
+
+  _Vicar, The_, 57.
+
+  _Villette_, 101, 103.
+
+  _Virginians, The_, 93.
+
+  _Vision of Sin, The_, 42.
+
+  _Vivian Grey_, 75.
+
+  _Vivia Perpetua_, 256.
+
+
+  Wade, Thomas, 66.
+
+  Wallace, Alfred Russel, 180;
+    and Darwin, 183, 186;
+    189-190.
+
+  Ward, W. G., 146, 219.
+
+  _Ward's English Poets_, 207.
+
+  _War in Afghanistan, History of the_, 142.
+
+  _War of the Succession in Spain, History of the_, 142.
+
+  Warren, J. B. L. _See_ De Tabley, Lord.
+
+  _Warren Hastings_, 115.
+
+  Warren, Samuel, 81.
+
+  _Water Babies, The_, 271.
+
+  Watson, Mr. William, 62.
+
+  _Westward Ho!_, 270.
+
+  Whately, Richard, 144.
+
+  _What will He do with It?_ 73.
+
+  Whewell, William, 166.
+
+  _Whims and Oddities_, 55.
+
+  Whitehead, Charles, 66.
+
+  _White Ship, The_, 243.
+
+  Whyte-Melville, G. J., 273.
+
+  Wilberforce, Samuel, 155, 184.
+
+  _Wilhelm Meister_, Carlyle's translation of, 13.
+
+  Williams, Rowland, 124.
+
+  _Wilson, Life of Bishop_, 145.
+
+  _Witness, The_, 178.
+
+  _Wives and Daughters_, 107.
+
+  _Woman in White, The_, 273.
+
+  _Wondrous Tale of Alroy, The_, 76.
+
+  Wood, Mrs. Henry, 269.
+
+  _Woodland Grave, A_, 254.
+
+  Woolner, Thomas, 240.
+
+  Wordsworth, William, and Matthew Arnold, 216-217;
+    223.
+
+  Wright, W. Aldis, 193.
+
+  _Wuthering Heights_, 102, 103, 104.
+
+
+  _Yeast_, 269, 270.
+
+  _Yellowplush Papers_, The, 91.
+
+  _Youth of England to Garibaldi's Legion, The_, 249.
+
+
+  _Zanoni_, 73, 74.
+
+
+  CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
+  TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] In later times this has been confused with the very different doctrine
+that there is a domain of authority _within_ the domain of reason.
+
+[2] _I.e._, if Ainsworth was the author of _Sir John Chiverton_.
+
+[3] The 'Young Friend' to whom these remarkable letters are addressed is
+now Lady Hills-Johnes, of Dolancothy, Carmarthenshire.
+
+[4] One early criticism was that the book was suspiciously _teres atque
+rotundus_.
+
+
+
+
+Introduction to English Literature
+
+By HENRY S. PANCOAST
+
+_Fourth Edition, enlarged. 725 pages. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net_
+
+Prof. C. H. Herford, Litt.D.: "Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole,
+than any other 'Introduction' known to me, the real requirements of such a
+book as distinguished from a 'Sketch' or a 'Summary.'... Should serve in
+particular as an excellent text-book in the courses on English Literature
+now required for the London Intermediate."
+
+
+A First View of English Literature
+
+By HENRY S. PANCOAST and PERCY VAN DYKE SHELLY
+
+_With 44 Illustrations and 2 Maps. 6s. net_
+
+
+Introduction to American Literature
+
+By HENRY S. PANCOAST
+
+_Crown 8vo. 6s. net_
+
+Spectator: "A very useful volume; we do not know where we could find a
+more compendious manual of its subject. Of a modest size and price, it is
+qualified to furnish a very good working knowledge of American writers and
+writings."
+
+
+History of the English Language
+
+By T. R. LOUNSBURY, Professor in Yale University
+
+_New Edition, Revised. 6s. net_
+
+Sir Walter Raleigh: "One of the most readable of the shorter histories of
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+
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+summary of the best critical opinion in regard to the author and his
+works, and it is all so well arranged that the student has no difficulty
+in turning up the point on which he wishes information."
+
+
+A Handbook to the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson
+
+By MORTON LUCE
+
+_With Bibliography. Fifth Edition. 6s. net_
+
+Prof. Dowden: "Your 'Handbook to Tennyson' seems to me excellent in its
+fulness of knowledge, its arrangement, and its appreciation of the poet's
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+
+Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning
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+  BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY AND GAZETTEER
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+and no collection of books, whether large or small, should be, in my
+opinion, without a copy." SIR SIDNEY LEE, D.LITT.
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