The first essential in a popular work of any kind is clearness.
A glance at the contents of Prof. Welsh’s new history of English
literature[E] shows that the work is so systematically arranged that
one can not fail to understand it. The life of the nation which shaped
the literature of each period is graphically and simply described.
Each political, national, and social law which helped to form the
thoughts and customs of the people, is noticed. The leading writers
are discussed under the different heads of biography, writing, style,
rank, character, and influence. This tabular method has, by no means,
degraded the book into simply a school text-book. It has made it
suitable for that and more valuable to the general reader. The style
is fresh, never tiresome. The illustrations are so woven into the
narrative that an idea of the plan of the book is readily seen, and
besides the quotations are admirably chosen. The work has been wrought
enthusiastically and conscientiously by a man thoroughly interested in
what he was doing. Its reception has been his reward.
The Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle,[F] have completed Mr.
Froude’s task of reminiscence editing, and given the curious public
ample information about the private life and character of Thomas
Carlyle. The task has not been a pleasant one for Mr. Froude, but it
has been faithfully and modestly performed. These letters are curiously
interesting for many reasons. They are vivacious and sparkling, full of
lively character sketches, and reveal the private life of one of the
most discussed men of the age. Better than all of these, they introduce
us to a woman to whom Arthur Helps once candidly said: “Well, really,
you are a model wife,” to whom poor Mazzini could go whenever “in a
state of crisis” (as he put it); whom Mills, Jeffrey, Tennyson, and
many others, honored for her wit and womanliness. She was a clever
woman, and a brave one. None but a clever woman could have written
these charming letters, none but a brave one could have endured a
husband like Carlyle. She was too loyal to cease loving him, too strong
to complain, though many a letter shows her sense of his weakness.
Jane Welsh Carlyle will find a permanent place among the famous women
of the century for wifely devotion, as well as for being a brilliant
letter-writer.
The book is chiefly valuable for its wide range of happily-told
anecdotes, and its spicy comments. Here is a picture of Lord
Jeffrey and Count D’Orsay, who were calling on her together: “What
a difference! The prince of critics and the prince of dandies! How
washed out the beautiful dandiacal face looked beside that little
clever old man’s! The large blue dandiacal eyes you would say had never
contemplated anything more interesting than the reflection of the
handsome personage they pertained to in a looking-glass, while the dark
penetrating ones of the other had taken notes of most things in God’s
universe, even seeing a good way into millstones.” She makes wise and
true as well as pointed comments on the wide range of men and society
that came under her notice.
Undoubtedly Robert Browning’s “Jocoseria”[G] has been the most read
and most thoroughly noticed of any book of poems of the season. It is
a simple little volume of but ten poems. The best of them all is the
unpretending one beginning:
“Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
This path—how soft to pace!
This May—what magic weather!
Where is the loved one’s face?”
The most influential book of the present day is undoubtedly the novel.
They constitute four-fifths of all the books read. The philosophy
of its development has become not only a question of great literary
interest, but one of educational and moral interest. Mr. Sydney
Lanier, in 1881, delivered a course of twelve lectures before the
students of John Hopkins University, on this subject, and they have
recently been published in book form,[H] forming a highly interesting
and philosophical discussion. His object is to show that the growth
in sentiment since the days of the Greeks has been so great that the
old forms of literature and art have been inadequate to express
our ideas, hence in the last two centuries three things have been
developed—Science, Music, and the Novel. He gives most copious
illustrations from modern novels to uphold his principles.
Lovers of American poetry and poets will be glad to welcome the recent
“Life of William Cullen Bryant.”[I] Soon after Mr. Bryant’s death in
1878 his papers, containing useful materials for a biography of his
life, were sent to Mr. Parke Godwin, a gentleman of long connection
with the press, in order that he might prepare a memoir of the poet.
Mr. Godwin has collected most of Mr. Bryant’s letters, his editorial
writings, and the newspaper articles concerning him, until he has been
able to lay before his readers a very complete and exact biography.
Necessarily the work contains little of intense interest. Bryant’s life
was a quiet, laborious one. Fifty years of it were spent in editorial
work in which, as the author well says, “the labors consist of a series
of incessant blows, of the real influence of which it is hard to
judge.” But his career as editor and poet are well treated in a simple,
pleasant narrative, which leave one with a profound respect for the
upright, just and noble father of American poetry.
In September, 1881, the Presbyterian Church lost one of its most
honored ministers by the death of the Rev. Cyrus Dickson, D.D., the
Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions. The Presbytery of Baltimore
at once arranged to prepare a memorial. The work was committed to the
Rev. S. J. M. Eaton, D.D.[J] The biography which Dr. Eaton has produced
is a simple story of a devout, self-sacrificing Christian. Such books
never fail in their purpose. The story of a life is, after all, the
most influential of stories.
One of the best of the many sets of school readers, is the “Globe
Readings.”[K] Beginning with the simple primers of two grades there are
six readers in which the selections are very carefully graded, followed
by a “Book of Golden Deeds,” by Charlotte Yonge; Lamb’s “Tales from
Shakspere;” Scott’s “Marmion;” “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and “Lady of
the Lake;” Cowper’s “Task,” and Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield.” The
series has been carefully edited, and the notes give just the amount of
help necessary to young readers.
The “Home College Series”[L] has reached the number of thirty-two.
They cover a great range of subjects. History, science, biography,
art, house-keeping, penmanship, wise-sayings, political economy and
religion, and will be valuable reading for spare moments.
The last issues of the charming “Riverside Literature Series,”[M] are
“Biographical Stories” and “True Stories from New England History.”
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