CHAPTER II_Victorian Literature: Sixty Years of Books and Bookmen

The Novelists

Any comparison of the novels of the Victorian Era, with the novels of

the Georgian Period, must be very much to the disadvantage of the

former. The great epoch of English fiction began with Goldsmith and

Richardson, and ended with Sir Walter Scott. It was an epoch which gave

us "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Clarissa," "Tom Jones," "Pride and

Prejudice," "Humphrey Clinker," and "Tristram Shandy." That fiction had

a naturalness and spontaneity to which the novels of the Victorian Era

can lay no claim. The novels of the period with which we are concerned

aspire to regenerate mankind. Dickens, indeed, started off with but

little literary equipment save sundry eighteenth century novels. He had

read Smollett, and Fielding, and Sterne, diligently. But the influence

of these humourists--so marked in "Pickwick"--became qualified in his

succeeding books by the strenuous spirit of the times.

It is alike interesting in itself and convenient for my purpose that

the most popular novelist of the Victorian era should have published his

first great book in 1837. Dickens awoke then to abundant fame, and his

popularity has never waned for an instant during the sixty succeeding

years. To-day he may be more or less decried by "literary" people, but

his audience has multiplied twofold. He has added to it the countless

thousands whom the School Board has given to the reading world.

=Charles Dickens (1812-1870)= was born at Landport, Portsea, his

father being an improvident clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth.

Dickens senior has been immortalized for us by the not too pleasing

portrait of "Micawber." After infinite struggle and penury, Dickens

became a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_. Under the signature of

"Boz" he wrote "Sketches" for the _Monthly Magazine_ in 1834. "Pickwick"

appeared from April 1836 to November 1837, and alike in parts and in

book form took the world by storm. It was succeeded by "Oliver Twist"

(1838), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839), "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1840), and

"Barnaby Rudge" (1841). From this time forth Dickens was the most

popular writer that our literature has seen. Within twelve years after

his death some four millions of his books were sold in England, and

there is no reason to believe that this popularity has in any way

abated, although George Eliot foretold that much of Dickens's humour

would be meaningless to the next generation, that is to say, to the

generation which is now with us. It is the fashion to call Dickens the

novelist of the half-educated, to charge him with lack of

reflectiveness, with incapacity for serious reasoning. His humour has

been described as insincere, his pathos as exaggerated. Much of this

indictment may with equal justice be made against Richardson and even

against Jane Austen, who surely anticipated Dickens by the creation of

the Rev. William Collins.

If Dickens had been a learned University Professor he would not have

possessed the equipment most needful for the artist who was to portray

to us in an imperishable manner the London which is now fast

disappearing. The people who censure Dickens are those for whom he has

served a purpose and is of no further use. They are a mere drop in the

ocean of readers. It is not easy to-day to gauge his precise position.

The exhaustion of many of his copyrights has given up his work to a host

of rival publishers. There are probably thousands of men and women now,

as there were in the fifties and sixties, who have been stimulated by

him, and who have found in his writings the aid to a cheery optimism

which has made life more tolerable amid adverse conditions. Mrs Richmond

Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, tells us how keenly Dickens's capacity

for stirring the heart was felt even in the home of the rival novelist.

Thackeray's youngest daughter, then a child, looked up from the book she

was reading to ask the question, "Papa, why do you not write books like

'Nicholas Nickleby'"? Thackeray himself shared the general enthusiasm.

"David Copperfield!" he writes to a correspondent, "By Jingo! It is

beautiful! It is charming! Bravo Dickens! It has some of his very

brightest touches--those inimitable Dickens touches which make such a

great man of him. And the reading of the book has done another author a

great deal of good.... It has put me on my mettle and made me feel that

I must do something; that I have fame and name and family to support."

If Dickens is still beloved by the multitude, the name of =William

Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)= has entirely eclipsed his in the

minds of a certain literary section of the community. Thackeray stands

to them for culture, Dickens for illiteracy. Thackeray had indeed a more

polished intellect; he had also a more restrained style. Thackeray was

born at Calcutta. His father, who was an Indian civil servant, died when

the boy was only five years old. He was educated at Charterhouse School

and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1831 he went to Weimar. He studied

long at Paris with a view to becoming an artist, and when "Pickwick"

wanted an illustrator to continue the work of Seymour who had committed

suicide, Thackeray applied to Dickens, but Hablot Browne was chosen, and

Thackeray was disappointed--happily for the world, which lost an

indifferent artist to gain a great author. Thackeray in 1837--the year

which saw the publication of "Pickwick" as a volume--joined the staff of

_Fraser's Magazine_. In that journal appeared in succession "The History

of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond," "The Yellowplush

Papers," and "The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon." In 1847 "Vanity Fair" was

begun in numbers, and not till then did its author secure real renown.

"Pendennis" was published in 1850, and "Esmond" in 1852. "The Newcomes"

(1854) is in some measure a sequel to "Pendennis," as "The Virginians"

(1858) is in some measure a sequel to "Esmond." These are the five works

by Thackeray which everyone must read. In 1857 Thackeray unsuccessfully

contested Oxford. In 1859 he undertook the editorship of the new

_Cornhill Magazine_ which flourished in his hands. These were the

halcyon days of magazine editors. On Macaulay's death in 1859, Thackeray

talked of purchasing the historian's vacant house. A friend remarked

upon his prosperity. "To make money one must edit a magazine," was the

answer. He did not buy Macaulay's house, but built himself one at

Palace Green, and here he died the day before Christmas-day 1863. His

daughter, Anne Thackeray, who became Mrs Richmond Ritchie, has written

"Old Kensington" and other stories of singular charm.

The twenty-six volumes of Thackeray's works make a veritable nursery of

style for the modern literary aspirant. But it is, as has been said,

upon his five great novels that his future fame must rest. They are as

permanent a picture of life among the well-to-do classes as those

Dickens has given us of life among the poor.

=Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)=, who gave to Thackeray the enthusiastic

hero-worship of her early years, called him a Titan, and dedicated "Jane

Eyre" to him, had little enough in common with the author of "Vanity

Fair." The daughter of a poor parson of Irish birth, she was born at

Thornton in Yorkshire. She and two sisters grew up in the cramped

atmosphere of a vicarage at Haworth, in the centre of the moorlands.

They wrote stories and poems from childhood, and dreamed of literary

fame. Meanwhile it was necessary to add to the scanty stipend of their

father; two of them went back as governesses to the school in which they

had been educated; and all of them a little later attempted the

uncongenial life of private governesses. The desire to have a school of

their own led Charlotte and her sister Emily to Brussels, where they

studied French and German. Returning to the Haworth parsonage, the three

sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, with money left them by an aunt,

published a volume of verse--"Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell."

Then each sister produced from her drawer the manuscript of a novel, and

Charlotte's "Professor," Emily's "Wuthering Heights," and Anne's "Agnes

Grey" were sent round to the publishers and returned more than once to

the parsonage. Finally the "Professor" was read by Smith & Elder, who

asked for a longer story by the writer. "Jane Eyre" (1847) was the

result, and that story became one of the most successful novels of the

day. It was followed by "Shirley" (1849) and "Villette" (1853). In 1854

Charlotte Bronte became Mrs Arthur Bell Nicholls, and the wife of her

father's curate. In the following year she died. "The Professor" was

published two years after her death.

=Emily Bronte (1818-1848)= accomplished less than her elder sister,

but her name will live as long. She secured the admiration of Sydney

Dobell, of Matthew Arnold, and of Mr Swinburne, and her best verse is

perhaps the greatest ever written by a woman. "Last Lines" and "The Old

Stoic" will rank with the finest poetry in our literature. Her one

novel, "Wuthering Heights," has been most happily criticised by Mr

Swinburne: "As was the author's life so is her book in all things;

troubled and taintless, with little of rest in it and nothing of

reproach. It may be true that not many will ever take it to their

hearts; it is certain that those who do like it will like nothing very

much better in the whole world of poetry or prose."

Emily Bronte's sole contributions to literature were the poems written

in conjunction with her two sisters under the name of Ellis Bell, some

further poems published by her sister Charlotte after her death, and the

single novel "Wuthering Heights."

=Anne Bronte (1819-1849)= wrote more than her sister Emily, but with

less of recognition. She contributed verses to the little volume of

poems under the name of Acton Bell, and additional verses were published

after her death by Charlotte. In addition to this she wrote two novels,

the first of them "Agnes Grey," and the second "The Tenant of Wildfell

Hall." This last, curiously enough, went into a second edition during

Anne's lifetime, and she contributed a preface to it defending herself

against her critics. Neither Anne's poetry nor her novels are of any

account to-day. They would not be read, were it not for the glory with

which her two sisters have surrounded the name of Bronte.

Women novelists have abundantly flourished during the Victorian Era, but

then the path was made easy for them by Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth,

and Fanny Burney. By all those who delight in debatable comparisons the

name of George Eliot is frequently brought into contrast with that of

Charlotte Bronte. =George Eliot (1819-1880)= was born at Griff in

Warwickshire, her real name being Mary Ann Evans. She was for a time at

a school at Nuneaton, and afterwards at Coventry. At first she was an

evangelical churchwoman, but about 1842 she became acquainted with two

or three cultivated women friends at whose houses she met Froude,

Emerson, and Francis Newman, all of whom represented a reverent

antagonism to supernatural Christianity. In conjunction with Sarah

Hennell, she undertook a translation of Strauss's "Life of Jesus." On

her father's death, in 1849, she came to London and became associated

with Dr Chapman in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_. It was

her friendship with George Henry Lewes, whom she met in 1851, which gave

her the first impulse towards fiction. Lewes was an active critic, and a

writer of two now forgotten novels. Miss Evans's "Scenes of Clerical

Life" were sent to Blackwood's Magazine in 1856. The stories were a

great success. Thackeray and Dickens were loud in expressions of

admiration. In 1859 "Adam Bede" was published and made George Eliot

famous. "It is the finest thing since Shakspere," said Charles Reade.

Her success, however, did not lead to hasty production. She wrote only

six novels during the remainder of her life. "I can write no word that

is not prompted from within," she said. "The Mill on the Floss" was

written in 1860; "Silas Marner" in 1861; "Romola" in 1863; "Felix Holt"

in 1866; "Middlemarch" in 1871-1872; and "Daniel Deronda" in 1876.

In 1880 Miss Mary Ann Evans became Mrs Walter Cross, but after a few

months of wedded life she died of inflammation of the heart at 4 Cheyne

Walk, Chelsea. Her husband wrote her biography, not with much success.

So entirely was George Eliot's best mind concentrated upon her books

that her letters, and indeed her personality, were a disappointment to

all but a few hero-worshippers.

The novels, with two volumes of poems and two of essays, make up George

Eliot's collected works. The essays written before and after her novels

give, like her letters, but few indications of her remarkable powers.

Nor, although "The Spanish Gipsy" is deeply interesting, can her poetry

be counted for much. "The Choir Invisible" is her best known poem. It is

by her novels that she must be judged, and these, for insight into

character, analysis of the motives which guide men, and sympathy with

the intellectual and moral struggles which make up so large a part of

life, have a literary niche to themselves. With singular catholicity she

paints the simplest faith and the highest idealism. Whether it be an

Evangelical clergyman, a Dissenting minister, or a Methodist

factory-girl, she enters into the spirit of their lives with fullest

sympathy. Carlyle could see in Methodism only "a religion fit for gross

and vulgar-minded people, a religion so-called, and the essence of it

_cowardice_ and _hunger_, terror of pain and appetite for pleasure both

carried to the infinite." George Eliot's sympathies were wider. She won

the heart of Methodists, who have stood in imagination listening to

Dinah Morris addressing the Hayslope peasantry, as she gained the

devotion of Roman Catholics like Lord Acton, who have seen in her

portrait of Savonarola a wise expression of their faith. And it is not

only in religious matters that her sympathies are so broad. The

sententious dulness of Mr Macey is as much within the range of her

feelings as the manliness of Adam Bede or the scholastic pride of old

Bardo. She feels equally for the weak and frivolous Hetty and the lofty,

self-sustained Romola. "At least eighty out of a hundred," she says, "of

your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last census are neither

extraordinarily silly nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily

wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor

sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no

hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly

not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested

themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are simply men of

complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald

and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people--many of them--bear a

conscience, and have felt the sublime promptings to do the painful

right; they have their unspoken sorrows and their sacred joys; their

hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they have

mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in their

very insignificance, in our comparison of their dim and narrow existence

with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which they share?

Depend upon it you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to

see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying

in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes,

and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones." The creations of

George Eliot,--Tito and Baldassare, Mrs Poyser and Silas Marner, Dorothy

Brooke and Gwendolen,--are not as familiar to the reading public of

to-day as they were to that of ten or fifteen years ago. Of the

idolatry which almost made her a prophetess of a new cult we hear

nothing now. She has not maintained her position as Dickens, Thackeray,

and Charlotte Bronte have maintained theirs. But if there be little of

partisanship and much detraction, it is idle to deny that George Eliot's

many gifts, her humour, her pathos, her remarkable intellectual

endowments, give her an assured place among the writers of Victorian

literature.

The next in order of prominence among the novelists of the period is

=Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)=. He was born at Holne Vicarage, on the

borders of Dartmoor, and was educated at King's College, London, and

Magdalen College, Cambridge. After this he received the curacy of

Eversley, in Hampshire, of which parish he finally became rector. In

1848 he published a drama entitled "The Saint's Tragedy," with St

Elizabeth of Hungary as heroine. A year later his novel of "Alton Locke"

gained him the title of "The Chartist Parson." This tale, in which

Carlyle is introduced in the person of an old Scotch bookseller, was a

crude and yet vigorous expression of sympathy with the Chartist

movement, and its influence was tremendous. For its sympathy with the

working classes, and in its reflection of the broad and tolerant

Christianity of which Kingsley was always the eloquent preacher, "Alton

Locke," in common with "Yeast" and "Two Years Ago," is a valuable

contribution to literature. Kingsley, however, became a truer artist

when, as in "Hypatia" and "Westward Ho!" he had not social and religious

ends in view. "Hypatia," in spite of many historical errors, is a

brilliant sketch of the early Church at Alexandria. Gibbon, from whom

Kingsley obtained the hint for this book, would have revelled in the

apparent endorsement by a latter-day clergyman of his estimate of the

early Christianity of the East. "Westward Ho!" is a picturesque

narrative of English rivalry with Spain in the reign of Elizabeth. The

contrasts of character in Frank and Amyas Leigh perhaps give this novel

a claim to be considered Kingsley's best effort. He wrote many other

works, including children's stories, scientific lectures, and poems,

among which last the beautiful ballads, "The Three Fishers" and "The

Sands of Dee," are the most popular. For nine years he held the office

of Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, but his

unphilosophical views of history made his presence there a misfortune. A

model country clergyman, a man essentially healthy-minded and interested

in all phases of life and thought, Kingsley's influence, especially on

young men, during the past five-and-thirty years, has been very great

and very beneficial.

=Henry Kingsley (1830-1876)=, a younger brother of Charles, wrote many

novels and romances, three of them memorable. "Geoffrey Hamlyn" is

popular as the best novel of Australian life. To Australia he had gone

to make his fortune at the diggings. He did not make a fortune, but

joined the colonial mounted police instead. Compelled by his office to

attend an execution, he threw up the post in disgust, and returned to

England to find his brother installed as Vicar of Eversley and on the

high road to fame. Little wonder that he attempted to emulate him, and

he succeeded.

Never, surely, has literature produced two brothers so remarkable, and

at the same time so different. Both gave us energetic heroes, and loved

manliness. In Charles Kingsley, however, the novelist was always largely

subordinated to the preacher. In Henry there was nothing of the preacher

whatever. "Geoffrey Hamlyn," "Ravenshoe" and "The Hillyars and The

Burtons," are all forcible, effective works, and they have secured

generous praise and appreciation from many a literary colleague. But

Henry was a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and so his personality has been

carefully screened from the public. His name is not even mentioned in

Charles Kingsley's biography. Sir Edwin Arnold, however, who knew him

at Oxford, and Mrs Thackeray Ritchie, who knew him towards the end of

his life, testify to certain delightful qualities of mind and heart

which peculiarly appealed to them.[8]

A writer not less successful than Charles Kingsley, but in no way

comparable as a man, was =Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873)=, Baron

Lytton, who was born in London, and created no small sensation in 1828

by the publication of "Pelham." This was followed by a long list of

novels of infinite variety. Some dealt with the preternatural like

"Zanoni," and others with history, psychology, and ethics. Of these the

most popular were doubtless the historical "Harold," "Rienzi," "The Last

of the Barons," and "The Last Days of Pompeii," which still hold their

own with the younger generation. The thoughtful men of to-day do not

however read "The Caxtons" as they did in the sixties and seventies.

Lytton was one of the cleverest men of his age--using the word in no

friendly sense--he was a clever novelist, a clever dramatist (his comedy

of "Money," and his tragedies "Richelieu" and "The Lady of Lyons,"

still hold the stage), and a clever Parliamentary debater.

Another writer, with higher claims to consideration than those of

literature, was =Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)=, Earl of Beaconsfield.

Disraeli entered life under conditions peculiarly favourable to a

successful literary career. His father, Isaac D'Israeli, was an

enthusiastic bookworm, whose "Curiosities of Literature" and other books

are an inexhaustible mine of anecdote on the quarrels and calamities of

authors. The young Disraeli wrote "Vivian Grey" in 1827, following this

very successful effort with "The Young Duke," "Venetia," "Henrietta

Temple," and other novels. In 1837 he was returned to Parliament as

member for Maidstone. His career as an orator and statesman does not

concern us here; suffice to say that of his many later novels

"Coningsby," "Tancred," and "Sybil" are by far the ablest and most

brilliant, and that "Sybil" was an effective exposure of many abuses in

the relations of capital to labour. In addition to his work as a

novelist, Lord Beaconsfield wrote an able biography of his friend and

colleague, Lord George Bentinck.

One of the most successful of the greater novelists of the reign was

=Charles Reade (1814-1884)=, who first became famous by "Peg

Woffington" in 1852. "The Cloister and the Hearth" was published in

1861, and "Griffith Gaunt" in 1866. Several of his later novels were

written "with a purpose." In "Hard Cash" he drew attention to the abuses

of private lunatic asylums; in "Foul Play" he aroused public interest in

the iniquities of ship-knackers; in "Put Yourself in His Place," he

attacked Trades Unions, and in "Never Too Late to Mend" he exposed some

of the abuses of our prison system as it existed at that time. Reade was

also an industrious dramatist; "Masks and Faces," and "Drink," are among

his most popular plays. Of all his books "The Cloister and the Hearth"

is the best, and also the most widely read. It has for its hero the

father of Erasmus.

Those who in days to come will want to know what provincial life was

really like in England in early Victorian times will enquire for the

novels of =Anthony Trollope (1815-1822)=. "Barchester Towers,"

"Framley Parsonage," and "Dr Thorne," are the most popular of a series

of tales, in all of which the country life of England, its clergy and

squirearchy, are portrayed. Trollope wrote on many subjects. His "Life

of Cicero" secured the commendation of Professor Freeman, and his

biography of Thackeray, though all too slight, is the best book about

the author of "Vanity Fair" that has so far been given us.

Another novelist of about equal status with Trollope in mid-Victorian

fiction is =George John Whyte Melville (1821-1878)=. Major Whyte

Melville is the novelist of all lovers of the hunting-field, and

strangely enough he fell a victim to the very sport which he had done so

much to picture. He was killed by a fall from his horse. Whyte

Melville's hunting novels include "Katerfelto" and "Black but Comely."

He also wrote historical novels, of which "The Queen's Maries" and "The

Gladiators" were the most popular, and he had a pretty gift of verse.

Literature has rarely produced a more picturesque figure than =Robert

Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)=. The son of a famous Scottish engineer he

was destined, like his great countryman Sir Walter Scott, for a

Writership to the Signet. He took, however, to literature instead, and

died at forty-four in Samoa,--where he had gone for his health,--after a

remarkable literary achievement. With a style not always rigidly

grammatical, but always impressive and distinguished, he shone in many

branches of literary work. He wrote travel pictures like "With a Donkey

in the Cevennes," which were incomparably superior to those of any

contemporary; his plays--written in collaboration with Mr W. E.

Henley--had a power of their own, and one of them, "Beau Austin,"

although not accepted by the public, is probably the greatest

contribution to the drama of the era. As a critic of life and of books

Stevenson has also an honourable place. I know of no better treatment of

the one than "Virginibus Puerisque," or of the other than "Some Aspects

of Robert Burns." He has given abundant pleasure to children by "A

Child's Garden of Verses," and in "Underwoods" he has scarcely less

successfully appealed to their elders.

It is as a novelist, however, that Stevenson fills the largest place. He

is the inheritor of the traditions of Scott, with the world-pain of his

own epoch superadded. Men and boys alike have found "Treasure Island"

absorbing, while men have also pondered over the widely different powers

which are displayed in "The New Arabian Nights" and "The Master of

Ballantrae," "Prince Otto," and "St Ives." "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is a

parable which has thrilled us all.

Stevenson delighted to call Mr George Meredith his master, and the two

men were friends of years. =George Meredith (1828- )= began his

literary career in 1851, with a volume of poems, one of which, "Love in

a Valley," is still an unqualified joy to all who read it. Mr Meredith

has published several volumes of poems since then, and all of them have

their loyal admirers, but it is as a novelist that the world at large

appraises him.

His concentrated thought and vivid passion have gained for him the title

of the "Browning of novelists." Each of his books in turn has had its

ardent partisans among cultivated and thoughtful readers. "The Shaving

of Shagpat" appeared in 1856, and "Farina" in 1857. "The Ordeal of

Richard Feverel," which appeared in 1859, is by many considered

Meredith's best novel. It treats, with subtle humour and profound

philosophical insight, of the problem of a youth's education, and is

full of truth to life. "Feverel" was followed by "Evan Harrington"

(1861), while "Rhoda Fleming" (1865), "The Adventures of Harry Richmond"

(1871), "Beauchamp's Career" (1876), "The Egoist" (1879), "The Tragic

Comedians" (1881), and "Diana of the Crossways" (1885), have each of

them abundance of readers. Merely to enumerate George Meredith's novels

is to call to the memory of all who have read them a widening of mental

and moral vision. The rich vein of poetry running through the books,

their humour and imagination, place their author in the very front rank

of English novelists. "I should never forgive myself," said Robert Louis

Stevenson, "if I forgot 'The Egoist,' which, of all the novels I have

read (and I have read thousands), stands in a place by itself. I have

read 'The Egoist' five or six times, and I mean to read it again."

Others have spoken with equal enthusiasm of "Sandra Belloni," with its

sweet singer Emilia; others of "Beauchamp's Career," with its

aristocratic Radical, now generally understood to have been intended for

Admiral Maxse.

Mr Meredith dedicated his volume of "Poems" of 1851 to =Thomas Love

Peacock (1785-1866)=, who, perhaps, more than any other writer

influenced his own style. Peacock was born at Weymouth, and he was

mainly self-educated. In 1804 and 1806 he published two small volumes of

poetry, "The Monks of St Mark" and "Palmyra." In 1812 he became

acquainted with Shelley, and the two were intimate at Great Marlow where

Peacock lived in 1815, and later. Peacock's novels "Headlong Hall"

(1816-1817), "Melincourt" (1817) and "Nightmare Abbey" (1818), which

have been two or three times reprinted within the last five or six

years, gained no commensurate attention on their appearance, although

one of them was translated into French. In 1819 Peacock became a clerk

in the India House, and married a Welsh girl, Jane Gryffdh. "Maid

Marion" appeared in 1822, "Crotchet Castle" in 1831, and in 1837 "Paper

Money Lyrics and other Poems." All the novels I have named, and they

are his most famous, belong to the pre-Victorian period, but "Gryll

Grange," his last novel, was published in 1861. Peacock is interesting

as a novelist and for his relations with other famous men. He was, as I

have said, the friend of Shelley, and he was the father-in-law of Mr

George Meredith. Added to this he succeeded to James Mill's post at the

India House, and vacated it for James Mill's son, John Stuart Mill.

To R. L. Stevenson we undoubtedly owe much of the impulse to the modern

romantic movement, which adds every day an historical novel or a story

of adventure to our libraries. It has given us Stanley Weyman, "Q" (A.

T. Quiller Couch), "Anthony Hope," Max Pemberton, and Conan Doyle, the

creator of Sherlock Holmes. Another Scotsman, =George MacDonald (1824- )=,

whose "Robert Falconer," "David Elginbrod," and "Alec Forbes

of Howglen," have charmed nearly a generation, had less influence than

might have been thought upon the younger Scottish writers, who have made

Scottish scenes and Scottish dialect so marked an element in many

popular works. James Matthew Barrie, for example, had written "A Window

in Thrums," before he had read one of Dr MacDonald's books. Mr Barrie

was probably influenced, however, by John Galt (1779-1859), whose

"Ayrshire Legatees" and "Annals of the Parish" were written before the

Queen began to reign.

A writer whose most striking book was published sufficiently long ago to

justify its inclusion here, was =Joseph Henry Shorthouse (1834- )=. His

"John Inglesant" gained for him a reputation which his "Sir Percival"

did not sustain. Mr Shorthouse has written nothing since "John

Inglesant" so beautiful as his "Little Schoolmaster Mark," a singularly

poetical conception of abnormal childhood.

The best stories for children have been written by =Lewis Carroll

(1833- )=. This is the pseudonym of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a

lecturer on mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and the author of

several mathematical text-books. In "Euclid and his Modern Rivals" and

"A Tangled Tale," Mr Dodgson has succeeded in combining his taste for

science with a rich humour, but his fame rests upon his remarkable

fairy-stories, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," published in 1865,

and its sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass," which appeared in 1872. Men

and women, quite as much as little children, have found pleasure and

entertainment in these happy efforts of a genius as individual as

anything our age has produced.

I have purposely all but ignored many writers of fiction who are still

actively engaged in literary pursuits. The daily journals bring their

achievements sufficiently to the front. But literary workers owe so much

to the untiring zeal of =Sir Walter Besant (1838- )= in their behalf,

that at the risk of inconsistency I mention his "All Sorts and

Conditions of Men," a story which not only sold by thousands, but had a

practical influence such as is rarely given to poet or novelist to

achieve. The writer dreams of a wealthy heiress devoting her time and

money to purifying and elevating the East End of London. She builds a

Palace of Delight, and devotes it to the service of the people. In May,

1887, the dream was realised, for the Queen opened just such a Palace

for the People in the Mile-End Road. How far this institution, the

outcome of a novelist's imagination and the generous subscriptions of

philanthropists, has achieved the regeneration of the London poor,

history has yet to record. Sir Walter Besant wrote at an earlier period

twelve novels in conjunction with =James Rice (1843-1882)=, a

collaborator of singular humour and imagination. Of the books written

conjointly, "Ready Money Mortiboy" and "The Golden Butterfly" are the