CLASSICS OF THE MODERN PERIOD
As we approach our own time it becomes more difficult to choose our
classics. For the earliest period time itself has made the selection
very ruthlessly. Nearly every Greek and Latin work left to us is a
classic. Then there is the long blank of the early Middle Ages ending
in the luxuriant artistic growth of the Renaissance. By the time we
have reached, however, the output of distinguished literature becomes
very great. Not only have the introduction of paper and printing and
the spread of education to a much larger class encouraged writing,
but we must remember that now there are a dozen civilizations, not
one or two as in ancient times. John Drinkwater in his _Outline of
Literature_ devotes one volume to the period from Homer to the middle
of the eighteenth century (nearly 5,000 years) and one volume to the
literature of the last 150 years! It does not mean that we are so very
much richer in classics. The reader must, therefore, not expect to
find here a mention of every poet whom some professor or other calls
“a classic,” but I have gone carefully over Drinkwater’s work and
Richardson and Owen’s _Literature of the World_ (which the reader will
find more useful if he wants a larger sketch), and give here a short
notice of the men about whose high distinction in letters there is a
common agreement.
§1. VOLTAIRE AND FRENCH CLASSICS
After the age of Racine and Molière French literature rarely rose
to the height of great distinction--the chief cause, as elsewhere,
being the bitter sectarian struggle--until Voltaire appeared. Seeing,
however, that Voltaire, was born just before the death of La Fontaine
and Mme. de Sévigné (whose letters are very elegant literature) the
interval was not long.
Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who took the pen-name of Voltaire,
is one of the most remarkable writers of Europe. Competent critics
pronounce him the best poet of his age--an age not rich in great
poets, however--and in history (_The Age of Louis XIV_), tragedy, and
treatment of actual problems (_Letters on the English_, _Philosophical
Dictionary_, etc.) he had no superior. But it is as a prose-writer,
particularly as a caustic critic of the creed of his country, that he
made a reputation which filled the world and has made his name one
of the most familiar even in our own time. Such sparkling wit as he
had when allied with high poetic talent, profound knowledge of human
nature, and rare power of construction formed an ideal equipment for
the work to which he chiefly devoted his life. As in the case of
Shakespeare, it is useless to write a few paragraphs about him. What
little one could write would be known to the reader. Voltaire has to be
read, for you cannot adequately describe the flash and sparkle of his
prose. I have translated a few of his smaller pieces (_Selections from
Voltaire_) so as to give the general reader an idea of his versatility,
and several of his stories (read, especially, _Candide_, a satire on
foolish optimism) can be had in the Big Blue Book series (Nos. B-6 and
B-30). The world will never tire of reading Voltaire.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), his contemporary (but not friend),
was a constructive thinker and emotional writer. His _Social Contract_
is a classic of sociological literature, and his _Confessions_ is one
of the most masterly autobiographies ever written, as well as one of
the most candid. His _Émile_ and _The New Heloise_, a treatise on
education, are hardly less distinguished though now little read.
Two such writers at one time would enrich any country, but Count Buffon
(1707-88) must be associated with them as a great writer as well as
the most learned naturalist of his time. His _Natural History_, in
twenty-four volumes, is a literary masterpiece as well as a scientific
encyclopedia. At the same time lived Denis Diderot (1713-84) and a
group of writers associated with him. Though none of these is a classic
in the literary sense, the great _Encyclopedia_ which they jointly
wrote is very notable in the history of letters and thought.
A little later, during the Revolution, were Mme. de Stael, a French
woman married to a Swede, whose novels were long considered to be great
literature, and Chateaubriand, an orthodox Catholic, who (though I
find his name omitted from most literary histories) was a writer of
great power and often of rare beauty. His _Genius of Christianity_ was
certainly esteemed a classic for the next half century.
In the nineteenth century the elder Dumas (1802-70), author of _The
Three Musketeers_, _Twenty Years After_, _The Count of Monte Cristo_,
etc., and Victor Hugo (1802-85) inaugurated the great period of modern
French literature. Hugo was an astounding literary genius, both in
prose and poetry. His formidable novels, _Les Miserables_ (an epic of
the poor), _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_, etc., may contain all the
defects which critics find in them, but they are superb conceptions and
the world still reads them as classics. “George Sand” (1804-76) is not,
perhaps, read outside France today, but her position in letters is very
high. I might recommend her _Consuelo_, but it is of such length that
the modern reader would despair of getting through it. Her real name
was the Baroness Dudevant, though she lived apart from her husband, a
woman of passionate adventures. Her friend Alfred de Musset (1810-57)
wrote lyric poems of the highest quality as well as literary plays and
stories.
With the activity of these we reach the period of the second Revolution
in France, the middle of the nineteenth century and the list of
distinguished names is long. While it is premature to say which, if
any, of their works will rank as classics, Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863)
wrote, besides dramas and novels, exquisite poetry of the Romantic
school. “Stendhal” (really Henri Beyle, 1783-1842) had a very high
reputation as writer of novels (_The Chartreuse of Parma_, etc.) and
essays. Baudelaire (1821-67) was the second best (if not the best)
French poet of the century: his book of verse _Flowers of Evil_ is
certainly a classic. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) wrote ninety powerful
novels (especially the series called _The Human Comedy_, a natural
history of contemporary life) and was a master of the short story.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) was so high and conscientious an artist that
he wrote only four perfect novels. Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Mérimée,
the de Goncourt brothers (Jules and Edmond), T. Gautier, A. Daudet,
Sainte-Beuve, Verlaine (poet), Zola, Rostand (dramatist), and the
recently deceased Anatole France, the prince of modern story-writers,
make up--without mentioning living writers--a group of brilliant
writers who will long be remembered; and to these we ought to add
scholars like Renan, Taine, Thiers, Michelet, etc., who were little
less distinguished in literature.
§2. GERMANY, RUSSIA AND SCANDINAVIA
Apart from Luther, we have no German writer whom we would call a
classic until the second half of the nineteenth century. At the time
when the influence of the Renaissance might be expected to reach and
stimulate it the country was desolated by a hundred years of warfare
about religion. It recovered in the years before the French Revolution
and immediately there appeared two poets, Goethe and Schiller, who
belong to the highest company.
Goethe (1749-1832) takes rank with Shakespeare. Intellectually--he
was an ardent scientist and deep thinker as well as a great poet--he
surpassed Shakespeare and, perhaps on that account, is inferior to him
in the strictly poetic faculty of exquisite imagery. No other poet
could have conceived the vast design of _Faust_, at which he worked
for seventy years, and at least the opening soliloquy of Faust will
always be read. His earlier or romantic style is beautifully seen in
his story, _The Sorrows of Young Werther_, and the long novel (or pair
of novels) of his later years, _Wilhelm Meister_, is a masterpiece.
With his encyclopedic knowledge and his profound intellect Goethe
gives the whole epic of humanity, as known in his day, in his work. In
mid-life he came under the influence of the Greek and Roman classics,
and the result may be read in his stately and beautiful long poems
_Tasso_, _Iphigenia_, _Hermann and Dorothea_, etc. But he was masterly
in all that he touched, sonnet or tragedy, story or art-criticism or
scientific essay.
Schiller (1759-1805), his younger friend and contemporary, is in the
stricter sense a poet and dramatist, not a thinker, though he studied
philosophy and wrote a famous history of the Thirty Years War. His
chief plays (_Wallenstein_, _Maria Stuart_, _Don Carlos_, etc.,) are
classics, and his lyrics are superb. Goethe befriended and influenced
him, and they composed together some brilliant satirical verses or
epigrams on contemporary shams. Like Goethe he began to write in the
Romantic vein, but his later and finer work shows the chaste influence
of the Greek and Roman classics.
Notable amongst the predecessors or early contemporaries of Goethe was
Lessing (1729-80), whose works on art (_Laocoon, etc._), comedies,
tragedies, and essays gave him a very high rank. Klopstock, Wieland
and others, took a great part in the revival of letters in Germany,
but I must be content with only a few of the great names. The works
of the long and impressive line of German philosophers from Kant to
Schopenhauer, cannot be treated here. They are classics of philosophy,
but Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was one of the most brilliant writers
of his time. He was the best German lyric writer after Goethe (see
his _Book of Songs_), wrote superb books of travel, and had a fund of
delicate irony and caustic wit that makes his prose always a delight.
Greater still--the greatest German writer after Goethe--was Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose volcanic and often beautiful prose-poetry
is of a unique order. His best work is _Thus Spake Zarathustra_,
a malicious choice of the austere Persian moralist Zarathustra
(or Zoroaster), as the mouthpiece of his own fiery indictment of
conventional moral ideas.
Italy in this period produced Count Leopardi (1798-1837), an exquisite
poet of pessimism, Casanova (or Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt,
1725-1803), a poet and adventurer whose memoirs (written in French)
are a classic, and Mazzini, the genius of the Italian rebellion. But
reaction kept back Italy until the latter part of the nineteenth
century and it is no part of my plan to notice recent works. The same
must be said of Spain, Portugal and Austria.
Switzerland had in H. F. Amiel (1821-81), a poet and essayist whose
diary, or _Intimate Journal_, is a classic of its kind: a rare and
beautiful expression of a mystic mind struggling with modern doubt.
In the far north Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), brought Norway into the
field of letters by a series of plays which made him at the time the
greatest dramatist of the world. They are modern problem-plays, of
advanced thought and rather somber atmosphere. Björnsen (1832-1910),
his compatriot and contemporary, also made a world-reputation by his
novels, dramas and poems, and won the Nobel Prize. His work does not
live as that of Ibsen does, yet there were distinguished literary
critics who at his death ranked him with Victor Hugo. In Denmark, a
classic of a kind was produced by Hans Andersen (1805-75), the great
fairytale writer.
At the same time Russia opened its literary age, with a number of
brilliant novelists. Pushkin (1799-1837), Nikolai Gogol (1800-52), Ivan
Turgenieff (1818-83), Feodor Dostoeffsky (1821-81), and Anton Chekhov
(1860-1904), were a group of realistic novelists, poets and essayists
who commanded the attention of the world. Tolstoi’s _Anna Karenina_, at
least, is another Russian work of the classic order, and Maxim Gorki
sustained the brilliant tradition of story-writing in recent times.
§3. MODERN ENGLISH WRITERS
The crowd of writers of distinction in every country now becomes
embarrassing, and I must either be content with a mere list of names
or omit many whom one or other critic chooses to regard as classics.
The reader must bear in mind, however, that this is not a history of
literature, even in outline, and for the modern period we will choose a
compromise, including the names of some who will certainly not live as
Vergil and Horace live today, yet omitting many quite familiar names.
I chose to begin the “modern” period with the poet Alexander Pope
(1688-1744), because in his work modern ideas begin to show a marked
influence. There was at the time a brilliant group of Deistic writers
in England, but Pope alone (who vaguely embodies their ideas in his
_Essay on Man_, the source of countless quotations), can be called
a literary classic. _The Rape of the Lock_ was regarded by his
contemporaries as his masterpiece.
Another classic of the period is the immortal boys’ story _Robinson
Crusoe_ by Daniel Defoe (1659-1730). None of his other stories has
lived, but his _Journal of the Plague_ is a work of great importance.
Later in the seventeenth century and early in the eighteenth, Addison
and Steele were the leading English writers, and their periodicals,
_The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_, are classics of journalism: a very
dignified and stately sort of journalism in magnificent English.
Richardson (1689-1761) was the first great English novelist, and
his _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_, had a
high reputation. A little later, H. Fielding wrote _Tom Jones_, which
ranked as a classic until recent times. L. Sterne (1715-68), whom some
ventured to compare to Cervantes, is equally distinguished in his chief
novel _Tristram Shandy_, and his _Sentimental Journey_.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), one of the most brilliant satirists, is
chiefly remembered by his _Tale of a Tub_ and _Gulliver’s Travels_,
which still circulates. He was not, as is commonly said, an Irish wit
but was born in Ireland of English parents. Coarse as _Gulliver_ is in
many pages, Swift was a Dean of the Church of England. But the same
looser taste is seen in most of the literature of the time: in Smollett
(whose famous novel _Roderick Random_ is based on _Gil Blas_); in the
dramatist Sheridan (_The Rivals_, _School for Scandal_, etc.), and
Beaumont and Fletcher. The poet James Thomson, author of _The Seasons_,
and the novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), whose _Sense and Sensibility_
and _Pride and Prejudice_ still stand very high, and the poets Oliver
Goldsmith (1728-74), author of the _Deserted Village_, and Thomas Gray
(1716-71), author of the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, show the more
refined feeling of the time.
A unique place must be given to Robert Burns (1759-96), the Scottish
poet and the finest lyric poet of the time in spite of his notorious
intemperance. Burns is assuredly an immortal and such pieces as _Tam_
and _The_ _Cotter’s Saturday Night_ are classics. _Auld Lang Syne_ is
also his. And a very different work of the eighteenth century which
is unquestionably a classic of highest rank is the great work of the
historian Gibbon (1757-94), _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_,
the product of twenty years of incessant labor.
The chronicle of English literature now becomes so congested with
distinguished names that we must notice only the higher peaks. Classics
beyond any question are the two great poets of rebellion who opened the
modern period in the stricter sense of the word, Byron and Shelley.
Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), was, as his title indicates, the
aristocratic poet, yet owing to his critical revolt and his sympathy
with rebels like the Greeks, he was ostracised by his own class (a
generally immoral class, by the way), and his work has a tinge of
melancholy. _Childe Harold_, _The Prisoner of Chillon_, and _Manfred_,
his best works, are classics. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), was
almost equally aristocratic in origin, yet he became the prophet of the
democratic and humanitarian movement. His _Prometheus Unbound_ is not
only a magnificent expression of modern thought, but it is one of the
greatest poems in literature from the purely artistic standpoint. While
Byron remained romantic, Shelley, like Goethe, felt the spell of the
Greek and Roman classics.
Next to these, or even above them or next to Milton, some critics
put William Wordsworth (1770-1850), the leading poet of the more
conservative school (with Cowper and Southey). I doubt if many
English readers now read his masterpiece, _The Excursion_, while
thousands treasure the beautiful work of John Keats (1795-1821), whose
classic, _Endymion_, Wordsworth patronizingly called a “pretty piece
of paganism.” Keats never saw Greece, and had never left London when
he wrote his wonderful poems of Greek legend and life (_Hyperion_,
_Lamia, etc._). Of the British poets of the early nineteenth century,
it is impossible, even in a list of classics, to ignore the _Ancient
Mariner_, _Kubla Khan_, etc., of S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834), the
_Lalla Rookh_ and _Irish Melodies_ of T. Moore (1779-1852), and the
_Songs of Experience_ of that strange mystic-skeptic William Blake
(1757-1827).
Classics of the first order are the novels (if not some of the poems)
of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), of the romantic school, and Charles
Dickens of early date, one of the greatest of all masters of fiction.
The novels of Thackeray (1811-63), would be put by many as classics of
a secondary rank, and at least the autobiographical _Confessions of an
English Opium-Eater_ of DeQuincey (1785-1859), is a classic: a unique
expression of drug-inspired dreams and reveries.
We now, however, reach the Victorian Age of letters in England, and
it is difficult to select. Whether Tennyson’s smooth and careful
verse and Robert Browning’s rugged and intellectual poems ought to
be included here may be disputed, but much of the poetry of Algernon
Charles Swinburne (1857-1909), especially his _Poems and Ballads_ and
_Songs Before Sunrise_, has a glow of passion and a beauty of language
that puts it in the highest category. The _Essays_ of Lord Macaulay
(1800-59), the _Sartor Resartus_ (a unique philosophical diatribe), and
_The History of the French Revolution_ of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881),
the noble prose of the _Seven Lamps_, _Stones of Venice_ and _Modern
Painters_ of John Ruskin (1819-1900), the _Marius the Epicurean_ of
Walter Pater (1839-94), some of the novels of George Eliot (or Mary
Ann Cross, 1819-1850), of George Meredith (1828-1909), the _Way of All
Flesh_ and _Erewhon_ of Samuel Butler (1835-1902), Huxley’s _Essays_
(on science and religion), and Froude’s _History of England_, and
Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ (1859), may be selected out of the mass of
fine or notable works. I again refrain from noticing living writers,
but one wonders if any living British author will be read fifty years
from now. Possibly, in fact, half or two-thirds of the works I have
noticed in this section will gradually pass out of that select circle
which contains the world’s classics. Already some whom contemporaries
considered as likely to live--Trollope, Southey, Lamb, Hazlitt,
Cobbett, the Bronté sisters, etc.--are mere names in the history of
English literature.
§4. AMERICAN CLASSICS
This difficulty of selection presses particularly upon one when we
turn to American literature. Few great American writers are old enough
to have endured and passed the test of time, and American literature
as a whole appears under peculiar circumstances. The reader will have
noticed throughout this sketch how great poetry, especially, belongs to
definite periods. We talk of the Golden Age of Greek and Latin letters,
the art of the Renaissance, the Elizabethan Age, the Storm and Stress
Period in Germany, and so on. These artistic periods mark a point where
a new civilization has reached its full development yet has not yet
become fully intellectualized, or a time when a revolution of some
kind or other has entered its blood. All this was over when the United
States was born. Its vast population in the nineteenth century was made
up from European nations which had long since passed through their
feverish periods.
The Revolution itself might be expected to inspire poetry, but a close
consideration of the conditions of the time would explain why it did
not. The only notable writers of the latter part of the eighteenth
century are Franklin (1706-90) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Paine
remained an Englishman and is not included in chronicles of American
literature, but his spirited and superb first work, _Common Sense_, is
essentially an expression of the American sentiment, and I prefer to
include it here. His _Rights of Man_ and _Age of Reason_ count rather
as English classics, but Paine was a cosmopolitan and would doubtless
prefer to be numbered amongst American writers.
Washington Irving (1783-1859) really opens the period of distinguished
American literature. His _Knickerbocker History of New York_, _Sketch_
_Book_, and _Alhambra_ take rank in world literature. J. Fenimore
Cooper (1789-1851) was for decades read throughout the English-speaking
world, and even beyond it, for his stories of the war with the Indians,
though one would hardly call them classics of fiction. William
Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) is the first poet of distinction, and his
_Thanatopsis_, though early, has every mark of great poetry.
By the middle of the century America had a group of writers to
compare with those of any country. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) even in
his prematurely closed career achieved poetry of a very high order,
especially _The Raven and Other Poems_. A prose-poem, _Eureka_, which
he wrote shortly before his death should be read for the interest of
his opinions. Bayard Taylor (1825-78) also wrote fine poetry (_Poems of
the Orient_, etc.) and gave us one of the most satisfactory versions of
Goethe’s _Faust_, a most difficult achievement.
Two early historians also must be included here: William Hickling
Prescott (1796-1859), whose _Ferdinand and Isabella_, _Conquest of
Mexico_, and _Conquest of Peru_ would distinguish any writer, and are
remarkable when we reflect that the author was blind, and John Lothrop
Motley (1814-77), whose _History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and
_History of the United Netherlands_ are finely written works.
Of the great crowd of American writers of the next generation I would
select Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) and Walt Whitman (1819-92) as
the greatest from the literary point of view. Emerson’s _Essays_ are
written generally in a noble English which no English writer of the
nineteenth century has surpassed. Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_, on
the other hand, is indisputably an American classic. Even Emerson,
whose moral dignity must have been shocked by many of Whitman’s
sentiments, pronounced the book “the most extraordinary piece of wit
and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” After these, as great and
distinctive writing I would give Bret Harte’s stories, Mark Twain’s
works, Lowell’s _Bigelow Papers_, and Thoreau’s _Walden_ and _In the
Maine Woods_.
Amongst the poets the highest place is usually awarded to Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), though the simplicity of his work
which charms one critic causes others to hesitate to put him in the
company of the greater poets. There is, naturally, more fire in the
verse of J. G. Whittier (1807-92) who became a passionate prophet of
the Abolitionist party (especially in _Voices of Freedom_). I prefer
some of the short poems--one might almost say hymns--of Whittier and
of James Russell Lowell (1818-91) to anything of Longfellow’s; though
Lowell is very unequal as a poet and is, perhaps (after his historic
_Bigelow Papers_), best known as a literary essayist.
Of the novelists of the time Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and W. D.
Howells (1837-1920) are confessedly the greatest. Hawthorne’s _Scarlet
Letter_ is a classic of American fiction. Dr. O. W. Holmes (1809-94)
was not a brilliant success as a novelist, but the general thought and
excellent writing of his _Autocrat_, _Poet_ and _Professor at the
Breakfast Table_ keep his work on the shelves of every book-lover. Of
the great orators, from Webster to Ingersoll, and the scientific and
philosophical writers, we cannot give any account here.
And into the merits of more recent and living writers I, as in other
sections, decline to enter. Taste changes so rapidly in our time that
already our critics seem to believe that no classic was written before
the twentieth century. H. G. Wells once in a conversation with me
ridiculed the idea that the style of the historian Gibbon was superior
to the English we write today. There is much to be said for the
directness and flexibility of the modern style, when a master writes
it, but on those tests few of the great works I have recorded would
maintain their high positions. There are, however, objective standards
of art and I have given some idea of the world’s masterpieces in all
ages which rank highest by those standards.
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.