History of the Period.--Much of the English history of this period
was affected directly or indirectly by the French Revolution (1789).
The object of this movement was to free men from oppression by the
aristocracy and to restore to them their natural rights. The new
watchwords were "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality." The professed
principles of the French revolutionists were in many respects similar
to those embodied in the American _Declaration of Independence_.
At first the movement was applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen;
but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of
terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France
executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make
republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister
home, and war immediately resulted. With only a short intermission,
this lasted from 1793 until 1815, the contest caused by the French
Revolution having become merged in the Napoleonic war. The battle of
Waterloo (1815) ended the struggle with the defeat of Napoleon by the
English general, Wellington.
The War of 1812 with the United States was for England only an
incident of the war with France. England had become so powerful on the
sea, as a result of the victories of Nelson, that she not only forbade
vessels of a neutral power to trade with France, but she actually
searched American vessels and sometimes removed their seamen, claiming
that they were British deserters. The Americans won astonishing naval
victories; but the war was concluded without any very definite
decision on the points involved.
The last part of the eighteenth century saw the invention of spinning
and weaving machines, the introduction of steam engines to furnish
power, the wider use of coal, the substitution of the factory system
for the home production of cloth, and the impairment of the home by
the employment of women and children for unrestricted hours in the
factories.
The long reign of George III., interrupted by periods of insanity,
ended in 1820. The next two kings were his sons, George IV.
(1820-1830) and William IV. (1830-1837). During these two reigns the
spirit of reform was in the air. The most important reforms were (1)
the revision of the criminal laws, which had prescribed death for some
two hundred offenses, including stealing as much as five shillings;
(2) the removal of political disabilities from Catholics, so that for
the first time since 1673 they could hold municipal office and sit in
Parliament; (3) the Reform Bill of 1832, which (_a_) extended the
franchise to the well-to-do middle classes but not to those dependent
on day labor, (_b_) gave a fairer apportionment of representatives in
Parliament and abolished the so-called "rotten boroughs," _i.e._ those
districts which with few or no inhabitants had been sending members to
Parliament, while the large manufacturing cities in the north were
without representatives; (4) the final bill in 1833 for the abolition
of slavery; (5) child labor laws, which ordered the textile factories
to cease employing children under nine years of age, prescribed a
legal working day of eight hours for children between nine and
thirteen, and of twelve hours for those between thirteen and eighteen;
(6) the improvement of the poor laws.
The increased interest in human rights and welfare is the most
important characteristic of this entire period, but most especially of
the reigns of George IV. and William IV. Sir Robert Peel, the elder,
although an employer of nearly a thousand children, felt the spirit of
the time enough to call the attention of Parliament to the abuses of
child labor. As we shall see, this new spirit exerted a strong
influence on literature.
Influence of the New Spirit on Poetry.--The French Revolution
stirred the young English poets profoundly. They proclaimed the birth
of a new humanity of boundless promise. The possibilities of life
again seemed almost as great as in Elizabethan days. The usually
sober-minded Wordsworth exclaimed:--
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!"[1]
In the age of Pope, the only type of man considered worthy a place in
the best literature was the aristocrat. The ordinary laborer was an
object too contemptible even for satire. Burns placed a halo around
the head of the honest toiler. In 1786 he could find readers for his
_The Cotter's Saturday Night_; and ten years later he proclaimed
thoughts which would have been laughed to scorn early in the
century:--
"Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
* * * * *
The rank is but the guinea stamp;
The man's the gowd[2] for a' that."[3]
Wordsworth strikes almost the same chord:--
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie."[4]
The tenderness and sympathy induced by this new interest in human
beings resulted in the annexation to English literature of an almost
unexplored continent,--the continent of childhood. William Blake and
William Wordsworth set the child in the midst of the poetry of this
romantic age.
More sympathy for animals naturally followed the increased interest in
humanity. The poems of Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge show
this quickened feeling for a starved bird, a wounded hare, a hart
cruelly slain, or an albatross wantonly shot. The social disorder of
the Revolution might make Wordsworth pause, but he continued with
unabated vigor to teach us--
"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."[5]
New humanitarian interests affected all the great poets of this age.
Although Keats was cut off while he was making an Aeolian response to
the beauty of the world, yet even he, in his brief life, heard
something of the new message.
Growth of Appreciation of Nature.--More appreciation of nature
followed the development of broader sympathy, Burns wrote a lyric full
of feeling for a mountain daisy which his plow had turned beneath the
furrow. Wordsworth exclaimed:--
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."[6]
For more than a century after Milton, the majority of references to
nature were made in general terms and were borrowed from the stock
illustrations of older poets, like Vergil. We find the conventional
lark, nightingale, and turtledove. Nothing new or definite is said of
them.
Increasing comforts and safety in travel now took more people where
they could see for themselves the beauty of nature. In the new poetry
we consequently find more definiteness. We can hear the whir of the
partridge, the chatter of magpies, the whistle of the quail. Poets
speak of a tree not only in general terms, but they note also the
differences in the shade of the green of the leaves and the
peculiarities of the bark. Previous to this time, poets borrowed from
Theocritus and Vergil piping shepherds reclining in the shade, whom no
Englishman had ever seen. In _Michael_ Wordsworth pictures a genuine
English shepherd.
The love for mountains and wild nature is of recent growth. One writer
in the seventeenth century considered the Alps as so much rubbish
swept together by the broom of nature to clear the plains of Italy. A
seventeenth century traveler thought the Welsh mountains better than
the Alps because the former would pasture goats. Dr. Johnson asked,
"Who can like the Highlands?" The influence of the romantic movement
developed the love for wild scenery, which is so conspicuous in
Wordsworth and Byron.
This age surpasses even the Elizabethan in endowing Nature with a
conscious soul, capable of bringing a message of solace and
companionship. The greatest romantic poet of nature thus expresses his
creed:--
"...Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy."[7]
The Victory of Romanticism.--We have traced in the preceding age the
beginnings of the romantic movement. Its ascendancy over classical
rules was complete in the period between 1780 and the Victorian age.
The romantic victory brought to literature more imagination, greater
individuality, deeper feeling, a less artificial form of expression,
and an added sense for the appreciation of the beauties of nature and
their spiritual significance.
Swinburne says that the new poetic school, "usually registered as
Wordsworthian," was "actually founded at midnight by William Blake
(1757-1827) and fortified at sunrise by William Wordsworth." These
lines from Blake's _To the Evening Star_ (1783) may be given to
support this statement:--
"Thou fair-haired Angel of the Evening,
* * * * *
Smile on our loves; and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy West Wind sleep on
The lake."
We may note in these lines the absence of the classical couplet, the
fact that the end of the lines necessitates no halt in thought, and a
unique sympathetic touch in the lines referring to the flower and the
wind.
Blake's _Songs of Innocence_ (1789) and _Songs of Experience_ (1793)
show not only the new feeling toward nature, but also a broader
sympathy with children and with all suffering creatures. The chimney
sweeper, the lost child, and even the sick rose are remembered in his
verse. In his poem, _The Schoolboy_, he enters as sympathetically as
Shakespeare into the heart of the boy on his way to school, when he
hears the call of the uncaged birds and the fields.
These two lines express an oft-recurring idea in Blake's mystical
romantic verse:--
"The land of dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star."
The volume of _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798), the joint work of Wordsworth
and Coleridge, marks the complete victory of the romantic movement.
The Position of Prose.--The eighteenth century, until near its end,
was, broadly speaking, an age of prose. In excellence and variety the
prose surpassed the poetry; but in this age (1780-1837) their position
was reversed and poetry regained almost an Elizabethan ascendancy.
Much good prose was written, but it ranks decidedly below the
enchanting romantic poetry.
Prose writers were laying the foundations for the new science of
political economy and endeavoring to ascertain how the condition of
the masses could be improved. While investigating this subject,
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), an Episcopal clergyman, announced
his famous proposition, since known as the Malthusian theorem, that
population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence.
Political economists and philosophers like Adam Smith (1723-1790),
professor in the University of Glasgow, agreed on the "let-alone"
doctrine of government. They held that individuals could succeed best
when least interfered with by government, that a government could not
set aside natural law, but could only impede it and cause harm, as for
instance, in framing laws to tempt capital into forms of industry less
productive than others and away from the employment that it would
naturally seek. Many did not even believe in legislation affecting the
hours of labor or the work of children. This "let-alone" theory was
widely held until the close of the nineteenth century.
In moral philosophy, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), lawyer and
philosopher, laid down the principle that happiness is the prime
object of existence, and that the basis of legislation should be the
greatest happiness to the greatest number, instead of to the
privileged few. He measured the morality of actions by their
efficiency in producing this happiness, and he said that pushpin is as
good as poetry, if it gives as much pleasure. He was followed by
James Mill (1773-1836), who maintained that the morality of actions
is measured by their utility. The fault with many of the prevalent
theories of government and morals lay in their narrow standards of
immediate utility, their failure to measure remote spiritual effects.
[Illustration: ROBERT SOUTHEY.]
The taste of the age encouraged poetry. Scott, although a natural born
writer of prose romance, made his early reputation by such poems as
_Marmion_ and _The Lady of the Lake_. Robert Southey (1774-1843)
usually classed with Wordsworth and Coleridge as one of the three
so-called Lake Poets, wrote much better prose than poetry. His prose
_Life of Nelson_ outranks the poetry in his _Curse of Kehama_. It is
probable that, had he lived in an age of prose ascendancy, he would
have written little poetry, for he distinctly says that the desire of
making money "has already led me to write sometimes in poetry what
would perhaps otherwise have been better written in prose." This
statement shows in a striking way the spirit of those times. If
Coleridge had not written such good poetry, his excellent critical
prose would probably be more read to-day; but he doubtless continues
to have a thousand readers for _The Ancient Mariner_ to one for his
prose.
Among the prose writers of this age, the fiction of Scott and Jane
Austen seems destined to the longest lease of life and the widest
circle of readers. De Quincey's work, especially his artistic
presentation of his thrilling dreams, has many admirers.
[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB. _From a drawing by Maclise_.]
The _Essays of Elia_ of Charles Lamb (1775-1834) still charms many
readers. For over thirty years he was by day a clerk in the India
House and by night a student of the Elizabethan drama and a writer of
periodical essays, suggestive of the work of Addison and Steele.
Lamb's pervasive humor in discussing trivial subjects makes him very
delightful reading. His well-known _Essays of Elia_ first appeared in
the _London Magazine_ between 1820 and 1833. The peculiar flavor of
his style and humor is shown in his _A Dissertation upon Roast-Pig_,
as one of the most popular of these _Essays_ is called. Lamb relates
how a Chinese boy, Bo-bo, having accidentally set his house an fire
and roasted a litter of pigs, happened to acquire a liking for roast
pig when he sucked his fingers to cool them after touching a crackling
pig. It was considered a crime to eat meat that was not raw; but the
jury fortunately had their fingers burned in the same way and tried
Bo-bo's method of cooling them. The boy was promptly acquitted. Lamb
gravely proceeds:--
"The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity
of the decision, and when the court was dismissed, went privily
and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a
few days his lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The
thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in
every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the
district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People
built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the
very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the
world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process
of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made
a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal,
might be cooked (_burnt_ as they called it) without the necessity of
consuming a whole house to dress it. Then began the rude form of a
gridiron."
[Illustration: BO-BO AND ROAST PIG. _From a drawing by B.
Westmacott_.]
Other enjoyable essays are _Old China_, a lovable picture of his home
life with his sister, _Dream Children_, _New Year's Eve_, and _Poor
Relations_.
The results of Lamb's Elizabethan studies appeared in the excellent
_Tales from Shakespeare_, which he wrote with his sister, and in his
_Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who wrote about the Time of
Shakespeare_.
This age produced much prose criticism. Coleridge remains one of
England's greatest critics, and Lamb and De Quincey are yet two of her
most enjoyable ones. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) and William
Hazlitt (1778-1830) also deserve mention in the history of English
prose criticism. Both men were unusually combative. Landor was sent
away from Oxford "for criticizing a noisy party with a shot gun,"
which he discharged against the closed shutters of the room where the
roisterers were holding their festivities. He went to Italy, where
most of his literary work was done. He avoided people, and even
boasted that he took more pleasure with his own thoughts than with
those of others. For companionship, he imagined himself conversing
with other people. The titles of his best two works are _Imaginary
Conversations_ (1824-1848) and _Pericles and Aspasia_ (1836), the
latter a series of imaginary letters. His writings are notable for
their style, for an unusual combination of dignity with simplicity and
directness. A statement like the following shows how vigorous and
sweeping his criticisms sometimes are: "A rib of Shakespeare would
have made a Milton; the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever
since." In spite of many splendid passages and of a style that
suggests sculpture in marble, twentieth-century readers often feel
that he is under full sail, either bound for nowhere, or voyaging to
some port where they do not care to land.
Hazlitt is less polished, but more suggestive, and in closer touch
with life than Landor. In seizing the important qualities of an
author's works and summarizing them in brief space, Hazlitt shows the
skill of a trained journalist. His three volumes, _Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays_ (1817), _Lectures on the English Poets_ (1818),
and _Lectures on the English Comic Writers_ (1819) contain criticism
that remains stimulating and suggestive. He loves to arrive somewhere,
to settle his points definitely. His discussion of the frequently
debated question,--whether Pope is a poet, shows this
characteristic:--
"The question,--whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been
settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great
poet, he must have been a great prose writer, that is, he was a
great writer of some sort."
His two volumes of essays, _The Round Table_ (1817) and _Table Talk_
(1821-1822), caused him to be called a "lesser Dr. Samuel Johnson."
While the combative dispositions of Landor and Hazlitt did not make
them ideal critics of their contemporaries, the taste of the age liked
criticism of the slashing type. The newly established periodicals and
reviews, such as _The Edinburgh Review_ (started in 1802), furnished a
new market for critical essays. Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), editor
of _The Edinburgh Review_, accused Wordsworth of "silliness" in his
_Lyrical Ballads_; and said vehemently of a later volume of the same
poet's verse: "This will never do." _The Quarterly Review_ in 1818
spoke of the "insanity" of the poetry of Keats. In 1819 _Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine_ gave a fatherly warning to Shelley that Keats as a
poet was "worthy of sheer and instant contempt," advised him to select
better companions than "Johnny Keats," and promised that compliance
with this advice would secure him "abundance of better praise."
Even the more genial Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), the friend of Shelley
and Keats, and the writer of many pleasant essays, called Carlyle's
style "a jargon got up to confound pretension with performance." We
like Hunt best when he is writing in the vein of the _Spectator_ or as
a "miniature Lamb." In such papers as _An Earth upon Heaven_, Hunt
tells us that in heaven "there can be no clergymen if there are no
official duties for them"; that we shall there enjoy the choicest
books, for "Shakespeare and Spenser should write us _new ones_." He
closes this entertaining paper with the novel assurance: "If we
choose, now and then we shall even have inconveniences."
WILLIAM COWPER, 1731-1800
[Illustration: WILLIAM COWPER. _From the portrait by Sir Thomas
Lawrence_.]
Life.--Cowper's life is a tale of almost continual sadness, caused
by his morbid timidity. He was born at Great Berkhampstead,
Hertfordshire, in 1731. At the age of six, he lost his mother and was
placed in a boarding school. Here his sufferings began. The child was
so especially terrified by one rough boy that he could never raise his
eyes to the bully's face, but knew him unmistakably by his shoe
buckles.
There was some happiness for Cowper at his next school, the
Westminster School, and also during the twelve succeeding years, when
he studied law; but the short respite was followed by the gloom of
madness. Owing to his ungovernable fear of a public examination, which
was necessary to secure the position offered by an uncle, Cowper
underwent days and nights of agony, during which he tried in many ways
to end his miserable life. The frightful ordeal unsettled his reason,
and he spent eighteen months in an insane asylum.
Upon his recovery, he was taken into the house of a Rev. Mr. Unwin,
whose wife tended Cowper as a son during the rest of her life. He was
never supremely happy, and he was sometimes again thrown into madness
by the terrible thought of God's wrath; but his life was passed in a
quiet manner in the villages of Weston and Olney, where he was loved
by every one. The simple pursuits of gardening, carpentering, visiting
the sick, caring for his numerous pets, rambling through the lanes,
studying nature, and writing verse, occupied his sane moments when he
was not at prayer.
Works.--Cowper's first works were the _Olney Hymns_. His religious
nature is manifest again in the volume which consists of didactic
poems upon such subjects as _The Progress of Error, Truth, Charity,
Table Talk_, and _Conversation_. These are in the spirit of the formal
classical poets, and contain sententious couplets such as
"An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless if it goes as when it stands."[8]
"Vociferated logic kills me quite;
A noisy man is always in the right."[9]
[Illustration: COWPER'S COTTAGE AT WESTON.]
The bare didacticism of these poems is softened and sweetened by the
gentle, devout nature of the poet, and is enlivened by a vein of pure
humor.
He is one of England's most delightful letter writers because of his
humor, which ripples occasionally over the stream of his
constitutional melancholy. _The Diverting History of John Gilpin_ is
extremely humorous. The poet seems to have forgotten himself in this
ballad and to have given full expression to his sense of the
ludicrous.
[Illustration: JOHN GILPIN'S RIDE. _From a drawing by R.
Caldecott_.]
The work that has made his name famous is _The Task_. He gave it this
title half humorously because his friend, Lady Austen, had bidden him
write a poem in blank verse upon some subject or other, the sofa, for
instance; and he called the first book of the poem _The Sofa_. _The
Task_ is chiefly remarkable because it turns from the artificial and
conventional subjects which had been popular, and describes simple
beauties of nature and the joys of country life. Cowper says:--
"God made the country, and man made the town."
To a public acquainted with the nature poetry of Burns, Wordsworth,
and Tennyson, Cowper's poem does not seem a wonderful production.
Appearing as it did, however, during the ascendancy of Pope's
influence, when aristocratic city life was the only theme for verse,
_The Task_ is a strikingly original work. It marks a change from the
artificial style of eighteenth century poetry and proclaims the dawn
of the natural style of the new school. He who could write of--
"...rills that slip
Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
In matted grass, that with a livelier green
Betrays the secret of their silent course,"
was a worthy forerunner of Shelley and Keats.
General Characteristics.--Cowper's religious fervor was the
strongest element in both his life and his writings. Perhaps that
which next appealed to his nature was the pathetic. He had
considerable mastery of pathos, as may be seen in the drawing of
"crazed Kate" in _The Task_, in the lines _To Mary_, and in the
touchingly beautiful poem _On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture out
of Norfolk_, beginning with that well-known line:--
"Oh that those lips had language!"
The two most attractive characteristics of his works are refined,
gentle humor and a simple and true manner of picturing rural scenes
and incidents. He says that he described no spot which he had not
seen, and expressed no emotion which he had not felt. In this way, he
restricted the range of his subjects and displayed a somewhat literal
mind; but what he had seen and felt he touched with a light fancy and
with considerable imaginative power.
ROBERT BURNS, 1759-1796
[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS. _From the painting by Nasmyth, National
Portrait Gallery_.]
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF BURNS.]
Life.--The greatest of Scottish poets was born in a peasant's
clay-built cottage, a mile and a half south of Ayr. His father was a
man whose morality, industry, and zeal for education made him an
admirable parent. For a picture of his father and the home influences
under which the boy was reared, _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ should
be read. The poet had little formal schooling, but under paternal
influence he learned how to teach himself.
Until his twenty-eighth year, Robert Burns was an ordinary laborer on
one or another of the Ayrshire tenant farms which his father or
brothers leased. At the age of fifteen, he was worked beyond his
strength in doing a man's full labor. He called his life on the
Ayrshire farms "the unceasing toil of a galley slave." All his life he
fought a hand-to-hand fight with poverty.
In 1786, when he was twenty-seven years old, he resolved to abandon
the struggle and seek a position in the far-off island of Jamaica. In
order to secure money for his passage, he published some poems which
he had thought out while following the plow or resting after the day's
toil. Six hundred copies were printed at three shillings each. All
were sold in a little over a month. A copy of this Kilmarnock edition
has since sold in Edinburgh for £572. His fame from that little volume
has grown as much as its monetary value.
Some Edinburgh critics praised the poems very highly and suggested a
second edition. Burns therefore abandoned the idea of going to Jamaica
and went to Edinburgh to arrange for a new edition. Here he was
entertained by the foremost men, some of whom wished to see how a
plowman would behave in polite society, while others desired to gaze
on what they regarded as a freak of nature.
The new volume appeared in 1787, and contained but few poems which had
not been published the previous year. The following winter he again
went to Edinburgh; but having shocked society by his intemperate
habits, he was almost totally neglected by the leaders of literature
and fashion.
In 1788 Burns married Jean Armour and took her to a farm which he
leased in Dumfriesshire. The first part of this new period was the
happiest in his life. She has been immortalized in his songs:--
"I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green
There's not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean."[10]
As this farm proved unprofitable, Burns appealed to influential
persons for some position that would enable him to support his family
and write poetry. This was an age of pensions, but not a farthing of
pension did he ever get. He was made an exciseman or gauger, at a
salary of £50 a year, and he followed that occupation for the few
remaining years of his life.
Robert Burns wrote and did some things unworthy of a great poet; but
when Scotland thinks of him, she quotes the lines which he wrote for
_Tam Samson's Elegy_:--
"Heav'n rest his saul, whare'er he be!
Is th' wish o' mony mae than me:
He had twa faults, or maybe three,
Yet what remead?[11]
Ae social, honest man want we."
Burns's Poetic Creed.--We can understand and enjoy Burns much better
if we know his object in writing poetry and the point of view from
which he regarded life. It would be hard to fancy the intensity of the
shock which the school of Pope would have felt on reading this
statement of the poor plowman's poetic creed:--
"Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire;
Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire
At pleugh or cart,
My Muse, though hamely in attire,
May touch the heart."[12]
Burns's heart had been touched with the loves and sorrows of life, and
it was his ambition to sing so naturally of these as to touch the
hearts of others.
With such an object in view, he did not disdain to use in his best
productions much of the Scottish dialect, the vernacular of the
plowman and the shepherd. The literary men of Edinburgh, who would
rather have been convicted of a breach of etiquette than of a
Scotticism, tried to induce him to write pure English; but the Scotch
words which he first heard from his mother's lips seemed to possess
more "o' Nature's fire." He ended by touching the heart of Scotland
and making her feel more proud of this dialect, of him, and of
herself.
[Illustration: BURNS AND HIGHLAND MARY. _From the painting by James
Archer_.]
Union of the Elizabethan with the Revolutionary Spirit.--In no
respect does the poetry of Burns more completely part company with the
productions of the classical school than in the expression of feeling.
The emotional fire of Elizabethan times was restored to literature. No
poet except Shakespeare has ever written more nobly impassioned love
songs. Burns's song beginning:--
"Ae fond kiss and then
we sever"
seemed to both Byron and Scott to contain the essence of a thousand
love tales. This unaffected, passionate treatment of love had long
been absent from our literature; but intensity of genuine feeling
reappeared in Burns's _Highland Mary, I Love My Jean, Farewell to
Nancy, To Mary in Heaven, O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast_, which last
Mendelssohn thought exquisite enough to set to music. The poetry of
Burns throbs with varying emotions. It has been well said that the
essence of the lyric is to describe the passion of the moment. Burns
is a master in this field.
The spirit of revolution against the bondage and cold formalism of the
past made the poor man feel that his place in the world was as
dignified, his happiness as important, as that of the rich. A feeling
of sympathy for the oppressed and the helpless also reached beyond man
to animals. Burns wrote touching lines about a mouse whose nest was,
one cold November day, destroyed by his plow. When the wild eddying
swirl of the snow beat around his cot, his heart went out to the poor
sheep, cattle, and birds.
Burns can, therefore, claim kinship with the Elizabethans because of
his love songs, which in depth of feeling and beauty of natural
utterance show something of Shakespeare's magic. In addition to this,
the poetry of Burns voices the democratic spirit of the Revolution.
Treatment of Nature.--In his verses, the autumn winds blow over
yellow corn; the fogs melt in limpid air; the birches extend their
fragrant arms dressed in woodbine; the lovers are coming through the
rye; the daisy spreads her snowy bosom to the sun; the "westlin" winds
blow fragrant with dewy flowers and musical with the melody of birds;
the brook flows past the lover's Eden, where summer first unfolds her
robes and tarries longest, because of the rarest bewitching
enchantment of the poet's tale told there.
In his poetry those conventional birds,--the lark and the
nightingale,--do not hold the chief place. His verses show that the
source of his knowledge of birds is not to be sought in books. We
catch glimpses of grouse cropping heather buds, of whirring flocks of
partridges, of the sooty coot and the speckled teal, of the fisher
herons, of the green-crested lapwing, of clamoring craiks among fields
of flowering clover, of robins cheering the pensive autumn, of
lintwhites chanting among the buds, of the mavis singing drowsy day to
rest.
It is true that on the poetic stage of Burns, man always stands in the
foreground. Nature is employed in order to give human emotion a proper
background. Burns chose those aspects of nature which harmonized with
his present mood, but the natural objects in his pages are none the
less enjoyable for that reason. Sometimes his songs complain if nature
seems gay when he is sad, but this contrast is employed to throw a
stronger light on his woes.
General Characteristics.--More people often visit the birthplace of
Burns near Ayr than of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon. What
qualities in Burns account for such popularity? The fact that the
Scotch are an unusually patriotic people and make many pilgrimages to
the land of Burns is only a partial answer to this question. The
complete answer is to be found in a study of Burns's characteristics.
In the first place, with his "spark o' Nature's fire," he has touched
the hearts of more of the rank and file of humanity than even
Shakespeare himself. The songs of Burns minister in the simplest and
most direct way to every one of the common feelings of the human
heart. Shakespeare surpasses all others in painting universal human
nature, but he is not always simple. Sometimes his audience consists
of only the cultured few.
Especially enjoyable is the humor of Burns, which usually displays a
kindly and intuitive sympathy with human weakness. _Tam o' Shanter_,
his greatest poem, keeps the reader smiling or laughing from beginning
to end. When the Scottish Muse proudly placed on his brow the holly
wreath, she happily emphasized two of his conspicuous qualities,--his
love and mirth, when she said:--
"I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth
With boundless love."[13]
Burns is one of the great masters of lyrical verse. He preferred that
form. He wrote neither epic nor dramatic poetry. He excels in "short
swallow flights of song."
There are not many ways in which a poet can keep larger audiences or
come nearer to them than by writing verses that naturally lend
themselves to daily song. There are few persons, from the peasant to
the lord, who have not sung some of Burns's songs such as _Auld Lang
Syne, Coming through the Rye, John Anderson my Jo_, or _Scots Wha hae
wi' Wallace Bled_. Since the day of his death, the audiences of Robert
Burns have for these reasons continually grown larger.
WALTER SCOTT, 1771-1832
[Illustration: WALTER SCOTT. _From the painting by William
Nicholson._]
Life.--Walter Scott, the son of a solicitor, was born in Edinburgh
in 1771. In childhood he was such an invalid that he was allowed to
follow his own bent without much attempt at formal education. He was
taken to the country, where he acquired a lasting fondness for animals
and wild scenery. With his first few shillings he bought the
collection of early ballads and songs known as Percy's _Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry_. Of this he says, "I do not believe I ever
read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm." His
grandmother used to delight him with the tales of adventure on the
Scottish border.
Later, Scott went to the Edinburgh High School and to the University.
At the High School he showed wonderful genius for telling stories to
the boys. "I made a brighter figure in the _yards_ than in the
_class_," he says of himself at this time. This early practice of
relating tales and noting what held the attention of his classmates
was excellent training for the future Wizard of the North.
After the apprenticeship to his father, the son was called to the bar
and began the practice of law. He often left his office to travel over
the Scottish counties in search of legendary ballads, songs, and
traditions, a collection of which he published under the title of
_Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. In 1797 he married Miss Charlotte
Carpenter, who had an income of £500 a year. In 1799, having obtained
the office of sheriff of Selkirkshire at an annual salary of £300,
with very light duties, he found himself able to neglect law for
literature. His early freedom from poverty is in striking contrast to
the condition of his fellow Scotsman, Robert Burns.
During the period between thirty and forty years of age, he wrote his
best poems. Not until he was nearly forty-three did he discover where
his greatest powers lay. He then published _Waverley_, the first of a
series of novels known by that general name. During the remaining
eighteen years of his life he wrote twenty-nine novels, besides many
other works, such as the _Life of Napoleon_ in nine volumes, and an
entertaining work on Scottish history under the title of _Tales of a
Grandfather_.
[Illustration: ABBOTSFORD, HOME OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.]
The crisis that showed Scott's sterling character came in the winter
of 1825-1826, when an Edinburgh publishing firm in which he was
interested failed and left an his shoulders a debt of £117,000. Had he
been a man of less honor, he might have taken advantage of the
bankrupt law, which would have left his future earnings free from past
claims; but he refused to take any step that would remove his
obligation to pay the debt. At the age of fifty four, he abandoned his
happy dream of founding the house of Scott of Abbotsford and sat down
to pay off the debt with his pen. The example of such a life is better
than the finest sermon on honor. He wrote with almost inconceivable
rapidity. His novel _Woodstock_, the product of three months' work,
brought him £8228. In four years he paid £70,000 to his creditors. One
day the tears rolled down his cheeks because he could no longer force
his fingers to grasp the pen. The king offered him a man-of-war in
which to make a voyage to the Mediterranean. Hoping to regain his
health, Scott made the trip, but the rest came too late. He returned
to Abbotsford in a sinking condition, and died in 1832, at the age of
sixty-one.
[Illustration: SCOTT'S GRAVE IN DRYBURGH ABBEY.]
Poetry.--Scott's three greatest poems are _The Lay of the Last
Minstrel_ (1805), _Marmion_ (1808), and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810).
They belong to the distinct class of story-telling poetry. Like many
of the ballads in Percy's collection, these poems are stories of old
feuds between the Highlander and the Lowlander, and between the border
lords of England and Scotland. These romantic tales of heroic battles,
thrilling incidents, and love adventures, are told in fresh, vigorous
verse, which breathes the free air of wild nature and moves with the
prance of a war horse. Outside of Homer, we can nowhere find a better
description of a battle than in the sixth canto of _Marmion: A Tale of
Flodden Field_:--
"They close, in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword sway and with lance's thrust;
And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if men fought upon the earth,
And fiends in upper air;
* * * * *
And in the smoke the pennons flew,
As in the storm the white sea mew."
_The Lady of the Lake_, an extremely interesting story of romantic
love and adventure, has been the most popular of Scott's poems. Loch
Katrine and the Trossachs, where the scene of the opening cantos is
laid, have since Scott's day been thronged with tourists.
[Illustration: LOCH KATRINE AND ELLEN'S ISLE.]
The most prominent characteristic of Scott's poetry is its energetic
movement. Many schoolboys know by heart those dramatic lines which
express Marmion's defiance of Douglas, and the ballad of _Lochinvar_,
which is alive with the movements of tireless youth. These poems have
an interesting story to tell, not of the thoughts, but of the deeds,
of the characters. Scott is strangely free from nineteenth century
introspection.
Historical Fiction.--Seeing that Byron could surpass him as a poet,
and finding that his own genius was best adapted to writing prose
tales, Scott turned to the composition of his great romances. In 1814
he published _Waverly_, a story of the attempt of the Jacobite
Pretender to recover the English throne in 1745. Seventeen of Scott's
works of fiction are historical.
When we wish a vivid picture of the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, of
the knight and the castle, of the Saxon swineherd Gurth and of the
Norman master who ate the pork, we may read _Ivanhoe_. If we desire
some reading that will make the Crusaders live again, we find it in
the pages of _The Talisman_. When we wish an entertaining story of the
brilliant days of Elizabeth, we turn to _Kenilworth_. If we are moved
by admiration for the Scotch Covenanters to seek a story of their
times, we have Scott's truest historical tale, _Old Mortality_.
Shortly after this story appeared, Lord Holland was asked his opinion
of it. "Opinion!" he exclaimed; "we did not one of us go to bed last
night--nothing slept but my gout." The man who could thus charm his
readers was called "the Wizard of the North."
[Illustration: WALTER SCOTT. _From a life sketch by Maclise_.]
Scott is the creator of the historical novel, which has advanced on
the general lines marked out by him. Carlyle tersely says: "These
historical novels have taught all men this truth, which looks like a
truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and
others till so taught: that the by-gone ages of the world were
actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state papers,
controversies, and abstractions of men."
The history in Scott's novels is not always absolutely accurate. To
meet the exigencies of his plot, he sometimes takes liberties with the
events of history, and there are occasional anachronisms in his work.
Readers may rest assured, however, that the most prominent strokes of
his brush will convey a sufficiently accurate idea of certain phases
of history. Although the hair lines in his pictures may be neglected,
most persons can learn more truth from studying his gallery of
historic scenes than from poring over volumes of documents and state
papers. Scott does not look at life from every point of view. The
reader of _Ivanhoe_, for instance, should be cautioned against
thinking that it presents a complete picture of the Middle Ages. It
shows the bright, the noble side of chivalry, but not all the
brutality, ignorance, and misery of the times.
Novels that are not Historical.--Twelve of Scott's novels contain
but few attempts to represent historic events. The greatest of these
novels are _Guy Mannering, The Heart of Midlothian, The Antiquary, and
The Bride of Lammermoor_.
Scott said that his most rapid work was his best. _Guy Mannering_, an
admirable picture of Scottish life and manners, was written in six
weeks. Some of its characters, like Dominie Sampson, the pedagogue,
Meg Merrilies, the gypsy, and Dick Hatteraick, the smuggler, have more
life than many of the people we meet.
A century before, Pope said that most women had no characters at all.
His writings tend to show that this was his real conviction, as it was
that of many others during the time when Shakespeare was little read.
_The Heart of Midlothian_ presents in Jeanie Deans a woman whose
character and feminine qualities have won the admiration of the world.
Scott could not paint women in the higher walks of life. He was so
chivalrous that he was prone to make such women too perfect, but his
humble Scotch lass Jeanie Deans is one of his greatest creations.
[Illustration: SCOTT'S DESK AT ABBOTSFORD.]
When we note the vast number of characters drawn by his pen, we are
astonished to find that he repeats so little. Many novelists write
only one original novel. Their succeeding works are merely repetitions
of the first. The hero may have put on a new suit of clothes and the
heroine may have different colored hair, or each may be given a new
mannerism, but there is nothing really new in character, and very
little in incident. Year after year, however, Scott wrote with
wonderful rapidity, without repeating his characters or his plots.
General Characteristics.--All critics are impressed with the
healthiness of Scott's work, with its freedom from what is morbid or
debasing. His stories display marked energy and movement, and but
little subtle analysis of feelings and motives. He aimed at broad and
striking effects. We do not find much development of character in his
pages. "His characters have the brilliance and the fixity of
portraits."
Scott does not particularly care to delineate the intense passion of
love. Only one of his novels, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, is aflame
with this overmastering emotion. He delights in adventure. He places
his characters in unusual and dangerous situations, and he has
succeeded in making us feel his own interest in the outcome. He has on
a larger scale many of the qualities that we may note in the American
novelist Cooper, whose best stories are tales of adventure in the
forest or on the sea. Like him, Scott shows lack of care in the
construction of sentences. Few of the most cultured people of to-day
could, however, write at Scott's breakneck speed and make as few
slips. Scott has far more humor and variety than Cooper.
Scott's romanticism is seen in his love for supernatural agencies,
which figure in many of his stories. His fondness for adventure, for
mystery, for the rush of battle, for color and sharp contrast, and his
love for the past are also romantic traits. Sometimes, however, he
falls into the classical fault of overdescription and of leaving too
little to the imagination.
In the variety of his creations, he is equaled by no one. He did more
than any other pioneer to aid fiction in dethroning the drama. His
influence can be seen in the historical novels of almost every nation.
JANE AUSTEN, 1775-1817
[Illustration: JANE AUSTEN. _From an original family portrait_.]
Life and Works.--While Sir Walter Scott was laying the foundations
of his large family estates and recounting the story of battles,
chivalry, and brigandage, a quiet little woman, almost unmindful of
the great world, was enlivening her father's parsonage and writing
about the clergy, the old maids, the short-sighted mothers, the
marriageable daughters, and other people that figure in village life.
This cheery, sprightly young woman was Jane Austen, who was born in
Steventon, Hampshire, in 1775.
She spent nearly all her life in Hampshire, which furnished her with
the chief material for her novels. She loved the quiet life of small
country villages and interpreted it with rare sympathy and a keen
sense of humor, as is shown in the following lines from _Pride and
Prejudice_:--
"'Oh, Mr. Bennet, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an
uproar! You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she
vows she will not have him; and if you do not make haste he will
change his mind and not have her!'
"'Come here, child,' cried her father ... 'I understand that Mr.
Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?' Elizabeth
replied that it was. 'Very well--and this offer of marriage you have
refused?'
"'I have, sir.'
"'Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists
upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?'
"'Yes, or I will never see her again.'
"'An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day
you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will
never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will
never see you again if you do!'"
She began her literary work early, and at the age of sixteen she had
accumulated quite a pile of manuscripts. She wrote as some artists
paint, for the pure joy of the work, and she never allowed her name to
appear on a title page. The majority of her acquaintances did not even
suspect her of the "guilt of authorship."
She disliked "Gothic" romances, such as _The Mysteries of Udolpho_,
and she wrote _Northanger Abbey_ as a burlesque of that type. In this
story the heroine, Catherine Moreland, who has been fed on such
literature, is invited to visit Northanger Abbey in Gloucestershire,
where with an imagination "resolved on alarm," she is prepared to be
agitated by experiences of trapdoors and subterranean passages. On the
first night of her visit, a violent storm, with its mysterious noises,
serves to arouse the most characteristic "Gothic" feelings; but when
the complete awakening comes and the "visions of romance are over,"
Catherine realizes that real life is not fruitful of such horrors as
are depicted in her favorite novels.
_Pride and Prejudice_ is usually considered Jane Austen's best work,
although _Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park_, and
_Persuasion_ have their ardent admirers. In fact, there is an
increasing number of discriminating readers who enjoy almost
everything that she wrote. During the last five years of the
eighteenth century, she produced some of her best novels, although
they were not published until the period between 1811 and 1818.
The scenes of her stories are laid for the most part in small
Hampshire villages, with which she was thoroughly familiar, the
characters being taken from the middle class and the gentry with whom
she was thrown. Simple domestic episodes and ordinary people, living
somewhat monotonous and narrow lives, satisfy her. She exhibits
wonderful skill in fashioning these into slight but entertaining
narratives. In _Pride and Prejudice_, for example, she creates some
refreshing situations by opposing Philip Darcy's pride to Elizabeth
Bennet's prejudice. She manages the long-delayed reconciliation
between these two lovers with a tact that shows true genius and a
knowledge of the human heart.
[Illustration: JANE AUSTEN'S DESK.]
A strong feature of Jane Austen's novels is her subtle, careful manner
of drawing character. She perceives with an intuitive refinement the
delicate shadings of emotion, and describes them with the utmost care
and detail. Her heroines are especially fine, each one having an
interesting individuality, thoroughly natural and womanly. The minor
characters in Miss Austen's works are usually quaint and original. She
sees the oddities and foibles of people with the insight of the true
humorist, and paints them with most dexterous cunning.
William D. Howells, the chief American realist of the nineteenth
century, wrote in 1891 of her and her novels:--
"She was great and they were beautiful because she and they were
honest and dealt with nature nearly a hundred years ago as realism
deals with it to-day. Realism is nothing more and nothing less than
the truthful treatment of material."
She was, indeed, a great realist, and it seems strange that she and
Scott, the great romanticist, should have been contemporaries. Scott
was both broad and big-hearted enough to sum up her chief
characteristics as follows:--
"That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of
feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most
wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself,
like any one going; but the exquisite touch which renders
commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the
description and the sentiment is denied to me."
She died in 1817 at the age of forty-one and was buried in Winchester
Cathedral, fourteen miles from her birthplace. The merit of her work
was apparent to only a very few at the time of her death. Later years
have slowly brought a just recognition of the important position that
she holds in the history of the realistic novel of daily life. Of
still greater significance to the majority is the fact that the subtle
charm of her stories continues to win for her an enlarged circle of
readers.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850
[Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _After the portrait by B.R.
Haydon_.]
Early Life and Training.--William Wordsworth was born in
Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770. He went to school in his ninth year
at Hawkshead, a village on the banks of Esthwaite Water, in the heart
of the Lake Country. The traveler who takes the pleasant journey on
foot or coach from Windermere to Coniston, passes through Hawkshead,
where he may see Wordsworth's name cut in a desk of the school which
he attended. Of greater interest is the scenery which contributed so
much to his education and aided his development into England's
greatest nature poet.
We learn from his autobiographical poem, _The Prelude_, what
experiences molded him in boyhood. He says that the--
"...common face of Nature spake to me
Rememberable things."
In this poem he relates how he absorbed into his inmost being the
orange sky of evening, the curling mist, the last autumnal crocus, the
"souls of lonely places," and the huge peak, which terrified him at
nightfall by seeming to stride after him and which awoke in him a--
"...dim and undermined sense
Of unknown modes of being."
[Illustration: BOY OF WINANDER. _From mural painting by H.O. Walker,
Congressional Library, Washington, D.C._]
In his famous lines on the "Boy of Winander," Wordsworth tells how--
"...the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."
At the age of seventeen he entered Cambridge University, from which he
was graduated after a four years' course. He speaks of himself there
as a dreamer passing through a dream. There came to him the strange
feeling that he "was not for that hour nor for that place;" and yet he
says that he was not unmoved by his daily association with the haunts
of his illustrious predecessors, or of--
"Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,"
and of Milton whose soul seemed to Wordsworth "like a star."
Influence of the French Revolution.--His travels on the continent in
his last vacation and after his graduation brought him in contact with
the French Revolution, of which he felt the inspiring influence. He
was fond of children, and the sight of a poor little French peasant
girl seems to have been one of the main causes leading him to become
an ardent revolutionist. _The Prelude_ tells in concrete fullness how
he walked along the banks of the Loire with his friend, a French
patriot:--
"...And when we chanced
One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl,
Who crept along fitting her languid gait
Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord
Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane
Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands
Was busy knitting in a heartless mood
Of solitude, and at the sight my friend
In agitation said, ''Tis against _that_
That we are fighting.'"
Just as Wordsworth was prepared to throw himself personally into the
conflict, his relatives recalled him to England. When the Revolution
passed into a period of anarchy and bloodshed, his dejection was
intense. As he slowly recovered from his disappointment, he became
more and more conservative in politics and less in sympathy with
violent agitation; but he never ceased to utter a hopeful though calm
and tempered note for genuine liberty.
Maturity and Declining Years.--Although Wordsworth was early left an
orphan, he never seemed to lack intelligent care and sympathy. His
sister Dorothy, a rare soul, helped to fashion him into a poet. Their
favorite pastime was walking and observing nature. De Quincey
estimates that Wordsworth, during the course of his life, mast have
walked as many as 175,000 miles. He acted on his belief that--
"All things that love the sun are out of doors,"
and he composed his best poetry during his walks, dictating it after
his return.
He must have had the capacity of impressing himself favorably on his
associates or he might never have had the leisure to write poetry.
When he was twenty-five, a friend left him a legacy of £900 to enable
him to follow his chosen calling of poet. Seven years later, friends
saw that he was appointed distributor of stamps for Westmoreland, at
the annual salary of £400. Years afterward, a friend gave him a
regular allowance to be spent in traveling.
The summer of 1797 saw him and Dorothy begin a golden year at Alfoxden
in Somersetshire, in close association with Coleridge. The result of
this companionship was _Lyrical Ballads_, an epoch-making volume of
romantic verse, containing such gems as Wordsworth's _Lines composed a
Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Lines written in Early Spring, We Are
Seven_, and Coleridge's _The Ancient Mariner_. "All good poetry,"
wrote Wordsworth in the _Preface_ to the second edition of this
volume, "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." This is
the opposite of the belief of the classical school.
In 1797, after a trip to Germany, he and Dorothy settled at Dove
Cottage, Grasmere, in the Lake Country. She remained a member of the
household after he married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, in 1802. The
history of English authors shows no more ideal companionship than that
of these three kindred souls. Dove Cottage where he wrote the best of
his poetry, remains almost unchanged. It is one of the most
interesting literary homes in England.
[Illustration: DOVE COTTAGE.]
In 1813 he moved a short distance away, to Rydal Mount, where he lived
the remainder of his life. In 1843 he was chosen poet laureate. He
died in 1850 and was buried in Grasmere Churchyard.
A Poet of Nature.--Wordsworth is one of the world's most loving and
thoughtful lyrical poets of Nature. For him she possessed a soul, a
conscious existence, an ability to feel joy and love. In _Lines
written in Early Spring_, he expresses this belief:--
"And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes."
All things seem to him to feel pure joy in existence:--
"The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare."
It was also his poetic creed that Nature could bring to human hearts a
message of solace and companionship. His poem, _Lines composed a Short
Distance above Tintern Abbey_, is a remarkable exposition of this
faith.
He would have scorned to be considered merely a descriptive poet of
nature. He satirizes those who could do nothing more than correctly
apply the color "yellow" to the primrose:--
"A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more."
He interprets the sympathetic soul of Nature, not merely her outward
or her intellectual aspect. He says in _The Prelude_:--
"From Nature and her overflowing soul
I had received so much, that all my thoughts
Were steeped in feeling."
If we compare Wordsworth's line--
"This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,"[14]
with Tennyson's line from _The Princess_--
"A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight,"
we may easily decide which shows more feeling and which, more art.
Many poets have produced beautiful paintings of the external features
of nature. With rare genius, Wordsworth looked beyond the color of the
flower, the outline of the hills, the beauty of the clouds, to the
spirit that breathed through them, and he communed with "Nature's
self, which is the breath of God." He introduced lovers of his poetry
to a new world of nature, a new source of companionship and solace, a
new idea of a Being in cloud and air and "the green leaves among the
groves."
Poetry of Man: Narrative Poems.--Wordsworth is a poet of man as well
as of nature. The love for nature came to him first; but out of it
grew his regard for the people who lived near to nature. His poetry of
man is found more in his longer narrative poems, although in them as
well as in his shorter pieces, he shows the action of nature on man.
In _The Prelude_, the most remarkable autobiographical poem in
English, not only reveals the power in nature to develop man, but he
also tells how the French revolution made him feel the worth of each
individual soul and a sense of the equality of all humanity at the bar
of character and conscience. As his lyrics show the sympathetic soul
of nature, so his narrative poems illustrate the second dominant
characteristic of the age, the strong sense of the worth of the
humblest man.
[Illustration: GRASMERE LAKE.]
_Michael_, one of the very greatest of his productions, displays a
tender and living sympathy with the humble shepherd. The simple
dignity of Michael's character, his frugal and honorable life, his
affection for his son, for his sheep, and for his forefather's old
home, appealed to the heart of the poet. He loved his subject and
wrote the poem with that indescribable simplicity which makes the
tale, the verse, and the tone of thought and feeling form together one
perfect and indissoluble whole. _The Leech-Gatherer_ and the story of
"Margaret" in _The Excursion_ also deal with lowly characters and
exhibit Wordsworth's power of pathos and simple earnestness. He could
not present complex personalities; but these characters, which
belonged to the landscapes of the Lake District and partook of its
calm and its simplicity, he drew with a sure hand.
His longest narrative poem is _The Excursion_ (1814), which is in nine
books. It contains fine passages of verse and some of his sanest and
maturest philosophy; but the work is not the masterpiece that he hoped
to make. It is tedious, prosy, and without action of any kind. The
style, which is for the most part heavy, becomes pure and easy only in
some description of a mountain peak or in the recital of a tale, like
that of "Margaret."
An Interpreter of Child Life.--Perhaps the French Revolution and the
unforgettable incident of the pitiable peasant child were not without
influence in causing him to become a great poetic interpreter of
childhood. No poem has surpassed his _Alice Fell, or Poverty_ in
presenting the psychology of childish grief, or his _We Are Seven_ in
voicing the faith of--
"...A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,"
or the loneliness of "the solitary child" in _Lucy Gray_:--
"The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door."
In the poem, _Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower_, Nature seems to
have chosen Wordsworth as her spokesman to describe the part that she
would play in educating a child. Nature says:--
"This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.
* * * * *
...She shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."
One of the finest similes in all the poetry of nature may be found in
the stanza which likens the charms of a little girl to those of:--
"A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky."
Finally, in his _Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
Early Childhood_, he glorifies universal childhood, that "eye among
the blind," capable of seeing this common earth--
"Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream."
General Characteristics.--Four of Wordsworth's characteristics go
hand in hand,--sincerity, feeling, depth of thought, and simplicity of
style. The union of these four qualities causes his great poems to
continue to yield pleasure after an indefinite number of readings. In
his garden of poetry, the daffodil blossoms all the year for the
"inward eye," and the "wandering voice of the cuckoo" never ceases to
awaken springtime in the heart.
His own age greeted with so much ridicule the excessive simplicity of
the presentation of ordinary childish grief in _Alice Fell_, that he
excluded it from many editions of his poems. We now recognize the
special charm of his simplicity in expressing those feelings and
thoughts that "do often lie too deep for tears."
Wordsworth was most truly great when he seemed to write as naturally
as he breathed, when he appeared unconscious of the power that he
wielded. When he attempted to command it at will, he failed, as in the
dull, lifeless lines of _The Excursion_. Sometimes even his labored
simplicity is no better than prose; but such simple and natural poems
as _Michael, The Solitary Reaper, To My Sister, Three Years She Grew
in Sun and Shower_, and the majority of the poems showing the new
attitude toward childhood, are priceless treasures of English
literature. Of most of these, we may say with Matthew Arnold, "It
might seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but
wrote his poem for him."
[Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _From a life sketch in Fraser's
Magazine_.]
Wordsworth lacks humor and his compass is limited; but within that
compass he is surpassed by no poet since Milton. On the other hand, no
great poet ever wrote more that is almost worthless. Matthew Arnold
did much for Wordsworth's renown by collecting his priceless poems and
publishing them apart from the mediocre work. Among the fine
productions, his sonnets occupy a high place. Only Shakespeare and
Milton in our language excel him in this form of verse.
Wordsworth is greatest as a poet of nature. To him nature seemed to
possess a conscious soul, which expressed itself in the primrose, the
rippling lake, or the cuckoo's song, with as much intelligence as
human lips ever displayed in whispering a secret to the ear of love.
This interpretation of nature gives him a unique position among
English poets. Neither Shakespeare nor Milton had any such general
conception of nature.
[Illustration: RYDAL MOUNT NEAR AMBLESIDE, THE HOME OF WORDSWORTH'S
OLD AGE.]
The bereaved, the downcast, and those in need of companionship turn
naturally to Wordsworth. He said that it was his aim "to console the
afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight." His critics often say that he
does not recognize the indifference, even the cruelty of nature; but
that he chooses, instead, to present the world as a manifestation of
love and care for all creatures. When he was shown where a cruel
huntsman and his dogs had chased a poor hart to its death, Wordsworth
wrote:--
"This beast not unobserved by nature fell;
His death was mourned by sympathy divine.
"The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves."[15]
Whatever view we take of the indifference of nature or of the
suffering in existence, it is necessary for us, in order to live
hopeful and kindly lives, to feel with Wordsworth that the great
powers of the universe are not devoid of sympathy, and that they
encourage in us the development of "a spirit of love" for all earth's
creatures. It was Wordsworth's deepest conviction that any one alive
to the presence of nature's conscious spiritual force, that "rolls
through all things"--
"Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain."
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 1722-1834
[Illustration: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. _From a pencil sketch by
C.R. Leslie_.]
Life.--The troubled career of Coleridge is in striking contrast to
the peaceful life of Wordsworth. Coleridge, the thirteenth child of a
clergyman, was born in 1772 at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. Early in
his life, the future poet became a confirmed dreamer, refusing to
participate in the play common to boys of his age. Before he was five
years old, he had read the _Arabian Nights_. Only a few years later,
the boy's appetite for books became so voracious that he devoured an
average of two volumes a day.
One evening, when he was about nine years old, he had a violent
quarrel with his brother and ran away, sleeping out of doors all
night. A cold October rain fell; but he was not found until morning,
when he was carried home more dead than alive. "I was certainly
injured;" he says of this adventure, "for I was weakly and subject to
ague for many years after." Facts like these help to explain why
physical pain finally led him to use opium.
After his father's death, young Coleridge became, at the age of ten, a
pupil in Christ's Hospital, London, where he remained eight years.
During the first half of his stay here, his health was still further
injured by continuing as he was in earlier childhood, "a playless
daydreamer," and by a habit of almost constant reading. He says that
the food "was cruelly insufficient for those who had no friends to
supply them." He writes:--
"Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; I was in a continual
low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of
present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner, and read,
read, read--fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a
mountain of plumcake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating
it into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and fancy!"
A few months after leaving Christ's Hospital, Coleridge went to
Cambridge, but he did not remain to graduate. From this time he seldom
completed anything that he undertook. It was characteristic of him,
stimulated by the spirit of the French Revolution, to dream of
founding with Southey a Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehanna.
In this ideal village across the sea, the dreamers were to work only
two hours a day and were to have all goods in common. The demand for
poetry was at this time sufficiently great for a bookseller to offer
Coleridge, although he was as yet comparatively unknown, thirty
guineas for a volume of poems and a guinea and a half for each hundred
lines after finishing that volume. With such wealth in view, Coleridge
married a Miss Fricker of Bristol, because no single people could join
the new ideal commonwealth. Southey married her sister; but the young
enthusiasts were forced to abandon their project because they did not
have sufficient money to procure passage across the ocean.
The tendency to dream, however, never forsook Coleridge. One of his
favorite poems begins with this line:--
"My eyes make pictures when they are shut."[16]
He recognized his disinclination to remain long at work on prearranged
lines, when he said, "I think that my soul must have preëxisted in the
body of a chamois chaser."
In 1797-1798 Coleridge lived with his young wife at Nether-Stowey in
Somerset. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to a house in the
neighborhood in order to be near Coleridge. The two young men and
Dorothy Wordsworth seemed to be exactly fitted to stimulate one
another. Together they roamed over the Quantock Hills, gazed upon the
sea, and planned _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_, which is one of
the few things that Coleridge ever finished. In little more than a
year he wrote nearly all the the poetry that has made him famous.
Had he, like Keats, died when he was twenty-five, the world would
probably be wondering what heights of poetic fame Coleridge might have
reached; but he became addicted to the use of opium and passed a
wretched existence of thirty-six years longer, partly in the Lake
District, but chiefly in a suburb of London, without adding to his
poetic fame. During his later years he did hack work for papers, gave
occasional lectures, wrote critical and philosophical prose, and
became a talker almost as noted as Dr. Johnson. It is only just to
Coleridge to recognize the fact that even if he had never written a
line of poetry, his prose would entitle him to be ranked among
England's greatest critics.
[Illustration: COLERIDGE'S COTTAGE AT NETHER-STOWEY.]
Coleridge's wide reading, continued from boyhood, made his
contemporaries feel that he had the best intellectual equipment of any
man in England since Francis Bacon's time. Once Coleridge, having
forgotten the subject of his lecture, was startled by the announcement
that he would speak on a difficult topic, entirely different from the
one he had in mind; but he was equal to the emergency and delivered an
unusually good address.
Young men used to flock to him in his old age to draw on his copious
stores of knowledge and especially to hear him talk about German
philosophy. Carlyle visited him for this purpose and speaks of the
"glorious, balmy, sunny islets, islets of the blest and the
intelligible," which occasionally emerged from the mist of German
metaphysics. He spent the last eighteen years of his life in Highgate
with his kind friend, Dr. Gillman, who succeeded in regulating and
decreasing the amount of opium which Coleridge took. He died there in
1834 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Westminster Abbey does not
have the honor of the grave of a single one of the great poets of this
romantic age.
Poetry.--_The Ancient Mariner_ (1798) is Coleridge's poetical
masterpiece. It is also one of the world's masterpieces. The
supernatural sphere into which it introduces the reader is a
remarkable creation, with its curse, its polar spirit, the phantom
ship, the seraph band, and the magic breeze. The mechanism of the poem
is a triumph of romantic genius. The meter, the rhythm, and the music
have well-nigh magical effect. Almost every stanza shows not only
exquisite harmony, but also the easy mastery of genius in dealing with
those weird scenes which romanticists love.
The moral interest of the poem is not inferior to its other charms.
The Mariner killed the innocent Albatross, and we listen to the same
kind of lesson as Wordsworth teaches in his _Hart-Leap Well_:--
"The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shat him with his bow.'"
The noble conclusion of the poem has for more than a hundred years
continued to influence human conduct:--
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."
His next greatest poem is the unfinished _Christabel_ (1816). A lovely
maiden falls under the enchantments of a mysterious Lady Geraldine;
but the fragment closes while this malevolent influence continues. We
miss the interest of a finished story, which draws so many readers to
_The Ancient Mariner_, although _Christabel_ is thickly sown with
gems. Lines like these are filled with the airiness of nature:--
"There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."
In all literature there has been no finer passage written on the
wounds caused by broken friendship than the lines in _Christabel_
relating to the estrangement of Roland and Sir Leoline. After reading
this poem and _Kubla Khan_, an unfinished dream fragment of fifty-four
lines, we feel that the closing lines of _Kubla Khan_ are peculiarly
applicable to Coleridge:--