And drunk the milk of Paradise."
Swinburne says of _Christabel_ and _Kubla Khan_: "When it has been
said that such melodies were never heard, such dreams never dreamed,
such speech never spoken, the chief things remain unsaid, unspeakable.
There is a charm upon these poems which can only be felt in silent
submission and wonder."
General Characteristics of his Poetry.--Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge
is not the poet of the earth and the common things of life. He is the
poet of air, of the regions beyond the earth, and of dreams. By no
poet has the supernatural been invested with more charm.
He has rare feeling for the beautiful, whether in the world of morals;
of nature, or of the harmonies of sound. The motherless Christabel in
her time of danger dreams a beautiful truth of this divinely governed
world:--
"But this she knows, in joys and woes,
That saints will aid if men will call:
For the blue sky bends over all."
His references to nature are less remarkable for description or
photographic details than for suggestiveness and diffused charm, such
as we find in these lines:--
"...the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune."
Wordsworth wrote few poems simpler than _The Ancient Mariner_. A
stanza like this seems almost as simple as breathing:--
"The moving moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide;
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside."
Prose.--Coleridge's prose, which is almost all critical or
philosophical, left its influence on the thought of the nineteenth
century. When he was a young man, he went to Germany and studied
philosophy with a continued vigor unusual for him. He became an
idealist and used the idealistic teachings of the German
metaphysicians to combat the utilitarian and sense-bound philosophy of
Bentham, Malthus, and Mill. We pass by Coleridge's _Aids to
Reflection_ (1825), the weightiest of his metaphysical productions, to
consider those works which possess a more vital interest for the
student of literature.
[Illustration: COLERIDGE AS A YOUNG MAN. _From a sketch made in
Germany_.]
His _Lectures on Shakespeare_, delivered in 1811, contained
epoch-making Shakespearean criticism. We are told that every
drawing-room in London discussed them. His greatest work on criticism
is entitled _Biographia Literaria_ (2 Vols., 1817). There are parts of
it which no careful student of the development of modern criticism can
afford to leave unread. The central point of this work is the
exposition of his theory of the romantic school of poetry. He thus
gives his own aim and that of Wordsworth in the composition of the
volume of poems, known as _Lyrical Ballads_:--
"...it was agreed that my endeavors should be directed to persons
and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to
transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of
truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that
willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes
poetic faith.
Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his
object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to
excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the
mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to
the loveliness and wonders of the world before us."[17]
Coleridge does not hold Wordsworth's belief that the language of
common speech and of poetry should be identical. He shows that
Wordsworth does better than follow his own theories. Yet, when he
considers both the excellencies and the defects of Wordsworth's verse,
Coleridge's verdict of praise is substantially that of the twentieth
century. This is an unusual triumph for a contemporary critic, sitting
in judgment on an author of an entirely new school and rendering a
decision in opposition to that of the majority, who, he says, "have
made it a business to attack and ridicule Mr. Wordsworth... His _fame_
belongs to another age and can neither be accelerated nor
retarded."[18]
GEORGE NOEL GORDON, LORD BYRON, 1788-1824
[Illustration: GEORGE NOEL GORDON, LORD BYRON. _From a portrait by
Kramer_.]
Life.--Byron was born in London in 1788. His father was a reckless,
dissipated spendthrift, who deserted his wife and child. Mrs. Byron
convulsively clasped her son to her one moment and threw the scissors
and tongs at him the next, calling him "the lame brat," in reference
to his club foot. Such treatment drew neither respect nor obedience
from Byron, who inherited the proud, defiant spirit of his race. His
accession to the peerage in 1798 did not tend to tame his haughty
nature, and he grew up passionately imperious and combative.
Being ambitious, he made excellent progress in his studies at Harrow,
but when he entered Cambridge he devoted much of his time to shooting,
swimming, and other sports, for which he was always famous. In 1809 he
started on a two years' trip through Spain, Greece, and the far East.
Upon his return, he published two cantos of _Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage_, which describe his journey.
This poem made him immediately popular. London society neglected its
old favorite, Scott, and eagerly sought out the handsome young peer
who had burst suddenly upon it. Poem after poem was produced by this
lion of society, and each one was received with enthusiasm and
delight. Probably no other English poet knew such instant widespread
fame as Byron.
Suddenly and unexpectedly this adulation turned to hatred. In 1815
Byron married Miss Milbanke, an heiress, but she left him a year
later. Although no reason for the separation was given, the public
fastened all the blame upon Byron. The feeling against him grew so
strong that he was warned by his friends to prepare for open violence,
and finally, in 1816, he left England forever.
His remaining eight years were spent mostly in Italy. Here, his great
beauty, his exile, his poetry, and his passionate love of liberty made
him a prominent figure throughout Europe. Notwithstanding this fame,
life was a disappointment to Byron. Baffled but rebellious, he openly
defied the conventions of his country; and seemed to enjoy the shock
it gave to his countrymen.
[Illustration: BYRON AT SEVENTEEN. _From a painting_.]
The closing year of his life shone brightest of all. His main
activities had hitherto been directed to the selfish pursuit of his
own pleasure; and he had failed to obtain happiness. But in 1823 Byron
went to Greece to aid the Greeks, who were battling with Turkey for
their independence. Into this struggle for freedom, he poured his
whole energies, displaying "a wonderful aptitude for managing the
complicated intrigues and plans and selfishnesses which lay in the
way." His efforts cost him his life. He contracted fever, and, after
restlessly battling with the disease, said quietly, one April morning
in 1824, "Now I shall go to sleep." His relatives asked in vain for
permission to inter him in Westminster Abbey. He was buried in the
family vault at Hucknall, Notthinghamshire, not far from Newstead
Abbey.
[Illustration: NEWSTEAD ABBEY, BYRON'S HOME.]
Early Works.--The poems that Byron wrote during his brilliant
sojourn in London, amid the whirl of social gayeties, are _The Giaour,
The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Parisina, Lara_, and _The Siege of
Corinth_. These narrative poems are romantic tales of oriental passion
and coloring, which show the influence of Scott. They are told with a
dash and a fine-sounding rhetoric well fitted to attract immediate
attention; but they lack the qualities of sincere feeling, lofty
thought, and subtle beauty, which give lasting fame.
His next publication, _The Prisoner of Chillon_ (1816), is a much
worthier poem. The pathetic story is feelingly told in language that
often displays remarkable energy and mastery of expression and
versification. His picture of the oppressive vacancy which the
Prisoner felt is a well-executed piece of very difficult word
painting:--
"There were no stars, no earth, no time,
No check, no change, no good, no crime--
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!"
[Illustration: CASTLE OF CHILLON.]
Dramas.--Byron wrote a number of dramas, the best of which are
_Manfred_ (1817) and _Cain_ (1821). His spirit of defiance and his
insatiable thirst for power are the subjects of these dramas. Manfred
is a man of guilt who is at war with humanity, and who seeks refuge on
the mountain tops and by the wild cataract. He is fearless and untamed
in all his misery, and even in the hour of death does not quail before
the spirits of darkness, but defies them with the cry:--
"Back to thy hell!
Thou hast no power upon me, _that_ I feel!
Thou never shall possess me, _that_ I know;
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine;
* * * * *
Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me--but not yours!"
Cain, while suffering remorse for the slaying of Abel, is borne by
Lucifer through the boundless fields of the universe. Cain yet dares
to question the wisdom of the Almighty in bringing evil, sin, and
remorse into the world. A critic has remarked that "Milton wrote his
great poem to justify the ways of God to man; Byron's object seems to
be to justify the ways of man to God."
The very soul of stormy revolt breathes through both _Manfred_ and
_Cain_, but _Cain_ has more interest as a pure drama. It contains some
sweet passages and presents one lovely woman,--Adah. But Byron could
not interpret character wholly at variance with his own. He possessed
but little constructive skill, and he never overcame the difficulties
of blank verse. A drama that does not show wide sympathy with varied
types of humanity and the constructive capacity to present the
complexities of life is lacking in essential elements of greatness.
Childe Harold, The Vision of Judgment, and Don Juan.--His best works
are the later poems, which require only a slight framework or plot,
such as _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Vision of Judgement,_ and
_Don Juan_.
The third and fourth cantos of _Childe Harold_, published in 1816 and
1818, respectively, are far superior to the first two. These later
cantos continue the travels of Harold, and contain some of Byron's
most splendid descriptions of nature, cities, and works of art. Rome,
Venice, the Rhine, the Alps, and the sea inspired the finest lines. He
wrote of Venice as she--
"...Sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
* * * * *
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance."
He calls Rome--
"The Niobe of nations! there she stands.
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago."
The following description, from Canto III, of a wild stormy night in
the mountains is very characteristic of his nature poetry and of his
own individuality:--
"And this is in the night:--Most Glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight--
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black,--and now, the glee
of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth"
When George III. died, Southey wrote a poem filled with absurd
flattery of that monarch. Byron had such intense hatred for the
hypocrisy of society that he wrote his _Vision of Judgment_ (1822) to
parody Southey's poem and to make the author the object of satire.
Pungent wit, vituperation, and irony were here handled by Byron in a
brilliant manner, which had not been equaled since the days of Dryden
and Pope. The parodies of most poems are quickly forgotten, but we
have here the strange case of Byron's parody keeping alive Southey's
original.
_Don Juan_ (1819-1824), a long poem in sixteen cantos, is Byron's
greatest work. It is partly autobiographic. The sinister, gloomy Don
Juan is an ideal picture of the author, who was sore and bitter over
his thwarted hopes of liberty and happiness. Therefore, instead of
strengthening humanity with hope for the future, this poem tears hope
from the horizon, and suggests the possible anarchy and destruction
toward which the world's hypocrisy, cant, tyranny, and universal
stupidity are tending.
The poem is unfinished. Byron followed Don Juan through all the phases
of life known to himself. The hero has exciting adventures and
passionate loves, he is favored at courts, he is driven to the lowest
depths of society, he experiences a godlike happiness and a demoniacal
despair.
_Don Juan_ is a scathing satire upon society. All its fondest
idols,--love, faith, and hope,--are dragged in the mire. There is
something almost grand in the way that this Titanic scoffer draws
pictures of love only to mock at them, sings patriotic songs only to
add--
"Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung
The modern Greek in tolerable verse,"
and mentions Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare only to show how
accidental and worthless is fame.
Amid the splendid confusion of pathos, irony, passion, mockery, keen
wit, and brilliant epigram, which display Byron's versatile and
spontaneous genius at its height, there are some beautiful and
powerful passages. There is an ideal picture of the love of Don Juan
and Haidee:--
"Each was the other's mirror, and but read
Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem."
"...they could not be
Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring,
Before one charm or hope had taken wing."
As she lightly slept--
"...her face so fair
Stirr'd with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air;
Or as the stirring of a deep clear stream
Within an Alpine hollow, when the wind
Walks o'er it."
General Characteristics.--The poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge
shows the revolutionary reaction against classicism in literature and
tyranny in government; but their verse raises no cry of revolt against
the proprieties and moral restrictions of the time. Byron was so
saturated with the revolutionary spirit that he rebelled against these
also; and for this reason England would not allow him to be buried in
Westminster Abbey.
As Byron frequently wrote in the white heat of passionate revolt, his
verse shows the effects of lack of restraint. Unfortunately he did not
afterwards take the trouble to improve his subject matter, or the mold
in which it was cast. Swinburne says, "His verse stumbles and jingles,
stammers and halts, where is most need for a swift and even pace of
musical sound."
[Illustration: BYRON'S HOME AT PISA.]
The great power of Byron's poetry consists in its wealth of
expression, its vigor, its rush and volume of sound, its variety, and
its passion. Lines like the following show the vigorous flow of the
verse, the love for lonely scenery, and a wealth of figurative
expression:--
"Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains,
They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds
With a diadem of snow."[19]
Scattered through his works we find rare gems, such as the following--
"...when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell."[20]
We may also frequently note the working of an acute intellect, as, for
instance, in the lines in which he calls his own gloomy type of mind--
"...the telescope of truth,
Which strips the distance of its phantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!"[21]
The answers to two questions which are frequently asked, will throw
more light on Byron's characteristics:--
I. Why has his poetic fame in England decreased so much from the
estimate of his contemporaries, by whom he seemed worthy of a place
beside Goethe? The answer is to be sought in the fact that Byron
reflected so powerfully the mood of that special time. That
reactionary period in history has passed and with it much of Byron's
influence and fame. He was, unlike Shakespeare, specially fitted to
minister to a certain age. Again, much of Byron's verse is rhetorical,
and that kind of poetry does not wear well. On the other hand, we
might reread Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, Milton's _Lycidas_, and
Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_ every month for a lifetime,
and discover some new beauty and truth at every reading.
II. Why does the continent of Europe class Byron among the very
greatest English poets, next even to Shakespeare? It is because Europe
was yearning for more liberty, and Byron's words and blows for freedom
aroused her at an opportune moment. Historians of continental
literature find his powerful impress on the thought of that time.
Georg Brandes, a noted European critic, says:--
"In the intellectual life of Russia and Poland, of Spain and Italy,
of France and Germany, the seeds which he had sown, fructified...
The Slavonic nations ...seized on his poetry with avidity... The
Spanish and Italian exile poets took his war cry... Heine's best
poetry is a continuation of Byron's work. French Romanticism and
German Liberalism are both direct descendants of Byron's
Naturalism."
Swinburne gives as another reason for Byron's European popularity the
fact that he actually gains by translation into a foreign tongue. His
faulty meters and careless expressions are improved, while his
vigorous way of stating things and his rolling rhetoric are easily
comprehended. On the other hand, the delicate shades of thought in
Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ cannot be translated into some European tongues
without distinct loss.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 1792-1822
[Illustration: PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. _From the portrait by Amelia
Curran, National Portrait Gallery_.]
Life.--Another fiery spirit of the Revolution was Shelley, born in
1792, in a home of wealth, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. He
was one of the most ardent, independent, and reckless English poets
inspired by the French Revolution. He was a man who could face infamy
and defy the conventionalities of the world, and, at the same moment,
extend a helpful hand of sympathy to a friend or sit for sixty hours
beside the sick bed of his dying child. Tender, pitying, fearless,
full of a desire to reform the world, and of hatred for any form of
tyranny, Shelley failed to adjust himself to the customs and laws of
his actual surroundings. He was calumniated and despised by the public
at large, and almost idolized by his intimate friends.
At Eton he denounced the tyranny of the larger boys. At Oxford he
decried the tyranny of the church over freedom of thought, and was
promptly expelled for his pamphlet, _The Necessity of Atheism_. This
act so increased his hatred for despotic authority that he almost
immediately married Harriet Westbrook, a beautiful school girl of
sixteen, to relieve her from the tyranny of her father who wanted her
to return to school. Shelley was then only nineteen and very
changeable. He would make such a sudden departure from a place where
he had vowed "to live forever," that specially invited guests
sometimes came to find him gone. He soon fell in love with Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, the brilliant woman who later wrote the weird
romance _Frankenstein_, and he married her after Harriet Shelley had
drowned herself. These acts alienated his family and forced him to
forfeit his right to Field Place.
[Illustration: SHELLEY'S BIRTHPLACE, FIELD PLACE.]
His repeatedly avowed ideas upon religion, government, and marriage
brought him into conflict with public opinion. Unpopular at home, he
left England in 1818, never to return. Like Byron, he was practically
an exile.
The remaining four years of Shelley's life were passed in comparative
tranquillity in the "Paradise of exiles," as he called Italy. He lived
chiefly at Pisa, the last eighteen months of his life. Byron rented
the famous Lanfranchi Palace in Pisa and became Shelley's neighbor,
often entertaining him and a group of English friends, among whom were
Edward Trelawny, the Boswell of Shelley's last days, and Leigh Hunt,
biographer and essayist.
On July 7, 1822, Shelley said: "If I die to-morrow, I have lived to be
older than my father. I am ninety years of age." The young poet was
right in claiming that it is not length of years that measures life.
He had lived longer than most people who reach ninety. The next day he
started in company with two others to sail across the Bay of Spezzia
to his summer home. Friends watching from the shore saw a sudden
tempest strike his boat. When the cloud passed, the craft could not be
seen. Not many months before, he had written the last stanza of
_Adonais_:--
"...my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."
Shelley's body was washed ashore, July 18, and it was burned near the
spot, in accordance with Italian law; but the ashes and the unconsumed
heart were interred in the beautiful Protestant cemetery at Rome, not
far from where Keats was buried the previous year.
Few poets have been loved more than Shelley. Twentieth century
visitors to his grave often find it covered with fresh flowers. The
direction which he wrote for finding the tomb of Keats is more
applicable to Shelly's own resting place:--
"Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread."[22]
Works.--_Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude_ (1816) is a magnificent
expression of Shelley's own restless, tameless spirit, wandering among
the grand solitudes of nature in search of the ineffably lovely dream
maiden, who was his ideal of beauty. He travels through primeval
forests, stands upon dizzy abysses, plies through roaring whirlpools,
all of which are symbolic of the soul's wayfaring, until at last,--
"When on the threshold
of the green recess,"
his dying glance rests upon the setting moon and the sufferer finds
eternal peace. The general tone of this poem is painfully despairing,
but this is relieved by the grandeur of the natural scenes and by many
imaginative flights.
[Illustration: GRAVE OF SHELLEY, PROTESTANT CEMETERY, ROME.]
The year 1819 saw the publication of a work unique among Shelley's
productions, _The Cenci_. This is a drama based upon the tragic story
of Beatrice Cenci. The poem deals with human beings, human passions,
real acts, and the natural world, whereas Shelley usually preferred to
treat of metaphysical theories, personified abstractions, and the
world of fancy. This strong drama was the most popular of his works
during his lifetime.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF STANZA FROM "TO A SKYLARK".]
He returned to the ideal sphere again in one of his great poems, the
lyrical drama _Prometheus Unbound_ (1820). This poem is the apotheosis
of the French Revolution. Prometheus, the friend of mankind, lies
tortured and chained to the mountain side. As the hour redemption
approaches, his beloved Asia, the symbol of nature, arouses the soul
of Revolution, represented by Demogorgon. He rises, hurls down the
enemies of progress and freedom, releases Prometheus, and spreads
liberty and happiness through all the world. Then the Moon, the Earth,
and the Voices of the Air break forth into a magnificent chant of
praise. The most delicate fancies, the most gorgeous imagery, and the
most fiery, exultant emotions are combined in this poem with something
of the stateliness of its Greek prototype. The swelling cadences of
the blank verse and the tripping rhythm of the lyrics are the product
of a nature rich in rare and wonderful melodies.
_The Witch of Atlas_ (1820), _Epipsychidion_ (1821), _Adonais_ (1821),
and the exquisite lyrics, _The Cloud, To a Skylark_ and _Ode to the
West Wind_ are the most beautiful of the remaining works. The first
two mentioned are the most elusive of Shelley's poems. With scarcely
an echo in his soul of the shadows and discords of earth, the poet
paints, in these works, lands--
"...'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;"
where all is--
"Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise."[23]
_Adonais_ is a lament for the early death of Keats, and it stands
second in the language among elegiac poems, ranking next to Milton's
_Lycidas_. Shelley referred to _Adonais as "perhaps the least
imperfect of my compositions." His biographer, Edward Dowden, calls it
"the costliest monument ever erected to the memory of an English
singer," who
"...bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal."
Mrs. Shelley put some of her most sacred mementos of the poet between
the leaves of _Adonais_, which spoke to her of his own immortality and
omnipresence:--
"Naught we know dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning?
* * * * *
He is a portion of the loveliness,
Which once he made more lovely."
Although some of Shelley's shorter poems are more popular, nothing
that he ever wrote surpasses _Adonais_ in completeness, poetic
thought, and perfection of artistic finish.
Treatment of Nature.--Shelley was not interested in things
themselves, but in their elusive, animating spirit. In the lyric poem,
_To Night_, he does not address himself to mere darkness, but to the
active, dream-weaving "Spirit of Night." The very spirit of the
autumnal wind seems to him to breathe on the leaves and turn them--
"Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes."[24]
In his spiritual conception of nature, he was profoundly affected by
Wordsworth; but he goes farther than the older poet in giving
expression to the strictly individual forms of nature. Wordsworth
pictures nature as a reflection of his own thoughts and feelings. In
_The Prelude_ he says:--
"To unorganic natures were transferred
My own enjoyments."
Shelley, on the other hand, is most satisfying and original when his
individual spirit forms in night, cloud, skylark, and wind are made to
sing, not as a reflection of his own mood, but as these spirit forces
might themselves be supposed to sing, if they could express their song
in human language without the aid of a poet. In the lyric, _The
Cloud_, it is the animating spirit of the Cloud itself that sings the
song:--
"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
* * * * *
I sift the snow on the mountains below
And their great pines groan aghast."
He thus begins the song, _To a Skylark_--
"Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,"
and he likens the lark to "an unbodied joy."
He peoples the garden in his lyric, _The Sensitive Plant_, with
flowers that are definite, individual manifestations of "the Spirit of
Love felt everywhere," the same power on which Shelley
enthusiastically relied for the speedy transformation of the world.
"A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew."
The "tulip tall," "the Naiad-like lily," "the jessamine faint," "the
sweet tuberose," were all "ministering angels" to the "companionless
Sensitive Plant," and each tried to be a source of joy to all the
rest. No one who had not caught the new spirit of humanity could have
imagined that garden.
In the exquisite _Ode to the West Wind_, he calls to that "breath of
Autumn's being" to express its own mighty harmonies through him:--
"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
* * * * *
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness."
We may fancy that the spirit forms of nature which appear in cloud and
night, in song of bird and western wind, are content to have found in
Shelley a lyre that responded to their touch in such entrancing notes.
General Characteristics.--Shelley's is the purest, the most hopeful,
and the noblest voice of the Revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge lost
their faith and became Tories, and Byron was a selfish, lawless
creature; but Shelley had the martyr spirit of sacrifice, and he
trusted to the end in the wild hopes of the revolutionary enthusiasts.
His _Queen Mab, Revolt of Islam, Ode to Liberty, Ode to Naples_, and,
above all, his _Prometheus Unbound_, are some of the works inspired by
a trust in the ideal democracy which was to be based on universal love
and the brotherhood of man. This faith gives a bounding elasticity and
buoyancy to Shelley's thought, but also tinges it with that disgust
for the old, that defiance of restraint, and that boyish disregard for
experience which mark a time of revolt.
The other subject that Shelley treats most frequently in his verse is
ideal beauty. He yearned all his life for some form beautiful enough
to satisfy the aspirations of his soul. _Alastor, Epipsychidion, The
Witch of Atlas_, and _Prometheus Unbound_, all breathe this insatiate
craving for that "Spirit of Beauty," that "awful Loveliness."
Many of his efforts to describe in verse this democracy and this ideal
beauty are impalpable and obscure. It is difficult to clothe such
shadowy abstractions in clear, simple form. He is occasionally vague
because his thoughts seem to have emerged only partially from the
cloud lands that gave them birth. At other times, his vagueness
resembles Plato's because it is inherent in the subject matter. Like
Byron, Shelley is sometimes careless in the construction and revision
of his verse. We shall, however, search in vain for these faults in
Shelley's greatest lyrics. He is one of the supreme lyrical geniuses
in the language. Of all the lyric poets of England, he is the greatest
master of an ethereal, evanescent, phantomlike beauty.
JOHN KEATS, 1795-1821
[Illustration: JOHN KEATS. _From the painting by Hilton, National
Portrait Gallery_.]
Life.--John Keats, the son of a keeper of a large livery stable, a
man "fine in common sense and native respectability," was born in
Moorfields, London, in 1795. He attended school at Enfield, where he
was a prize scholar. He took special pleasure in studying Grecian
mythology, the influence of which is so apparent in his poetry. While
at school, he also voluntarily wrote a translation of much of Vergil's
_AEneid_. It would seem as if he had also been attracted to
Shakespeare; for Keats is credited with expressing to a young playmate
the opinion that no one, if alone in the house, would dare read
_Macbeth_ at two in the morning.
When Keats was left an orphan in his fifteenth year, he was taken from
school and apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton, near London.
When seventeen, he walked some distance to borrow a copy of Spenser's
_Faerie Queene_. A friend says: "Keats ramped through the scenes of
the romance like a young horse turned into a spring meadow." His study
of Grecian mythology and Elizabethan poetry exerted a stronger
influence over him than his medical instructor. One day when Keats
should have been listening to a surgical lecture, "there came," he
says, "a sunbeam into the room and with it a whole troop of creatures
floating in the ray: and I was off with them to Oberon and fairy
land."
He made a moderately good surgeon; but finding that his heart was
constantly with "Oberon and the fairy land" of poesy, he gave up his
profession in 1817 and began to study hard, preparatory to a literary
career.
His short life was a brave struggle against disease, poverty, and
unfriendly criticism; but he accomplished more than any other English
author in the first twenty-five years of life. Success under such
conditions would have been impossible unless he had had "flint and
iron in him." He wrote:--
"I must think that difficulties nerve the spirit of a man. They make
his Prime Objects a Refuge as well as a Passion."
Late in 1818, after he had published his first volume of verse, he met
Fanny Brawne, a girl of eighteen, and soon fell desperately in love
with her. The next six months were the happiest and the most
productive period of his life. His health was then such that he could
take long walks with her. In the first spring after he had met her, he
wrote in less than three hours his wonderful _Ode to a Nightingale_,
while he was sitting in the garden of his home at Wentworth Place,
Hampstead, near London, listening to the song of the bird. Most of his
famous poems were written in the year after meeting her.
In February, 1820, his health began to decline so rapidly that he knew
that his days were numbered. His mother and one of his brothers had
died of consumption, and he had been for some time threatened with the
disease. He offered to release Miss Brawne from her engagement, but
she would not listen to the suggestion. She and her mother tried to
nurse him back to health. Few events in the history of English authors
are tinged with a deeper pathos than his engagement to Miss Brawne.
Some of the letters that he wrote to her or about her are almost
tragic. After he had taken his last leave of her he wrote, "I can bear
to die--I cannot bear to leave her."
[Illustration: WENTWORTH PLACE, KEATS'S HOME IN HAMPSTEAD.]
Acting on insistent medical advice, Keats sailed for Italy in
September, 1820, accompanied by a stanch friend, the artist Joseph
Severn. On this voyage, Keats wrote a sonnet which proved to be his
swan song:--
"Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores."
While he lay on his sick bed in Rome, he said: "I feel the flowers
growing over me." In February, 1821, he died, at the age of
twenty-five years and four months. On the modest stone which marks his
grave in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, there was placed at his
request: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." His most
appropriate epitaph is Shelley's _Adonais_.
[Illustration: GRAVE OF KEATS, ROME.]
Poems.--In 1817 he published his first poems in a thin volume, which
did not attract much attention, although it contained two excellent
sonnets: _On First Looking into Chapman's Homer_ and _On the
Grasshopper and Cricket_, which begins with the famous line:--
"The poetry of earth is never dead."
We may also find in this volume such lines of promise as:--
"Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown
The reading of an ever changing tale."
A year later, his long poem, _Endymion_, appeared. The inner purpose
of this poetic romance is to show the search of the soul for absolute
Beauty. The first five lines are a beautiful exposition of his poetic
creed. _Endymion_, however, suffers from immaturity, shown in boyish
sentimentality, in a confusion of details, and in an overabundance of
ornament. This poem met with a torrent of abuse. One critic even
questioned whether Keats was the real name of the author, adding, "we
almost doubt whether any man in his senses would put his real name to
such a rhapsody." Keats showed himself a better critic than the
reviewers. It is unusual for a poet to recognize almost at once the
blemishes in his own work. He acknowledged that a certain critic--
"...is perfectly right in regard to the 'slipshod' _Endymion_...
it is as good as I had the power to make it by myself. I have
written independently, _without judgement_, I may write
independently and _with judgement_ hereafter."
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL MS. OF ENDYMION.]
The quickness of his development is one of the most amazing facts in
literary history. He was twenty-three when _Endymion_ was published,
but in the next eighteen months he had almost finished his life's
work. In that brief time, he perfected his art and wrote poems that
rank among the greatest of their kind, and that have influenced the
work of many succeeding poets, such as Tennyson, Lowell, and
Swinburne.
[Illustration: ENDYMION. _From mural painting by H.O. Walker,
Congressional Library, Washington, D.C._]
Nearly all his greatest poems were written in 1819 and published in
his 1820 volume. _The Eve of St. Agnes_ (January, 1819) and the _Ode
to a Nightingale_ (May, 1819) are perhaps his two most popular poems;
but his other masterpieces are sufficiently great to make choice among
them largely a matter of individual preference.
_The Eve of St. Agnes_ is an almost flawless narrative poem, romantic
in its conception and artistic in its execution. Porphyro, a young
lover, gains entrance to a hostile castle on the eve of St. Agnes to
see if he cannot win his heroine, Madeline, on that enchanted evening.
The interest in the story, the mastery of poetic language, the wealth
and variety of the imagery, the atmosphere of medieval days, combine
to make this poem unusually attractive. The following lines appeal to
the senses of sight, odor, sound, and temperature,[25] as well as to
romantic human feeling and love of the beautiful:--
"...like a throbbing star
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odor with the violet,--
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set."
The fact that Keats could write the _Ode to a Nightingale_ in three
hours is proof of genius. This poem pleases lovers of music, of
artistic expression, of nature, of romance, and of human pathos. Such
lines as these show that the strength and beauty of his verse are not
entirely dependent on images of sense:--
"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath."
The _Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode on
Melancholy, Lamia_, and _Isabella_,--all show the unusual charm of
Keats. He manifests the greatest strength in his unfinished fragment
_Hyperion_, "the Götterdämmerung of the early Grecian gods." The
opening lines reveal the artistic perfection of form and the
effectiveness of the sensory images with which he frames the scene:--
"Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud."
General Characteristics.--Keats is the poetic apostle of the
beautiful. He specially emphasizes the beautiful in the world of the
senses; but his definition of beauty grew to include more than mere
physical sensations from attractive objects. In his _Ode to a Grecian
Urn_, he says that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," and he calls to
the Grecian pipes to play--
"Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone."
Those poets who thought that they could equal Keats by piling up a
medley of sense images have been doomed to disappointment. The
transforming power of his imagination is more remarkable than the
wealth of his sensations.
His mastery in choosing, adapting, and sometimes even creating, apt
poetic words or phrases, is one of his special charms. Matthew Arnold
says: "No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in
expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats." Some of his
descriptive adjectives and phrases, such as the "deep-damasked wings"
of the tiger-moth, have been called "miniature poems." In the eighty
lines of the _Ode to a Nightingale_, we may note the "_full-throated
ease_" of the nightingale's song, the vintage cooled in the
"_deep-delved_ earth," the "_beaded bubbles winking_ at the brim" of
the beaker "_full of the warm South_," "the coming musk-rose, full of
_dewy wine_," the sad Ruth "amid the _alien_ corn," and the "_faery
lands forlorn_."
A contemporary critic accused Keats of "spawning" new words, of
converting verbs into nouns, of forming new verbs, and of making
strange use of adjectives and adverbs. Some contemporaries might
object to his "_torchèd_ mines," "_flawblown_ sleet," "_liegeless_
air," or even to the "_calm-throated_" thrush of the immortals. Modern
lovers of poetry, however, think that he displayed additional proof of
genius by enriching the vocabulary of poetry more than any other
writer since Milton.
Keats was not, like Byron and Shelley, a reformer. He drew his first
inspiration from Grecian mythology and the romantic world of Spenser,
not from the French Revolution or the social unrest of his own day. It
is, however, a mistake to say that he was untouched by the new human
impulses. There is modern feeling in the following lines which
introduce us to the two cruel brothers in _Isabella_:--
"...for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torchèd mines and noisy factories.
* * * * *
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
Lay full of darts."
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold wrote of
Keats: "He is with Shakespeare." Andrew Bradley, a twentieth century
professor of poetry in the University of Oxford, says: "Keats was of
Shakespeare's tribe." These eminent critics do not mean that Keats had
the breadth, the humor, the moral appeal of Shakespeare, but they do
find in Keats much of the youthful Shakespeare's lyrical power,
mastery of expression, and intense love of the beautiful in life. When
Keats said: "If a sparrow comes before my window, I take part in its
existence and pick about the gravel," he showed another Shakespearean
quality in his power to enter into the life of other creatures. At
first he wrote of the beautiful things that appealed to his senses or
his fancies, but when he came to ask himself the question:--
"And can I ever bid these joys farewell?"
he answered:--
"Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,
Where I may find the agonies, the strife
Of human hearts."[26]
In _Isabella_, the _Ode to a Nightingale, Lamia_, and _Hyperion_, he
was beginning to paint these "agonies" and "the strife"; but death
swiftly ended further progress on this road. Before he passed away,
however, he left some things that have an Elizabethan appeal. Among
such, we may mention his welcome to "easeful death," his artistic
setting of a puzzling truth:--
"...Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips,
Bidding adieu,"
his line to which the young world still responds:--
"Forever wilt thou love and she be fair,"
and especially the musical call of his own young life, "yearning like
a God in pain."
THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 1785-1859
[Illustration: THOMAS DE QUINCEY. _From the painting by Sir J.W.
Gordon, National Portrait Gallery_.]
Life.-Thomas de Quincey was born in Manchester in 1785. Being a
precocious child, he became a remarkable student at the age of eight.
When he was only eleven, his Latin verses were the envy of the older
boys at the Bath school, which he was then attending. At the age of
fifteen, he was so thoroughly versed in Greek that his professor said
of him to a friend: "That boy could harangue an Athenian mob better
than you or I could address an English one." De Quincey was sent in
this year to the Manchester grammar school; but his mind was in
advance of the instruction offered there, and he unceremoniously left
the school on his seventeenth birthday.
For a time he tramped through Wales, living on an allowance of a
guinea a week. Hungering for books, he suddenly posted to London. As
he feared that his family would force him to return to school, he did
not let them know his whereabouts. He therefore received no money from
them, and was forced to wander hungry, sick, and destitute, through
the streets of the metropolis, with its outcasts and waifs. He
describes this part of his life in a very entertaining manner in his
_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_.
When his family found him, a year later, they prevailed on him to go
to Oxford; and, for the next four years, he lived the life of a
recluse at college.
In 1808 he took the cottage at Grasmere that Wordsworth had quitted,
and enjoyed the society of the three Lake poets. Here De Quincey
married and lived his happiest years.
The latter part of his life was clouded by his indulgence in opium,
which he had first taken while at college to relieve acute neuralgia.
At one time he was in the habit of taking an almost incredible amount
of laudanum. Owing to a business failure, his money was lost. It then
became necessary for him to throw off the influence of the narcotic
sufficiently to earn a livelihood, In 1821 he began to write. From
that time until his death, in 1859, his life was devoted mainly to
literature.
[Illustration: ROOM IN DOVE COTTAGE OCCUPIED BY WORDSWORTH,
COLERIDGE, AND DE QUINCEY.]
Works.--Nearly all De Quincey's writings were contributed to
magazines. His first and greatest contribution was _The Confessions of
an English Opium-Eater_, published in the _London Magazine_. These
_Confessions_ are most remarkable for the brilliant and elaborate
style in which the author's early life and his opium dreams are
related. His splendid, yet melancholy, dreams are the most famous in
the language.
De Quincey's wide reading, especially of history, supplied the
material for many of them. In these dreams he saw the court ladies of
the "unhappy times of Charles I.," witnessed Marius pass by with his
Roman legions, "ran into pagodas" in China, where he "was fixed, for
centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms," and "was buried for a
thousand years, in stone coffins, in narrow chambers at the heart of
eternal pyramids" in Egypt.
His dreams were affected also by the throngs of people whom he had
watched in London. He was haunted by "the tyranny of the human face."
He says:--
"Faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands,
by myriads, by generations, by centuries: my agitation was infinite,
my mind tossed, and surged with the ocean."
Sound also played a large part in the dreams. Music, heart-breaking
lamentations, and pitiful echoes recurred frequently in the most
magnificent of these nightly pageants. One of the most distressing
features of the dreams was their vastness. The dreamer lived for
centuries in one night, and space "swelled, and was amplified to an
extent of unutterable infinity."
To present with such force and reality these grotesque and weird
fancies, these vague horrors, and these deep oppressions required a
powerful imaginative grasp of the intangible, and a masterly command
of language.
In no other work does De Quincey reach the eminence attained in the
_Confessions_, although his scholarly acquirements enabled him to
treat philosophical, critical, and historical subjects with wonderful
grace and ease. His biographer, Masson, says, "De Quincey's sixteen
volumes of magazine articles are full of brain from beginning to end."
The wide range of his erudition is shown by the fact that he could
write such fine literary criticisms as _On Wordsworth's Poetry_ and
_On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth_, such clear, strong, and
vivid descriptions of historical events and characters as _The
Caesars, Joan of Arc_, and _The Revolt of the Tartars_, and such acute
essays on unfamiliar topics as _The Toilette of a Hebrew Lady, The
Casuistry of Roman Meals_, and _The Spanish Military Nun_.
He had a contemplative, analytic mind which enjoyed knotty
metaphysical problems and questions far removed from daily life, such
as the first principles of political economy, and of German
philosophy. While he was a clear thinker in such fields, he added
little that was new to English thought.
The works which rank next to _The Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater_ are all largely autobiographical, and reveal charming
glimpses of this dreamy, learned sage. Those works are _Suspiria de
Profundis (Sighs from the Depths), The English Mail Coach_, and
_Autobiographic Sketches_. None of them contains any striking or
unusual experience of the author. Their power rests upon their
marvelous style. _Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow_ in _Suspiria de
Profundis_ and the _Dream Fugue_ in the _Mail Coach_ are among the
most musical, the most poetic, and the most imaginative of the
author's productions.
General Characteristics.--De Quincey's essays show versatility,
scholarly exactness, and great imaginative power. His fame, however,
rests in a large degree upon his style. One of its most prominent
characteristics is, precision. There are but few English essayists who
can compare with him in scrupulous precision of expression. He
qualifies and elaborates a simple statement until its exact meaning
becomes plainly manifest. His vocabulary is extraordinary. In any of
the multifarious subjects treated by him, the right word seems always
at hand.
Two characteristics, which are very striking in all his works, are
harmony and stateliness. His language is so full of rich harmonies
that it challenges comparison with poetry. His long, periodic
sentences move with a quiet dignity, adapted to the treatment of lofty
themes.
De Quincey's work possesses also a light, ironic humor, which is
happiest in parody. The essay upon _Murder Considered as One of the
Fine Arts_ is the best example of his humor. This selection is one of
the most whimsical:--
"For, if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he come,
to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to
drinking and Sabbath breaking, and from that to incivility and
procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know
where you are to stop."
De Quincey's gravest fault is digression. He frequently leaves his
main theme and follows some line of thought that has been suggested to
his well-stored mind. These digressions are often very long, and
sometimes one leads to another, until several subjects receive
treatment in a single paper. De Quincey, however, always returns to
the subject in hand and defines very sharply the point of digression
and of return. Another of his faults is an indulgence in involved
sentences, which weaken the vigor and simplicity of the style.
Despite these faults, De Quincey is a great master of language. He
deserves study for the three most striking characteristics of his
style,--precision, stateliness, and harmony.
SUMMARY
The tide of reaction, which had for same time been gathering force,
swept triumphantly over England in this age of Romanticism.
Men rebelled against the aristocracy, the narrow conventions of
society, the authority of the church and of the government, against
the supremacy of cold classicism in literature, against confining
intellectual activity to tangible commonplace things, and against the
repression of imagination and of the soul's aspirations. The two
principal forces behind these changes were the Romantic movement,
which culminated in changed literary ideals, and the spirit of the
French Revolution, which emphasized the close kinship of all ranks of
humanity.
The time was preeminently poetic. The Elizabethan age alone excels it
in the glory of its poetry. The principal subjects of verse in the age
of Romanticism were nature and man. Nature became the embodiment of an
intelligent, sympathetic, spiritual force. Cowper, Burns, Scott,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats constitute a group of
poets who gave to English literature a new poetry of nature. The
majority of these were also poets of man, of a more ideal humanity.
The common man became an object of regard. Burns sings of the Scotch
peasant. Wordsworth pictures the life of shepherds and dalesmen.
Byron's lines ring with a cry of liberty for all, and Shelley
immortalizes the dreams of a universal brotherhood of man. Keats, the
poet of the beautiful, passed away before he heard clearly the message
of "the still sad music of humanity."
While the prose does not take such high rank as the poetry, there are
some writers who will not soon be forgotten. Scott will be remembered
as the great master of the historical novel, Jane Austen as the
skillful realistic interpreter of everyday life, De Quincey for the
brilliancy of his style and the vigor of his imagination in presenting
his opium dreams, and Lamb for his exquisite humor. In philosophical
prose, Mill, Bentham, and Malthus made important contributions to
moral, social, and political philosophy, while Coleridge opposed their
utilitarian and materialistic tendencies, and codified the principles
of criticism from a romantic point of view.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
Gardiner[27], Green, Walker, or Cheney. For the social side, see
Traill, V., VI., and Cheney's _Industrial and Social History of
England_.
LITERARY
_The Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vols. XI., XII.
Courthope's _A History of English Poetry_, Vol. VI.
Elton's _A Survey of English Literature from 1780-1830_, 2 vols.
Herford's _The Age of Wordsworth_.
Brandes's _Naturalism in England_ (Vol. IV. of _Main Currents in
Nineteenth Century Literature_.)
_The Revolution in English Poetry and Fiction_ (Chap. XXII. of Vol. X.
of _Cambridge Modern History_.)
Hancock's _The French Revolution and the English Poets_.
Scudder's _Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets_.
Symons's _The Romantic Movement in English Poetry_.
Reynolds's _The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and
Wordsworth_.
Mackie's _Nature Knowledge in Modern Poetry_.
Brookes's _Studies in Poetry_ (Blake, Scott, Shelley, Keats).
Symons's _William Blake_.
Payne's _The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ (Keats,
Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth).
Stephen's _Hours in a Library_, 3 vols. (Scott, De Quincey, Cowper,
Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge).
Dowden's _Studies in Literature_, 1879-1877.
Bradley's _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_ (Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats).
Lowell's _Among my Books, Second Series_ (Wordsworth, Keats).
Ainger's _Life of Lamb_. (E.M.L.)
Lucas's _Life of Charles Lamb_.
Goldwin Smith's _Life of Cowper_. (E.M.L.)
Wright's _Life of Cowper_.
Shairp's _Robert Burns_. (E.M.L.)
Carlyle's _Essay on Burns_.
Lockhart's _Life of Scott_., Hutton's _Life of Scott_. (E.M.L.)
Yonge's _Life of Scott_. (G.W.)
Goldwin Smith's _Life of Jane Austen_. (G.W.)
Helm's _Jane Austen and her Country House Comedy_.
Mitton's _Jane Austen and her Times_.
Adams's _The Story of Jane Austen's Life_.
Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_, 3 vols., Myers's _Life of Wordsworth_
(E.M.L.), Raleigh's _Wordsworth_.
Robertson's _Wordsworth and the English Lake Country_.
Traill's _Life of Coleridge_ (E.M.L.), Caine's _Life of Coleridge_
(G.W.), Garnett's _Coleridge_.
Sneath's _Wordsworth, Poet of Nature and Poet of Man_.
Mayne's _The New Life of Byron_, 2 vols, Nichol's _Life of Byron_
(E.M.L.), Noel's _Life of Byron_. (G.W.)
Trelawney's _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_.
Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, 2 vols., Symonds's _Life of Shelley_
(E.M.L.), Sharp's _Life of Shelley_ (G.W.). Francis Thompson's
_Shelley_.
Clutton-Brock's _Shelley: The Man and the Poet_.
Hogg's _Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley_(contemporary).
Angeli's _Shelley and his Friends in Italy_.
Colvin's _Life of Keats_ (E.M.L.), Rossetti's _Life of Keats_ (G.W.),
Hancock's _John Keats_.
Miller's _Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley, and Keats_.
Arnold's _Essays in Criticism, Second Series_ (Keats).
H. Buxton Forman's _Complete Works of John Keats_ (includes the
_Letters_, the best edition).
Masson's _Life of De Quincey_. (E.M.L.)
Minto's _Manual of English Prose Literature_ (De Quincey).
SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Blake.--Some of his best poems are given in Ward, IV., 601-608;
Bronson, III., 385-403; Manly, I., 301-304; _Oxford_, 558-566;
_Century_, 485-489, and in the volume in _The Canterbury Poets_.
Point out in Blake's verse (_a_) the new feeling for nature, (_b_)
evidences of wide sympathies, (_c_) mystical tendencies, and (_d_)
compare his verses relating to children and nature with Wordsworth's
poems on the same subjects.
Cowper.--Read the opening stanzas of Cowper's _Conversation_ and
note the strong influence of Pope in the cleverly turned but
artificial couplets. Compare this poem with the one _On the Receipt of
my Mother's Picture_ or with _The Task_, Book IV., lines 1-41 and
267-332, Cassell's _National Library, Canterbury Poets_, or _Temple
Classics_ and point out the marked differences in subject matter and
style. What forward movement in literature is indicated by the change
in Cowper's manner? _John Gilpin_ should be read for its fresh,
beguiling humor.
For selections, see Bronson,[28] III., 310-329; Ward, III., 422-485;
_Century_, 470-479; Manly, I., 285-294.
Burns.--Read _The Cotter's Saturday Night, For a' That and a' That,
To a Mouse, Highland Mary, To Mary in Heaven, Farewell to Nancy, I
Love My Jean, A Red, Red Rose_. The teacher should read to the class
parts of _Tam o' Shanter_.
The _Globe_ edition contains the complete poems of Burns with
Glossary. Inexpensive editions may be found in Cassell's _National
Library, Everyman's Library_, and _Canterbury Poets_. For selections,
see Bronson, III., 338-385; Ward. III., 512-571; _Century_, 490-502;
Manly, I., 309-326; _Oxford_, 492-506.
In what ways do the first three poems mentioned above show Burns's
sympathy with democracy? Quote some of Burns's fine descriptions of
nature and describe the manner in which he treats nature. How does he
rank as a writer of love songs? What qualities in his poems have
touched so many hearts? Compare his poetry with that of Dryden, Pope,
and Shakespeare.
Scott.--Read _The Lady of the Lake_, Canto III., stanzas iii.-xxv.,
or _Marmion_, Canto VI., stanzas xiii.-xxvii. (American Book Company's
_Eclectic English Classics_, Cassell's _National Library_, or
_Everyman's Library_.) Read in Craik, V., "The Gypsy's Curse" (_Guy
Mannering_), pp. 14-17, "The Death of Madge Wildfire" (_Heart of
Middlothian_), pp. 30-35, and "The Grand Master of the Templars"
(_Ivanhoe_), pp. 37-42. The student should put on his list for reading
at his leisure: _Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth,
and The Talisman_.
In what kind of poetry does Scott excel? Quote some of his spirited
heroes, and point out their chief excellences. How does his poetry
differ from that of Burns? In the history of fiction, does Scott rank
as an imitator or a creator? As a writer of fiction, in what do his
strength and his weakness consist? Has he those qualities that will
cause him to be popular a century hence? What can be said of his
style?
Jane Austen.--In Craik, V., or Manly. II, read the selections from
_Pride and Prejudice_. The student at his leisure should read all this
novel.
What world does she describe in her fiction? What are her chief
qualities? How does she differ from Scott? Why is she called
a "realist"?
Wordsworth.--Read _I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Solitary
Reaper, To the Cuckoo, Lines Written in Early Spring, Three Years She
Grew in Sun and Shower, To my Sister, She Dwelt among the Untrodden
Ways, She Was a Phantom of Delight, Alice Fell, Lucy Gray, We Are
Seven, Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of Early
Childhood, Ode to Duty, Hart-Leap Well, Lines Composed a Few Miles
above Tintern Abbey, Michael_ and the sonnets: "It is a beauteous
evening, calm and free," "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this
hour," and "The world is too much with us, late and soon." Some
students will also wish to read _The Prelude_ (_Temple Classics_ or
A.J. George's edition), which describes the growth of Wordsworth's
mind.
All the above poems (excepting _The Prelude_) may be found in the
volume _Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold_
(_Golden Treasury Series_, 331 pp., $1). Nearly all may also be found
in Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ (923 pp., $2). For
selections, see Bronson, IV., 1-54; Ward, IV., 1-88; _Oxford_ 594-618;
_Century_, 503-541; Manly, I., 329-345.
Refer to Wordsworth's "General Characteristics" (pp. 393-396) and
select the poems that most emphatically show his special qualities.
Which of the above poems seems easiest to write? In which is his
genius most apparent? Which best presents his view of nature? Which
best stand the test of an indefinite number of readings? In what do
his poems of childhood excel?
Coleridge.--Read _The Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Hymn
before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni, Youth and Age_; Bronson, I.,
54-93; Ward, IV., 102-154; Page, 66-103; Century, 553-565; Manly, I.,
353-364; _Oxford_, 628-656.
How do _The Ancient Mariner_ and _Christabel_ manifest the spirit of
Romanticism? What are the chief reasons for the popularity of _The
Ancient Mariner_? Would you call this poem didactic? Select stanzas
specially remarkable for melody, for beauty, for telling much in few
words, for images of nature, for conveying an ethical lesson. What
feeling almost unknown in early poetry is common in Coleridge's _The
Ancient Mariner_, Wordsworth's _Hart-Leap Well_, Burns's _To a Mouse,
On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp by Me, A Winter Night_, and Cowper's _On
a Goldfinch Starved to Death in his Cage_?
The advanced student should read some of Coleridge's prose criticism
in his _Biographia Literaria_ (_Everyman's Library_). The parts best
worth reading have been selected in George's _Coleridge's Principles
of Criticism_ (226 pp., 60 cents) and in Beers's _Selections for the
Prose Writings of Coleridge_ (including criticisms of Wordsworth and
Shakespeare, 146 pp., 50 cents).
Note how fully Coleridge unfolds in these essays the principles of
romantic criticism, which have not been superseded.
Byron.--Read _The Prisoner of Chillon_ (_Selections from Byron,
Eclectic English Classics_), _Childe Harold_, Canto III., stanzas
xxi-xxv. and cxiii., Canto IV., stanzas lxxviii., and lxxix. "Oh,
Snatch'd away in Beauty's Bloom," "There's not a joy the world can
give like that it takes away," and from _Don Juan_, Canto III., the
song inserted between stanzas lxxxvi. and lxxxvii. All these poems
will be found in the two volumes of Byron's works in the _Canterbury
Poets'_ series.
Selections are given in Bronson, IV., 125-174; Ward, IV., 244-303;
Page, 170-272; Oxford, 688-694; _Century_, 586-613; Manly, I.,
378-393.
From the stanzas indicated in _Childe Harold_, select, first, the
passages which best illustrate the spirit of revolt, and, second, the
passages of most poetic beauty. What natural phenomena appeal most to
Byron? What qualities make _The Prisoner of Chillon_ a favorite? Why
is his poetry often called rhetorical?
Shelley.--Read _Adonais, To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, To
Night, The Cloud, The Sensitive Plant_, and selections from _Alastor_
and _Prometheus Unbound_. Shelley's _Poetical Works_, edited by Edward
Dowden (_Globe Poets_), contains all of Shelley's extant poetry. Less
expensive editions are in _Canterbury Poets, Temple Classics_, and
_Everyman's Library_. Selections are given in Bronson, IV., 182-227;
Ward, IV., 348-416; Page, 275-369; _Oxford_, 697-717; _Century_,
614-638; Manly, I., 394-411.
Under what different aspects do _Adonais_ and _Lycidas_ view the life
after death? Has Shelley modified Wordsworth's view of the spiritual
force in nature? Does Shelley use either the cloud or the skylark for
the direct purpose of expressing his own feelings? Why is he sometimes
called a metaphysical poet? What is the most striking quality of
Shelley's poetic gift?
Keats.--Read _The Eve of St. Agnes_, _Ode to a Nightingale_, _Ode on
a Grecian Urn_, _To Autumn_, _Hyperion_ (first 134 lines), _La Belle
Dame sans Merci_, _Isabella_, and the sonnets: _On First Looking into
Chapman's Homer_, _On the Grasshopper and Cricket_, _When I have Fears
that I May Cease to Be_, _Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou
Art_. The best edition of the works of Keats is that by Buxton Forman.
The _Canterbury Poets_ and _Everyman's Library_ have less expensive
editions. All the poems indicated above may be found in Page's
_British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_. For selections, see
Bronson, IV., 230-265; Ward, IV., 427-464; _Oxford_, 721-744;
_Century_, 639-655; Manly, I., 413-425.
By direct reference to the above poems, justify calling Keats "the
apostle of the beautiful," in both thought and language. Give examples
of his felicitous use of words and phrases. Show by illustrations his
mastery in the use of the concrete. To what special senses do his
images appeal? Was he at all affected by the new human movement? Why
does Arnold say, "Keats is with Shakespeare"? In what respects is he
like the Elizabethans?
De Quincey.--Read _Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow_ (Craik, V.,
264-270). The first chapters of _The Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater_ (_Everyman's Library_; _Temple Classics_; _Century_,
683-690; Manly, II., 357-366) are entertaining and will repay reading.
Does his prose show any influence of a romantic and poetic age?
Compare his style with that of Addison, Gibbon, and Burke. In what
respects does De Quincey succeed, and in what does he fail, as a model
for a young writer?
Lamb.--From the _Essays of Elia_ (Cassell's _National Library_;
_Everyman's Library_, _Temple Classics_) read any two of these essays:
_A Dissertation upon Roast Pig, Old China, Dream Children, New Year's
Eve, Poor Relations_. For selections, see Craik, V., 116-126;
_Century_, 575-578; Manly, II., 337-345.
In what does Lamb's chief charm consist? Point out resemblances and
differences between his _Essays_ and Addison's.
Landor, Hazlitt, and Hunt.--Good selections are given in Craik, V.;
Chambers, III.; Manly, II. Inexpensive editions of Landor's _Imaginary
Conversations_ and _Pericles and Aspasia_ may be found in the _Camelot
Series_. Hazlitt's _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, Lectures on the
English Poets, Lectures on the English Comic Writers_, and _Table
Talk_ are published in _Everyman's Library_. The _Camelot Series_ and
the _Temple Classics_ also contain some of Hazlitt's works. A
selection from Leigh Hunt's _Essays_ is published in the _Camelot
Series_.
What are the main characteristics of Landor's style? Select a passage
which justifies the criticism: "He writes in marble." Give some
striking thoughts from his _Imaginary Conversations_. Compare his
style and subject matter with Hazlitt's. Show that Hazlitt has the
power of presenting in an impressive way the chief characteristics of
authors. Select some pleasing passages from Leigh Hunt's _Essays_.
Compare him with Addison and Lamb.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VIII:
[Footnote 1: _Prelude_, Book XI.]
[Footnote 2: gold.]
[Footnote 3: _For a' That and a' That_.]
[Footnote 4: _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_.]
[Footnote 5: _Hart-Leap Well_.]
[Footnote 6: _Intimations of Immortality_.]
[Footnote 7: Wordsworth's _Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern
Abbey_.]
[Footnote 8: _Retirement_.]
[Footnote 9: _Conversation_.]
[Footnote 10: _I Love My Jean_.]
[Footnote 11: remedy.]
[Footnote 12: _Epistle to John Lapraik_.]
[Footnote 13: _The Vision_.]
[Footnote 14: _Sonnet_: "The world is too much with us."]
[Footnote 15: _Hart Leap Well_.]
[Footnote 16: _A Day-Dream_.]
[Footnote 17: _Biographia Literaria_, Chapter XIV.]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., Chapter XXII.]
[Footnote 19: _Manfred_, Act I.]
[Footnote 20: _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto III.]
[Footnote 21: _The Dream_.]
[Footnote 22: _Adonais_, Stanza xlix]
[Footnote 23: _Epipsychidion_.]
[Footnote 24: _Ode to the West Wind_.]
[Footnote 25: For a discussion of the different sensory images of the
poets, see the author's _Education of the Central Nervous System_,
pages 109-208.]
[Footnote 26: _Sleep and Poetry_.]
[Footnote 27: For full titles, see p. 50.]
[Footnote 28: For full titles, see p. 6.]