Life.--George Meredith was the only child of a Welsh father and an

Irish mother. He was born in 1828 over his grandfather's tailor shop

in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The father proved incompetent in handling

the excellent tailoring business to which he fell heir; and he soon

abandoned his son. The mother died when the boy was five years old,

and he was then cared for by relatives. When he was fourteen, he was

sent to school in Germany for two years; but he did not consider his

schooling of much benefit to him and he was forced to educate himself

for his life's work.

On his return to England, he was articled to a London solicitor; but

by the age of twenty-one, Meredith had abandoned the law and had begun

the literary life which was to receive his undivided attention for

nearly sixty years. The struggle was at first extremely hard. Some

days, indeed, he is said to have lived on a single bowl of porridge.

While following his work as a novelist, he tried writing for

periodicals, served as a newspaper correspondent, and later became a

literary adviser for a large London publishing firm. In this capacity,

he proved a sympathetic friend to many a struggling young author.

Thomas Hardy says that he received from Meredith's praise sufficient

encouragement to persevere in the field of literature.

Meredith's marriage in 1849 was unhappy and resulted in a separation.

Three years after his wife's death, which occurred in 1861, he married

a congenial helpmate and went to live in Flint Cottage, near Burford

Bridge, Surrey, where most of his remaining years were spent.

Not until late in life were the returns from his writings sufficient

to relieve him from unceasing daily toil at his desk. He was widely

hailed as a literary master and recognized as a force in fiction

before he attained financial independence. After the death of

Tennyson, Meredith was elected president of the Society of British

Authors. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, his reply to the

_Who's Who_ query about his recreations was, "a great reader,

especially of French literature; has in his time been a great walker."

During his last sixteen years of life, he suffered from partial

paralysis and was compelled to abandon these long walks, which had

been a source both of recreation and of health.

He died in 1909 at the age of eighty-one and was laid beside his wife

in the Dorking cemetery. The following words from his novel,

_Vittoria_, are on his tombstone: "Life is but a little holding, lent

to do a mighty labor."

Poetry.--During his long career, Meredith wrote much verse, which

was collected in 1912 in a volume of 578 pages.

The quality of his poetry is very uneven. In such exquisite poems as

_Love in the Valley_, _The Lark Ascending_, and _Melanthus_, the fancy

and melody are artistically intertwined. Many have admired the

felicity of the description and the romance of the sentiment in this

stanza from _Love in the Valley_:--

"Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,

Swift as the swallow along the river's light

Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,

Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.

Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,

Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,

She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,

Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!"

Some of his songs are pure music, and an occasional descriptive

passage in his verse shows the deftness of touch of a skilled lyrical

poet. Such poems as _Jump-to-Glory Jane_, _Juggling Jerry_, _The

Beggar's Soliloquy_, and _The Old_ _Chartist_, are character sketches

of humble folk and show genuine pathos and humor. In his poetry,

Meredith is, however, more often the moralist and philosopher than the

singer and simple narrator. He treats of love, life, and death as

metaphysical problems. He ponders over the duties of mankind and the

greatest sources of human strength and courage. He roams through a

region that seems timeless and spaceless. He "neighbors the

invisible." The obscurities in many of these poems are due to the

abstract nature of the subject matter, to excessive condensation of

thought, to frequent omission of connecting words, and to an abundance

of figurative language.

Novels.--Meredith's novels comprise the largest and most noteworthy

part of his writings. His most important works of fiction are _The

Ordeal of Richard Feverel_ (1859), _The Egoist_ (1879), and _Diana of

the Crossways_ (1885). _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_ is the story of

a beautiful first love. The courtship of Richard and Lucy, amid scenes

that inspire poetic descriptions, is in itself a true prose lyric.

Their parting interview is one of the most powerfully handled chapters

to be found in English novels. It is heart-rending in its emotional

intensity and almost faultless in expression. _The Ordeal of Richard

Feverel_, like most of Meredith's works, contains more than a love

story. Many chapters of high-class comedy and epigrammatical wit serve

to explode a fallacious educational theory.

_The Egoist_ has for its special aim the portrayal and exposure of

masculine egotism. This was a favorite subject with Meredith and it

recurs frequently in his novels. The plot of _The Egoist_ is slight.

The interest is centered on the awakening of Clara Middleton and

Laetitia Dale to the superlative selfishness of Sir Willoughby's

egotism.

Scintillating repartee, covert side-thrusts, shrewd observations,

subtle innuendoes, are all used to assist in the revelation of this

egotism. One fair April morning, after his return to England from a

three years' absence, Sir Willoughby met Laetitia Dale, an early

sweetheart whom he no longer loved.

"He sprang out of the carriage and seized her hand. 'Laetitia

Dale!' he said. He panted. 'Your name is sweet English music!

And you are well?' The anxious question permitted him to read deep

in her eyes. He found the man he sought there, squeezed him

passionately, and let her go."

The delicate irony of this passage is a mild example of the rich vein

of humor running through this work. _The Egoist_ is the most

Meredithian of the author's novels, and it displays most exuberantly

his comic spirit, intent upon photographing mankind's follies. This

book has been called "a comedy in narrative."

Diana, the heroine of _Diana of the Crossways, is the queen of

Meredith's heroines. She is intellectual, warm-hearted, and

courageous. She thinks and talks brilliantly; but when she acts, she

is often carried away by the momentary impulse. She therefore keeps

the reader alternately scolding and forgiving her. Her betrayal of a

state secret, which cannot be condoned, remains the one flaw in the

plot. With this exception, the story is absorbing. The men and women

belong to the world of culture. Among them are some of Meredith's most

interesting characters, notably Redworth, the noblest man in any of

the novels. The scene of the story is in London's highest political

circle and the discussions sparkle with cleverness.

_Evan Harrington_ (1861), the story of a young tailor, is one of the

lightest and brightest of Meredith's novels. It presents in the

author's most inimitable manner a comic picture of the struggle for

social position. In two of the characters, Great Mel and Mrs. Mel, are

found the pen portraits of Meredith's grandparents. _Rhoda Fleming_

(1865) is in its style the simplest of his novels. The humble tragedy

is related in the plain speech of the people, without the Gaelic wit

usually characteristic of Meredith.

The first half of _The Adventures of Harry Richmond_ has been called

by some critics Meredith's best piece of writing, but the last half

shows less power.

Meredith grew more introspective in his later years, as is shown in

such long, analytical novels as, _One of Our Conquerors_ (1891), _Lord

Ormont and His Aminta_ (1894), and _The Amazing Marriage_ (1895).

General Characteristics.-Meredith's novels afford him various

opportunities for an exposition of his views on education, divorce,

personal liberty, conventional narrow-mindedness, egotism,

sentimentalism, and obedience to law. His own personality creeps into

the stories when he has some favorite sermon to preach; and he

sometimes taxes the reader's patience by unduly delaying the narrative

or even directing its course in order to accentuate the moral issue.

The chief excellences of his novels lie in the strong and subtle

character portrayal, in the brilliant conversations, in the power with

which intense scenes are presented, and in the well-nigh omnipresent

humor.

Meredith's humor frequently arises from his keen intellectual

perception of the paradoxes in life. One of his egotistical lovers,

talking to the object of his undying affections, "could pledge himself

to eternity, but shrank from being bound to eleven o'clock on the

morrow morning." Meredith does not fly into a passion, like Carlyle,

because society is sentimental and shallow and loves to pose. He

proceeds in the coolest manner to draw with unusual distinctness the

shallow dilettante, the sentimentalist, the egotist, and the

hypocrite. By placing these characters in the midst of men and women

actuated by simple and genuine motives, he develops situations that

seem especially humorous to readers who are alert to detect

incongruity. This veiled humor, which has been aptly styled "the

laughter of the mind," gives to Meredith's works their most

distinctive flavor.

His prose style is epigrammatic, rich in figures, subtle, sometimes

tortuous and even obscure. He abhors the trite and obvious, and, in

escaping them to indulge in witty riddles, fanciful expressions, and

difficult allusions, he imperils his clearness. In the presence of

genuine emotion, he is always as simple in style as he is serious in

attitude; but there are times when he seems to revel in the

extravagant and grotesque.

Meredith is the novelist of men and women in the world of learning, of

letters, and of politics; he is the satirist of social shams; and he

is the sparkling epigrammatist; but he is also the optimist with the

sane and vigorous message for his generation, and the realist who

keeps a genuine rainbow of idealism in his sky.

THOMAS HARDY, 1840-

[Illustration: THOMAS HARDY. _From the painting by Winifred

Thompson_.]

Life.--The subtle, comic aspects of cosmopolitan life, which were

such a fascination to Meredith, did not appeal to that somber realist,

Thomas Hardy, whose genius enabled him to paint impressive pictures of

the retired elemental life of Wessex. Hardy was born in 1840 in the

little village of Bockhampton, Dorsetshire, a few miles out of

Dorchester. He received his early education at the local schools,

attended evening classes at King's College, London, and studied Gothic

architecture under Sir Arthur Blomfield. The boy was articled at the

early age of sixteen to an ecclesiastical architect and, like the hero

in his novel, _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, made drawings and measurements of

old churches in rural England and planned their remodeling. He won

medals and prizes in this profession before he turned from it to

authorship. His first published work, _How I Built Myself a House_,

was an outgrowth of some early experiences as an architect.

Hardy married Miss Emma Lavinia Gifford in 1874 and went to live at

Sturminster Newton. Later he spent some time in London; but he

returned finally to his birthplace, the land of his novels, and built

himself a home at Max Gate, Dorchester, in 1885. His life has been a

retired one. He always shunned publicity, but he was happy to receive

in 1910 the freedom of his native town, an honor bestowed upon him as

a mark of love and pride.

Works.--Thomas Hardy is one of the greatest realists in modern

England, and also one of the most uncompromising pessimists. His

characters are developed with consummate skill, but usually their

progression is toward failure or death. These men and women are

largely rustics who subsist by means of humble toil, such as tending

sheep or cutting furze. The orbit of their lives is narrow. The people

are simple, primitive, superstitious. They are only half articulate in

the expression of their emotions. In _Far From the Madding Crowd_, for

example, Gabriel Oak wished to have Bathsheba know "his impressions;

but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odor in a net as of

attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feelings in the coarse

meshes of language. So he remained silent." On the other hand, the

speech is sometimes racy, witty, and flavored by the daily occupation

of the speaker.

The scenes usually selected for Hardy's stories are from his own

county and those immediately adjacent, to which section of country he

has given the name of Wessex. He knows it so intimately and paints it

so vividly that its moors, barrows, and villages are as much a part of

the stories as the people dwelling there. In fact, Egdon Heath has

been called the principal character in the novel, _The Return of the

Native_ (1878). The upland with its shepherd's hut, the sheep-shearing

barn, the harvest storm, the hollow of ferns, and the churchyard with

its dripping water spout are part of the wonderful landscape in _Far

From the Madding Crowd_ (1874) This is the finest artistic product of

Hardy's genius. It contains strongly-drawn characters, dramatic

incidents, a most interesting story, and some homely native humor. The

heroine, Bathsheba, is one of the brainiest and most independent of

all Hardy's women. She has grave faults; but the tragic experiences

through which she passes soften her and finally mold her into a

lovable woman. Steady, resourceful, dumb Gabriel Oak and clever,

fencing Sergeant Troy are delightful foils to each other, and are

every inch human.

[Illustration: MAX GATE. The Home of Hardy near Dorchester (the

Casterbridge of the Novels).]

_The Mayor of Casterbridge_ (1886) and _The Woodlanders_ (1886-1887)

deserve mention with _Far from the Madding Crowd_ and The _Return of

the Native_ as comprising the best four novels of the so-called Wessex

stories.

Hardy's later works exhibit an increasing absorption in ethical and

religious problems. _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ (1892) is one of

Hardy's most powerful novels. It has for its heroine a strong, sweet,

appealing woman, whose loving character and tragic fate are presented

with fearless vigor and deep sympathetic insight. The personal

intensity of the author, which is felt to pervade this book, is

present again in _Jude the Obscure_ (1895), that record of an aspiring

soul, struggling against hopeless odds, heavy incumbrances, and sordid

realities.

General Characteristics.--Hardy's novels leave a sense of gloom upon

the reader. He explains his view of modern life "as a thing to be put

up with, replacing the zest for existence which was so intense in

early civilization." His pessimistic philosophy strikes at the core of

life and human endeavor. Sorrow appears in his work, not as a

punishment for crime, but as an unavoidable result of human life and

its inevitable mistakes. Events, sometimes comic but generally tragic,

play upon the weaknesses of his characters and bring about

entanglements, misunderstandings, and suffering far in excess of the

deserts of these well-intentioned people. No escape is suggested.

Resignation to misfits, mistakes, and misfortune is what remains.

Hardy is one of the great Victorian story-tellers. His personality is

never obtruded on his readers. His humor is not grafted on his scenes,

but is a natural outgrowth of his rustic gatherings and conversations.

He relates a straightforward tale, and makes his characters act and

speak for themselves. He selects the human nature, the rural scene,

and the moral issue upon which his whole being can be centered. The

result is a certainty of design, a somberness of atmosphere, and an

intensity of feeling, such as are found in elegiac poetry. Natural

laws, physical nature, and human life are engaged in an uneven

struggle, and the result is usually unsatisfactory for human life. The

novels are pitilessly sad, but they are nevertheless products of a

genuine artist in temperament and technique. His novels show almost as

much unity of plot and mood as many of the greatest short stories.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1822-1888

[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD. _From the painting of G.F. Watts,

National Portrait Gallery_.]

Life.--Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, A.C.

Swinburne, and the much younger Rudyard Kipling are the most noted

among a large number of Victorian poets. All of these, with the

exception of the two greatest, Browning and Tennyson, also wrote

prose.

Matthew Arnold was born in 1822, at Laleham, Middlesex. His father,

Dr. Thomas Arnold, was the eminent head master of Rugby School, and

the author of _History of Rome, Lectures on Modern History_, and

_Sermons_. Under the guidance of such a father, Matthew Arnold enjoyed

unusual educational advantages. In 1837 he entered Rugby, and from

there went to Baliol College, Oxford. He was so ambitious and studious

that he won two prizes at Oxford, was graduated with honors, and, a

year later, was elected fellow of Oriel College. Arnold's name, like

Thomas Gray's, is associated with university life.

From 1847 to 1851, Arnold was private secretary to Lord Lansdowne. In

1851 he married the daughter of Justice Wightman. After relinquishing

his secretaryship, Arnold accepted a position that took him again into

educational fields. He was made lay inspector of schools, a position

which he held to within two years of his death. This office called for

much study in methods of education, and he visited the continent three

times to investigate the systems in use there. In addition, he held

the chair of poetry at Oxford for ten years, between 1857 and 1867.

One of the most scholarly courses of lectures that he delivered there

was _On Translating Homer_. From this time until his death, in 1888,

he was a distinguished figure in English educational and literary

circles.

Poetical Works.--Matthew Arnold's poetry belongs to the middle of

the century, that season of doubt, perplexity, and unrest, when the

strife between the church and science was bitterest and each

threatened to overthrow the other. In his home, Arnold was taught a

devout faith in revealed religion, and at college he was thrown upon a

world of inquiring doubt. Both influences were strong. His feelings

yearned after the early faith, and his intellect sternly demanded

scientific proof and explanation. He was, therefore, torn by a

conflict between his emotions and reason, and he was thus eminently

fitted to be the poetic exponent of what he calls--

"...this strange disease of modern life,

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts."[12]

Arnold felt that there were too much hurry and excitement in the age.

In the midst of opposing factions, theories, and beliefs, he cries out

for rest and peace. We rush from shadow to shadow--

"And never once possess our soul

Before we die."[13]

Again, in the _Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann"_, he

voices the unrest of the age--

"What shelter to grow ripe is ours?

What leisure to grow wise?

Like children bathing on the shore,

Buried a wave beneath,

The second wave succeeds, before

We have had time to breathe."

But Arnold is not the seer to tell us how to enter the vale of rest,

how to answer the voice of doubt. He passes through life a lonely

figure--

"Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born." [14]

The only creed that he offers humanity is one born of the scientific

temper, a creed of stoical endurance and unswerving allegiance to the

voice of duty. Many readers miss in Arnold the solace that they find

in Wordsworth and the tonic faith that is omnipresent in Browning.

Arnold himself was not wholly satisfied with his creed; but his cool

reason refused him the solace of an unquestioning faith. Arnold has

been called "the poet of the Universities," because of the reflective

scholarly thought in his verse. It breathes the atmosphere of books

and of the study. Such poetry cannot appeal to the masses. It is for

the thinker.

The style of verse that lends itself best to Arnold's genius is the

elegiac lyric. _The Scholar Gypsy_ and its companion piece _Thyrsis,

Memorial Verses, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,_ and _Stanzas in

Memory of the Author of "Obermann"_ are some of his best elegies.

_Sohrab and Rustam_ and _Balder Dead_ are Arnold's finest narrative

poems. They are stately, dignified recitals of the deeds of heroes and

gods. The series of poems entitled _Switzerland_ and _Dover Beach_ are

among Arnold's most beautiful lyrics. A fine description of the surf

is contained in the last-named poem:--

"Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in."

Neither the movement of the narrative nor the lightness of the lyric

is wholly congenial to Arnold's introspective melancholy muse.

Prose Works.--Although Arnold's first works were in poetry, he won

recognition as a prose writer before he was widely known as a poet.

His works in prose comprise such subjects as literary criticism,

education, theology, and social ethics. As a critic of literature, he

surpasses all his great contemporaries. Neither Macaulay nor Carlyle

possessed the critical acumen, the taste, ana the cultivated judgment

of literary works, in such fullness as Matthew Arnold.

His greatest contributions to critical literature are the various

magazine articles that were collected in the two volumes entitled

_Essays in Criticism_ (1865-1888). In these essays Arnold displays

great breadth of culture and fairness of mind. He rises superior to

the narrow provincialism and racial prejudices that he deprecates in

other criticisms of literature. He gives the same sympathetic

consideration to the German Heine and the Frenchman Joubert as to

Wordsworth. Arnold further insists that Frenchmen should study English

literature for its serious ethical spirit, and that Englishmen would

be benefited by a study of the lightness, precision, and polished form

of French literature.

Arnold's object in all his criticism is to discover the best in both

prose and poetry, and his method of attaining this object is another

illustration of his scholarship and mental reach. He says in his

_Introduction to Ward's English Poets_:--

"Indeed, there can be no more useful help for discovering what

poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can

therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines

and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a

touchstone to other poetry."

When Arnold seeks to determine an author's true place in literature,

his keen critical eye seems to see at a glance all the world's great

writers, and to compare them with the man under discussion. In order

to ascertain Wordsworth's literary stature, for example, Arnold

measures the height of Wordsworth by that of Homer, of Dante, of

Shakespeare, and of Milton.

Another essential quality of the critical mind that Arnold possessed

is "sweet reasonableness." His judgments of men are marked by a

moderation of tune. His strong predilections are sometimes shown, but

they are more often restrained by a clear, honest intellect. Arnold's

calm, measured criticisms are not marred by such stout partisanship as

Macaulay shows for the Whigs, by the hero worship that Carlyle

expresses, or by the exaggerated praise and blame that Ruskin

sometimes bestows. On the other hand, Arnold loses what these men

gain; for while his intellect is less biased than theirs, it is also

less colored and less warmed by the glow of feeling.

The analytical quality of Arnold's mind shows the spirit of the age.

His subjects are minutely classified and defined. Facts seem to divide

naturally into brigades, regiments, and battalions of marching order.

His literary criticisms note subtleties of style, delicate shadings in

expression, and many technical excellences and errors that Carlyle

would have passed over unheeded. In addition to the _Essays in

Criticism,_ the other works of Arnold that possess his fine critical

dualities in highest degree are _On Translating Homer_ (1861) and _The

Study of Celtic Literature_ (1867).

General Characteristics.--The impression that Arnold has left upon

literature is mainly that of a keen, brilliant intellect. In his

poetry there is more emotion than in his prose; but even in his poetry

there is no passion or fire. The sadness, the loneliness, the unrest

of life, and the irreconcilable conflict between faith and doubt are

most often the subjects of his verse. His range is narrow, but within

it he attains a pure, noble beauty. His introspective, analytical

poetry is distinguished by a "majesty of grief," depth of thought,

calm, classic repose, and a dignified simplicity.

In prose, Arnold attains highest rank as a critic of literature. His

culture, the breadth of his literary sympathies, his scientific

analyses, and his lucid literary style make his critical works the

greatest of his age. He has a light, rather fanciful, humor, which

gives snap and spice to his style. He is also a master of irony, which

is galling to an opponent. He himself never loses his suavity or good

breeding. Arnold's prose style is as far removed from Carlyle's as the

calm simplicity of the Greeks is from the powerful passion of the

Vikings. The ornament and poetic richness of Ruskin's style are also

missing in Arnold's. His style has a classic purity and refinement. He

has a terseness, a crystalline clearness, and a precision that have

been excelled in the works of few even of the greatest masters of

English prose.

ROBERT BROWNING, 1812-1889

[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING. _From the painting by G. F. Watts,

National Portrait Gallery._]

Life.--The long and peaceful lives of Browning and Tennyson, the two

most eminent poets of the Victorian age, are in marked contrast to the

short and troubled careers of Byron, Shelley, and Keats.

Robert Browning's life was uneventful but happy. He inherited a

magnificent physique and constitution from his father, who never knew

a day's illness. With such health, Robert Browning felt a keen relish

for physical existence and a robust joyousness in all kinds of

activity. Late in life he wrote, in the poem _At the Mermaid_:--

"Have you found your life distasteful?

My life did, and does, smack sweet.

* * * * *

I find earth not gray but rosy,

Heaven not grim but fair of hue.

Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.

Do I stand and stare? All's blue."

Again, in _Saul_, he burst forth with the lines:--

"How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ

All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy?"

These lines, vibrant with life and joy, could not have been written by

a man of failing vitality or physical weakness.

Robert Browning was born in 1812 at Camberwell, whose slopes overlook

the smoky chimneys of London. In this beautiful suburb he spent his

early years in the companionship of a brother and a sister. A highly

gifted father and a musical mother assisted intelligently in the

development of their children. Browning's education was conducted

mainly under his father's eye. The boy attended neither a large school

nor a college. After he had passed from the hands of tutors, he spent

some time in travel, and was wont to call Italy his university.

Although his training was received in an irregular way, his

scholarship cannot be doubted by the student of his poetry.

He early determined to devote his life to poetry, and his father

wisely refrained from interfering with his son's ambitions.

[Illustration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. From the painting by

Field Talfourd, National Portrait Gallery._]

Romantic Marriage with Elizabeth Barrett Barrett,--Her Poetry.--In

1845, after Browning had published some ten volumes of verse, among

which were _Paracelsus_ (1835), _Pippa Passes_ (1841), and _Dramatic

Lyrics_ (1842), he met Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (1806-1861),

whose poetic reputation was then greater than his own. The publication

in 1898 of _The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett

Barrett_ disclosed an unusual romance. When he first met her, she was

an invalid in her father's London house, passing a large part of her

time on the couch, scarcely able to see all the members of her own

family at the same time. His magnetic influence helped her to make

more frequent journeys from the sofa to an armchair, then to walk

across the room, and soon to take drives.

Her father, who might have sat for the original of Meredith's

"Egoist," had decided that his daughter should be an invalid and

remain with him for life. When Browning proposed to Miss Barrett that

he should ask her father for her hand, she replied that such a step

would only make matters worse. "He would rather see me dead at his

feet than yield the point," she said. In 1846 Miss Barrett,

accompanied by her faithful maid, drove to a church and was married to

Browning. The bride returned home; but Browning did not see her for a

week because he would not indulge in the deception of asking for "Miss

Barrett." Seven days after the marriage, they quietly left for Italy,

where Mrs. Browning passed nearly all her remaining years. She

repeatedly wrote to her father, telling him of her transformed health

and happy marriage, but he never answered her.

Before Miss Barrett met Browning, the woes of the factory children had

moved her to write _The Cry of the Children_. After Edgar Allan Poe

had read its closing lines:--

"...the child's sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath,"

he said that she had depicted "a horror, sublime in its simplicity, of

which Dante himself might have been proud."

Her best work, _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, written after Browning

had won her affection, is a series of love lyrics, strong, tender,

unaffected, true, from the depth of a woman's heart. Sympathetic

readers, who know the story of her early life and love, are every year

realizing that there is nothing else in English literature that could

exactly fill their place. Browning called them "the finest sonnets

written in any language since Shakespeare's." Those who like the

simple music of the heart strings will find it in lines like these:--

"I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight,

I love thee freely, as men strive for right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death."

After fifteen years of happy married life, she died in 1861, and was

buried in Florence. When thinking of her, Browning wrote his poem

_Prospice_ (1861) welcoming death as--

"...a peace out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be the rest."

His Later Years.--Soon after his wife's death, he began his long

poem of over twenty thousand lines, _The Ring and the Book_. He

continued to write verse to the year of his death.

In 1881 the Browning Society was founded for the study and discussion

of his works,--a most unusual honor for a poet during his lifetime.

The leading universities gave him honorary degrees, he was elected

life-governor of London University, and was tendered the rectorship of

the Universities of Glasgow and St. Andrew's and the presidency of the

Wordsworth Society.

During the latter part of his life, he divided most of his time

between London and Italy. When he died, in 1889, he was living with

his son, Robert Barrett Browning, in the Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice.

Over his grave in Westminster Abbey was chanted Mrs. Browning's

touching lyric:--

"He giveth his belovèd, sleep."

Dramatic Monologues.--Browning was a poet of great productivity.

From the publication of _Pauline_ in 1833 to _Asolando_ in 1889, there

were only short pauses between the appearances of his works. Unlike

Tennyson, Browning could not stop to revise and recast; but he

constantly sought expression, in narratives, dramas, lyrics, and

monologues, for new thoughts and feelings.

The study of the human soul held an unfailing charm for Browning. He

analyzes with marked keenness and subtlety the experiences of the

soul, its sickening failures, and its eager strivings amid complex,

puzzling conditions. In nearly all his poems, whether narrative,

lyric, or dramatic, the chief interest centers about some "incidents

in the development of a soul."

The poetic form that he found best adapted to "the development of a

soul" was the dramatic monologue, of which he is one of the greatest

masters. Requiring but one speaker, this form narrows the interest

either to the speaker or to the one described by him. Most of his best

monologues are to be found in the volumes known as _Dramatic Lyrics_

(1842), _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845), _Men and Women_ (1855),

_Dramatis Personae_ (1864).

_My Last Duchess, Andrea del Sarto, Saul, Abt Vogler_, and _The Last

Ride Together_ are a few of his strong representative monologues. The

speaker in _My Last Duchess_ is the widowed duke, who is describing

the portrait of his lost wife. In his blind conceit, he is utterly

unconscious that he is exhibiting clearly his own coldly selfish

nature and his wife's sweet, sunny disposition. The chief power of the

poem lies in the astonishing ease with which he is made to reveal his

own character.

The interest in _Andrea del Sarto_ is in the mental conflict of this

"faultless painter." He wishes, on the one hand, to please his wife

with popular pictures, and yet he yearns for higher ideals of his art.

He says:--

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?"

As he sits in the twilight, holding his wife's hand, and talking in a

half-musing way, it is readily seen that his love for this beautiful

but soulless woman has caused many of his failures and sorrows in the

past, and will continue to arouse conflicts of soul in the future.

_Abt Vogler_, one of Browning's noblest and most melodious poems,

voices the exquisite raptures of a musician's soul:--

"But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."

The beautiful song of David in the poem entitled _Saul_ shows a

wonderful sympathy with the old Hebrew prophecies. _Cleon_ expresses

the views of an early Greek upon the teachings of Christ and St. Paul.

_The Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister_ describes the development of a

coarse, jealous nature in monastic life. _The Last Ride Together_ is

one of Browning's many passionate poems on the ennobling power of

love. That remarkable, grotesque poem, _Caliban upon Setebos_,

transcends human fields altogether, and displays the brutelike

theology of a fiend.

In these monologues, Browning interprets characters of varying faiths,

nationalities, stations, and historic periods. He shows a wide range

of knowledge and sympathy. One type, however, which he rarely

presents, is the simple, commonplace man or woman. Browning excels in

the portrayal of unusual, intricate, and difficult characters that

have complicated problems to face, weaknesses to overcome, or lofty

ambitions to attain.

The Ring and the Book.--When Browning was asked what he would advise

a student of his poetry to read first, he replied: "_The Ring and the

Book_, of course." He worked on this masterly study of human souls for

many years in the decade in which his wife died. This poem (1868),

which has been facetiously called "a Roman murder story," was

suggested to him by a "square old yellow book," which he purchased for

a few cents at Florence in 1860. This manuscript, dated 1698, gives an

account of the trial of Guido Franceschini for the murder of his wife.

Out of this "mere ring metal," Browning fashioned his "Ring," a poem

twice the length of _Paradise Lost_.

The subject of the story is an innocent girl, Pompilia, who, under the

protection of a noble priest, flees from her brutal husband and seeks

the home of her foster parents. Her husband wrathfully pursues her and

kills both her and her parents. While this is but the barest outline,

yet the story in its complete form is very simple. As is usual with

Browning, the chief stress is laid upon the character portrayal.

He adopted the bold and unique plan of having different classes of

people in Rome and the various actors in the tragedy tell the story

from their own point of view and thus reveal their own bias and

characteristics. Each relation makes the story seem largely new.

Browning shows that all this testimony is necessary to establish a

complete circle of evidence in regard to the central truth of the

tragedy. The poem thus becomes a remarkable analytic study of the

psychology of human minds.

The four important characters,--Guido, the husband; Caponsacchi, the

priest; Pompilia, the girl-wife; and the Pope,--stand out in strong

relief. The greatest development of character is seen in Guido, who

starts with a defiant spirit of certain victory, but gradually becomes

more subdued and abject, when he finds that he is to be killed, and

finally shrieks in agony for the help of his victim, Pompilia. In

Caponsacchi there is the inward questioning of the right and the

wrong. He is a strongly-drawn character, full of passion and noble

desires. Pompilia, who has an intuitive knowledge of the right, is one

of Browning's sweetest and purest women. From descriptions of Mrs.

Browning, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne gave, we may conclude that she

furnished the suggestion for many of Pompilia's characteristics. The

Pope, with his calm, wise judgment and his lofty philosophy, is

probably the greatest product of Browning's intellect.

The books containing the monologues of these characters take first

place among Browning's writings and occupy a high position in the

century's work. They have a striking originality, intensity, vigor,

and imaginative richness. The remaining books are incomparably

inferior, and are marked at times by mere acuteness of reason and

thoroughness of legal knowledge.

A Dramatic Poet.--Although Browning's genius is strongly dramatic,

his best work is not found in the field of the drama. _Strafford_

(1837), _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ (1843), and _Colombe's Birthday_

(1844) have been staged successfully, but they cannot be called great

acting plays. The action is slight, the characters are complex, the

soliloquies are lengthy, and the climaxes are too often wholly

dependent upon emotional intensity rather than upon great or exciting

deeds. The strongest interest of these dramas lies in their

psychological subtlety, which is more enjoyable in the study than in

the theater.

Browning's dramatic power is well exhibited in poems like _In a

Balcony_ or _Pippa Passes_, in which powerful individual scenes are

presented without all the accompanying details of a complete drama.

The great force of such scenes lies in his manner of treating moments

of severe trial. He selects such a moment, focuses his whole attention

upon it, and makes the deed committed stand forth as an explanation of

all the past emotions and as a prophecy of all future acts. _In a

Balcony_ shows the lives of three characters converging toward a

crisis. The hero of this drama thus expresses his theory of life's

struggles in the development of the soul:--

"...I count life just stuff

To try the soul's strength on, educe the man."

_Pippa Passes_ is one of Browning's most artistic presentations of

such dramatic scenes. The little silk weaver, Pippa, rises on the

morning of her one holiday in the year, with the intention of enjoying

in fancy the pleasures "of the Happiest Four in our Asolo," not

knowing, in her innocence, of their misery and guilt. She wanders from

house to house, singing her pure, significant refrains, and, in each

case, her songs arrest the attention of the hearer at a critical

moment. She thus becomes unconsciously a means of salvation. The first

scene is the most intense. She approaches the home of the lovers,

Sebald and Ottima, after the murder of Ottima's husband. As Sebald

begins to reflect on the murder, there comes this song of Pippa's,

like the knocking at the gate in Macbeth, to loose the floodgates of

remorse:--

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF MS. FROM PIPPA PASSES.]

His Optimistic Philosophy.--It has been seen that the Victorian age,

as presented by Matthew Arnold, was a period of doubt and negation.

Browning, however, was not overcome by this wave of doubt. Although he

recognized fully the difficulties of religious faith in an age just

awakening to scientific inquiry, yet he retained a strong, fearless

trust in God and in immortality.

Browning's reason demanded this belief. In this earthly life he saw

the evil overcome the good, and beheld injustice, defeat, and despair

follow the noblest efforts. If there exists no compensation for these

things, he says that life is a cheat, the moral nature a lie, and God

a fiend. In _Asolando_, Browning thus presents his attitude toward

life:--

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake."

There is no hesitancy in this philosophy of Browning's. With it, he

does not fear to face all the problems and mysteries of existence. No

other poet strikes such a resonant, hopeful note as he. His _Rabbi Ben

Ezra_ is more a song of triumphant faith than anything written since

the Puritan days:--

"Our times are in His hand

Who saith, 'A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

* * * * *

"Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:

What entered into thee,

_That_ was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure."

General Characteristics.--Browning is a poet of striking originality

and impelling force. His writings are the spontaneous outpourings of a

rich, full nature, whose main fabric is intellect, but intellect

illumined with the glittering light of spiritual hopefulness and

flushed with the glow of deep human passion.

The subject of his greatest poetry is the human soul. While he

possesses a large portion of dramatic suggestiveness, he nevertheless

does not excel in setting off character against character in movement

and speech, but rather in a minute, penetrating analysis, by which he

insinuates himself into the thoughts and sensations of his characters,

and views life through their eyes.

He is a pronounced realist. His verse deals not only with the

beautiful and the romantic, but also with the prosaic and the ugly, if

they furnish true pictures for the panorama of real life. The

unconventionality and realism of his poetic art will be made manifest

by merely reading through the titles of his numerous works.

Browning did not write to amuse and entertain, but to stimulate

thought and to "sting" the conscience to activity. The meaning of his

verse is, therefore, the matter of paramount importance, far

overshadowing the form of expression. In the haste and carelessness

with which he wrote many of his difficult abstruse poems, he laid

himself open to the charge of obscurity.

His style has a strikingly individual stamp, which is marked far more

by strength than by beauty. The bare and rugged style of his verse is

often made profoundly impressive by its strenuous earnestness, its

burning intensity, which seems to necessitate the broken lines and

halting, interrupted rhythm. The following utterance of Caponsacchi,

as he stands before his judges, will show the intensity and ruggedness

of Browning's blank verse:--

"Sirs, how should I lie quiet in my grave

Unless you suffer me wring, drop by drop,

My brain dry, make a riddance of the drench

Of minutes with a memory in each?"

His lines are often harsh and dissonant. Even in the noble poem _Rabbi

Ben Ezra_, this jolting line appears:--

"Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?"

and in _Sordello_, Browning writes:--

"The Troubadour who sung

Hundreds of songs, forgot, its trick his tongue,

Its craft his brain."

No careful artist tolerates such ugly, rasping inversions.

In spite of these inharmonious tendencies in Browning, his poetry at

times shows a lyric lightness, such as is heard in these lines:--

"Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England--now!"[15]

His verse often swells and falls with a wavelike rhythm as in _Saul_

or in these lines in _Abt Vogler_:--

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;

On the earth the broken arc; in the heaven, a perfect round."

While, therefore, Browning's poetry is sometimes harsh, faulty, and

obscure, at times his melodies can be rhythmically simple and

beautiful. He is one of the subtlest analysts of the human mind, the

most original and impassioned poet of his age, and one of the most

hopeful, inspiring, and uplifting teachers of modern times.

ALFRED TENNYSON, 1809-1892

[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON. _From a photograph by Mayall._]

Life.--Alfred Tennyson, one of the twelve children of the rector of

Somersby, Lincolnshire, was born in that hamlet in 1809, a year

memorable, both in England and America for the birth of such men as

Charles Darwin, William E. Gladstone, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar

Allan Poe, and Abraham Lincoln.

Visitors to the Somersby rectory, in which Tennyson was born, note

that it fits the description of the home in his fine lyric, _The

Palace of Art_:--

"...an English home,--gray twilight pour'd

On dewy pastures, dewy trees,

Softer than sleep--all things in order stored,

A haunt of ancient peace."

His mother, one of the beauties of Lincolnshire, had twenty-five

offers of marriage. Of her Tennyson said in _The Princess:_--

"Happy he

With such a mother! faith in womankind

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high

Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall,

He shall not blind his soul with clay."

It is probable that Tennyson holds the record among English poets of

his class for the quantity of youthful verse produced. At the age of

eight, he was writing blank verse in praise of flowers; at twelve, he

began an epic which extended to six thousand lines.

In 1828 he entered Cambridge University; but in 1831 his father's

sickness and death made it impossible for him to return to take his

degree. Before leaving Cambridge, Tennyson had found a firm friend in

a young college mate of great promise, Arthur Henry Hallam, who became

engaged to the poet's sister, Emily Tennyson. Hallam's sudden death in

1832 was a profound shock to Tennyson and had far-reaching effects on

his poetic development. For a long time he lived in comparative

retirement, endeavoring to perfect himself in the poetic art.

His golden year was 1850, the year of the publication of _In

Memoriam_, of his selection as poet laureate, to succeed Wordsworth,

and of his marriage to Emily Sellwood. He had been in love with her

for fourteen years, but insufficient income had hitherto prevented

marriage.

[Illustration: FARRINGFORD.]

In 1855 Oxford honored him by bestowing on him the degree of D.C.L.

The students gave him an ovation and they properly honored his

greatest poem, _In Memoriam_ by mentioning it first in their loud

calls; but they also paid their respects to his _May Queen_, asking in

chorus: "Did they wake and call you early, call you early, Alfred

dear?"

The rest of his life was outwardly uneventful. He became the most

popular poet of his age. Schools and colleges had pupils translate his

poems into Latin and Greek verse. Of _Enoch Arden_ (1864), at that

time his most popular narrative poem, sixty thousand copies were sold

almost as as soon as it was printed. He made sufficient money to be

able to maintain two beautiful residences, a winter home at

Farringford on the Isle of Wight, and a summer residence at Aldworth

in Sussex. In 1884 he was raised to the peerage, with the title of

Baron of Aldworth and Farringford. He died in 1892, at the age of

eighty-three, and was buried beside Robert Browning in Westminster

Abbey.

Early Verse.--Tennyson published a small volume of poems in 1830,

the year before he left college, and another volume in 1832. Although

these contained some good poems, he was too often content to toy with

verse that had exquisite melody and but little meaning. The "Airy,

fairy Lilian" and "Sweet, pale Margaret" type of verse had charmed him

overmuch. The volumes of 1830 and 1832 were severely criticized.

_Blackwood's Magazine_ called same of the lyrics "drivel," and Carlyle

characterized the aesthetic verse as "lollipops." This adverse

criticism and the shock from Hallam's death caused him to remain

silent for nearly ten years. His son and biographer says that his

father during this period "profited by friendly and unfriendly

criticism, and in silence, obscurity, and solitude, perfected his

art."

In his thirty-third year (1842), Tennyson broke his long silence by

publishing two volumes of verse, containing such favorites as _The

Poet, The Lady of Shalott, The Palace of Art, The Lotos Eaters, A

Dream of Fair Women, Morte d'Arthur, Oenone, The Miller's Daughter,

The Gardener's Daughter, Dora, Ulysses, Locksley Hall, The Two

Voices_, and _Sir Galahad_.

Unsparing revision of numbers of these poems that had been published

before, entitles them to be classed as new work. Some critics think

that Tennyson never surpassed these 1842 volumes. His verse shows the

influence of Keats, of whom Tennyson said: "There is something of the

innermost soul of poetry in almost everything that he wrote."

One of Tennyson's most distinctive qualities, his art in painting

beautiful word-pictures, is seen at its best in stanzas from _The

Palace of Art_. His mastery over melody and the technique of verse is

evident in such lyrics as _Sir Galahad,_ and _The Lotos Eaters_. When

the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, read from _Ulysses_ the passage

beginning:--

"I am a part of all that I have met,"

he gave Tennyson a much-needed annual pension of £200.

These volumes show that he was coming into touch with the thought of

the age. _Locksley Hall_ communicates the thrill which he felt from

the new possibilities of science:--

"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

* * * * *

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time."

Hallam's death had also developed in him the human note, resonant in

the lyric, _Break, break, break:_--

"But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still."

The Princess, In Memoriam, and Maud.--Tennyson had produced only

short poems in his 1842 volumes, but his next three efforts, _The

Princess_ (1847), _In Memoriam_ (1850), and _Maud_ (1855), are of

considerable length.

_The Princess: A Medley_, as Tennyson rightly called it, contains 3223

lines of blank verse. This poem, which is really a discussion of the

woman question, relates in a half humorous way the story of a princess

who broke off her engagement to a prince, founded a college for women,

and determined to elevate her life to making them equal to men. The

poem abounds in beautiful imagery and exquisite melody; but the

solution of the question by the marriage of the princess has not

completely satisfied modern thought. The finest parts of the poem are

its artistic songs.

_In Memoriam_, an elegy in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, was begun at

Somersby in 1833, the year of Hallam's death, and added to at

intervals for nearly sixteen years. When Tennyson first began the

short lyrics to express his grief, he did not intend to publish them;

but in 1850 he gave them to the world as one long poem of 725

four-line stanzas.

_In Memoriam_ was directly responsible for Tennyson's appointment as

poet-laureate. Queen Victoria declared that she received more comfort

from it than from any other book except the _Bible_. The first stanza

of the poem (quoted on page 9) has proved as much of a moral stimulus

as any single utterance of Carlyle or of Browning.

This work is one of the three great elegies of a literature that

stands first in elegiac poetry. Milton's _Lycidas_ has more of a

massive commanding power, and Shelley's _Adonais_ rises at times to

poetic heights that Tennyson did not reach; but neither _Lycidas_ nor

_Adonais_ equals _In Memoriam_ in tracing every shadow of bereavement,

from the first feeling of despair until the mourner can realize that--

"...the song of woe

Is after all an earthly song,"

and can express his unassailable faith in--

"One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off divine event

To which the whole creation moves."

With this hopeful assurance closes Tennyson's most noble and beautiful

poem.

_Maud_, a lyrical melodrama, paints the changing emotions of a lover

who passes from morbid gloom to ecstasy. Then, in a moment of anger,

he murders Maud's brother. Despair, insanity, and recovery follow, but

he sees Maud's face no more. While the poem as a whole is not a

masterpiece, it contains some of Tennyson's finest lyrics. The eleven

stanzas of the lover's song to Maud, the--

"Queen Rose of the rosebud garden of girls,"

are such an exquisite blending of woodbine spice and musk of rose, of

star and daffodil sky, of music of flute and song of bird, of the soul

of the rose with the passion of the lover, of meadows and

violets,--that we easily understand why Tennyson loved to read these

lines.

The Idylls of the King.--In 1859 Tennyson published _Lancelot and

Elaine_, one of a series of twelve _Idylls_, the last of which

appeared in 1855. Together these form an epic on the subject of King

Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Tennyson relied mainly on

Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ for the characters and the stories.

These _Idylls_ show the struggle to maintain noble ideals. Arthur

relates how he collected--

"In that fair order of my Table Round,

A glorious company, the flower of men,

To serve as model for the mighty world,

And be the fair beginning of a time."

He made his knights swear to uphold the ideals of his court--

"To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,

To honor his own word as if his God's,

To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,

To love one maiden only, cleave to her,

And warship her by years of noble deeds

Until they won her."

The twelve _Idylls_ have as a background those different seasons of

the year that accord with the special mood of the story. In _Gareth

and Lynette_, the most interesting of the _Idylls_, the young hero

leaves his home in spring, when the earth is joyous with birds and

flowers. In the last and most nobly poetic of the series, _The Passing

of Arthur_, the time is winter, when the knights seem to be clothed

with their own frosty breath.

Sin creeps into King Arthur's realm and disrupts the order of the

"Table Round." He receives his mortal wound, and passes to rule in a

kindlier realm that welcomed him as "a king returning from the wars."

Although the _Idylls of the King_ are uneven in quality and sometimes

marred by overprofusion of ornament and by deficiency of dramatic

skill, their limpid style, many fine passages of poetry, appealing

stories, and high ideals have exerted a wider influence than any other

of Tennyson's poems.

Later Poetry.--Tennyson continued to write poetry until almost the

time of his death; but with the exception of his short swan song,

_Crossing the Bar_, he did not surpass his earlier efforts. His

_Locksley Hall Sixty Year After_ (1886) voices the disappointments of

the Victorian age and presents vigorous social philosophy. Some of his

later verse, like _The Northern Farmer_ and _The Children's Hospital_,

are in closer touch with life than many of his earlier poems.

He wrote also several historical dramas, the best of which is _Becket_

(1884); but his genius was essentially lyrical, not dramatic.

_Crossing the Bar_, written in his eighty-first year, is not only the

finest product of his later years, but also one of the very best of

Victorian lyrics.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF MS. OF CROSSING THE BAR.]

General Characteristics.--Tennyson is a poetic interpreter of the

thought of the Victorian age. Huxley called him "the first poet since

Lucretius who understood the drift of science." In these four lines

from _The Princess_, Tennyson gives the evolutionary history of the

world, from nebula to man:--

"This world was once a fluid haze of light.

Till toward the center set the starry tides,

And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast

The planets: then the monster, then the man."

Tennyson's poetry of nature is based on almost scientific observation

of natural phenomena. Unlike Wordsworth, Tennyson does not regard

nature as a manifestation of the divine spirit of love. He sees her

more from the new scientific point of view, as "red in tooth and claw

with rapine." The hero of _Maud_ says:--

"For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;

The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the

shrike.

And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and

prey."

The constant warfare implied in the evolutionary theory of the

survival of the fittest did not keep Tennyson from also presenting

nature in her gentler aspects. In _Maud_, the lover sings--

"...whenever a March-wind sighs,

He sets the jewel-print of your feet

In violets blue as your eyes,"

and he tells how "the soul of the rose" passed into his blood, and how

the sympathetic passion-flower dropped "a splendid tear." As beautiful

as is much of Tennyson's nature poetry, he has not Wordsworth's power

to invest it with "the light of setting suns," or to cause it to

awaken "thoughts that do lie too deep for tears."

The conflict between science and religion, the doubts and the sense of

world-pain are mirrored in Tennyson's verse. _The Two Voices_

begins:--

"A still small voice spoke unto me,

Thou art so full of misery

Were it not better not to be?"

His poetry is, however, a great tonic to religious faith. The closing

lines of _In Memoriam_ and _Crossing the Bar_ show how triumphantly he

met all the doubts and the skepticism of the age.

Like Milton, Tennyson received much of his inspiration from books,

especially from the classical writers; but this characteristic was

more than counterbalanced by his acute observation and responsiveness

to the thought of the age. _Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_ shows

that he was keenly alive to the social movements of the time.

Tennyson said that the scenes in his poems were so vividly conceived

that he could have drawn them if he had been an artist. A twentieth

century critic[16] says that Tennyson is almost the inventor of such

pictorial lyrics as _A Dream of Fair Women_ and _The Palace of Art_.

The artistic finish of Tennyson's verse is one of its great charms. He

said to a friend: "It matters little what we say; it is how we say

it--though the fools don't knew it." His poetry has, however, often

been criticized for lack of depth. The variety in his subject matter,

mode of expression, and rhythm renders his verse far more enjoyable

than that of the formal age of Pope.

Tennyson's extraordinary popularity in his own time was largely due to

the fact that he voiced so clearly and attractively the thought of the

age. As another epoch ushers in different interests, they will

naturally be uppermost in the mind of the new generation. We no longer

feel the intense interest of the Victorians in the supposed conflict

between science and religion. Their theory of evolution has been

modified and has lost the force of novelty. Theories of government and

social ideals have also undergone a gradual change. For these reasons

much of Tennyson's verse has ceased to have its former wide appeal.

Tennyson has, however, left sufficient work of abiding value, both for

its exquisite form and for its thought, to entitle him to be ranked as

a great poet. We cannot imagine a time when _Crossing the Bar_, _The

Passing of Arthur_, and the central thought of _In Memoriam_--

"'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all,"

will no longer interest readers. To Tennyson belong--

"Jewels five words long

That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time

Sparkle forever."

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, 1837-1909

[Illustration: ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, 1837-1909. _From the

painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti_.]

Life.--Swinburne was born in London in 1837. His father was an

admiral in the English navy, and his mother, the daughter of an earl.

The boy passed his summers in Northumberland and his winters in the

Isle of Wight. He thus acquired that fondness for the sea, so

noticeable in his poetry. His early experiences are traceable in lines

like these:--

"Our bosom-belted billowy-blossoming hills,

Whose hearts break out in laughter like the sea."

He went to Oxford for three years, but left without taking his degree.

The story is current that he knew more Greek than his teachers but

that he failed in an examination on the _Scriptures_. He sought to

complete his education by wide reading and by travel, especially in

France and Italy.

When he was twenty-five, he went to live for a short time at 16 Cheyne

Walk, Chelsea, in the western part of London, in the same house with

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and George Meredith. Swinburne admired

Rossetti's poetry and was much impressed with the Pre-Raphaelite

virtues of simplicity and directness.

Swinburne never married. His deafness caused him to pass much of his

long life in comparative retirement. His last thirty years were spent

with his friend, the critic and poet, Theodore Watts-Dunton, at Putney

on the Thames, a few miles southwest of London. Swinburne died in 1909

and was buried at Bonchurch in the Isle of Wight.

Works.--In 1864 England was enchanted with the melody of the

choruses in his _Atalanta in Calydon_, a dramatic poem in the old

Greek form. Lines like the following from the chorus, _The Youth of

the Year_, show the quality for which his verse is most famous:--

"When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain."

The first series of his _Poems and Ballads_ (1866) contains _The

Garden of Proserpine_, one of his best known poems. Proserpine

"forgets the earth her mother" and goes to her "bloomless" garden:--

"And spring and seed and swallow

Take wing for her and follow

Where summer song rings hollow

And flowers are put to scorn."

Many volumes came in rapid succession from his pen. In 1904 his poems

were collected in six octavo volumes containing 2357 pages. This

collection includes the long narrative poems, _Tristram of Lyonesse_

and _The Tale of Balen_, a faithful retelling of famous medieval

stories. He, however, had more ability as a writer of lyrics than of

narrative verse.

His poetic dramas fill five additional volumes. _Chastelard_ (1865),

one of the three dramas relating to Mary Queen of Scots, is the best

of his plays. He had, however, neither the power to draw character nor

the repression of speech necessary for a great dramatist. The best

parts of his plays are really lyrical verse.

Many critics think that Swinburne's reputation would be as great as it

now is, if he had ceased to write verse in 1866, at the age of

twenty-nine, after producing _Atalanta in Calydon_ and the first

series of his _Poems and Ballads_. Although his interests widened and

his poetic range increased, much of his work during his last forty

years is a repetition of earlier successes. His _Songs before

Sunrise_, however (1871), and the next two volumes of _Poems and

Ballads_ (1878 and 1889) contain some poems that rank among his best.

Later in life he wrote a large amount of prose criticism, much of

which deals with the Elizabethan dramatists. His _A Study of

Shakespeare_ (1880) and his shorter _Shakespeare_ (1905) are

especially suggestive. In spite of the fact that the reader must make

constant allowance for his habit of using superlatives, he was an able

critic.

General Characteristics.--Swinburne's poetry suffers from his

tendency to drown his ideas in a sea of words.

Sometimes we gain no more definite ideas from reading many lines of

his verse than from hearing music without words. Much of his poetry

was suggested by wide reading, not by close personal contact with

life. His verse sometimes offends from disregarding moral proprieties

and from so expressing his atheism as to wound the feelings of

religious people. His idea of a Supreme Power was colored by the old

Grecian belief in Fate. In exact opposition to Wordsworth, Swinburne's

youthful poems show that he regarded Nature as the incarnation of a

Power malevolent to man. He lacked the optimism of Browning and the

faith of Tennyson. The mantle of Byron and Shelley fell on Swinburne

as the poet of revolt against what seemed to be religious or political

tyranny.

After Tennyson's death, in 1892, Swinburne was the greatest living

English poet; but, even if his verse had not offended Queen Victoria

for the foregoing reasons, she would not have appointed him

poet-laureate after the misery of the Russians had moved him in 1890

to write, referring to the Czar:--

"Night hath naught but one red star--Tyrannicide.

"God or man, be swift; hope sickens with delay:

Smite and send him howling down his father's way."

Swinburne's crowning glory is his unquestioned mastery, unsurpassed by

any poet since Milton, of the technique of varied melodious verse.

This quality is evident, no matter whether he is describing the

laughter of a child:--

"Sweeter far than all things heard,

Hand of harper, tone of bird,

Sound of woods at sundawn stirr'd,

Welling water's winsome ward,

Wind in warm wan weather,"

or expressing his fierce hatred for any condition or place where--

"...a curse was or a chain

A throne for torment or a crown for bane

Rose, moulded out of poor men's molten pain,"

or singing the song of a lover--

"If love were what the rose is,

And I were like the leaf,

Our lives would grow together

In sad or singing weather,

Blown fields or flowerful closes,

Green pleasure or grey grief;

If love were what the rose is,

And I were like the leaf;"

or voicing his early creed--

"That no life lives forever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea,"

or chanting in far nobler strains the Anglo-Saxon belief in the

molding power of an infinite presence--

"I am in thee to save thee,

As my soul in thee saith,

Give thou as I gave thee,

Thy life-blood and breath,

Green leaves of thy labor, white flowers of thy thought, and red

fruit of thy death."

RUDYARD KIPLING, 1865-

[Illustration: RUDYARD KIPLING. _From the painting by John

Collier_.]

Life.--Rudyard Kipling, the youngest of the great Victorians, was

born in Bombay, India, in 1865. His parents were people of culture and

artistic training, the father, John Lockwood Kipling, being a

recognized authority on Indian art. Like most English children born in

India, Kipling, when very small, was sent to England to escape the

fatal Indian heat. Afterwards in the story _Baa, Baa, Black Sheep_,

Kipling told the tragic experience of two Anglo-Indian children when

separated from their parents. If it is true that this story is largely

autobiographical, the separation must have been a trying ordeal in

Kipling's childhood. Later he spent several years at Westward Ho,

Devonshire, in a school conducted mainly for the sons of Indian

officials. _Stalky and Co._, a broadly humorous book of schoolboy

life, gives the Kipling of this period, in the character of the

"egregious Beetle."

When only seventeen, he returned to India and immediately began

journalistic work. For seven years, first at Lahore and later at

Allahabad, he was busy with the usual hackwork of a small newspaper.

During these impressionable years, from seventeen to twenty-four, he

gained his intimate knowledge of the strangely-colored, many-sided

Indian life. His first stories and poems, often written in hot haste,

to fill the urgent need of more copy, appeared as waifs and strays in

the papers for which he wrote. A collection of verse, _Departmental

Ditties_, published at Lahore in 1886, was well received; and it was

quickly followed by several volumes of short stories. His ability thus

gained early recognition in India.

At the age of twenty-four, he left India for London. Here his books

found a publisher almost at once, and he was hailed as a new literary

genius. His work became so popular that he was able to devote his

whole time to writing. It is doubtful whether any writer since Dickens

has received such quick and enthusiastic recognition from all classes

of the English-speaking race. Even the street-car conductors were

heard quoting him.

In 1892 he married Miss Caroline Balestier, an American, and

afterwards lived for four years at Brattleboro, Vermont. Later he

settled in Sussex, England, whence he has made long journeys to South

Africa, Canada, and Egypt, amassing more knowledge of the English

"around the Seven Seas."

Probably the most remarkable feature of Kipling's career is the early

age at which his genius developed. Before he left India he had

published one book of verse and seven prose collections. By the time

he was thirty, he had written _The Jungle Books_, most of his best

short stories, and some of his finest verse.

Prose.--As a master of the modern short story, Kipling stands

unsurpassed. His journalistic work helped him to acquire a direct,

concentrated style of narrative, to find interest in an astonishing

variety of subjects, and to seize on the right details for vivid

presentation. He was fortunate in discovering in India a new literary

field, in which his genius appears at its best. Some of his early

tales of Indian life are marred by crudeness and by lack of feeling;

but these faults decreased as he matured.

Kipling's stories depend for their interest on incident, not on

analysis. He embodies romantic adventure and action in masterpieces as

different as the terrible tragedy of _The Man Who would be King_

(1888), the tender love story of _Without Benefit of Clergy_ (1890),

and the mystic dream-land of _The Brushwood Boy_ (1895). He specially

enjoyed portraying the English soldier. Perhaps his best-known

characters are the privates Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd, whom we

meet in such tales of mingled comedy and tragedy as _With the Main

Guard_ (1888), _On Greenhow Hill_ (1891), _The Incarnation of Krishna

Mulvaney_ (1891), _The Courting of Dinah Shadd_ (1981).

When Kipling traveled to new lands, he wrote stories of America,

Africa, and the deep sea; but his later tales show an unfortunate

increase in the use of technical terms and a lessening of his former

dash and spontaneity. There are, however, readers who prefer such a

delicate, subtle, story as _They_ (1905), to his earlier masterpieces

of strenuous action.

In _The Jungle Book_ (1894) and _The Second Jungle Book_ (1895),

Kipling has accomplished the greatest of feats,--an original creation.

From the moment the little brown baby, Mowgli, crawls into Mother

Wolf's cave away from Shere Khan, the tiger, until the time for him to

graduate from the jungle, we follow him under the spell of a

fascination different from any that we have known before. The animals

of the jungle have real personalities, from the chattering Bandar-log

to the lumbering kindly Baloo. With all their intense individuality,

they remain animals, each one true to his kind, hating or loving men,

thinking mainly through their instincts, and surpassing human

schoolmasters in teaching Mowgli the great laws of the jungle,--that

obedience is "the head and the hoof of the Law," that nothing was ever

yet lost by silence, that, in the jungle, life and food depend on

keeping one's temper, that no one shall kill for the pleasure of

killing.

[Illustration: MOWGLI AND HIS BROTHERS. _By permission of Century

Company._]

Above all stands the character of Mowgli, the wolf-adopted man-cub,

human and yet brother to the animals. With a touch of genius, Kipling

revealed the kinship between Mowgli and the denizens of the jungle.

Kipling's eyes could see both the harsh realism of animal existence

and the genuine idealism of Mother Wolf and the Pack and the

Jungle-law.

_Just So Stories_ (1902), written primarily for children, but

entertaining to all, is a collection of romantic stories, mostly of

animals, illustrated by Kipling himself. One of the best of these

tales is _The Cat that Walked by Himself_, which has distinct ethical

value in showing how the cat through service won his place by the

fireside.

Though Kipling has written four novels, only two, _The Light that

Failed_ (1891) and _Kim_ (1901), can compare with his best short

stories. _The Light that Failed_, the tragedy of an artist who becomes

blind, proves that Kipling was able to handle a long plot sufficiently

well to sustain interest. _Kim_ is an attempt to present as a more

completed whole that India of which the stories give only glimpses. On

the slenderest thread of plot is strung a bewildering array of scenes,

characters, and incidents. His intimate knowledge of India and his

photographic power of description are here used with remarkable

picturesque effect.

[Illustration: THE CAT THAT WALKED. _Copyright, 1902, by Rudyard

Kipling._]

Verse.--Kipling's poetry has many of the same qualities as his

prose,--originality, force, love of action. In _Barrack Room Ballads_

(1892), the soldier is again celebrated in vigorous songs with

swinging choruses. _Mandalay, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, Danny Deever_, show what

spirited verse can be fashioned from a common ballad meter and a bold

use of dialect.

"So 'ere's _to_ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;

You're a pore benighted 'eathen, but a first class fightin' man;

An' 'ere's _to_ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air--

You big black boundin' beggar--for you broke a British square!"

Much of his verse is political. His opinion of questions at issue is

sometimes given with much heat, but always with sincerity and true

patriotism. The best known of his patriotic songs, and perhaps his

noblest poetic effort, _The Recessional_ (1897), was inspired by the

fiftieth anniversary of Victoria's reign. _The Truce of the Bear_

(1898) is a warning against Russia. _The Native-Born_ is a toast to

the colonies in every clime.

Kipling's verse breaks with many of the accepted standards of English

verse. He does not aim at such pure beauty of form as we find in

Tennyson. He can handle skillfully many kinds of meter, as is shown in

_The Song of the English_, _The Ballad of East and West_, _The Song of

the Banjo_, and many sea lyrics. Yet he uses mostly the common

measures, attaining with these a free swing, a fitting of sound to

sense, that are irresistible to the many--

"Common tunes that make you choke and blow your nose,

Vulgar tunes that bring the laugh that brings the groan--

I can rip your very heart-strings out with those."[17]

Some of his later work shows increasing seriousness of tone. _The

Recessional_ and the _Hymn before Action_ are elevated in thought and

expression. The bigness of _L'Envoi_ shows poetic power capable of

higher flights:--

"And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall

blame;

And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;

But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,

Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They

Are!"[18]

General Characteristics.--Kipling has carried to their highest

development the principles of the Bret Harte School of short story

writers. His style possesses those qualities necessary for telling a

short tale,--directness, force, suggestiveness. Rarely has any writer

so mastered the technique, the craftsmanship of this particular

literary form. He has the gift of force and dramatic power, rather

than of beauty and delicacy.

He excels in suggestive vivid description, and he draws wonderful

pictures of all out-of-doors, especially of the sea; but nature

remains merely the background for the human figures. Much of his

vividness lies in the use of specific words. If he should employ the

phraseology of his jungle laws to frame the first commandment for

writers, it would be: "_Seven times never_ be vague." Few authors have

at the very beginning of their career more implicitly heeded such a

commandment, obedience to which is evident in the following

description from _The Courting of Dinah Shadd_:--

"Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not

all pricked in on one plane, but preserving an orderly perspective,

draw the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the

barred doors of heaven itself. The earth was a grey shadow more

unreal than the sky. We could hear her breathing lightly in the

pauses between the howling of the jackals, the movement of the wind

in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter of musketry-fire leagues

away to the left. A native woman from some unseen hut began to sing,

the mail train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and a roosting

crow cawed drowsily."

Abundant and vivid use of metaphors serves to render his concreteness

more varied and impressive. We find these in such expressions as "the

velvet darkness," "the kiss of the rain," "the tree-road." His

celestial artists splash at a ten-league canvas "with brushes of

comet's hair." Five words from Mulvaney explain why he does not wish

to leave his tent: "'Tis rainin' intrenchin' tools outside."

Kipling's spirit is essentially masculine. He prefers to write of men,

work, and battle, rather than of women and love. Since his interest is

mainly in action, he shows small ability in character drawing. His

people are clear-cut and alive, but we do not see them grow and

develop as do George Eliot's characters.

Above all, he stands as the interpreter of the ideals and the

interests of the Anglo-Saxons of his time. Those tendencies of the

age, which seem to others so dangerously materialistic, are the very

causes of his zest in life. In an age of machinery, he writes of the

romance of steam, the soul of an engine, the flight of an airship.

His is a work-a-day world; but in work well done, in obedience to the

established law, and in courage, he sees the proving of manhood, the

test of the true gentleman--

"Who had done his work and held his peace and had no fear to die."

Underlying all his thought is a deep belief in the "God of our

fathers," a God just to punish or reward, whom the English have

reverenced through all their history. Linked with this faith is an

intense feeling of patriotism toward that larger England of his

imperialistic vision.

These qualities justly brought Kipling the 1907 Nobel prize for

idealism in literature. He is truly the idealist of a practical age,

teaching the romance, the joy, the vision in the common facts and

virtues of present-day life.

SUMMARY

The history and literature of the Victorian age show the influence of

science. Darwin's conception of evolution affected all fields of

thought. The tendency toward analysis and dissection is a result of

scientific influence.

In describing the prose of the Victorian age, we have considered the

work of thirteen writers; namely, Macaulay, the brilliant essayist and

historian of the material advancement of England; Newman, essayist and

theologian, who is noted for clear style, acute thought, and

argumentative power; Carlyle, who awoke in his generation a desire for

greater achievement, and who championed the spiritual interpretation

of life in philosophy and history; Ruskin, the apostle of the

beautiful and of more ideal relations in social life; the essayist

Pater, whose prose is tinged with poetic color and mystic thought;

Arnold, the great analytical critic; Dickens, educational and social

reformer, whose novels deal chiefly with the lower classes; Thackeray,

whose fiction is not surpassed in keen, satiric analysis of the upper

classes of society; George Eliot, whose realistic stories of

middle-class life show the influence of science in her conception of

character as an orderly ethical growth; Stevenson, an artist in style,

writer of romances, essays, and poems for children; Meredith, subtle

novelist, distinguished for his comic spirit and portrayal of male

egotism; Hardy, realistic novelist of the lowly life of Wessex;

Kipling, whose _Jungle Books_ are an original creation, and whose

short stories surpass those of all other contemporaries.

In poetry, the age is best represented by five men; namely, Arnold,

who voices the feeling of doubt and unrest; Browning, who, by his

optimistic philosophy, leads to impregnable heights of faith, who

analyzes emotions and notes the development of souls as they struggle

against opposition from within and without, until they reach moments

of supreme victory or defeat; Tennyson, whose careful art mirrors in

beautiful verse much of the thought of the age, the influence of

science, the unrest, the desire to know the problems of the future, as

well as to steal occasional glances at beauty for its own sake;

Swinburne, the greatest artist since Milton in the technique of verse;

and Kipling, the poet of imperialistic England, whose ballads sing of

her soldiers and sailors, and whose lyrics proclaim the Anglo-Saxon

faith and joy in working.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

Walker's _Essentials in English History_, Cheney's _A Short History of

England_, McCarthy's _History of Our Own Times_, Cheney's _Industrial

and Social History of England_, Traill's _Social England_, VI.

LITERARY

_The Cambridge History of English Literature_.

Walker's _The Literature of the Victorian Era_.

Magnus's _English Literature in the Nineteenth Century_.

Saintsbury's _A History of English Literature in the Nineteenth

Century_.

Kennedy's _English Literature_, 1880-1905.

Walker's _Greater Victorian Poets_.

Brownell's _Victorian Prose Masters_.

Payne's _The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_.

Brooke's _Four Victorian Poets_ (Rossetti, Arnold, Morris).

Perry's _A Study of Prose Fiction_.

Benson's _Rossetti_. (E.M.L.)

Noyes's _William Morris_. (E.M.L.)

Trevelyan's _Life and Letters of Macaulay_. Morrison's _Macaulay_.

(E.M.L.)

Minto's _English Prose Literature_ (Macaulay and Carlyle).

Barry's _Newman_.

Ward's _The Life of John Henry, Cardinal Newman_, 2 vols.

Newman's _Letters and Correspondence, with a Brief Autobiography_.

Carlyle's _Reminiscences_.

Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_, 2 vols. Nichol's _Carlyle_. (E.M.L.)

Garnett's _Thomas Carlyle_. (G.W.)

Froude's _Jane Welsh Carlyle_, 2 vols.

T. and A. Carlyle's _New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle_.

Cook's _The Life of John Ruskin_, 2 vols.

Ruskin's _Praeterita, Scenes and Thoughts of My Past Life_.

Benson's _Ruskin: A Study in Personality_.

Earland's _Ruskin and his Circle_.

Harrison's _John Ruskin_. (E.M.L.)

Birrell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_.

Foster's _Life of Dickens_ (abridged and revised by Gissing).

Kitton's _Dickens, his Life, Writings, and Personality_.

Gissing's _Charles Dickens: A Critical Study_.

Chesterton's _Charles Dickens_. Hughes's _Dickens as an Educator_.

Philip's _A Dickens Dictionary_.

Melville's _William Makepeace Thackeray_, 2 vols.

Trollope's _Thackeray_. (E.M.L.)

Merivale and Marzials's _Life of Thackeray_. (G.W.)

Mudge and Sears's _A Thackeray Dictionary_.

Cross's _George Eliot's Life as Related in her Letters and Journals_.

Browning's _Life of George Eliot_. (G.W.) Stephens's _George Eliot_.

(E.M.L.)

Cook's _George Eliot: A Critical Study of her Life, Writings, and

Philosophy_.

Olcott's _George Eliot: Scenes and People in Her Novels_.

Hamilton's _Robert Louis Stevenson_.

Balfour's _The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, 2 vols.

_The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson_, edited by Sidney Colvin.

Raleigh's _Robert Louis Stevenson_. Hamerton's _Stevensoniana_.

Japp's _Robert Louis Stevenson_.

Hamerton's _George Meredith: His Life and Art in Anecdote and

Criticism_.

_Letters of George Meredith_, 2 vols.

Sturge Henderson's _George Meredith_.

Bailey's _The Novels of George Meredith: A Study_.

Trevelyan's _The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith_.

Beach's _The Comic Spirit in George Meredith_.

Lionel Johnson's _The Art of Thomas Hardy_.

Macdonell's _Thomas Hardy_.

Abercrombie's _Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study_.

Saxelby's _Thomas Hardy Dictionary_.

Phelps's _Essays on Modern Novelists_ (Hardy, Kipling, Stevenson).

Benson's _Walter Pater_. (E.M.L.)

Paul's _Matthew Arnold_. (E.M.L.)

Saintsbury's _Matthew Arnold_.

_Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett_.

Griffin and Minchin's _The Life of Robert Browning_.

Chesterton's _Robert Browning_. (E.M.L.)

Sharp's _Life of Browning_. (G.W.)

Symons's _An Introduction to the Study of Browning_.

Foster's _The Message of Robert Browning_.

Orr's _A Handbook to the works of Robert Browning_.

_Alfred, Lord Tennyson, A Memoir_, by his son.

Benson's _Alfred Tennyson_ (the best brief work).

Lyall's _Tennyson_. (E.M.L.)

Brooke's _Tennyson: His Art and Relation to Modern Life_.

Van Dyke's _The Poetry of Tennyson_.

Gordon's _The Social Ideals of Alfred Tennyson_.

Lackyer's _Tennyson as a Student and Poet of Nature_.

Luce's _Handbook to the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson_.

Woodberry's _Swinburne_.

Thomas's _Algernon Charles Swinburne: A Critical Study_.

Knowles's _Kipling Primer_.

Le Galliene's _Rudyard Kipling, A Criticism_.

Clemens's _A Ken of Kipling_.

Young's _Dictionary of the Characters and Scenes in the Stories and

Poems of Rudyard Kipling_.

Canby's _The Short Story in English_ (Kipling).

Cooper's _Some English Story Tellers_ (Kipling).

Leeb-Lundberg's _Word Formation in Kipling_ (excellent).

SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

The Pre-Raphaelites.--Read Rossetti's _The Blessed Damozel_, _Sister

Helen_, _The King's Tragedy_, _Love's Nocturne_, and _Mary's

Girlhood_. All of these are given in Page's _British Poets of the

Nineteenth Century_. Selections may be found in Bronson,[19] IV.,

_Century_, _Oxford Book of Victorian verse_, and Manly, I. Selections

from Christina Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite verse are given in all except

Page.

From William Morris, read _Two Red Roses Across the Moon_, _The_

_Defence of Guenevere_ (Page's _British Poets_), and the selections

from _The Earthly Paradise_ in either Page, _Century_, Bronson, IV.,

or Manly, I.

What part did Ruskin play in this new movement? Point out the

simplest, the most affecting, and the most pleasing stanza in _The

Blessed Damozel_. What Pre-Raphaelite qualities in this poem have made

it such a favorite? What are the chief characteristics of Rossetti's

other verse? Note specially Miss Rossetti's religious verse.

What Pre-Raphaelite qualities do Morris's _Two Red Roses across the

Moon_ (1858) and _The Defence of Guenevere_ (1858) show? Compare this

early verse with the selections from _The Earthly Paradise_

(1868-1870).

Macaulay.--Read either the _Essay on Milton_ or the _Essay on

Addison_ (_Eclectic English Classics_ or _Gateway Series_) or the

selections in Craik, V., Manly, II., _Century_, or Dickinson and Roe's

_Nineteenth Century Prose_.

Read _History of England_, Chap. IX., or the selections in Craik V.,

or _Century_, or Manly, II.

What are some of the qualities that cause Macaulay's writings to

outstrip in popularity other works of a similar nature? What qualities

in his style may be commended to young writers? What are his special

defects? Contrast his narrative style in Chap. IX. of the _History_

with Carlyle's in _The French Revolution_, Vol. I., Book V., Chap. VI.

Newman.--The best volume of selections is edited by Lewis E. Gates

(228 pages, 75 cents). Dickinson and Roe's _Nineteenth Century English

Prose_ contains Newman's essay on _Literature_. Selections are given

in Craik V., _Century_, and Manly, II.

Compare his style with Macaulay's and note the resemblance and the

difference. Why did Newman call himself a rhetorician? What qualities

does he add to those of a rhetorician? Select passages that show his

special clearness, concreteness, also his rhetorical and argumentative

power.

Carlyle.--Read the _Essay on Robert Burns_ (_Eclectic English

Classics_ or _Gateway Series_); _Sartor Resartus_, Book III., Chap.

VI. (_Everyman's Library_); _The French Revolution_, Vol. I., Book V.,

Chap. VI. (_Everyman's Library_). Selections may be found in Craik,

V., _Century_, Manly, II., and Evans's Carlyle (_Masters of

Literature_).

What marked difference in manner of treatment is shown in Macaulay's

_Milton_ or _Addison_ and Carlyle's _Burns_? What was Carlyle's

message in _Sartor Resartus_? What did Huxley and Tyndale say of his

influence? What are the most noteworthy qualities of _The French

Revolution_? What are the chief characteristics of Carlyle's style?

Ruskin.--In Vol. I., Part II., of _Modern Painters_, read the first

part of Chap. I. of Sec. III., Chap. I. of Sec. IV., and Chap. I. of

Sec. V., and note Ruskin's surprising accuracy of knowledge in dealing

with aspects of the natural world. _The Stones of Venice_, Vol. III.,

Chap. IV., states Ruskin's theory of art and its close relation to

morality. Excellent selections from the various works of Ruskin will

be found in _An Introduction to the Writings of John Ruskin_, by Vida

D. Scudder. Selections are also given in _Century_, Manly, II.,

_Riverside Literature Series_, and Bronson's _English Essays (Modern

Painters and Fors Clavigera). Sesame and lilies, The King of the

Golden River_, and _The Stones of Venice_ are published in _Everyman's

Library_.

What was the message of _Modern Painters_? of _The Stones of Venice_?

of _Fors Clavigera_? Why is Ruskin called a disciple of Carlyle?

Select a passage from Ruskin's descriptive prose and indicate its

chief qualities.

Brontë, Bulwer Lytton, Gaskell, Trollope, Kingsley, Reade, Blackmore,

and Barrie.--_Jane Eyre_ (Charlotte Brontë), _Wuthering Heights_

(Emily Brontë), _Last Days of Pompeii_ (Lytton), _Cranford_ (Gaskell),

_Barchester Towers_ (Trollope), _Westward Ho!_ (Kingsley), _The

Cloister and the Hearth_ (Reade), and _Lorna Doone_ (Blackmore) are

all published in _Everyman's Library_. Barrie's _The Little Minister_

is included in Burt's _Home Library_. The works of the Brontë sisters

will be much more appreciated if Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte

Brontë (Everyman's Library)_ is read first. The novels by the Brontë

sisters, Mrs. Gaskell, Trollope, and Barrie record their impressions

of contemporary life. The other novels are historical. Lytton gives a

vivid account of the last days of Pompeii. Kingsley thrills with his

story of the sailors of Elizabeth's time. Reade, who studied libraries

to insure the accuracy of _The Cloister and the Hearth_, portrays

vividly the oncoming of the Renaissance in he fifteenth century.

Blackmore's great story, which records some incidents of the Monmouth

rebellion (1685), is written more to interest than to throw light on

history.

Dickens.--The first works of Dickens to be read are _Pickwick

Papers, A Christmas Carol, and David Copperfield_. These are all

published in _Everyman's Library_. Craik, V., gives "Mr. Pickwick on

the Ice," "Christmas at the Cratchit's," and two scenes from _David

Copperfield_.

Select passages that show (a) humor, (b) pathos, (c) sympathy with

children, (d) optimism. Describe some one of the characters. Can you

instance a case here a mannerism is made to take the place of other

characterization? Is Dickens a master of plot? of style?

Thackeray.--Read _Henry Esmond (Eclectic English Classics)_ and _The

English Humorists of the Fifteenth Century_ (Macmillan's _Pocket

Classics_). Craik, V., and Manly, II. give selections.

Contrast the manner of treatment in Thackeray's historical novel,

_Henry Esmond_, and in Scott's historical romance, _Ivanhoe_.

Thackeray says: "The best humor is that which contains most

humanity--that which is flavored throughout with tenderness and

kindness." Would this serve as a definition of Thackeray's own style

of humor? State definitely how he differs from Dickens in portraying

character. Compare Thackeray's _English Humorists_ with Macaulay's

_Milton_ and Carlyle's _Burns_. Which essay leaves the most definite

ideas? Which is the most interesting? Which has the most atmosphere?

How should you characterize Thackeray's style?

George Eliot.--Read _Silas Marner_ (_Eclectic English Classics_ or

_Gateway Series_), or selections in Craik, V., or Manly, II. In what

does the chief strength of _Silas Marner_ consist,--in the plot, the

characters, or the description? Does the ethical purpose of this novel

grow naturally out of the story? Is the inner life or only the outward

appearance of the characters revealed? Wherein do they show growth?

Stevenson.--Read _Treasure Island_ (_Eclectic English Classics_ or

_Gateway Series_), _Inland Voyage_, and _Travels with a Donkey_

(_Gateway Series_). From the essays read _Child's Play, Aes Triplex_

(both in _Virginibus Puerisque_). Some of the essays and best short

stories (including _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_) are given in Canby and

Pierce's _Selections from Robert Louis Stevenson_. From the volume of

poems called _Underwoods_, read _The Celestial Surgeon and Requiem. A

Child's Garden of Verse_ may be read entire in an hour.

_Compare Treasure Island_ with _Robinson Crusoe_. What are the chief

characteristics of _An Inland Voyage_ and _Travels with a Donkey_? Why

is he called a romantic writer? As an essayist, compare him with

Thackeray. What are the special qualities of his style?

George Meredith.--_The Egoist_ is Meredith's most representative

novel. _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_ and _Diana of the Crossways_

are also masterpieces. From the _Poems_ read _Love in the Valley, The

Lark Ascending, Melanthus, Jump-to-Glory Jane_.

What is the central purpose of The Egoist? Select specially

Meredithian passages which show his general characteristics. Can you

find any other author whose humor resembles Meredith's? Would he

naturally be more popular with men or with women?

Hardy.--Hardy's most enjoyable novel is _Far from the Madding Crowd.

The Return of the Native_ is one of his strongest works.

What are some of the most striking differences between him and

Meredith? Which one is naturally the better story-teller? Where are

the scenes of most of Hardy's novels laid? What is his theory of life?

Arnold.--Read _Dover Beach, Memorial Verses, Stanzas in Memory of

the Author of "Obermann" and Sohrab and Rustum_ (Page's _British Poets

of the Nineteenth Century_, Bronson, IV., Manly, I.).

Is Arnold the poet of fancy or of reflection? How does his poetry show

one phase of nineteenth-century thought?

Arnold's _Essays, Literary and Critical_ are published in _Everyman's

Library_. The best volume of selections from the prose writings of

Arnold is the one edited by Lewis E. Gates (348 pages, 75 cents). Good

selections are given in Craik, V., Manly, I. (_Sweetness and light_),

_Century_ (_The Study of Poetry_). Arnold's _Introduction_ to Ward,

I., is well worth reading.

What quality specially marks Arnold's criticism? Compare him as a

critic with Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle, and Thackeray. What are the

advantages and disadvantages of a style like Arnold's?

Pater.--Read the essay, _Leonardo da Vinci_ (Dickinson and Roe's

_Nineteenth Century Prose_, pp. 338-368), from Pater's "golden book,"

_The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Literature_. E.E. Hale's

_Selections from Walter Pater_ (268 pages, 75 cents) gives

representative selections. Manly, II., and _Century_ give the essay on

_Style_.

What are the chief characteristics of Pater's style? Compare it with

Macaulay's, Newman's, Ruskin's, and Matthew Arnold's. Has Pater a

message? Does he show the spirit of the time?

The Brownings.--From Elizabeth Barrett Browning, read _Cowper's

Grave, the Cry of the Children_, and from her _Sonnets from the

Portuguese_, Nos. I., III., VI., X., XVIII., XX., XXVI., XXVIII.,

XLI., XLIII.

Mrs. Browning's verse comes from the heart and should be felt rather

than criticized. Fresh interest may, however, by given to a study of

her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, by comparing them with any other

series of love sonnets, excepting Shakespeare's.

Robert Browning's shorter poems are best for the beginner, who should

read _Rabbi Ben Ezra, Abt Vogler, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Prospice,

Saul, The Pied Piper of Hamelin._ Baker's _Browning's Shorter Poems

(Macmillan's Pocket Classics)_ contains a very good collection of his

shorter poems. Representative selections from Browning's poems are

given in Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century, Oxford Book

of Victorian Verse_, Bronson, IV., Manly, I., and _Century_.

Browning's masterpiece, _The Ring and the Book (Oxford Edition_,

Oxford University Press) would be apt to repel beginners. This should

be studied only after a previous acquaintance with his shorter poems.

Define Browning's creed as found in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. Is he an ethical

teacher? Is there any similarity between his teaching and Carlyle's?

What most interests Browning,--word-painting, narration, action,

psychological analysis, or technique of verse? See whether a

comparison of his _Prospice_ with Tennyson's _Crossing the Bar_ does

not help you to understand Browning's peculiar cast of mind. What

qualities in Browning entitle him to be ranked as a great poet?

Tennyson.--From his 1842 volume, read the poems mentioned on page

556. From _The Princess_, read the lyrical songs; from _In Memoriam_,

the parts numbered XLI., LIV., LVII., and CXXXI.; from _Maud_, the

eleven stanzas beginning: "Come into the garden, Maud"; from _The

Idylls of the King_, read _Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine,

The Passing of Arthur_ (Van Dyke's edition in _Gateway Series_); from

his later poems, _The Higher Pantheism, Locksley Hall Sixty Years

After_, and _Crossing the Bar_.

The best single volume edition of Tennyson's works is published in

Macmillan's _Globe Poets_. Selections are given in Page's _British

Poets of the Nineteenth Century_, Bronson, IV., _Oxford Book of

Victorian Verse_, Manly, I., and _Century_.

In _The Palace of Art_, study carefully the stanzas from XIV. to

XXIII., which are illustrative of Tennyson's characteristic style of

description. Compare _Locksley Hall_ with _Locksley Hall Sixty Years

After_, and note the difference in thought and metrical form. Does the

later poem show a gain over the earlier? Compare Tennyson's nature

poetry with that of Keats and Wordsworth. To what is chiefly due the

pleasure in reading Tennyson's poetry: to the imagery, form, thought?

What idea of his faith do you gain from _In Memoriam_ and _The Passing

of Arthur_? In what is Tennyson the poetic exponent of the age? Is it

probable that Tennyson's popularity will increase or wane? Select some

of his verse that you think will be as popular a hundred years hence

as now.

Swinburne.--Read _A Song in Time of Order, The Youth of the Year

(Atlanta in Calydon), A Match, The Garden of Proserpine, Hertha, By

the North Sea, The Hymn of Man, The Roundel, A Child's Laughter_.

The most of the above are given in Page's _British Poets of the

Nineteenth Century_, Bronson, IV., Manly, I., _Century, Oxford Book of

Victorian Verse_.

Compare both the metrical skill and poetic ideas of Swinburne and

Tennyson. Can you find any poet who surpasses Swinburne in the

technique of verse? What are his chief excellencies and faults?

Kipling.--Read _The Jungle Books_. The following are among the best

of his short stories: _The Man Who Would be King, The Brushwood Boy,

The Courting of Dinah Shadd, Drums of the Fore and Aft, Without

Benefit of Clergy, On Greenhow Hill_.

From his poems read _Mandalay, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, Danny Deever, The 'Eathen,

Ballad of East and West, Recessional, The White Man's Burden_; also

_Song of the Banjo_, and _L'Envoi_ from _Seven Seas_, published by

Doubleday, Page and Company.

Why is _The Jungle Book_ called an original creation? What are the

most distinctive dualities of Kipling's short stories? Point out in

what respects they show the methods of the journalist. How does

Kipling sustain the interest? What limitations do you notice? What is

specially remarkable about his style? What are the principal

characteristics of his verse? What subjects appeal to him? Why is his

verse so popular?

Minor Poets.--Read the selections from Clough, Henley, Bridges,

Davidson, Thompson, Watson, Dobson and Symons in either _The Oxford

Book of Victorian Verse_ or Stevenson's _The Home Book of Verse. The

Poetical Works of Robert Bridges_ is inexpensively published by the

Oxford University Press. Dobson's verse has been gathered into the

single volume _Collected Poems_ (1913).

What are the chief characteristics of each of the above authors? Do

these minor versifiers fill a want not fully supplied by the great

poets?

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IX:

[Footnote 1: _A Liberal Education and Where to Find It_ (_Lay

Sermons_).]

[Footnote 2: For suggested readings in Pater, see p. 584.]

[Footnote 3: Pp. 225-364 of the Oxford University Press edition of his

_Poetical Works_.]

[Footnote 4: Printed by permission of The Macmillan Company.]

[Footnote 5: Given in Stevenson's _Home Book of Verse_ and _The Oxford

Book of Victorian Verse_.]

[Footnote 6: _History of England_, Vol. III, Chap. XI.]

[Footnote 7: Morison's _Life of Macaulay_, p. 139.]

[Footnote 8: _The Idea of a University_ (_Literature: A Lecture_).]

[Footnote 9: _For Claviers_, Letter I.]

[Footnote 10: _Praeterita_, Vol. II., Chap. V.]

[Footnote 11: _Silas Marner_, Chap. VI.]

[Footnote 12: _The Scholar Gypsy_.]

[Footnote 13: _A Southern Light_.]

[Footnote 14: _The Grande Chartreuse_.]

[Footnote 15: _Home Thoughts from Abroad_.]

[Footnote 16: A.C. Benson's _Alfred Tennyson_, p. 157.]

[Footnote 17 & 18: Printed by permission of Rudyard Kipling and

Doubleday, Page and Company.]

[Footnote 19: For full titles, see p. 6.]