THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
1. +New Ideas.+-- The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century are alike remarkable for the new powers, new ideas,
and new life thrown into society. The coming up of a high flood-tide of
new forces seems to coincide with the beginning of the French Revolution
in 1789, when the overthrow of the Bastille marked the downfall of the
old ways of thinking and acting, and announced to the world of Europe
and America that the old _régime_-- the ancient mode of governing-- was
over. Wordsworth, then a lad of nineteen, was excited by the event
almost beyond the bounds of self-control. He says in his “Excursion”--
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven!”
It was, indeed, the dawn of a new day for the peoples of Europe. The
ideas of freedom and equality-- of respect for man as man-- were thrown
into popular form by France; they became living powers in Europe; and in
England they animated and inspired the best minds of the time-- Burns,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. Along with this high tide of
hope and emotion, there was such an outburst of talent and genius in
every kind of human endeavour in England, as was never seen before
except in the Elizabethan period. Great events produced great powers;
and great powers in their turn brought about great events. The war with
America, the long struggle with Napoleon, the new political ideas, great
victories by sea and land,-- all these were to be found in the beginning
of the nineteenth century. The English race produced great men in
numbers-- almost, it might be said, in groups. We had great leaders,
like Nelson and Wellington; brilliant generals, like Sir Charles Napier
and Sir John Moore; great statesmen, like Fox and Pitt, like Washington
and Franklin; great engineers, like Stephenson and Brunel; and great
poets, like Wordsworth and Byron. And as regards literature, an able
critic remarks: “We have recovered in this century the Elizabethan magic
and passion, a more than Elizabethan sense of the beauty and complexity
of nature, the Elizabethan music of language.”
2. +Great Poets.+-- The greatest poets of the first half of the
nineteenth century may be best arranged in groups. There were
+Wordsworth+, +Coleridge+, and +Southey+-- commonly, but unnecessarily,
described as the Lake Poets. In their poetic thought and expression they
had little in common; and the fact that two of them lived most of their
lives in the Lake country, is not a sufficient justification for the use
of the term. There were +Scott+ and +Campbell+-- both of them Scotchmen.
There were +Byron+ and +Shelley+-- both Englishmen, both brought up at
the great public schools and the universities, but both carried away by
the influence of the new revolutionary ideas. Lastly, there were
+Moore+, an Irishman, and young +Keats+, the splendid promise of whose
youth went out in an early death. Let us learn a little more about each,
and in the order of the dates of their birth.
3. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (+1770-1850+) was born at Cockermouth, a town in
Cumberland, which stands at the confluence of the Cocker and the
Derwent. His father, John Wordsworth, was law agent to Sir James
Lowther, who afterwards became Earl of Lonsdale. William was a boy of a
stiff, moody, and violent temper; and as his mother died when he was a
very little boy, and his father when he was fourteen, he grew up with
very little care from his parents and guardians. He was sent to school
at Hawkshead, in the Vale of Esthwaite, in Lancashire; and, at the age
of seventeen, proceeded to St John’s College, Cambridge. After taking
his degree of B.A. in 1791, he resided for a year in France. He took
sides with one of the parties in the Reign of Terror, and left the
country only in time to save his head. He was designed by his uncles for
the Church; but a friend, Raisley Calvert, dying, left him £900; and he
now resolved to live a plain and frugal life, to join no profession, but
to give himself wholly up to the writing of poetry. In 1798, he
published, along with his friend, S. T. Coleridge, the +Lyrical
Ballads+. The only work of Coleridge’s in this volume was the “Ancient
Mariner.” In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of whom he speaks in the
well-known lines--
“Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair,
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn.”
He obtained the post of Distributor of Stamps for the county of
Westmoreland; and, after the death of Southey, he was created
+Poet-Laureate+ by the Queen. --He settled with his wife in the Lake
country; and, in 1813, took up his abode at Rydal Mount, where he lived
till his death in 1850. He died on the 23d of April-- the death-day of
Shakespeare.
4. His longest works are the +Excursion+ and the +Prelude+-- both being
parts of a longer and greater work which he intended to write on the
growth of his own mind. His best poems are his shorter pieces, such as
the poems on +Lucy+, +The Cuckoo+, the +Ode to Duty+, the +Intimations
of Immortality+, and several of his +Sonnets+. He says of his own poetry
that his purpose in writing it was “to console the afflicted; to add
sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and
the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to
become more actively and securely virtuous.” His poetical work is the
noble landmark of a great transition-- both in thought and in style. He
drew aside poetry from questions and interests of mere society and the
town to the scenes of Nature and the deepest feelings of man as man. In
style, he refused to employ the old artificial vocabulary which Pope and
his followers revelled in; he used the simplest words he could find;
and, when he hits the mark in his simplest form of expression, his style
is as forcible as it is true. He says of his own verse--
“The moving accident is not my trade,
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;
’Tis my delight, alone, in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for _thinking hearts_.”
If one were asked what four lines of his poetry best convey the feeling
of the whole, the reply must be that these are to be found in his “Song
at the Feast of Brougham Castle,”-- lines written about “the good Lord
Clifford.”
“Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,--
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”
5. WALTER SCOTT (+1771-1832+), poet and novelist, the son of a Scotch
attorney (called in Edinburgh a W.S. or Writer to H.M.’s Signet), was
born there in the year 1771. He was educated at the High School, and
then at the College-- now called the University-- of Edinburgh. In 1792
he was called to the Scottish Bar, or became an “advocate.” During his
boyhood, he had had several illnesses, one of which left him lame for
life. Through those long periods of sickness and of convalescence, he
read Percy’s ‘Reliques of Ancient Poetry,’ and almost all the romances,
old plays, and epic poems that have been published in the English
language. This gave his mind and imagination a set which they never lost
all through life.
6. His first publications were translations of German poems. In the year
1805, however, an original poem, the +Lay of the Last Minstrel+,
appeared; and Scott became at one bound the foremost poet of the day.
+Marmion+, the +Lady of the Lake+, and other poems, followed with great
rapidity. But, in 1814, Scott took it into his head that his poetical
vein was worked out; the star of Byron was rising upon the literary
horizon; and he now gave himself up to novel-writing. His first novel,
+Waverley+, appeared anonymously in 1814. +Guy Mannering+, +Old
Mortality+, +Rob Roy+, and others, quickly followed; and, though the
secret of the authorship was well kept both by printer and publisher,
Walter Scott was generally believed to be the writer of these works, and
he was frequently spoken of as “the Great Unknown.” He was made a
baronet by George IV. in 1820.
7. His expenses in building Abbotsford, and his desire to acquire land,
induced him to go into partnership with Ballantyne, his printer, and
with Constable, his publisher. Both firms failed in the dark year of
1826; and Scott found himself unexpectedly liable for the large sum of
£147,000. Such a load of debt would have utterly crushed most men; but
Scott stood clear and undaunted in front of it. “Gentlemen,” he said to
his creditors, “time and I against any two. Let me take this good ally
into my company, and I believe I shall be able to pay you every
farthing.” He left his beautiful country house at Abbotsford; he gave up
all his country pleasures; he surrendered all his property to his
creditors; he took a small house in Edinburgh; and, in the short space
of five years, he had paid off £130,000. But the task was too terrible;
the pace had been too hard; and he was struck down by paralysis. But
even this disaster did not daunt him. Again he went to work, and again
he had a paralytic stroke. At last, however, he was obliged to give up;
the Government of the day placed a royal frigate at his disposal; he
went to Italy; but his health had utterly broken down, he felt he could
get no good from the air of the south, and he turned his face towards
home to die. He breathed his last breath at Abbotsford, in sight of his
beloved Tweed, with his family around him, on the 21st of September
1832.
8. His poetry is the poetry of action. In imaginative power he ranks
below no other poet, except Homer and Shakespeare. He delighted in war,
in its movement, its pageantry, and its events; and, though lame, he was
quartermaster of a volunteer corps of cavalry. On one occasion he rode
to muster one hundred miles in twenty-four hours, composing verses by
the way. Much of “+Marmion+” was composed on horseback. “I had many a
grand gallop,” he says, “when I was thinking of ‘+Marmion+.’” His two
chief powers in verse are his narrative and his pictorial power. His
boyhood was passed in the Borderland of Scotland-- “a district in which
every field has its battle and every rivulet its song;” and he was at
home in every part of the Highlands and the Lowlands, the Islands and
the Borders, of his native country. But, both in his novels and his
poems, he was a painter of action rather than of character.
9. His prose works are now much more read than his poems; but both are
full of life, power, literary skill, knowledge of men and women, and
strong sympathy with all past ages. He wrote so fast that his sentences
are often loose and ungrammatical; but they are never unidiomatic or
stiff. The rush of a strong and large life goes through them, and
carries the reader along, forgetful of all minor blemishes. His best
novels are +Old Mortality+ and +Kenilworth+; his greatest romance is
+Ivanhoe+.
10. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (+1772-1834+), a true poet, and a writer of
noble prose, was born at Ottery St Mary, in Devonshire, in 1772. His
father, who was vicar of the parish, and master of the grammar-school,
died when the boy was only nine years of age. He was educated at
Christ’s Hospital, in London, where his most famous schoolfellow was
Charles Lamb; and from there he went to Jesus College, Cambridge. In
1793 he had fallen into debt at College; and, in despair, left
Cambridge, and enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons, under the name of
Silas Tomkins Comberbatch. He was quickly discovered, and his discharge
soon obtained. While on a visit to his friend Robert Southey, at
Bristol, the plan of emigrating to the banks of the Susquehanna, in
Pennsylvania, was entered on; but, when all the friends and
fellow-emigrants were ready to start, it was discovered that no one of
them had any money. --Coleridge finally became a literary man and
journalist. His real power, however, lay in poetry; but by poetry he
could not make a living. His first volume of poems was published at
Bristol, in the year 1796; but it was not till 1798 that the +Rime of
the Ancient Mariner+ appeared in the ‘Lyrical Ballads.’ His next
greatest poem, +Christabel+, though written in 1797, was not published
till the year 1816. His other best poems are +Love+; +Dejection--an
Ode+; and some of his shorter pieces. His best poetry was written about
the close of the century: “Coleridge,” said Wordsworth, “was in blossom
from 1796 to 1800.” --As a critic and prose-writer, he is one of the
greatest men of his time. His best works in prose are +The Friend+ and
the +Aids to Reflection+. He died at Highgate, near London, in the year
1834.
11. His style, both in prose and in verse, marks the beginning of the
modern era. His prose style is noble, elaborate, eloquent, and full of
subtle and involved thought; his style in verse is always musical, and
abounds in rhythms of the most startling and novel-- yet always
genuine-- kind. +Christabel+ is the poem that is most full of these fine
musical rhythms.
12. ROBERT SOUTHEY (+1774-1843+), poet, reviewer, historian, but, above
all, man of letters,-- the friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth,-- was
born at Bristol in 1774. He was educated at Westminster School and at
Balliol College, Oxford. After his marriage with Miss Edith Fricker--
a sister of Sara, the wife of Coleridge-- he settled at Greta Hall, near
Keswick, in 1803; and resided there until his death in 1843. In 1813 he
was created +Poet-Laureate+ by George III. --He was the most
indefatigable of writers. He wrote poetry before breakfast; history
between breakfast and dinner; reviews between dinner and supper; and,
even when taking a constitutional, he had always a book in his hand, and
walked along the road reading. He began to write and to publish at the
age of nineteen; he never ceased writing till the year 1837, when his
brain softened from the effects of perpetual labour.
13. Southey wrote a great deal of verse, but much more prose. His prose
works amount to more than one hundred volumes; but his poetry, such as
it is, will probably live longer than his prose. His best-known poems
are +Joan of Arc+, written when he was nineteen; +Thalaba the
Destroyer+, a poem in irregular and unrhymed verse; +The Curse of
Kehama+, in verse rhymed, but irregular; and +Roderick, the last of the
Goths+, written in blank verse. He will, however, always be best
remembered by his shorter pieces, such as +The Holly Tree+, +Stanzas
written in My Library+, and others. --His most famous prose work is the
+Life of Nelson+. His prose style is always firm, clear, compact, and
sensible.
14. THOMAS CAMPBELL (+1777-1844+), a noble poet and brilliant reviewer,
was born in Glasgow in the year 1777. He was educated at the High School
and the University of Glasgow. At the age of twenty-two, he published
his +Pleasures of Hope+, which at once gave him a place high among the
poets of the day. In 1803 he removed to London, and followed literature
as his profession; and, in 1806, he received a pension of £200 a-year
from the Government, which enabled him to devote the whole of his time
to his favourite study of poetry. His best long poem is the +Gertrude of
Wyoming+, a tale written in the Spenserian stanza, which he handles with
great ease and power. But he is best known, and will be longest
remembered, for his short lyrics-- which glow with passionate and fiery
eloquence-- such as +The Battle of the Baltic+, +Ye Mariners of
England+, +Hohenlinden+, and others. He was twice Lord Rector of the
University of Glasgow. He died at Boulogne in 1844, and was buried in
Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.
15. THOMAS MOORE (+1779-1852+), poet, biographer, and historian-- but
most of all poet-- was born in Dublin in the year 1779. He began to
print verses at the age of thirteen, and may be said, like Pope, to have
“lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.” He came to London in 1799,
and was quickly received into fashionable society. In 1803 he was made
Admiralty Registrar at Bermuda; but he soon gave up the post, leaving a
deputy in his place, who, some years after, embezzled the Government
funds, and brought financial ruin upon Moore. The poet’s friends offered
to help him out of his money difficulties; but he most honourably
declined all such help, and, like Sir W. Scott, resolved to clear off
all claims against him by the aid of his pen alone. For the next twenty
years of his life he laboured incessantly; and volumes of poetry,
history, and biography came steadily from his pen. His best poems are
his +Irish Melodies+, some fifteen or sixteen of which are perfect and
imperishable; and it is as a writer of songs that Moore will live in the
literature of this country. He boasted, and with truth, that it was he
who awakened for this century the long-silent harp of his native land--
“Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee,
The cold chain of silence had hung o’er thee long,
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee,
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song.”
His best long poem is +Lalla Rookh+. --His prose works are little read
nowadays. The chief among them are his +Life of Sheridan+, and his +Life
of Lord Byron+. --He died at Sloperton, in Wiltshire, in 1852, two years
after the death of Wordsworth.
16. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (+1788-1824+), a great English poet, was
born in London in the year 1788. He was the only child of a reckless and
unprincipled father and a passionate mother. He was educated at Harrow
School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume--
+Hours of Idleness+-- was published in 1807, before he was nineteen.
A critique of this juvenile work which appeared in the ‘Edinburgh
Review’ stung him to passion; and he produced a very vigorous poetical
reply in +English Bards and Scotch Reviewers+. After the publication of
this book, Byron travelled in Germany, Spain, Greece, and Turkey for two
years; and the first two cantos of the poem entitled +Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage+ were the outcome of these travels. This poem at once placed
him at the head of English poets; “he woke one morning,” he said, “and
found himself famous.” He was married in the year 1815, but left his
wife in the following year; left his native country also, never to
return. First of all he settled at Geneva, where he made the
acquaintance of the poet Shelley, and where he wrote, among other poems,
the third canto of +Childe Harold+ and the +Prisoner of Chillon+. In
1817 he removed to Venice, where he composed the fourth canto of +Childe
Harold+ and the +Lament of Tasso+; his next resting-place was Ravenna,
where he wrote several plays. Pisa saw him next; and at this place he
spent a great deal of his time in close intimacy with Shelley. In 1821
the Greek nation rose in revolt against the cruelties and oppression of
the Turkish rule; and Byron’s sympathies were strongly enlisted on the
side of the Greeks. He helped the struggling little country with
contributions of money; and, in 1823, sailed from Geneva to take a
personal share in the war of liberation. He died, however, of fever, at
Missolonghi, on the 19th of April 1824, at the age of thirty-six.
17. His best-known work is +Childe Harold+, which is written in the
Spenserian stanza. His plays, the best of which are +Manfred+ and
+Sardanapālus+, are written in blank verse. --His style is remarkable
for its strength and elasticity, for its immensely powerful sweep,
tireless energy, and brilliant illustrations.
18. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (+1792-1822+),-- who has, like Spenser, been
called “the poet’s poet,”-- was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in
Sussex, in the year 1792. He was educated at Eton, and then at
University College, Oxford. A shy, diffident, retiring boy, with sweet,
gentle looks and manners-- like those of a girl-- but with a spirit of
the greatest fearlessness and the noblest independence, he took little
share in the sports and pursuits of his schoolfellows. Obliged to leave
Oxford, in consequence of having written a tract of which the
authorities did not approve, he married at the very early age of
nineteen. The young lady whom he married died in 1816; and he soon after
married Mary, daughter of William Godwin, the eminent author of
‘Political Justice.’ In 1818 he left England for Italy,-- like his
friend, Lord Byron, for ever. It was at Naples, Leghorn, and Pisa that
he chiefly resided. In 1822 he bought a little boat-- “a perfect
plaything for the summer,” he calls it; and he used often to make short
voyages in it, and wrote many of his poems on these occasions. When
Leigh Hunt was lying ill at Leghorn, Shelley and his friend Williams
resolved on a coasting trip to that city. They reached Leghorn in
safety; but, on the return journey, the boat sank in a sudden squall.
Captain Roberts was watching the vessel with his glass from the top of
the Leghorn lighthouse, as it crossed the Bay of Spezzia: a black cloud
arose; a storm came down; the vessels sailing with Shelley’s boat were
wrapped in darkness; the cloud passed; the sun shone out, and all was
clear again; the larger vessels rode on; but Shelley’s boat had
disappeared. The poet’s body was cast on shore, but the quarantine laws
of Italy required that everything thrown up on the coast should be
burned: no representations could alter the law; and Shelley’s ashes were
placed in a box and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome.
19. Shelley’s best long poem is the +Adonaïs+, an elegy on the death of
John Keats. It is written in the Spenserian stanza. But this true poet
will be best remembered by his short lyrical poems, such as +The Cloud+,
+Ode to a Skylark+, +Ode to the West Wind+, +Stanzas written in
Dejection+, and others. --Shelley has been called “the poet’s poet,”
because his style is so thoroughly transfused by pure imagination. He
has also been called “the master-singer of our modern race and age; for
his thoughts, his words, and his deeds all sang together.” He is
probably the greatest lyric poet of this century.
20. JOHN KEATS (+1795-1821+), one of our truest poets, was born in
Moorfields, London, in the year 1795. He was educated at a private
school at Enfield. His desire for the pleasures of the intellect and the
imagination showed itself very early at school; and he spent many a
half-holiday in writing translations from the Roman and the French
poets. On leaving school, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton--
the scene of one of John Gilpin’s adventures; but, in 1817, he gave up
the practice of surgery, devoted himself entirely to poetry, and brought
out his first volume. In 1818 appeared his +Endymion+. The ‘Quarterly
Review’ handled it without mercy. Keats’s health gave way; the seeds of
consumption were in his frame; and he was ordered to Italy in 1820, as
the last chance of saving his life. But it was too late. The air of
Italy could not restore him. He settled at Rome with his friend Severn;
but, in spite of all the care, thought, devotion, and watching of his
friend, he died in 1821, at the age of twenty-five. He was buried in the
Protestant cemetery at Rome; and the inscription on his tomb, composed
by himself, is, “_Here lies one whose name was writ in water_.”
21. His greatest poem is +Hyperion+, written, in blank verse, on the
overthrow of the “early gods” of Greece. But he will most probably be
best remembered by his marvellous odes, such as the +Ode to a
Nightingale+, +Ode on a Grecian Urn+, +To Autumn+, and others. His style
is clear, sensuous, and beautiful; and he has added to our literature
lines that will always live. Such are the following:--
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”
“Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.”
“Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.”
22. +Prose-Writers.+-- We have now to consider the greatest
prose-writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. First comes
+Walter Scott+, one of the greatest novelists that ever lived, and who
won the name of “The Wizard of the North” from the marvellous power he
possessed of enchaining the attention and fascinating the minds of his
readers. Two other great writers of prose were +Charles Lamb+ and
+Walter Savage Landor+, each in styles essentially different. +Jane
Austen+, a young English lady, has become a classic in prose, because
her work is true and perfect within its own sphere. +De Quincey+ is
perhaps the writer of the most ornate and elaborate English prose of
this period. +Thomas Carlyle+, a great Scotsman, with a style of
overwhelming power, but of occasional grotesqueness, like a great
prophet and teacher of the nation, compelled statesmen and
philanthropists to think, while he also gained for himself a high place
in the rank of historians. +Macaulay+, also of Scottish descent, was one
of the greatest essayists and ablest writers on history that Great
Britain has produced. A short survey of each of these great men may be
useful. Scott has been already treated of.
23. CHARLES LAMB (+1775-1834+), a perfect English essayist, was born in
the Inner Temple, in London, in the year 1775. His father was clerk to a
barrister of that Inn of Court. Charles was educated at Christ’s
Hospital, where his most famous schoolfellow was S. T. Coleridge.
Brought up in the very heart of London, he had always a strong feeling
for the greatness of the metropolis of the world. “I often shed tears,”
he said, “in the motley Strand, for fulness of joy at so much life.” He
was, indeed, a thorough Cockney and lover of London, as were also
Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Lamb’s friend Leigh Hunt. Entering the
India House as a clerk in the year 1792, he remained there thirty-three
years; and it was one of his odd sayings that, if any one wanted to see
his “works,” he would find them on the shelves of the India House. --He
is greatest as a writer of prose; and his prose is, in its way,
unequalled for sweetness, grace, humour, and quaint terms, among the
writings of this century. His best prose work is the +Essays of Elia+,
which show on every page the most whimsical and humorous subtleties,
a quick play of intellect, and a deep sympathy with the sorrows and the
joys of men. Very little verse came from his pen. “Charles Lamb’s
nosegay of verse,” says Professor Dowden, “may be held by the small hand
of a maiden, and there is not in it one flaunting flower.” Perhaps the
best of his poems are the short pieces entitled +Hester+ and +The Old
Familiar Faces+. --He retired from the India House, on a pension, in
1825, and died at Edmonton, near London, in 1834. His character was as
sweet and refined as his style; Wordsworth spoke of him as “Lamb the
frolic and the gentle;” and these and other fine qualities endeared him
to a large circle of friends.
24. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (+1775-1864+), the greatest prose-writer in his
own style of the nineteenth century, was born at Ipsley Court, in
Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775-- the anniversary of the
execution of Charles I. He was educated at Rugby School and at Oxford;
but his fierce and insubordinate temper-- which remained with him, and
injured him all his life-- procured his expulsion from both of these
places. As heir to a large estate, he resolved to give himself up
entirely to literature; and he accordingly declined to adopt any
profession. Living an almost purely intellectual life, he wrote a great
deal of prose and some poetry; and his first volume of poems appeared
before the close of the eighteenth century. His life, which began in the
reign of George III., stretched through the reigns of George IV. and
William IV., into the twenty-seventh year of Queen Victoria; and, in the
course of this long life, he had manifold experiences, many loves and
hates, friendships and acquaintanceships, with persons of every sort and
rank. He joined the Spanish army to fight Napoleon, and presented the
Spanish Government with large sums of money. He spent about thirty years
of his life in Florence, where he wrote many of his works. He died at
Florence in the year 1864. His greatest prose work is the +Imaginary
Conversations+; his best poem is +Count Julian+; and the character of
Count Julian has been ranked by De Quincey with the Satan of Milton.
Some of his smaller poetic pieces are perfect; and there is one, +Rose
Aylmer+, written about a dear young friend, that Lamb was never tired of
repeating:--
“Ah! what avails the sceptred race!
Ah! what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine!
“Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
Shall weep, but never see!
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.”
25. JANE AUSTEN (+1775-1817+), the most delicate and faithful painter of
English social life, was born at Steventon, in Hampshire, in 1775-- in
the same year as Landor and Lamb. She wrote a small number of novels,
most of which are almost perfect in their minute and true painting of
character. Sir Walter Scott, Macaulay, and other great writers, are
among her fervent admirers. Scott says of her writing: “The big bow-wow
strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch
which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting,
from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.”
She works out her characters by making them reveal themselves in their
talk, and by an infinite series of minute touches. Her two best novels
are +Emma+ and +Pride and Prejudice+. The interest of them depends on
the truth of the painting; and many thoughtful persons read through the
whole of her novels every year.
26. THOMAS DE QUINCEY (+1785-1859+), one of our most brilliant
essayists, was born at Greenhays, Manchester, in the year 1785. He was
educated at the Manchester grammar-school and at Worcester College,
Oxford. While at Oxford he took little share in the regular studies of
his college, but read enormous numbers of Greek, Latin, and English
books, as his taste or whim suggested. He knew no one; he hardly knew
his own tutor. “For the first two years of my residence in Oxford,” he
says, “I compute that I did not utter one hundred words.” After leaving
Oxford, he lived for about twenty years in the Lake country; and there
he became acquainted with Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge (the son of
S. T. Coleridge), and John Wilson (afterwards known as Professor Wilson,
and also as the “Christopher North” of ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’).
Suffering from repeated attacks of neuralgia, he gradually formed the
habit of taking laudanum; and by the time he had reached the age of
thirty, he drank about 8000 drops a-day. This unfortunate habit injured
his powers of work and weakened his will. In spite of it, however, he
wrote many hundreds of essays and articles in reviews and magazines. In
the latter part of his life, he lived either near or in Edinburgh, and
was always employed in dreaming (the opium increased his power both of
dreaming and of musing), or in studying or writing. He died in Edinburgh
in the year 1859. --Many of his essays were written under the signature
of “The English Opium-Eater.” Probably his best works are +The
Confessions of an Opium-Eater+ and +The Vision of Sudden Death+. The
chief characteristics of his style are majestic rhythm and elaborate
eloquence. Some of his sentences are almost as long and as sustained as
those of Jeremy Taylor; while, in many passages of reasoning that glows
and brightens with strong passion and emotion, he is not inferior to
Burke. He possessed an enormous vocabulary-- in wealth of words and
phrases he surpasses both Macaulay and Carlyle; and he makes a very
large-- perhaps even an excessive-- use of Latin words. He is also very
fond of using metaphors, personifications, and other figures of speech.
It may be said without exaggeration that, next to Carlyle’s, De
Quincey’s style is the most stimulating and inspiriting that a young
reader can find among modern writers.
27. THOMAS CARLYLE (+1795-1881+), a great thinker, essayist, and
historian, was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, in the year 1795.
He was educated at the burgh school of Annan, and afterwards at the
University of Edinburgh. Classics and the higher mathematics were his
favourite studies; and he was more especially fond of astronomy. He was
a teacher for some years after leaving the University. For a few years
after this he was engaged in minor literary work; and translating from
the German occupied a good deal of his time. In 1826 he married Jane
Welsh, a woman of abilities only inferior to his own. His first original
work was +Sartor Resartus+ (“The Tailor Repatched”), which appeared in
1834, and excited a great deal of attention-- a book which has proved to
many the electric spark which first woke into life their powers of
thought and reflection. From 1837 to 1840 he gave courses of lectures in
London; and these lectures were listened to by the best and most
thoughtful of the London people. The most striking series afterwards
appeared in the form of a book, under the title of +Heroes and
Hero-Worship+. Perhaps his most remarkable book-- a book that is unique
in all English literature-- is +The French Revolution+, which appeared
in 1837. In the year 1845, his +Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches+ were
published, and drew after them a large number of eager readers. In 1865
he completed the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken, his
+History of Frederick II., commonly called the Great+. This work is so
highly regarded in Germany as a truthful and painstaking history that
officers in the Prussian army are obliged to study it, as containing the
best account of the great battles of the Continent, the fields on which
they were fought, and the strategy that went to win them. One of the
crowning external honours of Carlyle’s life was his appointment as Lord
Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1866; but at the very time that
he was delivering his famous and remarkable Installation Address, his
wife lay dying in London. This stroke brought terrible sorrow on the old
man; he never ceased to mourn for his loss, and to recall the virtues
and the beauties of character in his dead wife; “the light of his life,”
he said, “was quite gone out;” and he wrote very little after her death.
He himself died in London on the 5th of February 1881.
28. +Carlyle’s Style.+-- Carlyle was an author by profession, a teacher
of and prophet to his countrymen by his mission, and a student of
history by the deep interest he took in the life of man. He was always
more or less severe in his judgments-- he has been called “The Censor of
the Age,”-- because of the high ideal which he set up for his own
conduct and the conduct of others. --He shows in his historic writings a
splendour of imagery and a power of dramatic grouping second only to
Shakespeare’s. In command of words he is second to no modern English
writer. His style has been highly praised and also energetically blamed.
It is rugged, gnarled, disjointed, full of irregular force-- shot across
by sudden lurid lights of imagination-- full of the most striking and
indeed astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim Titanic
force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them:
“Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the
remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out
helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered.” There is
no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative
language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable
sayings, such as the following:--
“Genius is an immense capacity for taking pains.”
“Do the duty which lies nearest thee! Thy second duty will already
have become clearer.”
“History is a mighty drama, enacted upon the theatre of time, with
suns for lamps, and eternity for a background.”
“All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true
hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as the
earth, has its summit in heaven.”
“Remember now and always that Life is no idle dream, but a solemn
reality based upon Eternity, and encompassed by Eternity. Find out
your task: stand to it: the night cometh when no man can work.”
29. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (+1800-1859+), the most popular of modern
historians,-- an essayist, poet, statesman, and orator,-- was born at
Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, in the year 1800. His father was one
of the greatest advocates for the abolition of slavery; and received,
after his death, the honour of a monument in Westminster Abbey. Young
Macaulay was educated privately, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge.
He studied classics with great diligence and success, but detested
mathematics-- a dislike the consequences of which he afterwards deeply
regretted. In 1824 he was elected Fellow of his college. His first
literary work was done for Knight’s ‘Quarterly Magazine’; but the
earliest piece of writing that brought him into notice was his famous
essay on +Milton+, written for the ‘Edinburgh Review’ in 1825. Several
years of his life were spent in India, as Member of the Supreme Council;
and, on his return, he entered Parliament, where he sat as M.P. for
Edinburgh. Several offices were filled by him, among others that of
Paymaster-General of the Forces, with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord John
Russell. In 1842 appeared his +Lays of Ancient Rome+, poems which have
found a very large number of readers. His greatest work is his +History
of England from the Accession of James II+. To enable himself to write
this history he read hundreds of books, Acts of Parliament, thousands of
pamphlets, tracts, broadsheets, ballads, and other flying fragments of
literature; and he never seems to have forgotten anything he ever read.
In. 1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in
1857 was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Macaulay of
Rothley-- the first literary man who was ever called to the House of
Lords. He died at Holly Lodge, Kensington, in the year 1859.
30. +Macaulay’s Style.+-- One of the most remarkable qualities in his
style is the copiousness of expression, and the remarkable power of
putting the same statement in a large number of different ways. This
enormous command of expression corresponded with the extraordinary power
of his memory. At the age of eight he could repeat the whole of Scott’s
poem of “Marmion.” He was fond, at this early age, of big words and
learned English; and once, when he was asked by a lady if his toothache
was better, he replied, “Madam, the agony is abated!” He knew the whole
of Homer and of Milton by heart; and it was said with perfect truth
that, if Milton’s poetical works could have been lost, Macaulay would
have restored every line with complete exactness. Sydney Smith said of
him: “There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as on
great; he is like a book in breeches.” His style has been called
“abrupt, pointed, and oratorical.” He is fond of the arts of surprise--
of antithesis-- and of epigram. Sentences like these are of frequent
occurrence:--
“Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic
only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer.”
“The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the
bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”
Besides these elements of epigram and antithesis, there is a vast wealth
of illustration, brought from the stores of a memory which never seemed
to forget anything. He studied every sentence with the greatest care and
minuteness, and would often rewrite paragraphs and even whole chapters,
until he was satisfied with the variety and clearness of the expression.
“He could not rest,” it was said, “until the punctuation was correct to
a comma; until every paragraph concluded with a telling sentence, and
every sentence flowed like clear running water.” But, above all things,
he strove to make his style perfectly lucid and immediately
intelligible. He is fond of countless details; but he so masters and
marshals these details that each only serves to throw more light upon
the main statement. His prose may be described as pictorial prose. The
character of his mind was, like Burke’s, combative and oratorical; and
he writes with the greatest vigour and animation when he is attacking a
policy or an opinion.