_Introduction_
_My aim in this little book has been to give short sketches and
estimates of the greatest modern English writers from Macaulay to
Stevenson and Kipling. Omissions there are, but my effort has been to
give the most characteristic writers a place and to try to stimulate
the reader's interest in the man behind the book as well as in the
best works of each author. Too much space is devoted in most literary
criticism to the bare facts of biography and the details of essays or
novels or histories written by authors. My plan has been to arouse
interest both in the men and their books so that any reader of this
volume may be stimulated to extend his knowledge of the modern English
classics._
_These chapters include the greatest English writers during the last
one hundred and fifty years and they have been prepared mainly for
those who have no thorough knowledge of modern English books or
authors. They are of limited scope so that few quotations have been
possible. But they have been written with an eager desire to help
those who care to know the best works of modern English authors. In
the same spirit the most appropriate illustrations have been secured
and a helpful bibliography has been added. If this book helps readers
to secure one lasting friend among these authors it will have done
good missionary work; for to make the books of one man or woman of
genius a part of our mental possessions is to be set on the broad
highway to literary culture._
_The Vital Quality in Literature_
_To Get the Spiritual Essence of a Great Book One Must Study
the Man Who Wrote It--The Man Is the Best Epitome His
Message._
_In this volume as in its predecessor, "Comfort Found in Good Old
Books," my aim has been to enforce the theory that behind every great
book is a man, greater than the best book that he ever wrote. This
strong spiritual quality which every one of the great authors puts
into his best books is what we should strive to secure when we read
these great classics. Unless we get this spiritual part we miss the
essence of the book._
_Hence it has been my aim in this volume to make clear what manner of
men wrote these books which serve as the landmarks of modern English
literature._
_The scope of this book is limited, but from Macaulay to Kipling the
effort has been to include those representative modern English
authors who both in prose and verse best reflect the spiritual
tendencies of their age. Whether essayists, historians, novelists or
poets each of these writers has furnished something distinctive; each
has caught some salient feature of his age and fixed it for all time
in the amber of his thought._
_And what a bead-roll is this of great English worthies: Macaulay, the
most brilliant and learned of all English essayists; Scott, the finest
story-teller of his own or any other age; Carlyle, the inspirer of
ambitious youth; De Quincey, the greatest artist in style, whose words
are as music to the sensitive ear; Dickens, the master painter of
sorrows and joys of the common people; Thackeray, the best interpreter
of human life and character; Charlotte Brontë, the brooding Celtic
genius who laid bare the hearts of women; George Eliot, the greatest
artist of her sex in mastery of human emotion; Ruskin, the first to
teach the common people appreciation of art and architecture;
Tennyson, the melodious singer who voiced the highest aspiration of
his time; Browning, the greatest dramatic poet since Shakespeare;
Charles Lamb, one of the tenderest of essayists; George Meredith, the
most brilliant and suggestive novelist of the Victorian age;
Stevenson, the best beloved and most artistic story-teller of his day;
Hardy, the master painter of tragedies of rural life; and Kipling, the
interpreter of Anglo-Indian life, the singer of the new age of science
and discovery, the laureate of the gospel of blood and iron._
_The work of each of these men and women who make up the splendid roll
of English immortals varies in quality, in style, in capacity to touch
the heart and inspire the thought of the reader of to-day. But great
as are their differences, all meet on the common ground of a
warm-hearted, sympathetic humanity that knows no distinctions of race
or creed, no limitations of time or place. The splendid sermons on the
gospel of work that Carlyle preached after long wrestlings of the
spirit are as full of inspiration to the youth of to-day as they were
when they came out from the mind of the man who actually lived the
laborious life that he commended; the little lay discourses that may
be found scattered through Thackeray's novels and essays are born of
agony of spirit, and it is their spiritual power which keeps them
fresh and full of inspiration in this age of doubt and materialism._
_And so we might go down through the whole list. Each of these great
writers had his Gethsemane, from which he emerged with the power of
moving the hearts of men. So when we read that most beautiful essay of
Lamb's on "Dream Children," our hearts ache for the lonely man who
sacrificed the best things in life for the sake of the sister whom he
loved better than his own happiness. And when we read Thackeray's
eloquent words on family love we know that he wrote in his heart's
blood, for the dearest woman in the world to him was lost forever in
this world, when the light of her reason was clouded._
_And so I have tried in these essays to show how bitter waters of
sorrow have strengthened the spirit of all these masters of English
thought and style, until they have poured out their hearts in eloquent
words that can never die. Far across the gulf of years their sonorous
voices reach our ears. Pregnant are they with the passionate
earnestness of these men and women of genius, these bearers of the
torch of spiritual inspiration passed from hand to hand down the
centuries._
_When our souls are moved by some great bereavement then the words of
these inspired writers soothe our griefs. When we are beaten down in
the dust of conflict they come with the refreshment of water from
springs in the everlasting hills. When we are bitter over great
losses or sore over hope deferred or stricken because friends have
proved faithless, then they soften our hearts and give us courage to
take up once more the battle of life._