Dickens lived during the greater part of his life in London, but in his

later years near Rochester, at Gadshill, the scene of Falstaff's exploit.

He made long sojourns also on the Continent. Much social and outdoor life

was necessary to him; he had a theory that he ought to spend as much time

out of doors as in the house. He married early and had a large family of

children, but pathetically enough for one whose emotions centered so

largely about the home, his own marriage was not well-judged; and after

more than twenty years he and his wife (the Dora Spenlow of 'David

Copperfield') separated, though with mutual respect. He died in 1870 and

was buried in Westminster Abbey in the rather ostentatiously unpretentious

way which, with his deep-seated dislike for aristocratic conventions, he

had carefully prescribed in his will.

Dickens' popularity, in his own day and since, is due chiefly: (1) to his

intense human sympathy; (2) to his unsurpassed emotional and dramatic

power; and (3) to his aggressive humanitarian zeal for the reform of all

evils and abuses, whether they weigh upon the oppressed classes or upon

helpless individuals. Himself sprung from the lower middle class, and

thoroughly acquainted with the life of the poor and apparently of sufferers

in all ranks, he is one of the most moving spokesmen whom they have ever

had. The pathos and tragedy of their experiences--aged and honest toilers

subjected to pitiless task-masters or to the yoke of social injustice;

lonely women uncomplainingly sacrificing their lives for unworthy men;

sad-faced children, the victims of circumstances, of cold-blooded parents,

or of the worst criminals--these things play a large part in almost all of

Dickens' books. In almost all, moreover, there is present, more or less in

the foreground, a definite humanitarian aim, an attack on some

time-consecrated evil--the poor-house system, the cruelties practised in

private schools, or the miscarriage of justice in the Court of Chancery. In

dramatic vividness his great scenes are masterly, for example the storm in

'David Copperfield,' the pursuit and discovery of Lady Dedlock in 'Bleak

House,' and the interview between Mrs. Dombey and James Carker in 'Dombey

and Son.'

Dickens' magnificent emotional power is not balanced, however, by a

corresponding intellectual quality; in his work, as in his temperament and

bearing, emotion is always in danger of running to excess. One of his great

elements of strength is his sense of humor, which has created an almost

unlimited number of delightful scenes and characters; but it very generally

becomes riotous and so ends in sheer farce and caricature, as the names of

many of the characters suggest at the outset. Indeed Dickens has been

rightly designated a grotesque novelist--the greatest of all grotesque

novelists. Similarly his pathos is often exaggerated until it passes into

mawkish sentimentality, so that his humbly-bred heroines, for example, are

made to act and talk with all the poise and certainty which can really

spring only from wide experience and broad education. Dickens' zeal for

reform, also, sometimes outruns his judgment or knowledge and leads him to

assault evils that had actually been abolished long before he wrote.

No other English author has approached Dickens in the number of characters

whom he has created; his twenty novels present literally thousands of

persons, almost all thoroughly human, except for the limitations that we

have already noted. Their range is of course very great, though it never

extends successfully into the 'upper' social classes. For Dickens was

violently prejudiced against the nobility and against all persons of high

social standing, and when he attempted to introduce them created only

pitifully wooden automatons. For the actual English gentleman we must pass

by his Sir Leicester Dedlocks and his Mr. Veneerings to novelists of a very

different viewpoint, such as Thackeray and Meredith.

Dickens' inexhaustible fertility in characters and scenes is a main cause

of the rather extravagant lack of unity which is another conspicuous

feature of his books. He usually made a good preliminary general plan and

proceeded on the whole with firm movement and strong suspense. But he

always introduces many characters and sub-actions not necessary to the main

story, and develops them quite beyond their real artistic importance. Not

without influence here was the necessity of filling a specified number of

serial instalments, each of a definite number of pages, and each requiring

a striking situation at the end. Moreover, Dickens often follows the

eighteenth-century picaresque habit of tracing the histories of his heroes

from birth to marriage. In most respects, however, Dickens' art improved as

he proceeded. The love element, it should be noted, as what we have already

said implies, plays a smaller part than usual among the various aspects of

life which his books present.

Not least striking among Dickens' traits is his power of description. His

observation is very quick and keen, though not fine; his sense for the

characteristic features, whether of scenes in Nature or of human

personality and appearance, is unerring; and he has never had a superior in

picturing and conveying the atmosphere both of interiors and of all kinds

of scenes of human life. London, where most of his novels are wholly or

chiefly located, has in him its chief and most comprehensive portrayer.

Worthy of special praise, lastly, is the moral soundness of all Dickens'

work, praise which is not seriously affected by present-day sneers at his

'middle-class' and 'mid-Victorian' point of view. Dickens' books, however,

like his character, are destitute of the deeper spiritual quality, of

poetic and philosophic idealism. His stories are all admirable

demonstrations of the power and beauty of the nobler practical virtues, of

kindness, courage, humility, and all the other forms of unselfishness; but

for the underlying mysteries of life and the higher meanings of art his

positive and self-formed mind had very little feeling. From first to last

he speaks authentically for the common heart of humanity, but he is not one

of the rarer spirits, like Spenser or George Eliot or Meredith, who

transport us into the realm of the less tangible realities. All his

limitations, indeed, have become more conspicuous as time has passed; and

critical judgment has already definitely excluded him from the select ranks

of the truly greatest authors.

WILLIAM M. THACKERAY. Dickens' chief rival for fame during his later

lifetime and afterward was Thackeray, who presents a strong contrast with

him, both as man and as writer.

Thackeray, the son of an East India Company official, was born at Calcutta

in 1811. His father died while he was a child and he was taken to England

for his education; he was a student in the Charterhouse School and then for

a year at Cambridge. Next, on the Continent, he studied drawing, and though

his unmethodical and somewhat idle habits prevented him from ever really

mastering the technique of the art, his real knack for it enabled him later

on to illustrate his own books in a semi-grotesque but effective fashion.

Desultory study of the law was interrupted when he came of age by the

inheritance of a comfortable fortune, which he managed to lose within a

year or two by gambling, speculations, and an unsuccessful effort at

carrying on a newspaper. Real application to newspaper and magazine writing

secured him after four years a place on 'Eraser's Magazine,' and he was

married. Not long after, his wife became insane, but his warm affection for

his daughters gave him throughout his life genuine domestic happiness.

For ten years Thackeray's production was mainly in the line of satirical

humorous and picaresque fiction, none of it of the first rank. During this

period he chiefly attacked current vices, snobbishness, and sentimentality,

which latter quality, Thackeray's special aversion, he found rampant in

contemporary life and literature, including the novels of Dickens. The

appearance of his masterpiece, 'Vanity Fair' (the allegorical title taken

from a famous incident in 'Pilgrim's Progress'), in 'Fraser's Magazine' in

1847-8 (the year before Dickens' 'David Copperfield') brought him sudden

fame and made him a social lion. Within the next ten years he produced his

other important novels, of which the best are 'Pendennis,' 'Henry Esmond,'

and 'The Newcomes,' and also his charming essays (first delivered as

lectures) on the eighteenth century in England, namely 'English Humorists,'

and 'The Four Georges.' All his novels except 'Henry Esmond' were published

serially, and he generally delayed composing each instalment until the

latest possible moment, working reluctantly except under the stress of

immediate compulsion. He was for three years, at its commencement, editor

of 'The Cornhill Magazine.' He died in 1863 at the age of fifty-two, of

heart failure.

The great contrast between Dickens and Thackeray results chiefly from the

predominance in Thackeray of the critical intellectual quality and of the

somewhat fastidious instinct of the man of society and of the world which

Dickens so conspicuously lacked. As a man Thackeray was at home and at ease

only among people of formal good breeding; he shrank from direct contact

with the common people; in spite of his assaults on the frivolity and vice

of fashionable society, he was fond of it; his spirit was very keenly

analytical; and he would have been chagrined by nothing more than by

seeming to allow his emotion to get the better of his judgment. His novels

seem to many readers cynical, because he scrutinizes almost every character

and every group with impartial vigor, dragging forth every fault and every

weakness into the light. On the title page of 'Vanity Fair' he proclaims

that it is a novel without a hero; and here, as in some of his lesser

works, most of the characters are either altogether bad or worthless and

the others very largely weak or absurd, so that the impression of human

life which the reader apparently ought to carry away is that of a hopeless

chaos of selfishness, hypocrisy, and futility. One word, which has often

been applied to Thackeray, best expresses his attitude--disillusionment.

The last sentences of 'Vanity Fair' are characteristic: 'Oh! Vanitas

Vanitatum! which, of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire?

or, having it, is satisfied?--Come, children, let us shut the box and the

puppets, for our play is played out.'

Yet in reality Thackeray is not a cynic and the permanent impression left

by his books is not pessimistic. Beneath his somewhat ostentatious manner

of the man of the world were hidden a heart and a human sympathy as warm as

ever belonged to any man. However he may ridicule his heroes and his

heroines (and there really are a hero and heroine in 'Vanity Fair'), he

really feels deeply for them, and he is repeatedly unable to refrain from

the expression of his feeling. Nothing is more truly characteristic of him

than the famous incident of his rushing in tears from the room in which he

had been writing of the death of Colonel Newcome with the exclamation, 'I

have killed the Colonel!' In his books as clearly as in those of the most

explicit moralizer the reader finds the lessons that simple courage,

honesty, kindliness, and unselfishness are far better than external show,

and that in spite of all its brilliant interest a career of unprincipled

self-seeking like that of Becky Sharp is morally squalid. Thackeray

steadily refuses to falsify life as he sees it in the interest of any

deliberate theory, but he is too genuine an artist not to be true to the

moral principles which form so large a part of the substratum of all life.

Thackeray avowedly took Fielding as his model, and though his spirit and

manner are decidedly finer than Fielding's, the general resemblance between

them is often close. Fielding's influence shows partly in the humorous tone

which, in one degree or another, Thackeray preserves wherever it is

possible, and in the general refusal to take his art, on the surface, with

entire seriousness. He insists, for instance, on his right to manage his

story, and conduct the reader, as he pleases, without deferring to his

readers' tastes or prejudices. Fielding's influence shows also in the

free-and-easy picaresque structure of his plots; though this results also

in part from his desultory method of composition. Thackeray's great fault

is prolixity; he sometimes wanders on through rather uninspired page after

page where the reader longs for severe compression. But when the story

reaches dramatic moments there is ample compensation; no novelist has more

magnificent power in dramatic scenes, such, for instance, as in the

climactic series in 'Vanity Fair.' This power is based largely on an

absolute knowledge of character: in spite of a delight in somewhat fanciful

exaggeration of the ludicrous, Thackeray when he chooses portrays human

nature with absolute finality.

'Henry Esmond' should be spoken of by itself as a special and unique

achievement. It is a historical novel dealing with the early eighteenth

century, and in preparing for it Thackeray read and assimilated most of the

literature of the period, with the result that he succeeded in reproducing

the 'Augustan' spirit and even its literary style with an approach to

perfection that has never been rivaled. On other grounds as well the book

ranks almost if not quite beside 'Vanity Pair.' Henry Esmond himself is

Thackeray's most thoroughly wise and good character, and Beatrix is as real

and complex a woman as even Becky Sharp.

GEORGE ELIOT. The perspective of time has made it clear that among the

Victorian novelists, as among the poets, three definitely surpass the

others. With Dickens and Thackeray is to be ranked only 'George Eliot'

(Mary Anne Evans).

George Eliot was born in 1819 in the central county of Warwick from which

Shakspere had sprung two centuries and a half before. Her father, a manager

of estates for various members of the landed gentry, was to a large extent

the original both of her Adam Bede and of Caleb Garth in 'Middlemarch,'

while her own childish life is partly reproduced in the experiences of

Maggie in 'The Mill on the Floss.' Endowed with one of the strongest minds

that any woman has ever possessed, from her very infancy she studied and

read widely. Her nature, however, was not one-sided; all her life she was

passionately fond of music; and from the death of her mother in her

eighteenth year she demonstrated her practical capacity in the management

of her father's household. Circumstances. combined with her unusual ability

to make her entire life one of too high pressure, and her first struggle

was religious. She was brought up a Methodist, and during her girlhood was

fervently evangelical, in the manner of Dinah Morris in 'Adam Bede'; but

moving to Coventry she fell under the influence of some rationalistic

acquaintances who led her to adopt the scientific Positivism of the French

philosopher Comte. Her first literary work, growing out of the same

interest, was the formidable one of translating the 'Life of Jesus' of the

German professor Strauss. Some years of conscientious nursing of her

father, terminated by his death, were followed by one in Geneva, nominally

a year of vacation, but she spent it largely in the study of experimental

physics. On her return to England she became a contributor and soon

assistant editor of the liberal periodical 'The Westminster Review.' This

connection was most important in its personal results; it brought her into

contact with a versatile man of letters, George Henry Lewes, [Footnote:

Pronounced in two syllables.] and in 1854 they were united as man and wife.

Mr. Lewes had been unhappily married years before to a woman who was still

alive, and English law did not permit the divorce which he would have

secured in America. Consequently the new union was not a legal marriage,

and English public opinion was severe in its condemnation. In the actual

result the sympathetic companionship of Mr. Lewes was of the greatest value

to George Eliot and brought her much happiness; yet she evidently felt

keenly the equivocal social position, and it was probably in large part the

cause of the increasing sadness of her later years.

She was already thirty-six when in 1856 she entered on creative authorship

with the three 'Scenes from Clerical Life.' The pseudonym which she adopted

for these and her later stories originated in no more substantial reason

than her fondness for 'Eliot' and the fact that Mr. Lewes' first name was

'George.' 'Adam Bede' in 1859 completely established her reputation, and

her six or seven other books followed as rapidly as increasingly laborious

workmanship permitted. 'Romola.' [Footnote: Accented on the first

syllable.] in 1863, a powerful but perhaps over-substantial historical

novel, was the outcome partly of residence in Florence. Not content with

prose, she attempted poetry also, but she altogether lacked the poet's

delicacy of both imagination and expression. The death of Mr. Lewes in 1878

was a severe blow to her, since she was always greatly dependent on

personal sympathy; and after a year and a half, to the surprise of every

one, she married Mr. John W. Cross, a banker much younger than herself. But

her own death followed within a few months in 1880.

George Eliot's literary work combines in an interesting way the same

distinct and even strangely contrasting elements as her life, and in her

writings their relative proportions alter rather markedly during the course

of her career. One of the most attractive qualities, especially in her

earlier books, is her warm and unaffected human sympathy, which is

temperamental, but greatly enlarged by her own early experience. The

aspiration, pathos and tragedy of life, especially among the lower and

middle classes in the country and the small towns, can scarcely be

interpreted with more feeling, tenderness, or power than in her pages. But

her sympathy does not blind her to the world of comedy; figures like Mrs.

Poyser in 'Adam Bede' are delightful. Even from the beginning, however, the

really controlling forces in George Eliot's work were intellectual and

moral. She started out with the determination to render the facts of life

with minute and conscientious accuracy, an accuracy more complete than that

of Mrs. Gaskell, who was in large degree her model; and as a result her

books, from the beginning, are masterpieces of the best sort of realism.

The characters, life, and backgrounds of many of them are taken from her

own Warwickshire acquaintances and country, and for the others she made the

most painstaking study. More fundamental than her sympathy, indeed, perhaps

even from the outset, is her instinct for scientific analysis. Like a

biologist or a botanist, and with much more deliberate effort than most of

her fellow-craftsmen, she traces and scrutinizes all the acts and motives

of her characters until she reaches and reveals their absolute inmost

truth. This objective scientific method has a tendency to become sternly

judicial, and in extreme cases she even seems to be using her weak or

imperfect characters as deterrent examples. Inevitably, with her

disposition, the scientific tendency grew upon her. Beginning with

'Middlemarch' (1872), which is perhaps her masterpiece, it seems to some

critics decidedly too preponderant, giving to her novels too much the

atmosphere of psychological text-books; and along with it goes much

introduction of the actual facts of nineteenth century science. Her really

primary instinct, however, is the moral one. The supremacy of moral law may

fairly be called the general theme of all her works; to demonstrating it

her scientific method is really in the main auxiliary; and in spite of her

accuracy it makes of her more an idealist than a realist. With unswerving

logic she traces the sequence of act and consequence, showing how

apparently trifling words and deeds reveal the springs of character and how

careless choices and seemingly insignificant self-indulgences may

altogether determine the issues of life. The couplet from Aeschylus which

she prefixed to one of the chapters of 'Felix Holt' might stand at the

outset of all her work:

'Tis law as steadfast as the throne of Zeus--

Our days are heritors of days gone by.

Her conviction, or at least her purpose, is optimistic, to show that by

honest effort the sincere and high-minded man or woman may win happiness in

the face of all difficulties and disappointments; but her own actual

judgment of life was somber, not altogether different from that which

Carlyle repudiated in 'The Everlasting Yea'; so that the final effect of

her books, though stimulating, is subdued rather than cheerful.

In technique her very hard work generally assured mastery. Her novels are

firmly knit and well-proportioned, and have the inevitable movement of life

itself; while her great scenes equal those of Thackeray in dramatic power

and, at their best, in reserve and suggestiveness. Perhaps her chief

technical faults are tendencies to prolixity and too much expository

analysis of characters and motives.

SECONDARY MIDDLE AND LATER VICTORIAN NOVELISTS. Several of the other

novelists of the mid-century and later produced work which in a period of

less prolific and less highly developed art would have secured them high

distinction. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) spent most of his life, by his

own self-renouncing choice, as curate and rector of the little Hampshire

parish of Eversley, though for some years he also held the professorship of

history at Cambridge. An aggressive Protestant, he drifted in his later

years into the controversy with Cardinal Newman which opened the way for

Newman's 'Apologia.' From the outset, Kingsley was an enthusiastic worker

with F. D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement which aimed at the

betterment of the conditions of life among the working classes. 'Alton

Locke' and 'Yeast,' published in 1849, were powerful but reasonable and

very influential expressions of his convictions--fervid arguments in the

form of fiction against existing social injustices. His most famous books

are 'Hypatia' (1853), a novel dealing with the Church in its conflict with

Greek philosophy in fifth-century Alexandria, and 'Westward Ho!' (1855)

which presents with sympathetic largeness of manner the adventurous side of

Elizabethan life. His brief 'Andromeda' is one of the best English poems

in the classical dactylic hexameter.

Charles Reade (1814-1884), a man of dramatic disposition somewhat similar

to that of Dickens (though Reade had a University education and was

admitted to the bar), divided his interest and fiery energies between the

drama and the novel. But while his plays were of such doubtful quality that

he generally had to pay for having them acted, his novels were often strong

and successful. Personally he was fervently evangelical, and like Dickens

he was often inspired to write by indignation at social wrongs. His 'Hard

Cash' (1863), which attacks private insane asylums, is powerful; but his

most important work is 'The Cloister and the Hearth' (1861), one of the

most informing and vivid of all historical novels, with the father of

Erasmus for its hero. No novelist can, be more thrilling and picturesque

than Reade, but he lacks restraint and is often highly sensational and

melodramatic.

Altogether different is the method of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) in his

fifty novels. Trollope, long a traveling employé in the post-office

service, was a man of very assertive and somewhat commonplace nature.

Partly a disciple of Thackeray, he went beyond Thackeray's example in the

refusal to take his art altogether seriously as an art; rather, he treated

it as a form of business, sneering at the idea of special inspiration, and

holding himself rigidly to a mechanical schedule of composition--a definite

and unvarying number of pages in a specified number of hours on each of his

working days. The result is not so disastrous as might have been expected;

his novels have no small degree of truth and interest. The most notable are

the half dozen which deal with ecclesiastical life in his imaginary county

of Barsetshire, beginning with 'The Warden' and 'Barchester Towers.' His

'Autobiography' furnishes in some of its chapters one of the noteworthy

existing discussions of the writer's art by a member of the profession.

Richard Blackmore (1825-1900), first a lawyer, later manager of a

market-garden, was the author of numerous novels, but will be remembered

only for 'Lorna Doone' (1869), a charming reproduction of Devonshire

country life assigned to the romantic setting of the time of James II. Its

simple-minded and gigantic hero John Ridd is certainly one of the permanent

figures of English fiction.

Joseph H. Shorthouse (1834-1903), a Birmingham chemical manufacturer, but a

man of very fine nature, is likewise to be mentioned for a single book,

'John Inglesant' (1881). Located in the middle of the seventeenth century,

when the strife of religious and political parties afforded material

especially available for the author's purpose, this is a spiritual romance,

a High Churchman's assertion of the supremacy of the inner over the outer

life. From this point of view it is one of the most significant of English

novels, and though much of it is philosophical and though it is not free

from technical faults, parts of it attain the extreme limit of absorbing

narrative interest.

Walter Pater (1839-1894), an Oxford Fellow, also represents distinctly the

spirit of unworldliness, which in his case led to a personal aloofness from

active life. He was the master of a delicately-finished, somewhat

over-fastidious, style, which he employed in essays on the Renaissance and

other historical and artistic topics and in a spiritual romance, 'Marius

the Epicurean' (1885). No less noteworthy than 'John Inglesant,' and better

constructed, this latter is placed in the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus

Aurelius, but its atmosphere is only in part historically authentic.

GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1910). Except for a lack of the elements which make

for popularity, George Meredith would hold an unquestioned place in the

highest rank of novelists. In time he is partly contemporary with George

Eliot, as he began to publish a little earlier than she. But he long

outlived her and continued to write to the end of his life; and his

recognition was long delayed; so that he may properly be placed in the

group of later Victorian novelists. His long life was devoid of external

incident; he was long a newspaper writer and afterward literary reader for

a publishing house; he spent his later years quietly in Surrey, enjoying

the friendship of Swinburne and other men of letters.

Among novelists he occupies something the same place which Browning, a

person of very different temperament and ideas, holds among poets. He

writes only for intelligent and thoughtful people and aims to interpret the

deeper things of life and character, not disregarding dramatic external

incident, but using it as only one of the means to his main purpose. His

style is brilliant, epigrammatic, and subtile; and he prefers to imply many

things rather than to state them directly. All this makes large, perhaps

sometimes too large, demands on the reader's attention, but there is, of

course, corresponding stimulation. Meredith's general attitude toward life

is the fine one of serene philosophic confidence, the attitude in general

of men like Shakspere and Goethe. He despises sentimentality, admires

chiefly the qualities of quiet strength and good breeding which are

exemplified among the best members of the English aristocracy; and in all

his interpretation is very largely influenced by modern science. His virile

courage and optimism are as pronounced as those of Browning; he wrote a

noteworthy 'Essay on Comedy' and oftentimes insists on emphasizing the

comic rather than the tragic aspect of things, though he can also be

powerful in tragedy; and his enthusiasms for the beauty of the world and

for the romance of youthful love are delightful. He may perhaps best be

approached through 'Evan Harrington' (1861) and 'The Ordeal of Richard

Feverel' (1859). 'The Egoist' (1879) and 'Diana of the Crossways' (1885)

are among his other strongest books. In his earlier years he wrote a

considerable body of verse, which shows much the same qualities as his

prose. Some of it is rugged in form, but other parts magnificently

dramatic, and some few poems, like the unique and superb 'Love in the

Valley,' charmingly beautiful.

THOMAS HARDY. In Thomas Hardy (born 1840) the pessimistic interpretation of

modern science is expressed frankly and fully, with much the same pitiless

consistency that distinguishes contemporary European writers such as Zola.

Mr. Hardy early turned to literature from architecture and he has lived a

secluded life in southern England, the ancient Wessex, which he makes the

scene of all his novels. His knowledge of life is sure and his technique in

all respects masterly. He has preferred to deal chiefly with persons in the

middle and poorer classes of society because, like Wordsworth, though with

very different emphasis, he feels that in their experiences the real facts

of life stand out most truly. His deliberate theory is a sheer

fatalism--that human character and action are the inevitable result of laws

of heredity and environment over which man has no control. 'The Return of

the Native' (1878) and 'Far from the Madding Crowd' (1874) are among his

best novels, though the sensational frankness of 'Tess of the

D'Urbervilles' (1891) has given it greater reputation.

STEVENSON. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), the first of the rather

prominent group of recent Scotch writers of fiction, is as different as

possible from Hardy. Destined for the career of civil engineer and

lighthouse builder in which his father and grandfather were distinguished,

he proved unfitted for it by lack both of inclination and of health, and

the profession of law for which he later prepared himself was no more

congenial. From boyhood he, like Scott, studied human nature with keen

delight in rambles about the country, and unlike Scott he was incessantly

practising writing merely for the perfection of his style. As an author he

won his place rather slowly; and his whole mature life was a wonderfully

courageous and persistent struggle against the sickness which generally

prevented him from working more than two or three hours a day and often

kept him for months in bed unable even to speak. A trip to California in an

emigrant train in 1879-1880 brought him to death's door but accomplished

its purpose, his marriage to an American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, whom he had

previously met in artist circles in France. He first secured a popular

success with the boys' pirate story, 'Treasure Island,' in 1882. 'A Child's

Garden of Verses' (1885) was at once accepted as one of the most

irresistibly sympathetic of children's classics; and 'The Strange Case of

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1886), a unique and astonishingly powerful moral

lesson in the form of a thrilling little romance which strangely

anticipates the later discoveries of psychology, made in its different way

a still stronger impression. Stevenson produced, considering his

disabilities, a remarkably large amount of work--essays, short stories, and

romances--but the only others of his books which need here be mentioned are

the four romances of Scotch life in the eighteenth century which belong to

his later years; of these 'The Master of Ballantrae' and the fragmentary

'Weir of Hermiston' are the best. His letters, also, which, like his

widely-circulated prayers, reveal his charming and heroic personality, are

among the most interesting in the history of English Literature. His bodily

weakness, especially tuberculosis, which had kept him wandering from one

resort to another, at last drove him altogether from Europe to the South

Seas. He finally settled in Samoa, where for the last half dozen years of

his life he was busy not only with clearing his land, building his house,

and writing, but with energetic efforts to serve the natives, then involved

in broils among themselves and with England, Germany, and the United

States. His death came suddenly when he was only forty-four years old, and

the Samoans, who ardently appreciated what he had done for them, buried him

high up on a mountain overlooking both his home and the sea.

Stevenson, in the midst of an age perhaps too intensely occupied with the

deeper questions, stood for a return to the mere spirit of romance, and for

occasional reading he furnishes delightful recreation. In the last

analysis, however, his general lack of serious significance condemns him at

most to a secondary position. At his best his narrative technique (as in

'The Master of Ballantrae') is perfect; his portrayal of men (he almost

never attempted women) is equally certain; his style has no superior in

English; and his delicate sensibility and keenness of observation render

him a master of description. But in his attitude toward life he never

reached full maturity (perhaps because of the supreme effort of will

necessary for the maintenance of his cheerfulness); not only did he retain

to the end a boyish zest for mere adventure, but it is sometimes adventure

of a melodramatic and unnecessarily disagreeable kind, and in his novels

and short stories he offers virtually no interpretation of the world. No

recent English prose writer has exercised a wider influence than he, but

none is likely to suffer as time goes on a greater diminution of

reputation.

RUDYARD KIPLING. The name which naturally closes the list of Victorian

writers is that of Rudyard Kipling, though he belongs, perhaps, as much to

the twentieth century as to the one preceding. The son of a professor of

architecture and sculpture in the University of Bombay, India, he was born

in that city in 1865. Educated in England in the United Services College

(for officers in the army and navy), he returned at the age of seventeen to

India, where he first did strenuous editorial work on newspapers in Lahore,

in the extreme northwestern part of the country. He secured his intimate

knowledge of the English army by living, through the permission of the

commanding general, with the army on the frontiers. His instinct for

story-telling in verse and prose had showed itself from his boyhood, but

his first significant appearance in print was in 1886, with a volume of

poems later included among the 'Departmental Ditties.' 'Plain Tales from

the Hills' in prose, and other works, followed in rapid succession and won

him enthusiastic recognition. In 1890 he removed to the United States,

where he married and remained for seven years. Since then he has lived in

England, with an interval in South Africa. He wrote prolifically during the

'90's; since then both the amount of his production and its quality have

fallen off.

Kipling is the representative of the vigorous life of action as led by

manly and efficient men, and of the spirit of English imperialism. His poem

"The White Man's Burden" sums up his imperialism--the creed that it is the

duty of the higher races to civilize the lower ones with a strong hand; and

he never doubts that the greater part of this obligation rests at present

upon England--a theory, certainly, to which history lends much support.

Kipling is endowed with the keenest power of observation, with the most

genuine and most democratic human sympathies, and with splendid dramatic

force. Consequently he has made a unique contribution to literature in his

portrayals, in both prose and verse, of the English common soldier and of

English army life on the frontiers of the Empire. On the other hand his

verse is generally altogether devoid of the finer qualities of poetry.

'Danny Deever,' 'Pharaoh and the Sergeant,' 'Fuzzy Wuzzy,' 'The Ballad of

East and West,' 'The Last Chantey,' 'Mulholland's Contract,' and many

others, are splendidly stirring, but their colloquialism and general

realism put them on a very different level from the work of the great

masters who express the deeper truths in forms of permanent beauty. At

times, however, Kipling too gives voice to religious feelings, of a simple

sort, in an impressive fashion, as in 'McAndrews' Hymn,' 'The Recessional,'

and 'When earth's last picture is painted.' His sweeping rhythms and his

grandiose forms of expression, suggestive of the vast spaces of ocean and

plain and of inter-stellar space with which he delights to deal, have been

very widely copied by minor verse-writers. His very vivid and active

imagination enables him not only to humanize animal life with remarkable

success, as in the prose 'Jungle-Books,' but to range finely in the realms

of the mysterious, as in the short stories 'They' and 'The Brushwood Boy.'

Of short-stories he is the most powerful recent writer, as witness 'The Man

Who Would Be King,' 'The Man Who Was,' 'Without Benefit of Clergy,' and

'Wee Willie Winkie'; though with all the frankness of modern realism he

sometimes leads us into scenes of extreme physical horror. With longer

stories he is generally less successful; 'Kim,' however, has much power.

THE HISTORIANS. The present book, as a brief sketch of English Literature

rather strictly defined, has necessarily disregarded the scientists,

economists, and philosophers whose writings did much to mold the course of

thought during the Victorian period. Among the numerous prominent

historians, however, two must be mentioned for the brilliant literary

quality of their work. James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) was a disciple of

Carlyle, from whom he took the idea of making history center around its

great men and of giving to it the vivid effectiveness of the drama. With

Froude too this results in exaggeration, and further he is sadly

inaccurate, but his books are splendidly fascinating. His great 'History of

England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Armada' is his longest work; his

'Sketch' of Julius Cæsar is certainly one of the most interesting books of

biography and history ever written. John Richard Green (1837-1883), who was

a devoted clergyman before he became a historian, struggled all his life

against the ill-health which finally cut short his career. His 'History of

the English People' is an admirable representative of the modern historical

spirit, which treats general social conditions as more important than mere

external events; but as a narrative it vies in interest with the very

different one of Macaulay. Very honorable mention should be made also of W.

E. H. Lecky, who belongs to the conscientiously scientific historical

school. His 'History of Rationalism in Europe,' for example, is a very fine

monument of the most thorough research and most effective statement; but to

a mature mind its interest is equally conspicuous.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Beginning as early as the latter part of the eighteenth century literary

production, thanks largely to the tremendous increase of education and of

newspapers and magazines, has steadily grown, until now it has reached

bewildering volume and complexity, in which the old principles are partly

merged together and the new tendencies, for contemporary observers, at

least, scarcely stand out with decisive distinctness. Most significant

to-day, perhaps, are the spirit of independence, now carried in some

respects beyond the farthest previous Romantic limits, and the realistic

impulse, in which the former impulses of democracy and humanitarianism play

a large part. Facts not to be disregarded are the steady advance of the

short story, beginning early in the Victorian period or before, to a

position of almost chief prominence with the novel; and the rise of

American literature to a position approaching equality with that of

England. Of single authors none have yet certainly achieved places of the

first rank, but two or three may be named. Mr. William De Morgan, by

profession a manufacturer of artistic pottery, has astonished the world by

beginning to publish at the age of sixty-five a series of novels which show

no small amount of Thackeray's power combined with too large a share of

Thackeray's diffuseness. Mr. Alfred Noyes (born 1880) is a refreshingly

true lyric poet and balladist, and Mr. John Masefield has daringly enlarged

the field of poetry by frank but very sincere treatment of extremely

realistic subjects. But none of these authors can yet be termed great.

About the future it is useless to prophesy, but the horrible war of 1914 is

certain to exert for many years a controlling influence on the thought and

literature of both England and the whole world, an influence which, it may

be hoped, will ultimately prove stimulating and renovating.

Whatever may be true of the future, the record of the past is complete. No

intelligent person can give even hasty study to the fourteen existing

centuries of English Literature without being deeply impressed by its range

and power, or without coming to realize that it stands conspicuous as one

of the noblest and fullest achievements of the human race.

A LIST OF AVAILABLE EDITIONS FOR THE STUDY OF IMPORTANT AUTHORS

The author has in preparation an annotated anthology of poems from the

popular ballads down, exclusive of long poems. In the meantime existing

anthologies may be used with the present volume. The following list

includes rather more of the other authors than can probably be studied at

first hand in one college year. The editions named are chosen because they

combine inexpensiveness with satisfactory quality. It is the author's

experience that a sufficient number of them to meet the needs of the class

may well be supplied by the college. 'Everyman' means the editions in the

'Everyman Library' series of Messrs. E. P. Dutton and Co.; 'R. L. S.' the

'Riverside Literature Series' of The Houghton Mifflin Co.

BÉOWULF. Prose translation by Child; R. L. S., cloth, 25 cents. Metrical

translation by J. L. Hall; D. O. Heath & Co., cloth, 75 cents, paper, 30

cents.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Prose translation by Miss J. L. Weston,

Scribner, 75 cents.

CHAUCER. Among numerous school editions of the Prolog and The Knight's Tale

may be named one issued by The American Book Co., 20 cents.

MALORY'S MORTE DARTHUR. Everyman, two vols., 35 cents each. The Medieval

Drama, Early Plays, ed. Child, R. L. S., cloth, 40 cents. 'Everyman and

Other Plays' (modernized), Everyman, 35 cents.

SPENSER'S FAERIE QUEENE. Everyman, three vols., 35 cents each. Vol. I

contains Books I and II.

ELIZABETHAN LYRICS, ed. Schelling, Ginn, 75 cents. Marlowe's Plays. Mermaid

ed., Scribner, $1.00.

SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS. Among the most useful 25 cent editions are those in the

R. L. S., the Arden series of D. C. Heath and Co., and the Tudor Series of

the Macmillan Co.

JONSON'S SEJANUS. Mermaid ed. of Jonson (Scribner), Vol. II, $1.00.

BACON'S ESSAYS. R. L. S., cloth, 40 cents. Everyman, 35 cents.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LYRICS, ed. Schelling, Ginn, 75 cents.

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST. Astor ed., T. Y. Crowell and Co., 60 cents.

BUNYAN'S PILGRIMS' PROGRESS. Everyman, 35 cents.

DRYDEN'S ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. In Satires of Dryden, ed. Collins,

Macmillan.

DEFOE'S ROBINSON CRUSOE. Everyman.

SWIFT'S GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Everyman. There are two excellent volumes of

Selections from Swift, ed. Craik, Oxford University Press.

THE SPECTATOR PAPERS. Everyman, four vols.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. Selections, ed. Osgood, Henry Holt and Co., 50 cents.

BURKE. Selections, ed. Perry, Holt, 50 cents.

THOMSON'S SEASONS. Astor ed., Crowell, 60 cents.

MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. Everyman, three vols. Vol. I has the essays on Clive and

Hastings.

CARLYLE'S SARTOR RESARTUS. Everyman.

RUSKIN. Selections, ed. Tinker, R. L. S., 50 cents.

ARNOLD'S CULTURE AND ANARCHY. Nelson and Sons, 25 cents.

NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVELS. Largely included in Everyman.

ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY

These assignments must of course be freely modified in accordance with

actual needs. The discussions of the authors' works should sometimes, at

least, be made by the student in writing, sometimes after a day or two of

preliminary oral discussion in class. In addition to the special questions

here included, the treatment of the various authors in the text often

suggests topics for further consideration; and of course the material of

the preliminary chapter is assumed. Any discussion submitted, either orally

or in writing, may consist of a rather general treatment, dealing briefly

with several topics; or it may be a fuller treatment of a single topic.

Students should always express their own actual opinions, using the

judgments of others, recorded in this book or elsewhere, as helps, not as

final statements. Students should also aim always to be definite, terse,

and clear. Do not make such vague general statements as 'He has good choice

of words,' but cite a list of characteristic words or skilful expressions.

As often as possible support your conclusions by quotations from, the

author or by page-number references to relevant passages.

THE ASSIGNMENTS

1. Above, Chapter I. One day.

2. 'BÉOWULF.' Two days. For the first day review the discussion of the poem

above, pp. 33-36; study the additional introductory statement which here

follows; and read in the poem as much as time allows. For the second day

continue the reading, at least through the story of Béowulf's exploits in

Hrothgar's country (in Hall's translation through page 75, in Child's

through page 60), and write your discussion. Better read one day in a prose

translation, the other in a metrical translation, which will give some idea

of the effect of the original.

The historical element in the poem above referred to is this: In several

places mention is made of the fact that Hygelac, Béowulf's king, was killed

in an expedition in Frisia (Holland), and medieval Latin chronicles make

mention of the death of a king 'Chocilaicus' (evidently the same person) in

a piratical raid in 512 A. D. The poem states that Béowulf escaped from

this defeat by swimming, and it is quite possible that he was a real

warrior who thus distinguished himself.

The other facts at the basis of the poem are equally uncertain. In spite of

much investigation we can say of the tribes and localities which appear in

it only that they are those of the region of Scandinavia and Northern

Germany. As to date, poems about a historical Béowulf, a follower of

Hygelac, could not have existed before his lifetime in the sixth century,

but there is no telling how far back the possibly mythical elements may go.

The final working over of the poem into its present shape, as has been

said, probably took place in England in the seventh or eighth century; in

earlier form, perhaps in the original brief ballads, it may have been

brought to the country either by the Anglo-Saxons or by stray 'Danes.' It

is fundamentally a heathen work, and certain Christian ideas which have

been inserted here and there, such as the mention of Cain as the ancestor

of Grendel, and the disparagement of heathen gods, merely show that one of

the later poets who had it in hand was a Christian.

The genealogical introduction of something over fifty lines (down to the

first mention of Hrothgar) has nothing to do with the poem proper; the

Béowulf there mentioned is another person than the hero of the poem. In the

epic itself we can easily recognize as originally separate stories: 1.

Béowulf's fight with Grendel. 2. His fight with Grendel's mother. 3. His

fight with the fire-drake. And of course, 4, the various stories referred

to or incidentally related in brief.

Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative qualities, such as Movement,

Proportion, Variety, Suspense. Do the style (terse and suggestive rather

than explicit) and the tendency to digressions seriously interfere with

narrative progress and with the reader's (or listener's) understanding? 2.

Dramatic vividness of scenes and incidents. 3. Descriptive qualities. 4. Do

you recognize any specifically epic characteristics? 5. Characterization,

both in general and of individuals. 6. How much of the finer elements of

feeling does the poet show? What things in Nature does he appreciate? His

sense of pathos and humor? 7. Personal and social ideals and customs. 8.

The style; its main traits; the effect of the figures of speech; are the

things used for comparisons in metaphors and similes drawn altogether from

the outer world, or partly from the world of thought? 9. The main merits

and defects of the poem and its absolute poetic value?

Written discussions may well begin with a very brief outline of the story

(not over a single page).

3. Above, chapter II. One day.

4. 'SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT' (in translation). One day.

Preliminary, pages 57-58 above. The romance combines two stories which

belong to the great body of wide-spread popular narrative and at first had

no connection with each other: 1. The beheading story. 2. The temptation.

They may have been united either by the present author or by some

predecessor of his. Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative qualities--Unity,

Movement, Proportion, Variety, Suspense. Is the repetition of the hunts and

of Gawain's experience in the castle skilful or the reverse, in plan and in

execution? 2. Dramatic power--how vivid are the scenes and experiences? How

fully do we sympathize with the characters? 3. Power of characterization

and of psychological analysis? Are the characters types or individuals? 4.

Power of description of scenes, persons, and Nature? 5. Character of the

author? Sense of humor? How much fineness of feeling? 6. Theme of the

story? 7. Do we get an impression of actual life, or of pure romance? Note

specific details of feudal life. 8. Traits of style, such as alliteration

and figures of speech, so far as they can be judged from the translation.

5. THE PERIOD OF CHAUCER. Above, pages 59-73. One day.

6. CHAUCER'S POEMS. Two or three days. The best poems for study are: The

Prolog to the Canterbury Tales. The Nuns' Priest's Tale. The Knight's Tale.

The Squire's Tale. The Prolog to the Legend of Good Women. The text, above,

pp. 65 ff., suggests topics for consideration, if general discussion is

desired in addition to reading of the poems.

7. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY AND THE POPULAR BALLADS. One day. Study above,

pages 74-77, and read as many ballads as possible. A full discussion of the

questions of ballad origins and the like is to be found in the 'Cambridge'

edition (Houghton Mifflin) of the ballads, edited by Sargent and Kittredge.

In addition to matters treated in the text, consider how much feeling the

authors show for Nature, and their power of description.

8. MALORY AND CAXTON. Two or three days. Study above, pages 77-81, and read

in Le Morte Darthur as much as time permits. Among the best books are: VII,

XXI, I, Xlll-XVII. Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative qualities. 2.

Characterization, including variety of characters. 3. Amount and quality of

description. 4. How far is the book purely romantic, how far does reality

enter into it? Consider how much notice is given to other classes than the

nobility. 5. The style.

9. THE EARLIER MEDIEVAL DRAMA, INCLUDING THE MYSTERY PLAYS. Two days.

Above, Chapter IV, through page 88. Among the best plays for study are:

Abraham and Isaac (Riverside L. S. vol., p. 7); The Deluge or others in the

Everyman Library vol., pp. 29-135 (but the play 'Everyman' is not a Mystery

play and belongs to the next assignment); or any in Manly's 'Specimens of

the Pre-Shakespearean Drama,' vol. I, pp. 1-211. The Towneley Second

Shepherds' Play (so called because it is the second of two treatments of

the Nativity theme in the Towneley manuscript) is one of the most notable

plays, but is very coarse. Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative structure

and qualities. 2. Characterization and motivation. 3. How much illusion of

reality? 4. Quality of the religious and human feeling? 5. The humor and

its relation to religious feeling. 6. Literary excellence of both substance

and expression (including the verse form).

10. THE MORALITIES AND INTERLUDES. One day. Above, pp. 89-91. Students not

familiar with 'Everyman' should read it (E. L. S. vol., p. 66; Everyman

Library vol., p. 1). Further may be read 'Mundus et Infans' (The World and

the Child. Manly's 'Specimens,' I, 353). Consider the same questions as in

the last assignment and compare the Morality Plays with the Mysteries in

general excellence and in particular qualities.

11. THE RENAISSANCE, with special study of The Faerie Queene. Four days.

Above, Chapter V, through page 116. Read a few poems of Wyatt and Surrey,

especially Wyatt's 'My lute, awake' and 'Forget not yet,' and Surrey's

'Give place, ye lovers, heretofore.' In 'The Faerie Queene' read the

Prefatory Letter and as many cantos of Book I (or, if you are familiar with

that, of some other Books) as you can assimilate--certainly not less than

three or four cantos. Subjects for discussion: 1. The allegory; its

success; how minutely should it be applied? 2. Narrative qualities. 3. The

descriptions. 4. General beauty. 5. The romantic quality. 6. The language.

7. The stanza, e. g., the variety of poetical uses and of treatment in such

matters as pauses. The teacher may well read to the class the more

important portions of Lowell's essay on Spenser, which occur in the latter

half.

12. THE ELIZABETHAN LYRIC POEMS. Two days. Above, pages 117-121. Read as

widely as possible in the poems of the authors named. Consider such topics

as: subjects and moods; general quality and its contrast with that of later

lyric poetry; emotion, fancy, and imagination; imagery; melody and rhythm;

contrasts among the poems; the sonnets. Do not merely make general

statements, but give definite references and quotations. For the second day

make special study of such particularly 'conceited' poems as the following

and try to explain the conceits in detail and to form some opinion of their

poetic quality: Lyly's 'Apelles' Song'; Southwell's 'Burning Babe';

Ralegh's 'His Pilgrimage'; and two or three of Donne's.

13. THE EARLIER ELIZABETHAN DRAMA, with study of Marlowe's Tamburlaine,

Part I. Two days. Above, Chapter VI, through page 129. Historically,

Tamerlane was a Mongol (Scythian) leader who in the fourteenth century

overran most of Western Asia and part of Eastern Europe in much the way

indicated in the play, which is based on sixteenth century Latin lives of

him. Of course the love element is not historical but added by Marlowe.

Written discussions should begin with a very brief outline of the story

(perhaps half a page). Other matters to consider: 1. Is there an abstract

dramatic theme? 2. Can regular dramatic structure be traced, with a clear

central climax? 3. Variety of scenes? 4. Qualities of style, e. g.,

relative prominence of bombast, proper dramatic eloquence, and sheer

poetry. 5. Qualities, merits, and faults of the blank verse, in detail.

E.g.: How largely are the lines end-stopped (with a break in the sense at

the end of each line, generally indicated by a mark of punctuation), how

largely run-on (without such pause)? Is the rhythm pleasing, varied, or

monotonous? 6. Characterization and motivation.

14. THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE; SHAKSPERE; AND 'RICHARD II' AS A REPRESENTATIVE

CHRONICLE-HISTORY PLAY. Three days. Above, pages 129-140. The historical

facts on which Richard II is based may be found in any short English

history, years 1382-1399, though it must be remembered that Shakspere knew

them only in the 'Chronicle' of Holinshed. In brief outline they are as

follows: King Richard and Bolingbroke (pronounced by the Elizabethans

_Bullenbroke_) are cousins, grandsons of Edward III. Richard was a

mere child when he came to the throne and after a while five lords, among

whom were his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester (also called in the play

Woodstock), and Bolingbroke, took control of the government. Later, Richard

succeeded in recovering it and' imprisoned Gloucester at Calais in the

keeping of Mowbray. There Gloucester was murdered, probably by Richard's

orders. According to Holinshed, whom Shakspere follows, Bolingbroke accuses

Mowbray of the murder. (This is historically wrong; Bolingbroke's charge

was another, trumped up, one; but that does not concern us.) Bolingbroke's

purpose is to fix the crime on Mowbray and then prove that Mowbray acted at

Richard's orders.

The story of the play is somewhat similar to that of Marlowe's 'Edward II,'

from which Shakspere doubtless took his suggestion. Main matters to

consider throughout are: The characters, especially Richard and

Bolingbroke; the reasons for their actions; do they change or develop? How

far are the style and spirit like Marlowe; how far is there improvement? Is

the verse more poetic or rhetorical? In what sorts of passages or what

parts of scenes is rime chiefly used? Just what is the value of each scene

in furthering the action, or for the other artistic purposes of the play?

As you read, note any difficulties, and bring them up in the class.

_For the second day,_ read through Act III. Act I: Why did Richard at

first try to prevent the combat, then yield, and at the last moment forbid

it? Are these changes significant, or important in results? (The 'long

flourish' at I, iii, 122, is a bit of stage symbolism, representing an

interval of two hours in which Richard deliberated with his council.)

_For the third day,_ finish the play and write your discussion, which

should consist of a very brief outline of the story and consideration of

the questions that seem to you most important. Some, in addition to those

above stated, are: How far is it a mere Chronicle-history play, how far a

regular tragedy? Has it an abstract theme, like a tragedy? Are there any

scenes which violate unity? Is there a regular dramatic line of action,

with central climax? Does Shakspere indicate any moral judgment on

Bolingbroke's actions? General dramatic power--rapidity in getting started,

in movement, variety, etc.? Note how large a part women have in the play,

and how large a purely poetic element there is, as compared with the

dramatic. The actual historical time is about two years. Does it appear so

long?

15. 'TWELFTH NIGHT' AS A REPRESENTATIVE ROMANTIC COMEDY. Three days, with

written discussion. In the Elizabethan period the holiday revelry continued

for twelve days after Christmas; the name of the play means that it is such

a one as might be used to complete the festivities. Helpful interpretation

of the play is to be found in such books as: F. S. Boas, 'Shakspere and his

Predecessors,' pp. 313 ff; Edward Dowden, 'Shakspere's Mind and Art,' page

328; and Barrett Wendell, 'William Shakspere,' pp. 205 ff. Shakspere took

the outline of the plot from a current story, which appears, especially, in

one of the Elizabethan 'novels.' Much of the jesting of the clown and

others of the characters is mere light trifling, which loses most of its

force in print to-day. The position of steward (manager of the estate)

which Malvolio holds with Olivia was one of dignity and importance, though

the steward was nevertheless only the chief servant. The unsympathetic

presentation of Malvolio is of the same sort which Puritans regularly

received in the Elizabethan drama, because of their opposition to the

theater. Where is Illyria, and why does Shakspere locate the play there?

_First day_: Acts I and II. 1. Make sure you can tell the story

clearly. 2. How many distinct actions? 3. Which one is chief? 4. Why does

Shakspere combine them in one play? 5. Which predominates, romance or

realism? 6. Note specifically the improbable incidents. 7. For what sorts

of scenes are verse and prose respectively used? Poetic quality of the

verse? 8. Characterize the main persons and state their relations to the

others, or purposes in regard to them. Which set of persons is most

distinctly characterized?

_Second day_: The rest. (The treatment given to Malvolio was the

regular one for madmen; it was thought that madness was due to an evil

spirit, which must be driven out by cruelty.) Make sure of the story and

characters as before. 9. How skilful are the interweaving and development

of the actions? 10. How skilful the 'resolution' (straightening out) of the

suspense and complications at the end? 11. Is the outcome, in its various

details, probable or conventional? 12. Is there ever any approach to tragic

effect?

_Third day_: Write your discussion, consisting of: I, a rather full

outline of the story (in condensing you will do better not always to follow

Shakspere's order), and II, your main impressions, including some of the

above points or of the following: 13. How does the excellence of the

characterization compare with that in 'Richard II'? 14. Work out the

time-scheme of the play--the amount of time which it covers, the end of

each day represented, and the length of the gaps to be assumed between

these days. Is there entire consistency in the treatment of time? 15. Note

in four parallel columns, two for the romantic action and two for the

others together, the events in the story which respectively are and are not

presented on the stage.

16. 'HAMLET' AS A REPRESENTATIVE TRAGEDY. Four days, with written

discussion. Students can get much help from good interpretative

commentaries, such as: C. M. Lewis, 'The Genesis of Hamlet,' on which the

theories here stated are partly based; A. C. Bradley, 'Shakspearean

Tragedy,' pp. 89-174; Edward Dowden, 'Shakspere Primer,' 119 ff.; Barrett

Wendell, 'William Shakspere,' 250 ff.; Georg Brandes, 'William

Shakespeare,' one vol. ed., book II, chaps. xiii-xviii; F. S. Boas,

'Shakespeare and his Predecessors,' 384 ff.; S. T. Coleridge, 'Lectures on

Shakspere,' including the last two or three pages of the twelfth lecture.

The original version of the Hamlet story is a brief narrative in the

legendary so-called 'Danish History,' written in Latin by the Dane Saxo the

Grammarian about the year 1200. About 1570 this was put into a much

expanded French form, still very different from Shakspere's, by the

'novelist' Belleforest, in his 'Histoires Tragiques.' (There is a

translation of Belleforest in the second volume of the 'Variorum' edition

of 'Hamlet'; also in Hazlitt's 'Shakespeare Library,' I, ii, 217 ff.)

Probably on this was based an English play, perhaps written by Thomas Kyd,

which is now lost but which seems to be represented, in miserably garbled

form, in an existing text of a German play acted by English players in

Germany in the seventeenth century. (This German play is printed in the

'Variorum' edition of 'Hamlet,' vol. II.) This English play was probably

Shakspere's source. Shakspere's play was entered in the 'Stationers'

Register' (corresponding to present-day copyrighting) in 1602, and his play

was first published (the first quarto) in 1603. This is evidently only

Shakspere's early tentative form, issued, moreover, by a piratical

publisher from the wretchedly imperfect notes of a reporter sent to the

theater for the purpose. (This first quarto is also printed in the

'Variorum' edition.) The second quarto, virtually Shakspere's finished

form, was published in 1604. Shakspere, therefore, was evidently working on

the play for at least two or three years, during which he transformed it

from a crude and sensational melodrama of murder and revenge into a

spiritual study of character and human problems. But this transformation

could not be complete--the play remains bloody--and its gradual progress,

as Shakspere's conception of the possibilities broadened, has left

inconsistencies in the characters and action.

It is important to understand the situation and events at the Danish court

just before the opening of the play. In Saxo the time was represented as

being the tenth century; in Shakspere, as usual, the manners and the whole

atmosphere are largely those of his own age. The king was the elder Hamlet,

father of Prince Hamlet, whose love and admiration for him were extreme.

Prince Hamlet was studying at the University of Wittenberg in Germany; in

Shakspere's first quarto it is made clear that he had been there for some

years; whether this is the assumption in the final version is one of the

minor questions to consider. Hamlet's age should also be considered. The

wife of the king and mother of Prince Hamlet was Gertrude, a weak but

attractive woman of whom they were both very fond. The king had a brother,

Claudius, whom Prince Hamlet had always intensely disliked. Claudius had

seduced Gertrude, and a few weeks before the play opens murdered King

Hamlet in the way revealed in Act I. Of the former crime no one but the

principals were aware; of the latter at most no one but Claudius and

Gertrude; in the first quarto it is made clear that she was ignorant of it;

whether that is Shakspere's meaning in the final version is another

question to consider. After the murder Claudius got himself elected king by

the Danish nobles. There was nothing illegal in this; the story assumes

that as often in medieval Europe a new king might be chosen from among all

the men of the royal family; but Prince Hamlet had reason to feel that

Claudius had taken advantage of his absence to forestall his natural

candidacy. The respect shown throughout the play by Claudius to Polonius,

the Lord Chamberlain, now in his dotage, suggests that possibly Polonius

was instrumental in securing Claudius' election. A very few weeks after the

death of King Hamlet, Claudius married Gertrude. Prince Hamlet, recalled to

Denmark by the news of his father's death, was plunged into a state of

wretched despondency by the shock of that terrible grief and by his

mother's indecently hasty marriage to a man whom he detested.

There has been much discussion as to whether or not Shakspere means to

represent Hamlet as mad, but very few competent critics now believe that

Hamlet is mad at any time. The student should discover proof of this

conclusion in the play; but it should be added that all the earlier

versions of the story explicitly state that the madness is feigned.

Hamlet's temperament, however, should receive careful consideration. The

actual central questions of the play are: 1. Why does Hamlet delay in

killing King Claudius after the revelation by his father's Ghost in I iv?

2. Why does he feign madness? As to the delay: It must be premised that the

primitive law of blood-revenge is still binding in Denmark, so that after

the revelation by the Ghost it is Hamlet's duty to kill Claudius. Of course

it is dramatically necessary that he shall delay, otherwise there would be

no play; but that is irrelevant to the question of the human motivation.

The following are the chief explanations suggested, and students should

carefully consider how far each of them may be true. 1. There are external

difficulties, _a_. In the earlier versions of the story Claudius was

surrounded by guards, so that Hamlet could not get at him. Is this true in

Shakspere's play? _b_. Hamlet must wait until he can justify his deed

to the court; otherwise his act would be misunderstood and he might himself

be put to death, and so fail of real revenge. Do you find indications that

Shakspere takes this view? 2. Hamlet is a sentimental weakling, incapable

by nature of decisive action. This was the view of Goethe. Is it consistent

with Hamlet's words and deeds? 3. Hamlet's scholar's habit of study and

analysis has largely paralyzed his natural power of action. He must stop

and weigh every action beforehand, until he bewilders himself in the maze

of incentives and dissuasives. 4. This acquired tendency is greatly

increased by his present state of extreme grief and despondency.

(Especially argued by Professor Bradley.) 5. His moral nature revolts at

the idea of assassination; in him the barbarous standard of a primitive

time and the finer feelings of a highly civilized and sensitive man are in

conflict. 6. He distrusts the authenticity of the Ghost and wishes to make

sure that it is not (literally) a device of the devil before obeying it.

Supposing that this is so, does it suffice for the complete explanation,

and is Hamlet altogether sincere in falling back on it?

In a hasty study like the present the reasons for Hamlet's pretense of

madness can be arrived at only by starting not only with some knowledge of

the details of the earlier versions but with some definite theory. The one

which follows is substantially that of Professor Lewis. The pretense of

madness was a natural part of the earlier versions, since in them Hamlet's

uncle killed his father openly and knew that Hamlet would naturally wish to

avenge the murder; in those versions Hamlet feigns madness in order that he

may seem harmless. In Shakspere's play (and probably in the older play from

which he drew), Claudius does not know that Hamlet is aware of his guilt;

hence Hamlet's pretense of madness is not only useless but foolish, for it

attracts unnecessary attention to him and if discovered to be a pretense

must suggest that he has some secret plan, that is, must suggest to

Claudius that Hamlet may know the truth. Shakspere, therefore, retains the

pretense of madness mainly because it had become too popular a part of the

story (which was known beforehand to most theater-goers) to be omitted.

Shakspere suggests as explanations (motivation) for it, first that it

serves as a safety-valve for Hamlet's emotions (is this an adequate

reason?); and second that he resolves on it in the first heat of his

excitement at the Ghost's revelation (I, iv). The student should consider

whether this second explanation is sound, whether at that moment Hamlet

could weigh the whole situation and the future probabilities, could realize

that he would delay in obeying the Ghost and so would need the shield of

pretended madness. Whether or not Shakspere's treatment seems rational on

analysis the student should consider whether it is satisfactory as the play

is presented on the stage, which is what a dramatist primarily aims at. It

should be remembered also that Shakspere's personal interest is in the

struggle in Hamlet's inner nature.

Another interesting question regards Hamlet's love for Ophelia. When did it

begin? Is it very deep, so that, as some critics hold, when Ophelia fails

him he suffers another incurable wound, or is it a very secondary thing as

compared with his other interests? Is the evidence in the play sufficiently

clear to decide these questions conclusively? Is it always consistent?

_For the second day,_ study to the end of Act II. Suggestions on

details (the line numbers are those adopted in the 'Globe' edition and

followed in most others): I, ii: Notice particularly the difference in the

attitude of Hamlet toward Claudius and Gertrude respectively and the

attitude of Claudius toward him. At the end of the scene notice the

qualities of Hamlet's temperament and intellect. Scenes iv and v: Again

notice Hamlet's temperament, v, 107: The 'tables' are the waxen tablet

which Hamlet as a student carries. It is of course absurd for him to write

on them now; he merely does instinctively, in his excitement and

uncertainty, what he is used to doing. 115-116: The falconer's cry to his

bird; here used because of its penetrating quality. 149 ff.: The speaking

of the Ghost under the floor is a sensational element which Shakspere keeps

for effect from the older play, where it is better motivated--there Hamlet

started to tell everything to his companions, and the Ghost's cries are

meant to indicate displeasure. II, ii, 342; 'The city' is Wittenberg. What

follows is a topical allusion to the rivalry at the time of writing between

the regular men's theatrical companies and those of the boys.

_Third day,_ Acts III and IV. III, i, 100-101: Professor Lewis points

out that these lines, properly placed in the first quarto, are out of order

here, since up to this point in the scene Ophelia has reason to tax herself

with unkindness, but none to blame Hamlet. This is an oversight of

Shakspere in revising. Scene ii, 1 ff.: A famous piece of professional

histrionic criticism, springing from Shakspere's irritation at bad acting;

of course it is irrelevant to the play. 95: Note 'I must be idle.' Scene

iii: Does the device of the play of scene ii prove wise and successful, on

the whole? 73 ff.: Is Hamlet sincere with himself here?

_Fourth day:_ Finish the play and write your discussion. V, i: Why are

the clowns brought into the play? ii, 283: A 'union' was a large pearl,

here dissolved in the wine to make it more precious. In the old play

instead of the pearl there was a diamond pounded fine, which constituted

the poison. Why is Fortinbras included in the play?

Your discussion should include a much condensed outline of the play, a

statement of its theme and main meanings as you see them, and a careful

treatment of whatever question or questions most interest you. In addition

to those above suggested, the character of Hamlet is an attractive topic.

17. The Rest of the Dramatists to 1642, and the Study of Jonson's

'Sejanus.' Three days, with written discussion of 'Sejanus.' Above, pp.

141-150. Preliminary information about 'Sejanus:' Of the characters in the

play the following are patriots, opposed to Sejanus: Agrippina, Drusus, the

three boys, Arruntius, Silius, Sabinus, Lepidus, Cordus, Gallus, Regulus.

The rest, except Macro and Laco, are partisans of Sejanus. In his estimate

of Tiberius' character Jonson follows the traditional view, which scholars

now believe unjust. Sejanus' rule actually lasted from 23-31 A.D.; Jonson

largely condenses. Livia Augusta, still alive at the time of the play, and

there referred to as 'the great Augusta,' was mother of Tiberius and a

Drusus (now dead) by a certain Tiberius Claudius Nero (not the Emperor

Nero). After his death she married the Emperor Augustus, who adopted

Tiberius and whom Tiberius has succeeded. The Drusus above-mentioned has

been murdered by Tiberius and Sejanus. By the Agrippina of the play Drusus

was mother of the three boys of the play, Nero (not the Emperor), Drusus

Junior, and Caligula (later Emperor). The Drusus Senior of the play is son

of Tiberius. In reading the play do not omit the various introductory prose

addresses, etc. (The collaborator whose part Jonson has characteristically

displaced in the final form of the play may have been Shakspere.)

_For the second day,_ read through Act IV. Questions: 1. How far does

Jonson follow the classical principles of art and the drama, general and

special? 2. Try to formulate definitely the differences between Jonson's

and Shakspere's method of presenting Roman life, and their respective power

and effects. Does Jonson's knowledge interfere with his dramatic

effectiveness? 3. The characters. Why so many? How many are distinctly

individualized? Characterize these. What methods of characterization does

Jonson use? 4. Compare Jonson's style and verse with Shakspere's. 5.

Effectiveness of III, 1? Is Tiberius sincere in saying that he meant to

spare Silius?

_For the third day_, finish the reading and write your discussion. 6.

Excellence in general dramatic qualities, especially Movement, Suspense,

Variety. Is the act-division organic? 7. State the theme. 8. Locate the

points in the line of action, especially the central climax. 9. Specific

points of influence from Greek and Senecan tragedy. Begin your discussion

with a summary of the story (but do not merely copy from Jonson's own

preliminary 'argument').

18. Francis Bacon and his Essays. One day. Above, pp. 151-156. Read half a

dozen of the Essays, including those on Studies and Friendship. The

numerous illustrations from classical history and literature were of course

natural to Bacon and his readers. The main matters for consideration are

suggested above. It would be interesting to state definitely, with

illustrations, those characteristics of Bacon's mind which make it

impossible that he should have written Shakspere's plays. Or you might

compare and contrast his essays with others that you know, such as those of

Emerson, Addison, Macaulay, or Lamb.

19. The King James Bible. If circumstances permit any number of hours may

be devoted to the style of the Bible or its contents--literary form,

narrative qualities or a hundred other topics. Comparison with the

Wiclifite or other earlier versions is interesting. Above, pp. 156-157.

20. The Seventeenth Century Minor Lyric Poets. Two days. Above, pages

157-164. Read as many as possible of the poems of the authors named.

Consider the differences in subjects and tone between them and the

Elizabethan poets on the one hand and the nineteenth century poets on the

other. Form a judgment of their absolute poetic value.

21. Milton. Above, pp. 164-170. Every one should be familiar with all the

poems of Milton mentioned in the text. Suggested assignments:

One day. The shorter poems. In the 'Nativity Hymn,' 'L'Allegro,' and 'Il

Penseroso' note appeals to sight (especially light and color), sound, and

general physical sensation, and cases of onomatopoeia or especial

adaptation of metrical movement to the sense. Of Lycidas write a summary

outline, indicating thought-divisions by line numbers; state the theme; and

consider Unity. Does the conventional pastoralism render the poem

artificial or insincere? Respective elements of Classicism and Romanticism

in the shorter poems?

Questions on 'Paradise Lost' are included in the present author's

'Principles of Composition and Literature,' Part II, pages 204 ff. Perhaps

the most important Books are I, II, IV, and VI.

One of the most suggestive essays on Milton is that of Walter Bagehot.

22. Bunyan and 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Above, pages 171-174. Many students

will have read 'Pilgrim's Progress' as children, but most will gain by

critical study of it. Perhaps two days may be devoted to Part I. Subjects

for discussion, in addition to those above suggested: 1. The allegory.

Compare with that of 'The Faerie Queene.' 2. The style. Compare with the

Bible and note words or expressions not derived from it. 3. Bunyan's

religion--how far spiritual, how far materialistic? 4. His personal

qualities--sympathy, humor, etc. 5. His descriptions. Does he care for

external Nature? Any influence from the Bible?

23. THE RESTORATION PERIOD AND DRYDEN, Above, Chapter VIII. One day.

24. DRYDEN'S 'ALEXANDER'S FEAST' AND ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL,' Part I. How

does the lyric quality of 'Alexander's Feast' compare with that of the best

lyrics of more Romantic periods? Compare 'Absalom and Achitophel' with the

source in II Samuel, Chapter XIII, verse 23, to Chapter XVIII. 1. How

cleverly is the ancient story applied to the modern facts? (The comparison

of Charles II to David was not original with Dryden, but was a commonplace

of the Court party. Of the minor characters: Ishbosheth, line 58, is

Richard Cromwell; Zimri, 544 ff., the Duke of Buckingham; Corah, 632 ff.,

Titus Dates; Bathsheba, 710, the Duchess of Portsmouth; Barzillai, 817, the

Duke of Ormond; Zadoc, 864, Archbishop Bancroft. The 'progress' of 729 ff.

is that which Monmouth made in 1680 through the West of England. Who or

what are the Jebusites, Egypt, Pharoah, and Saul?) 2. Power as a satire? 3.

Qualities and effectiveness of the verse, as you see it. How regularly are

the couplets end-stopped? 4. Is it real poetry?

25. THE PSEUDO-CLASSIC PERIOD AND DANIEL DEFOE, with study of Part I of

'Robinson Crusoe.' Three days. Above, pages 189-195, and in 'Robinson

Crusoe' as much as time allows. Better begin with Robinson's fourth voyage

(in the 'Everyman' edition, page 27). Consider such matters as: 1. The

sources of interest. Does the book make as strong appeal to grown persons

as to children, and to all classes of persons? 2. The use of details. Are

there too many? Is there skilful choice? Try to discover some of the

numerous inconsistencies which resulted from Defoe's haste and general

manner of composition, and cases in which he attempts to correct them by

supplementary statements. 3. The motivation. Is it always satisfactory? 4.

Characterize Robinson. The nature of his religion? How far is his character

like that of Defoe himself? 5. Success of the characterization of the other

persons, especially Friday? Does Defoe understand savages? 6. Narrative

qualities. How far has the book a plot? Value of the first-personal method

of narration? 7. The Setting. Has Defoe any feeling for Nature, or does he

describe merely for expository purposes? 8. The style. 9. Defoe's nature as

the book shows it. His sense of humor, pathos, etc. 10. Has the book a

definite theme?

26. JONATHAN SWIFT. Two days. Above, pages 195-202. In the reading, a

little of Swift's poetry should be included, especially a part of 'On the

Death of Dr. Swift'; and of the prose 'A Modest Proposal,' perhaps the

'Journal to Stella' (in brief selections), 'A Tale of a Tub,' and

'Gulliver's Travels.' Of course each student should center attention on the

works with which he has no adequate previous acquaintance. In 'The Tale of

a Tub' better omit the digressions; read the Author's Preface (not the

Apology), which explains the name, and sections 2, 4, 6, and 11. Subjects

for discussion should readily suggest themselves.

27. STEELE AND ADDISON AND THE 'SPECTATOR' PAPERS. Two days. Above, pages

202-208. Read a dozen or more of the 'Spectator' papers, from the De

Coverly papers if you are not already familiar with them, otherwise others.

Subjects: 1. The style. What gives it its smoothness-balance of clauses,

the choice of words for their sound, or etc.? The relation of long and

short sentences. 2. The moral instruction. How pervasive is it? How

agreeable? Things chiefly attacked? 3. Customs and manners as indicated in

the essays-entertainments, modes of traveling, social conventions, etc. 4.

Social and moral standards of the time, especially their defects, as

attacked in the papers. 5. The use of humor. 6. Characterization in the De

Coverly papers. Is the method general or detailed? Is there much

description of personal appearance? Is characterization mostly by

exposition, action or conversation? How clear are the characters? 7. Is Sir

Roger real or 'idealized'? 8. General narrative skill (not merely in the De

Coverly papers). 9. How near do the De Coverly papers come to making a

modern story? Consider the relative proportions of characterization,

action, and setting. 10. Compare the 'Spectator' essays with any others

with which you are familiar.

28. ALEXANDER POPE. The number of exercises may depend on circumstances.

Above, pages 190-191 and 208-215. As many as possible of the poems named in

the text (except 'The Dunciad') should be read, in whole or in part. 'An

Essay on Criticism': (By 'Nature' Pope means actual reality in anything,

not merely external Nature.) Note with examples the pseudo-classical

qualities in: 1. Subject-matter. 2. The relation of intellectual and

emotional elements. 3. The vocabulary and expression. 4. How deep is Pope's

feeling for external Nature? 5. State his ideas on the relation of

'Nature,' the ancients, and modern poets; also on authority and

originality. 6. In relation to his capacity for clear thought note in how

many different senses he uses the word 'wit.' 'The Rape of the Lock': Note

the attitude toward women. Your opinion of its success? How far is it like,

how far unlike, the 'Essay on Criticism'? Was the introduction of the

sylphs fortunate? Pope took them from current notions--books had been

written which asserted that there was a fantastic sect, the Rosicrucians,

who believed that the air was full of them. 'Eloisa to Abelard': (Abelard

was a very famous unorthodox philosopher of the twelfth century who loved

Héloise and was barbarously parted from her. Becoming Abbot of a monastery,

he had her made Abbess of a convent. From one of the passionate letters

which later passed between them and which it is interesting to read in

comparison Pope takes the idea and something of the substance of the poem.)

In your opinion does it show that Pope had real poetic emotion? Does the

rimed pentameter couplet prove itself a possible poetic vehicle for such

emotion? The translation of 'The Iliad': Compare with corresponding

passages in the original or in the translation of Lang, Leaf, and Myers

(Macmillan). Just how does Pope's version differ from the original? How

does it compare with it in excellence? The 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot': Note

Pope's personal traits as they appear here. How do the satirical portraits

and the poem in general compare with Dryden's 'Absalom and Achitophel'? In

general summary consider: Pope's spirit, his artistry, his comparative rank

as a poet, and the merits and defects of the couplet as he employs it.

29. SAMUEL JOHNSON. Two days. Above, pages 216-223. 'The Vanity of Human

Wishes': How far does it illustrate the pseudo-classical characteristics

(above, pages 190 and 215) and Johnson's own traits? How does it compare

with Pope's poems in artistry and power? The prose reading should consist

of or include the letter to Lord Chesterfield, a few essays from 'The

Rambler,' one or more of the 'Lives of the Poets' and perhaps a part of

'Rasselas.' 1. The style, both absolutely and in comparison with previous

writers. Is it always the same? You might make a definite study of (a) the

relative number of long and short words, (b) long and short and (c) loose

and balanced sentences. 2. How far do Johnson's moralizing, his pessimism,

and other things in his point of view and personality deprive his work of

permanent interest and significance? 3. His skill as a narrator? 4. His

merits and defects as a literary critic? 5. His qualifications and success

as a biographer?

30. BOSWELL AND HIS 'LIFE OF JOHNSON.' One day. Above, pages 223-225. Read

anywhere in the 'Life' as much as time allows, either consecutively or at

intervals. Your impression of it, absolutely and in comparison with other

biographies? Boswell's personality. Note an interesting incident or two for

citation in class.

31. GIBBON AND 'THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.' One day. Above,

pages 225-229. Read a chapter or two in the history. Among the best

chapters are numbers 1, 2, 3, 11, 14, 17, 24, 26, 29, 30, 35, 39, 40, 44,

50, 52, 58, 59, 68. Questions for consideration are suggested above, such

as: his power in exposition and narration; how his history compares with

later ones; his style.

32. EDMUND BURKE. Two days. Above, pages 229-236. Every one should be

familiar with the speech 'On Conciliation with America.' The speeches at

Bristol are among the briefest of Burke's masterpieces. Beyond these, in

rapid study he may best be read in extracts. Especially notable are:

'Thoughts on the Present Discontents'; 'An Address to the King'; the latter

half of the speech 'On the Nabob of Areot's Debts'; 'Reflections on the

Revolution in France'; 'A Letter to a Noble Lord.' Subjects for

consideration are suggested by the text. It would be especially interesting

to compare Burke's style carefully with Gibbon's and Johnson's. His

technique in exposition and argument is another topic; consider among other

points how far his order is strictly logical, how far modified for

practical effectiveness.

33. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT, THOMSON, AND COLLINS. One day. Above, pages

236-240. The reading may include extracts from Thomson and should include

most of Collins' 'Odes.' The student should note specifically in Collins

respective elements of classic, pseudo-classic; and romantic spirit, in

general and in details.

34. GRAY, GOLDSMITH, PERCY, MACPHERSON, AND CHATTERTON. One day. Above,

pages 240-247. The reading should include most of Gray's poems and 'The

Deserted Village.' Questions for consideration are suggested in the text,

but students should be able to state definitely just what are the things

that make Gray's 'Elegy' a great poem and should form definite opinions as

to the rank of 'The Bard' and 'The Progress of Poesy' among lyrics. These

two poems are the best examples in English of, the true Pindaric Ode as

devised by the ancient Greeks. By them it was intended for chanting by

dancing choruses. It always consists of three stanzas or some multiple of

three. In each set of three the first stanza is called the strophe (turn),

being intended, probably, for chanting as the chorus moved in one

direction; the second stanza is called the antistrophe, chanted as the

chorus executed a second, contrasting, movement; and the third stanza the

epode, chanted as the chorus stood still. The metrical structure of each

stanza is elaborate (differing in different poems), but metrically all the

strophes and antistrophes in any given poem must be exactly identical with

each other and different from the epodes. The form is of course artificial

in English, but the imaginative splendor and restrained power of expression

to which it lends itself in skilful and patient hands, give it especial

distinction. Lowell declares that 'The Progress of Poesy' 'overflies all

other English lyrics like an eagle,' and Mr. Gosse observes of both poems

that the qualities to be regarded are 'originality of structure, the varied

music of their balanced strophes, as of majestic antiphonal choruses,

answering one another in some antique temple, and the extraordinary skill

with which the evolution of the theme is observed and restrained.' 'The

Progress of Poesy' allegorically states the origin of Poetry in Greece;

expresses its power over all men for all emotions; and briefly traces its

passage from Greece to Rome and then to England, with Shakspere, Milton,

Dryden, and finally some poet yet to be. 'The Bard' is the imagined

denunciatory utterance of a Welsh bard, the sole survivor from the

slaughter of the bards made by Edward I of England on his conquest of

Wales. The speaker foretells in detail the tragic history of Edward's

descendants until the curse is removed at the accession of Queen Elizabeth,

who as a Tudor was partly of Welsh descent.

35. COWPER, BLAKE AND BUMS. One day. Above, pages 247-253. The reading

should include a few of the poems of each poet, and students should note

definitely the main characteristics of each, romantic and general.

36. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NOVEL AND GOLDSMITH'S 'VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.'

Above, pages 253-264. Most students will already have some acquaintance

with 'The Vicar of Wakefield.' Read again as much as time allows,

supplementing and correcting your earlier impressions. Consider: 1. The

relation of idealism, romance, and reality. 2. Probability, motivation, and

the use of accident. 3. The characterization. Characterize the main

persons. 4. Narrative qualities, such as unity, suspense, movement. 5. Is

moralizing too prominent! 6. The style.

37. COLERIDGE. One day. Above, pages 265-270. Read at least 'Kubla Khan,'

'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' and Part I of 'Christabel.' In 'Kubla

Kahn' 'Xanadu' is Coleridge's form for 'Xamdu,' the capital of Kublai Khan

in Purchas's Pilgrimage, which Coleridge was reading when he fell into the

sleep in which he wrote the poem. Coleridge said (though he is not to be

trusted explicitly) that he composed the poem, to a length of over 200

lines, without conscious effort; that on awaking he wrote down what has

been preserved; that he was then called out on an errand; and returning

after an hour he could recollect only this much. How far do you agree with

Swinburne's judgment: 'It is perhaps the most wonderful of all poems. We

seem rapt into that paradise revealed to Swedenborg, where music and color

and perfume were one, where you could hear the hues and see the harmonies

of heaven. For absolute melody and splendor it were hardly rash to call it

the first poem in the language. An exquisite instinct married to a subtle

science of verse has made it the supreme model of music in our language,

unapproachable except by Shelley.' In all the poems consider: 1. Is his

romantic world too remote from reality to be interesting, or has it poetic

imagination that makes it true in the deepest sense? 2. Which is more

important, the romantic atmosphere, or the story? 3. How important a part

do description or pictures play? Are the descriptions minute or

impressionistic? 4. Note some of the most effective onomatopoeic passages.

What is the main meaning or idea of 'The Ancient Mariner'? With reference

to this, where is the central climax of the story? Try to interpret

'Christabel.'

38. WORDSWORTH. Two days. Above, pages 270-277. Read as many as time allows

of his most important shorter poems. Your impressions about: 1. His Nature

poems. 2. His ideas of the relation of God, Nature, and Man. 3. The

application of his theory of simple subjects and simple style in his

poems--its consistency and success. 4. His emotion and sentiment. 5. His

poems in the classical style. 6. His political and patriotic sonnets. 7.

His power as philosopher and moralizer. 8. His rank as a poet. For the last

day write a clear but brief outline in declarative statements, with

references to stanza numbers, of the 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality.'

What is its theme?

39. SOUTHEY, SCOTT, AND BYRON. Two days, with discussion of Byron. Above,

pages 277-288. No reading is here assigned in Southey or Scott, because

Southey is of secondary importance and several of Scott's works, both poems

and novels, are probably familiar to most students. Of Byron should be read

part of the third and fourth cantos of 'Childe Harold' and some of the

lyric poems. Subjects for discussion are suggested in the text. Especially

may be considered his feeling for Nature, his power of description, and the

question how far his faults as a poet nullify his merits.

40. SHELLEY. Two days. Above, pages 288-294. The reading should include the

more important lyric poems. 1. Does his romantic world attract you, or does

it seem too unreal? 2. Note specific cases of pictures, appeals to various

senses, and melody. 3. Compare or contrast his feeling for Nature and his

treatment of Nature in his poetry with that of Wordsworth, Coleridge,

Scott, or Byron. Read 'Adonais' last and include in your report an outline

of it in a dozen or two sentences, with references to stanza numbers. The

outline should indicate the divisions of the poems and should make the

thought-development clear. (The poem imitates the Greek elegies, of which

the earliest now preserved was the Lament by Bion for Adonis, the

mythological youth beloved by Venus.) Shelley seems to have invented the

name 'Adonais' (standing for 'Keats') on analogy with 'Adonis.' Stanzas 17,

27-29, and 36-38 refer to the reviewer of Keats' poems in 'The Quarterly

Review.' In stanza 30 'The Pilgrim of Eternity' is Byron and the poet of

Ierne (Ireland) is Thomas Moore. 231 ff: the 'frail Form' is Shelley

himself.

41. KEATS. One day. Above, pages 294-298. Read 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' the

'Ode to a Nightingale,' 'Ode to a Grecian Urn,' and others of the shorter

poems. 1. Note definitely for citation in class passages of strong appeal

to the various senses and of beautiful melody and cadence. 2. Just what are

the excellences of 'The Eve of St. Agnes'? Is it a narrative poem? 3.

Consider classical and romantic elements in the poems.

42. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VICTORIAN PERIOD, AND MACAULAY. Two days,

with written discussion, of Macaulay. Above, pages 299-309. read either (1)

one of the essays, for example that on Olive or Bacon or Pitt or Chatham or

Warren Hastings, or (2) a chapter in the History. Good chapters for the

purpose are: 3, 5, 8, 15, 16, 20, 25. The following topics may be used for

written discussions, or may be assigned to individual students for oral

reports in class. Oral reports should be either written out in full and

read or given from notes; they should occupy five or ten minutes each and

may include illustrative quotations. 1. The effect of Macaulay's

self-confidence and dogmatism on the power of his writing and on the

reader's feeling toward it. 2. His power in exposition; e.g., the number

and concreteness of details, the power of selection, emphasis, and bringing

out the essentials. 3. Structure, including Unity, Proportion, Movement. 4.

Traits of style; e.g., use of antithesis and figures of speech; sentence

length and balance. 5. How far does his lack of Idealism injure his work?

Has he the power of appealing to the grand romantic imagination? 6. His

power in description. 7. Power as a historian. Compare him with other

historians.

43. CARLYLE. Two days. Above, pages 309-314. Unless you are already

familiar with 'Sartor Resartus' read in it Book II, chapters 6-9, and also

if by any means possible Book III, chapters 5 and 8. Otherwise read in

'Heroes and Hero-Worship' or 'The French Revolution.' (The first and third

books of 'Sartor Resartus' purport to consist of extracts from a printed

book of Teufelsdröckh, with comments by Carlyle; the second book outlines

Teufelsdröckh's (Carlyle's) spiritual autobiography.) In 'Sartor Resartus':

1. Make sure that you can tell definitely the precise meaning of The

Everlasting No, The Center of Indifference, and The Everlasting Yea. Look

up, e. g. in 'The Century Dictionary,' all terms that you do not

understand, such as 'Baphometic Fire-Baptism.' 2. Your general opinion of

his style? 3. Note definitely its main peculiarities in (a) spirit; (b)

vocabulary and word forms; (c) grammar and rhetoric.

44. RUSKIN. Two days. Above, pages 314-319. Most convenient for the

purposes of this study is Tinker's 'Selections from Ruskin' (Riverside

Literature Series). Everything there is worth while; but among the best

passages are 'The Throne,' page 138, and 'St. Mark's,' page 150; while

pages 20-57 are rather more technical than the rest. Among Ruskin's

complete works 'Sesame and Lilies,' 'The Crown of Wild Olives,' and

'Præterita' are as available and characteristic as any. Subjects for

written or oral reports: 1. His temperament and his fitness as a critic and

teacher. 2. His style--eloquence, rhythm, etc. 3. His power of observation.

4. His power in description. Consider both his sensitiveness to

sense-impressions and his imagination. 5. His expository power. 6. His

ideas on Art. How far are they sound? (In the 'Selections' there are

relevant passages on pages 164, 200, and 233.) 7. His religious ideas. How

far do they change with time? 8. His ideas on modern political economy and

modern life. How far are they reasonable? (Perhaps 'Munera Pulveris' or

'Unto This Last' states his views as well as any other one of his works.)

9. Compare with Carlyle in temperament, ideas, and usefulness.

45. MATTHEW ARNOLD. Three days. Above, pages 319-325. The poems read should

include 'Sohrab and Rustum' and a number of the shorter ones. The

discussion of the poems may treat: The combination in Arnold of classic and

romantic qualities; distinguishing traits of emotion and expression; and,

in 'Sohrab and Rustum,' narrative qualities. If you are familiar with

Homer, consider precisely the ways in which Arnold imitates Homer's style.

Of the prose works best read 'Culture and Anarchy,' at least the

introduction (not the Preface), chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5, and the Conclusion.

Otherwise read from the essays named in the text or from Professor L. E.

Gates' volume of Selections from Arnold. Consider more fully any of the

points treated above. If you read the 'Essays on Translating Homer' note

the four main qualities which Arnold finds in Homer's style.

46. TENNYSON. Two days. Above, pages 325-329. Special attention may be

given to any one, or more, of the statements or suggestions in the text,

considering its application in the poems read, with citation of

illustrative lines. Or consider some of the less simple poems carefully. E.

g., is 'The Lady of Shalott' pure romance or allegory? If allegory, what is

the meaning? Outline in detail the thought-development of 'The Two Voices.'

Meaning of such poems as 'Ulysses' and 'Merlin and the Gleam'?

47. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING AND ROBERT BROWNING. Two days. Above, pages

329-335. In general consider the application of the statements in the text;

and in the case of Robert Browning consider emotional, dramatic,

descriptive, and narrative power, poetic beauty, and adaptation of the

verse-form to the substance. Interpret the poems as carefully as possible;

discussions may consist, at least in part, of such interpretations.

48. ROSSETTI, MORRIS AND SWINBURNE. Above, pages 335-341. Students might

compare and contrast the poetry of these three men, either on the basis of

points suggested in the text or otherwise.

From this point on, the time and methods available for the study are likely

to vary so greatly in different classes that it seems not worth while to

continue these suggestions.