thoughts, feelings, incidents, which every reader recognizes to be
absolutely true to life. At first glance it would seem that one man on a
desert island could not possibly furnish the material for a long story; but
as we read we realize with amazement that every slightest thought and
action--the saving of the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel, the preparation
for defense against imaginary foes, the intense agitation over the
discovery of a footprint in the sand--is a record of what the reader
himself would do and feel if he were alone in such a place. Defoe's long
and varied experience now stood him in good stead; in fact, he "was the
only man of letters in his time who might have been thrown on a desert
island without finding himself at a loss what to do;"[215] and he puts
himself so perfectly in his hero's place that he repeats his blunders as
well as his triumphs. Thus, what reader ever followed Defoe's hero through
weary, feverish months of building a huge boat, which was too big to be
launched by one man, without recalling some boy who spent many stormy days
in shed or cellar building a boat or dog house, and who, when the thing was
painted and finished, found it a foot wider than the door, and had to knock
it to pieces? This absolute naturalness characterizes the whole story. It
is a study of the human will also,--of patience, fortitude, and the
indomitable Saxon spirit overcoming all obstacles; and it was this element
which made Rousseau recommend _Robinson Crusoe_ as a better treatise on
education than anything which Aristotle or the moderns had ever written.
And this suggests the most significant thing about Defoe's masterpiece,
namely, that the hero represents the whole of human society, doing with his
own hands all the things which, by the division of labor and the demands of
modern civilization, are now done by many different workers. He is
therefore the type of the whole civilized race of men.
In the remaining works of Defoe, more than two hundred in number, there is
an astonishing variety; but all are marked by the same simple, narrative
style, and the same intense realism. The best known of these are the
_Journal of the Plague Year_, in which the horrors of a frightful plague
are minutely recorded; the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_, so realistic that
Chatham quoted it as history in Parliament; and several picaresque novels,
like _Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders_, and _Roxana_. The
last work is by some critics given a very high place in realistic fiction,
but like the other three, and like Defoe's minor narratives of Jack
Sheppard and Cartouche, it is a disagreeable study of vice, ending with a
forced and unnatural repentance.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761)
To Richardson belongs the credit of writing the first modern novel. He was
the son of a London joiner, who, for economy's sake, resided in some
unknown town in Derbyshire, where Samuel was born in 1689. The boy received
very little education, but he had a natural talent for writing letters, and
even as a boy we find him frequently employed by working girls to write
their love letters for them. This early experience, together with his
fondness for the society of "his dearest ladies" rather than of men, gave
him that intimate knowledge of the hearts of sentimental and uneducated
women which is manifest in all his work. Moreover, he was a keen observer
of manners, and his surprisingly accurate descriptions often compel us to
listen, even when he is most tedious. At seventeen years of age he went to
London and learned the printer's trade, which he followed to the end of his
life. When fifty years of age he had a small reputation as a writer of
elegant epistles, and this reputation led certain publishers to approach
him with a proposal that he write a series of _Familiar Letters_, which
could be used as models by people unused to writing. Richardson gladly
accepted the proposal, and had the happy inspiration to make these letters
tell the connected story of a girl's life. Defoe had told an adventure
story of human life on a desert island, but Richardson would tell the story
of a girl's inner life in the midst of English neighbors. That sounds
simple enough now, but it marked an epoch in the history of literature.
Like every other great and simple discovery, it makes us wonder why some
one had not thought of it before.
RICHARDSON'S NOVELS. The result of Richardson's inspiration was _Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded_, an endless series of letters[216] telling of the trials,
tribulations, and the final happy marriage of a too sweet young maiden,
published in four volumes extending over the years 1740 and 1741. Its chief
fame lies in the fact that it is our first novel in the modern sense. Aside
from this important fact, and viewed solely as a novel, it is sentimental,
grandiloquent, and wearisome. Its success at the time was enormous, and
Richardson began another series of letters (he could tell a story in no
other way) which occupied his leisure hours for the next six years. The
result was _Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady_, published in eight
volumes in 1747-1748. This was another, and somewhat better, sentimental
novel; and it was received with immense enthusiasm. Of all Richardson's
heroines Clarissa is the most human. In her doubts and scruples of
conscience, and especially in her bitter grief and humiliation, she is a
real woman, in marked contrast with the mechanical hero, Lovelace, who
simply illustrates the author's inability to portray a man's character. The
dramatic element in this novel is strong, and is increased by means of the
letters, which enable the reader to keep close to the characters of the
story and to see life from their different view points. Macaulay, who was
deeply impressed by _Clarissa_, is said to have made the remark that, were
the novel lost, he could restore almost the whole of it from memory.
Richardson now turned from his middle-class heroines, and in five or six
years completed another series of letters, in which he attempted to tell
the story of a man and an aristocrat. The result was _Sir Charles
Grandison_ (1754), a novel in seven volumes, whose hero was intended to be
a model of aristocratic manners and virtues for the middle-class people,
who largely constituted the novelist's readers. For Richardson, who began
in _Pamela_ with the purpose of teaching his hearers how to write, ended
with the deliberate purpose of teaching them how to live; and in most of
his work his chief object was, in his own words, to inculcate virtue and
good deportment. His novels, therefore, suffer as much from his purpose as
from his own limitations. Notwithstanding his tedious moralizing and his
other defects, Richardson in these three books gave something entirely new
to the literary world, and the world appreciated the gift. This was the
story of human life, told from within, and depending for its interest not
on incident or adventure, but on its truth to human nature. Reading his
work is, on the whole, like examining the antiquated model of a stern-wheel
steamer; it is interesting for its undeveloped possibilities rather than
for its achievement.
HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754)
LIFE. Judged by his ability alone, Fielding was the greatest of this new
group of novel writers, and one of the most artistic that our literature
has produced. He was born in East Stour, Dorsetshire, in 1707. In contrast
with Richardson, he was well educated, having spent several years at the
famous Eton school, and taken a degree in letters at the University of
Leyden in 1728. Moreover, he had a deeper knowledge of life, gained from
his own varied and sometimes riotous experience. For several years after
returning from Leyden he gained a precarious living by writing plays,
farces, and buffoneries for the stage. In 1735 he married an admirable
woman, of whom we have glimpses in two of his characters, Amelia, and
Sophia Western, and lived extravagantly on her little fortune at East
Stour. Having used up all his money, he returned to London and studied law,
gaining his living by occasional plays and by newspaper work. For ten
years, or more, little is definitely known of him, save that he published
his first novel, _Joseph Andrews_, in 1742, and that he was made justice of
the peace for Westminster in 1748. The remaining years of his life, in
which his best novels were written, were not given to literature, but
rather to his duties as magistrate, and especially to breaking up the gangs
of thieves and cutthroats which infested the streets of London after
nightfall. He died in Lisbon, whither he had gone for his health, in 1754,
and lies buried there in the English cemetery. The pathetic account of this
last journey, together with an inkling of the generosity and
kind-heartedness of the man, notwithstanding the scandals and
irregularities of his life, are found in his last work, the _Journal of a
Voyage to Lisbon_.
FIELDING'S WORK. Fielding's first novel, _Joseph Andrews_ (1742), was
inspired by the success of _Pamela_, and began as a burlesque of the false
sentimentality and the conventional virtues of Richardson's heroine. He
took for his hero the alleged brother of Pamela, who was exposed to the
same kind of temptations, but who, instead of being rewarded for his
virtue, was unceremoniously turned out of doors by his mistress. There the
burlesque ends; the hero takes to the open road, and Fielding forgets all
about Pamela in telling the adventures of Joseph and his companion, Parson
Adams. Unlike Richardson, who has no humor, who minces words, and
moralizes, and dotes on the sentimental woes of his heroines, Fielding is
direct, vigorous, hilarious, and coarse to the point of vulgarity. He is
full of animal spirits, and he tells the story of a vagabond life, not for
the sake of moralizing, like Richardson, or for emphasizing a forced
repentance, like Defoe, but simply because it interests him, and his only
concern is "to laugh men out of their follies." So his story, though it
abounds in unpleasant incidents, generally leaves the reader with the
strong impression of reality.
Fielding's later novels are _Jonathan Wild_, the story of a rogue, which
suggests Defoe's narrative; _The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling_ (1749),
his best work; and _Amelia_ (1751), the story of a good wife in contrast
with an unworthy husband. His strength in all these works is in the
vigorous but coarse figures, like those of Jan Steen's pictures, which fill
most of his pages; his weakness is in lack of taste, and in barrenness of
imagination or invention, which leads him to repeat his plots and incidents
with slight variations. In all his work sincerity is perhaps the most
marked characteristic. Fielding likes virile men, just as they are, good
and bad, but detests shams of every sort. His satire has none of Swift's
bitterness, but is subtle as that of Chaucer, and good-natured as that of
Steele. He never moralizes, though some of his powerfully drawn scenes
suggest a deeper moral lesson than anything in Defoe or Richardson; and he
never judges even the worst of his characters without remembering his own
frailty and tempering justice with mercy. On the whole, though much of his
work is perhaps in bad taste and is too coarse for pleasant or profitable
reading, Fielding must be regarded as an artist, a very great artist, in
realistic fiction; and the advanced student who reads him will probably
concur in the judgment of a modern critic that, by giving us genuine
pictures of men and women of his own age, without moralizing over their
vices and virtues, he became the real founder of the modern novel.
SMOLLETT AND STERNE
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) apparently tried to carry on Fielding's work;
but he lacked Fielding's genius, as well as his humor and inherent
kindness, and so crowded his pages with the horrors and brutalities which
are sometimes mistaken for realism. Smollett was a physician, of eccentric
manners and ferocious instincts, who developed his unnatural peculiarities
by going as a surgeon on a battleship, where he seems to have picked up all
the evils of the navy and of the medical profession to use later in his
novels.
His three best known works are _Roderick Random_ (1748), a series of
adventures related by the hero; _Peregrine Pickle_ (1751) in which he
reflects with brutal directness the worst of his experiences at sea; and
_Humphrey Clinker_ (1771), his last work, recounting the mild adventures of
a Welsh family in a journey through England and Scotland. This last alone
can be generally read without arousing the readers profound disgust.
Without any particular ability, he models his novels on _Don Quixote_, and
the result is simply a series of coarse adventures which are characteristic
of the picaresque novel of his age. Were it not for the fact that he
unconsciously imitates Jonson's _Every Man in His Humour_, he would hardly
be named among our writers of fiction; but in seizing upon some grotesque
habit or peculiarity and making a character out of it--such as Commodore
Trunnion in _Peregrine Pickle_, Matthew Bramble in _Humphrey Clinker_, and
Bowling in _Roderick Random_--he laid the foundation for that exaggeration
in portraying human eccentricities which finds a climax in Dickens's
caricatures.
Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) has been compared to a "little bronze satyr of
antiquity in whose hollow body exquisite odors were stored." That is true,
so far as the satyr is concerned; for a more weazened, unlovely personality
would be hard to find. The only question in the comparison is in regard to
the character of the odors, and that is a matter of taste. In his work he
is the reverse of Smollett, the latter being given over to coarse
vulgarities, which are often mistaken for realism; the former to whims and
vagaries and sentimental tears, which frequently only disguise a sneer at
human grief and pity.
The two books by which Sterne is remembered are _Tristram Shandy_ and _A
Sentimental Journey through France and Italy_. These are termed novels for
the simple reason that we know not what else to call them. The former was
begun, in his own words, "with no real idea of how it was to turn out"; its
nine volumes, published at intervals from 1760 to 1767, proceeded in the
most aimless way, recording the experiences of the eccentric Shandy family;
and the book was never finished. Its strength lies chiefly in its brilliant
style, the most remarkable of the age, and in its odd characters, like
Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, which, with all their eccentricities, are so
humanized by the author's genius that they belong among the great
"creations" of our literature. The _Sentimental Journey_ is a curious
combination of fiction, sketches of travel, miscellaneous essays on odd
subjects,--all marked by the same brilliancy of style, and all stamped with
Sterne's false attitude towards everything in life. Many of its best
passages were either adapted or taken bodily from Burton, Rabelais, and a
score of other writers; so that, in reading Sterne, one is never quite sure
how much is his own work, though the mark of his grotesque genius is on
every page.
THE FIRST NOVELISTS AND THEIR WORK. With the publication of Goldsmith's
_Vicar of Wakefield_ in 1766 the first series of English novels came to a
suitable close. Of this work, with its abundance of homely sentiment
clustering about the family life as the most sacred of Anglo-Saxon
institutions, we have already spoken[217] If we except _Robinson Crusoe_,
as an adventure story, the _Vicar of Wakefield_ is the only novel of the
period which can be freely recommended to all readers, as giving an
excellent idea of the new literary type, which was perhaps more remarkable
for its promise than for its achievement. In the short space of twenty-five
years there suddenly appeared and flourished a new form of literature,
which influenced all Europe for nearly a century, and which still furnishes
the largest part of our literary enjoyment. Each successive novelist
brought some new element to the work, as when Fielding supplied animal
vigor and humor to Richardson's analysis of a human heart, and Sterne added
brilliancy, and Goldsmith emphasized purity and the honest domestic
sentiments which are still the greatest ruling force among men. So these
early workers were like men engaged in carving a perfect cameo from the
reverse side. One works the profile, another the eyes, a third the mouth
and the fine lines of character; and not till the work is finished, and the
cameo turned, do we see the complete human face and read its meaning. Such,
in a parable, is the story of the English novel.
SUMMARY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. The period we are studying is included
between the English Revolution of 1688 and the beginning of the French
Revolution of 1789. Historically, the period begins in a remarkable way by
the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1689. This famous bill was the third
and final step in the establishment of constitutional government, the first
step being the Great Charter (1215), and the second the Petition of Right
(1628). The modern form of cabinet government was established in the reign
of George I (1714-1727). The foreign prestige of England was strengthened
by the victories of Marlborough on the Continent, in the War of the Spanish
Succession; and the bounds of empire were enormously increased by Clive in
India, by Cook in Australia and the islands of the Pacific, and by English
victories over the French in Canada and the Mississippi Valley, during the
Seven Years', or French and Indian, Wars. Politically, the country was
divided into Whigs and Tories: the former seeking greater liberty for the
people; the latter upholding the king against popular government. The
continued strife between these two political parties had a direct (and
generally a harmful) influence on literature, as many of the great writers
were used by the Whig or Tory party to advance its own interests and to
satirize its enemies. Notwithstanding this perpetual strife of parties, the
age is remarkable for the rapid social development, which soon expressed
itself in literature. Clubs and coffeehouses multiplied, and the social
life of these clubs resulted in better manners, in a general feeling of
toleration, and especially in a kind of superficial elegance which shows
itself in most of the prose and poetry of the period. On the other hand,
the moral standard of the nation was very low; bands of rowdies infested
the city streets after nightfall; bribery and corruption were the rule in
politics; and drunkenness was frightfully prevalent among all classes.
Swift's degraded race of Yahoos is a reflection of the degradation to be
seen in multitudes of London saloons. This low standard of morals
emphasizes the importance of the great Methodist revival under Whitefield
and Wesley, which began in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
The literature of the century is remarkably complex, but we may classify it
all under three general heads,--the Reign of so-called Classicism, the
Revival of Romantic Poetry, and the Beginning of the Modern Novel. The
first half of the century, especially, is an age of prose, owing largely to
the fact that the practical and social interests of the age demanded
expression. Modern newspapers, like the _Chronicle, Post_, and _Times_, and
literary magazines, like the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, which began in this
age, greatly influenced the development of a serviceable prose style. The
poetry of the first half of the century, as typified in Pope, was polished,
unimaginative, formal; and the closed couplet was in general use,
supplanting all other forms of verse. Both prose and poetry were too
frequently satiric, and satire does not tend to produce a high type of
literature. These tendencies in poetry were modified, in the latter part of
the century, by the revival of romantic poetry.
In our study we have noted: (1) the Augustan or Classic Age; the meaning of
Classicism; the life and work of Alexander Pope, the greatest poet of the
age; of Jonathan Swift, the satirist; of Joseph Addison, the essayist; of
Richard Steele, who was the original genius of the _Tatler_ and the
_Spectator_; of Samuel Johnson, who for nearly half a century was the
dictator of English letters; of James Boswell, who gave us the immortal
_Life of Johnson_; of Edmund Burke, the greatest of English orators; and of
Edward Gibbon, the historian, famous for his _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_.
(2) The Revival of Romantic Poetry; the meaning of Romanticism; the life
and work of Thomas Gray; of Oliver Goldsmith, famous as poet, dramatist,
and novelist; of William Cowper; of Robert Burns, the greatest of Scottish
poets; of William Blake, the mystic; and the minor poets of the early
romantic movement,--James Thomson, William Collins, George Crabbe, James
Macpherson, author of the Ossian poems, Thomas Chatterton, the boy who
originated the Rowley Papers, and Thomas Percy, whose work for literature
was to collect the old ballads, which he called the _Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry_, and to translate the stories of Norse mythology in his
_Northern Antiquities_.
(3) The First English Novelists; the meaning and history of the modern
novel; the life and work of Daniel Defoe, author of _Robinson Crusoe_, who
is hardly to be called a novelist, but whom we placed among the pioneers;
and the novels of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith.
SELECTIONS FOR READING. Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English Prose
(Ginn and Company) are two excellent volumes containing selections from all
authors studied. Ward's English Poets (4 vols.), Craik's English Prose
Selections (5 vols.), and Garnett's English Prose from Elizabeth to
Victoria are useful for supplementary reading. All important works should
be read entire, in one of the following inexpensive editions, published for
school use. (For titles and publishers, see General Bibliography at end of
this book.)
_Pope_. Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, edited by Parrott, in Standard
English Classics. Various other school editions of the Essay on Man, and
Rape of the Lock, in Riverside Literature Series, Pocket Classics, etc.;
Pope's Iliad, I, VI, XXII, XXIV, in Standard English Classics, etc.
Selections from Pope, edited by Reed, in Holt's English Readings.
_Swift_. Gulliver's Travels, school edition by Ginn and Company; also in
Temple Classics, etc. Selections from Swift, edited by Winchester, in
Athenaeum Press (announced); the same, edited by Craik, in Clarendon Press;
the same, edited by Prescott, in Holt's English Readings. Battle of the
Books, in King's Classics, Bohn's Library, etc.
_Addison and Steele_. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, in Standard English
Classics, Riverside Literature, etc.; Selections from Addison, edited by
Wendell and Greenough, and Selections from Steele, edited by Carpenter,
both in Athenaeum Press; various other selections, in Golden Treasury
Series, Camelot Series, Holt's English Readings, etc.
_Johnson_. Lives of the Poets, in Cassell's National Library; Selected
Essays, edited by G.B. Hill (Dent); Selections, in Little Masterpieces
Series; Rasselas, in Holt's English Readings, and in Morley's Universal
Library.
_Boswell_. Life of Johnson (2 vols.), in Everyman's Library; the same (3
vols.), in Library of English Classics; also in Temple Classics, and Bohn's
Library.
_Burke_. American Taxation, Conciliation with America, Letter to a Noble
Lord, in Standard English Classics; various speeches, in Pocket Classics,
Riverside Literature Series, etc.; Selections, edited by B. Perry (Holt);
Speeches on America (Heath, etc.).
_Gibbon_. The Student's Gibbon, abridged (Murray); Memoirs, edited by
Emerson, in Athenaeum Press.
_Gray_. Selections, edited by W.L. Phelps, in Athenaeum Press; Selections
from Gray and Cowper, in Canterbury Poets, Riverside Literature, etc.;
Gray's Elegy, in Selections from Five English Poets (Ginn and Company).
_Goldsmith_. Deserted Village, in Standard English Classics, etc.; Vicar of
Wakefield, in Standard English Classics, Everyman's Library, King's
Classics, etc.; She Stoops to Conquer, in Pocket Classics, Belles Lettres
Series, etc.
_Cowper_. Selections, edited by Murray, in Athenaeum Press; Selections, in
Cassell's National Library, Canterbury Poets, etc.; The Task, in Temple
Classics.
_Burns_. Representative Poems, with Carlyle's Essay on Burns, edited by
C.L. Hanson, in Standard English Classics; Selections, in Pocket Classics,
Riverside Literature, etc.
_Blake_. Poems, edited by W.B. Yeats, in Muses' Library; Selections, in
Canterbury Poets, etc.
_Minor Poets_. Thomson, Collins, Crabbe, etc. Selections, in Manly's
English Poetry. Thomson's The Seasons, and Castle of Indolence, in Modern
Classics; the same poems in Clarendon Press, and in Temple Classics;
Selections from Thomson, in Cassell's National Library. Chatterton's poems,
in Canterbury Poets. Macpherson's Ossian, in Canterbury Poets. Percy's
Reliques, in Everyman's Library, Chandos Classics, Bohn's Library, etc.
More recent and reliable collections of popular ballads, for school use,
are Gummere's Old English Ballads, in Athenaeum Press; The Ballad Book,
edited by Allingham, in Goldern Treasury Series; Gayley and Flaherty's
Poetry of the People (Ginn and Company), etc. See Bibliography on p. 64.
_Defoe_. Robinson Crusoe, school edition, by Ginn and Company; the same in
Pocket Classics, etc.; Journal of the Plague Year, edited by Hurlbut (Ginn
and Company); the same, in Everyman's Library, etc.; Essay on Projects, in
Cassell's National Library.
_The Novelists_. Manly's English Prose; Craik's English Prose Selections,
vol. 4; Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (see above); Selected Essays of
Fielding, edited by Gerould, in Athenæum Press.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.[218]
_HISTORY_. _Text-book_, Montgomery, pp. 280-322; Cheyney, pp. 516-574.
_General Works_, Greene, ch. 9, sec. 7, to ch. 10, sec. 4; Traill,
Gardiner, Macaulay, etc. _Special Works_, Lecky's History of England in the
Eighteenth Century, vols. 1-3; Morris's The Age of Queen Anne and the Early
Hanoverians (Epochs of Modern History); Seeley's The Expansion of England;
Macaulay's Clive, and Chatham; Thackeray's The Four Georges, and the
English Humorists; Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne; Susan
Hale's Men and Manners of the Eighteenth Century; Sydney's England and the
English in the Eighteenth Century.
_LITERATURE. General Works_. The Cambridge Literature, Taine, Saintsbury,
etc. _Special Works_. Perry's English Literature in the Eighteenth Century;
L. Stephen's English Literature in the Eighteenth Century; Seccombe's The
Age of Johnson; Dennis's The Age of Pope; Gosse's History of English
Literature in the Eighteenth Century; Whitwell's Some Eighteenth Century
Men of Letters (Cowper, Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith, Gray, Johnson, and
Boswell); Johnson's Eighteenth Century Letters and Letter Writers;
Williams's English Letters and Letter Writers of the Eighteenth Century;
Minto's Manual of English Prose Writers; Clark's Study of English Prose
Writers; Bourne's English Newspapers; J.B. Williams's A History of English
Journalism; L. Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century.
_The Romantic Revival_. W.L. Phelps's The Beginnings of the English
Romantic Movement; Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century.
_The Novel_. Raleigh's The English Novel; Simonds's An Introduction to the
Study of English Fiction; Cross's The Development of the English Novel;
Jusserand's The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare; Stoddard's The
Evolution of the English Novel; Warren's The History of the English Novel
previous to the Seventeenth Century; Masson's British Novelists and their
Styles; S. Lanier's The English Novel; Hamilton's the Materials and Methods
of Fiction; Perry's A Study of Prose Fiction.
_Pope_. Texts: Works in Globe Edition, edited by A.W. Ward; in Cambridge
Poets, edited by H.W. Boynton; Satires and Epistles, in Clarendon Press;
Letters, in English Letters and Letter Writers of the Eighteenth Century,
edited by H. Williams (Bell). Life: by Courthope; by L. Stephen (English
Men of Letters Series); by Ward, in Globe Edition; by Johnson, in Lives of
the Poets (Cassell's National Library, etc.). Criticism: Essays, by L.
Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Lowell, in My Study Windows; by De
Quincey, in Biographical Essays, and in Essays on the Poets; by Thackeray,
in English Humorists; by Sainte-Beuve, in English Portraits. Warton's
Genius and Writings of Pope (interesting chiefly from the historical view
point, as the first definite and extended attack on Pope's writings).
_Swift_. Texts: Works, 19 vols., ed. by Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1814-
1824); best edition of prose works is edited by T. Scott, with introduction
by Lecky, 12 vols. (Bonn's Library); Selections, edited by Winchester (Ginn
and Company); also in Camelot Series, Carisbrooke Library, etc., Journal to
Stella, (Dutton, also Putnam); Letters, in Eighteenth Century Letters and
Letter Writers, ed. by T.B. Johnson. Life: by L. Stephen (English Men of
Letters); by Collins; by Craik; by J. Forster; by Macaulay; by Walter
Scott; by Johnson, in Lives of the Poets. Criticism: Essays, by Thackeray,
in English Humorists; by A. Dobson, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes; by
Masson, in the Three Devils and Other Essays.
_Addison_. Texts: Works, in Bohn's British Classics; Selections, in
Athenaeum Press, etc. Life: by Lucy Aiken; by Courthope (English Men of
Letters); by Johnson, in Lives of the Poets. Criticism: Essays, by
Macaulay; by Thackeray.
_Steele_. Texts: Selections, edited by Carpenter in Athenaeum Press (Ginn
and Company); various other Selections published by Putnam, Bangs, in
Camelot Series, etc.; Plays, edited by Aitken, in Mermaid Series. Life: by
Aitken; by A. Dobson (English Worthies Series). Criticism: Essays by
Thackeray; by Dobson, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes.
_Johnson_. Texts: Works, edited by Walesby, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1825); the
same, edited by G.B. Hill, in Clarendon Press. Essays, edited by G.B. Hill
(Dent); the same, in Camelot series; Rasselas, various school editions, by
Ginn and Company, Holt, etc.; Selections from Lives of the Poets, with
Macaulay's Life of Johnson, edited by Matthew Arnold (Macmillan). Life:
Boswell's Life of Johnson, in Everyman's Library, Temple Classics, Library
of English Classics, etc.; by L. Stephen (English Men of Letters); by
Grant. Criticism: G.B. Hill's Dr. Johnson, his Friends and Critics; Essays,
by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Macaulay, Birrell, etc.
_Boswell_. Texts: Life of Johnson, edited by G.B. Hill (London, 1874);
various other editions (see above). Life: by Fitzgerald (London, 1891);
Roger's Boswelliana (London, 1874). Whitfield's Some Eighteenth Century Men
of Letters.
_Burke_. Texts: Works, 12 vols. (Boston, 1871); reprinted, 6 vols., in
Bohn's Library; Selected Works, edited by Payne, in Clarendon Press; On the
Sublime and Beautiful, in Temple Classics. For various speeches, see
Selections for Reading, above. Life: by Prior; by Morley (English Men of
Letters). Criticism: Essay, by Birrell, in Obiter Dicta. See also Dowden's
French Revolution and English Literature, and Woodrow Wilson's Mere
Literature.
_Gibbon_. Texts: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by Bury, 7
vols. (London, 1896-1900); various other editions; The Student's Gibbon,
abridged (Murray); Memoirs, edited by Emerson, in Athenaeum Press (Ginn and
Company). Life: by Morison (English Men of Letters). Criticism: Essays, by
Birrell, in Collected Essays and Res Judicatae; by Stephen, in Studies of a
Biographer; by Robertson, in Pioneer Humanists; by Frederick Harrison, in
Ruskin and Other Literary Estimates; by Bagehot, in Literary Studies; by
Sainte-Beuve, in English Portraits. See also Anton's Masters in History.
_Sheridan_. Texts: Speeches, 5 vols. (London, 1816); Plays, edited by W.F.
Rae (London, 1902); the same, edited by R. Dircks, in Camelot Series; Major
Dramas, in Athenaeum Press; Plays also in Morley's Universal Library,
Macmillan's English Classics, etc. Life: by Rae; by M. Oliphant (English
Men of Letters); by L. Sanders (Great Writers).
_Gray_. Texts: Works, edited by Gosse (Macmillan); Poems, in Routledge's
Pocket Library, Chandos Classics, etc.; Selections, in Athenaeum Press,
etc.; Letters, edited by D.C. Tovey (Bohn). Life: by Gosse (English Men of
Letters). Criticism: Essays, by Lowell, in Latest Literary Essays; by M.
Arnold, in Essays in Criticism; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by A.
Dobson, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes.
_Goldsmith_. Texts: edited by Masson, Globe edition; Works, edited by Aiken
and Tuckerman (Crowell); the same, edited by A. Dobson (Dent); Morley's
Universal Library; Arber's The Goldsmith Anthology (Frowde). See also
Selections for Reading, above. Life: by Washington Irving; by A. Dobson
(Great Writer's Series); by Black (English Men of Letters); by J. Forster;
by Prior. Criticism: Essays, by Macaulay; by Thackeray; by De Quincey; by
A. Dobson, in Miscellanies.
_Cowper_. Texts: Works, Globe and Aldine editions; also in Chandos
Classics; Selections, in Athenasum Press, Canterbury Poets, etc. The
Correspondence of William Cowper, edited by T. Wright, 4 vols. (Dodd, Mead
& Company). Life: by Goldwin Smith (English Men of Letters); by Wright; by
Southey. Criticism: Essays, by L. Stephen; by Bagehot; by Sainte-Beuve; by
Birrell; by Stopford Brooke; by A. Dobson (see above). See also Woodberry's
Makers of Literature.
_Burns_. Texts: Works, Cambridge Poets Edition (containing Henley's Study
of Burns), Globe and Aldine editions, Clarendon Press, Canterbury Poets,
etc.; Selections, in Athenaeum Press, etc.; Letters, in Camelot Series.
Life: by Cunningham; by Henley; by Setoun; by Blackie (Great Writers); by
Shairp (English Men of Letters). Criticism: Essays, by Carlyle; by R.L.
Stevenson, in Familiar Studies; by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English
Poets; by Stopford Brooke, in Theology in the English Poets; by J. Forster,
in Great Teachers.
_Blake_. Texts: Poems, Aldine edition; also in Canterbury Poets; Complete
Works, edited by Ellis and Yeats (London, 1893); Selections, edited by W.B.
Yeats, in the Muses' Library (Dutton); Letters, with Life by F. Tatham,
edited by A.G.B. Russell (Scribner's, 1896). Life: by Gilchrist; by Story;
by Symons. Criticism: Swinburne's William Blake, a Critical Study; Ellis's
The Real Blake (McClure, 1907); Elizabeth Cary's The Art of William Blake
(Moffat, Yard & Company, 1907). Essay, by A.C. Benson, in Essays.
_Thomson_. Texts: Works, Aldine edition; The Seasons, and Castle of
Indolence, in Clarendon Press, etc. Life: by Bayne; by G.B. Macaulay
(English Men of Letters). Essay, by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English
Poets.
_Collins_. Works, edited by Bronson, in Athenaeum Press; also in Aldine
edition. Life: by Johnson, in Lives of the Poets. Essay, by Swinburne, in
Miscellanies. See also Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth
Century.
_Crabbe_. Works, with memoir by his son, G. Crabbe, 8 vols. (London,
1834-1835); Poems, edited by A.W. Ward, 3 vols., in Cambridge English
Classics (Cambridge, 1905); Selections, in Temple Classics, Canterbury
Poets, etc. Life: by Kebbel (Great Writers); by Ainger (English Men of
Letters). Essays, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Woodberry, in
Makers of Literature; by Saintsbury, in Essays in English Literature; by
Courthope, in Ward's English Poets; by Edward Fitzgerald, in Miscellanies;
by Hazlitt, in Spirit of the Age.
_Macpherson_. Texts: Ossian, in Canterbury Poets; Poems, translated by
Macpherson, edited by Todd (London, 1888). Life and Letters, edited by
Saunders (London, 1894). Criticism: J.S. Smart's James Macpherson (Nutt,
1905). See also Beers's English Romanticism. For relation of Macpherson's
work to the original Ossian, see Dean of Lismore's Book, edited by
MacLauchlan (Edinburgh, 1862); also Poems of Ossian, translated by Clerk
(Edinburgh, 1870).
_Chatterton_. Works, edited by Skeat (London, 1875); Poems, in Canterbury
Poets. Life: by Russell; by Wilson; Masson's Chatterton, a Biography.
Criticism: C.E. Russell's Thomas Chatterton (Moffatt, Yard & Company);
Essays, by Watts-Dunton, in Ward's English Poets; by Masson, in Essays
Biographical and Critical. See also Beers's English Romanticism.
_Percy_. Reliques, edited by Wheatley (London, 1891); the same, in
Everyman's Library, Chandos Classics, etc. Essay, by J.W. Hales, Revival of
Ballad Poetry, in Folia Literaria. See also Beers's English Romanticism,
etc. (Special works, above.)
_Defoe_. Texts: Romances and Narratives, edited by Aitken (Dent); Poems and
Pamphlets, in Arber's English Garner, vol. 8; school editions of Robinson
Crusoe, and Journal of the Plague Year (Ginn and Company, etc.); Captain
Singleton, and Memoirs of a Cavalier, in Everyman's Library; Early
Writings, in Carisbrooke Library (Routledge). Life: by W. Lee; by Minto
(English Men of Letters); by Wright; also in Westminster Biographies
(Small, Maynard). Essay, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library.
_Richardson_. Works: edited by L. Stephen (London, 1883); edited by
Philips, with life (New York, 1901); Correspondence, edited by A. Barbauld,
6 vols. (London, 1804). Life: by Thomson; by A. Dobson. Essays, by L.
Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by A. Dobson, in Eighteenth Century
Vignettes.
_Fielding_. Works: Temple Edition, edited by Saintsbury (Dent); Selected
Essays, in Athenaeum Press; Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, in Cassell's
National Library. Life: by Dobson (English Men of Letters); Lawrence's Life
and Times of Fielding. Essays, by Lowell; by Thackeray; by L. Stephen; by
A. Dobson (see above); by G.B. Smith, in Poets and Novelists.
_Smollett_. Works, edited by Saintsbury (London, 1895); Works, edited by
Henley (Scribner). Life: by Hannah (Great Writers); by Smeaton; by
Chambers. Essays, by Thackeray; by Henley; by Dobson, in Eighteenth Century
Vignettes.
_Sterne_. Works: edited by Saintsbury (Dent); Tristram Shandy, and A
Sentimental Journey, in Temple Classics, Morley's Universal Library, etc.
Life: by Fitzgerald; by Traill (English Men of Letters); Life and Times, by
W.L. Cross (Macmillan). Essays, by Thackeray; by Bagehot, in Literary
Studies.
_Horace Walpole_. Texts: Castle of Otranto, in King's Classics, Cassell's
National Library, etc. Letters, edited by C.D. Yonge. Morley's Walpole, in
Twelve English Statesmen (Macmillan). Essay, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a
Library. See also Beers's English Romanticism.
_Frances Burney_ (Madame d'Arblay). Texts: Evelina, in Temple Classics, 2
vols. (Macmillan). Diary and Letters, edited by S.C. Woolsey. Seeley's
Fanny Burney and her Friends. Essay, by Macaulay.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 1. Describe briefly the social development of the
eighteenth century. What effect did this have on literature? What accounts
for the prevalence of prose? What influence did the first newspapers exert
on life and literature? How do the readers of this age compare with those
of the Age of Elizabeth?
2. How do you explain the fact that satire was largely used in both prose
and poetry? Name the principal satires of the age. What is the chief object
of satire? of literature? How do the two objects conflict?
3. What is the meaning of the term "classicism," as applied to the
literature of this age? Did the classicism of Johnson, for instance, have
any relation to classic literature in its true sense? Why is this period
called the Augustan Age? Why was Shakespeare not regarded by this age as a
classical writer?
4. _Pope_. In what respect is Pope a unique writer? Tell briefly the story
of his life. What are his principal works? How does he reflect the critical
spirit of his age? What are the chief characteristics of his poetry? What
do you find to copy in his style? What is lacking in his poetry? Compare
his subjects with those of Burns of Tennyson or Milton, for instance. How
would Chaucer or Burns tell the story of the Rape of the Lock? What
similarity do you find between Pope's poetry and Addison's prose?
5. _Swift_. What is the general character of Swift's work? Name his chief
satires. What is there to copy in his style? Does he ever strive for
ornament or effect in writing? Compare Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_ with
Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_, in style, purpose of writing, and interest. What
resemblances do you find in these two contemporary writers? Can you explain
the continued popularity of _Gulliver's Travels_?
6. _Addison and Steele_. What great work did Addison and Steele do for
literature? Make a brief comparison between these two men, having in mind
their purpose, humor, knowledge of life, and human sympathy, as shown, for
instance, in No. 112 and No. 2 of the Spectator Essays. Compare their humor
with that of Swift. How is their work a preparation for the novel?
7. _Johnson_. For what is Dr. Johnson famous in literature? Can you explain
his great influence? Compare his style with that of Swift or Defoe. What
are the remarkable elements in Boswell's _Life of Johnson_? Write a
description of an imaginary meeting of Johnson, Goldsmith, and Boswell in a
coffeehouse.
8. _Burke_. For what is Burke remarkable? What great objects influenced him
in the three periods of his life? Why has he been called a romantic poet
who speaks in prose? Compare his use of imagery with that of other writers
of the period. What is there to copy and what is there to avoid in his
style? Can you trace the influence of Burke's American speeches on later
English politics? What similarities do you find between Burke and Milton,
as revealed in their prose works?
9. _Gibbon_. For what is Gibbon "worthy to be remembered"? Why does he mark
an epoch in historical writing? What is meant by the scientific method of
writing history? Compare Gibbon's style with that of Johnson. Contrast it
with that of Swift, and also with that of some modern historian, Parkman,
for example.
10. What is meant by the term "romanticism?" What are its chief
characteristics? How does it differ from classicism? Illustrate the meaning
from the work of Gray, Cowper, or Burns. Can you explain the prevalence of
melancholy in romanticism?
11. _Gray_. What are the chief works of Gray? Can you explain the continued
popularity of his "Elegy"? What romantic elements are found in his poetry?
What resemblances and what differences do you find in the works of Gray and
of Goldsmith?
12. _Goldsmith_. Tell the story of Goldsmith's life. What are his chief
works? Show from _The Deserted Village_ the romantic and the so-called
classic elements in his work. What great work did he do for the early
novel, in _The Vicar of Wakefield_? Can you explain the popularity of _She
Stoops to Conquer_? Name some of Goldsmith's characters who have found a
permanent place in our literature. What personal reminiscences have you
noted in _The Traveller_, _The Deserted Village_, and _She Stoops to
Conquer_?
13. _Cowper_. Describe Cowper's _The Task_. How does it show the romantic
spirit? Give passages from "John Gilpin" to illustrate Cowper's humor.
14. _Burns_. Tell the story of Burns's life. Some one has said, "The
measure of a man's sin is the difference between what he is and what he
might be." Comment upon this, with reference to Burns. What is the general
character of his poetry? Why is he called the poet of common men? What
subjects does he choose for his poetry? Compare him, in this respect, with
Pope. What elements in the poet's character are revealed in such poems as
"To a Mouse" and "To a Mountain Daisy"? How do Burns and Gray regard
nature? What poems show his sympathy with the French Revolution, and with
democracy? Read "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and explain its enduring
interest. Can you explain the secret of Burns's great popularity?
15. _Blake_. What are the characteristics of Blake's poetry? Can you
explain why Blake, though the greatest poetic genius of the age, is so
little appreciated?
16. _Percy_. In what respect did Percy's _Reliques_ influence the romantic
movement? What are the defects in his collection of ballads? Can you
explain why such a crude poem as "Chevy Chase" should be popular with an
age that delighted in Pope's "Essay on Man"?
17. _Macpherson_. What is meant by Macpherson's "Ossian"? Can you account
for the remarkable success of the Ossianic forgeries?
18. _Chatterton_. Tell the story of Chatterton and the Rowley Poems. Read
Chatterton's "Bristowe Tragedie," and compare it, in style and interest,
with the old ballads, like "The Battle of Otterburn" or "The Hunting of the
Cheviot" (all in Manly's _English Poetry_).
19. _The First Novelists_. What is meant by the modern novel? How does it
differ from the early romance and from the adventure story? What are some
of the precursors of the novel? What was the purpose of stories modeled
after _Don Quixote_? What is the significance of _Pamela_? What elements
did Fielding add to the novel? What good work did Goldsmith's _Vicar of
Wakefield_ accomplish? Compare Goldsmith, in this respect, with Steele and
Addison.
CHRONOLOGY
_End of Seventeenth and the Eighteenth Century_
============================================================================
HISTORY | LITERATURE
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1689. William and Mary | 1683-1719. Defoe's early writings
Bill of Rights. |
Toleration Act |
| 1695. Press made free
1700(?) Beginning of London clubs |
1702. Anne (d. 1714) |
War of Spanish Succession |
| 1702. First daily newspaper
1704. Battle of Blenheim | 1704. Addison's The Campaign
| Swift's Tale of a Tub
1707. Union of England and Scotland |
| 1709. The Tatler
| Johnson born (d. 1784)
| 1710-1713. Swift in London. Journal
| to Stella
| 1711. The Spectator
| 1712. Pope's Rape of the Lock
1714. George I (d. 1727) |
| 1719. Robinson Crusoe
1721. Cabinet government, Walpole |
first prime minister |
| 1726. Gulliver's Travels
| 1726-1730. Thomson's The Seasons
1727. George II (d. 1760) |
| 1732-1734. Essay on Man
1738. Rise of Methodism |
| 1740. Richardson's Pamela
1740. War of Austrian Succession |
| 1742. Fielding's Joesph Andrews
1746. Jacobite Rebellion |
| 1749. Fielding's Tom Jones
| 1750-1752. Johnson's The Rambler
1750-1757. Conquest of India | 1751. Gray's Elegy
| 1755. Johnson's Dictionary
1756. War with France |
1759. Wolf at Quebec |
1760. George III (d. 1820) | 1760-1767. Sterne's Tristram Shandy
| 1764. Johnson's Literary Club
1765. Stamp Act | 1765. Percy's Reliques
| 1766. Goldsmith's Vicar of
| Wakefield
|
| 1770. Goldsmith's Deserted Village
| 1771. Beginning of great newspapers
1773. Boston Tea Party |
1774. Howard's prison reforms | 1774-1775. Burke's American speeches
1775. American Revolution | 1776-1788. Gibbon's Rome
1776. Declaration of Independence | 1779. Cowper's Olney Hymns
| 1779-81. Johnson's Lives of the Poets
1783. Treaty of Paris | 1783. Blake's Poetical Sketches
| 1785. Cowper's The Task
| The London Times
1786. Trial of Warren Hastings |
| 1786. Burns's first poems (the
| Kilmarnock Burns)
| Burke's Warren Hastings
1789-1799. French Revolution |
| 1790. Burke's French Revolution
| 1791. Boswell's Life of Johnson
1793. War with France |
============================================================================
* * * * *
CHAPTER X
THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM (1800-1850)
THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
The first half of the nineteenth century records the triumph of Romanticism
in literature and of democracy in government; and the two movements are so
closely associated, in so many nations and in so many periods of history,
that one must wonder if there be not some relation of cause and effect
between them. Just as we understand the tremendous energizing influence of
Puritanism in the matter of English liberty by remembering that the common
people had begun to read, and that their book was the Bible, so we may
understand this age of popular government by remembering that the chief
subject of romantic literature was the essential nobleness of common men
and the value of the individual. As we read now that brief portion of
history which lies between the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the
English Reform Bill of 1832, we are in the presence of such mighty
political upheavals that "the age of revolution" is the only name by which
we can adequately characterize it. Its great historic movements become
intelligible only when we read what was written in this period; for the
French Revolution and the American commonwealth, as well as the
establishment of a true democracy in England by the Reform Bill, were the
inevitable results of ideas which literature had spread rapidly through the
civilized world. Liberty is fundamentally an ideal; and that
ideal--beautiful, inspiring, compelling, as a loved banner in the wind--was
kept steadily before men's minds by a multitude of books and pamphlets as
far apart as Burns's _Poems_ and Thomas Paine's _Rights of Man_,--all read
eagerly by the common people, all proclaiming the dignity of common life,
and all uttering the same passionate cry against every form of class or
caste oppression.
First the dream, the ideal in some human soul; then the written word which
proclaims it, and impresses other minds with its truth and beauty; then the
united and determined effort of men to make the dream a reality,--that
seems to be a fair estimate of the part that literature plays, even in our
political progress.
HISTORICAL SUMMARY. The period we are considering begins in the latter half
of the reign of George III and ends with the accession of Victoria in 1837.
When on a foggy morning in November, 1783, King George entered the House of
Lords and in a trembling voice recognized the independence of the United
States of America, he unconsciously proclaimed the triumph of that free
government by free men which had been the ideal of English literature for
more than a thousand years; though it was not till 1832, when the Reform
Bill became the law of the land, that England herself learned the lesson
taught her by America, and became the democracy of which her writers had
always dreamed.
The half century between these two events is one of great turmoil, yet of
steady advance in every department of English life. The storm center of the
political unrest was the French Revolution, that frightful uprising which
proclaimed the natural rights of man and the abolition of class
distinctions. Its effect on the whole civilized world is beyond
computation. Patriotic clubs and societies multiplied in England, all
asserting the doctrine of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the watchwords of
the Revolution. Young England, led by Pitt the younger, hailed the new
French republic and offered it friendship; old England, which pardons no
revolutions but her own, looked with horror on the turmoil in France and,
misled by Burke and the nobles of the realm, forced the two nations into
war. Even Pitt saw a blessing in this at first; because the sudden zeal for
fighting a foreign nation--which by some horrible perversion is generally
called patriotism--might turn men's thoughts from their own to their
neighbors' affairs, and so prevent a threatened revolution at home.
The causes of this threatened revolution were not political but economic.
By her invention in steel and machinery, and by her monopoly of the
carrying trade, England had become the workshop of the world. Her wealth
had increased beyond her wildest dreams; but the unequal distribution of
that wealth was a spectacle to make angels weep. The invention of machinery
at first threw thousands of skilled hand workers out of employment; in
order to protect a few agriculturists, heavy duties were imposed on corn
and wheat, and bread rose to famine prices just when laboring men had the
least money to pay for it. There followed a curious spectacle. While
England increased in wealth, and spent vast sums to support her army and
subsidize her allies in Europe, and while nobles, landowners,
manufacturers, and merchants lived in increasing luxury, a multitude of
skilled laborers were clamoring for work. Fathers sent their wives and
little children into the mines and factories, where sixteen hours' labor
would hardly pay for the daily bread; and in every large city were riotous
mobs made up chiefly of hungry men and women. It was this unbearable
economic condition, and not any political theory, as Burke supposed, which
occasioned the danger of another English revolution.
It is only when we remember these conditions that we can understand two
books, Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ and Thomas Paine's _Rights of Man_,
which can hardly be considered as literature, but which exercised an
enormous influence in England. Smith was a Scottish thinker, who wrote to
uphold the doctrine that labor is the only source of a nation's wealth, and
that any attempt to force labor into unnatural channels, or to prevent it
by protective duties from freely obtaining the raw materials for its
industry, is unjust and destructive. Paine was a curious combination of
Jekyll and Hyde, shallow and untrustworthy personally, but with a
passionate devotion to popular liberty. His _Rights of Man_ published in
London in 1791, was like one of Burns's lyric outcries against institutions
which oppressed humanity. Coming so soon after the destruction of the
Bastille, it added fuel to the flames kindled in England by the French
Revolution. The author was driven out of the country, on the curious ground
that he endangered the English constitution, but not until his book had
gained a wide sale and influence.
All these dangers, real and imaginary, passed away when England turned from
the affairs of France to remedy her own economic conditions. The long
Continental war came to an end with Napoleon's overthrow at Waterloo, in
1815; and England, having gained enormously in prestige abroad, now turned
to the work of reform at home. The destruction of the African slave trade;
the mitigation of horribly unjust laws, which included poor debtors and
petty criminals in the same class; the prevention of child labor; the
freedom of the press; the extension of manhood suffrage; the abolition of
restrictions against Catholics in Parliament; the establishment of hundreds
of popular schools, under the leadership of Andrew Bell and Joseph
Lancaster,--these are but a few of the reforms which mark the progress of
civilization in a single half century. When England, in 1833, proclaimed
the emancipation of all slaves in all her colonies, she unconsciously
proclaimed her final emancipation from barbarism.
LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AGE. It is intensely interesting to note
how literature at first reflected the political turmoil of the age; and
then, when the turmoil was over and England began her mighty work of
reform, how literature suddenly developed a new creative spirit, which
shows itself in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats,
and in the prose of Scott, Jane Austen, Lamb, and De Quincey,--a wonderful
group of writers, whose patriotic enthusiasm suggests the Elizabethan days,
and whose genius has caused their age to be known as the second creative
period of our literature. Thus in the early days, when old institutions
seemed crumbling with the Bastille, Coleridge and Southey formed their
youthful scheme of a "Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehanna,"--an
ideal commonwealth, in which the principles of More's _Utopia_ should be
put in practice. Even Wordsworth, fired with political enthusiasm, could
write,
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.
The essence of Romanticism was, it must be remembered, that literature must
reflect all that is spontaneous and unaffected in nature and in man, and be
free to follow its own fancy in its own way. We have already noted this
characteristic in the work of the Elizabethan dramatists, who followed
their own genius in opposition to all the laws of the critics. In Coleridge
we see this independence expressed in "Kubla Khan" and "The Ancient
Mariner," two dream pictures, one of the populous Orient, the other of the
lonely sea. In Wordsworth this literary independence led him inward to the
heart of common things. Following his own instinct, as Shakespeare does, he
too
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
And so, more than any other writer of the age, he invests the common life
of nature, and the souls of common men and women, with glorious
significance. These two poets, Coleridge and Wordsworth, best represent the
romantic genius of the age in which they lived, though Scott had a greater
literary reputation, and Byron and Shelley had larger audiences.
The second characteristic of this age is that it is emphatically an age of
poetry. The previous century, with its practical outlook on life, was
largely one of prose; but now, as in the Elizabethan Age, the young
enthusiasts turned as naturally to poetry as a happy man to singing. The
glory of the age is in the poetry of Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,
Shelley, Keats, Moore, and Southey. Of its prose works, those of Scott
alone have attained a very wide reading, though the essays of Charles Lamb
and the novels of Jane Austen have slowly won for their authors a secure
place in the history of our literature. Coleridge and Southey (who with
Wordsworth form the trio of so-called Lake Poets) wrote far more prose than
poetry; and Southey's prose is much better than his verse. It was
characteristic of the spirit of this age, so different from our own, that
Southey could say that, in order to earn money, he wrote in verse "what
would otherwise have been better written in prose."
It was during this period that woman assumed, for the first time, an
important place in our literature. Probably the chief reason for this
interesting phenomenon lies in the fact that woman was for the first time
given some slight chance of education, of entering into the intellectual
life of the race; and as is always the case when woman is given anything
like a fair opportunity she responded magnificently. A secondary reason may
be found in the nature of the age itself, which was intensely emotional.
The French Revolution stirred all Europe to its depths, and during the
following half century every great movement in literature, as in politics
and religion, was characterized by strong emotion; which is all the more
noticeable by contrast with the cold, formal, satiric spirit of the early
eighteenth century. As woman is naturally more emotional than man, it may
well be that the spirit of this emotional age attracted her, and gave her
the opportunity to express herself in literature.
As all strong emotions tend to extremes, the age produced a new type of
novel which seems rather hysterical now, but which in its own day delighted
multitudes of readers whose nerves were somewhat excited, and who reveled
in "bogey" stories of supernatural terror. Mrs. Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823)
was one of the most successful writers of this school of exaggerated
romance. Her novels, with their azure-eyed heroines, haunted castles,
trapdoors, bandits, abductions, rescues in the nick of time, and a general
medley of overwrought joys and horrors,[219] were immensely popular, not
only with the crowd of novel readers, but also with men of unquestioned
literary genius, like Scott and Byron.
In marked contrast to these extravagant stories is the enduring work of
Jane Austen, with her charming descriptions of everyday life, and of Maria
Edgeworth, whose wonderful pictures of Irish life suggested to Walter Scott
the idea of writing his Scottish romances. Two other women who attained a
more or less lasting fame were Hannah More, poet, dramatist, and novelist,
and Jane Porter, whose _Scottish Chiefs_ and _Thaddeus of Warsaw_ are still
in demand in our libraries. Beside these were Fanny Burney (Madame
D'Arblay) and several other writers whose works, in the early part of the
nineteenth century, raised woman to the high place in literature which she
has ever since maintained.
In this age literary criticism became firmly established by the appearance
of such magazines as the _Edinburgh Review_ (18O2), _The Quarterly Review_
(1808), _Blackwood's Magazine_ (1817), the _Westminster Review_ (1824),
_The Spectator_ (1828), _The Athenæum_ (1828), and _Fraser's Magazine_
(1830). These magazines, edited by such men as Francis Jeffrey, John Wilson
(who is known to us as Christopher North), and John Gibson Lockhart, who
gave us the _Life of Scott_, exercised an immense influence on all
subsequent literature. At first their criticisms were largely destructive,
as when Jeffrey hammered Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron most unmercifully;
and Lockhart could find no good in either Keats or Tennyson; but with added
wisdom, criticism assumed its true function of construction. And when these
magazines began to seek and to publish the works of unknown writers, like
Hazlitt, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, they discovered the chief mission of the
modern magazine, which is to give every writer of ability the opportunity
to make his work known to the world.
I. THE POETS OF ROMANTICISM
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)
It was in 1797 that the new romantic movement in our literature assumed
definite form. Wordsworth and Coleridge retired to the Quantock Hills,
Somerset, and there formed the deliberate purpose to make literature
"adapted to interest mankind permanently," which, they declared, classic
poetry could never do. Helping the two poets was Wordsworth's sister
Dorothy, with a woman's love for flowers and all beautiful things; and a
woman's divine sympathy for human life even in its lowliest forms. Though a
silent partner, she furnished perhaps the largest share of the inspiration
which resulted in the famous _Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798. In their
partnership Coleridge was to take up the "supernatural, or at least
romantic"; while Wordsworth was "to give the charm of novelty to things of
everyday ... by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom
and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us."
The whole spirit of their work is reflected in two poems of this remarkable
little volume, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which is Coleridge's
masterpiece, and "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," which
expresses Wordsworth's poetical creed, and which is one of the noblest and
most significant of our poems. That the _Lyrical Ballads_ attracted no
attention,[220] and was practically ignored by a public that would soon go
into raptures over Byron's _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_, is of small
consequence. Many men will hurry a mile to see skyrockets, who never notice
Orion and the Pleiades from their own doorstep. Had Wordsworth and
Coleridge written only this one little book, they would still be among the
representative writers of an age that proclaimed the final triumph of
Romanticism.
LIFE OF WORDSWORTH. To understand the life of him who, in Tennyson's words,
"uttered nothing base," it is well to read first _The Prelude_, which
records the impressions made upon Wordsworth's mind from his earliest
recollection until his full manhood, in 1805, when the poem was
completed.[221] Outwardly his long and uneventful life divides itself
naturally into four periods: (1) his childhood and youth, in the Cumberland
Hills, from 1770 to 1787; (2) a period of uncertainty, of storm and stress,
including his university life at Cambridge, his travels abroad, and his
revolutionary experience, from 1787 to 1797; (3) a short but significant
period of finding himself and his work, from 1797 to 1799; (4) a long
period of retirement in the northern lake region, where he was born, and
where for a full half century he lived so close to nature that her
influence is reflected in all his poetry. When one has outlined these four
periods he has told almost all that can be told of a life which is marked,
not by events, but largely by spiritual experiences.
Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland, where the Derwent,
Fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams.
It is almost a shock to one who knows Wordsworth only by his calm and noble
poetry to read that he was of a moody and violent temper, and that his
mother despaired of him alone among her five children. She died when he was
but eight years old, but not till she had exerted an influence which lasted
all his life, so that he could remember her as "the heart of all our
learnings and our loves." The father died some six years later, and the
orphan was taken in charge by relatives, who sent him to school at
Hawkshead, in the beautiful lake region. Here, apparently, the unroofed
school of nature attracted him more than the discipline of the classics,
and he learned more eagerly from the flowers and hills and stars than from
his books; but one must read Wordsworth's own record, in _The Prelude_, to
appreciate this. Three things in this poem must impress even the casual
reader: first, Wordsworth loves to be alone, and is never lonely, with
nature; second, like every other child who spends much time alone in the
woods and fields, he feels the presence of some living spirit, real though
unseen, and companionable though silent; third, his impressions are exactly
like our own, and delightfully familiar. When he tells of the long summer
day spent in swimming, basking in the sun, and questing over the hills; or
of the winter night when, on his skates, he chased the reflection of a star
in the black ice; or of his exploring the lake in a boat, and getting
suddenly frightened when the world grew big and strange,--in all this he is
simply recalling a multitude of our own vague, happy memories of childhood.
He goes out into the woods at night to tend his woodcock snares; he runs
across another boy's snares, follows them, finds a woodcock caught, takes
it, hurries away through the night. And then,
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion.
That is like a mental photograph. Any boy who has come home through the
woods at night will recognize it instantly. Again he tells as of going
bird's-nesting on the cliffs:
Oh, when I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill-sustained, and almost (so it seemed)
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag,--oh, at that time,
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ear! The sky seemed not a sky
Of earth,--and with what motion moved the clouds!
No man can read such records without finding his own boyhood again, and his
own abounding joy of life, in the poet's early impressions.
The second period of Wordsworth's life begins with his university course at
Cambridge, in 1787. In the third book of _The Prelude_ we find a
dispassionate account of student life, with its trivial occupations, its
pleasures and general aimlessness. Wordsworth proved to be a very ordinary
scholar, following his own genius rather than the curriculum, and looking
forward more eagerly to his vacation among the hills than to his
examinations. Perhaps the most interesting thing in his life at Cambridge
was his fellowship with the young political enthusiasts, whose spirit is
expressed in his remarkable poem on the French Revolution,--a poem which is
better than a volume of history to show the hopes and ambitions that
stirred all Europe in the first days of that mighty upheaval. Wordsworth
made two trips to France, in 1790 and 1791, seeing things chiefly through
the rosy spectacles of the young Oxford Republicans. On his second visit he
joined the Girondists, or the moderate Republicans, and only the decision
of his relatives, who cut off his allowance and hurried him back to
England, prevented his going headlong to the guillotine with the leaders of
his party. Two things rapidly cooled Wordsworth's revolutionary enthusiasm,
and ended the only dramatic interest of his placid life. One was the
excesses of the Revolution itself, and especially the execution of Louis
XVI; the other was the rise of Napoleon, and the slavish adulation accorded
by France to this most vulgar and dangerous of tyrants. His coolness soon
grew to disgust and opposition, as shown by his subsequent poems; and this
brought upon him the censure of Shelley, Byron, and other extremists,
though it gained the friendship of Scott, who from the first had no
sympathy with the Revolution or with the young English enthusiasts.
Of the decisive period of Wordsworth's life, when he was living with his
sister Dorothy and with Coleridge at Alfoxden, we have already spoken. The
importance of this decision to give himself to poetry is evident when we
remember that, at thirty years of age, he was without money or any definite
aim or occupation in life. He considered the law, but confessed he had no
sympathy for its contradictory precepts and practices; he considered the
ministry, but though strongly inclined to the Church, he felt himself not
good enough for the sacred office; once he had wanted to be a soldier and
serve his country, but had wavered at the prospect of dying of disease in a
foreign land and throwing away his life without glory or profit to anybody.
An apparent accident, which looks more to us like a special Providence,
determined his course. He had taken care of a young friend, Raisley
Calvert, who died of consumption and left Wordsworth heir to a few hundred
pounds, and to the request that he should give his life to poetry. It was
this unexpected gift which enabled Wordsworth to retire from the world and
follow his genius. All his life he was poor, and lived in an atmosphere of
plain living and high thinking. His poetry brought him almost nothing in
the way of money rewards, and it was only by a series of happy accidents
that he was enabled to continue his work. One of these accidents was that
he became a Tory, and soon accepted the office of a distributor of stamps,
and was later appointed poet laureate by the government,--which occasioned
Browning's famous but ill-considered poem of "The Lost Leader":
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
The last half century of Wordsworth's life, in which he retired to his
beloved lake district and lived successively at Grasmere and Rydal Mount,
remind one strongly of Browning's long struggle for literary recognition.
It was marked by the same steadfast purpose, the same trusted ideal, the
same continuous work, and the same tardy recognition by the public. His
poetry was mercilessly ridiculed by nearly all the magazine critics, who
seized upon the worst of his work as a standard of judgment; and book after
book of poems appeared without meeting any success save the approval of a
few loyal friends. Without doubt or impatience he continued his work,
trusting to the future to recognize and approve it. His attitude here
reminds one strongly of the poor old soldier whom he met in the hills,[222]
who refused to beg or to mention his long service or the neglect of his
country, saying with noble simplicity,
My trust is in the God of Heaven
And in the eye of him who passes me.
Such work and patience are certain of their reward, and long before
Wordsworth's death he felt the warm sunshine of general approval. The wave
of popular enthusiasm for Scott and Byron passed by, as their limitations
were recognized; and Wordsworth was hailed by critics as the first living
poet, and one of the greatest that England had ever produced. On the death
of Southey (1843) he was made poet laureate, against his own inclination.
The late excessive praise left him quite as unmoved as the first excessive
neglect. The steady decline in the quality of his work is due not, as might
be expected, to self-satisfaction at success, but rather to his intense
conservatism, to his living too much alone and failing to test his work by
the standards and judgment of other literary men. He died tranquilly in
1850, at the age of eighty years, and was buried in the churchyard at
Grasmere.
Such is the brief outward record of the world's greatest interpreter of
nature's message; and only one who is acquainted with both nature and the
poet can realize how inadequate is any biography; for the best thing about
Wordsworth must always remain unsaid. It is a comfort to know that his
life, noble, sincere, "heroically happy," never contradicted his message.
Poetry was his life; his soul was in all his work; and only by reading what
he has written can we understand the man.
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH. There is often a sense of disappointment when one
reads Wordsworth for the first time; and this leads us to speak first of
two difficulties which may easily prevent a just appreciation of the poet's
worth. The first difficulty is in the reader, who is often puzzled by
Wordsworth's absolute simplicity. We are so used to stage effects in
poetry, that beauty unadorned is apt to escape our notice,--like
Wordsworth's "Lucy":
A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Wordsworth set himself to the task of freeing poetry from all its
"conceits," of speaking the language of simple truth, and of portraying man
and nature as they are; and in this good work we are apt to miss the
beauty, the passion, the intensity, that hide themselves under his simplest
lines. The second difficulty is in the poet, not in the reader. It must be
confessed that Wordsworth is not always melodious; that he is seldom
graceful, and only occasionally inspired. When he is inspired, few poets
can be compared with him; at other times the bulk of his verse is so wooden
and prosy that we wonder how a poet could have written it. Moreover he is
absolutely without humor, and so he often fails to see the small step that
separates the sublime from the ridiculous. In no other way can we explain
"The Idiot Boy," or pardon the serious absurdity of "Peter Bell" and his
grieving jackass.
On account of these difficulties it is well to avoid at first the longer
works and begin with a good book of selections.[223] When we read these
exquisite shorter poems, with their noble lines that live forever in our
memory, we realize that Wordsworth is the greatest poet of nature that our
literature has produced. If we go further, and study the poems that impress
us, we shall find four remarkable characteristics: (1) Wordsworth is
sensitive as a barometer to every subtle change in the world about him. In
_The Prelude_ he compares himself to an æolian harp, which answers with
harmony to every touch of the wind; and the figure is strikingly accurate,
as well as interesting, for there is hardly a sight or a sound, from a
violet to a mountain and from a bird note to the thunder of the cataract,
that is not reflected in some beautiful way in Wordsworth's poetry.
(2) Of all the poets who have written of nature there is none that compares
with him in the truthfulness of his representation. Burns, like Gray, is
apt to read his own emotions into natural objects, so that there is more of
the poet than of nature even in his mouse and mountain daisy; but
Wordsworth gives you the bird and the flower, the wind and the tree and the
river, just as they are, and is content to let them speak their own
message.
(3) No other poet ever found such abundant beauty in the common world. He
had not only sight, but insight, that is, he not only sees clearly and
describes accurately, but penetrates to the heart of things and always
finds some exquisite meaning that is not written on the surface. It is idle
to specify or to quote lines on flowers or stars, on snow or vapor. Nothing
is ugly or commonplace in his world; on the contrary, there is hardly one
natural phenomenon which he has not glorified by pointing out some beauty
that was hidden from our eyes.
(4) It is the _life_ of nature which is everywhere recognized; not mere
growth and cell changes, but sentient, personal life; and the recognition
of this personality in nature characterizes all the world's great poetry.
In his childhood Wordsworth regarded natural objects, the streams, the
hills, the flowers, even the winds, as his companions; and with his mature
belief that all nature is the reflection of the living God, it was
inevitable that his poetry should thrill with the sense of a Spirit that
"rolls through all things." Cowper, Burns, Keats, Tennyson,--all these
poets give you the outward aspects of nature in varying degrees; but
Wordsworth gives you her very life, and the impression of some personal
living spirit that meets and accompanies the man who goes alone through the
woods and fields. We shall hardly find, even in the philosophy of Leibnitz,
or in the nature myths of our Indians, any such impression of living nature
as this poet awakens in us. And that suggests another delightful
characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry, namely, that he seems to awaken
rather than create an impression; he stirs our memory deeply, so that in
reading him we live once more in the vague, beautiful wonderland of our own
childhood.
Such is the philosophy of Wordsworth's nature poetry. If we search now for
his philosophy of human life, we shall find four more doctrines, which rest
upon his basal conception that man is not apart from nature, but is the
very "life of her life." (1) In childhood man is sensitive as a wind harp
to all natural influences; he is an epitome of the gladness and beauty of
the world. Wordsworth explains this gladness and this sensitiveness to
nature by the doctrine that the child comes straight from the Creator of
nature:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
In this exquisite ode, which he calls "Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807), Wordsworth sums up his philosophy
of childhood; and he may possibly be indebted here to the poet Vaughan,
who, more than a century before, had proclaimed in "The Retreat" the same
doctrine. This kinship with nature and with God, which glorifies childhood,
ought to extend through a man's whole life and ennoble it. This is the
teaching of "Tintern Abbey," in which the best part of our life is shown to
be the result of natural influences. According to Wordsworth, society and
the crowded unnatural life of cities tend to weaken and pervert humanity;
and a return to natural and simple living is the only remedy for human
wretchedness.
(2) The natural instincts and pleasures of childhood are the true standards
of a man's happiness in this life. All artificial pleasures soon grow
tiresome. The natural pleasures, which a man so easily neglects in his
work, are the chief means by which we may expect permanent and increasing
joy. In "Tintern Abbey," "The Rainbow," "Ode to Duty," and "Intimations of
Immortality" we see this plain teaching; but we can hardly read one of
Wordsworth's pages without finding it slipped in unobtrusively, like the
fragrance of a wild flower.
(3) The _truth_ of humanity, that is, the common life which labors and loves
and shares the general heritage of smiles and tears, is the only subject of
permanent literary interest. Burns and the early poets of the Revival began
the good work of showing the romantic interest of common life; and
Wordsworth continued it in "Michael," "The Solitary Reaper," "To a Highland
Girl," "Stepping Westward," _The Excursion_, and a score of lesser poems.
Joy and sorrow, not of princes or heroes, but "in widest commonalty
spread," are his themes; and the hidden purpose of many of his poems is to
show that the keynote of all life is happiness,--not an occasional thing,
the result of chance or circumstance, but a heroic thing, to be won, as one
would win any other success, by work and patience.
(4) To this natural philosophy of man Wordsworth adds a mystic element, the
result of his own belief that in every natural object there is a reflection
of the living God. Nature is everywhere transfused and illumined by Spirit;
man also is a reflection of the divine Spirit; and we shall never
understand the emotions roused by a flower or a sunset until we learn that
nature appeals through the eye of man to his inner spirit. In a word,
nature must be "spiritually discerned." In "Tintern Abbey" the spiritual
appeal of nature is expressed in almost every line; but the mystic
conception of man is seen more clearly in "Intimations of Immortality,"
which Emerson calls "the high-water mark of poetry in the nineteenth
century." In this last splendid ode Wordsworth adds to his spiritual
interpretation of nature and man the alluring doctrine of preëxistence,
which has appealed so powerfully to Hindoo and Greek in turn, and which
makes of human life a continuous, immortal thing, without end or beginning.
Wordsworth's longer poems, since they contain much that is prosy and
uninteresting, may well be left till after we have read the odes, sonnets,
and short descriptive poems that have made him famous. As showing a certain
heroic cast of Wordsworth's mind, it is interesting to learn that the
greater part of his work, including _The Prelude_ and _The Excursion_, was
intended for a place in a single great poem, to be called _The Recluse_,
which should treat of nature, man, and society. _The Prelude_, treating of
the growth of a poet's mind, was to introduce the work. The _Home at
Grasmere_, which is the first book of _The Recluse_, was not published till
1888, long after the poet's death. _The Excursion_ (1814) is the second
book of _The Recluse_; and the third was never completed, though Wordsworth
intended to include most of his shorter poems in this third part, and so
make an immense personal epic of a poet's life and work. It is perhaps just
as well that the work remained unfinished. The best of his work appeared in
the _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798) and in the sonnets, odes, and lyrics of the
next ten years; though "The Duddon Sonnets" (1820), "To a Skylark" (1825),
and "Yarrow Revisited" (1831) show that he retained till past sixty much of
his youthful enthusiasm. In his later years, however, he perhaps wrote too
much; his poetry, like his prose, becomes dull and unimaginative; and we
miss the flashes of insight, the tender memories of childhood, and the
recurrence of noble lines--each one a poem--that constitutes the surprise
and the delight of reading Wordsworth.
The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.
In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart--
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear.
In the wonderful "Ode to Dejection," from which the above fragment is
taken, we have a single strong impression of Coleridge's whole life,--a
sad, broken, tragic life, in marked contrast with the peaceful existence of
his friend Wordsworth. For himself, during the greater part of his life,
the poet had only grief and remorse as his portion; but for everybody else,
for the audiences that were charmed by the brilliancy of his literary
lectures, for the friends who gathered about him to be inspired by his
ideals and conversation, and for all his readers who found unending delight
in the little volume which holds his poetry, he had and still has a
cheering message, full of beauty and hope and inspiration. Such is
Coleridge, a man of grief who makes the world glad.
LIFE. In 1772 there lived in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, a queer little
man, the Rev. John Coleridge, vicar of the parish church and master of the
local grammar school. In the former capacity he preached profound sermons,
quoting to open-mouthed rustics long passages from the Hebrew, which he
told them was the very tongue of the Holy Ghost. In the latter capacity he
wrote for his boys a new Latin grammar, to mitigate some of the
difficulties of traversing that terrible jungle by means of ingenious
bypaths and short cuts. For instance, when his boys found the ablative a
somewhat difficult case to understand, he told them to think of it as the
_quale-quare-quidditive_ case, which of course makes its meaning perfectly
clear. In both these capacities the elder Coleridge was a sincere man,
gentle and kindly, whose memory was "like a religion" to his sons and
daughters. In that same year was born Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the youngest
of thirteen children. He was an extraordinarily precocious child, who could
read at three years of age, and who, before he was five, had read the Bible
and the Arabian Nights, and could remember an astonishing amount from both
books. From three to six he attended a "dame" school; and from six till
nine (when his father died and left the family destitute) he was in his
father's school, learning the classics, reading an enormous quantity of
English books, avoiding novels, and delighting in cumbrous theological and
metaphysical treatises. At ten he was sent to the Charity School of
Christ's Hospital, London, where he met Charles Lamb, who records his
impression of the place and of Coleridge in one of his famous essays.[224]
Coleridge seems to have remained in this school for seven or eight years
without visiting his home,--a poor, neglected boy, whose comforts and
entertainments were all within himself. Just as, when a little child, he
used to wander over the fields with a stick in his hand, slashing the tops
from weeds and thistles, and thinking himself to be the mighty champion of
Christendom against the infidels, so now he would lie on the roof of the
school, forgetting the play of his fellows and the roar of the London
streets, watching the white clouds drifting over and following them in
spirit into all sorts of romantic adventures.
At nineteen this hopeless dreamer, who had read more books than an old
professor, entered Cambridge as a charity student. He remained for nearly
three years, then ran away because of a trifling debt and enlisted in the
Dragoons, where he served several months before he was discovered and
brought back to the university. He left in 1794 without taking his degree;
and presently we find him with the youthful Southey,--a kindred spirit, who
had been fired to wild enthusiasm by the French Revolution,--founding his
famous Pantisocracy for the regeneration of human society. "The Fall of
Robespierre," a poem composed by the two enthusiasts, is full of the new
revolutionary spirit. The Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna,
was to be an ideal community, in which the citizens combined farming and
literature; and work was to be limited to two hours each day. Moreover,
each member of the community was to marry a good woman, and take her with
him. The two poets obeyed the latter injunction first, marrying two
sisters, and then found that they had no money to pay even their traveling
expenses to the new Utopia.
During all the rest of his career a tragic weakness of will takes
possession of Coleridge, making it impossible for him, with all his genius
and learning, to hold himself steadily to any one work or purpose. He
studied in Germany; worked as a private secretary, till the drudgery wore
upon his free spirit; then he went to Rome and remained for two years, lost
in study. Later he started _The Friend_, a paper devoted to truth and
liberty; lectured on poetry and the fine arts to enraptured audiences in
London, until his frequent failures to meet his engagements scattered his
hearers; was offered an excellent position and a half interest (amounting
to some £2000) in the _Morning Post_ and _The Courier_, but declined it,
saying "that I would not give up the country and the lazy reading of old
folios for two thousand times two thousand pounds,--in short, that beyond
£350 a year I considered money a real evil." His family, meanwhile, was
almost entirely neglected; he lived apart, following his own way, and the
wife and children were left in charge of his friend Southey. Needing money,
he was on the point of becoming a Unitarian minister, when a small pension
from two friends enabled him to live for a few years without regular
employment.
A terrible shadow in Coleridge's life was the apparent cause of most of his
dejection. In early life he suffered from neuralgia, and to ease the pain
began to use opiates. The result on such a temperament was almost
inevitable. He became a slave to the drug habit; his naturally weak will
lost all its directing and sustaining force, until, after fifteen years of
pain and struggle and despair, he gave up and put himself in charge of a
physician, one Mr. Gillman, of Highgate. Carlyle, who visited him at this
time, calls him "a king of men," but records that "he gave you the idea of
a life that had been full of sufferings, a life heavy-laden,
half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and
other bewilderment."
The shadow is dark indeed; but there are gleams of sunshine that
occasionally break through the clouds. One of these is his association with
Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, in the Quantock hills, out of which came
the famous _Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798. Another was his loyal devotion to
poetry for its own sake. With the exception of his tragedy _Remorse_, which
through Byron's influence was accepted at Drury Lane Theater, and for which
he was paid £400, he received almost nothing for his poetry. Indeed, he
seems not to have desired it; for he says: "Poetry has been to me its own
exceeding great reward; it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied
and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude, and it has given me
the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that
meets and surrounds me." One can better understand his exquisite verse
after such a declaration. A third ray of sunlight came from the admiration
of his contemporaries; for though he wrote comparatively little, he was by
his talents and learning a leader among literary men, and his conversations
were as eagerly listened to as were those of Dr. Johnson. Wordsworth says
of him that, though other men of the age had done some wonderful things,
Coleridge was the only wonderful man he had ever known. Of his lectures on
literature a contemporary says: "His words seem to flow as from a person
repeating with grace and energy some delightful poem." And of his
conversation it is recorded: "Throughout a long-drawn summer's day would
this man talk to you in low, equable but clear and musical tones,
concerning things human and divine; marshalling all history, harmonizing
all experiment, probing the depths of your consciousness, and revealing
visions of glory and terror to the imagination."
The last bright ray of sunlight comes from Coleridge's own soul, from the
gentle, kindly nature which made men love and respect him in spite of his
weaknesses, and which caused Lamb to speak of him humorously as "an
archangel a little damaged." The universal law of suffering seems to be
that it refines and softens humanity; and Coleridge was no exception to the
law. In his poetry we find a note of human sympathy, more tender and
profound than can be found in Wordsworth or, indeed, in any other of the
great English poets. Even in his later poems, when he has lost his first
inspiration and something of the splendid imaginative power that makes his
work equal to the best of Blake's, we find a soul tender, triumphant,
quiet, "in the stillness of a great peace." He died in 1834, and was buried
in Highgate Church. The last stanza of the boatman's song, in _Remorse_,
serves better to express the world's judgment than any epitaph:
Hark! the cadence dies away
On the quiet moon-lit sea;
The boatmen rest their oars and say,
_Miserere Domini!_
WORKS OF COLERIDGE. The works of Coleridge naturally divide themselves into
three classes,--the poetic, the critical, and the philosophical,
corresponding to the early, the middle, and the later periods of his
career. Of his poetry Stopford Brooke well says: "All that he did
excellently might be bound up in twenty pages, but it should be bound in
pure gold." His early poems show the influence of Gray and Blake,
especially of the latter. When Coleridge begins his "Day Dream" with the
line, "My eyes make pictures when they're shut," we recall instantly
Blake's haunting _Songs of Innocence_. But there is this difference between
the two poets,--in Blake we have only a dreamer; in Coleridge we have the
rare combination of the dreamer and the profound scholar. The quality of
this early poetry, with its strong suggestion of Blake, may be seen in such
poems as "A Day Dream," "The Devil's Thoughts," "The Suicide's Argument,"
and "The Wanderings of Cain." His later poems, wherein we see his
imagination bridled by thought and study, but still running very freely,
may best be appreciated in "Kubla Khan," "Christabel," and "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner." It is difficult to criticise such poems; one can only
read them and wonder at their melody, and at the vague suggestions which
they conjure up in the mind. "Kubla Khan" is a fragment, painting a
gorgeous Oriental dream picture, such as one might see in an October
sunset. The whole poem came to Coleridge one morning when he had fallen
asleep over Purchas, and upon awakening he began to write hastily,
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
He was interrupted after fifty-four lines were written, and he never
finished the poem.
"Christabel" is also a fragment, which seems to have been planned as the
story of a pure young girl who fell under the spell of a sorcerer, in the
shape of the woman Geraldine. It is full of a strange melody, and contains
many passages of exquisite poetry; but it trembles with a strange, unknown
horror, and so suggests the supernatural terrors of the popular hysterical
novels, to which we have referred. On this account it is not wholesome
reading; though one flies in the face of Swinburne and of other critics by
venturing to suggest such a thing.
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is Coleridge's chief contribution to the
_Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798, and is one of the world's masterpieces. Though
it introduces the reader to a supernatural realm, with a phantom ship, a
crew of dead men, the overhanging curse of the albatross, the polar spirit,
and the magic breeze, it nevertheless manages to create a sense of absolute
reality concerning these manifest absurdities. All the mechanisms of the
poem, its meter, rime, and melody are perfect; and some of its descriptions
of the lonely sea have never been equaled. Perhaps we should say
suggestions, rather than descriptions; for Coleridge never describes
things, but makes a suggestion, always brief and always exactly right, and
our own imagination instantly supplies the details. It is useless to quote
fragments; one must read the entire poem, if he reads nothing else of the
romantic school of poetry.
Among Coleridge's shorter poems there is a wide variety, and each reader
must be left largely to follow his own taste. The beginner will do well to
read a few of the early poems, to which we have referred, and then try the
"Ode to France," "Youth and Age," "Dejection," "Love Poems," "Fears in
Solitude," "Religious Musings," "Work Without Hope," and the glorious "Hymn
Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni." One exquisite little poem from the
Latin, "The Virgin's Cradle Hymn," and his version of Schiller's
_Wallenstein_, show Coleridge's remarkable power as a translator. The
latter is one of the best poetical translations in our literature.
Of Coleridge's prose works, the _Biographia, Literaria, or Sketches of My
Literary Life and Opinions_ (1817), his collected _Lectures on Shakespeare_
(1849), and _Aids to Reflection_ (1825) are the most interesting from a
literary view point. The first is an explanation and criticism of
Wordsworth's theory of poetry, and contains more sound sense and
illuminating ideas on the general subject of poetry than any other book in
our language. The _Lectures_, as refreshing as a west wind in midsummer,
are remarkable for their attempt to sweep away the arbitrary rules which
for two centuries had stood in the way of literary criticism of
Shakespeare, in order to study the works themselves. No finer analysis and
appreciation of the master's genius has ever been written. In his
philosophical work Coleridge introduced the idealistic philosophy of
Germany into England. He set himself in line with Berkeley, and squarely
against Bentham, Malthus, Mill, and all the materialistic tendencies which
were and still are the bane of English philosophy. The _Aids to Reflection_
is Coleridge's most profound work, but is more interesting to the student
of religion and philosophy than to the readers of literature.
ROBERT SOUTHEY (1774-1843)
Closely associated with Wordsworth and Coleridge is Robert Southey; and the
three, on account of their residence in the northern lake district, were
referred to contemptuously as the "Lakers" by the Scottish magazine
reviewers. Southey holds his place in this group more by personal
association than by his literary gifts. He was born at Bristol, in 1774;
studied at Westminster School, and at Oxford, where he found himself in
perpetual conflict with the authorities on account of his independent
views. He finally left the university and joined Coleridge in his scheme of
a Pantisocracy. For more than fifty years he labored steadily at
literature, refusing to consider any other occupation. He considered
himself seriously as one of the greatest writers of the day, and a reading
of his ballads--which connected him at once with the romantic school--leads
us to think that, had he written less, he might possibly have justified his
own opinion of himself. Unfortunately he could not wait for inspiration,
being obliged to support not only his own family but also, in large
measure, that of his friend Coleridge.
Southey gradually surrounded himself with one of the most extensive
libraries in England, and set himself to the task of of writing something
every working day. The results of his industry were one hundred and nine
volumes, besides some hundred and fifty articles for the magazines, most of
which are now utterly forgotten. His most ambitious poems are _Thalaba_, a
tale of Arabian enchantment; _The Curse of Kehama_, a medley of Hindoo
mythology; _Madoc_, a legend of a Welsh prince who discovered the western
world; and _Roderick_, a tale of the last of the Goths. All these, and many
more, although containing some excellent passages, are on the whole
exaggerated and unreal, both in manner and in matter. Southey wrote far
better prose than poetry, and his admirable _Life of Nelson_ is still often
read. Besides these are his _Lives of British Admirals_, his lives of
Cowper and Wesley, and his histories of Brazil and of the Peninsular War.
Southey was made Poet Laureate in 1813, and was the first to raise that
office from the low estate into which it had fallen since the death of
Dryden. The opening lines of Thalaba, beginning,
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
are still sometimes quoted; and a few of his best known short poems, like
"The Scholar," "Auld Cloots," "The Well of St. Keyne," "The Inchcape Rock,"
and "Lodore," will repay the curious reader. The beauty of Southey's
character, his patience and helpfulness, make him a worthy associate of the
two greater poets with whom he is generally named.
WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)
We have already called attention to two significant movements of the
eighteenth century, which we must for a moment recall if we are to
appreciate Scott, not simply as a delightful teller of tales, but as a
tremendous force in modern literature. The first is the triumph of romantic
poetry in Wordsworth and Coleridge; the second is the success of our first
English novelists, and the popularization of literature by taking it from
the control of a few patrons and critics and putting it into the hands of
the people as one of the forces which mold our modern life. Scott is an
epitome of both these movements. The poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge was
read by a select few, but Scott's _Marmion_ and _Lady of the Lake_ aroused
a whole nation to enthusiasm, and for the first time romantic poetry became
really popular. So also the novel had been content to paint men and women
of the present, until the wonderful series of Waverley novels appeared,
when suddenly, by the magic of this "Wizard of the North," all history
seemed changed. The past, which had hitherto appeared as a dreary region of
dead heroes, became alive again, and filled with a multitude of men and
women who had the surprising charm of reality. It is of small consequence
that Scott's poetry and prose are both faulty; that his poems are read
chiefly for the story, rather than for their poetic excellence; and that
much of the evident crudity and barbarism of the Middle Ages is ignored or
forgotten in Scott's writings. By their vigor, their freshness, their rapid
action, and their breezy, out-of-door atmosphere, Scott's novels attracted
thousands of readers who else had known nothing of the delights of
literature. He is, therefore, the greatest known factor in establishing and
in popularizing that romantic element in prose and poetry which has been
for a hundred years the chief characteristic of our literature.
LIFE. Scott was born in Edinburgh, on August 15, 1771. On both his mother's
and father's side he was descended from old Border families, distinguished
more for their feuds and fighting than for their intellectual attainments.
His father was a barrister, a just man, who often lost clients by advising
them to be, first of all, honest in their lawsuits. His mother was a woman
of character and education, strongly imaginative, a teller of tales which
stirred young Walter's enthusiasm by revealing the past as a world of
living heroes.
As a child, Scott was lame and delicate, and was therefore sent away from
the city to be with his grandmother in the open country at Sandy Knowe, in
Roxburghshire, near the Tweed. This grandmother was a perfect treasure-
house of legends concerning the old Border feuds. From her wonderful tales
Scott developed that intense love of Scottish history and tradition which
characterizes all his work.
By the time he was eight years old, when he returned to Edinburgh, Scott's
tastes were fixed for life. At the high school he was a fair scholar, but
without enthusiasm, being more interested in Border stories than in the
text-books. He remained at school only six or seven years, and then entered
his father's office to study law, at the same time attending lectures at
the university. He kept this up for some six years without developing any
interest in his profession, not even when he passed his examinations and
was admitted to the Bar, in 1792. After nineteen years of desultory work,
in which he showed far more zeal in gathering Highland legends than in
gaining clients, he had won two small legal offices which gave him enough
income to support him comfortably. His home, meanwhile, was at Ashestiel on
the Tweed, where all his best poetry was written.
Scott's literary work began with the translation from the German of
Bürger's romantic ballad of _Lenore_ (1796) and of Goethe's _Götz von
Berlichingen_ (1799); but there was romance enough in his own loved
Highlands, and in 1802-1803 appeared three volumes of his _Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border_, which he had been collecting for many years. In 1805,
when Scott was 34 years old, appeared his first original work, _The Lay of
the Last Minstrel_. Its success was immediate, and when _Marmion_ (1808)
and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810) aroused Scotland and England to intense
enthusiasm, and brought unexpected fame to the author,--without in the
least spoiling his honest and lovable nature,--Scott gladly resolved to
abandon the law, in which he had won scant success, and give himself wholly
to literature. Unfortunately, however, in order to increase his earnings,
he entered secretly into partnership with the firms of Constable and the
brothers Ballantyne, as printer-publishers,--a sad mistake, indeed, and the
cause of that tragedy which closed the life of Scotland's greatest writer.
The year 1811 is remarkable for two things in Scott's life. In this year he
seems to have realized that, notwithstanding the success of his poems, he
had not yet "found himself"; that he was not a poetic genius, like Burns;
that in his first three poems he had practically exhausted his material,
though he still continued to write verse; and that, if he was to keep his
popularity, he must find some other work. The fact that, only a year later,
Byron suddenly became the popular favorite, shows how correctly Scott had
judged himself and the reading public, which was even more fickle than
usual in this emotional age. In that same year, 1811, Scott bought the
estate of Abbotsford, on the Tweed, with which place his name is forever
associated. Here he began to spend large sums, and to dispense the generous
hospitality of a Scotch laird, of which he had been dreaming for years. In
1820 he was made a baronet; and his new title of Sir Walter came nearer to
turning his honest head than had all his literary success. His business
partnership was kept secret, and during all the years when the Waverley
novels were the most popular books in the world, their authorship remained
unknown; for Scott deemed it beneath the dignity of his title to earn money
by business or literature, and sought to give the impression that the
enormous sums spent at Abbotsford in improving the estate and in
entertaining lavishly were part of the dignity of the position and came
from ancestral sources.
It was the success of Byron's _Childe Harold_, and the comparative failure
of Scott's later poems, _Rokeby_, _The Bridal of Triermain_, and _The Lord
of the Isles_, which led our author into the new field, where he was to be
without a rival. Rummaging through a cabinet one day in search of some
fishing tackle, Scott found the manuscript of a story which he had begun
and laid aside nine years before. He read this old story eagerly, as if it
had been another's work; finished it within three weeks, and published it
without signing his name. The success of this first novel, _Waverley_
(1814), was immediate and unexpected. Its great sales and the general
chorus of praise for its unknown author were without precedent; and when
_Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Black Dwarf, Old Mortality, Rob Roy_, and
_The Heart of Midlothian_ appeared within the next four years, England's
delight and wonder knew no bounds. Not only at home, but also on the
Continent, large numbers of these fresh and fascinating stories were sold
as fast as they could be printed.
During the seventeen years which followed the appearance of _Waverley_,
Scott wrote on an average nearly two novels per year, creating an unusual
number of characters and illustrating many periods of Scotch, English, and
French history, from the time of the Crusades to the fall of the Stuarts.
In addition to these historical novels, he wrote _Tales of a Grandfather,
Demonology and Witchcraft_, biographies of Dryden and of Swift, the _Life
of Napoleon_, in nine volumes, and a large number of articles for the
reviews and magazines. It was an extraordinary amount of literary work, but
it was not quite so rapid and spontaneous as it seemed. He had been very
diligent in looking up old records, and we must remember that, in nearly
all his poems and novels, Scott was drawing upon a fund of legend,
tradition, history, and poetry, which he had been gathering for forty
years, and which his memory enabled him to produce at will with almost the
accuracy of an encyclopedia.
For the first six years Scott held himself to Scottish history, giving us
in nine remarkable novels the whole of Scotland, its heroism, its superb
faith and enthusiasm, and especially its clannish loyalty to its hereditary
chiefs; giving us also all parties and characters, from Covenanters to
Royalists, and from kings to beggars. After reading these nine volumes we
know Scotland and Scotchmen as we can know them in no other way. In 1819 he
turned abruptly from Scotland, and in _Ivanhoe_, the most popular of his
works, showed what a mine of neglected wealth lay just beneath the surface
of English history. It is hard to realize now, as we read its rapid,
melodramatic action, its vivid portrayal of Saxon and Norman character, and
all its picturesque details, that it was written rapidly, at a time when
the author was suffering from disease and could hardly repress an
occasional groan from finding its way into the rapid dictation. It stands
to-day as the best example of the author's own theory that the will of a
man is enough to hold him steadily, against all obstacles, to the task of
"doing what he has a mind to do." _Kenilworth, Nigel, Peveril_, and
_Woodstock_, all written in the next few years, show his grasp of the
romantic side of English annals; _Count Robert_ and _The Talisman_ show his
enthusiasm for the heroic side of the Crusaders' nature; and _Quentin
Durward_ and _Anne of Geierstein_ suggest another mine of romance which he
discovered in French history.
For twenty years Scott labored steadily at literature, with the double
object of giving what was in him, and of earning large sums to support the
lavish display which he deemed essential to a laird of Scotland. In 1826,
while he was blithely at work on _Woodstock_, the crash came. Not even the
vast earnings of all these popular novels could longer keep the wretched
business of Ballantyne on its feet, and the firm failed, after years of
mismanagement. Though a silent partner, Scott assumed full responsibility,
and at fifty-five years of age, sick, suffering, and with all his best work
behind him, he found himself facing a debt of over half a million dollars.
The firm could easily have compromised with its creditors; but Scott
refused to hear of bankruptcy laws under which he could have taken refuge.
He assumed the entire debt as a personal one, and set resolutely to work to
pay every penny. Times were indeed changed in England when, instead of a
literary genius starving until some wealthy patron gave him a pension, this
man, aided by his pen alone, could confidently begin to earn that enormous
amount of money. And this is one of the unnoticed results of the
popularization of literature. Without a doubt Scott would have accomplished
the task, had he been granted only a few years of health. He still lived at
Abbotsford, which he had offered to his creditors, but which they
generously refused to accept; and in two years, by miscellaneous work, had
paid some two hundred thousand dollars of his debt, nearly half of this sum
coming from his _Life of Napoleon_. A new edition of the Waverley novels
appeared, which was very successful financially, and Scott had every reason
to hope that he would soon face the world owing no man a penny, when he
suddenly broke under the strain. In 1830 occurred a stroke of paralysis
from which he never fully recovered; though after a little time he was
again at work, dictating with splendid patience and resolution. He writes
in his diary at this time: "The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I
scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as
if I had a remedy ready, yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the
vessel leaky."
It is good to remember that governments are not always ungrateful, and to
record that, when it became known that a voyage to Italy might improve
Scott's health, the British government promptly placed a naval vessel at
the disposal of a man who had led no armies to the slaughter, but had only
given pleasure to multitudes of peaceable men and women by his stories. He
visited Malta, Naples, and Rome; but in his heart he longed for Scotland,
and turned homeward after a few months of exile. The river Tweed, the
Scotch hills, the trees of Abbotsford, the joyous clamor of his dogs,
brought forth the first exclamation of delight which had passed Scott's
lips since he sailed away. He died in September of the same year, 1832, and
was buried with his ancestors in the old Dryburgh Abbey.
WORKS OF SCOTT. Scott's work is of a kind which the critic gladly passes
over, leaving each reader to his own joyous and uninstructed opinion. From
a literary view point the works are faulty enough, if one is looking for
faults; but it is well to remember that they were intended to give delight,
and that they rarely fail of their object. When one has read the stirring
_Marmion_ or the more enduring _Lady of the Lake_, felt the heroism of the
Crusaders in _The Talisman_, the picturesqueness of chivalry in _Ivanhoe_,
the nobleness of soul of a Scotch peasant girl in _The Heart of
Midlothian_, and the quality of Scotch faith in _Old Mortality_, then his
own opinion of Scott's genius will be of more value than all the criticisms
that have ever been written.
At the outset we must confess frankly that Scott's poetry is not artistic,
in the highest sense, and that it lacks the deeply imaginative and
suggestive qualities which make a poem the noblest and most enduring work
of humanity. We read it now, not for its poetic excellence, but for its
absorbing story interest. Even so, it serves an admirable purpose.
_Marmion_ and _The Lady of the Lake_, which are often the first long poems
read by the beginner in literature, almost invariably lead to a deeper
interest in the subject; and many readers owe to these poems an
introduction to the delights of poetry. They are an excellent beginning,
therefore, for young readers, since they are almost certain to hold the
attention, and to lead indirectly to an interest in other and better poems.
Aside from this, Scott's poetry is marked by vigor and youthful abandon;
its interest lies in its vivid pictures, its heroic characters, and
especially in its rapid action and succession of adventures, which hold and
delight us still, as they held and delighted the first wondering readers.
And one finds here and there terse descriptions, or snatches of song and
ballad, like the "Boat Song" and "Lochinvar," which are among the best
known in our literature.
In his novels Scott plainly wrote too rapidly and too much. While a genius
of the first magnitude, the definition of genius as "the infinite capacity
for taking pains" hardly belongs to him. For details of life and history,
for finely drawn characters, and for tracing the logical consequences of
human action, he has usually no inclination. He sketches a character
roughly, plunges him into the midst of stirring incidents, and the action
of the story carries us on breathlessly to the end. So his stories are
largely adventure stories, at the best; and it is this element of adventure
and glorious action, rather than the study of character, which makes Scott
a perennial favorite of the young. The same element of excitement is what
causes mature readers to turn from Scott to better novelists, who have more
power to delineate human character, and to create, or discover, a romantic
interest in the incidents of everyday life rather than in stirring
adventure.[225]
Notwithstanding these limitations, it is well--especially in these days,
when we hear that Scott is outgrown--to emphasize four noteworthy things
that he accomplished.
(1) He created the historical novel[226]; and all novelists of the last
century who draw upon history for their characters and events are followers
of Scott and acknowledge his mastery.
(2) His novels are on a vast scale, covering a very wide range of action,
and are concerned with public rather than with private interests. So, with
the exception of _The Bride of Lammermoor_, the love story in his novels is
generally pale and feeble; but the strife and passions of big parties are
magnificently portrayed. A glance over even the titles of his novels shows
how the heroic side of history for over six hundred years finds expression
in his pages; and all the parties of these six centuries--Crusaders,
Covenanters, Cavaliers, Roundheads, Papists, Jews, Gypsies, Rebels--start
into life again, and fight or give a reason for the faith that is in them.
No other novelist in England, and only Balzac in France, approaches Scott
in the scope of his narratives.
(3) Scott was the first novelist in any language to make the scene an
essential element in the action. He knew Scotland, and loved it; and there
is hardly an event in any of his Scottish novels in which we do not breathe
the very atmosphere of the place, and feel the presence of its moors and
mountains. The place, morever, is usually so well chosen and described that
the action seems almost to be the result of natural environment. Perhaps
the most striking illustration of this harmony between scene and incident
is found in _Old Mortality_, where Morton approaches the cave of the old
Covenanter, and where the spiritual terror inspired by the fanatic's
struggle with imaginary fiends is paralleled by the physical terror of a
gulf and a roaring flood spanned by a slippery tree trunk. A second
illustration of the same harmony of scene and incident is found in the
meeting of the arms and ideals of the East and West, when the two champions
fight in the burning desert, and then eat bread together in the cool shade
of the oasis, as described in the opening chapter of _The Talisman_. A
third illustration is found in that fascinating love scene, where Ivanhoe
lies wounded, raging at his helplessness, while the gentle Rebecca
alternately hides and reveals her love as she describes the terrific
assault on the castle, which goes on beneath her window. His thoughts are
all on the fight; hers on the man she loves; and both are natural, and both
are exactly what we expect under the circumstances. These are but striking
examples of the fact that, in all his work, Scott tries to preserve perfect
harmony between the scene and the action.
(4) Scott's chief claim to greatness lies in the fact that he was the first
novelist to recreate the past; that he changed our whole conception of
history by making it to be, not a record of dry facts, but a stage on which
living men and women played their parts. Carlyle's criticism is here most
pertinent: "These historical novels have taught this truth ... unknown to
writers of history: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled
by living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies, and
abstractions of men." Not only the pages of history, but all the hills and
vales of his beloved Scotland are filled with living characters,--lords and
ladies, soldiers, pirates, gypsies, preachers, schoolmasters, clansmen,
bailiffs, dependents,--all Scotland is here before our eyes, in the reality
of life itself. It is astonishing, with his large numbers of characters,
that Scott never repeats himself. Naturally he is most at home in Scotland,
and with humble people. Scott's own romantic interest in feudalism caused
him to make his lords altogether too lordly; his aristocratic maidens are
usually bloodless, conventional, exasperating creatures, who talk like
books and pose like figures in an old tapestry. But when he describes
characters like Jeanie Deans, in _The Heart of Midlothian_, and the old
clansman, Evan Dhu, in _Waverley_, we know the very soul of Scotch
womanhood and manhood.
Perhaps one thing more should be said, or rather repeated, of Scott's
enduring work. He is always sane, wholesome, manly, inspiring. We know the
essential nobility of human life better, and we are better men and women
ourselves, because of what he has written.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824)