ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1837-1909). This voluminous writer, born in the

year of Victoria's accession, is yet so close to our own day that it is

difficult to think of him as part of an age that is gone. As a poet he was

a master of verbal melody, and had such a command of verse forms that he

won his title of "inventor of harmonies." As a critic he showed a wide

knowledge of English and French literature, a discriminating taste, and an

enthusiasm which bubbled over in eulogy of those whom he liked, and which

emptied vials of wrath upon Byron, Carlyle and others who fell under his

displeasure. His criticisms are written in an extravagant, almost a

torrential, style; at times his prose falls into a chanting rhythm so

attractive in itself as to make us overlook the fact that the praise and

censure which he dispenses with prodigal liberality are too personal to be

quite trustworthy.

[Sidenote: HIS POETRY]

We are still too near Swinburne to judge him accurately, and his place in

the long history of English poetry is yet to be determined. We note here

only two characteristics which may or may not be evident to other readers.

In the first place, with his marvelous command of meter and melody,

Swinburne has a fatal fluency of speech which tends to bury his thought in

a mass of jingling verbiage. As we read we seem to hear the question, "What

readest thou, Hamlet?" and again the Dane makes answer, "Words, words,

words." Again, like the Pre-Raphaelites with whom he was at one time

associated, Swinburne lived too much apart from the tide of common life. He

wrote for the chosen few, and in the mass of his verse one must search long

for a passage of which one may say, This goes home to the hearts of men,

and abides there in the treasure-house of all good poetry.

Among the longer works of Swinburne his masterpiece is the lyrical drama

_Atalanta in Calydon_. If one would merely sample the flavor of the

poet, such minor works as "Itylus" and the fine sea pieces, "Off Shore,"

"By the North Sea" and "A Forsaken Garden" may be recommended. Nor should

we overlook what, to many, is Swinburne's best quality; namely, his love of

children, as reflected in such poems as "The Salt of the Earth" and "A

Child's Laughter." Among the best of his prose works are his _William

Blake_, _Essays and Studies_, _Miscellanies_ and _Studies in

Prose and Verse_.

SONGS IN MANY KEYS. In calling attention to the above-named poets, we have

merely indicated a few who seem to be chief; but the judgment is a personal

one, and subject to challenge. The American critic Stedman, in his

_Victorian Anthology_, recognizes two hundred and fifty singers; of

these eighty are represented by five or more poems; and of the eighty a few

are given higher places than those we have selected as typical. There are

many readers who prefer the _Goblin Market_ of Christina Rossetti to

anything produced by her gifted brother, who place Jean Ingelow above

Elizabeth Barrett, who find more pleasure in Edwin Arnold's _Light of

Asia_ than in all the poems of Matthew Arnold, and who cannot be

interested in even the best of Pre-Raphaelite verse because of its

unreality. Many men, many minds! Time has not yet recorded its verdict on

the Victorians, and until there is some settled criticism which shall

express the judgment of several generations of men, the best plan for the

beginner is to make acquaintance with all the minor poets in an anthology

or book of selections. It may even be a mistake to call any of these poets

minor; for he who has written one song that lives in the hearts of men has

produced a work more enduring than the pyramids.

* * * * *

II. THE VICTORIAN NOVELISTS

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]

Among the Victorian novelists were two men who were frequent rivals in the

race for fame and fortune. Thackeray, well born and well bred, with

artistic tastes and literary culture, looked doubtfully at the bustling

life around him, found his inspiration in a past age, and tried to uphold

the best traditions of English literature. Dickens, with little education

and less interest in literary culture, looked with joy upon the struggle

for democracy, and with an observation that was almost microscopic saw all

its picturesque details of speech and character and incident. He was the

eye of the mighty Victorian age, as Tennyson was its ear, and Browning its

psychologist, and Carlyle its chronic grumbler.

LIFE. In the childhood of Dickens one may see a forecast of his

entire career. His father, a good-natured but shiftless man

(caricatured as Mr. Micawber in _David Copperfield_), was a

clerk in the Navy Pay Office, at Portsmouth. There Dickens was born

in 1812. The father's salary was £80 per year, enough at that time

to warrant living in middle-class comfort rather than in the

poverty of the lower classes, with whom Dickens is commonly

associated. The mother was a sentimental woman, whom Dickens, with

questionable taste, has caricatured as Mrs. Micawber and again as

Mrs. Nickleby. Both parents were somewhat neglectful of their

children, and uncommonly fond of creature comforts, especially of

good dinners and a bowl of punch. Though there is nothing in such a

family to explain Dickens's character, there is much to throw light

on the characters that appear in his novels.

[Sidenote: THE STAGE]

The boy himself was far from robust. Having no taste for sports, he

amused himself by reading romances or by listening to his nurse's

tales,--beautiful tales, he thought, which "almost scared him into

fits." His elfish fancy in childhood is probably reflected in Pip,

of _Great Expectations_. He had a strong dramatic instinct to

act a story, or sing a song, or imitate a neighbor's speech, and

the father used to amuse his friends by putting little Charles on a

chair and encouraging him to mimicry,--a dangerous proceeding,

though it happened to turn out well in the case of Dickens.

This stagey tendency increased as the boy grew older. He had a

passion for private theatricals, and when he wrote a good story was

not satisfied till he had read it in public. When _Pickwick_

appeared (1837) the young man, till then an unknown reporter, was

brought before an immense audience which included a large part of

England and America. Thereafter he was never satisfied unless he

was in the public eye; his career was a succession of theatrical

incidents, of big successes, big lecture tours, big

audiences,--always the footlights, till he lay at last between the

pale wax tapers. But we are far ahead of our story.

[Sidenote: THE LONDON STREETS]

When Dickens was nine years old his family moved to London. There

the father fell into debt, and by the brutal laws of the period was

thrown into prison. The boy went to work in the cellar of a

blacking factory, and there began that intimate acquaintance with

lowly characters which he used later to such advantage. He has

described his bitter experience so often (in _David

Copperfield_ for instance) that the biographer may well pass

over it. We note only this significant fact: that wherever Dickens

went he had an instinct for exploration like that of a farm dog,

which will not rest in a place till he has first examined all the

neighborhood, putting his nose into every likely or unlikely spot

that may shelter friend or enemy. So Dickens used his spare hours

in roaming the byways of London by night, so he gained his

marvelous knowledge of that foreign land called The Street, with

its flitting life of gamins and nondescripts, through which we pass

daily as through an unknown country.

[Sidenote: THE SCRAMBLE FOR PLACE]

A small inheritance brought the father from prison, the family was

again united, and for two years the boy attended the academy which

he has held up to the laughter and scorn of two continents. There

the genius of Dickens seemed suddenly to awaken. He studied little,

being given to pranks and theatricals, but he discovered within him

an immense ambition, an imperious will to win a place and a name in

the great world, and a hopeful temper that must carry him over or

under all obstacles.

[Illustration: GADSHILL PLACE, NEAR ROCHESTER

The last residence of Dickens]

No sooner was his discovery made than he left school and entered a

law office, where he picked up enough knowledge to make court

practices forever ridiculous, in _Bleak House_ and other

stories. He studied shorthand and quickly mastered it; then

undertook to report parliamentary speeches (a good training in

oratory) and presently began a prosperous career as a reporter.

This had two advantages; it developed his natural taste for odd

people and picturesque incidents, and it brought him close to the

great reading public. To please that public, to humor its whims and

prejudices, its love for fun and tears and sentimentality, was

thereafter the ruling motive in Dickens's life.

[Sidenote: LITERARY VENTURES]

His first literary success came with some short stories contributed

to the magazines, which appeared in book form as _Sketches by

Boz_ (1835). A publisher marked these sketches, engaged Dickens

to write the text or letterpress for some comic pictures, and the

result was _Pickwick_, which took England and America by

storm. Then followed _Oliver Twist_, _Nicholas Nickleby_,

_Old Curiosity Shop_,--a flood of works that made readers rub

their eyes, wondering if such a fountain of laughter and tears were

inexhaustible.

There is little else to record except this: that from the time of

his first triumph Dickens held his place as the most popular writer

in English. With his novels he was not satisfied, but wrote a

history of England, and edited various popular magazines, such as

_Household Words_. Also he gave public readings, reveling in

the applause, the lionizing, which greeted him wherever he went. He

earned much money; he bought the place "Gadshill," near Rochester,

which he had coveted since childhood; but he was a free spender,

and his great income was less than his fancied need. To increase

his revenue he "toured" the States in a series of readings from his

own works, and capitalized his experience in _American Notes_

and parts of _Martin Chuzzlewit_.

A question of taste must arise even now in connection with these

works. Dickens had gone to a foreign country for just two things,

money and applause; he received both in full measure; then he bit

the friendly hand which had given him what he wanted. [Footnote:

The chief source of Dickens's irritation was the money loss

resulting from the "pirating" of his stories. There was no

international copyright in those days; the works of any popular

writer were freely appropriated by foreign publishers. This custom

was wrong, undoubtedly, but it had been in use for centuries.

Scott's novels had been pirated the same way; and until Cooper got

to windward of the pirates (by arranging for foreign copyrights)

his work was stolen freely in England and on the Continent. But

Dickens saw only his own grievance, and even at public dinners was

apt to make his hosts uncomfortable by proclaiming his rights or

denouncing their moral standards. Moreover, he had a vast conceit

of himself, and, like most visitors of a week, thought he knew

America like a book. It was as if he looked once at the welter cast

ashore by mighty Lake Superior in a storm, and said, "What a dirty

sea!"] Thackeray, who followed him to America, had a finer sense of

the laws of hospitality and good breeding.

[Sidenote: THE PRICE OF POPULARITY]

In 1844 Dickens resolved to make both ends meet, and carried out

his resolve with promptness and precision. To decrease expenses he

went to the Continent, and lived there, hungry for the footlights,

till a series of stories ending with _Dombey and Son_ put his

finances on a secure basis. Then he returned to London, wrote more

novels, and saved a fortune for his descendants, who promptly spent

it. Evidently it was a family trait. More and more he lived on his

nerves, grew imperious, exacting, till he separated from his wife

and made wreck of domestic happiness. The self-esteem of which he

made comedy in his novels was for him a tragedy. Also he resumed

the public readings, with their false glory and nervous wear and

tear, which finally brought him to the grave.

[Illustration: DICKEN'S BIRTHPLACE, LANDPORT, PORTSEA]

He died, worn out by his own exertions, in 1870. He had steadily

refused titles and decorations, but a grateful nation laid his body

to rest in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. It is doubtful

whether he would have accepted this honor, which was forced upon

him, for he had declared proudly that by his works alone he would

live in the memory of his countrymen.

WORKS OF DICKENS. In the early stories of Dickens is a promise of all the

rest. His first work was called _Sketches by Boz_, and "Boz" was

invented by some little girl (was it in _The Vicar of Wakefield?_) who

could not say "Moses"; also it was a pet name for a small brother of

Dickens. There was, therefore, something childlike in this first title, and

childhood was to enter very largely into the novelist's work. He could

hardly finish a story without bringing a child into it; not an ordinary

child, to make us smile, but a wistful or pathetic child whose sorrows,

since we cannot help them, are apt to make our hearts ache.

[Sidenote: THE PATHETIC ELEMENT]

Dickens is charged with exaggerating the woes of his children, and the

charge is true; but he had a very human reason for his method. In the first

place, the pathetic quality of his children is due to this simple fact,

that they bear the burden and the care of age. And burdens which men or

women accept for themselves without complaint seem all wrong, and are

wrong, when laid upon a child's innocent shoulders. Again, Dickens sought

to show us our error in thinking, as most grown-ups do, that childish

troubles are of small account. So they are, to us; but to the child they

are desperately real. Later in life we learn that troubles are not

permanent, and so give them their proper place; but in childhood a trouble

is the whole world; and a very hopeless world it is while it lasts. Dickens

knew and loved children, as he knew the public whom he made to cry with his

Little Nell and Tiny Tim; and he had discovered that tears are the key to

many a heart at which reason knocks in vain.

[Sidenote: PICKWICKIAN HUMOR]

The second work, _Pickwick,_ written in a harum-scarum way, is even

more typical of Dickens in its spirit of fun and laughter. He had been

engaged, as we have noted, to furnish a text for some comic drawings, thus

reversing the usual order of illustration. The pictures were intended to

poke fun at a club of sportsmen; and Dickens, who knew nothing of sport,

bravely set out with Mr. Winkle on his rook-shooting. Then, while the story

was appearing in monthly numbers, the illustrator committed suicide;

Dickens was left with Mr. Pickwick on his hands, and that innocent old

gentleman promptly ran away with the author. Not being in the least

adventurous, Mr. Pickwick was precisely the person for whom adventures were

lying in wait; but with his chivalrous heart within him, and Sam Weller on

guard outside, he was not to be trifled with by cabman or constable. So

these two took to the open road, and to the inns where punch, good cheer

and the unexpected were awaiting them. Never was such another book! It is

not a novel; it is a medley of fun and drollery resulting from high animal

spirits.

[Sidenote: THE MOTIVE OF HORROR]

In his next novel, _Oliver Twist_, the author makes a new departure by

using the motive of horror. One of his heroes is an unfortunate child, but

when our sympathies for the little fellow are stretched to the point of

tears, Dickens turns over a page and relieves us by Pickwickian laughter.

Also he has his usual medley of picturesque characters and incidents, but

the shadow of Fagin is over them all. One cannot go into any house in the

book, and lock the door and draw the shades, without feeling that somewhere

in the outer darkness this horrible creature is prowling. The horror which

Fagin inspires is never morbid; for Dickens with his healthy spirit could

not err in this direction. It is a boyish, melodramatic horror, such as

immature minds seek in "movies," dime novels, secret societies, detective

stories and "thrillers" at the circus.

In the fourth work, _Nicholas Nickleby_, Dickens shows that he is

nearing the limit of his invention so far as plot is concerned. In this

novel he seems to rest a bit by writing an old-fashioned romance, with its

hero and villain and moral ending. But if you study this or any subsequent

work of Dickens, you are apt to find the four elements already noted;

namely, an unfortunate child, humorous interludes, a grotesque or horrible

creature who serves as a foil to virtue or innocence, and a medley of

characters good or bad that might be transferred without change to any

other story. The most interesting thing about Dickens's men and women is

that they are human enough to make themselves at home anywhere.

WHAT TO READ. Whether one wants to study the method of Dickens or to enjoy

his works, there is hardly a better plan for the beginner than to read in

succession _Pickwick_, _Oliver Twist_ and _Nicholas

Nickleby_, which are as the seed plot out of which grow all his stories.

For the rest, the reader must follow his own fancy. If one must choose a

single work, perhaps _Copperfield_ is the most typical. "Of all my

books," said Dickens, "I like this the best; like many parents I have my

favorite child, and his name is David Copperfield." Some of the heroines of

this book are rather stagey, but the Peggotys, Betsy Trotwood, Mrs.

Gummidge, the Micawbers,--all these are unrivaled. "There is no writing

against such power," said Thackeray, who was himself writing

_Pendennis_ while Dickens was at work on his masterpiece.

[Illustration: YARD OF REINDEER INN, DANBURY

The scene of the races, in _Old Curiosity Shop_]

[Sidenote: TALE OF TWO CITIES]

Opinion is divided on the matter of _A Tale of Two Cities_. Some

critics regard it as the finest of Dickens's work, revealing as it does his

powers of description and of character-drawing without his usual

exaggeration. Other critics, who regard the exaggeration of Dickens as his

most characteristic quality, see in _Two Cities_ only an evidence of

his weakening power. It has perhaps this advantage over other works of the

author, that of them we remember only the extraordinary scenes or

characters, while the entire story of _Two Cities_ remains with us as

a finished and impressive thing. But there is also this disadvantage, that

the story ends and is done with, while _Pickwick_ goes on forever. We

may lose sight of the heroes, but we have the conviction, as Chesterton

says, that they are still on the road of adventure, that Mr. Pickwick is

somewhere drinking punch or making a speech, and that Sam Weller may step

out from behind the next stable and ask with a droll wink what we are up to

now.

It is hardly necessary to add that our reading of Dickens must not end

until we are familiar with some of his Yuletide stories, in which he gladly

followed the lead of Washington Irving. The best of all his short stories

is _A Christmas Carol_, which one must read but not criticize. At best

it is a farce, but a glorious, care-lifting, heart-warming farce. Would

there were more of the same kind!

A CRITICISM OF DICKENS. The first quality of Dickens is his extravagant

humor. This was due to the fact that he was alive, so thoroughly,

consciously alive that his vitality overflowed like a spring. Here, in a

word, is the secret of that bubbling spirit of prodigality which occasions

the criticism that Dickens produced not characters but caricatures.

[Sidenote: HIS EXAGGERATION]

The criticism is true; but it proclaims the strength of the novelist rather

than his weakness. Indeed, it is in the very exaggeration of Dickens that

his astonishing creative power is most clearly manifest. There is something

primal, stupendous, in his grotesque characters which reminds us of the

uncouth monsters that nature created in her sportive moods. Some readers,

meeting with Bunsby, are reminded of a walrus; and who ever saw a walrus

without thinking of the creature as nature's Bunsby? So with Quilp, Toots,

Squeers, Pumblechook; so with giraffes, baboons, dodoes, dromedaries,--all

are freaks from the æsthetic viewpoint, but think of the overflowing energy

implied in creating them!

The same sense of prodigality characterized Dickens even in his sober

moods, when he portrayed hundreds of human characters, and not a dead or

dull person among them. To be sure they are all exaggerated; they weep too

copiously, eat or drink too intemperately, laugh too uproariously for

normal men; but to criticize their superabundant vitality is to criticize

Beowulf or Ulysses or Hiawatha; nay, it is to criticize life itself, which

at high tide is wont to overflow in heroics or absurdity. The exuberance of

Pickwick, Micawber, Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp, Sam Weller and a host of others

is perhaps the most normal thing about them; it is as the rattling of a

safety valve, which speaks not of stagnant water but of a full head of

steam. For Dickens deals with life, and you can exaggerate life as much as

you please, since there is no end to either its wisdom or foolishness.

Nothing but a question can be added to the silent simplicity of death.

[Illustration: THE GATEHOUSE AT ROCHESTER, NEAR DICKENS'S HOME]

[Sidenote: HIS MOTIVE AND METHOD]

Aside from his purpose of portraying life as he saw it, in all its strange

complexity, Dickens had a twofold object in writing. He was a radical

democrat, and he aimed to show the immense hopefulness and compassion of

Democracy on its upward way to liberty. He was also a reformer, with a

profound respect for the poor, but no respect whatever for ancient laws or

institutions that stood in the way of justice. The influence of his novels

in establishing better schools, prisons, workhouses, is beyond measure; but

we are not so much interested in his reforms as in his method, which was

unique. He aimed to make men understand the oppressed, and to make a

laughing stock of the oppressors; and he succeeded as no other had ever

done in making literature a power in the land. Thus, the man or the law

that stands defiantly against public opinion is beaten the moment you make

that man or that law look like a joke; and Dickens made a huge joke of the

parish beadle (as Mr. Bumble) and of many another meddlesome British

institution. Moreover, he was master of this paradox: that to cure misery

you must meet it with a merry heart,--this is on the principle that what

the poor need is not charity but comradeship. By showing that humble folk

might be as poor as the Cratchits and yet have the medicine of mirth, the

divine gift of laughter, he made men rejoice with the poor even while they

relieved the poverty.

[Sidenote: HIS FAULTS]

As for the shortcomings of Dickens, they are so apparent that he who runs

may read. We may say of him, as of Shakespeare, that his taste is

questionable, that he is too fond of a mere show, that his style is often

melodramatic, that there is hardly a fault in the whole critical category

of which he is not habitually guilty. But we may say of him also that he is

never petty or mean or morbid or unclean; and he could not be dull if he

tried. His faults, if you analyze them, spring from precisely the same

source as his virtues; that is, from his abundant vitality, from his excess

of life and animal spirits. So we pardon, nay, we rejoice over him as over

a boy who must throw a handspring or raise a _whillilew_ when he

breaks loose from school. For Dickens, when he started his triumphal

progress with _Pickwick_, had a glorious sense of taking his cue from

life and of breaking loose from literary traditions. In comparison with

Ruskin or Thackeray he is not a good writer, but something more--a

splendidly great writer. If you would limit or define his greatness, try

first to marshal his array of characters, characters so vital and human

that we can hardly think of them as fictitious or imaginary creatures; then

remember the millions of men and women to whom he has given pure and

lasting pleasure.

* * * * *

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863)

[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

From a drawing by Samuel Laurence]

In fiction Thackeray stands to Dickens as Hamilton to Jefferson in the

field of politics. The radical difference between the novelists is

exemplified in their attitude toward the public. Thackeray, who lived among

the privileged classes, spoke of "this great stupid public," and thought

that the only way to get a hearing from the common people was to "take them

by the ears." He was a true Hamiltonian. Dickens had an immense sympathy

for the common people, a profound respect for their elemental virtues; and

in writing for them he was, as it were, the Jefferson, the triumphant

democrat of English letters. Thackeray was intellectual; he looked at men

with critical eyes, and was a realist and a pessimist. Dickens was

emotional; he looked at men with kindled imagination, judged them by the

dreams they cherished in their hearts, and was a romanticist and an

optimist. Both men were humorists; but where Thackeray was delicately

satirical, causing us a momentary smile, Dickens was broadly comic or

farcical, winning us by hearty laughter.

LIFE. To one who has been trained, like Dickens, in the school of

hardship it seems the most natural thing in the world to pass over

into a state of affluence. It is another matter to fare sumptuously

every day till luxurious habits are formed, and then be cast

suddenly on one's own resources, face to face with the unexpected

monster of bread and butter. This was Thackeray's experience, and

it colored all his work.

A second important matter is that Thackeray had a great tenderness

for children, a longing for home and homely comforts; but as a

child he was sent far from his home in India, and was thrown among

young barbarians in various schools, one of which, the

"Charterhouse," was called the "Slaughterhouse" in the boy's

letters to his mother. "There are three hundred and seventy boys in

this school," wrote; "I wish there were only three hundred and

sixty-nine!" He married for love, and with great joy began

housekeeping; then a terrible accident happened, his wife was taken

to an insane asylum, and for the rest of his life Thackeray was a

wanderer amid the empty splendors of clubs and hotels.

These two experiences did not break Thackeray, but they bowed him.

They help to explain the languor, the melancholy, the gentle

pessimism, as if life had no more sunrises, of which we are vaguely

conscious in reading _The Virginians_ or _The Newcomes_.

[Sidenote: EARLY YEARS]

Thackeray was born (1811) in Calcutta, of a family of English

"nabobs" who had accumulated wealth and influence as factors or

civil officers. At the death of his father, who was a judge in

Bengal, the child was sent to England to be educated. Here is a

significant incident of the journey:

"Our ship touched at an island, where my black servant took

me a walk over rocks and hills till we passed a garden,

where we saw a man walking. 'That is Bonaparte,' said the

black; 'he eats three sheep every day, and all the children

he can lay hands on.'"

Napoleon was then safely imprisoned at St. Helena; but his shadow,

as of a terrible ogre, was still dark over Europe.

Thackeray's education, at the Charterhouse School and at Cambridge,

was neither a happy nor a profitable experience, as we judge from

his unflattering picture of English school life in

_Pendennis_. He had a strongly artistic bent, and after

leaving college studied art in Germany and France. Presently he

lost his fortune by gambling and bad investments, and was

confronted by the necessity of earning his living. He tried the

law, but gave it up because, as he said, it had no soul. He tried

illustrating, having a small talent for comic drawings, and sought

various civil appointments in vain. As a last resource he turned to

the magazines, wrote satires, sketches of travel, burlesques of

popular novelists, and, fighting all the time against his habit of

idleness, slowly but surely won his way.

[Sidenote: LITERARY LABOR]

His first notable work, _Vanity Fair_ (1847), won a few

readers' and the critics' judgment that it was "a book written by a

gentleman for gentlemen" was the foundation of Thackeray's

reputation as a writer for the upper classes. Other notable novels

followed, _Henry Esmond_, _Pendennis_, _The

Newcomes_, _The Virginians_, and two series of literary and

historical essays called _English Humorists_ and _The Four

Georges_. The latter were delivered as lectures in a successful

tour of England and America. Needless to say, Thackeray hated

lecturing and publicity; he was driven to his "dollar-hunting" by

necessity.

In 1860 his fame was firmly established, and he won his first

financial success by taking charge of the _Cornhill Magazine_,

which prospered greatly in his hands. He did not long enjoy his

new-found comfort, for he died in 1863. His early sketches had been

satirical in spirit, his first novels largely so; but his last

novels and his Cornhill essays were written in a different

spirit,--not kinder, for Thackeray's heart was always right, but

broader, wiser, more patient of human nature, and more hopeful.

In view of these later works some critics declare that Thackeray's

best novel was never written. His stories were produced not

joyously but laboriously, to earn his living; and when leisure came

at last, then came death also, and the work was over.

WORKS OF THACKERAY. It would be flying in the face of all the critics to

suggest that the beginner might do well to postpone the famous novels of

Thackeray, and to meet the author at his best, or cheerfulest, in such

forgotten works as the _Book of Ballads_ and _The Rose and the

Ring_. The latter is a kind of fairy story, with a poor little good

princess, a rich little bad princess, a witch of a godmother, and such

villainous characters as Hedzoff and Gruffanuff. It was written for some

children whom Thackeray loved, and is almost the only book of his which

leaves the impression that the author found any real pleasure in writing

it.

[Sidenote: HENRY ESMOND]

If one must begin with a novel, then _Henry Esmond_ (1852) is the

book. This is an historical novel; the scene is laid in the eighteenth

century, during the reign of Queen Anne; and it differs from most other

historical novels in this important respect: the author knows his ground

thoroughly, is familiar not only with political events but with the

thoughts, ideals, books, even the literary style of the age which he

describes. The hero of the novel, Colonel Esmond, is represented as telling

his own story; he speaks as a gentleman spoke in those days, telling us

about the politicians, soldiers, ladies and literary men of his time, with

frank exposure of their manners or morals. As a realistic portrayal of an

age gone by, not only of its thoughts but of the very language in which

those thoughts were expressed, _Esmond_ is the most remarkable novel

of its kind in our language. It is a prodigy of realism, and it is written

in a charming prose style.

One must add frankly that _Esmond_ is not an inspiring work, that the

atmosphere is gloomy, and the plot a disappointment. The hero, after ten

years of devotion to a woman, ends his romance by happily marrying with her

mother. Any reader could have told him that this is what he ought to have

done, or tried to do, in the beginning; but Thackeray's heroes will never

take the reader's good advice. In this respect they are quite human.

[Sidenote: VANITY FAIR]

The two social satires of Thackeray are _Vanity Fair_ (1847) and

_The History of Arthur Pendennis_ (1849). The former takes its title

from that fair described in _Pilgrim's Progress_, where all sorts of

cheats are exposed for sale; and Thackeray makes his novel a moralizing

exposition of the shams of society. The slight action of the story revolves

about two unlovely heroines, the unprincipled Becky Sharp and the spineless

Amelia. We call them both unlovely, though Thackeray tries hard to make us

admire his tearful Amelia and to detest his more interesting Becky. Meeting

these two contrasting characters is a variety of fools and snobs, mostly

well-drawn, all carefully analyzed to show the weakness or villainy that is

in them.

One interesting but unnoticed thing about these minor characters is that

they all have their life-size prototypes in the novels of Dickens.

Thackeray's characters, as he explains in his preface, are "mere puppets,"

who must move when he pulls the strings. Dickens does not have to explain

that his characters are men and women who do very much as they please. That

is, perhaps, the chief difference between the two novelists.

[Sidenote: PENDENNIS]

_Pendennis_ is a more readable novel than _Vanity Fair_ in this

respect, that its interest centers in one character rather than in a

variety of knaves or fools. Thackeray takes a youthful hero, follows him

through school and later life, and shows the steady degeneration of a man

who is governed not by vicious but by selfish impulses. From beginning to

end _Pendennis_ is a penetrating ethical study (like George Eliot's

_Romola_), and the story is often interrupted while we listen to the

author's moralizing. To some readers this is an offense; to others it is a

pleasure, since it makes them better acquainted with the mind and heart of

Thackeray, the gentlest of Victorian moralists.

[Sidenote: AFTERTHOUGHTS]

The last notable works of Thackeray are like afterthoughts. _The

Virginians_ continues the story of Colonel Esmond, and _The

Newcomes_ recounts the later fortunes of Arthur Pendennis. _The

Virginians_ has two or three splendid scenes, and some critics regard

_The Newcomes_ as the finest expression of the author's genius; but

both works, which appeared in the leisurely form of monthly instalments,

are too languid in action for sustained interest. We grow acquainted with

certain characters, and are heartily glad when they make their exit;

perhaps someone else will come, some adventurer from the road or the inn,

to relieve the dullness. The door opens, and in comes the bore again to

take another leave. That is realism, undoubtedly; and Laura Pendennis is as

realistic as the mumps, which one may catch a second time. The atmosphere

of both novels--indeed, of all Thackeray's greater works, with the

exception of _English Humorists_ and _The Four Georges_--is

rather depressing. One gets the impression that life among "the quality" is

a dreary experience, hardly worth the effort of living.

[Illustration: CHARTERHOUSE SCHOOL

After a rare engraving by J. Rogers from the drawing made by Thomas H.

Shepherd at the time Thackeray was a student there]

THACKERAY: A CRITICISM. It is significant that Thackeray's first work

appeared in a college leaflet called "The Snob," and that it showed a

talent for satire. In his earlier stories he plainly followed his natural

bent, for his _Vanity Fair_, _Barry Lyndon_ (a story of a

scoundrelly adventurer) and several minor works are all satires on the

general snobbery of society. This tendency of the author reached a climax

in 1848, when he wrote _The Book of Snobs._ It is still an

entertaining book, witty, and with a kind of merciless fairness about its

cruel passages; yet some readers will remember what the author himself said

later, that he was something of a snob himself to write such a book. The

chief trouble with the half of his work is that he was so obsessed with the

idea of snobbery that he did injustice to humanity, or rather to his

countrymen; for Thackeray was very English, and interest in his characters

depends largely on familiarity with the life he describes. His pictures of

English servants, for instance, are wonderfully deft, though one might wish

that he had drawn them with a more sympathetic pencil.

[Sidenote: THE PERSONAL ELEMENT]

In the later part of his life the essential kindness of the man came to the

surface, but still was he hampered by his experience and his philosophy.

His experience was that life is too big to be grasped, too mysterious to be

understood; therefore he faced life doubtfully, with a mixture of timidity

and respect, as in _Henry Esmond_. His philosophy was that every

person is at heart an egoist, is selfish in spite of himself; therefore is

every man or woman unhappy, because selfishness is the eternal enemy of

happiness. This is the lesson written large in _Pendennis_. He lived

in the small world of his own class, while the great world of Dickens--the

world of the common people, with their sympathy, their eternal hopefulness,

their enjoyment of whatever good they find in life--passed unnoticed

outside his club windows. He conceived it to be the business of a novelist

to view the world with his own eyes, to describe it as he saw it; and it

was not his fault that his world was a small one. Fate was answerable for

that. So far as he went, Thackeray did his work admirably, portraying the

few virtues and the many shams of his set with candor and sincerity. Though

he used satire freely (and satire is a two-edged weapon), his object was

never malicious or vindictive but corrective; he aimed to win or drive men

to virtue by exposing the native ugliness of vice.

The result of his effort may be summed up as follows: Thackeray is a

novelist for the few who can enjoy his accurate but petty views of society,

and his cultivated prose style. He is not very cheerful; he does not seek

the blue flower that grows in every field, or the gold that is at every

rainbow's end, or the romance that hides in every human heart whether of

rich or poor. Therefore are the young not conspicuous among his followers.

* * * * *

MARY ANN EVANS, "GEORGE ELIOT" (1819-1880)

More than other Victorian story-tellers George Eliot regarded her work with

great seriousness as a means of public instruction. Her purpose was to show

that human life is effective only as it follows its sense of duty, and that

society is as much in need of the moral law as of daily bread. Other

novelists moralized more or less, Thackeray especially; but George Eliot

made the teaching of morality her chief business.

LIFE. In the work as in the face of George Eliot there is a certain

masculine quality which is apt to mislead one who reads _Adam

Bede_ or studies a portrait of the author. Even those who knew

her well, and who tried to express the charm of her personality,

seem to have overlooked the fact that they were describing a woman.

For example, a friend wrote:

"Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with

the bent of her soul. The deeply lined face, the too marked

and massive features, were united with an air of delicate

refinement, which in one way was the more impressive,

because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay,

the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the

outward harshness; there would be moments when the thin

hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the

earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the

deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave

appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols that

showed the presence of a wise, benignant soul."

[Sidenote: A CLINGING VINE]

That is very good, but somehow it is not feminine. So the

impression has gone forth that George Eliot was a "strong-minded"

woman; but that is far from the truth. One might emphasize her

affectionate nature, her timidity, her lack of confidence in her

own judgment; but the essence of the matter is this, that so

dependent was she on masculine support that she was always

idealizing some man, and looking up to him as a superior being. In

short, she was one of "the clinging kind." Though some may regard

this as traditional nonsense, it was nevertheless the most

characteristic quality of the woman with whom we are dealing.

[Sidenote: HER GIRLHOOD]

Mary Ann Evans, or Marian as she was called, was born (1819) and

spent her childhood in Shakespeare's county of Warwickshire. Her

father (whose portrait she has faintly drawn in the characters of

Adam Bede and Caleb Garth) was a strong, quiet man, a farmer and

land agent, who made a companion of his daughter rather than of his

son, the two being described more or less faithfully in the

characters of Maggie and Tom Tulliver in _The Mill on the

Floss_. At twelve years of age she was sent to a boarding

school; at fifteen her mother died, and she was brought home to

manage her father's house. The rest of her education--which

included music and a reading knowledge of German, Italian and

Greek--was obtained by solitary study at intervals of rest from

domestic work. That the intervals were neither long nor frequent

may be inferred from the fact that her work included not only her

father's accounts and the thousand duties of housekeeping but also

the managing of a poultry yard, the making of butter, and other

farm or dairy matters which at that time were left wholly to women.

[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT

From a portrait painted in Rome by M. d'Albert Durade, and now in

Geneva]

The first marked change in her life came at the age of twenty-two,

when the household removed to Coventry, and Miss Evans was there

brought in contact with the family of a wealthy ribbon-maker named

Bray. He was a man of some culture, and the atmosphere of his

house, with its numerous guests, was decidedly skeptical. To Miss

Evans, brought up in a home ruled by early Methodist ideals of

piety, the change was a little startling. Soon she was listening to

glib evolutionary theories that settled everything from an

earthworm to a cosmos; next she was eagerly reading such unbaked

works as Bray's _Philosophy of Necessity_ and the essays of

certain young scientists who, without knowledge of either

philosophy or religion, were cocksure of their ability to provide

"modern" substitutes for both at an hour's notice.

Miss Evans went over rather impulsively to the crude skepticism of

her friends; then, finding no soul or comfort in their theories,

she invented for herself a creed of duty and morality, without

however tracing either to its origin. She was naturally a religious

woman, and there is no evidence that she found her new creed very

satisfactory. Indeed, her melancholy and the gloom of her novels

are both traceable to the loss of her early religious ideals.

[Sidenote: HER UNION WITH LEWES]

A trip abroad (1849) was followed by some editorial work on _The

Westminster Review_, then the organ of the freethinkers. This in

turn led to her association with Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill

and other liberals, and to her union with George Henry Lewes in

1854. Of that union little need be said except this: though it

lacked the law and the sacrament, it seems to have been in other

respects a fair covenant which was honestly kept by both parties.

[Footnote: Lewes was separated from his first wife, from whom he

was unable to obtain a legal divorce. This was the only obstacle to

a regular marriage, and after facing the obstacle for a time the

couple decided to ignore it. The moral element in George Eliot's

works is due largely, no doubt, to her own moral sense; but it was

greatly influenced by the fact that, in her union with Lewes, she

had placed herself in a false position and was morally on the

defensive against society.]

Encouraged by Lewes she began to write fiction. Her first attempt,

"Amos Barton," was an excellent short story, and in 1859 she

produced her first novel, _Adam Bede_, being then about forty

years old. The great success of this work had the unusual effect of

discouraging the author. She despaired of her ability, and began to

agonize, as she said, over her work; but her material was not yet

exhausted, and in _The Mill on the Floss_ and _Silas

Marner_ she repeated her triumph.

[Sidenote: ON A PEDESTAL]

The rest of her life seems a matter of growth or of atrophy,

according to your point of view. She grew more scientific, as she

fancied, but she lost the freshness and inspiration of her earlier

novels. The reason seems to be that her head was turned by her fame

as a moralist and exponent of culture; so she forgot that she "was

born to please," and attempted something else for which she had no

particular ability: an historical novel in _Romola_, a drama

in _The Spanish Gypsy_, a theory of social reform in _Felix

Holt_, a study of the Hebrew race in _Daniel Deronda_, a

book of elephantine gambols in _The Opinions of Theophrastus

Such_. More and more she "agonized" over these works, and though

each of them contained some scene or passage of rare power, it was

evident even to her admirers that the pleasing novelist of the

earlier days had been sacrificed to the moral philosopher.

[Sidenote: SHE RENEWS HER YOUTH]

The death of Lewes (1878) made an end, as she believed, of all

earthly happiness. For twenty-four years he had been husband,

friend and literary adviser, encouraging her talent, shielding her

from every hostile criticism. Left suddenly alone in the world, she

felt like an abandoned child; her writing stopped, and her letters

echoed the old gleeman's song, "All is gone, both life and light."

Then she surprised everybody by marrying an American banker, many

years her junior, who had been an intimate friend of the Lewes

household. Once more she found the world "intensely interesting,"

for at sixty she was the same clinging vine, the same

hero-worshiper, as at sixteen. The marriage occurred in 1880, and

her death the same year. An elaborate biography, interesting but

too fulsome, was written by her husband, John Walter Cross.

WORKS. George Eliot's first works in fiction were the magazine stories

which she published later as _Scenes of Clerical Life_ (1858). These

were produced comparatively late in life, and they indicate both

originality and maturity, as if the author had a message of her own, and

had pondered it well before writing it. That message, as reflected in "Amos

Barton" and "Janet's Repentance," may be summarized in four cardinal

principles: that duty is the supreme law of life; that the humblest life is

as interesting as the most exalted, since both are subject to the same law;

that our daily choices have deep moral significance, since they all react

on character and their total result is either happiness or misery; and that

there is no possible escape from the reward or punishment that is due to

one's individual action.

Such is the message of the author's first work. In its stern insistence on

the moral quality of life and of every human action, it distinguishes

George Eliot from all other fiction writers of the period.

[Sidenote: HER BEST NOVELS]

In her first three novels she repeats the same message with more detail,

and with a gleam of humor here and there to light up the gloomy places.

_Adam Bede_ (1859) has been called a story of early Methodism, but in

reality it is a story of moral principles which work their inevitable ends

among simple country people. The same may be said of _The Mill on the

Floss_ (1860) and of _Silas Marner_ (1861). The former is as

interesting to readers of George Eliot as _Copperfield_ is to readers

of Dickens, because much of it is a reflection of a personal experience;

but the latter work, having more unity, more story interest and more

cheerfulness, is a better novel with which to begin our acquaintance with

the author.

[Illustration: GRIFF HOUSE, GEORGE ELIOT'S EARLY HOME IN WARWICKSHIRE]

The scene of all these novels is laid in the country; the characters are

true to life, and move naturally in an almost perfect setting. One secret

of their success is that they deal with people whom the author knew well,

and with scenes in which she was as much at home as Dickens was in the

London streets. Each of the novels, notwithstanding its faulty or

melancholy conclusion, leaves an impression so powerful that we gladly, and

perhaps uncritically, place it among the great literary works of the

Victorian era.

[Sidenote: LATER WORKS]

Of the later novels one cannot speak so confidently. They move some critics

to enthusiasm, and put others to sleep. Thus, _Daniel Deronda_ has

some excellent passages, and Gwendolen is perhaps the best-drawn of all

George Eliot's characters; but for many readers the novel is spoiled by

scientific jargon, by essay writing on the Jews and other matters of which

the author knew little or nothing at first hand. In _Middlemarch_ she

returned to the scenes with which she was familiar and produced a novel

which some critics rank very high, while others point to its superfluous

essays and its proneness to moralizing instead of telling a story.

[Sidenote: ROMOLA]

_Romola_ is another labored novel, a study of Italy during the

Renaissance, and a profound ethical lesson. If you can read this work

without criticizing its Italian views, you may find in the characters of

Tito and Romola, one selfish and the other generous, the best example of

George Eliot's moral method, which is to show the cumulative effect on

character of everyday choices or actions. You will find also a good story,

one of the best that the author told. But if you read _Romola_ as an

historical novel, with some knowledge of Italy and the Renaissance, you may

decide that George Eliot--though she slaved at this novel until, as she

said, it made an old woman of her--did not understand the people or the

country which she tried to describe. She portrayed life not as she had seen

and known and loved it, but as she found it reflected at second hand in the

works of other writers.

THE QUALITY OF GEORGE ELIOT. Of the moral quality of George Eliot we have

already said enough. To our summary of her method this should be added,

that she tried to make each of her characters not individual but typical.

In other words, if Tito came finally to grief, and Adam arrived at a state

of gloomy satisfaction (there is no real happiness in George Eliot's

world), it was not because Tito and Adam lived in different times or

circumstances, but because both were subject to the same eternal laws. Each

must have gone to his own place whether he lived in wealth or poverty, in

Florence or England, in the fifteenth or the nineteenth century. The moral

law is universal and unchanging; it has no favorites, and makes no

exceptions. It is more like the old Greek conception of Nemesis, or the

Anglo-Saxon conception of Wyrd, or Fate, than anything else you will find

in modern fiction.

[Sidenote: FATE AND SELF-SACRIFICE]

In this last respect George Eliot again differs radically from her

contemporaries. In her gloomy view of life as an unanswerable puzzle she is

like Thackeray; but where Thackeray offers a cultured resignation, a

gentlemanly making the best of a bad case, George Eliot advocates

self-sacrifice for the good of others. In her portrayal of weak or sinful

characters she is quite as compassionate as Dickens, and more thoughtfully

charitable; for where Dickens sometimes makes light of misery, and relieves

it by the easy expedient of good dinners and all-around comfort for saints

and sinners, George Eliot remembers the broken moral law and the suffering

of the innocent for the guilty. Behind every one of her characters that

does wrong follows an avenging fate, waiting the moment to exact the full

penalty; and before every character that does right hovers a vision of

sacrifice and redemption.

Her real philosophy, therefore, was quite different from that which her

scientific friends formulated for her, and was not modern but ancient as

the hills. On the one hand, she never quite freed herself from the old

pagan conception of Nemesis, or Fate; on the other, her early Methodist

training entered deep into her soul and made her mindful of the Cross that

forever towers above humanity.

* * * * *

OTHER VICTORIAN NOVELISTS

We have followed literary custom rather than individual judgment in

studying Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot as the typical Victorian

novelists. On Dickens, as the most original genius of the age, most people

are agreed; but the rank of the other two is open to question. There are

critics besides Swinburne who regard Charlotte Brontë as a greater genius

than George Eliot; and many uncritical readers find more pleasure or profit

in the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope than in anything written by

Thackeray. It may even be that the three or four leading novels of the age

were none of them written by the novelists in question; but it is still

essential to know their works if only for these reasons: that they greatly

influenced other story-tellers of the period, and that they furnish us a

standard by which to judge all modern fiction.

To treat the many Victorian novelists adequately would in itself require a

volume. We shall note here only a few leading figures, naming in each case

a novel or two which may serve as an invitation to a better acquaintance

with their authors.

[Illustration: CHARLOTTE BRONTË]

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte and Emily, made a tremendous sensation in

England when, from their retirement, they sent out certain works of such

passionate intensity that readers who had long been familiar with novels

were startled into renewed attention. Reading these works now we recognize

the genius of the writers, but we recognize also a morbid, unwholesome

quality, which is a reflection not of English life but of the personal and

unhappy temperament of two girls who looked on life first as a gorgeous

romance and then as a gloomy tragedy.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was perhaps the more gifted of the two

sisters, and her best-known works are _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_.

The date of the latter novel (1853) was made noteworthy by the masterpiece

of another woman novelist, Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), who was the

exact opposite of the Brontë sisters,--serene, well-balanced, and with a

fund of delicious humor. All these qualities and more appeared in

_Cranford_ (1853), a series of sketches of country life (first

contributed to Dickens's _Household Words_) which together form one of

the most charming stories produced during the Victorian era. The same

author wrote a few other novels and an admirable _Life of Charlotte

Brontë_.

[Sidenote: CHARLES READE]

Charles Reade (1814-1884) was a follower of Dickens in his earlier novels,

such as _Peg Woffington_; but he made one notable departure when he

wrote _The Cloister and the Hearth_ (1861). This is a story of student

life and vagabond life in Europe, in the stirring times that followed the

invention of printing. The action moves rapidly; many different characters

appear; the scene shifts from Holland across Europe to Italy, and back

again; adventures of a startling kind meet the hero at every stage of his

foot journey. It is a stirring tale, remarkably well told; so much will

every uncritical reader gladly acknowledge. Moreover, there are critics

who, after studying _The Cloister and the Hearth_, rank it with the

best historical novels in all literature.

[Illustration: MRS. ELIZABETH GASKELL

From the portrait by George Richmond, R.A.]

[Sidenote: TROLLOPE]

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) began as a follower of Thackeray, but in the

immense range of his characters and incidents he soon outstripped his

master. Perhaps his best work is _Barchester Towers_ (1857), one of a

series of novels which picture with marvelous fidelity the life of a

cathedral town in England.

Another novelist who followed Thackeray, and then changed his allegiance to

Dickens, was Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873). He was essentially an imitator, a

follower of the market, and before Thackeray and Dickens were famous he had

followed almost every important English novelist from Mrs. Radcliffe to

Walter Scott. Two of his historical novels, _Rienzi_ and _The Last

Days of Pompeii_, may be mildly recommended. The rest are of the popular

and somewhat trashy kind; critics jeer at them, and the public buys them in

large numbers.

One of the most charming books of the Victorian age was produced by Richard

Blackmore (1825-1900). He wrote several novels, some of them of excellent

quality, but they were all overshadowed by his beautiful old romance of

_Lorna Doone_ (1869). It is hard to overpraise such a story, wholesome

and sweet as a breath from the moors, and the critic's praise will be

unnecessary if the reader only opens the book. It should be read, with

_Cranford_, if one reads nothing else of Victorian fiction.

[Illustration: RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE]

Two other notable romances of a vanished age came from the hand of Charles

Kingsley (1819-1875). He produced many works in poetry and prose, but his

fame now rests upon _Hypatia_, _Westward Ho!_ and a few stories

for children. _Hypatia_ (1853) is an interesting novel dealing with

the conflict of pagan and Christian ideals in the early centuries.

_Westward Ho!_ (1855) is a stirring narrative of seafaring and

adventure in the days of Elizabeth. It has been described as a "stunning"

boys' book, and it would prove an absorbing story for any reader who likes

adventure were it not marred by one serious fault. The author's personal

beliefs and his desire to glorify certain Elizabethan adventurers lead him

to pronounce judgment of a somewhat wholesale kind. He treats one religious

party of the period to a golden halo, and the other to a lash of scorpions;

and this is apt to alienate many readers who else would gladly follow Sir

Amyas Leigh on his gallant ventures in the New World or on the Spanish

Main. Kingsley had a rare talent for writing for children (his heart never

grew old), and his _Heroes_ and _Water Babies_ are still widely

read as bedtime stories.

Of the later Victorian novelists, chief among them being Meredith, Hardy

and Stevenson, little may be said here, as they are much too near us to

judge of their true place in the long perspective of English literature.

Meredith, with the analytical temper and the disconnected style of

Browning, is for mature readers, not for young people. Hardy has decided

power, but is too hopelessly pessimistic for anybody's comfort,--except in

his earlier works, which have a romantic charm that brightens the obscurity

of his later philosophy.

[Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

From a photograph]

[Sidenote: STEVENSON]

In Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) we have the spirit of romance

personified. His novels, such as _Kidnapped_ and _David Balfour_,

are stories of adventure written in a very attractive style; but he is more

widely known, among young people at least, by his charming _Child's

Garden of Verses_ and his _Treasure Island_ (1883). This last is a

kind of dime-novel of pirates and buried treasure. If one is to read

stories of that kind, there is no better place to begin than with this

masterpiece of Stevenson. Other works by the same versatile author are the

novels, _Master of Ballantrae_, _Weir of Hermiston_ and _Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_; various collections of essays, such as

_Virginibus Puerisque_ and _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_;

and some rather thin sketches of journeying called _An Inland Voyage_

and _Travels with a Donkey_.

The cheery spirit of Stevenson, who bravely fought a losing battle with

disease, is evident in everything he wrote; and it was the author's spirit,

quite as much as his romantic tales or fine prose style, that won for him a

large and enthusiastic following. Of all the later Victorians he seems, at

the present time, to have the widest circle of cultivated readers and to

exercise the strongest influence on our writers of fiction.

* * * * *

III. VICTORIAN ESSAYISTS AND HISTORIANS

There is rich reading in Victorian essays, which reflect not only the

practical affairs of the age but also the ideals that inspire every great

movement whether in history or literature. For example, the intense

religious interests of the period, the growth of the Nonconformists or

Independents, the Oxford movement, which aimed to define the historic

position of the English Church, the chill of doubt and the glow of renewed

faith in face of the apparent conflict between the old religion and the new

science,--all these were brilliantly reflected by excellent writers, among

whom Martineau, Newman and Maurice stand out prominently. The deep thought,

the serene spirit and the fine style of these men are unsurpassed in

Victorian prose.

Somewhat apart from their age stood a remarkable group of

historians--Hallam, Freeman, Green, Gardiner, Symonds and others no less

praiseworthy--who changed the whole conception of history from a record of

political or military events to a profound study of human society in all

its activities. In another typical group were the critics, Pater, Bagehot,

Hutton, Leslie Stephen, who have given deeper meaning and enlarged pleasure

to the study of literature. In a fourth group were the scientists--Darwin,

Wallace, Lyell, Mivart, Tyndall, Mill, Spencer, Huxley, and their

followers--some of whom aimed not simply to increase our knowledge but to

use the essay, as others used the novel, to portray some new scene in the

old comedy of human life. Darwin was a great and, therefore, a modest man;

but some of his disciples were sadly lacking in humor. Spencer and Mill

especially wrote with colossal self-confidence, as if the world no longer

wore its veil of mystery. They remind us, curiously, that while poetry

endures forever, nothing on earth is more subject to change and error than

so-called scientific truth.

[Sidenote: TYPICAL WRITERS]

It is impossible in a small volume to do justice to so many writers,

reflecting nature or humanity from various angles, and sometimes insisting

that a particular angle was the only one from which a true view could be

obtained. Some rigorous selection is necessary; and we name here for

special study Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, who are commonly regarded as the

typical Victorian essayists. This selection does not mean, however, that

some other group might not be quite as representative of their age and

nation. Our chosen authors stand not for Victorian thought but only for

certain interesting phases thereof. Macaulay, the busy man of affairs,

voiced the pride of his generation in British traditions. Carlyle lived

aloof, grumbling at democracy, denouncing its shams, calling it to

repentance. Ruskin, a child of fortune, was absorbed in art till the burden

of the world oppressed him; whereupon he gave his money to the cause of

social reform and went himself among the poor to share with them whatever

wealth of spirit he possessed. These three men, utterly unlike in

character, were as one in their endeavor to make modern literature a power

wherewith to uplift humanity. They illustrate, better even than poets or

novelists, the characteristic moral earnestness of the Victorian era.

* * * * *

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859)

To many readers the life of Macaulay is more interesting than any of his

books. For the details of that brilliantly successful life, which fairly

won and richly deserved its success, the student is referred to Trevelyan's

fine biography. We record here only such personal matters as may help to

explain the exuberant spirit of Macaulay's literary work.

[Illustration: THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY]

LIFE. One notes first of all the man's inheritance. The Norse

element predominated in him, for the name Macaulay (son of Aulay)

is a late form of the Scandinavian _Olafson_. His mother was a

brilliant woman of Quaker descent; his father, at one time governor

of the Sierra Leone Colony in Africa, was a business man who gained

a fortune in trade, and who spent the whole of it in helping to

free the slaves. In consequence, when Macaulay left college he

faced the immediate problem of supporting himself and his family, a

hard matter, which he handled not only with his customary success

but also with characteristic enthusiasm.

Next we note Macaulay's personal endowment, his gift of rapid

reading, his marvelous memory which suggests Coleridge and Cotton

Mather. He read everything from Plato to the trashiest novel, and

after reading a book could recall practically the whole of it after

a lapse of twenty years. To this photographic memory we are

indebted for the wealth of quotation, allusion and anecdote which

brightens almost every page of his writings.

[Sidenote: HIS BRILLIANT CAREER]

After a brilliant career at college Macaulay began the study of

law. At twenty-five he jumped into prominence by a magazine essay

on Milton, and after that his progress was uninterrupted. He was

repeatedly elected to Parliament; he was appointed legal adviser to

the Supreme Council of India, in which position he acquired the

knowledge that appears in his essays on Clive and Hastings; he

became Secretary for War, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron

Macaulay of Rothley. It was said of him at that time that he was

"the only man whom England ever made a lord for the power of his

pen."

[Sidenote: HIS RECREATION]

The last thing we note, because it was to Macaulay of least moment,

is his literary work. With the exception of the _History of

England_ his writing was done at spare moments, as a relaxation

from what he considered more important labors. In this respect, of

writing for pleasure in the midst of practical affairs, he

resembles the Elizabethan rather than the Victorian authors.

While at work on his masterpiece Macaulay suddenly faltered, worn

out by too much work. He died on Christmas Day (1859) and was

buried in the place which he liked best to visit, the Poets' Corner

of Westminster Abbey. From the day on which he attracted notice by

his Milton essay he had never once lost his hold on the attention

of England. Gladstone summed up the matter in oratorical fashion

when he said, "Full-orbed Macaulay was seen above the horizon; and

full-orbed, after thirty-five years of constantly emitted splendor,

he sank below it." But Macaulay's final comment, "Well, I have had

a happy life," is more suggestive of the man and his work.

WORKS OF MACAULAY. Macaulay's poems, which he regarded as of no

consequence, are practically all in the ballad style. Among them are

various narratives from French or English history, such as "The Battle of

Ivry" and "The Armada," and a few others which made a popular little book

when they were published as _Lays of Ancient Rome_ (1842). The prime

favorite not only of the _Lays_ but of all Macaulay's works is

"Horatius Cocles," or "Horatius at the Bridge." Those who read its stirring

lines should know that Macaulay intended it not as a modern ballad but as

an example of ancient methods of teaching history. According to Niebuhr the

early history of Rome was written in the form of popular ballads; and

Macaulay attempted to reproduce a few of these historical documents in the

heroic style that roused a Roman audience of long ago to pride and love of

country.

[Sidenote: THE ESSAYS]

The essays of Macaulay appeared in the magazines of that day; but though

official England acclaimed their brilliancy and flooded their author with

invitations to dine, nobody seemed to think of them as food for ordinary

readers till a Philadelphia publisher collected a few of them into a book,

which sold in America like a good novel. That was in 1841, and not till two

years had passed did a London publisher gain courage to issue the

_Critical and Historical Essays_, a book which vindicated the taste of

readers of that day by becoming immensely popular.

The charm of such a book is evident in the very first essay, on Milton.

Here is no critic, airing his rules or making his dry talk palatable by a

few quotations; here is a live man pleading for another man whom he

considers one of the greatest figures in history. Macaulay may be mistaken,

possibly, but he is going to make you doff your hat to a hero before he is

done; so he speaks eloquently not only of Milton but of the classics on

which Milton fed, of the ideals and struggles of his age, of the

Commonwealth and the Restoration,--of everything which may catch your

attention and then focus it on one Titanic figure battling like Samson

among the Philistines. It may be that your sympathies are with the

Philistines rather than with Samson; but presently you stop objecting and

are carried along by the author's eloquence as by a torrent. His style is

the combined style of novelist and public speaker, the one striving to make

his characters real, the other bound to make his subject interesting.

That is Macaulay's way in all his essays. They are seldom wholly right in

their judgments; they are so often one-sided that the author declared in

later life he would burn them all if he could; but they are all splendid,

all worth reading, not simply for their matter but for their style and for

the wealth of allusion with which Macaulay makes his subject vital and

interesting. Among the best of the literary essays are those on Bunyan,

Addison, Bacon, Johnson, Goldsmith and Byron; among the historical essays

one may sample Macaulay's variety in Lord Clive, Frederick the Great,

Machiavelli and Mirabeau.

Careful readers may note a difference between these literary and historical

essays. Those on Bunyan, Johnson and Goldsmith, for example (written

originally for the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_), are more finished and

more careful of statement than others in which the author talks freely,

sharing without measure or restraint "the heaped-up treasures of his

memory."

[Sidenote: HISTORY OF ENGLAND]

Macaulay began to write his _History of England_ with the declaration

that he would cover the century and a half following the accession of James

II (1685), and that he would make his story as interesting as any novel.

Only the latter promise was fulfilled. His five volumes, the labor of more

than a decade, cover only sixteen years of English history; but these are

pictured with such minuteness and such splendor that we can hardly imagine

anyone brave enough to attempt to finish the record in a single lifetime.

Of this masterpiece of Macaulay we may confidently say three things: that

for many years it was the most popular historical work in our language;

that by its brilliant style and absorbing interest it deserved its

popularity, as literature if not as history; and that, though it contains

its share of error and more than its share of Whig partisanship, it has

probably as few serious faults as any other history which attempts to cover

the immense field of the political, social and intellectual life of a

nation. Read, for example, one of the introductory chapters (the third is

excellent) which draws such a picture of England in the days of the Stuarts

as no other historian has ever attempted. When you have finished that

chapter, with its wealth of picturesque detail, you may be content to read

Macaulay simply for the pleasure he gives you, and go to some other

historian for accurate information.

* * * * *

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)

There is little harmony of opinion concerning Carlyle, criticism of the man

being divided between praise and disparagement. If you are to read only one

of his works, it is perhaps advisable to avoid all biographies at first and

to let the _Essay on Burns_ or _Heroes and Hero Worship_ make its

own impression. But if you intend to read more widely, some knowledge of

Carlyle's personal history is essential in order to furnish the grain of

salt with which most of his opinions must be taken.

[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE

From engraving by Sartain from a daguerrotype]

LIFE. In the village of Ecclefechan Carlyle was born in 1795, the

year before Burns's death. His father was a stone-mason, an honest

man of caustic tongue; his mother, judged by her son's account, was

one of nature's noblewomen. The love of his mother and a proud

respect for his father were the two sentiments in Carlyle that went

with him unchanged through a troubled and oft-complaining life.

[Sidenote: HIS WRESTLINGS]

Of his tearful school days in Annandale and of his wretched years

at Edinburgh University we have glimpses in _Sartor Resartus_.

In the chapters of the same book entitled "The Everlasting Nay" and

"The Everlasting Yea" is a picture of the conflict between doubt

and faith in the stormy years when Carlyle was finding himself. He

taught school, and hated it; he abandoned the ministry, for which

his parents had intended him; he resolved on a literary life, and

did hack work to earn his bread. All the while he wrestled with his

gloomy temper or with the petty demons of dyspepsia, which he was

wont to magnify into giant doubts and despairs.

[Sidenote: CARLYLE AND EMERSON]

In 1826 he married Jane Welsh, and went to live in a house she had

inherited at Craigenputtock, or Hill of the Hawks. There on a

lonely moorland farm he spent six or seven years, writing books

which few cared to read; and there Emerson appeared one day ("He

came and went like an angel," said the Carlyles) with the

heartening news that the neglected writings were winning a great

audience in America. The letters of Carlyle and Emerson, as edited

by Charles Eliot Norton, are among the pleasantest results of

Carlyle's whole career.

[Sidenote: MRS. CARLYLE]

Carlyle's wife was a brilliant but nervous woman with literary

gifts of her own. She had always received attention; she expected

and probably deserved admiration; but so did Carlyle, who expected

also to be made the center of all solicitude when he called heaven

and earth to witness against democracy, crowing roosters, weak tea

and other grievous afflictions. After her death (in London, 1866)

he was plunged into deepest grief. In his _Reminiscences_ and

_Letters_ he fairly deifies his wife, calling her his queen,

his star, his light and joy of life, and portrays a companionship

as of two mortals in a Paradise without a serpent. All that is

doubtless as it should be, in a romance; but the unfortunate

publication of Mrs. Carlyle's letters and journals introduced a

jarring note of reality. A jungle of controversial writings has

since grown up around the domestic relations of the

Carlyles,--impertinent, deplorable writings, which serve no purpose

but to make us cry, "Enough, let them rest in peace!" Both had

sharp tongues, and probably both were often sorry.

[Sidenote: WORK IN LONDON]

From the moors the Carlyles went to London and settled for the

remainder of their lives in a house in Cheyne Row, in the suburb of

Chelsea. There Carlyle slowly won recognition, his success being

founded on his _French Revolution_. Invitations began to pour

in upon him; great men visited and praised him, and his fame spread

as "the sage of Chelsea." Then followed his _Cromwell_ and

_Frederick the Great_, the latter completed after years of

complaining labor which made wreck of home happiness. And then came

a period of unusual irritation, to which we owe, in part at least,

Carlyle's railings against progress and his deplorable criticism of

England's great men and women,--poor little Browning, animalcular

De Quincey, rabbit-brained Newman, sawdustish Mill, chattering

George Eliot, ghastly-shrieky Shelley, once-enough Lamb,

stinted-scanty Wordsworth, poor thin fool Darwin and his book

(_The Origin of Species_, of which Carlyle confessed he never

read a page) which was wonderful as an example of the stupidity of

mankind.

Such criticisms were reserved for Carlyle's private memoirs. The

world knew him only by his books, and revered him as a great and

good man. He died in 1881, and of the thousand notices which

appeared in English or American periodicals of that year there is

hardly one that does not overflow with praise.

[Illustration: CARLYLE'S HOUSE, CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, LONDON]

In the home at Chelsea were numerous letters and journals which

Carlyle committed to his friend Froude the historian. The

publication of these private papers raised a storm of protest.

Admirers of Carlyle, shocked at the revelation of another side to

their hero, denounced Froude for his disloyalty and malice;

whereupon the literary world divided into two camps, the Jane

Carlyleists and the Thomas Carlyleists, as they are still called.

That Froude showed poor taste is evident; but we must acquit him of

all malice. Private papers had been given him with the charge to

publish them if he saw fit; and from them he attempted to draw not

a flattering but a truthful portrait of Carlyle, who had always

preached the doctrine that a man must speak truth as he sees it.

Nor will Carlyle suffer in the long run from being deprived of a

halo which he never deserved. Already the crustiness of the man

begins to grow dim in the distance; it is his rugged earnestness

that will be longest remembered.

WORKS OF CARLYLE. The beginner will do well to make acquaintance with

Carlyle in some of the minor essays, which are less original but more

pleasing than his labored works. Among the best essays are those on Goethe

(who was Carlyle's first master), Signs of the Times, Novalis, and

especially Scott and Burns. With Scott he was not in sympathy, and though

he tried as a Scotsman to be "loyal to kith and clan," a strong touch of

prejudice mars his work. With Burns he succeeded better, and his picture of

the plowboy genius in misfortune is one of the best we have on the subject.

This _Essay on Burns_ is also notable as the best example of Carlyle's

early style, before he compounded the strange mixture which appeared in his

later books.

[Sidenote: HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP]

The most readable of Carlyle's longer works is _Heroes and Hero

Worship_ (1840), which deals with certain leaders in the fields of

religion, poetry, war and politics. It is an interesting study to compare

this work with the _Representative Men_ of Emerson. The latter looks

upon the world as governed by ideals, which belong not to individuals but

to humanity. When some man appears in whom the common ideal is written

large, other men follow him because they see in him a truth which they

revere in their own souls. So the leader is always in the highest sense a

representative of his race. But Carlyle will have nothing of such

democracy; to him common men are stupid or helpless and must be governed

from without. Occasionally, when humanity is in the Slough of Despond,

appears a hero, a superman, and proceeds by his own force to drag or drive

his subjects to a higher level. When the hero dies, humanity must halt and

pray heaven to send another master.

It is evident before one has read much of _Heroes_ that Carlyle is at

heart a force-worshiper. To him history means the biography of a few

heroes, and heroism is a matter of power, not of physical or moral courage.

The hero may have the rugged courage of a Cromwell, or he may be an

easy-living poet like Shakespeare, or a ruthless despot like Napoleon, or

an epitome of all meanness like Rousseau; but if he shows superior force of

any kind, that is the hallmark of his heroism, and before such an one

humanity should bow down. Of real history, therefore, you will learn

nothing from _Heroes_; neither will you get any trustworthy

information concerning Odin, Mahomet and the rest of Carlyle's oddly

consorted characters. One does not read the book for facts but for a new

view of old matters. With hero-worshipers especially it ranks very high

among the thought-provoking books of the past century.

[Sidenote: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION]

Of the historical works [Footnote: These include _Oliver Cromwell's

Letters and Speeches_ (1850) and _History of Frederick the Great_

(1858).] of Carlyle the most famous is _The French Revolution_ (1837).

On this work Carlyle spent much heart-breaking labor, and the story of the

first volume shows that the author, who made himself miserable over petty

matters, could be patient in face of a real misfortune. [Footnote: The

manuscript of the first volume was submitted to Carlyle's friend Mill (him

of the "sawdustish" mind) for criticism. Mill lent it to a lady, who lost

it. When he appeared "white as a ghost" to confess his carelessness, the

Carlyles did their best to make light of it. Yet it was a terrible blow to

them; for aside from the wearisome labor of doing the work over again, they

were counting on the sale of the book to pay for their daily bread.]

Moreover, it furnishes a striking example of Carlyle's method, which was

not historical in the modern sense, but essentially pictorial or dramatic.

He selected a few dramatic scenes, such as the storming of the Bastille,

and painted them in flaming colors. Also he was strong in drawing

portraits, and his portrayal of Robespierre, Danton and other actors in the

terrible drama is astonishingly vigorous, though seldom accurate. His chief

purpose in drawing all these pictures and portraits was to prove that order

can never come out of chaos save by the iron grip of a governing hand.

Hence, if you want to learn the real history of the French Revolution, you

must seek elsewhere; but if you want an impression of it, an impression

that burns its way into the mind, you will hardly find the equal of

Carlyle's book in any language.

Of Carlyle's miscellaneous works one must speak with some hesitation. As an

expression of what some call his prophetic mood, and others his ranting,

one who has patience might try _Shooting Niagara_ or the _Latter Day

Pamphlets_. A reflection of his doctrine of honest work as the cure for

social ills is found in _Past and Present_; and for a summary of his

philosophy there is nothing quite so good as his early _Sartor

Resartus_ (1834).

[Sidenote: SARTOR RESARTUS]

The last-named work is called philosophy only by courtesy. The title means

"the tailor retailored," or "the patcher repatched," and the book professed

to be "a complete Resartus philosophy of clothes." Since everything wears

clothes of some kind (the soul wears a body, and the body garments; earth

puts forth grass, and the firmament stars; ideas clothe themselves in

words; society puts on fashions and habits), it can be seen that Carlyle

felt free to bring in any subject he pleased; and so he did. Moreover, in

order to have liberty of style, he represented himself to be the editor not

the author of _Sartor_. The alleged author was a German professor,

Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, an odd stick, half genius, half madman, whose

chaotic notes Carlyle professed to arrange with a running commentary of his

own.

In consequence of this overlabored plan _Sartor_ has no plan at all.

It is a jumble of thoughts, notions, attacks on shams, scraps of German

philosophy,--everything that Carlyle wrote about during his seven-years

sojourn on his moorland farm. The only valuable things in _Sartor_ are

a few autobiographical chapters, such as "The Everlasting Yea," and certain

passages dealing with night, the stars, the yearnings of humanity, the

splendors of earth and heaven. Note this picture of Teufelsdroeckh standing

alone at the North Cape, "looking like a little belfry":

"Silence as of death, for Midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes,

has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the

peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in

the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too

were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and

cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters,

like a tremulous fire-pillar shooting downwards to the abyss, and

hide itself under my feet. In such moments Solitude also is

invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him

lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and

before him the silent Immensity and Palace of the Eternal, whereof

our Sun is but a porch-lamp?"

The book has several such passages, written in a psalmodic style, appealing

to elemental feeling, to our sense of wonder or reverence before the

mystery of life and death. It is a pity that we have no edition of

_Sartor_ which does justice to its golden nuggets by the simple

expedient of sifting out the mass of rubbish in which the gold is hidden.

The central doctrines of the book are the suppression of self, or

selfishness, and the value of honest work in contrast with the evil of

mammon-worship.

A CRITICISM OF CARLYLE. Except in his literary essays Carlyle's

"rumfustianish growlery of style," as he called it, is so uneven that no

description will apply to it. In moments of emotion he uses a chanting

prose that is like primitive poetry. Sometimes he forgets Thomas Carlyle,

keeps his eye on his subject, and describes it in vivid, picturesque words;

then, when he has nothing to say, he thinks of himself and tries to hold

you by his manner, by his ranting or dogmatism. In one mood he is a poet,

in another a painter, in a third a stump speaker. In all moods he must have

your ear, but he succeeds better in getting than in holding it. It has been

said that his prose is on a level with Browning's verse, but a better

comparison may be drawn between Carlyle and Walt Whitman. Of each of these

writers the best that can be said is that his style was his own, that it

served his purpose, and that it is not to be imitated.

[Sidenote: HIS TWO SIDES]

In formulating any summary of Carlyle the critic must remember that he is

dealing with a man of two sides, one prejudiced, dogmatic, jealous of

rivals, the other roughly sincere. On either side Carlyle is a man of

contradictions. For an odious dead despot like Frederick, who happens to

please him, he turns criticism into eulogy; and for a living poet like

Wordsworth he tempers praise by spiteful criticism. [Footnote: Carlyle's

praise of Wordsworth's "fine, wholesome rusticity" is often quoted, but

only in part. If you read the whole passage (in _Reminiscences_) you

will find the effect of Carlyle's praise wholly spoiled by a heartless

dissection of a poet, with whom, as Carlyle confessed, he had very slight

acquaintance.] He writes a score of letters to show that his grief is too

deep for words. He is voluble on "the infinite virtue of silence." He

proclaims to-day that he "will write no word on any subject till he has

studied it to the bottom," and to-morrow will pronounce judgment on America

or science or some other matter of which he knows nothing. In all this

Carlyle sees no inconsistency; he is sincere in either role, of prophet or

stump speaker, and even thinks that humor is one of his prime qualities.

[Illustration: ARCH HOME, ECCLEFECHAN

The birthplace of Carlyle]

Another matter to remember is Carlyle's constant motive rather than his

constant mistakes. He had the gloomy conviction that he was ordained to cry

out against the shams of society; and as most modern things appeared to him

as shams, he had to be very busy. Moreover, he had an eye like a hawk for

the small failings of men, especially of living men, but was almost blind

to their large virtues. This hawklike vision, which ignores all large

matters in a swoop on some petty object, accounts for two things: for the

marvelous detail of Carlyle's portraits, and for his merciless criticism of

the faults of society in general, and of the Victorian age in particular.

Such a writer invites both applause and opposition, and in Carlyle's case

the one is as hearty as the other. The only point on which critics are

fairly well agreed is that his rugged independence of mind and his

picturesque style appealed powerfully to a small circle of readers in

England and to a large circle in America. It is doubtful whether any other

essayist, with the possible exception of the serene and hopeful Emerson,

had a more stimulating influence on the thought of the latter half of the

nineteenth century.

* * * * *

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

The prose of Ruskin is a treasure house. Nature portrayed as everyman's

Holy Land; descriptions of mountain or landscape, and more beautiful

descriptions of leaf or lichen or the glint of light on a breaking wave;

appreciations of literature, and finer appreciations of life itself;

startling views of art, and more revolutionary views of that frightful

waste of human life and labor which we call political economy,--all these

and many more impressions of nature, art and human society are eloquently

recorded in the ten thousand pages which are the work of Ruskin's hand.

If you would know the secret that binds all his work together, it may be

expressed in two words, sensitiveness and sincerity. From childhood Ruskin

was extremely sensitive to both beauty and ugliness. The beauty of the

world and of all noble things that ever were accomplished in the world

affected him like music; but he shrank, as if from a blow, from all

sordidness and evil, from the mammon-worship of trade, from the cloud of

smoke that hung over a factory district as if trying to shield from the eye

of heaven so much needless poverty and aimless toil below. So Ruskin was a

man halting between two opinions: the artist in him was forever troubled by

the reformer seeking to make the crooked places of life straight and its

rough places plain. He made as many mistakes as another man; in his pages

you may light upon error or vagary; but you will find nothing to make you

doubt his entire sincerity, his desire to speak truth, his passion for

helping his fellow men.

LIFE. The early training of Ruskin may explain both the strength

and the weakness of his work. His father was a wealthy wine

merchant, his mother a devout woman with puritanic ideas of duty.

Both parents were of Scottish and, as Ruskin boasted, of plebeian

descent. They had but one child, and in training him they used a

strange mixture of severity and coddling, of wisdom and nonsense.

The young Ruskin was kept apart from other boys and from the sports

which breed a modesty of one's own opinion; his time, work and

lonely play were minutely regulated; the slightest infringement of

rules brought the stern discipline of rod or reproof. On the other

hand he was given the best pictures and the best books; he was

taken on luxurious journeys through England and the Continent; he

was furnished with tutors for any study to which he turned his

mind. When he went up to Oxford, at seventeen, he knew many things

which are Greek to the ordinary boy, but was ignorant of almost

everything that a boy knows, and that a man finds useful in dealing

with the world.

[Illustration: JOHN RUSKIN

From a photograph by Elliott and Fry]

[Sidenote: TRAINING AND ITS RESULTS]

There were several results of this early discipline. One was

Ruskin's devotion to art, which came from his familiarity with

pictures and galleries; another was his minute study of natural

objects, which were to him in place of toys; a third was his habit

of "speaking his mind" on every subject; a fourth was his rhythmic

prose style, which came largely from his daily habit of memorizing

the Bible. Still another result of his lonely magnificence, in

which he was deprived of boys' society, was that his affection went

out on a flood tide of romance to the first attractive girl he met.

So he loved, and was laughed at, and was desperately unhappy. Then

he married, not the woman of his choice, but one whom his parents

picked out for him. The tastes of the couple were hopelessly

different; the end was estrangement, with humiliation and sorrow

for Ruskin.

[Sidenote: TWENTY YEARS OF ART]

At twenty-four he produced his first important work, _Modern

Painters_ (1843), which he began as a defense of the neglected

artist Turner. This controversial book led Ruskin to a deeper study

of his subject, which resulted in four more volumes on modern

painting. Before these were completed he had "fairly created a new

literature of art" by his _Seven Lamps of Architecture_ and

_Stones of Venice_. He was appointed professor of fine arts at

Oxford; he gave several series of lectures which appeared later as

_Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, _Michael Angelo and

Tintoret_, _Val d'Arno_ and _The Art of England_.

By this time he was renowned as an art critic; but his theories

were strongly opposed and he was continually in hot water. In his

zeal to defend Turner or Millais or Burne-Jones he was rather

slashing in his criticism of other artists. The libel suit brought

against him by Whistler, whom he described as a coxcomb who flung a

pot of paint in the face of the public, is still talked about in

England. The jury (fancy a jury wrestling with a question of art!)

found Ruskin guilty, and decided that he should pay for the

artist's damaged reputation the sum of one farthing. Whistler ever

afterwards wore the coin on his watch chain.

[Sidenote: RUSKIN THE REFORMER]

It was about the year 1860 that Ruskin came under the influence of

Carlyle, and then began the effort at social reform which made

wreck of fame and hope and peace of mind. Carlyle had merely

preached of manual work; but Ruskin, wholehearted in whatever he

did, went out to mend roads and do other useful tasks to show his

belief in the doctrine. Carlyle railed against the industrial

system of England; but Ruskin devoted his fortune to remedying its

evils. He established model tenements; he founded libraries and

centers of recreation for workingmen; he took women and children

out of factories and set them to spinning or weaving in their own

homes; he founded St. George's Guild, a well-housed community which

combined work with education, and which shared profits fairly among

the workers.

England at first rubbed its eyes at these reforms, then shrugged

its shoulders as at a harmless kind of madman. But Ruskin had the

temper of a crusader; his sword was out against what was even then

called "vested interests," and presently his theories aroused a

tempest of opposition. Thackeray, who as editor of the _Cornhill

Magazine_ had gladly published Ruskin's first economic essays,

was forced by the clamor of readers to discontinue the series.

[Footnote: While these essays were appearing, there was published

(1864) a textbook of English literature. It spoke well of Ruskin's

books of art, but added, "Of late he has lost his way and has

written things--papers in the _Cornhill_ chiefly--which are

not likely to add to his fame as a writer or to his character as a

man of common sense" (Collier, _History of English

Literature_, p. 512).] To this reform period belong _Unto This

Last_ and other books dealing with political economy, and also

_Sesame and Lilies_, _Crown of Wild Olive_ and _Ethics

of the Dust_, which were written chiefly for young people.

[Sidenote: END OF THE CRUSADE]

For twenty years this crusade continued; then, worn out and

misunderstood by both capitalists and workingmen, Ruskin retired

(1879) to a small estate called "Brantwood" in the Lake District,

His fortune had been spent in his attempt to improve labor

conditions, and he lived now upon the modest income from his books.

Before he died, in 1900, his friend Charles Eliot Norton persuaded

him to write the story of his early life in _Præterita_. The

title is strange, but the book itself is, with one exception, the

most interesting of Ruskin's works.

WORKS OF RUSKIN. The works of Ruskin fall naturally into three classes,

which are called criticisms of art, industry and life, but which are, in

fact, profound studies of the origin and meaning of art on the one hand,

and of the infinite value of human life on the other.

The most popular of his art criticisms are _St. Mark's Rest_ and

_Mornings in Florence_, which are widely used as guidebooks, and which

may be postponed until the happy time when, in Venice or Florence, one may

read them to best advantage. Meanwhile, in _Seven Lamps of

Architecture_ or _Stones of Venice_ or the first two volumes of

_Modern Painters_, one may grow acquainted with Ruskin's theory of

art.

[Sidenote: HIS THEORY OF ART]

His fundamental principle was summarized by Pope in the line, "All nature

is but art unknown to thee." That nature is the artist's source of

inspiration, that art at its best can but copy some natural beauty, and

that the copy should be preceded by careful and loving study of the

original,--this was the sum of his early teaching. Next, Ruskin looked

within the soul of the artist and announced that true art has a spiritual

motive, that it springs from the noblest ideals of life, that the moral

value of any people may be read in the pictures or buildings which they

produced. A third principle was that the best works of art, reflecting as

they do the ideals of a community, should belong to the people, not to a

few collectors; and a fourth exalted the usefulness of art in increasing

not only the pleasure but the power of life. So Ruskin urged that art be

taught in all schools and workshops, and that every man be encouraged to

put the stamp of beauty as well as of utility upon the work of his hands;

so also he formulated a plan to abolish factories, and by a system of hand

labor to give every worker the chance and the joy of self-expression.

[Sidenote: THEORY OF ECONOMICS]

In his theory of economics Ruskin was even more revolutionary. He wrote

several works on the subject, but the sum of his teaching may be found in

_Unto This Last_; and the sum is that political economy is merely

commercial economy; that it aims to increase trade and wealth at the

expense of men and morals. "There is no wealth but life," announced Ruskin,

"life including all its power of love, of joy and of admiration." And with

minute exactness he outlined a plan for making the nation wealthy, not by

more factories and ships, but by increasing the health and happiness of

human beings.

Three quarters of a century earlier Thomas Jefferson, in America, had

pleaded for the same ideal of national wealth, and had characterized the

race of the nations for commercial supremacy as a contagion of insanity.

Jefferson was called a demagogue, Ruskin a madman; but both men were

profoundly right in estimating the wealth of a nation by its store of

happiness for home consumption rather than by its store of goods for

export. They were misunderstood because they were too far in advance of

their age to speak its trade language. They belong not to the past or

present, but to the future.

[Sidenote: FOR YOUNG READERS]

If but one work of Ruskin is to be read, let it be _Sesame and Lilies_

(1865), which is one of the books that no intelligent reader can afford to

neglect. The first chapter, "Of Kings' Treasuries," is a noble essay on the

subject of reading. The second, "Of Queens' Gardens," is a study of woman's

life and education, a study which may appear old-fashioned now, but which

has so much of truth and beauty that it must again, like Colonial

furniture, become our best fashion. These two essays [Footnote: A third

essay, "The Mystery of Life," was added to _Sesame and Lilies_. It is

a sad, despairing monologue, and the book might be better off without it.]

contain Ruskin's best thought on books and womanly character, and also an

outline of his teaching on nature, art and society. If we read _Sesame

and Lilies_ in connection with two other little books, _Crown of Wild

Olive_, which treats of work, trade and war, and _Ethics of the

Dust_, which deals with housekeeping, we shall have the best that Ruskin

produced for his younger disciples.

THE QUALITY OF RUSKIN. To the sensitiveness and sincerity of Ruskin we have

already called attention. There is a third quality which appears

frequently, and which we call pedagogical insistence, because the author

seems to labor under the impression that he must drive something into one's

head.

This insistent note is apt to offend readers until they learn of Ruskin's

motive and experience. He lived in a commercial age, an age that seemed to

him blind to the beauty of the world; and the purpose of his whole life

was, as he said, to help those who, having eyes, see not. His aim was high,

his effort heroic; but for all his pains he was called a visionary, a man

with a dream book. Yet he was always exact and specific. He would say, "Go

to a certain spot at a certain hour, look in a certain direction, and such

and such beauties shall ye see." And people would go, and wag their heads,

and declare that no such prospect as Ruskin described was visible to mortal

eyes. [Footnote: For example, Ruskin gave in _Fors Clavigera_ a

description of a beautiful view from a bridge over the Ettrick, in

Scotland. Some people have sought that view in vain, and a recent critic

insists that it is invisible (Andrew Lang, _History of English

Literature_, p. 592). In Venice or Florence you may still meet travelers

with one of Ruskin's books in hand, peering about for the beauty which he

says is apparent from such and such a spot and which every traveler ought

to see.]

Naturally Ruskin, with his dogmatic temper, grew impatient of such

blindness; hence the increasing note of insistence, of scolding even, to

which critics have called attention. But we can forgive much in a writer

who, with marvelously clear vision, sought only to point out the beauty of

nature and the moral dignity of humanity.

[Sidenote: Ruskin's Style]

The beauty of Ruskin's style, its musical rhythm or cadence, its wealth of

figure and allusion, its brilliant coloring, like a landscape of his

favorite artist Turner,--all this is a source of pleasure to the reader,

entirely aside from the subject matter. Read, for example, the description

of St. Mark's Cathedral in _Stones of Venice_, or the reflected

glories of nature in _Præterita_, or the contrast between Salisbury

towers and Giotto's campanile in _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and

see there descriptive eloquence at its best. That this superb eloquence was

devoted not to personal or party ends, but to winning men to the love of

beauty and truth and right living, is the secret of Ruskin's high place in

English letters and of his enduring influence on English life.

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The age of Victoria (1837-1901) approaches our own so

closely that it is still difficult to form an accurate judgment of

its history or literature. In a review of the history of the age we

noted three factors, democracy, science, imperialism, which have

profoundly influenced English letters from 1850 to the present

time.

Our study of Victorian literature includes (1) The life and works

of the two greater poets of the age, Tennyson and Browning. (2) The

work of Elizabeth Barrett, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Morris and

Swinburne, who were selected from the two hundred representive

poets of the period. (3) The life and the chief works of the major

novelists, Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot. (4) A review of

some other novelists of the age, the Brontë Sisters, Mrs. Gaskell,

Anthony Trollope, Blackmore, Kingsley, Meredith, Hardy and

Stevenson. (5) The typical essayists and historians, Macaulay,

Carlyle, Ruskin, with a review of other typical groups of writers

in the fields of religion, history and science.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Typical selections from all authors named

in the text are found in Manly, English Poetry, English Prose;

Pancoast, Standard English Poems, Standard English Prose; and

several other collections, which are especially useful in a study

of the minor writers. The works of the major authors may be read to

much better advantage in various inexpensive editions prepared for

school use. Only a few such editions are named below for each

author, but a fairly complete list is given under Texts in the

General Bibliography.

Tennyson's selected minor poems, Idylls of the King, The Princess

and In Memoriam, in Standard English Classics, Riverside

Literature, Pocket Classics, Silver Classics. A good volume

containing the best of Tennyson's poems in Athenæum Press Series.

Browning and Mrs. Browning, selected poems in Standard English

Classics, Lake Classics, English Readings, Belles Lettres Series.

Matthew Arnold, selected poems in Golden Treasury Series, Maynard's

English Classics; Sohrab and Rustum in Standard English Classics;

prose selections in English Readings, Academy Classics.

Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Christmas Carol in

Standard English Classics, Lake Classics; other novels in

Everyman's Library.

Thackeray, Henry Esmond in Standard English Classics, Pocket

Classics; English Humorists in Lake Classics, English Readings;

other works in Everyman's Library.

George Eliot, Silas Marner, in Standard English Classics, Riverside

Literature; Mill on the Floss and other novels in Everyman's

Library.

Blackmore's Lorna Doone and Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford in Standard

English Classics. Reade's Cloister and the Hearth, Kingsley's

Westward Ho and Hypatia in Everyman's Library.

Macaulay, selected essays in Standard English Classics, Riverside

Literature, Lake Classics.

Carlyle, Essay on Burns in Standard English Classics, Academy

Classics; Heroes and Hero Worship in Athenæum Press, Pocket

Classics; French Revolution in Everyman's Library.

Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies and selected essays and letters in

Standard English Classics; selections from Ruskin's art books in

Riverside Literature; other works in Everyman's Library.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. The works named below are selected from a large list

dealing with the Victorian age chiefly. For more extended works see

the General Bibliography.

_HISTORY_. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times and The Epoch of

Reform. Oman, England in the Nineteenth Century; Lee, Queen

Victoria; Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography.

_LITERATURE_. Saintsbury, History of Nineteenth Century

Literature; Harrison, Studies in Early Victorian Literature; Mrs.

Oliphant, Literary History of England in the Nineteenth Century;

Walker, The Age of Tennyson; Morley, Literature of the Age of

Victoria; Stedman, Victorian Poets; Brownell, Victorian Prose

Masters.

_Tennyson_. Life, by Lyall (English Men of Letters Series), by

Horton; Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his Son. Napier, Homes

and Haunts of Tennyson; Andrew Lang, Alfred Tennyson; Dixon, A

Tennyson Primer; Sneath, The Mind of Tennyson; Van Dyke, The Poetry

of Tennyson. Essays by Harrison, in Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and

Other Literary Estimates; by Stedman, in Victorian Poets; by

Hutton, in Literary Essays; by Dowden, in Studies in Literature; by

Forster, in Great Teachers; by Gates, in Studies and Appreciations.

_Browning_. Life, by Sharp (Great Writers Series), by

Chesterton (E. M. of L.). Alexander, Introduction to Browning (Ginn

and Company); Corson, Introduction to the Study of Browning;

Phelps, Browning: How to Know Him; Symonds, Introduction to the

Study of Browning; Brooke, Poetry of Robert Browning; Harrington,

Browning Studies. Essays by Stedman, Dowden, Hutton, Forster.

_Dickens_. Life, by Forster, by Ward (E. M. of L.), by

Marzials. Gissing, Charles Dickens; Chesterton, Charles Dickens;

Kitton, Novels of Dickens. Essays by Harrison, Bagehot; A. Lang, in

Gadshill edition of Dickens's works.

_Thackeray_. Life, by Merivale and Marzials, by Trollope (E.

M. of L.). Crowe, Homes and Haunts of Thackeray. Essays, by

Brownell, in English Prose Masters; by Lilly, in Four English

Humorists; by Harrison, in Studies in Early Victorian Literature;

by Scudder, in Social Ideals in English Letters.

_George Eliot_. Life, by L. Stephen (E. M. of L.), by O.

Browning, by Cross. Cooke, George Eliot: a Critical Study of her

Life and Writings. Essays by Brownell, Harrison, Dowden, Hutton.

_Macaulay_. Life, by Trevelyan, by Morrison (E. M. of L.).

Essays by L. Stephen, Bagehot, Saintsbury, Harrison, M. Arnold.

_Carlyle_. Life, by Garnett, by Nichol (E. M. of L.), by

Froude. Carlyle's Letters and Reminiscences, edited by Norton.

Craig, The Making of Carlyle. Essays by Lowell, Brownell, Hutton,

Harrison.

_Ruskin_. Life, by Harrison (E. M. of L.), by Collingwood.

Ruskin's Præterita (autobiography). Mather, Ruskin, his Life and

Teaching; Cooke, Studies in Ruskin; Waldstein, The Work of John

Ruskin; W. M. Rossetti, Ruskin, Rossetti and Pre-Raphaelitism.

Essays by Brownell, Saintsbury, Forster, Harrison.

* * * * *

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books dealing with individual authors and with special periods of

English literature are listed in the various chapter endings of

this history. Following are some of the best works for general

reference, for extended study and for supplementary reading.

_HISTORY_. A brief, trustworthy textbook of history, such as

Cheyney's Short History of England (Ginn and Company) or Gardiner's

Student's History (Longmans), should always be at hand in studying

English literature. More detailed works are Traill, Social England,

6 vols. (Putnam); Bright, History of England, 5 vols. (Longmans);

Green, History of the English People, 4 vols. (Harper); Green,

Short History of the English People, revised edition, 1 vol.

(American Book Co.); latest revision of Green's Short History, with

appendix of recent events to 1900, in Everyman's Library (Putnam);

Kendall, Source Book of English History (Macmillan); Colby,

Selections from the Sources of English History (Longmans); Lingard,

History of England, to 1688, 10 vols. (a standard Catholic

history). Mitchell, English Lands, Letters and Kings, 5 vols.

(Scribner), a series of pleasant essays of history and literature.

_LITERARY HISTORY_. Cambridge History of English Literature,

to be completed in 14 vols. (Putnam), by different authors, not

always in harmony; Channels of English Literature (Button) treats

of epic, drama, history, essay, novel and other types, each in a

separate volume; Jusserand, Literary History of the English People,

to 1650, 2 vols. (Putnam), a fascinating record; Ten Brink, English

Literature, to 1550, 3 vols. (Holt), good material, clumsy style;

Taine, English Literature, 2 vols. (Holt), brilliant but not

trustworthy; Handbooks of English Literature, 9 vols. (Macmillan);

Garnett and Gosse, Illustrated History of English Literature, 4

bulky volumes (Macmillan), good for pictures; Nicoll and Seccombe,

History of English Literature, from Chaucer to end of Victorian

era, 3 vols. (Dodd); Morley, English Writers, to 1650, 11 vols.

(Cassell); Chambers, Cyclopedia of English Literature, 3 vols.

(Lippincott).

_BIOGRAPHY_. Dictionary of National Biography, 63 vols.

(Macmillan). English Men of Letters, a volume to each author

(Macmillan); briefer series of the same kind are Great Writers

(Scribner), Beacon Biographies (Houghton), Westminster Biographies

(Small). Allibone, Dictionary of Authors, 5 vols. (Lippincott).

Hinchman and Gummere, Lives of Great English Writers (Houghton),

offers thirty-eight biographies in a single volume.

_LITERARY TYPES_. Courthope, History of English Poetry, 4

vols. (Macmillan); Gummere, Handbook of Poetics (Ginn and Company);

Stedman, Nature and Elements of Poetry (Houghton); Saintsbury,

History of English Prosody (Macmillan); Alden, Specimens of English

Verse (Holt).

Steenstrup, The Mediæval Popular Ballad, translated from the Danish

by Edward Cox (Ginn and Company); Gummere, The Popular Ballad

(Houghton). Ward, History of Dramatic Literature, to 1714, 3 vols.

(Macmillan); Caffin, Appreciation of the Drama (Baker).

Raleigh, The English Novel (Scribner); Hamilton, Materials and

Methods of Fiction (Baker); Cross, Development of the English Novel

(Macmillan); Perry, Study of Prose Fiction (Houghton).

Saintsbury, History of Criticism, 3 vols. (Dodd); Gayley and Scott,

Introduction to Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism (Ginn

and Company); Winchester, Principles of Criticism (Macmillan);

Worsfold, Principles of Criticism (Longmans); Moulton, Library of

Literary Criticism, 8 vols. (Malkan).

_ESSAYS OF LITERATURE_. Bagehot, Literary Studies; Hazlitt,

Lectures on the English poets; Lowell, Literary Essays; Mackail,

Springs of Helicon (English poets from Chaucer to Milton); Minto,

Characteristics of English Poets (Chaucer to Elizabethan

dramatists); Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism; Leslie Stephen,

Hours in a Library; Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books;

Birrell, Obiter Dicta; Hales, Folia Litteraria; Walter Pater,

Appreciations; Woodberry, Makers of Literature; Dowden, Studies in

Literature and Transcripts and Studies; Gates, Studies in

Appreciation; Harrison, The Choice of Books; Bates, Talks on the

Study of Literature.

_COLLECTIONS OF POETRY AND PROSE_. Manly, English Poetry,

English Prose, 2 vols., containing selections from all important

English authors (Ginn and Company); Newcomer and Andrews, Twelve

Centuries of English Poetry and Prose (Scott); Century Readings in

English Literature (Century Co.); Pancoast, Standard English

Poetry, Standard English Prose, 2 vols. (Holt); Leading English

Poets from Chaucer to Browning (Houghton); Oxford Book of English

Verse. Oxford Treasury of English Literature, 3 vols. (Clarendon

Press); Ward, English Poets, 4 vols., and Craik, English Prose

Selections, 5 vols. (Macmillan); Morley, Library of English

Literature, 5 vols. (Cassell).

_LANGUAGE_. Lounsbury, History of the English Language (Holt);

Emerson, Brief History of the English Language (Macmillan); Welsh,

Development of English Language and Literature (Scott); Bradley,

Making of English (Macmillan); Greenough and Kittredge, Words and

their Ways in English Speech (Macmillan); Anderson, Study of

English Words (American Book Co.).

_MISCELLANEOUS_. Classic Myths in English Literature (Ginn and

Company); Ryland, Chronological Outlines of English Literature,

names and dates only (Macmillan); Raleigh, Style (Longmans);

Brewer, Reader's Handbook (Lippincott); Hutton, Literary Landmarks

of London (Harper); Boynton, London in English Literature

(University of Chicago Press); Dalbiac, Dictionary of English

Quotations (Macmillan); Bartlett, Familiar Quotations (Little);

Walsh, International Encyclopedia of Quotations (Winston).

_SCHOOL TEXTS_. [Footnote: The chief works of English and

American literature are now widely published in inexpensive

editions prepared especially for classroom use. Descriptive

catalogues of these handy little editions are issued by the various

educational publishers.] Standard English Classics and Athenæum

Press Series (Ginn and Company); Riverside Literature (Houghton);

Pocket Classics, Golden Treasury Series (Macmillan); Lake Classics

(Scott); Silver Classics (Silver); Longmans' English Classics

(Longmans); English Readings (Holt); Maynard's English Classics

(Merrill); Caxton Classics (Scribner); Belles Lettres Series

(Heath); King's Classics (Luce); Canterbury Classics (Rand);

Academy Classics (Allyn); Cambridge Literature (Sanborn); Student's

Series (Sibley); Camelot Series (Simmons); Carisbrooke Library

(Routledge); World's Classics (Clarendon Press); Lakeside Classics

(Ainsworth); Standard Literature (University Publishing Company);

Eclectic English Classics (American Book Co.); Cassell's National

Library (Cassell); Everyman's Library (Button); Morley's Universal

Library (Routledge); Bohn Library (Macmillan); Little Masterpieces

(Doubleday); Handy Volume Classics (Crowell); Arthurian Romances

(Nutt); New Mediæval Library (Duffield); Arber's English Reprints

(Macmillan); Mermaid Dramatists (Scribner); Temple Dramatists

(Macmillan); Home and School Library, a series of texts prepared

for young readers (Ginn and Company).

* * * * *

OUTLINES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

CHAPTER I

THE PIONEERS AND NATION-BUILDERS

'Twas glory once to be a Roman:

She makes it glory now to be a man.

Bayard Taylor, "America"

We have this double interest in early American literature, that it is our

own and unlike any other. The literatures of Europe began with wonder tales

of a golden age, with stories of fairy ships, of kings akin to gods, of

heroes who ventured into enchanted regions and there waged battle with

dragons or the powers of darkness. American literature began with

historical records, with letters of love and friendship, with diaries or

journals of exploration, with elegiac poems lamenting the death of beloved

leaders or hearth companions,--in a word, with the chronicles of human

experience. In this respect, of recording the facts and the truth of life

as men and women fronted life bravely in the New World, our early

literature differs radically from that of any other great nation: it brings

us face to face not with myths or shadows but with our ancestors.

TWO VIEWS OF THE PIONEERS. It has become almost a habit among historians to

disparage early American literature, and nearly all our textbooks apologize

for it on the ground that the forefathers had no artistic feeling, their

souls being oppressed by the gloom and rigor of Puritanism.

Even as we read this apology our eyes rest contentedly upon a beautiful old

piece of Colonial furniture, fashioned most artistically by the very men

who are pitied for their want of art. We remember also that the Puritans

furnished only one of several strong elements in early American life, and

that wherever the Puritan influence was strongest there books and literary

culture did most abound: their private libraries, for example, make our own

appear rather small and trashy by comparison. [Footnote: When Plymouth

consisted of a score of cabins and a meetinghouse it had at least two

excellent libraries. Bradford had over three hundred books, and Brewster

four hundred, consisting of works of poetry, philosophy, science, devotion,

and miscellanies covering the entire field of human knowledge. In view of

the scarcity of books in 1620, one of these collections, which were common

in all the New England settlements, was equivalent to a modern library of

thirty or forty thousand volumes.] Cotton Mather, disciplined in the

strictest of Puritan homes, wrote his poems in Greek, conducted a large

foreign correspondence in Latin, read enormously, published four hundred

works, and in thousands of citations proved himself intimate with the

world's books of poetry and history, science and religion. That the leaders

of the colonies, south and north, were masters of an excellent prose style

is evident from their own records; that their style was influenced by their

familiarity with the best literature appears in many ways,--in the immense

collection of books in Byrd's mansion in Virginia, for instance, or in the

abundant quotations that are found in nearly all Colonial writings. Before

entering college (and there was never another land with so few people and

so many colleges as Colonial America) boys of fourteen passed a classical

examination which few graduates would now care to face; and the men of our

early legislatures produced state papers which for force of reasoning and

lucidity of expression have never been surpassed.

[Sidenote: THE QUESTION OF ART]

Again, our whole conception of American art may be modified by these

considerations: that it requires more genius to build a free state than to

make a sonnet, and the Colonists were mighty state-builders; that a ship is

a beautiful object, and American ships with their graceful lines and

towering clouds of canvas were once famous the world over; that

architecture is a noble art, and Colonial architecture still charms us by

its beauty and utility after three hundred years of experimental building.

"Art" is a great word, and we use it too narrowly when we apply it to an

ode of Shelley or a mutilated statue of Praxiteles, but are silent before a

Colonial church or a free commonwealth or the Constitution of the United

States.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO "WESTOVER," HOME OF WILLIAM BYRD]

Instead of an apology for our early literature, therefore, we offer this

possible explanation: that our forefathers, who set their faces to one of

the most heroic tasks ever undertaken by man, were too busy with great

deeds inspired by the ideal of liberty to find leisure for the epic or

drama in which the deeds and the ideal should be worthily reflected. They

left that work of commemoration to others, and they are still waiting

patiently for their poet. Meanwhile we read the straightforward record

which they left as their only literary memorial, not as we read the

imaginative story of Beowulf or Ulysses, but for the clear light of truth

which it sheds upon the fathers and mothers of a great nation.

* * * * *

THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1607-1765)

The Colonial period extends from the first English settlement at Jamestown

to the Stamp Act and other measures of "taxation without representation"

which tended to unite the colonies and arouse the sleeping spirit of

nationality. During this century and a half the Elizabethan dramatists

produced their best work; Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and a score of lesser

writers were adding to the wealth of English literature; but not a single

noteworthy volume crossed the Atlantic to reflect in Europe the lyric of

the wilderness, the drama of the commonwealth, the epic of democracy. Such

books as were written here dealt largely with matters of religion,

government and exploration; and we shall hardly read these books with

sympathy, and therefore with understanding, unless we remember two facts:

that the Colonists, grown weary of ancient tyranny, were determined to

write a new page in the world's history; and that they reverently believed

God had called them to make that new page record the triumph of freedom and

manhood. Hence the historical impulse and the moral or religious bent of

nearly all our early writers.

[Illustration: PLYMOUTH IN 1662. BRADFORD'S HOUSE ON RIGHT]