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Tata o lelure. 3 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 A PRIMER OP ENGLISH LITERATURE, B." MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, LL.D., I'ROFHSSOR OK ENGLISH LITERATURK IN THB UNIVKRSITY OK NOTKH DAMK. MONTREAL AND TORONTO; n. & J. SADLIER & CO. 1893. PR^ s-J c r t C^} PREFACE. In 7vriting this Primer of English Literature I have three objects in view. One is to give the Catholic stUikftt a standard 0/ judgment ; the others, to interest him in the literature 0/ his oivn language, and to en- courage such a taste /or it that he would long to read books and not be satisfied ivith the opinions of other people about them. I beg that the teacher and the stu- dent will remember that this little book is by a Catholic, for Catholics, afid that it is merely an introduction to the study of English Literature. The second part — a similar volume — will be devoted to American writers. Maurice Francis Egan. The University of Notre Dame. I ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. Early Saxon Writiw^s.— Poems Brought to England from the J/omes of the Saxons, ^to.— Qrdmon, 670. I. Literature is a rcfiecrlon of life in all ages. It is the only means by which we know how man- kind in other times lived, thought, and acted. English literature, in which we may also include American literature, expresses the thoughts, feelings, and observations of writers who used or use the English language. In speaking of American literature, we must re- member that it means many writings not in English. In South America and Mexico there are great authors who do not write the English language; and in Canada, which is part of America, there are numbers of writers in the French language deserv- ed';' celebrated. 8 ENGLISH 1 1 J ERA TV RE. \r\\KV. 2. Printed Books were not ilie (Trst furm in which literature existed. HeOtre the iiiventinii «»Jthe art of printing, literature was j)erj)Cluale(l by tradi- tion ; it was handed down from father t<> son. 'i'li(!«i the memory of man was his lil)rary. It is said that the magnificent works of Homer were preserved in this manner among the (ireeks for five hundred years. Later, symbolical characters, or letters, were im- pressed on various substances, such as the bark of trees and prepared leaves. In the year 1474 books began to be printed in England, and the monks, who had laboriously preserved great masterj)ieces of litera- ture by writing and illuminating them with wonder- ful care and taste, now learned to print by the aid of carved blocks and hand-presses. Many of the terms now in use among printers may be traced to the printing-offices of the Benedictine monks, who eagerly made use of any new art. To the care of the monks we owe not only the Bible, but the great classics. 3. Verse was the earliest form of literature in all languages. The oldest English poetry was not in rhyme as we understand it. Alliteration and ac- cent were essential. There are generally four accents in a line; but sometimes there are more accented syl- lables, and sometimes more than three alliterations. This is the usual form of the alliteration : " Soft is the Silence of Silvery twilight." Two alliterations are in the first part of the line, and pne in the second. Compound words are common '.] FAKI.y SAXOX U'NITINCS, — 7vhalcs-fHilh aiul swan-mad for ihc scii. wave-horse for a ship, war-adder fur an arrow, iind ^rold-frirud of men for king, occur vrrv oficii. ITie rules hy which the oldesl Knglish pocrns ar(^ uriltcn allowed of the repetili(jn of the same thouu^lit or fact several times. This is very common in the Hebrew; for in- stance: "Tile sound of the sea-horse was awful;" "The snort of the steed of the ocean.'" 4. The Language in which the earliest Kni^lish poems were sj)ukcn or sung dilTcrs much from the Knglisli of to-day. It was brought from Jutland, or Saxony, by the pirates who landed in Britain and drove the Britons, whom they called Welsh, int(» Wales and Cornwall, and into the part of France called Brittany. The latter preserve a separate lan- guage and literature to this day. Later, the stories of the ]Jritons crept into English literature. The Tales of King Arthur, the great epic of Tenny- son, was a British, not a Saxon, story. The Britons left us some Celtic words, of domestic import or the names of places : avon and ex (meaning water), cradle, mop, pilloiv, harrow (a funeral mound), mat- tock, crock, kiln, and a few others. Some Saxons probably married British wives, and hence we have the domestic British terms ; but the majority of the Britons fled, leaving the land to the Saxon conqueror and his language. 5. The First English Poems and the Epic " Beowulf" were doubtless composed long before the seventh century, and taken from the continent to England in the memory of Saxon bards. Beowulf \sd,i m lO EXCI.lSir LIT ERA irRE [riiAF. reduced to writing in the cif,'hth century by a monk of Northumbria. The Sonf^ of the Traveller, the earliest poem, enumerates the sinjj^er's experiences with the (Jotlis. Dear's Complaint is a sad story of one who is made a beggar by war ; it speaks of dumb sub- mission to the gods. The lu^ht at Finneshurf; and Waldhcrc are, with Beowulf, all the j.oems or parts of poems brought to Kngland from the homes of the Saxons. These fragments and the epic of Beoivulf may be studied with the help of an Anglo-Saxon grammar. Beoivulf is the story of a ferocious mon- ster called (Irendel. It was sung in parts by the warriors at their feasts, each chanting a part. This monster Grendel, like the dragons of the fairy-tales, had the habit of eating human (lesh. He harassed Ilrothgar, thane of Jutland, appearing in the ban- quet-hall and devouring any guest that suited his fancy. Beowulf of Sweden sails to Judland to as- sist the unfortunate king, and succeeds in killing the monster.,* Beowulf, however, no more shows the worst spirit of the Saxon pagan than Sir Edwin Ar- nold's poem, The Light of Asia, shows the selfishness of Buddhism. The Northumbrian Christian who tran- scribed it in 3184 alliterative lines put the mark of his finer and gentler thoughts upon it. To under- stand something of the spirit of the Scandinavians who began to make England, one might read Long- fellow's Skeleton in Armor, and The Invasion by Ger- ald Griffin, and afterwards Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott. In the latter occurs the famous dialogue be- tween Gurth and Wamba on the growth of the Nor- I] EAKl.y SAXOiV U'RITlXaS. II man, or rather the corrupted T.atin clement, in the Knplish hinf,'ua^'e. ^. About the year 670, the first entirely Knp- lish poem was written by Cxnlnion. It is a poeti- cal paraphrase of the OKI and the New 'I'estament. It was written in Yorkshire, on a wind-swept clilT. in the abbey presided over by St. Hilda, a rcli^Mous of noble blooil. C'a.'dnn)n was an elderly servant of the abbey, and when, after the feast, he was called on to sini; in his turn, over his cup of mead, with the other servants, he refused because he had heard no s(jngs that were not of cruelty and in praise of evil passions. One ni<;ht he crept away frt>m tlic table, sad because the others jeered at him, and went to sleep in the cow-shed; and a voice in his dream said to him, "Sing me a sryng !" Ca?dmon answered thai he could not sing; fc)r that reason he had left the feast. '"You must sing!" said the voice; "sing the beginnitig of created thinjrs. " Ca.'dmon sang some lines in his sleep about God and the creation. He remembered these lines when he awoke. The Abbess Hilda, believing that his gift must come from (]od, had him taught sacred history, and he became a monk, r^cdraon's para- phrases are full of the poet's individuality. His de- scription of the unholy triumph of Satan when he succeeds in tempting Kve is as grand as any passage in Milton's poem, Paradise Losi, on the same subject. Caedmon's simplicity, naturalness, and deep relig- ious feeling cause this ancient poem to be read and quoted by scholars to-day. Though the author died in ENGI.IRII I.lTh-.RATURF.. [chap. 12 686 -a dale which is also given as ihal of the death of St. Hilda, his friend and patroness, -Ca^dmon gave the Knglish a taste for the Old and the New Testa- ment. Cxdn,on's poems st.ggested to M.lton the great epic, Paradise Losf* '~"7see Brother Azarius' Development of Old English Thought. II.] EARLY ENGLISH POEMS. n CHAPTER II. Before 600.— Early English Poems.— The Venerable Bede, (i*1Z- — Thc Reign of Edgar, 958-75.— r/5,)k," the names of which are taken from the places where their MSS. are at present. Cyneivnl/ is credited with some of the pieces contained in these books. These pieces are generally religious. They were preserved in writing hy the monks, who preferred them to secular songs treating of war and revenge. Death is represented as terrible ; but there is always a gleam of divine hope shining through the cloud. The earlier poems of Cvneiru/f arc The Seafarer, The Wamkrer, The Wires Complaint, and a number of riddles. Later in hie he devoted himself entirely to religious po- etry. Among his later works were Helen ; or The Fmdmg o/the True Cross, Si. Andreas, The pLiix Ihe Passion 0/ Si Juiiana, and many hymns in honor of our Lord. qoni, '^)\u'"^S''[ Brunanburg (938) and the Song of the Fight at Maldon (998) are two war-songs which have been preserved. Tlie first was written for the S„.yon Chronicle, which is a rec- ord of historical events from the rei^n of Alfred to that of Stephen; the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard m ,t dates back as far as 775. About a century later K.ng Alfred began the editing of it, and, instead of a shght record of events, it became a history. The ^o„g 0/ Bnm„Nl,ur,^, was inserted to describe a great i6 Bl^GLiSH LITERATURE. [CHAI<. battle between the Saxons under Athelstan and the Danes under Anlaf. It ends with a dark glimpse of the deserted battle-field: " Silenced by swords and slain were the Danskers; \ Gone'were the others, gone in the night-gloom ; Shrill shrieked the screamers of death o'er the dying, — ' The raven, the eagle, the wolf of the wild wood, The vulture, — to feast on the white flesh of men." The Fight at Maldon is the story of how Brithnoth and his men bravely met death, trusting in God, against the Danes. A victory of King Edmund, 1016, and the coronation of King Edgar, 973, are among the later poems in the Chronicle. 12. The Venerable Bede was born in the year of our Lord 672. Bx^da, as his name is often written, was not only the father of English prose, but the scholar to whom England owes the beginning of scholarship. Boeda was a devout monk ; he lived a tranquil life at Jarrow, given up entirely to the work of enlightening the world by letters. It is the fash- ion to elevate Wycliffe and Tyndal and other trans- lators of the Scriptures who came after Baeda to the highest place, for the reason that they revolted against the Church on whose authority the world re- ceived the Bible. But to Baeda's reverent and scholarly mind is due the first prose translation of the Gospel of St. John into English. This was his last work. He finished on his death-bed. Flis forty-five other works were in Latin. All that Eng- lishmen for many years knew of the sciences they I CHAl*. II.] EARL V ENGLISH POEMS. »; d the pse of ying,— ithnoth I God, imund, 73. are he year written, but the ning of lived a he work he fash- 3r trans- a to the revolted /orld re- ent and ation of This was d. His lat Eng- ices they owed to him. Through this gentle monk, who was thoroughly permeated with love for the authority of the Catholic Church, England made her earliest step in learning. Just as the scribe had written the last words of his translation he began the Gloria in Ex- ce/sis, and died singing it, 735. Ba^da established learning in the north. The mon- asteries had become the homes of scholars ; libraries were established by ecclesiastics. Six hundred stu- dents, at least, had sat at Bccda's feet and prepared themselves to spread his teaching through the land. Alcuin, another great scholar, left his impress on the English mind. Ba^da, like Ca^dmon, was born in Northumbria, which had been the home of learning. But the Danish invasions crushed out scholarship. The south of England was illiterate when Alfred came to the throne. The thanes of Wessex thought only of warlike exercises and athletic sports. Alfred, thanks to his mother, had been imbued with a love of letters. 13. Saxon Literature contained no books of sci- ence, for those of Ba^da were in Latin. Alfred re- gretted this. He sent to foreign countries for such men as Grimbald of St. Omer's, and Asser of St. David's. Under their tuition, Alfred began to study Latin literature. He opened schools wherever it was possible. Lingard says that " It was his will that the children of every freeman, whose circumstances would allow it, should acquire the elementary arts of reading and writing; and that those who were designed for civic or ecclesiastical employment should moreover be IB ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. instructed in Latin." Alfred translated for his sub- jects the ecclesiastical history of the English by Bseda, the abridgment of ancient history by Orosius, the Consolation of Philosophy by Boetius, and, for the clergy, the Pastoral Rule of Gregory the Great. 14 St. Dunstan and Ethelwald, two good ecclesiastics, are the next great names in Saxon litera- ture. The invading Danes destroyed the monasteries, and there was little effort to cultivate literature until the peaceful reign of Edgar (958-75)- The incursions of the Danes had caused ecclesiastical discipline to relax. Some priests had even married. St. Dunstan appealed to Rome to restore good order and to en- courage scholarship. The Abbot Alfric translated a great part of the Bible into simple English. He wrote his Homilies, the Lives of the Saints, and the first English-Latin dictionary. In the beginning of the eleventh century, the Archbishop Wulfstan's Ad- dress to the English appeared. It is as terrible a picture of the consequences of the Danish invasion as St. Anselm gives in his celebrated poem in Latin, which contains the lovely hymn Omni die, die Mariae. Saxon Hterature revived for a while under Edward the Confessor, to become mingled in a grand stream of English when the Norman torrent rushed into it a few years later at the battle of Hastings. [chap. Ill 1 EARL V EN GUSH POEMS, 19 is sub- ish by irosius, for the 3 good 1 litera- LSteries, intil the ursions )line to )unstan i to en- slated a h. He and the ining of in's Ad- rrible a asion as 1 Latin, Mariae. Edward i stream into it a CHAPTER H. {Continued.) The Gallo-Nortnan Romances.— Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Celtic Element.— Brut, l20S.— 7'/ie Ormulum, 121$.— Sir John Mandeville, 1356. — William I.auglamVs Vision of Piers Plo7oman, 1^62.— fo/in Wycliffe, 1380.— y<^//M Gower, 1393. 15. Religion, one of the most important factors in the life of nations, has always inspired and influ- enced the expression of that life. We have seen that all the poets who wrote after the Saxons in England had become Christianized, were stimulated by the great objects off"ered by Christianity to their contemplation. As England owes the first suc- cessful effort to blot out human slavery to a priest, Wulstan, bishop of Worcester, so to priests, and monks are due the revival of letters in England after the confusion of the change of rulers. The battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror defeated Harold, meant a great deal. The Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans were originally of the same blood. The Danes who overran P2ngland mixed with the Saxons and did not change the speech. 16. With William came warriors of the Scandi- navian race, — Northmen, — who, during a long resi- dence in the part of France which their forefathers had conquered, had learned to speak the corrupt Latin known as the Gallo-Roman, because in Gaul it had 50 ENGLISH LITEKA TURE. [chap. I I degenerated from the sonorous Roman speech. This Gauhsh Roman language is also known as Norman French, as these Normans spol<.e and some of them wrote it. It had been slightly modified, too, by the introduction ofsome of their own Scandinavian words. There is a fiwwiis dialogue, in Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, between Wamba the fool and Gurth the swineherd, in which is described the process by which the Kng- hsh speech was changed by the Norman invasion, — a process by which it became gradually more exact, more elegant, more comprehensive, more plastic, without losing any of that directness, strength, and simplicity so characteristic of its Teutonic character. When the Conqueror entered England an epoch be- gan which was to help greatly towards making the English language and literature the magnificent things they are. It is too common to think little of the influence of Uie Celts on the English language and literature. But from the reign of Henry I., the third of the Norman kings, to the administration of President Harrison, the Celtic force has made itself felt in both the literature and the language of English-speaking peoples. 1 7. Geoffrey of Monmouth (i 135), was a Welsh priest at the court of Henry I. He wrote a legend- ary history of Britain, in which King Arthur and his knights were given much to do, and the life of Brut, the first king of Wales and great-grandson of the pious i^i^neas. These Celtic stories were taken from the Latin verse of Geoffrey 0/ Monmouth and put into the Gallo-Roman speech, the vernacular of the II.] EARLY EXGLISH POEMS. 21 knights and ladies who then occupied the castles of England. They were sung and written by the minstrels in France, and brought back to England by the Norman poet, Wace, in the reign of Henry II. Tennyson's great epic, 'Die Idyls of the King, is founded on some of the Celtic tales told by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The influence of the Celt — the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scotch Celt — is pointed out in the book of a celebrated modern writer on litera- ture, Matthew Arnold, whose literary taste was as fine as his philosophy was deplorable. 1 8. The English Language, little changed by the Conquest, continued to be the speech of the people, and Norman-P'rench — from which the word Romance is derived — the language of the upper classes. The priests used Latin; the nobles and foreign soldiers, Norman-French. The art of story-telling was brought into fashion by Geoffrey of Monmouth's legends and the Norman minstrels. The two queens of Henry I., Matilda and Alice, encouraged the vapid and jingling rhymsters, who spun out the adventures of King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Alexander the Great at endless length. The Anglo-Saxon poetry, rugged as it was, was poetry. From the Gallo- Roman poems still existing in MS., we can only wonder how the ladies and knights managed to listen and applaud. They were lavish both in applause and more substantial rewards. 19. The English Chronicle, written in the speech of the people, is the only piece of native English literature we find rippling through the turgidity of letters 22 EN-GLTSrr UTERA TURK. [chap. , i in England. It was begun at least a hundred years before the reign of King Alfred (871), and continued until 1 1 54. The last event it records is the death of King Stephen. Let it be remarked that, until the reign of King John, the Normans and the English — or Saxons, as we may call them, from their origin were distinct peoples living in one land. The Normans were the ruling race. They gave to the English speech its courtly terms, its names for the implements of battle and of the chase. But the Norman tongue was only the embroidery on a solid and beautiful texture. The Saxon was the hog, while the Norman was the stag, in the estimation of the nobles. Eng- lish literature may be said to have slept until the reign of John, when, in 1205, Layamon's version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Bnd appeared. 20. Layamcn was a studious priest dwelling on the banks of the Severn. At this time both Saxons and Normans had begun to look on the early history of their common island with a certain pride. The Nor- man-French had gradually ceased to be the tongue of the entire upper classes. And when Laycwion resolved to translate Bnd into English, he felt that he was about to do a noble work for his people He took his poem from the French text, but there are few French words in Bi'id. He adopted the head- rhyme of the Saxon. In Layajnons energetic verses we see a great contrast to the meaningless jingles of the Gallo-Norman poets. If the Normans gave the English language symmetry, the Saxons gave it strength. Layamon's Brut is the first evidence of the [chap. d years iliniicd cath uf lUil llje ish — or I • \v(.'re ormaiis lMi<^li.sh Icnients toni^uc Ljauliful Norm an ntil the sion of ling on Saxons story of le Nor- ton gue .axanum elt that )le He lere are head- c verses ngles of rave the gave it e of the II.] KARI.V ENGLISH POEMS. 23 ci)ini)lcic iiiingling of the Norman and Saxon ele- ments in Kngii>h speech. It has the vigor of Caid- inoii and Cynewult. 'Ihe appearance of Layamon iiKuks a new epoch. 21. The Ormulum (1215) is a prayer-book in verse, with .1 meditation, itr Httle sermon, for every d.iy in the weei;. It was written by a priest named Ormin. It was iiis]»ireti by the mc)tive which has made Tiioinas a Kcnipis' Fo//owin^ir of Christ a classic. It shows thai ilie Catholic religion tlien was the Cath- olic religion now, having the same ideals and the same practices. The Ormtiliun is in KnglLsh. The other early religious books were many in number. Auk ^w^ them were The Rule of the Anchoresses ( 1 2 20), The Genesis and Exddiis (1250), many hymns to the Hlessed Virgin, and a volume of metrical Lives of the 6Vr/>//.v. translated from Latin into French. 22. The Franciscan and Dominican Friars helped to make the Normans and Saxt)ns one people by uniting them in the bonds oi a common faith. The Normans and Saxons both acknowledged the succes- sor of St. Peter at Rome, however their national preju- dices might clash. Unlike the great Norman prelate St. Anselni, the author of the famous O/nni Die, ]ohn of Salisbury, William of Malmsbury, and Henry of Huntingdon, the friars influenced the speech of the j)eople. St. Anselm and the great churchmen who immediately preceded and succeeded him wrote in Latin. The friars learned English for the purpose of communicating with the people, and they led well-intentioned men to make English books for 24 iiNi.:i.lSH I.ITKRA TUKi:. [CHAP. the people. In 1303, Robert Manning translated into English the Manual 0/ Sins; in 1327, William of Shoreham iranshUccl the I'salms. About 1327, apj)carcd the Cursor Mwuli, a metrical version of the New Testament in English, with legends of the saints; in 1340, appeared Ayenbite 0/ Inwyt, — the early English equivalent for remorse of conscience, — and about the same time, Richard Rijlle's Prickc 0/ Conscience. As we are consiilering only those au- thors who wrote in English, we can merely mention Roger Bacon, that great Eranciscan friar who antic- ipated many modern applications of physics, and who prophesied the modern use of steam and the telegraph. He died in 1294. 23. The Chronicles begin with Williatn 0/ Afa/msdury {1142), and end with Matthew 0/ Paris (1273). They were annalsof the court and the times. They were written in Latin. 24. Romances. — The Arthurian Legends, first written for the Normans in England by (Jeoffrey of Monmouth, were done into Latin by Walter Mays, in the reign of Henry H. In his version The Holy Grail makes its appearance. Another romantic series of stories were those of Charlemagne and His Twelve Kfiights (attributed to Archbishop Turpin), Alexander the Great, and The Siege 0/ Troy. These romantic legends entered into the blood of P^nglish poetry. We meet with them very often later in many forms. The Seven Champions of Christendom^ including Guy of Warivick and Bevis of Southampton, ^d many other tales taken from the French, begam^ k [CHAP. inslatcd William t 1327. rsion of s of the J'/, — the icncc, — ^rickc 0/ luse au- mention 10 antic- ics, and and the (luwi oj )/ Paris c times. ds, first ^ffrey of r Mays, lie Holy omantic ind His 'urpin), These English later in stcndom, laniptony beqam^ II. EAKLY hMjUSll rOEMS. 25 ji'>l)ular. 'I'owards the end of the fifteenth century tlu: Knglish slory-tcUcr-j l)orrowed their |)l«»ts rather from Italy than from France. Richard C'(cur de Lion anil Robin Hood were lieroes of romantic legends. 25. English Ballads clustered around the name ol the oullaw Robin Ibunl. Towards the end of tlie fourteenth century, lyrics and short English poems sprung up. The most important is The Kikhcn- Loni AYn\ Laurence Minot's war-ballads (1352). 26. The Vision of Piers the Plowman.— A bitter and despondent poem, in which we find an echo of the sadness of Beoivul/, is William Lang- lanil's ]'isi()fi of Piers the Plowman. Langland was born in Shropshire, Kngland, about 1332. Langland liad reason for sadness ; plague and tempest had swept over Kngland, and almost decimated the inhabitants of the land. In the person of Piers he inveighs against the oppression of the poor and the abusesj' which had, owing to England's distance from Roma and the haughtiness of the Norman nobles, entered the religious and social fabric. In the Vision tho Church tells of Truth. Piers seeks for this Truth, which means in the first part justice among both j)riests and laymen. Truth afterwards becomes Ciod the Father, and Piers our Lord Himself. It lashes mercilessly the abuses of the times, and shows how a love for material things and a neglect of charity toward the poor make the laborer despair of justice. It appeared in 1362. It was prol)ably written at Oxford, where Langlantl was p, secular priest. \x\ I .1! h ii! 26 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. 1377 and 1393 the poem, with additions called Do We/, Do Be/, and Do Bes/, again appeared. An- other poem on T/ie Deposi/ion 0/ Ric/iard II. was written late in life. It is said that he died in the year of Chaucer's death, 1400. I']. John Wycliffe (1324-1384) had the merit of writing in English good for his time. His name has been used as that of a pioneer of the movement to which Henry VHI. gave form — the rebellion against the authority of Jesus Christ given to his Church. He has been called "the morning-star of the Reforma- tion." WycliiTe is first mentioned in history about the year 1360. He was about this time deprived of a wardenship he held at Oxford, on the charge that he had illegally gained it. A short time before he had made an attack on the mendicant friars, who had done so much toward the conversion of f^ngland. It was unchristian to ask for alms, he held, and when they appealed to the example of Our Lord, he returned that Our Lord had not asked for alms. He held, too, that the right to hold property is a grace of God, and that men forfeited it by sin. This doctrine had a great deal to do with the bloody re- bellion of the peasants which follo\/ed. He made a new translation of the Scriptures, and scattered it over the land by means of the "poor priests," his followers. He appealed from the decision of the Bishops to the private judgment of individuals, and urged them to interpret the Scriptures for themselves. He in this way laid the seeds of that poisonous tree of doubt and uncertainty in religious matters which casts its gloom over England lo-da). Versions of II.] EARLY ENGLISH POEMS, 27 the Scriptures had been made before WycliiTe's, but they had not been so widely spread, nor were they written in such strong English, nor were they sent forth with the advice that unlearned men should in- terpret them. When he appealed in doctrinal mat- ters from his Bishop to a lay tribunal, his supporters fell away from him. He finally retracted all the doctrines which were contrary to the teaching of the Church ; he was permitted to retire to Lutterworth, where he continued to be rector. He died on the last day of the year, 1384, while assisting at Mass. A stroke of apoplexy rendered him speechless. It may be noted that while Wycliffe spared no words of abuse against the Bishops and the clergy, no at- tempt was made to persecute him. Considering the dangerous doctrines he publicly taught, we may cite this as a wonderful evidence of the moderation of the English priests in the reign of Richard H. 28. Sir John Mandeville was bom at Albans about the year 1300. He was educated for the pro- fession of medicine. In 1322, he left England, filled with a desire to visit foreign lands. His itinerancy lasted, it is said, thirty-four years. He visited India, China, Palestine, Egypt, and Persia. He is called the writer of the first book written in that English of the later years of Edward HI., in which Chaucer wrote. He wrote his " travels " in Latin first, then in French, and afterwards in English, that all his countrymen might read them. His book is entitled " The Voi- age and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville, Knight." He died in 1372, at Lcige in Belgium. " Where- fore," he says, "I preye to alle rederes and herercs 28 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. of this bok, zif it please hem, that thci wolde preyen to God for me: and I shalle preye for hem. And alio tho that sevn for me -xPatcr Nostcr, with an Ave Maria that God forzcve me my synnes. I make hem partners and graunte hem part of all the gode pilgrimoges and of alle the gode dedes, that I have don. " The English language has changed, as you see, since Sir John INIandeville's time. 29. John Gower (1325-1402), surnamed the "moral Gower" by his friend Chaucer, wrote the Speculum Meditantis {The Mind of The Thoughtful Man), in French; the Vox Clamantis (7'//t' I'oice of One Crying), in Latin ; and Confcssio Amantis {The Lover s Confession), in English. The last was written at the request of King Richard. Gower was under the influence of French literature. He was at his best in rebuking the follies of the king, who respected him. There is no trace of the Speculum Medikmtis though its effigy lies with his other two important books under the head of his recumbent statue in the church of St. Saviour in London, of which he was a benefactor. His poems are very dull and long. We are now in the ISIiddle period of the English Language. It lasted from the time of Chaucer to the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign. During this time all things without life were put in the neuter gender, and some Teutonic practices, such as the termination of the infinitive with /;/, began to be dropped. i. [chap. III.] GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 29 3 preyen \. And 1 an Ave I make the gode ; I have you see, ned the rote the 'loughl/ul Voice 0/ ntis {The LS written as under It his best respected Meditantis mportant ;ue in the he was a ong. e English haucer to uring this tie neuter :h as the an to be CHAPTER III. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 /. 1400).-/..^ Tennyson^s lines on Chaucer. -French Period: Romauut of the Rose ^attributed to Chaucer.~The Compleynte to PH , (1368) -T/S^ Dethe ofBlaunche the Duchesse, {izt^\~ Italian Period: (1^72 to IzZiy-Troylus and Creseide.-The Compleynt ''■^^^r^'T'^"'^''''" '^^^'iArcite.-Boece. - The Former Le -The Parliament of Fouls. -Lines to Adam Scrivener.^ TheHousofFame.-English Period: (1381 /. 1389). -The Legends of Good Women.- The Canterbury Tales, "n , 7Z "'"^ '^' ^'"•^' ^'450 attributed io Chaucer), -O^^^^ves De Regimine Principum, (1411 or 1412 )-- John Lydgate, {about I433).- The Scotch Poets. 30. Geoffrey Chaucer is the first truly great poet who wrote in English, the poetic precursor of Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Wordsworth Tennyson, Aubrey de Vere. Bryant, Longfellow,' and Whittier. All later poets have praised him Tennyson in "The Dream of Fair Women, " says melodiously : ^ " I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade. The Legend of Good Women, long ago Sung by the morning star of song, who .nade His music heard below; "Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still," r 30 ENGLISH LITEKA TURE. [chap. "Dan "is a prefix of respect, resembling "Dom,"and though we might object to Elizabeth's being called "good," we can find no fault with the adjective "great," for she was more masculine than f;;minine, more kingly than queenly. 31. The City of London was Geoffrey Chaucer's birth-place. His father was probably a wine mer- chant; he was born about 1340. Early in life he was made page to Prince Lionel, Duke oi Clarence; he fought in Erance with the English army; he was taken prisoner, and ransomed. Erom 1381 to 1386, he was again connected with the court. His earliest poem was the A. B. C. 0/ the Blessed I'irgm. Each stanza begins with a letter of the alphabet. "G" begins, (the spelling is modernized*), with these four lines: " Glorious maid and mother, thou that never Wert bitter on the earth or on the sea, But full of sweetness and of mercy ever, Help that my Father be not wroth with me!" This was translated from the French for the Duchess Blanche, the wife of John of Gaunt, Chaucer's powerful friend. His early poems show a strong Erench influence. 32. Chaucer's Italian Period followed his three diplomatic missions to Italy. It is supjiosed that there he met Petrarca, the sweet master of the sonnet and Boccaccio, whose stories very much in- * In reading Chaucer the t: at the end of some words ought to be pronounced, — for instance: *\i^lorietts^ mayd) aiuimodc'r." [chap. III.J GEOFFRE y CIIA UCER. 31 ,"and called jeclive linine, auccr's e mcr- lifc he irence; he was 3 1386, earUest \ 'irgi7i. phabet. ), with .1" tor the Gaunt, s show a >\ved his upposed er of the much in- line words eiist! mayd) fluenccd the Canterbury Talcs. Chaucer quotes often from Danle, but he could not have met him, as Durante Alighieri (called Dante) died in 132 1. The works of Chaucer, after his Italian journeys, were serious in motive. II. The Canterbury Tales, a string of narra- tive poems on which Chaucer's fame rests, and which entitle him to be called, in Spenser's words, the " well of English undefiled," show that the poet had cast off the French and Italian influence and become English. It is true that he borrowed the plot of some of his stories from Boccaccio's heartless tales of the Florentine nobles who revelled while the plague raged in their city. The Canterbury Tales are genu- ine pictures of English folk. They give us an im- pression of Chaucer's time, though, in reading them, one must remember that Chaucer was a poet, not an historian. He is humorous and grave by turns, respectful of sacred things, though sometimes coarse. Dying, he bitterly regretted certain lines which even his contrite tears could not blot out. He was some- times free in his expressions concerning abuses that may have crept into religious discipline. He was neither a schismatic nor a heretic. He was a devout Catholic, with none of the bitterness and pride which characterized his contemporary, Wycliffe. His favor- ite flower was the daisy, and he loved the woods and fields as no poet before him had loved them; he made the love of natural scenery a quality in English poetry. 34- Chaucer the Man was always cheerful. His portrait shows him to have been grave, yet with -•■••'* II: 32 ENGLISH LIT ERA TURE. [chap. a humorous look. He is painted with his inkhorn and rosary. In spite of occasional indelicacies, the writings of Chaucer show that he was a deeply religious man. 35. Chaucer the Poet was, above all, a teller of stories. Although he translated De Consolatione PhilosophicB into English, he is not remembered by it or any of his other translations. Chaucer's fame rests on his power of observing and feeling. Will- iam Hazlitt* says of Chaucer that he had "an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of char- acter ; and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation." In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer paints his time as he saw it, with Charles Dickens' tendency to make each individual's character known by his external appearances. This is accountable for occasional exaggeration. He shows us a party of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury. They stop "in Southwark, at the Tabard." Among them is a knight, "a worthy man, — " That from the time that he first began To ryden out, he lovede chivalry, Truth and honor, fredom and curtrisye." His son, a young squire, — "Curteys he was, lowly and serveysable And 9arf f before his fader at the table." * Lectures on the English Poets. Philadelphia: Lippincott. f Carved. ,!J.i III.] GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 33 There, too, was a yeoman, who " A shef of pocock * arroes bright and kene Under his belte he bar ful thriftily." A nun. a Prioress, called Madame Eglantine, — "At metfe wel i-taught was sche withalle, Sche leet no morsel from her lippes falle, Ne with her fingers in her saucti deepe." A priest who "Christes lore, and his apostles twelve He taughte, but first he folwede it himselve." These personages and others, including the clerk of Oxford and the wife of Bath, each tell a story. Their stories are characteristic of the persons who recite them. The gentle and refined Prioress speaks of a heroic child who, dying for his Faith, " O Alma Redemptoris Mater loudly sang." The clerk of Oxford,— a well-read man, borrows from the Italian the tale of the patient Griselda, who suffers in loving silence, persecution and abuse, and the good-natured wife of Bath tells a comic story. Dryden and Pope translated parts of The Canterbury Tales into more modern English. Chaucer began to make English the grand language it is ; we owe him as great a debt as the Italians owe Dante. None of the poets before him wrote musical verse. He was a scholar, and yet much in the busy world ; he knew men, and he believed that "the proper study of mankind is man." He loved nature; the * Arrows with peacock feathers. 34 ENGLISH LITERATURE. tcHAt>. i May-time, the daisy, green leaves and birds make his poetry fresh with the joyousness of spring. One of his later works was a prose treatise on the Astrolabe, made for "little Lewis, his son." Parts of The Canterbury Tales were written in the last ten years of his life. The Parson's tale was written in 1400, when he died in London. He was the first poet buried in Westminster Abbey. 36. Thomas Occleve, or Hoccleve, was born about 1370. His principal poem is De Regimine Principum, translated from the Latin of the Roman, Aegidius, a pupil of St. Thomas Aquinas. The poem is in rhyme royal, which consists of seven heroic lines. Occleve, in this poem, addresses Chaucer, — ** O maister dere and fader reverent, My maister Chaucer, flonre of eloquence." He is very reverent in spirit. The date of his death is unknown. ZJ. John Lydgate was bom in Suffolk about 1370, His poems are The Storie of Thebes, a new Canterbury Tale, told by himself as he imagines him- self joining Chaucer's pilgrims, the Troy Booke (1420), The Falls 0/ Princes, and Lotidon Lickpenny, a de- scription of the pageants attending the entrance of Henry VL into London. Lydgate was a monk of the Benedictine Monastery at Bury St. Edmunds. The Falls 0/ Princes is the most interesting and least crude of his poems. In early life, he cared little for his monastic duties. Later, he became [cHAt. s make : on the ' Parts last ten ritten in the first /as born legimine Roman, ;. The Df seven iddresses III.] ROHER T //fuVR VSO.V, 35 te of his flk about '5, a new ines him- Jt'(l420), ny, a de- trance of monk of Mmunds. jting and he cared e became very devout and wiMte lives of Si. Alban and St. Edmund. 3«. Neither Gower, Occleve, nor Lydgate deserves special atteiitiun. 'Die j)eri()d between Chaucer and Spenser was dreary. The Scotch poets somewhat redeem ii. They introduce a well defined C'ellic elenicnl into l-luLrlish poetry. They are less sad than die Kni^lish, and their humor is nU "sick- lied o'er with the pale cast of lhou<2:hl. " 39. John Barbour (1316 1396), was the first Scotch poet. He studied both at Oxford and at Pari.s. lie wrote T/n' Bruce, in Chaucerian English. 40. James I.,{)i"Scothind (i 394-1437). He was captured by the I'luL^dish in 1405, and kept })risoner at various phices in England until 1424. In that year he married Eady jane lieaufort, a grand- daughter of that John of (Jaunt who had been Cliaucer's patrt^i. She was the heroine of his prin- cipal poem, The King's Quair (The King's Book). Christ s Kirk on the Green, a humorous poem, is attributed to him. He reigned thirteen years in Scotland ; he was assassinated in 1437. 41. Robert Henryson, Chaucer's best imitator, wrote some beautiful fables. Curtis gives his poems a high place, because of their refined language and his grace of form. In The Three Dead Powis (skulls), he anticipated Hamlet's famous speech on the skull of Yorick. His Robyne and Makyne is the earliest English pastoral. Little is known of his life ; but it is certain that in 1462 he was at the University 36 ENGLISH Ll'rr.KA TUNE. [CIIAIV of Glasgow, that he was a schoohiiastcr at Dunferm- line, and also a nolarv i)ui)lic there. 42. William Dunbar was liie most original of the Scotch poets succeeding Chaucer. He was born about 14^)0. He entered as a novice the Franciscan Oreler, but became convincetl that he had no voca- tion for that life. He receiveil an annuitv from James IV'., of Scothmd, and was tiie recognized poet of the c<»urt. 1 lis masterpiece is the 'J7ic Dance o/Oic Dcaiily Sins. The Golden Tar^e and The Thistle and the Rose are allegories, rich in jjictorial language, but full of Latinisms. Dunbar had great power of vivid descrij)tion ; he jjaints a ship as " a blossom on a spray," and says that "the skies rang with the shouting of the larks." Dunbar was a devout Cath- olic, and he became occasionally satirical against abuses in discipline contrary to the teaching of the Church. 43. Bishop Gawain Douglas, a son of the Earl of Angus, was born about 1475. At that time, when learning was despised by the turbulent vScotch, Gawain Douidas devoted himself to studv and took his degree at the University of St. Andrews in 1494. His father Earl Angus is represented as saying, — " Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine, Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line." In 1 501 he published his Palace of Honor; in 15 13 he finished his translation of Virgil's ^neid. He was consecrated Bishop of Dunkeld in 1515. The date o{ King Hart, another j)ocm, is uncertain, He died, exiled, in London, in 1522. w "^^^ [chap. nfcrm- inal <»f IS l)urn icisccin o VOCil- V Irom )gnizcil ; J)ance ', Thislle ngimgc, lONVcr of ssom on ,vith the ut Cath- against ig of the iii.J Till': CELTIC IXl'TUENCE. 37 C) f the at time, Scotch, md took in 1494. 1 in 15^3 id. He 5. The lin, He 44. The Celtic Influence is shown in these Scotch puds. Tlu'V have i;ccii perception, deep nielanch(»ly, and a (piick fancy. It must l)e remem- bered that though the derivation nf the most useful and f()rcii)le words in the Knglisii language is Teu- tonic, the form of the language is Celtic. It is to the Celtic element in the I'lnglish language, the element we have in common with the Welsh, the Scolcii, and the Irish, that we owe the style of the English lan- guage. If Chaucer iiad helped to Saxouize the ft)rm of the I'lnglish language as well as the words, we should have a language nearer to th (lerman m manner. Matthew Arnc^ld marks the difference by a (juotation. The London Times, he says, writes in this Hishion : "At noon a long line of carriages ex- tended from Pall Mall to the Peers' entrance of the Palace of Westminster." liul the Cologne Gazette puts it in this way: '" Kachdem die ]\)rbercHufv^en zu dem auf dem Giirzcnich-Saale zu Khren der A/\ij^eordneten stall Jiuden sollendeii liankette her cits Tollstiindif^ gelrojl'en warden waren, faiui heute Vor- mitlai^ atif polizeiliehe Anordnung die Schliessung sii)uintlicher Ztaniuise zum Giirzefiich stall. " You observe that there is a great difference be- tween the modern English and the modern German style of expression. You would do well, too, to observe how many Knglish words, like "house," "father," "mother," "daughter," "son," "hound," we have borrowed from the old German of the Saxons. 38 ENGLISH I. IT ERA TUKE, [CHAF. .1 II' 45- Minor English Poets. — St e phen Hawes (about 1520) was II (ii,scij)lL' of Lyci^Mle. lie was born in Sullolk, educated at Oxford, travelled in France, and was (irooni of the Privy (lianiber to Henry Vll. His principal wt)rk is The Poslime 0/ Pleasure ; or, The llisloric o/Graunde Amoure and Iai lielle Pucclle, written ai)oul 1506 ;uul printed in 1509. It is an alle \ * See Life of the Blessed Thomas More, t)y Father Bridgett. •(TlTf' 46 ENGLISH MTEKA TURE. [chap. 'ti! 'i sor, Henry II., who had promoted Thomas a Becket to the highest office in the realm, and then learned that a true Christian cannot be bribed. 67. Thomas a Buckei had defended the rights of the Church and the people, and Sir Thomas More fol- lowed his example. He would not take the oath of Supremacy which the King made obligatory. This oath made the King the spiritual superior of the Church in England. It was as unreasonable and tyrannical as if the Governor of New York were to force each cit- izen to swear that he was infallible in matters of faith and morals. Sir Thomas suffered, as St. Thomas a Becket had suffered before him. He was beheaded, with the learned and gentle Bishop Fisher. He went to his death smiling ; hence Thomson's beautiful lines. Recently he and Bishop Fisher, with some other English martyrs, were beatified by the Church, and we may now call the author of Uiopia "Blessed." 53. The " Utopia " of Sir Thomas More is his most important work, but not an example of his prose. It was written in Latin and, later, translated. It is the description of an ideal kingdom, — a work of imagination, with a solid lesson. More wrote, in 1 5 13, the first history in the English language. It was printed in 1557. It was entitled a " History of Edward V. aii^d his brother and of Richard HI." No writer has ever denied the authenti' city of this history. It is the most trustworthy ac- count of the horrible dealings of the infamous Richard HI. with the little princes. Sir Thomas t 1 I .v.] EARLY EXGLISU PROSE. 47 More — we may now call him the Blessed Thomas More — was remarkable for his prudence, gentleness, and truthfulness. He had every quality which should characterize a saint, a hero, and a man of genius. Erasmus, a famous scholar of his time, crossed frtjm the Continent to see him. They met at dinner, not knowing each other. Erasmus, who was an adej)t m lively talk which did not always snare sacred things, attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation. Sir Thomas took up his gay sallies and keen argu- ments in his own way. Erasmus was astonished. More's logic and wit were invincible.* *' Aut tu Monis es, aut fiul/us T (You are either More or no one,) and More replied, with equal quickness, " Aui es Erasmus, aut Diabolus T (You are either Eras- mus or the Devil !"') More was twice married. His first wife was the daughter of Mr. John Colt ; she died, leaving him three daughters and a son. He then married Mistress Alice Middleton, a talkative and ignorant woman, who gave him but little com- fort ; but Sir Thomas was of such a pious and genial nature, that no arrogance could spoil his good temper. He was martyred at the age of fifty-^ix years and five months. 54. William Tyndal, bom in 1484, died in 1536, was a forcible writer of English prose. We have ceen that the earliest book in English was the paraphrase made byCoedmon, under the patronage of the Abbess Hilda. T.vndal is much praised for having 1-1 This anecdote is not authenticated by Father Bridgett. 48 j':\(;/./s// /,//•/•./>'./ 77 Vv'/;. [chap. *' (»l)(Mi('il lilt' l)il)lc ti» llic l"-nj^lisli j)c<)j)l(.'" 1)}' tniiis- i;Uin;j: llu- Now 'rcstiiinciil from llio Circuk ;iiul Hebrew. Wyclitfe, \vlu)sc i)eciili;u llieoiies luul helped U) (leliiL,^' l'Ji}4:I;in(l with blood, iiad translated the Hible IVoiM the Latin of the \'ul,L;ate. Henry \'I1I. lookeil on the distribution of 'J'yndal's New 'leslanient among the common i)eoi)le many ((f whom could not read, and who must depend for its interpretation on otiiers almost as ignorant as them- selves as an oHence aL!;ainst his i^overnment. He lorced Tymlal to llee IVom the country, and i)rose- cuteil all who l)roUL,dit the translation into l"".nt;land. Finally, lie grasped Tyndal himself. Heresy with Henry VHI, meant any olfence that miglit weaken the people's regard for his gt)vcrnment ; heresy was therefore treason. In 1536. 'J yntlal was burned at tlie stake for heresy. Wyclilfe's and Tyndal's versions of the Scrii)turc, though good examples of the l''ng- jish of their times, were even more corruj)t than llie later King James' version which the Protestant Kpis' co])alians have lately iliscardcd. The Church haa always treated the sacred Scri})tures with the utmost reverence ; she has forbidtlen the reatling of corruj)t versions, or versions not interpreted by herself. But the Douay version of the Bible is for sale everywhere and is found in every Catholic household. Tyndal wrote good luiglish; but he taught the bad doctrine that every man might interpret the Bibl« for him- self 55. Roger Ascham, who was born in 151 5 and died in 1568, was tutor in Latin and Greek to Queen III IV.J EARLY ENd.lSll PROSE. 49 Klizalu'lli. He was the aiitlior of tlic "'roxnpliiliis," (from 'J'oAon, a l)()\v, aiul /i/iilas, a tiinul,) a dfU'iuc of archery, and " Tlie Si Imul-Mastcr." lie wndc i,f(»i)cl l'"-ni;!ish, thout^h he ( onsideri'd il iieii'ssaiy luetic prose." ! \- i % I \ 1 . !i''i,l< 50 /■ A'r7/. /.SV/ /. / r/^A'.'l 7 • f 'RE. fCHAP. Sir Philip Sidney was mucli inlliiciRcil by tlie Italian ainoiiHis poets, wliose artificial conceits are even Hiore artificial in l*',nglisli than they seem to be in Italian. Sir Philij), who came to be looked on as the Frencli looked on the Chevalier Bayard or as the English now consider (ieneral (iordon, died at /ut- phen in 1586. lie was lighting for the Netherlands against Spain. His dying act was to give a drink of water, which had been brought for him, to a dying S(jldier, saying, "Thy necessity is greater than mine." Sidney's "Apologia for Poetrie " is better English prose than his somewhat fantastic "Arcadia." 58. Lyly's "Euphues" (1579) marks the be- ginning of the later literary period of Elizabeth's reign. Lyly's work was in prose, though he also wrote poetry and plays. It is full of extravagances and absurd conceits. It became the fashion because it reflected the tone and manners of Elizabeth's court. A new word " pAiphuism," expressive of all that is strained and artificial, was created by it. Sir Thomas More and Sir Philip Sidney added "Utopian" and " Arcadian " to the language, and at this time, ow- ing to an industry of writers, the English vocabulary was constantly increasing. In .1 vJ sr/LvsEh\ 51 riiAriKR V. ( » 59 The Greatest of the English Poets after Chaucer was luiimiml Spenser, bi)rn in 1552; liiit what is called I'li/abctlian literature be<,Mn with Wyatl ami Surrey. '1'. ) them we owe that perfection flnrin which I'ai^Iish pnetryaml I'aiL;iish i)r()se have ;itt:iine.i; lor prose d nuposiiioii is affected lar^a^lv by ihr refinenieiit and elei^ance of poets. Chaucer, as wi' lia\e seen, borrowed his stories from the Italians, Daiile and lioccaccio; W'yatt and Surrey novv bor- rowed the j)oeli(.al forms, or rather imitated them. f"' '. The Early Elizabethan Period dates Iroiii 1559 to IS7V- iM-om 1580 to 1603 was that later I'di/.abethan jx-riod so radiant in the annals of literature. This sudilen burst of light came upon the English world like a sunburst after the darkness of early dawn ; but Wyatt and Surrey, the writers of travels, the translators of Virgii and Ovid, and the r aii\' writers of detached verses, wiio went into {)rinl because of the example of Sir Philip Sidney, — above all, the makers of ballads, stimulated the be- ginning of a great literary movement. 61. The First Collection of Poems was T/ie Paradysc 0/ Dainty Devhcs, published in 1576. This li » 1 irrr^ I' r 52 A. \ '(/Y. / .s // / / / 7'. A'. I ruKi-:, [ciiAr. and 7o//i'/'s Misic/fiinv were llu; pi(i;,'t'iiil<»rs of llu; vast diiwd of aiimials, inaii^a/incs, and pnctical "foUccliiJiis " whitli fulhtwcil, increasing; in num- ber down It) our own lime. The taste f<»r stories alst) p^rew. William Painler made a translation of many Italian tales, which lie called 77ic Palace 0/ Pleasure (15^'^"). 'i"^' (Jeor.L;e Turherville's 'I'ragkal Tali's, with new versions of Ainadis 0/ Gaul, the Athenian legends, autl the (Irecian myths, might be found everywhere. Plays (jf all kinds were pro- duced ; mascjues, which were lyrical J)lays, full of spectacular effects, became the fashion.* The pub- lic mind was (luickened by the mass of imaginative material it suddenly beheld. Men who wrote strove to write as eleganllv as Wvatt and Surrey and Sir Philip Sidney, who themselves had tried to equal Petrarca and Ar" >. Sackville's poems in the Mirror 0/ Afai^nsh uics (1559) and Gascoigne's Slcel Gliiss, a satirical poem (i57^>), belong to this period. 62. With Spenser a new force came into Eng- lish literature. Jiorn, as we have seen, about the middle of that remarkable century which ended some years after the death of Elizabeth, Edmund Spen- ser was educated at one of the grammar-schools founded and endowed by the Merchant Tailors' Company, from whence he went up to Cambridge in 1569, and acquired the degree of M. A. some seven years later. Little is known of his university * See a description of one in Sir Waller Scau's novel, Kcnihvorth. [CUAI'. of the; >L'tical mim- storics ion of 'dCt' of tl, the {^ht be e pro- full of c pul)- ^iiuUivc I strove uul Sir ) equal in the 's Slcel period, o Eng- mi the d some Spen- .hools ailors' dge in seven fvcrsity novel, v.l sr/:\s/:K. 53 I 4 career, except tw(»frieiulships which he fotriu'd ihrre, (»iie at least « it" which h.ul a potent inlliieuce on his tiiind. I'.ihiiuiKl Kirke, \slio was like Sj)ciiser a si/ar «»f IVnibrokc llall, has reci-ntly been identi- fied as the "1"-. K."who eililetl and concentrated i.ui- jxtrt's eaiiest work, the antmynioiis S/w/'/icn/s (\i/i/i'/itr, but unfortunately little else is known about him. The nihcr friend, (labriel Harvey, was Spenser's elder bv manv vears. lie was a fellow of Pembroke, ami afterwards a student and teacher of civil law at 'i'rinity Hall. Harvey, "the happy above happiest men," had in his day a high reputation as a classical scholar, was well read in Italian literature, was more(jver a sound critic, and dcjubiless had some share in the formation of Spen- ser's ideas. Sj)enser did not return immedialt'lv to London after (putting Cambridge. A mist hangs round his sojourn in Lancashire ; but it has an interest from the fact that he seems to liave gained experience which stimulated his nascent genius and gave color to his thoughts. In 157c; we find him in London, the friend of Philij) Sidney, busy with the " new" S/icp/icroet was a])j)ointed clerk of the Council of Munster, and i^ranted the manor and castle of Kilcolman, and it was in the midst of the beautiful scenery which abounds in the neighbor- iiood of that residence that he composed the first three books of his masterpiece, the Faerie Queene. 63. The Faerie Queene. — The germ of this great work was, as we have intimated, sown early in Spenser's literary career ; but it grew in secret, until it blossomed on the banks of the MuUa, which flowed through the Kilcolman demesne. One likes to fancy the scene as the gentle Spenser poured the story of his allegory into the enraptured cars of Raleigh, under the shadow of the castle. Out of re- spect f(jr the Puritanical ideas prevalent at the time, Spenser thought it necessary to shape his thoughts into a work on moral philosophy. The poem had an avowedly didactic aim. In a prefatory letter addressed to Raleigh he unravels the moral he had *' cloudily en\vrap])ed in allegorical devises. " But, in truth, the work has no well-defined plan. It is a network of allegories, alwavs beauliful indeed, but loosely connectetl, and conlnsed still more by end- less digressions whithersoever the poet's fancy led liim. 'I'he leading idea of the struggle ofCIood and Kvil — of the trials which hesti man's life in all con- ditions and at all limes- iiiiis. like a goKlen vein, throughout the poem, at one time hidtlen l)v a profusion of rich imagery, anon losing itself in the mazes of charming faiK\, but never completely ob- \'ir^ :i!!5' • :t!ii, 56 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [CFTAP, scurcd. The twelve books were intended to portray the warfare of the twelve knights (Aristotle's twelve virtues) with the powers of Evil. The machinery was borrowed (as the poet admits in the prefatory letter) from the popular Celtic legends about King Arthur, and his heads of moral philosophy from the Aris- totelian categories current among the schoolmen. In Arthur, before he was king, is portrayed the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private moral virtues, who is ultimately to aspire to the hand of the faerie queen, the one and only bride of man's spirit, endowed with humility and innocence, Only six books, however — the legends of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, of Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy — were finished, and thus only a portion of the great allegory remains. Parallel with this spirit- ual allegory Spenser introduces a historical one, in which Elizabeth is Gloriana, and Mary Queen of Scots is D- essa, and Leicester, and occasionally Sidney, is Prince ^rthur, and Raleigh is Timias. As an allegory the poem has many faults. It does not bear its story on the surface ; it is involved and intertwisted in parts so that the mind is con- fused with too much ornament, and is content to lose itself in the splendor of the imagery ; it is not consecutive or well-ordered. Put if it is art run riot, what splendid art it is ! What fancy, what music, what a sense of beauty .' With truth indeed is Spenser called the poet's poet, for since his time the Faerie Qiicene has nourished at its source the singers of the centuries that have come and gone. \i- I. ! v.] SPENSER. 57 li I ' Raleigh was delighted with the new poem, and took wSpenser to Kngland, where he received the adulation of the court. In the following year (1591) he collected and published his minor poems, includ- ing 'J'/it' Ruins of Time, the Tears 0/ the Muses, and Alother Huhlxird's Tnle, a satire on the Church and society. The poet returned to Ireland in the same year, wrote his Colin Cloufs Come Home Again, an account of the court of Elizabeth, and married a lady whose Christian name, Elizabeth, alone sur- vives. To her he addressed his Sonnets, full of quaint fancy and sweetness, and the incomparable wedding ode, the Epilhalamion, the finest composi- tion of its kind in the language. The year after his marriage he went over to London with three more books of the Faerie Queene, having thus completed half of his cherished plans. His death was in contrast to his life. During the Munster insurrection of 1598, his castle at Kilcolman was sacked and burned, and, according to some untruthful accounts, a child of his perished in the flames. Spenser and his wife escaped to Londoii ; but he was broken-hearted, and died January 16, 1598. He rests in Westminster Abbey, near the grave of Chaucet i \A f I 1 58 ENGLISH LIT ERA TURE. [CH/iP. CTTAPTKR VT. Prose— l/('(7t Angler, a serene and gentle book, lives to this (lay, though Izaak fished over two hundred years ag<~> (1^)53). Among the theological works, whose style had all the l'".lizabethan poetry, with new and atlded (jualities, may be named Jeremy Tavlor's I.iherly of Profdiesving, 1647. ilobbes' Leviathan, 'I 1t ■'i ll I'll' 1 I'll ' 'V\'i\ » ;'; fii,: 60 ENGLISIT LITERA TURE. [chap. a stupid philosophical work, rich in style, appeared in 1651. Ilobbcs, like all English philosophers, ex- cept Newman, is more remarkable for the clearness of his language than the subtlety of his reasoning. The style of the later men was less poetic, but stronger than that of the Klizabethans. ^7. Queen Anne, who ascended the English throne in 1702, was not an intellectual woman or even a clever one, but nevertheless a splendid epoch in English letters borrowed her name. The period succeeding her coming to the throne has been called the Augustan Age of English Literature, because the writers of that period are said to have done for the English tongue what Virgil and Horace did for the Latin language under Augustus. The truth is that the writers of the Queen Anne period were great because of their ancestors. Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele were literary descendants of Cowley and Sir William Temple ; and these writers imitated the great French author Montaigne — a volume of whose essays is the only book now existing known to have been owned ])y Shakspere. ^18. Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele invented periodical literature ; they were in England the fiithers of the magazine. Sir Richard Steele, born in Dublin, in 1675, of English parents, was educated at ^lerton College, Oxford. His friends refused to buv him a commission in the armv, and he enlisted as a common soldier. He was promoted to the rank of captain. He seems to have been a kind- hearted, somewhat reckless, brilliant man. He was VI.] PKOSF—isdi-il'ii. 6i leele [land Iborn cated Id to isted the :ind- was certainly a more interesting character than Addison, whom Macaulay exalts at his expense. Steele was humorous and pathetic, and he had studied human nature with sympathy. In the Talhir (1709), we enjoy the reflection of these qualities. He touches the foibles and fiishions, the vices and virtues of his time, without bitterness. Addison joined him in The yi/Z/tvand, later (171 1), in The Speclalor. Together, they introduced a new form into literature, and if the drama was the expression of literature in Shakspere's time, as the novel is in Tennyson's, the short semi- humorous, half-satirical essay was the expression of Pope's time. After a time these charming essays were printed daily, and The Spectator, The Guardian, and The Freeholder, were largely looked for by all people of taste. Addison refined English prose style and supplied the elegance of diction that Steele wanted. Addison, judged by our modern ideas, lacked many of the literary qualities for which his contemporaries most esteemed him. Grammatical errors can be pointed out in nearly all his essays, and Blair's analysis of his Style (see Blair s Rhetoric) is not only useful to stu- dents, but destructive to the claim of Addison's admi- rers, that he was the most polished writer of all time. In 1 701, Steele published The Christian Hero, in which he shows that he repented his reckless habits. Steele wrote plays, and political and anti-popery tracts. His periodical papers and those he wrote with Addison made his reputation, and Addison owed as much to Steele as Steele owed to him. Steele held important government appointments, for, as ifOf H 62 KNd.ISir LITERATURE. [chap. M 11! Macanlay says, at no time was literature so splen- didly appreciated by the Slate as during the reigns of William and of Anne. ^)9. Joseph Addison was a correct writer as to cadence and elegance; he was a fine writer widiout bombast; he was a constant student of the art of ex- pression, not of human nature. He was not as good humored as Steele, and his allusions to women are more satirical and less kindly. He was born at Litchfield and educated at Charterhouse. His poem on the victory of Blenheim made his reputation (1704), and he was appointed Under-Secretary of State. He married the dowager Countess of Warwick; he died in 1719, leaviUg a daughter. The Ta/Ierw^^ begun by Steele under the pen-name of Isaac Bic- kerstaft", and it appeared three times a week. Addi- son's first contribution appeared in No. 20, May 26. On the demise of The Tiller, Steele began The Sperfa/nr, which lasted from March i, 171 1, to De- cember 6, 171 2; it was issued daily. Addison wrote about half a number. It was succeeded b" The (iuariUan; after this the The Speclalor was resumed. 'Jhe Freeholder was a bi-wcckly written by Addison himself. Daniel Defoe conducted The Review, a pcric^dical which differed from Steele's and Addison's, by touching politics. Defoe, Steele, and Addison deserve the credit of having called the attention of the contemporaries to "Paradise Lost." Addison lives because of his essays; his tragedy, C^! ' vr.] /'A'06'A— 1561-1731. 63 good literature is iippreciatcil. Adtlison dit'd in 1719. 70. Daniel Defoe, it is said, wrote 25-j works — religious treatises, commercial pamphlets, histories, and his great work, Robinson Crusoe. He was born in London, in 1661; he was educated for the dis- senting* ministry. Defoe has been called the first professional author, as he lived entirely by the sale of his books. He published his first novel in 1719. It was Robinson Cntsoc — one of the most remarkable books in our language. Defoe's Knglish is old- fashioned and not of the best old-fashion; but in liis wonderful faithfulness to the details of human life and in his knt)wledge of human nature he stood almost alone. His political periodical, 'J'/ic Rcviczv (1704-1712), was the prototype of our weekly news- papers. His other novels were Captain Singleton (1720), Duncan Campbell (1720), Moll blander s ( 1 72 1 ), Colonel Jack ( i 7 2 1 ), Journal 0/ The Plague (1722), Roxana (1724), and the undated Memoir oj a Cavalier. He died in 1731; he was a traveller, a politician, and a tireless writer. Professor Minto truly says of Defoe: " He is more openly derisive and less bitter than Addison, having no mastery of the polite sneer ; he is not a loving humorist, lik^ Steele, but sarcastically and derisively humorous; and he is more magnanimous and less personal than Swift." * Dissenters in England are Protestants who do not be- long to the English Church. .1 j. I ; I VA \ff] 64 ENGr.lSIf LITERATURE, [chap. I 71. Bishop Berkeley's Minute Philo- sopher, in wliich he (iiicstioncd the existence of nuiUer, Mancleville's luible 0/ the Bees, and liishop Hiiller's Ana/oi^w still greatly read, arc the principal nieiaphysical works of the (Jueen Anne period. 72. To Drydens admirable prose essays, we owe the fust real criticism in Knglish. Izaak Wu/Zon, Cim'/i'W and llithln's, added to the treasury of prose. Later came Sir William Temple s essays. Sir Will- iam was, according to Dr. Jnhnson, the first writer tc» make I'-nglish prose musical. He was born in 1628 and he died in 1699. He was a dii)lomatist, and was credited wiUi arranging the marriage of William of Orange and the Princess JNIary of Kng- land. His manner of writing prose was directly OPI )osilc to that of Drvden, who was brilliant in his essay, but careless, entirely disregarding the para- graph. The prose writers of the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne were parly hacks or (jrub Street toilers who degraded literature by using it as an instrument for flattering their patrons. At that time (1702), the patron held writers in his grasp. Maicenas was the rich friend of Horace, the most noble of Latin poets; but these English writers were the slaves of the patron. Dr. Jolinson was the first to discard this vile servility, and to appeal to the public. The patron or patrons paid the writer and, as a rule, the writer repaid them in flattery. The lighter prose up to 1702 had no repre- sentative, except Lady Rachel Russell's ZcVAr^, Pepys' Diary (1660-69), ^^^ Evelyn's Diary (i6-!o). His- VI.] y'A'C>^/i— i5()i-i73'- 6s tory was a collcklitm of (kUIs unci cmls, coarsely flavorcil with bigotry, siieli as Clarciuloii's History of the Civil Wars (1641), aiul Jiisliop Burnet's narrow- miiuiecl Ilistorv 0/ His Own 'Jinics and Jiistorv 0/ The Reformation, 73. One of the Best examples of sound English prose is the Pilgritn's Pro^j^ress td" John Hunyan. It was written for the conunon peu{)le of l'"-ngland; ;is a study in the Saxon element of the English language it is unexcelleii. There are touches t)f" religious j)rejudice in it, at which we may smile to-day. John Bunyan wrote some religious j)oems and The llolv Cit\\ in 1665, In 1678, four years after the death of Milton, he wrote The Pi/gri/n's Progress. John Bun- yan was a comj)aratively ignorant man, but he i)ro- duced a book which is almost a prose lyric. As a good example of his style, the fight between Christian and Apollyon is to be recommended. J^unyan was the last prose author who reflected the spirit of the Commonwealth, though he is generally classed among the Elizabethans. 1 66 EXCLIS/I LITEKA TL'KE. [CHAF, I L ' 11.4! CIIAPTKR VII. Spensfr to .S'/mXV- /<, 1553 1593.— /'//<■ /n\;iitHin^ of the J)i lima. — Marlowe. 74. Edmund Spenser's Shepherd's Calen- dar is ihc bc/^iimiiij^.)! the later l-'-li/abclhan j)ciiiHU)f poclry; it appeared, witliout tlie poet's name, in 15H0. Before Spenser and Sidney api)eared in poetry — Sid- ney's Astrophel and Slella sonnets came out in 1591 — Kn^disiimen thouglit it somewhat undignified to pub- lish poetry. Of Juhnund Spenser's Faerie Quccne, it may be truly saiti that it is liie poem best beloved of tlie poets. It is a series of the richest pictures. After 15H0, came youthful and ardent j)oels. patriotic poets who broii rht ill c msltirical phi)' into fashion, and the religious poet. The greatest of the atter class durin;'- ( hieen I'.li/abeth's rei gn was the •11 oiiiliwells poems were Jesuit, Rcjbert Sou. well. very [)opular, 'riicy, strange to say, were as much. reau in ant as tl le vcrv sensuous verses s(.> fashionable at the time. This shows that, in the reign of (,)ueen Klizabeth, there %vere still many devout Catholics in the land, and it also shows tiiat tiic throwing off of the yoke of the (."alholic Church in England was not due to a religious sentiment, but to the revolt of human nature against restraint ; it was not that the Church was full of abuses, but that men wanted to be free from her rigid discipline. I I Mi n VII.] SI'EA'SKh' TO SUA KSPKRE. 67 )ClS, into " llie the ere I nil'. so iho limy that urch but ; it that ;'5. Robert Southwell, S.J.,* was the third .son of Richard ."^niiihwcll, a C'alhtdic gcnllciiian of N(»r- fnlk. Robert was l)orn at his fallier's seal, Ilorsliani, .^i. Failli's, about llie year 15^)2. There is a Irathlion to the elVect llial a ^ypsy woman made an attempt to steal him, in the hope ofi^ain; and he never ceased, ii is saiti, to show his gratitude to Ciod for havinj^ saved liim from a semi-savage and vagrant life. Al- thdugli the ."^outhweil family \vas Cathuhc, Richard SoiiiliwcH never permitted his rehgion to stand in the way of ills preferment; and in those days Cathohcs could obtain worldly advantage only by the sacrifice of princi{)le. Robert's tendency towards the rclig- I'ods life was so strong that lie was sent to Douay to be educated for the j)rieslliood. and from there to hills. 'J'his fact speaks well for his father, who risked much by having him educated alwoad. Robert went IVuni Paris to Rome, where he was received into the .Society of Jesus. I'larly in the year 1585 he ai)plied for permission to return to Kngland. The thought of souls perishing for the sacred nourish- ment that he coulil give them filled him with a solic- itude that was agony, and he longed for the crown of martyrdom. The peril that faced him was not vague. "Any papist/' according to the statute 27, I'.li/abeth c. 2, "born in the dominions of the crown of England, who should come over thitlier from be- yond the sea (unless driven by stress of weather, and * For further account of the group of Catholic poets, see Dr. F,tr;in's " Lectures o.n English Literature." (W. H. Sad. lier iS: Co.) (■vfT^ il 68 ENC/. I SI I I. f TERA TUKE. [chap. tarryinf^ only a rcasoiuible time), or should be in England three days without conforming; and taking the oath, should be guilty of high treason.'' South- well knew tliat a Jesuit was doubly obnoxious to the herd of Englishmen who blindly followed time-serv- ing leaders ; he knew, too, that if discovered he would be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He did not shrink. Perhajjs he reverently repeated the words of his " Burning Babe:" " Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns, The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals ; The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls ; For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood." Southwell's letter to his father, which he wrote soon after his return to England, shows that the poet who wrote "St. Peter's Complaint " might as easily have spoken an apolo'^ia before the despots who in England imitated the persecutions of Diocletian in the name of "reformation." P'or six years Southwell labored in his native land. Many Catholic souls, even priests in hiding, were strengthened by his example and consoled by his fervent piety. His zeal made many return to the Church and saved others from apostasy. Protected by Lady Arundel, whose confessor he was, he per- formed his sacred duties and wrote at intervals ; but the crown of martyrdom, like a pillar of fire, was alwavs before him. Tt led to the Promised Land, ;and he was soon to gain the end for which he worked, >L VII.] SPEJVSEA' TO SI/A h'sr ERE. 69 He was kept in prison three years. At last, on his own petition, he was brought to trial. lie was re- moved from the Tower of London to Xewp;atc, and on the 2ist iA February, 1595, lie was taken to West- minster and tried. His conduct before the court was worthy of his life. He was serene, manly, and not presumptuous. He denied that he was j;uilty of treason, but confessed that he was a Catholic priest, and that his purpose in England was to administer the rites of the Church to her lailhful children. He was condemned, and on the morning of the 22d of February was executed at Tyburn. Through the blundering of ttie hangman his agony was prolonged, and he "several times made the sign of the cross while hanging." He was drawn and quartered; but "through the kindness and interference of the by- standers the martyr was allowed to die before the indignities and mutilations were allowed. " And this happened in the reign of a woman whom historians have named "good," and whom Englishmen have been taught to reverence as "great!" Southwell's principal works were Sf. Pcicr's Com- phiint, ]\[ary Maf^dalens Tears, and a book in {)rose, ISIary Mdgdaleyi s Ftineral Tears. One poem of his, "Times go by Turns, "" is (juoted almost as generally as Cardinal Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light." 76. In the year 1600 and after it, there was a great outburst of romantic poetry in F'.ngiand. Shak- spere, not yet a great dramatist, wrote poems whose sensuousness is to be regretted. Thomas Lodge and Henry Constable, both Catholics, Thomas Carew, ai.J ^o ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. )': , Others were of this romantic school. Spenser had led the way by his love-sonnets called Amoretti, and Sir Philip Sidney had also set the fashion by imitating the lighter poems of the Italians. William Drummond of liawthornden was a Scotch pi^n of this period; he belongs properly to the time of James I., but he was evidently influenced by Sidney and Spenser. 11. William Warner, Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton were born about 1560, and were writers of j)atriotic poetry. They gave })octry a national flavor. William Warner wrote Albion s Eng- land, 1586, which sketches a history of England from the Deluge to the reign of Queen l^lizabcth. Samuel Daniel wrote a Ilis/urv 0/ the Civil Wars, 1595, in admirable Knglish, but bad poetry. In James I.'s reign (1613) Michael Drayton produced Polyolbion, in thirty books, written in Alexandrines. He had written before this time the (^ivil Wars 0/ J'Jihvard II. and the liarons and E'ngla/id's Ilcroical Epistles. Drayton deserves to be ranked among I'Jigiish pcjcts, though he wrote too much. The j)hilosophical poets who came into fashion as England became less in fear of war are Sir John Davies and Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. Sir John Davies was the author of Nosce tc ipsum, Know Thyself, and The Orchestra, and Lord Brooke wrote* long didactic poems On Hiinuvi Learning, on Wars, on Afonarchy, and on /Religion. But the great literary feature of the Elizabethan period was the rise of the drama to a grandeur unprophesicd and unexpected. 7S. The Engrlish Drama began in the monas- vri.] SPENSER TO SITAKSrERE. 71 teries, where miracle plays were performed on certain feasts. A survival of these is the Passion Play given every ten years at Obcrammergau, in Bavaria, by the peasants. It had gradually developed in England until Nicholas Udall wrote the first English comedy, Ralph Roister Doisfer, which was acted in 1551. The first English tragedy was Gorboduc or Fcrrax and Porrcx written by Sackville and Norton, and played in 1562. There was no play-house in Eng- land until the Blackfriars Theatre was built at Eondon in 157^1. The Globe Theatre was built for Shak- spere and his actors in 1599. Boys took the parts of women ; it would have been considered indecent if a woman had ajipeared as Rosa/iud, in As Von Like It, or as Portia, in The Merchant 0/ Venice; even Cordelia, the most gentle of Shakspcrc's characters, e\'cci)t Ophelia, was acted by a boy. It was not until the licentious reign of Charles II. that females aj)peared on the stage and an attempt to have painted scenes was made. Shakspere's plays were originally performed without illusory accessories. If the great poet could sec Mr. Dalys superb mounting v>{ I\Iid- stantner-Xijrht's Dream, he would no doubt feel re- paid for a journey back to "the glimpses of the moon." In his timea])lanket was used for a curtain, and the audience, which assembled at three o'clock, imagined trees, castles, gardens, etc. 79. The Play-writers before Shakspere were (}e(^rge (jascoig!ie, who wrote the Supposes (acted in 1566, and taken from the Italian of Ariosto) ; Arthur Brooke, wlu>sc Romeo and Juliet (T"^ Mi 72 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. may have suggested Shakspere's — it is taken from the same story, — and T. Hughes' Mis/or times of Arthur and the Famous Victories 0/ Henry V. Then came — from 1580 to 1596 — Pecle, Nasli, Chettle, Mun- (lay, (jrccnc, Lodge, Kyd, Marlowe, and Lyly, the author of Eupliiies. Tlie greatest of these was Mar- lowe. 80. Christopher Marlowe would have been a great name in English literature, had the personal character of the man who bore it been ccjual to his genius. IJe was born at Canterbury in England, in February, 1 564. lie was educated at the King's School in his birthplace and at Corpus Cluisti C'ollege, Cambridge. His father was a shoemaker, and when Marlowe developed atheistical opinions, there were men who openly regretted that he had not been forcibly kept to his father's business. But we see too much that is fme in his plays to endorse their o])inions. Marlowe served with Elizabeth's troops in the Netherlands, during the war of the Low Countries with Spain ; in the army, the tone of which was very licentious, he acquired the Godless opinions and coarseness that unhappily found its way into some of his literary work. His translations of Ovid's Elegies gained the reprobation of moral Knglishmen, and were burned by the hangman. His Hero and Leander and Tamburlaine are too coarse to be read without expurgation. Freed from the dirt that encumbers it, Tamburlaine is a great drama. As Hallam says, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus is a sketch by a great genius rather than a finished and complete I .p. le ir le 1- e VII.] SPENSER TO SHAKSPERE. 7% play. The same verdict might be given of luhvard //, and Dido^ Queen of Carihage. Marlowe was a poet of great promise, worthy to be a star that could only be dimmed by such a sun as Shakspere. He died as he had lived ; he was killed in a brawl at Deptford, in 1593. H ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. ¥ CHAPTER VIII. Shakspere, 8i. When Spenser was a youth, Shak- spere was a boy. — Spenser, whom Wordsworth names " mild Spenser, called from fairy land To struggle through dark ways," died in January, 1598. Spenser was twelve years old when Shakspere was born ; and Shakspere was thirty-four years old when Spenser died. Spenser, the most poetical of poets, p:reatest after Chaucer, was inspired by Italian <;enius. You iiave heard, and you will hear again, that -those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still."* were the results of the change in religion, which followed the rebellion of Henry VIII. This as- sumption is a sign of ignorance. What Chancer owed to Dante and Petrarca, Spenser owed to Tasso and Ariosto. Without these great Italians — who were ardently Catholic — luiglish poetry would per- haps now be only beginning to find suitable forms of expression. Let us rid ourselves at once of this fallacy. If English poetry exists to-day unrivalled * Tennvsoo I i VIII.] SHAKSPEKB. 75 H;au and Surrey, Spenser and Shakspere, Milton and Ic oned ",7",\,^'"-^ "•''-■'' t-l'-stian ages had de- Tut 1 ^■"' '■"'• ^"""y "°' '-"'■^-^d from '1 e Italians, Shakspere would not have had mode" o the sonnet and of blank verse in hi,, native spee -^cl had he not borro«ell.cr ,„■ to tell „r tl,e .lay's woes. IJcre in !"-■ .UKc ,,a.,,|ace, the lK,y .sat of winter nigl.ts and o- te.l t ,e cl,e.st,u,ts he had .a.here,! d.ti t h,s Preaotts le,«„e ti.ne, while the c,ah.a|,,,le.s si.n „,.red ■n '!-■ bowl. He hin,,self sings of the winter evcningsl " When icicles hariir bv the wall And Dick the she])herd And Tom bears 1 blows his nail. And milk ogs mto the hall comes frozen h When blood is nipped and Th en nj ffhtly ome in pail, ways be foul. sm In tl gs the staring owl. ic sum were glorious, despite tl nier the dajs of the boy at Stratfc then little fell 1" vogue. We can le strict parental di ow, with humorous b imagine the auburn-1 scipl (jrd ine laired ut grave eyes, standi ng \rr 80 EMGI.lSIf I.rri'.KA TUKi:. [chap, 5} 'j I on the rush-slrcwn floor and demurely waitinp: on his parents as they sat at tal)le. Tiie tal)le had, perhaps, a "carpet," as they called a cloth, -fur carpets were not put on the floors even of the queen's palace in 1571, — and it was a good boy's business to lay it. 85. Shakspere in Summer.— In the spring- and summer he absorbed all that beauty which he p^ave out later in his plays, in pictures of flowers and the seasons, such as no poet before or after him could have done. The boards in the floor of his fathers cottage are white to-day and worn, and the nails in them have heads like polished silver ; but the same flowers that bloomed around Stratford in the spring and the summer of 1571 bloomed and withered in the summer and autumn of this year. The peas-blossom nodded and the honeysuckle wafted its perfume ; the bees and swallows, and the same shrill corn-crake that made the little Will for- get his declensions and shy a stone at it, revelled in the sun of 1891. The Avon swells among its tan- gles of wild-flowers and reeds, and broods of duck- lings liide among the wild thyme of the banks, and swim on its serene surface. The white chestnut blooms fall ; the crimson roses flame in the old gar- den. Across the fields towards the little house of ihc Hathawavs, where Shakspere's wife lived, the glowing poppies make trails of fire among the soft, velvety green. In these fields Will played prisoner's base with his brothers, Richard, Gilbert, and Kd- I I viu.l S//A A\sr/':A'/':. 8i ot I the »ft. ler s mund. Here ho saw the picture he paints in A//,/- summcr-\if;/ifs Dream, where he niiii^es Ohcnm s.iy ; " I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where ox-lips and the nodding violet jjrows; yuile over-cauopicd with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine." In the spring, he f'uund by theAvnn Ophelia's flowers, those wiiich in her gentle madness, alter I-Iamlet has killed her fatlier, she oilers to tiie c«»iirt. "There's fennel for you ami cohunbines ; there's rue for you, and here's some for me : we may call it herb-grace o' Suntlays. . . . There's a daisy ; / wituld give you some violets, but they ivithered all ivlien mv father died. They say he made a good eud." And in the spring, by his own Avon, too, the flowers he weaves into the Queen's speech when she tells liow the crazed Ophelia died : " There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the j^lassy stream; There, with fantastic garlands, did she come. Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples; There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke. When down the weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up : Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress. Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element ; but long it could nf)t be, Till that her garments heavy with their drink PuU'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death," w ! '; b2 ENGlJSir /J'J'KA'.i rURE. [CIIAI'. \\y the Avon's banks in the early sprinij^ this ex- quisite L,^Hin|)se was photographed in colors by his eye, and afterwards reproduced in Winter s Talc:'' "... daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with bcauiy ; violets, dim. Hut sweeter lliaii the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's brca'.h ; pale primroses . . . bold ox-lips and The crown imperial, lilies ol all kinds, The Hower-du-hice being one." Now when you visit Stratford you may get all the flowers mentioned b}' ( )phelia lastened to a sheet of pap-.r, even the violet that " witiured when her lather died," \()\\ may also get a strip of paj)er with the famous inscription marked in black on it — that fa- mous inscription which has saved Shaksj)ere's tomb from desecration. The guide will go d(Avn on his knees and trace it for voii in th-' uiaint old form : I ■ "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here, Blessed be the man that spares these stones. And cursed be he that moves my bones." 86. Shakspere's Education. --Shakspere's father was anxious that his children ;diould be edu- catcti well ; and so for seven years the bo}' was kept at the Cirammar school, which the religious-minded men of the Catholic time had foundeil and ke})t alive. \\\ the time he left school his lather had become j)oor. lie went into some business or" other, — })er- haps he was a lawyer's clerk, w^) one knows. His tli VIII.] SIIAKSPERE. 83 nuhcr, J„hn Shaksperc, did the best he could for his eldest S..11, and if Will had "small Latin and less (ii-cek," he had enough to teach his younger brothers all they needed ; this he probably did. ' .Air. Kegan Paul says : " It is certain that in the years during which he was at school and in lus father's business, he read not many books but much ; and he learned that which ought to be the aim of :U1 boyish education, not to cram the memory with facts and figures, but how to use all that comes to us in life." There is a story that he shot one of Sir Thomas Lucy's deer and was punished for poaching. Charle- cut, Sir I'homas Lucy's place, is about three miles from Stratford. The house in which the indignant owner of the deer lived still stands; you approach It through paths bordered with hawthorn, blush roses, beeches and elms, and over turf soft because a thousand years have rolled over it. In "As You Like It,"Shakspere describes the Knglish forest of Arden— from which his mother, Mary Arden, prob- ably took her name— which is really No 'Man's Land, Tor there they " fleet their time carelessly as they did in the golden w^orld," and though the forest is supposed t(^ be in France— that of Ardennes- lions and palm trees live in it. This comedy is the most lyrical drama ever written. Jn this strange forest the " melancholy Jaques "-supposed to typify Shaksperc himself— sees a deer, " as he lay along Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood; «1 1. 84 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. To which place a poor, sequestered stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish; atul indeed, my lord, The writhed animal heav'd forth such groans That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting; and the big, round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook." ^1. Shakspere's Son Hamnet or Hamlet. — Whether Shakspcre killed Sir Thomas Lucy's deer or not, he had seen a wounded deer and he knew how to make the world see it with his eyes — a supreme gift in a writer. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, whose cottage still stands about a mile from Stratford. In this little house, to which ivy and running roses cling, they probably lived with their children, Susanna, who married Dr. Hall, and the twins, Hamnet and Judith. Haninet died young, and Judith, about whom William Black has written a charming story, called "Judith Shakspere." be- came Mrs. Quiney. No descendant of Shakspere is now alive. Things went badly at Stratford. He had not yet learned to coin the sobs of the stricken deer or the scent of the musk-roses into money. He went to London, bidding his wife and children be hopeful in the rural nest at Stratford. And there he found success, it is said that he took in his pocket his first poem, and that this attracted the attention of VIII.] SIfAKSPERE. S5 Lord SouthamptMn and Lord Pcnhrcke, two c>f the most brilliant of Klizabcth's courtiers Wecann.,tkn,.u- what books Shakspere read in o dcr to prepare hnnself to meet and dazzle the wits of this witty time, for the only volume of his that has come down to us is a translation of the French essayist Montaigne, of whose inHuence one can lind tn-es in his plays. We know he had read the scripture, and that he found "... tongues in trees, books in the running brooks Sermons in stones, and good in everything." _ In London, which was not then the great city it IS now, the young rustic saw much to amuse him How he became an actor, we do not know It is said that he performed in his own plavs-the part ot Adam, for instance, in -As You Like It " One thing IS sure: he loved his n;mily, and returned to Stratford at stated intervals with his heart set on rescuing his old father from poverty and of making his wife and children comfortable. He lono-ed for the time when he could settle down among the prim rose fields and blooming orchards of his native place and leave the glitter of the court and citvand'th; glare of the play-house to others. Shak.;pere did not seek for Aime, or for money as money; he made h,s marvellous dramas for the great end that he mio-ht make his father happy and Iiis children hapn;t_, that he might, at the end, live pleasantly and peace- fnll \(r a b ov, H c "builded better than he k and loved as new H( i:l-'^ 86 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. 1 1 was so careless of all but the profits of his noble works, that, had it not been for the care of iwo of his fellow-actors, the greatest of these great plays would have been lost to us. In 1623 — seven years after his death — the first folio edition of his plays was issued by Heminges and Condell. If they had been less solicitous for his fame, it would have died with him. 88. Spenser Praises Shakspere. — Shakspere was early recognized as a poet. Spenser i)raised him; he was king among the wits, a star among the nobles, lien Jonson, the most learned among his contemporaries, hailed him when living and extolled him when dead. Success and wealth came. But all the while Shakspere was thinking of Stratford- upon-Avon. In those days every gentleman had a coat of arms. Shakspere revived the arms of his family during his fiithcr's lifetime; they were, in heraldic language, a pointed spear on a bend sable and a silver falcon on a tasselled helmet, supporting a spear. An allusion to this bearing of arms occurs in the grave-digging scene of " Hamlet, " The second grave-digger asks if Adam was a gentleman. First Clown — . . . . the first that ever bore ar^is. Secoud C/otan — Why, he had none, Eirsf Clown — What, art a heathen ? The Scripture says, Adam digged: could he dig without arms? In London, Shakspere met ]\Iarlowe, who, if he had not died early, would have more nearly ap- proached our master than any other. " Richard III." VIII.] SHAKSPERE. 87 shows the influence of Marlow:, and parts of - Henry VI." were written by him. Shakspere laughed at the fashions of tiie day-the absurd costumes of fhe men and the euphuistic affectations of their speech —as satirically as Hamlet laughs at Osric, the " dude," in that great drama of thought. He never fails to fling at women's false hair and face-paintings, and the tyrannies of the ladies' tailors. Autolycus' song, in -Winter's Tale," shows that he knew the needs of the ladies of i6ir or thereabouts: " Lawn as white as driven snow, Cyprus * black as e'er was crow, Glove as sweet as damask roses, Masks for faces and for noses, Bugle, bracelet, necklace-amber, Perfume for a lady's chamber." 89. Shakspere's Later Life.— What little we know of Shakspere's later life we must gather from his plays, for there is no other record. His first farce was probably "The Comedy of Errors." It is a huge joke. Then came "Midsummer-Night's dream," a fantasy of moonlight, spiders' webs with dew upon them, flowers, fairies, and queer monsters, all seen in the atmosphere of a poet's dream. After these "Love's Labor Won," recast as -'All's Well That Ends Well," and the Italian stories, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona " and "Romeo and Juliet." From these we gather that Will Shakspere was generous, impetuous, gay, with a tear for suff"ering * Crape. II T 'J 88 K JVC LIS// LITERATURE. [CIIAP. \n and a lieart full of afTcction, and, like his heroes withal, fond of a practical jest. Mis first period ended with "King John," in which one of the few children drawn by Shakspere is so pathetically presented in Prince Arthur. In 1596, he entered his second period, with the most j)erfect of all his comedies, "The Merchant of Venice." He had reached the prime of his manhood. Here we have a high type of womanhood in Portia, feminine, yet almost more than a woman in her desire to save her husband's friend, and Shylock, the Jew, in whom the best attributes of a great race have been turned to evil by the un-Christian persecution of Christians — the generous Antonio, the graceful Bassanio, and the beautiful, but ungrateful, Jessica. Then came the "Taming of the Shrew,"' an old farce retouched; the three plays in which Sir John Falstaff appears — the two parts of " Henry IV." and " The Merry Wives of Windsor " — and the splendid historical pageant of " Henry V." The comedies he wrote for the Globe Theatre, in which he had a share, sparkle with gaiety and the lighter poetry, " Much Ado About Nothing," with the saucy Beatrice, "As You Like It," with the brilliant Rosalind and the "melancholy Jaques," who was a precursor in sadness of the deep des- pondency of Hamlet; then "Twelfth Night" and "All's Well That Ends Well." In 1602, Shak I I spere t was about the age at which Milton was struck by blindness, with his life-work hardly begun, — he was rich and had got his wish, as the children say, and i moderate enough. At the age of forty-three — I i VIII.] SHAKSPERE, 89 honored. But shadows fell upon him, Hamnet, his son, was dead; tiierc would he none of his name to bear the coat-of-arms he had so eagerly desired. Tliis was not the worst; he had been l)ctrayed by some friend whom lie liad trusted— as we see by the mysterious sonnets, which are as hard to read as the riddle of the Sphinx and as fraught with meaning. Some day we may fmd that they had a religious significance, and that the poet puts yearnings and hopes into them which he dare not utter more plainly. 90. The Loved Friends. — His great and noble friends were beheaded or exiled. Avarice and all evil passions ruled the court; ♦' the time was out of joint," and the poet, like Hamlet, could not put it right. He becomes more gloomy; no more light comedies, only the darkest tragedies. "Julius Caesar," written in 1601, means his grief for the ruin of his friends. Then follow " Hamlet," expressing crime and the vanity of trying to escape its punish- ment; "Othello," jealousy and murder; " Macbeth," inordinate ambition; "Lear," horrible ingratitude; "Antony and Cleopatra," "Coriolanus," and "Ti- mon." Later, the "Tempest." "Cymbeline," and "Winters Tale," in which the flowers of Stratford bloor-i again, and we feel that the bruised heart has found rest in country sights and .sounds. Last of all, he wrote with Fletcher the nobler parts of " Henry VnL."in 16 1 2. Later writers made his sketch of "Marina" into the play of "Pericles." He lived among his flowers and books, tended by his favorite daughter Judith, at his house. New Place, in Strat- ,.^ 90 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. ford, until peace came to him on May 3, 16 16. He passed from earth in the fifty-second year of his a}2;e, having made an epoch in the world. 91. His Religion. — Tradition says that Siiak- spere was ever gentle to those of the persecuted Faith of his fathers; * and his plays show it. New Place, at Stratford, is no more, only the foundations remain. Puritanism destroyed all that Henry Vill.'s brutality had left, or perhaps we should know more of this gentle man. His daughter, Judith (^)uincy, became a Puritan, and in her desire to eradicate all vestiges of the play-acting of her beloved father, she doubtless destroyed many traces of his thoughts and acts which we should now dwell on with love. If we can take the testimony of thepers(jnages he created whenever they were in extremity, we must conclude that he at least understood the religious beliefs his fathers had held. It is true that he wrote words he ought to have blotted. Let tis blot them out, and know them not. His nobility is so high that they, like plucked-up weeds, may perish in its shadow. To read his works carefully, under competent direction, is an education. What has he not said.? Each reading brings out some new meaning. The most bigoted unbeliever must admit thar Shakspere was deeply Christian in belief. Reverence fills his plays like the breath of incense. I\Ii. Frederick Furnivall, one of the acutest of modern ) * Judith Shakspere : William Black. \ vin.] S/fAk'SPKA'/':. 91 ) critics, reaches tliis conclusion reluctantly. Shak- sperc declares his belief in the ininiortalily of the soul — • i " And Death once dead, there's no more dying then." 92. His belief in immortality, — His speech is "saturated with the Scriptures." How could he helj) it.-* Had he not in the schoolroom f^azed every day on the painted story of the Cross, and read everywhere, in spite of Henry VHI's barbarity, the symbolism of the Church which had filled the life of Enj^land before the Reformation with the beauty of (jod's word. Though the statues of the saints were broken, and their figures in the stained glass windows defaced, the Church of the I b)ly Trinity still pointed with its spire towards heaven. Even in Shakspere's later time, all remembrance of the Sacramental Presence could not have faded out of Stratford, We can imagine Shakspere walking in the gloaming to- wards this old church, with its Gothic windows and fretted battlements. The glow-worms waver near him as he comes through the avenue of green lime trees, near the beech- and yew-shaded graveyard. He has come by the shining Avon, from "the lonesome meadows beyond where the primroses stand in their golden banks among the clover, and the frilled and fluted l)ell of the cowslip, hiding its single drop of blood, closes its petals as the night comes down." He pauses in the nave of the church * William Winter. r 92 r.Ncr.isn literature. [chap. find tlicrc in the soft j?low, cast by the last shaft of ^doiy from the settiiif^ sun, he sees the vacant place where, his father has tokl him, the tabernacle had ])een. It it gone. Perchance an old woman, who had seen the Faith in its glory, lies prostrate, sobbing befcjre the des])oiled altar whence her God has been torn. And then he murmurs, with his own dying Queen Katharine: " Spirits of peace, where are you ? Are ye all gone And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?" 93. His Death. — And, folding his hands at his back, he passes back through that sweet-scented lane, whose blossoms shall fall on his own coffin ere long, His eyes arc soft and hazel; his cheeks are not as ruddy as when he laid the cloth for his father and mother in earlier days; his forehead is domelike; he wears his customary suit of scarlet and black; so he goes to New Place, for which he has so long worked, to the demure Judith who waits for him, to his little chubby-cheeked grandchild, Bess Hall. The antlers in the entry, the silver tankards on the side-board, of which his wife and Judith are so proud, show dimly in the failing night; he murmurs the new song he has lately made for his play of " Cymbeline": " Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done. Home art gone and ta'en thy wages." A swan glides slowly to her nest among the reeds of the Avon. "The crimsom drops i' the bottom V1II.1 s/r.'tA'spKA'f:. 93 of the cowslip",* are now .,„i,e hi.l from the si.ht W,ll,,,m hhakspere. whom God gifte^ iV 'S^ <^ '^^ 0^ ^ ^4 A^ «?. :/j I 94 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. il -\ CHAPTER IX. Minor Dramatists and lien Jonson. 1596-1654. Tht' Ivricists, 94. It would be a mistake to imagine that the EngHsh people of the reigns of Henry V'HI., EHza- beth, and King James were Protestants in the modern sense. Lodge, Southwell, Constable, Shirley, Cra- shaw, and Habington were Catholic writers, popular with all Englishmen. 'I'he fined revolt against the Church was due to the ill-advised and bigoted policy of James H. rather than to any desire for a change of faith. 95- Ben Jonson wavered between the Church and Protestantism and finallv accented the latter, arguing that he was a good Protestant because he drank all the wine he could during the ceremony of the " Lord's Supper." I'his expression will probably give you the key to the personal character of the man. He had genius; he was rough, swaggering, even brutal, a scholar and sometimes a cynic, he ad- mired his great contemporary, Shakspere, though tney were widely dilTerent. Jonson had great stores of learning, and Shakspere had never been a stu- dent, except of men and nature. Jonson's genius seems like talent when compared with Sliakspere's. Jonson's dramas, great as they arc, mark the begin- IX.] ML VOR DRA MA TIS TS. 95 ning of the decline of dramatic art in Kngland lie was born in 1573, and was educated at Westminster School, and. according to some authorities, at St John s College, Cambridge. Jonson rejoiced in put- ting action before words, and his plays consequently lack the exquisite diction of Shakspere's, in which the action is suited to the word and the word to the action. His dramatic characters are named for their intentions or actions ; he does not trust them to show what they are. Morose is. for instance, the name of a man m Epkainc ; or, The Silent Woman; Cutbeard IS the name of a barber in the same play, and Subtle hat of the hero of The Alchemist. Jonson was hrown into prison for having killed a man in a duel Whi e in prison he became a Catholic, and was evi- dently sincere. His subsequent reversion to the Anglican Church was probably the result of careless- ncss and the difficulty of practising his adopted religion at a time when to be a Catholic was to be a criminal in the eyes of the law. Scjanus, his first play, appeared in 1603. Every Man in his Humor was played in i596-'98. This comedy was followed \;yI^vcryManout of his Humor, Cynthia s Revels, and 111 James I. 's reign, Volpone ; or, The Fox, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, and, after an interval Cati- Ime,^ tragedy. In 1 6 1 9 he was made poet laureate. He died in 1637. His last play, The Sad Shepherd IS his sweetest. Jonson's masques-lyrical plays very much in vogue at court during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. -show that he had the finest poetic feeling, in addition to his learning for U.rf 96 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. which he is ahviiys priiiscd. 'rherc is a description of one of his mas(iues in Sir Waller Scolt's novel of Kcnihvorth. Junson wrote few souths. Tiie best of them is paraphrased from tlie Latin and occurs in Kpicccnc ; or, The Sileut Woman. It begins : " Still 10 be neat, stil! to be drest, As you were going to a feast ; Still to be powdered, still perfi;med; Lady, it is to be presumed, Though Art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound." During the last years of his life he was acknowl- edged as the greatest man of letters in England. He died in London, August 6, 1637. Collections of his epistles and lyrics were made under the general names of the Underwoods and I'he Forest. Ben Jon- son's poem to Shaksperc was [)refixed to the first folio-edition of Shakspere's works, printed in 1623. In it, he calls the great poet : " Soul of the age ! The applause, the delight, the wonder o. our stage." 96. Beaumont and Fletcher. — John Fletcher, born at Rye, Sussex, in December, 1579, and Francis Beaumont, born about 1585, wrote some plays remarkable for their power. Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy are the most remarkable. Fletcher wrote a charming lyrical poem, The Faithful Shep- herdess. The Two Noble Kifismen is said to have been written by Shakspere and Pletcher. It is impos- sible to tell what part Beaumont or Fletcher contrib- uted to the joint plays. They wrote exquisite lyrics. IX.] MINOR DRAMA TISTS. 97 It is regrettable tliat their dramas arc too indecent to be read with enjoyment in our times. Alili,,u-h tliey wrote fine poetry now and tlicn, tiiey were untrue to human nature, lieaumcmt died in 1616, Fk-tclier in 1625. 97. Thomas Dekker, John Ford, John Webster, George Chapman, John IMarston, Henry Clapthorne, Richard Jirowne, William Row- ley. Thomas Middleton, Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Heywood, and James Shirley, came after Massinger and Ford. 98. James Shirley, though a boy when Elizabeth died, was t^ ; last of the glorious band of dramatists associated with her reign and name. He was born at London in 1596, and was educated at the Merchant-Tailors' School and at St. John's Col- lege, Oxford; from St. John's he went to Cambridge, received orders and got a cure near St. Albans, wlikh he gave up, from religious convictions, and em- braced the Catholic faith. We next find Shirley as a dramatist in London, smiled on by fortune and the court, in the person of Charles L's Queen, who ad- mired his genius and his Catholicity. In 1637 he crossed to Ireland, and wrote some plays which were performed at the first theatre ever erected in Dublin. On his return he took part in the civil war, fighting,' of course, on the side of the King, and in his later life he gave up dramatizing and taught school. Shirley was a man of upright and irreproachable character and a devout Catholic. His first play was a comedy entitled Love's jyich InT m 98 EXCI.lSif r.IJ'EKA TURE. [chap. I* (1625). From this period till 1641 his dramas fol- lowed in rapid succession. In 1^)46 he published a volume of lovc-po( ins, and two small volumes of masques in 1653 and 1659. Shirley's verse, while not markedly original, is elegant and forceful and has the true Elizabethan ring. He died in 1667. 99. Ford and Massinger, Webster and Chapman, who made the fine translation of Homer immortalized in Keats' fine sonnet, were dark and impassioned in tragedy, but they lacked naturalness. Massinger's first play was The Virgin Martyr, dated 1620. His best known drama is The New Way to Pay Old Debts, which centres on the character of Sir Giles Overreach. Massinger died in 1640. He is truer to humanity than Beaumont or Fletcher ; his language is unhappily often indecent; but he under- stood that the highest thing on earth is a good man or woman, remaining true to (jod in spite of all obsta- cles. John Ford published The Lover s Melaficholy, in 1629, and Perkin Warheck, which has been pronounced to be the best historic drama since Shakspere. The Broken Heart is a drama of hor- rors. John Webster, too, revelled in horrors and ghastliness. His most important play was The Duch- ess of Malfi, acted in 1616; Vittoria Coromlnma (1612) was followed by The Devil's Law Case, Appitts and Virginia, and the cc»medies Westward Ho! and Northward Ho! In these he was assisted by Dekker. 100. Sir Henry Walton (i 568-1 639), whose memoir was written by that genial-souled angler Izaak Walton, wrote two poems, viz. : The Char- IX.] MINOR DRAMATISTS. 99 actcr q, a Happy Life (1614). and the lines On His Mistress the Queen 0/ Bohemia (1620), which have secured a permanent place in Knglish literature. loi. Thomas Carew (1589- 1639) is the first in time, the second in genius, of that band of Royalist lyrists who graced tiie first quarter of the seventeenth century. Ilcrrick alone surpasses Carew in the deli- cacy and subtle charm of his lyrics, and Carew has the added merit of being the inventor of that courtly amorous poetry which characterized the reign of Charles I. and his successor. His best poem The Rapture, is unhappily disfigured by the loose moral tone of his age and cannot be laid before the general reader ; but most of his lyrics are freshly and purely conceived. Carew, Kdmund Gosse well says, "is a transitional figure ; he holds Shakspere with one hand and Congreve with the other, and leads us down the hill of the seventeenth century by a path more flowery and of easier incline than any of his com- peers ; yet we must never forget, in considering his historical position, that his chief merit lies, after all in his fresh coloring and sincere passion." 102. Robert Herrick was born in Cheapside, in August, 1594, and died at Dean-Prior, October 15, 1674. In 1648, he published Hesperides. Herrick, like Horace, may be said to have lived an ideal life for a poet ; his twenty years of arcadian repose in Dean-Priory, Devonshire, were preceded by an even more cultured seclusion of fourteen years. He is the first of the English pastoral poets, and in the front rank of the lyrists, and in the twelve hundred songs r^ lOO UNCI, I SI I 1. 1 TEKA Tl 'KE. f A' DKA MA TIS TS. lOI and a Catholic. Lod-c studied at Oxford and then went to Avignon, where he was grachiated doctor of medicine. In London on his return he became a suc- cessful dramatist and poet, and a popular physician. His works include novels, pamphlets, sonnets, el- egies and some plays. His hrst play was entitled : "The Wounds of Civil War lively set forth in the Tragedies of Marius and Sylla"(i59i), and was pub- lished in 1 594. In partnership with Robert Greene he wrote "A Looking-glass for London and England." His other important works are : "Rosalynde Eui)hues' Golden Legacy" (1590), -Phyllis" (1593^ and -A Margarite of America" (1596). Thomas Lodge died of the plague at Low Ley ton, in Essex, in 1625. "In some respects.'- says Mr. Edmund Gosse, " Lodge is superior to most of the lyrical poets of his time. He is certainly the best of the Euphuists, and no one rivalled him in the creation of a dreamy scene, ^)ut of s])ace, out of time,' where the loves and the jousts of an ideal chivalry would be pleasantly tempered by the tending of sheep." This is high praise, and nobly does Lodge deserve it. It will be remembered how much Lodgers Rusalynde colored Shakspere's treatment of his charming comedy "As You Like It." 107. Henry Constable was born about 1555, of a good Catholic family and was graduated at Cambridge University when he was twenty-four years old. He was suspected, on account of his religion, of a treasonable correspondence with Erance and quitted England in 1595. On his return, some six years later, he was apprehended and committed to 102 EXU/JS// l.l TliKA TUKE. [chap. the tower, where he was confined till towards the end of 1604. The date of Constable's death is not accu- rately known, hut it was probiihly about 1^)15. In 1592, he published a sonnet-se(juence entitled, "Diana; or the praises of his Mistress in certaine sweete sonnets, and also some si)iritual sonnets." Constable's sonnets are occasionally sweet but too full, as was the fashion of his time, of conceits wliich are ingenious rather than poetical. The following son- net is typical of his work : {Sonnet t>rt'fixed to Sidney^ s Apology for Poetry, 1 595). Give pardon, blessed soul, to my bold cries, If they, importune, interrupt thy song, Which now with joyful notes thou sing'st among The angel quiristers of the heavenly skies. Give pardon eke, sweet soul ! to my slow cries, That since I saw ihec now it is so long ; And yet the tears that unto thee belong, To thee as yet they ilid not sacrifice ; I did not know that thou wert dead before, I did not feel the grief I did sustain ; The greater stroke astonishelh the more, Astonishment takes from us sense of pain : I stood amazed when others' tears begun. And now begin to weep when they have done. 108. Sir John Suckling was born at Twicken- ham in 1608-9, and committed suicide in Paris in 1642. He wrote the drama o{ Aghiura{\()i%)\ the bal- lad 0/ a Weddhig (1640); and Fragmenta Aiirea^ all his remaining works, were published posthumously. Suckling's life, as became his wealth and station, was more that of n man of the world than of a poet. His public career was stirring and adventurous to the IX.] MIXOR nh\4 . )/A r/s TS. 103 last (le<,^rcc, and yet there arc songs in his Golden Fragments which will kecj) liis name fresh in the hearts of all true lovers of poetry. 109. Richard Lovelace (iV)i8 1658) published Lucasla ( 1 649) and Poslhume Poems ( xb^K)). Love- hice was the most careless and unecpial poet of an a-e of such writers. He will always be remend)erc.. as^the author of that divine nirewell, On Going /,, the Wars, in which occur the two g(.lden lines; " I could not love thcc. dear, so muth, Loved I not hcjnor more." iio. William Browne (1588-1643) wrote Brit- tanias Pastoral and Shepherd's Pipe. He was one of that knot of brilliant youn- men who called them- selves the sons of Hen Jonson, and was addressed by Chapman as the learned Shepherd of Fair Hitch- ing Hill. His pastoral poetry is sweet and natural. III. George Wither (1588-1667) is generally known as the author of one charming lyric : "Shall I, wasting in despaire,* " Dye because a woman's faire ? " Or make pale my cheeks with care " Cause another's rosie are ?" It is published at the end of the first edition of Fidelia, a poetical epistle from a girl to her incons- tant lover, but the MTiter of the Shepherd's Hunting —whose muse, according to Charles Lamb, 'Ms dis- tinguished by a hearty homeliness of manner and a plain moral speaking"— deserves to be better known. He was an intimate friend of Browne's and the two wrote in frien dly rivalry. Wither's works both in * Old snellini:. 104 EXGl.lSIi LITER A TCRE. [CHAr. prose and poetry arc voluminous. " Tlic prison notes of Wither, " says the critic already (]ur)tccl, in reference to The Shepherd's Hunting, written during the autiior's confinement in the Marshalsea, "are better than tlie wood notes of most of his brethren." 112. Giles Fletcher (15S8? 1623), cousin of one of the authors of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," wrote a religious poem of some merit, entitled, Christ's Victory in lleiwcn and Earth over and after Death (1640). It is written in the Spenserian stanza. 113. Richard Crashaw, born in 1615, died, 1650. Pope did not hesitate to borrow the finest pas- sages in " Kloise and Abelard " from Crashaw, and there arc many lines in CVashaw's poems which unite the perfect finish of Pope to a spontaneity and poetic warmth which the "Great Classic" never attained. Crashaw was born in an " intellectual day," tempered by a dim religious light. II is father like Habing- ton's was an author, a preacher in theTemj)leChurch, London, near which the poet was born. lie took his degree at Cambridge. He entered the Anglican C'hurch as a minister, liut his views were not " ortho- do.\ ;" he was expelled from his living, and soon after he became a Catholic. From his poems it is plain that Crashaw was always a Catholic at heart. lie went into the Church as one who, having lived in a half- forgotten place in dreams, enters it without surprise. Crashaw went to Court, but gained no preferment. The "not impossible she" he speaks of in "Wishes," whose courtly opposites suggested the portrait, never "materialized" herself, lie became a priest, and tx.j Af/.VOA: DRAMA TISTS. 105 died in \()y\ canon r.f Lorotto— an olTicc which he • •bt.iincd, il is said, ihr^aiL^h ihc influence ofilie exiled (.)iu'cn IIcMrictta Maria. C'rashaw's jxhtiis are belter kn..un than i labin-ion's. 'I'lic best known is "Wishes," which, like Merrick's "To Dairodills," is quoted in almost every reader, and the lovely poem beginning-, "Lo ! here a little volume but large book (Tear it not, sweet, It is no hypocrite), Much larger in itself than in its look." If Richard Crashaw, a poet who, by reason of his entire devotion to his faith and his absolute purity, bcloni^s to this i^m-ouj). had written nothing except the finale of "The l••lanlin.^^ Heart," he would de- serve more fame than at present distin^^uishes his name. "The Flamin^i,^ Heart," marred as it is by those cxasperalint; conceits that Crashaw never seemed tired of induli^in- in, is full of the intense fervor which the subject, "The i)icture of the seraphi- cal St. Teresa, as she is usually expressed with seraphim beside her," would naturally suggest to a religious and poetic mind. \'ery justly this poem beautifully closes : " O thou undaunted dauj^'hter of desires ! By all thy dower of lights and fires; Ry all the eagle in thee, all the dove ; By all thy lives and deaths of love ; By thy large draughts of intellectual day, And by thy thirsts of love more large than they ; By all thy brim-fill'd bowls of fierce desire, io6 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. n. By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire, By the full kingdom of that final kiss That seized thy parting soul and sealed thee His ; By all the Heav'n thou hast in Him, (Fair sister of the seraphim !) By all of Him we have in thee, Leave nothing of myself in me. Let me so read thy life that I Unto all life of mine may die." 114. William Habington (1605-1654) is re- membered only by his poem to the lady whom lie has simg under the fanciful name of Caslara. Hab- ington was a devout Catholic, and his poems are filled with the spirit of purity. His description oi Castara is exquisite : — " Like the violet which alone Prospers in some happy shade, My Castara lives unknown To no looser eye betrayed ; For she's to herself untrue Who delights i' the public view. " Such is her beauty, as no arts Have enright with borrowed grace, Her high birth no pride imparts, For she blushes in her place. Folly boasts a glorious blood ; She is noblest being good." Tranquil, serene, surrounded by his children and sup- ported by a firm fiiilli, of wliich The Holy Man, the fourth part of Casiara, is an evidence, he ended a happy and peaceful life in 1654. X.] MJL TOA' AND DR YDEA'-,^i., 700. 10/ CHAPTICR X. Millon mid Dryden. From 1608 lo ,700. T ,5. John Milton, (,6o«-,674) is the one Eng- I'^h poet who may without hesitation be comnareu w,th the «.ea.cst of all epic poets, Dante. He ifle's .an Dante, beeanse he is not so true as Dante • h theology leans towards free thought ; he does not 'take advantage of the lull g,„ry „f d.Hstian do ■ ," a„d ^ d, on ,n/..,w«,. /.„.,, heshowsmoresvntpa J uh Satan than w,th .St. Michael; and his epic lacks ^.e hutnan .nterest and feeling found in the D,vZ MiZtitlh rr^'- '^""''^^' ''^ '^ ""- -^^■ looked abo^t '" "'^ '■' •"'-''' ^'"' '- — i""sly looked about for a great subject. Shakspcre the .reaeest of all dramatic poets, had writtenTo. hi 'eat, warbled his woo.l-notes wilde •" h" nro S'ht °B X-^^^^' '-- «ithout'^mrh" otght But A[,lton, full of sublime thought, n^olved to take the epic form and measure him i ■>ith Homer, \ irgil, and Dante. ei.he''r'nnf ^'T '' "" ^ '"^'>''' "' ^'''' importance, ether universal or national, related by the poet, A tiZl TTc " ''"''" '^-' ^-"-^ ^•'--ter. brotder h,s grand tmages. Like the .Sa.xon poet Csdmon, the client of St. Hiuia, he chose the sLry \^ !^ I ii •; io8 EMGUSir IJTERA TURF.. [chap. of the Fall of Man, as related in Genesis, as of the most universal interest. This he called Paradise Lost. His Paradise Regained, a pendant to the first f)ocm, is powerful, but it has less interest and its diction is not so noble as the first part of the epic on which his fame rests. If Milton had never written Paradise Lost, he would be illustrious for having produced two of the finest odes in our language, V Allegro (The Cheerful i\Ian), and II Penseroso (The Thoughtful Man). 1 1 6. John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, December 9, 1608. He was instructed at St. Paul's School and Christ's College, Cambridge. He was intended by his family for the Anglican Church. He had, however, imbibed prejudices against the divine right of kings, then upheld by the ]"'nglish Church ; he had, in fact, become a Puritan. Besides, he had made up his mind to be a great poet. He went into retirement at his father's country residence, Morton, in the county of Bucks. Here he devoted himself to hard study, as a prepar- ation for his great position in the world. He held his vocation sacred ; he knew that a poet, even of the highest genius, must study hard to make himself worthy of (}od's gift. From 1632 to 1638, he wrote L' Allegro and // Penseroso, representing contrasted moods in a scholar's life, and Arcades, Coniiis, 2cs\(S. Lycidas. The first two were written befiuc the poet's journey to Italy, when he had onjy begun to study the Italian Ian- X.] MILTON AND DRYDEN-ibo^-i-ioo, IO9 guagc. // Penscroso is incorrect ; it should be Pansieroso. In if^z^-g, he went to Italy to com- plete his education ; he returned hastily, to enter into politics and political and religious controversies for twenty years. He accepted the post of Latin sec- retary to the Commonwealth although in 1649 li's eyes began to show signs of disease. In 1652 he became blind. He thus describes his blindness ; " So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled." From these lines, it would appear that the poet did not know the cause of his blindness. It might have been, as Professor Mark Pattison says, either am- aurosis (drop serene), or cataract (suffusion). He began Paradise Los/ in 1657. During the twenty years' interval, he wrote some sonnets, which Wordsworth characterizes as "Soul-animating strains, alas, too few!" They were political or personal. One of his son- nets, written on his blindness at the age of fiftv ends with the famous line, so full of music and res- ignation : " They also serve who only stand and wait." 117- Samson Agonistes is taken from the Scriptural account of the great slayer of the Philistines. It was Milton's last great poem. It is imitated from the Greek drama with choruses. Milton, the unconquered, but defeated Puritan, doubtless saw in Samson an image of himself Paradise Regained is in a more dramatic form than Paradise Lost: the li f 110 ENGLISH Ll TERA TL 'RE. [chap. dramatic form of the Elizabethan lime still lingers in it. It is the story of our Lord, told from the time of his baptism. It is inferior to Paradise Lost. In Paradise Lost — separated by twenty years from the delightful odes, IJ Allegro, II Pcnscruso, LA'cidas, written on the death of a frieiul, and the masque of Comus, we find sublimity, the grandest poetic style ev^er written, and the most sonorous rhythm. It has only one defect. Milton did not see the full mean- ing and beauty of the Incarnation. He was not sufficiently Christian. Milton, like most Puritans, looked on women as inferior beings, although l''s description of Eve is fine ; and, consequently, lie could not conceive the character of her whom Words- worth called " Our tainted nature's solitary boast." In 1665 Paradise Lost was completed. The great plague and the great fire prevented its publi- cation ; it did not appear until August, 1667. It was divided into ten books at first ; later, Milton cut It into twelve, by subdividing the seventh and tenth books. During 1 665-66, he wrote Paradise Regained and the magnificent Samson Agonistes. These poems appeared in 1671; he died in 1674. 118. Milton's Prose. Between 1640 and 1660, Milton wrote most of his sonnets. They varied in tone, but they are nearer in form to those of Petrarca than the sonnets of Sidney or Shakspere. Of his pamphlets, written during this time, we may mention Areopagitica ; or, Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printi7ig, 1644; five pamphlets before «.] mLTO.V AND Z^A'VDE.V^jOoS-iyoo. Ill 1642 ; a tract on Education; four Dimnhlpfc • vorce. He defended the beheading of Ch->rln« 7 irate rovalists. ' '"'''"'^ '^^°'" ">« J^^tly too S 7' ''"^^'' !" '^^°" -'i ^S°">-. as we': e A.:::" iri sruo ''"■ 7 ''^'' ''"-^ fit only for househoM vol The'v." '" '""^^' srhonl Tj . ^'^ worK. iney were not sent to school. He taught them to read five languages 1 hLl? ';r;!' '" ?.f ^ "- "e might'useM'e: wha th V r;ad T " "°' ''"" ""^ '"^■''"'"ff °f nat tney read. 1 hey were named Anne, Mary and Deborah; they resisted his attempts to ru t'hem «nd he was glad to send them awav from h ' le-n gold and silver embrolde v ^ a mrns 'r earning their livinrr \\\u > '' ^"^'^"^ ^^ A.iform.tho:;?,;3ti:;ur;:n:hr''""^- whde^.S,.aksperes vocabulary amounted to fifteen 120. John Dryden was bom in .63,, at Aid- r P 112 EXGLlSir LITERA TURE. lCHAP. winckle All Saints, in the Valley of the Neu in Norths amptonshirc, England. lie was educated at West^ minster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He went to London, in the year 1657. lie married q daughter of the Karl of Berkshire, 1663. In 1675 h^ was appointed Historiographer-Royal and Poet-Lau^ reate. Dryden has long been a neglected and mis« understood poet. Macaulay's brilliant characteri. zation of him has had much to do with the position Dryden has in the mind of the average reader. But Macaulay's correctness is becoming more and more a matter for question. Dryden's memory has been of late well defended by Mr. George Saintsbury and Mr. John Amphlett Evans, both good students. There is only one charge which is but too well grounded ; and that is the reproach of licentiousness made against the dramas of the poet. In his later years, he repented, like C'haucer, and in his ode to the memory of the young maid of honor to the Duchess of York, Anne Killigrew, he shows his regret and asks : "What can we say to excuse our second fall ?" Milton was the last of the Elizabethans; Dryden, the first of the new order of poets. Unfortunately, he let the gross and sensual atmosphere of the Restoration influence him; he was the poet of his time ; he reflected its worst and its best attributes. 121. Dryden's Religion. James H. was a Catholic ; but, unhappily for the religion he pro- fessed, an unreasonable autocrat. Dryden had been a court favorite during the reign of his brother, and X.J MILTON AND /Vv' r/;AyV-i6o8-i7oo. II3 he received somewhat less favor now. About a year after the accession of James, Dryden, who had been a Puritan, and, later, an admirer of the Churcli of Kng- land, became a Catholic. It has been assumed that he changed his religious and political opinions for the sake of gain. It is true he had written a poem on the death of the Protector, Oliver C'rumwcll ; but this shows the breadth of his mind rather than his sub- serviency. Dryden was a Royalist naturally, and he was no more of a time-server than a member of the present Democratic Party would be had he written a poem in honor of the great qualities of Abraham Lincoln. ]\Ir. George Saintsbury, the English critic, quotes Cardinal Newman's conversion in our centurv as a parallel case. The poetry of Dryden shcnvs conclusively that his conversion was sincere. Mr. Saintsbury compares some expressions of Cardinal Newman's with Dryden's in The II md and I he Pan- ther. They show a similar condition of mind. In The Pillar 0/ the Cioud, Cardinal Newman, hesitating on the threshold of the Church, says : " I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead Thou me on ! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will : remember not past years." In The Hind and the Panther, Dryden says : " My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires ; My manhood, long misled by wandering fires. Followed false lights ; and when their glimpse was gone, My pride struck out new sparkles of her own." \r^ 114 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. [CHAr In April, 1687, he published The Hind and Ihe Panther^ the most correctly versified of his poems. In this poem, he represents as a milk-white hind the Catholic Church, persecuted, assailed, but always pure. It is in the form of a fable, not an allegory ; the beasts s{)eak. It is clear, dignified, and it has many noble passages. Among ihcm are tiiat on " Private Judgment," containing the lines just quoted, and that on the unity of the Catholic Cluirch, in which the verses occur : "The gospel-sound, diffused from pole to pole, Where winds can carry, and where waves can roll. The self-same doctrine of lie sacred page Conveyed to every clime, in every age." He had been sincere in his adhesion to the Church of England, and the Religio Laid (1682) is a defence of the State opinions. But even in it there are signs that his convictions were changing. If Dry- den, by changing his religion, pleased the king, he knew well that he displeased the great majority of the English people. He addressed courtly compliments to the Stuarts, but they have no ring of Ailseness in them. It was a time of panegyrics, as well as of satire ; and Drydcn excelled in both. 122. Absalom and Achitophel (1681) was the political satire by which Dryden became famous. It is a masterly satire ; the Duke of Monmouth is Absalom, and Lord Shaftesbury, Achitophel. Dryden is not a courtier in this ; if he were, the poem would have been powerless with the luiglish [)eople ; he was a politician and palrioi. lie was more of a >: 1 MIL TOX AXD nj^'DI-X-itoS-iioo. 1 1 5 partisan at all times than a courtier ; his anti-Dutch ciranui, Am/wv,ur, Nvas written when WilHam of 0^an.^^e a Dutchman, sat on the throne of Kngland 1-^3- The form of Dryden's poems is very correct. He is the only poet, except Tennyson, who has succeeded in .^^ving dignity to the rhymin- couplet. U..cd by IV.pe, it is more polished, but is also more jingling and artificial. Dryden's odes areas great as Milton's. Compare Milton's Ode on the ^allvlty with Dryden's On St. Cecilia s Day or Mil tons lAxidas with Dryden's^,/;., Killigrcw, or Mil- tons Zj//.p ^vith Dryden's Alexander's Feast. I ho Ann.s Mu-abilis, a patriotic picture of England's glories and .>f the great fire in London, appeared in 1667. I he Medal and MacFlecknoe were political satires, succeeding Absalom and Achitophel (1681) In his latter years, he, retired from court and de- prived of his honors, made many translations. His hne paraphrase-he was more of a para- phraser than a translator-of the Veni^ Creator ^Piritus, IS in every hymn book. He finished his translation of Virgil in 1696. Among his prose works IS a translation of Bonhour's Life of St. Francis Xavier His defence of Poetry, which Thomas Arnold has admirably annotated, is excellent, though lie ails to see as much beauty as there is in his models, the dramas of French writers. In 1664 Iryden wrote The Indian Queen, a tragedy, and shortly afterwards, The Indian Emperor. In ' All for Love he dropped the rhyming couplet, and used blank verse entirely. It is the best of his tragedies \rr' Ii6 ENGLISH LITERATURE, [chap. James Russell Lowell calls it " a noble play. " XwTlie. Spanish Friar, a very low comedy, Aiiruugzcbc, The Rival Ladies, Don Sr//as/i('n, 'J'he Royal Martyr, and The Siege of Granaddy he minifies the rhymed couj)- let willi blank verse. The Siege o/Grajiada, which is so long that it coukl not be played at one represen- tation, is an epic rather than a drama. It is a mag- nilicent epic, too, spoiled as Paradise Regained was spoiled, by its inadequate dramatic form. It has not yet received at the hands of Knglish critics the epic crown it deserves. John Dryden dietl at his house in Gerard Street, Soho, London, on ]\Liy i, 1700; he was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. His verse is full of brilliant lines, " A Greek, and bountiful, forewarns us twice." " Forgiveness to the injured does belonjj, But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong." •'The cause of love can never be assigned, 'Tis in no face, but in the lover's mind." " Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs." ■ V 1(1 XI.J POPE AND SWIFT ii; CHAPTKR XI. The Au^nsfan ./;v.-/V/. ,,„./ .Sr.,/A- T/,e AV^r/,,,,,; ,f Modem Enslish History, — 1 688- 1 744. 124. The Short reign Of Queen Anne is rich in great naincs-as rich almost as the rei-ns of FHza- beth and \'ictoria. U tlie reign of Klizabetli gave us Shakspere and that of Victoria, Tennyson, the reign of Queen Anne is a veritable Augustan epoch of literary giants. The actual reign of this queen extended from 1702 to 1714-twelve years. And yet in these twelve years an impetus was given to literature which seems to be out of all proportion to the character of the sovereign or to the character of the time. 125. When we speak of the literary period of Queen Anne, we do not mean only the few years of her reign ; we mean the whole period which was influenced especially by the great men who reached the height of their intellectual power under her reign Between Dryden and Pope, there had been a literary interregnum. Milton was the poet of the Common- wealth ; Dryden, of the Restoration. After Dryden English literature was barren until Pope arose. 126 Of the galaxy of great names that burned in the murky sky of the time of Queen Anne the gi-eatest was that of Alexander Pope, who, born m 1 668, came in with that new dispensation which ii8 KNCLISN 1. 1 ri.KA T( A7-; [ciur. brought a (Icrtnaii dynasty to tlic lliionc uC Knj^huul and made it inipnssiblc fur a Sluail to sit ai,Min <»n the llirone of Ku^himl. ( )f the great men of this Augustan time, let us lake four, and from tlieir lives and their works we shall be able to get more of the color anil flavor of this period of transition than from even Macaulay's graphic but untrustwe»rthy pictures. It isa fault of the historian, Macaulay, that he sacrifices truth for eflect ; and the ci)nsetiuence is that more than one character has been tlamaged by him for ib.e sake of a brilliant antithesis. It is for this reason that the value of his work has, since his death, much depreciated among scholars. Ilowvivitl, how glow- ing his pictures are I — how antithesis plays • upon antithesis, like lightning about lightning, in his de- scriptions ! — but the flash passes, and he leaves us in darkness. Pope has suffered very much at the hands of IMacaulay. The ])oct had his faults, but he was neither so weak, so malicious, nor so insincere as the historian has made him out to be. 127. Pope and Dean Swift, Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson are four men who belong to the Augus- tan age of English letters and who more than any others, except Addison, gave it its life and tone. 128. Pope was born twenty-one years after Swift J Johnson, in 1709, twenty-one years after Pope, and Goldsmith in 1728. Goldsmith died in 1774, Pope in 1744, i^Nvift in 1745, and Johnson in 1784. Pope and Swift were close friends, and one of the pleasantest passages in Dr. Johnson's life is his friendship for Goldsmith. These four, though so it .. XI.J POri: AM) S\Vll']\ 119 the :er \cr in in )ne his so divided in the ninnhcr rifilicir years, were contenij)!)- raries ; and, diHiriii,i( in the (lualily <•!" their talent as one star differs fnmi another, tliey all hati the ini- prcssofthe world of tlieir lime, which was gradually bccoinin;i[ the world of our time. As a recent writer in the K(linl>uy}^h Rrrinv says — of I'',n,L,dand : "With the House of Hanover, modem hi. 'ory defuiitely commences." 129. The Change in the Times. -That spirit of romance and recklessness, that hi,L,di rei^ard for an artificial idea c)f honor and disrei^ard for practices of morality, that exaltation of mind and almost Italian refinement of style, which seemed to mark the Stu- arts as the last rej)resentalives of a lowered chivalry, had passed away. The l'".n,u:lish thn^ne had been lost to the male Stuarts and to princes of the Catholic faidi throu<;h the almost inconceivable stupidity of Queen Anne's father, James H. Queen Anne, an ungrateful dau,t,diter, a stupid woman married to a drunken and more stupid prince, seemed not to give promise of adding, by her encouragement, any new writer to the list of great authors, of whom Drydcn was the last. 130. After each political struggle, literature had burst into bloom in England with almost furious luxuriance. "Paradise Lost" had followed the wars of the Commonwealth ; "Hamlet" the fierce polit- ical struggle which left Elizabeth throned lioness of the West, and now that a period of peace had come after the dissensions, the plots and counter-plots, the revolts and judicial murders, that had characterized ^i 'r^-^ t20 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [ciiAr. the reign of James II., literature burst, as it were, into a new spring — the palm raised its tall head and the fern clustered about its root. Dryden, great and lonely, stood alone. He may be said to have been the last of the Klizabethans, fur he had all their spirit — the grandeur, the fire, and, unhappily, the free- dom of exi)ression of the Renaissance; he was of a new order, yet of the old. lie had exchanged the doubt which weakened the writings of his contem- poraries for the certitude which the C^itholic Church offers. Doubt, philosophical and religious, had, since the time of Henry VIII., been gradually growing in English literature; it was a canker-worm. It is a mistake to imagine that infidelity was born in France; Voltaire took more from Bolingbroke than Boling- broke and the English look from Voltaire; it was in iMigland that Voltaire gained the ammunition he afterwards used with such fatal effect. 131. Pope's faults and his virtues were much accentuated by his early training. His father and mother were Catholics, and therefore he was debar- red from receiving an education at any college or university in England. To be a Catholic in 16S8, in England, was to be, in the eyes of the law, a criminal. Catholics were doubly taxed ; they could exercise their religion only by stealth ; they could not own land in their own names. Thanks to the friendliness and honesty of some of their Protestant neighbors, many of them held land in the names of those neighbors. All avenues of ambition were closed to Catholics ; their only hope was in going abroad, XI.j POPF. AX I) ^WIFT. 121 in entering some great foreign college, or some foreign army— in becoming exiles from tliei.' own land and citizens of another. The Irisli nobles and gentry who had remained faithful to the tyrannical and weak James Stuart to the last, expatriated themselves in tins way after the battle of the ]5oyne ; hence we fmd a Mac:\Iah()n famous in the annals of France, an O'Donnell in Spain, a Taafe in Austria, and many Irish and some Knglish names high in the service of Continental stales. But Pope's father was not a no- bleman or a soldier ; he was a linen draper, and, after the Revolution by which William of Orange and James Stuart's daughter came to the throne of Eng- land, Pope's father retired from business and went to Binfield to live. J^infield was not far from Wind- sor and was one of the i)rettiest spots in TMigland, Here his parents lived, in the strictest seclusion, for twenty-seven years. Alexander was an only child, and he was over- indulged as most only children are. He went to a small school at I'ayford and to one at London, as he was, because of his religion, kej)t out of the great public schools. IJis saddest loss was that of a'' sys- tematic education. At the age of twelve, he left school ; he was delicate in health, small,' and he had curvature of the spine. It was this latter afflic- tion that gave jx.int to Pad\ Kmily Wortley Mon- tague's retort to him when he asked her what an -nterrogation point was. "A little crooked thing that asks question.s," she answered with wit, but 122 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. with a bitterness that makes us feel that womanly gentleness is better than wit. 132. Pope lacked a Philosophical Educa- tion. — Alexander Pope needed, in his time, wlicn the jar of beliefs, philosophies, and o})inions was hccomin.G^ loudest, a careful philosophical traininp:; but he did not get it: he was allowed to read what he pleased, and he read at random, rejecting what he disliked, as- similating what i)leased him. He was like a bee in a giirden full of flowers, among which there are many that are poisonous. Some of the poison showed itself in the honey of the poet ; and it is to his lack of true philosophical training, and to his reading without discretion that are due those heresies in his " Essay on Man'' and other blemishes in his poems. Pope, in the "Essay on Man," adopted the false principles of Bolingbroke without thinking much about them. In consequence, to Pope's horror, Voltaire, the arch-infidel, loudly praised the poem and had it widely circulated in France. He was made to appear as an infidel, in spite of himself. Pope was not a scholar ; he could neither read nor speak French well ; he knew less Greek probably than Shakspere, and his knowledge of Latin Wc^s by no means critical. 133. English History has not the name of any man who ascended to such dazzling heights against such terrible obstacles as did Alexander Pope, ex- cept one in more modern times, Benjamin D'ls- raeli. Lord Beaconsfield. Pope, in his day, had, as a Catholic, similar hindrances to those which on- XI.] POPE AXD SWIFT. 123 posed irisraeli, the Jew. He met them, and almost deserved the proud laudation he gives himself, when he says that, - if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways. " ^ The Popes, .secluded as they were, had some nends wlio hvod n.,t far from them ; these were the iilounts of Mapledurham, a O'.holic family The two daughters, Teresa and Martha, had an 'import- ant influence on the poets life. An early friend of h.s «as William Walsh, a writer of verses, whose advice to Pope was admirable: "There have been great poets in England, but never one great poet .at was correct." The young poet took these «ords to heart, and the ICnglish language can boast of no poet, except Tennyson, to whom it owes more po ..shed lines. Popes correctness is half his genius W hen Pope was very young his eyes saw rap- turously the old poet Dryden at the ftmous Will's coffee-house in London. Dryden was then a burly figure, with a red, wrinkled face, long gray hair, and a waistcoat powdered with snufT ' Pope was a worshipper ofgreat literary men. If he could not be near the rose himself, he was willing to revere one who had been near the rose. Wycherlev, a celebrated writer of comedies, now grown old, became fnencly wnh the precocious lad. Pope's father and mother, strict Catholics as they were, must have been indeed over-indulgent, to permit this intimacv, for Wycherley was one of the most brutallv indecent writer., of the Restoration Period. It may be that from Wycherley and the rakish London circle of t24 ENGLISH LITER A TUKE. [chap. wits to whose company he introduced Pope, that he acciiiirod that cynical manner of speaking of women which spoils many of his allusions. If wo look into our hearts and ask why Pope, with all his genius, with all his keenness, with all his common sense, with all his power of putting the most elegant and buoyant and finished shafts to the arrows of truth, does not get nearer to them, we shall discover that his lack of chivalry, and his powcrlessness to appre- ciate true womanhood give us the answer. 134. Pope and the Society of His Time. Pope reflected the spirit of the society in which he lived when he left his parents' quiet home and went to London. He was never exalted, he never forgot himself in a high theme ; he was a poet — and 1 al- most hesitate to use the word poet in this connection — (^f common sense, of judgment, of fine art, of keen wit, of brilliant antithesis, but never of heroism, of high duty, or of nobility of action. He purified j)oetry from the licentiousness of the Restoration Period ; he made the inflated and bombastic conceits of that time impossible; but, after all, he was the poet of the drawing-room, not of the woods — a re- tailer of the clever sayings of the assembly, not an echo of the mysterious voice of God in nature. A glimpse of Pope's time will tell us something of the circumstances that helped to move the man. It was a time of political intrigue. Queen Anne, at St. James' in London, was the sister of the Pretender who had fled to France. Who would succeed her } The Catholic prince at the Court of St. Germains, or the i XI.] POPE AMD SWIPT. t5$ It Protestant William of Orange ? The nobles intrjcrucd with both ; and Pope caught tliis spirit of intrigue. It was in the air. He could do nothing in a straight- forward way; he plotted when plots were fool it h ; his vanity led him into the most silly subterfuges for increasing his own importance and keeping hiniself before the eyes of the public. He quarrelled with nearly all his friends, and yet he was, doubtless loved by one of them, Dean Swift, the most sarcastic, the most cynical of men, until the end. Pope was spite- ful ; it must be admitted that he did not hesitate to equivocate in an unmanly fashion to gain a literary object ; he was furious at times against the enemies who lampooned and ridiculed him. But let us re- member how malicious, how bitter these enemies were, and that Pope was of an irritably nervous or- ganization, and that he was never quite well. A man with curvature of the spine may be excused if he show ill temper at times. And in attacking the vulgar tribe of literary mud-flingers about him, he, we regret, got more of hjsown mud in return than of theirs; he lowered himself by meeting malice with malice. And yet, though Pope quarrelled with nearly all his friends, generally from some petty mo- tive, he was loved by those who knew him best to the end. Vain and vindictive as he appears, he must have had a good heart. When Teresa. Blount, one of the two sisters who had been his early friends, offended him, he, nevertheless, saved her' from the pressure of poverty. He sneered at those who sneered at him ; he lived to be famous; he cultivated 126 ENGLISH LIT ERA TURE. (CIIAI' liis reputation as a gardener might cultivate asi)lcn- (lid flower, and he was not scrupulous as to the means he employed in so doing. To speak plainly, he did not tell the truth at times and he pretended what he did not feel; slill he was not bad at heart ; the vice was on the surface. MS- Pope's crippled condition.— He was a sickly cripj)lc ; socially — being the son of a trades- man — inferior to those around him ; he was a Catholic at a time when Catholics were proscribed and hated ; he used the arms of the weak against the strong ; and no doubt his sensitive mind was stung every day into madness by retorts such as that cjuoted from Lady Emily VVortley Montague. As Matthew Arnold says : " For each day brings its petty dust, Our soon-choked souls to fill. And we forget because we must, And not because we will." But poor Pope had not that blessed gift of for- getting, which so marvellously helps us to forgive. He loved his father and mother devotedly ; he assisted men and women who were poor ; he clung to his friend Bolingbroke, in spite of his disgrace ; he helped Dr. Johnson to the utmost of his power — a friendliness which the latter afterwards transferred to Goldsmith. His devotion to his father and mother was intense ; the latter lived the longer. Alluding to her he writes : " She let the tender office long engage, To rock the cradle of declining age, XI.] POPE AN/) SWIFT. 127 With Icnirtit acts exte-nd a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the hed of death Explore the thought, explain the asking eye. And keep awhile one parent from the sky." ' P-pc wrote tins ftom his heart. The ,,nly fault that can be hnincl with it is its ninnotcny-the rhymes make ,t jit,glc t,.o ^.tily. ll.,,^ ,„uch more di^^nnfied woucl tins he in a measure without rhyme. <.r in one in which the rhyme was not so closely recurrent i3f>. One of the most dignified letters of lopes IS that written to Atterl,ury, in which he re- fuses to chan^L^e his reli^Mon for the sake of temporal advanta.ires. Pope's faith during his life was not of the militant order; he believed, but lie was not par- ticularly zealous. He lived in a social world, in ^vll.ch convictions were not fashionablc-a world of blue china, and assemblies, and high play at cards and witty sayings, and low bows, and graceful courtesies-in which the set of the patches on a lady's face and the texture of the lace ruffles a man wore at his wrists were more important than faith or morals It was an age of politeness, of manners, of ar ihcahty To understand it, one must read the letters of Lord Chesterfield. It is to Pope's credit that he preserved his love for his parents, his love for the Abbe Southcote and earlier friends; above all his firmness in his religious belief among the temp- tations of so frivolous a time. Pope gives us a glimpse of the manners of his age in that charmincdy yrical bit of light verse, "The Rape of the Lock/ Lord Petre, one of the aristocratic circle of Catholig 128 ENGLISH LITERATURE, [chap. families in which Pope liad friends, had be-^n one of a water party on the 'I'liamcs. Among the ladies was Miss Arabella P'ermor, who was noted fo.- the beauty of her hair. Lord Petre cuts off a lock, just as Belinda (Miss Fermor) is bending over her coffee. Pope, in an exaggerated tone, says ; " Then flashed the living lightning' from her eyes, And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies. Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast, When husbands, or when lap-dogs, breathe their last ; Or when rich China vessels fall'n from high, In glitl'ring dust and painted fragments liel" Lord Petre's impudence brought about a quarref among the families ; and a friend of theirs proposecf that Pope should treat the subject in an airy fashion, and thus help to bring al)out a reconciliation. The Belinda of the poem was of course Miss Fermor ; the ]^aron, Lord Petre; Thalestris is INIrs. Morley; Sir Plume is Mrs. Morley's brother. Sir George Brown of PLaddington. Miss Fermor was much offended by the cynical and condescending manner which Pope assumed in the poem towards her and all women, and everybody concerned was more indignant than before. Nevertheless, it is one of the most brilliant of that light form of poetry which we call vers de soch'li' in our language. 137. The tone of the Augustan age towards women, as shown in the essayists and poets influenced by it, was sneering and satirical. I>en the elegant Addison seems to look on women as pretty toys — fit only to ^aste a black patch over a XI.] POPE AIVD SWIFT. 129 dimple, to put a touch of rouge on their checks, and to use a fan with all the graceful artificialitv which the politeness of the time had elevated into an art Dean Swift was brutal in his treatment of women" and Dr. Johnson admired their prettincss in a lordly way. Goldsmith alone, of these four, understood them and wrote of them with a respectful reverence that was almost awe. 138. The fashionable London lady of Pope's* and Swift's, of Goldsmith's and Johnson's time was not a serious person. To see the simple and gracious woman, one would have had to seek the country places. Thackeray, in " The Virginians " gives us opportunities of understanding thL The lady of Pope's time arose at twelve o'clock. At one her morning toilette was probably completed. Her maid touched her cheeks and lips wi{h red put a patch just where it would help to increase the brdhancy of her eyes or the plumpness of her cheek and brought her a cup of chocolate. Then she pro- bably saw her dressmaker or considered her eno-aoc- ments for the day. * * About one o'clock, the promenade in the Park began. A young man— and some old ones— who had spent the night in card-playing at one of the fashion- able coffee houses, appeared in a full white wi.r with a cocked hat edged with silver carried under his lefc arm, and his sword ornamented with a knot of ribbon of the favorite color of tiic lady he happened to be * See Canthorn's Life of Pope. Fr w 130 ENGLISH LITER A TUKE, [chap. in love with. lie wore a handkerchief of the finest Flemish hicc about his throat ; his waistcoat was left open at the top, showing a rullled shirt, and from a buttonhole in his coat fell his mull', usually of fox skin. Ix't us imagine the yount; Lord Petre coming out of Pall Mall to the Park about half-past one o'clock in the tlay. His wig is very high, and elaborately powdered, his silver-bordered flat hat is carried under his left arm, his cane tied to his wrist by a ribbon "trails harmonicjusly on the pebbles," he carries his fringed gloves in his left hand and an elaborate snuff-box, painted with the head of some Tory politician or perhaps some reigning "toast," as the professional beauty was then called. He wears a silver-embroidered white brocade coat, with a waistcoat of some more brilliant color; his delicate lace cravat is, according to the fashion, softly pow- dered with snuff; the tails of his coat, lined with tender-colored azure or puce silk, — puce was the color known to-day as heliotrope, — are stiffened with wire. He lounges along until he reaches a pond in the Park, where ducks are swimming. He stops there, feeding the fowl, and making, in his own estimation, a very pretty picture, while the ladies pass and admire him — that is, those who arc not too much engrossed in admiring themselves. He is particularly proud of the silver-embroidered stockings which match his suit, and of the high red heels of his shoes. 139. The fashionable life of Pope's time. — The lady, when, after her chocolate, she appeared in XI.] POPE AiXD SWIFT. 131 public, was rcarfully -.xmX wonderfully made. A hoop, larger than any hoop you can imagine a woman wearing, disKMided her skirts, which were of satin, velvet, or some other rich material, bro- caded in bunches of gold and silver flowers; she wore long, stilT. tightly laced bodices, with large pan- iers on either side ; her hair— very little of it her own— towered a foot at least above her head, so that it was difficult to get into a sedan chair. When she was in, the bearers of this fashic^iable convey- ance took h■../ ;v,'/ / /77' ,v i 7 rx/- I n M ' mi,M|'i I -iwih .'I lu (uliMiil I'- n\»ii Ihi I<"ii y\\'\ |M' (ir I m ilii \\\ ii- I'li'i I'll- ^nr-ii \\ \\\\ \ 1 \\\\i I ii I. !• M \\ u li ( •■! » nv '' Mm n\u' \ \'. I >\M'I" » '' \ 111 1 )iifb( (111 m i\i<( " ' l\i' 1 >>■. < hi n< 1(1 I'. I>i HI \\\i n 1 I- ■ mi liii.il ■ \ n hiM\. '.( m >i\ -. lUi i>ii| •• ' \ in >\ \i h i>i 1\ bi !ir \ <•; \\\- i M\ n r^n«i u\,\v1nv,i»>i u Ih.' ImiI. uvnv \vhi> lllil \<\ l- .\ KM>>r«i viWl :\\ \.iM> \\\\\ \\\- \\\\']\\\ It .-n \ ;Vi'(n w i . Il lln; tni«- piru .' <"»! >\\>iv'is . h. w r- l\i«\hlU |.' Topi , who ^^ .'iv Iv^ '-VU » »N'u h;ni. 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''I'll ' ■"mI I. .IVIIll', V.llirss;, I,, ,!,, ,,f ;, \,,,,l^,.,, '"'"' ' '" "' ;'"• I""'; IK : 'Vllt /;|,|' I. „', rlrwr.l •"■•'. W'.kI.I I. ,,,!, ..r. il hv ' l.,ih" I,' r' :^'l if.rrn, K.,f. •"*''''\'" '" '"T.'l II" ".. I 1 1 ; ^'//////77 ■ , //,,/.,./',, wrif- *''" ""• "' I'.lll'ii I'. I Ik:ii.I lll'l, li,i ; \„;( >„,,, ;, r \,;\,\ "'" '• l""'l- ll.iK!',.' fK'l:iKi'.i(.|i'..i^. At |;i-;f. ;ifur I'lll'i loiliiics ..I liciil, ull./ rn'liuin;; sli;/h}s whir.h 136 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. fell to the lot of only a poor chaplain in those days, he intrigued his way to what the world called great- ness. Then he did his best for Pope. We find a con- temporary picture of his swelling through the crowd at court, a personage of immense importance, and knowing it well, lie turns from a great lord to a poor hanger-on, only to show his independence. He tells a young nobleman that the best poet in England is INIr. Pope, "a Papist," who has begun a translation of Homer into English, for which he wanted subscriptions; *'for, " he said, "he shall not begin to print until I have a thousand guineas for him." Thackeray says of the Dean's kindness — "I think 1 would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been be- holden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner. He insulted a man as he served him, made women cry, guests look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions into poor men's faces. No 1 the Dean was no Irishman — no Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a true heart." 145- Pope loved this irreligious clergy- man, this religious infidel -why, we cannnot un- derstand. "His eyes are azure as the Heavens and have a charming archness in them,'' Pope says. And yet this arch and azure-eyed person raged at all we hold dear. How sweetly he jokes about eating little children, "I have been assured," he writes, in his Modest Proposal, "by a very knowing American of my acc]uaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, ; iiU XI.] POPE AND SWIFT. ni a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled." The bh-hting frost of his wit played overall things that most of us hold sacred. No wonder that he lived a wretched life, and died raving mad. He knew death was coming, and he knew, too, that only three friends would grieve for him— and the truest of these was Pope. He says — "Poor Pope will grieve a month and Gay A week, and Arbiuhnot a day; St. John himself will scarce forbear To bite his pen and drop a tear; The rest will give a shrug and cry, 'Tis pity— but we all must die." Pope's translations of the Iliad and Odyssey made him a rich man; he gained from them JT^ooo-^ and as money was then worth twice its present value we may place his profits at one hundred thousand dollars at least. Strange as it may seem. Pope trans- lated Homer without knowing Greek, and with only a very rudimentary knowledge of Latin. He simply used former translations, put them into his own language, and he produced some noble passages. Put Pope's Homer is not Homer's Homer. The Odyssey was published in 1725, and then Pope wrote The Dunciad, a stinging satire on his enemies. As an exercise in the couplet, it is a marvellous work of art; it is invaluable, too, to the student of con- temporary history; but, as Taine says, "Seldom has so nvich talent been expended to produce so much weariness." Henceforth Pope mixed morality I »"'!"■ 138 ENCfJSir LITER A TURE. [chap. and personal reflections. During Icn years he wrote: Moral Essays, Essay on Ma.:., Imitations of Homer, Epistle to Dr. Arbut/inot, antl the Epilogue to the Satires. Pope excuses the sting of his satire by one more stinging — "You think this cruel ? Take this for a rule, No creature smarts as little as a fool." 146. Toward the end of his life this bitter poet grew gentler. Like the Spanish king, who when asked if he forgave his enemies, Pope might have answered, "Certainly — I have killed them all." He spent the last years at his pleasant villa at Twickenham ; and there he died, on May 30, 1744. In his last hour, he turned towards the God whom his father and mother had taught him to adore — for whose worship, he, in spite of wretched failings, had sacrificed much of the glory of the world. He fervently received the last sacraments. He was buried beside the parents he had so tenderly loved, and there he lies — the bitterness burned out, the malice gone, the talent left for admiration and regret — admiration for its intense brilliancy, and regret that it should have been so misused. There lies the most conspicuous figure of his time, a conqueror greater than Ccesar, a poet only lesser than the greatest; at last he goes back, like a heart-sick child — after all his intrigues, all his triumphs, all his heart-burnings, and his feverish vanities — to creep to his mother's side, even into the grave ! XI I. J THE AUaUSTAN AGE. '39 CHAPTER XII. . TH. Au,„s,an A^.-OU^er G.U„„Un an,, Br. M„son. loved the sunl.glu and the woods, who were not qu.te men, and not quite animals but who were harmless and pia^ful, and sometimes j^rotesqu Oliver Goldsmith had something of the f un in 1-s composition. He loved alf the sighrand — or nature; he loved to wander mon/the ra poor, to play the flute while they danced on east ^f- Tr- '"' '" ""^ ''^I'P'-' ^-ong 'h ieast aitincia forms nf IiTo t .i • , ^ lunns oi iiie. In this he ofTers astrik '7 '"T'' '° ^^°Pe -ho preceded him in hi of poettc descent from Dryden. P, ,pe, as you know loved the atmosphere of the assembly and he coffel: house-the gla.e of blue china was pleasanter to Ms stght than the a.ure of the sKy, and the'rustle of I Ld '' court-tram at a rout, or the trailing of a gentleman's cane over the stones of Pall Mall, sweeter than coun- ry sounds to his hearing But Goldsmith was gen-' ume; he had no love for the artificiality of his time Pope was born forty years before Golds.nith, and yet' when Goldsmith wen. to London, the manners Ld very little. 7 he tnghsh form of government ceased I40 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. I t to be what it had been — for William of Orange com- pleted the disintegration of the monarchy, begun by C'romwell — but English social life was not materially different from English life in the days of Pope. 148. The Manners of Goldsmith's Times. — People amused themselves very much, and at the same time their manners were more formal than ours are now. And yet, with all their formality, they were more coarse. The English did not be- come civilized until a later period than the Conti- nental peoples, and their manners were almost as coarse under the first Georges as they were under Elizabeth. No gentlewoman in our time could listen to the language of Queen Elizabeth without a blush; and we are told by a good authority, the Duchess of Feria, that Queen Mary, her sister, w^as the marvel of the Court because her speech was so pure — the king, Plenry VIII., not believing this possible until he had sent some one to test the truth of it ! Similarly, the license of speech permitted in the days of Pope and Swift, the elegant Addison, the pompous Johnson, and the crystalline Goldsmith, would have shocked any decent man in our time. And we may be grateful to the best of the English poets that they were purer than their age. The men who reflected the corruption of manners are dead to us; the poets who were pure, live. 149. No English writer will live longer in the hearts of men than Oliver Goldsmith, "Noll," as he was sometimes called, "Goldy," as the great Dr. Johnson liked to call him. If, as Thackeray says, lit ,.:*.. xri.j THE AUGUSTAN AGE. 141 Swift was English at heart, Goldsmith was thorough- \y Irish ; he had what the French call the "defects of his qualities. " He had the Celtic generosity, with the Celtic recklessness— he never refused to lend money when he had it, and he died owin- ten thousand dollars, which, by the way, was never paid. All beggars loved him and all borrowers clung to him ; he would find a home for the home- less, and give his last crust of bread to the hun-ry With a benediction. Reduced tc poverty one day' he would the next, when some friends came to him' buy an expensive velvet suit-he was particularly fond of plum color. He was constantly gettin- money, before he became an author, from his kind uncle Contarine, and spending it as rapidly and as foolishly as he got it. While at Leyden, in Hol- land, presumably completing his medical studies he was induced to play cards, after having made a resolution never to do so. He lost all his money and was obliged to borrow some. He was alone in a strange land with perhaps two guineas in his pocket. Leyden was rich in flower gardens crowd- ed with tulips, then as precious as orchids are now. He remembered that his uncle Contarine was fond of flowers, and he spent half his money for a high-priced bulb, to send to him. He had the fatal Irish objection to saying -No," and the lovely Irish virtue of generosity, which, however, in for- getting to be just to itself, is often unjust to others. 150. Oliver Goldsmith unlike Dean Swift.— Oliver Goldsmith, though of English descent, was 142 ENGLISH LITEKA TURE. [chap. more Irish than the Irish themselves. He camc(»f a race of clergymen of the Church of England, and bis father seems to have expected in a vague kind of way that he would become a clergyman, too. He must have been a queer little fellow. There is a story — which William Black, in his sketch of Gold- smith, discredits — showing that he was a very clever child. He was uncouth, very small, pitted with the small-pox. He was called "a stupid, heavy block- head," and perhaps he deserved that title! But the story runs that once when he was gambolling at a dancing party at his uncle's house, the fiddler, struck by the almost dwarfish look of the boy, cried out "i^sop, " and, quick as thought, the awkward boy replied — "Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, See -(Esop dancing and his monkey playing." Later in life Goldsmith had no power of repartee. The most brutal ignoramus, whose retort in society was nothing but a horse-laugh, could put him to shame. He was sensitive, and, like other sensitive people, he was anxious for the good opinion of those around him. Put a pen in his hand and he could talk as charmingly as the most brilliant conversation- alist of the salon of Madame de Rambouillet ; but, in society, he had only what the French call the elo- quence lie I'escalier — he thought of all the good things he might have said when the opportunity for saymg them was gone. 151. Goldsmith's work, like that of most authors, is autobiographical. One can discover very easily the XII.] THE AUGUSTAN AGE. 143 ! 8 ' '" ' ,'""■;•■ '^f Longfonl, on November ,0 i u,s"::: '''■\';'''^'- "™ >-'"f^ n-ch on foj moved to LISS..V, m the countv of Westmeith I. T • -y.sreco,^..eat,,eAti.un;or..T,:rel^^ WoO. Macaulay protests against this iilentificition eh,sto,..„ presumes that no smiling .Wsh^-Tg smith idealized Lissov h ,f th ^'^^^^^^^''' ^old- L , . ^i^isu), D.it there can be no Hr.i,K»^ that this beloved nlacp «-.,« .K • ? "^^ •>r , piace was the orio-ina of AnKurr. He was the butt of his companions ; he was not strong enough to answer their blows with blows- he was not clever enough to retaliate with his tongue His life at home must have been cheerful, for no man who had not a cheerful home could have d such an interior as that of the Vicar's house ergyman in the fYcar of Wakefield was drawn The 144 AAov /s/f 1. 1 /'/:ka ri ^ni-.. (< IIAI- lit tin his r.uluM" ;i siiuj>lo, kiiul-lKMitcd. }.!;(muI(> old man, ready l<> saciifuo cvoryllnnj; lor his children, and the blundorinji Mosos liad sonic of ihc (inalitic.s K^{ ( loKlsnrlili himself. A clergyman with forty ponnds a year, even when money was worth twice what it is now, was not rich, (loldsmith's father hail somewhat more than this at l.issov : hut he was far from i)eing rich, and, when he di(>d. he left almost nothing. Oliver had been sent t»> Trinity College. Ho went as a sizar — tliat is. he was given his education on condition of per- forming certain menial duties, I!e did not like this ; lu> ct)mplained that he luul to sleep in a garret ; and on a window pane in this garret his name may still be seen. Mis \incle trieil to console him with the informa- tion that he had been a si/ar in his time ; some of the most eminent men in (Ireat I^ritain had earned their education in this way. if he could pass tluMugh Trinity College with credit, his success, pro- videil he should use ordinary industry and prudence, was assured. Nothing was required of him, excej^t that he slunild endure certain minor hardships and, in return, receive the best equipment his country could give him. 153. Goldsmith's Weakness a Lesson to Youth. — But Goldsmith, whose genius might have conquered all difl'iculties, refused to conquer him- self. This was his fatal misfortune. Had he had the prudence and perseverance of Pope, he might have lived comfortably, died at least serenely, and X.l.] rill: AmusrAx ack. '45 " '■"'", «"■•'"■'■ '■^"'•■'"■'•^ -r Ills .-n.i.K , , „,. '"'• ';'■-■'" »^l^ I'Hlr I.. l,i,n, „„|,„,,„„„ .:v,.,v- '"":•'"■ I< l"-N'«n.,., I,n„..st „„ „„. „s, •,', ;;:"'!-- I-'- Inn,. ,.,„„ ,, ,„, ,,,, ,,„ ,,,_, "'l""-'l ^. ... ,l„. ;,„,.„, uvcu-one » ■ . .. s,,„. „, i,is love M .„„i,,, :,' ""'"''"'";'' in.l. 1,0 lu,l l..:u„,.,| u,..-u, tn.ly; a„,l. la,,.,- „,l,|,,|„ „,,,,,„, .,,l,„,,^,, -us „. s.c.acl,iy i„cruas„„ ,,,,,„, „„, ,,,„|,^ ';,,. I ,c,„„ „,,,,,, as u:,s always ,l,e case «„!,,, |„ secnK.., ,., ,,.,,,, i„,,,i„.,^. ^^ ^^^^ m. •" " .t was Konc. Ho .Ictenni,,.,.,!,, st„ p at , l^est house ,„ a villago which ho ontercl is ni^h camo„n; ho in,|uiro,l r„r iho i„„ i,, a ,n.,st con- dcscond„,s way, an,l a waff son. h„n ,„ ,|,o snuhe's bouse I he s,|uire humored ,ho joke, and ,|,e youthful sponclthrilt, thinking of the vast resources ofthegutnea still unspent in his pocket, ordered the servants about ,n a mighty manner and patron- 146 ENGLISH LITERATURE, [chap. izingly asked the host and his wife to have a bottle of wine with him. On this episixle he based liis charm inp^ comedy. .S7/(' Si(n>/>s to Cofu/uer. Tony F.umpkin, tJJe p^ood-natured and uncouth country boy, in this comedy — or pcrliaj)s we may call it, as we call Shaksjiere's Taming of Ihe Shrew, a farce — is too stupid to be a ])icture of (ioldsmith himself, but Tony has some of Noll's propensities highly develojicd. This is one of the most delight- ful comedies ever written, in any language. It has the fine humor ctf IMolicre and a vivacity of diction that is more French than English. In fact, in Goldsmith's works the Celtic element in the English language rcac' its highest point. He preferrcv. .uieness to work, and a happy-go- lucky existence in an Irish village to the unknown opportunities of the great world. His relatives more than hinted that he oughl. to choose a profession. He tried to enter the Knglisli Church, which at this time was a refuge for many singular people, as one may see by perusing the various chronicles of the time and Thackeray's Virf^inians. It seems that Goldsmith, with his usual fondness for gay attire, clothed himself in scarlet, and the Bishop of Elphin would not permit him to be examined. He became a tutor, through the influence of the long-suffermg uncle Contarine ; he started, bedewed with the tears of his mother and no doubt followed by the thanks- givings of all his other relatives, to Cork, to embark for America. But he spent his money and came back, telling a story of having been robbed — a story ...L. XII.] THE AUGUSTA.V AGE. 147 py-go- pown more ssion. this US one f the that iltire, Iphin came ermg tears anks- nbark came story so improbable, that nobody, except his mother and uncle Contarine, could have been foolish enough to believe it. The kind uncle gave him fifty guineas more and he started for Dublin, to study law. He was back again, penniless, in a short time. Uncle Contarine gave him another chance ; he was sent to Kdinburgh, to study medicine, and he went away, never to return to Ireland again. But in his dreams he was often there ; when he wrote his immortal poem, The Deserted Village, her greenness was always before his eyes ; all the flaming tulips of Holland, all the heavy-headed roses of PVance, all the exotics of London, were as nothing to him compared with the dew-besprent shamrocks of his native fields. At the Italian Opera, when a great singer warbled — and Goldsmith was an intelligent amateur of music — he closed his eyes and went back to Lissoy, longing in his heart for the old, familiar airs. The youth in search of fort- une did not remain long in Edinburgh, Of course he wanted more money that he might pursue his studies in medicine on the Continent, where there were great professors. He went to Holland, and drew money from the credulous uncle Contarine, until at last even his almost exhaustless patience ceased to be a virtue. 154. From 1755 to 1756, he travelled in Europe, and wrote elaborate letters to his uncle Contarine — letters which are not too refined to omit a reference to the financial needs of the author. How he travelled nobody knows. There is a rumor 148 ENGLISH LITEKATUKE, [chap. that he played the flute to admirinjj peasants and at the doors of convents, but as this lias a tinge of ro- mance, it was probably invented by himself; Will- iam Black says that he begged his way — at any rate, he returned with a doctor's degree and nothing else to speak of. 155. He still Idles. — A cloud covered (]old- smith at this period. There was no nu)re money from uncle Contarine. lie had no friends in Lon- don : his pitted and ugly face was against him ; his Lissoy brogue was against him ; he did not know which way to turn ; he seemed to have failed utterly and thrr^ugh his own fault. Still, he was cheerful and generous, even with his crusts. He found a place as tutor in a school, and, later, as a hack writer for a publisher called (iriflitlis. lie quar- relled with Grifliths; and we find him at the age of thirty, already in debt for a new suit of clothes, and with no place among the world's workers. 156. His first literary work was an attack on the critics, in the Emjidry into ihc Present Slate 0/ Polite Learning in Europe ; his second, a magazine called The Bee, to which he was the sole contribu- tor. " There is not," he said, in his first short essay in this periodical, '* perhaps a more whimsically dismal figure in Nature than a man of real moelcsly, who assumes an air of impudence, who, while his heart beats with anxiety, studies ease and aftects good humor." Goldsmith was this "whimsically dismal " creature at this time ; but ihoso who under- stood him found his subtle Irish humor de'ightful in XII.] THE AUGUSTAN AGE. 149 conversation. Among them was that young .Miss Horneck, whom he christened, on her marriage by the pretty name of the - Jessamy Bride." His let'ters supposed to be written by an observing Chinese under the title of the CiUzcn 0/ the IVorA/ camo next' Ihey are very keen, very clear, but without bitter" ness. What a contrast they offer to the cynical satire of I ope s hits at folly ! U he says that the women of the city wore patches all over their faces, except on the tips of their noses, or makes fun of the elderly lady who api)ears in the Park dressed as a girl of sixteen, there is no jeer or sneer at womanhood in his humor. His heart was always gentle ; he never forgot, like Swift, that he had a mother ; he never wrote of women as if they were heartless puppets, like Pope ; he was, as Sir Walter Scott says, alway^ on the side of virtue. 157. Johnson's Kindness.-Admirers of talent begin to una him out, and among them is autocra- tic pompous, kind-hearted, pious, generous Dr Johnson-the great literary Tsar of his time. U you want to know in what reverence he was held, you will find it reflected in the amazement of Becky Sharps school-mistress when that too-clever youn^ lady throws the august Doctor's dictionary out of the carriage window, in the first chapter of Vani/y Fair and ivliss Jemima Pinkerton almost faims with horror. To be sought out by this great man, who was in Goldsmith's time what Addison had been in lopes, was a marvellous honor. And (ioldsmith tnough a greater genius than Johnson, was always ISO ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. ! f I V grateful for it. We are told by Boswell, the author of the finest biography in the Knglish language, that Goldsmith was envious of Johnson, when in fact simple, honest, loyal Oliver was incapable of envy. He may have been irritated by the constant, fulsome praise of the author of Rasse/as which thickened the air around him, as if a bottle of musk had to be broken whenever he opened his mouth ; and it is certain that Boswell the admirer and Johnson the dictator, with their coterie of flatterers, must have been sufficiently exasperating to warrant occasional expressions of impatience from (^uldsmith. He never tore and rent his friend, as Pope tore and rent Addison, with the crudest stabs of satire in our language. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and other great men became his friends. For a time, Goldsmith disappeared from among them. He had run into debt for fine clothes and other things — he acknowledged that his princi- pal objection to becoming a clergyman was because he could not wear colored clothes — and one day Dr. Johnson received a message to the effect that he was in danger of arrest for a debt to his landlady. John- son sent him a guinea, and followed it as quickly as he could ; he found that Goldsmith had already changed it, for there was a bottle of IMadeira, with a glass, before him. Johnson corked the bottle, and Goldsmith told him that he was much in debt for rent, but that he had an unpublished novel in his desk. Johnson looked at the IMS., saw that it had merit, and went to a bookseller and sold it for thirty XII.] THE AUGUSTAN- AGE. 151 pounds. This novel, sold to pay Goldsmith's rent and to keep him out of prison, was the famous Vicar 0/ Wakefield. Later, its proceeds would have paid Goldsmith's rent imndrcds of times over. 158. In 1764 there were no English Poets. —Mr. Stedman tells us that we are in the twilicrht of the poets now, but in that year, tliere was in En^'-land an entire eclipse of the poets. Suddenly there ap- peared a poem that had all Pope's art and none of ins artificiality, all his consummate polish, with more depth of thought and sincerity than he had ever had. But perhaps Goldsmith's style would have been impossible, if Pope had not purified the expres- sion of English verse for him as Dryden purified it ior Pope. The Traveller took England by storm. Goldsmith had written it over and over again chas- tening and improving each epithet until it was as clear as crystal and as precise as a needle to the ma- net. He had wrought, not for money this time, but for fame-and he got both. The Traveller is a series of lovely pictures, shown, like a panorama to the sound of a series of as lovely melodies. Macau- lay admires very much the plot and the philosophy o this poem, while he declares that Goldsmith's plots were generally bad. The value of The Travel- ler lies not in the fiible or in the philosophy; the re- flections of the English tourist, who from a crag in the Alps looks down on the countries beneath, have no particular interest; we do not care much about him or his conclusion that, in spite of circumstances our happiness depends on the regulation of our 152 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. minds, but we do care for the succession of pictures that passes before us, and for the music of verses which are as melodious as the English language has ever produced. The success of The Traveller made TJie Vicar oj Wakefield successful. A new poetic star had arisen, announced by the infallible authority, Dr. Johnson, as the greatest since Pope, and a novel by this para- gon must be in the hands of every person of taste. The fashionable ladies wept over the trials of the Vicar and laughed at poor INIoscs and the specta- cles, while their hair was powdered for the assembly; in the town of Bath, the most modish of resorts for health, the beaux and belles talked over it as they drank the waters in the pump room. Books were coming into fashion again, but cards were not going out. Everybody gambled ; Goldsmith, in his earlier days, had gambled, too; and even the good Dr. Johnson regretted that he was ignorant of cards. We can imagine this good Dr. Johnson, in a laced waistcoat with certain grease spots on it, for he was not as careful as he might have been, discussing the beauties of his friend's poem to a chosen circle, at some great lady's feast. Goldsmith seldom went to such feasts, for he had an awe of ladies attired in all their splendor. But Johnson occasionally condescended to take tea — a dozen dishes or so, our ancestors never spoke of cups — with Lady Betty Modish or some other personage of the grand world. And then the good Doctor enjoyed himself, for he was fond of eating, and we may be Xll.] THE AUGUSTAN AGE. 153 «ro that, ,f he helped himself to a dozen dishes of ea, he d,d not spare more solid viands. And al the wh, e he talked in his sonorous way, showing a deep Christian reverence for Christian things until he great Lady fears that he will one day dieaPapk ■ke the late Mr. Pope. But the Doctor shakes'h ; hea , though he believes in making satisfaction fo sm even ,n th,s world, and there is a story that he .tood for a long time bare-headed in the rafn before a shop ,n h,s native place for some disobedient or unfihal act committed against his parents rnrTn ■ ^'"''""■^ of Manners—The good Doc- tor .s dmmg at three o'clock with the great Ladv whose ha,r is magnificently be-ribboned and Jowdtl ed, and towers hi<'h md hnr r,„ r • V"^'^^^' verllower, h, ik' '"^'^ ?"" " of satm, with sil- wkh rr ^ '^'' f^^"""'^^^' '^^ '»P^ 'he table es b ;^ .''^'■""-t ";''" ^"^P"^-"^ and'shepher ! esses by Wattean; she is dressed, not because th« great Doctor is there, but because she is goin" to sil ■n a box at the theatre after dinner, and see Dr" Gold sm„ s new play, T>,e Go,n,.Xan.re,l Man.-ioX Goldsmuh has been so emboldened bv the success of has .ntd to conquer the stage. There is a youns lady of , e court, too, in less elaborate dress'^han he fnend s, w,th a lower head-gear, who hopes tha" Mr. GoKlsm.ths play will not be ,00 funnv. %he (s of the op,n,on that one ought to cry at a comedy and that laughter ,s vulgar, besides, she says 'tis the fashton to cry at the theatre-did she he se ^o ' i 154 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. I > spoil a cherry-colored satin gown with her tears the other night at the comedy oS. False Delicacy ^ But the Doctor does not answer because his mouth is full. Spread before these three people are a sir- loin of beef, a shoulder of veal, and a tongue, and some fish, and claret, and Burgundy and cider. Aftor this course will come orange and almond pudding, and heavy fritters — which the great and fashionable lady will help with her hands as is the custom, not disdaining to lick the grease from her fingers in a gleeful way which causes the amiable Doctor to smile. A little later soup, pork puddings, and roast goose will be served ; but my lady will refuse them, saying that she has no appetite, as she has taken a tankard of ale and some stewed chicken about half an hour ago. The young lady tells how a very pleasant young gentleman of her acquaintance hired three fiddlers and gave her and her sister a dance on the previous evening, and how he took each in turn out on the waxed floor of her father's oak-panelled hall, and how they tripped stately figures to the queer old tunes of Malbrook s'cn va-t-en en Guerre and Water Parted She tells, too, how the young gentleman was met by footpads on his way home and his purse and beautifully carved dress sword taken, but ti.'^'- no harm was done him. And the great lady telly a pleasant joke as to how some young bloods of her acquaintance agreed to make an old man of their acquaintance drunk, and how well they succeeded in bringing his gray hairs to shame, and how there XII.] THE AUGUSTAK AGE. '55 n to be a hanging soon to which all the gay of the town wi i go And the groat Doctor is L much occupied with the succulent goose to take notice of this fashionable rattle. After dinner, which is washed down by much tea-at thirty sliillings a pound, -and claL and Burg indy the great ladys sedan chair appears for a yellow fog makes the city dark. The link-bov. come, bearing sullen-looking torches and InH her head, in order to enter" the co'velie The "f borne away to witness, after a chat wlh a We„; 27,6 Good-Naiured Man proved to be too funnv tied to'r °' '".^ '°^^"- ^"^ P'^^-Soers atr •'low "and ' ''TT'"' '°"^'"^^' P-nounced it low, and no doubt our great lady was of that Garr:'Th".f ' T 'T .'"^ -"'"-'i^'"ed Coven Oarden Theatre, beside her husband whose wig was very large, whose muff of fox-skin was almost a large, and whose snuff-box glittered with brilliant! smi'thT',"" "^t^"'- J^""''^>' ^9. '768, when Go d! smith had reached the age of forty. He was at the play m a new wig and a suit of "purple bloom satin gram, with garter blue silk breeches " He r^l tirothfr'°V°V'' t""'' ""' ^^''^"'" "'■^ -■' ad Irn H r '' "■'* ^'"^ ='"'' g°''J buttons" were ever paid for we are not sure. Goldsmith found t easy to give, but hard to pav >6o. Goldsmith a Favorite.-He was over- htt:l:f"^'''^''°"- I'-^beadmittedlt he assumed airs at times, but they were innocent \\^ 156 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. assumptions. He once said to liis friend Beauclerc, that, " allliough he was a doctor, he never prescribed for anybody but a few friends." "It would be better," Beauclerc said, ** to prescribe for your ene- mies." Johnson, who thundered speeches on all around him, as the giant Antojus might have thund- ered at the pygmies, was very gentle to "Goldy," and Boswell preserves several speeches, in which Goldsmith, though a poor talker, had the best of the argument. One is the celebrated hit at Dr. Johnson's pompous language. Goldsmith was tell- ing the story of the petition of the little fishes to Jupiter. He saw that Johnson was laughing. "Why, Dr. Johnson," he said, "this is not so easy as you seem to think ; for, if you were to make little fishes speak, they would talk like Whales." Dr. Johnson, who, as you may have guessed, was fond of eating, remarked that kidneys were "pretty little things," but that one may eat \ great many of them without being satisfied^ "Yes," said Gold- smith, "but how many of them would reach to the moon ?" The autocrat does not know. "Why, one, sir, if it were long enough." Johnson, for once, was conquered. "Well, sir," he said, "I have deserved it ; I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question." Johnson, the big-hearted, the intolerant, the in- tolerable, was always loyal to Goldsmith, though lie sometimes pounced on him in conversation. "Whether, indeed, we take Goldsmith as a poet, a comic- writer, or an historian," he said, emphati- ""•J TJIE AUGUSTAN AGE. ,57 cally "he stands /^/.^to,." jv^t,,, ^ their charming stvlf^ t ,] u- r, ' ^^^^^P^ lor ^:'/-., they we e vn>^-. r ' ^"'""' '^^'"-""''^ ' i"cy were written for morif^r v.. ^ more unfitted to write sueh a booUh.n r .n" ''u 77,^ 'T // . "luney at the present valiip forty pounds a jear." His heart, he sa'i "Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain And drags a. each remove a lengtheni^VcTain" "^ "'''^'' ^ ^^^se quantity of Niagara- i6r. Goldsmith's next comedv wa«: " qi. Stoops to Connii*>r" ^""leay was She f WW v^onquer — a p ay whirh t^ ^^ even more fresh and popular th.n T ■ ^ '' produced. To read k wi i r '" '' ''^' ^''' 'ead It with perfect enjoyment, one 158 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. ought to have Harper's edition with the wonderful illustrations by Abbey. The fashiuniibiie pC()j)le of the town, who were coarse enough in their common speech and conduct, found this comedy too funny, after the mawkish sentimentality they were accus- tomed to. But it was too good not to succeed, and succeed it did. The most pathetic of all the poems of the eight- eenth century, is The Deserted VilUige. It was the cry of an exile ; the plaint of an Irish thrush pent in by dusty bars. How poor "Goldy, " wearied of work and of debt, longed for *' The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade." Oh, for a sight of the clear stream, where the water cresses grew ! Oh, for the homely sights and sounds 1 Like Wordsworth, in The Prelude, Gold- smith goes back to the days of his boyhood, and yearns to get close to Nature again. Wordsworth and Coleridge, the critics say, were the first English poets to unite the Jove of man and of nature in their poems, — to send away the false shepherds that, in classic guise, did duty for common English folk, to send their honest yoeman tramping through real fields and not through theatrical flowery meads, carry- ing myrtle and Cyprus. But this honor belongs to Goldsmith. As Pope was his pioneer in polished technique, he was Wordsworth's in his sympathy for man and nature. IMoreover, he is not condescending as Wordsworth is when he treats the life of the com- mon people, nor is he self-conscious. The opening XII.] THE AUGUSTAN AGE. 159 their Lt, in |lk, to real :arry- Igs to lished ly for iding Icom- ming lines, liackncyed though tlicy are, will never grow The most graceful, the most really elegant of all the eighteenth-century writers was Oliver Goldsmith. He could not say, "No." This was tlie principal fiiult of one of the most generous, most kindly humorous and sympathetic writers that ever existetl. He died in 1774, unhappy, overwhelmed with debts, and despondent. 162. The Drama. Restoration to Gold- smith. — The English Drama began to decay after the death of Shaksj)ere. Puritanism killed it for a time; and when it arose on the restoration of Charles H. to the throne, it became a vehicle of coarseness and licen- tiousness. Actresses played for the first dme in the theatres. Hitherto, the woman's parts had been taken by boys. The playwriters stole from the French of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, all but their morality. It is remarkable that, at this period, the French stage was moral, while the English was unspeakably bad. William Wycherley (1640 — 171 5) made clever, but licentious plays. William Congreve (1670 — 1729), Sir John Vanburgh (1666 — 1726), and George Farquhar (1678 — 1707), were brilliant, sparkling, and grossly immoral. Dryden's comedies unhappily deserve the regret he expresses for the same fault. The Duke of Buckingham ridiculed the heroic manner of his great epic-play, The Siege 0/ Granada, in a burlesque called T/ic Rehearsal. Nat Lee (1654-90) wrote the Rival Queens, a tragedy of some merit ; Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved and i6o ENGUSIf I.rrERATURE, [chap. The Orphans are sometimes played, and Thomas Soulliern's Faial Miirrihe worst of the men. Sir Richard Steele: wrote The lAt'ng Lover, a sentimental piece with a moral; Addison proiluced his tiresome Gilo ; Nicholas Rowe wrote cleanly, but his heroic plays are forgotten. The Bc^^nr's Opera, 172.S, by Gray, was the prototype c>{ Pinafore ami The Mikado. Colley Gibber (time of George II.), Fielding, Foote, and Garrick, wrote light and amusing plays. Gold- smith's She Sloops to Conquer and The Good-natured Man, and Sheridan's Riiui/s and School /or Scandid deservedly hold the stage still. Xill.J KOBERT BURX^ ro £AV ll'AV.VO. l6i CMAPTKR Kill The Poetry of the Nineteenth Century.- Kof.rt Burns yyonisworth, Mangan, Aubrey De Vere. i^>3. The New Age.-" With the new a-e " says Mr. J.,hn Dennis, an acute and svmpaliretic critic "arose a fresii sprin-iime of poetry, to be fol- lowed by a lovely summer. It was as if every bush was bursting into blossom, everv bird into son^ every fiower in meadow and wood opening its eyes in the sunshine." ^ ^ 164. Robert Burns (1759-96) was the earhest of the poets of this " new age." iJc was a Scotch farmer, like his father, and he followed the plough for a living. He was not uneducated; he liad ac- quired a little Latin, some French, and a good knowledge of English Grammar. His first book of poems, Kilmarnock, was received with appreciation Burns though living until he was twenty-three the lile of a Scotch peasant, had been educated by the inHuences of his time. He could read the same bc)oks read by the most cultivated man in London He was one of the first wriiers to show the world that the great writer need not necessarilv be bred in a college. His reputation rests chiefly on his son-s which will live side by side with those of his melo- dious contemporary, 1 nomas Moore. Burns has been 162 ENGLISH LITERA TURK. [chap. accused of irreligion ; he does not scoff at religion, but only at the hypocritical professors of it. All of his poemr are not moral ; his life, in truth, was ruined by ungovernable passions which he might have controlled. His songs Auld Lang Sv?ic, John Anderson My Jo, A Red, Red Rose, A Mans a Man for a That, and O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast, are sung in all civilized countries. His best poems are is the Scottish dialect. Ta?n O' Shanter, a long poem, is in this dialect ; the exquisite Cotter s Saturday Night is not. He is justly placed among the greater poets of Europe. In A Bard's Epitaph, he sadly describes himself — " Is there a man .«.,v//„,,^. ..The Ettrick Shepherd " (lyyo-,"' O wrote m Queens Wake, in which occur'his we 1 est poem, Benny Kilmeny. Hos<; was J .h He left Selk.rksh.re. in Scotland, and went to Kdin" I urgh ; he was one of the projectors oi Blackwoects Magazu,e. U,s poems are tender and fanciful • sometimes childish and extravagant "' ' bom'hWM°'"^' Campbell (.777-844) was born .n Uasgow ; he published The Pleasure, of Hoe,, „,e age of twenty-one. It was modelled on 7 he Pleasures 0/ Memory, by Samuel Rogers (,763 -■855). Ih>s poem and OConnorS Child are his bes long poems, although some critics put Gertrude 0/ n,r;„„,^ above the first. His ballads, //o/u-n/in. Jen, //.., Bailie of Ihe Bailie, ang. John Keats (1 793- 182.) is another poet of the poets His life was sad and short. Deep y sensutve, his health, never very good, was shattered by the ferocous attacks of the critics on A,u/,.„,^ou These savage reviews appeared in the Quarjy Re- vav, Apnl, r8t8, and in ^laciu^oodS 3/,^.,, 1 66 ENGLISH LIT ERA TURE. [chap. August, 1818. His Ode to a A^i}:;hlwgiilc 2in(\ To a Grecian Urn should be read with Shelley's Ode to the Skylark. Keats wrote an almost perfect sonnet, On Reading Chapman's Hoiner. Endymion begins with the famous lines : v\ " A thinp of beauty is a joy forever : Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness." Although not a classical scholar, Keats expressed in Endymion the Greek spirit more sympathetically than any other English poet. The Eve 0/ St. Agnes and 'The Pot 0/ Basil are full of rich and poetical expressions. Keats does not inspire or ennoble ; He simply satisfies a taste for beauty. He is not like a trumpet, calling to high actions ; he is like a violin, soft, sweet, and rich in melody. Keats died at the age of twenty-six, in 1821. Six years later, the first book written by one of the greatest of the poets of this century appeared ; and an era, which counts among its literary giants, Tennyson, A'ubrey de Vere, and BrowninL,, began. 170. Lord Byron (born Jan. 22, 1788, died April 19, 1824) was a remarkable man and a poet of a high order. George Gordon, Lord Byron, pro- duced an enormous amount of really good poetry in a short life-time. Like Pope, Byron was a cripple ; he was what is called "club-footed"; and this, al- though he was one of the handsomest men of his time, helped to make him bitter. He became a man of fashion, while remaining a man of geuius. XIII.] ROBERT BURNS TO BROWNING. 1 6/ died )oet of 1, pro- letry in lipple ; lis, al- pf his la mafli euius. From his boyhood, he was artificial and seemingly insincere ; but at heart he was sincere enough. He needed only good influences to make him great. Of all English poets, he is most remarkable for versatil- ity with strength, and artifice with fire. In spite of the immorality o{ Don Juan, he showed an earnest desire for higher things at times. And we can not help suspecting that if his closest friend, Tom Moore, had been a better Catholic, Bvron would have been a better man. There is evidence hinting at this in Byron's letters. Pope and Byron were not unHke in temperament ; but Byron, while not as correct as Pope, was the greater poet. He could be as stinging in his satire as the older man and as malicious. At the age of seventeen, Byron published his Hours of Idleness. It was ferociously mangled by the blunt tomahawk of the Edmhurgh Review. His reply to this, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, gave him reputation ; but he left England and began Childe Harold. On his return to England, in 1812, he published the first two cantos; '*he awoke and found himself famous." Childe Harold more than repeated the successes made by Goldsmith's Traveller. The town went wild about it. It was overrated at the time, as it is underrated now. The best parts of it are the descrip- tion of nature — those of the thunderstorm and the ocean being really sublime. In Beppo, he struck a new vein, that of comedy ; and a new form of verse, which he borrowed from the Italian. His serious poems, The Giaour, Bride of Abydos, Mazeppa, The Corsair, Lara, and Parisina, are artificial, insincere, 1 68 ENGLISH LITERATURE, [chap. and gloomy. His heroes are grand, wicrd, wicked creatures, wlio fancy they are heroic when ihey are only sclfi.sh. Socially he pretended to bean aristocrat, but at heart, he was a democrat ; he gave up his life for the liberties of (jircece, and made it known in Europe that it was possible for a British lord to sympathize with the cause of the people. In 1815 he was mar- ried. In 1 8 16, having separated from his wife, he left England, never to go back. After a residence in Switzerland, he went to Venice. Italy and Greece were the lands of his heart, though he was an Eng. lishman by birth. His most important poems are the Siege of Corinth, Hcbrciv Melodies, ProT?ielhcus, Prisoner of C/iil/on, Man/rcJ, Prophecy 0/ Dante, llic Vision of Judfrvicnt, Lament 0/ Tasso, Werner, The Deformed Transformed, and The Ishind. His dramas contain fine passages. Cain and Heai'en and Earth \\q c-x\\q(\ "mysteries," in imita- tion of the miracle plays of the middle ages. They were held to be blasphemous by the public when they first appeared. Marino Faliero, The Two Foscari, and Sardanapalus are dramas of unequal value, though they contain beautiful passages. Byron died of fever, at the age of thirty-six, when helping the Greeks to gain liberty. Goethe admired him and in- troduced him as a ty{)ical poet into Faust ; he was great and little at the same time; had he been true to his better nature, he would have left no regrets for us when we enjoy the fervor of his Isles of Greece or the organ-music of his address to the Ocean, or those exquisite lines beginning, "Know you the [chap. , wicked ^^ are only :)crat, but s life for 1 Kurope mpatliize \'as mar- wife, he dence in Greece an Kng. cms are 'ueihciis, ' Dauie, Wi enter. in and imita- They en they ^oscan\ value, )n died ng the ind in- le was n true ets for ^ece or m, or u the XHi.] A^OBE/^T BUJ^NS TO BROWNING. 169 Land where the cypress and myrtle," which he para- I)hrased from Goethe. Byron was the first Knglish poet, except Aloore, to gain a universal reputation 171. Sift Walter Scott (born in Edinburgh 1771; died at Abbotsford, 1832) holds a high place in poetical literature; but his best work is found in his novels. Scott took to j.rose, when the meteoric light of Byron arose. Before that time, his romances in verse, his lyrics and ballads had made him famous He was the first writer of the romantic school His spirit loved the atmosphere of the Middle Ages- he revelled in tournaments, pageants and the clash of '-irms. It IS easy to believe that some of his most stirring poems were composed on horseback, for they h^we the motion of the gallop in their rhythm and rhyme. Walter Scott began life as a lawyer, follow- ing his father's profession; but he dropped it for Hterature, publishing in 1799 a translation of Goethe s romantic poem, Gotz vo?i Ikrlichw^c7t He V^^^^^^'\ The Tmv of the Last Minstrel 180s Mar- nnon 1808, The Lady 0/ the Lake, 1810, Don Rod- erick, 181 r, Tnermain and Rokeh, 1S13. The Lord o/the Ls/es, 181 5, and ILaro/d the Dauntless 1817 were printed after his first successful novel, WaverAy appeared. A few minor poems, including the Fare- wellto the Muse (1822), ended his poetical works We have to regret that this noble-natured man, whose genms was so virile and sincere, should have through ignorance of Catholic practices, disfig^ ured Marmion with the absurd e{)isodc of the buried nun. The inlluence that made Sir Walter \ I 170 ENGLlSlI LITER A TURF. [chap. the poet of romance came from Goethe and the Ger- mans rather than from the Celtic influence. Like the North, he was "tender and true." His life and works were those of a manly man — cliasle, noble, honest. 172. William Wordsworth, born April 7, 1770, in the Cumberland IJisj^hlands, in luigiand, left a great mass of beautiful poetry and a few common- place verses. Wordsworth will never be a popular poet until the great crowd of the people learn to value thought rather than sentiment. Like ALllon, Wordsworth accepted his mission to write and was consciously a poet. He believed that he was a teacher, and his duties were summed up in these noble words: **To console the afflicted; io add sutu shine to daylight by makifig the happy happier ; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to thifik, ajid feel, and therefore to become more securely virtuous." Wordsworth loved nature ; he studied the sky, the lakes, the woods, the fields, as closely and with as much love as the child studies the face of its mother. Thomson, the author of "The Seasons," and Burns and Gray and Cowpcr had this great love for nature, too ; but not in the degree possessed by William Wordsworth. The French Revolution was an outbreak of haired — a reign of terror and a rain of blood ; it was as well the sundering of artificial forms which had begun to rule too much the life of men, Wordsworth saw only the good done by this upheaval. He was the first con- scious poet of the common people. Up to his time, 1: ^ x,n.] j^oBEA'T nuj^.vs ro Hi^owxnva. ,7, readers of poetry seemed I. think tl.at there w.s no beauty m the lives of the poor Wordsworth had a different opinion; he saw that V 11 by the peasants hearth as in the palace of the Prmce, H,s early poems, inspire.l by his belief in h.s m,ss,on as a teacher, were received with deri- s.on. The storm of ridicule that killed Keats o„lv eemed to make Wordsworth stronger. -. H chi cd for Z„,„ Grayr Mr. R. W. Church says > t L mtserable mother by the nor„: for '.he de ol te maniac nursiiff her infant .i,„ ■ '"^■^°""e give to *Loar and r , , """ ^"^ "^'^^ "« 6 >- lu Loar and Cordelia or • to the Harl, c.^,,„ the line of Thebes. ' "f "°"" "^ Wordsworth, having taken his degree at Cam '>ndge, went to France full of „„,i • ^' Upv.^i,.,- . "' enthusiasm for the Kevo ution. Its horrors drove him home ajn He changed his political opinions and ceased Tn apologize for the furies of murder and i eli. on n 1793 he published hi, first vol„™„ " ""^"S'""- In •798 appeared the fir tvolu" T/° Z"/";';",' " which Coleridge contribut d^.S/i^^T ° Coleridge and he went tn r ^rarmer. lived for some timea C ^'"'"^' '"""'"'^' f^^ -ifter hi. '"^"™= at Grasmere with his sister poets. His principal philosophical poems are 'Z Pre,u,e (,805) in which he shows thcMvorkinTof ht *Shaksperes "King Lear." f Sophocles. 172 ENGLIsn LITERATURE. [chap. own mind, and The Excursion (1814), He wrote many sonnets, inspired by passing events. "Scorn not the sonnet" and "The world is too much with us" are among the best sonnets in the English lan- guage. The latter is merely the expression of a mood, and Wordsworth did not intend it to be taken in an unchristian sense. His famous lines to the IMcssed Virgin, " Our tainted nature's solitary boast," would alone make us love this great poet, if he had n(jt a hundred other claims to our affection. His words, like Shakspere's, have become part of our language. How many times have these lines from the Ode to Immortality been quoted: *' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting. And conieih from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we cOtne From God, who is our home." ( ( Lucy" and "Lucy Gray" arc household poems* so, also, arc "The Sea Shell" and "She was a Phan- tom of Delight," in which are the well-known lines: " A perfect woman, nobly planned. To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light." Everybody knows, or ought to know, the sonnet, "Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room." oven l,a., passages tl.at seem .Inu, r ,■ .'"'^''^■^l"-'^'-- "" ears; l,u, Worclswortl, „ M ' '" """'- apprec-atcd as years ITt , ""'" '■""' '""^e and more to love L'i r r'"' '^'"" '"'- Pressc. in noble Ian" 'a.! W ,"^' "', "■""«'" -- English peasant wlfa ■Iviillo if ,7"''."''' '""-'- ^'<.^/«. has .one for his ^Z^ZX'^^ ''\ tliat coarse clothes and hard hl>or T '"^ in heart the riW, and the p o, , l ^- ", ''P'"""-" Mount, Aprils, ,S-o n , ''"•■'' "' J^J'''"''' a drana ia ..Tic H I ","'>' ^"^'"'Pt to «,ito failure nl>\L?:T ^''''^- " '^^'^ a Ills Utle to Immortnlit,' " ; S-.est lyrics in the i.:„,lir:2,„;»'-''^ '•'<-■ .reatpoct:"sir;:::rr:\h';^^ ^xiuMiip antl admiration of \Vorrl«ur^r.K Aubrey de V^rn'o i- i >^ ouisworth. Sir -a^ed.:, .L :;;i, '2-^ /-::--■" ^- ..is nificent plays written i„ , '. ..^ .""^ """ .'^^;«- '"^f'- nets of Sir A plays written in modern times ubrcy de Vcre T lie Son- Wordsworth as the England, the eldest were warmly praised by title; therefo most perfect of our a«-e son of a baronet in! '^ Sir Stephen de \ his admirable transl present baronet. Aubrey de"\ ations from If In 'erits the t-'re, well known by brother, the third son of Sir 1846. ^^nier, is the ere is his younger Aubrey, who died in 174 RKCLISII I.I TKRA TURE. [chap. Aubrey dc Vcrc was born January ro, 1814. He has led a life suilal)le to a poet, at liis home, Cur- ragh Chase, near Adare, in Ireland. lie says, " I became a Catholic, in 1851; a blessing fur which I feel more grateful every successive year." He has been a voluminous writer both in prose and poetry. His prose works arc Ktiiflish Misrule and Irish Mis- deeds (1848), Picluresijiic Skcfchcs 0/ Greece and y«r^Y'y (1859), Ireland's Church Properly and Ri}^ht Use 0/ It (1867), Pleas for Secularization (1867), The Church Settlement oj Ireland (1868), Constitu- tional atui Unconstitutional Political Action (1881), Es- say Chiefly on Poetry (1887), and Essays, Literary and Critical (1889). The last two are the most valuable of his prose works ; tliey are a mine of good prin- ciples, the finest x'sthetic teaching, and the highest literary art. 174. Alexander the Great and St. Thomas of Canterbury, both dramatic poems, are master- pieces. Tennyson's cfTorts at the production of a tragedy are dwarfed by tlie masterly work of his contemporary poet. De Vere has written the most mighty drama since Shakspere or Dryden. This is Alexander the Great. If it had been done by an actor, like Shakspere, it would be familiar to the people at large ; it wouUl be popular. At present, it is known to comparatively few ; but its reputation grows every year. Another masterpiece is De Vere's St. Tho?nas 0/ Canterbury.* It is a wonderful piece * For a contrast between this drama and Tennyson's Becket, see Dr. Egan's Lectures. (W. H. Sadlier & Co.) lie "I xiii.l KofiEKT nuRxs TO nRoivxrxc, 175 of dramatic art, at nncc sublime and In.man, and absolutely true to nature and to historv. 'IVnnyson the greatest of mcdern poets in so many drpartments of his art, (ailed wben be tried to write tragedy liut Aubrey De Vere stands alone as tbe onlv modern poet who has produced a grand tragedy. lake nryden's A/nuwznr ami Almahhlc, it is n.,t arranged ior actmg. His tragedies are ti,e work of a man of genius. Aubrey De X'ere's May Carols, The Search after Proserpine, Poe,ns, MisceUancous and Sacred ; Irish Odes and Oihn Poems, The legends 0/ Si. Patrick Upends of the Snvon Saints, The Foray of Queen ^cave, and Le^rends and Records of the Church and Ihe /s/;.Ar.-have all poetic merit. The time has now come for sifting the didactic element from these verses which glitter with pure gems of poetry. Au- brey de \ere is not a great lyrist; but as a writer of tragedies lie is the greatest of our time ; he is a giant amung lesser sages ; the poetic traditions of ^Shakspere and Dryden arc his; and each day brings a more general recognition of this fact. 175- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in 1772, IS best known to the general public by his (1798) and amA;/../(,8i6). Coleridge was undoubt- edly a man of genius, injured by disease. He was unhappily an opium eater. His Kubla Khan reads like a nightmare. He was learned, a keen student ofthehnglish language and of nature, but unbal- anced. His prose is confined mostly to bog-y 1/6 ENGLISH LIT ERA TURE. [chap. questions of Germr«i Metaphysics; his papers on Siuikspcrc are reniarkablc. He wrote by fits and starts, but talked, always with liis eyes shut, con- stantly and brilliantly. Of him the story is told that once meetinj; a friend he began a most exhaustive lecture, holding the button of his friend's coat in his hand. The friend cut olf the button and disappeared — Coleridge remained in the street, talking with the button in his hand. Coleridge was the first of the later school of poets called die Pre-Raphaelites, to whom he gave their keynote in llie Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Chrisiabel. Probably the lines from the latter poem most often quoted are ; " Alas ! they had been triends in youth ; And whispering tongues can poison truth ; And lonstancy lives in realms above ; Anil I'fe is thorny ; and youth is vain ; And to be '..ivjth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain." 176. Wordsworth and Coleridge were close friends, though as different in genius as Christabel is from The Prelude. Coleridge went back into the past — a dreamy, romantic past for him — and saw life as a vision that had some qualities of a night- marc, lie died in 1834. 177. Robert Southey, born in 1774, was made poet-laureate in 1813. He wrote many prose works, his Life of Xehon being the only one that lives. Of his poems, Joan of Arc was written at the age of nineteen; it is his worst. Rodcric (18 14), a chron- icle of Moorish conquest in Spain, is liis best. It is piclurcsque, elevated, and artislic. His other i„, Portattt poems are TI.Ma //.,. /?«/.„, J- ,80 yi Curse „/ Kcham,! Ui^o\ and ,,.."' <'.*'°')- ^'^'^ (■82.) He died in Q ,, """ '^ Moment 178. Minor Poets are Samuel Rogers 7x,,, Pleasures 0/ Memory (lyn,). rp,„„ Y; RMo,l„^l.„e (,8, 8) ^ Walter 9 % "'" ^'^•''~<='^' known 4 al/i. X,f ;:r P ""°^ '■■: '"' of Adelaide Procter, lives i,? his '^"""' '"""^^ "I'!"'f'^'"'«Sea!theopenSea! fhe blue, the fresh, the ever free I" of the better poets still loved and read Lovell Beddoe woled.rfsf ''"''""''■ ■''"'"""■^ °fthe,nost,,oon,vo i '.■ L^^^^^^^ his Deaths fest Book is f„ '''•'n'=>tisls ; Charles K nt^ , r^'^! ' T'?!''''^''^' l"--al. rr o'^'^.s wnose false y historril ,. ..^i ^^../^ is .ell known, wrote sc^tne imlre in ' : ^" write m a calmer style a good many years later, laud another famous poem, like - Locksley ilall, shows something of the influence of Byron It IS a love story, too, broken, incoherent, but very poetical, with lines, here and there, that seem to flash into the mind ; for instance : ''A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime In the lutle grove where I sit,-ah, wherefore cannot I be Like thmgs of the season gay .like the bountiful season bland I82 EJVGIJS/r L I TF.RA Tl 'RE. [CKAP. When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, Half lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent sea, The silent, sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land." After " Locksley Hall" and ''INIaud," the influ- ence of Byron on Tennyson seems lo grow less. 1 86. In studying the poetry of poets, it is a wise thing to study the inlliiencc of poets upon it. The young Tennyson's favorite poet was Thomson, — he of the serene and gentle "Seasons." Alfred Tennyson was burn at Soniersby in Lincolnshire, England, on August 6, 1S09. He began to write stories when he was very young. He wrote chapters of unending novels which he i)Ut, day after day, under the potato bowl on the table. I\Iiss Thacke- ray says that one of these, which lasted for months, was called "The Old Horse." She gives this ac- count of his first poem : 187. "Alfred's first verses, so I have heard him say, were written upon a slate which his brother Charles put into his hands one Sunday at Louth, when all the elders of the party were going into church, and the child was left alone. Charles gave him a subject — the flowers in the garden — and when he came back from church liiile Alfred brought the slate to his brother, all covered with written lines of blank verse. They were made on the models of Thomson's 'Seasons, ' the only poetry he had ever read. One can picture it all to oneself, the flowers in the garden, the verses, the little poet with wailing eyes, and the young brt)ther scanning the lines. xrv.] T.ORD TENA^YSOiW '83 that >s the first you have ever ear ,e 1 h^ '' andta.e.,..ordrorit.i^■^:::.orZ:?''"'^■ «ent on. Tl,e poet of Airre^fir t 'T calm and pleasant Thomson I , '^ T ''^ towards manhood he read R, r^ . , ^'''"'^ He serihhied in ,he ; : ie ; :n ,V " '"''°"- hold Byron's fiery verse Ind .nil 1 I '"^"S •'' is shown by his own. ) "" "'^ ''">'^ "'"^ ;:;t;-,„W,t the whole worhlwI^^tl^eL^rs:;- .™,«..i,,,:;r;;; ; ';;;;„r;, •»;"- '- 189. The Poet's I if^ n i r serene, pleasant. L h. „ ",•„ tt o^ t,"'^ ^'"''''' spots in England ■ a, ..,,,1' ,. "'. "'^, "'^ ^"•<^«ost genial friend id ; at college he lived life of a poet. 71 s, and his after-hfe w — -, a i^uuL. I ne preni Arthur Hallam,^to wind among con- '^•s and is the ideal premature death of his friend 1 we owe the magnificent 1 84 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. poem, "In Memoriam," — was perhaps the saddest event that came to him. Longfellow, his great contemporary, was also happy. And just before the tragic death of his wife, — she was burned to death, — a friend passing his cottage said : "1 fear change for Longfellow, for any change must be for the worse. " And this is the drop of bitterness that must tinge . all our happiness in this world — the thought that most changes must be for the worse. But changes that have come to Tennyson have brought him more praise, more honor, until of late people have begun to say that the laureate could only mar the monu- ment he had made for himself by trying to add too many ornaments to it. 190. His First Volume. — In his first volume, published fifty-nine years ago, he showed to the world a series of delicately-tinted portraits of ladies: "Claribel," "Lilian," "Isabel," "Mariana," "Made- line," "Adeline;" and his gorgeous set of pictures in arabesque, " Recollections of the Arabian Nights," "Love and Death," and "The Dying Swan." The appearance of this volume was not hailed as a revelation by the reading public. And indeed there was little in it to indicate the poet of "The Idyls of the King," of "The Princess," and of "In Memoriam," except a fineness of art which no Eng- lish poet has yet surpassed or even equalled. If "Airy, Fairy Lilian " is like a cherry stone minutely carved, yet Tennyson was the first poet to show how delicately such work could be done. If " IVIariana XIV.] LORD TENNYSON. 185 the adies : lade- ctures hts," ed as ideed The "In Eng- . If utely how riana in the Moated rjran^^e"is f)nly an exercise in jew- elled notes, what bard ever drew such exciuisitely modulated tones fr(jm his lyre before? If it is "a little picture painted well," where was the poet since Shakspere wIkj could have painted the picture so well? "The Owl," though many laughed at it, had something uf the c}uality of Shakspere's snntches of song. lyi. Byron's Influence. — There was not a trace of Byron in 'this utterance. The poet who had won the prize oflered by Cambridge for English poetry, in 1829, and who somewhat earlier had seemed in despair over the death of Byron, did not utter fierce heroics. lie painted pictures with a feel- ing for art that was new in literature. How this wonderful technical nicety struck the sensitive young readers of the time, Edmund Clarence Stedman tells us in " The Victorian Poets": "It is difficult now to realize how chaotic was the notion of art among English verse-makers at the begin- ning of Tennyson's career. Not even the example of Keats had taught the needful lesson, and I look upon his sue- cessor's e.arly efforts as of no small importance. These were dreamy experiments in metre and word-painting, and spontaneous after their kind. Readers sought not to ana- lyze their meaning and grace. The significance of art has since become so well understood, and such results have been attained, that 'Ciaribel,' 'Lilian,' 'The Merman,' 'The Dying Swan,' seem slight enough to us now; and even then the affectation pervading them, which was merely the error of a poetic soul groping for its true form of expres- sion, repelled men of severe and established tastes; but to the neophyte they had the charm of sighing winds and 1 86 ENGLISH LITER A TURK. [chap. babbl'ng waters, a wotider of luxury and wicrdness, inex- pressible, not to be effaced." U)2. Poetry as an Art. — It was evident that Tennyson re^Mrded poetry as an art. It was evident that tliis art was one tliat needed constant and per- sistent cultivation. It was evident that, deprived as he was of the material color of the painter, he was determined to make words flash, jewel-like, to make them burn in crimson, or to convey with all the vividness of a Murillo, tints, — not only the color, but the //«A, — of the sky, the earth, even of the at- mosphere itself. Let us take "Mariana." Look at the picture. The subject is that of a woman waiting in a coun- try-house surrounded by a moat. It is a simple sub- ject, not a complex or many-sided one. See how Tennyson gets as near color as words can. We may be sure that he cast and recast that poem many times before he printed it. " With blackest moss the flower pots Were thickly crusted, one and all ; The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the peach to the garden wall. The broken sheds looked sad and strange, Unlifted was the clinking latch ; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. "All day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creak'd ; The blue fly sung in the pane ; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peered about." XIV.J I.OKD Tlixxysotf^ IS/ color Sin,,,,,, To,,,,: o •''„''';'■'''-' ■?^'' '■' «'"-ds both color and sou, ' "'"' '""■"'^''' ''" sxlnle than oithor. ■■""' '*-".c-tl,i„, „„.,, . No.ice, too, how carorul is l„s ,.|, • ,■ ■n th,s early hook. Ho askl : "' ''''''""''^ "VVWore.hosefai,:,:„i„3,,„. ^pn/iMl Adeline ?" '95- Tennyson's Taste v » fault or tasto in Ton„,son ,7. ;" "'" T""' «'«' atrochoo wheroyou o.nc.tod . T' '''"'"'' ''"d i-^ 'hero booausc U,o , , ^^ i,/'™'"'-^' '- -"'o it effectivo .,i.cor« Shalott," "Oonone," "f.,K. ,. " ,. '"^ Udy of Tuluooof Art," "Oroid . n ' "'^"s'''^^" "The -;n,alfadozo„ot2 r';:''""''-'''-^''''s.'' qu'^ite, and all showing 1 , '"' ^^ually ex- hi^ first voIun,e, Ind Z !" ;'"'^='"^<= '" Power over '■T'- Lady Of Sh'lotrran'T''" "'" ^''^"'«■•-• f°n. 'ike all K„,dish poet fro,n •f"''~'°^ '^'=""^- '« fon.l of allegories /„ 'ril:TT '" '""'"^'•''f- we have the first hint of .h» '^' °'" ^''"1°" " " Klaine. " ^[ '^^ P"«'" ^e now know as 'he7,:ip;;r'?,:,^s°f f a'ott ■• '^ p°--^. -e or 'o remain stron, and spwli '^'"'^ "' "■■•"■ «"'. ^' -^' not b:eon,o~' T^rtl^r :! Zl. r IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) /. Cr. 11.25 l^^m 12.5 |50 ■^" m^ ui Us ^ us KM U. 11.6 % <^ /i ^> % / / y /^ Photographic Sciences Corporation \ ^\^ Cv a>' :\ \ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 O^ ri>^ o\ \^' 1 88 ENGL I Sir L I TERA T URE. [chap. weave its wel) high above the sordid aims of sin. And so the Lady of Shalott worked. " There she weaves by ni^ht and day. A maple web with colors gay. She lias heard a whisper say A curse is on her if she slay To look down to Camelot, She knows not what the curse may be And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott." But, after a time tliis wonderful lady who weaves into her web for the solace and delight of man all the sights that pass her as shadows is tempted to go down from her spiritual height. She yields to the temptation and dies. In this allegory we find the germ of Klainc, " the lily maid of Astolat." 195. "English Idyls." — In 1842 his third vol- ume appeared. It was called "English Idyls and Other Poems." This was the glorious fruition of a spring-time which had caught and garnered all the fresh beauty ol the opening year. The April and May of the poet's first poems had ripened into June, and the June, azure-skied, ricii, blooming, gave promise of even greater loveliness. In "The Lady of Shalott" we found the hint of Elaine. In this new volume we find studies for the great symphony to come — that English epic which is the poet's masterpiece. In this volume is that Homeric fragment — the Morte d' Arthur — which is one of the finest passages ever written in any Ian- [chap. XIV.] rORD TEAWYSO.V. 189 guaffc. Dante never wrote anvlhinif more ,„,n,n.H ■n strength, ,nore heroic in slvle. more r t " „ «pre,,s,„n an,l deeper in feeh'nff than " ^" "" ^''y '""B 'he noise of battle roiled." .ir,;::e'"i;:';j n™"' "" r"'"" '"^ ^'^'-'• isreallyo, of phc t ■>:.'" " "'^'^ "'I""-, i' y VI place. It belonits at the en. I .^f n. competcil "Idvis "^ll.^f„.^,■ i. , '""= ,9., ,1 ,i, ""o'^hichwchavenow. Km in ■842, the world had only hints o( them ; in the th d ^-h.on of blank ver.se which is a.s n.uch Tenn Li^n as Spenser's verse is Spenserian, and a love for'cZc forms and allusions; but in a great love for Enr^iish landscapes, Knglish country life, KngUsh ,„ocies of speech, and English institutions. Above all whether the poet tells us a Saxon legend like that of Cod.va ; a rustic idyl like -The Gardener's Daughter;" a modern story like "Dora;" or a Mid- die-age legend like "The Beggar Maid," there per- meates all his verse a reverence fur womanhood and purity and nobility of principle which is characteris- tic of all his work and all his moods. 'I'his is one reason why all women love Tennyson's poetrv for women are quicker than men to appreciate the pure 190 F.NCUS/f LITER A TrRE. [CIIAI>. and the true in literature. It is to Tennyson more than to any other man that we owe llie elevation and purity of most c)f the i)ul)lic utterances (»r the nine- teenth century. lie, more than any living writer, ha.s both influenced and been iniluenced by his time, lie is intensely modern. He is of the Vic- torian age as Shakspere was of the l\lizabelhan age. In truth, as IJen Jonson and Shaksjicre were representative of the spirit of their time, so Tenny- son is the exponent of ours. When he is highest, he is a leader; when lowest, a folhtwer. He is reverential to Christianity; in the case of his most important work, '* Tiie Idyls of the King," he is almost Catholic in his spirit, because he has bor- rowed his legends from Catholic sources ; but still "all his mind is clouded with a doubt." 197. "In Memoriam,"— Tennyson's doubt is evident even in that solemn and tenilor dirge, "In Memoriam," which formed his filth volume, pub- lished a year after "The Princess, " in 1850. The Creek poet, Moschus, wrote an elegy on his friend Bion, and the refrain of this elegy, " Ijcgin, Sicilian Muses, begin the lament," is famous. Tennyson, this modern poet, possessed of the (ireek j)assion for symmetry and iniluenced as mucii by Theocritus, Moschus, and Hion as by tlie spirit of liis own time, has made an elegy on his friend as solemn, as stately, as perfect in its form as that of Moschus ; but not so spontaneous and tender. There is more pathos in King David's few words over the body of Absalom than in all the noble falls and swells of "In Memo- XIV.] LORD TKXNYSO.V, IQI cloubt tr ad M each oh. r''""'" ' '"' ^•''"' •''"<' >l.e divine cortLde of prnLrr '"'^^^ "^ garden, .he con.Jr .a;" ' ,• : "hetur^h '""«'' serenity an« «'-^i>r. '-0 w„uU, ,.rrVhLt"tj:; f ^ '^"''f rural spurts (,r tlw/.o -^ "'^^^ hated to see the " ^f '"^^'' ^^^' J^-'io^v not ar,ything: I can but trust that good shall fall At ]ast-iar off-at last, to all. And every winter change to spring. " So runs my drea.n ; but what am I ? An mfant crying in the night • An infant crying for the light And with no language but a cry.'" with a doubt." "h^^ '" '"^ """" '^ ^■'-'''^1 " *'^r°"".f ™ 'if= should teach me this, r,atl,fe .shall live for evermore; Else earth is darkness at the core And dust and ashes all that is • 192 KNC.IJSIf LIT ERA TURE. [chap. " This round of Rreen, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim. " What then were God to such as 1 ? 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die ; " 'Twere best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws. To drop headforemost in the jaws Of vacant darkness and to cease." But be is possessed by the restlessness of our time. He cU)es not proclaim aloud that Christ lives; he looks on the faith of his sister with reverence, but he does not participate in it; his highest hope is that a new time will bring the faith that comes of self- contro) and that the "Christ that is to be" will come with the new yeai. To be frank, the Christianity of Tennyson seems to be little more tangible than the religion of George Eliot. He seems to hold that Christianity is good so far because no philosopher can offer the world anything better. Between the burning faith of Dante and the languid, half-sympa- thetic toleration of Tennyson, the gulf is as great as between the fervor of St. John the Evangelist and the mild beliefs of the modern broad-church Anglican divine. So much for the most noble elegy of uur century, which needs only a touch of the faith and fire of Dante to make it the grandest elegy of all time. Arthur Hallam, the subject of the "InMe- moriam," had been Tennyson's dearest friend; he was [chap. xtv.J LOIU) lENNYSOtf. '93 engaged .o marry the poet's sister, -He w.s- Tennjson Inmself said, in later years ■."" ' as mortal man could be" -In Tr '^"'^"" a sincere tribute of Invt a "'•™"'-'^'" «a3 tiiuuic oi love and ^cn ik fo n- i and ta ent. Re-rrof a. , ^^"lus to goodness Christian cert! ud^v 1^^;;'''^ ^'-^^"''^ '^^ '"- "nerri„,,y from the r^^Ss : iV'"?' "■'"■"'' rejoice that the nineteenth c.m,.' ^^ ''" """' 'he chaos of Tronic :.r7a, Tut' ''"" 'T"' tor,cal paper-flower gardens o Ro" / t/c?" H n a poem so pure in spirit and so puCn" rm'""^'^" epic. ^-.ichcomiLttTeidSrn T' '''T^''' with die perfection of mV ""■■"' ^'"^'''y your attoLon ^Tel "l?;-'^-.'^^'^-^"™' ' ™-'caM 'i"le songs scattered t,r:..'^i',:p""^^'^|!>- '^ '^o ■s one l3.ric, not in ''Th P ini :^;:rr ''""^ forever. And when you ask - VW' I " ' ' T' '"" ^-Poelry. No man has ever ye, e.ac h If ', 'T '' poetry is. But if r,n,. / exactly defined what •ions of the most ^^ '"" ''^'^ ""= <"- '"-'". quality whi iHs utt , ""' ''""''^' '" P<-'0-that M"^^^ion ot the inexDros^^nWo t- crystallization of a mood-is pTfect'^^^^^^ "^••eak. break, break, On thy cold, g:ray stones. O Sea. And I would that I could utter ihe thoughts thai arise in me m 194 ENGLISH LIIEKATURE. [cllAP. "O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play, O well for the sailor lad, That he sink's iti his boat on the bay ! " And the stately ships po on To their haven under the hill; But C) for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still ! " Hreak, break, break. At 'he loot of thy crags, O Sea, But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me." I must apoloi^izc for usini:^ the word "exquisite" so often. It is the only word by wliicli we can ex- press tlie art of these lovely — unsurpassingly lovely — songs. 199. Tennyson's Epic. — We owe ''The Idyls of the King" to the fact tliat Alfred Tennyson read and pondered over Sir Thomas Malory's old black- letter legends of King Arthur's Round Table. Here he found the story of his ej)ic ready-made. In the form he adopted, we find the influence of Theocritus, who seems, of all poets who wrote in Greek, to have most influenced him. The title of his epic poem, Tennyson took from Theocritus. The Idyls of Theo- critus are short pastoral poems, full of sweetness, tenderness and love of rural life. In these qualities, Theocritus and Tennyson are much in sympathy. Theocritus was born about two hundred and eighty- four years before the birth of Our Lord. His songs are of Sicilian woods and nightingales, ofilic tiiusical [tllAI'. XIV.J lOAO TEAWysOiV. 'OS contests of shepherds. In Te„„yso„s ..(Enone " «c find many traces ..f Theocritus, even paraphras;s on h„n. .. Godiva - is formed on an id/l ..f Theo cntns, and his lamous lulh.ln- is sngj^ested by Theo- cnius song of Alcnena over the infant Hercules Carl.We ,iid nm approve of Tennyson's reflections wa .C- ''^"1— I ■•' in his pleasant way- Sec hmi „n a dust-hill surroundei' by in- numerable, lead, I. ,gs." The term '.l,lvl," though apphcahle enott^h to the light an,l pastoral poems of Iheocmus was hardly so appropriate to thl various parts„f the Arthurian epic. IJu. Tennyson has made he title h,s o«n; we love "The Idyls of the King" bv the name he has re-created for them. The '• Idyls " are n,)w complete. Though scattered hrough several volumes now. they will doub less soon be g,ven to „s by the Laureate in logical se quence. They follow e.ach other in this order- '.The Com.ng of Arthur," "C^reth an,l Lynette," ..F.nid " ^■liahn an, B.alan," ..Vtvien," ..Elaine," ..The Ho,y GratI," Pelleas and F.ttarre," '.The Ust Tour- nament," ..Guinevere "ni„l "Tl^ d ■ *»' 'our- ,nn ThJ 7.. The Passing of Arthur." 200. The Allegory in the "Idyls "-The "Iclvls of the King" is an allegory, as well as an ep.c. It carries a great moral lesson. It is an epic ll'l '"'T'/""""'' "■'"'^'' '■'"'^ °" King Arthur and his knights because of the sin that crept among them like a serpent and left its trail over all. Arthur he Ideal king, the chivalrous servant of Christ, seems to represent the spiritual life. His queen Guinevere IS sense at war with soul." She loves the things of PT 796 E^ GUSH 1 1 TEKA Tl 'KE. (ciiAr, earth better than those of heaven. And from lierl)e- trayal of the King — her fall, like tliat of "The Lady of Shalott " — her sinful love for Sir Lancelot, wiio rei)resents the pride of the llesh — flow all tlic many evils that fall on the court of King Arthur. It is true that the allegorical meaning in .sf>mc of the Idyls is dimmer than in others. Sometimes it seems to disappear altogether. I recommend to your atten- tion a very ingenious interjjretation matle by Mr. Conde Fallen, of St. Louis, you will find in a recent volume of The Calholic World. "The Coming of Arthur " is the first Idyl. King Arthur seems to t«ypify the soul. There is a dispute about Arthur. The King Leodogran will not give Arthur, tlie knight who has saved him, his daughter Guinevere, until he is satisfied about Arthur's birth. Some say he came from heaven, others that he was even as the earth. So men have disf)uted over the origin of the soul. There is nt) soul, some say — no spiritual life. But Queen Bellicent cries out, dc scribing the scene of Arthur's coronation: — " But when he spoke and cheered his Table Round With large, divine, and comfortable words Beyond my tongue to tell thee — I beheld From eye to eye thro' all their Order flash A momentary likeness of the King : And ere it left their faces, thro' the cross And those around it and the Crucified, "Down from the casement over Arthur smote Flame-color vert, and azure in three rays Qne falling upon each of the three fair queens, «9; ^'^'•J lOKD TEN.VYSOX, VVho stood in silence near the throne, the friends yn Arthur. Kazing on him. tall, with bright Sweet faces who wil, help him at his need." ?oi The Symbol of the Church.-The Lady of the Lake is iliorc. t„c.. "clothed in white samite mystic wo. ulcrfui"--! mist of incense curled about her.-' The three Queens are Faith. Hope and Charily, on whom tlie colors symbolical of them' -Hame-color, blue, and green— fall from the cruci- fix in the stained glass of the cascment-the crucifix being the source of all grace. There is no doubt hat Arthur represents the spiritual soldier sent l,y Our Lord to concpicr the unbelievers and make clean tiie land. The Lady of the Lake -the Church -gives him the sword Excalibur, which comes from the serene depth of an untroubled lake Mcrhn, the sage and magician, is human reason without grace, strong, quick to see, failing of being omnipotent because it lacks Faith. In a later Llyl ^ivwn we see the grave sage who relies on the ]>roud power of his intellect ruined by his weakness when approached by the temptations ofsensuousness. I he lesson of Vivien is that reason and the highest culture, of themselves, are not proof against corrup- tion. * 202. The Meaning of Merlin. -When the question is put to Merlin whether King Arthur was .sent from Heaven or not, he answers, as human cul- u.re too often does as to the origin of the soul, by a riddle. He says ; r^r 198 /wW/./.S7/ I.lTEKATi'NE, [chap. " Rain, rain, and sun ! a rainbow in the sky ! A young man will be wiser by and by. An old man's wit may wander ere he die. " Rain, rain, and sun ! a rainbow on the lea ! And truth is this to mc and that to ihee ; And truth, or clothed, or naked, let it be. " Rain, sun, and rain ! And the free blossom blows ! Sun, rain, and sun, and where is he who knows? From the great deep to the great deep he goes !" This is the answer of modern skepticism to the questions of the soul. "Rain, sun and rain!" he says. They exist because we see tlicm. JUit, after all, it makes no difference wliether yc»u believe that there is beauty in Heaven or no Heaven at all — only the earth. Truth is only a mirage — a delusion of the senses and the elements — whether it seems of earthly or of heavenly orij^in. A young man will find this out by and by, though the old man's wits may wander and he may take visions for realities. " From the great deep to the great deep he goes." This is Herbert Spencer's answer to "The Un- knowable." And Pilate's doubt, " What is truth .? " finds its echo in INIerlin's cynical phrase, " And truth is this to me and that to thee." The first Idyl has this line : " The first night, the night of the new year. Was Arthur born." Let us observe, too, that King Arthur and Guine- vere were married in May ; for, through all the Idyls, XIV. J LORD TENNYSON, 199 Un- th ? " the unity of time is carefully observed. The time in "(larclh and Lynelte, " the second Idyl, is the late spring or early summer. •' For it was the lime of Kuster Day." And Lynettc says : "Good Lord, how sweetly smells the honeysuckle in the hushed night." 203. The Lessons of the " Idyls."— " Gareth and I.ynetle " is full of symbolism. A^ain, the Church appears more strongly symbolized, (lareth represents the strength of manhood, the Lady Lyon- ors the spirit, and Lynetle imagination. I would advise you to analyze this poem more closely. Ne.xt comes Enid — most K)vely study of wifely graciousness and patience. Guinevere's sin has begun to work horrible evil unconscious to herself. It plants suspicion in (ieraint's mind and causes Enid to suffer intolerably. The time is still in the sum- pier. I have alluded to the lesson of Vivien. " Balin and Balan " precedes it with the same lesson. We shall pass Vivien — the time is still summer, and a summer thunder storm breaks as Reason (Merlin) falls a prey to the seduction of Sensuality (Vivien). Elaine follows. It is now midsummer. Guine- vere and Lancelot begin to suffer for having betrayed the blameless King. Elaine is "the lily maid of Astolat." Elaine has the charm of a wood -faun — the purity of dew on a lily. But she, too, rrnist die, because of the sin of Guinevere and Lancelot, and 200 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [chap. because of her own wilfulness in loving Lancelot in spite of all. Is there anywhere in poetry a more pa- thetic, more beautiful picture than that of the "dead steered by the dumb " floating past the Castle of Camelot when the Queen had learned that the lair- est and richest of jewels are worse than dust when bought by sin. And Elaine — iiti " In her right hand the lily, in her left The letter — all her bright hair streaming down, And all the coverlid was cloih of gold Down to her waist, and she herself in white, All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled." 204. "The Holy Grail," which, allegorically and practically, has puzzled most commentators, can have its full significance to Catholics alone. It is doubtful whether Tennyson, taking the legend from the old romancers, has put any meaning into it other than he found in it. The time of "The Holy Grail" is still summer. In " Pelleas and Ettarre,'' we see again the growing evil worked by sin in King Arthur's plans for making the kingdom of Christ on earth. Sin grows and Faith fails ; the strong become weak. Sir Galahad's strength is "as the strength of ten because his heart is pure." The late summer is indicated by the "silent, seeded meadow grass. " In the next Idyl, "The Last Tournament," when ruin begins to fall, the gloom of autumn lowers, and we read of the "faded fields" and "yellowing woods." In XIV.] LORD TENNYSON. 20 r "Guinevere," when the doom of sin falls on all the court, It is dreary winter. "The white mist like a face cloth to the face Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still." In the last of the IdvU iV <«t'i n . Arthur- • t! ^''>^^— 'f^- The Passnffof Arthur, we are m December, at its close,- " And the new sun rose, bringing the newyear " ast S,r Iknhvere obeys and casts away the mystVc blade, Excahbur. King Arthur, close by the ' bXn chancel with the broken cross," speaks the most solemn, most marvellous speech in this gre'e of the Idyls-m which Tennvson the exqui ite becomes for once Tennyson the 'sublime,- ^ " And slowly answered Arthur from the barge- The old order changeth. giving place to new Lest one good custom should corrupt the world Comfort thyself: what comfort is i„ me > I have lived mv life, and that which I have done May He within Himself make pure! but thou If thou shouldst never see mv fare again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than th,s world dreams of. VVherefore'let th'/ o ce R.se l.ke a fountain for me night and day. In what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the bra m. I 202 ENGLISH LITERATURE. fCHAP. If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those that call them friend? For so the whole, round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell.'" The three Queens, clothed in black, gold-crowned, sail away with the blameless King in the barge, " dark as a funeral scarf," — and he is seen no more. 206. His Latest Poems. — "Demeter -nd Other rcems" was printed in December, 1889. ^^ shows no falling off in power. It contains one of the sweetest and most pathetic of all Tennyson's lyrics — a lyric which bears comparison with " Break, Break, Break." This is "Crossing the Bar." It ends with an "In Memoriam," written on the death of that stanch Catholic and defender of the Faith, W. G. Ward. i XV.] THE kELIGIOUS POETS. 101 CHAPTER XV. The Religious Poets.— T/w Pr^p,^i r. mirroring the han e „»7 "." ""• "'^' ''^•'""''' things by the FrenTr ^ '" ""'' ""*>' "''-^l^^-gat most prominent or lUz:;:; r;r :: :;: crCs Golf- ':""'" ''"" '''-"1-cur.lling cnmes. Goe he, ,n Gernian,-, was followed by Sir old stones over again with great regard for form The romantic seizes on any subieet that L T ter^Scor'''"'V° ,""' '°'"'""''^' '■" ^^'"'-h Sir Wal- eLrr'h, "■' '""''•■^' •'^'P^'' '» P^dnce two was the longing to look backward to the ^ru^Z A-s which helped the religious reviv i„ K„!2 'he other, the tendency to give a strange, n^v" c"'; 204 ENGLISH LIT ERA TURE. fcHAP. even to old Greek stories, and to see all things as it were through flame-colored glasses. Cardinal Newman, Father Faber, and the Reverend Mr. Keble were the most powerful of the religious poets. And Cardinal Newman never loses a chance of acknowledging the influence of Sir Walter Scott's novels upon him. In the next chapter you will find Cardinal New- man considered as a prose writer. Here I shall speak of him as a poet, and as the greatest of that school of poets which more than revived the tradi- tions of Southwell, Crashaw, Habington, and Her- bert. 208. John Henry Newman (i 801-1890) was the greatest master of English prose, and since his death no rival has arisen to dispute his position. In 1 8 16 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, graduated in 1820, and was elected a Fellow of Oriel College in 1822. All this implied high talent and hard work on his part. He began to long for something more satisfactory than mere intellectual success; he found that his desire for the truth and his researches led him nearer and nearer to the Catholic Church. He herame the leader of the most brilliant group of young men in Great Britain, who began to see that the Church of England was not a continuation of the Catholic Church, and that Henry VHI. and the Reformers had come "to destroy, not to fulfil." Newman, Kcble, Froude, and Pusey were conspicu- ous in the Tractarian Movement, so called because they wrote a scries of Tracts for the Times. Tract 11 XV.] THE REIJCIOUS POETS. 205 ^C., written by Newrmn Kr 1 climax. He-beinl r 1 ^'^^ "''^'"^^ ^^ ^ Fnrrinn > • ^ clergyman of the Church of i-^nghinci— resigned his hvin T— • '^^-^ ^^ 5^ was rector of tho ^'^/'/. The tic vn''" *'"""' ^-'•"''' '^'""'^■' to make dn to h """'" "'"" ''^ "^^ •■">""' opinion to Sh I're "'^ "'' '"^'"'^ ^''-Se-fr„,„ UoucI -consists of only tl.rec stanzas • Lead, kindly Ugh,, a„,id .he encircling gioo™, Lead 1 hou me on ' 1 The nigh, is dark, and I am far from home- Lead Thou me on ' Keep Thou my fee,;, done, ask ,0 see The d.s,an, scene,-o„e step enough for me. " ' ""' ""l"" ""■••'. ""•• prayed tha, Thou Shoulds, lead me on I loved .0 choose ana see my pa,h_h„, „„„ Lead Thou me on ' rioved the garish day, and, spite of fears Pnde ruled my will: remember not past years. 206 ENGLISH LI VERA TURE. [chap. " So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile." The Dream of Gerontius is one of the most re- markable poems of the nineteenth century. It is not an imitation of any other; it has not been imi- tated. It may be grouped witli three other poems of various degrees of merit — Dante's Divina Corn- media, parts of Paradise Lost, and The Blessed Damozel. These all tell of the life after death. Gerontius, the hero of Newman's poem, leaves the earth and his body and ascends to Heaven. The departing soul is seized with nameless terror, but the prayers for the dead give it strength and help to bear it upwards. It is a noble conception ; it ap- peals to all Christians, but especially to Catholics. It is a masterpiece of literary art ; it approaches the sublime, and yet it is tenderly human. Newman's object in life and in the poetical expression of his life was to know God and to love Him. He says : " Let others seek earth's honors; be it mine One law to cherish and to teach one line — Straight on towards Heaven to press with single bent, To know and love my God, and then to die content." 209. Frederick William Faber (1814-1863) was, like Newman, a graduate of Oxford. He was greatly influenced by the Tractarian Movement and Newman. He was received into the Church in \.'X XV.] THE REUGTOUS POETS. 207 1845. and later joined the Oratory of St. Philip de ^e^. His S/UK/02V 0/ the Rock\n,\ Hymns con- tain tender and elevated poetry. His poem. - The Right Must Win," is the be.st known of his v;rses,-- " For right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win. To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin." "Perfection" and "The Pilgrims of the Night" are likewise often quoted. Father Fabers sweetness and sympathy are cjuite as evident in his prose works as ,n his poems, as his famous All for Jesus testifies. •' 210^ Of the Religious Poets, the Reverend kindly hght" only a certain distance-is very popu ar. His Christian Tear is full of high thou^^ht and devout sentiment, but it never reaches the eleva- 71 frv /""''" ^' ^"^''- "^^^^^"^ Sonar's A Little While \^ well known,— " Beyond the smiling and the weeping,' I shall be soon; Beyond the waking and the sleeping, Beyond the sowing and the reaping,' I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home, Sweet hope ! Lord, tarry not, but come." Adelaide Anne Procter (.835-,8r,4) may be in- cluded among the religious poets. Slie was the daughter of Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall) 208 EXGLlSir LITER A TUKE. [chap. and roceivcd her first encouragement from Charles Dickens, her father's friend ; he did not know who "Miss Mary Berwick," his contributor to Household Words, was, until he found it out hy cliance. After her conversion she wrote many devotional poems ; hut the host remembered and most often quoted of her verses are A Woiuan's Qucs/ion and T/ic Lost Chord. iNIiss Procter has something of the sj)irit of Longfellow. There are few households that have not heard her poems read at their licarths and learned to love them. Archbishop Trench's religious poems deserve a high rank ; they are melodious, and so intensely devotional that one cannot help wondering why he ditl not follow Newman and Faber. 211. The Pre-Raphaelite Movement in England was based on a theory it is hard to define. John Ruskin tried to explain its relati(,)ns to art, but he did not succeed. lie makes it to mean in paint- ing, a revolt against meaningless forms and a return to the sincere study of nature. It does not mean the same thing in poetry ; for the Prc-Raphaelites are artificial and often unnatural. In fact, they do not aim to be natural ; they want to be iniefise. They see all things in a fiery and splendid light. Mr. Walter Pater, describing the poems of the chief of the Pre-Raphaelites, William INIorris, says of the characteristics of this school: "He has diflfused through King Arthur s Tomb the maddening white glare of the sun and tyranny of the moon, not tender and far off, but close down — the sorcerers' XV.J THE KF.fJarous POETS, 209 moon. large and feverish. The colorin.. ,• • . • anddeiinous.asor.scaHeMilies 7i;::r summer is like poison in one^s bloo w^^^^^^^^ ficn. bewililerr.,1 sickcnincr ^r ir . ^ '"''" characteristic work of ihi. . A , ''"' '' ^''^^ '"'»st no. navo. ,•„.„ Kn^L";;: e ::': , :,;:';;;^-; ^ into a ne- stnn.r.. • , '"-''' ^^'<^»'^ ^''c reader ^ n^ , strange, weird atmosphere whfrf, 212. Dante Gabriel Rossetfi ^f^^fi 00 ^ a Pr, P , ,. ' " I^re-Rapliaeiue anist as well as a i're-Raphaelite poet. He <-, iHii always with i remarkable toem v.. y:"'";;^^" '^"^^ ''^ ^^^ oneoftheLst^^nt^nftif::^^^^^^^ manner of the Pre-Raphaelite sS:"^"" " The Blessed Damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven • Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even • She had three lilies in her hand And the stars in her hand were seven " 2IO ENCI.ISII LIT ERA TURK. [rirAP. Rossctti was more Italian than Knu^lish in feeling; lie iniilalccl the poets rniiteiiijxnaiy Nviili Dante. He is not a j^reat poet. Iml a very ori<;inal one. He is pictures(iue, musical, overstrained. Ilis/h't' is a fine poem, abf»ve all, intense. It is a tribute to the lilessed Virgin. " Mother of the Fair Delight, Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight, Now sitting fourih beside the Three, Thyself a woman-Trinity — Being a daughter borne to fJod, Mother of Christ from stall to rood, And wife unto the Holy Ghost; — Oh, when our need is uttermost, Think that to such as death may strike Thou once wert sister, sisterlike! Thou headstone of humanity, Groundstone of the great Mystery, Fashioned like us, yet more than we!" Yet, intensely beautiful as some of Rossetti's poems are, one often feels as if the heavy scent of opium were mingled with the odor of his lilies. A poet somewhat influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites was the Irish poet, William Allingham. Purity, melody, and truth of feeling are his characteristics. Lovely Mary Do?iticl/v and The Fairies are very dear to all lovers of poetry. Every child ought to know The Fairies : " Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-huntlng. For fear of little men — 211 •^^•J /•///•; REf.niious POETS, Wee f„Ik, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And while owl's feather." '»^ \\ ci.s ()()in 111 i8?7 Tr • t master ..f Fnolish rliv.i . • ''' "'"^ greatest ' tiiLct than anv other noof h.,f k -onis repeated and diUu'ed do r< h;!,,, V '' .iffgeratiunofepiiliels m,! M. ., '"""S'"' ; his ex- a-n,oreunpLsam:,;:' r;:^'^-- a^...ia.d as nn.L^^lj': ,1 X.-^r'r ""^ poetry ™' " ^ -^-^'erpiece of music and ■• VV'hen ,be hounds of spring „e on winter's .r.. rhe „,o,her of months in „ea<,o„ or p i " ' F.ns the shadows and ivindy places ' Wuh hsp of leaves and ripple of rain." If I- 212 ENGLISH LI I ERA TL ViV;. [CIIAI'. One of the saddest things in modern Hterature is the sight of this poet with a cHvine gift dissolving his pearls in acid for swine to drink. 214. The Writers of Vers de Soci6t6, a light and airy species of verse, have attained won- derful delicacy and daintiness in this century. Cal- verley, the author of Fly-leaves^ was once very popular ; but Austin Dobson and Andrew Lang have brought the art c^f writing exquisite verses to a perfection only found in France in the last century. They have naturalized in Knglish the French forms of the rondeau and the ballade. In their hands these forms of verse, as a rule, fit only to practise with, be- come works of art. The manner and the measure are easily seen in this example of the rondeau : " With pipe and flute the rustic Pan Of old made music sweet for man; And wonder hushed the warbling bird, And closer drew the calm-eyed herd, The rolling river slowlier ran. " Ah, would— ah, would, a little span. Some air of Arcady would fan This age of care, too seldom stirred With pipe and flute ! " But now for gold we plot and plan; And from Beersheba unto Dan Apollo's self might pass unheard, Or find the night-jar's note preferred; — Not so it fared, when time began, With pipe and flute !" xvl Tlir. K El. I a IOCS POETS, 213 Mr. Dobson's Proverbs in Porcelain and At the Sijrn o/l)u: /.vn- conliiin sonic of liis best work. 2 15- Andrew Lang is a master of the ha/lu/i- He has pnined several books, anion^^ which Pa//a,tv, in liluv China is well known in America. Nuthin^^ that he has done equals Dobson's sweet dialo^nie Goodhl^hl, liahdtc; but he is a truly excjuisite artisi in words. The ballade consists of three stanzas and what is called the -envoy." Kach stanza has eight lines made on three rhymes ; for instance— << cark, new, mark, blue, through, rang, hue, bang." These three sounds are repeated through the next two stanzas, the -envoy" consisting of four hnes answering in rhyme to the second four of the third stanzas, as — " Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do. Fussiest critic !— your ' tongue has a tang'; But— a sage never heeded a shrew In the reign of the Emperor Whang." The "envoy" is always addressed to some person In this ballade it is the critics of blue china ; in most old ballades it is a prince. Frederick Locker-Lamp- son IS another of these dainty poets. His To J[fy 214 ENGLISH LIT ERA TUKE. ICHAJ', ri! I- Grandmother is a lovely companion-piece to our own Oliver Wendell WoXv^if^ The Last Leaf. Mortimer Collins was remarkable for his grace in this kind of verse, which is a mixture of archness, humor, pathos, and frivolity. Among the minor poets of great talent may be named Edmund William Gosse, author of On Flute and Viol ; Francis Thompson ; Mrs. Wilfrid IMaynell, whose Preludes deserve a lasting place in literature ; Arthur O'Shaughnessy; Sir Edwin Arnold; Chris- tina Rossetti; Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), son of the author of The Last Days 0/ Pompeii, and author of Lucile and Marah; Jean Ingelow; George Meredith; Philip James Bailey, author of Festiis; Francis Turner Palgrave, and Alfred Austin. This is not all; but it is sufficient for our purpose in this little book, which suggests rather than fills outlines. 216. Sir Edwin Arnold, author of The Light of Asia and The Light of the World (1892), is a pro- found scholar in all things oriental, but in The Light of Asia he has attempted to adorn the selfish beliefs and practices of Buddhism with the borrowed splen- dor of Christianity. In The Light of the World, he tries as hard to show the beauties of Christianity is he did to bedeck Buddhism and Mohammedanism. There are fine passages in The Light of the World. Poetically, it lacks the force and fire of his earlier poem. Sir Edwin's reputation seems to be founded on the fact that he introduced a "new flavor into modern literature. " Sir Edwin Arnold, Lewis Morris, MV,] THE RELIGIOUS POETS. 215 and Sir Henry T.yi..r, author of /'/./^ ,;,„ ^,,^,^.,j^ are often ch.s.se.l together. Of the three. Sir hII; J a) lor was incomparalily the greatest. The two other,, would he na„,ed hy their admirers for he omce of laureate if Lord Tennyson should pass from 2l6 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. [chap. 1 .. J i 1 it 1 it i I l\- CHAPTER XVI. Modern Prose, — Burke. — Rtiskin. — Carlyle. — Maraulay. — De Quincey, — Neivman. 2(7. English Literature is rich in prose. We talk in prose and write in prose every day, but we do D'jt often stop to consider the writers who have taught our predecessors how to speak and write good prose. The language wc speak was made by great writers. We can scarcely utter ten sentences of good Knglish without quoting from the makers of the English lan- guage. Although English literature is rich in prose, its prose is not equal to its poetry, nor equal to the perfect prose of the French. Cardinal Newman was the chief of English prose writers. To him and to Tennyson we owe the tendency towards plain Saxon words which is characteristic of the best mod- ern English prose. His contemporary, Cardinal Wiseman, though he wrote a masterpiece of fiction, Fabiola, and many other admirable works, was not an eminent master of prose. The two greatest of the modern writers of English rhetorical prose were Burke and Macaulay. By rhetorical prose I mean that kind of writing in which the emotional and cesthetic qualities predomi- nate. The intellectual quality of style is clearness ; the emotional, force ; and the aesthetic, elegance. In xvi.] MODERX PROSE. 217 By In Burkes and Macaulay's writings we cannot help see- ing that the ornaments of style are subjects of deep thought, and that sometimes they put the orna ment above the thought. In Newman's prose the intellectual quality predominates ; in De Quincev's the aesthetic ; in Ruskin's, the emotional. But in Ruskin s style the ornaments are not merely for ornament's sake : they arise from the subject, and are almost too poetical for prose. The reader might see the description of St. Marks at Venice, in the atones 0/ lemce, as a good example of this poetic quality. ^ 218. Edmund Burke was bom on Arran Quay, Dublin, January 12, 1728, and died in 1707 His mother, who had been a Miss Nagle, was a Catholic. At Trinity College, Dublin, where Gold- smith and he were together, he did not attain high honors. His biographers tell us that he spent his term in reading without a purpose ; he studied law but he was fonder of literature. His early training among people of various creeds, and the fact that his imniediate paternal ancestors and his mother were Catholics, helped to make him very tolerant We see this in all his later political speeches and actions. He was the greatest orator of his time and one of he most .orcible writers. The emotional quality of force is the chief characteristic of his style. He was a rhetorician, and the desire to use strong and pictu- resque expressions sometimes carried him beyond accuracy. Burke's and Goldsmith's writings ought to be interesting studies to the young. There can be ft 2l8 ENGUSII LITER A TURE. [chap. r : < I' I < I J *' 'I Mi. fl, w ■I ' no doubt that Goldsmitli's style is more worthy of imitation than Burke's. Burke was l)v nature an orator ; he had a rich vocabulary and the art of re- j)eating his argument in many new ways. A compe- j)etent critic says that Burke was one of the few men who almost attained a perfect command of the Eng- lish language ; but he was fond of Latinized words. He knew the art of being forcible ; he seldom at- tained the higher art of simplicity. Burke and Macaulay have much in common. They were both rhetorical ; and Burke, though his imagination often led him to extravagances, was more earnest than the historian. The famous passage beginning "The age of chivalry is gone," in his Reflectmis on the French Revolution, is a good example of the charac- teristics of Burke's style ; and his idea that a man, to love his country, ought to have a lovely country to love, is an example of that fondness for effective ex- pressions without regard to exact meaning so often characteristic of the rhetorical writer. Patriotism means that we shall love our country whether it be lovely or not. As a statesman he would have been admirable had the Holy Father, in the eighteenth century, been still the acknowledged arbitrator among nations. He longed for such an arbitrator, and talked as if one really existed. His Vindication 0/ Natural Society (1756) is an imitation of Boling- broke. His Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, his Reflections on the French Revolution, and his speech against Warren Hastings are remarkable. He was a friend to American freedom. He died at JtVi.] MODERN PROSE. 219 his estate of Beaconsficlil. If his son h.H V a u would prohaWy Inve I,,.,-,, , "^"'' ''^ title which Benhm , T ' ' P"^"^' ""'' ">at but without bX "'-aeh-another rhetorician, ^^ JUhout Burlces earnestness or force-afterward; two'^tnTs'Sh^stutntr/"''? ^"^'^^ ^ -.ether as he does^K 1^^^:^ '^xpress very nlain^v ^1 '"' ""'''^ *"'«" and love of German fo™, 7^"""' '"''^"'°^">'' through all his work HkTP'T""''^^ ^"''^"' werehii„rr.;r,:r'it"::t\r"^^^'^^ he died in i88o. m, ei,lv .h '" '"^ ; pie who cultivated hth u^ht" ""°"^ P^" advantage to him ■ ,"„> ,, ^ '" P^^'^'-'y was an Scotch form o PrAl ? ■ '"^""^'^'e^^ies of the a PhiiosoThVift^r :s tr i„"r '- ^-'" tn::Lf r^-''-^'- ""-"''""or iieve mat the true literary man wis PoH'o • , somettiing, no matter what R^ o^ j or^"; ar t:Trec°'''" ''^™^" ")'-wl>ic.rhe filled wi h m sl"i;e„ '''°"'' "''"^- "" "•■^'= mistaken opmions about the Churcr, 220 ENGUSir IJTERA TURE. [chap. i, pi ' % though he admitted once that "the Mass was the only genuine thing of our time." He hated what he thought was false, but his horror of shams became a disease, like Thackeray's morbid dislike for snobs. Carlyle saw shams everywhere, and Thackeray con- cluded that nearly everybody was a snob, including himself. A good contrast to the style of Carlyle is the admirably easy, graceful manner of Thackeray. Carlyle's early struggles and his dyspepsia soured a disposition not naturally cheerful. His clever wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, has left her own record of this fact. He was a man of genius, without religious or ethical direction. His own description of the agony he suffered when the French Revolution was thrown into the fire by mistake and he had to write it again shows how strong and persevering the man was. The French Revolution is not a history ; it is a series of pictures, more or less accurate, painted in vivid colors. His important works are, after the French Revolution, Sartor Resartus, Life of Frederick the Great, and Cromwell. As an example of his style, the death of Mirabeau, in the French Revolution, will serve. It is plain that he applied his own gospel of work to his books ; Frederick and the French Revo- lution show immense research and labor. 220. John Ruskin was born in 1819. He was brought up under strong religious influences. He was fond of the beauties of nature, and learned to appreciate them in his earliest youth. He was edu- cated at Oxford, and chose art for his object in life rather than for his profession. He has expressed the xvi.] MODEK.V PtfOSE. i2t art of panning in words rather than in lines or colors "hir ,7 "'"'■ r"""^^'^"' '^"' '- - "-^-o- as a least furt^ books on many subjects. His ni,>st im ponant work is ./«*.„ ^,„,„, ,„ ^ - fenor to h,s prose ; ,nto this prose he pours a wealth of poefc epithet. Let the student analyze the e -npfon of St. Mark's a. Venice.* an./no.e s> h poefc expressions as "melancholy gohl." K,„kin ^^is belief that he has a mission. Carlvle's mnttnn. eamv. Ruskm has no patience with the uglv. In Mo, en, P,,„,ers, the Sfones 0/ n,nce, and 'in all h.s books he goes back to the art which the C urch created and preserved, and yet he loses no cha of low Tk t "f "^ "'"^^" "^^"■- Like Longfl . drawn ,nvolt,ntarily towards the beauty of the Spouse of Christ A j.arallel between RuskLs s, .! of mmd and Hawthorne's may easily be made bv comparing certain pas.sages in ne ulik F^lkl passages scattered through Ruskin s works. Ca and Ruskm are the most picturesque of modern prose wnters. Ruskin's books for young people are Dus,. A censor of art. as C:arl3le was a censor of ex::;/:;:,°:rx^::r ■^''''^-- -"-'- ^-- ^12 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [CHAF J* 1^! lit if :^:i morals and manners, quoted as the foremost lover of beauty of iiis time, Ruskin still lives (1892) in elegant leisure at Ikantwood, in Westmoreland. 221. Thomas Babington Macaulay (bom in 1800, died 1859) was for a lung time the most popu- lar of English prose writers. He was educated at a ])rivate school, and afterwards entered Cambridge. He took two medals for poetical composition. He was a precocious child. There is a story that when he was little he preferred to talk in polysyllables. He was hurt in some trifling way, and he replied to a kind inquirer, "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." His fondness for Latin words is evident in his later writings. He was probably first drawn to historical studies by his desire to understand the pri- vate life of past ages. There is no more accurate or careful historian than Dr. John Lingard. The truth of his statements — the first edition of his history was printed in 1819 — has stood the test of time. And there is no more valuable compilation of facts than Kenelm Digby's great Mores Catholici. But neither of these great writers had the style of Macaulay; that style has caused his history to be read everywhere ; it is a popular book ; while Lingard 's work, the most accurate of English histories, is read only by careful students. This may be said, too, of the histories of the late Professor Freeman, who was accurate, but not a master of style, though his constant use of Saxon derivatives causes him to be clear and direct. This gentleman was Regius Professor of History at Oxford ; he has been succeeded by xvi.] MODERN PROSE. I^'ivate life of past i^^es" '"'"" ^''^ 1 . . . ' ^ ^^^^ ^^ Peerage in Great som'e'fTh'lTost'e!^! *^"'""y ('^"-.859) left us He was a ma^r o e^H "'"""'" "' ^^^^ ^'^'I- dulges too ofte n 7 ' '" '''''' "'°"8'> »>« in- olten m digressions which even his skill 224 ENGLlSir I.ITEKA TURE. [chap. cannut make liarmonious. He uses figures uf sj)ccch profusely, but he has the art of conceahng his art ; he seems never to be too florid. His most popular work is The Cofi/cssions 0/ an Opium-eater. This is a chissic. As a work of literary art, it is exquisite ; as the record of the sufferings of a human creature, the slave of a vicious habit, it is terrible. I)e (^)uin- cey never shook off this habit, though he at one time imagined he had done so. His style is accurate; he has a partiality for Latin words. Professor Minto says that "De Quincey's specialty was in describing incidents of a purely per- sonal interest, in language suited to their magnitude as they appeared in the eyes of the writer. "* His delicate art saved him from vanity, and hence the world to-day reads and re-reads his autobiographical sketches. His famous short papers are Murder Con- sidered as a Fine Art ; On the Knuckin^if at the Door in '^Macbeth;" and The Toilette 0/ a Hebrew Lady. 223. Edward Gibbon (i 737-1 794) has already been alluded to. His Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is an elaborate apology for paganism. His style is ornate, pompous, stately. Charles Lamb (Klia), the most delicate of English humorists, is all refinement ; and Leigh Hunt has clearness and ele- gance. William Hazlitt, less humorous and grace- ful than Hunt, deserves to be ranked among the minor prose writers. Coleridge, like nearly all the English poets, was a strong prose writer. In Dry- * Minto's Manual of English Prose. xvi.] MODERN rKOSE, den's case for instance, his n„e prose would l,e c„„ "4. John Henry Newman n,ay be named :;F;::;,i^r''"-^"'"'''''^^''"'^'^''^--'--'>"^ force nH l"' """"■ "'' '"^'''^ ""'"^» ^■''"'^"-■•'. force, and elegance. To l,im „,.,rc. U,a„ ,., ,„,: other writer ,s due the tendency to use Sax„„ dcrV? H,s sljle ,s nut only accurate; it is fine and sul.tle o a degree wh.ch redeems the English tongue fr m the rep.„ch of „ot being a language fit for"p i ! Phy. H,s .lp„/off,„ /,„, ,;■„ s„„ is ,„e one perfect Mca o/a Unwersify ought to be read and re-read at ^^ast once a year by every student of literature will arm h,m with definitions ; it will clarify and elevate his thoughts and sti.nulate him ts^l^ Zt expression of them. It is the one book i„ p" L after the New Testament, which every stu leni hirittle"',""'''T ^"O ' - S'aJ 'o cC his httle volume with a recommendation to all indents to study Newmans English if they want to become proficient in a language which has the best qualities of all other languages, and which lacl only the music oi the Itahan, THE END.