The ()1 yictorian f iterature j*.-* ; o 7" Richard The Masters Of Victorian Literature THE MASTERS OF VICTORIAN LITERATURE 1837-1897 By RICHARD D. GRAHAM EDINBURGH : JAMES THIN 1897 LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., LTD. PREFACE THE following pages have been written chiefly for the younger students of English Literature. Existing works on this subject usually stop at the threshold of our own time, but the interest of young students, so far from ending there, is strongly attracted towards the authors of to-day. To gratify their natural curiosity, and especially to foster in them a taste for what is beautiful, and of permanent value in the literature of the Victorian era, is the aim which the author has had in view. No scheme of ex- amination has been present to his thoughts in writing. At the same time he has made ample use of facts, and even of dates, in connection with the per- sonal element in the literature of the period, and has sought to show into what setting of circumstances in the life-history of the writer himself, the works of his genius are to be fitted. Except in the case of the poets, scarcely any attempt has been made to illustrate by means of extracts. Nevertheless, the study of literature will certainly fail in its highest effect as an educational agent, if the mind be not brought into direct contact with the style and thought of the writers under review. The manner and the extent to which this may be done, must, of course, depend on the tastes and the circum- M758063 vi Preface stances of the individual teacher or student. It will scarcely be questioned that to have such a sense of literary beauty as to be able to respond intelligently and sympathetically to what is best and noblest in literature, is to possess one of the fine flowers of a polite education, and to be within reach of a perennial store of exquisite delights. In dealing with a field so vast as English Literature during the Victorian era, selection was inevitable. Attention, therefore, has been mainly concentrated on the prose fiction and the poetry of the reign ; and while other departments, such as the essay, history, biography, science, and philosophy, have been dealt with more cursorily, some, such as the drama, the literature of travel and adventure, and the much vaster area covered by works in theology and religion, have been altogether omitted. The full and adequate history of Victorian Literature has yet to be written, and will no doubt ere long be produced by some com- petent pen. All that the present author hopes is that his attempt to set forth what has given interest and pleasure to himself may at least be found helpful to the younger readers for whom the book has been specially designed. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT i CHAPTER II EARLIER VICTORIAN NOVELISTS - . . 9 C. Dickens W. M. Thackeray C. Bronte G. Eliot- Lord Lytton B. Disraeli C. Lever A. Trollope C. Reade Mrs Gaskell C. Kingsley Wilkie Collins G. MacDonald R. D. Blackmore Mrs Oliphant G. Meredith. CHAPTER III LATER VICTORIAN NOVELISTS . . .105 T. Hardy Sir W. Besant W. Black J. H. Shorthouse Kail Caine Mrs Humphry Ward R. L. Stevenson S. J. Weyman A. Conan Doyle Anthony Hope R. Kipling J. M. Barrie S. R. Crockett Ian Maclaren Other Novelists. CHAPTER IV HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS . . .173 T. Carlyle Lord Macaulay J. A. Froude E. A. Free- man Bishop Stubbs G. Grote C. Thirlwall Dean Milman Dean Merivale J. H. Burton H. T. Buckle S. R. Gardiner A. W. Kinglake W. E. H. Lecky J. R. Green J. G. Lockhart Mrs Gaskell G. H. Lewes Dr Hanna Dean Stanley S. Brooke Prof. Masson G. O. Trevelyan T. Carlyle J. Forster J. A. Froude. viii Contents CHAPTER V PAGE EARLY VICTORIAN POETS . ^ -^ 2 39 L. Hunt T. Hood Lord om/ and then from Rome to Scepticism, and then back again to Rome. At twenty-one, Mary Arnold was married to Mr Thomas Humphry Ward, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and in 1880 they removed to London for the purpose of giving themselves to literary work. Mr Humphry Ward is well known as the editor of an admirable anthology of the English poets, with critical introductions from his own pen and those of many of the foremost critics of the time. Mrs Humphry Ward published her first book, Milly and Oily, a story of Child Life, in 1881. With her earliest novel, Miss Bretherton, published in 1884, she won considerable notice, although it scarcely prepared the public for the astonishing success of Robert Elsmere in 1888. This work quickly passed through many editions, both in this country and in America, and has had the honour of being translated into several of the Continental languages. Much may still be expected from this author. She is too conscientious in effort to overwrite herself, and she shows a mastery both of style and literary art that are the best guarantee that what she gives to the public will reach a high level of attainment. No other woman novelist now living approaches her in power or so nearly realises in her work the best traditions of the Victorian novel. She is, however, Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 127 in some danger of turning the novel into a thesis for the diffusion of her own opinions on the social and religious questions of the day. Much of her past success has undoubtedly been due to this element in her works : pursued further, it might be destructive both of her art and her popularity. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (1850-1894). It is a relief to escape from the problem novel with its more or less hectic atmosphere to tales that are tales indeed, full of adventure, and suffused with the glow of old romance. Breathless with interest, we follow their heroes from one hazard to another, scarcely requiring to think, but with an imagination thrilling with excited sympathy. We feel that the free air is blowing round us, that the pulses of our blood are beating healthily, and that a tonic as of the hills or ol the heaving sea is bracing us to newness of life. Among those who have done good service in connec- tion with this return to the romantic method are R. L. Stevenson and Stanley Weyman, Conan Doyle, and Anthony Hope. Of all the writers of English fiction of the younger generation, the impression of the highest genius was probably conveyed by Robert Louis Stevenson an impression which his many admirers hold, notwith- standing the conviction that nothing he has ever done, however exquisite, has quite realised all his possibili- ties. It is indeed singularly to Stevenson's credit that no achievement in literature to which he might have ia8 Victorian Literature risen, however high, would have been altogether a surprise to anyone acquainted with his work. For all have admitted in him a rare distinction of style, the qualities of a fine imagination, humour and pathos in a high degree, the fancy of the poet, and the sympathy, both wise and tender, of the genial lover of his kind. Born at Edinburgh in 1850, Stevenson got his education at various private schools, and afterwards at his native university. Sprung from a family that had an hereditary distinction in lighthouse engineer- ing, every opportunity was given him of qualifying for the same profession. But he was incorrigibly a genius, to whom the routine of study was not only abhorrent, but impossible. It is to be feared that his professors saw him but little, that his college halls were the hills that environed his romantic town, and that his chief companions were the choice books that accompanied him in his rambles and ministered to his fancy. Through all this, however, there ran a distinct purpose of self-education. In his interesting paper, entitled A College Magazine, he says : * All through my boyhood and youth I was known and pointed out for the pattern of an idler ; and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read and one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words ; when I sat by the roadside I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 129 halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed that I would learn to write.' His home exercises were conceived with the same intent. ' Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it ; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful ; but at least in these vain bouts I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction, and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann.' With his whole heart thus given to literature, it was natural that he should finally abandon the scien- tific pursuits in which it had been sought to train him. Lest, however, he should fail as an author, he qualified himself for the Scottish Bar, and for a time actually wore the advocate's gown and wig, and walked the floor of the Parliament House of Edinburgh. Bad health compelled him to leave his native city, and he became a wanderer. His impressions and many inter- esting experiences he has incorporated in various exquisite books of travel. I 130 Victorian Literature During the last six years of his life his home was Vailima in Samoa, one of the beautiful islands of the Pacific. Here, at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 2nd of December 1894, he suddenly fell into a state of unconsciousness, from which he never rallied. He died at eight the same evening. When the sad event became known in this country and America, where he was a great favourite, the press notices, unusually full and cordial, did ample justice to the beauties of his style and the many fascinations of his character. By almost universal consent, he was declared to be the legitimate successor of Scott in old romance, and the words of William Watson, the poet, written in a copy of Stevenson's Catriona and pub- lished only a few days before, were quoted with approval. Referring to Scott's vain dream of a race of princely heirs dispensing the hospitalities of Abbotsford, the poet says : ' Fate spurned his wish, but promised in amends, One mighty scion of his heart and mind : And where far isles the languid ocean fleck, Flying the cold kiss of our northern wind Lo, the rare spirit through whom we hail as friends The immortal Highland maid and Alan Breck ! ' The highest praise was given to Stevenson's com- pleted work in essays, romances, and poems ; but through all ran the lament that a genius so fine should have been struck down in his forty-fourth year, when the cunning of his hand was at its best, and when it seemed that the richest wine from his vintage was still to flow. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 1 3 1 The circumstances of his death suited well the element of romance that was so distinctly present in his life and character. From the first, lung disease seemed to have marked him for its prey. But the brave heart had not flinched or grown morbid. So far was this from being the case, one of his principal charms was a boyish animation and a gay light-hearted hopefulness. It would seem, however, that towards the end he had begun to fear a lingering death. In one of his last letters addressed to his friend, Mr Andrew Lang, he had expressed his dread lest such a paralysis of mental power and slow decay as that of Swift should be his fate. From this, therefore, he was happily delivered. Surrounded by wife and mother and other kind relatives and friends, he had all that loving attention could give and none of the pangs either of dying or of separation. According to instructions left by himself, he was buried on the following day, at the top of Vaea, a mountain 1300 feet high, close to his house, and overlooking the broad waters of the Pacific. The years spent in this beautiful and romantic island home were doubt- less years rescued from death, and we cannot but feel grateful that the gentle Tusitala, 'the teller of tales,' as the natives in their great love called him, had the happiness and inspiration which these years had brought. His early paper, Ordered South (1874), published in Macmillaris Magazine, is significant of the circum- stances that led to his expatriation from home. The 132 Victorian Literature fruits of these circumstances are also to be seen in An Inland Voyage (1878), his charming Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh of the same year, and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), all of them touched with the fine qualities of Stevenson's genius. His best essays followed in the volumes entitled Virginibus Puerisque (1881), Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882), and a series of papers that appeared between 1882 and 1887, and were reprinted under the title of Memories and Portraits. The charm of these essays is due not only to the singular beauty of their style, but also to the freshness of their thoughts, their glow of romantic feeling, and, not least, the frequent glimpses they afford of the always interesting and delightful personality of the writer himself. In 1882, he broke fresh ground in The New Arabian Nights, but notwithstanding the gruesome vividness of The Suicide Club and other tales, scarcely gave proof of that mastery of romantic fiction he was to reveal in Treasure Island, published in the same year. In the composition of this work, Stevenson had probably not taken himself very seriously, and he was perhaps as much surprised as any one at the wonderful popularity it achieved. It was a boy's book, but there was no limit to the ages of the boys who were both thrilled and horrified by the tap, tap of blindman Pew's staff upon the road, and by the sleek atrocities of that most consummate villain, John Silver. Prince Otto followed in 1885, but was not so successful. There is Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 133 a strange, weird glamour in such shorter pieces as Thrawn Janet (1881), and The Merry Men (1882). One of his most signal successes was won in 1886 by the publication of The Strange Case of Drjekyll and Mr Hyde. Mr Stevenson has written nothing that shows greater power than this gruesome little tale. Whether he intended it or not, it may be taken as an allegory of the dual nature that is to be found in every human being something of the angel and something also of the devil. How often is society startled by the discovery that beneath the seemingly placid exterior of what appears to be an innocent and well-ordered life may lurk a very wild beast, that only bides some momentary slackening of the forces of moral control to break forth into excesses of impure and even murderous lawlessness. This is the psychological problem presented in these pages with a singular subtlety and impressiveness. Dr Jekyll, the famous London professor and physician, has the respect of all for his high qualities of head and heart. The bene- ficences, which his wealth permits, and to which his generosity inclines him, are the theme of many tongues. Yet all the while he is only half known ; his is a life within a life. His best friends would not recog- nise him in that secret world which he frequents, and in which he succumbs to the baser passions of his nature. And so a greater temptation comes to him. He discovers a drug which has the power of effecting a physical transformation so complete that recognition by the dearest friend becomes impossible. Identity 134 Victorian Literature indeed remains, but to all outward seeming this is another man. Here then are boundless opportunities for the gratification of all the baser appetites and pas- sions without the risk of imperilling a most valuable reputation. A single draught of this secret decoction, and the tall, handsome, winning, supremely respect- able, and rather elderly Dr Jekyll is transformed into the dwarfish, misshapen, evil-looking, though younger, Edward Hyde. And all that servants, friends, and society know is that the great Dr Jekyll temporarily disappears from his usual haunts, as may well be with a man of his professional eminence. But the outer transformation is accompanied by a psychological change far more tremendous. For Hyde is pure evil, without a gleam of good selfish, cruel, lustful to the last de- gree. No good and honest man can find himself in company with him without a shudder of repulsion. Moreover, in his frequent transformations, that occurs which might have been expected. The evil nature so often given way to becomes more and more vigorous and insistent, as the better nature retires more and more into the background, until at last, without any use of drug, without any effort even of will, and at the most awkward and most unexpected moments, the change comes, and Jekyll is threatened with over- whelming and ruinous exposure. For Hyde has per- petrated a cruel and unprovoked murder, and all London has been searched for him. At length Jekyll sees that in suicide only is escape possible from a life that has become more terrible than death, not so Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 135 much from the fear of the gallows, as from fear and hatred of his own double Edward Hyde. The same year (1886) witnessed the publication of Kidnapped, another of Stevenson's great successes. It now appears as Part I. of The Adventures of David Balfour. There are many who consider it his finest work. It is full of life and energy. It touches local scenery, such as the wild moor of Rannoch, the slopes of Appin blazing in the sunlight, or the drearier land- scape of the lonely House of the Shaws, with a fine art and sympathy. The skill of a master is even more to be seen in the delineation of the two characters with whose fortunes the story is chiefly concerned the stiff, dour, but brave and manly, Lowland youth, David Balfour, and the inimitable Jacobite Highlander, Alan Breck Stewart, conceited and faithful, brave and belligerent. There are some ever-memorable scenes, such as the fight of the Round House on board the brig Covenant, and the quarrel and pipe contest between Alan Breck and Robin Oig. Some may think there is too much of hacking and slaying, but what cannot" be forgiven for the sake of the boyish freshness, the glow, the energy, the sweet, strong atmosphere that make it from beginning to end alive and enthralling ? Catriona (1893) now forms Part II. of The Adven- tures of David Baljour, and shows us better what possibilities of heroic courage and self-repression may lurk beneath the dull outward presentment of such a character as that of David. Alan Breck is also here, 136 Victorian Literature but fills less of the canvas than formerly. Much space is given to the equivocal doings of James More Macgregor, the eldest son of Rob Roy, and father of Catriona. In this tale, which contains some of its author's finest and most artistic work, Stevenson for the first time prominently introduces the feminine element, and with more success than had been antici- pated. Catriona herself is a fine study, but yields in interest, as many will think, to the arch, witty, leal- hearted Barbara Grant, the advocate's daughter, who is only too soon withdrawn from the reader's view. Some of the individual scenes, especially those in which David and Catriona are concerned in Holland, are remarkable for their beauty, subtlety, and pathos. The Black Arrow (1888), a tale of old English life in the time of the Roses, failed to awaken the interest of the public as it had also failed to secure the approval of Mr Stevenson's ( fireside critic,' whom he so genially mentions in his dedication. The Master of Ballan- trae (1889) reaches a higher level, and everywhere shows the writer's familiarity with eighteenth century life and manners. Its theme is the hatred of two brothers, beginning at Ballantrae in southern Scot- land, and ending in the wild American forest, with the wan moon shedding its pale reflection over the dead forms of both brothers. How painful it all is ! And how oppressive is that monotonously grey land- scape throughout ! The few characters, especially ( The Master,' are drawn with great sharpness and force, but they do not attract us. We are glad to be Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 137 rid of their company, and breathe more freely when the book is closed. Moreover, the incidents are not altogether beyond cavil. For surely the ghastly attempt to revive the buried Master buried alive after he has lain uncoffined for a week in the grave, is too unnatural to be consistent with the canons of good art. Some of Stevenson's work it is not easy to appraise, because it has been written in collaboration with others. The Dynamiter (1885) with Mrs Stevenson, his wife ; The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb Tide (1894) to some small extent, with his step-son, Mr Lloyd Osbourne ; and Three Plays, with Mr W. E. Henley. Interesting personal experiences of Steven- son are to be found in The Amateur Emigrant and Across the Plains, written in 1883 ; the first, describing his own observations and adventures as a second class passenger on an American liner ; and the second, his subsequent journey across the States, in a condition of health that scarcely permitted his friends to expect ever to see him again. He survived, however, and found a wife in California. The Silverado Squatters (1883) is a record of strange personal experiences in the great Western State. From the chapter of this book, entitled ' The Scot Abroad/ we learn how, amidst all his wanderings, Stevenson's heart still clung with all the tenacity of a Scot to his native land. Speaking of it he says : ' Of all mysteries of the human heart this is perhaps the most inscrutable. There is no special loveliness in that grey country, with its rainy 138 Victorian Literature sea-beat archipelago ; its fields of dark mountains ; its unsightly places, black with coal ; its treeless, sour, unfriendly-looking corn-lands ; its quaint, grey, castled city, where the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat. I do not even know if I desire to live there ; but let me hear in some far land, a kindred voice sing out, "O, why left I my hame ? " and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and no society of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence from my country. And though I think I would rather die elsewhere, yet in my heart of hearts I long to be buried among good Scots clods. I will say it fairly, it grows on me with every year : there are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps. When I forget thee, Auld Reekie, may my right hand forget its cunning ! ' The same pathetic yearning enters into almost his latest poem, addressed to S. R. Crockett on receiving the Dedication of The Stickit Minister. ' Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home ! and to hear again the call ; Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying, And hear no more at all.' The wish was not fulfilled. And now we learn from the publication of Weir of Hermiston, an unfinished tale on which Stevenson was engaged when he died, how close the scenes of home lay to his heart to the very last. It is marvellous how true is the home accent in this fragment of a Scottish tale, and how Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 139 easily and naturally the writer takes his stand once more in the windy streets of the ancient capital by the Forth, and on the sweet and fresh hill-sides that surround it. It would seem as if his many years of exile, the glow, the luxuriance, the glamour and gracious kindliness of life amidst the far Pacific seas had all been clean forgotten. In The Wreckers, The Ebb- Tide, The Island Nights 1 Entertainment, and other tales, he had shown how powerful was the spell they had cast upon his genius. But now when a supreme effort is to be put forth in the production of what promises to be his greatest work, he is the true Scot again; and he will doubtless remain the represen- tative Scot of literature for the whole period, from the publication of Treasure Island to his death. It is the general opinion that Stevenson has written nothing stronger than Weir of Hermiston, not merely because, to use an expression of his own, ' it is drowned in Scotland,' but because of the vigour with which the gruesome story is outlined, and the power with which its principal characters are set before us. Not the half of it has been told, yet there is enough to show that the author's imagination was never more powerful and active, his mastery of style never more assured and exquisite, his confidence of success never more reason- able, than when on the morning of the last day of his life he dictated what were destined to be the conclud- ing passages of this tale. The great achievement of this fragment is Weir of Hermiston himself, the Lord Justice-Clerk. For this character Mr Stevenson has 140 Victorian Literature had recourse to the well-known Lord Braxfield ( the hanging judge/ of whose .coarseness and severity so many stories have been told. But Weir is a far more subtly conceived personage, for with all his sternness and brutality, and actual pleasure in the conviction of the unhappy criminals brought before him, there is suggested something else. The reader cannot quite hate him, but feels instinctively that another side of his character is yet to be revealed, and waits. There is much to marvel at in his strong and clear in- telligence, the extent of his legal knowledge, his honesty as a man, and his integrity as a judge. In the differences that arise between him and his power- fully contrasted son Archie, the reader is perhaps less disposed to side with the son than probably he feels he ought to be, even in view of that tremendous situa- tion which unhappily the story never reaches, but which it is avowedly leading up to the trial on a charge of murder and the sentence to death of Archie Weir by his father, at the cost of the father's own life. In the elder of the two Kirsties Stevenson has drawn an admirable character one of the privil- eged, faithful, and now almost extinct race of Scottish female servants worthy almost of Scott himself. The Two Black Brothers of Cauldstaneslap are also power- fully imagined and described, and for them much stirring work had evidently been marked out. Alto- gether there were here the materials for a tale more powerful than any Mr Stevenson had yet written, and Stanley J. Weyman 141 regret is inevitable that the hand that had so skilfully begun this tale was not permitted to complete it. *S/ Ives (1897), another posthumous and incomplete story, relates, with Stevenson's usual graces of style, the adventures of a French prisoner who makes his escape from the Castle of Edinburgh, but it cannot be regarded as one of his greatest works. Stanley J. Weyman (1855) was born at Ludlow, in Shropshire, in 1855. He was educated first at Shrewsbury School, and then at Christ's Church, Oxford. Having been called to the bar in 1881, he practised for eight years on the Oxford Circuit, but with indifferent success. Partly on that account, and partly on account of bad health, he abandoned the profession of the law, and devoted all his energies to literature. No one has done better service than Mr Weyman in connection with the return of the Victorian novel to the romantic method. It was by The House of the Wolf, in 1889, that he first struck the note which has since become so familiar under his touch. It did not at the time attract much notice, but is a stirring and vivid picture of life and character in France in the time of the Bartholomew. The story moves swiftly from point to point, and has a succession of thrilling incidents. Especial interest gathers round the per- sonage known for his ferocity as the ' Wolf,' and a curious and delightful effect is produced by the art of the novelist in discovering for us, amidst the atro- 142 Victorian Literature cities of the great massacre, that the ( Wolf ' after all is human, and is even capable of noble generosity and self-sacrifice. The New Rector, which followed in 1890, is in a different style, and deals cleverly with a trying situa- tion in modern clerical life in England. It was followed in 1891 by The Story of Francis Cludde, a romance of the England and the Low Countries of the Sixteenth Century, when the gloom of Mary's fanati- cism is weighing down the spirits of men with a dull oppression, when plots are much afoot, and when no one knows who is the spy and who the honest man. The hero of the tale, and certain great personages accidentally associated with him, are made to pass through a series of tremendous adventures. Again and again they narrowly escape death ; and finally, when there seems no possibility of extrication from the meshes which fate has cast around them, there comes deliverance in the death of the ill-omened queen. It is all done with admirable art and spirit. Character is truthfully delineated, the manners of the time are faithfully displayed, but the narrative itself is never for a moment interrupted. We are carried on with a never-flagging interest from incident to incident, each more impressive and thrilling than another. It is characteristic of Mr Weyman to find his heroes in personages of unpromising exterior and surround- ings, to show the favourable play of circumstances upon them, and finally to present them clothed, if Stanley J. Weyman 143 not in immaculate graces, at least in very noble and attractive qualities. This is especially noticeable in A Gentleman of France (1893), a work of singular force and attractiveness. M. de Marsac, the hero of this fine tale, is a highly artistic study, scarcely un- worthy, it has often been said, of the great Dumas himself, although it is not Dumas, but Robert Louis Stevenson that Mr Weyman claims as Master. De Marsac, it is true, is little better than an impecunious adventurer, almost as destitute of hope as he is of gold pieces. But he is an almost miraculous swords- man, knows not what fear means, is the very soul of honour, and is as unconscious as a child of the heroic qualities in himself that are manifest to every eye but his own. Adventures of the most marvellous kind meet him at every turn, and call forth from him the most wonderful proofs of daring and resource. Most of these have some relation to Mademoiselle de Vire, a haughty beauty, depicted with charming piquancy and force, both when in the earlier stages of their intercourse, she humiliates him with her scorn, and when at last she delicately reveals the love which he is both too modest and too proud to claim. Across the stage of this story moves a crowd of distinguished personages, all more or less interested in the plots and counterplots of the ' League ' Henri III, his cousin of Navarre, Turenne, Crebillon, and others. Of scarcely inferior interest and power, though more limited in range, is Under the Red Robe (1894), the scene of which is laid in 1630, in the time of the 144 Victorian Literature Great Cardinal. Gil de Berault, the hero of this story, is no less powerfully depicted than Sieur de Marsac, although he is on a lower moral plane. He is, in fact, a gambler and bully, who through his skill in swords- manship has won a reputation as a duellist so sinister, that he is known throughout Paris as * The Black Death.' The exercise of this questionable art brings him under the displeasure of Richelieu, who has issued an edict against duelling, but who saves his life on the condition that he shall accomplish the arrest of M. de Cocheforet, a Bearnais gentleman and malcontent towards the Cardinal's government. To save his neck, de Berault consents, and in proceeding to the execution of his purpose has many exciting adven- tures, through all of which the better nature of the man is seen disentangling itself from baser elements, until at last, reinforced by his admiration of two noble women, and his deep love of one, he sets his prisoner free, and goes alone to Paris to meet his fate at the hands of Richelieu. Love, however, has been before him in the person of Mademoiselle de Cocheforet, and amidst the anxieties and humiliations of the memor- able ' Day of Dupes,' the great Cardinal has the satis- faction of doing one generous act in dismissing into happiness a brave man, reclaimed, as we are fain to hope and believe, by a woman's love to nobleness of life. To the same year, 1894, belongs The Man in Black, a shorter and less pleasant tale, presenting only the seamy side of human nature, and concerning Stanley J. Weyman 145 itself mainly with the sinister doings of Solomon Nostradamus, an infamous astrologer and concocter of poisons, in the Paris of the time of the Great Cardinal. This busy year, 1894, also produced My Lady Rotha, the scene of which is laid in Germany, in the troubled days of the Thirty Years' War. At first within the Schloss of the provincial town of Heritzburg, then in General Tzerclas' camp, and finally within beleaguered Nuremberg, with the great Swede and Wallenstein ready to fly at each other's throats, the incidents arrange themselves. These are as usual of a thrilling kind, and serve to keep alive the reader's attention to the last. The story is told by Martin Schwartz, the gigantic steward of Lady Rotha, a true gentleman, as faithful as he is brave. The high-spirited and capricious, but noble and tender-hearted Countess is ever in the foreground of the picture, and it is in the complication of her love affairs that the true motive of the story is to be found. In spirited delineation of character, as in the Countess and Tzerclas, in vivid and dramatic representation of scenes in the time of the Great War, and in the art with which simple human emotion is interwoven with deeds of direst cruelty and of loftiest daring, My Lady Rotha worthily sustains, if it does not add to, the reputation that was made by A Gentle- man of France. Following up his other successes, Mr Weyman in 1895 again invaded the romantic field of French K 146 Victorian Literature history, in a series of short stories entitled From the Memoirs of a Minister of France. They are told with the usual grace and simplicity, and are full of a romantic interest. They mainly set before us the great Henry in the closing period of his life, and the narrator himself, who is no other than Henry's ablest and most trusted minister, the grave, honest, resourceful Due de Sully. Here is much concerning the difficulties and even the humilia- tions of statesmanship at that time. The squabbles, jealousies, and intrigues of the court are very much in evidence ; while a sombre interest is lent to these tales by the perception that much of the gay in- souciance of the monarch's earlier manner has now given place to fits of gloom and despondency, that are strangely prophetic of the fatal tragedy that was destined just two months after the memoirs close to end for ever the gay impulses and the far-reaching projects of France's greatest king. In The Red Cockade (1896) France is still the sub- ject the France of the early days of the great Revolution. The Bastille has fallen, but the guillotine has not yet begun its deadly work. A few chateaux here and there have been burnt, but the people are bewildered and terrified, it would seem, at their own success. On the other hand, the nobles and the clergy are divided in their councils, always expect the king to do something that is not done, and in the vain waiting for a man and a policy, fall into a paralysis of fear and despair. The tale is told with spirit, and has Arthur Conan Doyle 147 some fine character-drawing. Two of the portraits at least are of supreme merit those of M. Froment of Nimes, and Madame de St Alais, with her magnificent courage, her scorn for the people, and the cruelty even to her own flesh and blood, which devotion to her order makes possible. M. Froment, outlined rather than worked out in detail, is a powerfully-conceived character. Here was the leader who, though not of their order, might, with a united nobility at his back, have stemmed the torrent that was devastating France. His noble failure is powerfully sketched, and there is something pathetic in the impression which that failure, added to his splendid courage, faith, and resourcefulness, leaves upon the mind. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859). Conan Doyle, who was born at Edinburgh in 1859, perpetuates the interest of a name already famous for two generations in connection with the arts of political caricature and book illustration. After an education obtained partly in England and partly abroad, he graduated M.D. in the university of his native town. Thereafter he proceeded to London, where he commenced a prac- tice ; but finding success more tardy than he expected, he ultimately abandoned medicine for literature. This, however, was not done until he had assured himself of success in his new profession. Like Mr Weyman, Conan Doyle put forth his ventures in the Romantic School, and some of his best works have also helped to revive an interest in the historical novel. It is not, 148 Victorian Literature however, in this field that his greatest popularity has been achieved. After A Study in Scarlet (1888) came Micah Clarke (1889), a tale of the Monmouth rebellion, full of stirring incidents and vivid pictures of life and manners in southern England towards the end of the seven- teenth century, and especially of the circumstances that led up to and followed the great collapse of Sedgemoor. The Firm of Girdlestone (1890) contains reminiscences of the author's student days in Edin- burgh. The Captain of the Polestar, with other short tales, was followed by a work still more decisive of Doyle's position, The White Company (1891), a tale of the times of Edward, the Black Prince, as full as heart of man or boy could wish of deeds of hardihood and romantic chivalry, picturesquely and dramatically set forth. The character-drawing is excellent, Sir Nigel Loring, the Captain of the White Company, with his sweet and gracious courtliness but lion-like prowess ; his gentle, monk-trained squire, Alleyne Edricson ; Sam Aylward, the bluff, soft-hearted bowman ; the red-headed giant, Hordle John ; the Black Prince himself and Don Pedro all are drawn with great vigour, and stand out with sharp-cut clearness from a page that is never wanting in life and interest. Another novel of the same class, The Refugees, followed in 1893. In this the reader is again carried to France, but now it is the time of the Grand Monarque, and we find ourselves involved in the endless Court in- trigues and heart-searchings of Versailles at the Arthur Conan Doyle 149 critical moment when the star of Montespan is paling to its eclipse before that of Madame de Maintenon. The Refugees is full of exciting incidents, conceived in the true spirit of romance, and when these reach their climax in France, the principal characters are transferred to the wilds of Canada, not, however, with- out considerable loss of interest and artistic congruity. But for one reader that knows Conan Doyle by such works as these, there are probably twenty who know him as the author of The Adventures (1892), and The Memoirs (1893) of Sherlock Holmes. With these two series of detective stories Dr Doyle has achieved one of the most remarkable successes of our time, not only by the skill with which interest is sustained through- out, but also by the dramatic force with which their principal character is conceived. The writer has told us that he drew this character from the life in the person of Dr Joseph Bell of Edinburgh. None the less do we feel that in Sherlock Holmes he has added a distinct and original creation to English literature. In A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, the wonderful astuteness of Sherlock Holmes is also the subject. The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892), a short but excellent piece of work, again shows the writer's clever handling of a mystery. Dr Doyle has more than sustained his reputation by such recent work as The Stark-Munro Letters (1895) and Brigadier Gerard (1895). Many indeed will prefer the latter even to the Sherlock Holmes books for its lifelike and amusing delineation of the delightfully 150 Victorian Literature naive and unconscious vanity of one of the bravest of the great Napoleon's officers. Rodney Stone (1897) is a clever study of English society life and manners under the Regency, when George III. was king. In all his work Conan Doyle shows himself to be a deft and capable craftsman. His art is pre-eminently that of the story-teller. A sure instinct enables him to escape the temptation to dulness. There may be little that is piquant or brilliant in his style. He touches no deep chords of human feeling. But there can be no doubt as to his power of handling a plot, or his success in recounting a stirring and vivid tale. Anthony Hope is the literary name of Mr A. H. Hawkins (1863), on whom a very few years have sufficed to bestow an extraordinary popularity as a writer of social, and especially of romantic fiction of the adventure kind. In works of the former class such as the clever Dolly Dialogues and The Comedies of Court- ship^ he has revealed a peculiar grace and deftness of touch, and in particular a command of easy, brilliant, well-bred conversation that have a distinct charm. But turning from the conventional forms of modern society life, he was happily led to seek a subject farther afield, in the crux of a strongly dramatic situation, producing the most astounding adventures, and calling forth the most remarkable qualities of courage and resource in his characters. Sometimes the incidents might seem to border upon the impossible, but they were rendered with such verve and animation that the Anthony Hope 151 reader could not help being carried along breathlessly to the close. Mr Hawkins did not all at once discover this vein within himself. The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), which may be said to have made his reputation, was the first, as it is still in the opinion of many the best, example among his works of this kind of writing. The very remarkable incidents of this story were conceived with such a vividness, and the narrative was sustained with such a brilliancy that no flagging of interest, once the book was taken up, was possible. Since then he has produced various other works conceived in the same manner, such as Count Antonio (1895) and Phroso (1897). Of his later works may also be mentioned The God in the Car (1894) and The Heart of the Princess Osra (1896). Anthony Hope had the usual literary discourage- ments, for his first novel, A Man of Mark, published in 1890, was but little noticed. He did not, however, lose heart, for in due course appeared Father Stafford, Mr Witfs Widow, and Almost a Hero, all of them showing excellent work, but none of them giving any promise of the stupendous success that was soon to come with The Prisoner of Zenda. Mr Hawkins, who is the son of the Rev. E. C. Hawkins, Vicar of St Bride's, Fleet Street, London, is Scholar of Balliol, and a Barrister of the Middle Temple. In 1894 he gave up his practice as a lawyer, and has since devoted himself entirely to literary pursuits. 152 Victorian Literature Henry Rider Haggard (1856), who has ministered so largely to the pleasure of younger readers during the last decade of the Victorian era, resides at Dit- chingham House, Norfolk. He spent some of the years of his early manhood in South Africa, where he held the position of Secretary to the Governor of Natal, and afterwards served on the staff of Sir Theo- philus Shepstone, H.M. Special Commissioner to the Transvaal in 1876-77. Like many others, Mr Haggard was deeply dissatisfied with the action of the British Government in restoring the Transvaal to the Boers after the affair of Majuba Hill, and throwing up his interests in that country he returned to England. His first book, Cetewayo and his White Neighbours (1882), was therefore a narrative of events of which he was fully informed, and of which he might almost be said to have been an eye-witness. Dawn, his first novel, appeared in 1884, and was followed by The Witch? s Head(i%%$) ; but it was King Solomons Mines (1886) that really made his reputation. He has fol- lowed up this success by a number of other tales on similar lines, such as She, Allan Qiiatermain, Jess, Colonel Quaritch, Cleopatra, Eric Bright- Eyes, Nada, the Lily, Montezumds Daughter, The People of the Mist, and The Heart of the World (1895). It is easy to find fault with these tales, which certainly make heavy demands upon the faith of the reader, which too often also show a style that is pretentious and overdone, and which, above all, seem to hold human life too cheap. On the other Rudyard Kipling 153 hand. Mr Haggard has the art of the true story-teller, and if he fails to put into these tales any element of subtle emotion, he enchains to the last the atten- tion of such readers as are capable of enjoying works of this class. More recently he has in Joan Haste (1895) tried his hand on a subject of a more familiar and conventional type, but with indifferent success. Rudyard Kipling (1864) is an author of many editions and an almost world-wide audience. Those who admire him will not allow him to be spoken of except in terms of extravagant praise. They see in Kipling the most noteworthy specimen of the end of the century Victorian literature, both in prose and verse. This, they will say, is real ; this is a literature that penetrates beneath all surface cover- ings and conventionalities right down to the primal roots of things. Here is life itself, undraped and unsophisticated, drinking from the very fountains of being, and in eternal harmony with the great tragi-comedy in which material forms are ever struggling to become articulate. Never, perhaps, has the mystery of material India, with its swarm- ing millions, its vast spaces, its oppressive silences, its sweltering heats, and its nightmare horrors, been more powerfully and poetically conceived. Whether, however, such writing in its strong intellectual appeal rests on a sufficient basis of careful and accurate obser- vation, and is not rather the result of a powerful imagination working up into new and strange com- 154 Victorian Literature binations the meagre gleanings of personal knowledge and reflection, may be open to question. It is some- thing in favour of this writer that so acute a critic as Mrs Oliphant, just deceased, is said to have greatly esteemed Mr Kipling's works, while, strange to say, she never liked Stevenson's. Most will feel that the power in Kipling is superabundant, but very many will doubt if it has yet found for itself forms of expression that are likely to put the seal of per- manency upon his work. Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1864. After an education obtained in North Devon, he returned to India in 1882, to assist in editing the Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer. It was during a journalistic experience extending over the next seven years that he began to publish the characteristic poems, tales, and sketches illustrative of native, military, and jungle life in India for which he has become so extensively known. He soon attracted attention. This, however, was work of too much strength and originality to be altogether free from fault, especially in so young a man. Some of it no doubt reached a high level of conception and of execution. It had, and in abundance, humour, pathos, imagination, and both dramatic and descriptive power. But it also had the faults that too often accompany such gifts. The flashes of genius were more noticeable than a sense of art. Mr Kipling's manner showed a frequent want of restraint, and its strong and vivid realism was too apt to degenerate James Matthew Barrie 155 into violence and coarseness. There were passages and even whole stories that no amount of power could render other than repulsive to the ordinary reader. His best known prose works are Soldiers Three, The Light that Failed, Life's Handicap, Many Inventions, and the Jungle Books. In verse, his Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) and The Seven Seas (1896) are done with an extraordinary spirit and energy, but scarcely rise into the region of true poetry. James Matthew Barrie (1860). The novel has in many recent cases added to its other qualities the charms of dialect and local colour, the effect of which has been a peculiar blending of humour and pathos, and a tender quaintness. It is perhaps natural that in this new departure the chief honours should have fallen to the countrymen of Scott. Not only does the 1 guid braid Scots ' lend itself to quaint, picturesque, and pathetic treatment, but there is also a something that does so in the sturdily independent Scottish character itself, with its depth of tenderness and of humour, its reserves of speech and of enthusiasm, its romantic and chivalrous devotion to ancient causes, its grave intelligence, and its familiarity with things unseen. Already considerable reputations have been won by some of our younger writers in dealing with subjects of this class. It remains, however, to be seen what more they have to give, and if it is only within this comparatively narrow and provincial sphere that 156 Victorian Literature they have gifts to exercise. Some of them, such as J. M. Barrie, S. R. Crockett, and Ian Maclaren, have already produced works of sterling quality, and will, no doubt, live among our classics. Mr J. M. Barrie in Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1889) and The Little Minister (1891), has set himself to illustrate the quaint oddities of character, the curious blending of humour and pathos, the pettiness, the heroisms, and the fine and full humanity of life in the small provincial town of Kirriemuir in Forfarshire, where he himself was born. Under the name of ' Thrums ' we know it almost as well as we know our own birthplace ; and as for Jess and Leeby, Hendry and Tammas, Gavin Ogilvy and the Little Minister, and many other characters besides, are they not familiar to us as people we ourselves have laughed and sorrowed with ? It is in A Window in Thrums that Mr Barrie has reached high- water mark, and there are passages in this work, both humorous and pathetic, so full of a very fine genius that it would be almost impossible to beat them. Mr Barrie has broken other ground in When a Man's Single (1888), and My Lady Nicotine (1890), but we miss in these a something that only seems to come to him with the atmosphere of Thrums. His latest tale, Sentimental Tommy (1896), after opening in the east of London, speedily transfers itself to Thrums, the scene of his former triumphs, and sets before us the remarkable sayings and doings of a company of children all more or less dominated by James Matthew Barrie 157 the genius of the child hero of the story. Tommy's hunger for poignant and untried emotions, his vivid imagination, his vanity, his selfishness, his masterful- ness, and his absolute unconsciousness of what truth- fulness means, are all displayed with much analytical power. It is evident that Mr Barrie scorns this character, just as Mr Thackeray scorned his own Becky. Evidently he has here prepared the way for a subsequent work in which Tommy, grown into manhood, will exercise a baleful influence, and will have to account for the evil consequences to others of these dangerous gifts and vices. Sentimental Tommy > though mainly occupied with the children, has glimpses of an adult tragic interest in the opening chapters, and more than a glimpse of idyllic beauty, reminding of Cranford, in depicting the gentleness and middle-aged loves of Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty. Still more recently Mr Barrie has published a remarkable sketch of his mother, entitled Margaret Ogilvy (1896). Some have thought that such a book should never have been written. They are of opinion that Mr Barrie in thus exposing to the public gaze the innermost heart and life of a mother has desecrated the sanctities of home. However that may be, no one can be insensible to the subtle charm of this book its beauty and tenderness, its humour, its pathos, and the fine bloom of its sentiment. It makes clearer what was well known before that towards the intel- lectual genesis of Mr Barrie, and even of the works by which his genius has expressed itself, his mother was 158 Victorian Literature no inconsiderable factor. It is possible that when Mr Barrie's other works are all forgotten, this sketch of his mother may still survive as one of the treasures of literature. Born at Kirriemuir in 1860, Mr Barrie is still young, and has, it may be hoped, a long and brilliant future before him. He was educated at Dumfries Academy, and graduated M.A. at Edinburgh University in 1882. Reminiscences of his college course are to be found in his bright little book, An Edinburgh Eleven, which contained, along with others, sketches of Robert Louis Stevenson, Professors Blackie and Tait, Calderwood and Masson, but which, notwithstanding its cleverness and humour, was, to those who knew the subjects, a little too highly coloured to be quite satisfactory. From Edinburgh, Mr Barrie drifted first to Nottingham and then to London, where his characteristic sketches appearing in the British Weekly, St James's Gazette, and other journals, soon attracted attention. More recently he has made some happy hits with the drama in Walker London, and The Professor's Love Story. Samuel Rutherford Crockett (1859). In 1893 The Stickit Minister and some Common Men diverted attention to a writer who, like Mr Barrie, following in the footsteps of Gait, has set himself to illustrate the lights and shadows of Scottish life, and who also has made liberal use of local colouring and the homely vernacular. Some of these sketches are humorous and Samuel Rutherford Crockett 159 pathetic in a high degree. The book was dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson, who, writing of it to a friend, says : ' The Stickit Minister and The Heather Lintie are two that come near to me particularly. They are drowned in Scotland. They have refreshed me like a visit home.' The Stickit Minister was warmly received, and quickly passed through several editions. Curiosity as to what its author would do next had not long to wait; for in 1894 four other works from Mr Crockett's pen were in the hands of the public. The best of these, The Raiders, has the strong breath of the Galloway moors and of the Solway blowing through it. It is of the time of the early Georges, and tells of the wild doings of smugglers and of gipsies. There are stirring fights by sea and land. The clank and jingle of the stout nags as they dash along the south- land roads with their kegs of brandy and iron-lined boxes of precious lace, are in our ears. In the silence of the night we hear the lowing of the great cattle droves as they are being driven by the raiders along the moorland tracks to the outlaw fastnesses among the hills. The interest of the story is well sustained by a series of hairbreadth escapes and perilous adven- tures. Probably Stevenson's Kidnapped was not a little in the author's mind as he wrote, for the many adventures of Patrick Heron and Silver Sand are wonderfully suggestive of David Balfour and Alan Breck. But of the originality of the work there can be no doubt. The Raiders has many quaint and humorous touches, but it is not without its pathos 160 Victorian Literature also. Indeed, the most distinct note of genius to be found in it is the touching tale told by Silver Sand to Patrick when they are shut up in the Aughty Cave during the great snowstorm, of how he carried the body of poor little dead Willie to his mother, and thereby ceased to be one of Lag's godless troopers, and became that strange thing a gipsy Cameronian. The women characters are all touched with insight and grace, especially Eppie Tamson and May Mischief, the heroine of the story. But, after all, the strong feature of this tale is not the vividness and reality of its characters, but the sense of freshness and exhilaration from outdoor life and adventure which its every page conveys. Following these decided successes came The Lilac Sunbonnet (1894), a love story, of merit inferior to that of its predecessors, although of all Mr Crockett's books it is said to have had the largest circulation. Two other works mark this prolific year, The Mad Sir Uchtred and The Playactress, both short stories, the former dealing with the period of * the killing time,' and the latter breaking for this writer new ground, by carrying him, somewhat belated, into the terra incog- nita of London theatrical life. A book of short tales, chiefly concerning Galloway, entitled Bog-Myrtle and Peat, next appeared. It is of unequal workmanship, although throughout quite characteristic of the author. In 1895 appeared The Men of the Moss- Hags, a more ambitious effort, in which are to be seen all the breezy, open-air effects which this author has taught Samuel Rutherford Crockett 161 us to expect. His presentation of the stern, rugged men and winsome ladies of the Covenant is picturesque and striking. The battle episodes are rendered with great fire and enthusiasm. He had here a subject peculiarly congenial, and if in seeming to challenge comparison with Old Mortality he does not altogether succeed, at least he has accomplished a very difficult task with no little credit. The rapidity of Mr Crockett's production is such that it is hard to keep pace with him. In 1896 he produced Cleg Kelly, the story of a city Arab ; and in the same year he returned to the manner of The Raiders in The Grey Man, in which he describes in a number of thrilling and romantic episodes occurring in the south-west of Scotland, the fierceness of manners that prevailed when the Scottish Solomon was king. It is full of adventure ; too full, some may think, of deeds of blood and violence. There are even moments when its horrors make the reader's gorge rise. On the other hand, there is much to relieve these horrors in the play of wholesome humour, in the sweet human loves, and in that ever-present delight in nature that has such an unfailing charm in this writer qualities, however, which are here and there marred by a painful and perfectly needless coarseness 01 expression. Mr Crockett was born in 1859, amid the scenes he has so well described, on the small farm of Duchrae, near New Galloway Station. Some years later the family removed to Castle Douglas, where young L 162 Victorian Literature Crockett was first pupil and then teacher in the Free Church Institution of that town. His subsequent studies at the Edinburgh University were followed by a residence abroad in the capacity of tutor. Having returned and completed his theological course, he became the Free Church Minister of Penicuik, a village a few miles to the south of Edinburgh, a position which he resigned in 1895 in order to devote himself wholly to literature. Mr Crockett's earliest literary efforts took the form of verse, which appeared in 1886 under the title of Dulce Cor, but attracted no attention. He is still young ; is, moreover, a man of powerful physique, and combining, as he does, habits of industry with undoubted ability, may reasonably be expected to give a good account of himself in the years to come. His danger is in writing too much, from which cause he has already in some degree suffered. Ian Maclaren (1850) is the pen name of the Rev. John Watson, D.D., of Sefton Park Presbyterian Church, Liverpool. Although of Highland blood on both sides, this representative Scotsman was actually born at Manningtree, Essex. This mistake, however, was partially rectified soon after by the removal of the family to Scotland. He passed through the classes of Edinburgh University at the same time as Robert Louis Stevenson, but had no personal acquaintance with him. He relates the interesting fact, however, that on the rare occasions, when the latter put in an Ian Maclaren 163 appearance in his classes, the students used to signalise the event by giving him a round of applause. Among Mr Watson's other fellow students, either at the University or New College (Free Church), were Dr Murray of the Challenger Expedition, Dr Stalker, and Professors Seth, Sorley, Drummond, Elmslie, and G. A. Smith. He also studied for a time at Tubingen. After receiving license as a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, Mr "Watson's first full charge was Logiealmond in Perthshire, which he has since made famous to all the English-speaking world under the name of ' Drumtochty.' He left it to become colleague to the Rev. Dr Millar of Free St Matthew's, Glasgow ; and in 1880 he accepted a call to his present charge, where for the last fifteen years he has laboured in a useful and highly appreciated ministry. His very remarkable success as a writer has been won by a series of sketches of Scottish life and char- acter as seen in the remote parish of Drumtochty. These sketches first appeared in the pages of the British Weekly, which had also first called attention to Mr Barrie and Mr Crockett ; and it is to this bright and clever journal that we are indebted for most of these facts respecting Ian Maclaren. When in 1894 his sketches appeared in book form as Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, they attracted very wide attention. They are in no sense mere imitations of the two writers just referred to, his undoubted fore- 164 Victorian Literature runners in this field ; they everywhere show the original power and independence of their author. In the keenness of his observation, in the instinct for discerning subtleties of character in humble peasant life, in his genial humour, in the width and gentleness of his toleration, and especially in his pathos, a quality of quite unusual depth in Ian Maclaren, we find an author of fine gifts, both of mind and heart, who fully deserves the reputation this work has won for him. If he had done nothing more than create Dr M'Clure the general practitioner of Drumtochty, who with something of heroic consecration has given himself to a life of unceasing toil, self-sacrifice, and modest hiding of great professional gifts, in the service of the unde- monstrative inhabitants of the Glen, we should feel that a something had been added to literature that must needs make the world sweeter and better than it was before. There is nothing cynical in these pictures of homely Scottish life ; a warmth of human heart, and a soft, though rugged tenderness are in them all. In a second series, The Days of Auld Langsyne (1895), Ian Maclaren has returned to Drumtochty, and the reader is as much as before impressed with the inwardness of the author's knowledge of Scottish character. May we not say that the continued popularity of these sketches, even outside of Scotland, is proof that they are human even more than they are Scotch ? Their realism cannot fail to come home to the reader, and we have difficulty, therefore, in Ian Maclaren 165 believing what the author has told us, that not one character in these books has been drawn from the life. We must suppose that they are real because they are true to the universal facts of human nature. For ^idyllic beauty of conception, quaint- ness of humour, and poignancy of pathos, ' Drum- sheugh's Love Story,' ' A Case of Conscience,' and ' A Triumph of Diplomacy ' in the later book are almost equal to anything in Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. His latest work in fiction, Kate Carnegie and those Ministers (1896), seemed at first to promise the larger interest of a continuous story ; but whatever the author's intention may have been, it resolved itself once again into a book of sketches drawn in the neighbour- hood of Drumtochty. Hitherto Ian Maclaren has not shown any of the constructive talent required for the devising and the proper handling of a plot, but, on the other hand, he has seldom produced better work than the 'Rabbi' Saunderson of this story, which, if it contained nothing more than this quaint and touching portrait, would still be entitled to be regarded as a work of unusual interest and value. Other Novelists. It was as a writer of humorous and spirited sea stories, that Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) won his reputation. The best of them, such as Peter Simple, Mr Midshipman Easy, and Jacob Faithful, had been written before the 1 66 Victorian Literature present reign began; but until his death in 1848 he continued to produce largely. Some of his later tales, such as The Phantom Ship, Poor Jack, and Masterman Ready, are scarcely, if at all, inferior to the best things he had already done. Of living authors, William Clark Russell (1844) is the true successor of Marryat, and may even be said to excel the older writer in the power with which he has described the cruel mystery of the sea, its dangers, and the crimes and superstitions of the men who do business upon it. For seven or eight years he had himself trod the deck, and was able, therefore, to put into his first sea story, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, which made his reputation, that air of reality which personal know- ledge only can give. Many other nautical tales have followed, and it is upon these that this writer's reputation rests. Francis Edward Smedley (1819- 1864) relieved a comparatively short life of bad health and physical suffering by writing such bright and humorous tales as Frank Fairleigh, Lewis Arundel, and Harry Coverdatts Courtship. Mrs Elizabeth Lynn Linton (1822), the author of John Davidson, Patricia Kemball, The Atonement of Learn Dundas, and Dulcie Everton (1896), also wrote a series of clever papers which attracted much attention in the pages of The Saturday Review, under the title of The Girl of the Period. Dinah Maria Mulock (1826- 1887), also known as Mrs Craik, deserves mention for her fine novel, John Halifax, Gentleman. She also wrote A Life for a Life, Mistress and Maid, and Other Novelists 167 many other tales. James Hannay (1827-1873) gave much of his time to journalism, was for some time editor of the Edinburgh Courant, but found opportunity to produce various works in fiction, the best of which are Singleton Fontenoy and Eustace Conyers. George Alfred Lawrence (1827- 1876) wrote Guy Livingstone, Sword and Gown, and other tales, very popular in their day. Henry Kingsley (1830-1876), the younger brother of Charles Kingsley, wrote Ravenshoe, his best story, Geoffrey Hamlin, and many others, with not a little of his brother's verve and enthusiasm. James Payn (1830), having received his education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, began a long and honourable career in literature early in the fifties by publishing certain volumes of verse, and by con- tributing articles to the Westminster Review and Household Words. In 1858 he became editor of Chamber s's Journal, in which appeared his first novel, A Family Scapegrace, followed by Lost Sir Massing- berd, the success of which was so great that it is said to have added 20,000 to the circulation of the Journal. In 1882 Mr Payn succeeded Mr Leslie Stephen as editor of The Cornhill Magazine, the chair of which he only vacated in 1896. Since 1888 his bright and humorous Notes have been a feature of The Illustrated London News. More than a hundred books, chiefly novels, have come from the pen of this much-loved, much - suffering, highly - equipped author, in whom are to be found, besides the best qualities of the 1 68 Victorian Literature novelist, a peculiarly quaint and subtle humour, and a genial humanity. Justin McCarthy (1830), in addition to A History of our Own Times and a History of the Four Georges, has done much journal- istic work, besides writing a number of popular novels, such as The Waterdale Neighbours, A Fair Saxon, Dear Lady Disdain, and The Dictator. S. Baring- Gould (1834), a country gentleman of an ancient family, and Rector of Lew-Trenchard, Devon, has since 1854 produced many books of an historical, antiquarian, and religious interest. More recently he has given himself to works in fiction, among the best of which are Mehalah and John Herring. He is strong in local colour, and in depicting with a grim and powerful realism the less attractive phases of human life and character. Mrs Maxwell, better known as Miss Braddon (1837), first made her reputation with Lady Audley's Secret in 1862. It was followed by Aurora Floyd, and since that time Miss Braddon has continued to produce a succession of bright, stirring, somewhat sensational stories, which have always been popular. Mrs Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1839), to whom reference has already been made in the sketch of her father, Mr Thackeray, has done much good work with the delicacy, exquisiteness of touch, and fine womanly instinct that form her most distinguishing character- istics. Her first novel was The Story of Elizabeth (1863), which was followed by The Village on the Cliff, Old Kensington, and various other tales. Joseph Other Novelists 169 Hatton (1839) nas been largely engaged in journal- ism, but is chiefly known as a clever writer of novels and works in general literature. Of his novels, mention may be made of Clytie, By Order of the Czar, Under the Great Seal, and The Dagger and the Cross. Robert Buchanan (1841), whose more important productions as a poet have elsewhere been noticed, has more recently devoted most of his time to the drama and fiction, in both of which he has won considerable success. His best novels are The Shadow of the Sword (1876), and God and the Man (1881). Andrew Lang (1844) also found his chief distinction in other fields than that of fiction ; but in 1896 he followed up The World' 1 s Desire (1890), a tale written in collaboration with Mr Rider Haggard, with an historical romance entirely from his own pen. The Monk of Fife, as the story is called, is supposed to be the chronicle of a certain Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, concerning events that * befell in the Realm of France ' during the time of the unfortunate Joan of Arc. It is full of life, movement, and adventure, described with much spirit and realistic effect. The historical personages and the actual occurrences have been closely studied, and are set forth not only with due attention to accuracy of detail, but with a mastery of style not usually found in the popular novel. Henry Seton Merriman, nom de plume of Mr Hugh S. Scott, has, especially in his fine Russian tale, The Sowers (1896), produced work of so much ability, that anything that now comes from his pen will be 170 Victorian Lfteratu re eagerly welcomed. John Strange Winter (1856), whose real name is Mrs Stannard, has told us how she won her position in literature, after many struggles and discouragements, by the publication of Booties' Baby and Houp-La in 1886, the public attention being drawn to them chiefly by her fresh and apparently familiar descriptions of army people and child life. She has worked the same vein many times since, and has achieved a fair amount of popularity. Marie Corelli (1864)) in spite of grave faults, both of subject and of style, has had extraordinary success as a novelist. Her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds (1886), has passed through many editions. The same good fortune has attended all her later ventures. Of her more recent works, Barrabas (1893), which introduces, not in an irreverent spirit, the sacred scenes and personages of the crucifixion and resurrection, The Sorrows of Satan (1895), and The Mighty Atom (1896), in which the evils of a purely secular education are vehemently denounced, are all open to cavil on the score of taste, but are not without elements of power. Such writers as Mrs Rentoul Esler, the author of How they Loved at Grimpat, and The Way of Trans- gressors, and Miss Annie S. Swan (Mrs Burnett Smith), the author of Aldersyde, Carlowrie, and many other tales, deserve credit for high purpose, and the sweet, pure, feminine tone of their works. Edna Lyall, nom de plume of Miss Ada E. Bayly, has been more ambitious in her subjects, but has preserved the same wholesome moral quality. In Golden Days Other Novelists 171 reproduces the times of the Restoration ; To Right the Wrong deals with Hampden and other actors in the great Civil War ; while Donovan, We Two, and others are occupied with the men and problems of to- day. Mrs Margaret L. Woods has done stronger and perhaps more enduring work in her boldly planned and carefully executed, A Village Tragedy, Esther Vanhomrigh a tale of the great Dean and The Vagabonds. Mr Kipling has given high praise to Mrs Flora Annie Steel (1847), a Scottish lady, resident for more than twenty years in India, for The Potter's Thumb (1894) and On the Face of the Waters (1896). The last is perhaps the most vivid presenta- tion of the great Indian Mutiny in the form of fiction that has yet appeared. In some places it rises to unusual power, and is indeed almost a great book. If it anywhere fails, it is in sacrificing the imagina- tive for the historical elements, in the writer's too great anxiety to set forth nothing but the facts in that tremendous episode in our national history. Followers in the new Scottish School of Barrie, Crockett, and Maclaren are numerous, such as D. S. Meldrum, author of The Story of Margredel and Grey Mantle and Gold Fringe both of them illus- trative of life and manners in Fifeshire ; Gabriel Setoun, the chronicler of the lights and shadows of Scottish life in the village of * Barncraig ' ; and David Lyall. And what is thus being done for Scotland has also been done for Ireland by Miss Jane Barlow, whose Irish Idylls, Kerrigans Quality, 172 Victorian Literature Mrs Martin's Company, and other works show fine art, poetry in the treatment of local scenery, and the closest observation of the Irish peasantry. In local colour Miss M. E. Francis (Mrs Blundell) also excels, her various tales showing no little power in depicting the customs of Lancashire, and in the use of its peculiar dialect. CHAPTER IV Historians and Biographers Victorian History. The earlier part of the Victorian era is rich in great writers of history writers who worked upon a large canvas, crowded with figures, and who used an amplitude of detail, and a pains- taking accuracy of research that have no parallel, except, perhaps, in the great author of The Decline and Fall. It could boast of such contemporary his- torians as Grote, Macaulay, Froude, Carlyle, Freeman, Gardiner, and Lecky ; and a period that could do that might justly claim to be not only the most brilliant, but also the most prolific of all periods of historical inquiry. But as we near the close of the era, a change becomes manifest. We look around in vain for the successors of these great historians. It is true that history still has its attraction for many pens, but it is a history in cameos. The vast and crowded canvas is no longer to be seen in the work of the younger men. Very brilliant are the pictures they present, but space is wanting. Their art for the most part resembles that of the microscopist who 174 Victorian Literature focuses his lens upon a minute field of inquiry, and makes the most insignificant details within that field stand out in sharp and vivid outline. Within narrower limits therefore exhaustive historical research continues. But even less than before it concerns itself with the doings of kings and statesmen, the intrigues of courts, the finesse of diplomacy, and the din of battlefields. Its business is rather with the common everyday life of the people of past times, and with the inception and progress of those social, political, and religious movements that have made the nations what they are to-day. Into its treatment of such subjects has necessarily entered much of that scientific spirit that is pre- dominant in the thought of the Victorian age. Guided by this spirit, the historian sees in a nation, not the mere sport or victim of a succession of power- ful men, who, acting capriciously, or in their own interest, have chosen to put their seal upon it, but the slowly evolved product of laws pressing with the cumulative force of centuries of change upon king and statesmen, scholar and peasant alike. It is this that is now giving to the conception of history an epical grandeur and completeness, by transferring attention from the meanness and pettiness of indi- vidual agents to the operation of social and moral forces that are as cosmical in the vastness and certainty of their action as the tides themselves. But as to the manner in which history shall be presented, the historians of the Victorian era are not Thomas Carlyle 175 agreed. In general they may be said to range them- selves in two opposite camps : that of the so-called romantic historians like Macaulay and Froude, who deem it the duty of the historian to set forth the facts with a due regard to impressiveness and pictorial effect; and that of writers like Freeman and Gardiner, whose conception of the historian's duty is to state the facts fully, simply, and accurately, regardless of effects. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). Thomas Carlyle, one of the most original men of genius of the reign, may be classed among the historians of the period, although in virtue of much characteristic work of another kind, he falls quite as appropriately under its essayists and miscellaneous writers. There is no more striking figure than his in our gallery of Victorian authors. To him belongs not only the interest of great work powerfully done, but also that of a potent moral force, and a personality of peculiar strength and fascination. And for that reason the time has, perhaps, scarcely come to judge him dispas- sionately. There are those who blame him for an influence which they conceive to have been harmful, especially to youth. There are very many others, however, to whom Carlyle has been infinitely more than poet or philosopher, essayist or historian. To them he has been nothing less than an inspired thinker and guide, his voice being as the voice of a prophet uttering divine messages, and calling them 176 Victorian Literature with imperious tones to truth, reality, and whole- someness of life. And although in the blaze of revelation that followed his death in 1881, it was inevitable that there should be much revulsion of feeling, to very many he still speaks as with the consecrated energy and moral force of an inspired seer of old. Of no man, not even Johnson, can it be said that we know him as we know Carlyle. The innumerable acts of his life and all his changeful moods, not only in their tenderness and pathos, their grim humour and noble subservience to duty, but also in their petulant chafings against circumstance, their peevish outbursts of jealousy and spleen, their spasms of selfishness and irritability, nothing softened, nothing withheld, are ruthlessly exposed to view. No such revelation could be altogether pleasing. Nevertheless, the reader with a soul will be able to hear, even beneath these distempered unburdenings, the heart-beats of a truly grand and noble nature, and it will be strange if the feeling be not present, that, after all, none of these frequent littlenesses actually lessen Carlyle's elevation. It may well be, however, that in view of such perturba- tions of spirit, the ordinary reader may be found congratulating himself that he at least is not of the order of geniuses upon whom descends sometimes so dark a dower of restless discontent. Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, a small village situated in the south of Dumfriesshire, in 1795. His father, James Carlyle, was first a stonemason and Thomas Carlyle 177 then a farmer. His mother, Margaret Aitken, was of the same humble rank in life. Both were compara- tively uneducated, and it is one of the most touching things in Carlyle's story, that when he had become famous, his aging mother learned to write, that she might have the happiness of exchanging letters with her son. These were the two persons whom Thomas Carlyle loved and reverenced beyond all human beings down to the day of his death. Instead of their defects making him ashamed of them, they only filled him with the deeper admiration for their sterling worth and the strength of their native qualities. To their force of character, their mental vigour, their emotional warmth, and especially to their fervent Scottish piety, he always professed himself to be under the deepest obligations ; and never has son paid to the memory of parents a more tender and loving tribute than Carlyle has done in the early portion of the Reminis- cences. With the laudable pride that so often makes the Scottish peasant desire to give to his children the advantages of education from which he has himself been debarred, James Carlyle sent his son Thomas to the Burgh School of Annan. Here he remained till 1810, when, in his fifteenth year, he left to enter him- self a student in Arts of the University of Edinburgh, with the view of becoming a minister of the Church of Scotland. His course, except in the subject of mathematics, was not brilliant, and he appears to have left the University, as most Scottish students then did, M 178 Victorian Literature without seeking a degree. It must have been for him a time of much strain and hardship, during which Carlyle, always a * diligent student, appears to have fallen into indifferent health. The dyspepsia from which he was to suffer all his days probably dates from the ardour of his scientific studies at this time under Professor Leslie. In the drift of his opinions it seemed less and less likely that he would ever be able to enter the Christian ministry, although he had not yet finally abandoned the idea. When, therefore, he finds employment as teacher of mathematics in the Burgh School of Annan, which, as a pupil, he had left four years before, we still read of his preaching trial sermons as a theological student, and even of receiv- ing praise for them. Two years later, through the good offices of his Edinburgh Professors, he got an appointment to the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy. And here, although not altogether unknown to each other before, Edward Irving for the first time enters the life of Carlyle, not to pass from it again until the brilliant meteor-like career of the great preacher has darkened into ill-starred and premature eclipse. It was natural that two Annan school-boys thus meeting should become friends and see much of each other : it was no less natural that, being the men they were, they should exchange books and discuss opinions with infinite sharpening of wits and enlargement of mental horizons. Affairs of the heart seem not to have been wanting in either case. Irving was engaged to Miss Martin, the daughter of the parish minister of Kirk- Thomas Carlyle 179 caldy ; and to Miss Gordon, the most brilliant of Irving's girl pupils, Carlyle appears to have made advances more or less serious. These, however, the young lady repelled with good feeling and an admirable un- derstanding of the stern grandeur and proud aloofness of the nature that had thus placed itself at her feet. Schoolmastering was little suited to Carlyle's tem- perament, and accordingly, after a two years' stay in Kirkcaldy, we find him back in Edinburgh. He has still to support himself by tutoring, but it becomes more and more evident that not in that any more than in preaching is Carlyle to find his true life- business, but in literature. During this time he wrote sixteen articles, chiefly for Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopedia, but these were of no special mark, and gave little promise of what he was afterwards to achieve. Of more importance was his translation of Legendre's Geometry, published in 1824. But it was as a student of German, and in the interpretation of German literature to the British public, that he first became favourably known. In 1823 his Life of Schiller began to appear in the pages of the London Magazine. It was warmly commended both at home and abroad, and had the honour of being translated into German by Goethe. In 1824, Carlyle translated Goethe's own Wilhelm Meister, and this, too, called forth most favour- able criticisms. Much other work in the same com- paratively untried field, both in the form of translations and of reviews and criticisms, followed, and gave to Carlyle the reputation of a writer of wide knowledge 180 Victorian Literature and much originality. More than any other man he deserves the credit of having thus introduced the masterpieces of German literature to the British public. Although thus busy with the pen, Carlyle was still engaged in tutorial work. When Edward Irving migrated to London, he recommended Carlyle as tutor to the young Bullers, and thus began a connection which at first at least was satisfactory to Carlyle, both pecuniarily and otherwise. His pupils came to Edin- burgh, and he found in them not only apt scholars, but exceedingly kind and courteous boys, with whom it was a pleasure to associate. But the yoke even of such pleasant bondage at length became galling to him, and he relinquished a connection in which no faults present themselves that are not due to his own morose and irritable temper. But Irving, even before this time, had given him an introduction of quite an- other sort. In Haddington lived Mr Welsh, a surgeon of good repute, who, when Irving was schoolmaster there, had secured his services as tutor to his daughter, Jane Welsh, a lively, mischievous, mocking, but clever, witty, and brilliant girl. She lost her heart to her handsome and grave tutor, and he, but for the engagement already referred to, would probably have reciprocated her love. When in 1821 Irving intro- duced her to Carlyle, there seemed little likelihood that the latter, with his uncouth appearance, broad accent, and altogether unpolished manners and exterior, would ever prove anything else to the dainty, Thomas Carlyle 181 elfish little lady than one more butt for her coquetry and sarcasm. But this was not so to be. With all her perception of the ridiculous in her new suitor, there was the feeling, ever growing stronger with prolonged intercourse, that he was her master ; and after much chafing of the bit, she married him on October 17, 1826, from ambition, she tells us, not from love. Mrs Welsh, now a widow, did not approve of the match, but made the best of circumstances, and fitted up a house for the pair at Comely Bank, Edin- burgh, where, therefore, for the next two years we find them located. Their life ought to have been happy. They had the best society the Scottish capital could offer. Among their friends and visitors were Sir William Hamilton, Professor Wilson, De Quincey, and Francis Jeffrey. The last was discovered to be a distant relative of Mrs Carlyle's, and perhaps for that reason the Edinburgh Review opened its pages to Carlyle, so that he became a frequent contributor. The Westminster Review and Fraser^s Magazine also accepted his articles. His circumstances had thus greatly improved, but probably in no circumstances could Carlyle's lurid, stormy nature have known true rest or happiness. Was it the city noises, or was it the demon of dyspepsia, or was it simply the hunger for change, that tortured him? Whatever it was, Carlyle now determined that they should quit Edinburgh and betake themselves to Craigenputtock, a small pro- perty in Dumfriesshire, which had been left to Mrs 1 82 Victorian Literature Carlyle by her father. Probably with her keen intelligence, bright wit, and instinct for society, she did not willingly consent to be thus buried out of sight. But as usual the stronger will prevailed, and in the summer of 1828, the Carlyles were duly established within their moorland home. Content- ment, it is to be feared, did not in this instance come with change, although for a time all seemed to go well. For Mrs Carlyle the six years that followed were in reality years of silence and solitude, of galling disappointment, of growing physical weakness, and of severe and even sordid manual drudgery, the memory of which never afterwards left her. Remote from city noises, absolutely without society, the ill-assorted pair were alone together, but owing to Carlyle's recluse habits of study, without any real companionship. It is true they had their visitors. Good-natured Jeffrey came with his well-meant, ill-requited kindness ; and better still, came Emerson in a never-to-be-forgotten visit, during which the much-tormented spirits of Craigenputtock had brief respite of peace and happi- ness. Yet these were the years of Carlyle's initiation. He had tabernacled in the wilderness. His thoughts had ranged over spaces wider far than any that met his view at Craigenputtock. He now knew himself, and the message which the world was waiting to receive from his lips. Undoubtedly the Carlyle that left Craigenputtock in 1834 was a stronger man than the Carlyle that had entered it six years before. Of actual work, moreover, done during this period, there Thomas Carlyle 183 was much to show. Carlyle had kept himself abreast of current literature, and, besides, had produced several writings of permanent value. Of these were the famous Essay on Burns, an admirably true and sympathetic criticism of the national bard ; another essay entitled Characteristics, and an estimate of Goethe contributed to the Edinburgh Review. But the chief fruit of Carlyle's seclusion among the Gallo- way hills is the immortal Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Patched), into which Carlyle has put more of his philosophy than into any of his later works. This work, of undoubted genius, after many rejections at the hands of the publishers, began to appear in the pages of Erasers Magazine ; and while Sartor was still in progress the Carlyles in 1834 removed to London. They found a home in No. 24 (now No. 5) Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and here for the next forty-five years Carlyle passed an interesting but uneventful life, given up chiefly to the prosecution of the great literary labours on which his reputation rests. His house in Cheyne Row has recently become the pro- perty of the nation, and thus for all time coming, visitors will be able, in some degree at least, to realise for themselves the circumstances amidst which the seer of Chelsea lived and wrote. The struggle for bread was not yet over, and the pair had to practise the most rigid economies. Sartor afterwards came to be recognised as one of the most remarkable books of the century, but in these early days was altogether unnoticed by the multitude, 184 Victorian Literature and in the lettered class excited either an amused contempt or bitter hostility. It had the immediate effect of making journalism for him impossible. Every effort to get work failed. The two or three hundred pounds with which they had commenced their Chelsea housekeeping were nearly gone. Carlyle was sorely tempted to accept Emerson's invitation, and seek his fortunes and a more favourable public in America. The truth is, he was never made to go in harness. His honesty, independence, and love of truth were such that he could not become a party man. Accord- ingly the great literary organs that had hitherto been open to him closed their doors. The columns of the Times, through the influence of his friend John Sterling, would probably have welcomed him, if only he could have donned its livery. In Carlyle's view, starvation would have been better. And how near they came to this grim issue may be learned from what he says in the February of 1835 : 'It is three- and-twenty months since I have earned one penny by the craft of literature.' The brave heart, how- ever, had no thought of giving in. Any suitable official position, especially if connected with education, would have been welcome ; and Carlyle appears to have thought that in that case he would have had no difficulty in turning his back upon so harsh a mistress as literature had proved. Nevertheless, through all discouragements a great work was shap- ing itself. Before leaving Craigenputtock he had begun to collect materials relating to the French Thomas Carlyle 185 Revolution, and had even produced some articles bearing upon it. This was the subject that now engaged all his energies. Carlyle was never one to whom literary effort came easily. With great pains he had gathered together his facts, and with infinite labour he had put the best of himself, mind and heart, into the first volume of this work, when what we must call a serious misfortune overtook him. Mr John Stuart Mill, his most intimate friend at that time, begged to be allowed to read the manuscript, and whilst in his possession, it was in- advertently destroyed by the maid-servant under the impression that it was waste paper. The blow was an overwhelming one for Carlyle, although he bore it with a fortitude, which in a man so easily disturbed by trifles, seems very remarkable. He began afresh, but found the task a hateful one. He had not kept his notes, and experienced the utmost difficulty in recalling what he had written, and especially in regaining his own mental attitude towards it. It was while the French Revolution was still on hand that Carlyle was finally delivered from all anxiety as to money matters. Miss Harriet Martineau and Miss Wilson had interested themselves so effectually on his behalf that two hundred ladies and gentlemen agreed to subscribe a guinea to hear from him a course of six lectures on the subject of German Literature. The course was highly successful, and had the gratifying result of putting ^"135 into 1 86 Victorian Literature Carlyle's purse. A second course, this time of twelve lectures, on the History of Literature, was delivered in the following season, with still more pleasing results, for it added nearly ^300 to his resources. Carlyle had many of the gifts of the popular orator, although these public appearances were far from his liking. So fruitful a source of revenue, however, could not yet be dispensed with. A third course on the Revolutions of Modern Europe followed ; and in 1840 he gave his last and best series, on the subject of * Heroes,' and never appeared upon a public platform again until twenty-six years later he delivered his memorable Rectorial address to the students of Edinburgh University. It is pleasing to know that with the success of these lectures all pecuniary anxieties were finally dissipated. In time his works, too, proved successful, and were eagerly bought by the publishers. Slowly but surely Carlyle himself came to be regarded as the representative British man of letters, honoured no less for his moral worth than for his literary genius. Unhappily better fortunes did not bring peace or content to either of the brilliant spirits that com- posed the Carlyle household. It is impossible not to be struck with their unreasonableness, when we hear them apostrophising heaven and earth against the cackling of an in offensive hen, or the twang of some neighbouring piano. Only we remember that they cannot always be taken at their word, and that to curse such things in superlatives has Thomas Carlyle 187 become with them not only a habit, but an art and a luxury. When The French Revolution was published in 1837, it met with a mixed reception, but on the whole it may be said to have turned the tide in favour of Carlyle. It is impossible to apply to this or to any other of Carlyle's historical works an ordinary standard. History, indeed, has never been so written before or since. His method is no less original than his style. Taking his stand among the events he describes, he makes his comments to the reader, who is supposed to accompany him, regarding the appearance and the actions of the various characters. Or in splintered fragments of glowing speech he addresses these characters themselves in bursts of scornful vitupera- tion, bitter mockery, or tenderest pity, as the case may be. Nothing so aflame with the passionate emotion of the writer himself, so full of inwardness and poetry, has ever been written in the form of history. To say this, however, is equivalent to saying that it is not to Carlyle we must look for an unbiassed record. It is less a history than the great dramatic poem of the Revolution. In his next contribution to historical literature Carlyle adhered more closely to the facts of history. The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845) was immediately and extensively popular, and may be said to have reconstructed public opinion regarding its subject. With his usual painstaking diligence, Carlyle had gathered together all the known utterances, 1 88 Victorian Literature spoken and written, of the great Protector, and illuminating these with intervals of vivid commentary and dramatic narrative, had succeeded in presenting to the view a towering and impressive personality. For the first time, indeed, Cromwell could now be understood. Here were to be seen not only his rugged force and commanding abilities as military leader and statesman, but also the man himself in relation to his family, his friends, and the laws of his interior life. It was shown that at the root of that life lay an abiding sense of God and duty, of God as the Sovereign not of nations only, but also of individual men and women ; of a duty and responsibility, all pervading, and descend- ing from the greatest to the most trivial acts of a human life. In view of the self-revelations of these letters and speeches, it became impossible any longer to regard Cromwell only as a vulgar, ambitious, self-seeking, but clever hypocrite ; or to doubt that, nowithstanding faults and imperfections, he was not only essentially an honest and sincere man, but also the greatest ruler that had ever swayed the sceptre in England. Modifica- tions of this opinion, due to fuller evidence, have no doubt arisen since ; but in the main the popular judgment respecting Cromwell remains that which the Letters and Speeches first suggested. Frederick the Great was the subject of his next important work. The six volumes of this History of Friedrich II of Prussia were published between 1858 and 1865, and altogether occupied fourteen busy years Thomas Carlyle 189 of their author's life. Before he had finished his task, if we may judge by frequent grumblings, it had become an almost intolerable burden. In the work itself, however, there is no slackening of effort, nor indeed any appearance of weariness. On Carlyle's own confession, Frederick was but a ' questionable hero ' ; yet even in him he could see the real man and born ruler. And what could he not forgive for the sake of those qualities of veracity, sincerity, dominancy of will, and energetic action, that consti- tute his ideal of a man, and that he finds so signally displayed in Frederick ? As in the other histories, Carlyle here follows the personal method. For although this work in its vast scope really embraces European events during the Eighteenth Century, these events are considered not so much in themselves as in relation to the principal personages at the heart of them ; and in the near neighbourhood of these personages the author himself is always to be found. Frederick II worthily completed the edifice of Carlyle's reputation. It was even more successful in America than at home, but its highest triumph was reserved for Frederick's own country, where it was at once translated and accepted as the greatest authority on its subject. It remains a monument of many of Carlyle's best qualities his untiring diligence in the collection and sifting of materials ; his admirable com- mand of historical perspective ; his unequalled lucidity of narrative style ; his genius for vivid dramatic portrai- 190 Victorian Literature ture ; his humour, his imagination, and his unfailing grasp of the divine significance of life. Even the faults of writings of so much genius will often help their general effect. This may be said to have been the case with Carlyle's excess of figurative language, his extrava- gance of eulogy and of invective, and even of his disregard of syntax. Carlyle's works on social and political questions are of little practical value. He generously avails himself of the privilege of denunciation : things could scarcely, in his view, be worse than they are in this England of the Nineteenth Century ; but he has little to suggest by way of remedy that is not absolutely and ridicu- lously futile. What he was in politics it is difficult to define. On some subjects he appears to be a pro- nounced Radical ; on others he is no less decidedly a Conservative ; and certainly the castigations he administers to Mr Gladstone are quite as severe as those he bestows on Mr Disraeli. His Chartism (1839), with all its girding at social and political evils, had no remedies other than the trite ones of Education and Emigration to suggest. The Nigger Question (1849) and The Latter Day Pam- phlets (1850) filled men of all parties with consterna- tion at the intemperance of his language, and the apparent wrongheadedness that could find in such generally acceptable changes as the Abolition of Slavery, Model Prisons, and the Extension of the Suffrage, only subjects for a vitriolic scorn and Cas- sandra-like laments. Past and Present (1843) contains Thomas Carlyle 191 much that is beautiful and suggestive ; but when it compares the times of Abbot Sampson and his monks, seven hundred years ago, with the England of to-day and its problems, to the disadvantage of the latter, we feel that little or no weight can attach to its deliver- ances. His critical judgments cannot be relied upon. The Burns essay is altogether admirable. On the other hand, his estimate of Sir Walter Scott does justice neither to its subject nor to himself. Carlyle's body of thought was not extensive. He was neither a deep nor an exact thinker. He is more remarkable for emotional intensity. He has his moments of seer-like vision, but even prophecy was scarcely more successful in Carlyle than in lesser men. The failure of his vaticinations is more noticeable than their fulfilment. On all subjects his thought left much that was indefinite, persistently shading off from the sharp edges of definition into cloudlands which, however beautiful and suggestive, gave no sufficient foothold to reason. Hence the difficulty of grasping his thought into a coherent philosophical system. It is rather to the inspirational quality of Carlyle's writings that we must look for his real potency. In the poetic beauty and grandeur of his thoughts, and still more in his constant call to seriousness and strenuousness of life, the reader who can appreciate such gifts and their unusual consecration to high purpose, will be able to forget the strange instrument of language that he used, his extravagant cynicisms 192 Victorian Literature and his sometimes intolerable vehemence of vitupera- tion and attack. Forgetting how he would pose as the one true, honest, capable, and unbiassed thinker of his time, and deducting all that is needful on the score of such arrogance, egotism, and harsh judgment of others none of which can be denied or justified there will still be left enough to make Thomas Carlyle one of the most inspiring thinkers of his time, one of the truest, sincerest of men, and the chief literary force among the prose writers of the earlier half of Queen Victoria's reign. What may be called the end of Carlyle's literary career, although not the end of his life, for he was still to live for many years, is marked by touching episodes. In 1866 he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, an event which seems to have given him peculiar pleasure. He was then seventy- one years of age, and far from strong, and it was not without misgivings that, in compliance with custom, he proceeded to Edinburgh to deliver the usual inaugural address. All testimonies agree in saying that he was singularly happy on this occasion, and that he had a brilliant reception at the hands of the students. Professors Huxley and Tyndall had accom- panied him, and when all was over, the latter, to reassure Mrs Carlyle, who was anxious about her husband, greatly comforted her with the message ' A perfect triumph ! ' On the discharge of this duty Carlyle did not at once return to London, and it was during his further Thomas Carlyle 193 stay in Scotland that the startling event of Mrs Carlyle's death occurred. She had gone for her usual drive round Hyde Park, her little dog following. A passing carriage went over its foot, Mrs Carlyle sprang out and took it into the brougham, and when she was next seen ( she was sitting with her hands folded on her lap, dead.' The fifteen solitary years that follow are broken by nothing more important than Carlyle's pamphlet, Shoot- ing Niagara : and After? a Jeremiad over the exten- sion of the franchise by the Reform Bill of 1867; sketches of the Norse Kings ; a criticism of the Portraits of John Knox ; and his letter to the Times on the Franco-German War. Much of his interest in life had now gone. Through the disablement of his right hand he could no longer hold the pen, and to dictate to another seemed impossible. The end of his long life of eighty-five years an end for which he had sadly wearied came on the 5th of February 1881. A resting-place in Westminster Abbey was offered, but in accordance with Carlyle's own directions, he was laid beside his father and mother in the grey churchyard of Ecclefechan. Lord Macaulay (1800-1859). When Victoria ascended the throne, Macaulay, then thirty-seven years of age, was still in India, carrying through important judicial reforms, and amassing a fortune modest indeed, yet sufficient to free him in the future from all pecuniary anxieties. The plan of a great N 194 Victorian Literature History of England, to come down to the close of George the Third's reign, had already been sketched ; and other projects, both in literature and in politics, now awaited the period of independence. No one can read the story of Macaulay 's life in India as told by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan, without being impressed with his ungrudging devotion to duty as a public servant, and without a feeling of amaze- ment at the wide range of his reading in ancient and modern authors, filling up apparently every moment not given to his official labours. Moreover, the reputation he had won in the pages of the Edinburgh Review as one of the most brilliant essayists of the age was not allowed to lapse. From time to time articles such as those on Mackintosh and Bacon were sent home to feed the popular expectation of greater work still to come. Nor can there be any doubt that, although not written till his return, the brilliant pageantries! and panoramas of the ' Clive ' and ' Hastings ' articles were now thought out, and their materials collected. Thomas Babington Macaulay was born in 1800, at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, the seat of his uncle Thomas Babington, after whom he was named. His father Zachary Macaulay, of Scottish clerical parentage, was a man of pronounced evangelical opinion and zealous philanthropic effort, especially in the cause of negro slavery. His mother, Selina Mills, daughter of a Bristol Quaker, seems to have been a woman of warm affections, good sense, and superior Lord Macaulay 195 mental endowments. The extraordinary precocity of the child was doubtless encouraged by his residence in a home where questions of public interest were frequently and eagerly discussed by men and women eminent both in literature and in philanthropy. At the same time his father and mother were fully alive to the importance of judicious training for their child, and were careful to conceal from him the admiration with which his unusual talents had secretly inspired them. Hannah More also, who was much attached to the boy, and whom Macaulay used afterwards to speak of as a second mother, while seeking to give a whole- some direction to his tastes and energies, treated him with no less wisdom and prudence. The boy's re- sources of memory and his extraordinary correctness and fluency of language, to say nothing of the justness of his thought for so young a child, became proverbial throughout the so-called Clapham sect to which his parents belonged. What was to be thought of a child of four, who when some hot coffee was spilt over his legs, gravely replied to the condolences of his hostess : * Thank, you, madam, the agony is abated ? ' Even with all precautions, however, it might not have been possible to prevent him from becoming a spoilt child, but for his own good sense and extraordinary sweet- ness and amiability of disposition. He was educated privately first at a school in Clap- ham, and then by Mr Preston, a clergyman in Hert- fordshire, but as often happens with such boys, he was probably his own best tutor. The feats recorded of his 196 Victorian Literature childhood are of the most astonishing! description. He read with avidity, and all he read he remembered. It even seems to have been a matter of regret and inconvenience to him that he could not forget. His own little ventures in various fields of authorship were not wanting. Fortunately for him he had in his mother a critic as discerning as she was sympathetic ; and in Hannah More also he found an accomplished literary friend, willing not only to encourage, but also to guide and to restrain. In his nineteenth year Macaulay was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, where on the whole he passed through a distinguished course. The five years thus spent were among the happiest of his life. In classical study he took an excellent position, obtaining the Craven Scholarship, but his weakness in mathe- matics debarred him from the highest honours of his University. He twice won the Chancellor's Medal for English verse ; graduated with honours in 1822, and was elected Fellow of Trinity in 1824. To no one could the informal intellectual life of Cambridge, out- side of academic routine, have been more valuable, and it was here, in the stimulating gymnastic of the Union, that he won that reputation as a brilliant talker and debater that never afterwards left him. It was in The Etonian and Knighfs Quarterly Magazine that the brilliant work of this promising young writer first appeared. Of his contributions to the latter were, in verse, ' Ivry ' and ' Naseby ' ; and in prose, ' The Fragments of a Roman Tale,' ' Scenes Lord Macaulay 197 from the Athenian Revels,' and the 'Conversation between Mr Abraham Cowley and Mr John Milton touching the Great Civil War.' For none of these pieces is it necessary to make the customary apologies on the ground of youth and inexperience. They are all wonderfully alive, and exhibit many of the best features of that vivid and picturesque style for which the author was afterwards so justly distinguished. In 1824 Francis Jeffrey, casting -about for new blood to enrich the pages of the Edinburgh Review, was directed to young Macaulay, and was fortunate enough to secure the promise of his help. In the following year, therefore, there appeared from this new pen, in the pages of the great Whig Quarterly, an exceedingly brilliant, though over-luxuriant essay on Milton, which attracted universal attention, and showed that a star of exceptional magnitude had entered the literary firmament. From that time onward to his death Macaulay's reputation never paled. A career of almost unbroken success was his. If his life was not without its trials and sorrows, yet was it singularly calm and free from the disturbing accidents of fortune. In 1826 he was called to the Bar, but never made either money or reputation as a barrister. In 1827, however, he obtained a Commissionership in Bank- ruptcy, and in 1830 was, through the influence of Lord Lansdowne, returned to Parliament as Member for the pocket borough of Calne. In the discussions on Parliamentary Reform that followed, he so dis- tinguished himself by his powerful advocacy, that when 198 Victorian Literature the measure was passed in 1832, he was elected M.P. for the new constituency of Leeds. In the same year he became Secretary of the Board of Control ; but a greater change in his life took place when in 1834 he went to India as President of a New Law Commission and Member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. His work there has already been referred to. He returned to England in 1838, and was elected M.P. for Edinburgh. During the following years he held the offices of Secretary of War and Paymaster of the Forces under successive Liberal administrations. In the general election of 1847, however, Macaulay lost his seat, chiefly because of his attitude on the May- nooth question, and his too frank expressions of opinion regarding the Evangelicals, both of which were displeasing to his constituents. But in 1852 they made generous amends by unanimously re- electing him without personal solicitation or expense. A still greater honour, however, came in 1857, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley, the first literary man on whom this honour had ever been bestowed. He did not long survive it, but died suddenly of heart disease on the 28th of December 1859, at Holly Lodge, Kensington. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Death only made plainer to every one the fine qualities of the great historian his generosity and friendliness, his geniality and sweetness of temper, the unblemished purity of his private life, and the flawless integrity of his public character. Great honours had Lord Macaulay 199 come to him, but no one could say that they had not been rightly won. Macaulay had never married, although never, per- haps, was there a man more clearly framed for domestic happiness. It is, in fact, in the domestic relation that we see him at his best as the most loving and dutiful of sons, the most tender, affectionate and unselfish of brothers, and for the children the most generous of uncles, and the most delightful and amusing of playmates. So beautiful, indeed, is his devotion in this sphere that it almost seems to engross in him the wholeness and sacredness of feeling which in other men take the form of religion. There was nothing notably distinguished in Mac- aulay's outward appearance, nothing to betoken either the power or the brilliance of his genius. No one, however, could listen to the volume of his talk without being struck, not with its copiousness only, but also with its wealth of allusion, its cogency of argument, and its exceeding richness of illustrative detail. His public speeches were interesting and powerful, but rather because they revealed the brilliant essayist than because they showed the born orator, for neither in voice nor in manner can Macaulay be said to have reached the accomplishment of true oratory. It was during the last twenty years of his life, following his return from India, that all his best literary work was done. His famous Essays, con- tributed to the Edinburgh Review, extend from 1825 to 1844, and may be said to be the recreations of a aoo Victorian Literature life the more serious purpose of which is expressed in the ' Lays,' and still more in the great ' History.' In 1842 The Lays of Ancient Rome were published in book form, and had an extraordinary success. Whether we regard them as poetry or not, it must be allowed that they give a most graphic and picturesque setting to the legends of ancient Rome, and carry the reader along with a verve and exhilaration of movement as fascinating to the scholar as they are to the less cultured reader. In the following year he published a collected edition of his Essays, being driven to this step, as he explains, by their publication in various un- authorised and imperfect forms in the United States. Probably not even the ' History ' has been read by a larger number of readers than the Essays. The energy and vivacity of youth are in them. What- ever faults they may have, they are never dull. Their brief sketches of character, their rapid sum- maries of events, are all given with an energy that seems unflagging, and sparkle with allusions drawn from the most distant and diverse regions of history and literature. His view of certain characters, such as Boswell, Johnson, and Bacon, may lack insight ; his estimates of authors may be deficient in true critical faculty and of this he himself seems to be aware ; his humour may be wanting in inwardness and subtlety, and partake too much of the boister- ousness of mere horse-play ; and undoubtedly the ardour of the political partisan is throughout a little too manifest ; yet where else shall we find essays Lord Macaulay 201 that round themselves into such a completeness of vivid human interest? When we come to examine his subjects more closely, we see that most of them concern statesmen, men of letters, and events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that they are thus to be regarded as tentative drafts of the great design of his ( History.' Despite Professor Minto's contrary opinion, there is much reason for thinking that in Macaulay's life there is manifest a distinct concentration of purpose, and that notwithstanding the important imperial and other interests in which he was engaged and he was never a man to spare himself he lived his life chiefly for the History. On this from his earliest undergraduate days his mind had been set, and for this he continued through all the years that followed patiently and laboriously to amass the vast stores of material that went to its composition. Other things the care of a department, the struggles of parliamentary life, the toils of a jurist in India might stay, for a time, his hand ; but in his mind the purpose lived, and, consciously or unconsciously, the absorption of ser- viceable material went on. His rejection by the Edinburgh constituency in 1847 was really a benefit to him, inasmuch as his retirement gave him the leisure necessary to com- plete the first instalment of his great work. The following year, therefore saw, the publication of the first of two volumes of The History of England, in which, according to its opening sentence, it was the 2O2 Victorian Literature purpose of the author ' to write the history of Eng- land from the accession of King James the Second down to a time which is within the memory of men still living.' The run upon this work was enormous. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. Edition after edition appeared, both here and in America, and was eagerly bought up. When the third and fourth volumes came out there was no lessening of popularity. A fifth volume the last was published in 1861, after the author's death, and without the careful finishing touches that, his hand would have given it. In Great Britain alone it is estimated that within thirty years of publication, one hundred and forty thousand copies of the 'History' had been sold. And yet it was but a fragment of his great design. That design had embraced all the period between the accession of James II and the close of the reign of George III a period of nearly a hundred and fifty years. In reality the * History' ends with the death of William III, and covers a period of fifteen years only. How much was the world's loss in this, no one can estimate. Eagerly men had been relishing by anticipation his brilliant sketches of character and events in the time of Queen Anne a period which he had made peculiarly his own, by endless toil in the by- ways of historical research. He was known to have consulted thousands of pamphlets, tracts, and playbills, besides the ordinary authorities. But all these vast accumulations were to pass away with the great historian, and one can only regret that so many side Lord Macaulay 203 issues of his useful and complex public life should have withdrawn him unwillingly from his most serious design. We may confidently say that Macaulay's unparalleled popularity was not due to any caprice of public taste, or to any mere fashion of the hour. History, in fact, had never before, and has never since, been made so interesting. The reader is as irresistibly carried along, as if he were devouring the pages of some enthralling romance. Yet, truth and reality are nowhere sacrificed in order to produce striking and romantic effects. The more solid qualities of the historian are all here. Never was industry more patient and laborious in the gathering of material, or in the endeavour to make the presentation of it life-like and true. And, although mistakes and exaggerations have here and there been pointed out as was indeed inevitable in a work deal- ing with such a multitude of details it still deservedly remains the greatest, as it is also undoubtedly the most popular, history of the century. No one can fail to be struck with the perfect lucidity of Macaulay's style a lucidity so absolute as to make it impossible for any one endowed with ordinary intelligence to misconceive his meaning. This has even been charged against him as a fault, and it has been said that he makes his meaning so unmistakable, that there is nothing left for the reader's mind to do. But when we consider how hard a thing it is to attain to a clearness such as this without sinking to puerility, we may well be thankful to the great historian for 204 Victorian Literature what is in truth an extraordinary merit and attraction in his style. Another of the noticeable qualities in Macaulay as a writer is his unrivalled force of argument. This is shown not only in the manner in which he exhibits, by a series of particulars rising in cumulative force, the weakness involved in an opponent's position, but also in the perspicuous statement of his own opinion, and the art with which, by persuasive argument, he so drives it home, as to make it appear that no other view is in the circumstances possible. Macaulay's style is that of a great historic artist. Scarcely does even Gibbon excel him in the dramatic arrangement of his materials and the production of his grand effects. All his vast accumulations are wrought in so deftly as materially to help on the general action, and to make the principal characters and events stand out in the more vivid clearness. His thousands of facts, gleaned from the most remote quarters, are managed with such art that not one of them seems out of place or in itself insignificant. Each is made to appear so necessary a part of the rich and brilliant mosaic into which it has been wrought, that without it the whole would have been wanting in charm and completeness. Where there is so much that is admirable, it is difficult to particularise. Perhaps the most masterly portion of the great work is the celebrated Third Chapter with its wonderful picture of social England in 168=;. When one considers the labour that must Lord Macaulay 205 have gone to the compilation of the vast array of facts of which the picture is composed, and the literary skill employed in their artistic combination, it is im- possible to refuse to the author the highest credit as an historian. His summaries of events are most masterly. The descriptions of particular scenes and incidents, such as the rebellion and death of Mon- mouth, the siege of Londonderry, and the massacre of Glencoe, are given with uncommon spirit and graphic force. Even when there may be a disposition to challenge the justness of his estimate of great his- toric characters, as in the case of Marlborough, it will be allowed that he has presented them with an extra- ordinary vigour. The ' History/ indeed, is alive throughout with a fascinating sparkle and brilliancy. The reader has not a dull moment from beginning to end. But it has become the fashion with certain critics to decry Macaulay. He has had to pay the usual penalty of excessive popularity in the reaction that is always sure to follow. It is said of him that he was arrogant and over-confident ; that he was apt, when he had uttered himself on any question, to think that there was nothing more to be said upon it ; and that he judged all political personages and events, and there- fore judged them partially, from a Whig standpoint. It is also affirmed that he was wanting in original thought ; that he gave to the world no new views on any subject whatever ; and that, satisfied with the functions of the narrator, he has left no wise deduc- 206 Victorian Literature tions of universal import as his conclusions from the events of the period under review. They have espe- cially dwelt upon his lack of insight and subtlety in the analysis of complex characters or events, alleging that he has been successful only with such as wore their qualities on the surface, and that he failed to comprehend the mystery that is present in every truly great human personality, arising from that mixture of conflicting motives and counterbalancing tendencies that goes to make it what it is. Now it may well be that much of this is true, and yet that Macaulay's merit as an historian is none the less. He is no spinner of theories, but just what he professes to be, a narrator of events, who, admitting his readers to the concrete spectacle of history which his genius has enrolled, allows them to form their own conclusions, and to perplex themselves, if they choose, with any abstract speculations that may seem pleasing to them. Notwithstanding all faults, his ' History ' remains the History of the Century, brilliant and captivating beyond all precedent, and it does not seem improb- able that his own expectation regarding it may be realised. ' I have tried,' said he, ' to do something to be remembered ; I have had the year 2000, and even the year 3000, often in my mind. I have sacrificed nothing to temporary fashions of thought and style.' James Anthony Froude (1818-1894). It: seems James Anthony Froude 207 to have given pleasure to Macaulay to think that in the dramatic treatment of history he was not to be without his imitators. When in 1856 James Anthony Froude published the first two volumes of his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, there could be no doubt that Macaulay's successor in the line of romantic historians had been found. History, indeed, has never enlisted a more brilliant pen, and whatever may be thought regarding Froude's merits as a working historian, no one will dispute the high distinction of his style, or his supreme excellence in the region of historic art. It is true that nothing like the popularity of Macaulay has fallen to his lot, nor can we wonder. Neverthe- less, not even in Macaulay's hands has the drama of history been more vividly portrayed, or its characters and events been made to appeal more strongly to the imagination of the reader. Froude's colours glow upon the canvas with an extraordinary brilliancy, and in spite of protests, burn themselves into the memory, so that the historic figures already imprinted there insensibly take tone from the stronger portraits which he has placed beside them. It is true that so far the world has not to any great extent accepted Froude's conception of Henry VIII, or even of Mary, Queen of Scots ; but it has been compelled to revise its judg- ments concerning them, and thus to reckon with an historian who, to the greatest industry in collecting the materials of history, has united an unerring instinct for their dramatic arrangement, an almost 208 Victorian Literature creative genius in the delineation of character, and an unequalled glow and witchery of style. But if Froude must be regarded as one of the most brilliant and consummate historic artists of this or any century, it must be admitted that he is pre-eminently unreliable. His are the qualities of the special pleader rather than the judge. No impartial holding of the balance seems with him to be possible. He is as eager to convict one set of characters as he is to acquit others. There is no desire, we may admit, to falsify the truth of history. But starting with the paradox that the commonly accepted opinion regarding any great historic character is almost certain to be wrong, he easily convinces himself, and makes it his business to collect overwhelming evidence to convince the reader that it is so. With a painstaking and perverse industry, state papers and all other available sources of information are ransacked to furnish forth the evidence required. Thus in his hands Henry VIII becomes a much - maligned prince, generous and refined, marred, it is true, by faults, yet withal the greatest Englishman of his time, and quite incapable of the monstrous cruelties generally laid to his charge. And so artistically is all this done, that had the popular judgment regarding the great Tudor been only less pronounced, it might, perchance, have been reversed or shaken. The same method is observable in his treatment of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom he pursues throughout his pages with an extraordinary rancour, refusing to leave her alone even in the pitiful tragedy James Anthony Froude 209 of her death, and hesitating not to turn every little word and act during the last cruel moments of her life into the proofs of duplicity and acting. When, however, Froude is not thus under the influence of prejudice, he can be trusted to unroll the panorama of events before us with a skill and fascina- tion as faithful to fact as it is masterly in style. Far distant times are made to live again before us with a wonderful air of reality. His scenes, crowded with life and colour, seize upon the imagination irresistibly, and we follow them with an interest and exhilaration which only the rarest works of fancy can evoke. Within the realm of historic imagination he thus causes us to experience a high and refined pleasure ; but, especially in relation to the most important personages and events, we want the assurance that our feet are firmly planted upon facts. James Anthony Froude was the youngest son of the Venerable R. H. Froude, Archdeacon of Totness, and was born in 1818 at Dartington, Devonshire. He was educated at Westminster School and Oriel College, Oxford. In 1840 he took his degree with second class honours in classics. Two years later he was made Fellow of Exeter College, and in 1844 took deacon's orders in the Church of England. For some little time thereafter he served as Curate in Torquay. The Tractarian movement was then at its height, and Froude, his elder brother Hurrel, and many other able and earnest young Oxonians came under the magic spell of John Henry Newman's remarkable personality. O 2io Victorian Literature The influences under which Froude then passed were destined to lead him very far afield. A distinct tendency towards sceptical thought became manifest in 1847, when he published a series of stories entitled, The Shadows of the Clouds, and still more when, two years later, The Nemesis of Faith appeared. These publications cost him not only his Fellowship, but also an educational appointment in Tasmania. After some little uncertainty as to his future, The Westminster Review and Fraser^s Magazine of the latter of which he subsequently became editor opened their pages to him, and Froude began to find a sphere for himself in literature. His position was won when there appeared in 1856 the first two volumes of his History of England, completed in 1870 in twelve volumes. The so-called Short Studies on Great Subjects followed at intervals, and sustained by the brilliant incisiveness of their style, as well as by their interest and pre-eminent readableness, the high repute won for him by his 'History.' In The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1871-1874) he maintained that the miseries of Ireland were largely due to the Irish themselves. His sketch of Julius Ccesar (1879) vindicated the character of the great Dictator from charges, based, as Froude conceives, mainly on the evidence of menda- cious documents issued by his enemies. A sympathetic sketch oijohn Bunyan for the English Men of Letters Series came from his pen in 1880 ; and in 1881, following the death of Carlyle, appeared the Reminis- James Anthony Froude 2 1 1 cences of that writer, under the editorship of Froude, Carlyle's literary executor. A tempest of angry criticism broke over this publication, and Froude was much blamed, especially for not withholding many harsh and contemptuous judgments of Carlyle upon persons still living or but recently dead. To all this, however, Froude continued to the last to retort that in doing as he did he only acted up to the spirit of the instructions of Carlyle himself, maintaining that not many years would pass before the public would thank him for giving them a true Carlyle. Working still in this field, he next edited Mrs Carlytts Letters, and then completed his dealings with this most interesting subject by giving to the world his life of Thomas Carlyle. Whatever may be thought of Froude's judgment both as to what he has admitted into, and what he has withheld from these various records of the Carlyles, no one can have any doubt as to the extraordinary interest of the pictures themselves, or of the exquisite literary art with which they have been drawn. There may be other lives of Carlyle ; there will be none to supersede that which Froude has furnished. Froude was a great traveller, but the records of his various journeyings have been as provocative of bitterness and controversy as even his historic judg- ments. Qceana, containing an account of his visit to our Australian Colonies, was, notwithstanding its great literary merit, indignantly repudiated by colonials as outrageously contrary to facts. A similar charge 212 Victorian Literature of inaccuracy was brought against his later work, The English in the West Indies ; or, The Bow of Ulysses ; the truth being, that while these works had all the brilliancy and charm of Froude's literary style, the conclusions to which they came had none of the weight attaching to a full and reasoned study of the subject. It would seem, indeed, that on no better evidence than that which meets the eyes and ears of the cursory tourist he made the most sweeping and audacious statements. Of later works from Froude's pen may be mentioned The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, an Irish romance of the eighteenth century ; a Life of Lord Beaconsfield, and The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon. When Mr Freeman, his great opponent in many an embittered controversy, died in 1892, Froude was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. In his luminous occupancy of this Chair, he delivered various courses of lectures, the last of which, on 'Erasmus,' he gave in the summer of 1894. The effort was highly successful, but proved too much for his failing strength. A prolonged illness ensued, to which he succumbed on the 2Oth of October fol- lowing, he being then in the seventy-seventh year of his age. Before his death the ' Erasmus ' lectures, the revision of which for the press he had just com- pleted before he took to his bed, had appeared, and besides being a worthy treatment of a subject pecu- liarly his own, they afforded evidence that his mental vigour was still unimpaired, and that he had lost Edward Augustus Freeman 213 nothing of the brilliance and charm of style that had made him one of the foremost masters of English prose. Another series of his Oxford lectures, on English Seamen in the Seventeenth Century p , appeared in 1895, and gave the same impression of undiminished vitality and brilliance. Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-1892) repre- sents a theory of historical composition exactly the reverse of that exemplified by Mr Froude. Agreeing, as they undoubtedly would, that it requires a com- petent knowledge of the facts, and that such a know- ledge is not to be obtained without an exhaustive and laborious study of first-hand authorities, Freeman would deny that there is any duty resting on the historian to set forth these facts pictorially. He would even regard the attempt to clothe them with so-called dramatic interest, or to surround them with an atmosphere of romance, as fatal to the dry light in which alone the personages and events of history can be viewed without distortion. The truth, simply, literally, and in all fulness, he would argue, is the one thing the historian is concerned about. On the other hand, Mr Froude might maintain that if history were only for experts, such a theory might hold good, but that as it is a branch of literature and intended for general use, it ought to be made literary, by being made to assume such forms as shall impress the imagination, and cause the reader to feel that he 214 Victorian Literature is gazing not upon the pale, ghostly shadow of life, but upon life itself. When, however, picturesqueness and colour are obtained at the cost of truth and accuracy, it is no longer history but romance that is presented to us, and the result is even more to be deplored than when the ' dryasdust ' historian sickens the reader with his innumerable details concerning matters of no human interest to any one except the professional student or expert. It so happens that both these historians have been charged with inaccuracy, although Mr Froude has suffered much more at the hands of the critics in this way than Mr Freeman. With the latter, undoubtedly, rests the credit of greater reliability. Still, it is well to remember that a sufficiency of accurate knowledge is not more necessary towards the complete effect at which the historian aims than the due presence of historic imagination. ' The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' may be a good motto for history, but it may be questioned if it will ever realise itself in the work of the historian who puts into his picture of a long past period only what he finds recorded concerning it in the old-world chronicles and state papers he has consulted as his authorities. The landscape painter who transfers to his canvas only the hard literal facts, seen by his objective vision, will scarcely convince that his representation is a true copy from nature. The idealisings of the artist's mind are also required to add to the objects he has represented on his canvas the something that shall do Edward Augustus Freeman 215 for them what atmosphere and association have done in nature. In like manner, the historian, looking back upon the facts over a gulf of centuries, does not, and cannot see them in the atmosphere in which they revealed themselves, without the exercise of historic imagination. It must be confessed that great as Mr Freeman's authority is as an historian, his manner is often most unattractive ; and that profound as is the respect paid him by the student of history called to work within the same fields, he is but little known or appreciated by the general reader. None the less will his name be handed down as that of one of the most industrious, widely learned, and reliable historians of this or any period. He grasped, as few have done, the conception of history as a unity that can only be properly studied when realised as a whole. A glance at his published writings' will show over how wide a field his own historical interests ranged. It is curious, however, to note regarding Freeman that, notwithstanding his vast erudition in his own special province, he was not in any other sense a man of wide culture. Indeed, we find in him not a few of the limitations that seem to us so strange in Darwin. For music and the fine arts he has little or no taste. Literature proper in its inwardness, its subtler and more elusive qualities, does not appeal to him. Perhaps it was inevitable that such a man should be arrogant and narrow, and impatient of opinions differing from his own. At least it was so, and 21 6 Victorian Literature nothing is more characteristic of him than the frequency and the vehemence of his polemical encounters. Mr Freeman was born at Mitchley Abbey, Har- borne, Staffordshire, in 1823. He appears to have been a precocious child. At three years of age he began to write verses, and at five and a half had attracted the notice of Hannah More by his love of learning, just as young Macaulay had done some twenty years before. He began to devote himself to the study of history before he was seven. The recently published Life of Freeman by Dean Stephens (1895), gives a most interesting, though somewhat uninviting, picture of a childhood that can scarcely be called childhood. He played at no games, was argumentative and too confident of his own opinion, would engage in controversy with his elders when he should have been at the cricket bat, and would give himself to the study of theology when it would have been more profitable to be working boyish mischief. What wonder that at sixteen he should be something of a prig ! And yet, at eighteen he failed in winning the scholarship at Balliol on which he had set his heart, and his course at Oxford from 1841 to 1847 was by no means so brilliant as might have been expected. Strange to say, he did not even win the Chancellor's Prize for an essay on 'The Norman Conquest' for which he had competed. It is impossible, however, not to regard this latter fact with unusual interest, seeing that Freeman was thus led to continue his Bishop Stubbs 217 study of a subject on which he afterwards became so celebrated an authority. From the first it would appear that a History Professorship at Oxford was the highest object of his ambition ; but it did not come to him till forty years later. Before that time he had written most of the works on which his world-wide reputation rests : The History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856), The History of the Norman Conquest (1867-1876), The Growth of the English Constitution (1%*] 2\ The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877), and many others bearing on History and Ecclesiastical Architecture. They are of the highest historical value, but they do not attract so much as we might expect. And the same might be said of Mr Freeman as a man. His qualities were not generally lovable, and are too much marred by faults of temper and of taste. Still, in spite of such qualities, and also of certain oddities of gait and manner that clung to him throughout life, he was a good, honest, true man, who did a great work with all the best of his powers. Freeman died in 1892. He had published in 1891 the first volume of a History of Sicily, which was completed by the publication by his son-in-law of the fourth volume in 1894. The Right Rev. William Stubbs, D.D., Bishop Of Oxford (1825), shares with Professor Freeman the distinction of being the most learned, painstaking, and reliable of the historians of the earlier periods of 2i8 Victorian Literature British history, and follows the same methods of historical research and composition. Bishop Stubbs was born at Knaresborough in 1825, was educated at the Grammar School of Ripon, and afterwards at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he crowned a brilliant career by passing first-class in Classics, and third in Mathematics in 1848. In the same year he was elected Fellow of Trinity, and having taken priest's orders, was appointed Vicar of Nave- stock, Essex. He had already entered upon his minute researches into early British history, as shown in a series of publications of great historical and archaeo- logical interest and value. In 1863 he edited Mosheim's Institutes of Church History, and in 1864-5 Chronicles and Memorials of Richard 7", and in following years various other books issued by the Master of the Rolls. As the result of the reputation thus acquired, Dr Stubbs was appointed Professor of Modern History at Oxford in 1866. In the years that followed this appointment, promotion came to him rapidly, both in the Church and in the University, various livings, Fellowships, and other offices falling into his hands. In 1884 he became Bishop of Chester, but five years later was transferred to the See of Oxford, which he still holds. The greatest achievement of this writer so far is The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development (1874-8), a work of the utmost importance and authority. George Grote 219 George Grote (1794-1871), of a well-known family of bankers, was born at Beckenham, Kent. In his sixteenth year he entered his father's counting-house, and thus also began his long and honourable career as a London banker. But in giving himself to busi- ness, he did not neglect classical studies, and very early formed the design of writing an exhaustive history of Greece. Many years were spent in the collection of materials, but, like Macaulay, he was seriously delayed in the execution of his purpose by political questions and the claims of public life. A Radical in politics, Mr Grote plunged with eagerness into the agitations connected with the passing of the great Reform Bill, and in 1832 was elected Member for the City of London, a position which he retained through several parliaments till 1841, when he finally retired from parliamentary life. The fruits of his greater leisure were seen in the publication in 1846 of the first of the twelve volumes of his History of Greece, which, however, was not completed till 1856. Critics have been generally agreed as to the merits of this great work. It was the fruit of a lifetime of study, and the calmness and reasonableness of its temper and of its judgments were no less apparent than the vast labour and the learning that he had put into it. Naturally he views the men and affairs of Greece from the Democratic point of view, and therefore differs from Mitford, who shows us the same events from the Conservative side. The excellent History of Greece by Connop Thirl- 220 Victorian Literature wall, Bishop of St David's, it is said, would not have been written but for the conviction that the vast accumulations of material which Grote, his old schoolfellow at the Charterhouse, was known to have made, would probably never see the light in conse- quence of his occupation in public affairs. Both Histories take the Liberal view of Greek politics, but of the two, Grote's is the more weighty and popular, and Thirlwall's the more scholarly. Of much less merit are Mr Grote's Plato and other Companions of Socrates (1865) and Aristotle, the latter of which was published after his death, which occurred in 1871. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. It would seem that the man in Mr Grote was no less admirable than the historian. Those who knew him speak in the highest terms of his courtesy and amiability, and apparently admire him even more for his simple-minded modesty than for the extent of his learning and the vigour of his intellect. Although most of the literary activity of Henry Hart Milman, Dean of St Paul's (1791-1868), lies outside of the Victorian era, this finely cultured poet and historian makes good his claim to a place among the literary worthies of the reign by his greatest and most durable work, a History of Latin Christianity (1854-5). In virtue of its style, adequacy of knowledge, and worthy treatment of a great subject, it deserves high rank among the histories of the century. Samuel Rawson Gardiner 221 Dean Merivale (1808-1893) the author of a History of the Romans under the Empire as well as other works on Roman and Early Church History is also deserving of high praise. John Hill Burton (1809- l88l) wrote genially on many subjects, such as The Book Hunter and The Scot Abroad, but is most widely known as the author of what is so far the best History of Scotland. Much was expected from Henry Thomas Buckle's (I822-I862) History of Civilisation in Europe, but the two volumes that were all of the author's colossal plan he lived to execute, are crude and un- satisfactory. Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829) is the greatest living authority on the period of English history between the death of Elizabeth and the Restora- tion. He is the author of certain smaller studies in history, such as The Thirty Years' War and The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, and of one monumental work, in three parts, the fruit of more than thirty years of labour and research. The first part of the latter work, entitled the History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of Civil War 1603-1642, and also the second part entitled The History of the Civil War 1642-1649, are happily complete. The first volume of the remaining portion, dealing with the History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate 1649-1660, appeared in 1894, so that the end of a truly noble undertaking is now fairly within sight. When complete, the whole will form a work of great and permanent value, not less for 222 Victorian Literature the exhaustive thoroughness with which its materials have been gathered and sifted, than for the admirable calmness and freedom from personal bias which it everywhere displays. The writer is careful to dissociate himself from the methods of Macaulay and Forster. who, he says, look at the events and the men embraced within their narra- tive through the political feelings and prepossessions proper to our own time. Professor Gardiner's desire is to judge them as from their own standpoint, and if possible to see these times and events as they appeared to the main actors in them. It must be admitted that although dealing with the most exciting period of English history, his narrative wants fire. Interesting, it could not fail to be, considering the nature of the subject. But, rightly or wrongly, the graces of style that lend such a charm to the pages of Macaulay and Froude are not to be found here. In plain, often prosaic fashion, the narrative goes on, but we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the truth, as far as that can be ascertained, has been placed before us with absolute fidelity. For the first time we feel com- petent to pass a final judgment upon the many actors in our great English historical epic. Nothing so weighty and authoritative on the period with which it deals has yet appeared, and it scarcely seems likely that it will ever be superseded. In no sense can Professor Gardiner be considered an historic artist. He is singularly wanting in the sense of proportion, and therefore cumbers his narrative with a needless Samuel Rawson Gardiner 223 abundance of uninteresting details. But there is something heroic in the devotion of this historian to his self-imposed task. If what is currently reported be true, that he gives a year of work to a year of history, we have a picture of labour nobly directed, and of self-sacrifice heroically encountered, such as entitle him to the honour of the age. No return in mere money could ever adequately recompense such toil. In his most recent work, on CromweWs Place in History (1897), based on six lectures delivered in the University of Oxford, Professor Gardiner has summed up the conclusions to which his lengthened study of the great Protector and his times has led him. He finds a parallel between Cromwell and the British people. Foreigners looking on us from without see only a forceful and unscrupulous nation, greedy of wealth and empire ; whilst we consider only the bene- fits that we have conferred by our just and righteous rule. ' With Cromwell's memory,' he concludes, * it has fared as with ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as a masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to regard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral audacity, with all his tenderness and spiritual yearn- ings, in the world of action what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring sense, is Cromwell's place in history. He stands there, not to be implicitly followed as a model, 224 Victorian Literature but to hold up a mirror to ourselves, wherein we may see alike our weakness and our strength.' Dr Gardiner was born in 1829 at Ropley, Hants. He was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, becoming Fellow of All Souls' in 1884, and Fellow of Merton in 1892. For some time he held the Professorship of Modern History at King's College, London, but on the death of Professor Froude, was appointed to the Chair for the same subjects at Oxford. Alexander William Kinglake (1811-1891) the historian of the Crimean War, was born at Taunton in 1811. After an education first at Eton and after- wards at Trinity College, Cambridge, he passed as barrister in the year of Queen Victoria's accession. Shortly afterwards (1844) he became famous by the publication of Eothen, a little book of oriental travel of remarkable picturesqueness, and, if we could suppose it to have been published just as it was written in his youth, nine years before, of an equally remarkable promise. To a time-worn and familiar subject it lent an air of absolute freshness, so that the desert became unusually attractive in the glow of his poetic imagina- tion. During ten years, 1857 to 1867, Kinglake was M.P. for Bridgwater, but his career as a practical politician must be pronounced a failure. In 1863 appeared the first two volumes of his famous History of the Crimean War, the last volumes of which were not Alexander William Kinglake 225 published till nearly twenty years later. In Kinglake, great merits as an historian are marred by serious blemishes. In the thoroughness with which he surveys everything within the field of his inquiry he falls no whit behind Professor Gardiner himself. Moreover, in all the qualities of life, motion, the play of changing colour, and the vivid dramatic realism of the pictures with which he fills the imagination, he is not unworthy even of Mr Froude. But, on the other hand, not even Froude himself can outdo him in the spirit of the partisan. The special pleader stands revealed in every page of the history. Never was there a writer of stronger prejudices ; never one that showed a more bitter animus towards the objects of his aversion. Thus the whole book is coloured by the writer's excessive dislike to Napoleon III. Another fault in this work is that its canvas is too large and crowded for the limited nature of the subject. When eight large volumes are required to describe the events of two years, it scarcely requires to be said that the author is wanting in a due sense of proportion. Even as a work of art, notwithstand- ing the excess of care and elaboration bestowed upon it, it does not rank so high as it might have done if it had been less diffuse, and crowded with detail. A cloud fell over the closing years of this fastidious, witty, brilliant man of the world, and associate of other clever men, in an almost complete deafness, aggravated by the still more terrible calamity of P 226 Victorian Literature cancer in the tongue. Death, therefore, could scarcely have been unwelcome when it came to him on the 2nd of January 1891. William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838) was born and educated in Dublin. In 1863 he graduated M.A. of Trinity College, in the University of that city. He holds the honorary doctorate of his own and various other universities ; and on the occasion of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee was made a Privy Coun- cillor. Literature was from the first his vocation. In 1 86 1 he published The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, from which it appears that his attention was at this time drawn sympathetically to O'Connell and other leaders of Irish national opinion. In the contro- versies of more recent years, however, he has been found in the ranks of those opposed to Home Rule, and now sits at Westminster as M.P. for his own university on the Unionist side. But it is not as a politician, in which relation he has not yet had time to make his mark, that Dr Lecky has won his reputation, but as the most philo- sophical of the historians of the Victorian era. The great works on which that reputation rests are the History of the Rise and the Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865), the History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), and the History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1878-90), including a History of Ireland. His latest work, Democracy and Liberty (1896), with its wide John Richard Green 227 and philosophical views of urgent political questions, well sustains the brilliant reputation which this writer has won. John Richard Green (1837-1883), wrote A Short History of the English People that at once obtained a unique popularity a popularity due to its own un- doubted merits, although it may have been enhanced by the personal sorrow which was felt by readers for the writer, as they thought of the slow waning of a most valuable life over a task into which he had put so much of his heart. Although the work of a con- firmed invalid, there is no appearance of weakness in it, or any slackness of labour on that account. It at once brought him reputation, and it continues to have a classic value in virtue of its own sterling qualities. Within its brief compass it covers the wide field of English history with consummate art, omitting little that is necessary to a full conception of the English nation regarded as a unity that has been slowly developing through all the past periods of its history. It views events in their just proportions, and places them in their true perspective ; and estimates with commendable judgment and impartiality the various forces and movements that have given to the English people a value and significance. He has taken his conception of history mainly from Professor Freeman, but has brought to its considera- tion a vividness, a brilliance of style, and a picturesque human interest that entitle the author to rank with aa8 Victorian Literature the romantic historians of English literature. From the same pen has come The Making of England (1882), and The Conquest of England (1883), works even more seriously conceived. Victorian Biography. There is no kind of litera- ture that has quite so great a fascination for most minds as Biography ; and there has never been a time in which English literature has been more affluent in works of this class. Doubtless the desire to have an intimate knowledge of the men and women who have achieved distinction in any depart- ment of human thought or activity is perfectly natural and legitimate. It ceases to be so only when it passes into the form of impertinent curiosity. Unhappily, however, much of present-day litera- ture panders to this unseemly propensity. It was reserved for the Victorian era to give birth to that strange, often offensive, literary exotic, the modern interviewer. His idea that every part of the life and circumstances of a famous man, even down to the furniture of his rooms and the length of his pipes, belongs to the public, is essentially vulgar, and as such foreign to any true conception of litera- ture, which, when genuine, is as remarkable for its admirable reserves as for its large and spontaneous utterance. A biography, when fitly done, with due regard to reticence and honesty, and especially when the subject of it is left to unfold himself through his letters, is Victorian Biography 229 a most useful as well as attractive human performance. It will probably open up the whole secret of a life, unintelligible otherwise. We may have wondered in regarding only the widely divergent public acts of such a career, what element of character held them together ; of what motive forces they were the expres- sion ; and from what trend of heredity, education, or environment they borrowed their originating impulse. But when through a worthy biography we thus hold in our hands the key of a noble life, conceive the unity into which its separate achievements are built up, and are able, in short, to comprehend its philosophy, we are furnished not only with a pleasure full of delightful surprises, but also with a most stimulating form of education. It must be confessed, however, that biography, notwithstanding its great human interest and value, is frequently, even when most popular, not entitled to be called literature. Still, there are to be found within the limits of the Victorian era a quite unusual number of works of this class, showing all that charm of style and power of unfolding in harmonious and truthful fashion the inner life of a man, together with the play of outward circumstances upon him, that entitle them to be considered literary in the best sense of the term. The memorable year, 1837, that witnessed the Queen's accession, the publication of Pickwick, Car- lyle's French Revolution, Browning's Strafford, and Hallam's Literature of Europe, saw also the earlier 230 Victorian Literature volumes of John Gibson Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott. This work, written by Scott's son-in-law, remains the most fascinating biography of the Victorian era, and according to common opinion, is also the greatest in all literature with the single exception of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. Taken along with the Journal of Sir Walter Scott, edited by Mr David Douglas, Lockhart's Life shows, as nothing else can, the goodness and lovableness, as well as the true greatness of its subject. Lockhart was a man of many attainments, but his supreme gift would seem to be found in biography, for besides the admirable Life of Scott, he had published in 1828 what is still considered as the best Life of Robert Burns. Lockhart himself, most of whose writings belong to preceding reigns, was a man of the most brilliant and versatile powers. He had written four novels, Valerius, Adam Blair, Reginald Dalton, and Matthew Wald, the best of which was Adam Blair, although none of them can be said to have brought him much reputa- tion. By his fine and spirited Spanish Ballads and other works in poetry, he had shown himself to possess a more genuine gift. As a journalist his distinction was even greater, and very many articles from his pen, contributed chiefly to Blackwood's Magazine and the Quarterly Review, of the latter of which he was long the editor, established his reputa- tion as one of the most trenchant and widely cultured critics of the time. No literary man, however, has been more cordially hated. There seemed to many John Gibson Lockhart 231 a diabolic malignity in the slashing criticism in which he indulged in his earlier Blackwood days. It may be doubted if even the fine life of Lockhart by Mr Andrew Lang, just published, will altogether undo this impression. Lockhart was too proud of being known as the ' Scorpion, and certainly did not dislike using the scorpion's sting. That, however, this born critic could on occasions be both just and generous is beyond all question. Mr Lang has shown that this man of few friends was yet of true Christian piety, of wholesome domestic tastes, of warm affections, and, in the circles of private life, of no little kindliness and charm. The picture of his sad and lonely old age after repeated bereavements is singularly touching and impressive. Lockhart was born within the Manse of Cambus- nethan in Lanarkshire in 1794. He received his earlier education at Glasgow University, and passed, as Snell Exhibitioner, at fifteen years of age to Balliol College, Oxford, where he took first-class Honours in 1813. He afterwards qualified for the Scottish Bar, but, wanting the accomplishment of public speaking, proved a failure. He became one of the brilliant band of writers who in the early days made Maga a power in the literary world, and also something of a scandal. He severed his connection with Edinburgh when he went to London in 1826 to become editor of the Quarterly Review, a post which he held for nearly thirty years. Before this he had published Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, and in 1820 232 Victorian Literature had married Scott's eldest daughter. His closing years were clouded by a succession of domestic mis- fortunes, his wife and all his children except one having predeceased him. He died at Abbotsford in 1854, and found a resting place beside the dust of his great father-in-law, within the classic ruins of Dry- burgh Abbey. A Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) by her friend Mrs Gaskell, whose career as a novelist has elsewhere been sketched, is a work of vivid interest and enduring value. Indiscretions as to what it revealed were charged against it ; and from subsequent editions certain withdrawals had to be made, because of an imperfect sifting of materials at the first. Besides, it seemed to paint the home life and the outward environments of the remarkable Haworth family in darker colours than the circumstances actually war- ranted. But these were slight faults compared with the many merits which make it one of the classics of English Literature. Two important additions to the literature of this most interesting subject have recently been made in Dr Wright's Brontes in Ireland, and Clement K. Shorter's Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle. George Henry Lewes (1817-1878) was one of the most versatile writers of the Victorian age. Nothing seemed to come amiss to him. He was novelist, drama- tist, critic, biographer, man of science and philosopher all in one. It may be doubted, however, if he will be remembered by posterity for anything except his strange association with the life-history of George Eliot, and his Lewes Hanna Masson 233 fine Life of Goethe. Even the Germans accept this work as the standard life of their great national poet. In the year (1847) in which he published Ranthorpe ; A Tale, greatly admired by Charlotte Bronte, appeared his Biographical History of Philosophy, a work lacking in weight and authority in the philosophical part, but undoubtedly interesting in its sketches of famous philosophers, ancient and modern, from Thales and Pythagoras to Hegel and Comte. Considerable literary value attaches to Dr Hanna's Life of Dr Chalmers, his father-in-law. The interest of this work is not altogether due to the fame of its subject as preacher, philanthropist, and ecclesiastical statesman. Besides the strong personality of Chalmers himself, and the unusual interest of the ecclesiastical events which he did so much to originate and control, the ' Life ' itself is done with a fine art, and a command of chaste and beautiful style that entitle it to rank high amongst Victorian biographies. Considerable interest attaches to the Life of Dr Thomas Arnold, the great schoolmaster of Rugby, by Dean Stanley; and to the sympathetic Life of Frederick W. Robertson, by Stopford Brooke. Professor Masson's monumental Life of Milton, viewed in relation to all the events of his time, belongs, perhaps, more properly to history than to biography. By the exhaustiveness of its treatment, it is certainly better fitted to become a work of supreme authority for students and experts, than a work for general readers. The genial ex-Professor 234 Victorian Literature of English Literature in the University of Edinburgh is the author of various other works in literary biography, such as Drummond of Hawthornden, Chatterton, and De Quincey, besides many critical papers. After the Life of Scott, no Victorian biography is more interesting than the Life of Lord Macaulay, by his nephew, George Otto Trevelyan. It is saying much to affirm that this life of the great Whig his- torian is as interesting as his own matchless narratives of events, or brilliant sketches of politicians and men of letters of past generations. Not a little of its charm is due to the manner in which it discovers to us the underlying simplicity of Macaulay's character, his kindliness and sympathy, and especially his generous and unselfish devotion to the members of his own family circle. It shows a nature on good terms with itself, but also one never tired of doing kind and unselfish things for others. The ' Life ' is executed throughout with fine art ; and we feel that the Mac- aulay it presents is the true Macaulay for all time to come. Mr, now Sir, George Otto Trevelyan, who has of late years won considerable distinction as a pro- minent politician, first gained the attention of the public with his work, The Competition Wallah. He is also the author of The Early Times of Charles James Fox. The Life of John Sterling, by Thomas Carlyle, his friend, owes its interest less to anything remarkable in its subject than to the genius of the writer, who is here to be seen in one of his most sympathetic and attractive moods. Better than anything directly John Forster 235 bearing upon Sterling whose personality is not a strong one is the well-known description of Cole- ridge to be found in this work. The seer of Highgate, it would seem, did not receive from the future sage of Chelsea all the homage he drew from such ardent disciples as Sterling and Maurice. But, perhaps, Carlyle's descriptions, bating the inevitable exaggera- tions, are all the more valuable on that account. John Forster (1812-1876), the helpful friend of so many literary men, was himself a man of versatile ability. His series of important historical works connected with the period of the Great Civil War would have justified his being placed among the historians, only they have been somewhat discredited by the later and more authoritative achievements in the same field of Professor Gardiner and others. It is less, therefore, by his Statesmen of the Commonwealth, Arrest of the Five Members, The Grand Remonstrance, and Sir John Eliot, than by his interesting Lives of Oliver Goldsmith, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles Dickens, that he is likely to be remembered in English literature. At his death in 1876 he left unfinished a Life of Dean Swift, from which much was expected, and for which he was known to have made extensive preparations. From the number of excellent biographies of the period, The Life of Charles Kingsley, by his wife, must not be omitted. It presents a most attractive picture, and we feel that it is a true one. It makes plain much that was only imperfectly understood in 236 Victorian Literature the Rector of Eversley, in whose tenderness, fine sincerity, and boyish enthusiasms, as thus revealed, we find the best commentary we could have, not only upon his public acts, but also upon his many writings. Reference has elsewhere been made to The Life of Thomas Carlyle, by James Anthony Froude, which, whatever may be its faults on the ground of over- frankness, will undoubtedly hold its place as one of the most interesting and brilliant presentments of a literary man to be found in any language. In the Life of John Ruskin, by his Secretary, W. G. Collingwood, the splendid gifts, the many eccentrici- ties, and the fine humanity of this great writer are adequately portrayed. Professor Knight's William Wordsworth and Professor Dowden's Shelley are also admirable specimens of literary biography, and the most authoritative works on their respective subjects. The biographies of scientific men of the period have had a peculiar, sometimes even a romantic, interest. The Life of Charles Darwin, by his son much of it, however, autobiographical is a book of the greatest importance, not only because of the light which it throws upon the scientific labours of the great evolutionist, but also because of its psychological interest in view of intellectual and spiritual changes passing within himself. Much of this is also true of the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, a book that puts into very brief compass an amazing amount of the most intensely interesting matter concerning that most fascinating Sir Richard Owen 237 of all subjects, the development of a rich and highly endowed human soul. The interest of the reader in this case is rendered more acute by the fact that atten- tion is concentrated on what is abnormal both in the manner of education and in the final results to which that education led. The Life of Sir Richard Owen, by his nephew, belongs to the same class of scientific biographies, in which we find the records of trium- phant scientific progress interwoven with the simply human story of the heart and the home. It presents to us the patriarch of science, the greatest palaeontolo- gist of his age, in singular contrast to Darwin and Mill, his contemporaries. Not only do we see in him the opponent of their theories, but also a man in whom the taste for science has not, as in them, starved any other part of his intellectual or emotional being. Amidst the most arduous professional labours he can still find time and inclination for all healthy forms of social intercourse and enjoyment. The theatre, the concert room, and the picture gallery, as well as general literature, have all for him a welcome appeal. Never, moreover, to the last does Owen lose his faith in the unseen, or his attitude of cheerful optimism. To this selection of important biographies of the Victorian period may be added the various series of smaller works of the same class, such as the Great Writers Series and the English Men of Letters Series. Many of the latter, which comprises about forty volumes, are of permanent value, and are as good as they could be within their limits. Mention need only 238 Victorian Literature be made of such works as Milton, by Mark Pattison; Wordsworth, by F. W. H. Myers ; Scott, by R. H. Hutton ; and Lamb, by Canon Ainger. Moreover, no notice of this kind would be complete without a reference to the monumental Dictionary of Biography, begun in 1882 under the editorship of Mr Leslie Stephen, and still running its course under that of Mr Sydney Lee. It is now (1897) in its fifty-first volume and is already, therefore, a library in itself. CHAPTER V Early Victorian Poets IN the still backwater that followed the wonderful poetical flood of the earlier quarter of the century the reign of Victoria opened. Only a short time before, Wordsworth and Scott, Coleridge and Southey, Byron, Shelley, and Keats had almost rivalled the glories of the so-called Elizabethan age in the generous abundance and richness of their poetical benefactions. The inevitable reaction followed. It came unhappily just when a burst of song from noble singers would have well become the auspicious advent of the girl- Queen. But Scott and Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats were all dead ; and although Wordsworth and Southey lingered still, their fires were well-nigh spent. The lustrous day of Tennyson and Browning had not yet dawned. In prelusive efforts these youth- ful singers had flecked the east with promise, but what their day would be, who could tell ? Thus the opening reign was illuminated in poetry chiefly by decaying fires ; and of the poets still productive whose reputations were then established strange though it 240 Victorian Literature may seem to us now none stood so high as Leigh Hunt and Thomas Hood. Early, however, in the forties both Tennyson and Browning had fairly swung into the poetical firmament, twin suns, destined to grow apace in brightness, but never to see eclipse for nearly sixty years. The publication, therefore, of Browning's Pippa Passes in 1841, and that of Tenny- son's famous Poems in 1842 were most significant events in the history of Victorian poetry. We may even say that the history of that poetry from the day of their advent to the day of their death is, to a large extent, the history of these two poets themselves. But while that is so, and while nothing is more noticeable than their influence, especially that of Tennyson, upon the other singers of the time, it must not be supposed that the age has been wholly imitative in poetry. It has witnessed manifold poetical experiments, and a growing mastery of metrical form. Never at any previous time, has verse, as an instru- ment of human thought and feeling, been so skilfully or so variously handled ; and never have there been so many singers capable of an almost technical per- fection. Nor with such poets as Tennyson and Browning, Swinburne and William Morris need we use the language of depreciation, even with reference to the higher elements of poetry. Still it must be confessed that, these names excepted, the Victorian era does not shine in the poetry of power. The rule has been cultured mediocrity. The ecstasy and the vision, the sublime thought, the poignant passion, and Early Victorian Poets 241 the divinely fit expression have seldom been present. Instead of these we have had a poetry of tender senti- ment, full of the charm of melody, readily responsive to all influences of beauty from without, and no less critically alive to all that is to be learned from the past thinkings and achievements of men. Joy has not been its prevailing mood. More and more with the advance of the reign has it given expression to a vague unrest and a wistful yearning. The long narrative poem, such as Aurora Leigh and The Idylls of the King, was the form by which the earlier Victorian poets chose to express their poetical conceptions. In these later decades the poets have largely abandoned the narrative for the shorter lyric, and in the production of poems of this class have reached a singular happiness of just and beautiful thought and expression. The diffusion of power consequent upon the new journalism and upon the demand especially for fictional literature, with the remunerative openings which they present to literary ability, are doubtless responsible for the fact, that although there never was a time when there were so many singers, the productions of so few ever rise above the level of minor poetry. There is the con- solation of knowing that what the age loses in one form, it gains in another ; and nothing can be farther from the truth than the gloomy foreboding that the glorious sun of English poetry is near its setting. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) belongs of right to an Q Victorian Literature older generation, but continued his literary activity so far into the present reign that he may justly claim admission to the circle of Victorian writers. A man who was on terms of friendship, more or less intimate, with Hazlitt and Lamb, with Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and who could also number amongst his later friends such writers as Dickens, Carlyle, and Macaulay, cannot have been without interesting qualities. It is true there is an elusive element both in his character and genius, as of a creature diversely compounded ; yet the materials are ample for forming a judgment concerning him. He by no means keeps himself in the background of such delightful prose works as his Autobiography, The Town, and Men, Women, and Books. Moreover, as the editor of the Examiner his affairs for a time were very much in the public view. To his intimacy with the Carlyles we owe a particularly life-like sketch of him and his. The rugged seer of Chelsea appears to have had a warm corner in his heart for Hunt. And yet it is difficult to ascribe to good nature only his characteristic and amusing description of the eccentricities of the Hunt household. The same may be said with even more truth of Dickens's unfortunate caricature of his friend as Harold Skimpole in the pages of Bleak House, although, when challenged, Dickens warmly disavowed all intention of pointing out Hunt by the character, while at the same time admitting that he may have been indebted for some of its externals to him. Leigh Hunt 243 Hunt wrote much and in many forms tales, criti- cisms, essays, dramas, and biographies, including an unfortunate account of his relations with Lord Byron, which has added nothing to his reputation. But in addition to all this, there is, ranging almost from his earliest years, a body of verse, fluctuating in quality, yet unquestionably poetry ; and it is probably upon this part of his literary output chiefly that his repu- tation will rest. It has, however, been the mis- fortune of Hunt, as it was also that of his friend Keats, and mainly through association with Hunt, to be judged more by political than by literary standards. A coterie of critics, resenting Hunt's strictures on their favourites, and objecting to the supposed revolu- tionary principles of the so-called ' Cockney School,' poured unmitigated, often unmerited, contempt upon work which well deserved a better reception. From this injustice Keats has already emerged ; his work is now frankly recognised for what it is, and his place among the immortals has been secured. That there will be any such recovery for Leigh Hunt as a poet is less likely. His plane was a distinctly lower one, and it may be that posterity will chiefly honour him for the influence exerted by his friend- ship and example upon two such fine spirits as Shelley and Keats. Yet there was often in his own verse a certain exquisiteness, a melody, a power of catching the fleeting thought, and of fixing it in the undying word. Unfortunately, however, Leigh Hunt was not always to be seen thus at his best. He had his frequent 244 Victorian Literature relapses into a manner that was not only common- place, but vulgar. His judgment as a literary critic was rarely at fault when others were in question ; moreover, he was most generous in his appreciations ; but he lacked the insight and delicacy of taste for self-criticism which he had so readily at command for others. The Story of Rimini (1816), Hunt's best poem, be- longs to his pre- Victorian period. He also wrote Captain Sword and Captain Pen (1839), A Legend of Florence (1840), The Palfrey (1842), Stories in Verse (1855), and various others. Wanting though all are in striking originality and the intense note that marks the higher poetry, there was much of the charm yielded by an easy flow of language and of rhyme, a nimble and appropriate fancy, a sensibility that responds readily to the influence of the beautiful, and frequent felicities both of thought and language that linger long and pleasantly in the memory. He deserves especial credit for the grace with which he handled the narra- tive poem. In all his verse, moreover, is reflected the interesting and, in some respects, fascinating per- sonality of the writer himself his unconquerable brightness and good-humour, his light-hearted fresh- ness and buoyancy, as of one to whom to live is joy. There is in him none of the strenuousness and intro- spectiveness of more recent poetry. Easily catching the manner of his favourites, Spenser, Chaucer, and the Italian models whom they followed, he is ever losing himself delightedly in some sweet tale or care- Leigh Hunt 245 less scene of old romance. His muse requires no spurring. Poetic pains are to him as nothing compared with poetic pleasures. Leigh Hunt was the son of a Church of England clergyman, and was born at Southgate, Middlesex, in 1784. After several years at Christ's Hospital, Lon- don, followed by a Government clerkship, he began his career as a journalist. It was in connection with the Examiner that he fell into the indiscretion of libelling George IV as a ( fat Adonis of fifty.' He was sentenced to a two years' imprisonment, besides other penalties. Instead of moping over this misfortune, Hunt called forth all his native cheerfulness, and gave a memorable object-lesson on the power of making the most of adverse circumstances. He converted his prison cell into a poet's bower. * I papered the walls,' says he, * with a trellis of roses ; I had the ceiling covered with clouds and sky ; the barred windows were screened with Venetian blinds ; and when my bookcases were set up, with their busts and flowers, and a pianoforte made its appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side the water. 1 took a pleasure, when a stranger knocked at the door, to see him come in and stare about him. Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room except in a fairy tale.' Hunt was visited in his confinement by Byron, Moore, and a host of other friends, and but for the restraint put upon his movements, the time could scarcely have passed more agreeably or profit- ably. No doubt there was another side to this easy 246 Victorian Literature good-nature. It is to be seen in the shiftlessness, the want of judgment and practical ability in common affairs, the proneness to fall into debt, and also to forget the obligations thus incurred, which all writers notice in connection with this pleasant man and most genial writer. He died in 1859. Thomas Hood (1799-1845), like Leigh Hunt, belongs equally to the Victorian period and that which immediately preceded it. The son of a Scotch pub- lisher and bookseller, he was born in London in May 1799. After receiving his education at a private school in Clapham, he was apprenticed as an engraver to his uncle, Mr Sands. His health, however, proving delicate, he was sent in his fifteenth year to Dundee to recruit. Here, among relatives, he remained for several years. During his stay in the northern town, he seems to have had some experience of commercial life, but what is of more interest is the fact that he certainly here made his earliest contributions to the press. The Dundee Advertiser received his first con- tribution in the year 1814, when Hood was fifteen years of age. This appears to have been followed by others, though probably without any serious thoughts of authorship as a vocation. In 1820 we find him once more in London engaged in his old occupation as an engraver. This, however, he soon abandoned, for in 1821 he was serving on the staff of the then popular London Magazine. Among his contributions to this magazine in 1821 were the poems, To Hope, Thomas Hood 247 Ode to Dr Kitchener, and Lycus the Centaur, revealing a capacity for literary labour far beyond the hack work to which so much of his time and energy had recently been given. Between 1821 and 1830, Hood produced much excellent verse, including The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies (1827), a work of true and delicate fancy ; Hero and Leander, many sonnets and lyrics, done with grace and simplicity, and showing fine art and an exquisite tenderness of feeling ; and The Fair Ines, which has won from other poets the praise of being almost perfect as a ballad. To the later period of his life belong such characteristic works in verse, as Miss Kilmansegg and her Golden Leg, The Dream of Eugene Aram (1829), The Song of the Shirt (1843), and The Bridge of Sighs (1844). His high qualities as a poet are distinctly manifested in these and other writings. Miss Kilmansegg is a satire in the form of broad burlesque, not without faults of taste, but with vivid dramatic force, realistic imagina- tion, and abounding humour. The Dream of Eugene Aram displays the power of conceiving an impressive dramatic situation, and of analysing the intense feel- ings proper to it. But it is in the other two poems just mentioned that Hood is generally thought to have touched his highest note. With a true instinct he gave instructions that there should be inscribed upon his tomb the words : ( He sang the Song of the Shirt.' That piece, so full of humanity and pathos, appeared in the Christmas number of Punch in 1843, and was at once taken to the heart of the British 248 Victorian Literature public. But the fine sympathy and charity of the poet that could see a brother and a sister, even in the most degraded, are shown still more convincingly in The Bridge of Sighs, a much finer poem. Had Hood written nothing more than these two poems, he would have been assured against oblivion. Perhaps the something pathetic in Hood's own life made him the more tenderly sympathetic with others. He had been fortunate in getting in Miss Reynolds one of the best and most loving of wives. The family that grew up around him had added largely to his pleasures. Never, moreover, was there a man to whom home meant more, or who found truer happi- ness in the exercise of the domestic affections. Still, it was a home over which hung a cloud that never altogether lifted, and that, indeed, darkened more and more in his closing years. The truth is that his life was a constant battle with disease complicated with poverty. The wolf was never fairly driven from his door. Just when there seemed the promise of better days, a bankruptcy in which he was involved plunged him into deeper distress. With a fine manliness he resolved to pay every penny that he owed, but like Scott he died in the attempt. Worse health had come with increased responsibilities and lessened means of comfort. Life abroad was tried for economy's sake. It only made privation harder. The shadow was fast deepening over this gentle life, but the dreary toil for bread could not be intermitted. Release only came with death in 1845, the poet then being in his Thomas Hood 249 forty-sixth year. Many admiring friends and readers gladly contributed to place a handsome monument over his grave in Kensal Green Cemetery, bearing upon it the inscription he had himself chosen. But he had once jocularly suggested a very different epitaph, 1 Here lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any other man.' And in this is condensed the peculiar pathos and irony of Thomas Hood's life. Never, perhaps, was there given to any other man such a constant, spontaneous, irresistible habit of joking. Everything he saw seemed to present itself to him on its humorous side. The quaintest, oddest, most whimsical and grotesque associations of things were for ever offering themselves to him. True poet though he was and it is to his serious verse we must look for his chief claim to be remembered it was rather for this perennial fount of humour that his contemporaries in general esteemed him. And alas ! there was money in it, and Hood dared not in his circumstances decline the resources which it offered. Much of this humour was singularly un forced, and came bubbling up as from a natural and inexhaustible fountain. Moreover, not a little of it was of that subtler quality that has its obverse in tears, or is shot through with the gleams of a fine poetic fancy. Still nothing can be drearier than very much of this work, both in prose and verse. There were times when the jaded horse would not respond to whip or spur, and these are the times when we feel how willingly we could have spared all his punning to 250 Victorian Literature have had just another Bridge of Sighs or Plea of the Midsummer Fairies. Hood, like Thackeray, and indeed beyond Thackeray, had a gift of comic draughtsmanship, of which he made the most ample use in expressing his humorous fancies and whimsicalities. He is to be seen in all his lighter gifts in the various series of the Comic Annual, Hood's Own, Whims and Oddities, and Up the Rhine. Altogether we may say of him that great though he was as a humourist, he was above all a true, though not a great poet, with a capability in this direction far beyond anything which the adverse cir- cumstances of his life had permitted him to produce. The following piece in Hood's serious manner refers to his sister Anne : THE DEATHBED. We watch'd her breathing through the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. So silently we seem'd to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers To eke her living out. Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died. For when the morn came dim and sad, And chill with early showers, Her quiet eyelids closed she had Another morn than ours. Alfred, Lord Tennyson 251 Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). In the opinion of the vast majority of English-speaking readers throughout the world, Alfred Tennyson is the chief ornament of British poetry in the Victorian era. He forms a link between the group of extra- ordinary poets whose genius sheds such lustre on the first quarter of the century and those of the decades following. Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge were all alive when Tennyson published his earliest volumes, and the commendations of the two latter, studiously cautious and measured though they were, may be said to have put upon him the true hall mark of the long and brilliant succession of great masters of English song. He is our representative Victorian poet, and to no one can we better look for the distinc- tive thought, the characteristic moods, and the new developments of recent and present-day verse. Alfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August 1809, in the rectory of Somersby, a sleepy hamlet in Lincolnshire. On both sides he was of gentle blood. His father, the Rev. George Clayton Harrison Tenny- son, LL.D., the rector of this small parish of sixty or seventy souls, was a man of superior character, culture, and attainments, with gifts of imagination that enabled him to discern and foster the germs of great qualities in his children. His wife, daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche, Vicar of Louth, by her extraordinary gentleness and tenderness of disposition, furnished the true complement to her husband's strong and master- ful personality. Alfred was the fourth son in this 252 Victorian Literature family of twelve, his two elder surviving brothers being Frederick and Charles, both of whom also dis- tinguished themselves as poets. Like the Bronte children, although in more genial circumstances, the young Tennysons lived a vivid imaginative life, and appear to have done much for each other. Mrs Thackeray Ritchie relates that Alfred, when a child of five, being driven along the garden path before a blast of wind, made his first line of poetry, as he shouted, * I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind.' Other tales are told of his childhood that at least show his early devotion to poetry, if they do not furnish evidence of any remarkable precocity. On the death of his grandmother, his grandfather asked him to write a poem on this event. When the verses were submitted to him, he presented the boy with half a sovereign, accompanied, however, with the discourag- ing remark, f That is the first money, my boy, that you've made by poetry ; and take my word for it it will be the last ! ' Education was begun at Somersby, but in 1816 Alfred, then seven years of age, and his brother Charles, one year older, were sent to the Grammar School at Louth, where they remained till 1820. From the latter year till 1828 they received the home tuition of their father in preparation for the Univer- sity. It was, no doubt, a fruitful period, singularly free from restraint and full of poetical opportunities. But it afforded openings for no little idleness, and with a nature so excessively shy and reserved as Alfred, Lord Tennyson 253 Tennyson's, it was a misfortune that he had not at this time the rough discipline of public school life. As it was, he was fortunate in his surroundings, and especially in finding in his brother a true com- panion of the soul, with tastes and sympathies akin to his own. Throughout this period the Tennyson of later years can be distinctly traced dreamy, imagina- tive, solitary, much given to abstracted commerce with Nature and self. It may have been, it probably was, somewhat unhealthy ; but the poems furnish evidence enough of a habit of closely interrogating Nature, and an appreciation of the distinctive features especi- ally of the Lincolnshire landscape, that must have been acquired during the long rambles of the brothers at this time. In his twelfth year Alfred is said to have composed an epic of four or five thousand lines in imitation of Scott, and somewhat later he tried his hand at a drama. In 1824, when he was fifteen, the news of Byron's death filtered slowly to the remote hamlet of Somersby, and filled our youthful poets with conster- nation. * I thought,' said Alfred, ' the whole world was at an end. I thought everything was over and finished for everyone that nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out alone, and carved " Byron is dead " into the sandstone.' In 1827, about two years after this event, there was published at Louth a small volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers^ forming the first literary venture of Alfred and Charles Tennyson. The object of this 2 54 Victorian Literature publication was to obtain pocket money for a long holiday, and it must have more than met their expec- tations, for the sanguine publisher appears to have given them in all about twenty pounds for the copy- right. Of the one hundred and two poems which the volume contained, four were from the pen of the older brother Frederick, who has continued to write poetry throughout a long life, but has had the mis- fortune to be eclipsed by the greater genius of the younger members of the family. The first feeling of any one on reading Poems by Two Brothers^ will prob- ably be one of surprise that they are not better than they are. For when all allowances on the score of youth and the youthful poets are careful in their preface to tell us that these poems were written between the ages of fifteen and eighteen have been made, it must be confessed that they do not show any remarkable power, or give any reasonable promise of future greatness. Even Byron's Hours of Idleness, which was manifestly much in their view when they wrote, compares in this respect favourably with them. Their interest is chiefly retrospective, in view of Alfred Tennyson's supreme distinction in Victorian poetry at a later period, and of the fact that Charles Tennyson, better known afterwards as the Rev. Charles Tennyson-Turner, a name assumed when he fell heir to his grand-uncle's property, became one of the most exquisite sonnet writers of our time. In 1828 these two brothers were entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, Alfred being then in his eighteenth Alfred, Lord Tennyson 255 year. Notwithstanding his extraordinary shyness and reserve, he soon found admittance into one of the best sets in the University. Foremost among his friends was Arthur Henry Hallam, two years younger than himself, but better equipped in scholarship and know- ledge, and, according to the testimony of all his friends, of a singularly beautiful and perfect character. Of the same set were Richard Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), R. C. Trench, who became Archbishop of Dublin, Henry Alford, the future Dean of Canterbury, Mr Spedding, F. D. Maurice, Charles Merivale, the historian of Rome, W. H. Thompson, subsequently Master of Trinity, and others. Thackeray was also at Cambridge at this time, but was of a different set. The friendship of the young men composing the Tennysonian group was very close. Yet even with them the super-sensitive- ness to adverse criticism, which in the laureate amounted almost to a disease, is distinctly marked. Archbishop Trench has told how Tennyson used to read his poems to these assembled friends, only, however, with the understanding that no word of fault- finding was to be expressed, although there seems to have been no law against the utterance of unqualified approbation. The one noteworthy academical achievement of the future laureate was Timbuctoo (1829), a poem in blank verse, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal, even against such formidable competitors as Monckton Milnes and the younger Hallam. Tennyson was still 256 Victorian Literature an undergraduate of Cambridge, when in 1830 he pub- lished his Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, a volume which shows a considerable advance upon former work, but which, nevertheless, is strangely unsuggestive of such later poems as Maud, Rizpah, and In Memoriam. There were, however, in these new productions quali- ties which justified both the enthusiasm of such critics as Hallam, and the objections of critics, not altogether unfriendly, like Professor Wilson. All can feel the sweetness, the melody, and the varied charm of these poems without being blind to their slightness, their want of clear, definite thought, or the absence in them of any strong note of passion. The Claribels and Lilians, the Adelines and Isabels, with whom so much of this volume is filled, and whom the poet paints with such delicate porcelain effects, are without much human interest, and, in fact, fail to reveal themselves. Mariana is one of the finest poems in this volume, but even Mariana of the Moated Grange in her soli- tude and melancholy is vague and indistinct, although one of the most characteristic qualities of the poet is shown in depicting how all the various features of the fen-like landscape take a sombre tone in sympathy with Mariana's sadness. In The Poet he touches a higher note, and shows less immaturity. In this year, Tennyson's more practical interests are to be seen in his visit in company with his friend Hallam to the Pyrenees, for the purpose of conveying money and sympathy to certain rebels then in arms against the Spanish authorities. In the following year, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 257 1831, he lost his father, and in consequence left Cam- bridge without taking a degree. His next volume of Poems appeared in 1832, and showed decided growth in the qualities in which hitherto he had been weakest. The vague, dreamy languors of melody and colour are still noticeable, but the motive is not so thin, and the human interests are growing stronger. It was possible for all readers to be interested in, and charmed by the idyllic beauty of The Miller's Daughter, and the tender pathos of The May Queen. There is but little of the old dilettante prettiness in the passion QtFatima and The Sisters. In The Palace of Art, the problems of the age begin to make themselves heard, and it is interesting to -note that here at the beginning, as also at the end of his career, Tennyson answers the ques- tion, * Is life worth living ? ' with a decided 4 Yes.' The finely melodious, richly coloured Lady of Shalott shows him to be already under the spell of the Arthurian legend. How vivid its nature pictures are, and how true to the particular human mood of which each is the background ! ' On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot ; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. 4 Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk "and shiver Victorian Literature Thro' the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four grey walls, and four grey towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. 1 By the margin, willow- veil'd, Slide the heavy barges trail'd By slow horses ; and unhail'd The shallop flitteth, silken-sail'd, Skimming down to Camelot : But who hath seen her wave her hand ? Or at the casement seen her stand ? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott ? ' Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to tower'd Camelot : And by the moon the reaper weary, Piling sheaves in uplands airy, Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.'" But the principal significance of this poem is, that it furnishes a landmark in the history of the poet's own mental development, in showing that he has now reached the perception that a noble life can never satisfy itself with a mere isolated dreaming of dreams, however beautiful, but must go forth in helpful sympathy with its fellows of humanity. In The Dream of Fair Women there are some fine passages ; and an almost flawless beauty of melody and cadence is Alfred, Lord Tennyson 259 reached in The Lotos-Eaters. But precious though such poetic material was, the notices of this volume were by no means generally favourable. Tennyson deeply resented them. But as the fount of inspiration in him is always less impressive than his supreme attainment as an artist, these criticisms probably served a good purpose. For seeing that Tennyson, notwithstanding his annoyance, withdrew many of the offending poems from future editions, and altered many others almost beyond recognition, we may presume that the stric- tures of such writers as Professor Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart were not altogether unnecessary. For the ten following years, Tennyson's voice was silent. But the laborious craftsman and he was that as well as born singer no great poet ever more so was toiling unrestingly to make himself the poet his friends and well-wishers expected him to be. His mental development was not rapid. It extended over many years. And even at the last it is impossible to say how much of the final result was due to natural growth, and how much to self-discipline and effort. In any case we know how powerfully both were reinforced by the inspiration of the great sorrow of his earlier life. Arthur Henry Hallam had become more and more his friend. They had had long days at Somersby together, and when Hallam became engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily, the ties between them grew still more close and intimate. But Hallam died suddenly at Vienna on the i5th of September 1833, and the sun of Tennyson's youth seemed to go down 260 Victorian Literature in blackness. To Arthur Henry Hallam belongs the interest not only of Tennyson's great love and im- perishable memorial, but also of an unfulfilled career in literature that promised to be of unusual brilliance and distinction. Many years were spent by Tennyson in brooding over this great sorrow, and in silently perfecting his poems to the most exquisite symmetry and beauty. When at length in 1842, he, being then thirty-one years of age, breaks silence with the famous edition of his Poems in two volumes, he is in every sense a man. The cloudlands of his youth, in which he has lingered only too long, now lie behind him. He has found a message for both the brain and the heart of his generation, and from that time onwards to his death, the age continues to listen to him as to one who has justly earned for himself the position of the greatest of living poets. In no other writer have we such singular opportunities of viewing the develop- ment of his own taste and art. These volumes distinctly showed the hand of the refiner in numerous transformations in old pieces. It is indeed most instructive thus to compare the various versions of the same poems marking the different stages of the poet's growth, and to note both what he adds and what he rejects. Never was there a taste more fas- tidious ; never an artist who so insisted upon absolute perfection in his work. Tennyson's manner of working may here be noted as somewhat peculiar. His custom, as he tells us, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 261 was to put down beautiful thoughts, jewelled words or phrases, striking comparisons, and descriptions of Nature just as they occurred to him in the course of his reading, his country rambles, or his silent medi- tations, and to treasure these up until a favourable opportunity of using them arose. Many of his best things, therefore, are of the nature of beautiful mosaics mosaics, however, fitted with such an exquisite art into his pictures of Nature or of man, that they seem to evolve themselves immediately and spontaneously from the main current of his thought. Had the whole result been less perfect, there might have been some temptation to suspect that the poem had no better raison d'etre than the exquisite phrase or fancy held in reserve so long. In any case it is at least curious to see so much of what may be called mechanic art in alliance with so undoubted a genius. That genius was largely imitative. It made its appropriations freely. His models could easily be recognised, and not a few of his choicest beauties can be shown to be derivative. Yet nothing can be more absurd than to seek to found upon such things a charge of plagiarism. Like Shakespeare, Tennyson often shows to greatest advantage when the old thought or fancy is placed side by side with the new and exquisite setting he has given it. The first of the two volumes published in 1842 was made up mainly of pieces that had appeared before, some of them slightly altered, most of them entirely recast. The second volume consisted of new pieces, 262 Victorian Literature which showed a great advance upon his former work, and had the effect of establishing his reputation upon a more secure foundation. The English Idyll, which had already in Tennyson's hands found exquisitely beautiful expression in The Millers Daughter and The May Queen, is even more strongly represented here in The Gardener's Daughter and Dora. These pieces, the former glowing with a true and passionate love, the latter even more perfect in the tender naturalness of its pathos, can scarcely fail to charm the reader by their thoroughly English sentiment and atmosphere, and by the sweet and wholesome human affection they display. We see the influence which the old Greek myths had upon the imagination of the poet in Ulysses ', which, classical though it is in subject and in treatment, yet has its undercurrents of modern sentiment : it depicts the ancient hero as wearied almost to death of the idleness of home, and as setting forth upon a new enterprise. The attractions of old romance are seen in the beautiful legend of Godiva, which surely was never rendered more purely or sympathetically. The Arthurian legend, however, still holds the chief place in his affection, as witness Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, Sir Galahad, and The Morte d } Arthur. Even more characteristic of the poet's advance are the poems that shed light on his ethical position and his relation to the great religious problems of the age. The Two Voices is even more interesting for its philosophy than for its poetry. The contest of the two voices is respecting the great problem Is Alfred, Lord Tennyson 263 Life worth living? and vague though the issue is felt to be, the conclusion is undoubtedly the affirma- tive of the optimist. This, however, is implied rather than stated in these concluding verses : ' And forth into the fields I went, And Nature's living motion lent The pulse of hope to discontent. ' I wondered at the bounteous hours, The slow result of winter showers ; You scarce could see the grass for flowers. ' I wonder'd while I paced along : The woods were filled so full with song, There seem'd no room for sense of wrong. ' And all so variously wrought, I marvell'd how the mind was brought To anchor by one gloomy thought ; ' And wherefore rather I made choice To commune with that barren voice, Than him that said, " Rejoice ! Rejoice ! " The highly allegorical Vision of Sin, vague though its conclusions also are, gives emphatic expression to the significant truth that the sin of the sense brings its certain punishment in the sense : ' Then some one spake Behold ! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time.' Of all these 1842 poems Locksley Hall was the most popular, and gave the greatest impression of strength and progress. It is full of beautiful things, like most of the other poems, but it also shows a dramatic power 264 Victorian Literature and passion which Tennyson had never reached before. It describes a love killed by the disillusion due to a girl's fickleness. The hero and speaker is a boy, and his passion of disappointment, scorn, and anger is the passion of a boy. As in Maud, the feeling is somewhat morbid and hysterical, and the curses into which this feeling breaks show a mind far from its poise. His has been the selfishness of a golden youth intoxicated with its own bright dreams and exquisite emotions. Bitter experience is necessary to teach him how deceptive and unsubstantial these are, how little the happiness of the individual counts for, and how much nobler as an object of enthusiasm is the welfare of the race. He thus awakes to the fact that relief from all this maddening turbulence of feeling that threatens to paralyse his nature, or to land him in the deadly chill of cynicism, must be found in action, in a living sympathy with human progress, and in the hastening on of the better world to be. How admirably fitted are the wide sweep and melodious cadence of the lines of this poem to express the exquisite beauty of some of its moods, and the rushing flaming passion of others ! As we read, we seem both to see and to hear the long roll of some tropic wave advancing upon a golden strand, and breaking into innumerable flashing liquid gems. What, for example, could more beautifully describe an imaginative youth than such lines as these ? ' Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west. Alfred, Lord Tennyson 265 4 Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. 4 Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time.' Into what an ecstasy does he pass when he knows that his love is returned : ' Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands : Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. 4 Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. 4 Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the Spring. 1 Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.' But it is here in the very moment of supreme bliss that fate reaches him ; his next words, therefore, are the bitter cry : 4 O my cousin, shallow-hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more ! O the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren shore ! ' He has been thrust aside for an older and richer suitor. We sympathise with an agony so real and natural. But we can see that the feeling is not pro- found. He will be consoled. He will hurl about his anathemas with a self-conscious violence and bluster. But he will soon be able to comfort himself with the thought 4 That a poet's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.' 266 Victorian Literature He will certainly escape from the self-centred heroics of his youth, of which these sorrows are a part. Already, indeed, he has gone far and learned much when he is able to say 4 Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen 'd with the process of the suns.' The best, however, that this experience has done for him is expressed in the words : ' Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.' For at last the audacity of youthful egotism has found its rebuke and has signed its recantation ; the true formula of a noble life being not ' All things for me,' but * I and my powers the servants of all.' This would seem to be a fitting conclusion, but the poet is not clear, and it may be that he meant nothing more by this poem than to exhibit the effervescence of a fermenting spirit in which the crystal of a solid, useful purpose has not yet been formed. One turns with interest to Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After, written by Tennyson in his old age, to see what bearing it has upon the problems of experi- ence touched upon by the earlier poem. On the whole the result is disappointing. The later poem lacks something of the imaginative power, the rushing energy, and the verbal brilliancy of the 1842 poem. The hero, now in talk with his grandson, is more Alfred, Lord Tennyson 267 than eighty years of age, but in some respects he is still the boy he was sixty years ago. He has not lost the power of cursing, and has bitter comments for those who do not please him. Still the mellowing touch of time has been upon him. Amy, dead sixty years ago, is to him now a tender and sacred memory. Her husband, a widower of sixty years, he acknowledges to have been a better man than himself. We miss the generous faith in human progress, and the glowing enthusiasms of his youth. After those early storms, life had rocked him in tranquil domestic waters. His lot had been cast, not among the fevered throngs of men, but amidst pleasant, easy- going rusticities. The human needs that clamoured for repose, got it not from him, but from his ancient rival. He has grown painfully pessimistic and con- servative. He sees the evils of society still, but thinks that men must be content to live their miserable lives here as best they may, and take their compensa- tions in the life to come. Such a philosophy of life is manifestly inadequate, and even although it illus- trates a temperament, one rather wonders that Tenny- son, with apparently so poor a message, should have recurred, after so long a time, to this unsatisfactory hero. Tennyson's life now becomes fuller and richer from the opportunities arising out of his residence in and near London, of associating with men worth know- ing. Especially valuable and stimulating to him 268 Victorian Literature was his friendship with Carlyle. In 1838, Tenny- son had joined the Anonymous Club, which num- bered amongst its members Carlyle, Mill, Sterling, Thackeray, Landor, Macready, and others. The friendship of such men could not fail to widen the poet's range, and quicken his intellectual sympathies. He is now, therefore, less self-centred than before, and the human interest has for him a stronger appeal. From various pens we have distinct glimpses of his tall, handsome, swarthy, gipsy-like figure, and can form some idea of the deep-voiced, monotonous chant with which he used to read his poems to his friends. Edward Fitzgerald writes : ( We have Alfred Tenny- son here, very droll and very wayward ; and much sitting up of nights till two and three in the morning, with pipes in our mouths ; at which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some of his magic music, which he does between growling and smoking, and so to bed.' But Carlyle's portrait places him even more vividly before us : ' A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair ; bright, laughing, hazel eyes ; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate ; of sallow - brown complexion, almost Indian-looking ; clothes cynically loose, free and easy ; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between ; speech and speculation free and plenteous ; I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe.' In the Chelsea household, Tennyson appears to have been a special favourite, and there Alfred, Lord Tennyson 269 can be little doubt that the hours spent there reacted powerfully upon his work. In 1845 the circumstances of the poet were made easier by a Civil List pension conferred upon him by Sir Robert Peel, chiefly through the good offices of Monckton Milnes, who sent a copy of Tennyson's poems to the Prime Minister with Locksley Hall and Ulysses marked. Tennyson's first long poem, The Princess, characterised as A Medley, appeared in 1847. In a mood half-serious, half-burlesque, he discussed in this poem a problem that has advanced many stages since that time the problem of woman's position in society. This question, moreover, he answers in the only way in which it can be answered, by pointing to the child. Not colleges or halls of learning can be the centre of the woman's kingdom, but the home, so Nature teaches. The Princess is full of Tennyson's best qualities his melody of verse, his playfulness, his art of vivid portraiture, his exquisite lyrical gift, shown especially in the beautiful songs added lo a later edition. The year 1850, Tennyson's golden year, witnessed three important events his marriage to Emily Sel- wood, whose youngest sister was already wife to his brother Charles ; his appointment to the Laureateship in succession to Wordsworth ; and the publication of In Memoriam. There are many who reckon this his greatest poem, and see in it his finest thought and most perfect art. Two things, however, will prevent it from being so widely popular as some of his other 270 Victorian Literature works. In the first place, it is a long poem, and is throughout of a sombre and melancholy cast. In the second place, it is, of all his poems, that which makes the heaviest demand upon the thoughtfulness of his readers, and is not to be understood, therefore, with- out considerable effort. It takes the form of a hundred and thirty-one separate poems, * all springing out of variations of the same mood of grief,' and using a stanza, the exquisite modulations of which seem almost per- fectly adapted to the poet's purpose. In Memoriam celebrates the virtues of his dead friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, and has been rightly characterised as the greatest of all poems in which a grief and its effects are chronicled. It shows us the poet shadowed by the awful mystery of death. Something like de- spair seizes him as he reflects on the waste implied in the sudden arrest of a career so full of rarest promise as that of his friend. There seems no room for God and love in a universe where such death prevails. Spectral i shapes haunt him with the gloomiest fore- bodings. His faith seems on the point of ship- wreck. The persistent * wherefores ?' that rise to his lips refuse to answer themselves. Yet slowly, with the dragging years, the long night of his sorrow passes into the glimmering of dawn. The shadows disperse ; he can hear once more the singing of birds ; again he catches sight of the blue over-arching heavens : now the dawn has grown into the full sunlight of hope, and the calmness and serenity of a faith that does not know indeed, but can trust. In Memoriam is furnished Alfred, Lord Tennyson 271 with a Prologue and an Epilogue. The latter was added at a later time, and expresses the poet's joy at the marriage of his youngest sister, Cecilia, to Pro- fessor Lushington. The Prologue is dated 1849, and was written several years after the rest of the poem was finished. Placed where it is, this most beautiful and impressive religious hymn sounds the true key- note of In Memoriam, by showing that, however black may be the gulfs of doubt into which sorrow may plunge the poet, the end will be peace. Such stanzas as the following belong to the supreme moments both of poetry and of faith : ' Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove ; " ' Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die ; And thou hast made him : thou art just. * Our little systems have their day ; They have their day and cease to be : They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 1 We have but faith : we cannot know ; For knowledge is of things we see ; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness : let it grow.' In the years that followed In Memoriam, a patriotic sentiment appears to prevail in Tennyson's poetry. 272 Victorian Literature In 1852 he produced his splendid Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. This was followed in 1854 by The Charge of the Light Brigade. The mood was with the poet to the last, and finds strong expression in such later poems as Balaclava, The Revenge, and The Defence of Lucknow. The next great poem from Tennyson's pen also illustrating the war spirit was Maud : a Monodrama, which appeared in 1855. Of all his poems this was the author's favourite, but it was by no means equally admired by the public. It is true that the critics are now very nearly of Tennyson's opinion ; for while they still find fault with its defence of war, its intrusion of scientific elements, and its occasional lapses into rhetoric, they admit that it is the most dramatic, and in some respects the most poetical, of all his writings. It glows throughout with the white heat of passion, and scarcely anywhere else have we such a wealth of lyrical sweetness and variety. The imaginative passion and melody of the song, Come into the Garden, Maud, would of itself have sufficed to place it among the finest poems of the century. The moody and hysterical hero reminds the reader of the hero of Locksley Hall, and it is with his over-strained emotions, sane and insane, that the poem is mainly occupied. Maud herself is somewhat feebly con- ceived, and figures but slightly in the events of the poem. It is no sorrow such as the poet has described in In Memoriam that is here depicted. It is the sorrow, fateful and inevitable, that follows Alfred, Lord Tennyson 273 a diseased temperament, splenetic, nervous, only half sane at the best, and stung to unnatural excitement by the memory of old, but unforgotten wrongs. Into this brooding life is interjected an idyllic love, only to be quenched in overwhelming disaster. The issue is from the first seen to be inevitable. Through all the thrilling rapture of the garden song is heard remotely, but distinctly, the wail of approaching doom. In a passion of self-defence the hero kills Maud's brother, and becomes a fugitive, haunted not only by her living shriek, but also by her dead presence. Vividly does the poet describe first the morbid fancies of the tottering brain, and then the forms of the madness itself. Recovery comes, but in a manner that is scarcely convincing. For it is the Crimean War that brings to him deliverance from the phantoms that have haunted him so long, and that enables him in recovered sanity to exclaim : 4 It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill, I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind, I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assigned.' The conclusion will not satisfy every taste, and undoubtedly the poet, in finding the remedy for the evils consequent on a long period of peace in a great war, runs counter to the logic of facts in overlooking the unimaginable horrors of such a conflict. Tennyson's next great work, The Idylls of the King, was built up slowly between the years 1859 and 1885. But as we have seen from such poems S 274 Victorian Literature as Sir Galahad, Launcelot and Guinevere, and The Lady of Shalott, the subject of the dim King and his shadowy Court had cast its spell upon Tenny- son long before. It was, indeed, his life study. His first serious effort in connection with it was put forth in the 1842 volume, in the poem en- titled Morte d 1 Arthur, which he afterwards expanded into The Passing of Arthur, to complete the poetical cycle of the Table Round. It was thus in some respects the first, as it was also in its perfected form the finest, of the series. When these poems were published separately, and out of their chronological order, they had seemed to lack unity. But when the whole work was completed, and arranged in the due order of time and events, and it was possible to view them according to the poet's design, it was seen that they presented an epical and artistic com- pleteness, for which hitherto they had not received credit. The story of Arthur and his Court as told by Malory and earlier writers is pretty closely adhered to. But into this story has been woven the signifi- cance of a deeper spiritual allegory. For in Tennyson's hands Arthur is the soul, his Knights are its various capacities and powers, and Guinevere his Queen is Sense, whose single sin involves the Soul with which she is in union, and all the goodly brotherhood of the Table Round in swift decay and final dissolution. Taking these poems in the order of time, and not of publication, the first is The Coming of Arthur, in ' Alfred, Lord Tennyson 275 which is described the dim mystery of his birth, the setting up of his throne, and the founding of the Order of the Table Round : ' And Arthur sat Crown 'd on the dais, and his warriors cried, " Be thou the King, and we will work thy will Who love thee." Then the King in low deep tones, And simple words of great authority, Bound them by so straight vows to his own self, That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some Were pale as at the passing of a ghost, Some flush'd, and others dazed, as one who wakes Half-blinded at the coming of a light. But when he spake and cheer'd 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.' The King's marriage to Guinevere follows, and becomes the occasion of a renewed consecration to the high and sacred purposes of his reign. ' And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake, " Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world Other, and may the Queen be one with thee, And all this Order of thy Table Round Fulfil the boundless purpose of their King ! " ' Whereupon Arthur's knights burst into song that expresses the very ecstasy of heroical and heavenly resolve : ' Strike for the King and live ! his knights have heard That God hath told the King a secret word. Fall battle-axe, and flash brand ! Let the King reign. 276 Victorian Literature ' Strike for the King and die ! and if thou diest, The King is King, and ever wills the highest. Clang battle-axe, and clash brand ! Let the King reign. 4 The King will follow Christ, and we the King In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing. Fall battle-axe, and flash brand ! Let the King reign. ' And Arthur and his knighthood for a space Were all one will, and thro' that strength the King Drew in the petty princedoms under him, Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reigned.' In Gareth and Lynette no canker in the goodly fellowship has yet appeared. The edge of that fine enthusiasm has not yet been blunted. Each vies with each in deeds of loftiest prowess and noblest chivalry. To all, the example of the King is still an inspiration. What, indeed, to Gareth and the rest is life itself but to 4 Follow the Christ, the King, Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King Else, wherefore born ? ' Next in the order of time come The Marriage of Geraint, and Geraint and Enid, which in the first edition of the Idylls had formed one poem under the name of Enid. Alas ! the ' little rift within the lute ' has now appeared. Whispers of the Queen's unfaith- fulness are abroad. Geraint hears and believes them : and there fell A horror on him, lest his gentle wife, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 277 Thro' that great tenderness for Guinevere, Had suffer'd, or should suffer, any taint In nature.' Unhappily the fear for his wife passes into causeless suspicion. What wonder when the rose of that fair Court, one so high in place and privilege as the Queen, could be so false ? Sad for Geraint and Enid is the weary time that follows, although it serves only to make more plain the prowess of the great Prince of Devon, and to place high above all doubt the exceed- ing loyalty, virtue, and meekness of his sweet wife. The working of this evil leaven is even more dis- tinctly traceable in Balin and Balan. This idyll was not published till 1885, and the purpose of it seems to be to accentuate the shadows that are now gathering around the good King, and to introduce Merlin and Vivien. Merlin, the sage, the weird enchanter of the Table Round, master of all knowledge, and pro- jector of all the mighty works of Arthur's kingdom, symbolises perfect wisdom and intellectual force, un- rooted in spiritual power. He comes before us in the poem, shadowed by a presentiment of approaching evil. Only too plainly he sees what as yet the great King, wrapt in the splendid isolation of his high aims, does not see, that the glory of his kingdom is depart- ing. Thus anticipating from day to day 4 A doom that ever poised itself to fall,' Merlin becomes melancholy and depressed, seeing 4 The meanest having power upon the highest, And the high purpose broken by the worm.' 278 Victorian Literature It was a presage too signally to be fulfilled in his own undoing. The subtle, shameless Vivien attaches herself to him when he is thus depressed and least capable of resistance, brings to bear upon him all the armoury of her wiles, and leaves him not, until, despoiled of his secret, ' In the hollow oak he lay as dead, And lost to life and use and name and fame.' The beautiful and touching story of Lancelot and Elaine is next told, and here we reach the core of all this mystery of evil that is marring the fairest struc- ture of noble purpose ever formed. The Lady of Shalott once again comes before us, but now it is as * the lily maid of Astolat ; ' and surely sweeter picture of maidenly purity, loveliness, and innocence, never offered itself to human view. So thought Lancelot : ' He look'd, and more amazed Than if seven men had set upon him, saw The maiden standing in the dewy light, He had not dream'd she was so beautiful, Then came on him a sort of sacred fear, For silent, tho' he greeted her, she stood Rapt on his face as if it were a god's.' At first sight she loves Lancelot, not knowing who he is, nor knowing it is love, and when she learns her love is hopeless, sweetly dies, as she has sweetly lived. But the poem is chiefly remarkable for the clear light it throws upon the character of Lancelot, the greatest, goodliest knight of Arthur's Court, and on his guilty relations to the Queen. Despite his sin, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 279 Lancelot, in virtue of his great prowess and his sweet and gracious courtesy, is still, next to the King, the noblest knight of the Table Round. No fight that he has waged with sword and shield has left such marks upon him as remorse for his faithlessness to the King, whom nevertheless he reveres and worships almost as a god. Sense taking the form of the Queen's glorious beauty, has for the time crushed his better part of man, but has not finally subdued him. He still has the grace to reverence the high purpose of the King, and to loathe himself because a base passion and a meaner aim have so far withdrawn him from it. Here, in Elaine's sweet womanhood, are offered to him purity of life, honesty and nobility of purpose, the happiness of a serene, pure love. But sense and a sentiment of honour to the Queen prevail. Fain would he break the bonds, but cannot, as he thinks. It is a perfectly human picture human in its strength and in its weakness. In Queen Guinevere we decline to a lower level. At this time the guilty love suffices her. The torture of remorse that so mars the visage of Lancelot does not trouble her. She, too, knows the greatness and the goodness of the King, her husband ; but his very goodness repels her. ' That passionate perfection, my good Lord But who can gaze upon the sun in heaven ? He never spake word of reproach to me, He never had a glimpse of mine untruth, He cares not for me.' 280 Victorian Literature 'Tome He is all fault who hath no fault at all : For who loves me must have a touch of earth ; The low sun makes the colour.' The poem closes in shadow, with the expression of Lancelot's remorseful pain. The Holy Grail follows, and shows us the monkish spirit of mysticism invading the Table Round, much to Arthur's regret and annoyance. In his absence, his knights have taken a vow to rest not until their eyes have seen the holy thing, the mystic dish from which the Saviour partook at the Last Supper, brought, as men say, to Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea. They are foredoomed to failure in their quest, all except Sir Galahad, who alone of all the knights is pure : such the declension from the high estate of holiness in which their goodly fellowship was founded. Sad at heart, the King foresees the sundering of the Order, the places of his knights vacant at his side, whilst they, following wandering fires, are lost in the quagmire, many of them, yea most, to return no more. Pelleas and Ettarre tells how the King makes new knights to fill the gap thus left by the Holy Quest, how Pelleas glowing with the ardours of a pure and noble youth is admitted to this fellowship, how setting forth to achieve his knightly endeavours, carrying the Queen in his heart as the symbol of all womanly excellence, he is fooled by Ettarre, taunted with the Queen's misdoings, so that the enthusiasms of his Alfred, Lord Tennyson 281 fervid soul go down before the conviction that there is neither truth in man nor honour in woman. Still more darkly do the shadows fall over Arthur's Court in The Last Tournament. The little rift within the lute has now grown very wide. Even the uncon- scious King suspects in the bearing of his knights : 1 A glance That only seems half-loyal to command, A manner somewhat fall'n from reverence ' 1 Or,' says he, ' have I dream'd the bearing of our Knights Tells of a manhood ever less and lower ? Or whence the fear lest this my realm uprear'd By noble deeds at one with noble vows, From flat confusion and brute violences, Reel back into the beast, and be no more ? ' For the last time the lists are set at Camelot, and Lancelot, sitting in the judge's chair, notes how the old laws of the tourney are violated, how courage and high courtesy, the gentleness of knights towards each other, and their chivalrous respect for the fair, are declined and indeed departed. The Queen, too, in the revels that succeed, is pained to see in the ladies of her Court loud colours and a boisterous mirth instead of the old simplicity, grace, and self-respect of manners and of dress. And it is borne home to both the Queen and Lancelot, that theirs is the evil example that has led to all this sad decline. The tale that follows is one of brutal violence and the basest passions, and we are conscious of some impatience in passing to Guinevere, the next of the Idylls, that we may at once 282 Victorian Literature see the end of a society that seemed so fair, and has, alas ! sunk so low. The King is still absent on his wars, and the Queen, remorseful now as well as Lancelot, sees that the storm will soon burst upon them. Their fault is known ; bitter enemies like Modred and Vivien are ever on the watch and plotting for their ruin. On the per- suasion of the Queen, Lancelot exchanges with her a last farewell, and they part weeping, he to go back to his own land, and she to hide herself within the holy house at Almesbury, where for many weeks she lives unknown among the unsuspecting nuns. Fresh from his war with Lancelot, the King repairs to Almesbury, and to the prostrate Guinevere, grovelling with her face against the floor, he sets forth all her sin, and all its miserable consequences to ' the fair Order of the Table Round ' : ' Till the loathsome opposite Of all my heart had destined did obtain, And all through thee ! ' But lest her great remorse should kill her, his pity adds : ' Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, I, whose vast pity almost makes me die To see thee, laying there thy golden head, My pride in happier summers, at my feet. All is past, the sin is sinn'd, and I, Lo 1 I forgive thee as Eternal God Forgives .... Alfred, Lord Tennyson 283 ' I love thee still. Let no man dream but that I love thee still, Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, Hereafter in that world where all are pure We two may meet before high God, and thou Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know I am thine husband not a smaller soul, Nor Lancelot, nor another. ' And while she grovell'd at his feet, She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck, And in the darkness o'er her fallen head, Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.' Too late the unhappy Queen knows herself and him ; nothing now remains for her but to find comfort in that hope for the future which he has left her : ' That in mine own heart I can live down sin And be his mate hereafter in the heavens Before high God.' * Is there none,' she cries ' Will tell the King I love him tho' so late ? Now ere he goes to the great battle ? none : Myself must tell him in that purer life, But now it were too daring. Ah ! my God, What might I not have made of thy fair world, Had I but loved thy highest creature here ? It was my duty to have loved the highest ; It surely was my profit had I known : It would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.' And so she withdraws into the convent seclusion to wait and pray, to become saintly in her helpfulness as the revered Abbess of the Convent, and finally to pass 1 To where beyond these voices there is peace. ' 284 Victorian Literature The last poem of the series, The Passing of Arthur, tells how the great King fought his ' last dim, weird battle in the West,' and how in slaying the subtle, foxy-faced traitor Modred, he himself received a mortal wound. The bold Sir Bedivere carries him to a chapel near the field, and listens to his moan : ' The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were.' He reminds Sir Bedivere how in the dim past a mystic hand from out the bosom of the lake had given him the sword Excalibur, and now commands the knight to fling it far into the middle of the mere. Sir Bedivere promises compliance, but, dazzled by its preciousness and beauty, ' For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, Myriads of topaz-lights and jacinth-work Of subtlest jewellery,' twice disobeys, until the King sternly orders him hence, and with a true note of human passion, only too seldom seen in Arthur, exclaims 1 If thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands. Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Alfred, Lord Tennyson 285 Among the bulrush beds, and clutch'd the sword, And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere.' With pain and difficulty Arthur and Sir Bedivere reach ( the level lake,' shining in * the long glories of the winter moon,' and here they find a barge, come they know not whence, crowded with stately forms, and in the midst three dark Queens with crowns of gold. The Queens 4 Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept ; But she, that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against a brow Striped with dark blood : ' Whereupon the mystic barge with its strange com- pany passed forth to the great deep from which it is said that Arthur had at first come ; and Sir Bedivere, watching, thought he heard the echo of a great cry heard 1 Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars ; ' 286 Victorian Literature and straining his eyes he ' Thought he saw the speck that bare the king, . . . Vanish into light. And the new sun rose bringing the new year.' The victory of sense over the soul is, after all, only partial. A beautiful ideal has been obscured behind the gross vapours of earthly passion and low aims. But the pure ideals of the soul, like the soul itself, cannot die. They will live again in new men and in new forms; and the old conflict will be refought under higher and more favourable conditions. Arthur's last slow words spoken from the barge to Bedivere ere he went are full of solemn import : ' The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure ! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.' Whether we allow to the Idylls the dignity and unity of the epic or not, it must be admitted that they have treated a great subject with wonderful beauty and suggestiveness. Nowhere is Tennyson's noble purity and elevation, both of thought and diction, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 287 more apparent. It may be objected that Arthur himself does not impress us as he ought ; that he is too cold, and passionless, and remote from human nature's ordinary moods, to touch the reader to the quick ; that even in the great scene at Almesbury, we feel that it is the calmness and reticence of a god that speak, rather than the passion-tost heart of a man. All this may be conceded, and yet it will remain true, that this rich cycle of Arthurian poems is one of the noblest and most precious contributions to Victorian literature. In 1864 appeared the volume containing Enoch Arden, accompanied by Aylmer^s Field and Sea Dreams. All three come below the level of Tenny- son's highest work, and all are characterised by an excess of decorative treatment. The richly jewelled phrasing and prodigality of ornament seem unnatural in a tale of simple fisher life such as Enoch Arden, or in a painful and sordid story of the blight that falls upon two lovers from the greed of purse-proud parents, such as Aylmer's Field. Even the gorgeous and exquisite description of the tropic island upon which Enoch is cast seems out of place, although no one would like to miss it. But the volume that contained these poems held several welcome surprises. Here, for example, was Tithonus, a flawless piece of work, excelled in craft- manship by nothing else that Tennyson has done. Originally given to his friend Thackeray for the Corn- hill Magazine in 1860, it tells, with a perfect grace of 288 Victorian Literature classical simplicity, the story of him who was loved by Aurora, and was cursed by the gift of immortality, unaccompanied by that of youthful vigour. Ulysses, Lucretius, and Demeter, produced at widely separated intervals, also take classical subjects, and illustrate the poet's most perfect work. A still greater surprise, however, was found in The Grandmother a favourite with the poet himself and The Northern Farmer: Old Style, the first and the best of his dialect poems. Both illustrate Tennyson's versatility, and reveal other qualities for which hitherto he had not received credit. The grim humour, the vivid realism, the dramatic force and intensity, the power to conceive and repro- duce characters entirely outside the world of his own emotions, showed a faculty which had not been expected of him. It was delightful to think that after more than thirty years of authorship, there might still be other surprises in store for us from his pen. The happy vein he had thus fallen upon he continued to work with considerable success. The Northern Farmer: New Style, is not much inferior to its earlier namesake. The Northern Cobbler, The Village Wife, and The Spinsters Sweet-Arts, all use the Lincoln- shire dialect, and happily illustrate the qualities that mark these dialect poems. In the same vivid mono- logue form in which Tennyson has thus expressed his most dramatic conceptions, we have Rizpah, contained in the wonderful .volume of 1880, entitled, Ballads and Other Poems. It is a short piece ; but nowhere else has Tennyson risen to such a height of sustained Alfred, Lord Tennyson 289 passion as in this thrilling glimpse of a mother's tortured heart and maddened brain. From the success of these monologues, much was expected when, in 1875, the poet published his first drama, Queen Mary. It was followed by various other plays, several of which had the honour of public representation, and all of which contained a great deal of fine work, although they left the impression that to his other noble gifts the poet had not added those of the successful dramatist. Harold appeared in 1876, The Cup and The Falcon in 1881, The Promise of May in 1882, Becket\i\ 1884, and The Foresters ; or Robin Hood and Maid Marian in 1892, the year of his death. Of all his works, the plays will probably have least permanent interest and value. In 1886, two volumes, Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After and other Poems, and Tiresias and other Poems, came from Tennyson's pen. The latter, along with much good work besides, contained The Ancient Sage, a poem which may be said to sum up towards the close of life all the best of Tennyson's teaching concerning this world and the next. It expresses the same wholesome optimism as of old, and shows that the poet's position has not greatly altered save to the advantage of faith, since The Two Voices was written more than forty years before. ' Wherefore,' says the Ancient Sage to his doubting companion, ' Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith ! T 290 Victorian Literature She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of "Yes" and " No," She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, She feels the sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd " Mirage ! " To the objection that ' Man has overlived his day, And, darkening in the light, Scarce feels the senses break away To mix with ancient Night.' the answer is : ' The shell must break before the bird can fly.' What then ? ' Let be thy wail and help thy fellow-men, And make thy gold thy vassal, not thy king, And fling free alms into the beggar's bowl, And send the day into the darken 'd heart, And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel, And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou Look higher, then perchance thou mayest, beyond A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, And past the range of Night and Shadow see The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day Strike on the Mount of Vision.' Demeter and other Poems was given to the world in 1889 when the poet was eighty years of age. It is said that 20,000 copies were sold within a week. It con- tained the strangely beautiful poem of his old age, Merlin and the Gleam. It is easy to read into this Alfred, Lord Tennyson 291 exquisite piece, as rich in its imaginative as in its emotional power, the noblest part of the poet's own personal history. He is the Merlin whose life from the beginning to the close, and whose exercise of high gift as a poet in all stages of his career, have been a constant pursuit of the ideal in life. Here, if any- where, is his dying testament to the age he has charmed and guided so long, and it is addressed especially to the young : Neglect no practical duty, do it ever manfully, kindly, well ; but let your spiritual aspirations rule your soul ; follow the Gleam ! Tennyson's history in the latter half of his life is little more than the history of his various books, and of an ever-growing reputation. In 1853 he had established himself at Farringford, Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight. After 1869, in order to escape the crowd of summer visitors, he spent only his winters here, his summers being given to his more secluded residence at Aldworth, near Haslemere, in Surrey. In 1883 he was made a peer under the title of Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Freshwater. These years of calm and honoured decline had almost nothing to disturb them, if we except the death of his favourite brother Charles in 1879, and the still sadder event of the death of his younger son Lionel at sea, in 1885. Tennyson's own life, that had been so ideally beautiful, had also an ideal close. His health had begun to give way in 1890. But, as we have seen, he continued to do good work for two years longer. 292 Victorian Literature In the last days of September 1892, he was prostrated by an attack of influenza, complicated by gout. In the early morning of October 6th, with all his family around him, and with no other light than that of the full moon shining in upon his bed, all that was mortal of the great poet passed peacefully away. There is a beautiful completeness about the life of Tennyson. He seems to have done all he meant to do. He never really failed in anything he attempted. There was no apparent decay in his powers. Almost to the last he retained his poetic sensibility unimpaired. The world, too, had been generous to him. He had secured an ample fortune, and the highest honours had fallen to his lot. Besides, he had the knowledge that his was not the approval only, but the love of all English-speaking men and women throughout the world ; that he had added largely to the sum of human happiness, by pouring a fresh flood of vivid beauty over the whole of life ; and that in doing so he had written no word that had not upon it the seal of a pure intent and a blameless life. The determination of what Tennyson's place among the poets is to be, must be left for posterity to decide. A review of all his work cannot overlook his versatility, or the fact that he did so many things supremely well. Among his most impressive qualities are an elevation of thought and a purity of tone that sometimes give to his poems an almost sacramental grace and dignity. In the marvellous beauty of form and expression to which he attained, he has scarcely his equal among Alfred, Lord Tennyson 293 English poets. He was pre-eminently the poet of his time. It is difficult to see how anyone else could have been to his age what he was. He reflects all its spirit. The yearnings and the doubts that fill the air he catches up into all beautiful modulations, not seeking rudely, or with sheer weight of authority, to crush them, but linking them on to a faith and hope that are in him servants to Love Supreme. When the history of English thought and belief in the latter half of the nineteenth century comes to be written, no better commentary upon its complex moods and philosophisings will be available than Tennyson's poems afford. With these words, so eloquent of calm and settled trust, from Crossing the Bar, one of his last poems, this sketch may fitly close : 1 Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark ! And may there be no shadow of farewell, When I embark ; 4 For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear us far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar.' Robert Browning (1812-1889). No one could be in sharper contrast with the author of The Idylls and In Memoriam than the poet to whose genius we owe The Ring and the Book, and yet, Browning shares with Tennyson the distinction of being the greatest poet of the Victorian era. He was born at Camber- 294 Victorian Literature well, a suburb of London, on the yth of May 1812. His father, also a Robert Browning, was a bookish man, of considerable force of character, artistic taste, and even of some attainments in verse-making. Browning invariably speaks of him with a warmth and enthusiasm that recall Carlyle's similar deliver- ances respecting his peasant father. With a certain felicity, therefore, Browning's early training and associations prepared him for his life work as a poet. At twelve years of age, he had composed poems enough to fill a volume, which the publishers to whom it was offered, very naturally declined. Mr Gosse, on the authority of Mr Browning, mentions that the earliest recognition of his genius came from the Misses Flower, the younger of whom, under the name of Sarah Flower Adams, is still widely appreciated for such beautiful devotional pieces as Nearer my God to Thee, and He sendeth Sun, He sendeth\ Shower. Byron was the object of Browning's youthful idolatry, as he was also of Tennyson's. Naturally, therefore, the note of imitation is as marked in these early effusions as is the absence of all indication of the original and peculiar forms in which Browning was afterwards to express himself. An event now happened that greatly extended his range by opening up to the eager boy of fourteen a whole fresh world of enchantment. This was the gift made to him by his mother of all the works of Shelley, and three volumes from the pen of Mr John Keats. Amidst all this reading and writing of poetry, which Robert Browning 295 was noticeably at this time, as it was ever afterwards, the chief life-business of the poet, the work of ordinary education had to be proceeded with. Till 1826 he was at school at Dulwich. Then came some private tutoring, followed in his eighteenth year by a brief course at London University. On his father speaking to him about a profession, he begged that he might be allowed to give himself entirely to poetry. To this his father consented, and somehow it could scarcely have been from the small means afforded by his father's income he was enabled to live for poetry, and even to make a considerable stay abroad. Perhaps there were kind friends like Aunt Silverthorne who were not unwilling to make pecuniary sacrifices in order to assist the development of so promising a career. In any case, there can have been few poets more fortunate in being left thus free to follow unwarped the prompt- ings of their own genius. The first fruits of this genius were Pauline, pub- lished in 1833, when the poet was twenty-one, and Paracelsus, which appeared two years later. The former he would gladly have withdrawn from circula- tion. Speaking of it afterwards, he says that good draughtsmanship and right handling were far beyond the artist at this time. Paracelsus was a great advance on Pauline, and gave magnificent promise of the poet's future. It is a long dramatic poem of more than 4000 lines, in which, although there are four characters, the essential feature is that of soliloquy or monologue. The ruggedness, obscurity, and want of 296 Victorian Literature melody that have come to be recognised as character- istic of Browning's verse are all found here, as well as his masculine and vivid intelligence. These poems, however, were scarcely noticed by the public, although the cultivated few did not fail to mark their promise. At the request of Mr Macready the tragedian, Browning wrote Strafford, which was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in 1837, with Mr Macready in the title character. It appears to have met with fair success, but was withdrawn after five nights in consequence of trouble connected with the manage- ment. His next literary venture was Sordello (1840), giving the whole life-history of a human soul, and for this the poet reverted to the form of monologue. It was the longest, and, it may be added, the most obscure poem he had yet written. It still shares along with certain of his latest writings that unenvi- able distinction. Hitherto Browning had derived no pecuniary advantage from these various publications ; but when a series of his writings began to appear under the happy title of Bells and Pomegranates, the popular attention was at last partially won. This work appeared in cheap parts, and thus were pro- duced in 1841 his strange, but beautiful play, Pippa Passes, which describes how Pippa, a sweet and pretty mill-girl, thinking herself nobody, takes her New Year's holiday, and in a solitary walk, enlivened by her songs, all unconsciously to herself, changes the whole destiny of four different sets of lives, as well as her own. It contains passages of great power and Robert Browning 297 lyrical sweetness, and seems to find its moral in the refrain of Pippa's song : ' God's in His heaven All's right with the world.' Another play, King Victor and King Charles, appeared in the same number, accompanied by a series of smaller pieces, under the title Dramatic Lyrics, including such well-known poems as Evelyn Hope, Saul, The Lost Leader, How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and the Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister. In the years following until 1846, successive numbers of Bells and Promegranates appeared, containing other five plays, The Return of the Druses (1843), A Blt on the 'Scutcheon (1843), Colombe' s Birthday (1844), A Soul's Tragedy (1846), and Luria (1846). The Dramatic Romances, a second series of shorter pieces, was produced in 1845, and embraced such fine work as My Last Duchess, Por- phyria*s Lover, In a Gondola, The Last Ride Together, and A Grammarians Funeral. A Blot on the 'Scutcheon was commissioned by Mr Macready, and produced at Drury Lane Theatre in 1843. It was given to crowded houses, but fortune once more played the poet false, for again a collapse in the management brought its stage career to a close. Colombo's Birthday, the only other play of his that has been performed in public, was produced by Miss Helen Faucit in 1852. More important to the poet than any of these events 298 Victorian Literature was his marriage in 1846 to Miss Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess, who had shortly before paid a high compliment to his Bells and Pomegranates in Lady Geraldine*s Courtship. Thereafter till 1861, when Mrs Browning's death put an end to this ideally perfect and singularly happy union, they lived abroad, chiefly at Florence, making only occasional visits to this country. The literary activity of both continued, and appeared to receive a new stimulus from their domestic happiness. In 1850, Browning gave to the world his fine Christmas Eve and Easter Day, from which we learn, though not very clearly, what is Browning's attitude to the Christian faith. These were followed in 1855 by Men and Women, his most popular work, a series of fifty poems, including such characteristic pieces as Karshish, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, and The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed^s Church. In the last of these and in the Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister, as well as elsewhere in these poems, he shows what meanness of petty vanity, what black passions of jealousy and hatred may crouch beneath the cowl of monk and rochet of bishop. The dying bishop of St Praxed's gives directions to his nephews that they shall build for him a tomb all of jasper, with a price- less lump of lapis lazuli, ' big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, resting upon his knees,' and with an epitaph: ' Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word ; ' and all that his ancient rival, dead Gandolf, may see and burst with envy. Robert Browning 299 Karshish is in the form of an epistle addressed by an Arab physician of that name, travelling in Judea in the days when the Roman legions under Titus were mustering for their final swoop upon Jerusalem, to his friend and master, Abib. It had evidently been the purpose of Karshish to describe everything of importance that he had seen upon his way, but he is diverted from this purpose by the overpowering interest he takes in one most remarkable case that had come under his notice at Bethany. According to his professional judgment, this was a case of epilepsy, accompanied by a three days' trance, and followed by a peculiar form of mania. The patient, a man named Lazarus, he has seen and conversed with. The sim- plicity, the aloofness that almost seems like stolid indifference, the strange serenity, and the moral elevation of this man's character, powerfully impress him. He has no doubt that he has diagnosed the case correctly, yet when Lazarus maintains that he has actually been dead and been restored to life by a great Nazarene of his tribe, whom, moreover, he declares to be a god, his mind is left in a state of pathetic uncertainty, which he cannot help revealing to his correspondent. Above all things would Karshish have liked to have met the learned Nazarene, whose death on a charge of wizardry, as reported to him, he deeply mourns. The characteristics of Lazarus, his sound physical health, the other-worldliness even of his outward aspect, the altered focus of his whole mental being, causing all ordinary human events and experi- 300 Victorian Literature ences to dwindle into insignificance, as might well be in one whose eyes have gazed upon God's secret in the unseen ; on the one hand, his almost cruel indif- ference to the ordinary pain, sorrow, and death of the world, and, on the other, the fierce flame of his indignation not at evil deeds only, but also at the slightest evil word or gesture ; his resignation to the will of God that has sent him to live and labour here awhile ; and his general attitude of love and tender- ness, not only towards human beings, but even to the lower animals and the universe of dead things, he dwells upon at length. The subject strangely fascin- ates, yet troubles Karshish. He apologises for dwelling so long upon it, and for a moment tears himself away to speak of trivial matters such as the blue-flowering borage, very nitrous, he had noticed on the margin of a pool, yet ends his letter with the passionate heart- questioning outburst of these final words : ' The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think ? So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too So, through the thunder comes a human voice, Saying, " O heart I made, a heart beats here ! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee ! " The madman saith He said so : it is strange.' Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto are com- panion soul portraits of two great mediaeval painters, and are both written in the monologue form in which Browning did so much of his best work. There is Robert Browning 301 something deeply interesting in the views of character which these etchings suggest, yet there is reason to suppose that in life the men were actually as the poet has described them here. Fortunately the por- trait of Fra Lippo Lippi, painted by himself, is to be seen in the National Gallery in London, and it has been noticed how curiously it corroborates this mental portrait furnished by Browning. It is that of a man in whom under the tonsure of the monk lurk unsubdued all tendencies of the world and of the flesh. Placed an orphan at eight years of age in the cloister, the religious life found nothing in him beyond the common superstitions of his age, except a delight in all forms of physical beauty and a divine gift of painting, which his brother monks, scandalised though they were by the fooleries and offences of his coarsely sensuous nature, were fain to regard as covering a multitude of sins. Even neighboured with such grossness, his was the heaven-born, in- communicable touch of a great and immortal genius. As a psychological study Andrea del Sarto is perhaps even more subtle and interesting. He is the fault- less painter, the wonder of his age in all matters of technique. He too has his limitations, but they are of the home rather than of the cloister. The visions of his youth have not fulfilled themselves. He himself and his work, he feels, have fallen into the greyness and low tone of an autumn twilight. He is heart-weary with labours that do not satisfy, notwithstanding, perhaps because of their technical perfection, and because, as 302 Victorian Literature he thinks, either the soul that should have entered into them was never there, or it has been frozen by lack of encouragement from the one person whose praise or blame could have influenced him. With all her beauty, his wife is cold, selfish, and irrespon- sive. His moan is 1 You don't understand Nor care to understand about my art. ' To her, indeed, its only significance is its power to supply her wants, and no matter how work is scamped, if only money can be got to purchase her ruffs, and pay the gaming debts of the cousin whose whistle calling her can be heard by del Sarto while his monologue is proceeding. The great painter knows his powers : ' I do what many dream of all their lives, Dream ? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town.' Yet has he to confess : ' There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.' It might have been so different. Robert Browning 303 1 Vender's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. (Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, Above and through his art for it gives way ; That arm is wrongly put and there again A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak : its soul is right, He means right that, a child may understand. Still, what an arm ! and I could alter it : But all the play, the insight and the stretch Out of me, out of me ! And wherefore out ? Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, We might have risen to Rafael, I and you ! Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think More than I merit, yes, by many times. But had you oh, with the same perfect brow, And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged " God and the glory ! never care for gain. The present by the future, what is that ? Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo ! Rafael is waiting : up to God, all three ! " I might have done it for you. So it seems : Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. Besides, incentives come from the soul's self ; The rest avail not.' The self- revelations of the poor, baffled, disappointed painter, close in catching a faint half hope from the future in a world to come : ' What would one have ? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance- Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, 304 Victorian Literature Meted on each side by the angel's reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me To cover the three first without a wife, While I have mine ! So still they overcome Because there's still Lucrezia, as I choose. Again the cousin's whistle ! Go, my Love.' On the death of his wife in 1861, Browning left Florence never to return. It was a terrible wrench, but his work did not suffer. He returned to London, and in 1864 produced Dramatis Persona, which, next to Men and Women, has been the most popular of his works. It contained, with other pieces, Abt Vogler, Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, and Prospice. In these poems he again and again insists that God has a plan for every life, and that that plan requires eternity for its completion. Thus, in the opening stanza of Rabbi ben Ezra, he says : ' Grow old along with me ! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made : Our times are in His hand Who saith, " A whole I planned, Youth shows but half ; trust God : see all, nor be afraid ! " ' And he adds : ' Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! Be our joys three-parts pain ! Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! ' The Ring and the Book, published in 1868-69, is generally considered Browning's masterpiece. This Robert Browning 305 vast poem of 21,000 lines has for its subject a famous criminal trial held at Rome in 1698, in which a certain Count Guido Franceschini of Arezzo and his four con- federates are charged with the murder of his wife Pompilia and her putative parents, Pietro and Violante Comparini. The poem opens with an account of how the subject first presented itself to the poet's mind. Crossing the Square of San Lorenzo, in Florence, one blazing market-day in June, he found exposed for sale, with many other odds and ends, an old vellum-bound volume, part print, part manuscript, containing a report of this once famous two -century -old case. For a lira (eightpence of our money) he becomes its possessor, and cons it so eagerly, that ere he has reached his home in Casa Guidi, he has mastered its contents. Eight times in all he reads it, till, saturated with the gruesome tragedy, he fashions it into the Ring and the Book. But why, it may be asked, this name? The somewhat fanciful explanation is given, that in that old volume he had found the crude but precious ore of truth, to which his poet's fancy had added the alloy of so much necessary falsehood, that it might be rounded as by hammer and by file into a ring wherewith to link our England to Italy. Here and there the personal note, always interesting in Browning, comes in. Examples of this are to be seen in his touching address to his English readers, beginning : ' Such, British Public, ye who like me not, (God love you !) whom I yet have laboured for ' U 306 Victorian Literature and in his wonderfully beautiful apostrophe to his dead wife as Lyric Love : ' O Lyric Love, half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire, Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face, Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die, This is the same voice : Can thy soul know change ? Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! Never may I commence my song, my due To God who best taught song by gift of thee, Except with bent head and beseeching hand That still, despite the distance and the dark, What was, again may be ; some interchange Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought, Some benediction anciently thy smile.' Only a poet of a genius more than equal to his courage would have dared to undertake a work on so colossal a scale, and on so apparently eccentric a plan. Including Browning's own summary of the facts, the circumstances of the murder are given with great detail ten different times, in order to show the various points of view from which they may be regarded, and also to furnish life portraits of the principal persons concerned. The poet tells how Count Guido, almost bankrupt both of means and hope of preferment, under the advice of his brother the Cardinal, marries for her dowry the beautiful Pompilia, then a girl of thirteen years of age, and the reputed daughter of Robert Browning 307 Pietro and Violante Comparini, but in reality the base- born child of a degraded wanton of the Roman streets. Disappointment as to the dowry expected causes Guido to treat Pompilia with a cruelty that is not satisfied with destroying the happiness of her present life, but even seeks the ruin of her soul. Encouraged by her husband, efforts are put forth to draw her into foulest sin ; and when these are of no avail, Count Guido does not hesitate to forge letters apparently passing between his wife and Canon Caponsacchi. After four years of this moral torture, Pompilia begs Caponsacchi to take her to Rome that her child may not be born under the ill-omened roof of her husband. The mind of the young priest has been strangely purified and elevated by all he has learned and seen of this noble, but persecuted wife, and cannot refuse her request. They are almost at the gates of Rome, when Guido overtakes, and hands them over to the civil authority. The judges sit upon their case, listen to the pleadings of Caponsacchi, and perplexed, though apparently convinced of their innocence, pass the mild sentence that Pompilia shall take up her abode in the Convent of the Convertites, and that Caponsacchi shall go into a three years' retirement at Civita. After a time Pompilia's health requires her removal to the house of the Comparini, where shortly afterwards her child is born. Hearing of that event, and believing that whatever happens to the mother now, her dowry will pass into his hands for his son, Guido suddenly appears with four confederates before 308 Victorian Literature Pietro's villa and murders all its inmates. Terrified lest her husband should seek to get possession of the child, Pompilia had a few days before placed him in safe keeping. The murderers having been captured, are immediately brought up for trial, and all are condemned. Such are the bare outlines of the story, which are viewed by one half Rome on the whole favourably to the murderers ; by the other half, unfavourably ; while the opinion of the critical cultured minority is that there is truth on both sides, and that the blame, if any, is to be equally distributed. After these skirmishes of more or less indifferent outsiders, the interest deepens when Count Guido, fresh from the torture, under which he has confessed his crime, pleads for his life, and with all the cunning of his subtle nature seeks to distort the evidence, to evoke pity for his own alleged sufferings and humiliations, and to blast the character of his victims. One shudders at the diabolical ingenuity and varied in- tellectual gifts he displays in raising all sorts of false issues, in playing upon the weaknesses of his judges, and in seeking to involve them in a maze of plausible sophistries. All is of no avail, but the whole impression left upon the mind is one of immense power turned to the worst uses. He is succeeded by Guiseppe Caponsacchi, and it is only when we learn from his lips the nature of that slow moral torture of four years through which the gentle Pompilia has passed, that Guido's astounding Robert Browning 309 cruelty, sordid meanness, and unnatural hate, stand forth in all their horrid proportions. As for Capon- sacchi himself, he rises before us with a vividness scarcely inferior even to the lurid personality of Count Guido. In a torrent of eloquent words he repeats the tale he had told to the same judges a few months before. His indignation scorches them with its passion, as he reminds them how their supineness and incre- dulity had brought about the death of Pompilia. He rises to a rare elevation as, casting all fear of mis- construction to the winds, he avows with passionate eloquence the warmth of his interest in Pompilia's Madonna-like purity and nobility of character, one moment's contact with which had been sufficient to banish all the frivolity and dissipation of his youth, and to make him true priest and servant of holiness for ever. Pompilia herself speaks next in a paper dictated during the four days she lay a-dying. The angel-like sweetness of the seventeen years' old wife and mother breathes in every word. Forgotten is much of the old pain and sorrow * Sheer dreaming and impos- sibility.' She dies content. Here, in her old home and with old friends around her, for one whole blissful fortnight, the joys of happy motherhood have been hers ; and now her child, seeing that he cannot fall into the hands of an evil father, she can calmly leave in the hands of God. Above all, she rejoices that time has been given her to clear from mists of calumny that pure and knightly soul that reached out to her 310 Victorian Literature in her great need a human hand of help, and in the generosity of his sacred impulse considered only her urgency, and never for a moment any possible loss of reputation for himself. 1 Yes, my last breath shall wholly spend itself In one attempt more to disperse the stain, The mist from other breath fond mouths have made, About a lustrous and pellucid soul : So that, when I am gone but sorrow stays, And people need assurance in their doubt If God yet have a servant, man a friend, The weak a saviour, and the vile a foe, Let him be present, by the name invoked, Guiseppe-Maria Caponsacchi ! ' As she nears her end, the spiritual passion in her gathers force, and she breaks out into the apostrophe 1 O Lover of my life, O soldier-saint, No work begun shall ever pause for death ! Love will be helpful to me more and more I' the coming course, the new path I must tread My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that ! Tell him that if I seem without him now, That's the world's insight ! Oh ! he understands ! He is at Civita do I once doubt The world again is holding us apart ? He had been here, displayed in my behalf The broad brow that reverberates the truth, And flashed the word God gave him, back to man 1 I know where the free soul is flown ! My fate Will have been hard for even him to bear : Let it confirm him in the trust of God, Showing how holily he dared the deed ! And, for the rest, say, from the deed, no touch Of harm came, but all good, all happiness, Not one faint fleck of failure ! ' Her dying hope is that in the heaven to which she Robert Browning 3 1 1 is going she may once more meet this great soul, and that there they may 1 Be as the angels rather, who, apart, Know themselves into one, are found at length Married, but marry never, no, nor give In marriage ; they are man and wife at once When the true time is : here we have to wait Not so long neither ! Could we by a wish Have what we will and get the future now, Would we wish aught done undone in the past ? So, let him wait God's instant, men call years ; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, Do out the duty ! Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise.' This poem would have lost little by the omission of the speeches of the advocates on either side. They have no real interest in the case except what is pro- fessional, as affording an opportunity for the display of intellectual dexterity, wit, and scholarship, often far- fetched and tiresome enough. It is different with Pope Innocent the Twelfth, to whom, after the prisoners have been declared guilty, the case has been appealed on the ground that Count Guido is a lay-ecclesiastic, and therefore entitled to come under the shield of the Church. The picture which Browning has drawn of the good old Pope, ( simple, sagacious, mild, yet resolute,' is entitled to rank even with such masterpieces as Guido, Capon- sacchi, and Pompilia. In the plain chamber, sparsely furnished, where he does his work, we see him spending the dim hours of a sombre February day over the long pleadings of the case, till, to his clear vision and 3 1 2 Victorian Literature mellow wisdom, the diabolic craft, the greed, and the portentous wickedness of Count Guido stand unmis- takably revealed in colours that are all the more hateful because he is a three-parts consecrate, and has had every advantage of high birth, good breeding, a sound frame, and a solid intellect to give him his life- chance in the world. Quite as clearly does the vener- able pontiff see how the star of Pompilia's purity takes a heavenlier lustre from the inky blackness of her origin as the child of a degraded wanton. What wonder had she too besmirched her soul ? But instead of that, the Pope pronounces her * first of the first, perfect in whiteness'; claims her as his rose gathered for the breast of God, the one blossom, ' born 'mid the briers of his enclosure, that makes him proud at eve. 7 Nor is his understanding of the true nobility and chivalrous self-sacrifice of Caponsacchi less instant and entire. Him he fondly calls his ( warrior priest,' flecked, it may be, with impulsive rashness and many irregulari- ties of a worldly and too freakish youth, but ever pure in life and sound of soul. The Pope dismisses the appeal, and orders the execution of all the five criminals to take place on the following day. Then does Count Guido tear the mask from himself, and pour forth the pent-up rage, malig- nity, and blasphemy of his soul into the ears of the shuddering priests, who have been sent to warn the prisoner of his doom, and administer ghostly consola- tion. The foul stream is only interrupted when the unhappy wretch hears without the feet of the dread Robert Browning 313 brotherhood of death come to bear him to his execu- tion, and shrieks out his agonised entreaty for help 'Abate, Cardinal, Christ, Maria, God, . . . Pompilia, will you let them murder me ? ' Surely a fine touch of genius that makes us see how, after all, his final conception of pitifulness and mercy is found, not even in God, but in the child-wife he has so foully murdered and traduced. Browning wrote much after The Ring and the Book, but most of these later writings are too difficult for young and ordinary readers. A list of them is here given in the order in which they appeared : 1871. ' Balaustion's Adventure.' * Prince Hohenstiel - Schwangau, Saviour of Society (Napoleon III). 1872. 'Fifine at the Fair.' 1873. 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country.' 1875. * Aristophanes' Apology.' ,, ' The Inn Album.' 1876. ' Pacchiarotto, and How he Worked in Dis- temper.' 1877. 'Agamemnon.' 1878. 'La Saisiaz.' ' The Two Poets of Croisic.' 1879. ' Dramatic Idylls.' 1880. 2nd series. 1883. 'Jocoseria.' 1884. ' Ferishtah's Fancies.' 1887. ' Parley ings with certain People of Importance in their day.' 1880. 'Asolando.' 314 Victorian Literature Several of these show Browning's interest in Greek art, the best of them being Balaustion's Adventure, a translation of the Alcestis of Euripides. La Saisiaz contains the poet's mature thoughts on God, the soul, death, and a future life. Some of the Dramatic Idylls, such as Halbert and Hob, are scarcely inferior to his best work in Men and Women, and Dramatis Persons. In Asolando, published on the day of his death, we find a lyrical sweetness and melody that belong to his best time ; and in these closing stanzas of the Epilogue, Browning's last words to the world, we find not only the expression of much of his wise and hopeful philosophy of life, but also a description of the poet himself : ' One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. 4 No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer ! Bid him forward, breast and back, as either should be, Strive and thrive ! cry " Speed, fight on, fare ever There as here ! "' No writer has suffered more than Browning from excessive praise and indiscriminate blame. Those who admire him see in him a true poet of great strength and originality, with a passionate intensity, a keenness of insight, and a wild rollicking humour, which have seldom been equalled. He has faults of obscurity, harshness, over-elaboration, and want of self-control, Robert Browning 3 1 5 that cannot be overlooked. He is not, and never can be, a poet of the people. The mental strain which such poetry puts upon the reader is severe. Strength, both emotional and intellectual, is required for the understanding and appreciation of soul-portraits, etched with such subtlety, vigour, and passionate intensity. Browning is a profound analyst of human nature. But it is human nature in startling and abnormal forms, remote from the experiences of ordinary men and women, that most interests him. Such qualities of soul he will trace through all the windings of their course, show what influences, past and present, have given them a trend in this direction or in that, and exhibit the causes of a conflict, the tragic issues of which can neither be foreseen nor averted. They are dark chambers of the soul which he thus exposes to our view. Too often, therefore, notwithstanding the gleams of a grim humour playing over his pages, they form but ghastly reading. They will scarcely furnish satisfaction to those who want to see only the brighter side of human character and life. Sanguine though Browning is, his works on the whole are a rebuke to that comfortable, easy-going optimism which is the average mood of the average man. Browning, how- ever, is no prophet of despair. His lurid delineations would seem to make poor human nature almost as bad as it can be ; but never in the darkest conflicts of the soul which he depicts is it a foregone conclusion that it will take the downward course. There is at least the possibility that its final motion will be upward. 316 Victorian Literature And even when at last the evil has been chosen, there is present the pitying concession that it might, and would have been different, if only the conspiring circumstances had been different. Even to the end, therefore, Browning's own attitude towards the humanity he has anatomised with such a searching keenness is one of hope. He retains his faith in an over-ruling God, all Wisdom, Power, and Love, working, even through the blind passions of men, towards a higher good. He seems to have cherished what has been called ( the larger hope,' that can anticipate for every human soul, somewhere in the ages, an ultimate deliverance and perfection. 1 God, by God's ways occult May doth, I will believe bring back All wanderers to a single track.' But if the psychological nature of his subjects has thus tended to repel the general reader, so also has his manner of treating them. So wanting in lucidity, and so eccentric is that manner, that he almost seems at times to be making sport alike of the reader and of the intensely serious purpose which he has in view. Very rarely has he the charm of simple melody and beauty so characteristic of Tennyson. He is generally harsh both in rhythm and in rhyme. His rugged and abrupt lines are broken and splintered by the force of the contend- ing passions they express, bursting forth now in words of burning invective, and now in bitter mocking gibes Robert Browning 317 that seem to cut to the very bone. Fine passages of natural description are not altogether absent ; but these are as rare as they are beautiful, and most frequently serve as the background to the vehemence of some human passion of hate or jealousy, greed or revenge, that is the main subject of the poem. It may also be urged against Browning that he carries us into too wide a field, that he fatigues by too great an amplitude of detail, and that he startles, if he does not repel, by indulging every wild vagary and caprice, alike of thought, imagination, and language. Browning's genius was essentially dra- matic, although not in the same sense as Shakespeare's. He had failed, as we have seen, to win the reputation and substantial rewards of the successful playwright ; but no one will deny to him a wonderful mastery of the dramatic monologue as a vehicle for expressing intensely tragic emotion. A peculiar interest attaches to the ethical position of a writer of such commanding power as Browning. He sees at the root of all that is best in man, a spirit of quenchless aspiration. According to this view, when a man ceases to yearn and reach forward, the worm of decay is preying upon his soul. Whether he be scholar seeking the gains of knowledge, artist engaged in the pursuit of ideal beauty, or saint in the quest of goodness, his truest life and best achieve- ment are still to come. From platforms of ascent already reached, man thus descries ever loftier heights to which the aspirations and endeavours of his soul 318 Victorian Literature may go forth. And Death? Even that does not stop scarcely, indeed, does it interrupt it only con- tinues and facilitates the progress. For such a spirit, therefore, earth can be no perfect, final, or satisfying theatre. It requires for the satisfaction of its yearnings and the development of its powers, a life free from the limitations of the present. Not less does it demand an infinite ideal, which can only be the Infinite Wisdom, Power, and Love of Christian faith. Thus though Browning may not have pinned himself down to any formal creed, upon such great verities of faith as these, his feet are pillared immovably. ' God's in His heaven- All's right in the world.' Mr Browning died at Venice on the i2th December 1889, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1809-1861), the wife of Robert Browning, is considered by many to have been the greatest of English poetesses, although there are those who prefer to bestow this distinction on Christina Rossetti. Miss Barrett was born in 1809 at Coxhoe Hall, in the county of Durham although some give 1806 as the year, and London as the place of birth and was the daughter of Mr Edward Moulton, who assumed the name of Barrett on inheriting a property in Herefordshire through his maternal grand- father. On this property he built a Gothic mansion to which he gave the name of Hope End, and here in the midst of a pleasant and beautiful landscape the Elizabeth Barrett Browning 319 little poetess passed an ideal childhood. Her sym- pathetic and indulgent father encouraged her youthful efforts, and afforded her every opportunity of gratify- ing her tastes. She was a precocious child, wrote poetry at eight years of age, and was wont at that time to divide her attentions between Homer in the original, and her doll, her flowers, and her favourite pony, Moses. Hers, however, was a true and natural childhood, with nothing hard or one-sided in its development. At the age of eleven she wrote an epic on The Battle of Marathon, of which her proud father had fifty copies printed. It does not appear, however, that either her father or any other member of her own family circle could give her the stimulus of a true intellectual companionship. The only per- son who at this time seems to have come into this closer contact with her was Mr Boyd, an old, blind, scholar-friend, under whose guidance she became acquainted with the Greek tragedians. Even he, probably, was not possessed of any qualities beyond those of a purely technical scholarship, such as would have enabled him fully to appreciate the genius of the fresh and ardent girl nature so strangely submitted to his guidance. The idyllic life of Hope End was at length inter- rupted, and shadows began to fall deeply over a life which hitherto had been all sunshine and charm. When Miss Barrett was fifteen she fell backwards in attempting to saddle her horse, and so injured herself that it became necessary to abstain from all physical 320 Victorian Literature exercise for several years. Painful though these years were, they were not unfruitful, for they undoubtedly gave her the opportunity of acquiring that wide acquaintance with various literatures that is so char- acteristic of her. Unhappily, misfortunes did not come singly. Her father lost much of his money, then her mother died, and following that the home at Hope End was broken up. The family lived for two years at Sidmouth, and then came to London, settling first in Gloucester Place, and afterwards in Wimpole Street. But London did not suit Miss Barrett's health. She had burst a bloodvessel in the lungs, and a long period of physical weakness ensued. A residence at Torquay was recommended, but here the greatest misfortune of her life befell her. Her favourite brother and two of his companions were drowned while boating in the bay. Utterly prostrate, she was confined to a dark chamber for several years after this event. But in 1844 the sunshine returned, never more during the remaining seventeen years of her life to leave her. This was when, through the introduction of her cousin Mr Kenyon, she became acquainted with Mr Robert Browning. In 1846 she was married to the poet, who, till her death, cherished her with a beautiful devotion, and thus gave her not only an undreamt-of happiness, but a new lease of life. For some reason Mr Browning's attentions to his daughter were so little agreeable to Mr Barrett, that the marriage finally took place without his knowledge or consent. Sad to say, the breach thus caused was Elizabeth Barrett Browning 321 never filled up, for Mr Barrett never afterwards either saw or held communication with her. This was the only cloud upon a connection that proved singularly felicitous throughout in the closeness of its sympathy, and its wealth of mutual happiness. In their new home the Casa Guidi, an old palace in Florence, the poetess found fresh mental stimulus, not only in the events of her new domestic relations, but also in the society of appreciative friends, and the political changes through which Italy was then passing. There was no more ardent champion of the cause of Italian unity than she, and much of her work from this time onward, such as Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Poems before Congress (i86c), voices with a passionate interest and intensity the aspirations of the land of her adoption. She was not privileged to witness the final triumph of the cause she had loved so well, and laboured for so strenuously. She was very ill when Count Cavour, the great Italian statesman and patriot, died prema- turely. This event gave her a great shock, and probably hastened her end. She died gently in the arms of her husband on the 3Oth of June 1861. The grateful Florentines have placed upon the Casa Guidi a marble tablet bearing an inscription, in which the national gratitude and admiration are warmly recorded. All who came within the range of Mrs Browning's personal influence seem to have been surprised that an intelligence so large and vivid should have been lodged within a body so diminutive and fragile. Her most intimate friend, Miss Mitford, writing of her X 322 Victorian Literature before her marriage, says, ' She is so sweet andgentle,and so pretty, that one looks at her as if she were some bright flower.' And again she describes her as * of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam.' Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, with his wife, saw much of the Brownings at Florence just before Mrs Browning's death, describes her as a 'pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all ; at any rate, only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet tenuity of voice.' ' I can recall,' says Mrs Thackeray Ritchie, ' the slight figure in its thin black dress, the writing apparatus by the sofa, the tiny inkstand, the quill-nibbed pen the unpretentious implements of her magic. She was a little woman ; she liked little things, Mr Browning used to say.' Mrs Browning was a true singer, a poet with an unquestionable inspiration. Hers was a nature so impassioned and aglow with intensest feeling as almost to suggest that no earthly woman, but some spirit from afar, was imprisoned within that fragile tenement of clay. Mr Browning, with an intelligible partiality, has given expression to the opinion that the much greater popularity of his wife's poems as com- pared with his own, was a just appraisement of their respective values his, that of the mere craftsman ; hers, that of the born and inspired singer. An interesting opinion, but one in which few, if any, Elizabeth Barrett Browning 323 persons competent to judge will be found to agree with him. A lady friend had expressed her preference for his poetry, and Mr Browning replied, ' You are wrong quite wrong she has genius ; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something he wants to make you see it as he sees it shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand ; and whilst this bother is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star that's the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine.' Her passionate sympathy with all forms of suffering in her fellow men is a very real quality in her. In every line there throbs a deeply humane soul, anguished by the burden and the pain that fall on others as they have also fallen on herself. To a far greater extent than is common, feeling dominated her poetry, as it did her nature and her life. Great, however, though Mrs Browning's poetry is in all essentials, in its more external qualities we find many faults. She herself vehemently repelled the charge of carelessness and indifference to correct form, so that we are compelled to explain her many poetical shortcomings and offences by supposing them to be due to an inherent defect of taste and judgment. Few of her poems can be said to approach perfection ; few, indeed, are free from blemishes that irritate by their appearance of perversity. Neither her rhythm 324 Victorian Literature nor her rhyme is good. She needlessly revives obsolete words, and as needlessly makes new ones. She mars many a noble passage by lapses into harsh- ness and the veriest prose. Nor is she always free from obscurity ; on the contrary, there is sometimes the suspicion that she herself has only half understood the thought she wanted to express. If, therefore, notwithstanding these and other faults, her poetry is still regarded with favour, it must be taken as a testimony to its inherent power and nobleness. Her first work, given to the world anonymously and not afterwards republished, was An Essay on Mind and other Poems (1826). It was, however, a translation of the Prometheus Bound of ^Eschylus, accompanied by other Poems, in 1833, that first made her known to the public. This was followed by The Seraphim in 1838, the Romaunt of the Page in 1839, and in 1844, Poems, including the Drama of Exile, in which both the subject and the manner of Milton's great epic are imitated, though without conspicuous success. In the same volume appeared The Vision of Poets, Lady Geraldine's Courtship, one of her most memorable poems, The Lay of the Brown Rosarie, The Duchess May, The Lost Bower, A Child Asleep, The Cry of the Children, which first appeared in Blackwood, and is said to have hastened legislation dealing with the case of poor children employed in factories, The Romance of the Swarfs Nest, The Dead Pan, and many others, in which the fully developed powers of the poet, together with her manifest faults, are dis- Elizabeth Barrett Browning 325 tinctly to be seen. In the rush of the newly-found happiness that entered her life with her acquaintance with Mr Browning, she wrote, but did not publish till 1850, four years after her marriage, the famous forty- four Sonnets from the Portuguese, which were so named from a suggestion of Mr Browning, but which had no connection whatever with the Portuguese. Here, more than anywhere else, we see the full power of the writer, who, in these poems, bares her whole soul to the view, as she sings with a lyrical power and an intensity of passionate feeling the new joys that have come into her life. Never, perhaps, has wife offered such a tribute to a husband, and in very few instances has the sonnet in English literature been used with equal force and mastery. They are entitled to rank with the very best poems in this form. Mrs Browning herself considered Aurora Leigh, published in 1856, the most mature of her works, and the one into which her highest convictions upon Life and Art had entered. Her view was supported by its great popularity with the general public, but the critics have been more discriminating in their praise. They have been ready to acknowledge the abundance of poetical material, the moments of high suggestion, the many beautiful passages which this poem contains, but they have also pointed out its want of method, its ignorance of real life, its numerous digressions and frequent lapses into prose. Neither the situations nor the characters are dramatically conceived or well delineated. Her shorter pieces will no doubt form 326 Victorian Literature a far more certain and durable foundation for her reputation. Two volumes devoted to the cause of Italy appeared in these later years, Casa Guidi Windows in 1851, and Poems before Congress in 1860, the year that preceded Mrs Browning's death. Last Poems were published by her husband after her death in 1862. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). The poetry of the later Victorian period has, on the whole, a strenuous and serious note befitting the deep problems of life and destiny with which so much of it has concerned itself. It is certainly not made brighter by the fact that in the perils of this great quest, the poet has too often lost both the vision of faith and the joy of hope. Its gloom is sometimes oppressive, and if despair be not its dominant note, at least it constantly vibrates to the minor chord of a wistful yearning and a painful unrest. Even Tennyson and Browning, both of them poets of faith and hope, were not able altogether to rise superior to this prevailing influence of Victorian poetry. But it is Mr Matthew Arnold who represents, more than any other writer, these new tendencies in latter- day poetry. A deep sadness hangs around his verse. Yet is he sincere and reverent. The agnostic doubt has cast its gloom upon him, but has not succeeded in expelling the religious spirit from his soul. Like his master, Wordsworth, he would fain gather a lesson of Matthew Arnold 327 joy and sweet content from all he sees and knows, but grieves to find it impossible. This alone, perhaps, would prevent Arnold from ever being extensively popular. The mass of men like sunshine, and will not readily forego it, even in their poetry. But there are other causes why they should not favour Arnold. Admitting the flawless beauty and classic perfection of much of his work, it must also be admitted that there is in it a certain coldness which checks enthusiasm. He seems to speak to us calmly indeed, but yet some- what sadly, and with just a touch of scorn, from some serene height, the air of which would no doubt be such as one of his own Greek gods would approve, but which is too rare and chill for ordinary mortals. In other words, the heart is not moved by his poetry. It is the intellectual, rather than the emotional ele- ment, one feels in it. However much one may be impressed by the clear-cut precision of his language, the fine lucidity of his ideas, and the charm of perfect grace with which they are expressed, we miss the pathos, the passion and the warmth of human sympathy that swiftly and inevitably go to the heart. When he does break through the control thus placed on his emotions, he shows that if his poetry wants warmth, it is not because he himself is cold. The same fact is borne out by the Letters of Matthew Arnold, just published (1896). They are disappointing in various respects ; they scarcely seem worthy of his great reputation ; and especially in his literary judg- ments does he seem to come short of what we should 328 Victorian Literature expect ; but, on the other hand, they show the native simplicity, kindliness, and warmth of the man's character, and how admirable he was in all the domestic and ordinary relations of life. His true poetical genius was probably held back from greater successes than it achieved, by the in- tellectual restraints of a too excessive academic culture. With less of the art and calculated labour of the perfect craftsman, there would doubtless have been seen in the effects produced more of the spontaneity of an original gift. Be this as it may, we doubt not that by reason of all its qualities, this poetry will continue to have its readers, fit though few ; and it may even be that those critics shall be proved to be in the right who think that he only is entitled to rank with Tennyson and Browning as one of the trinity of greater poets of the Victorian era. Matthew Arnold was the eldest son of the famous Dr Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby, and was born at Laleham on the Thames, on the 24th December, 1822. He was educated at Winchester and Rugby, and passed with the Balliol Scholarship to Oxford in 1841. Here he won the Newdigate prize for poetry with a poem on Oliver Cromwell, and finally graduated with second-class honours in 1844. ^ n the following year he was elected Fellow of Oriel. His connection with the fine old university town, to which he was so singularly attached, was prolonged in later life by his appointment in 1857 to the Professorship Matthew Arnold 329 of Poetry a position which he held with distinc- tion for the ten following years. In 1847 he had left Oxford to become Private Secre- tary to Lord Lansdowne, but on his marriage in 1851 he accepted the post of Lay Inspector of Schools, a position which he continued to hold until his death in 1888, and which made him widely influential in connection with his views as an educational reformer. His various writings, therefore, were only the recreations of a busy life, into which there necessarily entered much uncongenial drudgery. In 1848 appeared an- onymously his first volume, The Strayed Reveller and other Poems. It was followed in 1853 by Empedocles on Etna and other Poems, and in 1858 by Merope : a Tragedy. In 1866 appeared a volume entitled New Poems, which, however, largely consisted of a reprint of poems already published. From that time to the close of his life, he was well-nigh silent in poetry, a fact which is probably to be accounted for by the somewhat cold reception which his poems had received at the hands of both the critics and the public. Where almost everything is so beautiful in concep- tion and so perfect in form and colour, it is difficult to particularise. It is generally agreed, however, that The Forsaken Merman represents the peculiar charm of Arnold's poetry at its highest and best. Mr Swin- burne makes it the subject of an eloquent eulogium. ( The song,' he says, 4 is a piece of the sea-wind, a stray breath of the air, and bloom of the bays and hills : its 3 30 Victorian Literature mixture of mortal sorrow with the strange wild sense of a life that is not after mortal law the childlike moan after lost love mingling with the pure outer note of a song not human the look in it as of bright bewildered eyes with tears not theirs, and alien wonder in the watch of them the tender, marvellous, simple beauty of the poem, its charm as of a sound or a flower of the sea, set it and save it apart from all others in a niche of the memory.' Next to The Forsaken Merman may be placed The Scholar Gipsy and Thy r sis, both of them full of the personality of the writer, and reflecting the delights of old student wanderings around the ancient city on the Isis. The Scholar Gipsy describes a student of two centuries ago, who, partly driven by poverty, and partly lured by the sweet enchantment of the fields and flowers, abandons his books and becomes a gipsy. The sympathy of the writer is very manifest, and it scarcely needs that Clough should tell us that Arnold himself would sometimes gratify his taste for the sights and sounds of nature at the expense of his studies. Thyrsis is written in the same measure, and still further enshrines the author's delightful memories of Oxford life. It is a monody to commemorate Arthur Henry Clough, the most intimate of Arnold's student companions. It is a poem of the highest merit, and deserves comparison with the best work even of Milton, Shelley, and Swinburne in Elegiac poetry. The numerous pieces from Arnold's pen that are directly due to Greek influences have all a chaste Matthew Arnold 331 beauty of form, and the restfulness of a great calm. But of these it may be said that only the classical scholar can fully appreciate their worth. Among the best of them are The Strayed Reveller, Fragment of a Chorus of a Dejaneira, and Empedocles on Etna. In contrast with these are the poems which deal with subjects drawn from Oriental and Scandinavian sources, and which are marked by a deeper human interest. These poems are bathed in the light and atmosphere of the times described, and affect us strangely. The concluding passages of Sohrab and Rustum, for ex- ample, describing the anguish of Rustum on discover- ing that he has unwittingly slain his own son, are exceedingly fine, and show more of feeling than is common with this writer. In The Sick King in Bokhara, we see the same faithfulness to Oriental colour ; while Balder Dead gives a most impressive rendering of the familiar Scandinavian legend. Of shorter poems deserving of notice, may be mentioned Requiescat, Resignation, and Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse. The following lines, so characteristic in their sadness and their want of faith, are from the beautiful and suggestive piece called Dover Beach. 1 The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits ; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone ; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air ! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, 332 Victorian Literature Listen ! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another ! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.' This other example of Arnold reflects an influence that was just as real in his case as that of the literature of the Greek classics that of Wordsworth. It is taken from The Buried Life : ' Only but this is rare When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. Matthew Arnold 333 The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur ; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. * And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where it goes.' Arnold's permanent place in English Literature will doubtless be determined by his work as a poet; nevertheless, for the last twenty years of his life he wrote almost nothing in poetry, but much in prose. He is a poet for the thoughtful and cultured, and for those who can appreciate a chaste beauty of expression springing directly from the conception within the writer's mind. Those who came near to Mr Arnold assure us that people did not understand him, that a great many of his discussions on points of Christian doctrine were purely theoretical, and that at heart he was much nearer to ordinary Christians than he ever said. His recently published Letters contain many proofs of his intimate acquaintance with, and delight in the Bible. Still, it is not possible to overlook the fact that his divergence from orthodox Christianity was great. It is none the less interesting to know that Mr Arnold on the day of his sudden death, Sunday, 334 Victorian Literature April 15, 1888, worshipped in Sefton Park Church, Liverpool, the church of which the Rev. Dr Watson (Ian Maclaren, author of 4 The Bonnie Brier Bttsh), is minister, and that commenting afterwards on one of the hymns that had been sung : ' When I survey the wondrous cross, On which the Prince of Glory died,' he remarked to his friends that it was the finest hymn in the English language, and added, ( Yes, the Cross remaineth, and in the straits of the soul makes its ancient appeal.' William Edmonstoune Aytoun (1813-1865), although scarcely entitled to be called great, influenced the course of Victorian literature materially, both indirectly through his work in the university class-room, and also directly by his communications to the press. Born in Edinburgh in 1813, he received his higher education at the University of his native city and afterwards in Germany. In 1840 he was called to the Scottish bar ; and five years later was appointed to the Chair of English Literature in Edinburgh University. The duties of this Chair he continued to discharge with growing success until his death, combining with them, however, certain judicial functions as Sheriff of Orkney, an office to which he had been appointed by the Derby Government in 1852. His first work, Poland, Homer, and other Poems, was published when the writer was seventeen years William Edmonstoune Aytoun 335 of age. In 1840 he produced The Life and Times of Richard I.; and in the same year he began his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, on which his reputation as a poet chiefly rests. These, accompanied by other poems, were published in 1849, and show the influence of Scott's romantic ballad style, and also suggest the similar work of Macaulay in The Lays of Ancient Rome. They nowhere reach the higher levels of poetry, but are marked by a vivid rushing energy, patriotic ardour, and a glow of romantic sentiment, that have all contributed to keep them popular through the many editions into which they have run. Aytoun, like his father-in-law, Professor John Wilson (Christopher North), wrote much for Blackwood, achieving brilliant and happy effects, especially in such short stories as The Glenmutchkin Railway, and How I became a Yeoman, in which he displays a rich humour, racy of the soil. In 1854, in conjunction with his fellow-townsman, Mr, now Sir, Theodore Martin, he produced the Bon Gaultier Ballads, a series of clever burlesques and parodies of other writers. Firmilian : a Spasmodic Tragedy, which Aytoun published in 1854 under the pseudonym of Percy T. Jones, satirises cleverly the faults of a group of poets to whom Aytoun gave the name of the Spasmodic School. His long narrative poem Bothwell (1856), and his novel Norman Sinclair (1861), introducing events connected with the disastrous railway mania, were less successful. He was also the author of an 33 6 Victorian Literature edition of The Ballads of Scotland (1858), and, in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, of a translation of the shorter Poems and Ballads of Goethe (1859). The animation, the picturesqueness, and the romantic chivalry that mark this writer's serious poems are seen at their best in The Island of the Scots, from which the following extract, describing the crossing of the Rhine by the Scots, is taken : ' The Rhine is running deep and red, The island lies before " Now is there one of all the host Will dare to venture o'er ? For not alone the river's sweep Might make a brave man quail : The foe are on the further side, Their shot comes fast as hail. God help us, if the middle isle We may not hope to win ! Now is there any of the host Will dare to venture in ? " * No stay no pause. With one accord They grasped each other's hand, And plunged into the angry flood, That bold and dauntless band. High flew the spray above their heads, Yet onward still they bore, Midst cheer, and shout, and answering yell, And shot, and cannon roar " Now, by the Holy Cross ! I swear, Since earth and sea began, Was never such a daring deed Essayed by mortal man ! " Thick blew the smoke across the stream, And faster flashed the flame : The water plashed in hissing jets As ball and bullet came. William Edmonstoune Aytoun 337 Yet onwards pushed the Cavaliers All stern and undismayed, With thousand armed foes before, And none behind to aid. Once, as they neared the middle stream, So strong the torrent swept, That scarce that long and living wall Their dangerous footing kept. Then rose a warning cry behind, A joyous shout before : " The current's strong the way is long They'll never reach the shore ! See, see ! They stagger in the midst, They waver in their line ! Fire on the madmen ! break their ranks ; And whelm them in the Rhine ! " ' Have you seen the tall trees swaying When the blast is sounding shrill, And the whirlwind reels in fury Down the gorges of the hill ? How they toss their mighty branches, Struggling with the tempest's shock ; How they keep their place of vantage, Cleaving firmly to the rock ? Even so the Scottish warriors Held their own against the river ; Though the water flashed around them, Not an eye was seen to quiver ; Though the shot flew sharp and deadly, Not a man relaxed his hold : For their hearts were big and thrilling With the mighty thoughts of old. One word was spoke among them, And through the ranks it spread " Remember our dead Claverhouse ! " Was all the Captain said. Then, sternly bending forward, They wrestled on awhile, Until they cleared the heavy stream, Then rushed towards the isle.' 338 Victorian Literature When Professor Aytoun wrote his very clever satire, Firmiltan, he had in his mind especially three con- temporary poets, Philip James Bailey, Sydney Dobell, and Alexander Smith, whom he dubbed the ' Spas- modic School,' and whose prevailing faults and weak- nesses he hit off with admirable effect. At first these poets had achieved a popularity far beyond their actual merits, and had been made the subjects of in- judicious and excessive praise. The poetical hope of the future was supposed to be in them, and they, if any, were to bring back the greater achievements of British song. Naturally, therefore, Aytoun's brilliant satire, combining with the inevitable reaction in popular feeling, caused the pendulum of public favour to swing to the opposite extreme. As an actual fact justice has not been done to these poets, and although it would be hazardous to prophesy that there ever will be any sensible return of popular favour, it may be conceded that in all three are to be found qualities that far better justify critical approval than those of authors who have suffered no such reverse. Philip James Bailey (1816), the oldest of the three, and the only one now surviving, was born at Nottingham in 1816. He received his university educa- tion at Glasgow, where he displayed that taste for metaphysical speculation which is so distinct a feature of his great work, Festus. This, his first poem, published in 1839, is also beyond comparison, his best. It. was followed by The Angel World and The Mystic, Philip James Bailey 339 most of which were incorporated with Festus in the Jubilee edition of that work published in 1889. He also wrote The Age : a Colloquial Satire. Considering that Festus deals with the most in- tricate problems of life and destiny, and that it runs to such an inordinate length (in the edition just re- ferred to Festus is nearly twice as long as Browning's The Ring and the Book\ it is sufficiently remarkable that it should have passed through so many editions, both in this country and in America. The attraction which it manifestly holds for certain classes of readers is no doubt due to the blending of poetical elements that often attain to a high degree of beauty and imaginative force with theological and philosophical speculation concerning the profoundest questions of life, death, and immortality. A glowing fervour of spiritual passion, an exuberant wealth of imagery, and a magnificent sweep of diction are all strikingly present in this poem, but these are mixed with so much extravagance, unevenness, and mere frothy de- clamation, and are, moreover, so wanting in human interest and spontaneity as to justify the censure implied in the name ' Spasmodic ' which has been affixed to Bailey and the younger poets whom he is supposed to have influenced by his example. Mr Bailey still lives, but his reputation rests entirely on the work he did more than fifty years ago. All these faults were exaggerated, and all these merits became less noticeable in the unequal and ill- balanced work of Sydney Dobell (1824). This poet, 34 Victorian Literature who was born at Peckham Rye in 1824, published The Roman in 1850, and Balder in 1853 ; and these were followed by Sonnets on the War, and England in lime of War, both of them written in conjunction with Alexander Smith. Notwithstanding Dobell's glaring faults, it may be questioned if he had not a more genuine faculty than Bailey. Granting all that may be said about the thinness of the thought, and the triviality of the passion underlying so much inflated language, there remain passages of true lyrical power in which the writer approves himself an undoubted poet. He died in 1874 after many years of bad health, during which his voice was silent. Alexander Smith (1830) was floated into fame on the same wave of popularity, and was flung back into an equally undeserved neglect when it turned. Born in 1830, at Kilmarnock, of humble parents, he had no advantages of education. When his poems first began to attract public attention, he was a drawer of patterns in a Glasgow muslin factory. In 1853 he published A Life Drama and other Poems, which, although severely criticised in many quarters, attained an extraordinary popularity. Much was expected from this youth of twenty-three, and because of his youth much was forgiven. The wonder regarding him was, not that he had failed to escape the danger of echoing other men's thoughts, but rather that he had pro- duced so much that was original and promising, despite his early hardships and want of opportunity. Alexander Smith 341 He continued to write poetry until his death in 1867 at the early age of thirty-seven. Meanwhile circum- stances had on the whole been kind to him. Having been appointed Secretary to the University of Edin- burgh, he found himself in cultured society, and amidst congenial associations, which he was not slow to improve. His successive works bear distinct traces of a growing command over himself and the resources of his art as a poet. Before leaving Glasgow he had composed his City Poems, which showed a considerable advance upon his earlier work. The development was still more noticeable in Edwin of Deira, which, however, had the misfortune to appear shortly after Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and suffered something like an eclipse in consequence. Smith was a true singer notwithstanding the gush and thinness of some of his work ; and no one can doubt that that work was every day growing into a greater richness and power, when death touched the singer's lips to silence. In Alfred Hagarfs Household, a tale which he contributed to Good Words, he has sketched the circumstances of his own early life. A Summer in Skye describes, with an admirable command of prose style, what a poet's eye can see in that far island of the western seas. But it is upon his delight- ful and suggestive volume of Essays, Dreamthorp, that his reputation as a prose writer will chiefly rest. And however varied may be opinion respecting his poetry, no one capable of judging is likely to deny to these papers a very high excellence of style. 34 2 Victorian Literature They are altogether charming, and have the addi- tional attraction of presenting to us the modest, kindly, lovable personality of the writer himself in contact with the scenes and the authors he loved best. Alexander Smith does not deserve the neglect into which he has fallen, and it may be that for him, as for others, a time of revival is yet to come. CHAPTER VI Later Victorian Poets Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882). Dante Gabriel Rossetti will probably live in the record of Victorian Literature as much by the influence of his personality on other great men as by the genius that entered into his own works. His name is associated with an important revival in literature and art ; and in certain respects he was well qualified, in virtue of strong magnetic qualities, to be the apostle of a new renaissance. Yet there was something almost cloistral in his indifference to the modern world around. The strife of politics had little or no interest for him. Literary and social questions passed him by unheeded. Even his knowledge of books was for a writer so dis- tinguished, singularly limited. In some respects, therefore, his life was less the life of a man of the nineteenth century, than of the grey mediaeval times from which he drew so much of the inspiration of his art, and so many of the subjects of his poetry. Many of our ablest men have borne testimony to his brilliant fascinations, and have cordially acknowledged their 344 Victorian Literature obligations to him. Few men can have had a larger number of devoted friends. He knew Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, and the Brownings. Amongst his inti- mates in literature were Edmund Gosse, George Meredith, Hall Caine, Theodore Watts, William Sharp, Algernon Swinburne, and William Morris. In art his circle of friends included Holman Hunt, Millais, Burne Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Woolner the sculptor, and William B. Scott. Several of these have put on record their impressions of Rossetti's strange and powerful personality ; and to what we thus know respecting him, has recently been added the information contained in William Michael Rossetti's edition of his brother's Letters. The main facts of Rossetti's life history can easily be stated. He was born in London in 1828. His father, Gabrielle Rossetti, was an Italian refugee, whose patriotic lyrics on the side of constitutional liberty had made him obnoxious to the Neapolitan government. He was a man of learning and fine artistic and literary taste, and is well-known as a poet and commentator on Dante. On taking up his abode in England, he became Professor in King's College, London, and in King's College School, his son, Gabriel Charles Dante, who afterwards altered his name to Dante Gabriel, was educated. On leaving school young Rossetti gave himself to painting, towards which from a very early age he had been strongly disposed. He studied at the Royal Academy, but not long enough to master all the technicalities of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 345 his art. Consequently his drawing was always defec- tive, although as a painter he lived to become famous for the imaginative treatment of his subjects, and the mediaeval richness of his colour. In 1848 Rossetti became the centre of a movement in art which was known under the name of Pre- Raphaelitism, and which for the few years it lasted attracted much attention. The principal members of the so-called Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were Dante G. Rossetti, his brother William Michael Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Millais, Woolner, Collinson, and Stephens. There were others, such as Ruskin, Swin- burne, William Morris, Burne Jones, and Ford Madox Brown who gave the movement their countenance without actually becoming members of the Brother- hood. The object of this association of eager and clever young enthusiasts was to emancipate art from the influence of a hampering tradition. They proposed to follow simplicity and truth in all things, and in the near study of nature to express earnestly and faithfully, not what convention required, but the painter's own individuality of conception. These principles they applied to poetry also, and their influence, modified by time, and freed from the element of extravagance, has undoubtedly been useful in the fields both of art and of literature. It was in the literary organ of the Brotherhood, known as The Germ, and commenced in 1850 to give expression to their views in art and poetry, that the earliest of Rossetti's writings were published, including in poetry The Blessed Damozel, 346 Victorian Literature and in prose Hand and Soul. Poetry, in fact, had always had a greater attraction for him than art, and he was unquestionably right in his conviction that it represented in him a more perfect gift. But it was long before he could trust himself except only occa- sionally and in fugitive forms to publish what he had written. After a long engagement extending over several years, Mr Rossetti was married in 1860 to Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, in whom he found both literary and artistic accomplishments. In the follow- ing year 1861, the poet published his first work, a volume of translations in verse from the early Italian poets, now known under the name of Dante and his Circle, to which was appended a notice that there would shortly appear a volume of original poems from the pen of the same author. But in 1862 his wife died from an overdose of laudanum, and, overwhelmed by gloom and despondency, Mr Rossetti buried in his wife's coffin the manuscript volume of poems which had been thus promised to the world. They were hers, he said, as much as his, and all his interest in them appears to have gone down with her into the grave. Seven years later, however, his in- terest revived. The permission of the authorities was obtained to reopen his wife's grave, and the poems were rescued from oblivion, They were published along with others in the following year, 1870, under the title Dante at Verona and other Poems and on the whole were well received. It was, however, concerning Dante Gabriel Rossetti 347 this volume that Mr Robert Buchanan shortly after- wards wrote his unfortunate article entitled The Fleshly School of Poetry, an unprovoked attack which gave great pain to Mr Rossetti, and produced effects which never altogether left him. Mr Buchanan afterwards regretted having included Mr Rossetti in his strictures, and made him what amends he could. But the mischief was done. Rossetti had been a changed man since his wife's death. He still enjoyed the society of his friends, but the morbid element, which had always been present in him, had been deepening into a more habitual despondency. All this, of course, was greatly aggravated by so rude an assault from that outer world which, by this time, he had partially forsworn. A habit of insomnia set in, too frequently relieved by doses of the new drug, chloral ; and as these were ever losing their effect, and ever being increased in amount, he gradually lost strength, and became a physical wreck, although the mind continued as vigorous as ever. Another volume, entitled Ballads and Sonnets, appeared towards the close of 1881, and on Easter Sunday, 1882, he died at Birchington-on- Sea, near Margate, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. Never had man more loving and devoted service from his literary friends than Rossetti had from Hall Caine, Theodore Watts, and others during the dark years of his decline. The Blessed Damozel first attracted literary atten- tion to Rossetti. Written, as he tells us, in his nine- teenth year, it is still the work by which he is most 348 Victorian Literature widely known. It may not deserve the excessive praise bestowed upon it by many of his admirers, but some of its ideas are so exquisite that they could only have come from a poet of true genius. We find here, as also in other poems of his youthful period, a mysti- cal element, corresponding somewhat with the symbol- ism of his earlier work in painting. Both would seem to suggest the note of Catholic devotion. But Rossetti was no Catholic, and in neither case did the quality referred to spring from any definite religious feeling : it only expressed an artistic preference. No taste can be altogether insensible to the exquisite beauty of many of the lines of this poem. ' 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 hair were seven. Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn ; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn. And still she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm ; Until her bosom must have made The bar she leaned on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm. The sun was gone now ; the curled moon Was like a little feather Dante Gabriel Rossetti 349 Fluttering far down the gulf ; and now She spoke through the still weather. Her voice was like the voice the stars Had when they sang together.' The old ballad had a great attraction for Rossetti, and some of his best poems take this form. One of these, The White Ship is finely conceived, and in its straightforward truth and poignancy admirably ex- presses the spirit of the ballad. Berold, the butcher of Rouen, tells how the good ship went down with King Henry's son and all his merry company aboard, and how the stricken king having been told the tale by Berold, the sole survivor, ' never smiled again.' The King's Tragedy, written shortly before the poet's death, is also in ballad form, and is of even finer quality, rising here and there into passages of great dramatic force, and using with powerful effect those super- natural elements which are seldom absent from Mr Rossetti's best work. It is the tale of the cruel murder of Scotland's poet-king in the Charterhouse of Perth as told by Catherine Douglas, afterwards known as Kate Barlass, in honour of her heroic act in barring the door with her arm against the king's assassins. Sister Helen also takes its inspiration from the ancient ballad, and is no less intensely dramatic. It shows a love transformed to hate a hate deep-rooted as the rocks, implacable as hell, willing to lose itself for ever, if only its revenge be full. There is some- thing strangely gruesome in the weird and everchang- 350 Victorian Literature ing refrain. The poet makes use of the old supersti- tion that if an image in wax be made of a person, and that image be melted slowly before a fire, the person whom it represents will also dwindle and die in torment. ' " Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen ? To-day is the third since you began." " The time was long, yet the time ran, Little brother." (O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days to-day between Hell and Heaven !) ' The wondering child, her brother, goes upon the balcony, and thence conveys to her the messages of various riders, who in hot haste come from the dying man to entreat her to remove her curse. Of these is Keith of Keith his father : ' " Oh his son still cries, if you forgive, Sister Helen, The body dies but the soul shall live." " Fire shall forgive me as I forgive, Little brother ! " (O Mother, Mary Mother, As she forgives between Hell and Heaven ! ) " Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive, Sister Helen ! To save his dear son's soul alive." " Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive, Little brother ! " (O Mother, Mary Mother, Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven ! ) " O sister Helen, you heard the bell, Sister Helen ! Dante Gabriel Rossetti 351 More loud than the vesper-chime it fell." " No vesper-chime, but a dying knell, Little brother ! " (O Mother, Mary Mother, His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven ! ) " See, see the wax has dropped from its place, Sister Helen, And the flames are winning up apace ! " " Yet here they burn but for a space, Little brother ! " (O Mother, Mary Mother, Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven ! ) " Ah ! what white thing at the door has cross'd, Sister Helen ? Ah ! what is this that sighs in the frost ? " " A soul that's lost as mine is lost, Little brother ! " (O Mother, Mary Mother, Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven ! ) ' Of Mr Rossetti's poems many assign the highest place to Rose Mary in which his romantic imagina- tion and command of supernatural elements are used with wonderful effect, although the execution of this poem is not of uniform excellence. There is also dra- matic power of a high kind, after the manner of Browning, in A Last Confession a poem in blank verse, revealing very subtle insight in the suggestion of character and in depicting the tragedy of a pair of lives. Mr Rossetti has written a larger number of noble sonnets than any other poet of our time. For this form he reserved the best of all his powers, and in it he achieved a success that will be absolutely un- questioned. In the collected edition of his poems is 352 Victorian Literature to be found The House of Life a sonnet sequence, consisting of a series of one hundred and one sonnets. But besides these there are many others, full of his ripest thought and richest imagination, some of them illustrative of pictures by himself and others, and some devoted to persons endeared to him by ties of love and friendship. Christina G. Rossetti (1830-1894). Miss Rossetti, the sister of Dante G. Rossetti, was born in 1830, and largely inherited the genius and tastes of her very remarkable family. When she was sixteen, she had written a volume of verses, which her grandfather, Mr Polidori, published in 1847. It was not, however, till long after, that she became known by her quaint and remarkable poem, The Goblin Market, published in 1862. It was followed by The Prince's Progress (1866), Sing- Song, a Book of Nursery Rhymes (1872), A Pageant (1881), and several other volumes, both in prose and verse. Most of Miss Rossetti's later work is intensely devotional in its character, and reveals a nature strung to an almost saint-like ecstasy. More- over, the spiritual fervour of these poems is no mere artistic mood assumed in sympathy with the forms of mediaeval devotion as in her brother's case, but the genuine outcome of a personality steeped in the true spirit of passionate worship. But while their fervour is almost ascetic in its religious intensity, there is no trace of feebleness in them. They are strong both in intellectual and in artistic qualities. Christina G. Rossetti 353 In expression they are as finished and exquisite as in thought they are noble and elevating. Naturally we find in Miss Rossetti's work many traces of her brother's influence his romanticism, his blending of the real and the ideal, his art in dealing with weird supersti- tions, the strange glamour of his mysticism, and the sombre gloom that forms the setting and background of his most distinctive work in literature. Yet in some respects the difference between brother and sister could not be greater. The religious sentiment, which in him never passes beyond an artistic mood, is the very warp and woof of Miss Rossetti's nature. The saintly purity and elevation of her poetry is fed by sorrows rather than by joy ; yet is it suffused by the warm hues of memory, and the still brighter gleams of hope. ' Man's life is but a waking day Whose tasks are set aright : A time to work, a time to pray, And then a quiet night. And then, please God, a quiet night Where palms are green and robes are white, A long-drawn breath, a balm for sorrow, And all things lovely on the morrow.' The history of Victorian poetry cannot show a truer inspiration, or any loftier or more humane spirit than Christina Rossetti's. The poetry of a life free from all taint of self, and entirely given up to loving service for others, was never more beautifully exemplified. Dark shadows of bereavement and of personal pain rested upon her closing years, but could 354 Victorian Literature not embitter her gentle spirit, or obscure her spiritual outlook. After months of illness, she died on the 2Qth of December 1894, and on the occasion of her funeral two of her own poems, strikingly illustrative of what was most distinctive in herself as a woman and a poet, were sung. It is not merely, or even chiefly, because the goodness of the writer is so conspicuous in her poems, but rather because the poems themselves are at once so true and noble in conception, and so exquisite in artistic finish, that many are prepared to assign to Miss Rossetti the highest place among the women poets of English literature. She was deeply attached to the Church of England, and many of her later poems in such collections as Called to be Saints (1881), Time Flies (1885), and The Face of the Deep (1892), have an adaptation to its services. But how different they are from most religious poems we know. In the piercing keenness of their spiritual vision, in the thrilling suggestiveness of their thought regarding the Unseen, in the almost perfect beauty of their form, and in the poignancy of their cry from the soul, they are like nothing else in recent literature. The sombreness of her poetry is not without relief : ' Looking back along life's trodden way, Gleams and greenness linger on the track ; Distance melts and mellows all to-day, Looking back. ' Rose and purple and a silvery grey, Is that cloud, the cloud we called so black Christina G. Rossetti 355 Evening harmonises all to-day, Looking back. Foolish feet, so prone to halt or stray ; Foolish heart, so restive on the rack ! Yesterday we sighed, but not to-day, Looking back.' Of Miss Rossetti's romantic method the following lines, forming the conclusion of he Prince's Progress, a poem of her earlier period, may be taken as an example : ' Too late for love, too late for joy, Too late, too late ! You loitered on the road too long, You trifled at the gate : The enchanted dove upon her branch Died without a mate ; The enchanted princess in her tower Slept, died, behind the grate ; Her heart was starving all this while You made it wait. 4 Ten years ago, five years ago, One year ago, Even then you had arrived in time, Though somewhat slow ; Then you had known her living face Which now you cannot know : The frozen fountain would have leaped, The buds gone on to blow, The warm south wind would have awaked To melt the snow. ' Is she fair now as she lies ? Once she was fair ; Meet queen for any kingly king, With gold-dust on her hair. 356 Victorian Literature Now these are poppies in her locks, White poppies she must wear ; Must wear a veil to shroud her face And the want graven there : Or is the hunger fed at length, Cast off the care ? ' We never saw her with a smile Or with a frown ; Her bed seemed never soft to her, Though tossed of down ; She little heeded what she wore, Kirtle, or wreath, or gown ; We think her white brows often ached Beneath her crown, Till silvery hairs showed in her locks That used to be so brown. ' We never heard her speak in haste : Her tones were sweet, And modulated just so much As it was meet : Her heart sat silent through the noise And concourse of the street. There was no hurry in her hands, No hurry in her feet ; There was no bliss drew nigh to her, That she might run to greet. ' You should have wept her yesterday, Wasting upon her bed : But wherefore should you weep to-day That she is dead ? Lo, we who love weep not to-day, But crown her royal head. Let be these poppies that we strew, Your roses are too red : Let be these poppies, not for you Cut down and spread.' Jean Ingelow 357 Jean Ingelow (1830-1897) was born at Boston, Lincolnshire, in the same year as Miss Rossetti, and soon achieved a great popularity as a poet. In 1850 she published her first volume, entitled A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings. Several works in fiction followed, after which she gained a distinct success in a second volume of Poems in 1863. This volume contained much of her finest work, and was received with unstinted praise both by the critics and by the public. There could, in fact, be no doubt as to the powers of a writer who could produce such striking and beautiful poems as Divided, The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, Requiescat in Pace, and various others in this volume. On the surface of these poems lay the sweet, gentle womanliness of the writer. There was a great charm for readers in general in the directness and simplicity of her style. Ordinary themes were dealt with in simple Saxon language, yet with a sufficient freightage of thought. When she touched the chords either of some gentle familiar emotion or of some strong passion, it was in a manner convincing and agreeable to the great majority of readers. Her absolute sincerity was beyond all question. But the qualities of a higher gift were there also imagination, earnestness of feeling, the power to realise the varying moods and aspects of nature, and her most distinctive quality an unfailing lyrical gift of exceptional sweetness and melody. Such qualities were more than sufficient to counterbalance her chief fault an occasional diffuseness. 358 Victorian Literature In 1867 Miss Ingelow published A Story of Doom and other Poems. The namepiece of this volume, which takes for its subject The Deluge, is her longest work in verse, and is on rather more ambitious lines. On the whole, it cannot be said to have reached the excellence of her shorter pieces. In a later volume of Poems (1885), some excellent specimens of this writer are to be found. Echo and the Ferry shows the charmingly sympathetic com- prehension of childhood, which is one of the most noticeable qualities of Miss Ingelow : ' Ay, Oliver ! I was but seven, and he was eleven ; He looked at me pouting and rosy. I blushed where I stood ; They had told us to play in the orchard (and I only seven ! A small guest at the farm) ; but he said " Oh, a girl was no good ! " So he whistled and went, he went over the stile to the wood. It was sad, it was sorrowful ! Only a girl only seven ! At home in the dark London smoke I had not found it out. The pear-trees looked on in their white, and blue birds flashed about, And they too were angry as Oliver. Were they eleven ? I thought so. Yes, every one else was eleven eleven ! So Oliver went, but the cowslips were tall at my feet, And all the white orchard with fast-falling blossom was litter'd ; And under and over the branches those little birds twitter'd, While hanging head downwards they scolded because I was seven. A pity, a very great pity. One should be eleven. But soon I was happy, the smell of the world was so sweet, And I saw a round hole in an apple-tree rosy and old, Then I knew ! for I peeped, and I felt it was right they should scold ! Eggs small and eggs many. For gladness I broke into laughter ; And then some one else oh, how softly ! came after, came after, With laughter with laughter came after. Jean Ingelow 359 I dreamed of the country that night, of the orchard, the sky, The voice that had mocked coming after and over and under. But at last in a day or two namely Eleven and I Were very fast friends, and to him I confided the wonder. He said that was Echo. Was Echo a wise kind of bee That had learned how to laugh : could it laugh in one's ears and then fly And laugh again yonder. After many delightful child imaginings, the poem ends thus : ' Ay, here it was here that we woke her, the Echo of old ; All life of that day seems an echo, and many times told. Shall I cross by the ferry to-morrow, and come in my white To that little low church ? and will Oliver meet me anon ? Will it all seem an echo from childhood pass'd over pass'd on ? Will the grave parson bless us ? Hark, hark ! in the dim failing light I hear her ! As then the child's voice, clear and high, sweet and merry ; Now she mocks the man's tone with " Hie over ! Hie over the ferry ! " " And Katie ! " " And Katie ! " " Art thou with the glow-worms to- night ? My Katie ? " " My Katie ! " For gladness I break into laughter And tears. Then it all comes again as from far-away years ; Again, some one else oh, how softly ! with laughter comes after, Comes after with laughter comes after.' No other justification of Miss Ingelow's great popu- larity as a poet is required than such fine pieces as The High Tide and Divided, which will always most readily recall her name. She is also, however, the author of several tales in prose, marked by vigour of imagination and power, especially in the delineation of child character. Such are Studies for Stones (1864), Off the Skelltgs (1872), and Fated to be Free (1873). Miss Ingelow died at Kensington on July 2Oth, 1897. 360 Victorian Literature Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837), tne greatest of English poets now living, was the son of Admiral Swinburne, and was born in London in 1837. He received his education at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, which he left without a degree in 1860. His first literary production was a volume containing the two plays, The Queen Mother (Catherine de Medici) and Rosamond^ published in 1860. Since that time he has produced about thirty volumes of prose and verse, no less remarkable for their high excellence of form than for the marvellous productiveness they exhibit. Concerning the verse, it may be said that poetry has never been presented in shapes more exquisite and harmonious, and that the English language has never been used either with a more complete mastery or with a more dangerous affluence. There are times when Swinburne seems to be intoxicated with his own metrical and verbal facility, and when thought well-nigh disappears behind the cloud of beautiful words. It was not till the publication of Atalanta in Calydon in 1865, that he won the ear of the public. In none of his later work has he outdone this early success. In the same year, 1865, appeared Chastelara, the first of the trilogy of tragedies in which the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots is the central figure. In Bothwell (1874), the strongest of the group, and Mary Stuart (1881), his conception of the ill-fated princess is further elaborated ; and if the character of heartless, cruel voluptuousness which the Algernon Charles Swinburne 361 poet assigns to her, do not commend itself to every- one's sympathy, there is no denying the power with which the delineation is effected. These tragedies, especially the last two, are remarkable for the length to which they run, and the number of personages they introduce, characteristics which effectually put them beyond the pale of acting plays. The Poems and Ballads (1866) that succeeded Chastelard were as fiercely blamed by some as they were unduly praised by others. On the whole, however, the blame predominated. The promise of these poems and for that matter their achievement also was no doubt immense. Nothing could well exceed either the command of language or the mastery of metrical form and lyrical melody which they displayed. In these respects they were a revelation to all true lovers of the muse. On the other hand, they were out of touch with the times, and wanting in any clear message to them. Their charm of rhythmic beauty, their wealth of exquisite imagery, their depth of impassioned feeling have for their object the glorification of sense, and take no account of the inner and higher beauties of spirit. In the frankness of their pagan worship of the out- wardly beautiful, they show a want of restraint, which elicited very vehement remonstrances. It is to be feared that these objections were only partially met by the plea that the poems are intended to depict how certainly the sensuous produces satiety, and leads the soul to seek its satisfaction in a wiser 362 Victorian Literature and more inward conception of life. However that may be, Mr Swinburne, profiting by experience, did not again offend against popular feeling in anything like the same degree. A second series of Poems and Ballads was published in 1878, and a third in 1879, but in these the poet shows greater restraint. It is still, however, little else than a pagan sentiment that reveals itself in Songs before Sunrise (1871), in which the poet gives earnest expression to his views as a non-theist and republican. In Erechtheus (1876) he recurs to Greek models, and in Tiistram of Lyonesse (1882), as also in a quite recent work from his pen, The Tale of Balen (1896), he shows his fine handling of the Arthurian legend. In A Century of Roundels (1883) he reveals his unique acquaintance with French poetical forms. In the drama, besides the Mary Stuart Trilogy, he has produced Marino Faliero (1885), Locrine (1887), and? he Sisters (1890). Astrophel and other Poems, published in 1894, showed no falling off in Mr Swinburne's powers. All his characteristic qualities are here. The metrical facility and the verbal affluence are as wonderful as ever ; but there is the same elusiveness of thought and barren- ness of impulse as before. We close the book feeling that we have feasted high on sweet sounds, that a divine singer has been entertaining us with his heavenly music ; but all else is vague and indefinite. The name piece of the volume Astrophel, describes the poet's feelings in reading within the garden of an old English manor house, the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, Algernon Charles Swinburne 363 the Astrophel of three hundred years ago. A nature poem, Nympholet, is more important, and affords ad- mirable opportunity for judging of the characteristics of Swinburne's art. One of the best pieces, inscribed to Mr Theodore Watts, and entitled On the South Coast, describes what the poet, aided by his imagina- tion, sees in a seaward landscape of southern England. It is followed by an Autumn Vision, full of the ex- quisite modulations in metrical form so characteristic of this writer. There is a Dedication to William Morris, which also very favourably illustrates this author. The memorial verses to Tennyson, Browning, William Bell Scott, and others are not so felicitous. Mr Swinburne's prose writings, which are chiefly in the form of criticism, are singularly eloquent. The defects of his verse, however, reappear in them. One noticeable but generous fault is a tendency to excessive praise. Moreover, they are often rendered vague and unconvincing by the over-luxuriance of the language and imagery employed. Still, his studies of old authors such as Shakespeare, Chapman, and Ben Jonson, and also of such modern writers as Charlotte Bronte, William Blake, Matthew Arnold, and Victor Hugo, are full of insight, and are a valuable addition to the literature of criticism. Taking all this writer's work into account, we may say that Mr Swinburne well deserves his position as the greatest of English poets now living. He is entirely original ; he is a consummate metrical artist ; and if his verse is not free from inequalities, he has 364 Victorian Literature accomplished an amount of work of the finest quality, to which no other contemporary poet can lay claim. His excellence lies not in any peculiar richness or ful- ness of thought, but rather in a unique beauty of expression. Probably no other poet has ever shown such a knowledge of English metrical form. Certainly no one has sung in such a variety of cadences all of them beautiful. The melody of English speech, indeed, was never made so exquisite and memorable. Never- theless, even here, where he is strongest, Swinburne shows the defects of his virtues. The music of his verse, so marvellously sustained, becomes monotonous, and the reader is apt to be cloyed by very excess of sweetness. And when the exquisitely turned rhythms and rhymes have had their effect, the mind, releasing itself from the dreamy languors into which it has been cast, inquires the cause, there may be nothing for answer but a vague impression shining through the cloud of rainbow-tinted phrases. Mr Swinburne cannot be called a nature poet in the sense in which we apply the name to Wordsworth or Tennyson, although we may justly consider him as the greatest singer of the sea. His love for the sea is a consuming passion, and to every one of its changing moods, from calm to turbulence, he has given haunting expression in his verse. William Morris (1834-1896) was born at Waltham- stow, near London, and received his education at Marlborough and Exeter College, Oxford. From the William Morris 365 first, literature and art appear to have divided his sympathies. He contributed both articles and money towards founding The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. But when in 1856 he left the University, it was to article himself to Mr Street, the architect. This profession he soon abandoned. His first volume, The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems, was not without marks of immaturity, but en- couraged the hope of a brilliant future. In it we hear distinctly the keynote of his genius. Mr Morris was never the poet of the present. Even now it is in the dim remoteness of mediaeval life that he finds his in- spiration. Two of these pieces, Sir Peter Harpdoris End and The Haystack in the Floods, deserve especial mention. The latter sets before us the circumstances of an utterly unrelieved tragedy, -such as might well attract admiring attention. The Lady Jehane is riding tired and wet in flight from Paris with her lover, Sir Robert, when they are stopped by an armed band Bunder Godmar, his enemy and rival. They are overpowered, and the cruel choice is offered to the Lady Jehane of either accepting Godmar as her lover, or of first witnessing Sir Robert's death, and then of herself returning to Paris to encounter the ordeal of fire and water : ' She laid her hand upon her brow, Then gazed upon the palm, as though She thought her forehead bled, and " No," She said, and turn'd her head away, As there were nothing else to say, And everything were settled.' 366 Victorian Literature An hour, however, is given her to consider ' So, scarce awake, Dismounting, did she leave that place, And totter some yards : with her face Turn'd upward to the sky she lay, Her head on a wet heap of hay, And fell asleep : and while she slept, And did not dream, the minutes crept Round to the twelve again ; but she Being waked at last, sigh'd quietly, And strangely childlike came, and said : " I will not." ' Thereupon these two sad hearts would fain obtain the solace of but one poor kiss, but Godmar interposes, and with his own sword slays Sir Robert before her eyes. ' She shook her head and gazed awhile At her cold hands with a rueful smile, As though this thing had made her mad. This was the parting that they had Beside the haystack in the floods.' In 1863 Mr Morris with the encouragement, if not the active participation, of such friends as D. G. Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and E. Burne Jones, was engaged in launching a business firm devoted to the artistic treatment of house decoration in wall- papers, stained glass, and art fabrics. The business, rather contrary to expectation, proved a success, and indeed became of almost national importance in view of the revolution it accomplished in the appointments and decoration of the home. Since that time it has become common to expect in these appointments not William Morris 367 the useful only, but also beauty of colour and grace- fulness of form. At first this firm had for its designa- tion, ( Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company,' but in later years it bore the name and was under the management of Mr Morris alone. In designing patterns for this firm, Mr Morris for many years found the chief occupation of his life. No man, however, of our time has shown a greater vitality, a more restless and comprehensive energy. His joy in living was great, and fortune was kind. His tireless energy no less than his love of art was further seen in the setting up of the Kelmscott Press, from which he issued in sumptuous and beautiful forms reprints of various choice old books, including Chaucer. All of these were printed by the hand on a specially prepared paper, from type designed by Mr Morris himself. But even this was not enough for such energy as his. During the last fifteen years of his life he was one of the most strenuous workers in the Socialist propaganda. He appeared on many platforms, and ceased not to pour forth articles and pamphlets in the advocacy of his principles principles to which, how- ever, he was led less by social and political than by artistic considerations. Evidently his ambition was to revive amongst modern craftsmen the dignity, the intelligence, and the mastery of their art that were common in the days of the mediaeval guilds. It was while thus occupied, one man doing the work of three, that Mr Morris contrived to produce a quite unusual quantity of literature both of prose and verse. 368 Victorian Literature In 1867 he gave to the world his Life and Death of Jason, a long poem in seventeen books, in which he took Chaucer as his model, and in which he achieved his first literary success. In the series of beautiful tales in verse entitled The Earthly Paradise (1868-70) which followed, he adhered to the same model, and further established his reputation as the best teller of stories in verse since the Father of English Poetry wrote the Canterbury Tales. The argument prefixed to the prologue of The Earthly Paradise is as follows : ' Certain gentlemen and mariners of Norway, having considered all that they had heard of the Earthly Paradise, set sail to find it, and after many troubles and the lapse of many years came old men to some Western Land of which they had never before heard. There they died, when they had dwelt there certain years, much honoured of the strange people.' It was the custom of this kindly folk to hold two feasts every month, at each of which it was agreed to tell a tale, and hence the twenty -four tales of The Earthly Paradise, with the beautiful lyrics by which they are connected. Through all the great length of these poems, the verse flows sweetly, with many restful modulations. There is no stress of emotion, no harrowing anguish of circumstance, no rugged, harsh outlines of character. All seems remote, the voices come to us softened by distance, the men and women are seen as through a refining medium. The peace and glamour of an ideal world wrap us in their dreamy haze. A gentle William Morris 369 sadness runs through all these poems, and is, indeed, characteristic of this writer's work throughout. The wine of life ran full enough within the veins of the poet himself, but he gives us no sound of human laughter in his verse. The absence, if not the defect, of humour is everywhere apparent. But no less apparent is the absence of any sympathetic recog- nition of the serious tragedy of nineteenth century life. That it was not the poet's purpose to act the part of seer, to denounce the wrongs, to solve the mysteries, or to depict the anguish of life, may be gathered from his modest introduction to these poems : ' Of Heaven and Hell I have no power to sing, I cannot ease the burden of your fears, Or make quick coming death a little thing, Or bring again the pleasure of past years, Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears, Or hope again for aught that I can say, The idle singer of an idle day. ' The heavy trouble, the bewildering care That weighs us down who live and earn our bread, These idle verses have no power to bear ; So let us sing of names remembered, Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead, Or long time take their memory quite away From us poor singers of an empty day. ' Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight ? Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, Telling a tale not too importunate To those who in the sleepy region stay, Lulled by the singer of an empty day. ' 2 A 37 Victorian Literature Perhaps just because of this dreamy aloofness from the heart-sorrow and stress of present day needs and burdens, these long poems of Morris cannot be accorded the highest place even in the history of his own art. He has never been extensively popular. By many of the educated class he has been warmly appreciated ; but there is an irony in the circumstance that the toiling masses to whom he gave so much of his life know him but little. His later work, Sigurd the Volsung (1877) reaches a higher elevation, and is perhaps in closer touch with modern life ; but it also is open to the objection that it deals with what to us must be a world of dreams and shadows, too vague and remote from modern circumstances to be capable of arousing any warmth of sympathy in nineteenth century readers. The powerful attraction which the ancient Norse imaginations had for Mr Morris may be seen in the number of translations from the Icelandic done by him in conjunction with Mr Magnusson. Of these are The Story of Grettir the Strong (1869) and The Story of the Vohungs and the Niblungs (i 8 70). Among the recreations of this busy life were translations of the ^Eneid and the Odyssey. The leisure of his later years, however, was chiefly given to the production of a number of tales full of the fresh and romantic spirit of an early world. These, to many minds, proved most attractive. Some of them were in prose, and some partly in prose and partly in verse. Thus there appeared in rapid succession, and in outward Lord de Tabley 371 forms befitting their archaic character, The House of the Wolfaigs, The Roots of the Mountains, The Glitter- ing Plain, The Wood Beyond the World (1894), and The Well at the World's End (1896), the latter issued only just before his death. Lord de Tabley (1835-1895), better known in earlier life as John Leicester Warren, was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. Between 1864 and 1873 he published a succession of volumes containing poems, metrical dramas, and novels. After 1873, apparently because of insufficient encouragement, he wrote no more verses, until in 1893 he was once more induced to come before the public with a volume made up partly of new pieces, and partly of a selection from his earlier volumes. This dainty and beautiful volume was received with great cordiality, and full justice was done to the calm, chaste, somewhat statuesque beauty of the style, and the elevation of thought, feeling, and imagination which these poems displayed. Jael and Pandora are noteworthy specimens of this author's manner and power. In 1895 he produced a second volume, Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical, containing such fine work as Orpheus in Hades^ The Death of Phcethon^ and Circe. In these, as in most of the poems of this author, we see the poet of culture, choosing his subjects chiefly from the old Greek myths, and casting only an occasional glance over the turbulent moods and passions of modern life and society. Behind their 372 Victorian Literature classic beauty of conception and of form, one seems to hear, subdued to distance, the ' Still music of forgotten shapes, Dim pathos of a Pagan soul.' On the whole it is a Pagan sentiment, grave, acquiescent, coldly tender, never hopeful for the future, never really glad in the present, that is the prevailing mood of this poetry. ' Why should we tax the gods with woe ? They sit outside, they bear no part, They never wove the rainbow's glow, They never built the human heart. ' These careless idlers who can blame ? If Chance and Nature govern men : The universe from atoms came, And back to atoms rolls again. ' As earthly kings they keep their state, The cup of joy is in their hands; The war-note deepens at their gate, They hear a wail of hungry lands. ' They feast, they let the turmoil drive, And Nature scorns their fleeting sway : She ruled before they were alive, She rules when they are passed away. ' Before the poet's wistful face The flaming walls of ether glow : He sees the lurid brinks of space, Nor trembles at the gulfs below. ' He feels himself a foundering bark, Tossed on the tides of Time alone. Blindly he rushes on the dark, Nor waits his summons to be gone.' Robert William Buchanan 373 Robert William Buchanan (1841) is a poet of such an undoubted faculty that one wonders that he should be so little known. It is certainly not because his poems lack interest. Nor is it because they are either limited in quantity or inferior in power. Their range is exceedingly wide, and they throb with an intense, sometimes almost a painful, interest. Still less can it be said of Mr Buchanan, as it might with justice be said of Mr William Morris, that he stands aloof from present day needs and circumstances. No one could utter more plainly the burden of ordinary human joy and sorrow. It is, therefore, the more surprising that he should be comparatively unappreci- ated, while the claims of writers who do not deserve to be mentioned along with him are persistently pressed upon the public notice. This is much to be regretted, for Mr Buchanan, if we mistake not, is a poet who, notwithstanding inequalities, has scarcely any superiors among English poets now living. Robert Buchanan was born in Staffordshire in 1841. His father was proprietor of a Glasgow newspaper and a journalist by profession. It was no doubt thus that Robert Buchanan received his bent towards literature. He was educated at the High School and University of Glasgow, where he made the acquaintance of David Gray, the author of he Luggie. In 1860 these youthful aspirants made their way to London, ambitious to win for themselves a name in the kingdom of letters. Poor Gray speedily succumbed, leaving London only to die. Buchanan, by dint of 374 Victorian Literature energy, perseverance, and native genius, survived the hard struggle through which he had to pass, and fully realised the object of his ambition. His first volume of poetry, Undertones, was published in 1860, and was followed five years later by Idyls and Legends of Inverburn (1865). The rawness of youth was to be seen in the first of these, as was also much that was suggestive and promising. In the second, and still more in the London Poems that followed in 1866, we see unmistakably a richly endowed poet, full of imagination, dramatic insight, humour, pathos, and an abundance of sympathy with the unintelligible anguish of life that so often meets us in the lowest human forms. Here was no playing with the gossamer hues of air-spun fancies. There is a terrible earnest- ness in these poems ; and if at times we are tempted to revolt against the plainness with which the almost hopeless enigmas of life are set forth, we find comfort in the representation, again and again repeated, that after all the bad is not altogether bad, and that there is a saving leaven in human nature even at its worst. It is this that prevents such poems as Liz, Ratcliffe Meg, and Nell, from being positively repulsive. The North Coast Poems (1867) are full of the same sym- pathetic humanity, and deal with similar problems of common life, only substituting the scent of the heather and the salt breath of the long waves that beat upon northern shores for the pallid air of London streets. When we read such poems as Meg Blane or The Scaith of Bartle, we are confronted with forms of Robert William Buchanan 375 human wrong and anguish that scarcely admit of earthly alleviation. Yet, after all, there is comfort in this poet's view, even though it should be found only in the peace and solace of the great reconciler death. In the Coruisken Sonnets and the Book of Orm (1870), the poet appeals to a more cultivated public ; but still occupied with the same perplexing problems of life and destiny, can proclaim anew his generous gospel of hope. In their air of philosophical mysti- cism, these poems are more in accord with the prevail- ing tendencies of modern poetry ; they hover around death, the grave, and the hereafter ; they see even in such a conception of God as the poet has formed the operation of a boundless love. The Book of Orm contains some of the finest writing that has come from Mr Buchanan's pen. How weirdly conceived, for example, is The Dream of the World without Death, in which he shows how miserable we should be if our dear ones were only taken, and not visibly dead to us ! But it is in The Vision of the Man Accurst that he rises to the climax of his poetical achievement. This is a work of powerful imagination, which thrills us with its high suggestion, and which, while it depicts the immeasurable divine pity, at the same time re- veals the divinity of a purely human love. Kindred to this fine poem, and somewhat similar in treatment and in excellence, is a poem of a later time, The, Ballad of Judas Iscariot. There is something strangely haunting and impressive in the manner in which the soul of the great betrayer is represented as 376 Victorian Literature vainly seeking a resting place for the poor mangled body, and in which the Divine Master Himself is con- ceived as delaying the Holy Supper until the soul of Iscariot shall appear to share it : ' 'Twas the bridegroom stood at the open door, And beckon'd, smiling sweet ; 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot Stole in, and fell at his feet. ' The Holy Supper is spread within, And the many candles shine, And I have waited long for thee Before I poured the wine ! ' The supper wine is poured at last, The lights burn bright and fair, Iscariot washes the Bridegroom's feet, And dries them with his hair.' Scattered through all Mr Buchanan's writings are passages of rare lyrical sweetness and melody. In such poems as the ' The Lights o' Leith, he has caught with wonderful effect the simple and poignant spirit as well as the form of the ancient ballad. His pathos, of which there is no better example than this poem, is real and convincing. His humour is no less true, and finds an admirable illustration in the rollicking Wedding of Shon Maclean. The dramatic instinct is everywhere manifest in the way in which this poet seizes upon situations which give to the dramatist his opportunity, and also in the vividness with which he realises and portrays character. His narratives and descriptions of nature are marked by truth and realistic imagination. Robert William Buchanan 377 Of Mr Buchanan's other works in poetry may be mentioned Songs of the Terrible Year (1870), suggested by the Franco-German War; Political Mystics, Saint Abe and his Seven Wives, White Rose and Red, Balder the Beautiful, The City of Dreams, The Outcast (\ty\\ and The Wandering Jew (1893). Prose fiction and the drama have for some years engrossed most of Mr Buchanan's attention, and in both he has won con- siderable success. From The Lights o' Leith the following extracts are taken. A ship is running for the port amidst a wintry gale of snow and hail ; and through the surging spray the sailors see the town aflame with dancing lights. A boat is launched to take the skipper and the mate ashore. The latter tells the skipper how twenty years ago, he, the son of a drowned father, and an only child, ran away to sea ; how he had thrice re- turned from his wanderings, always, although empty- handed, to receive the kindliest welcome from his poor old mother; and how, now that his wanderings are over, he will comfort her with his presence and the wealth he has acquired. 4 And I lang, and lang, to seek ance mair The cot by the side o' the sea, And to find my grey old mither there, Waiting and watching for me ; 4 To dress her oot like a leddy grand While the tears o' gladness drap, To put the rings on her wrinkled hand, The siller intil her lap !i 378 Victorian Literature ' And to say, " O mither, I'm hame, I'm hame Forgie me, O forgie ! And never mair shall ye ken a care Until the day you dee ! " ' O bright and red shone the lights o' Leith In the snowy winter-tide Down the cheeks of the man the salt tears ran, As he stood by the skipper's side.' Hurrying to his mother's cot, he finds it black and tenantless. Tortured by his fears, his cousin, ' lame Janet Wylie, frae Marywell,' finds him, and, after much urging, tells him a tale so horrible that life for him is no longer possible. Her story was, that the bent form of his old mother had come to be regarded as that of a witch, and that when the cowardly pedant, ' King Jamie,' was driven into port by stress of weather, search was made for the witches whose spells were believed to have caused the storm. ' " O Robin, dear Robin, hearken nae mair ! " u Speak on, I'll heark to the en* ! " " O Robin, Robin, the sea oot there Is kinder than cruel men ! " ' ' They bade her tell she had wrought the spell That made the tempest blaw ; They strippit her bare as a naked bairn, They tried her wi' pincers and heated airn Till she shriek'd and swoon'd awa' ! < O Robin, Robin, the king sat there, While the cruel deed was done, And the clergy o' Christ ne'er bade him spare For the sake o' God's ain Son ! . Robert William Buchanan 379 4 The lights o' Leith, the lights o' Leith ! Like Hell's own lights they glow, While the sailor stands, with his trembling hands Prest hard on his heart in woe ! ' O Robin, Robin, . . . They doom'd her to burn . . . Doon yonner upon the quay . . . This night was the night ... see the light ! How it burns by the side o' the sea ! ' ' . . . She paused with a moan. . . . He had left her alone, And rushing through drift and snow, Down the side o' the wintry hill he had flown, His eyes on the lights below ! High up on the quay, blaze the balefires, and see ! Three stakes are deep set in the ground, To each stake smear 'd with pitch, clings the corpse of a witch, With the fire flaming redly around ! What madman is he who leaps in where they gleam, Close, close, to the centremost form ? " O mither, O mither," he cries with a scream That rings thro' the heart of the storm ! ' He can see the white hair snowing down thro' the glare, The white face upraised to the skies Then the cruel red blaze blots the thing from his gaze, And he falls on his face, and dies.' Writers of Society Verse. There is a class of poets of much less strenuous note, who following the French modes, and often imitating French forms, in pure lightness of heart set themselves to amuse man- kind. It is impossible not to be thankful to them. They have brought sunshine to the gloom of latter- day poetry, and added a new zest to living. As to 380 Victorian Literature the question whether they are to be considered poets, or only makers of verse, we need not concern ourselves. They do not take their own work too seriously, and will probably be content if they have succeeded in making the world a gayer and brighter place than it was before. The qualities of these writers are a dainty lightness of touch and an inimitable grace, wit, and good humour. In form and melody their verse is often perfect. The ' subjects of this vers-de-societe, as it has been called, are frequently trivial, but they are touched with such archness and verve, they show such an exquisite taste and knowledge both of rhythm and of rhyme, that to the mind of the wearied reader they often yield a quite peculiar pleasure. Moreover, in the swift and unexpected transitions of this verse from gay to grave, in the flashes sent from its rainbow- tinted laughter into the sombre depths over which that laughter plays, is occasionally to be heard the note of what is not easily to be distinguished from true poetry. Those who have reached high excel- lence as writers of society verse are very few indeed, and it is of them only that these things are said. The inferior writers are numerous, and nothing can be more wearisome than most of their effusions. The keynote of this verse was struck by Winthrop MackworthPraed (1802-1839), the friend of Macaulay, and author of The Red Fisherman, although he belongs of right to the pre- Victorian period. Chronologically, the first and one of the best of our gayer minstrels, Writers of Society Verse 381 is Frederick Locker, or Locker-Lampson as he was called after his second marriage. Mr Locker was born in 1821, and in early years saw service as a clerk in the Admiralty, although in later life he enjoyed a refined and cultured leisure. His London Lyrics (1857) have all the qualities of the best drawing-room verse the gaiety, the exquisite finish and felicity, the playful humour and dash of pathos. Mr Locker-Lampson died in 1895. Charles Stuart Calverley (1831-1884) in Verses and Translations (1862) and Fly Leaves (1872) shows a similar happy gift of light and graceful rhyming. It is Mr Austin Dobson, however, who takes the highest rank amongst these minstrels of the * lighter lyre,' and has done the best work of this kind up to the present time. Mr Dobson was born at Plymouth in 1840, and like Mr Locker became clerk in a govern- ment office. He got part of his education abroad a fact which probably accounts to a certain extent for the form which his genius took, and the manifest traces of a French influence upon his style. His works have been extremely popular, and are not likely to lose their fascination. In 1873 he published Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Societe ; in 1877, Proverbs in Porcelain ; in 1883, Old World Idylls, a reprint of selections from the two preceding volumes ; and in 1885, At the Sign of the Lyre. In these we have all the lightness and gaiety, facility and neatness, genial wisdom, pathos, and humour of the most per- fect writing of this kind. If there is wit, it plays 382 Victorian Literature harmlessly like summer lightning ; if the inevitable evil shows itself, it is touched delicately ; and notwith- standing so much of a Horatian and French influence manifest throughout, the purest may read these pages without a blush. There seems, therefore, a peculiar appropriateness in the dedication of his Old World Idylls not only to the toiling dwellers in towns and the many sad of heart, but also, and chiefly, to the modest English girl : ' But most to you with eyelids pure, Scarce witting yet of love or lure ; To you, with bird-like glances bright, Half-paused to speak, half-poised in flight ; O English girl, divine, demure, To you I sing ! ' How quaintly the manners and the very atmosphere of the eighteenth century are reproduced in such fine pieces as The Ballad of Beatt Brocade, A Dead Letter, A Gentleman of the Old School, and The Old Sedan Chair, and with what an exquisite daintiness Molly Trefusis is placed before us ! She was Cornish. We know at once by the ' Tre ; ' Then of guessing it scarce an abuse is If we say that where Bude bellows back to the sea Was the birthplace of Molly Trefusis. * And she lived in the era of patches and bows, Not knowing what rouge and ceruse is ; For they needed (I trust) but her natural rose, The lilies of Molly Trefusis. ' And I somehow connect her (I frankly admit That the evidence hard to produce is) Writers of Society Verse 383 With Bath in its hey-day of fashion and wit, This dangerous Molly Trefusis. 1 1 fancy her, radiant in ribbon and knot (How charming that old-fashioned puce is ! ) All blooming in laces, fal-lals and what not, At the pump-room Miss Molly Trefusis. ' He says she was ' Venus.' I doubt it. Beside, (Your rhymer so hopelessly loose is ! ) His ' little ' could scarce be to Venus applied, If fitly to Molly Trefusis. 1 No, no. It was Hebe he had in his mind ; And fresh as the handmaid of Zeus is, And rosy, and rounded, and dimpled you'll find Was certainly Molly Trefusis ! 'And you'll find, I conclude, in the 'Gentleman's Mag,' At the end, where the pick of the news is, ' On the (blank) at "the Bath," to Sir Hilary Brag, With a fortune, Miss Molly Trefusis.' Mr Andrew Lang (1844), better known as a versa- tile and accomplished prose writer, belongs to the same class of poets, although he has had his ventures into other realms of poetry besides. His most ambitious work in verse, Helen of Troy (1882), has the serious intent of seeking to rehabilitate the fair wife of Mene- laus by showing that, in her flight with Paris, she was not a free agent, but the unwilling victim of the goddess Aphrodite, who by her spells thus led the unhappy queen to fateful Troy. The poem through- out is marked by the ease and felicity of expression, the scholarly grace and charm of narrative and descrip- 384 Victorian Literature tion we expect in this writer ; but it nowhere rises into any noteworthy elevation of manner or of senti- ment. A more impressive example still of Mr Lang's serious verse is to be found in his beautiful sonnet entitled The Odyssey. His lighter verse is to be found in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), Ballades in Blue China (1880), Rhymes a la Mode (1884), Grass of Parnassus (1888), and Ban and Arriere Ban (1894). These can hardly be said to reach the inimitable daintiness of Austin Dobson's best work, nevertheless they are choice specimens of the careless joyance, the sprightly wisdom, and many felicities in thought and expression of our gayer minstrelsy. The brightness and gaiety with which small things are handled may be seen in the following stanza from the Ballades in Blue China: ' There's a joy without canker or cark, There's a pleasure eternally new, 'Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that's ancient and blue ; Unchipp'd all the centuries through It has pass'd, since the chime of it rang, And they fashion'd it, figure and hue, In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.' From the first of these thirty-two poems, the finely turned Ballade to Theocritus in Winter, to the last of the series, the Ballade of his Choice oj a Sepulchre, all are interesting, and illustrate happily the lightness and sureness of touch and many graces of this form of verse. But the last of these reaches a deeper note, William Watson 385 and is to be ranked among the poet's happier efforts. ' Here I'd come when weariest ! Here the breast Of the windburg's tufted over Deep with bracken ; here his crest Takes the west, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. ' Silent here are lark and plover ; In the cover Deep below the cushat best Loves his mate, and croons above her O'er their nest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. ' Bring me here, Life's tired-out guest, To the blest Bed that awaits the weary rover, Here should failure be confessed ; Ends my quest Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover ! ' William Watson (1858). Of the poets that were still young when Lord Tennyson died, none was more frequently spoken of as a possible successor in the Laureateship than William Watson. It is true that there have been many other ' new ' poets since that time, each of them duly acclaimed as the undoubted great singer whom the world has been expecting. And yet Mr Watson's position has not been seriously shaken. He may not equal in poetical genius, far less in amount of production, such poets as Swinburne and William Morris, but he can easily hold his own with the younger band of singers with whom so much of our poetical future lies. He reflects not a little of 2 B 386 Victorian Literature the elevation and chaste dignity of the great masters of English song. His verse commends itself by the clarity of its thought, the lucidity and harmony of its expression, its artistic reserve, and freedom from the turbulence of overstrained emotion, which is so fre- quently to be found in our younger poets. Mr Watson had to serve his art for many years before his merits as a poet obtained the recognition he has now won. Born in 1858 in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, he early went to live near Liverpool, and while still a youth, contributed poems to the newspaper press. In 1880, he produced his first volume of verse, The Prince's Quest and other Poems, written for the most part whilst he was still in his teens. The public were not greatly moved by it, but it won the approval of Dante Rossetti and other competent critics, who saw in it a work of exceptional promise. A series of poetical * Epigrams' followed, but it was not till 1892 that the public attention was conquered by another small volume from his pen, entitled, Wordsworth's Grave and other Poems. There was here no froth of words or rant of passion. The reasonableness and weight of thought and the fine dignity and chastity of expression took hold of every reader. Something of the severe simplicity of his master, Wordsworth, is to be seen in this verse. He does not seek to startle by bizarre effects, still less to shock conventional feeling by outraging propriety or by tampering with deeply cherished beliefs. The general tone of his poetry is subdued to a twilight calm and soft- William Watson 387 ness. We may indeed apply to the poet himself what he has written in the first of the Epigrams : ' 'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole ; Second in order of felicity I hold it to have walk'd with such a soul.' Mr Watson's inspiration is real, although the fount from which it flows is not a copious one. He knows his limitations, and in the prelude to the volume just referred to, says : ' The mighty poets from their flowing store Dispense like casual alms the careless ore ; Through throngs of men their lonely way they go Let fall their costly thoughts nor seem to know. Not mine the rich and showering hand that strews The facile largess of a stintless muse. A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long, Capriciously she touches me to song Then leaves me to lament her flight in vain, And wonder will she ever come again.' Of all the poetical tributes which the death of Tenny- son in 1892 called forth, it was generally acknowledged that Watson's was one of the best. Republished in a small volume, entitled Lachrymce Musarum, and other Poems, in the following year, it well sustained his reputation. This was still further accomplished by his Odes, and other Poems, published in 1894. Here, as in the other volumes, are traces of a shadowed life, of seasons of enforced idleness, and the pathos of grave and long-continued illness. But sad though his poetry sometimes is, it has no note of whining or 388 Victorian Literature defiance. It looks abroad upon the problems of life with an eye into which pain has entered, but which, nevertheless, retains its serenity because it can see beyond the pain. The end of the century pessimism has no encouragement from Mr Watson. From all trial he emerges manful to new hope, courage, and trust. This is finely expressed in these beautiful lines from Vita Nuova : ' I too have come through wintry terrors yea, Through tempest and through cataclysm of soul Have come and am delivered. Me the spring, Me also, dimly with new life hath touched, And with regenerate hope, the salt of life ; And I would dedicate these thankful tears To whatsoever power beneficent, Veiled though his countenance, undivulged his thought, Hath led me from the haunted darkness forth Into the gracious air and vernal morn.' This is, indeed, his message to the world, again and again repeated, as in these opening lines addressed to R. H. Hutton : ' Yes, I have had my griefs ; and yet I think that when I shake off life's annoy, I shall in my last hour, forget All things that were not joy.' It is impossible to say what Mr Watson's final posi- tion will be. Some have thought him cold, and miss in his verse the strong voice of passion, and that cry of the heart so often heard in recent poetry. It is also urged that he wants colour, that the landscape he depicts is of a too uniform greyness of tint. But surely a poet who, by his grave thoughtfulness, finely-poised William Watson 389 imagination, and perfection of poetical form suggests such masters as Milton, Gray, and Wordsworth has claims to be considered which cannot be lightly put aside. The fear with regard to him is lest the critical and reflective mood, which undoubtedly is strong, should crush out impulse, and thus dry up the foun- tains of his inspiration at their source. But a more valid objection to his claims to be considered a great poet is to be found in the meagreness of his produc- tion after so long a service in the cause of poetry. Mr Watson's later volumes are full of fine things, which will bear reading many times. The following beautiful lines are from the Ode to H. D. Traill, one of the most striking poems in Odes, and other Poems, published in 1894 : ' 'Tis from those moods in which life stands With feet earth-planted, yet with hands Stretched towards visionary lands, Where vapours lift A moment, and aerial strands Gleam through the rift. ' The poet wins, in hours benign, At older than the Delphic shrine, Those intimations faint and fine To which belongs Whatever character divine Invest his songs. ' And could we live more near allied To cloud and mountain, wind and tide, Cast this unmeaning coil aside And go forth free, The World our goal, Desire our guide We then might see 39 Victorian Literature * Those master moments grow less rare, And oftener feel that nameless air Come rumouring from we know not where ; And touch at whiles Fantastic shores, the fringes fair Of fairy isle, * And hail the mystic bird that brings News from the inner courts of things, The eternal courier-dove whose wings Are never furled ; And hear the bubblings of the springs That feed the world.' In addition to the works already mentioned, Mr Watson has written The Eloping Angels a Caprice, which, however, has added nothing to his reputation, also a clever volume of prose, entitled Excursions in Criticism, and The Year of Shame (1897), in which in sonnet form he gives indignant expression to his dis- satisfaction with the supineness of England with regard to Turkish atrocities in Armenia. John Davidson (1857). Since the publication of his Ballads and Songs in 1894, it has not been unusual to hear this writer spoken of as the strongest poetical force among our younger men. Yet the contrast between his work and that of Mr Watson is very great. The severe self-restraint of the latter is noticeably absent from the former. With much beauty of expression, lyrical charm, and affluence of imagery, Mr Davidson combines an Elizabethan forcefulness, and something also of an Elizabethan extravagance. For a poet he can no longer be counted young, yet John Davidson 391 his faults are the faults of youth. He has imagination, fancy, a wide outlook, melody, and a keen sense of the beautiful ; but intellectual force and the power of self-criticism can scarcely be reckoned among his gifts. Often he runs riot in ( wild and whirling words.' He would even seem to wish to startle and offend by the violence of his attacks on dearly cherished beliefs. In the volume of Ballads and Songs already referred to, he expresses a wish that A Ballad of Heaven, and A Ballad of Hell, should be read along with A Ballad of the Making of a Poet and A Ballad of the Exodus from Houndsditch, from which we may gather that he himself attaches especial im- portance to this sequence of pieces, and that it is from them we are to obtain his ripest thoughts respecting life and that which lies beyond. And if we add to them A Ballad of a Nun, we shall have under review the most noteworthy of Mr Davidson's whole contributions to poetical literature up to the present time. Now making every allowance for occasional felicities both of conception and of language, and for a general manifestation of poetical faculty of an unusual quality, it must be confessed that the addition which these poems make towards a philosophy of life is miserably small. With all their poetical charm, they are destitute of true dignity and any high sense of moral beauty. Thus they seldom thrill or soften the reader, perhaps because they so often rouse within him an angry feeling of protest and opposition. The windy 392 Victorian Literature egotisms of such a piece as A Ballad on the Making of a Poet, notwithstanding its many fine passages, if we are to take them as in any degree expressing the writer himself, only serve to reveal the weaknesses and vagaries of the so-called artistic temperament. Having cast off all hereditary and parent-sanctioned creeds, he plumes himself on being a man apart : * Set by to overhear The inner harmony, the very tune Of Nature's heart ; to be a thoroughfare For all the pageantry of Time ; to catch The mutterings of the Spirit of the Hour And make them known ; and of the lowliest To be the minister, and therefore reign Prince of the powers of the air, lord of the world And master of the sea. Within my heart I'll gather all the universe, and sing As sweetly as the spheres, and I shall be The first of men to understand himself.' These poems are never quite clear in their meaning, nor do they convince. The Ballad of Heaven pictures an inspired musician finishing his score just when wife and child have died from want of food, and unable to survive them, being ushered into heaven to the notes of his own ' brave andante ' and ' thundering scherzo.' ' But God said " Even so ; Nothing is lost that's wrought with tears ; The music that you made below Is now the music of the spheres." ' The poetical virtues of courage, hope, and love alone John Davidson 393 seem to have place in this verse, and even when the reader feels most the power that underlies it, he is most conscious how little it appeals to his sympathies. Mr Davidson was born in 1857 at Barrhead, Ren- frewshire. His father was an Evangelical Union minister, and in the early days of the poet was for a time colleague to Dr James Morrison, in Glasgow. At fifteen the future poet became a pupil teacher at Greenock, thus coming under the influence of local scenery which doubtless suggested the descriptions in The Making of a Poet. He taught in various schools in Scotland until 1889, when he came to London to pursue a literary career. His life during the next four years was one of hardship. He certainly did not eat the bread of idleness, for since that time he has produced more than a dozen separate volumes. His first real success was won with Fleet Street Eclogues, published in 1893. It was followed by A Random Itinerary, partly in prose and partly in verse, and by the still more remarkable Ballads and Songs in 1894. Since then there have appeared from his pen a second series of Fleet Street Eclogues and New Ballads (1896). Technical perfection is not characteristic of this writer. Here, however, undoubtedly is the soul of the true poet. Any number of passages passages rather than whole poems might be cited in proof of this. Many see in Mr Davidson's Ballad of a Nun his strongest claim to a true poetic inspiration. And yet in the conception of this poem there is something 394 Victorian Literature repugnant and false to human nature. We have only to compare Adelaide Ann Proctor's Legend of Provence with this, Mr Davidson's version of it, to see how much his work has gained in power, and at the same time lost in moral elevation. In his descriptions of Nature, as in his four poems on the Seasons, he is fresh and original. The following vigorous stanzas are from his poem on Spring : ' Certain, it is not wholly wrong To hope that yet the skies may ring With the due praises that belong To April over all the Spring : If one could only make a song The birds would wish to sing. ' The beggar starts his pilgrimage ; And kings their tassel-gentles fly ; The labourer earns a long day's wage ; The knight, a star of errantry, With some lost princess for a page Strays about Arcady. * Now fetching water in the dusk The maidens linger by the wells ; The ploughmen cast their homespun husk, And, while old Tuck his chaplet tells, Themselves in spangled fustian busk, And garters girt with bells. * Maid Marian's kirtle, somewhat old, A welt of red must now enhance ; Oho ! ho ho ! in silk and gold The gallant hobby horse will prance ; Sing hey, for Robin Hood the bold ; Heigh ho, the morris-dance ! John Davidson 395 ' Oh foolish fancy, feebly strong ! To England shall we ever bring The old mirth back ? Yes, yes ; nor long It shall be till that greater Spring ; And some one yet may make a song The birds would like to sing.' Reaching, however, a higher standard, are the following extremely poetical lines taken from A Ballad of a Nun : ' High on a hill the convent hung, Across a duchy looking down, Where everlasting mountains flung Their shadows over tower and town. * The jewels of their lofty snows In constellations flashed at night; Above their crests the moon arose ; The deep earth shuddered with delight. * Long ere she left her cloudy bed, Still dreaming in the orient land, On many a mountain's happy head Dawn lightly laid her rosy hand. ' The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm ; Clouds scattered largesses of rain ; The sounding cities, rich and warm, Smouldered and glittered in the plain. 4 Sometimes it was a wandering wind, Sometimes the fragrance of the pine, Sometimes the thought how others sinned, That turned her sweet blood into wine.' Francis Thompson. When Francis Thompson published his Poems in 1893, he seemed to justify to many the hope that one of the greater singers 396 Victorian Literature had struck his lyre amongst us. The large conception and the wide horizon, the intellectual force and sublimity of imagination were all apparently found here. Faults of occasional harshness and over-luxuri- ance, faults, too, of obscurity and pedantry in the use and coinage of words, were obvious. But all could be forgiven for the sake of the thrill that came to the reader as he accompanied the poet in his audacious yet reverent flights. Here were none of the triviali- ties of modern poetry. Almost every line was weighted with its thought, and made luminous by the flashes of a fine imagination. Moreover, the morbid despair and suspense of latter-day poetry were happily absent. The soul that here uttered itself had been crushed, but had risen ; had been in the depths, but was now on the heights, with the atmosphere of faith and hope around it, and over all the arching bow of divine mercy and love. It was a rare and elevating pleasure that such poetry could give, but it was for those only who were capable of understanding and appreciating it. The Poems are arranged in three divisions. Love in Dianas Lap, Miscellaneous Poems, and Poems on Children. The love which the first set treats of is a love without a taint of voluptuousness, a love that purifies and elevates, a love that regards woman as a gift from Heaven to purge man from his grossness, and therefore has no eye for her outward beauty, so directly and intensely does it gaze at the pure spirit within. Francis Thompson 397 1 How should I gauge what beauty is her dole Who cannot see her countenance for her soul ; As birds see not the casement for the sky ? I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind.' In the fine Poems on Children there is the same thought that a child, like a true woman, is a gift from heaven, the better part of both being native there. There is a dainty simplicity in Daisy, a bold but delicate fancifulness in The Making of Viola, and notwithstanding its air of pedantry, all the poet's great love and reverence for childhood in To my Godchild. It is, however, to the Miscellaneous Poems that most readers will turn for the most convincing proofs of this author's genius. Of these pieces A Corymbus for Autumn and The Hound of Heaven may be selected as showing to what an extraordinary height of sustained power this poet can rise. The latter, within its small compass, may be said to be one of the most richly imaginative poems of recent times. It describes a human soul pursued and finally captured by the Divine Love. The conception is noble, and is worked out with a profusion of imagery and a glow of spiritual passion that thrill the reader under a con- sciousness of unwonted exaltation. We seem in these verses to see a poet who can tread with something of Miltonic firmness the dim regions of the sublime. The poem opens thus : 4 1 fled him down the nights, and down the days ; I fled him down the arches of the years ; 398 Victorian Literature I fled him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind ; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped ; And shot precipitated Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet " All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." * Across the margent of the world I fled, And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, Smiting for shelter on their changed bars ; Fretted to dulcet jars And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon. I said to dawn : Be sudden to eve : Be soon ; With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over From this tremendous Lover ! Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see ! * To all swift things for swiftness did I sue ; Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, The long savannahs of the blue ; Or whether, Thunder-driven, They clanged His chariot "thwart a heaven, Flashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet : Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.' But such poetry may seem too remote from the lighter spirit of the times to have even the chance of popularity. This may in part be due to the strain of Catholic devotion that runs all through it, but it is Sir Lewis Morris 399 also due in some measure to its intellectual force, and its air of high and sacred imagination. None the less it gives a welcome example of the stately, deep- thoughted, earnest work of a by-past poetical time, when grand thoughts took shape in grand and noble language. The latest volumes of this writer, Sister Songs 1895, and New Poems 1897, it is to be feared, have not added to his reputation. The impression seems to grow that he is 'wilfully obscure and pedantic. The strain he puts upon- the reader is excessive; and not even the seventeenth century in which he finds his models can outdo him in the eccentric coinage of words, and the aloofness of his thoughts. Sir Lewis Morris (1835). Although the poems of this writer, judging by his numerous editions, have perhaps more largely than those of any other English poet now living secured acceptance with the general public, he is not much in favour with his literary brethren. His production has been large in amount and varied in form: and many of his poems present that surface interest in easily understood narrative that appeals so strongly to the mere lay reader. Ex- perts, however, object that he takes himself too seri- ously, that he is pretentious and shallow, that he is not only wanting in originality, but too manifestly imitative of other writers, especially Tennyson, that his thought when original seldom rises above com- monplace, and that just as seldom does it show any 400 Victorian Literature distinction of vivifying and illuminating imagination ; that, in fact, his mechanical facility is on a par with his unbounded self-confidence, and that his verse is marked by a plausible rhetoric rather than by any genuine gift of song. And although the judgment thus expressed may err on the side of harshness, and may even reflect to some extent the jealousies of other bards who have themselves been less fortunate in their appeals to the public, it must be confessed that there is some ground for their adverse judgment. Had the volume of this poet's work been less, its value would probably have been greater. And yet the very popularity of these poems would seem to indicate that they have not inadequately fulfilled their mission. For if they do not satisfy the highest taste, they do undoubtedly give pleasure to many whose tastes in poetry are of a simple and rudimentary kind. Evidently the middle-class intelligence finds his poetical treatment of the great thoughts of the age in his Songs of Two Worlds, as well as his presentation of the old Greek myths in The Epic of Hades, both pleasing and instructive. This might be considered enough to justify a genuine reputation. And it is only when the claim is advanced on his behalf of being a great and inspired singer, that hostile criticism is likely to assert itself. Besides the collections of poems just referred to, he has written Gwen, The Ode of Life, Songs Unsung, and Songs of Britain, all of which with the three series of Songs of Two Worlds, and The Epic of Hades Sir Lewis Morris 401 were in 1890 published in one compact and cheap volume. His later productions are A Vision of Saints (1890), Songs without Notes (1894), and Idylls and Lyrics (1896). This Welsh poet was born in Carmarthen in 1835. After a distinguished course at Oxford, he was in 1861 called to the bar, which however he speedily abandoned for literature. The honour of knighthood came to him in 1895. The influence of this poet on the moral side has undoubtedly been good. He shows little sympathy with the sadness and diseased sentimentality of so much of the poetry of our younger men. In his view of life there is good reason for cheerfulness and hope ; and no one can charge him with doing anything to undermine religious faith and reverence. On the whole The Epic of Hades may be regarded as his greatest contribution to modern poetry, and of the poems composing that work Marsyas will probably be generally regarded as the best. Alfred Austin (1835). On New Year's Day 1896, after an interval of three years during which the office had remained in abeyance, Mr Alfred Austin was appointed Poet-Laureate in succession to Lord Tenny- son. The appointment was a surprise to the majority of British people, who were not only ignorant of the new Laureate's works, but had scarcely even heard his name. Algernon Swinburne and William Morris, to say nothing of younger men like William 2 C 4-oa Victorian Literature Watson, were still living, and to any one of these it was thought the laurel might have fallen with better grace. No doubt there were reasons in the republicanism of Swinburne and the earnest Socialistic propaganda of Morris why they at least should be debarred from what is essentially a court function. But it is clear that even the most ardent admirers of Mr Austin cannot contend that his appointment means just what the Laureateship signified in the case of Wordsworth and Tennyson. It is only fair, how- ever, to say that if the selection of Alfred Austin proceeded on purely party lines, and was not the best possible, no other choice that could have been made would have been altogether free from objection. At least the appointment has not been won without a long and honourable record of thirty-five years of literary service as poet, critic, and journalist ; and no one can say that the new Laureate has ever used his powers for base or ignoble purposes. Moreover in his warm attachment to the throne, his reverence for British institutions, and his glowing patriotism are to be seen some at least of the qualities of a national poet, and the guarantee that the honour of his country will be safe in his hands. Mr Austin was born of Catholic parents at Head- ingley, near Leeds, in 1835. After an education obtained at Stonyhurst and St Mary's College, Oscott, he graduated at London University in 1853. In com- pliance with the wishes of his parents he now devoted himself to the study of the law, and was called to the Alfred Austin 403 bar in 1857. That his mind, however, was set on other things, may be judged by the fact that in his eighteenth year he published anonymously his first work, a poem entitled Randolph, followed soon after by a novel. On his father's death in 1861, he finally abandoned the law, and the same year witnessed the publication of The Season : a Satire, the first work to which he had put his name. It showed an abundance of cleverness and vigour, with not a little audacity and self-assertiveness. It was severely handled by many of the critics, although the promise of the youthful writer was freely enough acknowledged. During the same year he produced a reply to his critics in My Satire and its Censors, and in this as in The Season he fell foul of certain established literary reputations including those of Owen Meredith, Hep- worth Dixon, Mrs Browning and Charles Dickens, while laying the lash, not without pungency and self- satisfaction on society manners and ' diseases,' as seen in London. When, therefore, he himself appeared as a writer of serious poetry in 1862 with his Human Tragedy, expectation ran high as to his possible achievements. That his own opinion of this work is not a low one, may be judged from the fact that he has on several occasions since its first publication presented it in revised forms to the public. Neverthe- less, the result was disappointing ; for neither the Human Tragedy, nor any of the important works that followed Savonarola (1881), At the Convent Gate (1885), Prince Lucifer (1887), ambitious though they 404 Victorian Literature were, gave proof of a genuine inspiration. In his bold and clever essays on The Poetry of the Period (187 r o), he passes judgment upon his contemporaries with a refreshing vigour and frankness, and does not hesitate to criticise unfavourably even such masters as Tennyson and Browning, Swinburne and Morris. It seems strange, considering where he now stands and whom he has succeeded, to think that in these criticisms he will scarcely allow to the fine singer of In Memoriam the highest place even in the third rank of English poets. Mr Austin's shorter lyrics represent him more favourably than these longer and more ambitious performances. They have finish and smoothness. They are not mere echoes of other men's thoughts and cadences. Nevertheless they are wanting in power of thought and intensity of passion, and never thrill the reader by rising to any great height of noble imagination. There is noticeable, however, in all Mr Austin's work, whether in poetry or prose, a lucid directness and intelligence. The ardent lover of nature is revealed in every line, not Tennyson himself observing more accurately, or voicing with truer insight her ever-varying moods. He is a Briton of the Britons, ready at any moment, in vindication of crown or country, to burst forth into strains of Tyrtaean fire and energy. Besides the works already mentioned, he has written in verse The Golden Age : a Satire (1871), Interludes (1872), Soliloquies in Song (1882), Lyrical Poems (1891), Fortunatus the Pessimist (1892), England's Darling Alfred Austin 405 (1896), and The Conversion of Winckelmann (1897). In prose he is the author of five novels, and many essays and reviews contributed to the serial press, his work of this kind being marked by much brilliancy, incisiveness, and competency of knowledge. In his earlier career he did much leader-writing for the Daily News and the Standard newspapers, and acted as special correspondent for the latter at the head- quarters of the German Emperor in the Franco- German War. He is said to have been the first Englishman that entered Paris after the siege. In 1853 in conjunction with Mr W. J. Courthope, who is now Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and who has recently (1895) published the first volume of a monu- mental History of English Poetry, Mr Austin founded the National Review, of which he was editor till 1893. Among his latest contributions to English literature are a delightful piece of poetical prose, full of idyllic charm, entitled, The Garden that I Love (1894), and its equally attractive sequel, In Veronica?sGarden(\%<)$). The following verses are from A Night in June, one of Mr Austin's finest lyrics. 4 Lady ! in this night of June, Fair, like thee, and holy, Art thou gazing at the moon That is rising slowly ? I am gazing on her now : Something tells me, so art thou. Night hath been when thou and I Side by side were sitting, Watching o'er the moonlit sky Fleecy cloudlets flitting. 406 Victorian Literature Close our hands were linked then ; When will they be linked again ? 1 What to me the starlight still, Or the moonbeams' splendour, If I do not feel the thrill Of thy fingers slender ? Summer nights in vain are clear, If thy footstep be not near. ' If thou earnest, rose on rose From its sleep would waken ; From each flower and leaf that blows Spices would be shaken ; Floating down from star and tree, Dreamy perfumes welcome thee. . ..... ' I would give thee all I own, All thou hast would borrow, I from thee would keep alone Fear and doubt and sorrow. All of tender that is mine, Should most tenderly be thine. ' Moonlight ! into other skies, I beseech thee wander. Cruel thus to mock mine eyes, Idle thus to squander Love's own light on this dark spot ; For my lady cometh not ! ' Norman Gale (1862.) There is a charming fresh- ness and originality about the Country Muse (1892) and Orchard Songs (1893) of Mr Norman Gale. They breathe the very atmosphere of field and wood- land. In every rustic scene and incident the poet finds a summons to joy and the sunshine of the heart, and he is not slow to acknowledge his obligations to Norman Gale 407 the great Father who has made the country so sweet and fair. It is even a part of the charm of such poems that they touch no deep chords of emotion, deal with no dark problems of life and character. As their names imply they are simple pastorals, thrilling all through with the ecstasy of thrush and blackbird, lark and nightingale, and breathing in every line the scent of clover and of woodland. Each scene is fitted with its rustic maiden, Cicely or Clarinda, fresh as the dew, and modest as the violet, tripping across the meadow to her morning labours among the kine, or mayhap hieing shyly with her companions to a woodland bath in the shaded pool. For with this poet the beauties of nature are never divorced from the human loves that cling to them and render them still more lovely. Moreover the rustic pipe on which Mr Gale plays thus sweetly is entirely his own. This fact and a certain easy command of metrical form justify the expectation that we have still much to receive from this poet's hand. His other works are A June Romance, Cricket Songs, Songs for Little People, and a second series of The Country Muse (1895). Mr Gale was born at Kew, Surrey, in 1862. He is still, therefore, in the youth of his powers. The following lines are taken from A Cotswold Village : ' When Time is weary of my company Here let me rest. If I should end within four walls With bricks around, Buy me no smoky patch of city ground, But bring me to these acres of repose 40 8 Victorian Literature Whose natural consecration is most sure, That I may sleep beneath a country rose And where the dew is pure ; For in this valley God appeared to me, And where my soul is let my body be. 1 What time the father walked this earth He trod, I know, these Cotswold slopes ; With silence and with sound He clothed each mound ; The shadow of His robe goes over them, The bounties of His wisdom cover them And whoso cometh here To tread this sod He sees the neighbour neighbourly, And learning all Long Compton's loveliness The better learns his God.'' Other Poets. England is in the closing years of the nineteenth century as it was at the close of the sixteenth a nest of singing birds. The air seems alive with the sweet variety of their notes, and if no great distinction has as yet been won by the singers, at least we may be sure that the continuity of British song is not likely to be broken. Mention has still to be made of other poets of the period, some at least of whom may seem to deserve fuller notice than can here be given them. Coventry Patmore (1823-1897), the Laureate of Home and the Domestic Affections, wrote The Angel in the House, The Unknown Eros, and Miscellaneous Poems, but notwithstanding many exquisite passages, failed to reach the highest distinction. George Macdonald (1824), better known as a novelist, began his literary career in the dramatic poem, Within Other Poets 409 and Without, and followed it up with Poems, The Hidden Life, The Disciple, and The Gifts of the Child Christ, all of them marked by an elusive and mystical fancy, but showing so much lyrical delicacy and sweetness as to make it matter of regret that poetry and he should have parted company so soon. Gerald Massey (1828), himself sprung from the people, has strongly voiced the wants of the people, and although he has risen to no great height of lyrical inspiration, he has written both sweetly and sympathetically of fireside incidents and emotions ; and, in a number of national pieces, has shown an unwonted fire and energy of patriotic feeling. His Sir Richard Grenville's Last Fight is a spirited and powerful ballad Tennyson's subsequent treatment of the same theme notwithstanding. All his best pieces are to be found in My Lyrical Life (1890). George Meredith (1828), now so distinguished as a novelist, made his first bid for fame in a small volume of Pbems published forty-four years ago. This was followed in the intervals of his prose fictions by other exercises in verse Modern Love in 1862, and Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth in 1883. These seem to have brought him little profit and not much reputation, save with the select few to whom the subtle and eccentric qualities of this writer are as a whet to appetite. Sir Edwin Arnold (1832), formerly Principal of the Government Sanscrit College at Poona, and now Editor of the Daily Telegraph, is best known by The Victorian Literature Light of Asia, in which he tells in poetical form the story of Siddartha, the founder of Buddhism. In The Light of the World he essayed to do the same for the founder of Christianity, but with indifferent success. Theodore Watts (1836), the friend and com- panion of Dante Rossetti and Swinburne, has shown a striking poetical faculty in many beautiful sonnets and lyrics. Frederick W. H. Myers (1843), though better known as an able critic of our literature, has also taken his place among the poets in virtue of his St Paul (1865), Poems (1870), and The Renewal of Youth (1882). In all are noticeable a certain nobility of tone, and fluent grace of expression. If there is less of finish in The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges (1844), another poet of culture, there is a richer variety of poetical material, and a greater force and subtlety of thought. William Ernest Henley was born at Gloucester in 1849. In youth he suffered from bad health, and came to Edinburgh to place himself under the care of Sir Joseph, now Lord Lister. He was thus a patient in the old Edinburgh Infirmary for the space of twenty months. Two things besides his restoration to comparative health resulted. Robert Louis Stevenson found him out, saw much of him, and the two afterwards collaborated in a volume of plays, and became life-long friends. Another result of his enforced idleness was his first volume of Poems (1887), the best parts of which were inspired by hospital scenes and incidents. The vivid directness and realistic power of these at once attracted atten- Other Poets 41 1 tion. A later volume, The Song of the Sword and other Verses (1892), confirmed the good impression. Mr Henley has since made considerable reputation as a critic of art and literature, and as Editor in succes- sion of London, The Magazine of Art, and The Scots, afterwards The National, Observer, and is now engaged in editing the New Review. In the same year 1849 was born Edmund Gosse, who is also well known as a prose critic, and as a capable and industrious scholar of English and other literatures. He began his career as a poet. Of his various volumes, the principal was On Viol and Flute (1873), a later edition of which (1890) contained all his earlier poems. Want of space alone prevents the notice of many other poets of the period, especially of numerous women writers who have produced a highly respect- able body of verse, without, however, in any case ris- ing into the first rank. CHAPTER VII Essayists and Reviewers THE Victorian Essay can scarcely be considered apart from that marvellous expansion of journalism that forms perhaps the most striking literary characteristic of the present reign. It is not marked by any one distinctive feature, but in excellence it is not un- worthy of the great traditions of a literature that has given us such essayists as Bacon and Dryden, Addison and Steele, Johnson and Defoe, Hazlitt and Lamb. As in other departments of literature, so in the region of the Belles Lettres, the earlier Victorian period is also the greater. To the first half of the reign belong the names of such writers as Lockhart and Macaulay, Leigh Hunt and Carlyle, and to the excellence of their work in general literature, reference has already been made. But to this period also belong the names of De Quincey and Professor Wilson, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, to say nothing of Sir Arthur Helps, the author of Friends in Council, and such illuminat- ing critics as Walter Bagehot and George Brimley. Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859). An atmosphere Thomas de Quincey 413 of quaint originality hangs around the great Opium Eater. The interest we take in him is less due to his power of deep and subtle thought, his grand and im- pressive imagination, and his peculiarly sonorous and organ-like melody of style, all of which have made him an English classic, than to the unique and lovable personality of the man himself. No life of him, how- ever meagre, can fail of interest. Thomas de Quincey was born in Manchester in 1785. His father, a wealthy merchant in that city, died young, but left his family in comfortable circumstances. To Thomas probably the loss was more serious than to any of the other children. With his peculiarities of temperament, the judicious guidance and sympathy of a father so clever and cultured would have been in- valuable. It is evident that an element of Spartan- like austerity was present in his mother's character, and that her children found it easier to admire her many chill graces and accomplishments than to love her. After his father's death, Thomas and his elder brother William received instruction from the Rev. Samuel Hall, a clergyman of Salford, and an intimate friend of their late father. At this time Thomas was a shy, sensitive, dreamy child, predisposed to melan- choly, from which the stormy energy of his brother William did much to rouse him. In his twelfth year, Mrs de Quincey broke up her establishment at Greenheys, and removed to Bath. The Grammar School of this town was then under the headmaster- ship of Mr Morgan, an accomplished scholar. Under 41 4 Victorian Literature the inspiration of his influence young De Quincey made great progress in his classical studies, so that, although one of the younger boys, he was looked upon as the prodigy of the school. But this very success, it is said, was the cause of dissatisfaction to his mother, who disliking that her boy should be made the subject of public commendation, sent him to Wingfield, a private school in Wiltshire. Here he became a general favourite, and made good progress with his Greek studies. On leaving this school a year afterwards, he ac- companied his young friend Lord Westport in a tour through Ireland. On concluding a round of visits in which he was thus engaged during the next four or five months, his guardians decided to send him to the Grammar School of Manchester for three years before proceeding to Oxford. This they did chiefly on economical grounds, in the hope that he would secure one of several exhibitions of the value of fifty pounds obtainable for a university course at Manchester. The arrangement was little to De Quincey's liking; he pled hard that he might rather be sent to the Grammar School at Bath. When in 1800 therefore he was actually placed in Manchester, the disap- pointment seems to have rankled in his mind, and combined with the irksomeness of restraint following upon so much irresponsible liberty, and perhaps also with some measure of ill-health, caused him after eighteen months to run away from the school. The causes for this step, whatever they were, did not seem sufficient to himself afterwards. His masters were Thomas de Quincey 415 appreciative of his uncommon ability, his companions liked him, and as several of them were boys of quite exceptional talent and information, he had all the stimulus he required. We are left to conjecture that the eccentricity and impatience of restraint that were characteristic of him throughout life had begun to assert themselves. He found his way to Chester, where his mother was then residing. Naturally she had nothing but blame for the step that he had taken. Fortunately, however, for his wishes, his mother's brother, Colonel Thomas Penson, was then staying with her, and taking a less unfavourable view of the situation, recommended that the boy should receive a guinea a week, and be left free to wander where he chose. From July to November 1802, therefore, we find him engaged in a protracted pedestrian tour in North Wales, in which he meets strange people and has many curious adventures. Either growing tired of this vagabond life at last, or freakishly resenting the thin thread of restraint which his guinea a week imposed upon him, he took the curious step of burying himself in London, in the hope of being able to raise 200 on his expectations. He has put a thrilling and pathetic interest into the story of this part of his life. It is scarcely credible that a youth of seventeen, well connected and without vicious habits, should have been thus stranded in London, and completely lost for so many months to all knowledge of his friends. During the delay consequent upon negotiations with the money-lenders, he was reduced almost to starva- 4i 6 Victorian Literature tion, and became acquainted, innocently enough, with some strange associates. These he has described with great power, and in the case of the poor waif Ann, a kindly outcast of sixteen years, with a touching pathos. At length he was discovered and sent home. After remaining in his mother's house for about a year, he went to Oxford in 1803. He was too erratic in his habits to be very successful as a student, and he ulti- mately left without a degree. He did, however, go up for his written examination, and so impressed were the examiners, that one of them, Dr Goodenough of Christ Church, told the Worcester College people that they had sent up the cleverest man he had ever en- countered, and that, if he did as well in his vivd voce as he had done on paper, he would carry all before him. He vanished however from Oxford the night before his vivd voce was due. In illustration of the reserve which after the first he practised at Oxford, he mentions that he spoke only once to his tutor, and that what was said consisted ' of only three sentences, two of which fell to his share, one to mine.' He had brought with him to the University an unusual mastery of the Greek language; and while there he divided his time between the study of Greek philo- sophy, German, Hebrew, and the masterpieces of English literature. In 1807 he had been introduced to Wordsworth and Coleridge, for both of whom he had the warmest admiration, and whose genius, as expressed in The Lyrical Ballads, he claimed to have been one of Thomas de Quincey 417 the first to recognise. On leaving Oxford in 1808, he took up his abode in the cottage at Grasmere that had been occupied by Wordsworth, and this cottage he retained for the next twenty - seven years. By his residence at Grasmere he became enrolled in the band of brilliant geniuses who took so much of their inspiration from the scenery and associations of the Lakes. One evil habit he had, which was little in harmony with his beautiful surroundings. He is known everywhere throughout the world as the English Opium Eater. This pernicious habit had been growing upon him since 1804, his second year at Oxford, when, during a visit to London, he first tasted the drug. It was prescribed by a chemist for the relief of certain dis- tressing symptoms, from which De Quincey appears to have suffered more or less throughout his life. Up to 1813 it was taken only occasionally, but after that year it became a part of his daily diet, the quantity steadily increasing, until in 1816 it reached the appalling total of 8000 drops of laudanum per day. In this year De Quincey was married to Margaret Simpson, the beautiful young daughter of a Westmoreland yeoman. In view of this event he made an effort to overcome his enemy, and so far succeeded that his daily quantity was reduced from 8000 to 80 drops. Sometime after marriage, however, he succumbed once more, and four years were spent in a kind of intellectual torpor. As the result, his affairs became seriously embarrassed, and 2 D 4i 8 Victorian Literature the sharp goad of necessity compelling him, he was again enabled, partially at least, to overcome the spells of the deadly drug. When in 1821 he published in the pages of the London Magazine his famous Confessions of an English Opium Eater, he was under the impression that he had finally triumphed. In this, however, he was mistaken, for he continued to use the drug, although in diminished quantity, till his death. Up to 1825 his literary connection was chiefly with London, whither he often repaired from his retreat among the mountains. On such occasions he would have much pleasant intercourse with such agreeable companions as Charles Lamb, Thomas Hood, Sir T. Noon Talfourd, Charles Knight, and Allan Cunning- ham. After 1825 he wrote chiefly for Edinburgh, many of his best articles appearing in Blackwood 's Magazine. Of these may be mentioned Murder con- sidered as one of the Fine Arts, The Mail Coach, with The Vision of Sudden Death, Suspuia de Profundis ; also Toilette of a Hebrew Lady, Dr Parr and his Con- temporaries, The Ccesars, The Esseness, and Coleridge and Opium Eating. In 1834 ne began to write for Taifs Magazine, also published in Edinburgh. His connection with Tait lasted till 1846, and he appears to have contributed in all about fifty papers to its pages. De Quincey's earliest acquaintance with Edinburgh was through Professor Wilson. The latter, in consequence of the loss of his fortune, had been obliged to leave Elleray, Thomas de Quincey 419 his beautiful home on Lake Windermere. He and De Quincey had had many long rambles and much pleasant intercourse together. It was natural, there- fore, that when Wilson had settled in Edinburgh, De Quincey should pay him a visit in his new home. Wilson lived in the very heart of the intellectual life of the northern metropolis, and De Quincey seems to have had much pleasure in meeting Wilson's brilliant band of associates, of whom were such men as Lock- hart, Sir William Hamilton, his brother. Captain Thomas Hamilton, the author of Cyril Thornton, Sir William Allan, and R. P. Gillies. This was in 1820. From 1826 to 1830, various articles from De Quincey's pen appeared in Blackwood, in conse- quence of which it would seem he was to be found even more frequently in Edinburgh than at Grasmere. This was followed in the latter year by the removal of the family to Edinburgh, which henceforth till his death is the chief scene of his literary labours. The De Quincey family can be traced with difficulty through the various lodgings occupied by them in Edinburgh during the next ten years. The reason for such frequent changes does not appear, although from the fact that one of these lodgings was within the sanctuary of Holyrood, we may suppose that straitened circumstances had something to do with them. But there is a mysterious or evasive element in all the De Quincey history. Neither the man himself nor his life, profoundly interesting though he was to so many people, was fully known even to such intimates as 420 Victorian Literature Wilson. They saw in him an enigma, whom no ordinary standards of life and character could possibly explain. After the death of Mrs de Quincey in 1837, a comfortable cottage was taken at Polton, near Lasswade, about seven miles from Edinburgh, where the children lived under the admirable care of the eldest daughter Margaret ; De Quincey himself, except at intervals, living at 42 Lothian Street, or some other lodging in Edinburgh. Nothwithstanding the peculiarity of this arrangement, there is no doubt that he was a fond and considerate father, and that he was deeply loved and respected by his children. During these later years he had the best literary society that Edinburgh could afford, and amongst others became well acquainted with Mr and Mrs Carlyle. The habits of the recluse, however, were growing upon him, and many who would have been glad to catch a glimpse of the famous Opium Eater were disappointed. In his frequent changes of lodging he would sometimes vanish altogether from the view of his friends. Occasionally he would spend a year or more in Glasgow, partly to enjoy the conversation of his friends, Professors Nichol and Lushington, and partly to execute some literary work in which the Western City especially was inter- ested. Many articles contributed to Blackwood and Tait fill up these years. A new connection began in 1850 when De Quincey called on Mr Hogg, the publisher of Hoggs Weekly Instructor, and offered his services as a contributor. Both in the Instructor and Titan, into which it afterwards merged, many articles from Thomas de Quincey 421 the Opium Eater appeared. But what makes this connection chiefly interesting is the fact that it was Mr Hogg who suggested to De Quincey the publica- tion of a collected edition of his works. Although from the unpunctual and erratic habits of the writer it seemed unlikely that such a work would ever be carried to a successful conclusion, it was actually completed in an edition of fourteen volumes, en- larged in a later edition to sixteen. These, with some further additions that have been gathered together since De Quincey's death, afford ample material for forming a judgment concerning him, although they by no means embrace all his writings. It is well known that in his frequent changes of lodging, he left many precious bundles of manuscript behind him. These he was often too nervously timid to reclaim, if indeed, as was most likely, he did not altogether forget them. Some were discovered, after much trouble, by his friends. Some were restored voluntarily by those with whom they had been left ; others came to light only by accident. Many are doubtless irre- coverably lost. It was natural that one who united in himself so fine a genius with so singular a personality should excite a special interest in his many friends. No doubt that interest was piqued into still greater ac- tivity by the very elusiveness to which reference has been made. Even to see him was no easy matter, and not unfrequently the best laid stratagems for this purpose failed of success. Nevertheless we 422 Victorian Literature have the deeply interesting impressions of many men concerning him, including Carlyle, Thomas Hood, John Hill Burton, Charles Knight, Mr J. R. Findlay, Professor Masson, and others. They all agree in describing him as very short in stature, with a large head, an expansive forehead, and an extreme fragility of form. The apparent boyishness of his aspect disappeared when, on a closer inspection, the innumer- able wrinkles that lined his face became visible. The face itself was highly intellectual, and spoke both of good birth and of good breeding. His peculiarities in dress appear to have struck every one. They were as far as possible from any known conventional standard, and suggested that he had hastily clothed himself in the first garments that came to hand. All, too, were impressed with the sweetness and melody of his voice, that suited so well his gentle, courteous, and refined manner. Those who were privileged with a deeper intimacy, and especially if they were permitted to enter with him the magic circle of the midnight hours, were never tired of recalling the singular richness and eloquence of his talk. Thomas Hood says : ' When I have found him at home quite atihome in the midst of a German ocean of literature in a storm, flooding all the floor, the tables, billows of books, tossing, tumbling, surging open, on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour whilst the philosopher, standing with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking than reading from a u handwriting on the Thomas de Quincey 423 wall." Now and then he would diverge for a Scotch mile or two . . . but he always came back safely to the point where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence hunted his topic to the end. But look ! we are in the small hours, and a change comes o'er the spirit of that " old familiar face." A faint hectic tint leaves the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by a growing shadow signs of the waning influence of that potent drug whose stupendous pleasures and pains have been so eloquently described by the English Opium Eater.' 1 When he sat,' says Carlyle, ' you would have taken him by candlelight for the beautifulest little child blue- eyed, sparkling face had there not been a something, too, which said, " Eccovi," this child has been in hell.' R. P. Gillies, an intimate Edinburgh friend, says of him : ( His voice was extraordinary ; it came as if from dreamland ; but it was the most musical and impressive of voices.' * Oh for one hour of De Quincey ! ' exclaims Charles Knight ; ' better three hours from nine till midnight for a rapt listener to be " under the wand of a magician," spell-bound by his wonderful affluence of talk, such as that of the fairy whose lips dropped rubies and diamonds. Many a night have I, with my wife by my side, sat listening to the equable flow of his discourse, both of us utterly forgetting the usual regularity of our habits, and hearing the drowsy watchman's "past one o'clock" (for the old watch- man then walked his round) before we parted.' 424 Victorian Literature Mrs Gordon, daughter of Professor Wilson, says : 1 The time when he (De Quincey) was most brilliant was generally towards the early morning hours ; and then, more than once, my father arranged his supper- parties so that, sitting till three or four in the morn- ing, he brought Mr de Quincey to that point at which in charm and power of conversation he was so truly wonderful. I remember,' she says, ' his coming to Gloucester Place (her father's residence) one stormy night. He remained hour after hour in the vain expectation that the waters would assuage and the hurly-burly cease. There was nothing for it but that our visitor should remain all night.' She adds that he remained for the greater part of a year. Referring to his extreme carefulness as to diet, she further says that ' the cook, who had an audience with him daily, received his instructions in silent awe, quite over- powered by his manner ; for, had he been addressing a duchess, he could scarcely have spoken with more deference.' John Hill Burton, the historian of Scotland, knew De Quincey well, and under the name of Thomas Papaverius has in The Book- Hunter given some racy though highly exaggerated sketches of his friend. Making all allowances for the manifest caricature, these sketches are as clever as they are interesting. 1 No one/ he says, ' speaks of waiting dinner for him. He will come and depart of his own sweet will, neither burdened with punctualities, nor burdening others by exacting them. The festivities of the afternoon are Thomas de Quincey 425 far on when a commotion is heard in the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival he opens the door and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be ? A street boy of some sort ? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great -coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti- coloured belcher handkerchief ; on his feet are list- shoes, covered with snow for it is a stormy winter's night ; and the trousers someone suggests that they are inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them. ( What can be the theory of such a costume ? The simplest thing in the world it consisted of the frag- ments of apparel nearest at hand . . . His lips are speedily opened by some casual remark, and presently the flood of talk passes forth from them free, clear, and continuous never rising into declamation never losing a certain mellow earnestness, and all consisting of sentences as exquisitely jointed together as if they were destined to challenge the criticism of the re- motest posterity. . . Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and footsore, he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should get a penny and go home. . . . How far he had wandered since he had last re- freshed himself, or even whether he had eaten food 426 Victorian Literature that day, were matters on which there was no getting articulate utterance from him. Though his costume was muddy, however, and his communications about the material wants of life very hazy, the ideas which he had stored up during his wandering poured them- selves forth as clear and sparkling, both in logic and language, as the purest fountain that springs from a Highland rock. How that wearied, worn, little body was to be refreshed was a difficult problem ; soft food disagreed with him the hard he could not eat. Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it might be supposed that there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to be treated in the house that night. How many drops ? Drops ! non- sense, if the wine-glasses of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal size, there was no risk and so the weary is at rest for a time. . . Those who knew him a little might call him a loose man in money matters ; those who knew him closer laughed at the idea of coupling any notion of pecuniary or other like responsibility with his -nature. You might as well attack the character of the nightingale, which may have nipped up your five-pound note and torn it into shreds to serve as nest-building material. Only immediate craving necessities could ever extract from him an acknowledgment of the common vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilised society ; and only while the necessity lasted did the acknowledgment exist. Take just one example, which will render this Thomas de Quincey 427 clearer than any generalities. He arrives very late at a friend's door, and on gaining admission a process in which he often endured impediments he repre- sents, with his usual silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his being then and there in- vested with a sum of money in the current coin of the realm the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers, signs that his eloquence is likely to be un- productive, he is fortunately reminded that, should there be any difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he is at that moment in possession of a document, which he is prepared to deposit with the lender a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to remove any feeling of anxiety which the most prudent person could experience in the cir- cumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable, possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled bit of paper, and spreads it out a fifty-pound bank-note ! ' Notwithstanding his extreme fragility of form, De Quincey lived to the ripe age of seventy-four. He had barely completed the last volume of the collected edition of his works when the natural decay of old age set in. On the 8th of December 1859, he died at his lodgings in Lothian Street, Edinburgh. Here in his last moments he had all that the loving care and attention of his daughters could give him. He sleeps 428 Victorian Literature beside his wife and several of his children in a corner of St Cuthbert's Churchyard, under the shadow of the grey, old Scottish fortress. De Quincey was a man of subtle, penetrating intel- lect, of an unusually wide range and copiousness of ideas, of a powerful and impressive imagination, and of a wonderful command of stately, appropriate, and melodiously balanced speech. The pomp of style, the grand roll, the majestic sweep of the great prose writers of a former period, such as Milton and Sir Thomas Browne, are to be heard once more in De Quincey. He had a life-long passion for classical music, and for him one of the chief pleasures of a visit to London was to be found in the Opera. Something reminiscent of this may be traced in what may be called the rich orchestration and splendid choral effects of his style. He is a most digressive writer. It is never possible to predict at the beginning of a paper into what bye- paths he will be led before its close. Curious and interesting though many of these digressions are in themselves, they sorely exercise, and sometimes even irritate, the mind of the reader by their long-winded irrelevancies. Of this the well-known papers on Sir William Hamilton are perhaps the most flagrant examples. His many descriptive sketches show a keen observa- tion, but it is an observation directed to the people he comes in contact with, rather than to the ordinary forms of material nature. The great movements and Thomas de Quincey 429 stormy agitations of the elements powerfully attract his imagination, and are made to play an important part in his writings. But the familiar every-day nature of Wordsworth with its simple scenery jof hill and dale, of waving daffodils and growing primroses, does not attract him. On the other hand, he shows extra- ordinary acuteness in reading the signs of the human countenance; and will, under their guidance, follow the most complicated trains of thought, feeling, and motive of which they are the reflection, through all their subtlest labyrinths. In the sphere of intellectual analysis, De Quincey is an undoubted master; in that of exposition he is no less distinguished. Notwith- standing his learning, his many involved sentences, his diffuseness, and his frequent employment of un- common and technical terms, he is on the whole simple and clear. He is besides one of the most careful of writers. Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is the best example -of his humour ; but there are few of his pieces in which we do not find an air]of comic pleasantry, sometimes mischievously impish, and often not altogether seasonable. Pathos, too, of a true and touching kind is to be found, especially in the Confessions and Autobiographical Sketches. De Quincey's genius is to be seen at its best in the papers thus grouped together, that is in those which are most personal to himself. First must be placed The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and its sequel of Prose Phantasies, including the remarkable 43 Victorian Literature Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths), and The English Mail- Coach. The swift moving pano- ramas, the gorgeous phantasmagoria, and, as he calls it, ' the heart-shattering music ' of dreams, are in them all. In these his language is most elaborated, and assumes an oriental splendour in the richness and magnificence of its ornament. Fault indeed has been found with the style of De Quincey, chiefly on the ground of this excessive luxuriance and splendour of adornment. Next in importance to these are the Autobio- graphical Sketches, in which *he presents to us not only his own highly interesting personality, but also such intimates as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wilson, whose characters he read with a piercing insight, so that many have not been able to exonerate him from the charge of a spiteful maliciousness. In the attempt, however, to form a correct estimate of these men, it is not safe to overlook what De Quincey has written concerning them. In connection with his biographical work, mention may be made of his sketches of Shake- speare and Pope, and, in another vein, of Dr Parr and Walking Stewart. De Quincey had the true historic sense, and seems at various times to have been moved to write some great work in history. Probably, however, the long- continued drudgery of labour at one subject was too alien from his ingrained habits and methods of working to permit of this. At all events we have in this depart- ment only certain papers, often acute, striking, and Thomas de Quincey 431 brilliant from their background of historic imagination, such as The Ccesars, The Revolt of the Tartars, and Joan of Arc, to show his capabilities in this direction. There are others which it is less easy to classify, such as the suggestive papers on the Knocking in Macbeth, and Judas Iscariot. His more elaborate treatises on Rhetoric, Style, and Language, have a distinct value as coming from one who not only had an intimate technical knowledge of these subjects, but was himself one of the great masters of style ; while even such authorities as John Stuart Mill, treated with much deference his opinions on the vexed questions of Political Economy. Until his thirty-sixth year, De Quincey had written nothing ; but all these years, aided by a singularly retentive memory, he had been absorbing material from the best literatures of ancient and modern times. He claims for hfmself that his life throughout had been that of a philosopher, and that he had done little else at any period of it than read and think. No one, indeed, can fail to be struck with the multifariousness of his equipment for the business of literature. There seemed to be no subject on which he had not a competency of knowledge, and which he could not make interesting with an array of curious and recondite learning. Pedantry, however, is not one of his faults. He has a lightness of touch that enables his style to move easily under whatever burden of learning it is called upon to carry. It is difficult to classify writings that cover so wide 432 Victorian Literature and diversified a field. They are mostly in the essay form, and with the exception of The Logic of Political Economy and Klosterheim, were all of them contribu- tions to the serial literature of the day. John Wilson (1785-1854), De Quincey's friend, and the famous Christopher North of Blackwood 1 s Magazine^ had raised considerable expectation as a poet in The Isle of Palms (1812) and The City of the Plague (1816), and also as a prose writer in his stories, The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life (1822), The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay (1823), and Ihe Foresters (1824); but it is to his writings in the essay and dialogue forms that we must look for the finest fruits of his genius. On the whole his work has disappointed expectation. Already a partial oblivion has overtaken both his verse and his fiction, and he will probably live, if at all, in the blended poetry, philosophy, and humour of the Nodes, and especially in their unique creation of the Shepherd. John Wilson was born at Paisley in 1785. His father, a wealthy manufacturer of that town, gave his son the opportunity of acquiring a good private edu- cation. After four years spent at the University of Glasgow, Wilson, in 1803, entered Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he greatly distinguished himself, not only by his brilliant intellectual gifts, but also by his wonderful powers as an athlete, some of the feats recorded of him in this latter character being scarcely even credible. In 1806 he won the Newdigate prize for poetry; John Wilson 433 and in 1810 he took his degree of M.A. In the same year he was happily married to Miss Jane Penny of Liverpool, a lady of great personal attractions and of genuine worth. Some time before, his father having left him a considerable fortune, he had purchased the estate of Elleray, overlooking Lake Windermere. Here he found an ideal home, not the least of the attrac- tions of which was the near neighbourhood of De Quincey, and the Lakist poets, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, whom he greatly admired. Their in- fluence is to be seen in The Isle of Palms and The City of the Plague, which, notwithstanding their sweet- ness and tenderness, fail to reveal the full force of the writer's genius. On the loss of much of his fortune through the incapacity or the negligence of a relative acting as his agent, Wilson broke up his home at Elleray and came to Edinburgh. In 1815 he was called to the Scottish Bar, but was far from being burdened with briefs. For him, therefore, as well as for J. G. Lockhart, the launch- ing of Maga in 1817 was an auspicious event, for most of his literary work from that time onwards was given to its pages. Wilson was never the editor, Mr Blackwood himself retaining the control ; but Wilson's was the predominant spirit, as his articles were also for thirty years the most brilliant feature of the Magazine. In the earlier days, much of this work was somewhat of a scandal, and gave great offence by its personalities, and also sometimes by its seeming irreverence. But it had the merit of freshness, origin- 2 E 434 Victorian Literature ality, and an abundance of good humour and animal spirits. The clever irrepressible boyishness of the writers had a certain charm for many readers, and the success of the Magazine was secured. Wilson's own work in connection with it must have been enormous. Some of the numbers are said to have contained as many as three and four articles from his pen. These occupations, however, did not prevent him in 1820 from becoming a candidate for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, rendered vacant by the death of Dr Thomas Brown, to which, notwithstanding the formidable competitor- ship of Sir William Hamilton, he was elected by a majority of votes of the Town Council, in whose hands the election then lay. Wilson now flung himself with characteristic ardour and energy into the business of the Chair, the duties of which he continued to discharge for the next thirty years. Fears had been expressed as to his fitness for this task, but it is unquestioned that by his powerful eloquence and the inspiration of his striking person- ality, he made his dingy class-room the intellectual birthplace of many an ardent young man, who thenceforward found it unforgettable in all his after history. Wilson's various tales already referred to appeared in the years following this appointment. In their excess of pathos and of sentiment, they give an impression of effeminacy that is much at variance with one's conception of the rough, almost heroical manli- ness of their author. His critical papers were not, on John Wilson 435 the whole, of permanent value, and were often marred by a too great luxuriance of style. His lively articles dealing with his own tastes as a sportsman are fuller of interest. But undoubtedly his best writing, and also his most beautiful and suggestive thought are to be found scattered up and down the Nodes Ambrosiance. The Nodes are built upon certain imaginary convivial meetings, the scene of which is Ambrose's Tavern in Edinburgh, the characters being North himself, Timothy Tickler, James Hogg the * Shepherd,' and occasionally De Quincey. Discounting much that is outrageously farcical, and much more that concerns matters now gone beyond the range of the reader's interest, there still remains in these papers much that can be read with interest and amusement. Sir John Skelton (Shirley), who has just passed away, and who was himself an accomplished literary man, has given us the cream of the Nodes in an interesting, mirth- provoking volume. Professor Wilson died on April 3rd, 1854. John Ruskin (1819), the most eloquent of art critics, and one of the greatest masters of ornate English style, has also had his associations with the English Lakes. He was born in London in 1819, but was by descent mainly Scotch. His father, after completing his education at the High School of Edinburgh, entered a business house in London, and there showed such excellent qualities that he was soon afterwards invited to become the managing partner of 436 Victorian Literature a firm of wine merchants in that city. The firm prospered, and the home therefore to which, after a nine years' probation, he brought his Scotch cousin and bride, Margaret Cox, was one of comfort and even wealth. John Ruskin was the only child of this marriage, and from his earliest years was surrounded by all the advantages that plenty and luxury can bestow. In many respects he was fortunate in his parents. His father had both literary and artistic tastes, was keenly observant, and of eager curiosity concerning everything that attracted his attention, and with all his practical good sense, was not without a poetical and romantic side to his nature. His mother was a lady of ability, wide information, and force of character; who, from the very strenuousness with which she had for so many years herself pursued a course of self- improvement, combined with her love for her only child, and her sense of responsibility concerning him, was more likely to err through over-severity than over-indulgence. It was soon manifest to the parents that this child united unusual gifts to an unusual sensibility. It became their object, therefore, to see that his development was wisely ordered, and particu- larly that it was not purchased at the cost of a diseased excitability. Probably for this reason he was not sent to school till he was fourteen, his mother during the earlier years being his sole instructor. Looking back upon this time, Ruskin himself was disposed to think that the circumstances of his childhood had not been John Ruskin 437 altogether fortunate, and that he had suffered from a training both too formal and too luxurious. Some of the stories related of his mother would almost seem to indicate an unusual harshness and want of sympathy. It is said that when her baby cried to reach the tea- kettle, she forced the nurse to let him touch it, and sent him from the room screaming. It is also related of her that when he tumbled down stairs, she whipped him that he might learn to be careful ; and that when he came in to dessert or played among the fruit trees, she drew the line at one currant. In this way the child was doubtless taught lessons of carefulness, temperance, and self-control, which he never after- wards forgot. There are many stories of his youthful precocity. At five he had read many books. He could write at six, and at once began to compose. From 1826 to 1829 he was engaged upon a work entitled Hairy and Lucy Concluded, or Early Lessons. It was never finished, but filled three bound volumes, all carefully printed and illustrated by his own hand, with title page, tables of contents, errata, etc., complete. Much of the material for this writing was obtained from the family tours on which the Ruskins went from time to time, and which formed an invaluable part of the child's education. It was his father's custom in the summer to travel over a considerable portion of England to take orders for his firm ; and on such occasions the private carriage of Mr Telford, the moneyed partner, was placed at his disposal. There 438 Victorian Literature was room for quite a family party, and Mr Ruskin would be accompanied by his wife, little John, cousin Mary, and the nurse. It would be difficult to say whether on these occasions business or pleasure predominated. They at least had their element of danger as tending to over-stimulate an eager and sensitive child. Not content with taking water-colour sketches of objects of interest encountered on the way, Mr Ruskin, the father, would fill his note-books with such information as he could glean upon the spot respecting them. Thus every castle and cathedral, mouldering abbey and stately mansion, museum and picture gallery, to say nothing of the forms of nature and living things, became the subject of eager interest and earnest inquiry. The child of six caught the father's enthusiasm. He also must needs have his note-books and make his sketches. The bearing of this upon the tastes and the after career of Ruskin it is not difficult to see. Nothing is more characteristic of him in later years than the free use of note-books in his many wanderings, both for elaborate description and careful sketching. We may even say that out of these note-books came the great works that made his reputation. Up to his sixteenth year four of these tours had been in Scotland, three in the Lake District of England, one in Wales, and two on the Continent, embracing the Rhine countries and Switzerland. When he had reached the limit ot his mother's instructions, tutors were engaged to give him lessons in Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and Drawing. His John Ruskin 439 eager nature and his great ability made progress rapid, but he never cared for classical study, and as might have been expected, it was into the drawing lesson that he put most of himself. Perceiving what his bent was, his father spared no expense in procuring for him the best available teaching, and for a time therefore he had the advantage of lessons from such fine water-colourists as Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding. The church, however, not literature or art, was the profession his parents desired for him, their highest ambition being to see their son a bishop. When Ruskin was fourteen, it was thought well that he should have some experience of school life before going to the university. He was therefore placed with the Rev. T. Dale, but had to be with- drawn in consequence of an attack of pleurisy, one of the many more or less serious illnesses from which Mr Ruskin has suffered during his long life. In 1837 he entered upon his studies at Christ's College, Oxford. His course was not brilliant, its only distinction being the Newdigate prize for poetry, which, after several failures, he at last succeeded in winning. He graduated B.A. in 1842. Considering his bad health, and the many interests that attracted him outside of university work, it is not to be wondered at that the routine studies should have only partially engaged him. It was altogether natural that the eager intellectual and emotional forces of Ruskin's nature should find expression in poetry. It is not possible to say when he began 440 Victorian Literature verse-making, but for twelve years onwards from 1834, when he was fifteen, he was a constant contributor in verse to various publications. Before his work as a poet had been merged in his far greater work as a writer of ornate and richly poetical prose, he had given unquestionable proof that there was talent, if not a touch of genius, as well as the audacity of youth, in these writings. During all this period of poetical activity, he had also been furnishing notes to various scientific and art magazines ; and some of these, especially those on architectural subjects, had come to be highly esteemed, and even to have a certain authority. In 1843, he finally determined his course in life, by the publication of the first volume of what is generally regarded as his masterpiece : Modern Painters, their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to the Ancient Masters : by a Graduate of Oxford. This bold proceeding was the outcome of the intense admiration for Turner's work that had recently grown up within him; and its object was to vindicate for Turner a position as a landscape painter superior to that of all the older masters whom it had been customary to accept as models. Loud was the clamour which this audacious and heretical work called forth. The book, however, gradually made its way. There was much besides the praise of Turner in it. Critics found it easier to abuse than to answer it. Even professional painters admitted that the writer knew his subject, and they discovered much that was suggestive in its discussions concerning form and John Ruskin 441 colour; while to the general reader the extraordinary richness and brilliance of its descriptive passages fur- nished a unique form of pleasure. Long before Modern Painters was completed by the publication of its fifth volume in 1860, Ruskin had become one of the prose classics of English literature, and his magnificent descriptions of mountains, waves, and clouds had produced not only a keener artistic sense, but also the conviction that whole worlds of wonder and beauty, hitherto undreamt of, await the seeing eye that brings a patient reverence and love to the observation of nature. Here lies Ruskin 's great dis- tinction, that more even than the poets he has un- veiled for us the beautiful in nature. But here also, as in all his books, he has taught that the moral qualities of truth, sincerity, and an earnest purpose are required in him who would discover either the secrets of art, the wondrous meaning and beauty of nature, or the whole duty of man to man. In this he is throughout consistent, although in almost every- thing else his opinions have totally changed since Modern Painters first appeared. While this great work was in progress, he produced a series of books in which he expounded in similar fashion the principles of architecture. The Seven Lamps of Architecture appeared in 1849, followed by the magnificent Stones of Venice (1851-53), and his Edinburgh Lectures on Architecture and Painting (1854). In these writings also we find the most exquisite descriptive work by pen and pencil, together with the sermons in stones 442 Victorian Literature which noble architectural forms suggest to this critic, who is also a mystic and preacher of righteousness. In his view architecture is far more than mere building, is nothing less indeed than the embodiment in stone of all that highest and noblest in the builder and his age. Here also as in painting it is the ethical element in art, or its spiritual significance, that attracts him, the Seven Lamps representing to him such ethical principles as sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory and obedience. Ruskin has founded no school either in painting or architecture. Probably no great man has acknowledged him as father in either art. It is true that a band of clever artists and poets known as the Pre- Raphaelites were united on principles of truth, simplicity and whole-hearted devotion similar to those which he had been so strenuously advocating, and that he gave them his heartiest support in his paper on Pre-Raphaelitism (1851) ; but it cannot be said that they owed their origin to him. But if he is not the parent of any distinctive school, there can be no doubt that he has influenced the whole of art by bringing it face to face with nature, by revealing to it the exceeding beauty of material forms, and by showing how much of the perception of this beauty and the power to reproduce it, is due to ethical qualities in the artist himself, his age, and the nation to which he belongs. He has taught as no other has the lesson of waiting patiently, laboriously, lovingly upon nature, with serious intent to follow her guidance at what- John Ruskin 443 ever cost to personal prejudice and the sanctity of old ideals. But Ruskin is a philanthropist as well as a great art critic. In this aspect of his character may be seen even more strikingly displayed the qualities of impulsiveness and extravagance that are undoubtedly noticeable in him. And yet many of the things which thirty years ago would have been considered the freaks of a weak and ill-balanced mind look very like foresight now. For nothing has he been so widely ridiculed as for his many excursions into the thorny fields of political economy. In the early days when the Cornhill Magazine was under Thackeray's editor- ship, Ruskin contributed four articles on economic subjects under the title of Unto this Last (1860) ; but on the appearance of the fourth of the series, Mr Thackeray intimated to him that in consequence of the strong and unanimous disapproval by his readers of the sentiments expressed in these articles, it would be impossible for him to receive any more. The same thing happened with Fraser^s Magazine in connection with similar articles, afterwards republished under the title, Munera Pulveris (1872). They impeached the commercialism of the age as responsible for much of its poverty and vice, pled for the introduction of the element of human affection into the relations between employers and employed, and insisted that the wages of the labourer should be fixed and uniform like those of soldiers and professional men, and not regulated by competition. He has expanded these economic 444 Victorian Literature theories in other and later works such as Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne (1868), and Fors Clavigera (1871-84). Many of the opinions expressed in these books have grown familiar to the public mind, and do not now seem so revolutionary as they did at first. But at the time they were treated with something like angry contempt, as the frothy and mischievous ravings of a visionary. Many even doubted the sanity of the writer, but none could doubt his absolute sincerity. By the death of his father and mother, Ruskin had inherited a fortune of not less than ; 200,000, every penny of which has gone in acts of private and general beneficence, or in attempts, some of them painfully chimerical, to give practical shape to his modified socialism. Of these were the providing of model dwellings for the poor, experiments in co-operative trading, farming on something like communistic prin- ciples, working-men's colleges, and the furnishing, housing, and endowment of the Ruskin Museum, Sheffield. Perhaps, however, none of his economic experiments have attracted so much attention as his invasion of the realm of the British tradesman as the printer and publisher of his own works. From a villa at Orpington in Kent, his friend, Mr George Allen, declining all aid from advertisements, for many years sent forth the Ruskin books to public and bookseller alike, with no difference of price. At first the objections to this singular arrangement were very strong, but the feeling so far died down, and the sale of these works continued to be very large even before John Ruskin 445 the transference of the business to London under new arrangements for the trade. Of Ruskin's other books mention may be made of Sesame and Lilies (1865), one of his most popular works ; The Crown of Wild Olives (1866), The Queen of The Air (1869) and Preterita (1885-1889), an extremely interesting and characteristic autobiography, covering, however, only a portion of his life. His books represent only a part of Ruskin's many- sided activity. For many years he held the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Oxford, and much of his most characteristic thought passed into the various courses of Lectures delivered to the students. He resigned his chair at length because of a difference of opinion with his university on the subject of vivisection, to which as an ardent lover of animals he was strongly opposed. But he lectured to many institutions besides, and was ever as ready to scatter his intellectual wealth abroad, as he was to disperse his material means. Now, broken in health by several severe illnesses, and therefore retired from his many labours, Ruskin lives in comparative seclusion within his country house of Brantwood, on the shores of Coniston Lake, under the shadow of the mountains he has always loved with such devotion. The income he derives from his books is sufficient both for his own wants and for those of the pensioners who are dependent upon his bounty. Thus the generous humanity of the man remains, and for nothing will he be more 446 Victorian Literature regarded by posterity than for that. But their rever- ence will also take account of his high ideal of life, of his good intentions, if not of his successful endeavours, in the cause of social reform, and of a style, which after all deductions have been made for faults of excess, diffuseness, and over-luxuriance, remains un- equalled for descriptive power and eloquence. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) is also noted for the excellence of his prose style. The permanent reputa- tion of this writer, however, will probably rest upon his poetry rather than upon his prose. But, as has been mentioned in the sketch of his life and poetic career, he wrote almost nothing in poetry during his last twenty years, while he wrote much in prose. His subjects were Criticism, Middle-Class Education, Cul- ture, the Official Recognition of Literature, Church and State, and Philistinism a term which with him meant the narrowness, vulgarity, and want of taste of the unlearned as opposed to the width and refinement of the cultured class. He had not a little also to say of Religion ; but it was religion out of which had been eliminated the supernatural and apparently all hope of a future life, and which seems to have represented to him nothing more than a life of righteousness based on Bible morality. Arnold's critical work was especially good. The best of it is to be found in The Essays on Criticism, published in 1865. The tone of his prose writings, unlike his poetry, is bright, witty, and exhilarating, Matthew Arnold 447 with a sparkle that gives to them a peculiar charm. He is a master of phrase, and many of his sayings, such as ' sweetness and light,' and ' a stream of ten- dency, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness,' have passed into the currency of English speech. His opinions on many subjects were by no means acceptable, but were less objectionable than his manner of expressing them. The opposition thus called forth in many minds was, besides, accentuated by the scorn and superciliousness of his attitude, and the vehemence of his ridicule. He gave the impres- sion of being a very superior person, and of regarding with but scant respect any opinion that differed from his own. Towards Dissent especially he was con- temptuously and unjustly bitter. He undoubtedly did good, however, in helping to break down the insular prejudice and self-sufficiency of ordinary English character, and in leading the way to a truer and more wholesome form of literary criticism. His principal works in prose most of them pub- lished originally in serial form in addition to the Essays on Criticism, are Lectures on Translating Homer, The Study of Celtic Literature, Schools and Universities on the Continent, Culture and Anarchy, St Paul and Protestantism, Literature and Dogma, God and the Bible, and Last Essays on Church and State. All these writings show brilliant qualities of style, and set forth the opinions of the writer with great point and force, but they have probably already accomplished all they are likely to effect. 448 Victorian Literature In Dr John Brown of Edinburgh (1810-1882), the friend of Thackeray and John Leech, arid the author of Rab and his Friends and Pet Marjorie, is to be found a true man of genius. Never was an author more deeply or more justly loved. His many friends recall with a peculiar softening his exquisite qualities of mind and heart his delicate fancy and frolicsome humour, his earnest pleading for down- rightness and intensity of character and life, the sweetness of his charity, his unselfish thoughtmlness for others, and his childlike freshness, simplicity and honest impulsiveness. All loved him for his sunny nature ; those who knew him best were still more endeared to him by the mysterious cross which this sweet and gentle spirit, in long intervals of gloom, was called upon to bear. But for Brown's busy life as a physician in city practice, the compulsion of circumstance that had made for his friend Thackeray a career in literature, might also in his case have substituted works of greater and more permanent literary importance for the brightness and daintiness, the humour and pathos of those few exquisite essays, fruits of his leisure (Horce Subsecivce, he called them) which are all Brown's legacy to the world. In all of them, besides the qualities just mentioned, we see an ever-present sense of the poetry of life, tinged with the fine humanity of the author, and a perfectly frank and agreeable egotism. The occasion of each piece may be some outward fact a Border landscape, an oddity Dr John Brown 449 in human character, the quaintness of a child's mind, or even the vagaries of a dog ; but invariably it will be found that its true motive is something within himself a freak of his own imagination, a throb of his deep pity, an utterance of some strong personal love or preference, and therefore essentially a feature of himself. Dr Brown's finest piece of writing is his contribu- tion to a Biography of his father, entitled A letter addressed to the Rev. John Cairns, D.D. ; but his reputation will chiefly rest on Rab and his Friends, a gem without a flaw, the beautiful simplicity and art- lessness of which is the very perfection of art. In such pieces as Pet Marjorie and Queen Mary's Garden he has made us feel the beatings of a child's heart against our own. And in a number of pieces as re- markable for their humour as their pathos, he has vindicated as no other man ever did the claims of what Burns would have called our * poor earth-born companion, an' fellow-mortal,' the dog, to a kindly compassion and consideration. These and all the other pieces contained in the three volumes entitled Horce Subsecivce are full of a fine literary art and a still more exquisite sweetness born of the tender humanity of the author himself. \ If the writers of the latter half of the reign are not so distinguished, they at least show high qualities of accomplishment, and greatly exceed those of the earlier period in point of numbers. Within these later de- 2 F 450 Victorian Literature cades we find the exquisite exercises in prose style of Robert Louis Stevenson ; the brilliance of Mr John Morley ; the finely-balanced powers and the acute and judicious criticism of Mr R. H. Hutton, the veteran editor of the Spectator ; the versatile gifts of Mr Andrew Lang ; the ample knowledge of Professor Saintsbury and Frederick Harrison ; the many literary graces of such men as Edmund Gosse, W. E. Henley, and Augustine Birrell ; and the more remote, but exquisite qualities of Walter Pater, the author of Studies in the History of the Renaissance, Harms the Epicurean, and Gaston de Latour. The mere mention of these names is sufficient to show to what an extent the best of recent miscellane- ous literature has taken the form of literary criticism ; but it also shows how all-pervading has been the influence of journalism during the Victorian period. A large proportion of the writings of these authors made their first appearance in serial form. It may safely be said that much more of this class of writing, published anonymously, now lies buried in forgotten volumes of the larger ' Reviews ' and in the pages of old monthly or weekly magazines, or has even passed into oblivion with the sheets of the daily newspaper in which it first saw the light. No doubt very much of it was poor and ephemeral in quality, and deserved no better fate. Still, unquestionably, much has thus been lost which, but for the form of publica- tion, might justly, on account of both force and sub- tlety of thought, and distinction of style, have been Other Essayists 451 added to the permanent gains of literature. Journal- ism, indeed, was never so potent or so respectable as now. Faults it has, both on the moral and literary side ; but, on the whole, its aims and motives are high ; and for the best work of this class something more is now demanded than plausible assurance, a lively wit, a superficial knowledge, and fluency of expression. CHAPTER VIII Men of Science and Philosophers THE records of Science during the Victorian Era have been peculiarly rich and interesting. The tales they have to tell of triumphant research and discovery in a great variety of fields, read more like a page from old romance than anything else. It may safely be said that the achievements of science during the last sixty years have far more than exceeded the sum total of such achievements during all the human centuries preceding. It is little matter of wonder, therefore, that the scientific spirit should have passed so deeply into the forms of Victorian thought, or that the presence of this spirit should form one of the dis- tinctive characteristics of Victorian literature. A hard and materialistic tone may sometimes have resulted, but, on the whole, the scientific spirit has brought gains, even to the imaginative part of literature, by furnishing it with endless new material, and by pre- senting to it the wonderful in forms which the unas- sisted imagination could never have conceived. The graver parts of literature also have been benefited by Charles Darwin 453 its call to patient inquiry, exhaustive research, and the methods of the logical reason. Strictly speaking, however, the progress and victories of science do not fall within the scope of the present work. Only in so far as the records of these have themselves taken literary form, or have been the occasion of calling forth works of a popular rather than a technical character, need they be included in a sketch of Vic- torian literature. Even so much, however, is more than can be attempted here. Only a very few of the heroes of research and deep thinking can be so much as mentioned within the limits of a work like this. In the field of science, literature has, during the Victorian period, concentrated its interest on the speculations that have arisen concerning the results of biological inquiry. No scientific subject, indeed, has ever aroused anything like the general interest that has been attracted to the theory of Evolution as illus- trated by the researches of Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin (1809-1882). The name of Charles Darwin will live in the records of Victorian Literature as that of the author of the most remark- able scientific book of the century. The Origin of Species by Natural Selection is universally admitted to have been a work of epoch-making significance, and to have revolutionised the whole course of modern scien- tific thought ; for even where its conclusions have not been accepted, their influence [has [.been deeply felt, and has given colour to all succeeding speculation, especially in the sphere of biological inquiry. 454 Victorian Literature The author of this great work was born at Shrews- bury in 1809, the year in which Alfred Tennyson and Mr Gladstone also were born. His father, a prosper- ous physician of that town, was, as Charles Darwin assures us, a man of the keenest observation. His grandfather was the famous Erasmus Darwin, the philosophical poet of The Botanic Garden, who also had his speculations concerning the Origin of Species. At eight years of age Charles was sent to a day school in Shrewsbury ; but even before this time, the inborn tastes of his life had manifested themselves. In various small ways he was even then a collector of plants, insects, and minerals. After a year he was transferred to Dr Butler's school in the same town. His con- nection as a boarder with this school extended over seven years, and yielded him but little profit. It was a classical school, and he had no aptitude for languages. Evidently his father and his teachers agreed in think- ing that he was below, rather than above the average standard of boys. The truth is that the set studies of school were doing nothing to call forth the really remarkable powers that were latent in him. The science of mathematics was not taught, and no pro- vision whatever was made for the development of his quite extraordinary faculty of observation. He has left on record that poetry, including the works of Thomson, Scott, Byron, and especially the historical plays of Shakespeare, had at this time considerable attraction for him. White's Natural History of Selborne, and a book entitled The Wonders of the Charles Darwin 455 World, were also eagerly read and prized. But ac- cording to Darwin himself the best part of his educa- tion during the school period was his introduction to experimental philosophy in his father's tool house, where his elder brother Erasmus, a medical student, had set up a laboratory. In 1825 he accompanied his brother Erasmus to Edinburgh, where for two years he studied in the medical classes of the University. These years also Darwin was disposed to think were wasted. The academical studies had not much attraction for him ; and the college lectures, with the single exception of those on chemistry, he found intolerably dull and tiresome. In later life he greatly regretted that he had not persevered with his dissections, on the ground that work of this kind would have been of invaluable service to him. But he could not endure the operating theatre, the two cases he saw there fairly haunting him for many a year afterwards. He was fortunate, however, in securing the friendship of several clever young men of tastes similar to his own. With them he would make excursions in the neighbourhood of the Forth for the purpose of studying marine zoology ; and at other times would accompany them to the meetings of the Plinian and Wernerian Societies, and hear papers on Natural History read and discussed. To the former of these, his own earliest papers were presented. Whatever want of profit, therefore, there may have been in his stay at the Northern University, all this doubtless acted as a healthy stimulant on a 456 Victorian Literature young man of his tastes and aspirations ; for he tells us that he was never without the ambition to achieve something in connection with Natural History that would bring him reputation. In consequence of his father's affluent circumstances, the question of a profession was not with Darwin a serious one. After the two years at Edinburgh, he abandoned all thought of medicine, but seems to have had the Church in view when in 1828 he went to Cambridge. His stay here extended over three years, during which he appears to have had as little interest in academical study as before ; no pursuit, as he tells us, being followed with nearly so much pleasure as collecting beetles. He gives the following proof of his zeal : ( One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas ! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue, so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost as was the third one.' The most fortunate circumstance of his stay at Cambridge also is to be found in his scientific intimacies, especially that with Professor Henslow, a man of the greatest scientific attainments in the departments of Botany and Entomology, which also were of greatest interest to Darwin. It was through Professor Henslow that in 1831 he was invited to accompany Captain Fitzroy as naturalist in the voyage Charles Darwin 457 of H.M. ship Beagle. This memorable voyage extended over five years, and was considered by Darwin himself to have determined his career, and to have been by far the most important event in his life. There is no further thought of a profession now ; he has found his life-work. It is scarcely too much to say that all Darwin's scientific career, all his writings, with all their original contributions to the science of his time, are to be found, in germ at least, within the years of this remarkable voyage. It was not merely that it gave to the young naturalist, and that at an impressionable period of life, the kind of education that comes from extensive travel over many seas and lands, but that it furnished him with unparalleled opportunities for the exercise of a faculty of observation of the very highest order. Already in his twenty- first year the high qualifications of the true man of science assert themselves his keen observation, his patient industry in collecting facts, his bold general- isations in the explanation of phenomena, and his intense enthusiasm in the cause of science. Looking back upon this time, he used to say that his most vivid and pleasing recollections were of the glories of the tropical forest, in which he had found such unique opportunities for watching the struggle for existence in animal and vegetable forms. His interest in geological phenomena was almost equally great, and it was at this time that he made the immense mass of observations embodied in such earlier works as Coral Reefs (1842), Volcanic Islands (1844), and Geological 458 Victorian Literature Observations on South America (1846). Of these the most important and popular was that on Coral Reefs, which showed such a mastery of scientific method, and such an adequacy to explain the facts of the case, that men of science very soon gave its theory of oceanic subsidence their warm admiration and cordial acceptance. Of late years some of its posi- tions have been questioned by Dr Murray of the Challenger and others, without however in any way lessening the importance of Darwin's researches. In 1836 he was back in London, but with a some- what enfeebled constitution. He had never been altogether free from sea-sickness during the whole five years of the voyage. The effects seem to have remained with him ever afterwards; and it was only by living a careful and retired life, that he was able to accomplish the great works with which his name is associated. His first literary labour after his return was the preparation of his Journal of a Naturalist on Board H.M. Ship * Beagle] which was published in 1839. It is a work of the greatest interest and value, and still retains its popularity. In the same year, Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and after a few years' residence in London, went, in 1842, to live at Down, near Beckenham, in Kent. Here he spent the remaining forty years of his life without incident of any kind, other than the publication of his various books, and the carrying on of a correspondence that embraced the foremost men of science of the time. We learn that for more Charles Darwin 459 than twenty years the theory of Evolution to which he has given expression in his greatest work, had been present to his mind ; and that during all that time he had been slowly and patiently maturing his argu- ments, and accumulating the facts by which they were to be supported. Even when, in 1859, The Origin of Species was at last given to the world, it was still without much of the apparatus of fact which, according to his design, was to accompany his argu- ments. He had been startled to discover that others had been working at the same problem, and that, knowing nothing of his researches, they had reached almost identical conclusions. In June 1858, he received from the eminent natura- list Alfred Russel Wallace, who was then working in the Malay Archipelago, the manuscript of an essay, On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type, in which, much to his disturbance, he recognised his own arguments and his own conclu- sions quite independently reached by another. He lost no time in submitting the paper to his friends, Professor Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, both of whom had for fifteen years been well acquainted with his own speculations ; and on their advice a joint-paper, bearing the names of Darwin and Wallace, was read to the Linnaean Society, On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties ; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. It thus appears that the honours of discovery, if discovery it 460 Victorian Literature can be called, must be divided equally between the two great naturalists. Longer delay was now impossible, and accordingly in 1859 the work now everywhere known as The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published. It not only attracted great attention, but everywhere gave rise to embittered controversy. It was the popu- larly received, and also, at that time, the scientific opinion, that species were permanent and immutable ; in other words, that in greater or less conformity to the original type, they had remained the same through all the periods of biological time. Darwin, on the other hand, contended that species were mutable, and that they bore evidence, no less than varieties, of having been developed from earlier and simpler forms. Evolution was no new idea. Others, for example Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Robert Chambers, and Herbert Spencer, had anticipated Darwin in the enunciation of it. It was his distinction that in sup- port of this theory he produced a vast array of most interesting and reliable facts showing modification by descent, and illustrating the alleged struggle for exist- ence in plants and animals. He showed what a number of these forms, thus called into life, are con- tinually perishing, and accounted for it by a principle to which he gave the name of ' Natural Selection,' but which Herbert Spencer more happily called ' the survival of the fittest.' In this struggle, according to Darwin, the unfavourable variation, or that which is less generously equipped and can less readily adapt Charles Darwin 461 itself to circumstances, will die out, while the favour- able one will survive ; the result being the formation of a new species. In his view, the struggle is never- ending. New foes are found in forces that require a more strenuous energy of resistance, or a wider adapta- bility ; and the process of elimination is repeated, the fittest, of course, always surviving. It is possible, therefore, on this hypothesis to go back through all the ages of the life history of our globe, along a series of developments in which the passage backwards is always from higher to lower forms until the beginnings of life are reached in one or more primordial cells. And here the theory is confronted with its most serious difficulty. To the question, ' What then ? ' it has no answer to give. Darwin himself is frank enough to confess that he cannot explain the life of these cells. The idea of spontaneous generation he unhesitatingly rejects. The student of this theory, indeed, cannot but be struck with the doubts and hesitations of its author. He denies design in nature, but confesses that it is difficult to do so. He opposes Creation and Evolu- tion as irreconcilable alternatives, yet seems to hold the theistic position. He does not shrink from avowing his belief that man also is the product of this slow development, but will not admit that he is sprung from the apes, although of the same stock as they. Objectionable in popular opinion though much of the Origin was, Darwin's Descent of Man (1871) struck an even harsher note of discord, and roused a still stronger opposition. It cannot, however, be 462 Victorian Literature said to have altered anything. Absolutely no reliable trace of Simian ancestry, or cousinhood, as Darwin in effect puts it, has ever yet been discovered. The earliest human remains, going back to the very dawn of history, are practically identical with those of to-day. The * missing link ' so eagerly sought for has not been found. Science is compelled to acknowledge that the physical distance between man and the ape was as great in the earliest human ages as it is now. And if, notwithstanding this physical discrepancy, we admit the startling similarities of structure between man and the higher vertebrates, what means can be suggested for bridging over the tremendous chasm that separates the intellectual and moral nature even of the lowest man from the highest of the apes ? By the Descent of Man, the Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), and the Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals (1872), Darwin made intensely interesting and im- portant contributions to science, and placed his great theory fully before the world. It remains, however, a theory still. There is and there can be no positive proof that species ever have been formed in the manner described. Even such acute thinkers as Huxley, not unfavourably disposed, have been constrained to acknowledge that so-called 'natural selection ' has not been proved to be a fact. More- over the alternative Creation or Evolution is seen to be unnecessary. At the point to which Evolution conducts us, there is still life to be accounted for. Charles Darwin 463 And if so, why not by God and a creative act ? And if by one such act, why not by many, either in one period or in successive periods of time ? Evolution in some form, although it may not be in the Darwinian sense, is undoubtedly a fact, and this it is the glory of Darwin to have demonstrated. But Evolution is not incompatible with Creation ; and devout minds can even feel their reverence quickened by the thought of the Creative Will manifesting itself over long stretches of time in successive and ever-heightening develop- ments of animal and vegetable life. Outside of these controversies Darwin had put a singularly fresh and vivid interest into the study of certain other departments of natural history, by his fascinating Fertilisation of Orchids (1862), Climbing Plants (1864), Insectivorous Plants (1875), Movement in Plants (1880), and Earthworms (1881). Darwin's books owe comparatively little to the graces of style. He wrote slowly, and confesses to have found composition difficult. It was not therefore to the literary quality of his work, but to the interest attaching to the numberless observations of facts that he recorded, and the startling nature of the specula- tions to which they led him, that the extraordinary success of his books was due. All those who knew Darwin have recorded the charm of his personal character and manner. He was genial and affectionate, simple and frank, modest and diffident. None of his opponents could have been more ready to acknowledge the force of an 464 Victorian Literature argument that told against his theories than he was himself. His concessions indeed were so many and so important, that towards the close of his life but little was left of the theory of Natural Selection, of which he had made so much. Orthodox theological opinion had been up in arms against him, because his specula- tions were supposed to be dishonouring to human nature, and hostile to the conception of a personal Creator. But Darwin, while boldly accepting the conclusions to which his scientific opinions led him, deprecated with a fine frankness that undue stress should be put upon his private religious opinions, on the ground ,that the religious sentiment had never been strongly developed in him. There were further limitations, growing with his years, that have a peculiar psychological interest. He mentions that up to the age of thirty, he derived great pleasure from certain of the poets, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, but regrets that afterwards this taste entirely left him, so that he found the attempt to read even Shakespeare, whose historical plays especially used to have such an interest for him, nauseating and un- pleasant. In the same way, an early taste for pictures also disappeared, as did much of his former enjoyment in music. The only apparent exception to this decay on the emotional, imaginative, and aesthetic side of his nature, is to be found in his life-long enjoyment of novel -reading, a part of every day being spent either in reading, or having read to him, a portion of some popular fiction. Thomas H. Huxley 465 He died at Down on the igth of April, 1882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, a few feet from the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. The heated controversies that arose with the publication of the Origin of Species owe something of their bitterness to the vehemence both of defence and attack shown by such writers as Professors Huxley and Tyndall, who, in support of this new departure in scientific thought, brought to its advocacy a lucidity and eloquence of statement, a brilliance and force of imagination, an amount of general culture, and a power of literary expression to which Darwin could lay no claim. Although already well known as an accomplished zoologist, Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) may be said to have floated into general recognition on the numberless papers and addresses in which he strove to vindicate the Darwinian position. His earlier history reads not unlike a second edition of Darwin's. He had no advantages of education, and never entered a university. But in his youth he was an omnivorous reader of books, and these were of a quality that could scarcely have been expected. He particularly mentions the impression made upon his mind by Guizot's History of Civilisation and Sir William Hamilton's Edinburgh Review article on a Philosophy of the Unconditioned. It is evident that Hamilton's theory as to the limitations of human knowledge influenced all his 2 G 466 Victorian Literature future thinkings on metaphysical and theological subjects, for which, strange to say, he always had a liking. In his last paper, an unfinished criticism of Mr Balfour's Foundations of Belief, published in the Fortnightly Review a few weeks before his death, Mr Huxley expressly traces the form of Agnosticism he professed to Hamilton's theory of the relativity of human knowledge. Seeing that he lived to be the arch-enemy of what he called ; clerical-mindedness,' it is strange to find in his youth aspirations that pointed towards the church. Ultimately, after some medical training at Charing Cross Hospital, London, he entered the Royal Navy as Assistant-Surgeon, and served on board the Rattle- snake between the years 1846 and 1850. In the survey of the Great Barrier Reef on the eastern side of Australia, and the neighbouring Louisiade Archi- pelago, he had the opportunity of making those careful studies in marine zoology, the results of which he contributed from time to time to the Royal and Linnaean Societies. On his return he was admitted to the fellowship of the Royal Society, and in 1854 was appointed Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines, and of Physiology at the Royal Institu- tion. In 1859 he published in The Oceanic Hydrozoa the results of his observations in the long voyage of the Rattlesnake. Many other writings of a purely scientific character followed, dealing chiefly with subjects in Com- parative Anatomy and Physiology. To the general reader, however, he is better known by such works as Thomas H. Huxley 467 Mail's Place in Nature, David Hume, Darwiniana, and the various volumes of collected essays and public ad- dresses, published under such titles as Science and Education, Science and Hebrew Tradition, Science and Christian Tradition. In these latter his hostile attitude to accepted religious opinion is undisguised, as also are the vigour, polish, and brilliance of his polemical style. The love of the battle is strong in Huxley. He buckles on his armour with something of the warrior's alacrity. He has an instinctive perception of the weak points of an adversary. The rapier thrusts of his sarcasm are swift and deadly. The foe he holds himself especially charged to overcome is clericalism, and he fails to see that the spirit he so dislikes under that name, is very largely present in himself. The arrogant dogmatism, as he would call it, of the clerical mind when applied to scientific questions, is no less manifest in his own summary dealings with problems of theology. No one will deny to him the art of seeing clearly, and of putting clearly into words, what he sees. His defini- tion that science is nothing but trained and organised common-sense is illustrated by his own native shrewd- ness and keenness of intellect. Whether, however, with all his gifts he has actually advanced the causes on which he spent so much controversy may be doubted. It cannot be said that his attacks on religion have had any very disastrous result, and as for the Darwinian theory of Evolution, not only has it not received the assent of scientific men, but it did not 468 Victorian Literature even receive as a demonstrated fact the adhesion of Huxley himself. A certain warmth and impetuosity of impulse are to be noted in this great man as truly as are his candour, his intellectual vigour, and his splendid com- mand both of reasoning power and of fit and lucid language. The man of letters is no less distinctly seen in him than the man of science. There is much in his writings both as to their matter and their form, that the general reader, having no taste for science, can fully appreciate, and that give to them a true value as literature. Professor Huxley died at his villa of Hodes- lea, Eastbourne, on the 29th of June 1895. John Tyndall (1820-1893), another strenuous sup- porter of the Evolution theory, was also one of the greatest physicists of the age. The value of his con- tributions to science, especially on such subjects as light, heat, and sound, secured for him a European reputation, which he brilliantly sustained. To the gift of clear exposition, Professor Tyndall united eloquence, imagination, and a feeling for poetry. When the matter was one of purely scientific exposi- tion, these qualities were wont to lend a peculiar charm to his deliverances. On the other hand, in any matter of controversy, he was apt to show himself wanting in moderation not only in the use of language, which was often stronger than the occasion warranted, but also, as in his address from the Presidential Chair of the British Association at its meeting at Belfast in Sir Richard Owen 469 1874, in treating with a cavalier rudeness the most cherished opinions of those to whom he was opposed. Tyndall united in himself all the gifts of the scientific and the literary man. After a long illness he die'd towards the close of 1893. One would like to dwell upon the well-balanced and complete career of Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892). Acknowledged to be the greatest anatomist of the century, he was also a man of wide and generous culture, as might be expected of the friend and associate of the greatest thinkers, poets, novelists, musicians, and statesmen of the time. He was never a convert to Darwinism. He was not convinced that the origin of species by natural selection had been made out ; and he deprecated the materialistic trend of this theory, clinging to the last to the belief in an immaterial spirit, and the hope of continuing in a future life the researches intermitted here. From his biography recently published by his grandson, and elsewhere in this book referred to, the following extracts are taken, to set this great man, outside of his scientific work, distinctly before us. Referring to the ideal home of his later years in Richmond Park, he says : ' I was awoke at three o'clock on Sunday morning, by a concert of a very unusual kind to my ears, and, tempted by the un- wonted strains, I stole down into the garden. Day was grayly dawning in the north-east and some light clouds were floating across a pearly sky. The nightingales 470 Victorian Literature were sending forth interrupted capricious carols from every bush ; with a higher treble for some unknown warbler, and a lower one for thrushes and blackbirds. The distant curlew kept up a running tenor accompani- ment, and the more distant rookery gave out a steady bass ; with the occasional addition of the wood-pigeon's plaintive coo-oo. Then came the echo of the cheery crow of a distant cock, the lowing of the steer, and the drowsy hum of the humble bee. The air was fragrant with newly opening azaleas and whitethorn, and I was tempted to the brink of the little lake by the strange gambols and gyrations of the great black-backed carp. At half-past four, I returned again to bed, and slept till half-past nine, in comfortable instinctive consciousness that the whole was a reality, and no early morning dream.' The following words, taken from the concluding passage of his Rede Lecture delivered at Cambridge in 1859, will show how reverently and with how deep a sense of responsibility, this great man regarded the subjects with which it was his life-business to deal. After a description of the human body he proceeds : * Such are the dominating powers with which we, and we alone, are gifted ! I say gifted, for the surpassing organisation was no gift of ours. " It is He that made us, and not we ourselves." This frame is a temporary trust, for the uses of which we are responsible to the Maker. O you who possess it in all the supple vigour of lusty youth, think well what it is that He has com- mitted to your keeping ! Waste not its energies ; George J. Romanes 471 dull them not by sloth ; spoil them not by pleasures ! The supreme work of Creation has been accomplished that you might possess a body, the sole erect, of all animal bodies the most free, and for what ? For the service of the soul. Strive to realise the conditions of the possession of this wondrous structure. Think what it may become the Temple of the Holy Spirit ! Defile it not. Seek rather to adorn it with all meet and becoming gifts, and with fair furniture, moral and intellectual.' Professor Owen, ( the tall man with great glittering eyes,' as described by Carlyle, lived to reach his eighty-ninth year, and died om December 18, 1892, in the full possession of all his great mental faculties. Next to his work in science, his most enduring monu- ment is likely to be the noble Natural History Museum at South Kensington, the finest in the world, the fruit of much of his most anxious thought and self-denying labour during the closing years of his life. Of the younger race of biologists no one was more deeply loved, showed greater promise, or indeed did more abundant work than George J. Romanes (1848-1894). He was both the disciple and the friend of Darwin, who, to the end of his life, continued to meet and correspond with his young admirer with a beautiful intimacy of affection. The influence of this friendship is to be seen in such works from the pen of Romanes, as The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, Mental Evolution in Animals, Mental 472 Victorian Literature Evolution in Man, Darwin and after Darwin, and An Examination of Weismannism. Even he, however, could not accept without demur the theory of natural selection as adequate by itself to explain organic evolu- tion. He is the author of a work embodying his own earliest researches entitled Starfish, Jelly fish, and Sea Urchins, and also of an extremely interesting and valuable work on Animal Intelligence, the most popular of all his writings. There was something very winning and attractive about Romanes. But the deepest thing in him was his love of truth, and his honest, fearless, unselfish pursuit of it. Quite early in his career he had signalised his abandonment of the Christian faith by the publication of a work entitled A Candid Examination of Theism. Towards the close of his brief life he returned to the faith of his earlier years. This was made known by the fine Life of Romanes by his widow, and still more emphatically by his own notes published by Canon Gore after his death, under the title, Thoughts on Religion. Professor Romanes died in his forty-seventh year, at his house St Aldate's, Oxford, in 1894. The literary aptitudes of scientific men during the Victorian period have by no means been confined to biological research. Sir David Brewster as a physicist may thus be placed beside Tyndall. In geology, literature has been well represented by Sir Charles Lyell, the friend of Darwin, and author of The Other Men of Science 473 Principles of Geology and The Antiquity of Man ; by Hugh Miller, the stonemason of Cromarty, whose Old Red Sandstone made important additions to scientific knowledge, but who will rather be remembered for the charms of eloquence and poetry of style than for his actual achievements in science. Of his purely literary works My Schools and Schoolmasters deserves especial mention. Still later in time come the brothers Geikie, in both of whom, along with the amplest knowledge of their own special subject, is to be found the gift of clear, graceful literary expression. Sir Archibald Geikie was born and educated in Edinburgh, and was from his earliest years a predestined geologist. Aftenoccupying for some time the Murchison Professor- ship of Geology in the University of Edinburgh, he became Director-General of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom a position which he still holds. In The Story of a Boulder, The Scenery of Scotland viewed in Connection with its Physical Geology, his Text-book of Geology, The Ancient Volcanoes of Britain (1897), and his lives of various eminent men of science, are to be seen the qualities of an admirably lucid and attractive style. James Geikie, LL.D., followed his brother in the Edinburgh Chair of Geology on the re- moval of the latter to London. In his Great Ice Age, Pre-Historic Europe, etc., he too adds the charm of attractive form to an adequate scientific equipment. Professor Geikie's literary tastes and accomplishments further appear in his Songs and Lyrics, by Heinrich Heine. Astronomy in the hands of Sir Robert Ball has the 474 Victorian Literature same picturesque interest. For this reason his Story of the Heavens, Story of the Sun, In Starry Realms, etc., have had a large circulation, and have called forth unusual interest. The names of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer must here suffice to represent British Philosophy during the Victorian period. Others no doubt there were, such as Hamilton and Ferrier, Whewell and Whately, Mansel and Green. The vast erudition and splendid philosophical powers of Sir William Hamilton caused him during the latter part of his life to be recognised as the foremost representative of British philosophy. Since his death his speculations, although much discredited by other writers, have largely served to keep it alive. He remains therefore one of the germinant forces of British philosophical thought ; and it was in controversy with Hamilton that Mill secured much of his reputation as one of the greatest thinkers of the age. The life of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) is the history of a tremendous experiment in education. A human soul, indeed, was never reared under stranger conditions. Mill never had a youth, yet was of cultured, moral parentage. Almost from his cradle he is made the slave of an iron-bound system, that sees in him only a machine, destitute of either power or will to shape a course for itself. And the avowed object of the system is to create within the tender John Stuart Mill 475 years of a child, a power of reasoning, a retentiveness of memory, an understanding of facts and problems such as would be natural only in the cultured intel- ligence of a mature man. Mill himself deprecated the application to it of the word ' cram, 1 but surely there never was a more astounding example of forcing. And the pity of it becomes greater when we know that the author of it was the child's own father. In many ways the elder Mill was one of the most remarkable men of his time. The son of a Scottish farmer, James Mill had won distinction as a University student, and had gone so far as to obtain license as a Presbyterian minister. But at this point his opinions changed, and he never entered upon the duties of the ministerial office. Indeed so great was the change that he seems to have abandoned all religious belief and made an open avowal of scepticism. Having settled in London, he devoted himself to literature, and became widely known as a writer of sound judg- ment, accurate knowledge, and a singular clearness of exposition and of language on the various subjects in which he was interested. More particularly he was the author of a History of India (1818), which brought him into favourable notice, and led to various appoint- ments in connection with the government of the East India Company appointments which he continued to hold for the rest of his life. In addition to articles contributed to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, he wrote the Elements of Political Economy and an Analysis of the Human Mind. On the basis of such knowledge 476 Victorian Literature of him only, we should have judged James Mill to have been an erudite scholar and an original and acute thinker, especially on subjects connected with the various branches of Mental, Moral, and Political Philo- sophy. He was an advanced follower of Bentham, and before his son, perhaps the most influential of the band of thinkers, who were known as Philosophical Radicals, and whose organ was the Westminster Review. It remained for his greater son, in the sad but exceed- ingly interesting Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, to furnish us with a more interior portrait, and to show how much of the martinet was in his father, and of what unconscious cruelty a one-sided nature like his may be capable. John Stuart Mill was his eldest son, and may in consequence have suffered from that form of injury that often proceeds from an exaggerated idea of parental responsibility in the case of a first or only child. He was never sent to school, but got all his education from his father, at least until his fourteenth year. The method of that education, as we have seen, proceeded on the principle of forcing into pre- mature, and therefore unnatural, exercise, the purely intellectual powers of the child's mind, and of repress- ing, as far as might be, his emotional nature, by carefully excluding from his knowledge whatever would be likely to minister to sentiment, imagination, and a sense of poetry. From his earliest years, he was taught, and apparently throughout most if not all of his subsequent life believed, that the idea of John Stuart Mill 477 a God was a delusion of the ignorant. He tells us that he had never thrown off religious belief, because he never had it. Poetry, too, was kept far from him. The exquisite ideatisings of a child's mind seem to have been almost unknown to him. The enchant- ments of romance had as little place within his narrow scheme of things as the sublime ideas of religion. He played at no games, had no companions, the latter being deliberately excluded lest they should interfere with the parental plan of education. Life was thus one long strenuous endeavour within a groove from which he was never permitted to deviate by so much as a hair's breadth. It is surprising that even a child should have submitted so meekly to be thus cabined and confined. But, in fact, there are no signs of rebellion in him. We naturally ask, Where was the mother ? How was it possible that folded in the soft corners of her love, the child did not there catch the glints of that warmer and more glowing world from which his father's stern system debarred him ? We cannot say. The Autobiography, which has so much to relate con- cerning the early years of his childhood, tells us nothing of his mother. And yet, from other sources we know that by her personal beauty, and her warm emotional temperament, a quality which he must have inherited from her, she could scarcely have failed to impress deeply the tender heart of a child. In any case the experiment went on unchecked. The results are tabulated in the Autobiography, and form strange 478 Victorian Literature but pitiful reading. At three he began the study of Greek, and before he was eight had done an amount of work that would not have disgraced an undergradu- ate of twenty. ^Esop, Herodotus, Xenophon, Diogenes Laertius, Lucian, Isocrates, and Plato had all been more or less studied by him. In history he had read, during the same period, Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, Watson's Philip //and ///, Hooke's History of Rome, Rollin's Ancient History, Langhorne's Translation of Plutarch, Burnet's History of His Own Times, Mos- heim's Ecclesiastical History, M'Crie's Life of John Knox, and various others. Nor was any part of this work done lightly. He was made to give a verbal account of what he had read to his father, and if the latter added any explanations, the child was required to restate them afterwards in his own words. ' Of children's books/ says he, ( any more than of play- things, I had scarcely any, except an occasional gift from a relation or acquaintance.' Fortunately among such books were Robinson Crusoe, The Arabian Nights, and Don Quixote, and the enjoyment of these was doubtless the boy's intellectual salvation. In his eighth year he commenced learning Latin, and before he was twelve, he had gone through a formidable array of the Latin classics. During the same period he had made considerable progress in Mathematics. At the age of twelve he entered upon the thorough and systematic study of Logic, of the value of which as a mental gymnastic, his father had the highest opinion. In this his son agreed with John Stuart Mill 479 him. 'I know of nothing in my education,' says he, ' to which I think myself more indebted for whatever capacity of thinking I have attained.' To these subjects were added Oratory and Political Economy, and in this fashion Mill's studies proceeded until his fourteenth year, when his direct instruction at his father's hands ceased. Reviewing the whole period of his childhood, if childhood it can be called, Mill seems disposed to congratulate himself on the results obtained. He repudiates the idea that he was educated on a system of cram, alleging that he was never told anything that could be found out by think- ing. Moreover he expresses the opinion that in quickness of apprehension, retentiveness of memory, and energy of character, he was rather below than above par, and that results quite as striking could be obtained in the case of any boy or girl of average ability. But if it be admitted that a human mind was never more carefully, and successfully, disciplined to become a perfect instrument of thought ; if, moreover, a greater quantity of serviceable learning can seldom have been gathered together at the same age, is there nothing to set on the other side? As he looks back from the close of life, the review plainly does not altogether satisfy Mill himself. More than anything else he had gained in analytical power. But logical analysis is not everything. He regrets, and justly, that he suffered in physical development. He knew nothing of games, was no match for other boys at any kind of physical exercise, 480 Victorian Literature and throughout life was clumsy in the use of his hands. He suffered no less at quite the opposite pole of his being. For we have seen how the spiritual elements of his nature were starved. It cannot even be said that the moral stimulus that comes from the sanctions of religion were supplied by love and reverence for his father. The latter was stern, irritable, and exacting, and, as his son says, fear of him dried up his children's affection at its source. There can be no doubt that Mill's temperament was warmly emotional, and that naturally he was endowed with a peculiar intensity of feeling ; and yet during the first fourteen years of his life, when character was being so sedulously formed within him, feeling was permitted no outlet. As soon, however, as he is emancipated from the direct control of his father, the sense of beauty, especially in con- nection with natural scenery, and a susceptibility to the influence of poetry, become potent in his life. To him as to Carlyle there comes after a time a great crisis when all things seem to be slipping from under his feet ; and then he tells us it is the poetry of Wordsworth that recalls the vividness of life, and rescues him from despair. The analytical power the power of looking at everything in the cold, steely light of the logical reason was thus Mill's chief inheritance from the discipline of his early years ; but it is not un- reasonable to suppose that if his education had been conducted on more liberal and human principles, so as to produce the balanced and harmonious develop- ment of his whole nature, he might have been a John Stuart Mill 481 greater, stronger, and more original man than he actually proved. Even in relation to intellectual problems, much of his later life was a slow and painful unlearning of what had been instilled into him in his early years. It was altogether fortunate for him that he should have gone to make a long stay of more than a year with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham in a French Chateau, just when he was passing from under the direct instruction of his father. He was thus intro- duced to a family life very different from that to which he had been accustomed, to people some of whom were near his own age, to the language, institutions, and manners of a strange nation that deeply interested him, and, in a visit to the Pyrenees, to grand and impressive scenery, the influence of which in calling into exercise the emotional elements of Mill's nature, it is scarcely possible to over-estimate. On his return to England he gave himself to psycho- logical study, and carried on various readings in law, history and philosophy. In 1823 he entered the India House as clerk, a connection which lasted till the transference of the company's dominions to the Crown in 1858, thirty- five years later. When that event came, John Stuart Mill was the head of the office, and the government rewarded his services with a pension of ^"1500 a year. Between 1821 and 1840 he published many articles in the Westminster and other reviews, on subjects that showed his pre-eminent capa- city for the discussion of abstract problems in politics, 2 H 482 Victorian Literature philosophy, and political economy. In 1843 appeared his first great work, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, on which his reputation still mainly rests. The Principles of Political Economy, followed in 1848, and attracted the attention of all thinking men. A third great work appeared in 1865 as An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. Treatises on Liberty and Utilitarianism are also to be included in Mill's important contributions to the literature of British Philosophy. In all are to be seen the writer's remarkable powers of argument, his great intellectual force, and that carefulness as to forms of expression, which makes his works, of all the philo- sophical writings of the century, the most intelligible and attractive. Nothing, as he explains, was put from his hand, until it had been subjected again and again to the most careful processes of revision. It would be out of place here even to attempt to summarise the subject matter of such works as these by inquiring how far Mill's philosophy was empirical as Locke's and Hume's was ; in what sense he accepted ' happi- ness ' as the end of life ; and whether or not his theories as an economist tended to socialism. Great though Mill was as an abstract thinker, as a practical politician he must be pronounced a failure. In 1865 he was returned as Member of Parliament for Westminster in circumstances that reflected great honour upon him; but on the whole his public career was a disappointment. The wave of popularity that had carried his election so triumphantly was soon John Stuart Mill 483 spent, and in the General Election of 1868 he was defeated at the poll by Mr W. H. Smith. His failure can certainly not be ascribed to any lack of acquaint- ance with the problems of politics, far less to any lack of either zeal or ability in the discharge of his duties. More probably it was the result of a defective knowledge of men due to the limitations of his early training. Besides, he was outwardly cold and reserved in manner, and was wanting in the qualities of the orator and popular debater. A strain of eccentricity is also observable in the warmth of his advocacy of certain causes, such as the Enfranchisement of Women and the Irish Question. After a few years of retirement, broken by several illnesses, Mill died at Avignon in 1873. After his death appeared his interesting Autobiography and Three Essays on Religion, which were a surprise to every one, because of the impression which they gave, that Mill who had always been regarded as a pro- nounced sceptic, was nearer orthodox beliefs than could have reasonably been supposed. A careful study of this great man's character shows him to have been simple and honest, earnest and conscientious, ready to give due weight to opinions contrary to his own, and a sincere lover of his kind. The most strik- ing weakness in a character that was generally so strong is to be seen in the want of control over his emotional nature, and the extravagances of laudation, as in the case of his wife, into which he is thus betrayed. 484 Victorian Literature Herbert Spencer (1820). Herbert Spencer, the most comprehensive and influential of modern thinkers, was born at Derby in 1820. Hereditary influences, as well as certain favourable circumstances of his youth, doubtless contributed to make him the man he after- wards became. His father was a schoolmaster of decided ability, force of character, scientific tastes, and advanced educational ideas. He was opposed to the methods usually pursued in schools, and thought that too much time was given to the acquisition of a mass of unconnected and undigested facts of little use towards true culture and a fit preparation for life. The proper business of the educator therefore, in his opinion, is less to communicate knowledge than to dis- cipline the child's own faculties, especially by training it to habits of careful observation and right reasoning. It did not seem, however, that his son Herbert was likely to illustrate favourably any theory of education, although he actually lived to incorporate many of his father's enlightened ideas in his own admirable work on Education. He was seven before he learned to read, and continued to be a backward pupil, to whom the whole business of school was difficult and hateful. He learned anything with extreme difficulty, and forgot it as soon as it was learned. For languages he had no aptitude whatever, and apparently never acquired a knowledge of any language except his own, classical or foreign. His traffic indeed was little with books of any kind. On the other hand, he was a keen observer, the philosophising element was highly Herbert Spencer 485 developed in him, and in the unusual activity of his reasoning and generalising powers, we can see dis- tinctly the germs of those qualities that afterwards so highly distinguished him. In observing his father's, and also his uncle's emphatic attitude towards various social problems and public movements, and in listening to their animated discussions on such subjects with other kindred spirits, the boy had the opportunity not only of acquiring much useful information, but also of developing in himself an unusual talent for con- troversy, and for grappling with great intellectual, moral, and social problems. Of school subjects proper the only one for which he showed any true liking or aptitude was mathematics, but when it was seriously proposed that he should continue his mathematical studies at Cambridge, he positively declined. Thus it came to pass that he never had either a public school or a university train- ing, and notwithstanding the inevitable loss involved in this, when we consider how little the formal academic studies common in such institutions at that time were in accord with the rationalising and practical bent of his own genius, the fact need not be seriously regretted. There does not seem to have been any one calling to which the young Spencer was specially drawn, al- though it did for a time appear as if engineering was going to be his life occupation. Several years, in fact, were efficiently devoted to this work, but when the disastrous collapse of railway speculation came, he found his occupation gone. It was only now, therefore, 486 Victorian Literature about his twenty-sixth year, that he took up his abode in London, and began to find for himself a career in literature. In 1842 he wrote a series of letters for the Nonconformist on ( The Proper Sphere of Government,' and in 1848 became sub-editor on the staff of the Economist. In 1850 appeared his first really important work, Social Statics, in which are to be found hints of his great theory of Evolution as an explanation of the progress of society. During the next four years he became acquainted with many remarkable persons, including John Stuart Mill, George Henry Lewes, George Eliot, and her friends the Brays and Hennells of Coventry. During these years also he contributed numerous articles to the West- minster and other reviews, on such subjects as ' The Development Hypothesis,' ( The Philosophy of Style,' ' The Genesis of Science,' and ' The Art of Education.' All of them show the working of the author's mind along the line of thought that he was ere long to make so distinctively his own. It is specially worthy of note that in his paper on ' The Development Hypothesis,' published in 1852, seven years before Darwin's Origin of Species appeared, Spencer had quite distinctly outlined a theory of organic evolution, in terms which might have been those of Darwin himself. But the evolutionary trend of Spencer's opinions becomes still more distinctly visible in his Principles of Psychology published in 1855, for the central aim of this work is to show how all the faculties and operations of mind can be explained by Herbert Spencer 487 Evolution . The Principles of Psychology was afterwards incorporated in the monumental Synthetic Philosophy by which the strenuous labours of a lifetime have at length been crowned and completed. The strain put upon him in 1855 by the composi- tion of The Principles of Psychology resulted in a com- plete breakdown of health, causing entire abstinence from literary labour for the next eighteen months. Indeed, he was ever afterwards an invalid, liable at intervals to be completely prostrated, and at his best incapable of more than three hours' work daily. The patience, the courage, the almost heroic persistency with which, notwithstanding these disadvantages, he pursued his great work to its close in 1896, are them- selves wonderful, but become even more astonishing when we know that his successive publications, far from being a source of revenue to him, have in many cases proved a serious pecuniary loss. We rightly make much of a man like Nansen who has braved the dangers and solitudes of the frozen North in eager search for the physical Pole ; but we are apt to overlook the no less heroic qualities, and the far more tremendous labours, of such a man as Spencer, who gives forty years of his life to prodigious researches and the most arduous speculations in search of what may be called the Polar thought of the Universe the grand conception that will explain the progress of all matter, and life, and human institutions from the beginning until now. No less than this is what Spencer sought to do. 488 Victorian Literature Darwin applied the doctrine of Evolution to the development of Organic Life only ; and by his vast accumulations and admirable ordering of biological facts has undoubtedly done more than any other man to place it almost beyond dispute. But Spencer went far beyond that. He showed how Evolution might account not only for the development of animal and plant life on the globe, but also for the genesis of worlds, the slow upbuilding of the earth into its present form, the grouping of human beings into races and nations, and the rise and expansion of language and of law, of philosophy and of govern- ment, of morality and of religion, and of all social institutions from their crude germ in the rudimentary ideas of the earliest untutored ages to their full flower and fruit in the marvellous civilisations of the nine- teenth century. Truly a sublime and comprehensive theory, which, even more completely than Darwin's, seems to realise once again the cosmical grandeur of the Newtonian Conception of a unity of power and of law binding together all things within the universe. INDEX Adam Bede, 55 Adam Graeme of Mossgray, 99 Adams, Sarah Flower, 294 Agnes Grey, 42 Ainger, Canon, 238 Ainsworth, Harrison, II Alec Forbes of Howglen, 95 A II Sorts and Conditions of Men, 112, 114 Alton Locke, 88 Ancient Sage, The, 289 Andrea del Sarto, 298, 301 Arnold, Matthew, 326-334, 446 Arnold, Matthew, Letters of, 327 Arnold, Thomas, 125 Arnold, Dr Thomas, of Rugby, Life of, 233 . Arnold, Sir Edwin, 409 Asolando, 314 Astrophel, 362 Atalanta in Calydon, 360 Augustan Age of English Litera- ture, 2 Auld Licht Idylls, 156 Aurora Leigh, 241, 325 Austin, Alfred, 401-406 Ay Inter' 's Field, 287 Aytoun, William Edmonstoune, 334-338 Bagehot, Walter, 412 Bailey, Philip James, 338 Balder Dead, 331 Ballades in Blue China, 384 Ballad of a Nun, 391 Ball, Sir Robert, 473 Barchester Towers, 73 Baring-Gould, S., 168 Barlow, Miss Jane, 171 Barrack-Room Ballads, 155 Barrie, James Matthew, 155-158 Beauchamp^s Career, IO2 Becket, Tennyson s, 289 Bells and Pomegranates, 296 Besant, Sir Walter, 111-115 Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, 163 Biographical History of Philosophy, .233 Biography, Victorian, 228 Birrell, Augustine, 450 Blackmore, Richard D., II, 96-98 Black, William, 115-118 Blessed Damozel, The, 345, 348 Blot on the 'Scutcheon, 297 Bondman, The, 121 Bon Gaultier Ballads, 335 Book of Orm, 375 Bothwell, Swinburne's, 360 Braddon, Miss, 168 Brewster, Sir David, 472 Bridge of Sighs, 247 Bridges, George, 410 Brimley, George, 412 Bronte, Charlotte, 10, 35-49 Bronte, Charlotte, Mrs Gaskelfs Life of, 232 Bronte, Charlotte, and Her Circle (Shorter], 232 Bronte, Anne, 42, 45 Emily, 41, 42, 44 Brontes in Ireland, 39, 45, 232 Brooke, Stopford, 233 490 Index Brown, Dr John, 448 Browning, Robert, 240, 293-318 Mrs, 318-326 Buckle, H. T., 221 Buchanan, Robert, 169, 347, 373- 379 Burton, J. H., 221 Caine, T. Hall, 119-122 Calverley, C. S., 381 Carlyle, Thomas, 175-193, 234 Carlyle, Thomas, Life of, 236 Carlyle, Mrs, Letters of, 211 Casa Guidi Windows, 321 Catriona, 135 Caxtons, The, 64 Chalmers, Dr, Life of, 233 Charles O'Afalley, 70 Chartism (Carlyle), 190 Christmas Carol, 1 6, 20 Chronicles of Carlingford, 99 Civilisation in Europe, 221 Civil War, History of, 221 Cloister and the Hearth, 80 Collingwood, W. G., 236 Collins, W. Wilkie, 92-94 Commonwealth and Protectorate, Gardiner 's, 221 Coningsby, 69 Conquest of England, Green s, 228 Constitutional History of England^ 218 Corelli, Marie, 170 Country Muse, 406 Cousin Phillis, 84 Cranford, 84 Crimean War, History of, 225 Crockett, S. R., 158-162 Cromwell's Place in History, 22$ Crossing the Bar, 293 Daniel Deronda , 57 Darwin, Charles, 453-465 Daughter of Heth, 116 David BaJfour, Adventures of, i^ David Copper Jield, 16 David Elginbrod, 95 Davidson, John, 390-395 Days of Auld Lang Syne, 164 Dean Swift, Life of , 235 Deemster, The, 12 1 Demeter, 288, 290 Democracy and Liberty, 226 Descent of Man, 462 Diana of the Crossways, 102, 104 Dickens, Charles, 9, 13-23 Dickens , Charles, Life of, 235 Dictionary of Biography, 238 Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, 67-70 D'Israeli, Isaac, 67 Divided, 357 Dobell, Sydney, 339 Dobson, Austin, 381 Dombey 6 1 Son, 1 6 Dover Beach, 331 Dowden, Professor, 236 Doyle, A. Conan, II, 147-150 Drama of Exile, 324 Dramatic Idylls, 314 Dramatis Persona, 304 Dreamthorp, 341 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 133 Earthly Paradise, The, 368 Egoist, The, 102 Eliot, George, 10, 49-60 Elizabethan Literature, I England, History of, Macaulay's, 201 England, History of, Froudes, 2IO English Constitution, Growth o/j 217 English Men of Letters Series, 237 Enoch Arden, 287 Eothen, 224 Epic of Hades, 400 Esler, Mrs Rentoul, 170 Esmond, 29 Essayists and Reviewers, Vic- torian, 412 Eugene Aram, 63 European Morals, History of, 226 Falkland, 63 Familiar Studies of Men and Books , 132 Far from the Madding Crowd ', 107 Farina, 102 Index 49 Felix Holt, 56 Festus, 338 /%*/ ,5Vra/ Eclogues, 393 Fleshly School of Poetry, 347 Forsaken Merman, 329 Forster, John, 235 /ra Zz>/0 Z *)>//, 298, 300 Framley Parsonage, 73 Francis, Miss M. E., 172 Frederick II of Prussia, CarlyU's, 1 88 Freeman, Edward A., 213-217 French Revolution, Carlyle's, 185, 187 Froude, J. Anthony, 206-213, 236 Gale, Norman, 406 Gardiner, S. Rawson, 221 Gaskell, Mrs, 81-85, 2 3 2 Geikie, Sir Archibald, 473 Professor James, 473 Gentleman of France, 143 Goblin Market, 352 Goethe, Life of, Lewes 's, 233 Goldsmith, Life of , Forster 's, 235 Gosse, Edmund, 411 Grandmother, The, 288 Gray, David, 373 Great Writers Series, 237 Greece, History of, Grate's, 219 Greece, History of, ThirlwalFs, 219 Green, John Richard, 227 Grote, George, 219 Haggard, H. Rider, 152 Hamilton, Sir William, 474 Hanna, Dr, 233 Hannay, James, 167 Hard Cash, 79 Hardy, Thomas, 105, 106-111 Harrison, Frederick, 450 Harry Lorrequer, 70 Harry Richmond, 102 Hatton, Joseph, 168 Haystack in the Floods, 365 Helps, Sir Arthur, 412 Henley, W. Ernest, 410, 450 High Tide in Lincolnshire, 357 Historical Novel, n Hood, Thomas, 240, 246-250 Hope, Anthony, 150 Hound of Heaven, 397 Hunt, Leigh, 240, 241-246 Hutton, R. H., 450 Hypatia, 89 Huxley, T. H., 465-468 Idylls of the King, 241, 273-287 Idyls and Legends of Inverburn , 374 Ingelow, Jean, 357-359 Inland Voyage, Stevenson s, 132 In Memoriam, 256, 269 // is Never too Late to Mend, 79 Ixion in Heaven, 68 James, G. P. R., 11 Jane Eyre, 42 Jason, Life and Death of, 368 John Inglesant, 119 Journalism, Expansion of, 412 Kate Carnegie, 165 Karshish, 299 Kidnapped, 135 Kinglake, A. W., 224-226 Kingsley, Charles, II, 85-92 Kings ley, Charles, Life of , 235 Kingsley, Henry, 167 King's Tragedy, The, 349 Kipling, Rudyard, 153-155 Knight, Professor, 236 Lady Geraldine's Courtship, 324 Lady of Shalott, 257 Lang, Andrew, 169, 383-385, 450 Latter Day Pamphlets, 190 Lawrence, George A., 167 Lays of Ancient Rome, 200 Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, 335 Lecky, William, E. H., 226 Lee, Sydney, 238 Lever, Charles, 70 Lewes, George H., 53, 232 Life Drama, A, 340 Life s Handicap, 155 Lights o' Leith, 377 Linton, Mrs E. Lynn, 166 492 Index Lockhart, John Gibson, 230 Locker-Lampson, F., 381 Locksley Hall, 263 Locks ley Hall, Sixty Years After, 266 Lorna Doone, 96, 97 Lothair, 69 Luggie, The, 373 Lyall, David, 171 Edna, 170 Lyell, Sir Charles, 472 Lytton, Edward Bui wer, Lord, n, 61-67 Macaulay, Lord, 193-206 Macaulay, Lord, Life of , 234 Macdonald, George, 94-96 Maclaren,Ian, 162-166 Making of England, Greens, 228 Manxman, The, 121 Marcella, 124 Margaret Maitland of Sunny side, 98 Margaret Ogilvy, 157 Marryat, Captain F., 165 Martin Chuzzlewit, 1 6 Martin, Sir Theodore, 335 Mary Barton, 83 Massey, Gerald, 409 Masson, Professor, 233 Master of Ballantrae, 136 Maud, 256, 272 M'Carthy, Justin, 168 Meldrum, D. S., 171 Memories and Portraits, 132 Men of the Moss -Hags, 160 Men and Women, Brownings, 298 Meredith, George, 100-104 Merivale, Dean, 221 Merlin and the Gleam, 290 Middlemarch, 56 Mill, John Stuart, 474-483 Mill, John Stuart, A utobiography of, 236 Miller, Hugh, 473 Milman, Henry Hart, 220 Milton, Masson s, 233 Modern Painters, 440 Moonstone, 93 Morris, William, 240, 364-371 Morris, Sir Lewis, 399-401 Morte cT Arthur, 262 Mulock, Dinah Maria, 166 Myers, F. W. H., 410 My Novel, 64 My Lady Rotha, 145 Nemesis of Faith, 2io Newcomes, 30 Nigger Question, Carlyle's, 190 Nineteenth Century English Literature, 4 Nodes Ambrosiancz, 435 Norman Conquest, Freeman s, 2 17 Northern Farmer : Old Style, 288 Northern Farmer : New Style, 288 Novel, Victorian, n Later Victorian, 105 Historical, n Neurotic, 12 Problem, 1 1 Religious, 13 of Romantic Adventure, 12 Oceana, 211 Old Curiosity Shop, 1 6 Old Kensington, 1 68 Old World Idylls, 381 Oliphant, Mrs Margaret, 98-100 Oliver Cromwell, Carlytts, 187 Oliver Twist, 1 6, 17 Opium-Eater, The English, 429 Ordeal of Richard Fever el, IO2, 103 Origin of Species, 453, 460 Owen, Sir Richard, 469-471 Owen, Sir Richard, Life of , 237 Paracelsus, 295 Past and Present, 190 Pater, Walter, 450 Patmore, Coventry, 408 Pauline, 295 Payn, James, 167 Pelham, 63 Pendennis, 28 Periods of English Literature, I Pickwick Papers, 15, 22 Pippa Passes, 240, 296 Index 493 Poems and Ballads, Swinburne's, 36l Poems by two Brothers, 253 chiefly Lyrical, 256 Poets, Early Victorian, 239-342 Later Victorian, 343-411 Spasmodic, 338-342 Praed, W. M., 380 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 345 Prince's Progress, 352 Quest, 386 Princess, The, 269 ofThule, 116 Prisoner of Zenda, 151 Procter, Adelaide A., 394 Proverbs in Porcelain, 381 Queen Mary, Tennyson s, 289 Quincey, Thomas de, 412-432 Rabbi ben Ezra, 304 Raiders, 159 Rationalism in Europe, 226 Reade, Charles, n, 79-81 Ready Money Mortiboy, 112 Reminiscences, Carlyles, 21 1 Rhoda Fleming, 102 Rienzi, 63 Ring and the Book, 293, 304-313 Ritchie, Mrs Anne Thackeray, 34, 168 Rizpah, 256, 288 Robert Elsmere, 123 Robert Falconer, 95 Robertson, Frederick W., 233 Romola, 56 Romanes, G. J., 471, 472 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 343-352 Christina, G., 352-356 Roundabout Papers, The, 3 1 Ruskin, John, 435-446 Ruskin,John, Life of, 236 Russell, W. Clark, 166 Saintsbury, Professor, 450 Saints Tragedy, 88 Salem Chapel, 99 Scapegoat, The, 122 Scenes of Clerical Life, 54 Scholar Gipsy, The, 330 Scott, Sir Walter, 9, 10 Scott, Sir Walter, Life of, 230 Sentimental Tommy, 156 Setoun, Gabriel, 171 Seven Days of Architecture, 441 Shaving of Shagpat, 102 Sherlock Holmes, Adventures of, 149 Shirley, 45 Shorter, Clement, 49 Shorthouse, Joseph Henry, 118 Short History cf the English People, 227 Short Studies on Great Subjects, 2IO Sigurd the Volsung, 370 Silas Marner, 55 Sir George Tressady, 124 Sister Helen, 349 Sketches by Boz, 1 5 Smedley, Francis Edward, 1 66 Smith, Alexander, 340 Society Verse, Writers of, 379- 385 Sohrab and Rustum, 331 Song of the Shirt, 247 Sonnets from the Portuguese, 325 Sordelb, 296 Spasmodic Poets, 338-342 Spencer, Herbert, 484-488 Stanley, Dean, 233 Steel, Mrs Flora A., 171 Stephen, Leslie, 238 Sterling, John, Life of, 234 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 106, 127-141, 450 Stickit Minister, The, 158 Stones of Venice, 441 St Ives, 141 Sirafford, 296 Strayed Reveller, 329 Stubbs, Bishop, 217 Suspiria de Profundis, 430 Swan, Miss Annie S., 170 Swinburne, A. C., 240, 360-364 Sylvia* s Lovers, 84 Synthetic Philosophy, 487 Tabley, Lord de, 371 Tennyson, Lord, 240, 251-293 Thackeray, William, 10, 23-39 494 Index The English Humourists, 32 The Last Chronicle of Bar set, 73 The Mill on the Floss, 55 The Spanish Gypsy, 59 Thirlwall, Connop, 219 Thompson, Francis, 395-399 Thyrsis, 330 Treasure Island, 132 Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, 234 Trollope, Anthony, 71-79 Mrs, 78 Thomas A., 78 Two Voices, The, 262 Tyndall, Professor, 486 Ulysses, 288 Under the Red Robe, 143 Undertones, 374 Unknown Eros, The, 408 Unto this Last, 443 Vanity Fair, 25 Vers de Socie'te, 379-385 Victorian Biography, 228-230 Essay, 412 History, 173-175 Novel, 1 1 Poetry, 239-241 Victorian Science, 452 Vignettes in Rhyme, 381 V^llette, 46 Virginians, The, 30 Virginibus Puerisque, 132 Ward, Mrs Humphry, 13, 122- 127 Watson William, 385-390 Watts, Theodore, 410 Weir of Hermiston, 138 Westward Ho! 90 Weyman, Stanley J., n, 141-147 What will he do with it f 64 White Company, 148 Wilson, Professor, 432-435 Window in Thrums, 156 Winter, John Strange, 169 Wives and Daughters, 85 Woman in White, 93 Woods, Mrs Margaret L., 171 Wordsworth, Life of, 236 Wuthering Heights, 42, 43 Yeast, 88 Zanoni, 64 PRINTED BY OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. 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