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 ^be tlntvcr^tt^ ^Tutorial 53erte0 
 — ♦ — 
 
 THE TUTORIAL HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 A. J. WTATT, M.A. Lond. and Camb. 
 
 EXAMINER IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
 
 EDITOR OF "BEOWULF," CHAUOER'S " KNIOHT'S TALE," ETC., MILTON'i 
 
 "paradise REGAINED," " SAMSON AGONISTES " 
 
 Seventh Impression (Third Edition) 
 
 __^ 
 
 London: W. B. CLIVE 
 
 (Uniperfiitg 2^uforiaf (|)re60 £^. 
 
 DRURY LANE, W.C. 
 1910
 
 PR 
 
 &5 
 W97t 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The common complaint against smaller text-books of 
 literature is that they include too much, and fail to pre- 
 serve due proportion between the greater and the lesser 
 writers. In this book the lesser writers are mentioned, 
 if at all, only incidentally ; and the attempt has been 
 made, in passing from one great writer to another, to 
 give the history, as distinguished from the mere story, of 
 English literature — to lay bare some of the more important 
 aspects of the work of each author selected, while tracing 
 the lines of development from writer to writer — in a word, 
 to make an elementary book scientific, as far as the 
 methods of science are applicable. In this task I have 
 had no model before me to improve upon, and am more 
 painfully aware, than any friendly reader or critic can be, 
 of shortcomings in its execu.tion. In pai'ticular I have 
 felt the difiiculty of being consistent in difficulty : of 
 avoiding the opposite dangers of ' talking over people's 
 heads ' and childish simplicity. The former danger may 
 be largely obviated if the student, before perusing each 
 chapter, will read the English Classics recommended on 
 pp. ix-xi. 
 
 h 
 
 i02S3C'?
 
 VI PKEFACE. 
 
 I take to myself, without liis leave or knowledge, the 
 satisfaction of associating with this little work the name of 
 the living critic and historian of literature to whom it and 
 I owe most in the way of suggestion and stimulus, that of 
 Professor Herford of Aberystwyth. 
 
 A. J. W. 
 
 Cambridue, 
 
 July 1900. 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 To this edition a chapter by Mr. H. Clay, B.A. Oxon., 
 on the literature of the Victorian era has been added. 
 Thanks are due to Messrs. Macmillan and Co. for their 
 kind permission to quote from Matthew Arnold's Preface 
 to Ward's English Poets the passage given on page 267. 
 
 Cambkidge, 
 
 Sept. 1909.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Before the Conquest (1066 a.d.) 1 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Fkom the Conquest to Chaucer (1066-1400 a.d.) . . 8 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 From Medieval to Modern (1400-1579 a.d.) . . 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The English Drama 38 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 From Spenser to Milton (1579-1660 a.d.). . • . 72 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Age of Dkvden (1660-1700 a.d.) - • . 102 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Age of Poi-e (1700-1740 a.d.) 112 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Age of Johnson (1740-1798 a.d.) . . . ,145 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Age of Wordsworth (1798-1832 a.d.) . , . 183 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Age of Tennyson (1832-1892 a.d.) . . . . 220 
 
 Index 269 
 
 vii
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 ENGLISH CLASSICS. 
 
 For the full benefit derivable from the study of this 
 book it must be preceded by the reading of one work 
 by each of the authors dealt with. If that is not possible, 
 at least one complete work representative of each period 
 must be read. Tor this purpose the following classics 
 are recommended. 
 
 Ch. i. Beowulf. 
 
 „ ii. Chaucer's Prologue and Kniglifs Tale. 
 
 Laugland's Piers Ploivman (B. Prologue and 
 Passus v.). 
 
 ,, iii. Malory's Morte DartJmr (selection). 
 
 ,, iv. Marlowe's Dr. Faustas. 
 
 Shakespeai*e's Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and 
 Juliet, Henry V., As You Like It, Julius 
 Caesar, Hamlet, and Tempest. 
 Jonson's Epicene. 
 
 „ V. Spenser's Faery Queene I. 
 
 Milton's L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, Para- 
 
 dise Lost I. and II. 
 Bacon's Essays. 
 
 „ vi. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
 
 I TO THE READER. 
 
 Cli. vii. Pole's Essay on Griticism, Ejjistle to ArhutJuioi, 
 Epistle to Augustus. 
 Swift's Gulliver s Travels. 
 Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 
 Addison's Sir Roger de Goverley.- 
 
 „ viii. Thomson's Winter. 
 
 Richardson's Clarissa (abridged). 
 
 Fielding's Tom Jones. 
 
 ColHus's Poems. 
 
 Gray's Poems. 
 
 Boswell's Life of Johnson (selection). 
 
 Goldsmith's Deserted Village and Vicar of 
 
 Wakefield. 
 Burke's Two Speeches on America. 
 Cowper's Poems and Letters (Grolden Treasury). 
 
 „ ix. Wordsworth's Poems (G-olden Treasury), 
 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
 Byron's Poems (Grolden Treasury). 
 Shelley's Poems (Grolden Treasury). 
 Scott's Legend of Montrose, Ivanhoe, Quentin 
 
 Dnrward. 
 Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and Essays 
 (selection) . 
 
 „ X. Tennyson's Ulysses, Locksley Hall, English 
 
 Idylls, In Memoriam, Idylls of the King 
 
 (Macmillan, Griobe). 
 Bi'owning's Dramatic Lyrics, Pippa Passes, 
 
 Men and Women, The Ring and the Book 
 
 (Oxford Poets). 
 Arnold's Poems, Essays in Griticism. 
 Swinburne's Atalanta in Caledon, Poems and 
 
 Ballads. 
 
 ' Macmillan, Js.net.
 
 TO THE READER. XI 
 
 Ch. X. Morris's Defence of Guenevere, Earthly Para- 
 dise. 
 -^ Dickens' David Cojyperjield, Tale of Two Cities, 
 Pickwick Papers, Domhey and Son. 
 
 Thackeray's Vanity Fadr, The Newcomes,Esmond. 
 
 Gr. Eliot's Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, 
 Middlemarch. 
 
 C. Bronte's Jane Eyre, Shirley. 
 
 Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Frondes Agrestes, 
 Stones of Venice. 
 
 Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, History of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 Macaulay's Essays, History of England.
 
 TUTORIAL PIISTORY OF ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 BEFORE THE CONQUEST (1066 A.D.). 
 
 English literature is the greatest that the world has 
 I tr d t ^^^^ seen, and the language in which it is 
 written bids fair to be some day the universal 
 language. Such facts as these make it right to approach 
 its history in a spirit of reverence. It is hardly possible 
 to exaggerate or overestimate the greatness of this litera- 
 ture of ours. It is not merely that in every kind of 
 writing it challenges comparison with the best of any and 
 every other country ; but that, whereas almost every other 
 literature has had one or two great epochs, ours has had 
 at the very least five, and shows a lasting vitality that is 
 quite without parallel. If the last of these great literary 
 epochs may be said to have closed somewhere about 1870, 
 the first came to an end somewhere about 870 — not less 
 than one thousand years before. There are some people 
 who have lately been kind enough to recognise the 
 existence of Chaucer and his poetry, but to whom the 
 unfortunate term ' Anglo-Saxon ' suggests only the 
 curious, the hulicroiis, not to say the contemptible. What 
 is in reality our glory becomes their shame. The half- 
 amused, half -contemptuous ignorance of the whole of our 
 literature before Chaucer on the part of the great majority 
 of readers renders it necessary to make a few plain state- 
 ments of undeniable facts : that the earliest English 
 
 ENG. LIT. I
 
 2 BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 
 
 poetry and the earliest English prose alike belong to a 
 time when no other nation of modern Europe had either a 
 vernacular poetry or a vernacular prose ; that the best of 
 this poetry and the best of this prose have some qualities 
 of real greatness, and cannot fail to interest every earnest 
 reader ; and that English literature, like the English 
 language, is from the earliest to the latest times one and 
 indivisible. It has been stated by one recent historian 
 tliat ' the poetry of Chaucer has no connection vrith the 
 poetry of the Anglo-Saxons.' It would be equally true 
 to say that the waters of the Thames have no connection 
 with the waters of the Isis. But insistence on the essential 
 oneness of the stream of English literature need not render 
 us blind to the importance of the contributory streams, 
 nor to the fact that in particular the poetry of old 
 English needed to be blended with that of a more 
 advanced civilisation, and finally emerged aU the stronger 
 and better therefor. 
 
 The transcription of a few lines (translated on p. 6) 
 Language and of pootry will furnish the text for a few 
 Versification, remarks on our language and versification 
 before the Conquest. 
 
 Aiitev }tem «<'urdum TTeder-Geata leod 
 
 ^fste mid elne, nalas dndsware, 
 ^idan wolde ; ^rim-wylm onfeng 
 Ailde-rince. Da woes 7<wil dteges, 
 ger he j'one ^rund-wong on^j'tan mehte. 
 
 It will probably be obvious to every reader that we have 
 here a highly inflected language, and moreover one that 
 already merits the encomium passed upon it by Sir Philip 
 Sidney many centuries later : ' and is particularly happy 
 in compositions of two or three words together, which is 
 one of the greatest beauties that can be in a language.' 
 The fullness of inflection hampered versification as 
 much as the ready formation of compounds adorned the 
 language. 
 
 If attention be now directed to the metre, several infer- 
 ences will be drawn with little difiiculty. It will be seen
 
 0HARA0TERISTIC3 OF OLD EXOLISH POETRY. 3 
 
 (1) tliat the long lines are divided into half -lines by a 
 strongly-uiarked medial pause; (2) that the two halves 
 of a long line are bound together by alliteration, either 
 consonantal or vocal (tlio alliterative letters are italicised 
 above) ; (3) that in each half-line there are two accented 
 syllables, which may be singled out by the alliteration 
 (for the alliterative syllables are always accented) and by 
 rhetorical emphasis, and a varying number of unaccented 
 syllables; (4) and, in a word, that the versification is based 
 on alliteration and accent, and is therefore rhythmical, 
 not syllabic. Before the Conquest traces of rime are but 
 rarely met with. 
 
 The division of long linos into half-lines must have 
 Some charac- favoured the extended use of another charac- 
 o^d'&igUbh teristic feature of old English poetry, and of 
 poetry, immature poetry in general — parallelism. A 
 thought expressed in one half-line is frequently repeated 
 in other words once or even twice in the succeeding half- 
 lines. An old English poem can rarely run on for twenty 
 lines without a parallelism, and it is obvious that this 
 must impede its narrative power. There is a certain 
 tendency, even in narrative poems which have plenty of 
 life and movement on the whole, for the current to move 
 in eddies and backwaters, for the action to go back now 
 and again on itself; really rapid movement is hardly ever 
 found. Yet it is wonderful how little the best heroic, 
 martial, or elegiac verse appears to be hampered by these 
 drawbacks. To compensate for them it has an extensive 
 vocabulary of 2)icturesque diction and an abundance of 
 telling metaphors. Its marked preference for metaphors 
 over similes is nearly all in its favour. 
 
 It is the especial purpose of tliis chapter to tell only so 
 much (or rather so little) of the story of our earliest 
 literature as is necessary for the understanding of what 
 follows. Its poetry is mainly epic, elegiac, or religious. 
 The father of our religious poetry is Ctedmon (late seventh 
 century), the cowherd who became a monk under Hild, 
 abbess of "Whitby, and with whose name are associated the 
 Old English 'Genesis,' 'Exodus,' 'Daniel,' and 'Christ and 
 Satan.' It is more than possible that Milton had these poems
 
 4 BEFORE THE OONQtTEST. 
 
 translated to him by his friend 'Junius,' who was their 
 first editor. In elegiac poetry there have come down to us, 
 among others, 'Deor,' 'The Wanderer,' 'The Seafarer,' 
 and ' The Ruin,' which are all fine poetry; indeed one of 
 the greatest poets and critics of the nineteenth century 
 was of opinion that ' The Wanderer ' is not surpassable 
 in its kind. In martial poetry, we have ' Judith ' (a frag- 
 ment), 'The Battle of Maldon,' and 'The Battle of 
 Brunanburh.' 
 
 The last-named poem is, together Avith a few others of 
 less worth, in the 'Saxon Chronicle,' the greatest 
 ^chr'onide/ monument of Old English prose, and a monu- 
 ment too to the self-sacrificing devotion and 
 fostering care of the greatest of Englishmen, Alfred the 
 Grreat. The ' Chronicle ' consists mainly of a long series of 
 prose annals, extending from the landing of Julius Caesar 
 to the death of Stephen. The earlier annals were compiled 
 later, and then inserted in their place ; but from about 
 800 A.D. the entries are contemporary with the events 
 they describe, and thus form a priceless body of historical 
 material. During the Danish wars of Alfred's reign the 
 narrative becomes spirited, graphic, infused with patriotic 
 spirit. Here is a literal translation of a short extract 
 from the annal for 894 a.d., a time when no other Euro- 
 pean nation had an historical prose at all, to show how 
 venerable is the pedigree of English prose : 
 
 ' Then marched they thereto, and put the Danish host to flight, and 
 stormed the camp, and took all that there within was, both in money, and 
 in women, and also inbaii-ns, and brought all into London ; and all the 
 ships they either broke up or biu-nt up, or brought to London or to 
 Eochester ; and Haesten's wifo and his two sons one brought to the 
 king, and he gave them back to him, because one of them was his 
 godson, the other alderman Ethelred's.' 
 
 But the great and lasting glory of our earliest literature 
 is in the epic. It is certain, from the few 
 
 Beowu . fragments we possess, that some almost entire 
 Old English epics of noble proportions have perished. 
 But one complete poem of over three thousand long lines 
 survives — 'Beowulf,' which has a far better title than any
 
 ' BEOAlSnTLF.' 5 
 
 other poem to be regarded as tlie national English, epic. 
 It refers to historical events that occurred about 520 a.d. 
 But the main body of the pooni is mythical, and in all 
 probability it grew, like the true epic, ^yith the growth of 
 our race. We have space here only for a brief summary 
 of its 'fable,' and for a quotation from a modern poetical 
 rendering. 
 
 Hrothgar, king of the Danes, with whose ancestry the 
 poem opens, in the pride of his success in war builds a 
 great hall, Heorot, for feasting and the giving of treasure. 
 But a monster named Grendel, enraged by the daily sounds 
 of revelry, attacks the hall, makes a meal of fifteen thanes, 
 and carries off fifteen more, returning with similar intent 
 the next night. Thus Heorot is deserted, and remains so 
 for twelve years. Then Beowulf, a mighty warrior of the 
 Goats famous for the strength of his grip, hearing of 
 Grendel's ravages crosses the sea with fourteen comrades, 
 keeps watch in Heorot, and, after seeing one of his men 
 killed and eaten, grapples with the monster and puUs ofE 
 liis whole arm. Grendel escapes to his haunts, and dies. 
 The following night, when the Danes are again in possession 
 of tlie hall and Beowulf is lodged elsewhere, Grendel's 
 mother breaks in, and revenges the death of her son by 
 slaying ^schere, a noble Dane. Beowulf undertakes the 
 pursuit and revenge; he tracks the she-monster to her lair in 
 the bottom of a mere, and slays her there. Seeing Grendel's 
 corpse, he severs the head from the body, and bears it 
 back with him in triumph to Hrothgar's court. Loaded 
 with rich gifts, the hero returns to his own land, and 
 recites liis adventures to Hygelac, his uncle, the king of 
 tlie Goats. On the death of the latter, Beowulf refuses 
 the tin-one for himself, and acts as guardian and advisor to 
 the young king Heardred, who is, however, slain in battle. 
 Then Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, whom he rules 
 wisely for fifty years, until a dragon begins to lay waste 
 the land. The old hero's spirit is undaunted as ever, but 
 deserted by all his chosen warriors save one, although he 
 succeeds in quelling the fiery 'drake,' he himself meets 
 with his death in the terrible encounter. With the burn- 
 ing of his body the poem ends.
 
 6 before the conquest. 
 
 Beowulf and Grendel's Mother.* 
 
 ' So after these words the Weder-Geats' chieftain 
 With might of heart hastcn'd ; nor for answer then would he 
 Auijht tarry ; the sea-welter straightway took hold on 
 The warrior of men ; wore the while of a daytide 
 Or ever the ground-plain might he set eyes on. 
 Soon did she find, she who the flood -ring 
 Sword-rarening had held for an hundred of seasons, 
 Greedy and grim, that there one man of grooms 
 The ahode of the alien-wights sought from above ; 
 Then toward him she grasp'd and gat hold on the warrior 
 "With fell clutch, but no sooner she scathed withinward 
 The hale body ; rings from withoutward it warded, 
 That she could in no wise the war-skin clutch through, 
 The fast locked limb-sark, with fingers all loathly. 
 So bare then that sea-wolf when she came unto bottom 
 The king of the rings to the court-hall adown 
 In such wise that he might not, though hard-moody was he, 
 Be wielding of weapons. But many of wonders 
 In sea-swimming swink'dhim, and many a sea-deer 
 With his war-tusks was breaking his sark of the battle ; 
 The fell wights him follow'd. 'Twas then the earl found it 
 That in foe -hall there was he, I wot not of which, 
 Where never the water might scathe him a whit, 
 Nor because of the roof-hall might reach to him there 
 The fear-grip of the flood. Now fire-light he saw. 
 The bleak beam forsooth all brightly a-shining. 
 Then the good one, he saw the wolf of the ground. 
 The mere-wife the mighty, and main onset made he 
 With his battle-bill ; never his hand withheld sword-swing. 
 So that there on her head sang the ring-sword forsooth 
 The song of war greedy. But then found the guest 
 That the beam of the battle would bite not therewith, 
 Or scathe life at all, but there failed the edge 
 The k-ing in his need. It had ere thol'd a many 
 Of meetings of hand ; oft it sheared the helm. 
 The host-rail of the fey one ; and then was the first time 
 For that treasure dear lov'd that its might lay a-low. 
 
 " LI. 1492-1556 of the ' Story of Beowulf,' done out of the Old English tongue by 
 William Morris and A. J. Wyatt (Longmans, 6s.).
 
 ' BEOWULF. 
 
 But therewithal steadfast, naught sluggish of valour, 
 All mindful of high deeds was Hygelac's kinsman. 
 Cast then the wounded blade bound with the gem-stones 
 The warrior all angry, that it lay on the earth there, 
 Stiif-wrought and steel-edged. In strength now he trusted, 
 The hard hand-grip of might and main ; so shall a man do 
 "When he in the war-tide yet looketh to winning 
 The praise that is longsome, nor aught for life careth. 
 Then fast by the shoulder, of the feud nothing recking, 
 The lord of the War-Geats clutch'd Grendel's mother, 
 Cast down the battle-hard, bollen with anger, 
 That foe of the life, till she bow'd to the floor ; 
 But swiftly to him gave she back the hand-guerdon 
 "With hand-graspings grim, and griped against him ; 
 Then mood-weary stumbled the strongest of warriors, 
 The foot-kemp, until that a-down there he fell. 
 Then she sat on the hall-guest andtugg'd out her sax, 
 The broad and bro'vn-edged, to wreak her her son, 
 Her offspring her own. But lay yet on his shoulder 
 The breast-net well braided, the berg of his life, 
 That 'gainst point and 'gainst edge the entrance withstood. 
 Gone amiss then forsooth had been Ecgtheow's son 
 "Underneath the wide ground there, the kemp of the Geais, 
 Save to him his war-byrny had fram'd him a help, 
 The hard host-net ; and save that the Lord God the Holy 
 Had wielded the war-gain, the Lord the All-wise ; 
 Save that the skies' Ruler had rightwisely doom'd it 
 All easily. Sithence ho stood up again.'
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 FKOM THE CONQXJEST TO CHAUOEE, (1066-1400 A.D.). 
 
 It has been said that up to the tenth century English 
 was before all other European vernaculars in its achieve- 
 ments alike in poetry and in prose. From the Conquest 
 until the close of the thirteenth century French literature 
 went ahead of ours in almost every department; then, 
 with Dante (d. 1321), Petrarch (d. 1374), and Boccaccio 
 (d. 1375), Italian Hterature obtained the supremacy, 
 which was, however, brought back to England by Chaucer 
 in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. After his 
 death there came a prolonged period of dearth that can be 
 comjDared only to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a 
 dearth that must be attributed to the stupendous changes 
 taking place in all the departments that may be said to 
 environ and influence letters. But, with Shakespeare and 
 his contemporaries, England regained the supreme place, 
 not only in comparison with contemporary literatures, not 
 only in comparison with all other modern literatures, not 
 only for that age, — but gained and permanently retained 
 a place in universal literature, that is, in every department, 
 either unequaled or unsurpassed. 
 
 The two great periods of dearth in the story of English 
 
 letters admit of a rational explanation. In 
 ScTconque^'^ ®^*^^ instance momentous changes were taking 
 
 place, which must necessarily have had a 
 deadening influence upon authorship. These changes may 
 be called respectively, the change from early to medieval, 
 or, from 'Old' to 'Middle,' and from medieval to modern. 
 In each case the change extended to language, metre, 
 subject-matter, and spirit. If the earlier period of dearth
 
 CHANQES AFTEK THE CONQUEST. 9 
 
 was the longer, it was because the changes ' in the nature 
 of things' were complicated and intensified in England 
 by the disturbing effects of the Norman Conquest. Some 
 of these effects have probably been exaggerated ; changes 
 in the language, such as the decay of inflection, in any 
 case inevitable, have at times been laid solely at the door 
 of the Conquest, which in reality at most hastened them. 
 And indeed there was no need for exaggeration. Attempt 
 for a moment to conceive what its effects must have been. 
 A nation became supreme in State and in Church which, 
 though originally of the same kin as ourselves, had come 
 under the influence of Latin civilisation and refinement and 
 had become, to many intents, a Latin race. The ruling 
 classes in England for three centuries employed a different 
 idiom ; used, when they wrote, an entirely different system 
 of versification, based upon syllables instead of upon 
 beats; centred their thoughts upon a whole new range 
 of topics ; and were people of a temperament as diverse 
 from that of the typical Saxon, as the typical Frenchman 
 of to-day differs from the typical German. Roll these 
 last two into one and you will have something not utterly 
 unlike Chaucer ; perhaps too the same suggestion may go 
 no httle way towards explaining the greatness of our 
 language and of our race. 
 
 For three centuries, then, the struggle between the two 
 races, their languages and literatures, went on, and finally 
 resulted in a compromise, or rather an amalgamation. In 
 language, English won, but accepted thousands of words 
 from Norman and continental French ; in metre, French 
 won, though for a long time traces of the Old English 
 system remained in occasional aUiteration and outbreaks 
 of accentual rhji;hm. After the Conquest Old English 
 literature died a rapid death : nothing henceforward was 
 written in the old metre that could by any possibility be 
 called Old English poetry ; and when the Peterborough 
 manuscript of the 'Chronicle,' which brings the narrative 
 down tliree quarters of a century later than any other, 
 ceases in 1154 a.d., its language must be called 'transitional.' 
 For the sake of showing the changes that had ah-eady 
 taken place, we transcribe hero a short extract (to be
 
 10 FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER. 
 
 compared with tlie Old English quoted on p. 2) from the 
 annal of 1137 a.d., with its translation : 
 
 ' Wes nseure gcet mare wreccehed on land, ne ns9ure hethen 
 men werse ne diden Jmn hi diden. for ouer sithon ne forbaren hi 
 nouther circe ne cjTce-iferd. oc namen al ye god J^aet j^ar-inne was. 
 and brenden sythen ^e cyrce and al te gasdere. Ne hi ne forbaren 
 biscopes land ne abbotes ne preostes. ac raeueden munekes and 
 clerekes. and aeuric man other )'e ouer myhte. Gif twa men o])er 
 iii coman ridend to an tun. al ye tunscipe flugaen for heom. wenden 
 JiEet hi wseron rjBuerea. J?e biscopes and lered men heom cursede 
 teure. oc was heom naht Jiar of. for hi uueron al forcursaed and 
 forsuoren and forloren.' ^ 
 
 The 'Chronicle' alone demands mention between 1066 and 
 1200 A.D. During the hundred and fifty years 
 
 ^12o7a*d°™ ^'^'^^ ^^^^ ^•^- *° Chaucer, while prose pur- 
 to Chaucer, sucd the cvcn tcuor of its way, poetry showed 
 two developments of very marked interest, 
 the first international or European, the second English 
 and national. For it must be understood that the 
 great proportion of the literature of the Middle Ages was 
 common, in greater or less degree, to all the civilised 
 countries of Europe. In prose, this was the case until we 
 come to the fiiteenth century ; in poetry, English numbers 
 developed some originality of theme and treatment towards 
 the close of the thirteenth century, and this original 
 element increased enormously in the latter half esj)ecially 
 of the fourteenth century. Of the universal poetry the 
 chief kind was the romance, the direct source of which is 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin 'Historia Eegum Britanniee' 
 {circ. 1140). From Geoffrey Wace took the materials of 
 his Anglo-Norman 'Brut,' adding the institution of the 
 Round Table, and from Wace Layamon, of Arley on the 
 Severn, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
 took his English 'Brut.' Layamon, however, added so 
 much new material that he doubled the length of the poem. 
 
 ■ ' Never yet was greater ■wretchedness in the land, nor ever did the heathen men 
 worse than they did ; for nowhere afterwards did they spare either church or 
 churchyard, hut took all the wealth that was therein, and afterwards burnt the 
 church and all together. Nor did they spare bishop's land, nor abbot's, nor priest's, 
 but plundered monks and clerks, and every man another wherever he could. If 
 two or three men came riding to a town, all the township fled before them, supposed 
 that they were robbers. The bishops and clergy ever cursed them, but that was 
 naught to them, for they were all accursed and forsworn and reprobate.'
 
 PRE-OHAITCERIAN POETRY. 11 
 
 This ' Brut ' of Layamon is the first English romance after 
 'Beowiilf,' and is thus the ancestor of the long line which 
 includes 'Havelok,' 'King Horn', and the cycles of Arthur, 
 Charlemagne, Alexander, and Troy. Though many of the 
 English romances were concerned with national subjects 
 and heroes, and di-ew upon native materials, they seem in 
 the great majority of instances to have been translated 
 from the French. In Ereneh, after Wace, the prose 
 Arthurian romances anticipated the verse forms ; but in 
 England the development of a fit prose was much later 
 (fifteenth century), and the verse forms were therefore the 
 earlier. On the whole the earliest romances are the best. 
 "With the increase in length and in number the quality 
 deteriorated, so that already by about 1390 Chaucer 
 thought them a fit subject for burlesque in ids Kime of 
 Sir Thopas ('Canterbury Tales,' B. 1902-2108). The 
 following short extract is from Layamon' s ' Brut ' : 
 
 * pis iherde Uortiger, of alchen uuele he wes war, 
 
 & seide hit an Bruttisc, ne cuSe he nan ^nglisc : 
 
 " Maiden Rouwenne, drinc bluSeliche J^enne." 
 
 pat maide drone up J>at win, & lette don o5er ]>eT-in, 
 
 & bi-ta3hten }ian kinge, & J^rien hine custe ; 
 
 & J^nrh J^a ilke leoden J^a la jen comen to ))issen londe, 
 
 ■w£es-hail & drinc-ha3il ; moni mon J^er-of is fain.' ' 
 
 About 1275 English poetry begins to strike out a new 
 national j^ath of its own in its political songs. ' Eude 
 and imperfect as is the vehicle of expression,' says Court- 
 hope, ' the popular songs of England in the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries reveal a consciousness of united pur- 
 pose and a corporate pride in the nation, for which no 
 contemporary parallel can be found in any other countiy 
 of Europe.' These songs are an expression of the same 
 spirit which has ever since placed England in the van- 
 guard in the fight for liberty. Of the two following 
 illustrations, the occasion of the first is Edward II. 'a 
 violation of a charter, upon which two wise men com- 
 ment; that of the second, by our first 'jingo' poet, is 
 
 ' 'VortiepiTi heard this — of every evil he was aware — aud said it in British (he 
 knew no Enslish) : " Hidden Rowena, drink blithely then." The maid drank up 
 the wine, and had other put therein and handed to the king, and kissed him thrice ; 
 and through those same people those customs came to this land, wassail and diink- 
 hail ; many a one is glad thereof.'
 
 12 FKOM THE CONQtTEST TO CHAtJCEll. 
 
 Edward III.'s marcli through Normandy before the battle 
 of Crocy : 
 
 ' The firste seide, " I understonde 
 Ne may no king wel ben in londe 
 
 Under God Almihte, 
 But he cun himself rede 
 How he shall in londe lede 
 Everi man wi6 righte. 
 For miht is right, 
 Liht is niht, 
 And fiht is fliht. 
 For miht is riht, the lond is laweles, 
 For niht is liht, the lond is loreles, 
 For fiht is fliht, the lond is nameless." 
 That other seid a word ful god, 
 " Whoso roweth ap!;ein the flod, 
 Of sorwe he shal drinke ; 
 Also it fareth hi the unsele, 
 A man shal have litel hele 
 That agein to swinke. 
 Nn on is two, 
 Another (And wel ?) is wo, 
 And frend is fo. 
 For on is two, that lond is streintheles ; 
 For wel is wo, the lond is reutheles ; 
 For friend is fo, the lond is loveles." '^ 
 
 • Merlin said thus with his mouth, 
 Out of the north into the south 
 Suld cum a hare [boar = Edward III.] over the se, 
 That suld mak many man to fle ; 
 And in the se, he said ful right, 
 Suld he schew ful mekill might ; 
 And in France he suld bigin. 
 To mak tham wrath that er tharein, 
 Untill the se his taile reche sale [shall reach], 
 All folk o France to mekill bale. 
 Thus have I mater for to make, 
 For a noble prince sake ; 
 Help me, God, my wit es thin ; 
 Now Laurence Minot will bigin.' 
 
 ' The first said, ' I understand that no king may be prosperous in his land under 
 God Ahnighty unless he can counsel himself how to lead every man in the land 
 with justice. For might is right, light is night, fight is tiight. Uecause might is 
 right, the land is without law ; because night is light, the land is without learning ; 
 because fight is fiight, the land is without honour.' The next said a very good 
 word: 'Whoso rows against the stream he shall drink of sorrow. So it fares with 
 the unfortunate ; a man shall h«ve little remedy by striving against it. Now one 
 is two, well is woe, friend is foe. Because one is two, the land is without strength; 
 because well is woe, the land is without pity ; because friend is foe, the land u 
 without love.' — Wright, Political Songs, p, 254.
 
 MIDDLE ENGLISH PROSE. 13 
 
 Middle English prose before Wyclif and Malory is 
 respectable, but rather common-place and un- 
 ^"^"pr^ef^^^ distinguished in consequence of its comparative 
 neglect. Religion is to some extent the bane 
 of medieval literature ; for religious themes, through 
 their very familiarity, require a freshness of handling 
 that is too rarely conspicuous by its presence. Even in 
 poetry the religious section, with its legends of saints, 
 Bible narratives, paraphrases and homiKes in verse, bulks 
 most largely of all ; it almost monopolises prose. In the 
 ' Ancren Eiwle,' or Anchoresses' Eule, of the early 
 thirteenth century, however, though entirely a religious 
 work, we find many a passage that even now makes its 
 appeal direct to our hearts by its homeliness, its unconscious 
 humour, or its genuine fervour. This last characteristic 
 may bo illustrated by the following extract from the 
 address of Christ to the soul, which is given in modern 
 form because of the difficulties of the southern dialect : 
 
 ' Thy love, says the Lord, is either to he given freely, or it is to be 
 sold, or stolen, or taken away by force. If it is to be given, where 
 canst thou better bestow it than upon me ? Am I not the fairest thing ? 
 Am I not the richest king ? Am I not of the highest lineage ? Am I 
 not the most courteous of men ? Am I not the most liberal of men ? 
 Am I not of all things the sweetest? If thy love is not to be given, 
 but thou wilt by all means that it be bought, say how : either with 
 other love or with somewhat else ? One rightly sells love for love, and 
 thus love ought to be sold, and for nothing else. If thy love is 
 to be sold, I have bought it with love above all other. And if thou 
 sayest that thou wilt not value it so cheaply, but thou wilt have yet 
 more, name what it shall be ; set a price upon thy love. Thou shalt 
 not say so much, that I will not give thee much more for thy love. 
 "Wilt thou have castles and kingdoms ? "Wilt thou rule all the world ? I 
 will do better for thee. I will make thee, with all this, queen of heaven.' 
 
 Before passing to Chaucer, a word has to be said about 
 
 the two chief foreign influences that played upon his work, 
 
 the 'Roman de la Rose' and the early Italian 
 
 '?aKoM^^ Renaissance. AU authorities are agreed as to 
 
 the importance of the 'Roman de la Rose ' for the 
 
 understanding of later medieval literature. One says: that
 
 14 FROM TITE CONQITEST TO CHAUCER. 
 
 for two hundred years at least after ' it was written hardly 
 anybody wrote a love poem in England or France which 
 was not in some degree its offspring.' Another says : 
 'Whoever wishes to understand the spirit of the great 
 majority of poems written in England between the reigns 
 of Edward III. and Henry VIII. must first make the 
 acquaintance of the "Eomaunt of the Rose." ' The first four 
 thousand lines (roughly) were written by Guillaume de 
 Lorris (d. 1260) as a poem of chivalry, chiefly remarkable 
 because it is the first poem in any country which, throwing 
 aside the themes of war and heroism, turned to the new 
 theme of Love and treated it in the new mode of Allegory. 
 The last eighteen thousand lines are the work of Jean de 
 Meung (d. 1320), who, while ostensibly continuing the 
 allegory of his predecessor, in reality introduced an 
 entirely different spirit into the work, making the allegory 
 a mere cloak to enfold the telling of stories and political 
 and moral satire. Thus this wonderful poem cleaves the 
 Middle Ages, marking o&. the delicacy and mysticism of 
 feudal chivalry from the powerful study of uatui-e and men 
 and actual life that we find in the earlier Renaissance. 
 This poem Chaucer tells us that he translated ; and it will 
 not be very far from the truth if we say that in his early 
 poems he resembles Gruillaume de Lorris, and in his later 
 and greater poems Jean de Meung. But there is one other 
 poet (and prose writer) whose influence, in these later 
 poems, competes with that of ' limping ' Jean, and that is 
 ac io Boccaccio — whom yet Chaucer never men- 
 tions by name. * Dante takes for his province 
 the drama of the human soul in its widest scope; 
 Petrarch takes the heart of an individual man, him- 
 self. Boccaccio takes the complex stuff of daily life, 
 the " quicquid agunt homines" of common experience. 
 These are their several subjects. Out of them Dante 
 creates the epic, Petrarch the lyric, Boccaccio the novel.' 
 In his creation, in English poetry, of the ' tale in 
 verse,' told for its own sake, not merely to point a moral, 
 and told with consummate art, Chaucer owes much to 
 Boccaccio, whom, however, he surpasses as easily in versb 
 as the Italian surpasses him in prose narrative.
 
 OnATTCER. 15 
 
 This brings us then to the first great master of English 
 song. Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of a London 
 
 i339(?)^l6o. "vintner, who was himself in 1338 in attendance 
 
 upon the king and queen : in this way, no 
 
 doubt, a courtly career was opened up for the poet. The 
 
 scope of this work leaves no space for biographical 
 
 His Life details which are not in their nature or effects 
 also literary. Let it suffice then to say that in 
 the ten years from 1359 to 1369 Chaucer was engaged in the 
 service of the court with intervals of campaigning ; that in 
 the ten years from 1370 onwards he was frequently engaged 
 on diplomatic and commercial missions abroad; that from 
 1374 to 1391 he was more or less engrossed in official life 
 at the Customs, as Clerk of the Kling's Works, as a Knight 
 of the Shire for Kent; that in 1373, when Petrarch (whom 
 he probably saw) and Boccaccio were still Hving, and 
 again in 1378, he visited Italy on diplomatic missions; that 
 in spite of all pressure from outside work, from which indeed 
 he was largely relieved by permission to discharge his duties 
 by deputy, he was deep in the labours of authorship fi'om 
 1380 onwards; and that in 1386 the series of apparently 
 unmerited misfortunes began, which reduced him by 1391 
 to a state of constant pecuniary embarrassment. The 
 accession, in 1399, of the son of his old patron, John of 
 Gaunt, brought with it an additional pension of forty 
 marks a year; the easement came none too soon, for the 
 poet died the following year. He was buried in West- 
 minster Abbey. 
 
 In one passage in his poetry Chaucer refers to himself 
 
 Personal ^J ^^ Surname and in another by his Christian 
 references in name ; in three other passages he makes de- 
 
 ^^""^ ^' tailed references to his person, tastes, and 
 habits. In the 'House of Fame' an eagle swoops down 
 on the poet and bears him towards the stars, and in 
 the dehghtful conversation which ensues between them 
 Chaucer reveals himself more intimately to us than he does 
 anywhere else : 
 
 * Thus I longe in his clawes lay, 
 Til at the laste he to me spak 
 In mannes vols, and seyde, ' ' Awak !
 
 16 FHOM THE CONQTTEST TO OHAUOEK. 
 
 And be not so agast, for shame ! " 
 
 And called me tho by my name. 
 
 And, for I sholde the bet abreyde — 
 
 Me mette — " Awak," to me he [the eagle] seyde, 
 
 Right in the same vois and stevene 
 
 That iiseth oon I coude nevene ; 
 
 And with that vois, soth for to sayui 
 
 My minde cam to me agayn ; 
 
 For hit was goodly seyd to me, 
 
 So nas hit never wont to be. . . • 
 
 And sayde twyes " Seynte Marie ! 
 
 Thou art noyous for to carie." . . . 
 
 " god," thoughte I, " that madest kinde, 
 
 Shal I non other weyes dye ? 
 
 Wher loves wol me stellif ye, 
 
 Or what thing may this signifye ? 
 
 I neither am Enok, nor Elye, 
 
 Ne Romulus, ne Ganymede 
 
 That was y-bore up, as men rede, 
 
 To hevene with dan lupiter, 
 
 And maad the goddes boteler." . . . 
 
 " Thou demest of thy -self amis ; 
 
 For loves is not ther-aboute — 
 
 I dar wel putte thee out of doute— 
 
 To make of thse as yet a sterre. . . » 
 
 loves halt hit greet humblesse 
 
 And vertu eek, that thou wolt m;ike 
 
 A-night ful ofte thyn heed to ake, 
 
 In thy studie so thou wry test. . . . 
 
 But of thy verray neyghebores, 
 
 That dwellen almost at thy dores, 
 
 Thou herest neither that ne this ; 
 
 For whan thy labour doon al is, 
 
 And hast y-maad thy rekeninges, 
 
 In stede of reste and newe thinges, 
 
 Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon ; 
 
 And, also domb as any stoon, 
 
 Thou sittest at another boke, 
 
 Til fully daswed is thy loke. 
 
 And livest thus as an hermyte, 
 
 Although thynabstinence is lyte' (betweenll. 554 and 660). 
 
 The second passage is in the famous Prologue to the 
 ' Legend of Good Women ' : 
 
 ' And, as for me, though that my wit be lyte. 
 On bokes for to rede I me delyte, 
 And in myn herte have hem in reverence ; 
 And to hem yeve swich lust and swich credence,
 
 CHAUCEK 8 WORKS. 
 
 11 
 
 That ther is wel iinethe game noon 
 
 That from my bokes make me to goon, 
 
 But hit he other up-on the haly-day, 
 
 Or elles in the loly tyme of May ; 
 
 Whan that I here the smale foules singe, 
 
 And that the floures ginne for to springe, 
 
 Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun ! ' (11. 29 — 39). 
 
 The last passage in the order of their composition is in 
 the 'Canterbury Tales' (B. 1881-94); it gives us a 
 humorous description of the poet as he is supposed to 
 have appeared to ' ovir Host ' : 
 
 ' Whan seyd was al this miracle, every man 
 As sobre was that wonder was to se, 
 Til that our hoste lapun tho bigan. 
 And than at erst he loked up-on me, 
 And seyde thus, " what man artow? " quod he, 
 " Thou lokest as thou woldest finde an hare, 
 For ever up-on the groimde I see thee stare. 
 
 Approche neer, and loke up merily. 
 
 Now waryow, sirs, and lat this man have place ; 
 
 He in the waast is shape as wel as I ; 
 
 This were a popet in an arm tenbrace 
 
 For any womman smal and fair of face. 
 
 He semeth elvish by his contenaunce, 
 
 For unto no wight dooth he daliaunce." ' 
 
 Again, in three other passages Chaucer refers to his 
 List of his ^^^'^ writings, and the quotation of one of 
 Works, these wUl fittingly introduce a list of his 
 chief works : 
 
 ' Thou hast translated the Romauns of the Eose . . . 
 Hast thou nat mad in English eek the book 
 How that Crisseyde Troilus forsook ? . . . 
 
 He made the book that hight the Hous of Fame, 
 And eok the Deeth of Blaunche the Duchesse, 
 And the Parlement of Foules, as I gesse, 
 And al the love of Palamon and Arcyte 
 Of Thebes, thogh the story is knowen lyte ; 
 And many an ympne for your halydayes, 
 That highten Balades, Roundels, Virolayes ; 
 And, for to speke of other besinesse. 
 He hath in prose translated Boece 
 And of the Wrfichcd Eiigendring of Mankinde, 
 As man may in pope Innocent y-finde ; 
 And mad the hyt also of seynt Cecyle ; 
 EKO. LIT. 2
 
 18 FROM THE CONQUEST TO OHATJCER. 
 
 He made also, goon sithen a greet whyl, 
 Origenes upon the Maudeleyne ; 
 Him oghte now to have the lesse poyne ; 
 He hath mad many a lay and many a thing.' 
 
 In tlie following list all the works mentioned above are 
 included, but only the most important of the rest. They 
 are divided into three periods of authorship. The first 
 period is that of translation, also called the French period ; 
 it ends about the time of Chaucer's return from his second 
 visit to Italy in 1378. Up to this time he had been 
 largely a translator of works from French and Latin. The 
 second period is that of imitation, also called the Italian 
 period, because at that time the influence of the great 
 Italian poets of the century is most marked in Chaucer's 
 poetry. It may be dated 1379-85. The third period is 
 that of invention, or the original period, dating from 1386 
 to his death. 
 
 (1) Period of Translation { -1378): 'Origenes upon 
 
 the Maudeleyne ' — lost ; ' The "Wreched Engendring of 
 Mankinde ' — lost ; ' Romaunt of the Eose ' — octosyllabic 
 verse — lost (11. 1-1705 of the extant version may be by 
 Chaucer); 'Book of the Duchess, or Death of Blanche,' 
 1369 — octosyllabics; 'Life of Saint Cecyle ' (= 'Second 
 Nun's Tale') — Chaucer's stanza; 'Palamon and Arcite' 
 (= ' Knight's Tale') — heroic couplets. 
 
 {2) Period of Imitation, (1379-85): 'Translation of 
 Boethius ' — prose ; ' Troilus and Cressida ' — Chaucer's 
 stanza; 'Parliament of Fowls' 1382 — Chaucer's stanza; 
 'House of Fame,' 1384 — octosyllabics — unfinished;. 'Legend 
 of Q-ood Women,' 1384 — heroic couplets — unfinished. 
 
 (3) Original Period (1386-1400) : ' Canterb-ury Tales '— 
 chiefly heroic couplets and Chaucer's stanza — unfinished. 
 
 Among the minor poems, not included above, one of the 
 best is ' Truth ' ; it is not too long for quotation in full : 
 
 • Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse, 
 Suffice thee thy good, tho hit be smal ; 
 For hord hath hate, and climbing tickelnesse, 
 Prees hath envye, and wele blent overal ; 
 Savour no more than thee hihove shal ; 
 Werk wel thy-self, that other folk canst rede ; 
 And trouthe thee shal delivere, hit is no drede.
 
 chaxtcer's 'truth.' 1^ 
 
 Tempest thee noght al crokod to redresse, 
 
 In trust of hir that turneth as a bal : 
 
 Gret reste stant ia litel hesinesse ; 
 
 And eek hewar to sporne ageyn an al ; 
 
 Stryve noght, as doth the crokko with the wal. 
 
 Daimte thy-self, that dauntest otheres dede ; 
 
 And trouthe thee shal delivere, hit is no drede. 
 
 That thee is sent, receyTO in huxumnesse, 
 
 The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fal. 
 
 Her nis non hoom, her nis but wildernesse : 
 
 Forth, pilgrim, forth ! Forth, besto, out of thy stal ! 
 
 Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al ; 
 
 Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede : 
 
 And trouthe thee shal delivere, hit is no drede. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Therefore, thou vache, leve thyn old wrecchcdnesse 
 
 Unto the worlde ; leve now to be thral ; 
 
 Crye him mercy, that of his hy goodnesse 
 
 Made thee of noght, and in especial 
 
 Draw unto him, and pray in general 
 
 For thee, and eek for other, hevenlich mede ; 
 
 And trouthe thee shal delivere, hit is no drede.' 
 
 Only tlie faintest idea of the extent, variety, merit, and 
 music of Chaucer's poetry can be gathered 
 ^^perIods!^° from the foregoing list of his works. His first 
 period of experiments we may leave out of 
 account ; it is fairly represented by the ' Book of the 
 Duchess.' His second period is again a period of ex- 
 periments, some of which, however, come very near to 
 being masterpieces. ' Troilus and Cressida ' is a great 
 poem of over eight thousand lines ; and though it purports 
 to be a translation of Boccaccio's ' Filostrato,' fiilly two- 
 thirds of its lines are original. It is the greatest achieve- 
 ment of the second period ; the * Parliament of Fowls ' 
 and the ' House of Fame ' belong, like the ' Book of the 
 Duchess,' to the school of Guillaume de Lorris, the school 
 of dream and allegoiy. The ' Legend of Good Women ' 
 belongs even more to that school than the 'House of 
 Fame,' which was written partly under the influence of 
 Dante ; but the original Prologue of the ' Legend ' may 
 be selected ('Troilus and Cressida' being too long) to 
 represent the second period on account of its intrinsic
 
 20 FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER. 
 
 merits and for the light it throws upon the problems and 
 difficulties of Chaucer's career as a poetic artist. In all 
 we possess about thirty-five works from his pen, and it is 
 clear from his own references to them that many ' Balades, 
 Roundels, Virelayes ' must have been lost. 
 
 If of all these the ' Canterbury Tales ' alone had come 
 
 down to us, Chaucer's fame would not have 
 
 'The been seriously affected, for in them we have 
 
 ^TaiesT^ bim incomparably at his greatest and best. 
 
 While increasing his renown as abeady estab- 
 lished by his earlier works, the ' Tales ' of themselves add 
 three entirely new storeys to the house of the poet's fame, 
 of only one of which, without them, should we have had 
 even the scaffolding. In the first place the fiction of a 
 pilgrimage to Canterbury, which he invented as the frame- 
 work of his tales, and which he sustains in the links 
 between the tales with infinite resource of incident and 
 conversation, is immensely superior to every earlier device 
 of the same kind and has never been surpassed ; for it has 
 the supreme merit of collecting all sorts and conditions of 
 men and women for a purpose for which they must often 
 have united in that day, and thus of securing as great a 
 variety of tellers as the poet's genius for story-telling was 
 varied. Secondly, there is the character-painting of 
 the immortal Prologue. Of all the character-writers in 
 English literature from Ben Jonson to Wordsworth none 
 is so great as Chaucer. * I see all the pilgrims in the 
 "Canterbury Tales,'" says Dry den, ' their humours, their 
 features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped 
 with them at the Tabard in Southwark. . . . He must have 
 been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, 
 because he has taken into the compass of his " Canterbury 
 Tales " the very manners and humours (as we now call 
 them) of the whole English nation in his age. Not a 
 single character has escaped him.' In proof that there 
 is no exaggeration in this encomium we quote the charac- 
 ter of the Pardoner : 
 
 * With hym ther rood a gentil Pardoner 
 Of Eouncivale, his freend and his compeer, 
 That straight was comen fro the court of Rome.
 
 THE * CANTERBURY TALES.' 21 
 
 Ful loude he song, " Com hider, love to me." 
 This Somonour bar to hym a stiff burdoiin, 
 "Was nevere trompe of half so greet a soun. 
 This Pardoner hadde heer as yelow as wex, 
 But smothe it heeng, as dooth a strike of flex ; 
 By ovmces henge hiss lokkes that he hadde, 
 And therwith he hise shuldres overspradde ; 
 But thj-nne it lay by colpons oon and oon ; 
 But hood, for jolitee ne wered he noon. 
 For it was trussed up in his walet. 
 Hym thoughte he rood al of the newe jet ; 
 Dischevelee, save his cappe, ho rood al bare. 
 Swiche glarynge eyen hadde he as an hare. 
 A vernycle hadde he sowed upon his cappe ; 
 His walet lay biforn hym in his lappe 
 Bret-ful of pardon, come fi'om Rome all hoot. 
 A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot ; 
 No herd hadde he, ne nevere sholde have, 
 As smothe it was as it were late shave ; 
 I trowe he were a geldyng or a mare. 
 But of his craft, fro Berwyk unto Ware 
 Ne was ther swich another pardoner. 
 For in his male he hadde a pilwe-beer. 
 Which that, he seyde, was oure lady veyl ; 
 He seyde he hadde a gobet of the seyl 
 That Se'int Peter hadde whan that he wente 
 Upon the see, til Jhesu Christ hym hente. 
 He hadde a croys of latoun ful of stones, 
 And in a glas he hadde pigges bones. 
 But with thise relikes, whan that he fond 
 A povi-e person dwellyng upon lond. 
 Upon a day he gat hj-m moore moneye 
 Than that the person gat in monthcs tweye ; 
 And thus with feyned flaterye and japes 
 He made the person and the peple hys apes. 
 But, trewely to teUen atte laste. 
 He was in chirche a noble ecclesiaste ; 
 Wei koude he rede a lessoun or a storie. 
 But alderbest he song an offertorie, 
 For wel he wiste, whan that song was songe, 
 He moste preche and wel affile his tonge 
 To Wynne silver, as he ful wel koude ; 
 Therefore he song the murierly and loude.' 
 
 Thirdly, Chaucer is our greatest story-teller in verse. 
 There is no more possibility of disputing this fact than 
 there is of proving it here. The 'Tales' must be read,
 
 22 FROM THE CCNQUEST TO OHATTCER. 
 
 and happy is he who still has that roll to unfold. All that 
 can be done here is to tell in briefest summary 
 
 "o-nftence"* the 'Story of Constance' or the ' Man of Law's 
 Tale.' 
 Part I. Syrian merchants come to Rome and hear * the 
 excellent renoun' of the Emperor's daugliter Constance. 
 Their description of her on their return inflames the heart 
 of the Sultan of Syria, and he says he must have her to 
 wife even at the price of apostasy. By the Pope's media- 
 tion matters are so arranged. Constance leaves Rome for 
 her new home with forebodings. The Sultan's mother calls 
 her council together and they swear to do her bidding. 
 She pretends to the Sultan to abjure her faith, and invites 
 the Christians to a feast when they shall arrive. 
 
 Part II. The Christians arrive and are royally welcomed. 
 At the old Sultaness's feast, every Christian and every 
 converted Syrian, including the Sultan, is slain, and 
 Constance is set ailoat in a rudderless boat with her jewels, 
 clothes, and victuals. After more than three years at sea 
 she is driven ashore in Northumbria. The constable of 
 the place takes her home, and she converts his wife 
 ITermengykl, and then himself, to Christianity. A knight, 
 with whom Constance refuses to commit sin, revenges him- 
 seK by slaying Hermengyld in her sleep in the constable's 
 absence, and laying the bloody knife by Constance's side. 
 The constable returns with the king, Alia, and all the court 
 bears witness in Constance's favour excejit the knight, who 
 swears on a holy ' Briton book ' that she is guilty. Imme- 
 diately he falls to the earth and his eyes burst out of his 
 head. Alia has him slain, and marries Constance, to the 
 intense chagrin of his mother Donegild. In his absence, 
 during a war with Scotland, a boy is born to him, but his 
 mother alters the despatches so that he is informed of the 
 birth of a monster; but he replies 'Keep the child.' 
 Donegild, however, again tampers with the letter, and 
 the constable receives command to cast Constance and her 
 son adi-ift in the old boat. The command is reluctantly 
 obeyed. 
 
 Part III. When Alia returns he is overcome with gi'ief, 
 and tracing the crime to Donegild's door he slays her.
 
 THE MAN OF LAw's TALE, 23 
 
 Constance is driven hither and thither on the sea for five 
 years or more, and is then picked up by a Roman senator 
 as he is returning from Syria, after taking vengeance for 
 the perfidy of the Sultaness in the slaughter of the 
 Christians. Meanwhile Alia, stricken with penitence for 
 the murder of his mother, comes to Rome to obtain abso- 
 lution. The senator, with whose wife Constance is now 
 living (she has always maintained complete silence as to 
 her history), goes to dine with Alia, and takes with him 
 Constance's son Maurice. Alia inquires his history, suspects 
 that it is his own son, and asks to see the mother ; thus 
 husband and wife are brought together again and all the 
 past is explained. 
 
 ' Whan Alia saugh his wyf , faire he hire grette, 
 And weep that it was routhe for to see ; 
 For at the firste look he on hire sette, 
 He knew wel verraily that it was she ; 
 And she for sorwe as doumb stant as a tree ; 
 So was hir herte shet in hir distresse 
 When she remembred his unkyndenesse. 
 
 Twyes she swowned in his owene sighte. 
 
 He weep, and hym excuseth pitously : 
 
 "Now God," quod he, " and alle hise halwes brighte 
 
 So wisly on my soul as have mercy, 
 
 That of youre harm as giltelees am I 
 
 As is Maurice my sone, so lyk your face ; 
 
 Elles the feend me fecche out of this place ! " 
 
 Long was the sobbyng and the bitter poyne, 
 Er that hir woful hertes mighte cesse ; 
 Greet was the pitee for to heere hem pleyne, 
 Thurgh whiche pleintes gan hir wo encresse. 
 I pray yow all my labour to relesse ; 
 I may nat tell hir wo until to-morwe, 
 I am so wery for to speke of sorwe. 
 
 But finally, whan that the sothe is wist, 
 
 That Alia g'lteless was of hir wo, 
 
 I trowe an hundred tymes been they kist ; 
 
 And swich a blisse is ther bitwix hem two, 
 
 That, save the joye that laateth everemo, 
 
 Ther is noon lyk that any creature 
 
 Hath seyn, or shal, whil that the world may dure.' 
 
 Constance makes herself known to her father the Emperor 
 and in due time retui-ns to England with her husband.
 
 24 FEOM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER. 
 
 But their bliss is short-lived; Alia dies in a year, and 
 Constance retui-ns to end her days at Rome. Maurice 
 succeeds his grandfather. 
 
 Chaucer's sei-vices to English literature can hardly be 
 Chaucer's over-estimatcd. He actually did for our versifi- 
 Bervices to catiou what Johusou wrongly claimed to have 
 literature. ]^ggj^ done for English poetry by Dryden : ' He 
 found it brick and left it marble.' The easy flow and 
 wondrous melody of his verse can be duly appreciated only 
 by comparison with the work of his predecessors. But his 
 chief claim to the gratitude of posterity has yet to be 
 named : his discovery that ' to make the best of nature, 
 and not to grope vaguely after something better than 
 nature, was the true office of art.' Euskin speaks of 
 the * necessity to all high imagination that it should paint 
 straight from life.' As Chaucer's genius developed it felt 
 this necessity more and more, until it finally broke with 
 allegory, and painted for us in immortal colours actual 
 contemporary life and human nature. When the truth of 
 this principle in art, of the direct imitation of nature, was 
 realised, 'it was rapidly developed in other European 
 countries, by Aiiosto, by Cervantes, by Moliere ; but to 
 Chaucer must be assigned the honour of having led the 
 way.' 
 
 Although Chaucer must be allowed, in this little book, 
 to stand for the second great age in English 
 Langiand. literature, the fourteenth century, one of his 
 contemporaries, the author of ' Piers Plowman,' 
 is too important to be passed over without mention. In 
 almost all respects he is the complete antithesis of his 
 greater comrade ; he might be described by saying that 
 what Chaucer is not, that Langiand is. The p%sical 
 proportions of the two men are significant of much in 
 their poetry : the spare gaunt * long ' Will Langiand ; the 
 studious ' elvish ' courtier, ' shape in the waast as wel as * 
 our host of the Tabard. 'Chaucer describes the rich 
 much more fully than the poor, and shows the hohday- 
 making, cheerful, genial phase of English life ; but 
 Langiand pictures the homely poor in their ill-fed, hard- 
 working condition, battling against hunger, famine,
 
 LANGLAND. 25 
 
 injustice, oppression, and all the stern realities and 
 hardships that tried them as gold is tried in the fire. 
 Chaucer's satire often raises a good-humoured laugh ; but 
 Langland's is that of a man who is constrained to speak 
 out all the bitter truth, and it is as earnest as the evy of 
 an injured man who appeals to heaven for redress.' For 
 his particular purposes and the class of hearers he wished 
 to reach, Langland revived the Old English alliterative 
 and accentual metre, and gave it such vogue that for a 
 time it seemed to challenge the supremacy of the 
 Chaucerian iambic. Chaucer abandoned allegory ; it is 
 essential to Langland's art. Moreover, Langland actually 
 used allegory in the ' direct imitation of nature,' by making 
 his allegorical figures realistic, life-like human tyj)es. 
 He is the ancestor of Bunyan, to whom, among English 
 allegorists, he makes a splendid second. Finally, as 
 Chaucer is the ancestor of the long line of poets and 
 singers of which Tennyson is the greatest representative 
 in the nineteenth century, Langland is the parent of the 
 long line of bards and seers that has for the present 
 ended in Browning. It is the ' seer ' in Langland that 
 speaks in the following prediction of the ' good time 
 coming,' to the weird music of which our unaccustomed 
 ears can hardly yet be insensible : 
 
 ' Shal no Mede be maister • nevere more after, 
 Ac ' love and louhnesse^ . and leaute^ to-gederes 
 ShuUen be maistres on molde * • trewe men to helpe . . . 
 Ac kynde love shal come yut • and conscience to-gederes, 
 And make of lawe a laborer • suche love shal aryse, 
 And such pees among the puple ■ and a parfit treuthe 
 That lewes shal wene in here witt • and wexe so glade, 
 That here kyng be ycome • fro the court of hevene, 
 Moyses other ^ Messias • that men be so trewe. 
 For alle that bereth baselardes ^ • bryght swerde, other launce, 
 Axe, other acchett • other eny kynne wepne,'' 
 Shal be demed to the deth • bote yf he do hit smythie * 
 In -to sykel other into si the • to shar ^ other to ciilter ; '" 
 Ech man to pleye with a plouh • a pycoyse other a s^^iade, 
 Spynnen, and spek of God • and spille no tyme.' 
 
 'But. 
 
 • Loyalty. 
 
 'Or. 
 
 • Lowliness. 
 
 * Earth. 
 
 • Daggers. 
 
 ' Any kind of weapon. 
 
 » Share. 
 
 
 • Unless he have it smithied. 
 
 "> Coulter. 

 
 CHAPTEE in. 
 
 FBOM MEDIEVAIi TO MODERN (1400 — 1579 A.D.). 
 
 Great poets, apart from tlie few who may be called 
 universal, may be divided into two classes according as 
 tliey express and interpret the age in which they live, or 
 anticipate the thoughts, feelings, and problems of an age to 
 come. To the former class belong Chaucer, Pope, Dryden, 
 Tennyson ; to the latter, Collins, Shelley, Browning. But 
 though in many ways Chaucer admirably expressed his age, 
 yet in his conception of the poetic art and its relation to 
 life, as well as in his actual achievements, he left it far 
 behind. His genius carried him so far towards the modern 
 spirit in hterature that his successors spent a ivhole century 
 panting and toiling after him in vain. His actual achievements 
 were not equalled for fully two hundred years ; but even 
 his poetic standpoint was not attained by his successors for 
 at least a century and a quarter. This is the only great 
 Sahara in our literature for the majority of readers — for 
 
 whom English poetry begins with Chaucer. 
 ^^CentS^^^ Matthew Ai-nold calls the eighteenth century 
 
 ' excellent and indispensable ' ; the fifteenth 
 century is equally excellent and indispensable in its way. 
 A time when such stupendous changes were taking place 
 proved too much for the measure of talent possessed by 
 Lydgate and his contemporaries ; they had not the genius 
 to attune their muse to the changed and changing 
 conditions, and so they fell back into medievalism. The 
 living spirit of literature gave place to a mere literary 
 tradition ; and lifeless imitations masqueraded in the worn- 
 out garbs of allegory and romance. The last fifty 
 years of the century are almost entirely destitute of 
 poetry.
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 27 
 
 And what were tliese * stupendous changes ' ? In the 
 first place, the final disinflection of the lan- 
 A Century of guagc. In Chaucer's day inflections had 
 Changes, practically been reduced to three, -e, -es, -en, 
 of which he had made the fullest use in his 
 careful system of prosody. By 1400 fiectional -e was 
 dead as a separate syllable, and -en was rapidly following 
 it. This fact Chaucer's successors would not or could not 
 face, and the consequence was the partial ruin of their 
 versification. Their constant imitation of him only made 
 matters worse ; for whereas his final syllabic -e followed 
 the laws of etymology, theirs was a mere metrical con- 
 venience. They seem to have felt in a helpless way that 
 their lot was cast in an evil time for versifiers, for they 
 lament their own ineptitude in such lines as these of 
 Lydgate's : 
 
 ' And troutlie of metre I sette also a-syde, 
 For of that art I liad as tho no guyde 
 Me to reduce, when I went a-wronge : 
 I tooke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe.' 
 
 But the disinflection of the language was only one symptom 
 or feature of the mighty transition from the medieval to the 
 modern world, which was gradually taking place through- 
 out this century, and of which the death of feudalism and 
 feudal chivahy, the lessening power of the monarchy, the 
 growing power of the people, and the rise of the ' nation 
 of shopkeepers,' are manifestations. The old political and 
 social order was changing, giving place to new. Old 
 subjects were played out, the new were not yet ready, and 
 there was no great seer to anticipate them. 
 
 The best poetry of the fifteenth century is represented 
 by the works of Lydgate, the voluminous and versatile 
 monk of Bury St. Edmunds ; by the ' King's Quair' (Book) 
 
 of James I. of Scotland, who was captured by 
 Fifteenth an English shij) in 1406, and who in 1423 saw 
 Poctryf from his prison window at Windsor the lady 
 
 'who became successively the inspiration of his 
 verse, the means of his liberation, and the partner of his 
 throne ' ; and by the work of the Dunfermline schoolmastez', 
 Robert Henryson, 'Chaucer's aptest and brightest scholar.'
 
 28 FROM MEDIEVAli TO MODERN. 
 
 Of these three Henryson touches the highest mark ; his 
 * Moral Fables ' are the best poKtical apologues in the 
 language ; even a French critic, Jusserand, admits that ' the 
 story of the "uplandis Mous and the burges Mous" has 
 never been better told than by Henryson, and this can be 
 affirmed without forgetting La Fontaine.' From it the 
 following extract is taken : 
 
 < " "Wer I in- to the kith (home) that I come fra, 
 
 For Weill nor wo suld never cum agane." 
 With that scho take hir leif and f urth can ga, 
 
 Quhylis (whiles) throw the corne and quhylis throw the plane. 
 
 Quhen scho wes furth and fre scho wes ful fane, 
 And merilie merkit (hastened) unto the mure. 
 I can nocht tell how efterwart scho fure (fared), 
 
 But I hard say sho passit to hir den 
 
 Als warme als well, suppose (although) it wes nocht greit, 
 Full benely (abimdantly) stulllt, baith but and ben (outer and 
 inner room), 
 
 Of beinis and nnttis, peis, ry, and quheit (wheat) ; 
 
 Quhen-ever scho list scho had aneuch to eit 
 In quyet and eis (ease), withoutin ony dreid ; 
 Bot to hir sisteris feist na mair scho yeid (went). 
 
 Blissit be sempill lyfe withoutin dreid ! 
 
 Blissit be sober feist in quyetie ! 
 Q,uha hes aneuch, of na mair hes he neid, 
 
 Thocht it be lytill in-to quantitie. 
 
 Greit abondauce and blind prosperitie 
 Ofttymes maids ane evill conclusioun. 
 
 The sweitest lyfe thaii'for in this cuntrie 
 Is sickernes (security), with small possessioun.' 
 
 Hitherto prose had been left hopelessly in the lurch 
 tlirough the enormous advance recorded in the 
 Centoy Prose, poetry of Ohaucer ; in this century prose made 
 up some leeway. It is hardly too much to say 
 that Malory did for English prose what Chaucer had done 
 for English poetry. Yet we know practically nothing 
 about the author of the 'Morte Darthur,' printed by 
 Caxton in 1485, beyond the information contained in the 
 closing words of his book : ' this book was ended the 
 ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth by 
 Sir Thomas Maleore, kniglit, as Jesu help him for his 
 great might, as he is the servant of Jesu both day and
 
 FIFTEENTH CENTURY PROSE. 29 
 
 night.' Malory's ' Morte Darthur ' has been called by one 
 critic ' the great prose acbievement of the whole time 
 before the "Advancement of Learning"'; by another, 
 'the only Ai-thurian epic our literature has to show.' It is 
 indeed a very great work. Its chief sources and models 
 were the early French prose romances of the twelfth or 
 thirteenth century, the finest of all medieval prose ; apart 
 from the allowance to be made in favour of the French 
 versions on account of priority of date, Malory has nothing 
 to fear from a comparison with them. To some ears there 
 has been no prose so finely written ever since. The 
 Elizabethans possibly might have equalled it, had the 
 conditions been favourable ; but they were not, as we 
 shall see. Who can be insensible to the music of such a 
 passage as the farewell of Sir Launcelot and Gruenever ? 
 
 ' And therefore, lady, sithen ye have taken you to perfection, I 
 must needs take me to perfection of right. For I take record of God, 
 in you I have had mine earthly joy. And if I had found you now 
 so disposed, I had cast me to have had you into mine own realm. 
 But sithen I find you thus disposed, I ensure you faithfully I will 
 ever take me to penance, and pray while my life lasteth, if that I 
 may find any hermit either grey or white that will receive me. 
 Wherefore, madam, I pray you kiss me, and never no more. Nay, 
 said the queen, that shall I never do, hut abstain you from such 
 works. And they departed. But there was never so hard an hearted 
 man, but he would have wept to see the dolour that they made. For 
 there was lamentation as they had been stung with spears, and many 
 times they swooned. And the ladies bare the queen to her chamber, 
 and Sir Launcelot awoke, and went and took his horse, and rode aU 
 that day and all that night in a forest, weeping.' 
 
 How did it come about that such fine prose as this was 
 
 succeeded in the next century by the ' mental Latin ' of 
 
 Elyot and Ascham ? It was due to the Eenaissance. And 
 
 this leads to the furtlier remark, that all the 
 
 The 1?^^^^* influences which helped to mould and form our 
 
 Centuries, noble Elizabethan literature may be seen in 
 
 germ in the fifteenth century : the Renaissance, 
 
 translation, printing, the Eeformation, discoveries. About 
 
 each of these a word must be said here.
 
 30 FROM MEDIEVAL TO MODERN. 
 
 The Eenaissance, or the Revival of Learning', or the New 
 Learning, may be explained as the revived 
 RenS^sance. influence of the great Greek and Latin classics 
 upon modern thought and literature. It is 
 convenient to distinguish the Earlier Eenaissance of the 
 fourteenth century, which we may associate with the names 
 of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and in some degree with 
 that of Chaucer; and the Later Renaissance, which dates 
 from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, 
 and the consequent dispersal of learned Greeks through 
 civUised and friendly Europe. Thus the Later Renaissance 
 was especially Greek. The influence of the New Learning 
 was not at first beneficial on the whole; writers were over- 
 laden with their new acquisitions, and did not know what 
 to do with them (for example, among the personages 
 introduced into Douglas's ' Palace of Honour ' are Enoch, 
 Melchizedek, Deborah, Solomon, Job, Odysseus, Aristotle, 
 Catiline, Cicero, and Virgil, and the scheme of redemption 
 is expounded by a nymph in Calliope's train) ; classical 
 allusions were scattered broadcast ; and generally there 
 was a danger of English spelling, diction, syntax, versi- 
 fication, style, and drama, being overlaid and undermined 
 with ' classicism.' Of this wide and far-reaching move- 
 ment translation may be regarded as one modus ojM'randt, 
 although translations were, of course, made from French, 
 Italian, and Spanish, as well as from Latin and Greek. 
 To connect this feature with the fifteenth century it is 
 sufiicient to mention the rendering of Cicero's ' De 
 Amicitia,' by John Tiptoft, Earl of "Worcester (before 
 1475). 
 The invention of printing from movable founts was in 
 itseK a social and literary revolution. Pre- 
 printing, yiously reading had been the luxury of the 
 few, for manuscripts were scarce and precious. Even the 
 library of a man like Chaucer must have been quite small. 
 But aiter the first book ' enprynted by me wiUiam Caxton, 
 at westmestre,' ia 1477, every year saw a large increase 
 in the number of readers, and books and pamphlets came 
 to be written and printed even for the class who had never 
 before come within the charmed circle except under the
 
 DUNBAR AND DOUGLAS. 31 
 
 spell of tho wandering minstrel. How this fact reacted 
 upon literature, popularising it at times to debasement and 
 at times to a noble simplicity, but on the whole enlarging 
 its bounds and widening its influence, the student must be 
 left to follow out for himself. One incidental effect of the 
 introduction of printing should not be overlooked : com- 
 positors are intensely conservative, much more so even 
 than scribes ; from the first they have ill brooked any 
 interference with English spelling, and the residt has been 
 disastrous : while English sounds have changed greatly 
 since the fifteenth century, there has been no corresponding 
 change in their symbols, which are still to all intents those 
 of that century petrified. 
 
 The Eeformation is usually dated from Luther, but he 
 must be blind indeed who does not see its seeds in 
 Langland, Wyclif, Huss, Savonarola (burnt 1498). It led 
 to a further increase in the number of writers and readers, 
 and to a certain facility in composition that was not an 
 unmixed boon ; but above aU it produced models of 
 magnificent prose in the Enghsh Scriptures and in such 
 works as Foxe's ' Acts and Monuments.' 
 
 Lastly, the spirit of discovery was abroad, acting as a 
 new stimulus upon the minds of men. The famous voyages 
 of Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, and Vasco da Gama, all 
 between 1490 and 1500, turned the thoughts of men to 
 larger views of the physical universe, and brought into 
 English life and letters the spirit of adventure that 
 breathes through many of the best works of ' the spacious 
 times of great Elizabeth.' 
 
 Such then, in very brief, is the character of the fifteenth 
 
 century. Tho first four-fiiths of the sixteenth are one long 
 
 preparation for Spenser. Much had to be done before 
 
 Spenser and Marlowe were possible. Much was done at 
 
 the beginning of the century by two Scots poets, William 
 
 Dunbar, and Gawain Douglas. The former 
 
 ''^Dougias!'*^ revived the sound Chaucerian tradition of the 
 
 direct imitation of nature, though he is at times 
 
 purposely and inartisticaUy coarse. The latter did work of 
 
 greater historic moment in his translation of the ' Aeneid,' 
 
 the first rendering of any Latin or Greek classic into
 
 32 FROM MEDIEVAIi TO MODERN. 
 
 English vei'se. Of equal importance are the original pro- 
 logues, some of which contain descriptions of Nature that 
 make Douglas the ancestor of the school of Nature poets 
 of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One thing 
 alone prevents these men from receiving their due meed 
 of popidar appreciation to-day — a dialect that is painfully 
 slow reading to anyone but a born Scot. How Douglas's 
 verse moves at its best will be seen in the following lines 
 in praise of sjiring : 
 
 ' Welcum, the lord of lycht and lamp of day I 
 Welcura, fustyr of tendir herbys grene ! 
 AVelcum, quyknar of florist flowris schene ! 
 AVelcum, support of euery rute and vane ! 
 Welcum, comfort of alkynd fruyt and grane ! 
 Welcum, the byrdis beyld (shelter) apon the breyr ! 
 Welcum, maister and rewlar of the yeyr ! 
 Welcum, weilfar of husbandis at the plewis ! 
 Welcum, reparar of woddis, treis, and bewis (boughs) 
 Welcum, depayntar of the blomyt medis ! 
 Welcum, the Ij'fe of euery thing that spredis ! 
 Welcum, stourour (restorer) of alkynd bestiall ! 
 Welcum be thi brycht bemys, glading all ! 
 Welcum celestiall myrrour and aspy, 
 Atteching (reproving) all that hantis (practise) sluggardy ! ' 
 
 These Scots poets kept the flame alive in the dark days 
 between Chaucer and Spenser until the advent of ' tiie two 
 chief lanterns of hght to all others that Jiave since em- 
 ployed their pennes upon English Poesie,' Wyatt and 
 Surrey. For the best southern poet contemporary with 
 Dunbar and Douglas, Stephen Hawes, groom of the chamber 
 to Henry YII., is back in the Middle Ages with his ' Pastime 
 of Pleasure; or, the History of Grand Amour and La 
 Belle Pucel,' and back among the predecessors of Chaucer 
 with his halting, hobbling rhythm. None too soon did 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-42) and Heniy Howard, 
 
 son of the Duke of Norfolk, and (by courtesy) 
 "%l^ey!"^ Earl of Surrey (d. 1547), come to the rescue. 
 
 It has been the singular fate of these two poeta 
 to be the object of the most persistent of all the persistent 
 misunderstandings and misstatements in literary history, 
 some of which must needs be nailed again. Surrey's rank,
 
 linrATT AND SURREY. 33 
 
 through 'Tottel's Miscellany' (1557), is responsible for the 
 unhistorical order 'Surrey and Wyatt,' but it was not 
 necessary for a university professor to make matters worse 
 by writing that Wyatt' s ' songs are an inferior imitation of 
 Surrey's.' How they can be an 'inferior imitation' of the 
 songs of a man at least fourteen years his junior, who was 
 not twenty-five years old when Wyatt died, is a riddle for 
 the Sphinx. *As early as 1526,' says Professor Ilales, 
 ' when Surrey was certainly not more than ten 3'cars old, 
 Leland had honoured Wyatt, then twenty-three, as the 
 most accomplished poet of his time. . . . Surely it is time 
 Wyatt had a more general recognition as the first, in time 
 at least, of those " courtly makers." . . . Surely it is time 
 he should more generally have some credit for having 
 introduced the sonnet into our literature.' Secondly, the 
 statement is often made that ' to them we are indebted for 
 the great reform which substituted a metrical for a rhyth- 
 mical structure.' This is misleading, inasmuch as it leaves 
 out of sight the fact that Wyatt and Surrey were only 
 reintroducing a reform, this time with lasting success, 
 which had once already been effected by Chaucer, every line 
 of whose poetry is based on a ' metrical ' and not a ' rhyth- 
 mical structure.' Thirdly, those two poets are still very 
 commonly said to have travelled in Italy. Wyatt, it is 
 true, accompanied Sir John Eiissell when he wont as am- 
 bassador to the papal court in 1527 ; but Surrey never got 
 beyond France. Lastly, Putteuham's 'Henry, Earl of 
 Surrey, and Sir Thomas AVyatt, between ivhom I find very 
 little difference^ ('Art of English Poesy,' 1589) has been 
 repeated in effect over and over again, although any but 
 a superficial examination reveals marked differences in 
 spirit and in workmanship. 
 
 With a view to the final removal of those serious errors, 
 the first thing to be done is to restore Wyatt to the position 
 usually accorded to Surrey; to remember that he was a 
 poet with an established reputation when Surrey was a 
 boy; that Surrey had his friend and 'master's' models to 
 improve upon, and it is impossible to say what he would 
 have achieved without them ; and that the sole credit of the 
 introduction of the Italian influence belongs to AVyatt. 
 
 EKQ. LIT. 3
 
 34 FBOM MEDIEVAL TO MODERN. 
 
 The elder poet found English poetry in the deplorable 
 pHght in which we have seen it, and from which 
 ^^*did!^^*** he endeavoured to rescue it by introducing the 
 subjects and the measures of the Petrarchan 
 love poetry. He succeeded in giving a good ' send-oif ' to 
 modern lyric poetry ; he is our first satirist on the classical 
 model ; he effected a partial reform of poetic diction, by 
 means of a more careful selection of words, after Chaucer's 
 example, and the avoidance of the ' aureate ' terms of the 
 fifteenth century ; he introduced the sonnet, the heroic 
 quatrain (as in Gray's ' Elegy '), the ottava rima (as in 
 Byron's 'Don Juan'), the terza rima, and many lyric 
 measures : but the restoration of English prosody to 
 anything like the state of perfection in which Chaucer had 
 left it proved a task beyond his powers. His most 
 intolerable fault is the riming of unstressed ultimates, as 
 in 'suffer, displeasure ' ; 'harbour, banner.' On the other 
 hand, what he can achieve at his best may be seen in the 
 following extracts, each striking a new note in English 
 verse ; the latter, in ter%a rima {aha, bch, cdc, and so on), 
 is the opening of the first satire, in imitation of Horace's 
 * Town and Country Mouse ' : 
 
 ' What should I say ! 
 Since Faith is dead, 
 And Truth away 
 From you ia fled ? 
 Should I he led 
 With doubleness ? 
 Nay ! nay ! mistress. 
 I promised you, 
 
 And you promised me, 
 To be as true 
 As I would be. 
 But since I see 
 Your double heart, 
 Farewell my part ! 
 Thought for to take 
 'Tis not my mind ; 
 But to forsake 
 One so unkind ; 
 And as I find, 
 So will I trust ; 
 Farewell, unjust !
 
 THEIB RESrECTTVE ACniEVEMENTS. 86 
 
 Can ye say nay, 
 
 But that you said 
 That I alway 
 
 Should be oh eyed ? 
 And thus betrayed 
 Or that I wist ! 
 Farewell, unkist! ' 
 
 ' My mother's maids, when they do sew and spin, 
 They sing a song made of the fieldish mouse ; 
 That, for because her livelode was but thin, 
 
 Would needs go see her townish sister's house. 
 She thought herself endured to grievous pain, 
 The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse. 
 
 That when the furrows swimmed with the rain 
 She must lie cold and wet, in sony plight ; 
 And worse than that, bare meat there did remain 
 
 To comfort her, when she her house had dight, 
 Sometime a barley com, sometime a bean 
 For which she laboured hard both day and night. 
 
 In haiTCst time, while she might go and glean ; 
 And when her store was stroycd with the flood. 
 Then wellaway ! for she imdone was clean.' 
 
 Surrey completed the "svork that Wyatt had begun. He 
 ■was a far better metrist; he completed the 
 wha^siirrey reform iu dictiou that Wyatt had initiated ; 
 generally, one may say that he was as much 
 the more original of the two in the form of his poetry as 
 his friend was the more original in his matter. But his 
 greatest claim to our gratitude is his introduction of blank 
 verse, the metre that was to be put to the mightiest uses 
 of all in English poetiy, in his ti'anslation of tlie Second 
 and Fourth Books of the 'Aeneid.' Both "Wyatt and 
 Surrey avoid allegoiy ; they are free fi'om affectation and 
 indelicacy ; they were Eeformers in religion ; they were 
 English gentlemen in the best sense ; they ' struck a new 
 poetical lode.' With such a record there is no place for 
 exaggeration. The following stanzas are from Surrey's 
 elegy on liis friend — the first personal elegy in English 
 literature : 
 
 'Wyatt restcth hci e, that quick could never rest : 
 Whose heavenly gifts encreased by disdain, 
 
 And virtue sank the deeper in his breast ; 
 Such profit he by envy could obtain. . . ,
 
 36 FROM MEDIEVAli TO MODERN. 
 
 A visage Btem, and mild ; where both did grow, 
 
 Vice to contemn, in virtue to rejoice ; 
 Amid great storms whom grace assured so, 
 
 To five upright and smile at fortune's choice. 
 
 A hand that taught what might bo said in rhyme : 
 
 That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit : 
 A mark, the which (unperfected for time) 
 
 Some may approach, but never none may hit. 
 
 A tongue that served in foreign realms his king, 
 
 Whose courteous talk to \drtuo did inflame 
 Each noble heart : a worthy guide to bring 
 
 Our English youth by travail unto fame. 
 
 An eye whose judgment no eflfect could blind, 
 
 Friends to aUure and foes to reconcile, 
 Whose piercing look did represent a mind 
 
 With virtue fraught, reposed, void of guile. 
 
 A heart where dread was never so imprest 
 
 To hide the thought that might the truth advance, 
 
 In neither fortune left nor yet represt. 
 To swell in wealth, or yield unto mischance.' 
 
 The tliirty years after the death of Surrey were years of 
 imitation, preparation, and experiment. Much poetry was 
 written, and much of it was published in 'Miscellanies,' 
 beginning with Tottel's in 1557, which opened with poems 
 by Surrey and Wyatt. But only one name is of sufficient 
 moment for special mention here, that of Thomas Sack^dlle, 
 afterwards Lord Buckhurst. Sackville is often 
 said to be the greatest poet between Chaucer 
 and Spenser; but in judging any such claim bulk as well 
 as quality must be taken into the account, and Sackville's 
 volume is exceedingly small. He contributed to the 
 second edition of the 'Mirror for Magistrates' (1563) an 
 'Induction,' and the 'Tragedy' of Buckingham. Spenser 
 himself says that Sackville's 
 
 • Learned muse hath writ her own record 
 In golden verse, worthy immortal fame ' ; 
 
 and the student will have little difficulty in detecting in the
 
 saokvelle's * indttotion.' 37 
 
 following stanzas from the ' Induction ' an anticipatory 
 echo of the music of the ' Faery Queen ' : 
 
 ' Thence come we to the horrour and the hell, 
 The large great kingdoms, and the dreadful reign 
 Of Pluto in his throne where he did dwell, 
 The wide waste places, and the hugy plain. 
 The wailings, shrieks, and simdry sorts of pain, 
 The sighs, the sobs, the deep and deadly groan ; 
 Earth, air, and aU, resounding plaint and moan. 
 
 Here pul'd the babes, and here the maids unwed 
 With folded hands their sorry chance bewail'd ; 
 Here wept the guiltless slain, and lovers dead. 
 That slew themselves when nothing else avail'd: 
 A thousand sorts of sorrows here, that wail'd 
 With sighs, and tears, sobs, shrieks, and all yfear, 
 That, oh, alas, it was a hell to hear.'
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 We have in this chapter to sui'vey very briefly the whole 
 course of English drama, sketching in most summary 
 fashion its origins, its decline under Dryden, and its death 
 and burial in the eighteenth century, but dwelling with 
 such fulness as we may on the EHzabethan drama, especi- 
 ally under the three aspects of its rise in Marlowe, its con- 
 summation in Shakespeare, and its decadence in Jonson. 
 
 The Elizabethan drama is partly of native growth, but 
 has also a large admixture of later foreign elements, 
 coming in through the Eenaissance. Roughly the native 
 elements may be said to belong originally to religious 
 drama, and the foreign elements to secular drama. As 
 early as the tenth century, certainly, the Church had called 
 in the aid of rudimentary di-amatic performances in order 
 to bring home to the understanding of the simple such 
 events as the birth and resurrection of the Redeemer; 
 these performances passed over to England with the 
 Norman ecclesiastics. As was natural, further develop- 
 ments arose, and the so-called 'Miracles,' Miracle or 
 Mystery plays, came into being. The Bible 
 Miracle Plays, ^^^^-^^^g^ ^^^ material of the Mysteries, which 
 often expounded the mysteries connected with religion; 
 Miracles consisted of the legends of saints, in whose honour 
 they were acted. But the distinction of name is, in Eng- 
 land, entirely modern ; the name Miracle was used for both 
 classes, as it will be here. The earliest Miracles probably 
 date from the close of the eleventh century, but none have
 
 MTRACT,E PLAYS. 89 
 
 survived of earlier date than the twelfth, and none entirely 
 ill the vernaciilar earlier than the thirteenth. ' By degrees 
 the vernacular encroached upon the Latin and displaced 
 it ; the scene passed from the Church to the public place 
 or street ; the action developed ; and the actors were priests 
 supported by lay-folk, or were lay-folk alone.' But ' no 
 English play which has been preserved to us contains any 
 marks of its representation by clerical actors.' The Church 
 began to regard its quondam handmaid with suspicion ; 
 the Miracles feU into lay hands alone, but increased in 
 popular favour ; and the festival of Corpus Christi, which 
 usually feU in June, from being a holy day, became a 
 holiday devoted to the enactment of IVIiracles by the trade 
 guilds. As the number of guilds desirous of taking part 
 in these performances increased, the Chi-istmas and Easter 
 scenes, which had originally been the nucleus of the whole, 
 were expanded in both directions until a complete cycle of 
 plays was formed, starting from the Creation and Fall of 
 Man, embracing certain Old Testament episodes with a 
 special bearing on the gospel narrative, tracing in detail 
 the principal events in the Redeemer's life, and rounding 
 off the whole with the Judgment. Four such cycles have 
 come down to us, called respectively the York, Wakefield, 
 Chester, and Coventry plays. 
 
 The York cycle, which numbers forty-eight plays, dates 
 
 . from the middle of the fourteenth century. It 
 
 ' will be of interest to name some of the guilds, 
 
 with the titles of the plays they had severally to enact : — 
 
 1. Bakers — 'The Creation, Fall of Lucifer.' 2. Plasterers 
 — 'The Creation to the Fifth Day.' 3. CardmaJcers—' God 
 creates Adam and Eve.' 4. Fullers — 'Adam and Eve in 
 the Garden of Eden.' 5. Coopers — 'Man's Disobedience 
 and Fall.' 6. Armourers — 'Adam and Eve driven from 
 Eden.' 7. Glovers — ' Sacrificium Cayme et Abell.' 8. Ship- 
 wrights — 'Building of the Ai-k.' 9. Fishers and Mariners 
 — 'Noah and the Flood.' 10. ^ Parchmyners^ and Book- 
 hinders — 'Abraham's Sacrifice.' 11. Hosiers — ' The Israel- 
 ites in Egypt, the Ten Plagues, and Passage of the Red 
 Sea.' 12. Spicers — 'Annunciation and visit of Elizabeth 
 to Mary.' And so on.
 
 40 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 As an illustration we select this characteristic passage 
 from the play of the * Fishers and Mariners ' : 
 
 * Scene II. — Noah's home, 1st son enters. 
 
 1 Jil. Where are ye, modir myne ? 
 
 Come to my fadir sone. 
 Uxor. What says thou ? sone ? 
 I Jil. Moder, certeyne 
 
 My ffadir Ihynlris to flitte full ferxe. 
 
 He biddis you haste with al youre mayne 
 
 Unto hym, that no thyng you marre. 
 Uxor. 3a ! good sone, by the faste agayne. 
 
 And telle hym I wol come no narre (nearer). 
 If lilts. Dame, I wolde do youre hiddyng fayne, 
 
 But yow bus (behoves) wendc, els bese it warre (worse). 
 Uxor. Werre ! that wolde 1 witte. 
 
 We bowrde (jest) al wrange, I wene. 
 1 fdhcs. Modir, I sale you yitte. 
 
 My ffadir is bowne (ready) to flitte. 
 Uxor. Now, certis, I sail nou^^t silte, 
 
 Or (ere) I se what he mene; 
 
 Scene III. — The Ark, as before. 
 
 1 fUlns. Fadir, I have done nowe as ye comaunde, 
 
 My modir comes to j'ou this daye. 
 Koe. Scho is welcome, I wele warrande. 
 
 This worlde sail sone be waste awaye. [ Wife comes in 
 
 Uxor. Wher arte thou Noye ? 
 jfoe. Loo ! here at hande, 
 
 Come hedir faste, dame, I the praye. 
 Uxor. Trowes thou that I wol leve the harde lande. 
 
 And toiu-ne up here on toure deraye (confusion) ? 
 
 Nay, Noye, I am noujt bowne 
 
 to fonde (go) nowe over there ffellis (these hills) ; 
 
 Doo bames, goo we and trusse (make ready) to towne. 
 Noe. Nay, certis, sothly than mon (must) ye drowne. 
 Uxor. In faythe thou were als goode come downe, 
 
 And go do som what ellis. 
 Noe. Dame, fowrty dayes are nerhand past 
 
 And gone sen it be-gan to rayne ; 
 
 On lyffe salle noman lenger laste 
 
 Bot we allane, is nought to layne (conceal). 
 Uxor. Now Noye, in faythe the founes (growest silly) full faste. 
 
 This fare (proceeding) wille I no lenger frayne (inquire 
 into), 
 
 Thou arte nere woode (mad), I am agaste, 
 
 Fare-wele, I wille go home agayne.
 
 MIRACLES AND MORALITIES. 
 
 41 
 
 Noe. ! woman, arte thou woode ? 
 
 Of my werkis thou not wotte, 
 
 All that has ban (bone) or bloode 
 
 Salle be overe flowed with the floode. \^Detains her. 
 
 Uxor. In faithe, the were als goode 
 
 to late me go my gatte (way). 
 
 "We owte ! herrowe ! 
 Noe. What now ! What cheere ? 
 
 Uxor. T wille no narre for no kynnes (kind of) nede. 
 Koe. Uelpe ! my sonnes to holde her here, 
 
 For tille (to) her harmes she takes no heede. 
 2Jilitts. Beis merj', modir, and mende youre chere, 
 
 This worlde beis drowned with-outen drede. 
 Uxor. Alias ! that I this lare shuld lere. 
 Noe. Thou spilles us alle, iUe mj'ght thou speede ! 
 ZJilius. Dere modir, wonne (remain) with us, 
 
 ther shal no-thyng you greve. 
 Uxor. Nay, nedlyngis (needs) home me bus, 
 
 For I have tolls (tools) to trusse. 
 Noe. Woman, why dois thou thus. 
 
 To make us more myscheve ? 
 Uxor. Noye, thou myght have leteyn (let) me wete (know), 
 
 Erly and late thou wente ther outte, 
 
 And ay at home thou lete me sytte. 
 
 To loke that nowhere were wele aboutte. 
 Noe. Dame, thou holde me excused of itt, 
 
 It was goddis wille with-owten doutte. 
 Uxor. What ? wenys thou so for to go qwitte ? 
 
 Nay, be my trouthe, thou getis a clowte. \_Strilces Jtim. 
 
 Noe. I pray the, dame, be stille. 
 
 Thus god wolde have it wrought. 
 Uxor. Thow shulde have witte my wille, 
 
 Yf I wulde sente ther tille (assent thereto), 
 
 And Noye, for that same skylle (reason), 
 
 this bargan (strife) sail be brought. 
 
 Nowe at firste I f jTide and feele 
 
 Wher thou hast to the forest soght. 
 
 Thou shuld have tolde me for oure seele (happiness) 
 
 Whan we were to slyke bargane broght.' 
 
 It is a far cry from the Miracles to the Elizabethan 
 
 Miracles and <1^^^^^) 1^^ ^^ °^® '"'^^^ ^^^ Smallest Critical 
 
 the Later faculty Can fail to see the indebtedness of 
 
 Drama. ^]^q latter to its crudo forerunners. In the 
 
 Wakefield cycle comic relief was given by a realistic 
 
 farcical episode of sheep-stealing, which was pregnant 
 
 of future developments. * These early dramatists, too,
 
 42 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 furnished the hints for all the nameless generic characters 
 which figure so prominently in Shakespeare's plays. His 
 First and Second Citizens, Carriers, Gfentlemen, and Sol- 
 diers have all of them prototypes in the pageants of the 
 craftsmen ; and from the familiar talk by which the actors 
 helped the townsfolk to reaHse the Scripture narrative 
 was generalised the style made classical in the mouths of 
 Bottom, Dogberry, and Falstaff.' Nor is this all. The 
 pathetic situations in the scene between Abraham and 
 Isaac and in the story of Christ ; the grotesque character of 
 Lucifer, the pantaloon of modern pantomime ; the melo- 
 dramatic character of the bombastic, ranting Herod (cp. 
 Hamlet's ' out-Heroding Herod') ; the pastoral element in 
 the scene of the annunciation to the shepherds : none of 
 these can have failed to influence the later history of the 
 drama. The Miracle cycles continued to be played till the 
 close of the sixteenth century. 
 
 The Coventry cycle contains some allegorical personages, 
 such as Contemplacio and Death, which are a 
 
 ^p[aysf mark of later date and represent a partial 
 transition to the next stage in the development 
 of the drama, the Morality play. The Morality, in 
 which all the characters are allegorical abstractions intent 
 upon the moral and religious edification of the audience, 
 dates from the fifteenth century, the earliest examples 
 being the ' Pride of Life ' and the ' Castle of Perseverance,' 
 the latter of which traces the history of Humanum Q-enus 
 from birth to the Day of Judgment. In general interest 
 and dramatic power they fall far below the Miracles. But 
 whereas the latter were confined within a groove by the 
 Scripture narrative and an unelastic body of dogma, the 
 writers of Moralities were compelled to invent a plot, and 
 to compensate for the uninteresting nature of their dramatis 
 personae by ingenuity of construction. Their very weak- 
 ness proved a source of dramatic strength. Every 
 adventitious aid possible was called in to overcome the 
 tedium inseparable from the antics of allegorical lay 
 figures dramatised into some semblance of life. Scene- 
 painting received some attention and dramatic ' properties ' 
 were freely introduced. Instead of the old rigid series of
 
 INTERLUDES. 43 
 
 somewhat disconnected pageants, the incidents of the play 
 told into the career of a central allegorical personage or 
 hei'o, and thus a distinct advance was made towards 
 unity of construction. Moreover, in the attempt strongly 
 to individualise the allegorical characters, with a view to 
 arousing greater interest in them, the playwrights were 
 led to depict real characters with moral nicknames. 
 Finally, by the gradual substitution for virtues and vices 
 of actual historical or contemj)oraneous people, who were 
 good illustrations of particular virtues and vices, there 
 came to be produced some old plays, tragedies, histories, 
 and comedies, as yet unaSected by imitation of classical 
 models, from which the allegorical personages had been 
 nearly excluded. Thus we see that the Morality proved a 
 way of escape for the infant drama from the necessary 
 limitations of the Miracle. 
 
 A word or two about one other species of drama will 
 1 d bring us to the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. 
 Comic rehef was often provided in the Morali- 
 ties by means of an Interlude, in which the devil, borrowed 
 from the Miracles, had an attendant. Vice or Iniquity (see 
 Shakespeare's 'Eichard III.,' iii. 1.82), who delighted the 
 audience by the tricks he played on the fiend. In the 
 course of time the Interlude detached itself from the 
 Moralitj', and in the hands of John Heywood took literary 
 form. Heywood' 8 Interludes are as simple as possible in 
 construction, being little more than the dramatisation of 
 an anecdote ; the best known is the ' Four P.'s,' in which 
 a 'Poticary, a Pardoner, and a Palmer see which can teU 
 the biggest lie, while the Pedlar is appointed judge. The 
 Palmer wins easily with 
 
 ' I never saw nor knew in all my conscience 
 Any one woman out of patience.' 
 
 These Interludes were often acted by household servants 
 or retainers, and are important as developing the custom 
 of a nobleman of wealth having a band of more or less 
 well-trained actors dependent on liim. In the latter part 
 of Elizabeth's reign, when the drama proper was full- 
 grown, we find theatrical companies calling themselves
 
 44 THB ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 'the Earl of Leicester's servants,' 'the Queen's players,* 
 and so on. 
 
 The importance of the Morality in the development of 
 the regular or legitimate drama will now be manifest. In 
 the first place, the Morality proper led to the creation of, 
 and very largely gave way before, plays which mark a 
 distinct advance in the direction of true drama, and which 
 may be divided into Morahty-comedies, Morality-tragedies, 
 and Morality-histories {e.g. Bale's 'King Johan,' 1548). 
 Secondly, the Interlude developed from the Morality, 
 and in Heywood's hands may be regarded as a dramatic 
 germ, needing only extension and complexity to become 
 rudimentary drama. With these added, as in ' Gammer 
 Gurton's Needle,' acted at Cambridge in 1566, we have a 
 farcical five-act comedy. 
 
 In the division into five acts we see the influence of the 
 Renaissance. But that influence is much more marked 
 in the first regular English comedy and the first regular 
 English tragedy, both earlier than 'Gammer Gurton's 
 Needle.' The latter was ousted from the position of ' first 
 regular English comedy' by the discovery in 1818 of the 
 
 unique copy of ' Ealph Eoister Bolster,' 
 '^Doist^^*"' by Nicholas UdaU, headmaster of Eton and 
 
 then of Westminster. Its date is before rather 
 than after 1550. Its plot, in briefest summary, is 
 this : Roister Bolster, a feather-brained, chicken-hearted 
 coxcomb, is mischievously led on by Matthew Merygreke 
 to make love to the widow Christian Custance in the 
 absence of her betrothed, Gawin Goodluck, Complications 
 ensue ; but finally, Eoister Boister, having been literally 
 beaten off in his love-siege by the widow and her maids, 
 is good-huniouredly allowed to be reconciled to the betrothed 
 pair. Here, it is to be particidarly noted, we have an 
 amalgamation of the ' Miles Gloriosus ' of Plautus and the 
 Morality-Interlude, just as we have in the character of 
 Merygreke a compound of the 'parasite' of Plautus with 
 the 'vice' of the Morality. The regular construction of 
 the plot and the division into five acts are classical ; 
 but thoroughly English are the story, the characters, the 
 diction and the verse.
 
 ' GORBODtrO.' 45 
 
 If, as is undoubtedly the case, our first regular comedy 
 is preponderatingly of native origin, our first regular 
 tragedy, 'Gorboduc' or 'Ferrex and Porrex ' (acted 1562), is 
 
 at least equally of classical origin ; indeed, it is 
 'Gorboduc* modelled on the 'Thebais' of Seneca, though 
 
 the subject is taken from legendary British 
 history. The argument is thus summarised : ' Gorboduc, 
 kiug of Britain, divided his realms in his lifetime to his 
 sons, Ferrex and Porrex. The sons fell to dissension. 
 The younger killed the elder. The mother, that more 
 dearly loved the elder, for revenge killed the younger. 
 The people, moved with the cruelty of the fact, rose in 
 rebellion, and slew both father and mother. The nobility 
 assembled, and most terribly destroyed the rebels; and 
 afterwards, for want of issue of the prince, whereby the 
 succession of the crown became uncertain, they fell to 
 civil war, etc' ' Gorboduc ' is an academic Senecan play, 
 played before Elizabeth by the gentlemen of the Inner 
 Temple. Its subject is British, it is true ; it does not 
 observe the 'unities' of time and place, and there is a 
 dumb show before each act. But in all else it is ultra- 
 classical. The action is narrated by messengers, none is 
 seen on the stage ; in place of dialogue there is endless 
 declamation ; and each act but the last terminates with 
 a chorus. The piece is attributed to Thomas Sackville 
 (see p. 36) and Thomas Norton, and the stateliness and 
 restraint of the first three acts confirm their attribution 
 to Sackville, who is not unworthy of the honour of being 
 the first to use hUvik verse in drama. The following speech — 
 one of the best in the play — describing the death of 
 Porrex, will show how far removed is this early verse, 
 excellent as it is for its time, from the blank verse of 
 * Henry V.' or ' Lear ' : 
 
 ' The noble prince, pierced with the sudden wound, 
 Out of his wretched slumher hastily start, 
 Whose strength now failing straiglit he overthrew, 
 When in the full his eyes, e'en now unclosed, 
 Beheld the queen, and cried to her for help. 
 We then, alas ! the ladies which that time 
 Did there attend, seeing that heinous deed, 
 And hearing him oft call the wretched name
 
 46 THE ENOIilSH DRAMA. 
 
 Of mother, and to cry to her for aid 
 Whose direful hand gave him the mortal wound, 
 Pitying, alas ! (for naught else could we do), 
 His ruthful end, ran to the woeful hed. 
 Despoiled straight his breast and, all we might. 
 Wiped in vain, with napkins next at hand. 
 The sudden streams of blood that flushed fast 
 Out of the gaping wound. 0, what a look ! 
 what a rueful steadfast eye, methought, 
 He fixed upon my face ! which to my death 
 Will never part from me, when with a braid 
 A deep-fetched sigh he gave, and therewithal 
 Clasping his hands, to heaven he cast his sight ; 
 And straight, pale death pressing within his face. 
 The flying ghost his mortal corpse forsook.' 
 
 The plays that were produced in the twenty-five years 
 between * Q-orboduc ' and Marlowe's * Tamburlaine ' may be 
 „ , „ , divided into two main classes : scholarly ' aca- 
 due ' to ' Tarn- demic plays resembling ' (iorboduc, written 
 
 buriame.' ^^^ |.j^q wealthy, and popular plays written for 
 the masses. Before 1587 very few plays were printed, and 
 it is questionable whether any of the popular plays have 
 survived. We know, however, from contemporary criticism 
 that they must have borrowed their form from earlier native 
 dramas and their matter largely from Italian sources. 
 But ' Tamburlaine ' cannot have risen sheer from the level 
 plain ; the romantic drama must have been led up to more 
 gradually ; there must have been playwrights whose purpose 
 it was to bridge the gap which divided the crude popular 
 drama from the scholarly academic drama, drawing ele- 
 ments from both sources. And in fact two plays of this 
 character have survived, Eichard Edwards's ' Damon and 
 Pythias,' 1571, and Whetstone's 'Promos and Cassandra,' 
 1578. The latter is the source of Shakespeare's 'Measure 
 for Measure.' The dramatic quahty of its verse may not 
 unfairly be gauged from the following brief extract, in 
 which, like Claudio and Isabella, her brother is urging 
 Cassandra to save his life by submitting to dishonour : 
 
 ' Nay, sweet sister, more slander would inflame 
 
 Your spotless life, to reave your brother's breath, 
 When you have power for to enlarge the same. 
 Once in your hand doth lie my life and death.
 
 THE ' TTMVERSITY WITS.' 4*1 
 
 Weigh that I am the self-same flesh you are, 
 
 Think I once gone the house will go to wruck ; 
 Know forced faults for slander need not care ; 
 
 Look you for blame if I fail through your lack. 
 Consider well my great extremity. 
 
 If otherwise this doom I could revoke, 
 I would not spare for any jeopardy 
 
 To free thee, wench, from this same heavy yoke.' 
 
 It lias been remarked tliat the development of English 
 poetry in tlie fourteenth century was too sudden to be 
 lasting ; Chaucer's successors are a feeble folk. 
 ^ Drama!"" The Golden Age of our Hterature, so tardy in 
 its coming, so impatiently expected, was the 
 more lasting for having been so long a-preparing. But 
 for the long and gradual development in drama, leading 
 up to the great Elizabethan outburst, it is more than 
 possible that the age would have been poetic rather than 
 dramatic. But for SackAdlle's ' unrimed riming couplets * 
 it is more than possible that Marlowe would not have 
 created his ' mighty line.' But for Marlowe, Shakespeare's 
 work would have been so much harder that he would 
 certainly have achieved much less. This may be the place 
 to consider for a moment why Elizabethan literatiire is 
 predominantly dramatic ; the reasons are not far to seek. 
 In the first place, the di-ama alone was remunerative. 
 Then, it appealed to a larger pubHc than any other branch 
 of literature possibly could ; in fact, it was the only literary 
 means of reaching a great mass of people. Books were 
 still comparatively rare and dear ; the proportion of people 
 who could read was small ; there was no class of studious 
 readers. Lastly, the times themselves were dramatic ; 
 life abounded in dramatic elements and situations ; and a 
 great literature always stands in close, intimate, direct 
 relation to the life amid which it is created. 
 
 The way was made plain for Shakespeare and the ' actor- 
 playwrights ' by the group of dramatists known 
 ^rede^(^stor^'^ ^^ ^^® ' ^^^^^^'-'^i^y wits,' who may be dated, 
 as a group, 1580-1590. Of them, John Lyly 
 led the way in writing prose dialogue full of smart 
 repartee; Q-eorge Peele, in writing sweet verse, rather
 
 48 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 poetical than dramatic, flowing evenly in smooth diction ; 
 Thomas Kyd, in his 'Spanish Tragedy,' led the way 
 in creating the bloody style of tragedy (he was pro- 
 bably also the author of the old play of 'Hamlet'), of 
 which we have an example in ' Titus Andronicus,' and a 
 refined intellectualised example in the Shakespearean ' Ham- 
 let'; Robert Greene, in introducing into the drama Enghsh 
 country life and fresh young womanhood, in a word, in 
 doing for comedy something of what Marlowe did for 
 tragedy. But all these achievements pale, just as what 
 Marlowe did for tragedy pales, before what he did for 
 drama in general. He is the only predecessor of Shakes- 
 peare with whom we must linger. 
 
 Says Swinburne : * Of English blank verse, one of the 
 few highest forms of verbal harmony or poetic expression, 
 the genius of Marlowe was the absolute and divine 
 creator. By mere dint of original and godlike instinct he 
 discovered and called into life the hardest and highest 
 form of English verse, the only instrument since found 
 possible for our tragic or ej)ic poetry. He created the 
 modern tragic drama.' And again : ' Before him there 
 was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in 
 our language. After his arrival the way was prepared — 
 the paths were made straight for Shakespeare.' These are 
 great claims, and the reader whose dramatic studies have 
 begun and ended with Shakespeare will incline to suspect 
 their truth ; but on the whole they are justified. Once for 
 all, let the student remember that the same literature may 
 
 and must be judged in two quite different 
 The historic -^avs, according to its intrinsic excellence and 
 
 according to its place in historical development; 
 in other words, there is the intrinsic estimate, and there is 
 the historic estimate. Shakespeare may, of course, be com- 
 pared in intrinsic merit with Marlowe and with Jonson ; 
 but in the historic estimate, which it is one of the purposes 
 of this book to furnish, it must be obvious that it would 
 make an immense difference if Jonson had preceded 
 Shakespeare and Marlowe followed him, if Marlowe had 
 had Shakespeare's work to improve upon and Jonson had 
 not.
 
 MARLO-WT.. 49 
 
 Christopher Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury shoe- 
 maker, was bora in the same year as Shakespeare. He 
 took his Master of Ai'ts degree at Cambridge in 
 1587, the year of ' Tamburlaine.' In 1593 he 
 was killed in a tavern brawl. If Shakespeare had died in 
 the same year, what he had written might have shown 
 greater promise, but Marlowe would rightly have won 
 the greater renown. For in less than six years he had 
 created the English romantic drama. His principal plays 
 were the two parts of 'Tamburlaine the Great,' 'The 
 Tragical History of Dr. Faustus,' 'The Jew of Malta,' and 
 ' Edward II.' On this last play Lamb passed the famous 
 criticism : ' This tragedy is in a very different style 
 from "mighty Tamburlaine." The reluctant pangs of 
 abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which 
 Shakespeare scarce improved in his Richard the Second; 
 and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and 
 terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I 
 am acquainted.' In 'history' then also, Marlowe prepared 
 the way for Shakespeare. But, in order to examine and 
 establish the claims that have been made on his behalf, it 
 will be best to confine our attention to ' Tamburlaine ' and 
 'Faustus,' especially the latter. 
 
 ' Tamburlaine ' — the two parts may bo regarded as one 
 ^ , long play — is merely a succession of scenes in 
 
 am ur n . ^j^^ ^^ ^^ ^-^^ Scythiau shepherd who imagines 
 
 himself the instrument of Heaven's vengeance upon men. 
 The ' stormy monotony of Titanic truculence which 
 blusters like a simoom through the noisy course of its ten 
 fierce acts ' may be illustrated by the opening of Act iv. 
 scene 4, in the Second Part. 
 
 ' Enter Tamburlaine drawn in his Chariot by the Kings o/Trebizond 
 and iSyria, with hits in their months, reins in his left hand, and in his 
 right hand a whip with xvhieh he sconrgeth them. 
 
 Tamb. Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia l^ 
 
 What ! can ye draw but twenty miles a day, 
 And have so proud a chariot at your heels, 
 And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine ? ' 
 
 ■ Cp. ' 2 Henry TV.' ii. 4, 177-180. 
 ENQ. LIT. 4
 
 50 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 Possibly the student is not yet prepared to admit the 
 claims made on behalf of Marlowe. And we may add 
 that the play is dramatically very defective. It contains 
 about twenty murders and many battle-scenes, but there 
 is nothing that can be called a plot, no complexity, no 
 balance of parts, no intrigue, no characterisation worthy of 
 the name, no love as a motive. On the other hand, the 
 fact that it is the first play written for the public at large tti 
 blank verse entitles its author to infinite credit. Moreover, 
 it was the first play put on the English stage without the 
 aid of either academic chorus or popular dumb-show. 
 The dramatist's intentions are expressed in the Prologue : 
 
 ' From jigging veins of riming mother wits, 
 And such conceit as clovmage keeps in pay, 
 We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, 
 "NATiere you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine 
 Threatening the world with high astounding terms 
 And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. 
 View but his picture in this tragic glass, 
 And then ajiplaud his fortune as you please.' 
 
 These intentions may perhaps be thus enumerated in plain 
 prose : to divorce English plays from riming doggerel and 
 vulgar clownage ; to handle new themes of war and 
 history, and in a rhetorical manner ; to please the people 
 and hve by their patronage. * Tamburlaine ' is a good 
 example of the Marlowan type of tragedy — 'idealisation of 
 gigantic passion on a gigantic scale.' Here it is the 
 passion for dominion, in * Faustus ' it is the passion for 
 the power that comes with knowledge, in the 'Jew of 
 Malta ' it is the passion for wealth. 
 
 The special importance of ' Tamburlaine ' lies in the 
 fact that it was Marlowe's first play ; he appeals 
 
 Faustus.' much more strongly to modern readers in 
 ' Doctor Eaustus.' This play is divided into four- 
 teen scenes without acts; the plot is simple and familiar. In 
 the own words of the hero, ' For vain pleasure of twenty- 
 four years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. 
 I writ Lucifer and Mephistophilis a bill with mine 
 own blood : the date is expired ; the time wiU come 
 and he will fetch me.' Under this compact Faustus
 
 *DOOTOR FAITSTUS.' 51 
 
 had all knowledge and power, everytliing that his mind or 
 heart could desire, during the twenty-four years. He had 
 asked for Helen, and greeted her appearance in these 
 matchless lines : 
 
 ' "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
 And humt the topless towers of Ilium ? 
 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. — 
 Her Kps suck forth my soul : see where it flies I 
 Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
 Here will I dwell, for heaven is in those lips, 
 And all is dross that is not Helena. 
 I wiU he Paris, and for love of thee, 
 Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg he sacked ; 
 And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
 And wear thy colours on my plumed crest ; 
 Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
 And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
 Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.' 
 
 This is in the last scene but one ; the last scene is one of the 
 finest things even in Elizabethan drama. Goethe's 
 admiration for the whole piece was unbounded. We quote 
 the close of the play, Faustus's last hour : 
 
 ' All. Faustus, farewell. 
 
 lExetmt Scholars. The clock strikes eleven. 
 Fdiislus. Ah, Faustus, ,('■, 
 
 Now hast thou but one bare hour to live 
 
 And then thou must be damned perpetually ! 
 
 Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, 
 
 That time may cease, and midnight never come ; 
 
 Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make 
 
 Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but 
 
 A year, a month, a week, a natural day. 
 
 That Faustus may repent and save his soul ! 
 
 lente, lente currite, noetis equi ! 
 
 The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, 
 
 The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. 
 
 0, I'll leap up to my God ! Who pulls me down ? — 
 
 See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament ! 
 
 One di'op would save my soul, half a drop : ah, my Christ ! — 
 
 Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ ! 
 
 Yet will I call on him : 0, spare me, Lucifer ! — 
 
 Where is it now ? 'tis gone : and see, where God 
 
 Stretched out his arm, and bends his ireful brows ! 
 
 Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
 
 62 ' THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 And hide me from the heavy wrath of God I 
 
 No, no ! 
 
 Then will I headlong run into the earth : 
 Earth, gajie ! O no, it wiU not harhor me ! 
 You stars that reigned at my nativity, 
 \¥hose influence hath allotted death and hell, 
 Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, 
 Into the entrails of yon lab'ring clouds, 
 That, when you vomit forth into the air, 
 INIy limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, 
 So that my soul may but ascend to heaven ! 
 
 \Tlie clock strikes the half-hour. 
 Ah, half the hour is past ! 'twill all he past anon. 
 God, 
 
 If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, 
 Yet for Christ' s sake, whose blood hath ransomed me, 
 Impose some end to my incessant pain ; 
 Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, 
 A hundred thousand, and at last be saved ! 
 O, no end is limited to damned souls ! 
 Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul P 
 Or why is this immortal that thou hast ? 
 Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true. 
 This soul should fly from me, and I be changed 
 Unto some brutish beast ! all beasts are happy, 
 For, when they die, 
 
 Their souls are soon dissolved in elements ; 
 But mine must live still to be plagued in hell. 
 Cursed be the parents that engendered me ! 
 No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer 
 That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven. 
 
 \_The clock strikes twelve. 
 O, it strikes, it strikes ! Now, body, turn to air. 
 Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell ! 
 
 [Thunder and lightning, 
 O soul, be changed iato little water drops. 
 And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found ! 
 
 Enter DEVILS. 
 
 My Gk)d, my God, look not so fierce on me ! 
 Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile I 
 Ugly hell, gape not ; come not Lucifer ! 
 I'll burn my books ! Ah, Mephistophilis ! 
 
 \_Exeunt DEVILS with FausTXTS. 
 
 Enter Chokus. 
 
 Chorus. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, 
 And burned is Apollo's laurel bough. 
 That sometime grew within this learned man.
 
 SUAKESPKARt;. 53 
 
 Faustus is gone : regard his hellish faU, 
 Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise 
 Only to wonder at unlawful things, 
 Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits 
 To practise more than heavenly power permits. [Exit 
 
 Terminat kora diem ; terminat aitctor opus.' 
 
 Perhaps by this time the reader's opinion may have changed. 
 
 If the blank verse of this scene be compared with that of 
 
 'Gorboduc'(seep.45),itwillbeseenthatMarlowe 
 
 ^chieTed"^^ has discovered the secret of making it dramatic. 
 If blank verse has to be the medium of ex- 
 pressing human passion it must have liberty from the 
 restraints of hard and fast rule, and the measure of that 
 liberty Marlowe hits admirably in the lines just quoted. 
 It cannot be too -well understood that this was a stupen- 
 dous achievement. There are things in Marlowe we find 
 it hard to forgive : his lack of humour ; his apparent 
 conception of life as being made up of Titanic characters 
 like himself ; his inability to subordinate his poetic powers 
 to the reqiiirements of dramatic art, — 'Faustus' itseK is 
 a psychological poem in dramatic form rather than a 
 drama. But when we compare the state in which he found 
 English popular drama with the state in which he left it at 
 his death, and still more when we think of his creation of 
 the ' mighty line,' censiu-e is overwhelmed in praise. 
 
 The almost universal recognition at the present day of 
 Shakespeare's supreme position, if not in all literature, at 
 least in all drama, is sufficient proof of the impossibility of 
 
 „, , doing iustice to such a subiect within our 
 
 Shakespeare. ® •*,. . -_ . . J . 
 
 narrow limits, in selecting one or more topics 
 to treat with some approach to thoroughness, it seems best 
 to run rapidly over his dramatic career, noting the ap- 
 proximate order in which he wrote certain plays and groups 
 of plays ; then to deal more fully with one tj^^ical play ; 
 and lastly to seek the elements of his greatness, the grounds 
 of his supremacy. 
 
 AVilliam Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon in 
 1564, his father being a glover and farmer, and his mother 
 belonging to a gentle family, the Ardens of Warwickshire. 
 The boy doubtless learnt his ' small Latin and less Greek '
 
 54 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 (perhaps not so small after all) at the Free Q-rammar y. 
 School ; he married, in 1582, Anne Hathaway, who was eight 
 years his senior, and had by her three children ; in or about 
 1587 he went to London, and threw in his lot with the 
 play-actors and playwrights, being no doubt employed at 
 first to touch up and rewrite old plays. In the course of a 
 few years he prospered, obtained noble patronage, became 
 famous, was in favour at Court, became a shareholder in 
 the Q-lobe Theatre — thenceforward his principal source of 
 income — bought property at Stratford, and finally returned 
 tbither about 1611 with a comfortable fortune, there to die 
 only five years later, it is said on his birthday. 
 
 Leaving out of account early plays, such as 'Titus 
 Andronicus,' in which Shakesjieare in all probability only 
 collaborated, or which he may have found in the repertoire 
 of his company and partly rewritten, the first play we 
 re Shake- como to entirely fi'om his own pen is ' Love's 
 speare began in Labour's Lost,' just such a play as WO might 
 drama. expect from a 'young man from the country,' 
 half impressed by, and more than half inclined to ridicule, 
 the ways of town society. It is at once a 'topical play' 
 and a ' comedy of affectations.' It is remarkable that the 
 earliest and latest plays, this and the 'Tempest,' are 
 apparently the most original in plot. Shakespeare must 
 have recognised that his genius did not lie in the fabrication 
 of plots, and that by borrowing them, often from sources 
 familiar to his public, and transmuting them to his 
 purposes, he conserved his creative energies for work at 
 once of a higher character and more suited to his powers. 
 'Love's Labour's Lost' has been called 'topical' because 
 it introduces a number of topics of the day, such as acade- 
 mies for young men, current fashions, and affectations in 
 speech and dress, while the very names of the chief charac- 
 ters are those of leaders in the civil war in France in which 
 Englishmen were then assisting Henry of Navarre. But 
 we must not linger over this play, though it is well to see 
 where Shakespeare began in drama. The 'Two Gentle- 
 men of Yerona ' and the ' Comedy of Errors ' represent no 
 noteworthy advance in dramatic power. A favourable 
 example of Shakespeare's style in these earhest plays is seen
 
 GROWTH OF Shakespeare's art. 55 
 
 in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' iv. 3, 350-62. It will be noticed 
 that one thought is expressed in various ways, that the 
 thought is too thin for the language, that there is a 
 straining after effect, and plays on words are frequent : 
 
 ' From women's eyes this doctrine I derive : 
 They sparkle still the right Promethean fire ; 
 They are the hooks, the arts, the academes, 
 That show, contain and nourish all the world : 
 Else none at aU in aught proves excellent. 
 Then fools you were these women to forswear, 
 Or keeping what is sworn you will prove fools. 
 For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love, 
 Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men, 
 Or for men's sake, the authors of these women, 
 Or women's sake, by whom we men are men. 
 Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves, 
 Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.' 
 
 But when this period of apprenticeship is past we begin 
 Signs of to leave its crudities behind : doggrel dis- 
 growth. apjiears, ' conceits ' become less frequent, rime 
 is replaced by blank verse, the verse begins to move with 
 the feeling it expresses, the symmetrical grouping of 
 characters is less marked, and the characters themselves 
 not only live and move but develop, incident and character 
 iufluoncing character, before our very eyes. Upon this 
 advance in characterisation the student should keep his 
 attention fixed : it is the gauge of the dramatist's growth 
 in the mastery of his art ; in its perfection it is his supreme 
 dramatic quality. In the plays in which this advance 
 first becomes marked, 'Romeo and Jidiet,' the one early 
 tragedy, 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and the 'Merchant 
 of Venice,' we see the dramatist mastered by, and then 
 mastering, the great temptation of his early time, the same 
 that had beset Marlowe in another shape, that of per- 
 mitting his poetic and lyric faculty to dominate his dramas. 
 In Shakespeare the danger is seen especially in the pre- 
 valence of verse forms other than those of blank verse pure 
 and simple. This tendency consummated in ' Romeo and 
 Juliet ; ' it is well illustrated in the ' dawn-song ' with 
 which Act iii. scene 5 opens : 
 
 ' Jul. Wilt thou be gone ? it is not yet near day : 
 It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
 
 56 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear ; 
 Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate -tree : 
 Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. 
 
 Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the mom, 
 No nightingale : look, love, what envious streaks 
 Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east : 
 Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tip -toe on the misty mountain tops. 
 I must begone and live, or stay and die. 
 
 Jul. Ton light is not day-light, I know it, I : 
 It is some meteor that the sun exhales, 
 To be to thee this night a torch-bearer, 
 And light thee on thj' way to Mantua : 
 Therefore stay yet ; thou need'st not to be gone 
 
 Rom. Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death ; 
 I am content, so thou wilt have it so. 
 I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye, 
 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow ; 
 Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat 
 The vaulty heaven so high above our heads ; 
 I have more care to stay than will to go ; 
 Come, death, and welcome ! Juliet wills it so.' 
 
 Then the dramatist turns to English history, deriving his 
 material mainly from Holinshed's ' Chronicles,' 
 ^* °^' and works out its problems in his own way, 
 taking his subjects in a moral order, beginning with the 
 weakest and worst kings, and ending with his ideal of 
 kingship in Henry the Fifth. The historical plays — 
 'Henry VI.,' 'Eichard III.,' 'Eichard H.,' 'John,' 
 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.' — are studies of practical 
 success and failure, the mild comedy of good government, 
 and more often the tragedy of misgovernment — ^the revenges 
 of time in history. On the other hand, the tragedies are 
 studies of the life of a soul, and its ruin through passion, 
 weakness, crime, or calamity. The predominant note of 
 the ' histories ' is heard in the closing lines of ' King 
 John ' : 
 
 < This England never did, nor never shall 
 Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. 
 But when it first did help to wound itself. 
 Now these her princes are come home again. 
 Come the three corners of the world in arms, 
 And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue. 
 If England to itself do rest but true.'
 
 Shakespeare's ' histories.' 57 
 
 With 'Henry V.' we reach 1599; the perfect marriage 
 of thought and noble word-music to which the dramatist 
 has now attained may be seen in Henry's famous * Crispin 
 Crispian ' speech before the battle of Agincourt : 
 
 ' West. that we now had here 
 
 But one ten thousand of those men in England 
 That do no work to-day ! 
 
 K. Sen. What's he that wishes so ? 
 
 My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin; 
 If we are mark'd to die, we are enow 
 To do our country loss ; and if to live, 
 The fewer men, the greater share of honour. 
 God's will ! I pray thee, wish not one man more. 
 By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, 
 Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost ; 
 It yearns me not if men my garments wear ; 
 Such outward things dwell not in my desires ; 
 But if it be a sin to covet honour, 
 I am the most offending soul alive. 
 No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England ; 
 God's peace ! I would not lose so great an honour 
 As one man more, methinks, would share from me 
 For the best hope I have. 0, do not wish one more ! 
 Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, 
 That he which hath no stomach to his fight, 
 Let him depart ; his passport shall be made 
 And crowns for convoy jjut into his purse : 
 Wc would not die in that man's company 
 That fears his fellowship to die with us. 
 This day is called the feast of Crispian : 
 He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, 
 Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, 
 And rouse him at the name of Crispian. 
 He that shaU live this day, and see old age, 
 Win yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, 
 And say " To-morrow is Saint Crispian " : 
 Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, 
 And say " These wounds I had on Crispin's day." 
 Old men forget ; yet all shall be forgot, 
 But he'U remember with advantages 
 What feats he did that day : then shall our names, 
 Familiar in his mouth as household words, 
 Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, 
 Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, 
 Be in their flowing cups freshly remember' d. 
 This story shall the good man teach his son ; 
 And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
 
 68 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 From this day to the ending of the world, 
 
 But we in it shall be remembered ; 
 
 We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ; 
 
 For he to-day that sheds his blood with me 
 
 Shall be my brother ; be ho ne'er so vile, 
 
 This day shall gentle his condition ; 
 
 And gentlemen in England now a-bed 
 
 Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, 
 
 And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks 
 
 That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.' 
 
 Then, leaving English history, and before turning to 
 Roman, Shakespeare took a holiday in the 
 RomTniustOT ^^^^^^ ^^ Arden and elsewhere, and enriched 
 the world with three masterpieces in comedy, 
 •Much Ado about Nothing,' 'As You Like It,' and 'Twelfth 
 Night.' His fecundity in original character-creation at 
 this time may be judged by the fact that, in these three 
 comedies alone, not a suggestion is to be found in his 
 sources for Benedick and Beatrice, Dogberry and Verges ; 
 Jaques, Touchstone and Audrey; Malvolio, Sir Toby 
 Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Falsian, the jester Teste, 
 and Maria. With 'Julius Caesar' (1601), to be followed 
 later by 'Antony and Cleopatra' and 'Coriolanus,' Shakes- 
 peare turned to Roman history and gave us his ' godlike 
 Romans.' His authority here was Sir Thomas North's 
 translation of Plutarch; and he paid the old Greek 
 biographer, who has been called ' the universal Shakes- 
 peare of biography,' the highest possible compliment by 
 taking from him very much more material than he took 
 from any other source, lifting as it were whole pages at 
 once and vitalising them into dramatic poetry. 
 
 From about 1602 to 1608 is the period of the great 
 tragedies, 'Hamlet,' 'Othello,' 'Lear,' 'Mac- 
 
 S-age^^! beth,' and the dark comedies, 'Measure for 
 Measure ' and ' Troilus and Cressida.' Among 
 the four great tragedies the dramatist's greatest plays are 
 to be found. ' Hamlet ' holds us by the intellectual 
 character of the hero and the modern nature of the prob- 
 lems which make the tragedy of the play ; ' Macbeth' is in 
 every respect a complete contrast to ' Hamlet,' and sweeps 
 us along with the irresistible force of the hero's tumultuous
 
 THE GREAT TRAGEDIES. 69 
 
 ambition ; ' Othello ' grips the heart from the first scene, 
 maintains its hold mercilessly by the marvellous weaving 
 of the plot-web, and leaves the reader at the last limp and 
 exhausted. ' Lear * is a play of the early semi-barbarous 
 ages, and may be regarded as the ne plus ultra in drama of 
 cliaotic force and stormy passion. But it is a great play, 
 and perhaps shows better than any other how completely 
 Shakespeare had learnt to bend language and metre to his 
 dramatic purposes — of which the meeting of Lear and 
 Cordelia may serve as an illustration (IV. vii. 42-84) : 
 
 ' Cor. He wakes ; speak to him. 
 
 Loc. Madam, do you: 'tis fittest. 
 
 Cor. How does my royal lord ? How fares your majesty ? 
 
 Lear. You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave : 
 Thou art a soul in bliss ; but I am bound 
 Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears 
 Do scald like molten lead. 
 
 Cor. Sir, do you know me ? 
 
 Lear. You are a spirit, I know : when did you die? 
 
 Cor. StiU, still, far wide ! 
 
 Doct. He's scarce awake : let him alone awhile. 
 
 Lear. Where have I been ? "Where am T ? Fair daylight ? 
 I am mightily abused. I should e'en die with pity, 
 To see another thus. I know not what to say. 
 I will not swear these are my hands : let's see ; 
 I feci this pin prick. Would I were assured 
 Of my condition ! 
 
 Cor. 0, look upon me, sir. 
 
 And hold your hands in benediction o'er me : 
 No, sir, you must not kneel. 
 
 Lear. Pray, do not mock me : 
 
 I am a very foolish fond old man, 
 Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less ; 
 And, to deal plainly, 
 I fear I am not in my perfect mind. 
 Mcthinks I should know you, and know this man ; 
 Yet 1 am doubtful : for I am mainly ignorant 
 What place this is ; and all the skill I have 
 Remembers not these garments ; nor I know not 
 Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me ; 
 For, as I am a man, I think this lady 
 To be my child Cordelia. 
 
 Cor. And so I am, I am. 
 
 Lear. Be your tears wot ? yes, 'faith. I pray weep not : 
 If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
 
 60 THE ENGLISH DHAMA. 
 
 I know you do not love me ; for youi- sisters 
 Have, as I do remember, done me wrong : 
 You have some cause, they have not. 
 
 Cor. No cause, no cause, 
 
 Lear. Am I in France ? 
 
 Kent. In your own kingdom, sir. 
 
 Lear. Do not abuse me. 
 
 Boot. Be comforted, good madam : the great rage, 
 You see, is kill'd in him : and yet it is danger 
 To make him even o'er the time he has lost. 
 Desire him to go in ; trouble him no more 
 Till further settling. 
 
 Cor. Will't please your highness walk ? 
 
 Lear. You must bear with me : 
 
 Pray you now, forget and forgive : I am old and foolish.' 
 
 For the small group of last plays, 'Pericles,' 'Cym- 
 Theiast las ^^^i^©,' 'Winter's Tale,' 'The Tempest,' the 
 p ays. j^^^j^g ( romances ' has been suggested. ' In all 
 there is the same romantic incident of lost children 
 recovered by those to whom they are dear. ... In all 
 there is a beautiful romantic background of sea or moun- 
 tain,' ' All these plays turn on broken family ties united, 
 or tlieir breach forgiven.' No attempt has been made in 
 this chapter to connect Shakespeare's life in any way with 
 the sequence of his plays ; it is a moot point among critics 
 how far any such connection can be made good. But, 
 whether the scenes of pardon and reconciliation in these 
 last plays are in part explained by the poet's ajiproaching 
 retirement to Stratford or not, we may surely infer that 
 their calmer tone and serener outlook are those of the 
 great magician himself, as he lays aside his magic wand, 
 like Prospero in the passage we have selected as our final 
 illustration : 
 
 ' Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, 
 And ye that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him 
 When he comes back : you demi-puppets that 
 By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make. 
 Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice 
 To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid, 
 Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed 
 The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
 
 THE I^ST PLAYS. 61 
 
 And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault 
 Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder 
 Uave I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
 With his own bolt : the strong-based promontory 
 Have I made shake and by the spurs plucked up 
 The pine and cedur : graves at my command 
 Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth 
 By my so potent art. But this rough magic 
 I here abjure, and, when I have required 
 Some heavenly music, which even now I do, 
 To work mine end upon their senses that 
 This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, 
 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth. 
 And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, 
 I'll di'own my book.' 
 
 There can probably be no better play than this to treat 
 
 of more fully. The first scene is a shipwreck 
 
 ^^^.'^iGii!''''' oil a desert island, inhabited only by Prospero, 
 
 the banished Duke of Milan, his daughter 
 
 Miranda, a monster named Caliban (fi-om * cannibal '), who 
 
 acts as their servant, and some spirits, of whom Ariel is 
 
 the chief. Prospero is a magician, and by his art, with 
 
 the aid of Ariel, he is causing the shipwreck of his brother 
 
 Antonio, the usurper of the dukedom of Milan, Alonso, 
 
 king of Naples, who had aided Antonio in his usurpation, 
 
 Ferdinand the son of Alonso, Sebastian, Alonso' s brother, 
 
 Gonzalo an old councillor, and others. In the second 
 
 scone Miranda, who is distressed by the wreck, prays 
 
 * If by your art, my dearest father, you have 
 Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.' 
 
 Prospero's hope is that Ferdinand and Miranda may 
 fall in love. It is necessary, therefore, that the latter 
 should know something of their history, and her father 
 tells her the chief incidents:^ that Antonio and Alonso had 
 had them cast adrift in an open boat twelve years ago, 
 when Miranda was only three years old, but that 
 
 ' A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, out of his charity ' 
 
 ' This avoidance of a prologue by creating a dramatic necessity for the narration 
 of the previous history of the characters is a stroke of high art.
 
 62 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 had furnished them with food, clothes and books, and they 
 had arrived safely on this island. Here Ariel enters 
 to report the success of the shipwreck, and is sent off 
 ' like a water-nymph ' to lure Ferdinand to Prospero's 
 cave. While this is being done we are introduced to the 
 ' servant-monster ' Caliban. Ariel returns drawing Ferdi- 
 nand on with songs, which had the sound of the sea-swell 
 in them ; *by some strange touch upon the imagination we 
 see and feel a fairy -haunted bottom of the ocean, swaying 
 with the metre to the wash of waves, full of dim, rich and 
 fantastical shapes ' : 
 
 ' Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
 
 Of his bones are coral made ; 
 Those are pearls that were his eyea : 
 
 Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange. 
 Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell : 
 Burthen. Ding-dong. 
 Ari. Hark! now I hear them, — Ding-dong, hell.* 
 
 Miranda, who remembers no man but her father and 
 Caliban, at once falls in love with Ferdinand, as he does 
 with her. 
 
 In the second act Gonzalo gives a description of an ideal 
 commonwealth taken from Montaigne's 'Essays,' Florio's 
 translation of which is the only book we now possess 
 containing Shakespeare's autograph. This aided by Ariel's 
 music puts the whole party to sleep, except Antonio and 
 Sebastian. Antonio suggests to Sebastian to imitate his 
 example, and they are on the point of slaying Alonso and 
 Gonzalo when Ariel awakes the latter. In the third 
 act Ferdinand is discovered by Miranda at work bearing 
 logs, a task which Prospero has imposed to test him. 
 She pities, and in her innocent love half woos him : 
 
 ' Prompt me, plain and holy innocence ! 
 I am your wife, if you will marry me.' 
 
 Prospero is by, unseen. 
 
 * So glad of this as they I cannot be, 
 Who are surprised withal ; but my rejoicing 
 At nothing can be more.'
 
 * THE TEMPEST.' 63 
 
 In another scene, when Antonio and Sebastian are 
 plotting to renew their villainy, Ariel and Prospero's 
 'meaner ministers,' 'with good life and observation 
 strange,' bring in a banquet; when, in the desperation of 
 hunger, they are about to partake, ' Ariel, like a harpy, 
 claps his wings upon the table, and, with a quaint device, 
 the banquet vanishes.' Then Ariel upbraids all the 
 * three men of sia, ' and warns them that * nothing but 
 heart-sorrow and a clear life ensuing can' guard them from 
 the 'wraths' of the 'powers.' 
 
 The fourth act is mainly given over to a masque in 
 honour of the lovers, at the conclusion of which Prospero 
 assures Ferdinand that 
 
 ' Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits and 
 Ai-e melted into air, into thin air : 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack betiind. We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep.' 
 
 The fifth act gives us an excellent denouement. Prospero, 
 being assured by Ariel that 
 
 ' the king. 
 
 His brother and yours, abide all three distracted 
 
 And the remainder mourning over them,' 
 
 decides that 
 
 ' the rarer action is 
 In virtue than in vengeance : they being penitent, 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 Not a frown further.' 
 
 Ariel leads them all to Prospero's cell, and slowly ' their 
 rising senses begin to chase the ignorant fumes that 
 mantle their clearer reason.' Prospero in hat and rapier 
 proclaims himself ' sometime Milan ' ; and, though at 
 first incredulous, Alonso is convinced by the discovery of
 
 64 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 Ferdinand and Miranda playing at chess. Ariel's last 
 charge is to provide ' caka seas, auspicious gales ' for the 
 return to Naples * to see the nuptial of these our dear- 
 beloved solemnised.' 
 
 * My Ariel, cliick, 
 That is thy charge : then to the elements 
 Be free, and fare thou well ! ' 
 
 It is remarkable that, though for the most part Shake- 
 speare threw the restrictions of the ' unities ' of time and 
 place to the winds, as incompatible with his conception of 
 drama, in this play he has elected to observe them, as if 
 to show us what he could do in that kind ; the action takes 
 place in one day, and all but the first scene within the 
 narrow limits of an island, y 
 
 It by no means dimini^es the difficulty of assigning 
 
 some of the elements of Shakespeare's greatness that 
 
 . . that greatness is now universally recognised. 
 
 ppreoia on. ^^^ matter may be put in this way : in every 
 other writer's best quaHties he is an equal shareholder, in 
 some of his own he is unapproached and unapproachable. 
 One author may sometimes exhibit a power of creating a 
 character comparable to his, another may sometimes equal 
 him in imagination, a third in humour, and so forth ; but 
 such a multiplicity of gifts, which, combined, make the 
 greatest literature, seems never to have been bestowed on 
 any other than he. No one else, not even Homer or 
 Dante, has won homage so unanimous and uncontested. 
 
 * The first page of Shakespeare that I read,' says Goethe, 
 
 * made me his for life ; and when I had finished a single 
 play I stood like one born bhnd, on whom a miraculous 
 hand bestows sight in a moment.' 'Shakespeare was not 
 a theatre poet, the stage was too narrow for his great 
 intellect ; truly the whole visible world was too narrow.' 
 'Shakespeare is a being of a higher order than myself, 
 to whom I must look up and pay due reverence. ' 
 
 The view that Shakespeare was too great to be identified 
 with his own characters is thus finely put by an anony- 
 mous writer. ' Dowden, with picturesque license, divides 
 the career of Shakespeare into four parts : "In the Work-
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 65 
 
 shop," "In the World," "Out of the Depths," and "On the 
 
 Heights." It is true that Shakespeare's themes 
 
 to be WcnMed ^^^ manners do fall under some such divisions; 
 
 with any of his it is also tvuo that the four divisions represent 
 
 characters? .^ l i l c j. j.i • 
 
 the natural stages oi most men upon their 
 pilgrim's iirogvoss. That Shakespeare himself was in the 
 deep and darkness, and thence attained to the heights of 
 "clear and solemn vision," is not sure or necessary; his 
 powers heing so great, he logically passed from stage to 
 stage, as a dramatist, fmding himself drawn from one to 
 another by the natural growth of his genius. At each 
 period of his life he handled the matters to which his 
 genius was then equal. Ho saw that such is life, so 
 shaped, moulded, influenced, determined; it may be that 
 he stood aloof, not in the artistic selfishness of Groethe, but 
 with a wide serenity, the student of humanity, under- 
 standing all, sympathising with all, but himself the master 
 of it all. Hamlet, the perplexed and brooding Shakespeare? 
 Prospero, the calm and roj'al Shakespeare ? It might 
 seem so were Shakespeare less "myriad-minded" than 
 Coleridge called him ; but that Shakespeare, feeling in his 
 own heart and brain the passions of his creatures, should 
 have portrayed them with this dramatic strength and sure- 
 ness is almost incredible. A man, torn by the problems 
 of evil, the justice of the universal laws, the betrayal of 
 innocence, the triumphs of the wicked, may write burning 
 verse, the lyrics of a Shelley, the epic satire of a Byron, 
 the mocking rimes of a Heine, the stately odes of a 
 Leopardi ; but these [Shakespeare's] tragedies are not 
 the natural expression of a suffering or saddened spirit. 
 They are too royally designed, too masterfvdly controlled, 
 guided, rounded, finished. Eatlier, Shakespeare's suprem- 
 acy lies in this — that he could see and understand so 
 much, could pierce to the heart of so many passions, could 
 realise the actual play of life, without falling in bondage 
 to any power ; so that we say of him that he is universal, 
 and we dare not say what was his personality.' 
 
 It has been said that every phase of feeling lay within 
 the scope of Shakespeare's intuition. There is no point of 
 morals, of philosophy, of tho conduct of hfe, that he haa 
 
 ENG. LIT. 5
 
 66 TUE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 not touclied upon, no mystery that lie has not probed. 
 Life and death, love, wealth, poverty, the prizea 
 
 "'^'^uT^'''' ^^ ^^^® ^^^ ^^^ ^^y ^® gain them ; the characters 
 of men, the influences, overt and concealed, 
 which affect their fortunes, the mysterious forces which 
 baffle them, on all these questions Shakespeare has enriched 
 the world with his thought. He had no imj)ortunate topic 
 he was anxious to discuss, making him cram one part and 
 starve another. He gave everything its due place ; what 
 was great he told greatly, and what was small subordin- 
 ately. In his plays we find unalloyed mirth, bright and 
 tender fancy, airy satire, ardent passion, questionings into 
 the deep and terrible mysteries of life. And it is not 
 merely that we fi.nd all this, but that in almost every play 
 we have most diverse elements, the high and the low, the 
 great and the little, the noble and the base, the sad and 
 the merry, brought under the dominance of one dramatic 
 purpose, united under the sway of some great thought or 
 profound emotion. 
 
 Another element of greatness is the perfect naturalness 
 of the dialogue. There are plenty of undra- 
 matic passages in Shakespeare, because drama 
 had, in Ehzabethan days, to combine the essay, invective 
 and satire, rhetoric and philosophy with the strictly dra- 
 matic. But in dramatic dialogue Shakespeare is a past 
 master in perfectly natural touches. Lowell says that * Lear ' 
 V. 3, 309 — ' Pray you, undo this button : thank you, sir ' — 
 ' coming where it does and expressing what it does, is one 
 of those touches of the pathetically sublime of which only 
 Shakespeare ever knew the secret.' *In Shakespeare, who 
 first set an example of that most important innovation,' 
 writes De Quincey, ' in all his impassioned dialogues, each 
 reply or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous 
 speech. Every form of natural interruption, breaking 
 through the restraints of ceremony under the impulse of 
 tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interrogative, 
 ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded ; every 
 form of scornful repetition of the hostile words; every 
 impatient continuation of the hostile statement ; in short, 
 all modes and formulae by which anger, hurry, fretfulness,
 
 DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 67 
 
 scorn, impatience, or excitement under any movement 
 whatever, can disturb or modify or dislocate the formal 
 bookish style of commencement — these are as rife in 
 Shakespeare's dialogue as in life itself; and how much 
 vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, they add to the 
 scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and real 
 life, we need not say.' 
 
 And so one might continue. The subject is an inex- 
 haustible one. If in six years Marlowe created English 
 tragedy and English blank verse; in another ten years 
 Shakespeare carried tragedy to its highest possible 
 development, and made a blank verse, which was chiefly 
 dramatic in virtue of its rhetoric (as in his own Marlowan 
 play of 'Eichard III.'), into a verse that was the most 
 perfect medium of dramatic, and especially tragic, expression 
 possible. Marlowe was always much more of a poet than 
 a dramatist ; Shakespeare's superiority to him in poetry 
 is only surpassed by his infinite superiority in drama. Of 
 his non-dramatic poetical powers the highest expression is 
 seen in the songs of his plays and in the ' Sonnets,' one 
 of the finest of which we quote here : 
 
 ' Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments. Love is not loA'e 
 AVhich alters when it alteration finds, 
 
 Or bends with the remover to remove : 
 no ! it is an ever- fixed mark, 
 
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; 
 It is the star to every wandering bark, 
 
 "Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 
 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
 
 AVithin his bending sickle's compass come ; 
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
 Eut bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
 If this be error, and upon me proved, 
 I never writ, nor no man ever loved.' 
 
 The decline of the drama among Shakespeare's contem- 
 poraries and still more among his successors 
 Decline of will bost be seen by means of a comparison or 
 Drama, contrast with him. His masterpieces ' hold, as 
 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; show virtue 
 her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age
 
 68 THE ENQLISn DRAMA, 
 
 and body of the time his form and pressure.' In them, 
 again, we find the most wonderful characterisation : men 
 and women are revealed to us, even to the inmost depths 
 of their souls, not by the descriptions and analysis of 
 the dramatist, but by their own speeches and actions. 
 Characters grow and develop before our eyes; we see the 
 effects upon tliem of life and experience and circumstance ; 
 we see the influence of character upon character. In those 
 plays we have life, not in fragments, but as a whole and in 
 its entirety. We find — another mark of strict fidelity to 
 life — humour and pathos commingled. The clown is at 
 the graveside in 'Hamlet,' the fool is by the frantic Lear, 
 and this with psychological reason, for when the stimulus 
 is too strong, emotion must be relieved, or the organ will 
 either cease to respond or shatter. But Shakespeare's 
 reason was dramatic, not psj'chological ; and from the play- 
 wright's standpoint the blending of smiles and tears was 
 not only justified by its truth to life, it was an evidence of 
 consummate skill in the artist, who could thus increase the 
 capacity to realise pain by a temporary relaxation of the 
 tension. Lastly, there is in Shakespeare an aj)preciation of 
 the grandeur of moral excellence and a deep sense of the 
 invisible world. He never preaches or moralises, but he 
 does better : he shows us that the way of the transgressor 
 is hard, and that the punishment of sin is certain, if not 
 immediate. 
 
 The changes that were supervening in the drama, even 
 among Shakesj^eare's contemporaries, are 
 
 ^Toay°^ traceable to causes which imply a departure 
 from some or all of his characteristics as 
 enumerated above. In the first place, the climax had 
 been reached, and in the nature of the case dechne must 
 follow. The j)henomenon of the crest followed by the 
 trough of the wave is as common in literature as in other 
 departments of life. The patriotic outburst of national 
 life, the first glow of freedom of mind and conscience, the 
 first joy over the vast discoveries in the domains of mind 
 and matter, had spent themselves, and reaction was in- 
 evitable. The Court, with a selfish pedant at its head, 
 was a centre of evil rather than good influences, a school
 
 A VhAY OF JONSOn's. 69 
 
 for sycophants rather than for heroes. The nobler spirits, 
 disgusted with sin and frivolity, ceased to believe in a 
 union of beauty and culture sanctified by religion, and 
 cast in their lot with Puritanism. The effect of this on the 
 drama was that playwrights wrote for a lower and lower 
 class of audience ; most of them began to pander to its 
 taste. Jonson made a vigorous stand against the tendency, 
 but he lacked the Elizabethan insight into life as a whole ; 
 he depicted the ' humours ' of character, not its entirety. 
 lie too often hated the men of his day, and hate gives no 
 insight into character. Further, through lack of insight, 
 men lost the power of stimulating the emotions by natural 
 means, and so they fetched unnatural horrors, as we see in 
 Webster and later in Ford. And playgoers, having once 
 felt abnormal stimulus, craved like inebriates for more 
 and more. Finally, the moral standard sank. Society 
 was deteriorating ; and the representation of purity and 
 holiness became distasteful to men whose lives outraged 
 them. 
 
 A brief sketch of the plot of one of Jonson's plays will 
 be the best introduction to a survey of his 
 
 Jouson'8.* position. 'Epicene, or The Silent Woman' 
 (1 COO) is a comedy of rough mirth. The fun 
 hinges on the ' humour ' of crusty old Morose, who 
 cherishes an equal hatred for noise and for his noisy 
 nephew Dauphine, who is his heir. To spite the latter ho 
 wishes to marry, but fears the tongue of a wife. By 
 Dauphine's means the silent girl Epicene is introduced to 
 him ; and Morose is so charmed with her taciturnity, and 
 her soft low voice in the few words she utters, that he 
 straightway weds her. The marriage ceremony over, 
 I^picene develojjs an unexpected loquacity, which, with the 
 chatter and quarrels of Dauphine's confederates, nearly 
 drives old Morose wild. He seeks the help of the law to 
 try and get a separation, but in vain. At last the nephew 
 promises to free his uncle on condition of receiving a large 
 allowance and being made absolute heir. Morose gladly 
 consents. Then Dauphine reveals the plot he has con- 
 trived with Epicene, of which the others are unaware — she 
 is a boy in girl's clotliing.
 
 70 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 'The romantic license as to time and place,' says J. A. 
 
 Symonds, 'favoured the Shakespearian grasp 
 limiteUons: ^^ character in evolution. Macbeth could not 
 
 grow from a bluff general into a world-wearied 
 tyrant, Timon from a generous spendthrift into a cynical 
 man-hater, Antony from a bold politician into a woman's 
 plaything, in a single day. Given but twenty-four hours 
 for the dramatic action, and fixed types of character, 
 which do not grow, but are analysed, become inevitable. 
 Now Jonson was so far a classic by culture and instinct 
 that he adhered to the unities. . . . His mechanical hand- 
 ling of character belonged, therefore, in a measure to his 
 ideal of art.' The Jonsonian comedy has variety of 
 incident; it is in characterisation that it suffers by con- 
 trast with Shakesj)eare's. The range of characters is 
 limited by the range of ' humours ' ; certain fixed types 
 appear over and over again. Moreover, given certain 
 circumstances we can shrewdly guess what certain 
 characters will do. They are labelled, the jealous man, 
 the ambitious man, the braggart, and so on, and such 
 they remain. There may be more characterisation in 
 Jonson's comedies than in Shakespeare's, but the characters 
 are photographed with a kodak. Characters that have 
 exasperating ' humours ' become exasperating themselves 
 when they go out of the play the same as they came in : 
 the law of comedy is that it must please. Hampered as 
 he is by the unities, Jonson can only ' hold the mirror up ' — 
 and put it down again. 
 
 After Jonson it is not necessary, and it is not a j)leasant 
 task, to trace the decline of the drama in detail. To the 
 marks of decay already mentioned has to be added the 
 deterioration of blank verse, which at last became indis- 
 tinguishable from prose chopped up into lengths. The 
 closing of the theatres put an end to playwriting from 
 1642 to 1660; consequently there was no unbroken 
 
 tradition or gradual evolution in connection 
 Drama after -^^ith Restoration drama. Apart from a few 
 Restoration. * tragi-comodies ' — the blending of tragedy and 
 
 comedy seemed then sufficiently abnormal to 
 require a special label — the severance of tragedy and
 
 AFTER THE RESTORATION. 71 
 
 comedy was in marked contrast with their intermingling 
 in Elizabethan drama, and the fact is significant. The 
 ideal of the Elizabethan stage was, as has been seen, the 
 representation of nature and life in their infinite variety ; 
 if the Restoration stage had any such ideal it disguised 
 the fact so successfully as to give the impression that it 
 was bent on representing in its tragedy an impossibly 
 heroic state of life, and in its comedy the manners of its 
 own corrupt society. Tragedy, after vainly striving to 
 give vitality to the artificial and unhealthy style of the 
 * heroic play ' of Dryden and others, reverts in some degree 
 to earlier native examples, only, however, to sink into a 
 state of impotence, ill concealed by a rigid adherence to 
 the arbitrary code of rules that governed the pseudo- 
 classic French stage. Comedy adheres more to the ancient 
 spirit, and, elastically lending itself to the tone and taste 
 of the times without sacrificing the laws of its own being, 
 has a longer existence. Henceforward prose is its chosen 
 medium, as blank verse is (though not without exceptions) 
 that of tragedy. Towards the close of the seventeenth 
 century the comedy of manners attained to great distinction 
 iu the hands of Congreve, whose masterpiece, ' Love for 
 Love' (1695), has been called the most brilliant pure 
 comedy of manners in the English language. Un- 
 fortunately his wit, in which he is unsurpassed, is the 
 handmaid of immorality, in which, however, he is not the 
 worst offender of his day. In the eighteenth century, 
 Addison's * Cato ' (1713) has a spurious reputation in 
 tragedy, due to the political circumstances of the hour. 
 Comedy flared up for a time in the hands of Goldsmith 
 and Sheridan ; the former's ' She Stoops to Conquer * 
 (1773) and the latter's 'The Eivals' (1775) and 'The 
 School for Scandal' (1777) may still be seen on the stage. 
 l^ut with them the legitimate popular drama in pure 
 literatui-e died.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON (1 579-1 660 A.D.). 
 
 The year 1579 marks the upward limit of the Elizabethan 
 period as indisputahly as the year 1660 marks its close. 
 For in 1579, along with two notable works in Elizabethan 
 prose, Sir Thomas North's ' Plutarch' and Lyly's 'Euphues,' 
 there appeared Spenser's ' Shepherd's Calendar,' 
 ■^^(f^y^^'' accepted then and ever since as the harbinger 
 of our great Elizabethan poetry. It has 
 seemed best in this work to collect all drama into one 
 chapter; but it must be remembered that Elizabethan 
 drama, as poetry, is one of the greatest glories of Eliza- 
 bethan poetry; and it may almost be said that all later 
 drama, written for the popular stage, hardly excepting 
 Dr^'den's, is negligible as poetry. Matthew Arnold believes 
 that it is possible to gauge the worth of poetry by test 
 lines of unquestioned perfection. Tried in this way, 
 Elizabethan verse, although often written without any 
 view of publication, and only seeing the light after the 
 writer's death (as in the case of Sir Philip Sidney), will 
 be found to possess the hall-mark of the highest poetry, 
 that indefinable something which seems to elude us if we 
 attempt to lay our finger on it, and which we none the less 
 certainly feel to be present in some works and absent from 
 others. Present it unmistakably is in our Elizabethan 
 jioetry; intermittently and fitfull}'' present, no doubt, in 
 much of it, esj)ecially in the poetical miscellanies, and in 
 the somewhat similar collections of individual work ; but 
 never absent for long, never very far away. Take, for 
 
 n
 
 ELIZABETHAN POETRY. 73 
 
 an instance, ' A Sweet Lullaby ' from the ' The Arbor of 
 Amorous Devices' (1597). 
 
 ' Come little Labe, come silly soul, 
 
 Thy father's shame, thy mother's grief, 
 
 Born as I doubt to all our dole, 
 
 And to thyself unhappy chief : 
 Sing lullaby and lap it warm, 
 Poor soul that thinks no creature hann. 
 
 Thou little think'st and less dost know 
 
 The cause of this thy mother's moan ; 
 
 Thou want'st the wit to wail her woe, 
 
 And I myself am all alone ; 
 
 Why dost thou weep, why dost thou wail, 
 And know'st not yet what thou dost ail ? 
 
 Come little wretch, ah silly heart, 
 l\Iine only joy ; what can I more? 
 If there be any wrong thy smart, 
 That may the destinies implore ; 
 
 'Twas I, I say, against my will ; 
 
 I wail the time, but be thou still. 
 
 And dost thou smile ? oh, thy sweet face ! 
 Would God himself he might thee see ! 
 No doubt thou soon wouldst purchase grace, 
 I know right well, for thee and me. 
 
 But come to mother, babe, and play ; 
 
 For father false is fled away. 
 
 Sweet boy, if it by fortune chance 
 
 Thy father home again to send, 
 
 ] f death do strike me with his lance, 
 
 Yet mayst thou me to him commend ; 
 If any ask thy mother's name. 
 Tell how by love she purchased blame. 
 
 Then will his gentle heart soon yieK ; 
 I know him of a noble mind ; 
 Although a lion in the field, 
 A lamb in turn thou shalt him find ; 
 
 Ask blessing, babe ! be not afraid ; 
 
 His sugared words have me betrayed. 
 
 Then mayest thou joy and be right glad. 
 Although in woe I seem to moan ; 
 Thy father is no rascal lad, 
 A noble youth of blood and bone ; 
 
 His glancing looks, if once he smile, 
 
 liight honest women may beguile.
 
 74 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 Come little boy and rock asleep ; 
 Sing lullaby and be thou stiU ; 
 I that can do naught else but weep 
 Will sit by thee and wail my fill : 
 
 God bless my babe, and lullaby 
 
 From this thy father's quality ! ' 
 
 The writer of this exquisite little poem was at the pains 
 to immortalise himself anonymously. 
 
 The method here adopted, in deahng with this strikingly 
 abundant and magnificent poetic output, is to take Spenser 
 and Milton as tj'pical of Elizabethan poetry, and then to 
 trace the principal changes that supervened before the 
 Restoration. If the student will cast his thouglit back for 
 a moment to the evil days upon which English poetry had 
 fallen since Chaucer, he will not wonder that such ' num- 
 bers ' as the following took even the expectant by storm : 
 
 ' Up, then, Melpomene ! the mournfulst Muse of nyne, 
 Such cause of mourning never hadst afore ; 
 Up, grieslie ghostes ! and up my rufull ryme ! 
 Matter of myrth now shalt thou have no more ; 
 For dead shee is, that myrth thee made of yore. 
 
 Dido, my deare, alas ! is dead, 
 
 Dead, and lyeth wrapt in lead. 
 
 O heavie herse ! 
 Let streaming teares be poured out in store ; 
 
 carefull verse ! 
 
 Shepheards, that by your flocks on Kentish downes abyde, 
 Waile ye this wofuU waste of Nature's warke ; 
 Waile we the wight whose presence was our pryde ; 
 Waile we the wight whose absence is our carke ; 
 The sonne of all the world is dimme and darke : 
 
 The earth now lacks her wonted light, 
 And all we dwell in deadly night. 
 
 O heavie herse ! 
 Breake we our pypes, that shrild as loude as Larke ; 
 
 O carefull verse ! 
 
 But maugre death, and dreaded sisters deadly spight, 
 And gates of hel, and fyrie furies forse, 
 She hath the bonds broke of eternall night, 
 Her soule unbodied of the burdenous corpse. 
 Why then weepes Lobbin so without remorse ? 
 
 O Lobb ! the losse no longer lament ; 
 
 Dido nis dead, but into heaven hent. 
 
 O happye herse ! 
 Cease now, my Muse, now cease thy sorrowes source ; 
 
 joyfull verse !
 
 SPEXSEU. 75 
 
 Why wayle we then ? why weary we the Gods with playnts, 
 
 As if some evill were to her botight ? 
 
 SIio raignes a goddesse now among the saintes, 
 
 That whilom was the sajTit of shepheards light, 
 
 And is enstalled now in heavens hight. 
 
 I see thee, blessed soule, I see 
 
 Walke in Elisian fieldes so free. 
 
 happy herse ! 
 Might 1 once come to thee (0 that I might !), 
 
 joyful verse ! ' 
 
 Edmund Spenser was a Londoner by birth — 
 
 ' mcry London, my most kyndly Nurse, 
 That to me gave this life's first native sourse, 
 Though fi'om another place I take my name. 
 An house of auncient fame,' 
 
 (he was related to the Spencers of Althorpe) — and a 
 Cambridge man by training. He was at Cambridge 
 
 diuing some severe Puritanical struggles and 
 1552-/599. probably then received his Puritan bent. 
 
 Taking his M.A. in 1576 he went to the North 
 for a time, and apparently there fell in love with ' Eosa- 
 lind,' 'the widow's daughter of the glen' (' Shep. Cal.' 
 April 26). The same eclogue calls him * the southern 
 shepherd's boy' — a probable reference to the friendship 
 and patronage of Sir Phihp Sidney, to whom the whole 
 * Calendar ' is dedicated. In the June eclogue * Hobbinol ' 
 bids him 
 
 ' Forsake the soyle that so doth thee bewitch : 
 Leave me those hilles where harbrough nis to see. 
 Nor holy-bush, nor brere, nor winding witche : 
 And to the dales resort, where shepheards ritch 
 And fruictfuU flocks bene everywhere to see.' 
 
 Spenser came south, for he was in London in 1579 and 
 had been received into the house of Sidney's uncle 
 Leicester (the Prince Arthur of the 'Faery Queen'). In 
 1580 he wont to Ireland, then in rebellion, with Lord 
 Grey (the Artegall of the ' Faory Queen ' V.), and must 
 liave seen the massacre of Smerwick Fort, which he 
 vindicated in his ' View of the Present State of Ireland.'
 
 76 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 Henceforth he resided mostly in Ireland, but paid visits to 
 England for the publication of his great poem in 1589 and 
 1595, He was clerk of the council of Munster, and about 
 1586 he was granted the manor and ruined castle of 
 Kilcolman. During Tyrone's rebellion in 1598, when 
 Spenser had just been made Sheriff of County Cork, 
 Kilcolman was sacked and burnt. Spenser and his wife 
 escaped, but he died the following January in London. 
 
 Apart from the ' Shepherd's Calendar ' and the ' Faery 
 Queen ' Spenser's most notable poems are ' Mother Hub- 
 bard's Tale,' a satire on court life, and the ' Amoretti,' a 
 series of eighty-eight sonnets, and * Epithalamion ' or 
 marriage song, both celebrating the lady who became his 
 wife. 
 
 The reading pubHc are quite right in regarding Spenser 
 
 as the poet of the ' Faery Queen,' but the 
 
 '^^clifendM^'^*'^' ^W^^c^'^'s Calendar' cannot be passed over 
 
 in any history of English hterature because of 
 
 its' historic importance. The work consists of twelve 
 
 pastoral eclogues, in which the principal interlocutors are 
 
 Colin Clout (Spenser), and Hobbinol (Gabriel Harvey, a 
 
 college friend of Spenser's). In an introductory epistle, 
 
 not by the poet but by another friend, three remarks 
 
 occur on which we may conveniently hang a few more. 
 
 This inspired ' introducer ' says that ' in my opinion it is one 
 
 special prayse of many, whych are dew to this Poete, that 
 
 he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightfull heritage, 
 
 such good and natural English words, as have been long 
 
 time out of use and almost cleane disherited.' Jonson, on 
 
 the other hand, is of opinion that ' Spenser, 
 
 poetic in affecting the ancients, writ no language.' 
 
 diction. Unfortunately Spenser's zeal was not according 
 
 to knowledge. Professor Herford has analysed the 
 
 diction of the 'Calendar,' and divides the unusual words 
 
 into five classes: (IHhose derived from Middle English 
 
 literature, (2) from dialects, (3) Elizabethan colloquialisms, 
 
 (4) literary and learned words, (5) coinages of Spenser's 
 
 own. The words borrowed from earlier authors are often 
 
 incorrectly used, e.g. yede, went, is used for the infinitive, 
 
 'go.' It is maintained by Spenser's apologists that there
 
 'the SnEPHERD's CALENDAR.* 77 
 
 was no standard English in liis day and tliat it was 
 necessary for him to invent a poetic diction of Lis own. 
 It may be conceded that the invented diction accords 
 well on the whole with his subjects, but that only suggests 
 the further question whether subjects aud diction alike 
 were not rather too much ' behind the times ' : of which 
 more anon. In any case some of Spenser's contemporaries 
 seem not to have fared badly with the ' Queen's Eughsh * 
 of their day. 
 
 Two other quotations from * the epistle ' directly raise 
 the question of the importance of the ' Calendar ' : 'he 
 termeth the Shepheards Calendar, applying an olde 
 name to a new worke ' ; and : ' the best and most auncient 
 Poetes devised this kind of wryting, being both so base 
 for the matter, and homely for the manner, at the first 
 to trye t/iei/r JiabilitiesJ AVhat is new in those pastoral 
 eclogues is the adaptation of the old ' Kalendrier des 
 Bergcrs ' to the purposes of poetical allegory, and the par- 
 tial attuning of the eclogues, as Douglas did his prologues 
 to the ' Acneid,' to the changing seasons. The second 
 quotation makes it clear that the ' Calendar ' is Spenser's 
 great experiment in diction and versification. The 
 experiment was necessary and useful but not altogether 
 successful : necessary, because of AVj^att's and Surrey's 
 limitations in both subject and diction, and because their 
 experiments had not been worthily followed; useful, 
 because they gave the poet practice, facilitj^, and con- 
 fidence ; not altogether successful, because they confirmed 
 him in affected archaisms that hindered rather than helped 
 him. 
 
 Spenser's prolonged residence in Ireland left its mark 
 
 upon his poetry. 'The bulk of the "Faery Queen" as 
 
 we have it,' saj's Church, * was composed in what to 
 
 Spenser and his friends was almost a foreign 
 
 Ireland in land — in the conquered and desolated wastes 
 
 n e sp e .^^ ^^^^ ^^^ barbarous Ireland. . . . Spenser 
 was a learned poet ; and his poem has the character of the 
 work of a man of Avide reading, but without books to 
 verify or correct. It cannot be doubted that his life in 
 Ireland added to the force and vividness with which
 
 78 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 Spenser wrote. ... In Ireland, Englishmen saw, or at any 
 rate thought they saw, a universal conspiracy of fraud 
 against righteousness, a universal battle going on between 
 error and religion, between justice and the most insolent 
 selfishness. . . . The realities of the Irish wars and of Irish 
 social and political life gave a real subject, gave body and 
 form to the allegory. There in actual flesh and blood were 
 enemies to be fought with by the good and true. There 
 in visible fact were the vices and falsehoods, which Artliur 
 and his companions were to quell and punish. There in 
 living truth were Satisfoy, and Sansloij, and Sansjoy ; there 
 were Orgoglio and Grantorto, the witcheries of Acrasia and 
 Phaedria^ the insolence of Briana and Cruder. And there, 
 too, were real knights of goodness and the gospel — Grey, 
 and Ormond, and Ealegh, the Norreyses, St. Leger, and 
 Maltby — on a real mission from Gloriana's noble realm 
 to destroy the enemies of truth and virtue.' 
 
 The ' Faery Queen ' is a magnificent fragment of six 
 complete books and some detached cantos of a seventh. 
 Afraid lest the design and plan of the first three books 
 
 might not be clear to their readers, Spensei', 
 "auee^T'' ^1^6^ ^^ published them in 1590, added a 
 
 letter to Sir Walter Ralegh giving necessary 
 explanations. *In the person of Prince Arthur I set 
 forth magnificence in particular; which virtue, for that 
 (according to Aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of 
 all the rest, and containeth in it them all, therefore in the 
 whole course I mention the deeds of Arthur applicable to 
 that virtue, which I write of in that book. But of the 
 twelve other virtues I make twelve other knights the 
 patrons, for the more variety of the history : of which these 
 three books contain three. The first of the Knight of the 
 Red Cross, in whom I express Hohness ; the second of Sir 
 Guyon, in whom I set forth Temperance; the third of 
 Britomartis, a lady knight, in whom I picture Chastity. 
 [The fourth of Cambel and Triamond, Friendship; the fifth 
 Artegall, Justice ; the sixth Sir Calidore, Courtesy.] But 
 because the beginning of the whole work seemeth 
 abrupt and as depending upon other antecedents, it 
 needs that ye know the occasion of these three knights'
 
 'the faery queen.' 79 
 
 several adventures. For the method of a poet historical 
 is not such as of an historiographer. . . . The beginning 
 therefore of my history, if it were to be told by an 
 historiographer, should be the twelfth book, which is the 
 last; where I devise that the Faery Queen kej)t her annual 
 feast twelve days; uj)on which twelve several days the 
 occasions of twelve several adventures happened, which 
 being imdertaken by twelve several knights are in these 
 twelve books severally handled and discoursed. 
 
 'The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there 
 
 presented himself a tall clownish young man, 
 TeforeEiS^^o falling before the Queen of Faeries desired 
 
 a boon (as the manner then was) which during 
 the feast she must not refuse : which was that he might 
 have the achievement of any adventure, which during that 
 feast should happen ; that being granted, he rested himself 
 on the floor, unfit through his rusticity for a better place. 
 Soon after entered a fair lady in mourning weeds, riding on 
 a white ass, with a dwarf behind her leading a warlike 
 steed, that bore the arms of a knight, and his spear in the 
 dwarf's hand. She falling before the Queen of Faeries 
 complained that her father and mother, an ancient King and 
 Queen, had been by a huge di'agon many years shut up in 
 a brazen castle, who thence suffered them not to issue : 
 and therefore besought the Faery Queen to assign her some 
 one of her knights to take on him that exploit. Presently 
 that clownish person upstanding desired that adventure ; 
 whereat the Queen much wondering, and the Lady much 
 gainsaying, yet he earnestly importuned his desire. In 
 the end the Lady told him, that unless that armour which 
 she brought would serve him (that is, the armour of a 
 Christian man specified by Saint Paul, v. Ephes.) that he 
 could not succeed in that enterprise : which being forthwith 
 put upon him with due furnitures thereunto, he seemed 
 the goodliest man in all that company, and was well liked 
 of the Lady. And eftsoons taking on him kniglithood, 
 and mounting on that strange courser, he went forth with 
 her on that adventure : where beginneth the first book, viz. 
 
 A gentlo knight was pricking on the plain, etc'
 
 80 FROM SPENSER TO MIT,TON. 
 
 Book I. relates the adventures and ultimate triumph of 
 the Eedcross Knight and the Lady, Una. As 
 they journey they fall in with the hypocrite 
 Archimago, who succeeds in separating them. Tlic knight 
 meets Duessa and her lover Sansfoy, kills the ' Sarazin,' 
 and journeys on with the false Duessa, who takes him to 
 the House of Pride, where he defeats Sansjoy, and then 
 escapes from Duessa. She however rejoins him, when he 
 is surprised by the giant Orgoglio and thrown into his 
 dungeons. Meanwhile Una, wandering in search of her 
 knight, takes old Archimago, cunningly disguised, for him. 
 The 'Sarazin' Sansloy fights Archimago and seizes her, 
 but is in turn deprived of her by tlie forest satyrs. After 
 further wanderings she meets her knight's dwarf, who in- 
 forms her of his master's imprisonment in Orgoglio's castle. 
 At tliis point Arthur appears and offers to rescue him. He 
 kills Orgoglio, and rescues the Redcross Knight. After 
 Arthur's departure they meet a young kuight fleeing from 
 Despair, who, attacked by the Redcross Kniglit, would 
 have overcome him too but for tlie timely intervention of 
 Una, who takes him to the House of Holiness. Here he 
 is rested and prejiared for his encounter with the dragon 
 (see p. 79), and then, after a fierce and prolonged 
 conflict, he defeats and destroys him. Una's father 
 and mother are released, and Una and her knight are 
 married. 
 
 It is impossible to continue even to outline the plot and 
 it is unnecessary, for so little is the connection between 
 the different books that a critic recently advised readers to 
 pass straight from the first book to the sixth and then 
 back to the third. Before we pass to criticism, let the 
 student read or intone the following passages again and 
 again, until he feels the full beauty of their music, bearing 
 in mind the while that Spenser is the first great master of 
 metrical effects in English poetry. Leigh Hunt in his 
 * Imagination and Fancy ' has ' A Gallery of Pictures from 
 Spenser,' to each of which he has added its 'character' and 
 the name of the painter of whose genius it reminded him. 
 We quote three of these. 
 
 (1) 'A Knight in bright armour looking into a cave.
 
 'THE FAERY QUEKN.' 81 
 
 Character : A deep eifect of chiaroscuro, making deformity 
 
 visible. Painter, Rembrandt (I. i. 14). 
 
 * But, full of fire and greedy hardiment, 
 The youthful Knight could not for ought be staide : 
 But forth unto the darksom hole he went, 
 And looked in : his glistring armor made 
 A little glooming light, much like a shade ; 
 By which he saw the ugly monster plaine, 
 Half like a serpent horribly displaide, 
 But the other half did womans shape retaine, 
 Most loathsome, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.' 
 
 (2) The Cave of Despair. Character : Savage and For- 
 lorn Scenery, occupied by Squalid Misery. Painter : Sal- 
 vator Rosa (I. ix. 33-6). 
 
 * Ere long they come where that same wicked wight 
 His dwelling has, low in an hollow cave, 
 Far underneath a craggie clift ypight, 
 Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave, 
 That stiU for carrion carcases doth crave : 
 On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly Owle, 
 Shrieking his balefull note, which ever drave 
 Far from that haunt all other chearefuU fowle ; 
 And all about it wandring ghostes did wayle and howle. 
 
 And all about old stockes and stubs of trees, 
 Whereon nor fruit nor leafe was ever scene, 
 Did hang upon the ragged rocky knees ; 
 On which had many wretches hanged beene. 
 Whose carcases were scattred on the greene, 
 And throwne about the clifts. Arrived there, 
 That bare-head knight, for dread and dolefull teene, 
 Would fame have lied, ne durst approchen neare ; 
 But th'other forst him staye, and comforted in feare. 
 
 That darksome cave they enter, where they find 
 That cursed man, low sitting on the ground, 
 Musing full sadly in his sullein mind : 
 His griesie lockes, long growen and unbound, 
 Disordered hong about his shoulders round, 
 And hid his face, through which his hollow eyne 
 Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound ; 
 His raw-bone cheekes, through penurie and pine, 
 Were shronke into his jawes, as he did never dine. 
 
 His garment, nought but many ragged clouts, 
 With thomes together pind and patched was, 
 The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts ; 
 And him besides there lay upon the gras 
 A drearie corse, whose life away did pas, 
 END. LIT. t)
 
 82 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 All wallowd in his own yet luke-warme blood, 
 That from his wound yet welled fresh, alas ! 
 In which a rusty knife fast fixed stood. 
 And made an open passage for the gushing flood.' 
 
 (3) Charissa or Cliarity. Character : Spiritual Love. 
 Painter : Kapliael (I. x. 30-1). 
 
 ' She was a woman in her freshest age, 
 Of wondrous beauty, and of bounty rare, 
 W'^ith goodly grace and comely personage, 
 That was on earth not easie to compare ; 
 Full of gi'eat love, but Cujjids wanton snare 
 As hell she hated ; chaste in worke and will : 
 Her necke and brests were ever open bare, 
 That ay thereof her babes might sucke their fill , 
 The rest were all in yellow robes arayed still. 
 
 A multitude of babes about her hong, 
 Playing their sportes, that joyd her to behold ; 
 Whom still she fed whiles they were weake and young. 
 But thrust them forth still as they wexed old : 
 And on her head she wore a tyre of gold. 
 Adorned with gemmes and owches wondrous fayi-e, 
 'XMiose passing price uneath was to be told : 
 And by her side there sate a gentle payre 
 Of turtle doves, she sitting in an yvory chaj-re.' 
 
 The Spenserian stanza was created by adding an Alex- 
 . andrine (a line of six feet) to the stanza used 
 
 by Chaucer in his ' Monk's Tale.' Its supreme 
 merit is that it exactly suits Spenser's manner. It is 
 liquid, fluent, luxurious ; notable for its * fluidity and 
 sweet ease ' ; admirable for conveying impressions of 
 languor, melody, gentle music, beauty and repose. The 
 great sounding Alexandrine at the close of each stanza 
 seems to sum up the verse, as though just there, at the 
 end of each nine lines, were a strong and clear pause. 
 Spenser obeys the law laid down for him by the stanza he 
 created for himself : the sense almost always pauses with 
 the natural pause in the metre ; each stanza is usually 
 complete in itself, and gives us either a complete picture, 
 or a complete portion of a picture in many parts. With 
 the smallest amount of care in the selection of books and 
 cantos it is always easy to enjoy oneself in Spenser ; 
 indeed there is a certain danger of being lulled into a 
 too easy sensuous enjoyment of mere word-music without
 
 'the faery queen.' 83 
 
 food enougb. or labour enough for the mind. He is facile 
 princeps in abundance and riclmcss of detail and incident. 
 His imagination is as fecund as it is beautiful. If we are 
 content to ' skip ' and to * dip ' we shall find abundant 
 * gold-hoards ' : lines and stanzas of silvery melody, 
 musical cadences, perfect portraits of women, conceptions 
 of rare imaginative beauty. 
 
 On the other hand the ' Faery Queen ' has very serious 
 defects. It has a double allegory: amoral or subjective 
 allegory, which is pretty continuously present ; and a 
 political or objective allegory which is only fitfully present. 
 Hazlitt said tliat the allegory ' won't bite ' : one is some- 
 times tempted to wish that it would, for it does something 
 far worse, it growls. The allegory spoils the story, and 
 the story mars the allegory. Again, the poem has no 
 unity. Doubtless there was a certain unity in the poet's 
 original conception : both in connection with his professed 
 object, ' to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous 
 and gentle discipline' and 'to portray in Arthur the 
 imago of a brave knight perfected in the twelve private 
 moral virtues,' as well as in the relation of the various 
 books and adventures to the Faery Queen's commission. 
 But taking the poem as it stands, we are bound to admit 
 that there is no such unity in the executioh. After Book ii. 
 the part played by Arthur is at times insignificant. Even 
 the Faery Queen herself might be taken out of the poem 
 without materially damaging it. Spenser made the fatal 
 mistake of choosing a wrong model in Ariosto, whom it 
 was his hope to ' overgo.' It is evident — one sentence in the 
 letter to Ralegh is sufficient evidence : ' Ariosto comprised 
 both a good governor and a virtuous man in his Orlando ' 
 — that Spenser misunderstood and misinterpreted his 
 model, whose ' Orlando Furioso ' is a great artistic success, 
 whereas the ' Faery Queen ' is a failure as a ivhole. Lastl}--, 
 it has been said that Spenser in the world of poetry, like 
 Sidney in the world of action, was 'born out of due time.' 
 The faults of his great work are thus his misfortune rather 
 than his fault. 'The ' ends of the ages ' met over him. If 
 he had only had ' that supreme gift of insiglit and inven- 
 tion which enables a poet to blend conflicting ideas into
 
 84 FROM SPENSER TO UriLTON. 
 
 one organic whole ! ' What he lacked was vision and 
 judgment, not poetic power: the deep vision to see with 
 Chaucer that medievalism was doomed, or with Shakes- 
 peare that it was in its death-agony ; the judgment to 
 select a modern, actual, new theme which might have been 
 the real epic of that great age. 
 
 Excei:)t for any truth there might be in the charge that 
 Milton 'to party gave up what was meant for mankind,' 
 ho belongs, in spite of chronology, to the glorious earlier 
 Elizabethan period, and not to the later period of partial 
 decline. Therefore we take him here. He was, like 
 Spenser, a born Londoner, and was sent to St. 
 •^ uns^r-r' Paul's School. Ho is the chief glory of Christ's 
 
 1000-10/4. y^ ii /-~, I'-i I'liin- 
 
 College, Cambridge, which he leit in 1632. 
 Then he lived quietly at his father's house at Horton in 
 Buckinghamshire for six years, travelled on the continent 
 for more than a year, returned home in 1639 because of 
 the troubled state of affairs in England, devoted himself 
 almost exclusively to political work and prose writing 
 until the Restoration, being Latin Secretary to the Council 
 of State from 1649, and afterwards was, fortunately, 
 allowed to end his days in peace. Milton's life, like that 
 of Dryden and others, divides itself into three periods, and 
 the varying character of his writings in the three periods 
 shews how greatly his political and other connections 
 affected his literary work. Up to 1638 is the period of the 
 minor poems; from 1639 to 1660 is that of the prose 
 works and the sonnets, from 1660 to his death that of the 
 major poems. In the case of a man like Miltou, whose 
 work has been the subject of keen discussion and dissension 
 not unmixed with bitterness, it is of the last importance 
 that we should at the outset form a just estimate of 
 the spirit of the man. Two or three quotations from 
 early works afford the means of doing so. The sonnet 
 written at the age of twenty-three closes with these two 
 lines: 
 
 ♦ All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
 As ever in my great Task-master's eye.' 
 
 In September, 1637, he wrote to Charles Diodati :
 
 Milton's first period, 85 
 
 * Wliat God may have determined for mo I know not ; but 
 this I know, that if he ever instilled an intense love of 
 moral beauty into the breast of any man, He has instilled 
 it into mine.' And in 1641 he wrote in a prose tract : ' I 
 was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be 
 frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
 things, ought himself to be a true poem.' ' As ever in my 
 great Task-master's eye,' 'an intense love of moral beauty,' 
 ' ought himself to be a true poem ' : — we may agree 
 with Milton's opinions, or disagree; we may like him and 
 his poetry, or we may dislike them equally — but these 
 sayings come from his heart, and give the true clue to his 
 life and work. 
 
 The noteworthy poems of the years before 1639 are 
 'L' Allegro' and 'II Penseroso,' 'Comus' and 'Lycidas.' 
 
 The two first named stand in a class by them- 
 ^''perioZ"^** solves in our literature. There is nothing like 
 
 them before Milton, there is nothing fit to com- 
 pare with them since his day. The beauty of the matter 
 is almost surpassed by the technical excellences of the 
 manner. ' They satisfy the critics and they delight 
 mankind,' and that is certainly the lot of very few poems. 
 They are too long to give in full here, but the following 
 extracts will give some idea of their movement : 
 
 ' But come, thou Goddess fair and free. 
 In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, 
 And by men heart-easing Mirth. . . . 
 And in thy right hand lead with thee 
 The moimtain nymph, sweet Liberty ; 
 And if I give Ihee honour due, 
 Jlirtb, admit me of thy crew, 
 To live with her and live with thee 
 In unreproved pleasures free ; 
 To hear the lark begin his llight, 
 And, singing, startle the dull night 
 From his watch-tower in the skies, 
 Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 
 Then to come, in spite of sorrow, 
 And at my window bid good-morrow, 
 Through the sweetbriar or the vine, 
 Or the twisted eglantine. . . . 
 Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
 Cheerly rouse the slumbering mom,
 
 86 FliOM SPENSER 10 MILTON. 
 
 From the side of some hoar hill, 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill : 
 Sometimes walking, not unseen. 
 By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 
 Ilight agairst thr. eastern gate 
 Wliere the great Sun begins his state, 
 Ivobcd ''n flames and amber light, 
 The cloTids in thousand liveries dight; 
 While the ploughman near at hand 
 AVIiistlcs o'er the furrowed land, 
 And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 
 And the mower whets his scythe, 
 And every shepherd tells his tale 
 Under the hawthorn in the dale.' 
 
 ' But let my due feet never fail 
 To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
 And love the high embowed roof, 
 "With antique pillars massy-proof, 
 And storied windows richly dight, 
 Casting a dim religious light. 
 Tliere let the pealing organ blow 
 To the full -voiced choir below 
 In service high and anthems clear, 
 As may with sweetness through mine ear 
 Dissolve me into ecstasies. 
 And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. 
 And may at last my weary age 
 Find out the peaceful hermitage. 
 The hairy gown and mossy cell, 
 "Where I may sit and rightly spell 
 Of every star that heaven doth shew. 
 And every herb that sips the dew, 
 Till old experience do attain 
 To something like prophetic strain. ' 
 
 The shident sliould examine these pieces with tlie 
 greatest care for the sake of the perfect technique. It will 
 be seen that the verse is octosyllabic, and the art consists 
 not only in varying the lilt of the measure to suit the 
 pei-vading tone of each piece throughout, but also in vary- 
 ing the movement and sound of each line in accordance 
 with the changes in the thought. The subtler variations 
 can only be felt. The more obvious are the frequent 
 use of 'catalectic' {i.e. wanting the first syllable) lines, 
 such as 
 
 ' Right against the eastern gate,' 
 and ' To the full-voiced choix below ' ;
 
 Milton's second pkriod. 87 
 
 and the substitution of a trochee for an iambus in the 
 first foot . 
 
 ' Casting a dim religious light.' 
 
 It will be observed also that the two poems are parallel 
 and antithetic in tone and construction throughout : they 
 tell of the interests, joys, and pleasures of life looked at 
 from two opposite pomts of view. 
 
 In * Comus ' Milton produced what is not only incom- 
 parably the finest masque ever written, but 
 '^'LycWas'''^ ^^^^ among the greatest of his own works. 
 Comus, in this masque, is the god of Debauch, 
 born of Bacchus and Circe; The heroine, * The Lady,' 
 loses her brothers in a forest and is taken captive by the 
 lewd god, whoso arts, however, can avail nothing against 
 one guarded as she is by chastity and virtue ; by the help 
 of a spirit, who watches over her, and of Sabrina the 
 nymph of the Severn, her brothers find and release her, 
 wresting the magician's poisonous draught from him and 
 jmttiug liim and his crew to flight. In this way Milton 
 allogoricaliy depicts the endeavour of incontinent vice to 
 overcome and corrupt virtue ; it is even alleged that the 
 'Revel-god is a representative of those whom the poet 
 actuall}' regarded as the living votaries of the view of life 
 which he abhorred.' In 'Lycidas,' the beautiful elegy, 
 written under the form of a pastoral, in memory of his 
 college friend, Edward I^ng, Milton speaks sternly of the 
 corruptions of the chui-ch, in words which find a fit place 
 in the mouth of one who was to bid farewell for twenty 
 years to masque and pastoral and idyll, and betake himself 
 to stern political conflict, to controversy and struggle, 
 through Avhich he was destined to pass before he returned 
 to the Muses as the poet of ' Paradise Lost.' 
 
 Milton's second period is one of prose interspersed with 
 a few sonnets. In his prose works, * wherein 
 Second Period, knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the 
 genial power of nature to another task, I have 
 the use, as I may account, but of my left hand,' his 
 fundamental idea is liberty — liberty from a lower law only 
 to come under a higher law. Ho himself divides his prose 
 works into three classes : those dealing {a) with religious
 
 68 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 liberty, as in tlie Church Government controversy of 1641 ; 
 
 (b) Avith domestic liberty, as in the divorce pamphlets, 
 tlie 'Tractate on Education,' and the * Areopagitica ' ; 
 
 (c) with political liberty, as in the * Tenure of Kings and 
 Magistrates.' They vary in manner from the loftiest 
 strains and most harmonious cadences permissible in 
 prose to abuse that would now be termed worthy only 
 of Billingsgate Market ; but it must be remembered 
 that abuse was universal in the polemics of that day. 
 Amid the distractions of the time Milton found no leisure 
 for poetry outside ' the sonnet's scanty plot of ground ' : 
 
 ' when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 The thing became a trumpet ; whence he blew 
 Soul-animating strains — alas, too few ! ' 
 
 As a sonneteer Milton is noteworthy as the first English- 
 man to adhere consistently (with one exception) to the 
 Petrarchan form of the sonnet, which avoids the final 
 riming couplet so common in his predecessors. 
 
 * To CrRiACK Skinner, upon His Blindness. 
 
 Cyriack, this three-years -day these eyes, though clear 
 
 To outward view of blemish or of spot, 
 
 Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot ; 
 Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
 Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, 
 
 Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 
 
 Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer 
 llight onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? 
 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them ovcrplied 
 In liberty's defence, my noble task, 
 
 Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 
 This thought might lead me through this world's vain mask 
 
 Content, though blind, had I no better guide.' 
 
 To the general public (who, however, do not read him) 
 
 Milton is the poet of ' Paradise Lost, ' as Sjienser 
 
 '^S^^ is the poet of the 'Faery Queen,' and the 
 
 general public is right. Without ' Paradise 
 
 Lost' Milton would be only what Sackville, Chatterton, 
 
 or Keats is, a poet of magnificent but unfulfilled promise.
 
 Milton's third period. 89 
 
 As early as 1641 he had in one of his pamphlets declared 
 his intention of devoting himself to the composition of a 
 great poetical work, but at first he favoured the subject of 
 King Arthur and the dramatic form. By 1642 he had 
 made four drafts of a work on the subject of Paradise 
 Lost, but still adhered to the form of drama. How and 
 when he finally selected his subject and the epic form is 
 not known; the latter choice was certainly a wise one. 
 The poem was completed by 1665 and published in 1667. 
 
 The argument of ' Paradise Lost ' can be given in short 
 space. Satan, after his revolt and overthrow 
 
 e argumen . -^ heavcn, attempts to encourage his followers 
 with the hope of revenging themselves on man. He raises 
 Pandemonium and summons a council, as the result of 
 which he himself undertakes the search for the new world 
 and the new creature, Man. Then the scene is changed to 
 heaven, where God the Pather shews Satan to the Son, 
 informs him of his mission, and foretells his success in 
 ruining mankind. The Son offers himself as a redemptive 
 sacrifice and is accepted. Meanwhile Satan, directed by 
 Uriel, reaches the Earth, and perching in the shape of a 
 coiTuorant on the Tree of Life overhears from Adam the 
 prohibition, 
 
 ' not to taste that only Tree 
 Of Knowledge, planted by the Tree of Life,' 
 
 and resolves on the mode of their temptation. 
 
 ' All is not theirs, it seems ; 
 One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge called, 
 Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden? 
 Suspicious, reasonless ! Why should their Lord 
 Envy them that ? Can it be sin to know ? 
 Can it be death ? And do they only stand 
 By ignorance ? Is that their hap^jy state. 
 The proof of their obedience and their faith ? 
 O fair foundation laid whereon to build 
 Their ruin ! Hence I will excite their minds 
 With more desire to know, and to reject 
 Envious commands, invented with design 
 To keep them low, whom knowledge might exalt 
 Ec^ual with gods. Aspiring to be such. 
 They taste and die : what likelier can ensue ? ' 
 
 This brings us to the close of the fourth book.
 
 90 FROM SPENSER TO MlLTON. 
 
 Kaphael is sent to warn Adam of the impending danger, 
 and, in reply to his questions, relates in detail the story of 
 the war in heaven between the good and the evil angels, 
 the defeat and expulsion of the latter by the Messiah, and 
 the creation of the world and man. This, with the con- 
 versation that ensues, occupies the second four books. 
 Book ix. contains the actual temptation and fall, and in 
 Book X. the Son of God sentences and then clothes the 
 transgressors. Sin and Death make a bridge over Chaos 
 from Pandemonium to Earth, but God the Father foretells 
 their ultimate destruction by his Son. The last two books 
 contain a vision of the future revealed to Adam by Michael, 
 and the expulsion from Paradise. ' Our ling'ring parents ' 
 
 ' Hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow, 
 Through Eden took their solitary way.' 
 
 It is hoped that this brief analysis will give some idea 
 
 of the strength and the weakness of Milton's conception. 
 
 Aristotle's formulation of the essentials of the 
 
 Defects epic has never been called in question: the epic 
 
 of ' Paradise ,,n , li-- i 
 
 Lost.' treats oi one great complex action m a grand 
 style and with fulness of detail. * Paradise 
 Lost ' treats of one great action in a grand style ; but it 
 fails in complexity and fulness of detail. The greatness, 
 the universal interest, of the action is counterbalanced to 
 some extent by the meagreness of material, and the 
 difficulty of elaboration and invention in connection Avith 
 such a theme. Consequently the narrative has backwaters 
 and eddies. Too large a proportion of the poem is taken 
 up with episodes: Books v. -vii. are a retrospective historical 
 episode, Books xi. and xii. are mainly a prospective episode. 
 Again, the description of the war in heaven in Books v. 
 and vi. is in as distressingly bad taste as, on the other 
 hand, Books i. and ii. are fine and unsurpassable. The 
 poet enlists our sympathy, in far too great a degree, in the 
 behalf of Satan. Possibly the subject chosen was more in 
 accordance with Milton's character than with his poetic 
 genius, and he would have achieved a greater success with 
 a pagan subject. Lastly, his perpetuation of the Ptolemaic 
 system of astronomy, for the sake of his argument;
 
 MILTOn's rOETIC STYLE. 91 
 
 liis uverweight of theology, often of a kind unpalatable 
 even to those who take kindly to dogma ; his domineering 
 masterfuJnega in dealing with the relations of men and 
 women ; his awful lack of humour — aU these are utterly 
 unmodern. 
 
 But wlien all has been said that the most pertinacious 
 devil's advocate can say, it is little enough against what 
 can be urged on the other side. In speaking of the ' grand 
 style' of the poem it is diffictdt to use temperate 
 ^'"°"y]P°^''"^ langunge. No one has ever attuned our lan- 
 guage to such mighty harmonies as Milton ; 
 whether in rime or in blank verse he has given us some of 
 the noblest word-music of which it is capable. The chief 
 characteristics of ' Paradise Lost' may be summed up in the 
 word ' sublimity.' The poet's imagination is lofty and grand, 
 his style majestic and sonorous. Magnificent imagery with 
 him seems to be merely the fit and natural accompaniment 
 and cxjn-ession of magnificent ideas. It is in his sublimest 
 conceptions that his language most aptly fits his thought. 
 Wlion he deals with more commonplace matters (which is 
 seldom enough), the effect is that of second-rate musical 
 compositions played by a great artist on a splendid instru- 
 ment. ' A feeling of spaciousness such as no other poet 
 gives ' is Lowell's description of the effect produced by the 
 ' vistas and avenues ' of Milton's verse. No one who reads 
 'Paradise Lost' can fail to be struck with this peculiar 
 power of Milton. He can exercise it in half a dozen lines : 
 
 ' Here let those 
 Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell 
 Of Bahcl, and the works of Mcmphian kings, 
 TiCarn how their greatest monuments of fame 
 And strength and art arc easily outdone 
 By spirits reprobate, and in an hour 
 What in an age they, with incessant toil 
 And hands innumerable, scarce perform.' P. L., i. 692-G99. 
 lie can make us feel it in a few syllables : — 
 
 * Who would lose, 
 Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
 Those thoughts that ivuiider through eternity ? ' — ii. 148. 
 
 Or he can sustain the 8j)oll through scores and scores of 
 lines, as in Book xi. and elsewhere.
 
 92 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 In ' Paradise Lost ' Milton is our greatest artist, one 
 might almost say architect, in blank verse. 
 
 ^verse*^ But in order fully to appreciate the art and 
 distinction of Miltonic blank verse some pre- 
 paration, not to say training, is needed. A part of such 
 preparation is furnished by reading in succession the 
 quotation from ' Gorboduc ' on p. 45, and the quotations 
 from Milton given below. In the latter the whole 
 swing and movement of the verse is swayed by the move- 
 ment of the thought in a way that can be felt by a 
 delicate ear better than it can be described. Milton 
 himself says that ' true musical delight consists only in 
 apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense 
 variously drawn out from one verse into another.' The 
 full signiGcance of this last phrase is perhaps not 
 immediately aj)parent : for while it is obvious that ' the 
 sense drawn out from one verse into another ' means what 
 is now conveniently termed ' overflow,' it is less obvious 
 that ' variously ' covers the varying position of the medial 
 pause, and thus the varied medial cadences before that 
 pause. In the earliest English blank verse the pause 
 usually fell with wearisome monotony at the end of each 
 line ; Milton places it in every possible position. These 
 two characteristics of his prosody, the ' overflow ' and the 
 varied medial cadences, are important elements in the 
 upbuilding of the most delightful feature of his versi- 
 fication, his wonderful blank verse stanzas, which 
 are expounded, as well as they can be, in the follow- 
 ing quotation from an anonymous article. ' To analyse 
 Miltonic blank verse in all its details would be the work 
 of much study and prolonged labour. It is enough to 
 indicate the fact that the most sonorous passages commence 
 and terminate with interrupted lines, including in one 
 organic structure periods, parentheses and paragraphs of 
 fluent melody ; that the harmonies are wrought by subtle 
 and most complex alliterative systems, by delicate changes 
 in the length and volume of syllables, and by the choice of 
 names magnificent for their mere gorgeousness of sound. 
 In these structures there are many pauses which enable 
 the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none are perfect.
 
 MILTON S BLANK VERSE. 93 
 
 none satisfy the want created by the opening hemistich, 
 until the final and deliberate close is reached. Then 
 the sense of harmony is gratified, and we proceed with 
 pleasure to a new and different sequence. If the truth of 
 this remark is not confirmed by the following celebrated 
 and essentially Miltonic passage, it must fall without 
 further justification.' 
 
 ' And now his heart 
 Distends witli pride, and, hardening in his strength, 
 Glories : for never, since created man, 
 'hlvt such eiubodicd force as, named with these. 
 Could merit more than that small infantry 
 "Warred on by cranes — though all the giant brood 
 Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined 
 That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
 Mixed with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds 
 In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
 Begirt with British and Armoric knights , 
 And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
 Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
 Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 
 AVhen Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
 By Fontarabbia.' F.L., i. 571-87. 
 
 Other features of Milton's versification might be specified, 
 such as the wonderful use he makes of proper names, 
 illustrated above and below ; but a whole chapter would 
 be required to do the barest justice to the subject. The 
 degree in which the themes of his poetry appeal to us 
 varies as vastly as our various characters and dispositions ; 
 but about the music of his verse and the technical per- 
 fection of his prosody there is no room for two opinions. 
 Probably there is no better example of Milton's unsur- 
 passed faculty of making the sound an echo to the sense 
 than 'Paradise Eegained,' ii. 337-365 : 
 
 * He spake no dream ; for, as his words had end, 
 Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld. 
 In ample space under the broadest shade, 
 A table richly spread in regal mode. 
 With dishes piled and meats of noblest sort 
 And savour — beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
 In pastry built, or fi-om the spit, or boiled.
 
 94 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 Grisamber- steamed ; all fish, from sea or shore, 
 
 Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin, 
 
 And exquisitcst name, for which was drained 
 
 Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 
 
 Alas ! how simple, to these cates compared, 
 
 Was that crude apple that diverted Eve ! 
 
 And at a stately sideboard by the wine, 
 
 That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood 
 
 Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue 
 
 Than Ganymed or Hylas ; distant more, 
 
 Under the trees now tripped, now solemn stood, 
 
 Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades 
 
 AVith fruits and flowers from Amalthea's horn, 
 
 And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed 
 
 Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since 
 
 Of faery damsels met in forest wide 
 
 By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
 
 Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore. 
 
 And all the while harmonious airs were heai-d 
 
 Of chiming strings or charming pipes ; and winds 
 
 Of gentlest gale Arabian odours fanned 
 
 From their soft wings, and Flora's earliest smells.' 
 
 Elizabethan poetry at its best, as we have just seen it, 
 * was the flowering through art of a new faith and a new 
 joy — a faith in the spiritual truths recovered by the 
 Eeformation movement, a joy in the world of nature and of 
 human life as presented in the magic mirror of the Renais- 
 sance.' When party feeling grew strong, men lost, with 
 the sense of unity, breadth of feeling and large- 
 
 Poetry of ness of ideals. They thus readily fell into 
 
 transition, littlenesses ; they aimed at novelties of expression 
 more than at greatness of thought, and at 
 remote analogy and even obscm-ity of language rather 
 than depth of feeling and the grandeur of simplicity. 
 From about 1625, to which date we have returned, to 1660 
 two developments in English poetry are especially to be 
 noted : they tell into one another, but can best be dealt 
 with apart : the flourishing of ' metaphysical ' and of 
 lyi'ical poetry. The former must be regarded as a sign of 
 decadence ; the latter as the true poetic flame that still 
 burnt clear and bright until it could be passed on to 
 Dryden and his school. 
 
 The lyrical poetry of this time does not surpass that of
 
 CAROLINE POETRY, 95 
 
 the Elizabethans proper ; it is chiefly noteworthy because it 
 
 maintains such a high standard of excellence 
 
 The ■ft'lien so much other poetry was running to 
 
 ^ '' ^" seed, as lyrism itself in the end tended to do. 
 
 The principal names here are those of Carew, the eldest 
 
 of the Caroline poets, Lovelace, Herrick, and Suckling', 
 
 together with the religious lyrists, Crashaw and ' holy Mr. 
 
 Herbert.' The temptation to quote the exquisite lyrics of 
 
 these singers is so strong that it must be resisted — after 
 
 all they are to be found in every collection — and we must 
 
 be content with the hackneyed, but ever refreshing, ' To 
 
 Althea from Prison ' of Lovelace : 
 
 ' When love with uncoiifined wings 
 
 Hovers within iny gates, 
 And my divine Althea brings 
 
 To whisper at the grates ; 
 When I lie tangled in her hair, 
 
 And fettered to her eye, 
 The birds that wanton in the air 
 
 Know no such liberty. 
 
 When flowing cups run swiftly round 
 
 With no allaying Thames, 
 Our careless heads with roses bound, 
 
 Our hearts with loyal flames ; 
 When thirsty grief in wine we steep, 
 
 When healths and draughts go free, 
 Fishes that tipple in the deep 
 
 Know no such libei'ty. 
 
 When, like committed linnets, I 
 
 With shriller throat shall sing 
 The sweetness, mercy, majesty. 
 
 And glories of my King ; 
 When I shall voice aloud, how good 
 
 He is, how great should be. 
 Enlarged winds that curl the flood 
 
 Kjiow no such liberty. 
 
 Stone walls do not a prison raako, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 
 That for an hermitage ; 
 If I have freedom in my love, 
 
 And in my soul am free. 
 Angels alone, that soar above, 
 
 Knjoy such liberty.'
 
 96 FROM SPENSER TO MTLTON. 
 
 ' It was characteristic of the fashion of the day to invent 
 verse-forms of great intricacy and difficulty, the 
 p^sicar Poets ^^auty of which was of less import to the writei 
 ' than the oddity. Donne had set the example 
 of these fantastic eccentricities, and the wanton way in 
 which they were employed soon drove men of taste to the 
 rigid use of the heroic couplet only.* That is a very 
 partial explanation of the coming predominance of the heroic 
 couplet, to which we return in the next chapter. Donne 
 (1573-1631) had set the example to Enghsh poets, not 
 only or chiefly in these formal eccentricities, but in all the 
 marks of the so-called ' metaphysical ' school. Dryden 
 said of Donne in his ' Essay on Satire ' : ' He affects the 
 metaphysics.' Dr. Johnson, in his life of Cowley, taking 
 the hint from Dryden, extended the criticism to ' a race 
 of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets.' 
 He says : ' This kind of writing, which was, I beheve, 
 borrowed from Mariai and his followers, had been re- 
 commended by the example of Donne, a man of very 
 extensive and various knowledge.' The initiative in 
 England is due to Donne alone; dates render it impossible 
 that he should have imitated Marini. Then Johnson lays 
 out the chief characteristics of the style with justness and 
 acumen. ' The metaphysical poets were men of learning, 
 and to shew their learning was their whole endeavour. . . . 
 If that be considered as wit which is both natural and 
 new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first 
 production, acknowledged to be just, if it be that which he 
 that never found it, Avonders how he missed; to wit of 
 this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their 
 thoughts are often new, but seldom natural ; they are not 
 obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far 
 from wondering that he missed them, wonders more fre- 
 quently by what perverseuess of industry they were ever 
 found. . . . The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by 
 violence together; nature and art are ransacked for 
 illustrations, comparisons, and allusions. . . . Yet great 
 labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost ; if 
 they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, 
 they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth :
 
 THE ' ATETAPHYSICAL ' POETS. 97 
 
 if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth 
 the carriage. ... If their greatness seldom elevates, their 
 acuteness often surprises ; if the imagination is not always 
 grntified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison 
 are employed.' If to this be added two other brief 
 quotations, the student will have a comprehensive descrip- 
 tion of these literary curiosities. 'The metaphysical poets,' 
 says Leslie Stephen, ' are courtier pedants. They repre- 
 sent the intrusion into poetry of the love of dialectical 
 subtlety encouraged by the still prevalent system of 
 scholastic disputation.' 'The opposite word "physical,"' 
 writes Masson, ' would be in some respects more suggestive 
 of the truth, one of the most obvious characteristics of the 
 poets in question being a disposition to run everything 
 they think of through a series of quaint physical analogies, 
 emotionally inappropriate, though perceptible to a practised 
 or erudite wit.' 
 
 Donne's principal followers in this kind of poetry were 
 Crashaw, Herbert, Cleveland, and Cowley. But it must 
 be understood that every poet between 1625 and 1660 had 
 the ' metaphysical ' taint, even the best lyrists, even Milton 
 and Marvell. The worst possible examples of poetry of 
 this kind are Cowley's ' Mistress ' and Dryden's ' Upon the 
 Death of the Lord Hastings,' the one too long (see, how- 
 ever, ' The Spectator,' No. 62) and the other too immature 
 to quote. We give instead one of the most favourable 
 specimens possible, from Donne's ' A Valediction forbid- 
 ding Mourning.' 
 
 * Our two souls therefore, whicli are one, 
 Though I must go, endure not yet 
 A breach, but an expansion, 
 Like gold to airy thinness beat. 
 
 If they be two, they are two so 
 
 As stiff twin compasses are two, 
 Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
 
 To move, but doth, if th' other do. 
 
 And though it in the centre sit, 
 
 Yet when the other far doth roam, 
 It leans and hearkens after it. 
 
 And grows erect as that comes home. 
 ENO. LIT. 7
 
 98 FROM SPENSER TO MILTON. 
 
 Such wilt thou be to me, who must 
 
 Like th' other foot obliquely run, 
 Thy firmness makes my circle just, 
 
 And makes me end where I begun.' 
 
 The men who did most for the development of English 
 prose style in this period were Hooker and 
 
 ^^Trese!^^ Bacon. At first two great dangers beset prose : 
 the Latinised style of Ascham and the affected 
 style of Lyly. Much interest attaches to the prose work of 
 Lyly, who had a marked and, on the whole, not a bene- 
 ficial influence on prose style almost up to the Restoration. 
 But Hooker and Bacon did really great things for the 
 development of our somewhat slowly forming prose ; when 
 alliteration, antithesis, 'iinnatural natural history' were 
 the order of the day, they shewed that English was as 
 capable as the classics of subserving the highest purposes 
 of language — that it was possible in English also to 
 express the subtleties of thought in clear, straightforward, 
 and uninvolved sentences, and, when necessary, to con- 
 dense the greatest amoimt of meaning into the fewest 
 possible words. Hooker's * Ecclesiastical Polity ' (1594) is 
 the first publication in the English language to observe a 
 strict methodical arrangement and at the same time to 
 present a train of clear logical reasoning. 
 
 English prose from about 1580 to about 1700 may be 
 roughly divided into three periods of forty 
 
 Periods of years. We sav 'rousrhlv,' because literary 
 
 prose. •'., ,*' o J J J 
 
 periods and movements can never be more 
 than roughly fitted with dates; they invariably overlap. 
 It may be useful to call these three periods the periods of 
 'tentative' prose, of 'grand' prose, and of 'measured' 
 prose respectively. In this chapter we have to deal with 
 the first two only, and we take Bacon and Milton as their 
 respective representatives. 
 
 The intrinsic merit of Bacon's work in prose is un- 
 fortunately much greater than its influence, 
 ^acon, He essayed several kinds of writing and failed 
 in none. In the unfinished fable of the 
 'New Atlantis,' devised, says his chaplain, 'to the end 
 that he might exhibit therein a model or description of a
 
 BACON. 
 
 99 
 
 college, instituted for the interpreting of Nature and the 
 producing of great and mai-velous works for the benefit of 
 man,' Bacon made one of the earliest attempts at allegorical 
 prose romance, furnishing a model which might have been 
 used by Bunyan and Swift. The work is also credited 
 with having suggested the foundation of the Eoyal Society 
 and of several similar associations abroad. In his 
 ' Henry VII.' he wrote a historical prose, that has only to 
 be compared with that of the Elizabethan chroniclers to see 
 how great an advance it represents on any writing then 
 to be found in the same department of letters. But if 
 these two styles be regarded as variations of Bacon's philo- 
 sophical style seen in the 'Advancement of Learning,' 
 this stiU leaves him master of two utterly different styles, 
 for neither of which is he beholden to any predecessor. 
 Ilis more connected style may well be illustrated by a few 
 sentences from the * New Atlantis ' : 
 
 ' But then again there arose strong and gi'eat winds from the south 
 with a point east ; which carried us up (for all that we could do) 
 towards the north ; by which time our ^dctuals failed us, though we 
 had made good spare of them. So that finding ourselves in the midst of 
 the greatest wilderness of waters in the world, without victual, we gave 
 ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our 
 hearts and voices to God above, who sheiveth His ivonders in the deep ; 
 beseeching him of His mercy, that as in the beginning He discovered 
 the face of the deep, and brought forth day land, so He would now 
 discover land to us, that we might not perish. And it came to pass 
 that the next day about evening, we saw within a kenning before 
 us, towards the north, as it were thick clouds, which did put us in 
 some hope of land ; knowing how that part of the South Sea was 
 utterly unknown ; and might have islands or continents, that hitherto 
 were not come to light.' 
 
 The style of Bacon's ' Essays ' differs in toto from this. 
 
 The ' Essays ' appeared in three authorised editions during 
 
 the author's life ; their number increased from ten in the 
 
 first to fifty-eight in the last, and the individual essays also 
 
 were enlarged and partly rewritten. But even 
 
 •Essays.' in their final form they have been compared to 
 
 a * succession of short barks.' Bacon's own 
 
 description of them explains at once their origin and the
 
 100 FROM SPENSEU TO MILTON. 
 
 peculiarities of their style : they are ' fragments of his 
 conceits,' 'dispersed meditations,' ' brief notes set down 
 rather significantly than curiously ' {i.e. elaborately). In a 
 word they are little more than note-book jottings classified 
 and put into some order. They are * not so much set com- 
 positions as collections of thoughts that have happily shaped 
 themselves in epigrammatic and ornate phrase.' The follow- 
 ing extract from the essay ' Of Expense ' is a good illustration 
 of Bacon's acute worldly wisdom and of its literary garb : 
 ' Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions. 
 Therefore extraordinary expense must he limited hy the worth of the 
 occasion ; for voluntary undoing may he as well for a man's country 
 as for the kingdom of heaven , but ordinary expense ought to he 
 limited hy a man's estate, and governed with such regard as it he 
 within his compass ; and not suhject to deceit and ahuse of servants ; 
 and ordered to the best show, that the hills may he less than the 
 estimation abroad. Certainly, if a man will keep hut of even hand, 
 his ordinary expenses ought to he but to the half of his receipts ; and 
 if he think to wax rich, but to the third part. It is no baseness for 
 the greatest to descend and look into their own estate. Some forbear it, 
 not upon negligence alone, hut doubting to bring themselves into melan- 
 choly, in respect they shall find it broken. But wounds cannot be cured 
 without searching. He that cannot look into his own estate at all, had 
 need both choose well those whom he employeth, and change them often ; 
 for new are more timorous and less subtle He that can look into his 
 estate but seldom, it behoveth him to turn all to certainties. A man had 
 need, if he be plentiful in some kind of expense, to he as saving again in 
 some other : as if he be plentiful m diet, to be saving in apparel ; if he be 
 plentiful in the hall, to be saving in the stable ; and the like. For he that 
 is plentiful in expenses of all kinds wUl hardly he preserved from decay.' 
 
 Bacon's services to our prose can be rightly measured 
 only when we remember the dearth of available 
 Prose after models : it is not his fault that the excellent 
 models he left in masculine, trenchant, ver- 
 nacular English were neglected by those who had to carry 
 on prose tradition. Not that he was altogether without 
 followers : the character-writers of the seventeenth century, 
 Overbury, Earle and the rest, seem largely to have taken 
 Bacon for their model. But the representative prose 
 authors from 1620 to 1660 cultivated the 'grand' style.
 
 Milton's prose. 101 
 
 to tlie uoglect of Hooker and Bacon, and the effect is often 
 that of magnificent music played by a great composer on a 
 poor instrument. The chief vice of their prose is seen in 
 the fact that the second sentence in Milton's first prose 
 work contains four hundred words. The greatest writers 
 are the worst offenders : Milton and Jeremy Taylor do not 
 know that the sentence is the prose unit, as the line is 
 the poetical unit, and confuse the sentence with the para- 
 graph. Moreover, they, and Sir Thomas Browne still more, 
 indulge much too freely in ugly latinised words and 
 classical constructions. *To Milton,' says Henry Craik, 
 * prose was an unnatural medium, which he never subdued 
 to his purposes. As a prose writer he commands admira- 
 tion only where he enlists sympathy. He used the weapon 
 provided for him by his age with consummate power : 
 but it was a weapon which he seized as he found it, which 
 owed its force to the arm that wielded it, and which ho 
 left with no sharpness added to its temper, no new polish 
 to its surface, no new facility in its contrivance.' 
 
 The following sentence-paragraph is a good illustration 
 alike of Milton's merits and defects : 
 
 * Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may 
 perhaps he hoard offering at high strains in new and lofty measures, 
 to sing and celehrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous judgments 
 in this land throughout aU ages; wherehy this great and warlike 
 nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of 
 truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her old 
 vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be 
 found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day, 
 when Thou, the Eternal and shortly expected King, shalt open the 
 clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and distributing 
 national honours and rewards to religious and just conmonwealths, 
 shall put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming TTiy universal 
 and mild monarchy through heaven and earth ; where they imdoubtedly, 
 that, by thoir labours, counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for 
 the common good of religion, and their country, shall receive above 
 the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, 
 legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supercminence of 
 beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of 
 eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands wilh joy and bliss, in ovur- 
 mcasure for ever.'
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700 A.D.). 
 
 The Kestoration conveniently marks the approximate 
 date of one of the two mightiest changes in 
 iitera"°histo English literature and certainly of the most 
 ' abrupt cleavage. It is of the last importance 
 tliat the student should have in his mind a clear outline of 
 the liistory of our literature from 1579 to about 1832. 
 From 1579 to 1660 we have the Elizabethan period, the 
 characteristic marks of which have been studied, and of 
 which Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser may be taken as 
 the representatives. From 1660 to 1798 the English 
 Classical or * correct ' school was supreme ; its representa- 
 tives are Dryden, Pope, and Johnson. From 1798 to 1832 
 we have the Pomantic period, which may be represented 
 by Wordsworth. There are so many points of resemblance 
 between the Elizabethan and the Romantic periods that 
 the latter is often called the Second Romantic period. If 
 the fact of the resemblance is clearly borne in mind, the 
 nomenclature is not of very great moment ; and it is just 
 as necessary to remember that there are important differ- 
 ences between the two 'romantic' periods as that there 
 are fundamental resemblances. At present we are con- 
 cerned with the cleavage and contrast between the 
 Elizabethan and the Classical periods. This contrast 
 extends to each division of literature : poetry, drama, and 
 prose. The changes that took place are perhaps most 
 easily expounded and exemplified in connection with 
 poetry ; but the fact must be clearly borne in mind that 
 changes of a similar and equally far-reaching character are 
 seen in drama and in prose. Further, the changes in poetry 
 affect equally the matter and the form, the latter including 
 both metre and diction. It is to be particularly noted 
 
 103
 
 ROMANTIO AND CLASSIC. 103 
 
 that subject-matter, metre, and diction did not change 
 pari passu, though the changes under all three heads 
 culminated in Pope ; nor were the ' classicists ' them- 
 selves so quickly conscious of the changes isu matter and 
 in diction as of the changes in metre, upon which from 
 the first they prided themselves. The changes in metre 
 must therefore be dealt with in this chapter, whilst it 
 will be better to defer diction and subject-matter to a later 
 stage (see chap. vii.). 
 
 A word of explanation is necessary as to the selection 
 TK t™ and meaning of the terms 'classic,' 'correct,' 
 
 Ine terms . rm z i • » • • i i i 
 
 'Classic' and ' romantic. ihe classic writers prided them- 
 ' ^^o'naiitic.' ggiygg OQ their imitation of the Greek and Latin 
 (especially the latter) classical authors, whom they regarded 
 as the ultimate authority in matters literary : hence they 
 delighted to call their epoch ' the Augustan age ' of 
 English literature. Their literary creed is concisely ex- 
 pressed by the critic Walsh, who had great influence on 
 Pope, when he wrote to the latter in 1706: 'The best of 
 the modern poets in all languages are those that have the 
 nearest copied the ancients.' Nevertheless a much better 
 word than ' classic ' would be ' pseudo-classic' Pope did 
 not translate Homer from the Greek, but from the Latin 
 version and the English of Chapman. 'Already Dryden,' 
 says Dr. A. W. Ward, 'when in the hot haste of his 
 literary life his better genius had found time to take counsel 
 with itself, had recognised the truth that the French classical 
 school was merely a French adaptation of classical rules — 
 and supposed classical rules — into a code which was French 
 rather than classical.' The term ' correct ' again was applied 
 by the classicists to themselves and their poetry. Pope 
 said to 8pence : ' Walsh used to tell me that there was 
 one way left of excelling; for though we had several 
 great poets, we never had any one great poet who was 
 correct, and he desired me to make that my study and aim.' 
 ' Late, very late, correctness grew our care, 
 When the tired nation breathed from civil war,' 
 sings Pope himself, and adds 
 
 ' Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, 
 The last and greatest art, the art to blot,'
 
 104 THE AGE OF DRYDEN". 
 
 or, in other words, 'In me, Alexander Pope, correctness 
 has, for the first time, attained its full and final consum- 
 mation.' There is a danger of our adopting Pope's narrow 
 meaning of ' correctness ' and admitting his claim ; a truer 
 criticism recognises in Milton a far higher standard of 
 correctness in the proper sense of the word. Lastly, the 
 term 'romantic' was first applied in its present literary 
 sense by the ' romantics ' of the early nineteenth century. 
 Pope and the ' Augustans ' had used the word in a depre- 
 ciatory sense (as th^y also used the word 'Q-othic'), to 
 mean 'sentimental,' almost at times as a vague antithesis 
 of ' classical' ; their successors took the despised word, and 
 applied it triumphantly to themselves and those with whom 
 they claimed kinship, the Elizabethans. 
 
 We have already seen that Milton conceived true 
 musical dehght to consist 'only in apt num- 
 
 Contrast bcrs, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense 
 
 uGiTWSGIl ^ / J. */ «/ / ^ 
 
 Elizabethan variously drawn out from one verse into 
 versificaTion ^-^^other, not in the jingling sound of like 
 endings.' If we put over against this a 
 quotation from Dryden (dedication of the ' Rival Ladies '), 
 we shall see that these two leaders of the EHzabethan and 
 Classic schools of poetry were agreed as to their respective 
 characteristics. 'Eime,' writes Dryden, 'has all the advan- 
 tages of prose besides its own. But the excellence and 
 dignity of it were never fully known till Mr. AValler first 
 taught it ; he first made writing easily an art ; first shewed 
 us to conclude the sense most commonly in distichs 
 [couplets] ; which in the verse of those before him runs 
 on for so many lines together that the reader is out of 
 breath to overtake it.' It is evident that if this is 
 Dryden's serious opinion and is confirmed by his contem- 
 poraries, it is a very important pronouncement for the 
 understanding of their poetic standards and ideals. 
 Fortunately the Classic writers leave us in no doubt on the 
 point. Dryden, Addison, Pope, Prior, and Johnson repeat 
 the same statements in other words. ' Even after Chaucer 
 there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before 
 Waller and Denham were in being : and our numbers 
 were in their nonage tiU these last appeared.' ' The
 
 WALLER. 105 
 
 sweetness of English verse was never understood or 
 practised by our fathers. . . ; Everyone was willing to 
 acknowledge how much our poesy is improved by the 
 happiness of some writers yet living who first taught us 
 to mould oiu' thoughts into easy and significant words ; to 
 retrench the superfluities of expression ; and to make our 
 rhyme so properly a part of the verse, that it should never 
 mislead the sense, but itself be led and governed by it.' 
 ' Mr. Waller was indeed the parent of English verse, and 
 the first that shewed us our tongue had numbers and beauty 
 in it. . . . Verse before Mr. Waller was but downright 
 prose tagged with rimes.' There can be no mistaking 
 the plain meaning or the self-gratulating tone of these 
 passages: 'Chaucer, Spenser,' — Shakespeare apparently 
 was not regarded as a poet — ' and others did their poetical 
 best in their day, but imfortunately for them they lived in 
 the dark ages of English poetry, before the glorious light 
 of day was revealed ; the harbinger of that day was 
 Waller, and we are enjoying its resplendent noontide.' 
 And who was this Mr. AValler, who ' first made writing 
 
 easily an art'? He was a relative of Crom- 
 Edmund well' 8 and in politics a veritable Vicar of 
 1605-1087. Bray. Though we no longer lavish upon him 
 
 the panegyrics of the Augustans, he has 
 immense significance as the founder of the school of 
 poetry of which we take Dryden and Pope as the chief 
 representatives. In 1623, when Ben Jonson and Chapman 
 and Drayton were the poets most in vogue. Waller wrote 
 a long poem on the exciting incident of the moment, the 
 danger Prince Charles had just escaped on the return 
 voyage from Spain. Here are seven couplets from the 
 poem 'On the Prince's Escape at St. Andero' [Santander]: 
 
 ' What the prophetic Muse intends, alone 
 To him that feels that secret wound is known. 
 With the sweet sound of this harmonioiia lay, 
 Ahout the keel delighted dolphins play ; 
 So sure a sign of sea's ensuing rage, 
 "Which must anon this royal troop engage ; 
 To whom soft sleep seems more secure and sweet, 
 Within the town commanded by our fleet.
 
 106 THE AGE OF DBYDEl^. 
 
 These mighty peers placed in the gilded barge, 
 Proud with the burthen of bo brave a charge, 
 With painted oars the youths begin to sweep 
 Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep : 
 Which soon becomes the seat of sudden war 
 Between the wind and tide that fiercely jar.' 
 
 ' The prosody of such lines as these is quite undistinguish- 
 able from that of the Classic school from 1660 to the close 
 of the seventeenth century. Dryden proceeded no further 
 than this in the mere execution of the distich, and it was 
 only in the hands of Pope that it received a further polish 
 and rapidity.' We see clearly Waller's immense importance 
 from the historic point of view, when we compare his 
 verses above with the following lines from Ben Jonson's 
 ' To the Memory of my beloved Master William Shakes- 
 speare ' (prefixed to the First Folio), written in the 
 same year and in the same metre, that is to say, in heroic 
 couplets : 
 
 * And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, 
 
 From thence to honour thee, I would not seek 
 
 For names, but call forth thund'ring ^schylus, 
 
 Euripides, and Sophocles to us, 
 
 Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 
 
 To life again, to hear thy buskin tread. 
 
 And shake a stage ; or when thy socks were on, 
 
 Leave thee alone for a comparison 
 
 Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome 
 
 Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 
 
 Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, 
 
 To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 
 He was not of an age, but for all time ! 
 
 And all the Muses still were in their prime, 
 
 When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm 
 
 Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm ! ' 
 
 Or compare them with these lines from Chapman's 
 ' Odyssey ' (1615) in the same metre : 
 
 'Lately in Delos (with a charge of men 
 Arriv'd, that render'd me most wretched then, 
 Now making me thus naked) I beheld 
 The burthen of a palm, whose issue swell'd 
 About Apollo's fane, and that put on 
 A grace like thee ; for Earth had never none 
 Of all her sylvan issue so adorn'd. 
 Into amaze my very soul waa tum'd,
 
 ROMANTIC AND CLASSIC. 107 
 
 To give it observation ; as now thee 
 
 To view, virgin, a stupidity 
 
 Past admiration strikes me, join'd with fear 
 
 To do a suppliant's due, and press so near 
 
 As to embrace thy knees.' 
 
 Probably tbe reader's first impression may have been 
 that Waller's lines are in a different metre 
 Komantio and from Jonson's and Chapman's, and indeed they 
 couplets, are in the same metre so differently handled as 
 to become practically a different metre. 'For,' 
 as Herford says, ' nothing can be more unlike in effect 
 than verse in which the sense runs freely on, and that in 
 which a pause at the end of a line or couplet is habitual. 
 In the latter case the rime, coinciding with the divisions 
 of the sense, only accentuates its regularity, just as the 
 recurring strokes of the drum emphasize the regular 
 march of soldiers ; in the former, the very symmetry of 
 the rime throws off the unrestraint of the sense, as the 
 same drum heightens the effect of an irregular march.' 
 If AValler's lines are carefully compared with Jonson's 
 and Chapman's ; or, still better, if a book of Pope's ' Essay 
 on Man ' be compared with the same number of lines from 
 Chapman's ' Odyssey ' and the same number from Keats's 
 ' Endjmion ' ; some curious results will be arrived at. It 
 is not possible to make an exhaustive comparison here, but 
 one or two divergences will put the student on the right 
 track. In the first place, each of Waller's (or Pope's) 
 couplets is a stanza of two lines ; whereas Jonson's and 
 Chapman's lines, but for the rimes, more nearly resemble 
 Milton's blank verse than any stanza. Waller has a 
 stop of some kind at the close of each couplet ; seven of 
 the Eomantic couplets have no stop of any kind at the 
 close. Secondly, if the pause or 'overflow,' as the case 
 may be, at the end of the first lino of each couplet, be 
 examined, it will be found that the pause is much more 
 marked and 'overflow' much less common in Waller's 
 lines than in Jonson's or Chapman's; and if we put 
 Pope in place of Waller the contrast would be more 
 striking. Such a thing as a full stop at the end of the 
 first line of a couplet, as in Chapman's seventh line, could
 
 108 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. 
 
 hardly be paralleled in a Classic poet. And so one might 
 continue. But mere figures cannot prove much in poetry, 
 and it will be better to return and read even these short 
 passages again and again until their utterly different move- 
 ment is felt to the full. 
 
 By limiting the comparison, as above, to the heroic 
 
 couplets of the two schools, the points of dif- 
 Jon^ extended, fereuco are clearly focused, but they are also 
 
 restricted within the narrowest possible bounds. 
 If the limitation be removed and Romantic versification 
 be compared with Classic versification generally, it will 
 be understood that the differences will be much more 
 marked. It will be seen that the versification of the one 
 school admits every possible irregularity in its feet and in 
 its lines, while that of the other is characterised by the 
 formal ' correctness ' on which it prided itself. Their 
 choice of metre is equally significant : the chosen metre 
 of the Classics is that which allows least freedom and 
 scope to the individuality of the writer, the heroic couplet; 
 if the Romantics have a chosen metre, it is blank verse, 
 the most complete antithesis to the couplet, but it would 
 be truer to say that Romanticism tries all metres and 
 binds itself slave to none. The watchword of the one 
 school, in versification as in all else, is liberty, that of the 
 other is order. Liberty may tend towards license, and 
 such a tendency it was in the later Elizabethan times 
 which necessitated the Classic reaction, in itself a good 
 and healthy change and full of promise for the future of 
 literature, though its dominance was unduly prolonged. 
 One word of caution : let the student never forget that 
 form in poetry, though of its essence, is but the outward 
 and visible sign ; and that changes in form, such as those 
 we have been considering, are but tokens of deep changes 
 in the matter and spirit of literature, about which more 
 will be said in the next chapter. 
 
 John Dryden was, like Chaucer, a great craftsman in 
 
 English letters ; a man at first none too well 
 "^"i^i^mo!"' equipped for his profession, but blessed with an 
 
 open mind that could learn and did learn much; 
 a man who almost always got up from a piece of work wiser
 
 DRYDEN. 109 
 
 than he sat down to it ; who warmed to his work, though 
 he never seemed to bring inspiration to it, until he ahnost 
 became inspired by it ; one who, though his lot miglit have 
 been cast in happier times, made the most of his opportun- 
 ities, and has left a record in the history of English poetry 
 and prose that can never be effaced. For a large share 
 of the credit that he himself gave to Waller belongs to 
 Dryden in poetry, together with as large a share of the 
 credit that is sometimes given to Sprat and Cowley in 
 prose. 
 
 Dryden's literary life falls into three distinct periods. 
 The first, ending with 1681, is mainly the period of 
 drama. Dryden disciplined himself into writing dramas — 
 at one time he covenanted to produce three a year for one 
 company — because they paid, but his real genius lay in 
 other directions. The second period, fi-om 1681 to the 
 Revolution, saw the pubhcation of all his greatest works. 
 The third, from 1689 to his death, was the period of 
 miscellaneous production — ' fables,' translations, elegies, 
 writing to order for the booksellers. It may be useful to 
 mention all his principal works with brief comments. Of 
 his dramas the most important are his ' heroic plays,' 
 among which the best are ' The Indian Emperor ' and 
 ' The Conquest of Granada.' He was afterwards so 
 ashamed of the rant and fustian that abound in these 
 that he ridiculed one of them in his ' Mac Flecknoe ' ; 
 but they served to perfect his powers of versification in 
 the couplet in preparation for the great satires. The 
 'heroic plays' were admirably burlesqued in the Duke 
 of Buckingham's * Rehearsal.' In non-dramatic pootrj', 
 ' Annus Mirabilis ' celebrates, in the heroic quatrain, the 
 year of the Fire of London (1666); 'Religio Laici' is 
 a reasoned confession of faith; 'The Hind (Church of 
 Rome) and the Panther ' (Church of England) is a con- 
 troversial defense of his newly-adopted Roman Catholicism ; 
 'Alexander's Feast' is a magnificent ode written for St. 
 Cecilia's Day ; ' The Fables ' are mainly paraphrases and 
 modernisations of Boccaccio and Chaucer; the 'Trans- 
 lation of Yirgil ' is a more faithful and spirited piece of 
 work than Pope's ' Homer.'
 
 110 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. 
 
 Of the above, only tlie ' Eeligio Laici ' and the ' Hind 
 and the Panther ' are disputable masterpieces ; 
 ^^ieces*"' ^^* ^^® three pieces not yet named, ' Absalom 
 and Achitophel ' (Monmouth and Shaftesbury), 
 * The Medal,' and ' Mac Flecknoe ' (Shadwell), all produced 
 ■within the space of twelve months (1681-2), are indisput- 
 ably the masterpieces of English satire. ' Dryden is our 
 greatest reasoner in verse ' ; we admit the claim, while 
 deprecating reasoning in verse. But when the reasoning 
 is joined with satire, we acknowledge at once that what 
 we are reading is executed with infinitely greater pre- 
 cision and finish than would have been possible in prose. 
 But let the reader judge for himself. Here are three 
 extracts of sufficient length : the first is from the ' Hind 
 and the Panther' (the Bear is the Independent, the 
 Hare the Quaker, the Ape the Freethinker, the Lion 
 the King, the Boar the Anabaptist, and Eeynard the 
 Arian) ; the second is the character of Zinu'i (Bucking- 
 ham, the author of the 'Rehearsal') in 'Absalom and 
 Achitophel ' ; the third is the opening of ' Mac Plecknoe * 
 (Shadwell). 
 
 * The bloody Bear, an independent beast, 
 Unlicked to form, in groans her hate expressed. 
 Among the timorous kind the quaking Hare 
 Professed neutralit}% but would not swear. 
 Next her the buffoon Ape, as atheists use, 
 Mimicked all sects and had his own to chuse ; 
 Still when the Lion looked, his knees he bent. 
 And paid at church a courtier's compliment. 
 The bristled baptist Boar, impure as he, 
 But whitened with the foam of sanctity, 
 With fat pollutions fiUed the sacred place 
 And mountains levelled in his furious race ; 
 So first rebellion founded was in grace. 
 But, since the mighty ravage which he made 
 In German forests had his guilt betraj^ed, 
 "With broken tusks and with a borrowed name. 
 He shunned the vengeance and concealed the shame, 
 So lurked in sects unseen. With greater guile 
 False Eeynard fed on consecrated spoil ; 
 The graceless beast by Athanasius first 
 Was chased from Nice, then by Socinus nursed, 
 His impious race their blasphemy renewed ,
 
 DRYDEX. Ill 
 
 And Nature's King through Nature's optics viewed ; 
 Reversed they viewed him lessened to their eye, 
 Nor in an infant could a God descry. 
 New swarming sects to this obliquely tend, 
 Hence they began, and here they all will end. 
 What weight of ancient witness can prevail, 
 If private reason hold the public scale ? 
 But, gracious God, how well dost Thou provido 
 For erring judg-ments an unerring guide ! 
 Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light, 
 A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. 
 teach me to believe Thee thus concealed, 
 And search no farther than Thy self revealed ; 
 But her alone for my director take. 
 Whom thou hast promised never to forsalce ! 
 My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires ; 
 My manhood, long misled by wandering fires. 
 Followed false lights ; and when their glimpse was 
 
 gone. 
 My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. 
 Such was I, such by nature still I am ; 
 Be Thine the glory and be mine the shame ! ' 
 
 ' Some of their chiefs were princes of the land ; 
 In the first rank of these did Zimri stand, 
 A man so various that he seemed to be 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
 Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
 But in the course of one revolving moon 
 Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; 
 Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
 Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
 Blest madman, who could every hour employ 
 With something new to wish or to enjoy ! 
 Kailing and praising were his usual themes. 
 And both, to show his judgment, in extremes : 
 So over violent or over ci^'il 
 That every man with him was God or Devil. 
 In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 
 Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 
 Beggared by fools whom still he found too late. 
 He had his jest, and they had his estate. 
 He laughed himself from Court ; then sought relief 
 By forming p;irties, but could ne'er be chief : 
 For spite of him, the weight of business fell 
 On Absalom and wise Achitophel ; 
 Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, 
 He left not faction, but of that was left.'
 
 1 1 2 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. 
 
 ' All human things are subject to decay 
 And, "when Fate summons, monarchs must obey. 
 This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young 
 Was called to empire and had governed long. 
 In prose and verse was owned without dispute 
 Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute. 
 This aged prince, now flourishing in peace 
 And blest with issue of a large increase, 
 Worn out with business, did at length debate 
 To settle the succession of the state ; 
 And pondering which of all his sons was fit 
 To reign and wage immortal war with wit, 
 Cried, " 'Tis resolved, for Nature pleads that he 
 Should only rule who most resembles me. 
 Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, 
 Mature in dulness from his tender years ; 
 Shadwell alone of all my sons is he 
 Who stands confii-med in full stupidity. 
 The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, 
 But Shadwell never deviates into sense. 
 Some beams of wit on other souls may fall. 
 Strike through and make a lucid interval ; 
 But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, 
 His rising fogs prevail upon the day. 
 Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye 
 And seems desig-ned for thoughtless majesty, 
 Thoughtless as monarch oaks that shade the plain 
 And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign. 
 Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee, 
 Thou last great prophet of tautology. 
 Even I, a dunce of more renown than they, 
 Was sent before but to prepare thy way. 
 And coarsely clad in Norwich drugget came 
 To teach the nations in thy greater name." ' 
 
 * Nowhere else is tlie easy wing-stroke of the couplet, at 
 once propelling the poet through the upper air and slapping 
 his victim in the face at every beat, so triumphantly and 
 coolly manifested.' 
 
 In an interesting passage of his ' Essay on Satire ' 
 Dryden gives us his own recipe : * How easy 
 
 ^'■y^'^'^ it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily. 
 But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a 
 blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those oppro- 
 brious terms ! . . . This is the mystery of that noble trade. 
 . . . Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive:
 
 Dryden's satire. 113 
 
 a, witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and 
 a fool feels it not. . . . There is a vast difference betwixt the 
 slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke 
 that separates the head from the body and leaves it 
 standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack 
 Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, 
 of a bare hanging ; but to make a malefactor die sweetly 
 was only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply 
 it to myself, if the reader would be kind enough to think 
 it belongs to me. The character of Zimvi in my "Absalom" 
 is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem. It is not 
 bloody, but it is ridiculous enough, and he for whom it 
 was intended was too witty to resent it as an injury. ... 
 I avoided the mention of gi-eat crimes, and applied myself 
 to the representing of blind sides and little extravagances, 
 to which, the wittier a man is, he is generally the more 
 obnoxious.' Perhaps the reader will not 'be kind enough 
 to think it belongs to Dryden on all occasions ; but 
 when Dryden comes to be compared with Pope — and the 
 supremacy in verse satire certainly lies between them — it 
 will be seen how much the nearer of the two he is to 
 the ideal satirist. Pich, massive, intensely vigorous and 
 virile is Dryden. The red-hot energy which with him 
 ensures a liquid ease of expression and gives warmth and 
 hfe to all the satirical portraits; their inimitable pre- 
 cision which, though not so minutely exact as Pope's, has 
 a range of application far beyond his, and an ease and 
 freedom peculiar to themselves ; the clear reasoning so 
 convincing to the reader, perhaps aU the more because 
 it requires so little effort to follow ; the utter absence 
 of any cold timidity or di-owsy hesitation of expression — 
 these are the great qualities of Dryden's best poetry. 
 
 No English man of letters has ever received such glowing 
 tributes of admiration from contemporaries and successors 
 as * glorious John.' Pope avowed that he learned versifi- 
 cation wholly from Dryden's works, Dryden who 
 
 ' taught to join 
 The varj-ing verse, the full-resounding line, 
 The long majestic march, and energy diyine.' 
 ENO. LIT. 8
 
 114 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. 
 
 Gray describes the vigour of Dryden's style as a car borne 
 wide over the fields of glory by 
 
 ' Two coursers of ethereal race 
 With necks in thunder clothed and long-resounding pace ; ' 
 
 and asseverates that *if there is any excellence in my 
 numbers, I have learned it wholly from that great poet.' 
 And Landor wrote of him : 
 
 ' None ever crossed our mystic sea 
 IMore richly stored with thought than he ; 
 Though never tender or sublime, 
 He wrestles with and conquers Time.' 
 
 In turning from poetry to prose we do not tui-n away 
 from Dryden, who may truly be called 
 
 1660-1700 *^® father of modern prose style. Sprat and 
 Cowley and (he himseK added) Tillotson 
 anticipated him in prose as Waller did in poetry ; but in 
 each case, it may be said, Dryden made the reformed style 
 acceptable and brought it into acceptance. In a memor- 
 able passage Matthew Ai'uold compares the thi'ee periods 
 of prose which we have labelled 'tentative,' 'grand,' and 
 ' measured ' respectively. * When we find Chaj)iiian, the 
 Elizabethan translator of Homer, expressing himself in his 
 preface thus: "Though truth in her very nakedness sits 
 in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and Ganges 
 few eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here will so 
 discover and confirm, that, the date being out of her dark- 
 ness in this morning of our poet, he shall now gird his 
 temj)les with the sun," — we pronounce that such a prose 
 is intolerable. When we find Milton writing: "And long 
 it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, 
 that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write 
 well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a 
 true poem," — we pronounce that such a prose has its own 
 grandeur, but that it is obsolete and inconvenient. But 
 when we find Dryden telling us : " What Yirgil wrote in 
 the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have under- 
 taken to translate in my declining years ; struggling with 
 wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, 
 liable to be misconstrued in all I write," — then we
 
 dryden's prose. 115 
 
 exclaim that here at last we have the true English prose, 
 a prose such as we would all gladly use if we only knew 
 how.' We have gone back in verse in large measure to 
 the waj's of the Elizabethans, but in prose the reforms in 
 syntax and sentence-moulding introduced after the Restora- 
 tion still hold their own. Addison and Swift, Johnson and 
 Goldsmith, may have completed the prose reforms of 
 Dryden, but we can never go back upon his work. Take 
 him where you will, apart from minor differences in idiom, 
 you will find him always the same, always clear and 
 always modern. The following extract is from the 'Essay 
 of Dramatic Poesy ' (1667) : 
 
 * As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look 
 upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were hut his 
 dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which 
 any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as 
 well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, hut rather that he 
 was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or 
 alter. Wit and language, and humour also, in some measure, we had 
 before him ; hut something of art was wanting to the drama till he 
 came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who 
 preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, 
 or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and 
 saturnine to do it gracefully ; especially when he knew he came after 
 those who had performed both to such a height. 
 
 Humour was his proper sphere ; and in that he delighted most to 
 represent mechanic people, 
 
 He was deeply conversant in the Ancients, both Greek and Latin; 
 and he borrowed boldly from them. There is scarce a poet or his- 
 torian, among the Eoman authors of those times, whom he has not 
 translated in " Sejanus " and " Catiline." But he has done his 
 robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any 
 law. lie invades authors like a monarch ; and what would be theft 
 in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these 
 writers, he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and 
 customs, that if one of their own poets had written either of his 
 tragedies, wc had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault 
 in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously 
 in his serious plays. Perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize 
 our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much
 
 116 THE AGE OF DRYDEN. 
 
 Latin as he found them : wherein, though he learnedly followed the 
 idiom of their language, he did not enough comply with ours. 
 
 If I would compare him with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge 
 him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit. 
 Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets ; Jonson 
 was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing ; I admire him, but I 
 love Shakespeare.' 
 
 When prose like this is compared with that of Dryden'a 
 predecessors, it will be seen that some of the reforms he 
 effected are these. He swept away, for the most part, 
 parentheses, quotations, involutions, qualifications and after- 
 thoughts in the sentence ; they must be sejiarate sentences : 
 he made the sentence the unit of prose style, in place of 
 the paragraph. He did away with the Latin constructions 
 which could only lead to obscurity in an uninflected 
 language. He banished from the vocabulary all words 
 not generally intelligible, whether Latinisms or barbar- 
 isms. He avoided quaint phrases, far-fetched analogies, 
 complicated antitheses. He cultivated the native Saxon 
 idiom, and achieved a greater ease of style, in accordance 
 with the needs of the time. 
 
 But there was one contemporary of Dryden's, the 
 author of the greatest imaginative work of his age, whose 
 work stands clear of the literary tradition and tendencies 
 of the time. Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress 
 Jota Bunyan, f j-Qm this World to that which is to Come ' 
 unites many of the merits of the grand prose 
 of Milton and the measured prose of Dry den. Its author 
 was a poor tinker, who, after his conversion, became a 
 local preacher, spent twelve years in Bedford jail through 
 the tender sohcitude of the regular clergy, and after his 
 release became a resident pastor to the Baptists of Bedford, 
 known as 'Bishop Bunyan.' It is a moot point whether 
 this humble Puritan is not the greatest of English alle- 
 gorists : probably most people who are competent to judge 
 would say that he is. His voice has gone out into all the 
 world, for the 'Pilgrim's Progress' has been translated 
 into more languages than any other book except the 
 ' Bible ' and the ' De Imitatione Christi ' of Thomas a
 
 BUNTAIT. 117 
 
 Kempis. Even sturdy old Tory Dr. Johnson ranked it 
 with ' Don Quixote ' and * Robinson Crusoe ' as the only 
 books one wishes longer than they are. He asked Bishop 
 Percy's little daughter what she thought of it : she had 
 not read it. ' No ! then I would not give one farthing for 
 you,' and he put her down from his knee. All things 
 considered, it is one of the miracles of literature. The 
 allegory is maintained with unparalleled consistency. The 
 style is simple, without slang or bad grammar. The 
 power and ' grip ' of the narrative must have been felt by 
 every Englishman. Every impartial critic, pagan and 
 Christian alike, has appreciated the exalted merits of the 
 work, both in allegorical narrative and in simple manly yet 
 beautiful prose. Our illustration of Bunyan's style may 
 be called ' Christian and Hopeful in Doubting Castle.' 
 
 ' Now, night being come again, and the giant and his wife being in 
 bed, she asked him concerning the prisoners, and if they had taken 
 his counsel : to which he replied, They are sturdy rogues ; they 
 choose rather to bear all hardships than to make away with them- 
 selves. Then said she, Take them into the castle yard to-morrow, 
 and show them the bones and skulls of those that thou hast already 
 dispatched, and make them believe, ere a week comes to an end, thou 
 wilt tear them in pieces, as thou hast done their fellows before them. 
 
 So when the morning was come, the giant goes to them again, 
 and takes them into the castle yard, and shows them as his wife had 
 bidden him. These, said he, were pilgrims, as you are, once, 
 and they trespassed on my grounds, as you have done ; and, when l 
 thought lit, 1 tore them in pieces ; and so within ten days 1 will do 
 you. Go, get you down to your den again. And with that he beat 
 them all the way thither. They lay, therefore, all day on Saturday 
 in a lamentable case, as before. Now, when night was come, and 
 when Mrs. Diflidence, and her husband the giant, was got to bed, they 
 began to renew their discourse of their prisoners ; and, withal, the old 
 giant wondered that he could neither by his blows nor coimsel bring 
 them to an end. And with that his wife replied, I fear, said she, 
 that they live in hopes that some will come to relieve them ; or that 
 they have picklocks about them, by the means of which they hope 
 to escape. And sayest thou so, my dear? said the giant. I will 
 therefore search them in the morning.
 
 118 THE AGE OF DEYDEN. 
 
 Well, on Saturday, aljout midnight, they began to pray, and 
 continued in prayer till almost break of day. 
 
 Now, a little before it was day, good Christian, as one half amazed, 
 brake out into this passionate speech : What a fool, quoth he, 
 am I thus to lie in a stinldng dungeon, when I may as well walk at 
 liberty ! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am 
 persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle. Then said Hopeful, 
 That is good news : good brother, pluck it out of thy bosom, and 
 try. 
 
 Then Christian pulled it out of his bosom, and began to try at the 
 dungeon door, whose bolt, as he turned the key, gave back, and the 
 door flew open with ease, and Christian and Hopeful both came out. 
 Then he went to the outward door that leads into the castle yard, and 
 with his key opened that door also. After that he went to the iron 
 gate, for that must be opened too ; but that lock went damnable 
 hard, yet the key did open it. They then thrust open the gate to 
 make their escape wilh speed ; but that gate, as it opened, made such a 
 creaking that it waked Giant Desjiair, who, hastily rising to pursue 
 his prisoners, felt his limbs to fail ; for his fits took him again, so 
 that he could by no moans go after them. Then they went on, and 
 came to the King's highway, and so were safe, because they were out 
 of his jui'isdictioB.'
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1740 A.D.). 
 
 ALTnoTJon the early eighteenth, century may weU be called 
 the * age of prose and reason,' its most typical 
 "^age!'^*" representative is a poet; this seeming paradox 
 is partly explained by the fact that Pope is the 
 most prosaic of our great poets. Rossetti said that Pope's 
 was ' a prose style twisted into verse.' Furious controversy 
 has raged about the question, whether Pope was a poet at 
 all ; and again over the assertion that the largest part of 
 his works, being ' of the didactic, moral and satiric ' order, 
 is ' not of the most poetic species of poetry.' What was no 
 doubt meant by this assertion was that Pope's poetry was 
 not of the highest or most imaginative kind, and in those 
 terms the proposition would now receive universal assent ; 
 indeed the writers of that day, both in England and in 
 France, may be held to prove it by their own statements. 
 They furnish evidence, which is to us amusing by its 
 ingenuousness, that they regarded poetry as ' a more 
 affected prose subjected to rime.' Buifon said, in praise 
 of certain verses, that they were as fine as fine prose. 
 Dryden says in his JJ|eligio Laici ' : 
 
 ' And this ^^olished, ragged verse I chose, 
 As fittest for discourse and nearest prose.^ 
 
 Again in the Preface to his ' Fables,' he writes : 'my only 
 difficulty is ... to run them into verse or to give them 
 the other harmony of prose.' Pope uses almost identical 
 language in the design of his ' Essay on Man ' : * I chose 
 verse,' because 'I found I could express principles, maxims, 
 or precepts more shortly this way than in prose itself.' If 
 poffa nascitur, non fit, it is obvious that verse is not a 
 
 119
 
 120 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 deliberate choice with him but a necessity ; and that 
 Dryden, in hesitating between verse and prose, was not 
 in a poet's dilemma. 
 
 It will probably help towards the understanding of the 
 Compared ^o® ^^ Pope, if WO Contrast it with the Eliza- 
 with earlier bethau age and compare it with the age of 
 ages. Dryden : this may also tend to confirm what 
 has been already learnt about those ages. In Elizabeth's 
 day Englishmen were just waking up to the vastness and 
 fulness of existence; they thirsted for every cup, and 
 grasped recklessly at the golden fruit of good and evil; 
 they seemed to reel with an intoxicating sense of the 
 immensity of life and the greatness of the world. The 
 one quality they conspicuously lacked was temperance, 
 sobriety. Hence the extraordinary brilliance, the many- 
 coloured variety, the multifarious incongruity of their life 
 wore them out so soon. Hence too their literature was 
 inspired by passion and imagination ; and form was partly 
 disregarded in, partly made subservient to, the unrestrained 
 expression of thought and feeling. But with the cooling 
 of passion and emotion, with the replacement of spon- 
 taneity and ' abandon ' by reserve and introspection, with 
 fierce party feeling taking the place of patriotism, chief 
 attention came to be directed to correctness and neatness 
 of expression and the critical rules of art, which finally 
 developed a cold exactness and perfection of form, unbroken 
 by the sudden pauses and turns of thought natural to pas- 
 sion and imagination. On the cooling of creative and 
 imaginative impulses reflection and criticism invariably 
 supervene. Thus the age of Dryden is seen to be the 
 commencement of a prolonged critical period, intervening 
 between two great creative periods of our literature. All 
 the tendencies developed in the age of Dryden become 
 more pronounced in the age of Pope. Dryden himself 
 perhaps was never altogether comfortable in the triumph 
 of French standards in taste and French principles in 
 criticism, though he did more than all others combined 
 to bring it about. * He was always like a deserter 
 who cannot feel happy in the victories of the alien arms, 
 and who would go back if he could to the camp where ixti
 
 THE AOE OF COMMON SENSE. 121 
 
 naturally belonged.' But Pope had no such qualms. His 
 little finger was thicker than his master's loins. 
 
 The age of Pope was outwardly more respectable than 
 
 that of Dryden, but inwardly more rotten; 
 Tiie character it was an age of whited sepulchres. It 
 
 mattered little that within it was full of dead 
 men's bones and all uncleanness, so long as the outside 
 was whited. Nothing mattered greatly so long as out- 
 ward respectability was maintained. Open immorality is 
 never so dangerous as a sham morality, and it is therefore 
 no matter of surprise that imaginative Hterature in this 
 age touched the lowest point it has reached in modern 
 times. 'It is an unnatural age, because licentious in 
 every direction except that of the form which, by its own 
 authority, it has chosen as the exponent of its very spirit 
 and essence.' Swift said that *a nice man is a man of 
 nasty ideas.' Exactly in that sense and for that reason 
 the age of Pope is ' a nice age.' Moreover, it was a time 
 of political strife and uncertainty. The whole nation 
 was divided for a time into Hanoverians and Jacobites ; 
 treason was so rife that no one could trust his neighbour. 
 Almost all writers could be bought; even the best of 
 them, with few exceptions, were in the pay or service of 
 one political party or the other. Literature became the 
 handmaid of politics and of statecraft. 
 
 There is at least one respect in which 'Augustan' 
 
 literature has a claim to high rank : it reflects 
 ^lifeS? faithfully the character of the age. It was a 
 
 time marked by negation of faith, absence of 
 enthusiasm, social and religious conformity to the con- 
 ventionalities of respectability, a shallow rationalistic or 
 theistic philosophy, and an engrossing absorption in town 
 life to the exclusion of the healthier interests of the 
 country. All these features equally mark its literature, 
 which was almost exclusively didactic, moral and satiric. 
 'It is time enough,' wrote Pope in 1722, 'to like, or 
 affect to hke, the country, when one is out of love with 
 all but one's self.' Queen Anne pastorals 'affect to 
 like' the country, but 'a library and a poulterer's 
 shop' furnish all their material. One word summarises
 
 122 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 * Augustan ' literature — common sense : common sense 
 glorified, deified, beprosed, berimed, and bestanzaed 
 almost out of all recognition of itself. 'Wit and fine 
 writing,' says Addison after Boileau, ' doth not consist 
 so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving 
 things that are knoiv7i an agreealle turn. It is impossible 
 for us who live in the latter ages of the world to make 
 observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, 
 which have not been touched upon by others. We have 
 little else left us, but to represent the common sense of man- 
 kind in more strong, more heautiftil, or more uncommon lights.' 
 
 ' True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd, 
 What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd ' — 
 
 the same thought again. The utmost brilliance of form 
 combined with sheer banality of matter — that is Augustan 
 literature. Its highest development at that time has been 
 compared to flowers imitated in pearls and diamonds and 
 precious stones. * A noble language, an oratorical pomp, a 
 classical correctness reign throughout. . . Men seized those 
 universal and limited truths, which being situated between 
 lofty philosoj)hical abstractions and petty sensible details, 
 are the subject-matter of eloquence and rhetoric, and form 
 what we now-a-days call commonplaces. . . . Men had 
 special need of setting their ideas in order, and of seeing 
 them very distinctly in very clear phrases. Now that this 
 need is satisfied, it has disappeared ; we demand ideas, not 
 arrangement of ideas.' But probably the best thing that 
 has ever been said or written about Pope's epoch is Shairp's 
 simile, every phrase of which vividly s3'nibolises some one 
 of its features. ' What most strikes one in the poetry of 
 the Pope and Addison period, is its external character and 
 its limited range of subjects. Literature appeared like a 
 well-bred, elderly gentleman in rufiles and peruke, of 
 polished but somewhat chilhng manners, who met all 
 wai-mth of feeling with the frost of etiquette, and whose 
 conversation, restricted to certain subjects, touched but the 
 surface of these, and even that in set phrases.' 
 
 'In set phrases,' that is, in ' poetic diction.' It will be 
 remembered that the contrast between Eomantic and Classic 
 English poetry was to be dealt with under the heads of
 
 POETIC DICTION. 128 
 
 versification, subject-matter, and diction. Versification was 
 dealt with in Chapter VI.; subject-matter has 
 Auction, been touched on above, and will be again in the 
 chapter on the age of Wordsworth ; it remains 
 to say something of diction here. Poetic diction is that system 
 of conventional titles, epithets and periphrases, which was 
 recognised as proper to metrical composition in the eigh- 
 teenth century. It originated in a desire for a language 
 and imagery distinct from those ordinarily used in conver- 
 sation and in prose, and was at first rather the reverse of 
 conventional. When the Elizabethans referred to the 
 the sun as 'Phoebus' and the moon as 'Diana,' these 
 were in no wise liackneyed or conventional terms whicli 
 must be used to the exclusion of others, but wore intended 
 partly to accustom the reader to the less familiar associa- 
 tions of the world of the imagination. If a wood was 
 called a ' grove ' it was no mere pedantic effort to use a 
 more uncommon word. But in the 'Augustan' age, 
 partly with a view to distinguish the language of poetry 
 from that of prose (and we have seen how dangerously 
 narrow the boundary had become), the direct naming of 
 common (not vulgar) things came to be regarded as un- 
 poetical. Hence arose conscious soiiliistications of lan- 
 guage, the hall-mark of the freemasonry of poetry, 
 which became at once rigid and rigorous. No one could 
 be a poet, nothing could be poetry, without the equipment 
 of this 'precious' jargon. It was no longer possible to 
 speak of birds or men, except in prose ; in poetry they 
 became 'the feathered quire' and 'swains' respectively. 
 Thus * poetic diction ' was a hardening into convention 
 of what had once been spontaneous and natural ; as 
 such it deserves condemnation, since its use militates 
 against the whole idea of poetry. 
 
 It must not be assumed from what has been said that 
 'Our excellent *^® ^^® ^^ Pope is without excellences of its 
 eighteenth own. ' The literature of the reign of Queen 
 century.' Anne was the expression of the better mind of 
 England when it had recovered itself through good sense 
 and moderation of temper from the Puritan excess and 
 from the Cavalier excess. Enthusiasm was discredited and
 
 124 THE AGB OF POPE. 
 
 faith had no wings to soar ; but it was something to have 
 attained to a sober way of regarding human life, and to 
 the provisional resting-place of a philosophical and theo- 
 logical compromise. Addison's humane smile, Pope's 
 ethics of good sense, and the exquisite feHcity of manner 
 in each writer, represent and justify the epoch.' Again, 
 hear Matthew Arnold : * A fit prose was a necessity ; but 
 it was impossible that a fit prose should establish itself 
 amongst us without some touch of frost to the imaginative 
 life of the soul. The needful qualities of a fit prose are 
 regularity, uniformity, precision, balance. The men of 
 letters, whose destiny it may be to bring their nation to 
 the attainment of a fit prose, must of necessity, whether 
 they work in prose or in verse, give a predominating, an 
 almost exclusive attention to the qualities of regularity, 
 uniformity, precision, balance. But an almost exclusive 
 attention to these qualities involves some repression and 
 silencing of poetry. We are to regard Dryden as the 
 puissant and glorious founder. Pope as the splendid high- 
 priest, of our age of prose and reason, of our excellent and 
 indispensable eighteenth century.' * Pope's ethics of good 
 sense,' 'Addison's humane style,' 'the attainment of a fit 
 prose' — these are the topics of the remainder of this 
 chapter. 
 
 Pope's life may be passed over, except for a few dis- 
 connected facts. His father was a tradesman 
 Pope, who made a comfortable fortune ; hence the 
 
 1688-1744. pQgi; ^g^g nevor in straitened circumstances, 
 and his ' Homer * secured him ample means of his own. 
 The family were Roman Catholics, and Pope remained in 
 that faith through life. He was always weak and sickly 
 in body, bald and deformed, and almost a dwarf. He was 
 an affectionate son and a faithful friend. In politics and 
 in the Scriblerus Club he associated with the Tories, 
 though professing himself neutral. These facts have all 
 some bearing on his work. In the ' Epistle to Arbuthnot ' 
 he himself says : 
 
 ' Why did I write ? what sin to me unknown 
 Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own ? 
 ^8 yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
 
 POPE. 125 
 
 I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came. 
 
 I left no calling for this idle trade, 
 
 No duty brok^, no father disobey'd. 
 
 The muse but scrv'd to ease some friend, not wife, 
 
 To help me through this long disease, my life.' 
 
 Pope's literary life, like Milton's and Dryden's, falls 
 
 naturally into three periods : the first may be called the 
 
 period of tentatives ; the second that of the translation of 
 
 Homer ; the third tlaat of original translation and satire. 
 
 His chief works, in chronological order, are 
 
 His works, the * Pastorals ' and 'Windsor Forest,' which 
 describe nature in terms of art and town life, 
 deck her out like a milliner's shop, and are admirable 
 iUustrationg of how not to write pastoral poetry; the 
 'Essay on Criticism' (1711), which summed up Pope's 
 poetical creed and that of his contemporaries ; the ' "Rape 
 of the Lock' (1714), which Addison pronounced to be 
 vienim sal, and which has been called 'the real epos of 
 society under Queen Anne, though designed as a 
 burlesque'; the 'Messiah,' which formed number 378 of 
 the 'Spectator'; 'Translation of Homer' (1715-1725); 
 ' Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard ' ; ' Edition of Shake- 
 speare ' ; the ' Dunciad ' ; ' Moral Essays ' ; ' Essay on 
 Man'; 'Satires and Epistles.' The third period begins 
 with the ' Dunciad ' and comprises nearly all the poet's 
 best work, produced between the years 1728 and 1738 
 inclusive. His fame among his contemporaries and 
 throughout the eighteenth century by no means rested 
 only on the later poems ; but with us it is quite possible 
 that his reputation would be higher if we possessed them 
 alone. It is not that his powers of versification are seen 
 to much better advantage in the ' Essay on Man ' than in 
 the ' Essay on Criticism ' ; the eternal snip-snap of his 
 serried couplets can be heard and appreciated, and then 
 anathematised, almost as well in the one as in the other ; 
 but in his last period, in the homoeopathic doses of 
 superficial philosophy in the * Essay on Man, ' still more in 
 the 'Moral Essays,* and most of all in the 'Satires and 
 Epistles,' Pope had hit upon the kind of writing in which his 
 genius found its most natural and most perfect eA-pression,
 
 126 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 We propose now to illustwte, by quotation and brief 
 comment, tlie chief defects and merits of Pope's poetry 
 and by implication of that of his school. 
 
 The ' Essay on Criticism ' was highly commended by 
 
 The ' Essay Addison, and the following famous passage, in 
 
 , on ^ which Pope ' exemplified several of his precepts 
 
 Criticism, jj^ the Very precepts themselves,' especially took 
 
 ' Mr. Spectator's ' fancy. 
 
 ' Eut most by numbers judge a poet's song, 
 And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong : 
 In the bright Muse, though thousand charms conspire, 
 Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ; 
 Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, 
 Not mend their minds ; as some to church repair, 
 Not for the doctrine, but the music there. 
 These equal syUaJJcs alone require, 
 Though oft the ear the open vowels tire ; 
 While ejfpletives their feeble aid do join, 
 And ten low words oft creep in one dull line ; 
 While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, 
 With sure returns of still expected rhymes ; 
 Where'er you find " the cooling western breeze," 
 In the next line it ' ' whispers through the trees ' ' : 
 If crystal streams " with pleasing murmurs creep," 
 The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "■ sleep " ; 
 Then at .the last and only couplet fraught 
 With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 
 A needless Alexandrine ends the song. 
 That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.' 
 
 Nothing .of Pope's shows so completely and finally the 
 difference between the tastes of his day and ours in poetry 
 rpj^g as his translation of Homer. * It is a pretty 
 translation of poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it 
 Homer. Homer,' Bentley is reported to have said. 
 With us it is not merely that it is not Homer, although 
 the contrast with the original doubtless accentuates all 
 its defects ; but it is also the grand storehouse of all the 
 abominations of the Classic ' poetic diction.' How this die- 
 lion enslaved eighteenth century poetty is seen in the way 
 Johnson wrote of the ' Homer ' sixty years after it appeared. 
 ' Pope has left in his Homer a treasure of poetical elegances 
 to posterity. His version tuned the English tongue ; for 
 since its appearance no writer, however deficient in other
 
 pope's 'homer.' 12? 
 
 powers, lias wanfed melody. Such a series of lines, so 
 elaborately corrected and so sweetly modulated, took pos- 
 session of the public ear New sentiments and new 
 
 images others »«iay produce ; but to attempt any further 
 improvement "of versification-will be dangerous. Art and 
 diligence have now done their best, and what shall be 
 added will be the effort of tedious toil and needless 
 ciu'iosity.' "We append a specimen of this final model of 
 English versification, in which the conspicuous instances of 
 'poetic diction ' are indicated by italics. 
 
 ' The troops exulting sat in order round, 
 And beaming fires illumined all the ground. 
 As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 
 O'er heaven's pure azure spreads her sacred light, 
 T\'hen not a breath distiuljs the deep serene, 
 And not a cloud o'ercnsts the solemn scene, 
 jLrotmd her throne the vivid planets roll, 
 And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole, 
 ' O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
 
 And tip with silver every mountain's head : 
 Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, 
 A flood of glory bursts from all the skies ; 
 The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
 Ege the blue vault, and bless the useful light.' 
 
 Thfs ptissage comes just at the close of Book VIII. of 
 the 'Iliad'; the student should compare it with the original 
 Greek, or with Butcher and Lang's prose translation. In the 
 * Odyssey ' Pope had the assistance of two scholars, Fenton 
 and Broome, who translated and ' rimed up ' twelve of 
 the twenty-four books. But Pope 
 
 ' (his musical finesse was such. 
 So nice Ids ear, so delicate his touch) 
 ■' Made^oetry a mere mechanic art, 
 
 And every warbler has his tune by heart.' 
 
 And these two warblers imitated his tune so successfully 
 that it is not possible to distinguish Pope's work from 
 thdirs. • 
 
 In didactic poetry, the 'Essay on Man' is his best 
 The 'Essay production. It is addressed to Bolingbroke, 
 on Man.' and Pope clearly implies that in some measure 
 — in what measure is disputed — he was its inspirer :
 
 128 THE AOK OF POPS. 
 
 * Come then, my friend, my genius, come along ; 
 Oh master of the poet, and the song ! . . . 
 Shall then this verse to future age pretend 
 Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend? 
 That, urg'd by thee, I turn'd the tuneful art 
 From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart.' 
 
 Even Dr. Jolinson, keen and appreciative critic of Pope and 
 enthusiastic admirer of his poetry, can say little in praise 
 of the ' Essay ' ; we cannot do better than quote part of 
 liis criticism as at once sound, just, and discriminating. 
 
 'The subject is perhaps not very proper for poetry; 
 and the poet was not sufficiently master of 
 
 critichm,^ his subject ; metaphysical morality was to 
 him a new study; he was proud of his 
 acquisitions, and, supposing himself master of great 
 secrets, was in haste to teach what he had not learned. 
 Thus he tells us, in the first Epistle, that from the nature 
 of the Supreme Being may be deduced an order of 
 beings such as mankind, because infinite Excellence 
 can do only what is best. He finds out that these 
 beings must be " somewhere " ; and that " all the question 
 is, whether man be in a wrong place." Surely if, according 
 to the poet's Leibnitzian reasoning, we may infer that 
 man ought to be, only because he is, we may allow that 
 his place is the right place, because he has it. Supreme 
 Wisdom is not less infallible in disposing than in creating. 
 But what is meant by somewhere, and place, and ivrong place, 
 it had been vain to ask Pope, who probably had never 
 asked himself. Having exalted himself into the chair of 
 wisdom, he tells us much that every man knows, and 
 much that he does not know himself ; that we see but 
 little, and that the order of the universe is beyond our 
 comprehension ; an opinion not very uncommon ; and that 
 there is a chain of subordinate beings "from infinite to 
 nothing," of which himself and his readers are equally 
 ignorant. But he gives us one comfort, which without 
 his help he supposes unattainable, in the position "that 
 though we are fools, yet G-od is wise." This Essay affords 
 an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the 
 dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers oi
 
 pope's ' essav on man.' 129 
 
 eloquence. Never was penury of knowledge and vulgarity 
 of sentiment so happily disgmsed. The reader feels his 
 mind full, though he learns nothing ; and, when he meets 
 it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother 
 and his nurse. When these wonder-working sounds sink 
 into sense, and the doctrine of the Essay, disrobed of its 
 ornaments, is left to the powers of its naked excellence, 
 what shall we discover ? That we are, in comparison with 
 our Creator, very weak and ignorant ; that we do not 
 uphold the chain of existence ; and that we could not 
 make one another with more skill than we are made. . . . 
 To these profound principles of natural knowledge are 
 added some moral instructions equally new ; that self- 
 interest, well understood, will produce social concord ; that 
 men are mutual gainers by mutual benefits ; that evil is 
 sometimes balanced by good ; that human advantages are 
 Tinstable and fallacious, of uncertain duration and doubtful 
 effect ; that our true honour is, not to have a great part, 
 but to act it well ; that virtue only is our own ; and that 
 happiness is always in our power. Surely a man of no 
 very comprehensive search may ventixre to say that he has 
 heard all this before ; but it was never till now recom- 
 mended by such a blaze of embellishments, or such 
 sweetness of melody. The vigorous contraction of some 
 thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others, the inci- 
 dental illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes 
 the softness of the verses, enchain philosophy, suspend 
 criticism, and oppress judgment by overpowering pleasure.' 
 Our illustration of Pope's didactic manner is the opening 
 of the second Epistle, after reading which, together with 
 the other extracts in this chapter, no one will be sur- 
 prised that he is the most frequently quoted English poet 
 after Shakespeare. 
 
 ' Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ; 
 The proper study of Mankind is Man. 
 Pluc'd on this isthmus of a middle state, 
 A being darkly wise, and rudely great : 
 With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, 
 With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, 
 He hangs between ; in doubt to act, or rest ; 
 Tn doubt to deem himself a God, or Betist ; 
 ENQ. LIT. 9
 
 130 THE AGE OF TOPE. 
 
 In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer ; 
 Bom but to die, and reas'ning but to err ; 
 Alike in ignorance, his reason such, 
 Whether he thinks too little, or too much : 
 Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd ; 
 Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd ; 
 Created half to rise, and half to fall ; 
 Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all ; 
 Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd : 
 The glory, jest, and riddle of the world ! 
 
 Go, wond'rous creature ! mount where Science guides, 
 Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides ; 
 Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, 
 Correct old Time, and regulate the sun ; 
 Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere, 
 To the first good, first perfect, and first fair ; 
 Or tread the mazy round his follow 'rs trod, 
 And quitting sense call imitating God ; 
 As Eastern priests in giddy circles run, 
 And turn their heads to imitate the Sun, 
 Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule — 
 Then drop into thyself, and be a fool ! ' 
 
 Pope's satire is found in all its perfection in the 
 
 , 'Dunciad,' which is even nastier than it is 
 
 opessa e. ^^^^^.^ ^j^ ^-^q 'Moral Essays,' which are a 
 
 curious blend of moralising and satire, and in what are 
 now usually called the ' Satires and Epistles,' which con- 
 tain the Epistle to Ai-huthnot and the Imitations of Horace. 
 *It is no paradox to say that these "Imitations" are 
 among the most original of his writings. So entirely do 
 they breathe the spirit of the age and country in which 
 they were written, that they can be read without reference 
 to the Latin model.' Before commenting on Pope's sat- 
 irical method and manner, it will be well to sample his 
 writing in this kind by quoting his two most famous 
 ' portraits,' (1) that of Addison, (2) that of Lord Hervey, 
 both from the Epistle to Arbuthnot (A.). 
 
 * Peace to all such ! but were there One whose fires 
 True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires ; 
 Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
 And bom to write, converse, and live with ease : 
 Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
 Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, 
 View bim with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
 
 pope's satirical portuaits. 131 
 
 ' And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
 D;iiim with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
 And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 
 Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
 Just hmt a fault and hesitate dislike ; 
 Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend, 
 A tira'rous foe, and a suspicious friend ; 
 Dreading ev'n fools, by Flatterers besieg'd, 
 And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd ; 
 Like Cato, give his little Senate laws, 
 And sit attentive to his own applause ; 
 ^V^lile Wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise, 
 And wonder with a foolish face of praise : — 
 Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ? 
 Who would not weep, if ATTICUS were he?' 
 
 * A lash like mine no honest man shall dread. 
 But aU such babbling blockheads in his stead. 
 
 Let Sporus tremble — A. What? that thing of silk, 
 Sporus, that mere white curd of Ass's milk? 
 Satire or sense, alas ! can Sporus feel ? 
 ^Vho breaks a butterfly upon a wheel ? 
 P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, 
 This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings ; 
 AVhose buzz the witty and the fair annoys. 
 Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys : 
 So well-bred spaniels civilly delight 
 In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 
 Eternal smiles his emptiness betray. 
 As shallow streams run dimpling all the way : 
 Whether in florid impotence he speaks. 
 And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks ; 
 Or at the ear of Eve, familiar Toad, 
 Ualf froth, half venom, spits himself abroad. 
 In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, 
 Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies : 
 His wit, all see-saw between that and this, 
 Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, 
 And he himself one vile Antithesis. 
 Amphibious thing ! that, acting either part, 
 The trifling head or the corrupted heart, 
 Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board, 
 Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord. 
 Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest, 
 A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest ; 
 Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust ; 
 Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.' 
 
 The latter is the bitterest satirical portrait in the language,
 
 132 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 the former probably the meanest. They are about the 
 most famous satirical portraits in English literature, and 
 are a fair example of the way in which Pope marred his 
 satire by making it the vehicle of personal spleen. It is 
 inevitable that in this respect he should be compared with 
 Dryden, and the comparison is almost entirely in the 
 latter's favour. Pope's characters are for the most part 
 not types, but individuals ; and thus their satire, after 
 having wounded the person at whom it was aimed as 
 by a stab in the dark, for ever after misses the mark ; the 
 features of the victim are so clearly Kmued that no second 
 victim is ever likely to recognise himself. Dryden ' knocks 
 his antagonist down, and there an end. Pope seems to 
 have nursed his grudge, and then, watching his chance, to 
 have squirted vitriol from behind a corner, rather glad 
 than otherwise if it fell on the women of those he hated 
 or envied. And if Dryden is never dastardly, as Pope 
 often was, so also he never wrote anything so maliciously 
 depreciatory as Pope's unprovoked attack on Addison.' 
 Coleridge insists on the evolution of the characters as a 
 criterion of their excellence : ' You will find this a good 
 gauge or evidence of genius — whether it progresses and 
 evolves, or only spins upon itself. Take Dryden's 
 Achitophel and Zimri — Shaftesbury and Buckingham; 
 every line adds to or modifies the character, which is, as it 
 were, a-building up to the very last verse; whereas, in 
 Pope's Timon etc., the first two or three couplets contain 
 all the pith of the character, and the twenty or thirty lines 
 that follow are so much evidence or proof of overt acts of 
 jealousy or pride, or whatever it may be that is satirised.' 
 
 It may be said finally — it is hoped that it may have 
 been seen incidentally — that, though Pope's sphere is 
 a limited one, within that sphere he is a past-master, 
 especially in versification and in condensed epigrammatic 
 expression. 
 
 Of the three chief prose authors of the time, Addison, 
 
 Defoe and Swift, we take Swift first because 
 
 JoJiattan Swift, ]ie is our greatest prose satirist. He was 
 
 secretary to Sir William Temple ; took orders, 
 
 and finally became Dean of St. Patrick's, but he had
 
 SWIFT. 
 
 133 
 
 hoped for an En<,4ish bishopric and was a disappointed 
 man. Worse than that, he suffered from a disease which 
 one could wish had been insanity, but which has been 
 identified as sometliing different and apparently worse. 
 These facts must be borne in mind in forming a judgment 
 of Swift's Hterary work. In politics he was a Torj', and 
 edited the ' Examiner ' on their side. He was the lifelong 
 friend of Pope. Swift's most important works are : * A 
 Tale of a Tub,' an allegorical defence of the Church of 
 England as against Popery and Dissent, of which Swift 
 himself said in later years, ' What a genius I had when I 
 wrote that book ! ' ; the ' Battle fought last Friday between 
 the Ancient and the Modern Books in St. James's Library,' 
 a contribution on the side of the ancients to the foolish 
 controversy as to the comparative merits of ancient and 
 modern literature, a contribution of which it has been well 
 said : 
 
 ' St. James's old authors, so famed on each shelf, 
 Are Tanquished hy what he has written himself ' ; 
 
 'Ai'gimient against Abolishing Christianity,' one of the 
 finest samples of the author's irony ; the * Letters of M.B., 
 Drapier ' {i.e. draper), which led to the withdrawal of 
 Wood's 'brass halfpence,' and made Swift the idol of the 
 Irish nation ; ' Gulliver's Travels ' (1726) ; and the ' Modest 
 Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in 
 Ireland from becoming a burden to their Parents or 
 Country,' another masterpiece of irony. 
 
 Swift has been called ' as good a Christian as a man can 
 be who is also a pagan, a pessimist, and a hypochon- 
 driac ' ; it is an exquisitely ironical comment upon the 
 character of the age that such a man should have been 
 forced to masquerade as the champion of Christianity. 
 But it is as the author of ' Gulliver's Travels,' as our 
 greatest master of irony, and as the wield er of a simple 
 prose style, that we have to do with Swift here. ' Gulliver's 
 
 Travels into several remote. Nations of the 
 T^vlfs'.'* World' are comprised in four voyages. The 
 
 first is to Lilliput, where the inhabitants are 
 about six inches high and everything else is in the same 
 proportion : here the satire is directed to the meanness,
 
 134 THE AGE OP POPE. 
 
 chicanery and conventionality of tlio morality of politicians 
 and statesmen. The second is to BroLdingnag, whose in- 
 habitants are sixty feet in height, and therefore bear much 
 tlio same relation to Gulliver as he bore to the Lilliputians. 
 But to the Brobdingnagians, who live a simple Utopian 
 life, man is ' the most pernicious race of little odious 
 vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface 
 of the earth ' ; and we are to deduce the conclusion that 
 everything that is needful for man is obvious (in the most 
 literal sense of the word). The tliird voyage is to Laputa, 
 the flying island, inhabited by philosopliers and men of 
 science; to the subject continent, Balnibarbi, with its 
 metropolis, Lagado ; to Glubbdubdrib, the island of 
 sorcerers, where Gulliver has interviews with the dead ; 
 to Luggnngg, where the Struldbrugs are cursed with 
 immortality of body but not of intellect or affection ; and 
 to Japan. Here the satire is directed to the absurdities 
 of scientific specialisation and one-sided philosophy. The 
 iast voyage is to the country of the Houyhnhnms, a race 
 of reasoning horses served by degraded human brutes 
 called Yahoos — an outrageously embittered satire on the 
 human race. 
 
 One may rise from the perusal of Gulliver amused, 
 repelled, or awe-struck, but not pleased, in- 
 ^ ^ ' structed, edified or ennobled. Swift's con- 
 temporaries feared him, and we almost fear his * awful ' 
 genius, which has an element of the super-human or 
 rather non-human. His genius is mainly destructive ; 
 and he does not simply destroy, but lacerates. Yet if 
 we can confine our attention to the less offensive parts of 
 his writings or regard them solely from the literary point 
 of view, we cannot but admire the simplicity of the style, 
 the consistency of his allegory, and the power of his satire. 
 Swift reported that an Irish bishop said that ' Gulliver ' 
 * was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly 
 believed a word of it.' The supreme cleverness of the 
 book does not lie in the grotesque hypotheses, but in the 
 mai-vellous consistency and vivid realism with which their 
 consequences are worked out. Swift may have owed 
 something to the realism of 'Robinson Crusoe' (1719);
 
 SWIFT 8 PROSE. 135 
 
 but to luaintain such realistic truth in a narrative that 
 might liave been literal fact and in a fairy-tale allegory 
 are vastly different achievements. ' When you have once 
 thought of big men and little men,' said Johnson, 'it is 
 easy to do the rest.' The retort is almost too obvious : 
 Let Johnson try. There is another characteristic of Swift's 
 writing to which attention should be directed : its sim- 
 plicity — 'that simplicity without which no human per- 
 formance can arrive to any great perfection.' It is a style 
 that has never yet yielded its secret, never been succcssfiilly 
 parodied. It is not too correct in syntax ; its most marked 
 feature seems to be the invariable selection of the inevit- 
 able -word (the biill is intentional) in a vocabulary at once 
 classical and idiomatic. * Proper words, in proper places, 
 make the true definitioq of a style.' Since ' Gulliver ' is 
 so well known, our illustrations of Swift's irony and. of his 
 style are taken from the 'Argument against Abolishing 
 Christianity ' and from the ' Modest Proposal.' 
 
 ' It is again objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a set of 
 men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to bawl one day 
 in seven against the lawfulness of those methods most in use, toward 
 the pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure, which are the constant 
 practice of all men alive on the other six. But this objection is, I think, 
 a little unworthy of so refined an age as ours. Let us argue this matter 
 calmly : I appeal to the breast of any polite freethinker, whether, in the 
 pursuit of gratifying a predominant passion, he has not always felt a 
 wonderful incitement, by reflecting it was a thing forbidden : and, 
 therefore, we see, in order to cultivate this taste, the wisdom of the 
 nation has taken special care, that the ladies should be furnished with 
 prohibited silks, and the men with prohibited wine. And, indeed, it 
 were to be wished that some other prohibitions were promoted, in 
 order to improve the pleasures of the town ; which, for want of such 
 expedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving 
 way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen.' 
 
 ' I shall now, therefore, humbly propose my own thoughts, which I 
 hope will not bo liable to the least objection. 
 
 I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance 
 in London, that a young healthy child, well-nursed, is, at a year old, 
 a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,
 
 l36 THE AGE OE POPE. 
 
 roasted, baked, or boiled , and I make no doubt th:il il will equally 
 serve in a fricassee or a ragout. 
 
 I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the 
 hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty 
 thousand may be reserved. . . . That the remaining hundred thousand 
 may, at a year old, be offered in sale to persons of quality and fortune 
 through the kingdom ; always advising the mother ... to render them 
 plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an 
 entertainment for friends ; and when the family dines alone, the fore or 
 hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and, seasoned with a little 
 pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially 
 in winter. 
 
 I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 
 twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to 
 twenty-eight pounds. 
 
 I grant this food will bo somewhat dear, and therefore very proper 
 for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, 
 seem to have the best title to the children. . . . 
 
 I profess, in the sincerity of ray heart, that I have not the least 
 personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, 
 having no other motive than the public good of my country, by 
 advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and 
 gi\nng some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can 
 propose to get a single penny ; the youngest being nine years old, and 
 my wife past child-bearing.' 
 
 Daniel Defoe, journalist, pamphleteer, novelist, is one of 
 the most inscrutable characters in our literary 
 ^icef-m*?' history. Bunyan was not of the literary caste, 
 but he is universally respected; Defoe Avas 
 regarded as a pariah even by journalists and publishers. 
 His ' Shortest way with the Dissenters' (1702), by compell- 
 ing him to find securities for good behaviour for seven 
 years, had put him in the power of the government; he 
 undertook ' secret service ' ; he changed sides, like a mere 
 hireling, with changes of government ; he wrote at the 
 same time for and against his principles, till he can have 
 had no principles left. Yet he was a man of almost 
 incredible activity and versatility, and became a real power 
 in literature. The mere titles of his writings occupy twenty- 
 nine pages in Lee's Life. It will be sufficient here to
 
 DEFOE. 137 
 
 notice his 'Eeview,' 'Eobinson Crusoe' (1719), 'Memoirs 
 of a Cavalier,' and the ' Journal of the Plague Year.' 
 'The Review,' -n-hich appeared with unintermpted regu- 
 larity from 1704 to 1713 althoxigh it was written entirely 
 by Defoe himself, is a landmark in the history of EngUsh 
 periodical literature, especially as a link between Dunton's 
 ' Athenian Q-azette ' and the ' Tatler ' and * Spectator.' The 
 object of the 'Athenian Gazette' (1690) was to answer 
 questions put by the public on religion, casuistry, love, 
 literature and manners. Defoe went a step further in 
 adding to his paper for a time a ' Mercure Scandale : or, 
 Advice from the Scandalous Club.' In these two produc- 
 tions we find a good deal more than the germ of the 
 'Tatler.' 
 But Defoe's chief importance for us lies in his place in 
 
 the ' evolution ' (if the word may be pardoned) 
 ^"^^"noveL ^^^ ^^ *^® modem novel, by which a more literary 
 
 age has replaced the drama in its decay. When 
 almost the entire credit for the creation or paternity of 
 the novel has been variously assigned to Bunyan, Addison 
 and Defoe, it has surely been forgotten that there were 
 novels of akind in the sixteenth, as well as in the seventeenth 
 century. Bunyan undoubtedLly showed that a narrative 
 could be conceived and carried through with consistency 
 and vigour, and interspersed with animated dialogue ; his 
 living characters were a yet more important contribution 
 to the material of fiction. Defoe selected secular subjects, 
 banished allegory, and imitated the historical so closely 
 that his fictions were easily mistaken for narratives of fact. 
 Lord Chatham is said to have taken the ' Memoirs of a 
 Cavalier ' for a real history ; and Dr. ]\read, one of the 
 first physicians of his day, when commissioned by govei'n- 
 niont to report on the best means for preventing the 
 plague, refen-ed to Defoe's 'Plague Year' as a genuine 
 contemporary narrative, giving the exact reference in a 
 foot-note. No great mistalco was made in either case : 
 fictions wliich could so completely impose on learned con- 
 temporaries after the lapse of so little time from the date 
 of the events described, are more closely allied to fact 
 than to fiction, and serve some of the best purposes of
 
 138 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 history. They might be called ' narrative history ' ; simi- 
 larly, ' Eobiuson Crusoe ' might be called ' narrative bio- 
 graphy.' But can any of these works, which may be taken 
 as typical of Defoe's fictions, be ranked as ' novels ' ? If 
 they can, then anything that can be called a plot (for the 
 problem of the means of Crusoe's return to the world never 
 attains to the dignity of a plot), any excitation of curiosity 
 by means of the never-failing interest of love, any power 
 of characterisation, any analysis of passion or motive, any 
 real study of the workings of the human heart, are not 
 essentials of the novel. If they are essentials of the novel, 
 then Defoe's fictions are not novels. In the accepted 
 modern sense of the word, Eichardson's * Pamela ' is the 
 first modern novel. 
 
 This being so, the question remains, how Defoe is of 
 such importance in the history of literature ; 
 and the answer is, for realistic narrative told 
 in a realistic style. ' Robinson Crusoe ' anticipated ' Grul- 
 liver,' and, being imitable, had far greater influence. 
 An early parodist, the author of the 'Life and strange 
 surprising Adventures of Mr. D De F , of Lon- 
 don, Hosier,' says that every old woman bought it and 
 left it as a legacy with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the 
 * Practice of Piety, ' etc. The work itself was a legacy 
 to all future novelists. Its peculiar power had been antici- 
 pated by Defoe in three minor works, and the secret of its 
 success was discovered by a clever contemporary before it 
 was written, when the editor of ' Read's Journal ' said in 
 1718 that Defoe's hand in another journal was recog- 
 nisable by the ' agreeableness of the. style . . the little art 
 he is truly a master of, of forging a story and imposing 
 it on the world for truth.' It is the art of lying ; but 
 what a fine art consistent lying is ! It is the highest art 
 to conceal art : this was all the easier for Defoe because 
 his art was largely lack of art. We miss the suppressions, 
 the siftiugs, the embellishments of the artist, and an 
 impression forms in our minds that ' this simple honest 
 fellow is telling us a true story ' ; but in reality the very 
 prolixity, negligence and repetitions, which give us this 
 impression, are among the most important elements of his
 
 defoe's prose. 139 
 
 ai't. The following passage is extracted from the ' Journal 
 of the Plague Year ' : 
 
 ' It is indeed to be observ'd, that the women were, in all this Cal- 
 amity, the most rash, fearless, and desperate Creatures; and as there 
 were vast Numbers that went about as Nurses, to tend those that were 
 sick, they committed a great many petty Thieveries in the Houses 
 where they were employed ; and some of them were publickly whipt 
 for it, when perhaps they ought rather to have been hanged for 
 Examples ; for Numbers of Houses were robbed on these Occasions, 
 till at length the Parish Officers were sent to recommend Nurses to the 
 Sick, and always took an Account who it was they sent, so as that 
 they might call them to account, if the House had been abused 
 where they were placed. 
 
 But these Robberies extended chiefly to Wearing- Cloths, Linen, 
 and what Eings or liloney they could come at, when the Person 
 dyed who was under their Care, but not to a general Plunder of the 
 Houses ; and I could give an Accoimt of one of these Nurses, who 
 several Years after, being on her Death-bed, confest with the utmost 
 Horror, the Robberies she had committed at the Time of her being a 
 Nurse, and by which she had enriched herself to a great Degree : 
 But as for murthers, I do not find that there was ever any Proof of 
 the Facts, in the manner, as it has been reported, except as above. 
 
 Th' '. did tell me indeed of a Nurse in one place, that laid a wet 
 Cloth upon the Face of a dying Patient, who she tended, and so put 
 an End to his Life, who was just expiring before : And another 
 that smother'd a young "Woman she was looking to, when she was 
 in a fainting fit, and would have come to herself: Some that 
 kill'd them by giving them one T)iing, some another, and some 
 starved them by giving them nothing at all : But these Stories had 
 two Marks of Suspicion that always attended them, which caused me 
 always to slight them, and to look on them as mere Stories, that 
 People continually flighted one another with. (1.) That wherever 
 it was that we heard it, they always placed the Scene at the farther 
 End of the Town, opposite, or most remote from where you were to 
 hear it : If you heard it in White-Chapel, it had happened at 
 St. Giles's, or at Westminster, or Holbom, or that End of the Town ; if 
 you heard of it at that End of the Town, then it was done in White- 
 Chapel, or the Minories, or about Cripplegato Parish : If you heard of 
 it in the City, why, then it had happened in Southwark ; and if you 
 heard of it in Southwark, then it was done in the City, and the like.
 
 140 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 In the next place, of what Part soever you heard the Story, the 
 Particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet 
 douhle Clout on a dying Man's Face, and that of smothering a young 
 Gentlewoman ; so that it was apparent, at least to my Judgment, that 
 there was more of Tale than of Truth in those Things.' 
 
 'Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar 
 Joseph ^^^ ^'^^ coarse, and elegant but not osten- 
 
 Ad<iison, tatious, must give his days and nights to the 
 
 1672-1719. yQi^^^gg Qf Addison.' Johnson was right, 
 even though no critic would now venture to repeat the 
 advice ; for Addison inherited the prose tradition of 
 Dryden, and was, all in all, the best model the eighteenth 
 century could have taken for its prose. There is no need 
 here to touch on his life or even to mention his less known 
 works ; for us Addison is the ' Spectator.' 
 
 Steele started the ' Tatler ' in 1709, when Addison was 
 in Ireland; but the latter became a contributor, 
 
 g^'' , and considerably improved the prospects of 
 the periodical, which was, however, discon- 
 tinued at the beginnning of 1711. In the preface to the 
 fourth bound volume Steele wrote : ' I fared like a dis- 
 tressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. 
 I was undone by my auxiliary ; when I had once called 
 him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.' 
 Accordingly, on the 1st of March, 1711, appeared the first 
 number of Steele and Addison's joint paper, ' The Spec- 
 tator,' which appeared daily until 6th December, 1712. It 
 excluded politics; substituted the periodical essay for the 
 newspaper; cultivated humour and literary criticism. * The 
 new entertainment,' says Courthope, 'was provided by 
 the original design of an imaginary club, consisting of 
 several ideal types of character grouped round the central 
 figure of the Spectator. They represent considerable classes 
 or sections of the community, and are, as a rule, men 
 of strongly marked opinions, prejudices, and foibles, which 
 furnish inexhaustible matter of comment to the Spectator 
 himself, who delivers the judgments of reason and 
 common-sense. Sir Roger de Coverley, with his simplicity, 
 his high sense of honour, and his old-world reminiscences,
 
 'THE SPECTATOR.' 141 
 
 reflects the country gentleman of the best kind; Sir 
 Andrew Freeport expresses the opinions of the enter- 
 prising, hard-headed, and rather hard-hearted moneyed 
 interest ; Captain Sentry speaks for the army ; the Templar 
 for the world of taste and learning ; the clergyman for 
 theology and philosophy; while Will Honeycomb, the 
 elderly man of fashion, gives the Spectator many oppor- 
 tunities for criticising the traditions of morality and 
 breeding surviving from the days of the Restoration.' 
 The new periodical was an immediate and immense suc- 
 cess, and the question has often been asked, to which of the 
 collaborators that success was mainly due. Steele's con- 
 tributions number about forty less than Addison's. ' Steele 
 was its projector, founder, editor,' says Henry Morley, 
 ' and he was writer of that pai-t of it which took the widest 
 grasp upon the hearts of men.' It would be difficult to 
 prove that statement. The eighteenth century critics, the 
 general consensus of opinion, the test of popularity, would 
 all reverse such a decision. Johnson observed that, of the 
 half not written by Addison, not half was good. 
 
 A question of much greater moment is the influence of 
 the ' Spectator.' ' An instructor like Addison was now 
 . wanting, whose remarks, being superficial, 
 
 prea i . ^^jgj^^ ^^ easUy understood, and, being just, 
 might prepare the mind for more attainments.' This is 
 the best reply to such remarks as that Addison is 
 'not deep'; that *he thinks justly, but he thinks 
 faintly ' ; that he is ' curious and observant, rather 
 than penetrating.' If Addison had been a Berkeley, we 
 might have had no Addison. His expressed intention 
 (No. 10) was to enliven morality with wit, and to temper 
 wit with morality. He was justified in boasting that ho 
 brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools 
 and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea- 
 tables and coffee-houses. Both he and Steele addressed 
 women, and laboured to establish the influence of woman 
 in society. The most important papers bearing on 
 literature were Addison's eighteen papers on ' Paradise 
 Lost,' and three papers on ballads — alike notewortliy as 
 calling attention to earlier masterpieces then unduly
 
 142 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 neglected. Addison's humour was a new thing in our 
 prose; he showed that English essays could have some- 
 thing of French lightness and grace, and that it was possible 
 for reformed prose to charm ; he introduced into prose 
 the elegance and sprightliness of the best conversational 
 idiom. 'His style,' writes Lytton, 'has the nameless 
 urbanity in which we recognise the perfection of manner ; 
 courteous, but not courtier-like; so dignified, yet so kindly; 
 so easy, yet so high-bred. It is the most perfect foi-m of 
 English.' To have written essays that were read by, and 
 even fascinated, an ignorant or half-ignorant people, 
 engrossed in politics, vitiated in taste, and corrupt in 
 morals — essays that have never been surpassed as literature 
 in writings of the same kind — is surely a stupendous, if 
 not unparalleled, achievement. 
 
 Our selected extracts from the ' Spectator ' are by Steele 
 and Addison respectively. 
 
 ' The fii'st of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of ancient 
 descent, a baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley. His great-grand- 
 father was inventor of that famous country dance which is called after 
 him. All who know that shire are very well acquainted with the parts 
 and merits of Sir Roger. He is a gentleman that is very singular in 
 his behaviour, but his singularities proceed from his good sense, and 
 are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as he thinks the 
 world is in the wrong. However, this humour creates him no enemies, 
 for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy ; and his being uncon- 
 fined to modes and forms makes him but the readier and more capable 
 to please and oblige all who know him. When he is in town, he lives 
 in Soho Square. It is said, he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he 
 was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the next county 
 to him. Before this disappointment. Sir Roger was what you call a 
 fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and Sir 
 George Etherege, fought a duel upon his first coming to town, and 
 kicked Bully Dawson in a public coffee-house, for calling him a young- 
 ster. But, being ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was very 
 serious for a year and a half ; and though, his temper being naturally 
 jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never 
 dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of the 
 same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his 
 merry humours, he tells us, has been in and out twelve times since he
 
 Addison's prose. 143 
 
 first wore it. He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and 
 hearty ; keeps a good house hoth in town and country ; a great 
 lover of mankind ; hut there is such a mirthful cast in his 
 behaviour, that he is rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants 
 grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women pro- 
 fess to love him, and the young men are glad of his company ; when 
 he comes ijito a house, he calls the servants by their names, and talks 
 all the way upstairs to a visit. I must not omit that Sir Roger is a 
 justice of the quorum ; that he fills the chair at a quarter session with 
 great abilities, and three months ago gained universal applause by 
 explaining a passage in the game act.' 
 
 ' As I was yesterday morning walking with Sir Roger before his house, 
 a country fellow brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr. 
 William AVimble had caught that very morning, and that he presented 
 it with his service to him, and intended to come and dine with him. 
 At the same time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to me as 
 soon as the messenger left him. 
 
 ' ' Sir Roger, — I desire you to accept of a Jack, which is the best I 
 have caught this season. I intend to come and stay with you a week, 
 and see how the Perch bite in the Black river. I observed with some 
 concern, the last time I saw you upon the Bowling Green, that your 
 whip wanted a lash to it ; I will bring half-a-dozen with me I twisted 
 last week, which I hope will serve you aU the time you are in the 
 country. I have not been out of the saddle for six days last past, 
 having been at Eton with Sir John's eldest son. He takes to his 
 learning hugely. 
 
 I am, Sir, your humble Servant, 
 
 Will. Wimble." 
 
 This extraordinary letter, and message that accompanied it, made 
 me very curious to know the character and quality of the gentleman 
 who sent them ; which I found to be as follows. Will. Wimble is 
 younger brother to a baronet, and descended of the ancient family of 
 the Wimbles. He is now between forty and fifty ; but being bred to 
 no business, and born to no estate, he generally lives with his elder 
 brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts a pack of dogs 
 better than any man in the country, and is very famous for finding a 
 hare. He is extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle 
 man ; he makes a Jlay fly to a miracle, and furnishes the whole country 
 with angle rods. As he is a good-natured, oificious fellow, and very 
 much esteemed upon account of his family, he is a welcome guest at
 
 144 THE AGE OF POPE. 
 
 every house, and keeps up a good correspondence among all the gentle- 
 men about him. He carries a tulip root in his pocket from one to 
 another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of fi-iends that live, 
 perhaps, in the opposite sides of the country. Will, is a particular 
 favorite of the young heirs, whom he frequently obliges with a net that 
 he has weaved, or a setting dog that he has made himself ; he now and 
 then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to their mothers or 
 sisters ; and raises a great deal of mirth among them by inquiring, as 
 often as he meets them, ' ' how they wear ? ' ' These gentlemanlike 
 manufactures and obliging little humours make Will, the darling of the 
 country.'
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE AGE OE JOHNSON (1740-1798 A.D.). 
 
 The period between the dates at the head of this 
 chapter is the age of Johnson in a different 
 ^'^e age of sense from that in which the last two ages 
 have been named after Dryden and Pope 
 respectively. The prolonged Classic period (1660-1798) 
 has three very great names : Dryden placed himself at the 
 head of tlio movement and led his forces to their first 
 overwhelming victories ; Pope succeeded him, and reigned 
 without a rival over a stable empire ; Johnson too reigned 
 without a rival, but his throne was tottering to its fall, 
 and during the whole of his reign rebellion was rife and he 
 was often busily engaged in trying to stamp it out. He 
 is b}' far the greatest man of letters in the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century, and he fairly represents the dominant 
 school in criticism ; but in poetry he represents only the 
 decaying tradition of Pope and not the reviving tradition 
 of the Elizabethans, and therefore he does not represent 
 the best poetry, much less the poetical aspirations, of his 
 day. This was, above all things, an age of transition. 
 Almost any earlier age might fairly be represented by one 
 man ; in this age we have to observe, not only how 
 Johnson represented it, but also — perhaps the more 
 important of the two — how he misrepresented it. For 
 this purpose we shall first trace, in perspective, the 
 movements and changes of the literature of the period, 
 and then, taking the principal authors separately, show 
 how each is related to the developments already traced. 
 
 ENG. LIT. 145 10
 
 146 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 The most marked features of the literature of this 
 epoch were : the ascendancy of the Classic 
 
 Its general school of Pope in criticism, and its gradual 
 undermining, decline and fall in poetry ; the 
 gradual, though somewhat fitful, return to Nature in 
 poetry; the Romantic reaction slowly gathering power 
 and momentum for the final overthrow of its hereditary 
 foe ; the birth and rapid perfection of the modern novel ; 
 the flourishing of prose literature generally ; the supremacy 
 of Johnson. The one great movement on which the 
 student's eye must be fixed throughout the period is the 
 Romantic reaction, that is to say, the return to the earlier 
 ways of English poetry, to the principles and practice that 
 were in vogue before the Restoration. It is rightly called 
 a ' reaction ' ; because, although when the movement 
 consummated in the early nineteenth century it developed 
 several features quite distinct from those of Elizabethan 
 literature, as long as it was only or mainly a rebellion 
 against the Classic domination it was constantly harking 
 back to Spenser, Milton and Shakespeare, and imitating 
 them, often almost slavishly. If the reaction had produced 
 a Wordsworth instead of a Collins or a Gray, the ago 
 of Johnson might have ended, and the second Romantic 
 period have begun, a quarter of a century earlier than they 
 did. The ' return to Nature ' is a name often given to one 
 mode or feature of the Romantic reaction, viz. the revival 
 of the handling in poetry of subjects connected with ex- 
 ternal nature in a natural manner. The same expression 
 may be used to include the movement, often associated 
 with the name of Rousseau, for a return to more primitive 
 and 'natural' ways of life and social customs, but that 
 movement lies beyond our scope. The eighteenth century 
 has been rightly called ' the age of prose.' It did not fashion 
 modern prose style ; that, as we have seen, was done by 
 Dryden ; but it took the instrument that had been shaped 
 for it, and turned it to glorious uses. Moreover, it did 
 something for its further development : it improved and 
 perfected, in the works of Fielding, Johnson, Gibbon and 
 others, the solid and masculine style of prose, as distin- 
 guished from the conversational, almost feminine style of
 
 THOMSON. 
 
 147 
 
 Addison on the one hand, and the highly ornate and 
 rhetorical style of Burke on the other. A recent writer 
 thus summarises the gains of the century. ' The eighteenth 
 century by itself had created the novel and practically 
 created the literary history; it had put the essay into 
 general circulation ; it had hit off various forms, and an 
 abundant supply, of lighter verse ; it had added largely to 
 the literature of philosophy. Above all, it had shaped 
 the form of English prose-of- all-work, the one thing that 
 remained to be done at its opening. When an age has 
 done so much, it seems somewhat illiberal to reproach it 
 with not doing more.' 
 
 Before passing to individual authors, it is expedient 
 ^g to follow, with as much fulness as space 
 
 Romantic permits, the course of the Eomantic reaction. 
 
 reaction. j]ygn while the fame of the Classic poetry was 
 at its height, the way was being prepared for its over- 
 throw. Before Pope had reached the summit of his fame 
 in the fourth decade of the century, Thomson's ' Winter ' 
 (1726) and his complete 'Seasons' (1730) had appeared. 
 Nature herself at first-hand, not mere conventional de- 
 scriptions of her by poets who recommended her as a 
 tonic to the town-weary, found a place once more in our 
 literature, and was to find a larger one than at any earlier 
 period. 'Excepting the "Nocturnal Eeverie" of Lady 
 Winchelsea,' says Wordsworth, ' and a passage or two in 
 the "Windsor Forest" of Pope, the poetry of the period 
 intervening between the publication of the "Paradise 
 Lost" of Milton and the "Seasons" does not contain 
 a single new image of external nature, and scarcely 
 presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred 
 that the eye of the poet had been steadily fixed upon 
 the object, much less that his feelings had urged him to 
 work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination.' 
 
 The praise here given to Pope was not deserved ; the 
 James inipHed praise to Thomson was fully earned. 
 
 Thomson, Thomson is one of the greatest of our minor 
 
 1/00-1748. pQg|.g. }jQ jg ^^Q forerunner, and in some 
 
 measure the inspirer, of Cowper, Wordsworth and Tenny- 
 son in his observation of Nature and country life. It is as
 
 148 TnE AGE OF jonxso^r. 
 
 easy to exaggerate what lie did as to neglect him unduly. 
 External nature in the eighteenth century, says Dowden, 
 * is not a living Presence with which the spirit of man com- 
 munes : it is a collection of objects which may be described in 
 detail, and which are subject to certain general laws. To 
 Thomson a flower is an object which has a certain shape 
 and colour ; fair-handed Spring scatters them abroad — 
 
 " Violet darkly blue, 
 And polyantlius of unnumbered dyes ; 
 The yellow wallflower stained with iron-brown," 
 
 and as many others as the passage may require. "When 
 Thomson would be poetically devout, the Author of nature 
 is discovered in the elegant art of manufacturing flowers : 
 
 " Soft roll your incense, herbs and fruits and flowers, 
 In mingled clouds to Him whose sun exalts, 
 Whose breath perfumes you and whose pencil paints." 
 
 We are taught to "look through nature up to nature's 
 God." To Shelley a flower is a thing of light and of love, 
 bright with its yearning, pale with its passion. To AVords- 
 worth a flower is a living partaker of the common spiritual 
 life and joy of being, a joy which is at once calm and 
 ecstatic' This is true enough, but Thomson's historical 
 position must not be left out of account. It is not a 
 reproach to him that he was not Wordsworth and the 
 rest ; it is a credit to him that he helped to make them 
 possible. It is not a reproach, but a credit, to him 
 that he is a describer in detail, an enumerator if you 
 will. The fact remains that as a lover of Nature he took 
 us back and introduced us once again to her. To Thomson 
 then this, among other praises, must certainly be given : 
 to him we must trace that love and careful observation of 
 external nature which finds so large a place in our later 
 poetry, and which forms one of the characteristic notes of 
 the Eomantic revival at the close of the century. 
 
 Side by side with this return to Nature, we find other 
 
 signs of revolt in both the form and the 
 reactionJn'the sub j ect-matter of poctry. In form, poets, 
 ^the centoy * finding it impossible to sm-pass Pope in the 
 
 handHng of his chosen metre, the couplet, and 
 knowing that some degree of novelty is necessary to
 
 THE ROMANTIC REACTION. 149 
 
 success in literature, reverted to older metres, blank verse, 
 octosyllabic couplets (as in Milton's 'L' Allegro ' and 'II 
 Penseroso '), and the Spenserian stanza, or to modifications 
 of those metres. Thomson's ' Seasons ' is in blank verse, 
 and indeed a large amount of poetry in that measure was 
 written by Young (in ' Night Thoughts ') and others at the 
 very time when Pope's fame was at its height. Collins 
 and Gray carried on the revolt, both in the use of less 
 regular measures, and in seeking sources of inspiration 
 and subjects for their verse widely removed from the pre- 
 vailing tliemes of the life of the town and of society. 
 CoUius brought back a lyric spirit that had long been 
 absent from English poetry. Gray, says Professor Hales, 
 ' has for the student of literature a very particular interest 
 as having in many ways anticipated the tastes and the 
 devotions of a subsequent age. . . . He was a keen and 
 eager Greek scholar. . . . His attachment to older English 
 literature was another of his special distinctions. . . . He 
 felt the beauty of the English lakes a generation before 
 the great hierophant of them settled at Dove Cottage, 
 Grasmere.' And when we read his 'Elegy,' that 'poem 
 of such high perfection and such universal ajipeal to the 
 tenderest and the noblest depth of human feeling,' we 
 know that we have moved not so much to a great distance 
 from Pope as into a province unknown to him. And the 
 movement was by no means confined to the greater authors 
 alone. In tlie middle tliird of the century, many men, 
 whose poetry is not of intrinsic merit sufficient to warrant 
 their inclusion here, were doing work of great historic 
 importance in treating of new subjects, in trying to force 
 poetry into new paths and to make it return to old ones. 
 At the same time it must never be forgotten that they were 
 for the most part 'a feeble folk.' If at one time they struck 
 a Romantic vein, their next work was as likely as not purely 
 Classic. Even in ostensibly Eomantic poetry they tried to 
 conciliate the 'powers that were' by moralising in Pope's 
 manner. An individual named Boyse wrote ' The Olive ; 
 an Heroic Ode in the stanza of Spenser.' It is not in 
 Spenser's stanza at all, but in a ten-lined imitation of 
 his stanza made fashionable by the Classic poet Prior,
 
 150 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 These facts are mentioned here as being typical of the 
 age. Most curious and significant of all, however, is the 
 fact that the considerable poet Shenstone published in 
 1737 a burlesque imitation of Spenser called 'The School- 
 mistress,' which the public, being in the mood for Romantic 
 experiments, elected to take as a serious poem. Shenstone 
 therefore decided to fall in with their humour, and, aided 
 no doubt by a vastly increased respect for his original, re- 
 published the work in 1742 as a real imitation of the master, 
 and so successful a one that the great majority of readers 
 to the present day never suspect the burlesque intention. 
 
 By about the middle of the century the revolt against 
 _ ^ ,. the Classic school had become definite and 
 
 The Komantic . t i ^^T , • i • ^ -r-i 
 
 reaction in the conscious. Josoph Warton, in his 'liissay on 
 the"ent^°* Popc ' (1756), ventured to ex^Dress this awful 
 heresy : * it is manifest that good sense and 
 judgment were Pope's characteristical excellences rather 
 than fancy and invention.' Two or three occurrences after 
 the middle of the century may serve to mark clearly the 
 progress of the movement. It will be observed again and 
 again that among the distinctive marks of the Romantic 
 school are the striving against convention, the love of 
 novelty, the preference for the remote and the mysterious. 
 The growing appreciation of work inspired by such motives 
 as these is seen in the reception accorded to the ' Frag- 
 ments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of 
 Scotland,' and translated by Macpherson, together with 
 other supposed works of the Celtic poet Ossian, into rhap- 
 sodical English prose. Into the question of the genuine- 
 ness of these productions it is not possible to enter here. 
 But the fact that they were received with enthusiasm and 
 exercised considerable influence both here and on the Con- 
 tinent, is a plain indication that the yoke of the ' correct ' 
 school was being thrown off. A few years later a youth of 
 genius, out of harmony with the traditions of the dominant 
 school, conceived the unfortunate idea of passing off his 
 poems as the genuine work of a fiiteenth century English 
 poet; Chatterton's deceptions were soon discovered, but 
 they have more interest than is connected with the miser- 
 able life and tragic death of their author. Prom Chattertou
 
 TUE ROMANTIC KEACTION. 151 
 
 (1752-1770) the commencement of the new Romantic 
 
 Eoetry is sometimes dated ; his writings in form and spirit 
 elong entirely to the new age, not only having as little 
 in common with the eighteenth as they have with the 
 fifteenth century, but exercising a marked influence on 
 his successors, notably on Coleridge. 
 
 Three works of research also mark strikingly the tend- 
 ency of the time to look back lovingly to the earlier English 
 poetry. While Chatterton was sending his forgeries to 
 Horace Walpole, and Walpole was affording 
 • V^^'^ti. P^'*^of ^f ^-^0 zeal and ignorance of the craving 
 works. after the medieval by successfully palming 
 off his own 'Castle of Otranto' (1764) as a 
 * Gothic ' romance, Percy was preparing his ' Eeliques of 
 Ancient English Poetry' (1765). Percy's 'Reliques' con- 
 sisted of forty-five old ballads taken from his EoKo MS., 
 interlarded with a somewhat miscellaneous collection of 
 more modern, chiefly IjTical, pieces, introduced in order to 
 make the really precious old ballads more palatable to the 
 vitiated taste of the eighteenth century. Percy wrote an 
 apologetic preface to conciliate the public, as was then 
 customary, though he recognised the power and beauty of 
 the old poetry. 'The publication of the " Iveliques, " ' 
 writes Professor Hales, ' constitutes an epoch in the 
 history of the great revival of taste ; it changed the face 
 of literature. After 1765, before the end of the century, 
 nimierous collections of old ballads were made. The taste 
 that was awakened never slumbered again. The recogni- 
 tion of our old life and poetry that the " Reliques" gave 
 was at last gloriously confirmed and established by Walter 
 Scott.' Wordsworth testified in 1815: 'I do not think 
 that there is an able writer in verse of the present day 
 who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to 
 the "Eeliqucs." ' Nine years later (1774) appeared the first 
 volume of Warton's ' History of Englisli Poetry.' Thomas 
 Warton was for ten years professor of poetry at Oxford, 
 and his ' History ' is only now being superseded by a 
 recent holder of his chair. Whatever its defects may bo, 
 it shows a very general love of our older literature and a 
 very close acquaintance with it. The fact that it does not
 
 152 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 come down as far as the poet Cowley, with, whom Johnson's 
 'Lives of the Poets ' begins, sets off the contrast between the 
 Romantic and the Classic outlook over the past of English 
 literature. Thomas Warton has another title to fame in 
 that he brought back the sonnet into some measure of 
 favour : only two sonnets have come down to us composed 
 between Milton's and Warton's, one of the two being by 
 Gray. Thomas and his elder brother Joseph must be 
 remembered as the men who, more than any others, helped 
 to turn the Romantic reaction into a revolt and a rebellion 
 against the 'tyranny of Pope.' Lastly, in 1775-1778, 
 appeared Tyrwhitt' 8 edition of the 'Canterbury Tales,' a 
 "work of great critical value, which has probably done more 
 for accurate and scholarly study of Chaucer than any single 
 work before or since. The modernisations of Dryden and 
 Pope had done more harm than good in that direction. 
 
 While, durmg the years between the death of Pope and 
 1780, the Wartons, Collins, Gray and Chatterton were 
 quietly undermining the strongholds of the 'correct' school, 
 "without the will, the strength, or without originality 
 enough to raze them to the ground, during the following 
 twenty years the whole tottering fabric fell in mighty 
 
 ruin, and new "works of strange, and yet not 
 1780-1790 A.D. altogether strange, beauty began to rise in its 
 
 place. In the ninth decade of the century 
 the following works appeared : — 
 
 1781 : Crabbe's 'Library.' 
 
 1782 : Cowper's ' Table Talk.' 
 
 1783: Blake's 'Poetical Sketches,' Crabbe's 'Village,' 
 Ritson's ' Collection of English Songs.' 
 
 1785 : Cowper's ' Task ' and ' John Gilpin.' 
 
 1786 : Burns's ' Poems.' 
 
 1787 : Blake's ' Songs of Innocence,' Burns's ' Songs ' (in 
 
 the Scots Musical Museum). 
 1789: Bowles's 'Sonnets,' White's 'Natural History of 
 
 Selborne.' 
 1790 : Ritson's 'Ancient Songs.' 
 
 Here 'eighteenth century poetry' can be seen in its death- 
 ftgony. A mere examination of the titles of the above
 
 TITK ROMANTIC REACTION. 153 
 
 works shows what tremendous changes were going on 
 underneath. The decade opens with the ' Library ' and 
 ' Table Talk ' ; it closes with the * Sonnets ' which inspired 
 Coleridge, the 'Natural History of Selborne' and 'Ancient 
 Songs.' In Crabbe and Cowper the old order is ceasing, 
 giving place to the new order in Cowper, Blake and Burns. 
 Crabbe was writing on in the old faded style ; in the 
 'Librai-y'he is indeed a 'Pope in worsted stockings,' 
 Pope without Pope's wit or 'musical finesse.' Even 
 the ' Village ' is quite devoid of any trace of the new 
 naturaUsm ; he is as severe in his aversion from romance as 
 Don Quixote himself. Cowper cast the slough of the old 
 style triumphantly ; Blake and Burns had no touch of it, no 
 frost upon the soul. Instead of the wooden things before 
 produced there came a rush of pure lyrical poetry, almost as 
 if there had been no eighteenth century and the Caroline 
 lyrists were still writing; nothing had been heard in 
 England like the songs of these two men since young 
 Milton doffed his singing robes. 
 Before we pass in review the principal writers of the 
 period surveyed in this chapter, let us briefly 
 wXrwo^rto'^ note the advance that had been made in 
 preparation for Wordsworth by 1790. In the 
 poetry of Cowper, Blake and Burns, pure natural feeling, 
 wholly free from artifice, had returned to English song, 
 and had found expression in natural language. This 
 was one sign of a revolt against conventionality that was 
 beginning to show itself in all departments : in form, in 
 matter, in society, in life. Other symptoms of this revolt 
 in contemporary poetry were : a study of social questions, 
 and new interest taken in the poor; indications of the 
 democratic spirit not being confijied to the other side of 
 the Channel ; a truer dehneation of human character ; a 
 widening of the human sympathies to include children and 
 animals, and the joys and sorrows of home. One at least 
 of these features ia mirrored in a simple little lyric of 
 Blake's : 
 
 ' Little lamb, who made thee? 
 
 Dost thou know who made thte, 
 
 Qflve thee life and bade thee feed 
 
 By the stream and o'er the mead ;
 
 154 THE AGE OF JOIIKSON. 
 
 Gave thee clothing of delight, 
 Softest clothing, woollj% bright , 
 Gave thee such a tender voice, 
 Making all the vales rejoice? 
 
 Little lamb, who made thee ? 
 
 Dost thou know who made thee ? 
 
 Little lamb, I'll tell thee ; 
 Little lamb, I'll tell thee. 
 lie is called by thy name, 
 For he calls himself a lamb ; 
 lie is meek and He is mild, 
 He became a little child. 
 I a child and thou a lamb, 
 "We are called by his name. 
 
 Little lamb, God bless thee ! 
 
 Little lamb, God bless thee ! ' 
 
 It will be remembered tbat Eichardson, and not Defoe, 
 has already been proclaimed ' the father of 
 the modern novel,' that is, of the ' story 
 wrought round the passion of love to a tragic or 
 joyous conclusion.' Of all the unlikely persons to 
 have attained to this honour Samuel Richardson might 
 have been thought the unlikeliest. He was the son 
 of a very poor father, was apprenticed to a Lon- 
 don printer, set up in business for him- 
 '^lesQ^mi!' s^^^» prospered, and became Master of the 
 Stationers' Company. He is the * beau ideal ' 
 of an aldermanic Lord Mayor kind of man, and who 
 could conceive of a Lord Mayor lowering himself to write 
 a novel ? Moreover, Richardson was at an age when he 
 might have been expected to know better — fifty-one in 
 the year of the publication of his first work. Lastly, his 
 character was as inimical as his circumstances to the role 
 of novelist. He was an affable corpulent person, given 
 to the awful dissipation of drinking tea in the society of 
 adoring females. On the other hand it must be mentioned 
 that Richardson had always been a profuse letter-writer, 
 and in early days in his village home he carried on the 
 amorous correspondence of three young ladies at once. 
 His three novels are cast entirely in the form of letters. 
 About 1 739 he was asked to compose a volume of ' Familiar
 
 RICnARDSON. 155 
 
 Letters ' for the book-trade, and out of this commission arose 
 his first novo! 'Paraeln.'the story of a virtuous servant 
 wlio turned her young master from a rake into a husband. 
 In 1748 appeared his masterpiece, 'Clarissa,' a sort of 
 companion story of a lady seduced by a gentlemanly 
 villain. ' Pamela ' was intended to be a picture of rewarded 
 virtue ; but it is vulgar, and the conclusion is tame in the 
 extreme. On the other hand, ' Clarissa' is ostensibly a 
 picture of unhappy virtue ; but it is in reality far more moral 
 than its predecessor, and its conclusion is one of the most 
 imbearabl}' pathetic scenes in all fiction. 'As the suc- 
 cessive volumes appeared, and readers were held in 
 suspense as to the fate of the exquisite heroine, Eichard- 
 son was deluged with letters entreating him to have mercy. 
 The women of England knelt sobbing roimd his knees, and 
 addressed him as though he possessed the power of life 
 and death.' 
 
 Eichardson no doubt owes something to Defoe ; but he 
 was strongest where Defoe was weakest ; he had the 
 insight into character, the power of analysing and depict- 
 ing it, that Defoe lacked. Defoe saw things ; Richardson 
 described people's thoughts and feelings as accurately as 
 if he could see them ; he is one of the acutest students 
 of the human heart that ever lived. He was an 
 artist of character, an analyser of human motives and 
 emotions, with no rivals before him and few since. 
 ' Clarissa ' produced an impression in France such as no 
 English work had ever made before. 'Diderot said that 
 it placed Richardson with Homer and Euripides, Rousseau 
 openly imitated it, and Alfred de Mussot has styled it the 
 best novel in the world.' It is impossible to do Richard- 
 son justice in a short extract, because his effects are pro- 
 duced with great deliberation and his art is long drawn 
 out. Our specimen is from a letter to the villain Lovelace, 
 from his friend Belford, describing Clarissa's death. 
 
 ' ITicn turning her head, towards mc — Do you, sir, tell your friend 
 that I forgive him ! And I pray to God to forgive him ! Again 
 paxising, and lifting up her eyes, as if praying that he would. Let 
 him know how liappily I die:— and that, such as my own, I wish to
 
 156 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 be his last hour. She was again silent a few moments : and then 
 resuming— My sight fails me ! — Your voices only — (for we both 
 applauded her Christian, her divine frame, though in accents as broken 
 as her own) and the voice of grief is alike in all. Is not this Mr. 
 Morden's hand ? pressing one of his with that he had just let go — 
 Which is Mr. Belford's ? holding out the other. I gave her mine. 
 God Almighty bless you both, she said, and make you both — in your 
 last hour — for you must come to this — happy as I am. 
 
 She paused again, her breath growing shorter ; and after a few 
 minutes — And now, my dearest cousin, give me your hand — nearer — 
 still nearer — drawing it towards her; and she pressed it with her 
 dying lips— God protect you, dear, dear sir, and once more receive 
 my best and most grateful thanks— and tell my dear Miss Howe, and 
 vouchsafe to see and to tell my worthy Norton — she will be one day, 
 I fear not, though now lowly in her fortunes, a saint in heaven — tell 
 them both that I remember them with thankful blessings in my last 
 moments ! And pray God to give them happiness here for many, 
 many years for the sake of their friends and lovers ; and a heavenly 
 crown hereafter ; and such assurances of it as I have, through the all- 
 satisfying merits of our blessed Redeemer. 
 
 Her sweet voice and broken periods methinks still fill my ears, and 
 never will be out of my memory. After a short silence, in a more 
 broken and faint accent — And you, Mr. Belford, pressing my hand, 
 may God preserve you, and make you sensible of all your errors — you 
 see, in me, how all ends — may you be — and down sank her head upon 
 her pillow, she fainting away and drawing from us her hands. We 
 thought she was then gone ; and each gave way to a violent burst of 
 grief. But soon showing signs of returning life, our attention was again 
 engaged ; and I besought her, when a little recovered, to complete in 
 my favour her half-pronounced blessing. She waved her hand to us 
 both, and bowed her head six times, as we have since recollected, as if 
 distinguishing every person present ; not forgetting the nurse and 
 maidservant ; the latter having approached the bed, weeping as if 
 crowding in for the divine lady's last blessing ; and she spake falter- 
 ing and inwardly — Bless — bless — bless — you all — and — now — and 
 now — (holding up her almost lifeless hands for the last time) come — 
 come — Blessed Lord JESUS ! And with these words, the last 
 but half -pronounced, expired : — such a smile, such a charming 
 serenity overspreading her sweet face at the instant, as seemed to 
 manifest her eternal happiness already begim, Lovelace! — But I 
 can write no more.'
 
 FIELDING. 157 
 
 Fielding took the novel from Richardson's hands and 
 well nigh perfected it. He gave to it what it was not 
 
 likely to acquire in a series of letters — com- 
 ^^'''^noT^mi^^'P^®'^^*-^ ^^ incident, variety of characterisation, 
 
 and masterly construction, besides the humour 
 that both Defoe and Richardson lacked. ' Joseph Andrews' 
 (1742), brother to the highly virtuous servant 'Pamela,' 
 was designed as a burlesque ; but after a few chapters 
 Fielding became interested in his work, seemed to forget 
 that he was writing a skit, and produced a pure comedy in 
 fiction. Aanong many other works, * The History of Tom 
 Jones,' his masterpiece, followed in 1749, when the author's 
 health was already giving way. The highest p)raise is due 
 to Fielding's plots, that of 'Tom Jones' being one of the 
 best ever put into a novel. There is one episode of undue 
 length ; but there are no unnatural incidents ; the move- 
 ment of the story is like the growth of a tree. It is low 
 life, but the character-painting is almost unequalled, and 
 after all the mirror is held up to nature. 
 
 ♦ He looked on naked natm-e imashamed, 
 And saw the Sphinx, now hestial, now divine, 
 In change and rechange ; he nor praised nor blamed, 
 But drew her as he saw with fearless line. 
 Bid ho good service P God must judge, not we. 
 Manly he was, and generous and sincere ; 
 English in all, in genius blithely free : 
 Who loves a man may see his image here.' 
 
 Fielding has been often compared with Richardson. 
 Against the portly Master of the Stationers' Company we 
 have to set the scholar and the magistrate ; the manliest 
 of men against an old woman. ' There is a cheerful, 
 sunshiny, breezy spirit that prevails everywhere,' writes 
 Coleridge, 'strongly contrasted with the close hot day- 
 dreamy continuity of Richardson.* And again : * What a 
 master of composition Fielding was ! Upon my word, I 
 think the "Oedipus Tyrannus," "The Alchemist," and 
 "Tom Jones," the three most perfect plots ever planned. 
 And how charming, how wholesome. Fielding always is ! 
 To take him up after Richardson is like emerging from a 
 sick-room heated by stoves into an open lawn on a breezy
 
 158 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 day in May.' It would be equally true to say that it is 
 like the change from high tea in the company of respect- 
 able spinsters to a country wake. 
 
 Fielding's style is manly, plain, and lucid ; but for 
 grace and elegance we have to wait for his successors, 
 Sterne and Goldsmith. It is again difficult to do him 
 justice in a short extract ; but the following piece from 
 ' Tom Jones ' will serve as well as any. 
 
 ' Our critic was now pretty silent till the play, which Hamlet 
 introduces before the king. This he did not at first understand, till 
 Jones explained it to him ; but he no sooner entered into the spirit of 
 it, than he began to bless himself that he had never committed 
 murder. Then turning to Mrs. Miller, he asked her if she did not 
 imagine the king looked as if he was touched ; " though he is," said 
 he, " a good actor, and doth all he can to hide it. Well, I would not 
 have so much to answer for, as that wicked man there hath, to sit 
 upon a much higher chair than he sits upon. No wonder he run 
 away ; for your sake I'll never trust an innocent face again." 
 
 The grave-digging scene next engaged the attention of Partridge, 
 who expressed much surprise at the number of skulls thrown upon 
 the stage. To which Jones answered, " That it was one of the most 
 famous burial places about town." "No wonder, then," cries 
 Partridge, " that the place is haunted. But I never saw in my life a 
 worse grave-digger. I had a sexton, when I was clerk, that should 
 have dug three graves while he is digging one. The fellow handles a 
 spade as if it were the first time he had ever had one in his hand. Ay, 
 ay, you may sing. You had rather sing than work, I believe." Upon 
 Hamlet's taking up the skull, he cried out, " Well ! it is strange to 
 see how fearless some men are : I never could bring myself to touch 
 anything belonging to a dead man, on any account. He seemed 
 frightened enough too at the ghost I thought. Kemo omnibus horia 
 sapii.^' 
 
 Little more worth remembering occurred during the play, at the 
 end of which Jones asked him, which of the players he had liked 
 best ? To tliis he answered with some appearance of indignation at 
 the question, " The king, without doubt." " Indeed, Mr. Partridge," 
 says l^Irs. Miller, " you are not of the same opinion with the town; 
 for they are all agreed, that Hamlet is acted by the best player who 
 ever was on the stage." "He the best player!" cries Partridge, 
 with a contemptuous sneer, " why I could act as well as he myself.
 
 COLLINS. 159 
 
 I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very 
 same manner, and done just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that 
 Bceno, as you call it, between him and his mother, where you told 
 mo he acted so fine, why. Lord help me, any man, that is any good 
 man, that has such a mother, would have done exactly the same. I 
 know you are only joking with me ; but, indeed. Madam, though I was 
 never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the 
 country ; and the king for my money; he speaks all his words dis- 
 tinctly, half as loud again as the other. Anybody may see he is an 
 actor.'" 
 
 With Collins and Gray we return for the time to poetry. 
 
 William Collins alone disputes with Gray the poetical 
 
 supremacy of the mid-eighteenth century. To 
 
 1721-1759. the literary historian he is the more important 
 figure of the two. He did not fetch inspiration 
 from sources so remote as Gray ; but on the other hand he 
 was less chilled by the Classic influence of the hour ; he 
 produced in his few sane years of manhood about as much 
 as Gray did in a lifetime ; and there is in his verse, as will 
 be seen, a note of pure song that Gray never reached. 
 Collins was, in some sort, an eighteenth century Shelley. * He 
 had employed his mind, ' writes Johnson, ' chiefly on works 
 of fiction and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some 
 peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with 
 those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, 
 and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive 
 acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, 
 giants, and monsters ; he delighted to rove through the 
 meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence 
 of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian 
 gardens.' CoUins was attacked by brain disease about 
 1753, and died at Chichester at the age of thirty-eight. 
 
 ' He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of 
 revival,' says Johnson, who could never resist a stab at the 
 Romantic reactionaries, oven when the poet criticised had 
 been a dear personal friend. Collins 'affected' nothing ; 
 ho remained for long so obscure and unpopular that lie 
 effected little too. ' The Aviiole Eomantic School, in its germ 
 no doubt, but yet unmistakably foreshadowed, lies already 
 in the "Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands."'
 
 160 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 Undoubtedly this ode is distinctly Romantic in subject, 
 treatment, and style and moreover it struck an entirely new 
 note in English verse — not a mere echo of the Elizabeth- 
 ans. Yet its outward influence on the movement must 
 have been inappreciable, for it was lost sight of and never 
 published until 1788. We have said that there was no 
 affectation in Collins's poetry; he was just a Romantic born 
 out of due season ; he despaired of the return of the 
 days of Milton, of whose poetry there are some echoes in 
 his own. In the 'Ode on the Poetical Character,' he 
 represents himself leaving Waller and following Milton 
 ' in vain ' : 
 
 ' Thither oft, his glory greeting, 
 
 From Waller's myrtle shades retreating, 
 With many a vow from hope's aspiring tongue, 
 My trembling feet his guiding steps pui-sue ; 
 
 In vain — such bliss to one alone, 
 
 Of all the sons of soul, was known ; 
 
 And heaven, and fancy, kindred powers, 
 Have now o'erturned the inspiring bowers ; 
 Or curtained close such scene from every future view.' 
 
 We have already seen how needless was his despair. 
 It has been well said that of aU our minor poets Collins 
 is probably the one who has shown most of the higher 
 qualities of poetry. His appeal is not always sure of an 
 immediate response : he may be ' difficult ' ; but the diffi- 
 culty is well worth overcoming. The following ' Ode to 
 Evening ' is sure to be better appreciated at the twentieth 
 reading than at the first ; the rich economy of expression, 
 by which a single phrase or epithet suggests a whole 
 picture to the mind, requires time to produce its full 
 effect. 
 
 ' If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, 
 May hope, chaste eve, to soothe thy modest ear. 
 Like thy own solemn springs. 
 Thy springs, and dying gales, 
 
 nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sim 
 Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, 
 
 With brede ethereal wove, 
 
 O'erhang his wavy bed :
 
 COLIilNS's 'ode to EVtNINO.* 16l 
 
 Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat 
 With short, shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing; 
 
 Or where the beetle winds 
 
 His smull but sullen horn, 
 
 As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, 
 Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum : 
 
 Now teach me, maid composed. 
 
 To breathe some softened strain. 
 
 Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, 
 May, not unseemly, with its stillness suit, 
 
 As, musing slow, I hail 
 
 Thy genial loved return ! 
 
 For when thy folding star arising shows 
 His pjily circlet, at his warning lamp 
 
 1'he fragrant hours, and elves 
 
 Who slept in flowers the day, 
 
 And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge. 
 And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, 
 
 The pensive pleasures sweet 
 
 I'repare thy shadowy car. 
 
 Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake 
 Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile. 
 
 Or upland fallows grey 
 
 Reflect its last cool gleam. 
 
 But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain, 
 Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut. 
 
 That from the mountain's side 
 
 Views wilds, and swelling floods, 
 
 And hamlets brown, and dim- discovered spires; 
 And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all 
 
 Thy de\vy fingers draw 
 
 The gradual dusky veil. 
 
 While spring shall pour his showers, as oft lie wont, 
 And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest eve ! 
 
 While summer loves to dport 
 
 Beneath thy lingering light ; 
 
 While sallow autumn fills thy lap with leaves ; 
 Or winter, yelling through the troublous air. 
 
 Affrights thy shrinking train. 
 
 And rudely rends thy robes ; 
 
 So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed, 
 Shall fancy, friendship, science, rose-lipped health, 
 
 Thy gentlest influence own. 
 
 And hymn thy favourite name I ' 
 ENO. LIT. 1 1
 
 162 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 This ode is the unique instance in English literature of 
 a perfectly succesful lyric without rime. 
 
 The step from Collins to Gray is an easy one. They 
 
 were contemporaries ; they were both scholars ; 
 ^ni6-i7?r^' *^®y ^^^■'^ contributed to the Eomantic reaction. 
 
 Apart from the 'Elegy written in a Country 
 Churchj'ard,' the chief productions of the two men were 
 odes. Dickens saj's somewhere that no poet ever gained 
 a place among the immortals with so small a volume 
 under his arm as Gray; but he might have made an 
 exception in favour of Collins, who has been somewhat 
 unfairly overshadowed by the popularity of the author 
 of the ' Elegy.' Each poet has his champions. Matthew 
 Arnold says that ' Gray is our poetical classic of that 
 literature and age.' On the other hand Swinburne holds 
 that while, ' as an elegiac poet, Gray holds for all ages 
 to come his unassailable and sovereign station ; as a lyric 
 poet, he is simply unworthy to sit at the feet of Collins. . . 
 The Muse gave birth to Collins ; she did but give suck to 
 Gray.' Something like this is probably the general 
 opinion among poets, whereas the profamim vulgtis 
 plumps for Gray. Let us be content, with Swinburne, 
 to assign them the supremacy in their respective reahns : 
 Collins in the lyric, Gray in the elegy. The style that the 
 latter ' always aimed at and (so he says) never could 
 attain ' was ' extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, 
 perspicuous and musical.' This indicates one of the 
 defects of Gray's poetry : it was over-refined, and lacked 
 spontaneity. There was one critic whom the poet could 
 seldom please — himself. It was almost a case of 'Par- 
 turiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus,' for Gray had the 
 reputation of being the most learned man in Europe. 
 His connection with the new movement in literature is not 
 so intimate as that of Collins ; he is colder and more of a 
 mere antiquary ; but his ' Fatal Sisters ' and ' Descent 
 of Odin,' two odes from the Norse, and the 'Triumphs 
 of Owen ' from the Welsh, were among the earliest poems 
 in one department of the Eomantic reaction. Almost every 
 line of the ' Elegy written in a Country Churchyard ' 
 (that of Stoke Poges) is a 'household word'; but even
 
 OBAT. 163 
 
 outside that, Gray has contributed a number of familiar 
 quotations to the common stock, such as : 
 
 ' And snatch a fearful joy ' ; 
 
 • Gay hope is theirs hy fancy fed. 
 
 Less pleasing when possest ' ; 
 
 ♦ Alas ! regardless of their doom, 
 
 The little victims play ; 
 No sense have they of iUs to come, 
 Nor care heyond to-day ' ; 
 
 ' -where ignorance is bliss, 
 'Tis folly to be wise ' 
 
 all from the ' Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.' 
 Our extract consists of the last strophe, antistrophe and 
 epode of the Pindaric ode on the ' Progress of Poetry ' : 
 
 ' Far from the sun and summer- gale, 
 In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid, 
 AMiat time, where lucid Avon stray'd, 
 
 To him the mighty mother did unveil 
 Her awful face : the dauntless child 
 Stretch'd forth his little arms and smiled. 
 " This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear 
 Richly paint the vernal year : 
 Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy ! 
 This can unlock the gatis of joy ! 
 Of horror that, and thrilling fears, 
 Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.'* 
 
 Nor second He, that rode sublime 
 Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, 
 The secrets of the abyss to spy. 
 
 He passed the flaming bounds of place and time : 
 The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 
 Where angels tremble while they gaze, 
 He saw ; but, blasted with excess of light. 
 Closed his eyes in endless night. 
 Behold, where Drj'den's less presumptuous car 
 Wide o'er the fields of glory bear 
 Two coursers of ethereal race, 
 With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace. 
 
 Hark, his hands the lyre explore 1 
 Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er, 
 Scatters from her pictured urn 
 Thoughts that breathe, and words that bum.
 
 164 THE AGE OF JOKNSON. 
 
 But ah ! 'tis heard no more — 
 
 Oh lyre divine, what daring spirit 
 
 Wakes thee now ? Tho' he inherit 
 Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, 
 
 That the Thehan eagle bear, 
 Sailing with supreme dominion 
 
 Thro' the azure deep of air ; 
 Yet oft hefore his infant eyes would run 
 
 Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray, 
 With orient hues, unborrowed of the sun : 
 
 Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way 
 Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate. 
 Beneath the Good how far — but far above the Great.' 
 
 Whether or not Gray be * the poetical classic ' of that 
 Samuel ^^®' ^^' ^o^^sou is its best representative ; if 
 Johnson, he stands chiefly for a decaying Kterary tradi- 
 1/09-1784. ^[qj^^ }ie -^ag on terms of personal friendship 
 with several of the Romantic leaders, and probably every 
 one of them would have owned him the king of letters. 
 The ' Great Cham of hterature, ' as Smollett christened 
 him, owed his pre-eminent position to the combined force 
 of intellect, personality and conversation. Let us first 
 glance at him as Macaulay has depicted him for us in the 
 famous Literary Club, founded in 1764, which numbered 
 among its members not only Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, 
 and Goldsmith, but also Beauclerk, Garrick, Gibbon, Adam 
 Smith, Sir William Scott, Sir Joseph Banks, the two 
 Wartons, Stevens, Malone, Fox, and Boswell. 'There 
 are assembled those heads which live for ever on the 
 canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke 
 and the tall thin form of Langton, the courtly sneer of 
 Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon 
 tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in 
 his ear. In the foreground is the strange figure which is 
 as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we 
 have been brought up : the gigantic body, the huge massy 
 face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the 
 black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched 
 foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the 
 quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convul- 
 sive twitches ; we see the heavy form rolling ; we hear it 
 pufiing; and then comes tlie "AVhy, Sir!" and the "What
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 165 
 
 tlien, Sir! " and tlie "No, Sir!" and the "You don't see 
 your way tlirougli the question, Sir ! " ' 
 
 Johnson's works make no very imposing list. In poetry 
 
 the chief are: 'London' (1738), an imitation 
 
 '^°^ ' of Juvenal's third satire, of which Gray said 
 
 that it 'has all the ease and all the spirit of an original,' 
 
 and in which the famous line, 
 
 ' Slow rises worth by poverty depressed,' 
 
 was printed in capitals in the first edition ; the * Vanity of 
 Human Wishes ' (1749), an imitation of the tenth satire 
 of Juvenal ; and the ' Prologue spoken at the opening of 
 Drury Lane Theatre* (1747), part of which is quoted 
 below. The two imitations of Juvenal are among the best 
 imitations of a classic author that we possess. The spirit 
 of the Eoman satirist is admirably caught ; Johnson never 
 descends to Pope's peevish and venomous scorn and the 
 mahce of his poisoned sting; the objects of his satire are 
 vice, knavery, and folly, not particular villains, knaves, 
 and fools. But when all has been said that the utmost 
 partiality can urge, Johnson's poetry remains little better 
 than insignificant in quantity and in quality, and utterly 
 unmoving to modern ears. The balanced epithets, often 
 two in a line, are intolerably suggestive of verse written 
 after a recipe, as in the following extract from the 'Vanity 
 of Human Wishes ' : 
 
 ' The daring Greeks deride the martial show, 
 And heap their valleys with the gaudy foe. 
 Th' instdled sea with humbler thoughts he gains ; 
 A single skiff to speed his flight remains ; 
 Th' encumber'' d oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast 
 Through purple billows and & floating host. 
 The bold IBavarian in a luckless hour, 
 Tries the dread summits of Caesar eon power.' 
 
 Johnson touches a much higher mark than this in 
 the Drury Lane ' Prologue ' ; but it wiU be seen that he 
 is fast in the grip of the couplet. It opens thus : 
 
 ' When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes 
 First reared the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose :
 
 166 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 Each change of many -coloured life he drew, 
 Exhausted worlds and then imagined new : 
 Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, 
 And panting Time toiled after him in vain : 
 His powerful strokes presiding Truth impressed 
 And unresisted Passion stormed the breast. 
 
 Then Jonson came, instructed from the school, 
 To please in method and invent by rule ; 
 His studious patience and laborious art 
 By regular approach assailed the heart : 
 Cold approbation gave the lingering bays, 
 For those who durst not censure scarce could praise. 
 A mortal born, he met the general doom, 
 But left, like Egypt's kings, a lasting tomb. 
 
 The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame. 
 Nor wished for J onsen's art or Shakespeare's flame ; 
 Themselves they studied, as they felt they writ ; 
 Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. 
 Vice always found a sj^mpathetic friend; 
 They pleased their age and did not aim to mend. 
 Yet bards like these aspired to lasting praise. 
 And proudly hoped to pimp in future days. 
 Their cause was general, their supports were strong. 
 Their slaves were willing and their reign was long, 
 TiU Shame regained the post that Sense betrayed. 
 And Virtue called Oblivion to her aid.' 
 
 When we turn to his prose, Johnson's original achieve- 
 ments do not at first sight appear much greater than in 
 poetry. For what are they? The essays of the 'Rambler' 
 and the 'Idler,' each running for two years, and the 
 former ultimately, in collected form, attaining considerable 
 popularity; the 'Dictionary of the English Language' 
 (1755), a monument of immense labour, but lying hardly 
 upon the confines of literatm'e ; ' Easselas,' a didactic tale, 
 composed in the evenings of one week to defray the expenses 
 of his mother's funeral ; and a series of ' Lives of the 
 Poets' (1779-81), written for the booksellers to accompany 
 a collected series of British Poets. Hence the question is 
 often asked : ' What is the true explanation of Johnson's 
 _, . . unquestioned literary eminence, and of the fam- 
 
 johnson's iliarity of the reading public with his character 
 eminence. ^^^^ appearance?' The explanation is not to 
 be sought in his written works ; indeed, if we had only 
 these to judge by, we should assign him a creditable
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 167 
 
 place among the poets as a writer of dignified heroic 
 couplets ; among the essayists as a man who wrote sound 
 common-sense in a somewhat cumbrous Latinised idiom ; 
 among the story-tellers as the author of a not very 
 remarkable didactic tale ; among scholars as the compiler 
 of a ' Dictionary ' which showed considerable research and 
 diligence, but has necessarily — like all mere works of 
 scholarship — been long superseded ; and as a critic for his 
 'Lives of the Poets,' which is his best literary work. 
 No, the true explanation is to be found in his genuine 
 goodness of heart and sterling moral worth, in his supreme 
 talent for conversation, and in the good fortune which 
 brought him the best biographer that has ever written his 
 hero's life. In Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' (1791) the 
 dictator ' talks literature ' over the space of nearly a quarter 
 of a century. All critics are agreed as to the supreme merits 
 of 'Bozzy's' work. 'Homer is not more decidedly the 
 first of heroic poets,' says Macaulay, 'Shakespeare is not 
 more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not 
 more decidedly the first of orators, than BosweU is the first 
 of biographers.' 
 
 Apart from his conversation, Johnson left his mark 
 
 upon English literature as a critic and as a 
 i°criac! pi'ose stylist. His * Lives of the Poets ' was 
 
 no mean achievement in its day : it far 
 outdistanced all previous English works in literary 
 criticism. It is as strong in general principles as 
 it is unreliable in details of fact. He begins with 
 Cowley, omitting therefore many of the greatest names, 
 and including several mere poetasters ; the best lives are 
 considered to be those of Cowley, Milton, Dryden, Pope, 
 Swift, Addison and Gray. Johnson's magisterial attitude 
 is largely the result of the position he held among the wits 
 and literati of the day. Moreover, it was characteristic of 
 him not to question 'orthodox' beliefs. He reminds one 
 of the schoolmen of the middle ages, who accepted the most 
 preposterous premises unquestioningly, but argued from 
 them with consummate skill. His whole code of criticism 
 rested on a basis, which itself lay outside the pale of 
 criticism ; in other words, he considered poetry almost
 
 168 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 exclusively from the didactic and logical point of view. 
 He sometimes quoted an authority or precedent, but never 
 reasoned from the nature of things. Again, his criticism 
 is characterised by all the eighteeuth-century self-satisfac- 
 tion and incapability of appreciating the highest poetry. 
 For him, English poetry began with Waller and culminated 
 in Pope. Hence his judgments were often warped by pre- 
 judice or by sheer insensibility. Probably both came 
 into play in the case of Milton, the latter especially in that 
 of Gray. His opinion of Milton's * Lycidas ' is as clear an 
 instance of mistaken criticism as the history of Hterature 
 furnishes : * the diction is harsh, the rimes uncertain, and 
 the numbers unpleasing ' ; and this of the very poem 
 which Pattison says 'is the touchstone of taste.' He was 
 provokingly blind to the beauties of our earlier literature. 
 Among the authors of his own day Richardson was almost 
 the only one whom he unreservedly admired. But we can 
 hardly wonder at these vagaries, since he thought the 
 ' Aeneid' a greater poem than the 'Iliad,' and preferred 
 Pope's ' Hiad ' to Homer's. Yet due credit must be given 
 to Johnson for the vigour and sagacity of many of his 
 judgments. Of Pope he was a critic equally appreciative 
 and acute, and indeed of all work on Classic lines. And 
 outside this, his masculine intellect and independent 
 judgment often make his decisions interesting and 
 stimulating, even where we now regard them as mistaken. 
 He is weakest in details and in points requiring a fine 
 susceptibility ; he is strongest in his mastery of general 
 laws, in which he was much in advance of his age. His 
 'Lives' (quoted at some length on p. 128) did more 
 for criticism as a science than all preceding critical works 
 together. Byron said that it was the finest critical work 
 extant. 
 
 Of Johnson's prose style much has been written. Its 
 Johnson's latest champion thinks ' we may surely by 
 prose style, ^jj^jg ^jj^g claim that Johnson has shaken off 
 the inept cavillings of petty criticism, and has blunted 
 the shafts of the witlings ' — which seems to recall the 
 forensic maxim : if you have a bad case, abuse the 
 plaintiff's attorney. The plain truth is that Johnson has
 
 DR. JOHKSON. 169 
 
 more than one style. Here is a not unfavoui-able specimen 
 of liis earlier style, which has often been called sesqui- 
 pedalian — his verdict on Shakespeare's 'Cymbeline.' 'This 
 play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues, 
 and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the 
 expense of much incongruity. To lemark the folly of the 
 fiction, the absiu'dity of the conduct, the confusion of the 
 names and manners of different times, and the impossi- 
 bility of the events iu any system of life, were to waste 
 criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too 
 evident for detection and too gross for aggravation.' 
 There is no denying the clearness of structure and mean- 
 ing here ; equally there is no denying the off eusiveness of 
 'unresisting imbecility.' Apparently Q-oldsmith and John- 
 son himself are among the ' witlings.' Goldsmith once 
 said to him : * If you were to make little fishes talk, they 
 would talk like whales.' And Johnson, when asked, about 
 1780, how he liked a 'Rambler' that had been read, shook 
 his head and answered, ' Too wordy.' On the other hand, 
 in the style of the 'Lives of the Poets,' which is much 
 more idiomatic and Saxon, there is little enough to censure 
 and much to praise. Addison and Swift were rather 
 dangerous models : the grace of the former would so 
 easily degenerate into triviality, and the simpKcity of the 
 latter into slovenliness. With such carefully balanced 
 and scaffolded structures as Johnson's sentences some loss 
 of grace was inevitable ; but he set up a standard of prose 
 which could become traditional without danger, and into 
 which later writers might again infuse what of grace, 
 elegance, tenderness, and ease they could command. 
 
 Besides the quotation from the ' Life of Pope ' already 
 given, we select the famous Letter to Lord Chesterfield. 
 
 '7th February 1755. 
 Mr LoED — I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of ' The 
 World,' that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to 
 the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished ia 
 an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the 
 great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknow- 
 ledge.
 
 170 THE AOE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lord- 
 ship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchant- 
 ment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might 
 boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre ; — that I might 
 obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending ; but I found 
 my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty 
 would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your 
 Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a 
 retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I 
 could ; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever 
 so little. 
 
 Seven years, my lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward 
 rooms, or was repulsed from your door ; during which time I have 
 been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless 
 to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, 
 without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one 
 smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a 
 patron before. 
 
 The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found 
 him a native of the rocks. 
 
 Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man 
 struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, 
 encumbers him with help ? The notice which you have been pleased 
 to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind ; but it has 
 been delayed tUl I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it ; till I am 
 solitary, and cannot impart it ; till I am known, and do not want it. 
 I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where 
 no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should 
 consider me as owing that to a patron, which providence has enabled 
 me to do for myself. 
 
 Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any 
 favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should con- 
 clude, if less be possible, with less ; for I have been long wakened 
 from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much 
 
 exultation, 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 Your lordship's most hamble, most obedient servant, 
 
 Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 After the 'Great Ctam' himself, no member of the 
 Literary Club was more famous than Goldsmith, who,
 
 GOLDSMITH. 171 
 
 in singular consonance with his name, is paid to have 
 ' touched nothing ho did not adorn.' He is a 
 ouver curious contrast to his friend Johnson, who 
 1728-1774.' talked better than he wrote; and who him- 
 self said of Goldsmith : * No man was more 
 foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise 
 when he had.' Garrick's epitaj)h, to which ' Retaliation ' 
 was 'Goldy's' reply, proves the truth of Johnson's words : 
 
 ' Here lies Poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 
 Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll.' 
 
 In writing, he certainly achieved very great success in 
 several different departments, and five at least of his 
 productions are masterpieces in their way : * She Stoops to 
 Conquer,' which has never since been surpassed in prose 
 comedy ; the ' Traveller ' and the ' Deserted Village ' in 
 poetry ; the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' in fiction ; and the 
 ' Essays ' in periodical literature. His prose style is 
 the perfection of ease, entirely free from the 'tumid 
 pomp ' of the writers of Johnsonese ; it can have no higher 
 praise than this, tliat it is quite as easy to tire of Addison's 
 'Spectator' as of Goldsmith's 'Citizen of the World.' 
 His famous novel is very weak in plot ; but, in addition to 
 the charm of the style, it brims over with good humour 
 and real kindness of heart. It is the first genuine novel of 
 domestic life. Abroad, it is more read than any other of 
 our prose classics. Goethe called it a 'prose idyll,' and 
 acknowledged that in the decisive moment of mental 
 development the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' had formed his 
 education. ' That lofty and benevolent irony, that fair 
 and indulgent view of aU infirmities and faults, that 
 meekness under all calamities, that equanimity under all 
 changes and chances, and the whole train of kindred 
 virtues, whatever names they bear, proved my best edu- 
 cation.' Johnson wrote after Goldsmith's death: 'Let 
 not his frailties be remembered : he was a very great 
 man.' 
 
 Goldsmith's relation to the Romantic reaction is a very 
 interesting question. The ' Traveller ' and the ' Deserted 
 Village ' are about the last good poetry we are willing
 
 172 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 to concede to the scliool of Pope, and even that concession 
 
 is only a partial one : he belonged to that 
 
 Goldsmith and school as Diuch as the times would let him. 
 
 the Romantic i-r i i i i tit 
 
 reaction. He opposed blank verse, and had no more 
 
 sympathy with the forms of verse that Collins 
 
 and Gray had introduced or with those of earlier English 
 
 poetry than Johnson himself. The latter ridiculed them 
 
 in verse : 
 
 ' All is strange, yet nothing new, 
 Endless labour all along, 
 Endless laboiir to be wrong, 
 Phrase that time has flung away, 
 Uncouth words in disarray, 
 Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet, 
 Ode and elegy and sonnet.' 
 
 Goldsmith attacked them in the Dedication of the 
 ' Traveller ' : ' Yet, however this art [poetry] may be 
 neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger 
 from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. 
 AVhat criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of 
 blank verse, and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapaests, and 
 iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence ! Every 
 absurdity has now a champion to defend it.' Yet he is 
 comparatively free from the conventional * poetic diction ' ; 
 and, though there is not that close communion with 
 Nature that we find in later poets, in his fresh, clear, 
 truthful descriptions of natural scenery we note one of the 
 distinctively Romantic tendencies. 
 
 In poetry we select the ' village preacher ' from the 
 'Deserted Village,' who may be compared with Chaucer's 
 ' poor parson of a town ' ; in prose, a short extract from 
 the 'Essays.' 
 
 ' Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 
 And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; 
 There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose. 
 The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 
 A man he was to all the country dear, 
 And passing rich with forty pounds a year ; 
 Remote from towns he ran his godly race. 
 Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place ; 
 Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, 
 By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ;
 
 GOLDSMITH. l73 
 
 Far other aims his heart had learnt to prize, 
 More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. 
 His house was known to all the vagrant train, 
 He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ; 
 The long remembered beggar was his guest. 
 Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 
 The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud. 
 Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ; 
 The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 
 Sat by his fire, and talked the night away ; 
 Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, 
 Shouldei'ed his crutch, and showed how fields were won. 
 Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, 
 And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 
 Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 
 His pity gave ere charity began. 
 
 Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
 And even his failings leaned to virtue's side ; 
 But in his duty prompt at every call. 
 He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all. 
 And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
 To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, 
 He tried each art, reproved each dull delay. 
 Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.' 
 
 'ITiough fond of many acquaintances, I desire an intimacy only with 
 a few. The man in black, whom I have often mentioned, is one whoso 
 friendship I could wish to acquire, because he possesses my esteem. 
 His manners, it is true, are tinctured with some strange inconsistencies, 
 and he may be justly termed a humourist in a nation of humourists. 
 Though he is generous even to profusion, he affects to be thought a 
 prodigy of parsimony and prudence ; though his conversation be 
 replete with the most sordid and selfish maxims, his heart is dilated 
 with the most unboimded love. I have known him profess himself a 
 man-hater, while his cheek was glowing with compassion ; and, 
 while his looks were softened into pity, I have heard him use the 
 language of most unbounded ill-nature. Some affect humanity and 
 tenderness, others boast of having such dispositions from nature ; but 
 he is the only man I ever knew who seemed ashamed of his natural 
 benevolence. He takes as much pains to hide his feelings as any 
 hypocrite would to conceal his indifference ; but on every unguarded
 
 174 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 moment the mask drops oft, and reveals him to the most superficial 
 observer. 
 
 In one of our late excursions into the country, happening to 
 discourse upon the provision that was made for the poor in England, 
 he seemed amazed how any of his countrymen could be so foolishly 
 weak as to relieve occasional objects of charity, when the laws had 
 made such ample provision for their support. **ln every parish- 
 house," says he, "the poor are supplied with food, clothes, fire, and 
 a bed to lie on ; they want no more, I desire no more myself ; yet still 
 they seem discontented. I am surprised at the inactivity of our 
 magistrates in not taking up such vagrants, who are only a weight 
 upon the industrious ; I am surprised that people are found to relieve 
 them, when they must be at the same time sensible that it, in some 
 measure, encourages idleness, extravagance and imposture. Were I 
 to advise any man for whom I had the least regard, I would caution 
 him by all means not to be imposed upon by their false pretences ; let 
 me assure you, sir, they are impostors every one of them, and rather 
 merit a prison than relief." 
 
 He was proceeding in this strain, earnestly to dissuade me from an 
 imprudence of which I am seldom guilty, when an old man, who 
 still had about him the remnants of tattered finery, implored our 
 compassion. He assured us that he was no common beggar, but 
 forced into the shameful profession, to support a dying wife, and five 
 hungry children. Being prepossessed against such falsehoods, his 
 story had not the least influence upon me ; but it was quite otherwise 
 with the man in black ; I could see it visibly operate upon his 
 countenance, and effectually interrupt his harangue. I could easily 
 perceive that his heart burned to relieve the five starving children, 
 but he seemed ashamed to discover his weakness to me. While he 
 thus hesitated between compassion and pride, I pretended to look 
 another way, and he seized the opportunity of giving the poor 
 petitioner a piece of silver, bidding him at the same time, in order 
 that I should hear, go work for his bread, and not tease passengers 
 with such impertinent falsehoods for the future.' 
 
 There remains one great prose writer of last century 
 
 Edmund ^'^^ ^^^ ^® represented by no one but liimseli 
 
 Burke, — Edmuud Burke, the greatest political thinker 
 
 1729-1797, ^-j^Q j^j^g g^gj, (jQyQ|;g(j himself to the practice of 
 
 English politics. His best works are the 'Thoughts on 
 the Present Discontents' (1770), the two 'Speeches on
 
 BTTRKB. 175 
 
 America' (1774-1775), 'Eeflections on the Revolution in 
 Franco' (1790), and the 'Letters on a Eegicide Peace' 
 (1796). The earlier of these works show a political fore- 
 sight and sagacity almost without parallel; in the later 
 * the sanity and probity which so eminently distinguished 
 his character are clouded by his rabid prejudice against 
 France ' and ' that mother of all evU, the French Eevolu- 
 tion.' Burke's powers as an orator in prose grew to the 
 last ; but if we desire to admire and respect him equally 
 we shall read in preference those works which belong to 
 the time before ' this strange madness of anger seized and 
 convidsed hun.' He repeatedly forecast the course of 
 events correctly, and mapped out the pohcy that would 
 have to be undertaken in future emergencies with an 
 accuracy that can only be called prophetic. Burke was 
 before all things an orator. Johnson said of him : ' After 
 five minutes' talk you would say, "This is an extraordin- 
 ary man." He is never humdrum. Burke's talk is the 
 ebullition of his mind ; he does not talk from a desire of 
 distinction, but because his mind is full.' Hence it is 
 probable that in his case the reader of his oratory is at 
 no disadvantage as compared with the hearer — a view that 
 is confirmed by Goldsmith's clever skit in ' Eetaliation.' 
 
 ' Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 
 We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much ; 
 Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 
 Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat 
 To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote : 
 Who, too deep for his hearers, stiU went on refining, 
 And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining ; 
 Though equal to all things, for all things unlit. 
 Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit, 
 For a patriot too cool ; for a drudge disobedient ; 
 And loo fond of the rigiht to pursue the expedient.^ 
 
 Though Burke can be caUed neither our greatest 
 
 His style politician, nor our greatest public orator, nor 
 
 our greatest political philosopher, he is far and 
 
 away the gi'eatest example we have of the three in one 
 
 person. But for his own statement, few would have
 
 176 THE AGE OF JOHNSOW. 
 
 surmised that Dryden was his model in prose. His magni- 
 ficence of style is due to three things. First, the strong 
 feeling which everywhere manifests itself. Second, his 
 extensive knowledge, which prevented his ever treating a 
 subject pettily and fi-eed him from the narrowness of cut- 
 and-dried formulas in politics. His thoroughness, breadth 
 and profundity, as weU as his way of winding himself 
 into his subjects like a serpent, account for his moderate 
 success in public speaking. Third, his comprehensive 
 thought, which would not allow him to take advantage 
 of a narrowing down of survey. His style for the most 
 part corresponded with the imperial nature of his subjects : 
 the freedom of a nation, the fortunes of great societies, the 
 inviolability of law and fidelity. He is, says Craik, ' the 
 writer of a prose illumined as with fire ; enthusiastic and 
 yet supremely logical : fearless and yet absolutely obedient 
 to order and to law : eloquent and yet restrained : stirred 
 by every popular movement, and yet suggestive and philo- 
 sophical. More completely than any man he showed, in 
 style no less perfectly than in spirit and in symj)athy, all 
 that was most typical of the best genius of his age — its 
 restraint, its philosophy, its obedience to order and to law, 
 and its gift of literary instinct.' 
 
 Our illustration is from the * Speech on Conciliation with 
 America.' 
 
 ' I am sensible, sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is 
 admitted in the gross, but that quite a different conclusion is drawn 
 from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is an object 
 well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people is the best 
 way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their 
 choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who 
 understand the military art will of course have some predilection for 
 it. Those who wield the thunder of the state may have more confi- 
 dence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this 
 knowledge, my opinion is much more in favour of prudent manage- 
 ment than of force ; considering force not as an odious but a feeble 
 instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so grow- 
 ing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection 
 with us. 
 
 First, sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but
 
 BURKE. 177 
 
 temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the 
 necessity of subduing again ; and a nation is not governed, which is 
 perpetually to be conquered. 
 
 My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the 
 effect of force, and an armament is not victory. If you do not 
 succeed, you are without resource ; for, conciliation failing, force 
 remains ; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. 
 Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness ; but they can 
 never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. 
 
 A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your 
 very endeavours to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the 
 thing you recover ; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in 
 the contest. Nothing less will content me than whole America. I 
 do not choose to consume its strength along with our own ; because in 
 all parts it is the British strength that I consume. I do not choose to 
 be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict ; 
 stUl less in the midst of it. I may escape ; but I can make no insurance 
 against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to 
 break the American spirit ; because it is the spu-it that has made the 
 country. 
 
 Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favour of force as an 
 instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility 
 has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient in- 
 dulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so. But we 
 know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our 
 attempt to mend it ; and our sin far more salutary than our penitence. 
 
 These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of 
 untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in 
 other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated.' 
 
 Blake and Burns belong wholly to the new school ; they 
 anticipate the nineteenth century in the eighteenth. On 
 the other hand, three poets (whose surnames by a curious 
 double coincidence all begin with C) might be taken as 
 ' the incarnate transition ' from the eighteenth to the 
 nineteenth century : Crabbe, Cowper, and Coleridge. But 
 Crabbe never altered very much from first to last; 
 throughout his career he combined features from both 
 periods. In Coleridge the antagonistic styles are seen 
 in greater extremes than in any other poet ; but in 
 
 ENQ. LIT. 12
 
 178 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 otlier respects his early poetry is negligible. Cowper 
 serves our purpose best, because in him the transition 
 is seen in gradual process. He had never been satisfied 
 
 with the eighteenth century medium, and as 
 ■wiiuam Cowper, ^ young man liad abandoned poetry till he 
 
 could find a style more suited to the thoughts 
 within him ; the problem lay before him and he had to 
 work his way through it. Meanwhile, living in quiet 
 retirement at Olney, he had seasons of religious depression 
 that ended in recurrent attacks of madness, and after 1780 
 he took to poetry, partly at the suggestion of friends, as 
 a rehef and an occupation. The volume of poems that 
 aj)peared in 1782 was pronounced *a dull sermon in very 
 indifferent verse.' The acuter critics alone perceived the 
 frequent force of his writing, his quiet humour, and his 
 fine touches of criticism. Yet the work shows no trace of 
 naturalism, except perhaps in the minuteness of detail 
 with which some subjects are treated. In 1785, however, 
 appeared ' The Task,' the importance of which it is hardly 
 possible to exaggerate ; ' John Grilpin ' was printed in the 
 same volume. The explanation of the title is interesting. 
 Lady Austen, when staying at Olney, had urged Cowper to 
 write a poem in blank verse ; his reply was a request for a 
 subject. 'Oh! you can never be in want of a subject; 
 you can write on an}^ — write upon this Sofa.' Thus the 
 poem, hke several others of his, was a ' Task ' ; and the 
 fii'st book was on ' The Sofa ' : ' I sing the Sofa.' The first 
 hunda-ed lines or so keep to the subject, treated in a mock- 
 heroic style ; but then comes a notable change, 
 
 ' The sofa suits 
 The gouty limb, 'tis true ; but gouty limb, 
 Though on a soia, may I never feel : 
 For I have loved the rural walk through lanes 
 Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, 
 And skii'ted thick with intertexture firm 
 Of thorny boughs : have loved the rural walk 
 O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink 
 E'er since, a truant boy, I passed my bounds, 
 To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames.' 
 
 Here we see the true naturalism beginning as it were
 
 OOWPER. 179 
 
 suddenly. Almost all his earlier poetry was in the 
 couplet ; the ' Tusk ' is in blank verse. It is surely more 
 than a mere fancy to trace a suggestion of the moment- 
 ous change from Classic to Eomantic in the titles of the 
 several books : I. ' The Sofa ' ; II. ' The Time-Piece' ; III. 
 'The Garden'; IV. 'The Winter Evening'; V. 'The 
 Winter Morning Walk'; VI. 'The Winter Walk at 
 Noon.' 
 
 Thomson's 'Seasons' was published complete in 1730, 
 . ^ and his mantle had fallen on no intervening 
 
 Appreciation. j. mi, < m i > • i 
 
 poet. The 'Task' is a very unequal poem; 
 its importance lies in the fact that the worn-out didactic 
 eighteenth-century manner is blended in the most extra- 
 ordinary way with the coming naturalism; such words 
 as 'arthritic,' 'oscitancy,' 'stercoraceous,' with such Mil- 
 tonic lines as 
 
 ' The unambiguous footsteps of the God 
 Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, 
 And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds ' ; 
 
 never was such an old garment patched with new cloth. 
 Begun and ended in the summer of 1783, the poem made 
 an immediate success, and Cowper was at once recognised 
 as the first poet of the day. Since then it may have owed 
 some popularity and some unpopularity to its religious 
 tone — his aim was to show that religion is a fit theme for 
 poetry — but its tenderness, playfulness and love of nature 
 are fully recognised and appreciated by the French critic, 
 Sainte-lieuve, who is certainly not biased by religious 
 sympathy. The pathos of some of the minor poems, ' On 
 the Receipt of My Mother's Picture ' and ' To Mary,' is un- 
 surpassed and unsurpassable. Into the spirit of Cowper's 
 best work have entered, besides the love of nature, a deep 
 tenderness and a true feeling for humanity, that had not 
 been equalled in his century. He is attractive whenever 
 he shows his real self, as in his 'Letters,' which are the 
 best in our language. 
 
 Our selection is ' To Mary ' in poetry ; and in prose, part 
 of a letter to the Rev. William Unwin, the son of 'Mary,* 
 dated September 24, 1786.
 
 180 TITE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 To Maey. 
 
 The twentieth year is well-nigh past, 
 Since first our sky was overcast ; 
 Ah, would that this might be the last ! 
 My lilary ! 
 
 Thy spirits have a fainter flow, 
 I see thee daily weaker grow ; 
 'Twas my distress that brought thee low, 
 My Jlary ! 
 
 Thy needles, once a shining store, 
 For my sake restless heretofore, 
 Now rust disused, and shine no more, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil 
 The same kind oSice for me still. 
 Thy sight now seconds not thy will, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 But well thou pla3'^Ldst the housewife's pai't, 
 And all thy threads with magic art 
 Have wound themselves about this heart, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Thy indistinct expressions seem 
 Like language uttered in a dream ; 
 Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 
 Are still more lovely in my sight 
 Than golden beams of orient light, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 For, could I view nor them nor thee, 
 What sight worth seeing could I see ? 
 The sun would rise in vain for me. 
 My jSIary ! 
 
 Partakers of thy sad decline. 
 Thy hands their little force resign ; 
 Yet, gently prest, press gently mine. 
 My IMary ! 
 
 Such feebleness of limbs thou provest. 
 That now at every step thou movest 
 Upheld by two, yet still thou lovest. 
 My Mary !
 
 COWPEE. 161 
 
 And still to love, though prest with ill, 
 In wintry age to feel no chill, 
 With me is to be lovely still. 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
 But ah ! by constant heed I know, 
 How oft the sadness that I show 
 Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 And should my future lot be cast 
 With much resemblance of the past. 
 Thy worn-out heart will break at last, 
 My Mary ! ' 
 
 ' You have had your troubles, and we ours. This day three weeks 
 your mother received a letter from Mr. Newton, which she has not 
 yet answered, nor is likely to answer hereafter. It gave us both 
 much concern, but her more than me ; I suppose because my mind 
 being necessarily occupied in my work, I had not so much leisure to 
 browse upon the wormwood it contained. The report of it is a direct 
 accusation of me, and of her an accusation implied, that we have both 
 deviated into forbidden paths, and lead a life unbecoming the Gospel ; 
 that many of my friends in London are grieved, and the simple people 
 of Olney astonished ; that he never so much doubted of my restoration 
 to Christian privileges as now ; — in short, that I converse too much 
 with people of the world, and find too much pleasure in doing so. He 
 concludes with putting your mother in mind that there is still an 
 intercourse between London and Olney ; by which he means to insinuate 
 that we cannot offend against the decorum that we are bound to observe, 
 but the news of it will most certainly be conveyed to him. We do not at 
 all doubt it ; — we never knew a lie hatched at Olney that waited long for 
 a bearer ; and though we do not wonder to find ourselves made the 
 subjects of false accusation in a place ever fruitful of such productions, 
 we do and must wonder a little that he should listen to them with 
 BO much credulity. I say this because if he had heard only the 
 truth, or had believed no more than the truth, he would not, I think, 
 have found either me censurable or your mother. And that she should 
 be suspected of irregularities is the more wonderful (for wonderful it 
 would be at any rate), because she sent him not long before a letter 
 conceived in such strains of piety and spirituality as ought to have 
 convinced him that she at least was no wanderer. But what is the 
 fact, and how do we spend our time in reality ? "^Tiat are the deeds
 
 182 THE AGE OF JOHNSON. 
 
 for which we have been represented as thus criminal? Our present 
 course of life differs in nothing from that which we have both held 
 these thirteen years, except that, after great civilities shown us, 
 and many advances made on the part of the Throcks, we visit them. 
 That we visit also at Gayhurst ; that we have frequently taken airings 
 with my cousin in her carriage ; and that I have sometimes taken a 
 walk with her on a Sunday evening and sometimes by myself, which 
 however j'our mother has never done. These are the only novelties in 
 our practice ; and if by these procedures, so inoffensive in themselves, 
 we yet give offence, offence must needs be given. God and our own 
 consciences acquit us, and we acknowledge no other judges. 
 
 The two families with whom we have picked up this astonishing 
 intercourse are as harmless in their conversation and manners as can 
 be found anywhere. And as to my poor cousin, the only crime that 
 she is guilty of against the people of Olney is that she has fed the 
 hungry, clothed the naked, and administered comfort to the sick ; 
 except indeed that, by her great kindness, she has given us a little lift 
 in point of condition and circumstances, and has thereby excited envy 
 in some who have not the knack of rejoicing in the prosperity of 
 others. And this I take to be the root of the matter. 
 
 My dear William, I do not know that I should have teased your 
 nerves and spirits with this disagreeable theme, had not Mr. Newton 
 talked of applying to you for particulars. He would have done it, 
 he says, when he saw you last, but had not time. You are now 
 qualified to inform him as minutely as we ourselves could of all our 
 enormities ! Adieu ! 
 
 Our sincerest love to yourself and yours, 
 
 Wm. 0.'
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832 A.D.). 
 
 The Classic period may be held to have closed any time 
 The limits of between 1780 and 1798. But later than the 
 date. year of the publication of the ' Lyrical Ballads ' 
 (1798) of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Magna Charta 
 of the ro-enfranchisement of English poetry, it is impossible 
 to date the meeting of the two ages, although the critics 
 and the reading pubhc lagged far behind the poets, and 
 even Byron would have been a poet of the Classic school, 
 for which he professed the highest admiration, if the 
 tendencies of the time had not been too strong for him. 
 How slow the critical and reading public were in appre- 
 ciating the men who were the apostles of the Romantic 
 movement may be seen in the treatment accorded to 
 Wordsworth, whose theories and whose poetry, which is in- 
 finitely greater than his theories, were during most of his 
 life received with contempt and ridicule. But none of these 
 things — contempt, sneers, hostile criticism, parody, silence 
 — moved him ; he held on in spite of them all, slowly but 
 surely his following increased, until at last, towards the close 
 of his life, he was the acknowledged monarch of English 
 letters, and even in danger of the reaction that inevit- 
 ably follows an excess of popularity. The downward limit 
 of 1832 seems the best barrier between the age of Words- 
 worth and that of Tennyson. Of the six representative 
 writers for whom alone we can find room in this chapter, 
 Shelley and Byron had been dead eight years or more in 
 1832; Scott died in that year; Coleridge and Lamb had two 
 more years to live, but their work was done; Wordsworth 
 
 183
 
 184 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 did not die till 1850, but nearly all his best poetry 
 was written. Of the writers who made the next age 
 illustrious, Tennyson, Carlyle and Macaulay had begun 
 to publish; but all their works of greatest moment fall 
 after 1832. 
 
 Perhaps this period of little more than thirty years is of 
 Importance of uudiily magnified importance to us, because it 
 
 the period. j[g neither so near as to lack our respect nor so 
 far off as to alienate our sympathy, and because of the 
 pecidiarly entrancing interest in which it abounds. But 
 in sober fact, no other age in English literature, not even 
 the Elizabethan, can vie with this in combined mass and 
 rapidity of production ; in splendour of literary achieve- 
 ment it is surpassed by the Elizabethan age alone. It 
 contains eight writers of the first class, two of whom, 
 Coleridge and Scott, we might almost reckon as 'double 
 firsts,' in poetry and in prose. The productions of a single 
 year were sometimes of extraordinary intrinsic merit ; for 
 example, the year 1816 saw the production of Jane 
 Austen's 'Emma,' often regarded as her masterj)iece ; 
 Byron's 'Siege of Corinth,' 'Prisoner of Chillon,' and the 
 third canto of ' Childe Harold ' ; Coleridge's ' Christabel ' ; 
 Scott's 'Antiquary,' ' Black Dwarf,' and ' Old Mortality ' ; 
 and Shelley's ' Alastor ' — to mention first-class writers 
 only. With such an overwhelming output of work of 
 such a quality, the necessity for rigid exclusion and careful 
 selection in a book of this character must be more than 
 ever apparent. 
 
 It has been our purpose, from the time when the two 
 schools became clearly distinguished, to keep Romantic 
 and Classic work marked off by their distinctive character- 
 istics in a way that has probably not been attempted in an 
 elementary book before. We have seen throughout the 
 eighteenth century how the way was being prepared for the 
 later Romantics by Thomson, Collins, Gray, the Wartons, 
 Percy, Chatterton, Cowper, Burns and Blake. We have 
 now to remark those characteristics of the Romanticism of 
 this age which are peculiar to itself and distinguish it 
 from that of the Elizabethan age; and to see how 
 Wordsworth, alike by what he accomplished and by the
 
 'komanticism.' 185 
 
 admission of friends and foes, was the apostle of the 
 movement. 
 We have already seen that the degree of similarity between 
 the age of Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare 
 Eomantio and that of Wordsworth is sufficiently great, 
 penods. especially when they are contrasted with the 
 intervening Classic period, to justify the application to 
 them of the common term Eomantic. But if, instead of 
 conjointly contrasting them with the eighteenth century, we 
 compare them with each other, we shall find in them 
 features markedly dissimilar. This dissimilarity is partly 
 represented by the contrast between the drama and the 
 novel : that was the age of the drama, this is the age of 
 the novel ; that was the age of action, this is the age of 
 introspection. True, the poetry of the age of Wordsworth 
 is more noteworthy and characteristic than its fiction, but 
 that detracts little, if anything, from the force of the 
 illustration. For the salient fact is this : the Elizabethans 
 came into a rich heritage of life, which they had to 
 investigate and explore and make their own ; their world 
 was a world of action and therefore their literature is 
 before all things a literature of action ; they did not often 
 pause to reflect or analyse or balance pros and cons, they 
 acted by impulse or by intuition. On the other hand, 
 their descendants of the early nineteenth century wore 
 necessarily much more self-conscious, critical, intro- 
 spective ; they were keenly aHve to the literary history 
 of the intervening centuries, which they regarded with 
 aversion, or sympathy, or an alternation of the two; the 
 problems of life lay heavy upon some or all of them, not 
 least probably upon those in whose works they seem to 
 have left the fewest traces. Lastly, the age of Words- 
 worth regarded external nature in a way unknown to the 
 Elizabethans, who, apart from Shakespeare, appear to have 
 been unable even to assign flowers to their proper seasons. 
 Professor Herford, in a passage marked by all his 
 
 critical acumen, philosophic insight, and grace 
 ^e^lined™ ^^ language, answers the question ' What was 
 
 Romanticism?' with special reference to its 
 manifestations in the early nineteenth century : from it
 
 186 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 we quote the following sentences. ' Primarily it was an 
 extraordinary development of imaginative sensibility. At 
 countless points the universe of sense and thought acquired 
 a new potency of response and appeal to man, a new 
 capacity of ministering to, and mingling with, his richest 
 and intensest life. Glory of lake and mountain, grace of 
 childhood, dignity of the untaught peasant, wonder of 
 faery, mystery of the Gothic aisle, radiance of Attic 
 marble — all these springs of the poet's inspiration and 
 the artist's joy began to How, not at once but in prolonged 
 unordered succession; and not within a limited area, but 
 throughout Western Europe, and pre-eminently in Ger- 
 many, England, and France. ... To rekindle the soul of 
 the past, or to reveal a soul where no eye had yet 
 discerned it ; to call up Helen or Isolde, or to invest lake 
 and mountain with " the light that never was, on sea or 
 land " ; to make the natural appear supernatural, a8 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge put it, or the supernatural 
 natural — were but different avenues to the world of 
 Romance. . . . Like every other English version of a great 
 European movement, English Romanticism had its peculiar 
 originality and strength, and its peculiar limitations. Its 
 chief glory lay, without doubt, in the extraordinarily 
 various intimate and subtle interpretation of the world 
 of "external Nature," and of that other world of wonder 
 and romance which the familiar comradeship of Nature 
 generates in the mind of man. Neither France nor 
 Germany made any real advance upon Rousseau's vivid 
 and impassioned landscape painting. But for Wordsworth, 
 Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge, Nature is an inexhaustible 
 source and provocative of lovely imaginings. Words- 
 worth conveys the loneliness of the mountains, Shelley 
 the tameless energies of wind, Keats the embalmed 
 darkness of verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways, 
 with an intensity which makes all other Nature poetry 
 seem pale.' 
 
 The same brilliant and scholarly writer summarises the 
 non-formal differences between the Classic and Romantic 
 schools in two sentences : ' Classicism opposes to the arbi- 
 trariness of fancy a pervading rationality; to the mysterious
 
 'romanticism.' 187 
 
 the intelligible; to the unpruned variety of nature the 
 limitations of an eclectic art ; to passion glori- 
 Contrasted fied and dwelt on, passion restrained and 
 Classicism, somewhat disparaged. Romanticism, on the 
 other hand, makes prominent the qualities 
 conspicuous in the youth of a nation : bright aimless 
 fancy, awe of the unknown, eager uncritical delight in the 
 abundance of nature ; impetuous joy and sorrow, breaking 
 forth into such free and instant tears and smiles as the 
 Argonauts uttered, or the comrades of Odysseus.' This is, 
 like Jaques, so 'full of matter,' that the student will do 
 well to apply it and test its truth again and again in his 
 study of the poets of the two periods, or in reading the 
 works of two such typical writers as Pope and Wordsworth. 
 It may be useful to repeat here wliat were in effect the 
 watchwords of the two schools : of the one, order, harmony, 
 restraint, common-sense; of the other, variety, contrast, 
 liberty, imagination. The dangers were, on the one hand, 
 of order degenerating into routine, harmony into mere 
 mechanism, restraint into durance vile, and common-sense 
 into formulas ; on the other hand, of variety giving place 
 to variegation, contrast to wilfulness, liberty to licence, 
 and imagination to mere idiosyncrasy. In feeble and 
 incompetent hands, Classic poetry tends to become dull, 
 mechanical, monotonous, prosaic in the last degree; 
 Romantic poetry to become unwieldy, hysterical, involved, 
 noisy, vulgar, inharmonious. 
 
 AVe saw in Chapter VI. with what contempt the early 
 Classic poets looked back on their Romantic 
 Keats on the predecessors, — an example that was followed 
 with added bitterness by several of the nine- 
 teenth century Romantics. For instance, Keats in his 
 'Sleep and Pootiy' thus characterises his predecessors, in 
 a passage equally noteworthy for its Romantic opinions 
 and for its Romantic heroic couplets : 
 
 * a schism 
 Nurtured by foppery and barbarism 
 Made great Apollo blush for this his land. 
 Men -were thought wise who could not understand 
 His glories , with a puling infant's force
 
 188 THE AGE OP WORDSWORTH. 
 
 They sway'd about upon a rocking-horse, 
 And thought it Pegasus. Ah ! dismal-soul'd ! 
 The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd 
 Its gathering waves —ye felt it not. The blue 
 Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew 
 Of summe night collected still to make 
 The morning precious : Beauty was awake ! 
 Why were ye not awake ? But ye were dead 
 To things ye knew not of, — were closely wed 
 To musty laws lined out with wretched rule 
 And compass vile ; so that ye taught a school 
 Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit. 
 Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, 
 Their verses tallied. Easy was the task : 
 A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask 
 Of Poesy, ni-fated, impious race ! 
 That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face, 
 And did not know it, — no, they went about, 
 Holding a poor, decrepit standard out, 
 Mark'd with most flimsy mottoes, and in large 
 The name of one Boileau ! ' 
 
 A few special features of the literature of tliis time 
 The early deserve a passing mention. The revival of 
 nineteenth interest in ballads, due to Percy, was more than 
 ^' maintained. The productions of early periods 
 and nameless minstrels, belonging as it were to the child- 
 hood of literature, they are the very antithesis of what the 
 Classics delighted to honour. Scott wrote of Percy's 
 * Eeliques ' : ' nor do I believe I ever read a book half so 
 frequently or with half the enthusiasm.' Ballads generally 
 received wider recognition ; the text of genuine old ballads 
 was treated with reverence ; and the composition of ' Bal- 
 lads ' became something of a poetic fashion. Another 
 feature was the nascent influence of Germany upon English 
 literature. In poetry it was in some degree a wave of 
 Percy's influence rebounding upon its native shore ; but a 
 more wide-spread and more lasting effect was produced, 
 both on poetry and prose, by the transcendental philosophy 
 of Kant. This too was the age of the starting of the 
 reviews which played so important a part in the life of the 
 century; the Liberal 'Edinburgh Review' (conservative 
 enough in literature) in 1802, the Conservative ' Quarterly ' 
 in 1809, and 'Blackwood's Magazine' in 1817. Again,
 
 WORDSWORTH. 189 
 
 it was the age of the 'great school' of Shakespearean 
 critics, Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt — all so great that 
 one knows not in what order to place their names. The 
 eighteenth century can show plenty of Shakespearean 
 dry-as-dusts ; but it has not a single critic of Shakespeare 
 (except Theobald) worthy to hold a candle to these three 
 men, whose unerring justness of appreciation, brilliance 
 and insight place them at the head of dramatic critics. 
 Lastly, there was a -wondrous revival of prose fiction, 
 ■which -wiU be dealt with in connection with the work of 
 Scott. 
 
 It was the fashion of the critics of the 'Edinburgh 
 Review ' to regard Wordsworth as the leader 
 
 ^ School!'^ of what they were pleased to caU the 'Lake 
 School,' because he, Coleridge and Southey 
 were supposed to have formed a * brotherhood of poets,' 
 who ' haunted for some time about the lakes of Cumber- 
 land.' This was a convenient supposition for the satirists 
 of the time, one of whom composed the epigram : 
 
 ' They lived in the lakes — an appropriate quarter 
 For poems diluted with plenty of water.' 
 
 But literary history is not so uncritical as to need Coleridge's 
 distinct denial that any such ' school ' existed ; the three 
 men were friends — Coleridge and Southey married sisters 
 — and influenced each other ; but the resemblance between 
 them is hardly greater than between any other three 
 Romantic poets. The 'Lake School' was "Wordsworth, 
 to whom we now turn. 
 
 There is no space for biography in this chapter. For 
 ^.„. the most part Wordsworth lived a quiet life 
 
 Wordsworth, near the English lakes in the midst of the 
 1770-1850. "beloved mountains, which left their mark upon 
 much of his poetry. But his disposition and character 
 were by no means so ' quiet ' as they have often been 
 represented. The popxilar conception of the poet as a 
 prim, staid, if not stolid, Puritan, as a self-absorbed, 
 uninteresting recluse, as characterised by a calm, passion- 
 less aloofness fi-om the world of human interests, has 
 been proved to be a »i«'«conception. lie was a man of
 
 190 THE AGE OF "WORDSWOKTH. 
 
 concentrated energies and impassioned contemplation ; and 
 some power of entering sympathetically into such states 
 of being is necessary to the full enjoyment of his highest 
 poetry. That highest poetry is scattered up and down his 
 works,^ for Wordsworth is not a poet of 'masterpieces.' 
 He is rather a poet of unscalable heights of sublimity, 
 and almost unfathomable depths of bathos and common- 
 place. Both extremes are exemplified in the 'Lyrical 
 Ballads/ to which should be added at least 'The Solitary 
 Reaper,' 'To the Cuckoo' (1804), 'I Wandered Lonely as 
 a Cloud,' the * Ode to Duty,' ' Stanzas suggested by a 
 Picture of Peele Castle,' 'Character of the Happy Warrior,' 
 ' Intimations of Immortality from Eecollections of Early 
 Childhood,' and the pick of the ' Sonnets.' 
 
 The importance of the 'Lyrical Ballads' lies in the facts, 
 
 that the Romantic aspirations we have seengrow- 
 The '^y?^<;*i^ ing in force throughout the eighteenth century 
 
 found most complete poetical expression therein, 
 and that in the prefaces and appendix of the later editions 
 Wordsworth put forth and defended the poetic theories 
 which were exemplified in the poems themselves. The 
 ' Lyrical Ballads ' therefore are to modern poetry what 
 Rossetti's 'Annunciation' is to modern painting; they 
 enriched the world of English poetry as no one volume has 
 since done. The early association of the joint authors, 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, is probably the most important 
 passage in both their lives, and, often as the story has 
 been told {e.g. by Wordsworth in a note at the head of 
 ' We are Seven '), it must be repeated here. In 1793 
 Coleridge read Wordsworth's * Descriptive Sketches ' 
 and was instantly and violently moved by it. In his 
 impulsive manner he wrote immediately to his friends : 
 ' The giant Wordsworth— God love him !' In 1795-1796, 
 when they became intimate, each felt that their friendship 
 was by far the most momentous thing that had ever 
 happened to them. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister 
 removed to Alfoxden in Somerset on purpose to be near 
 Coleridge, who had settled at Nether Stowey, and for the 
 
 1 Much of it i8 brought together in the Golden Treasurj' ' Words- 
 worth ' (Macmillan, 2s. 6d.).
 
 THE 'lYRIOAX B.VIiLADS.' 191 
 
 next year they lived intermittently in ' productive friend- 
 ship.' The two poets were widely different in training 
 and in certain intellectual characteristics ; on the other 
 hand they had some deeply-rooted affinities. The result 
 of their intercourse was two-fold. In the first place they 
 influenced each other. Coleridge rose from a fourth-rate 
 poet to one of the first order, and wrote nearly everything 
 of his that has enduring worth within two years or so from 
 the beginning of their friendship. Coleridge's influence 
 on AVordsworth, though less striking, was of great value ; 
 for one thing it helped to rid him of those morbid ideas 
 which had come of brooding over the French Revolution. 
 In the second place, there was a recognition on both 
 sides that each of their natures had limits which 
 they could not overpass. They prepared to produce a 
 joint volume ; but the partnership became less and less 
 close; they found out by degrees the wide poetical 
 diversity between them, and realised the consequent im- 
 practicability of joint authorship. In the end, so much 
 more fecund and responsive was the genius of Wordsworth, 
 that his nineteen contributions were hardly kept in coun- 
 tenance by the four of Coleridge, although the latter 
 included the finest poem in the volume, 'The Ancient 
 Mariner.' The original title was ' Lyrical Ballads, with a 
 few other Poems.' Among the latter was AVords worth's 
 most memorable contribution to the volume, neither lyrical 
 nor a ballad, the ' Lines written a few miles above Tintern 
 Abbey.' Such is in brief the external history of this 
 remarkable book, the joint production of which Words- 
 worth refers to in his ' Prelude ' : 
 
 ' That summcT, under whose indulgent skies 
 Upon smooth Qunntock's airy ridge we roved 
 TJncheoked, or loitered mid her sylv.in combs, 
 Thou in bewitching words, with happy heart, 
 Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man, 
 The bright- eyed Mariner ; 
 And I, associate with such labour, steeped 
 In soft forgetful ness the livelong hours, 
 Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found, 
 After the perils of his moonlight ride, 
 Near the loud waterfall.'
 
 192 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 But of far deeper import than what has just been 
 
 ^.^ related is what may well be called the internal 
 
 the ' Lyrical history of the ' Lyrical Ballads.' It is char- 
 
 Baiiads.' acteristic of Coleridge that his record of the 
 partnership should deal with this side of its history. 
 ' The thought,' he says, ' suggested itself (to which of us 
 I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be 
 composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and 
 agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural ; and the 
 excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the 
 affections by the di-amatic truth of such emotions, as 
 would naturally accompany such situations, supposing 
 them real. For the second class, subjects were to be 
 chosen from ordinary Kfe ; the characters and incidents 
 were to be such as will be found in every village and its 
 vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to 
 seek after them, or to notice them when they present 
 themselves. In this idea originated the plan of the 
 "Lyrical Ballads"; in which it was agreed that my 
 endeavours should be directed to persons and characters 
 supernatural, or at least romantic ; yet so as to transfer 
 from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance 
 of truth sufTicient to procure for these shadows of 
 imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the 
 moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, 
 on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, 
 to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and 
 to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by 
 awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of 
 custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders 
 of the world before us.' In a word, Coleridge's part was 
 to humanise and familiarise the supernatural, Wordsworth's 
 to exalt and transfigure the natural and the common. 
 
 The reader will be helped to a fuller comprehension of 
 this important passage, if we append Dowden's comment 
 upon it, and add one or two illustrations from the 
 * Ballads ' themselves. * Coleridge indicates precisely 
 wherein lay the importance of the publication of this 
 little volume in the history of our literature. There 
 existed two powerful tendencies in the literature of the
 
 THE 'lyrical ballads.' 193 
 
 time, each of wliich was liable to excess when it operated 
 alone, each of which needed to work in harmony with the 
 other, and to take into itself something from the other — 
 the tendency to realism, seen in such a poem as Crabbe's 
 "The Village," and the tendency towards romance, seen 
 in its more extravagant forms in such writings as those of 
 Matthew Grregory Lewis. ReaHsm might easily have 
 become hard, dry, literal, as we sometimes see it in 
 Crabbe. Romance might easily have degenerated into a 
 coai'se revel in material horrors. English poetry needed, 
 first, that romance should be saved and ennobled by the 
 presence and tiie power of truth — truth moral and psycho- 
 logical ; and secondly, that naturalism, without losing any 
 of its fidelity to fact, shoiild be saved and ennobled by the 
 pi-esence and the power of imagination — " the light that 
 never was, on sea or land." This precisely was what 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth contributed to English poetry 
 in their joint volume of " Lyi-ical Ballads," which in 
 consequence may justly be described as marking an epoch 
 in the history of our hterature.* 
 
 Our extracts are from the * Lines written above Tintern ' 
 and the * Ancient Mariner * respectively. 
 
 ' Though absent long, 
 These forme of beauty have not been to me, 
 As is a landacape to a blind man's eye : 
 But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din 
 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, 
 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
 Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, 
 And passing even into my purer mind 
 With tranquil restoration : — feelings too 
 Of unremembered pleasure ; sut-h, perhaps, 
 As may have had no trivial influence 
 On that best portion of a good man's life, 
 His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
 Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 
 To them I may have owed another gift, 
 Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, 
 In which the burthen of the mystery. 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world 
 Is lighten'd : — that serene and blessed mood, 
 ENO. LIT. 13
 
 194 
 
 THE AGE OF WOBX>SWORTH. 
 
 In which the afEections gently lead ua on, 
 Until, the hreath of this corporeal frame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul : 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 "We see into the life of things. 
 
 If this 
 Be but a vain belief, yet, oh ! how oft, 
 In darkness, and amid the many shapes 
 Of joyless day-light ; when the fretful stir 
 Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, 
 Have hung upon the beatings of my heart ; 
 How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, 
 O sylvan Wye ! Thou wanderer through the woods, 
 How often has my spirit turned to thee ! ' 
 
 "'I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! 
 I fear thy skinny hand ! 
 And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
 As is the ribb'd sea-sand. 
 
 The "Wedding- 
 Guest feareth 
 that a spirit is 
 talking to him ; 
 
 I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 
 And thy skinny hand, so brown." — 
 Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding Guest '< 
 This body dropt not down. 
 
 Alone, alone, all, all alone. 
 Alone on a wide, wide sea ! 
 And never a saint took pity on 
 My soul in agony. 
 
 The many men, so beautiful ! 
 
 And they all dead did lie : 
 
 And a thousand thousand slimy things 
 
 Liv'd on ; and so did I. 
 
 I look'd upon the rotting sea, 
 And drew my eyes away ; 
 I look'd upon the rotting deck. 
 And there the dead men lay. 
 
 I look'd to Heaven, and tried to pray; 
 But or ever a prayer had gusht, 
 A wicked whisper came, and made 
 My heart as dry as dust. 
 
 But the ancient 
 Mariner assureth 
 him of his bodily 
 life, and pro- 
 ceedeth to relate 
 his horrible pen- 
 ance. 
 
 He despiseth 
 the creatures of 
 the calm. 
 
 And envieth 
 that they should 
 live, and so many 
 lie dead.
 
 THE ' LYRICAL, BALLADS.' 
 
 195 
 
 I closed my lids, and kept them close, 
 
 And the balls like pulses heat ; 
 
 For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky 
 
 Lay like a load on my weary eye, 
 
 And the dead were at my feet. 
 
 The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 
 Nor rot nor reek did they : 
 The look with which they look'd on me 
 Had never pass'd away. 
 
 But the curse 
 liveth for him in 
 the eye of the 
 dead men. 
 
 An orphan's curse would drag to hell 
 
 A spirit from on high ; 
 
 But oh ! more horrible than that 
 
 Is the curse in a dead man's eye ! 
 
 Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse. 
 
 And yet I could not die. 
 
 The moving Moon went up the sky, 
 
 And no where did abide : 
 
 Softly she was going up, 
 
 And a star or two beside — 
 
 Her beams bemock'd the sultry main. 
 
 Like April hoar-fi'ost spread ; 
 
 But where the shiji's huge shadow 
 
 lay, 
 The charmed water burnt alway 
 A still and awful red. 
 
 In his loneliness and fixed- 
 ness he yenrneth towards the 
 journeying Moon, and the stars 
 that still sojourn, yet -till move 
 onward ; and everywhere the 
 hlue sky belongs to them, and 
 is their appointed rest, and 
 their native country and their 
 own natural homes, which they 
 enter unannounced, as lords 
 that are certainly expect-d, and 
 yet there is a silent joy at their 
 arrival. 
 
 Beyond the shadow of the ship, 
 
 I watch'd the water-snakes : 
 
 They mov'd in tracks of shining white. 
 
 And when they rear'd, the elfish light 
 
 Fell off in hoary flakes. 
 
 By the light of 
 the Mnon he 
 beholdeth God's 
 creatures of the 
 great calm. 
 
 Within the shadow of the ship 
 
 I watch'd their rich attire : 
 
 Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 
 
 They coil'd and swam ; and every track 
 
 Was a flafih of golden fire. 
 
 happy living things ! no tongue 
 
 Their beauty might declare ; 
 
 A spring of love gush'd from my heart, 
 
 And I bless'd them unaware ! 
 
 Sure my kind saint took pity on me. 
 
 And I bless'd them unaware ! 
 
 Their beauty 
 and their happi- 
 
 He blesseth 
 them in his 
 heart.
 
 196 THE AGE Oe WORDSWORTH. 
 
 The self -same moment I could pray ; The spell be- 
 
 And from my neck so free ^'^^ *<* ^''^^^• 
 
 The Albatross fell off, and sank 
 Like lead into the sea.' 
 
 "Wordsworth's poetic theories, largely right but in part 
 overstated, lie beyond the scope of this book. But we 
 take him and Scott as the representatives of the poetry 
 and prose of the age, and therefore it is necessary to make 
 clear what his practice did for English poetry. He 'took 
 
 Some of stock ' of the language of poetry, cleared out a 
 WordRworth's lot of old rubbish which had long ceased to 
 
 reforms iiave any but a conventional poetic value, and 
 made available for poetic use many words that had long 
 been falsely regarded as unpoetic. And this is only 
 typical of what he did in other departments ; he extended 
 likewise the domain of poetiy in the realm of nature, not 
 external nature alone, but in the lower ranks of human 
 nature too. The eighteenth century had clung to the surface 
 of things like a limpet, never penetrating beneath ; Words- 
 worth habitually worked from the surface towards the 
 centre, and from this characteristic all his reforms ema- 
 nated. As one of his disciples says, 'Through seeing in 
 many things which had hitherto been deemed unfit subjects 
 for poetry a deeper truth and beauty than in those which 
 had been most dealt with, he did a wider service to poetry 
 than any other poet of his time.' 
 
 There is another debt that we owe to him. We tuiu to 
 other poets for amusement, for intellectual stimulus, for 
 the culture of the emotions ; we turn to Wordsworth for 
 moral and spiritual consolation. He speaks direct to the 
 soul. Not that he is by any means a distinctly religious 
 poet. His ai-tistic canon is expressed in these words : ' his 
 works, as well as those of other poets, should not be con- 
 sidered as developing all the influences which his own 
 heart recognised, but rather those which he felt able as an 
 artist to display to advantage.' And these were, above 
 Wordsworth ^^' ^^^ influences of Nature. He is the high 
 and priest of our restored communion with Nature. 
 
 Nature. rj,^ Milton, who knew Nature chiefly through 
 books, she was a glorious spectacle, to Wordsworth she
 
 WOKDSWORTH. 197 
 
 was a living power. Milton's epithets are expressive 'of 
 a real emotion in the spectator's soul, not of any quality 
 detected by keen insight in the objects themselves.' This 
 insight was the secret of Wordsworth's strength. ' Most 
 eighteenth century poets in like manner either content them- 
 selves with the mere description of single scenes in Nature, 
 or they transfer to these scenes tlieir own emotions. It is 
 Wordsworth who first thinks of Nature habitually as a 
 whole, and treats of the active influence which she may 
 exert on the mind of man. It is not every one, however, 
 as he says, who is capable of receiving all that Nature is 
 ready to give. It is useless to approach her except with 
 observing eyes and an open heart. The accuracy of 
 Wordsworth's own observation of Nature is proved to us 
 on aU hands in his poems, and his sensitiveness of feeling 
 is well shown in the " Lanes written above Tintern Abbey." 
 But to get the utmost good possible, he tells us a further 
 process is necessary, a withdrawal into oneself and an 
 inward contemplntion of what one has seen and felt. It is 
 the picture left on the mind after this process which is the 
 last lesson Nature can give us, and which is the fit subject 
 of poetry. Often the emotion originally excited will be 
 completely transmuted in this process of inward reflection : 
 sadness may be made the substance of a higher joy.' 
 Thus Nature in Wordsworth's poetry is not regarded 
 as a mere background for his pictures of man, nor as 
 a mirror reflecting the feelings of man, but rather as a 
 wonderful power around us calming and influencing our 
 Bouls. 
 
 Wordsworth's best poetry was written between the 
 years 1797 and 1808 ; the best of his best is supreme in its 
 kind. It is intermingled with a good deal that, whether 
 or not as a consequence of his theories, is comparatively of 
 very poor quality. Sometimes the two qualities are most 
 strangely blended in the same poem, as in ' The Sailor's 
 Mother ' (below). As a sonneteer his merits are very 
 remarkable. That the poet who could write such drivel as 
 
 ' And Betty's most especial charge 
 Was, "Johnny! Johnny! mind that you
 
 198 THE AGE OF 'WORDS'WOETH. 
 
 Come home again, nor stop at all, 
 Come home again, whate'er befall, 
 My Johnny do, I pray you do " ' 
 
 in tlie * Idiot Boy,' should be the one to bring the sonnet 
 back to its pristine perfection and to popular favour, is one 
 of those things one would never be likely to prophesy. 
 Yet the best sonnets of Wordsworth are worthy of Shake- 
 speare or Milton, unsurpassable, perfect, equaled only by 
 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds' (see p. 67) 
 and its few compeers. That the poet of the ' Idiot Boy ' 
 found the discipline of sonnet-writing beneficial is not to 
 be wondered at ; as he himself says, 
 
 ' In truth the prison, unto which we doom 
 Ourselves, no prison is : and hence for me. 
 In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound 
 "Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground.' 
 
 To our earlier illustration we add here his finest sonnet, 
 and ' The SaHor's Mother.' 
 
 ' The world is too much with us ; late and soon. 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
 The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
 The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; 
 For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
 It moves us not. — Great God, I'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.' 
 
 * One morning (raw it was and wet — 
 A foggy day in winter time) 
 A Woman on the road I met, 
 Not old, though something past her prime : 
 Majestic in her person, tall and straight ; 
 And like a Roman matron's was her mien and gait. 
 
 The ancient spirit is not dead ; 
 Old times, thought I, are breathing there ; 
 Proud was I that my country bred 
 Such strength, a dignity so fair :
 
 COLERrDQE. 199 
 
 She begged an alms, like one in poor estate ; 
 I looked at her again, nor did my pride abate. 
 
 When from these lofty thoughts I woke, 
 
 " What is it," said I, " that you bear, 
 
 Beneath the covert of your Cloak, 
 
 Protected from this cold damp air ? " 
 
 She answered, soon as she the question heard, 
 
 "A simple bmlhen, Sir, a little Singing-bii-d." 
 
 And, thus continuing, she said, 
 
 " I had a Son, who many a day 
 
 Sailed on the seas, but he is dead ; 
 
 In Denmark he was cast away : 
 
 And I have travelled weary miles to see 
 
 If aught which he had owned might still remain for me. 
 
 " The bird and cage they both were his : 
 'Twas my Son's bird ; and neat and trim 
 He kept it ; many voyages 
 The singing-bird had gone with him ; 
 ^^'^len last he sailed, he left the bird behind ; 
 From bodings, as might be, that hung upon his mind. 
 
 " He to a fellow-lodger's care 
 
 Had left it, to be watched and fed, 
 
 And pipe its song in safety ; — there 
 
 I found it when my Son was dead ; 
 
 And now, God help me for my little wit ! 
 
 I bear it with me, Sir ; — he took so much delight in it." ' 
 
 But little must be added here to what has been said 
 Samuel Taylor ^^ Coleridge above. His part in the ' Lyrical 
 CoKnd'ze, Ballads ' was to obtain a ' willing suspension 
 1772-1834. ^^ disbelief ' for the supernatural, and we may 
 say that that is what the best of his poetry does. His 
 years of full poetic inspiration were few, two at the most 
 (1797-1798), and hence the quantity of his high poetic work 
 is in inverse proportion to its quality. He waited weary 
 years in the vain hope of a return of inspiration, in order 
 to finish ' Christabel ' ; but it was never finished. His 
 later work was critical and philosophical. ' Coleridge 
 alone among English writers is in the front rank at once 
 as poet, as critic, and as philosopher.' His ' Lectures and 
 Notes on Shakespeare ' is still one of the very few indis- 
 pensable books for the Shakespearean student.
 
 200 THE AGE OF WOEDSWORTH. 
 
 The poetry of Coleridge has ' a certain languidly sooth- 
 ing grace or cadence for its most hxed quality.' 
 18 poetry, -g^ pointed out to Hazlitt that there is a * class 
 of poetry built on the foundation of dreams.' In such 
 poetry he is facile princeps in universal Hterature. 'The 
 Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel' (1816), ' Kubla Khan,' and 
 'Love' may be called 'dream poems.' 'Kubla Khan' 
 was actually a dream ; it is a fragment because he was 
 interrupted in transcribing it by an unspeakable caUer. 
 If, in addition to these four, ' Dejection ' and ' France ' are 
 read, the student will acknowledge the peculiar charm of 
 Coleridge's magic verse. There is no more luscious music, 
 no more enchanting melody, in the English tongue than are 
 to be found in these six pieces. Haziitt says that Coleridge 
 ' liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or break- 
 ing through the straggling branches of a copse- wood ' ; but 
 the mode of composition left no trace in his verse, unless 
 it be in the accentual rhythm. ' The metre of the 
 "Christabel,"' says the Preface, 'is not, properly speak- 
 ing, irregular, though it may seem so from its being 
 founded on a new principle: namely, that of counting in 
 each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the 
 latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the 
 accents will be found to be only four.' Coleridge was 
 unaware that his ' new principle ' is that upon which the 
 oldest English verse is constructed. So were his brother 
 poets, and they seized upon it with delight. While the 
 incomplete poem was fluttering about the literary circles 
 in manuscript, Scott heard it recited by Sir John Stoddart 
 in 1801, and 'the music in his heart he bore,' reproduc- 
 ing it as best he could in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' 
 (1805), whence Byron borrowed it for his 'Siege of 
 Corinth.' 
 
 The peculiar witchery of Coleridge's poetry can hardly 
 be better exemplified than in the 'Kubla Khan' fragment. 
 
 * In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 A stately pleasure- dome decree : 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man 
 Down to a sunless sea.
 
 COLEKIDGE. 201 
 
 So twice five miles of fertile ground 
 With walls and towers were girdled round : 
 And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills 
 Where blossomed many an incense- bearing tree; 
 And here were forests ancient as the hills, 
 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 
 
 But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted 
 
 Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover ! 
 
 A savage place ! as holy and enchanted 
 
 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 
 
 By woman wailing for her demon-lover ! 
 
 And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, 
 
 As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 
 
 A mighty fountain momently was forced : 
 
 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 
 
 Huge fragments vaulted like reboimding hail, 
 
 Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail : 
 
 And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever 
 
 It flung up momently the sacred river. 
 
 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 
 
 Through wood and dale the sacred river ran. 
 
 Then reached the caverns measureless to man. 
 
 And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean : 
 
 And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
 
 Ancestral voices proi)hesying war ! 
 
 The shadow of the dome of pleasure 
 
 Floated midway on the waves ; 
 
 Where was heard the mingling measure 
 
 From the fountain and the caves. 
 It was a miracle of rare device, 
 A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice I 
 
 A damsel with a dulcimer 
 
 In a vision once I saw : 
 
 It was an Abyssinian maid, 
 
 And on her dulcimer she played, 
 
 Singing of Mount Abora. 
 
 Could I revive within me 
 
 Her symphony and song. 
 
 To such a deep delight 'twould win me 
 That with music loud and long, 
 I would build that dome in air, 
 That sunny dome ! those caves of ice ! 
 And all who heard should see them there. 
 And all should cry, Beware ! Beware ! 
 His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
 
 202 THE AGE OF WORDSWOKTH. 
 
 Weave a circle round him thrice, 
 And close your eyes with holy dread, 
 For he on honey-dew hath fed, 
 And drxmk the milk of Paradise.' 
 
 Byron and Shelley, an admirable contrast and represent- 
 ing opposite extremes of Romantic poetry, will complete 
 our account of early nineteenth century verse. If the 
 criticism of foreign nations be, as Madame de Stael says, 
 that of a contemporary posterity, Byron might 
 ^i788^im°' ^® *^® ^st of English poets, for he had an enor- 
 mous reputation abroad. In his hands Eng- 
 Ksh poetry became for the first time European. 
 
 ' He touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced, 
 As some vast river of unfailing source, 
 Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed, 
 And opened new fountains in the human heart. 
 Where fancy halted, wearj' in her flight, 
 In other men, his, fresh as morning, rose, 
 And soared imtrodden heights, and seemed at home 
 Where angels bashful looked. Others, though great, 
 Beneath their argument seemed struggling whiles ; 
 He, from above descending, stooped to touch 
 The loftiest thought ; and proudly stooped as though 
 It scarce deserved his verse. With Nature's self 
 He seemed an old acquaintance, free to jest 
 At will with all her glorious majesty. 
 He laid his hand upon the " Ocean's mane," 
 And played familiar with his hoary locks ; 
 Stood on the Alps, stood on the Apennines, 
 And with the thunder talked, as friend to friend ; 
 And wove his garland of the lightning's wing.' 
 
 This is the way Byron's contemporaries write of him. 
 His personality and his poetry together ' subjugated ' 
 them, and oppressed their judgment. His finest verse is 
 by no means always wholesome^: it includes parts of 
 ' Childe Harold,' one or two of the * Hebrew Melodies,' 
 'Beppo,' 'The Vision of Judgment,' and parts of 'Don 
 Juan.' It was 'Childe Harold' that first took the world, 
 not England alone, by storm, and the reason is not far to 
 seek. Europe was in the last deadly throes of the struggle 
 
 ' Most of what is at once good and wholesome is collected in the 
 Golden Treasury ' Byron.' (Macmillan, 28. 6d.)
 
 BYBON. 203 
 
 with Napoleon, and Byron alone among the poets of that 
 day took what filled the thoughts of every one fur the 
 themes of his muse. ' There was not a parish of Great 
 Britain in which there was not some household that had 
 a direct personal interest in the scene of the pilgrim's 
 travels — " some fi'iend, some brother there." . . . Loose 
 and rambling as " Childe Harold" is, it yet had for the 
 time an unconscious art ; it entered the absorbing tumult 
 of a hot and feverish struggle, and opened a way in the 
 dark clouds gathering over the combatants through which 
 they could see the blue vault and the shining stars.' But 
 Byron was essentially an occasional poet, and his fame now 
 rests rather on the most brilliant passages in the whole of 
 his poetry than on any particular poems. His life is in 
 his work ; and, on the whole, the more personal parts of 
 his writing are the best. The mass, the range, the rush, 
 the force, the versatility of his productions are well nigh 
 incredible ; but they have the defects of their qualities, 
 and on the artistic side, in form, versification, structure, 
 execution, are often lamentably weak. We are too often 
 struck by Byron's ' elemental worldHness.' Boundless 
 resources he has of invention, rhetoric, passion, wit and 
 fancy ; but he lacks the highest mark of the ' maker,' 
 supreme imagination. 
 
 The following stanzas from ' Don Juan ' are refreshingly 
 unorthodox. 
 
 ' Milton's the prince of poets — so we say ; 
 
 A little heavy, but no less divine : 
 An independent being in his day — 
 
 Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and wine ; 
 But his life falling into Johnson's way. 
 
 We're told this great high priest of all the Nine 
 Was whipt at college — a harsh sire — odd spouse, 
 
 For the first Mrs. Milton left his house. 
 
 All these are, cerfes, entertaining facts. 
 
 Like Shakespeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes ; 
 Like Titus' youth, and Caesar's earliest acta ; 
 
 Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes) ; 
 Like Cromwell's pranks ; — but although truth exacts 
 
 These amiable descriptions from the scribes, 
 As most essential to their hero's story. 
 They do not much contribute to his glory.
 
 204 THE AGE OF 'WOKDS'WORTH. 
 
 All are not moralists, like Southey, when 
 He prated to the world of " Pantisocrasy ; " 
 
 Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then 
 Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy ; 
 
 Or Coleridge, lon<^ before his flighty pen 
 Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy ; 
 
 When he and Southey, following the same path, 
 
 Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath). 
 
 Such names at present cut a convict figure, 
 
 The very Botany Bay in moral geogfraphy ; 
 Their loyal treason, renegade rigour, 
 
 Are good manure for their more bare biography. 
 Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger 
 
 Than any since the birthday of typography ; 
 A drowsy frowsy poem, call'd the " Excursion," 
 Writ in a manner which is my aversion. 
 
 He there builds up a formidable dyke 
 
 Between his own and others' intellect ; 
 But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, Kke 
 
 Joanna vSouthcote's Shiloh, and her sect. 
 Are things which in this century don't strike 
 
 The public mind — so few are the elect ; 
 And the new births of both their stale virginities 
 Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities .... 
 
 We learn from Horace, " Homer sometimes sleeps " ; 
 
 We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes, — 
 To show with what complacency he creeps, 
 
 With his dear " Waggoners," around his lakes. 
 He wishes for " a boat " to sail the deeps — 
 
 Of ocean? — No, of air ; and then he makes 
 Another outcry for " a little boat," 
 And drivels seas to set it well afloat. 
 
 If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain. 
 And Pegasus runs restive in his " Waggon," 
 
 Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain? 
 Or pray Medea for a single dragon ! 
 
 Or if too classic for his vulgar brain. 
 
 He fear'd his neck to venture such a nag on, 
 
 And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, 
 
 Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon ? 
 
 •' Pedlars," and " Boats," and " Waggons ! " Oh ! ye shades 
 
 Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this ? 
 That trash of such sort not alone evades 
 
 Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss
 
 SHELLEY. 206 
 
 Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades 
 Of sense and song above your graves may hiss ! — 
 
 The "little boatman," and his " Peter Bell," 
 
 Can sneer at him who drew " Achitophel ! " , 
 
 John Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique, 
 
 Just as he really promised something great, 
 If not intelligible, without Greek 
 
 Contrived to talk about the gods of late 
 Much as they might have been supposed to speak. 
 
 Poor fellow ! Hia was an untoward fate ; 
 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, 
 
 Should let itself be snutf'd out by an article.' 
 
 Shelley seems, on a superficial examination, to have 
 
 nothing in common with his friend Byron. 
 
 ^%'h u ^^^^^ Yet they were both aristocrats ; both were 
 
 1792-1822. opponents of the established order in the state 
 and in society, who made the Continent rather 
 than Englaml their home; both wiote in haste and did not 
 correct at leisure ; and both looked upon Greece as the 
 historic land of freedom, "the mother of the free." But 
 it is not to be wondered at if these points of contact are 
 lost sight of in tlie vast differences that sunder them. In 
 Byron the intellect is supreme, and the imagination sub- 
 ordinate; in Slielley the intellect is the servant of the 
 imagination. BjTon is of the world, worldly ; too often of 
 the earth, earthy ; whereas of Shelley it has been said with 
 truth : ' None of his contemporaries lived from first to 
 last so completely under the dominance of "soul-light"; 
 his errors in conduct and weaknesses in art were alike 
 rooted in this supreme quality.' Byron is a materialist, 
 Shelley an idealist. With eyes fijxed on the splendid appa- 
 ritions with which he peopled space, he went through the 
 world not seeing the high road, stumbhng over the stones 
 by the roadside. 
 
 Of Shelley's longer works the most perfect are : the 
 two lyric dramas on the Greek model, ' Prometheus Un- 
 bound' and 'Hellas'; * Adonais ' — also on the model of 
 the Greek laments of Bion and Moschus — an elegy on the 
 death of Keats worthy to rank with ' Lycidas ' aud ' In 
 Memoriam ' ; the ' Witch of Atlas ' and ' Epipsychidion.' 
 But Shelley is nowhere greater than in his numerous
 
 206 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 shorter lyrical pieces, among the best of which are * The 
 Skylark' (quoted below), 'The Cloud,' 'To Constantia 
 Singing,' ' Ode to the West Wind,' * Earely, rarely, comest 
 Thou,' 'The Ode to Liberty,' and 'To Night.' It has 
 been well said that ' as a poet Shelley contributed a new 
 quality to English literature — a quality of ideality, free- 
 dom, and spiritual audacity, which severe critics of other 
 nations think we lack.' He is the poet of the glorious 
 future, possessed by a vision of intellectual beauty. If for 
 the satisfaction of the senses we turn to the poetry of 
 Byron, if our heart turns to Keats, and our soul to Words- 
 worth, it is for the satisfaction of the spirit that we turn 
 to Shelley. If he lived in an unpractical ethereal world, 
 his poetry is drawing many souls upwards to hold com- 
 munion with him there. 
 
 ' Hail to thee, blithe spirit — 
 
 Bird thou never wert — 
 
 That from heaven or near it 
 
 Pourest thy full heart 
 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 
 
 Higher still and higher 
 
 From the earth thou springest 
 Like a cloud of fii-e ; 
 
 The blue Ueep thou wingest, 
 And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 
 
 In the golden lightning 
 
 Of the sunken sun, 
 O'er which clouds are bright'ning, 
 
 Thou dost float and run, 
 Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 
 
 The pale purple even 
 
 Melts around thy flight ; 
 Like a star of heaven, 
 
 In the broad daylight 
 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, 
 
 Keen as are the arrows 
 
 Of that silver sphere 
 "Whose intense lamp narrows 
 
 In the white dawn clear, 
 Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there.
 
 SHELLEY. 207 
 
 All the earth and air 
 
 With thy voice is loud, 
 As, when nig'ht is bare, 
 
 From one lonely cloud 
 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 
 
 What thou art we know not ; 
 
 What is most like thee ? 
 From rainbow clouds there flow not 
 Drops so bright to see 
 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 
 
 Like a poet hidden 
 
 In the light of thought, 
 Singing hymns unbidden. 
 
 Till the world is wrought 
 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not ; 
 
 Like a high-bom maiden 
 
 In a palace tower. 
 Soothing her love- laden 
 8uul in secret hour 
 With music sweet as love which overflows her bower : 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 
 In a dell of dew, 
 Scattering unDeholden 
 Its aerial hue 
 Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view : 
 
 Like a rose embowered 
 
 In its own green leaves, 
 By warm winds deflowered. 
 Till the scent it gives 
 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy -winged thieves; 
 
 Sound of vernal showers 
 
 On the twinkling grass, 
 Hain-awakened flowers. 
 
 Ail that ever was 
 Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass: 
 
 Teach us, sprite or bird, 
 
 What sweet thoughts are thine 
 I have never heard 
 
 Praise of love or wine 
 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
 
 208 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Chorus hymeneal 
 
 Or triumphal chaunt, 
 Matched with thine would be all 
 
 Hut an empty vaunt, 
 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 
 
 What objects are the fountains 
 
 Of thy happy strain ? 
 What fields, or waves, or mountains Y 
 What shapes of sky or plain ? 
 What love of thine own kind ? what iguorance of pain ? 
 
 With thy clear keen joyance 
 
 Languor cannot be : 
 Shadow of annoyance 
 
 Never came near thee : 
 Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 
 
 Waking or asleep, 
 
 Thou of death must deem 
 Things more true and deep 
 
 Than we mortals dream, 
 Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 
 
 We look before and after, 
 
 And pine for what is not : 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 
 With some pain is fraught ; 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 
 
 Yet, if we could scorn 
 
 Hate and pride and fear, 
 If we were things born 
 Not to shed a tear, 
 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 
 
 Better than all measures 
 
 Of delightful sound, 
 Better than all treasures 
 That in books are found. 
 Thy skill to poet were, thou scomer of the ground ! 
 
 Teach me half the gladness 
 
 That thy brain must know, 
 Such harmonious madness 
 From my lips would flow. 
 The world should listen then as I am listening now.'
 
 KEATS. 209 
 
 Keats (like Slielley's ashes) lies ia tbe Protestant ceme- 
 tery at Eome, and on his grave, by his own 
 
 i*-^5o.^2i flesire, is the inscription: "Here lies one whose 
 name was writ in water." " Posterity has 
 agreed with him that it is," adds Saintsbiuy, " but in the 
 Water of Life." Keats' father was employed in livery 
 stables in London, and the boy was bred as a surgeon, but 
 gave up his studies in the year that his first volume of 
 "Poems" (1817) appeared. In 1818 came "Eudymion," 
 insolently reviewed in the Quarterly, and also in Blackwood, 
 which called it " calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling 
 idiocy." Not these reviews, as Shelley supposed, but con- 
 sumption led to the poet's early death. In a volume of 
 1820 all his most perfect work appeared. In the fall of 
 that year he sailed for E"aples with his friend Severn, who 
 tended him with a woman's devotion until his death at 
 Rome in February 1821. In view of popular misconcep- 
 tions, it may be well to add that his character was essen- 
 tially sane, generous, and manly. 
 
 What might not this genius of twenty-five have accom- 
 plished if he had lived ? His mind ripened early, and his 
 work shows an extraordinary advance in both creative and 
 critical power. " Endymion," in which Endymion's pur- 
 suit of Diana typifies the poet's pursuit of beauty, is 
 weak, diffuse, and full of mere " prettinesses " of diction. 
 " Lamia," the tale of a youth who marries a serpent in 
 the guise of a beautiful woman, and " Isabella, or the Pot 
 of Basil," show the growth of human feeling and artistic 
 restraint. "Hyperion," a Greek fragment, is a triumph of 
 Miltonic severity. In the " Eve of St. Agnes," and stiU 
 more in the six great Odes and the pick of the Sonnets, 
 Keats reaches the height and ideal of his art, and founds 
 the Tennysonian school of flawless workmanship which was 
 to influence much of the best verse of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Keats once wrote, "I have loved the principle of beauty 
 in all things." This principle came to him through three 
 main channels : through external Nature, which he paints 
 with Shakespearean felicity ; through the luxuriant richness 
 of thought seen in Elizabethan poets and playwrights ; 
 and through the severe grandeur of Greek art. If judged 
 ENG. HT. 14
 
 210 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 by quantity, he caunot claim a position in the first rank, 
 though no other poet would stand higher if he had died at 
 twenty-five ; but if judged by quality Keats must rank 
 with the greatest moulders and creators of verse. The 
 essential mark of his genius is that he unites the ideals of 
 old Greece and modern Romanticism. His poetic faith is 
 summed up in the close of the " Ode on a G-recian Urn," 
 of which we quote the first and last two stanzas : — 
 
 Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness ! 
 
 Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, 
 Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 
 
 A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
 What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 
 
 Of deities or mortals, or of both. 
 
 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? 
 
 What men or gods are these ? What maidens loth ? 
 What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 
 
 What pipes and timbrels ? What wild ecstasy ? 
 
 Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 
 
 To what green altar, mysterious priest, 
 Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 
 
 And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 
 What little town by river or sea-shore, 
 
 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
 
 Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ? 
 And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
 
 Will silent be : and not a soul to tell 
 
 Why thou are desolate, can e'er return. 
 
 Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! with brede 
 
 Of marble men and maidens overwrought. 
 With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 
 
 Thou, silent form ! dost tease us out of thought 
 As doth eternity : Cold Pastoral ! 
 
 When old age shall this generation waste. 
 
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
 
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." — -That is all 
 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 211 
 
 The second groat period of English, fiction opened with 
 Scott and Scott's ' Wavorloy ' in 1814 and closed with 
 hi8 his death in 1832. Scott says with reference 
 predecessors, .j.^ j^j^ immediate predecessors in fiction : 'Tlie 
 imitators of Mrs. Eadcliffe and Mr. Lewis were before 
 us ; personages who, to all the faults and extravagances 
 of their originals, added that of dulness, with which they 
 can seldom be charged. We strolled through a variety of 
 castles, each of which was regularly called II Castello ; 
 met with as many captains of condottieri ; heard various 
 ejaculations of S. Maria and Diabolo ; read by a decaying 
 lamp and in a tapestried chamber dozens of legends as 
 stupid as the main history ; examined such suites of 
 deserted apartments as might fit up a reasonable barrack ; 
 and saw as many glimmering lights as would make a 
 respectable illumination.' But, besides these, there were 
 two ladies in the early years of the century, ]\Iiss Porter, 
 authoress of the 'Scottish Chiefs' (1810), and Miss 
 Edgeworth, the foundress of the novel of Irish life and 
 character, who if they did nothing more, pointed out to 
 Scott, as he most generously acknowledges, the two main 
 lines that his fiction was to follow, those of history and 
 Scottish character. Yet the most superficial comparison of 
 Scott with these or any predecessors will show that he is 
 rightly esteemed the creator of the historical novel, because 
 he was the first to respect the truth of history, to convey 
 on the whole sufiiciently accurate impressions of historical 
 events and of the social life of past ages, while combining 
 with these in one narrative fictitious characters and in- 
 cidents. In one word, the historical novel in his hands 
 became a genuine work of literary art, and the conditions 
 which he imposed upon it were accepted as the canons 
 of that class of composition. Where, in later works, a 
 greater degree of historical accuracy has been attained, 
 the result has usually been less pleasing, less artistic, less 
 successful as literature and as fiction. ' In speed of pro- 
 duction, combined with variety and depth of interest, and 
 weight and accuracy of historical substance, Scott is still 
 unrivalled.' 
 
 Scott's life was prosperous and happy until the downfall
 
 212 THE AGE OF WORDSWORXn. 
 
 of tlie Constables and the Ballaiitynes, his publishers and 
 printers, in 1826, a crash which involved him in liabilities 
 
 Sir "Walter amounting to £117, 000. His attempt at the age 
 Scott, of fifty-five to wipe off this debt is one of the 
 
 1771-1832. jj^Qgi; tieroic stories in literary history. In five 
 years he had repaid £63,000, but the effort killed him. 
 Wlien in 1831 he went for a voyage in a vessel placed at 
 his disposal by the King, "Wordsworth wrote : 
 
 ' The might 
 Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes ; 
 Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue 
 * Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, 
 Follow this wondrous Potentate.' 
 
 lie returned in time to die at Abbotsford. 
 
 It is often supposed that the ' Border Minstrel ' was 
 
 a poet by birth and a novelist by accident ; 
 ^^^NOTeis.^^^^ whereas we have his own account to prove that 
 
 it was by a series of accidents he had been 
 led to write his earlier romances in verse, instead of in 
 prose. As he humorously says, * those who complain, not 
 unreasonably, of the profusion of the tales which have 
 followed " Waverley," may bless their stars at the narrow 
 escape they have made, by the commencement of the 
 inundation being postponed fifteen years.' The second 
 title of ' Waverley' was originally (in 1805) 'Or 'tis Fifty 
 years since ' ; but Scott mislaid the manuscrijit, and did 
 not find it till 1814, when he changed the 'Fifty' to 
 ' Sixty.' All this proves conclusively that he did not take 
 to prose fiction because, as he put it, Byi-on had ' bet 
 him ' in poetry. * Waverley,' introduced to the world 
 anonjTnously, gave its name to the wonderful series 
 of twenty-nine works produced in the next seventeen 
 years (1814-31), during thirteen of which the secret of 
 the authorship was kept. Of the twenty-nine, seventeen 
 may be called historical ; and of these again, ' Waverley' 
 and six others deal with Scottish history, ' Ivanhoe ' 
 and six others with English history, and ' Quentin 
 Durward ' and two others with continental history. 
 Tliey range in time from the twelfth to the eighteenth 
 century.
 
 tUE ' WAVEUI.EY NOVELS.* 213 
 
 Tlie ' Wavcrley Novels ' owe their exalted position to 
 T hat th ■ *^^ pre-eminout qualities : the excellence of 
 prcHiminence the characterisation, and the harmonious de- 
 13 due. velopment of the plots. Scott was the first 
 to show how much the mingling' of invention with his- 
 torical truth can effect, when each completes and inter- 
 penetrates the other, and how much the novel may gain 
 by the combination. This may have been at first the 
 result of a happy chance, but even then it was a stroke of 
 genius. Extravageint critics have placed Scott on a level 
 with Shakespeare, as if they could be compared in depth 
 of feeling and in creative originality; but one thing at 
 least they had in common and in equal measure — healthi- 
 ness of spirit and, consequently, dislike of all artificiality. 
 All Scott's characters are genuinely drawn from life ; they 
 are real men and women, not personifications or abstrac- 
 tions or attempts at the solution of psychological problems 
 masquerading in human garb. The historical personages, 
 that pass before us in his pages, represent the most diverse 
 classes and peoples, — Richard the Lion-heart and LouisXI., 
 Cromwell and Charles tlie Bold, Rob Roy, Rochester, and 
 Montrose, Cavaliers and Roundheads, pirates and astrologers, 
 court-ladies and fortune-tellers; yet aU appear real and 
 natural, and accord so well with their surroundings, their 
 time, and with historical tradition, that the mind of tho 
 reader is satisfied with what he feels to be, on the one 
 hand a work of art, and on tlie other the essential truth 
 of history. The clearness of tho total impression is secured 
 by the harmonious grouping of the characters and by the 
 due subordination of aU parts to the main action. More- 
 over, Scott, like Shakespeare, does not generalise from 
 the individual, but individualises the class, and thus 
 renders his portraits, as every great artist must, true 
 types of character. Herein lie at once the high moral 
 value and the high artistic value of his fictions. Not 
 one of them is a moral problem, excogitated in order 
 to prove the truth of a favourite theory ; but aU tho 
 teachings of life and experience are there, as in life 
 itself, without one of them being dragged into undue 
 prominence.
 
 214 TITE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 On one side Scott's genius is in kinship with Words- 
 worth's — in the beauty and correctness of his descriptions, 
 which are always in strict unison with the * situation ' 
 in which they are introduced. The smallest details are 
 handled with the same certainty of touch as the main out- 
 lines; hence the whole picture never fails to induce in 
 the reader the same feeling that nature awakens in the 
 observer (only in a different degree), whether it be the 
 solemn stillness of old towns and dark forests, or the soft 
 and yet majestic stillness of a lake in the Highlands. His 
 descriptions are both rich and accurate ; his outKnes are 
 sharp and clear ; his landscapes have always their charac- 
 teristic ' tone.' He gives, as Wordsworth does, at once the 
 form and the spirit of the place, but with this difference, 
 that the poet necessarily relies more upon suggestion. 
 
 To all these excellences must be added the variety of 
 his characters and situations, his rich multifarious know- 
 ledge, and his historical fairness. However decided Scott's 
 political faith was, and however it led him in his other 
 works to crude and one-sided judgments, it had not the 
 slightest influence on the handling of his fictional material ; 
 he never alters a historical character out of love for his 
 own views, or assigns to one a fixed tendency subservient 
 to other than literary ends. Characters and circumstances 
 so completely determine the development of each story, 
 that the reader gives himself up to that delusion without 
 which the highest delights and effects of fiction are im- 
 possible, and follows the adventures of real men and 
 women. 
 
 Before parting with the 'Wizard of the North' it may 
 be useful to give an extract from one of his novels. We 
 select for this purpose 'A Legend of Montrose' (1819), 
 a tale of the Civil War in the seventeenth century and one 
 of the most spirited of the Scottish romances. 
 
 ' " And the Marquis of Argyle — should I incline to enter his 
 service, is he a kind master ? " demanded Dalgetty. 
 "Never man kinder," quoth Campbell. 
 " And bountiful to his officers ? " pursued the Captain. 
 •' The most open hand in Scotland," replied Murdoch.
 
 'a legend of MONTROSE.' 215 
 
 "True and faithful to his engagements?" continued Dalgetty. 
 
 " As honourable a nobleman as breathes," said the clansman. 
 
 " I never heard so much good of him before," said Dalgetty ; " you 
 must know the Marquis well — or rather you must be the Marquis 
 himself! Lord of Ai-gyle," he added, throwing himself suddenly on 
 the disguised nobleman, "I arrest you in the name of King Charles, 
 as a traitor. If you venture to call for assistance, I will wrench round 
 your neck." 
 
 The attack which Dalgetty made upon Argyle's person was so 
 sudden and imexpected that ho easily prostrated him on the floor of 
 the dungeon, and held him down with one hand, while his right, 
 grasping the Marquis's throat, was ready to strangle him on the 
 slightest attempt to call for assistance. 
 
 " Lord of Argyle," he said, "it is now my turn to lay down the 
 terms of capitulation. If you list to show me the private way by 
 which you entered the dungeon, you shall escape, on condition of 
 being my locum tenens, as we said at the Mareschal College, until your 
 warder visits his prisoners. But if not, I will first strangle you — I 
 learned the art from a Polonian heyduck, who had been a slave in the 
 Ottoman seraglio — and then seek out a mode of retreat." 
 
 " Villain ! you would not murder me for my kindness," murmured 
 Argyle. 
 
 " Not for your kindness, my lord," replied Dalgetty ; " but first to 
 teach your lordship ih.Q jus gentium towards cavaliers who come to you 
 imder safe-conduct ; and secondly, to warn you of the danger of pro- 
 posing dishonourable terms to any worthy soldado, in order to tempt 
 him to become false to his standard during the term of his service." 
 
 " Spare my life," said Argyle, "and I will do as you require." 
 
 Dalgetty maintained his gripe upon the Marquis's throat, com- 
 pressing it a little while he asked questions, and relaxing it so far as 
 to give him the power of answering them. 
 
 " Where is the secret door into the dungeon?" he demanded. 
 
 "Hold up the lantern to the comer on your right hand, you will 
 discern the iron which covers the spring," replied the Marquis. 
 
 " So far so good. Where does the passage lead to ? " 
 
 "To my private apartment behind the tapestry," answered the 
 prostrate nobleman. 
 
 " From thence how shall I reach the gateway?" 
 
 "Through the grand gallery, the ante-room, the lackey's waiting 
 hall, the grand guardroom — " 
 
 "All crowded with soldiers, factionariea, and attendants? — that
 
 216 THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 will never do for me, my lord ; have you no secret passage to the 
 gate, as you have to your dungeons ? I have seen such in Germany." 
 
 " There is a passage through the chapel," said the Marquis, 
 " opening from my apartment." 
 
 *' And what is the pass -word at the gate?" 
 
 "The sword of Levi," replied the Marquis; " but if you will 
 receive my pledge of honour, I will go with you, escort you through 
 every guard, and set you at full liberty with a passport." 
 
 ' ' I might trust you, my lord, were your throat not already black 
 with the grasp of my fingers ; as it is, beso los manos a usted, as the 
 Spaniard says. Yet you may grant me a passport — are there writing 
 materials in your apartment ? " 
 
 ' ' Surely ; and blank passports ready to be signed. I will attend 
 you there," said the Marquis, " instantly." 
 
 "It were too much honour for the like of me," said Dalgetty ; 
 " your lordship shall remain under charge of mine honest friend 
 Ranald MacEagh ; therefore, prithee let me drag you within reach of 
 his chain. Honest Ranald, you see how matters stand with us. 1 
 shall find the means, I doubt not, of setting you at freedom, lilean- 
 time, do as you see me do ; clap your hand thus on the weasand of this 
 high and mighty prince, under his ruff, and if he offer to struggle or 
 cry out, fail not, my worthy Ranald, to squeeze doughtily ; and if it 
 be ad deliquium, Ranald, that is, till he swoon, there is no great matter, 
 seeing he designed your gullet and mine to still harder usage." 
 
 "If he offer at speech or struggle," said Ranald, "he dies by my 
 hand." 
 
 "That is right, Ranald — very spirited; a thorough-going friend 
 that understands a hint is worth a million ! ' ' 
 
 Thus resigning the charge of the Marquis to his new confederate, 
 Dalgetty pressed the spring, by which the secret door flew open, 
 though so well were its hinges polished and oiled that it made not 
 the slightest noise in revolving. The opposite side of the door was 
 secured by very strong bolts and bars, beside which hung one or two 
 keys, designed apparently to undo fetterlocks. A narrow staircase, 
 ascending up through the thickness of the castle-waU, landed, as the 
 Marquis had truly informed him, behind the tapestry of his private 
 apartment. Such communications were frequent in old feudal castles, 
 as they gave the lord of the fortress, like a second Dionysius, the 
 means of hearing the conversation of his prisoners, or, if he pleased, 
 of visiting them in disguise, an experiment which had terminated 
 80 unpleasantly on the present occasion fur Gillespie Grumach.
 
 CllAIlLES LAMB. 217 
 
 Having examined previously whether there was anyone in the apart- 
 ment, and finding the coast clear, the Captain entered, and hastily 
 possessing himself of a blank passport, several of which lay on the 
 table, and of writing materials, securing, at the same time, the Marquis's 
 dagger and a silk cord from the hangings, he again descended into 
 the cavern, where, listening a moment at the door, he could hear the 
 half-stifled voice of the Marquis making great proffers to MacEagh, 
 on condition he would suffer him to give an alarm. 
 
 " Not for a forest of deer — not for a thousand head of cattle," 
 answered the freebooter ; ' ' not for all the lands that ever called a son 
 of Diurmid master, will I break the troth I have plighted to him of 
 the iron garment ! " 
 
 " He of the iron garment," said Dalgetty, entering, "is bounden 
 unto you, MacEagh, and this noble lord shall be bounden also ; but 
 first he must fill up this passport with the names of Major Dugald 
 Dalgetty and his guide, or he is like to have a passport to another 
 world." 
 
 The Marquis subscribed and wrote, by the light of the dark lan- 
 tern, as the soldier prescribed to him.' 
 
 No ono could desire a happier omen than to close his 
 
 book with the name of Charles Lamb, one of 
 
 ^ ml^-ls^i!^^' *^® most lovable men that ever lived, *my 
 
 gentle-hearted Charles,' ' Lamb the frolic and 
 
 the gentle.' Yet in one respect his life was a prolonged 
 
 tragedy. "When his sister Mary, his collaborator in the 
 
 'Talcs from Shakespeare,' killed their invalid mother in 
 
 a moment of maniacal frenzy, her brother gave up all 
 
 thoughts of marriage, and devoted the remainder of his 
 
 life to a companionship unique in the history of English 
 
 letters, one from which the element of pathos was never 
 
 absent, and that of tragedy seldom. 
 
 In literary criticism Lamb is the peer of Coleridge and 
 Hazhtt ; and to their acumen and insight he added a 
 sympathy, a reverence and a subtle charm of style, to 
 which they cannot lay equal claim. ' The spirit of hia 
 author descended upon him, and he felt it ! ' His 
 'Essays of Elia,' contributed to the 'London Magazine,' 
 are among the daintiest tilings in the whole range of 
 our literature. No fine old crusted port can equal
 
 218 THJi AGE Ok' WOKUSWOKTH. 
 
 them in flavour. They were archaic when they wefe 
 written, and yet their old-world air was as natural 
 and native to Lamb as if he had been a resurrected 
 Elizabethan. For combined humour, taste, penetration, 
 and vivacity they are unsurpassed, perhaps unequaled. 
 Lamb's theme is London, which he knew and loved so 
 well; he is her great prose-poet. In whatever he wrote 
 he is always the same Lamb, humour and pathos and love 
 commingled, so that we cannot wonder that Wordsworth 
 wrote, in his noble tribute ' Written after the Death of 
 Charles Lamb,' 
 
 ' Oh, he was good, if e'er a good man lived 1 ' 
 
 llES. Battle's OprN^ioNS on Whist. 
 
 ' " A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game." This 
 was the celebrated tcish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, 
 next to her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She was none of 
 your luke-warm gamesters, your half-and-half players, who have no 
 objection to take a hand, if you want one to make a rubber ; who 
 affirm that they have no pleasure in winning ; that they like to win 
 one game and lose another ; that they can while away an hour very 
 agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; 
 and will desire an adversary who has slipped a wrong card to take it 
 up and play another. These insufferable triliers are the curse of a 
 table. One of these flies will spoU a whole pot. Of such it may be 
 said that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing them. 
 
 Sarah Battle waa none of that breed. She detested them, as I 
 do, from her heart and soul, and would not, save upon a striking 
 emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She 
 loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined enemy. She took 
 and gave no concessions. She hated favours. She never made a 
 revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary without exacting the 
 utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight, cut and thrust. She 
 held not her good sword (her cards) "like a dancer." She sat bolt 
 upright, and never showed you her cards nor desired to see yours. 
 All people have their blind side — their superstitions ; and I have 
 heard her declare, under the rose, that hearts was her favourite suit. 
 
 I never in my Ufe — and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years 
 of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play, or 
 snaff a candle in the middle of a game, or ring for a servant till it
 
 CHAKLE3 I_\M!J. 219 
 
 was fairly over. She never introduced or connived at miscellaneous 
 conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed, cards 
 were cards ; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last- 
 century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a 
 literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand, 
 and who, in his excess of candour, declared that he thought there was 
 no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, 
 in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble 
 occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that 
 light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world 
 to do, — and she did it. !She unbent her mind afterwards over u book.'
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 The Age of Wordsworth opened with the publication of 
 TheA-'eof "Lj^'ical Ballads." The beginning of the next 
 Tennyson, period of EngHsh literature was marked by 
 832-189-. jiothing so revolutionary. It may be said to 
 begin with the publication of Tennyson's " Poems " in 1830 ; 
 its most fruitful years were the years of his prime ; and it 
 closed about the year of his death, 1892. Within these 
 dates a great epoch expressed itself in a great hterature, 
 whose unity of spirit, in spite of the variety of its form, 
 becomes more and more evident as the period recedes from 
 us. It is fitting that the age should take its name from 
 Tennyson, not on account of the happy accident of his 
 Laureateship, but because its limits coincide with the 
 limits of his working life, and because he is the most 
 representative writer of his time. His interests are the 
 highest interests of the age; he felt the difiiculties, and 
 voiced the hopes of its finest spirits. 
 
 What were the characteristics of this epoch ? The first 
 and most obvious is that it was an era of 
 
 Its Charac- i • ^ t xi • j. 
 
 teristics: euormous material progress. In these sixty 
 (i) great mate- years the population of England doubled : 
 
 ricil progress *' x x t -i 
 
 its wealth increased three or four-fold. The 
 effects of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century 
 worked themselves out, and altered the whole structiu'e of 
 society. The relations of class with class were changed. 
 The established social order, which to the writers of the 
 eighteenth century had seemed a thing fixed and unalter- 
 able, was proved to be a temporary and transient arrange- 
 ment. A revolutionary feeling was abroad in the early part 
 of the period, and showed itself in much of the literature. 
 But it disappeared with the increase of wealth and comfort. 
 New methods of industry afforded unprecedented oppor- 
 tunities of becoming rich. The discoveries of science knit 
 
 220
 
 MATERIALISM. 221 
 
 the whole world closer together and widened euoruiously 
 the field of an energetic man's opportunities. " The appli- 
 cation of science to industry," " the conquest of tlie material 
 resources of nature " were the watchwords of the time and 
 the acliievements of which the age was proudest. These 
 tilings seemed to the men of the day to be not merely greater 
 than the achievements of any previous age, but so great as 
 to constitute a new beginning, a new and real civilisation : 
 the seventeenth century achieved parliamentary liberty, 
 but it had no railways ; the Elizabethans were great, but 
 knew not the electric cable. 
 
 Hence the chief energies of the period were devoted to 
 
 ends very different from art and literature. Its 
 
 ^"ciaiilm"'"^' standards were those of the market, not those 
 
 of the library. Its system of values had no 
 
 place, or only a very low place, for beauty and truth of 
 
 ideas. In short it was an age of commercialism. To 
 
 idealists its enormous energy and productive power seemed 
 
 to be misdirected. Material production was regarded not 
 
 as a means to the good life, but as an end in itself, and 
 
 apparently the chief end in life. An increase in comfort 
 
 has often resulted in an outburst of literature and art. 
 
 There was such an outbiu-st in the second cjuarter of the 
 
 nineteenth century ; but it is less a product of increased 
 
 leisure and increased wealth than a protest against 
 
 these. 
 
 The age then was one of great achievement in the arts 
 .of wealth, and its prevailing spirit was one 
 
 the Natural of materialism. It was materialistic also in 
 Sciencesand aiiother scnsc, the philosophical sense. A 
 scientific method was being developed which 
 made the investigation of nature effective to an extent 
 hitherto imdreamed of. Man's conception of the material 
 universe was changed. Darwin's application of the law 
 of evolution to the sphere of biology changed man's 
 conception of himself. The critical method of the natural 
 sciences was extended to history and theology, and the 
 fabric of authority found itself undermined on every side. 
 The effects of all tliis criticism have not yet worked 
 themselves out, but they very quickly made themselves
 
 222 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 felt. Old views of the universe, of man and his relation to 
 God, had to be given up. Old faiths had to restate them- 
 selves, or justify themselves on new grounds. The destruc- 
 tive effect of this criticism was increased by the folly or 
 cowardice of the orthodox, A\ho refused to face it and 
 attempted to ignore the prol)lems it raised. Hence the 
 thoughtful layman found his old beliefs crumbling beneath 
 his feet, and naturally turned for new ones to the sciences 
 which had made them necessary. Of course Science (with 
 a capital S, as the natural sciences came to be called) could 
 not answer all his questions ; but rationalistic theories 
 became fashionable, which, basing themselves on Science, 
 eliminated the supernatural from the universe and, perhaps 
 unintentionally, justified the materialistic bent of society 
 at that time. Finer spirits, whose honesty 
 
 gnos icism. (.Q^-,^pgjjg^ them to give up traditional faiths — at 
 any rate in the form they had received them — and who 
 could not find any permanent satisfaction in a purely 
 material conception of life and the imiverse, took refuge in 
 agnosticism. Much was uncertain, but hope was left, or 
 work, or the reahty of passion, or the truth of art. Thus 
 we get an age struggling to formulate a faith, giving 
 utterance to partial and fragmentary beliefs, without 
 wholly satisfying itself. But the doubts, the scepticism 
 of the nineteenth centiu-y are not like those of the 
 eighteenth. The scepticism of the eighteenth century was 
 the scepticism of indifference ; the nineteenth century 
 writers were never indifferent. They have none of the 
 smug satisfaction with the ideals of their time which shines 
 through the rhetoric of Pope and his friends. With one 
 or two exceptions they aim at expressing a wider and higher 
 conception of life than that of the Great Exhibition of 
 1851 ; and it was in that Exhibition that the English of 
 1851 regarded their greatness as established. 
 
 What is the attitude of the great writers to this mate- 
 rialism in conduct, and formalism or scepticism 
 
 Characteristics . i- • n ,,n eij_i i-i i- c -i- ■ 
 
 of the Litera- m rehgiou <r They leel the exhilaration of iivmg 
 
 tiireofthe in a time of rapid progress; but few of them 
 
 can enjoy it without criticism. In nearly all 
 
 the literature of the time there is a note of revolt against
 
 THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 223 
 
 the deification of material progress. In Carlyle it is 
 (i) Revolt perhaps the dominant note. Matthew Arnold's 
 against Mate- definition of poetry as " a criticism of life " is 
 riaiism. g^ppiipj^^ie, if at all, to the poetry of his own 
 time. The revolt is explicit in Tennyson's ' Maud ' and 
 ' Locksley Hall,' in Carlyle, Euskin, and Arnold, in most of 
 the novelists. It is implicit in art's whole treatment of 
 contemporary life. Bulstrode and Becky Sharp, Pecksniff 
 and Jane Eyre's guardian are mirrors held up to their 
 readers, and exhibit most unflattering reflections. The 
 (ii) Revival of poets turned to other ages for inspiration, 
 interest in past Nothing is more characteristic than the living 
 ^°^^' interest they took in other times. As in every 
 literary revival the classical myths received a new life ; and 
 without sacrificing any of their old beauty expressed new 
 meanings. Perhaps Tennyson's finest work is to be found 
 in his classical poems. Matthew Arnold lived in habitual 
 converse with the Greeks, and derived his art and ideas 
 from them more than from any English source. Swinburne 
 succeeded, where Arnold failed, in making readable a tra- 
 gedy written in English after the Grreek model. Browning's 
 chief field of interest was the Kenaissance. Its persons 
 live in his poems with an intensity possessed by few 
 contemporaries. But the chief historical interest of the 
 time was in the Middle Ages, and the chief expression of 
 this interest was, perhaps, the Oxford Movement. 
 
 The Oxford movement was an attempt to recover a lost 
 tradition. It was responsible for a good deal 
 MovMuIut!* of spurious mediaevalism ; but it did grasp 
 the truth, which the eighteenth century had 
 obscured, that the middle ages had qualities and capa- 
 cities which the moderns had lost. The theologians of the 
 movement wished to recover the connexion with the Con- 
 tinent and with its own past which the Enghsh Church 
 had lost at the Eeforniation. They recognised in the 
 mediaeval and early Church a habit of piety and a genius 
 for public worsliip which had disappeared. They tried to 
 restore these virtues by directing their own and other 
 people's attention to the history of the middle ages, and 
 by trying to recover the ritual and art of the mediaeval
 
 224 THE AaE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 Chui'cli. The movement failed in its immediate object of 
 altering the character of the English Church, partly 
 because its most powerful leaders found themselves forced 
 by the logic of their position to join the Church of Eome, 
 and partly because its appeal to the authority of a 
 Catholic tradition was not a sufficient defence of the 
 Catholic creed against the attacks of scientific and his- 
 torical criticism. But the movement exercised a great 
 influence on the intellectual life of the time, and helped 
 on a revival of interest in mediaeval art in which a whole 
 school of poets and painters found their inspiration. Just 
 as Arnold found a refuge from the doubts and philistinism 
 of his time in the Grreek classics, so William Morris 
 attached himself in spirit to the art and life of the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Carlyle had used that 
 time as a foil to the squalor and sordid motives of his own 
 England. Euskin bade his contemporaries reach back 
 for right standards and just motives of work past the 
 intervening centuries to the time when the Gothic Cathe- 
 drals were built. Morris in all his various activities (and 
 to a less extent Swinburne and Rossetti) tried to carry 
 out this precept ; he steeped himself in the art of the 
 middle ages and tried in his own work to develop and 
 continue the lines he found there, ignoring or combating 
 the aims and tendencies of his own time. 
 
 Poets and prophets then foimd little in their own age 
 (iii) Great ^^^ material for criticism and ideals to flee 
 Speouir.tive from. But in their flight to other ages, in 
 Activity. ^]^q[y clenunciations of their country's commer- 
 cialism, they were in search of the great need of the time 
 — a new faith. The system of ideas 
 
 " On man, on Nature, and on human life," 
 
 which are the foundation of the reasonable life and the 
 eternal subjects of poetry, had been shaken to its base 
 by the critical methods and discoveries of the new sciences. 
 New truths had to be fitted into the system, and old truths 
 restated. The attitude of the different writers to this 
 problem varied; but the need of solution presents itself 
 everywhere. The earlier writers were the most hopeful.
 
 PROSE FICTION. 225 
 
 Browning and Dickens have an optimism, based on the 
 mere joy of Ufe, which no catastrophes of creeds can shake. 
 But 
 
 " God's in his Heaven 
 All's right with the world," 
 
 though encoiu'aging and infectious, is rather a personal 
 opinion than a reasoned explanation of the obvious ills in 
 the world. Tennyson is more explicit. In " In Memo- 
 riani " he states the problem presented to the religious 
 (some years aftei') by Darwin, and attempts to solve it. 
 Is death the end ? Is tlie evolution of this world a blind 
 process without moral meaning ? Has the distinction 
 between right and wrong no absolute value ? In any case, 
 Why is right right ? and. Is duty a delusion ? These are 
 the questions that recur in the most typical writers of the 
 time. Tennyson finally reaches a reasonable optimism. 
 Where no other answer is possible he will assert 
 
 ' ' Because right is right to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." 
 
 Arnold tends towards a i*easonable pessimism. He cannot 
 get rid of his doubts, and to perform the duty, the 
 authority of which he recognises but fails to understand, he 
 draws support from happier ages. Others, as we have seen, 
 turned their backs on the whole problem and attempted to 
 construct the edifice of their life on the basis of the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries. Others again, of the 
 same school or closely connected with it, sought satisfac- 
 tion in a refined hedonism. Life is there, and we must 
 get what pleasure we can get out of it ; and the chiefest 
 pleasures are to be found in the practice and contemplation 
 of art. And through these at the end of the epoch we 
 get people begging the whole question and preaching the 
 barren doctrine of Art for Art's sake. 
 
 In many epochs poetry is not merely the most important 
 
 but the largest part of the literature of the time. 
 Prose Fict?on° ^^ ^.he opoch we are considering its preeminence 
 
 is still undoubted, but is threatened. His- 
 torically perhaps prose fiction is the most important section 
 
 ENG. LIT. 15
 
 226 THE AGE OP TENNTSON. 
 
 of Victorian literatiire. Poetry during tlie period is chiefly 
 lyric and episodic in character. There are few great con- 
 structional works. On the whole — there are of course 
 important exceptions — poets did not set out to write epics 
 or construct great dramas. Their best work was in the 
 realisation of separate characters, single episodes, isolated 
 emotions. There are relatively few works whose chief 
 interest lies in the interrelations of a number of characters, 
 and the interplay of their emotions. And this difference 
 from Elizabethan or Jacobean poetry is perhaps explained 
 by the importance of the novel. The eighteenth century 
 novelists were very far from exhausting the possibilities 
 of the instrument they had invented. Scott put it to a 
 new use with enormous success. The Victorian novelists 
 reverted to the treatment of contemporary life and 
 manners. 
 
 The novel is perhaps the most elastic and adaptable 
 
 medium that the literary artist has discovered. 
 Literary Form. I^ requires dramatic construction,while allowing 
 
 the author to work out his characters and inci- 
 dents with a detail which makes the stage unnecessary. 
 It gives the humorist his opportunity ,whether his humour 
 lies mainly in his perception and creation of character, as 
 with Dickens, or in his style, as with Thackeray. The 
 variety of treatment it permits gives the author scope for the 
 fullest self-expression ; and the variety of subject it treats 
 is so great that the woi'ks of, for example, Dickens and 
 Thackeray give us a more complete picture of the England 
 of their time than we could have got in any other way. The 
 only permanent rival of the novel is the drama ; but the 
 drama requires certain conditions which do not obtain in 
 England. It requires, among other things, the concentra- 
 tion of the intellectual life of a nation in one place, as the 
 life of France is concentrated in Paris, or that of England 
 was in London in the times of Shakespeare, Congreve, and 
 Sheridan. Moreover, the novel appeals to a wider audience 
 than any other form of literature. Scott's popularity was 
 perhaps equalled by Byron's ; and Tennyson's poems had 
 enormous sales. But since about 1860 the big audience 
 has been for the novel and only the novel.
 
 POETRY. 227 
 
 This wide appeal of prose fiction is significant of a 
 Rise of a class tendency we must notice. With the growth of 
 of uneducated the population and the diffusion of education 
 rea era. ^^ havc had the growth of a reading public 
 unlike any that existed before. It is a public, enormous 
 in number, able to I'ead and often able to do little more, 
 with a certain amount of leisure and the means of 
 obtaining books. It has asked for something to read, 
 and two great industries have grown up to satisfy that 
 demand, the manufacture of popular fiction and popular 
 journalism. Hence it has become difficult for an author 
 to satisfy his standards of literary taste and at the 
 same time make a popular appeal. Dickens had virtues 
 that appealed to all readers, and vices which strengthened 
 his appeal to the reader without taste. But others have 
 not been so fortunate ; and we have the novel condition 
 of a nvimerous class of readers who do not read the true 
 literature of the time. To reach this class there has grown 
 up a great mass of magazines and other serial publications 
 which, with much that is purely ephemeral, contain a good 
 deal of real literature. At the same time probably a larger 
 proportion of the nation has a real interest in literature 
 than ever before, and education tends to increase the pro- 
 portion. 
 
 We can best consider the literature of the period in 
 three sections — Poetry, Prose Fiction, Histoiy and Criti- 
 cism. 
 
 I. Poetry. 
 
 The poetry of the age of Tennyson does not differ from 
 that of Wordsworth's contemporaries as a result of any 
 change of theory. There is a difference ; but the difference 
 is not fundamental as is that between Pope's poetry 
 and Wordsworth's. Tennyson and his contemporaries 
 recognised the authenticity of their immediate predeces- 
 sors and Avere influenced by them. Especially is this 
 influence noticeable in the del>t of Tennyson to Keats 
 and Arnold to Wordsworth, No poet of the previous
 
 228 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 generation, however, had such an influence on mid- Victorian 
 literature as Tennyson himself. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson was one of three brothers, all poets, 
 Alfred ^^® ^*^^^ *^^ ^ rector of Somersby in Lincoln- 
 
 Tennyson, shire. He was educated at Louth and Cam- 
 ^ ^'^ ■ bridge. He was one of a set of brilliant 
 undergraduates at Trinity ; and it was one of these, 
 Arthur Hallam, whose death led to the writing of ' In 
 Memoriam.' His first poems were pxiblished in 1830, 
 another volume, ' Poems chiefly Lyrical,' appeared in 1882. 
 He published nothing further till 1842. In the ten years 
 interval Tennyson had not been idle. He had svibjected 
 his powers to a process of experiment and criticism, 
 which enabled them to have their fullest possible effect. 
 And the poetry of 1832 had been educating an audience 
 for him. The 'Poems' of 1842, including as they did 
 ' Ulysses,' ' Morte d'Arthur,' ' St. Agnes' Eve,' established 
 his position as a great poet, and his later volumes only 
 extended and made more profitable a popularity almost 
 unequalled among poets of the first rank. In 1847 came 
 ' The Princess,' in 1850 ' In Memoriam,' in 1855 ' Maud,' 
 in 1859 the first four 'Idylls of the King.' The first 
 of his dramas, ' Queen Mary,' appeared in 1875 ; the 
 last volume published by himself, the volume containing 
 ' Crossing the Bar,' in 1889. 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald maintained that Tennyson was never 
 at his best after the volume of 1842. That 
 Poeim?''^ opinion will obtain little support ; but it is 
 true that the earlier work was never excelled, 
 and that the later poems discover hardly any powers 
 which are not exhibited in this early work. In the very 
 earliest poems, while we see that the writer has used his 
 predecessors in developing his ovni methods of expression, 
 we hear the individual note of a new poet. He has an 
 afiinity with Keats, and in a less degree with Shelley, in 
 the combination of perfectly musical language with a 
 wonderful pictorial suggestiveness. But the rhythm is 
 new, and the imagery is beautiful in a different way from 
 that of any other poet. In these early poems his greatness 
 as a lyric poet is evident. His excellence lies in richness
 
 Tennyson's early poems. 229 
 
 of fancy, a sense of romance, and perfection of form, rather 
 than in any depth of passion. We may quote for example 
 some stanzas from ' Mariana ' : — 
 
 ' With blackest moss the flower-plots 
 
 Were thickly crusted, one and all : 
 The rusted nails fell from the knots 
 
 That held the peacli to tlie garden-wall. 
 The broken sheds look'd sad and strange : 
 
 Unlifted was the clinking latch ; 
 
 Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
 Upon the lonely moated grange. 
 
 8he only said "My life is dreary, 
 He cometh not " she said ; 
 
 She said "I am aweary, aweary, 
 I would that I were dead ! " 
 
 Upon the middle of the night, 
 
 Waking she heard the night-fowl crow : 
 The cock sung out an hour ere light : 
 
 From the dark fen the oxen's low 
 Came to her ; without hope of change, 
 
 In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn, 
 
 Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn 
 About the lonely moated grange. 
 
 She only said "The day is dreary, 
 lie cometh not " she said ; 
 
 She said "I am aweary, aweary, 
 I would that I were dead ! " 
 
 And ever when the moon was low, 
 
 And the shrill winds were up and away, 
 In the white ciu-tain, to and fro. 
 
 She saw the gusty shadow sway. 
 But when the moon was very low. 
 
 And wild winds bound within tiieir cell, 
 
 Tiie shadow of the poplar fell 
 Upon her bed, across her brow. 
 
 She only said "The night is dreary. 
 He cometh not " she said ; 
 
 She said "I am aweary, aweary, 
 I would tliat I were dead ! " 
 
 The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, 
 
 Tlie slow clock ticking, and the sound 
 Which to the wooing wind aloof
 
 230 THE AGE OF TENNYSO>f. 
 
 The poplar made, did all confound 
 Her sense ; but most she loathed the hour 
 
 When the thick-moted sunbeam lay 
 
 Athwart the chambers, and the day 
 Was sloping toward his western bower. 
 
 Then, said she " I am very dreary, 
 He will not come " she said ; 
 
 She wept, ' ' I am aweary, aweary, 
 Oh God, that I were dead ! " ' 
 
 The Poems of 1842 revealed Tennyson's greatness as a 
 writer of blank verse. This medium had usually been 
 reserved for the treatment of subjects on a large scale. 
 Tennyson uses it to realise the simple episode or the single 
 character. The ' Idyll,' to ute his own title, is perhaps 
 the most typical form into which he and his contemporaries 
 throw their work. In this form he is perfect. In a poem 
 like ' St. Simeon Stylites ' he realises and expresses char- 
 acter far more effectivel}^ than in his plays. In ' Ulysses,' 
 ' Tithonus,' ' Oenone ' there is a vivid presentation not so 
 much of incidents themselves as of the atmosphere of 
 incidents, in verse that is perhaps more than any other in 
 the language ' most musical, most melancholy.' In all 
 these poems and still more in the ' Morte d' Arthur ' the 
 poet manages to convey into the blank verse something of 
 the quality of lyric poetry. A few lines from ' Ulysses ' 
 may be quoted as an example of these poems. 
 
 * Death closes all ; but something ere the end, 
 Some work of noble note, maj' yet be done. 
 Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. 
 The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks ; 
 The long day wanes : the slow moon climbs : the deep 
 Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 
 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 
 Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
 The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
 To sail bej^ond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars, until I die.' 
 
 After 1842 Tennyson became more ambitious in the scale 
 of his work, and in tliree long poems set forth 
 
 Poeins?"^^"^ his views on contemporary questions of thought. 
 The ' Princess ' is dramatic in form and deals 
 
 with the question of the equality of the sexes. The subject
 
 Tennyson's longer poems, 23l 
 
 is no longer novel ; and Tennyson's style is not colloquial 
 enough for the easy delineation of contemporary manners. 
 The poem, however, contains some finely drawn characters 
 and shows a greater versatility in the iise of blank verse 
 than any predecessor from the same pen. One famous 
 description may be quoted : — 
 
 ' Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
 Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 
 No Angel but a dearer being, all dipt 
 In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
 Interpreter between the Gods and men, 
 Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 
 On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 
 Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
 Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved, 
 And girdled her with music' 
 
 But the poem's chief glory is to be found in the inter- 
 spersed lyrics : ' Home they brought her warrior dead,' 
 ' The splendour falls on castle walls,' and especially those 
 wonderfiil blank verse lyrics beginning ' Come down, O 
 maid, from yonder mountain-heights ' and ' Tears, idle 
 tears.' 
 
 ' In Memoriam ' is the most deliberately philosophic of 
 all Tennyson's works. It is a collection of elegies in 
 memory of his friend Arthur Hallam who died in 1833. 
 Tennyson was profoundly moved by the sudden ending by 
 death of their friendship, and expressed his grief in verse 
 of everlasting truth and beauty. But the loss also led 
 him to reflect on the great problems of religion — im- 
 mortality, the I'eality of evil, and free-will — which were 
 agitating every sincere and religious thinker of his time ; 
 and the poem as a whole is the record of his passage from 
 the numbness of absolute despair to what he calls 'the 
 larger hope.' He recognised that the discoveries of 
 physical science made the simple optimism of the old 
 religious creeds impossible. But he was not prepared to 
 give up therefore his belief in immortality and a divine 
 government of the universe. His consciousness of his 
 need for these things was alone evidence outweighing all 
 the evidence against them. Still less would he surrender
 
 232 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 the conviction based on experience of the value of faith 
 and love. 
 
 ' 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all.' 
 
 The hundred and thirty-one separate poems composing ' In 
 Memoriam ' are written all in the same metre ; but it is 
 used with such consummate skill that it never becomes 
 monotonous. 
 
 ' Maud,' the third work which concerns itself with 
 contemporary problems, is a criticism of the materialism 
 of mid-Victorian England. It is the most uneven and 
 spasmodic of the three. The lyric beauty of parts gives it 
 a permanent value ; but as a whole it suffers from the 
 intrusion of ephemeral problems. The poet's indignation 
 is sincere enough; but it takes its objects in their con- 
 temporary, not their universal aspect ; that is to say, it 
 is the indignation of the pamphleteer, not that of the 
 poet. The scheme of this poem is entirely original and 
 novel ; and in it Tennyson gives the personal lyric its 
 widest extension. 
 
 Tennyson's later work labours under two disadvantages : 
 its bulk and the existence of the earlier poems 
 Poemf ^^'^ to compare it with. Some of it, especially the 
 ' Ballads ' of 1880, is novel. All of it is ex- 
 quisitely finished. But as a whole it lacks the magic 
 of the earlier and shorter poems. ' The Idylls of the 
 King ' have been called a ' boudoir epic' It is true 
 that their atmosphere is neither primitive nor mediaeval ; 
 but they are intended to be ideal and not historical 
 characterisations. Though they vary in poetical merit, 
 they exhibit a uniform perfection of workmanship ; and 
 they are among the finest of narrative poems. The 
 polish of the diction has been deemed excessive ; but the 
 variety and adaptability of the verse cannot be admired too 
 much. Tennyson's plays are not among his best work. 
 He had not the power of dramatic construction, and his 
 characterisation was not the kind that drama needs. He 
 was following his genius more faithfully when he adopted 
 the looser consti'uction of ' The Princess ' or the episodic 
 method of ' The Idylls.'
 
 Tennyson's styl^. 233 
 
 No poet lias combined so wide a variety of poetic work 
 with so uniform a perfection of workmanship, 
 styie^*''"'^ His inspiration may lag, but his diction is 
 never careless or slovenly. It is as a rule 
 simple rather than ornate. Often (for instance, in the 
 14th elegy of ' In Memoriam ') every line of a passage 
 taken by itself is prose, the rhythm is perfectly simple and 
 there are no words not usual in prose ; but the lines taken 
 together are pure poetiy. And his simplicity — unlike 
 Wordsworth's — never fails in dignity ; at times it develops 
 into a verbal felicity which is magical. Such passages as 
 the following are the perfect expression of romance: — 
 
 ' and from them rose 
 A cry that shivered to the tingling stars, 
 And, aa it were one voice, an agony 
 Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills 
 All night in a waste land, ^^■hen no one comes, 
 Or hath come, since the making of the world.' 
 or 
 
 ' . . . like some full-breasted swan 
 That, fluting a wild carol ere her death. 
 Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood 
 With swarthy webs.' 
 
 Sometimes his fine scholarship gives his diction a classic 
 quality akin to Matthew Arnold's ; as in some of the 
 stanzas of ' In Memoriam " : — 
 
 or 
 
 ' Thou comest, much wept for ; such a breeze 
 Compelled thy canvas ' ; 
 
 * a favourable speed 
 Ruftle thy mirror'd mast, and lead 
 Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.' 
 
 And he can charge his diction with force when he wishes, as 
 in ' Lucretius " : — 
 
 ' for it seeni'd "■ 
 
 A void was made in Nature ; all her bonds 
 
 Crack'd ; and I saw the flaring atom-streams 
 
 And torrents of lier myriad universe, 
 
 Ruining along tlic illimitable inane, 
 
 Fly on to clash together again, and make 
 
 Another and another frame of tliin'jrs 
 
 r or ever.
 
 234 THE AGE OP TENNYSON, 
 
 His intimate knowledge of nature and sympathy with her 
 in all her moods is evident in his wonderful descriptions, 
 and in the use he makes of these descriptions to express 
 human feeling. 
 
 His virtues have their defects. He is guilty sometimes 
 of ' prettiness,' of relying on verbal finish to atone for the 
 absence of sincere feeling. He is not one of the great 
 masters of passion ; and he is lacking in profundity. 
 When dealing with material impressions he is clarity 
 itseK; but he often becomes indefinite and vague when 
 dealing with some problem of thought. His most ambitious 
 work, ' In Memoriam,' is far from being his most success- 
 ful ; and its value consists rather in the beauty of its 
 isolated elegies than in the effectiveness of its argument. 
 
 No stronger contrast could be imagined than that between 
 Tennyson and Tennyson and his great contemporary, Eobert 
 Browning Browuiug. Tennyson was representative of 
 con las . Y^[g age ; he speaks with the accent of his age, 
 and concerned himself immediately with its problems. 
 Browning is of all poets the most independent of his 
 time. He takes his subjects from all ages, and treats all 
 ahke as if he were a contemporary. Though Italy was for 
 many years his home, liis work bears few traces of Italy's 
 contemporary struggle for freedom. He felt, of course, the 
 stir of the ideas of his time; but their influence is less 
 directly obvious in his work than in any other poet's. 
 Again, Tennyson was not merely an English, but a European 
 poet. Browning, in spite of his cosmopolitan interests, has 
 peculiarities of style and outlook that make him inaccessible 
 to the great bulk of foreigners. And the reason of this 
 difference is easy to see. Tennyson is, perhaps, the most 
 limpid of English poets, Browning the most difficult. 
 Tennyson was classic in his sympathies. He was inter- 
 ested in the form of his utterances at least as much as in 
 their matter, and perfected that form with infinite labour 
 and exquisite literary taste. Browning was preoccupied 
 with the matter of his poems ; he had too much to say to 
 trouble about perfection of form, and, so long as his mean- 
 ing got itself expressed somehow, was satisfied. He had 
 neither Tennyson's ear for verbal music nor the same
 
 BROWNING. 235 
 
 sense of literary form. His verbal felicities seem acci- 
 dental, not the result of premeditated art. But he had 
 much the more powerful intellect of the two, much the 
 greater capacity for, and insight into, passion. 
 
 Kobei-t Browning was born in London in 1812 of well- 
 Robert to-do middle-class parents. He was privately 
 Browning, educated, and acquired an enormous store of 
 1812-1889. unusual learning. His first poem, 'Pauline,' 
 was published in 1833, having been written two years 
 before ; but his first work of importance was ' Paracelsus,' 
 published in 1835. It has little incident, though it is 
 dramatic in tone. It is in fact a soul's history. Browning 
 tells us himself that in his poetry the stress is laid on 
 ' incidents in the development of a soul.' Such incidents 
 are the effect of passion, especially the passion of love ; and 
 though Paracelsus' passion was the passion for knowledge, 
 his last speech indicates the supreme importance which love 
 was afterwards to take in Browning's view of life : — 
 
 ' It was not strange I saw no good in man, 
 To overbalance all the wear and waste 
 Of faculties, displayed in vain, but born 
 To prosper in some better sphere ; and why ? 
 In my own heart love had not been made wise 
 To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
 To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope 
 In ill-success.' 
 
 The poet Aprile in ' Paracelsus ' is a reminiscence 
 probably of Shelley, who came nearest to expressing the 
 truth of life as Browning saw it. In 1837 the play 
 ' Strafford ' Avas written for Browning's friend Macready. 
 In 1840 came ' Sordello,' another ' soul's history,' in which 
 the poet's faults of involved thought and incompletely 
 elucidated expression are quite mature. ' Sordello ' was 
 followed between 1841 and 1846 by the series of plays, 
 tragedies, and dramatic lyrics known as ' Bells and Pome- 
 granates,' the first of which, ' Pippa Passes,' a drama, 
 appeared in 1841. The series included also the tragedy, 
 ' King Victor and King Charles,' and five other plays, as 
 well as the two collections of ' Dramatic Lyrics ' referred to
 
 236 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 below. ' Pippa Passes ' was builfc up round the idea of a 
 person ' walking througli life apparently too obscure to 
 leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting 
 though unconscious influence at every step of it.' One of 
 Pippa's songs, though the most quoted piece of Browning, 
 is too beautiful and too characteristic of him to be called 
 hackneyed : — 
 
 ' The year's at the spring 
 
 And day's at the morn ; 
 
 Morning's at seven ; 
 
 The liill-side's dew-pearled ; 
 
 The lark's on the wing ; 
 
 The snail's on the thorn ; 
 
 God's in his heaven^ 
 
 All's right with the world ! ' 
 
 The scheme of regular drama did not suit Browning's 
 genius. Though the characters in his plays are simple — 
 being usually embodiments of some single motive passion 
 — and the spring of the action some simple idea, like 
 the opposition of personal loyalty and political expediency, 
 the plays themselves are involved and the action where 
 not obsciire is slight. They grow less and less suited 
 to the stage, and approximate more and more to the 
 type of dramatic monologue which was Browning's chief 
 mode of representation in the succeeding — his richest— 
 period. 
 
 The two series of ' Dramatic Lyrics ' included in 
 ' Bells and Pomegranates ' not only established 
 
 ' Dramatic -r) • ^ x i- i.ij.'T 
 
 Lyrics 'and Browumg s greatness as a lyric poet, but mdi- 
 ' Men and Gated the lines on which his dramatic genius 
 could best express itself. The lyrics proper 
 owe their excellence not so much to any verbal music or 
 perfection of form — though many have these virtues — 
 as to their wonderful vividness and immediate reality. The 
 longer poems—such as ' Artemis Prologizes ' in the volume 
 of 1842 and ' Pictor Ignotus ' or ' Sauf' in that of 1845— 
 are in form very like the ' Men and Women ' of 1855.' 
 
 ' Many of the poems in this vohime were in the collected edition 
 of his works distribiTted by the poet under other heads : e.g. ' The 
 Last Ride Together' is to be found among ' Dramatic Romances.'
 
 BROWNING. 237 
 
 Tbey are, however, more lucid aud direct iu diction ; they 
 hive a simplicity not to be found in the later poems into 
 which the poet's intellectuality crams more than he 
 can lucidly express. But they have not the profundity 
 of feeling which makes ' Men and Women ' almost 
 Browning's greatest work. 
 
 This growth in insight and deepening feeling was 
 perhaps due to the one great event of his life, his meeting 
 with the poetess Elizabeth Barrett and their marriage in 
 1846. During the fifteen years of their married life, 
 spent chiefly in Florence, Browning published only two 
 works, ' Christmas Eve and Easter Day ' in 1850 and 
 ' Men and Women ' in 1855. The latter of these works is, 
 if not quite his masterpiece, certainly his most popular 
 work. In it his dramatic power was most effective. He 
 had little genius for dramatic construction. His characters 
 are not revealed by action and inter-action, as they should 
 be in a drama meant for the stage ; nor does the poet 
 describe them from the point of view of a spectator. He 
 lets each person in these poems tell his own story, give 
 his own account of his actions and his explanation of 
 them. The result is characterisation as vivid and personal 
 as anything in literature. And it is not only the character 
 of persons but the character of events that is seized and 
 perpetuated in this way. The full emotional significance 
 of a glance or a chance word, of a landscape or of an 
 ambition, is perceived and expressed. Some stanzas from 
 ' The Last Ride Together ' may be quoted : — 
 
 ' I said — Then, clearest, since 'tis so, 
 iSinee now at length my fate I know, 
 Since nothing all my love avails, 
 Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails, 
 
 Since this was written and needs must hc- 
 My whole heart rises uj) to l)less 
 Your name in pride and thanklulness ! 
 Take back the hope you gave — I claim 
 Only a memory of tlie same, 
 — And this beside, if j'ou will not blame, 
 Your leave for one more last ride a\ itli me.
 
 238 THE AGE OP TENNYSON. 
 
 II. 
 
 My mistress bent that brow of hers, 
 Tliose deep dark eyes where pride demurs 
 When pity would be softening througli, 
 Fixed me a breathing-while or two 
 
 With life or death in the balance : Right ! 
 The blood replenished me again ; 
 My last thought was at least not vain. 
 I and my mistress, side by side 
 Shall be together, breathe and ride, 
 So, one day more am I deified. 
 
 Who knows but the world may end to-night? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then we began to ride. My soul 
 Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll 
 Freshening and fluttering in the wind. 
 Past hopes already lay behind. 
 
 What need to strive with a life awry ? 
 Had I said that, had I done this, 
 So might I gain, so might I miss. 
 Might she have loved me ? just as well 
 She might have hated, — who can tell ? 
 Where had I been now, if the worst befell ? 
 
 And here we are riding, she and I. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Who knows what's fit for us ? Had fate 
 Proposed bliss here should sublimate 
 My being ; had I signed the bond — 
 Still one must lead some life beyond. 
 
 Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. 
 This foot once planted on the goal, 
 This glory-garland round my soul, 
 Could I descry such ? Try and test ! 
 I sink back shuddering from the quest. 
 Earth being so good, would heaven seem best ? 
 
 Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride. 
 
 X. 
 
 And yet, — she has not spoke so long ! 
 What if heaven be, that, fair and strong 
 At life's best, with our eyes upturned
 
 BROWNING. 239 
 
 Whither life's flower is first discerned, 
 
 We, fixed so, ever should so abide? 
 What if we still ride on, we two, 
 With life for ever old yet new, 
 Changed not in kind but in degree. 
 The instant made eternity, — 
 And heaven just prove that I and she 
 
 Ride, ride together, for ever ride ? ' 
 
 One poem in this collection slioidd be noticed. The last, 
 ' One Word More,' is the only poem which he addressed 
 directly to liis wife, the only one in which he expressed his 
 own and not a creation's passion. 
 
 In 1861 Mrs. Browning died, and Browning came to live 
 in London. He was now beginning to achieve 
 
 ' ^Ifenis/'"^^ popularity with a reading public tired of the 
 ultra-refinement of Tennyson. In 1868-1869 
 he put his popularity to the severest possible test with 'Tlie 
 Eing and the Book,' his longest and greatest poem. In this 
 is a farther application of his dramatic method. The story 
 is a murder story. A husband kills his wife and defends 
 himself by accusing her unjustly of unfaithfulness. Not 
 only does eacli of the characters tell his own story ; but 
 the gossip of Eome for and against the husband and wife 
 is given, the speeches of counsel, and the statement of the 
 aged Pope to whom the husband appealed. Thus thejstory 
 is sliown in every possible light. Every aspect is brought 
 out ; and the tragedy lives again with almost more than the 
 reality of a contemporary event. ' The Ring and the Book ' 
 was followed by a long succession of other works — versified 
 novels, translations (in a setting) from the Grreek, ' Drama- 
 tic Idylls,' 'Fancies and Facts.' 'Asolando,' the last 
 collection, was published on the day of the poet's death, 
 Dec. 12th, 1889. 
 
 The obscurity of Browning was at one time proverbial. 
 Obscurity, however, is not the true word to 
 
 'Obscudfy!' describe the quality of his diction. Some of 
 
 the lyrics of 1840-1850 are lucidity itself; and 
 
 he is never difficult through careless or obscure thinking. 
 
 He is difficult, but he always knows exactly what he means. 
 
 Vividness and acute definition are keynotes of his thought;
 
 240 THE AGE OP TENNYSON. ^^~^ 
 
 and they are usually to be fovind in the expression if the 
 reader is intent. His poems are really overcrowded. They 
 give one the impression of a powerful j)ersonality in 
 eager haste to express something of supreme importance ; 
 dragging in words from every field of thought and activity 
 and forcibly adapting them ; breaking in stubborn rhythms 
 and awkward rhymes to its purpose — and usually succeed- 
 ing. At his best his spiritual force, working at a white 
 heat, fuses matter and form into a perfect unity. And 
 though his * shorthand ' at times becomes a mannerism, his 
 rhythm and metre usually fit and help out the sense of a 
 passage. Another cause, not of obscurity but of difiiculty, 
 is that the very vividness of the crowded detail hinders the 
 reader from grasping the sense of a whole passage or poem. 
 No poet is more provocative of thought than Browning ; 
 
 but it is not the method of poetry to give an 
 PhHoso'phy elaborated and coordinated theory of life and 
 
 the universe. He is a seer, expressing the thing 
 he sees. ' All poetry,' he tells us, ' is the problem of putting 
 the infinite into the finite.' Sometimes he seems, like 
 Wordsworth, to see God in everything, and the universe 
 real and important only in that aspect. But his sti'ong 
 sense of individuality prevented him from adopting Pan- 
 theism as a creed. He felt that the eternal, omnipotent 
 and infinite Deity was a reality ; but he felt just as 
 strongly that the individual man, or bird, or rock, was real 
 and important. The strength of his merely physical vision, 
 and the corresponding clearness of his intellectual and 
 imaginative grasp of life made him cling to the actual, and 
 prevented him from following Shelley into the realm of 
 abstractions. But for Browning, Professor Herford says, 
 'the finite is not the rival or antithesis, but the very 
 language of the infinite.' And it is love that makes the 
 two one. Through love man becomes divine, and life 
 acquires significance. 
 
 ' For fife with all it yields of joy and woe — 
 Is just our chance of the prize of learning love.' 
 
 And just as men become divine through love, so through 
 love Grod becomes human.
 
 MATTHEW AKNOLB. 24l 
 
 • So the All (Jreat were the All-Loving too, — 
 So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
 Saying, " heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! " ' 
 
 Hence the invocation of Love at the end of the first 
 book of ' The Ring and the Book,' the ' posy ' of the ring, 
 might be taken as the dedication of all his work : — 
 
 ' Ij'ric 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 thj' soul know change ? 
 Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! ' 
 
 Great as were their differences, Tennyson and Browning 
 were both Eomanticists. The reaction in favour 
 tion : Matthew 01 some sort 01 Ulassicism came m the mulale 
 '*^"'i888 ^^^" ^^ ^^^® century in the work of a younger poet, 
 Matthew Arnold. Arnold entirely failed to 
 catch the ear of the public when he first offered it his poems 
 in 1849-1853 ; but his audience has steadily grown ever 
 since, and it is doubtful if any poetry of that time is so 
 widely read to-day as Arnold's. Arnold's classicism is not 
 the classicism of the eighteenth century. But it is, just as 
 that was, a reaction against the undisciplined freedom of 
 the romantic poetry. Arnold's theory of poetry was not 
 content to let the poet's inspiration be his sole and sufli- 
 cient guide. He must derive the principles and standards 
 of his art from a study of the masters of the art, and 
 express himself in conformity with those principles and 
 standards. And the first rule is that the subject is the 
 determining factor in a poem. The romantic poet was 
 content to let his genius flow easily Avherever it listed for 
 the sake of the beauty of separate pai-ts. Arnold main- 
 tained that every poem should be a unity, its treatment 
 determined by its subject, and every part subordinated to 
 
 ENG. LIT. 16
 
 242 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 tlie whole. The kind of subject for poetic treatment he 
 describes in the famous preface to the ' Poems ' of 1853 : 
 ' The Poet, then, has in the first place to select an excellent 
 action ; and what actions are the most excellent ? Those, 
 certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great 
 primary human affections ; to those elementary feelings 
 which subsist permanently in the race, and which are inde- 
 pendent of time.' It is this choice of an excellent action, 
 its treatment as a unity, with due subordination of part to 
 whole, and a sustained and even dignity of action, which 
 constitute the ' grand style.' Of this grand style the 
 Greeks are the unapproached masters, and therefore their 
 Avorks are the touchstone and model of all poetry. Arnold 
 was not only a true poet but a great critic ; and it is this 
 combination that determined his views and makes them 
 so important. 
 
 Ai-nold has Httle of the magic of Tennyson, little of the 
 passionate eloquence of Browning. His diction 
 ^^^'"lias, however, always dignity, which rises at 
 times to supreme felicity, as in the line, 
 
 ' The unplumb'd, sale, estranging sea. 
 
 The best examples of his ti'eatraent of a great subject are 
 to be found, not in his dramatic poems ' Empedocles on 
 Etna ' and ' Merope,' but in the narratives ' Sohrab and 
 Eustum ' and ' Balder Dead,' in which he achieves an 
 Homeric simplicity and dignity of style. We may quote 
 the conclusion of ' Sohrab and Eustum ' as an example : — 
 
 'But the majestic River floated on, 
 Out of the mist and hum of that low land, 
 Into the frosty starlight, and there moved. 
 Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste, 
 Under the solitary moon ; — he flow'd 
 Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunje, 
 Brimming, and bright, and large ; then sands begin 
 To hem his watery march, and dam his streams. 
 And split his currents ; that for many a league 
 The sliorn and pareell'd Oxus strains along 
 Tln'ough beds of sand and matted rushy isles— 
 Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had 
 In his hitch mountain-cradle in Pamere,
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 243 
 
 A foilVl circuitous wanderer — till at last 
 
 The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide 
 
 His luminous home of waters opens, bright 
 
 And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars 
 
 Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.' 
 
 ■ The most typical part of liis work, however, are the lyrics 
 aud elegies, in which he states his attitude to 
 " " ° ' the thought of his time. Some of the lyrics 
 are imleed passionate (for example the collection called 
 ' Switzerlancl'), but the majority are written in the same 
 key as the elegiac poems. The dominant mood is one of 
 rather melancholy reflection. Arnold felt more intimately 
 than any of his contemporaries the difficulty of life in 
 
 ' this our time 
 Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.' 
 
 He suffered more intensely than any of them from 
 
 ' this strange disease of modern life, 
 With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 
 Its heads o'er-taxed, its palsied hearts.' 
 
 He looked everywhere for help, and found help in many 
 quarters without finding anything that would give him 
 peace. Of English poets the one to whom he owed most 
 was Wordsworth. Byron's force and passion he admired, 
 but could not imitate. Goethe, de Senancour, the Greeks, 
 his father — he acknowledged his debt to all, but was still 
 unsatisfied. Perhaps the most typical of his poems is the 
 'Scholar-Gipsy' — the story of the seventeenth- century 
 scholar who left Oxford to find the secret of life among the 
 gipsies and became immortal through his faith in his 
 search ; 
 
 ' Still nursing the unconquerable hope. 
 Still clutching the inviolable shade. 
 
 With a free, onward impulse brushing through 
 By night the silver'd branches of the glade.' 
 
 Arnold envies him and contrasts him with the people of 
 his own time : — 
 
 ' But fly our paths, our feverish contact fl}' ! 
 For strong the infection of our mental strife,
 
 244 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 Wliich, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest ; 
 
 And we should win thee from thy own fair life, 
 Like us distracted, and like us unblest. 
 Soon, soon thy cheer would die, 
 
 Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers, 
 And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made ; 
 
 And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, 
 Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.' 
 
 He envies anyone with au assured faith, like the clergyman 
 in the wonderful sonnet on East London ; and while 
 resigning himself to wait for some greater thinker or some 
 happier age to resolve his doubts, seems himself to take 
 refuge in a kind of fatalism. The ' Buried Life ' seems to 
 suggest that our troubles and questionings are futile : our 
 fate is determined beforehand. 
 
 ' Fate which foresaw 
 How frivolous a baby man would be — 
 By what distractions he would be possess'd, 
 How he would pour himself in every strife, 
 And well-nigh change his own identity — 
 That it might keep from his capricious play 
 His genuine self, and force him to obey 
 Even in his own despite his being's law, 
 Bade tlu'ough the deep recesses of our breast 
 The unregarded river of our life 
 Pursue with indiscernible flow its way ; 
 And that we should not see 
 The buried stream, and seem to be 
 Eddying at large in blind uncertainty, 
 Though driving on with it eternally. ' 
 
 Arnold's poetry was not appreciated by his own day. 
 The following generation has found in it perhaps the most 
 complete expression in Victorian poetry of its religious and 
 ethical life. 
 
 Matthew Arnold has had a growing influence on English 
 
 A renewed poctry ; but this influence was not felt by his 
 
 Romantic contemporaries. Rather was there a renewal 
 
 impu se. ^£ ^jj^^ romantic impulse. Three poets, closely 
 
 associated in friendship, found a renewed inspiration in the 
 
 art and literature of the middle ages and discovered new 
 
 possibilities of magic and romance in English verse. They
 
 THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 245 
 
 were Dante Charles Gabriel Eossetti, an Italian born in 
 England, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
 The eighteenth centitry had called the middle ages 
 "Gothic" in contempt of their art. The nineteenth 
 century was constantly going back to them for guidance 
 in matters of art. Scott's novels and the Gothic revival in 
 architecture are instances of this interest. The Oxford 
 movement was a manifestation of it in theology, and the 
 effects of that movement not only on theology but on 
 literature and art have not yet worked themselves out. 
 In art the corresponding movement was the formation 
 of the pre-Eaphaelite Brotherhood, whose object is ex- 
 pressed in its name. In Literature Coleridge, Keats, 
 and Tennyson had all felt and expressed the mystery and 
 romance of the age of chivalry. But no expression of the 
 permanent value and inspiration of mediaeval ideas is 
 more important than the work of the three poets we have 
 now to consider. 
 
 They have much in common. All three have the art of 
 getting a music out of words and rhythm apart from the 
 sense. All three, especially the artist Eossetti, show the 
 influence of the art of painting. Their poems suggest 
 pictures with a novel vividness. All make use of mediaeval 
 imagery, mediaeval legend, and mediaeval ideas, and create 
 the atmosphere of mediaeval romance. Their middle ages 
 are no more historical than those of Tennyson's ' Idylls ' ; 
 but they do not profess to be. The atmosphere of their 
 works is the atmosphere of a dream, not of any i-eal place 
 or time ; and their morality is the morality of dream-world. 
 They are not troubled with the doubts and difficulties that 
 make up the substance of so much of the poetry of 
 Tennyson and Arnold. It is significant that Eossetti and 
 Swinburne were among the earliest prophets of Browning's 
 greatness ; for Browning too found life interesting enough 
 without discussing the effects on religion of the theory of 
 evolution. The religion of these later romanticists is the 
 religion of beauty. They make beauty the end of life; 
 they criticise their own time for its neglect of beauty; and 
 they delight in any time in which beautiful things were 
 produced.
 
 246 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 D. Gr. Eossetti (1828-1882), the eldest of them, was more 
 famous in his own time as an artist and a 
 ^' f82^-i8s 2."' member of the pre-Eaphaelite Brotherhood 
 than as a poet. His poems were not pnbhshed 
 till 1870, though they were written much earlier. His 
 acquaintance with the past was reached through the poetry 
 of Italy ; and the greatest influences in forming his poetry 
 were Dante and his pictorial art. Though he had no 
 regular academic training, he had cultivated assiduously 
 his natural feeling for the beauty and vakie of the indivi- 
 dual word ; and acquired that exact and suggestive use of 
 words which constitutes true scholarship. 
 
 William Morris (1834-1896) was a man of much greater 
 WiHiam knowledge and much wider activities. His 
 
 Morris, ' Defence of Guenevere, and other Poems,' 
 
 published in 1858, was the first work of the 
 school to be given to the public ; and the public simply 
 ignored it. It was the fashion among Morris' set at 
 Oxford, so his biographer tells us, to regard Tennyson's 
 poems as the final achievement in poetry, beyond which it 
 was impossible to go. In this, his first volume, Morris 
 uses the same mediaeval sources as Tennyson uses for his 
 ' Idylls,' with much better effect. Tennyson took Malory's 
 chronicle, retold the stories in polished verse, and infused 
 into them the morality of mid- Victorian England. Morris 
 was steeped in Malory and Froissart and tlie art of their 
 time, and avoids the mistake of using their stories as alle- 
 gories with a suggestion of moral instruction. 
 
 The atmosphere, however, which Morris creates so 
 wonderfully is not that of the historical middle ages, but 
 rather that of a fairy tale. He had a child's love of 
 wonderful stories ; and, after a silence of ten years, 
 during which he first attempted under Eossetti's in- 
 fluence to become a painter, and then found his chief 
 work in artistic craftsmanship, he began the long series 
 of narratives which form the bulk of his poetical work. 
 In the ' Earthly Paradise ' he collects in one setting tales 
 from classical and Teutonic mythology as well as from 
 mediaeval sources. He does not attempt to give them a 
 historical colour appropriate to their origin, but treats
 
 SWINBURNE. 247 
 
 tliein uuifonnly. His metre is a deliglitfully easy aucl 
 limpid decasyllabic couplet, his manner the manner of a 
 mediaeval story-teller ; so that the Greek tales are seen as 
 it were through the coloured glass of mediaeval sentiment. 
 Later he became devoted to the Hterature of Scandinavia 
 and Iceland. The poem "Sigurd the Volsung" (1877), 
 and his translations of the ' Grettis ' and ' Volsunga ' Sagas 
 illustrate this interest ; but its chief result was a series of 
 romances, written in prose with occasional verse, in a 
 language artificially archaic, the atmosphere of which is 
 that of a primitive Teutonic society. " The House of the 
 Wolfiugs" (1889) was the first, "The Sundering Flood" 
 the last of the seven. Throughout his literary career he 
 was busily engaged in emphasising the importance of 
 beauty by reviving and practising the art-crafts. 
 
 Swinbiu'ne, who was born in 1837 and died in April 
 A. c. s«in- 1909, is a greater poet than either Eossetti or 
 bume, 1837- Morris. He is one of the most prolific of poets, 
 ^'*""" and the variety of his work is as surprising 
 
 as its volume. In his first volumes the most noticeable 
 influence is that of the Elizabethans ; but very soon he 
 attained to a style that was quite new in literature. He 
 had an intimate acquaintance with the literatures of Greece, 
 France, and England ; and he learnt something from each. 
 He had a command of metrical expression which no other 
 English poet has ever equalled ; especially is his skill shown 
 in the perfect ease with which he uses and adapts the compli- 
 cated scheme of the old French Ballade and similar metres. 
 But his most characteristic quality is the sheer verbal 
 music, obtained by an instinctive selection of musical vowel 
 and consonant combinations, of poems like ' The Garden of 
 Proserpine.' He creates his atmosphere not by images and 
 meanings, but by the mere flow of the rhythm and music 
 of the sounds. The imagery and meanings help ; the 
 thought is never careless or confused ; but no poet has 
 ever approximated so closely to music. His technical 
 facility at times becomes a snare : in his later woi'ks especi- 
 ally there is much versification which, wliile technically 
 perfect, expresses no very profound emotion and does not 
 help forward much the development of the poem .
 
 248 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 ' Poems and Ballads ' was hailed as immoral. It cer- 
 tainly represents in a most convincing manner certain 
 phases of passion about which English poetry is usually 
 silent. But Swinburne derived his literary traditions at 
 least as much from France as from England ; and he 
 claims as a principle of art the absolute freedom of 
 the artist in the choice of subject and method of treat- 
 ment. And he is rather the poet of pain than of the 
 passion of love ; it is of the weariness and regrets of 
 remembered passion that he writes in his most character- 
 istic mood. Many of his poems reflect his sympathy with 
 the revolutionary movements of the third quarter of the 
 century. Perhaps the most important of his works are 
 • Atalanta in Calydon' (1864) with its wonderful choruses, 
 'Poems and Ballads' (1866) which established his repu- 
 tation, ' Songs before Sunrise ' (1871), the second series 
 of 'Poems and Ballads' (1878), 'Tristram of Lyonnesse' 
 (1882), and 'Mary Siuart' (1881). He also published 
 several volumes of prose ci'iticism. 
 
 The six poets we have dealt with by no means exhaust 
 other Poets ^^^ riclies of Victoriau poetry. There were 
 of the Age many others — writers whose work, though 
 o ennybon. jjujij^g^j [j^ bulk, had the quality of genuine 
 poetry ; and some who, if not so important as the six 
 writers mentioned, are above the rank of minor poets. 
 Of the latter Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861), the wife of 
 Robert Browning, is one. Her work has great faults — a 
 tendency to gush, and a carelessness and lack of taste in 
 diction. At the same time she has a great capacity for 
 sincere feeling and a faculty of expressing it simply ; her 
 work is especially rich in pathos. She had many subjects 
 — religion, romance, love — and a great command of varied 
 metrical expression. She is at her best where the form she 
 has adopted imposes restraint on her tendency to excessive 
 fluency, as for instance in the ' Sonnets from the Portu- 
 guese.' Christina Eossetti (1830-1894) had not Mrs. 
 Browning's depth or passion ; but she avoided her defects. 
 Her claim to greatness is two-fold. Eirst, she expresses 
 in verse of an exquisite musical qviality a sense of 
 romance almost equal to her brother's, and thus takes
 
 PROSE FICTION. 249 
 
 her place by the side of her brother and Morris ; and 
 secondly, she is one of the few verse-writers who have 
 found in orthodox religion an inspiration to genuine 
 poetry. Her devotional poems, while they express no 
 novel or exciting view of religion, are sincerity itself ; and 
 their form, as is the case with all her work, is exquisite. 
 No period of English literature is richer in fine lyric 
 poetry than the age of Tennyson. There is a 
 jync poe ry. j.j(,jjjjggg ^j^^ variety of melody which show 
 that the Victorians had studied with effect the work of their 
 predecessors. Yet, while they learnt more from their pre- 
 decessors than perhaps the poets of any other age had done, 
 they were not mere imitators. They accepted faithfully 
 every revelation of the possibilities of their instrument ; 
 but the uses to which they put it were new, and they them- 
 selves discovered new possibilities in it. Generalisations 
 over so large and varied a mass of Avork are dangerous ; 
 one, however, may be ventured. It is distinguished from 
 the poetry of other epochs by its intimate appreciation of 
 the beauty of nature and of the bearing that nature's 
 beauty has on 1mm an life. The poetry of the nineteenth 
 century, like the science of the nineteenth century, breaks 
 down the barrier between man and external nature, and 
 insists on the imity of all things. Thus Wordsworth 
 would seem to be the most important poet of the nine- 
 teenth centin-y, and Victorian poetry as a whole an expres- 
 sion of the impulse that produced ' Lyrical Ballads ' in 1 798. 
 
 II. Prose Fiction. 
 
 The eighteenth century invented the novel, but left the 
 nineteenth century to reap the full benefits of the inven- 
 tion. The fundamental thing in the novel, the delineation 
 of character in narrative, Avas grasped by Fielding, Richard- 
 son, and Smollett, and carried out with complete success ; 
 but they did not realise the dramatic possibilities of plot- 
 construction. Their method was leisurely and discursive, 
 the construction of the story loose and casual. Episodes,
 
 250 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 especially humorous adventures, are admitted which, have 
 no strict relevance to the development of the story. Their 
 greatness lay in their power of creating character. Scott 
 enormously widened the scope of prose fiction by inventing 
 the historical novel. His contemporary, Jane Austen, 
 carried its development forward in another direction by 
 placing the chief interest of her novels in the faithful 
 delineation of contemporary manners. Incident in her 
 novels is of the quietest and most everyday kind ; but it is 
 sufficient to develop the characters. If Scott made the 
 novel a vehicle for romance. Miss Austen showed its 
 possibilities for the portrayal of quiet realism. 
 Scott's success brought him a host of imitators, of whom 
 
 Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1803-1873), one 
 (jharies^Duikens, q£ q^q most versatile writers of the century, was 
 
 the most important. The next great English 
 novelist, however, owed little or nothing to Scott. Charles 
 Dickens (1812-1870) is one of the most original of English 
 writers. He had no regular education and owed little to 
 any predecessors. In his boyhood he read eagerly the 
 eighteenth century novelists, and he has some affinity with 
 Smollett ; but his real literary training was his work as a 
 journalist, which quickened his powers of observation and 
 helped him to a faculty of rapid and easy expression. The 
 story of his boyhood and youth, so far as it is relevant to 
 the formation of his character as a writer, is told by himself 
 in * David Copperfield.' His first book, ' Sketches by Boz,' 
 was published in 1836, and was an immediate success. It 
 has the chief characteristics of his later work — the humour, 
 farcical at times, and the pathos, strained at times, which 
 he found in ' everyday life and everyday people.' His next 
 book, ' The Pickwick Papers,' was intended to serve merely 
 as letter-press to a series of drawings by the caricaturist 
 Seymour. It developed into a coherent story only when 
 the public's appreciation of its humour made author more 
 important than artist. The first novel constructed on 
 orthodox lines was 'Oliver Twist' (1837-1838). In ac- 
 cordance with the fashion of the time all Dickens' and 
 Thackeray's novels were published serially in parts. This 
 may be one reason for their great length.
 
 DICKENS. 251 
 
 It is significant that Dickens' most popular, and in 
 many respects most characteristic, work should 
 *^°"i!^'novers°^ not Originally have heen intended for a novel. 
 Lacking an academic training, he was not at 
 first interested in questions of literary form. He was not 
 concerned to discover and aj^ply principles underlying the 
 work of predecessors. The work of creation with him was 
 entirely spontaneous. He could not help writing ; and his 
 superabundant vitality poured itself out in a long procession 
 of characters whose adventures were narrated with as little 
 artifice and as much zest as a child tells its adventures. 
 This does not mean that his work is careless : it certainly 
 is not. But in his early work he has little regard for any 
 unities of time or place. He is not afraid of long digres- 
 sions which do not help forward the story. His stages 
 are crowded, and contain many persons whose story is not 
 essential to the development of the main story. Hence 
 the early novels of Dickens are in form very like the novels 
 of the eighteenth century. Their unity depends not so 
 much on any plot as on an individual. The story is the 
 story of that individual's adventures on his journey 
 through life, and usually begins at the beginning with his 
 birth. 
 
 After ' David Copperfield,' however, we find a more 
 conscious art and an approximation to the later form of 
 the novel. In ' Bleak House,' for instance, the unifying 
 interest of the story is not any individual character, 
 but the great Chancery suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. 
 The whole action of the book springs from this suit, 
 and the different persons are connected with one 
 another by their common relation to it. Thus in 
 Dickens, as in English literature generally, the chief 
 form of prose fiction changed from simple narrative to 
 something more akin to the drama. The closer unity 
 and more careful construction of the later form, how- 
 ever, did not suit his genius so well as the unfettered 
 freedom of the earlier. Irrelevancies and digressions 
 that would have been fatal in a lesser man assumed the 
 character of virtues in Dickens on account of his great 
 gift of humour.
 
 252 THE AGE OP TENNYSON. 
 
 The humour of Dickens is his greatest quality. It 
 
 makes everything he wrote unmistakably 
 
 13 lumour. gi^^^.rj^^j^gj.ig^iQ of j^^^^ j^ appears in the turn 
 
 of his phrases, in a certain indirectness of statement which 
 throws into relief a comic element in anything he wishes 
 to describe. It is even more obvious in his most typical 
 characters. The characters most typical of Dickens are 
 not the heroes and hei'oines of his novels, not the ordinary 
 persons whose originals are to be found in any company of 
 middle-class Englishmen; but those persons, of obscure 
 station but striking individuality, who may have an im- 
 portant bearing on the plot but would be equally welcome 
 if they had none. Sam Weller and his even greater father, 
 Mrs. Gamp, Captain Cuttle, Mr. Micawber are unlike any 
 other characters in fiction. It has been objected that they 
 are not true to life. It might indeed be difficult to find 
 their exact prototypes ; bvit they are unmistakably alive. 
 Every phrase they utter is redolent of their individuality. 
 Collectively they sum up much of the humour of English 
 life in Dickens' time. 
 
 Closely connected with his power of humorous charac- 
 terisation is Dickens' mastery of the grotesque 
 ^^tvoZqit^ ^^^^ terrible. The dwarf Qiiilp in 'The Old 
 Curiosity Shop,' Dennis the hangman in 
 ' Barnaby Eudge,' Uriah Heep in ' David Copperfield ' are 
 as characteristic of him in their way as any of the comic 
 figures. The ultimate source of true humour is a certain 
 independence and individuality of outlook ; and the same 
 eyes which found much to excite laughter in their survey 
 of the world found much to excite fear. And they found 
 much to excite tears. Though a proueness to labour the 
 pathetic is one of his faults, Dickens' pathos gives much 
 of its value to his work. Such a character as Little Nell 
 in ' The Old Curiosity Shop ' has sentiment without any 
 sentimentalism. 
 
 One other featui'e in Dickens' novels should be noted, 
 
 since it was one he attached importance to 
 
 ^^zeai!'"° himself, namely his use of them to reveal 
 
 abuses and advocate reforms. The abuses of 
 
 Poor Law administration are pilloried in ' Oliver Twist ' ;
 
 THACKERAY. 253 
 
 the evils of imprisoumeut i'ur debt in ' Pickwick,' ' David 
 Copperfield,' and ' Little Dorrit ' ; the law's delay iu ' Bleak 
 House,' the cumbrousness of govenimeut procedui-e iu 'The 
 Circmulocutiou Office ' of ' Little Dorrit,' the rottenness 
 of the private school in ' Nicholas Nickleby.' On these 
 subjects Dickens felt strongly, and embodied in the 
 characters and incidents of his story most effective criti- 
 cisms of them. 
 
 Dickens was born in the lower middle class and drew 
 liis scenes and characters from the middle and lower 
 classes. His portraiture of members of the official and 
 leisured classes was nearly always satirical in intention, 
 and was usually unsuccessful. For a full and fair picture 
 of the ' upper ' classes we must go to his gi'eat contem- 
 porary, William Makepeace Thackeray. 
 
 Thackeray was born in India in 1811 and educated 
 
 at Charterhouse and Cambridge. He had a 
 Makepeace private fortune and devoted himself first to 
 T'lackeray, r^y^ jjjg early writings were miscellaneous in 
 
 character, appearing chiefly in ' Frazer's Maga- 
 zine' and 'Punch.' It was not till' 1847-1848 that he 
 published the first of his great novels, 'Vanity Fair.' 
 ' Pendennis,' which is chiefly interesting fi'om its auto- 
 biographical element, appeared in 1849-1850 ; ' Esmond ' 
 in 1852 ; ' The Newcomes ' in 1853-1855 ; ' The Virginians ' 
 in 1857-1858. In 1860 he became editor of the 'Cornhill 
 Magazine,' to which he contributed ' Level the Widower,' 
 ' Philip,' and a series of essays called ' The Roundabout 
 Papers.' He died in 1863. 
 
 In many respects Thackeray presents a strong contrast 
 
 to Dickens. He came of a different class, and 
 ^""wc'kfnr'*^ represented the life of a different class in his 
 
 novels. He had much more regular educa- 
 tion, and had historical and literai'y sympathies that 
 Dickens lacked. He had not Dickens' industry, but his 
 literary product Avas more varied, including a good deal 
 of literaxy criticism and some excellent light verse. His 
 humour is different. It is more reflective than that of 
 Dickens, and the style it colours is more the style of 
 a scholar and reader. His sense of humour expresses
 
 254 THE AGE OP TENNYfcON. 
 
 itself most easily in commeut ou the story and addresses to 
 the reader, while that of Dickens finds its most natural ex- 
 pression in the creation of character. Again, the more 
 educated taste of Thackeray saves him from the melo- 
 drama into which Dickens sometimes lapses. His pathos 
 is not so sentimental, springing as it does from the 
 characters of the story and issuing in action. At the 
 same time Thackeray has something in common with 
 Dickens. He shared his admiration of the eighteenth- 
 century novelists, and adopted their methods of telling 
 a story. His novels are biographical, pictures of the life 
 and times of a particular person whose career is traced 
 from birth onwards. The chief interest is always in the 
 characters, not in the plots. In fact the development of 
 the novel into a rigorous unity in which every character 
 and every incident is strictly subordinated to a central 
 dramatic purpose has been the work not of English, but 
 of French novelists. 
 
 Thackeray's greatness lies in his power of creating 
 
 character. He enriched English litei'atui-e 
 'cilaiactS^s.'^ with a long series of figures, each of which 
 
 is typical of a class without losing any of its 
 individuality. Becky Sharp is the typical adventuress for 
 all time ; Colonel Newcome is the pei-fect exemplar of an 
 English gentleman. And these characters are true to life. 
 They are typical of their class, not as the puppets in a 
 morality play are typical, by being labelled with some out- 
 standing attribute, but as real persons are typical of their 
 class. Their virtue or foible is only one among many 
 attributes, only one rather striking aspect of a complete 
 and many-sided personality. 
 
 He allows himself ample scope for making his persons 
 real. His stories are long ; they cover sometimes a couple 
 of generations. They are peopled by a multitude of 
 persons, who throw light on one another in a long succession 
 of quiet but effective situations. The dialogue is as near 
 to the speech, of real life as the art of fiction will permit ; 
 for in no department of art does exact photographic repro- 
 duction give the living and breathing reality which true 
 art possesses. At times the action of the novel rises to
 
 THACKERAY. 255 
 
 situations of tense emotiou, as in the scene of tlie scandal 
 at Curzon Street in " Vanity Fair." As a rule, however, 
 Thackeray prefers to reproduce the even tenour of English 
 life without exciting incidents ; and the scale of his stories 
 enables him to develop his characters without the aid of 
 frequent emotional crises. He is a little shy of passion in 
 all its forms. It is not that he is incapable of it ; but he 
 seems to adopt the ordinary educated Enghshman's atti- 
 tude, which regards passion as showing a want of self- 
 control, and as therefore not quite respectable ; and his 
 treatment of it is usually cjuizzical, sympathetic but not 
 wholly serious. From this habit his novels gain in veri- 
 similitude as a picture of English society, but they lose in 
 dramatic force. 
 
 This habit of quizzing both the characters of his books 
 , . . „ and his readers won Thackeray a reputation 
 for cynicism. Cynic, however, he was not; there 
 is no bitterness in his humour or his satire. The only justi- 
 fication for the charge is that he does not take people so 
 seriously as they take themselves; and few humourists 
 would escape the charge of cynicism if that is sufficient 
 iustification for it. Unlike Dickens, he was not inter- 
 ested in reform. His books are not troubled with any 
 'purpose.' But he had a very keen eye for the foibles of 
 humanity, and pointed them out without bitterness, but 
 with a certain delight. And he took a pleasure in affect- 
 ing a cynical attitude. His comments on the story and 
 long addresses to the reader are in the style of the kindly 
 but disillusioned man of the world, but the stories them- 
 selves have no lack of faith in hiunan nature. 
 
 ' Esmond ' requires separate attention, because it was 
 'Esmond' ^^^ innovation in English literature. It was an 
 historical novel in which the interest lay not so 
 much in the incidents as in the characters. It sought to 
 infuse into a true novel of character that spirit of romance 
 which belongs to a story placed in another age. To write 
 it required something more than an archaeologist's or an 
 historian's knowledge of the time in which the action was 
 placed ; and it is one of Thackeray's greatest achievements 
 because he was steeped in the life and literature of the
 
 256 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 eighteenth century. As his whole work shows, he was a 
 person of easy temper and leisurely habits who would feel 
 quite at home in the age of ' The Spectator.' 
 
 Dickens and Thackeray had no successor of genius so 
 varied and abundant as their own till Gleorge Meredith 
 gave the world his books. But in the sixteen years that 
 separated Dickens from Meredith there were born several 
 writers whose achievement is important in the history of 
 Enghsh literature. The first of these, Anthony Trollops 
 (1815-1882), is not a writer of great distiuc- 
 lope, "isTo-iss'i tion. He wrote a great number of novels 
 which exhibit uniformly careful workmanship 
 without much inspiration. Some of his chronicles of quiet 
 country life, especially the Barsetshire series, are excellent ; 
 but he is chiehy interesting as being typical of a larger 
 number of novelists who in the third quarter of the 
 century satisfied the English public's avidity for unex- 
 citing novels of domestic fiction. The fashion was perhaps 
 set by a younger contemporary who had published her 
 last work before Trollope published his first. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte, one of three sisters of Celtic ex- 
 Chaiiotte tractiou, was born and lived practically all 
 Bronte, her life in the West Riding of Yorkshire. 
 i8i6-i8o5. jq-^ English writer ever grasped and expressed 
 the spirit of a locality more intimately than she and 
 her sister Emily. Her novels were all based on her per- 
 sonal experiences, and acquire a peculiar vividness from 
 that fact. One of the most living and affecting pictures 
 of childhood is the part of 'Jane Eyre' which describes 
 her old school. Her heroines followed closely the lines of 
 her own character in ' Jane Eyi'e ' and ' Villette,' of her 
 sister Emily's in ' Shirley.' The minor characters of her 
 novels were portraits of her friends and acquaintances ; and 
 most of the scenes of her novels can be identified from her 
 descriptions. She has none of the fecundity of genius 
 which enabled Dickens and Thackeray to create a whole 
 world of types and persons; and she had little of their 
 humour. Her scope was strictly limited by her own rather 
 restricted social intercourse. But within those limits she 
 had powers which belong only to genius. She had a
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 257 
 
 knowledge of passion which must have been considered 
 very shocking in a uiid-Victorian lady, and would certainly 
 have ruined her prospects in the profession for which she 
 was intended — that of governess. She had a consider- 
 able power of satire, which she used a little unkindly to 
 express her contempt for much of the provincial society 
 in which she moved. Her style is as a rule simple and 
 direct, a little grandiloquent in some of the reflectivev 
 passages, but forcible and eloquent in the expression of 
 feeling. 
 
 Very different was the other great woman novelist of 
 Geoigo Eliot, the period. G-eorge Eliot — her real name was 
 
 1819-1880. Mary Anne Evans — was born in Warwickshire 
 in 1819. She spent the greater part of her life in London, 
 and did a great deal of writing of a philosophical and 
 critical character before attempting fiction. But her War- 
 wickshire life — the life of the English village before the 
 railway came to disturb it — provided the substance of most 
 of her novels. She had a wonderful faculty of observation, 
 which enabled her to reproduce exactly the mannerisms of 
 rustic habit and speech. The conversation of the rustics 
 in the village inn at the beginning of ' Silas Marner ' is as 
 convincing as if the reader was in the inn listening. And 
 she imderstood the whole country-side, its interrelations, 
 its hierarchies and standards of value, and could give a 
 complete picture of its life. Her appreciation of the 
 humour of her country characters is not shown in isolated 
 conversations or observed eccentricities only ; it enabled her 
 to create a character lilce Mrs. Poyser, who embodied that 
 humour and expressed it in pitliy phrases that have become 
 proverbial. Even greater tlian her humour was her com- 
 mand of pathos. There are few figures in fiction for whom 
 the reader has more pity than Maggie Tulliver ; and the 
 pathos of her story springs inevitably from her character 
 and svu'roundiugs. In drawing women George Eliot was 
 rarely at fault ; her male characters are not so convincing. 
 She was rather inclined to make of them unnatural em- 
 bodiments of her rather strenuous moral views. Her style 
 too suffered from an over-fondness for scientific and philo- 
 sophical jargon. Her intellect was apt to get the better of 
 
 ENG. LIT. 17
 
 258 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 her ; and her touch was never qmte sure when she wandered 
 from the country and the people of her youth. 
 
 In George Ehot the novel took its modern form. 
 Every story — except perhaps ' The Mill on the 
 ^'IhlXvet'^I'loss'— derives its unity from its plot. The 
 different episodes are all related to each other 
 and subordinated to the main story. The chief appeal to 
 the emotions of the reader is made by the inevitable 
 catastrophe towards which the whole action moves. As 
 an example of dramatic construction ' Middlemarch ' is the 
 greatest of the novels. The tragedies of Bulstrode's 
 downfall and of Dr. Lydgate's lapse from his ideals are 
 perfectly interwoven with the main plot; and the whole 
 movement of the action has the inevitableness of great 
 drama. George Eliot was very much influenced by the 
 agnostic school of philosophers and theologians who con- 
 ducted the ' Westminster Eeview ' in the fifties. Her 
 novels have a special appeal for the type of mind which is 
 troubled by (or delights in) religious difiiculties. The 
 mood of much of her work is not unlike that of Matthew 
 Arnold's poems. But in spite of her great ability she was 
 not an original thinker, and contributed nothing to philo- 
 sophic thought or religious theory. 
 
 A much more powerful thinker and a greater novelist 
 George ^^ George Meredith. His first novel, ' The 
 
 Meredith, Ordeal of Eichard Eeverel,' was published 
 ■ in 1859, only two years after George Eliot's 
 first novel. His greatness was not recognised for many 
 years ; and the public were perhaps not much to blame, 
 since his fiction was something quite new. His power of 
 creating character is on a level with that of Dickens and 
 Thackeray. His novels are much more elaborately and 
 carefully constructed. He is obscure and difiicult; but 
 the obscurity is certainly not due to loose or incomplete 
 thinking. The cause of his obscurity is the source of his 
 originality. Incident in his novels is almost all psycho- 
 logical, i.e. actions are described, not as they would strike 
 an observer, but from the point of view of the actor. 
 The author sees life as a complex of emotions, with 
 passion as the truest reality. He is difiicult because
 
 HISTORY AffD CRITICISiM. 259 
 
 his standard of vahies is sometliing entirely new. His 
 thought moves in a higher plane than that of everj-day 
 life. To understand him the reader has to climb (or be 
 lifted) to his altitude ; then his view becomes intelligible, 
 since what seemed to be mountains looked at from the 
 dead-level of every-day life are seen to be only hills, and 
 
 the true peaks are revealed behind and above 
 ^^^cai*Nov°eL°'^l'^^i^i- ^^ ^ seuse the interest of novels had 
 
 always been psychological ; but the standpoint 
 had been that of every-day life and the actions were objec- 
 tively described. 
 
 In Meredith the analysis of motive becomes much 
 subtler ; the precise emotional significance of every action 
 is estimated, and prominence given to it in accordance with 
 that estimate. And the most important fiction of subse- 
 quent writers has followed Meredith in transferring the 
 interest of the novel from what may be called the specta- 
 cular to the psychological aspect of the characters and 
 action. 
 
 III. History and Criticism, 
 
 The nineteenth century saw an enormous growth in the 
 „, „ . ,, audience which an English author coiild 
 
 Cliange in tlio -xt ^ i i 
 
 Comiitiuns of aciclress. JNot only was there an increase m 
 I'ubiicatioD. poptilation, but the spread of education in- 
 creased the proportion of the population who were interested 
 in literature and accessible to new ideas. Book-making 
 has become a trade ; but the output of books now which 
 can claim consideration as literature is greater than it 
 has ever been before. One new form of publication — the 
 periodical — has had especial influence on the literature we 
 are now considering. The stately and conservative reviews 
 — the ' Edinburgh ' and ' Quarterly ' — set the standard of 
 periodical literature for the first half of the century. 
 'Blackwood's' was somewhat lighter in tone, and 'Frazer's' 
 more daring, daring enough to publish even ' Sartor 
 Resartus.' Early in the second half of the century the 
 ' Cornhill,' a shilling magazine, was founded under the
 
 2G0 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 cclitorsliip of Thackeray, and soon found imitators. From 
 that time forward most prose writers made their debut in 
 the pages of some periodical ; and any writer had tliere his 
 opportunity, if he had some genuine contribution to ma]i;e 
 to the criticism, literaiy, artistic, social, or moral, of his 
 time. 
 
 Nor did promising critics lack other encouragement. The 
 age, as we have seen, was one of great intellectual activity 
 and great changes. It was interested in things, and 
 welcomed anyone who could give it new interests. Especi- 
 ally did it give an eager hearing to anyone who could make 
 past ages live again. Moreover, its energies did not always 
 choose ideal outlets ; and the very activity of the age gave 
 abundant opportunity and stimulus to prophet and teacher. 
 Hence the age of Tennyson has a multitude of prose writers 
 • — historians, essayists, and critics of every kind — too 
 numerous to be discussed separately. A few will be taken 
 as representative ; and even they will be more numerous 
 than the scale of this book would permit if the age were 
 not so many-sided in its activities and interests. 
 
 Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) is perhaps 
 the most popular of English historians. His 
 
 Thomas . tj. • • ± 4.- ■ t j.- 
 
 Babington immediate success is interesting as indicating 
 Macaulay ^^q tastes of liis Contemporaries. He was a 
 prominent Whig politician, helped his party to 
 pass the first Reform Bill, and received as reward the post 
 of Legal Member of the Council of India. His reputation 
 as an author was made by a series of essays, historical and 
 biographical, in the ' Edinburgh Eeview.' It was increased 
 by his verse, a series of historical baUads ; and confirmed 
 by the four volumes which was all he lived to complete of 
 a detailed 'History of England from the Accession of 
 James II.' 
 
 As a historian Macaulay's chief virtue is the vividness 
 
 Merits and ^^ ^^^^ picture lie cau give of a past age or a 
 
 Defecta as a personality. This vividness is due to two 
 
 Historian, ^j^jj^gg . |-jjg g^gat erudition, and his skill as a 
 
 writer ; and it is with this latter quality that we are chiefly 
 
 concerned. His virtues and his faults as a writer spring 
 
 from the same fundamental fact, that Macaulay is a
 
 IMACAULAY. 261 
 
 rhetorician. The most obvious characteristic of everything 
 he wrote is its absolute clearness. It is never necessary to 
 re-read anything he wrote to discover its full meaning. 
 And this virtue has its corresponding defect in a lack of 
 suggestiveness, an absence of mystery. The clearness is 
 obtained by the means which a speaker, whose audience 
 cannot turn back a page to recover anything it has for- 
 gotten, is bound to adopt. The ideas are repeated in a 
 number of slightly different forms, and fixed in the reader's 
 mind liy a constant succession of illustrations and com- 
 parisons. Whether these devices are legitimate in prose 
 which is intended to be read and not heard is doubtful ; 
 but their effectiveness is proved by the multitude of 
 Macaulay's imitators. 
 
 Macaulay's great defect as a historian is his partiality. 
 He had strong religious and political views, which degene- 
 rated into prejudices when imported into his treatment of 
 other times. He is always an advocate, painting his heroes 
 as perfect and their enemies as viHains. Much of his popu- 
 larity is due to this habit, since history is given a much 
 more lively interest by being treated in the style of contem- 
 porary politics. He carries this tendency to extremes, as in 
 the essay on Boswell, where he tries to show that Boswell 
 wrote the greatest of biographies because lie was the meanest 
 of men. And this partiality is emphasized by an objection 
 to half-tones. Everything must be black or white, every- 
 body wholly good or wholly bad. Macaulay's passion for 
 absolute clearness and strict definition led him often to 
 represent as certain what was doubtful, as clear what was 
 obscure. All these are the qualities of the rhetorician, 
 whose business is to persuade ; and to persuade he must 
 be lucid, partisan, and dogmatic. 
 
 The style which enables Macaulay to make his views 
 so convincing has often been imitated without 
 ''' °' being equalled. Its principle is the use, in- 
 stead of the old periodic sentence, of short sentences, so 
 cleverly managed as never to become monotonous, built 
 up into paragraphs. It does not admit of any dwelling on 
 single words to extract their full value ; but Macauhiy was 
 careful always to use good words, avoiding colloquiaUsms
 
 262 THE AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 aud neologisms. We will quote as an example a sliovt 
 passage from Ch. viii. of the History : — 
 
 ' At ten the Court again met. The crowd was greater than ever. 
 The jury appeared in their box ; and there was a breathless stillness. 
 
 Sir Samuel Astry spoke. " Do you find the defendants, or any of 
 tliem, guilty of the misdemeanour whereof they are impeached, or 
 not guilty ? " Sir Roger Langley answered, " Not guilty." As the 
 words were uttered, Halifax sprang up and waved his hat. At that 
 signal, benches and galleries raised a shout. In a moment ten 
 thousand persons, who crowded the great hall, replied with a still 
 louder shout, which made the old oaken roof crack ; and in another 
 moment the innumerable throng without set up a thii'd huzza, which 
 was heard at Temple Bar. The boats which covered the Thames 
 gave an answering cheer. A peal of gunpowder was heard on the 
 water, and another, and another ; and so, in a few moments, the 
 glad tidings went flying past the Savoy and the Friars to London 
 Bridge, and to the forest of masts below. As the news spread, 
 streets and squares, market-places and coffee-houses, broke forth 
 into acclamations. Yet were the acclamations less strange than the 
 weeping. l'"or the feelings of men had been wound up to such a 
 point that at length the stern English nature, so little used to out- 
 ward signs of emotion, gave way, and thousands sobbed aloud for 
 very joy. Meanwhile, from the outskirts of the multitude, horsemen 
 were spurring off to bear along all the great roads intelligence of the 
 victory of our Church and nation. Yet not even that astounding 
 explosion could awe the bitter and intrepid spirit of the Solicitor. 
 Striving to make himself heard above the din, he called on the 
 Judges to commit those who had violated, by clamour, the dignity 
 of a court of justice. One of the rejoicing populace was seized. But 
 the tribunal felt that it would be absurd to punish a single individual 
 for an offence common to hundreds of thousands, and dismissed him 
 with a gentle reprimand.' 
 
 Macaulay was in sympathy with his ag3 and shared its 
 self-complacency. The other great historian of 
 Thomas Cadyie.^l^e first half of the century made his whole 
 work a protest against that self-satisfaction. 
 Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was the son of a mason in 
 Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. He was educated at Edin- 
 burgh University, and intended for the ministry. In 1826 
 he married Jane Welsh, and retired for six years to her 
 farm at Craiggenputtoclv ; and in that period his mind 
 develope^l its full powers and exhibited its true bent. His 
 chief affinity was with the philosophers and critics of
 
 CARLTLE. 263 
 
 Germany, and his style was influenced by his study of Ger- 
 man ; but his tremendous personaHty would have forged for 
 itself a style absolutely individual, whatever external in- 
 fluences it was submitted to in the course of its formation. 
 
 The great bulk of Carlyle's work was historical and 
 biographical. The chief books are ' The 
 
 ^Works!^^ French Eevolution,' published in 1837, ' The 
 Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell,' 
 1845, and 'The History of Frederick the Great,' which 
 took fourteen years to write and was seven years in pub- 
 lishing (1858-1865). His historical method has not the 
 scientific precision of to-day ; but he expended unlimited 
 industry in working up his material, in collecting, estimating, 
 and digesting it. The results of this process are presented 
 to the reader in a manner which, if at times eccentric, 
 is usually effective. No English writer has a greater 
 power of historical imagination, the power of realising the 
 life of a past time and presenting it so that it lives again. 
 His profound insight into character carries him further 
 tlian any science of method would carry a smaller man. 
 His arrangement and interpretation of facts is illuminating. 
 Perhaps the quality which more than any other gives his 
 narratives their literary value is their dramatic force. He 
 delighted in characters who wei-e capable by their innate 
 greatness of dramatic action ; and perhaps the chief interest 
 of historical study to him was the opportunity it gave of ap- 
 preciating and preaching the greatness of the strong man. 
 
 Carlyle allowed himself complete freedom in his histori- 
 
 „ ... . , cal works of commenting unfavourably on his 
 
 Criticism of . -»/ripi- ^ ■ ^ t 
 
 Contemporary Contemporaries. Miich ot his work, including 
 Society. jjjg j^^g^ characteristic book, ' Sartor Kesartus,' 
 was in direct criticism of the spirit of his age. He was 
 oppressed by its commercialism. He revolted against the 
 sordid materialism of so many of its aims. Comfort and 
 respectability, it seemed to him, were preferred to force 
 and originality ; the social order with the ' cash-nexus ' as 
 its chief bond was little better than anarchy. He was 
 naturally religious, though he found no satisfaction in 
 orthodox rehgion ; and he looked for principles and ideals 
 in men's actions. Instead, he fouiid shams and cant ; and
 
 264 THE AGE OF TENNTSON. 
 
 lie was moved by his passion for sincerity to preach in 
 volumes that are anything but silent themselves the gos- 
 pels of silence and Avork. His style is as rugged as his 
 personality. It js full of strange inversions and sudden 
 apostrophes to the reader. It tries to dispense with pro- 
 nouns, conjunctions, and svich smaU fry. Strange and 
 archaic forms and newly-coined words are common. It is 
 emphatically not a style to copy. But it is always forcible 
 and dramatic ; and though unnatural when considered by 
 itself, it suits exactly Carlyle's vivid and declamatory 
 habit of thought. He is a prophet ; and prophets cannot 
 body forth their message in the language of the drawing- 
 room. Almost any page of his writing would serve as an 
 example of his style ; our quotation is from the last book 
 of ' The French Eevolution ' : — 
 
 ' What a day, once more ! Women are driven out ; men storm 
 irresistibly in ; choke all corridors, thunder at all gates. Deputies, 
 putting forth head, obtest, conjure; 8aint-Antoine rages, "Bread 
 and Constitution." Report has risen that the "Convention is 
 assassinating the women : " crushing and rushing, clangor and 
 furor ! The oak doors have become as oak tambourines, sounding 
 under the axe of Saint- Antoine ; plaster-work crackles, wood-work 
 booms and jingles ; door starts up ; bursts in Saint- Antoine with 
 frenzy and vociferation, with Rag-standards, printed Proclamation, 
 drum -music ; astonishment to eye and ear. Gendarmes, loyal 
 Sectioners charge through the other door ; they are recharged ; 
 musketry exploding ; Saint-Antoine cannot be expelled. Obtesting 
 Depiities obtest vainly' : Respect the President ; approach not the 
 President ! Deputy F^raud, stretching out his hands, baring his 
 bosom scarred in the Spanish wars, obtests vainly ; threatens and 
 resists vainljj-. Rebellious Deputy of the Sovereign, if thou have 
 fought, have not we too ? We have no Bread, no Constitution ! 
 Iliey wrench poor Feraud ; they tumble him, trample him, wrath 
 Avaxing to see itself work : they drag him into the corridor, dead or 
 near it ; sever his head, and fix it on a pike. Ah, did an unexampled 
 Convention want this variety of destiny, too, then ? F6raud's 
 bloody head goes on a pike. Such a game has begun ; Paris and the 
 Earth may wait how it will end.' 
 
 Carlyle's biographer, James Anthony Froude (1818-1894), 
 
 James Anthony was the third great historian of the period. 
 
 Froude, 1818- Froudo was One of the Oxford men who came 
 
 ^^^'^' under the influence of Newman ; he was driven 
 
 by the feeling of revvilsion which followed Newman's
 
 BUSKIN. 265 
 
 secession to Rome iuto an attitude of scepticism and 
 violetit opposition to the Catholic religion. The results are 
 visible in all his books. He had many faixlts as a 
 historian. He was prejudiced and partial. The period he 
 chose for his great work, the History of England from the 
 fall of Wolsey to the defeat of the Armada, was one that 
 requires an almost impossible detachment of mind for its 
 fair treatment ; and Froude imported into his treatment 
 of it all his violent theological partisanship. This defect 
 was emphasised by his culpable carelessness in dealing 
 with his material. He neither exhausted the soui'ces of 
 information open to him nor used accurately the material 
 he did employ. That he was a great historian in spite of 
 these defects was due to his imagination and powers of 
 expresssion. Like Carlyle and Macaulay, he could by a 
 sustained imaginative effort make a past age live again ; 
 and his prose, if it has not the perfect lucidity of Macaulay, 
 has a good deal more force and music. 
 
 Carlyle's was the first great protest against the 
 materialism of Victorian England, against a 
 
 isi9-im°' theory of social relations which took the con- 
 clusions of a utilitarian political economy for 
 ethical precepts. His mantle fell upon the shoulders of 
 John Ruskin (1829-1900). Ruskin reached his conviction 
 of the need of a change in the English temper by a very 
 different route from Carlyle. He was the son of wealthy 
 parents and educated at Oxford. His first interest was 
 art, and it was his study of the conditions wliich made 
 great art possible that led to his reforming zeal. He is 
 perhaps the greatest art critic of England. In ' Modern 
 Painters ' he examined and set forth the principles of paint- 
 ing with a detail and thoroughness hitlierto unattempted. 
 In ' The Stones of Venice ' he performed the same service 
 for architecture. But his impetuous temper makes him 
 an unsafe guide. His admiration of Turner and of the 
 pre-Raphaelites was too unqualified ; and his quarrel with 
 Whistler shows that he was not sufficiently receptive of 
 new ideas in ai-t. But the value of the great bulk of his 
 criticism is undoubted, and his influence for good on the 
 public taste is unequalled.
 
 266 THK AGE OF TENNYSON. 
 
 The fundamental principle of Euskin's art criticism was 
 „ .,„.,.. that art was not a tiling apart from the private 
 
 gocial Criticism. , i t t^ r. ^- tj. t t ^ 
 
 and public lite ot a nation. It was dependent 
 on that life and essential to it. Great art could only be 
 produced in a healthy nation ; and a nation that did not 
 produce things of beauty was not healthy. He affirmed 
 the necessary connection of the good and the beautiful. 
 His first quarrel with his age was that it neglected beauty ; 
 this objection soon developed into the further objection that 
 beauty was impossible in such an age. He quarrelled with 
 the utilitarian ideals which influenced statesmen and directed 
 the course of social development ; and beginning as an art 
 critic he ended as a social reformer. His most violent 
 attacks were directed against the Manchester school of 
 Liberals and their policy of laissez-faire. The doctrine 
 that mere self-interest, enlightened or unenlightened, would 
 work out unaided the solution of every social problem was 
 to him intolerable. He called for the application of every 
 power, public and private, till the nation was a nation of 
 healthy and educated individuals ; and he called far more 
 ■urgently for a change in the national temper. He asked 
 for a temper which did not estimate success solely by 
 income, but which appreciated self-sacrifice and so became 
 capable of great art. 
 
 In his writing Euskin is dogmatic and often on the 
 surface inconsistent. His debating powers were greater 
 than his powers of reasoning. His style is one of the best 
 examples of flamboyant prose in English. It is seldom 
 turgid, because it is always inspu-ed by appreciation of 
 beauty in art, nature, and man. It is rhetorical : many of 
 the later books were first delivered as lectures ; but the 
 rhetoric is great rhetoric, convincing and passionate. And 
 the style is a wonderful instrument for pui'poses of invec- 
 tive. Our example is from the chapter on ' The Nature of 
 Gothic ' in ' The Stones of Venice' : — 
 
 ' And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about 
 which you have been proud so often, because the Avork of it 
 was so good and strong, and the oi'naments of it so finished. Ex- 
 amine again all those accurate mouldings and perfect polisliings, and 
 unerring adjustments of the seasoned wood and tempered steel.
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 267 
 
 Many a time you have exulted over them, and tliought how great 
 England was, because her slightest work was done so thoroughly. 
 Alas ! if read riglitly, these jierfectnesses are signs of a slavery in 
 our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than 
 that of the scourged African, or helot (ireek. Men may be beaten, 
 chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, 
 and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to 
 smother their souls with tliem, to blight and hew into rotting 
 pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make 
 the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to sec God, 
 into leathern thongs to yoke macliinery with, — this is to be slave- 
 masters indeed ; and there might be more freedom in England, 
 though her feudal lords' liglitest words were worth men's lives, and 
 though the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows 
 of her fields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is 
 sent like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is 
 given daily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into 
 the exactness of a line.' 
 
 Ruslciu attached the self-complacency of Victorian 
 England from tlie point of view of a lover of 
 ^^''^^'oTuio!"''' beauty and a social reformer. A quieter but 
 equally effective attack was made on it by 
 Matthew Arnold. As a prose writer Arnold is important 
 in two capacities, first as a great literary critic, and secondly 
 as a censor of the English middle classes. His poetry, 
 and his theory of poetry, show the importance he attached 
 to the continual study of the great poets. In his critical 
 essays he exemplifies the value of such study, bringing a 
 mind formed by it to bear on the problem of estimating 
 the value of recent and contemporary writers. In the 
 domain of literary criticism he did as much to estabhsh 
 principles and educate taste as did Ruskin in that of art 
 criticism. 
 
 And his criticism like Ruskin's had a moral purpose. 
 He regarded culture — the hal)it of seeking and meditating 
 on all that was greatest in the literature of past ages — as 
 the most important influence in living the good life. And 
 he found that his contemporaries ignored this culture ; 
 they were, in the phrase he made current, ' Philistines,' 
 and their lives consequently were lacking in ' sweetness and 
 light.' In his 'Essays in Criticism' (18(35), in occasional 
 essays published after, and iu a series of books which had
 
 268 THE ArtE OP TRNNTSOX. 
 
 for their object the substitution of au uucTogmatic for a 
 dogmatic Christianity, he preached this gospel. His deli- 
 cate satire and delightful humour made his teaching 
 effective and saved him from the charge of priggishness. 
 His prose has the qualities he himself lays down as need- 
 ful for a fit prose, ' regularity, uniformity, precision, 
 balance ' ; and it has besides the vivifying touch of indi- 
 viduality which makes a style. As an example we may 
 quote a few lines from his preface to Ward's * English 
 Poets ' :— 
 
 'More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to 
 poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. WiLhoiit 
 poetry, our science will appear incomplete ; and most of what now 
 passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by 
 poetry. Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it. For 
 finely and truly does Wordsworth call poetry " the impassioned 
 expression which is in the countenance of all science " ; and what 
 is a countenance without an expression ? Again, Wordsworth finely 
 and truly calls poetry "the breath and finer spirit of all know- 
 ledge " ; our religion, parading evidences such as those on which the 
 popular mind relies now ; our philosophy, pluming itself on its 
 reasonings about causation and finite and infinite being ; what are 
 they but the shadows and dreams and false shows of knowledge ? 
 The day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves for having 
 trusted to them, for having taken them seriously ; and the more 
 we perceive their hollo wness, the more we shall prize " the l)rcath 
 and finer spirit of knowledge " offered to us by poetry.'
 
 INDEX. 
 
 When there is more than one page against a name in this Index, the 
 principal account ivill be found at the page after which the abbreviation 
 ' seq.' is used. 
 
 ABSAL02I and Achitophcl, 
 110-1, 113. 
 Addisou,. Joseph, 71, 122, 140 scq., 
 
 147, 169. 
 Aeneid, Translation of, 31, 35. 
 Ainsworth, Harrison, 250. 
 Ancrcn Riiclc, 13. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 223, 225, 227, 
 
 241 seq., 267 scq. 
 Aschani, Roger, 29, 98. 
 'Augustan age,' 103, 121-3. 
 
 BACON, Francis, 98 seq. 
 Ballads, 151, 188. 
 Barrett, Elizabeth (Mrs. Robert 
 
 ]3rowiiing), 237,239, 248 scq. 
 Beowulf, 4-7. 
 
 Blacliivood's Magazine, 259. 
 Blake, William, 152-4. 
 Blank verse, 35, 45, 48, 53, 67, 92. 
 Boccaccio, 14, 15. 
 Boswell, 167. 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 256. 
 Browning, Robert, 223, 225, 234, 
 
 235 scq., 245. 
 Brut, The, 10, 11. 
 Bunyau, John, 116-8. 
 Burke, Edmund, 147, 174 scq. 
 Burns, Robert, 152-3. 
 Byron, Lord, 200, 202 seq., 205, 
 
 206, 243. 
 
 C^DMON, 3. 
 Canterbury Talcs, 17, 20 scq. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 223, 262 seq., 
 265. 
 
 Caroline h-rists, 95. 
 
 Caxton, William, 30. 
 
 Chapman, 106-7, 114. 
 
 Chattertou, 150-1. 
 
 Chaucer, 13, 15 scq. 
 
 Childe Harold, 202-3. 
 
 Christabel, 199, 200. 
 
 Chronicle, Old English, 4, 9, 10. 
 
 Clarissa, ] 55-6. 
 
 ' Classic,' The term, 103. 
 
 * Classic ' and ' Romantic ' com- 
 pared, 104 seg., 122-3, 152, 
 186-7. 
 
 'Classic' versification, 104 scq. 
 
 ' Classical ' period, 102, 145 scq. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 177, 
 LS4, 189-196, 199 seq. 
 
 Collins, William, 149, 159 scq. 
 
 Commercialism of the Nine- 
 teenth Century, 221, 263. 
 
 Comus, 87. 
 
 Cougreve, 71. 
 
 Conquest, Effects upon English 
 of the, 8-10. 
 
 Cornhill Magazine, The, 253,259. 
 
 ' Correct,' The term, 103. 
 
 'Correct' school, 102. 
 
 Couplets, 104 seq. 
 
 269
 
 270 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cowper, WilHam, 152-3, 1V7 seq. 
 Crabbe, 152-3, 177, 193. 
 
 DANTE, 14, 19. 
 Darwin, Charles, 221,225. 
 Defoe, Daniel, 136 seq., 155, 157. 
 Dickens, 225, 227, 250 seq. 
 Donne, John, 96-7. 
 Douglas, Gawaiu, 30-2. 
 Dryden, 97, 103, 104., 108 seq., 
 
 119, 120, 132, 145. 
 Dunbar, William, 31. 
 
 EARTHLY Paradise, The, 246. 
 Edinburgh Review, The, 
 259. 
 Elegy, Gray's, 149. 
 Eliot, George, 257. 
 Elizabethan period, 102. 
 Epicene, or The SilentWoman, 69. 
 Epistle to Arbuthnot, 124, 130-1. 
 Esmond, 255. 
 Essay on Criticism, 126. 
 Essay on Man, 127 seq. 
 Essay on Satire, Dryden's, 112. 
 Essays, Bacon's, 99. 
 Essays of Elia, 217-9. 
 
 FAERY Queen, The, 11 seq. 
 Faustus, Doctor, 50-3. 
 Ferrex and Porrex, 45. 
 Fielding, Henry, 157-9. 
 Fifteenth Century, 26. 
 Fitzgerald, 228. 
 Frazer's Magazine, 259. 
 Froude, J. A., 264. 
 
 GAMMER Gurton's Needle, 44. 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 10. 
 Goethe, 243. 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 71, 170 seq., 
 
 175. 
 Oorboduc, 45, 
 
 Gothic Revival, The, 245. 
 Gray, Thomas, 114, 149,152, 159, 
 
 162 seq. 
 Greene, Robert, 48. 
 aulliver's Travels, 133-5, 138. 
 
 H 
 
 AWES, Stephen, 32. 
 Henryson, 27-8. 
 
 Heroic coujjlets, 104 seq. 
 Heroic couplets. Classic and 
 
 Romantic, compared, 107. 
 Heroic quatrain, 34, 109. 
 Hind and the Panther, 110. 
 Homer, Pope's, 109, 124-7. 
 Hooker, Richard, 98. 
 House of Fame, 15, 19. 
 
 IDYLLS of the King, 232. 
 In Memoriam, 231, 233. 
 Interludes, 43. 
 
 JAMES I. of Scotland, 27. 
 James, G. P. R., 250. 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 126, 128-9, 
 
 135, 145, 146, 164 seq., 172. 
 Jonson, Ben, 69 seq., 105-7. 
 Journal of the Plague Year, 137, 
 
 139, 140. 
 Journalism, Gi'owth of, 227. 
 
 KEATS, John, 186-7, 209-10. 
 Kubla Khan, 200-2. 
 Kyd, Thomas, 48. 
 
 ' T AKE School,' 189. 
 
 I J L'Allegro and II Pensc 
 
 roso, 85-7. 
 Lamb, Charles, 189, 217 seq. 
 Langland, 24, 25. 
 Last Ride Together, The, 237. 
 Lay anion, 10, 11. 
 Legend of Good Women, 16, 19.-
 
 271 
 
 Legend of Montrose, 214 seq. 
 Lives of the Poets, Johnson's, 
 
 167-9. 
 Love's Lahoui-'s Zat, 5-i. 
 Lycidag, 87. 
 Lydgate, 26, 27. 
 Lyly, John, 47, 98. 
 Lyrical Ballads, 183, 190 seq., 
 
 220. 
 
 MACAULAY, 260 seq. 
 Mac Flecknoe, 110, 112. 
 Macplierson, 150. 
 Maloiy, Sir Thomas, 28-9. 
 Mariana, 229. 
 
 Marlowo,Christoi)her,4.8 seq-, 67. 
 Maud, 232. 
 
 Meredith, George, 256, 258 seq. 
 ' Metapliysical ' Poets, 96-8. 
 Middlcmarch, 258. 
 Milton, John, 84 seq., 101, 114, 
 
 19G-7. 
 Miuot, Laurence, 12. 
 Miracle or Jlystery Plays, 38 seq. 
 Mirror for Mayistrates, 36-7. 
 Moralities, 42-3. 
 
 Morris, William, 224, 245, 246 seq. 
 Morte Darthur, 28-9. 
 Mysteries, 38 seq. 
 
 "VTATURE in Poetry, 249. 
 l\ New Learning, The, 30. 
 Newman, 264. 
 
 Novel, The, 137-8, 154 seq., 211 
 seq., 226, 249 seq. 
 
 ODE to Evening, ColHus's, 
 160-1. 
 Otfnva rima, 34. 
 ' Overflow,' 92. 
 Oxford Movement, 223, 264, 
 
 PARADISE Lost, 88 seq. 
 Peele, George, 47. 
 Percy's Reliqucs, 151, 188. 
 Petrarch, 14, 15. 
 
 Tiers Plowman, 24, 25. 
 Pilgrim's Progress, 116-8. 
 Pippa Passes, 236. 
 'Poetic diction,' 122-3, 126-7, 
 
 165, 196. 
 Pope, 103, 104, 107, 113, 119, 
 
 121, 12i seq., 145-7,222. 
 Pre - llaphaelite Brotherhood, 
 
 The, 245, 265. 
 Princess, The, 230. 
 Printing, 30. 
 
 Q 
 
 UARTEBLY 
 259. 
 
 Revieiv, The, 
 
 T) ALPE Roister Doister, 44. 
 
 ±\j Reformation, The, 31. 
 
 Reliques, Percy's, 151, 188. 
 
 Renaissance, The, 13, 14, 29, 30. 
 
 Return to Nature, The, 146 seq., 
 177-9, 196-7. 
 
 Revival of Learning, 30. 
 
 Richardson, Samuel, 154 seq. 
 
 Ring and the Book, The, 239, 241. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 134, 137-8. 
 
 Roman de la Rose, 13, 14. 
 
 Romances, 11. 
 
 'Romantic' and 'classic' com- 
 pared, 104 seq., 122-3, 152, 
 186-7. 
 
 Romanticism, 108, 185-6. 
 
 Romantic periods. The two, 102, 
 184-5. 
 
 Romantic reaction. The, 146 scg., 
 159, IGO, 162, 171-2, 177-9, 184. 
 
 ' Romantic,' The term, 103. 
 
 llomantic versification, 104 seq. 
 
 Rose, Romaunt of the, 13, 14. 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., 224,245, 24:0 seq. 
 
 Rossctti, Christina, 248. 
 
 Ruskin, John, 223, 265 seq. 
 
 SACKVILLE, Thomas, Lord 
 Buckhurst, 36-7, 45. 
 Satires and Ejnstles, Pope's, 130-2. 
 Saxon Chronicle, 4.
 
 272 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 151, 181, 188, 
 
 200,211 seq. 
 Season)^, Thomson's, 14'7-9. 
 Serial fiction, 250. 
 Shakespeare, William, 47-9, 
 
 53 seq., 213. 
 Shakespearean critics, 189. 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 148, 186, 
 
 205 seq. 
 Shenstoue, 150. 
 Shepherd's Calendar, 12, 74-7. 
 Sheridan, 71. 
 
 Sonnets, 34, 67, 88, 152, 197-8. 
 Southey, 189. 
 
 Spectator, The, 137, 140 seq. 
 Spenser, Edmund, 74 seq. 
 Spenserian stanza, 82. 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 140 seq. 
 Suri-ey, Earl of, 32 seq. 
 Swift, Jonathan, 132 seq., 169. 
 Swinburne, 223, 224,245, 247 seq. 
 
 TAMBURLAINE, 46, 49, 50. 
 Task, Cowper's, 178-9. 
 Tatler, The, 137, 140. 
 Tempest, The, 60 seq. 
 Tennyson, 220, 223, 225, 227, 
 
 228 seq., 245, 246. 
 Terza rima, 34-5. 
 Thackeray, W. M., 253 seq. 
 Thomson, James, 147-9. 
 
 Tom Jones, 157-9. 
 TotteVs Miscellany, 33, 36. 
 Tfoilus and Cressida, Chaucer's 
 
 19. 
 Trollope, Anthony, 256, 
 Truth, Chaucer's, 18. 
 Tyrwhitt, 152. 
 
 UDALL, Nicholas, 44. 
 Uhjsscs, 230. 
 
 VERSIFICATION, ' Classic' 
 and ' Romantic,' com- 
 pared, 108. 
 Vicar of Wakefield, 171. 
 Victorian fiction, 225. 
 
 WAGE, 10, 11. 
 Waller, Edmund, lOi seq. 
 Walpole, Horace, 151. 
 Walsh, 103. 
 
 Warton, Joseph, 150, 152. 
 Warton, Thomas, 151-2. 
 Waverleij Novels, 212 seq. 
 Welsh, Jane (Mrs. Carlvle),262. 
 Wordsworth, William, 147-9, 183, 
 
 184, 186, 189 seq., 206,214, ^43. 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, the Elder, 
 
 82 seq. 
 
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 14 
 
 UNIVEBSITY TUTORIAL SERIES. 
 
 Bdltions Of Xatin anO (5rcch Classics, 
 
 The Text is in all cases accompanied Jiy Inlrodncl ion and Notes; hooks 
 
 marked (*) contain also an alpJuihelical Lexicon. 
 The Vocabularies are in order of the text and are preceded hy Test Papers. 
 
 Acts of Apostles. 
 
 Text. 
 
 Akschylus— 
 
 Eunienides. 3'6 
 
 Persae. 3/6 
 
 Prometheus Vinctiis. 2/6 
 
 Septem contra Thebas. 3/6 
 
 Voc. 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 i/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 AUISTOPHANES— 
 
 
 
 Ranae. 
 
 3/6 
 
 
 Caesar— 
 
 
 
 Civil War, Book 1. 
 
 1/6 
 
 
 Civil War, Book 3. 
 
 2/6 
 
 i/0 
 
 Gallic War, Books 1 -7. 
 
 
 
 (each; 
 
 16 
 
 1 /o 
 
 Gallic War, Book 1, 
 
 
 
 Ch. 1 to 29. 
 
 1/6 
 
 
 The Invasion of Britain. 
 
 1/6 
 
 i/0 
 
 Gallic War, Book 7, Ch. 
 
 
 
 1 to 68. 
 
 1/6 
 
 
 Cicero— 
 
 
 
 Ad Atticuni, Book 4. 
 
 3/6 
 
 ..* 
 
 De Aniicitia. 
 
 *l/6 
 
 I/O 
 
 De Finibus, Book 1. 
 
 2/6 
 
 
 De Finibus, Book 2. 
 
 3/6 
 
 
 De Officiis, Book 3. 
 
 3/6 
 
 I'o 
 
 De Senectute. 
 
 *l/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 In Catilinani I. -IV. 
 
 2/6 
 
 
 I., III. (each) 1/6 
 
 i/0 
 
 I. and IV. 
 
 1/6 
 
 
 Philippic 11. 
 
 2/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Archia. 
 
 1/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Balbo. 
 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Cluentio. 
 
 3/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Lege Manilla. 
 
 2/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Marcello 
 
 1/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Mi lone. 
 
 3/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Plancio 
 
 3/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 Pro Roscio Amerino. 
 
 2/6 
 
 10 
 
 CURTIUS— 
 
 Book 9, Ch 6-end. 
 
 Demosthenes— 
 Androtion. 
 
 Euripides— 
 Alcestis. 
 Andromache. 
 Bacchae. 
 Hecuba. 
 Hippolytus. 
 Iphigenia in Tauris. 
 Medea. 
 
 Herodotus— 
 Book 3. 
 
 Book 4, Ch. 1-144. 
 Book 6. 
 Book 8. 
 
 Homer— 
 Iliad, Book 6. 
 Iliad, Book 24. 
 Odyssey, Books 9, 10. 
 Odyssey, Books 11, 12. 
 Odyssey, Books 13, 14. 
 Odyssey, Book 17. 
 
 Text. Voc. 
 
 1/6 ... 
 4/6 ... 
 
 1/6 1/0 
 
 3/6 ... 
 
 3/6 1/0 
 
 3/6 ... 
 
 3/6 1/0 
 
 3/6 1/0 
 
 2/0 ... 
 
 4/6 
 4/6 
 2/6 
 3/6 
 
 3/6 
 
 2/6 
 2/6 
 2/6 
 1/6 
 
 Horace — 
 
 Epistles (inchiding Ars 
 Poetica). 4/6 
 
 Epistles (excluding A. P.) ... 
 
 Epodes. 1/6 
 
 Odes, Books 1-4. *3/6 
 
 Separately, each liook 
 (*2, 3, 4). 1/6 
 
 Satires. 3/6 
 
 I/O 
 
 1/0 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 1/0 
 
 Isocrates- 
 De Bigis. 
 
 2/6
 
 UNIVERSITY TUTORIAL SERIES. 
 
 JEMtfons Of Xatln aiiD ©veeft dlassics— co7i/m(wd 
 
 Text. 
 
 JUVKNAL — 
 
 Satires 1, 3, 10, 11. 3/6 
 
 Satires 1. 3. 4. 3/G 
 
 Satires 8, 10, 13. 2/6 
 
 Satires 11, 13, 14. 3/6 
 
 Livv— 
 
 Book 1. 2/6 
 
 Books 3, 6, 9. (eacli) 3 6 
 
 Book 5. 2/6 
 
 Book 9, CI). 1-19. 1/6 
 
 Book 21, Cli. 1-30. 1/6 
 
 Text. 
 
 (eacli) 2/6 
 
 3/6 
 
 Books 21, 22. 
 LUCIAN— 
 
 Cliaron and Piscator. 
 Ly.SIAS— 
 Eratosthenes. 2/6 
 
 Eratosth. and Agoratus. ... 
 N Kros — 
 
 Hannibal, Cato, Atticus. 1/0 
 Ovid— 
 
 Fasti, Books 3, 4. 2/6 
 
 Fasti, Books 5, 6. 3/6 
 
 Heroides, 1-10. 3 6 
 
 Heroides, 1,2,3,5, 7, 12. ... 
 Heroides, 1, 5, 12, 1 6 ; 12, 10 
 Metaniorplioses, Book 1, 
 lines 1-150; Book 3, 
 lines 1-250, 511-733; 
 Book 5, lines 385-550. 
 
 (each) 1/6 
 Book 11. 
 
 Book 11, lines 410-74S. 1/6 
 Books 13, 14. (eacli) 1/6 
 Tristia, Books 1,3. (each) 1 6 
 Plato— 
 
 Apology. 
 
 Crito. 
 
 I'aithyphro and Meno- 
 
 xenus. 
 ion, Ladies. (each) 
 
 Phaedo. 
 
 3/0 
 2 6 
 
 4/6 
 3 6 
 3/6 
 
 1/0 
 1/0 
 1/0 
 
 1/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 10 
 1/0 
 1/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 i/b 
 
 10 
 
 1 
 10 
 
 10 
 1/0 
 
 Sallust— 
 Catiline. 
 
 SOPHOCLE.S— 
 
 Ajax. 
 
 Antigone. 
 
 Electra. 
 
 Tacitus— 
 
 Agrieola. 
 
 Annals, Book 1. 
 
 Annals, Book 2. 
 
 Gerriiania. 
 
 Histories, Books 1, 3. 
 (each) 
 Tkrence— 
 
 Adelphi. 
 
 Thucydides— 
 
 Book 7. 
 Vergil— 
 
 Aeneid, Books 1-S. (eacii) 
 
 Books 7-10. 
 
 Book 9. 
 
 Books 9, 10. 
 
 Book 10. 
 
 Book 11. 
 
 Book 12. 
 
 Eclogues. 
 
 Georgics, Books 1 and 2. 
 
 Georgics, Books 1 and 4. 
 
 Georgics, Book 4. 
 
 (separately) 
 
 Xenophon— 
 
 Anabasis, Book 1. 
 Anabasis, Book 4. 
 Cyropaedcia, Book 1 
 Cyropaedeia, Book 5. 
 Hollenica, Book.s 3, 4. 
 
 (eacli) 
 Memorabilia, Bunk 1. 
 Oecononiicus. 
 
 Cii. 1-10. 
 
 16 
 
 36 
 
 2 6 
 
 3 6 
 
 2/6 
 26 
 26 
 
 2/6 
 
 3/6 
 3 6 
 
 3/6 
 
 *]/6 
 
 ;5/6 
 
 *l/6 
 
 *1% 
 *\ 6 
 1 6 
 3/6 
 3/6 
 3/6 
 
 16 
 
 Voc. 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 1/0 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 i/b 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 i/b 
 
 1/0 
 
 i/b 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/6 
 
 10 
 
 1/6 
 
 
 1/6 
 
 i'/o 
 
 
 10 
 
 1/6 
 
 
 3/6 
 
 i'/o 
 
 4/6 
 
 1/0 
 
 1/6 
 
 
 A detailed ca/alo/jue of the above can. be obtained on application.
 
 16 THE UNIVERSITY TUTOBIAL SERIES. 
 
 Z\K IHuivcreit^ tutorial Scries. 
 
 General Editor : Wm. Briggs, LL.D., D.C.L., M.A., B.Sc, 
 
 Principal of University Correspondence College, 
 
 The object of the University Tutorial Series is to provide 
 candidates for examinations and learners generally with text-books 
 which shall convey in the simplest form sound instruction in accord- 
 ance with the latest results of scholarsliip and scientific research. 
 Important points are fully and clearly treated, and care has been 
 taken not to introduce details which are likely to perplex the be- 
 ginner. 
 
 The Publisher will be happy to entertain applications from 
 Teachers for Specimen Copies of books mentioned in this List. 
 
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