A SYLLABUS 
 
 OP 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN GREENLAW, Ph.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 ou TToW aWa ttoXv 
 
 BENJ. H. SANBORN k CO. 
 
 CHICAGO NEW YORK BOSTON 
 1 9^2 1 
 
Copyright. 1912, 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN A. GREENLAW 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is designed primarily for college courses in the history of 
 English litera^ture. Its object is three-fold: to supply the facts essential 
 to the intelligent reading of the selections; to point out the character- 
 istics which render each author significant in the development of our lit- 
 erature; to set the student at work for himself by encouraging him to 
 find in the texts illustrations of the significant points named in the out- 
 lines and in the studies. It is expected that the book will be used in con- 
 junction with one of the anthologies, such as English Poetry and English 
 Prose, edited by Professor Manly; Century Readings in English Litera- 
 ture, edited by Professors Cunliffe, Pyre, and Young; Twelve Centuries oi 
 English Poetry and Prose, edited by Professor Newcomer; or the older 
 volumes' of selections such as Ward's English Poets and Craik 's English 
 Prose. 
 
 We no longer regard a jumble of facts culled from a hand-book and 
 liiixed with bits of criticism as proof of a knowledge of literature; in 
 theory, at least, we send the pupil to the poem or the essay. But every 
 experienced teacher knows that in the present method two dangers lurk: 
 the failure of the pupil, through his ignorance of fundamental facts, to 
 grasp the full significance of a piece of literature, or of a writer, or of a 
 period of literary development; and the extreme difficulty of intelligent 
 reading. These dangers we seek to avoid through the lecture, the con- 
 ference, and the examination. But if the lecturer finds it necessary to 
 dictate pages of dates, bibliographies, and summaries of criticism, and 
 the examination tests only the memorizing of these facts and the knowl- 
 edge of the stories or the themes of the works studied, wherein have we 
 advanced beyond the old method? Moreover, it is not sufficient to ask 
 a pupil untrained in methods of literary study to read several pages of 
 
 iii 
 
selections without at the same time giving him some hints as to the sig- 
 nificance of the material he is to consider. This book seeks to aid the 
 instructor by presenting in convenient form the facts that must accom- 
 pany the reading, and to suggest to the pupil some of the things he should 
 look for in the work assigned him for study. With such preparation, the 
 student conies to the class-room with a mind alert, not passive, while 
 the instructor, freed from that most deadening of educational processes, 
 the dictation of elementary matter, may make the most of this alertness. 
 
 While the book contains more material than can be used in a course 
 meeting two or three times a week for a year, it is purposely so arranged 
 that selection will be easy. If it be desired to limit the attention to poetry, 
 or to omit such forms as the drama or prose fiction, or to stress only the 
 more important authors, the additional outlines may be neglected alto- 
 gether without disturbing the plan of the course, or they may be read 
 rapidly as connecting hnks for the toi)i('S that are studied in detail. Sim- 
 ilarly, the various sections on the drama or fiction or certain types of 
 poetry may be grouped into a unit which will supply a guide for the study 
 of the development of a literary form. To this end, the usual chronolog- 
 ical order has been at times abandoned, as also in such sections as deal 
 with a transitional period like the seventeenth century. The studies 
 given in connection with the important authors and periods may 
 serve as a basis for discussion in the quiz section or the conference, or 
 may be assigned to various members of the class for oral discussion oi^ 
 written reports, or may be omitted. The references, also, may be omitted 
 or used in similar ways; it was not the purpose to give extended bibliog- 
 raphies, but only such references as are likely to be of value in a general 
 survey course and are easily accessible. The blank pages may be used 
 for additional references, or for brief summaries of the reading, or for short 
 reports on one of the studies, or for comments made by the instructor. 
 
 In addition to the purpose for which it is chiefly designed, the book 
 will be of service to students who are preparing for examinations, to can- 
 didates for licenses as teachers, and to those private students who desire 
 to carry on a course in systematic reading and have not the guidance of 
 a teacher. It should be remembered, however, that the true office of 
 such a book is that of a tool; knowledge of the facts that it contains is 
 
 iv 
 
o 
 
 G-%1^ 
 
 of value only in connection with actual experience with literature itself. 
 Used in this way, the outlines, which have been tested for years under 
 such various conditions as are incident to elementary courses in college, 
 extension classes for teachers, and the somewhat different set of prob- 
 lems presented by work in summer schools, will assist in giving form and 
 point to a general survey of literary history, at the same time supplying 
 a knowledge of method that will be of service when the student enters upon 
 more advanced work. 
 
 Brooklyn, April, 1912. 
 
 REFERENCE LIST 
 
 The books named below are referred to in the Outlines by the author's name 
 or by the first word of the title only. Books referring to special periods or authors 
 and cited by title are not included here. 
 
 Brooke : English Literature from the Beginnings to the Norman Conquest. (Mac- 
 
 millan.) 
 Cambridge History of English Literature. (Putnam.) 
 Courthope: History of English Poetry. (Macmillan.) 
 Emerson: History of the English Language. (Macmillan.) 
 Jusserand: Literary History of the English People. (Putnam.) 
 Lounsbury: History of the English Language. (Holt.) 
 
 Schofield: English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer. (Macmillan.) 
 Ten Brink: History of English Literature. (Holt.) 
 Ward: English Poets. (Macmillan.) 
 
 ^.1.^1' 
 
A SYLLABUS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 THE ANGLO SAXON PERIOD 
 
 I. The People 
 
 1. Prehistoric inhabitants of Britain. Traces of several tribes, 
 some of which left monuments (Stonehenge). 
 
 2. Celtic Britain. At the time of Caesar's invasion the land was 
 occupied by tribes related to the Celts of Spain and France. 
 These tribes contributed some words to the English language and 
 a considerable body of romantic legend. 
 
 3. Roman Britain. Caesar's invasion 55 B. C. ; in 42 A. D. a more 
 extended occupation; in 80 A. D. Britain made a Roman province 
 under Agricola. Celts forced into Wales and the Scotch High- 
 lands. Roman influence on language and literature inconsiderable. 
 In 407-410 Roman legions withdrawn and Celts returned to old 
 possessions. 
 
 4. The Anglo Saxon Conquest. Dates from about 449. Three 
 invading tribes: Angles, from Holstein, settled north of Thames; 
 Jutes, from Jutland, settled mainly in Kent; Saxons, from Schles- 
 wig, south of Thames. Celts forced by these invaders back to 
 old retreats, after defence reputed made by King Arthur. Anglo- 
 Saxon conquest complete by 550. 
 
 5. The Danish Conquest. About 850 all England conquered by 
 Danes, except Wessex (King Alfred, 871-901). 
 
 References: Lounsbury, chaptor I; Emerson, pp. 38-43; Krapj), pp. 15-38. 
 
II. The Language 
 
 I. English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. 
 This family divides into eight branches: 
 
 (a) Indo-Iranian (Sanskrit, Persian, etc.) 
 
 (b) Armenian 
 
 (c) Greek 
 
 (d) Albanian (north of Greece) 
 
 (e) Itahc (Latin; later, the Romance languages) 
 (/) Celtic (Gaul, Britain, Wales, Scotch Highlands) 
 
 (g) Balto-Slavic (Russian, Bulgarian, Bohemian, Polish) 
 (h) Teutonic. This branch subdivided into East Germanic 
 (Gothic ; chief monument a translation of parts of the Bible by 
 Ulfilas, fourth century); North Germanic (Icelandic, Norse, 
 Swedish, Danish) ; West Germanic, including English, Frisian, 
 Franconian (Holland, Flanders), Low German, High German. 
 Main characteristics of the Teutonic branch: the great conso- 
 nant shift (Grimm's Law); the division of verbs into strong 
 and weak conjugations; the two-fold declension of adjectives; 
 fixed word accent. 
 
 References: Emorson, chapters I and II; Lounsbury, introduction; Krapp, 
 pp. 44-55. For Celtic and Latin influence on the English language in the Anglo- 
 Saxon period, see Lounsbury, chapter III; Emerson, chapter IX; Krapp, 
 pp. 211-219. 
 
III. The Literature 
 
 I. Epic and Lyric 
 
 (a) Beowulf. IMS in West Saxon of the tenth century, hut 
 the poem probably dates from the seventh century, while 
 the main incidents in it are much older. Slight historical 
 element in the fact that about 512 A. D. Chochilaicus 
 (Hygelac), king of the Danes, raided the lower Rhine and was 
 defeated by the Franks. On this raid a hero escaped by 
 swimming. (Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum.) The 
 main interest, however, is not in this element but in the 
 hero's contests with uncanny powers: Grendel, Grendel's 
 dam, the fire drake. The poem approaches epic in that it 
 presents a more or less complete biography of its hero; is 
 the product of the folk; introduces the supernatural, and 
 presents culture history of a race. 
 (&) Other Epic Poetrj^ 
 
 Finnshurg, a fragment of fifty lines containing a vivid 
 account of the defence of a hall during a night attack, 
 closely related to a passage in Beowulf (translated in 
 Gummere, and in most translations of Beowulf). 
 Waldhere, two fragments containing sixty-three lines. 
 The story was also told in the Latin Waltharius, by 
 Ekkehard of St. Gall, tenth century, and in several 
 other places. See the abstract of the story in Cam- 
 bridge, L 35-37, and the translation of the Anglo- 
 Saxon fragments in Gummere. 
 
 (c) Lyric poetry, closely related to the poems named above: 
 
 Widsith, relating the adventures of a scop in his wander- 
 ings to the courts of various chiefs (Cambridge, L 
 37, 38, and Brooke, 46-48); Deor^s Lament, also deal- 
 ing with the life of the scop (Brooke. 48, 49). The 
 elegiac element is strong in Beoundf, Widsith, and 
 Dear; cf. also The Wanderer (translated in Brooke, 
 313-310); and The Seafarer (Brooke, 311, 312). 
 
 (d) Heroic poetry : The Battle of Maldon (translated in Brooke, 
 
8 
 
 317-324) and The Battle of Brunanburh, (translated by 
 Tennyson). 
 
 Studies. 
 
 1. Observe the characteristics of the verse: the half lines; the accents; 
 
 the alliteration. 
 
 2. The style: repetition; episode; epic speeches; the kennings. 
 
 3. Besides the three main adventures, observe (a) the means by which 
 
 the earlier life of the hero is introduced; (b) Beowulf's life from 
 the time he left the court of Hrothgar to his last adventure; 
 (c) the references to other stories familiar to the poet's auditors. 
 
 4. Note the combination of pagan and Christian elements in the poem. 
 
 5. What knowledge does the poem contribute as to the position and 
 
 functions of the scop'? 
 
 6. Study the life of the time: social customs; powers of the king and 
 
 his relations to his foUov.ers; occupations; religion. 
 
 7. Nature, as viewed by the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 References. The «best translation of Beowulf, w^ith valuable introductory mat- 
 ter and notes, is by Gummere (The Oldest English Epic, Macmillan). A con- 
 venient translation in prose, with introduction, is by C. G. Child, in Riverside 
 Literature Series. Older translations are by J. Earle (prose); Garnett (verse); 
 and Hall (verse). For discussions of the history of the poem and the main 
 problems see especially Cambridge I. chapter iii. Cf. also Brooke, chapters iii 
 and iv, Courthope, I. chapter iii; Ten Brink, pp. 23-32. Much interesting 
 material on the character of the poem, its relation to other folk poetry, and 
 the culture history contained in it, are in Hart's Ballad and Epic, Harvard 
 Studies and A'otes. 
 
 Translations of the poems named above, in whole or in part, may also be found 
 in Cook and Tinker, Ten Brink, Cambridge, etc. 
 
10 
 
 2. Christian Poetry 
 
 (a) Biblical Paraphrases: 
 
 Genesis, from the creation to the time of Abraham; 
 a combination of two poems: Genesis A (11. 1-234, 
 852-2735) and Geiiesis B (II. 235-851). The second 
 of these, based upon an Old Saxon poem and belonging 
 to the ninth century, deals with the fall of Satan and 
 his angels, is more dramatic than Genesis A, and may 
 be compared with the first book of Paradise Lost. 
 Exodus, the story of the passage through the Red 
 Sea and the destruction of the Egj'ptians. IMarked 
 by brilliancy and vigour of imagery, and heroic style. 
 Daniel, a treatment of the story of Daniel up to the 
 fifth chapter; homiletic in style. Christ and Sataii, 
 consisting of three poems: The Fall of the Angels, 
 Christ's Harrowing of Hell, and The Temptation. 
 All these poems originally ascribed to Caedmon 
 (seventh century) : (a) because of Bede's account of 
 him and his work, on which see the translation in 
 Cambridge, I. 47-49, and in Brooke; (b) on the author- 
 ity of the Junian MS, published 1655. 
 (6) Cynewulf. Eighth century writer, personality and place 
 of residence uncertain. Four poems known to be his by rea- 
 son of runic signatures: Crist, dealing with the Advent, As- 
 cension, and Last Judgment; (perhaps not entirel}^ by Cyne- 
 wulf) ; Juliana, Elene (saints legends) ; Fates of the Apostles. 
 (c) The School of Cynewulf: The Phoenix, an allegorical 
 poem which applies the myth to Christ, marked by brilliant 
 coloring and love of nature; Judith, an incomplete epic of 
 the apocryphal heroine, heroic style; Aijdreas, heroic poem 
 on a subject similar to Fates of the Apostles but more brilliant, 
 marked by love of the sea. 
 References: Cambridge I. 45-71; 15G-158; Brooke, chapters viii, ix, xi, xii; 
 Ten Brink, 32-47; 371-386; Jusserand, I, 68-77; Cook and Tinker, Select Trans- 
 lations:. 
 
12 
 
 3- Prose 
 
 {a) Bede. Distinguished scholar who lived in Xorthumbria 
 in the eighth century; his Ecclesiastical History (731) covers 
 the period from 55 B. C. to 731 A. D. 
 
 (6) Alfred (849-901) King of Wessex, warred successfully 
 on the Danes; patron of learning who, with the assistance 
 of scholars brought by him into Wessex, translated into the 
 vernacular Gregory's Pastoral Care, Bede's Ecclesiastical 
 History, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, and the uni- 
 versal history (fifth century) by Orosius. His name con- 
 nected with other works, and he also took an active interest 
 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. His method of translation 
 free rather than literal, the purpose being to apply the wis- 
 dom of these famous books to special problems in Wessex. 
 (c) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Based at first on monastic 
 records; made more systematic by Alfred; eventually covered 
 years from 60 B. C. to 1154 A. D. First great book in Eng- 
 lish prose; ranges from mere annals to detailed and vivid 
 description; also contains some heroic verse of a high order. 
 {d) The Homilists 
 
 The Blickling Homilies, nineteen in number, partly 
 homiletic, partly narrative told for religious instruc- 
 tion; tenth century. 
 
 Aelfric, (Winchester, tenth century) wrote many 
 homilies; some deal with biblical and church history; 
 highly poetical style with much alliteration and allegory. 
 
 References: Cambridge I. chapters vi and vii; Brooke, chapters xiv and xvii; 
 Ten Brink 67-83, 97-115; Cook and Tinker. 
 
14 
 
 THE MIDDXE ENGLISH PERIOD 
 
 I. The Language 
 
 1. Dialects: Northern (Scottish lowlands, Northumberland, Dur- 
 ham, Yorkshire, Lancashire) ; Midland (from the Humber to the 
 Thames and west to Wales; Southern (south of the Thames, Kent, 
 Etc.). These varied so widely that the Northern dialect seemed 
 a foreign language to a southerner. 
 
 2. Periods: Early (1100-1250); Standard (1250-1400); Late 
 (1400-1500). 
 
 3. Characteristics: leveling of Anglo Saxon inflections, e usually 
 taking the place of the old vowel endings, but persistence of par- 
 tial inflection, with retention of final e as a separate syllable; 
 large additions to the vocabulary by influence of French, this 
 influence, however, coming rather from Paris than from the Nor- 
 mans. 
 
 4. In the fourteenth century East Midland became the literary 
 language, gaining its pre-eminence largely through the work of 
 Chaucer and his contemporaries; after this time most dialect 
 distinctions disappear and the language constantly approaches 
 the modern forms. Note also that the leveling of inflections pro- 
 ceeded more rapidly in the North than elsewhere. 
 
 References: Ten Brink, pp. 119-122; Schofield, 1-25; 140-144; Krapp, 74-83; 
 Lounsbury, 115-160; Emerson, 51-83; Greenough and Kittredge, Words and 
 their Ways, 83-92. 
 
16 
 
 II. Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer 
 I. The Chronicles 
 
 (a) Latin chronicles of the twelfth century by William of 
 Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey of Monmouth. 
 Geoffrey gives a highly romantic account of Arthur, based, 
 he says, on an old ''British book," in which Arthur appears 
 as a world conqueror, not a fairy king, 
 
 (6) The Brut, by Layamon, c. 1200; a verse chronicle of Britain 
 from the fall of Troy to 689 A. D.; based upon a French 
 chronicle by Wace; interesting for its style, which combines 
 some of the characteristics of Anglo-Saxon heroic verse with 
 the newer French forms, and for its stories of Lear, Arthur, 
 and other early heroes. It introduces the Round Table 
 and some fairy elements into the .Arthurian Legend. 30,000 
 lines. 
 
 (c) Robert of Gloucester wrote a metrical chronicle c. 1300 
 based mainly on Geoffrey for the earlier periods but more 
 authentic as the author approached his own time. 
 
 2. Religious and didactic poetry and prose 
 
 (a) The Moral Ode {Poema Morale) (c. 1170) Aphoristic 
 style; rather narrow and selfish, yet not without charm. 
 {h) The Ormulum (c. 1200) by Orrm; a verse paraphrase of 
 parts of the Gospels, with detailed and wearisome explana- 
 tions; main interest due to its being an early attempt at 
 spelling reform. 
 
 (c) Cursor Mundi (c. 1300) Biblical history, in verse, from 
 the Creation to Solomon and from the birth of the Virgin 
 to the Final Judgment; 25,000 lines. 
 
 {d) Richard Rolle (c. 1290-1349). A hermit and mystic 
 who wrote much in verse and prose, Latin and English, on 
 meditation, mystical exaltation, and the Christian life. 
 Best known poem The Pricke of Conscience. 
 
 3. Debates. This popular literary type included both religious 
 and secular subjects; most notable poems: The Body and the Soul 
 (c. 1200), and The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1250). 
 
18 
 
 4* Lyrics. Many of these are love poems addressed to the Virgin ; 
 others are the famous Cuckoo Song (c. 1250) ; Alysoun; Springtime, 
 etc. (c. 1300). 
 
 References: See the introduction to Manly's English Poetns; Ten Brink, pp. 
 153-156; 139-143; 187-275; Cambridge I. chapters ix, xi, xvi. On versification, 
 Cambridge ch. xviii. See also Schofield, pp. 34-46; 349-373 (chronicles) ; 96-98; 
 110-139 (French works in England) ; 374^17 (religious works) ; 418-434 (didactic 
 works); 435-450 (lyrics); Courthope, I. chapter iv; Jusserand, I. chapters iii 
 and iv. 
 
20 
 
 III. The Romances 
 
 1. Origin and character: The romances arose in the twelfth century, 
 in France (chief writer, Chretien de Troyes); differed from the 
 older epic poetry (Beowulf, Song of Roland) in that they were 
 designed to be read, not sung; were courtly, not heroic; stressed 
 the refinemeois and casuistry of love; appealed to a feminine 
 audience. 
 
 2. Subject matter: According to Jean Bodel, there were three 
 "matters": of France, of Britain, and of Rome the Great. This 
 last included romances of Thebes, Troy, Alexander, Aeneas. 
 The French court poets not only made use of their own legendary 
 material (Charlemagne, Roland, etc.) but borrowed from every 
 source and in many cases sent back this borrowed material in 
 highly developed literary form. 
 
 3. The Arthurian Romances. 
 
 (a) Development from the beginnings to Chretien. 
 
 {a') In certain chronicles of the ninth and tenth 
 centuries, Arthur named as a leader of the Britons in 
 the contest with the Saxon invaders. 
 {h') In the Celtic traditions, Arthur and his knights, 
 Gwalchmi (Gawain), Kai, and Bedwyr, had super- 
 natural powers and were heroes of magical adventures. 
 Most notable of these stories is Kilhwch and Olicen 
 (one of the so-called Mahinogi; see abstract in Cam- 
 bridge I. pp. 282-284, or in the reprint of the Mabi- 
 nogion in Everyman's Librar}-). 
 
 (c') Geoffrey of Monmouth (tAvelfth century). His 
 account of Arthur really a prose romance of Arthur 
 and Merlin, telling of Arthur's birth, his conquest of 
 the Saxons, his marriage with Guinevere, his exploits 
 as a world conqueror, the treachery of ]\Iodred, and 
 his death. 
 
 {d') Later chronicles, based on Geoffrey, by Wace and 
 Layamon, make Arthur the ideal British hero, stress 
 the fairy element, introduce the Round Table, and 
 
22 
 
 amplify the account of Arthur's death and the prophecy 
 of his return. 
 
 (e') In France, Chretien de Troyes (twelfth century) 
 and his followers make the story pure romance. In 
 this stage, Arthur becomes less important and the 
 main interest centers in the adventures of ''the greatest 
 knight in the world" an honor held successively by 
 Gawain, Lancelot, Perceval, Galahad. Certain ele- 
 ments -are 'also added to the original story, such as 
 the Lancelot cj^le; the Quest for the Grail; the Tris- 
 tram cycle. Each of these becomes the nucleus of a 
 new group of romances, developed by various writers 
 and at great length. 
 (b) Arthurian romances in English. 
 
 (a') Redactions of romances taken from the cycles, 
 chiefly about certain favorite knights (Lancelot, 
 Gawain, etc.), and less courtly than the French orig- 
 inals. 
 
 {b') More independent versions, in which various 
 chivalric incidents are united with popular traditions. 
 Most notable of these 'is the fourteenth century Ga- 
 wayne and the Green Knight (see the abstract in Scho- 
 field pp. 215-217, or Miss Weston's translation), which 
 is noteworthy for its complex stanza and use of allitera- 
 tion, its descriptions of nature, and the spirit and 
 rapidity of the narration. 
 
 (c') The alliterative Morte Arthure, fourteenth century, 
 a remarkable poem which combines the old stories of 
 Arthur's expedition against Rome with the account of 
 his death made familiar by Malory. 
 {d') In some of the popular ballads are various Arthu- 
 rian legends. 
 References: Schofield, pp. 14.5-;il9; Cambridge, I. pp. 270-307 (Arthurian 
 
 Legend); 308-356 (other romances); Jusserand, I. pp. 344-351; Ten lirink, pp. 
 
 225-204. 
 
24 
 
 GEOFFREY CHAUCER 
 
 I. Life (c. 1340-1400). Main points to remember: 
 
 1. London born and bred; exerted important influence in making 
 London English the standard Uterary language as against the 
 Northern dialect used in such important contemporary works as 
 Gawayne and the Green Knight, The Pearl, and the York and 
 Towneley INIysteries. 
 
 2. The first English author about whose life and works we have 
 reasonably full knowledge; earlier literature was usually anony- 
 mous or written by men of whom we know little beyond their 
 names. 
 
 3. His relation to patronage: Closely connected with John of 
 Gaunt and with the Court; sent on diplomatic missions to Italy, 
 France and Flanders; connected with the customs service for 
 many years; member of Parliament for Kent; recipient of royal 
 pensions. Compare the Anglo-Saxon scop and also the clerics 
 who wrote so much of the literature of Anglo-Saxon and early 
 Middle English times. 
 
 4. His relations to foreign literature: he did nmch to render Eng- 
 land famiUar with the love allegory then popular in France, and 
 also imitated many French lyrical forms; he reflected the new 
 movement in Italy, led by Boccaccio and Petrarch, and thus antici- 
 pated in several important respects the English renaissance. 
 
 5. His relations to medieval literature. See examples below. 
 
26 
 
 II. His principal works 
 
 1. Early works 
 
 (a) The Romance of the Rose. An allegorical poem written 
 in France in the xiii century which exerted prodigious in- 
 fluence on French and English literature; it is an excellent 
 example of love allegory. We know that Chaucer made a 
 translation of at least part of thispoem; itisuncertainwhether 
 the Middle English version now extant is his; probably the 
 first 1700 lines are his. 
 
 (h) Book of the Duchess. Based upon a French poem by 
 Froissart, but altered to refer to the death of Blanch, wife of 
 John of Gaunt, Chaucer's patron, in 1369 and probably 
 written at about that time. 
 
 (c) Various lyrics, showing Chaucer's familiarity with French 
 lyric poets of his time. 
 
 2. Middle Period. From his study and imitation of French poets 
 Chaucer turned to the Italians. 
 
 (a) The House of Fame (c. 1379). An allegorical poem tell- 
 ing how Chaucer visited, under conduct of an eagle, the 
 House of Fame. Main influences Dante and Virgil. 
 (6) Parliament of Fowls (c. 1382). Shows influence of Dante 
 and Boccaccio; also of French allegorv. Refers to marriage 
 of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. ! 
 
 3. The climax of his genius. 
 
 _ (a) Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1383). Based on the Filos- 
 trato of Boccaccio, partly a literal translation, but with im- 
 portant additions and changes. Remarkable for its dramatic 
 insight into character and its admirable plot. To be com- 
 pared with Shakspere. 
 {h) The Canterbury Tales. 
 
 4. Minor works. These include many lyrics, and also the prose 
 translation of Boethius and the (prose) treatise on the Astrolabe. 
 (Two of the Canterbury Tales are also in prose: The Parson's 
 Tale and Chaucer's Tale of Melibeus). 
 
28 
 
 III. The Canterbury Tales 
 
 1. Relations to similar collections of tales. The literary form is 
 Oriental in origin; cf. Severi Wise Masters, Fables of Bidpai, 
 Arabian Nights. Cf. also Boccaccio's Decameron. 
 
 2. The plan of the work is outlined in the Prologue, written about 
 1387; of the 120 tales projected but 24 were written, and some 
 of these are unfinished. 
 
 3. Classification of the Tales. Into the framework projected 
 in the Prologue, Chaucer placed work that he had already written, 
 with or without revision, and also new work. Since, however, the 
 work is incomplete and not all the connecting links were written 
 to show the order in which Chaucer intended the Tales to appear, 
 the best method of classification is to consider the subject matter. 
 
 * (a) Stories mainly medieval in character. Examples are 
 
 The Monk's Tale (medieval "tragedy" — stories of great 
 men fallen on evil days) ; Nun's Priest's Tale (beast fable and 
 medieval sermon); Man of Law (saint's legend). Here also 
 should be placed tales of the fabUau type, such as those told 
 by the Pardoner, the Friar, the Reeve, etc. 
 (6) Tales based on the Romances. Examples are the stories 
 of the Wife of Bath (Arthurian) ; Knight (Italian chivalric 
 romance — Boccaccio's Teseide) ; Chaucer's tale of Sir Thopas 
 (burlesque of the bad romances) ; Squire's Tale. 
 (c) Classical, such as the Physician's Tale (Appius and 
 Virginia.) 
 
30 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. Read the Prologue, noting 
 
 (a) The verse. Scan some of it, paying attention to the syllabic e; 
 note the character of the couplet. 
 
 (6) The portraits. Memorize some of the striking bits of charac- 
 terization. Try to discover what gives the extraordinary vividness 
 to these character sketches. Compare Addison's Coverley Papers. 
 With the portrait of the Parson compare Goldsmith's Deserted 
 Village. 
 (c) The style. 
 
 2. Read the Nun's Priest's Tale, noting characterization, humor, satire, 
 
 character of Chaucer's learning and his attitude toward the science 
 of his time, sermon and beast fable elements. Cf. Aesop, and 
 Chantecler. 
 
 References: Cambridge, II. 179-224; Courthope, I. 247-301; Jusserand, I. 
 267-343. The Chaucer Primer (Pollard) is a convenient brief manual; 
 somewhat larger is the biography in the English Men of Letters Series (Ward). 
 The Poetry of Chaucer, by R. K. Root, contains some of the important conclu- 
 sions of recent research, presented in popular form. Coulton's Chaucer and His 
 England and Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life contain supplementary material 
 of great interest and value. Somewhat more special are the three volumes by 
 Professor Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer; the chapters on "The Chaucer Legend" 
 and ''The Learning of Chaucer" are the most important. 
 
32 
 Chaucer's Contemporaries 
 
 I. Piers the Plowman 
 
 1. An alliterative poem of the period 1362-1398 in three extant 
 versions : 
 
 (a) The "A-text," in twelve passus (cantos) besides the pro- 
 logue; 2567 lines; contains the Vision of Lady Meed (satire on 
 the corruptions in church and state) ; the Vision of Piers the 
 Plowman (the search for Saint Truth, led by Piers, contain- 
 ing much satire of social conditions, idleness, etc.); and the 
 Vision of Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best (less allegory; 
 more debate). 
 
 (6) The "B-text" repeats most of this material, though with 
 many variations in detail, and adds nine passus; total length 
 7242 lines. 
 
 (c) The "C-text," containing 7357 lines, makes still other 
 changes and additions. 
 
 2. Authorship long ascribed to a William Langland or Langley: 
 Professor IManly has recently proved it to be of composite author- 
 ship. 
 
 n. John Gower (c. 1325-1408) 
 
 Confessio Amantis, his chief English work, was written 1386- 
 1390, and contains something over one hundred stories set in a 
 framework. Lover wanders in wood in May and is made by Venus 
 to confess to his sins against love; this confession arranged accord- 
 ing to the medieval idea of the seven deadly sins, with the sub- 
 divisions; the Confessor (Genius) tells stories illustrating each sin. 
 Thus allegory of the French type (cf. Legend of Good Womeii), 
 but more elaborate, and interrupted by many digressions, mainly 
 didactic. Also illustrates tendency to apply theological method 
 and matter to the ''religion" of love; cf. Chaucer. 
 
34 
 
 in. Scottish Literature 
 
 1. The Fourteenth Century 
 
 (a) John Barbour, The Bruce, romance in form of chronicle. 
 
 (b) BUnd Harry's Chronicle. Main interest in its account of 
 Wallace. 
 
 (c) Various romances, e. g. Golagros and Gawane, Adventures 
 of Arthur, Morte Arthure. 
 
 2. Chaucerian school in Scotland, fifteenth century 
 
 (a) King James I (?) The Kingis Quair (The King's Book); 
 like the Romance oj the Rose, a dream allegory dealing with 
 the uncertainty of Fortune and the happiness of love. 
 Many reminiscences of Chaucer's phrasing and language, 
 and fuller literary appreciation of Chaucer than is shown by 
 many of the imitators. 
 
 (6) Robert Henryson wrote a version of Aesop (thirteen 
 fables, marked by freshness of treatment); Testament of 
 Cresseid (continues Chaucer's story by supplying sequel to 
 Diomede episode, with a tragic conclusion); Robene and 
 Makyne (pastoral in form of debate; cf. Nut Brown Maide). 
 
 (c) William Dunbar (c. 1460-c. 1530) was a less sympathetic 
 imitator of Chaucer; his Golden Targe a dream allegory of 
 love; Thrissil and the Rois, refers to the marriage of James 
 IV; dream poem; cf. Parliament of Fowls; wrote also various 
 satirical poems, the best of them the Dance of the Seven 
 Deadly Sins, and some ballads. 
 
 (d) Gavin Douglas (1475-1522) wrote the Palice of Honour, 
 dream allegory, over-elaborate and didactic, in which lover 
 is arrested for poem against love, is tried by Venus, etc. 
 Douglas also translated twelve books of the Aeneid. 
 
36 
 
 IV. English Imitators of Chaucer 
 
 1. John Lj'dgate (c. 1370-c. 1450). Enormous production, on 
 great variety of subjects; noted for extremely crabbed verse. 
 Chief works: 
 
 (a) The Troy Book, 30,000 lines, based on Guido delle Colonne. 
 
 (b) Falls of Princes, from Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum, 
 similar to Monk's Tale, but in 36,000 lines. 
 
 (c) Temple of Glass. A love allegory. 
 
 (d) Pilgrimage of Man. 
 
 (e) The Assembly, of Gods. An allegory of the \dces and the 
 virtues. 
 
 2. Thomas Occleve (c. 1368-c. 1450) wrote the Regiment of Princes 
 giving counsel to rulers and incidentally containing some noble 
 lines in praise of Chaucer. 
 
 3. Poems attributed to Chaucer but by unknown authors. 
 
 (a) The Plowman's Tale, an application of fable material to 
 
 religious controversy. 
 
 (6) The Flower and the Leaf. Translated by Dryden. 
 
 (c) The Assembly of Ladies. 
 
 (d) The Court of Love. 
 
 4. Stephen Hawes (c. 1475-c. 1523) 
 
 The Passetyme of Pleasure, an allegory dealing with a favo- 
 rite theme, the marriage of Wit and Science. Graunde 
 Amour, attended by the knights Truth, Constancy, Fidelity, 
 Fortitude, etc., has many chivalric adventures in his wooing 
 of La Belle Pucell. The poem unites many scholastic 
 elements, such as the central theme and the instruction of the 
 knight by the seven liberal arts, with Chaucerian love alle- 
 gory and chivalric romance. Thus it marks the transition 
 from the love allegory of Chaucer to the moral allegory of 
 Spenser. The Example of Virtue, also by Hawes, contains 
 similar moral allegory. 
 References: On Piers Plowman the best chapter is that by Professor Manly 
 in Cambridge, II. 1-48; other references are Jusserand, I. 373-402; Courthope 
 I. 200-246. On Cower see Caml)ridse, II. 153-178; Jusserand I. 364-372; Court- 
 hope, I. 302-321. On the Scottish Chaucerians Cambridge, II. 115-152 and 272- 
 302; Jusserand, I. 503-512. On the English Chaucerians, Cambridge II. 225- 
 271; Courthope 1. 321-340 and 356-392; Jusserand I. 495-502. 
 
38 
 LATER MIDDLE ENGLISH PROSE 
 
 I. Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1400-1471) 
 
 I. Morte d'Arthur. Published by Caxton, 1485. 
 
 (a) Source. Caxton says the book was given him by Malory, 
 who "dyd take oute of certeyn bookes of frensshe and re- 
 duced it in to Englysshe." It has been shown that IMalory's 
 originals were about ten times as long as his own romance. 
 (6) No central theme, except that Arthur is more prominent 
 than in the French romances. Malory evidently picked, 
 from a great mass, those stories that pleased him best, ap- 
 parently aiming to give, after a fashion, an account of the 
 king from his birth to his death. Note, that here we 
 find what approximates an epic view. 
 
 (c) Contents: Books I.-III. Arthur's birth; his relations to 
 Merlin; his marriage. Books IV, V, Merlin; and the wars. 
 Books VI, VII, Lancelot ; Gareth. Books VIII-X, Tristram. 
 Books XI -XVII, Lancelot; Galahad; The Grail. Books 
 XVIII, XIX, Lancelot and Guinevere. Books XX, XXI, 
 last daj^s and death of Arthur. 
 
 (d) Style. Lack of paragraph and sentence structure and 
 frequent blunders in syntax; yet courtly, simple, free from 
 affectation, fresh in diction, picturesque in expression. 
 
 Studies: 
 
 1. Find illustrations of vivid description, rapid narration. 
 
 2. Study the sources of the vocabulary of a few paragraphs. 
 
 3. Compare the style with that of Addison or Macaulay. 
 
 4. Study the differences between Malory's ethical point of view and 
 
 Tennyson's, for example, the Lancelot-Guinevere story or the 
 attitude toward the search for the Grail. 
 
 5. Study the parallel between the accounts of Arthur's death given by 
 
 Malory and Tennyson. 
 
40 
 
 n. other Fifteenth century prose 
 
 1. William Caxton (c. 1421-1491) 
 
 (a) Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, translated from the 
 French and printed by Caxton at Bruges in 1475, the first 
 printed book in English. 
 
 (5) Dides and Seyings of the Philosophers, printed in 1477 at 
 his press near Westminster. 
 
 (c) About seventy books printed by him, some of them trans- 
 lations from the French, about one third of these his own 
 translations; most important of these The Golden Legend. 
 Of the English books, the most notable are editions of Chaucer 
 and Gow-er. Books not written by him (such as Malory's 
 Morte) were carefully edited and supplied with prefaces. 
 
 (d) Caxton was succeeded by the famous printer Wynkyn 
 de Worde. 
 
 2. Lord Berners. Famous for his translation of Froissart's 
 Chronicles and for Huon of Bordeaux, a romance very popular 
 in the next century, notable for its introduction of Oberon as a 
 fairy king. 
 
 References: Cambridge II. 353-386; Jusserand II. 26-39. For Malory, the 
 selections edited by Professor Mead (Ginn & Company), and the briefer selec- 
 tions in the Riverside Literature Series. 
 
42 
 
 LITERATURE OF THE FOLK 
 
 I. The literature of the Middle English Period so far considered falls 
 mainly into two classes : works written by clerics for doctrinal or didactic 
 purposes; and courtly literature designed for the upper classes. Popular 
 anecdotes and tales existed and sometimes were written down; in the 
 Canterbury Tales are a few examples. There were also popular songs, 
 often political and satirical. Fable literature is of popular origin. Of 
 popular origin, also, were the rude dramas, such as the mummer's plays 
 and the plays about Robin Hood and Saint George. 
 
 II. The Popular Ballad 
 
 1. ''A tale telling itself in song," thus narrative, impersonal, 
 lyrical; origin among the folk and sometimes composed by the 
 folk; transmitted by oral tradition, perhaps for centuries. 
 
 2. Something over three hundred extant, but of these only eleven 
 in MSS older than the xvii century. Date of copying or printing, 
 however, not significant of the age of the ballad. Most of those 
 extant probably belong, in origin, to the Middle English period. 
 :Most important collections: (a) The Percy MS of 1650, which 
 is the source of (6) Percy's Reliques (1765); (c) Scott's Border 
 Minstrelsy; (d) Professor Child's English and Scottish Popular 
 Ballads. 
 
 3. Characteristics of the ballad 
 
 (a) In the older ballads, usually couplets with alternating 
 refrain ; dealing with a single situation, all details suppressed ; 
 incremental repetition. Phrase and word accent also 
 significant. 
 
 (b) Later ballads are longer and more deliberate, approach- 
 ing epic; the so-called ballad stanza (quatrains in which 
 the first and third lines have four accents, the second and 
 fourth having three with rhyme) becomes more common. 
 Refrain and repetition are less evident. For examples, see 
 especially the Robin Hood cycle. 
 
Studies ; 
 
 44 
 
 Themes 
 
 (a) Riddling ballads 
 (6) Domestic tragedy 
 
 (c) Supernatural themes 
 
 (d) Border ballads 
 
 (e) Ballads of the greenwood 
 (/) Humorous ballads 
 
 1. Find examples of ballads belonging to the various classes noted 
 
 above. 
 
 2. Sir Patrick Spens. (a) Note the stanza, the illustrations of change 
 
 in word accent, the conventional expressions. (6) Find instances 
 of incremental repetition, (c) What illustrations of popular super- 
 stition ? (d) Considering it as a narrative, observe the situation, 
 the characters, the selection of details, the omission of details that 
 in a romance or short story would be included. What gives the 
 ballad its great power as a piece of dramatic narrative? (e) Observe 
 the coronach element and compare the coronach in the Lady of 
 the Lake. 
 
 3. Lord Randal, (a) In form, is this more or less primitive than Sir 
 
 Patrick Spens? (6) Compare the two in stanza, repetition, and 
 selection of details. 
 
 4. Study several ballads dealing with the supernatural, such as Thomas 
 
 Rymer, The Wife of Usher's Well, and The Daemon Lover, and ob- 
 serve (a) the differences in theme, method of dealing with the super- 
 natural, sources of material, and effectiveness; and (6) differences 
 between them and such an imitation of the supernatural ballad as 
 Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 
 
 5. The Nut Brown Maide (c. 1500) is sometimes called a ballad, but 
 
 wrongly. Show the differences between it and the true ballad (a) 
 in the evidences of conscious literary art; (6) in the form (stanza, 
 rhyme, diction) ; (c) in the differences between the repetition found 
 in it and true ballad repetition; {d) in the debate element, on which 
 compare Owl and the Nightingale, The Body and the Soul, etc.; 
 (e) in the amount and character of incident. 
 
46 
 
 References: The best brief introduction to ballad literature, by the leading 
 authority on the subject, is the chapter on ballads in the Cambridge History 
 II. 449-474 (Gummere). See also ProfCvSsor Gummere's edition of selected bal- 
 lads, with the introduction (Ginn & Company). More complete discussion is to 
 be found in the same author's The Popular Ballad (Houghton, Mifflin Company). 
 A convenient and inexpensive book of selections is published in the Riverside 
 Literature Series; this contains an excellent brief introduction. The Cambridge 
 edition of English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Houghton) gives practically the 
 whole body of ballad literature, with an authoritative introduction by Professor 
 Kittredge. 
 
48 
 THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 I. Changes influencing the Literature of the Sixteenth Century 
 
 1. In language: such as (a) changes in pronunciation due for ex- 
 ample to the dropping of final e as a separately sounded syllable; 
 metrical regularity of Chaucer's verse no longer appreciated; 
 (b) the consequent breaking down of old metrical standards and 
 the introduction of freakish forms ("Poulter's measure"; "Skel- 
 tonic" verse, etc.)- Later in the century, the attempt to adapt 
 classical quantitative verse to English (The Areopagus, etc.). 
 
 2. In thought: such as (a) the new nationalism, due to the political 
 changes made by Henry ^TII and EHzabeth; (b) the revival of 
 interest in the classics (Humanism) which had been almost un- 
 known in the Middle Ages; (c) cosmopolitanism, due to travel; 
 the influence of Italy and France, reflected in Chaucer, again 
 becomes prominent. 
 
 3. In literary themes: such as the introduction of the sonnet and 
 other forms of subjective literature; the pastoral; the new theory 
 of the epic; the novel; the essay; the drama. 
 
 n. Early Humanism in England 
 
 1. Humphrey of Gloucester (1391-1447) 
 
 2. Colet (1466-1519) and Erasmus (1465-1536) 
 
 3. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) 
 
 (a) Utopia (Latin version, 1516; English translation by 
 Ralph Robinson, 1551) 
 
 4. Early translations from the classics 
 
 (a) Phaer's Aeneid (1558-1562). Two books of the Aeneid 
 also translated by Surrey, in blank verse. 
 (6) Seneca was translated by Jasper Heywood and others, 
 1581. 
 
 (c) North's Plutarch (1579) was famous for its influence on 
 Shakspere. 
 
50 
 
 III. Transitional Poetry of the Early Sixteenth Century 
 
 1. John Skelton (c. 1460-1529) 
 
 (a) Author of various translations and adaptations of human- 
 istic works. 
 
 (b) Influenced by Chaucer in Garlande of Laurell, a medley 
 of all sorts of material, but in lively metre; and in the more 
 important Bowge of Courte, an allegory owing something to 
 Chaucer, something to the ''ship" allegory of Brant and 
 Barclay. 
 
 (c) Phillyp Sparowe, a story of the death and burial of a pet 
 sparrow; travesty, incoherent structure, "Skeltonic" verse. 
 Written to please a patron. 
 
 (d) Colyn Clout, a satire of the clergy from the point of view 
 of a layman. 
 
 (e) Why come ye nat to courte? a bitter ijivective against 
 Wolsey. 
 
 (/) Magnyfycence, a morality plaj^ but with probably direct 
 application to political matters. 
 
 (g) Skelton's verse is usually written in two-accent lines, 
 irregular in unaccented syllables, and with rhj^mes rambling 
 through any number of lines. 
 
 2. Alexander Barclay (c. 1475-1552) 
 
 (a) The Ship of Fools (1509) a translation, with many addi- 
 tions, of the Narrenschiff of Sebastian Brant; satire of all 
 sorts of folly, shown by women, clerics, beggars and vaga- 
 bonds; full of classical and biblical allusionsand many proverbs; 
 scurrilous; vivid picture of contemporary life; shows inter- 
 relation of Germany and England in early sixteenth century. 
 (6) Eclogues (c. 1514). Five pastoral eclogues translated 
 from Alantuan and Aeneas Sylvius but with manj^ additions 
 and a])plications to local conditions; they treat of miseries 
 of court and the superiority of country life, and the sad 
 state of poets. Important as being the first examples of 
 Renaissance pastoral in English, and have the characteristic 
 satire veiled by allegory; they are racy, homely, vivid. 
 
52 
 
 IV. The Mirror for Magistrates 
 
 I. Combines medieval and renaissance elements 
 
 (a) Written by various men, 1555 ff. ; a series of medieval 
 "tragedies" similar to Chaucer's Monk's Tale and Boccaccio's 
 De Casihus Virormri; immediate model Lydgate's Fall of 
 Princes and first planned as a re-issue and continuation of 
 that work. 
 
 (6) Great popularity throughout the century, and particu- 
 larly influential on the drama, thirty historical plays being 
 extant which are based on stories told in the Mirror. 
 (c) Chief importance due to the Induction written 1563 by 
 Thomas Sackville (who also collaborated with Norton in 
 writing Gorhoduc [acted 1562] a Senecan tragedy in blank 
 verse); this Induction, influenced by Chaucer and Virgil, 
 and perhaps by Dante, notable for its allegory, its grave 
 and musical verse, and its direct influence on Spenser. 
 V. Tottel's Miscellany (1557) 
 
 I. A collection of nearly three hundred poems by Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt (1503-1542), the Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-1547), and others. 
 These poems are mainly (a) sonnets in imitation of Petrarch; 
 (6) other amoristic lyrics, introducing, with the sonnets, a new 
 code of courtly "love"; (c) satires, epistles, epigrams, showing 
 the influence of the classics but dealing with certain conventional 
 subjects, such as the superiority of the country to the town and 
 the hardships of the courtier's life; a few, such as Wyatt's The 
 Mean and Sure Estate, showing the influence of Chaucer. By 
 far the greater number are amoristic, and are written in the most 
 diverse metrical forms. 
 
54 
 
 VI. George Gascoigne (c. 1525-1577) 
 
 1. A poet of moderate genius whose importance springs from the 
 way in which he anticipated many of the hterary activities of the 
 Ehzabethan period. 
 
 2. Representative works 
 
 (a) Dramatic writings: The Supposes, a comedy acted in 
 1566, based upon a comedy by Ariosto; Jocasta, acted 1566, 
 a tragedy of the Senecan type. 
 , (6) Certayne Notes of Instruction, 1575, the first important 
 '^ work of Uterary criticism in EngUsh. 
 
 (c) The Posies, 1575, a collection of poems, mainly lyrical, 
 on many subjects and in many forms. 
 
 (d) The Steel Glass, 1576, a satire based on a comparison 
 between the old steel mirrors, representing the superior 
 moral and manners of an earlier age, and the crystal mirrors 
 then coming into fashion, by which he symbolizes the 
 corruption and follies of his age. Somewhat in the manner 
 of Piers Plowman. 
 
 References: On the changes in language, etc., in the sixteenth century, see 
 Cambridge, III. 499-530. On the general character of the Renaissance, see 
 Jusserand, II. 3-25; 40-92; 134-149, and in his Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, 
 chapter ii; Einstein, Italian Renaissance in England, chapters ii and viii. For 
 Humanism, see Cambridge Modern History, I. chapter vi; Courthope, II. chap- 
 ter i; Cambridge, III. 1-27; Jusserand, II. 76-92. For Tottel's Miscellany, see 
 Jusserand II. 134-148; Cambridge III. 187-206; Courthope, II. chapters ii and 
 iii; and the introduction to Padelford's Sixteenth Century Lyrics (Heath & Com- 
 pany). For Gascoigne: Cambridge, III. 227-238; Courthope, II. 167-177. A 
 selection from the Steel Glass is to be found in Skeat's Specifnens- of English 
 Literature, 1394-1579, pp. 312-325. This book may also be consulted for its 
 selections from other transitional authors from Chaucer to Spenser. 
 
56 
 THE NEW ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 I. The Influence of Italy and France 
 
 1. Italian writers important for their influence on English liter- 
 ature in the sixteenth century, 
 
 (a) Petrarch (1304-1374) His Bime, or Sonetti e canzoni 
 in vita di Madonna Laura, a cycle of 207 sonnets, inter- 
 spersed with various other short lyrics, treating of the suffer- 
 ings of the lover, the cruelty of his mistress, the lofty in- 
 fluence of love, the whole given the form of a cycle through 
 references to the passing of time and to incidents of his 
 courtship. These sonnets exerted great influence in France 
 and England through their form, their phraseology, and the 
 Neo-Platonic theory of love. 
 
 (6) Ariosto {Orlando Furioso, 1516) and Tasso {Gerusalemme 
 Liber aia, 1575) were writers of epic poetry whose works pro- 
 foundly influenced Spenser. 
 
 (c) The writers of novelle, short stories usually of a tragic 
 cast, which formed the basis for the many English collec- 
 tions of short stories and also served as storehouses of plot 
 for the dramas. 
 
 2. The influence of France felt mainly through the critical theories 
 of the Pleiade, through the pastorals of Marot and others, and 
 through the sonnets and other lyrics of Ronsard, Du Bellay, 
 Desportes. 
 
^X.: 
 
 ^ J^ e 
 
58 
 
 II. The Sonnet 
 
 1. Origin. Arose in Italy near the end of the thirteenth century; 
 practiced by Dante, Michelangelo, Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. 
 At first, however, the name was applied to any short amoristic 
 lyric, and a similar confusion persisted in England even in Shaks- 
 pere's time. Rossetti's translation of the New Life of Dante 
 will illustrate early sonnet forms and aims. Chaucer translated 
 one of Petrarch's sonnets in his Troilus, Book I. 11. 400-420. 
 
 2. Form. 
 
 (a) True Italian type. Fourteen lines, the first eight con- 
 stituting the octave, which introduces the theme, and the 
 last six the sestet, which is sub-divided into two tercets. 
 The first tercet prepares the leading idea or theme of the 
 octave for the conclusion in the second tercet, See Words- 
 • worth's sonnet on Milton for a fairly close imitation of this 
 form. The rhyme scheme of the octave is abba, abba; 
 less accurately, abba, a c c a; of the sestet, c d e, c d e; 
 or c d c d c d; or c d c d e e. 
 
 (6) English forms in the sixteenth century fall under two 
 main classes: the Shaksperean, consisting of three quatrains 
 rhyming alternately, and a concluding couplet; and the 
 Spenserian, somewhat like the stanza of the Faerie Queene, 
 ab ab, b cb c , c d c d , e e. Milton's sonnets are correct 
 in rhyme, but often careless of the distinction between oc- 
 tave and sestet. 
 3. English sonnet cycles of the sixteenth century 
 
 (a) Wyatt,. Surrey, Gascoigne, Watson, wrote many sonnets 
 before the time of the great cycles; Tottel's collection of 
 songs and sonnets was reprinted seven times by 1587; 
 Shakspere introduced three sonnets into Lovers Labour's 
 Lust and two in Romeo and Juliet; chief vogue of the genre 
 from 1591 to 1597, in which period the French writers were 
 drawn upon fjuite as much as the Italian. 
 (/;) T\u\ chief cycles: Sidney, Astrophcl and Stella, 1591, 
 platonic courtship of Lady Penelope Rich, 108 sonnets, 
 
60 
 
 based on Petrarch, Ronsard, and Desportes; Daniel, Delia, 
 1592, mainly French, some of them of high literary value; 
 Constable, Diana, 1592, 1594; Barnes, Parihenophil and 
 Partheno'pe, 1593; Watson, Tears of Fancie, 1593; Giles 
 Fletcher the Elder, Licia, 1593, frankly confessed to be 
 literary exercises; Lodge, Phillis, 1593; Drayton, Idea, 
 1594; Spenser, Amoretti, 1595,. but some of them perhaps 
 written at a much earlier date, in their present form repre- 
 senting his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married; 
 Shakspere, Sonnets, ca. 1594, which differ from the other 
 cycles in that some of them are addressed to a man and 
 others show distaste for the conventions of the genre. 
 (c) Total number of amoristic sonnets written during this 
 period estimated at 1200; in addition, about 500 addressed 
 to patrons and as many on philosophical and religious 
 themes. 
 Studies 
 
 1. Conventionalities in diction and ttopes, such as the similes of the 
 
 ship, the warrior, etc., and in the narrative element, "the prologue, 
 hope, and the epilogue, despair." 
 
 2. The idealistic view of love. This form of Elizabethan Platonism 
 
 especially prominent in the sonnets of Sidney and of Spenser. For 
 the complete statement of the religion of beauty, see Spenser's 
 Four Hymns. 
 
 3. The problem of Shakspere's sonnets. Besides the reference given 
 
 above to Lee, the introductions to the editions of the sonnets by 
 Beeching and by Rolfe may be used. 
 
 References: On the general character of the sonnet and the history of its'form, 
 consult Alden, English Verse, pp. 267-297, and Corson, Primer of English Verse, 
 pp. 143-185. On the Elizabethan sonnet, see Cambridge 111. 281-310 (Lee); 
 Jusserand, II. 383^19. A more d tai.ed count of the cycles is in Lee's Life 
 of Shakespeare, s. v. the sonnets and also in the appendix. For the Italian in- 
 fluence, consult Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England, and for the French, 
 Lee, The French Renaissance in England, and Upham, French Influence in English 
 Literature. 
 
62 
 
 m. The Pastoral 
 
 1. Classical pastorals 
 
 (a) Theocritus (280 B.C.). His Idyls marked by reahsm and 
 by introduction of themes afterwards characteristic of the 
 genrCj such as the singing match, dirge, love-lay, etc. No 
 allegory or veiled satire. 
 
 {h) Virgil's Eclogues are less realistic and introduce allusions 
 to life of the times. 
 
 2. Italian Group 
 
 (a) Petrarch wrote twelve Latin eclogues 1346-1356; these 
 
 have strong political allegory. His eclogues imitated by 
 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 (6) Mantuan (1448-1516) wrote a series of pastorals in 
 
 which the satire of church and state is more pronounced. 
 
 Some of these translated into English by Barclay. 
 
 {d) Sannazaro's Arcadia, 1490-1495; consists of twelve 
 
 eclogues comiected by passages in lyrical prose; the most 
 
 striking theme is the praise of Arcadia as a refuge from 
 
 the town. Compare Sidney's romance, and As You Like It. 
 
 3. French Group 
 
 (a) Of the poets who wrote pastorals in France in the six- 
 teenth century, Marot is important for the influence he 
 exerted on Spenser. 
 
 4. English predecessors of Spenser 
 
 (a) Barclay translated some of Mantuan's eclogues ca. 1514. 
 (6) Googe in 1563 wrote eight eclogues loosely connected 
 by two narratives running through them, realistic in style 
 and homely in metre, moral in intention, 
 (c) There were some pastoral elements in the other poetry 
 of the period, as in Tottel; Chaucer was also regarded as 
 a pastoral poet by Spenser and others. 
 
■64 
 
 5. Spenser's Shepheards Calender, 1579. Twelve eclogues, some- 
 what loosely connected by the motif of the seasons, one being 
 assigned to each month, and by the romance of Colin (Spenser) 
 and Rosalind. Five of the eclogues deal with religious and politi- 
 cal conditions, and are native rather than foreign in source and 
 model. The others imitate conventional pastoral themes, such 
 as the singing match, the praise of the poet's patron, the dirge, 
 the complaint of unrequited love. In freshness, lyric power, 
 and thought the Calender marks the beginning of a new era in 
 English poetry. 
 Studies 
 
 1. The most notable eclogues of the Shepheards Calendar are those 
 
 for 'February' (religious allegory; fable of the oak and the briar, 
 told in what was thought to be the style of Chaucer and in a four 
 stress verse which roughly imitates the way Chaucer's verse must 
 have sounded as pronounced in Spenser's time); 'April' (Song in 
 praise of Elizabeth); 'October' (the perfect poet). 
 
 2. Study the versification of 'February.' 
 
 3. The eclogues for 'September,' 'October' and 'November' contain 
 
 ideas and phrases echoed by Milton in Lycidas. 
 
 References: A convenient introduction to the pastorals is to be found in Pro- 
 fessor Herford's edition of the Shepheards Calendar; see also the introduction to 
 English Pastorals, edited by E. K. Chambers; Morley, English Writers, IX. 
 35-58; Jusserand, II. 455-472; Cambridge, III. 247-269; Courthope, II. 242- 
 245, 252-256; Church, Life of Spenser, chapter ii. The Idyls of Theocritus have 
 been translated by A. Lang and others; Virgil's Eclogues appear in translation 
 in Everyman^ s Library. 
 
66 
 
 IV. Other Lyric Poetry 
 
 1. The Ehzabethan Anthologies were ahuost as popular and as 
 numerous as the sonnet cycles; they were composed of short poems 
 collected from the works of well-known poets or extracted from 
 song-books, novels, and dramas. Chief examples: 
 
 (a) TotteVs Miscellany (1557) 
 
 {h) Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576). Themes largely 
 
 moral; reprinted eight times by 1600. 
 
 (c) Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578) 
 
 {d) A Handfull of Pleasant Delights (1584) 
 
 (e) The Phoenix's Nest (1593) 
 
 (/) England's Helicon (1600) 
 
 (g) The Passionate Pilgrim (1599). Ascribed to Shakspere. 
 
 (h) Poetical Rhapsody (1602) 
 
 2. A group of narrative poems, strongly lyrical in method, based 
 on classical sources: Shakspere's Venus and Adonis (1593) and 
 The Rape of Lucrece (1594); and Marlowe's Hero and Leander 
 (published 1598). 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. Compare the Elizabethan song lyric with the popular ballad in stanza, 
 
 use of refrain, evidences of conscious literary art, theme. 
 
 2. The place of the lyric in the dramas and romances of the time. 
 
 3. The Elizabethan Song Books. 
 
 References: The best introduction to the lyrics of the Elizabethan period is 
 to be found in Schelling's Elizabethan Lyrics or in Carpenter's English Lyric 
 Poetry. See also Cambridge IV. 127-146. On the general characteristics of 
 lyric poetry, see Gummere, Handbook of Poetics, pp. 40-57. 
 
68 
 EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599) 
 
 I. Early Works 
 
 1. While a student at Cambridge contributed some translations 
 from Du Bellay to a miscellany, Theatre for Worldlings (1569). 
 
 2. In London in the service of the Earl of Leicester, 1578-1580. 
 Here published (1579) the Shepheards Calender, which, among 
 other elements, contained a warning to the Puritans of the danger 
 to England in the alliance between Rome and Philip of Spain. 
 Also wrote Mother Hubberds Tale, a beast fable in the manner of 
 Chaucer, warning Leicester to prevent the proposed marriage 
 between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. For his boldness, 
 Spenser sent to Ireland, 1580, as the secretary of Lord Grey, and 
 spent the remainder of his life there except for two visits to London. 
 
 II. The Faerie Queene 
 
 1. Planned in imitation of Ariosto as early as 1579 and written 
 in part, though perhaps not in the form in which it was finallj'- 
 published. First three books brought by Spenser to London 
 1589 and published 1590; the next three published 1596, though 
 completed two years earlier. In 1609 two additional cantos in 
 the same stanza but not otherwise closely related to the epic. 
 
 2. Plan 
 
 (a) Virgil, regarded in the Renaissance as the ideal poet, 
 was thought not only to have written the history of the 
 founding of Rome but also to have presented in the form of 
 allegory a view of the state and a portrait of the ideal man. 
 Thus Spenser, passing like Virgil from pastoral to epic, 
 planned an epic that should deal with the early history of 
 Britain, should shadow forth the ideal man, and i)resent a 
 theory of the state. 
 
 (6) The details of the plan of the epic are given in the letter 
 to Raleigh prefixed to the edition of 1590. There were to 
 be twelve books, each of them devoted to the adventures of 
 a knight ropresontjng a cardinal virtue. Unity was to be 
 given through the person of Arthur representing Alagnifi- 
 
i 
 
 70 
 
 cence in twF moral allegory, Leicester in the political allegory, 
 and EiidLud in the conception of the State. Gloriana, the 
 'Faerie^Jiicone', represents Elizabeth. But the allegory, 
 after th^ fashion of the time, is very complex; for example, 
 Elizabf^ is represented not only as Gloriana but also as 
 Britomart and Mercilla. 
 Contents. ^ 
 
 (a) Boofly. The Red Cross Knight, accompanied by Una, 
 slays the Dragon. Moral allegory: Holiness guided by Truth 
 overcomes Error. Political allegory: the events of the 
 English Reformation. 
 
 (6) Book II. The adventures of Guyon and Arthur, leading 
 to the defence of Alma and the overthrow of Acrasia. Moral 
 allegory: the course of Temperance through life, avoiding 
 extremes of gloom or of false joy, avoiding wrath and vio- 
 lent passion, conquering desires for wealth and sensual 
 enjoyment. Political allegory less marked; the character- 
 istics of the English gentleman are represented, and his 
 patriotism is grounded on study of past history of his nation. 
 
 (c) Book III. The adventures of Britomart; her love for 
 Artegall. Moral allegory: Britomart represents chastity. 
 Political allegory: Britomart represents the Queen as Sov- 
 ereign, loving Artegall, who stands for Justice, an attribute 
 of sovereignty. Many of the incidents refer to social and 
 political affairs at court. 
 
 (d) Book IV. No dominating knight in this book but a 
 series of adventures representing the various aspects of love. 
 Cainbell and Triamond represent friendship between men; 
 Britomart and Amoret, that between women ; the love stories 
 of Britomart and Amoret are continued. 
 
 (e) Book V. Artegall saves Irena; Arthur goes to defend 
 Belgae; Ducssa is tried and executed. The moral allegory 
 deals with the virtue of Justice presented under various 
 forms. The political element deals with the function of jus- 
 tice in tlu^ state and concretely with the problem of Ireland. 
 
72 
 
 (/) Book VI. The quest for the Blatant Beast by Calidore. 
 Moral allegory: Calidore represents courtesy; the Beast 
 is Scandal. Political allegory: reference to the damage 
 done to England by the detraction visited upon Lord Grey 
 and others in spite of their service to the state; Sidney the 
 personification of Courtesy. 
 
 {g) Book VII (?) Two cantos of ^Mutability and the danger 
 it brings the state; perhaps a reference to the course of Eng- 
 land in dealing with the Irish problem. 
 III. Spenser's Other Works. 
 
 1. Complaints. A collection of minor poems published in 1591 
 but written at various times. Most important Mother Hubberds 
 Tale and Virgils Gnat. 
 
 2. Miscellaneous Pastorals: Daphnaida (1591); Astrophcl, and 
 Colin Clout (1595). Also, two marriage hymns, Epithalamion 
 and Prothalamion. 
 
 3. Fowre Hymnes, published 1596. These present Spenser's 
 philosophy of Love and Beauty, his Xeo-Platonic creed. For 
 the Amoretti, see p. 59. 
 
 4. Veue of the Present State of Ireland, written 1595-1596, a 
 prose discussion in form of dialogue, based on ]\Iachiavelli's 
 Prince ; the prose counterpart of Faerie Queene V. 
 
74 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. The Stanza: observe its structure, the effect of the rhyme-scheme and 
 
 the alexandrine. (See Corson, Primer of English Verse, pp. 87- 
 107; Alden, English Verse, pp. 102-106). (b) The stanza as em- 
 ploj^ed by subsequent, poets. For a list of such i-mitations see 
 Corson, pp. 108-142. (c) Find stanzas remarkable for pictorial 
 quality, sensuous charm, etc. 
 
 2. Compare Spenser's use of simile with that of Milton in Paradise Lost. 
 
 His diction. 
 
 3. Study the plot construction of the first book of the Faerie Queene. 
 
 Is the book successful as narrative? 
 
 4. Study the characterization in the same book; the character-groups, 
 
 the different allegorical types, etc. 
 
 5. Compare Spenser's use of Arthurian romance material with Tenny- 
 
 son's. Compare the two poets as to use of allegory. Compare, 
 Spenser's a jlf gr>ry with Chancer'.s. With Bunyan's. 
 
 6. Note the main principles of Spenser's religion of beauty. 
 
 References: The best biography of Spenser is that contributed by Professor 
 Fletcher to the Encyclopedia Americana. For criticism, see Lowell's essay on 
 Spenser and the brilliant though unfair account in Jusserand III. 473-509. 
 Courthope's chapter in Cambridge III. 259-272 contains much excellent criticism 
 together with some inaccuracies in detail. 
 
76 
 
 THE DRAMA 
 
 I. The Origin of the English Drama 
 I. The Religious Drama 
 
 («) Origin in the trope, a text for a special day, introduced 
 in the musical service of the Mass. Some of these were 
 dramatic in character, especially those for Easter and Christ- 
 mas; they date from about the ninth century. An excellent 
 example of the trope is the Easter Quern Quaeritis, which may 
 be found in translation in Manly's Pre-Shaksperean Drama, 
 I. xix, or in Early Plays (Riverside Literature Series), pp. 2 ff. 
 (6) By the thirteenth century, rude dramas had developed 
 about the sepulcher (Easter) and the manger (Christmas); 
 these expanded into groups of scenes; a third group formed 
 by the introduction of scenes from the Old Testament sup- 
 posed to prophesy the coming of Messiah. All this develop- 
 ment within the church. 
 
 (c) Third stage of development shown in transfer to the 
 guilds, to be presented by them outside the church. Ver- 
 nacular took the place of the Latin ; more realistic treatment 
 of incidents, especially those that were extra-biblical; in- 
 troduction of comedy scenes ; development of character types, 
 such as Herod, Pilate, Noah's wife. 
 
 (d) The English Cycles. Of the hundreds of plays pro- 
 duced in England during the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies, four fairly complete cycles are extant: The York, 
 containing 48 pageants; Towneley or Wakefield, 32 pageants; 
 the so-called Coventry cycle, with 43; and the Chester cycle, 
 with 25. These usually presented on Corpus Christi Day, 
 elaborate in staging and detail, the cycles covering the main 
 events from the Creation to the Day of Doom, the chief 
 stress being upon the periods from the Creation to the Flood; 
 the life of Christ, with the Ascension, and the early Apostolic 
 age. These plays originally called "mysteries" (Fr. mystere) 
 because presented by the guilds. Also a few "miracles" 
 or dramatized legends about saints. 
 
78 
 
 2. Moralities 
 
 (a) These dramatized moral allegories of the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries due to the great popularity of allegory. 
 (6) Themes : reUgious and moral instruction ; religious polem- 
 ics; later, plays showing the value of learning. Examples: 
 The Castle of Perseverance, Everyman, Hycke Scorner, Nyce 
 Wanton. 
 
 (c) Bale's Kynge Johann (ca. 1538) in.troduces historical 
 characters along with allegorical abstractions, but the play 
 deals with religious controversy of the time and is not 
 properly chronicle history. 
 
 3. Interludes 
 
 • (a) Origin uncertain and strict definition difficult; object 
 entertainment rather than instruction, thus deals with real- 
 istic comedy. An early example of high dramatic merit in 
 the Second Shepherd's play of the Towneley religious 
 cycle. 
 
 (b) John Heywood (c. 1497-c. 1577) wrote many interludes, 
 e. g., Weather; Love; Four PP; Johan Johan;etc. 
 
 4. Folk Plays 
 
 (a) Certain folk customs and festivals contain dramatic 
 elements, some of them of great age: Hock Tuesday Play; 
 Sword Dance, etc., are examples. 
 
 (6) Somewhat later are numerous plays dealing with St. 
 George, Robin Hood, etc. Some of these still survive as 
 mummer's plays in parts of England. See the interesting 
 account of the Christmas mummer's play in Hardy's novel. 
 The Return of the Native. Further material on the subject 
 of folk customs and plays may be found in Chambers' 
 The Mediaeval Stage, volume II. 
 
80 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. The best illustration of the dramatic version of biblical story is to 
 
 be found in the Brome play of Abraham and Isaac (Reprinted 
 in Early Plays, R.L.S., and in Manly.) Study the way in which 
 the author enters into sympathy with the main characters; his sense 
 of the tragedy; the force of the climax; the realism of treatment and 
 independence of slavish following of his source. For extra-biblical 
 material, see one of the Noah plays, broad farce, or the far superior 
 Shepherds Play {Early Plays; Manly). Study plot construction of 
 the latter; characterization; realism, 
 
 2. Everyman and Nice Wanton should be studied among the moralities, 
 
 as to plot, characterization, management of allegory. 
 
 References: Text of early plays may be had in convenient form in the volume 
 Early Plays in the Riverside Literature Series; see also Manly, The Pre-Shaks- 
 perean Drama, volume I.; Pollard, English Mystery Plays, etc., which also contains 
 an extended introduction. A volume in Everyman's Library is also devoted to 
 texts. For discussion, sec Cambridge, V. 40-68 (The Religious Drama) and pp. 
 26-39 (Folk Plays). The English Religious Drama, by K. L. Bates, contains 
 much interesting material on methods of presentation, costumes, acting, etc. 
 See also Ward's English Dramatic Literature, I. 1-157, and Jusserand, I. 439- 
 494. 
 
82 
 
 n. The Period of Transition 
 I. Early tragedy 
 
 (a) Tragic elements in the rehgious drama, such as the 
 Brome Abraham play, the drastic realism of the Crucifixion. 
 (6) Senecan tragedy. The ten tragedies ascribed to Seneca 
 (first century) were popular through the ^Middle Ages for 
 their philosophy and oratorical quality; they were not 
 acted, however. In the Renaissance many translations 
 and imitations were put on the stage; English translation 
 in 1581; imitations adopted the five act division, were 
 tragedies of blood, not character, were highly rhetorical, 
 made use of chorus, and gave the stage such stock charac- 
 ters as the ghost, the tyrant, the confidant, etc. Gorboduc, 
 by Sackville and Norton, acted 1562, based on early English 
 history, but in Senecan style; purpose didactic, dealing 
 with problem of Queen's marriage; blank verse. Jocasta, 
 by Gascoigne, 1566, from Italian version of tragedy by 
 Euripides; blank verse. The Misfortunes of Arthur, by 
 Thomas Hughes, acted 1588, based on Geoffrey and Malory, 
 but Senecan style ; blank verse. 
 
 (c) Other early tragedies, important for relations to Shaks- 
 pere, were The Troublesome Raigne of King John and The 
 True Chronicle History of King Leir. 
 
84 
 
 2. Early Comedy 
 
 (a) Comedy elements were present in the religious plays^ 
 notably in the Noah plays, the shepherds' plays, etc. Note 
 also the interludes. 
 
 (h) Neo-classical group. One form of these plays origi- 
 nated in Germany, aimed at reproducing the wit and senten- 
 tiousness of Plautus and Terence but with a moral aim; 
 usually variations of the story of the Prodigal Son; examples 
 in the Acolastus of William Gnaphaeus and the anti-papal 
 Pammachius of Thomas Kirchmayer. These translated 
 and imitated in English school dramas; notable example 
 in Gascoigne's Glasse of Government. Nicholas Udall, a 
 schoolmaster, adapted Roman comedy to English; his 
 Ralph Roister Doister, ca. 1553, the first true English comedy 
 having structure and complicated plot; imitates Plautus 
 in inspiration and form. Gammer Gurtons Nedle, ca. 1562, 
 by William Stevenson (?), classical in structure like other 
 college plays, but native English farce in characters and plot. 
 Note, finally, that Shakspere made use of Latin comedy 
 in his Comedy of Errors. 
 
 (c) Translations. Gascoigne's Supposes, acted 1566, a trans- 
 lation from Ariosto. 
 
 References: For texts, see Manly's Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, 
 and the volume in Everyman's Library. Gayley's Representative English Come- 
 dies contains specimens of the comedies, together with much historical matter. 
 For history and criticism, Cambridge V. 68-135; Ward's English Dramatic 
 Literature, chapter ii; Jusserand III, 24-35. 
 
86 
 
 III. The New English Drama 
 
 1. John Lyiy (1553-1606) 
 
 (a) First literary work, his novel Euphues, 1578. 
 
 (b) His plays usually presented by the Children's Companies 
 of the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's. His themes usually 
 pastoral or classical myth, often treating in allegory current 
 politics or social affairs at court. 
 
 (c) Chief comedies: Endymion, 1579, an application o& the 
 myth to the quarrel between Leicester and the Queen; 
 Sapho and Phao, ca. 1582, also allegorical; Campaspe, 
 printed 1584, classical story of Alexander, Campaspe, and 
 Apelles. Pastoral elements added in Gallathea, printed 1592, 
 and Love's Metamorphosis, printed 1601. Mother Bomhie, 
 printed 1594, deals with mistaken identity, like Plautus, 
 and has less Euphuism and more farce than usual in Lyly. 
 Woman in the Moone, printed 1597, is in blank verse. 
 
 {d) The significance of Lyly as a dramatist rests upon his 
 stressing of the comedy of wit rather than situation, thus 
 producing high comedy as against the older farce; his in- 
 troduction of the lighter aspecfs of love; his symmetrical 
 grouping of characters; his use of prose; the introduction 
 of lyrics into the plays; his attention to style. In all these 
 respects he influenced Shakspere. 
 
 2. Christopher Marlowe (1564-r593) 
 
 (a) Romantic tragedies: Tamburlaine, in two parts, 1587- 
 1588, a study of the thirst for universal political dominion; 
 Doctor Faustus, 1588,- an adaptation of the Faust legend 
 from contemporary German accounts, a study of the thirst 
 for intellectual greatness; The Jew of Malta, 1589, dealing 
 with the thirst for universal wealth. 
 
 (b) Chronicle History: Edward the Second, ca. 1592; not the 
 primitive type of chronicle play, since its material is selected 
 and the theme is fairly unified, leading to a tragic close. 
 Influenced Shakspere's Richard II; Marlowe's influence also 
 apparent in Richard III. 
 
88 
 
 -^ (c) The significance of Marlowe consists in his estabhshing, 
 by the great popularity of his plays as well as the skill of 
 his versification, blank verse as the form of Elizabethan 
 tragedy; in his study of the individualism, the virtu, so 
 characteristic of the Renaissance; in the epic and lyric 
 qualities of his work. 
 
 Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) 
 
 (a) Important for his use of the Revenge Tragedy, character- 
 ized by introduction of ghost seeking revenge; madness; 
 play within the play; much bloodshed; strongly reminiscent 
 of Seneca. Compare Hamlet. 
 
 (6) His chief plaj^s The Spanish Tragedy, acted 1586, and 
 the Ur- Hamlet, acted 1588. 
 
 George Peele (1558-1598) 
 
 (a) His plays significant for skill in use of words and rich, 
 often ironical, humor; they blend romanc^e with realism, 
 and show true love of nature and simple country life. 
 (6) Chief plays: The Arraignment of Paris, published 1584; 
 The Old Wives Tale, ca. 1590, which contains a version of 
 the story of Comus and much folk-lore; David and Bethsabe, 
 printed 1599, a romantic version of the biblical stor>'. 
 
 Robert Greene (1558-1592) 
 
 (a) Significant for his lyrics and for his contributions to 
 prose fiction {Pandosto, etc.) and to pamphleteering as well 
 as for his dramas. Plays filled with love of nature and in- 
 teresting for use of Italian romantic story, realism of Eng- 
 lish setting, admirable characterization. 
 (6) Representative dramas: Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 
 printed 1594, introduces much folk-lore, shows popular 
 interest in necromancy (cf. Fausius), and presents romantic 
 story. James the Fourth, licensed 1594, introduces Oberon 
 in a prose induction, contains highly romantic story for 
 main plot, with masque elements; excellent example of mix- 
 ture of serious plot with comedy. 
 
90 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. Lyly's Campaspe is the best of his plays for a study of his romantic 
 
 comedy with serious main plot and comic sub-plot. Observe the 
 three groups of characters, the slightness of story, the failure to 
 realize the dramatic crisis, the dialogue, the songs. 
 
 2. Marlowe: (a) Tamburlaine may be studied for its versification, its 
 
 weakness in characterization, its repetition of incident, its epic 
 qualities. (&) Doctor Faiistus is far more dramatic in its introduc- 
 tion and conclusion, but breaks down in intervening scenes. Why 
 is this so? Compare other versions of the legend, (c) Edward the 
 Second: The dramatic problem involved in changing our view of 
 the King; the selection of material to give unity to the plot; the 
 advance over Taynhurlaine in ch'aracterization (cf. Isabel-Zenocrate; 
 Edward-Tamburlaine) ; yet the failure to render with effectiveness 
 the dramatist's conceptions of character and the frequently awk- 
 ward exposition. 
 
 3. Greene's James the Fourth may be studied for its relation to Shaks- 
 
 pere's romantic comedy and its introduction of some of the situ- 
 ations used by Shakspere. Note also the abundance of story sup- 
 plied by the two plots, the large number of characters, the grouping 
 of characters, the pseudo-historical element. 
 
 References: For Lyly, see Cambridge V. 13G-144; Ward, History of English 
 Dramatic Literature, I. 270-303. Campaspe is printed by Manly, volume II. 
 273-326, and in Gayley, Representative English Comedies, with a critical essay by 
 Professor Baker, I. 263-332. For Marlowe, Cambridge V. 160-176; Jusserand 
 III. 133-148; Ward, Histonj etc., I. 313-363. A convenient text of Marlowe's 
 plays is published in Everyman's Library. For Kyd, Peele, Greene, see Cam- 
 bridge V. 144-155, 176-185; Ward, History etc., I. 270-409; Jusserand III. 121- 
 133. Greene's Ja7nes the Fourth, Peele's David and Bethsabe, and Kyd's Spanish 
 Tragedy are in Manly, II. Peele's Old Wives' Tale and Greene's Friar Bacon are 
 in Gayley I. See also Everyman's Library. 
 
92 
 
 IV. WiUiam Shakspere (1564-1616) 
 
 I. Development as a writer of comedies 
 
 (a) The period of experiment, 1589-1591. To this belong 
 The Comedy of Errors, a comedy of situation, not charac- 
 ter, based on the Menechmi of Plautus and thus related 
 to the Latin school drama; Love's Labour's Lost, with ap- 
 parently original plot, but like Lyly in slightness of story, 
 stress of witty dialogue, symmetrical grouping of characters, 
 and affectation in style; Two Gentlemen of Verona, based 
 in part on Montemayor's Diana and, in the denouement, 
 on the popular story of male friendship, Titus and Gysippus, 
 the play being a first study in romantic comedy with serious 
 main plot and humorous subordinate characters. 
 (6) The period of transition, 1595-1598. Here belong the 
 fairy play of Midsummer- Night' s Dream; the romantic 
 story combined with a study of character which verges on 
 tragedy in The Merchant of Venice; and the development 
 of farce-comedy seen in The Taming of the Shrew and The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. Of these, the Shrew and Mer- 
 chant of Venice owe something to earlier English plays, 
 while the Dream and the Merry Wives are, in the main plot, 
 more original. 
 
 (c) The triumph of romantic comedy, 1599-1600. Here 
 belong Much Ado about Nothing (partly based on a novel 
 of Bandello's), in which the serious plot (Hero-Claudio) 
 comes very near tragedy, being relieved only by the slight- 
 ness of stress, the greater emphasis on the Benedick-Beatrice 
 story, and the masque-like close; As You Like It (a pretty 
 close dramatization of Lodge's Rosalynde), which shows 
 the influence of pastoral and sonnet literature, made real 
 through the skill in characterization; Twelfth Night (based 
 mainly on Belief orest through the tale of Apolonius and Silla 
 in Barnabe Riche his Farewell to the Militarie Profession) ; 
 most admirable of the comedies in plot cons truction and 
 expositimi. 
 
94 
 
 Studies in Shakspere's Comedies 
 
 1. Luvc^a Labour s Lost may be compared with Lyly's Campaspe as to 
 
 character, plot, and style. Where does the dramatic climax come? 
 Criticize the fifth act. Does the dialogue characterize? 
 
 2. Two Gentlemen of Verona: What is the main theme? How long 
 
 does it take the dramatist to get the situation fully before us? 
 Account for the extraordinary denouement. Note parallels in situ- 
 ation and character between it and later plays. 
 
 3. Midsummer- Night' s Dream: Study the relations between plots. 
 
 Account fo'r the slightness of the story of the lovers. Compare 
 the "fairies" with Spenser's conception in the FaerieQueene. 
 
 4. Merchant of Venice: Here, again, study the plot-relations. Is the 
 
 title justifiable? Would "Shylock" be more accurate? Or is the 
 Bassanio-Portia story the main unifying influence? Function of 
 the Lorenzo-Jessica story? What is Shakspere's attitude toward 
 Shylock? 
 
 5. Much Ado: Account for the indistinct characterization of Hero and 
 
 Claudio and the improbable denouement. How is the Benedick- 
 Beatrice story brought into relation with it? Which constitutes 
 » the main plot? How much incident is there in the Benedick- 
 
 Beatrice story? How is this story made prominent, and why? 
 
 6. As You Like It: Compare the first act with the corresponding portion 
 
 of Lodge's novel. What reflections of the sonnet ideal of love re- 
 main in the play? Function of the Touchstone-Audrey-WiUiam 
 story; is it comparable with Shakspere's method in other plays, 
 e.g., Love's Labour's Lost and Two Gentlemen? Criticize from the 
 modern view-point the dramatic effectiveness or ineffectiveness 
 of acts one and five. 
 
 7. Twelfth Night: Compare the first act with those of Two Gentlemen 
 
 and As You Like It. Compare the relations between the romantic 
 story and the comedy elements in this play with the method in 
 Shakspere's other romantic comedies. Compare the story of Viola 
 with that of Julia {Two Gentlemen) as to incident, characterization, 
 and exposition. 
 
96 
 
 2. The Chronicle History Group 
 
 '(a) Henry VI. In three parts; about 1592; very Httle 
 
 of the first part by Shakspere. Represents primitive type 
 of chronicle play, history dramatized en bloc. 
 
 (b) Historical plays having a tendency toward tragedy: 
 Richard III (159.3), a play in Marlowe's manner, strongly 
 centralized about the Machiavellian character of Richard; 
 hint of Nemesis as foundation for tragedy at the end (com- 
 pare Macbeth) ; King John {ca. 1594) based in part upon an 
 earlier play, and uncertain in effect through representation 
 of John as both hero and villain; thus a return in construction 
 to primitive unorganized type, though with the difference 
 that main interest is in character, not incident. Richard 
 II {ca. 1594) based[^nj|olinjhedbut _similar in many respect s 
 ^Marlowe's Edward the Second; deals with closing events 
 in Richard's Teign. hence, pove rty of incident m ade-up 
 by longjpeeches of ^pic .and iyricL quality;Jiiiit-of-tragedy 
 of pity; besides Richard's, JfuUJength portrait of Gaunt, 
 representing patrio tism of Engla nd, is notable. (Compare 
 Fauiconbridge, in John, and Henry V, for other elements 
 in Shakspere's conception of the ideal Englishman). 
 
 (c) The Henry V trilogy {Henry IV, in two parts; Henry V : 
 1597-1599) presents Hal as prince and as king; epic type 
 with strong admixture of reaUstic comedy; based on old 
 English play. 
 
 Studies on the Historical Plays 
 
 1. Note relations between the group represented by John, Richard II, 
 
 Richard III and Shakspere's later work in tragedy based on 
 chronicle history {Lear, Macbeth). 
 
 2. Note relation of the plays dealing with Henry V (a) to epic con- 
 
 ception of history, both in plot and style; {b) to realistic comedy 
 as apart from the romantic type. 
 
 3. Study the relation of one of the plays to the chronicles of Holinshed; 
 
 note the general character of the changes made by Shakspere, and 
 the effects of these changes. 
 
98 
 
 The Tragedies 
 
 (a) Early experiments: Titus Andronicus {ca. 1594), a 
 tragedy of blood and revenge; crude in characterization; 
 melodramatic; not by Shakspere, though he revised it in 
 part. Romeo and Juliet, printed in imperfect form in 
 1597, written some years earlier; plot drawn mainly. from 
 Romeus and Juliet (by Arthur Brooke, 1562) and a version 
 of the story in Painter's Palace of Ple(\sure, ultimately an 
 Italian story; tragedy of blood but purified by story of 
 youthful love; lyrical hke Ve7ius and Adonis. 
 
 (b) Julius Caesar {ca. 1599), based mainly on North's trans- 
 lation of Plutarch; thus a play similar in part to the chronicle 
 plays, not really classical; chief problem arises in the fact 
 that Caesar dies in act III sc. i and what seems to be remi- 
 niscence of old revenge type of play is introduced by his 
 ghost; cf. Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet. 
 
 (c) Hamlet (1602), probably based on an old revenge play, 
 perhaps by Kyd, but the story goes back to Saxo Grammati- 
 cus. A tragedy of blood and revenge, but these elements 
 made less prominent through stressing of the philosophical 
 element in the play; little external action, the tragedy of 
 the soul of Hamlet. 
 
 {d) Othello {ca. 1604). Source in a story by Cinthio, but 
 notable for manner in which melodramatic and sordid story 
 of lust and murder has been elevated; notable also for absence 
 of comedy element save in sinister humor of lago, for absence 
 of sub-plot, and for marvelous compactness and motivation. 
 \j{e) King Lear (1604-1606). Based on old folk legend, told 
 also in Geoffrey's Chronicle, Gesta Romanorum, Mirror for 
 Magistrates, Holinshed, The Faerie Qucene, etc., and in 
 an old chronicle play of 1594; underplot from Sidney's 
 Arcadia; remarkable parallelism between main plot and the 
 story of Gloucester deepens the tragedy. 
 / (/) Macbeth (1606). Based on Holinshed; a tragedy of 
 personal ambition; shortest of the great tragedies. 
 
100 
 
 (g) Last tragedies of Shakspere: Timon of Athens (ca. 
 1607); Antony and Cleopatra (1608); Coriolanus {ca. 1609). 
 Shakspere 's Last Works 
 
 (a) Comedies written during the period of the great tragedies 
 and showing cynicism and disillusion: Troilus and Cressida 
 (1602); widely known story treated in original and baffling 
 manner; compare the version by Chaucer. AlVs Well that 
 Ends Well {ca. 1602) ; based on Painter's version of a story 
 by Boccaccio. Measure for Measure (1604); story of Italian 
 origin, through a comedy by Whetstone. 
 (6) Dramatic romances: Pericles, printed 1608; not wholly 
 by Shakspere. Cijmheline {ca. 1610); pseudo-historical 
 setting from Holinshed; main story widely known, and told 
 by Boccaccio and in Westward for Sinelts, an EngHsh mis- 
 cellany. Winter's Tale (1611); from Greene's romance 
 Pandosto; unites tragic story with pastoral romance. The 
 Tempest (1611); source of main plot uncertain; notable 
 for observance of classical unities and skilful use of the 
 supernatural. 
 
102 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. Study the effect of emphasis by comparing the Hero-Claudio story 
 
 (Much Ado) with the denouement of Romeo and Juliet and with the 
 story of Desdemona. 
 
 2. Compare lago and Richard III. Study the relations of Othello with 
 
 its source, particularly in the characterization of lago, in moti- 
 vation, and in the denouement. Note the cumulative effect of the 
 incidents and other details. 
 
 3. Study the use of incident in Hamlet; the amount of it, the elements 
 
 drawn from the old revenge plays. The various explanations of 
 the relation of Hamlet s character to the tragedy, as given in the 
 Variorum edition (Furness). 
 
 4. The history of the tragedy of Lear in the eighteenth century. 
 
 5. Contrast the fourth act of Macbeth with the other acts in motivation, 
 
 compactness, style. 
 
 6. Compare the conception of tragedy set forth in Romeo and Juliet 
 
 with that of Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Madbeth. The relation of these 
 last to the classical ideal of tragedy. 
 
 7. Compare Winter's Tale and The Tempest as to structure; Winter's 
 
 Tale and Othello as to main plot; Winter's Tale, Romeo and Juliet 
 and Much Ado in denouement. 
 
 8. Compare Tempest and Midsummer- Night's Dream in use of super- 
 
 natural, in versification, in style. 
 
 References: The best brief biographies of Shakspere, complementary to each 
 other in method and view, are those by Sidney Lee and Walter Raleigh. A 
 convenient introduction to the plays may be had in Dowden's Primer and in the 
 Introduction to Shakspere by Professor MacCracken and others. For a discus- 
 sion of Shakspcre's advance in technique, see Baker, The Development of Shaks- 
 pere as a Dramatist. See also the larger histories of literature, especially Cam- 
 bridge for its bibliographies, and such criticism as in Dowden, The Mind and Art 
 of Shakspere. Convenient complete texts of the plays are to be had in the 
 single volume Cambridge or Globe or Oxford editions. For sources and later 
 histories of the plays, see the Variorum editions so far as issued. For the Eliza- 
 bethan Stage, see Jusserand III. 36-104; Cambridge VI. 271-313; Baker, 36-99; 
 and the monograph on the Shaksperean Stage, by V. E. Albright. 
 
104 
 
 V. Dramatists contemporary with Shakspere 
 
 1. Ben Jonson (1573-1637) 
 
 (a) Represents a theory of drama opposed to Shakspere's 
 in his deference to classic models, his adherence to "rules", 
 his hatred of the romantic type, his carefully constructed 
 plot, his simple, not complex characters; his method to 
 construct a plot to fit his conception of his characters rather 
 than to create the characters to fit an old plot. 
 (6) Early comedies of the "humor" type: Every Man in 
 His Humour, 1598; Every Man out of His Humour, 1599. 
 (c) Later comedies, realistic in manner, classical in style, 
 satirical in intent: Volpone, 1606; Epicoene, 1609; The 
 Alchemist, .1610: Bartholomeio Fair, 1614. 
 {d) Classical tragedy: Sejanus (1603); Catiline (1611). 
 (e) Jonson also wrote many masques. 
 
 2. George Chapman (1559-1634) 
 
 (a) Translated Homer; wrote both comedies, such as The 
 Gentleman Usher (1606), and tragedies, such as Bussy d'Am- 
 bois (1607) and The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois (1613). 
 
 (b) Style vivid, poetic, imaginative; plot romantic and 
 exaggerated; epic rather than dramatic in manner. 
 
 3. Thomas Dekker {ca. 1570-ca. 1641) 
 
 (a) The Shoemaker's Holiday (1600), realistic study of 
 
 London life. 
 
 (6) Old Fortunatus (1600), a poetic comedy. 
 
 (c) Many other comedies notable for their descriptions of 
 London life. 
 
106 
 
 4. Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579- 
 
 1625) 
 
 (a) Wrote many plays in collaboration; others individually. 
 (6) Chiefly significant for dramatic romances and tragi- 
 comedies, such as Philaster (1608) and The Maid's Tragedy 
 (1609). 
 
 5. The End of the Romantic Drama 
 
 (a) From the death of Shakspere to the closing of the thea- 
 tres in 1642 the main dramatic tendencies were toward sen- 
 sationalism and theatricality; stressing of the scene rather 
 than the whole plot; lowered moral tone; licentiousness 
 in versification. The themes were mainly tragedies or tragi- 
 comedies of sex-interest and comedies of manners. 
 
 (b) John Webster is remembered chiefly for his Duchess of 
 Maljy (1616); John Ford, for his tragedy The Broken Heart 
 (1633); James Shirley, for his tragedy The Cardinall (1641), 
 the last of the great tragedies, and for his comedies of man- 
 ners, such as Hyde Park (1632) and The Lady of Pleasure 
 (1635). 
 
 References: All these dramatists are discussed in Cambridge VI. See also 
 Ward II. 296-765; III. 1-124; Jusserand III. 369-463. 
 
108 
 
 ELIZABETHAN PROSE 
 I. Prose Fiction 
 
 1. The old romances retained considerable popularity during the 
 sixteenth century, partly through the revival of chivalry. Malory 
 still read; other popular romances being Guy of Warwick, Lancelot, 
 Bevis of Hampton, and the later Amadis. Compare Faerie Queene. 
 Romances attacked, however, on the ground of immorality; most 
 Elizabethan fiction is either really or professedly moral in intention ; 
 later in the ^entury, the Italian prose tales largely supplanted them. 
 
 2. The collections of prose tales 
 
 (a) Based on the Italian novella, a short story romantic 
 in theme, but simple and realistic in style and often cli- 
 mactic in construction. Important for their influence on 
 Shakspere and other dramatists. 
 
 (6) Chief collections: William Painter, The Palace of Pleas- 
 ure, 1566; G. Fenton, Tragical Discourses, 1567; Barnahe 
 Riche His Farewell to the Miliiarie Profession, 1581. 
 
 3. The Novel 
 
 (a) John Lyly, E'ltp/iwes, 1578-1580. A short story expanded 
 by letters and moral discussions; style highly mannered 
 (antithesis, exaggerated similes, intricate alliteration, exact 
 balance of accents). 
 
 (6) Robert Greene, Pandosto, 1588 (influenced Winter^ s 
 Tale) ; Menaphon, 1589. Pastoral romances, unreal in scene 
 and euphuistic in style; filled with maxims; slight in charac- 
 terization. 
 
 (c) Thomas Lodge, Rosalynde, 1590. Main source of As 
 You Like It; a pastoral romance based on the pseudo- 
 Chaucerian Tale of Gamelyn ; style a combination of Euphu- 
 ism and Petrarchism; combines prose and verse; best of the 
 Elizabethan romances. 
 
 (d) Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia, 1580-85; published 1590. 
 Combines pastoral and chivalric elements ; contains elements 
 drawn from Sannazaro's Arcadia (title; pastoral back- 
 ground; interspersed eclogues); Montemayor's Diana (open- 
 
\ 
 
110 
 
 ing passages similar; some lyrics translated from it; woman- 
 page motif) ; Amadis of Gaul (romantic and chivalric epi- 
 sodes) ; and the Greek romances (prince captured by band of 
 outlaws, etc.). Plot badly made, because of multitude 
 of characters and incidents; style marked rather by conceits 
 and bold metaphors than the Euphuistic simile, sentences 
 longer than in Euphues; was regarded as a "poem" in its 
 time, and had great influence on drama (e. g. the Gloucester 
 plot in Lear), on contemporary poetry, and in later times 
 (e. g. Pamela's prayer was used by Charles I and called forth 
 a pamphlet from Milton; name also used by Richardson in 
 Pamela, etc.)- 
 
 (e) Thomas Nash, Jack Wilton, 1594. Story of an advent- 
 urer in his travels in France, Germany, and Italy until his 
 return with rich Itahan wife. Time of Henry VIII; the poet 
 Surrey is introduced and his love for Geraldine of the sonnets 
 made excuse for ridicule of Petrarchism; purpose also to 
 make fun of German and Italian culture, and of the English 
 for aping foreign fashions. Style affected, but better than 
 Lyly's or Sidney's; more realistic and witty; deals with com- 
 mon life, not pastoral, and is related to picaresque genre. 
 Suggests Don Quixote in parts. 
 
 (/) Thomas Deloney wrote (1596-1600) three storiest.( r/^o?^ as 
 of Reading, Jack of Newbury, and the Gentle Craft) in praise 
 of the crafts of the clothiers, the weavers, and the cobblers, 
 with much realistic description of contemporary life. 
 
 References: Jusserand, The English Novel, chapters ii-v; Literary History, 
 III. chapter iv; Cambridge III. 386-424; Canby, The Short Story in English, 
 103-155 (especially good for its treatment of the collections of prose tales); 
 Dunlop, History of Fiction, II. chapter xi (especially for summaries of plots); 
 Courthopc, II. chapters vii, viii. See also the histories of tlie English Novel by 
 Cross, Raleigh, Warren. The chapter on Arcadia in Fox Bourne's Life of Sid- 
 ney; the essay on Lodge in Gosse's Seventeenth Century Studies, and IMorley's 
 English Writers X may also be consulted. An excellent edition of Rusalynde 
 is in "The Shakespeare Library" (Duffield & Co.). 
 
112 
 
 II. The Beginnings of Literary Criticism in England 
 
 1. Literary criticism before the sixteenth century 
 
 (a) Chaucer's criticism of the romances in his Sir Thopas. 
 
 (b) Works on Rhetoric were the outgrowth of Humanism. 
 
 2. Roger Ascham introduced some elementary literary criticism 
 in The Scolemaster, 1570. 
 
 3. George Gascoigne, Certayn Notes of Instruction, 1575; rules 
 for writing verse. 
 
 4. Stephen Gosson, School of Abuse, 1579, represents Puritan 
 attack on poetry for its immorality; attacked drama and romances 
 especially. 
 
 5. Thomas Lodge, A Defence of Poetry, 1579; an eloquent reply 
 to Gosson. 
 
 6. Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy, written about 1583; 
 discusses position of poetry in past ages; classifies the "kinds"; 
 maintains poetry to be the highest of knowledges; defends it 
 against charges of immorality, and reviews state of poetry and 
 drama in his own time; classical point of view. 
 
 7. William Webbe, Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586; historical 
 but inadequate survey of English poetry; abuses rhyme and holds 
 brief for quantitative verse; compare Harvey's letters to Spenser 
 and the theories of the Areopagus. 
 
 8. Puttenham's (?) Arte of English Poesie, published 1589; com- 
 bines rhetoric with poetical criticism; historical survey; praises 
 Spenser and Sidney. 
 
114 
 
 g. Sir John Harington, in the Preface to his translation of 
 Ariosto, 1591, phrases tendency to regard Virgil as model for 
 epic poetry and compares him, in much detail, with Ariosto. 
 
 10. Thomas Campion, Observations on the Art of English Poesy, 
 1G02, reflects protest against effort to make English verse conform 
 to classical models, shown in the earlier quantitative verse. 
 
 11. Samuel Daniel, A Defence of Ryme, 1603, carries the revolt 
 farther and maintains the necessity of an English system. 
 
 12. As a whole, Elizabethan criticism has strong moral element, 
 due to the Puritan attack and the defences thereto; leans toward 
 classicism and ''rules"; admits the transitional character of 
 poetry of the time; shows beginnings of valuation of authors 
 and works. • 
 
 References: Cambridge, III. chapter xiv; the introduction to Gregory Smith's 
 Elizabethan Critical Essays; Spingarn's Literary Criticism in the Renaissance; 
 Jusserand II. 354-368. Sidney's Defense, edited by Cook, is published by Giun 
 & Company. 
 
116 
 
 m. Historical and Didactic Works 
 
 1. Chronicles were written by Raphael Holinshed (editor), Ed- 
 ward Hall, WiUiam Camden, and others. Raleigh attempted a 
 history of the world. Richard Hakluyt, Raleigh, and others 
 wrote accounts of travel and colonization. 
 
 2. Richard Hooker wrote, 1594-1597, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical 
 Polity, a defense of the Anglican position as against Calvinism. 
 Notable for its philosophical breadth of view, its dignity, its 
 learning, and a style eloquent and sonorous. 
 
 IV. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) 
 
 1. Lawyer, member of Parliament, and orator of great eminence, 
 as w^ell as an eager and ambitious student during the time of 
 Elizabeth; attained eminence as a writer and philosopher during 
 the reign of James; life marked by doubleness of aim, due to 
 self-seeking ambition coupled with a desire for service to knowl- 
 edge: ''I have taken all knowledge to be my province." 
 
 2. Chief prose works 
 
 (a) Essays, published 1597 (containing ten essays); 1612, 
 (38 essays); 1625 (58 essays). "Certain brief notes, set 
 down rather significantly than curiously"; subjects usually 
 abstract, treated from utilitarian point of view; notable for 
 abundance of illustration, shrewdness, extreme conciseness. 
 
 (b) Advancement of Learning (1605); a summary of existing 
 knowledge. 
 
 (c) The Wisdom of the Ancients (1609); thirty-one classical 
 myths with allegorical interpretation. 
 
 (d) Novum Organum (1620) ; presents the "new instrument of 
 thought and discovery," an analysis and arrangement of 
 inductive evidence; stresses practical aim of knowledge; 
 significant rather for the indication of the way in which 
 science was to develop than for the value of the results 
 reached by the author; written in Latin. 
 
118 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. "Of Studies": Has this essay any structure or is it inorganic? What 
 
 devices are used for marking transitions between sentences and main 
 divisions of the thought, if any? What is the difference between 
 Bacon's use of antithesis and balance and Lyly's? Study with 
 care the diction: use of archaic and obsolete words; source of the 
 vocabulary (Latin or English?); the use of rhetorical figures. Is 
 the style similar to that of the Bible in any respects? 
 
 2. "Of Truth": Structure? How does the imagery differ from that in 
 
 the essay on Studies? What does he mean by "lie"? 
 
 3. What indications of the character of the man are to be found in the 
 
 essays "Of Love," "Of Great Place," "Of Wisdom for a Man's 
 Self"? 
 
 4. Classify the themes of the Essays. 
 
 5. Compare with the Essays of Montaigne. 
 
 References: Cambridge IV. 319-335 (best for discussion of the scientific value 
 of Bacon's work) : Schelling, English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare, 
 337-356 (inchnes to hostile view); Scott, Introduction to edition of the Essays 
 (distinctly appreciative view, with thorough study of literary quahties and 
 sources); Jusserand III. 524-549 (like Macaulay's Essay in balancing character 
 of the man against wisdom of the writer). The best edition of the Essays is 
 that by M. A. Scott (Scribners). 
 
120 
 ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 
 
 I. Translations from the Classics 
 
 1. English translations of Ovid, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sallust, 
 Xenophon, Cicero. 
 
 2. Sir Thomas North, Plutarch, 1579. 
 
 3. R. Stanyhurst, Virgil's Aeneid (four books), 1582. 
 
 4. George Chapman, Homer's Iliad, 1598, 1611. 
 11. Translations from contemporary foreign literature 
 
 1. Thomas Hoby, The Boke of the Courtier, 1561, from II Cor- 
 tegiano by Castiglione; a famous "conduct-book," important 
 for its influence on Spenser. 
 
 2. The Italian prose tales were translated by Fenton, Painter, 
 and others. 
 
 3. Machiavelli's II Principe, known in the original and in the 
 garbled French version by Gentillet, exerted profound influence 
 on Elizabethan thought and literature; the Art of War and Floren- 
 tine History were known in English versions. 
 
 4. Italian poetry: Ariosto's Orlando Furioso translated by Haring- 
 ton, 1591; Tasso' s Gerusalemme Liberata translated by Fairfax, 
 1600. Petrarch universally known, but usually translated piece- 
 meal and without acknowledgment. 
 
 5. French hterature: Florio's translation of Montaigne, 1603; 
 Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas, 1590-1592. Influence of 
 Ronsard, Desportes, and Du Bellay comparable with that of 
 Petrarch, and transmitted in the same manner. 
 
 References: Schelling, English Literature etc., 262-291; Cambridge IV. 1-28; 
 Jusserand II. 386-377; also the works on the ItaUan and French Renaissance in 
 England by Einstein, Upham, Lee. 
 
122 
 
 m. The English Bible 
 
 1. Partial translations made in Anglo Saxon times by Alfred and 
 Aelfric ; in the fourteenth century by John Wyclif . 
 
 2. Translations in the sixteenth century 
 
 (a) Wilham Tindale translated, 1526-1530, the New Testa- 
 ment and the Pentateuch; this influenced Matthew's Bible, 
 edited by John Rogers, 1537, and the Great Bible, edited by 
 Cranmer, 1539. 
 
 (b) First English version of the entire Bible by ^Miles Cover- 
 dale, 1535. 
 
 3. The King James Bible, 1604-1611, has exerted prodigious 
 influence on English literature. 
 
 (a) Because though translations from the classics and from 
 contemporary foreign literature usually fail to render ex- 
 actly the genius of the original tongue, it was possible to 
 translate the Hebrew scriptures with such fidelity as to 
 reproduce the spirit as well as the matter of the original. 
 
 (b) Because its concreteness and simplicity corrected the 
 main faults of Elizabethan prose in diction and imagery; 
 93% of its vocabulary is native English, and there are only 
 about 6000 words as against 20,000 or more in Shakspere 
 and 13,000 in Milton. 
 
 (c) Because the poetical portions of the work, retaining in 
 the translation their emotional and imaginative value, 
 served as a model for an English prose which should have 
 literary distinction without the affectation of Euphuism, 
 or the disorder and incoherence of the tracts, or the abstract 
 and involved style of Latinized prose. 
 
 (d) Because its passionate earnestness and directness of 
 appeal give the intensity found in the drama but rarely in 
 earlier prose. 
 
 (c) Because its phrases and images have become imbedded 
 in daily speech, a source of allusion more pervasive than 
 any other, part and parcel of the style of all English authors 
 of distinction since its time. 
 
124 
 
 (/) Because of the universality of its appeal to all classes 
 of society, whatever the degree of education; only Shaks- 
 pere being comparable in influence in this respect. 
 
 References: Professor Cook's chapter in Cambridge IV. 29-58; Gardiner's 
 The Bible as English Ldterature, 282-396; Green, History of the English People, 
 Book VII, chapter i. A good introduction to the literary study of the Bible 
 is that by R. G. Moulton (Heath & Company). 
 
126 
 POETRY FROM JONSON TO MILTON 
 
 L The Transition to the Seventeenth Century 
 
 1. Michael Drayton (1563-1631) 
 
 (a) Significant because his work reflects the course of Eng- 
 lish poetry from the time of the sonnet cycles to the birth 
 of Dry den. 
 
 (6) Chief works: Idea, the Shepheards Garland, 1593, 1606, 
 a series of eclogues in imitation of the Shepheards Calender 
 but with much less satire and moralizing; Idea's Mirrour, 
 1594, a soniiet cycle which passed through eleven editions 
 by 1631 ; England'' s Heroicall Epistles, 1597, a series of letters 
 from heroic lovers, written in couplets (compare Pope's 
 Eloisa to Abelard); Odes, 1606; Poly-Olhion, 1613, 1622, 
 an account of observation and travel in England, preserv- 
 ing history and legend as related to places visited; Nym- 
 phidia, 1627, a mock-heroic poem about Oberon and Titania. 
 {Poly-Olhion is one of a number of long poems patriotic 
 in aim and epic in stjde; other examples being Albion's 
 England, by Warner, 1586, and The Civill Wars, by Daniel, 
 1595-1609.) 
 
 2. John Donne (1573-1631) 
 
 (a) Most of his poems collected and published 1633, 1635, 
 but written 1592-1602; these poems Elizabethan in time 
 but their chief influence felt in the seventeenth centur3^ 
 (6) Themes: songs and sonnets mainly of an erotic type; 
 \ satires; devotional poems. 
 v(c) Significant for his rebellion against Petrarchism (com- 
 pare Nash, and the sonnets of Shakspere) ; for his inequal- 
 ity of style and subtlety and ingenuity of thought; for his 
 disregard of convention, and for his use of conceits drawn 
 from scientific and out of the way sources; his imagery, 
 however, not intended for ornament so much as for the 
 expression of highly original and imaginative thought; 
 somewhat similar to Browning. 
 
128 
 
 (d) Representative poems: Go and Catch a Falling Star and 
 Love's Deity (cynicism, contempt for Petrarchistic ideal); 
 The Ecstacy (shows his pecuUar style and intellectual 
 subtlety); The Storm (notable example of graphic descrip- 
 tion); Death (a sonnet). 
 
 ;. Ben Jonson (1573-1637) 
 
 (a) Besides his dramas and masques, Jonson wrote odes, 
 lyrics and epigrams, printed as Epigrams and The Forest, 
 1616; Underwoods, 1640; and the prose Timber or Dis- 
 coveries, 1641. The last contains, besides little essays on 
 men and conduct, essays on style and poetry which show 
 the influence of Quintilian, Horace, and Aristotle and point 
 toward the criticism of the age of Dryden and Pope. 
 
 -/-_ (6) Jonson's lyrics are notable for their sense of form, 
 finish of style, indebtedness to the classics, and for their 
 influence on Herrick and others of the "tribe of Ben." 
 
 I -Jonson and Donne also used the heroic couplet for satire 
 
 and epigram. 
 
 \. Robert Herrick (1591-1674) 
 
 (a) His lyrics, about 1200 in number, written at various 
 times but not collected and pubUshed until 1648, with the 
 titles Hesperides and Noble Numbers; the first collection 
 consisting of secular and the second of devotional verse. 
 
 (b) Besides Jonson's, chief influences on his work the poems 
 of Catullus, Horace, and the Anacreontic lyrics. 
 
 (c) Themes: amoristic poems free from Petrarchism or 
 subtlety; folk customs; the transitoriness of beauty; the 
 seasons; flowers and fairies; religious poems. 
 
 (d) Poetry marked by polish of form combined with great 
 lyrical power; large variety of metrical forms; absence 
 of deep feeling or serious thought. 
 
7^ 
 
 130 
 
 II. The School of Spenser 
 
 1. William Druiiimond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) wrote many 
 lyrics, both amorous and religious; some pastorals; a prose tract, 
 The Cypresse Grove, is a discourse upon death that anticipates 
 the work of Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 2. George Wither (1588-162J) 
 
 (a) Satire : Abuses Stript and Whipt. 
 
 (b) Pastorals: The Shepherd's Hunting (1615); Fidelia 
 (1617); Faire Virtue (1622). These marked by true love 
 
 ^^ of nature, simplicity, lyrical power, use of the four accent 
 
 couplet made famous by Milton. 
 
 (c) Religious poetry: Haleluiah, a collection of Puritan 
 hymns, reflecting his sympathy with Puritanism, 1641. 
 
 3. William Browne (1591-1645) 
 
 (a) Britannia's Pastorals (1613, 1616) imitate Spenser, but 
 
 are simple and observant; patriotic in intention. 
 
 (6) Inner Temple Masque, performed 1614-15, influenced 
 
 Co7nus. 
 
 4. Giles Fletcher (1588-1623) 
 
 (a) Like other poets in this group, links Spenser and Milton. 
 Most important work, Christ's Victorie, 1610, in a modi- 
 fied Spenserian stanza, is in four parts: Heaven, Earth, 
 Death, Resurrection; and illustrates growing tendency 
 toward epic treatment of biblical material. 
 
 5. Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650) 
 
 (a) Britain's Ida, 1628, a version of the Venus and Adonis 
 story written in a modified Spenserian stanza, and long 
 attributed to Spenser. 
 
 (b) The Purple Island, 1633, an allegory of the human body 
 with nmch moral allegory in the manner of Spenser. Com- 
 pare Nosce Teipsum, by Sir John Davies, 1602, a philo- 
 sophical poem on human nature. 
 
 (c) The ApoUyonists, 1627, five cantos in modified Spen- 
 serian stanza, in which the story of the Fall of Lucifer is 
 connected with the history of the Roman church and reaches 
 a climax in the C^unpowder plot. Interesting relations 
 to Milton. 
 
132 
 
 m. Lyric Poets 
 
 1. The Cavalier Lyrists 
 
 (a) Besides Herrick, a group of court poets wrote songs 
 and lyrics during the reign of Charles I. Chief among them 
 were Thomas Carew (1598-1639); Richard Lovelace (1618- 
 1658) ; Sir John Suckling (1609-1641). 
 ' ^ (5) These poets notable for qualities of verse already noted 
 in Jonson and Herrick, but with far less range and greater 
 artificiality. 
 
 2. Writers of the religious lyric 
 
 (a) George Herbert (1593-1633) wrote The Temple, a col- 
 lection of nearly two hundred poems, published 1633. In 
 attention to form, suggests the Cavalier group; his fondness 
 — for conceits shows his relation to the type of poetry insti- 
 tuted by Donne; his passionate intensity and sincerity 
 reveal the character of the man and the contrast between 
 him and Herrick. 
 
 (6) Richard Crashaw (1612-1649) wrote both secular and 
 religious lyrics. Of the first. Wishes to his Supposed Mis- 
 tress is the most famous; of the second, The Weeper is notable 
 for the grotesqueness of its conceits, while the Hymne 
 to St. Teresa is passionate and powerful. 
 
 (c) Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) published Silex Scintillans 
 1650, 1656; owed much to Herbert, but with stronger ten- 
 dency to mysticism; imaginative power manifest in The 
 World and They are all gone into the World of Light. In 
 The Retreat suggested the main thought of Wordsworth's 
 ode on Immortality. 
 
 (d) William Habington (1605-1654) wrote Castara, a col- 
 lection of love poems, together with many religious lyrics. 
 
 (e) Francis Quarles (1592-1644) is remembered for his 
 Emhlemes, 1635. 
 
134 
 
 IV. Beginnings of Pseudo-Classicism 
 
 1. The three main tendencies in seventeenth century poetry thus 
 
 far considered: 
 
 (a) The school dominated by Jonson and Herrick represents 
 the classical impulse toward perfection of form. 
 
 (b) The Spenserian group represents the growing interest 
 in long narrative and epic poems partly religious, partly 
 historical and patriotic. 
 
 (c) The concettists (Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, etc.) repre- 
 sent not only the decadence from Ehzabethan imaginative 
 and lyrical power and a new artificiality distinct from the 
 artificiahty of Petrarchism, Euphuism, etc., but also an 
 increasingly religious tone of poetry reflecting sincere feel- 
 ing, often expressed in the grotesque and over-wrought im- 
 agery characteristic also of Puritan poetry and prose. 
 
 2. The group now to be considered represents the further devel- 
 opment of cl assicism into a poetry that stresses form above con- 
 tent. The ode replaces the older pastoral and sonnet; the couplet 
 becomes epigrammatic; ''fancy" takes the place of imagination; 
 medieval abstractions become mere conventions; classical allu- 
 sion and studied phrase lead to a new poetic diction. Chief 
 exemplars of this tendency: Waller; Denham; Cowley; Davenant. 
 
136 
 
 Edmund Waller (1605/6-1687) 
 
 (a) His Poems published 1645; translation of a part of Vir- 
 gil, 1658; Divine Poems, 1685; about 5000 lines in all. 
 ih) Distinguished for some fine lyrics, which however are 
 imitative, not original; other lyrics marked by triviality, 
 gallantry, cynicism. Chief reasons for the great influence 
 exerted by him to be found in his popularizing of the closed 
 couplet; in his theory that the function of poetry is to please; 
 and in the example which he set for regarding polish and 
 elegance as the chief duty of a poet. 
 
 (c) Before "Waller, the heroic couplet long known. Chaucer 
 used it, but in flexible form, in a large portion of his work; 
 Spenser used it in satirical verse; Shakspere in parts of 
 Love's Labour's Lost; Joseph Hall in his satires (Vergi- 
 demiarum, 1597, based on Juvenal) gave it much of the point 
 and epigram dear to later times; Jonson, who was Waller's 
 master, also used it in his satires; Drayton, in his Heroicall 
 Epistles; and George Sandys, in his versions of Ovid, 1626, 
 and of the Aeneid, Book I, 1632, showed its possibilities as 
 a medium for translation of the classics. 
 
 Sir John Denham (1615-1668) 
 
 (a) Translated part of the Aeneid into heroic couplets. 
 (6) Cooper's Hill, 1642; in heroic couplets; combines des- 
 cription with moral reflection; the description being general, 
 not specific, and the style conventional but concise and 
 antithetical. 
 
138 
 
 5. Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) 
 
 (a) The Mistress, 1647, amoristic poetry marked by frigid- 
 ity, conventionality, conceits. 
 
 (6) Pindarique Odes, 1656, professed to imitate Pindar's 
 "enthusiasticall manner"; not truly Pindaric in form; 
 filled with abstractions and conceits; exerted great influ- 
 ence on succeeding pseudo-classic poets, 
 (c) Davideis, 1656, a sacred epic, designed in imitation of 
 Virgil, but only four of the twelve books written; pedantic 
 and labored, but illustrates tendency that was to culminate 
 in Milton; heroic couplet. 
 
 (rf) Cowley's influence mainly felt in his popularizing of 
 the ode, which became the chief lyric form in the pseudo- 
 classic period ; and in his use of the couplet for heroic narra- 
 tive. His prose, Advancement of Learning, Cromwell, Essays, 
 (1661), is free from the artificiality of his verse. 
 
 6. Sir William Davenant wrote an epic poem, Gondibert (two 
 books published 1650); planned in five books corresponding to 
 the five acts of a drama; poem suggests the heroic plays of Dry- 
 den in style, theme, and conception of poetry. 
 
 References: The best survey of the lyric poetry of the period is in Schelling, 
 Seventeenth Century Lyrics; see also Ward's English Poets III.; Drayton, in Cam- 
 bridge IV. 193-224; Herrick: Cambridge VII. 5-18; Courthope III. 253-265. 
 Donne: Schelling, English Literature etc., 357-377; Cambridge IV. 225-256; 
 Courthope III. 147-168. The Spcnserians: Cambridge IV. 172-192; Courthope 
 III. 9-73; 12G-14G. Theological and Court lyrists: Cambridge VII. 1-54; Court- 
 hope III. 118-14G; 169-333. Classical group: Cambridge VII. 55-81; Courthope 
 III. 271-284; 334-385. 
 
140 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PROSE BEFORE DRYDEN 
 
 I. The Prose of Learning and Scientific Inquiry 
 
 1. Bacon's scientific works belong to the early part of the century. 
 
 2. Robert Burton (1577-1640) 
 
 (a) The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, purports to be a 
 
 scientific inquiry into the definition, causes, symptoms, 
 
 and properties of melancholy; its cure; with a special study 
 
 of love melancholy and religious melancholy. 
 
 (6) Style marked by pedantic quotation of authorities; 
 
 ill-digested masses of material; humor; interest in human 
 
 nature. 
 
 (c) Influenced Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Lamb, Coleridge, 
 
 etc. 
 
 3. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) 
 
 (a) Religio Medici, written about 1635 for private use, pub- 
 lished 1642, 1643; immense popularity due in part to its 
 freedom from the rehgious controv rsy of the time, in part 
 to the charm of its style and of the personality revealed 
 in its pages. 
 
 (6) Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial, and The Garden of Cyrus, 
 1658. The first, inspired by the discovery of some burial 
 urns at Norfolk, is an essay on modes of burial, and a series 
 of reflections on death, fame, and immortality, 
 (c) Style intimately revealing, imaginative, rhythmical, 
 erudite; curious in texture, in subject, in intellectual quaUty. 
 
 4. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) 
 
 (a) The Holy War (1640); Holy and Profane State (1641); 
 
 The Worthies of England (1662). 
 
 (6) Notable for skill in characterization and for his wit. 
 
^ 
 
 •• 
 
142 
 
 5. Izaak Walton (1593-1683) 
 
 (a) Compleat Angler (1653); Lives (of Donne, Herbert, 
 Wotton, and others) published separately at various times; 
 collected, 1670. 
 
 (6) Less pedantic than others included in this section, he 
 shows the spirit of the antiquary, combined with that of 
 the lover of nature; his style charming for its simplicity. 
 II. Travel, History, Political Science 
 
 1. Books of travel by Purchas (1613), Sandys (1615), and others. 
 
 2. Historical works by Bacon {Henry the Seventh), Raleigh 
 ( History of the World) , and others. 
 
 3. Thomas Hobbes wrote (1631) Leviathan, "the matter, form, 
 and power of a commonwealth." 
 
 III. Theological Writers 
 
 1. Richard Baxter, The Saint's Everlasting Rest, 1649/50. 
 
 2. Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living (1650); Holy Dying (1651). 
 
 References: No satisfactory liistory of English prose in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury exists. For the writers in group I., consult Cambridge VII. A convenient 
 edition of Browne's principal Avritings, with an introduction by Professor Herford, 
 is published in Everyman's Library. 
 
144 
 JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) 
 
 I. First Period (1608-1639) 
 
 1. Poems written while a student at Christ's College, Cam- 
 bridge, 1625-1632. 
 
 (a) On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629) ; unites Pagan 
 and Christian elements in the manner of Renaissance poets; 
 anticipates the conception, in Paradise Lost, that heathen 
 deities, representatives of Satan, were put to flight by the 
 coming of Christ; shows sympathy with the beauty of old 
 religious faiths, not hatred ; style disfigured at times by con- 
 ceits, but a poem filled with lyrical beauty despite its learn- 
 ing. 
 
 (fe) Seven Latin elegies, written 1625-1629, valuable for 
 autobiographical details: his relations to several friends; 
 an early love affair; his interest in London crowds and thea- 
 tres; his conception of the poet's function. 
 
 (c) Some experiments in verse, such as metrical versions 
 of some Psalms, a speech for a vacation exercise at college, 
 some elegiac poems, a tribute to Shakspere. 
 
 (d) The famous sonnet On Being Arrived at the Age of 
 Twenty Three. 
 
 2. Poems written at Horton (1632-1638) 
 
 (a) L' Allegro and II Penseroso (1634); studies in contrasted 
 moods, representing what were to him the two sides of a 
 well proportioned life; exactly balanced in structure; the 
 setting that of an "ideal day," though this is not strictly 
 followed. 
 
 (b) The Masques: Arcades, a fragment, 1633; Comus, 1634, 
 published 1637. Comus unites classical studies of Milton 
 with elements characteristic of the Renaissance; sources 
 and analogues in Spenser (his theory of Beauty, and the 
 Bower of Bliss) ; Peele, The Old Wives Talc ; Fletcher, The 
 Faithful Shepherdess; Jonson's masque of Pleasure Recon- 
 ciled to Virtue. Distinguished from usual type of masque 
 
146 
 
 by greater amount of story, seriousness of tone, lyrical beauty, 
 perfection of form. 
 
 (r) Lycidas (1637), published in the collection of elegies 
 in memory of Edward King, 1638; a pastoral dirge which 
 observes many of the conventions of the genre, but individual 
 in style, thought, and beauty. Sources and analogues 
 in Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser. 
 
 3. Poems belonging to the period of foreign travel, 1638-1639. 
 
 (a) Six Italian sonnets, showing the influence of Petrarch, 
 and perhaps reflecting an experience in Italy. 
 (6) To Manso, a Latin verse epistle addressed to a man of 
 letters whom Milton met at Naples; poem important for in- 
 dication that Milton contemplated an Arthurian epic, 
 (c) Epitaphium Damonis, a pastoral dirge of great beauty, 
 written in Latin, in memory of his friend Diodati, and con- 
 taining further references to the projected Arthurian epic. 
 
 4. These poems were collected in 1645 and published under the 
 title "Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, com- 
 posed at several times." 
 
148 
 
 II. Second Period (1640-1660) 
 
 1. This period important chiefly for the prose works; Milton 
 engaged in teaching, 1639-1647; Secretary for Foreign Tongues, 
 1649-1660; completely blind after 1652. 
 
 2. Chief Prose Works 
 
 (a) The Reason of Church Government (1642); one of the 
 most important sources of knowledge concerning his life 
 and opinions. 
 "^ (6) The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 1643. 
 
 (c) Education, 1644. 
 
 (d) Areopagitica, 1644; a defence of the liberty of the press. 
 
 (e) Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and Eikonoklastes, 
 , 1649, deal with right of people to dethrone a monarch. 
 
 ^ (0 A Free Commonwealth, 1660; proposes an oligarchy, not 
 true republic; possibly caused loss of secretaryship and 
 arrest, August-December, 1660. 
 3- Poems 
 
 (a) Most of the Sonnets belong to this period; these approach 
 more nearly the Italian form and imitate Petrarch rather 
 in the use of themes drawn from religion, politics and 
 the life of the poet than in the Elizabethan sense. Several 
 are addressed to women; others to intimate friends; a 
 third group deals with politics and statesmen, and the fourth 
 is autobiographical. 
 
 (6) Some few translations belong here, chiefly from the 
 Psalms, and the pathetic Latin ode to John Rouse (1646) 
 librarian at Oxford, in which Milton longs for the return 
 of the Muse of Learning and an age of sounder hearts. 
 
150 
 
 III. Paradise Lost 
 
 1. Published 1667, in ten books; second edition, dividing books 
 vii and x of the original, making twelve books in all, 1674. 
 
 2. Inception from 1641; chief documents are his Epistle to Manso, 
 the Epitaphium Damonis, the Reason of Church Government, and 
 his Common-place Book. Hesitated between Arthurian and Bib- 
 lical subject; epic or Greek tragedy. By 1642 had several outlines 
 on Fall of Man; began work soon after. Influenced by Spenser, 
 Tasso, and Renaissance theory of a poet's function and of the epic. 
 
 3. Sources and analogues: Many epics and dramas on biblical 
 subjects throughout Europe in the seventeenth century. Milton 
 possibly influenced by Andreini {Adamo, Italian drama, 1613); 
 Du Bartas {Divine Week, translated by Sylvester, 1605); Vondel 
 {Lucifer, Dutch drama, 1654). Other poems by Vondel, the 
 Adamus Exul by Grotius, and English poems by Giles and Phineas 
 Fletcher may have had influence. Real significance is not in 
 direct borrowing; rather in proof of widespread interest in such 
 subjects; like Dante, Milton sums up an epoch; his poem is 
 a literary epic, but is the result of something analogous to ''epic 
 ferment." Error to regard it as the result of his despair over 
 the failure of the Commonwealth; in inception and in a consid- 
 erable part of the writing it proceeds from a very different mood. 
 
 4. Contents: Book I. Satan and Beelzebub arouse their followers 
 from the Lake of Fire; Pandemonium built. II. The Parliament 
 in Pandemonium; Satan chosen for embassy to Earth; the occu- 
 pations of his followers during his absence; his flight through 
 Chaos. III. The consultation in Heaven; Satan's arrival at 
 the World (Ptolemaic cosmogony) ; interviews Uriel in the Sphere 
 of the Sun; arrives at Earth near Eden. IV. Satan visits Eden, 
 learns the conditions on which Man may remain there; Uriel 
 warns Gabriel, who thwarts Satan's first attack. V.-\TII. 
 Raphael warns Adam; relates the story of Satan's rebellion and 
 fall; gives an account of the Creation. IX. Satan succeeds in 
 his plot. X. Adam and Eve sentenced; Satan's return and ac- 
 count of his victory; remorse of Adam and Eve. XI, XII. 
 Michael, sent to drive Man from Paradise, shows, in vision, the 
 history of the race; the expulsion. 
 
152 
 
 IV. Last Works of Milton 
 
 1. Paradise Regained 
 
 (a) Several subjects from the life of Christ in Milton's 
 list of 1640-1641; subject of Christ's victory over Satan 
 implicit in Paradise Lost; the poem probably written 1665- 
 1667; published 1671. 
 
 (b) Sources and analogues in the book of Job, which Milton 
 regarded as an epic; in Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victorie 
 (of value only as an analogue); and in the bibhcal account 
 of Satan's temptation of Christ. 
 
 (c) The poem, which is in four books, is less effective than 
 Paradise Lost because of its artificiality in comparison 
 with the biblical narrative; its consequent failure to be 
 convincing; the lack of creative imagination; the tyranny 
 of religious dogma. 
 
 2. Samson Agonistes 
 
 (a) Published 1671; this subject also included in the list 
 of 1641, and in his choice of Greek tragedy as his model 
 Milton realizes his earUer inclination toward drama; not 
 intended as an acting drama. 
 
 (6) Sources and analogues: Besides the narrative in Judges 
 (chapters xiii-xvi), a drama by Vondel on the same subject 
 (1660) is analogous, though not a true source. 
 (c) Significance consists in the analogy between the theme 
 and the mood of Milton after the Restoration; in the extra- 
 ordinary variety and effectiveness of the versification; 
 in the freedom from ornament and allusion, on which com- 
 pare the Elizabethan prodigality of the early poems. 
 
 3. To this period also belong a text book on Grammar, a History 
 of Britain (1670), and the second edition of the Minor Poenis, 
 with some additions (including poems of the second period), 
 1673. 
 
154 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. On the early poems 
 
 (a) Find illustrations in the texts of the characteristics named in 
 
 the Outline. 
 
 (6) Compare Comus with other masques, e. g. one of Jonson's. 
 
 (c) Relation of these poems to Elizabethan poetry. 
 
 {d) Milton's use of Nature. 
 
 2. On the works of the second period 
 
 (a) From the sonnets, the Latin elegies (i, v, vi, vii), the Latin 
 epistle to his father, the Reason of Church Government, summarize 
 the autobiographical material. 
 
 (6) Make an outline of Areopagiiica, testing its value as argument. 
 (c) Characteristics of Milton's prose; on which compare Bacon. 
 
 3. On Paradise Lost 
 
 (a) The best_books to read are the first, the second, a,nd the ninth. 
 (6) Compare \\{t\i~lYi^'Aeneid as to management of the action; 
 unity of the plot ; use of epic conventions; heroic simile; the speeches. 
 
 (c) Compare the verse wdth that of Hamlet or The Tempest. 
 
 (d) Study the characterization of the speakers in Pandemonium 
 andt he construction of the speeches as arguments. 
 
 (e) (Milton's diction as compared with Shakspere'sy 
 
 (/) Milton's use of biblical material. Of classical allusion. 
 (g) Has the poem a hero? 
 
 4. On Samson Agonistes 
 
 (a) Read Milton's introduction and discuss the relation of the 
 
 drama to Greek tragedy. 
 
 (6) Compare it with Comus as to action, verse, style. Criticize 
 
 Macaulay's comparison. 
 
 (c) The autobiographical significance. 
 
 {d) Passages from Milton's works illustrating his attitude toward 
 
 the drama. 
 
156 
 
 References: The best brief biographies are those by Pattison {English Men of 
 Letters) and Raleigh (Putnam). Professor Saintsbury's essay in Cambridge 
 VII. 108-161; Com-thope III. 378^21, and the Introduction (Moody) to the 
 Cambridge edition of the Poetical Works supply both biographical and critical 
 material. For the prose, the most convenient edition is that in the Riverside 
 Literature Series (Lockwood) ; this also contains several early biographies; see 
 also Morley's selections from the prose, valuable for the autobiographical pas- 
 sages, and Corson's Introduction to Milton (Macmillan). The best single volume 
 edition of the poems is the Cambridge (Houghton), which is noteworthy for the 
 separate introductions to the several poems. On the verse, see this book and also 
 Corson, Primer of English Verse, 193-220. The great authority on Milton is 
 Masson, The Life of John Milton, six volumes. Of the innumerable essays, those 
 by Lowell, Macaulay, Dowden, Leslie Stephen may be consulted. Woodhull's 
 The Epic of Paradise Lost is useful for its summaries of plots of analogous works. 
 
158 
 JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) 
 
 I. Dramatic works 
 
 I. Most of these belong to the period 1665-1678 
 
 (a) Heroic plays, such as The Conquest of Granada, Aureng- 
 zebe, etc.; written in couplets; unreal in character and situ- 
 
 j ation, stressing love interest, showing "poetic justice"; 
 style full of bombast and rant. 
 
 (6) Comedies, such as Marriage a la Mode, The Spanish 
 Friar, etc.; comedies of manners marked by coarseness; 
 prose and verse. 
 
 (c) Imitations of Shakspere, such as All for Love {Antony 
 and Cleopatra); in blank verse; conventional style; "heroic" 
 rather than dramatic. ^ 
 
 II. Poetical Works 
 
 1. For the most part written in the heroic couplet, in the satires 
 usually close but in the later works, such as the Fables, flexible 
 in management of pauses and rhymes, often with six accents. 
 Few lyrics apart from the Odes. Distinguished for clarity of 
 form, epigram, wit, satire, verse-essay. 
 
 2. Satirical and Controversial poems 
 
 (a) Absalom and Achitophel, 1681; second part, in collabora- 
 tion with Tate, 1682. A political satire, based on biblical 
 story used as allegory of political conditions ; notable for 
 portraits of Absalom (Alonmouth), Achitophel (Shaftesbury), 
 and Zimri (Buckingham). 
 
 (6) MacFlecknoe, 1682; a literary satire, forerunner of the 
 Dunciad. 
 
 (c) The Medal, 1682; political satire attacking Shaftesbury. 
 
 (d) Religio Laid, 1682; verse-essay defending Anglican 
 church. 
 
 (e) The Hind and the Panther, 1687; a beast fable (compare 
 Mother Hubberds Talc); apology for Catholics (Hind) as 
 against Anglicans (Panther) ; other characters are the Wolf 
 (Calvinists) and Fox (Socinians). 
 
% 
 
 160 
 
 3- Odes and Lyrics 
 
 (a) Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew, 1685, 
 (6) Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687. 
 (c) Alexander's Feast, 1697. 
 
 {d) Lyrics from the dramas, and many occasional poems. 
 4. Translations 
 
 (a) These very numerous; differ in important respects from 
 the translations of the Elizabethan period; show increasing 
 interest in translation characteristic of Classicism. 
 (6) Chief translations: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid of Virgil, 
 1697; many selections from Ovid; others from Juvenal, 
 Horace, Lucretius, Theocritus, etc.; the Fables (1700), 
 include five translations from Chaucer (one the pseudo- 
 Chaucerian Flower and the Leaf); three from Boccaccio; 
 others from Ovid; first book of the Iliad, etc. 
 m. Criticism 
 
 1. As a critic, Dryden notable for good sense, frank apprecia- 
 tion of earlier English poets, openness of mind. His prose 
 marked by colloquial ease, simple directness, freedom from 
 pedantry and all affectation; first modern prosaist. 
 
 2. Most of his criticism contained in his Prefaces, such as, 
 {a) Essays on Dramatic Poesy, 1664, 1668. Of Heroic 
 Plays, 1672. These defend the English stage against the 
 French, show his appreciation of Shakspere and advocate 
 rhyme in tragedy. Chief sources Aristotle and Corneille. 
 (6) Preface to the Fables, 1700; distinguished for view of 
 Chaucer, on which he differs from most Augustan criticism, 
 and for the comparison between Homer and Virgil, 
 (c) Other important Prefaces are those to his translation 
 of Virgil (on epic poetry) ; to the translation of Ovid (theory 
 of translation) ; to the collection of poems called Sylvae 
 (theory of translation) ; and to the translations from Juvenal, 
 etc., (remarks on Milton and Spenser) 
 
/ 
 
162 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. How do Dryden's lyrics differ from those of the Elizabethan period? 
 
 2. Compare the portraits of Absalom, Aehitophel, Zimri, with those of 
 the Canterbury pilgrims in Chaucer's Prologue. 
 
 3. The couplet, as practised by Dryden. 
 
 4. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite compared with Chaucer's Knight's 
 Tale. 
 
 5. Dryden's view of Chaucer and Shakspere. 
 
 6. Dryden's dramatic theory. 
 
 7. The prose style of Dryden (compare Bacon and Milton). 
 
 8. Differences between Dryden's translations (see the Prefaces as well 
 as some of the work) and those of the Elizabethan period. 
 
 References: The best brief biographies are those by Saintsbury {English Men 
 of Letters) and Leslie Stephen (Dictionary of National Biography) ; Essays by John- 
 son, Lowell, and others; Courthope IIL 482-533 (poetry) and IV. 397-453 
 (drama); Garnett, Age of Dryden, 7-4L The Preface to the Fables is reprmted 
 in Bronson's English Essays; a convenient edition of the dramatic criticism is 
 published in Holt's English Readings (edited by Strunk) ; for the full body of his 
 criticism see the edition by Ker, published by the Oxford University Press. 
 
164 
 CONTEMPORARIES OF MILTON AND DRYDEN 
 
 I. Poets 
 
 1. Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) 
 
 (a) Assisted Milton as Latin Secretary under Cromwell. 
 
 (6) Garden Poems, Bermudas, Ode on Cromwell's Return, etc., 
 
 written about 1650, published 1681, show great lyrical 
 
 power, sincere love for nature, mastery of form. 
 
 (c) Satires, written about 1670, published 1689; heroic 
 
 couplet. 
 
 2. Samuel Butler (1612-1680) 
 
 (a) A satirist of his times, rather than a partisan. 
 (6) Hudihras, 1663, 1664, 1678; a mock-heroic poem in the 
 manner of Don Quixote, written in four-accent couplets, 
 and attacking the Presbyterians; uses caricature rather than 
 characterization; is notable for many contributions to our 
 stock of familiar quotations; suggests the mock-heroic 
 genre culminating in Swift and Pope, 
 (c) Many other satires and prose works. 
 
 3. John Oldham (1653-1683) 
 
 (a) Wrote odes to Jonson and others. 
 
 (6) .Famous for satires, marked by invective and coarseness, 
 
 but WTitten in vigorous style. 
 
 4. Lyric poets. 
 
 (a) John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1 647-1680) 
 
 (6) Dryden, Otway, Sedley, and others introduced IjTics 
 
 into their dramas. 
 
 5. The Essay on Translated Verse, by the Earl of Roscommoa, 
 is an illustration of the growing popularity of the verse-essay. 
 
. 166 
 
 II. Dramatists 
 
 1. No authorized dramatic productions were made between 1642 
 and the Restoration. In 1656 Davenant produced The Siege of 
 Rhodes, an "entertainment of declamation and music'.' having 
 some of the features of modern opera; in 1660 he opened a theatre. 
 The French stage now replaced the Elizabethan: scene shifting, 
 re-arrangement of auditorium and stage, introduction of actresses. 
 The plays gave greater attention to the unities, sought elevation 
 of style and sentiment, used couplet (blank verse being thought 
 "low"); subjects dealt with politics and love. 
 
 2. Besides Dryden's, chief heroic plays were by Roger Boyle 
 (Mustapha, 1665), Nathaniel Lee {Nero, 1675), Thomas Otway 
 {Don Carlos, 1675). 
 
 3. Tragedy 
 
 (a) Continues romantic tragedy of the later Elizabethans. 
 {b) Thomas Otway wrote tragedies in blank verse: The 
 Orphan, 1680; Venice Preserved, 1682. 
 (c) Nicholas Rowe, Jane Shore, 1714. 
 
 4. Comedy 
 
 (a) Prose comedies of manners; brilliant in wit and style; 
 subject usually illicit love; indecent in language. 
 (6) William Wycherley: The Country Wife, 1673; The Plain 
 Dealer, 1674; influenced by Moliere; coarse and brutal, but 
 ^ of great power. ^ 
 
 (c) WilUam Congreve (1670-1729): wrote both comedy 
 and tragedy; intimate with Swift and Pope; best tragedy 
 The Mourning Bride, 1697; comedies, such as Lbve for Love, 
 1695, and The Way of the World, 1700, marked by excellence 
 of plot, scintillating wit, skill in portraiture, coarseness. 
 
 (d) George Farquhar, The Beaux Stratagem, 1707. 
 
 (e) Comedies were also written by Aphra Behn, Mrs. Manly, 
 and Mrs. Centlivre. 
 
168 
 
 III. Prose Fiction 
 I. Romances 
 
 (a) In the earlier part of the seventeenth century, romances 
 of the Arcadia type continued, with repeated editions of 
 Amadis and Guy of Warwick. 
 
 (b) The French heroic romances of Scudery and La Cal- 
 prenede were read in th€ original and in numerous transla- 
 tions. These differed from earlier romances in greater 
 stress laid on gallantry, on decorum; marked by bombastic 
 speeches, influenced heroic plays of Dryden and others. 
 
 (c) In England, Argenis (1621), a romance written, in Latin 
 by John Barclay, combined elements of the type of Arcadia 
 with disquisitions on problems of government and allegory of 
 
 . European history of his time; translated into various tongues 
 it exerted great influence on the heroic romances. Best Eng- 
 lish example of heroic romance is Boyle's Parthenissa, 1654. 
 
 (d) These romances of extreme length, filled with episodes; 
 allegorical presentation of contemporary persons and events; 
 literary circles founded by "the matchless Orinda" and Mar- 
 garet of Newcastle discussed them. 
 
 2. The reaction against romance 
 
 (a) Don Quixote translated 1612, 1620, 1687; Rabelais 
 translated by Urquhart, 1653. 
 
 (6) Taste for ''novels," often called "secret histories," in- 
 creased after the Restoration. These of moderate length, 
 more realistic, appealed to the Hking for scandal; written 
 usually by "a person of Quality" or said to be translated 
 "from the French." 
 
 (c) Congreve in his short story "Love and Duty Recon- 
 cil'd" 1692, distinguished between romance and novel, and 
 wrote a tale of gallantry in slightly realistic vein. 
 id) Orponoka (1688), by Aphra Behn, combines strong 
 humanitarian interest (cf. Rousseau) with style of heroic 
 novel; purpose to contrast state of nature with civilization 
 and to attack slavery. 
 
170 
 
 John Bunyan (1628-1688) 
 
 (a) Next to Dryden, most important influence on develop- 
 ment of modern prose. His style simple and direct, effect- 
 ive because subordinated to the writer's purpose; intense 
 earnestness clothed in the homely diction of the Bible. 
 (6) Chief works: pamphlets of a controversial nature, 1656- 
 1660; Grace Abounding, an autobiography, 1665; Pilgrim's 
 Progress, part I, 1678; part II, 1684; Life and Death of 
 Mr. Badman (reverses pilgrimage of Christian) 1680; The 
 Holy War, 1682. About sixty works written by Bunyan. 
 (c) Pilgrim's Progress has many analogues, such as the 
 various dream allegories of the fifteenth century; Piers 
 Plowman; Lydgate's translation. The Pilgrimage of the Life 
 of Man, from the French of de Guileville. It is radically 
 different from The Faerie Queene. The source is in the 
 New Testament conception of hfe, and in Bunyan's own 
 "vision." 
 
 {d) The significance of Bunyan's work in relation to the 
 novel is in its use of simple narrative in place of older arti- 
 ficiality of plot and style; in its abundant use of detail 
 to give the effect of realism; in the genius by which abstrac- 
 tions are given the reality of living men; in its knowledge 
 of the human heart and of life in the English villages. 
 
 Other writings in prose that contributed to the novel 
 
 (a) The character books. These owe something to the 
 "characters" of Theophrastus (373-284 B. C). In England, 
 Joseph Hall's Characters of Virtues and Vices, 1608; Thomas 
 Qverbury's Characters, 1614; John Earle's Microcosmo- 
 graphie, 1628, were collections of character sketches, like 
 essays, containing little narrative but important in the 
 transition from stories of incident to the novel of character. 
 These pioneers were followed by a host of imitators, among 
 them Samuel Butler, and reached complete development 
 in The Spectator. 
 (6) The new interest in biography, shown by Walton's 
 
172 
 
 Lives, etc.; the autobiographies and memoirs, such as those 
 by Margaret of Newcastle, Bunyan, Pepys (Diary 1660- 
 1669; pubUshed 1828), Evelyn (Diary 1641-1706; published 
 1818); the short stories in form of letters, such as The 
 Letters of Lindamifa. 
 IV. Other Prose, 1660-1700 
 
 1. Scientific prose 
 
 (a) Isaac Newton, Principia, 1687. 
 
 (b) John Locke, Essay Concerning the Human Understand- 
 ing, 1690. 
 
 2. Criticism 
 
 (a) In Jonson is to be found early statement of the theory 
 of "rules" as true tests of literary values; hke him, Alilton 
 acknowledges allegiance to Aristotle and Horace. 
 (h) Other contributions to neo-classic theory in works of 
 Hobbes, Cowley, and Davenant. 
 
 (c) Highest type of criticism before the eighteenth century 
 is found in Dryden. 
 
 (d) Criticism of the drama is found in Thomas Rymer, 
 notorious for his attacks on Shakspere's plays; and Jeremy 
 Collier, whose *S7?orf View of the Irmnorality and Prof oneness 
 of the English Stage (1698) reminds us of Gosson and pre- 
 cipitated hot discussion and some reforms. 
 
 3. History 
 
 (a) Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, wrote his great His- 
 tory of the Rebellion near the end of his Hfe (died 1674); 
 this work, published 1702-1704, has been described as an 
 "historical epic." 
 
 (6) Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, (1643-1715) wrote 
 a History of the Reformation (published 1679, 1714), and 
 History of his Own Times (published 1723-1734). 
 
174 
 
 References: Convenient handbooks covering the period are The Age of Milton, 
 by J. H. B. Masterman and The Age of Dryden, by Richard Garnett. For the 
 Restoration drama see Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, III/ 277- 
 518; Courthope IV. 386-454; Chase, The English Heroic Play; Garnett, Age 
 of Dryden 76-148, Gosse; English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, 38-72. 
 On prose fiction consult Jusserand, English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, 
 347-418; Canby, Short Story in English, 156-176; Cross, English Novel, 13-27. 
 For Bunyan add Cambridge VII. 188-202; Froude in English Men of Letters; 
 Dowden in Puritan and Anglican. Summaries of the plots of the important 
 French romances are in Dunlop, History of Fictio?i, II. 379-394; 403-462. 
 
17G 
 
 PROSE FROM 1700 TO 1740 
 
 I. General characteristics of English prose 1700-1740 
 
 1. Marked by criticism o f life as distinguished from the Arca- 
 dianism of the sixteenth ccntiiry; by its appeal to the intellect 
 rather than to feeling or imagination; by the subordination of 
 style to purpose. * 
 
 2. Follows the example of Dryden in colloquial ease and simplic- 
 ity of dieljon. 
 
 3. Exerted important influence on the development of journaUsm 
 and of the modern novel. 
 
 II. Daniel Defoe (1660 or 1661-1731) 
 
 1. Style marked by _ simplicity, dis cursiveness , carelessness, mi- 
 nute deta il^ narrative skill. His use of the picaresqu e in his 
 novels tends to greater unity of plot; his characters ar e drawn 
 from real life; his attention to detai l gives v erisimilitud e. 
 
 2. Chief works 
 
 (a) Pamphlets, such as The^ShortestWaiiynth^ 
 ^1702) which according to Defoe was intended to bring the 
 High Church party into ridicule by presenting extreme view 
 of their position; caused imprisonment of the author, 
 (6) Periodicals. Defoe was connected with many news- 
 papers, chiefly in the years 1716-1726. Earher than tliis 
 (1704-1713) he had anticipated The Taller and The Spec- 
 tator in his Review of the Affairs of France, a small four-page 
 quarto, in which he introduced '' Advice from the Scandalous 
 Club" and also editorial comment on European and national 
 affairs. 
 
 (c) Prose fiction (1719-1725). Defoe wrote many short 
 fictions, such as The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (1706). Besides 
 Robinson Crusoe (1719-1720), which is a j:ealistic_Jiai:eL-Df 
 incident, The History of the Plague in London (1722) shows 
 skill in managing details so as to produce the effect of autlieit 
 tic_history; Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722), 
 Colonel Jack (1722), Roxana (1724) and Jonathan Wild 
 
O^^aaXX^^^^ 
 
 Qj^jsjiX.' 
 
178 
 
 (1725), are aU^icaresillie. stories, purporting to be biographies, 
 interest mainly in incident though at times showing skill 
 in character analysis. 
 ni. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) 
 
 1. Style characterized by force, plainness, use of invective and 
 sarcasm, coarseness; favorite forms are allegory, mock-hecoic 
 prose epic, elaborate irony. 
 
 2. The^JBxUJ le of the B ooks fl697) deals with the famous contro- 
 versy over the relative merits of Ancient and Modern writers; this 
 was introduced by Sir ^^'illiam Temple, who was opposed by Rich- 
 ard Bentley (Epistles of Phalaris, 1697); Swift defended Temple. 
 S.^TJie Tale of a Tub (1698, published 1704) religious satire 
 under the form of allegory. 
 
 3. Gullivers Travels (1726); satire of politics and learning; alle- 
 gory remarkable for the way in which a simple narrative which 
 is loved by children conceals the fiercest satire. 
 
 4. Other works: Bickerstaff Papers (1708); Drapier's Letters 
 (1724); A Modest Proposal (1729). The Journal_to . Stella was 
 written 1710-1713. Swift also wrote some poems. 
 
 IV. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) and Joseph Addison (1672-1719) 
 
 1. Their most important work found in their collaboration on 
 the periodicals: The Taller (1709-1711) and The Spectator (1711- 
 1714). Their style marked by humor, simplicity, absence of 
 pedantry and of sarcasm, skill in portraiture. Their aim, the 
 reformation of manners, but their methods very different from 
 those of Swift. The proportion of narrative in their work is 
 small, but the careful portraits of "characters" contribute to the 
 development of the novel. 
 
 2. Steele also important for his contributions to the drama, 
 of which The Tender Husband (1705) and The Conscious Lovers^* 
 (1722) are examples. 
 
 3. Addison also significant for his contributions to criticism, 
 chiefly found in The Spectator; for some poems, such as The 
 Campaign (1704); and for the Roman play, written according to 
 neo-classic standards, Cato (1713). 
 
180 
 
 V. Other prose of the period 
 
 1. John Arbuthnot (16G7-1735), a member of the Scriblerus Club, 
 wrote The History of John Bull (1713), an attack on ]\Iarlborough, 
 and Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus (1741), which ridicules false 
 learning. 
 
 2. John Dennis (1657-1733); a writer of bombastic verse and of 
 man}' tragedies; a dramatic critic, chiefly of Shakspere; attacked 
 by Pope, 
 
 3. Colley Gibber (1671-1757) a famous actor who also wrote 
 dramas and "improved" Shakspere; poet laureate; lampooned 
 by Pope; best work his Apology, 1740. 
 
 4. Lady Mary Wortley Alontagu (1689-1762) and Philip Stanhope, 
 
 Earl of C hesterfield (1694-1773) are remembered for their letters. 
 
 ^. Writers of theology and philosophy: Bishop Atterbury; Lord 
 /S haftesbur y (Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc., 1711); Bernard 
 
 de Mandeyille (Fahle of the Bees, 1723); Lord ^ Bq liogbroke ; 
 
 George Berkeley; Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion, 1736). 
 
182 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. Read a portion of the Journal of the Plague or of Robinson Crusoe, 
 noting the characteristics of the style; the use of detail as a means 
 of gaining verisimilitude; the presence or absence of description, of 
 character analysis, etc. Robinson Crusoe may be compared with the 
 narrative of Selkirk (in Captain Edward Cook's Voyage to the South 
 Seas, 1712); note that many romantic incidents are omitted; how 
 then does Defoe differ from most writers of travel stories? 
 
 2. Contrast Swift's use of allegpry with Spenser's and Bunyan's; his 
 realism with Defoe's and Bunyan's; his mock-heroic devices with 
 those of The Rape of the Lock. Swift's A Modest Proposal may be 
 compared with DeQuincey's Murder as a Fine Art. 
 
 3. Addison: (a) The relation of the Coverley papers to the novel; (6) 
 the "character" as written by Addison; (c) the portraits in Chaucer's 
 Prologue compared with Addison's; (d) eighteenth century life as 
 seen in The Spectator; (e) Addison's style compared with Swift's; 
 (/) elements in Addison's theory of criticism. 
 
 References: For Defoe, see Minto's Ldfe in English Men of Letters, especially 
 chapter ix; Stephen, in Hours in a Library I. For Swift, Stephen in Dictionary 
 of National Biography and English Men of Letters; Selections from Swift, in 
 English Readings (Holt). Addison: Johnson, in Lives of the Poets; Court hope, 
 in English Men of Letters; Stephen, in Dictionary of National Biography; Thack- 
 eray, English Humourists and Henry Esmond; Addison's papers on Milton are 
 edited by Cook (Ginn); On the entire period consult the histories of English 
 literature in the eighteenth century by Perry and by Gosse, and Dennis, The 
 Age of Pope. 
 
184 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) 
 I. Classicism 
 
 I. Phases in the history of the classics 
 
 (a) Humanism, as illustrated by the work of Erasmus, 
 Ascham, etc. 
 
 (b) Romantic use of classical material, shown in the classi- 
 cal allusions and myths in Spenser; in such poems as Venus 
 and Adonis and Hero and Leander; in such dramas as Antony 
 and Cleopatra. 
 
 (c) The application of the literary theories of Aristotle 
 and Horace to English literature, shown in Sidney's criti- 
 cism of the drama, in Jonson's dramas and critical theory, 
 and in Dryden. 
 
 (d) The development of a theory of "kinds" and of ''rules" 
 in which the influence of French classicism is apparent, 
 tending to a "pseudo-classicism" which dominated English 
 literature during much of the eighteenth century. 
 
 3. Characteristics of tlie_poetry;^fjtli^3ge_of^ 
 (a) The new conception of 'Svit." 
 
 (6) The use of the heroic couplet as the ideal stanza; this 
 tends to epigram and stresses clarity and form. 
 
 (c) The ''tyranny of the epithet." 
 
 (d) Preference for the general rather than the concrete; 
 the type, not the individual. This is shown both in charac- 
 ter analysis and in description. 
 
 (e) The lack of the subjective, personal note characteristic of 
 earlier and later periods. There are few sonnets and lyrics. 
 (0 Conventional use of classical allusions. 
 
 (g) The increase in didacticism. 
 
 {h) "Fancy" takes the place of imagination; romantic 
 "extravagance" is not good form; "good sense" is the re- 
 quirement. 
 
 (i) Poetry and drama must conform to the "rules." 
 3. Literary types: satire; co;iiedy_j)f manners; the ode; niQck- 
 . heroic "epics"; "translations" of the classics. ~~ 
 
186 
 
 II. Main phases of the work of Pope 
 
 1. His view of poetry. Found chiefly in the Essay on Criticism 
 (1711), which shows the influence of Horace and Boileau. Car- 
 dinal principles center about injunctions to follow '^Nature"; to 
 use the ancients as standards; and to pay supreme attention to 
 nianner of expression. 
 
 2. Satire of contemporary life and manners 
 
 (a) The Rape of the Lock (1712, and, with the addition of 
 the ''machinery" of the sylphs, 1714). Illustrates comedy 
 of manners in form of mock-heroic epic. Compare comedies 
 of Congreve. The quarrel with Addison. 
 (6) The Dunciad (1728, 1742, 1743). Also mock-epic; 
 satire ostensibly of the poetasters, but marred by personal 
 spite. Theobald and Cibber. The elaborate machinery 
 of mystification. For analogues compare MacFlecknoe; 
 The Battle of the Books, etc. 
 
 (c) The Satires, with the prefatory Epistle to Dr. Arbuth- 
 not (1735). The Epistle is a defence of Pope, also famous 
 for the portrait of Addison (Atticus). 
 
 3. The translations and imitations 
 
 (a) The Pastorals (1709, but probably written earlier); 
 these imitate the Shepheards Calender in their application to 
 the seasons but are wholly different in style; they are intro- 
 duced by an essay on Pastoral poetry. 
 
 (6) Various imitations and translations based on Chaucer 
 and Ovid, following Dryden. 
 
 (c) Horace is imitated in the Satires. 
 
 (d) Th'e great translations: Iliad (1715-1720); Odyssey 
 (1725-1726). These ''translate" Homer into terms of Eng- 
 lish life of the eighteenth century; illustrate the theory of 
 following "Nature," as well as Pope's power of putting 
 into perfect form material not original with him; and appeal 
 to the taste of the time for pseudo-classicism. Contrast 
 the Elizabethan translations. 
 
188 
 
 The verse-essays 
 
 (a) The tendency shown by the Essay on Criticism to put 
 into the heroic couplet matter usually treated in prose finds 
 illustration in the later Essay on Man (1732-1734) and the 
 Moral Essays (1731-1735). The first shows the influence 
 of Bolingbroke, and while vague and contradictory as a 
 system of thought contains some of Pope's finest verse; 
 the second combines ''philosophy" with personal satire. 
 
 Experiments and miscellanies 
 
 (a) Windsor Forest (1713) is a good illustration of. the con- 
 ventional attitude toward Nature. 
 (6) Eloisa to Abelard (1717) 
 
 (c) Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717) 
 
 (d) Edition of Shakspere (1725). 
 
190 
 
 Studies 
 
 I. Fintl illustrations of the characteristics of pseudo-classic poetry 
 
 named above. 
 2/\Vhat does Pope include in his conception of "Nature?" 
 y<3. Summarize, so far as you can, the main principles of his theory of 
 ^ poetry. Compare with Horace's Ars Poetica. 
 
 4. How far docs the Rape of the Lock observe the "rules" for epic? 
 
 5. Compare a passage from Pope's translation of Homer with the cor- 
 responding pasage in Chapman's translation and point out the differences. 
 Compare both with Cowper's or Bryant's version of the same passage. 
 
 6. The mock-epic genre. 
 
 References: Discussions of pseudo-classic diction, themes, and theories of 
 literature are to be found in Lowell's essays on Dryden and Pope; in Beers, 
 English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, chapter ii; Pellissier, Literary 
 Movement in France, chapter i; Stephen, English Literature in the Eighteenth 
 Century; Courthope V. chapter i, and the section on Pope. See also Babbitt, 
 The New Laokoon, Part I. 
 
 On Pope, see also the Life, by Stephen, in English Men of Letters; Courthope 
 V. 156-185; 251-271; Dennis, Age of Pope, 27-64; Gosse, English Literature 
 in the Eighteenth Century, 108-134; Johnson, in Lives of the Poets, presents the 
 view of a man almost contemporary. 
 
 
.i 
 
192 
 
 POETS CONTEMPORARY WITH POPE 
 
 I. Writers of Didactic Poetry 
 
 1. This school Augustan in style and in fondness for didactic 
 themes; poems analogous to the Geologies of Virgil; blank verse. 
 
 2. James Thomson (1700-1748) 
 
 (a) The Seasons (1725-1730) in blank verse and diction 
 imitative of Milton; real observation of Nature but without 
 interpretation; ''seasons" idea reminiscent of the Shepheards 
 Calender; didactic; episodic and loosely knit, due to the fact 
 that it is a development of a short poem into a sort of epic ; 
 narrative element introduced in little idyls; prodigious 
 influence in Germany and France and the founder of a 
 special "school" in England. 
 
 (6) Castle of Indolence (1748, but written many years before). 
 Two cantos in Spenserian stanza, the first important example 
 of a long series of such imitations in the eighteenth century. 
 Three elements in the poem : a burlesque metrical romance ; 
 a portion of it singularly accurate in its suggestion of Spen- 
 ser's style; in the second canto, conventional Augustan 
 didacticism, praise of Liberty, etc. 
 
 3. Poems more or less closely related to The Seasons 
 
 (a) Earlier than The Seasons: Cider, by John Philips, 1706. 
 (6) Later 'poems: The Chase (1735) by William Somerville, 
 a poem in praise of hunting; The Art of Preserving Health 
 (1744), by John Armstrong; The Pleasures of Imagination 
 (1744), by Mark Akenside, notable for sententious, philo- 
 sophical style and blank verse modelled on Milton's; The 
 Fleece (1757), by John Dyer. 
 
194 
 
 4. Didactic poems chiefly religious 
 
 (a) Night Thoughts (1741-1745), by Edward Young; an 
 answer to Pope^s Essay on Man written in ]\liltonic blank 
 verse. Young also wrote some tragedies (Busiris; Revenge) 
 and a satire on the thirst for fame ( The Universal Passi07i). 
 (6) The A'ight Piece and Hymn to Contentmentj by Thomas 
 Parnell (1679-1718) show influence of Milton in style and 
 in the use of the f our accent c oupl et. Parnell also wrote 
 a narrative poem, The Hennit, in the heroic couplet, 
 (c) The Grave (1743), by Robert Blair; about 200 lines in 
 blank verse; imaginative; excellent representative of a genre 
 popular through the century. 
 n. Light verse : epistolary, burlesque, and lyric 
 
 1. Ambrose Philips (1671-1749) wrote some pastorals which 
 caused a dispute with Pope and led to Gay's Shepherrrs Week; 
 a sentimental tragedy. The Distrest Mother (1712) which was 
 puffed by Addison in the Spectator; and was notorious for his 
 odes to babes and children (' 'namby-pamby"). 
 
 2. John Philips (1676-1708) is remembered for The Splendid 
 Shilling; Miltonic blank verse applied to burlesque on poverty. 
 
 3. John Pomfret wrote a notable poem, The Choice, in epistolary 
 style of Horace and praising simplicity of life, language and style. 
 
 ^ 4. Mat th£BL-£riQrmiS61-1721) wrote many artificial but witty 
 lyrics; a tediou s didactic poe m (S oloma n) ; and Henry and Emma, 
 "¥Vonventional /'translation'' of The Nut-Browne Maid.' 
 
 5. -Tnh'^ ^-^y ( 1685-1732) is distinguisliecl for" varieFy of achieve- 
 ment: TJie Shepherd's Week (1714) contains six eclogues, supposed 
 to imitate The Shepheards Calender; travesty on pastorals but 
 containing some realistic touches; Trivia (1716), mock-heroic 
 account of journeyings about London in witty and realistic style; 
 Fables (1727); I^e^iiar'sO^era (1728), extremely popular burlesque 
 of Italian opera; lyrics such as Black- Eyed Susan. 
 
 6. William Shenstone (1714-1764) wrote a Pastoral Ballad filled 
 with artificial simplicity, and The Schoolmistress (1742), a bur- 
 lesque of Spenser's stanza and epic style, but notable for simple 
 and realistic description. 
 
n 
 
196 
 
 III. Poets influenced by Milton's Minor Poems 
 
 1. John Dyer (1700-1758), Gron^ar Hillsmd Country Walk. 
 
 2. Lady Winchelsea (1661-1720), besides many poems in pseudo- 
 classic style, wrote several short poems distinguished for apprecia- 
 tion' of nature : The Tree, Nocturnal Reverie, To the Nightingale. 
 
 References: For the entire period, Dennis, Age of Pope; Gosse, Eighteenth 
 Century Literature; Courthope, V., especially chapters ii, iii, v, vii; Pomfret's 
 Choice is printed at pp. 102-105. For Thomson, besides the references given 
 above, see the Life by G. C. Macaulay in English Men of Letters. Texts of many 
 of the poems named are in* Eighteenth Century Verse', edited by Lynn (Mac- 
 millan). See also Beers, English Romanticism. 
 
198 
 PROSE IX THE AGE OF JOHNSON 
 
 I. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) 
 
 1. Poetry 
 
 (a) London (1738) ; Vanihj of Human Wishes (1749). These 
 belong to the ethical school; in heroic couplet; notable for 
 moral elevation, being more weighty than Pope's satires; 
 based on Juvenal. 
 
 (b) Irene (1749); a tragedy; follows the "rules." 
 
 2. The Dictionary: plan published 1747; work completed and 
 published, with the famous letter to Chesterfield, 1755. 
 
 3. Periodicals 
 
 (a) The Rambler (1750-1752). 
 
 (6) The Idler (1759-1760). These combine criticism with 
 
 "characters" and slight narrative. 
 
 4. Rasselas (1759); a romance marked by slightness of story, 
 pessimism, moral disquisition. 
 
 5. Lives of the Poets (1779-1781) 
 
 (a) The essays on Cowley, Milton, and Pope are most im- 
 portant for their critical dicta. Johnson inclines to be inde- 
 pendent of the "rules"; stresses the moral aim of poetry; 
 to him poetry is "the art of uniting pleasure with truth by 
 calling imagination to the help of reason"; finds test of a 
 poem in its popularity; condemns extravagance in thought 
 and language. 
 
 (6) Other material on Johnson's theories of criticism in the 
 prologues written for Garrick, notably the one on the opening 
 of Drury Lane, and in the Rambler. The famous sunnnary 
 of pseudo-classic theory of style is in Rasselas, chapter x: 
 "The business of the poet is to examine, not the individual 
 but the species; to remark general properties and large 
 appearances. He does not number the streaks of the tulip, 
 or describe the difi'crent shades in the verdure of the forest." 
 
 6. The chief influence of Johnson, however, has been felt rather 
 through his conversation, as reported by Boswell, and his noble 
 personal characler, than through his writings. 
 
200 
 
 n. Johnson's Circle 
 
 1. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792); famous portrait painter; 
 author of Discourses on painting and criticism. 
 
 2. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) 
 
 (a) Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1756; criticism 
 of poetry and painting; influenced Lessing's Laokoon. 
 
 (b) Political writings: Thoughts on the Present Discontents 
 (1770); American Taxation (1774); Conciliation with the 
 American Colonies (1775); Revolution in France (1790); 
 Regicide Peace (1796). 
 
 3. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) 
 
 (a) History of the Decline and Fall of Rome (1776-1788). 
 (6) Memoirs (published 1796). 
 
 4. James Boswell (1740-1795) 
 
 (a) Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1785). 
 
 (b) Life of Dr. Johnson (1791); greatest English biography. 
 
 5. David Garrick (1717-1779) 
 
 (a) Famous for the revolution in style of acting introduced 
 by him: passionate representation of Hamlet, Macbeth, 
 Richard III, etc., in place of cold and stilted manner of the 
 • time. 
 
 (6) Manager of Drury Lane; his company including Mrs. 
 Gibber and Peg Woffington. 
 
 (c) Author of comedies, prologues, etc. 
 
 6. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) 
 
 (a) Poetry: "^he , Traveller (1757; published 1764); didactic 
 
 and descriptive poem in heroic couplets. The Deserted 
 
 Village, (1770) marks triumph in his use of the couplet; 
 
 melody, grace, pathos and humor. 
 
 (6) Fiction: The Vicar oj Wakefield (1766). (See Outhne 
 
 on the Novel.) 
 
 (c) Dramatic Work: The Good Natur'd Man (1768); ^he^ 
 
 Stoops to Conquer (1773). (See Outline on Eighteenth 
 
 Century Drama.) 
 
 ((/) Criticism: After 1757 wrote many reviews and essays; 
 
 Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning (1759); 
 
 satire in Citizen of the World (1762). His criticism vacillates 
 
 between pseudo-classic type and hints of the approaching 
 
 romantic revival. 
 
202 
 
 III. The Novel 
 
 I. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) 
 
 (a) Pamela (1740); the first modern novel; a series of letters 
 exchanged between Pamela, a virtuous servant girl, and her 
 parents; her ''virtue rewarded" by marriage with her em- 
 ployer, ''Mr. B." 
 
 (6) Clarissa Harlowe (1748); similar in theme and method 
 though dealing with people of higher station; far"^ better plot 
 construction, leading to tragedy. 
 
 (c) Sir Charles Grandison (1753); designed to present the 
 perfect hero, in order to atone for the attractiveness of his 
 villain Lovelace {Clarissa Harlowe) and to counteract the 
 "Evil Tendency" of Fielding's Tom Jones; dramatis personm 
 include "Men, Women, and Itahans"; a morality in the 
 garb of prose fiction. 
 
 Xd) Richardson's favorite method to tell the story by means 
 
 /of letters; amount of incident small; chief importance lies 
 
 I -in study of character, yet these characters are comparatively 
 
 \ simple representations of vices and virtues; sentimental 
 
 moralizing. 
 
204 
 
 2. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) 
 
 (a) Wrote several comedies and farces 1730-1737. 
 
 (b) Joseph Andrews (1742); begun as a parody on Pamela, 
 but develops into a comic epic, influenced by Cervantes 
 and the picaresque romances. 
 
 (c) Jonathan Wild (1743); written to illustrate the thesis 
 that greatness does not necessarily involve goodness; elabo- 
 rate irony. 
 
 {d) Tom Jones (1749); perfect example of the comic epic 
 in prose; story told directly, not through letters; ridicules 
 sentimental morality of Richardson; notable for plot con- 
 struction, realism, vividness of characterization, 
 (e) Amelia (1751); Griselda-like story of heroine married 
 to weak but devoted man (Captain Booth); plot compli- 
 cated by long episodic "stories" of the characters as they 
 are introduced. 
 
 (/) Fielding superior to Richardson in directness with which 
 story is told; in presenting complex characters; in realism. 
 His theory of a novel a combination of "history" and "comic 
 epic." 
 
206 
 
 3. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) 
 
 (a) Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) lacks ^liit and incident , 
 unit^ and coherence ; a medley of out-of-the-way learning 
 from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Rabelais, etc. Not- 
 able for wild eccentricities of style, combined with passages 
 flawless in execution; for humor and pathos, and for skill 
 in characterization. > .^ . 
 
 (b) A SentimentalJ our ney (17 QS). .' .Om:>\^^^^^ ^'' 
 
 4. Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) 
 
 (a) Picaresque stories: Roderick Random (1748); Feregrine 
 Pjskle (1751); Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753). These 
 stories marked by coarseness and brutality; by realism; 
 satire in the manner of Swift. Roderick Random introduces 
 the story of the sea. 
 
 (b) Later novels: Sir Launcelot Greaves tl762); Humj^hrey 
 Clinker (1771). The last is a story told in letters, but with 
 greater variety than possible to Richardson, and introducing 
 a number of cleverly drawn portraits. 
 
 5. Other fiction 
 
 (a) The Castle of Otranto (1764), by Horace Walpole^ in- 
 troduces Gothic Romance later developed by Mrs. Radcliffe 
 and others, and contributing both to the new Romanticism 
 and to the historical tales of Scott. 
 
 (6) The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), by Goldsmith; conven- 
 tional incidents and character types; excellence due to por- 
 traiture and style rather than to plot construction; notable 
 for purity and optimism. 
 
 (c) The Man of Feeling (1771), by Henry Mackenzie; senti- 
 mental romance influenced by Sterne and by sentimental 
 comedy warred on by Goldsmith and Sheridan. 
 
 <^ (d) Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782); comrdies of manners 
 
 by Frances Burney; important for influence on later work 
 of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen. 
 
» 208 
 
 IV. Other Prose 
 
 1. Letters 
 
 (a) Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield: Letters (1774). 
 
 2. History and Political Science 
 
 (a) David Hume, History of Great Britain (1754-1762). 
 (6) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776). 
 
 (c) Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of 
 England (1765-1769). 
 
 (d) Letters of Junius (1769-1772). 
 
 3. Description of Nature 
 
 (a) Gilbert White, Natural History of Selborne (1789). 
 
 References: On the entire period, see Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature^ 
 and Seccombe, The Age of Johnson. Selections from the writings of the authors 
 named in this section, with bibliographies, are to be found in Alden's Readings 
 in English Prose of the Eighteenth Century (Houghton). For Johnson, see also 
 Stephen's Life in English Men of Letters; Macaulay's Essay; Courthope V. 
 201-209; and the Chief Lives of the Poets, with introduction and the essays by 
 Macaulay, Carlyle, and Arnold (Holt). For Goldsmith, see the biographies 
 by Black and Dobson; the Essay by Macaulay; Thackeray, in English Humour- 
 ists; a convenient edition of the plays is in the Belles Lettres Series (Heath). 
 For the Novel, see Cross, Development of the English Novel; Raleigh, The English 
 Novel; Thackeray's English Humourists; Dobson's Fielding and Richardson 
 in the English Men of Letters, and The Life and Times of Sterne, by W. L. Cross. 
 Novels by Fielding are reprinted in Everyman's Library; a convenient edition of 
 Tristram Shandy is in the Temple Classics. • 
 
210 
 
 THE DRAMA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 I. Shakspere 
 
 1. During the greater part of the century, Shakspere was attacked 
 for his violation of the unities; for intermingUng comedy and 
 tragedy; for "lowness" (such as the porter scene in Macbeth, 
 the "mouse stirring" and the gravediggers' scene in Hamlet, 
 and the mob in Julius Caesar) ; and for violation of poetic justice, 
 as in Lear. The influence of the French drama and, after 1730, 
 of Voltaire, contributed to these opinions. 
 
 2. Alterations of most of the great plays were made for the 
 stage; the plays were presented in costumes and manners of 
 the century, and were declaimed in the stilted manner of the 
 French theatre. 
 
 3. More natural mode of acting introduced by Charles Macklin 
 (Shylock) and David Garrick (Macbeth) in 1741, but Garrick 
 was responsible for further mutilations of the texts; Mrs. Siddons' 
 representation of Lady Macbeth (1784) became famous. 
 
 II. Sentimental Comedy 
 
 I. Early examples in Steele's Tender Husband, Conscious Lovers, 
 
 and other plays, 1703-1721. 
 
 J2. Developed as special type after the middle of the century, 
 / being influenced by Rousseau and Richardson and by the French 
 
 comedies of tears. These plays based on hatred of "lowness," 
 , and are sentimental domestic plays without realism, wit, or even 
 \ comic situation. 
 
 3. Best examples: False Delicacy (1768), by Hugh Kelly; The 
 
 West Indian (1771), by Richard Cumberland. 
 
 (4. Attacked by Goldsmith in his prefaces and essays, as well 
 as in his plays; burlesqued by Fielding in his dramas and novels; 
 and by Sheridan. 
 
212 ■ 
 
 III. Comedy of Manners 
 
 1. Oliver Cloldsmith 
 
 (a) The Good-natur' d Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer 
 ' (1773). 
 
 (b) Aimed at delineation of character and restoration of 
 humorous situation; marked by wit and humor, and by 
 moral purity. 
 
 2. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) 
 
 (a) The Rivals (1775); The Duenna (1775); The School for 
 Scandal {1777) ; The Critic (1779). In these plays Sheridan 
 warred on sentimentalism in the drama and novel; but in 
 his Pizarro (1799), a free translation from the German of 
 Kotzebue, he produced a melodramatic tragedy which be- 
 came enormously popular. 
 
 (6) Sheridan's comedies constructed on the Elizabethan 
 plan; in wit and dialogue suggest Congreve without his 
 indecency; excel in characterization and dramatic situation. 
 
 IV. The Decadence 
 
 1. After Sheridan little of value; burletta, opera, melodrama, 
 pantomime almost drove the legitimate drama from the stage. 
 
 2. Translations of Kotzebue's plays, with imitations by Colman 
 and others. 
 
 3. Gothic drama such as Lewis's Castle Spectre. 
 
 4. Prevailing type melodramatic and stilted; theatrical without 
 literary value. 
 
 References: No good history of the drama for this period exists. Hints are 
 to be found in the various editions of Goldsmith's and Sheridan's plays, espe- 
 cially Nettleton's Major Dramas of Sheridan (Ginn) and Dobson's Goldsmith 
 (Heath, Belles Lettres Series.) See also Lounsbury's Shakespeare as, a Dramatic 
 Artist and Shakespeare Wars; Thorndike's Tragedy (Houghton). 
 
214 
 
 THE REACTION TOWARDS ROMANTICISM 
 
 I. Interest in medieval and earlier English literature 
 
 1. The period from 1750 to 1780 marked 
 
 (a) By sincere appreciation of Milton and Spenser, con- 
 trasted with earlier condescension and burlesque. 
 
 (b) By imaginative sympathy with medieval life and lit- 
 erature, shown in poetry, fiction, criticism, and scholarly 
 research. 
 
 2. WiUiam Collins (1721-1759) 
 
 (a) At Oxford wrote Persian Eclogues (1743) and projected 
 
 a history of Humanism; later odes on various subjects 1746, 
 
 1749. 
 
 -(6) Best poems and odes: To Liberty; To Evening; The 
 ( Passions; On the Death of Thomson; Dirge in Cymbeline; 
 \0n the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands. 
 
 (c) Some of these poems are in the conventional style, but 
 • as a whole they are marked by imagination, feehng, freedom 
 
 in versification, sympathy with earlier Enghsh poets and 
 with popular legend. 
 
 3. Thomas Gray (1716-1771) 
 
 (a) Odes to Spring, Adversity, Eton College (1742); Elegy 
 in a Country Churchyard (1751) ; collected edition of his poems 
 (1753); Progress of Poetry, and The Bard (1757); poems 
 from the Norse and Welsh (Fatal Sisters, Descent of Odin. 
 Triumphs of Owen, Death of Hoel, etc., published 1768) 
 His Letters are also important for their literary criticism, 
 their interest in nature, and the revelation of his personahty. 
 (5) Notable for the progress shown in his poetry from Augus- 
 
 , tan conventionality to romantic interest in the medieval. 
 
 'The Pindaric Odes are more accurate in form than the so- 
 called Pindarics of Cowley. 
 
 (c) Both Collins and Gray criticized by Johnson and others 
 for archaisms, "elaborate imagery, lack of "smoothness," 
 etc. Both are distinguished for srnallness of product and 
 exquisite sense of form. 
 
216 
 
 The Ballads 
 
 (a) Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) by his collections of songs 
 and ballads {Tea Table Miscellany and The Evergreen) led 
 the way for a number of Scottish poets culminating in Burns; 
 while his Gentle Shepherd, a pastoral drama (1725) shows 
 interest in simple life and nature. 
 
 (6) James Macpherson in 1760 published what purported 
 to be translations of the Gaelic poems of Ossian. 
 (c) Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), 
 a collection of popular ballads that marks an epoch in the 
 history of Romanticism. 
 
 ((/) Thomas Chatterton, The Rowley Poems (1764ff); pre- 
 tended copies of poems said to have been found at Bristol; 
 imitated language of. Chaucer but without §Xact knowledge. 
 (e) James Beattie, in Tlie Minstrel (1771-1774), shows in- 
 terest in ballads and in nature, influence of Gray and Gold- 
 smith, and uses Spenserian stanza. 
 
 Gothic Romance 
 
 (a) Smollett, in Ferdinand Count Fathom, introduced some 
 Gothic elements of mystery and horror. 
 
 (b) Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764); scene in 
 medieval Italy; Gothic tragedy with walking portraits, 
 giant in armor, etc. 
 
 (c) Clara Reeve, The Old English Baron (1777); contem- 
 porary life in medieval setting. 
 
 (d) William Beckford, Vathek (1786); an eastern tale. 
 
 (e) Anne Radcliffe, five Gothic romances written 1789- 
 1797, chief among them being The Mysteries of Udolpho and 
 The Italian: ruined castles, mysterious doors, supernatural- 
 ism, conventional types, the interest being mainly in thrill- 
 ing incident. 
 
 (/) "Monk" Lewis, The Monk (1795). 
 /{g) These romances melodramatic rather than Elizabethan; 
 \ extravagant in imagination; supernatural and horrible in 
 incident; lead to historical romance. 
 
> ( 
 
218 
 
 6. Criticism and Scholarship 
 
 (a) Y^ung, in Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), 
 inchnes to romantic individualism and criticism of Pope. 
 (6) Reactionary elements mingled with convention in critical 
 pieces by Goldsmith. 
 
 (c) Bishop Hurd, in his Letters on Chivalry and Romance 
 (17()_' criiicizos Pope's injunction to follow nature; shows 
 romantic appreciation of Spenser; holds that each author 
 is to be judged in accordance with his genius and that of his 
 time, not by '"rules" or ''kinds." 
 
 {d) Joseph Warton (1722-1800) wrote The Enthusiast (about 
 1740), in which he praised the Elizabethans; edited Virgil 
 (1753), with essays on poetry; wrote an essay on Pope 
 (1757), and edited Pope's works (1797). 
 (e) Thomas Warton (1728-1790) wrote some poems romantic 
 in tendency; Observations on the Faery Queen of Spenser 
 (1754); History of English Poetry (1774-1781). He vacil- 
 lates between romantic enthusiasm and pseudo-classic 
 theory; significant as scholar and critic. 
 (J) Elements in the critical reaction: no definite creed, but 
 distinctly romantic in preference for historical point of 
 view and in imaginative sympathy. 
 
220 
 
 II. The development of the poetry of nature, 1 780-1 790. 
 
 1. William Cowper (1731-1800) 
 
 (a) Olncy Hymns (with Newton, 1779); Table Talk (1782); 
 The Task (1785); Translation of Horner (1791); Letters 
 (published 1824). 
 
 (6) Calvinisni*: sincere, gloomy, passionate. As a writer of 
 religious verse is to be compared with Herbert, and with 
 the eighteenth century hymnologists (Isaac Watts; Charles 
 and John Wesley). 
 
 (c) Poetry of Nature: direct observation; sympathy; the 
 delations between man and nature. 
 
 (d) Humor; witty character sketches; satire; epigram. 
 
 (e) A writer of some notable ballads {Boadicea; Toll for 
 the Brave; The Castaway; John Gilpin). 
 
 (J) Uses. couplets and blank verse; his poetic diction shows 
 reaction against pseudo-classic forms and leads to Words- 
 worth. 
 
 (g) In his translation of Homer seeks Uteralness and rejects 
 the theories of Dryden and Pope. 
 
 2. George Crabbe (1754-1832) 
 
 (a) Chief significance in this period in his The Village 
 (1783); after long silence, wrote (1807-1819) several collec- 
 tions of poems narrative and descriptive {The Parish Regis- 
 ter; The Borough; Tales in Verse; Tales of the Hall). 
 
 (b) Like Cowper, is interested in both man and nature, 
 excelling both in characterization and in accurate descrip- 
 tion. His method realistic; he studies the lives of the poor 
 but without the passionate sympathy of Burns; insists on 
 the unpleasant aspects; does not seek to interpret or to 
 reform. 
 
222 
 
 3. Robert Burns (1759-1796) 
 
 (a) Poerns, published 1786; second edition, with many ad- 
 ditions, 1787; another edition, adding Tarn O'Shanter and 
 other poems, 1793. 
 
 (6) The return of the lyric. After Herrick and his con- 
 » temporaries, very few good lyrics in English poetry until 
 
 Burns, following Ramsay, Fergusson and other Scottish 
 ^ - poets, pubhshed his poem's. The excellence of his love songs, 
 
 (c) Man: Burns the best representative of the tendency of 
 the time to find subjects for poetry in humble life. But 
 he differs in important respects from Goldsmith, Cowper, 
 Crabbe. In connection with this topic note also the in- 
 fluence of Rousseau; the prison reform movement; Wes- 
 leyanism; the movement toward democracy in France and 
 America. 
 
 {d) Nature: Sympathy with the humble aspects of nature, 
 ^,^ common flowers and animals; illustrates the "deepening of 
 
 imaginative sensibility" characteristic of Romanticism, 
 (e) Other elements in his poetry: humor; hatred of religious 
 cant; variety of metrical forms. 
 
 4. Wilham Blake (1757-1827) 
 
 (a) Poems: Poetical Sketches (1783); Songs of Innocence 
 (1789); Songs of Experience (1794). Prophetic Books: The 
 Book of Thel (1789); The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 
 (1790); Jerusalem, and Milton (1804). 
 
 (h) Shows the influence of the Elizabethans and of the 
 ballad revival. 
 
 (c) Love of animals and of childhood. His poems on these 
 subjects marked by felicity of expression and lyrical form, 
 by simplicity without condescension; they may be compared 
 with similar themes treated by Burns and Wordsworth. 
 
 (d) In mysticism and love of the marvelous anticipates 
 important phases of poetry in the nineteenth century. 
 
 (e) Besides his literary work, Blake was famous as an artist 
 and engraver. His designs for The Grave (Blair), for Chau- 
 cer's Canterbury pilgrims, for the book of Job, and for Dante, 
 are noteworthy. 
 
 ^' 
 
224 
 
 Studies : 
 
 1. Note the progress from pseudo-classic diction and forms in the work 
 of Gray by comparing one of the earlier Odes with The Fatal Sisters. 
 
 2. Study The Progress of Poesy and The Bard: as to fusion of conventional 
 and romantic elements; as to form; in comparison with the odes of 
 Cowley. 
 
 3. Can you distinguish any differences between the poetry of Collins 
 and that of Gray? 
 
 4. Find in your text illustrations of the characteristics of Cowper's 
 poetry named in the Outline. Of the poetry of Crabbe. Of Burns. 
 
 5. Compare the archaisms of Chatterton with those of Spenser and with 
 the language of Chaucer. 
 
 6. The relations of Burns to his Scottish predecessors. 
 
 7. The treatment of Nature in the poetry of Cowper, Crabbe, Burns. 
 
 8. Studies in the blank verse represented by this group of poets. 
 
 9. Burns and Herrick. 
 
 Reference: On the period prior to 1780, Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature 
 and Courthope, volume V. On the entire period, Beers, English Romanticism 
 in the Eighteenth Century. Short discussions of Gothic Romance are found 
 in the histories of the novel by Cross and Raleigh; Dunlop, History of Fiction, 
 II. 577-587, may be consulted for abstracts of the plots of the chief exemplars 
 of the type. For Gray, see the selections in the Athenaeum Press Series, with 
 the introduction; Gosse, in English Men of Letters; and the essays by Lowell 
 and Arnold; for a hostile contemporary view, Johnson's Life is notorious. For 
 Buras, see Athenaeum Press edition; Shairp's Life; and the essays by Carlyle, 
 Hazlitt, Stevenson. 
 
22G 
 
 THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH 
 
 I. Some definitions of Romanticism 
 
 1. "The revival of the Medieval." 
 
 2. "The Renascence of Wonder." 
 
 3. "The deepening of imaginative sensibility.' 
 
 4. "The essential classical element is that quality of order in 
 beauty . . . It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that 
 constitutes the romantic character in art." 
 
 II. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 
 
 1. After leaving Cambridge (B.A., St. John's College, 1791), 
 travelled in France; wrote Descriptive Sketches (1793); Guilt and 
 Sorrow (1793-1795); The Borderers (a tragedy, 1795-1796). 
 These works show interest in nature and humble life, as well as 
 effect of tragic events in France. 
 
 2. Acquaintance with Coleridge, 1796; result in Lyrical Ballads 
 (1798), which contained, besides other pieces by the two friends, 
 The Ancient Mariner. Aim of the poets to give poetic charm to 
 events and scenes of common life, and to make the supernatural 
 seem real; the "Advertisement" also declares war on co^iventional 
 poetic diction. 
 
 3. After travels in Germany (1798-1799) settled in the Lake 
 country; given office in customs, 1813; poet-laureate, 1843. 
 
 4. Main groups of his poems 
 
 (a) Nature poems, such as Tintern Abbey, Expostulation 
 and Reply, The Tables Turned, The World is too much with 
 us. Daffodils, Peele Castle, and the longer works The Excur- 
 sion (1814), The Prelude (published 1850), and The Recluse 
 (published 1888)." 
 (6) Childhood, such as Lucy Gray, We are Seven, etc. 
 
 (c) Pastorals, such as The Old Cumberland Beggar and 
 Michael. 
 
 (d) Medieval themes: Hartleap Well; The White Doe. 
 
 (e) Odes: Duty, On the Intimations of Immortality, etc. 
 (/) Classical themes: Laodamia; Dion, etc. 
 
 ig) Sonnets: in this field he is coniparal)le with Milton. 
 Note that the sonnet w as almost unk nown in England from_ 
 Milton to Wordsworth. 
 
228 
 
 5. Wordsworth's theory of poetry: simple themes; language the 
 same as that of ordinary life; rebels against the theory of poetic 
 diction held by Pope and his school. Literary criticism contained 
 mainly in the Prefaces to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads 
 (1800); to The Excursion (1814), and to the collected edition of 
 his Poems (1815). 
 
 6. Wordsworth's theory of Nature: transcendental; is both real- 
 istic and interpretative; values meditation and a "wise passive- 
 ness." 
 
 7. Note the wide range of his themes; his mastery of blank verse, 
 sonnet, ode; his lyric power; his appeal to thought; his complete 
 break with the pseudo-classic tradition. 
 
230 
 
 in. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) 
 
 1. While a student at Christ's Hospital influenced by the Sonnets 
 of Bowles (1789). After some experiments, wrote two great 
 odes: To the Departing Year and France (1796, 1798), and a group 
 of nature poems: Frosi at Midnight; Fears in Solitude (1798) 
 
 2. Greatest poems: The Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan (1797), 
 and Christabel, (1797-1800)7 These show the special qualities 
 of his supernaturalism, his marvelous lyrical power, and a vivid- 
 ness of imagination unknown in English poetry since Milton. 
 
 3. Like Wordsworth, wrote of nature, childhood, simple life. 
 But these not his characteristic themes, and at the last {Ode to 
 
 '^Dejection, 1802) he expressed dissent from his friend's theory of 
 Nature. 
 
 4. Dramatic works: Robespierre (with Southey, 1794); Wallen- 
 stein (translated from Schiller, 1800); Rejnorse (acted, 1813); 
 Zapolya (1817). 
 
 5. Prose works: besides contributions to several periodicals, 
 essays on political philosophy, on religion {Aids to Reflection 
 1825), etc., Coleridge attained high rank as a literary critic. His 
 lectures on Shakspere, (1808, 1812, 1818) show the influence of 
 German criticism; Lessing, Kant, Schiller, Schelling. His Bio- 
 gr<ij)liia Litcraria (1817) adds the criticism of Wordsworth's 
 theoiy of poetry; poetic diction, the themes proper to poetry; 
 the distinction between Fancy and Imagination. 
 
232 
 
 IV. Walter Scott (1771-1832) 
 
 1. Ancestry from heroes of border warfare; profoundly influenced 
 in youth by Percy's Reliques and by study of legends. After 
 study of law (admitted to the bar, 1792) and of German romantic 
 literature (translations from Goethe and Biirger), this interest 
 led to publication of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). 
 
 2. From ballads passed to metrical romance: projected an edition 
 of Sir Tristrem (published, 1804) ; then wrote first original narrative 
 poem on border chivalry. The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), 
 which was influenced somewhat by Christabel though wholly 
 different in attitude toward medievalism. 
 
 3. Later metrical romances: Marmion (1808), a somewhat melo- 
 dramatic account of defeat at Flodden; Lady of the Lake (1810); 
 The Vision of Don Roderick (1811) ; The Bridal of Triermain (1813), 
 The Lord of the Isles (1815). Later romances show flagging in- 
 vention, and with the entrance of Byron into the same field 
 Scott turned to prose. This work belongs to period of residence 
 at Ashestiel. 
 
234 
 
 The Novels 
 
 (a) These written during residence at Abbotsford; belong 
 to the period 1814-1831; and begin with Waverley (1814). 
 Until 1827, pubucation was anonymous. 
 
 (b) Aim was to write historical drama in form of prose 
 fiction; the twenty nine novels fall into three groups: those 
 dealing with Scotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries; with England and the Middle Ages (beginning with 
 Ivanhoe, 1820); and with continental Europe (beginning 
 with Quentin Durward, 1823). 
 
 (c) Failure of his publishers, the Ballantynes, for £117,000 
 in 1826, inspired his magnificent courage to repay the debt 
 by his pen, but the last novels show evidence of strain. 
 
 Scott's place in literature 
 
 (a) As a 2£?t: notable for skill in vivid description; for 
 mastery of narrative in verse; for facility in use of the four 
 accent couplet. He lacks, however, the distinction of verse 
 that was attained by his great contemporaries. 
 (6) As a novehst : notable for the same qualities of descrip- 
 tion and narrative; for humor; for absence of mysticism; 
 for abundance of detail; for historical magnificence of his 
 crowded scenes. Limitations in lack of subtle portraiture 
 or of development of character, and in the frequently me- 
 chanical nature of his plots. 
 
 (c) In his interest in the medieval, Scott one of the chief 
 representatives of romanticism. His medievalism not mys- 
 tical, like that of Coleridge, nor sensuous and dreamy, like 
 that of Keats but aims at realism. 
 
236 
 
 V. Lord Byron (1788-1824) 
 
 1. While a student at Cambridge, published a collection of short 
 poems, mainly conventional or silly; these occasioned Jeffrey's 
 stinging review in the Edinburgh, to which Byron replied in Eng^ 
 lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). This a literary satire, 
 in couplets, imitating the Dunci ad and having the same defects. 
 
 2. The first foreign tour (1809-1811) resulted in the poem which 
 made him famous: Childe Harold (cantos I and II, 1812). Chief 
 characteristics : 
 
 (a) The use of the Spenserian stanza, though not an imi- 
 tation of the Spenserian manner. Some few archaisms; 
 general idea of a pilgrimage; admirable for the romantic 
 description of nature. 
 
 (b) Enormous popularity due to interest in foreign scenery 
 and life (compare the oriental romances) and its revelation 
 of romantic personality. 
 
 3. The Metrical Romances (1813-1816) 
 
 (a) Best examples: The Giaour; The Bride of Abydos] The 
 Corsair; Lara; Siege of Corinth. 
 
 (6) Popularity due to melodramatic action; passionate aspects 
 of love; personal interest in the adventures of a romantic 
 hero; vigor of their style. Supplanted Scott. 
 
 4. Left England permanently, 1816, living in Italy until he 
 organized military expedition in behalf of Greek independence, 
 1823. Works written during this period reflect scorn of English 
 religious, political, and social ideals, and satirize Wordsworth, 
 Southey, and other men of letters. 
 
238 
 
 5. Works written in exile. 
 
 (a) In Switzerland, summer of 1816: Childe Harold, canto 
 III; The Prisoner of Chillon; Stanzas to Augusta; Manfred. 
 The last similar to Faust in theme; dramatic in form; suggests 
 Gothic romance. 
 
 (b) In Venice: Lament for Tasso (1817); Childe Harold 
 canto IV. (1817). 
 
 (c) During the remainder of his life, Byron wrote mainly 
 narrative and dramatic works, for the most part in satirical 
 or serio-comic vein: Beppo (1817); Don Juan (1819; 1821- 
 1823), which is on the whole the most representative of 
 his genius; and The Vision of Judgment (1821), which mocks 
 at Southey. These illustrate the narratives, while il/qrino 
 Faliero {IS20) ; Sardanapalus (1821) The Tivo Foscari (18211, 
 and Cain (1822) are the chief dramas. 
 
 6. Besides his poetry, Byron also wrote admirable prose, notably 
 on such controversial questions as the dispute with Bowles on 
 the merits of Pope. 
 
240 
 
 VI. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 
 
 1. Like Byron, Shelley compelled to leave England because of 
 the storm aroused by his domestic life and religious opinions; 
 from youth interested in schemes of political and social reform; 
 associated with Godwin. 
 
 2. Works written in England (1813-1818) 
 
 (a) Queen Mab (1813), shows influence of Southey and 
 Landor in construction, of Godwin in thought. 
 (6) Alastor (1816); influenced by Wordsworth in verse and 
 in theory of nature, but original in imaginative quaUty. 
 
 (c) Swiss tour, 1816, brought him into contact with Byron 
 and produced i Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Hymn to 
 Mont Blanc ^ 
 
 (d) The Revolt of Islam (1817), a romance of revolution, in 
 Spenserian stanza; great in parts but indistinct in total 
 effect. 
 
 3. Works written in exile (1818-1822) 
 
 (a) Dramas: Prometheus Unbound (1819), a lyrical drama 
 which applies the myth to the story of the struggle for 
 political and religious liberty; The Cenci (1819), a powerful 
 tragedy, owing much to Macbeth. 
 
 (b) Lyrics: Ode to the West Wind; Ode to Liberty; The Sen- 
 sitive Plant; The Cloud; To a Skylark, etc. 
 
 (c) Satires: Peter Bell, etc. 
 
 (d) Adonais, an elegy written in 1821 on the death of Keats; 
 Spenserian stanza; pastoral in part; his greatest poem. 
 
 4. Shelley's genius essentially lyrical; ethereal rather than sen- 
 suous or mystical; unsuccessful in narrative. 
 
242 
 
 VII. John Keats (1795-1821) 
 
 1. Born in London; studied medicine; went to Italy on account 
 of failing health, 1820. 
 
 2. In his early poems uses heroic couplet radically different 
 from that of the eighteenth century. In Sleep and Poetry at- 
 tacked Pope. This and other poems contained in the volume of 
 1817. 
 
 3. l^ndymion (1818); heroic couplet; poetic romance, but the 
 story lost in sensuous detail; attacked in reviews. 
 
 4. Poems dealing with the medieval •.(_jE'ye of St. Agnes; Lamia; 
 Isabella ; La Belle DameT^, All except last published in the volume 
 of 1820. 
 
 5. Other poems of 1820 
 
 (a) Odes: Grecian Urn; Nightingale; Melancholy; Autumn, 
 
 etc. 
 
 (6) Hyperion; Miltonic in verse and imaginative quality. 
 
 (c) Sonnets. 
 
 6. Represents late phase of English romanticism: note his small 
 interest in public affairs; the peculiar qualities of his medieval- 
 ism ; his kinship with Spenser in representing the spirit of romance 
 and the worship of beauty; his development of ode and couplet 
 and his mastery of the sonnet. In important respects antici- 
 pates neo-romanticism of Tennyson, Rqssetti, Swinburne. Thus 
 a highly important transitional poet. 
 
244 
 
 Studies 
 
 I. Wordsworth: 
 
 (a) His view of Nature. Important poems are Tintern Ahhey, 
 The Tables Turned, Daffodils, Peek Castle, Influence of Natural 
 Objects, and the lyrics suggested by various flowers. Note illus- 
 
 . trations of his theory that poetry "takes its origin from emotion 
 recollected in tranquillity"; the stress' placed on meditation; the 
 manner in which he "interprets" Nature. What differences between 
 the flower poems and those by Herrick and Burns? Distinguish 
 between his youthful view of Nature and that of his maturity. 
 Difference between his attitude and that involved in Pope's injunc- 
 tion to "follow Nature." 
 
 (b) The poetry of humble life: Poor Susan, Simon Lee, Cumberland 
 Beggar, Resolution and Independence, Michael. Compare Burns 
 and Crabbe. Note the inequality of style and theme; which is the 
 greatest of these poems, and why? How does the group illustrate 
 Wordsworth's theories of theme and diction? 
 
 (c) The Sonnets: themes; style; revelation of personality;. compari- 
 son with those of Milton. 
 
 (d) Study the development of the thought in the Ode on Immortality. 
 Compare it with the didactic poetry of the school of Pope and 
 Thomson and with the Odes of Dryden and Gray. 
 
 (e) Study other poems revealing his philosophy, such as Laodamia, 
 Duty, The Happy Warrior, and summarize results. 
 
 2. Coleridge: 
 
 (a) Compare him with Wordsworth in view of Nature and of Man; 
 
 themes; style; qualities of imagination. 
 
 (6) Study metre and rhyme in Christabel. 
 
 (c) Compare his medievalism with that of Scott. How does 
 
 The Ancient Mariner imitate the popular ballads, and how does 
 
 it differ? Compare Christabel with the old romances, such as 
 
 Gawain and the Green Knight or Malory? 
 
246 
 
 3- Byron; Shelley; Keats: 
 
 (a) What themes drawn from Nature does Byron prefer? Has 
 he any transcendentalism? Subtlety? Ccjmpare his use of simile 
 and metaphor with that of Coleridge and Shelley. Compare his 
 methods in description with those of Scott. Account for his par- 
 tiality for Pope. 
 
 (6) Study a group of Shelley's Nature poems, such as The West 
 Wind, The Sensitive Plant, Skylark, Cloud, Euganean Hills, and 
 set down your observations. 
 
 (c) What are the leading ideas of Shelley? Are they clearly ex- 
 pressed? 
 
 (d) The passion for beauty as exemplified in the poetry of Shelley 
 and Keats. 
 
 (e) The differences between the medievalism of Keats and that of 
 Coleridge. 
 
 (/) Compare Endymion and Hyperion to show "how Keats advanced 
 
 in style, imagination, power of expression. 
 
 (g) The influence of Spenser on Shelley and Keats. 
 References: The best Handbook for the entire period is Herford's The Age of 
 Wordsworth; copious selections from the works of all the poets treated in this 
 section are to be found in Page's British Poets of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. 
 (Sanborn), which also contains admirably selected bibliographies. The main 
 documents showing the literary theories of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley 
 are printed, in separate volumes, by the Oxford University Press. For biogra- 
 phies, consult the volumes in the English Men of Letters Series {Wordsworth 
 (Meyers) ; Coleridge ) Traill) ; Scott (Hutton) ; Byron (Nichol) ; Shelley (S jTnonds) ; 
 Keats (Colvin). The essays by Arnold on Wordsworth, BjTon, Keats; by Trent 
 (The Authority of Criticism) on Byron and Shelley; by More on Byron (introduc- 
 tion to Cambridge edition) ; by Symonds on Byron (Ward's English Poets) and 
 such general histories as Brandes, Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature. 
 
248 
 
 OTHER VERSE AND PROSE 1798-1832 
 
 I. Poets 
 
 I. Robert Southey (1774-1843) 
 
 (a) His inspiration from books, not life; intimate friend 
 of Coleridge and Wordsworth; war between him and Byron; 
 poet laureate, 1813. 
 
 (6) Important contributions to the rnetrical romances (com- 
 pare the work of Crabbe, Landor, Byron, Scott) : Joan of 
 Arc (1796; shows influence of republican ideas); Thalaba 
 (1801 ; epic of Islam) ; Madoc (1805) and The Curse of Kehama 
 (1810) (Arabian and Hindoo tales); Doji Roderick (1814), an 
 epic dealing with Gothic times. 
 
 (c) Southey also studied Spanish literature and legend, 
 translating several romances, and is noteworthy for some 
 lyrics. 
 
 (d) A writer of prose of distinction, such as the History of 
 Brazil and the lives of Nelson, Wesley, etc. 
 
 3. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) 
 
 (a) Distinguished for both verse and prose; "the methods 
 'of sculpture rather than poetry"; classical in reserve, in 
 finish and in reproducing the spirit of Theocritus and of the 
 \Greek Anthology. 
 
 (6) Poems: Gehir (1798), prehistoric Egyptian tale, filled 
 with myth and legend akin to Greek and Roman type, dis- 
 tinguished for reserve and definiteness of outline; Chrysaor 
 (1802), the last of the Titans; many poems in Latin, some of 
 them later translated into English in the Hellenics (1847); 
 many occasional poems and epigrams. 
 
 (c) Dramas: Count Julian (1812), based on old Spanish 
 legend, story somewhat like that of Coriolanus. 
 {d) Prose: Imaginary Conversations (1824, 1828, 1829), the 
 work on which his fame rests; written in Italy; marked by 
 dramatic power; subjects drawn from all nations and ages; 
 history, philosophy, literary criticism. Other prose illus- 
 trated by his Pericles and Aspasia (1836) and Pentameron 
 (1837). 
 
250 
 
 Minor Poets 
 
 (a) Xhpn^^s Campbell (1777-1844) wrote Pleasures of Hope 
 (1799); many battle lyrics, such as Mariners of England, 
 Hohenlinden, Battle of the Baltic; and a romance in verse, 
 Gertrude of Wyoming, in Spenserian stanza (1809). 
 (6) Ebenezer Elliott is remembered for his Corn-Law 
 Rhymes (1828). 
 
 (c) James Hogg wrote and collected ballads and wrote 
 prose^tates; influenced by Scott; called "The Ettrick Shep- 
 herd.'.' 
 
 (d) Thomas Moore (1779-1852) wrote Irish Melodies (1807 
 and after); many lyrics; and Lalla Rookh (Oriental romance, 
 1817). 
 
 (e) Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) reflected various literary 
 fashions; intimate with the several groups of poets of the 
 period. Wrote didactic poem, eighteenth century style, 
 The Pleasures of Memory (1793); essayed the metrical tale 
 {Jacqueline, 1814), and the poetic description of foreign 
 travel {Italy, 1822). 
 
252 
 
 THE NOVEL IN THE TIME OF SCOTT 
 
 I. Before Waverley 
 
 1. The Sentimental Novel 
 
 (a) The Man of Feeling (1771), by Henry Mackenzie. 
 
 (b) Sentimentalism combined with pedagogical or sociolog- 
 ical elements: A Simple Story (1791), by Elizabeth Inchbald; 
 Anna St. Ives (1792), by Thomas Holcroft; St. Leon (1799), 
 and Caleb Williams (1794), by William Godwin. 
 
 2. Gothic Romance 
 
 (a) Vathek, an Arabian Tale (1786), by William Beckford. 
 (6) The Mysteries of Udolpho, (1794), and The Italian (1797), 
 by Anne Radcliffe. 
 
 (c) The Monk (1795), by Matthew Gregory Lewis. 
 {d) Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Godwin Shelley, 
 (e) Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), by C. R. Maturin. 
 
 3. Jane Austen (1775-1817) 
 
 (a) Pride and Prejudice (1797; published 1813); distin- 
 guished for excellence of plot, but the characters are mainly 
 humor types and the dialogue is often awkward and mechan- 
 ical. 
 
 (6) Sense and Sensibility (1797; pubhshed 1811); marks 
 triumph of her method of witty dialogue, delicate satire 
 of types, realistic pictures drawn from limited field of life; 
 a satire of ''sensibility." 
 
 (c) Northanger Abbey (1798; published 1817); a satire of 
 Gothic romance. 
 
 (d) Last works: Emma; Mansfield Park; Persuasion (1814- 
 1818). 
 
 4. Other writers of the comedy of manners 
 
 (a) Besides Miss Austen, writers dealing with contemporary 
 manners were Frances Burney (Evelina, 1778; Cecilia, 1782) ; 
 Maria Edgeworth {Belinda, and Castle Rackrent, 1800- 
 1801; Fashionable Tales, 1809-1812). 
 
 5. Historical romance 
 
 (a) Of many examples of this type before Scott, the most 
 important are those by Jane Porter {Thaddeu^ of Warsaw, 
 1803; Scottish Chiefs, 1810). 
 
254 
 
 n. From Waverley to Dickens 
 
 1. Roniauce 
 
 (a) Innumerable historical novels appeared as a result of 
 the enormous popularity of Scott. G. P. R. James and 
 W. H. Ainsworth, who wrote between 1825 and 1850, were 
 among the more prolific of these imitators. 
 (6) Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, wrote The Last Dayi 
 of Pompeii (1834); Rienzi (1835); The Last of the Barons^ 
 (1843), and Harold (1848). 
 
 (c) Later historical romances are those by Charles Kings- 
 ley (Hypatia, 1853), and Thackeray. 
 
 2. The Reaction towards Realism 
 
 (a) Mary Mitford shows the influence of Miss Austen in 
 Our Village (1824-1832). 
 
 (6) Thomas Love Peacock wrote comedies of humors which 
 burlesqued the romances: Nightmare Abbey (1818); Crotchet 
 Castle (1831). 
 
256 
 
 Studies 
 
 I. Outline for the study of a novel 
 
 1. Plot 
 
 (a) Is it a novel of incident or of characterization? Is it related 
 in structure to the drama or to the epic? 
 
 (b) Make a list of the main incidents, marking those noteworthy 
 for emotional intensity or for comic situation. From this list 
 determine more fully the structure of the plot, method of develop- 
 ment, etc. 
 
 (c) Are there any improbable or unreasonable incidents? Do all 
 the incidents bear directly on the plot, or are some episodic? Is 
 there a sub-plot? If so, is it closely related to the main story? 
 
 (d) Is the story as a whole strongly unified? 
 
 2. Characters 
 
 (a) Are the chief persons simple character types or are they complex? 
 The minor persons? Are there well defined groups of characters? 
 
 (b) What methods are used in characterization? Is character 
 revealed mainly 'through action, or dialogue, or description? Is 
 there a variety of types? Is the author more successful in portray- 
 ing some types than others? 
 
 (c) Which seems to you to dominate: the plot, or the characters? 
 Does the plot seem constructed mainly as a means for exhibiting 
 certain character-types, or are the characters merely lay-figures 
 for the exposition of the plot, or are the two elements combined 
 harmoniously? 
 
 (d) What is the author's attitude toward his characters? 
 
 3. Setting 
 
 (a) What is the period of the novel? Is realism of setting at- 
 tempted? What means are employed to give the impression of 
 realism? Is the setting relatively important or unimportant? 
 (6) Does description of nature receive any stress? Is it related 
 to the story in any direct way? Is it mainly ornamental, or does 
 it assist in making the incidents vivid or convincing, or does it in- 
 fluence characters? Does it embody any interpretation or 
 philosophy? 
 
258 
 
 4. Style 
 
 (a) Is the writer precise? Is his vocabulary large; is it appropriately 
 varied in narration and in dialogue? 
 
 (b) What is the proportion of dialogue to narration? Does the 
 dialogue characterize; is it stiff, or natural? Does it assist in expo- 
 sition? 
 
 (c) What special qualities (humor; pathos; satire; moral purpose, 
 etc.) does the book illustrate? 
 
 (d) Are any peculiarities of style (such as artificiality, pedantry, 
 awkwardness in expression, "fine writing," prejudice, etc.) allowed 
 to interfeie with the straightforward telling of the story? 
 
 5. Author 
 
 (a) Is the book written mainly to entertain, or to illustrate a thesis, 
 or to present a phase of life? Does the author make the story a 
 means for presenting his philosophy of life, or does he tell the 
 story without comment? Are you conscious of the opinions and 
 interpretations of the author as you read? 
 
 n. Special studies in the novel of this period 
 
 1. Scott: Study one of the novels in accordance with the outline given 
 above; compare Kenilucorth or Ivanhoe with Henry V\ what is the 
 relation of the novels of Scott to his poetry, to the previous history of 
 the novel, to Romanticism? 
 
 2. Miss Austen: Study Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice in 
 connection with the outline; justify the term "comedy of manners" as 
 applied to her work. 
 
 3. Castle Rackrent and The Absentee, by Miss Edgeworth, afford oppor- 
 tunity for study of early use of fiction for serious purposes of reform with- 
 out direct didacticism, and for the introduction of character types till 
 then unusual in English fiction. 
 
 4. In all your studies based on the outline, here and in the later period, 
 remember that you should note concrete illustrations of your points. 
 
260 
 
 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 1798-1832 
 
 I. Criticism in the works of the Romantic poets 
 
 1. Romantic criticism introduced by \Yordsworth and Coleridge. 
 
 2. B^^n attacked the reviewers in English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers^; engaged in a controversy with Bowles about the merits 
 of Pope; criticized Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey in his poems. 
 
 3. Shelley wrote an eloquent Defence of Poetry (1821), and 
 some fragments in other places; in Adonais he lashed the review- 
 ers who had ridiculed Keats. 
 
 II. The Conservatives 
 
 T. Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) 
 
 (a) His work published in the Edinburgh Review, of which 
 he was editor 1803-1829. 
 
 (b) His criticism based on authority and the "rules," and 
 aimed at "common sense" ; yet his dogmatism rather a matter 
 of "taste" than reason. 
 
 (c) His war mainly on the mystical and supernatural elements 
 in Romantic poetry; he praised simplicity and realism of 
 Crabbe, admired the Elizabethans, and recognized defects 
 in Pope and Addison. 
 
 (d) This accounts for his appreciation of that phase of 
 Romanticism represented by Scott's tales while attacking 
 Wordsworth's transcendentalism and sentimental view of 
 peasant life. 
 
 2. Other writei"s for the Reviews 
 
 (a) Sydney Smith (1771-1845)' Famous wit; like Jeffrey 
 in adherence to gospel of common sense; connected with the 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 (b) WilHam Gifford (1757-1826) became editor of the Quar- 
 terly, 1809; lacked cleverness of Jeffrey and Smith and more 
 ])rutal in attacks on Romantic poets; his notorious review 
 of Endymion provoked Shelley's Adonais. 
 
 (c) John G. Lockhart (1794-1854) wrote for Blackiroods; 
 famous for his biographies of Burns and Scott; severely 
 criticized Keats and Plunt. 
 
2G2 
 
 III. The Progress of Romantic Criticism 
 I. Charles Lamb (1775-1834) 
 
 "XoTTntimate friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and among 
 the first to recognize their genius; his writings the by- 
 products of a busy life as clerk in the government service; 
 exerted great influence through his personality and conver- 
 sation. 
 
 (6) After some experiments (some poems, 1796, 1797; Rosa- 
 mund Gray, a tale, 1798; John Woodvil, a drama based on 
 Ehzabethan models, 1801) he wrote, with his sister, Tales 
 from Shakespeare, 1807, 
 
 (c) Most significant criticism based on his study of the 
 drama; this contained mainly in Specimens of the English 
 Dramatic Poets (1808), the essay on the tragedies of Shaks- 
 pere, and such papers in Elia as "The Artificial Comedy of 
 the Last Century" and "The Sanity of True Genius." 
 
 (d) Fame rests on Essays of Elia (1823) and Last Essays 
 of Elia (1833), reprinted from the London Magazine. These 
 illustrate his mastery of the familiar essay, more intimate 
 and self -revealing than The Spectator; their didacticism 
 less obtrusive. Variety of themes: personal, humorous, 
 fanciful, with some serious criticism of life and letters. 
 
 (e) Style: rich humor; wit; ease; deUcate fancy; sensi- 
 tiveness to the flavor of age. His criticism marked by 
 penetration, sympathy, imaginative qualit}-; a discoverer 
 of subtle effects in Shakspere and of the poetic value of the 
 minor Elizabethan drama. (The student should find con- 
 crete illustrations of these points in the selections assigned 
 for study.) 
 
264 
 
 William Hazlitt (1778-1830) 
 
 (a) Youth marked by incessant study, enthusiasm for revo- 
 lutionary schemes; made various attempts to write and 
 to paint; was profoundly influenced by Coleridge. 
 (6) First important work The Characters of Shakespeare's 
 Plays (1817); this followed by Lectures on the English Poets 
 (1818); Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819); 
 Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Reign of Eliza- 
 beth (1821). In The Spirit of the Age (1825) he summed up 
 his impressions of literature and criticism in his own time. 
 
 (c) Besides criticism, wrote many familiar essays: The" 
 Round Table (1817); Table Talk (1821-1822); TheJPlairi^ 
 
 ■ Speaker (1826). 
 
 (d) As a critic, had no systematic method, depending rather 
 on a cultivated and catholic taste; decisive and dogmatic, 
 but imaginative; sought to appreciate the point of view 
 and purposes of the author; sturdy and independent, a hater 
 of sham and affectation. 
 
266 
 
 Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) 
 
 (a) T^Iember of the Coleridge-Wordsworth circle in youth; in 
 the period 1803-1820 read widely and formed projects for 
 great works; story of his youth related in first important 
 work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, contributed 
 to London Magazine (collected and published, 1821). Fre- 
 quent contributor to this and other periodicals, where most 
 of his work first appeared. Klosterheim, a romance, 1832. 
 (6) Papers and essays illustrating his imaginative and 
 rhythmical prose: Suspiria de Profundis; The English 
 Mail Coach; The Revolt of the Tartars. His "lecture" 
 on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts illustrates 
 his peculiar "humor of the horrible." 
 
 (c) Passages and essays in Hterary criticism: On Style; 
 
 (Pope (which contains the famous passage on the literature 
 of knowledge and the Hterature of power) ; On the Knocking 
 Q,t the Gate in Macbeth. 
 
 (d) Style: marked by digression; minuteness of detail; 
 suggestive of poetry in its rhythm and imaginative power. 
 As a critic he is subtle, psychological, penetrating, depending 
 on these qualities for his value rather than on the exquisite 
 taste of Lamb and Hazlitt. (The student should find illus- 
 trations of these points in the work asssigned for study.) 
 
268 
 
 4. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) 
 
 (a) One of the founders of The Examiner (1808); wrote 
 Story q[ Rimini, a verse-narrative based on the Francesca 
 scene in the Inferno, while in prison because of a poUtical 
 paper; travelled in Italy; intimate with the Shelleys. 
 (6) Wrote many lyrics; translated from the Italian; con- 
 tributed many essays to the reviews. 
 References: The best brief account of the men treated in this section is contained 
 in Herford's Age of Wordsworth; Saintsbury's History of Criticism and English 
 Literary Criticism may also be consulted. The critical essays of Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Shelley, De Quincey, (in separate volumes) are published by the Oxford 
 University Press; the best edition of Jeffrey's essays is that by Gates (Ginn). 
 Hazlitt and Lamb are represented in Everyman's Library. Lives of De Quincey 
 and Lamb in English Men of Letters, 
 
270 
 
 POETRY IN THE VICTORIAN PERIOD I. 
 
 I. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) 
 
 1. Period of preparation 
 
 (a) Poems by Two Brothers (1827); Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, 1828, where he won a prize for his poem Timbuctoo 
 (1829); published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1830. 
 (6) Abroad with Hallam, 1832, another edition of his Poems, 
 with revisions and additions, 1833. 
 
 (c) Most important works of this first period : Ode to Memory, 
 The Poet, The Dying Swan, Lady of Shaloit, The Miller's 
 
 V Daughter, Oenone, Palace of Art, Lotos Eaters, Fair Women. 
 
 (d) Early work marked by over-ornamentation, strong tend- 
 ency to allegory, variety of metrical forms, promise of power. 
 
 2. Second period (1833-1850) 
 
 (a) For nine years silent; engaged in revising early work 
 and writing new poems; results in two volumes of Poems, 
 1842; published The Princess, 1847. His fame began with 
 the publication of the volumes of 1842; pension, 1845; poet 
 laureate, succeeding Wordsworth, 1850. 
 
 (b) Main groups: Pastoral idyls, somewhat similar to 
 Wordsworth's {The Gardener's Daughter, Dora, etc.); themes 
 drawn from the classics (Oenone, Ulysses, Lotos Eaters, 
 Tithonus); studies in Arthurian legend {Lady of Shalott, 
 Galahad, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, Morte d' Arthur); 
 other medieval themes (Dream of Fair Women, which owes 
 something to Chaucer; *S^. Simeon Stylites, a study in medie- 
 val asceticism; Godiva) St. Agnes' Eve)] and allegory (Palace 
 of Art, The Vision of Sin). 
 
 3. In Memoriam (1850) 
 
 (a) Written at various times after Hallam's death (1833); 
 a collection of 131 lyrical poems of varying lengths, with 
 prologue and epilogue; stanza singularly effective variant 
 of elegiac form; four accent quatrains, rh^nning abba. 
 
 (b) Poem sliglitly unified through references to seasons, 
 holidays, anniversaries, and by development of thought from 
 deep grief, through doubt, to resignation and peace. 
 
272 
 
 4. Idylls of the King (1859-1885) 
 
 (a)Sourcesln Malory and in Lady Charlotte Guest's trans- 
 lation of the so-called ]\Iabinogion. Uses the term 
 ''idyl" in the sense of "little picture"; thus he presents a 
 series of episodes only loosely connected rather than a true 
 epic. 
 
 (h) In present form the Idylls set forth a history of Arthur's 
 life by means of twelve stories; the allegory is never promi- 
 nent, though the general idea of the war of Sense on Soul 
 runs through the whole. But Tennyson began without def- 
 inite plan. 
 
 (c) The Idylls do not re produce th e medieval life and ideals : 
 Tennyson lacks sympa thy with the quest for the Grail ; 
 stresses the defectio n of Guinev ere: distorts the Tristram 
 story; thus he ''translates" medieval romance. 
 /{d) Blank verse unsurpassed for variety, richness of orna- 
 ment, lyrical power. 
 
 5. Later Poems: 
 
 (a) Maud (a monodrama, 1855); Enoch Arden (1864); 
 Ballads and Other Poems (1880); Tiresias and Other Poems 
 (1885); Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886); Demeter 
 (1889). 
 
 6. Dramas 
 
 (a) Queen Mary (1875); Harold (1877); The Cup (1884); 
 The Falcon (1884); The Promise of May (1886); The Fores- 
 ters {1S92). 
 
 (b) These works mainly Elizabethan in type; literary in 
 style. 
 
274 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. Compare Tennyson's early studies in Arthurian romance (The Lady 
 of Shalott, Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere) with his use 
 of this material in the later Idylls. 
 
 2. The Palace of Art and The Vision of Sin: summarize the meaning of 
 each poem; differences between the allegory in these poems and the alle- 
 gory of Spenser and Bunyan; between it and the allegory of the Idylls. 
 
 3. Summarize the thought of a number of the poems in In Memoriam. 
 What evidences of relation to the scientific movement of the time (Evo- 
 lution, with the effects on religious faith). Study the stanza of the poem 
 and its effects. (Corson's Primer of English Verse, pp. 70-77, may be 
 consulted.) 
 
 4. Compare the Dream of Fair IVomenvfhh Chaucer's Legend. 
 
 5. Compare one of the Idylls with its sources in Malory. How does the 
 poet make use of romance material in order to interpret life of his time? 
 How does he distort the story of the Grail, and why? (On this compare 
 St. Simeon Stylites.) Compare Tennyson's use of the medieval with that 
 of earlier poets of the romantic period, especially Scott, Coleridge, Keats. 
 
 6. Compare Rizpah with one of Browning's dramatic monologues. 
 
 7. Some of Tennyson's stanzas. 
 
 8. Tennyson's methods in revision. (On this the introduction to Van 
 Dyke's edition of Selections froni Tennyson, published by Ginn, may be 
 c onsu Ited .) 
 
 9. Rlietorical ornament in Tennyson. 
 
 10. Tennyson's view of Nature. 
 
 11. Reflections in Tennyson's poetry of the political, social, and scienti- 
 fic movements of his time. 
 
 References: Life, in English Men of Letters (Lyall) ; more complete account, 
 with valuable material about his methods of revision, the writing of the poems, 
 etc., in the biography by Hallam Tennyson; selections, with introduction, edited 
 by Van Dyke (Ginn); criticism in Dowden's Studies in Literature, Van Dyke's 
 Poetry of Tennyson, Stopford -Brooke's Tennyson, Gates's Studies and Apprecia- 
 tions, Stedman's Victorian Poets. The Handbook by Morton Luce (Macmillan) 
 will be found useful. For texts and bibliographies of Tennyson and the other 
 principal Victorian poets, see Page's British Poets of the Nineteenth Century 
 (Sanborn). 
 
276 
 
 11. Robert Browning (1812-1889) 
 
 1. Privately educated; won some attention through Paracelsus 
 and the production by Alacready of his Strafford and A Blot 
 in the ^Scutcheon: married Elizabeth Barrett, 1846, and resided 
 in Italy until her death, 1861; afterwards mainly in London. 
 
 2. Early poems: Pauline (1833); Paracelsus (1835); Sordello 
 (1840). 
 
 3. Dramas 
 
 (a) Strafford (1837); Pippa Passes (1841); Kitig Victor and 
 King Charles (1B42); Return of the Druses (1843); A Blot 
 in the ^Scutcheon (1843); Colomhe^s Birthday (1844); Luria 
 (1846); SouVs Tragedy (1846); In a Balcony (1853). 
 (fe) Plots usually invented by Browning; they lack action, 
 and stress psychological analysis of character, 
 (c) Pippa Passes is highly original in conception, notable 
 for lyrics and characterization; not a stage drama. In 
 a Balcony deals powerfully with a single intense situation 
 and suggests somewhat the method of Ibsen. Colomhe's 
 Birthday and A Blot in the 'Scutcheon approach more nearly 
 the stage drama of the Elizabethan type. 
 
278 
 
 4* The Dramatic Monologues 
 
 (a) These mainly in volumes Dramatic Lyrics (1842); Dra- 
 matic Romances (1845); Men and Women (1855); Dramatis 
 Personae (1864); Dramatic Idyls (1879-1880). 
 (6) This Browning's most notable contribution to literature; 
 subtle analysis of character revealed either in narrative 
 or in a monologue; great variety of themes, most character- 
 istic being those dealing with the Renaissance; they differ 
 from narrative poems in that incident is of value only as 
 a means of revealing character, that this character analysis 
 is more deeply penetrating, while other characters than the 
 speaker are made almost equally vivid. 
 
 5. The Ring and the Book (1868-1869) 
 
 (a) An Italian story of murder, somewhat like the original 
 of Othello in sordidness and brutality, but told twelve times, 
 each version presenting the story from a different view-point ; 
 the story is lifted into the realm of spiritual tragedy, as in 
 Othello. 
 
 6. Lyrics 
 
 (a) Despite the frequent difficulty and conciseness of his 
 style, Browning attained the highest rank as a writer of 
 lyrics. These scattered through his works; Asolando (1889) 
 his last published volume, is mainly lyrical. 
 
 7. Poems based on Greek Literature 
 
 (a) Balaustion's Adventure, from Euripides (1871); Aris- 
 tophanes^ Apology, from Euripides, (1875); Agamemnon, 
 from Aeschylus (1877). 
 
280 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. The Grammariayi' s Funeral: Time? Meaning? What attitude does 
 Browning take? Compare Tennyson's St. Simeon Stylites. 
 
 2. My Last Duchess: Situation? Character of the Duke? To whom is 
 he speaking? Character of the Duchess? What characteristics of a 
 gentleman of the Renaissance are here shown? Why is the poem "dra- 
 matic"? 
 
 3. The Bishop orders his Tomb: Study this poem as showing even more 
 full}' Browning's idea of the essential faults of the later Italian Renaissance. 
 
 4. Caliban: Source in The Tempest; meaning of the poem. Is it merely 
 a dramatic picture of primitive religion or is there further significance? 
 Study the diction. 
 
 5. Find illustrations of Browning's optimism; of his view of love; of 
 music; of art; of nature. How does he differ from Tennyson in these 
 respects? 
 
 6. Compare Browning's use of Renaissance with Tennyson's use of 
 Arthurian material, and both with other illustrations of the revival of 
 the past. 
 
 7. Dramatic monologues for further study: Andrea del Sarto; The Italian 
 in England; The Epistle of Karshish; Saul; The Flight of the Duchess. 
 
 fl&la^tid. ^* C'/w7de Harold to the Dark Tower Came is one of the few places in which 
 Browning deals with the medieval romances. The poem may be com- 
 pared with Tennyson's Arthurian studies. 
 
 9. Poems related to ballad material: Herve Riel; Muckle Mouth Meg. 
 
 10. Poems mainly philosophical or religious: Fra Lippo Lippi; Rabbi 
 Ben Ezra; Abt Vogler; Christmas Eve; Bishop Blougram's Apology. 
 
 References: For additional texts, see Page, British Poets; Berdoe's Browning 
 Cyclopedia or Mrs. Orr's Handbook may be consulted for explanation of difficul- 
 ties; for biography, Sharp, in Great IVriters series, and Chesterton, in English 
 Men of Letters. Some valuable material may be found in the papers of the 
 Boston Browning Society; other criticism inStedman's Victorian Poets, Dowden's 
 Studies in Literature, Stopford Brooke's The Poetry of Browning. 
 
282 
 
 III. Other poets 
 
 1. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1809-1861) 
 
 (a) Essay on Mind at 17; student of the classics, and trans- 
 lator of Prometheus Bound at 24; almost hopelessly ill after 
 1837. 
 
 (6) Chief works: The Seraphim (1838); Romaunt of the Page 
 (1839); Poems (1844); Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850); 
 Casa Guidi Windows (1851); Aurora Leigh (1856). 
 (c) Style careless and uneven, due to facility of compo- 
 sition, but often of high lyrical power. The Sonnets, her 
 best work, may be compared with the Elizabethan cycles. 
 
 2. .-^thur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) 
 
 (a) Poems mainly lyrical, most of them written 1840-1850. 
 ih) Careless of form, uneven in quality; thought tends to 
 scepticism and reflects religious unrest of the middle of the 
 century. Has no definite message, excellence due to sin- 
 cerity and devotion to truth. 
 
 (6) Important lyrics: Qua Cursum Ventus; The New Sinai; 
 Easter Day; So?igs in Absence; Say not the Struggle Nought 
 Availeth. 
 
 3. Minor lyric poets 
 
 (o) Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), besides his novels, 
 wrote many lyrics. 
 
 (6) John Keble (1792-1866) wrote a collection of sacred 
 verse, The Christian Year. 
 
 (c) Thomas Hood (1799-1845) wrote many IjtIcs distin- 
 guished for tunefulness, wut, pathos; the most famous are 
 The Bridge of Sighs and Song of the Shirt, 
 {d) Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839) was a writer 
 of society verse. 
 
 (e) Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849), Death's Jest Book. 
 (/) Ed^^ard Fitzgerald (1809-1883), The Rubaiyat of Omar 
 Khayyam. 
 
284 
 
 PROSE IX THE AGE OF VICTORIA 
 
 I. Essayists and Critics 
 
 I. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) 
 
 (a) Student at University of Edinburgh; studied law; 
 
 interest in German literature resulted in ]yilhelm Meister 
 
 {IS24:); German Romance (1827); lived in London after 1834; 
 
 lectures 1837-1840; great reputation in America due to 
 
 friendship with Emerson. 
 
 (6) Chief works 
 
 i. Reviews: Contributed mainly to the Edinburgh, 
 Fraser's and London Magazine. Chief papers: Richter; 
 German Literature; Burns (1828); Voltaire (1829); 
 BoswelVs Johnson (1832). 
 
 ii. Biography and history: Schiller (1820-1824); Crom- 
 well (1845); John Sterling (1851), French Revolution 
 (1837); Friedrich II (1858-1865). 
 iii. Essays philosophical, social; and literary: Signs 
 of the Times (1829); Sartor Resartus (in Eraser's 
 1833-34, first American edition 1835, first English 
 edition 1838); Heroes and Hero Worship (1841); Past 
 and Present (1843); Latter Day Pamphlets (1851). 
 
 (c) Thought influenced by German contemporary literature, 
 by French revolution and the progress of social reform; 
 individualism. 
 
 (d) Style impetuous, vigorous, imaginative, didactic; marked 
 by apostrophe, invective, colloquialism, coinage of words 
 and other mannerisms. Imaginative power gives to biog- 
 raphy and history effect of fiction and drama. 
 
286 
 
 2. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) 
 
 (a) Precocious youth, famous for retentive memory and 
 eagerness for knowledge; at seven wrote "history" and 
 "poetry"; at Trinity College, Cambridge, won prizes for 
 composition; studied law; began contributions to Edinburgh 
 at 25; Parliament 1830. 
 (6) Chief works: 
 
 i. Literary and historical essays contributed to the 
 Edinburgh Review 1825-1848. Chief papers: Milton, 
 Dryden, Bunyan, Johnson, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hast- 
 ings, Frederick the Great, Addison. 
 ii. History of England (from the time of James II) 
 (1848-1861) 
 
 iii. Verse: Lays of Ancient Rome (1842); Ivry and the 
 Armada (1848). 
 (c) Style: simplicity, clear presentation of material, repe- 
 tition; antithesis and balance, which is not only manifested 
 in sentence and paragraph structure but in contrast of 
 characters, thus leading to partiality and exaggeration. Dif- 
 fers from Carlyle in lack of sense of mystery and passionate 
 feeling; in a style brilliant instead of imaginative; in the 
 wisdom of the practical man as against the visions of the 
 seer. 
 
288 
 
 . Jclin TT(Miiy X(nvinan (1801-1890) 
 
 {(I) Tninly College, Oxford, 1817-1822; be^anOxford^ Move- 
 ment; joined Roman Church, 1845; Cardinal, 1879. 
 T^) Chief prose_ works: Tracts for the Times (1833-1841); 
 
 ^^ The Idea of a University (1852); Present Position of Catho- 
 lics (1851); Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864). 
 
 (c) Fiction: Loss and Gain (1848); Callista (1852). 
 
 (d) Poems: many hymns and religious lyrics; collected 1834, 
 1853; Dream of Gerontius (1866). 
 
 (e) Style marked by urbanity; scholarly precision ; adroitness 
 in argument; sincerity; lack of mannerism, though carefully 
 elaborated; subtle rhythm; abundance of illustration. 
 
 . ^ohn Ruskin (1819-1900) 
 
 (a) Precocious youth; first publications at fifteen; Christ 
 
 Church, Oxford, 1837-1842; lecturer after 1853 and professor 
 
 of Art at Oxford; lived at Brantwood after 1872. 
 
 (6) Chief works 
 
 i. ^\j-t criticism: Modern Painters (1843-1860); Seven 
 Lamps of Architecture (1849) : Pre-Raphaelitisyn (1851); 
 Stones of Venice (1851-1853). 
 
 ii. Social and political: Political Economy of Art 
 (1857); Unto this Last {1SQ2) ; Munera Pulveris (1862- 
 1863); Sesame and Lilies (1866); Crown of Wild Olive 
 (1866); Fors Clavigera (1871-1878). 
 
 (c) Style: rhythm, often passing into metre; length of 
 
 sentences; picturesqueness. 
 
 Ad) Two main divisions of his thought : criticism of art, and 
 \|?riticism of the social system of his time. 
 
290 
 
 5. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) 
 
 (a) Rugby; Balliol College, Oxford and fellow of Oriel; 
 inspector of schools after 1851; professor of Poetry at Ox- 
 ford, 1857-1867. 
 
 (b) Poetry; chiefly written 1849-1869. (See separate out- 
 line). 
 
 (c) P^ae; chiefly written 1861-1888: On Translating Homer 
 N (1861) •,\ Essays in Criticisjn (First Series, 1865; ^econd 
 
 Series, 1888); Celtic Literature (1867); Culture and Anarchy 
 (1869); Literature and Dogma (1873); Discourses in America 
 (1885). 
 
 (d) Criticism: Poetry to him a "criticism of life"; culture, 
 by which he means "setting ourselves to ascertain what per- 
 fection is and to make it prevail" is the text of his work. 
 
 (e) Style: ease; simplicity; tendency to condescension; 
 reiteration; fondness for certain phrases which he uses as 
 symbols; biblical flavor, 
 
 6. Walter Pater (1839-1894) 
 
 (a) Distinguished for literary criticism, studies and inter- 
 pretations of the Renaissance; "intellectual Hedonism." 
 Style marked by careful attention to sentence structure 
 and diction, producing at times an effect of artificiality. 
 (6) Works: Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873; 
 some of the essays being reprinted from periodicals) ; Marius 
 the Epicurean, a romance (1885) ; Imaginary Portraits (1887) ; 
 Appreciations (1889); Greek Studies (1895). 
 
292 
 
 II. The Novel 
 
 I. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) 
 
 (a) Youth of poverty and hardship influenced his novels; 
 journalism in London, and throughout his life interested 
 in various periodicals; was also manager of a theatrical 
 company, and, when his fame was established, gave many 
 readings from his works in England and America. 
 (6) Early writings: Sketches by Boz, journalistic sketches, 
 collected in 1836; Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), influenced 
 by Pierce Egan's Tom and Jerry, which had appeared period- 
 ically 1821-1828. 
 (c) Novels: First group 
 
 i. Oliver Twist (1837-1838), a picaresque story of slum 
 life in London. 
 
 ii. Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839); Yorkshire schools, 
 and adventures of poor youth in London; interest in 
 drama. 
 
 ii. Old Curiosity Shop (1840); Little Nell; story of 
 adventure type; itinerant players, 
 iv. Barnaby Rudge (1841), first historical no-^el. 
 V. Martin Chuzzlewit (1843); written after first Ameri- 
 can tour and contains harsh criticism, 
 vi. Christmas Books (1843-46; 1848). 
 vii. Dombey and Son (1846-48); a study of pride, 
 viii. Dceuid Copper field (1849-50) ; strong autobiograph- 
 ical element; shows great advance in structure, with 
 less of the theatrical and seniiimental. 
 
294 
 
 (d) Last novels: 
 
 i. Bleak House (J.852-53) ; introduces "society." 
 
 ii. Hard Times (1854). 
 
 iii. Little Dorrit (1855-1857); British officialdom. 
 
 iv. Tale of Two Cities (1859); French Revolution; 
 
 type differs from usual. 
 
 V. Great Expectations (1861); returns to earlier style. 
 
 vi. Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). 
 
 (e) These novels show reaction from the romantic school 
 toward realism, yet they are not thoroughly realistic. Humor, 
 pathos, unequalled creative power and variety of character- 
 ization. Often theatrical rather than dramatic, stressing 
 exaggerated situation and character, tending to sentimen- 
 tality. Strong humanitarian element. 
 
296 
 
 2. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) 
 
 (a) Cambridge; drawing and law; journalism {Fraser^s and 
 Punch) ; fame came to him more slowly than to Dickens. 
 (6) Early work: Barry Lyndon (1844); mock heroic defence 
 of gambling, in manner of Fielding's Jonathan Wild; Book of 
 Siiobs, same period, ridicules affectations of polite society. 
 
 (c) Novels 
 
 i. Vanity Fair (1847-1848); slightly historical; study 
 
 of female adventurer, influenced by Fielding; a rebuke 
 
 to sentimentality and moralizing; epic in structure. 
 
 ii. Pendennis (1849-1850); "a, new Tom Jones." 
 
 iii. Henry Esmoiid (1852); historical novel remarkable 
 
 for reproduction of style of Addison's time and for 
 
 masterly plot. 
 
 iv. The Newcomes (1854-1855); influence of Sterne 
 
 is seen; gentler in view of life and character. 
 
 V. The Virginians (1857); a sequel to Henry Esmond. 
 
 (d) Other works: Lectures on the English Humourists, 
 (delivered in England, 1851, in America, 1852, and published 
 in 1853), studies in poetry and prose of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Lectures on the Four Georges. Roundabout Papers 
 (essays contributed to Cornhill, of which he was editor 
 1860-1862.) 
 
 (e) Thackeray warred on various types of fiction popular 
 from Scott to Dickens, particular subjects of attack being 
 historical romance, conventional morality, sentimental hu- 
 manitarianism. His position somewhat like that of Fielding, 
 who was his master. Excels in delineation of character, 
 epic sweep of plot, sense of the irony of Hfe, hatred of sham. 
 His style incisive; conversational; clear and idiomatic. 
 
298 
 
 George Eliot (Marian Evans) (1819-1874) 
 
 (a) Distinguished in youth for studies in German hterature 
 and philosophy; turned to fiction 1857. 
 
 (6) Noy^l^^ 
 
 i. Scenes of Clerical Life (1858); written • under in- 
 fluence of Mrs. Gaskell, whose Ruth (1853) had been 
 based on idea that ''characterjs^fate." 
 ii. Adam Bede (1859); The^U^l onjiej^pss (1860); 
 Silas Marner (1861) are studies of JMidland life, 
 partly autobiographic, and show the sense of the 
 tragic in commonplace life. 
 
 iii. Romola (1863) is sharply differentiated from the 
 preceding novels by its erudite treatment of phases 
 of the Italian Renaissance; a tragedy of crime and 
 moral decay. 
 
 iv. Last novels: Felix Holt (1866) ; Middlemarch (1871- 
 1872); Daniel Deronda (1876), show increase of psy- 
 chological analysis of various types of character. 
 (c) Eliot presents studies of character in evolution, not as 
 fixed types; her tragedies are based on incidents seemingly 
 trivial rather than on great crimes; to her, "fate" is not 
 something external but of the soul itself. Thus the chief 
 interest of her novels lies not in incident or plot structure 
 but in minute analysis of states of the soul. 
 
300 
 
 ^eOTgeMeredith (1828-1909) 
 
 (a)Eaiicate(i in Germany; law; journalism; tried verse and 
 prose, but won recognition slowly. 
 
 (b) Early work: Poems (1851); The Shaving of Shagpat, 
 a fantastic Eastern tale (1856). 
 
 (c) Chief novels: 
 
 i. The Ordeal of^ Richard Feverel (1859); a "history 
 
 of Father and Son"; Richard brought up under ''the 
 
 System" by Sir Austin, who is an Egoist, but nature 
 
 proves the stronger. 
 
 ii. Evan Harrington, Sandra ^ Belloni, and Vittoria, 
 
 deal with the sentimentalism of gentility; the last 
 
 two show his sympathy with the Italian struggle for 
 
 independence. 
 
 iii. Rhoda Fleming and Harry Richmond have mOre plot 
 
 interest ; approach romance ; didacticism less prominent. 
 
 iv. The Egoist (1879); the most complete exposition 
 
 of the "Comic Spirit." 
 
 v. Beaucham'p' s Career, Diana of the Crossways, and 
 
 The Amazing Marriage are the most- important of his 
 
 later novels. 
 
 (d) Other works 
 
 i. His theory of The Comic Spirit explained in the 
 
 lecture "On the Idea of Comedy" (1877) (supplemented 
 
 by the prelude to The Egoist, and the first chapter of 
 
 Diana). 
 
 ii. Later poems: Modern Love (1862) ; Poems and Lyrics 
 
 (1883). 
 
 (e) Meredith attacks pride and sentimentalism; agrees with 
 Eliot that character is fate ("we are betrayed by what is 
 false within"), but gains through comedy (''thoughtful laugh- 
 ter") the purifying influence of tragedy. / Style distinguished 
 for brilliancy; mannerism leading to obscurity; epigranunatic 
 dialogue which, nevertheless, characterizes; by the presence 
 of the comic spirit rather than humor or satire. 
 
302 
 
 'smother novelists 
 
 (a) Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847); Shirley (1849). 
 (6) Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847). 
 
 (c) Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1853); Ruth (1853). 
 
 (d) Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke (1849); Hypatia (1853); 
 Westward Ho (1855) 
 
 (e) Anthony Trollope (1815-1882): The Warden (1855); 
 Barchester Towers (1857); Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). 
 (/) Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894): distinguished for 
 his short stories, his romances, and his familiar essays on 
 men and books. 
 
 (9-V<5- /f -af- ig) Thomas Hardy (born 1840): The Return of the Native 
 (1878) and Tess of the Durbervilles (1891) best illustrate his 
 method and his theory of life. Minute realism in his studies 
 of Wessex life; opposed to Eliot by his theory of fate outside 
 of character and manifested through the cruelty of Nature; 
 /[^ work marks the chasm that separates Wordsworth's 
 \(!onfidence in Nature from modern scepticism. His novels 
 constructed on the plan of Elizabethan drama; distinguished 
 for skill in characterization, mastery of plot, and precision 
 of style. 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. I. Find illustrations in the assigned reading of the characteristics 
 of style and thought of the prose Avriters treated in section I. 
 
 2. Carlyle's Essay on Burns is excellent as a means of studying the author's 
 style when most free from mannerism; for its sympathetic study of the 
 poet, and as a means of appreciating the differences between romantic 
 theories of poetic diction and theme and those of Pope's time. 
 
 3. Macaulay's use of antithesis and balance should be compared with 
 Bacon's. 
 
 4. Macaulay's limitations as a critic of literature. 
 
 5. Study the rhetoric of the paragraph as illustrated by one of tlie writers 
 of this group, such as Carlylc, Macaulay, or Arnold. 
 
 6. Study the diction of these three writers. 
 
304 
 
 II. I. Study the novels assigned for reading in accordance with the 
 outline at p. 255. 
 
 2. Find illustrations of characteristics of style and method named in 
 the outline under each novelist. 
 
 3. Vanity Fair: Are the relations of the two main plots always well 
 managed? Which plot is the more interesting? Why? What means 
 are employed to gain this result? Explain the significance of the sub- 
 title. Distinguish between the exaggeration in this novel and that found 
 in Dickens. What does Thackeray say, in the novel, as to his view of 
 realism? Compare Thackeray and Fielding. 
 
 4. Henry Esmond: How does the method differ from that of Vanity 
 Fair? In what ways is the prose style of the age of Addison imitated? 
 Compare the novel with one of Scott's historical novels. 
 
 5. Middhmarch: Account for the large number of characters and plots 
 running through this novel? What is the meaning of the title in this 
 connection? What, then, is the purpose of the novel? 
 
 W^hat is the relation of the prologue to the story? Is it true that 
 Middlemarch is a "tragedy of lost ideals?" How does the story of Lyd- 
 gate illustrate the thesis that character is fate? Account for Dorothea's 
 affection for Ladislaw; what seems to be Eliot's attitude towards him? 
 
 Differentiate between the realism of Eliot and that of Dickens; Thack- 
 eray; Austen. 
 
 6. Meredith: The most important topic is to study Meredith's theory 
 of comedy; to this end, the essay on Comedy should be read in connection 
 with Richard Feverel or The Egoist. Note especially the means by which 
 Meredith gains something of the effect of tragedy through what he denom- 
 inates comedy. Compare Thackeray and Dickens on this. 
 
 Methods of characterization; the mingling of realism with romance; 
 Meredith's women; the rhetoric of Meredith, are other topics for study. 
 
 References: 
 
 I. Besides the general histories of the period the following special works may be 
 consulted: Carlyle's Heroes and Sartor are edited, with extensive introductions, 
 by MacMechan in the Athenaeum Press Series (Ginn) ; the best editions of selec- 
 tions from Newman and Arnold, by Gates, are published in Holt's English 
 Readings; in the same series. Pater, edited by Hale. In the English Men of Let- 
 ters Series are biographies of Carlyle (Nichol) ; Pater (Benson) ; Kuskin (Harrison) ; 
 Arnold (Paul) ; Macaulay (Morison). The various critical introductions in Craik's 
 EtKjlish Prose. 
 
 II. In English Men of Letters Series are biographies of Dickens (Ward) ; Eliot 
 (Stephen); Thackeray (Trollope). For Meredith, see J. W. Beach, The Comic 
 Spirit in Meredith (Longmans); M. S. Henderson, George Meredith (Scribners); 
 James Moffat, A Primer to the Novels (Hodder and Stoughton). See also the 
 general histories of the Novel already cited, and Bliss Perry, A Study of Prose 
 Fiction (Houghton). 
 
306 
 
 LATER VICTORIAN POETRY 
 
 I. General characteristics of the period 
 
 1. A period of reaction: progress of the scientific movement; 
 faihng of revolutionary enthusiasm; reUgious doubt. 
 
 2. Sources of inspiration medieval and classical 
 
 (a) Strong sense of detachment; medieval themes not used 
 as a means for interpreting contemporary life, as in Tennyson 
 and Browning, but as a means of escape. 
 (6) Increasing attention to form ; evidence of failing imagina- 
 tion; in some poems clear marks of decadence. 
 
 (c) Contrast with this neo-romanticism the intense realism 
 and the increasing importance of the novel. 
 
 (d) Nature as a theme for poetry less important; patriotism 
 and enthusiasm for democracy rare. 
 
 II. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) 
 
 1. Poetical works: The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1849); 
 Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852); Poems (1853); 
 Merope (1858); New Poems (1867); collective edition of Poems 
 (1869). 
 
 2. Representative poems 
 
 (a) Narrative poems treated in the manner of Greek epic 
 or tragedy; themes oriental, Norse, Celtic: Sohrab and 
 Rustum; Balder Dead; Tristram and Iseult. 
 {b) Elegiac poems: The Scholar Gypsy; Thyrsis; Rugby 
 Chapel ; Heine's Grave, etc. Note the strong elegiac element 
 in all Arnold's poetry. 
 
 (c) Poems of disillusion, doubt, resignation: Dover Beach; 
 Stagirius; Worldly Place; Self-deception; Bacchanalia. This 
 element also found in The Scholar Gypsy and in many lyrics. 
 {d) Classical themes: The Forsaken Merman; The Strayed 
 Reveller; Empedocles on Etna; Merope, etc. 
 Jf^ Legend: The Neckan; St. Brandan, etc. 
 (/) Sonnets. 
 
308 
 
 m. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) 
 
 1. Student of dmwiug and painting and one of the founders of 
 the Pre-Raphaelite movement. 
 
 2. Writings: Early Italian Poets (1861); Poems (1870); Ballads 
 and Sonnets (1881). 
 
 3. Representative poems 
 
 (a) Medieval themes, neo-romantic in treatment; as a rule 
 ballads either literary and mystical in manner or attempts 
 at imitation of the old ballads in use of refrain, diction, etc. 
 This group picturesque but vague and sensuous: The Blessed 
 Damozel; Troy Town; Eden Bower; Staff and Scrip; Sister 
 Helen; Stratton Water; Rose Mary; The Ki?ig^s Tragedy. 
 
 (b) Realistic poems: The Last Confession (a story of Italian 
 life suggesting Browning's dramatic monologues); Jenny. 
 
 (c) Lyrics. 
 
 (d) Sonnets for Pictures; and The House of Life (a sonnet 
 sequence). 
 
 IV. William Morris (1834-1896) 
 
 1. Architecture; painting; household arts; printing; socialism. 
 
 2. Chief poetical works 
 
 (a) Ballad period, strongly influenced by Pre-Raphaelite 
 ideals, resulting in poetry somewhat like Rossetti's: poems 
 of this group chiefly contained in The Defence of Guenevere 
 and Other Poems (1858). Besides the title poem, important 
 illustrations of this phase of his work are King Arthur s 
 Tomb; Rapunzel; The Eve of Crecy; etc. More realistic in 
 their presentation of medievalism are Shameful Death, The 
 Haystack in the Floods, Riding Together, etc. 
 (6) Chaucerian period: The Life and Death of Jason (1866); 
 The Earthly Paradise (1S6S-1S70); Sigurd the Volsung (1877). 
 These are collections of narrative poems, told in the manner 
 of Chaucer and imitating medieval originals in stanza, metre, 
 and diction; sources classical, oriental, Norse, etc., treated 
 from medieval point of view. 
 
 (c) Poems of contemporary life: Poems by the Way (1891). 
 These less significant than his medieval poems. 
 
 3. Morris also wrote a number of prose romances; translated 
 Norse sagas, and translated the Aeneid and tlie Odyssey. 
 
310 
 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) 
 
 1. Chief poetical works 
 
 (a) Dramas: Atalanta in Calydon (1865) and Erechtheus 
 (1876) are dramas of classical type; The Queen Mother (1860), 
 Rosa?nond (1860), Chastelard (1865), Bothwell (1874), and 
 Mary Stuart (1881) are of the Ehzabethan type. 
 (6) Poems and Ballads (1866; 1878; 1889). The three series 
 include a very large number of poems chiefly lyric or short 
 narratives, on medieval, classical, and Hebrew themes. 
 
 (c) Narrative poems drawn from Arthurian material: Tris- 
 tram of Lyonesse (1882); Tale of Balen (1896). 
 
 (d) As a poet, Swinburne notable for facility; great variety 
 of metre and stanza forms; great learning; marvelous lyrical 
 power. His work often decadent, appealing to senses; a 
 pessimist. Lacks restraint; small variety in mood. 
 
 2. Criticism: William Blake (1868); George Chapman (1875); 
 Essays and Studies (1875); A Study of Shakespeare (1880); The 
 Age of Shakespeare (1908). 
 
312 
 
 Studies 
 
 1. Note parallels between Arnold's critical theory (chiefly as respects 
 themes of poetry, the grand style, view of Homer, etc.) and his classical 
 treatment of medieval stories. 
 
 2. Test Arnold's interpretation of medieval life and character by compar- 
 ing Balder Dead with Beowulf. Compare it also with Homer. 
 
 3. Find in Arnold's poems illustrations of his philosophy of life and view 
 of his times. 
 
 4. Compare Arnold and Gray. 
 
 5. Compare Rossetti's ballads: (a) with the folk ballads; (6) with the 
 Ancient Mariner. 
 
 6. The influence of Blake on Rossetti. 
 
 7. The Pre-Raphaelite movement as related to English poetry. 
 
 8. Compare Morris's Arthurian poems with the treatment of the same 
 themes (a) by Malory; (6) by Tennyson. 
 
 9. Compare the early group of medieval poems by Morris {Guenevere, 
 King Arthur, Geffray Teste Noire, Old Love, Shameful Death, etc.) with 
 the group represented by The Judgment of God, The Haystack in the 
 Floods, etc. 
 
 10. Study the metrical forms used in Jason, Earthly Paradise, Sigurd, 
 and account for them. 
 
 11. Morris and Chaucer. 
 
 12. Classify some of the poems in Swinburne's Poeiyis and Ballads and 
 discuss one of the groups. 
 
 References: For the entire period see especially Stedman's Victorian Poets 
 and the texts and bibliographies in Page's British Poets. For Arnold, consult 
 the references given under the outline for his prose. For Rossetti, see the biog- 
 raphy by Joseph Knight in Great Writers Series; Pater, Appreciations; Swinburne, 
 Essays and Studies. For Morris, Mackail's Life; Dowden, Transcripts and Stud- 
 ies; Swinburne, Essays and Studies. 
 
INDEX TO AUTHORS AND PERIODS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Addison, Joseph 178 
 
 Aelfric 12 
 
 Alfred 12 
 
 Akenside, Mark 192 
 
 Ainsworth, W. H 254 
 
 Arbuthnot, Dr. John 180 
 
 Anglo Saxon Period 
 
 The People 2 
 
 The Language 4 
 
 The Literature 6 
 
 Ariosto 56, 120 
 
 Armstrong, John 192 
 
 Arnold, Matthew 290, 306 
 
 Ascham, Roger 112 
 
 Austen, Jane 252 
 
 Bacon, Sir Francis 116, 142 
 
 Ballads, Popular 42-46 
 
 Bede 12 
 
 Barbour, John 34 
 
 Barclay Alexander 50, 62 
 
 Barclay, John 168 
 
 Baxter, Richard 142 
 
 Beattie, James 216 
 
 Beaumont, Francis 106 
 
 Beckford, William 216 
 
 Beddoes, T. L 282 
 
 Behn, Aphra 166, 168 
 
 Bentley, Richard 178 
 
 Berners, Lord 40 
 
 Bible, The Enghsh 122, 124 
 
 Blackstone, Sir William 208 
 
 Blair, Robert 194 
 
 Blake, Wilham 222 
 
 Blind Harry 34 
 
 Boswell, James 200 
 
 Boyle, Roger 166, 168 
 
 Bronte, Charlotte 302 
 
 Bronte, Emily 302 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas 140 
 
 Browne, William 130 
 
 Browning, Ehzabeth B 282 
 
 Browning, Robert 276-280 
 
 Bulwer, Edward (Lord Lytton) 254 
 
 Bunyan, John 170 
 
 Burke, Edmund 2OO 
 
 Burnet, Bishop 172 
 
 Burney, Frances 206, 252 
 
 Burns, Robert 222 
 
 Burton, Robert 140 
 
 Butler, Bishop IgQ 
 
 Butler, Samuel 164 
 
 Byron, Lord 236-238, 246 
 
 Caedmon 10 
 
 Calpren^e, La 168 
 
 Camden, William 116 
 
 Campbell, Thomas : 250 
 
 Campion, Thomas 114 
 
 Carew, Thomas ' 132 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas 284 
 
 Caxton, WiUiam 40 
 
 Chapman, George 104, 120 
 
 Chatterton, Thoma:. 216 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey 24-30 
 
 Chesterfield, Earl of 180, 208 
 
 Chretien de Troyes 20, 22 
 
 Cibber, Colley 180 
 
 Clarendon, Earl of 172 
 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh 282 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 230, 244 
 
 Colet, John 48 
 
 Collier, Jeremj' 172 
 
 Colhns, William 214 
 
 Congreve, William 166, 168 
 
 Coverdale, Miles 122 
 
 Cowley, Abraham 138 
 
 Cowper, William 220 
 
 315 
 
316 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Crabbe, George 220 
 
 Cra^haw, Richard 132 
 
 Cumberland, Richard 210 
 
 Cynewulf 10 
 
 Daniel, Samuel 60, 114 
 
 Davenant, Sir Wilham 166 
 
 Da vies, Sir John 130 
 
 Defoe, Daniel 176 
 
 Dekker, Thomas 104 
 
 Deloney, Thomas 110 
 
 Denham, Sir John 136 
 
 Dennis, John 180 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas 266 
 
 Dickens, Charles 292-294 
 
 Donne, John 126 
 
 Douglas, Gawin 34 
 
 Drama 
 
 Early 76 
 
 Elizabethan 82 
 
 Eighteenth Century 166, 210 
 
 Drayton, Michael 126, 136 
 
 Drummond, William 130 
 
 Dryden, John 158-162 
 
 Dunbar, ^^■ilham 34 
 
 Dyer, John 192, 196 
 
 Earle, John 170 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria 252 
 
 Eighteenth Century 
 
 Prose 176-182; 198-208; 216-218 
 
 Poetry 184-196; 214-216; 220-224 
 
 Drama 166,210-212 
 
 Eliot, George 298 
 
 Ehzabetlian Period 
 
 Anthologies 66 
 
 Drama 82-106 
 
 Pastorals 62-64 
 
 Prose 108-118 
 
 Sonnets 58-60 
 
 Translations 120-124 
 
 Elliot, Ebenezer 250 
 
 Erasmus 48 
 
 Evelyn, John 172 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Fairfax, Edward 120 
 
 Farquhar, George 166 
 
 Fielding, Henry 204 
 
 Fitzgerald, Edward 282 
 
 Fletcher, Giles 130 
 
 Fletcher, John 106 
 
 Fletcher, Phineas 130 
 
 Florio, John 120 
 
 Ford, John 106 
 
 Fuller, Thomas 140 
 
 Garrick, David 200 
 
 Gascoigne, George 54, 82, 84, 1 12 
 
 GaskeU, Mrs 302 
 
 Gay, John. 194 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth 16, 20 
 
 Gibbon, Edward . . 200 
 
 Giflford, WiUiam 260 
 
 Gloucester, Humphrey of 48 
 
 Godwm, William 252 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver 200, 206, 210, 212 
 
 Googe, Barnaby 62 
 
 Gosson, Stephen 112 
 
 Gower, John 32 
 
 Gray, Thomas 214 
 
 Greene, Robert 88, 108 
 
 Habington, William 132 
 
 Hakluyt, Richard 116 
 
 Hall, Joseph 136, 170 
 
 Hardy, Thomas 302 
 
 Harington, Sir John 114 
 
 Hawes, Stephen 36 
 
 Hazlitt, WiUiaiii 264 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon 16 
 
 Henryson, Robert 34 
 
 Herbert, George 132 
 
 Herrick, Robert 128 
 
 Heywood, John 78 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas 142 
 
 Hoby, Thomas 120 
 
 Hogg, James 250 
 
 Holcroft, Thomas 252 
 
 Hohnshed, Raphael 116 
 
317 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Hood, Thomas 282 
 
 Hooker, Richard 116 
 
 Humanism 48 
 
 Hume, David 208 
 
 Hunt, Leigh 268 
 
 Hurd, Bishop 218 
 
 Inchbald, Elizabeth 252 
 
 James I. of Scotland 34 
 
 James, G. P. R 254 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis 260 
 
 Johnson, Samuel 198 
 
 Jonson, Ben 104, 128, 136 
 
 "Junius" 208 
 
 Keats, John 242,246 
 
 Keble, John •. 282 
 
 KeUy, Hugh 210 
 
 Kingsley, Charles 254, 302 
 
 Kyd, Thomas 88 
 
 Lamb, Charles 262 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage 248 
 
 Langland, WiUiam (?) 32 
 
 Layamon 16, 20 
 
 Lee, Nathaniel 166 
 
 Lewis, "Monk" 216 
 
 Locke, John 172 
 
 Lockhart, John G 260 
 
 Lodge, Thomas 108, 112 
 
 Lovelace, Richard 132 
 
 Lydgate, John 36 
 
 Lyly, John 86 
 
 Ivlacaulay, Thomas B 286 
 
 Maehiavelli 120 
 
 Mackenzie, Henry 206 
 
 Macpherson, James 216 
 
 Malory, Sir Thomas 38 
 
 Mandeville, Bernard 180 
 
 Mantuan 62 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher 66, 86 
 
 Marot 62 
 
 Marvell, Andrew 164 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Maturin, C. R 252 
 
 Meredith, George 300 
 
 Middle English Period 
 
 Language 14 
 
 Literature 16 
 
 Fourteenth Century 24 
 
 Later 38-46 
 
 Milton, John 144-156 
 
 Mitford, Mary 254 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary 180 
 
 Moore, Thomas 250 
 
 More, Sir Thomas 48 
 
 Morris, William 308 
 
 Nash, Thomas 110 
 
 Newman, John Henry 288 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac 172 
 
 North, Sir Thomas 48, 120 
 
 Norton, Thomas 52, 82 
 
 Novel 
 
 Elizabethan 108-110 
 
 Seventeenth Century 168-172 
 
 Eighteenth Centiu-y. . . .176, 202-206, 216 
 Nineteenth Century. . . .252-258; 292-304 
 
 Occleve, Thomas 36 
 
 Oldham, John 164 
 
 Orm 16 
 
 Otway, Thomas 166 
 
 Overbury, Sir Thomas 170 
 
 Painter, William 108 
 
 Parnell, Thomas 194 
 
 Pater, Walter 290 
 
 Peacock, T. L 254, 282 
 
 Peele, George 88 
 
 Peyps, Samuel 172 
 
 Percy, Thomas 216 
 
 Petrarch 56,62,120 
 
 Philips, Ambrose 194 
 
 PhiUps, John '.192, 194 
 
 Pomfret, John 194 
 
 Pope, Alexander 184-190 
 
 Porter, Jane 252 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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