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CANTERBURY PILGRIMS
From Royal MS., 18 DM, in the British Museum

ENGLISH LITERATURE

ITS HISTORY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
FOR THE LIFE OF THE ENGLISH-
SPEAKING WORLD

A TEXT-BOOK FOR SCHOOLS

BY
WILLIAM J. LONG

GINN AND COMPANY

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO - LONDON
ATLANTA DALLAS COLUMBUS SAN FRANCISCO

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A8 33 .5

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GINN AND COMPANY PRO-
PRIETORS BOSTON U.S.A.

TO
MY FRIEND

C-H-T

IN GRATITUDE FOR

HIS CONTINUED HELP IN THE

PREPARATION OF

THIS BOOK

PREFACE

This book, which presents the whole splendid history of
English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the
Victorian Era, has three specific aims. The first is to create or
to encourage in every student the desire to read the best books,
and to know literature itself rather than what has been written
about literature. The second is to interpret literature both per-
sonally and historically, that is, to show how a great book gen-
erally reflects not only the author's life and thought but also the
spirit of the age and the ideals of the nation's history. The
third aim is to show, by a study of each successive period, how
our literature has steadily developed from its first simple songs
and stories to its present complexity in prose and poetry.

To carry out these aims we have introduced the following
features :

(1) A brief, accurate summary of historical events and social
conditions in each period, and a consideration of the ideals
which stirred the whole nation, as in the days of Elizabeth,
before they found expression in literature.

(2) A study of the various literary epochs in turn, showing
what each gained from the epoch preceding, and how each aided
in the development of a national literature.

(3) A readable biography of every important writer, showing
how he lived and worked, how he met success or failure, how
he influenced his age, and how his age influenced him.

(4) A study and analysis of every author's best works, and of
many of the books required for college-entrance examinations.

(5) Selections enough especially from earlier writers, and
from writers not likely to be found in the home or school library

vi ENGLISH LITERATURE

to indicate the spirit of each author's work ; and directions
as to the best works to read, and where such works may be
found in inexpensive editions.

(6) A frank, untechnical discussion of each great writer's
work as a whole, and a critical estimate of his relative place
and influence in our literature.

(7) A series of helps to students and teachers at the end of
each chapter, including summaries, selections for reading, bibliog-
raphies, a list of suggestive questions, and a chronological table of
important events in the history and literature of each period.

(8) Throughout this book we have remembered Roger
Ascham's suggestion, made over three centuries ago and still
pertinent, that "'tis a poor way to make a child love study by
beginning with the things which he naturally dislikes." We
have laid emphasis upon the delights of literature ; we have
treated books not as mere instruments of research which is
the danger in most of our studies but rather as instruments
of enjoyment and of inspiration ; and by making our study as
attractive as possible we have sought to encourage the student
to read widely for himself, to choose the best books, and to
form his own judgment about what our first Anglo-Saxon
writers called "the things worthy to be remembered."

To those who may use this book in their homes or in their
class rooms, the writer ventures to offer one or two friendly sug-
gestions out of his own experience as a teacher of young people.
First, the amount of space here given to different periods and
authors is not an index of the relative amount of time to be
spent upon the different subjects. Thus, to tell the story of
Spenser's life and ideals requires as much space as to tell the
story of Tennyson ; but the average class will spend its time
more pleasantly and profitably with the latter poet than with
the former. Second, many authors who are and ought to be
included in this history need not be studied in the class room.

PREFACE vii

A text-book is not a catechism but a storehouse, in which one
finds what he wants, and some good things beside. Few classes
will find time to study Blake or Newman, for instance ; but
in nearly every class there will be found one or two students
who are attracted by the mysticism of Blake or by the profound
spirituality of Newman. Such students should be encouraged to
follow their own spirits, and to share with their classmates the
joy of their discoveries. And they should find in their text-book
the material for their own study and reading.

A third suggestion relates to the method of teaching litera-
ture ; and here it might be well to consider the word of a great
poet, that if you would know where the ripest cherries are,
ask the boys and the blackbirds. It is surprising how much a
young person will get out of the Merchant of Venice, and some-
how arrive at Shakespeare's opinion of Shylock and Portia, if
we do not bother him too much with notes and critical direc-
tions as to what he ought to seek and find. Turn a child and a
donkey loose in the same field, and the child heads straight for
the beautiful spots where brooks are running and birds singing,
while the donkey turns as naturally to weeds and thistles. In
our study of literature we have perhaps too much sympathy
with the latter, and we even insist that the child come back
from his own quest of the ideal to join us in our critical com-
panionship. In reading many text-books of late, and in visiting
many class rooms, the writer has received the impression that we
lay too much stress on second-hand criticism, passed down from
book to book ; and we set our pupils to searching for figures of
speech and elements of style, as if the great books of the world
were subject to chemical analysis. This seems to be a mistake,
for two reasons : first, the average young person has no natural
interest in such matters ; and second, he is unable to appreciate
them. He feels unconsciously with Chaucer :

And as for me, though that my wit be lyte,
On booke's for to rede I me delyte.

viii ENGLISH LITERATURE

Indeed, many mature persons (including the writer of this history)
are often unable to explain at first the charm or the style of an
author who pleases them ; and the more profound the impression
made by a book, the more difficult it is to give expression to our
thought and feeling. To read and enjoy good books is with us,
as with Chaucer, the main thing ; to analyze the author's style or
explain our own enjoyment seems of secondary and small impor-
tance. However that may be, we state frankly our own conviction
that the detailed study and analysis of a few standard works
which is the only literary pabulum given to many young people in
our schools bears the same relation to true literature that theol-
ogy bears to religion, or psychology to friendship. One is a more
or less unwelcome mental 'discipline ; the other is the joy of life.
The writer ventures to suggest, therefore, that, since litera-
ture is our subject, we begin and end with good books ; and that
we stand aside while the great writers speak their own message
to our pupils. In studying each successive period, let the stu-
dent begin by reading the best that the age produced ; let him
feel in his own way the power and mystery of Beowulf, the
broad charity of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, the ro-
mantic enthusiasm of Scott ; and then, when his own taste is
pleased and satisfied, a new one will arise, to know some-
thing about the author, the times in which he lived, and finally
of criticism, which, in its simplicity, is the discovery that the men
and women of other ages were very much like ourselves, loving as
we love, bearing the same burdens, and following the same ideals :

Lo, with the ancient
Roots of man's nature
Twines the eternal
Passion of song.

Ever Love fans it ;
Ever Life feeds it ;
Time cannot age it ;
Death cannot slay.

PREFACE ix

To answer the questions which arise naturally between teacher
and pupil concerning the books that they read, is one object of
this volume. It aims not simply to instruct but also to inspire ;
to trace the historical development of English literature, and at
the same time to allure its readers to the best books and the
best writers. And from beginning to end it is written upon the
assumption that the first virtue of such a work is to be accurate,
and the second to be interesting.

The author acknowledges, with gratitude and appreciation,
his indebtedness to Professor William Lyon Phelps for the
use of his literary map of England, and to the keen critics,
teachers of literature and history, who have read the proofs of
this book, and have improved it by their good suggestions.

WILLIAM J. LONG
STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION THE MEANING OF
LITERATURE I

The Shell and the Book. Qualities of Literature. Tests of Literature.
The Object in studying Literature. Importance of Literature. Sum-
mary of the Subject. Bibliography.

CHAPTER II. THE ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD-ENGLISH
PERIOD 10

Our First Poetry. "Beowulf." " Widsith." " Deor's Lament." "The
Seafarer." "The Fight at Finnsburgh." " Waldere." Anglo-Saxon
Life. Our First Speech. Christian Writers. Northumbrian Literature.
Bede. Caedmon. Cynewulf. Decline of Northumbrian Literature.
Alfred. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER III. THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD . 46

The Normans. The Conquest. Literary Ideals of the Normans. Geoffrey
of Monmouth. Work of the French Waiters. Layamon's " Brut."
Metrical Romances. The Pearl. Miscellaneous Literature of the Nor-
man Period. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER IV. THE AGE OF CHAUCER. ... 67

History of the Period. Five Writers of the Age. Chaucer. Langland.
" Piers Plowman." John Wyclif. John Mandeville. Summary. Bibli-
ography. Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER V. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. . . 89

Political Changes. Literature of the Revival. Wyatt and Surrey. Malory's
" Morte d' Arthur." Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER VI. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. ... 99

Political Summary. Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age. The Non-
Dramatic Poets. Edmund Spenser. Minor Poets. Thomas Sackville.
Philip Sidney. George Chapman. Michael Dray ton. The Origin of
the Drama. The Religious Period of the Drama. Miracle and Mystery
Plays. The Moral Period of the Drama. The Interludes. The Artistic
Period of the Drama. Classical Influence upon the Drama. Shake-
speare's Predecessors in the Drama. Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare.

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

Decline of the Drama. Shakespeare's Contemporaries and Successors.
Ben Jonson. Beaumont and Fletcher. John Webster. Thomas Middle-
ton. Thomas Heywood. Thomas Dekker. Massinger. Ford. Shirley.
Prose Writers. Francis Bacon. Richard Hooker. Sidney. Raleigh.
John Foxe. Camden and Knox. Hakluyt and Purchas. Thomas North.
Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER VII. THE PURITAN AGE . . . . .186

The Puritan Movement. Changing Ideals. Literary Characteristics.
The Transition Poets. Samuel Daniel. The Song Writers. The Spen-
serian Poets. The Metaphysical Poets. John Donne. George Herbert.
The Cavalier Poets. Thomas Carew. Robert Herrick. Suckling and
Lovelace. John Milton. The Prose Writers. John Bunyan. Robert Bur-
ton. Thomas Browne. Thomas Fuller. Jeremy Taylor. Richard Baxter.
Izaak Walton. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER VIII. PERIOD OF THE RESTORATION 236

History of the Period. Literary Characteristics. John Dryden. Samuel
Butler. Hobbes and Locke. Evelyn and Pepys. Summary. Bibliography.
Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER IX. EIGHTEENTH - CENTURY LITERA-
TURE 258

History of the Period. Literary Characteristics. The Classic Age.
Alexander Pope. Jonathan Swift. Joseph Addison. w The Tatler " and
"The Spectator." Samuel Johnson. Boswell's << Life of Johnson." Later
Augustan Writers. Edmund Burke. Edward Gibbon. The Revival of
Romantic Poetry. Thomas Gray. Oliver Goldsmith. William Cowper.
Robert Burns. William Blake. The Minor Poets of the Romantic
Revival. James Thomson. William Collins. George Crabbe. James
Macpherson. Thomas Chatterton. Thomas Percy. The First English
Novelists. Meaning of the Novel. Precursors of the Novel. Discovery
of the Modern Novel. Daniel Defoe. Samuel Richardson. Henry
Fielding. Smollett and Sterne. Summary. Bibliography. Questions.
Chronology.

CHAPTER X. THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM . . .369

Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics of the Age. The Poets
of Romanticism. William Wordsworth. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Robert Southey. Walter Scott. Byron. Percy Bysshe Shelley. John
Keats. Prose Writers of the Romantic Period. Charles Lamb. Thomas
De Quincey. Jane Austen. Walter Savage Landor. Summary. Bibliog-
raphy. Questions. Chronology.

xii ENGLISH LITERATURE

PAGE

CHAPTER XI. THE VICTORIAN AGE . . . .452

Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics. Poets of the Victorian
Age. Alfred Tennyson. Robert Browning. Minor Poets of the Victorian
Age. Elizabeth Barrett. Rossetti. Morris. Swinburne. Novelists of
the Victorian Age. Charles Dickens. William Makepeace Thackeray.
George Eliot. Minor Novelists of the Victorian Age. Charles Reade.
Anthony Trollope. Charlotte Bronte. Bulwer Lytton. Charles Kingsley.
Mrs. Gaskell. Blackmore. Meredith. Hardy. Stevenson. Essayists
of the Victorian Age. Macaulay. Carlyle. Ruskin. Matthew Arnold.
Newman. The Spirit of Modern Literature. Summary. Bibliography.
Questions. Chronology.

CHAPTER XII. AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 569

Rudyard Kipling. Some Modern Novelists. The Realists. The Modern
Romance. The Poets. Poetry of Everyday Life. The Symbolists. The
Celtic Revival. Books of Many Kinds. Books of the War. Bibliography.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 595

INDEX 599

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

CANTERBURY PILGRIMS Frontispiece

From Royal MS., 18 D.ii, in the British Museum

LITERARY MAP OF ENGLAND

THE MANUSCRIPT BOOK 30

After the painting in the Congressional Library, by John W. Alexander

GEOFFREY CHAUCER 68

After the Rawlinson Pastel Portrait in the Bodleian Library, Oxford
PORTIA 150

After the portrait by John Everett Millais. Property of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art

AMERICAN MEMORIAL WINDOW, STRATFORD 155

EDMUND BURKE 298

From an old print

ALFRED TENNYSON 458

After the portrait by George Frederic Watts

SIR GALAHAD 465

After the painting by George Frederic Watts

CHARLES DICKENS 488

After the portrait by Daniel Maclise

THOMAS CARLYLE 528

After the portrait by James McNeil! Whistler

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

A PAGE FROM THE MANUSCRIPT OF BEOWULF 19

STONEHENGE, ON SALISBURY PLAIN 28

INITIAL LETTER OF A MS. COPY OF ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL ... 3!
RUINS AT WHITBY 32

OEDMON CROSS AT WHITBY ABBEY 39

LEIF ERICSON'S VESSEL 47

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL AS IT WAS COMPLETED LONG AFTER

THE CONQUEST 50

REMAINS OF THE SCRIPTORIUM OF FOUNTAINS ABBEY .... 62

TABARD INN 75

JOHN WYCLIF .84

SPECIMEN OF CAXTON'S PRINTING IN THE YEAR 1486 .... 90

EDMUND SPENSER IO2

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 138

ANNE HATHAWAY COTTAGE 142

BIRTHPLACE OF SHAKESPEARE 145

TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON 147

BEN JONSON 158

JOHN MILTON 204

JOHN BUNYAN 219

LIBRARY AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 244

WESTMINSTER 249

JONATHAN SWIFT 270

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN 272

JOSEPH ADDISON 278

SAMUEL JOHNSON 287

THOMAS GRAY 308

CHURCH AT STOKE POGES 39

xiv

ENGLISH LITERATURE xv

PAGE

OLIVER GOLDSMITH 31 I

WILLIAM COWPER 317

ROBERT BURNS 321

BIRTHPLACE OF BURNS 323

THE AULD BRIG, AYR (AYR BRIDGE) 327

DANIEL DEFOE 346

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 376

WORDSWORTH'S HOME AT RYDAL MOUNT 381

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 388

ROBERT SOUTHEY 394

WALTER SCOTT 397

ABBOTSFORD 399

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 407

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 41 I

CHARLES LAMB 427

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, LONDON 428

THOMAS DE QUINCEY 433

ROBERT BROWNING 470

MRS. BROWNING 483

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 498

GEORGE ELIOT 506

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 522

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 528

JOHN RUSKIN 539

QUADRANGLE OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD 553

ENGLISH LITERATURE

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION THE MEANING OF LITERATURE

Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede.

Chaucer's Truth

On, on, you noblest English, . . .

Follow your spirit. Shakespeare's Henry V

The Shell and the Book. A child and a man were one day
walking on the seashore when the child found a little shell
and held it to his ear. Suddenly he heard sounds, strange,
low, melodious sounds, as if the shell were remembering and
repeating to itself the murmurs of its ocean home. The child's
face filled with wonder as he listened. Here in the little shell,
apparently, was a voice from another world, and he listened
with delight to its mystery and music. Then came the man,
explaining that the child heard nothing strange ; that the
pearly curves of the shell simply caught a multitude of sounds
too faint for human ears, and filled the glimmering hollows
with the murmur of innumerable echoes. It was not a new
world, but only the unnoticed harmony of the old that had
aroused the child's wonder.

Some such experience as this awaits us when we begin the
study of literature, which has always two aspects, one of
simple enjoyment and appreciation, the other of analysis and
exact description. Let a little song appeal to the ear, or a
noble book to the heart, and for the moment, at least, we dis-
cover a new world, a world so different from our own that it

2 ENGLISH LITERATURE

seems a place of dreams and magic. To enter and enjoy this
new world, to love good books for their own sake, is the chief
thing ; to analyze and explain them is a less joyous but still
an important matter. Behind every book is a man ; behind
the man is the race ; and behind the race are the natural and
social environments whose influence is unconsciously reflected.
Tlifcsjfc also we must know, if the book is to speak its whole
message. In a word, we have now reached a point where we
wishstty understand as well as to enjoy literature; and the
first step, since exact definition is impossible, is to determine
some of its essential qualities.

Qualities of Literature. The first significant thing is the
essentially artistic quality of all literature. All art is the
expression of life in forms of truth and beauty ; or
rather, it is the reflection of some truth and beauty
which are in the world, but which remain unnoticed until
brought to our attention by some sensitive human soul, just
as the delicate curves of the shell reflect sounds and harmo-
nies too faint to be otherwise noticed. A hundred men may
pass a hayfield and see only the sweaty toil and the windrows
of dried grass ; but here is one who pauses by a Roumanian
meadow, where girls are making hay and singing as they work.
He looks deeper, sees truth and beauty where we see only
dead grass, and he reflects what he sees in a little poem in
which the hay tells its own story :

Yesterday's flowers am I,

And I have drunk my last sweet draught of dew.
Young maidens came and sang me to my death ;
The moon looks down and sees me in my shroud,

The shroud of my last dew.

Yesterday's flowers that are yet in me
Must needs make way for all to-morrow's flowers.
The maidens, too, that sang me to my death
Must even so make way for all the maids

That are to come.

And as my soul, so too their soul will be
Laden with fragrance of the days gone by.

INTRODUCTION 3

The maidens that tomorrow come this way
Will not remember that I once did bloom,
For they will only see the new-born flowers.
Yet will my perfume-laden soul bring back,
As a sweet memory, to women's hearts

Their days of maidenhood.
And then they will be sorry that they came

To sing me to my death ;
And all the butterflies will mourn for me.

I bear away with me
The sunshine's dear remembrance, and the low

Soft murmurs of the spring.
My breath is sweet as children's prattle is ;
I drank in all the whole earth's fruitfulness,
To make of it the fragrance of my soul

That shall outlive my death. 1

One who reads only that first exquisite line, "Yesterday's
flowers am I," can never again see hay without recalling the
beauty that was hidden from his eyes until the poet found it.
In the same pleasing, surprising way, all artistic work must
be a kind of revelation. Thus architecture is probably the
oldest of the arts ; yet we still have many builders but few
architects, that is, men whose work in wood or stone suggests
some hidden truth and beauty to the human senses. So in
literature, which is the art that expresses life in words that
appeal to our own sense of the beautiful, we have many writers
but few artists. In the broadest sense, perhaps, literature
means simply the written records of the race, including all its
history and sciences, as well as its poems and novels ; in the
narrower sense literature is the artistic record of life, and most
of our writing is excluded from it, just as the mass of our
buildings, mere shelters from storm and from cold, are ex-
cluded from architecture. A history or a work of science may
be and sometimes is literature, but only as we forget the
subject-matter and the presentation of facts in the simple
beauty of its expression.

1 From The Bard of the Dimbovitza^ First Series, p. 73.

4 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The second quality of literature is its suggestiveness, its
appeal to our emotions and imagination rather than to our
intellect. It is not so much what it says as what it
awakens in us that constitutes its charm. When
Milton makes Satan say, " Myself am Hell," he does not state
any fact, but rather opens up in these three tremendous
words a whole world of speculation and imagination. When
Faustus in the presence of Helen asks, "Was this the face
that launched a thousand ships ? " he does not state a fact
or expect an answer. He opens a door through which our
imagination enters a new world, a world of music, love,
beauty, heroism, the whole splendid world of Greek litera-
ture. Such magic is in words. When Shakespeare describes
the young Biron as speaking

In such apt and gracious words
That aged ears play truant at his tales,

he has unconsciously given not only an excellent description
of himself, but the measure of all literature, which makes us
play truant with the present world and run away to live awhile
in the pleasant realm of fancy. The province of all art is not
to instruct but to delight ; and only as literature delights us,
causing each reader to build in his own soul that "lordly
pleasure house " of which Tennyson dreamed in his " Palace
of Art," is it worthy of its name.

The third characteristic of literature, arising directly from
the other two, is its permanence. The world does not live by
bread alone. Notwithstanding its hurry and bustle
and apparent absorption in material things, it does
not willingly let any beautiful thing perish. This is even more
true of its songs than of its painting and sculpture ; though
permanence is a quality we should hardly expect in the pres-
ent deluge of books and magazines pouring day and night
from our presses in the name of literature. But this problem
of too many books is not modern, as we suppose. It has been
a problem ever since Caxton brought the first printing press

INTRODUCTION 5 _

from Flanders, four hundred years ago, and in the shadow of
Westminster Abbey opened his little shop and advertised
his wares as "good and chepe." Even earlier, a thousand
years before Caxton and his printing press, the busy scholars
of the great library of Alexandria found that the number of
parchments was much too great for them to handle ; and
now, when we print more in a week than all the Alexandrian
scholars could copy in a century, it would seem impossible
that any production could be permanent ; that any song or
story could live to give delight in future ages. But literature
is like a river in flood, which gradually purifies itself in two
ways, the mud settles to the bottom, and the scum rises to
the top. When we examine the writings that by common con-
sent constitute our literature, the clear stream purified of its
dross, we find at least two more qualities, which we call the
tests of literature, and which determine its permanence.

Tests of Literature. The first of these is universality, that
is, the appeal to the widest human interests and the sim-
plest human emotions. Though we speak of national and race
literatures, like the Greek or Teutonic, and though each has

certain superficial marks arising out of the peculiar-
Universality . ... , , .

ities of its own people, it is nevertheless true that

good literature knows no nationality, nor any bounds save
those of humanity. It is occupied chiefly with elementary
passions and emotions, love and hate, joy and sorrow, fear
and faith, which are an essential part of our human nature ;
and the more it reflects these emotions the more surely does
it awaken a response in men of every race. Every father
must respond to the parable of the prodigal son ; wherever
men are heroic, they will acknowledge the mastery of Homer;
wherever a man thinks on the strange phenomenon of evil in
the world, he will find his own thoughts in the Book of Job ;
in whatever place men love their children, their hearts must
be stirred by the tragic sorrow of CEdipus and King Lear.
All these are but shining examples of the law that only as a

6 ENGLISH LITERATURE

book or a little song appeals to universal human interest does
it become permanent.

The second test is a purely personal one, and may be ex-
pressed in the indefinite word "style." It is only in a mechan-
ical sense that style is " the adequate expression
of thought," or " the peculiar manner of expressing
thought," or any other of the definitions that are found in
the rhetorics. In a deeper sense, style is the man, that is, the
unconscious expression of the writer's own personality. It is
the very soul of one man reflecting, as in a glass, the thoughts
and feelings of humanity. As no glass is colorless, but tinges
more or less deeply the reflections from its surface, so no
author can interpret human life without unconsciously giving
to it the native hue of his own soul. It is this intensely per-
sonal element that constitutes style. Every permanent book
has more or less of these two elements, the objective and the
subjective, the universal and the personal, the deep thought
and feeling of the race reflected and colored by the writer's
own life and experience.

The Object in studying Literature. Aside from the pleasure
of reading, of entering into a new world and having our imagi-
nation quickened, the study of literature has one definite
object, and that is to know men. Now man is ever a dual
creature ; he has an outward and an inner nature ; he is not
only a doer of deeds, but a dreamer of dreams ; and to know
him, the man of any age, we must search deeper than his
history. History records his deeds, his outward acts largely ;
but every great act springs from an ideal, and to understand
this we must read his literature, where we find his ideals
recorded. When we read a history of the Anglo-Saxons, for
instance, we learn that they were sea rovers, pirates, explorers,
great eaters and drinkers ; and we know something of their
hovels and habits, and the lands which they harried and plun-
dered. All that is interesting ; but it does not tell us what
most we want to know about these old ancestors of ours,

INTRODUCTION 7

not only what they did, but what they thought and felt ; how
they looked on life and death ; what they loved, what they
feared, and what they reverenced in God and man. Then we
turn from history to the literature which they themselves
produced, and instantly we become acquainted. These hardy
people were not simply fighters and freebooters ; they were
men like ourselves ; their emotions awaken instant response
in the souls of their descendants. At the words of their
gleemen we thrill again to their wild love of freedom and the
open sea ; we grow tender at their love of home, and patriotic
at their deathless loyalty to their chief, whom they chose
for themselves and hoisted on their shields in symbol of his
leadership. Once more we grow respectful in the presence
of pure womanhood, or melancholy before the sorrows and
problems of life, or humbly confident, looking up to the God
whom they dared to call the Allfather. All these and many
more intensely real emotions pass through our souls as we
read the few shining fragments of verses that the jealous
ages have left us.

It is so with any age or people. To understand them we
must read not simply their history, which records their deeds,
but their literature, which records the dreams that, made their
deeds possible. So Aristotle was profoundly right when he
said that "poetry is more serious and philosophical than his-
tory"; and Goethe, when he explained literature as "the
humanization of the whole world."

Importance of Literature. It is a curious and prevalent
opinion that literature, like all art, is a mere play of imagina-
tion, pleasing enough, like a new novel, but without any seri-
ous or practical importance. Nothing could be farther from
the truth. Literature preserves the ideals of a people ; and
ideals love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom, reverence
are the part of human life most worthy of preservation. The
Greeks were a marvelous people ; yet of all their mighty
works we cherish only a few ideals, ideals of beauty in

8 ENGLISH LITERATURE

perishable stone, and ideals of truth in imperishable prose
and poetry. It was simply the ideals of the Greeks and
Hebrews and Romans, preserved in their literature, which
made them what they were, and which determined their value
to future generations. Our democracy, the boast of all English-
speaking nations, is a dream ; not the doubtful and sometimes
disheartening spectacle presented in our legislative halls, but
the lovely and immortal ideal of a free and equal manhood,
preserved as a most precious heritage in every great literature
from the Greeks to the Anglo-Saxons. All our arts, our sci-
ences, even our inventions are founded squarely upon ideals ;
for under every invention is still the dream of Beowulf, that
man may overcome the forces of nature ; and the foundation
of all our sciences and discoveries is the immortal dream that
men " shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

In a word, our whole civilization, our freedom, our progress,
our homes, our religion, rest solidly upon ideals for their
foundation. Nothing but an ideal ever endures upon earth. It
is therefore impossible to overestimate the practical importance
of literature, which preserves these ideals from fathers to
sons, while men, cities, governments, civilizations, vanish from
the face of the earth. It is only when we remember this
that we appreciate the action of the devout Mussulman, who
picks up and carefully preserves every scrap of paper on
which words are written, because the scrap may perchance
contain the name of Allah, and the ideal is too enormously
important to be neglected or lost.

Summary of the Subject. We are now ready, if not to
define, at least to understand a little more clearly the object
of our present study. Literature is the expression of life in
words of truth and beauty ; it is the written record of man's
spirit, of his thoughts, emotions, aspirations ; it is the history,
and the only history, of the human soul. It is characterized
by its artistic, its suggestive, its permanent qualities. Its two
tests are its universal interest and its personal style. Its

INTRODUCTION 9

object, aside from the delight it gives us, is to know man,
that is, the soul of man rather than his actions ; and since it
preserves to the race the ideals upon which all our civilization
is founded, it is one of the most important and delightful sub-
jects that can occupy the human mind.

Bibliography. (NOTE. Each chapter in this book includes a special bibli-
ography of historical and literary works, selections for reading, chronology,
etc. ; and a general bibliography of texts, helps, and reference books will be
found at the end. The following books, which are among the best of their
kind, are intended to help the student to a better appreciation of literature and
to a better knowledge of literary criticism.)

General Works. Woodberry's Appreciation of Literature (Baker & Taylor
Co.) ; Gates's Studies in Appreciation (Macmillan) ; Bates's Talks on the Study
of Literature (Houghton, Mifflin) ; Worsfold's On the Exercise of Judgment
in Literature (Dent) ; Harrison's The Choice of Books (Macmillan) ; Ruskin's
Sesame and Lilies, Part I ; Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism.

Essays. Emerson's Books, in Society and Solitude ; Dowden's The Inter-
pretation of Literature, in Transcripts and Studies (Kegan Paul & Co.), and
The Teaching of English Literature, in New Studies in Literature (Houghton,
Mifflin) ; The Study of Literature, Essays by Morley, Nicolls, and L. Stephen,
edited by A. F. Blaisdell (Willard Small).

Criticism. Gayley and Scott's An Introduction to the Methods and Materials
of Literary Criticism (Ginn and Company) ; Winchester's Principles of Literary
Criticism (Macmillan); Worsfold's Principles of Criticism (Longmans); John-
son's Elements of Literary Criticism (American Book Company) ; Saintsbury's
History of Criticism (Dodd, Mead) .

Poetry. Gummere's Handbook of Poetics (Ginn and Company) ; Stedman's
The Nature and Elements of Poetry (Houghton, Mifflin) ; Johnson's The Forms
of English Poetry (American Book Company) ; Alden's Specimens of English
Verse (Holt); Gummere's The Beginnings of Poetry (Macmillan); Saintsbury's
History of English Prosody (Macmillan).

The Drama. Caffin's Appreciation of the Drama (Baker & Taylor Co.).

The Novel. Raleigh's The English Novel (Scribner); Hamilton's The Mate-
rials and Methods of Fiction (Baker & Taylor Co.).

CHAPTER II

THE ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD-ENGLISH PERIOD (450-1050)
I. OUR FIRST POETRY

Beowulf. Here is the story of Beowulf, the earliest and the
greatest epic, or heroic poem, in our literature. It begins with
a prologue, which is not an essential part of the story, but
which we review gladly for the sake of the splendid poetical
conception that produced Scyld, king of the Spear Danes. 1

At a time when the Spear Danes were without a king, a ship came
sailing into their harbor. It was filled with treasures and weapons of
war ; and in the midst of these warlike things was a baby sleeping. No
man sailed the ship ; it came of itself, bringing the child, whose name
was Scyld.

Now Scyld grew and became a mighty warrior, and led the Spear
Danes for many years, and was their king. When his son Beowulf 2 had
become strong and wise enough to rule, then Wyrd (Fate), who speaks
but once to any man, came and stood at hand ; and it was time for Scyld
to go. This is how they buried him :

Then Scyld departed, at word of Wyrd spoken,
The hero to go to the home of the gods.
Sadly they bore him to brink of the ocean,
Comrades, still heeding his word of command.

There rode in trie harbor the prince's ship, ready,
With prow curving proudly and shining sails set.
Shipward they bore him, their hero beloved ;
The mighty they laid at the foot of the mast.

^Treasures were there from far and near gathered,
Byrnies of battle, armor and swords ;
Never a keel sailed out of a harbor
So splendidly tricked with the trappings of war.

1 There is a mystery about this old hero which stirs our imagination, but which is
never explained. It refers, probably, to some legend of the Anglo-Saxons which we have
supplied from other sources, aided by some vague suggestions and glimpses of the past
in the poem itself. 2 This is not the Beowulf who is hero of the poem.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD II

They heaped on his bosom a hoard of bright jewels
To fare with him forth on the flood's great breast.
No less gift they gave than the Unknown provided,
When alone, as a child, he came in from the mere.

High o'er his head waved a bright golden standard
Now let the waves bear their wealth to the holm.
Sad-souled they gave back its gift to the ocean,
Mournful their mood as he sailed out to sea. 1

"And no man," says the poet, "neither counselor nor hero, can tell
who received that lading."

One of Scyld's descendants was Hrothgar, king of the Danes ; and
with him the story of our Beowulf begins. Hrothgar in his old age had
built near the sea a mead hall called Heorot, the most splendid hall in
the whole world, where the king and his thanes gathered nightly to
feast and to listen to the songs of his gleemen. One night, as they were
all sleeping, a frightful monster, Grendel, broke into the hall, killed
thirty of the sleeping warriors, and carried off their bodies to devour
them in his lair under the sea. The appalling visit was speedily repeated,
and fear and death reigned in the great hall. The warriors fought at
first; but fled when they discovered that no weapon could harm the
monster. Heorot was left deserted and silent. For twelve winters Gren-
del's horrible raids continued, and joy was changed to mourning among
the Spear Danes.

At last the rumor of Grendel crossed over the sea to the land of the
Geats, where a young hero dwelt in the house of his uncle, King
Hygelac. Beowulf was his name, a man of immense strength and
courage, and a mighty swimmer who had developed his powers fight-
ing the "nickers," whales, walruses and seals, in the icebound northern
ocean. When he heard the story, Beowulf was stirred to go and fight
the monster and free the Danes, who were his father's friends.

With fourteen companions he crosses the sea. There is an excellent
bit of ocean poetry here (11. 210-224), and we get a vivid idea of the
hospitality of a brave people by following the poet's description of
Beowulf's meeting with King Hrothgar and Queen Wealhtheow, and
of the joy and feasting and story-telling in Heorot. The picture of
Wealhtheow passing the mead cup to the warriors with her own hand
is a noble one, and plainly indicates the reverence paid by these strong
men to their wives and mothers. Night comes on ; the fear of Grendel
is again upon the Danes, and all withdraw after the king has warned
Beowulf of the frightful danger of sleeping in the hall. But Beowulf
lies down with his warriors, saying proudly that, since weapons will

1 Beowulf, 11. 26-50, a free rendering to suggest the alliteration of the original.

12 ENGLISH LITERATURE

not avail against the monster, he will grapple with him bare handed and
trust to a warrior's strength.

Forth from the fens, from the misty moorlands,
Grendel came gliding God's wrath 1 he bore
Came under clouds, until he saw clearly,
Glittering with gold plates, the mead hall of men.
Down fell the door, though fastened with fire bands ;
Open it sprang at the stroke of his paw.
Swollen with rage burst in the bale-bringer ;
Flamed in his eyes a fierce light, likest fire. 2

At the sight of men again sleeping in the hall, Grendel laughs in his
heart, thinking of his feast. He seizes the nearest sleeper, crushes his
"bone case" with a bite, tears him limb from limb, and swallows him.
Then he creeps to the couch of Beowulf and stretches out a claw, only
to find it clutched in a grip of steel. A sudden terror strikes the mon-
ster's heart. He roars, struggles, tries to jerk his arm free; but Beowulf
leaps to his feet and grapples his enemy bare handed. To and fro they
surge. Tables are overturned ; golden benches ripped from their fasten-
ings ; the whole building quakes, and only its iron bands keep it from
falling to pieces. Beowulf's companions are on their feet now, hacking
vainly at the monster with swords and battle-axes, adding their shouts
to the crashing of furniture and the howling " war song " of Grendel.
Outside in the town the Danes stand shivering at the uproar. Slowly
the monster struggles to the door, dragging Beowulf, whose fingers
crack with the strain, but who never relaxes his first grip. Suddenly a
wide wound opens in the monster's side ; the sinews snap ; the whole
arm is wrenched off at the shoulder ; and Grendel escapes shrieking
across the moor, and plunges into the sea to die.

Beowulf first exults in his night's work ; then he hangs the huge arm
with its terrible claws from a cross-beam over the king's seat, as one
would hang up a bear's skin after a hunt. At daylight came the Danes ;
and all day long, in the intervals of singing, story-telling, speech mak-
ing, and gift giving, they return to wonder at the mighty "grip of
Grendel" and to rejoice in Beowulf's victory.

When night falls a great feast is spread in Heorot, and the Danes
sleep once more in the great hall. At midnight comes another monster,

1 Grendel, of the Eoten (giant) race, the death shadow, the mark stalker, the shadow
ganger, is also variously called god's foe, fiend of hell, Cain's brood, etc. It need hardly
be explained that the latter terms are additions to the original poem, made, probably, by
monks who copied the manuscript. A belief in Wyrd, the mighty power controlling the
destinies of men, is the chief religious motive of the epic. In line 1056 we find a curious
blending of pagan and Christian belief, where Wyrd is withstood by the " wise God."

2 Summary of 11. 710-727. We have not indicated in our translation (or in quota-
tions from Garnett, Morley, Brooke, etc.) where parts of the text are omitted.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 13

a horrible, half-human creature, 1 mother of Grendel, raging to avenge
her offspring. She thunders at the door ; the Danes leap up and grasp
their weapons ; but the monster enters, seizes Aeschere, who is friend and
adviser of the king, and rushes away with him over the fens.

The old scenes of sorrow are reviewed in the morning ; but Beowulf
says simply :

Sorrow not, wise man. It is better for each

That his friend he avenge than that he mourn much.

Each of us shall the end await

Of worldly life : let him who may gain

Honor ere death. That is for a warrior,

When he is dead, afterwards best.

Arise, kingdom's guardian ! Let us quickly go

To view the track of Grendel's kinsman.

I promise it thee : he will not escape,

Nor in earth's bosom, nor in mountain-wood,

Nor in ocean's depths, go where he will. 2

Then he girds himself for the new fight and follows the track of the
second enemy across the fens. Here is Hrothgar's description of the
place where live the monsters, "spirits of elsewhere," as he calls them:

They inhabit

The dim land that gives shelter to the wolf,
The windy headlands, perilous fen paths,
Where, under mountain mist, the stream flows down
And floods the ground. Not far hence, but a mile,
The mere stands, over which hang death-chill groves,
A wood fast-rooted overshades the flood ;
There every night a ghastly miracle
Is seen, fire in the water. No man knows,
Not the most wise, the bottom of that mere.
The firm-horned heath-stalker, the hart, when pressed,
Wearied by hounds, and hunted from afar,
Will rather die of thirst upon its bank
Than bend his head to it. It is unholy.
Dark to the clouds its yeasty waves mount up
When wind stirs hateful tempest, till the air
Grows dreary, and the heavens pour down tears. 3

Beowulf plunges into the horrible place, while his companions wait
for him on the shore. For a long time he sinks through the flood ; then,

1 Grendel's mother belongs also to the Eoten (giant) race. She is called brim-wylf
(sea wolf), merewif (sea woman), gr-und-wyrgen (bottom monster), etc.

2 From Garnett's Beowulf, 11. 1384-1394. 8 From Morley's version, 11. 1357-1376.

14 ENGLISH LITERATURE

as he reaches bottom, Grendel's mother rushes out upon him and drags
him into a cave, where sea monsters swarm at him from behind and
gnash his armor with their tusks. The edge of his sword is turned
with the mighty blow he deals the merewif; but it harms not the mon-
ster. Casting the weapon aside, he grips her and tries to hurl her down,
while her claws and teeth clash upon his corslet but cannot penetrate
the steel rings. She throws her bulk upon him, crushes him down,
draws a short sword and plunges it at him; but again his splendid
byrnie saves him. He is wearied now, and oppressed. Suddenly, as
his eye sweeps the cave, he catches sight of a magic sword, made by
the giants long ago, too heavy for warriors to wield. Struggling up
he seizes the weapon, whirls it and brings down a crashing blow upon
the monster's neck. It smashes through the ring bones ; the merewif
falls, and the fight is won.

The cave is full of treasures ; but Beowulf heeds them not, for near
him lies Grendel, dead from the wound received the previous night.
Again Beowulf swings the great sword and strikes off his enemy's head ;
and lo, as the venomous blood touches the sword blade, the steel melts like
ice before the fire, and only the hilt is left in Beowulf's hand. Taking the
hilt and the head, the hero enters the ocean and mounts up to the shore.

Only his own faithful band were waiting there ; for the Danes, see-
ing the ocean bubble with fresh blood, thought it was all over with the
hero and had gone home. And there they were, mourning in Heorot, when
Beowulf returned with the monstrous head of Grendel carried on a
spear shaft by four of his stoutest followers.

In the last part of the poem there is another great fight. Beowulf is
now an old man ; he has reigned for fifty years, beloved by all his peo-
ple. He has overcome every enemy but one, a fire dragon keeping
watch over an enormous treasure hidden among the mountains. One
day a wanderer stumbles upon the enchanted cave and, entering, takes
a jeweled cup while the firedrake sleeps heavily. That same night the
dragon, in a frightful rage, belching forth fire and smoke, rushes down
upon the nearest villages, leaving a trail of death and terror behind him.

Again Beowulf goes forth to champion his people. As he approaches
the dragon's cave, he has a presentiment that death lurks within :

Sat on the headland there the warrior king ;
Farewell he said to hearth-companions true,
The gold-friend of the Geats ; his mind was sad,
Death-ready, restless. And Wyrd was drawing nigh,
Who now must meet and touch the aged man,
To seek the treasure that his soul had saved
And separate his body from his life. 1

1 Beowulf, 11. 2417-2423, a free rendering.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 15

There is a flash of illumination, like that which comes to a dying
man, in which his mind runs back over his long life and sees something
of profound meaning in the elemental sorrow moving side by side with
magnificent courage. Then follows the fight with the firedrake, in
which Beowulf, wrapped in fire and smoke, is helped by the heroism of
Wiglaf, one of his companions. The dragon is slain, but the fire has
entered Beowulf's lungs and he knows that Wyrd is at hand. This is
his thought, while Wiglaf removes his battered armor :

" One deep regret I have : that to a son
I may not give the armor I have worn,
To bear it after me. For fifty years
I ruled these people well, and not a king
Of those who dwell around me, dared oppress
Or meet me with his hosts. At home I waited
For the time that Wyrd controls. Mine own I kept,
Nor quarrels sought, nor ever falsely swore.
Now, wounded sore, I wait for joy to come." x

He sends Wiglaf into the firedrake's cave, who finds it filled with
rare treasures and, most wonderful of all, a golden banner from which
light proceeds and illumines all the darkness. But Wiglaf cares little
for the treasures ; his mind is full of his dying chief. He fills his hands
with costly ornaments and hurries to throw them at his hero's feet. The
old man looks with sorrow at the gold, thanks the "Lord of all" that by
death he has gained more riches for his people, and tells his faithful
thane how his body shall be burned on the Whale ness, or headland :

w My life is well paid for this hoard ; and now
Care for the people's needs. I may no more
Be with them. Bid the warriors raise a barrow
After the burning, on the ness by the sea,
On Hronesness, which shall rise high and be
For a remembrance to my people. Seafarers
Who from afar over the mists of waters
Drive foamy keels may call it Beowulf's Mount
Hereafter." Then the hero from his neck
Put off a golden collar ; to his thane,
To the young warrior, gave it with his helm,
Armlet and corslet ; bade him use them well.
w Thou art the last Waegmunding of our race,
For fate has swept my kinsmen all away.
Earls in their strength are to their Maker gone,
And I must follow them." 2

1 Lines 2729-2740, a free rendering. 2 Morley's version, 11. 2799-2816.

1 6 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Beowulf was still living when Wiglaf sent a messenger hurriedly to
his people ; when they came they found him dead, and the huge dragon
dead on the sand beside him.

Then the Goth's people reared a mighty pile

With shields and armour hung, as he had asked,

And in the midst the warriors laid their lord,

Lamenting. Then the warriors on the mount

Kindled a mighty bale fire ; the smoke rose

Black from the Swedish pine, the sound of flame

Mingled with sound of weeping ; . . . while smoke

Spread over heaven. Then upon the hill

The people of the Weders wrought a mound,

High, broad, and to be seen far out at sea.

In ten days they had built and walled it in

As the wise thought most worthy ; placed in it

Rings, jewels, other treasures from the hoard.

They left the riches, golden joy of earls,

In dust, for earth to hold ; where yet it lies,

Useless as ever. Then about the mound

The warriors rode, and raised a mournful song

For their dead king ; exalted his brave deeds,

Holding it fit men honour their liege lord,

Praise him and love him when his soul is fled.

Thus the [Geat's] people, sharers of his hearth,

Mourned their chief's fall, praised him, of kings, of men

The mildest and the kindest, and to all

His people gentlest, yearning for their praise. 1

One is tempted to linger over the details of the magnificent
ending : the unselfish heroism of Beowulf, the great prototype
of King Alfred; the generous grief of his people, ignoring
gold and jewels in the thought of the greater treasure they
had lost ; the memorial mound on the low cliff, which would
cause every returning mariner to steer a straight course to
harbor in the remembrance of his dead hero ; and the pure
poetry which marks every noble line. But the epic is great
enough and simple enough to speak for itself. Search the
literatures of the world, and you will find no other such
picture of a brave man's death.

1 Lines 3156-3182 (Morley's version).

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 17

Concerning the history of Beowulf a whole library has been
written, and scholars still differ too radically for us to express
Histo and a P os i trve judgment. This much, however, is clear,
Meaning of - that there existed, at the time the poem was
composed, various northern legends of Beowa, a
half-divine hero, and the monster Grendel. The latter has
been interpreted in various ways, sometimes as a bear, and
again as the malaria of the marsh lands. For those interested
in symbols the simplest interpretation of these myths is to
regard Beowulf's successive fights with the three dragons as
the overcoming, first, of the overwhelming danger of the sea,
which was beaten back by the dykes; second, the conquer-
ing of the sea itself, when men learned to sail upon it ; and
third, the conflict with the hostile forces of nature, which are
overcome at last by man's indomitable will and perseverance.

All this is purely mythical ; but there are historical inci-
dents to reckon with. About the year 520 a certain northern
chief, called by the chronicler Chochilaicus (who is generally
identified with the Hygelac of the epic), led a huge plundering
expedition up the Rhine. After a succession of battles he was
overcome by the Franks, but and now we enter a legendary
region once more not until a gigantic nephew of Hygelac had
performed heroic feats of valor, and had saved the remnants
of the host by a marvelous feat of swimming. The majority of
scholars now hold that these historical events and personages
were celebrated in the epic ; but some still assert that the events
which gave a foundation for Beowulf occurred wholly on Eng-
lish soil, where the poem itself was undoubtedly written.

The rhythm of Beo wulf and indeed of all our earliest poetry
depended upon accent and alliteration ; that is, the beginning
Poetical of two or more words in the same line with the
Form same sound or letter. The lines were made up of

two short halves, separated by a pause. No rime was used ;
but a musical effect was produced by giving each half line
two strongly accented syllables. Each full line, therefore.

1 8 ENGLISH LITERATURE

had four accents, three of which (i.e. two in the first half,
and one in the second) usually began with the same sound or
letter. The musical effect was heightened by the harp with
which the gleeman accompanied his singing. The poetical
form will be seen clearly in the following selection from the
wonderfully realistic description of the fens haunted by Gren-
del. It will need only one or two readings aloud to show that
many of these strange-looking words are practically the same
as those we still use, though many of the vowel sounds were
pronounced differently by our ancestors.

. . . Hie dygel lond
Warigeath, wulf-hleothu, windige naessas,

Frecne fen-gelad, thaer fyrgen-stream
Under nasssa genipu nither gewiteth,
Flod under foldan. Nis thaet feor heonon,
Mil-gemearces, thaet se mere standeth,
Ofer thaem hongiath hrinde bearwas

. . . They (a) darksome land
Ward (inhabit), wolf cliffs, windy nesses,

Frightful fen paths where mountain stream

Under nesses' mists nether (downward) wanders,

A flood under earth. It is not far hence,

By mile measure, that the mere stands,

Over which hang rimy groves.

Widsith. The poem "Widsith," the wide goer or wanderer,
is in part, at least, probably the oldest in our language. The
author and the date of its composition are unknown ; but the
personal account of the minstrel's life belongs to the time
before the Saxons first came to England. 1 It expresses the
wandering life of the gleeman, who goes forth into the world
to abide here or there, according as he is rewarded for his
singing. From the numerous references to rings and rewards,
and from the praise given to generous givers, it would seem

1 Probably to the fourth century, though some parts of the poem must have been
added later. Thus the poet says (11. 88-102) that he visited Eormanric, who died dr. 375,
and Queen Ealhhild whose father, Eadwin, died dr. 561. The difficulty of fixing a date
to the poem is apparent. It contains several references to scenes and characters in
Beowulf.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 19

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A PAGE FROM THE MANUSCRIPT OF BEOWULF

20 ENGLISH LITERATURE

that literature as a paying profession began very early in our
history, and also that the pay was barely sufficient to hold
soul and body together. Of all our modern poets, Goldsmith
wandering over Europe paying for his lodging with his songs
is most suggestive of this first recorded singer of our race.
His last lines read :

Thus wandering, they who shape songs for men
Pass over many lands, and tell their need,
And speak their thanks, and ever, south or north,
Meet someone skilled in songs and free in gifts,
Who would be raised among his friends to fame
And do brave deeds till light and life are gone.
He who has thus wrought himself praise shall have
A settled glory underneath the stars. 1

Deor's Lament. In " Deor " we have another picture of the
Saxon scop, or minstrel, not in glad wandering, but in manly
sorrow. It seems that the scop's living depended entirely upon
his power to please his chief, and that at any time he might
be supplanted by a better poet. Deor had this experience, and
comforts himself in a grim way by recalling various examples
of men who have suffered more than himself. The poem is
arranged in strophes, each one telling of some afflicted hero
and ending with the same refrain : His sorrow passed away ;
so will mine. "Deor" is much more poetic than "Widsith,"
and is the one perfect lyric 2 of the Anglo-Saxon period.

Weland for a woman knew too well exile.
Strong of soul that earl, sorrow sharp he bore ;
To companionship he had care and weary longing,
Winter-freezing wretchedness. Woe he found again, again,
After that Nithhad in a need had laid him
Staggering sinew-wounds sorrow-smitten man !
That he overwent; this also may 7. 3

The Seafarer. The wonderful poem of "The Seafarer"
seems to be in two distinct parts. The first shows the hardships

1 Lines 135-143 (Morley's version).

2 A lyric is a short poem reflecting some personal emotion, like love or grief. Two
other Anglo-Saxon poems, " The Wife's Complaint " and " The Husband's Message,"
belong to this class.

8 First strophe of Brooke's version, History of Early English Literature.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 21

of ocean life ; but stronger than hardships is the subtle call of
the sea. The second part is an allegory, in which the troubles
of the seaman are symbols of the troubles of this life, and the
call of the ocean is the call in the soul to be up and away to its
true home with God. Whether the last was added by some monk
who saw the allegorical possibilities of the first part, or whether
some sea-loving Christian scop wrote both, is uncertain. Follow-
ing are a few selected lines to show the spirit of the poem :

The hail flew in showers about me ; and there I heard only

The roar of the sea, ice-cold waves, and the song of the swan ;

For pastime the gannets' cry served me ; the kittiwakes' chatter

For laughter of men ; and for mead drink the call of the sea mews.

When storms on the rocky cliffs beat, then the terns, icy-feathered,

Made answer ; full oft the sea eagle forebodingly screamed,

The eagle with pinions wave-wet. . . .

The shadows of night became darker, it snowed from the north ;

The world was enchained by the frost ; hail fell upon earth ;

'T was the coldest of grain. Yet the thoughts of my heart now are

throbbing

To test the high streams, the salt waves in tumultuous play.
Desire in my heart ever urges my spirit to wander,
To seek out the home of the stranger in lands afar off.

There is no one that dwells upon earth, so exalted in mind,
But that he has always a longing, a sea-faring passion
For what the Lord God shall bestow, be it honor or death.
No heart for the harp has he, nor for acceptance of treasure,
No pleasure has he in a wife, no delight in the world,
Nor in aught save the roll of the billows ; but always a longing,
A yearning uneasiness, hastens him on to the sea.

The woodlands are captured by blossoms, the hamlets grow fair,
Broad meadows are beautiful, earth again bursts into life,
And all stir the heart of the wanderer eager to journey,
So he meditates going afar on the pathway of tides.
The cuckoo, moreover, gives warning with sorrowful note,
Summer's harbinger sings, and forebodes to the heart bitter sorrow.

Now my spirit uneasily turns in the heart's narrow chamber,
Now wanders forth over the tide, o'er the home of the whale,
To the ends of the earth and comes back to me.

Eager and greedy,

The lone wanderer screams, and resistlessly drives my soul onward,
Over the whale-path, over the tracts of the sea. 1
1 Seafarer, Part I, Iddings' version, in Translations from Old English Poetry.

22 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Fight at Finnsburgh and Waldere. Two other of our old*
est poems well deserve mention. The "Fight at Finnsburgh'*
is a fragment of fifty lines, discovered on the inside of a
piece of parchment drawn over the wooden covers of a book
of homilies. It is a magnificent war song, describing with
Homeric power the defense of a hall by Hnaef l with sixty
warriors, against the attack of Finn and his army. At mid-
night, when Hnaef and his men are sleeping, they are sur-
rounded by an army rushing in with fire and sword. Hnaef
springs to his feet at the first alarm and wakens his warriors
with a call to action that rings like a bugle blast :

This no eastward dawning is, nor is here a dragon flying,
Nor of this high hall are the horns a burning ;
But they rush upon us here now the ravens sing,
Growling is the gray wolf, grim the war-wood rattles,
Shield to shaft is answering. 2

The fight lasts five days, but the fragment ends before we
learn the outcome. The same fight is celebrated by Hrothgar's
gleeman at the feast in Heorot, after the slaying of Grendel.

" Waldere " is a fragment of two leaves, from which we get
only a glimpse of the story of Waldere (Walter of Aquitaine)
and his betrothed bride Hildgund, who were hostages at the
court of Attila. They escaped with a great treasure, and in
crossing the mountains were attacked by Gunther and his
warriors, among whom was Walter's former comrade, Hagen.
Walter fights them all and escapes. The same story was
written in Latin in the tenth century, and is also part of the
old German Nibelungenlied. Though the saga did not origi-
nate with the Anglo-Saxons, their version of it is the oldest
that has come down to us. The chief significance of these
"Waldere" fragments lies in the evidence they afford that
our ancestors were familiar with the legends and poetry of
other Germanic peoples.

1 It is an open question whether this poem celebrates the fight at which Hnsef, the
Danish leader, fell, or a later fight led by Hengist, to avenge Hnaef 's death.

2 Brooke's translation, History of Early English Literature. For another early battle-
song see Tennyson's " Battle of Brunanburh."

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 23

II. ANGLO-SAXON LIFE

We have now read some of our earliest records, and have
been surprised, perhaps, that men who are generally described
in the histories as savage fighters and freebooters could pro-
duce such excellent poetry. It is the object of the study of
all literature to make us better acquainted with men, not
simply with their deeds, which is the function of history, but
with the dreams and ideals which underlie all their actions.
So a reading of this early Anglo-Saxon poetry not only makes
us acquainted, but also leads to a profound respect for the
men who were our ancestors. Before we study more of their
literature it is well to glance briefly at their life and language.

The Name. Originally the name Anglo-Saxon denotes two
of the three Germanic tribes, Jutes, Angles, and Saxons,
who in the middle of the fifth century left their homes on the
shores of the North Sea and the Baltic to conquer and colonize
distant Britain. Angeln was the home of one tribe, and the
name still clings to the spot whence some of our forefathers
sailed on their momentous voyage. The old Saxon word
angul or ongul means a hook, and the English verb angle is
used invariably by Walton and older writers in the sense of
fishing. We may still think, therefore, of the first Angles as
hook-men, possibly because of their fishing, more probably
because the shore where they lived, at the foot of the penin-
sula of Jutland, was bent in the shape of a fishhook. The
name Saxon from seax, sax, a short sword, means the sword-
man, and from the name we may judge something of the
temper of the hardy fighters who preceded the Angles into
Britain. The Angles were the most numerous of the con-
quering tribes, and from them the new home was called
Anglalond. By gradual changes this became first Englelond
and then England.

More than five hundred years after the landing of these
tribes, and while they called themselves Englishmen, we find
the Latin writers of the Middle Ages speaking of the inhabitants

24 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of Britain as Anglisaxones, that is, Saxons of England, to
distinguish them from the Saxons of the Continent. In the
Latin charters of King Alfred the same name appears ; but it
is never seen or heard in his native speech. There he always
speaks of his beloved "Englelond" and of his brave "Englisc"
people. In the sixteenth century, when the old name of
Englishmen clung to the new people resulting from the union
of Saxon and Norman, the name Anglo-Saxon was first used
in the national sense by the scholar Camden * in his History
of Britain ; and since then it has been in general use among
English writers. In recent years the name has gained a wider
significance, until it is now used to denote a spirit rather than
a nation, the brave, vigorous, enlarging spirit that character-
izes the English-speaking races everywhere, and that has
already put a broad belt of English law and English liberty
around the whole world.

The Life. If the literature of a people springs directly out
of its life, then the stern, barbarous life of our Saxon fore-
fathers would seem, at first glance, to promise little of good
literature. Outwardly their life was a constant hardship, a per-
petual struggle against savage nature and savage men. Behind
them were gloomy forests inhabited by wild beasts and still
wilder men, and peopled in their imagination with dragons
and evil shapes. In front of them, thundering at the very
dikes for entrance, was the treacherous North Sea, with its
fogs and storms and ice, but with that indefinable call of the
deep that all men hear who live long beneath its influence.
Here they lived, a big, blond, powerful race, and hunted and
fought and sailed, and drank and feasted when their labor was
done. Almost the first thing we notice about these big, fear-
less, childish men is that they love the sea ; and because they
love it they hear and answer its call :

1 William Camden (1551-1623), one of England's earliest and greatest antiquarians.
His first work, Britannia, a Latin history of England, has been called " the common sun
whereat our modern writers have all kindled their little torches."

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 25

... No delight has he in the world,

Nor in aught save the roll of the billows; but always a longing,
A yearning uneasiness, hastens him on to the sea. 1

As might be expected, this love of the ocean finds expres-
sion in all their poetry. In Beowulf alone there are fifteen
names for the sea, from the holm, that is, the horizon sea, the
"upmounding," to the brim, which is the ocean flinging its
welter of sand and creamy foam upon the beach at your feet.
And the figures used to describe or glorify it " the swan
road, the whale path, the heaving battle plain " are almost
as numerous. In all their poetry there is a magnificent sense of
lordship over the wild sea even in its hour of tempest and fury:

Often it befalls us, on the ocean's highways,

In the boats our boatmen, when the storm is roaring,

Leap the billows over, on our stallions of the foam. 2

The Inner Life. A man's life is more than his work ; his
dream, is ever greater than his achievement ; and literature
reflects not so much man's deed as the spirit which animates
him ; not the poor thing that he does, but rather the splendid
thing that he ever hopes to do. In no place is this more evi-
dent than in the age we are now studying. Those early sea
kings were a marvelous mixture of savagery and sentiment,
of rough living and of deep feeling, of splendid courage and
the deep melancholy of men who know their limitations and
have faced the unanswered problem of death. They were not
simply fearless freebooters who harried every coast in their
war galleys. If that were all, they would have no more his-
tory or literature than the Barbary pirates, of whom the same
thing could be said. These strong fathers of ours were men
of profound emotions. In all their fighting the love of an un-
tarnished glory was uppermost ; and under the warrior's savage
exterior was hidden a great love of home and homely virtues,

1 From Iddings' version of The Seafarer.

2 From Andreas, 11. 511 ff., a free translation. The whole poem thrills with the
old Saxon love of the sea and of ships.

zC> ENGLISH LITERATURE

and a reverence for the one woman to whom he would pres-
ently return in triumph. So when the wolf hunt was over, or
the desperate fight was won, these mighty men would gather
in the banquet hall, and lay their weapons aside where the
open fire would flash upon them, and there listen to the songs
of Scop and Gleeman, men who could put into adequate
words the emotions and aspirations that all men feel but that
only a few can ever express :

Music and song where the heroes sat

The glee-wood rang, a song uprose

When Hrothgar's scop gave the hall good cheer. 1

It is this great and hidden life of the Anglo-Saxons that
finds expression in all their literature. Briefly, it is summed
up in five great principles, their love of personal freedom,
their responsiveness to nature, their religion, their reverence
for womanhood, and their struggle for glory as a ruling motive
in every noble life.

In reading Anglo-Saxon poetry it is well to remember these

Springs of ^ ve P rmc ipl es > for tnev are like tne little springs
Anglo-Saxon at the head of a great river, clear, pure springs of
poetry, and out of them the best of our literature
has always flowed. Thus when we read,

Blast of the tempest it aids our oars ;
Rolling of thunder it hurts us not ;
Rush of the hurricane bending its neck
To speed us whither our wills are bent,

we realize that these sea rovers had the spirit of kinship with
the mighty life of nature ; and kinship with nature invariably
expresses itself in poetry. Again, when we read,

Now hath the man

O'ercome his troubles. No pleasure does he lack,
Nor steeds, nor jewels, nor the joys of mead,
Nor any treasure that the earth can give,
O royal woman, if he have but thee, 2

1 From Beowulf, 11. 1063 ^-> a ^ ree translation.

2 Translated from The Husband's Message, written on a piece of bark. With won-
derful poetic insight the bark itself is represented as telling its story to the wife, from

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 27

we know we are dealing with an essentially noble man, not a
savage ; we are face to face with that profound reverence for
womanhood which inspires the greater part of all good poetry,
and we begin to honor as well as understand our ancestors.
So in the matter of glory or honor ; it was, apparently, not the
love of fighting, but rather the love of honor resulting from
fighting well, which animated our forefathers in every cam-
paign. "He was a man deserving of remembrance " was the
highest thing that could be said of a dead warrior ; and "He
is a man deserving of praise " was the highest tribute to the
living. The whole secret of Beowulf's mighty life is summed
up in the last line, " Ever yearning for his people's praise." So
every tribe had its scop, or poet, more important than any
warrior, who put the deeds of its heroes into the expressive
words that constitute literature ; and every banquet hall had
its gleeman, who sang the scop's poetry in order that the deed
and the man might be remembered. Oriental peoples built
monuments to perpetuate the memory of their dead ; but our
ancestors made poems, which should live and stir men's souls
long after monuments of brick, and stone had crumbled away.
It is to this intense love of glory and the desire to be remem-
bered that we are indebted for Anglo-Saxon literature.

Our First Speech. Our first recorded speech begins with
the songs of Widsith and Deor, which the Anglo-Saxons may
have brought with them when they first conquered Britain.
At first glance these songs in their native dress look strange
as a foreign tongue; but when we examine them carefully
we find many words that have been familiar since childhood.
We have seen this in Beowulf ; but in prose the resemblance

the time when the birch tree grew beside the sea until the exiled man found it and
stripped the bark and carved on its surface a message to the woman he loved. This first
of all English love songs deserves to rank with Valentine's description of Silvia :

Why, man, she is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, II, 4.

28 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of this old speech to our own is even more striking. Here,
for instance, is a fragment of the simple story of the con-
quest of Britain by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors :

Her Hengest and ^sc his sunu gefuhton with Bryttas, on thaere stowe
the is gecweden Creccanford, and thaer ofslogon feower thusenda wera.
And tha Bryttas tha forleton Cent-lond, and mid myclum ege flugon to
Lundenbyrig. (At this time Hengest and Aesc, his son, fought against

STONEHENGE, ON SALISBURY PLAIN
Probably the ruins of a temple of the native Britons

the Britons at the place which is called Crayford and there slew four
thousand men. And then the Britons forsook Kentland, and with much
fear fled to London town.) 1

The reader who utters these words aloud a few times will
speedily recognize his own tongue, not simply in the words
but also in the whole structure of the sentences.

From such records we see that our speech is Teutonic in
its origin ; and when we examine any Teutonic language we
learn that it is only a branch of the great Aryan or Indo-
European family of languages. In life and language, there-
fore, we are related first to the Teutonic races, and through
them to all the nations of this Indo-European family, which,
starting with enormous vigor from their original home (prob-
ably in central Europe 2 ), spread southward and westward, driv-
ing out the native tribes and slowly developing the mighty
civilizations of India, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the wilder but
more vigorous life of the Celts and Teutons. In all these

1 From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, record of the year 457.

2 According to Sweet the original home of the Aryans is placed in central or northern
Europe, rather than in Asia, as was once assumed. See The History of Language, p. 103.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 29

languages Sanskrit, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic
we recognize the same root words for father and mother, for
God and man, for the common needs and the common rela-
tions of life ; and since words are windows through which we
see the soul of this old people, we find certain ideals of love,
home, faith, heroism, liberty, which seem to have been the
very life of our forefathers, and which were inherited by them
from their old heroic and conquering ancestors. It was on
the borders of the North Sea that our fathers halted for un-
numbered centuries on their westward journey, and slowly
developed the national life and language which we now call
Anglo-Saxon.

It is this old vigorous Anglo-Saxon language which forms

the basis of our modern English. If we read a paragraph

from any good English book, and then analyze it,

Dual Charac-
ter of our as we would a flower, to see what it contains, we
Language find two Distinct classes of words. The first class,
containing simple words expressing the common things of life,
makes up the strong framework of our language. These words
are like the stem and bare branches of a mighty oak, and if
we look them up in the dictionary we find that almost invari-
ably they come to us from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. The
second and larger class of words is made up of those that give
grace, variety, ornament, to our speech. They are like the
leaves and blossoms of the same tree, and when we examine
their history we find that they come to us from the Celts,
Romans, Normans, and other peoples with whom we have
been in contact in the long years of our development. The
most prominent characteristic of our present language, there-
fore, is its dual character. Its best qualities strength, sim-
plicity, directness come from Anglo-Saxon sources ; its
enormous added wealth of expression, its comprehensiveness,
its plastic adaptability to new conditions and ideas, are largely
the result of additions from other languages, and especially
of its gradual absorption of the French language after the

30 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Norman Conquest. It is this dual character, this combination
of native and foreign, of innate and exotic elements, which ac-
counts for the wealth of our English language and literature.
To see it in concrete form, we should read in succession
Beowulf and Paradise Lost, the two great epics which show
the root and the flower of our literary development.

III. CHRISTIAN WRITERS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON
PERIOD

The literature of this period falls naturally into two divi-
sions, pagan and Christian. The former represents the
poetry which the Anglo-Saxons probably brought with them
in the form of oral sagas, the crude material out of which
literature was slowly developed on English soil ; the latter rep-
resents the writings developed under teaching of the monks,
after the old pagan religion had vanished, but while it still
retained its hold on the life and language of the people. In
reading our earliest poetry it is well to remember that all of
it was copied by the monks, and seems to have been more or
less altered to give it a religious coloring.

The coming of Christianity meant not simply a new life
and leader for England ; it meant also the wealth of a new
language. The scop is now replaced by the literary monk ;
and that monk, though he lives among common people and
speaks with the English tongue, has behind him all the culture
and literary resources of the Latin language. The effect is
seen instantly in our early prose and poetry.

Northumbrian Literature. In general, two great schools of
Christian influence came into England, and speedily put an
end to the frightful wars that had waged continually among
the various petty kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons. The first of
these, under the leadership of Augustine, came from Rome.
It spread in the south and center of England, especially in
the kingdom of Essex. It founded schools and partially edu-
cated the rough people, but it produced no lasting literature.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD

The other, under the leadership of the saintly Aidan, came from
Ireland, which country had been for centuries a center of reli-
gion and education for all western Europe. The monks of this
school labored chiefly in Northumbria, and to their influence
we owe all that is best in Anglo-Saxon literature. It is called
the Northumbrian School ; .f. pieces tmntns 7
its center was the mon-
asteries and abbeys, such
as Jarrow and Whitby,
and its three greatest
names are Bede, Caed-
mon, and Cynewulf.

BEDE (673-735)

The Venerable Bede,
as he is generally called,
our first great scholar and
" the father of our English
learning," wrote almost
exclusively in Latin, his
last work, the translation
of the Gospel of John into
Anglo-Saxon, having been
unfortunately lost. Much
to our regret, therefore,
his books and the story of his gentle, heroic life must be
excluded from this history of our literature. His works, over
forty in number, covered the whole field of human knowledge
in his day, and were so admirably written that they were
widely copied as text-books, or rather manuscripts, in nearly
all the monastery schools of Europe.

The work most important to us is the Ecclesiastical His-
tory of the English People. It is a fascinating history to read
even now, with its curious combination of accurate scholarship
and immense credulity. In all strictly historical matters Bede

INITIAL LETTER OF A MS. COPY OF
ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL, CIR. 700 A.D.

32 ENGLISH LITERATURE

is a model. Every known authority on the subject, from
Pliny to Gildas, was carefully considered ; every learned pil-
The First grim to Rome was commissioned by Bede to ransack
History of the archives and to make copies of papal decrees
and royal letters ; and to these were added the tes-
timony of abbots who could speak from personal knowledge of
events or repeat the traditions of their several monasteries.

Side by side with this historical exactness are marvelous
stories of saints and missionaries. It was an age of credulity,
and miracles were in men's minds continually. The men of

RUINS AT WHITBY

whom he wrote lived lives more wonderful than any romance,
and their courage and gentleness made a tremendous impres-
sion on the rough, warlike people to whom they came with
open hands and hearts. It is the natural way of all primitive
peoples to magnify the works of their heroes, and so deeds of
heroism and kindness, which were part of the daily life of
the Irish missionaries, were soon transformed into the miracles
of the saints. Bede believed these things, as all other men did,
and records them with charming simplicity, just as he received
them from bishop or abbot. Notwithstanding its errors, we
owe to this work nearly all our knowledge of the eight cen-
turies of our history following the landing of Caesar in Britain.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 33

C^DMON (Seventh Century)

Now must we hymn the Master of heaven,

The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father,

The thought of His heart. He, Lord everlasting,

Established of old the source of all wonders :

Creator all-holy, He hung the bright heaven,

A roof high upreared, o'er the children of men ;

The King of mankind then created for mortals

The world in its beauty, the earth spread beneath them,

He, Lord everlasting, omnipotent God. 1

If Beowulf 'and the fragments of our earliest poetry were
brought into England, then the hymn given above is the first
verse of all native English song that has come down to us,
and Caedmon is the first poet to whom we can give a defi-
nite name and date. The words were written about 665 A.D.
and are found copied at the end of a manuscript of Bede's
Ecclesiastical History.

Life of Caedmon. What little we know of Caedmon, the Anglo-
Saxon Milton, as he is properly called, is taken from Bede's account 2
of the Abbess Hilda and of her monastery at Whitby. Here is a free
and condensed translation of Bede's story :

There was, in the monastery of the Abbess Hilda, a brother distin-
guished by the grace of God, for that he could make poems treating
of goodness and religion. Whatever was translated to him (for he could
not read) of Sacred Scripture he shortly reproduced in poetic form of
great sweetness and beauty. None of all the English poets could equal
him, for he learned not the art of song from men, nor sang by the arts of
men. Rather did he receive all his poetry as a free gift from God, and
for this reason he did never compose poetry of a vain or worldly kind.

Until of mature age he lived as a layman and had never learned any
poetry. Indeed, so ignorant of singing was he that sometimes, at a feast,
where it was the custom that for the pleasure of all each guest should
sing in turn, he would rise from the table when he saw the harp coming
to him and go home ashamed. Now it happened once that he did this
thing at a certain festivity, and went out to the stall to care for the
horses, this duty being assigned to him for that night. As he slept at

1 " Caedmon's Hymn," Cook's version, in Translations from Old English Poetry-

2 Ecclesiastical History, IV, xxiv.

34 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the usual time, one stood by him saying : " Caedmon, sing me something."
" I cannot sing," he answered, " and that is why I came hither from the
feast." But he who spake unto him said again, " Caedmon, sing to me."
And he said, "What shall I sing?" and he said, "Sing the beginning
of created things." Thereupon Caedmon began to sing verses that he
had never heard before, of this import : " Now should we praise the
power and wisdom of the Creator, the works of the Father." This is the
sense but not the form of the hymn that he sang while sleeping.

When he awakened, Casdmon remembered the words of the hymn
and added to them many more. In the morning he went to the steward
of the monastery lands and showed him the gift he had received in
sleep. The steward brought him to Hilda, who made him repeat to the
monks the hymn he had composed, and all agreed that the grace of God
was upon Caedmon. To test him they expounded to him a bit of Scrip-
ture from the Latin and bade him, if he could, to turn it into poetry.
He went away humbly and returned in the morning with an excellent
poem. Thereupon Hilda received him and his family into the monastery,
made him one of the brethren, and commanded that the whole course of
Bible history be expounded to him. He in turn, reflecting upon what he
had heard, transformed it into most delightful poetry, and by echoing
it back to the monks in more melodious sounds made his teachers his
listeners. In all this his aim was to turn men from wickedness and to
help them to the love and practice of well doing.

[Then follows a brief record of Caedmon's life and an exquisite picture
of his death amidst the brethren.] And so it came to pass [says the
simple record] that as he served God while living in purity of mind
and serenity of spirit, so by a peaceful death he left the world and went
to look upon His face.

Caedmon's Works. The greatest work attributed to Caedmon
is the so-called Paraphrase. It is the story of Genesis, Exodus,
and a part of Daniel, told in glowing, poetic language, with a
power of insight and imagination which often raises it from
paraphrase into the realm of true poetry. Though we have
Bede's assurance that Caedmon " transformed the whole course
of Bible history into most delightful poetry," no work known
certainly to have been composed by him has come down to us.
In the seventeenth century this Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase was
discovered and attributed to Caedmon, and his name is still
associated with it, though it is now almost certain that the
Paraphrase is the work of more than one writer.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 35

Aside from the doubtful question of authorship, even a
casual reading of the poem brings us into the presence of
a poet rude indeed, but with a genius strongly suggestive at
times of the matchless Milton. The book opens with a hymn
of praise, and then tells of the fall of Satan and his rebel angels
from heaven, which is familiar to us in Milton's Paradise Lost.
Then follows the creation of the world, and the Paraphrase be-
gins to thrill with the old Anglo-Saxon love of nature.

Here first the Eternal Father, guard of all,
Of heaven and earth, raised up the firmament,
The Almighty Lord set firm by His strong power
This roomy land ; grass greened not yet the plain,
Ocean far spread hid the wan ways in gloom.
Then was the Spirit gloriously bright
Of Heaven's Keeper borne over the deep
Swiftly. The Life-giver, the Angel's Lord,
Over the ample ground bade come forth Light.
Quickly the High King's bidding was obeyed,
Over the waste there shone light's holy ray.
Then parted He, Lord of triumphant might,
Shadow from shining, darkness from the light.
Light, by the Word of God, was first named day. 1

After recounting the story of Paradise, the Fall, and the
Deluge, the Paraphrase is continued in the Exodus, of which
the poet makes a noble epic, rushing on with the sweep of a
Saxon army to battle. A single selection is given here to show
how the poet adapted the story to his hearers :

Then they saw,

Forth and forward faring, Pharaoh's war array
Gliding on, a grove of spears ; glittering the hosts !
Fluttered there the banners, there the folk the march trod.
Onwards surged the war, strode the spears along,
Blickered the broad shields ; blew aloud the trumpets. . . .
Wheeling round in gyres, yelled the fowls of war,
Of the battle greedy ; hoarsely barked the raven,
Dew upon his feathers, o'er the fallen corpses
Swart that chooser of the slain ! Sang aloud the wolves
At eve their horrid song, hoping for the carrion. 2

1 Genesis, 112-131 (Morley). 2 Exodus, 155 fif. (Brooke).

36 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Besides the Paraphrase we have a few fragments of the
same general character which are attributed to the school of
Csedmon. The longest of these is Judith, in which the story
of an apocryphal book of the Old Testament is done into
vigorous poetry. Holofernes is represented as a savage and
cruel Viking, reveling in his mead hall ; and when the heroic
Judith cuts off his head with his own sword and throws it
down before the warriors of her people, rousing them to
battle and victory, we reach perhaps the most dramatic and
brilliant point of Anglo-Saxon literature.

CYNEWULF (Eighth Century)

Of Cynewulf, greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poets, excepting
only the unknown author of Beowulf, we know very little.
Indeed, it was not till 1840, more than a thousand years after
his death, that even his name became known. Though he is
the only one of our early poets who signed his works, the
name was never plainly written, but woven into the verses in
the form of secret runes, 1 suggesting a modern charade, but
more difficult of interpretation until one has found the key
to the poet's signature.

Works of Cynewulf. The only signed poems of Cynewulf
are The Christ, Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, and Elene.
Unsigned poems attributed to him or his school are Andreas,

1 Runes were primitive letters of the old northern alphabet. In a few passages Cyne-
wulf uses each rune to represent not only a letter but a word beginning with that letter.
Thus the rune-equivalent of C stands for cene (keen, courageous), Y for yfel (evil, in
the sense of wretched), N for nyd (need), W for ivyn (joy), U for ur (our), L for lagu
(lake), F for feoh (fee, wealth). Using the runes equivalent to these seven letters,
Cynewulf hides and at the same time reveals his name in certain verses of The Christ,
for instance:

Then the Courage-hearted quakes, when the King (Lord) he hears
Speak to those who once on earth but obeyed Him weakly,
While as yet their Yearning pain and their Need most easily
Comfort might discover. . . . Gone is then the Winsomeness
Of the earth's adornments ! What to Us as men belonged
Of the joys of life was locked, long ago, in Lake-flood.
All the Fee on earth.

See Brooke's History of Early English Literature, pp. 377-379, or The Christ of
Cynewulf, ed. by Cook, also by Gollancz.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 37

the Phoenix, the Dream of the Rood, the Descent into Hell,
Guthlac, the Wanderer, and some of the Riddles. The last are
simply literary conundrums in which some well-known object,
like the bow or drinking horn, is described in poetic language,
and the hearer must guess the name. Some of them, like " The
Swan " J and " The Storm Spirit," are unusually beautiful.

Of all these works the most characteristic is undoubtedly
The Christ, a didactic poem in three parts : the first celebrat-
ing the Nativity ; the second, the Ascension ; and

The Christ , . , TX -.

the third, Doomsday, telling the torments of the
wicked and the unending joy of the redeemed. Cynewulf takes
his subject-matter partly from the Church liturgy, but more
largely from the homilies of Gregory the Great. The whole is
well woven together, and contains some hymns of great beauty
and many passages of intense dramatic force. Throughout the
poem a deep love for Christ and a reverence for the Virgin
Mary are manifest. More than any other poem in any language,
The Christ reflects the spirit of early Latin Christianity.

Here is a fragment comparing life to a sea voyage, a
comparison which occurs sooner or later to every thoughtful
person, and which finds perfect expression in Tennyson's
"Crossing the Bar."

Now 't is most like as if we fare in ships
On the ocean flood, over the water cold,
Driving our vessels through the spacious seas
With horses of the deep. A perilous way is this
Of boundless waves, and there are stormy seas
On which we toss here in this (reeling) world
O'er the deep paths. Ours was a sorry plight

1 My robe is noiseless while I tread the earth,
Or tarry 'neath the banks, or stir the shallows ;
But when these shining wings, this depth of air,
Bear me aloft above the bending shores
Where men abide, and far the welkin's strength
Over the multitudes conveys me, then
With rushing whir and clear melodious sound
My raiment sings. And like a wandering spirit
I float unweariedly o'er flood and field.

(Brougham's version, in Transl.from Old Eng. Poetry.)

38 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Until at last we sailed unto the land,
Over the troubled main. Help came to us
That brought us to the haven of salvation,
God's Spirit-Son, and granted grace to us
That we might know e'en from the vessel's deck
Where we must bind with anchorage secure
Our ocean steeds, old stallions of the waves.

In the two epic poems of Andreas and Elene Cynewulf
(if he be the author) reaches the very summit of his poetical
Andreas and art. Andreas, an unsigned poem, records the story
of St. Andrew, who crosses the sea to rescue his
comrade St. Matthew from the cannibals. A young ship-
master who sails the boat turns out to be Christ in disguise.
Matthew is set free, and the savages are converted by a mir-
acle. 1 It is a spirited poem, full of rush and incident, and the
descriptions of the sea are the best in Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Elene has for its subject-matter the finding of the true
cross. It tells of Constantine's vision of the Rood, on the eve
of battle. After his victory under the new emblem he sends his
mother Helena (Elene) to Jerusalem in search of the original
cross and the nails. The poem, which is of very uneven quality,
might properly be put at the end of Cynewulf 's works. He
adds to the poem a personal note, signing his name in runes ;
and, if we accept the wonderful "Vision of the Rood " as Cyne-
wulf 's work, we learn how he found the cross at last in his own
heart. There is a suggestion here of the future Sir Launfal
and the search for the Holy Grail.

Decline of Northumbrian Literature. The same northern
energy which had built up learning and literature so rapidly
in Northumbria was instrumental in pulling it down again.
Toward the end of the century in which Cynewulf lived, the
Danes swept down on the English coasts and overwhelmed
Northumbria. Monasteries and schools were destroyed ; schol-
ars and teachers alike were put to the sword, and libraries that

1 The source of Andreas is an early Greek legend of St. Andrew that found its
way to England and was probably known to Cynewulf in some brief Latin form, now lost.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD

had been gathered leaf by leaf with the toil of centuries were
scattered to the four winds. So all true Northumbrian litera-
ture perished, with the exception of a few fragments, and that
which we now possess l is largely a translation in the dialect
of the West Saxons. This translation
was made by Alfred's scholars, after
he had driven back the Danes in an
effort to preserve the ideals and the
civilization that had been so hardly
won. With the conquest of North-
umbria ends the poetic period of
Anglo-Saxon literature. With Alfred
the Great of Wessex our prose litera-
ture makes a beginning.

ALFRED (848-901)

" Every craft and every power soon grows
old and is passed over and forgotten, if it
be without wisdom. . . . This is now to be
said, that whilst I live I wish to live nobly,
and after life to leave to the men who come
after me a memory of good works." 2

So wrote the great Alfred, looking ^
back over his heroic life. That he
lived nobly none can doubt who reads
the history of the greatest of Anglo-
Saxon kings; and his good works C^DMON CROSS AT WHITBY
include, among others, the education

of half a country, the salvage of a noble native literature,
and the creation of the first English prose.

1 Our two chief sources are the famous Exeter Book, in Exeter Cathedral, a collection
of Anglo-Saxon poems presented by Bishop Leofric (*:. 1050), and the Vercelli Book,
discovered in the monastery of Vercelli, Italy, in 1822. The only known manuscript of
Beowulf 'was discovered c. 1600, and is now in the Cotton Library of the British Museum.
All these are fragmentary copies, and show the marks of fire and of hard usage. The
Exeter Book contains the Christ, Guthlac, the Phoenix, Juliana, Widsith, The Seafarer,
Dear's Lament, The Wife's Complaint, The Lover's Message, ninety-five Riddles, and
many short hymns and fragments, an astonishing variety for a single manuscript.

2 From Alfred's Boethius.

40 ENGLISH. LITERATURE

Life and Times of Alfred. For the history of Alfred's times, and
details of the terrific struggle with the Northmen, the reader must
be referred to the histories. The struggle ended with the Treaty of
Wedmore, in 878, with the establishment of Alfred not only as king
of Wessex, but as overlord of the whole northern country. Then the
hero laid down his sword, and set himself as a little child to learn
to read and write Latin, so that he might lead his people in peace as
he had led them in war. It is then that Alfred began to be the heroic
figure in literature that he had formerly been in the wars against
the Northmen.

With the same patience and heroism that had marked the long
struggle for freedom, Alfred set himself to the task of educating his
people. First he gave them laws, beginning with the Ten Command-
ments and ending with the Golden Rule, and then established courts
where laws could be faithfully administered. Safe from the Danes
by land, he created a navy, almost the first of the English fleets, to
drive them from the coast. Then, with peace and justice established
within his borders, he sent to Europe for scholars and teachers, and
set them over schools that he established. Hitherto all education
had been in Latin ; now he set himself the task, first, of teaching
every free-born Englishman to read and write his own language, and
second, of translating into English the best books for their instruc-
tion. Every poor scholar was honored at his court and was speedily
set to work at teaching or translating; every wanderer bringing a
book or a leaf of manuscript from the pillaged monasteries of North-
umbria was sure of his reward. In this way the few fragments of
native Northumbrian literature, which we have been studying, were
saved to the world. Alfred and his scholars treasured the rare frag-
ments and copied them in the West-Saxon dialect. With the excep-
tion of Caedmon's Hymn, we have hardly a single leaf from the great
literature of Northumbria in the dialect in which it was first written.

Works of Alfred. Aside from his educational work, Alfred
is known chiefly as a translator. After fighting his country's
battles, and at a time when most men were content with mil-
itary honor, he began to learn Latin, that he might translate
the works that would be most helpful to his people. His
important translations are four in number : Orosius's Univer-
sal History and Geography, the leading work in general history

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 41

for several centuries ; Bede's History, 1 the first great histor-
ical work written on English soil ; Pope Gregory's Shep-
herds Book, intended especially for the clergy ; and Boethius's
Consolations of Philosophy, the favorite philosophical work of
the Middle Ages.

More important than any translation is the English or Saxon
Chronicle. This was probably at first a dry record, especially of
The Saxon important births and deaths in the West-Saxon
Chronicle kingdom. Alfred enlarged this scant record, begin-
ning the story with Caesar's conquest. When it touches his
own reign the dry chronicle becomes an interesting and
connected story, the oldest history belonging to any modern
nation in its own language. The record of Alfred's reign,
probably by himself, is a splendid bit of writing and shows
clearly his claim to a place in literature as well as in history.
The Chronicle was continued after Alfred's death, and is the
best monument of early English prose that is left to us. Here
and there stirring songs are included in the narrative, like
"The Battle of Brunanburh" and "The Battle of Maldon." 2
The last, entered 991, seventy-five years before the Norman
Conquest, is the swan song of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The
Chronicle was continued for a century after the Norman Con-
quest, and is extremely valuable not only as a record of
events but as a literary monument showing the development
of our language.

Close of the Anglo-Saxon Period. After Alfred's death there
is little to record, except the loss of the two supreme objects
of his heroic struggle, namely, a national life and a national
literature. It was at once the strength and the weakness of
the Saxon that he lived apart as a free man and never joined
efforts willingly with any large body of his fellows. The tribe
was his largest idea of nationality, and, with all our admiration,

1 It is not certain that the translation of Bede is the work of Alfred.

2 See Translations from Old English Poetry. Only a brief account of the fight is
given in the Chronicle. The song known as " The Battle of Maldon," or " Byrhtnoth's
Death," is recorded in another manuscript.

42 ENGLISH LITERATURE

we must confess as we first meet him that he has not enough
sense of unity to make a great nation, nor enough culture to
produce a great literature. A few noble political ideals re-
peated in a score of petty kingdoms, and a few literary ideals
copied but never increased, that is the summary of his liter-
ary history. For a full century after Alfred literature was prac-
tically at a standstill, having produced the best of which it was
capable, and England waited for the national impulse and for
the culture necessary for a new and greater art. Both of these
came speedily, by way of the sea, in the Norman Conquest.

Summary of Anglo-Saxon Period. Our literature begins with songs and
stories of a time when our Teutonic ancestors were living on the borders of
the North Sea. Three tribes of these ancestors, the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons,
conquered Britain in the latter half of the fifth century, and laid the founda-
tion of the English nation. The first landing was probably by a tribe of Jutes,
under chiefs called by the chronicle Hengist and Horsa. The date is doubt-
ful ; but the year 449 is accepted by most historians.

These old ancestors were hardy warriors and sea rovers, yet were capable
of profound and noble emotions. Their poetry reflects this double nature.
Its subjects were chiefly the sea and the plunging boats, battles, adventure,
brave deeds, the glory of warriors, and the love of home. Accent, alliteration,
and an abrupt break in the middle of each line gave their poetry a kind of
martial rhythm. In general the poetry is earnest and somber, and pervaded
by fatalism and religious feeling. A careful reading of the few remaining
fragments of Anglo-Saxon literature reveals five striking characteristics :
the love of freedom ; responsiveness to nature, especially in her sterner
moods ; strong religious convictions, and a belief in Wyrd, or Fate ; rever-
ence for womanhood; and a devotion to glory as the ruling motive in every
warrior's life.

In our study we have noted: (i) the great epic or heroic poem Beowulf,
and a few fragments of our first poetry, such as " Widsith," " Deor's Lament,"
and " The Seafarer." (2) Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon life ; the form of our
first speech. (3) The Northumbrian school of writers. Bede, our first historian,
belongs to this school ; but all his extant works are in Latin. The two great
poets are Caedmon and Cynewulf. Northumbrian literature flourished between
650 and 850. In the year 867 Northumbria was conquered by the Danes, who
destroyed the monasteries and the libraries containing our earliest literature.
(4) The beginnings of English prose writing under Alfred (848-901). Our most
important prose work of this age is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was
revised and enlarged by Alfred, and which was continued for more than two
centuries. It is the oldest historical record known to any European nation in
its own tongue.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 43

Selections for Reading. Miscellaneoiis Poetry. The Seafarer, Love Letter
(Husband's Message), Battle of Brunanburh, Deor's Lament, Riddles, Exodus,
The Christ, Andreas, Dream of the Rood, extracts in Cook and Tinker's
Translations from Old English Poetry * (Ginn and Company) ; Judith, trans-
lation by A. S. Cook. Good selections are found also in Brooke's History of
Early English Literature, and Morley's English Writers, vols. i and 2.

Beowulf. J. R. C. Hall's prose translation; Child's Beowulf (Riverside
Literature Series) ; Morris and Wyatt's The Tale of Beowulf ; Earle's The
Deeds of Beowulf; Metrical versions by Garnett, J. L. Hall, Lumsden, etc.

Prose. A few paragraphs of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Manly's English
Prose ; translations in Cook and Tinker's Old English Prose.

Bibliography. 2 History. For the facts of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of
England consult first a good text-book : Montgomery, pp. 3157, or Cheyney,
pp. 36-84. For fuller treatment see Green, ch. I ; Traill, vol. I ; Ramsey's
Foundations of England ; Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons ; Freeman's
Old English History ; Allen's Anglo-Saxon England ; Cook's Life of Alfred ;
Asser's Life of King Alfred, edited by W. H. Stevenson ; C. Plummer's Life
and Times of Alfred the Great ; E. Dale's National Life and Character in the
Mirror of Early English Literature ; Rhys's Celtic Britain.

Literature. Anglo-Saxon Texts. Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, and Albion
Series of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English Poetry (Ginn and Company);
Belles Lettres Series of English Classics, sec. I (Heath & Co.) ; J. W. Bright's
Anglo-Saxon Reader ; Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer, and Anglo-Saxon Reader.

General Works. Jusserand, Ten Brink, Cambridge History, Morley (full
titles and publishers in General Bibliography).

Special Works. Brooke's History of Early English Literature ; Earle's
Anglo-Saxon Literature ; Lewis's Beginnings of English Literature ; Arnold's
Celtic Literature (for relations of Saxon and Celt) ; Longfellow's Poets and
Poetry of Europe; Hall's Old English Idyls; Gayley's Classic Myths, or
Guerber's Myths of the Northlands (for Norse Mythology) ; Brother Azarias's
Development of Old English Thought.

Beowulf, prose translations by Tinker, Hall, Earle, Morris and Wyatt ;
metrical versions by Garnett, J. L. Hall, Lumsden, etc. The Exeter Book (a
collection of Anglo-Saxon texts), edited and translated by Gollancz. The
Christ of Cynewulf, prose translation by Whitman ; the same poem, text and
translation, by Gollancz ; text by Cook. Caedmon's Paraphrase, text and trans-
lation, by Thorpe. Garnett's Elene, Judith, and other Anglo-Saxon Poems.
Translations of Andreas and the Phoenix, in Gollancz's Exeter Book. Bede's
History, in Temple Classics ; the same with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (one
volume) in Bohn's Antiquarian Library.

1 This is an admirable little book, containing the cream of Anglo-Saxon poetry,
in free translations, with notes. Translations from Old English Prose is a companion
volume.

2 For full titles and publishers of general reference books, and for a list of inexpen-
sive texts and helps, see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

44 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Suggestive Questions. 1 i. What is the relation of history and literature?
Why should both subjects be studied together? Explain the qualities that
characterize all great literature. Has any text-book in history ever appealed
to you as a work of literature ? What literary qualities have you noticed in
standard historical works, such as those of Macaulay, Prescott, Gibbon, Green,
Motley, Parkman, and John Fiske ?

2. Why did the Anglo-Saxons come to England ? What induced them to
remain ? Did any change occur in their ideals, or in their manner of life ? Do
you know any social or political institutions which they brought, and which
we still cherish ?

3. From the literature you have read, what do you know about our Anglo-
Saxon ancestors ? What virtues did they admire in men ? How was woman
regarded? Can you compare the Anglo-Saxon ideal of woman with that of
other nations, the Romans for instance ?

4. Tell in your own words the general qualities of Anglo-Saxon poetry. How
did it differ in its metrical form from modern poetry ? What passages seem to
you worth learning and remembering ? Can you explain why poetry is more
abundant and more interesting than prose in the earliest literature of all
nations ?

5. Tell the story of Beowulf. What appeals to you most in the poem ? Why
is it a work for all time, or, as the Anglo-Saxons would say, why is it worthy
to be remembered ? (Note the permanent quality of literature, and the ideals
and emotions which are emphasized in Beowulf?) Describe the burials of
Scyld and of Beowulf. Does the poem teach any moral lesson ? Explain the
Christian elements in this pagan epic.

6. Name some other of our earliest poems, and describe the one you like
best. How does the sea figure in our first poetry ? How is nature regarded ?
What poem reveals the life of the scop or poet ? How do you account for
the serious character of Anglo-Saxon poetry ? Compare the Saxon and the
Celt with regard to the gladsomeness of life as shown in their literature.

7. What useful purpose did poetry serve among our ancestors ? W T hat
purpose did the harp serve in reciting their poems ? Would the harp add any-
thing to our modern poetry ?

8. What is meant by Northumbrian literature ? Who are the great Northum-
brian writers ? What besides the Danish conquest caused the decline of
Northumbrian literature ?

9. For what is Bede worthy to be remembered ? Tell the story of Csedmon,
as recorded in Bede's History. What new element is introduced in Caedmon's
poems ? What effect did Christianity have upon Anglo-Saxon literature ? Can
you quote any passages from Caedmon to show that Anglo-Saxon character was
not changed but given a new direction ? If you have read Milton's Paradise Lost,
what resemblances are there between that poem and Caedmon's Paraphrase?

1 The chief object of these questions is not to serve as a review, or to prepare for
examination, but rather to set the student thinking for himself about what he has read.
A few questions of an advanced nature are inserted, which call for special study and re-
search in interesting fields.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD

10. What are the Cynewulf poems ? Describe any that you have read.
How do they compare in spirit and in expression with Beowulf? with Caed-
mon ? Read The Phoenix (which is a translation from the Latin) in Brooke's
History of Early English Literature, or in Gollancz's Exeter Book, or in
Cook's Translations from Old English Poetry, and tell what elements you
find to show that the poem is not of Anglo-Saxon origin. Compare the views
of nature in Beowulf and in the Cynewulf poems.

11. Describe the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. What is its value in our lan-
guage, literature, and history ? Give an account of Alfred's life and of his
work for literature. How does Anglo-Saxon prose compare in interest with
the poetry ?

CHRONOLOGY

HISTORY

LITERATURE

449(?). Landing of Hengist and Horsa

in Britain

477. Landing of South Saxons
547. Angles settle Northumbria
597. Landing of Augustine and his

monks. Conversion of Kent
617. Eadwine, king of Northumbria
635-665. Coming of St. Aidan. Con-
version of Northumbria

867. Danes conquer Northumbria

871. Alfred, king of Wessex

878. Defeat of Danes. Peace of

Wedmore
901. Death of Alfred

1013-1042. Danish period

1016. Cnut, king

1042. Edward the Confessor. Saxon

period restored

1049. Westminster Abbey begun
1066. Harold, last of Saxon kings.

Norman Conquest

547. Gildas's History

664. Caedmon at Whitby

673-735- Bede

7 50 (>.). Cynewulf poems

860. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begun

991. Last known poem of the Anglo-
Saxon period, The Battle of
Maldon, otherwise called
Byrhtnoth's Death

CHAPTER III

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD (1066-1350)
I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

The Normans. The name Norman, which is a softened form of
Northman, tells its own story. The men who bore the name came
originally from Scandinavia, bands of big, blond, fearless men
cruising after plunder and adventure in their Viking ships, and
bringing terror wherever they appeared. It was these same " Chil-
dren of Woden " who, under the Danes' raven flag, had blotted out
Northumbrian civilization in the ninth century. Later the same race
of men came plundering along the French coast and conquered the
whole northern country ; but here the results were altogether differ-
ent. Instead of blotting out a superior civilization, as the Danes had
done, they promptly abandoned their own. Their name of Nor-
mandy still clings to the new home; but all else that was Norse
disappeared as the conquerors intermarried with the native Franks
and accepted French ideals and spoke the French language. So
rapidly did they adopt and improve the Roman civilization of the
natives that, from a rude tribe of heathen Vikings, they had devel-
oped within a single century into the most polished and intellectual
people in all Europe. The union of Norse and French (i.e. Roman-
Gallic) blood had here produced a race having the best qualities of
both, the will power and energy of the one, the eager curiosity and
vivid imagination of the other. When these Norman-French people
appeared in Anglo-Saxon England they brought with them three
noteworthy things : a lively Celtic disposition, a vigorous and pro-
gressive Latin civilization, and a Romance language. 1 We are to
think of the conquerors, therefore, as they thought and spoke of
themselves in the Domesday Book and all their contemporary liter-
ature, not as Normans but as Frand, that is, Frenchmen.

1 A Romance language is one whose basis is Latin, not the classic language of litera-
ture, but a vulgar or popular Latin spoken in the military camps and provinces. Thus
Italian, Spanish, and French were originally different dialects of the vulgar Latin, slightly
modified by the mingling of the Roman soldiers with the natives of the conquered provinces,

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 47

The Conquest. At the battle of Hastings (1066) the power of
Harold, last of the Saxon kings, was broken, and William, duke of
Normandy, became master of England. Of the completion of that
stupendous Conquest which began at Hastings, and which changed
the civilization of a whole nation, this is not the place to speak.
We simply point out three great results of the Conquest which have
a direct bearing on our literature. First, notwithstanding Caesar's
legions and Augustine's monks, the Normans were the first to bring
the culture and the practical ideals of Roman civilization home to
the English people ; and this at a critical time, when England had
produced her best, and her own literature and civilization had already
begun to decay. Second, they forced upon
England the national idea, that is, a strong,
centralized government to replace the
loose authority of a Saxon chief over
his tribesmen. And the world's his-
tory shows that without a great
nationality a great
literature is impossi-
ble. Third, they
brought to England
the wealth of a new
language and litera-
ture, and our English
gradually absorbed

both. For three cen-

, TT ; LEIF ERICSON'S VESSEL

tunes after Hastings

French was the language of the upper classes, of courts and schools
and literature ; yet so tenaciously did the common people cling to
their own strong speech that in the end English absorbed almost the
whole body of French words and became the language of the land.
It was the welding of Saxon and French into one speech that pro-
duced the wealth of our modern English.

Naturally such momentous changes in a nation were not brought
about suddenly. At first Normans and Saxons lived apart in the rela-
tion of masters and servants, with more or less contempt on one side
and hatred on the other ; but in an astonishingly short time these two
races were drawn powerfully together, like two men of different dis-
positions who are often led into a steadfast friendship by the attrac-
tion of opposite qualities, each supplying what the other lacks. The

48 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was continued for a century after
Hastings, finds much to praise in the conquerors ; on the other hand
the Normans, even before the Conquest, had no great love for the
French nation. After conquering England they began to regard it as
home and speedily developed a new sense of nationality. Geoffrey's
popular History? written less than a century after the Conquest,
made conquerors and conquered alike proud of their country by
its stories of heroes who, curiously enough, were neither Norman
nor Saxon, but creations of the native Celts. Thus does literature,
whether in a battle song or a history, often play the chief role in the
development of nationality. 2 Once the mutual distrust was overcome
the two races gradually united, and out of this union of Saxons and
Normans came the new English life and literature.

Literary Ideals of the Normans. The change in the life of the con-
querors from Norsemen to Normans, from Vikings to Frenchmen,
is shown most clearly in the literature which they brought with them
to England. The old Norse strength and grandeur, the magnificent
sagas telling of the tragic struggles of men and gods, which still stir
us profoundly, these have all disappeared. In their place is a
bright, varied, talkative literature, which runs to endless verses, and
which makes a wonderful romance out of every subject it touches.
The theme may be religion or love or chivalry or history, the deeds
of Alexander or the misdeeds of a monk ; but the author's purpose
never varies. He must tell a romantic story and amuse his audience ;
and the more wonders and impossibilities he relates, the more surely
is he believed. We are reminded, in reading, of the native Gauls,
who would stop every traveler and compel him to tell a story ere he
passed on. There was more of the Gaul than of the Norseman in
the conquerors, and far more of fancy than of thought or feeling in
their literature. If you would see this in concrete form, read the
Chanson de Roland, the French national epic (which the Normans

1 See p. 51.

2 It is interesting to note that all the chroniclers of the period, whether of English or
Norman birth, unite in admiration of the great figures of English history, as it was then
understood. Brutus, Arthur, Hengist, Horsa, Edward the Confessor, and William of
Normandy are all alike set down as English heroes. In a French poem of the thirteenth
century, for instance, we read that "there is no land in the world where so many good
kings and saints have lived as in the isle of the English . . . such as the strong and
brave Arthur, Edmund, and Cnut." This national poem, celebrating the English
Edward, was written in French by a Norman monk of Westminster Abbey, and its first
heroes are a Celt, a Saxon, and a Dane. (See Jusserand, Literary History of the Eng-
lish People, I, II2ff.)

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 49

first put into literary form), in contrast with Beowulf, which voices
the Saxon's thought and feeling before the profound mystery of
human life. It is not our purpose to discuss the evident merits or
the serious defects of Norman-French literature, but only to point
out two facts which impress the student, namely, that Anglo-Saxon
literature was at one time enormously superior to the French, and
that the latter, with its evident inferiority, absolutely replaced the
former. "The fact is too often ignored," says Professor Schofield, 1
"that before 1066 the Anglo-Saxons had a body of native literature
distinctly superior to any which the Normans or French could boast
at that time ; their prose especially was unparalleled for extent and
power in any European vernacular." Why, then, does this superior
literature disappear and for nearly three centuries French remain
supreme, so much so that writers on English soil, even when they do
not use the French language, still slavishly copy the French models?
To understand this curious phenomenon it is necessary only to
remember the relative conditions of the two races who lived side by
side in England. On the one hand the Anglo-Saxons were a con-
quered people, and without liberty a great literature is impossible.
The inroads of the Danes and their own tribal wars had already
destroyed much of their writings, and in their new condition of
servitude they could hardly preserve what remained. The conquer-
ing Normans, on the other hand, represented the civilization of
France, which country, during the early Middle Ages, was the literary
and educational center of all Europe. They came to England at a
time when the idea of nationality was dead, when culture had almost
vanished, when Englishmen lived apart in narrow isolation ; and they
brought with them law, culture, the prestige of success, and above
all the strong impulse to share in the great world's work and to join
in the moving currents of the world's history. Small wonder, then,
that the young Anglo-Saxons felt the quickening of this new life
and turned naturally to the cultured and progressive Normans as
their literary models.

II. LITERATURE OF THE NORMAN PERIOD

In the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh there is a beauti-
fully illuminated manuscript, written about 1330, which gives
us an excellent picture of the literature of the Norman period.

1 English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer.

50 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In examining it we are to remember that literature was in
the hands of the clergy and nobles ; that the common people
could not read, and had only a few songs and ballads for their
literary portion. We are to remember also that parchments
were scarce and very expensive, and that a single manuscript
often contained all the reading matter of a castle or a village.
Hence this old manuscript is as suggestive as a modern library.
It contains over forty distinct works, the great bulk of them
being romances. There are metrical or verse romances of

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL AS IT WAS COMPLETED LONG
AFTER THE CONQUEST

French and Celtic and English heroes, like Roland, Arthur
and Tristram, and Bevis of Hampton. There are stories of
Alexander, the Greek romance of "Flores and Blanchefleur,"
and a collection of Oriental tales called "The Seven Wise
Masters." There are legends of the Virgin and the saints, a
paraphrase of Scripture, a treatise on the seven deadly sins,
some Bible history, a dispute among birds concerning women,
a love song or two, a vision of Purgatory, a vulgar story
with a Gallic flavor, a chronicle of English kings and Norman
barons, and a political satire. There are a few other works,

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 51

similarly incongruous, crowded together in this typical manu-
script, which now gives mute testimony to the literary taste of
the times.

Obviously it is impossible to classify such a variety. We
note simply that it is mediaeval in spirit, and French in style
and expression ; and that sums up the age. All the scholarly
works of the period, like William of Malmesbury's History,
and Anselm's 1 Cur Deus Homo, and Roger Bacon's Opus
Majus, the beginning of modern experimental science, were
written in Latin ; while nearly all other works were written
in French, or else were English copies or translations of French.
originals. Except for the advanced student, therefore, they
hardly belong to the story of English literature. We shall
note here only one or two marked literary types, like the Rim-
ing Chronicle (or verse history) and the Metrical Romance y
and a few writers whose work has especial significance.

Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1 1 54). Geoffrey's Historia Regum
Britannia is noteworthy, not as literature, but rather as a source
book from which many later writers drew their literary mate-
rials. Among the native Celtic tribes an immense number of
legends, many of them of exquisite beauty, had been pre-
served through four successive conquests of Britain. Geoffrey,
a Welsh monk, collected some of these legends and, aided
chiefly by his imagination, wrote a complete history of the
Britons. His alleged authority was an ancient manuscript in
the native Welsh tongue containing the lives and deeds of all
their kings, from Brutus, the alleged founder of Britain, down
to the coming of Julius Caesar. 2 From this Geoffrey wrote his
history, down to the death of Cadwalader in 689.

The " History " is a curious medley of pagan and Christian
legends, of chronicle, comment, and pure invention, all

1 Anselm was an Italian by birth, but wrote his famous work while holding the see
of Canterbury.

2 During the Roman occupancy of Britain occurred a curious mingling of Celtic
and Roman traditions. The Welsh began to associate their national hero Arthur with
Roman ancestors ; hence the story of Brutus, great-grandson of ^neas, the first king
of Britain, as related by Geoffrey and Layamon.

52 ENGLISH LITERATURE

recorded in minute detail and with a gravity which makes it
clear that Geoffrey had no conscience, or else was a great
joker. As history the whole thing is rubbish ; but it was ex-
traordinarily successful at the time and made all who heard it,
whether Normans or Saxons, proud of their own country. It
is interesting to us because it gave a new direction to the
literature of England by showing the wealth of poetry and
'romance that lay in its cAvn traditions of Arthur and his
knights. Shakespeare's King Lear, Malory's Morte d* Arthur,
and Tennyson's Idylls of the King were founded on the work
of this monk, who had the genius to put unwritten Celtic tra-
dition in the enduring form of Latin prose.

Work of the French Writers. The French literature of the
Norman period is interesting chiefly because of the avidity
with which foreign writers seized upon the native legends and
made them popular in England. Until Geoffrey's preposter-
ous chronicle appeared, these legends had not been used to
any extent as literary material. Indeed, they were scarcely
known in England, though familiar to French and Italian
minstrels. Legends of Arthur and his court were probably
first taken to Brittany by Welsh emigrants in the fifth and
sixth centuries. They became immensely popular wherever
they were told, and they were slowly carried by minstrels and
story-tellers all over Europe. That they had never received
literary form or recognition was due to a peculiarity of medi-
aeval literature, which required that every tale should have
some ancient authority behind it. Geoffrey met this demand
by creating an historical manuscript of Welsh history. That
was enough for the age. With Geoffrey and his alleged manu-
script to rest upon, the Norman-French writers were free to
use the fascinating stories which had been for centuries in the
possession of their wandering minstrels. Geoffrey's Latin
history was put into French verse by Gaimar (c. 1150) and
by Wace (c. 1155), and from these French versions the work
was first translated into English. From about 1200 onward

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 53

Arthur and Guinevere and the matchless band of Celtic heroes
that we meet later (1470) in Malory's Morte d'A rthur became
the permanent possession of our literature.

Layamon's Brut (c. 1200). This is the most important of
the English riming chronicles, that is, history related in the
form of doggerel verse, probably because poetry is more
easily memorized than prose. We give here a free rendering
of selected lines at the beginning of the poem, which tell us
all we know of Layamon, the first who ever wrote as an
Englishman for Englishmen, including in the term all who
loved England and called it home, no matter where their
ancestors were born.

Now there was a priest in the land named Layamon. He was son of
Leovenath may God be gracious unto him. He dwelt at Ernley, at a
noble church on Severn's bank. He read many books, and it came to
his mind to tell the noble deeds of the English. Then he began to
journey far and wide over the land to procure noble books for authority.
He took the English book that Saint Bede made, another in Latin that
Saint Albin made, 1 and a third book that a French clerk made, named
Wace. 2 Layamon laid these works before him and turned the leaves ;
lovingly he beheld them. Pen he took, and wrote on book-skin, and
made the three books into one.

The poem begins with the destruction of Troy and the
flight of "^Eneas the duke" into Italy. Brutus, a great-
grandson of ^Eneas, gathers his people and sets out to find
a new land in the West. Then follows the founding of the
Briton kingdom, and the last third of the poem, which is over
thirty thousand lines in length, is taken up with the history
of Arthur and his knights. If the Brut had no merits of its
own, it would still interest us, for it marks the first appear-
ance of the Arthurian legends in our own tongue. A single
selection is given here from Arthur's dying speech, familiar
to us in Tennyson's Morte d' Arthur. The reader will notice
here two things : first, that though the poem is almost pure

1 Probably a Latin copy of Bede.

2 Wace's translation of Geoffrey.

ENGLISH LITERATURE

-Anglo-Saxon, 1 our first speech has already dropped many in-
flections and is more easily read than Beoivulf ; second, that
-French influence is already at work in Layamon's rimes and
assonances, that is, the harmony resulting from using the
same vowel sound in several successive lines :

And ich wulle varen to Avalun :

To vairest alre maidene,

To Argante there quene,

Alven swithe sceone.

And heo seal mine wunden

Makien alle isunde,

Al hal me makien

Mid haleweiye drenchen.

And seothe ich cumen wulle

To mine kineriche

And wunien mid Brutten

Mid muchelere wunne.

>Efne than worden

Ther com of se wenden

That wes an sceort bat lithen,

Sceoven mid uthen,

And twa wimmen ther inne,

Wunderliche idihte.

And heo nomen Arthur anan

And an eovste hine vereden

And softe hine adun leiden,

And forth gunnen lithen.

And I will fare to Avalun,
To fairest of all maidens,
To Argante the queen,
An elf very beautiful.
And she shall my wounds
Make all sound ;
All whole me make
With healing drinks.
And again will I come
To my kingdom
And dwell with Britons
With mickle joy.
Even (with) these words
There came from the sea
A short little boat gliding,
Shoved by the waves ;
And two women therein,
Wondrously attired.
And they took Arthur anon
And bore him hurriedly,
And softly laid him down,
And forth gan glide.

Metrical Romances. Love, chivalry, and religion, all per-
vaded by the spirit of romance, these are the three great
literary ideals which find expression in the metrical romances.
Read these romances now, with their knights and fair ladies,
their perilous adventures and tender love-making, their min-
strelsy and tournaments and gorgeous cavalcades, as if
humanity were on parade, and life itself were one tumultuous
holiday in the open air, and you have an epitome of the
whole childish, credulous soul of the Middle Ages. The

1 Only one word in about three hundred and fifty is of French origin. A century later
Robert Mannyng uses one French word in eighty, while Chaucer has one in six or seven.
This includes repetitions, and is a fair estimate rather than an exact computation.

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 55

Normans first brought this type of romance into England, and
so popular did it become, so thoroughly did it express the
romantic spirit of the time, that it speedily overshadowed all
other forms of literary expression.

Though the metrical romances varied much in form and
subject-matter, the general type remains the same, a long
rambling poem or series of poems treating of love
or knightly adventure or both. Its hero is a knight ;
its characters are fair ladies in distress, warriors in armor,
giants, dragons, enchanters, and various enemies of Church
and State ; and its emphasis is almost invariably on love,
religion, and duty as defined by chivalry. In the French
originals of these romances the lines were a definite length,
the meter exact, and rimes and assonances were both used to
give melody. In England this metrical system came in con-
tact with the uneven lines, the strong accent and alliteration
of the native songs ; and it is due to the gradual union of the
two systems, French and Saxon, that our English became
capable of the melody and amazing variety of verse forms
which first find expression in Chaucer's poetry.

In the enormous number of these verse romances we note
three main divisions, according to subject, into the romances
Cycles of ( or the so-called matter) of France, Rome, and
Romances Britain. 1 The matter of France deals largely with
the exploits of Charlemagne and his peers, and the chief of
these Carlovingian cycles is the Chanson de Roland, the
national epic, which celebrates the heroism of Roland in his
last fight against the Saracens at Ronceval. Originally these
romances were called Chansons de Geste ; and the name is
significant as indicating that the poems were originally short
songs 2 celebrating the deeds (gesta) of well-known heroes.

1 The matter of Britain refers strictly to the Arthurian, i.e. the Welsh romances; and
so another division, the matter of England, may be noted. This includes tales of popu-
lar English heroes, like Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Horn Child, etc.

2 According to mediaeval literary custom these songs were rarely signed. Later, when
many songs were made over into a long poem, the author signed his name to the entire
work, without indicating what he had borrowed.

56 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Later the various songs concerning one hero were gathered
together and the Geste became an epic, like the Chanson de
Roland, or a kind of continued ballad story, hardly deserving
the name of epic, like the Geste of Robin Hood}-

The matter of Rome consisted largely of tales from Greek
and Roman sources ; and the two great cycles of these
romances deal with the deeds of Alexander, a favorite hero,
and the siege of Troy, with which the Britons thought they
had some historic connection. To these were added a large
number of tales from Oriental sources ; and in the exuberant
imagination of the latter we see the influence which the
Saracens those nimble wits who gave us our first modern
sciences and who still reveled in the Arabian Nights had
begun to exercise on the literature of Europe.

To the English reader, at least, the most interesting of the
romances are those which deal with the exploits of Arthur
The Matter an d his Knights of the Round Table, the rich-
of Britain es t storehouse of romance which our literature has
ever found. There were many cycles of Arthurian romances,
chief of which are those of Gawain, Launcelot, Merlin, the
Quest of the Holy Grail, and the Death of Arthur. In pre-
ceding sections we have seen how these fascinating romances
were used by Geoffrey and the French writers, and how,
through the French, they found their way into English, ap-
pearing first in our speech in Layamon's Brut. The point to
remember is that, while the legends are Celtic in origin, their
literary form is due to French poets, who originated the met-
rical romance. All our early English romances are either copies
or translations of the French ; and this is true not only of the
matter of France and Rome, but of Celtic heroes like Arthur,
and English heroes like Guy of Warwick and Robin Hood.

1 An English book in which such romances were written was called a Gest or Jest
Book. So also at the beginning of Cursor Mundi (c. 1320) we read :

Men yernen jestis for to here

And romaunce rede in diverse manere,

and then follows a summary of the great cycles of romance, which we are considering.

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 57

The most interesting of all Arthurian romances are those
of the Gawain cycle, 1 and of these the story of Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight is best worth reading, for
and the Green many reasons. First, though the material is taken
from French sources, 2 the English workmanship is
the finest of our early romances. Second, the unknown author
of this romance probably wrote also "The Pearl," and is the
greatest English poet of the Norman period. Third, the poem
itself with its dramatic interest, its vivid descriptions, and its
moral purity, is one of the most delightful old romances in
any language.

In form Sir Gawain is an interesting combination of
French and Saxon elements. It is written in an elaborate
stanza combining meter and alliteration. At the end of each
stanza is a rimed refrain, called by the French a "tail rime."
We give here a brief outline of the story ; but if the reader
desires the poem itself, he is advised to begin with a modern
version, as the original is in the West Midland dialect and is
exceedingly difficult to follow.

On New Year's day, while Arthur and his knights are keeping the
Yuletide feast at Camelot, a gigantic knight in green enters the banquet
hall on horseback and challenges the bravest knight present to an
exchange of blows ; that is, he will expose his neck to a blow of his
own big battle-ax, if any knight will agree to abide a blow in return.
After some natural consternation and a fine speech by Arthur, Gawain
accepts the challenge, takes the battle-ax, and with one blow sends the
giant's head rolling through the hall. The Green Knight, who is evi-
dently a terrible magician, picks up his head and mounts his horse.
He holds out his head and the ghastly lips speak, warning Gawain to
be faithful to his promise and to seek through the world till he finds the
Green Chapel. There, on next New Year's day, the Green Knight will
meet him and return the blow.

The second canto of the poem describes Gawain's long journey
through the wilderness on his steed Gringolet, and his adventures with

1 Tennyson goes farther than Malory in making Gawain false and irreverent. That
seems to be a mistake ; for in all the earliest romances Gawain is, next to Arthur, the
noblest of knights, the most loved and honored of all the heroes of the Round Table.

2 There were various French versions of the story ; but it came originally from the
Irish, where the hero was called Cuchulinn.

58 ENGLISH LITERATURE

storm and cold, with wild beasts and monsters, as he seeks in vain for
the Green Chapel. On Christmas eve, in the midst of a vast forest, he
offers a prayer to " Mary, mildest mother so dear," and is rewarded
by sight of a great castle. He enters and is royally entertained by
the host, an aged hero, and by his wife, who is the most beautiful
woman the knight ever beheld. Gawain learns that he is at last near
the Green Chapel, and settles down for a little comfort after his
long quest.

The next canto shows the life in the castle, and describes a curious
compact between the host, who goes hunting daily, and the knight, who-
remains in the castle to entertain the young wife. The compact is that
at night each man shall give the other whatever good thing he obtains
during the day. While the host is hunting, the young woman tries in
vain to induce Gawain to make love to her, and ends by giving him a.
kiss. When the host returns and gives his guest the game he has killed
Gawain returns the kiss. On the third day, her temptations having
twice failed, the lady offers Gawain a ring, which he refuses ; but when
she offers a magic green girdle that will preserve the wearer from
death, Gawain, who remembers the giant's ax so soon to fall on his-
neck, accepts the girdle as a "jewel for the jeopardy" and promises
the lady to keep the gift secret. Here, then, are two conflicting com-
pacts. When the host returns and offers his game, Gawain returns the
kiss but says nothing of the green girdle.

The last canto brings our knight to the Green Chapel, after he is
repeatedly warned to turn back in the face of certain death. The
Chapel is a terrible place in the midst of desolation ; and as Gawain
approaches he hears a terrifying sound, the grating of steel on stone,
where the giant is sharpening a new battle-ax. The Green Knight
appears, and Gawain, true to his compact, offers his neck for the blow.
Twice the ax swings harmlessly ; the third time it falls on his shoulder
and wounds him. Whereupon Gawain jumps for his armor, draws his
sword, and warns the giant that the compact calls for only one blow,
and that, if another is offered, he will defend himself.

Then the Green Knight explains things. He is lord of the castle
where Gawain has been entertained for days past. The first two swings
of the ax were harmless because Gawain had been true to his compact
and twice returned the kiss. The last blow had wounded him because
he concealed the gift of the green girdle, which belongs to the Green
Knight and was woven by his wife. Moreover, the whole thing has been,
arranged by Morgain the fay-woman (an enemy of Queen Guinevere,,
who appears often in the Arthurian romances). Full of shame, Gawain.
throws back the gift and is ready to atone for his deception ; but the
Green Knight thinks he has already atoned, and presents the green
girdle as a free gifto Gawain returns to Arthur's court, tells the whole

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 59

story frankly, and ever after that the knights of the Round Table wear
a green girdle in his honor. 1

The Pearl. In the same manuscript with " Sir Gawain "
are found three other remarkable poems, written about 1350,
and known to us, in order, as "The Pearl," "Cleanness,"
and " Patience." The first is the most beautiful, and received
its name from the translator and editor, Richard Morris, in
1864. "Patience" is a paraphrase of the book of Jonah;
<r Cleanness " moralizes on the basis of Bible stories ; but
"The Pearl" is an intensely human and realistic picture
of a father's grief for his little daughter Margaret, "My
precious perle wythouten spot." It is the saddest of all
our early poems.

On the grave of his little one, covered over with flowers, the father
pours out his love and grief till, in the summer stillness, he falls asleep,
while we hear in the sunshine the drowsy hum of insects and the far-
away sound of the reapers' sickles. He dreams there, and the dream
grows into a vision beautiful. His body lies still upon the grave while
his spirit goes to a land, exquisite beyond all words, where he comes
suddenly upon a stream that he cannot cross. As he wanders along the
bank, seeking in vain for a ford, a marvel rises before his eyes, a crystal
cliff, and seated beneath it a little maiden who raises a happy, shining
face, the face of his little Margaret.

More then me lyste my drede aros,
I stod full stylle and dorste not calle ;
Wyth yghen open and mouth ful clos,
I stod as hende as hawk in halle.

He dares not speak for fear of breaking the spell ; but sweet as a lily
she comes down the crystal stream's bank to meet and speak with him,
and tell him of the happy life of heaven and how to live to be worthy
of it. In his joy he listens, forgetting all his grief; then the heart of
the man cries out for its own, and he struggles to cross the stream to
join her. In the struggle the dream vanishes; he wakens to find his
eyes wet and his head on the little mound that marks the spot where
his heart is buried.

1 It is often alleged that in this romance we have a very poetical foundation for the
Order of the Garter, which was instituted by Edward III, in 1349; but the history of
the order makes this extremely doubtful. The reader will be chiefly interested in com-
paring this romance with Beowulf, for instance, to see what new ideals have taken root
in England.

60 ENGLISH LITERATURE

From the ideals of these three poems, and from peculiari-
ties of style and meter, it is probable that their author wrote
also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. If so, the unknown
author is the one genius of the age whose poetry of itself
has power to interest us, and who stands between Cynewulf
and Chaucer as a worthy follower of the one and forerunner
of the other.

Miscellaneous Literature of the Norman Period. It is well-
nigh impossible to classify the remaining literature of this
period, and very little of it is now read, except by advanced
students. Those interested in the development of "transi-
tion " English will find in the Ancren Riwle, i.e. " Rule of the
Anchoresses" (c. 1225), the most beautiful bit of old English
prose ever written. It is a book of excellent religious advice
and comfort, written for three ladies who wished to live a
religious life, without, however, becoming nuns or entering
any religious orders. The author was Bishop Poore of Salis-
bury, according to Morton, who first edited this old classic
in 1853. Orm's Ormulum, written soon after the Brut, is a
paraphrase of the gospel lessons for the year, somewhat after
the manner of Caedmon's Paraphrase, but without any of
Caedmon's poetic fire and originality. Cursor Mundi (c. 1320)
is a very long poem which makes a kind of metrical romance
out of Bible history and shows the whole dealing of God with
man from Creation to Domesday. It is interesting as show-
ing a parallel to the cycles of miracle plays, which attempt
to cover the same vast ground. They were forming in this
age ; but we will study them later, when we try to understand
the rise of the drama in England.

Besides these greater works, an enormous number of fables
and satires appeared in this age, copied or translated from
the French, like the metrical romances. The most famous of
these are "The Owl and the Nightingale," - a long debate
between the two birds, one representing the gay side of life,
the other the sterner side of law and morals, and " Land

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 6 1

of Cockaygne," i.e. "Luxury Land," a keen satire on monks
and monastic religion. 1

While most of the literature of the time was a copy of the

French and was intended only for the upper classes, here

and there were singers who made ballads for the

Ballads

common people ; and these, next to the metrical
romances, are the most interesting and significant of all the
works of the Norman period. On account of its obscure ori-
gin and its oral transmission, the ballad is always the most
difficult of literary subjects. 2 We make here only three sug-
gestions, which may well be borne in mind : that ballads were
produced continually in England from Anglo-Saxon times
until the seventeenth century ; that for centuries they were
the only really popular literature ; and that in the ballads
alone one is able to understand the common people. Read,
for instance, the ballads of the "merrie greenwood men,"
which gradually collected into the Geste of Robin Hood, and
you will understand better, perhaps, than from reading many
histories what the common people of England felt and thought
while their lords and masters were busy with impossible met-
rical romances.

In these songs speaks the heart of the English folk. There
is lawlessness indeed; but this seems justified by the oppres-
sion of the times and by the barbarous severity of the game
laws. An intense hatred of shams and injustice lurks in every
song ; but the hatred is saved from bitterness by the humor
with which captives, especially rich churchmen, are solemnly
lectured by the bandits, while they squirm at sight of devilish

1 Originally Cockaygne (variously spelled) was intended to ridicule the mythical
country of Avalon, somewhat as Cervantes' Don Quixote later ridicules the romances of
chivalry. In Luxury Land everything was good to eat ; houses were built of dainties
and shingled with cakes ; buttered larks fell instead of rain ; the streams ran with good
wine ; and roast geese passed slowly down the streets, turning themselves as they went.

2 Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads is the most scholarly and complete
collection in our language. Gummere's Old English Ballads is a good short work.
Professor Kittredge's Introduction to the Cambridge edition of Child's Ballads is the
best summary of a very difficult subject. For an extended discussion of the literary
character of the ballad, see Gummere's The Popular Ballad.

ENGLISH LITERATURE

tortures prepared before their eyes in order to make them
give up their golden purses ; and the scene generally ends in
a bit of wild horse-play. There is fighting enough, and ambush
and sudden death lurk at every turn of the lonely roads ; but
there is also a rough, honest chivalry for women, and a gener-
ous sharing of plunder with the poor and needy. All literature

REMAINS OF THE SCRIPTORIUM OF FOUNTAINS ABBEY
(Fourteenth century)

is but a dream expressed, and " Robin Hood " is the dream of
an ignorant and oppressed but essentially noble people, strug-
gling and determined to be free.

Far more poetical than the ballads, and more interesting:
even than the romances, are the little lyrics of the period,
those tears and smiles of long ago that crystallized
into poems, to tell us that the hearts of men are
alike in all ages. Of these, the best known are the " Luve
Ron" (love rune or letter) of Thomas de Hales (c. 1250);

Lyrics

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 63

* Springtime" (c. 1300), beginning "Lenten (spring) ys come
with luve to toune "; and the melodious love song "Alysoun,"
written at the end of the thirteenth century by some unknown
poet who heralds the coming of Chaucer :

Bytuene Mersh and Averil,

When spray biginneth to springe,

The lutel foul 1 hath hire wyl

On hyre lud 2 to synge.

Ich libbe 3 in love longinge

For semlokest 4 of all thinge.

She may me blisse bringe ;

Icham 5 in hire baundoun. 6

An hendy hap ichabbe yhent,'
Ichot 8 from hevene it is me sent,
From alle wymmen mi love is lent 9
And lyht 10 on Alysoun.

Summary of the Norman Period. The Normans were originally a hardy
race of sea rovers inhabiting Scandinavia. In the tenth century they conquered
a part of northern France, which is still called Normandy, and rapidly adopted
French civilization and the French language. Their conquest of Anglo-Saxon
England under William, Duke of Normandy, began with the battle of Hastings
in 1066. The literature which they brought to England is remarkable for
its bright, romantic tales of love and adventure, in marked contrast with the
strength and somberness of Anglo-Saxon poetry. During the three centuries
following Hastings, Normans and Saxons gradually united. The Anglo-Saxon
speech simplified itself by dropping most of its Teutonic inflections, absorbed
eventually a large part of the French vocabulary, and became our English
language. English literature is also a combination of French and Saxon
elements. The three chief effects of the conquest were (i) the bringing of
Roman civilization to England ; (2) the growth of nationality, i.e. a strong
centralized government, instead of the loose union of Saxon tribes ; (3) the
new language and literature, which were proclaimed in Chaucer.

At first the new literature was remarkably varied, but of small intrinsic
worth ; and very little of it is now read. In our study we have noted :
(i) Geoffrey's History, which is valuable as a source book of literature, since
it contains frhe native Celtic legends of Arthur. (2) The work of the French
writers, who made the Arthurian legends popular. (3) Riming Chronicles, i.e.
history in doggerel verse, like Layamon's Brut. (4) Metrical Romances, or
tales in verse. These were numerous, and of four classes : (a) the Matter
of France, tales centering about Charlemagne and his peers, chief of which is

1 little bird. 2 in her language. 8 I live. * fairest. 5 I am. 6 power, bondage.
7 a pleasant fate I have attained. 8 I know. 9 gone. 10 lit, alighted.

64 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the Chanson de Roland ; (b) Matter of Greece and Rome, an endless series
of fabulous tales about Alexander, and about the Fall of Troy ; (c) Matter of
England, stories of Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Robin Hood, etc. ;
(d) Matter of Britain, tales having for their heroes Arthur and his knights of
the Round Table. The best of these romances is Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight. (5) Miscellaneous literature, the Ancren Riwle, our best piece of
early English prose; Orm's Ormulum; Cursor Mundi, with its suggestive
parallel to the Miracle plays ; and ballads, like King Horn and the Robin
Hood songs, which were the only poetry of the common people.

Selections for Reading. For advanced students, and as a study of language,
a few selections as given in Manly's English Poetry and in Manly's English
Prose ; or selections from the Ormulum, Brut, Ancren Riwle, and King Horn,
etc., in Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English. The ordinary student
will get a better idea of the literature of the period by using the follow-
ing : Sir Gawain, modernized by J. L. Weston, in Arthurian Romances Series
(Nutt) ; The Nun's Rule (Ancren Riwle), modern version by J. Morton, in
King's Classics ; Aucassin and Nicolete, translated by A. Lang (Crowell & Co.) ;
Tristan and Iseult, in Arthurian Romances ; Evans's The High History of the
Holy Grail, in Temple Classics ; The Pearl, various modern versions in prose
and verse ; one of the best is Jewett's metrical version (Crowell & Co.) ; The
Song of Roland, in King's Classics, and in Riverside Literature Series ; Evans's
translation of Geoffrey's History, in Temple Classics; Guest's The Mabinogion,
in Everyman's Library, or S. Lanier's Boy's Mabinogion (i.e. Welsh fairy tales
and romances) ; Selected Ballads, in Athenseum Press Series, and in Pocket
Classics ; Gayley and Flaherty's Poetry of the People ; Bates's A Ballad Book.

Bibliography. 1 History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 58-86, or Cheyney,
pp. 88-144. For fuller treatment, Green, ch. 2 ; Traill ; Gardiner, etc. Jewett's
Story of the Normans (Stories of the Nations Series) ; Freeman's Short
History of the Norman Conquest ; Hutton's King and Baronage (Oxford
Manuals of English History).

Literature. General Works. Jusserand; Ten Brink; Mitchell, vol. i, From
Celt to Tudor ; The Cambridge History of English Literature.

Special Works. Schofield's English Literature from the Norman Conquest
to Chaucer ; Lewis's Beginnings of English Literature ; Ker's Epic and Ro-
mance; Saintsbury's The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory;
Newell's King Arthur and the Round Table ; Maynadier, The Arthur of the
English Poets ; Rhys's Studies in the Arthurian Legends.

Ballads. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads; Gummere's Old
English Ballads (one volume) ; Hazlitt's Early Popular Poetry of England ;
Gayley and Flaherty's Poetry of the People; Percy's Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry, in Everyman's Library.

Texts, Translations, etc. Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English ;
Morris's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in Early English Text Series;

1 For titles and publishers of reference books see General Bibliography at the end of
this book.

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 65

Madden's Layamon's Brut, text and translation (a standard work, but rare) ;
The Pearl, text and translation, by Gollancz ; the same poem, prose version,
by Osgood, metrical versions by Jewett, Weir Mitchell, and Mead ; Geoffrey's
History, translation, in Giles's Six Old English Chronicles (Bonn's Antiquarian
Library) ; Morley's Early English Prose Romances ; Joyce's Old Celtic Ro-
mances ; Guest's The Mabinogion ; Lanier's Boy's Mabinogion ; Arthurian
Romances Series (translations). The Belles Lettres Series, sec. 2 (announced),
will contain the texts of a large number of works of this period, with notes
and introductions.

Language. Marsh's Lectures on the English Language ; Bradley's Making
of English ; Lounsbury's History of the English Language ; Emerson's Brief
History of the English Language ; Greenough and Kittredge's Words and
their Ways in English Speech ; Welsh's Development of English Literature
and Language.

Suggestive Questions. I. What did the Northmen originally have in
common with the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes ? What brought about the
remarkable change from Northmen to Normans ? Tell briefly the story of
the Norman Conquest. How did the Conquest affect the life and literature
of England ?

2. What types of literature were produced after the Conquest? How do
they compare with Anglo-Saxon literature ? What works of this period are
considered worthy of a permanent place in our literature ?

3. What is meant by the Riming Chronicles ? What part did they play in
developing the idea of nationality? What led historians of this period to
write in verse ? Describe Geoffrey's History. What was its most valuable
element from the view point of literature ?

4. What is Layamon's Brut ? Why did Layamon choose this name for his
Chronicle ? What special literary interest attaches to the poem ?

5. What were the Metrical Romances ? What reasons led to the great
interest in three classes of romances, i.e. Matters of France, Rome, and
Britain ? What new and important element enters our literature in this type ?
Read one of the Metrical Romances in English and comment freely upon it,
as to interest, structure, ideas, and literary quality.

6. Tell the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What French and
what Saxon elements are found in the poem ? Compare it with Beowulf to
show the points of inferiority and superiority. Compare Beowulf's fight with
Grendel or the Fire Drake and Sir Gawain's encounter with the Green Knight,
having in mind (i) the virtues of the hero, (2) the qualities of the enemy, (3)
the methods of warfare, (4) the purpose of the struggle. Read selections from
The Pearl and compare with Dear's. Lament. What are the personal and the
universal interests in each poem ?

7. Tell some typical story from the Mabinogion. Where did the Arthurian
legends originate, and how did they become known to English readers ? What
modern writers have used these legends ? What fine elements do you find in
them that are not found in Anglo-Saxon poetry ?

ENGLISH LITERATURE

8. What part did Arthur play in the early history of Britain ? How long
did the struggle between Britons and Saxons last ? What Celtic names and
elements entered into English language and literature ?

9. What is a ballad, and what distinguishes it from other forms of poetry ?
Describe the ballad which you like best. Why did the ballad, more than any
other form of literature, appeal to the common people ? What modern poems
suggest the old popular ballad ? How do these compare in form and subject
matter with the Robin Hood ballads ?

CHRONOLOGY

HISTORY

LITERATURE

912. Northmen settle in Normandy
1066. Battle of Hastings. William,
king of England

1087. William Rufus
1093. Anselm, archbishop of Canter-
bury

1096. First Crusade
noo. Henry I
1135. Stephen

1147. Second Crusade

1154. Henry II

1189. Richard I. Third Crusade

1199. John

1215. Magna Charta

1216. Henry III

I23o(>.). University of Cambridge
chartered

1265. Beginning of House of Com-
mons. Simon de Montfort

1272. Edward I

1295. First complete Parliament

1307. Edward .II
1327. Edward III

1338. Beginning of Hundred Years'
War with France

1086. Domesday Book completed

>.. Anselm's Cur Deus Homo

i no. First recorded Miracle play in
England (see chapter on the
Drama)

H37(V.). Geoffrey's History

i2Oo(cir.}. Layamon's Brut
i225(V.). Ancren Riwle

1267. Roger Bacon's Opus Majus

1300-1400. York and Wakefield.

Miracle plays
i32o(V.). Cursor Mundi

i34o(?). Birth of Chaucer
I35o(>.). Sir Gawain. The Pearl

CHAPTER IV

THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1350-1400)
THE NEW NATIONAL LIFE AND LITERATURE

History of the Period. Two great movements may be noted in the
complex life of England during the fourteenth century. The first is
political, and culminates in the reign of Edward III. It shows the
growth of the English national spirit following the victories of
Edward and the Black Prince on French soil, during the Hundred
Years' War. In the rush of this great national movement, separating
England from the political ties of France and, to a less degree, from
ecclesiastical bondage to Rome, the mutual distrust and jealousy
which had divided nobles and commons were momentarily swept
aside by a wave of patriotic enthusiasm. The French language lost
its official prestige, and English became the speech not only of the
common people but of courts and Parliament as well.

The second movement is social ; it falls largely within the reign
of Edward's successor, Richard II, and marks the growing discon-
tent with the contrast between luxury and poverty, between the idle
wealthy classes and the overtaxed peasants. Sometimes this move-
ment is quiet and strong, as when Wyclif arouses the conscience of
England ; again it has the portentous rumble of an approaching
tempest, as when John Ball harangues a multitude of discontented
peasants on Black Heath commons, using the famous text :

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman ?

and again it breaks out into the violent rebellion of Wat Tyler. All
these things show the same Saxon spirit that had won its freedom in
a thousand years' struggle against foreign enemies, and that now felt
itself oppressed by a social and industrial tyranny in its own midst.
Aside from these two movements, the age was one of unusual stir
and progress. Chivalry, that mediaeval institution of mixed good and
evil, was in its Indian summer, a sentiment rather than a practical
system. Trade, and its resultant wealth and luxury, were increasing

68 ENGLISH LITERATURE

enormously. Following trade, as the Vikings had followed glory, the
English began to be a conquering and colonizing people, like the Anglo-
Saxons. The native shed something of his insularity and became a
traveler, going first to view the places where trade had opened the
way, and returning with wider interests and a larger horizon. Above
all, the first dawn of the Renaissance is heralded in England, as in
Spain and Italy, by the appearance of a national literature.

Five Writers of the Age. The literary movement of the age
clearly reflects the stirring life of the times. There is Lang-
land, voicing the social discontent, preaching the equality of
men and the dignity of labor ; Wyclif, greatest of English
religious reformers, giving the Gospel to the people in their
own tongue, and the freedom of the Gospel in unnumbered
tracts and addresses ; Gower, the scholar and literary man,
criticising this vigorous life and plainly afraid of its conse-
quences ; and Mandeville, the traveler, romancing about the
wonders to be seen abroad. Above all there is Chaucer,
scholar, traveler, business man, courtier, sharing in all the stir-
ring life of his times, and reflecting it in literature as no other
but Shakespeare has ever done. Outside of England the great-
est literary influence of the age was that of Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio, whose works, then at the summit of their influ-
ence in Italy, profoundly affected the literature of all Europe.

CHAUCER (1340 ?- 1400)

f What man artow ? ' quod he 5
f Thou lokest as thou woldest finde an hare,
For ever upon the ground I see thee stare.
Approche neer, and loke up merily. . . .
He semeth elvish by his contenaunce.'

(The Host's description of Chaucer,

Prologue, Sir Thopas)

On reading Chaucer. The difficulties of reading Chaucer
are more apparent than real, being due largely to obsolete
spelling, and there is small necessity for using any modern
versions of the poet's work, which seem to miss the quiet

GEOFFREY CHAUCER
After the Rawlinson Pastel Portrait, Oxford

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 69

charm and dry humor of the original. If the reader will
observe the following general rules (which of necessity ignore
many differences in pronunciation of fourteenth-century Eng-
lish), he may, in an hour or two, learn to read Chaucer almost
as easily as Shakespeare : (i) Get the lilt of the lines, and let
the meter itself decide how final syllables are to be pro-
nounced. Remember that Chaucer is among the most mu-
sical of poets, and that there is melody in nearly every line.
If the verse seems rough, it is because we do not read it
correctly. (2) Vowels in Chaucer have much the same value
as in modern German ; consonants are practically the same
as in modern English. (3) Pronounce aloud any strange-
looking words. Where the eye fails, the ear will often recog-
nize the meaning. If eye and ear both fail, then consult the
glossary found in every good edition of the poet's works.
(4) Final e is usually sounded (like a in Virginia) except where
the following word begins with a vowel or with //. In the
latter case the final syllable of one word and the first of the
word following are run together, as in reading Virgil. At
the end of a line the e, if lightly pronounced, adds melody
to the verse. 1

In dealing with Chaucer's masterpiece, the reader is urged
to read widely at first, for the simple pleasure of the stories,
and to remember that poetry and romance are more interesting
and important than Middle English. When we like and appre-
ciate Chaucer his poetry, his humor, his good stories, his
kind heart it will be time enough to study his language.

Life of Chaucer. For our convenience the life of Chaucer is divided
into three periods. The first, of thirty years, includes his youth and
early manhood, in which time he was influenced almost exclusively
by French literary models. The second period, of fifteen years,
covers Chaucer's active life as diplomat and man of affairs ; and in
this the Italian influence seems stronger than the French. The

1 The reader may perhaps be more interested in these final letters, which are some-
times sounded and again silent, if he remembers that they represent the decaying inflec-
tions of our old Anglo-Saxon speech.

70 ENGLISH LITERATURE

third, of fifteen years, generally known as the English period, is the
time of Chaucer's richest development. He lives at home, observes
life closely but kindly, and while the French influence is still strong,
as shown in the Canterbury Tales, he seems to grow more independ-
ent of foreign models and is dominated chiefly by the vigorous life of
his own English people.

Chaucer's boyhood was spent in London, on Thames Street near
the river, where the world's commerce was continually coming and

going. There he saw daily the shipman of the Canter-
First Period * 7 . , / , f- ,, -, ,

bury 1 ales just home in his good ship Maudelayne, with

the fascination of unknown lands in his clothes and conversation.
Of his education we know nothing, except that he was a great reader.
His father was a wine merchant, purveyor to the royal household,
and from this accidental relation between trade and royalty may
have arisen the fact that at seventeen years Chaucer was made page
to the Princess Elizabeth. This was the beginning of his connection
with the brilliant court, which in the next forty years, under three
kings, he was to know so intimately.

At nineteen he went with the king on one of the many expedi-
tions of the Hundred Years' War, and here he saw chivalry and all
the pageantry of mediaeval war at the height of their outward splen-
dor. Taken prisoner at the unsuccessful siege of Rheims, he is said
to have been ransomed by money out of the royal purse. Returning
to England, he became after a few years squire of the royal house-
hold, the personal attendant and confidant of the king: It was dur-
ing this first period that he married a maid of honor to the queen.
This was probably Philippa Roet, sister to the wife of John of Gaunt,
the famous Duke of Lancaster. From numerous whimsical references
in his early poems, it has been thought that this marriage into a
noble family was not a happy one ; but this is purely a matter of
supposition or of doubtful inference.

In 1370 Chaucer was sent abroad on the first of those diplomatic
missions that were to occupy the greater part of the next fifteen years.
Two years later he made his first official visit to Italy, to arrange

a commercial treaty with Genoa, and from this time is
Second Period . .. . , , , . . . ..^

noticeable a rapid development in his literary powers

and the prominence of Italian literary influences. During the inter-
vals between his different missions he filled various offices at home,
chief of which was Comptroller of Customs at the port of London.
An enormous amount of personal labor was involved ; but Chaucer

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 71

seems to have found time to follow his spirit into the new fields of
Italian literature :

For whan thy labour doon al is.

And hast y-maad thy rekeninges,

In stede of reste and newe thinges,

Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon,

And, also domb as any stoon,

Thou sittest at another boke

Til fully daswed is thy loke,

And livest thus as an hermyte. 1

In 1386 Chaucer was elected member of Parliament from Kent,
and the distinctly English period of his life and work begins. Though

exceedingly busy in public affairs and as receiver of cus-
Third Period , . V F . 11 .,,.,, , , . , ,

toms, his heart was still with his books, from which only

nature could win him :

And as for me, though that my wit be lyte,

On bokes for to rede I me delyte,

And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence,

And in myn herte have hem in reverence

So hertely, that ther is game noon

That fro my bokes maketh me to goon,

But hit be seldom, on the holyday ;

Save, certeynly, whan that the month of May

Is comen, and that I here the foules singe,

And that the floures ginnen for to springe

Farwel my book and my devocioun ! 2

In the fourteenth century politics seems to have been, for honest
men, a very uncertain business. Chaucer naturally adhered to the
party of John of Gaunt, and his fortunes rose or fell with those of his
leader. From this time until his death he is up and down on the
political ladder ; to-day with money and good prospects, to-morrow
in poverty and neglect, writing his " Complaint to His Empty Purs,"
which he humorously calls his " saveour doun in this werlde here."
This poem called the king's attention to the poet's need and increased
his pension ; but he had but few months to enjoy the effect of this
unusual "Complaint." For he died the next year, 1400, and was
buried with honor in Westminster Abbey. The last period of his life,
though outwardly most troubled, was the most fruitful of all. His

1 House of Fame, II, 652 ff. The passage is more or less autobiographical.

2 Legend of Good Women, Prologue, 11. 29 ff.

72 ENGLISH LITERATURE

"Truth," or "Good Counsel," reveals the quiet, beautiful spirit of his
life, unspoiled either by the greed of trade or the trickery of politics :

Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse,
Suffyce unto thy good, though hit be smal ;
For hord l hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse,
Prees z hath envye, and wele 3 blent 4 overal ;
Savour no more than thee bihove shal ;
Werk 5 wel thyself, that other folk canst rede ;
And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

Tempest 6 thee noght al croked to redresse,

In trust of hir 7 that turneth as a bal :

Gret reste stant in litel besinesse ;

And eek be war to sporne 8 ageyn an al 9 ;

Stryve noght, as doth the crokke with the wal.

Daunte 10 thyself, that dauntest otheres dede ;

And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse,

The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fal.

Her nis non hoom, her nis but wildernesse :

Forth, pilgrim, forth ! Forth, beste, out of thy stall

Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al ;

Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede :

And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

Works of Chaucer, First Period. The works of Chaucer
are roughly divided into three classes, corresponding to the
three periods of his life. It should be remembered, however,
that it is impossible to fix exact dates for most of his works.
Some of his Canterbury Tales were written earlier than the
English period, and were only grouped with the others in his
final arrangement.

The best known, though not the best, poem of the first
period is the Romaunt of the Rose^- a translation from the
French Roman de la Rose, the most popular poem of the

1 wealth. 2 the crowd. 3 success. 4 blinds. 5 act. 6 trouble.

7 i.e. the goddess Fortune. 8 kick. 9 awl. 10 judge.

11 For the typography of titles the author has adopted the plan of putting the titles of
all books, and of all important works generally regarded as single books, in italics. Indi-
vidual poems, essays, etc., are in Roman letters with quotation marks. Thus we have
the " Knight's Tale," or the story of " Palamon and Arcite," in the Canterbury Tales.
This system seems on the whole the best, though it may result in some inconsistencies.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 73

Middle Ages, a graceful but exceedingly tiresome allegory
of the whole course of love. The Rose growing in its mystic
garden is typical of the lady Beauty. Gathering the Rose
represents the lover's attempt to win his lady's favor ; and
the different feelings aroused Love, Hate, Envy, Jealousy,
Idleness, Sweet Looks are the allegorical persons of the
poet's drama. Chaucer translated this universal favorite, put-
ting in some original English touches ; but of the present
Romaunt only the first seventeen hundred lines are believed
to be Chaucer's own work.

Perhaps the best poem of this period is the "Dethe of
Blanche the Duchesse," better known as the " Boke of the
Duchesse," a poem of considerable dramatic and emotional
power, written after the death of Blanche, wife of Chaucer's
patron, John of Gaunt. Additional poems are the "Compleynte
to Pite," a graceful love poem; the "A B C," a prayer to the
Virgin, translated from the French of a Cistercian monk, its
verses beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet ;
and a number of what Chaucer calls "ballads, roundels, and
virelays," with which, says his friend Gower, "the land was
filled." The latter were imitations of the prevailing French
love ditties.

Second Period. The chief work of the second or Italian
period is Troilus and Criseyde, a poem of eight thousand
lines. The original story was a favorite of many authors
during the Middle Ages, and Shakespeare makes use of it in
his Troilus and Cressida. The immediate source of Chaucer's
poem is Boccaccio's // Filostrato, "the love-smitten one"; but
he uses his material very freely, to reflect the ideals of his
own age and society, and so gives to the whole story a dra-
matic force and beauty which it had never known before.

The " Hous of Fame" is one of Chaucer's unfinished poems,
having the rare combination of lofty thought and simple,
homely language, showing the influence of the great Italian
master. In the poem the author is carried away in a dream

74 ENGLISH LITERATURE

by a great eagle from the brittle temple of Venus, in a
sandy wilderness, up to the hall of fame. To this house come
all rumors of earth, as the sparks fly upward. The house
stands on a rock of ice

writen ful of names
Of folk that hadden grete fames.

Many of these have disappeared as the ice melted ; but the
older names are clear as when first written. For many of his
ideas Chaucer is indebted to Dante, Ovid, and Virgil ; but
the unusual conception and the splendid workmanship are all
his own.

The third great poem of the period is the Legende of Goode
Wimmen. As he is resting in the fields among the daisies,
he falls asleep and a gay procession draws near. First comes
the love god, leading by the hand Alcestis, model of all wifely
virtues, whose emblem is the daisy ; and behind them follow
a troup of glorious women, all of whom have been faithful in
love. They gather about the poet ; the god upbraids him for
having translated the Romance of the Rose, and for his early
poems reflecting on the vanity and fickleness of women.
Alcestis intercedes for him, and offers pardon if he will atone
for his errors by writing a "glorious legend of good women."
Chaucer promises, and as soon as he awakes sets himself to
the task. Nine legends were written, of which "Thisbe" is
perhaps the best. It is probable that Chaucer intended to
make this his masterpiece, devoting many years to stories of
famous women who were true to love ; but either because he
wearied of his theme, or because the plan of the Canterbury Tales
was growing in his mind, he abandoned the task in the middle
of his ninth legend, fortunately, perhaps, for the reader will
find the Prologue more interesting than any of the legends.

Third Period. Chaucer's masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales,
one of the most famous works in all literature, fills the third
or English period of his life. The plan of the work is magnifi-
cent : to represent the wide sweep of English life by gathering

THE AGE OF CHAUCER

a motley company together and letting each class of society
tell its own favorite stories. Though the great work was never
finished, Chaucer succeeded in his purpose so well that in the
Canterbury Tales he has given us a picture of contemporary
English life, its work and play, its deeds and dreams, its fun
and sympathy and hearty joy of living, such as no other single
work of literature has ever equaled.

Plan of the Canterbury Tales. Opposite old London, at
the southern end of London Bridge, once stood the Tabard

TABARD INN

Inn of Southwark, a quarter made famous not only by the
Canterbury Tales, but also by the first playhouses where
Shakespeare had his training. This Southwark was the point
of departure of all travel to the south of England, especially
of those mediaeval pilgrimages to the shrine of Thomas a
Becket in Canterbury. On a spring evening, at the inspiring
time of the year when "longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,"
Chaucer alights at the Tabard Inn, and finds it occupied by
a various company of people bent on a pilgrimage. Chance
alone had brought them together; for it was the custom of

;6 ENGLISH LITERATURE

pilgrims to wait at some friendly inn until a sufficient conv
pany were gathered to make the journey pleasant and safe
from robbers that might be encountered on the way. Chaucer
joins this company, which includes all classes of English soci-
ety, from the Oxford scholar to the drunken miller, and accepts
gladly their invitation to go with them on the morrow.

At supper the jovial host of the Tabard Inn suggests that,
to enliven the journey, each of the company shall tell four
tales, two going and two coming, on whatever subject shall
suit him best. The host will travel with them as master of
ceremonies, and whoever tells the best story shall be given a
fine supper at the general expense when they all come back
again, a shrewd bit of business and a fine idea, as the pil-
grims all agree.

When they draw lots for the first story the chance falls to
the Knight, who tells one of the best of the Canterbury Tales,
the chivalric story of " Palamon and Arcite." Then the tales
follow rapidly, each with its prologue and epilogue, telling how
the story came about, and its effects on the merry company.
Interruptions are numerous ; the narrative is full of life and
movement, as when the miller gets drunk and insists on tell-
ing his tale out of season, or when they stop at a friendly inn
for the night, or when the poet with sly humor starts his story
of "Sir Thopas," in dreary imitation of the metrical romances
of the clay, and is roared at by the host for his "drasty
ryming." With Chaucer we laugh at his own expense, and
are ready for the next tale.

From the number of persons in the company, thirty-two in
all, it is evident that Chaucer meditated an immense work of
one hundred and twenty-eight tales, which should cover the
whole life of England. Only twenty-four were written ; some
of these are incomplete, and others are taken from his earlier
work to fill out the general plan of the Canterbiiry Tales.
Incomplete as they are, they cover a wide range, including
stories of love and chivalry, of saints and legends, travels,

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 77

adventures, animal fables, allegory, satires, and the coarse
humor of the common people. Though all but two are written
in verse and abound in exquisite poetical touches, they are
stories as well as poems, and Chaucer is to be regarded as
our first short-story teller as well as our first modern poet.
The work ends with a kindly farewell from the poet to his
reader, and so "here taketh the makere of this book his leve."

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. In the famous "Prologue"
the poet makes us acquainted with the various characters of
his drama. Until Chaucer's day popular literature had been
busy chiefly with the gods and heroes of a golden age ; it

d been essentially romantic, and so had never attempted
o study men and women as they are, or to describe them so
:hat the reader recognizes them, not as ideal heroes, but as
his own neighbors. Chaucer not only attempted this new real-
istic task, but accomplished it so well that his characters were
instantly recognized as true to life, and they have since be-
come the permanent possession of our literature. Beowulf and
Roland are ideal heroes, essentially creatures of the imagina-
tion ; but the merry host of the Tabard Inn, Madame Eglan-
tyne, the fat monk, the parish priest, the kindly plowman,
the poor scholar with his "bookes black and red,"- all seem
more like personal acquaintances than characters in a book.
Says Dry den : " I see all the pilgrims, their humours, their
features and their very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped
with them at the Tabard in South wark." Chaucer is the first
English writer to bring the atmosphere of romantic interest
about the men and women and the daily work of one's own
world, which is the aim of nearly all modern literature.

The historian of our literature is tempted to linger over
this " Prologue " and to quote from it passage after passage
to show how keenly and yet kindly our first modern poet
observed his fellow-men. The characters, too, attract one
like a good play: the "verray parfit gentil knight" and his
manly son, the modest prioress, model of sweet piety and

78 ENGLISH LITERATURE

society manners, the sporting monk and the fat friar, the dis-
creet man of law, the well-fed country squire, the sailor just
home from sea, the canny doctor, the lovable parish priest
who taught true religion to his flock, but "first he folwed
it himselve"; the coarse but good-hearted Wyf of Bath, the
thieving miller leading the pilgrims to the music of his bag-
pipe, all these and many others from every walk of English
life, and all described with a quiet, kindly humor which seeks
instinctively the best in human nature, and which has an
ample garment of charity to cover even its faults and failings.
" Here," indeed, as Dryden says, "is God's plenty." Probably
no keener or kinder critic ever described his fellows ; and in
this immortal " Prologue " Chaucer is a model for all those
who would put our human life into writing. The student
should read it entire, as an introduction not only to the poet
but to all our modern literature.

The Knight's Tale. As a story, " Palamon and Arcite " is,
in many respects, the best of the Canterbury Tales, reflecting
as it does the ideals of the time in regard to romantic love
and knightly duty. Though its dialogues and descriptions
are somewhat too long and interrupt the story, yet it shows
Chaucer at his best in his dramatic power, his exquisite
appreciation of nature, and his tender yet profound philosophy
of living, which could overlook much of human frailty in the
thought that

Infinite been the sorwes and the teres
Of olde folk, and folk of tendre yeres.

The idea of the story was borrowed from Boccaccio ; but parts
of the original tale were much older and belonged to the com-
mon literary stock of the Middle Ages. Like Shakespeare,
Chaucer took the material for his poems wherever he found
it, and his originality consists in giving to an old story some
present human interest, making it express the life and ideals
of his own age. In this respect the " Knight's Tale " is remark-
able. Its names are those of an ancient civilization, but its

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 79

characters are men and women of the English nobility as
Chaucer knew them. In consequence the story has many
anachronisms, such as the mediaeval tournament before the
temple of Mars ; but the reader scarcely notices these things,

ing absorbed in the dramatic interest of the narrative.

Briefly, the " Knight's Tale " is the story of two young men,
fast friends, who are found wounded on the battlefield and
taken prisoners to Athens. There from their dungeon win-
dow they behold the fair maid Emily ; both fall desperately
in love with her, and their friendship turns to strenuous
rivalry. One is pardoned ; the other escapes ; and then
nights, empires, nature, the whole universe follows their
desperate efforts to win one small maiden, who prays mean-
while to be delivered from both her bothersome suitors. As
he best of the Canterbury Tales are now easily accessible,
e omit here all quotations. The story must be read entire,
ith the Prioress' tale of Hugh of Lincoln, the Clerk's tale

Patient Griselda, and the Nun's Priest's merry tale of
Chanticleer and the Fox, if the reader would appreciate the
variety and charm of our first modern poet and story-teller.

Form of Chaucer's Poetry. There are three principal meters
to be found in Chaucer's verse. In the Canterbury Tales he
uses lines of ten syllables and five accents each, and the lines
run in couplets :

His eyen twinkled in his heed aright
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.

The same musical measure, arranged in seven-line stanzas,
but with a different rime, called the Rime Royal, is found in
its most perfect form in Troilus.

O blisful light, of whiche the bemes clere
Adorneth al the thridde hevene faire !
O sonnes leef, O Joves doughter dere,
Plesaunce of love, O goodly debonaire,
In gentil hertes ay redy to repaire !
O verray cause of hele and of gladnesse,
Y-heried be thy might and thy goodnesse J

80 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In hevene and helle, in erthe and salte see
Is felt thy might, if that I wel descerne ;
As man, brid, best, fish, herbe and grene tree
Thee fele in tymes with vapour eterne.
God loveth, and to love wol nought werne ;
And in this world no lyves creature,
With-outen love, is worth, or may endure. 1

The third meter is the eight-syllable line with four accents, the
lines riming in couplets, as in'the " Boke of the Duchesse":

Thereto she coude so wel pleye,
Whan that hir liste, that I dar seye
That she was lyk to torche bright,
That every man may take-of light
Ynough, and hit hath never the lesse.

Besides these principal meters, Chaucer in his short poems
used many other poetical forms modeled after the French, who
in the fourteenth century were cunning workers in every form
of verse. Chief among these are the difficult but exquisite
rondel, " Now wel com Somer with thy sonne softe," which
closes the "Parliament of Fowls," and the ballad, "Flee fro
the prees," which has been already quoted. In the "Monk's
Tale" there is a melodious measure which may have furnished
the model for Spenser's famous stanza. 2 Chaucer's poetry is
extremely musical and must be judged by the ear rather than
by the eye. To the modern reader the lines appear broken
and uneven ; but if one reads them over a few times, he soon
catches the perfect swing of the measure, and finds that he is
in the hands of a master whose ear is delicately sensitive to
the smallest accent. There is a lilt in all his lines which is
marvelous when we consider that he is the first to show us
the poetic possibilities of the language. His claim upon our
gratitude is twofold : 3 first, for discovering the music that is
in our English speech ; and second, for his influence in fixing
the Midland dialect as the literary language of England.

1 Troilus and Criseyde, III. 2 See p. 107.

3 For a summary of Chaucer's work and place in our literature, see the Comparison
with Spenser, p. in.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 8 1

CHAUCER'S CONTEMPORARIES
WILLIAM LANGLAND (1332? . . . ?)

Life. Very little is known of Lan gland. He was born probably
near Malvern, in Worcestershire, the son of a poor freeman, and in
his early life lived in the fields as a shepherd. Later he went to
London with his wife and children, getting a hungry living as clerk in
the church. His real life meanwhile was that of a seer, a prophet after
Isaiah's own heart, if we may judge by the prophecy which soon
found a voice in Piers Plowman. In 1399, after the success of his
great work, he was possibly writing another poem called Richard the

'edeless, a protest against Richard II ; but we are not certain of the
authorship of this poem, which was left unfinished by the assassina-
tion of the king. After 1399 Langland disappears utterly, and the

ate of his death is unknown.

Piers Plowman. "The voice of him that crieth in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord," might well be
written at the beginning of this remarkable poem. Truth, sin-
cerity, a direct and practical appeal to conscience, and a vision
of right triumphant over wrong, these are the elements of all
prophecy ; and it was undoubtedly these elements in Piers
Plowman that produced such an impression on the people of
England. For centuries literature had been busy in pleasing
the upper classes chiefly ; but here at last was a great poem
which appealed directly to the common people, and its suc-
cess was enormous. The whole poem is traditionally attrib-
uted to Langland ; but it is now known to be the work of
several different writers. It first appeared in 1 362 as a poem
of eighteen hundred lines, and this may have been Langland's
work. In the next thirty years, during the desperate social
conditions which led to Tyler's Rebellion, it was repeatedly
revised and enlarged by different hands till it reached its
final form of about fifteen thousand lines.

The poem as we read it now is in two distinct parts, the
first containing the vision, of Piers, the second a series of

82 ENGLISH LITERATURE

visions called "The Search for Dowel, Dobet, Dobest " (do well,
better, best). The entire poem is in strongly accented, alliter-
ative lines, something like Beowulf, and its immense popularity
shows that the common people still cherished this easily mem-
orized form of Saxon poetry. Its tremendous appeal to justice
and common honesty, its clarion call to every man, whether
king, priest, noble, or laborer, to do his Christian duty, takes
from it any trace of prejudice or bigotry with which such
works usually abound. Its loyalty to the Church, while de-
nouncing abuses that had crept into it in that period, was
one of the great influences which led to the Reformation in
England. Its two great principles, the equality of men before
God and the dignity of honest labor, roused a whole nation
of freemen. Altogether it is one of the world's great works,
partly because of its national influence, partly because it is
the very best picture we possess of the social life of the four-
teenth century :

Briefly, Piers Plowman is an allegory of life. In the first vision, that
of the "Field Full of Folk," the poet lies down on the Malvern Hills on
a May morning, and a vision comes to him in sleep. On the plain beneath
him gather a multitude of folk, a vast crowd expressing the varied life
of the world. All classes and conditions are there ; workingmen are
toiling that others may seize all the first fruits of their labor and
live high on the proceeds ; and the genius of the throng is Lady
Bribery, a powerfully drawn figure, expressing the corrupt social life
of the times.

The next visions are those of the Seven Deadly Sins, allegorical fig-
ures, but powerful as those of Pilgrim's Progress, making the allegories
of the Romaunt of the Rose seem like shadows in comparison. These all
came to Piers asking the way to Truth ; but Piers is plowing his half
acre and refuses to leave his work and lead them. He sets them all to
honest toil as the best possible remedy for their vices, and preaches the
gospel of work as a preparation for salvation. Throughout the poem
Piers bears strong resemblance to John Baptist preaching to the crowds
in the wilderness. The later visions are proclamations of the moral
and spiritual life of man. The poem grows dramatic in its intensity,
rising to its highest power in Piers's triumph over Death. And then
the poet wakes from his vision with the sound of Easter bells ringing
in his ears.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 83

Here are a few lines to illustrate the style and language ;
but the whole poem must be read if one is to understand its
crude strength and prophetic spirit :

In a somer sesun, whon softe was the sonne,

I schop 1 me into a shroud, as I a scheep were,

In habite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,

Went wyde in this world, wondres to here.

Bote in a Mayes mornynge, on Malverne hulles,

Me byfel a ferly, 2 of fairie me thoughte.

I was wery, forwandred, and went me to reste

Undur a brod banke, bi a bourne 3 side ;

And as I lay and lened, and loked on the watres,

I slumbred in a slepyng hit swyed 4 so murie. . . .

JOHN WYCLIF (i324?-i384)

Wyclif, as a man, is by far the most powerful English fig-
ure of the fourteenth century. The immense influence of his
preaching in the native tongue, and the power of his Lollards
to stir the souls of the common folk, are too well known his-
torically to need repetition. Though a university man and a
profound scholar, he sides with Langland, and his interests
are with the people rather than with the privileged classes,
for whom Chaucer writes. His great work, which earned him
his title of "father of English prose," is the translation of the
Bible. Wyclif himself translated the gospels, and much more
of the New Testament ; the rest was finished by his followers,
especially by Nicholas of Hereford. These translations were
made from the Latin Vulgate, not from the original Greek
and Hebrew, and the whole work was revised in 1388 by
John Purvey, a disciple of Wyclif. It is impossible to over-
estimate the influence of this work, both on our English prose
and on the lives of the English people.

Though Wyclif 's works are now unread, except by occa-
sional scholars, he still occupies a very high place in our
literature. His translation of the Bible was slowly copied all

1 clad. 2 wonder. 3 brook. 4 sounded.

8 4

ENGLISH LITERATURE

over England, and so fixed a national standard of English prose
to replace the various dialects. Portions of this translation, in
the form of favorite passages from Scripture, were copied by
thousands, and for the first time in our history a standard of pure
English was established in the homes of the common people.
As a suggestion of the language of that day, we quote a
few familiar sentences from the Sermon on the Mount, as

given in the later version
of Wyclif's Gospel :

And he openyde his mouth,
and taughte hem, and seide,
Blessid ben pore men in spirit,
for the kyngdom of hevenes
is herne. 1 Blessid ben mylde
men, for thei schulen welde 2
the erthe. Blessid ben thei
that mornen, for thei schulen
be coumfortid. Blessid ben
thei that hungren and thristen
rightwisnesse, 8 for thei schulen
be fulfillid. Blessid ben merci-
ful men, for thei schulen gete
merci. Blessid ben thei that
ben of clene herte, for thei
schulen se God. Blessid ben
pesible men, for thei schulen
be clepid 4 Goddis children.
Blessid ben thei that suffren
persecusioun for rightfulnesse, for the kyngdom of hevenes is herne. 1 . . .
Eftsoone ye han herd, that it was seid to elde men, Thou schalt not
forswere, but thou schalt yelde 5 thin othis to the Lord. But Y seie 6 to
you, that ye swere not for ony thing ; . . . but be youre worde, yhe,
yhe ; nay, nay ; and that that is more than these, is of yvel. . . .

Ye han herd that it was seid, Thou schalt love thi neighbore, and hate
thin enemye. But Y seie to you, love ye youre enemyes, do ye wel to hem 7
that hatiden 8 you, and preye ye for hem that pursuen 9 and sclaundren 10
you; that ye be the sones of youre Fadir that is in hevenes, that makith
his sunne to rise upon goode and yvele men, and reyneth n on just men
and unjuste. . . . Therefore be ye parfit, as youre hevenli Fadir is parfit.

1 theirs 2 rule 3 righteousness 4 called 5 yield 6 say

7 them 8 hate 9 persecute W slander " rains

JOHN WYCLIF

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 85

JOHN MANDEVILLE

About the year 1356 there appeared in England an extraor-
dinary book called the Voyage and Travail of Sir John Maun-
Mandeviiie's devil le, written in excellent style in the Midland
Travels dialect, which was then becoming the literary lan-
guage of England. For years this interesting work and its
unknown author were subjects of endless dispute ; but it is
now fairly certain that this collection of travelers' tales is
simply a compilation from Odoric, Marco Polo, and various
other sources. The original work was probably in French,
which was speedily translated into Latin, then into English
and other languages ; and wherever it appeared it became
extremely popular, its marvelous stories of foreign lands
being exactly suited to the credulous spirit of the age. 1 At
the present time there are said to be three hundred copied
manuscripts of " Mandeville " in various languages, more,
probably, than of any other work save the gospels. In the
prologue of the English version the author calls himself John
Maundeville and gives an outline of his wide travels during
thirty years ; but the name is probably a " blind," the prologue
more or less spurious, and the real compiler is still to be
discovered.

The modern reader may spend an hour or two very pleas-
antly in this old wonderland. On its literary side the book
is remarkable, though a translation, as being the first prose

1 In its English form the alleged Mandeville describes the lands and customs he has
seen, and brings in all the wonders he has heard about. Many things he has seen himself,
he tells us, and these are certainly true : but others he has heard in his travels, and of
these the reader must judge for himself. Then he incidentally mentions a desert where
he saw devils as thick as grasshoppers. As for things that he has been told by devout
travelers, here are the dog-faced men, and birds that carry off elephants, and giants
twenty-eight feet tall, and dangerous women who have bright jewels in their heads
instead of eyes, " and if they behold any man in wrath, they slay him with a look, as
doth the basilisk." Here also are the folk of Ethiopia, who have only one leg, but who
hop about with extraordinary rapidity. Their one foot is so big that, when they lie in
the sun, they raise it to shade their bodies ; in rainy weather it is as good as an umbrella.
At the close of this interesting book of travel, which is a guide for pilgrims, the author
promises to all those who say a prayer for him a share in whatever heavenly grace he
may himself obtain for all his holy pilgrimages.

86 ENGLISH LITERATURE

work in modern English having a distinctly literary style and
flavor. Otherwise it is a most interesting commentary on the
general culture and credulity of the fourteenth century.

Summary of the Age of Chaucer. The fourteenth century is remarkable
historically for the decline of feudalism (organized by the Normans), for
the growth of the English national spirit during the wars with France, for the
prominence of the House of Commons, and for the growing power of the labor-
ing classes, who had heretofore been in a condition hardly above that of slavery.

The age produced five writers of note, one of whom, Geoffrey Chaucer, is
one of the greatest of English writers. His poetry is remarkable for its variety,
its story interest, and its wonderful melody. Chaucer's work and Wyclif's
translation of the Bible developed the Midland dialect into the national lan-
guage of England.

In our study we have noted: (i) Chaucer, his life and work; his early or
French period, in which he translated " The Romance of the Rose " and wrote
many minor poems ; his middle or Italian period, of which the chief poems
are"Troilus and Cressida" and "The Legend of Good Women"; his late
or English period, in which he worked at his masterpiece, the famous Canter-
bury Tales. (2) Langland, the poet and prophet of social reforms. His chief
work is Piers Plowman. (3) Wyclif, the religious reformer, who first trans-
lated the gospels into English, and by his translation fixed a common standard
of English speech. (4) Mandeville, the alleged traveler, who represents the new
English interest in distant lands following the development of foreign trade. He
is famous for Mandeville's Travels, a book which romances about the wonders
to be seen abroad. The fifth writer of the age is Gower, who wrote in three
languages, French, Latin, and English. His chief English work is the Confessio
Amantis, a long poem containing one hundred and twelve tales. Of these only
the " Knight Florent " and two or three others are interesting to a modern reader.

Selections for Reading. Chaucer's Prologue, the Knight's Tale, Nun's
Priest's Tale, Prioress' Tale, Clerk's Tale. These are found, more or less com-
plete, in Standard English Classics, King's Classics, Riverside Literature
Series, etc. Skeat's school edition of the Prologue, Knight's Tale, etc., is espe-
cially good, and includes a study of fourteenth-century English. Miscellane-
ous poems of Chaucer in Manly's English Poetry or Ward's English Poets.
Piers Plowman, in King's Classics. Mandeville's Travefe, modernized, in
English Classics, and in Cassell's National Library.

For the advanced student, and as a study of language, compare selections
from Wyclif, Chaucer's prose work, Mandeville, etc., in Manly's English Prose,
or Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English, or Craik's English Prose
Selections. Selections from Wyclif's Bible in English Classics Series.

Bibliography. 1 History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 115-149, or Cheyney,
pp. 186-263. For fuller treatment, Green, ch. 5; Traill; Gardiner.

1 For titles and publishers of reference works see General Bibliography at the end of
this book.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER 87

Special Works. Hutton's King and Baronage (Oxford Manuals) ; Jusse-
rand's Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century ; Coulton's Chaucer and his
England ; Pauli's Pictures from Old England ; Wright's History of Domestic
Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages ; Trevelyan's
England in the Age of Wyclif ; Jenks's In the Days of Chaucer; Froissart's
Chronicle, in Everyman's Library; the same, new edition, 1895 (Macmillan) ;
Lanier's Boys' Froissart (i.e. Froissart's Chronicle of Historical Events, 1325-
1400); Newbolt's Stories from Froissart; Bulfinch's Age of Chivalry may be
read in connection with this and the preceding periods.

Literature. General Works. Jusserand ; Ten Brink ; Mitchell ; Minto's
Characteristics of English Poets ; Courthope's History of English Poetry.

Chaucer, (i) Life : by Lounsbury, in Studies in Chaucer, vol. I ; by Ward,
in English Men of Letters Series ; Pollard's Chaucer Primer. (2) Aids to
study: F. J. Snell's The Age of Chaucer; Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer
(3 vols.) ; Root's The Poetry of Chaucer; Lowell's Essay, in My Study Win-
dows ; Hammond's Chaucer: a Biographical Manual; Hempl's Chaucer's
Pronunciation ; Introductions to school editions of Chaucer, by Skeat, Lid-
dell, and Mather. (3) Texts and selections : The Oxford Chaucer, 6 vols.,
edited by Skeat, is the standard; Skeat's Student's Chaucer; The Globe
Chaucer (Macmillan) ; Works of Chaucer, edited by Lounsbury (Crowell) ;
Pollard's The Canterbury Tales, Eversley edition ; Skeat's Selections from
Chaucer (Clarendon Press) ; Chaucer's Prologue, and various tales, in Stand-
ard English Classics (Ginn and Company), and in other school series.

Minor Writers. Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English Prose.
Jusserand's Piers Plowman ; Skeat's Piers Plowman (text, glossary and notes) ;
Warren's Piers Plowman in Modern Prose. Arnold's Wyclif's Select English
Works ; Sergeant's Wyclif (Heroes of the Nation Series) ; Le Bas's Life of
John Wyclif. Travels of Sir John Mandeville (modern spelling), in Library of
English Classics ; Macaulay's Gower's English Works.

Suggestive Questions. I. What are the chief historical events of the four-
teenth century ? What social movement is noticeable ? What writers reflect
political and social conditions ?

2. Tell briefly the story of Chaucer's life. What foreign influences are notice-
able ? Name a few poems illustrating his three periods of work. What qualities
have you noticed in his poetry ? Why is he called our first national poet ?

3. Give the plan of the Canterbiiry Tales. For what is the Prologue re-
markable ? What light does it throw upon English life of the fourteenth cen-
tury ? Quote or read some passages that have impressed you. Which character
do you like best ? Are any of the characters like certain men and women
whom you know ? What classes of society are introduced ? Is Chaucer's atti-
tude sympathetic or merely critical ?

4. Tell in your own words the tale you like best. Which tale seems truest
to life as you know it ? Mention any other poets who tell stories in verse.

5. Quote or read passages which show Chaucer's keenness of observation,
his humor, his kindness in judgment, his delight in nature. What side of

ENGLISH LITERATURE

human nature does he emphasize ? Make a little comparison between Chaucer
and Shakespeare, having in mind (i) the characters described by both poets.
(2) their knowledge of human nature, (3) the sources of their plots, (4) the
interest of their works.

6. Describe briefly Piers Plowman and its author. Why is the poem called
"the gospel of the poor"? What message does it contain for daily labor?
Does it apply to any modern conditions ? Note any resemblance in ideas
between Piers Plowman and such modern works as Carlyle's Past and Pres-
ent, Kingsley's Alton Locke, Morris's Dream of John Ball, etc.

7. For what is Wyclif remarkable in literature ? How did his work affect
our language ? Note resemblances and differences between Wyclif and the
Puritans.

8. What is Mandevillt's Travels ? What light does it throw on the mental
condition of the age ? W T hat essential difference do you note between this
book and Gulliver's Travels ?

CHRONOLOGY, FOURTEENTH CENTURY

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1327. Edward III

1338. Beginning of Hundred Years'

War with France
1347. Capture of Calais
1348-1349. Black Death

1373. Winchester College, first great
public school

1377. Richard II. Wyclif and the
Lollards begin Reformation
in England

1381. Peasant Rebellion. Wat Tyler

1399. Deposition of Richard II.

Henry IV chosen by Parliament

i34o(?). Birth of Chaucer

1356. Mandeville's Travels
1359. Chaucer in French War
1360-1370. Chaucer's early or French
period

1 370-1 385. Chaucer's Middle or Italian
period

1362-1395. Piers Plowman

1385-1400. Canterbury Tales

1382. First complete Bible in English

1400. Death of Chaucer

(Dante's Divina Commedia, c.
1310; Petrarch's sonnets and
poems, 1325-1374; Boccac-
cio's tales, c, 1350.)

CHAPTER V

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING (1400-1550)
I. HISTORY OF THE PERIOD

Political Changes. The century and a half following the death of
Chaucer (1400-1550) is the most volcanic period of English history.
The land is swept by vast changes, inseparable from the rapid
accumulation of national power; but since power is the most dan-
gerous of gifts until men have learned to control it, these changes
seem at first to have no specific aim or direction. Henry V whose
erratic yet vigorous life, as depicted by Shakespeare, was typical of the
life of his times first let Europe feel the might of the new national
spirit. To divert that growing and unruly spirit from rebellion at
home, Henry led his army abroad, in the apparently impossible
attempt to gain for himself three things : a French wife, a French
revenue, and the French crown itself. The battle of Agincourt was
fought in 1415, and five years later, by the Treaty of Troyes, France
acknowledged his right to all his outrageous demands.

The uselessness of the terrific struggle on French soil is shown by
the rapidity with which all its results were swept away. When Henry
died in 1422, leaving his son heir to the crowns of France and
England, a magnificent recumbent statue with head of pure silver
was placed in Westminster Abbey to commemorate his victories.
The silver head was presently stolen, and the loss is typical of all
that he had struggled for. His son, Henry VI, was but the shadow of
a king, a puppet in the hands of powerful nobles, who seized the
power of England and turned it to self-destruction. Meanwhile all
his foreign possessions were won back by the French under the magic
leadership of Joan of Arc. Cade's Rebellion (1450) and the bloody
Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) are names to show how the energy
of England was violently destroying itself, like a great engine that has
lost its balance wheel. The frightful reign of Richard III followed,
which had, however, this redeeming quality, that it marked the end of
civil wars and the self-destruction of feudalism, and made possible a
new growth of English national sentiment under the popular Tudors.

90 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In the long reign of Henry VIII the changes are less violent, but
have more purpose and significance. His age is marked by a steady
increase in the national power at home and abroad, by the entrance
of the Reformation " by a side door," and by the final separation of
England from all ecclesiastical bondage in Parliament's famous Act
of Supremacy. In previous reigns chivalry and the old feudal sys-
tem had practically been banished; now monasticism, the third
mediaeval institution with its mixed evil and good, received its death-
blow in the wholesale suppression of the monasteries and the re-
moval of abbots from the House of Lords. Notwithstanding the evil
character of the king and the hypocrisy of proclaiming such a crea-
ture the head of any church or the defender of any faith, we acquiesce

wij Dag rf^fupn tfr gerc of oiu toft <V\ utj < !???*> / *nfc
fy? fi:8 jroof tip tftpte of hpngljattfcffr tri>Anfc enpign?
ftfc ttptj o*B of fljage afery irf

SPECIMEN OF CAXTON'S PRINTING IN THE YEAR 1486

silently in Stubb's declaration 1 that "the world owes some of its
greatest debts to men from whose memory the world recoils."

While England during this period was in constant political strife,
yet rising slowly, like the spiral flight of an eagle, to heights of
national greatness, intellectually it moved forward with bewildering
rapidity. Printing was brought to England by Caxton (c. 1476), and
for the first time in history it was possible for a book or an idea to
reach the whole nation. Schools and universities were established in
place of the old monasteries ; Greek ideas and Greek culture came
to England in the Renaissance, and man's spiritual freedom was
proclaimed in the Reformation. The great names of the period are
numerous and significant, but literature is strangely silent. Proba-
bly the very turmoil of the age prevented any literary development,
for literature is one of the arts of peace ; it requires quiet and
meditation rather than activity, and the stirring life of the Renais-
sance had first to be lived before it could express itself in the new
literature of the Elizabethan period.

1 Constitutional History of England.

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 91

The Revival of Learning. The Revival of Learning denotes, in its
broadest sense, that gradual enlightenment of the human mind after
the darkness of the Middle Ages. The names Renaissance and
Humanism, which are often applied to the same movement, have
properly a narrower significance. The term Renaissance, though
used by many writers " to denote the whole transition from the
Middle Ages to the modern world," l is more correctly applied to
the revival of art resulting from the discovery and imitation of
classic models in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Humanism
applies to the revival of classic literature, and was so called by its
leaders, following the example of Petrarch, because they held that
the study of the classics, literce humaniores, i.e. the " more human
writings," rather than the old theology, was the best means of
promoting the largest human interests. We use the term Revival of
Learning to cover the whole movement, whose essence was, accord-
ing to Lamartine, that " man discovered himself and the universe,"
and, according to Taine, that man, so long blinded, " had suddenly
opened his eyes and seen."

We shall understand this better if we remember that in the Middle
Ages man's whole world consisted of the narrow Mediterranean and
the nations that clustered about it ; and that this little
world seemed bounded by impassable barriers, as if God
had said to their sailors, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther."
Man's mind also was bounded by the same narrow lines. His culture
as measured by the great deductive system of Scholasticism con-
sisted not in discovery, but rather in accepting certain principles and
traditions established by divine and ecclesiastical authority as the
basis of all truth. These were his Pillars of Hercules, his mental and
spiritual bounds that he must not pass, and within these, like a child
playing with lettered blocks, he proceeded to build his intellectual
system. Only as we remember their limitations can we appreciate
the heroism of these toilers of the Middle Ages, giants in intellect,
yet playing with children's toys ; ignorant of the laws and forces
of the universe, while debating the essence and locomotion of angels ;
eager to learn, yet forbidden to enter fresh fields in the right of
free exploration and the joy of individual discovery.

The Revival stirred these men as the voyages of Da Gama and
Columbus stirred the mariners of the Mediterranean. First came
the sciences and inventions of the Arabs, making their way slowly

1 Symonds, Revival of Learning.

92 ENGLISH LITERATURE

against the prejudice of the authorities, and opening men's eyes to
the unexplored realms of nature. Then came the flood of Greek
literature which the new art of printing carried swiftly to every
school in Europe, revealing a new world of poetry and philosophy.
Scholars flocked to the universities, as adventurers to the new world
of America, and there the old authority received a deathblow. Truth
only was authority ; to search for truth everywhere, as men sought
for new lands and gold and the fountain of youth, that was the
new spirit which awoke in Europe with the Revival of Learning.

II. LITERATURE OF THE REVIVAL

The hundred and fifty years of the Revival period are sin-
gularly destitute of good literature. Men's minds were too
much occupied with religious and political changes and with
the rapid enlargement of the mental horizon to find time for
that peace and leisure which are essential for literary results.
Perhaps, also, the floods of newly discovered classics, which
occupied scholars and the new printing presses alike, were by
their very power and abundance a discouragement of native
talent. Roger Ascham (1515-1568)^ famous classical scholar,
who published a book called Toxophilus (School of Shooting)
in 1545, expresses in his preface, or "apology," a very wide-
spread dissatisfaction over the neglect of native literature
when he says, "And as for ye Latin or greke tongue, every
thing is so excellently done in them, that none can do better :
In the Englysh tonge contrary, every thinge in a maner so
meanly, both for the matter and handelynge, that no man can
do worse."

On the Continent, also, this new interest in the classics
served to check the growth of native literatures. In Italy
especially, for a full century after the brilliant age of Dante
and Petrarch, no great literature was produced, and the Italian
language itself seemed to go backward. 1 The truth is that

1 Sismondi attributes this to two causes : first, the lack of general culture ; and second,
the absorption of the schools in the new study of antiquity. See Literature of the South
j>/ Europe, II, 400 ff.

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 93

these great writers were, like Chaucer, far in advance of their
age, and that the mediaeval mind was too narrow, too scantily
furnished with ideas to produce a varied literature. The fif-
teenth century was an age of preparation, of learning the be-
ginnings of science, and of getting acquainted with the great
ideals, the stern law, the profound philosophy, the suggestive
mythology, and the noble poetry of the Greeks and Romans,
the mind was furnished with ideas for a new literature.

With the exception of Malory's Morte d'Arthur (which is
still mediaeval in spirit) the student will find little of interest
in the literature of this period. We give here a brief summary
of the men and the books most "worthy of remembrance";
but for the real literature of the Renaissance one must go
forward a century and a half to the age of Elizabeth.

The two greatest books which appeared in England during
this period are undoubtedly Erasmus's 1 Praise of Folly (Enco-
Praise of mium Moricz) and More's Utopia, the famous " King-
Foll y dom of Nowhere." Both were written in Latin, but
were speedily translated into all European languages. The
Praise of Folly is like a song of victory for the New Learning,
which had driven away vice, ignorance, and superstition, the
three foes of humanity. It was published in 1511 after the
accession of Henry VIII. Folly is represented as donning cap
and bells and mounting a pulpit, where the vice and cruelty of
kings, the selfishness and ignorance of the clergy, and the
foolish standards of education are satirized without mercy.

More's Utopia, published in 1516, is a powerful and origi-
nal study of social conditions, unlike anything which had ever
appeared in any literature. 2 In our own day we have seen its
influence in Bellamy's Looking Backward, an enormously

1 Erasmus, the greatest scholar of the Renaissance, was not an Englishman, but
seems to belong to every nation. He was born at Rotterdam (c. 1466), but lived the
greater part of his life in France, Switzerland, England, and Italy. His Encomium
Morice was sketched on a journey from Italy (1509) and written while he was the guest
of Sir Thomas More in London.

2 Unless, perchance, the reader finds some points of resemblance in Plato's ** Republic."

94 ENGLISH LITERATURE

successful book, which recently set people to thinking of the
unnecessary cruelty of modern social conditions. More learns
from a sailor, one of Amerigo Vespucci's compan-
ions, of a wonderful Kingdom of Nowhere, in which
all questions of labor, government, society, and religion have
been easily settled by simple justice and common sense. In
this Utopia we find for the first time, as the foundations of
civilized society, the three great words, Liberty, Fraternity,
Equality, which retained their inspiration through all the vio-
lence of the French Revolution and which are still the unreal-
ized ideal of every free government. As he hears of this
wonderful country More wonders why, after fifteen centuries
of Christianity, his own land is so little civilized ; and as we
read the book to-day we ask ourselves the same question.
The splendid dream is still far from being realized ; yet it
seems as if any nation could become Utopia in a single gen-
eration, so simple and just are the requirements.

Greater than either of these books, in its influence upon
the common people, is Tyndale's translation of the New
Testament (1525), which fixed a standard of good English, and
T ndaie's at t ^ ie same tmie brought that standard not only
New Testa- to scholars but to the homes of the common people.
Tyndale made his translation from the original
Greek, and later translated parts of the Old Testament from
the Hebrew. Much of Tyndale's work was included in Cran-
mer's Bible, known also as the Great Bible, in 1539, and was
read in every parish church in England. It was the founda-
tion for the Authorized Version, which appeared nearly a
century later and became the standard for the whole English-
speaking race.

Wyatt and Surrey. In 1557 appeared probably the first
printed collection of miscellaneous English poems, known as
ToMel's Miscellany. It contained the work of the so-called
courtly makers, or poets, which had hitherto circulated in
manuscript form for the benefit of the court. About half of

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 95

these poems were the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?-
1542) and of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 P-I547).
Both together wrote amorous sonnets modeled after the Ital-
ians, introducing a new verse form which, although very dif-
ficult, has been a favorite ever since with our English poets. 1
Surrey is noted, not for any especial worth or originality of
his own poems, but rather for his translation of two books
of Virgil " in strange meter." The strange meter was the blank
verse, which had never before appeared in English. The chief
literary work of these two men, therefore, is to introduce the
sonnet and the blank verse, one the most dainty, the other
the most flexible and characteristic form of English poetry,
which in the hands of Shakespeare and Milton were used to
make the world's masterpieces.

Malory's Morte d' Arthur. The greatest English work of
this period, measured by its effect on subsequent literature,
is undoubtedly the Morte d? Arthur, a collection of the Arthu-
rian romances told in simple and vivid prose. Of Sir Thomas
Malory, the author, Caxton 2 in his introduction says that he
was a knight, and completed his work in 1470, fifteen years
before Caxton printed it. The record adds that " he was the
servant of Jesu both by day and night." Beyond that we
know little 3 except what may be inferred from the splendid
work itself.

Malory groups the legends about the central idea of the
search for the Holy Grail. Though many of the stories, like
Tristram and Isolde, are purely pagan, Malory treats them
all in such a way as to preserve the whole spirit of mediaeval
Christianity as it has been preserved in no other work. It

1 See Wordsworth's sonnet, On the Sonnet. For a detailed study of this most perfect
verse form, see Tomlinson's The Sonnet, Its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry.

2 William Caxton (c. 1422-1491) was the first English printer. He learned the art
abroad, probably at Cologne or Bruges, and about the year 1476 set up the first wooden
printing press in England. His influence in fixing a national language to supersede the
various dialects, and in preparing the way for the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan
age, is beyond calculation.

8 Malory has, in our own day, been identified with an English country gentlemaa
and soldier, who was member of Parliament for Warwickshire in 1445.

96 ENGLISH LITERATURE

was to Malory rather than to Layamon or to the early French
writers that Shakespeare and his contemporaries turned for
their material ; and in our own age he has supplied Tennyson
and Matthew Arnold and Swinburne and Morris with the
inspiration for the "Idylls of the King" and the "Death of
Tristram " and the other exquisite poems which center about
Arthur and the knights of his Round Table.

In subject-matter the book belongs to the mediaeval age ;
but Malory himself, with his desire to preserve the literary
monuments of the past, belongs to the Renaissance ; and he
deserves our lasting gratitude for attempting to preserve the
legends and poetry of Britain at a time when scholars were
chiefly busy with the classics of Greece and Rome. As the
Arthurian legends are one of the great recurring motives of
English literature, Malory's work should be better known.
His stories may be and should be told to every child as part
of his literary inheritance. Then Malory may be read for his
style and his English prose and his expression of the mediae-
val spirit. And then the stories may be read again, in Tenny-
son's "Idylls," to show how those exquisite old fancies appeal
to the minds of our modern poets.

Summary of the Revival of Learning Period. This transition period is at
first one of decline from the Age of Chaucer, and then of intellectual prepara-
tion for the Age of Elizabeth. For a century and a half after Chaucer not a
single great English work appeared, and the general standard of literature was
very low. There are three chief causes to account for this: (i) the long war
with France and the civil Wars of the Roses distracted attention from books
and poetry, and destroyed or ruined many noble English families who had
been friends and patrons of literature ; (2) the Reformation in the latter part
of the period filled men's minds with religious questions ; (3) the Revival of
Learning set scholars and literary men to an eager study of the classics, rather
than to the creation of native literature. Historically the age is noticeable for
its intellectual progress, for the introduction of printing, for the discovery of
America, for the beginning of the Reformation, and for the growth of political
power among the common people.

In our study we have noted: (i) the Revival of Learning, what it was,
and the significance of the terms Humanism and Renaissance ; (2) three in-
fluential literary works, Erasmus's Praise of Folly, More's Utopia, and Tyn-
dale's translation of the New Testament; (3) Wyatt and Surrey, and the

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 97

so-called courtly makers or poets; (4) Malory's Morte d" 1 Arthur, a collection
of the Arthurian legends in English prose. The Miracle and Mystery Plays
were the most popular form of entertainment in this age ; but we have reserved
them for special study in connection with the Rise of the Drama, in the
following chapter.

Selections for Reading. Malory's Morte d'Arthur, selections, in Athenaeum
Press Series, etc. (It is interesting to read Tennyson's Passing of Arthur in
connection with Malory's account.) Utopia, in Arber's Reprints, Temple
Classics, King's Classics, etc. Selections from Wyatt, Surrey, etc., in Manly's
English Poetry or Ward's English Poets; Tottel's Miscellany, in Arber's
Reprints. Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English, vol. 3, has good
selections from this period.

Bibliography. 1 History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 150-208, or Cheyney,
pp. 264-328. Greene, ch. 6 ; Traill ; Gardiner ; Froude ; etc.

Special Works. Denton's England in the Fifteenth Century ; Flower's The
Century of Sir Thomas More ; The Household of Sir Thomas More, in King's
Classics ; Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century ; Field's Introduction to
the Study of the Renaissance ; Einstein's The Italian Renaissance in England;
Seebohm's The Oxford Reformers (Erasmus, More, etc.).

Literature. General Works. Jusserand; Ten Brink; Minto's Characteris-
tics of English Poets.

Special Works. Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature ; Malory's Morte
d'Arthur, edited by Sommer ; the same by Gollancz (Temple Classics) ;
Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur; More's Utopia, in Temple Classics, King's
Classics, etc. ; Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More, in King's Classics, Temple
Classics, etc. ; Ascham's Schoolmaster, in Arber's English Reprints ; Poems
of Wyatt and Surrey, in English Reprints and Bell's Aldine Poets ; Simonds's
Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Poems; Allen's Selections from Erasmus; Jusse-
rand's Romance of a King's Life (James I of Scotland) contains extracts and
an admirable criticism of the King's Quair.

Suggestive Questions, i. The fifteenth century in English literature is
sometimes called " the age of arrest." Can you explain why ? What causes
account for the lack of great literature in this period ? Why should the ruin
of noble families at this time seriously affect our literature ? Can you recall
anything from the Anglo-Saxon period to justify your opinion ?

2. What is meant by Humanism ? What was the first effect of the study of
Greek and Latin classics upon our literature ? What excellent literary pur-
poses did the classics serve in later periods ?

3. What are the chief benefits to literature of the discovery of printing ?
What effect on civilization has the multiplication of books ?

4. Describe More's Utopia. Do you know any modern books like it ?
Why should any impractical scheme of progress be still called Utopian ?

1 For titles and publishers of general works see General Bibliography at the end of
this book.

9 8

ENGLISH LITERATURE

5. What work of this period had the greatest effect on the English lan-
guage ? Explain why.

6. What was the chief literary influence exerted by Wyatt and Surrey ?
Do you know any later poets who made use of the verse forms which they
introduced ?

7. Which of Malory's stories do you like best ? Where did these stories
originate ? Have they any historical foundation ? What two great elements
did Malory combine in his work ? What is the importance of his book to later
English literature ? Compare Tennyson's " Idylls of the King " and Malory's
stories with regard to material, expression, and interest. Note the marked resem-
blances and differences between the Morte d* Arthur and the Nibelungen Lied.

CHRONOLOGY

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1413. Henry V

1415. Battle of Agincourt

1422. Henry VI

1428. Siege of Orleans. Joan of Arc

1453. End of Hundred Years' War

1455-1485. Wars of Roses

1461. Edward IV

1483. Richard III

1485. Henry VII

1492. Columbus discovers America
1509. Henry VIII

1534. Act of Supremacy. The Refor-
mation accomplished

1547. Edward VI
1553. Mary
1558. Elizabeth

1470. Malory's Morte d' Arthur
I474(<r.). Caxton, at Bruges, prints the

first book in English, the

Recuyell of the Historyes of

Troye

1477. First book printed in England
1485. Morte d'Arthur printed by

Caxton
1499. Colet, Erasmus, and More

bring the New Learning to

Oxford

1509. Erasmus's Praise of Folly
1516. More's Utopia
1525. Tyndale's New Testament
I 53(^-)- Introduction of the sonnet

and blank verse by Wyatt

and Surrey
1539. The Great Bible

1557. Tottel's Miscellany

CHAPTER VI

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH (1550-1620)
I. HISTORY OF THE PERIOD

Political Summary. In the Age of Elizabeth all doubt seems to
vanish from English history. After the reigns of Edward and Mary,
with defeat and humiliation abroad and persecutions and rebellion
at home, the accession of a popular sovereign was like the sunrise
after a long night, and, in Milton's words, we suddenly see England,
" a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself, like a strong man after
sleep, and shaking her invincible locks." With the queen's character,
a strange mingling of frivolity and strength which reminds one of
that iron image with feet of clay, we have nothing whatever to do.
It is the national life that concerns the literary student, since even a
beginner must notice that any great development of the national
life is invariably associated with a development of the national litera-
ture. It is enough for our purpose, therefore, to point out two facts :
that Elizabeth, with all her vanity and inconsistency, steadily loved
England and England's greatness; and that she inspired all her
people with the unbounded patriotism which exults in Shakespeare,
and with the personal devotion which finds a voice in the Faery
Queen. Under her administration the English national life pro-
gressed by gigantic leaps rather than by slow historical process, and
English literature reached the very highest point of its development.
It is possible to indicate only a few general characteristics of this
great age which had a direct bearing upon its literature.

Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age. The most characteristic
feature of the age was the comparative religious tolerance, which
Religious was due largely to the queen's influence. The fright-
Toleration f u i excesses of the religious war known as the Thirty
Years' War on the Continent found no parallel in England. Upon
her accession Elizabeth found the whole kingdom divided against
itself ; the North was largely Catholic, while the southern counties
were as strongly Protestant. Scotland had followed the Reforma-
tion in its own intense way, while Ireland remained true to its old

100 ENGLISH LITERATURE

religious traditions, and both countries were openly rebellious. The
court, made up of both parties, witnessed the rival intrigues of
those who sought to gain the royal favor. It was due partly to the
intense absorption of men's minds in religious questions that the
preceding century, though an age of advancing learning, produced
scarcely any literature worthy of the name. Elizabeth favored both
religious parties, and presently the world saw with amazement
Catholics and Protestants acting together as trusted counselors of a
great sovereign. The defeat of the Spanish Armada established the
Reformation as a fact in England, and at the same time united all
Englishmen in a magnificent national enthusiasm. For the first time
since the Reformation began, the fundamental question of religious
toleration seemed to be settled, and the mind of man, freed from
religious fears and persecutions, turned with a great creative impulse
to other forms of activity. It is partly from this new freedom of the
mind that the Age of Elizabeth received its great literary stimulus.

2. It was an age of comparative social contentment, in strong
contrast with the days of Langland. The rapid increase of manu-
Social Con- facturing towns gave employment to thousands who
tentment had before been idle and discontented. Increasing trade
brought enormous wealth to England, and this wealth was shared to
this extent, at least, that for the first time some systematic care for
the needy was attempted. Parishes were made responsible for their
own poor, and the wealthy were taxed to support them or give them
employment. The increase of wealth, the improvement in living, the
opportunities for labor, the new social content, these also are fac-
tors which help to account for the new literary activity.

3. It is an age of dreams, of adventure, of unbounded enthusiasm
springing from the new lands of fabulous riches revealed by English

explorers. Drake sails around the world, shaping the
mighty course which English colonizers shall follow
through the centuries ; and presently the young philosopher Bacon
is saying confidently, "I have taken all knowledge for my prov-
ince." The mind must search farther than the eye ; with new, rich
lands opened to the sight, the imagination must create new forms
to people the new worlds. Hakluyt's famous Collection of Voyages,
and Purchas, His Pilgrimage, were even more stimulating to the
English imagination than to the English acquisitiveness. While her
explorers search the new world for the Fountain of Youth, her
poets are creating literary works that are young forever. Marston

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH tdi

writes 1 : " Why, man, all their dripping pans are pure gold. The prison-
ers they take are fettered in gold ; and as for rubies and diamonds,
they goe forth on holydayes and gather 'hem by the seashore to hang
on their children's coates." This comes nearer to being a description
of Shakespeare's poetry than of the Indians in Virginia. Prospero, in
The Tempest, with his control over the mighty powers and harmo-
nies of nature, is only the literary dream of that science which had
just begun to grapple with the forces of the universe. Cabot, Drake,
Frobisher, Gilbert, Raleigh, Willoughby, Hawkins, a score of
explorers reveal a new earth to men's eyes, and instantly literature
creates a new heaven to match it. So dreams and deeds increase
side by side, and the dream is ever greater than the deed. That is
the meaning of literature.

4. To sum up, the Age of Elizabeth was a time of intellectual
liberty, of growing intelligence and comfort among all classes, of
unbounded patriotism, and of peace at home and abroad. For a
parallel we must go back to the Age of Pericles in Athens, or of
Augustus in Rome, or go forward a little to the magnifi-
cent court of Louis XIV, when Corneille, Racine, and
Moliere brought the drama in France to the point where Marlowe,
Shakespeare, and Jonson had left it in England half a century earlier.
Such an age of great thought and great action, appealing to the eyes
as well as to the imagination and intellect, finds but one adequate
literary expression ; neither poetry nor the story can express the
whole man, his thought, feeling, action, and the resulting character ;
hence in the Age of Elizabeth literature turned instinctively to the
drama and brought it rapidly to the highest stage of its development.

II. THE NON-DRAMATIC POETS OF THE
ELIZABETHAN AGE

EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)
(CvdcKe)

" Piers, I have pip^d erst so long with pain
That all mine oaten reeds been rent and wore,
And my poor Muse hath spent her spared store,
Yet little good hath got, and much less gain.
Such pleasaunce makes the grasshopper so poor,
And Hgge so layd 2 when winter doth her strain.

1 Eastward Ho! a play given in Blackfriars Theater about 1603. The play vras
written by Marston and two collaborators. 2 Lie so faint.

103

ENGLISH LITERATURE

(Piers)

The dapper ditties that I wont devise,
To feed youth's fancy, and the flocking fry
Delighten much what I the bet forthy ?
They han the pleasure, I a slender prize :
I beat the bush, the birds to them do fly :
What good thereof to Cuddie can arise ?

Cuddie, the praise is better than the price,

The glory eke much greater than the gain : . . ."

Shepherd" 1 s Calendar, October

In these words, with their sorrowful suggestion of Deor,
Spenser reveals his own heart, unconsciously perhaps, as no
biographer could possibly do. His life and work seem to cen-
ter about three great influences,
summed up in three names :
Cambridge, where he grew ac-
quainted with the classics and
the Italian poets ; London, where
he experienced the glamour and
the disappointment of court life ;
and Ireland, which steeped him
in the beauty and imagery of old
Celtic poetry and first gave him
leisure to write his masterpiece.

Life. Of Spenser's early life and
parentage we know little, except
that he was born in East Smithfield, near the Tower of London, and
was poor. His education began at the Merchant Tailors' School in
London and was continued in Cambridge, where as a poor sizar and
fag for wealthy students he earned a scant living. Here in the glori-
ous world that only a poor scholar knows how to create for himself
he read the classics, made acquaintance with the great Italian poets,
and wrote numberless little poems of his own. Though Chaucer
was his beloved master, his ambition was not to rival the Canterbury
Tafes, but rather to express the dream of English chivalry, much as
Ariosto had done for Italy in Orlando Furioso.

After leaving Cambridge (1576) Spenser went to the north of
England, on some unknown work or quest. Here his chief occupation

EDMUND SPENSER

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 103

was to fall in love and to record his melancholy over the lost
Rosalind in the Shepherd's Calendar. Upon his friend Harvey's
advice he came to London, bringing his poems ; and here he met
Leicester, then at the height of royal favor, and the latter took him
to live at Leicester House. Here he finished the Shepherd's Calen-
dar, and here he met Sidney and all the queen's favorites. The court
was full of intrigues, lying and flattery, and Spenser's opinion of his
own uncomfortable position is best expressed in a few lines from
" Mother Hubbard's Tale " :

Full little knowest thou, that has not tried,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide :
To lose good days, that might be better spent ;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent ;

To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ;
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs ;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

In 1580, through Leicester's influence, Spenser, who was utterly
weary of his dependent position, was made secretary to Lord Grey,
.the queen's deputy in Ireland, and the third period of his life began.
He accompanied his chief through one campaign of savage brutality
in putting down an Irish rebellion, and was given an immense estate
with the castle of Kilcolman, in Munster, which had been confis-
cated from Earl Desmond, one of the Irish leaders. His life here,
where according to the terms of his grant he must reside as an Eng-
lish settler, he regarded as lonely exile :

My luckless lot,

That banished had myself, like wight forlore,

Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.

It is interesting to note here a gentle poet's view of the " unhappy
island." After nearly sixteen years' residence he wrote his View of
the State of Ireland (I596), 1 his only prose work, in which he sub-
mits a plan for "pacifying the oppressed and rebellious people."
This was to bring a huge force of cavalry and infantry into the
country, give the Irish a brief time to submit, and after that to hunt
them down like wild beasts. He calculated that cold, famine, and
sickness would help the work of the sword, and that after the rebels
had been well hounded for two winters the following summer would

l The View was not published till 1633.

104 ENGLISH LITERATURE

find the country peaceful. This plan, from the poet of harmony
and beauty, was somewhat milder than the usual treatment of a
brave people whose offense was that they loved liberty and reli-
gion. Strange as it may seem, the View was considered most states-
manlike, and was excellently well received in England.

In Kilcolman, surrounded by great natural beauty, Spenser fin-
ished the first three books of the Faery Queen. In 1589 Raleigh
visited him, heard the poem with enthusiasm, hurried the poet off
to London, and presented him to Elizabeth. The first three books
met with instant success when published and were acclaimed as the
greatest work in the English language. A yearly pension of fifty
pounds was conferred by Elizabeth, but rarely paid, and the poet
turned back to exile, that is, to Ireland again.

Soon after his return, Spenser fell in love with his beautiful
Elizabeth, an Irish girl; wrote his Amoretti, or sonnets, in her
honor ; and afterwards represented her, in the Faery Queen, as the
beautiful woman dancing among the Graces. In 1594 he married
Elizabeth, celebrating his wedding with his " Epithalamion," one of
the most beautiful wedding hymns in any language.

Spenser's next visit to London was in 1595, when he published
" Astrophel," an elegy on the death of his friend Sidney, and three
more books of the Faery Queen. On this visit he lived again at
Leicester House, now occupied by the new favorite Essex, where he
probably met Shakespeare and the other literary lights of the Eliza-
bethan Age. Soon after his return to Ireland, Spenser was appointed
Sheriff of Cork, a queer office for a poet, which probably brought
about his undoing. The same year Tyrone's Rebellion broke out in
Munster. Kilcolman, the ancient house of Desmond, was one of the
first places attacked by the rebels, and Spenser barely escaped with
his wife and two children. It is supposed that some unfinished parts
of the Faery Queen were burned in the castle.

From the shock of this frightful experience Spenser never recov-
ered. He returned to England heartbroken, and in the following
year (1599) he died in an inn at Westminster. According to Ben
Jonson he died "for want of bread"; but whether that is a poetic
way of saying that he had lost his property or that he actually died
of destitution, will probably never be known. He was buried beside
his master Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the poets of that age
thronging to his funeral and, according to Camden, "casting their
elegies and the pens that had written them into his tomb."

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 105

Spenser's Works. The Faery Queen is the great work upon
which the poet's fame chiefly rests. The original plan of the
poem included twenty-four books, each of which was to
recount the adventure and triumph of a knight who repre-
sented a moral virtue. Spenser's purpose, as indicated in a
letter to Raleigh which introduces the poem, is as follows :

To pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave
Knight, perfected in the twelve private Morall Vertues, as Aristotle hath
devised ; which is the purpose of these first twelve bookes : which if I
finde to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other
part of Polliticke Vertues in his person, after that hee came to be king.

Each of the Virtues appears as a knight, fighting his oppos-
ing Vice, and the poem tells the story of the conflicts. It is
therefore purely allegorical, not only in its personified virtues
but also in its representation of life as a struggle between
good and evil. In its strong moral element the poem differs
radically from Orlando Furioso, upon which it was modeled.
Spenser completed only six books, celebrating Holiness,
Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy.
We have also a fragment of the seventh, treating of Con-
stancy ; but the rest of this book was not written, or else was
lost in the fire at Kilcolman. The first three books are by
far the best ; and judging by the way the interest lags and
the allegory grows incomprehensible, it is perhaps as well for
Spenser's reputation that the other eighteen books remained
a dream.

Argument of the Faery Queen. From the introductory letter
we learn that the hero visits the queen's court in Fairy Land,
while she is holding a twelve-days festival. On each day some
distressed person appears unexpectedly, tells a woful story of
dragons, of enchantresses, or of distressed beauty or virtue,
and asks for a champion to right the wrong and to let the
oppressed go free. Sometimes a knight volunteers or begs
for the dangerous mission ; again the duty is assigned by the
queen ; and the journeys and adventures of these knights are

106 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the subjects of the several books. The first recounts the
adventures of the Redcross Knight, representing Holiness,
and the lady Una, representing Religion. Their contests are
symbolical of the wo rid- wide struggle between virtue and faith
on the one hand, and sin and heresy on the other. The second
book tells the story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance ; the third,
of Britomartis, representing Chastity ; the fourth, fifth, and
sixth, of Cambel and Triamond (Friendship), Artegall (Justice),
and Sir Calidore (Courtesy). Spenser's plan was a very elas-
tic one and he filled up the measure of his narrative with
everything that caught his fancy, historical events and per-
sonages under allegorical masks, beautiful ladies, chivalrous
knights, giants, monsters, dragons, sirens, enchanters, and
adventures enough to stock a library of fiction. If you read
Homer or Virgil, you know his subject in the first strong line ;
if you read Caedmon's Paraphrase or Milton's epic, the intro-
duction gives you the theme ; but Spenser's great poem
with the exception of a single line in the prologue, " Fierce
warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song" gives
hardly a hint of what is coming.

As to the meaning of the allegorical figures, one is generally
in doubt. In the first three books the shadowy Faery Queen
sometimes represents the glory of God and sometimes Eliza-
beth, who was naturally flattered by the parallel. Britomartis
is also Elizabeth. The Redcross Knight is Sidney, the model
Englishman. Arthur, who always appears to rescue the op-
pressed, is Leicester, which is another outrageous flattery.
Una is sometimes religion and sometimes the Protestant
Church ; while Duessa represents Mary Queen of Scots, or
general Catholicism. In the last three books Elizabeth appears
again as Mercilla ; Henry IV of France as Bourbon ; the war
in the Netherlands as the story of Lady Beige ; Raleigh as
Timias ; the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland
(lovers of Mary or Duessa) as Blandamour and Paridell ; and
so on through the wide range of contemporary characters and

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 107

events, till the allegory becomes as difficult to follow as the
second part of Goethe's Faust.

Poetical Form. For the Faery Queen Spenser invented a
new verse form, which has been called since his day the
Spenserian stanza. Because of its rare beauty it has been
much used by nearly all our poets in their best work. The
new stanza was an improved form of Ariosto's ottava rima (i.e.
eight-line stanza) and bears a close resemblance to one of
Chaucer's most musical verse forms in the "Monk's Tale."
Spenser's stanza is in nine lines, eight of five feet each and
the last of six feet, riming ababbcbcc. A few selections from
the first book, which is best worth reading, are reproduced
lere to show the style and melody of the verse.

A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Ycladd l in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine.
The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde ;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield :
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield :
Full iolly 2 knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts 3 and fierce encounters fitt.

And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living ever, him ador'd:
Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had,
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word ;
But of his cheere 4 did seeme too solemne sad ;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad. 5

This sleepy bit, from the dwelling of Morpheus, invites us to

linger :

And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,

A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,

And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne

Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.

1 clad. 2 handsome. 3 jousts, tournaments. 4 countenance. & dreaded.

108 ENGLISH LITERATURE

No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard : but carelesse Quiet lyes,
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enimyes.

The description of Una shows the poet's sense of ideal beauty :

One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,
From her unhastie beast she did alight ;
And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay
In secrete shadow, far from all mens sight ;
From her fayre head her fillet she undight, 1
And layd her stole aside. Her angels face,
As the great eye of heaven, shyne'd bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place ;
Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace.

It fortune'd, out of the thickest wood
A ramping lyon rushdd suddeinly,
Hunting full greedy after salvage blood :
Soone as the royall Virgin he did spy,
With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
To have attonce devourd her tender corse :
But to the pray whenas he drew more ny,
His bloody rage aswaged with remorse, 2
And, with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.

Instead thereof he kist her wearie feet,
And lickt her lilly hands with fawning tong ;
As he her wrongdd innocence did weet. 3
O how can beautie maister the most strong,
And simple truth subdue avenging wrong !

Minor Poems. Next to his masterpiece, the Shepherd's
Calendar (1579) is the best known of Spenser's poems;
though, as his first work, it is below many others in melody.
It consists of twelve pastoral poems, or eclogues, one for each
month of the year. The themes are generally rural life, nature,
love in the fields ; and the speakers are shepherds and shep-
herdesses. To increase the rustic effect Spenser uses strange
forms of speech and obsolete words, to such an extent that
Jonson complained his works are not English or any other

1 took off. 2 pity. a know.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 109

language. Some are melancholy poems on his lost Rosalind ;
some are satires on the clergy ; one, " The Briar and the
Oak," is an allegory; one flatters Elizabeth, and others are
pure fables touched with the Puritan spirit. They are written
in various styles and meters, and show plainly that Spenser
was practicing and preparing himself for greater work.

Other noteworthy poems are " Mother Hubbard's Tale,"
a satire on society; "Astrophel," an elegy on the death of Sid-

icy ; Amoretti, or sonnets, to his Elizabeth ; the marriage

lymn, " Epithalamion," and four "Hymns," on Love, Beauty,
Heavenly Love, and Heavenly Beauty. There are numerous

:her poems and collections of poems, but these show the

:ope of his work and are best worth reading.
Importance of the Shepherd's Calendar. The publication of
;his work, in 1579, by an unknown writer who signed himself

lodestly " Immerito," marks an important epoch in our litera-
ture. We shall appreciate this better if we remember the
long years during which England had been without a great
poet. Chaucer and Spenser are often studied together as
poets of the Renaissance period, and the idea prevails that
they were almost contemporary. In fact, nearly two centuries

issed after Chaucer's death, years of enormous political
md intellectual development, and not only did Chaucer have
no successor but our language had changed so rapidly that
Englishmen had lost the ability to read his lines correctly. 1

This first published work of Spenser is noteworthy in at
least four respects : first, it marks the appearance of the first
national poet in two centuries ; second, it shows again the
variety and melody of English verse, which had been largely
a tradition since Chaucer ; third, it was our first pastoral, the
beginning of a long series of English pastoral compositions
modeled on Spenser, and as such exerted a strong influence
on subsequent literature ; and fourth, it marks the real be-
ginning of the outburst of great Elizabethan poetry.

1 In the nineteenth century men learned again to appreciate Chaucer.

HO ENGLISH LITERATURE

Characteristics of Spenser 's Poetry. The five main qualities
of Spenser's poetry are (i) a perfect melody ; (2) a rare sense
of beauty ; (3) a splendid imagination, which could gather
into one poem heroes, knights, ladies, dwarfs, demons and
dragons, classic mythology, stories of chivalry, and the throng-
ing ideals of the Renaissance, all passing in gorgeous pro-
cession across an ever-changing and ever-beautiful landscape ;
(4) a lofty moral purity and seriousness ; (5) a delicate ideal-
ism, which could make all nature and every common thing
beautiful. In contrast with these excellent qualities the reader
will probably note the strange appearance of his lines due to
his fondness for obsolete words, like eyne (eyes) and shend
(shame), and his tendency to coin others, like mercify, to suit
his own purposes.

It is Spenser's idealism, his love of beauty, and his ex-
quisite melody which have caused him to be known as "the
poets' poet." Nearly all our subsequent singers acknowledge
their delight in him and their indebtedness. Macaulay alone
among critics voices a fault which all who are not poets
quickly feel, namely that, with all Spenser's excellences, he is
difficult to read. The modern man loses himself in the con-
fused allegory of the Faery Queen, skips all but the marked
passages, and softly closes the book in gentle weariness.
Even the best of his longer poems, while of exquisite work-
manship and delightfully melodious, generally fail to hold the
reader's attention. The movement is languid ; there is little
dramatic interest, and only a suggestion of humor. The very
melody of his verses sometimes grows monotonous, like a
Strauss waltz too long continued. We shall best appreciate
Spenser by reading at first only a few well-chosen selections
from the Faery Queen and the Shepherd's Calendar, and a few
of the minor poems which exemplify his wonderful melody.

Comparison between Chaucer and Spenser. At the outset
it is well to remember that, though Spenser regarded Chaucer
as his master, two centuries intervene between them, and that

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH III

their writings have almost nothing in common. We shall
appreciate this better by a brief comparison between our first
two modern poets.

Chaucer was a combined poet and man of affairs, with the
latter predominating. Though dealing largely with ancient or
mediaeval material, he has a curiously modern way of looking
at life. Indeed, he is our only author preceding Shakespeare
with whom we feel thoroughly at home. He threw aside the
outgrown metrical romance, which was practically the only
form of narrative in his day, invented the art of story-telling
in verse, and brought it to a degree of perfection which has
probably never since been equaled. Though a student of the
classics, he lived wholly in the present, studied the men and
women of his own time, painted them as they were, but added
always a touch of kindly humor or romance to make them
interesting. So his mission appears to be simply to
amuse himself and his readers. His mastery of various and
melodious verse was marvelous and has never been surpassed
in our language ; but the English of his day was changing
rapidly, and in a very few years men were unable to appreciate
his art, so that even to Spenser and Dryden, for example, he
seemed deficient in metrical skill. On this account his influ-
ence on our literature has been much less than we should
expect from the quality of his work and from his position as
one of the greatest of English poets.

Like Chaucer, Spenser was a busy man of affairs, but in
him the poet and the scholar always predominates. He writes
as the idealist, describing men not as they are but as he thinks
they should be ; he has no humor, and his mission is not to
amuse but to reform. Like Chaucer he studies the classics
and contemporary French and Italian writers ; but instead of
adapting his material to present-day conditions, he makes
poetry, as in his Eclogues for instance, more artificial even
than his foreign models. Where Chaucer looks about him and
describes life as he sees it, Spenser always looks backward for

112 ENGLISH LITERATURE

his inspiration; he lives dreamily in the past, in a realm of
purely imaginary emotions and adventures. His first quality
is imagination, not observation, and he is the first of our poets
to create a world of dreams, fancies, and illusions. His second
quality is a wonderful sensitiveness to beauty, which shows
itself not only in his subject-matter but also in the manner of
his poetry. Like Chaucer, he is an almost perfect workman ;
but in reading Chaucer we think chiefly of his natural char-
acters or his ideas, while in reading Spenser we think of the
beauty of expression. The exquisite Spenserian stanza and
the rich melody of Spenser's verse have made him the model
of all our modern poets.

MINOR POETS

Though Spenser is the one great non-dramatic poet of the
Elizabethan Age, a multitude of minor poets demand atten-
tion of the student who would understand the tremendous
literary activity of the period. One needs only to read The
Paradyse of Daynty Devises (15 76), or A Gorgeous Gallery
of Gallant Inventions (1578), or any other of the miscellane-
ous collections to find hundreds of songs, many of them of
exquisite workmanship, by poets whose names now awaken
no response. A glance is enough to assure one that over all
England "the sweet spirit of song had arisen, like the first
chirping of birds after a storm." Nearly two hundred poets
are recorded in the short period from 1558 to 1625, and
many of them were prolific writers. In a work like this, we
can hardly do more than mention a few of the best known
writers, and spend a moment at least with the works that
suggest Marlowe's description of "infinite riches in a little
room." The reader will note for himself the interesting union
of action and thought in these men, so characteristic of the
Elizabethan Age ; for most of them were engaged chiefly in
business or war or politics, and literature was to them a pleas-
ant recreation rather than an absorbing profession.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 113

Thomas Sackville (1536-1608). Sir Thomas Sackville, Earl
of Dorset and Lord High Treasurer of England, is generally
classed with Wyatt and Surrey among the predecessors of
the Elizabethan Age. In imitation of Dante's Inferno, Sack-
ville formed the design of a great poem called The Mirror
for Magistrates. Under guidance of an allegorical personage
called Sorrow, he meets the spirits of all the important actors
in English history. The idea was to follow Lydgate's Fall of
Princes and let each character tell his own story ; so that
the poem would be a mirror in which present rulers might
see themselves and read this warning : " Who reckless rules
right soon may hope to rue." Sackville finished only the " In-
duction " and the "Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham/
These are written in the rime royal, and are marked by
strong poetic feeling and expression. Unfortunately Sackville
turned from poetry to politics, and the poem was carried on
by two inferior poets, William Baldwin and George Ferrers.

Sackville wrote also, in connection with Thomas Norton,
the first English tragedy, Ferrex and Porrex, called also
Gorbodttc, which will be considered in the following section ]
on the Rise of the Drama.

Philip Sidney (1554-1586). Sidney, the ideal gentleman,
the Sir Calidore of Spenser's "Legend of Courtesy," is vastly
more interesting as a man than as a writer, and the student
is recommended to read his biography rather than his books.
His life expresses, better than any single literary work, the
two ideals of the age, personal honor and national greatness.

As a writer he is known by three principal works, all
published after his death, showing how little importance he
attached to his own writing, even while he was encouraging
Spenser. The Arcadia is a pastoral romance, interspersed
with eclogues, in which shepherds and shepherdesses sing of
the delights of rural life. Though the work was taken up
idly as a summer's pastime, it became immensely popular and

1 See p. 125.

114 ENGLISH LITERATURE

was imitated by a hundred poets. The Apologie for Poetrie
(1595), generally called the Defense of Poesie, appeared in
answer to a pamphlet by Stephen Gosson called The School
of Abuse (1579), in which the poetry of the age and its un-
bridled pleasure were denounced with Puritan thoroughness
and conviction. The Apologie is one of the first critical essays
in English ; and though its style now seems labored and unnat-
ural, the pernicious result of Euphues and his school, it
is still one of the best expressions of the place and meaning
of poetry in any language. Astrophel and Stella is a col-
lection of songs and sonnets addressed to Lady Penelope
Devereux, to whom Sidney had once been betrothed. They
abound in exquisite lines and passages, containing more poetic
feeling and expression than the songs of any other minor writer
of the age,

George Chapman (i559?-i634). Chapman spent his long,
quiet life among the dramatists, and wrote chiefly for the
stage. His plays, which were for the most part merely poems
in dialogue, fell far below the high dramatic standard of his
time and are now almost unread. His most famous work is
the metrical translation of the Iliad (1611} and of the Odyssey
(1614). Chapman's Homer, though lacking the simplicity and
dignity of the original, has a force and rapidity of movement
which makes it superior in many respects to Pope's more
familiar translation. Chapman is remembered also as the
finisher of Marlowe's Hero and Leander, in which, apart from
the drama, the Renaissance movement is seen at perhaps its
highest point in English poetry. Out of scores of long poems
of the period, Hero and Leander and the Faery Queen are the
only two which are even slightly known to modern readers.

Michael Drayton (1563-1631). Drayton is the most volu-
minous and, to antiquarians at least, the most interesting of the
minor poets. He is the Layamon of the Elizabethan Age, and
vastly more scholarly than his predecessor. His chief work
is Polyolbion, an enormous poem of many thousand couplets,

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 11$

describing the towns, mountains, and rivers of Britain, with
the interesting legends connected with each. It is an extremely
valuable work and represents a lifetime of study and research.
Two other long works are the Barons' Wars and the Heroic
Epistle of England ; and besides these were many minor
poems. One of the best of these is the " Ballad of Agincourt,"
a ballad written in the lively meter which Tennyson used with
some variations in the " Charge of the Light Brigade," and
which shows the old English love of brave deeds and of the
songs that stir a people's heart in memory of noble ancestors.

III. THE FIRST ENGLISH DRAMATISTS

The Origin of the Drama. First the deed, then the story,
then the play ; that seems to be the natural development of
the drama in its simplest form. The great deeds of a people
are treasured in its literature, and later generations represent
in play or pantomime certain parts of the story which appeal
most powerfully to the imagination. Among primitive races
the deeds of their gods and heroes are often represented at
the yearly festivals ; and among children, whose instincts are
not yet blunted by artificial habits, one sees the story that
was heard at bedtime repeated next day in vigorous action,
when our boys turn scouts and our girls princesses, precisely
as our first dramatists turned to the old legends and heroes
of Britain for their first stage productions. To act a part
seems as natural to humanity as to tell a story ; and origi-
nally the drama is but an old story retold to the eye, a story
put into action by living performers, who for the moment
"make believe " or imagine themselves to be the old heroes.

To illustrate the matter simply, there was a great life lived
by him who was called the Christ. Inevitably the life found
its way into literature, and we have the Gospels. Around the
life and literature sprang up a great religion. Its worship
was at first simple, the common prayer, the evening meal
together, the remembered words of the Master, and the

Ii6 ENGLISH LITERATURE

closing hymn. Gradually a ritual was established, which grew
more elaborate and impressive as the centuries went by.
Scenes from the Master's life began to be represented in the
churches, especially at Christmas time, when the story of
Christ's birth was made more effective, to the eyes of a
people who could not read, by a babe in a manger surrounded
by magi and shepherds, with a choir of angels chanting the
Gloria in Excelsisl Other impressive scenes from the Gospel
followed ; then the Old Testament was called upon, until a
complete cycle of plays from the Creation to the Final Judg-
ment was established, and we have the Mysteries and Miracle
plays of the Middle Ages. Out of these came directly the
drama of the Elizabethan Age.

PERIODS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA

i. The Religious Period. In Europe, as in Greece, the
drama had a distinctly religious origin. 2 The first characters
were drawn from the New Testament, and the object of the
first plays was to make the church service more impressive,
or to emphasize moral lessons by showing the reward of the
good and the punishment of the evil doer. In the latter days
of the Roman Empire the Church found the stage possessed
by frightful plays, which debased the morals of a people
already fallen too low. Reform seemed impossible ; the cor-
rupt drama was driven from the stage, and plays of every
kind were forbidden. But mankind loves a spectacle, and

1 The most dramatic part of the early ritual centered about Christ's death and resur-
rection, on Good Fridays and Easter days. An exquisite account of this most impressive
service is preserved in St. Ethelwold's Latin manual of church services, written about
965. The Latin and English versions are found in Chambers's Medieval Stage, Vol. II.
For a brief, interesting description, see Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers, pp. 14 ff.

2 How much we are indebted to the Norman love of pageantry for the development
of the drama in England is an unanswered question. During the Middle Ages it was
customary, in welcoming a monarch or in celebrating a royal wedding, to represent
allegorical and mythological scenes, like the combat of St. George and the dragon, for
instance, on a stage constructed for the purpose. These pageants were popular all over
Europe and developed during the Renaissance into the dramatic form known as the
Masque. Though the drama was of religious origin, we must not overlook these secular
pageants as an important factor in the development of dramatic art.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 1 1/

soon the Church itself provided a substitute for the forbidden
plays in the famous Mysteries and Miracles.

Miracle and Mystery Plays. In France the name miracle
was given to any play representing the lives of the saints,
while the mystire represented scenes from the life of Christ
or stories from the Old Testament associated with the coming
of Messiah. In England this distinction was almost unknown ;
the name Miracle was used indiscriminately for all plays hav-
ing their origin in the Bible or in the lives of the saints ; and
the name Mystery, to distinguish a certain class of plays, was
not used until long after the religious drama had passed away.

The earliest Miracle of which we have any record in Eng-
land is the Ludus de Sancta Katharina, which was performed
in Dunstable about the year mo. 1 It is not known who
wrote the original play of St. Catherine, but our first version
was prepared by Geoffrey of St. Albans, a French school-
teacher of Dunstable. Whether or not the play was given in
English is not known, but it was customary in the earliest
plays for the chief actors to speak in Latin or French, to
show their importance, while minor and comic parts of the
same play were given in English.

For four centuries after this first recorded play the Mira-
cles increased steadily in number and popularity in England.
They were given first very simply and impressively in the
churches ; then, as the actors increased in number and the
plays in liveliness, they overflowed to the churchyards ; but
when fun and hilarity began to predominate even in the most
sacred representations, the scandalized priests forbade plays
altogether on church grounds. By the year 1 300 the Miracles
were out of ecclesiastical hands and adopted eagerly by the
town guilds ; and in the following two centuries we find the
Church preaching against the abuse of the religious drama

1 Miracles were acted on the Continent earlier than this. The Normans undoubtedly
brought religious plays with them, but it is probable that they began in England before
the Conquest (1066). See Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, I, xix.

Ii8 ENGLISH LITERATURE

which it had itself introduced, and which at first had served a
purely religious purpose. 1 But by this time the Miracles had
taken strong hold upon the English people, and they continued
to be immensely popular until, in the sixteenth century, they
were replaced by the Elizabethan drama.

The early Miracle plays of England were divided into two
classes : the first, given at Christmas, included all plays con-
Cycies of nected with the birth of Christ ; the second, at
Plays Easter, included the plays relating to his death

and triumph. By the beginning of the fourteenth century all
these plays were, in various localities, united in single cycles
beginning with the Creation and ending with the Final Judg-
ment. The complete cycle was presented every spring, be-
ginning on Corpus Christi day ; and as the presentation of so
many plays meant a continuous outdoor festival of a week or
more, this day was looked forward to as the happiest of the
whole year.

Probably every important town in England had its own
cycle of plays for its own guilds to perform, but nearly all
have been lost. At the present day only four cycles exist
(except in the most fragmentary condition), and these, though
they furnish an interesting commentary on the times, add
very little to our literature. The four cycles are the Ches-
ter and York plays, so called from the towns in which they
were given ; the Towneley or Wakefield plays, named for the
Towneley family, which for a long time owned the manu-
script ; and the Coventry plays, which on doubtful evidence
have been associated with the Grey Friars (Franciscans) of
Coventry. The Chester cycle has 25 plays, the Wakefield 30,
the Coventry 42, and the York 48. It is impossible to fix
either the date or the authorship of any of these plays ;
we only know certainly that they were in great favor from
the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The York plays are

1 See Jusserand, A Literary History of the English People., I, iii, vi. For our earliest
plays and their authors see Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers,

and thi
Actors

four

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 119

generally considered to be the best ; but those of Wakefield
show more humor and variety, and better workmanship. The
former cycle especially shows a certain unity resulting from
its aim to represent the whole of man's life from birth to
death. The same thing is noticeable in Cursor Mundi,
which, with the York and Wakefield cycles, belongs to the
fourteenth century.

At first the actors as well as the authors of the Miracles
were the priests and their chosen assistants. Later, when
The sta e *^ e town guilds took up the plays and each guild
and the became responsible for one or more of the series,
the actors were carefully selected and trained. By
four o'clock on the morning of Corpus Christi all the players
had to be in their places in the movable theaters, which were
scattered throughout the town in the squares and open places.
Each of these theaters consisted of a two-story platform,
set on wheels. The lower story was a dressing room for the
actors ; the upper story was the stage proper, and was reached
by a trapdoor from below. When the play was over the plat-
form was dragged away, and the next play in the cycle took its
place. So in a single square several plays would be presented
in rapid sequence to the same audience. Meanwhile the first
play moved on to another square, where another audience
waiting to hear it.

Though the plays were distinctly religious in character,
here is hardly one without its humorous element. In the
lay of Noah, for instance, Noah's shrewish wife makes fun
.or the audience by wrangling with her husband. In the
Crucifixion play Herod is a prankish kind of tyrant who
leaves the stage to rant among the audience ; so that to
"out-herod Herod" became a common proverb. In all the
plays the devil is a favorite character and the butt of every
joke. He also leaves the stage to play pranks or frighten the
wondering children. On the side of the stage was often seen
a huge dragon's head with gaping red jaws, belching forth

thei

T1cjil

120 ENGLISH LITERATURE

fire and smoke, out of which poured a tumultuous troop of
devils with clubs and pitchforks and gridirons to punish the
wicked characters and to drag them away at last, howling
and shrieking, into hell-mouth, as the dragon's head was
called. So the fear of hell was ingrained into an ignorant
people for four centuries. Alternating with these horrors
were bits of rough horse-play and domestic scenes of peace
and kindliness, representing the life of the English fields and
homes. With these were songs and carols, like that of the
Nativity, for instance :

As I out rode this enderes (last) night,
Of three jolly shepherds I saw a sight,
And all about their fold a star shone bright;

They sang terli terloiv,
So merryly the shepherds their pipes can blow.

Down from heaven, from heaven so high,
Of angels there came a great companye
With mirth, and joy, and great solemnitye ;

They sang terli terlow,
So merryly the shepherds their pipes can blow.

Such songs were taken home by the audience and sung for a
season, as a popular tune is now caught from the stage and
sung on the streets ; and at times the whole audience would
very likely join in the chorus.

After these plays were written according to the general
outline of the Bible stories, no change was tolerated, the
audience insisting, like children at " Punch and Judy," upon
seeing the same things year after year. No originality in plot
or treatment was possible, therefore ; the only variety was in
new songs and jokes, and in the pranks of the devil. Child-
ish as such plays seem to us, they are part of the religious
development of all uneducated people. Even now the Persian
play of the "Martyrdom of AH" is celebrated yearly, and
the famous "Passion Play," a true Miracle, is given every
ten years at Oberammergau.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 121

2. The Moral Period of the Drama. 1 The second or moral
period of the drama is shown by the increasing prevalence of
the Morality plays. In these the characters were allegorical
personages, Life, Death, Repentance, Goodness, Love,
Greed, and other virtues and vices. The Moralities may be
regarded, therefore, as the dramatic counterpart of the once
popular allegorical poetry exemplified by the Romance of the
Rose. It did not occur to our first, unknown dramatists to
portray men and women as they are until they had first made
characters of abstract human qualities. Nevertheless, the
Morality marks a distinct advance over the Miracle in that it
gave free scope to the imagination for new plots and incidents.
In Spain and Portugal these plays, under the name auto, were
wonderfully developed by the genius of Calderon and Gil
Vicente ; but in England the Morality was a dreary kind of
performance, like the allegorical poetry which preceded it.

To enliven the audience the devil of the Miracle plays was
introduced ; and another lively personage called the Vice was
the predecessor of our modern clown and jester. His busi-
ness was to torment the "virtues" by mischievous pranks,
and especially to make the devil's life a burden by beating
him with a bladder or a wooden sword at every opportunity.
The Morality generally ended in the triumph of virtue, the
devil leaping into hell-mouth with Vice on his back.

The best known of the Moralities is "Everyman," which has recently
been revived in England and America. The subject of the play is the

1 These three periods are not historically accurate. The author uses them to empha-
size three different views of our earliest plays rather than to suggest that there was any
orderly or chronological development from Miracle to Morality and thence to the Inter-
ludes. The latter is a prevalent opinion, but it seems hardly warranted by the facts.
Thus, though the Miracles precede the Moralities by two centuries (the first known
Morality, " The Play of the Lord's Prayer," mentioned by Wyclif, was given probably
about 1375), some of the best known Moralities, like " Pride of Life," precede many of
the later York Miracles. And the term Interlude, which is often used as symbolical of
the transition from the moral to the artistic period of the drama, was occasionally used
in England (fourteenth century) as synonymous with Miracle and again (sixteenth century)
as synonymous with Comedy. That the drama had these three stages seems reasonably
certain ; but it is impossible to fix the limits of any one of them, and all three are some-
times seen together in one of the later Miracles of the Wakefield cycle.

122 ENGLISH LITERATURE

summoning of every man by Death ; and the moral is that nothing can
take away the terror of the inevitable summons but an honest life and
the comforts of religion. In its dramatic unity it suggests the pure
Greek drama ; there is no change of time or scene, and the stage is
never empty from the beginning to the end of the performance. Other
well-known Moralities are the "Pride of Life," " Hyckescorner," and
" Castell of Perseverance." In the latter, man is represented as shut up
in a castle garrisoned by the virtues and besieged by the vices.

Like the Miracle plays, most of the old Moralities are ot
unknown date and origin. Of the known authors of Moral-
ities, two of the best are John Skelton, who wrote " Mag-
nificence," and probably also "The Necromancer"; and Sir
David Lindsay (1490-1555), "the poet of the Scotch Refor-
mation," whose religious business it was to make rulers un-
comfortable by telling them unpleasant truths in the form
of poetry. With these men a new element enters into the
Moralities. They satirize or denounce abuses of Church and
State, and introduce living personages thinly disguised as
allegories ; so that the stage first becomes a power in shap-
ing events and correcting abuses.

The Interludes. It is impossible to draw any accurate line
of distinction between the Moralities and Interludes. In gen-
eral we may think of the latter as dramatic scenes, some-
times given by themselves (usually with music and singing) at
banquets and entertainments where a little fun was wanted ;
and again slipped into a Miracle play to enliven the audience
after a solemn scene. Thus on the margin of a page of one
of the old Chester plays we read, "The boye and pigge when
the kinges are gone." Certainly this was no part of the
original scene between Herod and the three kings. So also
the quarrel between Noah and his wife is probably a late
addition to an old play. The Interludes originated, undoubt-
edly, in a sense of humor; and to John Hey wood (1497?-
1580 ?), a favorite retainer and jester at the court of Mary, is
due the credit for raising the Interlude to the distinct dramatic
form known as comedy.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 123

Heywood's Interludes were written between 1520 and 1540. His
most famous is " The Four P's," a contest of wit between a " Pardoner,
a Palmer, a Pedlar and a Poticary." The characters here strongly sug-
gest those of Chaucer. 1 Another interesting Interlude is called "The
Play of the Weather." In this Jupiter and the gods assemble to listen
to complaints about the weather and to reform abuses. Naturally every-
body wants his own kind of weather. The climax is reached by a boy
who announces that a boy's pleasure consists in two things, catch-
ing birds and throwing snowballs, and begs for the weather to be such
that he can always do both. Jupiter decides that he will do just as he
pleases about the weather, and everybody goes home satisfied.

All these early plays were written, for the most part, in a
mingling of prose and wretched doggerel, and add nothing
to our literature. Their great work was to train actors, to
keep alive the dramatic spirit, and to prepare the way for
the true drama.

3. The Artistic Period of the Drama. The artistic is the
final stage in the development of the English drama. It dif-
fers radically from the other two in that its chief purpose
is not to point a moral but to represent human life as it is.
The artistic drama may have purpose, no less than the Mir-
acle play, but the motive is always subordinate to the chief
end of representing life itself.

The first true play in English, with a regular plot, divided
into acts and scenes, is probably the comedy, " Ralph Royster
The First Doyster." It was written by Nicholas Udall, mas-
Comedy ter o f Eton, and later of Westminster school, and
was first acted by his schoolboys some time before 1556.
The story is that of a conceited fop in love with a widow, who
is already engaged to another man. The play is an adaptation
of the Miles Gloriosus, a classic comedy by Plautus, and the
English characters are more or less artificial ; but as furnish-
ing a model of a clear plot and natural dialogue, the influence
of this first comedy, with its mixture of classic and English
elements, can hardly be overestimated.

1 In fact, Hey wood w cribbed " from Chaucer's Tales in another Interlude called
"The Pardoner and the Frere."

124 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The next play, "Gammer Gurton's Needle'' (dr. 1562), is
a domestic comedy, a true bit of English realism, represent-
ing the life of the peasant class.

Gammer Gurton is patching the leather breeches of her man Hodge,
when Gib, the cat, gets into the milk pan. While Gammer chases the
cat the family needle is lost, a veritable calamity in those days. The
whole household is turned upside down, and the neighbors are dragged
into the affair. Various comical situations are brought about by Diccon,
a thieving vagabond, who tells Gammer that her neighbor, Dame Chatte,
has taken her needle, and who then hurries to tell Dame Chatte that
she is accused by Gammer of stealing a favorite rooster. Naturally
there is a terrible row when the two irate old women meet and misun-
derstand each other. Diccon also drags Doctor Rat, the curate, into
the quarrel by telling him that, if he will but creep into Dame Chatte's
cottage by a hidden way, he will find her using the stolen needle. Then
Diccon secretly warns Dame Chatte that Gammer Gurton's man Hodge
is coming to steal her chickens ; and the old woman hides in the dark
passage and cudgels the curate soundly with the door bar. All the parties
are finally brought before the justice, when Hodge suddenly and pain-
fully finds the lost needle which is all the while stuck in his leather
breeches and the scene ends uproariously for both audience and actors.

This first wholly English comedy is full of fun and coarse
humor, and is wonderfully true to the life it represents. It
was long attributed to John Still, afterwards bishop of Bath ;
but the authorship is now definitely assigned to William
Stevenson. 1 Our earliest edition of the play was printed in
1575; but a similar play called "Dyccon of Bedlam" was
licensed in 1552, twelve years before Shakespeare's birth.

To show the spirit and the metrical form of the play we
give a fragment of the boy's description of the dullard Hodge
trying to light a fire on the hearth from the cat's eyes, and
another fragment of the old drinking song at the beginning of
the second act.

At last in a dark corner two sparkes he thought he sees

Which were, indede, nought els but Gyb our cat's two eyes.

" Puffe ! " quod Hodge, thinking therby to have fyre without doubt ;

With that Gyb shut her two eyes, and so the fyre was out.

1 Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, 86.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 125

And by-and-by them opened, even as they were before ;

With that the sparkes appeared, even as they had done of yore

And, even as Hodge blew the fire, as he did thincke,

Gyb, as she felt the blast, strayght-way began to wyncke,

Tyll Hodge fell of swering, as came best to his turne,

The fier was sure bewicht, and therfore wold not burne.

At last Gyb up the stayers, among the old postes and pinnes,

And Hodge he hied him after till broke were both his shinnes,

Cursynge and swering othes, were never of his makyng,

That Gyb wold fyre the house if that shee were not taken.

Fyrste a Songe :

Backe and syde, go bare, go bare ;

Booth foote and hande, go colde ;
But, belly e, God sende thee good ale ynoughe.

Whether it be newe or olde /

I can not eate but lytle meate,

My stomacke is not good ;
But sure I thinke that I can dryncke

With him that weares a hood.
Thoughe I go bare, take ye no care,

I am nothinge a-colde,
I stuffe my skyn so full within

Of ioly good ale and olde.

Backe and syde, go bare, etc.

Our first tragedy, "Gorboduc," was written by Thomas
Sackville and Thomas Norton, and was acted in 1562, only
The First two years before the birth of Shakespeare. It is
Tragedy remarkable not only as our first tragedy, but as the
first play to be written in blank verse, the latter being most
significant, since it started the drama into the style of verse
best suited to the genius of English playwrights.

The story of " Gorboduc " is taken from the early annals of Britain and
recalls the story used by Shakespeare in King Lear. Gorboduc, king
of Britain, divides his kingdom between his sons Ferrex and Porrex.
The sons quarrel, and Porrex, the younger, slays his brother, who is
the queen's favorite. Videna, the queen, slays Porrex in revenge ; the
people rebel and slay Videna and Gorboduc ; then the nobles kill the
rebels, and in turn fall to fighting each other. The line of Brutus being

126 ENGLISH LITERATURE

extinct with the death of Gorboduc, the country falls into anarchy, with
rebels, nobles, and a Scottish invader all fighting for the right of succes-
sion. The curtain falls upon a scene of bloodshed and utter confusion.

The artistic finish of this first tragedy is marred by the
authors' evident purpose to persuade Elizabeth to marry. It
aims to show the danger to which England is exposed by the
uncertainty of succession. Otherwise the plan of the play
follows the classical rule of Seneca. There is very little action
on the stage ; bloodshed and battle are announced by a
messenger ; and the chorus, of four old men of Britain, sums
up the situation with a few moral observations at the end of
each of the first four acts.

Classical Influence upon the Drama. The revival of Latin
literature had a decided influence upon the English drama as
it developed from the Miracle plays. In the fifteenth century
English teachers, in order to increase the interest in Latin,
began to let their boys act the plays which they had read as
literature, precisely as our colleges now present Greek or
German plays at the yearly festivals. Seneca was the favor-
ite Latin author, and all his tragedies were translated into
English between 1559 and 1581. This was the exact period
in which the first English playwrights were shaping their own
ideas ; but the severe simplicity of the classical drama seemed
at first only to hamper the exuberant English spirit. To
understand this, one has only to compare a tragedy of Seneca
or of Euripides with one of Shakespeare, and see how widely
the two masters differ in methods.

In the classic play the so-called dramatic unities of time,
place, and action were strictly observed. Time and place must
Dramatic remain the same ; the play could represent a period
Unities o f on i v a f ew hours, and whatever action was in-
troduced must take place at the spot where the play began.
The characters, therefore, must remain unchanged through-
out ; there was no possibility of the child becoming a man,
or of the man's growth with changing circumstances. As the

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 127

play was within doors, all vigorous action was deemed out of
place on the stage, and battles and important events were
simply announced by a messenger. The classic drama also
drew a sharp line between tragedy and comedy, all fun being
rigorously excluded from serious representations.

The English drama, on the other hand, strove to represent
the whole sweep of life in a single play. The scene changed
rapidly; the same actors appeared now at home, now at
court, now on the battlefield ; and vigorous action filled the
stage before the eyes of the spectators. The child of one act
appeared as the man of the next, and the imagination of the
spectator was called upon to bridge the gaps from place to
place and from year to year. So the dramatist had free scope
to present all life in a single place and a single hour. More-
over, since the world is always laughing and always crying at
the same moment, tragedy and comedy were presented side by
side, as they are in life itself. As Hamlet sings, after the play
that amused the court but struck the king with deadly fear :

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play ;

For some must watch, while some must sleep :

So runs the world away.

Naturally, with these two ideals struggling to master the
English drama, two schools of writers arose. The University
Two Schools Wits, as men of learning were called, generally
of Drama upheld the classical ideal, and ridiculed the crude-
ness of the new English plays. Sackville and Norton were
of this class, and "Gorboduc " was classic in its construction.
In the "Defense of Poesie " Sidney upholds the classics and
ridicules the too ambitious scope of the English drama.
Against these were the popular playwrights, Lyly, Peele,
Greene, Marlowe, and many others, who recognized the Eng-
lish love of action and disregarded the dramatic unities in
their endeavor to present life as it is. In the end the native
drama prevailed, aided by the popular taste which had been

128 ENGLISH LITERATURE

trained by four centuries of Miracles. Our first plays, espe-
cially of the romantic type, were extremely crude and often
led to ridiculously extravagant scenes ; and here is where the
classic drama exercised an immense influence for good, by in-
sisting upon beauty of form and definiteness of structure at
a time when the tendency was to satisfy a taste for stage
spectacles without regard to either.

In the year 1574 a royal permit to Lord Leicester's actors

allowed them " to give plays anywhere throughout our realm

of England," and this must be regarded as the

The Theater . . . r . . , ^ .

beginning of the regular drama. Two years later
the first playhouse, known as "The Theater," was built for
these actors by James Burbage in Finsbury Fields, just north
of London. It was in this theater that Shakespeare proba-
bly found employment when he first came to the city. The
success of this venture was immediate, and the next thirty
years saw a score of theatrical companies, at least seven reg-
ular theaters, and a dozen or more inn yards permanently
fitted for the giving of plays, all established in the city
and its immediate suburbs. The growth seems all the more
remarkable when we remember that the London of those
days would now be considered a small city, having (in 1600)
only about a hundred thousand inhabitants.

A Dutch traveler, Johannes de Witt, who visited London
in 1596, has given us the only contemporary drawing we
possess of the interior of one of these theaters. They were
built of stone and wood, round or octagonal in shape, and
without a roof, being simply an inclosed courtyard. At one
side was the stage, and before it on the bare ground, or pit,
stood that large part of the audience who could afford to pay
only an admission fee. The players and these groundlings
were exposed to the weather ; those that paid for seats were
in galleries sheltered by a narrow porch-roof projecting in-
wards from the encircling walls ; while the young nobles and
gallants, who came to be seen and who could afford the extra

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 129

fee, took seats on the stage itself, and smoked and chaffed
the actors and threw nuts at the groundlings. 1 The whole
idea of these first theaters, according to De Witt, was like
that of the Roman amphitheater ; and the resemblance was
heightened by the fact that, when no play was on the boards,
the stage might be taken away and the pit given over to bull
and bear baiting.

In all these theaters, probably, the stage consisted of a
bare platform, with a curtain or " traverse " across the middle,
separating the front from the rear stage. On the
latter unexpected scenes or characters were "dis-
covered " by simply drawing the curtain aside. At first little
or no scenery was used, a gilded sign being the only announce-
ment of a change of scene ; and this very lack of scenery led
to better acting, since the actors must be realistic enough
to make the audience forget its shabby surroundings. 2 By
Shakespeare's day, however, painted scenery had appeared,
first at university plays, and then in the regular theaters. 3
In all our first plays female parts were taken by boy actors,
who evidently were more distressing than the crude scenery,
for contemporary literature has many satirical references to
their acting, 4 and even the tolerant Shakespeare writes :

Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.

1 That these gallants were an unmitigated nuisance, and had frequently to be
silenced by the common people who came to enjoy the play, seems certain. Dekker*s
Gull's Hornbook (1609) has an interesting chapter on " How a Gallant should behave
Himself in a Playhouse."

2 The first actors were classed with thieves and vagabonds ; but they speedily raised
their profession to an art and won a reputation which extended far abroad. Thus a con-
temporary, Fynes Moryson, writes in his Itinerary : " So I remember that when some
of our cast despised stage players came . . . into Germany and played at Franckford . . .
having nether a complete number of actors, nor any good aparell, nor any ornament of
the stage, yet the Germans, not understanding a worde they sayde, both men and wemen,
flocked wonderfully to see their gesture and action."

3 Schelling, Elizabethan Drama.

4 Baker, in his Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, pp. 57-62, takes a differ-
ent view, and shows how carefully many of the boy actors were trained. It would require,
however, a vigorous use of the imagination to be satisfied with a boy's presentation of
Portia, Juliet, Cordelia, Rosalind, or any other of Shakespeare's wonderful women.

130 ENGLISH LITERATURE

However that may be, the stage was deemed unfit for
women, and actresses were unknown in England until after
the Restoration.

Shakespeare* s Predecessors in the Drama. The English
drama as it developed from the Miracle plays has an inter-
esting history. It began with schoolmasters, like Udall, who
translated and adapted Latin plays for their boys to act, and
who were naturally governed by classic ideals. It was con-
tinued by the choir masters of St. Paul and the Royal and
the Queen's Chapel, whose companies of choir-boy actors
were famous in London and rivaled the players of the regu-
lar theaters. 1 These choir masters were our first stage man-
agers. They began with masques and interludes and the dra-
matic presentation of classic myths modeled after the Italians ;
but some of them, like Richard Edwards (choir master of the
Queen's Chapel in 1 561), soon added farces from English coun-
try life and dramatized some of Chaucer's stones. Finally, the
regular playwrights, Kyd, Nash, Lyly, Peele, Greene, and Mar-
lowe, brought the English drama to the point where Shake-
speare began to experiment upon it.

Each of these playwrights added or emphasized some
essential element in the drama, which appeared later in the
work of Shakespeare. Thus John Lyly (1554 ?-i6o6), who is
now known chiefly as having developed the pernicious liter-
ary style called euphuism, 2 is one of the most influential of
the early dramatists. His court comedies are remarkable for
their witty dialogue and for being our first plays to aim

1 These choir masters had royal permits to take boys of good voice, wherever found,
and train them as singers and actors. The boys were taken from their parents and were
often half starved and most brutally treated. The abuse of this unnatural privilege led
to the final withdrawal of all such permits.

2 So called from Euphues, the hero of Lyly's two prose works, Euphues, the Anatomy
of Wit (1579), and Euphues and his England (1580). The style is affected and over-
elegant, abounds in odd conceits, and uses hopelessly involved sentences. It is found
in nearly all Elizabethan prose writers, and partially accounts for their general tendency
to artificiality. Shakespeare satirizes euphuism in the character of Don Adriano of
Love 's Labour 's Lost, but is himself tiresomely euphuistic at times, especially in his early
or " Lylian " comedies. Lyly, by the way, did not invent the style, but did more than
any other to diffuse it.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 131

definitely at unity and artistic finish. Thomas Kyd's Spanish
Tragedy (c. 1585) first gives us the drama, or rather the
melodrama, of passion, copied by Marlowe and Shakespeare.
This was the most popular of the early Elizabethan plays ;
it was revised again and again, and Ben Jonson is said to
have written one version and to have acted the chief part of
Hieronimo. 1 And Robert Greene (15 58?- 15 92) plays the
chief part in the early development of romantic comedy, and
gives us some excellent scenes of English country life in plays
like Friar Bacon and Friar Bitngay.

Even a brief glance at the life and work of these first
playwrights shows three noteworthy things which have a
f bearing on Shakespeare's career: (i) These men
the Early were usually actors as well as dramatists. They
Dramatists knew ^ e stage and the audience, and in writing
their plays they remembered not only the actor's part but also
the audience's love for stories and brave spectacles. "Will
it act well, and will it please our audience," were the questions
of chief concern to our early dramatists. (2) Their training
began as actors ; then they revised old plays, and finally be-
came independent writers. In this their work shows an exact
parallel with that of Shakespeare. (3) They often worked
together, probably as Shakespeare worked with Marlowe and
Fletcher, either in revising old plays or in creating new ones.
They had a common store of material from which they derived
their stories and characters, hence their frequent repetition of
names ; and they often produced two or more plays on the
same subject. Much of Shakespeare's work depends, as we
shall see, on previous plays ; and even his Hamlet uses the
material of an earlier play of the same name, probably by Kyd,
which was well known to the London stage in 1589, some
twelve years before Shakespeare's great work was written.

All these things are significant, if we are to understand
the Elizabethan drama and the man who brought it to

1 See Schelling, I, 211.

132 ENGLISH LITERATURE

perfection. Shakespeare was not simply a great genius; he
was also a great worker, and he developed in exactly the same
way as did all his fellow craftsmen. And, contrary to the
prevalent opinion, the Elizabethan drama is not a Minerva-
like creation, springing full grown from the head of one man ;
it is rather an orderly though rapid development, in which
many men bore a part. All our early dramatists are worthy
of study for the part they played in the development of the
drama ; but we can here consider only one, the most typical of
all, whose best work is often ranked with that of Shakespeare.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593)

Marlowe is one of the most suggestive figures of the Eng-
lish Renaissance, and the greatest of Shakespeare's prede-
cessors. The glory of the Elizabethan drama dates from his
Tamburlaine (1587), wherein the whole restless temper of the
age finds expression :

Nature, that framed us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest.

Tamburlaine, Pt. I, II, vii.

Life. Marlowe was born in Canterbury, only a few months before
Shakespeare. He was the son of a poor shoemaker, but through the
kindness of a patron was educated at the town grammar school and
then at Cambridge. When he came to London (c. 1584), his soul
was surging with the ideals of the Renaissance, which later found
expression in Faustus, the scholar longing for unlimited knowledge
and for power to grasp the universe. Unfortunately, Marlowe had
also the unbridled passions which mark the early, or Pagan Renais-
sance, as Taine calls it, and the conceit of a young man just enter-
ing the realms of knowledge. He became an actor and lived in a

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 133

low-tavern atmosphere of excess and wretchedness. In 1587, when
but twenty-three years old, he produced Tamburlaine, which brought
him instant recognition. Thereafter, notwithstanding his wretched
life, he holds steadily to a high literary purpose. Though all his
plays abound in violence, no doubt reflecting many of the violent
scenes in which he lived, he develops his " mighty line " and depicts
great scenes in magnificent bursts of poetry, such as the stage had
never heard before. In five years, while Shakespeare was serving
his apprenticeship, Marlowe produced all his great work. Then he
was stabbed in a drunken brawl and died wretchedly, as he had lived.
The Epilogue of Faustus might be written across his tombstone :

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

That sometime grew within this learned man.

Marlowe's Works. In addition to the poem "Hero and
Leander," to which we have referred, 1 Marlowe is famous
for four dramas, now known as the Marlowesque or one-man
type of tragedy, each revolving about one central personality
who is consumed by the lust of power. The first of these is
Tamburlaine, the story of Timur the Tartar. Timur begins
as a shepherd chief, who first rebels and then triumphs over
the Persian king. Intoxicated by his success, Timur rushes
like a tempest over the whole East. Seated on his chariot
drawn by captive kings, with a caged emperor before him, he
boasts of his power which overrides all things. Then, afflicted
with disease, he raves against the gods an.d would overthrow
them as he has overthrown earthly rulers. Tamburlaine is
an epic rather than a drama ; but one can understand its
instant success with a people only half civilized, fond of mili-
tary glory, and the instant adoption of its "mighty line" as
the instrument of all dramatic expression.

Faustus, the second play, is one of the best of Marlowe's
works. 2 The story is that of a scholar who longs for infinite

1 See p. 114.

2 In 1587 the first history of Johann Faust, a half -legendary German necromancer,
appeared in Frankfort. Where Marlowe found the story is unknown ; but he used it, as
Goethe did two centuries later, for the basis of his great tragedy.

134 ENGLISH LITERATURE

knowledge, and who turns from Theology, Philosophy, Medi-
cine, and Law, the four sciences of the time, to the study of

magic, much as a child might turn from jewels to
Faustus . ,

tinsel and colored paper. In order to learn magic

he sells himself to the devil, on condition that he shall have
twenty-four years of absolute power and knowledge. The play
is the story of those twenty-four years. Like Tamburlaine,
it is lacking in dramatic construction, 1 but has an unusual
number of passages of rare poetic beauty. Milton's Satan sug-
gests strongly that the author of Paradise Lost had access to
Faustus and used it, as he may also have used Tamburlaine,
for the magnificent panorama displayed by Satan in Paradise
Regained. For instance, more than fifty years before Milton's
hero says, "Which way I turn is hell, myself am hell," Mar-
lowe had written :

Faust. How comes it then that thou art out of hell ?
Mephisto. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place ; for where we are is hell,
And where hell is there must we ever be.

Marlowe's third play is The Jew of Malta, a study of the
lust for wealth, which centers about Barabas, a terrible old
money lender, strongly suggestive of Shylock in The Merchant
of Venice. The first part of the play is well constructed,
showing a decided advance, but the last part is an accumu-
lation of melodramatic horrors. Barabas is checked in his
murderous career by falling into a boiling caldron which he
had prepared for another, and dies blaspheming, his only
regret being that he has not done more evil in his life.

Marlowe's last play is Edward //, a tragic study of a king's
weakness and misery. In point of style and dramatic con-
struction, it is by far the best of Marlowe's plays, and is a
worthy predecessor of Shakespeare's historical drama.

1 We must remember, however, that our present version of Faustus is very much
mutilated, and does not preserve the play as Marlowe wrote it.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 135

Marlowe is the only dramatist of the time who is ever
compared with Shakespeare. 1 When we remember that he
Marlowe and died at twenty-nine, probably before Shakespeare
Shakespeare na d produced a single great play, we must wonder
what he might have done had he outlived his wretched youth
and become a man. Here and there his work is remarkable
for its splendid imagination, for the stateliness of its verse,
and for its rare bits of poetic beauty ; but in dramatic instinct,
in wide knowledge of human life, in humor, in delineation of
woman's character, in the delicate fancy which presents an
Ariel as perfectly as a Macbeth, in a word, in all that makes
a dramatic genius, Shakespeare stands alone. Marlowe simply
prepared the way for the master who was to follow.

Variety of the Early Drama. The thirty years between
our first regular English plays and Shakespeare's first com-
edy 2 witnessed a development of the drama which astonishes
us both by its rapidity and variety. We shall better appreci-
ate Shakespeare's work if we glance for a moment at the
plays that preceded him, and note how he covers the whole
field and writes almost every form and variety of the drama
known to his age.

First in importance, or at least in popular interest, are the
new Chronicle plays, founded upon historical events and char-
Types of acters. They show the strong national spirit of the
Drama Elizabethan Age, and their popularity was due

largely to the fact that audiences came to the theaters
partly to gratify their awakened national spirit and to get
their first knowledge of national history. Some of the Moral-
ities, like Bayle's King Johan (1538), are crude Chronicle
plays, and the early Robin Hood plays and the first trag-
edy, Gorboduc, show the same awakened popular interest in

1 The two dramatists may have worked together in such doubtful plays as Richard
III, the hero of which is like Timur in an English dress, and Titus Androniciis, with
its violence and horror. In many strong scenes in Shakespeare's works Marlowe's influ-
ence is manifest.

2 Gammer Garten's Needle appeared c. 1562 ; Lovers Labour' 1 * Lost, c. 1591.

136 ENGLISH LITERATURE

English history. During the reign of Elizabeth the popular
Chronicle plays increased till we have the record of over two
hundred and twenty, half of which are still extant, dealing
with almost every important character, real or legendary, in
English history. Of Shakespeare's thirty-seven dramas, ten
are true Chronicle plays of English kings ; three are from
the legendary annals of Britain ; and three more are from the
history of other nations.

Other types of the early drama are less clearly defined,
but we may sum them up under a few general heads : (i) The
Domestic Drama began with crude home scenes introduced
into the Miracles and developed in a score of different ways,
from the coarse humor of Gammer Gurton 's Needle to the
Comedy of Manners of Jonson and the later dramatists.
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and Merry Wives of
Windsor belong to this class. (2) The so-called Court Com-
edy is the opposite of the former in that it represented a dif-
ferent kind of life and was intended for a different audience.
It was marked by elaborate dialogue, by jests, retorts, and
endless plays on words, rather than by action. It was made
popular by Lyly's success, and was imitated in Shakespeare's
first or " Lylian "comedies, such as Love 's Labour 's Lost, and
the complicated Two Gentlemen of Verona. (3) Romantic
Comedy and Romantic Tragedy suggest the most artistic and
finished types of the drama, which were experimented upon
by Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, and were brought to perfec-
tion in The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and The
Tempest. (4) In addition to the above types were several
others, the Classical Plays, modeled upon Seneca and fa-
vored by cultivated audiences ; the Melodrama, favorite of
the groundlings, which depended not on plot or characters
but upon a variety of striking scenes and incidents ; and the
Tragedy of Blood, always more or less melodramatic, like
Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, which grew more blood-and-thundery
in Marlowe and reached a climax of horrors in Shakespeare's

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 137

Titus Andronicus. It is noteworthy that Hamlet, Lear, and
Macbeth all belong to this class, but the developed genius of
the author raised them to a height such as the Tragedy of
Blood had never known before.

These varied types are quite enough to show with what
doubtful and unguided experiments our first dramatists were
engaged, like men first setting out in rafts and dugouts on
an unknown sea. They are the more interesting when we
remember that Shakespeare tried them all ; that he is the
only dramatist whose plays cover the whole range of the
drama from its beginning to its decline. From the stage
spectacle he developed the drama of human life ; and instead
of the doggerel and bombast of our first plays he gives us the
poetry of Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream.
In a word, Shakespeare brought order out of dramatic chaos.
In a few short years he raised the drama from a blundering
experiment to a perfection of form and expression which has
never since been rivaled.

IV. SHAKESPEARE

One who reads a few of Shakespeare's great plays and
then the meager story of his life is generally filled with a
The Wonder of vague wonder. Here is an unknown country boy,
Shakespeare p Oor an d poorly educated according to the stand-
ards of his age, who arrives at the great city of London and
goes to work at odd jobs in a theater. In a year or two he is
associated with scholars and dramatists, the masters of their
age, writing plays of kings and clowns, of gentlemen and
heroes and noble women, all of whose lives he seems to know
by intimate association. In a few years more he leads all
that brilliant group of poets and dramatists who have given
undying glory to the Age of Elizabeth. Play after play runs
from his pen, mighty dramas of human life and character
following one another so rapidly that good work seems im-
possible ; yet they stand the test of time, and their poetry is

138

ENGLISH LITERATURE

still unrivaled in any language. For all this great work the
author apparently cares little, since he makes no attempt to
collect or preserve his writings. A thousand scholars have
ever since been busy collecting, identifying, classifying the
works which this magnificent workman tossed aside so care-

lessly when he aban-
doned the drama and
retired to his native
village. He has a mar-
velously imaginative
and creative mind ; but
he invents few, if any,
new plots or stories.
He simply takes an old
play or an old poem,
makes it over quickly,
and lo ! this old familiar
material glows with the
deepest thoughts and
the tenderest feelings
that ennoble our hu-
manity ; and each new
generation of men finds
it more wonderful than the last. How did he do it ? That is
still an unanswered question and the source of our wonder.

There are, in general, two theories to account for Shake-
speare. The romantic school of writers have always held

that m ^ m " a11 came f rom within"; that his gen-

i us W as his sufficient guide ; and that to the over-
mastering power of his genius alone we owe all his great
works. Practical, unimaginative men, on the other hand,
assert that in Shakespeare "all came from without," and that
we must study his environment rather than his genius, if we
are to understand him. He lived in a play-loving age ; he
studied the crowds, gave them what they wanted, and simply

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Genius or
Training

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 139

reflected their own thoughts and feelings. In reflecting the
English crowd about him he unconsciously reflected all crowds,
which are alike in all ages ; hence his continued popularity.
And in being guided by public sentiment he was not singular,
but followed the plain path that every good dramatist has
always followed to success.

Probably the truth of the matter is to be found somewhere
between these two extremes. Of his great genius there can
be no question ; but there are other things to consider. As
we have already noticed, Shakespeare was trained, like his
fellow workmen, first as an actor, second as a reviser of old
plays, and last as an independent dramatist. He worked with
other playwrights and learned their secret. Like them, he
studied and followed the public taste, and his work indicates
at least three stages, from his first somewhat crude experi-
ments to his finished masterpieces. So it would seem that in
Shakespeare we have the result of hard work and of orderly
human development, quite as much as of transcendent genius.

Life (1564-1616). Two outward influences were powerful in
developing the genius of Shakespeare, the little village of Strat-
ford, center of the most beautiful and romantic district in rural
England, and the great city of London, the center of the world's
political activity. In one he learned to know the natural man in his
natural environment ; in the other, the social, the artificial man in
the most unnatural of surroundings.

From the register of the little parish church at Stratford-on-Avon
we learn that William Shakespeare was baptized there on the twenty-
sixth of April, 1564 (old style). As it was customary to baptize
children on the third day after birth, the twenty-third of April
(May 3, according to our present calendar) is generally accepted as
the poet's birthday.

His father, John Shakespeare, was a farmer's son from the neigh-
boring village of Snitterfield, who came to Stratford about 1551, and
began to prosper as a trader in corn, meat, leather, and other agri-
cultural products. His mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a
prosperous farmer, descended from an old Warwickshire family of

140 ENGLISH LITERATURE

mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman blood. In 1559 this married couple
sold a piece of land, and the document is signed, " The marke + of
John Shacksper. The marke + of Mary Shacksper " ; and from this
it has been generally inferred that, like the vast majority of their
countrymen, neither of the poet's parents could read or write. This
was probably true of his mother ; but the evidence from Stratford
documents now indicates that his father could write, and that he
also audited the town accounts; though in attesting documents he
sometimes made a mark, leaving his name to be rilled in by the one
who drew up the document.

Of Shakespeare's education we know little, except that for a few
years he probably attended the endowed grammar school at Stratford,
where he picked up the " small Latin and less Greek " to which his
learned friend Ben Jonson refers. His real teachers, meanwhile,
were the men and women and the natural influences which sur-
rounded him. Stratford is a charming little village in beautiful War-
wickshire, and near at hand were the Forest of Arden, the old castles
of Warwick and Kenilworth, and the old Roman camps and military
roads, to appeal powerfully to the boy's lively imagination. Every
phase of the natural beauty of this exquisite region is reflected in
Shakespeare's poetry ; just as his characters reflect the nobility and
the littleness, the gossip, vices, emotions, prejudices, and traditions
of the people about him.

I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news ;
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,
Told of a many thousand warlike French
That were embattailed and ranked in Kent. 1

Such passages suggest not only genius but also a keen, sympathetic
observer, whose eyes see every significant detail. So with the nurse
in Romeo and Juliet, whose endless gossip and vulgarity cannot quite
hide a kind heart. She is simply the reflection of some forgotten
nurse with whom Shakespeare had talked by the wayside.

Not only the gossip but also the dreams, the unconscious poetry
that sleeps in the heart of the common people, appeal tremendously

l King John, IV, 2.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 141

to Shakespeare's imagination and are reflected in his greatest plays.
Othello tries to tell a curt soldier's story of his love ; but the account
is like a bit of Mandeville's famous travels, teeming with the fancies
that filled men's heads when the great round world was first brought
to their attention by daring explorers. Here is a bit of folklore,
touched by Shakespeare's exquisite fancy, which shows what one boy
listened to before the fire at Halloween :

She comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep ;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,

Her chariot is an empty hazel nut
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love ;

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream. 1

So with Shakespeare's education at the hands of Nature, which
came from keeping his heart as well as his eyes wide open to the
beauty of the world. He speaks of a horse, and we know the fine
points of a thoroughbred ; he mentions the duke's hounds, and we
hear them clamoring on a fox trail, their voices matched like bells
in the frosty air ; he stops for an instant in the sweep of a tragedy
to note a flower, a star, a moonlit bank, a hilltop touched by the
sunrise, and instantly we know what our own hearts felt but could
not quite express when we saw the same thing. Because he notes
and remembers every significant thing in the changing panorama of
earth and sky, no other writer has ever approached him in the per-
fect natural setting of his characters.

1 Queen Mab, in Romeo and Juliet.

142

ENGLISH LITERATURE

When Shakespeare was about fourteen years old his father lost
his little property and fell into debt, and the boy probably left
school to help support the family of younger children. What occu-
pation he followed for the next eight years is a matter of conjecture.
From evidence found in his plays, it is alleged with some show of
authority that he was a country schoolmaster and a lawyer's clerk,
the character of Holof ernes, in Love's Labour's Lost, being the war-
rant for one, and Shakespeare's knowledge of law terms for the
other. But if we take such evidence, then Shakespeare must have
been a botanist, because of his knowledge of wild flowers ; a sailor,

ANNE HATHAWAY COTTAGE

because he knows the ropes ; a courtier, because of his extraordinary
facility in quips and compliments and courtly language ; a clown,
because none other is so dull and foolish ; a king, because Richard
and Henry are true to life; a woman, because he has sounded the
depths of a woman's feelings ; and surely a Roman, because in Cori-
olanus and Julius Ccesar he has shown us the Roman spirit better
than have the Roman writers themselves. He was everything, in his
imagination, and it is impossible from a study of his scenes and
characters to form a definite opinion as to his early occupation.

In 1582 Shakespeare was married to Anne Hathaway, the daugh-
ter of a peasant family of Shottery, who was eight years older than
her boy husband. From numerous sarcastic references to marriage
made by the characters in his plays, and from the fact that he soon

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 143

left his wife and family and went to London, it is generally alleged
that the marriage was a hasty and unhappy one ; but here again the
evidence is entirely untrustworthy. In many Miracles as well as in
later plays it was customary to depict the seamy side of domestic
life for the amusement of the crowd; and Shakespeare may have
followed the public taste in this as he did in other things. The ref-
erences to love and home and quiet joys in Shakespeare's plays are
enough, if we take such evidence, to establish firmly the opposite
supposition, that his love was a very happy one. And the fact
that, after his enormous success in London, he retired to Strat-
ford to live quietly with his wife and daughters, tends to the same
conclusion.

About the year 1587 Shakespeare left his family and went to
London and joined himself to Burbage's company of players. A per-
sistent tradition says that he had incurred the anger of Sir Thomas
Lucy, first by poaching deer in that nobleman's park, and then,
when haled before a magistrate, by writing a scurrilous ballad about
Sir Thomas, which so aroused the old gentleman's ire that Shake-
speare was obliged to flee the country. An old record 1 says that
the poet "was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison
and rabbits," the unluckiness probably consisting in getting caught
himself, and not in any lack of luck in catching the rabbits. The
ridicule heaped upon the Lucy family in Henry IV and the Merry
Wives of Windsor gives some weight to this tradition. Nicholas
Rowe, who published the first life of Shakespeare, 2 is the authority
for this story ; but there is some reason to doubt whether, at the time
when Shakespeare is said to have poached in the deer park of Sir
Thomas Lucy at Charlescote, there were any deer or park at the
place referred to. The subject is worthy of some scant attention, if
only to show how worthless is the attempt to construct out of rumor
the story of a great life which, fortunately perhaps, had no con-
temporary biographer.

Of his life in London from 1587 to 1611, the period of his great-
est literary activity, we know nothing definitely. We can judge only
from his plays, and from these it is evident that he entered into the
stirring life of England's capital with the same perfect sympathy and
understanding that marked him among the plain people of his native
Warwickshire. The first authentic reference to him is in 1592, when

1 By Archdeacon Davies, in the seventeenth century.

2 In 1709, nearly a century after the poet's death.

144 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Greene's l bitter attack appeared, showing plainly that Shakespeare
had in five years assumed an important position among playwrights.
Then appeared the apology of the publishers of Greene's pamphlet,
with their tribute to the poet's sterling character, and occasional lit-
erary references which show that he was known among his fellows
as "the gentle Shakespeare." Ben Jonson says of him: "I loved
the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as
any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature." To
judge from only three of his earliest plays 2 it would seem reasonably
evident that in the first five years of his London life he had gained
entrance to the society of gentlemen and scholars, had caught their
characteristic mannerisms and expressions, and so was ready by
knowledge and observation as well as by genius to weave into his
dramas the whole stirring life of the English people. The plays
themselves, with the testimony of contemporaries and his business
success, are strong evidence against the tradition that his life in
London was wild and dissolute, like that of the typical actor and
playwright of his time.

Shakespeare's first work may well have been that of a general
helper, an odd-job man, about the theater ; but he soon became an
actor, and the records of the old London theaters show that in the
next ten years he gained a prominent place, though there is little
reason to believe that he was counted among the " stars." Within
two years he was at work on plays, and his course here was exactly
like that of other playwrights of his time. He worked with other
men, and he revised old plays before writing his own, and so gained
a practical knowledge of his art. Henry VI (c. 1590-1591) is an
example of this tinkering work, in which, however, his native power
is unmistakably manifest. The three parts of Henry VI (and Richard
III, which belongs with them) are a succession of scenes from
English Chronicle history strung together very loosely ; and only in
the last is there any definite attempt at unity. That he soon fell
under Marlowe's influence is evident from the atrocities and bom-
bast of Titus Androni&us and Richard III. The former may have
been written by both playwrights in collaboration, or may be one of

1 Robert Greene, one of the popular playwrights of the time, who attacked Shake-
speare in a pamphlet called "A Groat's Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repent-
ance." The pamphlet, aside from its jealousy of Shakespeare, is a sad picture of a man of
genius dying of dissipation, and contains a warning to other playwrights of the time,
whose lives were apparently almost as bad as that of Greene.

2 Love's Labour 's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

145

Marlowe's horrors left unfinished by his early death and brought to
an end by Shakespeare. He soon broke away from this apprentice
work, and then appeared in rapid succession Love 's Labour 's Lost,
Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, the first English Chron-
icle plays, 1 A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, and Romeo and Juliet.
This order is more or less conjectural ; but the wide variety of these
plays, as well as their unevenness and frequent crudities, marks
the first or experimental stage of Shakespeare's work. It is as if the

BIRTHPLACE OF SHAKESPEARE

author were trying his power, or more likely trying the temper of his
audience. For it must be remembered that to please his audience
was probably the ruling motive of Shakespeare, as of the other early
dramatists, during the most vigorous and prolific period of his career.
Shakespeare's poems, rather than his dramatic work, mark the
beginning of his success. " Venus and Adonis " became immensely

1 Henry VI, Richard III, Richard 77, King John. Prior to 1588 only three true
Chronicle plays are known to have been acted. The defeat of the Armada in that year
led to an outburst of national feeling which found one outlet in the theaters, and in the
next ten years over eighty Chronicle plays appeared. Of these Shakespeare furnished
nine or ten. It was the great popular success of Henry VI, a revision of an old play, in
1592 that probably led to Greene's jealous attack.

146 ENGLISH LITERATURE

popular in London, and its dedication to the Earl of Southampton
brought, according to tradition, a substantial money gift, which may
have laid the foundation for Shakespeare's business success. He
appears to have shrewdly invested his money, and soon became
part owner of the Globe and Blackfriars theaters, in which his plays
were presented by his own companies. His success and popularity
grew amazingly. Within a decade of his unnoticed arrival in London
he was one of the most famous actors and literary men in England.

Following his experimental work there came a succession of won-
derful plays, Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
Julius Ccesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony and
Cleopatra, The great tragedies of this period are associated with a
period of gloom and sorrow in the poet's life ; but of its cause we
have no knowledge. It may have been this unknown sorrow which
turned his thoughts back to Stratford and caused, apparently, a dis-
satisfaction with his work and profession ; but the latter is generally
attributed to other causes. Actors and playwrights were in his day
generally looked upon with suspicion or contempt ; and Shakespeare,
even in the midst of success, seems to have looked forward to the
time when he could retire to Stratford to live the life of a farmer
and country gentleman. His own and his father's families were first
released from debt ; then, in 1597, he bought New Place, the finest
house in Stratford, and soon added a tract of farming land to com-
plete his estate. His profession may have prevented his acquiring
the title of "gentleman," or he may have only followed a custom of
the time x when he applied for and obtained a coat of arms for his
father, and so indirectly secured the title by inheritance. His home
visits grew more and more frequent till, about the year 1 6 1 1 , he left
London and retired permanently to Stratford.

Though still in the prime of life, Shakespeare soon abandoned his
dramatic work for the comfortable life of a country gentleman. Of
his later plays, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, and Pericles
show a decided falling off from his previous work, and indicate
another period of experimentation; this time not to test his own
powers but to catch the fickle humor of the public. As is usually
the case with a theater-going people, they soon turned from serious
drama to sentimental or more questionable spectacles ; and with
Fletcher, who worked with Shakespeare and succeeded him as the

1 See Lee's Life of William Shakespeare, pp. 188-196.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

first playwright of London, the decline of the drama had already
begun. In 1609, however, occurred an event which gave Shake-
speare his chance for a farewell to the public. An English ship
disappeared, and all on board were given up for lost. A year later
the sailors returned home, and their arrival created intense excite-
ment. They had been wrecked on the unknown Bermudas, and

TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON

had lived there for ten months, terrified by mysterious noises which
they thought came from spirits and devils. Five different accounts
of this fascinating shipwreck were published, and the Bermudas
became known as the " lie of Divels." Shakespeare took this story
which caused as much popular interest as that later shipwreck
which gave us Robinson Crusoe and wove it into The Tempest.
In the same year (1611) he probably sold his interest in the
Globe and Blackfriars theaters, and his dramatic work was ended.

148 ENGLISH LITERATURE

A few plays were probably left unfinished 1 and were turned over
to Fletcher and other dramatists.

That Shakespeare thought little of his success and had no idea
that his dramas were the greatest that the world ever produced
seems evident from the fact that he made no attempt to collect or
publish his works, or even to save his manuscripts, which were care-
lessly left to stage managers of the theaters, and so found their way
ultimately to the ragman. After a few years of quiet life, of which
we have less record than of hundreds of simple country gentlemen
of the time, Shakespeare died on the probable anniversary of his
birth, April 23, 1616. He was given a tomb in the chancel of the
parish church, not because of his preeminence in literature, but
because of his interest in the affairs of a country village. And in the
sad irony of fate, the broad stone that covered his tomb now an
object of veneration to the thousands that yearly visit the little
church was inscribed as follows :

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed heare ;
Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

This wretched doggerel, over the world's greatest poet, was intended,
no doubt, as a warning to some stupid sexton, lest he should empty
the grave and give the honored place to some amiable gentleman
who had given more tithes to the parish.

Works of Shakespeare. At the time of Shakespeare's death
twenty-one plays existed in manuscripts in the various theaters.
A few others had already been printed in quarto form, and
the latter are the only publications that could possibly have
met with the poet's own approval. More probably they were
taken down in shorthand by some listener at the play and then
"pirated" by some publisher for his own profit. The first
printed collection of his plays, now called the First Folio
(1623), was made by two actors, Heming and Condell, who
asserted that they had access to the papers of the poet and
had made a perfect edition, " in order to keep the memory of
so worthy a friend and fellow alive." This contains thirty-six

1 Like Henry VIII, and possibly the lost Cardenio.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 149

of the thirty-seven plays generally attributed to Shakespeare,
Pericles being omitted. This celebrated First Folio was printed
from playhouse manuscripts and from printed quartos contain-
ing many notes and changes by individual actors and stage
managers. Moreover, it was full of typographical errors, though
the editors alleged great care and accuracy ; and so, though it
is the only authoritative edition we have, it is of little value
in determining the dates, or the classification of the plays as
they existed in Shakespeare's mind.

Notwithstanding this uncertainty, a careful reading of the
plays and poems leaves us with an impression of four differ-
ent periods of work, probably corresponding with
Four Periods , , . r J , , vr %,

the growth and experience of the poet s life. These

are : (i) a period of early experimentation. It is marked by
youthfulness and exuberance of imagination, by extravagance
of language, and by the frequent use of rimed couplets with
his blank verse. The period dates from his arrival in London
to 1595. Typical works of this first period are his early
poems, Love's Labour's Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and
Richard III. (2) A period of rapid growth and development,
from 1595 to 1600. Such plays as The Merchant of Venice,
Midsummer Night's Dream, As You, Like It, and Henry IV,
all written in this period, show more careful and artistic
work, better plots, and a marked increase in knowledge of
human nature. (3) A period of gloom and depression, from
1600 to 1607, which marks the full maturity of his powers.
What caused this evident sadness is unknown ; but it is gen-
erally attributed to some personal experience, coupled with
the political misfortunes of his friends, Essex and Southamp-
ton. The Sonnets with their note of personal disappointment,
Twelfth Night, which is Shakespeare's "farewell to mirth,"
and his great tragedies, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and
Julius Ccesar, belong to this period. (4) A period of restored
serenity, of calm after storm, which marked the last years of
the poet's literary work. The Winter's Tale and The Tempest

T50 ENGLISH LITERATURE

are the best of his later plays ; but they all show a falling off
from his previous work, and indicate a second period of experi-
mentation with the taste of a fickle public.

To read in succession four plays, taking a typical work
from each of the above periods, is one of the very best ways
of getting quickly at the real life and mind of Shakespeare.
Following is a complete list with the approximate dates of his
works, classified according to the above four periods.

FIRST PERIOD, EARLY EXPERIMENT. Venus and Adonis, Rape of
Lucrece, 1594 ; Titus Andronicus, Henry VI (three parts), 1590-1591 ;
Lovers Labour ^s Lost, 1590; Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of
Verona, 1591-1592 ; Richard III, 1593 ; Richard II, King John, 1594-

1595-

SECOND PERIOD, DEVELOPMENT. Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer
Night's Dream, 1595 ; Merchant of Venice, Henry IV (first part), 1596 ;
Henry IV (second part), Merry Wives of Windsor, 1597 ; Much Ado
About Nothing, 1598 ; As You Like It, Henry V, 1599.

THIRD PERIOD, MATURITY AND GLOOM. Sonnets (1600- ?), Twelfth
Night, 1600 ; Taming of the Shrew, Julius Casar, Hamlet, Troilus and
Cressida, 1601-1602 ; All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Meas-
ure, 1603; Othello, 1604; King Lear, 1605; Macbeth, 1606; Antony
and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, 1607.

FOURTH PERIOD, LATE EXPERIMENT. Coriolanus, Pericles, 1608 ;
Cymbeline, 1609; Winter's Tale, 1610-1611; The Tempest, 1611;
Henry VIII (unfinished).

Classification according to Source. In history, legend, and
story, Shakespeare found the material for nearly all his dramas ;
and so they are often divided into three classes, called histor-
ical plays, like Richard III and Henry V; legendary or partly
historical plays, like Macbeth, King Lear, and Julius Ccesar ;
and fictional plays, like Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant
of Venice. Shakespeare invented few, if any, of the plots or
stories upon which his dramas are founded, but borrowed
them freely, after the custom of his age, wherever he found
them. For his legendary and historical material he depended
largely on Ho Unshed 's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and
Ireland, and on North's translation of Plutarch's famous Lives.

Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

PORTIA
After the portrait by John Everett Millais

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 151

A full half of his plays are fictional, and in these he used the
most popular romances of the day, seeming to depend most
on the Italian story-tellers. Only two or three of his plots, as
in Love's Labour 's Lost and Merry Wives of Windsor - , are
said to be original, and even these are doubtful. Occasionally
Shakespeare made over an older play, as in Henry VI, Comedy
of Errors, and Hamlet ; and in one instance at least he seized
upon an incident of shipwreck in which London was greatly
interested, and made out of it the original and fascinating
play of The Tempest, in much the same spirit which leads our
modern playwrights when they dramatize a popular novel or
a war story to catch the public fancy.

Classification according to Dramatic Type. Shakespeare's
dramas are usually divided into three classes, called tragedies,
comedies, and historical plays. Strictly speaking the drama
has but two divisions, tragedy and comedy, in which are
included the many subordinate forms of tragi-comedy, melo-
drama, lyric drama ( opera ), farce, etc. A tragedy is a drama
in which the principal characters are involved in desperate
circumstances or led by overwhelming passions. It is inva-
riably serious and dignified. The movement is always stately,
but grows more and more rapid as it approaches the climax ;
and the end is always calamitous, resulting in death or dire
misfortune to the principals. As Chaucer's monk says,
before he begins to "biwayle in maner of tragedie":

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie
Of him that stood in great prosperitee,
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.

A comedy, on the other hand, is a drama in which the char-
acters are placed in more or less humorous situations. The
movement is light and often mirthful, and the play ends in
general good will and happiness. The historical drama aims
to present some historical age or character, and may be
either a comedy or a tragedy. The following list includes

152 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the best of Shakespeare's plays in each of the three classes ;
but the order indicates merely the author's personal opinion
of the relative merits of the plays in each class. Thus Mer-
chant of Venice would be the first of the comedies for the
beginner to read, and Julius Ccesar is an excellent introduc-
tion to the historical plays and the tragedies.

COMEDIES. Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Nights Dream, As
You Like It, Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Twelfth Night.

TRAGEDIES. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear,
Othello.

HISTORICAL PLAYS. Julius Ccesar, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V,
Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra.

Doubtful Plays. It is reasonably certain that some of the
plays generally attributed to Shakespeare are partly the work
of other dramatists. The first of these doubtful plays, often
called the Pre-Shakespearian Group, are Titus Andronicus and
the first part of Henry VI. Shakespeare probably worked with
Marlowe in the two last parts of Henry F7and in Richard III.
The three plays, Taming of the Shrew, Timon, and Pericles
are only partly Shakespeare's work, but the other authors are
unknown. Henry VIII is the work of Fletcher and Shake-
speare, opinion being divided as to whether Shakespeare
helped Fletcher, or whether it was an unfinished work of
Shakespeare which was put into Fletcher's hands for com-
pletion. Two Noble Kinsmen is a play not ordinarily found
in editions of Shakespeare, but it is often placed among his
doubtful works. The greater part of the play is undoubtedly
by Fletcher. Edward III is one of several crude plays pub-
lished at first anonymously and later attributed to Shakespeare
by publishers who desired to sell their wares. It contains a few
passages that strongly suggest Shakespeare ; but the external
evidence is all against his authorship.

Shakespeare's Poems. It is generally asserted that, if
Shakespeare had written no plays, his poems alone would
have given him a commanding place in the Elizabethan Age.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 153

Nevertheless, in the various histories of our literature there
is apparent a desire to praise and pass over all but the Sonnets
as rapidly as possible ; and the reason may be stated frankly.
His two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape
of Lucrece," contain much poetic fancy ; but it must be said
of both that the subjects are unpleasant, and that they are
dragged out to unnecessary length in order to show the play
of youthful imagination. They were extremely popular in
Shakespeare's day, but in comparison with his great dramatic
works these poems are now of minor importance.

Shakespeare's Sonnets, one hundred and fifty-four in num-
ber, are the only direct expression of the poet's own feelings
that we possess ; for his plays are the most impersonal in all
literature. They were published together in 1609 ; but if they
had any unity in Shakespeare's mind, their plan and purpose
are hard to discover. By some critics they are regarded as
mere literary exercises ; by others as the expression of some
personal grief during the third period of the poet's literary
career. Still others, taking a hint from the sonnet beginning
"Two loves I have, of comfort and despair," divide them all
into two classes, addressed to a man who was Shakespeare's
friend, and to a woman who disdained his love. The reader
may well avoid such classifications and read a few sonnets,
like the twenty-ninth, for instance, and let them speak their
own message. A few are trivial and artificial enough, sug-
gesting the elaborate exercises of a piano player ; but the
majority are remarkable for their subtle thought and exquisite
expression. Here and there is one, like that beginning

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,

which will haunt the reader long afterwards, like the remem-
brance of an old German melody.

Shakespeare's Place and Influence. Shakespeare holds, by
general acclamation, the foremost place in the world's litera-
ture, and his overwhelming greatness renders it difficult to

154 ENGLISH LITERATURE

criticise or even to praise him. Two poets only, Homer and
Dante, have been named with him ; but each of these wrote
within narrow limits, while Shakespeare's genius included all
the world of nature and of men. In a word, he is the uni-
versal poet. To study nature in his works is like exploring a
new and beautiful country ; to study man in his works is like
going into a great city, viewing the motley crowd as one views
a great masquerade in which past and present mingle freely
and familiarly, as if the dead were all living again. And the
marvelous thing, in this masquerade of all sorts and condi-
tions of men, is that Shakespeare lifts the mask from every
face, lets us see the man as he is in his own soul, and shows
us in each one some germ of good, some "soul of goodness "
even in things evil. For Shakespeare strikes no uncertain
note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of your own.
Good always overcomes evil in the long run ; and love, faith,
work, and duty are the four elements that in all ages make
the world right. To criticise or praise the genius that creates
these men and women is to criticise or praise humanity itself.
Of his influence in literature it is equally difficult to speak.
Goethe expresses the common literary judgment when he
says, " I do not remember that any book or person or event
in my life ever made so great an impression upon me as the
plays of Shakespeare." His influence upon our own language
and thought is beyond calculation. Shakespeare and the King
James Bible are the two great conservators of the English
speech ; and one who habitually reads them finds himself
possessed of a style and vocabulary that are beyond criticism.
Even those who read no Shakespeare are still unconsciously
guided by him, for his thought and expression have so per-
vaded our life and literature that it is impossible, so long as
one speaks the English language, to escape his influence.

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, " This was a man I "

AMERICAN MEMORIAL WINDOW IN THE CHURCH OF THE HOLV
TRINITY, STRATFORD-ON-AVON

156 ENGLISH LITERATURE

V. SHAKESPEARE'S CONTEMPORARIES AND
SUCCESSORS IN THE DRAMA

Decline of the Drama. It was inevitable that the drama
should decline after Shakespeare, for the simple reason that
there was no other great enough to fill his place. Aside from
this, other causes were at work, and the chief of these was
at the very source of the Elizabethan dramas. It must be
remembered that our first playwrights wrote to please their
audiences ; that the drama rose in England because of the
desire of a patriotic people to see something of the stirring
life of the times reflected on the stage. For there were no
papers or magazines in those days, and people came to the
theaters not only to be amused but to be informed. Like
children, they wanted to see a story acted ; and like men, they
wanted to know what it meant. Shakespeare fulfilled their
desire. He gave them their story, and his genius was great
enough to show in every play not only their own life and
passions but something of the meaning of all life, and of that
eternal justice which uses the war of human passions for its
own great ends. Thus good and evil mingle freely in his
dramas ; but the evil is never attractive, and the good triumphs
as inevitably as fate. Though his language is sometimes coarse,
we are to remember that it was the custom of his age to speak
somewhat coarsely, and that in language, as in thought and
feeling, Shakespeare is far above most of his contemporaries.

With his successors all this was changed. The audience
itself had gradually changed, and in place of plain people
eager for a story and for information, we see a larger and
larger proportion of those who went to the play because they
had nothing else to do. They wanted amusement only, and
since they had blunted by idleness the desire for simple
and wholesome amusement, they called for something more
sensational. Shakespeare's successors catered to the de-
praved tastes of this new audience. They lacked not only

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 157

Shakespeare's genius, but his broad charity, his moral insight
into life. With the exception of Ben Jonson, they neglected
the simple fact that man in his deepest nature is a moral being,
and that only a play which satisfies the whole nature of man
by showing the triumph of the moral law can ever wholly
satisfy an audience or a people. Beaumont and Fletcher,
forgetting the deep meaning of life, strove for effect by in-
creasing the sensationalism of their plays ; Webster reveled
in tragedies of blood and thunder ; Massinger and Ford made
another step downward, producing evil and licentious scenes
for their own sake, making characters and situations more
immoral till, notwithstanding these dramatists' ability, the
stage had become insincere, frivolous, and bad. Ben Jonson's
ode, "Come Leave the Loathed Stage," is the judgment of a
large and honest nature grown weary of the plays and the
players of the time. We read with a sense of relief that
in 1642, only twenty-six years after Shakespeare's death,
both houses of Parliament voted to close the theaters as
breeders of lies and immorality.

BEN JONSON (i573?-i637)

Personally Jonson is the most commanding literary figure
among the Elizabethans. For twenty-five years he was .the
literary dictator of London, the chief of all the wits that
gathered nightly at the old Devil Tavern. With his great
learning, his ability, and his commanding position as poet
laureate, he set himself squarely against his contemporaries
and the romantic tendency of the age. For two things he
fought bravely, to restore the classic form of the drama,
and to keep the stage from its downward course. Apparently
he failed ; the romantic school fixed its hold more strongly
than ever ; the stage went swif tiy to an end as sad as that
of the early dramatists. Nevertheless his influence lived and
grew more powerful till, aided largely by French influence, it
resulted in the so-called classicism of the eighteenth century.

158 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Life. Jonson was born at Westminster about the year 1573.
His father, an educated gentleman, had his property confiscated
and was himself thrown into prison by Queen Mary ; so we infer
the family was of some prominence. From his mother he received
certain strong characteristics, and by a single short reference in
Jonson's works we are led to see the kind of woman she was. It is
while Jonson is telling Drummond of the occasion when he was
thrown into prison, because some passages in the comedy of East-
ward Ho ! gave offense to King James, and he was in danger of a

horrible death, after having
his ears and nose cut off.
He tells us how, after his
pardon, he was banqueting
with his friends, when his
"old mother" came in
and showed a paper full
of "lusty strong poison,"
which she intended to mix
with his drink just before
the execution. And to
show that she "was no
churl," she intended first
to drink of the poison her-
self. The incident is all
the more suggestive from

BEN JONSON the fact that Chapman and

Marston, one his friend and

the other his enemy, were first cast into prison as the authors of
Eastward Ho ! and rough Ben Jonson at once declared that he too
had had a small hand in the writing and went to join them in prison.
Jonson's father came out of prison, having given up his estate, and
became a minister. He died just before the son's birth, and two
years later the mother married a bricklayer of London. The boy
was sent to a private school, and later made his own way to West-
minster School, where the submaster, Camden, struck by the boy's
ability, taught and largely supported him. For a short time he may
have studied at the university in Cambridge ; but his stepfather
soon set him to learning the bricklayer's trade. He ran away from
this, and went with the English army to fight Spaniards in the Low
Countries. His best known exploit there was to fight a duel between

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 159

the lines with one of the enemy's soldiers, while both armies
looked on. Jonson killed his man, and took his arms, and made his
way back to his own lines in a way to delight the old Norman
troubadours. He soon returned to England, and married precipi-
tately when only nineteen or twenty years old. Five years later we
find him employed, like Shakespeare, as actor and reviser of old
plays in the theater. Thereafter his life is a varied and stormy one.
He killed an actor in a duel, and only escaped hanging by pleading
" benefit of clergy " l ; but he lost all his poor goods and was branded
for life on his left thumb. In his first great play, Every Man in His
Humour (1598), Shakespeare acted one of the parts ; and that may
have been the beginning of their long friendship. Other plays fol-
lowed rapidly. Upon the accession of James, Jonson's masques won
him royal favor, and he was made poet laureate. He now became
undoubted leader of the literary men of his time, though his rough
honesty and his hatred of the literary tendencies of the age made
him quarrel with nearly all of them. In 1616, soon after Shake-
speare's retirement, he stopped writing for the stage and gave him-
self up to study and serious work. In 1618 he traveled on foot to
Scotland, where he visited Drummond, from whom we have the scant
records of his varied life. His impressions of this journey, called
Foot Pilgrimage, were lost in a fire before publication. Thereafter
he produced less, and his work declined in vigor; but spite of growing
poverty and infirmity we notice in his later work, especially in the
unfinished Sad Shepherd, a certain mellowness and tender human
sympathy which were lacking in his earlier productions. He died
poverty stricken in 1637. Unlike Shakespeare's, his death was
mourned as a national calamity, and he was buried with all honor in
Westminster Abbey. On his grave was laid a marble slab, on which
the words " O rare Ben Jonson " were his sufficient epitaph.

Works of Ben Jonson. Jonson's work is in strong con-
trast with that of Shakespeare and of the later Elizabethan
dramatists. Alone he fought against the romantic tendency
of the age, and to restore the classic standards. Thus the
whole action of his drama usually covers only a few hours, or

1 A name given to the privilege claimed by the mediaeval Church for its clergy of
being exempt from trial by the regular law courts. After the Reformation the custom
survived for a long time, and special privileges were allowed to ministers and their
families. Jonson claimed the privilege as a minister's son.

160 ENGLISH LITERATURE

a single day. He never takes liberties with historical facts,
as Shakespeare does, but is accurate to the smallest detail.
His dramas abound in classical learning, are carefully and
logically constructed, and comedy and tragedy are kept apart,
instead of crowding each other as they do in Shakespeare
and in life. In one respect his comedies are worthy of care-
ful reading, they are intensely realistic, presenting men
and women of the time exactly as they were. From a few
of Jonson's scenes we can understand better than from all
the plays of Shakespeare how men talked and acted during
the Age of Elizabeth.

Jonson's first comedy, Every Man in His Humour, is a key
to all his dramas. The word "humour" in his age stood for
Every Man in som e characteristic whim or quality of society.
His Humour Jonson gives to his leading character some prom-
inent humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the
most characteristic feature of a face, and so holds it before our
attention that all other qualities are lost sight of ; which is
the method that Dickens used later in many of his novels.
Every Man in His Humour was the first of three satires.
Its special aim was to ridicule the humors of the city. The
second, Cynthia's Revels, satirizes the humors of the court ;
while the third, The Poetaster, the result of a quarrel with
his contemporaries, was leveled at the false standards of the
poets of the age.

The three best known of Jonson's comedies are Volpone,
or the Fox, The Alchemist, and Epiccene, or the Silent Woman.
Volpone is a keen and merciless analysis of a man governed
by an overwhelming love of money for its own sake. The
first words in the first scene are a key to the whole comedy :

(Volpone)

Good morning to the day ; and next, my gold !
Open the shrine that I may see my saint.

{Mosca withdraws a curtain and discovers piles of

gold, plate, jewels, etc.}
Hail the world's soul, and mine !

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 161

Volpone's method of increasing his wealth is to play upon the
avarice of men. He pretends to be at the point of death, and
his "suitors," who know his love of gain and that he has no
heirs, endeavor hypocritically to sweeten his last moments
by giving him rich presents, so that he will leave them all his
wealth. The intrigues of these suitors furnish the story of
the play, and show to what infamous depths avarice will lead
a man.

The Alchemist is a study of quackery on one side and of
gullibility on the other, founded on the mediaeval idea of the
philosopher's stone, 1 and applies as well to the patent medi-
cines and get-rich-quick schemes of our day as to the pecul-
iar forms of quackery with which Jonson was more familiar.
In plot and artistic construction The Alchemist is an almost
perfect specimen of the best English drama. It has some
remarkably good passages, and is the most readable of Jon-
son's plays.

Epiccene, or the Silent Woman, is a prose comedy exceedingly
well constructed, full of life, abounding in fun and unexpected
situations. Here is a brief outline from which the reader may
see of what materials Jonson made up his comedies.

The chief character is Morose, a rich old codger whose humor is a
horror of noise. He lives in a street so narrow that it will admit no
The Silent carriages ; he pads the doors ; plugs the keyhole ; puts mat-
Woman tresses on the stairs. He dismisses a servant who wears
squeaky boots ; makes all the rest go about in thick stockings ; and
they must answer him by signs, since he cannot bear to hear anybody
but himself talk. He disinherits his poor nephew Eugenie, and, to make
sure that the latter will not get any money out of him, resolves to marry.
His confidant in this delicate matter is Cutbeard the barber, who, unlike
his kind, never speaks unless spoken to, and does not even knick his
scissors as he works. Cutbeard (who is secretly in league with the
nephew) tells him of Epiccene, a rare, silent woman, and Morose is so
delighted with her silence that he resolves to marry her on the spot.
Cutbeard produces a parson with a bad cold, who can speak only in a
whisper, to marry them ; and when the parson coughs after the ceremony

1 A similar story of quackery is found in Chaucer, " The Canon's Yeoman's Tale."

162 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Morose demands back five shillings of the fee. To save it the parson
coughs more, and is hurriedly bundled out of the house. The silent
woman finds her voice immediately after the marriage, begins to talk
loudly and to make reforms in the household, driving Morose to distrac-
tion. A noisy dinner party from a neighboring house, with drums and
trumpets and a quarreling man and wife, is skillfully guided in at this
moment to celebrate the wedding. Morose flees for his life, and is
found perched like a monkey on a crossbeam in the attic, with all his
nightcaps tied over his ears. He seeks a divorce, but is driven frantic
by the loud arguments of a lawyer and a divine, who are no other than
Cutbeard and a sea captain disguised. When Morose is past all hope
the nephew offers to release him from his wife and her noisy friends if
he will allow him five hundred pounds a year. Morose offers him any-
thing, everything, to escape his torment, and signs a deed to that effect.
Then comes the surprise of the play when Eugenie whips the wig from
Epiccene and shows a boy in disguise.

It will be seen that the Silent Woman, with its rapid
action and its unexpected situations, offers an excellent
opportunity for the actors ; but the reading of the play, as
of most of Jonson' s comedies, is marred by low intrigues
showing a sad state of morals among the upper classes.

Besides these, and many other less known comedies, Jonson
wrote two great tragedies, Sejamis (1603 ) and Catiline ( 161 1),
upon severe classical lines. After ceasing his work for the
stage, Jonson wrote many masques in honor of James I and
of Queen Anne, to be played amid elaborate scenery by the
gentlemen of the court. The best of these are " The Satyr,"
" The Penates," "Masque of Blackness," "Masque of Beauty,"
"Hue and Cry after Cupid," and "The Masque of Queens."
In all his plays Jonson showed a strong lyric gift, and some
of his little poems and songs, like "The Triumph of Charis,"
"Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and "To the Mem-
ory of my Beloved Mother," are now better known than his
great dramatic works. A single volume of prose, called Tim-
ber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, is an inter-
esting collection of short essays which are more like Bacon's
than any other work of the age.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 163

Beaumont and Fletcher. The work of these two men is so
closely interwoven that, though Fletcher outlived Beaumont
by nine years and the latter had no hand in some forty of the
plays that bear their joint names, we still class them together,
and only scholars attempt to separate their works so as to
give each writer his due share. Unlike most of the Eliza-
bethan dramatists, they both came from noble and cultured
families and were university trained. Their work, in strong
contrast with Jonson's, is intensely romantic, and in it all,
however coarse or brutal the scene, there is still, as Emerson
pointed out, the subtle " recognition of gentility."

Beaumont (1584-1616) was the brother of Sir John Beau-
mont of Leicestershire. From Oxford he came to London to
study law, but soon gave it up to write for the stage. Fletcher
(i 579- 1625) was the son of the bishop of London, and shows
in all his work the influence of his high social position and of
his Cambridge education. The two dramatists met at the
Mermaid tavern under Ben Jonson's leadership and soon
became inseparable friends, living and working together.
Tradition has it that Beaumont supplied the judgment and
the solid work of the play, while Fletcher furnished the
high-colored sentiment and the lyric poetry, without which
an Elizabethan play would have been incomplete. Of their
joint plays, the two best known are Philaster^ whose old
theme, like that of Cymbeline and Griselda, is the jealousy
of a lover and the faithfulness of a girl, and The Maid's
Tragedy. Concerning Fletcher's work the most interesting
literary question is how much did he write of Shakespeare's
Henry VIII, and how much did Shakespeare help him in
The Two Noble Kinsmen,

John Webster. Of Webster's personal history we know
nothing except that he was well known as a dramatist under
James I. His extraordinary powers of expression rank him
with Shakespeare ; but his talent seems to have been largely
devoted to the blood-and-thunder play begun by Marlowe.

164 ENGLISH LITERATURE

His two best known plays are The White Devil (pub. 1612)
and The Duchess of Malfi (pub. 1623). The latter, spite of
its horrors, ranks him as one of the greatest masters of
English tragedy. It must be remembered that he sought in
this play to reproduce the Italian life of the sixteenth
century, and for this no imaginary horrors are needed. The
history of any Italian court or city in this period furnishes
more vice and violence and dishonor than even the gloomy
imagination of Webster could conceive. All the so-called
blood tragedies of the Elizabethan period, from Thomas Kyd's
Spanish Tragedy down, however much they may condemn the
brutal taste of the English audiences, are still only so many
search lights thrown upon a history of horrible darkness.

Thomas Middleton (1570 P-I62/). Middleton is best
known by two great plays, The Changeling^- and Women Be-
ware Women. In poetry and diction they are almost worthy
at times to rank with Shakespeare's plays ; otherwise, in
their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to
the moral sense and are repulsive to the modern reader.
Two earlier plays, A Trick to catch the Old One, his best
comedy, and A Fair Quarrel, his earliest tragedy, are less
mature in thought and expression, but more readable, because
they seem to express Middleton' s own idea of the drama
rather than that of the corrupt court and playwrights of his
later age.

Thomas Heywood ( 1580 ?- 1650 ?). Heywood's life, of
which we know little in detail, covers the whole period of
the Elizabethan drama. To the glory of that drama he con-
tributed, according to his own statement, the greater part, at
least, of nearly two hundred and twenty plays. It was an
enormous amount of work ; but he seems to have been ani-
mated by the modern literary spirit of following the best
market and striking while the financial iron is hot. Naturally

1 In this and in A Fair Quarrel Middleton collaborated with William Rowley, of
whpm little is known except that he was an actor from c. 1607-1627.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 165

good work was impossible, even to genius, under such cir-
cumstances, and few of his plays are now known. The two
best, if the reader would obtain his own idea of Heywood's
undoubted ability, are A Woman killed with Kindness, a
pathetic story of domestic life, and The Fair Maid of the
West, a melodrama with plenty of fighting of the popular kind.

Thomas Dekker (1570-?). Dekker is in pleasing contrast
with most of the dramatists of the time. All we know of him
must be inferred from his works, which show a happy and
sunny nature, pleasant and good to meet. The reader will
find the best expression of Dekker' s personality and erratic
genius in The Shoemakers' Holiday, a humorous study of
plain working people, and Old Fortunatus, a fairy drama of
the wishing hat and no end of money. Whether intended
for children or not, it had the effect of charming the elders
far more than the young people, and the play became im-
mensely popular.

Massinger, Ford, Shirley. These three men mark the end
of the Elizabethan drama. Their work, done largely while
the struggle was on between the actors and the corrupt
court, on one side, and the Puritans on the other, shows a
deliberate turning away not only from Puritan standards
but from the high ideals of their own art to pander to the
corrupt taste of the upper classes.

Philip Massinger (15841640) was a dramatic poet of
great natural ability ; but his plots and situations are usually
so strained and artificial that the modern reader finds no
interest in them. In his best comedy, A New Way to Pay
Old Debts, he achieved great popularity and gave us one
figure, Sir Giles Overreach, which is one of the typical
characters of the English stage. His best plays are The
Great Duke of Florence, The Virgin Martyr, and The Maid
of Honour.

John Ford (1586-1642 ?) and James Shirley (1596-1666)
have left us little of permanent literary value, and their works

1 66 ENGLISH LITERATURE

are read only by those who wish to understand the whole
rise and fall of the drama. An occasional scene in Ford's
plays is as strong as anything that the Elizabethan Age pro-
duced ; but as a whole the plays are unnatural and tiresome.
Probably his best play is The Broken Heart (1633). Shirley
was given to imitation of his predecessors, and his very imita-
tion is characteristic of an age which had lost its inspiration.
A single play, Hyde Park, with its frivolous, realistic dialogue,
is sometimes read for its reflection of the fashionable gossipy
talk of the day. Long before Shirley's death the actors said,
"Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone." Parliament voted
to close the theaters, thereby saving the drama from a more
inglorious death by dissipation. 1

VI. THE PROSE WRITERS
FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

In Bacon we see one of those complex and contradictory
natures which are the despair of the biographer. If the
writer be an admirer of Bacon, he finds too much that he
must excuse or pass over in silence ; and if he takes his
stand on' the law to condemn the avarice and dishonesty of
his subject, he finds enough moral courage and nobility to
make him question the justice of his own judgment. On the
one hand is rugged Ben Jonson's tribute to his power and
ability, and on the other Hallam's summary that he was "a
man who, being intrusted with the highest gifts of Heaven,
habitually abused them for the poorest purposes of earth
hired them out for guineas, places, and titles in the service
of injustice, covetousness, and oppression."

Laying aside the opinions of others, and relying only upon
the facts of Bacon's life, we find on the one side the politician,
cold, calculating, selfish, and on the other the literary and

1 The reader will find wholesome criticism of these writers, and selections from their
works, in Charles Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, an excellent book, which
helps us to a better knowledge and appreciation of the lesser Elizabethan dramatists.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 167

scientific man with an impressive devotion to truth for its
own great sake ; here a man using questionable means to
advance his own interests, and there a man seeking with zeal
and endless labor to penetrate the secret ways of Nature,
with no other object than to advance the interests of his
fellow-men. So, in our ignorance of the secret motives and
springs of the man's life, judgment is necessarily suspended.
Bacon was apparently one of those double natures that only
God is competent to judge, because of the strange mixture
of intellectual strength and moral weakness that is in them.

Life. Bacon was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of
the Seal, and of the learned Ann Cook, sister-in-law to Lord Burleigh,
greatest of the queen's statesmen. From these connections, as well
as from native gifts, he was attracted to the court, and as a child was
called by Elizabeth her "Little Lord Keeper." At twelve he went
to Cambridge, but left the university after two years, declaring the
whole plan of education to be radically wrong, and the system
of Aristotle, which was the basis of all philosophy in those days, to
be a childish delusion, since in the course of centuries it had " pro-
duced no fruit, but only a jungle of dry and useless branches."
Strange, even for a sophomore of fourteen, thus to condemn the whole
system of the universities ; but such was the boy, and the system !
Next year, in order to continue his education, he accompanied the
English ambassador to France, where he is said to have busied him-
self chiefly with the practical studies of statistics and diplomacy.

Two years later he was recalled to London by the death of his
father. Without money, and naturally with expensive tastes, he
applied to his Uncle Burleigh for a lucrative position. It was in
this application that he used the expression, so characteristic of the
Elizabethan Age, that he " had taken all knowledge for his province."
Burleigh, who misjudged him as a dreamer and self-seeker, not only
refused to help him at the court but successfully opposed his ad-
vancement by Elizabeth. Bacon then took up the study of law,
and was admitted to the bar in 1582. That he had not lost his
philosophy in the mazes of the law is shown by his tract, written
about this time, " On the Greatest Birth of Time," which was a pie?
for his inductive system of philosophy, reasoning from many facts
to one law, rather than from an assumed law to particular facts,

1 68 ENGLISH LITERATURE

which was the deductive method that had been in use for centuries.
In his famous plea for progress Bacon demanded three things : the
free investigation of nature, the discovery of facts instead of theories,
and the verification of results by experiment rather than by argument.
In our day these are the A, B, C of science, but in Bacon's time they
seemed revolutionary.

As a lawyer he became immediately successful; his knowledge
and power of pleading became widely known, and it was almost at
the beginning of his career that Jonson wrote, " The fear of every one
that heard him speak was that he should make an end." The pub-
lication of his Essays added greatly to his fame ; but Bacon was not
content. His head was buzzing with huge schemes, the pacification
of unhappy Ireland, the simplification of English law, the reform of
the church, the study of nature, the establishment of a new philoso-
phy. Meanwhile, sad to say, he played the game of politics for his
personal advantage. He devoted himself to Essex, the young and
dangerous favorite of the queen, won his friendship, and then used
him skillfully to better his own position. When the earl was tried
for treason it was partly, at least, through Bacon's efforts that he was
convicted and beheaded ; and though Bacon claims to have been
actuated by a high sense of justice, we are not convinced that he
understood either justice or friendship in appearing as queen's
counsel against the man who had befriended him. His cold-
bloodedness and lack of moral sensitiveness appear even in his
essays on " Love " and " Friendship." Indeed, we can understand
his life only upon the theory that his intellectuality left him cold and
dead to the higher sentiments of our humanity.

During Elizabeth's reign Bacon had sought repeatedly for high
office, but had been blocked by Burleigh and perhaps also by the
queen's own shrewdness in judging men. With the advent of
James I (1603) Bacon devoted himself to the new ruler and rose
rapidly in favor. He was knighted, and soon afterwards attained
another object of his ambition in marrying a rich wife. The
appearance of his great work, the Advancement of Learning, in
1605, was largely the result of the mental stimulus produced by his
change in fortune. In 1613 he was made attorney-general, and
speedily made enemies by using the office to increase his personal
ends. He justified himself in his course by his devotion to the
king's cause, and by the belief that the higher his position and the
more ample his means the more he could do for science. It was

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 169

in this year that Bacon wrote his series of State Papers, which show
a marvelous grasp of the political tendencies of his age. Had his
advice been followed, it would have certainly averted the struggle
between king and parliament that followed speedily. In 1617 he
was appointed to his father's office, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and
the next year to the high office of Lord Chancellor. With this
office he received the title of Baron Verulam, and later of Viscount
St. Alban, which he affixed with some vanity to his literary work.
Two years later appeared his greatest work, the Novum Organum,
called after Aristotle's famous Organon. .

Bacon did not long enjoy his political honors. The storm which
had been long gathering against James's government broke suddenly
upon Bacon's head. When Parliament assembled in 1621 it vented
its distrust of James and his favorite Villiers by striking unexpectedly
at their chief adviser. Bacon was sternly accused of accepting bribes,
and the evidence was so great that he confessed that there was much
political corruption abroad in the land, that he was personally guilty
of some of it, and he threw himself upon the mercy of his judges.
Parliament at that time was in no mood for mercy. Bacon was de-
prived of his office and was sentenced to pay the enormous fine of
40,000 pounds, to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and
thereafter to be banished forever from Parliament and court. Though
the imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was largely re-
mitted, Bacon's hopes and schemes for political honors were ended ;
and it is at this point of appalling adversity that the nobility in the
man's nature asserts itself strongly. If the reader be interested to
apply a great man's philosophy to his own life, he will find the essay,
"Of Great Place," most interesting in this connection.

Bacon now withdrew permanently from public life, and devoted
his splendid ability to literary and scientific work. He completed
the Essays, experimented largely, wrote history, scientific articles,
and one scientific novel, and made additions to his Instauratio
Magna, the great philosophical work which was never finished. In
the spring of 1626, while driving in a snowstorm, it occurred to him
that snow might be used as a preservative instead of salt. True to
his own method of arriving at truth, he stopped at the first house,
bought a fowl, and proceeded to test his theory. The experiment
chilled him, and he died soon after from the effects of his ex-
posure. As Macaulay wrote, "the great apostle of experimental
philosophy was destined to be its martyr."

170 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Works of Bacon. Bacon's philosophic works, The Advance-
ment of Learning and the Novum Organum, will be best un-
derstood in connection with the Instauratio Magna, or T/ie
Great Institution of True Philosophy, of which they were
parts. The Instauratio was never completed, but the very
idea of the work was magnificent, to sweep away the in-
volved philosophy of the schoolmen and the educational
systems of the universities, and to substitute a single great
work which should be a-complete education, " a rich storehouse
for the glory of the Creator and for the relief of man's estate."
The object of this education was to bring practical results to
all the people, instead of a little selfish culture and much use-
less speculation, which, he conceived, were the only products
of the universities.

The Instauratio Magna. This was the most ambitious,
though it is not the best known, of Bacon's works. For the
insight it gives us into the author's mind, we note here a
brief outline of his subject. It was divided into six parts,
as follows :

1. Partitiones Scientiarum. This was to be a classification and
summary of all human knowledge. Philosophy and all speculation must
be cast out and the natural sciences established as the basis of all edu-
cation. The only part completed was The Advancement of Learning,
which served as an introduction.

2. Novum Organum, or the "new instrument," that is, the use of
reason and experiment instead of the old Aristotelian logic. To find
truth one must do two things : (#) get rid of all prejudices or idols, as
Bacon called them. These " idols " are four : " idols of the tribe," that is,
prejudices due to common methods of thought among all races; "idols
of the cave or den," that is, personal peculiarities and prejudices ; "idols
of the market place," due to errors of language; and "idols of the
theater," which are the unreliable traditions of men. () After dis-
carding the above "idols" we must interrogate nature; must collect
facts by means of numerous experiments, arrange them in order, and
then determine the law that underlies them.

It will be seen at a glance that the above is the most important of
Bacon's works. The Organum was to be in several books, only two of
which he completed, and these he wrote and rewrote twelve times until
they satisfied him.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 1 71

3. Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis, the study of all the phe-
nomena of nature. Of four parts of this work which he completed,
one of them at least, the Sylva Sylvarum, is decidedly at variance with
his own idea of fact and experiment. It abounds in fanciful explana-
tions, more worthy of the poetic than of the scientific mind. Nature is
seen to be full of desires and instincts ; the air " thirsts " for light and
fragrance ; bodies rise or sink because they have an " appetite " for
height or depth ; the qualities of bodies are the result of an "essence,"
so that when we discover the essences of gold and silver and diamonds
it will be a simple matter to create as much of them as we may need.

4. Scala Intellect's^ or " Ladder of the Mind," is the rational appli-
cation of the Organum to all problems. By it the mind should ascend
step by step from particular facts and instances to general laws and
abstract principles.

5. Prodrome " Prophecies or Anticipations," is a list of discoveries
that men shall make when they have applied Bacon's methods of study
and experimentation.

6. Philosophia Secunda, which was to be a record of practical
results of the new philosophy when the succeeding ages should have
applied it faithfully.

It is impossible to regard even the outline of such a vast
work without an involuntary thrill of admiration for the bold
and original mind which conceived it. " We may," said Bacon,
" make no despicable beginnings. The destinies of the human
race must complete the work . . . for upon this will depend
not only a speculative good but all the fortunes of mankind
and all their power." There is the unconscious expression of
one of the great minds of the world. Bacon was like one of
the architects of the Middle Ages, who drew his plans for a
mighty cathedral, perfect in every detail from the deep
foundation stone to the cross on the highest spire, and who
gave over his plans to the builders, knowing that, in his own
lifetime, only one tiny chapel would be completed ; but
knowing also that the very beauty of his plans would appeal
to others, and that succeeding ages would finish the work
which he dared to begin.

The Essays. Bacon's famous Essays is the one work which
will interest all students of our literature. His Instauratio was

ENGLISH LITERATURE

in Latin, written mostly by paid helpers from short English
abstracts. He regarded Latin as the only language worthy of
a great work ; but the world neglected his Latin to seize upon
his English, marvelous English, terse, pithy, packed with
thought, in an age that used endless circumlocutions. The
first ten essays, published in 1597, were brief notebook
jottings of Bacon's observations. Their success astonished
the author, but not till fifteen years later were they repub-
lished and enlarged. Their charm grew upon Bacon himself,
and during his retirement he gave more thought to the won-
derful language which he had at first despised as much as
Aristotle's philosophy. In 1612 appeared a second edition
containing thirty-eight essays, and in 1625, the year before
his death, he republished the Essays in their present form,
polishing and enlarging the original ten to fifty-eight, cover-
ing a wide variety of subjects suggested by the life of men
around him.

Concerning the best of these essays there are as many
opinions as there are readers, and what one gets out of them
depends largely upon his own thought and intelligence. In
this respect they are like that Nature to which Bacon directed
men's thoughts. The whole volume may be read through in
an evening ; but after one has read them a dozen times he
still finds as many places to pause and reflect as at the first
reading. If one must choose out of such a storehouse, we
would suggest "Studies," "Goodness," "Riches," "Atheism,"
"Unity in Religion," "Adversity," "Friendship," and "Great
Place " as an introduction to Bacon's worldly-wise philosophy.

Miscellaneous Works. Other works of Bacon are interest-
ing as a revelation of the Elizabethan mind, rather than
because of any literary value. The New Atlantis is a kind of
scientific novel describing another Utopia as seen by Bacon.
The inhabitants of Atlantis have banished Philosophy and
applied Bacon's method of investigating Nature, using
the results to better their own condition. They have a

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 1/3

wonderful civilization, in which many of our later discov-
eries academies of the sciences, observatories, balloons,
submarines, the modification of species, and several others
were foreshadowed with a strange mixture of cold reason and
poetic intuition. De Sapientia Veterum is a fanciful attempt
to show the deep meaning underlying ancient myths, a
meaning which would have astonished the myth makers them-
selves. The History of Henry VII is a calm, dispassionate,
and remarkably accurate history, which makes us regret that
Bacon did not do more historical work. Besides these are
metrical versions of certain Psalms which are valuable, in
view of the controversy anent Shakespeare's plays, for show-
ing Bacon's utter inability to write poetry and a large
number of letters and state papers showing the range and
power of his intellect.

Bacon's Place and Work. Although Bacon was for the
greater part of his life a busy man of affairs, one cannot
read his work without becoming conscious of two things,
a perennial freshness, which the world insists upon in all
literature that is to endure, and an intellectual power which
marks him as one of the great minds of the world.

Of late the general tendency is to give less and less
prominence to his work in science and philosophy ; but
criticism of his Instauratio, in view of his lofty aim, is of
small consequence. It is true that his "science" to-day
seems woefully inadequate ; true also that, though he sought
to discover truth, he thought perhaps to monopolize it, and
so looked with the same suspicion upon Copernicus as upon
the philosophers. The practical man who despises philosophy
has simply misunderstood the thing he despises. In being
practical and experimental in a romantic age he was not
unique, as is often alleged, but only expressed the tendency
of the English mind in all ages. Three centuries earlier the
monk Roger Bacon did more practical experimenting than
the Elizabethan sage; and the latter 's famous "idols" are

174 ENGLISH LITERATURE

strongly suggestive of the former's "Four Sources of Human
Ignorance." Although Bacon did not make any of the scien-
tific discoveries at which he aimed, yet the whole spirit of
his work, especially of the Organum^ has strongly influenced
science in the direction of accurate observation and of care-
fully testing every theory by practical experiment. " He that
regardeth the clouds shall not sow," said a wise writer of old ;
and Bacon turned men's thoughts from the heavens above,
with which they had been too busy, to the earth beneath,
which they had too much neglected. In an age when men
were busy with romance and philosophy, he insisted that the
first object of education is to make a man familiar with his
natural environment ; from books he turned to men, from
theory to fact, from philosophy to nature, and that is per-
haps his greatest contribution to life and literature. Like
Moses upon Pisgah, he stood high enough above his fellows
to look out over a promised land, which his people would
inherit, but into which he himself might never enter.

Richard Hooker (i554?-i6oo). In strong contrast with
Bacon is Richard Hooker, one of the greatest prose writers
of the Elizabethan Age. One must read the story of his life,
an obscure and lowly life animated by a great spirit, as told
by Izaak Walton, to appreciate the full force of this contrast.
Bacon took all knowledge for his province, but mastered no
single part of it. Hooker, taking a single theme, the law and
practice of the English Church, so handled it that no scholar
even of the present day would dream of superseding it or of
building upon any other foundation than that which Hooker
laid down. His one great work is The Laivs of Ecclesiastical
Polity?- a theological and argumentative book ; but, entirely
apart from its subject, it will be read wherever men desire
to hear the power and stateliness of the English language.
Here is a single sentence, remarkable not only for its perfect

1 The first five books were published 1594-1597, and are as Hooker wrote them. The
last three books, published after his death, are of doubtful authorship, but they are
thought to have been completed from Hooker's notes.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 175

form but also for its expression of the reverence for law which
lies at the heart of Anglo-Saxon civilization :

Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven
and earth do her homage ; the very least as feeling her care, and the
greatest as not exempted from her power ; both angels and men, and
creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and
manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of
their peace and joy.

Sidney and Raleigh. Among the prose writers of this
wonderful literary age there are many others that deserve
passing notice, though they fall far below the standard of
Bacon and Hooker. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), who has
already been considered as a poet, is quite as well known by
his prose works, Arcadia, a pastoral romance, and the Defense
of Poesie, one of our earliest literary essays. Sidney, whom
the poet Shelley has eulogized, represents the whole romantic
tendency of his age ; while Sir Walter Raleigh (i552?-i6i8)
represents its adventurous spirit and activity. The life of
Raleigh is an almost incomprehensible mixture of the poet,
scholar, and adventurer ; now helping the Huguenots or the
struggling Dutch in Europe, and now leading an expedition
into the unmapped wilds of the New World ; busy here with
court intrigues, and there with piratical attempts to capture
the gold-laden Spanish galleons ; one moment sailing the high
seas in utter freedom, and the next writing history and poetry
to solace his imprisonment. Such a life in itself is a volume
far more interesting than anything that he wrote. He is the
restless spirit of the Elizabethan Age personified.

Raleigh's chief prose works are the Discoverie of Guiana,
a work which would certainly have been interesting enough
had he told simply what he saw, but which was filled with
colonization schemes and visions of an El Dorado to fill the
eyes and ears of the credulous ; and the History of the World,
written to occupy his prison hours. The history is a wholly
untrustworthy account of events from creation to the downfall

176 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of the Macedonian Empire. It is interesting chiefly for its
style, which is simple and dignified, and for the flashes of
wit and poetry that break into the fantastic combination of
miracles, traditions, hearsay, and state records which he called
history. In the conclusion is the famous apostrophe to Death,
which suggests what Raleigh might have done had he lived
less strenuously and written more carefully.

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could advise thou hast
persuaded ; what none hath dared thou hast done ; and whom all the
world hath flattered thou only hast cast out of the world and despised ;
thou hast drawn together all the star-stretched greatness, all the pride,
cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two
narrow words, Hie jacet !

John Foxe (15 16-158 7). Foxe will be remembered always
for his famous Book of Martyrs, a book that our elders gave to
us on Sundays when we were young, thinking it good discipline
for us to afflict our souls when we wanted to be roaming the
sunlit fields, or when in our enforced idleness we would, if our
own taste in the matter had been consulted, have made good
shift to be quiet and happy with Robinson Crusoe. So we
have a gloomy memory of Foxe, and something of a grievance,
which prevent a just appreciation of his worth.

Foxe had been driven out of England by the Marian per-
secutions, and in a wandering but diligent life on the Continent
he conceived the idea of writing a history of the persecutions
of the church from the earliest days to his own. The part
relating to England and Scotland was published, in Latin,
in 1559, under a title as sonorous and impressive as the
Roman office for the dead, Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum
Maximarumque per Europam Persecutionum Commentarii. On
his return to England Foxe translated this work, calling it the
Acts and Monuments ; but it soon became known as the Book
of Martyrs, and so it will always be called. Foxe's own
bitter experience causes him to write with more heat and
indignation than his saintly theme would warrant, and the

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH I//

"holy tone" sometimes spoils a narrative that would be im-
pressive in its bare simplicity. Nevertheless the book has
made for itself a secure place in our literature. It is strongest
in its record of humble men, like Rowland Taylor and Thomas
Hawkes, whose sublime heroism, but for this narrative, would
have been lost amid the great names and the great events that
fill the Elizabethan Age.

Camden and Knox. Two historians, William Camden and
John Knox, stand out prominently among the numerous
historical writers of the age. Camden's Britannia (1586) is
a monumental work, which marks the beginning of true
antiquarian research in the field of history ; and his Annals
of Queen Elizabeth is worthy of a far higher place than has
thus far been given it. John Knox, the reformer, in his
History of the Reformation in Scotland, has some very vivid
portraits of his helpers and enemies. The personal and
aggressive elements enter too strongly for a work of history ;
but the autobiographical parts show rare literary power.
His account of his famous interview with Mary Queen of
Scots is clear-cut as a cameo, and shows the man's ex-
traordinary power better than a whole volume of biography.
Such scenes make one wish that more of his time had been
given to literary work, rather than to the disputes and troubles
of his own Scotch kirk.

Hakluyt and Purchas. Two editors of this age have made
for themselves an enviable place in our literature. They are
Richard Hakluyt (i552?-i6i6) and Samuel Purchas (1575?
1626). Hakluyt was a clergyman who in the midst of his
little parish set himself to achieve two great patriotic ends,
to promote the wealth and commerce of his country, and to
preserve the memory of all his countrymen who added to the
glory of the realm by their travels and explorations. To
further the first object he concerned himself deeply with
the commercial interests of the East India Company, with
Raleigh's colonizing plans in Virginia, and with a translation

178 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of De Soto's travels in America. To further the second he
made himself familiar with books of voyages in all foreign
languages and with the brief reports of explorations of his
own countrymen. His Principal Navigations, Voyages, and
Discoveries of the English Nation, in three volumes, appeared
first in 1589, and a second edition followed in 1598-1600.
The first volume tells of voyages to the north ; the second to
India and the East ; the third, which is as large as the other
two, to the New World. With the exception of the very first
voyage, that of King Arthur to Iceland in 517, which is
founded on a myth, all the voyages are authentic accounts
of the explorers themselves, and are immensely interesting
reading even at the present day. No other book of travels
has so well expressed the spirit and energy of the English
race, or better deserves a place in our literature.

Samuel Purchas, who was also a clergyman, continued the
work of Hakluyt, using many of the latter's unpublished
manuscripts and condensing the records of numerous other
voyages. His first famous book, Purchas, His Pilgrimage, ap-
peared in 1613, and was followed by Hakluytus Post humus,
or Purchas His Pilgrimes, in 1625. The very name inclines
one to open the book with pleasure, and when one follows
his inclination which is, after all, one of the best guides in
literature he is rarely disappointed. Though it falls far
below the standard of Hakluyt, both in accuracy and literary
finish, there is still plenty to make one glad that the book was
written and that he can now comfortably follow Purchas on
his pilgrimage.

Thomas North. Among the translators of the Elizabethan
Age Sir Thomas North (1535 ?-i6oi?) is most deserving of
notice because of his version of Plutarch s Lives (1579) from
which Shakespeare took the characters and many of the inci-
dents for three great Roman plays. Thus in North we read :

Caesar also had Cassius in great jealousy and suspected him much:
whereupon he said on a time to his friends : " What will Cassius do,

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 179

think ye ? I like not his pale looks." Another time when Caesar's friends
warned him of Antonius and Dolabella, he answered them again, "I
never reckon of them ; but these pale-visaged and carrion lean people,
I fear them most," meaning Brutus and Cassius.

Shakespeare merely touches such a scene with the magic of
his genius, and his Caesar speaks :

Let me have men about me that are fat:
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look :
He thinks too much : such men are dangerous.

A careful reading of North's Plutarch and then of the famous
Roman plays shows to how great an extent Shakespeare was
dependent upon his obscure contemporary.

North's translation, to which we owe so many heroic
models in our literature, was probably made not from Plu-
tarch but from Amyot's excellent French translation. Never-
theless he reproduces the spirit of the original, and notwith-
standing our modern and more accurate translations, he
remains the most inspiring interpreter of the great biographer
whom Emerson calls "the historian of heroism."

Summary of the Age of Elizabeth. This period is generally regarded as
the greatest in the history of our literature. Historically, we note in this age
the tremendous impetus received from the Renaissance, from the Reformation,
and from the exploration of the New World. It was marked by a strong
national spirit, by patriotism, by religious tolerance, by social content, by
intellectual progress, and by unbounded enthusiasm.

Such an age, of thought, feeling, and vigorous action, finds its best expres-
sion in the drama; and the wonderful development of the drama, culminat-
ing in Shakespeare, is the most significant characteristic of the Elizabethan
period. Though the age produced some excellent prose works, it is essentially
an age of poetry ; and the poetry is remarkable for its variety, its freshness,
its youthful and romantic feeling. Both the poetry and the drama were per-
meated by Italian influence, which was dominant in English literature from
Chaucer to the Restoration. The literature of this age is often called the lit-
erature of the Renaissance, though, as we have seen, the Renaissance itself
began much earlier, and for a century and a half added very little to our liter-
ary possessions.

In our study of this great age we have noted (i) the Non-dramatic Poets,
that is, poets who did not write for the stage. The center of this group is

ISO ENGLISH LITERATURE

Edmund Spenser, whose Shepherd 11 s Calendar (1579) marked the appearance
of the first national poet since Chaucer's death in 1400. His most famous
work is The Faery Queen. Associated with Spenser are, the minor poets,
Thomas Sackville, Michael Drayton, George Chapman, and Philip Sidney.
Chapman is noted for his completion of Marlowe's poem, Hero and Leander,
and for his translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Sidney, besides his
poetry, wrote his prose romance Arcadia, and The Defense of Poesie, one of
our earliest critical essays.

(2) The Rise of the Drama in England ; the Miracle plays, Moralities, and
Interludes ; our first play, " Ralph Royster Doyster " ; the first true English
comedy, " Gammer Gurton's Needle," and the first tragedy, " Gorboduc " ; the
conflict between classic and native ideals in the English drama.

(3) Shakespeare's Predecessors, Lyly, Kyd, Nash, Peele, Greene, Marlowe ;
the types of drama with which they experimented, the Marlowesque, one-
man type, or tragedy of passion, the popular Chronicle plays, the Domestic
drama, the Court or Lylian comedy, Romantic comedy and tragedy, Classical
plays, and the Melodrama. Marlowe is the greatest of Shakespeare's prede-
cessors. His four plays are " Tamburlaine," " Faustus," " The Jew of Malta,"
and " Edward II."

(4) Shakespeare, his life, work, and influence.

(5) Shakespeare's Successors, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Web-
ster, Middleton, Heywood* Dekker; and the rapid decline of the drama. Ben
Jonson is the greatest of this group. His chief comedies are " Every Man
in His Humour," "The Silent Woman," and " The Alchemist"; his two
extant tragedies are " Sejanus " and " Catiline."

(6) The Prose Writers, of whom Bacon is the most notable. His chief
philosophical work is the Instauratio Magna (incomplete), which includes
" The Advancement of Learning " and the " Novum Organum " ; but he is
known to literary readers by his famous Essays. Minor prose writers are
Richard Hooker, John Foxe, the historians Camden and Knox, the editors
Hakluyt and Purchas, who gave us the stirring records of exploration, and
Thomas North, the translator of Plutarch's Lives.

Selections for Reading. Spenser. Faery Queen, selections in Standard
English Classics ; Bk. i, in Riverside Literature Series, etc. ; Shepherd's Cal-
endar, in Cassell's National Library; Selected Poems, in Canterbury Poets
Series; Minor Poems, in Temple Classics; Selections in Manly's English
Poetry, or Ward's English Poets.

Minor Poets. Drayton, Sackville, Sidney, Chapman, Selections in Manly
or Ward ; Elizabethan songs, in Schelling's Elizabethan Lyrics, and in Pal-
grave's Golden Treasury; Chapman's Homer, in Temple Classics.

The Early Drama. Play of Noah's Flood, in Manly's Specimens of the
Pre-Shaksperean Drama, or in Pollard's English Miracle Plays, Moralities
and Interludes, or in Belles Lettres Series, sec. 2 ; L. T. Smith's The York
Miracle Plays.

Lyly. Endymion, in Holt's English Readings.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 181

Marlowe. Faustus, in Temple Dramatists, or Mermaid Series, or Morley's
Universal Library, or Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets ; Selec-
tions in Manly's English Poetry, or Ward's English Poets ; Edward II, in
Temple Dramatists, and in Holt's English Readings.

Shakespeare. Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, etc., in Standard
English Classics (edited, with notes, with special reference to college-entrance
requirements). Good editions of single plays are numerous and cheap. Hud-
son's and Rolfe's and the Arden Shakespeare are suggested as satisfactory.
The Sonnets, edited by Beeching, in Athenaeum Press Series.

Ben Jons on. The Alchemist, in Canterbury Poets Series, or Morley's Uni-
versal Library ; Selections in Manly's English Poetry, or Ward's English Poets,
or Canterbury Poets Series ; Selections from Jonson's Masques, in Evans's
English Masques; Timber, edited by Schelling, in Athenaeum Press Series.

Bacon. Essays, school edition (Ginn and Company) ; Northup's edition, in
Riverside Literature Series (various other inexpensive editions, in the Pitt
Press, Golden Treasury Series, etc.) ; Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, edited
by Cook (Ginn and Company). Compare selections from Bacon, Hooker,
Lyly, and Sidney, in Manly's English Prose.

Bibliography. 1 History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 208-238 ; Cheyney,
pp. 330-410; Green, ch. 7 ; Traill, Macaulay, Froude.

Special works. Creighton's The Age of Elizabeth ; Hall's Society in the
Elizabethan Age ; Winter's Shakespeare's England ; Goadby's The England
of Shakespeare ; Lee's Stratford on Avon ; Harrison's Elizabethan England.

Literature. Saintsbury's History of Elizabethan Literature ; Whipple's
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth ; S. Lee's Great Englishmen of the Six-
teenth Century ; Schelling's Elizabethan Lyrics, in Athenaeum Press Series ;
Vernon Lee's Euphorion.

Spenser. Texts, Cambridge, Globe, and Aldine editions ; Noel's Selected
Poems of Spenser, in Canterbury Poets; Minor Poems, in Temple Classics;
Arber's Spenser Anthology ; Church's Life of Spenser, in English Men of
Letters Series ; Lowell's Essay, in Among My Books, or in Literary Essays,
vol. 4; Hazlitt's Chaucer and Spenser, in Lectures on the English Poets;
Dowden's Essay, in Transcripts and Studies.

The Drama. Texts, Manly's Specimens of the Pre-Shakesperean Drama,
2 vols., in Athenaeum Press Series ; Pollard's English Miracle Plays, Morali-
ties and Interludes; the Temple Dramatists; Morley's Universal Library;
Arber's English Reprints ; Mermaid Series, etc. ; Thayer's The Best Eliza-
bethan Plays.

Gayley's Plays of Our Forefathers (Miracles, Moralities, etc.) ; Bates's The
English Religious Drama ; Schelling's The English Chronicle Play ; Lowell's
Old English Dramatists ; Boas's Shakespeare and his Predecessors ; Symonds's
Shakespeare's .Predecessors in the English Drama ; Schelling's Elizabethan
Drama; Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets; Introduction to

1 For titles and publishers of reference works see General Bibliography at the end
of this book.

1 82 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Hudson's Shakespeare : His Life, Art, and Characters ; Ward's History of Eng-
lish Dramatic Literature ; Dekker's The Gull's Hornbook, in King's Classics.

Marlowe. Works, edited by Bullen ; chief plays in Temple Dramatists,
Mermaid Series of English Dramatists, Morley's Universal Library, etc. ;
Lowell's Old English Dramatists ; Symonds's introduction, in Mermaid Series ;
Dowden's Essay, in Transcripts and Studies.

Shakespeare. Good texts are numerous. Furness's Variorum edition is at
present most useful for advanced work. Hudson's revised edition, each play
in a single volume, with notes and introductions, will, when complete, be one
of the very best for students' use.

Raleigh's Shakespeare, in English Men of Letters Series ; Lee's Life of
Shakespeare ; Hudson's Shakespeare : his Life, Art, and Characters ; Halliwell-
Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare ; Fleay's Chronicle History of
the Life and Work of Shakespeare ; Dowden's Shakespeare, a Critical Study
of his Mind and Art ; Shakespeare Primer (same author) ; Baker's The De-
velopment of Shakespeare as a Dramatist ; Lounsbury's Shakespeare as a
Dramatic Artist ; The Text of Shakespeare (same author) ; Wendell's William
Shakespeare ; Bradley's Shakesperian Tragedy ; Hazlitt's Shakespeare and
Milton, in Lectures on the English Poets ; Emerson's Essay, Shakespeare or
the Poet ; Lowell's Essay, in Among My Books ; Lamb's Tales from Shake-
speare ; Mrs. Jameson's Shakespeare's Female Characters (called also Char-
acteristics of Women) ; Rolfe's Shakespeare the Boy ; Brandes's William
Shakespeare ; Moulton's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist ; Mabie's William
Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man ; The Shakespeare Apocrypha, edited
by C. F. T. Brooke; Shakespeare's Holinshed, edited by Stone ; Shakespeare
Lexicon, by Schmidt ; Concordance, by Bartlett ; Grammar, by Abbott, or
by Franz.

Ben Jonson. Texts in Mermaid Series, Temple Dramatists, Morley's Uni-
versal Library, etc. ; Masques and Entertainments of Ben Jonson, edited by
Morley, in Carisbrooke Library; Timber, edited by Schelling, in Athenaeum
Press Series.

Beaumont, Fletcher, etc. Plays in Mermaid Series, Temple Dramatists, etc. ;
Schelling's Elizabethan Drama ; Lowell's Old English Dramatists ; Lamb's
Specimens of English Dramatic Poets ; Fleay's Biographical Chronicle of the
English Drama ; Swinburne's Essays, in Essays in Prose and Poetry, and in
Essays and Studies.

Bacon. Texts, Essays in Everyman's Library, etc. ; Advancement of Learn-
ing in Clarendon Press Series, Library of English Classics, etc. ; Church's
Life of Bacon, in English Men of Letters Series ; Nichol's Bacon's Life
and Philosophy ; Francis Bacon, translated from the German of K. Fischer
(excellent, but rare) ; Macaulay's Essay on Bacon.

Minor Prose Writers. Sidney's Arcadia, edited by Somers ; Defense of Poesy,
edited by Cook, in Athenaeum Press Series ; Arber's Reprints, etc. ; Selections
from Sidney's prose and poetry in the Elizabethan Library; Symonds's Life of
Sidney, in English Men of Letters ; Bourne's Life of Sidney, in Heroes of the
Nations ; Lamb's Essay on Sidney's Sonnets, in Essays of Elia.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 183

Raleigh's works, published by the Oxford Press ; Selections by Grosart, in
Elizabethan Library ; Raleigh's Last Fight of the Revenge, in Arber's Re-
prints ; Life of Raleigh, by Edwards and by Gosse. Richard Hooker's works,
edited by Keble, Oxford Press ; Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in Everyman's
Library, and in Morley's Universal Library ; Life, in Walton's Lives, in Mor-
ley's Universal Library ; Dowden's Essay, in Puritan and Anglican.

Lyly's Euphues, in Arber's Reprints ; Endymion, edited by Baker ; Cam-
paspe, in Manly's Pre-Shaksperean Drama.

North's Plutarch's Lives, edited by Wyndham, in Tudor Library ; school
edition, by Ginn and Company. Hakluyt's Voyages, in Everyman's Library ;
Jones's introduction to Hakluyt's Diverse Voyages ; Payne's Voyages of
Elizabethan Seamen; Froude's Essay, in Short Studies on Great Subjects.

Suggestive Questions, i. What historical conditions help to account for
the great literature of the Elizabethan age ? What are the general character-
istics of Elizabethan literature ? What type of literature prevailed, and why ?
What work seems to you to express most perfectly the Elizabethan spirit ?

2. Tell briefly the story of Spenser's life. What is the story or argument
of the Faery Queen ? What is meant by the Spenserian stanza ? Read and
comment upon Spenser's " Epithalamion." Why does the " Shepherd's Calen-
dar " mark a literary epoch ? What are the main qualities of Spenser's poetry ?
Can you quote or refer to any passages which illustrate these qualities ?
Why is he called the poets' poet ?

3. For what is Sackville noted ? What is the most significant thing about
his " Gorboduc " ? Name other minor poets and tell what they wrote.

4. Give an outline of the origin and rise of the drama in England. What
is meant by Miracle and Mystery plays ? What purposes did they serve among
the common people ? How did they help the drama ? What is meant by
cycles of Miracle plays? How did the Moralities differ from the Miracles?
What was the chief purpose of the Interludes ? What type of drama did they
develop ? Read a typical play, like " Noah's Flood " or " Everyman," and write
a brief analysis of it.

5. What were our first plays in the modern sense ? What influence did the
classics exert on the English drama ? What is meant by the dramatic unities ?
In what important respect did the English differ from the classic drama ?

6. Name some of Shakespeare's predecessors in the drama? What types
of drama did they develop ? Name some plays of each type. Are any of these
plays still presented on the stage ?

7. What are Marlowe's chief plays ? What is the central motive in each ?
Why are they called one-man plays ? What is meant by Marlowe's " mighty
line " ? What is the story of " Faustus " ? Compare " Faustus " and Goethe's
" Faust," having in mind the story, the dramatic interest, and the literary
value of each play.

8. Tell briefly the story of Shakespeare's life. What fact in his life most
impressed you ? How does Shakespeare sum up the work of all his predeces-
sors ? What are the four periods of his work, and the chief plays of each ?

1 84

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Where did he find his plots ? What are his romantic plays ? his chronicle or
historical plays ? What is the difference between a tragedy and a comedy ?
Name some of Shakespeare's best tragedies, comedies, and historical plays.
Which play of Shakespeare's seems to you to give the best picture of human
life ? Why is he called the myriad-minded Shakespeare ? For what reasons is
he considered the greatest of writers ? Can you explain why Shakespeare's
plays are still acted, while other plays of his age are rarely seen ? If you have
seen any of Shakespeare's plays on the stage, how do they compare in interest
with a modern play ?

9. What are Ben Jonson's chief plays ? In what important respects did
they differ from those of Shakespeare ? Tell the story of " The Alchemist "
or " The Silent Woman." Name other contemporaries and successors of
Shakespeare. Give some reasons for the preeminence of the Elizabethan
drama. What causes led to its decline ?

10. Tell briefly the story of Bacon's life. What is his chief literary work ?
his chief educational work ? Why is he called a pioneer of modern science ?
Can you explain what is meant by the inductive method of learning ? What
subjects are considered in Bacon's Essays? What is the central idea of the
essay you like best ? What are the literary qualities of these essays ? Do
they appeal to the intellect or the emotions ? What is meant by the word
" essay," and how does Bacon illustrate the definition ? Make a comparison
between Bacon's essays and those of some more recent writer, such as Addi-
son, Lamb, Carlyie, Emerson, or Stevenson, having in mind the subjects,
style, and interest of both essayists.

11. Who are the minor prose writers of the Elizabethan Age ? What did
they write ? Comment upon any work of theirs which you have read. What
is the literary value of North's Plutarch ? What is the chief defect in Eliza-
bethan prose as a whole ? What is meant by euphuism ? Explain why Eliza-
bethan poetry is superior to the prose.

CHRONOLOGY

Last Half of the Sixteenth and First Half of the Seventeenth Centuries

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1558. Elizabeth (d. 1603)

1571. Rise of English Puritans
1577. Drake's Voyage around the
World

1559. John Knox in Edinburgh

1562 (?). Gammer Gurton's Needle.
Gorboduc

1564. Birth of Shakespeare

1576. First Theater

1 579. Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar.
Lyly's Euphues. North's Plu-
tarch.

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

185

CHRONOLOGY (continued}

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1588. Defeat of the Armada

1603. James I (d. 1625)

1604. Divine Right of Kings pro-

claimed

1607. Settlement at Jamestown, Vir-
ginia

1620. Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth

1625. Charles I

1587. Shakespeare in London,
lowe's Tamburlaine

Mar-

1590. Spenser's Faery Queen. Sid-
ney's Arcadia

1590-1595. Shakespeare's Early Plays
1597-1625. Bacon's Essays
1598-1614. Chapman's Homer
1598. Ben Jonson's Every Man in His

Humour
1600-1607. Shakespeare's Tragedies

1 605. Bacon's Advancement of Learn-
ing
1608. Birth of Milton

1611. Translation (King James Ver-
sion) of Bible
1614. Raleigh's History
1616.' Death of Shakespeare
1620-1642. Shakespeare's successors.

End of drama

1620. Bacon's Novum Organum
1622. First regular newspaper, The

Weekly News
1626. Death of Bacon

CHAPTER VII

THE PURITAN AGE (1620-1660)
I. HISTORICAL SUMMARY

The Puritan Movement. In its broadest sense the Puritan move-
ment may be regarded as a second and greater Renaissance, a
rebirth of the moral nature of man following the intellectual awak-
ening of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In Italy,
whose influence had been uppermost in Elizabethan literature, the
Renaissance had been essentially pagan and sensuous. It had hardly
touched the moral nature of man, and it brought little relief from the
despotism of rulers. One can hardly read the horrible records of the
Medici or the Borgias, or the political observations of Machiavelli,
without marveling at the moral and political degradation of a cul-
tured nation. In the North, especially among the German and Eng-
lish peoples, the Renaissance was accompanied by a moral awakening,
and it is precisely that awakening in England, "that greatest moral
and political reform which ever swept over a nation in the short space
of half a century," which is meant by the Puritan movement. We
shall understand it better if we remember that it had two chief
objects: the first was personal righteousness; the second was civil
and religious liberty. In other words, it aimed to make men honest
and to make them free.

Such a movement should be cleared of all the misconceptions
which have clung to it since the Restoration, when the very name
Wrong * Puritan was made ridiculous by the jeers of the gay

ideas of courtiers of Charles II. Though the spirit of the move-
the Puritans ment was p ro f oun( Hy religious, the Puritans were not a
religious sect ; neither was the Puritan a narrow-minded and gloomy
dogmatist, as he is still pictured even in the histories. Pym and
Hampden and Eliot and Milton were Puritans; and in the long
struggle for human liberty there are few names more honored by
freemen everywhere. Cromwell and Thomas Hooker were Puritans;
yet Cromwell stood like a rock for religious tolerance ; and Thomas
Hooker, in Connecticut, gave to the world the first written constitution,

186

THE PURITAN AGE 187

in which freemen, before electing their officers, laid down the
strict limits of the offices to which they were elected. That is a
Puritan document, and it marks one of the greatest achievements
in the history of government.

From a religious view point Puritanism included all shades of belief.
The name was first given to those who advocated certain changes in
the form of worship of the reformed English Church under Elizabeth ;
but as the ideal of liberty rose in men's minds, and opposed to it
were the king and his evil counselors and the band of intolerant
churchmen of whom Laud is the great example, then Puritanism
became a great national movement. It included English churchmen
as well as extreme Separatists, Calvinists, Covenanters, Catholic
noblemen, all bound together in resistance to despotism in Church
and State, and with a passion for liberty and righteousness such as
the world has never since seen. Naturally such a movement had its
extremes and excesses, and it is from a few zealots and fanatics that
most of our misconceptions about the Puritans arise. Life was stern
in those days, too stern perhaps, and the intensity of the struggle
against despotism made men narrow and hard. In the triumph of
Puritanism under Cromwell severe laws were passed, many simple
pleasures were forbidden, and an austere standard of living was forced
upon an unwilling people. So the criticism is made that the wild out-
break of immorality which followed the restoration of Charles was
partly due to the unnatural restrictions of the Puritan era. The criti-
cism is just ; but we must not forget the whole spirit of the movement.
That the Puritan prohibited Maypole dancing and horse racing is of
small consequence beside the fact that he fought for liberty and jus-
tice, that he overthrew despotism and made a man's life and property
safe from the tyranny of rulers. A great river is not judged by the
foam on its surface, and certain austere laws and doctrines which we
have ridiculed are but froth on the surface of the mighty Puritan
current that has flowed steadily, like a river of life, through English
and American history since the Age of Elizabeth.

Changing Ideals. The political upheaval of the period is summed
up in the terrible struggle between the king and Parliament, which
resulted in the death of Charles at the block and the establishment
of the Commonwealth under Cromwell. For centuries the English
people had been wonderfully loyal to their sovereigns ; but deeper
than their loyalty to kings was the old Saxon love for personal liberty.
At times, as in the days of Alfred and Elizabeth, the two ideals went

1 88 ENGLISH LITERATURE

hand in hand ; but more often they were in open strife, and a final
struggle for supremacy was inevitable. The crisis came when James I,
who had received the right of royalty from an act of Parliament,
began, by the assumption of "divine right," to ignore the Parliament
which had created him. Of the civil war which followed in the reign
of Charles I, and of the triumph of English freedom, it is unneces-
sary to write here. The blasphemy of a man's divine right to rule
his fellow-men was ended. Modern England began with the charge
of Cromwell's brigade of Puritans at Naseby.

Religiously the age was one of even greater ferment than that
which marked the beginning of the Reformation. A great ideal, the
Religious ideal of a national church, was pounding to pieces, like
Ideals a ship in the breakers, and in the confusion of such an

hour the action of the various sects was like that of frantic passengers,
each striving to save his possessions from the wreck. The Catholic
church, as its name implies, has always held true to the ideal of a
united church, a church which, like the great Roman government
of the early centuries, can bring the splendor and authority of Rome
to bear upon the humblest village church to the farthest ends of the
earth. For a time that mighty ideal dazzled the German and English
reformers ; but the possibility of a united Protestant church perished
with Elizabeth. Then, instead of the world-wide church which was
the ideal of Catholicism, came the ideal of a purely national Protes-
tantism. This was the ideal of Laud and the reactionary bishops, no
less than of the scholarly Richard Hooker, of the rugged Scotch
Covenanters, and of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. It is in-
tensely interesting to note that Charles called Irish rebels and Scotch
Highlanders to his aid by promising to restore their national reli-
gions ; and that the English Puritans, turning to Scotland for help,
entered into the solemn Covenant of 1643, establishing a national
Presbyterianism, whose object was :

To bring the churches of God in the three kingdoms to uniformity in reli-
gion and government, to preserve the rights of Parliament and the liberties
of the Kingdom ; . . . that we and our posterity may as brethren live in
faith and love, and the Lord may delight to live in the midst of us.

In this famous Covenant we see the national, the ecclesiastical, and
the personal dream of Puritanism, side by side, in all their grandeur
and simplicity.

THE PURITAN AGE 189

Years passed, years of bitter struggle and heartache, before the
impossibility of uniting the various Protestant sects was generally
recognized. The ideal of a national church died hard, and to its
death is due all the religious unrest of the period. Only as we
remember the national ideal, and the struggle which it caused, can
we understand the amazing life and work of Bunyan, or appreciate
the heroic spirit of the American colonists who left home for a wilder-
ness in order to give the new ideal of a free church in a free state
its practical demonstration.

Literary Characteristics. In literature also the Puritan Age
was one of confusion, due to the breaking up of old ideals.
Mediaeval standards of chivalry, the impossible loves and
romances of which Spenser furnished the types, perished no
less surely than the ideal of a national church ; and in the
absence of any fixed standard of literary criticism there was
nothing to prevent the exaggeration of the " metaphysical "
poets, who are the literary parallels to religious sects like
the Anabaptists. Poetry took new and startling forms in
Donne and Herbert, and prose became as somber as Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy. The spiritual gloom which sooner
or later fastens upon all the writers of this age, and which
is unjustly attributed to Puritan influence, is due to the
breaking up of accepted standards in government and religion.
No people, from the Greeks to those of our own day, have
suffered the loss of old ideals without causing its writers to cry,
" Ichabod 1 the glory has departed." That is the unconscious
tendency of literary men in all times, who look backward for
their golden age ; and it need not concern the student of
literature, who, even in the break-up of cherished institutions,
looks for some foregleams of a better light which is to break
upon the world. This so-called gloomy age produced some
minor poems of exquisite workmanship, and one great master
of verse whose work would glorify any age or people, John
Milton, in whom the indomitable Puritan spirit finds its noblest
expression.

ENGLISH LITERATURE

There are three main characteristics in which Puritan
literature differs from that of the preceding age : ( I ) Eliza-
Puritan and k etnan literature, with all its diversity, had a
Elizabethan marked unity in spirit, resulting from the patriot-
ism of all classes and their devotion to a queen
who, with all her faults, sought first the nation's welfare.
Under the Stuarts all this was changed. The kings were the
open enemies of the people ; the country was divided by
the struggle for political and religious liberty ; and the litera-
ture was as divided in spirit as were the struggling parties.
(2) Elizabethan literature is generally inspiring ; it throbs
with youth and hope and vitality. That which follows speaks
of age and sadness ; even its brightest hours are followed by
gloom, and by the pessimism inseparable from the passing of
,old standards. (3) Elizabethan literature is intensely romantic ;
the romance springs from the heart of youth, and believes all
things, even the impossible. The great schoolman's credo,
" I believe because it is impossible," is a better expression
of Elizabethan literature than of mediaeval theology. In the
literature of the Puritan period one looks in vain for romantic
ardor. Even in the lyrics and love poems a critical, intellec-
tual spirit takes its place, and whatever romance asserts itself
is in form rather than in feeling, a fantastic and artificial
adornment of speech rather than the natural utterance of a
heart in which sentiment is so strong and true that poetry is
its only expression.

II. LITERATURE OF THE PURITAN PERIOD

The Transition Poets. When one attempts to classify the
literature of the first half of the seventeenth century, from
the death of Elizabeth (1603) to the Restoration (1660), he
realizes the impossibility of grouping poets by any accurate
standard. The classifications attempted here have small
dependence upon dates or sovereigns, and are suggestive
rather than accurate. Thus Shakespeare and Bacon wrote

THE PURITAN AGE 191

largely in the reign of James I, but their work is Elizabethan
in spirit ; and Bimyan is no less a Puritan because he hap-
pened to write after the Restoration. The name Metaphys-
ical poets, given by Dr. Johnson, is somewhat suggestive but
not descriptive of the followers of Donne ; the name Caro-
line or Cavalier poets brings to mind the careless temper of
the Royalists who followed King Charles with a devotion of
which he was unworthy ; and the name Spenserian poets
recalls the little band of dreamers who clung to Spenser's
ideal, even while his romantic mediaeval castle was battered
down by Science at the one gate and Puritanism at the other.
At the beginning of this bewildering confusion of ideals ex-
pressed in literature, we note a few writers who are gener-
ally known as Jacobean poets, but whom we have called the
Transition poets because, with the later dramatists, they show
clearly the changing standards of the age.

Samuel Daniel (15621619). Daniel, who is often classed
with the first Metaphysical poets, is interesting to us for two
reasons, for his use of the artificial sonnet, and for his
literary desertion of Spenser as a model for poets. His Delia,
a cycle of sonnets modeled, perhaps, after Sidney's Astrophel
and Stella, helped to fix the custom of celebrating love or
friendship by a series of sonnets, to which some pastoral
pseudonym was affixed. In his sonnets, many of which rank
with Shakespeare's, and in his later poetry, especially the
beautiful "Complaint of Rosamond" and his " Civil Wars,"
he aimed solely at grace of expression, and became influential
in giving to English poetry a greater individuality and in-
dependence than it had ever known. In matter he set himself
squarely against the mediaeval tendency :

Let others sing of kings and paladines
In aged accents and untimely words,
Paint shadows in imaginary lines.

This fling at Spenser and his followers marks the beginning
of the modern and realistic school, which sees in life as it is

192 ENGLISH LITERATURE

enough poetic material, without the invention of allegories
and impossible heroines. Daniel's poetry, which was forgot-
ten soon after his death, has received probably more homage
than it deserves in the praises of Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb,
and Coleridge. The latter says : " Read Daniel, the admir-
able Daniel. The style and language are just such as any
pure and manly writer of the present day would use. It seems
quite modern in comparison with the style of Shakespeare."

The Song Writers. In strong contrast with the above are
two distinct groups, the Song Writers and the Spenserian
poets. The close of the reign of Elizabeth was marked by
an outburst of English songs, as remarkable in its sudden
development as the rise of the drama. Two causes contributed
to this result, the increasing influence of French instead of
Italian verse, and the rapid development of music as an art
at the close of the sixteenth century. The two song writers
best worth studying are Thomas Campion (1567?-! 619) and
Nicholas Breton (1545 ?-i626?). Like all the lyric poets of
the age, they are a curious mixture of the Elizabethan and
the Puritan standards. They sing of sacred and profane love
with the same zest, and a careless love song is often found on
the same page with a plea for divine grace.

The Spenserian Poets. Of the Spenserian poets Giles
Fletcher and Wither are best worth studying. Giles Fletcher
(i588?-i623) has at times a strong suggestion of Milton
(who was also a follower of Spenser in his early years) in the
noble simplicity and majesty of his lines. His best known work,
" Christ's Victory and Triumph " (1610), was the greatest reli-
gious poem that had appeared in England since " Piers Plow-
man," and is not an unworthy predecessor of Paradise Lost.

The life of George Wither (1588-1667) covers the whole
period of English history from Elizabeth to the Restoration,
and the enormous volume of his work covers every phase of
the literature of two great ages. His life was a varied one ;
now as a Royalist leader against the Covenanters, and again

THE PURITAN AGE 193

announcing his Puritan convictions, and suffering in prison for
his faith. At his best Wither is a lyric poet of great origi-
nality, rising at times to positive genius ; but the bulk of his
poetry is intolerably dull. Students of this period find him
interesting as an epitome of the whole age in which he lived ;
but the average reader is more inclined to note with interest
that he published in 1623 Hymns and Songs of the Church,
the first hymn book that ever appeared in the English language.
The Metaphysical Poets. This name which was given
by Dr. Johnson in derision, because of the fantastic form of
Donne's poetry is often applied to all minor poets of the
Puritan Age. We use the term here in a narrower sense,
excluding the followers of Daniel and that later group known
as the Cavalier poets. It includes Donne, Herbert, Waller,
Denham, Cowley, Vaughan, Davenant, Marvell, and Crashaw.
The advanced student finds them all worthy of study, not
only for their occasional excellent poetry, but because of their
influence on later literature. Thus Richard Crashaw (1613 ?
1649), tne Catholic mystic, is interesting because his troubled
life is singularly like Donne's, and his poetry is at times like
Herbert's set on fire. 1 Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), who
blossomed young and who, at twenty-five, was proclaimed the
greatest poet in England, is now scarcely known even by
name, but his " Pindaric Odes " 2 set an example which in-
fluenced English poetry throughout the eighteenth century.
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) is worthy of study because he
is in some respects the forerunner of Wordsworth; 3 and
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), because of his loyal friendship
with Milton, and because his poetry shows the conflict between
the two schools of Spenser and Donne. Edmund Waller
(1606-1687) stands between the Puritan Age and the Res-
toration. He was the first to use consistently the "closed"

1 See, for instance, the " Hymn to St. Theresa " and " The Flaming Heart."

2 So called from Pindar, the greatest lyric poet of Greece.

3 See, for instance, " Childhood," " The Retreat," " Corruption," " The Bird," " The
Hidden Flower," for Vaughan's mystic interpretation of childhood and nature.

194 ENGLISH LITERATURE

couplet which dominated our poetry for the next century.
By this, and especially by his influence over Dryden, the
greatest figure of the Restoration, he occupies a larger place
in our literature than a reading of his rather tiresome poetry
would seem to warrant.

Of all these poets, each of whom has his special claim, we
can consider here only Donne and Herbert, who in differ-
ent ways are the types of revolt against earlier forms and
standards of poetry. In feeling and imagery both are poets
of a high order, but in style and expression they are the
leaders of the fantastic school whose influence largely domi-
nated poetry during the half century of the Puritan period.

JOHN DONNE (1573-1631)

Life. The briefest outline of Donne's life shows its intense human
interest. He was born in London, the son of a rich iron merchant,
at the time when the merchants of England were creating a new and
higher kind of princes. On his father's side he came from an old
Welsh family, and on his mother's side from the Heywoods and Sir
Thomas More's family. Both families were Catholic, and in his early
life persecution was brought near ; for his brother died in prison for
harboring a proscribed priest, and his own education could not be
continued in Oxford and Cambridge because of his religion. Such
an experience generally sets a man's religious standards for life ; but
presently Donne, as he studied law at Lincoln's Inn, was investigating
the philosophic grounds of all faith. Gradually he left the church in
which he was born, renounced all denominations, and called himself
simply Christian. Meanwhile he wrote poetry and shared his wealth
with needy Catholic relatives. He joined the expedition of Essex
for Cadiz in 1596, and for the Azores in 1597, and on sea and in
camp found time to write poetry. Two of his best poems, "The
Storm " and "The Calm," belong to this period. Next he traveled
in Europe for three years, but occupied himself with study and
poetry. Returning home, he became secretary to Lord Egerton,
fell in love with the latter's young niece, Anne More, and married
her ; for which cause Donne was cast into prison. Strangely enough
his poetical work at this time is not a song of youthful romance, but

THE PURITAN AGE 195

"The Progress of the Soul," a study of transmigration. Years of
wandering and poverty followed, until Sir George More forgave the
young lovers and made an allowance to his daughter. Instead of
enjoying his new comforts, Donne grew more ascetic and intellectual
in his tastes. He refused also the flattering offer of entering the
Church of England and of receiving a comfortable " living." By his
" Pseudo Martyr " he attracted the favor of James I, who persuaded
him to be ordained, yet left him without any place or employment.
When his wife died her allowance ceased, and Donne was left with
seven children in extreme poverty. Then he became a preacher,
rose rapidly by sheer intellectual force and genius, and in four years
was the greatest of English preachers and Dean of St. Paul's Cathe-
dral in London. There he " carried some to heaven in holy raptures
and led others to amend their lives," and as he leans over the pulpit
with intense earnestness is likened by Izaak Walton to "an angel
leaning from a cloud."

Here is variety enough to epitomize his age, and yet in all his life,
stronger than any impression of outward weal or woe, is the sense of
mystery that surrounds Donne. In all his work one finds a mystery,
a hiding of some deep thing which the world would gladly know and
share, and which is suggested in his haunting little poem, " The
Undertaking":

I have done one braver thing

Than all the worthies did ;

And yet a braver thence doth spring,

Which is, to keep that hid.

Donne's Poetry. Donne's poetry is so uneven, at times so
startling and fantastic, that few critics would care to rec-
ommend it to others. Only a few will read his works, and they
must be left to their own browsing, to find what pleases
them, like deer which, in the midst of plenty, take a bite here
and there and wander on, tasting twenty varieties of food in
an hour's feeding. One who reads much will probably bewail
Donne's lack of any consistent style or literary standard. For
instance, Chaucer and Milton are as different as two poets could
well be ; yet the work of each is marked by a distinct and con-
sistent style, and it is the style as much as the matter which
makes the Tales or the Paradise Lost a work for all time.

1 96 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Donne threw style and all literary standards to the winds ;
and precisely for this reason he is forgotten, though his great
intellect and his genius had marked him as one of those who
should do things "worthy to be remembered." While the
tendency of literature is to exalt style at the expense of
thought, the world has many men and women who exalt
feeling and thought above expression ; and to these Donne
is good reading. Browning is of the same school, and com-
pels attention. While Donne played havoc with Elizabethan
style, he nevertheless influenced our literature in the way of
boldness and originality ; and the present tendency is to give
him a larger place, nearer to the few great poets, than he has
occupied since Ben Jonson declared that he was "the first poet
of the world in some things," but likely to perish "for not being
understood." For to much of his poetry we must apply his
own satiric verses on another's crudities :

Infinite work ! which doth so far extend
That none can study it to any end.

GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633)

W O day most calm, most bright," sang George Herbert, and
we may safely take that single line as expressive of the whole
spirit of his writings. Professor Palmer, whose scholarly edi-
tion of this poet's works is a model for critics and editors,
calls Herbert the first in English poetry who spoke face to
face with God. That may be true ; but it is interesting to
note that not a poet of the first half of the seventeenth cen-
tury, not even the gayest of the Cavaliers, but has written
some noble verse of prayer or aspiration, which expresses the
underlying Puritan spirit of his age. Herbert is the greatest,
the most consistent of them all. In all the others the Puritan
struggles against the Cavalier, or the Cavalier breaks loose
from the restraining Puritan ; but in Herbert the struggle is
past and peace has come. That his life was not all calm,
that the Puritan in him had struggled desperately before it

THE PURITAN AGE 197

subdued the pride and idleness of the Cavalier, is evident to
one who reads between his lines :

I struck the board and cry'd, No more !

I will abroad.

What ? Shall I ever sigh and pine ?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind.

There speaks the Cavalier of the university and the court ; and
as one reads to the end of the little poem, which he calls by
the suggestive name of "The Collar," he may know that he
is reading condensed biography.

Those who seek for faults, for strained imagery and fantastic
verse forms in Herbert's poetry, will find them in abundance ;
but it will better repay the reader to look for the deep thought
and fine feeling that are hidden in these wonderful religious
lyrics, even in those that appear most artificial. The fact that
Herbert's reputation was greater, at times, than Milton's, and
that his poems when published after his death had a large sale
and influence, shows certainly that he appealed to the men of
his age ; and his poems will probably be read and appreciated,
if only by the few, just so long as men are strong enough to
understand the Puritan's spiritual convictions.

Life. Herbert's life is so quiet and uneventful that to relate a few
biographical facts can be of little advantage. Only as one reads the
whole story by Izaak Walton can he share the gentle spirit of Her-
bert's poetry. He was born at Montgomery Castle, 1 Wales, 1593, of
a noble Welsh family. His university course was brilliant, and after
graduation he waited long years in the vain hope of preferment at
court. All his life he had to battle against disease, and this is un-
doubtedly the cause of the long delay before each new step in his
course. Not till he was thirty-seven was he ordained and placed over
the little church of Bemerton. How he lived here among plain
people, in " this happy corner of the Lord's field, hoping all things
and blessing all people, asking his own way to Sion and showing others

1 There is some doubt as to whether he was born at the Castle, or at Black Hall.
Recent opinion inclines to the latter view,

198 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the way," should be read in Walton. It is a brief life, less than three
years of work before being cut off by consumption, but remarkable
for the single great purpose and the glorious spiritual strength that
shine through physical weakness. Just before his death he gave some
manuscripts to a friend, and his message is worthy of John Bunyan :

Deliver this little book to my dear brother Ferrar, and tell him he
shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed
betwixt God and my soul before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus
my master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom. Desire
him to read it ; and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of
any dejected poor soul, let it be made public ; if not, let him burn it, for
I and it are less than the least of God's mercies.

Herbert's Poems. Herbert's chief work, The Temple, con-
sists of over one hundred and fifty short poems suggested by
the Church, her holidays and ceremonials, and the experiences
of the Christian life. The first poem, "The Church Porch," is
the longest and, though polished with a care that foreshad-
ows the classic school, the least poetical. It is a wonderful
collection of condensed sermons, wise precepts, and moral
lessons, suggesting Chaucer's " Good Counsel," Pope's "Es-
say on Man," and Polonius's advice to Laertes, in Hamlet ;
only it is more packed with thought than any of these. Of
truth-speaking he says :

Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie ;

A fault which needs it most grows two thereby.

and of calmness in argument :

Calmness is great advantage : he that lets
Another chafe may warm him at his fire.

Among the remaining poems of The Temple one of the
most suggestive is "The Pilgrimage." Here in six short stan-
zas, every line close-packed with thought, we have the whole
of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The poem was written prob-
ably before Bunyan was born, but remembering the wide
influence of Herbert's poetry, it is an interesting question
whether Bunyan received the idea of his immortal work from

THE PURITAN AGE 199

this " Pilgrimage." Probably the best known of all his poems
is the one called "The Pulley," which generally appears, how-
ever, under the name "Rest," or "The Gifts of God."

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us, said he, pour on him all we can :
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way ;

Then beauty flowed ; then wisdom, honor, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

For, if I should, said he,
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness :
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.

Among the poems which may be read as curiosities of ver-
sification, and which arouse the wrath of the critics against
the whole metaphysical school, are those like " Easter Wings "
and "The Altar," which suggest in the printed form of the
poem the thing of which the poet sings. More ingenious is
the poem in which rime is made by cutting off the first letter
of a preceding word, as in the five stanzas of " Paradise " :

I bless thee, Lord, because I grow
Among thy trees, which in a row
To thee both fruit and order ow.

And more ingenious still are odd conceits like the poem
" Heaven," in which Echo, by repeating the last syllable of
each line, gives an answer to the poet's questions.

200 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Cavalier Poets. In the literature of any age there are
generally found two distinct tendencies. The first expresses
the dominant spirit of the times ; the second, a secret or an
open rebellion. So in this age, side by side with the serious
and rational Puritan, lives the gallant and trivial Cavalier.
The Puritan finds expression in the best poetry of the period,
from Donne to Milton, and in the prose of Baxter and Bunyan ;
the Cavalier in a small group of poets, Herrick, Lovelace,
Suckling, and Carew, who write songs generally in lighter
vein, gay, trivial, often licentious, but who cannot altogether
escape the tremendous seriousness of Puritanism.

Thomas Carew (1598 ?-i639?). Carew may be called the
inventor of Cavalier love poetry, and to him, more than to any
other, is due the peculiar combination of the sensual and the
religious which marked most of the minor poets of the seven-
teenth century. His poetry is the Spenserian pastoral stripped
of its refinement of feeling and made direct, coarse, vigorous.
His poems, published in 1640, are generally, like his life,
trivial or sensual ; but here and there is found one, like the
following, which indicates that with the Metaphysical and
Cavalier poets a new and stimulating force had entered
English literature :

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose, .
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more where those stars light
That downwards fall in dead of night,
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest,
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674). Herrick is the true Cavalier,
gay, devil-may-care in disposition, but by some freak of fate

THE PURITAN AGE 2OI

a clergyman of Dean Prior, in South Devon, a county made
famous by him and Blackmore. Here, in a country parish, he
lived discontentedly, longing for the joys of London and the
Mermaid Tavern, his bachelor establishment consisting of an
old housekeeper, a cat, a dog, a goose, a tame lamb, one hen,
for which he thanked God in poetry because she laid an egg
every day, and a pet pig that drank beer with Herrick out
of a tankard. With admirable good nature, Herrick made the
best of these uncongenial surroundings. He watched with
sympathy the country life about him and caught its spirit in
many lyrics, a few of which, like " Corinna's Maying," " Gather
ye rosebuds while ye may," and "To Daffodils," are among the
best known in our language. His poems cover a wide range,
from trivial love songs, pagan in spirit, to hymns of deep
religious feeling. Only the best of his poems should be read ;
and these are remarkable for their exquisite sentiment and
their graceful, melodious expression. The rest, since they
reflect something of the coarseness of his audience, may be
passed over in silence.

Late in life Herrick published his one book, Hesperides
and Noble Numbers (1648). The latter half contains his
religious poems, and one has only to read there the remark-
able "Litany" to see how the religious terror that finds
expression in Bunyan's Grace Abounding could master even
the most careless of Cavalier singers.

Suckling and Lovelace. Sir John Suckling ( 1 609-1 642) was
one of the most brilliant wits of the court of Charles I, who wrote
poetry as he exercised a horse or fought a duel, because it was
considered a gentleman's accomplishment in those days. His
poems, "struck from his wild life like sparks from his rapier,"
are utterly trivial, and, even in his best known "Ballad Upon a
Wedding," rarely rise above mere doggerel. It is only the ro-
mance of his life his rich, brilliant, careless youth, and his
poverty and suicide in Paris, whither he fled because of his devo-
tion to the Stuarts that keeps his name alive in our literature.

202 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In his life and poetry Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)
offers a remarkable parallel to Suckling, and the two are often
classed together as perfect representatives of the followers of
King Charles. Lovelace's Lucasta, a volume of love lyrics, is
generally on a higher plane than Suckling's work ; and a few
of the poems like "To Lucasta," and "To Althea,from Prison,"
deserve the secure place they have won. In the latter occur
the oft-quoted lines :

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage ;
Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty.

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart ;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free ;

So didst thou travel on life's common way

In cheerful godliness: and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

(From Wordsworth's " Sonnet on Milton ")

Shakespeare and Milton are the two figures that tower
conspicuously above the goodly fellowship of men who have
made our literature famous. Each is representative of the
age that produced him, and together they form a suggestive
commentary upon the two forces that rule our humanity,
the force of impulse and the force of a fixed purpose. Shake-
speare is the poet of impulse, of the loves, hates, fears, jeal-
ousies, and ambitions that swayed the men of his age. Milton
is the poet of steadfast will and purpose, who moves like a
god amid the fears and hopes and changing impulses of the
world, regarding them as trivial and momentary things that
can never swerve a great soul from its course.

THE PURITAN AGE 203

It is well to have some such comparison in mind while
studying the literature of the Elizabethan and the Puritan Age.
While Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and their unequaled com-
pany of wits make merry at the Mermaid Tavern, there is
already growing up on the same London street a poet who
shall bring a new force into literature, who shall add to the
Renaissance culture and love of beauty the tremendous moral
earnestness of the Puritan. Such a poet must begin, as the
Puritan always began, with his own soul, to discipline and
enlighten it, before expressing its beauty in literature. " He
that would hope to write well hereafter in laudable things,"
says Milton, "ought himself to be a true poem ; that is, a
composition and pattern of the best and most honorable
things." Here is a new proposition in art which suggests the
lofty ideal of Fra Angelico, that before one can write litera-
ture, which is the expression of the ideal, he must first de-
velop in himself the ideal man. Because Milton is human he
must know the best in humanity; therefore he studies, giving
his days to music, art, and literature, his nights to profound
research and meditation. But because he knows that man is
more than mortal he also prays, depending, as he tells us,
on "devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich
with all utterance and knowledge." Such a poet is already
in spirit far beyond the Renaissance, though he lives in the
autumn of its glory and associates with its literary masters.
"There is a spirit in man," says the old Hebrew poet, "and
the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding."
Here, in a word, is the secret of Milton's life and writing.
Hence his long silences, years passing without a word ; and
when he speaks it is like the voice of a prophet who begins
with the sublime announcement, "The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me." Hence his style, producing an impression of sub-
limity, which has been marked for wonder by every historian
of our literature. His style was unconsciously sublime because
he lived and thought consciously in a sublime atmosphere.

204

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Life of Milton. Milton is like an ideal in the soul, like a lofty
mountain on the horizon. We never attain the ideal ; we never climb
the mountain ; but life would be inexpressibly poorer were either to
be taken away.

From childhood Milton's parents set him apart for the attainment
of noble ends, and so left nothing to chance in the matter of train-
ing. His father, John Milton, is said to have turned Puritan while
a student at Oxford and to have been disinherited by his family;

whereupon he settled in
London and prospered
greatly as a scrivener,
that is, a kind of notary.
In character the elder
Milton was a rare com-
bination of scholar and
business man, a radical
Puritan in politics and
religion, yet a musician,
whose hymn tunes are
still sung, and a lover of
art and literature. The
poet's mother was a
woman of refinement
and social grace, with a
deep interest in religion
and in local charities.
So the boy grew up in a
home which combined
the culture of the Renaissance with the piety and moral strength of
early Puritanism. He begins, therefore, as the heir of one great age
and the prophet of another.

Apparently the elder Milton shared Bacon's dislike for the educa-
tional methods of the time and so took charge of his son's training,
encouraging his natural tastes, teaching him music, and seeking out
a tutor who helped the boy to what he sought most eagerly, not the
grammar and mechanism of Greek and Latin but rather the stories,
the ideals, the poetry that hide in their incomparable literatures. At
twelve years we find the boy already a scholar in spirit, unable to
rest till after midnight because of the joy with which his study
was rewarded. From boyhood two great principles seem to govern

JOHN MILTON

THE PURITAN AGE 205

Milton's career : one, the love of beauty, of music, art, literature,
and indeed of every form of human culture ; the other, a steadfast
devotion to duty as the highest object in human life.

A brief course at the famous St. Paul's school in London was the
prelude to Milton's entrance to Christ's College, Cambridge. Here
again he followed his natural bent and, like Bacon, found himself
often in opposition to the authorities. Aside from some Latin poems,
the most noteworthy song of this period of Milton's life is his splen-
did ode, " On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," which was begun
on Christmas day, 1629. Milton, while deep in the classics, had yet
a greater love for his native literature. Spenser was for years his
master ; in his verse we find every evidence of his " loving study " of
Shakespeare, and his last great poems show clearly how he had been
influenced by Fletcher's Christ's Victory and Triumph. But it is
significant that this first ode rises higher than anything of the kind
produced in the famous Age of Elizabeth.

While at Cambridge it was the desire of his parents that Milton
should take orders in the Church of England ; but the intense love
of mental liberty which stamped the Puritan was too strong within
him, and he refused to consider the " oath of servitude," as he called
it, which would mark his ordination. Throughout his life Milton,
though profoundly religious, held aloof from the strife of sects. In
belief, he belonged to the extreme Puritans, called Separatists, In-
dependents, Congregationalists, of which our Pilgrim Fathers are
the great examples; but he refused to be bound by any creed or
church discipline :

As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.

In this last line of one of his sonnets 1 is found Milton's rejection of
every form of outward religious authority in face of the supreme
Puritan principle, the liberty of the individual soul before God.

A long period of retirement followed Milton's withdrawal from the
university in 1632. At his father's country home in Horton he gave
himself up for six years to solitary reading and study, roaming over
the wide fields of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Italian,
and English literatures, and studying hard at mathematics, science,
theology, and music, a curious combination. To his love of music
we owe the melody of all his poetry, and we note it in the rhythm
and balance which make even his mighty prose arguments harmonious.

1 " On his being arrived to the Age of Twenty-three."

206 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In "Lycidas," "L'Allegro," "II Penseroso," "Arcades," " Comus,"
and a few "Sonnets," we have the poetic results of this retirement at
Horton, few, indeed, but the most perfect of their kind that our
literature has recorded.

Out of solitude, where his talent was perfected, Milton entered
the busy world where his character was to be proved to the utmost.
From Horton he traveled abroad, through France, Switzerland, and
Italy, everywhere received with admiration for his learning and cour-
tesy, winning the friendship of the exiled Dutch scholar Grotius, in
Paris, and of Galileo in his sad imprisonment in Florence. 1 He
was on his way to Greece when news reached him of the break be-
tween king and parliament. With the practical insight which never
deserted him Milton saw clearly the meaning of the news. His cordial
reception in Italy, so chary of praise to anything not Italian, had re-
awakened in Milton the old desire to write an epic which England
would "not willingly let die"; but at thought of the conflict for
human freedom all his dreams were flung to the winds. He gave up
his travels and literary ambitions and hurried to England. " For I
thought it base," he says, " to be traveling at my ease for intellectual
culture while my fellow-countrymen at home were righting for liberty."

Then for nearly twenty years the poet of great achievement and
still greater promise disappears. We hear no more songs, but only
the prose denunciations and arguments which are as remarkable as
his poetry. In all our literature there is nothing more worthy of the
Puritan spirit than this laying aside of personal ambitions in order to
join in the struggle for human liberty. In his best known sonnet, " On
His Blindness," which reflects his grief, not at darkness, but at his
abandoned dreams, we catch the sublime spirit of this renunciation.

Milton's opportunity to serve came in the crisis of 1649. The
king had been sent to the scaffold, paying the penalty of his own
treachery, and England sat shivering at its own deed, like a child or
a Russian peasant who in sudden passion resists unbearable brutality
and then is afraid of the consequences. Two weeks of anxiety, of
terror and silence followed; then appeared Milton's Tenure of Kings
and Magistrates. To England it was like the coming of a strong
man, not only to protect the child, but to justify his blow for liberty.
Kings no less than people are subject to the eternal principle of law ;

1 ** It is remarkable," says Lamartine, " how often in the libraries of Italian princes
and in the correspondence of great Italian writers of this period you find mentioned the
name and fame of this young Englishman."

THE PURITAN AGE 207

the divine right of a people to defend and protect themselves,
that was the mighty argument which calmed a people's dread and pro-
claimed that a new man and a new principle had arisen in England.
Milton was called to be Secretary for Foreign Tongues in the new
government ; and for the next few years, until the end of the Com-
monwealth, there were two leaders in England, Cromwell the man of
action, Milton the man of thought. It is doubtful to which of the
two humanity owes most for its emancipation from the tyranny of
kings and prelates.

Two things of personal interest deserve mention in this period of
Milton's life, his marriage and his blindness. In 1643 he married Mary
Powell, a shallow, pleasure-loving girl, the daughter of a Royalist ;
and that was the beginning of sorrows. After a month, tiring of the
austere life of a Puritan household, she abandoned her husband,
who, with the same radical reasoning with which he dealt with affairs
of state, promptly repudiated the marriage. His Doctrine and Dis-
cipline of Divorce and his Tetrachordon are the arguments to justify
his position ; but they aroused a storm of protest in England, and
they suggest to a modern reader that Milton was perhaps as much to
blame as his wife, and that he had scant understanding of a woman's
nature. When his wife, fearing for her position, appeared before him
in tears, all his ponderous arguments were swept aside by a generous
impulse ; and though the marriage was never a happy one, Milton
never again mentioned his wife's desertion. The scene in Paradise
Losf, where Eve comes weeping to Adam, seeking peace and pardon,
is probably a reflection of a scene in Milton's own household. His
wife died in 1653, and a few years later he married another, whom
we remember for the sonnet, " Methought I saw my late espoused
saint," in which she is celebrated. She died after fifteen months,
and in 1663 he married a third wife, who helped the blind old man
to manage his poor household.

From boyhood the strain on the poet's eyes had grown more
and more severe ; but even when his sight was threatened he held
steadily to his purpose of using his pen in the service of his country.
During the king's imprisonment a book appeared called Eikon J3a-
silike (Royal Image), giving a rosy picture of the king's piety, and
condemning the Puritans. The book speedily became famous and
was the source of all Royalist arguments against the Commonwealth.
In 1649 appeared Milton's Eikonoklastes (Image Breaker), which
demolished the flimsy arguments of the Eikon Basilike as a charge

208 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of Cromwell's Ironsides had overwhelmed the king's followers. After
the execution of the king appeared another famous attack upon the
Puritans, Defensio Regia pro Carlo /, instigated by Charles II, who
was then living in exile. It was written in Latin by Salmasius, a
Dutch professor at Leyden, and was hailed by the Royalists as an in-
vincible argument. By order of the Council of State Milton prepared
a reply. His eyesight had sadly failed, and he was warned that any
further strain would be disastrous. His reply was characteristic of
the man and the Puritan. As he had once sacrificed his poetry, so he
was now ready, he said, to sacrifice his eyes also on the altar of Eng-
lish liberty. His magnificent Defensio pro Populo Anglicano is one
of the most masterly controversial works in literature. The power of
the press was already strongly felt in England, and the new Com-
monwealth owed its standing partly to Milton's prose, and partly to
Cromwell's policy. The Defensio was the last work that Milton saw.
Blindness fell upon him ere it was finished, and from 1652 until his
death he labored in total darkness.

The last part of Milton's life is a picture of solitary grandeur un-
equaled in literary history. With the Restoration all his labors and
sacrifices for humanity were apparently wasted. From his retirement
he could hear the bells and the shouts that welcomed back a vicious
monarch, whose first act was to set his foot upon his people's neck.
Milton was, immediately marked for persecution ; he remained for
months in hiding ; he was reduced to poverty, and his books were
burned by the public hangman. His daughters, upon whom he
depended in his blindness, rebelled at the task of reading to him
and recording his thoughts. In the midst of all these sorrows we
understand, in Samson, the cry of the blind champion of Israel :

Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishonored, quelled,

To what can I be useful ? wherein serve

My nation, and the work from Heaven imposed?

But to sit idle on the household hearth,

A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze,

Or pitied object.

Milton's answer is worthy of his own great life. Without envy or
bitterness he goes back to the early dream of an immortal poem and
begins with superb consciousness of power to dictate his great epic.

Paradise Lost was finished in 1665, after seven years' labor in
darkness. With great difficulty he found a publisher, and for the

THE PURITAN AGE 209

great work, now the most honored poem in our literature, he received
less than certain verse makers of our day receive for a little song in
one of our popular magazines. Its success was immediate, though,
like all his work, it met with venomous criticism. Dryden summed
up the impression made on thoughtful minds of his time when he
said, "This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too." Thereafter a
bit of sunshine came into his darkened home, for the work stamped
him as one of the world's great writers, and from England and the Con-
tinent pilgrims came in increasing numbers to speak their gratitude.
The next year Milton began his Paradise Regained. In 1671 ap-
peared his last important work, Samson Agonistes^ the most powerful
dramatic poem on the Greek model which our language possesses.
The picture of Israel's mighty champion, blind, alone, afflicted by
thoughtless enemies but preserving a noble ideal to the end, is a
fitting close to the life work of the poet himself. For years he was
silent, dreaming who shall say what dreams in his darkness, and say-
ing cheerfully to his friends, " Still guides the heavenly vision." He
died peacefully in 1674, the most sublime and the most lonely figure
in our literature.

Milton's Early Poetry. 1 In his early work Milton appears
as the inheritor of all that was best in Elizabethan literature,
and his first work, the ode " On the Morning of Christ's Na-
tivity," approaches the high-water mark of lyric poetry in
England. In the next six years, from 1631 to 1637, ne wrote
but Jittle, scarcely more than two thousand lines, but these
are among the most exquisite and the most perfectly finished
in our language.

" L' Allegro" and "II Penseroso" are twin poems, contain-
ing many lines and short descriptive passages which linger in
the mind like strains of music, and which are known
and loved wherever English is spoken. " L' Allegro"
(the joyous or happy man) is like an excursion into the Eng-
lish fields at sunrise. The air is sweet ; birds are singing ; a

1 In Milton's work we see plainly the progressive influence of the Puritan Age. Thus
his Horton poems are joyous, almost Elizabethan in character; his prose is stern, mili-
tant, unyielding, like the Puritan in his struggle for liberty ; his later poetry, following
the apparent failure of Puritanism in the Restoration, has a note of sadness, yet pro-
claims the eternal principles of liberty and justice for which he had lived.

210 ENGLISH LITERATURE

multitude of sights, sounds, fragrances, fill all the senses ; and
to this appeal of nature the soul of man responds by being
happy, seeing in every flower and hearing in every harmony
some exquisite symbol of human life. "II Penseroso" takes
us over the same ground at twilight and at moonrise. The
air is still fresh and fragrant ; the symbolism is, if possible,
more tenderly beautiful than before ; but the gay mood is
gone, though its memory lingers in the afterglow of the sun-
set. A quiet thoughtfulness takes the place of the pure, joyous
sensation of the morning, a thoughtfulness which is not sad,
though like all quiet moods it is akin to sadness, and which
sounds the deeps of human emotion in the presence of nature.
To quote scattered lines of either poem is to do injustice to
both. They should be read in their entirety the same day, one
at morning, the other at eventide, if one is to appreciate their
beauty and suggestiveness.

The "Masque of Comus" is in many respects the most
perfect of Milton's poems. It was written in 1634 to be per-
formed at Ludlow Castle before the earl of Bridge-
water and his friends. There is a tradition that the
earl's three children had been lost in the woods, and, whether
true or not, Milton takes the simple theme of a person lost,
calls in an Attendant Spirit to protect the wanderer, and out
of this, with its natural action and melodious songs, makes
the most exquisite pastoral drama that we possess. In form
it is a masque, like those gorgeous products of the Elizabethan
age of which Ben Jonson was the master. England had bor-
rowed the idea of the masque from Italy and had used it as
the chief entertainment at all festivals, until it had become
to the nobles of England what the miracle play had been to
the common people of a previous generation. Milton, with
his strong Puritan spirit, could not be content with the mere
entertainment of an idle hour. "Comus" has the gorgeous
scenic effects, the music and dancing of other masques ; but
its moral purpose and its ideal teachings are unmistakable,

THE PURITAN AGE 211

" The Triumph of Virtue" would be a better name for this per-
fect little masque, for its theme is that virtue and innocence
can walk through any peril of this world without permanent
harm. This eternal triumph of good over evil is proclaimed
by the Attendant Spirit who has protected the innocent in this
life and who now disappears from mortal sight to resume its

life of joy :

Mortals, that would follow me,

Love Virtue ; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime ;
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.

While there are undoubted traces of Jonson and John Fletcher
in Milton's " Comus," the poem far surpasses its predecessors
in the airy beauty and melody of its verses.

In the next poem, "Lycidas," a pastoral elegy written in
1637, and the last of his Horton poems, Milton is no longer
the inheritor of the old age, but the prophet of a
new. A college friend, Edward King, had been
drowned in the Irish Sea, and Milton follows the poetic cus-
tom of his age by representing both his friend and himself in
the guise of shepherds leading the pastoral life. Milton also
uses all the symbolism of his predecessors, introducing fauns,
satyrs, and sea nymphs ; but again the Puritan is not content
with heathen symbolism, and so introduces a new symbol of
the Christian shepherd responsible for the souls of men, whom
he likens to hungry sheep that look up and are not fed. The
Puritans and Royalists at this time were drifting rapidly apart,
and Milton uses his new symbolism to denounce the abuses
that had crept into the Church. In any other poet this moral
teaching would hinder the free use of the imagination ; but
Milton seems equal to the task of combining high moral pur-
pose with the noblest poetry. In its exquisite finish and ex-
haustless imagery " Lycidas" surpasses most of the poetry of
what is often called the pagan Renaissance.

212 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Besides these well-known poems, Milton wrote in this early
period a fragmentary masque called "Arcades"; several Latin
poems which, like his English, are exquisitely fin-
ished; and his famous "Sonnets," which brought
this Italian form of verse nearly to the point of perfection.
In them he seldom wrote of love, the usual subject with his
predecessors, but of patriotism, duty, music, and subjects of
political interest suggested by the struggle into which Eng-
land was drifting. Among these sonnets each reader must
find his own favorites. Those best known and most frequently
quoted are "On His Deceased Wife," "To the Nightingale,"
"On Reaching the Age of Twenty-three," "The Massacre in
Piedmont," and the two "On His Blindness."

Milton's Prose. Of Milton's prose works there are many
divergent opinions, ranging from Macaulay's unbounded praise
to the condemnation of some of our modern critics. From a
literary view point Milton's prose would be stronger if less
violent, and a modern writer would hardly be excused for
using his language or his methods ; but we must remember
the times and the methods of his opponents. In his fiery zeal
against injustice the poet is suddenly dominated by the sol-
dier's spirit. He first musters his facts in battalions, and
charges upon the enemy to crush and overpower without
mercy. For Milton hates injustice and, because it is an
enemy of his people, he cannot and will not spare it. When
the victory is won, he exults in a paean of victory as soul-
stirring as the Song of Deborah. He is the poet again, spite
of himself, and his mind fills with magnificent images. Even
with a subject so dull, so barren of the bare possibilities of
poetry, as his "Animadversions upon the Remonstrants' De-
fense," he breaks out into an invocation, "Oh, Thou that
sittest in light and glory unapproachable, parent of angels and
men," which is like a chapter from the Apocalypse. In such
passages Milton's prose is, as Taine suggests, "an outpouring
of splendors," which suggests the noblest poetry.

THE PURITAN AGE 213

On account of their controversial character these prose
works are seldom read, and it is probable that Milton never
thought of them as worthy of a place in literature.
Of them all Areopagitica has perhaps the most per-
manent interest and is best worth reading. In Milton's time
there was a law forbidding the publication of books until they
were indorsed by the official censor. Needless to say, the
censor, holding his office and salary by favor, was naturally
more concerned with the divine right of kings and bishops
than with the delights of literature, and many books were sup-
pressed for no better reason than that they were displeasing
to the authorities. Milton protested against this, as against
every other form of tyranny, and his Areopagitica so called
from the Areopagus or Forum of Athens, the place of public
appeal, and the Mars Hill of St. Paul's address is the most
famous plea in English for the freedom of the press.

Milton's Later Poetry. Undoubtedly the noblest of Milton's
works, written when he was blind and suffering, are Paradise
Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. The first is
the greatest, indeed the only generally acknowledged epic in
our literature since Beowulf ; the last is the most perfect
specimen of a drama after the Greek method in our language.

Of the history of the great epic we have some interesting
glimpses. In Cambridge there is preserved a notebook of
Paradise Milton's containing a list of nearly one hundred
subjects 1 for a great poem, selected while he was
a boy at the university. King Arthur attracted him at first ;
but his choice finally settled upon the Fall of Man, and we
have four separate outlines showing Milton's proposed treat-
ment of the subject. These outlines indicate that he con-
templated a mighty drama or miracle play ; but whether
because of Puritan antipathy to plays and players, or because
of the wretched dramatic treatment of religious subjects which

1 Of these sixty were taken from the Bible, thirty-three from English and five from
Scotch history.

214 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Milton had witnessed in Italy, he abandoned the idea of a play
and settled on the form of an epic poem ; most fortunately, it
must be conceded, for Milton had not the knowledge of men
necessary for a drama. As a study of character Paradise
Lost would be a grievous failure. Adam, the central charac-
ter, is something of a prig ; while Satan looms up a magnifi-
cent figure, entirely different from the devil of the miracle
plays and completely overshadowing the hero both in interest
and in manliness. The other characters, the Almighty, the
Son, Raphael, Michael, the angels and fallen spirits, are
merely mouthpieces for Milton's declamations, without any
personal or human interest. Regarded as a drama, there-
fore, Paradise Lost could never have been a success ; but as
poetry, with its sublime imagery, its harmonious verse, its
titanic background of heaven, hell, and the illimitable void
that lies between, it is unsurpassed in any literature.

In 1658 Milton in his darkness sat down to dictate the
work which he had planned thirty years before. In order to
understand the mighty sweep of the poem it is necessary to
sum up the argument of the twelve books, as follows :

Book I opens with a statement of the subject, the Fall of Man, and
a noble invocation for light and divine guidance. Then begins the
Argument account of Satan and the rebel angels, their banishment
of Paradise from heaven, and their plot to oppose the design of the
Lost Almighty by dragging down his children, our first parents,

from their state of innocence. The book closes with a description of
the land of fire and endless pain where the fallen spirits abide, and the
erection of Pandemonium, the palace of Satan. Book II is a description
of the council of evil spirits, of Satan's consent to undertake the temp-
tation of Adam and Eve, and his journey to the gates of hell, which are
guarded by Sin and Death. Book III transports us to heaven again.
God, foreseeing the fall, sends Raphael to warn Adam and Eve, so that
their disobedience shall be upon their own heads. Then the Son offers
himself a sacrifice, to take away the sin of the coming disobedience of
man. At the end of this book Satan appears in a different scene, meets
Uriel, the Angel of the Sun, inquires from him the way to earth, and
takes his journey thither disguised as an angel of light. Book IV shows
us Paradise and the innocent state of man. An angel guard is set over

THE PURITAN AGE 215

Eden, and Satan is arrested while tempting Eve in a dream, but is curi-
ously allowed to go free again. Book V shows us Eve relating her dream
to Adam, and then the morning prayer and the daily employment of our
first parents. Raphael visits them, is entertained by a banquet (which
Eve proposes in order to show him that all God's gifts are not kept in
heaven), and tells them of the revolt of the fallen spirits. His story is
continued in Book VI. In Book VI I we read the story of the creation
of the world as Raphael tells it to Adam and Eve. In Book VIII Adam
tells Raphael the story of his own life and of his meeting with Eve.
Book IX is the story of the temptation by Satan, following the account
in Genesis. Book X records the divine judgment upon Adam and Ev.e ;
shows the construction by Sin and Death of a highway through chaos to
the earth, and Satan's return to Pandemonium. Adam and Eve repent
of their disobedience and Satan and his angels are turned into serpents.
In Book XI the Almighty accepts Adam's repentance, but condemns
him to be banished from Paradise, and the archangel Michael is sent to
execute the sentence. At the end of the book, after Eve's feminine grief
at the loss of Paradise, Michael begins a prophetic vision of the destiny
of man. Book XI I continues Michael's vision. Adam and Eve are com-
forted by hearing of the future redemption of their race. The poem ends
as they wander forth out of Paradise and the door closes behind them.

It will be seen that this is a colossal epic, not of a man or
a hero, but of the whole race of men ; and that Milton's char-
acters are such as no human hand could adequately portray.
But the scenes, the splendors of heaven, the horrors of hell,
the serene beauty of Paradise, the sun and planets suspended
between celestial light and gross darkness, are pictured with
an imagination that is almost superhuman. The abiding inter-
est of the poem is in these colossal pictures, and in the lofty
thought and the marvelous melody with which they are im-
pressed on our minds. The poem is in blank verse, and not
until Milton used it did we learn the infinite variety and har-
mony of which it is capable. He played with it, changing its
melody and movement on every page, "as an organist out of a
single theme develops an unending variety of harmony."

Lamartine has described Paradise Lost as the dream of a
Puritan fallen asleep over his Bible, and this suggestive de-
scription leads us to the curious fact that it is the dream, not

216 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the theology or the descriptions of Bible scenes, that chiefly
interests us. Thus Milton describes the separation of earth
and water, and there is little or nothing added to the sim-
plicity and strength of Genesis ; but the sunset which follows
is Milton's own dream, and instantly we are transported to a
land of beauty and poetry :

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad ;
Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.
She all night long her amorous descant sung :
Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires ; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

So also Milton's Almighty, considered purely as a literary
character, is unfortunately tinged with the narrow and literal
theology of the time. He is a being enormously egotistic, the
despot rather than the servant of the universe, seated upon a
throne with a chorus of angels about him eternally singing his
praises and ministering to a kind of divine vanity. It is not
necessary to search heaven for such a character ; the type is
too common upon earth. But in Satan Milton breaks away
from crude mediaeval conceptions ; he follows the dream again,
and gives us a character to admire and understand :

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"

Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat

That we must change for Heaven ? this mournful gloom

For that celestial light ? Be it so, since He

Who now is sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right: farthest from Him is best,

Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy forever dwells ! Hail, horrors ! hail,

Infernal World ! and thou, profoundest Hell,

THE PURITAN AGE 217

Receive thy new possessor one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least
We shall be free ;'the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence :
Here we may reign secure ; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell :
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.'

In this magnificent heroism Milton has unconsciously immor-
talized the Puritan spirit, the same unconquerable spirit that
set men to writing poems and allegories when in prison for
the faith, and that sent them over the stormy sea in a cockle-
shell to found a free commonwealth in the wilds of America.

For a modern reader the understanding of Paradise Lost
presupposes two things, a knowledge of the first chapters of
the Scriptures, and of the general principles of Calvinistic
theology; but it is a pity to use the poem, as has so often
been done, to teach a literal acceptance of one or the other.
Of the theology of Paradise Lost the least said the better ;
but to the splendor of the Puritan dream and the glorious
melody of its expression no words can do justice. Even a
slight acquaintance will make the reader understand why it
ranks with the Divina Commedia of Dante, and why it is
generally accepted by critics as the greatest single poem in
our literature.

Soon after the completion of Paradise Lost, Thomas Ell-
wood, a friend of Milton, asked one day after reading the
Paradise manuscript, " But what hast thou to say of Para-
Regained dise Found?" It was in response to this suggestion
that Milton wrote the second part of the great epic, known
to us as Paradise Regained. The first tells how mankind, in
the person of Adam, fell at the first temptation by Satan and
became an outcast from Paradise and from divine grace ; the

218 ENGLISH LITERATURE

second shows how mankind, in the person of Christ, with-
stands the tempter and is established once more in the
divine favor. Christ's temptation in the wilderness is the
theme, and Milton follows the account in the fourth chapter
of Matthew's gospel. Though Paradise Regained was Mil-
ton's favorite, and though it has many passages of noble
thought and splendid imagery equal to the best of Paradise
Lost, the poem as a whole falls below the level of the first,
and is less interesting to read.

In Samson Agonistes Milton turns to a more vital and per-
sonal theme, and his genius transfigures the story of Sam-
son, the mighty champion of Israel, now blind and
scorned, working as a slave among the Philistines.
The poet's aim was to present in English a pure tragedy, with
all the passion and restraint which marked the old Greek dra-
mas. That he succeeded where others failed is due to two
causes : first, Milton himself suggests the hero of one of the
Greek tragedies, his sorrow and affliction give to his noble
nature that touch of melancholy and calm dignity which is in
perfect keeping with his subject. Second, Milton is telling his
own story. Like Samson he had struggled mightily against the
enemies of his race ; he had taken a wife from the Philistines
and had paid the penalty ; he was blind, alone, scorned by his
vain and thoughtless masters. To the essential action of the
tragedy Milton could add, therefore, that touch of intense yet
restrained personal feeling which carries more conviction than
any argument. Samson is in many respects the most convin-
cing of his works. Entirely apart from the interest of its sub-
ject and treatment, one may obtain from it a better idea of
what great tragedy was among the Greeks than from any
other work in our language.

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

THE PURITAN AGE

219

III. PROSE WRITERS OF THE PURITAN PERIOD
JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688)

As there is but one poet great enough to express the Puri-
tan spirit, so there is but one commanding prose writer, John
Bunyan. Milton was the child of the Renaissance, inheritor
of all its culture, and the most profoundly educated man of
his age. Bunyan was a poor, uneducated tinker. From the
Renaissance he inherited nothing ; but from the Reformation
he received an excess of that spiritual independence which
had caused the Puritan struggle for liberty. These two men,
representing the extremes of English life in the seventeenth
century, wrote the
two works that stand
to-day for the mighty
Puritan spirit. One
gave us the only epic
since Beowulf ; the
other gave us our
only great allegory,
which has been read
more than any other
book in our language
save the Bible.

Life of Bunyan.

Bunyan is an extraor-
dinary figure ; we must
study him, as well as
his books. Fortunately
we have his life story in his own words, written with the same lovable
modesty and sincerity that marked all his work. Reading that story
now, in Grace Abounding, we see two great influences at work in his
life. One, from within, was his own vivid imagination, which saw
visions, allegories, parables, revelations, in every common event.
The other, from without, was the spiritual ferment of the age, the

JOHN BUNYAN

220 ENGLISH LITERATURE

multiplication of strange sects, Quakers, Free-Willers, Ranters,
Anabaptists, Millenarians, and the untempered zeal of all classes,
like an engine without a balance wheel, when men were breaking
away from authority and setting up their own religious standards.
Bunyan's life is an epitome of that astonishing religious individualism
which marked the close of the English Reformation.

He was born in the little village of Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628,
the son of a poor tinker. For a little while the boy was sent to school,
where he learned to read and write after a fashion ; but he was soon
busy in his father's shop, where, amid the glowing pots and the fire
and smoke of his little forge, he saw vivid pictures of hell and the
devils which haunted him all his life. When he was sixteen years old
his father married the second time, whereupon Bunyan ran away and
became a soldier in the Parliamentary army.

The religious ferment of the age made a tremendous impression
on Bunyan's sensitive imagination. He went to church occasionally,
only to find himself wrapped in terrors and torments by some fiery
itinerant preacher; and he would rush violently away from church
to forget his fears by joining in Sunday sports on the village green.
As night came on the sports were forgotten, but the terrors returned,
multiplied like the evil spirits of the parable. Visions of hell and the
demons swarmed in his brain. He would groan aloud in his remorse,
and even years afterwards he bemoans the sins of his early life.
When we look for them fearfully, expecting some shocking crimes
and misdemeanors, we find that they consisted of playing ball on
Sunday and swearing. The latter sin, sad to say, was begun by
listening to his father cursing some obstinate kettle which refused to
be tinkered, and it was perfected in the Parliamentary army. One
day his terrible swearing scared a woman, "a very loose and ungodly
wretch," as he tells us, who reprimanded him for his profanity. The
reproach of the poor woman went straight home, like the voice of a
prophet. All his profanity left him; he hung down his head with
shame. " I wished with all my heart," he says, " that I might be a
little child again, that my father might learn me to speak with-
out this wicked way of swearing." With characteristic vehemence
Bunyan hurls himself upon a promise of Scripture, and instantly the
reformation begins to work in his soul. He casts out the habit, root
and branch, and finds to his astonishment that he can speak more
freely and vigorously than before. Nothing is more characteristic
of the man than this sudden seizing upon a text, which he had

THE PURITAN AGE 221

doubtless heard many times before, and being suddenly raised up
or cast down by its influence.

With Bunyan's marriage to a good woman the real reformation in
his life began. While still in his teens he married a girl as poor as
himself. " We came together," he says, " as poor as might be, hav-
ing not so much household stuff as a dish or spoon between us both."
The only dowry which the girl brought to her new home was two old,
threadbare books, The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, and The
Practice of Piety}* Bunyan read these books, which instantly gave
fire to his imagination. He saw new visions and dreamed terrible new
dreams of lost souls ; his attendance at church grew exemplary ; he
began slowly and painfully to read the Bible for himself, but because
of his own ignorance and the contradictory interpretations of Scrip-
ture which he heard on every side, he was tossed about like a feather
by all the winds of doctrine.

The record of the next few years is like a nightmare, so terrible is
Bunyan's spiritual struggle. One day he feels himself an outcast;
the next the companion of angels; the third he tries experiments
with the Almighty in order to put his salvation to the proof. As he
goes along the road to Bedford he thinks he will work a miracle, like
Gideon with his fleece. He will say to the little puddles of water in
the horses' tracks, " Be ye dry " ; and to all the dry tracks he will
say, "Be ye puddles." As he is about to perform the miracle a
thought occurs to him : " But go first under yonder hedge and pray
that the Lord will make you able to perform a miracle." He goes
promptly and prays. Then he is afraid of the test, and goes on his
way more troubled than before.

After years of such struggle, chased about between heaven and
hell, Bunyan at last emerges into a saner atmosphere, even as Pilgrim
came out of the horrible Valley of the Shadow. Soon, led by his intense
feelings, he becomes an open-air preacher, and crowds of laborers
gather about him on the village green. They listen in silence to his
words ; they end in groans and tears ; scores of them amend their
sinful lives. For the Anglo-Saxon people are remarkable for this,
that however deeply they are engaged in business or pleasure, they
are still sensitive as barometers to any true spiritual influence, whether
of priest or peasant; they recognize what Emerson calls the "accent

1 The latter was by Lewis Bayly, bishop of Bangor. It is interesting to note that
this book, whose very title is unfamiliar to us, was speedily translated into five different
languages. It had an enormous sale, and ran through fifty editions soon after publication.

222 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of the Holy Ghost," and in this recognition of spiritual leadership
lies the secret of their democracy. So this village tinker, with his
strength and sincerity, is presently the acknowledged leader of an
immense congregation, and his influence is felt throughout England.
It is a tribute to his power that, after the return of Charles II, Bunyan
was the first to be prohibited from holding public meetings.

Concerning Bunyan's imprisonment in Bedford jail, which followed
his refusal to obey the law prohibiting religious meetings without the
authority of the Established Church, there is a difference of opinion.
That the law was unjust goes without saying ; but there was no reli-
gious persecution, as we understand the term. Bunyan was allowed to
worship when and how he pleased ; he was simply forbidden to hold
public meetings, which frequently became fierce denunciations of the
Established Church and government. His judges pleaded with Bunyan
to conform with the law. He refused, saying that when the Spirit
was upon him he must go up and down the land, calling on men
everywhere to repent. In his refusal we see much heroism, a little
obstinacy, and perhaps something of that desire for martyrdom which
tempts every spiritual leader. That his final sentence to indefinite
imprisonment was a hard blow to Bunyan is beyond question. He
groaned aloud at the thought of his poor family, and especially at the
thought of leaving his little blind daughter :

I found myself a man encompassed with infirmities ; the parting was
like pulling the flesh from my bones. . . . Oh, the thoughts of the hard-
ship I thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart
to pieces. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow thou art like to have for
thy portion in this world; thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger,
cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure
that the wind should blow upon thee. 1

And then, because he thinks always in parables and seeks out most
curious texts of Scripture, he speaks of " the two milch kine that
were to carry the ark of God into another country and leave their
calves behind them." Poor cows, poor Bunyan ! Such is the mind
of this extraordinary man.

With characteristic diligence Bunyan set to work in prison making
shoe laces, and so earned a living for his family. His imprisonment
lasted for nearly twelve years ; but he saw his family frequently, and
was for some time a regular preacher in the Baptist church in

1 Abridged from Grace Abounding, Part 3 ; Works (ed. 1873), p. 71.

THE PURITAN AGE 223

Bedford. Occasionally he even went about late at night, holding
the proscribed meetings and increasing his hold upon the common
people. The best result of this imprisonment was that it gave Bunyan
long hours for the working of his peculiar mind and for study of his
two only books, the King James Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
The result of his study and meditation was The Pilgrim 's Progress,
which was probably written in prison, but which for some reason he
did not publish till long after his release.

The years which followed are the most interesting part of Bunyan's
strange career. The publication of Pilgrim's Progress in 1678 made
him the most popular writer, as he was already the most popular
preacher, in England. Books, tracts, sermons, nearly sixty works in
all, came from his pen ; and when one remembers his ignorance, his
painfully slow writing, and his activity as an itinerant preacher, one
can only marvel. His evangelistic journeys carried him often as far
as London, and wherever he went crowds thronged to hear him.
Scholars, bishops, statesmen went in secret to listen among the
laborers, and came away wondering and silent. At Southwark the
largest building could not contain the multitude of his hearers; and
when he preached in London, thousands would gather in the cold
dusk of the winter morning, before work began, and listen until he
had made an end of speaking. " Bishop Bunyan " he was soon called
on account of his missionary journeys and his enormous influence.

What we most admire in the midst of all this activity is his perfect
mental balance, his charity and humor in the strife of many sects.
He was badgered for years by petty enemies, and he arouses our
enthusiasm by his tolerance, his self-control, and especially by his
sincerity. To the very end he retained that simple modesty which no
success could spoil. Once when he had preached with unusual power
some of his friends waited after the service to congratulate him, tell-
ing him what a "sweet sermon" he had delivered. "Aye," said
Bunyan, "you need not remind me ; the devil told me that before I
was out of the pulpit."

For sixteen years this wonderful activity continued without inter-
ruption. Then, one day when riding through a cold storm on a labor
of love, to reconcile a stubborn man with his own stubborn son, he
caught a severe cold and appeared, ill and suffering but rejoicing in
his success, at the house of a friend in Reading. He died there a
few days later, and was laid away in Bunhill Fields burial ground,
London, which has been ever since a campo santo to the faithful.

224 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Works of Bunyan. The world's literature has three great
allegories, Spenser's Faery Queen, Dante's Divina Comme-
dia, and Banyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The first appeals to
poets, the second to scholars, the third to people of every age
and condition. Here is a brief outline of the famous work :

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a
certain place where was a den [Bedford jail] and laid me down in that

place to sleep ; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream." So
p[l g ring's* f the story begins. He sees a man called Christian setting
Progress 8 out with a book in his hand and a great load on his back

from the city of Destruction. Christian has two objects,
to get rid of his burden, which holds the sins and fears of his life,
and to make his way to the Holy City. At the outset Evangelist finds
him weeping because he knows not where to go, and points him to a
wicket gate on a hill far away. As Christian goes forward his neigh-
bors, friends, wife and children call to him to come back ; but he puts
his fingers in his ears, crying out, " Life, life, eternal life," and so rushes
across the plain.

Then begins a journey in ten stages, which is a vivid picture of the
difficulties and triumphs of the Christian life. Every trial, every diffi-
culty, every experience of joy or sorrow, of peace or temptation, is put
into the form and discourse of a living character. Other allegorists
write in poetry and their characters are shadowy and unreal ; but Bunyan
speaks in terse, idiomatic prose, and his characters are living men and
women. There are Mr. Worldly Wiseman, a self-satisfied and dogmatic
kind of man, youthful Ignorance, sweet Piety, courteous Demas, gar-
rulous Talkative, honest Faithful, and a score of others, who are not at
all the bloodless creatures of the Romance of the Rose, but men real
enough to stop you on the road and to hold your attention. Scene after
scene follows, in which are pictured many of our own spiritual expe^
riences. There is the Slough of Despond, into which we all have fallen,
out of which Pliable scrambles on the hither side and goes back
grumbling, but through which Christian struggles mightily till Helpful
stretches him a hand and drags him out on solid ground and bids him
go on his way. Then come Interpreter's house, the Palace Beautiful,
the Lions in the way, the Valley of Humiliation, the hard fight with the
demon Apollyon, the more terrible Valley of the Shadow, Vanity Fair,
and the trial of Faithful. The latter is condemned to death by a jury
made up of Mr. Blindman, Mr. Nogood, Mr. Heady, Mr. Liveloose, Mr.
Hatelight, and others of their kind to whom questions of justice are
committed by the jury system. Most famous is Doubting Castle, where
Christian and Hopeful are thrown into a dungeon by Giant Despair.

THE PURITAN AGE 225

And then at last the Delectable Mountains of Youth, the deep river that
Christian must cross, and the city of All Delight and the glorious com-
pany of angels that come singing down the streets. At the very end,
when in sight of the city and while he can hear the welcome with which
Christian is greeted, Ignorance is snatched away to go to his own place;
and Bunyan quaintly observes, "Then I saw that there was a way to
hell even from the gates of heaven as well as from the city of Destruc-
tion. So I awoke, and behold it was a dream !"

Such, in brief, is the story, the great epic of a Puritan's individual ex-
perience in a rough world, just as Paradise Lost was the epic of mankind
as dreamed by the great Puritan who had "fallen asleep over his Bible."

The chief fact which confronts the student of literature as
he pauses before this great allegory is that it has been trans-
Success of l ate d into seventy-five languages and dialects, and
pilgrim's has been read more than any other book save one
in the English language.

As for the secret of its popularity, Taine says, " Next to
the Bible, the book most widely read in England is the Pil-
grim's Progress. . . . Protestantism is the doctrine of salva-
tion by grace, and no writer has equaled Bunyan in making
this doctrine understood." And this opinion is echoed by the
majority of our literary historians. It is perhaps sufficient
answer to quote the simple fact that Pilgrim's Progress is
not exclusively a Protestant study ; it appeals to Christians
of every name, and to Mohammedans and Buddhists in pre-
cisely the same way that it appeals to Christians. When it
was translated into the languages of Catholic countries, like
France and Portugal, only one or two incidents were omitted,
and the story was almost as popular there as with English
readers. The secret of its success is probably simple. It is,
first of all, not a procession of shadows repeating the author's
declamations, but a real story, the first extended story in our
language. Our Puritan fathers may have read the story for
religious instruction ; but all classes of men have read it be-
cause they found in it a true personal experience told with
strength, interest, humor, in a word, with all the qualities
that such a story should possess. Young people have read it,

226 ENGLISH LITERATURE

first, for its intrinsic worth, because the dramatic interest of
the story lured them on to the very end ; and second, because
it was their introduction to true allegory. The child with
his imaginative mind the man also, who has preserved his
simplicity naturally personifies objects, and takes pleasure
in giving them powers of thinking and speaking like himself.
Bunyan was the first writer to appeal to this pleasant and
natural inclination in a way that all could understand. Add
to this the fact that Pilgrim 's Progress was the only book
having any story interest in the great majority of English
and American homes for a full century, and we have found
the real reason for its wide reading.

The Holy War, published in 1665, is the first important
work of Bunyan. It is a prose Paradise Lost, and would un-
doubtedly be known as a remarkable allegory were
it: not overshadowed by its great rival. Grace
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, published in
1666, twelve years before Pilgrim's Progress, is the work
from which we obtain the clearest insight into Bunyan's re-
markable life, and to a man with historical or antiquarian
tastes it is still excellent reading. In 1682 appeared The
Life and Death of Mr. B adman, a realistic character study
which is a precursor of the modern novel; and in 1684 the
second part of Pilgrim's Progress, showing the journey of
Christiana and her children to the city of All Delight. Besides
these Bunyan published a multitude of treatises and sermons,
all in the same style, direct, simple, convincing, expressing
every thought and emotion perfectly in words that even a
child can understand. Many of these are masterpieces, ad-
mired by workingmen and scholars alike for their thought and
expression. Take, for instance, "The Heavenly Footman,"
put it side by side with the best work of Latimer, and the
resemblance in style is startling. It is difficult to realize
that one work came from an ignorant tinker and the other
from a great scholar, both engaged in the same general work.

THE PURITAN AGE 227

As Bunyan's one book was the Bible, we have here a sugges-
tion of its influence in all our prose literature.

, MINOR PROSE WRITERS

The Puritan Period is generally regarded as one destitute
of literary interest ; but that was certainly not the result of
any lack of books or writers. Says Burton in his Anatomy
of Melancholy :

I have . . . new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole
catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms,
heresies, controversies in philosophy and religion. Now come tidings
of weddings, maskings, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, sports, plays ,
then again, as in a new-shipped scene, treasons, cheatings, tricks, rob-
beries, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, deaths, new discover-
ies, expeditions ; now comical, then tragical matters. . . .

So the record continues, till one rubs his eyes and thinks he
must have picked up by mistake the last literary magazine.
And for all these kaleidoscopic events there were waiting
a multitude of writers, ready to seize the abundant material
and turn it to literary account for a tract, an article, a vol-
ume, or an encyclopedia.

If one were to recommend certain of these books as ex-
pressive of this age of outward storm and inward calm, there
Three Good are three that deserve more than a passing notice,
Books namely, the Religio Medici, Holy Living, and The

Compleat Angler. The first was written by a busy physician,
a supposedly scientific man at that time ; the second by the
most learned of English churchmen ; and the third by a simple
merchant and fisherman. Strangely enough, these three great
books the reflections of nature, science, and revelation all
interpret human life alike and tell the same story of gentle-
ness, charity, and noble living. If the age had produced only
these three books, we could still be profoundly grateful to it
for its inspiring message.

228 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Robert Burton (1577-1640). Burton is famous chiefly as
the author o the Anatomy of Melancholy ', one of the most
astonishing books in all literature, which appeared in 1621.
Burton was a clergyman of the Established Church, an incom-
prehensible genius, given to broodings and melancholy and
to reading of every conceivable kind of literature. Thanks to
his wonderful memory, everything he read was stored up for
use or ornament, till his mind resembled a huge curiosity
shop. All his life he suffered from hypochondria, but curi-
ously traced his malady to the stars rather than to his own
liver. It is related of him that he used to suffer so from de-
spondency that no help was to be found in medicine or the-
ology ; his only relief was to go down to the river and hear
the bargemen swear at one another.

Burton's Anatomy was begun as a medical treatise on mor-
bidness, arranged and divided with all the exactness of the
schoolmen's demonstration of doctrines ; but it turned out to
be an enormous hodgepodge of quotations and references
to authors, known and unknown, living and dead, which
seemed to prove chiefly that " much study is a weariness to
the flesh." By some freak of taste it became instantly popu-
lar, and was proclaimed one of the greatest books in literature.
A few scholars still explore it with delight, as a mine of classic
wealth ; but the style is hopelessly involved, and to the ordi-
nary reader most of his numerous references are now as un-
meaning as a hyper-jacobian surface.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). Browne was a physician
who, after much study and travel, settled down to his profes-
sion in Norwich ; but even then he gave far more time to the
investigation of natural phenomena than to the barbarous
practices which largely constituted the "art" of medicine in
his day. He was known far and wide as a learned doctor and
an honest man, whose scientific studies had placed him in ad-
vance of his age, and whose religious views were liberal to the
point of heresy. With this in mind, it is interesting to note,

THE PURITAN AGE 229

as a sign of the times, that this most scientific doctor was
once called to give "expert" testimony in the case of two old
women who were being tried for the capital crime of witch-
craft. He testified under oath that "the fits were natural,
but heightened by the devil's cooperating with the witches,
at whose instance he [the alleged devil] did the villainies."

Browne's great work is the Religio Medici, i.e. The Religion
of a Physician (1642), which met with most unusual success.
Religio " Hardly ever was a book published in Britain,"
Medici savs Qldys, a chronicler who wrote nearly a century

later, "that made more noise than the Religio Medici." Its
success may be due largely to the fact that, among thousands
of religious works, it was one of the few which saw in nature
a profound revelation, and which treated purely religious
subjects in a reverent, kindly, tolerant way, without ecclesi-
astical bias. It is still, therefore, excellent reading ; but it is
not so much the matter as the manner the charm, the
gentleness, the remarkable prose style which has estab-
lished the book as one of the classics of our literature.

Two other works of Browne are Vulgar Errors (1646), a
curious combination of scientific and credulous research in
the matter of popular superstition, and Urn Burial, a treatise
suggested by the discovery of Roman burial urns at Walsing-
ham. It began as an inquiry into the various methods of burial,
but ended in a dissertation on the vanity of earthly hope and
ambitions. From a literary point of view it is Browne's best
work, but is less read than the Religio Medici.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661). Fuller was a clergyman and
royalist whose lively style and witty observations would natu-
rally place him with the gay Caroline poets. His best known
works are The Holy War, The Holy State and the Profane
State, Church History of Britain, and the History of the
Worthies of England. The Holy and Profane State is chiefly
a biographical record, the first part consisting of numerous
historical examples to be imitated, the second of examples to

230 ENGLISH LITERATURE

be avoided. The Church History is not a scholarly work, not-
withstanding its author's undoubted learning, but is a lively
and gossipy account which has at least one virtue, that it
entertains the reader. The Worthies, the most widely read
of his works, is a racy account of the important men of Eng-
land. Fuller traveled constantly for years, collecting infor-
mation from out-of-the-way sources and gaining a minute
knowledge of his own country. This, with his overflowing
humor and numerous anecdotes and illustrations, makes lively
and interesting reading. Indeed, we hardly find a dull page
in any of his numerous books.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). Taylor was the greatest of
the clergymen who made this period famous, a man who, like
Milton, upheld a noble ideal in storm and calm, and him-
self lived it nobly. He has been called "the Shakespeare of
divines," and "a kind of Spenser in a cassock," and both
descriptions apply to him very well. His writings, with their
exuberant fancy and their noble diction, belong rather to
the Elizabethan than to the Puritan age.

From the large number of his works two stand out as repre-
sentative of the man himself : The Liberty of Prophesying
(1646), which Hallam calls the first plea for tolerance in
religion, on a comprehensive basis and on deep-seated foun-
dations; and The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living (1650).
To the latter might be added its companion volume, Holy
Dying, published in the following year. The Holy Living
and Dying, as a single volume, was for many years read in
almost every English cottage. With Baxter's Saints' Rest,
Pilgrim's Progress, and the King James Bible, it often con-
stituted the entire library of multitudes of Puritan homes;
and as we read its noble words and breathe its gentle spirit,
we cannot help wishing that our modern libraries were gathered
together on the same thoughtful foundations.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691). This "busiest man of his
age" strongly suggests Bunyan in his life and writings. Like

THE PURITAN AGE 231

Bunyan, he was poor and uneducated, a nonconformist min-
ister, exposed continually to insult and persecution ; and, like
Bunyan, he threw himself heart and soul into the conflicts of
his age, and became by his public speech a mighty power
among the common people. Unlike Jeremy Taylor, who
wrote for the learned, and whose involved sentences and clas-
sical allusions are sometimes hard to follow, Baxter went
straight to his mark, appealing directly to the judgment and
feeling of his readers.

The number of his works is almost incredible when one
thinks of his busy life as a preacher and the slowness of
manual writing. In all, he left nearly one hundred and seventy
different works, which if collected would make fifty or sixty
volumes. As he wrote chiefly to influence men on the im-
mediate questions of the day, most of this work has fallen into
oblivion. His two most famous books are The Saints' Ever-
lasting Rest and A Call to the Unconverted, both of which were
exceedingly popular, running through scores of successive edi-
tions, and have been widely read in our own generation.

Izaak Walton (i 593-1683). Walton was a small tradesman
of London, who preferred trout brooks and good reading to the
profits of business and the doubtful joys of a city life ; so at fifty
years, when he had saved a little money, he left the city and
followed his heart out into the country. He began his literary
work, or rather his recreation, by writing his famous Lives,
kindly and readable appreciations of Donne, Wotton, Hooker,
Herbert, and Sanderson, which stand at the beginning of
modern biographical writing.

In 1653 appeared The Complete Angler, which has grown
steadily in appreciation, and which is probably more widely
read than any other book on the subject of fishing
^ Begins with a conversation between a falconer, a
hunter, and an angler; but the angler soon does
most of the talking, as fishermen sometimes do ; the hunter
becomes a disciple, and learns by the easy method of hearing

232 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the fisherman discourse about his art. The conversations, it
must be confessed, are often diffuse and pedantic ; but they
only make us feel most comfortably sleepy, as one invariably
feels after a good day's fishing. So kindly is the spirit of the
angler, so exquisite his appreciation of the beauty of the earth
and sky, that one returns to the book, as to a favorite trout
stream, with the undying expectation of catching something.
Among a thousand books on angling it stands almost alone in
possessing a charming style, and so it will probably be read
as long as men go fishing. Best of all, it leads to a better ap-
preciation of nature, and it drops little moral lessons into the
reader's mind as gently as one casts a fly to a wary trout ;
so that one never suspects his better nature is being angled
for. Though we have sometimes seen anglers catch more than
they need, or sneak ahead of brother fishermen to the best
pools, we are glad, for Walton's sake, to overlook such unac-
countable exceptions, and agree with the milkmaid that "we
love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men."

Summary of the Puritan Period. The half century between 1625 and
1675 is called the Puritan period for two reasons: first, because Puritan
standards prevailed for a time in England ; and second, because the greatest
literary figure during all these years was the Puritan, John Milton. Histor-
ically the age was one of tremendous conflict. The Puritan struggled for
righteousness and liberty, and because he prevailed, the age is one of moral
and political revolution. In his struggle for liberty the Puritan overthrew the
corrupt monarchy, beheaded Charles I, and established the Commonwealth
under Cromwell. The Commonwealth lasted but a few years, and the resto-
ration of Charles II in 1660 is often put as the end of the Puritan period. The
age has no distinct limits, but overlaps the Elizabethan period on one side,
and the Restoration period on the other.

The age produced many writers, a few immortal books, and one of the
world's great literary leaders. The literature of the age is extremely diverse
in character, and the diversity is due to the breaking up of the ideals of polit-
ical and religious unity. This literature differs from that of the preceding age
in three marked ways : (i) It has no unity of spirit, as in the days of Eliza-
beth, resulting from the patriotic enthusiasm of all classes. (2) In contrast
with the hopefulness and vigor of Elizabethan writings, much of the literature
of this period is somber in character ; it saddens rather than inspires us. (3) It
has lost the romantic impulse of youth, and become critical and intellectual ;
it makes us think, rather than feel deeply.

THE PURITAN AGE 233

In our study we have noted (i) the Transition Poets, of whom Daniel
is chief; (2) the Song Writers, Campion and Breton; (3) the Spenserian
Poets, Wither and Giles Fletcher; (4) the Metaphysical Poets, Donne and
Herbert ; (5) the Cavalier Poets, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling ;
(6) John Milton, his life, his early or Horton poems, his militant prose, and
his last great poetical works ; (7) John Bunyan, his extraordinary life, and his
chief work, The Pilgrim'' s Progress ; (8) the Minor Prose Writers, Burton,
Browne, Fuller, Taylor, Baxter, and Walton. Three books selected from this
group are Browne's Religio Medici, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, and
Walton's Complete Angler.

Selections for Reading. Milton. Paradise Lost, books 1-2, L'Allegro, II
Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and selected Sonnets, all in Standard English
Classics; same poems, more or less complete, in various other series; Are-
opagitica and Treatise on Education, selections, in Manly's English Prose, or
Areopagitica in Arber's English Reprints, Clarendon Press Series, Morley's
Universal Library, etc.

Minor Poets. Selections from Herrick, edited by Hale, in Athenaeum Press
Series; selections from Herrick, Lovelace, Donne, Herbert, etc., in Manly's Eng-
lish Poetry, Golden Treasury, Oxford Book of English Verse, etc,; Vaughan's
Silex Scintillans, in Temple Classics, also in the Aldine Series ; Herbert's The
Temple, in Everyman's Library, Temple Classics, etc.

Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress, in Standard English Classics, Pocket
Classics, etc. ; Grace Abounding, in Cassell's National Library.

Minor Prose Writers. Wentworth's Selections from Jeremy Taylor;
Browne's Religio Medici, Walton's Complete Angler, both in Everyman's
Library, Temple Classics, etc. ; selections from Taylor, Browne, and Walton
in Manly's English Prose, also in Garnett's English Prose.

Bibliography. 1 History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 238-257; Cheyney,
pp. 431-464; Green, ch. 8 ; Traill ; Gardiner.

Special Works. Wakeling's King and Parliament (Oxford Manuals) ; Gar-
diner's The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution ; Tulloch's English
Puritanism and its Leaders ; Lives of Cromwell by Harrison, by Church, and
by Morley ; Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches.

Literature. Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature (extends to 1660); Master-
man's The Age of Milton ; Dowden's Puritan and Anglican.

Milton. Texts, Poetical Works, Globe edition, edited by Masson ; Cam-
bridge Poets edition, edited by Moody ; English Prose Writings, edited by
Morley, in Carisbrooke Library; also in Bohn's Standard Library.

Masson's Life of John Milton (8 vols.) ; Life, by Garnett, by Pattison (Eng.
lish Men of Letters). Raleigh's Milton ; Trent's John Milton ; Corson's Intro-
duction to Milton ; Brooke's Milton, in Student's Library ; Macaulay's Milton ;
Lowell's Essays, in Among My Books, and in Latest Literary Essays ; M. Arnold's
Essay, in Essays in Criticism ; Dowden's Essay, in Puritan and Anglican.

1 For titles and publishers of reference works, see General Bibliography at the end
of this book.

234 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Cavalier Poets. Schelling's Seventeenth Century Lyrics, in Athenaeum
Press Series ; Cavalier and Courtier Lyrists, in Canterbury Poets Series ;
Gosse's Jacobean Poets ; Lovelace, etc., in Library of Old Authors.

Donne. Poems, in Muses' Library ; Life, in Walton's Lives, in Temple Classics,
and in Morley's Universal Library ; Life, by Gosse ; Jessup's John Donne ;
Dowden's Essay, in New Studies ; Stephen's Studies of a Biographer, vol. 3.

Herbert. Palmer's George Herbert; Poems and Prose Selections, edited
by Rhys, in Canterbury Poets ; Dowden's Essay, in Puritan and Anglican.

Biinyan. Brown's John Bunyan, His Life, Times, and Works ; Life, by
Venables, and by Froude (English Men of Letters) ; Essays by Macaulay, by
Dowden, supra, and by Woodberry, in Makers of Literature.

Jeremy Taylor. Holy Living, Holy Dying, in Temple Classics, and in Bonn's
Standard Library ; Selections, edited by Wentworth ; Life, by Heber, and by
Gosse (English Men of Letters) ; Dowden's Essay, supra.

Thomas Browne. Works, edited by Wilkin ; the same, in Temple Classics,
and in Bohn's Library ; Religio Medici, in Everyman's Library ; essay by
Pater, in Appreciations ; by Dowden, supra ; and by L. Stephen, in Hours
in a Library; Life, by Gosse (English Men of Letters).

Izaak Walton. Works, in Temple Classics, Cassell's Library, and Morley's
Library ; Introduction, in A. Lang's Walton's Complete Angler ; Lowell's
Essay, in Latest Literary Essays.

Suggestive Questions, i. What is meant by the Puritan period? W T hat
were the objects and the results of the Puritan movement in English history?

2. What are the main characteristics of the literature of this period ?
Compare it with Elizabethan literature. How did religion and politics affect
Puritan literature ? Can you quote any passages or name any works which
justify your opinion ?

3. What is meant by the terms Cavalier poets, Spenserian poets, Meta-
physical poets ? Name the chief writers of each group. To whom are we
indebted for our first English hymn book ? Would you call this a work of
literature? Why?

4. What are the qualities of Herrick's poetry ? What marked contrasts
are found in Herrick and in nearly all the poets of this period?

5. Who was George Herbert ? For what purpose did he write ? What
qualities are found in his poetry ?

6. Tell briefly the story of Milton's life. What are the three periods of his
literary work ? What is meant by the Horton poems ? Compare " L'Allegro "
and "II Penseroso." Are there any Puritan ideals in "Comus"? Why is
" Lycidas " often put at the summit of English lyrical poetry ? Give the main
idea or argument of Paradise Lost. What are the chief qualities of the poem ?
Describe in outline Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. What personal
element entered into the latter ? What quality strikes you most forcibly in
Milton's poetry ? W T hat occasioned Milton's prose works ? Do they properly
belong to literature ? Why ? Compare Milton and Shakespeare with regard
to (i) knowledge of men, (2) ideals of life, (3) purpose in writing.

THE PURITAN AGE

235

7. Tell the story of Bunyan's life. What unusual elements are found in
his life and writings ? Give the main argument of The Pilgrim 'j Progress. If
you read the story before studying literature, tell why you liked or disliked it.
Why is it a work for all ages and for all races ? What are the chief qualities
of Bunyan's style ?

8. Who are the minor prose writers of this age ? Name the chief works of
Jeremy Taylor, Thomas Browne, and Izaak Walton. Can you describe from
your own reading any of these works ? How does the prose of this age com-
pare in interest with the poetry ? (Milton is, of course, excepted in this
comparison.)

CHRONOLOGY

Seventeenth Century

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1625. Charles I

Parliament dissolved

1628. Petition of Right

1630-1640. King rules without Parlia-
ment. Puritan migration to
New England

1640. Long Parliament

1642. Civil War begins

1643. Scotch Covenant
1643. P res s censorship

1645. Battle of Naseby; triumph of
Puritans

1649. Execution of Charles I. Cava-
lier migration to Virginia

1649-1660. Commonwealth

1653-1658. Cromwell, Protector
1658-1660. Richard Cromwell
1660. Restoration of Charles II

1621. Burton's Anatomy of Melan-
choly
1623. Wither's Hymn Book

1629. Milton's Ode on the Nativity
1630-1633. Herbert's poems

1632-1637. Milton's Horton poems
1642. Browne's Religio Medici
1644. Milton's Areopagitica

1649. Milton's Tenure of Kings

1650. Baxter's Saints' Rest. Jeremy

Taylor's Holy Living

1651. Hobbes's Leviathan
1653. Walton's Complete Angler

1663-1694. Dryden's dramas (next
chapter)

1666. Bunyan's Grace Abounding

1667. Paradise Lost
1674. Death of Milton

1678. Pilgrim's Progress published
(written earlier)

CHAPTER VIII

PERIOD OF THE RESTORATION (1660-1700)
THE AGE OF FRENCH INFLUENCE

History of the Period. It seems a curious contradiction, at first
glance, to place the return of Charles II at the beginning of modern
England, as our historians are wont to do; for there was never a
time when the progress of liberty, which history records, was more
plainly turned backwards. The Puritan regime had been too severe ;
it had repressed too many natural pleasures. Now, released from
restraint, society abandoned the decencies of life and the reverence
for law itself, and plunged into excesses more unnatural than had
been the restraints of Puritanism. The inevitable effect of excess is
disease, and for almost an entire generation following the Restora-
tion, in 1660, England lay sick of a fever. Socially, politically, mor-
ally, London suggests an Italian city in the days of the Medici ; and
its literature, especially its drama, often seems more like the delirium
of illness than the expression of a healthy mind. But even a fever
has its advantages. Whatever impurity is in the blood " is burnt and
purged away," and a man rises from fever with a new strength and
a new idea of the value of life, like King Hezekiah, who after his
sickness and fear of death resolved to " go softly " all his days. The
Restoration was the great crisis in English history; and that Eng-
land lived through it was due solely to the strength and excellence
of that Puritanism which she thought she had flung to the winds
when she welcomed back a vicious monarch at Dover. The chief
lesson of the Restoration was this, that it showed by awful contrast
the necessity of truth and honesty, and of a strong government of
free men, for which the Puritan had stood like a rock in every hour
of his rugged history. Through fever, England came slowly back to
health ; through gross corruption in society and in the state England
learned that her people were at heart sober, sincere, religious folk,
and that their character was naturally too strong to follow after
pleasure and be satisfied. So Puritanism suddenly gained all that
it had struggled for, and gained it even in the hour when all seemed

236

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 237

lost, when Milton in his sorrow unconsciously portrayed the govern-
ment of Charles and his Cabal in that tremendous scene of the
council of the infernal peers in Pandemonium, plotting the ruin of
the world.

Of the king and his followers it is difficult to write temperately.
Most of the dramatic literature of the time is atrocious, and we can
The King understand it only as we remember the character of the
and his court and society for which it was written. Unspeakably

Followers v jj e m n j s private life, the king had no redeeming patri-
otism, no sense of responsibility to his country for even his public
acts. He gave high offices to blackguards, stole from the exchequer
like a common thief, played off Catholics and Protestants against
each other, disregarding his pledges to both alike, broke his solemn
treaty with the Dutch and with his own ministers, and betrayed his
country for French money to spend on his own pleasures. It is use-
less to paint the dishonor of a court which followed gayly after such
a leader. The first Parliament, while it contained some noble and
patriotic members, was dominated by young men who remembered
the excess of Puritan zeal, but forgot the despotism and injustice
which had compelled Puritanism to stand up and assert the manhood
of England. These young politicians vied with the king in passing
laws for the subjugation of Church and State, and in their thirst for
revenge upon all who had been connected with Cromwell's iron gov-
ernment. Once more a wretched formalism that perpetual danger
to the English Church came to the front and exercised authority
over the free churches. The House of Lords was largely increased
by the creation of hereditary titles and estates for ignoble men and
shameless women who had flattered the king's vanity. Even the
Bench, that last strong refuge of English justice, was corrupted by
the appointment of judges, like the brutal Jeffreys, whose aim, like
that of their royal master, was to get money and to exercise power
without personal responsibility. Amid all this dishonor the foreign
influence and authority of Cromwell's strong government vanished
like smoke. The valiant little Dutch navy swept the English fleet
from the sea, and only the thunder of Dutch guns in the Thames,
under the very windows of London, awoke the nation to the realiza-
tion of how low it had fallen.

Two considerations must modify our judgment of this dishearten-
ing spectacle. First, the king and his court are not England.
Though our histories are largely filled with the records of kings and

238 ENGLISH LITERATURE

soldiers, of intrigues and fighting, these no more express the real
life of a people than fever and delirium express a normal manhood.
Revolution Though king and court and high society arouse our
of 1688 disgust or pity, records are not wanting to show that

private life in England remained honest and pure even in the worst
days of the Restoration. While London society might be entertained
by the degenerate poetry of Rochester and the dramas of Dryden
and Wycherley, English scholars hailed Milton with delight ; and the
common people followed Bunyan and Baxter with their tremendous
appeal to righteousness and liberty. Second, the king, with all his
pretensions to divine right, remained only a figurehead; and the
Anglo-Saxon people, when they tire of one figurehead, have always
the will and the power to throw it overboard and choose a better
one. The country was divided into two political parties : the Whigs,
who sought to limit the royal power in the interests of Parliament
and the people; and the Tories, who strove to check the growing
power of the people in the interests of their hereditary rulers. Both
parties, however, were largely devoted to the Anglican Church ; and
when James II, after four years of misrule, attempted to establish a
national Catholicism by intrigues which aroused the protest of the
Pope 1 as well as of Parliament, then Whigs and Tories, Catholics
and Protestants, united in England's last great revolution.

The complete and bloodless Revolution of 1688, which called
William of Orange to the throne, was simply the indication of Eng-
land's restored health and sanity. It proclaimed that she had not
long forgotten, and could never again forget, the lesson taught her
by Puritanism in its hundred years of struggle and sacrifice. Modern
England was firmly established by the Revolution, which was brought
about by the excesses of the Restoration.

Literary Characteristics. In the literature of the Restora-
tion we note a sudden breaking away from old standards,
French j ust as society broke away from the restraints of
influence Puritanism. Many of the literary men had been
driven out of England with Charles and his court, or else had
followed their patrons into exile in the days of the Common-
wealth. On their return they renounced old ideals and de-
manded that English poetry and drama should follow the

1 Guizot's History of the Revolution in England.

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 239

style to which they had become accustomed in the gayety of"
Paris. We read with astonishment in Pepys's Diary (1660-
1669) that he has been to see a play called Midsummer Night 's
Dream, but that he will never go again to hear Shakespeare,
" for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in
my life." And again we read in the diary of Evelyn,
another writer who reflects with wonderful accuracy the life
and spirit of the Restoration, "I saw Hamlet played ; but
now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his
Majesty's being so long abroad." Since Shakespeare and the
Elizabethans were no longer interesting, literary men began
to imitate the French writers, with whose works they had
just grown familiar ; and here begins the so-called period of
French influence, which shows itself in English literature for
the next century, instead of the Italian influence which had
been dominant since Spenser and the Elizabethans.

One has only to consider for a moment the French writers
of this period, Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malherbe, Corneille,
Racine, Moliere, all that brilliant company which makes
the reign of Louis XIV the Elizabethan Age of French litera-
ture, to see how far astray the early writers of the Restora-
tion went in their wretched imitation. When a man takes
another for his model, he should copy virtues not vices ; but
unfortunately many English writers reversed the rule, copy-
ing the vices of French comedy without any of its wit or deli-
cacy or abundant ideas. The poems of Rochester, the plays
of Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, all
popular in their day, are mostly unreadable. Milton's "sons
of Belial, flown with insolence and wine," is a good expression
of the vile character of the court writers and of the London
theaters for thirty years following the Restoration. Such work
can never satisfy a people, and when Jeremy Collier, 1 in 1698,

1 Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), a clergyman and author, noted for his scholarly Eccle-
siastical History of Great Britain (1708-1714) and his Short View of the Immorality and
Profanenessofthe English Stage (1698). The latter was largely instrumental in correct-
ing the low tendency of the Restoration drama.

240 ENGLISH LITERATURE

published a vigorous attack upon the evil plays and the play-
wrights of the day, all London, tired of the coarseness and
excesses of the Restoration, joined the literary revolution,
and the corrupt drama was driven from the stage.

With the final rejection of the Restoration drama we reach
a crisis in the history of our literature. The old Elizabethan
New Tend- spirit, with its patriotism, its creative vigor, its love
encies o f romance, and the Puritan spirit with its moral

earnestness and individualism, were both things of the past ;
and at first there was nothing to take their places. Dryden,
the greatest writer of the age, voiced a general complaint
when he said that in his prose and poetry he was "drawing
the outlines " of a new art, but had no teacher to instruct
him. But literature is a progressive art, and soon the writers
of the age developed two marked tendencies of their own,
the tendency to realism, and the tendency to that preciseness
and elegance of expression which marks our literature for the
next hundred years.

In realism that is, the representation of men exactly as
they are, the expression of the plain, unvarnished truth with-

^ out regard to ideals or romance the tendency

was at first thoroughly bad. The early Restora-
tion writers sought to paint realistic pictures of a corrupt
court and society, and, as we have suggested, they emphasized
vices rather than virtues, and gave us coarse, low plays with-
out interest or moral significance. Like Hobbes, they saw
only the externals of man, his body and appetites, not his
soul and its ideals ; and so, like most realists, they resemble
a man lost in the woods, who wanders aimlessly around in
circles, seeing the confusing trees but never the whole forest,
and who seldom thinks of climbing the nearest high hill to
get his bearings. Later, however, this tendency to realism
became more wholesome. While it neglected romantic poetry,
in which youth is eternally interested, it led to a keener
study of the practical motives which govern human action.

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 241

The second tendency of the age was toward directness and
simplicity of expression, and to this excellent tendency our
literature is greatly indebted. In both the Eliza-
bethan and the Puritan ages the general tendency
of writers was towards extravagance of thought and language.
Sentences were often involved, and loaded with Latin quota-
tions and classical allusions. The Restoration writers opposed
this vigorously. From France they brought back the tendency
to regard established rules for writing, to emphasize close
reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and to use short, clean-
cut sentences without an unnecessary word. We see this
French influence in the Royal Society, 1 which had for one of
its objects the reform of English prose by getting rid of its
"swellings of style," and which bound all its members to use
"a close, naked, natural way of speaking ... as near to
mathematical plainness as they can." Dryden accepted this
excellent rule for his prose, and adopted the heroic couplet,
as the next best thing, for the greater part of his poetry. As
he tells us himself :

And this unpolished rugged verse I chose
As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.

It is largely due to him that writers developed that formal-
ism of style, that precise, almost mathematical elegance,
miscalled classicism, which ruled English literature for the
next century. 2

Another thing which the reader will note with interest in
Restoration literature is the adoption of the heroic couplet; that
is, two iambic pentameter lines which rime together, as the

1 The Royal Society, for the investigation and discussion of scientific questions, was
founded in 1662, and soon included practically all of the literary and scientific men of
the age. It encouraged the work of Isaac Newton, who was one of its members ; and its
influence for truth at a time when men were stUl trying to compound the philosopher's
stone, calculating men's actions from the stars, and hanging harmless old women for
witches can hardly be overestimated.

2 If the reader would see this in concrete form, let him read a paragraph of Milton's
prose, or a stanza of his poetry, and compare its exuberant, melodious diction with
Dryden's concise method of writing.

242 . ENGLISH LITERATURE

most suitable form of poetry. Waller, 1 who began to use it
in 1623, is generally regarded as the father of the couplet, for
he is the first poet to use it consistently in the bulk
of his poetry. Chaucer had used the rimed couplet
wonderfully well in his Canterbury Tales, but in Chaucer it
is the poetical thought more than the expression which de-
lights us. With the Restoration writers, form counts for
everything. Waller and Dryden made the couplet the prevail-
ing literary fashion, and in their hands the couplet becomes
"closed"; that is, each pair of lines must contain a complete
thought, stated as precisely as possible. Thus Waller writes :

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. 2

That is a kind of aphorism such as Pope made in large quan-
tities in the following age. It contains a thought, is catchy,
quotable, easy to remember ; and the Restoration writers de-
lighted in it. Soon this mechanical closed couplet, in which
the second line was often made first, 3 almost excluded all
other forms of poetry. It was dominant in England for a full
century, and we have grown familiar with it, and somewhat
weary of its monotony, in such famous poems as Pope's "Essay
on Man" and Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." These, how-
ever, are essays rather than poems. That even the couplet is
capable of melody and variety is shown in Chaucer's Tales and
in Keats' s exquisite Endymion.

These four things, the tendency to vulgar realism in the
drama, a general formalism which came from following set
rules, the development of a simpler and more direct prose
style, and the prevalence of the heroic couplet in poetry are
the main characteristics of Restoration literature. They are
all exemplified in the work of one man, John Dryden.

1 Edmund Waller (1606-1687), the most noted poet of the Restoration period until
his pupil Dryden appeared. His works are now seldom read.

' 2 From Divine Poems, " Old Age and Death."

3 Following the advice of Boileau (1676-1711), a noted French critic, whom Voltaire
called " the lawgiver of Parnassus."

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 243

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

Dryden is the greatest literary figure of the Restoration,
and in his work we have an excellent reflection of both the
good and the evil tendencies of the age in which he lived. If
we can think for a moment of literature as a canal of water,
we may appreciate the figure that Dryden is the "lock by
which the waters of English poetry were let down from the
mountains of Shakespeare and Milton to the plain of Pope " ;
that is, he stands between two very different ages, and serves
as a transition from one to the other.

Life. Dryden's life contains so many conflicting elements of
greatness and littleness that the biographer is continually taken
away from the facts, which are his chief concern, to judge motives,
which are manifestly outside his knowledge and business. Judged
by his own opinion of himself, as expressed in the numerous pref-
aces to his works, Dryden was the soul of candor, writing with no
other master than literature, and with no other object than to advance
the welfare of his age and nation. Judged by his acts, he was appar-
ently a timeserver, catering to a depraved audience in his dramas,
and dedicating his work with much flattery to those who were easily
cajoled by their vanity into sharing their purse and patronage. In
this, however, he only followed the general custom of the time, and
is above many of his contemporaries.

Dryden was born in the village of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire,
in 1631. His family were prosperous people, who brought him up
in the strict Puritan faith, and sent him first to the famous West-
minster school and then to Cambridge. He made excellent use of his
opportunities and studied eagerly, becoming one of the best educated
men of his age, especially in the classics. Though of remarkable
literary taste, he showed little evidence of literary ability up to the
age of thirty. By his training and family connections he was allied
to the Puritan party, and his only well-known work of this period,
the " Heroic Stanzas," was written on the death of Cromwell :

His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone,
For he was great ere Fortune made him so ;

And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.

244

ENGLISH LITERATURE

In these four lines, taken almost at random from the " Heroic
Stanzas," we have an epitome of the thought, the preciseness, and
the polish that mark all his literary work.

This poem made Dryden well known, and he was in a fair way
to become the new poet of Puritanism when the Restoration made
a complete change in his methods. He had come to London for a
literary life, and when the Royalists were again in power he placed
himself promptly on the winning side. His " Astraea Redux," a poem

LIBRARY AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

of welcome to Charles II, and his " Panegyric to his Sacred Majesty,"
breathe more devotion to " the old goat," as the king was known to
his courtiers, than had his earlier poems to Puritanism.

In 1667 he became more widely known and popular by his
"Annus Mirabilis," a narrative poem describing the terrors of the
great fire in London and some events of the disgraceful war with
Holland ; but with the theaters reopened and nightly filled, the
drama offered the most attractive field to one who made his living
by literature ; so Dryden turned to the stage and agreed to furnish
three plays yearly for the actors of the King's Theater. For nearly

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 245

twenty years, the best of his life, Dryden gave himself up to this
unfortunate work. Both by nature and habit he seems to have been
clean in his personal life ; but the stage demanded unclean plays,
and Dryden followed his audience. That he deplored this is evident
from some of his later work, and we have his statement that he
wrote only one play, his best, to please himself. This was All for
Love, which was written in blank verse, most of the others being in
rimed couplets.

During this time Dryden had become the best known literary man
of London, and was almost as much a dictator to the literary set
which gathered in the taverns and coffeehouses as Ben Jonson had
been before him. His work, meanwhile, was rewarded by large finan-
cial returns, and by his being appointed poet laureate and collector
of the port of London. The latter office, it may be remembered,
had once been held by Chaucer.

At fifty years of age, and before Jeremy Collier had driven his
dramas from the stage, Dryden turned from dramatic work to throw
himself into the strife of religion and politics, writing at this period
his numerous prose and poetical treatises. In 1682 appeared his
Religio Laid (Religion of a Layman), defending the Anglican
Church against all other sects, 'especially the Catholics and Presby-
terians ; but three years later, when James II came to the throne
with schemes to establish the Roman faith, Dryden turned Catholic
and wrote his most famous religious poem, "The Hind and the
Panther," beginning :

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged ;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

This hind is a symbol for the Roman Church ; and the Anglicans,
as a panther, are represented as persecuting the faithful. Numer-
ous other sects Calvinists, Anabaptists, Quakers were represented
by the wolf, boar, hare, and other animals, which gave the poet an
excellent chance for exercising his satire. Dryden's enemies made
the accusation, often since repeated, of hypocrisy in thus changing
his church; but that he was sincere in the matter can now hardly
be questioned, for he knew how to "suffer for the faith" and to
be true to his religion, even when it meant misjudgment and loss of
fortune. At the Revolution of 1688 he refused allegiance to William

246 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of Orange ; he was deprived of all his offices and pensions, and as
an old man was again thrown back on literature as his only means of
livelihood. He went to work with extraordinary courage and energy,
writing plays, poems, prefaces for other men, eulogies for funeral
occasions, every kind of literary work that men would pay for.
His most successful work at this time was his translations, which re-
sulted in the complete <Lneid and many selections from Homer,
Ovid, and Juvenal, appearing in English rimed couplets. His most
enduring poem, the splendid ode called " Alexander's Feast," was
written in 1697. Three years later he published his last work,
Fables, containing poetical paraphrases of the tales of Boccaccio and
Chaucer, and the miscellaneous poems of his last years. Long pref-
aces were the fashion in Dryden's day, and his best critical work is
found in his introductions. The preface to the Fables is generally
admired as an example of the new prose style developed by Dryden
and his followers.

From the literary view point these last troubled years were the
best of Dryden's life, though they were made bitter by obscurity
and by the criticism of his numerous enemies. He died in 1700
and was buried near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.

Works of Dryden. The numerous dramatic works of Dry-
den are best left in that obscurity into which they have fallen.
Now and then they contain a bit of excellent lyric poetry,
and in All for Love, another version of Antony and Cleopatra,
where he leaves his cherished heroic couplet for the blank
verse of Marlowe and Shakespeare, he shows what he might
have done had he not sold his talents to a depraved audience.
On the whole, reading his plays is like nibbling at a rotting
apple ; even the good spots are affected by the decay, and
one ends by throwing the whole thing into the garbage can,
where most of the dramatic works of this period belong.

The controversial and satirical poems are on a higher

plane ; though, it must be confessed, Dryden's satire often

strikes us as cutting and revengeful, rather than

witty. The best known of these, and a masterpiece

of its kind, is " Absalom and Achitophel," which is undoubtedly

the most powerful political satire in our language. Taking

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 247

the Bible story of David and Absalom, he uses it to ridicule
the Whig party and also to revenge himself upon his enemies.
Charles II appeared as King David; his natural son, the
Duke of Monmouth, who was mixed up in the Rye House
Plot, paraded as Absalom ; Shaftesbury was Achitophel, the
evil Counselor ; and the Duke of Buckingham was satirized
as Zimri. The poem had enormous political influence, and
raised Dryden, in the opinion of his contemporaries, to the
front rank of English poets. Two extracts from the powerful
characterizations of Achitophel and Zimri are given here to
show the style and spirit of the whole work.

(SHAFTESBURY)

Of these the false Achitophel was first ;
A name to all succeeding ages cursed :
For close designs and crooked counsels fit ;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place ;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace :
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy body to decay. . . .
A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms : but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide ;
Else why should he, with wealth and honor blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ?
Punish a body which he could not please ;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son. . . .
In friendship false, implacable in hate ;
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state ; . .
Then seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves in factious times
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.

248 ENGLISH LITERATURE

(THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM)

Some of their chiefs were princes of the land ;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome :
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy !
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent, or over-civil,
That every man with him was God or devil.

Of the many miscellaneous poems of Dryden, the curious
reader will get an idea of his sustained narrative power from
the Anmis Mirabilis. The best expression of Dryden's liter-
ary genius, however, is found in "Alexander's Feast," which
is his most enduring ode, and one of the best in our language.

As a prose writer Dryden had a very marked influence on
our literature in shortening his sentences, and especially in
Prose and writing naturally, without depending on literary
Criticism ornamentation to give effect to what he is saying.
If we compare his prose with that of Milton, or Browne, or
Jeremy Taylor, we note that Dryden cares less for style than
any of the others, but takes more pains to state his thought
clearly and concisely, as men speak when they wish to be
understood. The classical school, which followed the Restora-
tion, looked to Dryden as a leader, and to him we owe largely
that tendency to exactness of expression which marks our
subsequent prose writing. With his prose, Dryden rapidly
developed his critical ability, and became the foremost critic *

1 By a critic we mean simply one who examines the literary works of various ages,
separates the good from the bad, and gives the reasons for his classification. It is notice-
able that critical writings increase in an age, like that of the Restoration, when great
creative works are wanting.

THE RESTORATION PERIOD

249

of his age. His criticisms, instead of being published as inde-
pendent works, were generally used as prefaces or introduc-
tions to his poetry. The best known of these criticisms are
the preface to the Fables, "Of Heroic Plays," "Discourse on
Satire," and especially the " Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (1668),
which attempts to lay a foundation for all literary criticism.

Dryden's Influence on Literature. Dryden's place among
authors is due partly to his great influence on the succeeding

WESTMINSTER

age of classicism. Briefly, this influence may be summed up
by noting the three new elements which he brought into our
literature. These are: (i) the establishment of the heroic
couplet as the fashion for satiric, didactic, and descriptive
poetry ; (2) his development of a direct, serviceable prose style
such as we still cultivate ; and (3) his development of the art of
literary criticism in his essays and in the numerous prefaces
to his poems. This is certainly a large work for one man to
accomplish, and Dryden is worthy of honor, though compara-
tively little of what he wrote is now found on our bookshelves.

250 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Samuel Butler (1612-1680). In marked contrast with Dry-
den, who devoted his life to literature and won his success
by hard work, is Samuel Butler, who jumped into fame by a
single, careless work, which represents not any serious intent
or effort, but the pastime of an idle hour. We are to remem-
ber that, though the Royalists had triumphed in the Restora-
tion, the Puritan spirit was not dead, nor even sleeping, and
that the Puritan held steadfastly to his own principles. Against
these principles of justice, truth, and liberty there was no
argument, since they expressed the manhood of England ;
but many of the Puritan practices were open to ridicule, and
the Royalists, in revenge for their defeat, began to use ridicule
without mercy. During the early years of the Restoration
doggerel verses ridiculing Puritanism, and burlesque, that
is, a ridiculous representation of serious subjects, or a serious
representation of ridiculous subjects, were the most popular
form of literature with London society. Of all this burlesque
and doggerel the most famous is Butler's Hudibras, a work
to which we can trace many of the prejudices that still pre-
vail against Puritanism.

Of Butler himself we know little ; he is one of the most
obscure figures in our literature. During the days of Crom-
well's Protectorate he was in the employ of Sir Samuel Luke,
a crabbed and extreme type of Puritan nobleman, and here
he collected his material and probably wrote the first part of
his burlesque, which, of course, he did not dare to publish
until after the Restoration.

Hudibras is plainly modeled upon the Don Quixote of
Cervantes. It describes the adventures of a fanatical justice
of the peace, Sir Hudibras, and of his squire,
Ralpho, in their endeavor to put down all innocent
pleasures. In Hudibras and Ralpho the two extreme types of
the Puritan party, Presbyterians and Independents, are merci-
lessly ridiculed. When the poem first appeared in public, in
1663, after circulating secretly for years in manuscript, it

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 251

became at once enormously popular. The king carried a copy
in his pocket, and courtiers vied with each other in quoting
its most scurrilous passages. A second and a third part, con-
tinuing the adventures of Hudibras, were published in 1664
and 1668. At best the work is a wretched doggerel, but it
was clever enough and strikingly original ; and since it ex-
pressed the Royalist spirit towards the Puritans, it speedily
found its place in a literature which reflects every phase of
human life. A few odd lines are given here to show the
character of the work, and to introduce the reader to the best
known burlesque in our language :

He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skilled in analytic ;
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt south and southwest side ;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute ;
He 'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man 's no horse ;
He 'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination.

For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church Militant ;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun ;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery ;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks ;
Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those .they have no mind to.

Hobbes and Locke. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one
of the writers that puzzle the historian with a doubt as to
whether or not he should be included in the story of litera-
ture. The one book for which he is famous is called Levia-
than, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth
(1651). It is partly political, partly a philosophical book,

252 ENGLISH LITERATURE

combining two central ideas which challenge and startle the
attention, namely, that self-interest is the only guiding power
of humanity, and that blind submission to rulers is the only
true basis of government. 1 In a word, Hobbes reduced human
nature to its purely animal aspects, and then asserted con-
fidently that there was nothing more to study. Certainly,
therefore, as a reflection of the underlying spirit of Charles
and his followers it has no equal in any purely literary work
of the time.

John Locke (1632-1704) is famous as the author of a
single great philosophical work, the Essay concerning Human
Understanding (1690). This is a study of the nature of the
human mind and of the origin of ideas, which, far more than
the work of Bacon and Hobbes, is the basis upon which Eng-
lish philosophy has since been built. Aside from their subjects,
both works are models of the new prose, direct, simple, con-
vincing, for which Dryden and the Royal Society labored.
They are known to every student of philosophy, but are sel-
dom included in a work of literature. 2

Evelyn and Pepys. These two men, John Evelyn (1620-
1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), are famous as the
writers of diaries, in which they jotted down the daily occur-
rences of their own lives, without any thought that the world
would ever see or be interested in what they had written.

1 Two other principles of this book should be noted : (i) that all power originates in
the people ; and (2) that the object of all government is the common good. Here evi-
dently is a democratic doctrine, which abolishes the divine right of kings ; but Hobbes
immediately destroys democracy by another doctrine, that the power given by the
people to the ruler could not be taken away. Hence the Royalists could use the book to
justify the despotism of the Stuarts on the ground that the people had chosen them.
This part of the book is in direct opposition to Milton's Defense of the English People.

2 Locke's Treatises on Government should also be mentioned, for they are of pro-
found interest to American students of history and political science. It was from Locke
that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution drew many
of their ideas, and even some of their most striking phrases. " All men are endowed
with certain inalienable rights"; "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; "the
origin and basis of government is in the consent of the governed," these and many
more familiar and striking expressions are from Locke. It is interesting to note that he
was appointed to draft a constitution for the new province of Carolina ; but his work
was rejected, probably because it was too democratic for the age in which he lived.

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 253

Evelyn was the author of Sylva, the first book on trees
and forestry in English, and Terra, which is the first attempt
at a scientific study of agriculture ; but the world has lost
sight of these two good books, while it cherishes his diary,
which extends over the greater part of his life and gives us
vivid pictures of society in his time, and especially of the
frightful corruption of the royal court.

Pepys began life in a small way as a clerk in a government
office, but soon rose by his diligence and industry to be Sec-
retary of the Admiralty. Here he was brought into
y contact with every grade of society, from the king's
ministers to the poor sailors of the fleet. Being inquisitive as
a blue jay, he investigated the rumors and gossip of the court,
as well as the small affairs of his neighbors, and wrote them
all down in his diary with evident interest. But because he
chattered most freely, and told his little book a great many
secrets which it were not well for the world to know, he con-
cealed everything in shorthand, and here again he was like
the blue jay, which carries off and hides every bright trinket
it discovers. The Diary covers the years from 1660 to 1669,
and gossips about everything, from his own position and
duties at the office, his dress and kitchen and cook and rela-
tives, to the great political intrigues of office and the scandals
of high society. No other such minute picture of the daily
life of an age has been written. Yet for a century and a half
it remained entirely unknown, and not until 1825 was Pepys's
shorthand deciphered and published. Since then it has been
widely read, and is still one of the most interesting examples
of diary writing that we possess. Following are a few extracts, 1
covering only a few days in April, 1663, from which one may
infer the minute and interesting character of the work that
this clerk, politician, president of the Royal Society, and gen-
eral busybody wrote to please himself :

1 A few slight changes and omissions from the original text, as given in Wheatley's
edition of Pepys (London, 1892, 9 vols.), are not indicated in these brief quotations.

254 ENGLISH LITERATURE

April ist. I went to the Temple to my Cozen Roger Pepys, to see
and talk with him a little : who tells me that, with much ado, the Par-
liament do agree to throw down Popery ; but he says it is with so much
spite and passion, and an endeavor of bringing all Nonconformists into
the same condition, that he is afeard matters will not go so well as he
could wish. . . . To my office all the afternoon ; Lord ! how Sir J.
Minnes, like a mad coxcomb, did swear and stamp, swearing that Com-
missioner Pett hath still the old heart against the King that ever he
had, . . . and all the damnable reproaches in the world, at which I was
ashamed, but said little ; but, upon the whole, I find him still a foole,
led by the nose with stories told by Sir W. Batten, whether with or
without reason. So, vexed in my mind to see things ordered so unlike
gentlemen, or men of reason, I went home and to bed.

3d. To White Hall and to Chappell, which being most monstrous
full, 1 could not go into my pew, but sat among the quire. Dr. Creeton,
the Scotchman, preached a most admirable, good, learned, honest, and
most severe sermon, yet comicall. . . . He railed bitterly ever and anon
against John Calvin and his brood, the Presbyterians, and against the
present terme, now in use, of "tender consciences." He ripped up
Hugh Peters (calling him the execrable skellum), his preaching and
stirring up the mayds of the city to bring in their bodkins and thimbles.
Thence going out of White Hall, I met Captain Grove, who did give
me a letter directed to myself from himself. I discerned money to be
in it, and took it, knowing, as I found it to be, the proceed of the place
I have got him, the taking up of vessels for Tangier. But I did not
open it till I came home to my office, and there I broke it open, not
looking into it till all the money was out, that I might say I saw no
money in the paper, if ever I should be questioned about it. There was
a piece of gold and 4^ in silver.

4th. To my office. Home to dinner, whither by and by comes Roger
Pepys, etc. Very merry at, before, and after dinner, and the more for
that my dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our owne only
mayde. W T e had a fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton
boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lambe, a dish of
roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a
most rare pie), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all
things mighty noble and to my great content.

5th (Lord's day). Up and spent the morning, till the Barber came,
in reading in my chamber part of Osborne's Advice to his Son, which I
shall not never enough admire for sense and language, and being by
and by trimmed, to Church, myself, wife, Ashwell, etc. Home and,
while dinner was prepared, to my office to read over my vows with great
affection and to very good purpose. Then to church again, where a
simple bawling young Scot preached.

THE RESTORATION PERIOD 255

igth (Easter day). Up and this day put on my close-kneed coloured
suit, which, with new stockings of the colour, with belt and new gilt-
handled sword, is very handsome. To church alone, and after dinner
to church again, where the young Scotchman preaching, I slept all the
while. After supper, fell in discourse of dancing, and I find that Ash-
well hath a very fine carriage, which makes my wife almost ashamed of
herself to see herself so outdone, but to-morrow she begins to learn to
dance for a month or two. So to prayers and to bed. Will being gone,
with my leave, to his father's this day for a day or two, to take physique
these holydays.

23d. St. George's day and Coronacion, the King and Court being at
Windsor, at the installing of the King of Denmarke by proxy and the
Duke of Monmouth. . . . Spent the evening with my father. At cards
till late, and being at supper, my boy being sent for some mustard to a
neat's tongue, the rogue staid half an houre in the streets, it seems at a
bonfire, at which I was very angry, and resolve to beat him to-morrow.

24th. Up betimes, and with my salt eele went down into the parler
and there got my boy and did beat him till I was fain to take breath
two or three times, yet for all I am afeard it will make the boy never
the better, he is grown so hardened in his tricks, which I am sorry for,
he being capable of making a brave man, and is a boy that I and my
wife love very well.

Summary of the Restoration Period. The chief thing to note in England
during the Restoration is the tremendous social reaction from the restraints
of Puritanism, which suggests the wide swing of a pendulum from one extreme
to the other. For a generation many natural pleasures had been suppressed ;
now the theaters were reopened, bull and bear baiting revived, and sports,
music, dancing, a wild delight in the pleasures and vanities of this world
replaced that absorption in " other-worldliness " which characterized the extreme
of Puritanism.

In literature the change is no less marked. From the Elizabethan drama
playwrights turned to coarse, evil scenes, which presently disgusted the people
and were driven from the stage. From romance, writers turned to realism ; from
Italian influence with its exuberance of imagination they turned to France, and
learned to repress the emotions, to follow the head rather than the heart, and
to write in a clear, concise, formal style, according to set rules. Poets turned
from the noble blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, from the variety and
melody which had characterized English poetry since Chaucer's day, to the
monotonous heroic couplet with its mechanical perfection.

The greatest writer of the age is John Dryden, who established the heroic
couplet as the prevailing verse form in English poetry, and who developed a
new and serviceable prose style suited to the practical needs of the age. The
popular ridicule of Puritanism in burlesque and doggerel is best exemplified
in Butler's Hudibras. The realistic tendency, the study of facts and of men

256 ENGLISH LITERATURE

as they are, is shown in the work of the Royal Society, in the philosophy of
Hobbes and Locke, and in the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, with their minute
pictures of social life. The age was one of transition from the exuberance and
vigor of Renaissance literature to the formality and polish of the Augustan
Age. In strong contrast with the preceding ages, comparatively little of
Restoration literature is familiar to modern readers.

Selections for Reading. Dryden. Alexander's Feast, Song for St. Cecilia's
Day, selections from Absalom and Achitophel, Religio Laici, Hind and Panther,
Annus Mirabilis, in Manly's English Poetry, or Ward's English Poets, or
Cassell's National Library ; Palamon and Arcite (Dryden's version of Chaucer's
tale), in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature, etc. ; Dryden's An
Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in Manly's, or Garnett's, English Prose.

Butler. Selections from Hudibras, in Manly's English Poetry, Ward's
English Poets, or Morley's Universal Library.

Pepys. Selections in Manly's English Prose ; the Diary in Everyman's
Library.

Bibliography. History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 257-280; Cheyney,
pp. 466-514; Green, ch. 9; Traill ; Gardiner; Macaulay.

Special Works. Sydney's Social Life in England from the Restoration to
the Revolution ; Airy's The English Restoration and Louis XIV ; Hale's The
Fall of the Stuarts.

Literature. Garnett's The Age of Dryden ; Dowden's Puritan and Anglican.

Dryden. Poetical Works, with Life, edited by Christie ; the same, edited
by Noyes, in Cambridge Poets Series; Life and Works (18 vols.), by Walter
Scott, revised (1893) by Saintsbury; Essays, edited by Ker; Life, by Saints-
bury (English Men of Letters) ; Macaulay's Essay ; Lowell's Essay, in Among
My Books (or in Literary Essays, vol. 3) ; Dowden's Essay, supra.

Butler. Hudibras, in Morley's Universal Library ; Poetical Works, edited
by Johnson ; Dowden's Essay, supra.

Pepys. Diary in Everyman's Library ; the same, edited by Wheatley (8 vols.);
Wheatley's Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In; Stevenson's Essay,
in Familiar Studies of Men and Books.

The Restoration Drama. Plays in the Mermaid Series ; Hazlitt's Lectures
on the English Comic Writers ; Meredith's Essay on Comedy and the Comic
Spirit ; Lamb's Essay on the Artificial Comedy ; Thackeray's Essay on Con-
greve, in English Humorists.

Suggestive Questions, i. What marked change in social conditions fol-
lowed the Restoration ? How are these changes reflected in literature ?

2. What are the chief characteristics of Restoration literature ? Why is
this period called the Age of French influence ? What new tendencies were
introduced? What effect did the Royal Society and the study of science
have upon English prose ? What is meant by realism ? by formalism ?

3. What is meant by the heroic couplet ? Explain why it became the pre-
vailing form of English poetry. What are its good qualities and its defects ?

THE RESTORATION PERIOD

257

Name some well-known poems which are written in couplets. How do Dryden's
couplets compare with Chaucer's ? Can you explain the difference ?

4. Give a brief account of Dryden's life. What are his chief poetical works ?
For what new object did he use poetry ? Is satire a poetical subject ? Why
is a poetical satire more effective than a satire in prose ? What was Dryden's
contribution to English prose ? What influence did he exert on our literature ?

5. What is Butler's Hudibras ? Explain its popularity. Read a passage and
comment upon it, first, as satire ; second, as a description of the Puritans. Is
Hudibras poetry ? Why ?

6. Name the philosophers and political economists of this period. Can you
explain why Hobbes should call his work Leviathan ? What important Amer-
ican documents show the influence of Locke ?

7. Tell briefly the story of Pepys and his Diary. What light does the latter
throw on the life of the age ? Is the Diary a work of literature ? Why ?

CHRONOLOGY

Last Half of the Seventeenth Century

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1649. Execution of Charles I
1649-1660. Commonwealth
1660. Restoration of Charles II

1665-1666. Plague and Fire of London

War with Holland
1667. Dutch fleet in the Thames

1680. Rise of Whigs and Tories

1685. James II

Monmouth's Rebellion

1688. English Revolution, William of

Orange called to throne

1689. Bill of Rights. Toleration Act

1651. Hobbes's Leviathan
1660-1669. Pepys's Diary

1662. Royal Society founded

1663. Butler's Hudibras

Dry-

1667. Milton's Paradise Lost,
den's Annus Mirabilis
1663-1694. Dryden's dramas
1671. Paradise Regained
1678. Pilgrim's Progress published

1 68 1, Dryden's Absalom and Achit-
ophel

1687. Newton's Principia proves the
law of gravitation

1690. Locke's Human Understanding
1698. Jeremy Collier attacks stage
1700. Death of Dryden

CHAPTER IX

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE (1700-1800)
I. AUGUSTAN OR CLASSIC AGE

History of the Period. The Revolution of 1688, which banished
the last of the Stuart kings and called William of Orange to the
throne, marks the end of the long struggle for political freedom in
England. Thereafter the Englishman spent his tremendous energy,
which his forbears had largely spent in fighting for freedom, in end-
less political discussions and in efforts to improve his government.
In order to bring about reforms, votes were now necessary ; and to
get votes the people of England must be approached with ideas,
facts, arguments, information. So the newspaper was born, 1 and lit-
erature in its widest sense, including the book, the newspaper, and
the magazine, became the chief instrument of a. nation's progress.

The first half of the eighteenth century is remarkable for the
rapid social development in England. Hitherto men had been more
Social r less governed by the narrow, isolated standards of the

Development Middle Ages, and when they differed they fell speedily
to blows. Now for the first time they set themselves to the task of
learning the art of living together, while still holding different opin-
ions. In a single generation nearly two thousand public coffeehouses,
each a center of sociability, sprang up in London alone, and the
number of private clubs is quite as astonishing. 2 This new social life
had a marked effect in polishing men's words and manners. The
typical Londoner of Queen Anne's day was still rude, and a little
vulgar in his tastes ; the city was still very filthy, the streets unlighted
and infested at night by bands of rowdies and "Mohawks"; but
outwardly men sought to refine their manners according to pre-
vailing standards; and to be elegant, to have "good form," was
a man's first duty, whether he entered society or wrote literature.
One can hardly read a book or poem of the age without feeling this

1 The first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, appeared in London in 1702.

2 See Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century.

258

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 259

superficial elegance. Government still had its opposing Tory and Whig
parties, and the Church was divided into Catholics, Anglicans, and
Dissenters; but the growing social life offset many antagonisms,
producing at least the outward impression of peace and unity.
Nearly every writer of the age busied himself with religion as well
as with party politics, the scientist Newton as sincerely as the church-
man Barrow, the philosophical Locke no less earnestly than the
evangelical Wesley ; but nearly all tempered their zeal with modera-
tion, and argued from reason and Scripture, or used delicate satire
upon their opponents, instead of denouncing them as followers of
Satan. There were exceptions, of course ; but the general tendency
of the age was toward toleration. Man had found himself in the
long struggle for personal liberty ; now he turned to the task of
discovering his neighbor, of finding in Whig and Tory, in Catholic
and Protestant, in Anglican and Dissenter, the same general human
characteristics that he found in himself. This good work was helped,
moreover, by the spread of education and by the growth of the
national spirit, following the victories of Marlborough on the Conti-
nent. In the midst of heated argument it needed only a word
Gibraltar, Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet or a poem of victory
written in a garret 1 to tell a patriotic people that under their many
differences they were all alike Englishmen.

In the latter half of the century the political and social progress
is almost bewildering. The modern form of cabinet government re-
sponsible to Parliament and the people had been established under
George I ; and in 1757 the cynical and corrupt practices of Walpole,
premier of the first Tory cabinet, were replaced by the more en-
lightened policies of Pitt. Schools were established ; clubs and coffee-
houses increased ; books and magazines multiplied until the press
was the greatest visible power in England ; the modern great dailies,
the Chronicle, Post, and Times, began their career of public educa-
tion. Religiously, all the churches of England felt the quickening
power of that tremendous spiritual revival known as Methodism,
under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield. Outside her own
borders three great men Clive in India, Wolfe on the Plains of
Abraham, Cook in Australia and the islands of the Pacific were
unfurling the banner of St. George over the untold wealth of new
lands, and spreading the world-wide empire of the Anglo-Saxons.

1 Addison's " Campaign" (1704), written to celebrate the battle of Blenheim.

260 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Literary Characteristics. In every preceding age we have
noted especially the poetical works, which constitute, accord-
An Age of m g to Matthew Arnold, the glory of English liter-
Prose ature. Now for the first time we must chronicle
the triumph of English prose. A multitude of practical in-
terests arising from the new social and political conditions
demanded expression, not simply in books, but more especially
in pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers. Poetry was inade-
quate for such a task ; hence the development of prose, of
the "unfettered word," as Dante calls it, a development
which astonishes us by its rapidity and excellence. The
graceful elegance of Addison's essays, the terse vigor of
Swift's satires, the artistic finish of Fielding's novels, the
sonorous eloquence of Gibbon's history and of Burke' s ora-
tions, these have no parallel in the poetry of the age.
Indeed, poetry itself became prosaic in this respect, that it
was used not for creative works of imagination, but for essays,
for satire, for criticism, for exactly the same practical ends
as was prose. The poetry of the first half of the century, as
typified in the work of Pope, is polished and witty enough,
but artificial ; it lacks fire, fine feeling, enthusiasm, the glow
of the Elizabethan Age and the moral earnestness of Puritan-
ism. In a word, it interests us as a study of life, rather than
delights or inspires us by its appeal to the imagination. The
variety and excellence of prose works, and the development
of a serviceable prose style, which had been begun by Dry-
den, until it served to express clearly every human interest
and emotion, these are the chief literary glories of the
eighteenth century.

In the literature of the preceding age we noted two marked

tendencies, the tendency to realism in subject-matter, and

the tendency to polish and refinement of expres-

Set tire

sion. Both these tendencies were continued in the
Augustan Age, and are seen clearly in the poetry of Pope,
who brought the couplet to perfection, and in the prose of

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 261

Addison. A third tendency is shown in the prevalence of
satire, resulting from the unfortunate union of politics with
literature. We have already noted the power of the press in
this age, and the perpetual strife of political parties. Nearly
every writer of the first half of the century was used and re-
warded by Whigs or Tories for satirizing their enemies and for
advancing their special political interests. Pope was a marked
exception, but he nevertheless followed the prose writers in
using satire too largely in his poetry. Now satire that is, a
literary work which searches out the faults of men or institu-
tions in order to hold them up to ridicule is at best a de-
structive kind of criticism. A satirist is like a laborer who
clears away the ruins and rubbish of an old house before the
architect and builders begin on a new and beautiful structure.
The work may sometimes be necessary, but it rarely arouses
our enthusiasm. While the satires of Pope, Swift, and Addi-
son are doubtless the best in our language, we hardly place
them with our great literature, which is always constructive
in spirit ; and we have the feeling that all these men were
capable of better things than they ever wrote.

The Classic Age. The period we are studying is known to
us by various names. It is often called the Age of Queen
Anne ; but, unlike Elizabeth, this " meekly stupid " queen
had practically no influence upon our literature. The name
Classic Age is more often heard ; but in using it we should
remember clearly these three different ways in which the
word " classic " is applied to literature : (i) the term " classic "
refers, in general, to writers of the highest rank in any nation.
As used in our literature, it was first applied to the works of
the great Greek and Roman writers, like Homer and Virgil ;
and any English book which followed the simple and noble
method of these writers was said to have a classic style.
Later the term was enlarged to cover the great literary works
of other ancient nations ; so that the Bible and the Avestas,
as well as the Iliad and the ^Eneid, are called classics.

262 ENGLISH LITERATURE

(2) Every national literature has at least one period in which
an unusual number of great writers are producing books, and
this is called the classic period of a nation's literature. Thus
the reign of Augustus is the classic or golden age of Rome ;
the generation of Dante is the classic age of Italian litera-
ture ; the age of Louis XIV is the French classic age ; and
the age of Queen Anne is often called the classic age of
England. (3) The word " classic " acquired an entirely different
meaning in the period we are studying ; and we shall better
understand this by reference to the preceding ages. The
Elizabethan writers were led by patriotism, by enthusiasm,
and, in general, by romantic emotions. They wrote in a nat-
ural style, without regard to rules ; and though they exagger-
ated and used too many words, their works are delightful
because of their vigor and freshness and fine feeling. In the
following age patriotism had largely disappeared from politics
and enthusiasm from literature. Poets no longer wrote natu-
rally, but artificially, with strange and fantastic verse forms to
give effect, since fine feeling was wanting. And this is the
general character of the poetry of the Puritan Age. 1 Gradu-
ally our writers rebelled against the exaggerations of both the
natural and the fantastic style. They demanded that poetry
should follow exact rules ; and in this they were influenced
by French writers, especially by Boileau and Rapin, who in-
sisted on precise methods of writing poetry, and who professed
to have discovered their rules in the classics of Horace and
Aristotle. In our study of the Elizabethan drama we noted
the good influence of the classic movement in insisting upon
that beauty of form and definiteness of expression which
characterize the dramas of Greece and Rome ; and in the
work of Dryden and his followers we see a revival of classi-
cism in the effort to make English literature conform to rules

1 Great writers in every age, men like Shakespeare and Milton, make their own style.
They are therefore not included in this summary. Among the minor writers also there
are exceptions to the rule ; and fine feeling is often manifest in the poetry of Donne,
Herbert, Vaughan, and Herrick.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 263

established by the great writers of other nations. At first the
results were excellent, especially in prose ; but as the crea-
tive vigor of the Elizabethans was lacking in this age, writing
by rule soon developed a kind of elegant formalism, which
suggests the elaborate social code of the time. Just as a
gentleman might not act naturally, but must follow exact
rules in doffing his hat, or addressing a lady, or entering a
room, or wearing a wig, or offering his snuffbox to a friend,
so our writers lost individuality and became formal and arti-
ficial. The general tendency of literature was to look at life
critically, to emphasize intellect rather than imagination, the
form rather than the content of a sentence. Writers strove
to repress all emotion and enthusiasm, and to use only precise
and elegant methods of expression. This is what is often
meant by the " classicism " of the ages of Pope and Johnson.
It refers to the critical, intellectual spirit of many writers, to
the fine polish of their heroic couplets or the elegance of
their prose, and not to any resemblance which their work
bears to true classic literature. In a word, the classic move-
ment had become pseudo-classic, i.e. a false or sham classi-
cism ; and the latter term is now often used to designate a
considerable part of eighteenth-century literature. 1 To avoid
this critical difficulty we have adopted the term Augustan
Age, a name chosen by the writers themselves, who saw in
Pope, Addison, Swift, Johnson, and Burke the modern par-
allels to Horace, Virgil, Cicero, and all that brilliant company
who made Roman literature famous in the days of Augustus.

1 We have endeavored here simply to show the meaning of terms in general use in
our literature ; but it must be remembered that it is impossible to classify or to give a
descriptive name to the writers of any period or century. While " classic " or " pseudo-
classic " may apply to a part of eighteenth-century literature, every age has both its ro-
mantic and its classic movements. In this period the revolt against classicism is shown
in the revival of romantic poetry under Gray, Collins, Burns, and Thomson, and in the
beginning of the English novel under Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. These poets and
novelists, who have little or no connection with classicism, belong chronologically to the
period we are studying. They are reserved for special treatment in the sections
following.

264 ENGLISH LITERATURE

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

Pope is in many respects a unique figure. In the first
place, he was for a generation "the poet" of a great nation.
To be sure, poetry was limited in the early eighteenth cen-
tury ; there were few lyrics, little or no love poetry, no epics,
no dramas or songs of nature worth considering ; but in the
narrow field of satiric and didactic verse Pope was the undis-
puted master. His influence completely dominated the poetry
of his age, and many foreign writers, as well as the majority
of English poets, looked to him as their model. Second, he
was a remarkably clear and adequate reflection of the spirit
of the age in which he lived. There is hardly an ideal, a be-
lief, a doubt, a fashion, a whim of Queen Anne's time, that is
not neatly expressed in his poetry. Third, he was the only
important writer of that age who gave his whole life to let-
ters. Swift was a clergyman and politician ; Addison was
secretary of state ; other writers depended on patrons or
politics or pensions for fame and a livelihood ; but Pope was
independent, and had no profession but literature. And
fourth, by the sheer force of his ambition he won his place,
and held it, in spite of religious prejudice, and in the face of
physical and temperamental obstacles that would have dis-
couraged a stronger man. For Pope was deformed and sickly,
dwarfish in soul and body. He knew little of the world of
nature or of the world of the human heart. He was lacking,
apparently, in noble feeling, and instinctively chose a lie when
the truth had manifestly more advantages. Yet this jealous,
peevish, waspish little man became the most famous poet of
his age and the acknowledged leader of English literature.
We record the fact with wonder and admiration ; but we do
not attempt to explain it.

Life. Pope was born in London in 1688, the year of the Revo-
lution. His parents were both Catholics, who presently removed
from London and settled in Binfield, near Windsor, where the poet's

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 265

childhood was passed. Partly because of an unfortunate prejudice
against Catholics in the public schools, partly because of his own
weakness and deformity, Pope received very little school education,
but browsed for himself among English books and picked up a smat-
tering of the classics. Very early he began to write poetry, and records
the fact with his usual vanity :

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.

Being debarred by his religion from many desirable employments,
he resolved to make literature his life work; and in this he re-
sembled Dryden, who, he tells us, was his only master, though
much of his work seems to depend on Boileau, the French poet and
critic. 1 When only sixteen years old he had written his " Pastorals ";
a few years later appeared his " Essay on Criticism," which made
him famous. With the publication of the Rape of the Lock, in 1712,
Pope's name was known and honored all over England, and this
dwarf of twenty-four years, by the sheer force of his own ambition,
had jumped to the foremost place in English letters. It was soon
after this that Voltaire called him " the best poet of England and,
at present, of all the world," which is about as near the truth as
Voltaire generally gets in his numerous universal judgments. For
the next twelve years Pope was busy with poetry, especially with his
translations of Homer; and his work was so successful financially
that he bought a villa at Twickenham, on the Thames, and remained
happily independent of wealthy patrons for a livelihood.

Led by his success, Pope returned to London and for a time en-
deavored to live the gay and dissolute life which was supposed to be
suitable for a literary genius ; but he was utterly unfitted for it, men-
tally and physically, and soon retired to Twickenham. There he
gave himself up to poetry, manufactured a little garden more arti-
ficial than his verses, and cultivated his friendship with Martha
Blount, with whom for many years he spent a good part of each day,
and who remained faithful to him to the end of his life. At Twicken-
ham he wrote his Moral Epistles (poetical satires modeled after

1 Pope's satires, for instance, are strongly suggested in Boileau ; his Rape of the
Lock is much like the mock-heroic Le Lutrin ; and the "Essay on Criticism," which
made him famous, is an English edition and improvement of L'Art Poetique. The last
was, in turn, a combination of the Ars Poetica of Horace and of many well-known rules
of the classicists.

266 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Horace) and revenged himself upon all his critics in the bitter abuse
of the Dunciad. He died in 1744 and was buried at Twickenham,
his religion preventing him from the honor, which was certainly his
due, of a resting place in Westminster Abbey.

Works of Pope. For convenience we may separate Pope's
work into three groups, corresponding to the early, middle,
and later period of his life. In the first he wrote his " Pas-
torals," "Windsor Forest," "Messiah," " Essay on Criticism,"
"Eloise to Abelard," and the Rape of the Lock ; in the sec-
ond, his translations of Homer ; in the third the Dunciad
and the Epistles, the latter containing the famous "Essay
on Man" and the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," which is in
truth his "Apologia," and in which alone we see Pope's life
from his own view point.

The " Essay on Criticism " sums up the art of poetry as
taught first by Horace, then by Boileau and the eighteenth-
Essay on century classicists. Though written in heroic coup-
Criticism i e ts, we hardly consider this as a poem but rather
as a storehouse of critical maxims. " For fools rush in where
angels fear to tread"; "To err is human, to forgive divine " ;
"A little learning is a dangerous thing," these lines, and
many more like them from the same source, have found their
way into our common speech, and are used, without thinking
of the author, whenever we need an apt quotation.

The Rape of the Lock is a masterpiece of its kind, and comes
nearer to being a "creation" than anything else that Pope
Rape of the nas written. The occasion of the famous poem was
Lock trivial enough. A fop at the court of Queen Anne,

one Lord Petre, snipped a lock of hair from the abundant
curls of a pretty maid of honor named Arabella Fermor. The
young lady resented it, and the two families were plunged
into a quarrel which was the talk of London. Pope, being
appealed to, seized the occasion to construct, not a ballad, as
the Cavaliers would have done, nor an epigram, as French
poets love to do, but a long poem in which all the mannerisms

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 267

of society are pictured in minutest detail and satirized with
the most delicate wit. The first edition, consisting of two
cantos, was published in 1712 ; and it is amazing now to read
of the trivial character of London court life at the time when
English soldiers were battling for a great continent in the
French and Indian wars. Its instant success caused Pope to
lengthen the poem by three more cantos ; and in order to
make a more perfect burlesque of an epic poem, he introduces
gnomes, sprites, sylphs, and salamanders, 1 instead of the gods
of the great epics, with which his readers were familiar. The
poem is modeled after two foreign satires : Boileau's Le Lu-
trin (reading desk), a satire on the French clergy, who raised
a huge quarrel over the location of a lectern ; and La Secchia
Rapita (stolen bucket), a famous Italian satire on the petty
causes of the endless Italian wars. Pope, however, went far
ahead of his masters in style and in delicacy of handling a
mock-heroic theme, and during his lifetime the Rape of the
Lock was considered as the greatest poem of its kind in all
literature. The poem is still well worth reading; for as an
expression of the artificial life of the age of its cards, par-
ties, toilettes, lapdogs, tea-drinking, snuff-taking, and idle
vanities it is as perfect in its way as Tamburlaine, which
reflects the boundless ambition of the Elizabethans.

The fame of Pope's Iliad, which was financially the most
successful of his books, was due to the fact that he interpreted
Pope's Trans- Homer in the elegant, artificial language of his own
lations a g e> Not only do his words follow literary fashions,

but even the Homeric characters lose their strength and be-
come fashionable men of the court. So the criticism of the
scholar Bentley was most appropriate when he said, "It is a
pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer."
Pope v translated the entire Iliad and half of the Odyssey ; and

1 These are the four kinds of spirits inhabiting the four elements, according to the
Rosicrucians, a fantastic sect of spiritualists of that age. In the dedication of the
poem Pope says he took the idea from a French book called LeComte de Gabalis.

268 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the latter work was finished by two Cambridge scholars,
Elijah Fenton and William Broome, who imitated the me-
chanical couplets so perfectly that it is difficult to distinguish
their work from that of the greatest poet of the age. A single
selection is given to show how, in the nobler passages, even
Pope may faintly suggest the elemental grandeur of Homer :

The troops exulting sat in order round,
And beaming fires illumined all the ground.
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er Heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ?
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head.

The " Essay " is the best known and the most quoted of
all Pope's works. Except in form it is not poetry, and when
Essay on one considers it as an essay and reduces it to plain
Man prose, it is found to consist of numerous literary

ornaments without any very solid structure of thought to rest
upon. The purpose of the essay is, in Pope's words, to "vin-
dicate the ways of God to Man " ; and as there are no unan-
swered problems in Pope's philosophy, the vindication is per-
fectly accomplished in four poetical epistles, concerning man's
relations to the universe, to himself, to society, and to happiness.
The final result is summed up in a few well-known lines :

All nature is but art, unknown to thee ;

All chance, direction which thou canst not see ;

All discord, harmony not understood ;

All partial evil, universal good :

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.

Like the " Essay on Criticism," the poem abounds in quot-
able lines, such as the following, which make the entire work
well worth reading :

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 269

Hope springs eternal in the human breast :
Man never is, but always to be blest.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.

The same ambition can destroy or save,
And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.

Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw :
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite :
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer books are the toys of age :
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before ;
Till tired he sleeps, and Life's poor play is o'er. 1

The Dunciad (i.e. the " Iliad of the Dunces ") began origi-
nally as a controversy concerning Shakespeare, but turned
Misceiiane- out to be a coarse and revengeful satire upon all
ous Works t h e literary men of the age who had aroused Pope's
anger by their criticism or lack of appreciation of his genius.
Though brilliantly written and immensely popular at one time,
its present effect on the reader is to arouse a sense of pity
that a man of such acknowledged power and position should
abuse both by devoting his talents to personal spite and
petty quarrels. Among the rest of his numerous works the
reader will find Pope's estimate of himself best set forth in
his " Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," and it will be well to close
our study of this strange mixture of vanity and greatness with
"The Universal Prayer," which shows at least that Pope had
considered, and judged himself, and that all further judgment
is consequently superfluous.

l Compare this with Shakespeare's " All the world 's a stage," in As You Like It, II, 7.

2/O

ENGLISH LITERATURE

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)

In each of Marlowe's tragedies we have the picture of a
man dominated by a single passion, the lust of power for its
own sake. In each we see that a powerful man without self-
control is like a dangerous instrument in the hands of a child ;
and the tragedy ends in the destruction of the man by the
ungoverned power which he possesses. The life of Swift is
just such a living tragedy. He had the power of gaining

wealth, like the hero of
the Jew of Malta ; yet
he used it scornfully, and
in sad irony left what re-
mained to him of a large
property to found a hos-
pital for lunatics. By hard
work he won enormous
literary power, and used
it to satirize our common
humanity. He wrested
political power from the
hands of the Tories, and
used it to insult the very
men who had helped him,
and who held his fate in
their hands. By his domi-
nant personality he exercised a curious power over women,
and used it brutally to make them feel their inferiority. Being
loved supremely by two good women, he brought sorrow and
death to both, and endless misery to himself. So his power
brought always tragedy in its wake. It is only when we re-
member his life of struggle and disappointment and bitter-
ness that we can appreciate the personal quality in his satire,
and perhaps find some sympathy for this greatest genius of
all the Augustan writers.

JONATHAN SWIFT

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 2/1

Life. Swift was born in Dublin, of English parents, in 1667. His
father died before he was born ; his mother was poor, and Swift,
though proud as Lucifer, was compelled to accept aid from relatives,
who gave it grudgingly. At the Kilkenny school, and especially at
Dublin University, he detested the curriculum, reading only what
appealed to his own nature ; but, since a degree was necessary to
his success, he was compelled to accept it as a favor from the
examiners, whom he despised in his heart. After graduation the
only position open to him was with a distant relative, Sir William
Temple, who gave him the position of private secretary largely on
account of the unwelcome relationship.

Temple was a statesman and an excellent diplomatist; but he
thought himself to be a great writer as well, and he entered into a
literary controversy concerning the relative merits of the classics and
modern literature. Swift's first notable work, The Battle of the Books ,
written at this time but not published, is a keen satire upon both
parties in the controversy. The first touch of bitterness shows itself
here ; for Swift was in a galling position for a man of his pride,
knowing his intellectual superiority to the man who employed him,
and yet being looked upon as a servant and eating at the servants'
table. Thus he spent ten of the best years of his life in the pretty
Moor Park, Surrey, growing more bitter each year and steadily curs-
ing his fate. Nevertheless he read and studied widely, and, after
his position with Temple grew unbearable, quarreled with his patron,
took orders, and entered the Church of England. Some years later
we find him settled in the little church of Laracor, Ireland, a
country which he disliked intensely, but whither he went because no
other " living " was open to him.

In Ireland, faithful to his church duties, Swift labored to better
the condition of the unhappy people around him. Never before had
the poor of his parishes been so well cared for ; but Swift chafed
under his yoke, growing more and more irritated as he saw small
men advanced to large positions, while he remained unnoticed in a
little country church, largely because he was too proud and too
blunt with those who might have advanced him. While at Laracor
he finished his Tale of a Tub, a satire on the various churches of
the day, which was published in London with the Battle of the Books
in 1704. The work brought him into notice as the most powerful
satirist of the age, and he soon gave up his church to enter the
strife of party politics. The cheap pamphlet was then the most

2/2

ENGLISH LITERATURE

powerful political weapon known ; and as Swift had no equal at
pamphlet writing, he soon became a veritable dictator. For several
years, especially from 1710 to 1713, Swift was one of the most im-
portant figures in London. The Whigs feared the lash of his satire ;
the Tories feared to lose his support. He was courted, flattered,
cajoled on every side ; but the use he made of his new power is sad
to contemplate. An unbearable arrogance took possession of him.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN

Lords, statesmen, even ladies were compelled to sue for his favor
and to apologize for every fancied slight to his egoism. It is at this
time that he writes in his Journal to Stella :

Mr. Secretary told me the Duke of Buckingham had been talking
much about me and desired my acquaintance. I answered it could not
be, for he had not yet made sufficient advances ; then Shrewsbury said
he thought the Duke was not used to make advances. I said I could
not help that, for I always expected advances in proportion to men's
quality, and more from a Duke than any other man.

Writing to the Duchess of Queensberry he says :

I am glad you know your duty ; for it has been a known and estab-
lished rule above twenty years in England that the first advances have
been constantly made me by all ladies who aspire to my acquaintance,
and the greater their quality the greater were their advances.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 273

When the Tories went out of power Swift's position became un-
certain. He expected and had probably been promised a bishopric
in England, with a seat among the peers of the realm; but the
Tories offered him instead the place of dean of St. Patrick's Cathe-
dral in Dublin. It was galling to a man of his proud spirit; but
after his merciless satire on religion, in The Tale of a Tub, any
ecclesiastical position in England was rendered impossible. Dublin
was the best he could get, and he accepted it bitterly, once more
cursing the fate which he had brought upon himself.

With his return to Ireland begins the last act in the tragedy of
his life. His best known literary work, Gulliver's Travels, was done
here ; but the bitterness of life grew slowly to insanity, and a fright-
ful personal sorrow, of which he never spoke, reached its climax in
the death of Esther Johnson, a beautiful young woman, who had
loved Swift ever since the two had met in Temple's household, and
to whom he had written his Journal to Stella. During the last years
of his life a brain disease, of which he had shown frequent symp-
toms, fastened its terrible hold upon Swift, and he became by turns
an idiot and a madman. He died in 1745, and when his will was
opened it was found that he had left all his property to found St.
Patrick's Asylum for lunatics and incurables. It stands to-day as
the most suggestive monument of his peculiar genius.

The Works of Swift. From Swift's life one can readily
foresee the kind of literature he will produce. Taken together
his works are a monstrous satire on humanity ; and the spirit
of that satire is shown clearly in a little incident of his first
days in London. There was in the city at that time a certain
astrologer named Partridge, who duped the public by calcu-
lating nativities from the stars, and by selling a yearly almanac
predicting future events. Swift, who hated all shams, wrote,
with a great show of learning, his famous Bickerstaff Alma-
nac, containing "Predictions for the Year 1708, as Deter-
mined by the Unerring Stars." As Swift rarely signed his
name to any literary work, letting it stand or fall on its own
merits, his burlesque appeared over the pseudonym of Isaac
Bickerstaff, a name afterwards made famous by Steele in The
Tatler. Among the predictions was the following :

274 ENGLISH LITERATURE

My first prediction is but a trifle ; yet I will mention it to show how
ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns :
it relates to Partridge the almanack maker ; I have consulted the star
of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the
29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever ; therefore
I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time.

On March 30, the day after the prediction was to be ful-
filled, there appeared in the newspapers a letter from a revenue
officer giving the details of Partridge's death, with the doings
of the bailiff and the coffin maker ; and on the following
morning appeared an elaborate " Elegy of Mr. Partridge."
When poor Partridge, who suddenly found himself without
customers, published a denial of the burial, Swift answered
with an elaborate " Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff," in which
he proved by astrological rules that Partridge was dead, and
that the man now in his place was an impostor trying to cheat
the heirs out of their inheritance.

This ferocious joke is suggestive of all Swift's satires.
Against any case of hypocrisy or injustice he sets up a remedy
Character ^ P rec i se ly tne same kind, only more atrocious,
of Swift's and defends his plan with such seriousness that
the satire overwhelms the reader with a sense of
monstrous falsity. Thus his solemn " Argument to prove that
the Abolishing of Christianity may be attended with Some
Inconveniences" is such a frightful satire upon the abuses of
Christianity by its professed followers that it is impossible for
us to say whether Swift intended to point out needed reforms,
or to satisfy his conscience, 1 or to perpetrate a joke on the
Church, as he had done on poor Partridge. So also with his
"Modest Proposal," concerning the children of Ireland, which
sets up the proposition that poor Irish farmers ought to raise
children as dainties, to be eaten, like roast pigs, on the tables
of prosperous Englishmen. In this most characteristic work

1 It is only fair to point out that Swift wrote this and two other pamphlets on religion
at a time when he knew that they would damage, if not destroy, his own prospects of
political advancement.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 275

it is impossible to find Swift or his motive. The injustice
under which Ireland suffered, her perversity in raising large
families to certain poverty, and the indifference of English
politicians to her suffering and protests are all mercilessly
portrayed ; but why ? That is still the unanswered problem
of Swift's life and writings.

Swift's two greatest satires are his Tale of a Tub and
Gulliver's Travels. The Tale began as a grim exposure of
Tale of a Tub t ^ ie a ^ e g e d weaknesses of three principal forms of
religious belief, Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist,
as opposed to the Anglican ; but it ended in a satire upon all
science and philosophy.

Swift explains his whimsical title by the custom of mariners in
throwing out a tub to a whale, in order to occupy the monster's atten-
tion and divert it from an attack upon the ship, which only proves
how little Swift knew of whales or sailors. But let that pass. His book
is a tub thrown out to the enemies of Church and State to keep them
occupied from further attacks or criticism ; and the substance of the
argument is that all churches, and indeed all religion and science and
statesmanship, are arrant hypocrisy. The best known part of the book
is the allegory of the old man who died and left a coat (which is Chris-
tian Truth) to each of his three sons, Peter, Martin, and Jack, with
minute directions for its care and use. These three names stand for
Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists ; and the way in which the sons
evade their father's will and change the fashion of their garment is part
of the bitter satire upon all religious sects. Though it professes to
defend the Anglican Church, that institution fares perhaps worse than
the others ; for nothing is left to her but a thin cloak of custom under
which to hide her alleged hypocrisy.

In Gulliver's Travels the satire grows more unbearable.
Strangely enough, this book, upon which Swift's literary fame
Gulliver's generally rests, was not written from any literary
motive, but rather as an outlet for the author's
own bitterness against fate and human society. It is still
read with pleasure, as Robinson Crusoe is read, for the inter-
esting adventures of the hero ; and fortunately those who
read it generally overlook its degrading influence and motive.

276 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Gulliver^s Travels records the pretended four voyages of one Lemuel
Gulliver, and his adventures in four astounding countries. The first
book tells of his voyage and shipwreck in Lilliput, where the inhabitants
are about as tall as one's thumb, and all their acts and motives are on
the same dwarfish scale. In the petty quarrels of these dwarfs we are
supposed to see the littleness of humanity. The statesmen who obtain
place and favor by cutting monkey capers on the tight rope before their
sovereign, and the two great parties, the Littleendians and Bigendians,
who plunge the country into civil war over the momentous question of
whether an egg should be broken on its big or on its little end, are sat-
ires on the politics of Swift's own day and generation. The style is
simple and convincing ; the surprising situations and adventures are as
absorbing as those of Defoe's masterpiece ; and altogether it is the
most interesting of Swift's satires.

On the second voyage Gulliver is abandoned in Brobdingnag, where
the inhabitants are giants, and everything is done upon an enormous
scale. The meanness of humanity seems all the more detestable in view
of the greatness of these superior beings. When Gulliver tells about
his own people, their ambitions and wars and conquests, the giants can
only wonder that such great venom could exist in such little insects.

In the third voyage Gulliver continues his adventures in Laputa, and
this is a satire upon all the scientists and philosophers. Laputa is a
flying island, held up in the air by a loadstone ; and all the professors
of the famous academy at Lagado are of the same airy constitution.
The philosopher who worked eight years to extract sunshine from
cucumbers is typical of Swift's satiric treatment of all scientific prob-
lems. It is in this voyage that we hear of the Struldbrugs, a ghastly
race of men who are doomed to live upon earth after losing hope and
the desire for life. The picture is all the more terrible in view of the
last years of Swift's own life, in which he was compelled to live on, a
burden to himself and his friends.

In these three voyages the evident purpose is to strip off the veil of
habit and custom, with which men deceive themselves, and show the
crude vices of humanity as Swift fancies he sees them. In the fourth
voyage the merciless satire is carried out to its logical conclusion. This
brings us to the land of the Houyhnhnms, in which horses, superior
and intelligent creatures, are the ruling animals. All our interest, how-
ever, is centered on the Yahoos, a frightful race, having the form and
appearance of men, but living in unspeakable degradation.

The Journal to Stella, written chiefly in the years 1710-
1713 for the benefit of Esther Johnson, is interesting to us
for two reasons. It is, first, an excellent commentary on

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 277

contemporary characters and political events, by one of the
most powerful and original minds of the age ; and second, in
Misceiiane- i ts l ve passages and purely personal descriptions
ous Works it gives us the l^est picture we possess of Swift
himself at the summit of his power and influence. As we
read now its words of tenderness for the woman who loved
him, and who brought almost the only ray of sunlight into
his life, we can only wonder and be silent. Entirely different
are his Drapier's Letters, a model of political harangue and of
popular argument, which roused an unthinking English public
and did much benefit to Ireland by preventing the politicians'
plan of debasing the Irish coinage. Swift's poems, though
vigorous and original (like Defoe's, of the same period), are
generally satirical, often coarse, and seldom rise above dog-
gerel. Unlike his friend Addison, Swift saw, in the growing
polish and decency of society, only a mask for hypocrisy ;
and he often used his verse to shock the new-born modesty
by pointing out some native ugliness which his diseased mind
discovered under every beautiful exterior.

That Swift is the most original writer of his time, and one
of the greatest masters of English prose, is undeniable.
Character of Directness, vigor, simplicity, mark every page.
Swift's Prose Among writers of that age he stands almost alone
in his disdain of literary effects. Keeping his object steadily
before him, he drives straight on to the end, with a convin-
cing power that has never been surpassed in our language.
Even in his most grotesque creations, the reader never loses
the sense of reality, of being present as an eyewitness of the
most impossible events, so powerful and convincing is Swift's
prose. Defoe had the same power ; but in writing Robinson
Crusoe, for instance, his task was comparatively easy, since
his hero and his adventures were both natural ; while Swift
gives reality to pygmies, giants, and the most impossible
situations, as easily as if he were writing of facts. Notwith-
standing these excellent qualities, the ordinary reader will do

2 7 8

ENGLISH LITERATURE

well to confine himself to Gulliver s Travels and a book of
well-chosen selections. For, it must be confessed, the bulk
of Swift's work is not wholesome reading. It is too terribly
satiric and destructive ; it emphasizes the faults and failings
of humanity ; and so runs counter to the general course of
our literature, which from Cynewulf to Tennyson follows the
Ideal, as Merlin followed the Gleam, 1 and is not satisfied till
the hidden beauty of man's soul and the divine purpose of his
struggle are manifest.

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

In the pleasant art of living with one's fellows, Addison is
easily a master. It is due to his perfect expression of that
art, of that new social life which, as we have noted, was char-
acteristic of the Age of Anne,
that Addison occupies such a
large place in the history of
literature. Of less power and
originality than Swift, he never-
theless wields, and deserves to
wield, a more lasting influence.
Swift is the storm, roaring
against the ice and frost of
the late spring of English life.
Addison is the sunshine, which
melts the ice and dries the mud
and makes the earth thrill with
light and hope. Like Swift, he

JOSEPH ADDISON '' i TI i

despised shams, but unlike him,

he never lost faith in humanity ; and in all his satires there is
a gentle kindliness which makes one think better of his fellow-
men, even while he laughs at their little vanities.

Two things Addison did for our literature which are of
inestimable value. First, he overcame a certain corrupt

1 See Tennyson's " Merlin and the Gleam."

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 279

tendency bequeathed by Restoration literature. It was the
apparent aim of the low drama, and even of much of the poetry
Addison's of tnat a g e > to make virtue ridiculous and vice attract-
influence j ve Addison set himself squarely against this un-
worthy tendency. To strip off the mask of vice, to show its
ugliness and deformity, but to reveal virtue in its own native
loveliness, that was Addison's purpose; and he succeeded
so well that never, since his day, has our English literature
seriously followed after false gods. As Macaulay says, "So
effectually did he retort on vice the mockery which had re-
cently been directed against virtue, that since his time the
open violation of decency has always been considered amongst
us a sure mark of a fool." And second, prompted and aided
by the more original genius of his friend Steele, Addison
seized upon the new social life of the clubs and made it the
subject of endless pleasant essays upon types of men and
manners. The Tat/erand The Spectator are the beginning of
the modern essay ; and their studies ^of human character, as
exemplified in Sir Roger de Coverley, are a preparation for
the modern novel.

Life. Addison's life, like his writings, is in marked contrast to
that of Swift. He was bom in Milston, Wiltshire, in 1672. His
father was a scholarly English clergyman, and all his life Addison
followed naturally the quiet and cultured ways to which he was early
accustomed. At the famous Charterhouse School, in London, and
in his university life at Oxford, he excelled in character and scholar-
ship and became known as a writer of graceful verses. He had some
intention, at one time, of entering the Church, but was easily per-
suaded by his friends to take up the government service instead.
Unlike Swift, who abused his political superiors, Addison took the
more tactful way of winning the friendship of men in large places.
His lines to Di;yden won that literary leader's instant favor, and one
of his Latin poems, "The Peace of Ryswick" (1697), with its kindly
appreciation of King William's statesmen, brought him into favorable
political notice. It brought him also a pension of three hundred pounds
a year, with a suggestion that he travel abroad and cultivate the art
of diplomacy : which he promptly did to his own great advantage.

280 ENGLISH LITERATURE

From a literary view point the most interesting work of Addison's
early life is his Account of the Greatest English Poets (1693), written
while he was a fellow of Oxford University. One rubs his eyes to
find Dryden lavishly praised, Spenser excused or patronized, while
Shakespeare is not even mentioned. But Addison was writing under
Boileau's " classic " rules ; and the poet, like the age, was perhaps
too artificial to appreciate natural genius.

While he was traveling abroad, the death of William and the
loss of power by the Whigs suddenly stopped Addison's pension ;
necessity brought him home, and for a time he lived in poverty and
obscurity. Then occurred the battle of Blenheim, and in the effort
to find a poet to celebrate the event, Addison was brought to the
Tories' attention. His poem, "The Campaign," celebrating the
victory, took the country by storm. Instead of making the hero
slay his thousands and ten thousands, like the old epic heroes,
Addison had some sense of what is required in a modern general,
and so made Marlborough direct the battle from the outside, com-
paring him to an angel riding on the whirlwind :

'T was then great Marlbro's mighty soul was proved,

That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved,

Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,

Examined all the dreadful scenes of war ;

In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,

To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid,

Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,

And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.

So when an angel by divine command

With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,

(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,)

Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ;

And, pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

That one doubtful simile made Addison's fortune. Never before
or since was a poet's mechanical work so well rewarded. It was
called the finest thing ever written, and from that day Addison rose
steadily in political favor and office. He became in turn Under-
secretary, member of Parliament, Secretary for Ireland, and finally
Secretary of State. Probably no other literary man, aided by his
pen alone, ever rose so rapidly and so high in office.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 281

The rest of Addison's life was divided between political duties
and literature. His essays for the Tatler and Spectator, which we
still cherish, were written between 1709 and 1714 ; but he won more
literary fame by his classic tragedy Cato, which we have almost for-
gotten. In 1716 he married a widow, the Countess of Warwick, and
went to live at her home, the famous Holland House. His married
life lasted only three years, and was probably not a happy one.
Certainly he never wrote of women except with gentle satire, and
he became more and more a clubman, spending most of his time in
the clubs and coffeehouses of London. Up to this time his life had
been singularly peaceful ; but his last years were shadowed by quar-
rels, first with Pope, then with Swift, and finally with his lifelong
friend Steele. The first quarrel was on literary grounds, and was
largely the result of Pope's jealousy. The latter's venomous carica-
ture of Addison as Atticus shows how he took his petty revenge on
a great and good man who had been his friend. The other quarrels
with Swift, and especially with his old friend Steele, were the unfor-
tunate result of political differences, and show how impossible it
is to mingle literary ideals with party politics. He died serenely in
1719. A brief description from Thackeray's English Humorists is
his best epitaph :

A life prosperous and beautiful, a calm death ; an immense fame and
affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.

Works of Addison. The most enduring of Addison's works
are his famous Essays, collected from the Tatler and Specta-
tor. We have spoken of him as a master of the

The Essays . ....

art of gentle living, and these essays are a perpet-
ual inducement to others to know and to practice the same
fine art. To an age of fundamental coarseness and artificiality
he came with a wholesome message of refinement and sim-
plicity, much as Ruskin and Arnold spoke to a later age of
materialism ; only Addison's success was greater than theirs
because of his greater knowledge of life and his greater faith
in men. He attacks all the little vanities and all the big vices
of his time, not in Swift's terrible way, which makes us feel
hopeless of humanity, but with a kindly ridicule and gentle
humor which takes speedy improvement for granted. To read

282 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Swift's brutal "Letters to a Young Lady," and then to read
Addison's " Dissection of a Beau's Head " and his " Dissection
of a Coquette's Heart," is to know at once the secret of the
latter's more enduring influence.

Three other results of these delightful essays are worthy
of attention : first, they are the best picture we possess of
the new social life of England, with its many new interests ;
second, they advanced the art of literary criticism to a much
higher stage than it had ever before reached, and however
much we differ from their judgment and their interpretation
of such a man as Milton, they certainly led Englishmen to
a better knowledge and appreciation of their own literature ;
and finally, in Ned Softly the literary dabbler, Will Wimble
the poor relation, Sir Andrew Freeport the merchant, Will
Honeycomb the fop, and Sir Roger the country gentleman,
they give us characters that live forever as part of that goodly
company which extends from Chaucer's country parson to
Kipling's Mulvaney. Addison and Steele not only introduced
the modern essay, but in such characters as these they herald
the dawn of the modern novel. Of all his essays the best
known and loved are those which introduce us to Sir Roger
de Coverley, the genial dictator of life and manners in the
quiet English country.

In style these essays are remarkable as showing the grow-
ing perfection of the English language. Johnson says, " Who-
Addison's ever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but
Style no t coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must

give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." And
again he says, " Give nights and days, sir, to the study of
Addison if you mean to be a good writer, or, what is more
worth, an honest man." That was good criticism for its day,
and even at the present time critics are agreed that Addison's
Essays are well worth reading once for their own sake, and
many times for their influence in shaping a clear and graceful
style of writing.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 283

Addison's poems, which were enormously popular in his
day, are now seldom read. His Cato, with its classic unities
and lack of dramatic power, must be regarded as a
failure, if we study it as tragedy ; but it offers an
excellent example of the rhetoric and fine sentiment which
were then considered the essentials of good writing. The best
scene from this tragedy is in the fifth act, where Cato solilo-
quizes, with Plato's Immortality of the Soul open in his hand,
and a drawn sword on the table before him :

It must be so Plato, thou reason'st well !

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,

This longing after immortality ?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,

Of falling into nought? why shrinks the soul

Back on herself, and startles at destruction ?

'T is the divinity that stirs within us ;

'T is heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,

And intimates eternity to man.

Many readers make frequent use of one portion of Addi-
son's poetry without knowing to whom they are indebted.
His devout nature found expression in many hymns, a few of
which are still used and loved in our churches. Many a con-
gregation thrills, as Thackeray did, to the splendid sweep of
his "God in Nature," beginning, "The spacious firmament on
high." Almost as well known and loved are his "Traveler's
Hymn," and his "Continued Help," beginning, "When all
thy mercies, O my God." The latter hymn written in a
storm at sea off the Italian coast, when the captain and crew
were demoralized by terror shows that poetry, especially a
good hymn that one can sing in the same spirit as one would
say his prayers, is sometimes the most practical and helpful
thing in the world.

Richard Steele (1672-1729). Steele was in almost every
respect the antithesis of his friend and fellow-worker, a
rollicking, good-hearted, emotional, lovable Irishman. At the
Charterhouse School and at Oxford he shared everything with

284 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Addison, asking nothing but love in return. Unlike Addison,
he studied but little, and left the university to enter the Horse
Guards. He was in turn soldier, captain, poet, playwright,
essayist, member of Parliament, manager of a theater, pub-
lisher of a newspaper, and twenty other things, all of which
he began joyously and then abandoned, sometimes against his
will, as when he was expelled from Parliament, and again be-
cause some other interest of the moment had more attraction.
His poems and plays are now little known ; but the reader
who searches them out will find one or two suggestive things
about Steele himself. For instance, he loves children ; and
he is one of the few writers of his time who show a sincere
and unswerving respect for womanhood. Even more than
Addison he ridicules vice and makes virtue lovely. He is the
originator of the Tatler, and joins with Addison in creating
the Spectator, the two periodicals which, in the short space
of less than four years, did more to influence subsequent lit-
erature than all other magazines of the century combined.
Moreover, he is the original genius of Sir Roger, and of many
other characters and essays for which Addison usually receives
the whole credit. It is often impossible in the Tatler essays
to separate the work of the two men ; but the majority of
critics hold that the more original parts, the characters, the
thought, the overflowing kindliness, are largely Steele's crea-
tion ; while to Addison fell the work of polishing and perfect-
ing the essays, and of adding that touch of humor which
made them the most welcome literary visitors that England
had ever received.

The Tatler and The Spectator. On account of his talent in
writing political pamphlets, Steele was awarded the position
of official gazetteer. While in this position, and writing for
several small newspapers, the idea occurred to Steele to pub-
lish a paper which should contain not only the political news,
but also the gossip of the clubs and coffeehouses, with some
light essays on the life and manners of the age. The immediate

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 285

result for Steele never let an idea remain idle was the
famous Tatler, the first number of which appeared April 12,
1709. It was a small folio sheet, appearing on post days-, three
times a week, and it sold for a penny a copy. That it had
a serious purpose is evident from this dedication to the first
volume of collected Tatler essays :

The general purpose of this paper is to expose the false arts of life,
to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recom-
mend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behavior.

The success of this unheard-of combination of news, gossip,
and essay was instantaneous. Not a club or a coffeehouse
in London could afford to be without it, and over its pages
began the first general interest in contemporary English life
as expressed in literature. Steele at first wrote the entire
paper and signed his essays with the name of Isaac Bicker-
staff, which had been made famous by Swift a few years be-
fore. Addison is said to have soon recognized one of his own
remarks to Steele, and the secret of the authorship was out.
From that time Addison was a regular contributor, and occa-
sionally other writers added essays on the new social life of
England. 1

Steele lost his position as gazetteer, and the Tatler was
discontinued after less than two years' life, but not till it
won an astonishing popularity and made ready the way for
its successor. Two months later, on March I, 1711, appeared
the first number of the Spectator. In the new magazine
politics and news, as such, were ignored ; it was a literary
magazine, pure and simple, and its entire contents consisted
of a single light essay. It was considered a crazy venture at
the time, but its instant success proved that men were eager
for some literary expression of the new social ideals. The

1 Of the Tatler essays Addison contributed forty-two ; thirty-six others were written
in collaboration with Steele ; while at least a hundred and eighty are the work of Steele
alone.

286 ENGLISH LITERATURE

following whimsical letter to the editor may serve to indicate
the part played by the Spectator in the daily life of London :

Mr. Spectator, Your paper is a part of my tea equipage; and my
servant knows my humor so well, that in calling for my breakfast this
morning (it being past my usual hour) she answered, the Spectators -as not
yet come in, but the teakettle boiled, and she expected it every moment.

It is in the incomparable Spectator papers that Addison
shows himself most "worthy to be remembered." He con-
tributed the majority of its essays, and in its firsk number
appears this description of the Spectator, by which name
Addison is now generally known :

There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my
appearance ; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of
politicians at Will's [Coffeehouse] and listening with great attention to
the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes
I smoke a pipe at Child's, and, whilst I seem attentive to nothing but
The Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I
appear on Sunday nights at St. James's, and sometimes join the little
committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and
improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa
Tree, and in the theaters both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I
have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these
ten years ; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock job-
bers at Jonathan's. . . . Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator
of mankind than as one of the species, . . . which is the character I in-
tend to preserve in this paper.

The large place which these two little magazines hold in
our literature seems most disproportionate to their short span
of days. In the short space of four years in which Addison
and Steele worked together the light essay was established as
one of the most important forms of modern literature, and
the literary magazine won its place as the expression of the
social life of a nation.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

287

SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)

The reader of Boswell's Johnson, after listening to endless
grumblings and watching the clumsy actions of the hero, often
finds himself wondering why he should end his reading with
a profound respect for this " old bear " who is the object of
Boswell's groveling attention. Here is a man who was cer-
tainly not the greatest writer of his age, perhaps not even a
great writer at all, but who
was nevertheless the dictator
of English letters, and who
still looms across the cen-
turies of a magnificent litera-
ture as its most striking and
original figure. Here, more-
over, is a huge, fat, awkward
man, of vulgar manners and
appearance, who monopo-
lizes conversation, argues
violently, abuses everybody,
clubs down opposition,
" Madam " (speaking to his
cultivated hostess at table),
"talk no more nonsense";
"Sir" (turning to a distin-
guished guest), " I perceive you are a vile Whig." While
talking he makes curious animal sounds, " sometimes giving a
half whistle, sometimes clucking like a hen"; and when he has
concluded a violent dispute and laid his opponents low by
dogmatism or ridicule, he leans back to " blow out his breath
like a whale " and gulp down numberless cups of hot tea. Yet
this curious dictator of an elegant age was a veritable lion,
much sought after by society ; and around him in his own
poor house gathered the foremost artists, scholars, actors, and
literary men of London, all honoring the man, loving him,

SAMUEL JOHNSON

288 ENGLISH LITERATURE

and listening to his dogmatism as the Greeks listened to the
voice of their oracle.

What is the secret of this astounding spectacle ? If the
reader turns naturally to Johnson's works for an explanation,
he will be disappointed. Reading his verses, we find nothing
to delight or inspire us, but rather gloom and pessimism, with
a few moral observations in rimed couplets :

But, scarce observed, the knowing and the bold
Fall in the general massacre of gold ;
Wide-wasting pest ! that rages unconfined,
And crowds with crimes the records of mankind ;
For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws,
For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws ;
Wealth heaped on wealth nor truth nor safety buys ;
The dangers gather as the treasures rise. 1

That is excellent common sense, but it is not poetry ; and
it is not necessary to hunt through Johnson's bulky volumes
for the information, since any moralist can give us offhand
the same doctrine. As for his Rambler essays, once so suc-
cessful, though we marvel at the big words, the carefully
balanced sentences, the classical allusions, one might as well
try to get interested in an old-fashioned, three-hour sermon.
We read a few pages listlessly, yawn, and go to bed.

Since the man's work fails to account for his leadership
and influence, we examine his personality; and here every-
thing is interesting. Because of a few oft-quoted passages
from Boswell's biography, Johnson appears to us as an
eccentric bear, who amuses us by his growlings and clumsy
antics. But there is another Johnson, a brave, patient, kindly,
religious soul, who, as Goldsmith said, had "nothing of the
bear but his skin"; a man who battled like a hero against
poverty and pain and melancholy and the awful fear of death,
and who overcame them manfully. " That trouble passed
away ; so will this" sang the sorrowing Deor in the first old

l From " The Vanity of Human Wishes."

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 289

Anglo-Saxon lyric ; and that expresses the great and suffer-
ing spirit of Johnson, who in the face of enormous obstacles
never lost faith in God or in himself. Though he was a reac-
tionary in politics, upholding the arbitrary power of kings and
opposing the growing liberty of the people, yet his political
theories, like his manners, were no deeper than his skin ; for
in all London there was none more kind to the wretched, and
none more ready to extend an open hand to every struggling
man and woman who crossed his path. When he passed
poor homeless Arabs sleeping in the streets he would slip a
coin into their hands, in order that they might have a happy
awakening ; for he himself knew well what it meant to be
hungry. Such was Johnson, a " mass of genuine manhood,"
as Carlyle called him, and as such, men loved and honored him. 1

Life of Johnson. Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, in
1709. He was the son of a small bookseller, a poor man, but intelli-
gent and fond of literature, as booksellers invariably were in the good
days when every town had its bookshop. From his childhood John-
son had to struggle against physical deformity and disease and the
consequent disinclination to hard work. He prepared for the uni-
versity, partly in the schools, but largely by omnivorous reading in
his father's shop, and when he entered Oxford he had read more
classical authors than had most of the graduates. Before finishing
his course he had to leave the university on account of his poverty,
and at once he began his long struggle as a hack writer to earn
his living.

At twenty-five years he married a woman old enough to be his
mother, a genuine love match, he called it, and with her dowry
of ;8oo they started a private school together, which was a dismal
failure. Then, without money or influential friends, he left his home
and wife in Lichfield and tramped to London, accompanied only by
David Garrick, afterwards the famous actor, who had been one of
his pupils. Here, led by old associations, Johnson made himself

1 A very lovable side of Johnson's nature is shown by his doing penance in the pub-
lic market place for his unfilial conduct as a boy. (See, in Hawthorne's Our Old Home,
the article on " Lichfield and Johnson.") His sterling manhood is recalled in his famous
letter to Lord Chesterfield, refusing the latter's patronage for the Dictionary. The stu-
dent should read this incident entire, in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

290 ENGLISH LITERATURE

known to the booksellers, and now and then earned a penny by
writing prefaces, reviews, and translations.

It was a dog's life, indeed, that he led there with his literary
brethren. Many of the writers of the day, who are ridiculed in Pope's
heartless Dunciad, having no wealthy patrons to support them,
lived largely in the streets and taverns, sleeping on an ash heap or
under a wharf, like rats ; glad of a crust, and happy over a single
meal which enabled them to work for a while without the reminder
of hunger. A few favored ones lived in wretched lodgings in Grub
Street, which has since become a synonym for the fortunes of strug-
gling writers. 1 Often, Johnson tells us, he walked the streets all night
long, in dreary weather, when it was too cold to sleep, without food
or shelter. But he wrote steadily for the booksellers and for the
Gentleman's Magazine, and presently he became known in London
and received enough work to earn a bare living.

The works which occasioned this small success were his poem,
" London," and his Life of the Poet Savage, a wretched life, at best,
which were perhaps better left without a biographer. But his success
was genuine, though small, and presently the booksellers of London
are coming to him to ask him to write a dictionary of the English
language. It was an enormous work, taking nearly eight years
of his time, and long before he had finished it he had eaten up
the money which he received for his labor. In the leisure intervals
of this work he wrote "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and other
poems, and finished his classic tragedy of Irene.

Led by the great success of the Spectator, Johnson started two
magazines, The Rambler (17501752) and The Idler (1758-1760).
Later the Rambler essays were published in book form and ran
rapidly through ten editions ; but the financial returns were small,
and Johnson spent a large part of his earnings in charity. When his
mother died, in 1759, Johnson, although one of the best known men
in London, had no money, and hurriedly finished Rasselas, his only
romance, in order, it is said, to pay for his mother's burial.

It was not till 1762, when Johnson was fifty-three years old, that
his literary labors were rewarded in the usual way by royalty, and he
received from George III a yearly pension of three hundred pounds.
Then began a little sunshine in his life. With Joshua Reynolds, the

1 In Johnson's Dictionary we find this definition : " Grub-street, the name of a street
in London much inhabited. by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary
poems; whence any mean production is called Grub-street."

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 291

artist, he founded the famous Literary Club, of which Burke, Pitt,
Fox, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and indeed all the great literary men and
politicians of the time, were members. This is the period of John-
son's famous conversations, which were caught in minutest detail by
Boswell and given to the world. His idea of conversation, as shown
in a hundred places in Boswell, is to overcome your adversary at
any cost ; to knock him down by arguments, or, when these fail,
by personal ridicule ; to dogmatize on every possible question, pro-
nounce a few oracles, and then desist with the air of victory. Con-
cerning the philosopher Hume's view of death he says : " Sir, if he
really thinks so, his perceptions are disturbed, he is mad. If he does
not think so, he lies." Exit opposition. There is nothing more to
be said. Curiously enough, it is often the palpable blunders of these
monologues that now attract us, as if we were enjoying a good joke
at the dictator's expense. Once a lady asked him, " Dr. Johnson,
why did you define pastern as the knee of a horse? " " Ignorance,
madame, pure ignorance," thundered the great authority.

When seventy years of age, Johnson was visited by several book-
sellers of the city, who were about to bring out a new edition of
the English poets, and who wanted Johnson, as the leading literary
man of London, to write the prefaces to the several volumes. The
result was his Lives of the Poets, as it is now known, and this is his
last literary work. He died in his poor Fleet Street house, in 1 784, and
was buried among England's honored poets in Westminster Abbey.

Johnson's Works. "A book," says Dr. Johnson, "should
help us either to enjoy life or to endure it." Judged by this
The standard, one is puzzled what to recommend among

English Johnson's numerous books. The two things which
ary belong among the things "worthy to be remem-
bered " are his Dictionary and his Lives of the Poets, though
both these are valuable, not as literature, but rather as a study
of literature. The Dictionary, as the first ambitious attempt
at an English lexicon, is extremely valuable, notwithstanding
the fact that his derivations are often faulty, and that he fre-
quently exercises his humor or prejudice in his curious defini-
tions. In defining "oats," for example, as a grain given in
England to horses and in Scotland to the people, he indulges

292 ENGLISH LITERATURE

his prejudice against the Scotch, whom he never understood,
just as, in his definition of "pension," he takes occasion to
rap the writers who had flattered their patrons since the days
of Elizabeth ; though he afterwards accepted a comfortable
pension for himself. With characteristic honesty he refused
to alter his definition in subsequent editions of the Dictionary.

The Lives of the Poets are the simplest and most readable
of his literary works. For ten years before beginning these
Lives of biographies he had given himself up to conversation,
the Poets anc j ^ Q ponderous style of his Rambler essays
here gives way to a lighter and more natural expression. As
criticisms they are often misleading, giving praise to artificial
poets, like Cowley and Pope, and doing scant justice or abun-
dant injustice to nobler poets like Gray and Milton ; and they
are not to be compared with those found in Thomas Warton's
History of English Poetry, which was published in the same
generation. As biographies, however, they are excellent read-
ing, and we owe to them some of our best known pictures of
the early English poets.

Of Johnson's poems the reader will have enough if he glance
over "The Vanity of Human Wishes." His only story,
Poems and Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, is a matter of rheto-
Essays r j c rather than of romance, but is interesting still
to the reader who wants to hear Johnson's personal views of
society, philosophy, and religion. Any one of his Essays, like
that on "Reading," or "The Pernicious Effects of Revery,"
will be enough to acquaint the reader with the Johnsonese
style, which was once much admired and copied by orators,
but which happily has been replaced by a more natural way
of speaking. Most of his works, it must be confessed, are
rather tiresome. It is not to his books, but rather to the
picture of the man himself, as given by Boswell, that Johnson
owes his great place in our literature.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 293

BOSWELL'S " LIFE OF JOHNSON "

In James Boswell (1740-1795) we have another extraordi-
nary figure, a shallow little Scotch barrister, who trots about
like a dog at the heels of his big master, frantic at a caress
and groveling at a cuff, and abundantly contented if only he
can be near him and record his oracles. All his life long Bos-
well's one ambition seems to have been to shine in the reflected
glory of great men, and his chief task to record their sayings
and doings. When he came to London, at twenty-two years
of age, Johnson, then at the beginning of his great fame, was
to this insatiable little glory-seeker like a Silver Doctor to a
hungry trout. He sought an introduction as a man seeks
gold, haunted every place where Johnson declaimed, until in
Davies's bookstore the supreme opportunity came. This is his
record of the great event :

I was much agitated [says Boswell] and recollecting his prejudice
against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies,
"Don't tell him where I come from." "From Scotland," cried Davies
roguishly. "Mr. Johnson," said I, "I do indeed come from Scotland,
but I cannot help it." ..." That, sir " [cried Johnson], " I find is what a
very great many of your countrymen cannot help." This stroke stunned
me a good deal ; and when we had sat down I felt myself not a little
embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might come next.

Then for several years, with a persistency that no rebuffs
could abate, and with a thick skin that no amount of ridicule
could render sensitive, he follows Johnson ; forces his way
into the Literary Club, where he is not welcome, in order to
be near his idol ; carries him off on a visit to the Hebrides ;
talks with him on every possible occasion ; and, when he is
not invited to a feast, waits outside the house or tavern in
order to walk home with his master in the thick fog of the
early morning. And the moment the oracle is out of sight
and in bed, Boswell patters home to record in detail all that he
has seen and heard. It is to his minute record that we owe
our only perfect picture of a great man ; all his vanity as

294 ENGLISH LITERATURE

well as his greatness, his prejudices, superstitions, and even
the details of his personal appearance :

There is the gigantic body, the huge face seamed with the scars of
disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the gray wig with
the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the
quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches ;
we see the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; and then comes the
"Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the
" You don't see your way through the question, sir ! " 1

To Boswell's record we are indebted also for our knowledge
of those famous conversations, those wordy, knockdown battles,
which made Johnson famous in his time and which still move
us to wonder. Here is a specimen conversation, taken almost
at random from a hundred such in Boswell's incomparable
biography. After listening to Johnson's prejudice against
Scotland, and his dogmatic utterances on Voltaire, Robertson,
and twenty others, an unfortunate theorist brings up a recent
essay on the possible future life of brutes, quoting some pos-
sible authority from the sacred scriptures :

Johnson, who did not like to hear anything concerning a future state
which was not authorized by the regular canons of orthodoxy, discour-
aged this talk ; and being offended at its continuation, he watched an
opportunity to give the gentleman a blow of reprehension. So when the
poor speculatist, with a serious, metaphysical, pensive face, addressed
him, " But really, sir, when we see a very sensible dog, we don't know
what to think of him"; Johnson, rolling with joy at the thought which
beamed in his eye, turned quickly round and replied, " True, sir ; and
when we see a very foolishy//0w, we don't know what to think of him"
He then rose up, strided to the fire, and stood for some time laughing
and exulting.

Then the oracle proceeds to talk of scorpions and natural
history, denying facts, and demanding proofs which nobody
could possibly furnish :

He seemed pleased to talk of natural philosophy. " That woodcocks,"
said he, " fly over the northern countries is proved, because they have
been observed at sea. Swallows certainly sleep all the winter. A num-

1 From Macaulay's review of Boswell's Life of Johnson.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 295

ber of them conglobulate together by flying round and round, and then
all in a heap throw themselves under water and lie in the bed of a river."
He told us one of his first essays was a Latin poem upon the glowworm :
I am sorry I did not ask where it was to be found.

Then follows an astonishing array of subjects and opinions.
He catalogues libraries, settles affairs in China, pronounces
judgment on men who marry women superior to themselves,
flouts popular liberty, hammers Swift unmercifully, and adds
a few miscellaneous oracles, most of which are about as reliable
as his knowledge of the hibernation of swallows.

When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning I found him highly
satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. " Well," said
he, "we had good talk." "Yes, sir" [says I], "you tossed and gored sev-
eral persons."

Far from resenting this curious mental dictatorship, his
auditors never seem to weary. They hang upon his words,
praise him, flatter him, repeat his judgments all over London
the next day, and return in the evening hungry for more.
Whenever the conversation begins to flag, Boswell is like a
woman with a parrot, or like a man with a dancing bear. He
must excite the creature, make him talk or dance for the edi-
fication of the company. He sidles obsequiously towards his
hero and, with utter irrelevancy, propounds a question of
theology, a social theory, a fashion of dress or marriage, a
philosophical conundrum : " Do you think, sir, that natural
affections are born with us ? " or, " Sir, if you were shut up in
a castle and a newborn babe with you, what would you do ? "
Then follow more Johnsonian laws, judgments, oracles ; the
insatiable audience clusters around him and applauds ; while
Boswell listens, with shining face, and presently goes home
to write the wonder down. It is an astonishing spectacle ; one
does not know whether to laugh or grieve over it. But we
know the man, and the audience, almost as well as if we had
been there ; and that, unconsciously, is the superb art of this
matchless biographer.

296 ENGLISH LITERATURE

When Johnson died the opportunity came for which Bos-
well had been watching and waiting some twenty years. He
would shine in the world now, not by reflection, but by his
own luminosity. He gathered together his endless notes and
records, and began to write his biography ; but he did not
hurry. Several biographies of Johnson appeared, in the four
years after his death, without disturbing Boswell's perfect
complacency. After seven years' labor he gave the world his
Life of Johnson. It is an immortal work ; praise is superfluous ;
it must be read to be appreciated. Like the Greek sculptors,
the little slave produced a more enduring work than the great
master. The man who reads it will know Johnson as he knows
no other man who dwells across the border ; and he will lack
sensitiveness, indeed, if he lay down the work without a greater
love and appreciation of all good literature.

Later Augustan Writers. With Johnson, who succeeded
Dryden and Pope in the chief place of English letters, the
classic movement had largely spent its force ; and the latter
half of the eighteenth century gives us an imposing array of
writers who differ so widely that it is almost impossible to
classify them. In general, three schools of writers are notice-
able : first, the classicists, who, under Johnson's lead, insisted
upon elegance and regularity of style ; second, the romantic
poets, like Collins, Gray, Thomson, and Burns, who revolted
from Pope's artificial couplets and wrote of nature and the
human heart 1 ; third, the early novelists, like Defoe and
Fielding, who introduced a new type of literature. The
romantic poets and the novelists are reserved for special
chapters ; and of the other writers Berkeley and Hume in
philosophy ; Robertson, Hume, and Gibbon in history ; Ches-
terfield and Lady Montagu in letter writing ; Adam Smith

1 Many of the writers show a mingling of the classic and the romantic tendencies.
Thus Goldsmith followed Johnson and opposed the romanticists; but his Deserted
Village is romantic in spirit, though its classic couplets are almost as mechanical as
Pope's. So Burke's orations are "elegantly classic" in style, but are illumined by bursts
of emotion and romantic feeling.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 297

in economics ; Pitt, Burke, Fox, and a score of lesser writers
in politics we select only two, Burke and Gibbon, whose
works are most typical of the Augustan, i.e. the elegant, classic
style of prose writing.

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797)

To read all of Burke's collected works, and so to under-
stand him thoroughly, is something of a task. Few are equal
to it. On the other hand, to read selections here and there,
as most of us do, is to get a wrong idea of the man and to
join either in fulsome praise of his brilliant oratory, or in
honest confession that his periods are ponderous and his
ideas often buried under Johnsonian verbiage. Such are the
contrasts to be found on successive pages of Burke's twelve
volumes, which cover the enormous range of the political and
economic thought of the age, and which mingle fact and fancy,
philosophy, statistics, and brilliant flights of the imagination,
to a degree never before seen in English literature. For Burke
belongs in spirit to the new romantic school, while in style
he is a model for the formal classicists. We can only glance
at the life of this marvelous Irishman, and then consider his
place in our literature.

Life. Burke was born in Dublin, the son of an Irish barrister, in
1729. After his university course in Trinity College he came to
London to study law, but soon gave up the idea to follow literature,
which in turn led him to politics. He had the soul, the imagination
of a poet, and the law was only a clog to his progress. His two first
works, A Vindication of Natural Society and The Origin of our
Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, brought him political as well
as literary recognition, and several small offices were in turn given
to him. When thirty-six years old he was elected to Parliament as
member from Wendover ; and for the next thirty years he was the
foremost figure in the House of Commons and the most eloquent
orator which that body has ever known. Pure and incorruptible in
his politics as in his personal life, no more learned or devoted
servant of the Commonwealth ever pleaded for justice and human

298 ENGLISH LITERATURE

liberty. He was at the summit of his influence at the time when the
colonies were struggling for independence; and the fact that he
championed their cause in one of his greatest speeches, " On Con-
ciliation with America," gives him an added interest in the eyes of
American readers. His championship of America is all the more
remarkable from the fact that, in other matters, Burke was far from
liberal. He set himself squarely against the teachings of the roman-
tic writers, who were enthusiastic over the French Revolution; he
denounced the principles of the Revolutionists, broke with the lib-
eral Whig party to join the Tories, and was largely instrumental in
bringing on the terrible war with France, which resulted in the
downfall of Napoleon.

It is good to remember that, in all the strife and bitterness of
party politics, Burke held steadily to the noblest personal ideals of
truth and honesty ; and that in all his work, whether opposing the
slave trade, or pleading for justice for America, or protecting the
poor natives of India -from the greed of corporations, or setting
himself against the popular sympathy for France in her desperate
struggle, he aimed solely at the welfare of humanity. When he re-
tired on a pension in 1794, he had won, and he deserved, the grati-
tude and affection of the whole nation.

Works. There are three distinctly marked periods in
Burke's career, and these correspond closely to the years in
which he was busied with the affairs of America, India, and
France successively. The first period was one of prophecy.
He had studied tbe history and temper of the American col-
onies, and he warned England of the disaster which must
follow her persistence in ignoring the American demands,
and especially the American spirit. His great speeches, " On
American Taxation" and "On Conciliation with America,"
were delivered in 1774 and 1775, preceding the Declaration
of Independence. In this period Burke's labor seemed all in
vain ; he lost his cause, and England her greatest colony.

The second period is one of denunciation rather than of
prophecy. England had won India ; but wben Burke studied
the methods of her victory and understood tbe soulless way
in which millions of poor natives were made to serve the

EDMUND BURKE
From an old print

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 299

interests of an English monopoly, his soul rose in revolt, and
again he was the champion of an oppressed people. His two
greatest speeches of this period are "The Nabob of Arcot's
Debts " and his tremendous " Impeachment of Warren Hast-
ings." Again he apparently lost his cause, though he was still
fighting on the side of right. Hastings was acquitted, and the
spoliation of India went on ; but the seeds of reform were sown,
and grew and bore fruit long after Burke' s labors were ended.

The third period is, curiously enough, one of reaction.
Whether because the horrors of the French Revolution had
frightened him with the danger of popular liberty, or because
his own advance in office and power had made him side un-
consciously with the upper classes, is unknown. That he was
as sincere and noble now as in all his previous life is not
questioned. He broke with the liberal Whigs and joined
forces with the reactionary Tories. He opposed the romantic
writers, who were on fire with enthusiasm over the French
Revolution, and thundered against the dangers which the
revolutionary spirit must breed, forgetting that it was a revo-
lution which had made modern England possible. Here, where
we must judge him to have been mistaken in his cause, he
succeeded for the first time. It was due largely to Burke's
influence that the growing sympathy for the French people
was checked in England, and war was declared, which ended
in the frightful victories of Trafalgar and Waterloo.

Burke's best known work of this period is his Reflections
on the French Revolution, which he polished and revised again
Essay on ar| d again before it was finally printed. This am-
Revoiution bitious literary essay, though it met with remark-
able success, is a disappointment to the reader. Though of
Celtic blood, Burke did not understand the French, or the
principles for which the common people were fighting in their
own way 1 ; and his denunciations and apostrophes to France

1 A much more interesting work is Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, which was written
in answer to Burke's essay, and which had enormous influence in England and America.

300 ENGLISH LITERATURE

suggest a preacher without humor, hammering away at sinners
who are not present in his congregation. The essay has few
illuminating ideas, but a great deal of Johnsonian rhetoric,
which make its periods tiresome, notwithstanding our admira-
tion for the brilliancy of its author. More significant is one of
Burke's first essays, A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin
of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which is sometimes
read in order to show the contrast in style with Addison's
Spectator essays on the " Pleasures of the Imagination."

Burke's best known speeches, "On Conciliation with
America," " American Taxation," and the " Impeachment of
Burke's Warren Hastings," are still much studied in our
Orations schools as models of English prose ; and this fact
tends to give them an exaggerated literary importance. Viewed
purely as literature, they have faults enough ; and the first
of these, so characteristic of the Classic Age, is that they
abound in fine rhetoric but lack simplicity. 1 In a strict sense,
these eloquent speeches are not literature, to delight the
reader and to suggest ideas, but studies in rhetoric and in
mental concentration. All this, however, is on the surface.
A careful study of any of these three famous speeches reveals
certain admirable qualities which account for the important
place they are given in the study of English. First, as show-
ing the stateliness and the rhetorical power of our language,
these speeches are almost unrivaled. Second, though Burke
speaks in prose, he is essentially a poet, whose imagery, like
that of Milton's prose works, is more remarkable than that of
many of our writers of verse. He speaks in figures, images,
symbols ; and the musical cadence of his sentences reflects

1 In the same year, 1775, in which Burke's magnificent " Conciliation" oration was
delivered, Patrick Henry made a remarkable little speech before a gathering of delegates
in Virginia. Both men were pleading the same cause of justice, and were actuated by the
same high ideals. A very interesting contrast, however, may be drawn between the meth-
ods and the effects of Henry's speech and of Burke's more brilliant oration. Burke
makes us wonder at his learning, his brilliancy, his eloquence ; but he does not move
us to action. Patrick Henry calls us, and we spring to follow him. That suggests the
essential difference between the two orators.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 301

the influence of his wide reading of poetry. Not only in
figurative expression, but much more in spirit, be belongs
with the poets of the revival. At times his language is
pseudo-classic, reflecting the influence of Johnson and his
school ; but his thought is always romantic ; he is governed
by ideal rather than by practical interests, and a profound sym-
pathy for humanity is perhaps his most marked characteristic.

Third, the supreme object of these orations, so different
from the majority of political speeches, is not to win approval
or to gain votes, but to establish the truth. Like our own
Lincoln, Burke had a superb faith in the compelling power of
the truth, a faith in men also, who, if the history of our race
means anything, will not willingly follow a lie. The methods
of these two great leaders are strikingly similar in this respect,
that each repeats his idea in many ways, presenting the truth
from different view points, so that it will appeal to men of
widely different experiences. Otherwise the two men are in
marked contrast. The uneducated Lincoln speaks in simple,
homely words, draws his illustrations from the farm, and often
adds a humorous story, so apt and "telling" that his hearers
can never forget the point of his argument. The scholarly
Burke speaks in ornate, majestic periods, and searches all
history and all literature for his illustrations. His wealth of
imagery and allusions, together with his rare combination of
poetic and logical reasoning, make these orations remarkable,
entirely apart from their subject and purpose.

Fourth (and perhaps most significant of the man and his
work), Burke takes his stand squarely upon the principle of
justice. He has studied history, and he finds that to estab-
lish justice, between man and man and between nation and
nation, has been the supreme object of every reformer since the
world began. No small or merely temporary success attracts
him ; only the truth will suffice for an argument ; and noth-
ing less than justice will ever settle a question permanently.
Such is his platform, simple as the Golden Rule, unshakable

302 ENGLISH LITERATURE

as the moral law. Hence, though he apparently fails of his
immediate desire in each of these three orations, the principle
for which he contends cannot fail. As a modern writer says
of Lincoln, " The full, rich flood of his life through the nation's
pulse is yet beating"; and his words are still potent in shaping
the course of English politics in the way of justice.

EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1/94)

To understand Burke or Johnson, one must read a multi-
tude of books and be wary in his judgment ; but with Gibbon
the task is comparatively easy, for one has only to consider
two books, his Memoirs and the first volume of his History,
to understand the author. In his Memoirs we have an inter-
esting reflection of Gibbon's own personality, a man who
looks with satisfaction on the material side of things, who
seeks always the easiest path for himself, and avoids life's
difficulties and responsibilities. " I sighed as a lover ; but I
obeyed as a son," he says, when, to save his inheritance, he
gave up the woman he loved and came home to enjoy the
paternal loaves and fishes. That is suggestive of the man's
whole life. His History, on the other hand, is a remarkable
work. It was the first in our language to be written on scien-
tific principles, and with a solid basis of fact ; and the style is
the very climax of that classicism which had ruled England for
an entire century. Its combination of historical fact and literary
style makes The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire the one
thing of Gibbon's life that is "worthy to be remembered."

Gibbon's History. For many years Gibbon had meditated,
like Milton, upon an immortal work, and had tried several
historical subjects, only to give them up idly. In \i\^> Journal
he tells us how his vague resolutions were brought .to a focus :

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing
amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing
vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and
fall of the city first started to my mind.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 303

Twelve years later, in 1776, Gibbon published the first vol-
ume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ; and the
enormous success of the work encouraged him to go on with
the other five volumes, which were published at intervals
during the next twelve years. The History begins with the
reign of Trajan, in A.D. 98, and "builds a straight Roman
road " through the confused histories of thirteen centuries,
ending with the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. The
scope of the History is enormous. It includes not only
the decline of the Roman Empire, but such movements as the
descent of the northern barbarians, the spread of Christianity,
the reorganization of the European nations, the establishment
of the great Eastern Empire, the rise of Mohammedanism,
and the splendor of the Crusades. On the one hand it lacks
philosophical insight, being satisfied with facts without com-
prehending the causes ; and, as Gibbon seems lacking in
ability to understand spiritual and religious movements, it is
utterly inadequate in its treatment of the tremendous influ-
ence of Christianity. On the other hand, Gibbon's scholar-
ship leaves little to criticise ; he read' enormously, sifted his
facts out of multitudes of books and records, and then mar-
shaled them in the imposing array with which we have grown
familiar. Moreover, he is singularly just and discriminating
in the use of all documents and authorities at his command.
Hence he has given us the first history in English that has
borne successfully the test of modern research and scholarship.

The style of the work is as imposing as his great subject.
Indeed, with almost any other subject the sonorous roll of his
majestic sentences would be out of place. While it deserves
all the adjectives that have been applied to it by enthusiastic
admirers, finished, elegant, splendid, rounded, massive, sono-
rous, copious, elaborate, ornate, exhaustive, it must be con-
fessed, though one whispers the confession, that the style
sometimes obscures our interest in the narrative. As he
sifted his facts from a multitude of sources, so he often hides

304 ENGLISH LITERATURE

them again in endless periods, and one must often sift them
out again in order to be quite sure of even the simple facts.
Another drawback is that Gibbon is hopelessly worldly in his
point of view ; he loves pageants and crowds rather than in-
dividuals, and he is lacking in enthusiasm and in spiritual
insight. The result is so frankly material at times that one
wonders if he is not reading of forces or machines, rather
than of human beings. A little reading of his History here
and there is an excellent thing, leaving one impressed with
the elegant classical style and the scholarship ; but a contin-
ued reading is very apt to leave us longing for simplicity, for
naturalness, and, above all, for the glow of enthusiasm which
makes the dead heroes live once more in the written pages.

This judgment, however, must not obscure the fact that
the book had a remarkably large sale ; and that this, of itself,
is an evidence that multitudes of readers found it not only
erudite, but readable and interesting.

II. THE REVIVAL OF ROMANTIC POETRY

The old order changeth, yielding place to new ;

And God fulfills Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Tennyson's " The Passing of Arthur."

The Meaning of Romanticism. While Dryden, Pope, and
Johnson were successively the dictators of English letters,
and while, under their leadership, the heroic couplet became
the fashion of poetry, and literature in general became satiric
or critical in spirit, and formal in expression, a new romantic
movement quietly made its appearance. Thomson's The
Seasons (1730) was the first noteworthy poem of the roman-
tic revival ; and the poems and the poets increased steadily in
number and importance till, in the age of Wordsworth and
Scott, the spirit of Romanticism dominated our literature
more completely than Classicism had ever done. This romantic

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 305

movement which Victor Hugo calls "liberalism in literature"
is simply the expression of life as seen by imagination,
rather than by prosaic "common sense," which was the cen-
tral doctrine of English philosophy in the eighteenth century.
It has six prominent characteristics which distinguish it from
the so-called classic literature which we have just studied :

1. The romantic movement was marked, and is always
marked, by a strong reaction and protest against the bondage
of rule and custom, which, in science and theology, as well as
in literature, generally tend to fetter the free human spirit.

2. Romanticism returned to nature and to plain humanity
for its material, and so is in marked contrast to Classicism,
which had confined itself largely to the clubs and drawing-
rooms, and to the social and political life of London. Thom-
son's Seasons ; whatever its defects, was a revelation of the
natural wealth and beauty which, for nearly a century, had
been hardly noticed by the great writers of England.

3. It brought again the dream of a golden age 1 in which the
stern realities of life were forgotten and the ideals of youth
were established as the only permanent realities. " For the
dreamer lives forever, but the toiler dies in a day," expresses,
perhaps, only the wild fancy of a modern poet ; but, when we
think of it seriously, the dreams and ideals of a people are
cherished possessions long after their stone monuments have
crumbled away and their battles are forgotten. The romantic
movement emphasized these eternal ideals of youth, and
appealed to the human heart as the classic elegance of Dryden
and Pope could never do.

4. Romanticism was marked by intense human sympathy,
and by a consequent understanding of the human heart. Not
to intellect or to science does the heart unlock its treasures,
but rather to the touch of a sympathetic nature ; and things
that are hidden from the wise and prudent are revealed unto

1 The romantic revival is marked by renewed interest in mediaeval ideals and litera-
ture ; and to this interest is due the success of Walpole's romance, The Castle of Otranto,
and of Chatterton's forgeries known as the Rowley Papers.

306 ENGLISH LITERATURE

children. Pope had no appreciable humanity ; Swift's work is
a frightful satire ; Addison delighted polite society, but had
no message for plain people ; while even Johnson, with all his
kindness, had no feeling for men in the mass, but supported
Sir Robert Walpole in his policy of letting evils alone until
forced by a revolution to take notice of humanity's appeal.
With the romantic revival all this was changed. While How-
ard was working heroically for prison reform, and Wilberforce
for the liberation of the slaves, Gray wrote his "short and
simple annals of the poor," and Goldsmith his Deserted Village,
and Cowper sang,

My ear is pained,

My soul is sick with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.

There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,

It does not feel for man. 1

This sympathy for the poor, and this cry against oppression,
grew stronger and stronger till it culminated in " Bobby "
Burns, who, more than any other writer in any language, is
the poet of the unlettered human heart.

5. The romantic movement was the expression of individual
genius rather than of established rules. In consequence, the
literature of the revival is as varied as the characters and
moods of the different writers. When we read Pope, for
instance, we have a general impression of sameness, as if all
his polished poems were made in the same machine ; but in
the work of the best romanticists there is endless variety.
To read them is like passing through a new village, meeting
a score of different human types, and finding in each one
something to love or to remember. Nature and the heart of
man are as new as if we had never studied them. Hence, in
reading the romanticists, who went to these sources for their
material, we are seldom wearied but often surprised ; and the
surprise is like that of the sunrise, or the sea, which always

1 From The Task, Book II.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 307

offers some new beauty and stirs us deeply, as if we had
never seen it before.

6. The romantic movement, while it followed its own
genius, was not altogether unguided. Strictly speaking, there
is no new movement either in history or in literature ; each
grows out of some good thing which has preceded it, and
looks back with reverence to past masters. Spenser, Shake-
speare, and Milton were the inspiration of the romantic
revival ; and we can hardly read a poem of the early roman-
ticists without finding a suggestion of the influence of one of
these great leaders. 1

There are various other characteristics of Romanticism,
but these six the protest against the bondage of rules, the
return to nature and the human heart, the interest in old
sagas and mediaeval romances as suggestive of a heroic age,
the sympathy for the toilers of the world, the emphasis upon
individual genius, and the return to Milton and the Eliza-
bethans, instead of to Pope and Dryden, for literary models
are the most noticeable and the most interesting. Remem-
bering them, we shall better appreciate the work of the fol-
lowing writers who, in varying degree, illustrate the revival
of romantic poetry in the eighteenth century.

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771)

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day ;
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea ;
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

So begins "the best known poem in the English language/ 1
a poem full of the gentle melancholy which marks all early

1 See, for instance, Phelps, Beginnings of the Romantic Movement, for a list of
Spenserian imitators from 1700 to 1775.

308 ENGLISH LITERATURE

romantic poetry. It should be read entire, as a perfect model
of its kind. Not even Milton's "II Penseroso," which it
strongly suggests, excels it in beauty and suggestiveness.

Life of Gray. The author of the famous " Elegy " is the most
scholarly and well-balanced of all the early romantic poets. In his
youth he was a weakling, the only one of twelve children who sur-
vived infancy ; and his unhappy childhood, the tyranny of his father,
and the separation from his loved mother, gave to his whole life the
stamp of melancholy which is noticeable in all his poems. At the
famous Eton school, and again at Cambridge, he seems to have fol-
lowed his own scholarly tastes rather
<&7~~r5S^ t nan tne curriculum, and was shocked,

like Gibbon, at the general idleness
and aimlessness of university life. One
happy result of his school life was his
friendship for Horace Walpole, who took
him abroad for a three years' tour of the
Continent.

No better index of the essential differ-
ence between the classical and the new
romantic school can be imagined than
that which is revealed in the letters of
Gray and Addison, as they record their
THOMAS GRAY impressions of foreign travel. Thus, when

Addison crossed the Alps, some twenty-
five years before, in good weather, he wrote : "A very troublesome
journey. . . . You cannot imagine how I am pleased with the sight
of a plain." Gray crossed the Alps in the beginning of winter,
" wrapped in muffs, hoods and masks of beaver, fur boots, and bear-
skins," but wrote ecstatically, " Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a
cliff but is pregnant with religion and poetry."

On his return to England, Gray lived for a short time at Stoke
Poges, where he wrote his " Ode on Eton," and probably sketched
his " Elegy," which, however, was not finished till 1750, eight years
later. During the latter years of his shy and scholarly life he was
Professor of Modern History and Languages at Cambridge, without
any troublesome work of lecturing to students. Here he gave him-
self up to study and to poetry, varying his work by " prowlings "
among the manuscripts of the new British Museum, and by his

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

309

M Lilliputian " travels in England and Scotland. He died in his
rooms at Pembroke College in 1771, and was buried in the little
churchyard of Stoke Poges.

Works of Gray. Gray's Letters, published in 1775, are
excellent reading, and his Journal is still a model of natural
description ; but it is to a single small volume of poems that
he owes his fame and his place in literature. These poems
divide themselves naturally into three periods, in which we
may trace the progress of Gray's emancipation from the

CHURCH AT STOKE POGES

classic rules which had so long governed English literature.
In the first period he wrote several minor poems, of which
the best are his "Hymn to Adversity" and the odes "To
Spring" and "On a Distant Prospect of Eton College."
These early poems reveal two suggestive things : first, the
appearance of that melancholy which characterizes all the
poetry of the period ; and second, the study of nature, not for
its own beauty or truth, but rather as a suitable background
for the play of human emotions.

The second period shows the same tendencies more strongly
developed. The " Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard "

310 ENGLISH LITERATURE

(1750), the most perfect poem of the age, belongs to this
period. To read Milton's " II Penseroso " and Gray's " Elegy "
is to see the beginning and the perfection of that "literature
of melancholy " which largely occupied English poets for
more than a century. Two other well-known poems of this
second period are the Pindaric odes, "The Progress of Poesy "
and " The Bard." The first is strongly suggestive of Dryden's
"Alexander's Feast," but shows Milton's influence in a greater
melody and variety of expression. " The Bard " is, in every
way, more romantic and original. An old minstrel, the last of
the Welsh singers, halts King Edward and his army in a wild
mountain pass, and with fine poetic frenzy prophesies the terror
and desolation which must ever follow the tyrant. From its
first line, " Ruin seize thee, ruthless King ! " to the end, when
the old bard plunges from his lofty crag and disappears in the
river's flood, the poem thrills with the fire of an ancient and
noble race of men. It breaks absolutely with the classical
school and proclaims a literary declaration of independence.

In the third period Gray turns momentarily from his Welsh
material and reveals a new field of romantic interest in two
Norse poems, "The Fatal Sisters" and "The Descent of
Odin" (1761). Gray translated his material from the Latin,
and though these two poems lack much of the elemental
strength and grandeur of the Norse sagas, they are remark-
able for calling attention to the unused wealth of literary
material that was hidden in Northern mythology. To Gray
and to Percy (who published his Northern Antiquities in
1770) is due in large measure the profound interest in the
old Norse sagas which has continued to our own day.
f . Taken together, Gray's works form a most interesting com-
mentary on the varied life of the eighteenth century. He was
a scholar, familiar with all the intellectual interests of his age,
and his work has much of the precision and polish of the clas-
sical school ; but he shares also the reawakened interest in
nature, in common man, and in mediaeval culture, and his

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

work is generally romantic both in style and in spirit. The
same conflict between the classic and romantic schools, and
the triumph of Romanticism, is shown clearly in the most
versatile of Gray's contemporaries, Oliver Goldsmith.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

Because The Deserted Village is one of the most familiar
poems in our language, Goldsmith is generally given a high
place among the poets of the romantic dawn. But the Village,
when we read it care-
fully, turns out to be a
rimed essay in the style
of Pope's famous Essay
on Man; it owes its
popularity to the sympa-
thetic memories which it
awakens, rather than to
its poetic excellence. It
is as a prose writer that
Goldsmith excels. He is
an essayist, with Addi-
son's fine polish but with
more sympathy for hu-
man life ; he is a drama-
tist, one of the very few
who have ever written a
comedy that can keep
its popularity unchanged

while a century rolls over its head ; but greater, perhaps, than
the poet and essayist and dramatist is Goldsmith the novelist,
who set himself to the important work of purifying the early
novel of its brutal and indecent tendencies, and who has given
us, in The Vicar of Wakefield, one of the most enduring char-
acters in English fiction. In his manner, especially in his
poetry, Goldsmith was too much influenced by his friend

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

312 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Johnson and the classicists ; but in his matter, in his sympathy
for nature and human life, he belongs unmistakably to the new
romantic school. Altogether he is the most versatile, the most
charming, the most inconsistent, and the most lovable genius
of all the literary men who made famous the age of Johnson.

Life. Goldsmith's career is that of an irresponsible, unbalanced
genius, which would make one despair if the man himself did not
remain so lovable in all his inconsistencies. He was born in the vil-
lage of Pallas, Ireland, the son of a poor Irish curate whose noble
character is portrayed in Dr. Primrose, of The Vicar of Wakefield,
and in the country parson of The Deserted Village. After an unsatis-
factory course in various schools, where he was regarded as hope-
lessly stupid, Goldsmith entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar,
i.e. a student who pays with labor for his tuition. By his escapades
he was brought into disfavor with the authorities, but that troubled
him little. He was also wretchedly poor, which troubled him less ;
for when he earned a few shillings by writing ballads for street
singers, his money went oftener to idle beggars than to the paying
of his honest debts. After three years of university life he ran away,
in dime-novel fashion, and nearly starved to death before he was
found and brought back in disgrace. Then he worked a little, and
obtained his degree in 1749.

Strange that such an idle and irresponsible youth should have
been urged by his family to take holy orders ; but such was the fact.
For two years more Goldsmith labored with theology, only to be
rejected when he presented himself as a candidate for the ministry.
He tried teaching, and failed. Then his fancy turned to America,
and, provided with money and a good horse, he started off for Cork,
where he was to embark for the New World. He loafed along the
pleasant Irish ways, missed his ship, and presently turned up cheer-
fully amongst his relatives, minus all his money, and riding a sorry
nag called Fiddleback, for which he had traded his own on the way. 1
He borrowed fifty pounds more, and started for London to study law,
but speedily lost his money at cards, and again appeared, amiable
and irresponsible as ever, among his despairing relatives. The next
year they sent him to Edinburgh to study medicine. Here for a
couple of years he became popular as a singer of songs and a teller

1 Such is Goldsmith's version of a somewhat suspicious adventure, whose details
are unknown.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 313

of tales, to whom medicine was only a troublesome affliction. Sud-
denly the Wanderlust seized him and he started abroad, ostensibly
to complete his medical education, but in reality to wander like a
cheerful beggar over Europe, singing and playing his flute for food
and lodging. He may have studied a little at Leyden and at Padua,
but that was only incidental. After a year or more of vagabondage
he returned to London with an alleged medical degree, said to have
been obtained at Louvain or Padua.

The next few years are a pitiful struggle to make a living as
tutor, apothecary's assistant, comedian, usher in a country school,
and finally as a physician in Southwark. Gradually he drifted into
literature, and lived from hand to mouth by doing hack work for
the London booksellers. Some of his essays and his Citizen of the
World (1760-1761) brought him to the attention of Johnson, who
looked him up, was attracted first by his poverty and then by his
genius, and presently declared him to be " one of the first men we
now have as an author." Johnson's friendship proved invaluable,
and presently Goldsmith found himself a member of the exclusive
Literary Club. He promptly justified Johnson's confidence by pub-
lishing The Traveller (1764), which was hailed as one of the finest
poems of the century. Money now came to him liberally, with orders
from the booksellers ; he took new quarters in Fleet Street and fur-
nished them gorgeously ; but he had an inordinate vanity for bright-
colored clothes, and faster than he earned money he spent it on
velvet cloaks and in indiscriminate charity. For a time he resumed
his practice as a physician, but his fine clothes did not bring patients,
as he expected ; and presently he turned to writing again, to pay
his debts to the booksellers. He produced several superficial and
grossly inaccurate schoolbooks, like his Animated Nature and
his histories of England, Greece, and Rome, which brought him
bread and more fine clothes, and his Vicar ofWakefield, The Deserted
Village, and She Stoops to Conquer, which brought him undying fame.

After meeting with Johnson, Goldsmith became the object of
BoswelPs magpie curiosity ; and to Boswell's Life of Johnson we are
indebted for many of the details of Goldsmith's life, his homeli-
ness, his awkward ways, his drolleries and absurdities, which made
him alternately the butt and the wit of the famous Literary Club.
Boswell disliked Goldsmith, and so draws an unflattering portrait,
but even this does not disguise the contagious good humor which
made men love him. When in his forty-seventh year, he fell sick of

3 H ENGLISH LITERATURE

a fever, and with childish confidence turned to a quack medicine to
cure himself. He died in 1774, and Johnson placed a tablet, with a
sonorous Latin epitaph, in Westminster Abbey, though Goldsmith
was buried elsewhere. " Let not his frailties be remembered ; he
was a very great man," said Johnson; and the literary world
which, like that old dictator, is kind enough at heart, though often
rough in its methods is glad to accept and record the verdict.

Works of Goldsmith. Of Goldsmith's early essays and his
later school histories little need be said. They have settled
into their own place, far out of sight of the ordinary reader.
Perhaps the most interesting of these is a series of letters for
the Public Ledger (afterwards published as The Citizen of the
World}, written from the view point of an alleged Chinese
traveler, and giving the latter's comments on English civili-
zation. 1 The following five works are those upon which Gold-
smith's fame chiefly rests :

The Traveller (1764) made Goldsmith's reputation among
his contemporaries, but is now seldom read, except by stu-
dents who would understand how Goldsmith was, at one time,
dominated by Johnson and his pseudo-classic ideals. It is a
long poem, in rimed couplets, giving a survey and criticism
of the social life of various countries in Europe, and reflects
many of Goldsmith's own wanderings and impressions.

The Deserted Village (1770), though written in the same
mechanical style, is so permeated with honest human sym-
The Deserted pathy, and voices so perfectly the revolt of the
Village individual man against institutions, that a multi-
tude of common people heard it gladly, without consulting
the critics as to whether they should call it good poetry.
Notwithstanding its faults, to which Matthew Arnold has
called sufficient attention, it has become one of our best
known poems, though we cannot help wishing that the mo-
notony of its couplets had been broken by some of the Irish
folk songs and ballads that charmed street audiences in

1 Goldsmith's idea, which was borrowed from Walpole, reappears in the pseudo Letters
from a Chinese Official, which recently attracted considerable attention.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 3*5

Dublin, and that brought Goldsmith a welcome from the French
peasants wherever he stopped to sing. In the village parson
and the schoolmaster, Goldsmith has increased Chaucer's list
by two lovable characters that will endure as long as the
English language. The criticism that the picture of prosper-
ous " Sweet Auburn " never applied to any village in Ireland
is just, no doubt, but it is outside the question. Goldsmith
was a hopeless dreamer, bound to see everything, as he saw
his debts and his gay clothes, in a purely idealistic way.

The Good-Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer are
Goldsmith's two comedies. The former, a comedy of charac-
ter, though it has some laughable scenes and one laughable
character, Croaker, met with failure on the stage, and has
never been revived with any success. The latter, a comedy
of intrigue, is one of the few plays that has never lost its
popularity. Its lively, bustling scenes, and its pleasantly ab-
surd characters, Marlowe, the Hardcastles, and Tony Lump-
kin, still hold the attention of modern theater goers ; and
nearly every amateur dramatic club sooner or later places
She Stoops to Conquer on its list of attractions.

The Vicar of Wakefield is Goldsmith's only novel, and the
first in any language that gives to home life an enduring
The Vicar of romantic interest. However much we admire the
Wakefield beginnings of the English novel, to which we shall
presently refer, we are nevertheless shocked by its frequent
brutalities and indecencies. Goldsmith, like Steele, had the
Irish reverence for pure womanhood, and this reverence
made him shun as a pest the vulgarity and coarseness in
which contemporary novelists, like Smollett and Sterne, seemed
to delight. So he did for the novel what Addison and Steele
had done for the satire and the essay ; he refined and elevated
it, making it worthy of the old Anglo-Saxon ideals which are
our best literary heritage.

Briefly, The Vicar of Wakefield is the story of a simple
English clergyman, Dr. Primrose, and his family, who pass

316 ENGLISH LITERATURE

from happiness through great tribulation. Misfortunes, which
are said never to come singly, appear in this case in flocks ;
but through poverty, sorrow, imprisonment, and the unspeak-
able loss of his daughters, the Vicar's faith in God and man
emerges triumphant. To the very end he is like one of the
old martyrs, who sings Alleluia while the lions roar about
him and his children in the arena. Goldsmith's optimism, it
must be confessed, is here stretched to the breaking point.
The reader is sometimes offered fine Johnsonian phrases
where he would naturally expect homely and vigorous lan-
guage ; and he is continually haunted by the suspicion that,
even in this best of all possible worlds, the Vicar's clouds of
affliction were somewhat too easily converted into showers of
blessing ; yet he is forced to read on, and at the end he con-
fesses gladly that Goldsmith has succeeded in making a most
interesting story out of material that, in other hands, would
have developed either a burlesque or a brutal tragedy. Lay-
ing aside all romantic passion, intrigue, and adventure, upon
which other novelists depended, Goldsmith, in this simple
story of common life, has accomplished three noteworthy re-
sults : he has made human fatherhood almost a divine thing ;
he has glorified the moral sentiments which cluster about the
family life as the center of civilization ; and he has given us,
in Dr. Primrose, a striking and enduring figure, which seems
more like a personal acquaintance than a character in a book.

WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800)

In Cowper we have another interesting poet, who, like Gray
and Goldsmith, shows the struggle between romantic and
classic ideals. In his first volume of poems, Cowper is more
hampered by literary fashions than was Goldsmith in his
Traveller and his Deserted Village. In his second period,
however, Cowper uses blank verse freely; and his delight in
nature and in homely characters, like the teamster and the

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 317

mail carrier of The 7asfc, shows that his classicism is being rap-
idly thawed out by romantic feeling. In his later work, espe-
cially his immortal "John Gilpin," Cowper flings fashions aside,
gives Pegasus the reins, takes to the open road, and so proves
himself a worthy predecessor of Burns, who is the most spon-
taneous and the most interesting of all the early romanticists.

Life. Cowper 's life is a pathetic story of a shy and timid genius,
who found the world of men too rough, and who withdrew to nature
like a wounded animal. He was born at Great Berkhamstead, Hert-
fordshire, in 1731, the son of an English clergyman. He was a deli-
cate, sensitive child, whose
early life was saddened by
the death of his mother and
by his neglect at home. At
six years he was sent away to
a boys' school, where he was
terrified by young barbarians
who made his life miserable.
There was one atrocious bully
into whose face Cowper could
never look ; he recognized his
enemy by his shoe buckles,
and shivered at his approach.
The fierce invectives of his
" Tirocinium, or a Review of
Schools" (1784), shows how
these school experiences had
affected his mind and health.
For twelve years he studied WILLIAM COWPER

law, but at the approach of a

public examination for an office he was so terrified that he attempted
suicide. The experience unsettled his reason, and the next twelve
months were spent in an asylum at St. Alban's. The death of his father,
in 1756, had brought the poet a small patrimony, which placed him
above the necessity of struggling, like Goldsmith, for his daily bread.
Upon his recovery he boarded for years at the house of the Unwins,
cultured people who recognized the genius hidden in this shy and
melancholy yet quaintly humorous man. Mrs. Unwin, in particular,

3i8 ENGLISH LITERATURE

cared for him as a son ; and whatever happiness he experienced in
his poor life was the result of the devotion of this good woman, who
is the " Mary " of all his poems.

A second attack of insanity was brought on by Cowper's morbid
interest in religion, influenced, perhaps, by the untempered zeal of
one John Newton, a curate, with whom Cowper worked in the small
parish of Olney, and with whom he compiled the famous Olney
Hymns. The rest of his life, between intervals of melancholia or
insanity, was spent in gardening, in the care of his numerous pets,
and in writing his poems, his translation of Homer, and his charm-
ing letters. His two best known poems were suggested by a lively
and cultivated widow, Lady Austen, who told him the story of John
Gilpin and called for a ballad on the subject. She also urged him
to write a long poem in blank verse ; and when he demanded a sub-
ject, she whimsically suggested the sofa, which was a new article of
furniture at that time. Cowper immediately wrote "The Sofa," and,
influenced by the poetic possibilities that lie in unexpected places,
he added to this poem from time to time, and called his completed
work The Task. This was published in 1785, and the author was
instantly recognized as one of the chief poets of his age. The last
years of his life were a long battle with insanity, until death mer-
cifully ended the struggle in 1800. His last poem, "The Casta-
way," is a cry of despair, in which, under guise of a man washed
overboard in a storm, he describes himself perishing in the sight of
friends who are powerless to help.

Cowper's Works. Cowper's first volume of poems, contain-
ing "The Progress of Error," "Truth," "Table Talk," etc.,
is interesting chiefly as showing how the poet was bound by
the classical rules of his age. These poems are dreary, on the
whole, but a certain gentleness, and especially a vein of pure
humor, occasionally rewards the reader. For Cowper was a
humorist, and only the constant shadow of insanity kept him
from becoming famous in that line alone.

The Task, written in blank verse, and published in 1785,
is Cowper's longest poem. Used as we are to the natural
poetry of Wordsworth and Tennyson, it is hard for us to
appreciate the striking originality of this work. Much of it is

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 319

conventional and "wooden," to be sure, like much of Words-
worth's poetry ; but when, after reading the rimed essays and
the artificial couplets of Johnson's age, we turn sud-

TheTask , ' _ , , . . , T '

denly to Cowper s description or homely scenes,
of woods and brooks, of plowmen and teamsters and the
letter carrier on his rounds, we realize that we are at the
dawn of a better day in poetry :

He comes, the herald of a noisy world,

With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks:

News from all nations lumbering at his back.

True to his charge, the close-packed load behind,

Yet careless what he brings, his one concern

Is to conduct it to the destined inn,

And, having dropped the expected bag, pass on.

He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,

Cold and yet cheerful : messenger of grief

Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some ;

To him indifferent whether grief or joy.

Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,

Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet

With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks

Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,

Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains,

Or nymphs responsive, equally affect

His horse and him, unconscious of them all.

Cowper's most laborious work, the translation of Homer in
blank verse, was published in 1791. Its stately, Milton-like
Misceiiane- movement, and its better rendering of the Greek,
ous Works make this translation far superior to Pope's artifi-
cial couplets. It is also better, in many respects, than Chap-
man's more famous and more fanciful rendering ; but for
some reason it was not successful, and has never received the
recognition which it deserves. Entirely different in spirit are
the poet's numerous hymns, which were published in the
Olney Collection in 1779, and which are still used in our
churches. It is only necessary to mention a few first lines
'' God moves in a mysterious way," " Oh, for a closer walk

320 ENGLISH LITERATURE

with God," "Sometimes a light surprises" to show how
his gentle and devout spirit has left its impress upon thou-
sands who now hardly know his name. With Cowper's charm-
ing Letters, published in 1803, we reach the end of his im-
portant works, and the student who enjoys reading letters
will find that these rank among the best of their kind. It
is not, however, for his ambitious works that Cowper is
remembered, but rather for his minor poems, which have
found their own way into so many homes. Among these, the
one that brings quickest response from hearts that understand
is his little poem, "On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture,"
beginning with the striking line, "Oh, that those lips had
language." Another, called "Alexander Selkirk," beginning,
"I am monarch of all I survey," suggests how Selkirk's ex-
periences as a castaway (which gave Defoe his inspiration for
Robinson Crusoe) affected the poet's timid nature and imagi-
nation. Last and most famous of all is his immortal "John
Gilpin." Cowper was in a terrible fit of melancholy when
Lady Austen told him the story, which proved to be better
than medicine, for all night long chuckles and suppressed
laughter were heard in the poet's bedroom. Next morning at
breakfast he recited the ballad that had afforded its author so
much delight in the making. The student should read it,
even if he reads nothing else by Cowper ; and he will be lack-
ing in humor or appreciation if he is not ready to echo heartily
the last stanza :

Now let us sing, Long live the King,

And Gilpin, long live he !
And when he next doth ride abroad

May I be there to see.

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)

After a century and more of Classicism, we noted with
interest the work of three men, Gray, Goldsmith, and Cowper,
whose poetry, like the chorus of awakening birds, suggests
the dawn of another day. Two other poets of the same age

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

321

suggest the sunrise. The first is the plowman Burns, who
speaks straight from the heart to the primitive emotions of
the race ; the second is the mystic Blake, who only half
understands his own thoughts, and whose words stir a sensi-
tive nature as music does, or the moon in midheaven, rousing
in the soul those vague desires and aspirations which ordinarily
sleep, and which can
never be expressed
because they have no
names. Blake lived
his shy, mystic, spirit-
ual life in the crowded
city, and his message
is to the few who can
understand. Burns
lived his sad, toilsome,
erring life in the open
air, with the sun and
the rain, and his songs
touch all the world.
The latter's poetry, so
far as it has a philos-
ophy, rests upon two
principles which the
classic school never understood, ghat common people are at,
heart romantic andjovers of the ideal, and |hat^sjniple Jiuman
emotions furnish the elements of true poetry. Largely because
he follows these two principles, Burns is probably the greatest
song writer of the world. His poetic creed may be summed
up in one of his own stanzas :

Give me ae spark o' Nature's fire,

That 's a' the learning I desire ;

Then, though I trudge thro' dub an' mire

At pleugh or cart,
My Muse, though hamely in attire,

May touch the heart.

ROBERT BURNS

322 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Life. 1 Burns's life is|"a life of fragments." as Carlyle called it;
and the different fragments are as unlike as the noble " Cotter's
Saturday Night" and the rant and riot of "The Jolly Beggars."
The details of this sad and disjointed life were better, perhaps,
forgotten. We call attention only to the facts which help us to un-
derstand the man and his poetry.

Burns was born in a clay cottage at Alloway, Scotland, in the bleak
winter of 1 759. His father was an excellent type of the Scotch peas-
ant of those days, a poor, honest, God-fearing man, who toiled
from dawn till dark to wrest a living for his family from the stubborn
soil. His tall figure was bent with unceasing labor ; his hair was thin
and gray, and in his eyes was the careworn, hunted look of a peasant
driven by poverty and unpaid rents from one poor farm to another.
The family often fasted of necessity, and lived in solitude to avoid
the temptation of spending their hard-earned money. The children
went barefoot and bareheaded in all weathers, and shared the parents'
toil and their anxiety over the rents. At thirteen ^Bobbv/ the eldest,
was doing a peasant's full day's labor ; at sixteen he was chief laborer
on his father's farm; and he describes the life as "the cheerless
gloom of a hermit, and the unceasing moil of a galley slave." In
1784 the father, after a lifetime of toil, was saved from a debtor's
prison by consumption and death. To rescue something from the
wreck of the home, and to win a poor chance of bread for the family,
the two older boys set up a claim for arrears of wages that had never
been paid. With the small sum allowed them, they buried their
father, took another farm, Mossgiel, in Mauchline, and began again
the long struggle with poverty.

Such, in outline, is Burns's own story of his early life, taken mostly
from his letters. There is another and more pleasing side to the pic-
ture, of which we have glimpses in his poems and in his Common-
place Book. Here we see the boy at school ; for like most Scotch
peasants, the father gave his boys the best education he possibly
could. We see him following the plow, not like a slave, but like a
free man, crooning over an old Scotch song and making a better
one to match the melody. We see him stop the plow to listen to
what the wind is saying, or turn aside lest he disturb the birds at
their singing and nest making. At supper we see the family about

1 Fitz-Greene Halleck's poem " To a Rose from near Alloway Kirk" (1822) is a good
appreciation of Burns and his poetry. It might be well to read this poem before the sad
story of Burns's life.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 323

the table, happy notwithstanding their scant fare, each child with a
spoon in one hand and a book in the other. We hear Betty Davidson
reciting, from her great store, some heroic ballad that fired the
young hearts to enthusiasm and made them forget the day's toil.
And in "The Cotter's Saturday Night " we have a glimpse of Scotch
peasant life that makes us almost reverence these heroic men and
women, who kept their faith and their self-respect in the face of
poverty, and whose hearts, under their rough exteriors, were tender
and true as steel.

A most unfortunate change in Burns' s life began when he left the
farm, at seventeen, and went to Kirkoswald to study surveying. The
town was the haunt of smugglers, rough-living, hard-drinking men ;

BIRTHPLACE OF BURNS

and Burns speedily found his way into those scenes of " riot and
roaring dissipation " which were his bane ever afterwards. For a
little while he studied diligently, but one day, while taking the alti-
tude of the sun, he saw a pretty girl in the neighboring garden, and
love put trigonometry to flight. Soon he gave up his work and wan-
dered back to the farm and poverty again.

When twenty-seven years of age Burns first attracted literary
attention, and in the same moment sprang to the first place in
Scottish letters. In despair over his poverty and personal habits,
he resolved to emigrate to Jamaica, and gathered together a few of
his early poems, hoping to sell them for enough to pay the expenses
of his journey. The result was the famous Kilmarnock edition of
Burns, published in 1786, for which he was offered twenty pounds,
It is said that he even bought his ticket, and on the night before

324 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the ship sailed wrote his " Farewell to Scotland," beginning, "The
gloomy night is gathering fast," which he intended to be his last
song on Scottish soil.

In the morning he changed his mind, led partly by some dim
foreshadowing of the result of his literary adventure ; for the little
book took all Scotland by storm. Not only scholars and literary
men, but " even plowboys and maid servants," says a contempo-
rary, eagerly spent their hard-earned shillings for the new book.
Instead of going to Jamaica, the young poet hurried to Edinburgh
to arrange for another edition of his work. His journey was a con-
stant ovation, and in the capital he was welcomed and feasted by
the best of Scottish society. This unexpected triumph lasted only
one winter. Burns's fondness for taverns and riotous living shocked
his cultured entertainers, and when he returned to Edinburgh next
winter, after a pleasure jaunt through the Highlands, he received
scant attention. He left the city in anger and disappointment, and
went back to the soil, where he was more at home.

The last few years of Burns's life are a sad tragedy, and we pass
over them hurriedly. He bought the farm Ellisland, Dumfriesshire,
and married the faithful Jean Armour, in 1788. That he could write

of her,

I see her in the dewy flowers,

I see her sweet and fair ;

I hear her in the tunefu' birds,

I hear her charm the air :

There's not a bonie flower that springs

By fountain, shaw, or green ;

There's not a bonie bird that sings,

But minds me o' my Jean,

is enough for us to remember. The next year he was appointed ex-
ciseman, i.e. collector of liquor revenues, and the small salary, with
the return from his poems, would have been sufficient to keep his
family in modest comfort, had he but kept away from taverns. For
a few years his life of alternate toil and dissipation was occasionally
illumined by his splendid lyric genius, and he produced many songs
"Bonnie Boon," " My Love 's like a Red, Red Rose," "Auld
Lang Syne," " Highland Mary," and the soul-stirring " Scots wha
hae," composed while galloping over the moor in a storm which
have made the name of Burns known wherever the English language
is spoken, and honored wherever Scotchmen gather together. He died

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 325

miserably in 1796, when only thirty-seven years old. His last letter
was an appeal to a friend for money to stave off the bailiff, and one
of his last poems a tribute to Jessie Lewars, a kind lassie who
helped to care for him in his illness. This last exquisite lyric, " O
wert thou in the cauld blast," set to Mendelssohn's music, is one
of our best known songs, though its history is seldom suspected by
those who sing it.

The Poetry of Burns. The publication of the Kilmarnock
Burns, with the title Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
(1786), marks an epoch in the history of English Literature,
like the publication of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar. After
a century of cold and formal poetry, relieved only by the
romanticism of Gray and Cowper, these fresh inspired songs
went straight to the heart, like the music of returning birds
in springtime. It was a little volume, but a great book ; and
we think of Marlowe's line, "Infinite riches in a little room,"
in connection with it. Such poems as "The Cotter's Satur-
day Night," "To a Mouse," "To a Mountain Daisy," "Man
was Made to Mourn," "The Twa Dogs," "Address to the
Deil," and "Halloween," suggest that the whole spirit of
the romantic revival is embodied in this obscure plowman.
Love, humor, pathos, the response to nature, all the poetic
qualities that touch the human heart are here ; and the heart
was touched as it had not been since the days of Elizabeth.
If the reader will note again the six characteristics of the
romantic movement, and then read six poems of Burns, he
will see at once how perfectly this one man expresses the
new idea. Or take a single suggestion,

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever !
Ae farewell, and then forever !
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him ?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me ;
Dark despair around benights me.

326 ENGLISH LITERATURE

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy ;
But to see her was to love her ;
Love but her, and love forever.
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met or never parted
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

The "essence of a thousand love tales" is in that one little
song. Because he embodies the new spirit of romanticism,
critics give him a high place in the history of our literature ;
and because his songs go straight to the heart, he is the poet
of common men.

Of Burns's many songs for music little need be said. They
have found their way into the hearts of a whole people, and
Songs for there they speak for themselves. They range from
Music the exquisite " O wert thou in the cauld blast," to

the tremendous appeal to Scottish patriotism in " Scots wha
hae wi' Wallace bled," which, Carlyle said, should be sung
with the throat of the whirlwind. Many of these songs were
composed in his best days, when following the plow or resting
after his work, while the music of some old Scotch song was
ringing in his head. It is largely because he thought of music
while he composed that so many of his poems have the singing
quality, suggesting a melody as we read them.

Among his poems of nature, "To a Mouse" and "To a
Mountain Daisy" are unquestionably the best, suggesting the
poetical possibilities that daily pass unnoticed under our feet.
These two poems are as near as Burns ever comes to appre-
ciating nature for its own sake. The majority of his poems,
like " Winter " and " Ye banks and braes o' bonie Boon,"
regard nature in the same way that Gray regarded it, as a
background for the play of human emotions.

Of his poems of emotion there is an immense number. It
is a curious fact that the world is always laughing and crying
at the same moment; and we can hardly read a page of

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE

327

Burns without finding this natural juxtaposition of smiles and
tears. It is noteworthy also that all strong emotions, when
expressed naturally, lend themselves to poetry ; and Burns,
more than any other writer, has an astonishing faculty of
describing his own emotions with vividness and simplicity, so
that they appeal instantly to our own. One can-
not read, " I love my Jean," for instance, with-
out being in love with some idealized woman ;
or "To Mary in Heaven," without sharing the
personal grief of one who has loved and lost.

THE AULD BRIG, AYR (AYR BRIDGE)

Besides the songs of nature and of human emotion, Burns
has given us a large number of poems for which no general
Misceiiane- title can be given. Noteworthy among these are
ous Poems "A man's a man for a' that," which voices the
new romantic estimate of humanity; "The Vision," from
which we get a strong impression of Burns's early ideals ; the
" Epistle to a Young Friend," from which, rather than from
his satires, we learn Burns's personal views of religion and
honor; the "Address to the Unco Guid," which is the poet's
plea for mercy in judgment; and "A Bard's Epitaph," which,
as a summary of his own life, might well be written at the end
of his poems. " Halloween," a picture of rustic merrymaking,
and " The Twa Dogs," a contrast between the rich and poor,

328 ENGLISH LITERATURE

are generally classed among the poet's best works ; but one
unfamiliar with the Scotch dialect will find them rather difficult.
Of Burns's longer poems the two best worth reading are
" The Cotter's Saturday Night " and "Tarn o' Shanter," the
one giving the most perfect picture we possess of a noble
poverty ; the other being the most lively and the least objec-
tionable of his humorous works. It would be difficult to find
elsewhere such a combination of the grewsome and the ridicu-
lous as is packed up in "Tarn o' Shanter." With the excep-
tion of these two, the longer poems add little to the author's
fame or to our own enjoyment. It is better for the beginner
to read Burns's exquisite songs and gladly to recognize his place
in the hearts of a people, and forget the rest, since they only
sadden us and obscure the poet's better nature.

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me :

" Pipe a song about a lamb ; "

So I piped with merry cheer.
w Piper, pipe that song again ; "

So I piped : he wept to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read ; "
So he vanished from my sight,

And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear. 1

Of all the romantic poets of the eighteenth century, Blake
is the most independent and the most original. In his earliest

1 Introduction, Songs of Innocence.

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 329

work, written when he was scarcely more than a child, he
seems to go back to the Elizabethan song writers for his
models ; but for the greater part of his life he was the poet
of inspiration alone, following no man's lead, and obeying no
voice but that which he heard in his own mystic soul. Though
the most extraordinary literary genius of his age, he had prac-
tically no influence upon it. Indeed, we hardly yet understand
this poet of pure fancy, this mystic, this transcendental mad-
man, who remained to the end of his busy life an incompre-
hensible child.

Life. Blake, the son of a London tradesman, was a strange, imagi-
native child, whose soul was more at home with brooks and flowers
and fairies than with the crowd of the city streets. Beyond learning
to read and write, he received no education ; but he began, at ten
years, to copy prints and to write verses. He also began a long
course of art study, which resulted in his publishing his own books,
adorned with marginal engravings colored by hand, an unusual
setting, worthy of the strong artistic sense that shows itself in many
of his early verses. As a child he had visions of God and the angels
looking in at his window ; and as a man he thought he received
visits from the souls of the great dead, Moses, Virgil, Homer, Dante,
Milton, " majestic shadows, gray but luminous," he calls them.
He seems never to have asked himself the question how far these
visions were pure illusions, but believed and trusted them implicitly.
To him all nature was a vast spiritual symbolism, wherein he saw
elves, fairies, devils, angels, all looking at him in friendship or
enmity through the eyes of flowers and stars :

With the blue sky spread over with wings,
And the mild sun that mounts and sings ;

With trees and fields full of fairy elves,
And little devils who fight for themselves ;

With angels planted in hawthorne bowers,
And God himself in the passing hours.

And this curious, pantheistic conception of nature was not a matter
of creed, but the very essence of Blake's life. Strangely enough, he
made no attempt to found a new religious cult, but followed his own

330 ENGLISH LITERATURE

way, singing cheerfully, working patiently, in the face of discourage-
ment and failure. That writers of far less genius were exalted to
favor, while he remained poor and obscure, does not seem to have
troubled him in the least. For over forty years he labored diligently
at book engraving, guided in his art by Michael Angelo, but invent-
ing his own curious designs, at which we still wonder. The illustra-
tions for Young's " Night Thoughts," for Blair's " Grave," and the
"Inventions to the Book of Job," show the peculiarity of Blake's
mind quite as clearly as his poems. While he worked at his trade
he flung off for he never seemed to compose disjointed visions
and incomprehensible rhapsodies, with an occasional little gem that
still sets our hearts to singing :

Ah, sunflower, weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the sun ;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller's journey is done ;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,

Rise from their graves, and aspire
Where my sunflower wishes to go !

That is a curious flower to find growing in the London street ; but
it suggests Blake's own life, which was outwardly busy and quiet, but
inwardly full of adventure and excitement. His last huge prophetic
works, like Jerusalem and Milton (1804), were dictated to him, he
declares, by supernatural means, and even against his own will.
They are only half intelligible, but here and there one sees flashes
of the same poetic beauty that marks his little poems. Critics gen-
erally dismiss Blake with the word " madman " ; but that is only an
evasion. At best, he is the writer of exquisite lyrics ; at worst, he is
mad only " north-northwest," like Hamlet ; and the puzzle is to find
the method in his madness. The most amazing thing about him is
the perfectly sane and cheerful way in which he moved through
poverty and obscurity, flinging out exquisite poems or senseless rhap-
sodies, as a child might play with gems or straws or sunbeams indif-
ferently. He was a gentle, kindly, most unworldly little man, with
extraordinary eyes, which seem even in the lifeless portraits to re-
flect some unusual hypnotic power. He died obscurely, smiling at a
vision of Paradise, in 182 7. That was nearly a century ago, yet he still
remains one of the most incomprehensible figures in our literature.

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 331

Works of Blake. The Poetical Sketches, published in 1783,
is a collection of Blake's earliest poetry, much of it written in
boyhood. It contains much crude and incoherent work, but
also a few lyrics of striking originality. Two later and better
known volumes are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experi-
ence, reflecting two widely different views of the human soul.
As in all his works, there is an abundance of apparently worth-
less stuff in these songs ; but, in the language of miners, it is all
"pay dirt " ; it shows gleams of golden grains that await our
sifting, and now and then we find a nugget unexpectedly :

My lord was like a flower upon the brows
Of lusty May ; ah life as frail as flower !
My lord was like a star in highest heaven,
Drawn down to earth by spells and wickedness j
My lord was like the opening eye of day ;
But he is darkened ; like the summer moon
Clouded ; falPn like the stately tree, cut down ;
The breath of heaven dwelt among his leaves.

On account of the chaotic character of most of Blake's
work, it is well to begin our reading with a short book of
selections, containing the best songs of these three little vol-
umes. Swinburne calls Blake the only poet of " supreme and
simple poetic genius " of the eighteenth century, " the one
man of that age fit, on all accounts, to rank with the old great
masters." * The praise is doubtless extravagant, and the criti-
cism somewhat intemperate ; but when we have read " The
Evening Star," "Memory," "Night," "Love," "To the
Muses," "Spring," "Summer," "The Tiger," "The Lamb,"
"The Clod and the Pebble," we may possibly share Swin-
burne's enthusiasm. Certainly, in these three volumes we
have some of the most perfect and the most original songs in
our language.

Of Blake's longer poems, his titanic prophecies and apoca-
lyptic splendors, it is impossible to write justly in such a brief
work as this. Outwardly they suggest a huge chaff pile, and

1 Swinburne's William Blake.

332 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the scattered grains of wheat hardly warrant the labor of win-
nowing. The curious reader will get an idea of Blake's amaz-
ing mysticism by dipping into any of the works of his middle
life, Urizen, Gates of Paradise, Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, America, The French Revolution, or The Vision of the
Daughters of Albion. His latest works, like Jerusalem and
Milton, are too obscure to have any literary value. To read
any of these works casually is to call the author a madman ;
to study them, remembering Blake's songs and his genius, is
to quote softly his own answer to the child who asked about
the land of dreams :

" O what land is the land of dreams,

What are its mountains and what are its streams?

O father, I saw my mother there,

Among the lilies by waters fair."

w Dear child, I also by pleasant streams
Have wandered all night in the land of dreams;
But though calm and warm the waters wide,
I could not get to the other side."

MINOR POETS OF THE REVIVAL

We have chosen the five preceding poets, Gray, Goldsmith,
Cowper, Burns, and Blake, as the most typical and the most
interesting of the writers who proclaimed the dawn of Roman-
ticism in the eighteenth century. With them we associate
a group of minor writers, whose works were immensely popu-
lar in their own day. The ordinary reader will pass them by,
but to the student they are all significant as expressions of
very different phases of the romantic revival.

James Thomson (1700-1748). Thomson belongs among
the pioneers of Romanticism. Like Gray and Goldsmith, he
wavered between pseudo-classic and the new romantic ideals,
and for this reason, if for no other, his early work is interest-
ing, like the uncertainty of a child who hesitates whether to
creep safely on all fours or risk a fall by walking. He is

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 333

"worthy to be remembered" for three poems, "Rule Bri-
tannia," which is still one of the national songs of England,
The Castle of Indolence, and The Seasons. The dreamy and
romantic Castle (1748), occupied by enchanter Indolence and
his willing captives in the land of Drowsyhed, is purely Spen-
serian in its imagery, and is written in the Spenserian stanza.
The Seasons (1726-1730), written in blank verse, describes
the sights and sounds of the changing year and the poet's
own feelings in the presence of nature. These two poems,
though rather dull to a modern reader, were significant of the
early romantic revival in three ways : they abandoned the
prevailing heroic couplet ; they went back to the Elizabethans,
instead of to Pope, for their models ; and they called atten-
tion to the long-neglected life of nature as a subject for poetry.

William Collins (1721-1759). Collins, the friend and dis-
ciple of Thomson, was of a delicate, nervous temperament,
like Cowper ; and over him also brooded the awful shadow of
insanity. His first work, Oriental Eclogues (1742), is romantic
in feeling, but is written in the prevailing mechanical couplets.
All his later work is romantic in both thought and expression.
His "Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands"
(1750) is an interesting event in the romantic revival, for it
introduced a new world, of witches, pygmies, fairies, and medi-
aeval kings, for the imagination to play in. Collins's best known
poems are the odes "To Simplicity," "To Fear," "To the
Passions," the little unnamed lyric beginning "How sleep
the brave," and the exquisite "Ode to Evening." In reading
the latter, one is scarcely aware that the lines are so delicately
balanced that they have no need of rime to accentuate their
melody.

George Crabbe (1754-1832). Crabbe is an interesting com-
bination of realism and romanticism, his work of depicting
common life being, at times, vaguely suggestive of Fielding's
novels. The Village (1783), a poem without a rival as a pic-
ture of the workingmen of his age, is sometimes like Fielding

334 ENGLISH LITERATURE

in its coarse vigor, and again like Dryden in its precise versi-
fication. The poem was not successful at first, and Crabbe
abandoned his literary dreams. For over twenty years he
settled down as a clergyman in a country parish, observing
keenly the common life about him. Then he published more
poems, exactly like The Village, which immediately brought
him fame and money. They brought him also the friendship
of Walter Scott, who, like others, regarded Crabbe as one of
the first poets of the age. These later poems, The Parish
Register (1807), The Borough (1810), Tales in Verse (1812),
and Tales of the Hall (1819), are in the same strain. They are
written in couplets ; they are reflections of nature and of
country life ; they contain much that is sordid and dull, but
are nevertheless real pictures of real men and women, just as
Crabbe saw them, and as such they are still interesting.
Goldsmith and Burns had idealized the poor, and we admire
them for their sympathy and insight. It remained for Crabbe
to show that in wretched fishing villages, in the lives of hard-
working men and women, children, laborers, smugglers, pau-
pers, all sorts and conditions of common men, there is
abundant romantic interest without exaggerating or idealizing
their vices and virtues.

James Macpherson (1736-1796). In Macpherson we have
an unusual figure, who catered to the new romantic interest
in the old epic heroes, and won immense though momentary
fame, by a series of literary forgeries. Macpherson was a
Scotch schoolmaster, an educated man, but evidently not
over-tender of conscience, whose imagination had been stirred
by certain old poems which he may have heard in Gaelic
among the Highlanders. In 1760 he published his Fragments
of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands, and alleged
that his work was but a translation of Gaelic manuscripts.
Whether the work of itself would have attracted attention is
doubtful ; but the fact that an abundance of literary material
might be awaiting discovery led to an interest such as now

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 335

attends the opening of an Egyptianf tomb, and a subscription
was promptly raised in Edinburgh to send Macpherson through
the Highlands to collect more " manuscripts." The result was
the epic Fingal (1762), "that lank and lamentable counterfeit
of poetry," as Swinburne calls it, which the author professed
to have translated from the Gaelic of the poet Ossian. Its
success was astonishing, and Macpherson followed it up with
Temora (1763), another epic in the same strain. In both these
works Macpherson succeeds in giving an air of primal grandeur
to his heroes ; the characters are big and shadowy ; the
imagery is at times magnificent ; the language is a kind of
chanting, bombastic prose :

Now Fingal arose in his might and thrice he reared his voice.
Cromla answered around, and the sons of the desert stood still. They
bent their red faces to earth, ashamed at the presence of Fingal. He
came like a cloud of rain in the days of the sun, when slow it rolls on
the hill, and fields expect the shower. Swaran beheld the terrible king
of Morven, and stopped in the midst of his course. Dark he leaned on
his spear rolling his red eyes around. Silent and tall he seemed as an
oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its branches blasted of old by the
lightning of heaven. His thousands pour around the hero, and the
darkness of battle gathers on the hill. 1

The publication of this gloomy, imaginative work produced a
literary storm. A few critics, led by Dr. Johnson, demanded
to see the original manuscripts, and when Macpherson refused
to produce them, 2 the Ossianic poems were branded as a
forgery ; nevertheless they had enormous success. Macpher-
son was honored as a literary explorer ; he was given an
official position, carrying a salary for life ; and at his death,
in 1796, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Blake, Burns,
and indeed most of the poets of the age were influenced by

1 There are several omissions from the text in this fragment from Fingal.

2 Several fragments of Gaelic poetry, attributed to Ossian or Oisin, are now known
to have existed at that time in the Highlands. Macpherson used these as a basis for his
epic, but most of the details were furnished by his own imagination. The alleged text
of " Ossian " was published in 1807, some eleven years after Macpherson's death. It only
added another mystery to the forgery ; for, while it embodied a few old and probably genuine
fragments, the bulk of it seems to be Macpherson's work translated back into Gaelic.

336 ENGLISH LITERATURE

this sham poetry. Even the scholarly Gray was deceived and
delighted with " Ossian " ; and men as far apart as Goethe
and Napoleon praised it immoderately.

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770). This "marvelous boy,"
to whom Keats dedicated his " Endymion," and who is cele-
brated in Shelley's "Adonais," is one of the saddest and most
interesting figures of the romantic revival. During his child-
hood he haunted the old church of St. Mary Redcliffe, in
Bristol, where he was fascinated by the mediaeval air of the
place, and especially by one old chest, known as Canynge's
coffer, containing musty documents which had been preserved
for three hundred years. With strange, uncanny intentness
the child pored over these relics of the past, copying them
instead of his writing book, until he could imitate not only
the spelling and language but even the handwriting of
the original. Soon after the "Ossian" forgeries appeared,
Chatterton began to produce documents, apparently very old,
containing mediaeval poems, legends, and family histories, cen-
tering around two characters, Thomas Rowley, priest and
poet, and William Canynge, merchant of Bristol in the days
of Henry VI. It seems incredible that the whole design of
these mediaeval romances should have been worked out by a
child of eleven, and that he could reproduce the style and the
writing of Caxton's day so well that the printers were de-
ceived ; but such is the fact. More and more Rowley Papers,
as they were called, were produced by Chatterton, appar-
ently from the archives of the old church ; in reality from his
own imagination, delighting a large circle of readers, and
deceiving all but Gray and a few scholars who recognized the
occasional misuse of fifteenth-century English words. All
this work was carefully finished, and bore the unmistakable
stamp of literary genius. Reading now his 'VElla," or the
" Ballad of Charite," or the long poem in ballad style called
"Bristowe Tragedie," it is hard to realize that it is a boy's
work. At seventeen years of age Chatterton went for a literary

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 337

career to London, where he soon afterwards took poison and
killed himself in a fit of childish despondency, brought on by
poverty and hunger.

Thomas Percy (1729-181 1). To Percy, bishop of the Irish
church, in Dromore, we are indebted for the first attempt at
a systematic collection of the folk songs and ballads which are
counted among the treasures of a nation's literature. 1 In 1765
he published, in three volumes, his famous Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry. The most valuable part of this work is the
remarkable collection of old English and Scottish ballads,
such as " Chevy Chase," the " Nut Brown Mayde," " Children
of the Wood," "Battle of Otterburn," and many more, which
but for his labor might easily have perished. We have now
much better and more reliable editions of these same ballads ;
for Percy garbled his materials, adding and subtracting freely,
and even inventing a few ballads of his own. Two motives
probably influenced him in this. First, the different versions
of the same ballad varied greatly ; and Percy, in changing
them to suit himself, took the same liberty as had many other
writers in dealing with the same material. Second, Percy was
under the influence of Johnson and his school, and thought
it necessary to add a few elegant ballads "to atone for the
rudeness of the more obsolete poems." That sounds queer
now, used as we are to exactness in dealing with historical
and literary material ; but it expresses the general spirit of
the age in which he lived.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Percy's Reliques marks
an epoch in the history of Romanticism, and it is difficult to
measure its influence on the whole romantic movement. Scott
says of it, " The first time I could scrape a few shillings to-
gether, I bought myself a copy of these beloved volumes ; nor
do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with half
the enthusiasm." Scott's own poetry is strongly modeled

1 For various other collections of songs and ballads, antedating Percy's, see Phelps's
Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, ch. vii.

338 ENGLISH LITERATURE

upon these early ballads, and his Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border is due chiefly to the influence of Percy's work.

Besides the Reliques, Percy has given us another good
work in his Northern Antiquities (1770), translated from the
French of Mallet's History of Denmark. This also was of
immense influence, since it introduced to English readers a
new and fascinating mythology, more rugged and primitive
than that of the Greeks ; and we are still, in music as in
letters, under the spell of Thor and Odin, of Frea and the
Valkyr maidens, and of that stupendous drama of passion and
tragedy which ended in the "Twilight of the Gods." The lit-
erary world owes a debt of gratitude to Percy, who wrote
nothing of importance himself, but who, by collecting and
translating the works of other men, did much to hasten the
triumph of Romanticism in the nineteenth century.

III. THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVELISTS

The chief literary phenomena of the complex eighteenth
century are the reign of so-called Classicism, the revival of
romantic poetry, and the discovery of the modern novel. Of
these three, the last is probably the most important. Aside
from the fact that the novel is the most modern, and at pres-
ent the most widely read and influential type of literature,
we have a certain pride in regarding it as England's original
contribution to the world of letters. Other great types of
literature, like the epic, the romance, and the drama, were
first produced by other nations ; but the idea of the modern
novel seems to have been worked out largely on English soil ; 1
and in the number and the fine quality of her novelists, Eng-
land has hardly been rivaled by any other nation. Before we
study the writers who developed this new type of literature,
it is well to consider briefly its meaning and history.

1 The first books to which the term " novel," in the modern sense, may be applied,
appeared almost simultaneously in England, France, and Germany. The rapid develop-
ment of the English novel had an immense influence in all European nations.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 339

Meaning of the Novel. Probably the most significant remark
made by the ordinary reader concerning a work of fiction
The story takes the form of a question : Is it a good story ?
Element p or the reader of to-day is much like the child and
the primitive man in this respect, that he must be attracted
and held by the story element of a narrative before he learns
to appreciate its style or moral significance. The story ele-
ment is therefore essential to the novel ; but where the story
originates is impossible to say. As well might we seek for
the origin of the race ; for wherever primitive men are found,
there we see them gathering eagerly about the story-teller.
In the halls of our Saxon ancestors the scop and the tale-
bringer were ever the most welcome guests ; and in the bark
wigwams of the American Indians the man who told the
legends of Hiawatha had an audience quite as attentive as
that which gathered at the Greek festivals to hear the story
of Ulysses's wanderings. To man's instinct or innate love for
a story we are indebted for all our literature ; and the novel
must in some degree satisfy this instinct, or fail of appreciation.

The second question which we ask concerning a work of

fiction is, How far does the element of imagination enter into

it ? For upon the element of imagination depends,

The Romance . i r ,.*

largely, our classification ot works 01 nction into
novels, romances, and mere adventure stories. The divisions
here are as indefinite as the border land between childhood
and youth, between instinct and reason ; but there are certain
principles to guide us. We note, in the development of any
normal child, that there comes a time when for his stories he
desires knights, giants, elves, fairies, witches, magic, and
marvelous adventures which have no basis in experience.
He tells extraordinary tales about himself, which may be only
the vague remembrances of a dream or the creations of a
dawning imagination, both of which are as real to him as
any other part of life. When we say that such a child
"romances," we give exactly the right name to it; for this

340 ENGLISH LITERATURE

sudden interest in extraordinary beings and events marks
the development of the human imagination, running riot at
first, because it is not guided by reason, which is a later
development, and to satisfy this new interest the romance l
was invented. The romance is, originally, a work of fiction
in which the imagination is given full play, without being
limited by facts or probabilities. It deals with extraordinary
events, with heroes whose powers are exaggerated, and often
adds the element of superhuman or supernatural characters.
It is impossible to draw the line where romance ends ; but
this element of excessive imagination and of impossible heroes
and incidents is its distinguishing mark in every literature.

Where the novel begins it is likewise impossible to say ; but

again we have a suggestion in the experience of every reader.

There comes a time, naturally and inevitably, in the

The Novel vr r ,, , , ."

life of every youth when the romance no longer en-
thralls him. He lives in a world of facts ; gets acquainted with
men and women, some good, some bad, but all human ; and he
demands that literature shall express life as he knows it by ex-
perience. This is the stage of the awakened intellect, and in our
stories the intellect as well as the imagination must now be
satisfied. At the beginning of this stage we delight in Robin-
son Crusoe; we read eagerly a multitude of adventure narra-
tives and a few so-called historical novels ; but in each case
we must be lured by a story, must find heroes and " moving
accidents by flood and field" to appeal to our imagination;
and though the hero and the adventure may be exaggerated,
they must both be natural and within the bounds of probabil-
ity. Gradually the element of adventure or surprising inci-
dent grows less and less important, as we learn that true life
is not adventurous, but a plain, heroic matter of work and

1 The name " romance " was given at first to any story in one of the Romance lan-
guages, like the French metrical romances, which we have considered. Because these
stories were brought to England at a time when the childish mind of the Middle Ages
delighted in the most impossible stories, the name " romance " was retained to cover any
work of the unbridled imagination.

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 341

duty, and the daily choice between good and evil. Life is the
most real thing in the world now, not the life of kings, or
heroes, or superhuman creatures, but the individual life with
its struggles and temptations and triumphs or failures, like
our own ; and any work that faithfully represents life becomes
interesting. So we drop the adventure story and turn to the
novel. For the novel is a work of fiction in which the imagi-
nation and the intellect combine to express life in the form of
a story ; and the imagination is always directed and controlled
by the intellect. It is interested chiefly, not in romance or
adventure, but in men and women as they are ; it aims to
show the motives and influences which govern human life,
and the effects of personal choice upon character and destiny.
Such is the true novel, 1 and as such it opens a wider and
more interesting field than any other type of literature.

Precursors of the Novel. Before the novel could reach its
modern stage, of a more or less sincere attempt to express
human life and character, it had to pass through several cen-
turies of almost imperceptible development. Among the early
precursors of the novel we must place a collection of tales
known as the Greek Romances, dating from the second to the
sixth centuries. These are imaginative and delightful stories
of ideal love and marvelous adventure, 2 which profoundly

1 This division of works of fiction into romances and novels is a somewhat arbitrary
one, but it seems, on the whole, the most natural and the most satisfactory. Many
writers use the generic term " novel " to include all prose fiction. They divide novels
into two classes, stories and romances ; the story being a form of the novel which relates
certain incidents of life with as little complexity as possible; and the romance being a
form of novel which describes life as led by strong emotions into complex and unusual
circumstances. Novels are otherwise divided into novels of personality, like The Vicar
of Wakefield and Silas Marner ; historical novels, like Ivanhoe ; novels of romance,
like Lorna Doone ; and novels of purpose, like Oliver Twist and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
All such classifications are imperfect, and the best of them is open to objections.

2 One of these tales was called The Wonderful Things beyond Thule. It is the
story of a youth, Dinias, who for love of a girl, Dercyllis, did heroic things and under-
took many adventures, including a journey to the frozen north, and another to the moon.
A second tale, Ephesiaca, is the story of a man and a maid, each of whom scoffs at love.
They meet and fall desperately in love ; but the course of true love does not run smooth,
and they separate, and suffer, and go through many perils, before they " live happily ever
after." This tale is the source of the mediaeval story, Apollonius of Tyre, which is used
in Gower's Confessio Amantis and in Shakespeare's Pericles. A third tale is the pastoral
love story, Daphnis and Chloe, which reappeared in many forms in subsequent literature.

342 ENGLISH LITERATURE

affected romance writing for the next thousand years. A second
group of predecessors is found in the Italian and Spanish pas-
toral romances, which were inspired by the Eclogues of Virgil.
These were extremely popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and their influence is seen later in Sidney's Arcadia,
which is the best of this type in English.

The third and most influential group of predecessors of the
novel is made up of the romances of chivalry, such as are
found in Malory's Morte d'ArtJmr. It is noticeable, in read-
ing these beautiful old romances in different languages, that
each nation changes them somewhat, so as to make them
more expressive of national traits and ideals. In a word, the
old romance tends inevitably towards realism, especially in
England, where the excessive imagination is curbed and the
heroes become more human. In Malory, in the unknown
author of Sir Gawain and the Green KnigJit, and especially
in Chaucer, we see the effect of the practical English mind
in giving these old romances a more natural setting, and in
making the heroes suggest, though faintly, the men and
women of their own day. The Canterbury Tales, with their
story interest and their characters delightfully true to nature,
have in them the suggestion, at least, of a connected story
whose chief aim is to reflect life as it is.

In the Elizabethan Age the idea of the novel grows more
definite. In Sidney's Arcadia (1580), a romance of chivalry,
the pastoral setting at least is generally true to nature ; our
credulity is not taxed, as in the old romances, by the continual
appearance of magic or miracles ; and the characters, though
idealized till they become tiresome, occasionally give the im-
pression of being real men and women. In Bacon's The New
Atlantis (1627) we have the story of the discovery by mari-
ners of an unknown country, inhabited by a superior race of
men, more civilized than ourselves, an idea which had been
used by More in his Utopia in 1516. These two books are
neither romances nor novels, in the strict sense, but studies

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 343

of social institutions. They use the connected story as a
means of teaching moral lessons, and of bringing about needed
reforms ; and this valuable suggestion has been adopted by
many of our modern writers in the so-called problem novels
and novels of purpose.

Nearer to the true novel is Lodge's romantic story of
Rosalynde, which was used by Shakespeare in As You Like It.
This was modeled upon the Italian novella, or short story,
which became very popular in England during the Elizabethan
Age. In the same age we have introduced into England the
Spanish picaresque novel (from picaro, a knave or rascal),
which at first was a kind of burlesque on the mediaeval ro-
mance, and which took for its hero some low scoundrel or
outcast, instead of a knight, and followed him through a long
career of scandals and villainies. One of the earliest types of
this picaresque novel in English is Nash's The Unfortunate
Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton (1594), which is also a
forerunner of the historical novel, since its action takes place
during that gorgeous interview between Henry VIII and the
king of France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In all
these short stories and picaresque novels the emphasis was
laid not so much on life and character as on the adventures
of the hero ; and the interest consisted largely in wondering
what would happen next, and how the plot would end. The
same method is employed in all trashy novels and it is es-
pecially the bane of many modern story-writers. This exces-
sive interest in adventures or incidents for their own sake,
and not for their effect on character, is what distinguishes
the modern adventure story from the true novel.

In the Puritan Age we approach still nearer to the modern
novel, especially in the work of Bunyan ; and as the Puritan
always laid emphasis on character, stories appeared having
a definite moral purpose. Bunyan's The Pilgrim s Progress
(1678) differs from the Faery Queen, and from all other
mediaeval allegories, in this important respect, that the

344 ENGLISH LITERATURE

characters, far from being bloodless abstractions, are but thinly
disguised men and women. Indeed, many a modern man,
reading the story of Christian, has found in it the reflection
of his own life and experience. In The Life and Death of
Mr. B adman (1682) we have another and even more realistic
study of a man as he was in Bunyan's day. These two strik-
ing figures, Christian and Mr. Badman, belong among the
great characters of English fiction. Bunyan's good work, his
keen insight, his delineation of character, and his emphasis
upon the moral effects of individual action, was carried on by
Addison and Steele some thirty years later. The character
of Sir Roger de Coverley is a real reflection of English country
life in the eighteenth century ; and with Steele's domestic
sketches in The Tatler, The Spectator, and The Guardian
(1709-1713), we definitely cross the border land that lies out-
side of romance, and enter the region of character study
where the novel has its beginning.

The Discovery of the Modern Novel. Notwithstanding this
long history of fiction, to which we have called attention, it
is safe to say that, until the publication of Richardson's
Pamela, in 1740, no true novel had appeared in any litera-
ture. By a true novel we mean simply a work of fiction
which relates the story of a plain human life, under stress of
emotion, which depends for its interest not on incident or
adventure, but on its truth to nature. A number of English
novelists Goldsmith, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne
all seem to have seized upon the idea of reflecting life as
it is, in the form of a story, and to have developed it simulta-
neously. The result was an extraordinary awakening of in-
terest, especially among people who had never before been
greatly concerned with literature. We are to remember that,
in previous periods, the number of readers was comparatively
small ; and that, with the exception of a few writers like
Langland and Bunyan, authors wrote largely for the upper
classes. In the eighteenth century the spread of education

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 345

and the appearance of newspapers and magazines led to an
immense increase in the number of readers ; and at the same
time the middle-class people assumed a foremost place in
English life and history. These new readers and this new,
powerful middle class had no classic tradition to hamper them.
They cared little for the opinions of Dr. Johnson and the
famous Literary Club ; and, so far as they read fiction at all,
they apparently took little interest in the exaggerated ro-
mances of impossible heroes and the picaresque stories of
intrigue and villainy which had interested the upper classes.
Some new type of literature was demanded, and this new
type must express the new ideal of the eighteenth century,
namely, the value and the importance of the individual life.
So the novel was born, expressing, though in a different way,
exactly the same ideals of personality and of the dignity of
common life which were later proclaimed in the American
and in the French Revolution, and were welcomed with re-
joicing by the poets of the romantic revival. To tell men,
not about knights or kings or types of heroes, but about
themselves in the guise of plain men and women, about their
own thoughts and motives and struggles, and the results of
actions upon their own characters, this was the purpose of
our first novelists. The eagerness with which their chapters
were read in England, and the rapidity with which their work
was copied abroad, show how powerfully the new discovery
appealed to readers everywhere.

Before we consider the work of these writers who first devel-
oped the modern novel, we must glance at the work of a pioneer,
Daniel Defoe, whom we place among the early novelists for the
simple reason that we know not how else to classify him.

DANIEL DEFOE (i66i(?)-i73i)

To Defoe is often given the credit for the discovery of the
modern novel ; but whether or not he deserves that honor is
an open question. Even a casual reading of Robinson Crusoe

346

ENGLISH LITERATURE

(1719), which generally heads the list of modern fiction,
shows that this exciting tale is largely an adventure story,
rather than the study of human character which Defoe prob-
ably intended it to be. Young people still read it as they
might a dime novel, skipping its moralizing passages and
hurrying on to more adventures ; but they seldom appreciate
the excellent mature reasons which banish the dime novel to
a secret place in the haymow, while Crusoe hangs proudly on

the Christmas tree or
holds an honored place
on the family book-
shelf. Defoe's Appa ri-
tion of Mrs. Veal,
Memoirs of a Cavalier,
and Journal of the
Plague Year are such
mixtures of fact, fic-
tion, and credulity
that they defy classi-
fication ; while other
so-called "novels,"
like Captain Single-
ton, Moll Flanders,
and Roxana, are but
little better than pica-
resque stories, with a
deal of unnatural moralizing and repentance added for puri-
tanical effect. In Crusoe, Defoe brought the realistic adven-
ture story to a very high stage of its development ; but his
works hardly deserve to be classed as true novels, which must
subordinate incident to the faithful portrayal of human life and
character.

Life. Defoe was the son of a London butcher named Foe, and
kept his family name until he was forty years of age, when he added
the aristocratic prefix with which we have grown familiar. The

DANIEL DEFOE

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 347

events of his busy seventy years of life, in which he passed through
all extremes, from poverty to wealth, from prosperous brickmaker
to starveling journalist, from Newgate prison to immense popularity
and royal favor, are obscure enough in details ; but four facts stand
out clearly, which help the reader to understand the character of
his work. First, Defoe was a jack-at-all-trades, as well as a writer ;
his interest was largely with the working classes, and notwithstand-
ing many questionable practices, he seems to have had some con-
tinued purpose of educating and uplifting the common people.
This partially accounts for the enormous popularity of his works,
and for the fact that they were criticised by literary men as being
" fit only for the kitchen." Second, he was a radical Nonconformist
in religion, and was intended by his father for the independent
ministry. The Puritan zeal for reform possessed him, and he tried
to do by his pen what Wesley was doing by his preaching, without,
however, having any great measure of the latter's sincerity or single-
ness of purpose. This zeal for reform marks all his numerous works,
and accounts for the moralizing to be found everywhere. Third,
Defoe was a journalist and pamphleteer, with a reporter's eye for
the picturesque and a newspaper man's instinct for making a " good
story." He wrote an immense number of pamphlets, poems, and
magazine articles ; conducted several papers, one of the most
popular, the Review, being issued from prison, and the fact that
they often blew hot and cold upon the same question was hardly
noticed. Indeed, so extraordinarily interesting and plausible were
Defoe's articles that he generally managed to keep employed by the
party in power, whether Whig or Tory. This long journalistic career,
lasting half a century, accounts for his direct, simple, narrative style,
which holds us even now by its intense reality. To Defoe's genius
we are also indebted for two discoveries, the "interview" and the
leading editorial, both of which are still in daily use in our best
newspapers.

The fourth fact to remember is that Defoe knew prison life ; and
thereby hangs a tale. In 1702 Defoe published a remarkable pam-
phlet called "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," supporting
the claims of the free churches against the " High Fliers," i.e. Tories
and Anglicans. In a vein of grim humor which recalls Swift's
" Modest Proposal," Defoe advocated hanging all dissenting minis-
ters, and sending all members of the free churches into exile ; and
so ferociously realistic was the satire that both Dissenters and Tories

348 ENGLISH LITERATURE

took the author literally. Defoe was tried, found guilty of seditious
libel, and sentenced to be fined, to stand three days in the pillory,
and to be imprisoned. Hardly had the sentence been pronounced
when Defoe wrote his " Hymn to the Pillory,"

Hail hieroglyphic state machine,
Contrived to punish fancy in,

a set of doggerel verses ridiculing his prosecutors, which Defoe,
with a keen eye for advertising, scattered all over London. Crowds
flocked to cheer him in the pillory ; and seeing that Defoe was mak-
ing popularity out of persecution, his enemies bundled him off to
Newgate prison. He turned this experience also to account by pub-
lishing a popular newspaper, and by getting acquainted with rogues,
pirates, smugglers, and miscellaneous outcasts, each one with a
"good story" to be used later. After his release from prison, in
1704, he turned his knowledge of criminals to further account, and
entered the government employ as a kind of spy or secret-service
agent. His prison experience, and the further knowledge of crim-
inals gained in over twenty years as a spy, accounts for his numerous
stories 'of thieves and pirates, Vkz Jonathan ZJWand Captain Avery,
and also for his later novels, which deal almost exclusively with
villains and outcasts.

When Defoe was nearly sixty years of age he turned to fiction
and wrote the great work by which he is remembered. Robinson
Crusoe was an instant success, and the author became famous all
over Europe. Other stories followed rapidly, and Defoe earned
money enough to retire to Newington and live in comfort ; but not
idly, for his activity in producing fiction is rivaled only by that of
Walter Scott. Thus, in 1720 appeared Captain Singleton, Duncan
Campbell, and Memoirs of a Cavalier ; in 1722, Colonel Jack, Moll
Flanders, and the amazingly realistic Journal of the Plague Year.
So the list grows with astonishing rapidity, ending with the History
of the Devil in 1726.

In the latter year Defoe's secret connection with the government
became known, and a great howl of indignation rose against him in
the public print, destroying in an hour the popularity which he had
gained by a lifetime of intrigue and labor. He fled from his home
to London, where he died obscurely, in 1731, while hiding from real
or imaginary enemies.

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 349

Works of Defoe. At the head of the list stands Robinson
Crusoe (1719-1720), one of the few books in any literature
which has held its popularity undiminished for nearly two
centuries. The story is based upon the experiences of Alex-
ander Selkirk, or Selcraig, who had been marooned in the
island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of Chile, and who had
lived there in solitude for five years. On his return to Eng-
land in 1709, Selkirk's experiences became known, and Steele
published an account of them in The Englishman, without,
however, attracting any wide attention. That Defoe used
Selkirk's story is practically certain ; but with his usual du-
plicity he claimed to have written Crusoe in 1708, a year
before Selkirk's return. However that may be, the story
itself is real enough to have come straight from a sailor's log-
book. Defoe, as shown in his Journal of the Plague Year and
his Memoirs of a Cavalier, had the art of describing things he
had never seen with the minute accuracy of an eyewitness.

The charm of the story is its intense reality, in the succes-
sion of thoughts, feelings, incidents, which every reader rec-
Robinson ognizes to be absolutely true to life. At first glance
Crusoe jj- WO uld seem that one man on a desert island

could not possibly furnish the material for a long story ; but
as we read we realize with amazement that every slightest
thought and action the saving of the cargo of the ship-
wrecked vessel, the preparation for defense against imaginary
foes, the intense agitation over the discovery of a footprint in
the sand is a record of what the reader himself would do
and feel if he were alone in such a place. Defoe's long and
varied experience now stood him in good stead ; in fact, he
"was the only man of letters in his time who might have
been thrown on a desert island without finding himself at a
loss what to do ; " 1 and he puts himself so perfectly in his
hero's place that he repeats his blunders as well as his tri-
umphs. Thus, what reader ever followed Defoe's hero through

1 Minto's Life of Defoe, p. 139.

350 ENGLISH LITERATURE

weary, feverish months of building a huge boat, which was
too big to be launched by one man, without recalling some
boy who spent many stormy days in shed or cellar building
a boat or dog house, and who, when the thing was painted
and finished, found it a foot wider than the door, and had to
knock it to pieces ? This absolute naturalness characterizes
the whole story. It is a study of the human will also, of
patience, fortitude, and the indomitable Saxon spirit overcom-
ing all obstacles ; and it was this element which made Rous-
seau recommend Robinson Crusoe as a better treatise on
education than anything which Aristotle or the moderns had
ever written. And this suggests the most significant thing
about Defoe's masterpiece, namely, that the hero represents
the whole of human society, doing with his own hands all the
things which, by the division of labor and the demands of
modern civilization, are now done by many different workers.
He is therefore the type of the whole civilized race of men.

In the remaining works of Defoe, more than two hundred
in number, there is an astonishing variety ; but all are marked
by the same simple, narrative style, and the same intense
realism. The best known of these are the Journal of the
Plague Year, in which the horrors of a frightful plague are
minutely recorded ; the Memoirs of a Cavalier, so realistic
that Chatham quoted it as history in Parliament ; and several
picaresque novels, like Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack, Moll
Flanders, and Roxana. The last work is by some critics
given a very high place in realistic fiction, but like the other
three, and like Defoe's minor narratives of Jack Sheppard and
Cartouche, it is a disagreeable study of vice, ending with a
forced and unnatural repentance.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761)

To Richardson belongs the credit of writing the first mod-
ern novel. He was the son of a London joiner, who, for
economy's sake, resided in some unknown town in Derbyshire,

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 351

where Samuel was born in 1689. The boy received very
little education, but he had a natural talent for writing let-
ters, and even as a boy we find him frequently employed
by working-girls to write their love letters for them. This
early experience, together with his fondness for the society
of "his dearest ladies" rather than of men, gave him that
intimate knowledge of the hearts of sentimental and unedu-
cated women which is manifest in all his work. Moreover, he
was a keen observer of manners, and his surprisingly accurate
descriptions often compel us to listen, even when he is most
tedious. At seventeen years of age he went to London and
learned the printer's trade, which he followed to the end of
his life. When fifty years of age he had a small reputation
as a writer of elegant epistles, and this reputation led certain
publishers to approach him with a proposal that he write a
series of Familiar Letters, which could be used as models by
people unused to writing. Richardson gladly accepted the
proposal, and had the happy inspiration to make these letters
tell the connected story of a girl's life. Defoe had told an
adventure story of human life on a desert island, but Rich-
ardson would tell the story of a girl's inner life in the midst
of English neighbors. That sounds simple enough now, but
it marked an epoch in the history of literature. Like every
other great and simple discovery, it makes us wonder why
some one had not thought of it before.

Richardson's Novels. The result of Richardson's inspira-
tion was Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, an endless series of
letters 1 telling of the trials, tribulations, and the final happy
marriage of a too sweet young maiden, published in four vol-
umes extending over the years 1740 and 1741. Its chief
fame lies in the fact that it is our first novel in the modern
sense. Aside from this important fact, and viewed solely as

1 These were not what the booksellers expected. They wanted a "handy letter
writer," something like a book of etiquette; and it was published in 1741, a few months
after Pamela.

352 ENGLISH LITERATURE

a novel, it is sentimental, grandiloquent, and wearisome. Its-
success at the time was enormous, and Richardson began
another series of letters (he could tell a story in no other
way) which occupied his leisure hours for the next six years.
The result was Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady,
published in eight volumes in 17471748. This was another,
and somewhat better, sentimental novel ; and it was received
with immense enthusiasm. Of all Richardson's heroines
Clarissa is the most human. In her doubts and scruples of
conscience, and especially in her bitter grief and humiliation,
she is a real woman, in marked contrast with the mechanical
hero, Lovelace, who simply illustrates the author's inability to
portray a man's character. The dramatic element in this novel
is strong, and is increased by means of the letters, which
enable the reader to keep close to the characters of the story
and to see life from their different view points. Macaulay, who
was deeply impressed by Clarissa, is said to have made the
remark that, were the novel lost, he could restore almost the
whole of it from memory.

Richardson now turned from his middle-class heroines, and
in five or six years completed another series of letters, in
which he attempted to tell the story of a man and an aristo-
crat. The result was Sir Charles Grandison (1754), a novel
in seven volumes, whose hero was intended to be a model of
aristocratic manners and virtues for the middle-class people,
who largely constituted the novelist's readers. For Richard-
son, who began in Pamela with the purpose of teaching his
hearers how to write, ended with the deliberate purpose of
teaching them how to live ; and in most of his work his chief
object was, in his own words, to inculcate virtue and good
deportment. His novels, therefore, suffer as much from his
purpose as from his own limitations. Notwithstanding his
tedious moralizing and his other defects, Richardson in these
three books gave something entirely new to the literary world,
and the world appreciated the gift. This was the story of

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 353

human life, told from within, and depending for its interest
not on incident or adventure, but on its truth to human nature.
Reading his work is, on the whole, like examining the anti-
quated model of a stern-wheel steamer ; it is interesting for
its undeveloped possibilities rather than for its achievement.

HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754)

Life. Judged by his ability alone, Fielding was the greatest of
this new group of novel writers, and one of the most artistic that
our literature has produced. He was born in East Stour, Dorset-
shire, in 1707. In contrast with Richardson, he was well educated,
having spent several years at the famous Eton school, and taken
a degree in letters at the University of Leyden in 1728. Moreover,
he had a deeper knowledge of life, gained from his own varied and
sometimes riotous experience. For several years after returning
from Leyden he gained a precarious living by writing plays, farces,
and buffooneries for the stage. In 1735 he married an admirable
woman, of whom we have glimpses in two of his characters, Amelia,
and Sophia Western, and lived extravagantly on her little fortune at
East Stour. Having used up all his money, he returned to London
and studied law, gaining his living by occasional plays and by news-
paper work. For ten years, or more, little is definitely known of
him, save that he published his first novel, Joseph Andrews, in 1742,
and that he was made justice of the peace for Westminster in 1748.
The remaining years of his life, in which his best novels were
written, were not given to literature, but rather to his duties as
magistrate, and especially to breaking up the gangs of thieves and
cutthroats which infested the streets of London after nightfall. He
died in Lisbon, whither he had gone for his health, in 1754, and
lies buried there in the English cemetery. The pathetic account of
this last journey, together with an inkling of the generosity and
kind-heartedness of the man, notwithstanding the scandals and
irregularities of his life, are found in his last work, the Journal of a
Voyage to Lisbon.

Fielding's Work. Fielding's first novel, Joseph Andrews
(1742), was inspired by the success of Pamela, and began as
a burlesque of the false sentimentality and the conventional

354 ENGLISH LITERATURE

virtues of Richardson's heroine. He took for his hero the
alleged brother of Pamela, who was exposed to the same kind
of temptations, but who, instead of being rewarded for his
virtue, was unceremoniously turned out of doors by his mis-
tress. There the burlesque ends ; the hero takes to the open
road, and Fielding forgets all about Pamela in telling the
adventures of Joseph and his companion, Parson Adams.
Unlike Richardson, who has no humor, who minces words,
and moralizes, and dotes on the sentimental woes of his hero-
ines, Fielding is direct, vigorous, hilarious, and coarse to the
point of vulgarity. He is full of animal spirits, and he tells
the story of a vagabond life, not for the sake of moralizing,
like Richardson, or for emphasizing a forced repentance, like
Defoe, but simply because it interests him, and his only con-
cern is "to laugh men out of their follies." So his story,
though it abounds in unpleasant incidents, generally leaves
the reader with the strong impression of reality.

Fielding's later novels are Jonathan Wild, the story of a
rogue, which suggests Defoe's narrative ; The History of Tom
Jones, a Foundling (1749), his best work; z.u& Amelia (1751),
the story of a good wife in contrast with an unworthy hus-
band. His strength in all these works is in the vigorous but
coarse figures, like those of Jan Steen's pictures, which fill
most of his pages ; his weakness is in lack of taste, and in
barrenness of imagination or invention, which leads him to
repeat his plots and incidents with slight variations. In all
his work sincerity is perhaps the most marked characteristic.
Fielding likes virile men, just as they are, good and bad, but
detests shams of every sort. His satire has none of Swift's
bitterness, but is subtle as that of Chaucer, and good-natured
as that of Steele. He never moralizes, though some of his
powerfully drawn scenes suggest a deeper moral lesson than
anything in Defoe or Richardson ; and he never judges even
the worst of his characters without remembering his own frailty
and tempering justice with mercy. On the whole, though much

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 355

of his work is perhaps in bad taste and is too coarse for pleas-
ant or profitable reading, Fielding must be regarded as an
artist, a very great artist, in realistic fiction ; and the advanced
student who reads him will probably concur in the judgment
of a modern critic that, by giving us genuine pictures of men
and women of his own age, without moralizing over their vices
and virtues, he became the real founder of the modern novel.

SMOLLETT AND STERNE

Tobias Smollett (17211771) apparently tried to carry on
Fielding's work ; but he lacked Fielding's genius, as well as
his humor and inherent kindness, and so crowded his pages
with the horrors and brutalities which are sometimes mistaken
for realism. Smollett was a physician, of eccentric manners
and ferocious instincts, who developed his unnatural peculiari-
ties by going as a surgeon on a battleship, where he seems to
have picked up all the evils of the navy and of the medical
profession to use later in his novels.

His three best known works are Roderick Random (1748),
a series of adventures related by the hero ; Peregrine Pickle
Smollett's ( I 75 I )> m which he reflects with brutal directness
Novels the worst of his experiences at sea ; and Humphrey

Clinker (1771), his last work, recounting the mild adventures
of a Welsh family in a journey through England and Scot-
land. This last alone can be generally read without arousing
the reader's profound disgust. Without any particular ability,
he models his novels on Don Quixote, and the result is simply
a series of coarse adventures which are characteristic of the
picaresque novel of his age. Were it not for the fact that he
unconsciously imitates Jonson's Every Man in His Humour,
he would hardly be named among our writers of fiction ; but
in seizing upon some grotesque habit or peculiarity and mak-
ing a character out of it such as Commodore Trunnion in
Peregrine Pickle, Matthew Bramble in Humphrey Clinker,
and Bowling in Roderick Random he laid the foundation

ENGLISH LITERATURE

for that exaggeration in portraying human eccentricities which
finds a climax in Dickens's caricatures.

Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) has been compared to a
" little bronze satyr of antiquity in whose hollow body exqui-
site odors were stored." That is true, so far as the satyr is
concerned ; for a more weazened, unlovely personality would
be hard to find. The only question in the comparison is in
regard to the character of the odors, and that is a matter of
taste. In his work he is the reverse of Smollett, the latter
being given over to coarse vulgarities, which are often mis-
taken for realism ; the former to whims and vagaries and
sentimental tears, which frequently only disguise a sneer at
human grief and pity.

The two books by which Sterne is remembered are Tris-
tram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey through France and
Sterne's Italy. These are termed novels for the simple reason
Work that we know not what else to call them. The former

was begun, in his own words, " with no real idea of how it was
to turn out "; its nine volumes, published at intervals from 1 760
to 1767, proceeded in the most aimless way, recording the
experiences of the eccentric Shandy family ; and the book
was never finished. Its strength lies chiefly in its brilliant
style, the most remarkable of the age, and in its odd charac-
ters, like Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, which, with all their
eccentricities, are so humanized by the author's genius that
they belong among the great "creations" of our literature.
The Sentimental Journey is a curious combination of fiction,
sketches of travel, miscellaneous essays on odd subjects,
all marked by the same brilliancy of style, and all stamped
with Sterne's false attitude towards everything in life. Many
of its best passages were either adapted or taken bodily from
Burton, Rabelais, and a score of other writers ; so that, in
reading Sterne, one is never quite sure how much is his own
work, though the mark of his grotesque genius is on every
page.

EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE 357

The First Novelists and their Work. With the publication
of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield in 1766 the first series of
English novels came to a suitable close. Of this work, with
its abundance of homely sentiment clustering about the family
life as the most sacred of Anglo-Saxon institutions, we have
already spoken. 1 If we except Robinson Crusoe, as an adven-
ture story, the Vicar of Wakefield is the only novel of the
period which can be freely recommended to all readers, as
giving an excellent idea of the new literary type, which was
perhaps more remarkable for its promise than for its achieve-
ment. In the short space of twenty-five years there suddenly
appeared and flourished a new form of literature, which influ-
enced all Europe for nearly a century, and which still furnishes
the largest part of our literary enjoyment. Each successive
novelist brought some new element to the work, as when Field-
ing supplied animal vigor and humor to Richardson's analysis
of a human heart, and Sterne added brilliancy, and Goldsmith
emphasized purity and the honest domestic sentiments which
are still the greatest ruling force among men. So these early
workers were like men engaged in carving a perfect cameo
from the reverse side. One works the profile, another the eyes,
a third the mouth and the fine lines of character ; and not till
the work is finished, and the cameo turned, do we see the
complete human face and read its meaning. Such, in a para-
ble, is the story of the English novel.

Summary of the Eighteenth Century. The period we are studying is in-
cluded between the English Revolution of 1688 and the beginning of the
French Revolution of 1789. Historically, the period begins in a remarkable
way by the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1689. This famous bill was the
third and final step in the establishment of constitutional government, the first
step being the Great Charter (1215), and the second the Petition of Right
(1628). The modern form of cabinet government was established in the reign
of George I (1714-1727). The foreign prestige of England was strengthened
by the victories of Marlborough on the Continent, in the War of the Spanish
Succession ; and the bounds of empire were enormously increased by Clive
in India, by Cook in Australia and the islands of the Pacific, and by English

1 See p. 315.

358 ENGLISH LITERATURE

victories over the French in Canada and the Mississippi Valley, during the
Seven Years', or French and Indian, Wars. Politically, the country was
divided into Whigs and Tories : the former seeking greater liberty for the
people ; the latter upholding the king against popular government. The con-
tinued strife between these two political parties had a direct (and generally a
harmful) influence on literature, as many of the great writers were used by
the Whig or Tory party to advance its own interests and to satirize its ene-
mies. Notwithstanding this perpetual strife of parties, the age is remarkable
for the rapid social development, which soon expressed itself in literature.
Clubs and coffeehouses multiplied, and the social life of these clubs resulted
in better manners, in a general feeling of toleration, and especially in a kind
of superficial elegance which shows itself in most of the prose and poetry of
the period. On the other hand, the moral standard of the nation was very
low ; bands of rowdies infested the city streets after nightfall ; bribery and
corruption were the rule in politics; and drunkenness was frightfully preva-
lent among all classes. Swift's degraded race of Yahoos is a reflection of the
degradation to be seen in multitudes of London saloons. This low standard
of morals emphasizes the importance of the great Methodist revival under
Whitefield and Wesley, which began in the second quarter of the eighteenth
century.

The literature of the century is remarkably complex, but we may classify it
all under three general heads, the Reign of so-called Classicism, the Revival
of Romantic Poetry, and the Beginning of the Modern Novel. The first half
of the century, especially, is an age of prose, owing largely to the fact that the
practical and social interests of the age demanded expression. Modern news-
papers, like the Chronicle, Post, and Times, and literary magazines, like the
Taller and Spectator, which began in this age, greatly influenced the develop-
ment of a serviceable prose style. The poetry of the first half of the century,
as typified in Pope, was polished, unimaginative, formal ; and the closed coup-
let was in general use, supplanting all other forms of verse. Both prose and
poetry were too frequently satiric, and satire does -not tend to produce a high
type of literature. These tendencies in poetry were modified, in the latter
part of the century, by the revival of romantic poetry.

In our study we have noted: (i) the Augustan or Classic Age ; the mean-
ing of Classicism ; the life and work of Alexander Pope, the greatest poet of
the age ; of Jonathan Swift, the satirist ; of Joseph Addison, the essayist ; of
Richard Steele, who was the original genius of the Toiler and the Spectator ;
of Samuel Johnson, who for nearly half a century was the dictator of English
letters; of James Boswell, who gave us the immortal Life of Johnson ; of
Edmund Burke, the greatest of English orators ; and of Edward Gibbon, the
historian, famous for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

(2) The Revival of Romantic Poetry; the meaning of Romanticism; the
life and work of Thomas Gray ; of Oliver Goldsmith, famous as poet, drama-
tist, and novelist; of William Cowper; of Robert Burns, the greatest of
Scottish poets; of William Blake, the mystic; and the minor poets of the
early romantic movement, James Thomson, William Collins, George Crabbe,

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 359

James Macpherson, author of the Ossian poems, Thomas Chatterton, the boy
who originated the Rowley Papers, and Thomas Percy, whose work for litera-
ture was to collect the old ballads, which he called the Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry, and to translate the stories of Norse mythology in his North-
ern Antiquities.

(3) The First English Novelists ; the meaning and history of the modern
novel; the life and work of Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, who is
hardly to be called a novelist, but whom we placed among the pioneers ; and
the novels of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith.

Selections for Reading. Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English
Prose (Ginn and Company) are two excellent volumes containing selections
from all authors studied. Ward's English Poets (4 vols.), Craik's English
Prose Selections (5 vols.), and Garnett's English Prose from Elizabeth to
Victoria are useful for supplementary reading. All important works should be
read entire, in one of the following inexpensive editions, published for school
use. (For titles and publishers, see General Bibliography at end of this book.)

Pope. Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, edited by Parrott, in Standard
English Classics. Various other school editions of the Essay on Man, and
Rape of the Lock, in Riverside Literature Series, Pocket Classics, etc.;
Pope's Iliad, I, VI, XXII, XXIV, in Standard English Classics, etc. Selec-
tions from Pope, edited by Reed, in Holt's English Readings.

Swift. Gulliver's Travels, school edition by Ginn and Company; also in
Temple Classics, etc. Selections from Swift, edited by Winchester, in Athe-
naeum Press (announced) ; the same, edited by Craik, in Clarendon Press ; the
same, edited by Prescott, in Holt's English Readings. Battle of the Books, in
King's Classics, Bohn's Library, etc.

Addison and Steele. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, in Standard English
Classics, Riverside Literature, etc. ; Selections from Addison, edited by Wen-
dell and Greenough, and Selections from Steele, edited by Carpenter, both in
Athenaeum Press ; various other selections, in Golden Treasury Series, Came-
lot Series, Holt's English Readings, etc.

Johnson. Lives of the Poets, in Cassell's National Library ; Selected Es-
says, edited by G. B. Hill (Dent) ; Selections, in Little Masterpieces Series ;
Rasselas, in Holt's English Readings, and in Morley's Universal Library.

Boswell. Life of Johnson (2 vols.), in Everyman's Library ; the same (3 vols.),
in Library of English Classics ; also in Temple Classics, and Bohn's Library.

Burke. American Taxation, Conciliation with America, Letter to a Noble
Lord, in Standard English Classics ; various speeches, in Pocket Classics,
Riverside Literature Series, etc.; Selections, edited by B. Perry (Holt);
Speeches on America (Heath, etc.).

Gibbon. The Student's Gibbon, abridged (Murray) ; Memoirs, edited by
Emerson, in Athenaeum Press.

Gray. Selections, edited by W. L. Phelps, in Athenaeum Press ; Selections
from Gray and Cowper, in Canterbury Poets, Riverside Literature, etc. ;
Gray's Elegy, in Selections from Five English Poets (Ginn and Company).

360 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Goldsmith. Deserted Village, in Standard English Classics, etc. ; Vicar of
Wakefield, in Standard English Classics, Everyman's Library, King's Classics,
etc. ; She Stoops to Conquer, in Pocket Classics, Belles Lettres Series, etc.

Cowper. Selections, edited by Murray, in Athenaeum Press ; Selections, in
Cassell's National Library, Canterbury Poets, etc. ; The Task, in Temple
Classics.

Burns. Representative Poems, with Carlyle's Essay on Burns, edited by
C. L. Hanson, in Standard English Classics; Selections, in Pocket Classics,
Riverside Literature, etc.

Blake. Poems, edited by W. B. Yeats, in Muses' Library ; Selections, in
Canterbury Poets, etc.

Minor Poets. Thomson, Collins, Crabbe, etc. Selections, in Manly's Eng-
lish Poetry. Thomson's The Seasons, and Castle of Indolence, in Modern
Classics ; the same poems in Clarendon Press, and in Temple Classics ; Selec-
tions from Thomson, in Cassell's National Library. Chatterton's poems, in
Canterbury Poets. Macpherson's Ossian, in Canterbury Poets. Percy's Rel-
iques, in Everyman's Library, Chandos Classics, Bohn's Library, etc. More
recent and reliable collections of popular ballads, for school use, are Gum-
mere's Old English Ballads, in Athenaeum Press ; The Ballad Book, edited by
Allingham, in Goldern Treasury Series ; Gayley and Flaherty's Poetry of the
People (Ginn and Company), etc. See Bibliography on p. 64.

Defoe. Robinson Crusoe, school edition, by Ginn and Company; the same
in Pocket Classics, etc. ; Journal of the Plague Year, edited by Hurlbut (Ginn
and Company) ; the same, in Everyman's Library, etc. ; Essay on Projects,
in Cassell's National Library.

The Novelists. Manly's English Prose ; Craik's English Prose Selections,
vol. 4; Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (see above); Selected Essays of Field-
ing, edited by Gerould, in Athenaeum Press.

Bibliography. 1 History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 280-322; Cheyney,
pp. 516-574. General Works. Greene, ch. 9, sec. 7, to ch. 10, sec. 4; Traill,
Gardiner, Macaulay, etc. Special Works. Lecky's History of England in the
Eighteenth Century, vols. 1-3 ; Morris's The Age of Queen Anne and the
Early Hanoverians (Epochs of Modern History) ; Seeley's The Expansion of
England ; Macaulay's Clive, and Chatham ; Thackeray's The Four Georges,
and the English Humorists ; Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen
Anne ; Susan Hale's Men and Manners of the Eighteenth Century; Sydney's
England and the English in the Eighteenth Century.

Literature. General Works. The Cambridge Literature, Taine, Saintsbury,
etc. Special Works. Perry's English Literature in the Eighteenth Century;
L. Stephen's English Literature in the Eighteenth Century ; Seccombe's The
Age of Johnson ; Dennis's The Age of Pope ; Gosse's History of English
Literature in the Eighteenth Century; Whitwell's Some Eighteenth Century
Men of Letters (Cowper, Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith, Gray, Johnson, and

1 For titles and publishers of general reference works, and of inexpensive texts, see
General Bibliography at end of this book.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 361

Boswell); Johnson's Eighteenth Century Letters and Letter Writers; Williams's
English Letters and Letter Writers of the Eighteenth Century; Minto's
Manual of English Prose Writers; Clark's Study of English Prose Writers;
Bourne's English Newspapers ; J. B. Williams's A History of English Jour-
nalism ; L. Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.

The Romantic Revival. W. L. Phelps's The Beginnings of the English Ro-
mantic Movement ; Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century.

The Novel. Raleigh's The English Novel ; Simonds's An Introduction to
the Study of English Fiction; Cross's The Development of the English
Novel ; Jusserand's The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare ; Stod-
dard's The Evolution of the English Novel; Warren's The History of the
English Novel previous to the Seventeenth Century ; Masson's British Novel-
ists and their Styles; S. Lanier's The English Novel; Hamilton's the Mate-
rials and Methods of Fiction ; Perry's A Study of Prose Fiction.

Pope. Texts : Works, in Globe Edition, edited by A. W. Ward ; in Cam-
bridge Poets, edited by H. W. Boynton; Satires and Epistles, in Clarendon
Press; Letters, in English Letters and Letter Writers of the Eighteenth
Century, edited by H. Williams (Bell). Life : by Courthope ; by L. Stephen
(English Men of Letters Series) ; by Ward, in Globe Edition; by Johnson, in
Lives of the Poets (Cassell's National Library, etc.). Criticism: Essays, by
L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by Lowell, in My Study Windows ; by
De Quincey, in Biographical Essays, and in Essays on the Poets ; by Thack-
eray, in English Humorists ; by Sainte-Beuve, in English Portraits. Warton's
Genius and Writings of Pope (interesting chiefly from the historical view point,
as the first definite and extended attack on Pope's writings).

Swift. Texts; Works, 19 vols., ed. by Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1814-
1824) ; best edition of prose works is edited by T. Scott, with introduction by
Lecky, 12 vols. (Bohn's Library) ; Selections, edited by Winchester (Ginn and
Company); also in Camelot Series, Carisbrooke Library, etc., Journal to
Stella, (Button, also Putnam) ; Letters, in Eighteenth Century Letters and
Letter Writers, ed. by T. B. Johnson. Life : by L. Stephen (English Men of
Letters) ; by Collins ; by Craik ; by J. Forster ; by Macaulay ; by Walter
Scott ; by Johnson, in Lives of the Poets. Criticism : Essays, by Thackeray,
in English Humorists ; by A. Dobson, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes ; by
Masson, in the Three Devils and Other Essays.

Addison. Texts: Works, in Bohn's British Classics; Selections, in Athe-
naeum Press, etc. Life : by Lucy Aiken ; by Courthope (English Men of
Letters) ; by Johnson, in Lives of the Poets. Criticism: Essays, by Macaulay;
by Thackeray.

Steele. Texts : Selections, edited by Carpenter in Athenaeum Press (Ginn
and Company) ; various other Selections published by Putnam, Bangs, in
Camelot Series, etc. ; Plays, edited by Aitken, in Mermaid Series. Life : by
Aitken; by A. Dobson (English Worthies Series). Criticism: Essays by
Thackeray ; by Dobson, in Eighteenth Century Vignettes.

Johnson. Texts: Works, edited by Walesby, n vols. (Oxford, 1825); the
same, edited by G. B. Hill, in Clarendon Press. Essays, edited by G. B. Hill

362 ENGLISH LITERATURE

(Dent) ; the same, in Camelot series ; Rasselas, various school editions, by
Ginn and Company, Holt, etc. ; Selections from Lives of the Poets, with
Macaulay's Life of Johnson, edited by Matthew Arnold (Macmillan). Life :
BoswelFs Life of Johnson, in Everyman's Library, Temple Classics, Library
of English Classics, etc. ; by L. Stephen (English Men of Letters) ; by Grant.
Criticism : G. B. Hill's Dr. Johnson, his Friends and Critics ; Essays, by
L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by Macaulay, Birrell, etc.

Boswell. Texts : Life of Johnson, edited by G. B. Hill (London, 1874) ;
various other editions (see above). Life: by Fitzgerald (London, 1891);
Roger's Boswelliana (London, 1874). Whitfield's Some Eighteenth Century
Men of Letters.

Burke. Texts: Works, I2vols. (Boston, 1871); reprinted, 6 vols., in Bohn's
Library; Selected Works, edited by Payne, in Clarendon Press; On the Sub-
lime and Beautiful, in Temple Classics. For various speeches, see Selections
for Reading, above. Life: by Prior; by Morley (English Men of Letters).
Criticism : Essay, by Birrell, in Obiter Dicta. See also Dowden's French
Revolution and English Literature, and Woodrow Wilson's Mere Literature.

Gibbon. Texts : Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by Bury,
7 vols. (London, 1896-1900) ; various other editions; The Student's Gibbon,
abridged (Murray) ; Memoirs, edited by Emerson, in Athenaeum Press (Ginn
and Company). Life : by Morison (English Men of Letters). Criticism : Essays,
by Birrell, in Collected Essays and Res Judicatae ; by Stephen, in Studies of a
Biographer ; by Robertson, in Pioneer Humanists ; by Frederick Harrison, in
Ruskin and Other Literary Estimates ; by Bagehot, in Literary Studies ; by
Sainte-Beuve, in English Portraits. See also Anton's Masters in History.

Sheridan. Texts: Speeches, 5 vols. (London, 1816); Plays, edited by
W. F. Rae (London, 1902) ; the same, edited by R. Dircks, in Camelot Series ;
Major Dramas, in Athenaeum Press : Plays also in Morley's Universal Library,
Macmillan 's English Classics, etc. Life: by Rae; by M. Oliphant (English
Men of Letters) ; by L. Sanders (Great Writers).

Gray. Texts : W T orks, edited by Gosse (Macmillan) ; Poems, in Routledge's
Pocket Library, Chandos Classics, etc. ; Selections, in Athenaeum Press, etc. ;
Letters, edited by D.C.Tovey(Bohn). Life: by Gosse (English Men of Letters).
Criticism : Essays, by Lowell, in Latest Literary Essays ; by M. Arnold, in
Essays in Criticism ; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by A. Dobson, in
Eighteenth Century Vignettes.

Goldsmith. Texts: edited by Masson, Globe edition; Works, edited by
Aiken and Tuckerman (Crowell) ; the same, edited by A. Dobson (Dent) ;
Morley's Universal Library; Arber's The Goldsmith Anthology (Frowde). See
also Selections for Reading, above. Life : by Washington Irving ; by A. Dobson
(Great Writer's Series); by Black (English Men of Letters); by J. Forster;
by Prior. Criticism : Essays, by Macaulay ; by Thackeray ; by De Quincey ;
by A. Dobson, in Miscellanies.

Cowper. Texts : Works, Globe and Aldine editions ; also in Chandos
Classics ; Selections, in Athenaeum Press, Canterbury Poets, etc. The Corre-
spondence of William Cowper, edited by T. Wright, 4 vols. (Dodd, Mead &

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 363

Company). Life: by Goldwin Smith (English Men of Letters); by Wright;
by Southey. Criticism : Essays, by L. Stephen ; by Bagehot ; by Sainte-
Beuve ; by Birrell ; by Stopford Brooke j by A. Dobson (see above). See
also Woodberry's Makers of Literature.

Burns. Texts: Works, Cambridge Poets Edition (containing Henley's
Study of Burns), Globe and Aldine editions, Clarendon Press, Canterbury
Poets, etc. ; Selections, in Athenaeum Press, etc. ; Letters, in Camelot Series.
Life : by Cunningham; by Henley; by Setoun ; by Blackie (Great Writers) ;
by Shairp (English Men of Letters). Criticism : Essays, by Carlyle ; by R. L.
Stevenson, in Familiar Studies ; by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English Poets ;
by Stopford Brooke, in Theology in the English Poets ; by J. Forster, in
Great Teachers.

Blake. Texts: Poems, Aldine edition; also in Canterbury Poets; Com-
plete Works, edited by Ellis and Yeats (London, 1893); Selections, edited
by W. B. Yeats, in the Muses' Library (Button) ; Letters, with Life by
F. Tatham, edited by A. G. B. Russell (Scribner's, 1896). Life: by Gilchrist;
by Story; by Symons. Criticism: Swinburne's William Blake, a Critical
Study; Ellis's The Real Blake (McClure, 1907); Elizabeth Cary's The Art
of William Blake (Moffat, Yard & Company, 1907). Essay, by A. C. Benson,
in Essays.

Thomson. Texts : Works, Aldine edition ; The Seasons, and Castle of Indo-
lence, in Clarendon Press, etc. Life: by Bayne ; by G. B. Macaulay (English
Men of Letters). Essay, by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English Poets.

Collins. Works, edited by Bronson, in Athenaeum Press ; also in Aldine
edition. Life : by Johnson, in Lives of the Poets. Essay, by Swinburne, in
Miscellanies. See also Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century.

Crabbe. Works, with memoir by his son, G. Crabbe, 8 vols. (London,
1834-1835); Poems, edited by A. W. Ward, 3 vols., in Cambridge English
Classics (Cambridge, 1905) ; Selections, in Temple Classics, Canterbury Poets,
etc. Life : by Kebbel (Great Writers) ; by Ainger (English Men of Letters).
Essays, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Woodberry, in Makers of
Literature ; by Saintsbury, in Essays in English Literature ; by Courthope,
in Ward's English Poets ; by Edward Fitzgerald, in Miscellanies ; by Hazlitt,
in Spirit of the Age.

Macpherson. Texts : Ossian, in Canterbury Poets ; Poems, translated by
Macpherson, edited by Todd (London, 1888). Life and Letters, edited by
Saunders (London, 1894). Criticism: J. S. Smart's James Macpherson (Nutt,
1905). See also Beers's English Romanticism. For relation of Macpherson's
work "to the original Ossian, see Dean of Lismore's Book, edited by Mac-
Lauchlan (Edinburgh, 1862) ; also Poems of Ossian, translated by Clerk
(Edinburgh, 1870).

Chatterton. Works, edited by Skeat (London, 1875) ; Poems, in Canter-
bury Poets. Life : by Russell ; by Wilson ; Masson's Chatterton, a Biography.
Criticism : C. E. Russell's Thomas Chatterton (Moffatt, Yard & Company) ;
Essays, by Watts-Dunton, in Ward's English Poets; by Masson, in Essays
Biographical and Critical. See also Beers's English Romanticism.

364 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Percy. Reliques, edited by Wheatley (London, 1891) ; the same, in Every-
man's Library, Chandos Classics, etc. Essay, by J. W. Hales, Revival of
Ballad Poetry, in Folia Literaria. See also Beers's English Romanticism, etc.
(Special works, above.)

Defoe. Texts : Romances and Narratives, edited by Aitken (Dent) ; Poems
and Pamphlets, in Arber's English Garner, vol. 8 ; school editions of Robinson
Crusoe, and Journal of the Plague Year (Ginn and Company, etc.) ; Captain
Singleton, and Memoirs of a Cavalier, in Everyman's Library ; Early Writings,
in Carisbrooke Library (Routledge). Life : by W. Lee ; by Minto (English
Men of Letters) ; by Wright ; also in Westminster Biographies (Small, May-
nard). Essay, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library.

Richardson. Works: edited by L. Stephen (London, 1883); edited by
Philips, with life (New York, 1901) ; Correspondence, edited by A. Barbauld,
6 vols. (London, 1804). Life: by Thomson ; by A. Dobson. Essays, by L.
Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by A. Dobson, in Eighteenth Century
Vignettes.

Fielding. Works: Temple Edition, edited by Saintsbury (Dent) ; Selected
Essays, in Athenaeum Press ; Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, in Cassell's
National Library. Life : by Dobson (English Men of Letters) ; Lawrence's
Life and Times of Fielding. Essays, by Lowell ; by Thackeray ; by L. Stephen ;
by A. Dobson (see above) ; by G. B. Smith, in Poets and Novelists.

Smollett. Works, edited by Saintsbury (London, 1895) ; Works, edited by
Henley (Scribner). Life : by Hannah (Great Writers) ; by Smeaton ; by Cham-
bers. Essays, by Thackeray ; by Henley ; by Dobson, in Eighteenth Century
Vignettes.

Sterne. Works : edited by Saintsbury (Dent) ; Tristram Shandy, and A
Sentimental Journey, in Temple Classics, Morley's Universal Library, etc.
Life : by Fitzgerald ; by Traill (English Men of Letters) ; Life and Times, by
W. L. Cross (Macmillan). Essays, by Thackeray; by Bagehot, in Literary
Studies.

Horace Walpole. Texts: Castle of Otranto, in King's Classics, Cassell's
National Library, etc. Letters, edited by C. D. Yonge. Morley's Walpole, in
Twelve English Statesmen (Macmillan). Essay, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a
Library. See also Beers's English Romanticism.

Frances Btirney (Madame d'Arblay). Texts : Evelina, in Temple Classics,
2 vols. (Macmillan). Diary and Letters, edited by S. C. Woolsey. Seeley's
Fanny Burney and her Friends. Essay, by Macaulay.

Suggestive Questions, i. Describe briefly the social development of the
eighteenth century. What effect did this have on literature ? What accounts
for the prevalence of prose ? What influence did the first newspapers exert
on life and literature ? How do the readers of this age compare with those of
the Age of Elizabeth ?

2. How do you explain the fact that satire was largely used in both prose
and poetry ? Name the principal satires of the age. What is the chief object
of satire ? of literature ? How do the two objects conflict ?

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 365

3. What is the meaning of the term " classicism," as applied to the litera-
ture of this age ? Did the classicism of Johnson, for instance, have any relation
to classic literature in its true sense ? Why is this period called the Augustan
Age ? Why was Shakespeare not regarded by this age as a classical writer?

4. Pope. In what respect is Pope a unique writer ? Tell briefly the story of
his life. What are his principal works ? How does he reflect the critical spirit
of his age ? What are the chief characteristics of his poetry ? What do you
find to copy in his style ? What is lacking in his poetry ? Compare his sub-
jects with those of Burns or Tennyson or Milton, for instance. How would
Chaucer or Burns tell the story of the Rape of the Lock ? What similarity do
you find between Pope's poetry and Addison's prose ?

5. Swift. What is the general character of Swift's work ? Name his chief
satires. What is there to copy in his style ? Does he ever strive for ornament
or effect in writing ? Compare Swift's Gulliver's Travels with Defoe's Robin-
son Crusoe, in style, purpose of writing, and interest. What resemblances do
you find in these two contemporary writers ? Can you explain the continued
popularity of Gulliver* s Travels ?

6. Addison and Steele. What great work did Addison and Steele do for
literature ? Make a brief comparison between these two men, having in mind
their purpose, humor, knowledge of life, and human sympathy, as shown, for
instance, in No. 112 and No. 2 of the Spectator Essays. Compare their humor
with that of Swift. How is their work a preparation for the novel ?

7. Johnson. For what is Dr. Johnson famous in literature ? Can you ex-
plain his great influence ? Compare his style with that of Swift or Defoe. What
are the remarkable elements in Boswell's Life of Johnson ? Write a description
of an imaginary meeting of Johnson, Goldsmith, and Boswell in a coffeehouse.

8. Burke. For what is Burke remarkable ? What great objects influenced
him in the three periods of his life? Why has he been called a romantic poet
who speaks in prose ? Compare his use of imagery with that of other writers
of the period. What is there to copy and what is there to avoid in his style ?
Can you trace the influence of Burke's American speeches on later English
politics ? What similarities do you find between Burke and Milton, as revealed
in their prose works ?

9. Gibbon. For what is Gibbon " worthy to be remembered " ? Why does
he mark an epoch in historical writing ? What is meant by the scientific
method of writing history ? Compare Gibbon's style with that of Johnson.
Contrast it with that of Swift, and also with that of some modern historian,
Parkman, for example.

10. What is meant by the term " romanticism ? " What are its chief charac-
teristics ? How does it differ from classicism ? Illustrate the meaning from
the work of Gray, Cowper, or Burns. Can you explain the prevalence of
melancholy in romanticism ?

n. Gray. What are the chief works of Gray? Can you explain the con-
tinued popularity of his " Elegy " ? What romantrc elements are found in his
poetry ? What resemblances and what differences do you find in the works of
Gray and of Goldsmith ?

366 ENGLISH LITERATURE

12. Goldsmith. Tell the story of Goldsmith's life. What are his chief
works ? Show from The Deserted Village the romantic and the so-called clas-
sic elements in his work. What great work did he do for the early novel, in
The Vicar of Wakefield? Can you explain the popularity of She Stoops to Con-
quer? Name some of Goldsmith's characters who have found a permanent
place in our literature. What personal reminiscences have you noted in The
Traveller, The Deserted Village, and She Stoops to Conquer ?

13. Cowper. Describe Cowper's The Task. How does it show the romantic
spirit ? Give passages from " John Gilpin " to illustrate Cowper's humor.

14. Burns. Tell the story of Burns's life. Some one has said, "The meas-
ure of a man's sin is the difference between what he is and what he might be."
Comment upon this, with reference to Burns. What is the general character
of his poetry? Why is he called the poet of common men? What subjects
does he choose for his poetry ? Compare him, in this respect, with Pope.
What elements in the poet's character are revealed in such poems as " To a
Mouse " and " To a Mountain Daisy " ? How do Burns and Gray regard
nature ? What poems show his sympathy with the French Revolution, and
with democracy ? Read " The Cotter's Saturday Night," and explain its en-
during interest. Can you explain the secret of Burns's great popularity ?

15. Blake. What are the characteristics of Blake's poetry? Can you ex-
plain why Blake, though the greatest poetic genius of the age, is so little
appreciated ?

16. Percy. In what respect did Percy's Reliques influence the romantic
movement ? What are the defects in his collection of ballads ? Can you ex-
plain why such a crude poem as " Chevy Chase " should be popular with an
age that delighted in Pope's " Essay on Man " ?

17. Macpherson. What is meant by Macpherson's " Ossian " ? Can you
account for the remarkable success of the Ossianic forgeries ?

1 8. Chatterton. Tell the story of Chatterton and the Rowley Poems. Read
Chatterton's " Bristowe Tragedie," and compare it, in style and interest, with
the old ballads, like " The Battle of Otterburn " or " The Hunting of the
Cheviot" (all in Manly's English Poetry}.

19. The First Novelists. What is meant by the modern novel ? How does
it differ from the early romance and from the adventure story? What are
some of the precursors of the novel ? What was the purpose of stories mod-
eled after Don Quixote ? What is the significance of Pamela ? What elements
did Fielding add to the novel ? What good work did Goldsmith's Vicar of
Wakefield accomplish ? Compare Goldsmith, in this respect, with Steele and
Addison.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

367

CHRONOLOGY

End of Seventeenth and the Eighteenth Century

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1689. William and Mary

Bill of Rights. Toleration Act

1 700 (?) Beginning of London clubs
1702. Anne (d. 1714)

War of Spanish Succession

1704. Battle of Blenheim

1 707. Union of England and Scotland

1714. George I (d. 1727)

1721. Cabinet government, Walpole
first prime minister

1727. George II (d. 1760)
1738. Rise of Methodism
1740. War of Austrian Succession
1746. Jacobite Rebellion

1750-1757. Conquest of India

1756. War with France

1759. Wolf at Quebec

1760. George III (d. 1820)

1765. Stamp Act

1683-1719. Defoe's early writings

1695. Press made free

1702. First daily newspaper
1704. Addison's The Campaign
Swift's Tale of a Tub

1709. The Tatler

Johnson born (d. 1784)
1710-1713. Swift in London. Journal
to Stella

1711. The Spectator

1712. Pope's Rape of the Lock

1719. Robinson Crusoe

1726. Gulliver's Travels
1726-1730. Thomson's The Seasons

1732-1734. Essay on Man
1740. Richardson's Pamela
1742. Fielding's Joseph Andrews

1749. Fielding's Tom Jones
1750-1752. Johnson's The Rambler
1751. Gray's Elegy
1755. Johnson's Dictionary

1760-1767. Sterne's Tristram Shandy

1764. Johnson's Literary Club

1765. Percy's Reliques

1 766. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield

368

ENGLISH LITERATURE

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1773. Boston Tea Party

1774. Howard's prison reforms

1775. American Revolution

1776. Declaration of Independence

1783. Treaty of Paris

1786. Trial of Warren Hastings

1789-1799. French Revolution

1793. War with France

1770. Goldsmith's Deserted Village

1771. Beginning of great newspapers

1774-1775. Burke's American speeches
1776-1788. Gibbon's Rome
1779. Cowper's Olney Hymns
1779-81. Johnson's Lives of the Poets
1783. Blake's Poetical Sketches

1785. Cowper's The Task
The London Times

1 786. Burns's first poems (the Kilmar-

nock Burns)
Burke's Warren Hastings

1790. Burke's French Revolution

1791. Boswell's Life of Johnson

CHAPTER X

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM (1800-1850)

THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE

The first half of the nineteenth century records the triumph
of Romanticism in literature and of democracy in govern-
ment ; and the two movements are so closely associated, in
so many nations and in so many periods of history, that one
must wonder if there be not some relation of cause and effect
between them Just as we understand the tremendous ener-
gizing influence of Puritanism in the matter of English liberty
by remembering that the common people had begun to read,
and that their book was the Bible, so we may understand this
age of popular government by remembering that the chief
subject of romantic literature was the essential nobleness of
common men and the value of the individual. As we read
now that brief portion of history which lies between the
Declaration of Independence (1776) and the English Reform
Bill of 1832, we are in the presence of such mighty political
upheavals that "the age of revolution" is the only name by
which we can adequately characterize it. Its great historic
movements become intelligible only when we read what was
written in this period ; for the French Revolution and the
American commonwealth, as well as the establishment of a
true democracy in England by the Reform Bill, were the
inevitable results of ideas which literature had spread rapidly
through the civilized world. Liberty is fundamentally an
ideal ; and that ideal beautiful, inspiring, compelling, as a
loved banner in the wind was kept steadily before men's
minds by a multitude of books and pamphlets as far apart as

369

37P ENGLISH LITERATURE

Burns's Poems and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, all read
eagerly by the common people, all proclaiming the dignity of
common life, and all uttering the same passionate cry against
every form of class or caste oppression.

First the dream, the ideal in some human soul ; then the
written word which proclaims it, and impresses other minds
with its truth and beauty ; then the united and determined
effort of men to make the dream a reality, that seems to
be a fair estimate of the part that literature plays, even in our
political progress.

Historical Summary. The period we are considering begins in the
latter half of the reign of George III and ends with the accession of
Victoria in 1837. When on a foggy morning in November, 1783,
King George entered the House of Lords and in a trembling voice
recognized the independence of the United States of America, he
unconsciously proclaimed the triumph of that free government by
free men which had been the ideal of English literature for more
than a thousand years ; though it was not till 1832, when the Reform
Bill became the law of the land, that England herself learned the
lesson taught her by America, and became the democracy of which
her writers had always dreamed.

The half century between these two events is one of great turmoil,
yet of steady advance in every department of English life. The
The French storm center of the political unrest was the French
Revolution Revolution, that frightful uprising which proclaimed the
natural rights of man and the abolition of class distinctions. Its
effect on the whole civilized world is beyond computation. Patriotic
clubs and societies multiplied in England, all asserting the doc-
trine of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the watchwords of the Revo-
lution. Young England, led by Pitt the younger, hailed the new
French republic and offered it friendship ; old England, which par-
dons no revolutions but her own, looked with horror on the turmoil
in France and, misled by Burke and the nobles of the realm, forced
the two nations into war. Even Pitt saw a blessing in this at first ;
because the sudden zeal for fighting a foreign nation which by
some horrible perversion is generally called patriotism might turn
men's thoughts from their own to their neighbors' affairs, and so pre-
vent a threatened revolution at home.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 3/1

The causes of this threatened revolution were not political but
economic. By her inventions in steel and machinery, and by her
Economic monopoly of the carrying trade, England had become
Conditions " the workshop of the world." Her wealth had increased
beyond her wildest dreams; but the unequal distribution of that
wealth was a spectacle to make angels weep. The invention of
machinery at first threw thousands of skilled hand workers out of
employment ; in order to protect a few agriculturists, heavy duties
were imposed on corn and wheat, and bread rose to famine prices
just when laboring men had the least money to pay for it. There
followed a curious spectacle. While England increased in wealth,
and spent vast sums to support her army and subsidize her allies in
Europe, and while nobles, landowners, manufacturers, and merchants
lived in increasing luxury, a multitude of skilled laborers were clam-
oring for work. Fathers sent their wives and little children into the
mines and factories, where sixteen hours' labor would hardly pay for
the daily bread ; and in every large city were riotous mobs made up
chiefly of hungry men and women. It was this unbearable economic
condition, and not any political theory, as Burke supposed, which
occasioned the danger of another English revolution.

It is only when we remember these conditions that we can under-
stand two books, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Thomas
Paine's Rights of Man, which can hardly be considered as literature,
but which exercised an enormous influence in England. Smith was
a Scottish thinker, who wrote to uphold the doctrine that labor is
the only source of a nation's wealth, and that any attempt to force
labor into unnatural channels, or to prevent it by protective duties
from freely obtaining the raw materials for its industry, is unjust and
destructive. Paine was a curious combination of Jekyll and Hyde,
shallow and untrustworthy personally, but with a passionate devotion
to popular liberty. His Rights of Man, published in London in
1791, was like one of Burns's lyric outcries against institutions which
oppressed humanity. Coming so soon after the destruction of the
Bastille, it added fuel to the flames kindled in England by the
French Revolution. The author was driven out of the country, on
the curious ground that he endangered the English constitution, but
not until his book had gained a wide sale and influence.

All these dangers, real and imaginary, passed away when England
turned from the affairs of France to remedy her own economic con-
ditions. The long Continental war came to an end with Napoleon's

3/2 ENGLISH LITERATURE

overthrow at Waterloo, in 1815 ; and England, having gained enor-
mously in prestige abroad, now turned to the work of reform at
home. The destruction of the African slave trade ; the
mitigation of horribly unjust laws, which included poor
debtors and petty criminals in the same class ; the prevention of
child labor; the freedom of the press; the extension of manhood
suffrage ; the abolition of restrictions against Catholics in Parliament ;
the establishment of hundreds of popular schools, under the leader-
ship of Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, these are but a few of
the reforms which mark the progress of civilization in a single half
century. When England, in 1833, proclaimed the emancipation of
all slaves in all her colonies, she unconsciously proclaimed her final
emancipation from barbarism.

Literary Characteristics of the Age. It is intensely inter-
esting to note how literature at first reflected the political
turmoil of the age ; and then, when the turmoil was over and
England began her mighty work of reform, how literature
suddenly developed a new creative spirit, which shows itself
in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley,
Keats, and in the prose of Scott, Jane Austen, Lamb, and
De Quincey, a wonderful group of writers, whose patriotic
enthusiasm suggests the Elizabethan days, and whose genius
has caused their age to be known as the second creative
period of our literature. Thus in the early days, when old
institutions seemed crumbling with the Bastille, Coleridge and
Southey formed their youthful scheme of a " Pantisocracy on
Romantic tne banks of the Susquehanna," - an ideal corn-
Enthusiasm monwealth, in which the principles of More's Utopia
should be put in practice. Even Wordsworth, fired with po-
litical enthusiasm, could write,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.

The essence of Romanticism was, it must be remembered, that
literature must reflect all that is spontaneous and unaffected
in nature and in man, and be free to follow its own fancy in
its own way. We have already noted this characteristic in the

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 373

work of the Elizabethan dramatists, who followed their own
genius in opposition to all the laws of the critics. In Coleridge
we see this independence expressed in " Kubla Khan" and
"The Ancient Mariner," two dream pictures, one of the popu-
lous Orient, the other of the lonely sea. In Wordsworth this
literary independence led him inward to the heart of common
things. Following his own instinct, as Shakespeare does, he too

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

And so, more than any other writer of the age, he invests the
common life of nature, and the souls of common men and
women, with glorious significance. These two poets, Coleridge
and Wordsworth, best represent the romantic genius of the
age in which they lived, though Scott had a greater literary
reputation, and Byron and Shelley had larger audiences.

The second characteristic of this age is that it is emphatic-
ally an age of poetry. The previous century, with its practical
An Age of outlook on life, was largely one of prose ; but now,
Poetry as j n the Elizabethan Age, the young enthusiasts

turned as naturally to poetry as a happy man to singing. The
glory of the age is in the poetry of Scott, Wordsworth, Coler-
idge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Moore, and Southey. Of its prose
works, those of Scott alone have attained a very wide reading,
though the essays of Charles Lamb and the novels of Jane
Austen have slowly won for their authors a secure place in
the history of our literature. Coleridge and Southey (who
with Wordsworth form the trio of so-called Lake Poets) wrote
far more prose than poetry ; and Southey 's prose is much
better than his verse. It was characteristic of the spirit of
this age, so different from our own, that Southey could say
that, in order to earn money, he wrote in verse " what would
otherwise have been better written in prose."

It was during this period that woman assumed, for the first
time, an important place in our literature. Probably the chief

374 ENGLISH LITERATURE

reason for this interesting phenomenon lies in the fact that
woman was for the first time given some slight chance of
Women as education, of entering into the intellectual life of
Novelists the race j an fi f as j s always the case when woman is
given anything like a fair opportunity, she responded magnifi-
cently. A secondary reason may be found in the nature of
the age itself, which was intensely emotional. The French
Revolution stirred all Europe to its depths, and during the
following half century every great movement in literature, as
in politics and religion, was characterized by strong emotion ;
which is all the more noticeable by contrast with the cold,
formal, satiric spirit of the early eighteenth century. As
woman is naturally more emotional than man, it may well be
that the spirit of this emotional age attracted her, and gave
her the opportunity to express herself in literature.

As all strong emotions tend to extremes, the age produced
a new type of novel which seems rather hysterical now, but
which in its own day delighted multitudes of readers whose
nerves were somewhat excited, and who reveled in " bogey "
stories of supernatural terror. Mrs. Anne Radcliffe (1764-
1823) was one of the most successful writers of this school
of exaggerated romance. Her novels, with their azure-eyed
heroines, haunted castles, trapdoors, bandits, abductions, res-
cues in the nick of time, and a general medley of overwrought
joys and horrors, 1 were immensely popular, not only with the

1 Mrs. Radcliffe's best work is the Mysteries of Udolpho. This is the story of a tender
heroine shut up in a gloomy castle. Over her broods the terrible shadow of an ancestor's
crime. There are the usual "goose-flesh" accompaniments of haunted rooms, secret
doors, sliding panels, mysterious figures behind old pictures, and a subterranean passage
leading to a vault, dark and creepy as a tomb. Here the heroine finds a chest with
blood-stained papers. By the light of a flickering candle she reads, with chills and
shivering, the record of long-buried crimes. At the psychologic moment the little candle
suddenly goes out. Then out of the darkness a cold, clammy hand ugh! Foolish
as such stories seem to us now, they show, first, a wild reaction from the skepticism of
ths preceding age ; and second, a development of the mediaeval romance of adventure ;
only the adventure is here inward rather than outward. It faces a ghost instead of a
dragon ; and for this work a nun with her beads is better than a knight in armor. So
heroines abound, instead of heroes. The age was too educated for mediaeval monsters
and magic, but not educated enough to reject ghosts and other bogeys.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 375

crowd of novel readers, but also with men of unquestioned
literary genius, like Scott and Byron.

In marked contrast to these extravagant stories is the
enduring work of Jane Austen, with her charming descrip-
tions of everyday life, and of Maria Edgeworth, whose won-
derful pictures of Irish life suggested to Walter Scott the
idea of writing his Scottish romances. Two other women who
attained a more or less lasting fame were Hannah More, poet,
dramatist, and novelist, and Jane Porter, whose Scottish Chiefs
and Thaddeus of Warsaw are still in demand in our libraries.
Beside these were Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay) and
several other writers whose works, in the early part of the
nineteenth century, raised woman to the high place in liter-
ature which she has ever since maintained.

In this age literary criticism became firmly established by
the appearance of such magazines as the Edinburgh Review
The Modern (1802), The Quarterly Review (1808), Blackwood's
Magazines Magazine (1817), the Westminster Review ( 1 824),
The Spectator (1828), The Athenceum (1828), and Fraser's
Magazine (1830). These magazines, edited by such men as
Francis Jeffrey, John Wilson (who is known to us as Chris-
topher North), and John Gibson Lockhart, who gave us the
Life of Scott, exercised an immense influence on all subse-
quent literature. At first their criticisms were largely de-
structive, as when Jeffrey hammered Scott, Wordsworth, and
Byron most unmercifully ; and Lockhart could find no good
in either Keats or Tennyson ; but with added wisdom, criti-
cism assumed its true function of construction. And when
these magazines began to seek and to publish the works of
unknown writers, like Hazlitt, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, they
discovered the chief mission of the modern magazine, which
is to give every writer of ability the opportunity to make his
work known to the world.

376

ENGLISH LITERATURE

I. THE POETS OF ROMANTICISM
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

It was in 1797 that the new romantic movement in our
literature assumed definite form. Wordsworth and Coleridge
retired to the Quantock Hills, Somerset, and there formed
the deliberate purpose to make literature " adapted to interest

mankind permanently/'
which, they declared,
classic poetry could
never do. Helping the
two poets was Words-
worth's sister Dorothy,
with a woman's love for
flowers and all beautiful
things, and a woman's
divine sympathy for
human life even in its
lowliest forms. Though
a silent partner, she
furnished perhaps the
largest share of the in-
spiration which resulted
in the famous Lyrical
Ballads of 1 798. In their partnership Coleridge was to take up
the " supernatural, or at least romantic " ; while Wordsworth
was " to give the charm of novelty to things of every day . . .
by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom
and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world
before us." The whole spirit of their work is reflected in two
poems of this remarkable little volume, " The Rime of the An-
cient Mariner," which is Coleridge's masterpiece, and "Lines
Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," which expresses
Wordsworth's poetical creed, and which is one of the noblest
and most significant of our poems. That the Lyrical Ballads

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 377

attracted no attention, 1 and was practically ignored by a
public that would soon go into raptures over Byron's Childe
Harold and Don Juan, is of small consequence. Many men
will hurry a mile to see skyrockets, who never notice Orion
and the Pleiades from their own doorstep. Had Wordsworth
and Coleridge written only this one little book, they would
still be among the representative writers of an age that pro-
claimed the final triumph of Romanticism.

Life of Wordsworth. To understand the life of him who, in
Tennyson's words, "uttered nothing base," it is well to read first
The Prelude ', which records the impressions made upon Wordsworth's
mind from his earliest recollection until his full manhood, in 1805,
when the poem was completed. 2 Outwardly his long and uneventful
life divides itself naturally into four periods : (i) his childhood and
youth, in the Cumberland Hills, from 1770 to 1787; (2) a period
of uncertainty, of storm and stress, including his university life at
Cambridge, his travels abroad, and his revolutionary experience,
from 1787 to 1797; (3) a short but significant period of finding
himself and his work, from 1797 to 1799; (4) along period of
retirement in the northern lake region, where he was born, and
where for a full half century he lived so close to nature that her
influence is reflected in all his poetry. When one has outlined these
four periods he has told almost all that can be told of a life which
is marked, not by events, but largely by spiritual experiences.

Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland, where

the Derwent,

Fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams.

It is almost a shock to one who knows Wordsworth only by his calm
and noble poetry to read that he was of a moody and violent temper,
and that his mother despaired of him alone among her five children.
She died when he was but eight years old, but not till she had

1 The Lyrical Ballads were better appreciated in America than in England. The
first edition was printed here in 1802.

2 The Prelude was not published till after Wordsworth's death, nearly half a century
later.

378 ENGLISH LITERATURE

exerted an influence which lasted all his life, so that he could re-
member her as " the heart of all our learnings and our loves." The
father died some six years later, and the orphan was taken in charge
by relatives, who sent him to school at Hawkshead, in the beautiful
lake region. Here, apparently, the unroofed school of nature
attracted him more than the discipline of the classics, and he
learned more eagerly from flowers and hills and stars than from his
books ; but one must read Wordsworth's own record, in The Prelude,
to appreciate this. Three things in this poem must impress even
the casual reader : first, Wordsworth loves to be alone, and is never
lonely, with nature ; second, like every other child who spends much
time alone in the woods and fields, he feels the presence of some
living spirit, real though unseen, and companionable though silent ;
third, his impressions are exactly like our own, and delightfully
familiar. When he tells of the long summer day spent in swimming,
basking in the sun, and questing over the hills; or of the winter
night when, on his skates, he chased the reflection of a star in the
black ice ; or of his exploring the lake in a boat, and getting sud-
denly frightened when the world grew big and strange, in all this
he is simply recalling a multitude of our own vague, happy memo-
ries of childhood. He goes out into the woods at night to tend his
woodcock snares ; he runs across another boy's snares, follows them,
finds a woodcock caught, takes it, hurries away through the night.

And then,

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathings coming after me, and sounds

Of undistinguishable motion.

That is like a mental photograph. Any boy who has come home
through the woods at night will recognize it instantly. Again he tells
us of going bird's-nesting on the cliffs :

Oh, when I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill-sustained, and almost (so it seemed)
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time,
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ear ! The sky seemed not a sky
Of earth, and with what motion moved the clouds !

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 379

No man can read such records without rinding his own boyhood again,
and his own abounding joy of life, in the poet's early impressions.

The second period of Wordsworth's life begins with his university
course at Cambridge, in 1787. In the third book of The Prelude we
find a dispassionate account of student life, with its trivial occupa-
tions, its pleasures and general aimlessness. Wordsworth proved to
be a very ordinary scholar, following his own genius rather than the
curriculum, and looking forward more eagerly to his vacation among
the hills than to his examinations. Perhaps the most interesting
thing in his life at Cambridge was his fellowship with the young
political enthusiasts, whose spirit is expressed in his remarkable
poem on the French Revolution, a poem which is better than a
volume of history to show the hopes and ambitions that stirred all
Europe in the first days of that mighty upheaval. Wordsworth made
two trips to France, in 1790 and 1791, seeing things chiefly through
the rosy spectacles of the young Oxford Republicans. On his second
visit he joined the Girondists, or the moderate Republicans, and
only the decision of his relatives, who cut off his allowance and
hurried him back to England, prevented his going headlong to the
guillotine with the leaders of his party. Two things rapidly cooled
Wordsworth's revolutionary enthusiasm, and ended the only dramatic
interest of his placid life. One was the excesses of the Revolution
itself, and especially the execution of Louis XVI ; the other was the
rise of Napoleon, and the slavish adulation accorded by France to
this most vulgar and dangerous of tyrants. His coolness soon grew to
disgust and opposition, as shown by his subsequent poems ; and this
brought upon him the censure of Shelley, Byron, and other extrem-
ists, though it gained the friendship of Scott, who from the first had no
sympathy with the Revolution or with the young English enthusiasts.

Of the decisive period of Wordsworth's life, when he was living
with his sister Dorothy and with Coleridge at Alfoxden, we have
already spoken. The importance of this decision to give himself to
poetry is evident when we remember that, at thirty years of age, he
was without money or any definite aim or occupation in life. He
considered the law, but confessed he had no sympathy for its con-
tradictory precepts and practices; he considered the ministry, but
though strongly inclined to the Church, he felt himself not good
enough for the sacred office ; once he had wanted to be a soldier
and serve his country, but had wavered at the prospect of dying of
disease in a foreign land and throwing away his life without glory or

382 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Wordsworth set himself to the task of freeing poetry from all
its " conceits," of speaking the language of simple truth, and
of portraying man and nature as they are ; and in this good
work we are apt to miss the beauty, the passion, the intensity,
that hide themselves under his simplest lines. The second
difficulty is in the poet, not in the reader. It must be con-
fessed that Wordsworth is not always melodious ; that he is
seldom graceful, and only occasionally inspired. When he is
inspired, few poets can be compared with him ; at other times
the bulk of his verse is so wooden and prosy that we wonder
how a poet could have written it. Moreover, he is absolutely
without humor, and so he often fails to see the small step
that separates the sublime from the ridiculous. In no other
way can we explain "The Idiot Boy," or pardon the serious
absurdity of " Peter Bell " and his grieving jackass.

On account of these difficulties it is well to avoid at first
the longer works and begin with a good book of selections. 1
Poems of When we read these exquisite shorter poems, with
Nature their noble lines that live forever in our memory,
we realize that Wordsworth is the greatest poet of nature
that our literature has produced. If we go further, and study
the poems that impress us, we shall find four remarkable
characteristics : (i) Wordsworth is sensitive as a barometer
to every subtle change in the world about him. In The Pre-
lude he compares himself to an seolian harp, which answers
with harmony to every touch of the wind ; and the figure is
strikingly accurate, as well as interesting, for there is hardly
a sight or a sound, from a violet to a mountain and from a
bird note to the thunder of the cataract, that is not reflected
in some beautiful way in Wordsworth's poetry.

(2) Of all the poets who have written of nature there is
none that compares with him in the truthfulness of his repre-
sentation. Burns, like Gray, is apt to read his own emotions

1 Dowden's Selections from Wordsworth is the best of many such collections. See
Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the end of this chapter.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM

381

had ever produced. On the death of Southey (1843) he was made
poet laureate, against his own inclination. The late excessive praise
left him quite as unmoved as the first excessive neglect. The steady
decline in the quality of his work is due not, as might be expected,
to self-satisfaction at success, but rather to his intense conserva-
tism, to his living too much alone and failing to test his work by the
standards and judgment of other literary men. He died tranquilly in
1850, at the age of
eighty years, and was
buried in the church-
yard at Grasmere.

Such is the brief
outward record of the
world's greatest in-
terpreter of nature's
message; and only
one who is acquainted
with both nature and
the poet can realize
how inadequate is
any biography ; for
the best thing about
Wordsworth must always remain unsaid. It is a comfort to know
that his life, noble, sincere, " heroically happy," never contradicted
his message. Poetry was his life ; his soul was in all his work ; and
only by reading what he has written can we understand the man.

The Poetry of Wordsworth. There is often a sense of dis-
appointment when one reads Wordsworth for the first time ;
and this leads us to speak first of two difficulties which may
easily prevent a just appreciation of the poet's worth. The
first difficulty is in the reader, who is often puzzled by Words-
worth's absolute simplicity. We are so used to stage effects
in poetry, that beauty unadorned is apt to escape our notice,
like Wordsworth's u Lucy":

A violet by a mossy stone,

Half hidden from the eye ;
Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

WORDSWORTH'S HOME AT RYDAL MOUNT

3^2 ENGLISH LITERATURE

(2) Of all the poets who have written of nature there is
none that compares with him in the truthfulness of his repre-
sentation. Burns, like Gray, is apt to read his own emotions

1 Dowden's Selections from Words-worth is the best of many such collections. See
Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the end of this chapter.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 383

into natural objects, so that there is more of the poet than of
nature even in his mouse and mountain daisy ; but Words-
worth gives you the bird and the flower, the wind and the
tree and the river, just as they are, and is content to let them
speak their own message.

(3) No other poet ever found such abundant beauty in the
common world. He had not only sight, but insight, that is, he
not only sees clearly and describes accurately, but penetrates
to the heart of things and always finds some exquisite meaning
that is not written on the surface. It is idle to specify or to
quote lines on flowers or stars, on snow or vapor. Nothing is
ugly or commonplace in his world ; on the contrary, there
is hardly one natural phenomenon which he has not glorified
by pointing out some beauty that was hidden from our eyes.

(4) It is the life of nature which is everywhere recognized ;
not mere growth and cell changes, but sentient, personal
life ; and the recognition of this personality in nature charac-
terizes all the world's great poetry. In his childhood Words-
worth regarded natural objects, the streams, the hills, the
flowers, even the winds, as his companions ; and with his
mature belief that all nature is the reflection of the living
God, it was inevitable that his poetry should thrill with the
sense of a Spirit that "rolls through all things." Cowper,
Burns, Keats, Tennyson, all these poets give you the out-
ward aspects of nature in varying degrees ; but Wordsworth
gives you her very life, and the impression of some personal
living spirit that meets and accompanies the man who goes
alone through the woods and fields. We shall hardly find,
even in the philosophy of Leibnitz, or in the nature myths of
our Indians, any such impression of living nature as this poet
awakens in us. And that suggests another delightful charac-
teristic of Wordsworth's poetry, namely, that he seems to
awaken rather than create an impression ; he stirs our mem-
ory deeply, so that in reading him we live once more in the
vague, beautiful wonderland of our own childhood.

384 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Such is the philosophy of Wordsworth's nature poetry. If
we search now for his philosophy of human life, we shall find
Poems of HU- f ur more doctrines, which rest upon his basal con-
man Life ception that man is not apart from nature, but is
the very "life of her life." (i) In childhood man is sensitive
as a wind harp to all natural influences ; he is an epitome of
the gladness and beauty of the world. Wordsworth explains
this gladness and this sensitiveness to nature by the doctrine
that the child comes straight from the Creator of nature :

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness

And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home.

In this exquisite ode, which he calls " Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807), Wordsworth
sums up his philosophy of childhood ; and he may possibly
be indebted here to the poet Vaughan, who, more than a
century before, had proclaimed in " The Retreat " the same
doctrine. This kinship with nature and with God, which
glorifies childhood, ought to extend through a man's whole
life and ennoble it. This is the teaching of " Tintern Abbey,"
in which the best part of our life is shown to be the result of
natural influences. According to Wordsworth, society and
the crowded unnatural life of cities tend to weaken and per-
vert humanity ; and a return to natural and simple living is
the only remedy for human wretchedness.

(2) The natural instincts and pleasures of childhood are the
true standards of a man's happiness in this life. All artificial
pleasures soon grow tiresome. The natural pleasures, which
a man so easily neglects in his work, are the chief means by
which we may expect permanent and increasing joy. In
"Tintern Abbey," "The Rainbow," "Ode to Duty," and

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 385

" Intimations of Immortality " we see this plain teaching ;
but we can hardly read one of Wordsworth's pages without
finding it slipped in unobtrusively, like the fragrance of a
wild flower.

(3) The truth of humanity, that is, the common life which
labors and loves and shares the general heritage of smiles
and tears, is the only subject of permanent literary interest.
Burns and the early poets of the Revival began the good work
of showing the romantic interest of common life ; and Words-
worth continued it in "Michael," "The Solitary Reaper,"
"To a Highland Girl," "Stepping Westward," The Excur-
sion, and a score of lesser poems. Joy and sorrow, not of
princes or heroes, but "in widest commonalty spread," are
his themes ; and the hidden purpose of many of his poems is
to show that the keynote of all life is happiness, not an
occasional thing, the result of chance or circumstance, but a
heroic thing, to be won, as one would win any other success,
by work and patience.

(4) To this natural philosophy of man Wordsworth adds a
mystic element, the result of his own belief that in every
natural object there is a reflection of the living God. Nature
is everywhere transfused and illumined by Spirit ; man also
is a reflection of the divine Spirit ; and we shall never under-
stand the emotions roused by a flower or a sunset until we
learn that nature appeals through the eye of man to his inner
spirit. In a word, nature must be "spiritually discerned." In
"Tintern Abbey" the spiritual appeal of nature is expressed
in almost every line ; but the mystic conception of man is
seen more clearly in "Intimations of Immortality," which
Emerson calls "the high-water mark of poetry in the nine-
teenth century." In this last splendid ode Wordsworth adds
to his spiritual interpretation of nature and man the alluring
doctrine of preexistence, which has appealed so powerfully to
Hindoo and Greek in turn, and which makes of human life a
continuous, immortal thing, without end or beginning.

386 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Wordsworth's longer poems, since they contain much that
is prosy and uninteresting, may well be left till after we have
read the odes, sonnets, and short descriptive poems
that have made him famous. As showing a certain
heroic cast of Wordsworth's mind, it is interesting to learn
that the greater part of his work, including The Prelude and
The Excursion, was intended for a place in a single great
poem, to be called The Recluse, which should treat of nature,
man, and society. The Prelude, treating of the growth of a
poet's mind, was to introduce the work. The Home at Gras-
mere, which is the first book of The Recluse, was not published
till 1888, long after the poet's death. The Excursion (1814)
is the second book of The Recluse ; and the third was never
completed, though Wordsworth intended to include most of
his shorter poems in this third part, and so make an immense
personal epic of a poet's life and work. It is perhaps just as
well that the work remained unfinished. The best of his work
appeared in the Lyrical Ballads (1798) and in the sonnets,
odes, and lyrics of the next ten years ; though " The Duddon
Sonnets" (1820), "To a Skylark" (1825), and "Yarrow Re-
visited" (1831) show that he retained till past sixty much of
his youthful enthusiasm. In his later years, however, he per-
haps wrote too much ; his poetry, like his prose, becomes dull
and unimaginative ; and we miss the flashes of insight, the
tender memories of childhood, and the recurrence of noble
lines each one a poem that constitutes the surprise and
the delight of reading Wordsworth.

The outward shows of sky and earth,

Of hill and valley, he has viewed j
And impulses of deeper birth

Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart

The harvest of a quiet eye

That broods and sleeps on his own heart

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 387

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,

In word, or sigh, or tear.

In the wonderful " Ode to Dejection," from which the
above fragment is taken, we have a single strong impression
of Coleridge's whole life, a sad, broken, tragic life, in marked
contrast with the peaceful existence of his friend Wordsworth.
For himself, during the greater part of his life, the poet had
only grief and remorse as his portion ; but for everybody else,
for the audiences that were charmed by the brilliancy of his
literary lectures, for the friends who gathered about him to
be inspired by his ideals and conversation, and for all his
readers who found unending delight in the little volume which
holds his poetry, he had and still has a cheering message, full
of beauty and hope and inspiration. Such is Coleridge, a man
of grief who makes the world glad.

Life. In 1772 there lived in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, a queer
little man, the Rev. John Coleridge, vicar of the parish church and
master of the local grammar school. In the former capacity he
preached profound sermons, quoting to open-mouthed rustics long
passages from the Hebrew, which he told them was the very tongue
of the Holy Ghost. In the latter capacity he wrote for his boys a
new Latin grammar, to mitigate some of the difficulties of traversing
that terrible jungle by means of ingenious bypaths and short cuts.
For instance, when his boys found the ablative a somewhat difficult
case to understand, he told them to think of it as the quale-quare-
quidditive case, which of course makes its meaning perfectly clear.
In both these capacities the elder Coleridge was a sincere man,
gentle and kindly, whose memory was " like a religion " to his sons
and daughters. In that same year was born Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
the youngest of thirteen children. He was an extraordinarily preco-
cious child, who could read at three years of age, and who, before
he was five, had read the Bible and the Arabian Nights, and could
remember an astonishing amount from both books. From three to

388 ENGLISH LITERATURE

six he attended a " dame " school ; and from six till nine (when his
father died and left the family destitute) he was in his. father's school,
learning the classics, reading an enormous quantity of English books,
avoiding novels, and delighting in cumbrous theological and meta-
physical treatises. At ten he was sent to the Charity School of
Christ's Hospital, London, where he met Charles Lamb, who re-
cords his impression of the place and of Coleridge in one of his
famous essays. 1 Coleridge seems to have remained in this school
for seven or eight years without visiting his home, a poor, neglected
boy, whose comforts and entertainments were all within himself.
Just as, when a little child, he used to wander over the fields with
a stick in his hand, slashing the tops from weeds and thistles,

and thinking himself to be the mighty
champion of Christendom against the
infidels, so now he would lie on the
roof of the school, forgetting the play of
his fellows and the roar of the London
streets, watching the white clouds drift-
ing over and following them in spirit
into all sorts of romantic adventures.

At nineteen this hopeless dreamer,
who had read more books than an
old professor, entered Cambridge as
a charity student. He remained for

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE n6arl y threG y eaiS > then n aW ^ b ?~

cause of a trifling debt and enlisted in

the Dragoons, where he served several months before he was discov-
ered and brought back to the university. He left in 1794 without
taking his degree ; and presently we find him with the youthful
Southey, a kindred spirit, who had been fired to wild enthusiasm
by the French Revolution, founding his famous Pantisocracy for
the regeneration of human society. "The Fall of Robespierre," a
poem composed by the two enthusiasts, is full of the new revolu-
tionary spirit. The Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna,
was to be an ideal community, in which the citizens combined farm-
ing and literature ; and work was to be limited to two , hours each
day. Moreover, each member of the community was to marry
a good woman, and take her with him. The two poets obeyed
the latter injunction first, marrying two sisters, and then found

1 See " Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," in Essays of Elia.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 389

that they had no money to pay even their traveling expenses
to the new Utopia.

During all the rest of his career a tragic weakness of will takes
possession of Coleridge, making it impossible for him, with all his
genius and learning, to hold himself steadily to any one work or
purpose. He studied in Germany ; worked as a private secretary,
till the drudgery wore upon his free spirit ; then he went to Rome
and remained for two years, lost in study. Later he started The
Friend, a paper devoted to truth and liberty ; lectured on poetry
and the fine arts to enraptured audiences in London, until his fre-
quent failures to meet his engagements scattered his hearers ; was
offered an excellent position and a half interest (amounting to some
^"2000) in the Morning Post and The Courier, but declined it, say-
ing " that I would not give up the country and the lazy reading of
old folios for two thousand times two thousand pounds, in short,
that beyond ^350 a year I considered money a real evil." His
family, meanwhile, was almost entirely neglected ; he lived apart,
following his own way, and the wife and children were left in charge
of his friend Southey. Needing money, he was on the point of be-
coming a Unitarian minister, when a small pension from two friends
enabled him to live for a few years without regular employment.

A terrible shadow in Coleridge's life was the apparent cause of
most of his dejection. In early life he suffered from neuralgia, and
to ease the pain began to use opiates. The result on such a tempera-
ment was almost inevitable. He became a slave to the drug habit ;
his naturally weak will lost all its directing and sustaining force,
until, after fifteen years of pain and struggle and despair, he
gave up and put himself in charge of a physician, one Mr. Gill-
man, of Highgate. Carlyle, who visited him at this time, calls him
" a king of men," but records that " he gave you the idea of a life
that had been full of sufferings, a life heavy-laden, half- vanquished,
still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other
bewilderment."

The shadow is dark indeed ; but there are gleams of sunshine
that occasionally break through the clouds. One of these is his asso-
ciation with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, in the Quantock
hills, out of which came the famous Lyrical Ballads of 1798.
Another was his loyal devotion to poetry for its own sake. With the
exception of his tragedy Remorse, which through Byron's influence
was accepted at Drury Lane Theater, and for which he was paid

390 ENGLISH LITERATURE

^400, he received almost nothing for his poetry. Indeed, he seems
not to have desired it ; for he says: " Poetry has been to me its own
exceeding great reward ; it has soothed my afflictions ; it has multi-
plied and refined my enjoyments ; it has endeared solitude, and it
has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the
beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." One can better un-
derstand his exquisite verse after such a declaration. A third ray of
sunlight came from the admiration of his contemporaries ; for though
he wrote comparatively little, he was by his talents and learning a
leader among literary men, and his conversations were as eagerly
listened to as were those of Dr. Johnson. Wordsworth says of him
that, though other men of the age had done some wonderful things,
Coleridge was the only wonderful man he had ever known. Of his
lectures on literature a contemporary says : " His words seem to
flow as from a person repeating with grace and energy some delight-
ful poem." And of his conversation it is recorded : " Throughout a
long-drawn summer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable
but clear and musical tones, concerning things human and divine ;
marshalling all history, harmonizing all experiment, probing the
depths of your consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and
terror to the imagination."

The last bright ray of sunlight comes from Coleridge's own soul,
from the gentle, kindly nature which made men love and respect him
in spite of his weaknesses, and which caused Lamb to speak of him
humorously as "an archangel a little damaged." The universal law
of suffering seems to be that it refines and softens humanity ; and
Coleridge was no exception to the law. In his poetry we find a note
of human sympathy, more tender and profound than can be found
in Wordsworth or, indeed, in any other of the great English poets.
Even in his later poems, when he has lost his first inspiration and
something of the splendid imaginative power that makes his work
equal to the best of Blake's, we find a soul tender, triumphant,
quiet, " in the stillness of a great peace." He died in 1834, and was
buried in Highgate Church. The last stanza of the boatman's song,
in Remorse, serves better to express the world's judgment than any
epitaph :

Hark ! the cadence dies away

On the quiet moon-lit sea ;

The boatmen rest their oars and say,
Miserere Domini !

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 391

Works of Coleridge. The works of Coleridge naturally
divide themselves into three classes, the poetic, the critical,
and the philosophical, corresponding to the early, the middle,
and the later periods of his career. Of his poetry Stopford
Brooke well says : " All that he did excellently might be
bound up in twenty pages, but it should be bound in pure
gold." His early poems show the influence of Gray and Blake,
especially of the latter. When Coleridge begins his " Day
Dream " with the line, " My eyes make pictures when they 're
shut," we recall instantly Blake's haunting Songs of Innocence.
But there is this difference between the two poets, in Blake
we have only a dreamer ; in Coleridge we have the rare com-
bination of the dreamer and the profound scholar. The qual-
ity of this early poetry, with its strong suggestion of Blake,
may be seen in such poems as " A Day Dream," " The Devil's
Thoughts," "The Suicide's Argument," and "The Wander-
ings of Cain." His later poems, wherein we see his imagination
bridled by thought and study, but still running very freely, may
best be appreciated in " Kubla Khan," " Christabel," and " The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner." It is difficult to criticise such
poems ; one can only read them and wonder at their melody,
and at the vague suggestions which they conjure up in the mind.
" Kubla Khan " is a fragment painting a gorgeous Oriental
dream picture, such as one might see in an October sunset.
The whole poem came to Coleridge one morning when he had
fallen asleep over Purchas, and upon awakening he began to

write hastily,

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

He was interrupted after fifty-four lines were written, and he
never finished the poem.

" Christabel " is also a fragment, which seems to have been
planned as the story of a pure young girl who fell under the

392 ENGLISH LITERATURE

spell of a sorcerer, in the shape of the woman Geraldine. It
is full of a strange melody, and contains many passages of
exquisite poetry ; but it trembles with a strange, unknown
horror, and so suggests the supernatural terrors of the popu-
lar hysterical novels, to which we have referred. On this
account it is not wholesome reading ; though one flies in the
face of Swinburne and of other critics by venturing to suggest
such a thing.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is Coleridge's chief
contribution to the Lyrical Ballads of 1 798, and is one of the
The Rime of wor ^'s masterpieces. Though it introduces the
the Ancient reader to a supernatural realm, with a phantom
ship, a crew of dead men, the overhanging curse of
the albatross, the polar spirit, and the magic breeze, it never-
theless manages to create a sense of absolute reality concern-
ing these manifest absurdities. All the mechanisms of the
poem, its meter, rime, and melody are perfect ; and some of
its descriptions of the lonely sea have never been equaled.
Perhaps we should say suggestions, rather than descriptions ;
for Coleridge never describes things, but makes a suggestion,
always brief and always exactly right, and our own imagina-
tion instantly supplies the details. It is useless to quote frag-
ments ; one must read the entire poem, if he reads nothing
else of the romantic school of poetry.

Among Coleridge's shorter poems there is a wide variety,
and each reader must be left largely to follow his own taste.
The beginner will do well to read a few of the early poems, to
which we have referred, and then try the "Ode to France,"
" Youth and Age," " Dejection," " Love Poems," " Fears in
Solitude," " Religious Musings," " Work Without Hope," and
the glorious " Hymn Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni."
One exquisite little poem from the Latin, " The Virgin's Cradle
Hymn," and his version of Schiller's Wallenstein, show Cole-
ridge's remarkable power as a translator. The latter is one of
the best poetical translations in our literature.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 393

Of Coleridge's prose works, the Biographia Literaria, or
Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions (1817), his col-
lected Lectures on Shakespeare (1849), and. Aids to
Reflection (1825) are the most interesting from a
literary view point. The first is an explanation and criticism
of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, and contains more sound
sense and illuminating ideas on the general subject of poetry
than any other book in our language. The Lectures, as re-
freshing as a west wind in midsummer, are remarkable for
their attempt to sweep away the arbitrary rules which for two
centuries had stood in the way of literary criticism of Shake-
speare, in order to study the works themselves. No finer
analysis and appreciation of the master's genius has ever been
written. In his philosophical work Coleridge introduced the
idealistic philosophy of Germany into England. He set him-
self in line with Berkeley, and squarely against Bentham,
Malthus, Mill, and all the materialistic tendencies which were
and still are the bane of English philosophy. The Aids to
Reflection is Coleridge's most profound work, but is more
interesting to the student of religion and philosophy than to
the readers of literature.

ROBERT SOUTHEY (1774-1843)

Closely associated with Wordsworth and Coleridge is Rob-
ert Southey ; and the three, on account of their residence in
the northern lake district, were referred to contemptuously as
the " Lakers " by the Scottish magazine reviewers. Southey
holds his place in this group more by personal association
than by his literary gifts. He was born at Bristol, in 1774;
studied at Westminster School, and at Oxford, where he found
himself in perpetual conflict with the authorities on account
of his independent views. He finally left the university and
joined Coleridge in his scheme of a Pantisocracy. For more
than fifty years he labored steadily at literature, refusing to

394

ENGLISH LITERATURE

consider any other occupation. He considered himself seri-
ously as one of the greatest writers of the day, and a reading
of his ballads which connected him at once with the ro-
mantic school leads us to think that, had he written less,
he might possibly have justified his own opinion of himself.
Unfortunately he could not wait for inspiration, being obliged
to support not only his own family but also, in large measure,
that of his friend Coleridge.

Southey gradually surrounded himself with one of the most
extensive libraries in England, and set himself to the task of
Works of writing something every working day. The results
Southey o f his industry were one hundred and nine volumes,
besides some hundred and fifty articles for the magazines,
most of which are now utterly forgotten. His most ambitious

poems are Thalaba, a tale of
Arabian enchantment ; The
Curse of Kekama, a medley of
Hindoo mythology ; Madoc, a
legend of a Welsh prince who
discovered the western world ;
and Roderick, a tale of the
last of the Goths. All these,
and many more, although
containing some excellent pas-
sages, are on the whole exag-
gerated and unreal, both in
manner and in matter. Southey
wrote far better prose than
poetry, and his admirable Life
of Nelson is still often read.
Besides these are his Lives of British Admirals, his lives of
Cowper and Wesley, and his histories of Brazil and of the
Peninsular War.

Southey was made Poet Laureate in 1813, and was the
first to raise that office from the low estate into which it had

ROBERT SOUTHEY

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 395

fallen since the death of Dryden. The opening lines of
Thalaba, beginning,

How beautiful is night !

A dewy freshness fills the silent air,

are still sometimes quoted ; and a few of his best known short
poems, like "The Scholar," " Auld Cloots," "The Well of St.
Keyne," "The Inchcape Rock," and " Lodore," will repay the
curious reader. The beauty of Southey's character, his pa-
tience and helpfulness, make him a worthy associate of the
two greater poets with whom he is generally named.

WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)

We have already called attention to two significant move-
ments of the eighteenth century, which we must for a moment
recall if we are to appreciate Scott, not simply as a delightful
teller of tales, but as a tremendous force in modern literature.
The first is the triumph of romantic poetry in Wordsworth
and Coleridge ; the second is the success of our first English
novelists, and the popularization of literature by taking it from
the control of a few patrons and critics and putting it into
the hands of the people as one of the forces which mold
our modern life. Scott is an epitome of both these move-
ments. The poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge was read by
a select few, but Scott's Marmion and his Lady of the Lake
aroused a whole nation to enthusiasm, and for the first time
romantic poetry became really popular. So also the novel had
been content to paint men and women of the present, until
the wonderful series of Waverley novels appeared, when sud-
denly, by the magic of this " Wizard of the North," all history
seemed changed. The past, which had hitherto appeared as
a dreary region of dead heroes, became alive again, and filled
with a multitude of men and women who had the surprising
charm of reality. It is of small consequence that Scott's
poetry and prose are both faulty ; that his poems are read

39 6 ENGLISH LITERATURE

chiefly for the story, rather than for their poetic excellence ;
and that much of the evident crudity and barbarism of the
Middle Ages is ignored or forgotten in Scott's writings. By
their vigor, their freshness, their rapid action, and their
breezy, out-of-door atmosphere, Scott's novels attracted thou-
sands of readers who else had known nothing of the delights
of literature. He is, therefore, the greatest known factor in
establishing and in popularizing that romantic element in
prose and poetry which has been for a hundred years the
chief characteristic of our literature.

Life. Scott was born in Edinburgh, on August 15, 1771. On
both his mother's and father's side he was descended from old
Border families, distinguished more for their feuds and fighting than
for their intellectual attainments. His father was a barrister, a just
man, who often lost clients by advising them to be, first of all, hon-
est in their lawsuits. His mother was a woman of character and
education, strongly imaginative, a teller of tales which stirred young
Walter's enthusiasm by revealing the past as a world of living heroes.

As a child, Scott was lame and delicate, and was therefore sent
away from the city to be with his grandmother in the open country
at Sandy Knowe, in Roxburghshire, near the Tweed. This grand-
mother was a perfect treasure-house of legends concerning the old
Border feuds. From her wonderful tales Scott developed that in-
tense love of Scottish history and tradition which characterizes all
his work.

By the time he was eight years old, when he returned to Edin-
burgh, Scott's tastes were fixed for life. At the high school he was
a fair scholar, but without enthusiasm, being more interested in
Border stories than in the text-books. He remained at school only
six or seven years, and then entered his father's office to study law,
at the same time attending lectures at the university. He kept this
up for some six years without developing any interest in his profes-
sion, not even when he passed his examinations and was admitted
to the Bar, in 1792. After nineteen years of desultory work, in
which he showed far more zeal in gathering Highland legends than
in gaining clients, he had won two small legal offices which gave him
enough income to support him comfortably. His home, meanwhile,
was at Ashestiel on the Tweed, where all his best poetry was written.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM

397

Scott's literary work began with the translation from the German
of Burger's romantic ballad of Lenore (1796) and of Goethe's Gotz
von Berlichingen (1799); but there was romance enough in his
own loved Highlands, and in 1802-1803 appeared three volumes
of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, which he had been collect-
ing for many years. In 1805, when Scott was 34 years old, appeared
his first original work, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Its success
was immediate, and when Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the
Lake (1810) aroused Scotland and England to intense enthusiasm,
and brought unexpected fame to the author, without in the least
spoiling his honest and lov-
able nature, Scott gladly
resolved to abandon the
law, in which he had won
scant success, and give
himself wholly to literature.
Unfortunately, however, in
order to increase his earn-
ings, he entered secretly
into partnership with the
firms of Constable and the
brothers Ballantyne, as
printer-publishers, a sad
mistake, indeed, and the
cause of that tragedy which
closed the life of Scotland's
greatest writer.

The year 1 8 1 1 is remark-
able for two things in Scott's
life. In this year he seems to have realized that, notwithstanding the
success of his poems, he had not yet "found himself " ; that he was
not a poetic genius, like Burns ; that in his first three poems he had
practically exhausted his material, though he still continued to write
verse ; and that, if he was to keep his popularity, he must find some
other work. The fact that, only a year later, Byron suddenly became
the popular favorite, shows how correctly Scott had judged himself
and the reading public, which was even more fickle than usual
in this emotional age. In that same year, 1811, Scott bought the
estate of Abbotsford, on the Tweed, with which place his name is for-
ever associated. Here he began to spend large sums, and to dispense

WALTER SCOTT

398 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the generous hospitality of a Scotch laird, of which he had been
dreaming for years. In 1820 he was made a baronet ; and his new
title of Sir Walter came nearer to turning his honest head than had
all his literary success. His business partnership was kept secret, and
during all the years when the Waverley novels were the most popular
books in the world, their authorship remained unknown; for Scott
deemed it beneath the dignity of his title to earn money by business
or literature, and sought to give the impression that the enormous
sums spent at Abbotsford in improving the estate and in entertain-
ing lavishly were part of the dignity of the position and came from
ancestral sources.

It was the success of Byron's Childe Harold, and the comparative
failure of Scott's later poems, Rokeby, The Bridal of Triermain, and
The Lord of the Isles, which led our author into the new field, where
he was to be without a rival. Rummaging through a cabinet one day
in search of some fishing tackle, Scott found the manuscript of a
story which he had begun and laid aside nine years before. He read
this old story eagerly, as if it had been another's work ; finished
it within three weeks, and published it without signing his name.
The success of this first novel, Waverley (1814), was immediate and
unexpected. Its great sales and the general chorus of praise for its
unknown author were without precedent ; and when Guy Manner-
ing, The Antiquary, Black Dwarf, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, and
The Heart of Midlothian appeared within the next four years, Eng-
land's delight and wonder knew no bounds. Not only at home, but
also on the Continent, large numbers of these fresh and fascinating
stories were sold as fast as they could be printed.

During the seventeen years which followed the appearance of
Waverley, Scott wrote on an average nearly two novels per year,
creating an unusual number of characters and illustrating many
periods of Scotch, English, and French history, from the time of the
Crusades to the fall of the Stuarts. In addition to these historical
novels, he wrote Tales of a Grandfather, Demonology and Witch-
craft, biographies of Dryden and of Swift, the Life of Napoleon, in
nine volumes, and a large number of articles for the reviews and
magazines. It was an extraordinary amount of literary work, but it
was not quite so rapid and spontaneous as it seemed. He had been
very diligent in looking up old records, and we must remember
that, in nearly all his poems and novels, Scott was drawing upon a
fund of legend, tradition, history, and poetry, which he had been

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM

399

gathering for forty years, and which his memory enabled him to pro-
duce at will with almost the accuracy of an encyclopedia.

For the first six years Scott held himself to Scottish history, giv-
ing us in nine remarkable novels the whole of Scotland, its heroism,
its superb faith and enthusiasm, and especially its clannish loyalty to
its hereditary chiefs ; giving us also all parties and characters, from
Covenanters to Royalists, and from kings to beggars. After reading
these nine volumes we know Scotland and Scotchmen as we can
know them in no other way. In 1819 he turned abruptly from
Scotland, and in Ivanhoe, the most popular of his works, showed what
a mine of neglected wealth lay just beneath the surface of English

ABBOTSFORD

history. It is hard to realize now, as we read its rapid, melodramatic
action, its vivid portrayal of Saxon and Norman character, and all its
picturesque details, that it was written rapidly, at a time when the
author was suffering from disease and could hardly repress an occa-
sional groan from finding its way into the rapid dictation. It stands
to-day as the best example of the author's own theory that the will
of a man is enough to hold him steadily, against all obstacles, to
the task of "doing what he has a mind to do." Kenilworth, Nigel,
Peveril, and Woodstock, all written in the next few years, show his
grasp of the romantic side of English annals ; Count Robert 'and The
Talisman show his enthusiasm for the heroic side of the Crusaders'
nature; and Quentin Durward and Anne of Geierstein suggest an-
other mine of romance which he discovered in French history.

400 ENGLISH LITERATURE

For twenty years Scott labored steadily at literature, with the
double object of giving what was in him, and of earning large sums
to support the lavish display which he deemed essential to a laird
of Scotland. In 1826, while he was blithely at work on Woodstock,
the crash came. Not even the vast earnings of all these popular
novels could longer keep the wretched business of Ballantyne on its
feet, and the firm failed, after years of mismanagement. Though a
silent partner, Scott assumed full responsibility, and at fifty-five
years of age, sick, suffering, and with all his best work behind him,
he found himself facing a debt of over half a million dollars. The
firm could easily have compromised with its creditors ; but Scott
refused to hear of bankruptcy laws under which he could have taken
refuge. He assumed the entire debt as a personal one, and set
resolutely to work to pay every penny. Times were indeed changed
in England when, instead of a literary genius starving until some
wealthy patron gave him a pension, this man, aided by his pen alone,
could confidently begin to earn that enormous amount of money.
And this is one of the unnoticed results of the popularization of lit-
erature. Without a doubt Scott would have accomplished the task,
had he been granted only a few years of health. He still lived at
Abbotsford, which he had offered to his creditors, but which they
generously refused to accept ; and in two years, by miscellaneous
work, had paid some two hundred thousand dollars of his debt,
nearly half of this sum coming from his Life of Napoleon. A new
edition of the Waverley novels appeared, which was very successful
financially, and Scott had every reason to hope that he would soon
face the world owing no man a penny, when he suddenly broke
under the strain. In 1830 occurred a stroke of paralysis from which
he never fully recovered ; though after a little time he was again at
work, dictating with splendid patience and resolution. He writes in
his diary at this time : " The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I
scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as
if I had a remedy ready, yet God knows I am at sea in the dark,
and the vessel leaky."

It is good to remember that governments are not always ungrate-
ful, and to record that, when it became known that a voyage to
Italy might improve Scott's health, the British government promptly
placed a naval vessel at the disposal of a man who had led no
armies to the slaughter, but had only given pleasure to multitudes of
peaceable men and women by his stories. He visited Malta, Naples,

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 401

and Rome; but in his heart he longed for Scotland, and turned
homeward after a few months of exile. The river Tweed, the Scotch
hills, the trees of Abbotsford, the joyous clamor of his dogs, brought
forth the first exclamation of delight which had passed Scott's lips
since he sailed away. He died in September of the same year, 1832,
and was buried with his ancestors in the old Dryburgh Abbey.

Works of Scott. Scott's work is of a kind which the critic
gladly passes over, leaving each reader to his own joyous and
uninstructed opinion. From a literary view point the works
are faulty enough, if one is looking for faults ; but it is well
to remember that they were intended to give delight, and
that they rarely fail of their object. When one has read the
stirring Marmion or the more enduring Lady of the Lake,
felt the heroism of the Crusaders in The Talisman, the pic-
turesqueness of chivalry in Ivanhoe, the nobleness of soul of
a Scotch peasant girl in The Heart of Midlothian, and the qual-
ity of Scotch faith in Old Mortality, then his own opinion of
Scott's genius will be of more value than all the criticisms
that have ever been written.

At the outset we must confess frankly that Scott's poetry
is not artistic, in the highest sense, and that it lacks the
Scott's deeply imaginative and suggestive qualities which
Poetry make a poem the noblest and most enduring work
of humanity. We read it now, not for its poetic excellence,
but for its absorbing story interest. Even so, it serves an
admirable purpose. Marmion and The Lady of the Lake,
which are often the first long poems read by the beginner in
literature, almost invariably lead to a deeper interest in the
subject ; and many readers owe to these poems an introduc-
tion to the delights of poetry. They are an excellent begin-
ning, therefore, for young readers, since they are almost certain
to hold the attention, and to lead indirectly to an interest in
other and better poems. Aside from this, Scott's poetry is
marked by vigor and youthful abandon ; its interest lies in
its vivid pictures, its heroic characters, and especially in its

402 ENGLISH LITERATURE

rapid action and succession of adventures, which hold and de-
light us still, as they held and delighted the first wondering
readers. And one finds here and there terse descriptions, or
snatches of song and ballad, like the " Boat Song " and " Loch-
invar," which are among the best known in our literature.

In his novels Scott plainly wrote too rapidly and too much.
While a genius of the first magnitude, the definition of genius
Scott's as " tne infinite capacity for taking pains " hardly
Novels belongs to him. For details of life and history, for

finely drawn characters, and for tracing the logical conse-
quences of human action, he has usually no inclination. He
sketches a character roughly, plunges him into the midst of
stirring incidents, and the action of the story carries us
on breathlessly to the end. So his stories are largely adven-
ture stones, at the best ; and it is this element of adventure
and glorious action, rather than the study of character, which
makes Scott a perennial favorite of the young. The same ele-
ment of excitement is what causes mature readers to turn
from Scott to better novelists, who have more power to delin-
eate human character, and to create, or discover, a romantic
interest in the incidents of everyday life rather than in stir-
ring adventure. 1

Notwithstanding these limitations, it is well especially in
these days, when we hear that Scott is outgrown to empha-
Scott's Work si ze f ur noteworthy things that he accomplished,
for Literature (i) He created the historical novel 2 ; and all nov-
elists of the last century who draw upon history for their
characters and events are followers of Scott and acknowledge
his mastery.

(2) His novels are on a vast scale, covering a very wide
range of action, and are concerned with public rather than

1 See Scott's criticism of his own work, in comparison with Jane Austen's, p. 439.

2 Scott's novels were not the first to have an historical basis. For thirty years pre-
ceding the appearance of Waverley, historical romances were popular; but it was due to
Scott's genius that the historical novel became a permanent type of literature. See Cross,
The Development of the English Novel.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 403

with private interests. So, with the exception of The Bride of
Lammermoor, the love story in his novels is generally pale
and feeble ; but the strife and passions of big parties are mag-
nificently portrayed. A glance over even the titles of his
novels shows how the heroic side of history for over six hun-
dred years finds expression in his pages ; and all the parties
of these six centuries Crusaders, Covenanters, Cavaliers,
Roundheads, Papists, Jews, Gypsies, Rebels start into life
again, and fight or give a reason for the faith that is in them.
No other novelist in England, and only Balzac in France,
approaches Scott in the scope of his narratives.

(3) Scott was the first novelist in any language to make
the scene an essential element in the action. He knew Scot-
land, and loved it ; and there is hardly an event in any of his
Scottish novels in which we do not breathe the very atmos-
phere of the place, and feel the presence of its moors and
mountains. The place, morever, is usually so well chosen and
described that the action seems almost to be the result of
natural environment. Perhaps the most striking illustration
of this harmony between scene and incident is found in Old
Mortality, where Morton approaches the cave of the old Cove-
nanter, and where the spiritual terror inspired by the fanatic's
struggle with imaginary fiends is paralleled by the physical
terror of a gulf and a roaring flood spanned by a slippery tree
trunk. A second illustration of the same harmony of scene
and incident is found in the meeting of the arms and ideals
of the East and West, when the two champions fight in the
burning desert, and then eat bread together in the cool shade
of the oasis, as described in the opening chapter of The Talis-
man. A third illustration is found in that fascinating love
scene, where Ivanhoe lies wounded, raging at his helplessness,
while the gentle Rebecca alternately hides and reveals her
love as she describes the terrific assault on the castle, which
goes on beneath her window. His thoughts are all on the
fight ; hers on the man she loves ; and both are natural, and

404 ENGLISH LITERATURE

both are exactly what we expect under the circumstances.
These are but striking examples of the fact that, in all his
work, Scott tries to preserve perfect harmony between the
scene and the action.

(4) Scott's chief claim to greatness lies in the fact that he
was the first novelist to recreate the past ; that he changed
our whole conception of history by making it to be, not a
record of dry facts, but a stage on which living men and
women played their parts. Carlyle's criticism is here most
pertinent : " These historical novels have taught this truth
. . . unknown to writers of history : that the bygone ages of
the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols,
state papers, controversies, and abstractions of men." Not
only the pages of history, but all the hills and vales of his be-
loved Scotland are filled with living characters, lords and
ladies, soldiers, pirates, gypsies, preachers, schoolmasters,
clansmen, bailiffs, dependents, all Scotland is here before
our eyes, in the reality of life itself. It is astonishing, with
his large numbers of characters, that Scott never repeats him-
self. Naturally he is most at home in Scotland, and with
humble people. Scott's own romantic interest in feudalism
caused him to make his lords altogether too lordly ; his aris-
tocratic maidens are usually bloodless, conventional, exasper-
ating creatures, who talk like books and pose like figures in
an old tapestry. But when he describes characters like Jeanie
Deans, in The Heart of Midlothian, and the old clansman,
Evan Dhu, in Waverley, we know the very soul of Scotch
womanhood and manhood.

Perhaps one thing more should be said, or rather repeated,
of Scott's enduring work. He is always sane, wholesome,
manly, inspiring. We know the essential nobility of human
life better, and we are better men and women ourselves,
because of what he has written.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 405

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824)

There are two distinct sides to Byron and his poetry, one
good, the other bad ; and those who write about him generally
describe one side or the other in superlatives. Thus one critic
speaks of his " splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity
and strength"; another of his "gaudy charlatanry, blare of
brass, and big bow-wowishness." As both critics are funda-
mentally right, we shall not here attempt to reconcile their
differences, which arise from viewing one side of the man's
nature and poetry to the exclusion of the other. Before his
exile from England, in 1816, the general impression made by
Byron is that of a man who leads an irregular life, poses as a
romantic hero, makes himself out much worse than he really
is, and takes delight in shocking not only the conventions but
the ideals of English society. His poetry of this first period
is generally, though not always, shallow and insincere in
thought, and declamatory or bombastic in expression. After
his exile, and his meeting with Shelley in Italy, we note a
gradual improvement, due partly to Shelley's influence and
partly to his own mature thought and experience. We have
the impression now of a disillusioned man who recognizes his
true character, and who, though cynical and pessimistic, is at
least honest in his unhappy outlook on society. His poetry
of this period is generally less shallow and rhetorical, and
though he still parades his feelings in public, he often sur-
prises us by being manly and sincere. Thus in the third canto
of Childe Harold, written just after his exile, he says :

In my youth's summer I did sing of one,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind ;

and as we read on to the end of the splendid fourth canto
with its poetic feeling for nature, and its stirring rhythm that
grips and holds the reader like martial music we lay down
the book with profound regret that this gifted man should

406 ENGLISH LITERATURE

have devoted so much of his talent to describing trivial or
unwholesome intrigues and posing as the hero of his own
verseaj, The real tragedy of Byron's life is that he died just
as he was beginning to find himself.

Life. Byron was born in London in 1788, the year preceding the
French Revolution. We shall understand him better, and judge
him more charitably, if we remember the tainted stock from which
he sprang. His father was a dissipated spendthrift of unspeakable
morals ; his mother was a Scotch heiress, passionate and unbalanced.
The father deserted his wife after squandering her fortune ; and the
boy was brought up by the mother who "alternately petted and
abused " him. In his eleventh year the death of a granduncle left
him heir to Newstead Abbey and to the baronial title of one of the
oldest houses in England. He was singularly handsome; and a
lameness resulting from a deformed foot lent a suggestion of pathos
to his make-up. All this, with his social position, his pseudo-heroic
poetry, and his dissipated life, over which he contrived to throw
a veil of romantic secrecy, made him a magnet of attraction to
many thoughtless young men and foolish women, who made the
downhill path both easy and rapid to one whose inclinations led him
in that direction. Naturally he was generous, and easily led by
affection. He is, therefore, largely a victim of his own weakness
and of unfortunate surroundings.

At school at Harrow, and in the university at Cambridge, Byron
led an unbalanced life, and was more given to certain sports from
which he was not debarred by lameness, than to books and study.
His school life, like his infancy, is sadly marked by vanity, violence,
and rebellion against every form of authority ; yet it was not with-
out its hours of nobility and generosity. Scott describes him as " a
man of real goodness of heart, and the kindest and best feelings,
miserably thrown away by his foolish contempt of public opinion."
While at Cambridge, Byron published his first volume of poems,
Hours of Idleness, in 1807. A severe criticism of the volume in the
Edinburgh Review wounded Byron's vanity, and threw him into a
violent passion, the result of which was the now famous satire called
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which not only his enemies,
but also Scott, Wordsworth, and nearly all the literary men of his
day, were satirized in heroic couplets after the manner of Pope's
Dunciad. It is only just to say that he afterwards made friends with

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 407

Scott and with others whom he had abused without provocation ;
and it is interesting to note, in view of his own romantic poetry, that
he denounced all masters of romance and accepted the artificial
standards of Pope and Dryden. His two favorite books were the Old
Testament and a volume of Pope's poetry. Of the latter he says,
" His is the greatest name in poetry ... all the rest are barbarians."

In 1809 Byron, when only twenty-one years of age, started on a
tour of Europe and the Orient. The poetic results of this trip were
the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, with their famous
descriptions of romantic scenery. The work made him instantly
popular, and his fame overshadowed Scott's completely. As he says
himself, " I awoke one morn-
ing to find myself famous," and
presently he styles himself " the
grand Napoleon of the realms
of rhyme." The worst element
in Byron at this time was his
insincerity, his continual pos-
ing as the hero of his poetry.
His best works were translated,
and his fame spread almost as
rapidly on the Continent as
in England. Even Goethe was
deceived, and declared that a
man so wonderful in character
had never before appeared in
literature, and would never ap- GEORG E GORDON, LORD BYRON
pear again. Now that the tinsel

has worn off, and we can judge the man and his work dispassion-
ately, we see how easily even the critics of the age were governed by
romantic impulses.

The adulation of Byron lasted only a few years in England. In
1815 he married Miss Milbanke, an English heiress, who abruptly
left him a year later. With womanly reserve she kept silence ; but
the public was not slow to imagine plenty of reasons for the separa-
tion. This, together with the fact that men had begun to penetrate
the veil of romantic secrecy with which Byron surrounded himself
and found a rather brassy idol beneath, turned the tide of public
opinion against him. He left England under a cloud of distrust and
disappointment, in 1816, and never returned. Eight years were

408 ENGLISH LITERATURE

spent abroad, largely in Italy, where he was associated with Shelley
until the latter 's tragic death in 1822. His house was ever the
meeting place for Revolutionists and malcontents calling themselves
patriots, whom he trusted too greatly, and with whom he shared his
money most generously. Curiously enough, while he trusted men
too easily, he had no faith in human society or government, and
wrote in 1817: "I have simplified my politics to an utter detesta-
tion of all existing governments." During his exile he finished
Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon, his dramas Cain and Man-
fred, and numerous other works, in some of which, as in Don Juan,
he delighted in revenging himself upon his countrymen by holding
up to ridicule all that they held most sacred.

In 1824 Byron went to Greece, to give himself and a large part
of his fortune to help that country in its struggle for liberty against
the Turks. How far he was led by his desire for posing as a hero,
and how far by a certain vigorous Viking spirit that was certainly in
him, will never be known. The Greeks welcomed him and made
him a leader, and for a few months he found himself in the midst
of a wretched squabble of lies, selfishness, insincerity, cowardice,
and intrigue, instead of the heroic struggle for liberty which he had
anticipated. He died of fever, in Missolonghi, in 1824. One of his
last poems, written there on his thirty-sixth birthday, a few months
before he died, expresses his own view of his disappointing life :

My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of love are gone :
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.

Works of Byron. In reading Byron it is well to remember
that be was a disappointed and embittered man, not only in
his personal life, but also in his expectation of a general trans-
formation of human society. As he pours out his own feelings,
chiefly, in his poetry, he is the most expressive writer of his
age in voicing the discontent of a multitude of Europeans who
were disappointed at the failure of the French Revolution to
produce an entirely new form of government and society.

One who wishes to understand the whole scope of Byron's
genius and poetry will do well to begin with his first work,

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 409

Hours of Idleness, written when he was a young man at the
university. There is very little poetry in the volume, only a
Hours of striking facility in rime, brightened by the devil-
idleness may-care spirit of the Cavalier poets ; but as a reve-
lation of the man himself it is remarkable. In a vain and
sophomoric preface he declares that poetry is to him an idle
experiment, and that this is his first and last attempt to
amuse himself in that line. Curiously enough, as he starts for
Greece on his last, fatal journey, he again ridicules literature,
and says that the poet is a "mere babbler." It is this despis-
ing of the art which alone makes him famous that occasions
our deepest disappointment. Even in his magnificent pas-
sages, in a glowing description of nature or of a Hindoo wom-
an's exquisite love, his work is frequently marred by a wretched
pun, or by some cheap buffoonery, which ruins our first splen-
did impression of his poetry.

Byron's later volumes, Manfred and Cain, the one a curi-
ous, and perhaps unconscious, parody of Faust, the other of

Paradise Lost, are his two best known dramatic
Longer Poems .

works. Aside from the question of their poetic
value, they are interesting as voicing Byron's excessive indi-
vidualism and his rebellion against society. The best known
and the most readable of Byron's works are Mazeppa, The
Prisoner of Chilian, and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. The
first two cantos of Childe Harold (1812) are perhaps more
frequently read than any other work of the same author,
partly because of their melodious verse, partly because of their
descriptions of places along the lines of European travel ;
but the last two cantos (1816-1818) written after his exile
from England, have more sincerity, and are in every way bet-
ter expressions of Byron's mature genius. Scattered through
all his works one finds magnificent descriptions of natural
scenery, and exquisite lyrics of love and despair ; but they
are mixed with such a deal of bombast and rhetoric, to-
gether with much that is unwholesome, that the beginner

410 ENGLISH LITERATURE

will do well to confine himself to a small volume of well-
chosen selections. 1

Byron is often compared with Scott, as having given to
us Europe and the Orient, just as Scott gave us Scotland
and its people ; but while there is a certain resemblance in
the swing and dash of the verses, the resemblance is all on
the surface, and the underlying difference between the two
poets is as great as that between Thackeray and Bulwer-Lytton.
Scott knew his country well, its hills and valleys which are
interesting as the abode of living and lovable men and women.
Byron pretended to know the secret, unwholesome side of
Europe, which generally hides itself in the dark ; but instead
of giving us a variety of living men, he never gets away from
his own unbalanced and egotistical self. All his characters,
in Cain, Manfred, The Corsair, The Giaour, Childe Harold,
Don Juan, are tiresome repetitions of himself, a vain, dis-
appointed, cynical man, who finds no good in life or love or
anything. Naturally, with such a disposition, he is entirely
incapable of portraying a true woman. To nature alone,
especially in her magnificent moods, Byron remains faithful ;
and his portrayal of the night and the storm and the ocean
in Childe Harold are unsurpassed in our language.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is :
What if my leaves are falling like its own !

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one !

In this fragment, from the " Ode to the West Wind," we
have a suggestion of Shelley's own spirit, as reflected in all
his poetry. The very spirit of nature, which appeals to us in
the wind and the cloud, the sunset and the moonrise, seems

1 See Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the end of this chapter.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM

411

to have possessed him, at times, and made him a chosen in-
strument of melody. At such times he is a true poet, and his
work is unrivaled. At other times, unfortunately, Shelley
joins with Byron in voicing a vain rebellion against society.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

His poetry, like his life, divides itself into two distinct moods.
In one he is the violent reformer, seeking to overthrow our
present institutions and to hurry the millennium out of its slow
walk into a gallop. Out of this mood come most of his longer
poems, like Queen Mab, Revolt of Islam, Hellas, and The

412 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Witch of Atlas, which are somewhat violent diatribes against
government, priests, marriage, religion, even God as men
supposed him to be. In a different mood, which finds ex-
pression in Alastor, Adonais y and his wonderful lyrics, Shelley
is like a wanderer following a vague, beautiful vision, forever
sad and forever unsatisfied. In the latter mood he appeals
profoundly to all men who have known what it is to follow
after an unattainable ideal.

Shelley's Life. There are three classes of men who see visions,
and all three are represented in our literature. The first is the mere
dreamer, like Blake, who stumbles through a world of reality without
noticing it, and is happy in his visions. The second is the seer, the
prophet, like Langland, or Wyclif, who sees a vision and quietly
goes to work, in ways that men understand, to make the present
world a little more like the ideal one which he sees in his vision.
The third, who appears in many forms, as visionary, enthusiast,
radical, anarchist, revolutionary, call him what you will, sees a
vision and straightway begins to tear down all human institutions,
which have been built up by the slow toil of centuries, simply be-
cause they seem to stand in the way of his dream. To the latter
class belongs Shelley, a man perpetually at war with the present
world, a martyr and exile, simply because of his inability to sympa-
thize with men and society as they are, and because of his own mis-
taken judgment as to the value and purpose of a vision.

Shelley was born in Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, in 1792.
On both his father's and his mother's side he was descended from
noble old families, famous in the political and literary history of
England. From childhood he lived, like Blake, in a world of fancy,
so real that certain imaginary dragons and headless creatures of the
neighboring wood kept him and his sisters in a state of fearful ex-
pectancy. He learned rapidly, absorbed the classics as if by intui-
tion, and, dissatisfied with ordinary processes of learning, seems to
have sought, like Faustus, the acquaintance of spirits, as shown in his
" Hymn to Intellectual Beauty " :

While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped

Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 413

Shelley's first public school, kept by a hard-headed Scotch master,
with its floggings and its general brutality, seemed to him like a com-
bination of hell and prison ; and his active rebellion against existing
institutions was well under way when, at twelve years of age, he
entered the famous preparatory school at Eton. He was a delicate,
nervous, marvelously sensitive boy, of great physical beauty; and,
like Cowper, he suffered torments at the hands of his rough school-
fellows. Unlike Cowper, he was positive, resentful, and brave to the
point of rashness ; soul and body rose up against tyranny ; and he
promptly organized a rebellion against the brutal fagging system.
" Mad Shelley " the boys called him, and they chivied him like dogs
around a little coon that fights and cries defiance to the end. One
finds what he seeks in this world, and it is not strange that Shelley,
after his Eton experiences, found causes for rebellion in all existing
forms of human society, and that he left school " to war among man-
kind," as he says of himself in the Revolt of Islam. His university
days are but a repetition of his earlier experiences. While a student
at Oxford he read some scraps of Hume's philosophy, and immedi-
ately published a pamphlet called " The Necessity of Atheism." It
was a crude, foolish piece of work, and Shelley distributed it by post
to every one to whom it might give offense. Naturally this brought
on a conflict with the authorities, but Shelley would not listen to
reason or make any explanation, and was expelled from the univer-
sity in 1811.

Shelley's marriage was even more unfortunate. While living in
London, on a generous sister's pocket money, a certain young school-
girl, Harriet Westbrook, was attracted by Shelley's crude revolution-
ary doctrines. She promptly left school, as her own personal part in
the general rebellion, and refused to return or even to listen to her
parents upon the subject. Having been taught by Shelley, she threw
herself upon his protection ; and this unbalanced couple were pres-
ently married, as they said, " in deference to anarch custom." The
two infants had already proclaimed a rebellion against the institution
of marriage, for which they proposed to substitute the doctrine of
elective affinity. For two years they wandered about England, Ire-
land, and Wales, living on a small allowance from Shelley's father,
who had disinherited his son because of his ill-considered marriage.
The pair soon separated, and two years later Shelley, having formed
a strong friendship with one Godwin, a leader of young enthusiasts
and a preacher of anarchy, presently showed his belief in Godwin's

414 ENGLISH LITERATURE

theories by eloping with his daughter Mary. It is a sad story, and the
details were perhaps better forgotten. We should remember that in
Shelley we are dealing with a tragic blend of high-mindedness and
light-headedness. Byron wrote of him, " The most gentle, the most
amiable, and the least worldly-minded person I ever met ! "

Led partly by the general hostility against him, and partly by his
own delicate health, Shelley went to Italy in 1818, and never re-
turned to England. After wandering over Italy he finally settled in
Pisa, beloved of so many English poets, beautiful, sleepy Pisa,
where one looks out of his window on the main street at the busiest
hour of the day, and the only living thing in sight is a donkey, doz-
ing lazily, with his head in the shade and his body in the sunshine.
Here his best poetry was written, and here he found comfort in the
friendship of Byron, Hunt, and Trelawney, who are forever associ-
ated with Shelley's Italian life. He still remained hostile to English
social institutions ; but life is a good teacher, and that Shelley dimly
recognized the error of his rebellion is shown in the increasing sad-
ness of his later poems :

O world, O life, O time !

On whose last steps I climb, ,

Trembling at that where I had stood before ;
When will return the glory of your prime ?

No more oh, never more !

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight ;

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight

No more oh, never more !

In 1822, when only thirty years of age, Shelley was drowned
while sailing in a small boat off the Italian coast. His body was
washed ashore several days later, and was cremated, near Viareggio,
by his friends, Byron, Hunt, and Trelawney. His ashes might, with
all reverence, have been given to the winds that he loved and that
were a symbol of his restless spirit; instead, they found a resting
place near the grave of Keats, in the English cemetery at Rome.
One rarely visits the spot now without finding English and American
visitors standing in silence before the significant inscription, Cor
Cordium.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 415

Works of Shelley. As a lyric poet, Shelley is one of the
supreme geniuses of our literature ; and the reader will do
well to begin with the poems which show him at his very
best. "The Cloud/' "To a Skylark," "Ode to the West
Wind," "To Night," poems like these must surely set the
reader to searching among Shelley's miscellaneous works, to
find for himself the things "worthy to be remembered."

In reading Shelley's longer poems one must remember
that there are in this poet two distinct men : one, the wan-
derer, seeking ideal beauty and forever unsatisfied j
the other, the unbalanced reformer, seeking the
overthrow of present institutions and the establishment of
universal happiness. Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude (1816)
is by far the best expression of Shelley's greater mood. Here
we see him wandering restlessly through the vast silences of
nature, in search of a loved dream-maiden who shall satisfy
his love of beauty. Here Shelley is the poet of the moonrise,
and of the tender exquisite fancies that can never be expressed.
The charm of the poem lies in its succession of dreamlike
pictures ; but it gives absolutely no impressions of reality. It
was written when Shelley, after his long struggle, had begun
to realize that the world was too strong for him. Alastor is
therefore the poet's confession, not simply of failure, but of
undying hope in some better thing that is to come.

Prometheus Unbound (1818-1820), a lyrical drama, is the

best work of Shelley's revolutionary enthusiasm, and the

most characteristic of all his poems. Shelley's

Prometheus ....... r *

philosophy (if one may dignify a hopeless dream
by such a name) was a curious aftergrowth of the French
Revolution, namely, that it is only the existing tyranny of
State, Church, and society which keeps man from growth into
perfect happiness. Naturally Shelley forgot, like many other
enthusiasts, that Church and State and social laws were not
imposed upon man from without, but were created by himself
to minister to his necessities. In Shelley's poem the hero,

416 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Prometheus, represents mankind itself, a just and noble
humanity, chained and tortured by Jove, who is here the per-
sonification of human institutions. 1 In due time Demogorgon
(which is Shelley's name for Necessity) overthrows the tyrant
Jove and releases Prometheus (Mankind), who is presently
united to Asia, the spirit of love and goodness in nature,
while the earth and the moon join in a wedding song, and
everything gives promise that they shall live together happy
ever afterwards.

Shelley here looks forward, not back, to the Golden Age,
and is the prophet of science and evolution. If we compare
his Titan with similar characters in Faust and Cain, we shall
find this interesting difference, that while Goethe's Titan
is cultured and self-reliant, and Byron's stoic and hopeless,
Shelley's hero is patient under torture, seeing help and hope
beyond his suffering. And he marries Love that the earth
may be peopled with superior beings who shall substitute
brotherly love 'for the present laws and conventions of society.
Such is his philosophy ; but the beginner will read this poem,
not chiefly for its thought, but for its youthful enthusiasm, for
its marvelous imagery, and especially for its ethereal music.
Perhaps we should add here that Prometheus is, and probably
always will be, a poem for the chosen few who can appreciate
its peculiar spiritlike beauty. In its purely pagan conception
of the world, it suggests, by contrast, Milton's Christian phil-
osophy in Paradise Regained.

Shelley's revolutionary works, Queen Mab (1813), The
Revolt of Islam (1818), Hellas (1821), and The Witch of
Atlas (1820), are to be judged in much the same way as is
Prometheus Unbound. They are largely invectives against
religion, marriage, kingcraft, and priestcraft, most impractical
when considered as schemes for reform, but abounding in

1 Shelley undoubtedly took his idea from a lost drama of /Eschylus, a sequel to Pro-
metheus Bound, in which the great friend of mankind was unchained from a precipice,
where he had been placed by the tyrant Zeus.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 417

passages of exquisite beauty, for which alone they are worth
reading. In the drama called The Cenct(i8icj), which is founded
upon a morbid Italian story, Shelley for the first and only time
descends to reality. The heroine, Beatrice, driven to despera-
tion by the monstrous wickedness of her father, kills him and
suffers the death penalty in consequence. She is the only one
of Shelley's characters who seems to us entirely human.

Far different in character is Epipsychidion (1821), a rhap-
sody celebrating Platonic love, the most impalpable, and so
one of the most characteristic, of all Shelley's
works. It was inspired by a beautiful Italian girl,
Emilia Viviani, who was put into a cloister against her will,
and in whom Shelley imagined he found his long-sought ideal
of womanhood. With this should be read Adonais (1821),
the best known of all Shelley's longer poems. Adonais is a
wonderful threnody, or a song of grief, over the death of the
poet Keats. Even in his grief Shelley still preserves a sense
of unreality, and calls in many shadowy allegorical figures,
Sad Spring, Weeping Hours, Glooms, Splendors, Destinies,
all uniting in bewailing the loss of a loved one. The whole
poem is a succession of dream pictures, exquisitely beautiful,
such as only Shelley could imagine ; and it holds its place
with Milton's Lycidas and Tennyson's In Memoriam as one
of the three greatest elegies in our language.

In his interpretation of nature Shelley suggests Words-
worth, both by resemblance and by contrast. To both poets
Shelley and all natural objects are symbols of truth ; both re-
Wordsworth g arc j nature as permeated by the great spiritual life
which animates all things ; but while Wordsworth finds a
spirit of thought, and so of communion between nature and
the soul of man, Shelley finds a spirit of love, which exists
chiefly for its own delight; and so "The Cloud," "The Sky-
lark," and "The West Wind," three of the most beauti-
ful poems in our language, have no definite message for
humanity. In his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley is

41 8 ENGLISH LITERATURE

most like Wordsworth ; but in his " Sensitive Plant," with its
fine symbolism and imagery, he is like nobody in the world
but himself. Comparison is sometimes an excellent thing ;
and if we compare Shelley's exquisite " Lament," beginning
"O world, O life, O time," with Wordsworth's "Intimations
of Immortality," we shall perhaps understand both poets
better. Both poems recall many happy memories of youth ;
both express a very real mood of a moment ; but while the
beauty of one merely saddens and disheartens us, the beauty
of the other inspires us with something of the poet's own
faith and hopefulness. In a word, Wordsworth found and
Shelley lost himself in nature.

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of
the Romanticists. While Scott was merely telling stories, and
Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law,
and Shelley advocating impossible reforms, and Byron voicing
his own egoism and the political discontent of the timeSj
Keats lived apart from men and from all political measures,
worshiping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write
what was in his own heart, or to reflect some splendor of the
natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be. He had, moreover,
the novel idea that poetry exists for its own sake, and suffers
loss by being devoted to philosophy or politics or, indeed, to
any cause, however great or small. As he says in " Lamia " :

... Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy ?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven :
We know her woof, her texture ; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 419

Partly because of this high ideal of poetry, partly because he
studied and unconsciously imitated the Greek classics and
the best works of the Elizabethans, Keats' s last little volume
of poetry is unequaled by the work of any of his contempo-
raries. When we remember that all his work was published
in three short years, from 18 17 to 1820, and that he died when
only twenty-five years old, we must judge him to be the most
promising figure of the early nineteenth century, and one of
the most remarkable in the history of literature.

Life. Keats's life of devotion to beauty and to poetry is all the
more remarkable in view of his lowly origin. He was the son of a
hostler and stable keeper, and was born in the stable of the Swan
and Hoop Inn, London, in 1795. One has only to read the rough
stable scenes from our first novelists, or even from Dickens, to un-
derstand how little there was in such an atmosphere to develop
poetic gifts. Before Keats was fifteen years old both parents died,
and he was placed with his brothers and sisters in charge of guardi-
ans. Their first act seems to have been to take Keats from school
at Enfield, and to bind him as an apprentice to a surgeon at Ed-
monton. For five years he served his apprenticeship, and for two
years more he was surgeon's helper in the hospitals ; but though
skillful enough to win approval, he disliked his work, and his
thoughts were on other things. " The other day, during a lecture, "
he said to a friend, " there came a sunbeam into the room, and with
it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray ; and I was off with
them to Oberon and fairyland." A copy of Spenser's Faery Queen,
which had been given him by Charles Cowden Clark, was the prime
cause of his abstraction. He abandoned his profession in 1817, and
early in the same year published his first volume of Poems. It was
modest enough in spirit, as was also his second volume, Endymion
( 1 8 1 8) ; but that did not prevent brutal attacks upon the author
and his work by the self-constituted critics of Blackwood's Magazine
and the Quarterly. It is often alleged that the poet's spirit and
ambition were broken by these attacks; 1 but Keats was a man of
strong character, and instead of quarreling with his reviewers, or
being crushed by their criticism, he went quietly to work with the

1 This idea is suppported by Shelley's poem Adonais, and by Byron's parody against
the reviewers, beginning, " Who killed John Keats ? I, says the Quarterly."

420 ENGLISH LITERATURE

idea of producing poetry that should live forever. As Matthew
Arnold says, Keats " had flint and iron in him " ; and in his next
volume he accomplished his own purpose and silenced unfriendly
criticism.

For the three years during which Keats wrote his poetry he lived
chiefly in London and in Hampstead, but wandered at times over
England and Scotland, living for brief spaces in the Isle of Wight,
in Devonshire, and in the Lake district, seeking to recover his own
health, and especially to restore that of his brother. His illness be-
gan with a severe cold, but soon developed into consumption; and
added to this sorrow was another, his love for Fannie Brawne, to
whom he was engaged, but whom he could not marry on account of
his poverty and growing illness. When we remember all this per-
sonal grief and the harsh criticism of literary men, the last small
volume, Lamia , Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems
(1820), is most significant, as showing not only Keats's wonderful
poetic gifts, but also his beautiful and indomitable spirit. Shelley,
struck by the beauty and promise of " Hyperion," sent a generous
invitation to the author to come to Pisa and live with him; but
Keats refused, having little sympathy with Shelley's revolt against
society. The invitation had this effect, however, that it turned
Keats's thoughts to Italy, whither he soon went in the effort to save
his life. He settled in Rome with his friend Severn, the artist, but
died soon after his arrival, in February, 1821. His grave, in the
Protestant cemetery at Rome, is still an object of pilgrimage to
thousands of tourists ; for among all our poets there is hardly
another whose heroic life and tragic death have so appealed to the
hearts of poets and young enthusiasts.

The Work of Keats. "None but the master sball praise
us; and none but the master shall blame" might well be
written on the fly leaf of every volume of Keats's poetry ; for
never was there a poet more devoted to his ideal, entirely
independent of success or failure. In strong contrast with
his contemporary, Byron, who professed to despise the art
that made him famous, Keats lived for poetry alone, and, as
Lowell pointed out, a virtue went out of him into everything he
wrote. In all his work we have the impression of this intense
loyalty to his art ; we have the impressiop also of a profound

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 421

dissatisfaction that the deed falls so far short of the splendid
dream. Thus after reading Chapman's translation of Homer he

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen:
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne ;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt. I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

In this striking sonnet we have a suggestion of Keats's high
ideal, and of his sadness because of his own ignorance, when
he published his first little volume of poems in 1817. He
knew no Greek ; yet Greek literature absorbed and fascinated
him, as he saw its broken and imperfect reflection in an Eng-
lish translation. Like Shakespeare, who also was but poorly
educated in the schools, he had a marvelous faculty of dis-
cerning the real spirit of the classics, a faculty denied to
many great scholars, and to most of the " classic " writers of
the preceding century, and so he set himself to the task of
reflecting in modern English the spirit of the old Greeks.

The imperfect results of this attempt are seen in his next
volume, Endymion, which is the story of a young shepherd
beloved by a moon goddess. The poem begins with the strik-
ing lines :

A thing of beauty is a joy forever ;

Its loveliness increases ; it will never

Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us ; and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing,

which well illustrate the spirit of Keats's later work, with its
perfect finish and melody. It has many quotable lines and

422 ENGLISH LITERATURE

passages, and its " Hymn to Pan " should be read in connection
with Wordsworth's famous sonnet beginning, " The world is too
much with us." The poem gives splendid promise, but as a whole
it is rather chaotic, with too much ornament and too little de-
sign, like a modern house. That Keats felt this defect strongly
is evident from his modest preface, wherein he speaks of Endy-
mion, not as a deed accomplished, but only as an unsuccessful
attempt to suggest the underlying beauty of Greek mythology.

Keats's third and last volume, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of
St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820), is the one with which the
Lamia and reader should begin his acquaintance with this mas-
Other Poems t er O f English verse. It has only two subjects,
Greek mythology and mediaeval romance. " Hyperion " is a
magnificent fragment, suggesting the first arch of a cathedral
that was never finished. Its theme is the overthrow of the
Titans by the young sun-god Apollo. Realizing his own im-
maturity and lack of knowledge, Keats laid aside this work,
and only the pleadings of his publisher induced him to print
the fragment with his completed poems.

Throughout this last volume, and especially in " Hyperion,"
the influence of Milton is apparent, while Spenser is more
frequently suggested in reading ' Endymion.

Of the longer poems in the volume, " Lamia " is the most
suggestive. It is the story of a beautiful enchantress, who
turns from a serpent into a glorious woman and fills every
human sense with delight, until, as a result of the foolish
philosophy of old Apollonius, she vanishes forever from her
lover's sight. "The Eve of St. Agnes," the most perfect of
Keats's mediaeval poems, is not a story after the manner of
the metrical romances, but rather a vivid painting of a roman-
tic mood, such as comes to all men, at times, to glorify a
workaday world. Like all the work of Keats and Shelley, it
has an element of unreality ; and when we read at the end,

And they are gone ; aye, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm,

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 423

it is as if we were waking from a dream, which is the only
possible ending to all of Keats's Greek and mediaeval fancies.
We are to remember, however, that no beautiful thing, though
it be intangible as a dream, can enter a man's life and leave
him quite the same afterwards. Keats's own word is here sug-
gestive. "The imagination," he said, "may be likened to
Adam's dream ; he awoke and found it true."

It is by his short poems that Keats is known to the major-
ity of present-day readers. Among these exquisite shorter
poems we mention only the four odes, " On a Grecian Urn,"
"To a Nightingale," "To Autumn," and "To Psyche." These
are like an invitation to a feast ; one who reads them will
hardly be satisfied until he knows more of such delightful
poetry. Those who study only the " Ode to a Nightingale "
may find four things, a love of sensuous beauty, a touch of
pessimism, a purely pagan conception of nature, and a strong
individualism, which are characteristic of this last of the
romantic poets.

As Wordsworth's work is too often marred by the moral-
izer, and Byron's by the demagogue, and Shelley's by the
Keats's Place reformer, so Keats's work suffers by the opposite
in Literature extreme of aloofness from every human interest ;
so much so, that he is often accused of being indifferent to
humanity. His work is also criticised as being too effeminate
for ordinary readers. Three things should be remembered in
this connection. First, that Keats sought to express beauty
for its own sake ; that beauty is as essential to normal hu-
manity as is government or law ; and that the higher man
climbs in civilization the more imperative becomes his need
of beauty as a reward for his labors. Second, that Keats's let-
ters are as much an indication of the man as is his poetry ;
and in his letters, with their human sympathy, their eager
interest in social problems, their humor, and their keen insight
into life, there is no trace of effeminacy, but rather every
indication of a strong and noble manhood. The third thing

424 ENGLISH LITERATURE

to remember is that all Keats's work was done in three or four
years, with small preparation, and that, dying at twenty-five,
he left us a body of poetry which will always be one of our
most cherished possessions. He is often compared with "the
marvelous boy " Chatterton, whom he greatly admired, and
to whose memory he dedicated his Endymion ; but though
both died young, Chatterton was but a child, while Keats was
in all respects a man. It is idle to prophesy what he might
have done, had he been granted a Tennyson's long life and
scholarly training. At twenty-five his work was as mature
as was Tennyson's at fifty, though the maturity suggests
the too rapid growth of a tropical plant which under the warm
rains and the flood of sunlight leaps into life, grows, blooms
in a day, and dies.

As we have stated, Keats's work was bitterly and unjustly
condemned by the critics of his day. He belonged to what
was derisively called the cockney school of poetry, of which
Leigh Hunt was chief, and Proctor and Beddoes were fellow-
workmen. Not even from Wordsworth and Byron, who were
ready enough to recommend far less gifted writers, did Keats
receive the slightest encouragement. Like young Lochinvar,
"he rode all unarmed and he rode all alone." Shelley, with
his sincerity and generosity, was the first to recognize the
young genius, and in his noble Adonais written, alas, like
most of our tributes, when the subject of our praise is dead
he spoke the first true word of appreciation, and placed
Keats, where he unquestionably belongs, among our greatest
poets. The fame denied him in his sad life was granted freely
after his death. Most fitly does he close the list of poets of
the romantic revival, because in many respects he was the
best workman of them all. He seems to have studied words
more carefully than did his contemporaries, and so his poetic
expression, or the harmony of word and thought, is gener-
ally more perfect than theirs. More than any other he lived
for poetry, as the noblest of the arts. More than any other

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 425

he emphasized beauty, because to him, as shown by his " Gre-
cian Urn," beauty and truth were one and inseparable. And
he enriched the whole romantic movement by adding to its
interest in common life the spirit, rather than the letter, of the
classics and of Elizabethan poetry. For these reasons Keats
is, like Spenser, a poet's poet ; his work profoundly influenced
Tennyson and, indeed, most of the poets of the present era.

II. PROSE WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

Aside from the splendid work of the novel writers Wal-
ter Scott, whom we have considered, and Jane Austen, to
Literary whom we shall presently return the early nine-
Criticism teenth century is remarkable for the development
of a new and valuable type of critical prose writing. If we
except the isolated work of Dryden and of Addison, it is safe
to say that literary criticism, in its modern sense, was hardly
known in England until about the year 1825. Such criticism
as existed seems to us now to have been largely the result of
personal opinion or prejudice. Indeed we could hardly expect
anything else before some systematic study of our literature
as a whole had been attempted. In one age a poem was called
good or bad according as it followed or ran counter to so-
called classic rules ; in another we have the dogmatism of
Dr. Johnson ; in a third the personal judgment of Lockhart
and the editors of the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly,
who so violently abused Keats and the Lake poets in the
name of criticism. Early in the nineteenth century there
arose a new school of criticism which was guided by knowl-
edge of literature, on the one hand, and by what one might
call the fear of God on the other. The latter element showed
itself, in a profound human sympathy, the essence of the
romantic movement, and its importance was summed up by
De Quincey when he said, " Not to sympathize is not to under-
stand." These new critics, with abundant reverence for past
masters, could still lay aside the dogmatism and prejudice

426 ENGLISH LITERATURE

which marked Johnson and the magazine editors, and read
sympathetically the work of a new author, with the sole idea
of finding what he had contributed, or tried to contribute,
to the magnificent total of our literature. Coleridge, Hunt,
Hazlitt, Lamb, and De Quincey were the leaders in this new
and immensely important development ; and we must not for-
get the importance of the new periodicals, like the London
Magazine, founded in 1820, in which Lamb, De Quincey, and
Carlyle found their first real encouragement.

Of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria and his Lectures on
Shakespeare we have already spoken. Leigh Hunt (1784-
Huntand l %59) wrote continuously for more than thirty
Hazlitt years, as editor and essayist ; and his chief object
seems to have been to make good literature known and appre-
ciated. William Hazlitt (1778-1830), in a long series of lec-
tures and essays, treated all reading as a kind of romantic
journey into new and pleasant countries. To his work largely,
with that of Lamb, was due the new interest in Elizabethan
literature, which so strongly influenced Keats's last and best
volume of poetry. For those interested in the art of criticism,
and in the appreciation of literature, both Hunt and Hazlitt
will well repay study ; but we must pass over their work to
consider the larger literary interest of Lamb and De Quincey,
who were not simply critics of other men's labor, but who
also produced some delightful work of their own, which the
world has carefully put away among the "things worthy to
be remembered."

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

In Lamb and Wordsworth we have two widely different
views of the romantic movement ; one shows the influence of
nature and solitude, the other of society. Lamb was a lifelong
friend of Coleridge, and an admirer and defender of the poetic
creed of Wordsworth ; but while the latter lived apart from
men, content with nature and with reading an occasional

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM

427

moral lesson to society, Lamb was born and lived in the midst
of the London streets. The city crowd, with its pleasures and
occupations, its endless little comedies and tragedies, alone in-
terested him. According to his own account, when he paused
in the crowded street tears would spring to his eyes, tears
of pure pleasure at the abundance of so much good life ; and
when he wrote, he simply interpreted that crowded human life
of joy and sorrow, as Wordsworth in-
terpreted the woods and waters, with-
out any desire to change or to reform
them. He has given us the best pic-
tures we possess of Coleridge, Haz-
litt, Landor, Hood, Cowden Clarke,
and many more of the interesting men
and women of his age ; and it is due
to his insight and sympathy that the
life of those far-off days seems almost
as real to us as if we ourselves remem-
bered it. Of all our English essayists
he is the most lovable ; partly because
of his delicate, old-fashioned style and humor, but more be-
cause of that cheery and heroic struggle against misfortune
which shines like a subdued light in all his writings.

Life. In the very heart of London there is a curious, old-
fashioned place known as the Temple, an enormous, rambling,
apparently forgotten structure, dusty and still, in the midst of the
endless roar of the city streets. Originally it was a chapter house
of the Knights Templars, and so suggests to us the spirit of the
Crusades and of the Middle Ages ; but now the building is given
over almost entirely to the offices and lodgings of London lawyers.
It is this queer old place which, more than all others, is associated
with the name of Charles Lamb. " I was born," he says, "and
passed the first seven years of my life in the Temple. Its gardens,
its halls, its fountain, its river . . . these are my oldest recollec-
tions." He was the son of a poor clerk, or rather servant, of one of
the barristers, and was the youngest of seven children, only three of

CHARLES LAMB

428

ENGLISH LITERATURE

whom survived infancy. Of these three, John, the elder, was appar-
ently a selfish creature, who took no part in the heroic struggle of
his brother and sister. At seven years, Charles was sent to the famous
"Bluecoat" charity school of Christ's Hospital. Here he remained
seven years ; and here he formed his lifelong friendship for another
poor, neglected boy, whom the world remembers as Coleridge. 1

When only fourteen years old, Lamb left the charity school and
was soon at work as a clerk in the South Sea House. Two years
later he became a clerk in the famous India House, where he worked

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, LONDON

steadily for thirty-three years, with the exception of six weeks, in
the winter of 1795-1796, spent within the walls of an asylum.
In 1796 Lamb's sister Mary, who was as talented and remarkable
as Lamb himself, went violently insane and killed her own mother.
For a long time after this appalling tragedy she was in an asylum at
Hoxton; then Lamb, in 1797, brought her to his own little house,
and for the remainder of his life cared for her with a tenderness and
devotion which furnishes one of the most beautiful pages in our
literary history. At times the malady would return to Mary, giving

1 See " Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," in Essays of Elia.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 429

sure warning of its terrible approach ; and then brother and sister
might be seen walking silently, hand in hand, to the gates of the
asylum, their cheeks wet with tears. One must remember this, as
well as Lamb's humble lodgings and the drudgery of his daily work
in the big commercial house, if he would appreciate the pathos of
"The Old Familiar Faces," or the heroism which shines through the
most human and the most delightful essays in our language.

When Lamb was fifty years of age the East India Company, led
partly by his literary fame following his first Essays of Elia, and
partly by his thirty-three years of faithful service, granted him a
comfortable pension ; and happy as a boy turned loose from school
he left India House forever to give himself up to literary work. 1 He
wrote to Wordsworth, in April, 1825, "I came home forever on
Tuesday of last week it was like passing from life into eternity.'*
Curiously enough Lamb seems to lose power after his release from
drudgery, and his last essays, published in 1833, lack something of
the grace and charm of his earlier work. He died at Edmonton in
1834; and his gifted sister Mary sank rapidly into the gulf from
which his strength and gentleness had so long held her back. No
literary man was ever more loved and honored by a rare circle of
friends ; and all who knew him bear witness to the simplicity and
goodness which any reader may find for himself between the lines
of his essays.

Works. The works of Lamb divide themselves naturally
into three periods. First, there are his early literary efforts,
including the poems signed w C. L." in Coleridge's Poems on
Various Subjects (1796) ; his romance Rosamund Gray (1798) ;
his poetical drama John Woodvil (1802); and various other
immature works in prose and poetry. This period comes to an
end in 1803, when he gave up his newspaper work, especially
the contribution of six jokes, puns, and squibs daily to the
Morning Post at sixpence apiece. The second period was
given largely to literary criticism ; and the Tales from Shake-
speare (1807) written by Charles and Mary Lamb, the
former reproducing the tragedies, and the latter the comedies
may be regarded as his first successful literary venture.

1 See Essays ofElia, " The Superannuated Man."

430 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The book was written primarily for children; but so thor-
oughly had brother and sister steeped themselves in the litera-
ture of the Elizabethan period that young and old alike were
delighted with this new version of Shakespeare's stories, and
the Tales are still regarded as the best of their kind in our
literature. In 1808 appeared his Specimens of English Dra-
matic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare. This carried
out the splendid critical work of Coleridge, and was the most
noticeable influence in developing the poetic qualities of
Keats, as shown in his last volume.

The third period includes Lamb's criticisms of life, which
are gathered together in his Essays of Elia (1823), and his
Essays of Last Essays of Elia, which were published ten
Ella years later. These famous essays began in 1820

with the appearance of the new London Magazine? and
were continued for many years, such subjects as the " Disser-
tation on Roast Pig," "Old China," "Praise of Chimney
Sweepers," "Imperfect Sympathies," "A Chapter on Ears,"
"Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," " Mackery End," "Grace
Before Meat," " Dream Children," and many others being
chosen apparently at random, but all leading to a delightful
interpretation of the life of London, as it appeared to a quiet
little man who walked unnoticed through its crowded streets.
In the first and last essays which we have mentioned, " Dis-
sertation on Roast Pig" and "Dream Children," we have the
extremes of Lamb's humor and pathos.

The style of all these essays is gentle, old-fashioned, irre-
sistibly attractive. Lamb was especially fond of old writers,
and borrowed unconsciously from the style of Bur-
ton's Anatomy of Melancholy and from Browne's
Religio Medici and from the early English dramatists. But
this style had become a part of Lamb by long reading, and

1 In the first essay, " The South Sea House," Lamb assumed as a joke the name of a
former clerk, Elia. Other essays followed, and the name was retained when several suc-
cessful essays were published in book form, in 1823. In these essays "Elia" is Lamb
himself, and " Cousin Bridget " is his sister Mary.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 431

he was apparently unable to express his new thought without
using their old quaint expressions. Though these essays are
all criticisms or appreciations of the life of his age, they are
all intensely personal. In other words, they are an excellent
picture of Lamb and of humanity. Without a trace of vanity
or self-assertion, Lamb begins with himself, with some purely
personal mood or experience, and from this he leads the reader
to see life and literature as he saw it. It is this wonderful
combination of personal and universal interests, together with
Lamb's rare old style and quaint humor, which make the
essays remarkable. They continue the best tradition of Addi-
son and Steele, our first great essayists ; but their sympathies
are broader and deeper, and their humor more delicious, than
any which preceded them.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859)

In De Quincey the romantic element is even more strongly
developed than in Lamb, not only in his critical work, but
also in his erratic and imaginative life. He was profoundly
educated, even more so than Coleridge, and was one of the
keenest intellects of the age ; yet his wonderful intellect
seems always subordinate to his passion for dreaming. Like
Lamb, he was a friend and associate of the Lake poets, mak-
ing his headquarters in Wordsworth's old cottage at Gras-
mere for nearly twenty years. Here the resemblance ceases,
and a marked contrast begins. As a man, Lamb is the most
human and lovable of all our essayists ; while De Quincey is
the most uncanny and incomprehensible. Lamb's modest
works breathe the two essential qualities of sympathy and
humor ; the greater number of De Quincey's essays, while
possessing more or less of both these qualities, are character-
ized chiefly by their brilliant style. Life, as seen through
De Quincey's eyes, is nebulous and chaotic, and there is a
suspicion of the fabulous in all that he wrote. Even in The
Revolt of the Tartars the romantic element is uppermost, and

432 ENGLISH LITERATURE

in much of De Quincey's prose the element of unreality is
more noticeable than in Shelley's poetry. Of his subject-
matter, his facts, ideas, and criticisms, we are generally sus-
picious ; but of his style, sometimes stately and sometimes
headlong, now gorgeous as an Oriental dream, now musical
as Keats's Endymion, and always, even in the most violent
contrasts, showing a harmony between the idea and the ex-
pression such as no other English writer, with the possible
exception of Newman, has ever rivaled, say what you will
of the marvelous brilliancy of De Quincey's style, you have
still only half expressed the truth. It is the Style alone which
makes these essays immortal.

Life. De Quincey was born in Manchester in 1785. In neither
his father, who was a prosperous merchant, nor his mother, who was
a quiet, unsympathetic woman, do we see any suggestion of the son's
almost uncanny genius. As a child he was given to dreams, more
vivid and intense but less beautiful than those of the young Blake,
to whom he bears a strong resemblance. In the grammar school at
Bath he displayed astonishing ability, and acquired Greek and Latin
with a rapidity that frightened his slow tutors. At fifteen he not
only read Greek, but spoke it fluently; and one of his astounded
teachers remarked, " That boy could harangue an Athenian mob
better than you or I could address an English one." From the gram-
mar school at Manchester, whither he was sent in 1800, he soon ran
away, finding the instruction far below his abilities, and the rough
life absolutely intolerable to his sensitive nature. An uncle, just
home from India, interceded for the boy lest he be sent back to the
school, which he hated ; and with an allowance of a guinea a week
he started a career of vagrancy, much like that of Goldsmith, living
on the open hills, in the huts of shepherds and charcoal burners, in
the tents of gypsies, wherever fancy led him. His fear of the Man-
chester school finally led him to run away to London, where, with-
out money or friends, his life was even more extraordinary than his
gypsy wanderings. The details of this vagrancy are best learned in
his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, where we meet not
simply the facts of his life, but also the confusion of dreams and
fancies in the midst of which he wandered like a man lost on the
mountains, with storm clouds under his feet hiding the familiar

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM

433

earth. After a year of vagrancy and starvation he was found by his
family and allowed to go to Oxford, where his career was marked by
the most brilliant and erratic scholarship. When ready for a degree,
in 1807, he passed his written tests successfully, but felt a sudden
terror at the thought of the oral examination and disappeared from
the university, never to return.

It was in Oxford that De Quincey began the use of opium, to relieve
the pains of neuralgia, and the habit increased until he was an almost
hopeless slave to the drug.
Only his extraordinary will
power enabled him to break
away from the habit, after
some thirty years of misery.
Some peculiarity of his deli-
cate constitution enabled De
Quincey to take enormous
quantities of opium, enough
to kill several ordinary men ;
and it was largely opium,
working upon a sensitive im-
agination, which produced
his gorgeous dreams, broken
by intervals of weakness and
profound depression. For
twenty years he resided at
Grasmere in the companion-
ship of the Lake poets ; and
here, led by the loss of his
small fortune, he began to
write, with the idea of sup-
porting his family. In 1821 he published his first famous work,
the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and for nearly forty
years afterwards he wrote industriously, contributing to various
magazines an astonishing number of essays on a great variety of
subjects. Without thought of literary fame, he contributed these
articles anonymously; but fortunately, in 1853, he began to collect
his own works, and the last of fourteen volumes was published just
after his death.

In 1830, led by his connection with Blackwood's Magazine, to
which he was the chief contributor, De Quincey removed with his

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

434 ENGLISH LITERATURE

family to Edinburgh, where his erratic genius and his singularly
childlike ways produced enough amusing anecdotes to fill a volume.
He would take a room in some place unknown to his friends and
family ; would live in it for a few years, until he had filled it, even
to the bath tub, with books and with his own chaotic manuscripts,
allowing no one to enter or disturb his den ; and then, when the
place became too crowded, he would lock the door and go away and
take another lodging, where he repeated the same extraordinary
performance. He died in Edinburgh in 1859. Like Lamb, he was
a small, boyish figure, gentle, and elaborately courteous. Though,
excessively shy, and escaping as often as possible to solitude, he was
nevertheless fond of society, and his wide knowledge and vivid
imagination made his conversations almost as prized as those of his
friend Coleridge.

Works. De Quincey's works may be divided into two gen-
eral classes. The first includes his numerous critical articles,
and the second his autobiographical sketches. All his works,
it must be remembered, were contributed to various maga-
zines, and were hastily collected just before his death. Hence
the general impression of chaos which we get from reading
them.

From a literary view point the most illuminating of De
Quincey's critical works is his Literary Reminiscences. This
Critical contains brilliant appreciations of Wordsworth, Cole-
Essays r id g e, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Hazlitt, and Landor,
as well as some interesting studies of the literary figures of
the age preceding. Among the best of his brilliant critical
essays are On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823),
which is admirably suited to show the man's critical genius,
and Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (1827), which
reveals his grotesque humor. Other suggestive critical works,
if one must choose among such a multitude, are his Letters to
a Young Man (1823), Joan of Arc (1847), The Revolt of the
Tartars (1840), and The English Mail-Coach (1849). In the
last-named essay the "Dream Fugue" is one of the most
imaginative of all his curious works.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 435

Of De Quincey's autobiographical sketches the best known
is his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). This is
Confessions on ^ P art l} r a record of opium dreams, and its chief
of an Opium- interest lies in glimpses it gives us of De Quincey's

ter ' et own life and wanderings. This should be followed
by Suspiria de Profundis (1845), which is chiefly a record of
gloomy and terrible dreams produced by opiates. The most
interesting parts of his Suspiria, showing De Quincey's mar-
velous insight into dreams, are those in which we are brought
face to face with the strange feminine creations " Levana,"
" Madonna," " Our Lady of Sighs," and " Our Lady of Dark-
ness." A series of nearly thirty articles which he collected in
1853, called Autobiographic Sketches, completes the revelation
of the author's own life. Among his miscellaneous works may
be mentioned, in order to show his wide range of subjects,
Klosterheim, a novel, Logic of Political Economy, the Essays
on Style and Rhetoric, Philosophy of Herodotus, and his arti-
cles on Goethe, Pope, Schiller, and Shakespeare which he
contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

De Quincey's style is a revelation of the beauty of the
English language, and it profoundly influenced Ruskin and
The style of other prose writers of the Victorian Age. It has two
De Quincey c hi e f f au lt s , diffuseness, which continually leads
De Quincey away from his object, and triviality, which often
makes him halt in the midst of a marvelous paragraph to
make some light jest or witticism that has some humor but
no mirth in it. Notwithstanding these faults, De Quincey's
prose is still among the few supreme examples of style in our
language. Though he was profoundly influenced by the seven-
teenth-century writers, he attempted definitely to create a
new style which should combine the best elements of prose
and poetry. In consequence, his prose works are often, like
those of Milton, more imaginative and melodious than much
of our poetry. He has been well called " the psychologist of
style," and as such his works will never be popular; but to

436 ENGLISH LITERATURE

the few who can appreciate him he will always be an inspi-
ration to better writing. One has a deeper respect for our
English language and literature after reading him.

Secondary Writers of Romanticism. One has only to glance
back over the authors we have been studying Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Southey, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott, Lamb, De
Quincey to realize the great change which swept over
the life and literature of England in a single half century,
under two influences which we now know as the French
.Revolution in history and the Romantic Movement in litera-
ture. In life men had rebelled against the too strict authority
of state and society ; in literature they rebelled even more
vigorously against the bonds of classicism, which had sternly
repressed a writer's ambition to follow his own ideals and to
express them in his own way. Naturally such an age of revo-
lution was essentially poetic, only the Elizabethan Age sur-
passes it in this respect, and it produced a large number of
minor writers, who followed more or less closely the example
of its great leaders. Among novelists we have Jane Austen,
Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Porter, and Susan
Ferrier, all women, be it noted ; among the poets, Campbell,
Moore, Hogg (" the Ettrick Shepherd "), Mrs. Hemans, Heber,
Keble, Hood, and " Ingoldsby " (Richard Barham) ; and among
miscellaneous writers, Sidney Smith, " Christopher North "
(John Wilson), Chalmers, Lockhart, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt,
Hallam, and Landor. Here is an astonishing variety of
writers, and to consider all their claims to remembrance
would of itself require a volume. Though these are generally
classed as secondary writers, much of their work has claims
to popularity, and some of it to permanence. Moore's Irish
Melodies, Campbell's lyrics, Keble' s Christian Year, and Jane
Porter's Thaddens of Warsaw and Scottish Chiefs have still
a multitude of readers, where Keats, Lamb, and De Quincey
are prized only by the cultured few ; and Hallam' s historical
and critical works are perhaps better known than those of

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 437

Gibbon, who nevertheless occupies a larger place in our litera-
ture. Among all these writers we choose only two, Jane
Austen and Walter Savage Landor, whose works indicate a
period of transition from the Romantic to the Victorian Age.

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817)

We have so lately rediscovered the charm and genius of
this gifted young woman that she seems to be a novelist of
yesterday, rather than the contemporary of Wordsworth and
Coleridge ; and few even of her readers realize that she did
for the English novel precisely what the Lake poets did for
English poetry, she refined and simplified it, making it
a true reflection of English life. Like the Lake poets, she
met with scanty encouragement in her own generation. Her
greatest novel, Pride and Prejudice, was finished in 1 797, a
year before the appearance of the famous Lyrical Ballads of
Wordsworth and Coleridge ; but while the latter book was
published and found a few appreciative readers, the manu-
script of this wonderful novel went begging for sixteen years
before it found a publisher. As Wordsworth began with the
deliberate purpose of making poetry natural and truthful, so
Miss Austen appears to have begun writing with the idea of
presenting the life of English country society exactly as it
was, in opposition to the romantic extravagance of Mrs. Rad-
cliffe and her school. But there was this difference, that
Miss Austen had in large measure the saving gift of humor,
which Wordsworth sadly lacked. Maria Edgeworth, at the
same time, set a sane and excellent example in her tales of
Irish life, The Absentee and Castle Rackrent; and Miss Austen
followed up the advantage with at least six works, which have
grown steadily in value until we place them gladly in the first
rank of our novels of common life. It is not simply for her
exquisite charm, therefore, that we admire her, but also for
her influence in bringing our novels back to their true place
as an expression of human life. It is due partly, at least, to

438 ENGLISH LITERATURE

her influence that a multitude of readers were ready to appre-
ciate Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, and the powerful and enduring
work of George Eliot.

Life. Jane Austen's life gives little opportunity for the biographer,
unless, perchance, he has something of her own power to show the
beauty and charm of commonplace things. She was the seventh
child of Rev. George Austen, rector of Steven ton, and was born in
the parsonage of the village in 1775. With her sisters she was edu-
cated at home, and passed. her life very quietly, cheerfully, in the
doing of small domestic duties, to which love lent the magic lamp
that makes all things beautiful. She began to write at an early age,
and seems to have done her work on a little table in the family sit-
ting room, in the midst of the family life. When a visitor entered,
she would throw a paper or a piece of sewing over her work, and
she modestly refused to be known as the author of novels which we
now count among our treasured possessions. With the publishers
she had little success. Pride and Prejudice went begging, as we
have said, for sixteen years; and Northanger Abbey (1798) was
sold for a trivial sum to a publisher, who laid it aside and forgot it,
until the appearance and moderate success of Sense and Sensibility
in 181 1. Then, after keeping the manuscript some fifteen years, he
sold it back to the family, who found another publisher.

An anonymous article in the Qtiarterly Review, following the
appearance of Emma in 1815, full of generous appreciation of the
charm of the new writer, was the beginning of Jane Austen's fame ;
and it is only within a few years that we have learned that the
friendly and discerning critic was Walter Scott. He continued to be
her admirer until her early death ; but these two, the greatest writers
of fiction in their age, were never brought together. Both were
home-loving people, and Miss Austen especially was averse to pub-
licity and popularity. She died, quietly as she had lived, at Win-
chester, in 1817, and was buried in the cathedral. She was a bright,
attractive little woman, whose sunny qualities are unconsciously re-
flected in all her books.

Works. Very few English writers ever had so narrow a
field of work as Jane Austen. Like the French novelists,
whose success seems to lie in choosing the tiny field that
they know best, her works have an exquisite perfection that

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 439

is lacking in most of our writers of fiction. With the excep-
tion of an occasional visit to the watering place of Bath, her
whole life was spent in small country parishes, whose simple
country people became the characters of her novels. Her
brothers were in the navy, and so naval officers furnish the
only exciting elements in her stories ; but even these alleged
heroes lay aside their imposing martial ways and act like them-
selves and other people. Such was her literary field, in which
the chief duties were of the household, the chief pleasures in
country gatherings, and the chief interests in matrimony.
Life, with its mighty interests, its passions, ambitions, and
tragic struggles, swept by like a great river ; while the se-
cluded interests of a country parish went round and round
quietly, like an eddy behind a sheltering rock. We can easily
understand, therefore, the limitations of Jane Austen ; but
within her own field she is unequaled. Her characters are
absolutely true to life, and all her work has the perfection of
a delicate miniature painting. The most widely read of her
novels is Pride and Prejudice ; but three others, Sense and
Sensibility p , Emma, and Mansfield Park, have slowly won
their way to the front rank of fiction. From a literary view
point Northanger Abbey is perhaps the best ; for in it we find
that touch of humor and delicate satire with which this gentle
little woman combated the grotesque popular novels of the
Udolpho type. Reading any of these works, one is inclined to
accept the hearty indorsement of Sir Walter Scott : " That
young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and
feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the
most wonderful I ever met with. The big bowwow strain I
can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch
which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters
interesting from the truth of the description and the senti-
ment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature
died so early ! "

440 ENGLISH LITERATURE

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775-1864)

While Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, and other romantic crit-
ics went back to early English literature for their inspiration,
Landor shows a reaction from the prevailing Romanticism by
his imitation of the ancient classic writers. His life was an
extraordinary one and, like his work, abounded in sharp con-
trasts. On the one hand, there are his egoism, his uncontrol-
lable anger, his perpetual lawsuits, and the last sad tragedy
with his children, which suggests King Lear and his daugh-
ters ; on the other hand there is his steady devotion to the
classics and to the cultivation of the deep wisdom of the
ancients, which suggests Pindar and Cicero. In his works we
find the wild extravagance of Gebir, followed by the superb
classic style and charm of Pericles and Aspasia. Such was
Landor, a man of high ideals, perpetually at war with himself
and the world.

Life. Lander's stormy life covers the whole period from Words-
worth's childhood to the middle of the Victorian Era. He was the
son of a physician, and was born at Warwick, in 1775. From his
mother he inherited a fortune ; but it was soon scattered by large
expenditures and law quarrels ; and in his old age, refused help by
his own children, only Browning's generosity kept Landor from
actual want. At Rugby, and at Oxford, his extreme Republican-
ism brought him into constant trouble ; and his fitting out a band
of volunteers to assist the Spaniards against Napoleon, in 1808,
allies him with Byron and his Quixotic followers. The resemblance
to Byron is even more strikingly shown in the poem Gebir, pub-
lished in 1798, a year made famous by the Lyrical Ballads of
Wordsworth and Coleridge.

A remarkable change in Lander's life is noticeable in 1821, when,
at forty-six years of age, after having lost his magnificent estate of
Llanthony Abbey, in Glamorganshire, and after a stormy experience
in Como, he settled down for a time at Fiesole near Florence. To
this period of calm after storm we owe the classical prose works for
which he is famous. The calm, like that at the center of a whirl-
wind, lasted but a short time, and Landor. leaving his family in

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 441

great anger, returned to Bath, where he lived alone for more than
twenty years. Then, in order to escape a libel suit, the choleric old
man fled back to Italy. He died at Florence, in 1864. The spirit
of his whole life may be inferred from the defiant farewell which he
flung to it :

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ;

Nature I loved, and next to Nature Art ;
1 warmed both hands before the fire of life ;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Works. Lander's reaction from Romanticism is all the
more remarkable in view of his early efforts, such as Gebir, a
wildly romantic poem, which rivals any work of Byron or
Shelley in its extravagance. Notwithstanding its occasional
beautiful and suggestive lines, the work was not and never
has been successful ; and the same may be said of all his
poetical works. His first collection of poems was published
in 1795, his last a full half century later, in 1846. In the
latter volume, The Hellenics, which included some transla-
tions of his earlier Latin poems, called Idyllia Heroica y one
has only to read "The Hamadryad," and compare it with the
lyrics of the first volume, in order to realize the astonishing
literary vigor of a man who published two volumes, a half
century apart, without any appreciable diminution of poetical
feeling. In all these poems one is impressed by the striking
and original figures of speech which Landor uses to emphasize
his meaning.

It is by his prose works, largely, that Landor has won a
place in our literature ; partly because of their intrinsic worth,
their penetrating thought, and severe classic style ; and partly
because of their profound influence upon the writers of the
present age. The most noted of his prose works are his six
volumes of Imaginary Conversations (1824-1846). For these
conversations Landor brings together, sometimes in groups,
sometimes in couples, well-known characters, or rather shad-
ows, from the four corners of the earth and from the remot-
est ages of recorded history. Thus Diogenes talks with Plato,

442 ENGLISH LITERATURE

JEsop with a young slave girl in Egypt, Henry VIII with
Anne Boleyn in prison, Dante with Beatrice, Leofric with
Lady Godiva, all these and many others, from Epictetus
to Cromwell, are brought together and speak of life and love
and death, each from his own view point. Occasionally, as in
the meeting of Henry and Anne Boleyn, the situation is tense
and dramatic ; but as a rule the characters simply meet and
converse in the same quiet strain, which becomes, after much
reading, somewhat monotonous. On the other hand, one who
reads the Imaginary Conversations is lifted at once into a
calm and noble atmosphere which braces and inspires him,
making him forget petty things, like a view from a hilltop.
By its combination of lofty thought and severely classic style
the book has won, and deserves, a very high place among our
literary records.

The same criticism applies to Pericles and Aspasia, which
is a series of imaginary letters, telling the experiences of
Aspasia, a young lady from Asia Minor, who visits Athens
at the summit of its fame and glory, in the great age of Peri-
cles. This is, in our judgment, the best worth reading of all
Landor's works. One gets from it not only Lander's classic
style, but what is well worth while a better picture of
Greece in the days of its greatness than can be obtained
from many historical volumes.

Summary of the Age of Romanticism. This period extends from the war
with the colonies, following the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, to the
accession of Victoria in 1837, both limits being very indefinite, as will be seen
by a glance at the Chronology following. During the first part of the period
especially, England was in a continual turmoil, produced by political and
economic agitation at home, and by the long wars that covered two continents
and the wide sea between them. The mighty changes resulting from these
two causes have given this period the name of the Age of Revolution. The
storm center of all the turmoil at home and abroad was the French Revolu-
tion, which had a profound influence on the life and literature of all Europe.
On the Continent the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815) apparently
checked the progress of liberty, which had started with the French Revolution, 1

1 See histories for the Congress of Vienna (1814) and the Holy Alliance (1815).

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 443

but in England the case was reversed. The agitation for popular liberty, which
at one time threatened a revolution, went steadily forward till it resulted in
the final triumph of democracy, in the Reform Bill of 1832, and in a number
of exceedingly important reforms, such as the extension of manhood suffrage,
the removal of the last unjust restrictions against Catholics, the establishment
of a national system of schools, followed by a rapid increase in popular educa-
tion, and the abolition of slavery in all English colonies (1833). To tn ^ s we
must add the changes produced by the discovery of steam and the invention
of machinery, which rapidly changed England from an agricultural to a manu-
facturing nation, introduced the factory system, and caused this period to be
known as the Age of Industrial Revolution.

The literature of the age is largely poetical in form, and almost entirely
romantic in spirit. For, as we have noted, the triumph of democracy in gov-
ernment is generally accompanied by the triumph of romanticism in literature.
At first the literature, as shown especially in the early work of Wordsworth,
Byron, and Shelley, reflected the turmoil of the age and the wild hopes of an
ideal democracy occasioned by the French Revolution. Later the extravagant
enthusiasm subsided, and English writers produced so much excellent litera-
ture that the age is often called the Second Creative period, the first being
the Age of Elizabeth. The six chief characteristics of the age are : the preva-
lence of romantic poetry ; the creation of the historical novel by Scott ; the
first appearance of women novelists, such as Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, Jane Porter,
Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen ; the development of literary criticism, in
the work of Lamb, De Quincey, Coleridge, and Hazlitt ; the practical and
economic bent of philosophy, as shown in the work of Malthus, James Mill,
and Adam Smith ; and the establishment of great literary magazines, like
the Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly, Blackwood^s, and the Athenceum,

In our study we have noted (i) the Poets of Romanticism : the impor-
tance of the Lyrical Ballads of 1798; the life and work of Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats ; (2) the Prose Writers : the
novels of Scott ; the development of literary criticism ; the life and work of
the essayists, Lamb, De Quincey, Landor, and of the novelist Jane Austen.

Selections for Reading. Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English
Prose (each one vol.) contain good selections from all authors studied.
Ward's English Poets (4 vols.), Craik's English Prose Selections (5 vols.),
Braithwaite's The Book of Georgian Verse, Page's British Poets of the Nine-
teenth Century, and Garnett's English Prose from Elizabeth to Victoria, may
also be used to advantage. Important works, however, should be read entire
in one of the inexpensive school editions given below. (Full titles and pub-
lishers may be found in the General Bibliography at the end of this book.)

Wordsworth. Intimations of Immortality, Tintern Abbey, best lyrics and
sonnets, in Selections, edited by Dowden (Athenaeum Press Series) ; selections
and short poems, edited by M. Arnold, in Golden Treasury Series ; Selections,
also in Everyman's Library, Riverside Literature Series, Cassell's National
Library, etc.

444 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Coleridge. Ancient Mariner, edited by L. R. Gibbs, in Standard English
Classics ; same poem, in Pocket Classics, Eclectic English Classics, etc. ;
Poems, edited by J. M. Hart, in Athenaeum Press (announced, 1909) ; Selec-
tions, Golden Book of Coleridge, in Everyman's Library ; Selections from
Coleridge and Campbell, in Riverside Literature ; Prose Selections (Ginn and
Company, also Holt) ; Lectures on Shakespeare, in Everyman's Library,
Bonn's Standard Library, etc.

Scott. Lady of the Lake, Marmion, Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Guy Manner-
ing, Quentin Durward. Numerous inexpensive editions of Scott's best poems
and novels in Standard English Classics, Pocket Classics, Cassell's National
Library, Eclectic English Classics, Everyman's Library, etc. ; thus, Lady of
the Lake, edited by Edwin Ginn, and Ivanhoe, edited by W. D. Lewis, both
in Standard English Classics ; Marmion, edited by G. B. Acton, and The
Talisman, edited by F. Treudly, in Pocket Classics, etc.

Byron. Mazeppa and The Prisoner of Chillon, edited by S. M. Tucker, in
Standard English Classics ; short poems, Selections from Childe Harold, etc.,
in Canterbury Poets, Riverside Literature, Holt's English Readings, Pocket
Classics, etc.

Shelley. To a Cloud, To a Skylark, West Wind, Sensitive Plant, Adonais,
etc., all in Selections from Shelley, edited by Alexander, in Athenaeum Press
Series ; Selections, edited by Woodberry, in Belles Lettres Series ; Selections,
also in Pocket Classics, Heath's English Classics, Golden Treasury Series, etc.

Keats. Ode on a Grecian Urn, Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, Lamia, To a
Nightingale, etc., in Selections from Keats, in Athenaeum Press ; Selections
also in Muses' Library, Riverside Literature, Golden Treasury Series, etc.

Lamb. Essays : Dream Children, Old China, Dissertation on Roast Pig,
etc., edited by Wauchope, in Standard English Classics ; various essays also
in Camelot Series, Temple Classics, Everyman's Library, etc. Tales from
Shakespeare, in Home and School Library (Ginn and Company) ; also in
Riverside Literature, Pocket Classics, Golden Treasury, etc.

De Quincey. The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc, in Standard English
Classics, etc. ; Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, in Temple Classics,
Morley's Universal Library, Everyman's Library, Pocket Classics, etc. ; Selec-
tions, edited by M. H- Turk, in Athenaeum Press ; Selections, edited by
B. Perry (Holt).

Landor. Selections, edited by W. Clymer, in Athenaeum Press ; Pericles

and Aspasia, in Camelot Series ; Imaginary Conversations, selected (Ginn'and

Company) ; the same, 2 vols., in Dutton's Universal Library ; selected poems,

in Canterbury Poets ; selections, prose and verse, in Golden Treasury Series.

Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice, in Everyman's Library, Pocket Classics, etc.

Bibliography. 1 History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 323-357 ; Cheyney,
576-632. General Works. Green, X, 2-4, Traill, Gardiner, Macaulay, etc.
Special Works. Cheyney's Industrial and Social History of England ; Warner's

1 For full titles and publishers of general reference books, see General Bibliography
at end of this book.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 445

Landmarks of English Industrial History ; Hassall's Making of the British
Empire ; Macaulay's William Pitt ; Trevelyan's Early Life of Charles James
Fox ; Morley's Edmund Burke ; Morris's Age of Queen Anne and the Early
Hanoverians.

Literature. General Works. Mitchell, Courthope, Garnett and Gosse, Taine
(see General Bibliography). Special Works. Beers's English Romanticism in
the Nineteenth Century; A. Symons's The Romantic Movement in English
Poetry ; Dowden's The French Revolution and English Literature, also
Studies in Literature, 1789-1877; Hancock's The French Revolution and
the English Poets ; Herford's The Age of Wordsworth (Handbooks of Eng-
lish Literature) ; Mrs. Oliphant's Literary History of England in the End of
the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Centuries ; Saintsbury's
History of Nineteenth Century Literature; Masson's Wordsworth, Shelley,
Keats, and Other Essays ; Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century,
vols. 1-3; Gates's Studies and Appreciations; S. Brooke's Studies in Poetry;
Rawnsley's Literary Associations of the English Lakes (2 vols.).

Wordsworth. Texts : Globe, Aldine, Cambridge editions, etc. ; Poetical
and Prose Works, with Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, edited by Knight,
Eversley Edition (London and New York, 1896) ; Letters of the Wordsworth
Family, edited by Knight, 3 vols. (Ginn and Company) ; Poetical Selections,
edited by Dowden, in Athenaeum Press ; various other selections, in Golden
Treasury, etc. ; Prose Selections, edited by Gayley (Ginn and Company). Life :
Memoirs, 2 vols., by Christopher Wordsworth ; by Knight, 3 vols. ; by Myers
(English Men of Letters) ; by Elizabeth Wordsworth ; Early Life (a Study
of the Prelude) by E. Legouis, translated by J. Matthews ; Raleigh's Words-
worth ; N. C. Smith's Wordsworth's Literary Criticism ; Rannie's Wordsworth
and His Circle. Criticism : Herford's The Age of Wordsworth ; Masson's
Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats ; Magnus's Primer of Wordsworth ; Wilson's
Helps to the Study of Arnold's Wordsworth ; Essays, by Lowell, in Among
My Books ; by M. Arnold, in Essays in Criticism ; by Hutton, in Literary
Essays ; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library, and in Studies of a Biographer ;
by Bagehot, in Literary Studies; by Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age; by
Pater, in Appreciations ; by De Quincey, in Essays on the Poets ; by Fields,
in Yesterdays with Authors ; by Shairp, in Studies in Poetry and Philosophy.
See also Knight's Through the W T ordsworth Country, and Rawnsley's Literary
Associations of the English Lakes.

Coleridge. Texts : Complete Works, edited by Shedd, 7 vols. (New York,
1884); Poems, Globe, Aldine, and Cambridge editions, in Athenaeum Press
(announced, 1909), Muses' Library, Canterbury Poets, etc. ; Biographia Liter-
aria, in Everyman's Library ; the same, in Clarendon Press ; Prose Selections,
Lectures on Shakespeare, etc. (see Selections for Reading, above) ; Letters,
edited by E. H. Coleridge (London, 1895), Life: by J. D. Campbell; by
Traill (English Men of Letters) ; by Dykes ; by Hall Caine (Great Writers
Series) ; see also Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and Lamb's essay, Christ's
Hospital, in Essays of Elia. Criticism : Brandl's Coleridge and the English
Romantic Movement. Essays, by Shairp, in Studies in Poetry and Philosophy ;

446 ENGLISH LITERATURE

by Woodberry, in Makers of Literature ; by J. Forster, in Great Teachers ;
by Dowden, in New Studies ; by Swinburne, in Essays and Studies ; by Brooke,
in Theology in the English Poets ; by Saintsbury, in Essays in English Litera-
ture ; by Lowell in Democracy and Other Essays ; by Hazlitt, and by Pater
(see Wordsworth, above). See also Beers's English Romanticism; Carlyle's
chapter on Coleridge, in Life of John Sterling.

Southey. Texts : Poems, edited by Dowden (Macmillan) ; Poetical Works
(Crowell) ; Selections in Canterbury Poets ; Life of Nelson, in Everyman's
Library, Temple Classics, Morley's Universal Library, etc. Life : by Dowden
(English Men of Letters). Essays, by L. Stephen, in Studies of a Biographer ;
by Hazlitt and Saintsbury (see above).

Scott. Texts : Numerous good editions of novels and poems. For single
works, see Selections for Reading, above. Life : by Lockhart, 5 vols. (several
editions; best by Pollard, 1900); by Hutton (English Men of Letters); by
A. Lang, in Literary Lives ; by C. D. Yonge (Great Writers) ; by Hudson ;
by Saintsbury (Famous Scots Series). Criticism : Essays, by Stevenson, Gossip
on Romance, in Memories and Portraits; by Shairp, in Aspects of Poetry; by
Swinburne, in Studies in Prose and Poetry; by Carlyle, in Miscellaneous
Essays ; by Hazlitt, Bagehot, L. Stephen, Brooke, and Saintsbury (see Cole-
ridge and Wordsworth, above).

Byron. Texts : Complete Works, Globe, Cambridge Poets, and Oxford
editions ; Selections, edited by M. Arnold, in Golden Treasury (see also Selec-
tions for Reading, above) ; Letters and Journals of Byron, edited by Moore
(unreliable). Life : by Noel (Great Writers) ; by Nichol (English Men of
Letters) ; The Real Lord Byron, by J. C. Jeaff reson ; Trelawny's Recollections
of Shelley and Byron. Criticism : Hunt's Lord Byron and His Contempo-
raries ; Essays, by Morley, Macaulay, Hazlitt, Swinburne, and M. Arnold.

Shelley. Texts : Centenary Edition, edited by Woodberry, 4 vols. ; Globe
and Cambridge Poets editions ; Essays and Letters, in Camelot Series (see
Selections for Reading, above). Life : by Symonds (English Men of Letters) ; by
Dowden, 2 vols. ; by Sharp (Great Writers) ; by T. J. Hogg, 2 vols. ; by W. M.
Rossetti. Criticism : Salt's A Shelley Primer ; Essays, by Dowden, in Tran-
scripts and Studies; by M. Arnold, Woodberry, Bagehot, Forster, L. Stephen,
Brooke, De Quincey, and Hutton (see Coleridge and Wordsworth, above).

Keats. Texts : Complete Works, edited by Forman, 4 vols. (London, 1883) ;
Cambridge Poets Edition, with Letters, edited by H. E. Scudder (Houghton,
Mifflin) ; Aldine Edition, with Life, edited by Lord Houghton (Macmillan) ,
Selected Poems, with introduction and notes by Arlo Bates (Ginn and Com-
pany) ; Poems, also in Everyman's Library, Muses' Library, Golden Treasury,
etc. ; Letters, edited by S. Colvin, in Eversley Edition. Life : by Forman, in
Complete Works ; by Colvin (English Men of Letters) ; by W. M. Rossetti
(Great Writers) ; by A. E. Hancock. Criticism : H. C. Shelley's Keats and
His Circle ; Masson's Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays ; Essays,
by M. Arnold, in Essays in Criticism, also in Ward's English Poets, vol. 4 ; by
Hudson, in Studies in Interpretation ; by Lowell, in Among My Books, or
Literary Essays, vol. 2 ; by Brooke, De Quincey, and Swinburne (above).

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 447

Lamb. Texts : Complete Works and Letters, edited by E. V. Lucas, 7 vols.
(Putnam); the same, edited by Ainger, 6 vols. (London, 1883-1888); Essays
of Elia, in Standard English Classics, etc. (see Selections for Reading) ; Dra-
matic Essays, edited by B. Matthews (Dodd, Mead) ; Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets, in Bohn's Library. Life : by E. V. Lucas, 2 vols. ; by Ainger
(English Men of Letters) ; by Barry Cornwall ; Talfourd's Memoirs of Charles
Lamb. Criticism : Essays, by De Quincey, in Biographical Essays ; by F. Har-
rison, in Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates ; by Pater,
and Woodberry (see Wordsworth and Coleridge, above). See also Fitzgerald's
Charles Lamb, his Friends, his Haunts, and his Books.

De Quincey. Texts: Collected Writings, edited by Masson, 14 vols. (Lon-
don, 1889-1891) ; Confessions of an Opium-Eater, etc. (see Selections for
Reading). Life : by Masson (English Men of Letters) ; Life and Writings, by
H. A. Page, 2 vols. ; Hogg's De Quincey and his Friends ; Findlay's Personal
Recollections of De Quincey; see also De Quincey's Autobiographical
Sketches, and Confessions. Criticism: Essays, by Saintsbury, in Essays in
English Literature ; by Masson, in Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other
Essays ; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library. See also Minto's Manual of
English Prose Literature.

Landor. Texts: Works, with Life by Forster, 8 vols. (London, 1876);
Works, edited by Crump (London, 1897) ; Letters, etc., edited by Wheeler
(London, 1897 and 1899) ; Imaginary Conversations, etc. (see Selections for
Reading). Life : by Colvin (English Men of Letters) ; by ForsVer. Criticism:
Essays, by De Quincey, Woodberry, L. Stephen, Saintsbury, Swinburne, Dow-
den (see above). See also Stedman's Victorian Poets.

Jane Austen. Texts : Works, edited by R. B. Johnson (Dent) ; various
other editions of novels ; Letters, edited by Woolsey (Roberts). Life : Austen-
Leigh's Memoir of Jane Austen ; Hill's Jane Austen, her Home and her
Friends ; Mitton's Jane Austen and her Times. Life, by Goldwin Smith ; by
Maiden (Famous Women Series); by O. F. Adams. Criticism: Pollock's
Jane Austen ; Pellew's Jane Austen's Novels ; A. A. Jack's Essay on the
Novel as Illustrated by Scott and Miss Austen ; H. H. BonnelPs Charlotte
Bronte, George Eliot, and Jane Austen ; Essay, by Howells, in Heroines
of Fiction.

Maria Edgeworth. Texts : Tales and Novels, New Langford Edition, 10
vols. (London, 1893) ; various editions of novels (Dent, etc.) ; The Absentee,
and Castle Rackrent, in Morley's Universal Library. Life : by Helen Zimmer-
man ; Memoir, by Hare.

Mrs. Anne Radcliffe. Romances, with introduction by Scott, in Ballantynes'
Novelists Library (London, 1824) ; various editions of Udolpho, etc. ; Saints-
bury's Tales of Mystery, vol. i. See Beers's English Romanticism.

Moore. Poetical Works, in Canterbury Poets, Chandos Classics, etc.;
Selected poems, in Golden Treasury; Gunning's Thomas Moore, Poet and
Patriot ; Symington's Life and Works of Moore. Essay, by Saintsbury.

Campbell. Poems, Aldine edition ; Selections, in Golden Treasury. Life,
by Hadden.

448 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Hazlitt. Texts : Works, edited by Henley, 12 vols. (London, 1902) ; Selected
Essays, in Temple Classics, Camelot Series, etc. Life : by Birrell (English
Men of Letters); Memoirs, by W. C. Hazlitt. Essays, by Saintsbury; by
L. Stephen.

Leigh Hunt. Texts: Selected essays, in Camelot Series, also in Cavendish
Library (Warne) ; Stories from the Italian Poets (Putnam). Life": by Monk-
house (Great Writers). Essays, by Macaulay; by Saintsbury; by Hazlitt.
See also Mrs. Field's A Shelf of Old Books.

Suggestive Questions. (NOTE. In a period like the Age of Romanticism,
the poems and essays chosen for special study vary so widely that only a few
general questions on the selections for reading are attempted.)

1. Why is this period of Romanticism (1789-1837) called the Age of Revo-
lution ? Give some reasons for the influence of the French Revolution on
English literature, and illustrate from poems or essays which you have read.
Explain the difference between Classicism and Romanticism. Which of these
two types of literature do you prefer ?

2. What are the general characteristics of the literature of this period ?
What two opposing tendencies are illustrated in the novels of Scott and Jane
Austen ? in the poetry of Byron and Wordsworth ?

3. Wordsworth. Tell briefly the story of Wordsworth's life, and name
some of his best poems. Why do the Lyrical Ballads (1798) mark an impor-
tant literary epoch ? Read carefully, and make an analysis of the " Intimations
of Immortality " ; of " Tintern Abbey." Can you explain what political con-
ditions are referred to in Wordsworth's " Sonnet on Milton " ? in his " French
Revolution " ? Does he attempt to paint a picture in his sonnet on West-
minster Bridge, or has he some other object in view ? What is the central
teaching of the " Ode to Duty " ? Compare Wordsworth's two Skylark poems
with Shelley's, j Make a brief comparison between Wordsworth's sonnets and
those of Shakespeare and of Milton, having in mind the thought, the melody,
the view of nature, and the imagery of the three poets. Quote from Words-
worth's poems to show his belief that nature is conscious ; to show the influ-
ence of nature on man ; to show his interest in children ; his sensitiveness to
sounds ; to illustrate the chastening influence of sorrow. Make a brief com-
parison between the characters of Wordsworth's " Michael " and of Burns's
" The Cotter's Saturday Night." Compare Wordsworth's point of view and
method, in the three poems " To a Daisy," with Burns's view, as expressed in
his famous lines on the same subject.

4. Coleridge. What are the general characteristics of Coleridge's life ?
What explains the profound sympathy for humanity that is reflected in his
poems ? For what, beside his poems, is he remarkable ? Can you quote any
passages from his poetry which show the influence of Wordsworth ? What
are the characters in " The Ancient Mariner " ? In what respect is this poem
romantic ? Give your own'reasons for its popularity. Does the thought or the
style of this poem impress you ? If you have read any of the Lectures on
Shakespeare, explain why Coleridge's work is called romantic criticism.

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM 449

5. Scott. Tell the story of Scott's life, and name his chief poems and
novels. Do you recall any passage from his poetry which suggests his own
heroism ? Why was he called " the wizard of the North " ? What is the gen-
eral character of his poetry ? Compare Marmion with one of the old ballads,
having in mind the characters, the dramatic interest of the story, and the style
of writing. In what sense is he the creator of the historical novel? Upon
what does he depend to hold the reader's attention ? Compare him, in this
respect, with Jane Austen. Which of his characters impress you as being the
most lifelike ? Name any novels of the present day which copy Scott or show
his influence. Read Ivanhoe and the Lady of the Lake; make a brief analysis
of each work, having in mind the style, the plot, the dramatic interest, the use
of adventure, and the truth to nature of the different characters.

6. Byron. Why is Byron called the revolutionary poet ? (Illustrate, if
possible, from his poetry.) What is the general character of his work ? In
what kind of poetry does he excel ? (Quote from Childe Harold to illustrate
your opinion.) Describe the typical Byronic hero. Can you explain his great
popularity at first, and his subsequent loss of influence ? Why is he still
popular on the Continent ? Do you find more of thought or of emotion in his
poetry ? Compare him, in this respect, with Shelley ; with Wordsworth.
Which is the more brilliant writer, Byron or Wordsworth? Which has the
more humor ? Which has the healthier mind ? Which has the higher ideal of
poetry ? Which is the more inspiring and helpful ? Is it fair to say that Byron's
quality is power, not charm ?

7. Shelley. What are the chief characteristics of Shelley's poetry ? Is it most
remarkable for its thought, form, or imagery? What poems show the influ-
ence of the French Revolution ? What subjects are considered in " Lines
written among the Euganean Hills"? What does Shelley try to teach in
" The Sensitive Plant " ? Compare Shelley's view of nature, as reflected in
" The Cloud " or " The West Wind," with Wordsworth's view, as reflected
in "The Prelude," "Tintern Abbey," "Daffodils," etc. To what class of
poems does " Adonais " belong ? What is the subject of the poem ? Name
others of the same class. How does Shelley describe himself in this poem ?
Compare Shelley's "Adonais" and Milton's " Lycidas " with regard to the
view of life after death as expressed in the poems. What kinds of scenes
does Shelley like best to describe? Compare his characters with those of
Wordsworth ; of Byron. Do you recall any poems in which he writes of ordi-
nary people or of ordinary experiences ?

8. Keats. What is the essence of Keats's poetical creed, as expressed in
the " Ode on a Grecian Urn " ? What are the remarkable elements in his life
and work ? What striking difference do you find between his early poems and
those of Shelley and Byron ? What are the chief subjects of his verse ? What
poems show the influence of the classics? of Elizabethan literature? Can
you explain why his work has been called literary poetry ? Keats and Shelley
are generally classed together. What similarities do you find in their poems ?
Give some reasons why Keats introduces the old Bedesman in " The Eve of
Saint Agnes." Name some of the literary friends mentioned in Keats's poetry.

450 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Compare Keats's characters with those of Wordsworth ; of Byron. Does Keats
ever remind you of Spenser ? In what respects ? Is your personal preference
for Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, or Keats ? Why ?

9. Lamb. Tell briefly the story of Lamb's life and name his principal
works. Why is he called the most human of essayists ? His friends called
him " the last of the Elizabethans." Why ? What is the general character of
the Essays of Elia ? How is the personality of Lamb shown in all these
'essays ? Cite any passages showing Lamb's skill in portraying people. Make
a brief comparison between Lamb and Addison, having in mind the subjects
treated, the style, the humor, and the interest of both essayists. Which do
you prefer, and why ?

10. De Qiiincey. What are the general characteristics of De Quincey's
essays ? Explain why he is called the psychologist of style. What accounts
for a certain unreal element in all his work. Read a passage from The English
Mail-Coach, or f rom Joan of Arc, or from Levana, Our Lady of Sorrows, and
comment freely upon it, with regard to style, ideas, interest, and the impres-
sion of reality or unreality which it leaves.

11. Landor. In what respect does Landor show a reaction from Romanti-
cism ? What qualities make Landor's poems stand out so clearly in the
memory ? Why, for instance, do you think Lamb was so haunted by " Rose
Aylmer " ? Quote from Landor's poems to illustrate his tenderness, his sensi-
tiveness to beauty, his power of awakening emotion, his delicacy of charac-
terization. Do you find the same qualities in his prose ? Can you explain
why much of his prose seems like a translation from the Greek ? Compare a
passage from the Imaginary Conversations with a passage from Gibbon or
Johnson, to show the difference between the classic and the pseudo-classic
style. Compare one of Landor's characters, in Imaginary Conversations, with
the same character in history.

12. Jane Austen. How does Jane Austen show a reaction from Romanti-
cism ? What important work did she do for the novel ? To what kind of fic-
tion was her work opposed ? In what does the charm of her novels consist ?
Make a brief comparison between Jane Austen and Scott (as illustrated in
Pride and Prejudice and Ivanhoe), having in mind the subject, the characters,
the manner of treatment, and the interest of both narratives. Do Jane
Austen's characters have to be explained by the author, or do they explain
themselves? Which method calls for the greater literary skill? What does
Jane Austen say about Mrs. Radcliffe, in Northanger Abbey? Does she make
any other observations on eighteenth-century novelists ?

THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM

451

CHRONOLOGY

End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1760-1820. George III
1789-1799. French Revolution

1800. Union of Great Britain and

Ireland
1802. Colonization of Australia

1805. Battle of Trafalgar

1807. Abolition of slave trade
1808-1814. Peninsular War

1812. Second war with United States

1814. Congress of Vienna

1815. Battle of Waterloo

1819. First Atlantic steamship

1820. George IV (d. 1830)

1826. First Temperance Society

1829. Catholic Emancipation Bill

1830. William IV (d. 1837)
First railway

1832. Reform Bill

1833. Emancipation of slaves

1834. System of national education
1837. Victoria (d. 1901)

1770-1850. Wordsworth
1771-1832. Scott

1796-1816. Jane Austen's novels
1798. Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth
and Coleridge

1802. Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scot-
tish Border

1805-1817. Scott's poems

1807. Wordsworth's Intimations of
Immortality. Lamb's Tales
from Shakespeare

1809-1818. Byron's Childe Harold
1810-1813. Coleridge's Lectures on

Shakespeare
1814-1831. Waverley Novels

1816. Shelley's Alastor

1817. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
1817-1820. Keats's poems
1818-1820. Shelley's Prometheus

1820. W r ordsworth's Duddon Sonnets
1820-1833. Lamb's Essays of Elia

1821. De Quincey's Confessions
1824-1846. Lander's Imaginary Con-
versations.

1830. Tennyson's first poems

1831. Scott's last novel

1833. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus
Browning's Pauline

1853-1861. De Quincey's Collected
Essays

CHAPTER XI

THE VICTORIAN AGE (1850-1900)
THE MODERN PERIOD OF PROGRESS AND UNREST

When Victoria became queen, in 1837, English literature
seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked
contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age which
we have just studied. Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and
Scott had passed away, and it seemed as if there were no
writers in England to fill their places. Wordsworth had
written, in 1835,

Like clouds that rake the mountain summits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother,

From sunshine to the sunless land !

In these lines is reflected the sorrowful spirit of a literary
man of the early nineteenth century who remembered the
glory that had passed away from the earth. But the leanness
of these first years is more apparent than real. Keats and
Shelley were dead, it is true, but already there had appeared
three disciples of these poets who were destined to be far
more widely read than were their masters. Tennyson had
been publishing poetry since 1827, his first poems appearing
almost simultaneously with the last work of Byron, Shelley,
and Keats; but it was not until 1842, with the publication
of his collected poems, in two volumes, that England recog-
nized in him one of her great literary leaders. So also
Elizabeth Barrett had been writing since 1820, but not till
twenty years later did her poems become deservedly popular ;
and Browning had published his Pauline in 1833, but it
was not until 1 846, when he published the last of the series

452

THE VICTORIAN AGE 453

called Bells and Pomegranates, that the reading public began
to appreciate his power and originality. Moreover, even as
romanticism seemed passing away, a group of great prose
writers Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, and Ruskin had
already begun to proclaim the literary glory of a new age,
which now seems to rank only just below the Elizabethan
and the Romantic periods.

Historical Summary. Amid the multitude of social and political
forces of this great age, four things stand out clearly. First, the long
struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for personal liberty is defi-
nitely settled, and democracy becomes the established
order of the day. The king, who appeared in an age of popular
weakness and ignorance, and the peers, who came with the Normans
in triumph, are both stripped of their power and left as figureheads
of a past civilization. The last vestige of personal government and
of the divine right of rulers disappears ; the House of Commons
becomes the ruling power in England ; and a series of new reform
bills rapidly extend the suffrage, until the whole body of English
people choose for themselves the men who shall represent them.

Second, because it is an age of democracy, it is an age of popular
education, of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood, and of
profound social unrest. The slaves had been freed in
1833 ; but in the middle of the century England awoke
to the fact that slaves are not necessarily negroes, stolen in Africa
to be sold like cattle in the market place, but that multitudes of
men, women, and little children in the mines and factories were
victims of a more terrible industrial and social slavery. To free
these slaves also, the unwilling victims of our unnatural competitive
methods, has been the growing purpose of the Victorian Age until
the present day.

Third, because it is an age of democracy and education, it is an
age of comparative peace. England begins to think less of the
The Ideal of P om P an d false glitter of fighting, and more of its moral
Peace evils, as the nation realizes that it is the common people

who bear the burden and the sorrow and the poverty of war, while
the privileged classes reap most of the financial and political rewards.
Moreover, with the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations,
it becomes evident that the social equality for which England was

454 ENGLISH LITERATURE

contending at home belongs to the whole race of men ; that brother-
hood is universal, not insular ; that a question of justice is never
settled by fighting ; and that war is generally unmitigated horror
and barbarism. Tennyson, who came of age when the great Reform
Bill occupied attention, expresses the ideals of the Liberals of his
day who proposed to spread the gospel of peace,

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world.

Fourth, the Victorian Age is especially remarkable because of its
rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical inven-
Arts and tions. A glance at any record of the industrial achieve-
Sciences ments of the nineteenth century will show how vast they
are, and it is unnecessary to repeat here the list of the inventions,
from spinning looms to steamboats, and from matches to electric
lights. All these material things, as well as the growth of educa-
tion, have their influence upon the life of a people, and it is inev-
itable that they should react upon its prose and poetry; though as
yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and mechanics to
determine accurately their influence upon literature. When these
new things shall by long use have became familiar as country roads,
or have been replaced by newer and better things, then they also
will have their associations and memories, and a poem on the rail-
roads may be as suggestive as Wordsworth's sonnet on Westminster
Bridge ; and the busy, practical workingmen who to-day throng our
streets and factories may seem, to a future and greater age, as quaint
and poetical as to us seem the slow toilers of the Middle Ages.

Literary Characteristics. When one is interested enough
to trace the genealogy of Victoria he finds, to his surprise,
An Age of that in her veins flowed the blood both of William
Prose the Conqueror and of Cerdic, the first Saxon king

of England ; and this seems to be symbolic of the literature
of her age, which embraces the whole realm of Saxon and
Norman life, the strength and ideals of the one, and the
culture and refinement of the other. The romantic revival
had done its work, and England entered upon a new free
period, in which every form of literature, from pure romance
to gross realism, struggled for expression. At this day it is

THE VICTORIAN AGE 455

obviously impossible to judge the age as a whole ; but we are
getting far enough away from the early half of it to notice cer-
tain definite characteristics. First, though the age produced
many poets, and two who deserve to rank among the greatest,
nevertheless this is emphatically an age of prose. And since
the number of readers has increased a thousandfold with the
spread of popular education, it is the age of the newspaper, the
magazine, and the modern novel, the first two being the story
of the world's daily life, and the last our pleasantest form of
literary entertainment, as well as our most successful method
of presenting modern problems and modern ideals. The novel
in this age fills a place which the drama held in the days of
Elizabeth ; and never before, in any age or language, has the
novel appeared in such numbers and in such perfection.

The second marked characteristic of the age is that lit-
erature, both in prose and in poetry, seems to depart from
Moral tne purely artistic standard, of art for art's sake,

Purpose anc i t o ^ e actuated by a definite moral purpose.
Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin, who and what were
these men if not the teachers of England, not vaguely but
definitely, with superb faith in their message, and with the
conscious moral purpose to uplift and to instruct ? Even the
novel breaks away from Scott's romantic influence, and first
studies life as it is, and then points out what life may and
ought to be. Whether we read the fun and sentiment of
Dickens, the social miniatures of Thackeray, or the psycho-
logical studies of George Eliot, we find in almost every case
a definite purpose to sweep away error and to reveal the
underlying truth of human life. So the novel sought to do
for society in this age precisely what Lyell and Darwin sought
to do for science, that is, to find the truth, and to show how
it might be used to uplift humanity. Perhaps for this reason
the Victorian Age is emphatically an age of realism rather
than of romance, not the realism of Zola and Ibsen, but a
deeper realism which strives to tell the whole truth, showing

456 ENGLISH LITERATURE

moral and physical diseases as they are, but holding up health
and hope as the normal conditions of humanity.

It is somewhat customary to speak of this age as an age

of doubt and pessimism, following the new conception of

man and of the universe which was formulated by

Idealism

science under the name of Evolution. It is spoken
of also as a prosaic age, lacking in great ideals. Both these
criticisms seem to be the result of judging a large thing when
we are too close to it to get its true proportions, just as
Cologne Cathedral, one of the world's most perfect structures,
seems to be a shapeless pile of stone when we stand too close
beneath its mighty walls and buttresses. Tennyson's imma-
ture work, like that of the minor poets, is sometimes in a
doubtful or despairing strain ; but his In Memoriam is like
the rainbow after storm ; and Browning seems better to ex-
press the spirit of his age in the strong, manly faith of w Rabbi
Ben Ezra," and in the courageous optimism of all his poetry.
Stedman's Victorian Anthology is, on the whole, a most in-
spiring book of poetry. It would be hard to collect more
varied cheer from any age. And the great essayists, like
Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and the great novelists, like
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, generally leave us with a
larger charity and with a deeper faith in our humanity.

So also the judgment that this age is too practical for great
ideals may be only a description of the husk that hides a very
full ear of corn. It is well to remember that Spenser and
Sidney judged their own age (which we now consider to be
the greatest in our literary history) to be altogether given
over to materialism, and to be incapable of literary greatness.
Just as time has made us smile at their blindness, so the next
century may correct our judgment of this as a material age,
and looking upon the enormous growth of charity and brother-
hood among us, and at the literature which expresses our
faith in men, may judge the Victorian Age to be, on the whole,
the noblest and most inspiring in the history of the world.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 457

I. THE POETS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892)

O young Mariner,
You from the haven
Under the sea-cliff.
You that are watching
The gray Magician
With eyes of wonder,
/ am Merlin,
And / am dying,
/ am Merlin
Who follow The Gleam.

O young Mariner,
Down to the haven
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel,
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow The Gleam.

One who reads this haunting poem of " Merlin and The
Gleam " finds in it a suggestion of the spirit of the poet's
whole life, his devotion to the ideal as expressed in poetry,
his early romantic impressions, his struggles, doubts, triumphs,
and his thrilling message to his race. Throughout the entire
Victorian period Tennyson stood at the summit of poetry in
England. Not in vain was he appointed laureate at the death
of Wordsworth, in 1850; for, almost alone among those who
have held the office, he felt the importance of his place, and
filled and honored it. For nearly half a century Tennyson
was not only a man and a poet ; he was a voice, the voice of
a whole people, expressing in exquisite melody their doubts
and their faith, their griefs and their triumphs. In the won-
derful variety of his verse he suggests all the qualities of
England's greatest poets. The dreaminess of Spenser, the

458 ENGLISH LITERATURE

majesty of Milton, the natural simplicity of Wordsworth, the
fantasy of Blake and Coleridge, the melody of Keats and
Shelley, the narrative vigor of Scott and Byron, all these
striking qualities are evident on successive pages of Tenny-
son's poetry. The only thing lacking is the dramatic power
of the Elizabethans. In reflecting the restless spirit of this
progressive age Tennyson is as remarkable as Pope was in
voicing the artificiality of the early eighteenth century. As a
poet, therefore, who expresses not so much a personal as a
national spirit, he is probably the most representative liter-
ary man of the Victorian era.

Life. Tennyson's life is a remarkable one in this respect, that
from beginning to end he seems to have been dominated by a single
impulse, the impulse of poetry. He had no large or remarkable ex-
periences, no wild oats to sow, no great successes or reverses, no
business cares or public offices. For sixty-six years, from the appear-
ance of the Poems by Two Brothers, in 1827, until his death in
1892, he studied and practiced his art continually and exclusively.
Only Browning, his fellow-worker, resembles him in this ; but the
differences in the two men are world-wide. Tennyson was naturally
shy, retiring, indifferent to men, hating noise and publicity, loving
to be alone with nature, like Wordsworth. Browning was sociable,
delighting in applause, in society, in travel, in the noise and bustle
of the big world.

Tennyson was born in the rectory of Somersby, Lincolnshire, in
1809. The sweet influences of his early natural surroundings can
be better understood from his early poems than from any biography.
He was one of the twelve children of the Rev. George Clayton
Tennyson, a scholarly clergyman, and his wife Elizabeth Fytche, a
gentle, lovable woman, "not learned, save in gracious household
ways," to whom the poet pays a son's loyal tribute near the close of
The Princess. It is interesting to note that most of these children
were poetically inclined, and that two of the brothers, Charles and
Frederick, gave far greater promise than did Alfred.

When seven years old the boy went to his grandmother's house
at Louth, in order to attend a famous grammar school at that place.
Not even a man's memory, which generally makes light of hardship
and glorifies early experiences, could ever soften Tennyson's hatred

ALFRED TENNYSON

THE VICTORIAN AGE 459

of school life. His complaint was not so much at the roughness of
the boys, which had so frightened Cowper, as at the brutality of
the teachers, who put over the school door a wretched Latin in-
scription translating Solomon's barbarous advice about the rod and
the child. In these psychologic days, when the child is more impor-
tant than the curriculum, and when we teach girls and boys rather
than Latin and arithmetic, we read with wonder Carlyle's description
of his own schoolmaster, evidently a type of his kind, who "knew
of the human soul thus much, that it had a faculty called memory,
and could be acted on through the muscular integument by appli-
ance of birch rods." After four years of most unsatisfactory school
life, Tennyson returned home, and was fitted for the university by
his scholarly father. With his brothers he wrote many verses, and
his first efforts appeared in a little volume called Poems by Two
Brothers, in 1827. The next year he entered Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he became the center of a brilliant circle of
friends, chief of whom was the young poet Arthur Henry Hallam.

At the university Tennyson soon became known for his poetical
ability, and two years after his entrance he gained the prize of the
Chancellor's Medal for a poem called "Timbuctoo," the subject,
needless to say, being chosen by the chancellor. Soon after winning
this honor Tennyson published his first signed work, called Poems
Chiefly Lyrical (1830), which, though it seems somewhat crude and
disappointing to us now, nevertheless contained the germ of all his
later poetry. One of the most noticeable things in this volume is
the influence which Byron evidently exerted over the poet in his
early days; and it was perhaps due largely to the same romantic
influence that Tennyson and his friend Hallam presently sailed away
to Spain, with the idea of joining the army of insurgents against
King Ferdinand. Considered purely as a revolutionary venture, this
was something of a fiasco, suggesting the noble Duke of York and
his ten thousand men, " he marched them up a hill, one day ;
and he marched them down again." From a literary view point,
however, the experience was not without its value. The deep im-
pression which the wild beauty of the Pyrenees made upon the
young poet's mind is reflected clearly in the poem "CEnone."

In 1831 Tennyson left the university without taking his degree.
The reasons for this step are not clear; but the family was poor,
and poverty may have played a large part in his determination. His
father died a few months later ; but, by a generous arrangement

460 ENGLISH LITERATURE

with the new rector, the family retained the rectory at Somersby,
and here, for nearly six years, Tennyson lived in a retirement which
strongly suggests Milton at Horton. He read and studied widely,
cultivated an intimate acquaintance with nature, thought deeply on
the problems suggested by the Reform Bill which was then agitating
England, and during his leisure hours wrote poetry. The first fruits
of this retirement appeared, late in 1832, in a wonderful little vol-
ume bearing the simple name Poems. As the work of a youth
only twenty-three, this book is remarkable for the variety and melody
of its verse. Among its treasures we still read with delight "The
Lotos Eaters," "Palace of Art," "A Dream of Fair Women," "The
Miller's Daughter," " OEnone," and "The Lady of Shalott"; but
the critics of the Quarterly, who had brutally condemned his earlier
work, were again unmercifully severe. The effect of this harsh criti-
cism upon a sensitive nature was most unfortunate ; and when his
friend Hallam died, in 1833, Tennyson was plunged into a period
of gloom and sorrow. The sorrow may be read in the exquisite little
poem beginning, " Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O
Sea ! " which was his first published elegy for his friend ; and the de-
pressing influence of the harsh and unjust criticism is suggested in
"Merlin and The Gleam," which the reader will understand only
after he has read Tennyson's biography.

For nearly ten years after Hallam's death Tennyson published
nothing, and his movements are hard to trace as the family went
here and there, seeking peace and a home in various parts of Eng-
land. But though silent, he continued to write poetry, and it was in
these sad wandering days that he began his immortal In Memoriam
and his Idylls of the King. In 1842 his friends persuaded him to
give his work to the world, and with some hesitation he published
his Poems. The success of this work was almost instantaneous, and
we can appreciate the favor with which it was received when we
read the noble blank verse of "Ulysses" and " Morte d'Arthur,"
the perfect little song of grief for Hallam which we have already
mentioned, and the exquisite idyls like "Dora" and "The Garden-
er's Daughter," which aroused even Wordsworth's enthusiasm and
brought from him a letter saying that he had been trying all his life
to write such an English pastoral as " Dora " and had failed. From
this time forward Tennyson, with increasing confidence in himself
and his message, steadily maintained his place as the best known
and best loved poet in England.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 461

The year 1850 was a happy one for Tennyson. He was appointed
poet laureate, to succeed Wordsworth; and he married Emily Sellwood,

Her whose gentle will has changed my fate
And made my life a perfumed altar flame,

whom he had loved for thirteen years, but whom his poverty had pre-
vented him from marrying. The year is made further remarkable by
the publication of In Memoriam, probably the most enduring of his
poems, upon which he had worked at intervals for sixteen years. Three
years later, with the money that his work now brought him, he leased
the house Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, and settled in the first
permanent home he had known since he left the rectory at Somersby.

For the remaining forty years of his life he lived, like Words-
worth, " in the stillness of a great peace," writing steadily, and en-
joying the friendship of a large number of people, some distinguished,
some obscure, from the kindly and sympathetic Victoria to the serv-
ants on his own farm. All of these he called with equal sincerity his
friends, and to each one he was the same man, simple, strong,
kindly, and noble. Carlyle describes him as " a fine, large-featured,
dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man, . . . most restful,
brotherly, solid-hearted." Loving solitude and hating publicity as
he did, the numerous tourists from both sides of the ocean, who
sought him out in his retreat and insisted upon seeing him, made
his life at times intolerable. Influenced partly by the desire to es-
cape such popularity, he bought land and built for himself a new
house, Aldworth, in Surrey, though he made his home in Farring-
ford for the greater part of the year.

His labor during these years and his marvelous freshness and
youthfulness of feeling are best understood by a glance at the con-
tents of his complete works. Inferior poems, like The Princess,
which was written in the first flush of his success, and his dramas,
which were written against the advice of his best friends, may easily
be criticised ; but the bulk of his verse shows an astonishing origi-
nality and vigor to the very end. He died very quietly at Aldworth,
with his family about him in the moonlight, and beside him a volume
of Shakespeare, open at the dirge in Cymbeline :

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,

Nor the furious winter's rages ;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.

462 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The strong and noble spirit of his life is reflected in one of his best
known poems, " Crossing the Bar," which was written in his eighty-
first year, and which he desired should be placed at the end of his
collected works :

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me !
And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark !
And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark ;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

Works. At the outset of our study of Tennyson's works
it may be well to record two things, by way of suggestion.
First, Tennyson's poetry is not so much to be studied as to
be read and appreciated ; he is a poet to have open on one's
table, and to enjoy as one enjoys his daily exercise. And
second, we should by all means begin to get acquainted with
Tennyson in the days of our youth. Unlike Browning, who
is generally appreciated by more mature minds, Tennyson
is for enjoyment, for inspiration, rather than for instruction.
Only youth can fully appreciate him ; and youth, unfortu-
nately, except in a few rare, beautiful cases, is something
which does not dwell with us long after our school days. The
secret of poetry, especially of Tennyson's poetry, is to be
eternally young, and, like Adam in Paradise, to find every
morning a new world, fresh, wonderful, inspiring, as if just
from the hands of God.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 463

Except by the student, eager to understand the whole
range of poetry in this age, Tennyson's earlier poems and
Early Poems, ms later dramas may well be omitted. Opinions
and Dramas var y about both; but the general judgment seems
to be that the earlier poems show too much of Byron's influ-
ence, and their crudeness suffers by comparison with the
exquisitely finished work of Tennyson's middle life. Of dra-
matic works he wrote seven, his great ambition being to pre-
sent a large part of the history of England in a series of
dramas. Becket was one of the best of these works and met
with considerable favor on the stage ; but, like all the others,
it indicates that Tennyson lacked the dramatic power and the
humor necessary for a successful playwright.

Among the remaining poems there is such a wide variety
that every reader must be left largely to follow his own de-
The Princess, lightful choice. 1 Of the Poems of 1842 we have
and Maud already mentioned those best worth reading. The
Princess, a Medley (1847), a long poem of over three thousand
lines of blank verse, is Tennyson's answer to the question of
woman's rights and woman's sphere, which was then, as in
our own day, strongly agitating the public mind. In this
poem a baby finally solves the problem which philosophers
have pondered ever since men began to think connectedly
about human society. A few exquisite songs, like "Tears,
Idle Tears," "Bugle Song," and "Sweet and Low," form the
most delightful part of this poem, which in general is hardly
up to the standard of the poet's later work. Maud (1855) is
what is called in literature a monodrama, telling the story of
a lover who passes from morbidness to ecstasy, then to anger
and murder, followed by insanity and recovery. This was
Tennyson's favorite, and among his friends he read aloud
from it more than from any other poem. Perhaps if we could

1 An excellent little volume for the beginner is Van Dyke's " Poems by Tennyson,"
which shows the entire range of the poet's work from his earliest to his latest years
(See Selections for Reading, at the end of this chapter.)

464 ENGLISH LITERATURE

hear Tennyson read it, we should appreciate it better ; but,
on the whole, it seems overwrought and melodramatic. Even
its lyrics, like "Come into the Garden, Maud," which make
this work a favorite with young lovers, are characterized by
" prettiness " rather than by beauty or strength.

Perhaps the most loved of all Tennyson's works is In Me-

moriam^ which, on account of both its theme and its exquisite

workmanship, is "one of the few immortal names

In Memoriam . , . , , _. .

that were not born to die. The immediate occa-
sion of this remarkable poem was Tennyson's profound per-
sonal grief at the death of his friend Hallam. As he wrote
lyric after lyric, inspired by this sad subject, the poet's grief
became less personal, and the greater grief of humanity
mourning for its dead and questioning its immortality took
possession of him. Gradually the poem became an expres-
sion, first, of universal doubt, and then of universal faith,
a faith which rests ultimately not on reason or philosophy,
but on the soul's instinct for immortality. The immortality
of human love is the theme of the poem, which is made up
of over one hundred different lyrics. The movement takes
us through three years, rising slowly from poignant sorrow
and doubt to a calm peace and hope, and ending with a
noble hymn of courage and faith, a modest courage and
a humble faith, love-inspired, which will be a favorite as
long as saddened men turn to literature for consolation.
Though Darwin's greatest books had not yet been written,
science had already overturned many old conceptions of life ;
and Tennyson, who lived apart and thought deeply on all the
problems of his day, gave this poem to the world as his own
answer to the doubts and questionings of men. This univer-
sal human interest, together with its exquisite form and mel-
ody, makes the poem, in popular favor at least, the supreme
threnody, or elegiac poem, of our literature ; though Milton's
Lycidas is, from the critical view point, undoubtedly a more
artistic work.

SIR GALAHAD

466 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Idylls of the King ranks among the greatest of Tenny-
son's later works. Its general subject is the Celtic legends
idylls of the f King Arthur and his knights of the Round
Kin g Table, and the chief source of its material is

Malory's Morte d Arthur. Here, in this mass of beautiful
legends, is certainly the subject of a great national epic ; yet
after four hundred years, during which many poets have used
the material, the great epic is still unwritten. Milton and
Spenser, as we have already noted, considered this material
carefully ; and Milton alone, of all English writers, had per-
haps the power to use it in a great epic. Tennyson began to
use these legends in his Morte d' Arthur (1842) ; but the epic
idea probably occurred to him later, in 1856, when he began
"Geraint and Enid," and he added the stories of "Vivien,"
"Elaine," "Guinevere," and other heroes and heroines at in-
tervals, until " Balin," the last of the Idylls^ appeared in 1885.
Later these works were gathered together and arranged with
an attempt at unity. The result is in no sense an epic poem,
but rather a series of single poems loosely connected by a
thread of interest in Arthur, the central personage, and in his
unsuccessful attempt to found an ideal kingdom.

Entirely different in spirit is another collection of poems
called English Idyls ^ which began in the Poems of 1842,
English an d which Tennyson intended should reflect the
Id y ls ideals of widely different types of English life. Of

these varied poems, "Dora," "The Gardener's Daughter,"
"Ulysses," " Locksley Hall" and "Sir Galahad" are the
best ; but all are worthy of study. One of the most famous
of this series is "Enoch Arden " (1864), in which Tenny-
son turns from mediaeval knights, from lords, heroes, and
fair ladies, to find the material for true poetry among the
lowly people that make up the bulk of English life. Its rare
melody, its sympathy for common life, and its revelation of

1 Tennyson made a distinction in spelling between the Idylls of the King, and the
English Idyls, like " Dora."

THE VICTORIAN AGE 467

the beauty and heroism which hide in humble men and women
everywhere, made this work an instant favorite. Judged by
its sales alone, it was the most popular of his works during
the poet's lifetime.

Tennyson's later volumes, like the Ballads (1880) and
Demeter (1889), should not be overlooked, since they contain
some of his best work. The former contains stirring war
songs, like "The Defence of Lucknow," and pictures of wild
passionate grief, like "Rizpah"; the latter is notable for
"Romney's Remorse," a wonderful piece of work; "Merlin
and The Gleam," which expresses the poet's lifelong ideal;
and several exquisite little songs, like "The Throstle," and
"The Oak," which show how marvelously the aged poet re-
tained his youthful freshness and inspiration. Here certainly
is variety enough to give us long years of literary enjoyment ;
and we need hardly mention miscellaneous poems, like " The
Brook" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade," which are
known to every schoolboy; and "Wages" and "The Higher
Pantheism," which should be read by every man who thinks
about the old, old problem of life and death.

Characteristics of Tennyson's Poetry. If we attempt to
sum up the quality of Tennyson, as shown in all these works,
the task is a difficult one ; but three things stand out more
or less plainly. First, Tennyson is essentially the artist. No
other in his age studied the art of poetry so constantly or with
such singleness of purpose ; and only Swinburne rivals him
in melody and the perfect finish of his verse. Second, like all
the great writers of his age, he is emphatically a teacher, often
a leader. In the preceding age, as the result of the turmoil
produced by the French Revolution, lawlessness was more
or less common, and individuality was the rule in literature.
Tennyson's theme, so characteristic of his age, is the reign
of order, of law in the physical world, producing evolution,
and of law in the spiritual world, working out the perfect
man. In Memoriam, Idylls of the King^ The Princess,

468 ENGLISH LITERATURE

here are three widely different poems ; yet the theme of each,
so far as poetry is a kind of spiritual philosophy and weighs
its words before it utters them, is the orderly development
of law in the natural and in the spiritual world.

This certainly is a new doctrine in poetry, but the message
does not end here. Law implies a source, a method, an ob-
Tennyson's j ect - Tennyson, after facing his doubts honestly
Message anc ] manfully, finds law even in the sorrows and
losses of humanity. He gives this law an infinite and personal
source, and finds the supreme purpose of all law to be a reve-
lation of divine love. All earthly love, therefore, becomes an
image of the heavenly. What first perhaps attracted readers* to
Tennyson, as to Shakespeare, was the character of his women,
pure, gentle, refined beings, whom we must revere as our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers revered the women they loved. Like
Browning, the poet had loved one good woman supremely,
and her love made clear the meaning of all life. The message
goes one step farther. Because law and love are in the world,
faith is the only reasonable attitude toward life and death,
even though we understand them not. Such, in a few words,
seems to be Tennyson's whole message and philosophy .

If we attempt now to fix Tennyson's permanent place in
literature, as the result of his life and work, we must apply
to him the same test that we applied to Milton and Words-
worth, and, indeed, to all our great poets, and ask with the
German critics, " What new thing has he said to the world
or even to his own country ? " The answer is, frankly, that
we do not yet know surely ; that we are still too near Tenny-
son to judge him impersonally. This much, however, is clear.
In a marvelously complex age, and amid a hundred great men,
he was regarded as a leader. For a full half century he was
the voice of England, loved and honored as a man and a poet,
not simply by a few discerning critics, but by a whole people
that do not easily give their allegiance to any one man. And
that, for the present, is Tennyson's sufficient eulogy.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 469

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy !

In this new song of David, from Browning's Saul, we have
a suggestion of the astonishing vigor and hope that charac-
terize all the works of Browning, the one poet of the age
who, after thirty years of continuous work, was finally recog-
nized and placed beside Tennyson, and whom future ages
may' judge to be a greater poet, perhaps, even, the great
est in our literature since Shakespeare.

The chief difficulty in reading Browning is the obscurity
of his style, which the critics of half a century ago held up
to ridicule. Their attitude towards the poet's early work may
be inferred from Tennyson's humorous criticism of Sordello.
It may be remembered that the first line of this obscure poem
is, "Who will may hear Bordello's story told " ; and that the
last line is, "Who would has heard Sordello's story told."
Tennyson remarked that these were the only lines in the
whole poem that he understood, and that they were evidently
both lies. If we attempt to explain this obscurity, which
puzzled Tennyson and many less friendly critics, we find that
it has many sources. First, the poet's thought is often ob-
scure, or else so extremely subtle that language expresses it
imperfectly,

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped.

Second, Browning is led from one thing to another by his
own mental associations, and forgets that the reader's associa-
Browning's tions may be of an entirely different kind. Third,
Obscurity Browning is careless in his English, and frequently
clips his speech, giving us a series of ejaculations. As we
do not quite understand his processes of thought, we must
stop between the ejaculations to trace out the connections.

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Fourth, Browning's allusions are often far-fetched, refer-
ring to some odd scrap of information which he has picked
up in his wide reading, and the ordinary reader finds it
difficult to trace and understand them. Finally, Browning
wrote too much and revised too little. The time which he
should have given to making one thought clear was used in
expressing other thoughts that flitted through his head like
a flock of swallows. His field was the individual soul, never
exactly alike in any two men, and he sought to express
, the hidden motives

^ and principles which

govern individual ac-
tion. In this field he
is like a miner delving
underground, sending
up masses of mingled
earth and ore ; and the
reader must sift all
this material to sepa-
rate the gold from the
dross.

Here, certainly, are
sufficient reasons for
Browning's obscurity ;
and we must add the

ROBERT BROWNING , ., ,, f ,.

word that the fault

seems unpardonable, for the simple reason that Browning
shows himself capable, at times, of writing directly, melodi-
ously, and with noble simplicity.

So much for the faults, which must be faced and overlooked
before one finds the treasure that is hidden in Browning's
Browning as poetry. Of all the poets in our literature, no other
a Teacher j s so completely, so consciously, so magnificently
a teacher of men. He feels his mission of faith and courage
in a world of doubt and timidity. For thirty years he faced

THE VICTORIAN AGE 471

indifference or ridicule, working bravely and cheerfully the
while, until he made the world recognize and follow him.
The spirit of his whole life is well expressed in his Paracelsus -,
written when he was only twenty-two years old :

I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive, what time, what circuit first,
I ask not ; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive ;
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.

He is not, like so many others, an entertaining poet. One
cannot read him after dinner, or when settled in a comfort-
able easy-chair. One must sit up, and think, and be alert
when he reads Browning. If we accept these conditions, we
shall probably find that Browning is the most stimulating
poet in our language. His influence upon our life is positive
and tremendous. His strength, his joy of life, his robust
faith, and his invincible optimism enter into us, making us
different and better men after reading him. And perhaps
the best thing we can say of Browning is that his thought
is slowly but surely taking possession of all well-educated
men and women.

Life. Browning's father was outwardly a business man, a clerk
for fifty years in the Bank of England ; inwardly he was an interest-
ing combination of the scholar and the artist, with the best tastes of
both. His mother was a sensitive, musical woman, evidently very
lovely in character, the daughter of a German shipowner and mer-
chant who had settled in Scotland. She was of Celtic descent, and
Carlyle describes her as the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman.
From his neck down, Browning was the typical Briton, short,
stocky, large-chested, robust; but even in the lifeless portrait his
face changes as we view it from different angles. Now it is like an
English business man, now like a German scientist, and now it has
a curious suggestion of Uncle Remus, these being, no doubt, so
many different reflections of his mixed and unremembered ancestors.

He was born in Camberwell, on the outskirts of London, in 1812.
From his home and from his first school, at Peckham, he could see

472 ENGLISH LITERATURE

London ; and the city lights by night and the smoky chimneys by
day had the same powerful fascination for the child that the woods
and fields and the beautiful country had for his friend Tennyson.
His schooling was short and desultory, his education being attended
to by private tutors and by his father, who left the boy largely to
follow his own inclination. Like the young Milton, Browning was
fond of music, and in many of his poems, especially in "Abt Vog-
ler " and "A Toccata of Galuppi's," he interprets the musical tem-
perament better, perhaps, than any other writer in our literature.
But unlike Milton, through whose poetry there runs a great melody,
music seems to have had no consistent effect upon his verse, which
is often so jarring that one must wonder how a musical ear could
have endured it.

Like Tennyson, this boy found his work very early, and for fifty
years hardly a week passed that he did not write poetry. He began
at six to produce verses, in imitation of Byron ; but fortunately this
early work has been lost. Then he fell under the influence of
Shelley, and his first known work, Pauline (1833), must be consid-
ered as a tribute to Shelley and his poetry. Tennyson's earliest
work, Poems by Two Brothers, had been published and well paid
for, five years before ; but Browning could find no publisher who
would even consider Pauline, and the work was published by means
of money furnished by an indulgent relative. This poem received
scant notice from the reviewers, who had pounced like hawks on a
dovecote upon Tennyson's first two modest volumes. Two years
later appeared Paracelsus, and then his tragedy Straff or d was put
upon the stage; but not till Sordello was published, in 1840, did he
attract attention enough to be denounced for the obscurity and va-
garies of his style. Six years later, in 1846, he suddenly became
famous, not because he finished in that year his Bells and Pome-
granates (which is Browning's symbolic name for " poetry and
thought "or " singing and sermonizing "), but because he eloped with
the best known literary woman in England, Elizabeth Barrett, whose
fame was for many years, both before and after her marriage, much
greater than Browning's, and who was at first considered superior to
Tennyson. Thereafter, until his own work compelled attention, he
was known chiefly as the man who married Elizabeth Barrett. For
years this lady had been an almost helpless invalid, and it seemed a
quixotic thing when Browning, having failed to gain her family's con-
sent to the marriage, carried her off romantically. Love and Italy

THE VICTORIAN AGE 473

proved better than her physicians, and for fifteen years Browning
and his wife lived an ideally happy life in Pisa and in Florence.
The exquisite romance of their love is preserved in Mrs. Browning's
Sonnets from the Portuguese, and in the volume of Letters recently
published, wonderful letters, but so tender and intimate that it
seems almost a sacrilege for inquisitive eyes to read them.

Mrs. Browning died in Florence in 1861. The loss seemed at
first too much to bear, and Browning fled with his son to England.
For the remainder of his life he lived alternately in London and in
various parts of Italy, especially at the Palazzo Rezzonico, in Venice,
which is now an object of pilgrimage to almost every tourist who
visits the beautiful city. Wherever he went he mingled with men
and women, sociable, well dressed, courteous, loving crowds and
popular applause, the very reverse of his friend Tennyson. His
earlier work had been much better appreciated in America than in
England ; but with the publication of The Ring and the Book, in
1868, he was at last recognized by his countrymen as one of the
greatest of English poets. He died in Venice, on December 12,
1889, the same day that saw the publication of his last work,
Asolando. Though Italy offered him an honored resting place,
England claimed him for her own, and he lies buried beside Tenny-
son in Westminster Abbey. The spirit of his whole life is magnifi-
cently expressed in his own lines, in the Epilogue of his last book :

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

Works. A glance at even the titles which Browning
gave to his best known volumes Dramatic Lyrics (1842),
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), Men and Women
(1855), Dramatis Persona (1864) will suggest how strong
the dramatic element is in all his work. Indeed, all his
poems may be divided into three classes, pure dramas,
like Strafford and A Blot in the 'Scutcheon ; dramatic narra-
tives, like Pippa Passes, which are dramatic in form, but
were not meant to be acted ; and dramatic lyrics, like The
Last Ride Together, which are short poems expressing some

474 ENGLISH LITERATURE

strong personal emotion, or describing some dramatic episode
in human life, and in which the hero himself generally tells
the story.

Though Browning is often compared with Shakespeare,
the reader will understand that he has very little of Shake-
Browning and speare's dramatic talent. He cannot bring a group
Shakespeare o f people together and let the actions and words
of his characters show us the comedy and tragedy of human
life. Neither can the author be disinterested, satisfied, as
Shakespeare was, with life itself, without drawing any moral
conclusions. Browning has always a moral ready, and insists
upon giving us his own views of life, which Shakespeare
never does. His dramatic power lies in depicting what he
himself calls the history of a soul. Sometimes, as in Paracel-
sus, he endeavors to trace the progress of the human spirit.
More often he takes some dramatic moment in life, some
crisis in the ceaseless struggle between good and evil, and
describes with wonderful insight the hero's own thoughts
and feelings ; but he almost invariably tells us how, at such
and such a point, the good or the evil in his hero must inevi-
tably have triumphed. And generally, as in " My Last Duch-
ess," the speaker adds a word here and there, aside from the
story, which unconsciously shows the kind of man he is. It
is this power of revealing the soul from within that causes
Browning to fascinate those who study him long enough.
His range is enormous, and brings all sorts and conditions
of men under analysis. The musician in "Abt Vogler," the
artist in "Andrea del Sarto," the early Christian in "A Death
in the Desert," the Arab horseman in "Muleykeh," the sailor
in "Herve Kiel/' the mediaeval knight in "Childe Roland,"
the Hebrew in "Saul," the Greek in " Balaustion's Adven-
ture," the monster in " Caliban," the immortal dead in " Karsh-
ish," all these and a hundred more histories of the soul
show Browning's marvelous versatility. It is this great range
of sympathy with many different types of life that constitutes

THE VICTORIAN AGE 475

Browning's chief likeness to Shakespeare, though otherwise
there is no comparison between the two men.

If we separate all these dramatic poems into three main
periods, the early, from 1833 to 1841; the middle, from
First Period l8 4 J to l8 68 ; and the late, from 1868 to 1889,
of Work th e wor k of the beginner will be much more easily
designated. Of his early soul studies, Pauline (1833), Para-
celsus (1835), and Sordello (1840), little need be said here,
except perhaps this : that if we begin with these works, we
shall probably never read anything else by Browning. And
that were a pity. It is better to leave these obscure works
until his better poems have so attracted us to Browning that
we will cheerfully endure his worst faults for the sake of his
undoubted virtues. The same criticism applies, though in
less degree, to his first drama, Strafford (1837), which belongs
to the early period of his work.

The merciless criticism which greeted Sordello had a

wholesome effect on Browning, as is shown in the better work

of his second period. Moreover, his new power

Second Period

was developing rapidly, as may be seen by com-
paring the eight numbers of his famous Bells and Pome-
granates series (18411846) with his earlier work. Thus, the
first number of this wonderful series, published in 1841,
contains Pippa Passes, which is, on the whole, the most
perfect of his longer poems ; and another number contains
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, which is the most readable of his
dramas. Even a beginner must be thrilled by the beauty
and the power of these two works. Two other noteworthy
dramas of the period are Colombe's Birthday (1844) and In a
Balcony (1855), which, however, met with scant appreciation
on the stage, having too much subtle analysis and too little
action to satisfy the public. Nearly all his best lyrics, dramas,
and dramatic poems belong to this middle period of labor ; and
when The Ring and the Book appeared, in 1868, he had given
to the world the noblest expression of his poetic genius.

4/6 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In the third period, beginning when Browning was nearly
sixty years old, he wrote even more industriously than before,

and published on an average nearly a volume of
Third Period c -,:' .

poetry a year. Such volumes as Fzfine at the Fair,

Red Cotton Night- Cap Country, The Inn Album, Jocoseria, and
many others, show how Browning gains steadily in the power
of revealing the hidden springs of human action ; but he
often rambles most tiresomely, and in general his work loses in
sustained interest. It is perhaps significant that most of his
best work was done under Mrs. Browning's influence.

What to Read. Of the short miscellaneous poems there is
such an unusual variety that one must hesitate a little in sug-
gesting this or that to the beginner's attention. " My Star,"
"Evelyn Hope," "Wanting is What?" "Home Thoughts
from Abroad," "Meeting at Night," "One Word More" (an
exquisite tribute to his dead wife), "Prospice" (Look For-
ward); songs from Pippa Passes ; various love poems like
"By the Fireside" and "The Last Ride Together" ; the in-
imitable "Pied Piper," and the ballads like " Herve Kiel"
and "How They Brought the Good News," these are a
mere suggestion, expressing only the writer's personal prefer-
ence ; but a glance at the contents of Browning's volumes
will reveal scores of other poems, which another writer might
recommend as being better in themselves or more character-
istic of Browning. 1

Among Browning's dramatic soul studies there is also a
very wide choice. "Andrea del Sarto " is one of the best,
Soul stud- revealing as it does the strength and the weakness
ies of "the perfect painter," whose love for a soulless

woman with a pretty face saddens his life and hampers his
best work. Next in importance to "Andrea" stands "An
Epistle," reciting the experiences of Karshish, an Arab phy-
sician, which is one of the best examples of Browning's

1 An excellent little book for the beginner is Lovett's Selections from Browning.
(See Selections for Reading, at the end of this chapter.)

THE VICTORIAN AGE 477

peculiar method of presenting the truth. The half-scoffing,
half-earnest, and wholly bewildered state of this Oriental
scientist's mind is clearly indicated between the lines of his
letter to his old master. His description of Lazarus, whom
he meets by chance, and of the state of mind of one who,
having seen the glories of immortality, must live again in the
midst of the jumble of trivial and stupendous things which
constitute our life, forms one of the most original and sug-
gestive poems in our literature. " My Last Duchess " is a
short but very keen analysis of the soul of a selfish man,
who reveals his character unconsciously by his words of
praise concerning his dead wife's picture. In "The Bishop
Orders his Tomb " we have another extraordinarily interest-
ing revelation of the mind of a vain and worldly man, this
time a churchman, whose words tell you far more than he
dreams about his own character. " Abt Vogler," undoubtedly
one of Browning's finest poems, is the study of a musician's
soul. " Muleykeh " gives us the soul of an Arab, vain and
proud of his fast horse, which was never beaten in a race. A
rival steals the horse and rides away upon her back ; but,
used as she is to her master's touch, she will not show her
best pace to the stranger. Muleykeh rides up furiously ; but
instead of striking the thief from his saddle, he boasts about
his peerless mare, saying that if a certain spot on her neck
were touched with the rein, she could never be overtaken.
Instantly the robber touches the spot, and the mare answers
with a burst of speed that makes pursuit hopeless. Muleykeh
has lost his mare ; but he has kept his pride in the unbeaten
one, and is satisfied. " Rabbi Ben Ezra," which refuses analy-
sis, and which must be read entire to be appreciated, is per-
haps the most quoted of all Browning's works, and contains
the best expression of his own faith in life, both here and
hereafter. All these wonderful poems are, again, merely a
suggestion. They indicate simply the works to which one
reader turns when he feels mentally vigorous enough to pick

478 ENGLISH LITERATURE

up Browning. Another list of soul studies, citing w A Toccata
of Galuppi's," "A Grammarian's Funeral," " Fra Lippo Lippi,"
"Saul," "Cleon," "A Death in the Desert," and "Soliloquy
of the Spanish Cloister," might, in another's judgment, be
more interesting and suggestive.

Among Browning's longer poems there are two, at least,
that well deserve our study. Pippa Passes, aside from its

rare poetical qualities, is a study of unconscious
Pippa Passes . _ _, . , , ,

influence. The idea of the poem was suggested to

Browning while listening to a gypsy girl singing in the woods
near his home ; but he transfers the scene of the action to
the little mountain town of Asolo, in Italy. Pippa is a little
silk weaver, who goes out in the morning to enjoy her one
holiday of the whole year. As she thinks of her own happi-
ness she is vaguely wishing that she might share it, and do
some good. Then, with her childish imagination, she begins
to weave a little romance in which she shares in the happi-
ness of the four greatest and happiest people in Asolo. It
never occurs to her that perhaps there is more of misery
than of happiness in the four great ones of whom she dreams ;
and so she goes on her way singing,

The year 's at the spring
And day 's at the morn ;
Morning 's at seven ;
The hillside 's dew-pearled ;
The lark 's on the wing ;
The snail 's on the thorn :
God's in his heaven
All 's right with the world !

Fate wills it that the words and music of her little songs
should come to the ears of four different groups of people at
the moment when they are facing the greatest crises of their
lives, and turn the scale from evil to good. But Pippa knows
nothing of this. She enjoys her holiday, and goes to bed still
singing, entirely ignorant of the good she has done in the
world. With one exception, it is the most perfect of all

THE VICTORIAN AGE 479

Browning's works. At best it is not easy, nor merely enter-
taining reading ; but it richly repays whatever hours we spend
in studying it.

The Ring and the Book is Browning's masterpiece. It is
an immense poem, twice as long as Paradise Lost, and longer
The Ring and by some two thousand lines than the Iliad; and
the Book before we begin the undoubted task of reading it,
we must understand that there is no interesting story or
dramatic development to carry us along. In the beginning
we have an outline of the story, such as it is a horrible
story of Count Guido's murder of his beautiful young wife ;
and Browning tells us in detail just when and how he found
a book containing the record of the crime and the trial.
There the story element ends, and the symbolism of the book
begins. The title of the poem is explained by the habit of
the old Etruscan goldsmiths who, in making one of their
elaborately chased .rings, would mix the pure gold with an
alloy, in order to harden it. When the ring was finished, acid
was poured upon it ; and the acid ate out the alloy, leaving
the beautiful design in pure gold. Browning purposes to
follow the same plan with his literary material, which consists
simply of the evidence given at the trial of Guido in Rome,
in 1698. He intends to mix a poet's fancy with the crude
facts, and create a beautiful and artistic work.

The result of Browning's purpose is a series of monologues,
in which the same story is retold nine different times by the
different actors in the drama. The count, the young wife,
the suspected priest, the lawyers, the Pope who presides at
the trial, each tells the story, and each unconsciously re-
veals the depths of his own nature in the recital. The most
interesting of the characters are Guido, the husband, who
changes from bold defiance to abject fear ; Caponsacchi, the
young priest, who aids the wife in her flight from her brutal
husband, and is unjustly accused of false motives ; Pompilia,
the young wife, one of the noblest characters in literature, fit

480 ENGLISH LITERATURE

in all respects to rank with Shakespeare's great heroines ;
and the Pope, a splendid figure, the strongest of all Brown-
ing's masculine characters. When we have read the story, as
told by these four different actors, we have the best of the
poet's work, and of the most original poem in our language.

Browning's Place and Message. Browning's place in our
literature will be better appreciated by comparison with his
Browning and friend Tennyson, whom we have just studied. In
Tennyson one respect, at least, these poets are in perfect
accord. Each finds in love the supreme purpose and mean-
ing of life. In other respects, especially in their methods of
approaching the truth, the two men are the exact opposites.
Tennyson is first the artist and then the teacher ; but with
Browning the message is always the important thing, and he
is careless, too careless, of the form in which it is expressed.
Again, Tennyson is under the influence of the romantic re-
vival, and chooses his subjects daintily ; but "all 's fish " that
comes to Browning's net. He takes comely and ugly sub-
jects with equal pleasure, and aims to show that truth lies
hidden in both the evil and the good. This contrast is all
the more striking when we remember that Browning's essen-
tially scientific attitude was taken by a man who refused to
study science. Tennyson, whose work is always artistic,
never studied art, but was devoted to the sciences ; while
Browning, whose work is seldom artistic in form, thought
that art was the most suitable subject for a man's study.

The two poets differ even more widely in their respective
messages. Tennyson's message reflects the growing order of
Browning's tne a g e > and is summed up in the word "law."
Message j n ^{ s view, the individual will must be suppressed ;
the self must always be subordinate. His resignation is at
times almost Oriental in its fatalism, and occasionally it sug-
gests Schopenhauer in its mixture of fate and pessimism.
Browning's message, on the other hand, is the triumph of the
individual will over all obstacles ; the self is not subordinate

THE VICTORIAN AGE 481

but supreme. There is nothing Oriental, nothing doubtful,
nothing pessimistic in the whole range of his poetry. His is
the voice of the Anglo-Saxon, standing up in the face of all
obstacles and saying, " I can and I will." He is, therefore, far
more radically English than is Tennyson ; and it may be for
this reason that he is the more studied, and that, while youth
delights in Tennyson, manhood is better satisfied with Brown-
ing. Because of his invincible will and optimism, Browning
is at present regarded as the poet who has spoken the strong-
est word of faith to an age of doubt. His energy, his cheer-
ful courage, his faith in life and in the development that
awaits us beyond the portals of death, are like a bugle-call to
good living. This sums up his present influence upon the
minds of those who have learned to appreciate him. Of the
future we can only say that, both at home and abroad, he seems
to be gaining steadily in appreciation as the years go by.

MINOR POETS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE

Elizabeth Barrett. Among the minor poets of the past
century Elizabeth Barrett (Mrs. Browning) occupies perhaps
the highest place in popular favor. She was born at Coxhoe
Hall, near Durham, in 1806; but her childhood and early
youth were spent in Herefordshire, among the Malvern Hills
made famous by Purs Plowman. In 1835 tne Barrett family
moved to London, where Elizabeth gained a literary reputa-
tion by the publication of The Seraphim and Other Poems
(1838). Then illness and the shock caused by the tragic death
of her brother, in 1840, placed her frail life in danger, and
for six years she was confined to her own room. The innate
strength and beauty of her spirit here showed itself strongly
in her daily study, her poetry, and especially in her interest
in the social problems which sooner or later occupied all the
Victorian writers. f f My mind to me a kingdom is " might well
have been written over the door of the room where this delicate
invalid worked and suffered in loneliness and in silence.

482 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In 1844 Miss Barrett published her Poems, which, though
somewhat impulsive and overwrought, met with remarkable
public favor. Such poems as "The Cry of the Children,"
which voices the protest of humanity against child labor,
appealed tremendously to the readers of the age, and this
young woman's fame as a poet temporarily overshadowed
that of Tennyson and Browning. Indeed, as late as 1850,
when Wordsworth died, she was seriously considered for the
position of poet laureate, which was finally given to Tennyson.
A reference to Browning, in " Lady Geraldine's Courtship,"
is supposed to have first led the poet to write to Miss Barrett,
in 1845. Soon afterwards he visited the invalid ; they fell in
love almost at first sight, and the following year, against the
wishes of her father, who was evidently a selfish old tyrant,
Browning carried her off and married her. The exquisite
romance of their love is reflected in Mrs. Browning's Sonnets
from the Portuguese (1850). This is a noble and inspiring
book of love poems ; and Stedman regards the opening son-
net, " I thought once how Theocritus had sung," as equal to
any in our language.

For fifteen years the Brownings lived an ideally happy life
at Pisa, and at Casa Guidi, Florence, sharing the same poetical
ambitions. And love was the greatest thing in the world,

How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right ;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise ;

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life ! and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

THE VICTORIAN AGE

483

Mrs. Browning entered with whole-souled enthusiasm into
the aspirations of Italy in its struggle against the tyranny of
Austria ; and her Casa Guidi Windows (1851) is a combina-
tion of poetry and politics, both, it must be confessed, a little
too emotional. In 1856 she published Aurora Leigh, a novel
in verse, having for its hero a young social reformer, and for
its heroine a young woman, poetical and enthusiastic, who
strongly suggests Elizabeth Barrett herself. It emphasizes in
verse precisely the same moral
and social ideals which Dickens
and George Eliot were proclaim-
ing in all their novels. Her last
two volumes were Poems before
Congress ( 1 860), and Last Poems,
published after her death. She
died suddenly in 1861 and was
buried in Florence. Browning's
famous line, " O lyric love, half an-
gel and half bird," may well apply
to her frail life and aerial spirit.

Rossetti. Dante Gabriel Ros-
setti (1828-1882), the son of an
exiled Italian painter and scholar, was distinguished both
as a painter and as a poet. He was a leader in the Pre-
Raphaelite movement l and published in the first numbers of

1 This term, which means simply Italian painters before Raphael, is generally applied
to an artistic movement in the middle of the nineteenth century. The term was first
used by a brotherhood of German artists who worked together in the convent of San
Isodoro, in Rome, with the idea of restoring art to its mediaeval purity and simplicity.
The term now generally refers to a company of seven young men, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti and his brother William, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, James
Collinson, Frederick George Stevens, and Thomas Woolner, who formed the Pre-
Raphaelite brotherhood in England in 1848. Their official literary organ was called The
Germ, in which much of the early work of Morris and Rossetti appeared. They took
for their models the early Italian painters who, they declared, were " simple, sincere, and
religious." Their purpose was to encourage simplicity and naturalness in art and litera-
ture ; and one of their chief objects, in the face of doubt and materialism, was to express
the " wonder, reverence, and awe " which characterizes mediaeval art. In its return to
the mysticism and symbolism of the mediaeval age, this Pre-Raphaelitism suggests the
contemporary Oxford or Tractarian movement in religion. (See footnote, p. 554.)

MRS. BROWNING

484 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Germ his " Hand and Soul," a delicate prose study, and
his famous "The Blessed Damozel," beginning,

The blessed damozel leaned out

From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth

Of waters stilled at even ;
She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

These two early works, especially "The Blessed Damozel,"
with its simplicity and exquisite spiritual quality, are charac-
teristic of the ideals of the Pre-Raphaelites.

In 1860, after a long engagement, Rossetti married Eliza-
beth Siddal, a delicate, beautiful English girl, whom he has
immortalized both in his pictures and in his poetry. She died
two years later, and Rossetti never entirely recovered from
the shock. At her burial he placed in her coffin the manu-
scripts of all his unpublished poems, and only at the persist-
ent demands of his friends did he allow them to be exhumed
and printed in 1870. The publication of this volume of love
poems created a sensation in literary circles, and Rossetti was
hailed as one of the greatest of living poets. In 1881 he pub-
lished his Ballads and Sonnets, a remarkable volume contain-
ing, among other poems, "The Confession," modeled after
Browning; " The Ballad of Sister Helen," founded on a mediae-
val superstition; "The King's Tragedy," a masterpiece of
dramatic narrative; and "The House of Life," a collection of
one hundred and one sonnets reflecting the poet's love and
loss. This last collection deserves to rank with Mrs. Brown-
ing's Sonnets from the Portugtiese and with Shakespeare's
Sonnets, as one of the three great cycles of love poems in our
language. It has been well said that both Rossetti and Morris
paint pictures as well in their poems as on their canvases, and
this pictorial quality of their verse is its chief characteristic.

Morris. William Morris (1834-1896) is a most interesting
combination of literary man and artist. In the latter capacity,

THE VICTORIAN AGE 485

as architect, designer, and manufacturer of furniture, carpets,
and wall paper, and as founder of the Kelmscott Press for
artistic printing and bookbinding, he has laid us all under an
immense debt of gratitude. From boyhood he had steeped
himself in the legends and ideals of the Middle Ages, and his
best literary work is wholly mediaeval in spirit. The Earthly
Paradise (1868-1870) is generally regarded as his master-
piece. This delightful collection of stories in verse tells of a
roving band of Vikings, who are wrecked on the fabled island
of Atlantis, and who discover there a superior race of men
having the characteristics of ideal Greeks. The Vikings re-
main for a year, telling stories of their own Northland, and
listening to the classic and Oriental tales of their hosts.
Morris's interest in Icelandic literature is further shown by
his Sigurd the Volsung, an epic founded upon one of the old
sagas, and by his prose romances, The House of the Wolfings,
The Story of the Glittering Plain, and The Roots of the
Mountains. Later in life he became deeply interested in
socialism, and two other romances, The Dream of John Ball
and News from Nowhere, are interesting as modern attempts
at depicting an ideal society governed by the principles of
More's Utopia.

Swinburne. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) is,
chronologically, the last of the Victorian poets. As an artist
in technique having perfect command of all old English
verse forms and a remarkable faculty for inventing new he
seems at the present time to rank among the best in our liter-
ature. Indeed, as Stedman says, "before his advent we did
not realize the full scope of English verse." This refers to
the melodious and constantly changing form rather than to
the content of Swinburne's poetry. At the death of Tenny-
son, in 1892, he was undoubtedly the greatest living poet, and
only his liberal opinions, his scorn of royalty and of conven-
tions, and the prejudice aroused by the pagan spirit of his
early work prevented his appointment as poet laureate He

486 ENGLISH LITERATURE

has written a very large number of poems, dramas, and essays
in literary criticism ; but we are still too near to judge of the
permanence of his work or of his place in literature. Those
who would read and estimate his work for themselves will do
well to begin with a volume of selected poems, especially
those which show his love of the sea and his exquisite appre-
ciation of child life. His Atalanta in Calydon (1864), a beauti-
ful lyric drama modeled on the Greek tragedy, is generally
regarded as his masterpiece. In all his work Swinburne carries
Tennyson's love of melody to an extreme, and often sacrifices
sense to sound. His poetry is always musical, and, like music,
appeals almost exclusively to the emotions.

We have chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, these four writers
Mrs. Browning, D. G. Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne as
representative of the minor poets of the age ; but there are
many others who are worthy of study, Arthur Hugh dough
and Matthew Arnold, 1 who are often called the poets of skep-
ticism, but who in reality represent a reverent seeking for truth
through reason and human experience ; Frederick William
Faber, the Catholic mystic, author of some exquisite hymns ;
and the scholarly John Keble, author of The Christian Year,
our best known book of devotional verse ; and among the
women poets, Adelaide Procter, Jean Ingelow, and Christina
Rossetti, each of whom had a large, admiring circle of readers.
It would be a hopeless task at the present time to inquire into
the relative merits of all these minor poets. We note only
their careful workmanship and exquisite melody, their wide
range of thought and feeling, their eager search for truth,
each in his own way, and especially the note of freshness and
vitality which they have given to English poetry.

1 Arnold was one of the best known poets of the age, but because he has exerted a
deeper influence on our literature as a critic, we have reserved him for special study among
the essayists. (See p. 545.)

THE VICTORIAN AGE 487

II. THE NOVELISTS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)

When we consider Dickens's life and work, in comparison
with that of the two great poets we have been studying, the
contrast is startling. While Tennyson and Browning were
being educated for the life of literature, and shielded most
tenderly from the hardships of the world, Dickens, a poor,
obscure, and suffering child, was helping to support a shift-
less family by pasting labels on blacking bottles, sleeping
under a counter like a homeless cat, and once a week timidly
approaching the big prison where his father was confined for
debt. In 1836 his Pickwick was published, and life was
changed as if a magician had waved his wand over him.
While the two great poets were slowly struggling for recogni-
tion, Dickens, with plenty of money and too much fame, was
the acknowledged literary hero of England, the idol of im-
mense audiences which gathered to applaud him wherever he
appeared. And there is also this striking contrast between
the novelist and the poets, that while the whole tendency
of the age was toward realism, away from the extremes of
the romanticists and from the oddities and absurdities of the
early novel writers, it was precisely by emphasizing oddities
and absurdities, by making caricatures rather than characters,
that Dickens first achieved his popularity.

Life. In Dickens's early life we see a stern but unrecognized
preparation for the work that he was to do. Never was there a
better illustration of the fact that a boy's early hardship and suffer-
ing are sometimes only divine messengers disguised, and that cir-
cumstances which seem only evil are often the source of a man's
strength and of the influence which he is to wield in the world. He
was the second of eight poor children, and was born at Landport
in 1812. His father, who is supposed to be the original of Mr.
Micawber, was a clerk in a navy office. He could never make both
ends meet, and after struggling with debts in his native town for
many years, moved to London when Dickens was nine years old.

488 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The debts still pursued him, and after two years of grandiloquent
misfortune he was thrown into the poor-debtors' prison. His wife,
the original of Mrs. Micawber, then set up the famous Boarding
Establishment for Young Ladies; but, in Dickens's words, no young
ladies ever came. The only visitors were creditors, and they were
quite ferocious. In the picture of the Micawber family, with its tears
and smiles and general shiftlessness, we have a suggestion of Dickens's
own family life.

At eleven years of age the boy was taken out of school and went
to work in the cellar of a blacking factory. At this time he was, in
his own words, a "queer small boy," who suffered as he worked;
and we can appreciate the boy and the suffering more when we find
both reflected in the character of David Copperfield. It is a heart-
rending picture, this sensitive child working from dawn till dark for
a few pennies, and associating with toughs and waifs in his brief in-
tervals of labor ; but we can see in it the sources of that intimate
knowledge of the hearts of the poor and outcast which was soon
to be reflected in literature and to startle all England by its appeal
for sympathy. A small legacy ended this wretchedness, bringing the
father from the prison and sending the boy to Wellington House
Academy, a worthless and brutal school, evidently, whose head
master was, in Dickens's words, a most ignorant fellow and a tyrant.
He learned little at this place, being interested chiefly in stories, and
in acting out the heroic parts which appealed to his imagination; but
again his personal experience was of immense value, and resulted in
his famous picture of Dotheboys Hall, in Nicholas Nickleby, which
helped largely to mitigate the evils of private schools in England.
Wherever he went, Dickens was a marvelously keen observer, with
an active imagination which made stories out of incidents and char-
acters that ordinary men would have hardly noticed. Moreover he
was a born actor, and was at one time the leading spirit of a band
of amateurs who gave entertainments for charity all over England.
These three things, his keen observation, his active imagination,
and the actor's spirit which animated him, furnish a key to his life
and writings.

When only fifteen years old, he left the school and again went to
work, this time as clerk in a lawyer's office. By night he studied
shorthand, in order to fit himself to be a reporter, this in imitation
of his father, who was now engaged by a newspaper to report the
speeches in Parliament. Everything that Dickens attempted seems

CHARLES DICKENS
After the portrait by Daniel Maclise

THE VICTORIAN AGE 4^9

to have been done with vigor and intensity, and within two years we
find him reporting important speeches, and writing out his notes as
the heavy coach lurched and rolled through the mud of country
roads on its dark way to London town. It was largely during this
period that he gained his extraordinary knowledge of inns and sta-
bles and " horsey " persons, which is reflected in his novels. He also
grew ambitious, and began to write on his own account. At the age
of twenty-one he dropped his first little sketch " stealthily, with fear
and trembling, into a dark letter-box, in a dark office up a dark
court in Fleet Street." The name of this first sketch was " Mr. Minns
and his Cousin," and it appeared with other stories in his first book,
Sketches by Boz, in 1835. One who reads these sketches now, with
their intimate knowledge of the hidden life of London, can under-
stand Dickens's first newspaper success perfectly. His best known
work, Pickwick, was published serially in 18361837, and Dickens's
fame and fortune were made. Never before had a novel appeared
so full of vitality and merriment. Though crude in design, a mere
jumble of exaggerated characters and incidents, it fairly bubbled
over with the kind of humor in which the British public delights,
and it still remains, after three quarters of a century, one of our
most care-dispelling books.

The remainder of Dickens's life is largely a record of personal
triumphs. Pickwick was followed rapidly by Oliver Twist, Nicholas
Nickleby, Old Curiosity Shop, and by many other works which
seemed to indicate that there was no limit to the new author's in-
vention of odd, grotesque, uproarious, and sentimental characters.
In the intervals of his novel writing he attempted several times to
edit a weekly paper ; but his power lay in other directions, and with
the exception of Household Words, his journalistic ventures were
not a marked success. Again the actor came to the surface, and
after managing a company of amateur actors successfully, Dickens
began to give dramatic readings from his own works. As he was
already the most popular writer in the English language, these read-
ings were very successful. Crowds thronged to hear him, and his
journeys became a continuous ovation. Money poured into his
pockets from his novels and from his readings, and he bought for
himself a home, Gadshill Place, which he had always desired, and
which is forever associated with his memory. Though he spent the
greater part of his time and strength in travel at this period, nothing
is more characteristic of the man than the intense energy with which

490 ENGLISH LITERATURE

he turned from his lecturing to his novels, and then, for relaxa-
tion, gave himself up to what he called the magic lantern of the
London streets.

In 1842, while still a young man, Dickens was invited to visit the
United States and Canada, where his works were even better known
than in England, and where he was received as the guest of the
nation and treated with every mark of honor and appreciation. At
this time America was, to most Europeans, a kind of huge fairyland,
where money sprang out of the earth, and life was happy as a long
holiday. Dicksns evidently shared this rosy view, and his romantic
expectations were naturally disappointed. The crude, unfinished
look of the big country seems to have roused a strong prejudice in
his mind, which was not overcome at the time of his second visit,
twenty-five years later, and which brought forth the harsh criticism
of his American Notes (1842) and of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-
1844). These two unkind books struck a false note, and Dickens
began to lose something of his great popularity. In addition he had
spent money beyond his income. His domestic life, which had been
at first very happy, became more and more irritating, until he sepa-
rated from his wife in 1858. To get inspiration, which seemed for a
time to have failed, he journeyed to Italy, but was disappointed.
Then he turned back to the London streets, and in the five years
from 1848 to 1853 appeared Dombey and Son, David Copperfield,
and Bleak House, three remarkable novels, which indicate that
he had rediscovered his own power and genius. Later he resumed
the public readings, with their public triumph and applause, which
soon came to be a necessity to one who craved popularity as a
hungry man craves bread. These excitements exhausted Dickens,
physically and spiritually, and death was the inevitable result. He
died in 1870, over his unfinished Edwin Drood, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.

Dickens's Work in View of his Life. A glance through even
this unsatisfactory biography gives us certain illuminating
suggestions in regard to all of Dickens's work. First, as a
child, poor and lonely, longing for love and for society, he
laid the foundation for those heartrending pictures of chil-
dren, which have moved so many readers to unaccustomed
tears. Second, as clerk in a lawyer's office and in the courts,

THE VICTORIAN AGE 491

he gained his knowledge of an entirely different side of human
life. Here he learned to understand both the enemies and
the victims of society, between whom the harsh laws of that
day frequently made no distinction. Third, as a reporter, and
afterwards as manager of various newspapers, he learned the
trick of racy writing, and of knowing to a nicety what would
suit the popular taste. Fourth, as an actor, always an actor
in spirit, he seized upon every dramatic possibility, every
tense situation, every peculiarity of voice and gesture in the
people whom he met, and reproduced these things in his
novels, exaggerating them in the way that most pleased his
audience.

When we turn from his outward training to his inner dis-
position we find two strongly marked elements. The first is
his excessive imagination, which made good stories out of in-
cidents that ordinarily pass unnoticed, and which described
the commonest things a street, a shop, a fog, a lamp-post,
a stagecoach with a wealth of detail and of romantic sug-
gestion that makes many of his descriptions like lyric poems.
The second element is his extreme sensibility, which finds
relief only in laughter and tears. Like shadow and sunshine
these follow one another closely throughout all his books.

Remembering these two things, his training and disposition,
we can easily foresee the kind of novel he must produce. He
Dickens and w ^ be sentimental, especially over children and
his Public outcasts ; he will excuse the individual in view of
the faults of society ; he will be dramatic or melodramatic ;
and his sensibility will keep him always close to the public,
studying its tastes and playing with its smiles and tears. If
pleasing the public be in itself an art, then Dickens is one of
our greatest artists. And it is well to remember that in
pleasing his public there was nothing of the hypocrite or
demagogue in his make-up. He was essentially a part of the
great drifting panoramic crowd that he loved. His sympa-
thetic soul made all their joys and griefs his own. He fought

492 ENGLISH LITERATURE

against injustice ; he championed the weak against the strong;
he gave courage to the faint, and hope to the weary in heart ;
and in the love which the public gave him in return he found
his best reward. Here is the secret of Dickens's unprecedented
popular success, and we may note here a very significant
parallel with Shakespeare. The great difference in the genius
and work of the two men does not change the fact that each
won success largely because he studied and pleased his public.
General Plan of Dickens's Novels. An interesting sugges-
tion comes to us from a study of the conditions which led to
Dickens's first three novels. Pickwick was written, at the sug-
gestion of an editor, for serial publication. Each chapter was
to be accompanied by a cartoon by Seymour (a comic artist
of the day), and the object was to amuse the public, and, inci-
dentally, to sell the paper. The result was a series of charac-
ters and scenes and incidents which for vigor and boundless
fun have never been equaled in our language. Thereafter, no
matter what he wrote, Dickens was labeled a humorist. Like
a certain American writer of our own generation, everything
he said, whether for a feast or a funeral, was supposed to con-
tain a laugh. In a word, he was the victim of his own book.
Dickens was keen enough to understand his danger, and his
next novel, Oliver Twist, had the serious purpose of mitigat-
ing the evils under which the poor were suffering. Its hero
was a poor child, the unfortunate victim of society ; and, in
order to draw attention to the real need, Dickens exaggerated
the woeful condition of the poor, and filled his pages with sen-
timent which easily slipped over into sentimentality. This
also was a popular success, and in his third novel, Nicholas
Nickleby, and indeed in most of his remaining works, Dickens
combined the principles of his first two books, giving us mirth
on the one hand, injustice and suffering on the other; min-
gling humor and pathos, tears and laughter, as we find them
in life itself. And in order to increase the lights and shadows
in his scenes, and to give greater dramatic effect to his narra-

THE VICTORIAN AGE 493

tive, he introduced odious and loathsome characters, and made
vice more hateful by contrasting it with innocence and virtue.

We find, therefore, in most of Dickens's novels three or four
widely different types of character : first, the innocent little
His Char- child, like Oliver, Joe, Paul, Tiny Tim, and Little
Nell, appealing powerfully to the child love in every
human heart ; second, the horrible or grotesque foil, like
Squeers, Fagin, Quilp, Uriah Heep, and Bill Sykes ; third,
the grandiloquent or broadly humorous fellow, the fun maker,
like Micawber and Sam Weller ; and fourth, a tenderly or
powerfully drawn figure, like Lady Dedlock of Bleak House,
and Sydney Carton of A Tale of Two Cities, which rise to
the dignity of true characters. We note also that most of
Dickens's novels belong decidedly to the class of purpose or
problem novels. Thus Bleak House attacks "the law's de-
lays "; Little Dorrit, the injustice which persecutes poor
debtors ; Nicholas Nickleby, the abuses of charity schools
and brutal schoolmasters ; and Oliver Twist, the unnecessary
degradation and suffering of the poor in English workhouses.
Dickens's serious purpose was to make the novel the instru-
ment of morality and justice, and whatever we may think of
the exaggeration of his characters, it is certain that his stories
did more to correct the general selfishness and injustice of
society toward the poor than all the works of other literary
men of his age combined.

The Limitations of Dickens. Any severe criticism of Dickens
as a novelist must seem, at first glance, unkind and unneces-
sary. In almost every house he is a welcome guest, a per-
sonal friend who has beguiled many an hour with his stories,
and who has furnished us much good laughter and a few good
tears. Moreover, he has always a cheering message. He em-
phasizes the fact that this is an excellent world ; that some
errors have crept into it, due largely to thoughtlessness, but
that they can be easily remedied by a little human sympathy.
That is a most welcome creed to an age overburdened with

494 ENGLISH LITERATURE

social problems ; and to criticise our cheery companion seems
as discourteous as to speak unkindly of a guest who has just
left our home. But we must consider Dickens not merely as
a friend, but as a novelist, and apply to his work the same
standards of art which we apply to other writers ; and when
we do this we are sometimes a little disappointed. We must
confess that his novels, while they contain many realistic de-
tails, seldom give the impression of reality. His characters,
though we laugh or weep or shudder at them, are sometimes
only caricatures, each one an exaggeration of some peculiarity,
which suggest Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour. It
is Dickens's art to give his heroes sufficient reality to make
them suggest certain types of men and women whom we know ;
but in reading him we find ourselves often in the mental state
of a man who is watching through a microscope the swarming
life of a water drop. Here are lively, bustling, extraordinary
creatures, some beautiful, some grotesque, but all far apart
from the life that we know in daily experience. It is certainly
not the reality of these characters, but rather the genius of
the author in managing them, which interests us and holds
our attention. Notwithstanding this criticism, which we would
gladly have omitted, Dickens is excellent reading, and his
novels will continue to be popular just so long as men enjoy
a wholesome and absorbing story.

What; to Read. Aside from the reforms in schools and
prisons and workhouses which Dickens accomplished, he has
laid us all, rich and poor alike, under a debt of gratitude.
After the year 1843 the one literary work which he never
neglected was to furnish a Christmas story for his readers ;
and it is due in some measure to the help of these stories,
brimming over with good cheer, that Christmas has become
in all English-speaking countries a season of gladness, of gift
giving at home, and of remembering those less fortunate than
ourselves, who are stHl members of a common brotherhood.
If we read nothing else of Dickens, once a year, at ^Christmas

THE VICTORIAN AGE 495

time, we should remember him and renew our youth by read-
ing one of his holiday stories, The Cricket on the Hearth,
The Chimes, and above all the unrivaled Christmas Carol.
The latter especially will be read and loved as long as men
are moved by the spirit of Christmas.

Of the novels, David Copperfield is regarded by many as
Dickens' s masterpiece. It is well to begin with this novel, not
simply for the unusual interest of the story, but also for the
glimpse it gives us of the author's own boyhood and family.
For pure fun and hilarity Pickwick will always be a favorite ;
but for artistic finish, and for the portrayal of one great
character, Sydney Carton, nothing else that Dickens wrote is
comparable to A Tale of Two Cities. Here is an absorbing
Tale of TWO stor y> with a carefully constructed plot, and the
Cities action moves swiftly to its thrilling, inevitable con-

clusion. Usually Dickens introduces several pathetic or gro-
tesque or laughable characters besides the main actors, and
records various unnecessary dramatic episodes for their own
sake ; but in A Tale of Two Cities everything has its place
in the development of the main story. There are, as usual,
many characters, Sydney Carton, the outcast, who lays down
his life for the happiness of one whom he loves ; Charles
Darnay, an exiled young French noble ; Dr. Manette, who
has been "recalled to life" from a frightful imprisonment,
and his gentle daughter Lucie, the heroine ; Jarvis Lorry, a
lovable, old-fashioned clerk in the big banking house ; the
terrible Madame Defarge, knitting calmly at the door of her
wine shop and recording, with the ferocity of a tiger licking
its chops, the names of all those who are marked for ven-
geance ; and a dozen others, each well drawn, who play minor
parts in the tragedy. The scene is laid in London and Paris,
at the time of the French Revolution; and, though careless of
historical details, Dickens reproduces the spirit of the Reign
of Terror so well that A Tale of Two Cities is an excellent
supplement to the history of the period. It is written in

496 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Dickens's usual picturesque style, and reveals his usual imagi-
native outlook on life and his fondness for fine sentiments
and dramatic episodes. Indeed, all his qualities are here shown,
not brilliantly or garishly, as in other novels, but subdued
and softened, like a shaded light, for artistic effect.

Those who are interested in Dickens's growth and methods
can hardly do better than to read in succession his first three
novels, Pickwick, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby, which,
as we have indicated, show clearly how he passed from fun to
serious purpose, and which furnish in combination the general
plan of all his later works. For the rest, we can only indicate
those which, in our personal judgment, seem best worth read-
ing, Bleak House, Dombey and Son, Our Mutual Friend,
and Old Curiosity Shop, but we are not yet far enough
away from the first popular success of these works to deter-
mine their permanent value and influence.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863)

As the two most successful novelists of their day, it is nat-
ural for us, as it was for their personal friends and admirers,
to compare Dickens and Thackeray with respect to their life
and work, and their attitude toward the world in which they
lived. Dickens, after a desperately hard struggle in his boy-
hood, without friends or higher education, comes into man-
hood cheery, self-confident, energetic, filled with the joy of
his work ; and in the world, which had at first treated him so
harshly, he finds good everywhere, even in the jails and in
the slums, simply because he is looking for it. Thackeray,
after a boyhood spent in the best of English schools, with
money, friends, and comforts of every kind, faces life timidly,
distrustfully, and dislikes the literary work which makes him
famous. He has a gracious and lovable personality, is kind of
heart, and reveres all that is pure and good in life ; yet he
is almost cynical toward the world which uses him so well,
and finds shams, deceptions, vanities everywhere, because

THE VICTORIAN AGE 497

he looks for them. One finds what one seeks in this world,
but it is perhaps significant that Dickens sought his golden
fleece among plain people, and Thackeray in high society.
The chief difference between the two novelists, however, is
not one of environment but of temperament. Put Thackeray
in a workhouse, and he will still find material for another
Book of Snobs ; put Dickens in society, and he cannot help
finding undreamed-of possibilities among bewigged and be-
powdered high lords and ladies. For Dickens is romantic and
emotional, and interprets the world largely through his imagi-
nation ; Thackeray is the realist and moralist, who judges solely
by observation and reflection. He aims to give us a true pic-
ture of the society of his day, and as he finds it pervaded by
intrigues and snobbery he proceeds to satirize it and point
out its moral evils. In his novels he is influenced by Swift
and Fielding, but he is entirely free from the bitterness of
the one and the coarseness of the other, and his satire is
generally softened by a noble tenderness. Taken together,
the novels of Dickens and Thackeray give us a remarkable
picture of all classes of English society in the middle of the
nineteenth century.

Life. Thackeray was born in 1 8 1 1 , in Calcutta, where his father
held a civil position under the Indian government. When the boy
was five years old his father died, and the mother returned with her
child to England. Presently she married again, and Thackeray was
sent to the famous Charterhouse school, of which he has given us a
vivid picture in The Newcomes. Such a school would have been a
veritable heaven to Dickens, who at this time was tossed about be-
tween poverty and ambition ; but Thackeray detested it for its rude
manners, and occasionally referred to it as the "Slaughterhouse."
Writing to his mother he says : " There are three hundred and
seventy boys in the school. I wish there were only three hundred
and sixty-nine."

In 1829 Thackeray entered Trinity College, Cambridge, but left
after less than two years, without taking a degree, and went to Ger-
many and France, where he studied with the idea of becoming an

498

ENGLISH LITERATURE

artist. When he became of age, in 1832, he came into possession of
a comfortable fortune, returned to England, and settled down in the
Temple to study law. Soon he began to dislike the profession in-
tensely, and we have in Pendennis a reflection of his mental attitude
toward the law and the young men who studied it. He soon lost his
fortune, partly by gambling and speculation, partly by unsuccessful
attempts at running a newspaper, and at twenty-two began for the
first time to earn his own living, as an artist and illustrator. An in-
teresting meeting between Thackeray and Dickens at this time
(1836) suggests the relative importance of the two writers. Seymour,
who was illustrating the Pickwick Papers, had just died, and Thack-
eray called upon Dickens with a few
drawings and asked to be allowed to
continue the illustrations. Dickens
was at this time at the beginning
of his great popularity. The better
literary artist, whose drawings were
refused, was almost unknown, and
had to work hard for more than ten
years before he received recogni-
tion. Disappointed by his failure as
an illustrator, he began his literary
career by writing satires on society
for Fraser's Magazine. This was the
beginning of his success ; but though
the Yellowplush Papers, The Great
Hoggarty Diamond, Catherine, The
Fitz Boodlers, The Book of Snobs ,
Barry Lyndon, and various other immature works made him known
to a few readers of Punch and of Fraser's Magazine, it was not till the
publication of Vanity Fair (1847-1848) that he began to be recog-
nized as one of the great novelists of his day. All his earlier works
are satires, some upon society, others upon the popular novelists,
Bulwer, Disraeli, and especially Dickens, with whose sentimental
heroes and heroines he had no patience whatever. He had married,
meanwhile, in 1836, and for a few years was very happy in his home.
Then disease and insanity fastened upon his young wife, and she was
placed in an asylum. The whole after life of our novelist was dark-
ened by this loss worse than death. He became a man of the clubs,
rather than of his own home, and though his wit and kindness made

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
THACKERAY

THE VICTORIAN AGE 499

him the most welcome of clubmen, there was an undercurrent of
sadness in all that he wrote. Long afterwards he said that, though
his marriage ended in shipwreck, he " would do it over again ; for
behold Love is the crown and completion of all earthly good."

After the moderate success of Vanity fair, Thackeray wrote the
three novels of his middle life upon which his fame chiefly rests,
Pendennis in 1850, Henry Esmond in 1852, and The Newcomes in
1855. Dickens's great popular success as a lecturer and dramatic
reader had led to a general desire on the part of the public to see
and to hear literary men, and Thackeray, to increase his income,
gave two remarkable courses of lectures, the first being English
Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, and the second The Four
Georges, both courses being delivered with gratifying success in
England and especially in America. Dickens, as we have seen, was
disappointed in America and vented his displeasure in outrageous
criticism; but Thackeray, with his usual good breeding, saw only
the best side of his generous entertainers, and in both his public and
private utterances emphasized the virtues of the new land, whose
restless energy seemed to fascinate him. Unlike Dickens, he had
no confidence in himself when he faced an audience, and like most
literary men he disliked lecturing, and soon gave it up. In 1860
he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine, which prospered in his
hands, and with a comfortable income he seemed just ready to do
his best work for the world (which has always believed that he was
capable of even better things than he ever wrote) when he died sud-
denly in 1863. His body lies buried in Kensal Green, and only a
bust does honor to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Works of Thackeray. The beginner will do well to omit
the earlier satires of Thackeray, written while he was strug-
Henry ES- S^ n S to earn a living from the magazines, and open
mond Henry Esmond (1852), his most perfect novel,

though not the most widely known and read. The fine his-
torical and literary flavor of this story is one of its most
marked characteristics, and only one who knows something of
the history and literature of the eighteenth century can ap-
preciate its value. The hero, Colonel Esmond, relates his
own story, carrying the reader through the courts and camps
of Queen Anne's reign, and giving the most complete and

500 ENGLISH LITERATURE

accurate picture of a past age that has ever appeared in a
novel. Thackeray is, as we have said, a realist, and he begins
his story by adopting the style and manner of a scholarly
gentleman of the period he is describing. He has an ex-
traordinary knowledge of eighteenth-century literature, and
he reproduces its style in detail, going so far as to insert in
his narrative an alleged essay from the Tatler. And so per-
fectly is it done that it is impossible to say wherein it differs
from the style of Addison and Steele.

In his matter also Thackeray is realistic, reflecting not the
pride and pomp of war, which are largely delusions, but its
Realism of brutality and barbarism, which are all too real ;
Esmond painting generals and leaders, not as the newspaper
heroes to whom we are accustomed, but as moved by intrigues,
petty jealousies, and selfish ambitions ; showing us the great
Duke of Marlborough not as the military hero, the idol of
war-crazed multitudes, but as without personal honor, and
governed by despicable avarice. In a word, Thackeray gives
us the "back stairs" view of war, which is, as a rule, totally
neglected in our histories. When he deals with the literary
men of the period, he uses the same frank realism, showing
us Steele and Addison and other leaders, not with halos about
their heads, as popular authors, but in slippers and dressing
gowns, smoking a pipe in their own rooms, or else growing
tipsy and hilarious in the taverns, just as they appeared
in daily life. Both in style and in matter, therefore, Esmond
deserves to rank as probably the best historical novel in
our language.

The plot of the story is, like most of Thackeray's plots,
very slight, but perfectly suited to the novelist's purpose.
The Plot of The plans of his characters fail ; their ideals grow
Esmond ^im . there is a general disappearance of youthful
ambitions. There is a love story at the center ; but the ele-
ment of romance, which furnishes the light and music and
fragrance of love, is inconspicuous. The hero, after ten years

THE VICTORIAN AGE 501

of devotion to a young woman, a paragon of beauty, finally
marries her mother, and ends with a few pious observations
concerning Heaven's mercy and his own happy lot. Such an
ending seems disappointing, almost bizarre, in view of the
romantic novels to which we are accustomed ; but we must
remember that Thackeray's purpose was to paint life as he
saw it, and that in life men and things often take a different
way from that described in romances. As we grow acquainted
with Thackeray's characters, we realize that no other ending
was possible to his story, and conclude that his plot, like his
style, is perhaps as near perfection as a realistic novelist can
ever come.

Vanity Fair (1847-1848) is the best known of Thackeray's
novels. It was his first great work, and was intended to ex-
press his own views of the social life about him,

Vanity Fair J . '

and to protest against -the overdrawn heroes of
popular novels. He takes for his subject that Vanity Fair to
which Christian and Faithful were conducted on their way to
the Heavenly City, as recorded in Pilgrim s Progress. In
this fair there are many different booths, given over to the
sale of "all sorts of vanities," and as we go from one to
another we come in contact with "juggling, cheats, games,
plays, fools, apes, knaves, rogues, and that of every kind."
Evidently this is a picture of one side of social life ; but the
difference between Bunyan and Thackeray is simply this,
that Bunyan made Vanity Fair a small incident in a long
journey, a place through which most of us pass on our way
to better things ; while Thackeray, describing high society in
his own day, makes it a place of long sojourn, wherein his
characters spend the greater part of their lives. Thackeray
styles this work "a novel without a hero." The whole action
of the story, which is without plot or development, revolves
about two women, Amelia, a meek creature of the milk-
and-water type, and Becky Sharp, a keen, unprincipled in-
triguer, who lets nothing stand in the way of her selfish

502 ENGLISH LITERATURE

desire to get the most out of the fools who largely constitute
society. On the whole, it is the most powerful but not the
most wholesome of Thackeray's works.

In his second important novel, Pendennis (1849-1850), we

have a continuation of the satire on society begun in Vanity

Fair. This novel, which the beginner should read

Pendennis f ~ , . . . ,. r

after Esmond, is interesting to us for two reasons,
because it reflects more of the details of Thackeray's life
than all his other writings, and because it contains one
powerfully drawn character who is a perpetual reminder of
the danger of selfishness. The hero is "neither angel nor
imp/' in Thackeray's words, but the typical young man of
society, whom he knows thoroughly, and whom he paints ex-
actly as he is, a careless, good-natured but essentially selfish
person, who goes through life intent on his own interests.
Pendennis is a profound moral study, and the most powerful
arraignment of well-meaning selfishness in our literature, not
even excepting George Eliot's Romola, which it suggests.

Two other novels, The Ne^vcomes (1855) and The Virgin-
ians (1859), complete the list of Thackeray's great works of
The New- fiction. The former is a sequel to Pendennis, and
comes the latter to Henry Esmond ; and both share the

general fate of sequels in not being quite equal in power or in-
terest to their predecessors. The Newcomes, however, de-
serves a very high place, some critics, indeed, placing it at
the head of the author's works. Like all Thackeray's novels,
it is a story of human frailty ; but here the author's innate
gentleness and kindness are seen at their best, and the hero is
perhaps the most genuine and lovable of all his characters.

Thackeray is known in English literature as an essayist
as well as a novelist. His English Humorists and The Four
Thackeray's Georges are among the finest essays of the nine-
Essays teenth century. In the former especially, Thackeray
shows not only a wide knowledge but an extraordinary under-
standing of his subject. Apparently this nineteenth-century

THE VICTORIAN AGE 503

writer knows Addison, Fielding, Swift, Smollett, and other
great writers of the past century almost as intimately as one
knows his nearest friend ; and he gives us the fine flavor of
their humor in a way which no other writer, save perhaps
Lamb, has ever rivaled. 1 The Four Georges is in a vein of
delicate satire, and presents a rather unflattering picture of
four of England's rulers and of the courts in which they
moved. Both these works are remarkable for their exquisite
style, their gentle humor, their keen literary criticisms, and
for the intimate knowledge and sympathy which makes the
people of a past age live once more in the written pages.

General Characteristics. In treating of Thackeray's view of
life, as reflected in his novels, critics vary greatly, and the
following summary must be taken not as a positive judgment
but only as an attempt to express the general impression of
his works on an uncritical reader. He is first of all a realist,
who paints life as he sees it. As he says himself, " I have no
brains above my eyes ; I describe what I see." His pictures
of certain types, notably the weak and vicious elements of
society, are accurate and true to life, but they seem to play
too large a part in his books, and have perhaps too greatly in-
fluenced his general judgment of humanity. An excessive
sensibility, or the capacity for fine feelings and emotions, is
a marked characteristic of Thackeray, as it is of Dickens
and Carlyle. He is easily offended, as they are, by the
shams of society; but he cannot find an outlet, as Dickens
does, in laughter and tears, and he is too gentle to follow
Carlyle in violent denunciations and prophecies. He turns to
satire, influenced, doubtless, by eighteenth-century litera-
ture which he knew so well, and in which satire played too
large a part. 2 His satire is never personal, like Pope's, or
brutal, like Swift's, and is tempered by kindness and humor;

1 It should be pointed out that the English Humorists is somewhat too highly col-
ored to be strictly accurate. In certain cases also, notably that of Steele, the reader may
well object to Thackeray's patronizing attitude toward his subject.

2 See pp. 260-261.

504 ENGLISH LITERATURE

but it is used too freely, and generally lays too much emphasis
on faults and foibles to be considered a true picture of any
large class of English society.

Besides being a realist and satirist, Thackeray is essentially
a moralist, like Addison, aiming definitely in all his work at
Thackeray producing a moral impression. So much does he
as a Moralist re vere goodness, and so determined is he that his
Pendennis or his Becky Sharp shall be judged at their true
value, that he is not content, like Shakespeare, to be simply an
artist, to tell an artistic tale and let it speak its own message ;
he must explain and emphasize the moral significance of his
work. There is no need to consult our own conscience over
the actions of Thackeray's characters ; the beauty of virtue
and the ugliness of vice are evident on every page.

Whatever we may think of Thackeray's matter, there is one
point in which critics are agreed, that he is master of a
pure and simple English style. Whether his thought
be sad or humorous, commonplace or profound, he
expresses it perfectly, without effort or affectation. In all his
work there is a subtle charm, impossible to describe, which
gives the impression that we are listening to a gentleman.
And it is the ease, the refinement, the exquisite naturalness
of Thackeray's style that furnishes a large part of our pleas-
ure in reading him.

MARY ANN EVANS, GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880)

In nearly all the writers of the Victorian Age we note, on
the one hand, a strong intellectual tendency to analyze the
problems of life, and on the other a tendency to teach, that
is, to explain to men the method by which these problems
may be solved. The novels especially seem to lose sight of
the purely artistic ideal of writing, and to aim definitely at
moral instruction. In George Eliot both these tendencies
reach a climax. She is more obviously, more consciously a
preacher and moralizer than any of her great contemporaries.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 505

Though profoundly religious at heart, she was largely occupied
by the scientific spirit of the age ; and finding no religious
creed or political system satisfactory, she fell back upon duty
as the supreme law of life. All her novels aim, first, to show
in individuals the play of universal moral forces, and second,
to establish the moral law as the basis of human society. Aside
from this moral teaching, we look to George Eliot for the
reflection of country life in England, just as we look to
Dickens for pictures of the city streets, and to Thackeray for
the vanities of society. Of all the women writers who have
helped and are still helping to place our English novels at
the head of the world's fiction, she holds at present unques-
tionably the highest rank.

Life. Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans, known to us by her pen
name of George Eliot, began to write late in life, when nearly forty
years of age, and attained the leading position among living English
novelists in the ten years between 1870 and 1880, after Thackeray
and Dickens had passed away. She was born at Arbury Farm, War-
wickshire, some twenty miles from Stratford-on-Avon, in 1819. Her
parents were plain, honest folk, of the farmer class, who brought her
up in the somewhat strict religious manner of those days. Her father
seems to have been a man of sterling integrity and of practical Eng-
lish sense, one of those essentially noble characters who do the
world's work silently and well, and who by their solid worth obtain a
position of influence among their fellow-men.

A few months after George Eliot's birth the family moved to
another home, in the parish of Griff, where her childhood was largely
passed. The scenery of the Midland counties and many details of
her own family life are reflected in her earlier novels. Thus we find
her and her brother, as Maggie and Tom Tulliver, in The Mill on
the Floss ; her aunt, as Dinah Morris, and her mother, as Mrs. Poy-
ser, in Adam Bede. We have a suggestion of her father in the hero
of the latter novel, but the picture is more fully drawn as Caleb
Garth, in Middlcmarch. For a few years she studied at two private
schools for young ladies, at Nuneaton and Coventry ; but the death
of her mother called her, at seventeen years of age, to take entire
charge of the household. Thereafter her education was gained wholly

;o6

ENGLISH LITERATURE

by miscellaneous reading. We have a suggestion of her method in
one of her early letters, in which she says : " My mind presents an
assemblage of disjointed specimens of history, ancient and modern ;
scraps of poetry picked up from Shakespeare, Cowper, Wordsworth,
and Milton ; newspaper topics, morsels of Addison and Bacon, Latin
verbs, geometry, entomology, and chemistry; reviews and metaphys-
ics, all arrested and petrified and smothered by the fast-thickening
everyday accession of actual events, relative anxieties, and house-
hold cares and vexations."

When Mary was twenty-one years old the family again moved, this
time to Foleshill Road, near Coventry. Here she became acquainted

with the family of Charles Bray,
a prosperous ribbon manufacturer,
whose house was a gathering place
for the freethinkers of the neigh-
borhood. The effect of this lib-
eral atmosphere upon Miss Evans,
brought up in a narrow way, with
no knowledge of the world, was to
unsettle many of her youthful con-
victions. From a narrow, intense
dogmatism, she went to the other
extreme of radicalism ; then (about
1860) she lost all sympathy with
the freethinkers, and, being in-
stinctively religious, seemed to be
groping after a definite faith while
following the ideal of duty. This spiritual struggle, which suggests
that of Carlyle, is undoubtedly the cause of that gloom and depres-
sion which hang, like an English fog, over much of her work ; though
her biographer, Cross, tells us that she was not by any means a sad
or gloomy woman.

In 1849 Miss Evans's father died, and the Brays took her abroad
for a tour of the continent. On her return to England she wrote
several liberal articles for the Westminster Review, and presently was
made assistant editor of that magazine. Her residence in London at
this time marks a turning point in her career and the real beginning
of her literary life. She made strong friendships with Spencer, Mill,
and other scientists of the day, and through Spencer met George
Henry Lewes, a miscellaneous writer, whom she afterwards married.

MARY ANN EVANS,
GEORGE ELIOT

THE VICTORIAN AGE 507

Under his sympathetic influence she began to write fiction for the
magazines, her first story being "Amos Barton" (1857), which was
later included in the Scenes of Clerical Life (1858). Her first
long novel, Adam Bede, appeared early in 1859 and met with such
popular favor that to the end of her life she despaired of ever again
repeating her triumph. But the unexpected success proved to be an
inspiration, and she completed The Mill on the Floss and began
Silas Marner during the following year. Not until the great success
of these works led to an insistent demand to know the author did
the English public learn that it was a woman, and not an English
clergyman, as they supposed, who had suddenly jumped to the front
rank of living writers.

Up to this point George Eliot had confined herself to English
country life, but now she suddenly abandoned the scenes and the
people with whom she was most familiar in order to write an histor-
ical novel. It was in 1860, while traveling in Italy, that she formed
"the great project" of Romola, a mingling of fiction and moral
philosophy, against the background of the mighty Renaissance move-
ment. In this she was writing of things of which she had no personal
knowledge, and the book cost her many months of hard and depress-
ing labor. She said herself that she was a young woman when she
began the work, and an old woman when she finished it. Romola
(1862-1863) was not successful with the public, and the same may
be said of Felix Holt the Radical (1866) and The Spanish Gypsy
(1868). The last-named work was the result of the author's ambition
to write a dramatic poem which should duplicate the lesson of Rom-
da ; and for the purpose of gathering material she visited Spain,
which she had decided upon as the scene of her poetical effort. With
the publication of Middlemarch (1871-1872) George Eliot came
back again into popular favor, though this work is less spontaneous,
and more labored and pedantic, than her earlier novels. The fault
of too much analysis and moralizing was even more conspicuous
in Daniel Deronda (1876), which she regarded as her greatest
book. Her life during all this time was singularly uneventful, and
the chief milestones along the road mark the publication of her
successive novels.

During all the years of her literary success her husband Lewes
had been a most sympathetic friend and critic, and when he died, in
1878, the loss seemed to be more than she could bear. Her letters
of this period are touching in their loneliness and their craving for

of th

508 ENGLISH LITERATURE

sympathy. Later she astonished everybody by marrying John Walter
Cross, much younger than herself, who is known as her biographer.
" Deep down below there is a river of sadness, but ... I am able
to enjoy my newly re-opened life," writes this woman of sixty, who,
ever since she was the girl whom we know as Maggie Tulliver, must
always have some one to love and to depend upon. Her new interest
in life lasted but a few months, for she died in December of the same
year (1880). One of the best indications of her strength and her
limitations is her portrait, with its strong masculine features, sug-
gesting both by resemblance and by contrast that wonderful por-
trait of Savonarola which hangs over his old desk in the monastery
at Florence.

Works of George Eliot. These are conveniently divided into
three groups, corresponding to the three periods of her life.
The first group includes all her early essays and miscellane-
ous work, from her translation of Strauss' s Leben Jesu, in
1846, to her union with Lewes in 1854. The second group
includes Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, Mill on the
Floss, and Silas Marner, all published between 1858 and 1 86 1 .
These four novels of the middle period are founded on the
author's own life and experience ; their scenes are laid in the
country, and their characters are taken from the stolid people
of the Midlands, with whom George Eliot had been familiar
since childhood. They are probably the author's most endur-
ing works. They have a naturalness, a spontaneity, at times
a flash of real humor, which are lacking in her later novels ;
and they show a rapid development of literary power which
reaches a climax in Silas Marner.

The novel of Italian life, Romola (1862-1863), marks a
transition to the third group, which includes three more
novels, Felix Holt (1866), Middlemarch (1871-1872), Daniel
Deronda (1876), the ambitious dramatic poem The Spanish
Gypsy (1868), and a collection of miscellaneous essays called
The Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879). The general
impression of these works is not so favorable as that produced
by the novels of the middle period. They are more labored

THE VICTORIAN AGE 509

and less interesting ; they contain much deep reflection and
analysis of character, but less observation, less delight in pic-
turing country life as it is, and very little of what we call in-
spiration. We must add, however, that this does not express
a unanimous literary judgment, for critics are not wanting
who assert that Daniel Deronda is the highest expression of
the author's genius.

The general character of all these novels may be described,
in the author's own term, as psychologic realism. This means
General Char- tnat George Eliot sought to do in her novels what
acter Browning attempted in his poetry ; that is, to repre-

sent the inner struggle of a soul, and to reveal the motives,
impulses, and hereditary influences which govern human
action. Browning generally stops when he tells his story, and
either lets you draw your own conclusion or else gives you
his in a few striking lines. But George Eliot is not content
until she has minutely explained the motives of her characters
and the moral lesson to be learned from them. Moreover, it
is the development of a soul, the slow growth or decline of
moral power, which chiefly interests her. Her heroes and
heroines differ radically from those of Dickens and Thackeray
in this respect, that when we meet the men and women
of the latter novelists, their characters are already formed,
and we are reasonably sure what they will do under given
circumstances. In George Eliot's novels the characters de-
velop gradually as we come to know them. They go from
weakness to strength, or from strength to weakness, accord-
ing to the works that they do and the thoughts that they
cherish. In Romola, for instance, Tito, as we first meet him,
may be either good or bad, and we know not whether he will
finally turn to the right hand or to the left. As time passes,
we see him degenerate steadily because he follows his self-
ish impulses, while Romola, whose character is at first only
faintly indicated, grows into beauty and strength with every
act of self-renunciation.

510 ENGLISH LITERATURE

In these two characters, Tito and Romola, we have an
epitome of our author's moral teaching. The principle of law
Moral was in the a i r during the Victorian era, and we

Teaching have already noted how deeply Tennyson was influ-
enced by it. With George Eliot law is like fate ; it over-
whelms personal freedom and inclination. Moral law was to
her as inevitable, as automatic, as gravitation. Tito's degen-
eration, and the sad failure of Dorothea and Lydgate in
Middlemarch, may be explained as simply as the fall of an
apple, or as a bruised knee when a man loses his balance. A
certain act produces a definite moral effect on the individual ;
and character is the added sum of all the acts of a man's
life, just as the weight of a body is the sum of the weights
of many different atoms which constitute it. The matter of
rewards and punishments, therefore, needs no final judge or
judgment, since these things take care of themselves auto-
matically in a world of inviolable moral law.

Perhaps one thing more should be added to the general
characteristics of George Eliot's novels, they are all rather
depressing. The gladsomeness of life, the sunshine of smiles
and laughter, is denied her. It is said that once, when her
husband remarked that her novels were all essentially sad,
she wept, and answered that she must describe life as she
had found it.

What to Read. George Eliot's first stories are in some re-
spects her best, though her literary power increases during
her second period, culminating in Silas Marner, and her psy-
chological analysis is more evident in Daniel Deronda. On
the whole, it is an excellent way to begin with the freshness
and inspiration of the Scenes of Clerical Life and read her
books in the order in which they were written. In the first
group of novels Adam Bede is the most natural, and probably
interests more readers than all the others combined. The Mill
on the Floss has a larger personal interest, because it reflects
much of George Eliot's history and the scenes and the friends

THE VICTORIAN AGE

Sir

Silas Marner

of her early life. The lack of proportion in this story, which
gives rather too much space to the girl-and-boy experiences,
is naturally explained by the tendency in every man and
woman to linger over early memories.

Silas Marner is artistically the most perfect of George
Eliot's novels, and we venture to analyze it as typical of her
ideals and methods. We note first the style, which
is heavy and a little self-conscious, lacking the vigor
and picturesqueness of Dickens, and the grace and natural-
ness of Thackeray. The characters are the common people of
the Midlands, the hero being a linen weaver, a lonely outcast
who hoards and gloats over his hard-earned money, is robbed,
thrown into utter despair, and brought back to life and happi-
ness by the coming of an abandoned child to his fire. In the
development of her story the author shows herself, first, a
realist, by the naturalness of her characters and the minute
accuracy with which she reproduces their ways and even the
accents of their speech ; second, a psychologist, by the con-
tinual analysis and explanation of motives ; third, a moralist,
by showing in each individual the action and reaction of uni-
versal moral forces, and especially by making every evil act
bring inevitable punishment to the man who does it. Tragedy,
therefore, plays a large part in the story ; for, according to
George Eliot, tragedy and suffering walk close behind us, or
lurk at every turn in the road of life. Like all her novels,
Silas Marner is depressing. We turn away from even the
wedding of Eppie which is just as it should be with a
sense of sadness and incompleteness. Finally, as we close the
book, we are conscious of a powerful and enduring impression
of reality. Silas, the poor weaver ; Godfrey Cass, the well-
meaning, selfish man ; Mr. Macey, the garrulous and observ-
ant parish clerk ; Dolly Winthrop, the kind-hearted country-
woman who cannot understand the mysteries of religion and
so interprets God in terms of human love, these are real
people, whom having once met we can never forget.

512 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Romola has the same general moral theme as the English
novels ; but the scenes are entirely different, and opinion is
divided as to the comparative merit of the work. It
is a study, a very profound study of moral develop-
ment in one character and of moral degeneracy in another.
Its characters and its scenes are both Italian, and the action
takes place during a critical period of the Renaissance move-
ment, when Savonarola was at the height of his power in
Florence. Here is a magnificent theme and a superb back-
ground for a great novel, and George Eliot read and studied
till she felt sure that she understood the place, the time, and
the people of her story. Romola is therefore interesting read-
ing, in many respects the most interesting of her works. It
has been called one of our greatest historical novels ; but as
such it has one grievous fault. It is not quite true to the
people or even to the locality which it endeavors to represent.
One who reads it here, in a new and different land, thinks
only of the story and of the novelist's power ; but one who
reads it on the spot which it describes, and amidst the life
which it pictures, is continually haunted by the suggestion
that George Eliot understood neither Italy nor the Italians.
It is this lack of harmony with Italian life itself which caused
Morris and Rossetti and even Browning, with all his admira-
tion for the author, to lay aside the book, unable to read it
with pleasure or profit. In a word, Romola is a great moral
study and a very interesting book ; but the characters are
not Italian, and the novel as a whole lacks the strong reality
which marks George Eliot's English studies.

MINOR NOVELISTS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE

In the three great novelists just considered we have an
epitome of the fiction of the age, Dickens using the novel to
solve social problems, Thackeray to paint the life of society
as he saw it, and George Eliot to teach the fundamental prin-
ciples of morality. The influence of these three writers is

THE VICTORIAN AGE 513

reflected in all the minor novelists of the Victorian Age. Thus,
Dickens is reflected in Charles Reade, Thackeray in Anthony
Trollope and the Bronte sisters, and George Eliot's psychol-
ogy finds artistic expression in George Meredith. To these
social and moral and realistic studies we should add the ele-
ment of romance, from which few of our modern novelists
can long escape. The nineteenth century, which began with
the romanticism of Walter Scott, returns to its first love, like
a man glad to be home, in its delight over Blackmore's Lorna
Doone and the romances of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Charles Reade. In his fondness for stage effects, for pic-
turing the romantic side of common life, and for using the
novel as the instrument of social reform, there is a strong
suggestion of Dickens in the work of Charles Reade (1814-
1884). Thus his Peg Woffington is a study of stage life from
behind the scenes ; A Terrible Temptation is a study of social
reforms and reformers ; and Put yourself in his Place is the
picture of a workingman who struggles against the injustice
of the trades unions. His masterpiece, The Cloister and the
Hearth (1861), one of our best historical novels, is a some-
what laborious study of student and vagabond life in Europe
in the days of the German Renaissance. It has small resem-
blance to George Eliot's Romola, whose scene is laid in Italy
during the same period ; but the two works may well be read
in succession, as the efforts of two very different novelists of
the same period to restore the life of an age long past.

Anthony Trollope. In his realism, and especially in his con-
ception of the novel as the entertainment of an idle hour,
Trollope (1815-1882) is a reflection of Thackeray. It would
be hard to find a better duplicate of Becky Sharp, the heroine
of Vanity Fair, for instance, than is found in Lizzie Eustace,
the heroine of The Eustace Diamonds. Trollope was the most
industrious and systematic of modern novelists, writing a defi-
nite amount each day, and the wide range of his characters
suggests the Human Comedy of Balzac. His masterpiece is

514 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Barchester Towers (1857). This is a study of life in a cathe-
dral town, and is remarkable for its minute pictures of bishops
and clergymen, with their families and dependents. It would
be well to read this novel in connection with The Warden
(1855), The Last Chronicle of Parse t (1867), and other novels
of the same series, since the scenes and characters are the
same in all these books, and they are undoubtedly the best
expression of the author's genius. Hawthorne says of his
novels : " They precisely suit my taste, solid and substan-
tial, and . . . just as real as if some giant had hewn a great
lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all
the inhabitants going about their daily business and not sus-
pecting that they were being made a show of."

Charlotte Bronte. We have another suggestion of Thack-
eray in the work of Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855). She
aimed to make her novels a realistic picture of society, but
she added to Thackeray's realism the element of passionate
and somewhat unbalanced romanticism. The latter element
was partly the expression of Miss Bronte's own nature, and
partly the result of her lonely and grief-stricken life, which
was darkened by a succession of family tragedies. It will help
us to understand her work if we remember that both Char-
lotte Bronte and her sister Emily 1 turned to literature because
they found their work as governess and teacher unendurable,
and sought to relieve the loneliness and sadness of their own
lot by creating a new world of the imagination. In this new
world, however, the sadness of the old remains, and all the
Bronte novels have behind them an aching heart. Charlotte
Bronte's best known work is Jane Eyre (1847), which, with
all its faults, is a powerful and fascinating study of elemental
love and hate, reminding us vaguely of one of Marlowe's

1 Emily Bronte (1818-1848) was only a little less gifted than her famous sister. Her
best known work is Wuthering Heights (1847), a strong but morbid novel of love and
suffering. Matthew Arnold said of her that, " for the portrayal of passion, vehemence,
and grief," Emily Bronte had no equal save Byron. An exquisite picture of Emily is
given in Charlotte Bronte's novel Shirley.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 515

tragedies. This work won instant favor with the public, and
the author was placed in the front rank of living novelists.
Aside from its value as a novel, it is interesting, in many of
its early passages, as the reflection of the author's own life
and experience. Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853) make up
the trio of novels by which this gifted woman is generally
remembered.

Bulwer Lytton. Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873) was
an extremely versatile writer, who tried almost every kind of
novel known to the nineteenth century. In his early life he
wrote poems and dramas, under the influence of Byron ; but
his first notable work, Pelham (1828), one of the best of his
novels, was a kind of burlesque on the Byronic type of gentle-
man. As a study of contemporary manners in high society,
Pelham has a suggestion of Thackeray, and the resemblance
is more noticeable in other novels of the same type, such
as Ernest Maltravers (1837), The Caxtons (1848-1849), My
Novel (1853), and Kenelm Chillingly (1873). We have a
suggestion of Dickens in at least two of Lytton's novels,
Paul Clifford and Eugene Aram, the heroes of which are
criminals, pictured as the victims rather than as the oppressors
of society. Lytton essayed also, with considerable popular
success, the romantic novel in The Pilgrims of the Rhine and
Zanoni, and tried the ghost story in The Haunted and the
Haunters. His fame at the present day rests largely upon
his historical novels, in imitation of Walter Scott, The Last
Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi (1835), and Harold (1848),
the last being his most ambitious attempt to make the novel
the supplement of history. In all his novels Lytton is inclined
to sentimentalism and sensationalism, and his works, though
generally interesting, seem hardly worthy of a high place in
the history of fiction.

Kingsley. Entirely different in spirit are the novels of the
scholarly clergyman, Charles Kingsley (1819-1875). His
works naturally divide themselves into three classes. In the

5 1 6 ENGLISH LITERATURE

first are his social studies and problem novels, such as Alton
Locke (1850), having for its hero a London tailor and poet,
and Yeast (1848), which deals with the problem of the agri-
cultural laborer. In the second class are his historical novels,
Hereward the Wake, Hypatia, and Westward Ho! Hypatia
is a dramatic story of Christianity in contact with paganism,
having its scene laid in Alexandria at the beginning of
the fifth century. Westward Ho! (1855), his best known
work, is a stirring tale of English conquest by land and sea in
the days of Elizabeth. In the third class are his various mis-
cellaneous works, not the least of which is Water-Babies, a
fascinating story of a chimney sweep, which mothers read to
their children at bedtime, to the great delight of the round-
eyed little listeners under the counterpane.

Mrs. Gaskell. Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) began,
like Kingsley, with the idea of making the novel the instru-
ment of social reform. As the wife of a clergyman in Man-
chester, she had come in close contact with the struggles and
ideals of the industrial poor of a great city, and she reflected
her sympathy as well as her observation in Mary Barton
(1848) and in North and South (1855). Between these two
problem novels she published her masterpiece, Cranford, in
1853. The original of this country village, which is given
over to spinsters, is undoubtedly Knutsford, in Cheshire,
where Mrs. Gaskell had spent her childhood. The sympathy,
the keen observation, and the gentle humor with which the
small affairs of a country village are described make Cranford
one of the most delightful stories in the English language.
We are indebted to Mrs. Gaskell also for the Life of Charlotte
Bront'e\ which is one of our best biographies.

Blackmore. Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825-1900)
was a prolific writer, but he owes his fame almost entirely
to one splendid novel, Lorna Doone, which was published in
1 869. The scene of this fascinating romance is laid in Exmoor
in the seventeenth century. The story abounds in romantic

THE VICTORIAN AGE 517

scenes and incidents ; its descriptions of natural scenery are
unsurpassed ; the rhythmic language is at times almost equal
to poetry ; and the whole tone of the book is wholesome and
refreshing. Altogether it would be hard to find a more de-
lightful romance in any language, and it well deserves the
place it has won as one of the classics of our literature.
Other works of Blackmore which will repay the reader are
Clara Vanghan (1864), his first novel, The Maid of Sker
(1872), Springhaven (1887), Perly cross (1894), and Tales from
the Telling House ( 1 896) ; but none of these, though he
counted them his best work, has met with the same favor as
Lorna Doone.

Meredith. So much does George Meredith (1828-1909)
belong to our own day that it is difficult to think of him as
one of the Victorian novelists. His first notable work, The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel, was published in 1859, ^e same
year as George Eliot's Adam Bede ; but it was not till the
publication of Diana of tlie Crossways, in 1885, that his power
as a novelist was widely recognized. He resembles Browning
not only in his condensed style, packed with thought, but
also in this respect, that he labored for years in obscurity,
and after much of his best work was published and apparently
forgotten he slowly won the leading place in English fiction.
We are still too near him to speak of the permanence of his
work, but a casual reading of any of his novels suggests a
comparison and a contrast with George Eliot. Like her, he
is a realist and a psychologist ; but while George Eliot uses
tragedy to teach a moral lesson, Meredith depends more upon
comedy, making vice not terrible but ridiculous. For the hero
or heroine of her novel George Eliot invariably takes an indi-
vidual, and shows in each one the play of universal moral
forces. Meredith constructs a type-man as a hero, and makes
this type express his purpose and meaning. So his characters
seldom speak naturally, as George Eliot's do ; they are more
like Browning's characters in packing a whole paragraph into

5i8 ENGLISH LITERATURE

a single sentence or an exclamation. On account of his enig-
matic style and his psychology, Meredith will never be popu-
lar; but by thoughtful men and women he will probably be
ranked among our greatest writers of fiction. The simplest
and easiest of his novels for a beginner is The Adventures of
Henry Richmond (1871). Among the best of his works, be-
sides the two mentioned above, are Beauchamp's Career (1876)
and The Egoist (1879). The latter is, in our personal judg-
ment, one of the strongest and most convincing novels of the
Victorian Age.

Hardy. Thomas Hardy (1840- ) seems, like Meredith,
to belong to the present rather than to a past age, and an in-
teresting comparison may be drawn between these two novel-
ists. In style, Meredith is obscure and difficult, while Hardy
is direct and simple, aiming at realism in all things. Meredith
makes man the most important phenomenon in the universe }
and the struggles of men are brightened by the hope of vic-
tory. Hardy makes man an insignificant part of the world,
struggling against powers greater than himself, sometimes
against systems which he cannot reach or influence, some-
times against a kind of grim world-spirit who delights in mak-
ing human affairs go wrong. He is, therefore, hardly a real-
ist, but rather a man blinded by pessimism ; and his novels,
though generally powerful and sometimes fascinating, are not
pleasant or wholesome reading. From the reader's view point
some of his earlier works, like the idyllic love story Under the
Greenwood Tree (1872) and A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), are
the most interesting. Hardy became noted, however, when
he published Far from the Madding Crowd, a book which,
when it appeared anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine
(1874), was generally attributed to George Eliot, for the sim-
ple reason that no other novelist was supposed to be capa-
ble of writing it. The Return of the Native (1878) and The
Woodlanders are generally regarded as Hardy's masterpieces ;
but two novels of our own day, Tess of the U Ubervilles (1891)

THE VICTORIAN AGE 519

e the Obscure (1895), are better expressions of Hardy's
literary art and of his gloomy philosophy.

Stevenson. In pleasing contrast with Hardy is Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850-1894), a brave, cheery, wholesome spirit,
who has made us all braver and cheerier by what he has
written. Aside from their intrinsic value, Stevenson's novels
are interesting in this respect, that they mark a return to
the pure romanticism of Walter Scott. The novel of the nine-
teenth century had, as we have shown, a very definite pur-
pose. It aimed not only to represent life but to correct it,
and to offer a solution to pressing moral and social problems.
At the end of the century Hardy's gloom in the face of mod-
ern social conditions became oppressive, and Stevenson broke
away from it into that land of delightful romance in which
youth finds an answer to all its questions. Problems differ,
but youth is ever the same, and therefore Stevenson will
probably be regarded by future generations as one of our
most enduring writers. To his life, with its "heroically
happy " struggle, first against poverty, then against physical
illness, it is impossible to do justice in a short article. Even
a longer biography is inadequate, for Stevenson's spirit, not
the incidents of his life, is the important thing ; and the
spirit has no biographer. Though he had written much better
work earlier, he first gained fame by his Treasure Island
(1883), an absorbing story of pirates and of a hunt for buried
gold. Dr. Jeky II and Mr. Hyde (1886) is a profound ethical
parable, in which, however, Stevenson leaves the psychology
and the minute analysis of character to his readers, and makes
the story the chief thing in his novel. Kidnapped (1886),
The Master of Ballantrae (1889), and David Balfour (1893)
are novels of adventure, giving us vivid pictures of Scotch
life. Two romances left unfinished by his early death in
Samoa are The Weir of Hermiston and St. Ives. The latter
was finished by Quiller-Couch in 1897 ; the former is happily
just as Stevenson left it, and though unfinished is generally

520 ENGLISH LITERATURE

regarded as his masterpiece. In addition to these novels,
Stevenson wrote a large number of essays, the best of which
are collected in Virginibus Puerisque, Familiar Studies of
Men and Books, and Memories and Portraits. Delightful
sketches of his travels are found in An Inland Voyage (1878),
Travels with a Donkey (1879), Across the Plains (1892), and
The Amateur Emigrant (1894). Underivoods (1887) is an ex-
quisite little volume of poetry, and A Child ' s Garden of Verses
is one of the books that mothers will always keep to read to
their children.

In all his books Stevenson gives the impression of a man
at play rather than at work, and the reader soon shares in the
happy spirit of the author. Because of his beautiful personal-
ity, and because of the love and admiration he awakened for
himself in multitudes of readers, we are naturally inclined to
exaggerate his importance as a writer. However that may be,
a study of his works shows him to be a consummate literary
artist. His style is always simple, often perfect, and both in
his manner and in his matter he exercises a profound influence
on the writers of the present generation*.

III. ESSAYISTS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859)

Macaulay is one of the most typical figures of the nine-
teenth century. Though not a great writer, if we compare
him with Browning or Thackeray, he was more closely asso-
ciated than any of his literary contemporaries with the social
and political struggles of the age. While Carlyle was pro-
claiming the gospel of labor, and Dickens writing novels to
better the condition of the poor, Macaulay went vigorously to
work on what he thought to be the most important task of
the hour, and by his brilliant speeches did perhaps more than
any other single man to force the passage of the famous Re-
form Bill. Like many of the Elizabethans, he was a practical

THE VICTORIAN AGE 521

man of affairs rather than a literary man, and though we
miss in his writings the imagination and the spiritual insight
which stamp the literary genius, we have the impression
always of a keen, practical, honest mind, which looks at
present problems in the light of past experience. Moreover,
the man himself, with his marvelous mind, his happy spirit,
and his absolute integrity of character, is an inspiration to
better living.

Life. Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, in
1800. His father, of Scotch descent, was at one time governor of
the Sierra Leone colony for liberated negroes, and devoted a large
part of his life to the abolition of the slave trade. His mother, of
Quaker parentage, was a brilliant, sensitive woman, whose character
is reflected in that of her son. The influence of these two, and the
son's loyal devotion to his family, can best be read in Trevelyan's
interesting biography.

As a child, Macaulay is strongly suggestive of Coleridge. At three
years of age he began to read eagerly ; at five he " talked like a
book"; at ten he had written a compendium of universal history,
besides various hymns, verse romances, arguments for Christianity,
and one ambitious epic poem. The habit of rapid reading, begun in
childhood, continued throughout his life, and the number and vari-
ety of books which he read is almost incredible. His memory was
phenomenal. He could repeat long poems and essays after a single
reading ; he could quote not only passages but the greater part of
many books, including Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and vari-
ous novels like Clarissa. Once, to test his memory, he recited two
newspaper poems which he had read in a coffeehouse forty years be-
fore, and which he had never thought of in the interval.

At twelve years of age this remarkable boy was sent to a private
school at Little Shelford, and at eighteen he entered Trinity College,
Cambridge. Here he made a reputation as a classical scholar and a
brilliant talker, but made a failure of his mathematics. In a letter
to his mother he wrote : "Oh for words to express my abomination
of that science. . . . Discipline of the mind ! Say rather starvation,
confinement, torture, annihilation ! " We quote this as a commen-
tary on Macaulay's later writings, which are frequently lacking in the
exactness and the logical sequence of the science which he detested.

exac

522 ENGLISH LITERATURE

After his college course Macaulay studied law, was admitted to
the bar, devoted himself largely to politics, entered Parliament in
1830, and almost immediately won a reputation as the best debater
and the most eloquent speaker of the Liberal or Whig party. Glad-
stone says of him : " Whenever he arose to speak it was a summons
like a trumpet call to fill the benches." At the time of his election
he was poor, and the loss of his father's property threw upon him
the support of his brothers and sisters ; but he took up the burden
with cheerful courage, and by his own efforts soon placed himself and
his family in comfort. His political progress was rapid, and was due
not to favoritism or intrigue, but to his ability, his hard work, and his
sterling character. He was several times elected to Parliament, was

legal adviser to the Supreme Coun-
cil of India, was a member of the
cabinet, and declined many offices
for which other men labor a lifetime.
In 1857 his great ability and services
to his country were recognized by his
being raised to the peerage with the
title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley,
Macaulay 's literary work began in
college with the contribution of vari-
ous ballads and essays to the maga-
zines. In his later life practical affairs
claimed the greater part of his time,
and his brilliant essays were written

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY . . . . . . , ,

m the early morning or late at night.

His famous Essay on Milton appeared in the Edinburgh Review in
1825. It created a sensation, and Macaulay, having gained the ear of
the public, never once lost it during the twenty years in which he was
a contributor to the magazines. His Lays of Ancient Rome appeared
in 1842, and in the following year three volumes of his collected
Essays. In 1847 ne l st m ' s seat m Parliament, temporarily, through
his zealous efforts in behalf of religious toleration ; and the loss was
most fortunate, since it gave him opportunity to begin his History
of England, a monumental work which he had been planning for
many years. The first two volumes appeared in 1848, and their
success can be compared only to that of the most popular novels.
The third and fourth volumes of the History (1855) were even
more successful, and Macaulay was hard at work on the remaining

THE VICTORIAN AGE 523

volumes when he died, quite suddenly, in 1859. He was buried, near
Addison, in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A paragraph
from one of his letters, written at the height of his fame and influ-
ence, may give us an insight into his life and work :

I can truly say that I have not, for many years, been so happy as I
am at present. ... I am free. I am independent. I am in Parliament,
as honorably seated as man can be. My family is comfortably off. I
have leisure for literature, yet I am not reduced to the necessity of writ-
ing for money. If I had to choose a lot from all that there are in human
life, I am not sure that I should prefer any to that which has fallen to
me. I am sincerely and thoroughly contented.

Works of Macaulay. Macaulay is famous in literature for
his essays, for his martial ballads, and for his History of Eng-
Essay on land. His first important work, the Essay on Mil-
Milton j 0n (1825), is worthy of study not only for itself,

as a critical estimate of the Puritan poet, but as a key to all
Macaulay's writings. Here, first of all, is an interesting work,
which, however much we differ from the author's opinion,
holds our attention and generally makes us regret that the
end comes so soon. The second thing to note is the his-
torical flavor of the essay. We study not only Milton, but
also the times in which he lived, and the great movements of
which be was a part. History and literature properly belong
together, and Macaulay was one of the first writers to explain
the historical conditions which partly account for a writer's
work and influence. The third thing to note is Macaulay's
enthusiasm for his subject, an enthusiasm which is often
partisan, but which we gladly share for tbe moment as we
follow the breathless narrative. Macaulay generally makes a
hero of his man, shows him battling against odds, and the
heroic side of our own nature awakens and responds to the
author's plea. The fourth, and perhaps most characteristic
thing in the essay is the style, which is remarkably clear,
forceful, and convincing. Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh
Review, wrote enthusiastically when he received the manu-
script, "The more I think, tbe less I can conceive where you

524 ENGLISH LITERATURE

picked up that style." We still share in the editor's wonder;
but the more we think, the less we conceive that such a style
could be picked up. It was partly the result of a well-stored
mind, partly of unconscious imitation of other writers, and
partly of that natural talent for clear speaking and writing
which is manifest in all Macaulay's work.

In the remaining essays we find the same general qualities
which characterize Macaulay's first attempt. They cover a

wide range of subjects, but they may be divided
Other Essays . J ".

into two general classes, the literary or critical, and

the historical. Of the literary essays the best are those on
Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Byron, Dryden, Leigh Hunt,
Bunyan, Bacon, and Johnson. Among the best known of the
historical essays are those on Lord Clive, Chatham, Warren
Hastings, Hallam's Constitutional History, Von Ranke's His-
tory of the Papacy, Frederick the Great, Horace Walpole,
William Pitt, Sir William Temple, Machiavelli, and Mirabeau.
Most of these were produced in the vigor of young manhood,
between 1825 and 1845, while the writer was busy with practi-
cal affairs of state. They are often one-sided and inaccurate, but
always interesting, and from them a large number of busy peo-
ple have derived their first knowledge of history and literature.
The best of Macaulay's poetical work is found in the Lays
of Ancient Rome (1842), a collection of ballads in the style of
Lays of An- Scott, which sing of the old heroic days of the
cientRome Roman republic. The ballad does not require much
thought or emotion. It demands clearness, vigor, enthusiasm,
action ; and it suited Macaulay's genius perfectly. He was,
however, much more careful than other ballad writers in mak-
ing his narrative true to tradition. The stirring martial spirit
of these ballads, their fine workmanship, and their appeal to
courage and patriotism made them instantly popular. Even
to-day, after more than fifty years, such ballads as those on
Virginius and Horatius at the Bridge are favorite pieces in
many school readers.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 525

The History of England, Macaulay's masterpiece, is still
one of the most popular historical works in the English lan-
History of g ua g e - Originally it was intended to cover the pe-
Engiand T iod from the accession of James II, in 1685, to the
death of George IV, in 1830. Only five volumes of the work
were finished, and so thoroughly did Macaulay go into details
that these five volumes cover only sixteen years. It has been
estimated that to complete the work on the same scale would
require some fifty volumes and the labor of one man for over
a century.

In his historical method Macaulay suggests Gibbon. His
own knowledge of history was very great, but before writing
he read numberless pages, consulted original documents, and
visited the scenes which he intended to describe. Thackeray's
remark, that " Macaulay reads twenty books to write a sen-
tence and travels one hundred miles to make a line of
description," is, in view of his industry, a well- war ranted
exaggeration.

As in his literary essays, he is fond of making heroes, and
he throws himself so heartily into the spirit of the scene he is
describing that his word pictures almost startle us by their
vivid reality. The story of Monmouth's rebellion, for instance,
or the trial of the seven bishops, is as fascinating as the best
chapters of Scott's historical novels.

While Macaulay's search for original sources of informa-
tion suggests the scientific historian, his use of his material
is much more like that of a novelist or playwright. In his
essay on Machiavelli he writes : "The best portraits are per-
haps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature,
and we are not certain that the best histories are not those
in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is
judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy, but
much is gained in effect." 1 Whether this estimate of historical
writing be true or false, Macaulay employed it in his own

1 Essays, Riverside edition, I, 318.

526 ENGLISH LITERATURE

work and made his narrative as absorbing as a novel. To all
his characters he gives the reality of flesh and blood, and in
his own words he "shows us over their houses and seats us
at their tables." All that is excellent, but it has its disad-
vantages. In his admiration for heroism, Macaulay makes
some of his characters too good and others too bad. In his
zeal for details he misses the importance of great movements,
and of great leaders who are accustomed to ignore details ;
and in his joy of describing events he often loses sight of
underlying causes. In a word, he is without historical insight,
and his work, though fascinating, is seldom placed among, the
reliable histories of England.

General Characteristics. To the reader who studies Macau-
lay's brilliant essays and a few chosen chapters of his His-
tory, three things soon become manifest. First, Macaulay's
art is that of a public speaker rather than that of a literary
man. He has a wonderful command of language, and he makes
his meaning clear by striking phrases, vigorous antitheses,
anecdotes, and illustrations. His style is so clear that "he
who runs may read," and from beginning to end he never
loses the attention of his readers. Second, Macaulay's good
spirits and enthusiasm are contagious. As he said himself,
he wrote "out of a full head," chiefly for his own pleasure or
recreation ; and one who writes joyously generally awakens
a sense of pleasure in his readers. Third, Macaulay has " the
defect of his qualities." He reads and remembers so much
that he has no time to think or to form settled opinions. As
Gladstone said, Macaulay is " always conversing or recollect-
ing or reading or composing, but reflecting never." So he
wrote his brilliant Essay on Milton, which took all England
by storm, and said of it afterward that it contained " scarcely
a paragraph which his mature judgment approved." Whether
he speaks or writes, he has always before him an eager audi-
ence, and he feels within him the born orator's power to hold
and fascinate. So he gives loose rein to his enthusiasm, quotes

THE VICTORIAN AGE 527

from a hundred books, and in his delight at entertaining us
forgets that the first quality of a critical or historical work is
to be accurate, and the second to be interesting.

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)

In marked contrast with Macaulay, the brilliant and cheer-
ful essayist, is Thomas Carlyle, the prophet and censor of the
nineteenth century. Macaulay is the practical man of affairs,
helping and rejoicing in the progress of his beloved England.
Carlyle lives apart from all practical interests, looks with dis-
trust on the progress of his age, and tells men that truth,
justice, and immortality are the only worthy objects of human
endeavor. Macaulay is delighted with material comforts ; he
is most at home in brilliant and fashionable company ; and
he writes, even when ill and suffering, with unfailing hopeful-
ness and good nature. Carlyle is like a Hebrew prophet just
in from the desert, and the burden of his message is, " Woe
to them that are at ease in Zion ! " Both men are, in differ-
ent ways, typical of the century, and somewhere between the
two extremes the practical, helpful activity of Macaulay
and the spiritual agony and conflict of Carlyle we shall find
the measure of an age which has left the deepest impress
upon our own.

Life of Carlyle. Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire,
in 1795, a few months before Burns's death, and before Scott had
published his first work. Like Burns, he came of peasant stock,
strong, simple, God-fearing folk, whose influence in Carlyle's later
life is beyond calculation. Of his mother he says, " She was too mild
and peaceful for the planet she lived in "; and of his father, a stone
mason, he writes, " Could I write my books as he built his houses,
walk my way so manfully through this shadow world, and leave it
with so little blame, it were more than all my hopes."

Of Carlyle's early school life we have some interesting glimpses
in Sartor Resartus. At nine years he entered the Annan grammar
school, where he was bullied by the older boys, who nicknamed him

5 28

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Tom the Tearful. For the teachers of those days he has only ridi-
cule, calling them "hide-bound pedants," and he calls the school
by the suggestive German name of Hinterschlag Gymnasium. At
the wish of his parents, who intended Carlyle for the ministry, he en-
dured this hateful school life till 1809, when he entered Edinburgh
University. There he spent five miserable years, of which his own
record is : " I was without friends, experience, or connection in the
sphere of human business, was of sly humor, proud enough and to
spare, and had begun my long curriculum of dyspepsia." This nag-
ging illness was the cause
of much of that irritability
of temper which frequently
led him to scold the pub-
lic, and for which he has
been harshly handled by
unfriendly critics.

The period following his
university course was one
of storm and stress for Car-
lyle. Much to the grief of
the father whom he loved,
he had given up the idea
of entering the ministry.
Wherever he turned, doubts
like a thick fog surrounded
him, doubts of God, of
his fellow-men, of human

progress,

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

of himself.

was poor, and to earn an
honest living was his first
problem. He tried successively teaching school, tutoring, the study
of law, and writing miscellaneous articles for the Edinburgh Encyclo-
pedia. All the while he was fighting his doubts, living, as he says,
" in a continual, indefinite, pining fear." After six or seven years of
mental agony, which has at times a suggestion of Bunyan's spiritual
struggle, the crisis came in 1821, when Carlyle suddenly shook off his
doubts and found himself. " All at once," he says in Sartor, " there
arose a thought in me, and I asked myself : ' What Art thou afraid of ?
Wherefore like a coward dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go
cowering and trembling? Despicable biped ! What is the sum total

THOMAS CARLYLE
After the portrait by James McNeill Whistler

THE VICTORIAN AGE 529

of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death ; and say the
pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will, or can
do against thee ! Hast thou not a heart ; canst thou not suffer what-
soever it be ; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample
Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come
then ; I will meet it and defy it ! ' And as I so thought, there rushed
like a stream of fire over my whole soul ; and I shook base Fear
away from me forever." This struggle between fear and faith, and the
triumph of the latter, is recorded in two remarkable chapters, " The
Everlasting No " and "The Everlasting Yea," of Sartor Resartus.

Carlyle now definitely resolved on a literary life, and began with
any work that offered a bare livelihood. He translated Legendre's
Geometry from the French, wrote numerous essays for the magazines,
and continued his study of German while making translations from
that language. His translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister ap-
peared in 1824, his Life of Schiller in. 1825, and his Specimens of
German Romance in 1827. He began at this time a correspondence
with Goethe, his literary hero, which lasted till the German poet's
death in 1832. While still busy with "hack work," Carlyle, in 1826,
married Jane Welsh, a brilliant and beautiful woman, whose literary
genius almost equaled that of her husband. Soon afterwards, influ-
enced chiefly by poverty, the Carlyles retired to a farm, at Craigen-
puttoch (Hawks' Hill), a dreary and lonely spot, far from friends
and even neighbors. They remained here six years, during which
time Carlyle wrote many of his best essays, and Sartor Resartus, his
most original work. The latter went begging among publishers for
two years, and was finally published serially in Eraser's Magazine,
in 18331834. By this time Carlyle had begun to attract attention
as a writer, and, thinking that one who made his living by the maga-
zines should be in close touch with the editors, took his wife's advice
and moved to London " to seek work and bread." He settled in
Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a place made famous by More, Erasmus,
Bolingbroke, Smollett, Leigh Hunt, and many lesser lights of litera-
ture, and began to enjoy the first real peace he had known since
childhood. In 1837 appeared The French Revolution, which first
made Carlyle famous ; and in the same year, led by the necessity of
earning money, he began the series of lectures German Literature
(1837), Periods of European Culture (1838), Revolutions of Modern
Europe (1839), Heroes and Hero Worship (1841) which created
a sensation in London. "It was," says Leigh Hunt, "as if some

530 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Puritan had come to life again, liberalized by German philosophy
and his own intense reflection and experience."

Though Carlyle set himself against the spirit of his age, calling
the famous Reform Bill a " progress into darkness," and democracy
" the rule of the worst rather than the best," his rough sincerity was
unquestioned, and his remarks were more quoted than those of any
other living man. He was supported, moreover, by a rare circle of
friends, Edward Irving, Southey, Sterling, Landor, Leigh Hunt,
Dickens, Mill, Tennyson, Browning, and, most helpful of all, Emerson,
who had visited Carlyle at Craigenputtoch in 1833. It was due largely
to Emerson's influence that Carlyle's works were better appreciated,
and brought better financial rewards, in America than in England.

Carlyle's fame reached its climax in the monumental History of
Frederick the Great (1858-1865), published after thirteen years of
solitary toil, which, in his own words, " made entire devastation of
home life and happiness." The proudest moment of his life was
when he was elected to succeed Gladstone as lord rector of Edin-
burgh University, in 1865, the year in which Frederick the Great was
finished. In the midst of his triumph, and while he was in Scotland
to deliver his inaugural address, his happiness was suddenly destroyed
by the death of his wife, a terrible blow, from which he never re-
covered. He lived on for fifteen years, shorn of his strength and in-
terest in life ; and his closing hours were like the dull sunset of a
November day. Only as we remember his grief and remorse at the
death of the companion who had shared his toil but not his triumph,
can we understand the sorrow that pervades the pages of his Remi-
niscences. He died in 1881, and at his own wish was buried, not in
Westminster Abbey, but among his humble kinsfolk in Ecclefechan.
However much we may differ from his philosophy or regret the
harshness of his minor works, we shall probably all agree in this sen-
timent from one of his own letters, that the object of all his
struggle and writing was " that men should find out and believe the
truth, and match their lives to it."

Works of Carlyle. There are two widely different judg-
ments of Carlyle as a man and a writer. The first, which is
founded largely on his minor writings, like Chartism, Latter-
Day Pamphlets, and Shooting Niagara, declares that he is a
misanthrope and dyspeptic with a barbarous style of writing ;

THE VICTORIAN AGE

531

that he denounces progress, democracy, science, America,
Darwin, everybody and everything that he does not under-
stand ; that his literary opinions are largely prejudices ; that
he began as a prophet and ended as a scold ; and that in
denouncing shams of every sort he was something of a sham
himself, since his practice was not in accord with his own
preaching. The second judgment, which is founded upon
Heroes and Hero Worship, Cromwell, and Sartor Resartus,
declares that these works are the supreme manifestation of
genius ; that their rugged, picturesque style makes others look
feeble or colorless by comparison ; and that the author is the
greatest teacher, leader, and prophet of the nineteenth century.

Somewhere between these two extremes will be found the
truth about Carlyle. We only note here that, while there are
some grounds for the first unfavorable criticism, we are to
judge an author by his best rather than by his worst work ;
and that a man's aims as well as his accomplishments must
be taken into consideration. As it is written, " Whereas it
was in thine heart to build an house unto my name, thou didst
well that it was in thine heart." Whatever the defects of
Carlyle and his work, in his heart he was always planning a
house or temple to the God of truth and justice.

Carlyle's important works may be divided into three general
classes, critical and literary essays, historical works, and
Sartor Resartus, the last being in a class by itself, since there
is nothing like it in literature. To these should be added a
biography, the admirable Life of John Sterling, and Carlyle's
Letters and Reminiscences, which are more interesting and
suggestive than some of his better known works. We omit
here all consideration of translations, and his intemperate de-
nunciations of men and institutions in Chartism, Latter-Day
Pamphlets, and other essays, which add nothing to the author's
fame or influence.

Of the essays, which are all characterized by Carlyle's zeal
to get at the heart of things, and to reveal the soul rather

532 ENGLISH LITERATURE

than the works of a writer, the best are those on " Burns,"
"Scott," " Novalis," " Goethe," " Characteristics," " Signs ot
the Times," and " Boswell's Life of Johnson." 1 In the famous
Essay on Essay on Burns, which is generally selected for
Burns special study, we note four significant things :

(i) Carlyle is peculiarly well fitted for his task, having many
points in common with his hero. (2) In most of his work
Carlyle, by his style and mannerisms and positive opinions,
generally attracts our attention away from his subject ; but
in this essay he shows himself capable of forgetting himself
for a moment. To an unusual extent he sticks to his subject,
and makes us think of Burns rather than of Carlyle. The
style, though unpolished, is fairly simple and readable, and is
free from the breaks, crudities, ejaculations, and general
" nodulosities " which disfigure much of his work. (3) Carlyle
has an original and interesting theory of biography and criti-
cism. The object of criticism is to show the man himself, his
aims, ideals, and outlook on the universe ; the object of biog-
raphy is "to show what and how produced was the effect of
society upon him ; what and how produced was his effect on
society." (4) Carlyle is often severe, even harsh, in his esti-
mates of other men, but in this case the tragedy of Burns's
" life of fragments " attracts and softens him. He grows
enthusiastic and a rare thing for Carlyle apologizes for
his enthusiasm in the striking sentence, "We love Burns,
and we pity him ; and love and pity are prone to magnify."
So he gives us the most tender and appreciative of his essays,
and one of the most illuminating criticisms of Burns that has
appeared in our language.

The central idea of Carlyle's historical works is found in his
Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), his most widely read book.
"Universal history," he says, "is at bottom the history of

1 The student should remember that Carlyle's literary opinions, though very positive,
are to be received with caution. Sometimes, indeed, they are so one-sided and preju-
diced that they are more valuable as a revelation of Carlyle himself than as a study of
the author he is considering.

THE VICTORIAN AGE

533

the great men who have worked here." To get at the truth of
history we must study not movements but men, and read not
Heroes and state papers but the biographies of heroes. His
Hero Worship summar y o f history as presented in this work has
six divisions : (i) The Hero as Divinity, having for its general
subject Odin, the " type Norseman," who, Carlyle thinks, was
some old heroic chief, afterwards deified by his countrymen ;
(2) The Hero as Prophet, treating of Mahomet and the rise of
Islam ; (3) The Hero as Poet, in which Dante and Shakespeare
are taken as types ; (4) The Hero as Priest, or religious leader,
in which Luther appears as the hero of the Reformation, and
Knox as the hero of Puritanism ; (5) The Hero as Man of
Letters, in which we have the curious choice of Johnson, Rous-
seau, and Burns ; (6) The Hero as King, in which Cromwell
and Napoleon appear as the heroes of reform by revolution.

It is needless to say that Heroes is not a book of history ;
neither is it scientifically written in the manner of Gibbon.
With science in any form Carlyle had no patience ; and he
miscalculated the value of that patient search for facts and
evidence which science undertakes before building any theo-
ries, either of kings or cabbages. The book, therefore, abounds
in errors ; but they are the errors of carelessness and are
perhaps of small consequence. His misconception of history,
however, is more serious. With the modern idea of history, as
the growth of freedom among all classes, he has no sympathy.
The progress of democracy was to him an evil thing, a " turn-
ing of the face towards darkness and anarchy." At certain
periods, according to Carlyle, God sends us geniuses, some-
times as priests or poets, sometimes as soldiers or statesmen ;
but in whatever guise they appear, these are our real rulers.
He shows, moreover, that whenever such men appear, multi-
tudes follow them, and that a man's following is a sure index
of his heroism and kingship.

Whether we agree with Carlyle or not, we must accept for
the moment his peculiar view of history, else Heroes can never

534 ENGLISH LITERATURE

open its treasures to us. The book abounds in startling ideas,
expressed with originality and power, and is pervaded through,
out by an atmosphere of intense moral earnestness. The
more we read it, the more we find to admire and to remember.

Carlyle's French Revolution (1837) * s to be taken more
seriously as a historical work ; but here again his hero wor>
French sn ip comes to the front, and his book is a series of
Revolution flashlights thrown upon men in dramatic situations,
rather than a tracing of causes to their consequences. The
very titles of his chapters " Astraea Redux," "Windbags,"
" Broglie the War God" do violence to our conception of
history, and are more suggestive of Carlyle's individualism
than of French history. He is here the preacher rather than
the historian ; his text is the eternal justice ; and his message
is that all wrongdoing is inevitably followed by vengeance.
His method is intensely dramatic. From a mass of historical
details he selects a few picturesque incidents and striking fig-
ures, and his vivid pictures of the storming of the Bastille,
the rush of the mob to Versailles, the death of Louis XVI,
and the Reign of Terror, seem like the work of an eyewitness
describing some terrible catastrophe. At times, as it portrays
Danton, Robespierre, and the great characters of the tragedy,
Carlyle's work is suggestive of an historical play of Shake-
speare ; and again, as it describes the rush and riot of men
led by elemental passion, it is more like a great prose epic.
Though not a reliable history in any sense, it is one of the
most dramatic and stirring narratives in our language.

Two other historical works deserve at least a passing notice.
The History of Frederick the Great (1858-1865), in six vol-
oiiver umes, is a colossal picture of the life and times of

Cromwell the hero of the Prussian Empire. Oliver Crom-
well's Letters and Speeches is, in our personal judgment,
Carlyle's best historical work. His idea is to present the very
soul of the great Puritan leader. He gives us, as of first im-
portance, Cromwell's own words, and connects them by a

THE VICTORIAN AGE 535

commentary in which other men and events are described
with vigor and vividness. Cromwell was one of Carlyle's
greatest heroes, and in this case he is most careful to present
the facts which occasion his own enthusiasm. The result
is, on the whole, the most lifelike picture of a great histori-
cal character that we possess. Other historians had heaped
calumny upon Cromwell till the English public regarded him
with prejudice and horror ; and it is an indication of Carlyle's
power that by a single book he revolutionized England's
opinion of one of her greatest men.

Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1834), his only creative work, is
a mixture of philosophy and romance, of wisdom and nonsense,
Sartor a chaotic jumble of the author's thoughts, feel-

Resartus ings, and experiences during the first thirty-five
years of his life. The title, which means " The Tailor Patched-
up," is taken from an old Scotch song. The hero is Diogenes
Teufelsdroeckh, a German professor at the University of
Weissnichtwo (don't know where) ; the narrative concerns
this queer professor's life and opinions ; and the central
thought of the book is the philosophy of clothes, which are
considered symbolically as the outward expression of spirit.
Thus, man's body is the outward garment of his soul, and the
universe is the visible garment of the invisible God. The
arrangement of Sartor is clumsy and hard to follow. In order
to leave himself free to bring in everything he thought about,
Carlyle assumed the position of one who was translating and
editing the old professor's manuscripts, which are supposed
to consist of numerous sheets stuffed into twelve paper bags,
each labeled with a sign of the zodiac. The editor pretends
to make order out of this chaos ; but he is free to jump from
one subject to another and to state the most startling opinion
by simply using quotation marks and adding a note that he is
not responsible for Teufelsdroeckh's crazy notions, which
are in reality Carlyle's own dreams and ideals. Partly because
of the matter, which is sometimes incoherent, partly because

536 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of the style, which, though picturesque, is sometimes confused
and ungrammatical, Sartor is not easy reading ; but it amply
repays whatever time and study we give to it. Many of its
passages are more like poetry than prose ; and one cannot
read such chapters as " The Everlasting No," " The Ever-
lasting Yea," " Reminiscences," and " Natural Supernatural-
ism," and be quite the same man afterwards ; for Carlyle's
thought has entered into him, and he walks henceforth more
gently, more reverently through the world, as in the presence
of the Eternal.

General Characteristics. Concerning Carlyle's style there
are almost as many opinions as there are readers. This is
Carlyle's partly because he impresses different people in
Style widely different ways, and partly because his ex-

pression varies greatly. At times he is calm, persuasive,
grimly humorous, as if conversing; at other times, wildly
exclamatory, as if he were shouting and waving his arms at
the reader. We have spoken of Macaulay's style as that of the
finished orator, and we might reasonably speak of Carlyle's as
that of the exhorter, who cares little for methods so long as he
makes a strong impression on his hearers. " Every sentence
is alive to its finger tips," writes a modern critic ; and though
Carlyle often violates the rules of grammar and rhetoric, we
can well afford to let an original genius express his own in-
tense conviction in his own vivid and picturesque way.

Carlyle's message may be summed up in two imperatives,

labor, and be sincere. He lectured and wrote chiefly for the

upper classes who had begun to think, somewhat

sentimentally, of the conditions of the laboring men

of the world ; and he demanded for the latter, not charity or

pity, but justice and honor. All labor, whether of head or

hand, is divine ; and labor alone justifies a man as a son of

earth and heaven. To society, which Carlyle thought to be

occupied wholly with conventional affairs, he came with the

stamp of sincerity, calling upon men to lay aside hypocrisy

THE VICTORIAN AGE 537

and to think and speak and live the truth. He had none of
Addison's delicate satire and humor, and in his fury at what
he thought was false he was generally unsympathetic and
often harsh ; but we must not forget that Thackeray who
knew society much better than did Carlyle gave a very
unflattering picture of it in Vanity Fair and The Book of
Snobs. Apparently the age needed plain speaking, and Car-
lyle furnished it in scripture measure. Harriet Martineau,
who knew the world for which Carlyle wrote, summed up his
influence when she said that he had " infused into the mind
of the English nation . . . sincerity, earnestness, healthfulness,
and courage." If we add to the above message Carlyle's con-
ceptions of the world as governed by a God of justice who
never forgets, and of human history as " an inarticulate Bible,"
slowly revealing the divine purpose, we shall understand better
the force of his ethical appeal and the profound influence he
exercised on the moral and intellectual life of the past century.

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

In approaching the study of Ruskin we are to remember,
first of all, that we are dealing with a great and good man,
who is himself more inspiring than any of his books. In some
respects he is like his friend Carlyle, whose disciple he ac-
knowledged himself to be ; but he is broader in his sympa-
thies, and in every way more hopeful, helpful, and humane.
Thus, in the face of the drudgery and poverty of the competi-
tive system, Carlyle proposed, with the grim satire of Swift's
" Modest Proposal," to organize an annual hunt in which suc-
cessful people should shoot the unfortunate, and to use the
game for the support of the army and navy. Ruskin, facing
the same problem, wrote : " I will endure it no longer quietly ;
but henceforward, with any few or many who will help, do my
best to abate this misery." Then, leaving the field of art
criticism, where he was the acknowledged leader, he begins
to write of labor and justice ; gives his fortune in charity, in

538 ENGLISH LITERATURE

establishing schools and libraries ; and founds his St. George's
Guild of workingmen, to put in practice the principles of
brotherhood and cooperation for which he and Carlyle con-
tended. Though his style marks him as one of the masters
of English prose, he is generally studied not as a literary man
but as an ethical teacher, and we shall hardly appreciate his
works unless we see behind every book the figure of the
heroically sincere man who wrote it.

Life. Ruskin was born in London, in 1819. His father was a
prosperous wine merchant who gained a fortune in trade, and who
spent his leisure hours in the company of good books and pictures.
On his tombstone one may still read this inscription written by Rus-
kin : " He was an entirely honest merchant and his memory is to
all who keep it dear and helpful. His son, whom he loved to the
uttermost and taught to speak truth, says this of him." Ruskin's
mother, a devout and somewhat austere woman, brought her son up
with Puritanical strictness, not forgetting Solomon's injunction that
** the rod and reproof give wisdom."

Of Ruskin's early years at Herne Hill, on the outskirts of London,
it is better to read his own interesting record in Praterita. It was
in some respects a cramped and lonely childhood, but certain things
which strongly molded his character are worthy of mention. First,
he was taught by word and example in all things to speak the truth,
and he never forgot the lesson. Second, he had few toys, and spent
much time in studying the leaves, the flowers, the grass, the clouds,
even the figures and colors of the carpet, and so laid the foundation
for that minute and accurate observation which is manifest in all his
writings. Third, he was educated first by his mother, then by private
tutors, and so missed the discipline of the public schools. The influ-
ence of this lonely training is evident in all his work. Like Carlyle,
he is often too positive and dogmatic, the result of failing to test
his work by the standards of other men of his age. Fourth, he was
obliged to read the Bible every day and to learn long passages ver-
batim. The result of this training was, he says, "to make every
word of the Scriptures familiar to my ear in habitual music." We
can hardly read a page of his later work without finding some reflec-
tion of the noble simplicity or vivid imagery of the sacred records.
Fifth, he traveled much with his father and mother, and his innate

THE VICTORIAN AGE

539

love of nature was intensified by what he saw on his leisurely jour-
neys through the most beautiful parts of England and the Continent.

Ruskin entered Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1836, when
only seventeen years old. He was at this time a shy, sensitive boy,
a lover of nature and of every art which reflects nature, but almost
entirely ignorant of the ways of boys and men. An attack of con-
sumption, with which he had long been threatened, caused him to
leave Oxford in 1840, and for nearly two years he wandered over Italy
searching for health and cheerfulness, and gathering materials for the
first volume of Modern Painters, the book that made him famous.

Ruskin's literary work began in childhood, when he was encouraged
to write freely in prose and poetry. A volume of poems illustrated
by his own drawings was published
in 1859, after he had won fame
as a prose writer, but, save for the
drawings, it is of small importance.
The first volume of Modern Painters
(1843) was begun as a heated de-
fense of the artist Turner, but it de-
veloped into an essay on art as a true
picture of nature, " not only in her
outward aspect but in her inward
spirit." The work, which was signed
simply "Oxford Graduate," aroused
a storm of mingled approval and
protest ; but however much critics
warred over its theories of art, all
were agreed that the unknown author was a master of descriptive
prose. Ruskin now made frequent trips to the art galleries of the
Continent, and produced four more volumes of Modern Painters
during the next seventeen years. Meanwhile he wrote other books,
Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Stones of Venice (1851-1853),
Pre-Raphaelitism, and numerous lectures and essays, which gave
him a place in the world of art similar to that held by Matthew
Arnold in the world of letters. In 1869 he was appointed professor
of art at Oxford, a position which greatly increased his prestige and
influence, not only among students but among a great variety of peo-
ple who heard his lectures and read his published works. Lectures
on Art, Aratra Pentelici (lectures on sculpture), Ariadne Florentina
(lectures on engraving), Michael Angela and Tintoret, The Art of

JOHN RUSKIN

540 ENGLISH LITERATURE

England, Val d' Arno (lectures on Tuscan art), St. Mark's Rest (a
history of Venice), Mornings in Florence (studies in Christian art,
now much used as a guidebook to the picture galleries of Florence),
The Laws of Fiesole (a treatise on drawing and painting for schools),
Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, Pleasures of England, all these
works on art show Ruskin's literary industry. And we must also re-
cord Love's Meinie (a study of birds), Proserpina (a study of flowers),
Deucalion (a study of waves and stones), besides various essays on
political economy which indicate that Ruskin, like Arnold, had begun
to consider the practical problems of his age.

At the height of his fame, in 1860, Ruskin turned for a time from
art, to consider questions of wealth and labor, terms which were
used glibly by the economists of the age without much thought for
their fundamental meaning. "There is no wealth but life," an-
nounced Ruskin, " life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and
of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the great-
est number of noble and happy human beings." Such a doctrine,
proclaimed by Goldsmith in his Deserted Village, was regarded as a
pretty sentiment, but coming from one of the greatest leaders and
teachers of England it was like a bombshell. Ruskin wrote four
essays establishing this doctrine and pleading for a more socialistic
form of government in which reform might be possible. The essays
were published in the Cornhill Magazine, of which Thackeray was
editor, and they aroused such a storm that the publication was dis-
continued. Ruskin then published the essays in book form, with the
title Unto This Last, in 1862. Munera Pulveris (\%>2) was another
work in which the principles of capital and labor and the evils of
the competitive system were discussed in such a way that the author
was denounced as a visionary or a madman. Other works of this
practical period are Time and Tide, Fors Clavigera, Sesame and Lilies,
and the Crown of Wild Olive.

The latter part of Ruskin's life was a time of increasing sadness,
due partly to the failure of his plans, and partly to public attacks
upon his motives or upon his sanity. He grew bitter at first, as his
critics ridiculed or denounced his principles, and at times his voice
is as querulous as that of Carlyle. We are to remember, however,
the conditions under which he struggled. His health had been shat-
tered by successive attacks of disease ; he had been disappointed in
love ; his marriage was unhappy ; and his work seemed a failure.
He had given nearly all his fortune in charity, and the poor were

THE VICTORIAN AGE 541

more numerous than ever before. His famous St. George's Guild was
not successful, and the tyranny of the competitive system seemed
too deeply rooted to be overthrown. On the death of his mother he
left London and, in 1879, retired to Brantwood, on Coniston Lake,
in the beautiful region beloved of Wordsworth. Here he passed the
last quiet years of his life under the care of his cousin, Mrs. Severn,
the " angel of the house," and wrote, at Professor Norton's sugges-
tion, Prceterita, one of his most interesting books, in which he de-
scribes the events of his youth from his own view point. He died
quietly in 1900, and was buried, as he wished, without funeral pomp
or public ceremony, in the little churchyard at Coniston.

Works of Ruskin. There are three little books which, in
popular favor, stand first on the list of Ruskin' s numerous
works, Ethics of the Dust, a series of Lectures to Little
Housewives, which appeals most to women ; Crown of Wild
Olive, three lectures on Work, Traffic, and War, which appeals
to thoughtful men facing the problems of work and duty ;
and Sesame and Lilies, which appeals to men and women
alike. The last is the most widely known of Ruskin's works
and the best with which to begin our reading.

The first thing we notice in Sesame and Lilies is the sym-
bolical title. " Sesame," taken from the story of the robbers'
Sesame and cave * n tne Arabian Nights, means a secret word
Lilies or talisman which unlocks a treasure house. It was

intended, no doubt, to introduce the first part of the work,
called " Of Kings' Treasuries," which treats of books and
reading. " Lilies," taken from Isaiah as a symbol of beauty,
purity, and peace, introduces the second lecture, " Of Queens'
Gardens," which is an exquisite study of woman's life and
education. These two lectures properly constitute the book,
but a third is added, on " The Mystery of Life." The last
begins in a monologue upon his own failures in life, and is
pervaded by an atmosphere of sadness, sometimes of pessimism,
quite different from the spirit of the other two lectures.

Though the theme of the first lecture is books, Ruskin
manages to present to his audience his whole philosophy of

542 ENGLISH LITERATURE

life. He gives us, with a wealth of detail, a description of what
constitutes a real book ; he looks into the meaning of words,
Kings' Treas- an ^ teaches us how to read, using a selection from
uries Milton's Lycidas as an illustration. This study of

words gives us the key with which we are to unlock " Kings'
Treasuries," that is, the books which contain the precious
thoughts of the kingly minds of all ages. He shows the real
meaning and end of education, the value of labor and of a
purpose in life ; he treats of nature, science, art, literature,
religion ; he defines the purpose of government, showing that
soul-life, not money or trade, is the measure of national great-
ness ; and he criticises the general injustice of his age, quoting
a heartrending story of toil and suffering from the newspapers
to show how close his theory is to daily needs. Here is an
astonishing variety in a small compass ; but there is no con-
fusion. Ruskin's mind was wonderfully analytical, and one
subject develops naturally from the other.

In the second lecture, "Of Queens' Gardens," he considers
the question of woman's place and education, which Tennyson
Of Queens' na d attempted to answer in The Princess. Ruskin's
Gardens theory is that the purpose of all education is to ac-
quire power to bless and to redeem human society ; and that
in this noble work woman must always play the leading part.
He searches all literature for illustrations, and his description
of literary heroines, especially of Shakespeare's perfect women,
is unrivaled. Ruskin is always at his best in writing of women
or for women, and the lofty idealism of this essay, together
with its rare beauty of expression, makes it, on the whole,
the most delightful and inspiring of his works.

Among Ruskin's practical works the reader will find in
Fors Clavigera, a series of letters to workingmen, and Unto
Unto This This Last, four essays on the principles of political
Last economy, the substance of his economic teachings.

In the latter work, starting with the proposition that our
present competitive system centers about the idea of wealth,

THE VICTORIAN AGE 543

Ruskin tries to find out what wealth is ; and the pith of his
teaching is this, that men are of more account than money ;
that a man's real wealth is found in his soul, not in his pocket ;
and that the prime object of life and labor is " the producing
of as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-
hearted human creatures." To make this ideal practical, Ruskin
makes four suggestions : (i) that training schools be estab-
lished to teach young men and women three things, the
laws and practice of health, habits of gentleness and justice,
and the trade or calling by which they are to live ; (2) that
the government establish farms and workshops for the pro-
duction of all the necessaries of life, where only good and
honest work shall be tolerated and where a standard of work
and wages shall be maintained ; (3) that any person out of
employment shall be received at the nearest government
school : if ignorant he shall be educated, and if competent
to do any work he shall have the opportunity to do it ;
(4) that comfortable homes be provided for the sick and for
the aged, and that this be done in justice, not in charity.
A laborer serves his country as truly as does a soldier or a
statesman, and a pension should be no more disgraceful in
one case than in the other.

Among Ruskin' s numerous books treating of art, we recom-
mend the Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Stones of
Workson Venice (1851-1853), and the first two volumes of
Art Modern Painters (1843-1846). With Ruskin's art

theories, which, as Sydney Smith prophesied, " worked a com-
plete revolution in the world of taste," we need not concern
ourselves here. We simply point out four principles that are
manifest in all his work : (i) that the object of art, as of every
other human endeavor, is to find and to express the truth ;
(2) that art, in order to be true, must break away from con-
ventionalities and copy nature ; (3) that morality is closely
allied with art, and that a careful study of any art reveals the
moral strength or weakness of the people that produced it ;

544 ENGLISH LITERATURE

(4) that the main purpose of art is not to delight a few cul-
tured people but to serve the daily uses of common life. "The
giving brightness to pictures is much," he says, "but the giv-
ing brightness to life is more." In this attempt to make art
serve the practical ends of life, Ruskin is allied with all the
great writers of the period, who use literature as the instru-
ment of human progress.

General Characteristics. One who reads Ruskin is in a state
of mind analogous to that of a man who goes through a picture
gallery, pausing now to admire a face or a landscape for its
own sake, and again to marvel at the technical skill of the
artist, without regard to his subject. For Ruskin is a great
literary artist and a great ethical teacher, and we admire one
page for its style, and the next for its message to humanity.
The best of his prose, which one may find in the descriptive
passages of Prceterita and Modern Painters, is written in a
richly ornate style, with a wealth of figures and allusions, and
at times a rhythmic, melodious quality which makes it almost
equal to poetry. Ruskin had a rare sensitiveness to beauty in
every form, and more, perhaps, than any other writer in our
language, he has helped us to see and appreciate the beauty
of the world around us.

As for Ruskin' s ethical teaching, it appears in so many
forms and in so many different works that any summary
Ethical must appear inadequate. For a full half century
Teaching ne was " th e apostle of beauty " in England, and
the beauty for which he pleaded was never sensuous or pagan,
as in the Renaissance, but always spiritual, appealing to the
soul of man rather than to his eyes, leading to better work
and better living. In his economic essays Ruskin is even more
directly and positively ethical. To mitigate the evils of the
unreasonable competitive system under which we labor and
sorrow ; to bring master and man together in mutual trust
and helpfulness ; to seek beauty, truth, goodness as the chief
ends of life, and, having found them, to make our characters

THE VICTORIAN AGE 545

correspond ; to share the best treasures of art and literature
with rich and poor alike ; to labor always, and, whether we
work with hand orhead, to do our work in praise of something
that we love, this sums up Ruskin's purpose and message.
And the best of it is that, like Chaucer's country parson, he
practiced his doctrine before he preached it.

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

In the world of literature Arnold has occupied for many
years an authoritative position as critic and teacher, similar
to that held by Ruskin in the world of art. In his literary
work two very different moods are manifest. In his poetry
he reflects the doubt of an age which witnessed the conflict
between science and revealed religion. Apparently he never
passed through any such decisive personal struggle as is re-
corded in Sartor Resartus, and he has no positive conviction
such as is voiced in " The Everlasting Yea." He is beset by
doubts which he never settles, and his poems generally ex-
press sorrow or regret or resignation. In his prose he shows
the cavalier spirit, aggressive, light-hearted, self-confident.
Like Carlyle, he dislikes shams, and protests against what he
calls the barbarisms of society ; but he writes with a light
touch, using satire and banter as the better part of his argu-
ment. Carlyle denounces with the zeal of a Hebrew prophet,
and lets you know that you are hopelessly lost if you reject
his message. Arnold is more like the cultivated Greek ; his
voice is soft, his speech suave, but he leaves the impression,
if you happen to differ with him, that you must be deficient
in culture. Both these men, so different in spirit and methods,
confronted the same problems, sought the same ends, and
were dominated by the same moral sincerity.

Life. Arnold was born in Laleham, in the valley of the Thames,
in 1822. His father was Dr. Thomas Arnold, head master of Rugby,
with whom many of us have grown familiar by reading Tom Brown's

546 ENGLISH LITERATURE

School Days. After fitting for the university at Winchester and at
Rugby, Arnold entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he was dis-
tinguished by winning prizes in poetry and by general excellence in
the classics. More than any other poet Arnold reflects the spirit of
his university. "The Scholar-Gipsy" and "Thyrsis" contain many
references to Oxford and the surrounding country, but they are more
noticeable for their spirit of aloofness, as if Oxford men were too
much occupied with classic dreams and ideals to concern themselves
with the practical affairs of life.

After leaving the university Arnold first taught the classics at
Rugby; then, in 1847, he became private secretary to Lord Lans-
downe, who appointed the young poet to the position of inspector
of schools under the government. In this position Arnold worked
patiently for the next thirty-five years, traveling about the country,
examining teachers, and correcting endless examination papers. For
ten years (1857-1867) he was professor of poetry at Oxford, where
his famous lectures On Translating Homer were given. He made
numerous reports on English and foreign schools, and was three times
sent abroad to study educational methods on the Continent. From
this it will be seen that Arnold )ed a busy, often a laborious life, and
we can appreciate his statement that all his best literary work was
done late at night, after a day of drudgery. It is well to remember
that, while Carlyle was preaching about labor, Arnold labored daily ;
that his work was cheerfully and patiently done ; and that after the
day's work he hurried away, like Lamb, to the Elysian fields of litera-
ture. He was happily married, loved his home, and especially loved
children, was free from all bitterness and envy, and, notwithstanding
his cold manner, was at heart sincere, generous, and true. We shall
appreciate his work better if we can see the man himself behind all
that he has written.

Arnold's literary work divides itself into three periods, which we
may call the poetical, the critical, and the practical. He had written
poetry since his school days, and his first volume, The Strayed Reveller
and Other Poems, appeared anonymously in 1849. Three years later
he published Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems ; but only a few-
copies of these volumes were sold, and presently both were withdrawn
irom circulation. In 18531855 he published his signed Poems, and
twelve years later appeared his last volume of poetry. Compared with
the early work of Tennyson, these works met with little favor, and
Arnold practically abandoned poetry in favor of critical writing.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 547

The chief works of his critical period are the lectures On Trans-
lating Homer (1861) and the two volumes of Essays in Criticism
(1865-1888), which made Arnold one of the best known literary
men in England. Then, like Ruskin, he turned to practical ques-
tions, and his Friendship's Garland (1871) was intended to satirize
and perhaps reform the great middle class of England, whom he
called the Philistines. Culture and Anarchy, the most characteristic
work of his practical period, appeared in 1869. These were followed
by four books on religious subjects, St. Paul and Protestantism
(1870), Literature and Dogma (1873), God and the Bible (1875),
and Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877). The Discourses in
America (1885) completes the list of his important works. At the
height of his fame and influence he died suddenly, in 1888, and was
buried in the churchyard at Laleham. The spirit of his whole life
is well expressed in a few lines of one of his own early sonnets :

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,

One lesson which in every wind is blown,

One lesson of two duties kept at one

Though the loud world proclaim their enmity

Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity ;

Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows

Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose,

Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.

Works of Matthew Arnold. We shall better appreciate

Arnold's poetry if we remember two things : First, he bad

been taught in his home a simple and devout faith

His Poetry . , & . .. .

in revealed religion, and in college he was thrown
into a world of doubt and questioning. He faced these doubts
honestly, reverently, in his heart longing to accept the faith
of his fathers, but in his head demanding proof and scientific
exactness. The same struggle between head and heart, be-
tween reason and intuition, goes on to-day, and that is one
reason why Arnold's poetry, which wavers on the borderland
between doubt and faith, is a favorite with many readers.
Second, Arnold, as shown in his essay on The Study of Poetry ',
regarded poetry as " a criticism of life under the conditions
fixed for such criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic

548 ENGLISH LITERATURE

beauty." Naturally, one who regards poetry as a " criticism "
will write very differently from one who regards poetry as the
natural language of the soul. He will write for the head rather
than for the heart, and will be cold and critical rather than en-
thusiastic. According to Arnold, each poem should be a unit,
and he protested against the tendency of English poets to use
brilliant phrases and figures of speech which only detract
attention from the poem as a whole. For his models he went
to Greek poetry, which he regarded as " the only sure guid-
ance to what is sound and true in poetical art." Arnold is,
however, more indebted than he thinks to English masters,
especially to Wordsworth and Milton, whose influence is
noticeable in a large part of his poetry.

Of Arnold's narrative poems the two best known are Bal-
der Dead (1855), an incursion into the field of Norse mythol-
ogy which is suggestive of Gray, and Sohrab and Rustum
(1853), which takes us into the field of legendary Persian
history. The theme of the latter poem is taken from the
Shah-Namah (Book of Kings) of the Persian poet Firdausi,
who lived and wrote in the eleventh century.

Briefly, the story is of one Rustem or Rustum, a Persian Achilles, who
fell asleep one day when he had grown weary of hunting. While he
slept a band of robbers stole his favorite horse, Ruksh. In
trailing the robbers Rustum came to the palace of the king
of Samengan, where he was royally welcomed, and where
he fell in love with the king's daughter, Temineh, and married her. But
he was of a roving, adventurous disposition, and soon went back to fight
among his own people, the Persians. While he was gone his son Sohrab
was born, grew to manhood, and became the hero of the Turan army.
War arose between the two peoples, and two hostile armies were en-
camped by the Oxus. Each army chose a champion, and Rustum and
Sohrab found themselves matched in mortal combat between the lines.
At this point Sohrab, whose chief interest in life was to find his father,
demanded to know if his enemy were not Rustum ; but the latter was
disguised and denied his identity. On the first day of the fight Rustum
was overcome, but his life was spared by a trick and by the generosity
of Sohrab. On the second day Rustum prevailed, and mortally wounded
his antagonist. Then he recognized his own son by a gold bracelet

iaec

THE VICTORIAN AGE 549

which he had long ago given to his wife Temineh. The two armies,
rushing into battle, were stopped by the sight of father and son weep-
ing in each other's arms. Sohrab died, the war ceased, and Rustum
went home to a life of sorrow and remorse.

Using this interesting material, Arnold produced a poem
which has the rare and difficult combination of classic reserve
and romantic feeling. It is written in blank verse, and one
has only to read the first few lines to see that the poet is not
a master of his instrument. The lines are seldom harmonious,
and we must frequently change the accent of common words,
or lay stress on unimportant particles, to show the rhythm.
Arnold frequently copies Milton, especially in his repetition
of ideas and phrases ; but the poem as a whole is lacking in
Milton's wonderful melody.

The classic influence on Sohrab and Rustum is especially
noticeable in Arnold's use of materials. Fights are short ;
grief is long ; therefore the poet gives few lines to the com-
bat, but lingers over the son's joy at finding his father, and
the father's quenchless sorrow at the death of his son. The
last lines especially, with their " passionate grief set to solemn
music," make this poem one of the best, on the whole, that
Arnold has written. And the exquisite ending, where the
Oxus, unmindful of the trivial strifes of men, flows on sedately
to join "his luminous home of waters" is most suggestive of
the poet's conception of the orderly life of nature, in contrast
with the doubt and restlessness of human life.

Next in importance to the narrative poems are the elegies,
"Thyrsis," "The Scholar-Gipsy," "Memorial Verses," "A
Misceiia- Southern Night," " Obermann," " Stanzas from the
neous Poems Grande Chartreuse," and "Rugby Chapel." All
these are worthy of careful reading, but the best is " Thyrsis,"
a lament for the poet Clough, which is sometimes classed with
Milton's Lycidas and Shelley's Adonais. Among the minor
poems the reader will find the best expression of Arnold's
ideals and methods in "Dover Beach," the love lyrics entitled

550 ENGLISH LITERATURE

" Switzerland," "Requiescat," " Shakespeare/' "The Future,"
"Kensington Gardens," "Philomela," "Human Life," " Cal-
licles's Song," "Morality," and " Geist's Grave," the last
being an exquisite tribute to a little dog which, like all his
kind, had repaid our scant crumbs of affection with a whole
life's devotion.

The first place among Arnold's prose works must be given
to the Essays in Criticism, which raised the author to the
Essays in front rank of living critics. His fundamental idea
Criticism o f criticism appeals to us strongly. The business
of criticism, he says, is neither to find fault nor to display the
critic's own learning or influence; it is to know "the best
which has been thought and said in the world," and by using
this knowledge to create a current of fresh and free thought.
If a choice must be made among these essays, which are all
worthy of study, we would suggest " The Study of Poetry,"
"Wordsworth," " Byron," and " Emerson." The last-named
essay, which is found in the Discourses in America, is hardly
a satisfactory estimate of Emerson, but its singular charm
of manner and its atmosphere of intellectual culture make it
perhaps the most characteristic of Arnold's prose writings.

Among the works of Arnold's practical period there are two
which may be taken as typical of all the rest. Literature and
Dogma (1873) is, in general, a plea for liberality in religion.
Arnold would have us read the Bible, for instance, as we would
read any other great work, and apply to it the ordinary stand-
ards of literary criticism.

Culture and Anarchy (1869) contains most of the terms
culture, sweetness and light, Barbarian, Philistine, Hebraism,
Culture and an ^ many others which are now associated with
Anarchy Arnold's work and influence. The term " Barbarian "
refers to the aristocratic classes, whom Arnold thought to be
essentially crude in soul, notwithstanding their good clothes
and superficial graces. " Philistine " refers to the middle
classes, narrow-minded and self-satisfied people, according

THE VICTORIAN AGE

551

to Arnold, whom he satirizes with the idea of opening their
minds to new ideas. " Hebraism " is Arnold's term for moral
education. Carlyle had emphasized the Hebraic or moral ele-
ment in life, and Arnold undertook to preach the Hellenic or
intellectual element, which welcomes new ideas, and delights
in the arts that reflect the beauty of the world. " The upper-
most idea with Hellenism," he says, " is to see things as they
are ; the uppermost idea with Hebraism is conduct and obe-
dience." With great clearness, sometimes with great force,
and always with a play of humor and raillery aimed at the
" Philistines," Arnold pleads for both these elements in life
which together aim at "-Culture," that is, at moral and intel-
lectual perfection.

General Characteristics. Arnold's influence in our literature
may be summed up, in a word, as intellectual rather than in-
spirational. One cannot be enthusiastic over his poetry, for
the simple reason that he himself lacked enthusiasm. He is,
however, a true reflection of a very real mood of the past cen-
tury, the mood of doubt and sorrow ; and a future genera-
tion may give him a higher place than he now holds as a
poet. Though marked by "the elemental note of sadness," all
Arnold's poems are distinguished by clearness, simplicity, and
the restrained emotion of his classic models.

As a prose writer the cold intellectual quality, which mars
his poetry by restraining romantic feeling, is of first importance,
since it leads him to approach literature with an open mind
and with the single desire to find "the best which has been
thought and said in the world." We cannot yet speak with
confidence of his rank in literature ; but by his crystal-clear
style, his scientific spirit of inquiry and comparison, illumined
here and there by the play of humor, and especially by his
broad sympathy and intellectual culture, he seems destined to
occupy a very high place among the masters of literary
criticism.

552 ENGLISH LITERATURE

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801-1890)

Any record of the prose literature of the Victorian era,
which includes the historical essays of Macaulay and the art
criticism of Ruskin, should contain also some notice of its
spiritual leaders. For there was never a time when the re-
ligious ideals that inspire the race were kept more constantly
before men's minds through the medium of literature.

Among the religious writers of the age the first place be-
longs unquestionably to Cardinal Newman. Whether we con-
sider him as a man, with his powerful yet gracious personality,
or as a religious reformer, who did much to break down old
religious prejudices by showing the underlying beauty and
consistency of the Roman church, or as a prose writer whose
style is as near perfection as we have ever reached, Newman
is one of the most interesting figures of the whole nine-
teenth century.

Life. Three things stand out clearly in Newman's life : first, his
unshaken faith in the divine companionship and guidance ; second,
his desire to find and to teach the truth of revealed religion ; third,
his quest of an authoritative standard of faith, which should remain
steadfast through the changing centuries and amid all sorts and con-
ditions of men. The first led to that rare and beautiful spiritual
quality which shines in all his work ; the second to his frequent
doctrinal and controversial essays ; the third to his conversion to the
Catholic church, which he served as priest and teacher for the last
forty-five years of his life. Perhaps we should add one more char-
acteristic, the practical bent of his religion ; for he was never so
busy with study or controversy that he neglected to give a large part
of his time to gentle ministration among the poor and needy.

He was. born in London, in 1801. His father was an English
banker ; his mother, a member of a French Huguenot family, was a
thoughtful, devout woman, who brought up her son in a way which
suggests the mother of Ruskin. Of his early training, his reading of
doctrinal and argumentative works, and of his isolation from material
things in the thought that there were "two and only two absolute
and luminously self-evident beings in the world," himself and his

THE VICTORIAN AGE

553

Creator, it is better to read his own record in the Apologia, which
is a kind of spiritual biography.

At the age of fifteen Newman had begun his profound study of
theological subjects. For science, literature, art, nature, all the
broad interests which attracted other literary men of his age, he
cared little, his mind being wholly occupied with the history and
doctrines of the Christian church, to which he had already devoted
his life. He was educated first at the school in Baling, then at
Oxford, taking his degree in the latter place in 1820. Though his
college career was not more brilliant than that of many unknown
men, his unusual ability was recognized and he was made a fellow

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of Oriel College, retaining the fellowship, and leading a scholarly
life for over twenty years. In 1824 he was ordained in the Anglican
church, and four years later was chosen vicar of St. Mary's, at
Oxford, where his sermons made a deep impression on the cultivated
audiences that gathered from far and near to hear him.

A change is noticeable in Newman's life after his trip to the
Mediterranean in 1832. He had begun his life as a Calvinist, but
while in Oxford, then the center of religious unrest, he described
himself as " drifting in the direction of Liberalism." Then study
and bereavement and an innate mysticism led him to a profound
sympathy with the mediaeval Church. He had from the beginning
opposed Catholicism ; but during his visit to Italy, where he saw the
Roman church at the center of its power and splendor, many of

554 ENGLISH LITERATURE

his prejudices were overcome. In this enlargement of his spiritual
horizon Newman was greatly influenced by his friend Hurrell Froude,
with whom he made the first part of the journey. His poems of this
period (afterwards collected in the Lyra Apostolica), among which
is the famous "Lead, Kindly Light," are noticeable for their radiant
spirituality ; but one who reads them carefully sees the beginning of
that mental struggle which ended in his leaving the church in which
he was born. Thus he writes of the Catholic church, whose services
he had attended as "one who in a foreign land receives the gifts of
a good Samaritan ":

that thy creed were sound !

For thou dost soothe the heart, thou church of Rome,
By thy unwearied watch and varied round
Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.

1 cannot walk the city's sultry streets,
But the wide porch invites to still retreats,

Where passion's thirst is calmed, and care's unthankful gloom.

On his return to England, in 1833, he entered into the religious
struggle known as the Oxford or Tractarian Movement, 1 and speedily
became its acknowledged leader. Those who wish to follow this
attempt at religious reform, which profoundly affected the life of
the whole English church, will find it recorded in the Tracts for
the Times, twenty-nine of which were written by Newman, and in
his Parochial and Plain Sermons (1837-1843). After nine years of
spiritual conflict Newman retired to Littlemore, where, with a few
followers, he led a life of almost monastic seclusion, still striving to
reconcile his changing belief with the doctrines of his own church.
Two years later he resigned his charge at St. Mary's and left the
Anglican communion, not bitterly, but with a deep and tender
regret. His last sermon at Littlemore on " The Parting of Friends "

1 The Oxford movement in religion has many points of resemblance to the Pre-
Raphaelite movement in art. Both protested against the materialism of the age, and
both went back for their models to the Middle Ages. Originally the movement was in-
tended to bring new life to the Anglican church by a revival of the doctrine and prac-
tices of an earlier period. Recognizing the power of the press, the leaders chose literature
for their instrument of reform, and by their Tracts for the Times they became known
as Tractarians. To oppose liberalism and to restore the doctrine and authority of the
early Church was the center of their teaching. Their belief might be summed up in one
great article of the Creed, with all that it implies, " I believe in one Catholic and Apos-
tolic Church." The movement began at Oxford with Keble's famous sermon on " National
Apostasy," in 1833; but Newman was the real leader of the movement, which practically
ended when he entered the Catholic church in 1845.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 555

still moves us profoundly, like the cry of a prophet torn by personal
anguish in the face of duty. In 1845 he was received into the
Catholic church, and the following year, at Rome, he joined the
community of St. Philip Neri, "the saint of gentleness and kind-
ness," as Newman describes him, and was ordained to the Roman
priesthood.

By his preaching and writing Newman had exercised a strong
influence over his cultivated English hearers, and the effect of his
conversion was tremendous. Into the theological controversy of
the next twenty years we have no mind to enter. Through it all
Newman retained his serenity, and, though a master of irony and
satire, kept his literary power always subordinate to his chief aim,
which was to establish the truth as he saw it. Whether or not we
agree with his conclusions, we must all admire the spirit of the
man, which is above praise or criticism. His most widely read work,
Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), was written in answer to an unfortu-
nate attack by Charles Kingsley, which would long since have been
forgotten had it not led to this remarkable book. In 1854 Newman
was appointed rector of the Catholic University in Dublin, but after
four years returned to England and founded a Catholic school at
Edgbaston. In 1879 he was made cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. The
grace and dignity of his life, quite as much as the sincerity of his
Apologia, had long since disarmed criticism, and at his death, in
1890, the thought of all England might well be expressed by his own
lines in " The Dream of Gerontius " :

I had a dream. Yes, some one softly said

" He 's gone," and then a sigh went round the room;
And then I surely heard a priestly voice

Cry Subvenite j and they knelt in prayer.

Works of Newman. Readers approach Newman from so
many different motives, some for doctrine, some for argument,
Apologia Pro some for a pure prose style, that it is difficult to
vita Sua recommend the best works for the beginner's use.
As an expression of Newman's spiritual struggle the Apologia
Pro Vita Sua is perhaps the most significant. This book is
not light reading, and one who opens it should understand
clearly the reasons for which it was written. Newman had
been accused of insincerity, not only by Kingsley but by

556 ENGLISH LITERATURE

many other men, in the public press. His retirement to soli-
tude and meditation at Littlemore had been outrageously
misunderstood, and it was openly charged that his conver-
sion was a cunningly devised plot to win a large number of
his followers to the Catholic church. This charge involved
others, and it was to defend them, as well as to vindicate
himself, that Newman wrote the Apologia. The perfect sin-
cerity with which he traced his religious history, showing that
his conversion was only the final step in a course he had been
following since boyhood, silenced his critics and revolutionized
public opinion concerning himself and the church which he
had joined. As the revelation of a soul's history, and as a
model of pure, simple, unaffected English, this book, entirely
apart from its doctrinal teaching, deserves a high place in
our prose literature.

In Newman's doctrinal works, the Via Media, the Grammar
of Assent, and in numerous controversial essays the student
of literature will have little interest. Much more significant
are his sermons, the unconscious reflection of a rare spiritual
nature, of which Professor Shairp said: "His power shows
itself clearly in the new and unlooked-for way in which he
touched into life old truths, moral or spiritual. . . . And as
he spoke, how the old truth became new ! and how it came
home with a meaning never felt before ! He laid his finger
how gently yet how powerfully on some inner place in the
hearer's heart, and told him things about himself he had never
known till then. Subtlest truths, which would have taken
philosophers pages of circumlocution and big words to state,
were dropped out by the way in a sentence or two of the
most transparent Saxon." Of greater interest to the general
reader are The Idea of a University, discourses delivered at
Dublin, and his two works of fiction, Loss and Gain, treating
of a man's conversion to Catholicism, and Callista, which is,
in his own words, " an attempt to express the feelings and
mutual relations of Christians and heathens in the middle of

THE VICTORIAN AGE 557

the third century." The latter is, in our judgment, the most
readable and interesting of Newman's works. The character
of Callista, a beautiful Greek sculptor of idols, is
powerfully delineated ; the style is clear and trans-
parent as air, and the story of the heroine's conversion and
death makes one of the most fascinating chapters in fiction,
though it is not the story so much as the author's unconscious
revelation of himself that charms us. It would be well to read
this novel in connection with Kingsley's Hypatia, which at-
tempts to reconstruct the life and ideals of the same period.

Newman's poems are not so well known as his prose, but
the reader who examines the Lyra Apostolica and Verses on
Various Occasions will find many short poems that
stir a religious nature profoundly by their pure and
lofty imagination ; and future generations may pronounce one
of these poems, "The Dream of Gerontius," to be Newman's
most enduring work. This poem aims to reproduce the thoughts
and feelings of a man whose soul is just quitting the body, and
who is just beginning a new and greater life. Both in style
and in thought "The Dream" is a powerful and original poem
and is worthy of attention not only for itself but, as a modern
critic suggests, "as a revelation of that high spiritual purpose
which animated Newman's life from beginning to end."

Of Newman's style it is as difficult to write as it would be
to describe the dress of a gentleman we had met, who was
Newman's so perfectly dressed that we paid no attention to
Style hi s dothes. His style is called transparent, because

at first we are not conscious of his manner ; and unobtrusive,
because we never think of Newman himself, but only of the
subject he is discussing. He is like the best French prose
writers in expressing his thought with such naturalness and
apparent ease that, without thinking of style, we receive ex-
actly the impression which he means to convey. In his ser-
mons and essays he is wonderfully simple and direct ; in his
controversial writings, gently ironical and satiric, and the

558 ENGLISH LITERATURE

satire is pervaded by a delicate humor ; but when his feelings
are aroused he speaks with poetic images and symbols, and
his eloquence is like that of the Old Testament prophets.
Like Ruskin's, his style is modeled largely on that of the
Bible, but not even Ruskin equals him in the poetic beauty
and melody of his sentences. On the whole he comes nearer
than any other of his age to our ideal of a perfect prose writer.

Other Essayists of the Victorian Age. We have selected
the above five essayists, Macaulay, Carlyle, Arnold, Newman,
Critical an ^ Ruskin, as representative writers of the Vic-
Writers torian Age ; but there are many others who well
repay our study. Notable among these are John Addington
Symonds, author of The Renaissance in Italy, undoubtedly
his greatest work, and of many critical essays ; Walter Pater,
whose Appreciations and numerous other works mark him as
one of our best literary critics ; and Leslie Stephen, famous
for his work on the monumental Dictionary of National Biog-
raphy, and for his Hours in a Library, a series of impartial
and excellent criticisms, brightened by the play of an original
and delightful humor.

Among the most famous writers of the age are the scien-
tists, Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, and Wallace,
a wonderful group of men whose works, though

The Scientists . , ,. , . &

they hardly belong to our present study, have ex-
ercised an incalculable influence on our life and literature.
Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), which apparently estab-
lished the theory of evolution, was an epoch-making book.
It revolutionized not only our conceptions of natural history,
but also our methods of thinking on all the problems of human
society. Those who would read a summary of the greatest
scientific discovery of the age will find it in Wallace's Dar-
winism, a most interesting book, written by the man who
claims, with Darwin, the honor of first announcing the principle
of evolution. And, from a multitude of scientific works, we
recommend also to the general reader Huxley's Autobiography

THE VICTORIAN AGE 559

and his Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, partly because
they are excellent expressions of the spirit and methods of
science, and partly because Huxley as a writer is perhaps the
clearest and the most readable of the scientists.

The Spirit of Modern Literature. As we reflect on the va-
ried work of the Victorian writers, three marked characteristics
invite our attention. First, our great literary men, no less
than our great scientists, have made truth the supreme object
of human endeavor. All these eager poets, novelists, and
essayists, questing over so many different ways, are equally
intent on discovering the truth of life. Men as far apart as
Darwin and Newman are strangely alike in spirit, one seeking
truth in the natural, the other in the spiritual history of the
race. Second, literature has become the mirror of truth ; and
the first requirement of every serious novel or essay is to be
true to the life or the facts which it represents. Third, litera-
ture has become animated by a definite moral purpose. It is
not enough for the Victorian writers to create or attempt an
artistic work for its own sake ; the work must have a definite
lesson for humanity. The poets are not only singers, but
leaders ; they hold up an ideal, and they compel men to recog-
nize and follow it. The novelists tell a story which pictures
human life, and at the same time call us to the work of social
reform, or drive home a moral lesson. The essayists are nearly
all prophets or teachers, and use literature as the chief instru-
ment of progress and education. Among them all we find
comparatively little of the exuberant fancy, the romantic
ardor, and the boyish gladness of the Elizabethans. They
write books not primarily to delight the artistic sense, but to
give bread to the hungry and water to the thirsty in soul.
Milton's famous sentence, " A good book is the precious life-
blood of a master spirit," might be written across the whole
Victorian era. We are still too near these writers to judge
how far their work suffers artistically from their practical
purpose ; but this much is certain, that whether or not

560 ENGLISH LITERATURE

they created immortal works, their books have made the
present world a better and a happier place to live in. And
that is perhaps the best that can be said of the work of any
artist or artisan.

Summary of the Victorian Age. The year 1830 is generally placed at the
beginning of this period, but its limits are very indefinite. In general we may
think of it as covering the reign of Victoria (1837-1901). Historically the age
is remarkable for the growth of democracy following the Reform Bill of 1832 ;
for the spread of education among all classes ; for the rapid development of the
arts and sciences ; for important mechanical inventions ; and for the enormous
extension of the bounds of human knowledge by the discoveries of science.

At the accession of Victoria the romantic movement had spent its force;
Wordsworth had written his best work ; the other romantic poets, Coleridge,
Shelley, Keats, and Byron, had passed away ; and for a time no new develop-
ment was apparent in English poetry. Though the Victorian Age produced
two great poets, Tennyson and Browning, the age, as a whole, is remarkable
for the variety and excellence of its prose. A study of all the great writers of
the period reveals four general characteristics: (i) Literature in this Age has
come very close to daily life, reflecting its practical problems and interests, and
is a powerful instrument of human progress. (2) The tendency of literature is
strongly ethical ; all the great poets, novelists, and essayists of the age are
moral teachers. (3) Science in this age exercises an incalculable influence.
On the one hand it emphasizes truth as the sole object of human endeavor;
it has established the principle of law throughout the universe ; and it has
given us an entirely new view of life, as summed up in the word " evolution,"
that is, the principle of growth or development from simple to complex forms.
On the other hand, its first effect seems to be to discourage works of the
imagination. Though the age produced an incredible number of books, very
few of them belong among the great creative works of literature. (4) Though
the age is generally characterized as practical and materialistic, it is significant
that nearly all the writers whom the nation delights to honor vigorously at-
tack materialism, and exalt a purely ideal conception of life. On the whole, we
are inclined to call this an idealistic age fundamentally, since love, truth, jus-
tice, brotherhood all great ideals are emphasized as the chief ends of life,
not only by its poets but also by its novelists and essayists.

In our study we have considered: (i) The Poets; the life and works of
Tennyson and Browning ; and the chief characteristics of the minor poets,
Elizabeth Barrett (Mrs. Browning), Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. (2) The
Novelists ; the life and works of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot ; and
the chief works of Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Charlotte Bronte, Bul-
wer-Lytton, Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, Blackmore, George Meredith, Hardy, and
Stevenson. (3) The Essayists ; the life and works of Macaulay, Matthew
Arnold, Carlyle, Newman, and Ruskin. These were selected, from among
many essayists and miscellaneous writers, as most typical of the Victorian

THE VICTORIAN AGE 561

Age. The great scientists, like Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, Wallace, Tyndall, and
Spencer, hardly belong to our study of literature, though their works are of
vast importance ; and we omit the works of living writers who belong to the
present rather than to the past century.

Selections for Reading. Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English
Prose (Ginn and Company) contain excellent selections from all authors of
this period. Many other collections, like Ward's English Poets, Garnett's
English Prose from Elizabeth to Victoria, Page's British Poets of the Nine-
teenth Century, and Stedman's A Victorian Anthology, may be used to ad-
vantage. All important works may be found in the convenient and inexpensive
school editions given below. (For full titles and publishers see the General
Bibliography.)

Tennyson. Short poems, and selections from Idylls of the King, In Memo-
riam, Enoch Arden, and The Princess. These are found in various school
editions, Standard English Classics, Pocket Classics, Riverside Literature
Series, etc. Poems by Tennyson, selected and edited with notes by Henry
Van Dyke (Athenaeum Press Series), is an excellent little volume for beginners.

Browning. Selections, edited by R. M. Lovett, in Standard English Classics.
Other school editions in Everyman's Library, Belles Lettres Series, etc.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Selections, edited by Elizabeth Lee, in Stand-
ard English Classics. Selections also in Pocket Classics, etc.

Matthew Arnold. Sohrab and Rustum, edited by Trent and Brewster, in
Standard English Classics. The same poem in Riverside Literature Series, etc.
Selections in Golden Treasury Series, etc. Poems, students' edition (Crowell).
Essays in Everyman's Library, etc. Prose selections (Holt, Allyn & Bacon, etc.).

Dickens. Tale of Two Cities, edited by J. W. Linn, in Standard English
Classics. A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Pickwick Papers. Vari-
ous good school editions of these novels in Everyman's Library, etc.

Thackeray. Henry Esmond, edited by H. B. Moore, in Standard English
Classics. The same novel, in Everyman's Library, Pocket Classics, etc.

George Eliot. Silas Marner, edited by R. Adelaide Witham, in Standard
English Classics. The same novel, in Pocket Classics, etc.

Carlyle. Essay on Burns, edited by C. L. Hanson, in Standard English Clas-
sics, and Heroes and Hero Worship, edited by A. MacMechan, in Athenaeum
Press Series. Selections, edited by H. W. Boynton (Allyn & Bacon). Various
other inexpensive editions, in Pocket Classics, Eclectic English Classics, etc.

Ruskin. Sesame and Lilies, edited by Lois G. Hufford, in Standard Eng-
lish Classics. Other editions in Riverside Literature, Everyman's Library, etc.
Selected Essays and Letters, edited by Hufford, in Standard English Classics.
Selections, edited by Vida D. Scudder (Sibley) ; edited by C. B. Tinker, in
Riverside Literature.

Macaulay. Essays on Addison and Milton, edited by H. A. Smith, in
Standard English Classics. Same essays, in Cassell's National Library, River-
side Literature, etc. Lays of Ancient Rome, in Standard English Classics,
Pocket Classics, etc.

562 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Newman. Selections, with introduction by L. E. Gates (Holt) ; Selections
from prose and poetry, in Riverside Literature. The Idea of a University, in
Manly's English Prose.

Bibliography. (NOTE. For full titles and publishers of general reference
books, see General Bibliography.) History. Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 357-
}S3 ; Cheyney, pp. 632-643. General Works. Gardiner, and Traill. Special
Works. McCarthy's History of Our Own Times; Bright's History of Eng-
land, vols. 4-5 ; Lee's Queen Victoria ; Bryce's Studies in Contemporary
Biography.

Literature. General Works. Garnett and Gosse, Taine. Special Works.
Harrison's Early Victorian Literature ; Saintsbury's A History of Nineteenth
Century Literature ; Walker's The Age of Tennyson ; same author's The
Greater Victorian Poets ; Morley's Literature of the Age of Victoria ; Sted-
man's Victorian Poets ; Mrs. Oliphant's Literary History of England in the
Nineteenth Century ; Beers's English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century ;
Dowden's Victorian Literature, in Transcripts and Studies ; Brownell's Victo-
rian Prose Masters.

Tennyson. Texts: Cabinet edition (London, 1897) is the standard. Various
good editions, Globe, Cambridge Poets, etc. Selections in Athenaeum Press
(Ginn and Company).

Life : Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his son, is the standard ; by
Lyall (in English Men of Letters) ; by Horton ; by Waugh. See also Anne
T. Ritchie's Tennyson and His Friends ; Napier's The Homes and Haunts of
Tennyson ; Rawnsley's Memories of the Tennysons.

Criticism : Brooke's Tennyson, his Art and his Relation to Modern Life ;
A. Lang's Alfred Tennyson ; Van Dyke's The Poetry of Tennyson ; Sneath's
The Mind of Tennyson ; Gwynn's A Critical Study of Tennyson's Works ;
Luce's Handbook to Tennyson's Works ; Dixon's A Tennyson Primer ; Mas-
terman's Tennyson as a Religious Teacher; Collins's The Early Poems of
Tennyson; Macallum's Tennyson's Idylls of the King and the Arthurian Story;
Bradley's Commentary on In Memoriam; Bagehot's Literary Studies, vol. 2;
Brightwell's Concordance ; Shepherd's Bibliography.

Essays : By F. Harrison, in Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary
Estimates ; by Stedman, in Victorian Poets ; by Hutton, in Literary Essays ;
by Dowden, in Studies in Literature ; by Gates, in Studies and Apprecia-
tions ; by Forster, in Great Teachers ; by Forman, in Our Living Poets. See
also Myers's Science and a Future Life.

Browning. Texts : Cambridge and Globe editions, etc. Various editions of
selections. (See Selections for Reading, above.)

Life : by W. Sharp (Great Writers) ; by Chesterton (English Men of
Letters); Life and Letters, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr; by Waugh, in Westmin-
ster Biographies (Small & Maynard).

Criticism: Symons's An Introduction to the Study of Browning; same
title, by Corson ; Mrs. Orr's Handbook to the Works of Browning ; Nettle-
ship's Robert Browning; Brooke's The Poetry 'of Robert Browning; Cooke's

THE VICTORIAN AGE 563

Browning Guide Book ; Revell's Browning's Criticism of Life ; Berdoe's
Browning's Message to his Times ; Berdoe's Browning Cyclopedia.

Essays : by Hutton, Stedman, Dowden, Forster (for titles, see Tennyson,
above) ; by Jacobs, in Literary Studies ; by Chapman, in Emerson and Other
Essays ; by Cooke, in Poets and Problems ; by Birrell, in Obiter Dicta.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Texts : Globe and Cambridge editions, etc. ;
various editions of selections. Life : by J. H. Ingram ; see also Bayne's Two
Great Englishmen. Kenyon's Letters of E. B. Browning.

Criticism : Essays, by Stedman, in Victorian Poets ; by Benson, in Essays.

Matthew Arnold. Texts: Poems, Globe edition, etc. See Selections for
Reading, above. Life : by Russell ; by Saintsbury ; by Paul (English Men of
Letters); Letters, by Russell.

Criticism : Essays, by Woodberry, in Makers of Literature ; by Gates, in
Three Studies in Literature ; by Hutton, in Modern Guides of English Thought ;
by Brownell, in Victorian Prose Masters ; by F. Harrison (see Tennyson, above).

Dickens. Texts : numerous good editions of novels. Life : by J. Forster;
by Marzials (Great Writers) ; by Ward (English Men of Letters) ; Langton's
The Childhood and Youth of Dickens.

Criticism : Gissing's Charles Dickens ; Chesterton's Charles Dickens ;
Kitten's The Novels of Charles Dickens ; Fitzgerald's The History of Pick-
wick. Essays"-, by F. Harrison (see above) ; by Bagehot, in Literary Studies ;
by Lilly, in Four English Humorists ; by A. Lang, in Gadshill edition of
Dickens's works.

Thackeray. Texts : numerous good editions of novels and essays. Life: by
Melville ; by Merivale and Marzials (Great Writers) ; by A. Trollope (English
Men of Letters) ; by L. Stephen, in Dictionary of National Biography. See
also Crowe's Homes and Haunts of Thackeray; Wilson's Thackeray in the
United States.

Criticism : Essays, by Lilly, in Four English Humorists ; by Harrison, in
Studies in Early Victorian Literature ; by Scudder, in Social Ideals in Eng-
lish Letters ; by Brownell, in Victorian Prose Masters.

George Eliot. Texts: numerous editions. Life: by L. Stephen (English
Men of Letters) ; by O. Browning (Great Writers) ; by her husband, J. W. Cross.

Criticism : Cooke's George Eliot, a Critical Study of her Life and Writings.
Essays : by J. Jacobs, in Literary Studies ; by H. James, in Partial Portraits ;
by Dowden, in Studies in Literature; by Hutton, Harrison, Brownell, Lilly
(see above). See also Parkinson's Scenes from the George Eliot Country.

Carlyle. Texts : various editions of works. Heroes, and Sartor Resartus,
in Athenaeum Press (Ginn and Company) ; Sartor, and Past and Present, I vol.
(Harper); Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, I vol. (Appleton) ; Letters and
Reminiscences, edited by C. E. Norton, 6 vols. (Macmillan).

Life : by Garnett (Great Writers) ; by Nichol (English Men of Letters) ; by
Froude, 2 vols. (very full, but not trustworthy). See also Carlyle's Reminis-
cences and Correspondence, and Craig's The Making of Carlyle.

Criticism : Masson's Carlyle Personally and in his Writings. Essays : by Low-
ell, in My Study Windows ; by'^Harrison, Brownell, Hutton, Lilly (see above).

564 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Ruskin. Texts : Brantwood edition, edited by C. E. Norton ; various
editions of separate works. Life : by Harrison (English Men of Letters) ; by
Collingwood, 2 vols. ; see also Ruskin's Praeterita.

Criticism : Mather's Ruskin, his Life and Teaching ; Cooke's Studies in
Ruskin ; Waldstein's The Work of John Ruskin ; Hobson's John Ruskin,
Social Reformer ; Mrs. Meynell's John Ruskin ; Sizeranne's Ruskin and the
Religion of Beauty, translated from the French ; White's Principles of Art ;
W. M. Rossetti's Ruskin, Rossetti, and Pre-Raphaelitism.

Essays : by Robertson, in Modern Humanists ; by Saintsbury, in Corrected
Impressions ; by Brownell, Harrison, Forster (see above).

Macaulay. Texts : Complete works, edited by his sister, Lady Trevelyan
(London, 1866); various editions of separate works (see Selections for Read-
ing, above). Life: Life and Letters, by Trevelyan, 2 vols.; by Morrison (Eng-
lish Men of Letters).

Criticism : Essays, byv Bagehot, in Literary Studies ; by L. Stephen, in
Hours in a Library ; by Saintsbury, in Corrected Impressions ; by Harrison,
in Studies in Early Victorian Literature ; by Matthew Arnold.

Newman. Texts: Uniform edition of important works (London, 1868-
1881); Apologia (Longmans); Selections (Holt, Riverside Literature, etc.).
Life : Jennings's Cardinal Newman; Hutton's Cardinal Newman; Early Life,
by F. Newman ; by Waller and Barrow, in Westminster Biographies. See also
Church's The Oxford Movement ; Fitzgerald's Fifty Years of Catholic Life
and Progress.

Criticism : Essays, by Donaldson, in Five Great Oxford Leaders ; by
Church, in Occasional Papers, vol. 2 ; by Gates, in Three Studies in Litera-
ture ; by Jacobs, in Literary Studies ; by Hutton, in Modern Guides of Eng-
lish Thought; by Lilly, in Essays and Speeches; by Shairp, in Studies in
Poetry and Philosophy. See also Hutton's Cardinal Newman.

Rossetti. Works, 2 vols. (London, 1901). Selections, in Golden Treasury
Series. Life: by Knight (Great Writers) ; by Sharp; Hall Caine's Recollec-
tions of Dante Gabriel Rossetti ; Gary's The Rossettis ; Marillier's Rossetti ;
Wood's Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement; W. M. Hunt's Pre-
Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Criticism: Tirebuck's Rossetti, his Work and Influence. Essays : by Swin-
burne, in Essays and Studies ; by Forman, in Our Living Poets ; by Pater, in
Ward's English Poets ; by F. W. H. Myers, in Essays Modern.

Morris. Texts : Story of the Glittering Plain, House of the Wolfings, etc.
(Reeves & Turner) ; Early Romances, in Everyman's Library ; Sigurd the
Volsung, in Camelot Series ; Socialistic writings (Humboldt Publishing Co.).
Life : by Mackail ; by Gary ; by Vallance.

Criticism : Essays, by Symons, in Studies in Two Literatures ; by Dawson,
in Makers of Modern English ; by Saintsbury, in Corrected Impressions. See
also Nordby's Influence of Old Norse Literature.

Swinburne. Texts : Complete works (Chatto and Windus) ; Poems and
Ballads (Lovell) ; Selections (Rivington, Belles Lettres Series, etc.). Life;
Wratislaw's Algernon Charles Swinburne, a Study.

THE VICTORIAN AGE 565

Criticism : Essays, by Forman, Saintsbury (see above) ; by Lowell, in My
Study Windows ; see also Stedman's Victorian Poets.

Charles Reade. Texts : Cloister and the Hearth, in Everyman's Library ;
various editions of separate novels. Life : by C. Reade.

Criticism : Essay, by Swinburne, in Miscellanies.

Anthony Trollope. Texts : Royal edition of principal novels (Philadelphia,
1900); Barchester Towers, etc., in Everyman's Library. Life: Autobiography
(Harper, 1883).

Criticism: H. T. Peck's Introduction to Royal edition, vol. i. Essays: by
H. James, in Partial Portraits; by Harrison, in Early Victorian Literature. See
also Cross, The Development of the English Novel.

Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Texts : Works, Haworth edition, edited by
Mrs. H. Ward (Harper); Complete works (Dent, 1893); J ane Evre Shirley,
and Wuthering Heights, in Everyman's Library. Life of Charlotte Bronte :
by Mrs. Gaskell; by Shorter; by Birrell (Great Writers). Life of Emily
Bronte : by Robinson. See also Leyland's The Bronte Family.

Criticism : Essays, by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library ; by Gates, in Studies
and Appreciations ; by Harrison, in Early Victorian Literature ; by G. B. Smith,
in Poets and Novelists. See also Swinburne's A Note on Charlotte Bronte.

Bulwer-Lytton. Texts: Works, Knebsworth edition (Routledge) ; various
editions of separate works; Last Days of Pompeii, etc., in Everyman's Library.
Life: by his son, the Earl of Lytton; by Cooper; by Ten Brink.

Criticism: Essay, by W. Senior, in Essays in Fiction.

Mrs. Gaskell. Various editions of separate works; Cranford, in Standard
English Classics, etc. Life : see Dictionary of National Biography. Criticism :
see Saintsbury's Nineteenth-Century Literature.

Kingsley. Texts: Works, Chester edition; Hypatia, Westward Ho! etc.,
in Everyman's Library. Life : Letters and Memories, by his wife ; by Kaufmann.

Criticism: Essays, by Harrison, in Early Victorian Literature; by L. Ste-
phen, in Hours in a Library.

Stevenson. Texts : Works (Scribner) ; Treasure Island, in Everyman's Li-
brary; Master of Ballantrae, in Pocket Classics; Letters, edited by Colvin
(Scribner). Life: by Balfour; by Baildon; by Black; by Cornford. See also
Simpson's Edinburgh Days; Fraser's In Stevenson's Samoa; Osborne and
Strong's Memories of Vailima.

Criticism: Raleigh's Stevenson; Alice Brown's Stevenson. Essays: by H.
James, in Partial Portraits; by Chapman, in Emerson and Other Essays.

Hardy. Texts: Works (Harper). Criticism: Macdonnell's Thomas Hardy;
Johnson's The Art of Thomas Hardy. See also Windle's The Wessex of
Thomas Hardy ; and Dawson's Makers of English Fiction.

George Meredith. Texts: Novels and Selected Poems (Scribner).

Criticism: Le Gallienne's George Meredith; Hannah Lynch's George
Meredith. Essays : by Henley, in Views and Reviews ; by Brownell, in Vic-
torian Prose Masters; by Monkhouse, in Books and Plays. See also Bailey's
The Novels of George Meredith ; Curie's Aspects of George Meredith ; and
Cross's The Development of the English Novel.

566 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Suggestive Questions. (NOTE. The best questions are those which are
based upon the books, essays, and poems read by the pupil. As the works
chosen for special study vary greatly with different teachers and classes, we
insert here only a few questions of general interest.) I. What are the chief
characteristics of Victorian literature ? Name the chief writers of the period
in prose and poetry. What books of this period are, in your judgment, worthy
to be placed among the great works of literature? What effect did the dis-
coveries of science have upon the literature of the age? What poet reflects
the new conception of law and evolution ? What historical conditions account
for the fact that most of the Victorian writers are ethical teachers ?

2. Tennyson. Give a brief sketch of Tennyson's life, and name his chief
works. Why is he, like Chaucer, a national poet ? Is your pleasure in reading
Tennyson due chiefly to the thought or the melody of expression? Note this
figure in " The Lotos Eaters":

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.

What does this suggest concerning Tennyson's figures of speech in general?
Compare " Locksley Hall " with " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." What
differences do you find in thought, in workmanship, and in poetic enthusiasm ?
What is Tennyson's idea of faith and immortality as expressed in In Memoriam ?

3. Browning. In what respects is Browning like Shakespeare? What is
meant by the optimism of his poetry? Can you explain why many thoughtful
persons prefer him to Tennyson? What is Browning's creed as expressed in
"Rabbi Ben Ezra"? Read " Fra Lippo Lippi" or "Andrea del Sarto," and
tell what is meant by a dramatic monologue. In " Andrea " what is meant by
the lines,

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what 's a heaven for ?

4. Dickens. What experiences in Dickens's life are reflected in his novels ?
What are his favorite types of character ? What is meant by the exaggeration
of Dickens? What was the serious purpose of his novels? Make a brief
analysis of the Tale of Two Cities, having in mind the plot, the characters, and
the style, as compared with Dickens's other novels.

5. Thackeray. Read Henry Esmond and explain Thackeray's realism.
What is there remarkable in the style of this novel? Compare it with Ivanhoe
as a historical novel. What is the general character of Thackeray's satire?
What are the chief characteristics of his novels? Describe briefly the works
which show his great skill as a critical writer.

6. George Eliot. Read Silas Marner and make a brief analysis, having in
mind the plot, the characters, the style, and the ethical teaching of the novel.
Is the moral teaching of George Eliot convincing ; that is, does it suggest it-
self from the story, or is it added for effect ? What is the general impression
left by her books? How do her characters compare with those of Dickens
and Thackeray ?

THE VICTORIAN AGE 567

7. Carlyle. Why is Carlyle called a prophet, and why a censor? Read the
Essay on Burns and make an analysis, having in mind the style, the idea of
criticism, and the picture which this essay presents of the Scotch poet. Is
Carlyle chiefly interested in Burns or in his poetry? Does he show any marked
appreciation of Burns's power as a lyric poet ? What is Carlyle's idea of history
as shown in Heroes and Hero Worship ? What experiences of his own life are
reflected in Sartor Resartus ? What was Carlyle's message to his age ? What
is meant by a " Carlylese " style ?

8. Macaulay. In what respects is Macaulay typical of his age ? Compare
his view of life with that of Carlyle. Read one of the essays, on Milton or
Addison, and make an analysis, having in mind the style, the interest, and the
accuracy of the essay. What useful purpose does Macaulay's historical knowl-
edge serve in writing his literary essays ? What is the general character of
Macaulay's History of England? Read a chapter from Macaulay's History ',
another from Carlyle's French Revolution, and compare the two. How does
each writer regard history and historical writing ? What differences do you
note in their methods ? What are the best qualities of each work ? Why are
both unreliable ?

9. Arnold. What elements of Victorian life are reflected in Arnold's poetry ?
How do you account for the coldness and sadness of his verses ? Read Sohrab
and Riistum and write an account of it, having in mind the story, Arnold's
use of his material, the style, and the classic elements in the poem. How does
it compare in melody with the blank verse of Milton or Tennyson ? What
marked contrasts do you find between the poetry and the prose of Arnold ?

10. Ruskin. In what respects is Ruskin"the prophet of modern society"?
Read the first two lectures in Sesame and Lilies and then give Ruskin's views
of labor, wealth, books, education, woman's sphere, and human society. How
does he regard the commercialism of his age ? What elements of style do you
find in these lectures ? Give the chief resemblances and differences between
Carlyle and Ruskin.

n. Read Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford and describe it, having in mind the style,
the interest, and the characters of the story. How does it compare, as a pic-
ture of country life, with George Eliot's novels ?

12. Read Blackmore's Lorna Doone and describe it (as in the question
above). What are the romantic elements in the story? How does it compare
with Scott's romances in style, in plot, in interest, and in truthfulness to life ?

568

ENGLISH LITERATURE

CHRONOLOGY

Nineteenth Century

HISTORY

LITERATURE

1830. William IV
1832. Reform Bill

1837. Victoria (d. 1901)

1844. Morse's Telegraph
1846. Repeal of Corn Laws

1854. Crimean War
1857. Indian Mutiny

1867. Dominion of Canada estab-
lished

1870. Government schools estab-
lished

1880. Gladstone prime minister

1887, Queen's jubilee
1901. Edward VII

1825. Macaulay's Essay on Milton

1826. Mrs. Browning's early poems
1830. Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly

Lyrical

1833. Browning's Pauline
1833-1834. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus
1836-1865. Dickens's novels
1837. Carlyle's French Revolution

1843. Macaulay's essays

1843-1860. Ruskin's Modern Painters

1847-1859. Thackeray's important

novels

1847-1857. Charlotte Bronte's novels
1848-1861. Macaulay's History
1853. Kingsley's Hypatia

Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford

1853-1855. Matthew Arnold's poems
1856. Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh

1858-1876. George Eliot's novels
1859-1888. Tennyson's Idylls of the

King

1859. Darwin's Origin of Species
1864. Newman's Apologia

Tennyson's Enoch Arden
1865-1888. Arnold's Essays in Criti-

1868. Browning's Ring and the Book

1869. Blackmore's Lorna Doone

1879. Meredith's The Egoist

1883. Stevenson's Treasure Island
1885. Ruskin's Praeterita begun

1889. Browning's last work, Asolando
1892. Death of Tennyson

CHAPTER XII
AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE

What of the faith and fire within us,

Men who march away . . .
To hazards whence no tears can win us,
What of the faith and fire within us,

Men who march away ?

Hardy, " The Song of the Soldier"

Before the World War wrought its change on the spirits of
men, fusing the will and feeling of millions into one superb
national impulse, life seemed very complex in England, and
literature was busily reflecting its complexity rather than its
unity, its surface eddies or cross-currents rather than its deep
underflow. A host of writers held up each some problem or
interest or field of the far-flung empire, and their collective
work now makes upon the reader an impression of hopeless
confusion. At the outset of our study, therefore, let these three
matters be clearly understood :

First, this essay is not in any sense a " history " of recent
literature, since no man can possibly write trie history of his
own times. The best we can do is to select a few representative
writers, to the exclusion of many who may prove of equal or
greater power. The general plan is to examine the work of
one important author in some detail (this to suggest a study
method) and to view the others broadly in convenient groups.

Second, the standard of selection is not the opinion of any
critic, but rather a consensus of readers' opinions whenever
such can be found. If you object that a selection based on
fickle popularity can have little value, the answer is that until
Time has its way with books popularity and personal taste are
the only means we have of judging them.

569

570 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Of taste and its vagaries non disputandum, but of popularity
something may still be said enough, at least, to distinguish
the false from the true. There are many so-called
n y popular books which are superficial or clever or
funny or sentimental or sensational, each appealing to its own
class of readers, and with such books, which come and go like
summer hats, we have here no concern. But there is another
kind of popularity in literature that goes back to the root-word
" people," which means men and women, old and young, wise
and ignorant. To be popular in the true sense, therefore, a
writer must show some elemental human quality that appeals to
folk generally, and that not only diverts them for a moment but
makes them think and remember and approve or disapprove.

Such popularity indicates power of some kind. It may be
the power of truth or falsehood, of a genius or a dancing der-
vish ; but the writer who holds the attention of many different
people is not common ; he should be looked at twice. If he is
" merely popular," his book will be forgotten on the appearance
of another, as Trilby was forgotten ; but if he wins the next
generation and the next, he is on the Road of Few Travelers
which leads to Parnassus. Kipling serves us well as an illus-
tration : some critics call him a great writer, others a show-
man in letters ; but all agree on his immense and fairly won
popularity.

The third matter to be emphasized is that no essay of
recent literature can be authoritative, and that at every point
the reader, no less than the writer, is free to follow his own
judgment. The essayist, examining by light of his personal
taste a few works which are popular in the best sense, must
try to be temperate with what he likes and fair with what he
heartily dislikes ; but if he wholly succeeded in the latter aim,
he would be more or less than human. The reader, on the
other hand, will remember that Time is the only critic who
can surely tell which authors have the quality of greatness.
Meanwhile the best means of anticipating Time's verdict in

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 5/1

the future is to be acquainted with what Time has approved in
the past. In other words, the more you know of old books the
more likely are you to estimate the new aright.

This does not mean that new books are critically to be re-
garded as of small consequence ; for many of them are excel-
lent, well worthy of study, and because they reflect our own life
and thought and speech they come to us with a familiar appeal
that the books of a distant age can never quite equal. Each
generation likes its own books best. Therein is perhaps the
danger, that the lively present interest of recent literature may
blind us to its serious defects ; hence the need of a standard
of value, which only the old and tried books can give us.

RUDYARD KIPLING

For more than thirty years, or ever since he came from
India with his Plain Tales, Kipling has been the most famous
writer of the English-speaking world. Yet he cares naught for
fame, apparently, and affects to despise or to patronize the
country that gives him the truest homage and the greater part
of his readers, to say nothing of his daily bread. What is there
in the author or his message to account for this phenomenon
of popularity ? One cannot explain Kipling, or any other man
for that matter, but a glance at his career and method may
help us understand his audience.

His life began in Bombay, in 1865. As a child he was sent
to England, where he received such mingled scraps of educa-
tion and barbarism as are commonly furnished by an
English school for boys. (This is judging the matter
as Tennyson and twenty other English writers have judged it.
If any evidence is needed, Kipling furnishes it in Stalky and
Co.) At sixteen or thereabouts he went back to India, where
he "ate the bread of discontent" as reporter for a small
newspaper. He wrote some " local " poems and stories, which
attracted the attention of newspaper readers; he published

572 ENGLISH LITERATURE

them in a little book, and suddenly found himself on the
way to fame and fortune. Then he traveled widely about the
English-speaking world, and everywhere on land or sea he had
the reporter's eye for the odd, the new, the picturesque incident
which would be certain to " hit " his readers. He was a jour-
nalist by instinct, and even now, after thirty years of book-
making, the newspaper man shows in his slang, his " pep," his
up-to-the-minute theme, his air of lofty superiority, as if indeed
all things were known to him. But he is much more than a
journalist ; he is a very clever craftsman in words, and few can
match him in power of presenting a vivid picture to the eye or
creating an effect of fear or wonder in the mind. Thus by his
choice of fresh subjects he wins an audience, and by his good
writing he holds it.

Two other matters, of style and philosophy, should be noted

in explanation of Kipling's popularity. His verse goes blithely,

as if to the drums ; his prose is always vigorous,

His Readers . ' j ru

picturesque, and manly when he does not deliber-
ately seek an effect by sheer brutality. His philosophy of life
(or such as appears in his writing) is very simple : he believes
in work, and this with heroism constitutes his creed. More-
over, he is very exclusive in his notion of work, which makes
it easy to agree with him. Soldier, sailor, explorer, governor
of a colony, inventor of strange machines, such only are
workers ; while thinkers, teachers, congressmen, and all who
must get up at the whistle are weaklings, oafs, or such " flan-
neled fools " as are held up to scorn in " The Islanders." By
a curious whim of fate most of these useful persons are wishing
they could chuck their unromantic jobs and go off exploring or
governing a colony ; therefore do they read Kipling, finding
him a kindred spirit and a voice of their souls' desire.

Kipling's Verse. As a type of popular verse consider well
" The Feet of the Young Men." It appeared many years
ago, celebrating a vague youth heading off into a vague wilder-
ness because the " red gods " were calling him ; and wherever

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 573

he went many fell in behind him, as if he were the pied piper.
Now his name is legion ; those who write for the sporting
magazines, or go big-game hunting or tenting in the wilds or
bass-fishing in the creek, are all devotees of the red gods.
We do not know exactly who these divinities are, or how they
differ from the green gods, which are more abundant, or from
the pink gods, which are more feminine. In other words,
Kipling's affectation of a campelling " something lost beyond
the ranges " was poetic humbug ; but it was a very catchy hum-
bug and we all caught it yes, and are glad of the catching.

Perhaps the lilt of Kipling's verse is what chiefly recom-
mends it. There is martial rhythm in his lines which makes
them pleasant to the ear, aside from their subject or meaning.
Thus, you cannot read "The Bell Buoy" without feeling the
heave of the unquiet sea, or "Danny Deever" without mentally
hearing the dead march that attends a soldier's burial.

Aside from this attractive rhythm, it is often difficult to
name anything of value in Kipling's songs, most of which
Typical bear the same relation to poetry that popular " rag-
Poems j me bears to music. Of the early Departmental
Ditties little need be said, except perhaps this : the author
might better have put them in the fire than in his collected
works. Barrack- Room Ballads is better in spots, but the
" Mandalay " spots are far between. " The Ballad of East
and West " (which is not of the barracks) is a stirring tale and
the best of its kind. Other good lines are found scattered
through the prose works and in " occasional " poems such as
"The Flag of England," "The Truce of the Bear" (read
this in connection with the story of " The Man Who Was "),
the famous " Recessional," and " For All We Have and Are "
written at the outbreak of the Great War and giving the
word " Hun " its new meaning. Such poems, with their vigor-
ous expression of national feeling, explain why many regard
Kipling as the real poet laureate of England, no matter who
may be appointed to that high office.

574 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Prose Works. Reading the exquisite " Without Benefit of
Clergy " in comparison with the ruffianly Stalky and Co. or
the stale and unprofitable A Diversity of Creatures, one may
agree with critics who say that Kipling's early prose was his
best. That is a matter of opinion, however, and the reader
may be more interested in following the successive stages of
Kipling's work. He began with stories of Anglo-Indian life,
such as appear in Plain Tales front the Hills and Soldiers
Three. Then in England, apparently in answer to those who
said he was not artist enough to reflect life in a novel, he
wrote The Light that Failed. Next came a round-the-world
stage, reflected in several volumes of short stories, such as
Many Inventions, and another of absorption in engines and
technical terms. These stages overlap, and betweenwhiles
appeared Kim, a panorama of Indian scenes, Captains Coura-
geous, a boys' story of the fishing fleet, and that delight of all
children young or old, The Jungle Book.

To the Anglo-Indian stories "The Man Who Was" or
" The Tomb of his Ancestors " will serve well as an intro-
Typicai duction ; while " The Incarnation of Krishna Mul-
stories vaney " will surely make you want to know more
of Soldiers Three. Mulvaney is considered the best of Kip-
ling's characters ; but he is a " stage Irishman " nevertheless,
and Ortheris is more true to life. One of the finest of his
tales of native life is "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," in the
second Jungle Book. " The Ship that Found Herself " and
" 007 " are favorites among the mechanical stories ; those who
know how boiler plates talk will like them, but other readers
will more enjoy "The Bridge Builders," which is a better tale.

Kipling is at his best when he writes a dream-story that
has happily no pretense of reality. "The Brushwood Boy," a
beautiful piece of imaginative writing, seems to have more ad-
mirers than any other of his short-stories. Kim is not so much
a novel as a kind of mirage of that mysterious land which we
call India. There are those who regard Kim as a picture drawn

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 575

from life by one who knows ; but you may fill your head with
delusions if you view it in that light. Kipling got his knowl-
edge of natives, as of wolves and other beasts, chiefly from his
imagination, and Kim and The Jungle Book are both in the
same class of excellent fiction.

The animal stories suggest a curious grouping of Kipling's
characters into the less real, the more real, and the wholly
The real, curious because reality is found where you

jungle Book j east ex pect it. When his men or women talk we
are skeptical, thinking them too clever to be natural ; his
machines talk a little more humanly ; but not till his animals
talk do we recognize our own kind. So we look askance at
Mulvaney or Mrs. Hauksbee or Cottar, finding one stagy,
another artificial, a third illusory ; but we welcome Mowgli and
grumbling old Baloo as fellow travelers on life's highway.
Such characters, original and fascinating, are here to stay. Re-
membering them gratefully, most young critics from seven to
seventy acclaim The Jungle Book, the Mowgli stories especially,
as the most enduring of Kipling's works.

SOME MODERN NOVELISTS

Facing the fact that the novel now dwarfs all other forms
of literature, the student will ask, Why this flood of fiction ?
The answer is, People want it ; which is precisely the answer
an Elizabethan would have given to explain his flood of drama.
In 1600 very few Englishmen could read; for amusement
they demanded plays, and many besides Shakespeare were
ready to serve them at a price. In 1900, when everybody
reads, people want stories, and a plethora of novelists is the
result. In this, as in every other age, the prevailing type of
literature is determined not by writers but by readers.

The Realists. To avoid endless debate let us agree, if we
can, on this working definition : the realist is bound to portray
life as he sees men live it; while the maker of romance is

576 ENGLISH LITERATURE

free to picture life as men dream or desire it to be, or strive
to make it, the larger freedom being what chiefly distinguishes
the romantic from the realistic novel. Both deal with life, one
seeing it with the eye, the other with eye and imagination.
There are faults in that definition, but no more than in any
other you may formulate.

Herbert G. Wells, an honest novelist who takes his art very

seriously, is the most conspicuous of contemporary realists.

"We are going to write about the whole of life,"

Wells

he announces. " We are going to deal with politi-
cal questions and religious questions and social questions, un-
til a thousand pretenses and ten thousand impostures shrivel
in the cold clear air of our elucidations."

Questions of such import, with eleven thousand complications
to bedevil them, might make even Solomon hold his tongue ;
but they give Wells his mission and his instrument. His mis-
sion is to reform ; his instrument the novel, that shall go forth
like a knight of old to destroy evil. One must admire his
courage, and his robust faith in the written word. He sees
more shams than ever Carlyle counted ; society, religion, busi-
ness, everywhere is muddle (his favorite word), and at each
new muddle he hurls a book. That, and not mere story-telling,
is the prime meaning of his twenty or thirty novels, beginning
with pseudo-scientific tales modeled on Jules Verne or More's
Utopia and halting for the moment with Joan and Peter,
which professes to picture England in the stress of the Great
War but is really a tirade against modern education.

Like other reformers Wells has his strong and his weak
points ; he is strong on sociology and science, which he exalts
to a god, but rather weak on souls and human nature. Thus,
in Marriage he takes his hero and heroine off to Labrador,
there to live in a hut and prove how beautifully simple life
can be ; which shows that he has great delusions about
Labrador. One who has lived on that bleak coast knows that
life there is rather more complex than in a fashionable hotel,

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 577

and decidedly less comfortable. Simplicity is not learned of
science or cultivated by a fish diet ; it is a soul quality which
shines with the same clear light in every corner of the earth.
And complexity is not the result of town life or capitalism or
any other modernity ; it is due solely to cross-purposes, and
there may be as much of it between two persons in a hut as
among five millions in London city.

In sum, most of the deeper meanings of life, its faith, its
courage, its laughter, its invincible hope, seem largely to have
escaped this realist's observation. He is so bent on reforming
the evil of society that he misses nearly all the good in it.
As a type of his early wonder-stories The War of the Worlds
will serve as well as another ; of his later fiction Tono-Bungay
or The New Machiavelli will show the author's zeal for knock-
ing the humbug out of business or politics. He is a good writer,
vigorous and sincere, but in his work one is very apt to lose
sight of the story-teller in the reformer. An exception is found
in The Wheels of Chance, a pleasant story written before Wells
turned knight-errant with a trenchant pen for a weapon.

Joseph Conrad (English for Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeni-

ofski) is unlike any other recent novelist, which may account

for his smaller circle of readers. We shall better

Conrad

appreciate the peculiar quality of his work if we
view it in the light of his personal history. He is Polish by
birth ; his life began in the Ukraine, where his cultured father
and mother were done to death by Russian officials. At nine-
teen, after his education at the hands of a French tutor, he
learned English, followed a wandering heart to sea, and for
twenty years went up and down the world in sailing ships.
In all that time he never met one of his countrymen (the
Poles are not a seafaring folk), and the solitude of exile
and the vast solitude of the waters entered deep into his
impressionable Slavic nature.

Somewhere Conrad speaks feelingly of "the loneliness
that surrounds every human soul from the cradle to the

578 ENGLISH LITERATURE

grave," and in that word he unconsciously revealed himself
and what he must write. Solitude, the mystery of fate, and
the melancholy that attends one who sees life as solitude
and mystery, such is the theme of his novels. So far he
is like Hawthorne ; he suggests the American novelist in this
also, that to him the events of any man's life are measured
by their moral effect on the man's character.

The scene of his story is always in keeping with his somber
and fateful theme. Occasionally he locates on the African or
American coast, but more often on some lonely South Sea
island, where every sailor who makes port is a stranger to
every other and where the undertone of the sea is never
stilled. He writes well, surprisingly so when you remember
that English is not his native speech, and always with restrained
power. His characters seem half real for the moment, like
other strangers, but soon fade as if one had been following
a daydream. Presently their very names are forgotten ; only
an impression remains, as of mystery made visible. To read
Chance or Victory is to know this writer, for all his work is
in the same vein. Nostromo is perhaps his best novel, and
Typhoon is especially notable for its word-pictures of the
changing but ever-changeless sea.

John Galsworthy is a reformer, like Wells, but approaches

his victim in satiric rather than in hammer-and-tongs fashion.

He is master of a good style, quiet, assured, uncon-

Galsworthy . ,, . /~ii ,..,.

scious, and there is a finely dramatic quality in his
work which shows in the dialogue and in the arrangement of
chapters, each being finished like a scene from a drama.
In his typical story two orders of society appear in contrast :
an aristocratic class, dull, self-satisfied, opposed to change ;
and a lower class of radicals, brainy and restless, who are bent
on reforming things. Among his best works are The Man
of Property, The Patrician, and The Country House. In his
latest novels he falls sadly away, and tells an unpleasant story
that serves no artistic or useful end.

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 579

Excepting only Conrad, the realists deal largely with the
" muddle " of family life, and if one believed their report
the English must be in a parlous state. Such
atrocious parents and rebellious children make one
wonder whether no nice homes are left in England, such
lovely homes as one has entered and must ever gratefully
remember. And if they still exist, why in the name of Colum-
bus do not the realists discover them ? Our amazement is in-
creased in reading Samuel Butler (not the author of Hudibras,
but a later Butler of growing fame), who regards the family
as a modern Juggernaut and cries out for a law that shall
divorce all children from their unworthy parents.

Here again some personal experience some parental
restraint or Sunday compulsion which bred a hatred of family
and church seems to color all the author's work. It is said
that he rejoiced when his father died, leaving him money and
unrestrained liberty, the two only things which he considered
essential to human welfare. His chief work, The Way of All
Flesh, carries a tale through three generations, each proving
anew the necessity of divorcing children from their elders,
It is a powerful work, artistically the best realistic novel that
has lately appeared, with a saturnine humor and an air of dis-
interested fairness that make it both readable and plausible.
Butler thought much but published very little, and, as his
Note-Books indicate, was the most careful craftsman among"
recent novelists ; but again one must ask, Did he find no
worthy mothers and no happy children in all England that he
should turn devil's advocate in his portrayal of family life ?

Two other realists, Eden Phillpotts and Arnold Bennett, are
somewhat alike in that both are swamped by their " materials " ;
endless pages with mere things rather than

Phiii

human action, assuming that if they minutely de-

scribe a woman's dress, her house, her furniture, and all her
relatives to the third and fourth generation, they have somehow
created a real character. Phillpotts has produced a staggering

580 ENGLISH LITERATURE

number of novels dealing with all matters of possible interest

in the South of England. Wide combe Fair (in which a village

appears as a character) is his brightest work. The Thief of

Viriite and The Three Brothers are considered his best novels.

Arnold Bennett finds his " material " in the alleged Five

Towns of a pottery district. His American readers, and they

are many, are in two groups : one finds a novel very

Bennett . ... , , , ,-,

clever, or possibly good, and recommends Bennett
to a friend ; the friend goes to the library, takes out a different
novel, finds frothy conceits without human interest or literary
virtue, and wonders why anyone should waste an hour over such
truck. This curious difference, which involves more than per-
sonal taste, may possibly be explained by the novelist's way of
work. He began, as journalist for a woman's periodical, to
write trashy fiction for the frank purpose of making money.
When he failed of his purpose, his seven or eight novels finding
few readers in England and no recognition in America, he gave
time and thought and some conscience to The Old Wives Tale,
making a novel to please himself, it is said. A multitude of
American readers greeted this book, as it deserved ; whereupon
the author followed his market while the following was good,
hastily writing more novels and republishing his early trash in
America as " new editions " of date subsequent to that of The
Old Wives' Tale (1908), giving readers here the impression
that they were new works. So the matter is explained by
Professor Phelps. To judge it fairly you must remember that
modern literature has its commercial side (the only side that
appeals to some publishers of fiction) and that many authors
now write to make a living.

The Old Wives' Tale, relating the tragic life-story of two
sisters, is Bennett's best novel, and it makes one wish he had
written fewer books with more sincerity. A second choice is
the humorous Denry the Audacious (published in England as
The Card, 1911), and with any third, such as Helen of the
High Hand, you approach the trashy borderland.

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 581

An older and more earnest novelist is Mrs. Humphry Ward,
famous ever since her Robert Elsmere was trumpeted by Glad-
stone and read by almost everybody else. One who
now yawns over that quasi-religious story must
wonder at the literary commotion which it occasioned. Yet
remember its day and generation. Appearing at a time when
religion was supposed to be shaken by the discoveries of science,
it appealed to that multitude of readers who are interested in
any serious treatment of a religious question. And Mrs. Ward
is always serious ; well informed also, and up to date. She is
an intellectual by inheritance, belonging to the Arnold family
renowned in English life and letters.

Her later novels, Marcella, The Marriage of William Ashe,
Lady Roses Daughter and the rest, are all alike, conscien-
tious, well written, of high purpose, but without genius or humor
or even a frivolous feminine touch to give them charm. She
deals exclusively with the " best " society, introducing you to
brilliant statesmen, modest geniuses, beautiful and clever young
women, and other desirables whom you expect to meet, and
don't, when you pass the portal of society. That is perhaps the
secret of Mrs. Ward's popularity : she takes you into the " up-
per circles " and flatters your delusion that they are any more
brainy or happy than your own. Her best and least popular
novel is David Grieve, in the vein of Robert Elsmere but
showing more ability to draw a human character humanly ; that
is, without putting him on intellectual stilts.

The Modern Romance. After reading a score of reformatory
novels with their overwrought problems and woolly socialistic
theories, one wearies for a good story and asks, Are there in
recent fiction no pleasant books of life or love or nonsense
" for happy folk in housen " ? Yes, plenty. Locke has one to
keep you mentally smiling, and De Morgan one to evoke smiles
and tears at the same time a rare experience, almost forgotten
since Dickens used to compound his stories of pathos and
irrepressible humor.

582 ENGLISH LITERATURE

William J. Locke is an architect, officer of some ponderous
Royal British Institute, who writes for relaxation. His philoso-
phy is that every person past the wonderland of
childhood has two natures, one of everyday habit,
the other of primitive stuff which runs to dreams, emotions,
new sensations. Work satisfies the former man, literature the
latter ; therefore does Locke work by day and write novels by
night a happy fashion, which Raleigh and other Elizabethans
cherished. Septimus is his brightest work of fancy, and The
Beloved Vagabond is by many considered his masterpiece.
The latter, a readable story dealing with the adventures of a
foot-loose fiddler, is bohemian and rather pagan in spirit. After
reading it one may want to know the author's deeper view of
life, which appears in The Three Wise Men.

William Frend De Morgan was first an artist, then a designer
and maker of pottery, and not till he was past sixty did he
begin to write fiction. His first novel, Joseph Vance t
appeared in 1906 and took two countries by storm.
Almost everyone who read the story thought of Dickens ; but
De Morgan is always himself, not an echo of somebody else ;
he only suggests Dickens in his hearty love of life and in his
literary method, which is to plunge into the middle of a story
trusting heaven and human nature to bring him to a good end.
Also he commonly begins with unpromising characters of the
slums, and tells a tale of " the spark in the clod " turning to
pure flame and burning away all dross. His two best novels
are Alice-for-Short m\& Joseph Vance, one dealing with a girl,
the other with a boy, both of the street but on their upward
way to womanhood or manhood. They are rarely good novels,
but haphazard and not everywhere easy to read.

James M. Barrie was the most popular of recent romancers

till he wrote Peter Pan, which made him the most popular of

playwrights. He began in A Window in Thrums

and Auld Licht Idylls to portray the life of a Scottish

village, a drear life at best, with here and there a glint of

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 583

humor or pathos or sentiment to light up its dullness. Soon
his emotionalism ran away with him ; his readers liked it, and
he harped on it more, and more artificially, till honest human
sentiment degenerated into sentimentality, as in The Little
Minister. Then it was that Stevenson wrote to a friend,
" There 's genius in Barrie, but there 's a journalist at his
elbow there's the risk."

Thereafter Barrie showed the journalist by playing on his
readers' feelings, and there is a negative quality in his work, a
lack of candor or proper manliness, which is hard to define but
harder still to escape. His Margaret Ogilvy may or may not
be an exception ; it is a semi-biography of his mother and is
all sentiment, rare and delicate, which you read with pleasure
until you begin to question an author's taste in selling a
mother's confidence to the public. His Sentimental Tommy,
the story of a detestable boy, is considered his masterpiece ;
but many readers find the teary Tommy a sentimental bore.
As if to emphasize the moral of this book Barrie followed it
with Tommy and Grizel, in which the selfish hero came to a
bad end. As a little girl said, " First he wrote a story, and
then he wrote a squeal to it." Like every other sequel to a
masterpiece, Tommy and Grizel is a disappointment ; which
makes one wonder why authors continue to write them. Barrie
is at his best in charming plays, such as Peter Pan, or in
frolicsome adventure-stories such as The Little White Bird,
in which he makes no attempt to draw character but gives free
rein to his elfish fancy.

There are scores more of realistic and romantic novels, alto-
gether too many to be summarized. For those who like adven-
ture there is Rider Haggard, with his King Solomon s Mines
and a dozen other gloriously impossible romances of Africa;
readers of detective stories will find just what they like in the
Sherlock Holmes series of Arthur Conan Doyle ; and because
everybody likes a good dog everybody will want to read the
best of dog stories in Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle. Hudson's

584 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Green Mansions and other tales of the tropical forest ; Anthony
Hope, May Sinclair, Mary Willcocks (before she went wrong
on woman's rights), Quiller-Couch, Maurice Hewlett, W. B.
Maxwell, Leonard Merrick, these are a few names which
serve as signboards to the pleasant or rocky roads of recent
fiction.

THE POETS

By some whim of human psychology, or it may be of human
love, most of us regard poetry as a mother regards her grown-
up boy : he may be exploring Alaska or fighting in France,
but always in her thought he remains a child who must be
mothered from the cold and the rain. Even so does poetry,
old and rugged as the hills, reappear in our memory as a frail,
tender, youthful thing unfit for the rough and busy ways of
men. So we expect the language of poetry to be that of the
nursery or the moonlight or the lover's plea, while prose is
reserved for greater or sterner matters.

Now, though a few singers have died young, the world's
poets are mostly strong men ; they write of things natural or
things human in the simplest way, and their verse is more
concise and more powerful than any prose. Poetry is the ele-
mental speech of humanity in moments of noble thought or
deep feeling, and because it contains nothing artificial or super-
fluous it is easily memorized. Therefore did the earliest histo-
rians write only ballads of brave deeds ; and even in this prosaic
age, if you think a strong thought or a wise thought and want
it to be remembered, you must give it poetic expression.

This little homily is based upon the work of recent English
poets. There are many of them, more than in any other
age ; they deal with the big things or the deep things of life,
and deal with them honestly, in man-fashion. The one quality
which they have in common is their sincerity, their purpose
to keep poetry near to common men, where it originated and
where it ever belongs.

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 585

Poetry of Everyday Life. John Masefield, most rugged of
recent poets, is a veritable saga-man who would have been at
home in the viking ship of Eric the Red, but who appears
now in a tame or conventional age to sing the seamy side of
civilization. As a boy he ran away to sea, and knocked about
the rough fringes of earth for many seasons. One night, it is
said, he found a copy of Chaucer, sat up with it till the stars
paled, and went forth in the morning knowing what his calling
was. Of all great poets Chaucer is perhaps the most sensible,
the most human, the most "modern," and Masefield is his
disciple. If you read the simple opening of the Nun's Priest's
story of Chanticleer (in the Canterbury Tales] and the power-
fully compressed beginning of Masefield 's Widow in the Bye
Street, you will see the master honored in his pupil.

Practically all Masefield's narrative poems deal with common
men or women, as his lyrics deal with the ordinary things of
sea or land. Chaucer was great enough to include all types
of humanity in his sympathy, but Masefield knows no gallant
knights or dainty Madame Eglentynes ; his range is narrowed
to working folk ; he has no romantic heroes but only such half-
failures as you meet any day at the dock or in the street :

The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with a clout,

The chanteyman bent at the halliards, putting a tune to the shout,

The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired lookout, . . .

Of these shall my song be fashioned, my story be told.

Of the longer narratives Dauber, recounting the experience
of a poor artist who shipped before the mast and was done
Masefield's to death by heartless seamen, is commonly recom-
Poems mended by critics. It has some memorable lines of

the ship and the ocean in storm or calm ; but the tale is too
harsh and the sailors too horribly brutal to be interesting. Two
better narratives are The Widow in the Bye Street and The
Everlasting Mercy. These are the author's favorites, and by
them he would be judged as a poet ; but avoid them if you
are looking for merely pleasant reading. They are mostly

586 ENGLISH LITERATURE

scenes of human poverty or degradation, powerfully drawn
against a background of nature. The lyrics are too many for
brief review. They abound in strong or beautiful lines ; but
they clearly indicate that Masefield writes too much and too
rapidly for the best results. Among the volumes that one may
profitably dip into are Good Friday, Philip the King, and Salt-
Water Ballads and Lyrics.

Very different from Masefield is Alfred Noyes, a poet of

cheerful mood who lives and works on the sunny side of the

road. He is one of the most melodious of present-

Noyes , . . ^ - -

day singers, using a great variety of verse forms very
skillfully, and though he rarely produces anything of striking
power or beauty his verse is always musical and good to read.
As an indication of his wide variety of pleasant subjects we
need quote only his titles : The Forest of Wild Thyme, with its
Alice-in- Wonderland spirit ; Fifty Singing Seamen, with some
excellent lyrics ; The Barrel Organ, a rollicking song of the
street, into which blows a breath of spring to make men glad ;
Drake, an epic of the Elizabethan seaman ; Sherwood, a dra-
matic poem of the days of Robin Hood, with a rare fool or
jester called Shadow-of-a-Leaf ; and several others as different
as The Flower of Old Japan and Tales of the Mermaid
Tavern.

The Symbolists. We give this poor name to a group of
.poets, late followers of Spenser and Rossetti, who represent
life or beauty by a road or flower or some other symbol, which
is like a flag in that it speaks more than words. Coventry
Patmore seems to have been the leader of this group. His
simplest work, The Angel in the. House, a placid narrative of
life and love, was once widely read. It is still a good test, not
of the poet but of the reader, who may quickly learn from it
whether or not Patmore is to be followed into other fields. But
if you care not much for The Angel, be not discouraged ; try
another poet. There is as much latitude of taste in poetry as
in food or romance.

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE

587

Francis Thompson is in spirit a follower of those Puritan
symbolists whom Dr. Johnson called the metaphysical poets,
because he did not like or understand them. He
wrote many fine religious poems which have a double
suggestion of the rugged power of Donne and the heavenly
grace of George Herbert. " The Hound of Heaven " is not
his best but only his most famous poem ; and this also is a
test of the reader's taste. The symbolism is a little unfortu-
nate, the ff hound " being the divine love which follows a man
wherever he may wander, as the Spirit followed the Psalmist
in one of the most beautiful poems in any language, beginning,
" O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me." The sym-
bol of the brute may be less distasteful if you remember the
noble dogs of St. Bernard, which go forth in the winter storm
to find and save the perishing.

Stephen Phillips is the most widely known of recent symbol-
ists. He had the same passionate love of beauty that animated
Keats, and like Keats he died young, apparently at
the beginning of a great career. In his first little
volume, Poems (1897), turn to " Marpessa," one of his finest
works, and read the lines of Idas to the maid :

Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say
So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell ;
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart. . . .
Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where.

If such symbolic lines appeal to your sense of beauty, there
are plenty more like them, both in the early volume and in
New Poems (1907). Phillips soon turned to drama and wrote
Herod and Paolo and Francesca for the stage ; but these,
though they met with favor not often accorded a poet's play
in recent times, are more notable for their poetic lines than
for their dramatic or "acting" quality.

Phillips

588 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Celtic Revival. Of late years certain poets and drama-
tists of Irish birth or sympathy have been calling attention to
the old Erin of song and romance. Their work is supposed to
be a renaissance of Celtic literature, and occasionally is ; but
more often it is a modern version of that ideal beauty which
Spenser located in the Land of Faery, and which now finds a
local habitation and a name in Ireland.

William Butler Yeats is the leading poet of this busy group,
who have already established a national theater in Dublin, and
who are even trying to revive the ancient Irish
language. In his poetry and drama he thinks of
himself as a reviver of old symbols, and writes in prose a
theory of his art; but " a rose by any other name would smell
as sweet." He is first and last a lover of beauty, which knows
no age, no death, no revival, being forever young as the morn-
ing ; and so long as he writes of beauty his English readers
care little for his theory. There is a rare purity and simplicity
in his work, which bespeak a child's heart ; so he can write of
one whom he loves, and before whom he would spread a cloth
of gold or stars, as Raleigh spread his cloak before the Queen :

But I, being poor, have only my dreams ;
I have spread my dreams under your feet.

Yeats's poetic titles, The Wind among the Reeds, In the Seven
Woods, Shadowy Waters, The Land of Heart's Desire (the last
two being dramas), are as inviting as an open door. Enter
freely into any of his little volumes, for there is no best where
all is simple and good. But if you must have direction, skip at
first The Wanderings of Oisin and other revivals of long-dead
heroes, and begin with a collection of ballads and lyrics.

Other glimpses of the Celtic " renaissance " may be had in
the plays of Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge (try
his Riders to the Sea], in the poems of Padraic Colum and
George W. Russell, and in the happy short stories of Seumas
Mac Manus collected in Through the Turf Smoke.

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 589

BOOKS OF MANY KINDS

In contrast with the Victorian age the present is extraordina-
rily interested in plays of every kind. Aside from professional
playwrights, who are many and well rewarded, most of the
poets and novelists we have just met have turned their hand
to drama, and no sooner does a novel appeal to the public
than the author or somebody else quickly makes it over for
the stage.

To summarize these plays in a chapter of literature is inad-
visable for various reasons : they are hopelessly abundant ; with
rare exceptions they are ephemeral in character;
and finally, their essential dramatic quality demands
that one who would criticize them must view them on the
stage, not in the cold pages of a book. They need actors,
light, scenery, all the illusion of the theater, if they are to
be fairly judged. To take them out of their proper setting is
to examine a diamond in the dusk. Arthur Wing Pinero is an
excellent illustration ; he has made some forty plays, light or
serious, and seldom a poor work among them ; but they are
not read ; their very names are forgotten save by a few old
theatergoers and a few young playwrights who study them as
models ; so why should we coldly consider them as literature ?

In a different and purely literary class are the essays ; but

here again we are bewildered by the number of writers who

reflect every interest of modern life, its business,

politics, religion and science no less than its fun

and nonsense, in a flood of magazine articles that for force

and brilliancy have rarely been surpassed. From the multitude

we select only three as typical ; but the student will remember

that this particular selection is wholly a matter of personal

taste, and that happily tastes differ.

Of works dealing with literature and criticism A Bookman s
Letters by W. Robertson Nicoll (who appears as " Claudius
Clear " in The British Weekly] is one of the pleasantest. It

590 ENGLISH LITERATURE

is a book of wide range and wide sympathy, dealing gener-
ously with modern literature, a wise, helpful, kindly book,
kind to the author under discussion and, above all, kind to the
reader. In the ethical and religious fields there are few essays
to compare with those of J. Brierley (the modest "J. B." of
the periodicals), which are collected in Ourselves and the Uni-
verse and three or four similar volumes characterized by deep
thought, lucid expression and a very wide range of literary
allusion. And for a criticism of literature and life there are
the numerous books of Chesterton ("G. K. C.," not Cecil
Chesterton), a bluff, fat, hearty man of Falstaffian wit and
logic. He is a master of paradox, of topsy-turvy observation ;
and he has a genius for presenting any old subject under the
sun, or any new fad or fashion, in a way nobody ever happened
to think of before. Moreover, under his most extravagant
whim or paradox there is always thought and life, a downright
hatred of sham and a genuine love of humanity.

Books of the War. Three things of literary interest have
already emerged from the World War. The first is the mar-
velous spirit of England. Masefield voiced it for us, simply
and manfully, in one of his addresses to an American audience
(" St. George and the Dragon," in The War and the Future \
1918). Never before, not even in the days of Elizabeth, were
Englishmen so brave, so strong, so united ; and with England
went heart and soul the mighty English-speaking world. This
glorious national spirit, fusing men to unity of thought and feel-
ing, must again have a tremendous influence on English litera-
ture. The coming days shall see it ; the flood of books has
already begun, and in them, unless all signs fail, shall be some-
thing of fire and faith that no English books ever had before.

The second phenomenon is the return of old writers with a
new song or tale on their lips, and the appearance of new poets
Writers m whom the fierce light of war has revealed a hid-
oidandNew d en talent. A few popular authors have used the
war unworthily, in a catchpenny spirit ; but they are exceptions,

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 591

arid we shall not name them. The aged Thomas Hardy comes
out of his twilight brooding with his " Song of the Soldier,"
which has all the vigor of his vanished youth ; and Wells for-
gets his everlasting reform to show, in Mr. Britling Sees It
Through, a cross section of English life as the war discovers
it. (Too bad he was not content with that, but must at the end
tinker up a reformed god to supplant his helpless science!)
William Watson the poet, who as a lover of peace used to be
recommended to us as an antidote to Kipling's jingoism, comes
out bravely with The Man Who Saw in the old martial spirit
of his forebears. Masefield leaves his poetry to haunt the
trenches ; in vivid prose he writes Gallipoli and The Old Front
Line, one dealing with the Dardanelles expedition, the other
with the Battle of the Somme, each a splendid story of
heroism splendidly told.

Besides these familiar writers (we have mentioned but a few
of those who reflect the national feeling) a number of unlooked-
for poets appeared in both England and America, in Canada
and Australia also, and poetry resumed its old function of
speaking more urgently and more truly than is possible in prose.
The general quality of their work is surprisingly good, as you
may judge from any one of a dozen volumes of war songs ;
and the strange thing is, that of scores of names attached to
this poetry rarely is there one that was before known to the
literary world.

The third phenomenon is the change that has mysteriously
come over writers in their attitude toward the strife of arms.
Poetry of From Beowulf to Tennyson practically all English
the War poets sang the glory and heroism and panoply of
war in the trump-and-drum style of " The Charge of the
Light Brigade " and " The Helmet of Navarre." But now,
though we have witnessed such heroism as was never sung
or dreamed, and this not in plumed knights but in neighborly
men, our poets are strangely mute to the glory of conflict;
when they write of war they pass over its martial splendor to

592 ENGLISH LITERATURE

show you a soldier's heart with its tender memories. So for
one old-style poem of " How the Guard Came Through " there
are hundreds, like Lieutenant Asquith's "The Volunteer,"
which say nothing whatever of fighting, though they leave you
with deeper respect for human courage and almost a reverence
for the men of your own breed. Masefield's "August, 1914 "
is typical of another strange kind of war poem ; it draws a pic-
ture of quiet English fields, leaving your imagination to see or
hear the stark horror of the trenches, the flash and boom of
guns and the glare of burning homes across the Channel.

In all these poets, young or old, two noble qualities appear :
a deathless loyalty to an ideal England and a deep love of
peace as the only normal condition of human life. Both quali-
ties appear, with a promise that was never fulfilled, in the
work of Rupert Brooke, for example, a young poet who went
out as a soldier on the Dardanelles expedition. He died there,
in the ^Egean, and they made his grave in Skyros that Achilles
knew. Ere he gave a life for his country he bravely wrote, as
our Nathan Hale spoke, his own immortal epitaph :

If I should die, think only this of me :

That there 's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed,
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think : this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less,

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given,
Her sights and sounds, dreams happy as her day,

And laughter learnt of friends, and gentleness
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 1

l Reprinted from Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke by permission of the literary
executor and of the publishers, Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., and Dodd, Mead & Com-
pany, Inc. Copyright, 1915, by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

AN ESSAY OF RECENT LITERATURE 593

Bibliography. There are near a hundred books dealing with recent
literature, but not one to tell you what you want to know ; that is, for each
important author such events of his life as may color his work, his chief
books in order, his philosophy or world view, his motive in writing, and then
a word of criticism or appreciation. The books available are mostly collections
of magazine articles ; the selection of authors is consequently haphazard,
many of the most important being omitted ; and they are almost wholly
critical, giving you not the author or his work but the critic's reaction on the
author. Among the best of these reactions are :

Phelps, Advance of the English Novel (Dodd), and Essays on Modern
Novelists (Macmillan) ; Cooper, Some English Story Tellers (Holt) ; Follett,
Some Modern Novelists (Holt); Freeman, The. Moderns (Crowell). Phelps,
Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century (Dodd). Chandler,
Aspects of Modern Drama (Macmillan) ; Phelps, Twentieth Century Theatre
(Macmillan) ; Andrews, The Drama of To-day (Lippincott) ; Howe, Dramatic
Portraits (Kennerley) ; Clark, British and American Drama of To-day (Holt).

A book which attempts to continue the history of English prose and verse
from the Victorian Age to the present day is Cunliffe, English Literature
during the Last Half-Century (Macmillan, 1919).

In addition to the above collective studies there are numerous presenta-
tions of Kipling, Barrie, Chesterton, Yeats, Synge and other recent writers
and dramatists, each in a single volume.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Every chapter in this book includes two lists, one of selected read-
ings, the other of special works treating of the history and literature of
the period under consideration. The following lists include the books
most useful for general reference work and for supplementary reading.

A knowledge of history is of great advantage in the study of lit-
erature. In each of the preceding chapters we have given a brief
summary of historical events and social conditions, but the student
should do more than simply read these summaries. He should review
rapidly the whole history of each period by means of a good text-
book. Montgomery's English History and Cheyney's Short History
of England are recommended, but any other reliable text-book will
serve the purpose.

For literary texts and selections for reading a few general collec-
tions, such as are given below, are useful ; but the important works
of each author may now be obtained in excellent and inexpensive
school editions. At the beginning of the course the teacher, or the
home student, should write for the latest catalogue of such publica-
tions as the Standard English Classics, Everyman's Library, etc.,
which offer a very wide range of reading at small cost. Nearly every
publishing house issues a series of good English books for school
use, and the list is constantly increasing.

History

Text-books : Montgomery's English History ; Cheyney's Short
History of England (Ginn and Company).

General Works : Green's Short History of the English People,
i vol., or A History of the English People, 4 vols. (American
Book Co.).

Traill's Social England, 6 vols. (Putnam).

Bright's History of England, 5 vols., and Gardiner's Students'
History of England (Longmans).

Gibbins's Industrial History of England, and Mitchell's English
Lands, Letters, and Kings, 5 vols. (Scribner).

595

596 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Oxford Manuals of English History, Handbooks of English His-
tory, and Kendall's Source Book of English History (Macmillan).

Lingard's History of England until 1688 (revised, 10 vols., 1855)
is the standard Catholic history.

Other histories of England are by Knight, Froude, Macaulay, etc.
Special works on the history of each period are recommended in
the preceding chapters.

History of Literature

Jusserand's Literary History of the English People, 2 vols.
(Putnam).

Ten Brink's Early English Literature, 3 vols. (Holt).

Courthope's History of English Poetry (Macmillan).

The Cambridge History of English Literature, many vols., incom-
plete (Putnam).

Handbooks of English Literature, 9 vols. (Macmillan).

Garnett and Gosse's Illustrated History of English Literature,
4 vols. (Macmillan).

Morley's English Writers, n vols. (Cassell), extends through
Elizabethan literature. It is rather complex and not up to datCj
but has many quotations from authors studied.

Taine's English Literature (many editions), is brilliant and inter-
esting, but unreliable.

Literary Criticism

Lowell's Literary Essays.

Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets.

Mackail's The Springs of Helicon (a study of English poetry from
Chaucer to Milton).

Dowden's Studies in Literature, and Dowden's Transcripts and
Studies.

Minto's Characteristics of English Poets.

Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism.

Stevenson's Familiar Studies in Men and Books.

Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library.

Birrell's Obiter Dicta.

Hales's Folia Litteraria.

Pater's Appreciations.

NOTE. Special works on criticism, the drama, the novel, etc., will be
found in the Bibliographies on pp. 9, 181, etc.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 597

Texts and Helps (inexpensive school editions).

Standard English Classics, and Athenaeum Press Series (Ginn and
Company).

Everyman's Library (Button).

Pocket Classics, Golden Treasury Series, etc. (Macmillan).

Belles Lettres Series (Heath).

English Readings Series (Holt).

Riverside Literature Series (Houghton, Mifflin).

Canterbury Classics (Rand, McNally).

Academy Classics (Allyn & Bacon).

Cambridge Literature Series (Sanborn).

Silver Series (Silver, Burdett).

Student's Series (Sibley).

Lakeside Classics (Ainsworth).

Lake English Classics (Scott, Foresman).

Maynard's English Classics (Merrill).

Eclectic English Classics (American Book Co.).

Caxton Classics (Scribner).

The King's Classics (Luce).

The World's Classics (Clarendon Press).

Little Masterpieces Series (Doubleday, Page).

Arber's English Reprints (Macmillan).

New Mediaeval Library (Duffield).

Arthurian Romances Series (Nutt).

Morley's Universal Library (Routledge).

CasselPs National Library (Cassell).

Bohn Libraries (Macmillan).

Temple Dramatists (Macmillan).

Mermaid Series of English Dramatists (Scribner).

NOTE. We have included in the above list all the editions of which we
have any personal knowledge, but there are doubtless others that have es-
caped attention.

Biography

Dictionary of National Biography, 63 vols. (Macmillan), is the
standard.

English Men of Letters Series (Macmillan).
Great Writers Series (Scribner).
Beacon Biographies (Houghton, Mifflin).

598 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Westminster Biographies (Small, Maynard).

Hinchman and Gummere's Lives of Great English Writers
(Houghton, Mifflin) is a good single volume, containing thirty-eight
biographies.

NOTE. For the best biographies of individual writers, see the Bibliographies
at the ends of the preceding chapters.

Selections

Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English Prose (Ginn and
Company) are the best single-volume collections, covering the whole
field of English literature.

Pancoast's Standard English Poetry, and Pancoast's Standard
English Prose (Holt).

Oxford Book of English Verse, and Oxford Treasury of English
Literature, 3 vols. (Clarendon Press).

Page's British Poets of the Nineteenth Century (Sanborn).

Stedman's Victorian Anthology (Houghton, Mifflin).

Ward's English Poets, 4 vols. ; Craik's English Prose Selections,
5 vols. ; Chambers's Encyclopedia of English Literature, etc.

Miscellaneous

The Classic Myths in English Literature (Ginn and Company).
Adams's Dictionary of English Literature.
Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English Literature.
Brewer's Reader's Handbook.
Botta's Handbook of Universal Literature.
Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History.
Hutton's Literary Landmarks of London.
Heydrick's How to Study Literature.

For works on the English language see Bibliography of the
Norman period, p. 65.

INDEX

KEY TO PRONUNCIATION

a, as in fate ; 5, as in fat ; a, as in arm ; a, as in all ; a, as in what ; a, as in care

e, as in mete ; e, as in met ; e, as in there

I, as in ice ; I, as in it ; i, as in machine

6, as in old; o, as in not; o, as in move; 6, as in son; 6, as in horse; do, as in food;

06, as in foot

u, as in use ; u, as in up ; u, as in fur ; u, as in rule ; u, as in pull
y, as in fly ; y, as in baby

c, as in call ; 5, as in mice ; ch, as in child ; -eh, as in school
g, as in go ; g, as in cage
s, as in saw ; s, as in is
th, as in thin ; th, as in then
x, as in vex ; x, as in exact

NOTE. Titles of books, poems, essays, etc., are in italics.

Absalom and Achitophel (a-ehit'o-fel),

246

Abt Vogler (apt vog'ler), 477
Actors, in early plays, 119; Eliza-
bethan, 129
Addison, 278; life, 279; works, 281;

hymns, 283 ; influence, 279 ; style,

282

Adonais (ad-o-na'is), 417, 424
^Esc (esk), 28
Aidan, St. (I'dan), 31
Aids to Reflection, 393
Alastor (a-las'tor), 415
Alchemist, The, 161
Alexanders Feast, 246, 248
Alfred, King, 39; life and times, 40;

works, 40, 41
Alice-for-Short, 582
All for Love, 245, 246
Alysoun, or Alisoun (ary-sown or aTy-

zoon), old form of Alice, 63
Amelia, 354
American Taxation, Burke's speech

on, 300

An Epistle, 476
Anatomy of Melancholy, 228
Ancren Riwle (angk'ren rpl), 60
Andrea del Sarto (an-dra'ya del sar'to),

476
Andreas, 38

Angel in the House* The, 586

Angeln, 23

Angles, the, 23

Anglo-Norman Period, 46 ; literature,
49, 52 ; ballads, 61 ; lyrics, 62 ;
summary, 63 ; selections for read-
ing, 64 ; bibliography, 64 ; ques-
tions on, 65 ; chronology, 66

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 28, 45, 48

Anglo-Saxon Period, 10; early poetry,
10-24; springs of poetry, 26; lan-
guage, 27 ; Christian writers, 30-41 ;
source books, 39 ; summary, 42 ;
selections for reading, 43 ; bibli-
ography, 43 ; questions on, 44 ;
chronology, 45

Anglo-Saxons, 6; the name, 23 ; life,
24, 25; language, 27; literature,
see Anglo-Saxon Period

Annus Mirabilis, 244, 248

Anselm, 51

Apologia, Newman's, 553, 555

Apologie for Poetrie, 114

Arcadia, 113, 342

Areopagitica (ar'e-op-a-jit'i-ca), 213

Arnold, Matthew, 486, 545 ; life, 545 ;
poetry, 547; prose works, 550;
characteristics, 551

Art, definition of, 2

Arthurian romances, 56, 57

599

6oo

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Artistic period of drama, 123
Artistic quality of literature, 2
Ascham, Roger, 92
Asquith, Lieutenant, 592
Assonance, 54, 55

Astrcea Redux (as-tre'a re'duks), 244
Astrophel and Stella (as'tro-fel), 114
Atalanta in Calydon (at-a-liin'ta, kal'i-

don), 486
August, 1914, 592
Augustan Age, meaning, 263. See

Eighteenth-Century Literature
Auld Licht Idylls, 582
Aurora Leigh (a-ro'ra le), 483
Austen, Jane, 375, 437; life, 438;

novels, 439 ; Scott's criticism of, 439

Bacon, Francis, 166; life, 167; works,
170; place and influence, 173

Bacon, Roger, 51, 173

Ballad, the, 61, 524

Ballad of East and West, The, 573

Ballads and Sonnets, 484

Barchester Towers, 514

Bard, The, 310

Bard of the Dimbovitza (dim-bo-vitz'a),
Roumanian folk songs, 2-3

Barrack- Room Ballads, 573

Barrel Organ, The, 586

Barrie, James M., 582

Battle of Agincourt (English, aj'in-
k5rt), 115

Battle of Bmnanburh, 41

Battle of the Books, 271

Baxter, Richard, 230

Beaumont, Francis (b5'mont), 163

Becked 463

Bede, 31 ; his history, 32 ; his account
of Caedmon, 33

Bell Buoy, The, 573

Bells and Pomegranates, 472, 475

Beloved Vagabond, The, 582

Benefit of clergy, 159

Bennett, Arnold, 579, 580

Beowulf (ba'5-wulf), the poem, 10-16 ;
history, 17 ; poetical form, 17 ;
manuscript of, 39

Beowulf's Mount, 15

Bibliographies, study of literature, 9 ;
Anglo-Saxon Period, 43; Norman,
64 ; Chaucer, 86 ; Revival of Learn-
ing* 975 Elizabethan, 181 ; Puri-
tan, 233; Restoration, 256; Eight-
eenth Century, 360 ; Romanticism,
444 ; Victorian, 562 ; general, 595

Bickerstaff Almanac, 273
Biographia Literaria, 393
Blackmore, Richard, 516
Blake, William, 328 ; life, 329 ; works,

33 1

Blank verse, 95

Blessed Damozel, 484

Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A, 475

Bob, Son of Battle, 583

Boethius (bo-e'thi-us), 41

Boileau (bwa-lo') French critic, 242,
262

Boke of the Ditches se, 73, 80

Bookman's Letters, A, 589

Book of Martyrs, 176

Borough, The, 334

Boswell, James, 293. See also Johnson

Boy actors, 130

Breton, Nicholas, 192

Bridge Builders, The, 574

Brierley, J., 590

Bronte, Charlotte and Emily, 514

Brooke, Rupert, 592

Browne, Thomas, 228 ; works, 229

Browning, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett,
272, 481-483

Browning, Robert, 469; life, 471;
works, 473; obscurity of, 469; as
a teacher, 470 ; compared with
Shakespeare, 474 ; with Tennyson,
480; periods of work, 475; soul
studies, 476; place and message, 480

Brushwood Boy, The, 574

Biut, Layamon's, 53 ; quotation from,

Brutus, alleged founder of Britain, 51
Bulwer Lytton, 515
Bunyan, John, 219; life, 219; works,

224 ; his style, 226
Burke, Edmund, 297 ; life, 297 ; works,

298 ; analysis of his orations, 300
Burney, Fanny (Madame D'Arblay),

Burns, Robert, 321 ; life, 322; poetry,
325 ; Carlyle's essay on, 532

Burton, Robert, 228

Butler, Samuel, Hudibras, 250

Butler, Samuel, 579

Byron, 405; life, 406; works, 408;
compared with Scott, 410

Caedmon (kad'mon), life, 33 ; works,
34 ; his Paraphrase, 34 ; school of,

3.6

Cain, 409

INDEX

60 1

Callista, 556

Calvert, Raisley, 380

Camden, William, 24, 177

Campaign, The, 280

Campion, Thomas, 192

Canterbury Tales, 74; plan of, 75;

prologue, 77 ; Dry den's criticism

of, 77

Canynge's coffer, 336
Captains Cotirageous, 574
Card, The, 580
Carew, Thomas, 200
Carlyle, 527; life, 527; works, 530;

style and message, 536
Carols, in early plays, 120
Casa Guidi Windows (ka'sa gwe'de),

483

Castell of Perseverance, 122
Castle of Indolence, 333
Cato, 283

Cavalier poets, 200
Caxton, 95; specimen of printing, 90
Celtic legends, 56
Celtic revival, 588
Chance, 578
Chansons de Geste, 55
Chanson de Roland, 55
Chapman, George, 114; his Homer,

114; Keats's sonnet on, 421
Chatterton, Thomas, 336
Chaucer, how to read, 68 ; life, 69 ;

works, 72 ; form of his poetry, 79;

melody, 80; compared with Spenser,

in
Chaucer, Age of: history, 67; writers,

68-86 ; summary, 86 ; selections

for reading, 86; bibliography, 86;

questions on, 87 ; chronology, 88
Chester plays, 118
Chesterton (G. K. C.), 590
Cheyne Row, 529
Childe Harold, 405, 407, 409
Child's Garden of Verses, 520
Chochilaicus (ko-kil-a'i-cus), 17
Christ, The, of Cynewulf,"37
Christabel, 391
Christian Year, 486
Christmas Carol, A, 495
Christ's Hospital, London, 388, 428
Chronicle, The Anglo-Saxon, 28, 45, 48
Chronicle plays, 135
Chronicles, riming, 53
Chronology : Anglo-Saxon Period,

45; Norman-French, 66; Age of

Chaucer, 88 ; Revival of Learning,

98; Elizabethan, 185; Puritan, 235;
Restoration, 257; Eighteenth Cen-
tury, 367 ; Romanticism, 451 ; Vic-
torian, 568

Citizen of the World, 313, 314

Clarissa, 352

Classic and classicism, 261-263

Classic influence on the drama, 126

" Clear, Claudius," 589

Cloister and the Hearth, 513

Clough, Arthur Hugh, 486

Cockaygne, Land 0/"(k6-kan'), 6l

Coleridge, 373, 376, 387; life, 387;
works, 391 ; critical writings, 393

Collier, Jeremy, 293

Collins, William, 333

Colum, Padraic, 588

Comedy, definition, 123; first Eng-
lish, 151 ; of the court, 136

Complete Angler, The, 231

Comtis, Masque of, 210

Conciliation with America, Burke's
speech, 300

Confessions of an English Opium-
Eater, 433, 435

Conrad, Joseph, 577

Consolations of Philosophy, 41

Cotter's Saturday Night, 328

Country House, The, 578

Couplet, the, 242

Court comedies, 136

Covenant of 1643, *88

Coventry plays, 118

Cowley, Abraham, 193

Cowper, William, 316; life, 317;
works, 318

Crabbe, George, 333

Cranford, 516

Crashaw, Richard, 193

Critic, meaning of, 248

Critical writing, Dryden, 248 ; Cole-
ridge, 393 ; in Age of Romanticism,
425; in Victorian Age, 550, 558

Criticism, Arnold's definition, 550

Cross, John Walter, 508

Crown of Wild Olive, 541

Culture and Anarchy, 547, 550

Curse of Kehama (ke-ha'ma), 394

Ctirsor Mundi, 60

Cycles, of plays, 118; of romances, 55

Cynewulf (kin'e-wulf), 36-38

Cynthia's Revels (sin'thi-a), 160

Daniel, Samuel, 191
Daniel Deronda, 507, 509

602

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Danny Deever, 573

D'Arblay, Madame (Fanny Burney),

375

Darwin and Darwinism, 558

Dauber, 585

David Grieve, 581

Death, Raleigh's apostrophe to, 176

Decline and fall of the Roman Em-
pire, 303

Defense of Poesie, 114

Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, 208

Defoe, 345 ; life, 346; works, 349

Dekker, Thomas, 165

Delia, 191

Democracy and Romanticism, 369 ;
in Victorian Age, 453

De Morgan, William Frend, 581, 582

Denry the Attdacious, 580

Dear's Lament, 20

Departmental Ditties, 573

De Quincey, 425, 431; life, 432;
works, 434; style, 432, 435

De Sapientia Vetemm, 173

Deserted Village, The, 311, 314

Dethe of Blanche the Duchesse, 73, 80

Diary, Evelyn's, 253; Pepys's, 253;
selections from, 254

Dickens, 487 ; life, 487 ; works, 490 ;
general plan of novels, 492 ; his
characters, 493 ; his public, 491 ;
limitations, 493

Dictionary, Johnson's, 291

Discoverie of Guiana (ge-a'na), 175

Diversity of Creatures, A, 574

Divina Commedia (de-ve'na kom-
ma'de-a), 217

Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 519

Domestic drama, 136

Donne, John, 194; his poetry, 195

Dotheboys Hall (do-the-boys), 488

Doyle, Arthur Conan, 583

Drake, 586

Drama, in Elizabethan Age, 101; ori-
gin, 115; periods of, 116, 121, 123;
miracle and mystery plays, 117;
interludes, 122; classical influence
on, 126; unities, 126; the English,
127; types of, 135; decline of, 156.
See also Elizabethan Age, Shake-
speare, Jonson, Marlowe, etc.

Dramatic unities, 126

Dramatists, methods of, 131. See
Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc.

Drapier^s Letters, 277

Drayton, Michael, 114

Dream of Gerontius, The (je-ron'shi-

us )> 555 557
Dryden, 243; life, 243; works, 246;

influence, 248, 249 ; criticism of

Canterbury Tales, 76
Duchess of Malfi (mal'fe), 164
Dunciad, The (dun'si-ad), 269

Ealhild, queen (e-al'hild), 18

Earthly Paradise, 485

Eastward Ho ! 158

Economic conditions, in Age of Ro-
manticism, 371

Edgeworth, Maria, 375, 437

Edward II, 134

Egoist, The, 518

Eighteenth-Century Literature: his-
tory of the period, 258; literary
characteristics, 260 ; the Classic
Age, 261 ; Augustan writers, 264 ;
romantic revival, 304 ; the first
novelists, 338; summary, 357; se-
lections for reading, 359; bibliog-
raphy, 360 ; questions, 364 ; chro-
nology, 367

Eikon Basilike (I'kon ba-sil'i-ke), 207

Eikonoklastes (I-kon-o-klas'tez), 207

Elegy, Gray's, 307, 309

Elene, 38

Elizabethan Age : history, 99 ; non-
dramatic poets, 101, n?; first
dramatists, 115; Shakespeare's
predecessors, 130 ; Shakespeare,
137; Shakespeare's contemporaries
and successors, 156; prose writers,
166; summary, 179; selections,
180 ; bibliography, 181 ; questions,
183; chronology, 185

Endymion, 421

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,
406

English Humorists, 409, 502

English Idyls, 466

Eormanric (e-or'man-ric), 18

Epiccene (ep'i-sen), or The Silent
Woman, 161

Epithalamion (ep-i-tha-Ia'mt-on), 109

Erasmus, 93

Essay concerning Human Understand-
ing, 252

Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 249

Essay on Burns, 532

Essay on Criticism, 266

Essay on Man, 268

Essay on Milton, 522, 523, 526

INDEX

603

Essays, Addison's, 281 ; Bacon's, 171

Essays in Criticism, 547, 550

Essays of Elia (e'li-a), 430

Essays, recent, 589

Ethics of the Dust, 541

Euphites and euphuism (u'fu-ez), 130

Evans, Mary Ann. See George Eliot

Evelyn, John, 252

Everlasting Mercy, The, 585

Everlasting No, and Yea, The, 529

Every Man in His Humour, 1 60

Everyman, 121

Excursion, The, 386

Exeter Book, 39

Faber, Frederick, 486

Eables, Dryden's, 246

faery Queen, 104, 105

Eall of Princes, 113

Eaust (foust), Faustus (fas'tus), 133

Eeet of the Young Men, The, 572

Ferrex and Porrex, 113, 125

Fielding, 353; novels, 353; charac-
teristics, 354

Fifty Singing Seamen, 586

Fight at Finnsburgh, 22

Fingal (fing'gal), 335

Firot-folio Shakespeare, 148

Flag of England, The, 573

Fletcher, Giles, 192

Fletcher, John, 163

Flower of Old Japan, The, 586

For All We Have and Are, 573

Ford, John, 165

Forest of Wild Thyme, The, 586

Formalism, 241

Four Georges, The, 499, 503

Foxe, John, 176

Fragments of Ancient Poetry, 334

French influence in Restoration litera-
ture, 238

French language in England, 47

French Revolution, influence of, 370,
372

French Revolution, Carlyle's, 534

Fuller, Thomas, 229

Gallipoli, 591
Galsworthy, John, 578
Gammer Giirton's Needle, 124
Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth, 516
Gaivain and the Green Knight (ga'-

wan), 57, 342

Gawain cycle of romances, 57
Gebir (ga-ber / ), 440, 441

Geoffrey of Monmouth (jef'rT), 48, 51
George Eliot, 504 ; life, 505 ; works,

508 ; characteristics, 509 ; as a

moralist, 510
Gest (or jest) books, 56
Geste of Robin Hood, 56, 6 1
Gibbon, 302 ; his history, 303
Gifts of God, The, 199
Girondists (jl-ron'dists), 379
Gleemen, or minstrels, 26, 27
Goldsmith, 311 ; life, 312; works, 314
Good Cotinsel, 72
Good Friday, 586
Gorboduc (gor'b5-duk), 125
Gorgeous Gallery, 112
Cower, 68, 86
Grace Aboiinding, 226
Gray, Thomas, 307 ; life, 308 ; works,

Greatest English Poets, 280
Green Mansions, 584
Greene, Robert, 131
Gregory, Lady, 588
Gregory, Pope, 41

Grendel, story of, n ; mother of, 13
Grubb Street, 290
Gulliver's Travels, 275
GulVs Hornbook, 129

Haggard, Rider, 583

Ilakluyt, Richard (hak'loot), 177

Hallam, 436 ; his criticism of Bacon,

1 66

Hardy, Thomas, 518, 591
Hastings, battle of, 47
Hathaway, Anne, 142
Hazlitt, William, 426
Helen of the High Hand, 580
Hengist (heng'gist), 28
Henry Esmond, 499
Herbert, George, 196; life, 197;

poetry of, 198
Hero and Leander, 114
Herod, 587

Heroes and Hero Worship, 529, 533
Heroic couplet, 239
Heroic Stanzas, 243
Herrick, Robert, 200
Hesperides and Noble Niimbers (hes-

per'I-dez), 201
Hewlett, Maurice, 584
Heywood, John, 122, 123
Heywood, Thomas, 164
Hilda, abbess, 33
Hildgund (hild'gund), 22

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Historical novel, 402

History of England, Macaulay's, 522,

5 2 5
History of Frederick the Great, Car-

lyle's, 530, 534

History of Henry VIII, Bacon's, 173
History of the Reformation in Scotland,

Knox's, 177

History of the World, Raleigh's, 175
Hnaef (nef), 22
Hobbes, Thomas, 251
Holofernes (hol-6-fer'nez), in Judith,

Holy and Profane State, 229
Holy Living, 230
Holy War, 226
Homer, Chapman's, 114; Dryden's,

246; Pope's, 267; Cowper's, 319
Hooker, Richard, 174
Hooker, Thomas, 186
Hope, Anthony, 584
Hound of Heaven, The, 587
Hours in a Library, 558
Hours of Idleness, 406, 409
House of Fame, 73
House of Life, 484
Hrothgar (roth'gar), n
Hudibras (hu'di-bras), 250
Hudson, 583
Humanism, 91
Humphrey Clinker, 355
Hunt, Leigh, 426
Husband's Message, 26
Huxley, 558
Hygelac (hi-je'lak), 17
Hymn book, first English, 193
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, 412
Hymns, Addison's, 283 ; Cowper's,

318,319

Hypatia (hi-pa'shia), 516
Hyperion (hi-pe'ri-on), 422

Idealism of Victorian Age, 456
Ideals, 8

Idols, of Bacon, 170, 173
Idylls of the King, 466
// Penseroso (il pen-se-ro'so), 209
Iliad, Pope's translation, 267 ; Chap-
man's, 114; Dryden's, 246
Imaginary Conversations, 441
Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 300
In Memoriam, 461, 464
Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney, 574
Instauratio Magna (in-sta-ra'shi-o), 170
Interludes, 122

In the Seven Woods, 588
Intimations of Immortality, 384, 385

Jacobean poets, 191

Jane Eyre (ar), 514

Jeffrey, Francis, 375

Jest (or gest) books, 56

Jew of Malta, 134

Joan and Peter, 576

John Gilpin, 320

Johnson, Samuel, 287; life, 289;

works, 291 ; his conversations, 294 ;

Boswell's Life of Johnson, 293
Jonathan Wild, 354
Jonson, Ben, 1 57 ; life, 1 58 ; works, 1 59
Joseph Andrews, 353
Joseph Vance, 582
Journal of the Plague Year, 350
Journal to Stella, 272, 276
Judith, 36
Juliana, 36
Jungle Book, The, 574, 575

Keats, 418; life, 419; works, 420;

place in literature, 423
Kilmarnock Burns, the, 325
Kim, 574, 575
Kings' Treasuries, 542
Kingsley, Charles, 515, 555
King Solomon's Mines, 583
Kipling, 570, 571; life, 571; verse,

572 ; prose, 574
Knighfs Tale, The, 78
Knox, John, 177
Kubla Khan (kob'la kan), 391
Kyd, Thomas, 131

L? Allegro (lal-a'gro), 209

Lady of the Lake, 397, 401

Lady Rose's Daughter, 581

Lake poets, the, 373

Lamb, Charles, 426 ; life, 427 ; works,

429 ; style, 430
Lamb, Mary, 428, 429
Lamia (la'mi-a), 418, 422
Land of Cockaygne (ko-kan'), 61
Land of Dreams, 332
Land of Heart's Desire, The, 588
Landor, Walter Savage, 440 ; life,

440; works, 441
Langland, William, 81
Language, our first speech, 27 ; dual

character of, 29 ; Teutonic origin, 28
Last Days of Pompeii (pom-pa'ye), 515
Law, Hooker's idea of, 175

INDEX

605

Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 174

Lay Sermons, 559

Layamon, 53

Lays of Ancient Rome, 524

Lead, Kindly Light, 554

Lectures on Shakespeare, 393

Legende of Goode Wimmen, 74

Leviathan, 251

Lewes, George Henry, 506

Liberty of Prophesying, 230

Life, compared to a sea voyage, 37

Life of Johnson, 293, 296

Life of Savage, 290

Light that Failed, The, 574

Lindsay, David, 122

Literary Club, the, 291

Literary criticism, 425. See also
Critical writing

Literary Reminiscences, 434

Literature, definition, 8 ; qualities, 2 ;
tests, 5 ; object in studying, 6; im-
portance, 7 ; Goethe's definition,
7 ; spirit of modern, 559

Literature and Dogma, 547, 550

Little Minister, The, 583

Little White Bird, The, 583

Lives, Plutarch's, 178; Walton's, 231

Lives of the Poets, 292

Locke, John, 252

Locke, William J., 581, 582

Lockhart, John, 375

Lorna Doone, 516

Lost Leader, The, 380

Lovelace, Richard, 202

Lycidas (lis'i-das), 211

Lydgate, John, 113

Lyly, John (lil'i)* 130

Lyra Apostolica, 554, 557

Lyrical Ballads, 376

Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 515

Mac Manus, Seumas, 588

Macaulay, 520 ; life, 521 ; works, 523 ;

characteristics, 526
Macpherson, James (mak-fer'son), 334
Magazines, the modern, 375
Maldon, The Battle of,^\
Malory, 95

Man of Property, The, 578
Man Who Saw, The, 591
Man Who Was, The, 573, 574
Mandeville's Travels, 85
Manfred, 409
Many Inventions, 574
Marcella, 581

Margaret Ogilvy, 583
Marlowe, 132; life, 132; works, 133;
and Milton, 134 ; and Shakespeare,

135

Marmton, 397, 401
Marpessa, 587
Marriage, 576

Man-iage of William Ashe, The, 581
Marvell, Andrew, 193
Masefield, John, 585, 590, 591, 592
Massinger, Philip, 165
Matter of France, Rome, and Britain,

55 5 6

Maxwell, W. B., 584
Melodrama, 136
Memoirs of a Cavalier, 349, 350
Meredith, George, 517
Merlin and the Gleam, 457
Merrick, Leonard, 584
Metaphysical poets, 191, 193
Metrical romances, 54, 55
Middleton, Thomas, 164
Miles Gloriosus (me'les glo-ri-6'sus) v

123

Mill on the Floss, 510
Milton, 202 ; life, 204 ; early or Hor-

ton poems, 209; prose works, 212 ;

later poetry, 213 ; and Shakespeare,

202 ; Wordsworth's sonnet on, 202
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 397
Miracle of Purun Bhagat, The, 574
Miracle plays, 117
Mirror for Magistrates, 1 1 3
Mr. Badman, Life and Deathof, 226,344
Mr. Britling Sees It Through, 591
Modern literature, spirit of, 559
Modern novelists, 575
Modern Painters, 539, 543
Modern Romance, 581
Modest Proposal, A, 274
Moral Epistles, 265, 266
Moral period of the drama, 121
Moral purpose in Victorian literature,

455. 559

Morality plays, 121
More, Hannah, 375
More, Thomas, 93
Morris, William, 484
Morte d 1 Arthur (mort dar'ther), 95
Mother Hubbard's Tale, 103
Mulfykek (mu-la'ka), 477
My Last Duchess, 477
Mysteries of Udolpho, The (u-dol'fo),

374
Mystery plays, 117

6o6

ENGLISH LITERATURE

New Atalantis, 172, 342
Newcomes, The, 497, 502
New Machiavelli, The, 577
Newman, Cardinal, 552; life, 552;

prose works, 555; poems, 557;

style, 557

Newspapers, the first, 258, 259
Nibelungenlied (ne'be-lung-en-let), 22
Nicoll, W. Robertson, 589
Noah, play of, 119
Norman Conquest, 47
Norman pageantry, 116
Norman period. See Anglo-Norman
Normans, 46 ; union with Saxons, 48 ;

literature of, 48
North, Christopher (John Wilson),

375

North, Thomas, 178
Northanger Abbey (north'an-jer), 439
Northern Antiquities, 338
Northumbrian literature, 30 ; decline

of, 38 ; how saved, 40
Nostromo, 578
Novel, meaning and history, 339, 340 ;

precursors of, 341 ; discovery of

modern, 344
Novelists, the first English, 338, 357.

See Scott, Dickens, etc.
Novum Organum (or'ga-num), 170
Noyes, Alfred, 586

Ode on the Morning of Chris fs Nativ-
ity, 205, 209

Ode to Dejection, 387

Ode to the West Wind, 410

Odes, Pindaric, 193

Odyssey, Pope's, 267 ; Chapman's, 114;
Dryden's, 246

Old Fortunatus (for-tu-na'tus), 165

Old Front Line, The, 591

Old Wives 1 Tale, The, 580

Oliver Cromwell, Carlyle's, 534

Oliver Twist, 492, 493

Ollivant, Alfred, 583

007, 574

Origin of Species, 558

Orlando Furioso (or-lan'd5 foo-re-o'-
so), 105

Orm, or Orme, 60 ; his Ormulum, 60

Orosius (5-ro'si-us), his history, 40

Ossian (osh'ian) and Ossianic poems,

335

Ourselves and the Universe, 590
Owl and Nightingale, The, 60
Oxford movement, 554

P*s, The Four, \ 23

Palamon and Arcite (pal'a-mon, ar 7 -
site), 78

Pamela (pam'e-la), 344, 351

Pantisocracy(pan-tl-sok / ra-se), of Cole-
ridge, Southey, etc., 388

Paolo and Francesca, 587

Paradise Lost, 213, 214

Paradise Regained, 217

Parody se of Daynty Devises, 112

Paraphrase of Caedmon, 34

Parish Register, The, 334

Patmore, Coventry, 586

Patrician, The, 578

Pauline, 472, 475

Pearl, The, 59

Pelham, 515

Pendennis, 498, 502

Pepys, Samuel (pep'is, peps, peps),
252, 253

Percy, Thomas, 337

Peregrine Pickle (per'e-grin), 355

Pericles and Aspasia (per'i-klez, as-pa'-
shi-a), 442

Peter Pan, 583

Philip the King, 586

Philistines, the, 550

Phillips, Stephen, 587

Phillpotts, Eden, 579

Phoenix (fe'nix), 37

Pickwick Papers, 487, 489, 492

Piers Plowman (peers), 8 1

Pilgrim's Progress, 224, 343

Pindaric odes (pin-dar'ic), 193

Pinero, Arthur Wing, 589

Pippa Passes, 475, 478

Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, 221

Plain Tales from the Hills, 574

Plays, recent, 589

Plutarch's Lives, 178

Poems by Two Brothers, 459

Poetaster, The, 160

Poetry of everyday life, 585

Poets, recent, 584

Polyolbion (pol-i-ol'bi-on), 114

Pope, Alexander, 264 ; life, 264 ;
works, 266

Porter, Jane, 375

Practice of Piety, 221

Preeterita (pre-ter'i-ta), 538, 541

Praise of Folly, 93

Prelude, The, 377, 378, 379* 36

Pre-Raphaelites (ra'fa-el-ites), 483

Pride and Prejudice, 437, 439

Princess, The, 461, 463

INDEX

607

Prometheus Unbound (pro-me'thus),

4*5

Prose development in eighteenth cen-
tury, 260

Pseudo-classicism (su'do), 263
Purchas, Samuel, 178; Purchas His

Pilgrimes, 178

Puritan Age: history, 186; literary
characteristics, 189; poets, 190;
prose writers, 219; compared with
Elizabethan, 196; summary, 232;
selections for reading, 233; bibli-
ography, 233; questions, 234;
chronology, 235
Puritan movement, 186
Puritans, wrong ideas of, 186

Queen Mab, in Borneo and Juliet, 141
Queen's Gardens, 54 2
Quiller-Couch, 584

Rabbi Ben Ezra, 477

Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 374

Raleigh, Walter, 175

Ralph Royster Doyster, 123

Rambler essays, 288, 290, 292

Rape of the Lock, 266

Reade, Charles, 513

Realism, 240

Realists, 575, 579

Recessional, 573

Recluse, The, 386

Redcross Knight of The Faery Queen,

106
Reflections on the French Revolution,

299

Religio Laid, 245
Religio Medici, 229
Religious period of the drama, 116
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,

337

Reminiscences, Carlyle's, 530

Remorse, 389

Renaissance, the (re-na'sans, ren-e-
sans', etc.), 91

Restoration Period : history, 236 ; lit-
erary characteristics, 238 ; writers,
243; summary, 255; selections for
reading, 256; bibliography, 256;
questions, 256; chronology, 257

Revival of Learning Period : history,
89 ; literature, 92 ; summary, 96 ;
selections for reading, 97 ; bibli-
ography, 97 ; questions, 97 ; chro-
nology, 98

Re-volt of Islam, 413, 416
Revolution, French, 370, 372 ; of

1688, 238; age of, 369
Richardson, Samuel, 350; novels of,

351

Riders to the Sea, 588

Rights of Man, 299, 371

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 392

Rime Royal, 79

Ring and the Book, The, 479

Robert Elsmere, 581

Robin Hood, 56, 6 1

Robinson Crusoe, 345, 349

Roderick, 395

Roderick Random, 355

Romance, 339; Greek Romances,
341 ; modern, 581

Romance languages, 46

Romance of the Rose, 72

Romantic comedy and tragedy, 136

Romantic enthusiasm, 372

Romantic poetry, 304

Romanticism, Age of, 369 ; history,
370 ; literary characteristics, 372 ;
poets, 376 ; prose writers, 425 ; sum-
mary, 442 ; selections for reading,
443 ; bibliography, 444 ; questions,
448; chronology, 451

Romanticism, meaning, 304

Romola, 507, 509, 512

Rosalynde, 343

Rossetti, Christina (ros-set'te), 486

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 483

Rowley Papers, 336

Royal Society, 241

Runes, 36

Ruskin, 537 ; life, 538 ; works, 541 ;
characteristics, 544 ; message, 544

Russell, George W., 588

Sackville, Thomas, 113

St. Catherine, Play of,\\~}

St. George and the Dragon, 590

St. George's Guild, 538, 541

Saints' Everlasting Rest, 231

Salt- Water Ballads and Lyrics, 586

Samson Agonistes (ag-o-nis'tez), 218

Sartor Resartus (sar'tor re-sar'tus),
527, 528, 535

Satire, 260 ; of Swift, 274 ; of Thack-
eray, 503

Saxon. See Anglo-Saxon

School of Shooting, 92

Science in Victorian Age, 558, 560

Scop, or poet (skop), 20

6o8

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Scott, Walter, 395 ; life, 396 ; poetry,
401 ; novels, 402 ; criticism of Jane
Austen, 439

Scottish Chiefs, 375

Scyld (skild), story of, 10

Sea, names of, in Anglo-Saxon, 25

Seafarer, The, 20

Seasons, The, 333

Selections for reading : Anglo-Saxon
period, 43 ; Norman, 64 ; Chaucer,
86 ; Revival of Learning, 97 ; Eliza-
bethan, 1 80; Puritan, 233 ; Restora-
tion, 256; Eighteenth Century, 359;
Romanticism, 443 ; Victorian, 561

Sentimental Journey, 356

Sentimental Tommy, 583

Septimus, 582

Sesame and Lilies (ses'a-me), 541

Shadowy Waters, 588

Shakespeare, 137; life, 139; works,
148; four periods, 149; sources of
plays, 1 50 ; classification of plays,
151; doubtful plays, 152; poems,
152; place and influence, 153

She Stoops to Conquer, 315

Shelley, 410; life, 412; works, 415;
compared with Wordsworth, 417

Shepherds' Book, 41

Shepherd's Calendar, 108, 109

Sherlock Holmes, 583

Sherwood, 586

Ship that Found Herself, The, 574

Shirley, James, 166

Shoemaker's Holiday, The, 165

Short View of the English Stage, 239

Sidney, Philip, 113, 175

Sigurd the Volsung, 485

Silas Marner, 511

Silent Woman, The, 161

Sinclair, May, 584

Sir Charles Grandison, 352

Skelton, John, 122

Sketches by Boz, 489

Smollett, Tobias, 355

Social development in eighteenth
century, 258

Sohrab and Rustum (soo'rhab, or
so'hrab), 548

Soldiers Three, 574

Song of the Soldier, 591

Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Ex-
perience, 331

Sonnet, introduction of, 95

Sonnets, of Shakespeare, 153; of Mil-
ton, 212

Sonnets from the Portugttese, 472, 482,

484 "

Southey, 393 ; works, 394
Spanish Gypsy, 507
Spanish Tragedy, 131
Specimens of English Dramatic Poets,

Spectator, The, 279, 284, 344
Spenser, 101 ; life, 102; works, 105;

characteristics, 1 10 ; compared with

Chaucer, no
Spenserian poets, 192
Spenserian stanza, 107
Stage, early, 119; Elizabethan, 129
Stalky and Co,, 571, 574
Steele, Richard,
Stephen, Leslie,
Sterne, Lawrence, 356
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 519
Style, a test of literature, 6
Suckling, John, 201
Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 95
Swan, The, 37
Swift, 270; life, 271; works, 273;

satire, 274 ; characteristics, 277
Swinburne, 485
Sylva, 253
Symbolists, 586

Symonds, John Addington, 558
Synge, John Millington, 588

Tabard Inn, 75

Tale of a Tub, 271, 273, 275

Tale of Two Cities, A, 495

Tales from Shakespeare, 429

Tales in Verse, 334

Tales of the Hall, 334

Tales of the Mermaid Tavern, 586

Tarn o' Shanter, 328

Tamburlaine (tam'bur-lane), 132, 133

Task, The, 318, 319

Toiler, The, 279, 284, 344

Taylor, Jeremy, 230

Temora, (te-md'ra), 335

Tempest, The, 147

Temple, The, 198

Tennyson, 457 ; life, 458; works, 462;

characteristics, 467 ; message, 468
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 206
Terra, 253

Tests of literature, 5
Teufelsdroeckh (toy'felz-druk), 535
Thackeray, 496; life, 497; works,

499 ; characteristics, 503 ; style,

504 ; and Dickens, 496

INDEX

609

Thaddeus of Warsaw, 375
Thalaba (tal-a'ba), 394
Theater, the first, 128
Thief of Virtue, The, 580
Thompson, Francis, 587
Thomson, James, 332
Three Brothers, The, 580
Three Wise Men, The, 582
Through the Turf Smoke, 588
Thyrsis (ther'sis), 549
Timber, 162
Tintern Abbey, 376

Tirocinium (tl-ro-sin'i-um), or a Re-
view of Schools, 317
Tom Jones, 354

Tomb of his Ancestors, The, 574
Tommy and Grizel, 583
Tono-Bungay, 577
Tories and Whigs, 238
Totters Miscellany, 94
Townley plays, 118
Toxophilus (tok-sof Mus), 92
Tractarian movement, 554
Tracts for the Times, 554
Tragedy, definition, 151 ; of blood, 136
Transition poets, 190
Traveller, The, 313, 314
Treasure Island, 519
Treatises on Government, 252
Tristram Shandy, 356
Tro'ilus and Cres'sida, 73
Trollope, Anthony, 513
Troyes, Treaty of, 89
Truce of the Bear, The, 573
Tntth, or Good Counsel, 72
Tyndale, William (tin'dal), 94
Typhoon, 578

Udall, Nicholas (u'dal), 123
Udolpho (u-dol'fo), 374
Unfortunate Traveller, The, 343
Universality a test of literature, 5
University wits, 127
Unto This Last, 540, 542
Utopia, 93, 342

Vanity Fair, 501

Vanity of Human Wishes, 288

Vaughan, Henry, 193

Vercelli Book, 39

Vicar of Wake fie Id, 315, 357

Vice, the, in old plays, 121

Victorian Age, 452; history, 453;
literary characteristics, 454 ; poets,
457 ; novelists, 487 ; essayists, etc.,

520 ; spirit of, 559 ; summary, 560 ;
selections for reading, 561 ; bibli-
ography, 562 ; questions, 566 ;
chronology, 568

Victory, 578

View of the State of Ireland, 103

Village, The, 333

Vision of the Rood, 38

Volpone (vol-po'ne), 160

Volunteer, The, 592

Voyages, Hakluyt's, 178

Wakefield plays, 118

Waldere (val-da're, 0rval'dare), 22

Waller, Edmund, 193, 242

Walton, Izaak, 231

Wanderings of Oisin, The, 588

War and the Future, The, 590

War of the Worlds, The, 577

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 581

Watson, William, 591

Waverley, 398

Way of All Flesh, The, 579

Wealth of Nations, 371

Weather, The Play of the, 123

Webster, John, 163

Wedmore, Treaty of, 40

Wells, Herbert G., 576, 591

Westward Ho! 516

Wheels of Chance, The, 577

Whigs and Tories, 238

Whitby (hwit'bi), 32, 33

Widecombe Fair, 580

Widow in the Bye Street, The, 585

Widsith (vid'sith), 18, 19

Wiglaf (vig'laf), 15

Willcocks, Mary, 584

Wilson, John (Christopher North), 375

Wind among the Reeds, The, 588

Windo^l} in Thrums, A, 582

Wither, George, 192

Withoiit Benefit of Clergy, 574

Women in literature, 373, 374

Wordsworth, 373, 376; life, 377;

poetry, 381 ; poems of nature, 382 ;

poems of life, 384 ; last works, 386
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 376
Worthies of England, 229, 230
Wuthering Heights (wuth'er-ing), 514
Wyatt (wi'at), Thomas, 94
Wyclif (wik'lif), 83
Wyrd (vird), or fate, 12

Yeats, William Butler, 588
York plays, 118

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