J' 'f %■ .^-^ %4 ,/ 1: j'\ ^ ,^. - ^ -^ , X ..A' >o' r o cs ^V > .<^ V '^^^ ' ,^% ^^"^ FACSIMILES OF THE SIGNATURES OF AUTHORS IN THE TAUCHNITZ EDITION PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THEIR CORRESPONDENCE AND AGREEMENTS WITH BARON TAUCHNITZ. A FRONTISPIECE TO VOLUME 2000. Of English Literatiire. r The folloiving, ivith a z^ 4^^^;^^!^^^ '—>^<^' ^^ /5ntli ^/l^t^^ VII ^/.^ ^^^ Jm^^i/y^ /l/Ui/ /hUh/k44ij c^^' ^ ^cy^c^^^^xMJ'—^^ £^./^^/^ ^^^ aZ/^z^t^ 1862. C87I. 1843. 1844. [868. — vni 1868. *2^y-*^/^»^ /^^^'^J^^ 1873- 1872. /S^^ 4 /^^k..^ IX ^ ^- [876. ^ "^(^^^-^J^-^ <^51,^/^^ .^22^^/:^^c^/^-t^^ t (y-^k^i.,^^>a ^r^^^^^>c<^ 34. y^^^<^<^c^ ^ . (J^^cculyh . ^^. *36. XI — XII XIII 48. J^eJiLcju ioTuuT^^i^^LXf 1872. 1878. XIV XV XVI c87^. ^_^/^^?/H^ Cz(^^^^-^^€::^tL^ 64. ^^^n^^ua^.^.^^-^^ 876 •^*^^^^''«^a-rf^'^:^Ss7>s iL- 65 *i^. 1879. ' r 8<5° Q//k:i^(U.-<^ AHle^^^car^zi^ *6, 872- V^ ¥ i ' I •^•■'^^/ ^ / ^ 68 872. »^-^''*'^r7^7^^^^^^ /"-y^*^*" ' / '^ ^/^ • 69 XVII Of English Literattite. XVIII i877. XIX XX i874 XXI ]k^ (^/dX^. ^«79. 94- /->/: jC^y/2^^\^ 1865. ,5 (^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ '«^' 7^/c^^^ A^-£o 1856. XXII 1872. 1876. ^^^ ^2^-^^^^^ 1880. dC^C^/Ui^^l^^''ii'-<./Cit^^-i^ 1872. Moa/vw» Y^r sJi^^^CJ^^tXXjty^ XXllI 1853- ^/^^^:^^^-^»— ^^^ 1859. 03- o/u-^icC^ 1879. 105. ^- -.^fe^^^s^. 1872. (872. XXIV i874. [872. 1854. 1870. (.y^^-'^^^^^^. 1854- XXV ^^^^^ cy^'^'^^^' ,875. "5- XXVI XXVJI ^.C f- ^%^'i^i^n' 'ra^:9h ^c^yt^* y 1%T2. / 1869. ^Z^?^^^^ 1866. 134- 135- 875. 136. (_///kJ^ '^^.^ 1872. 1872. i8s6. i866. 1865. t86i XXX /^ WfiTU^^ii^ i-^--^-^ -... - ^oJL^M-jJ^ ^hstrcAdf^ 139. i ^^^-^y^Af^ Z^^fZ^ XXXI 143- 144- ^/fl^A/v^A^/xic.<.^MX^-^^^ ■»»■ "yi/irai.: cui^aut/u^: Jo/oL ^dXi.^ 1863. 1876, ,,6 n(U.tAjL^i^tdL Scocc/z^a'c^i^ ,,,, XXXII XXXIII ^t^yf^ ^t^^ Uj tf^ — XXXVII — '^^^^^^^ ^l^--^ d^- The two greatest English poets, Chaucer and Shakespeare, taught only through images of life. Towards the close of the Fourteenth Century, Gower in his English poem, the "Confessio Amantis," set a collection of tales in a light frame work. He soj arranged them in eight books that they were seven distinct volleys of shot against the seven deadly sins, and one against misuse of royal power. When Chaucer also followed the example set by Boccaccio's "De- cameron," his tales were as far as Shakespeare's plays from any profession of didactic purpose. But like Shakespeare, Chaucer used the highest gifts of genius so that he might teach while he delighted. Nobody ' who has read Chaucer through, or who has fairly read through only the Canterbury Tales, can look upon Chaucer as an animal poet. No man before Shake- speare dwelt as Chaucer dwelt upon the beauty of a perfect womanhood, the daisy was for him its OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. T 7 emblem, with its supposed power to heal imvard bruises, its modest beauty, its heart of gold, and its white crown of innocence. He is not less deeply be- cause unaffectedly religious. His absolute kindliness made part of his perception of the highest truth, and it increased greatly the power of his teaching. Lydgate and Occleve at the beginning of the Fif- teenth Century maintained, as far as they had strength, the poet's office, to delight and teach. But their days were clouded with political confusion. There is nothing in wars between families for the succession to a throne, or in wars of invasion for aggrandizement of the in- vader, that can set a people singing, or touch to the quick that better part of life which speaks through a true Literature. It is only war of minds, and bodies too if need be, for the truth, for liberty, for something that true men will rather die than lose, which fetches out the earnest voice of life. The Lowland Scot, most - English of the English, who was able to say, thus far and no farther, to invasions of the Norman kings, did not want poets at a time when elsewhere English Literature was among the victims of ignoble strife. In Chaucer's latter time John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, had blended many a touch of wisdom with a strain of liberty in his metrical Life of Robert Bruce, who died not fifty years before. The poem was half written in 1375. In the next century Blind Harry, a wandering minstrel, with less art though with more appearance of art in the variety of measures, sang the romance of Wallace, When tales of Wallace were 0/ English Liierattife. 2 I 8 A GLANCE AT THE PAST being thus chanted among the Scots, Robert Henrysor in 1462, became a graduate of the newly founde< University of Glasgow. Robert Henryson, who was dead in 1508, wrote in his "Robin and Makyn" the' first pastoral in English Literature. He moralized fables in verse with a shrewd Scottish humour. He wrote an earnest sequel to Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressida," and he left to us a small body of thought- ful and religious poetry. Before he passed away there had begun the great development of Scottish song that yielded in William Dunbar the next poet of great mark after Chaucer, and in Sir David Lindsay of the Mount the Scottish Poet of the Reformation. It is noticeable, however, that in the middle of the Fifteenth Century, when England was bleeding from the wounds of Civil war, and the voice of her Literature was almost silenced, there were two writers who showed that the pulse of the nation had not stopped. Sir John Fortescue, who had been Henry the Sixth's Chief Justice and fought at Towton, went into exile with his master. Although himself cast out from a country where all seemed to be discord, he com- pared in France, for the instruction of the young Prince who might afterwards be king of England, the absolutist forms of the French monarchy with the limitations of the power of the king that had grown with the growth of English law. Days even of weak- ness and disorder had been made occasions for con- firming and extending those constitutional rights upon which Fortescue dwelt. The other writer through OF KNGUSTT LITERATURE. I 9 ' >m we feci that, in those days of civil war, however >d might flow, the heart of England was still riling, is Reginald Pecock. The followers of Wiclif, viiown as Lollards, though without competent leaders, kvere battling still for a reformed Church. Forerun- ners of the later Puritans, they desired the clergy to look only to the Bible, to build up the church by founding it and all its ordinances upon scripture only as the Word of God, and to avoid human tradition and vain ceremonies that had, for many, turned religion into superstition. The Bishops were blamed for want of diligence in preaching; wealth of the clergy was condemned, and their encouragement of war, of oaths, of pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, invocation of saints, veneration of relics and of images, church ornaments and bells and banners. Reginald Pecock, a busy writer and a Welshman, who became, in the middle of the Fifteenth Century, Bishop of Chichester, produced in English a large book of argu- ment with the Bible Men called "the Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy." He came down among the people and in their own tongue sought by reason to convince them of what he believed to be their errors. He opposed constant appeal to the Bible on indifferent matters of Church discipline because God had given to men Reason to determine such things for themselves. Scripture, he said, was designed for revelation to man of that which was beyond and above reason. Both were gifts from the same source of all truth; Reason and Faith, therefore, never really 20 A GLANCE AT THE PAST contradict each other. First principles on which to base the later doctrines of Religious Liberty were in the writings of this Bishop, whom the temporal and \ spiritual Lords of his own day immured for life in Thorney Abbey. They condemned him as one who, by preferring Reason to Authority in dealing with the people, had offered to break down the strongest buttress of the Church. But throughout Europe in the Fifteenth Century there was a gathering of forces that gave impulse to the forward struggle. The fall of Constantinople in May 1453 scattered the learned Greeks, who taught abroad the ancient literature of their country and in- troduced Greek studies into Europe. Plato then came in aid of the battle against sensuality within the Church. Two years after the fall of Constantinople Gutenberg and Faust completed the first printed book. The sack of Mayence, in 1462, by its Archbishop Adolphus, dispersed the printers, and with them the secrets of their craft. Printing presses then were established in some of the chief cities of Europe. When William Caxton introduced the art of printing into England, and settled among the hand copyists at Westminster, he seemed only to be cheapening a luxury. His first publications, in and after the year 1474, were such as the rich men, who alone could afford books, might be disposed to buy. But it was not long before full use was found for the new means of carrying on that con- flict of thought by which society moves forward to the higher life that even now is attained only by a few. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 21 Besides these forces there came also in aid of the new- birth of intellectual energy in Europe, the discovery of the New World. Columbus went to sea about the ' time when the printers of Mayence were first scattered. While men's imaginations were still being embold- ened by these great discoveries, Sir Thomas More wrote his "Utopia." Somewhere about the New World was the Island of Utopia— Nusquama— Nowhere— dis- covered by one of the voyagers whom Amerigo Vespucci left behind, and whom More feigned that he had met at Antwerp. Wretched wars of ambition made in these days the chief business of the chief sovereigns of Europe. More, writing part of his little book in Brussels while a fellow lodger with his friend Erasmus, set forth under a transparent veil his condemnation of political and social evils in the England of his day, with playful aids to the perception of what a civilized community might be. On the 31st of October 15 17, Martin Luther affixed to the church door at Wittenberg his 95 theses against Indulgences. Wiclif and Huss were dead, but there remained the cause they battled for. Luther was turned to rebellion against the Pope's authority by the Pope's rebellion against Reason and Scripture. The papal legate Cajetan gave up attempt to bring Luther back into the state of passive obedience, and said, "I will not speak with the beast again; he has deep eyes, and his head is full of speculation." Luther's translation of the Bible into German set William Tyndale upon the like work in England. Tyndale's New Testament 21 A GLANCE AT THE PAST was printed at Cologne and Worms in 1525, at Ant werp in 1526, and smuggled into England, with hij tracts in aid of Church Reform. In 1536 Tyndal( was strangled and burnt at Antwerp. His last words' were: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" In 1537 Miles Coverdale produced the first complete translation of the Bible into English, and it was ad- mitted into England. Foundations of the future church . establishment in England were then being laid. In; May 1533, a few months after his private marriage with Anne Boleyn King Henry VIII. was divorced from Katherine of Arragon. Their daughter Mary, after- wards Queen Mary of England, was then seventeen years old. In the following September Elizabeth was born. Henry VIII. having quarrelled with Rome over the personal question of his divorce from Katherine, in November 1534 the English Parliament made the King absolute master of the Church of England. In 1535, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, when an old man of 80, was beheaded because he could not take oath of assent to the king's new position in the Eng- lish Church. Fisher was beheaded on the 2 2d of June, and Sir Thomas More, for a like reason, on the 6th of July. In the same year Hugh Latimer was made Bishop of Worcester. Coverdale's Bible was then in print, but it was dedicated to the king's " most dearest just wife Anne," and as Anne Boleyn was be- headed in May 1536, before these Bibles had been issued', the issue was delayed for the removal of the dedication. In 1537 the king's next wife, Jane OF ENr.TJSH LITERATURE. 2^ Seymour, died after the birth of her son Edward. While attempts were being made to secure an English version of the Bible free from the objection laid against Tyndale's of Lutheranism in the manner of translation, the English Church Reformers were still active in controversy. In 1539 — the year also of Thomas Crom- well's final act for the dissolution of Abbeys — the king, as Head of the Church, declared for all the practices against which objection was most frequent. The king's "Act abolishing Diversity of Opinion" caused Latimer to resign his bishopric and he w^as silenced during the rest of Henry VIIFs reign. Meanwhile upon the continent the zeal of Calvin had been added to the zeal of Luther. On the 20th of November 1541 Calvin's Ecclesiastical and Moral Code established at Geneva what was called "the Yoke of Christ." There was free use of authority to enforce doctrine and discipline, there as elsewhere. The reading of romances was forbidden. Three children were officially punished for stopping outside the church to eat cakes after service had begun. In 1568 a child was beheaded for having struck her parents. A lad of sixteen was sentenced to death for only threatening to strike his mother. The forms of earnestness in this and other controversies could in no man lie wholly outside the civilization of his time. On the 28th of January 1547 King Henry VIIL died, only a few days after he had signed the death warrant of one of the best poets of his reign, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Though the Earl of Surrey 24 A GLANCE AT THE PAST had never been himself in Italy he had joined his elder friend Sir Thomas Wyatt in adapting Italian and French verse measures to the English tongue. Through them the sonnet found its way into English Literature, and it was the Earl of Surrey who by translating two books of Vergil's ^neid into a form of blank verse then being tried in Italy, brought into English Litera- ture the use, at first only a slight use, of a measure that was developed afterwards by the genius of Shake- speare and Milton into the noblest instrument for the expression of poetic thought. In Henry the Eighth's reign Italian influence, which, in the days of Chaucer, had been influence only of great writers on great writers, became an influence of court upon court, a spread of fashions from the source of fashion. The earnest undertone of English thought was in the fancies of the courtly poets who in the latter part of Henry the Eighth's reign followed the Italian fashions. Italians claimed all the great Latin poets as their an- cestors; in Italy the new foundations also of Modern Literature had been laid by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The free spirit from which that new power came was being enfeebled by the rise of tyrannies. But the little tyrants played at literature, wrote verse, and gladly directed thoughts of eager minds from ques- tions of political right to debate over the sonnets of Petrarch. It became a courtly fashion to write verse, and strain for ingenious daintiness of speech, known in England as the Euphuism of the Elizabethan time. Who could deny the right of Italy to lead Europe in OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 2^ Art and Literature? Nowhere else in the world was the temper of the artist so distinctly to be found. Ariosto produced his Orlando in 1515, within Henry the Eighth's reign, and died in 1533, the year of the king's divorce from Katherine. Among the universities and courts of Italy there was in those days the birth of the modern drama. Pastoral poetry was finding a new voice. Scholarship was active. The year of Luther's birth was the year also of the birth of Raffaelle, and Ariosto and Michael Angelo were born within one half year of 1 474-7 5. Some of the verses writ- ten in accordance with Italian usage by noblemen and gentlemen of the days of Henry the Eighth, Edward VI. and Queen Maiy were collected, together with the poems of the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, into a book commonly known as Tottel's Miscellany. It was published a few months before Elizabeth became Queen. The tone of these poems, although they can be playful, is never frivolous. The voice even of courtly English song, in those days of constant struggle over essentials of the higher life, accords with the spirit of a little poem by Lord Vaux, one of the number of the courtly singers: "Our wealth leaves us at death, our kinsmen at the grave, But virtues of the mind unto the heavens with us we have. Wherefore, for virtue's sake, I can be Avell content The sweetest time of all my life to deem in thinking spent." With the advance of scholarship came also new thought upon the principles of education. At the end of the Fifteenth Century, Grocyn and Linacre had first 26 A GLANCE AT THE PAST taught Greek at Oxford. Among the Greek scholars at Oxford was John Colet, son of a rich citizen of London. He became in 1 505 Dean of St. Paul's, and began in 15 10 the spending of his large private fortune on the founding of St. Paul's School. Sir Thomas Elyot, a Suffolk gentleman, who served Henry VIII. as Ambassador, wrote both upon Educa- tion and upon Management of Health. His little book called "the Castle of Health," written with apology to the doctors for entering their domain, curiously applies the medical knowledge he had picked up from books then of authority to discussion of food and diet, and throws light upon the social customs of the day. It was published in 1533, two years later than his book called "the Governour," the most en- lightened treatise on the education proper for a gen- tleman which had appeared up to that time in Eng- lish Literature. Records of the foundations of public schools bear, indeed, clear witness to the interest in education that formed part of the new birth of ener- getic thought. Only eight public schools were founded before the reign of Henry VI., one of them being Winchester College. In the reign of Henry VI., in 1441, Eton was founded. In the same reign three other schools were established, one of them being the City of London School, which was revived in 1834. ^^ the reign of Edward IV. four schools were founded; under Edward V. none. Under Richard III. there was one; under Henry VII. there were twelve; but under OF ENGLISH IJTERATURE. 2/ Henry VIII. the number of new school foundations was no less than forty nine. The work went on with in- creased energy during the short reign of Edward VI. when forty four more schools were founded; Christ's Hospital being one of them. Twelve schools were founded in the reign of Mary (there were not more during the whole of the long reign of George III.), and one hundred and fifteen under Elizabeth, including Westminster, Merchant Taylors', and Rugby. Charter- house was among the forty-eight schools founded in the reign of James I. Of the whole number of public schools founded from the days of King Alfred down to the present day, one half date from some year within the period from the accession of Henry VIII. to the death of Elizabeth. After the death of Henry VIII. there was a child king of ten years old in the hands of the Church Re- formers, who were energetic in securing the predomi- nance of their opinion. Latimer, called into activity, preached before Edward VI. and before the court and people, with direct zeal against all unreformed abuses, not without condemnation of the neglect of the plough in God's field by the prelates. The Devil, he said, is the busiest prelate in England, "ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you." Edward's short reign, from 1547 to 1553, was followed by the reign of his elder sister, Queen Katherine's daughter, Mary. By her the work of the reformers was overthrown, the new doctrines and service books were deprived of authority, strong efforts were made to restore the English Church to the 28 A GLANCE AT THE PAST communion of Rome, and on the i6th of October, 1555, Latimer was among those who were burnt for their opinions. On the 17th of November 1558 Queen Mary died and her younger sister EUzabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter, then twenty-five years old, became Queen of England. OF ENGLISTT LITERATURE. 2g CHAPTER IT. FROi\r THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH TO THE REIGN OF ANNE. The whole population of England in the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign was below five million, and burning questions of the day caused wide divisions among these. If the best intellect among the people was on the side of Reformation in the Church, more than half of them were inclined to stand in the old ways. Among the Reformers there was subdivision. John Hooper, who was burnt under Mary, had been sent to prison under Edward by way of conquering his strong objection to be made a Bishop if, as Bishop, he must wear the Bishop's robes. The con- troversy upon vestments that has never died out of the English Church of the Reformation, arose, like most other occasions of debate within its pale, out of the way in which the Reformation was established. On the continent the follow^ers of Luther and Calvin drew to themselves, where they prevailed, prince and peasant. They had no difficulty in putting aside the whole cere- monial of Roman worship, and establishing the severe simplicity of a Church based upon no authority but that of Scripture. In England, when the Pope was set aside the King replaced him, and opinions or usages ordained by authority, were imposed, with frequent 30 A GLANCE AT THE PAST abrupt change, upon a country but half willing to accept them. Edward's advisers had been afraid to stir violence of opposition by conspicuous change in the outward appearance of church worship. The young queen put in the place of Cardinal Pole, Matthew Parker as her first Archbishop of Canterbury, and with his help set about her work of establishing the Reforma- tion in the Church of which she meant to be the Head. Matthew Parker was a pureminded religious man, and a good student of the past. The Queen's policy, and the Archbishop's, was to find a middle way between the Roman Catholics and those re- formers against whom Pecock of old had reasoned, the Bible men, who in Elizabeth's time were first called Precisians or Puritans. Elizabeth felt strongly the difficulty caused by discords among her people. Spain, richer by discovery of the New World, was a strong combatant for Rome, and little England, divided within itself, had from Spain certainly, perhaps from Spain and France to- gether, an attack to face. Her desire for union among her subjects was often expressed. It was this feeling partly that caused her at the beginning of her reign to give such emphasis to the chance production of the ■^ first tragedy written in English, "Gorboduc", or "Ferrex and Porrex", that its success opened the way to the development of the Elizabethan drama. The story taken by its young writers, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, who produced it as an entertainment for Grand Christmas at the Inner Temple in 1561, OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 3 I was unquestionably chosen for expression of a thought dominant at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. The first of the dumbshows before the acts, set forth the fable of the bundle of sticks which being divided were easily broken, but when bound together withstood all force from without. When the queen heard of this play, she commanded that it should be acted again before herself and her court; and it was so acted, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, upon a great decorated scaffold in the Queen's hall in West- minster, on the 1 8th of January, 1562 (new style). That was the birthday of the English drama. The first English comedy had, indeed, been pro- duced by Nicholas Udall, the headmaster of Eton in Henry the Eighth's reign, between the years 1534 and 1 54 1, when he made a free adaptation into English of the "Miles Gloriosus" of Plautus as "Ralph Roister "^ Doister," instead of giving his boys, as usual, a Latin play to act. But there was nothing in the conditions under which that comedy was produced to cause wide imitation. It was otherwise with Gorboduc, produced in London before a large audience of cultivated men trained in the Universities, and emphasized by the Queen's special command for its repetition at West- minster. The Queen herself from that time regularly included plays written in English among court enter- tainments, and they were set forth, as masques had been, with some scenery. On the public stages, with- out scenery, entertaining stories of all kinds were freely dramatised and shown in action. $2 A GLANCE AT THE PAST The delight in plays spread, but for a long time the plays were, with few exceptions, of but little literary worth. For the next five and twenty years there was no great rise of the English drama. At court John Lyly produced daintily ingenious pieces, clas- sical and mythological, addressed only to cultivated audiences, George Peele displayed in a court-play the grace of his genius, but on the whole, it may be said that from the year 156 1-2, when Gorboduc was pro- duced, to the year 1586, when it is probable that Shakespeare came to London at the age of twenty two, few plays of much literary value were produced. When William Shakespeare, eldest son of John Shake- speare, glover, of Stratford upon Avon, left his native town to try his fortunes in London, his father was a broken man, who had been struggling with adversity for the last eight years. William Shakespeare, born on the 23d of April 1564, had married Anne Hathaway towards the close of 1582. A daughter Susanna was born in 1583, and there were twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1585. In some way he must have been endeavouring at Stratford to support his wife and his three babies, when it occurred to him that he might earn more in London if he joined the players. He came as an unknown youth out of Warwickshire, and though born to become the world's greatest poet, there were six years of patient industry among the players, prentice years they may be called, during which he was only learning his art and finding his way to some little recognition of his powers. But those were the OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. ^^ first six years of a vigorous development of the Eliza- bethan drama. In 1586 John Lyly's age was only ^^, Peele was of about the same age, Thomas Lodge per- haps 28, Robert Greene, Henry Chettle and Thomas Kyd were young men of seven and twenty. Chris- topher Marlowe, a shoemaker's son who had been sent to Cambridge, foremost among them all in genius, broke into fame with his Tamburlaine at the time when Shakespeare joined the theatres, and he also w\as then but a young man of twenty two or twenty three. During the six years when Shakespeare was learning his art, Marlowe was running through his brilliant career, and with Lodge, Peele, Greene and others was producing a poetic drama, purely Eliza- bethan. At the end of those six years, in 1592, Shakespeare had produced little or nothing beyond such recasting of the plays of other writers as we have in the three parts of King Henry VL Marlowe was killed in a brawl in 1593. During the six years from Greene's death to the year 1598, Shakespeare was putting forth his power, and there was no dramatist of mark to divide attention with him. That was his harvest time. Within that time he was producing about two plays a year. A list of twelve plays is given in a book of the year 1598 — Meres's "Palladis Tamia" — that bears witness to the pre-eminence he had by that time attained. He was then thirty four years old, and in the preceding year had bought "New Place," one of the best houses in his native town. There remained five years of Elizabethan 0/ English Literature. 3 3'4 A GLANCE AT THE PAST Drama before the death of Elizabeth. In these years Shakespeare continued his successes. But during these last five years of the reign a group of younger | dramatists became active. Ben Jonson's earliest comedy, "Every Man in His Humour," was produced in its current form in 1598. Thomas Dekker, John Mar- ston, Thomas Heywood also began writing in the la^ years of Elizabeth, and while Shakespeare was still writing, and rising in power, the English Drama reached its highest ground during the first ten or twelve years of the reign of James the First. Ben Jonson was then at his best, Beaumont and Fletcher joined the company of writers. Ford, Massinger, Mar- ston and others were then also writing. Causes of decay were already at work, but certainly the full ripeness of the English drama was in those first years of the reign of James the First. We turn back to Elizabeth's endeavour to secure peace for her Church by taking a middle way be- tween the strife of opposite opinions. Archbishop Parker died in 1575 and was succeeded in his see of Canterbury by Edmund Grindal Archbishop of York. Grindal was in agreement with those Church reformers who laid stress upon study of the Bible, and faithful exposition of it by the clergy. He encouraged meet- ings of the clergy known as Prophesyings for debate upon difficulties. The queen held that if every minister considered it his duty to study the Bible for himself and express in sermons his personal opinions to his people, the issue of this could only be a splitting OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 35 of the church into more forms of various opinion than there were already. She commanded Grindal to sup- press the prophesyings, and to discourage independent preaching. She had adopted in 1559 the "Book of Homilies" issued in Edward the Sixth's reign, and added to this in 1563 a second Book of Homilies. f Here, she thought, were sermons enough; and if these were generally preached there would be throughout the country one harmonious body of instruction from the pulpits. Grindal^ could not obey the Queen's com- mand to restrain his clergy in their search into the Scriptures. Therefore in 1577 he fell into disgrace. He was restrained from exercise of the duties of his office, and was, until his death in July, 1583, Arch- bishop only in name. In 1577 when Grindal fell into disgrace, Edmund Spenser was a young man of about four-and-twenty; he had proceeded to his M. A. degree at Cambridge the year before, and was then possibly a tutor in the North of England. In 1579 Spenser was in London, employed by the Earl of Leicester, the friend also of Leicester's nephew, Philip Sidney, who was of like age and in many respects like minded with himself. In that year Spenser published his first little book of verse, "the Shepherd's Calendar," and in it he not only followed the French poet Clement Marot in mak- ing pastoral eclogues speak desire for a pure church and unworldly ministers, but in doing so he clearly took his stand by the disgraced Archbishop Grindal. It was a characteristic opening to Spenser's literary 3* 3 6 A GLANCE AT THE PAST life. No man ever set thought to sweeter music, and there are some who are content with a mere enjoy- ment of the outward charm of Spenser's manner, as if that were all. But Spenser was the Elizabethan Milton, Puritan like Milton with no narrow zeal against the innocent delights of life, but with grand yearning for the victory of man over all that opposed his main- tenance of a pure soul obedient to God in a pure body obedient to the laws of Nature. Shakespeare was universal poet. He saw through the accidents of life to its essentials. But the accidents of his time are never out of Spenser's verse. He is a combatant poet. In his Faerie Queene, never completed though he was at work on it for more than fourteen years, he used a form of romance in which his time de- lighted, to show man through all his powers for good battling his way heavenward. Aid of divine grace the poet represented, in the eighth canto of each book, by the intervention of Prince Arthur with his diamond shield. But while "the Faerie Queene" might be read simply as a spiritual allegory based on Christian doctrine, alike applicable to all times, the general allegory is expressed through constant indication of the particular battles of the poet's own day. But the strife it tells of, with its aim unchanged whatever the shifting scenery of conflict, lasts through all genera- tions till we reach the crowning race of man. The poet sought to put his genius to the highest use. /^Amusers of a day the day rewards, and their reward vends with the day. Only the helpers live. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 37 Spenser was a young child when John Knox re- turned from Geneva to Scotland, and prospered so well in his work that, on the 17th of August 1560, the Estates of Scotland embodied his opinions in a Con- fession of Faith for the Scottish Church. The Scottish Reformation was established in accordance with the view of those who preferred church government by Presbyters and Elders to what they looked upon as the less scriptural rule of Bishops. The Puritan view that prevailed in Scotland was in England also very strongly represented. In the third year of Elizabeth's reign, when it was moved in Convocation of the Church that Saints' Days should be abolished; that in common prayer the minister should turn^ his face to the people; that the sign of the cross should not be used in baptism; that kneeling at the sacrament should be left to the discretion of the minister; that organs should be removed; and that it should suffice if the minister wore the surplice once, provided that he ministered in a comely garment, there was a large majority of members present, including Dean Nowell, the author of the Church Catechism still in use, who voted for these concessions. The numbers were fifty- three to thirty-one, but proxies changed the balance of the votes and gave a majority of one against the Puritans. Of eighty-five editions of the English Bible published in Elizabeth's reign, sixty were of the Geneva version, preferred by the Puritans. The fierce spirit of conflict with Rome was not wanting in its preface, nor indeed were Roman Catholics free in 38 A GLANCE AT THE PAST Elizabeth's reign from cruel persecution, even to torture and death. But the fierceness, though it might breathe desire to hew Agag in pieces before the Lord, was chiefly spent in spiritual contest with a cruel tyranny. In 1567 there was established the Council of Blood in the Netherlands; and in February 1568, all the in- habitants of the Netherlands were condemned to death, by sentence of the Inquisition, except a few who were named. In a letter to Philip, Alva estimated at 800 the executions in Passion wxek. In the following year Edmund Spenser, then passing from school to College, contributed to a religious book published by a refugee from the Low Countries. In 1572 there was in France the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Spenser was then a youth of about nineteen, and young Philip Sidney was in Paris at the time. In 1573 there was the siege of Haarlem, with 300 women among the defenders of the town. At Haarlem there was a treacherous slaughter of two or three thousand; three hundred were tied back to back and drowned in the lake. Alva, recalled by his own wish in December, boasted that he had caused 1 8,600 Netherlanders to be executed. This was the year in which Spenser took his Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1579 William of Nassau was nominated Stadtholder of Holland, and in July 1581 there was the Dutch Declaration of Independence. In 1585-7 there was the expedition of Leicester in aid of the struggling Protestants, during which, on the 22d of September, 1586, Sir Philip Sidney, noblest type of the young Elizabethan Englishman, was killed OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 3g at Zutphen. As Athens rose to her highest point dur- ing the struggle with Persia, so the effect of this struggle for life and freedom upon the Dutch provinces engaged in it, was their prosperity. Old towns became larger, and new towns were built; the ports of the free states were filled with shipping. In these days, Moscow, Constantinople and Paris were the three largest capitals. The London of Elizabeth, astir with highest life, was a town of about 160,000 inhabitants. But when the whole power of Spain was gathered against her, England, stirred to the soul, poured out her highest energies. The land was full of music. With the soul of Freedom for its Prospero, This isle was full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Still there were courtly singers, Sir Walter Raleigh struck boldly with his privateers at wealth of Spain upon the seas, and sang praise of his Queen. Sidney was poet, and wrote a "Defence of Poesy," the first piece of English criticism that looked through the letter to the spirit of good literature. Sidney's nearest friends were Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer, poets both. It was Dyer who sang My mind to me a kingdom is, Such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss That earth affords or grows by kind : Though much I want which most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave. All the dramatists were lyric poets, for the greater must include the less. He is no dramatist who can- 40 A GLANCE AT THE PAST I not write a song. Not only the greater poets, as Spenser and Shakespeare, but singers like Thomas : Watson and Henry Constable who aspired no higher,, scattered sonnets. Elizabeth herself wrote rhymes, J and so did James of Scotland. The luxury of fancy spent itself on dress, and played ingenious tricks upon language, following Italian example that then- spread through all the literature of Europe. But the ■ strain for antithesis, alliteration and far-fetched in- genuity of simile, was nowhere so pleasantly successful as in England, where it took its name of Euphuism from the title of a book of John Lyly's. And Lyly's " Euphues," published in 1579, while written in the dainty fashion that was to make it acceptable, was deeply earnest in its purpose. It sought to enforce among the rich such care for education as had been shown in 1570 by Roger Ascham's " Schoolmaster," — the next famous book : upon education, after Sir Thomas Elyot's "Governour," ' — and a regard for religion not enfeebled by the lighter " fashions of the day. ' Through all home discords, fellowship in a com- mon danger from without held England and Elizabeth in strong accord until after the defeat of the Spanish armada. Struggle between the two different types of thought, which had arranged nations of Europe into opposite camps, became then less urgent on a Euro- pean question, and attention was transferred to the home controversies. These also turned chiefly upon questions of holding by authority and the traditions of the past, or giving a new range to thought and build- OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 41 ing for the future. The queen also was unmarried and had no direct heir to her throne. Of more than twelve possible claimants to the succession she would not name one. It was enough for her that quiet arrangements were made to secure the throne after her death to James of Scotland. With many claimants to the throne and no declared successor, it was commonly feared that the divided land would be again weakened by civil war. It is for this reason that the two best heroic poems of Elizabeth's later time made it their theme to paint the misery of civil war. Daniel published, in 1595 and succeeding years, his poem on "the Civil Wars of Lancaster and York." Drayton followed in 1596 with his poem on "the Lamentable Civil Wars of Edward the Second and the Barons." Even Shake- speare had begun in those latter days with work upon plays that had civil war for their theme. The three Parts of Henry VI. were probably produced in 1592, and a bad version of the second of these plays was printed in 1594 as "the First Part of the Contention betwixt the Houses of York and Lancaster." Thomas Lodge also, among the dramatists, dealt with the same theme when he produced his play of "the Wounds of Civil War, lively set forth in the true tragedies of Marius and Sylla," first printed in 1594. Under James the First there was not only, during the first ten or twelve years of the reign, the time of the full ripeness of the English drama, preceding the several stages of its swift decay, but the energies aroused under Elizabeth gave impulse to a great ad- 42 A GLANCE AT THE PAST vance of thought in the domain of Science. Francis Bacon was about three years older than Shakespeare, whom he outlived ten years. Bacon lived through the whole of the reign of James I., which contains all his maturest work. He had not thriven to his mind in Elizabeth's reign; but he rose rapidly under James. He lived by law and loved philosophy. As lawyer Bacon rose to be Lord Chancellor, and as philosopher he gave the strongest impulse to a sound method of experimental search into the secrets of Nature. His dispassionate experimental method failed when applied to life. The emotions have their part with intellect and will in shaping human action, and on critical occasions Bacon failed for want of that impulse which has no part in the work of philosophical re- search but assists in determining the healthy acts of men in their common relations. As a thinker Francis Bacon fastened even at College upon the idea which it was his life's work to develope. He wished that philosophers, instead of turning their wits round and round upon themselves, would use the mind as a tool with which to hew out truth from the great quarry of nature and shape it into use for man. From any observed facts in the world about us, let us by thought- ful experiment find our way in to the knowledge of the law that governs them. But after the law had been found by this inductive method, there followed the carrying out of the main purpose of Bacon's system, and that was, to deduce from the law prac- tical application of it that would enlarge the dominion OP F.NGrJSH LITERATURE. ^3 of man. When Franklin began search into the un- known cause of thunder and lightning by sending up his kites into a thunderstorm, there was beginning of inductive experiment; and when, through experiment after experiment, there came knowledge of electricity and of the laws under which it acts, deduction fol- lowed. Thus through one only of the many ways of employing the new force, the electric telegraph, an invention as important as that of the mariner's com- pass, has enlarged the powers of man. Such dis- coveries. Bacon argued, instead of being made at rare intervals by accident, w^ould be made frequently as the result of definite inquiry, if men followed the methods of the New Organon, which he opposed to the Organon of Aristotle. There may have been no- thing new in Bacon's teaching, but in him the energ}^ of the time put it into the mind of the man who was in force of intellect second only to Shakespeare, to apply himself with all his might to the enforcement of the great central principles of true research in science. The teaching of Bacon set men who had scientific tastes inquiring. In the days of Charles the First there were little communities, at Oxford and at, Gresham College in London, of men who were seeking the advance of knowledge by experiment, as Bacon counselled. The movement gathered strength, and one issue of it was the founding in 1662 of "the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge," which is to this day in England the great public expression of the Fellowship of Science. 44 A GLANCE AT THE PAST Science was born again, while the poetical drama passed into decay. Like causes had been at worl^ to make the days of Elizabeth and James the great period alike of English and of Spanish Drama. Spanish plays, when they were not on sacred subjects, founded their plots commonly on complications of intrigue, in which animal love was the motive power. Influenced of the Spanish Drama became marked in France, and! it advanced to England. Under Elizabeth, dramatists; great and small made plays of tales that touched humanity in all its forms. Shakespeare still did so; in the reign of James I., and so, in his own way, did! Ben Jonson, but among other men there was an almost! general acceptance of the fashion of the time. The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, were all first produced 1 in the reign of James. Apart from Shakespeare's there' are none which contain finer strains of imaginative J verse; but there is no longer, in the choice and J management of the plots a range wide as all the \ interests of man. Usually also it is not love on which J the plots turn, but a sensual passion that mistakes its ' name. The Puritans began war against plays chiefly because they were at first acted on Sundays. After I that cause of contention ceased, there remained no I very substantial ground of ofl"ence. Shakespeare wrote ' for audiences that represented fairly the whole body of the English people. But when the matter of the , plays lost wholesomeness there was a gradual desertion i of the playhouses by men who represented no small I part of the best life of England. This lowered the OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 45 one of the audiences. The stage reflects only the Vorld before the curtain and within the playhouse vails. When, therefore, the audience sinks below a air representation of the whole -life of the country, he plays sink with it. In Ben Jonson's relation with he stage we find vigorous illustration of this process )f decay. He could not refrain from expressions of :ontempt for audiences out of which the large life of lumanity was gone. Turning, at last, from "the loathed itage," with an ode pouring fierce scorn upon the men ,vho called themselves its critics and its patrons, who discussed each day "something they call a play," he 5aid of them If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not, their palate's with the swine. rhat ode was written in the year 1630, only fourteen y^ears after the death of Shakespeare. There was decay also in the versification of the plays. Marlowe had brought blank verse into use as the measure of dramatic poetry. Shakespeare had brought it to perfection. With increased familiarity there had come increased freedom in its use. With many dramatists in Shakespeare's latter day, freedom of use meant often careless use. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. the carelessness was more habitual. At last the decline was general, and when the drama was revived, after the Commonwealth, those who tried to write blank verse produced usually prose hacked into bad lengths. The art of writing blank verse was extinct, and critics were pretty well agreed 46 A GLANCE AT THE PAST to give up its use in the drama. No great use had ever been made of it in other forms of poetry; Buti just when this was settled, Milton produced in blank- verse "Paradise Lost," and upon that rock the critical cockboats came to pieces. There was decay even in the polite forms of ingenious speech. Elizabethan Euphuism lost its fresh elastic life, the strain that still was healthy strain of a quick wit. The strain remained, painfully showing itself in stiff-jointed struggles for agility. The later Euphuism was laboured, obscure and pedantic. What! we called in England Euphuism was a form of writing that spread out of Italy to France and Spain as well as to England. The fashion being artificial could not last, and the manner of its decay was the same throughout. In Italy, Spain, France, England it was passing at the same time through like stages of decay. While Donne stands for type of the change in English Literature, its type in Italy is Marino, in Spain, Gon- gora. Our Euphuists were contemporary with a cor- \ responding school of poets called in Spanish Literature i the Conceptistas, and our Later Euphuists, whom Samuel Johnson afterwards called "metaphysical poets," v/ere contemporary with a school of Spanish poets called i the Cultos, who, like our later Euphuists, mightily] affected culture. Culture! The aim of culture is to bring forth in their due season the natural fruits of the earth. But the deep religious life that has never died in the English people, and is the strength of many OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 47 opposite forms of opinion, found expression still, what- ever the outside dress in which fashion had clothed it. Even in Donne's poetry that inner grace of thought makes itselt felt through the misfitting dress of words that cumbers it. The poems of George Herbert's "Temple" were written in 1630-33 during the three last years of his life, when he was rector of Bemerton, housed in a damp hollow and slowly dying of con- sumption. These poems have all the outward features of the later Euphuism, but the living soul of the poet has struck its own fire into them all. As the flesh was sickening and dying, the spirit rose in health and life. Herbert represented the English church as loved by those who were most ready to find emblems in aid of spiritual life in that form of ceremonial against which the Puritans contended. But no form of opinion has ever dulled the English reader's sense of the pure spirit of devotion that breathes out of George Herbert's singing. His "Temple" had so great an effect upon men's minds, that it gave rise to a little school of poets who avowed themselves his followers and imitators. Best of the group and nearest to his master, whom he sometimes equalled, Henry Vaughan, was, like Herbert himself, a Welshman. There was decay also under James I., or tendency to decay, in the old sense of the relation between Crown and People. Elizabeth had felt like an ab- solute queen, and had stretched her prerogative. The people believed that, "divinity doth hedge a king," and with the Queen, true Englishwoman, whatever 48 A GLANCE AT THE PAST her faults, it was Elizabeth for England and not England for Elizabeth. With her successor it was rather England for James than James for England. Such a king soon brought into question the limits of royal authority. Locke has observed that liberty is apt to suffer under a good sovereign, because the trust of the people goes with every undue use of the royal power. The motive and the end are held to justify the means. But when a weak rule follows, ground has to be recovered upon which the Sovereign can no longer be trusted. Then may come strife. The question of the limit of authority extended, there- fore, in the reign of James the First from Church to State. One of the Church questions agitated in those days touched the divine authority of Tithes. John Selden, trained to the law, was, among all of his time, the one man most learned in what we now call the constitutional history of England. He took for his motto a Greek sentence meaning "Above all things. Liberty." He was an antiquary who distinctly valued study of the past as giving, "necessary light to the present," and who spoke of "the too studious affecta- tion of bare and sterile antiquity" as "nothing else than to be exceeding busy about nothing." Among the books written by Selden that brought a knowledge of the past to bear upon interpretation of the present, was one, published in 16 18, on "the History of Tithes." His purpose, he said, was not to take any side in the argument for and against their divine institution, but OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 4Q to bring together a narrative of facts and leave readers to use them as they pleased. Selden's facts bore very distinctly against that principle of divine authority which King James cherished in church matters as an outwork for defence of the great keep in which he himself dwelt. He had Selden before him, reasoned with him, brought him before the High Commission Court, ordered a confutation of his book to be written, and said to him, "If you or any of your friends shall write against this confutation I will throw you into prison." It was in the same year that James caused Sir Walter Raleigh to be executed for the satisfaction of the King of Spain, In 1621 the King came into conflict with his Parliament. Being offended at advice from Parliament, he told the House of Com- mons that its privileges were held from the Crown, were "rather a toleration than inheritance," and that if members forgot their duty they would be dis- allow^ed. The House of Commons took counsel with John Selden, and in accordance with his evidence entered a protest on its journals declaring that, "the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdiction of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritances of the subjects of England." King James at a Privy Council sent for the Commons' journal and with his own hand erased that entry. Then he dissolved the Parliament, imprisoned some of its members, and placed Selden in custody of the Sheriff. When afterwards, at the close of his reign, James was obliged to summon a new Parliament, 0/ English Literature. 4 50 A GLANCE AT THE PAST John Selden entered it as member for Lancaster, and he contributed his scholarship to the contest against exercise of absolute authority by Charles the First. When James the First died, John Milton, a youth of seventeen, went from St. Paul's school in London to Christ's College, Cambridge. The land was at that time full of song, and the English still were, as they had been since the days of Henry VIIL, distinctly a musical nation. In Elizabeth's reign part of the common furniture of a barber's shop was a pair of virginals on which a customer could play while he was waiting to be trimmed. It required no special preparation to strike up, in a chance company of friends, catches, madrigals, and part songs. Skill in song writing was an attainment that became the man of fashion, and perhaps there was no period in which song writing had a larger place in English Literature than the reign of Charles the First. Men who in earlier times would have written many plays and a few songs, now wrote one or two plays and many songs. Songs of the cavaliers sometimes glorified the drunkard and the light-o'-love, in playful strains that were meant only as a gay form of defiance to the Puritan. Among men of less wit the same antagonism only made the descent easier to fellow- ship with Gryll. In such times Milton, after seven years of study at Cambridge, had withdrawn to his father's house in Horton, a village near Windsor and Eton, and was labouring to fit himself for high use of what talent he OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 5 1 had as a poet. He had closed his sonnet of self- dedication, at the age of twenty-three, with a resolve to which he was, throughout his after life, as true as man can be: All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great task-master's eye. Milton was in his twenty- fourth year when he went home to Horton, and remained there until he was within eight months of the age of thirty. At Horton he wrote L' Allegro and II Penseroso, Arcades, Comus and Lycidas. "Arcades" was a slight domestic masque written for the family of the Earl of Bridgewater, to be used as an expression of family affection. Comus was a state masque, written to be presented at Ludlow Castle by the Earl of Bridgewater, when he gave, as representative of the sovereign, a grand entertainment upon coming into residence as Lord President of the West. It was produced in the great hall at Ludlow Castle on the 29th of September 1634, and must have been written not later than in the preceding spring, to allow time for the writing of the music to the words, the learning of parts, preparation of elaborate scenes and masks, and requisite rehearsals. In the preced- ing year, 1633, a Puritan lawyer, William Prynne, author of many books maintaining the less liberal form of Puritan opinion, published his "Histriomastix," which denounced stage plays, masques and dances in uncompromising terms. The chief actors in masques were members and friends of the family that gave the entertainment. The queen herself took part in the 4* 52 A GLANCE AT THE PAST Court Masques, and there arose outcry against Prynne that passages in his book were a direct insult to the Queen. Prynne published his book about Christmas 1632. On the first of February 1633 (new style) Prynne was committed to the Tower. He was there kept prisoner without bail. Information was not ex- hibited against him in the Starchamber until June 1633, and the sentence of the Starchamber was not pronounced until February 17, 1634. It was, that Prynne should pay a fine of ^5000, be expelled from his Inn, disbarred, deprived of his Oxford degree, set in the pillory at Westminster and Cheap- side, and in each pillory have one of his ears cut off. Though many of the Lords did not expect that such a judgment would be executed, and the Queen inter- ceded, there was no remission, and Prynne was pil- loried on the 7th and loth of May 1634, either while Milton was writing "Comus" or when he had just finished it. That Milton, who was, like Spenser, in the best sense of the word, but in none of its narrower senses, Puritan, should precisely at this time be asked to write a masque and accept the commission, is worth notice. The Inns of Court spent an unusual sum upon a masque, as a loyal way of repudiating the opinions of the disgraced lawyer. Some like feeling of loyalty may have caused the Earl of Bridgewater to grace his entertainment with a masque that required costly preparation. Milton was then in his twenty-sixth year, and with a just sense of the poet's office, he OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 53 showed that through masque or play as purely as through psalm or hymn the true music of life could be expressed. Without a touch of churlish contro- versy, or one word that could check innocent enjoy- ment of the festival to which he added new delight, he made his delight consist in a setting forth of the victory of temperance over excess, of the true spirit of purity over the sensual debasement of the flesh. The charming rod of Comus that must be reversed before his power is destroyed, enables the spirit of unlicensed mirth to cause things to seem other than they are. When the fashion of the time saw only hospitality in him who forced his friend down to the level of the swine, Comus had cast his spells into the spungy air, of power to cheat the eye with blear il- lusion. When Sabrina, nymph of the Severn, was raised to release the lady from the chair of Comus to which she was bound by her magic art, it was Sabrina, because the Severn was the river most familiar at Ludlow. From any other river Milton might have raised a waternymph to typify the spirit of Tem- perance that must arise to break the social spells of a bad custom. Comus escaped. His wand was not reversed. He lived on to become God of the English Court in Charles the Second's time. Only in our day we have seen his wand reversed. As the old question of the limit of authority be- came more and more urgent, and conflict of argument was blended with conflict of bodily force, above the tumult of civil war there rose upon every side the 54 A GLANCE AT THE PAST voices of the leaders in the war of thought. By thought alone the issues would be finally determined. The chief philosopher of the time, Thomas Hobbes, reasoned out the position of the citizen, and nature of the Body Politic. He argued that, like the body natural, the body politic must needs be, for its own well being, in absolute subjection to a single head. Such a head, he said, is the king, constituted by a society of men naturally equal, who give up to a central authority, for their own better preservation, some part of the right inherent in each one. Sir Robert Filmer, a loyal gentleman of less intellectual mark, acquired pro- minence by arguing that Hobbes conceded too much when he based the absolute authority of kings upon a social compact among men naturally equal. Men, he said, never were naturally equal. First there was Adam. When Eve followed, Adam was master. When sons were born, their father was their superior. Out of the divine ordinance of fatherhood Sir Robert Filmer drew the origin of an authority in kings re- ceived from God alone. When the king's cause was lost, conflict of thought was only the more active. The king was tried, condemned, and executed for treason against his people. Was there indeed a reciprocal obligation, and could a king as well as a subject be- come guilty of the capital offence of treason? Milton had taken no part in the physical struggle, he was one who, as he said, "in all his writings spoke never that any man's skin should be grazed." His part was with those only who ranged thought against thought for OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 55 the defence of a just liberty. From the outbreak of the Civil war to the settlement of the Revolution was a period of about five and forty years. The man of five and twenty had seen all its changes by the time he reached three score and ten, and lived through the din of all the conflicting arguments of all the parties. Whatever the outward changes that went with it, all was one continuous effort to find for Eng- land a solution of the problem of the limit of authority, so far as that was to be done by settling the relations between Government and People. The Commonwealth was an experiment in that direction. Really sustained by the vigour of a single man, all seemed to be sound while Cromwell governed. Opinion was freely ex- pressed, in many forms, as to the best constitution of a state. Thomas Hobbes published in 1651 his "Leviathan," the chief embodiment of the old argument for an absolute sovereign; James Harrington published in 1656 his "Oceana," the first plea in English Literature for vote by ballot after the manner of the Venetian republic, filling every office of the state by free elec- tion, with frequent return of the elected to a test- ing of their continued fitness by a fresh dependence on the votes of their constituents. Milton's tract on "the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" dealt with the essential principle in contest, and reasoned against irresponsible power. The indictment of England before Europe, written in 1649 ^7 Claude Saumaise, Selden was asked to answer, but Selden pointed to Milton, knowing well that, in the pleading of such a 56 A GLANCE AT THE PAST cause before the world, acuteness in applying know- ledge of the past to uses of the present needs to be quickened by the fervour of a high minded enthusiasm. Milton therefore wrote, in Latin, for all Europe, the reply to Saumaise, his first "Defence of the People of England," and sacrificed his failing eyesight over the labour of a second Defence. In all this there is to be felt under passing . accidents of controversy, the labouring of English thought towards the settlement not reached till 1689. J^^^^ before the death of Crom- well, Richard Baxter added to the Controversy his "Holy Commonwealth," in which he condemned ar- rangements that, like Harrington's, left God out of account. Baxter made God head of the Common- wealth, and a king ruler under God and for his people. He upheld monarchy, though he had felt it his duty to make common cause with those who sought to check the aggressions of Charles I. The argument touching the best way of providing for the maintenance of the religious life within the nation was carried on now mainly by the representa- tives of three forms of opinion. Two of them agreed in the desire to secure unity within the church by an accord of opinion, determined by authority. They differed as to the form of the authority, but if the Presbyterian form had been supreme, its theory of Church Union would have impelled it to force, if it could, all England into conformity. This bias of opinion was in direct accord with the principles of monarchy. The third party was that of the Indepen- OF ENGLISH LiTERATUl-lE. 57 dents. In the time of Elizabeth there was an obscure sect known as the Brownists, who held a doctrine then supposed to urge direct encouragement of heresy and schism. Their argument was that in matters of opinion men never will agree if they are free, as they should be, to think for themselves. They proposed, therefore, that in religion all who took the Bible for their rule of faith should find in that fact their bond of union; that each man should be free to draw his own conclusions as to the right way to the higher spiritual life, that he should then be free also to unite himself for religious worship into an independent con- gregation with those who agreed with him in their choice of a spiritual guide. A church thus formed would represent within itself all the diversities of human opinion. Each of its congregations would re- spect the different opinions of its neighbours, molesting none and by none molested, and all would be firmly united as one brotherhood, not by an impossible accord of intellectual opinion, but by that essential spirit of religion to which every form of doctrine is designed to lead, the "charity, which is the bond of perfectness." As this form of opinion spread, the obscure Brownists of Elizabeth's time became the strong body of the Independents in the days of Charles I. and the Commonwealth. Winning at first readiest acceptance from those in whom the bias was rather towards free- dom of individual thought than towards authority, it included the men with whom, in civil affairs, the theory of a republic would find favour. Each of these 58 A GLANCE AT THE PAST forms of opinion had, in the days of Civil war and of the Common we ahh, an earnest and pureminded re- presentative. Jeremy Taylor maintained the ideal of the episcopal established Church; Richard Baxter re- presented in the purest form the Presbyterian prin- ciple; John Milton, the Independent. Of these three men, however different in degree and character of intellect, the spiritual life was one, they were alike religious. Jeremy Taylor had endeavoured to bring all within the Church by widening its pale, and ask- ing for no other test of Church fellowship than com- mon acceptance of that oldest and simplest formula known as the Apostles' Creed. Milton desired no test of Church fellowship but an acceptance of the Bible as the basis of opinion, and upon that basis opinion wholly free. Each pleaded for charity and toleration. When Milton condemned Prelacy, he did. not condemn those who preferred prelacy within the Church to which they joined themselves, but those who required all men, whatever their personal convictions, to accept prelacy as the one form of government within the Church. Richard Baxter, in his numerous books, again and again pleaded for the healing of dissension and the restoration of peace to the Church. What he especially observed was the large accord between the Presbyterians and the church from which they had seceded. His aim, after the Restoration, was to obtain from either side little concessions that would make it possible to bring back the whole Presbyterian body into what Langland had called the Castle of Unity. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 59 From Baxter's point of view there was no scheme to be found that could inchide the Independents. The radical difference between Presbyterian and Indepen- dent had, in fact, been chief cause of the divisions that after Cromwell's death produced the failure of the Commonwealth. England, accepting the fact of the failure, tried monarchy again, and could do so only by the Restoration of the Stuarts. Prince Charles had been taught in a stern school and might have learnt his lesson. The Presbyterians at the Restoration were too strong a body to be directly slighted. But they had not been tolerant in the days of their supremacy. The restored Church was full of men who had suffered deeply from the bitterness of party spirit. There was a time now for retaliation. All men were not Baxters and Jeremy Taylors, and among the natural passions and resentments of the time Baxter found it impossible to work his cure for Church Divisions. Still also the Roman Catholics were a strong body in the land, able to draw shrewd conclusions on their own behalf from the continued strife among Reformers. There passed, then, into the reign of Charles the Second all this religious energy, together with the civil controversy that seemed to be settled but had, in fact, been only advanced a step or two. The days of his adversity had taught the new king nothing except some of the fashions that were least worth borrowing from France. As far as his influence extended, in every sense, good music went out of fashion. He had no interest in the old English harmonies, in sweet bo A GLANCE AT THE PAST accord of various instruments, fair type of the accord of various minds. He cared only for dance tunes to which he could snap his fingers, and these, he thought, were played best on the fiddle. The king's band,! therefore, was transformed into a body of French fiddlers; the same music found its way into the re- vived theatres, with dancing to it, and this was glanced : at by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in his burlesque play, "the Rehearsal," when spirits descended! with fiddlers dressed in green, and "the green frogs croaked forth a coranto of France." But there came into England at this time a more important influence of France over our literature. In outward forms, partly but not altogether for good, Italian influence went out and French influence came in. When many of the cavaliers, after the loss of their cause, formed a little English colony in Paris, they became guests in the salons of the Hotel Rambouillet, and were in daily relation with the new critical spirit. The Mar- quise de Rambouillet had led a movement among the ladies who, as queens of society might govern its usages, for the repression of all kinds of evil speaking. Even the common forms of speech in which a lady could not distinguish herself from her chambermaid, were avoided as low, but there was at the same time an honest attempt to aid in freeing the language from uncertainty of conflicting dialects and shifting usage, so that there might be one fixed language, a standard French, through which to express an enduring litera- ture. Out of this social movement the French Aca- OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 6 1 kmy had arisen in 1635, the year before the birth of Boileau. The Academy was to produce a Dictionary hat was to be the accredited list of words thence- brth to be adopted as classical French. In this pro- :ess of fixing the language by a formal effort, pre- ference was naturally given to words of Latin origin. French being a Romance language, such words were :n harmony with its whole structure. The French .\cademy was at work, the ladies, called in the polite strain encouraged by themselves, les Precieuses, were still in dainty league with the grammarians and curi- ous in words and phrases, when the exiled English courtiers came among them. At the same time the true vigour of French literature was rising to its highest, and already Corneille was producing his first and best plays. Critical discussion of words was passing on to- wards a criticism that would touch the essence of the thought within the words. This movement began while the Italian influence in its decayed form still prevailed. In their own polite way, the Precieuses did affect litera- ture. They believed that it became a person of quality to have taste in writing, and that Literature was a matter gf high culture with which the vulgar world had nothing to do. Thus taught in France, the English courtiers after the Restoration also affected taste. He was a man of wit and taste who could write verse to the tune of a saraband. A great noble might show taste also by discovering and aiding genius in others. There was still need of the relation of patron and client. In France that relation was main- 62 A GLANCE AT THE PAST , tained in the most elaborate and dainty forms, as ] part of a great man's state. But Moli^re had justj then in France declared his power, and through him i the genius of comedy was lavishing rare wealth off unaffected wit upon the expression of a shrewd good I sense. Moli^re wrote as his friend Boileau would have had men write; and Boileau, who was only twenty four years old when Charles the Second be- came king of England, in that year began to sweep » off with his satires the last traces of Italian in- fluence. "Let us turn," he said, "from the paste' brilliants of Italy. All should tend to good sense.",' The critical influence of Boileau rose, and extended", through nearly all Europe. It came to its height after • 167 1, when he published his imitation of Horace's Art ; of Poetry, H Art Poetique. France then was infested . with small critics, and in England too a polite rhyming about prose and prosing about rhyme became the fashion. John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, wrote in [ verse an "Essay on Poetry," and an "Essay on Satire." Lord Lansdowne wrote a poem on "Unnatural Flights in Poetry." The Earl of Roscommon, best of the group, , wrote in verse an "Essay on Translated Verse." Boileau himself was a true critic who taught at the right time the right doctrine. He was right when he bade those who had strayed too far from good sense to study the na- tive dignity of style in the best poets of the Augustan time. With an ease worthy of all imitation, those poets had clothed each thought in simple and natural words so truly fitted that the words they used are for OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 63 all time the happiest expression of the thought they uttered. Go to Nature, said Boileau, but see how the great artist follows Nature, and look up to him as your example. The small critics could understand only the letter of all this. In England the desire to avoid what was "low" in style led to a choice of words from the Latin side of the language, from which there was built up a separate book English; so that it was accounted as great a mistake to write like a man, as to talk like a book. This fog came down from among the heights although it did not stay by them long, but here and there it lingers still among the valleys. As Boileau did not begin to write his satires until 1660, it was not until six or seven years after the Restoration that his influence was generally felt in England. Because the French critics knew nothing about Eng- lish Literature, their followers shared their ignorance, and for two or three generations the Commonwealth period seemed to have fallen as a cloud between the present and the past. We were on the way tx) that state of critical con- ceit which young Addison reflected when he wrote at College, in the manner of his time, a sketch of the great English poets from Chaucer to Dryden. He showed his ignorance of Chaucer by adopting the opinion of the day. In vain he jests in his unpolished strain, And tries to make his readers laugh, in vain; 64 A GLANCE AT THE PAST and sank deeper still when he followed his blind guides by looking on the age of Elizabeth as a "bar- barous age," Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage, In antick tales amused a barbarous age. But now the mystic tale that pleased of yore, Can charm an understanding age no more. Shakespeare, young Addison left out altogether. A14 though the French critics understood Milton no better^ than Shakespeare, Addison fastened upon him from'^ the first, and since the nightingale was nothing to; the cuckoos, was content to say of him "he seems} ^ above the critic's nicer law." 1^ Free to return to verse after long labour for theJ^ direct service of his country, Milton had finished!^ writing "Paradise Lost" in the year of the plague of?^ London, 1665, and he published it in 1667, the year!*' after the Fire by which great part of the city was;'' destroyed. At some time in the latter years of the^'' Commonwealth his mind passed from its first coui'^ ception, which was of an Epic with king Arthur for!" its hero, to the theme he finally adopted. The land^f- was full of controversies touching the form of religion }L Among the Commonwealth men there was a constant! fi bandying of technical terms in theology, speculatioriP' over dogmas founded on the fall of man. Milton had''^' little liking for this kind of argument, he made it ir^ft Paradise Lost one of the entertainments of the devils ^1 who were to amuse themselves as they pleased until |w Satan's return, that they OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 65 reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end in wanderinjT mazes lost. The starting point of scepticism in that day was from L dogmatic theology that seemed to argue God unjust. Vhen Milton took for his theme the Fall of Man, he aw that he could shape out of it a poem fulfilling in he highest degree all requirements of the Epic, while t would set to music the religion of his country, as le felt it, and "justify the ways of God to man." The LCtion was one; it was great in the persons concerned, he First Parents of the race; great in itself; and, ac- :ording to the religious faith of his countrymen, upremely great in its consequences. He was supplied .Iso with that supernatural machinery which was held be essential to an epic poem. Ancient traditions of mgels and archangels enabled him to shape the con- ending powers of Good and Evil into spiritual forms :ntirely suited to his theme, and wanting in no ele- nent of dignity or grandeur. In Vergil's ^Eneid the •ne theme is the settlement of ^neas among the ^atins, great in its consequence, because it laid the irst foundations of the Roman Empire. What hap- )ened before the action of the poem, and what was to :ome of it, Vergil included in two episodes, ^neas enewing his old griefs in narrative to Dido tells all hat preceded; descending afterwards to the under- ^rorld, he learns from the shade of Anchises what shall ollow. Milton, in like manner, has for his one theme Of English Literature . 5 66 A GLANCE AT THE PAST the Temptation and Fall, with its immediate con-|iJ sequence, the expulsion from Paradise. What came|)f before, is told in the discourse of Raphael with Adam pi what should follow, is learnt from the Vision shown byiji Michael, and the discourse of Michael before Adan:?;; and Eve quit Eden. That episode shows the subject oiju the poem great in its consequence, not through man'jjil ruin, but through his redemption. While Milton, wittlie aid of the highest intellectual culture, enshrined irpi Charles the Second's reign the religion of his country! 1 in epic that rose high "above the Aonian Mount; '|r Bunyan in his way, unlearned in any but one book shaped his religion into homely allegory of the Chris|r tian's flight from destruction, and of his aids and peril as a Pilgrim who sought everlasting life. In 1 67 1, three years before his death, Miltori published in one volume "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes." Paradise Regained was a minia^ ture epic, in some sense a companion to Paradise Lost! since the theme of one poem was a Temptation anci a Fall, the theme of the other a Temptation and c{lc Victory. The epic form in "Paradise Regained" wan-ll deliberately subdued into harmony with one unbrokerlff strain, of which the burden may be said to be, "Res -111 in the Lord, and wait patiently for him." Paradise ii to be Regained by every man who bears the tempta lions of life, whatever their form, in the patient spiri of Christ, who waits his father's time and seeks onh to do his father's will. The temptation to distrust anci impatience was great in those days for men who likt OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 67 liltoii had battled for what they held to be the cause f civil and religious freedom, and who saw, in the olitical and social life of England under Charles the econd, exultation of the Philistines over the fallen ause of God. For this reason Milton again shaped is song to the times, and when all seemed dark bout him, when there was no man who could ill from what quarter deliverance would come, he ublished his last poems. In "Paradise Regained" he welt upon the patience of Christ, meek and un- •oubled in his firm rest upon God. In the midst of Samson Agonistes," he set in a fine chorus questioning •om the condition of the country, questioning from ae sorrows of the individual man; but he set it there tiat it might have its answer in the close. God of our fathers ! what is man That thou towards him with hand so various, Or might I say contrarious, Temper'st thy providence through his short course? The foremost of those who seemed chosen by God advance his glory and effect the people's safety — he Cromwells, Hampdens, Pyms, over the ruin of /hose work many despaired in 1671, — even toward tiese, thus dignified, Thou oft Amidst their height of noon, Changest thy countenance, and thy hand, with no regard Of highest favours past From thee on them, or them to thee of service. Nor only dost degrade them, or remit To Hfe obscured, which were a fair dismission, But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high, 5* 68 A GLANCE AT THE PAST Unseemly falls in human eye, Too grievous for the trespass or omission; Oft leav'st them to the hostile sword Of heathen or profane, their carcases ij To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived; Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times. And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude. But Milton's poem, and his life as a poet, closed ii the midst of outward darkness with expression of thi quiet faith that All is best, though we oft doubt What the unsearchable dispose Of highest Wisdom brings about. And ever best found in the close. ol In this case the event showed clearly enough tha Milton's faith was w^ell founded. The very circum stances that were taken as grounds of despair wen those which secured good speed to the settlement de|o sired. The English Revolution followed within eighteei;li( years of the poems in which Milton sought to suggesjic that it is one part of a true faith in God not to despai of the Republic. Taking a scripture parallel, for the more readj|2 persuasion of the people, Dryden shaped in his "Ab salom and Achitophel" keen satire in verse as a poli tical pamphlet on the vital question of the day. Fac tion he suggested had been heated by outcry over th( feigned Popish Plot, Shaftesbury (Achitophel) ha(f( taken advantage of this to stir Protestant passion anc persuade Monmouth (Absalom) to rebellion against hinft; father. Who were the heads of the rebellion? Whai^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 6g lends had the king? Here opportunity is given for ignette sketches of leaders on either side. Among irious counsels comes that of the king. His enemies ad abused his clemency, but let them now "Beware the fury of a patient man. Law they require: let Law then show her face." Dryden's poem was published on the 1 7th of No- ^mber 1681; on the 24th Law showed her face in a ay not desired by the king, for the grand jury ignored le bill of indictment against Shaftesbury and he was wed. But he left the country in 1682, to die in the )llowing year in the course of nature. His friend )hn Locke at the same time left England, which was len no very safe home for an active friend of liberty, oth went to Holland. Charles the Second died on le 6th of February 1685. His brother, the Duke of ork, succeeded as James the Second, and began his iign by going openly to mass. Li November of the ime year Louis XIV. in France revoked the Edict of antes, which had secured, in some places, to a limited xtent, freedom of worship for the Protestants. Although iquired to become Roman Catholics and forbidden ) quit the country, many French Protestants went into xile. Not a few settled in England, where their descendants add to the strength of the English people. )hn Evelyn noted in his diary how the Bishop of 'alence said that the victory over heresy in the Re- ocation of the Edict of Nantes was "but what was ished in England; and that God seemed to raise the 70 A GLANCE AT THE PAST French king to this power and magnanimous action's that he might be in a capacity to assist in doing thei^ same here." King James claimed a right to override law by dispensing with the Test Act, and in Apri 1687 issued a Declaration of Liberty of Conscience ii England, suspending all religious oaths and tests This set dissenters free as well as Roman Catholics The first appearance in Literature of Daniel Defoe was as the writer of three pamphlets to warn the Dis senters, he being himself one, that when they sen addresses of thanks to the king for his repeal of penai laws, they thanked him for assuming to himself j right to override the law. Again was urged the limi of royal authority. In the same year 1687 Dryden who had become Roman Catholic, aided the king's purl pose of bringing about, if possible, a Roman Catholi reaction, by writing an argument in verse between thn milk white Hind, type of Catholicism, and the Panthe whose spots indicated the multitude of Protestant heresies and schisms. His object in speaking throug^ beasts, a device open enough to ridicule, was to with draw the argument as much as possible from its dail;| association with passionate strife of men, and so tj get quieter hearing. A very lively caricature, by Mai thew Prior and Charles Montague, in the manner c the Duke of Buckingham's Rehearsal, called "th Hind and Panther transversed to the Story of th Country Mouse and the City Mouse," cleverly seize< what in art was the weak point of Dryden's poen though for the end it had in view the fault gav* OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 71 strength. Five^ears and a half before, when Dryden, relieving himself to be a Protestant, wrote the "Religio :.aici," his poem showed that he was Roman Catholic ilready. The theory of a Pope, whose absolute opinion ihall determine controversies and secure Unity of the ,^ith as a bond of peace, is in the doctrine of the •Religio Laici that —after hearing what the Church can say, If still our Reason runs another way That private Reason 'tis more just to curb Than by disputes the public peace disturb. For points obscure are of small use to learn: But common quiet is mankind's concern. In April 1688 James II. issued again his Declaration of Indulgence, and in May he ordered it to be read in all Churches. The Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops, one of them Thomas Ken, the author of an Evening Hymn still in wide use throughout Eng- land, sent to the King a petition which pointed out that the Declaration was "founded upon such a dispensing power as hath been often declared illegal in Parlia- ment." The Petition was hawked about London, where the Declaration was read only in four churches. The bishops were tried for libel and acquitted. The King had a camp at Hounslow for the maintenance of his authority, but the soldiers in camp joined the shouts of the people at the acquittal of the seven bishops. On the day of the acquittal, June 30th 1688, a mes- senger was sent to invite William of Orange, whose fleet entered Torbay on the anniversary of Gunpowder 72 A GLANCE AT THE PAST Plot. On the i gth of December the Prince of Orange held a Court at St. James's. James the Second tookl shelter with the King of France , and was declared to have abdicated. In February 1689 William and Mary< became King and Queen of England, accepting with the crown those definite limitations of authority which were afterwards embodied in the Bill of Rights. .i If the friends of an absolute authority were de- feated, their opinions were not changed. Dryden gave up his office of Poet Laureate by refusing to take the required oaths upon its renewal under a new sovereign. King William was loyal to the principles of the English Revolution, but he drew England into his continental wars; and England entered into themi| the more willingly because they struck at Louis XIV. I Thousands of Englishmen who would have found it< hard to understand the technical grounds of foreign^ war under William III. and Anne, were content to strike at the power of the King of France, because his -^ strength might be against the liberties of England. Even at home there was need of watchfulness. John i Locke returned to England in the ship that brought! Queen Mary, and together with the Revolution came at once a fit interpretation of its meaning. In 1689 and 1690 Locke produced "a Letter concerning Tolera- tion in Religion," and maintained his positions against attack; he also published "Two Treatises of Govern- ment," in one of which he demolished Filmer's theory of the divine origin of absolute authority, and in the other he set up the true theory of Civil Government. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 73 He published also in 1690 his "Essay concerning Hu- man Understanding," of which the purpose was to persuade men of the limits of the knowable and win them from the waste of strength upon vain argument over questions which no man could determine. Locke was one of the men of science to whose energies new force had been given since the days of Francis Bacon. The continued energy is indicated by the fact that 1687, the year of James the Second's Declaration of Indulgence, was the year in which Isaac Newton published his "Principia," which included the demon- stration of his theory of gravitation. Locke had been associated with the group of scientific men at Oxford, and out of inclination towards useful science, had made physic his profession. But the times bred thought as to the constitution of a state. Lord Shaftes- bury, when Lord Ashley, had been drawn towards Locke by the wisdom of his political reasonings, and had assisted in determining the bent of his scientific study towards the constitution of society. Then Locke's writings were of Civil and Religious Liberty, of Educa- tion, including care of health, of the conservation of intellectual energy, so that it might be spent only upon useful discussion, and upon the maintenance of Christianity by taking it directly from its source, without reference to the vain efforts of later dis- putants to define what lies beyond the bounds of human knowledge. Locke, who was deeply religious, taught that man's senses are the gates by which all human knowledge enters, and that we cannot form a 74 A GLANCE AT THE PAST conception of anything that lies wholly outside the range of our experience. Matters of faith, he said, are above reason, not opposed to reason; we can have no higher assurance of truth than the Word of God. Having, therefore, convinced ourselves by reason of the authority of the book from which we draw our religion, we take simply its teaching upon spiritual things, and rest upon that, as sufficient. We pass the bounds of human understanding when we cumber revealed truth with definitions of our own. At the beginning of William the Third's reign Locke's argument for Toleration in Religion which time and experience have now taught almost all Englishmen to take as matter of course, was distinctly opposed, on the old ground that it destroyed Unity of the Church and opened the door to heresy and schism. The truth was not yet learned that uniformity of opinion is unattainable, and that the Church of a free people cannot comprehend the nation unless it allow room for wide varieties in critical opinion. If we can be content with bringing all into one brotherhood by maintenance of the one spirit of religion, we may not only bind a nation, but bind also the nations into one. James the Second had persecuted the Scotch Covenanters, keen Puritans bitterly hostile to Catho- licism. Opponents of the King's claims to authority were paired with the Scotch Covenanters, who fed on whig, sour whey, and so they were dubbed Whigs. The Irish were Roman Catholics, and among the Irish OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 75 there were notorious thieves called tories; Tories there- fore, became the return nickname for the King's friends as supporters of a Roman Catholic reaction and the King's exemption from control of law. In those days a man was Whig or Tory as he had good or ill will to the settlement made by the English Revolution. The stumble of his horse that caused William the Third's death was ascribed to a mole's breaking of the soil. The mole was afterwards toasted by those who desired a second restoration of the Stuarts. Thus Sir Walter Scott made in his "Waverley" the Laird of Balmawhipple call for a bumper "to the little gen- tleman in black who did such service in 1702, and may the White Horse" (of the House of Hanover) "break his neck over a mound of his making." [Shakespeare's Plays, Milton's Poems, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" are in the Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors. Volume 500, entitled "Five Centuries of the English Language and Literature," includes pieces from Wiclif, Chaucer, Sir Thomas JNIore, Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Locke.] 76 A GLANCE AT THE PAST CHAPTER III. FROM THE REIGN OF ANNE TO THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. Queen Anne came to the English throne in March 1702 at the age of thirty seven, a well meaning wo- man, kindly, religious, and with a mind somewhat en- feebled by domestic grief. On the 29th of July 1700 she had lost, in the Duke of Gloucester, the only child surviving of seventeen that had been born. She had then a close friendship with Marlborough's wife, calling herself in their correspondence Mrs. Morley, and Lady Marlborough Mrs. Freeman. After the death of her last child her signature changed from "Your faithful Morley" to "Your poor unfortunate faithful Morley." Devoted to the English Church and its ecclesiastical system, Anne would not take the sacrament before the clergy, and those first fruits and tenths which had of old time been yielded to the Pope and which were added by Henry VIII. to the Crown revenue, Queen Anne, on the 6th of February, 1704, which was her birthday and also a Sunday, gave as a birthday offering to the poorer clergy of the Church. The fund is still so applied, under the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. It may be taken as another indication of the character of Queen Anne, that she gave out of her first year's civil list a hundred thousand pounds to relieve burdens of the people. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 77 About six months before the death of William III, Anne's father, James IL, had died in France, and Louis XIV. defied William by acknowledging the son of James II. King of England. This act sounded again a note of war, and Anne's first speech in Par- liament maintained war. It also repeated a recom- mendation of Union between England and Scotland; which after much difficult negotiation was finally ar- ranged in July 1706, to date from the ist of May 1707, Great Britain being chosen as the name for the United country. Queen Anne had no ill will to her own family; the bias of her mind was towards authority, and through her devotion to the established Church she could per- haps be made an instrument in the hands of those who were unfriendly to the settlement made by the Revolution. But the ways of politicians on both sides had in those days become very crooked. What little there was of a highminded statesmanship was often lost among lowthoughted cares of a political life in which few men kept to a straight path, subordinating passion and ambition to the public good. The great currents of opinion were still flowing in accordance with a fixed natural law, but they struck on mudbanks with which the whole stream was becoming choked, and were thus for a time deflected and defiled. The first zeal of the Tories was for a renewal of strong war against dissent. This was in right ac- cordance with the belief still prevalent that the de- sired Unity of the Church was to be secured by a 78 A GLANCE AT THE PAST common agreement upon points of discipline and doctrine. To this form of zeal, Defoe opposed in 1702 an ironical reduction to absurdity of the policy of persecution, called "the Shortest Way with the Dissen- ters." He was condemned to imprisonment and set in the pillory on each of the last three days of July 1703. "A Hymn to the Pillory," which he wrote for distribution to the crowd, caught easily the ears and understandings of the people. The flowergirls were about, and Defoe's pillory was strewn with roses. Defoe's pillory is a new starting point for English Literature. With Defoe especially it may be said that we have the beginning of a form of literature written with the desire to reach all readers. The French critical influence with its purblind classicism, its servi- tude to forms, its false image of dignity and its low dread of the simplicity which it accounted "low," was still cherished with much solemn regard. From that which called itself polite society the old large and healthy life seemed to be gone. Not out of the formalism of French critics, but out of the national life came health. Defoe went from his pillory to prison where his durance was not very strict, and began to issue on the igth of February 1704 his journal known as the "Review," which came out twice a week until 1705, and then three times a week till 1 7 13, when Anne's reign was drawing to a close. It was the first journal in England that gave thought- ful comment upon public affairs. In this paper Defoe kept guard upon the constitution, and a supplement to OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 79 it, in which he dealt by slight machinery of a club with questions of minor morals, must have suggested to Richard Steele his "Tatler." Jonathan Swift published in 1704 his "Battle of the Books," based on a small controversy born of a small reaction against dead worship of the dead, with not much life in the argument on either side. It includes the pleasant dialogue between the spider and the bee, in w^hich the spider is the modern, and the bee the ancient, who seeks only what is beautiful in nature to draw from it, as the bee seeks honey and wax, "the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light." "A Tale of a Tub," published by Swift in the same volume, was, in the interest of Christian charity, a witty satire on the controversies that caused Roman Catholic, English churchman and Dissenter, Peter, Martin and Jack, to damage and soil the coats, - — clothing of righteousness, — their Father gave them. It was a plea for common fellowship and good will, in which Martin fared better than Peter and Jack, while each might think himself ill treated. Addison delighted in Swift's wit, but Queen Anne thought that the book ought not to have been written by a clergy- man. Swift's genius was more robust than Addison's. John Forster in his fragment of Swift's life has given the lines of "Baucis and Philemon" as Swift originally wrote them. Addison persuaded Swift to much altera- tion. We may now compare the first draft with the revision, and see very distinctly where there was strength lost by Swift's acceptance of wrong principles So A GLANCE AT THE PAST of criticism then in fashion. While Swift was in Lon- don, he amused the town, at the beginning of the year 1708, with an attempt to bring into disrepute the astrological almanacs that fostered superstition. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff, who professed himself to be indeed an astrologer, he predicted the day of the death of one of the chief makers of these almanacs, John Partridge. When the day was passed. Partridge's death was described in another pamphlet. Richard Steele began his "Tatler" in 1709, when this joke was still fresh, and Isaac Bickerstaff the astrologer thus came to be a central figure in that series of essays. The success of "the Tatler," which was wholly designed by Steele, established the period- ical essay as a force in literature. "The Tatler" was a penny paper that appeared three times a week. When its success was already assured, Addison con- tributed, and when 271 numbers had been published, Steele dropped "the Tatler" to revive it a few weeks later, under a new name, "the Spectator," as a daily essay. He was still the sole proprietor and editor, but his friend Addison helped actively. By the founding of these papers Steele gave Addison to English Literature. The design of Steele in Tatler and Spectator, which he brought his friend Addison to share, was by issue of short unassuming essays, untouched by the bitterness of political controversy, to assist in restoring to English society the wholesome tone lost in the days of Charles the Second. The fashion of speech that degraded womanhood, and OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 8 I affected ridicule of marriage Steele battled against with his kindly wit. One of the most pathetic of the sketches in "the Tatler" was a picture of a happy home, and of the void made by the loss of wife and mother. The weak vanities that had been fostered in women by a low form of worship, Steele and Addison touched with the kindliest of satire. The foppish affectation of profanity and other stains upon the manners of the day, were not overlooked, and in Steele's writing there was an earnest effort to break down the con- ventional opinion that supported duelling. When the political movements of Queen Anne's reign led at last to question whether the party of reaction might not succeed in its schemes for a reversal of the settlement of the succession after the Queen's death, Steele would no longer bind himself to shut out political discussion from his papers. He brought "the Spec- tator" to an end, established in its place "the Guardian," went on to "the Englishman" and by a pamphlet on "the Crisis" exposed himself to the wj:ath of a Tory House of Commons. But there really was at that time a danger to the country, clear enough to all who read in any detail the records of Anne's reign. The queen's unexpected death by apoplexy on the ist of August 17 14 deprived plotters of time for the maturing of their plans. Steele's pamphlet against attempts to undermine the Con- stitution, for which he was expelled from a Tory House of Commons, was submitted to the criticism of Addison and others before publication. It had for its Of Eftglish Literature . O 82 A GLANCE AT THE PAST sole object to save Englishmen from danger of ignor- ance upon a vital question, by setting forth, with exact citation of documents, what was meant by the English Constitution and what was the settlement, and the purpose of the settlement of the succession to the Crown. When Addison wrote of Steele's plain speak- ing in those critical times "I am in a thousand troubles for poor Dick, and wish his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself," he spoke with his own natu- ral timidity, and indicated a relation between public and private interests that Steele never could have re- cognized. Wherever Steele and Addison were fellow- workers, Steele, whose whole heart was his friend's, gave to his friend alone the praise. But of the two i characters Steele's was the more vigorous, and Addison i climbed highest when he followed where Steele led. Addison's sensitive nature gave refinement to his humour, and delicacy to his sense of the charm of style. He was the best critic of his day, and the more : readily accepted because he shared to some extent,, conventional opinions of his time. He enjoyed " Ch^vy Chase" and "the Babes in the Wood," and did so for good human reasons. But when he tried in Spectator i papers to show cause for his enjoyment, it was by sug- gesting resemblances to Horace and Vergil. There are passages in Addison's criticisms of "Paradise Lost" by which he made Spectator papers a means of rescuing Milton from the prejudices of the day, in which the pre- judices themselves govern his argument; and what we might now look upon as the weak part of his criticism, OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 83 vas in his own time a safeguard to his reputation. But here was nothing conventional in Addison's tastes. The sympathetic insight of genius and the religious lepths of character caused him to fasten only on that vhich was good ; all that could be affected by conven- ion was his manner of accounting critically for his •ight impressions. His judgment could be warped also Dy kindly feeling when the work of a friend like '\.mbrose Philips was in question. Alexander Pope was twenty three years old in 1 7 ii A'hen the Spectator was appearing. In that year he :)ublished his poem called "An Essay on Criticism," U'ritten two years earlier. It followed the fashion of :ritical France in writing about writing, or rather, since :ts theme was criticism, in writing about writing about ivriting. But though of the school of Boileau, and ivritten, of course, in couplets after the French style 3f versification which was already overrunning English Literature, Pope's "Essay on Criticism" had an English ring. It was goodnatured, too, and taught the cen- sorious that Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human, to forgive divine. In the "Rape of the Lock" Pope, at the close of Queen Anne's reign, amused society with a mock heroic that again was in the school of Boileau, for it might aever have been written had not Boileau written "Le Lutrin." But in the charm of style Pope here excelled his master. Though a few touches of English earnest- 6* $4 A GLANCE AT THE PAST ness are In the treatment of a frivolous theme, as in the furnishing of Belinda's toilet table with " Puffs, ^ powders, patches, Bibles, billets doux/' there is nothing; to cloud the playfulness of satire upon a fashionable i world exceeding busy about nothing. But there was now rising in Europe another mood than that of light trifling with triflers. Society ins England was little helped by the personal influence of the two first Kings of the House of Hanover who, after' Queen Anne's death, duly assured the Protestant suc- cession to the English throne. In France the social corruption and the miseries of the people had kept- pace together. The resources of an absolute dominions had been strained cruelly to pay for triumphs and* calamities of war. The people, as Voltaire said, weret dying to the sound of Te Deums. The death of Louis XIV. followed not long after that of Queeni Anne. In 1 7 1 5 Louis XV. came to the French thrones as a child, and from 17 15 to 1726 there was thei Regency of the Duke of Orleans. It is hard to sayj whether the profligacy and meanness of French fashion^ able life was at its worst under the Regency or during the personal reign of the King, which lasted until 1774 and developed, among those who dreamed oii better things, a deep contempt for the corruptions ofi what they supposed to be an overcivilized society.i There was an excess of formal outward polish to supply; the place of frank sincerity, and there was the self-] satisfaction of men who had no conception of the use' of life. Pierre Bayle, who had keen reason to know) OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 85 le baseness of the dragonnades in favour of religion, onfounded religion itself with the degradation of it into liserable forms, and looking out upon the evils of Dciety, asked whether a just God could have created iich a world as he then saw. In 1695-6 he published Holland his "Dictionnaire Historique," in which ves of men were told by an acute and honest scholar ith continual suggestion of doubt whether the actual tate of Man, and even the course of Nature, did not lake faith in the existence of a God impossible. This ork, which was translated into English in 17 11, and )r its abundance of curious and suggestive matter t^as a favourite with the religious Addison, may be lonveniently taken as a starting point for the form of bepticism developed throughout Europe, but especially 1 France, during the eighteenth century. It was not ow as in Milton's time, a question of the justice or ijustice involved in certain theological doctrines, as f election or predestination, but it struck deeper, and )oking out upon the world asked boldly, Can this be world that a just God is governing? Bayle died in 706, and in 17 10 the philosopher Leibnitz, writing 1 Paris, published in French his "Theodicee," which ttempted answer to Bayle's questioning. He began dth the suggestion that Bayle is now in heaven; scaped from this world in which he could see only a art of the divine scheme, and that imperfectly, he is here he may, perhaps, look out upon the whole and oubt no more. This pointed to the main argument f Leibnitz, that our limited view makes us imperfect; 86 A GLANCE AT THE PAST judges of the ways of God. We cannot know what isij man's place in the Universe, nor on this earth can we; see more than a small part of the whole scheme ofi creation. In what we can see, Leibnitz argued, we can find justice and wisdom, doubts begin where oun light fails. But the patent shams and unrealities of' that which called itself the polite life of the time — though to us they are now, both in France and England,! most easily traceable to their causes — disheartened: many earnest men, especially the young. In 1706: Bernard Mandeville published in England a little fable^; in five hundred lines of verse entitled "The Grumbling. Hive or the Knaves turned Honest." Bees in a hive, he said, are like men in society, they have trades andJ professions as men have, and in a certain hive everyj bee became so painfully conscious of the knavery of all his neighbours, that they resolved to becometj honest. When they did so, there was no more need for lawyers, because there was no injustice to guard! against; no need for doctors, because there was am end of ways of life and ways of eating that producedii disease; no need of merchants, because there was no( demand for foreign luxuries. Trades based upon waste and folly disappeared, and thus with honest); came poverty. The standing army was put down, be- cause the honest hive was capable of no aggressive war. It was attacked, as defenceless, by the bees oj other hives. Every bee then served as a volunteer. The enemies were driven back, but honesty had found iU way at last to such simplicity of life that the hive OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 87 tself was judged to be unnecessary. The whole ,5warm, therefore, flew back to its original home in a lollow tree. When we consider that the course of re- iction against evils of an artificial life was on its way to an emphatic maintenance of the innocence of the state of nature, the place of Bernard Mandeville's satire in the main current of European thought, already flowing towards a new Revolution, becomes very distinct. First annotated in 17 14, in 1723 "the Fable of the Bees" was reproduced, with a full prose commentary, in two volumes, enforcing the idea that civilization is based on the vices of mankind. Three years later, in November 1726, appeared Swift's "Gullivers Travels," a book by no means to be isolated from the rest of Literature as representing Sw^ift's personal and peculiar scorn of the meanness and corruption of human society. The voice of its time is in this book also, but had a more intense ex- pression through the genius and the character of Swift. To bring home to men the littleness of the lives about which they were meanly occupied. Swift used his vivid imagination in the shaping of a book of travels full of wonders as a fairy tale, but addressed by him to men rather than children. With Lemuel Gulliver among the Lilliputians, we see civilization in a baby show. Only change the size of men, and let an inch stand for a foot, and how trivial we seem in our own eyes. Reverse the glass, and imagine men and all that be- longs to them, and all their little pets and fumes, as they would be looked down upon by a race, say, twelve 88 A GLANCE AT THE PAST times taller, to do that we visit Brobdignag. If a few feet of size make so much difference in our power of discovering the smallness of that which we are apt to look upon as the chief work of life, how must our petty jealousies and ambitions, our glorying in stars and garters, seem to the angels who can look down from the height of heaven? In the voyage to Laputa we have satire on man's pride in his own knowledge, and in the voyage to the Houyhnhnms, where the innocent life of one of the lower animals is compared with the corrupt life of man calling himself civilized, the satire fiercely expresses what was then the grow- ing sense of evil in society. Rousseau was arguing a few years later that man is the worse for civilization; that the natural man, the noble savage, having no property and therefore no inducement to theft, and being in other ways without temptation to crime, lived a purer and a better life than the man warped by civilization. Swift made a like contrast when he placed man's artificial and dishonest life below the life of a horse. * Two or three years after the appearance of Gul- liver's Travels, one of the kindliest of poets, John Gay, wrote a satire on society less forcible but quite as fierce. His "Beggar's Opera," produced with very great success in January 1728, was full of under- suggestion that the ways of the great politicians were one with the Avays of thieves. A paper in "the Crafts- * Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 89 man" at once boldly applied it all to actual life, and the refusal of permission to act the sequel, entitled "Polly," told how the official world had understood its satire. "Polly" was printed; and if in the Beggar's Opera one might enjoy the art without attending to the social satire, in "Polly" the satire is forced strongly on attention. Its whole plan is to place a picture of degraded civilization between pirates and savages, and show society upon a level with the pirates, or below them, and the natural man, the savage, far exalted above both. In the days of "Gulliver's Travels" and "the Beggar's Opera," and of Pope's attack on the small end of Literature in his "Dunciad," appeared in English poetry the first clear signs of a reviving sense of Nature. Within a few months of one another ap- peared Dyer's "Grongar Hill," Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," and "Winter," the first published part of Thomson's "Seasons." "Grongar Hill" was a simple utterance of the sense of natural beauty during a walk up the low hill by the Towy at whose foot stands the house in which Dyer was born. The poet blends, as he should blend, human feeling with his poem so as to mark harmony between the world within man and the world without. He even escapes from the all pervading couplets of tensyllabled lines, to the old octosyllabic measure. Allan Ramsay, who be- gan life as a poor lad working on the banks of a leadmine, had a true songnote of his own, and the lyric parts are very pleasant in his pastoral play. go A GLANCE AT THE PAST In Thomson's "Seasons," the diction is Latin, rhe- torical; but no work of that day approached "the Seasons" in the fuhiess and variety of its expression of Nature in all her moods."^ If Thomson delights in sending his nouns abroad each with three Latin ad- jectives in attendance, the Latin adjectives give more than eye service; each helps to the exact expression of a thought. Through the whole poem there runs also a main thought summed up in the closing Hymn "These as they change, Ahiiighty Father, these Are but the varied god. " The whole work is shaped into a poet's answer to those who held that Nature denied God. Thomson's "Hymn of the Seasons" was written in 1728. In 1732 Pope published the first part of his "Essay on Man," containing the first two epistles, the third epistle followed in 1733, the fourth in 1734, and in 1738 he summed up that work with his "Universal Prayer." Pope wrote in Queen Anne's reign the "Essay on Criticism" and "Rape of the Lock." In the reign . of George I. he made money by following the classical fashion with a translation of Homer. In the reign of George II. years were ripening his own sense of life, and the reaction against frivolity and formalism had carried the course of Literature beyond the shallows. There was a waste of marsh on either side, but the main stream rolled through it now as a * Thomson's Poetical Works are in the Taiichnitz Collection. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. QI deep river under leaden skies. Pope's writing in this part of his life deals with the larger problem of society.* His "Essay on Man" was a distinct effort to meet in his own way the doubts that had been spreading since the time of Bayle. His argument was that of Leibnitz's Theodicee, a book he had not read. It had entered into daily reasonings of men, and Pope may very well have owed his argument to Leib- nitz without having taken it directly from him. In his reasoning for evidence of divine wisdom even in the passions and the selfishness of man, he framed a little scheme of his own. His Epistles and Satires he regarded as so many expressions of his argument reduced from theory to practice. Two years after Pope had published his fourth Epistle and two years before he printed his Universal Prayer, Joseph Butler, in 1736, furnished his very different contribution to the same argument, in a book studied to this day at the English Universities, arguing the "Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature." Two years after its publica- tion Butler w^as made a bishop. In those days John Wesley at Oxford, aided by his brother Charles, was preparing to strike a more effectual blow against doubts based upon the insin- cerities of man. When Swift published "Gulliver's Travels" John Wesley, twenty three years old, ob- tained his Fellowship at Lincoln College Oxford. His * Pope's Select Poetical Works are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 92 A GLANCE AT THE PAST reaction against formalism in religion was in the direction of sincerity. He and his brother persuaded some of their fellow students to join them in living before the world, fearless of its conventions, as well as they could, the Christian life as Christ had taught it. They were a society at first of fifteen students laughed at as "the Godly Club," "the Bible moths," and by a name that stuck to them, as "Methodists." They visited the sick and the prisoners, and strove to "recover the image of God." George Whitefield, who went as a poor servitor to Pembroke College, was admitted of their number. Wesley's growing influence upon men from that time forth bore witness to the power of a deep sincerity. He died at the age of eighty eight, after sixty five years of ministration. For more than fifty years he preached two, three or four sermons a day, and travelled about four thousand five hundred miles in each year, carrying his enthusiasm from place to place. What he asked of his hearers was that they would awake and arise, put aside all idle formalism, and join themselves to his society, not by pledging themselves to particular doctrinal opinions, but by a resolve as far as possible to live really the Christian life, and avoid every custom of the world that was in conflict with it. George Whitefield, who began his work under the influence of Wesley, spread similar teaching, with a little more regard to doctrine, preaching commonly, like Wesley, in the open air, to audiences that might be reckoned by tens of thousands. When John Wesley died, he left an organized religious OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 93 society of 140,000 members, in Britain and America. True it is that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." This great effort to restore sincerity to the religion of the country, — which no fault of Wesley's has placed outside the established Church of England — had its rise in one of the great centres of English thought, the University of Oxford. While the battle for a freer because truer life was thus being fought in England, evidence was every- where of the sickness of mind due to an unwholesome condition of society. As the body sickens in confine- ment, so may the mind. There is more evidence of hypochondria and actual insanity among writers in the eighteenth century than at any other time. This was the case probably among men of all occupations. Healthy men w^ere touched with the gloom of bondage. Robert Blair's poem on "the Grave" published in 1743, dwells far more on the mortality within the church- yard than upon the spiritual life beyond. Its most vigorous passage paints fear of the churchyard ghost. Edv/ard Young published in 1742-3 his "Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality," oc- casioned by the death of a married stepdaughter in 1736, of her husband in 1740, and of his own wife in 1 74 1. The gloom in it was implied by the name of its sequel "The Consolation," but the note of melan- choly runs through all. There is less gloom in Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" completed a few years later, but the sickness of the times was felt also by Gray. In his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton 94 A GLANCE AT THE PAST College," the manner of the musing is characteristic. Now, a crowd of boys in a playground would suggest to a moralist fresh energies of a generation that shall carry on the labour of the present. To Gray it sug- gested nothing but the miseries in store for them when they should be men: Alas, regardless of their doom The little victims play. William Collins, whose Odes were published in 1747, died insane. Samuel Johnson, with a scrofulous taint of the blood that throughout his life threatened in- sanity, battled against poverty without and disease within. His firm resolve and his strong hold upon religion gave him mastery, and he came to be the main support of the best intellectual life of his time. No thought was healthier than his of the strong soul that overcame in daily combat the infirmities of bodily disease. When the wit and fashion of London gathered at last around the shambling shortsighted man, still destitute of the world's wealth, whose features had been made harsh, and manners rudely abrupt, by the physical condition over which in all essentials he was master, his fearless sincerity gave to his life a grandeur that men felt. He taught others to look, like himself, through all the fleeting accidents of life to that in which a man can really live, and there were none who came to know him without learning how pure a spring of love and tenderness kept the whole nature fresh within. Firmly attached to the established Church, OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 95 Johnson was a stout Tory on the religious side of his life and held the First Georges in such contempt as, it may be said, their lives had duly earned for them. But no delusions of party feeling dimmed his sense of human brotherhood, and of the large interests of humanity. Negro slavery was to his mind so gross a wrong that he startled a polite company one day with a toast "to the next Insurrection of the Blacks." The political corruption of his time caused Johnson in his Dictionary, which appeared in 1755, to define "Pen- sion" as "a grant made to any one without an equi- valent," and "Pensioner" as "a slave of state, hired by a stipend to obey his master." In 1760, when he was fifty two years old, his friends, holding it un- endurable that one who had served England so well should live in poverty, obtained a pension for him of £300 a year. When told what had been done, he took a day for reflection, and then accepted. But his acts showed in what spirit he took the grant. For some of the money wasted yearly in political corrup- tion he w^ould find a better use. He sheltered in his home five other persons who deserved help and with- out it would have sunk to ruin. Johnson lived with them as his friends, respected them, secured for them respect. One was a negro servant of a friend who could no longer keep him. Johnson took charge of him and he was known as Dr. Johnson's man, but Johnson gave him liberal education, wrote to him as "Dear Francis," subscribing "Yours affectionately," and through him made living protest against the notion 96 A GLANCE AT THE PAST that man can be made other than man by the colour of his • skin. Johnson's pension sustained five lives and gave him means of occasional help to sufferers whom he came near. Once when he found a ruined woman who had fainted in the streets he took her up on his | broad back, carried her to his home, and made what effort he could to save her. The best life of the time, \ the life that was struggling to lift the age above its j petty formalisms to a large sense of what men really live for, breathed and moved in Johnson. He was; sixty nine years old Avhen he began, and seventy three ' when he completed, in 1781, his "Lives of the Poets." When the booksellers asked him to write them for an edition of the poets then in preparation and requested him to name his price, he asked only £200. They gave him more , though still less than the work was ; worth, but when the insufficient payment was suggested to him as a matter of complaint, he answered, "No, it is not that they gave me too little, but that I gave them too much." * He was no grumbler himself, and no encourager of idle grumbling. "I hate," he said,, " a complainer." It was characteristic of French critical influence that "the Poets" according to the booksellers, , that is to say, the saleable Poets, all wrote after the • reign of Queen Elizabeth. Johnson's power had grown with the time, and he so far shared the reaction against formalism in his style , that the English of his * Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" are in two volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. OF ENGLISH TJTERATURE. 97 "Lives of the Poets" differs distinctly from the English of his "Rambler." In these latter days Johnson said of Robertson the historian, "If his style is bad, that is, too big words and too many of them, I am afraid he caught it of me." Johnson died in December 1784, four or five years before the fall of the Bastille. Wil- liam Wordsworth was a boy of fourteen when John- son died, and William Cowper was then writing his "Task." If we glance at the historians we still find the drift of the time marked by the course of English Literature. There had been imperial annals, de- veloped after the invention of printing from the fa- miliar form of the monastic chronicle; there had been also histories of special periods, like Bacon's "Histoiy of the Reign of Henry the Seventh" or Clarendon's "His- tory of the Rebellion;" but there had been no attempt to trace cause and effect through the whole sequence of English history. David Hume, who began his literary life in 1738, at the age of 27, with a "Treatise on Human Nature," and in his subsequent writings on Politics and the Principles of Morals had blended the sceptical spirit of the time with clear discussion of the chief problems of life, was made in 1 7 5 2 Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. Access to books suggested to him the writing of what was first planned as a suggestive special history. A quarto volume on the reigns of James I. and Charles L appeared in 1745. It was decried and neglected. Only forty five copies were sold in a twelvemonth. It was not Of English Liierniure. 7 98 A GLANCE AT THE PAST Hume's first experience of neglect, but he always had worked on, unchecked by apparent failure. Having published in the intervening year a "Natural History of Religion," Hume continued his English History in 1756 from the Death of Charles I. to the Revolution. In 1759 he prefixed to his published work a History of the House of Tudor, and in 1761 he stepped farther back, and thus completed the first "History of Eng- land" that attempted to bring all into one narrative, told throughout from the writer's point of view with a philosophical sense of the sequence of events. With the scepticism of the reaction yet more marked, and a warmth of imagination, wanting in Hume, to give life to a style still dignified with Latin English Edward Gibbon, in the year of Hume's death, 1776, published the first volume of his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The last volume was published a year before the French Revolution. Volney's "Ruins of Em- pires" was published in France in September 1791, and Gibbon's theme was suggested to him by the decrepi- tude of the French monarchy, and the vague general sense of corrupt governments upon the road to ruin. Among the ruins of the Capitol it had occurred to him that the story of the fall of the great power of Rome would tend to show what makes the weakness and the strength of states. Pictures of individual life were at the same time developed by the novelists, who first became in the eighteenth century a power in Literature. Defoe broke this new ground with his "Robinson Crusoe" in OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 99 17 19, which did not call itself a novel, but was an exact imitation of a book of Voyage and Adventure. In the loneliness of Crusoe on his island Defoe ex- pressed his own sense of political isolation. The in- terest in the book lies in its picture of self-reliance tempered with religious faith.* Defoe's other novels also imitated other forms of literature, for vivid ex- pression of life as it really is. The example set by his "Robinson Crusoe" spread to Germany, and gave rise there to many imitations. Then followed in 1726 "Gulliver's Travels." Pastoral heroic French romances kept the field as novels proper until Richardson, Fielding and Smollett first gave dignity to the novel as a distinct form of English Literature upon which the highest genius may be wisely spent. Richardson began in 1741 with his "Pamela," which attached con- ventional notions of dignity by giving the name of a romance heroine to a servant girl Pamela Andrews. Richardson, who was not himself free from all pre- judices of his day, rewarded virtue in his Pamela by giving her for husband a rascal who happened also to be the Squire. Henry Fielding was prompted to ridicule this weak point in a book professing to ad- vance morality, and began to write adventures of Pamela's brother Joseph, as a jest on hers. But having begun to Avrite a novel. Fielding found his strength. "Joseph Andrews," published in 1742, was very much more than a jest upon Pamela. Life was painted, * Defoe's ''Robinson Crusoe" is in the Tauchnitz Collection, 7* lOO A GLANCE AT THE PAST follies of society were satirized, and in Parson Adams there was Fielding's picture of a Christian and a scholar who, having the soul of a gentleman, is brought by his simplicity into the most ridiculous positions, but whom nothing can make ridiculous. He is rolled in a pigsty and is not the less a gentleman, towards whom we feel kindly affection and a high respect. In 1748 Richardson followed with his best novel, Clarissa Harlowe,* where a shrewd religious man's quick in- terest in life, kindliest feeling, and the giving of his 1 whole mind to his work with a complete faith in his own creation, enabled him to produce the effect of a j work of genius, without the aid of genius in pro- ■ ducing it. In 1749 Fielding also published his chief ^ novel, Tom Jones.* It was his chief novel because largest of design, an image of the world of man, and. in Tom Jones and Blifil of the right and the wrong way of taking life. Tom Jones errs much, but he is what he seems to be, and out of his own sincerity has faith in the sincerity of others. Blifil excels him in observance of the forms of worth, but he is insincere, and acts in the belief that, others being like himself, no man is to be trusted. The book breathes health. The convention of the time did not forbid a direct picturing of its evil; but the coarse scenes in Fielding's novels are given always for what they are, with no false gloss upon them. Whenever Tom Jones sins * Fielding's "Tomjones" and Richardson's " Clarissa Harlowe'"| are jn the Tauchnitz Collection. " OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 10 I against the purity of his love for Sophia his wrong doing is made in some way to part him from her, and when he pleads towards the close of the story, the difference between men and women, and the different codes of morality by which they are judged in society, Fielding makes Sophia answer, "I will never marry a man who is not as incapable as I am myself of making such a distinction." The charm of genius enters into the whole texture of thought in Fielding's novels. A [page of his is to a page of Richardson's as silk to sackcloth. In his next novel "Amelia" Fielding sought :o paint the excellence of womanhood. Everywhere tiis vigour is tempered with a kindly humour that :auses us to read,, seldom laughing, but always, as it kvere with an undersmile, in a good humour that yives ready entrance to the wisdom of the thought so ittered. There is no bitterness even when, in his ceen irony upon false estimates of human greatness, 'Jonathan Wild the Great," a notorious thief and hiefcatcher, stands as a type of the Great Alexanders, is in Gay's "Beggar's Opera" Peachum and Locket vere meant to be taken for statesmen of the eigh- eenth century. The youngest of this group of lovelists, Tobias Smollett, produced his first novel, Roderick Random," in 1748, the year of Richard- ion's "Clarissa"; his last novel, "Humphrey Clinker," L few months before his death. He died in 1771. Smollett's novels were light-hearted pictures of life md character as they appeared to a quick witted ob- erver who, though he painted as an observer from 102 A GLANCE AT THE PAST outside, never missed the points that made a sketch of incident or character amusing* He was a hard- working man of letters. His continuation of Hume's- History of England into his own times ended with the year 1765, and was published in 1769. It had in its day a success as great as that obtained in ourt own day by Macaulay's History, but time has told' upon its reputation. Another novelist was Laurence Sterne whose] "Tristram Shandy," rich in playful wit, began to ap- pear in 1759. The last published volume of a book« that was not finished and had no aim or end beyond amusement, appeared in 1767. Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," published in 1768, the year of his death,! owes part of its character to the fact that it was: written a few years after the chief sentimental writ-j ings of Rousseau.** The reaction in France was advancing. The cor- ruption of Society was inveighed against by youngj philosophers, one of whom, Helvetius, said that if arui angel came from heaven to teach men to live reasons able lives, he would no more be listened to than the philosopher who was accused to the Athenian youths of pronouncing tarts to be unwholesome. Voltaire represented the revolt of the intellect against bondage of convention, and Rousseau the revolt of the emotions. * Smollett's ''Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle" and "Humphrey Clinker" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and "Sentimental Journey' are in the Tauchnitz Collection. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. IO3 Rousseau had rejected the positive idea of Duty, and taken Sensibility for rule of conduct. "The Heart is good," he said, "listen to it; suffer yourself to be led by Sensibility and you will never 'stray, or your strayings will be of a creditable sort." This outbreak of the emotional part of human nature after long suffering from the restraints of a cold formalism, had its form determined by Rousseau's genius and eloquence. In 1750 Rousseau obtained, by arguing against the benefits of civilization, the prize offered by the Aca- demy of Dijon for an essay on the origin of the inequality among men, and whether it is authorised by natural law. In arguing afterwards, with delight- ful shrewdness, against an advocate of civilization, Rousseau exalted man in a state of nature, traced still to overcivilization the corruption of mankind, and said, though he thought it a hard thing to say, that the savage on the banks of the Orinoco who discovered that by binding a board to the skull of an infant he could so flatten it as to repress the development of the brain was a benefactor to society. In 1761 Rous- seau represented life in action from his sentimental point of view in the "Nouvelle Heloise," in 1762 he published under the name of "Emile" his view of education, and in the same year his "Contrat Social," a scheme of society idealised in his own way from the principles of the English Revolution and the Dutch Declaration of Independence. This book had more in- fluence than any other publication on the views of men who endeavoured to shape in France an ideal Com- I04 A GLANCE AT THE PAST monwealth after the fall of monarchy at the Revolution of 1789. In England as in France writers dwelt upon the inequalities among men. Goldsmith's "Traveller," published in 1764, glanced over Europe, saw in each country its blessing and its curse, and dwelt upon the contrast in England between luxury and poverty. The thought in the Traveller Have we not seen at Pleasure's lordly call The smiling, long frequented village fall? was fully developed afterwards, in the poem of "the Deserted Village;" but it is not to be overlooked that in the last lines of "the Traveller" Goldsmith pointed to a remedy for ills of life, not in political revolution, but in that development of the true life within each heart and home towards which we in the nineteenth century are labouring. This note was struck clearly by Goldsmith and by Cowper before it became the master note of Wordsworth's verse, and master thought of a succeeding generation. The like pathos and kindly satire against false sentiment in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," published in 1766, caused that book to bring some of its own health to the mind even of young Goethe.* Moreover, if one Scotsman wrote "the Man of Feeling" another wrote in those days "the Wealth of Nations" and helped society by laying firm * Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," and his Poems and Plays are in the Tauchnitz Collection. OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. IO5 foundations for the study of political economy. Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was published in the same year as "the Vicar of Wakefield/' and four years after Rousseau's "Contrat Social." William Cowper, withdrawn from active life by the infirmity that caused, even in his calm country re- tirement, the gloom of insanity to fall upon his cheer- ful mind, knew the world and its stir only from afar. But he expressed in his "Task," published in 1785, the feeling caught by his sensitive mind from the sense of oppression that pervaded Europe. He blended with generous expression of the English love of liberty, his pictures of what seemed the decay of society, the conventions of the town and of the church, the unjust wars, cruelties of the slave trade, and exclaimed 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. He denounced the Bastille four years before its fall: Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts; Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair, That monarchs have supplied from age to age With music such as suits their sovereign ears, The sighs and groans of miserable men ! There's not an English heart that would not leap To hear that ye were fallen at last. The Bastille fell on the 14th of July 1789. "Liberty Fraternity, Equality" was the cry, and the hope of thou- 106 A GLANCE AT THE PAST sands of enthusiastic dreamers, whose feeling was that ascribed by Wordsworth to the Solitary in his early days, For, lo, the dread Bastille With all the chambers in its horrid towers, Fell to the ground; by violence overthrown Of indignation, and with shouts that drowned The crash it made in falling. From the wreck A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise, The appointed seat of equitable law And mild paternal sway. The political feeling of those times in England is illustrated throughout by the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke. At the age of about seven and twenty he published, in 1756, a satire on the French philo- sophical tendency to contrast the virtues of the natural man with the vices of a corrupt civilization. When the imperial policy of George III., and of those who called themselves the King's friends, was taxing the American colonies for the profit of England, and the colonists ob- jected to taxation by a Parliament in which they were not represented, Burke's rare ability was made known to the Marquis of Rockingham. He became Rock- ingham's private secretary in July 1765, at the time when Rockingham, becoming premier, had the great difficulty of the day to deal with. Burke was es- sentially conservative. He dreaded Revolution and all sudden violence of change. His policy in the American dispute aimed at the staying of the strife. You claim imperial right to tax; claim it, then, he said. The American colonists refuse to bear imperial taxation; then do not impose it. Satisfy yourselves with formal OF I'^NGT.ISH TJTERATURE. I07 declaration of your right; and them, by not using it. That was the policy on which Rockingham acted. If the king and his friends had been wiser than they were, there would have been no war with the American colonies, no Declaration of Independence; no founding in the new world of a great English Republic to take large part in the building of man's future. The blind- ness of rulers was, in this case, like the blindness of rulers in the days before the English Revolution, only opening the way to better things. When cause and effect lie both before us in the remoter and the nearer past, we learn to look with Milton in calm of mind upon the darkest and most doubtful times, for even through the foolishness of man God's will is done. Burke pleaded for the American colonists, that he might avert violent change. But by the outbreak of the great French Revolution, not only was a violent change be- gun, but it was a change of the kind that he most dreaded. Idealists were making a clean sweep of government, law, and many of the most cherished traditions and beliefs of men, to build up all anew according to their fancies. The enthusiasm ran as fire, the neighbour's house burned, England might burn next. With passionate eloquence Burke warred against the French Revolution. Feelings like his prompted the part taken by England in the attempt to crush it out by force. War against French Revolution was the school in which Napoleon was bred, and after a short peace there followed war against Napoleon which lasted until Waterloo. I08 A GLANCE AT THE PAST There was no failure of the French Revolution that at the close of the last century represented over all Europe the revolt against forms of authority from which the life was gone. Failure was of the mistaken means, not of the aims. Thomas Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," published in the last year of the eighteenth century, when its author was but a youth of twenty one or twenty two, was as the last word of the dying century to its successor, full of ardent expectation of such a future as wisdom of Greece or Rome never conceived. The man whom Rousseau and others had supposed to be overcivilized, was not half civilized. It would be overpraise of human society, even as it now is, to describe it as half civilized. But the hope of a high future was set by the young poet of hope against all the wrongs and cruelties that were about him in the world. I watch, he said, I watch the wheels of Nature's mazy plan And learn the future by the past of man. When William Wordsworth took his stand in the "Lyrical Ballads," published in 1798, against all insin- cerity of diction, and sought to draw from man the truest note in the great harmony of Nature, he felt, as every poet of that day felt keenly, the discords of life and "what man has made of man." Robert Burns, true poet of nature, published his first volume of poems at Kilmarnock in the autumn of 1786. In 1787 the fame of "the Ayrshire Ploughman" spread through England. Until his death in 1796 he poured OF ENGT.TSH LITERATURE. TOQ out natural song, often tinged deeply with the feeling of the time. He sent a couple of carronades as a pre- sent to the National Assembly.'^ Wordsworth's sense of what man has made of man caused him not only to be one of those Englishmen whose hearts leapt at the fall of the Bastille, but drew him in his youth into direct fellowship with the French Revolutionists. He too believed, in his inexperience, that a great effort of humanity might in a few years turn wrong into right. He shared the brightest dreams of the first days of such effort. Through this living interest in the great hope, and this participation in its energies, Wordsworth was first among all poets to read the riddle of the failure that caused many to despair.** That which had been sought was rightly sought. The great awakening to sense of a life for man far other than that which had bred impatience of its meanness, was a real awakening, from which the nations must not sink back into sleep. But Burke was right in his distrust of the means by which a regenera- tion was to be attained. A state can be no better than the citizens who are its substance. Transmute these. The process of their transmutation is slow, painfully slow; but the way is known, and it is the only way that can lead to a real civilization of the world. Here and there some man lives a noble life, wins honour from all, unless his work be such as be- * The Poems of Burns are in the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Wordsworth's "Select Poetical Works" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. I lO A GLANCE AT THE PAST gets blindness of party strife, and he is remembered in story for his worthy deeds. Wordsworth asked boldly the question, Why is this glorious creature to be found One only in ten thousand? What one is Why may not millions be? Endeavour suddenly to change the characters of men has failed, but there remains a no less strenuous re- solve to attain that at which the Revolution aimed. Wordsworth himself in his "Excursion," published in 1 8 1 4, which was a poetical expression of the problem of society as he then understood it, urged the duty of the state to provide education for every child born in the land, as a first condition of the shaping of good citizens. He held, and rightly held, that free Eng- land's place was still that of a leader among the nations, and that from her the light was to spread, by advance, through her, of a true culture. Even till the smallest habitable rock Beaten by lonely billows, hear the songs Of humanized society. And so we come to the motive force that directs all the best energies of England in the reign of Queen Victoria. We have seen already that when the minds of men are stirred about essentials, life finds its highest utterance, and Literature, the voice of life, is at its best. For this reason there was in England at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century a fresh develop- OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, I I I menl of power. The genius of Byron represented the whole passionate movement of the Revolutionary time, and most clearly expressed sympathy with the nations who desired to throw off tyranny and be themselves.* Shelley's poetry expressed the pure ideal of the Re- volution, the sense of what humanity should be and was not, resentment of all that was base, and con- fusion of the God whose true spirit of love and justice breathed on almost every page of Shelley's verse with an image of God that dishonoured Him, and was among the forms made to be broken. Keats had the revived sense of beauty in God's world, and expressed through it, in his fragment of "Hyperion," the aspiration of the time. As the old Titans gave place to the younger Gods, So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel us. One aid to the work of our time has come from the dying out of prejudices that restrained women from writing. Jane Austen's novels all ai:)peared between 1811 and 18 1 8, but there was an interval of fifteen years between the Avriting of the three first published and the three that followed. She painted such pictures of real life as she had seen as a girl in a quiet country parsonage. Like Wordsworth, she sought to show the charm that lies under the common things about * Byron's Poetical Works in 5 vols, and a volume of "Selections from Shelley" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 112 A GLANCE AT THE PAST. US, and with a fine feminine humour, under sentences clear, simple, and exactly fitted to expression of a shrewd good sense, she came nearer to Fielding than any novelist who wrote before the reign of Queen Victoria.* Miss Edge worth began novel writing in Ireland in the first years of the Nineteenth Century. She sketched the Irish character about her with a quick perception that tended everywhere to cor- rection of abuses and increase of kindly feeling. From her the greatest novelist of his time. Sir Walter Scott, said that he had the first impulse to write novels that painted Scottish character. With the higher genius of a poet colouring their kindly views of man and nature, Scott's novels then became for many minds a spring of health.** * Jane Austen's Novels are in the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Sir Walter Scott's Novels and Poems are in the Tauchnitz Collection. ( IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. CHAPTER IV. OF THOSE WHO WERE OLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REIGN; AND OF THE POETS, WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, LANDOR. After the death of William IV. at two o'clock in the morning on the 20th of June 1837, ^^^ niece Victoria Alexandrina, whose father died within the first year of her life, and who had been quietly edu- cated by her mother, became Queen of England. She had then just entered her nineteenth year. The dura- tion of that part of the Reign of Victoria which is a part of history at the time when this narrative is written, exactly corresponds with the forty four years and four months of the whole Reign of Elizabeth. Most of the great poets of the preceding time had passed away. Keats died in 1821; Shelley, in 1822; Byron, in 1824: but if they had lived, Keats would have been at the beginning of the reign only forty- one years old; Shelley, forty five; and Byron, forty- nine. Keats, indeed, was a year younger than Thomas Carlyle, with whose death this narrative closes. Sir Walter Scott had been dead nearly five years in June 0/ English Literatitre, o 114 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1837. He was a year younger than Wordsworth, who lived until 1850. Coleridge, who was a year younger than Scott, had died in the house of his friend Mr. Gillman at Highgate in July 1834."^ His eldest son Hartley, born in 1796, and his one daughter Sara, lived; and there was in each of them a touch of the father's genius. In Hartley Coleridge there was a touch also of his father's weakness. He obtained a fellowship at Oriel and having lost it, through fault of his own, was for a time in London, then sought un- successfully to earn a livelihood by teaching, and de- pended afterwards upon his pen. He had published in 1826 a book on the "Worthies of Lancashire and Yorkshire," and a volume of poems at Leeds in 1833. He lived for some time at Rydal, where he died in 1849. -^^^ poems in two volumes, and a volume of "Essays and Marginalia," were edited by his brother in 1 85 1. Hartley Coleridge's sister Sara, of whose training, in her earlier years, her father's friend Southey had charge, married in 1829 her cousin Henry Nelson Coleridge, a Chancery barrister. During the first years of the Reign of Victoria, nephew and daughter were engaged as husband and wife in cherishing the poet's memory. The husband edited "Letters, Conversations and Recollections" of Coleridge in 1836, also his "Table Talk," and in 1839 ^i^ "Literary Remains" in four volumes. The wife edited in 1840 her father's "Con- fessions of an Inquiring Spirit," gave a new edition of his * The Poems of Coleridge are in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. II 5 "Biographia Literaria," in 1847, ^"^ his "Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare" in 1849, and his "Essays on his own Times." Henry Nelson Coleridge died in 1843. Sara Coleridge, who published also in 1837 ^ charming fairy tale of her own, "Phantasmion," lived until 1852. Her "Memoirs and Letters" were edited by her daughter in 1873. Robert Southey, in the days of his youth, fired by the wild hopes of the French Revolution, and sharing its resentment of what man has made of man, had planned with Coleridge and other kindred spirits a retreat from the old worn-out world to the banks of the Susquehanna, where they were to found an all- equal-government, a Pant-iso-cracy. Since they would need wives Southey had suggested three Miss Frickers in his native Bristol, one of whom, Edith, he marked for himself, the other two might become — did become — wives to two other Pantisocrats. Coleridge took one of them, Sara, for his wife; and Robert Lovell, who died young, took another. When Lovell died, leaving a widow with an infant, Southey was thrown upon his own resources, with a hard battle to fight, but he added Lovell's widow and child to his own domestic cares. When Coleridge afterwards was ill able to help himself, much of the burden of Coleridge's family was borne also by his hardworking and faithful friend. Southey, like Coleridge, after experience of vanity in all the hopes inspired by the French Revolution, lost faith in reform sought by the way of sudden change, and, roughly speaking, took his place with the con- 8* I 1 6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE servatives. in 1813, on the death of Henry James Pye, Southey had been made Poet Laureate. He was Laureate, therefore, and sixty-three years old — Words- worth was sixty-seven — at the accession of Victoria. When Southey died, in 1843, he had held for forty ' years the office which then passed to his friend Words- worth, and of which since the death of Wordsworth in 1850, the renewed dignity has been sustained by Alfred Tennyson. The oldest writers who lived at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, and had not wholly ^ ceased to produce, were Joanna Baillie, 75 years old; Samuel Rogers, 74; Robert Plumer Ward, 72; Miss Edgeworth, 70; and Isaac DTsraeli, 70. Joanna Baillie had published her first "Plays on the Passions" in 1798. In 1809 Walter Scott had superintended the production of a play of hers at Edinburgh, and in 1836 she had published three more volumes of plays. Though her plays may be little read in future time, two or three homely ballads written by her in her earlier days, such as, "Woo'd and Married and a'" or "The Weary Pund 0' Tow" will live with other de- licate and homely pieces which have the simple tenderness or playfulness of old ballads that were J written often, there is reason to think, by cultivated . women. So Lady Nairne who died in 1845, aged 79, wrote "the Laird o' Cockpen," "Caller Herrin'" and "The Land o' the Leal." Joanna Baillie lived very quietly at Hampstead during the first fourteen years of the reign, and died at the age of 89, in 185 1. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I I 7 Miss Edgeworth died two years earlier, and though her active life as an author closed in 1834, she published a last novel, "Orlandino," in the year before her death. Samuel Rogers lived to be yet older than Joanna Baillie. His age was 74 at the beginning of the reign, and he was in his ninety fourth year when he died, in December 1855. His old age was not spent in seclusion. He was a banker's son, and derived wealth in after life from his own partnership in the bank. He had poetic feeling, sociable instincts, a shrewd sharp wit in conversation, and a ready kind- ness. If he had been born poor, he might have been a poet of considerable power. He made his reputa- tion, in 1792, when he was thirty, with "the Pleasures of Memory." It was the best of a group of books, "Pleasures of Refinement," "Pleasures of Charity," &c., which had been suggested to imitative writers by the success of Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination." Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination" was a rhetorical poem, first published when he was a young man, and in good accordance with the fashion of its time. Rogers's "Pleasures of Memory" was not only better than any other imitation of Akenside, but it was better than Akenside. There was a simpler and a truer grace of style, due partly to change of literary fashion; a theme pleasant to every reader; and the ease of a man of taste who could give and take refined pleasure, but "whose sails were never to the tempest given." Samuel Rogers might have become I 1 8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE an English author of great mark if, at some time before he was forty years old, his bank had broken. His poem of "Italy" was published in an elegant manner, and maintained his credit. The shrewd wit of Rogers's conversation ought to have shown only the social side of an intellectual vigour that stirred in his writing; but as writer, his whole vitality was never shown. In the reign of Victoria it was for many years the principal charm of a social breakfast table. Samuel Rogers's breakfasts were in the reign of Victoria what suppers at the Mermaid had been in Elizabeth's time; no doubt a highly civilized variation from the older fashion. The foremost men in politics, literature and art were among Rogers's guests, and in the wit combats the venerable host could parry and thrust with the nimblest. Robert Plumer Ward, who was 72 in 1837, had begun life as a barrister, and in 1805, having entered parliament, he became Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs under Lord Mulgrave. In 1 807 he was a Lord of the Admiralty, and from 181 1 to 1823, when he retired from public life, he was Clerk of the Ordnance. He inserted the name Plumer between his Christian and surname to please the second of his three wives. Robert Plumer Ward made his more permanent mark as a writer with two novels, "Tremaine" in 1825 and "De Vere" in 1827. They painted society and political life, and in society were popular, although their tone was that of a thoughtful, cultivated man whose speculations touched essentials and who asked IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. IIQ thought from his reader. Robert Plumer Ward con- tinued to write during the earlier years of the reign of Victoria. In 1838 he published "Illustrations of Human Life." He discussed in another book what he took to be "the Real Character of the Revolution of 1688." In 1 84 1 and 1844 he produced novels, "De Clifford," and " Chatsworth." In 1846 he died, aged 81, and in 1850 the Hon. E. Phipps published his "Memoirs and Literary Remains." The last of the septuagenarians who remained active after the accession of Victoria was Isaac D'ls- raeli, father of a more famous son. He was the son of a Venetian merchant, settled in England, and drawn from his father's profession by a love of books. At two and twenty he printed "A Poetical Epistle on Abuse of Satire" and in 1791, at the age of 24, published the first volume of the series by which he is best remembered, "The Curiosities of Literature." Two years later, a second volume followed. From 1794 to 18 II he was unsuccessfully endeavouring to earn a place as original author, by poems, romances and novels. In 1 8 1 2 he produced another book in the style of the Curiosities of Literature, called "the Calamities of Authors;" in 1814 followed "the Quarrels of Authors." Then, after some historical disquisition on James I., with which he began the expression of his good will to the Stuarts, there followed in 18 17 a third volume of "the Curiosities of Literature." This being the work of his that succeeded, there followed in 1823 three volumes of a second series of "Curiosi- I20 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ties of Literature;" after which he produced, in 1828-31, five volumes of "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First." The last of Isaac Disraeli's books of gatherings was published in 1841, two years after he had become blind. It was called "Amenities of Literature." Nine years after the ap- pearance of that book, he died, at the age of 83. Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities and Amenities of Litera- ture, Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, are odds and ends of the reading of a man who looked out actively for interesting bits of life and character, and took pleasure in carrying his reading along byways of literary life. He persuaded himself, in a mild way, that he was gathering materials for a History of English Literature, and he mined diligently for hidden treasures. But his heaps are unsifted, and the higher qualities of mind were little used in bringing them together. Isaac D'Israeli had a love for books beyond that of a trifler. There is human interest in each of his scraps, and suggestiveness in his manner of group- ing them. The books must always be entertaining; and they may be occasionally useful to a student who will take the trouble, by his own reading, to correct or verify, and by his own thinking to get the light required for a right seeing of any supposed fact. In Isaac D'Israeli's account of Gabriel Harvey, for ex- ample, there is not a sentence without at least one error in it, expressed or implied; yet all is honestly based on reading. The errors come of reading with- out balancing authorities, or testing statements by IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 121 known facts, or weighing evidence in any way. The lights and shades of truth are hard to get, and when got they take sharpness of effect, or what the ignorant call clearness, from a story. Many a man may be said to take great pains to spoil his work for all readers except the thoughtful. Isaac D'Israeli's fault is really, perhaps, inseparable from the kind of book on which his credit rests, and his are by far the best books of their kind. If the strictest of English scholars were so much of a magician that he could cause at wall what books he pleased to be forgotten, he would never deprive himself and others of these pleasant stores of literary small talk. Still following along the course of life the course of time, we turn now to those writers who at the ac- cession of Victoria were between sixty and seventy years old; some of them still capable of ripe and energetic work, all working still in cordial fellowship with younger men whose turn it was to be chief builders for the future. Among those who had been most active in the preceding generation was the great master builder, William Wordsworth, whose age at the beginning of the reign was sixty-seven. Southey was sixty-three, and Walter Savage Landor sixty-two. Then there were the men who had given new life and new means of continued life to the free conflict of opinion, by helping to found the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine: Francis Jeffrey who in 1837 was sixty-four years old, Sydney Smith who was sixty-eight, — their younger comrade Brougham was 122 OP ENGLISH LITERATURE fifty-eight — and John Wilson, who was sixty-two. Thomas Campbell, who had sung "the Pleasures of Hope" at the close of the eighteenth century, was sixty, and James Montgomery was sixty-six. William Wordsworth, son of John Wordsworth, an attorney who was law agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale, was born on the 7th of April 1770. His father had married Anne Cookson, daughter of a draper at Penrith. There were five children by the marriage, four boys and a girl. Richard the eldest, who became a lawyer, then William and Dorothy, Christopher and John. — Christopher, who was trained for the Church, became Fellow, and afterwards Master, of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was Master of Trinity in 1837, t)ut resigned in 1840 and died in 1846. He edited a collection of Ecclesiastical Bio- graphy, and argued for King Charles's authorship of "Eikon Basilike." One of his sons, also named Chris- topher, and also a writer of books, is the present Bishop of Lincoln (188 1). Among his writings is a book on "Greece, Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical," published in 1840, with books of Biblical criticism, and on the state of Education and Religion in France and Italy. — William, Dorothy and John were the three children of the family who were especially bound one to another, for there was in each of them the poetic temperament. When William was eight years old he lost his mother. He and his brother Christopher were sent soon afterwards to school at Hawkshead, a pic- turesque village between Esthwaite and Coniston lakes, m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 123 where there is one of the grammar schools that were founded in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The boys lodged with Dames in the cottages round about, and in the cottage of Anne Tyson William Wordsworth had a happy home with freedom to ramble at wdll over the hills. He was at school at Hawkshead, a boy of fourteen, when he heard of his father's death. Sir James Lowther, to whose estates John Wordsworth had been agent, had borrowed tiearly all the money that his agent had, five thousand pounds, and refused to repay it. What remained was lost in the endeavour to re- cover what was gone. When Sir James died, as Lord Lonsdale, in 1802, his successor made amends to the utmost of his power. He paid to the family the prin- cipal due, with ample interest, and he remained a cordial friend. To him Wordsworth dedicated his "Excursion," and it was he who, by obtaining for him a small salaried office in Westmoreland, enabled the poet in his later years to unite "plain living and high thinking" free from anxiety lest bread should fail. But until 1 80 1 the young Wordsworths were an orphan family, dependent on two uncles for their maintenance. Their uncles proposed to educate both William and Christopher for the Church, and William was sent from Hawkshead school, in October 1787, to St. John's College, Cambridge. He loved the poets; his own skill in verse had been encouraged by the head master at Hawkshead, the Rev. William Taylor, who died not long before Wordsworth left the school, Wordsworth being among the few elder boys of whom, from his 124 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE death bed, he took leave. More than the poets, Words- worth loved that out of which all poetry springs, Man's world within him and without him, his to unite, to conquer and possess. At the close of his second session in Cambridge Europe felt the fall of the Bastille. He went to College at a time when the reaction against formalism, the desire towards a truer life for men, stirred even the old and was growing to a passion among those of the young who had generous hearts and quick imaginations. Wordsworth tells, in the poem published after his death as "The Prelude," what ideal of a University he took to Cambridge, and how he felt himself repelled by the emptiness of what he found. Colleges and schools had not escaped the deadening influences of the preceding time, and the resentment of a young enthusiast is in Wordsworth's picture of what Cambridge seemed to him. All degrees And shapes of spurious fame and short-lived praise Here sate in state, and fed with daily alms Retainers won away from solid good: And here was Labour, his own bondslave; Hope, That never set the pains against the prize; Idleness halting with his weary clog, And poor misguided Shame, and witless Fear, And simple Pleasure foraging for Death; Honour misplaced, and Dignity astray; Feuds, factions, flatteries, enmity, and guile Murmuring submission, and bald government, (The idol weak as the idolator) And Decency and Custom, starving Truth, And blind Authority beating with his staff The child that might have led him. m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 12$ Wordsworth, well trained at Hawkshead, could meet without labour all that Cambridge required of him, if he had no desire for University distinction. He read the poets, thought his own thoughts, spent the first vacation at Hawkshead in the cottage of his old dame Tyson, and the second with his relations at Penrith. During that vacation, news of the great movement in France poured in on him. Throughout his next year at College his mind was stirred by the new hopes for man. When the third session was closing, and his uncles wished him to read for honours, he was more disposed like Brutus to "think of the world," and ob- tained leave to set out with a young College friend, Robert Jones, afterwards a Welsh clergyman, for a walk through France to the Alps. With his deep enjoyment of external nature, the Alps would at any time have drawn Wordsworth across France. But a higher pleasure than the Alps could give, he looked for and found on his way to them. There was France standing on the top of golden hours, And human nature seeming born again. There he said that he saw How bright a face is worn when joy of one Is joy for tens of millions. He came home, took in January 1791 his B. A. degree, and shrank from entering the Church. But he was moneyless, dependent on his uncles, and must earn. His bent was towards Literature, but with law in the background he spent time in London; then, since hope 126 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE still beat high for the regeneration of the world, and his mind was already in France, he discovered the importance of acquiring a good knowledge of French, and obtained leave to spend a little time in learning French among the French. In Paris he found too many English, and went honestly to live at Blois and Orleans. In October 1792 he returned to Paris, a month after the September massacres. While he re- coiled from the cruelty and outrage that had stained the cause of the Revolutionists, he told himself that all these evils came of ignorance and brutality among men whose minds had been starved through genera- tions of oppression. If the thinkers could prevail; if earnest men who knew the way to the right haven could make their voices heard among those untaught mariners who only added to the tumult of the storm, they might escape wreck yet. Little as he could do, he could speak French and write it; he did care with all his soul for the great hope that, in many a pure and fervent mind, had been associated with the out- break of the Revolution. He would give all that he had to give in aid of the endeavour to secure the triumph of high thought and generous emotion over ignorance and passion. He would take part in the work of the Girondists. His uncles saw his danger, and by stopping his allowance obliged him to come home at the end of 1792. As he wrote to Coleridge in "The Prelude," if he had not been compelled to j-eturn home, IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 27 Doubtless I should then have made common cause With some who perished; haply perished too; A poor mistaken and bewildered offering, — Should to the breast of Nature have gone back, With all my resolutions, all my hopes. Wordsworth, in England again, was still full of the enthusiasm of the time, with an instinct strong as Milton's had been to the poet's calling, and no de- finite profession conceived for him by others but the Church or Law. He tried Literature by publishing after his return his poem called "An Evening Walk, Addressed to a young Lady," his sister Dorothy. He published also a poem with a mild title, "Descriptive Sketches taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps." The title is mild, and the rhymed couplets are not as good as those of Goldsmith's "Traveller"; but the young blood courses through many of Words- worth's lines, for his theme is the walk across France wdth his friend Jones, and the hopes of the time are in it. To his faithful uncles, who were doing their full duty by a dead brother's and sister's children, William Wordsworth himself must have then presented a some- what hopeless problem. There came at last an unlooked-for solution. Among Wordsworth's friends at Penrith was a young man, Raisley Calvert, like himself in social position, for his father had been steward to estates of the Duke of Norfolk. At Christmas 1794 he was dying of con- sumption, and his friend Wordsworth nursed him. Calvert had a little money to leave, he knew his friend's aspirations and the bonds of fortune by whicl^ 128 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE they were restrained, he knew also of a resolute will that justified faith in his future. Raisley Calvert left to his friend nine hundred pounds, and Wordsworth resolved by strictest thrift to secure independence henceforth, not for himself only but also for his sister Dorothy. She had never known, since their father's death, a settled home, but had been taken care of generally by relations among whom she visited. Words- worth resolved now to be poet, and as far as was in his power a true poet; finding his own way to the highest utterance within his reach, not bending before any gale of fashion, but with a resolve, like Milton's, to do all as in his great Taskmaster's eye. Through the good offices of a friend at Bristol he was led to become tenant of a very quiet house called Race- down, which lies below the road as it winds round the lower slope of Pilsdon Hill, half way between Lyme Regis and Crewkerne. To this home he brought his sister Dorothy, he five and twenty, she four and twenty, glorying in the first sense of being mistress of a real home of her own. There was no place large, enough to contain shops within six miles in any direction, and the post came in only once a week. The scenery about the house was peaceful, and there was fine walking on the hills in the direction of the sea. Of Raisley Calvert's legacy, Wordsworth wrote afterwards to his friend Sir George Beaumont, "Upon the interest of the a^goo — ^400 being laid out in annuity, with £200 deducted from the principal, and ^100 a legacy to my sister, and a^ioo more which the 'Lyrical IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I2g Ballads' have brought me, my sister and I continued to live seven years, nearly eight." Among the few readers of the little pamphlet of verse in which Wordsworth described his walk across France to the Alps, had been Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It had come to him at the time when he had left Cambridge, made Southey's acquaintance, and was deep in the project for a Pantisocracy. He had found in Wordsworth's verse something that answered to his own enthusiasm for new hopes that France had quickened. The scheme for a Pantisocracy had only brought him a wife. He had lectured on Charles the First and on the French Revolution; had preached; had inspired in rich warm-hearted men a sense of his rare genius; had obtained a small pension from the Wedgwoods of Etruria, that he might have leisure for intellectual work, and had settled at Nether Stowey near the Bristol Channel, partly because another of his liberal friends and helpers, Mr. Poole, lived there and was the good genius of the place. When Coleridge at Nether Stowey learned that William Wordsworth, the author of the "Descriptive Sketches" in which he had found an ardour akin to his own, was living a few miles from Crewkerne, he walked over to see him. The sudden dropping in upon them of an enthusiastic poet, who was even a little younger than themselves, was a great event to William and Dorothy. The three became firm friends; and the result of the friendship was that William and Dorothy left Racedown to live within reach of Coleridge's daily companionship. In 0/ Evglish Liierahire. 9 130 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE July 1797, therefore, Wordsworth and his sister settled within two or three miles of Nether Stowey at Alfoxden, where Wordsworth had also a son of Mr. Basil Montagu living with him as pupil. Not long afterwards, in the autumn of that year, Wordsworth and his sister planned a walk with Coleridge to Linton, and thought to pay the small expense of the holiday by writing a poem that might bring them five pounds from "the New Monthly Magazine." A friend, Mr. Cruikshank, had been dreaming about a Phantom Ship. Coleridge suggested the dream as a groundwork of the poem. Wordsworth, who had been reading in Shelvocke's voyages the sailors' superstitions about albatrosses, sug- gested shooting an albatross as the crime that was to bring trouble on the Ancient Mariner, and it was he also who suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men. The poem was written by Coleridge, Wordsworth only furnishing a few lines. When written, "the Rime of the Ancient Mariner" seemed too impor- tant to be given to a magazine. It caused the planning of a book, the "Lyrical Ballads," in which Coleridge was to deal chiefly with the supernatural world and Words- worth with the natural. Each was to take the direct way to the realising of poetic thought, by avoidance of conventional phrases and the use of words chosen from the language of real life. Coleridge's friend, Joseph Cottle at Bristol, was bold enough to publish the book and pay the authors. When he sold his stock and copyrights, not long afterwards, the tender made for "Lyrical Ballads" was £0 os od. Cottle IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I3I thoughtfully, therefore, took the opportunity of passing back the despised copyright to the authors. With £ ^o Daid by Cottle for Wordsworth's share of the Lyrical Ballads, William and Dorothy went abroad and spent ;he winter 1798-9 at Goslar near the Hartz Moun- ;ains. With the first breath of spring, after an un- isally cold winter, Wordsworth felt the last ties of the )ld days, "Not mine, and such as were not made for ne," to fall away from him. His mind stirred by m active sense of freedom with its "trances of thought md mountings of the mind," looked boldly to a life )efore him, all his own, a poet's life. Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high, Matins and vespers of harmonious verse. Free to move as they pleased, the brother and ister, when they came back to England, went to Stock- on upon Tees, for there lived an old companion at he Dame School in Penrith, Mary Hutchinson. From )tockton a walk was taken with Coleridge in the Lake Country. As the year drew to a close, and it became lecessary to set up another independent home, Words- /orth remembered a little cottage just outside the illage of Grasmere, upon the border of the Lake, ,^hich had been to let. He walked over to see whether : was still to be had, found that it was, and took it rom the next following Christmas, 1799. So it was liat Wordsworth and his sister began their life at rrasmere in the beginning of this century. There 9* t:^2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Wordsworth, thirty years •ago, began by producing j with additions, a new edition in two volumes of the "Lyrical Ballads," and occupied leisure hours in poetic meditation on the past course of his life that made him what he was, and to what end he worked. Inj this long poem, addressed to Coleridge, and publishedj by his widow after his death as "the Prelude," Words- worth was feeling his way to a clear knowledge of his place among the poets. He married Mary Hutchinsor in 1802, the year in which Lord Lonsdale diedf childless and his heir, who was a clergyman's son, paicj the debt to the Wordsworths, thus giving about £ 1 8ocj each, to William and his sister Dorothy. Lifluence OJ his sister and of his wife, in the peace of Grasmere, valley, brought calm to his spirit. While others, who had felt as he felt in 1789, lost all hope when the Revolution failed, the close of Wordsworth's " Prelude,' j written in 1805 and the beginning of 1806, shows, that he had gained a surer though a calmer hope. Throughout the war with Napoleon, Wordswortl: illustrated in a noble series of poems, grouped in hiSi Works as "Poems dedicated to National Liberty anc; Independence," the best mind of England combatin^| against tyrannic force. Li June 1803 his eldest child his Son John, was born. In the same year began his friendship with Sir George Beaumont, that lasted unti'. Beaumont's death in 1827. In August 1804 his, daughter Dorothy — Dora — was born. The son Johr, had been named after Wordsworth's brother John who; at the close of 1804, was appointed to the commanc IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1.^^ of the Abergavenny East Indiaman. The ship sailed with 402 passengers on board, and on the 5th of February 1805, through fault of the pilot, struck on the shambles of the Bill of Portland. Of all who were on board only 139 were saved. The captain staid by his duty on the wreck, and went down with it. It was to have been John Wordsworth's last voyage, from which he had hoped to retire with means enough to spend the rest of his days at Grasmere with William and Dorothy, who had contributed 5^1200 Dut of their shares in the little patrimony to advance heir brother's fortunes. In June 1806 Wordsworth's hird child, Thomas, was born, and in September 1808 lis fourth child Catherine. The family could no onger be housed in the cottage at Townend, and here was removal to another house in Grasmere, :alled Allan Bank. In May 18 10 William, the fifth :hild, was born. Thomas and Catherine failed in lealth. In 18 11 the family removed from Allan Bank o the Old Grasmere Rectory, opposite the church- ard. Catherine was laid in the churchyard in une 18 1 2. In the autumn little Thomas swept the ailing leaves from his sister's grave, but he was aid by her side in the following December. Change f home was then absolutely necessary. Peace of nind was unattainable by Wordsworth and his wife nthin daily sight of the churchyard in which were he graves of their two little ones. For this reason a lOuse was sought at Rydal, about two miles distant, nd in the spring of 18 13 the family removed to 134 ^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Rydal Mount, which was thenceforth Wordsworth's permanent home. About the same time the second Lord Lonsdale, who in every way made generous amends for the wrong done by his predecessor to the Wordsworths, placed the poet above narrow care for bread by obtaining for him the post of distributor of stamps for Westmoreland, and afterwards for Cumberland also. The assured income of ^^500 a year gave Wordsworth ease, and enabled him to pro-; duce in 18 14 his "Excursion." This was one part only of a poem designed on a larger scale, but it was^ in itself a complete expression of what would have been the purpose of the whole. Through "the Ex. cursion" Wordsworth dealt with the problem of oui common life as it stood after the failure of those whc had aimed at a reconstruction of society by Revolu^ tion. Wordsworth still maintained the loftiest idea] of a humanized society. He used poetically the cha-i racters drawn in "the Excursion" as so many facton in working out his own solution of the problem. The Wanderer represents shrewd natural sense, strength ened in youth by homely and religious education anc in manhood by wide intercourse with men. The Solitarj represents one in whom faith seems dead, enthusiasrr for the best aims of the Revolution being quellec by the apparent failure of the effort. Talk betweei Wanderer and Solitary, and all the associated ini cidents, maintain one flow of thought, until the Pastor representing culture and religion in acquaintance wit! the daily lives of men, adds his part to the argument IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 135 The full course of reasoning leads to expression of the faith which is at the heart of Wordsworth's poetry. It there first found distinct expression. It is now the faith of all who look for a full civilization. The question of "the Prelude," "What one is, why may not millions be?" is answered in "the Excursion." The way to realize the far ideal is not by violent change in the outward form of a state, but by change in the minds of its citizens. The first condition of success in this citizen-building is that no child's mind shall be left untaught; and in the year before Waterloo Wordsworth in "the Excursion" was claiming for every child its sacred right, and urging on the State its duty. Now, he said, when destruction is a prime pursuit, "Show to the wretched nations for what end The powers of civil polity were given. " The first edition of 500 copies of "the Excursion" lasted the English public for six years. The next edition of 500 it took seven years to sell. Southey heard of a critic who thought he had crushed "the Excursion." "He crush 'the Excursion!'" Southey said. "Tell him he might as well think he could crush Skiddaw." At the beginning of the reign of Victoria Words- worth had long since delivered his message. He published in 1837 "Memorials of a Tour in Italy," and with them a poem, "Guilt and Sorrow," written in 1 79 1. In 1838 he was made L. L. D. of Durham, in 1839 D. C. L. of Oxford. Southey died on the r36 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 2 1 St of March 1843, and Wordsworth was then made Poet Laureate. In 1841 his daughter Dora married Edward Quillinan, an old friend of the family. In 1 846 Wordsworth was elected by the students Rector of the University of Glasgow. His only surviving brother, Christopher, died in that year. In 1847 Dora died, and Wordsworth wrote "Our Sorrow I feel is for life, but God's will be done." In 1850, on the loth of March he attended service at Rydal Chapel for the last time. In the evening he walked to Grasmere through a keen north-east wind, called at a cottage and sat down on the stone seat of the porch to watch the setting sun. He was eighty years old, and lightly clad. There followed, after a few days, a fatal in- flammation of the throat and chest. When hope of recovery was gone, his wife whispered to him "William, you are going to Dora." He died on the 23d of April 1850, and was buried beside his children in the churchyard at Grasmere. Robert Southey, born on the 12th of August 1774, was the son of a linendraper in Bristol. His father was noted for his punctual habits, a characteristic that his son inherited, but although punctuality is said to be the soul of business, Southey's father was unpro- sperous. Southey himself owed the chief care over his childhood and youth to a maiden aunt. Miss Tyler, an elder half sister of his mother's, and to his mother's brother the Rev. Herbert Hill, chaplain to the British factory at Lisbon. He was sent to Westminster School. In his last year at Westminster, in 1792, Southey con- IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 37 tributed to a school magazine called "the Flagellant" a playful article on Flogging, tracing the practice in schools as a sacred rite associated with the worship of the Devil, and glancing at head masters as high priests by whom its mysteries were maintained and trans- mitted. Dr. Vincent, the head master at Westminster, re- sented the article, and Southey was expelled. We have to remember the emotions of the time, the revolutionary outburst in the greater w^orld: the sympathies, in school and college, of large bodies of the young with all at- tacks on tyranny; the strong feeling on the other side that impelled to battle for authority, and the belief that, then if ever, it was necessary to assert authority against the spirit of insubordination among those who were to be citizens of the future, and upon whose allegiance to law the future of England might depend. Uncle Hill held by his nephew, who was open, generous, alive with eager intellect; and as for any common sense he wanted, that, his uncle said, would come. At a time, therefore, when Southey's father, a broken man, was dying. Uncle Hill and Aunt Tyler proceeded to send their nephew to Oxford. But the offended head master had sent such an account of him to the authorities at Christ Church that when he applied for admission there he was refused. He was entered to Baliol; and at that time of his entrance into the University, his father died. At Oxford he w^as "citizen Southey," full of wild poetic hope for the regeneration of the world. At nineteen he began an epic poem, "Joan of Arc," and finished it in six weeks. One ground of interest in the 138 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE theme was, that it represented high emotion and a patriotic struggle of France against English invasion. England then had entered into what Southey regarded as unholy war against the Revolution. Like Words- worth, Southey gave his sympathy to the Girondins who took Brissot for their guide. After the execution of Brissot, in the autumn of 1793, Southey felt, as Cowper had felt, sick at heart with every day's report of wrong and outrage. There seemed to him no place left in the corrupted world for virtue. In the summer of 1794 citizen Southey at Oxford was visited by Coleridge from Cambridge. The scheme of a migration to the Susquehanna was devised. Robert's mysterious plot- tings gave Aunt Tyler concern. Uncle Hill, who still hoped that he might guide his nephew to a quiet living in the English church, held that, whatever the plots, a run to Spain and Portugal with him when he returned to his own post at Lisbon, would distract the boy's attention from them, and would do him good. Southey was glad of the run, but he had engaged himself to marry Edith Fricker. To make all sure, he married her privately before starting, his friend Joseph Cottle, a sympathetic bookseller who believed in Southey's genius and in the genius also of his friend Coleridge, lending the money necessary for the wed- ding ring and marriage fees. Southey went to Spain, wrote to Edith letters from Spain and Portugal de- signed for publication, and came back with that know- ledge of Spanish which he increased and turned to excellent account for literary labours of his after years. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I3Q He had now to acknowledge his wife, to bear the with- drawal of all further care for him by his Aunt Tyler, and to fight the battle of life for himself. In 1796 "Joan of Arc" was published by Cottle. The "Letters from Spain and Portugal" were published also in 1797. There were changes of lodging, and there was constant increase in the number of Southey's literary friends. There came aid of a^i6o a year from his old school fellow Charles Wynn, according, as they both felt, to the fashion of the good time that would come when Whate'er is wanting to yourselves In others ye shall promptly find, and all, Enriched by mutual and reflected wealth, Shall with one heart honour their common kind. In 1799 and 1800 there were published two little volumes of an "Annual Anthology," containing verses by Southey, Coleridge, Robert Lloyd, Charles Lamb, Humphrey Davy, then a young man of one and twenty at Bristol, and other contributors. Southey earned a guinea a week by writing verses for "the Morning Post," to which also Wordsworth and Coleridge contributed. But Wordsworth had found his own path. Coleridge was not of punctual habits. Southey alone, looking upon such work as a source of income, held to it with his usual diligence. He finished "Madoc," worked at "Thalaba," and was planning "the Curse of Kehama" before "Thalaba" was finished. He paid a visit, with his wife, in 1800, to Uncle Hill in Portugal, who, always wise and kind, was still his friend. In 1 80 1, when Southey returned, Coleridge was 140 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE settled for a time at Greta Hall, Keswick, by Derwent- water, where he was thirteen miles from Wordsworth at Grasmere. Southey visited him there, but being offered the post of private secretary to Montagu Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, with a salary of ^400 a year, he felt bound to accept it. Then, leaving his wife for a time at Keswick, Southey went to Dublin. He found that he had little to do, that little being tedious. When it was suggested that he should fill up his spare time by acting also as tutor to Mr. Corry's son, Southey gave up the appointment and fell back upon the literary life that was for him the happiest. In 1801 he published two volumes of Poems, and also "Thalaba." In 1802 his mother came to see him in his London lodging, and died there. He moved to a little furnished house at Bristol and worked on his English version of "Amadis of Gaul," which he had undertaken to produce for £60. In the autumn of this year his first child was born, a daughter, who died in a few months. To comfort his wife with the companionship of her sister, Coleridge's wife, Southey went with her to Greta Hall, which thenceforth be- came their home. It was first shared with Coleridge; but Coleridge, suffering from the damp of the lake country, soon afterwards wandered away, and the home remained Southey's, with charge in it for some time of Coleridge's wife and children, and of his wife's other sister, Robert Lovell's widow. All was to be maintained by steady, cheerful labour of the pen. In 1803 "Amadis of Gaul" appeared, and interest in the IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 14! boy poet of his native Bristol prompting a kind heart, Southey edited Chatterton's poems for the benefit of Chatterton's relations. At Greta Hall there were Coleridge's children. Hartley and Derwent were the two boys, and Sara was a baby of seven months when, after the loss of his own first child, Southey first saw her at Keswick. On May Day in 1804 Southey again had a child of his own, a daughter, Edith May, and Southey wrote in i8og, "I have five children, three of them at home, and two under my mother's care in heaven." Sara Coleridge, who was bred by Southey in that household of cheerful love and labour, spoke of him as "upon the w^hole the best man she had ever known." "Madoc" w^as published in 1805, and also a col- lection of "Metrical Tales." Southey's profit from "Madoc," with w^hich poem he had taken especial pains, was, at the end of a year, ^3. i6s. id. In 1807 he published an English version of "Palmerin of England," also "Specimens of the Later English Poets," also "Espriella's Letters," which playfully represented English manners and customs as they were supposed to appear to a visitor from Spain. In this year 1807 his old school-friend Charles Wynn obtained for him, on account of literary services, a pension from the Civil List that took the place of his own annual allowance of ^i6o, and was of about that value. Still working the mine of Spanish literature, out of which he had drawn some part of the help of his housekeeping, Southey next produced a version of 142 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "the Chronicle of the Cid." Then followed, in 1810, the "Curse of Kehama" and a "History of Brazil." Away from libraries Southey needed books, and he loved their companionship. Books had multiplied about him from his youth upward, and the volumes in the library at Greta Hall grew in time, through purchase and gift, from four thousand to fourteen thousand. Half a dozen labours were usually being carried on together at the study table; long hours of work were punctually observed; refreshment was in change of the form of work; and rest was everywhere outside the study in the cheerful home, its wise peace and its tender playfulness. "There is no sense so good," he said, "as your honest genuine nonsense." Southey avoided excitement. In his mind, as in other minds, the young faith in sudden change had been overthrown, and while he looked still, as his "Colloquies" show, and passages in his poem on the field of Waterloo, to a nobler day for man, he looked to its slow attainment by advance of a true sense of life with the advance of culture. Like Wordsworth he laid chief stress upon education of the people. The changed tone of his mind brought him into accord with the founders of "the Quarterly Review," and after its establishment, in 1809, writing for "the Quarterly" became one form of Southey's work. In 1813 Southey was made Poet Laureate, and in 18 14 he produced the best of his longer tales in verse, "Roderick, the Last of the Goths." In 1818, behind his yearly income, Southey had for his whole fortune IN THE PIEIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 43 ^400 in consols. In 182 1 that sum had been in- creased, and he gave all to a ruined friend who had been good to him in former years. Yet he refused an offer of ^^2000 a year if he would come to London and write daily in "the Times." A son and daughter had died in the happy home at Greta Hall; grief for their loss was so deep seated that father and mother never dared again to speak their names. But a deeper grief followed in 1834, when, after forty years, during which, as he wrote to his friend Bedford, "she has been the life of my life," Southey's wife had to be placed in a lunatic asylum. Next year she was returned to him and for her last days trusted to his care, but she lived only until November. He worked as hard as ever, and his earnings had so far increased that he was now making some provision for his family in case of death. Sir Robert Peel offered him a baronetcy. That was de- clined, but Sir Robert then added ^300 a year to Southey's pension. Such was the English worthy who was poet laureate in 1837, aged sixty three, at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. He had been editing Cowper's works, and touching upon the insanity in Cowper's life, while she whom he loved best was dying insane beside him. His gentleness of manner was even in- creased by his sense of the shades that were closing in upon his evening of life. His memory would fail; his old animation was gone; his body had wasted; and the eagle face had lost its fire. Among his friends. 144 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE for the last twenty years, had been Caroline Bowles, only child of Captain Charles Bowles of Buckland near Lymington, who had distinguished herself by verses to which her name was not attached, and which had excited Southey's admiration. He had expressed his admiration for her in "the Quarterly" before he knew her personally. At Midsummer in 1839 Southey married Miss Bowles, his age being then sixty five, hers fifty two. But the failure of power was not checked. Signs of decay became more and more manifest. Two months after his marriage he began to lose himself at times in conversation. Then the use of the pen failed; then the power of reading. He walked about among his books, still loving them, al- though they were dumb to him now. Wordsworth in 1840 visited him in his library at Greta Hall. Southey did not know him, until told who it was. "Then," wrote Wordsworth, "his eyes flashed for a moment with their former brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had found him, patting with both hands his books affectionately like a child." He died on the 2 1 St of March 1843. Southey's whole character is in his writings. In prose and verse he maintained the reaction against formalism by a simple purity of style, based on the simple purity of his own character. The only man of whom he wrote severely was Byron, and that only after Don Juan began to appear, because he felt that Byron made an ill use of his genius, and dragged minds down instead of raising them. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 145 There was health in the ideal of his own longer poetical romances, and although they yield few lines that cast a thought into imperishable form, "Thalaba'' and "the Curse of Kehama," "Madoc" and "Roderick" are four of the best metrical tales in English Litera- ture. In "Thalaba" and "the Curse of Kehama" there was, as in Scott's metrical romances, an escape from the convention of heroic couplets, but Southey's de- fiance of convention was as absolute as he could make it. "Madoc" and "Roderick" were in blank verse of simple dignity. In "Roderick," which might fairly be called an epic, Southey's more ambitious tale-writing rose to its best form. In the less ambitious work, the metrical tales and legends of his younger days, the grace of a playful good humour blends with the spirit of romance, and there never will be a time when they cease to furnish a part of the familiar literature of the English People. In the "Life of Nelson," published in 1813, Southey gave to a national theme the charm of his clear style, and in "the Doctor," of which the first volume was published anonymously in 1833, ^^'^^ the last some years after his death, the whole pleasantness of Southey's character with his best sense of life breathes through his love of books. In the last days of his mental darkness, Southey was heard breathing to himself with satisfaction the name of his friend Landor — "Ay, Landor, Landor..." He had met Landor first at Bristol in 1 808, and spoke of him as "the only man of whose praise I was ambi- 0/ English Lite?-ature, lO 146 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE tious, or whose censure would have humbled me." Walter Savage Landor, who was about six months younger than Southey, lived on through a vigorous old age to the year 1864. He was the son of a physician at Warwick, and was born on the 30th of January 1775. His second name of Savage was that of his mother's family. His mother owned the two estates in Warwickshire of Ipsley Court and Tach- brook, with a share of a reversionary interest in Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. To this pro- perty, worth a^ 80,000 and strictly entailed upon her eldest son, Landor was heir. At ten he was sent to Rugby, vigorous, impulsive, impatient, with a quick intellect that fastened upon nature and upon those books of the poets which are the best part of nature. He soon became one of the best Latin scholars in Rugby and probably the best writer of Latin verse. It irritated him that the head master seemed to under- rate his work; and when Landor was irritated the fire flashed, it never smouldered. A violent quarrel with the head master over a Latin quantity led to a request that his father would remove Landor from Rugby, since he would not bend his temper to school dis- cipline. His sympathy with the French Revolution brought him into conflict of opinion at home; but his sympathy was that of a mind with extreme bias towards individual freedom. He was a natural republican, and could not bow to the despotic monarchy of school. After two years with a private tutor Landor went, in 1793, to Oxford. He was at Trinity when IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 47 Southey was at Baliol. But Landor's college life was ^ brought to an abrupt end, like his life at Rugby. Being rusticated, he gave up his chambers and refused to go back to the University. This brought to a head the disputes at home, and Landor parted from his father. Allowance was made to him of a^ 150 a year with freedom of action, and welcome to his father's house w^henever he paid it a visit. Landor then went to South Wales, living at Swansea, Tenby, or elsewhere, and sometimes visiting home. In South Wales there was again close communion with books and nature, and with all his keen relish for the ancient classics he found in Milton the masterpoet; "even the great hexameter sounded to me tinkling when I had recited aloud, in my solitary walks on the seashore, the haughty appeal of Satan and the re- pentance of Eve." Near Tenby he had friends in the family of Lord Aylmer. Rose Aylmer lent him a "His- tory of Romance" by Clara Reeve, in which he found the sketch of a tale that suggested to him his poem of "Gebir." Landor began "Gebir" in Latin, but then turned to English, and when all was done he vigorously condensed what he had written. " Gebir " was published anonymously at Warwick, as a pamphlet, in 1798, the year of the "Lyrical Ballads." Robert Southey was among the few who bought it, and he first made known its power. In the best sense of the phrase "Gebir" was written in classical English, not with a search for pompous w^ords of Latin origin to give false dignity to style, but with strict endeavour to form 148 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE terse English lines of apt words well compacted. Many] passages appear to have been half thought out in Greek or Latin, and Landor published a translation of "Gebir" into Latin three or four years after its first ap-' pearance. The poem included prophetic visions in, which Landor's sympathy with the French Revolution! and his contempt for George III. were duly figured. At the close of 1805 Landor's father died, and the:; young poet became a man of property. He lived chiefly at Bath. In 1808 Southey and Landor met. Their friend- ship remained unbroken. No later differences of political or other opinion could touch the delight of each in the free powers of his friend. When Spain rose to throw off the yoke of Napoleon, Landor's en-j thusiasm carried him to Corunna, where he paid for the equipment of a thousand volunteers and joined with them the Spanish army of the North. After the convention of Cintra he returned to England, sharing! the disappointment that was expressed by Wordsworth I in a vigorous prose pamphlet. Then Landor desired f a large Welsh estate, Llanthony Priory, and paid for it by not only selling an estate in Staffordshire in- herited from his father, but also by divesting himself of i part of the inheritance that would come to him at his ; mother's death. He began at Llanthony costly im- i provements, but still lived much at Bath, where in 1 1 8 II he married, in quick accordance with a sudden fancy, at the age of thirty-six a girl of twenty. Then he began his tragedy of " Count Julian." The patriotic IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 149 Struggle in Spain had caused Southey, Scott and Landor ill to deal with the romance of Count Julian who, to ivenge wrong done on his daughter by Roderick, the ast of the Gothic Kings, called in the Moors. Southey's ipic of "Roderick, the last of the Goths," and Landor's )lay of Count Julian had both been begun in 18 10, md the friends worked in fellowship. Landor was dso writing Latin Idyls. His play of "Count Julian" vsLS published in 18 12. His "Idyllia" he published i,t Oxford in 18 13. After five years, his impetuous emper had surrounded him with troubles at Llanthony, n which place he had sunk seventy thousand pounds, n 18 1 4 Llanthony was vested in trustees, other property -as sold, and Landor left England, parting abruptly ■om his wife because she was unwilling to live in ranee. But reconciliation followed on that quarrel; Dr a time Mr. and Mrs. Landor lived at Tours, and 'len for three years at Como, where a son was born 3 them.. A quarrel with a magistrate obliged Landor leave Como. He was then chiefly at Pisa from 819 until 182 1, and at Pisa he published his Latin oems as "Idyllia Heroica," with an Essay De cultu iqiie usu Latini sermonis. In 182 i, Italy then sharing 1 active expression of the revived spirit of nationality, andor addressed to the Italian people an Italian 5say on Representative Government. After Pisa, lorence was Landor's home, and there, or in the im- lediate neighbourhood, he lived for the next eight ars. There he worked at his "Imaginary Con- ^rsations," of which two volumes were published in 150 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1824. The dialogues, between speakers of many lands and many ages of the world, were developed through a vigorous prose, compact with thought, expressing in force and grace and combative opinion an in- dividuality that was even the fresher for carrying with it everywhere, like Milton's prose, the scholarship and the sincerity that gave precision to the style. Landor's sentences, often Ciceronian, mark strongly the dif- ference between strained rhetoric set forth in Latin English, and vigorous thought in English phrase with a style based on scholarly attention to the best prose of the Latins. The whole mind of Landor found ex- pression in these dialogues, which closed with a poem] on the national uprisings in Greece and Italy. In 1826 a second edition appe^ed, with an added third volume in 1828. Twenty seven more dialogues fol- lowed as a new series in 1829. More dialogues were! written, but not published until 1 846. Before Florence! was left, Landor had a family of four children. His] "Imaginary Conversations" gave him literary fame,: and brought new friends who were fascinated by the charm of kindly genius under the headstrong im- pulsive character. His fiercest wrath, when it had way, would end usually in explosions of laughter. No man's compliments were more delicate than Landor's, and his bluff sincerity gave them unusual value. It was at Florence that Lady Blessington made his acquaint- ance. He acquired at once a foremost place among her many friends. Margaret Power, Countess of Blessington, was born IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I5I in 1790, the daughter of an Irish squire in the county of Waterford. She had beauty, vivacity, and natural refinement; but was most unhappily married before she was fifteen to an English officer, a Captain Far- mer. After his death, she married, in 18 18, an Irish peer, the Earl of Blessington, with whom her life became luxurious and easy. They spent some years in Italy, which yielded to Lady Blessington matter for books. Her "Conversations with Lord Byron," were published in 1832. She ^vl-ote also "The Idler in Italy" and "The Idler in France." After Lord Blessington's death, in 1829, Lady Blessington settled at Gore House, Kensington. For the remaining twenty years of her life, her house was a fashionable centre of intel- lectual enjoyment. There she was at home in 1837, forty eight years old, at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. She wrote novels,* she edited fashionable annuals, "the Book of Beauty," and "the Keepsake," and she and Count D'Orsay had a pleasant welcome to her social circle for all the talents. Count Alfred D'Orsay, nine years younger than Lady Blessington, was the son of a general D'Orsay, and was in the French army till he attached himself to Lord and Lady Blessington. In 1827 he married Lord Blessington's daughter by a former marriage, but soon separated from her. In 1829 he returned with Lady Blessington to England and was looked upon as one of the leaders of the fashion- * Lady Blessington's Novels are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 152 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE able world. " Count D'Orsay had some skill in draw- ing and sculpture and artistic tastes. When Landor at Florence made the acquaintance of Lord and Lady Blessington, the Count was their companion. In 1829, when Lady Blessington settled at Gore House, Landor bought, with help of money lent by a Welsh admirer, a villa at Fiesole, the Villa Gherardesca. Boccaccio's Valley of Ladies was within its grounds. There, with an occasional stormy outbreak and litiga- tion about water-rights that would have delighted Mr. Tulliver, he was happy, and his children were his playfellows. At Fiesole he prepared a revised col- lection of his poems, which was published by Edward Moxon in 1831, "Gebir, Count Julian, and other Poems." In 1832 Landor revisited England, but he re- turned next year to Fiesole. In 1834 Lady Blessing- ton superintended for him the anonymous publication of his "Citation and Examination of William Shake- speare." Landor joined with it a dialogue between Essex and Spenser after Spenser had been driven from Kilcolman. Another of Landor's books written at Fiesole was his "Pericles and Aspasia," in two volumes of letters. The publishing of these was managed for him by his friend and sometime neighbour at Fiesole, the novelist George Payne Rainsford James,* who had published his first novel, "Richelieu," in 1825, when he was twenty four years old, and when Walter Scott, by * The novels of G. P. R. James are in 21 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I53 whose historical novels he was moved to imitation, was still writing. In 1835 Landor, happy in his chil- dren but not in his wife, had his home at Fiesole broken up by domestic feud. Not enduring his wife's speech to him in presence of his children, he parted from his family and, after a few months by himself at Lucca, came to England. He remained in affectionate correspondence with his children, and did not quarrel with his wife's relations. He went for a time from place to place in England before settling again, and then, at the beginning of the reign of Victoria, in October 1837, being nearly 63 years old, he returned to Bath. In the same year he published his Imaginary Conversations between Petrarch and Boccaccio, sup- posed to have been held on five successive days, which he called "the Pentameron," adding to the book five various dramatic scenes, "Pentalogia." When in Lon- don, Landor was happiest as guest at Gore House, where at the crowded assemblies he came to know men of the rising generation, and where, among others, he first found his friend John Forster, afterwards his Avarmhearted biographer, and Charles Dickens, who transferred one or two of his outward peculiarities to Mr. Boythorn in Bleak House. 154 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAPTER V. JOURNALISTS OF THE ELDER GENERATION, ESSAYISTS AND POETS. We turn now to a group of men who passed as elders into the reign of Victoria, which owed much to them for the quickening of intellectual discussion. Francis Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, John Wilson and Thomas De Quincey, forefathers of the modern race of quarterly and monthly journalists. Francis Jeffrey was bojrn in Edinburgh in 1773. At the Edinburgh High School he was under Mr. Eraser, who afterwards boasted that from three suc- cessive classes, of four years each, he turned out Scott, Jeffrey and Brougham. He remembered Jeffrey as "a little clever anxious boy, always near the top of the class, and who never lost a place without shedding tears." There were 120 boys taught in the class, under one master, without help of an usher. In 1787 Jeffrey was sent to Glasgow University, which he left for a session at Oxford. There he took pains to get rid of his Scottish accent, and, said Lord Holland, at nineteen he had lost the broad Scotch but gained only the narrow English. From Oxford he returned to Edinburgh, in 1792, and studied law. Having joined the debating society of the University, the IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 55 Speculative Society, which had been founded nearly thirty years before, he read five papers in it and was much influenced by its young energies. In 1794 he was called to the Scottish bar, and hoped for practice. On the first of November 1801 Jeffrey married a second cousin, Catherine Wilson, daughter of the Pro- fessor of Church History at St. Andrews. His profes- sion up to that time had never brought him in £ 100 a year. He and his wife set up their home on the third story of No. 18 Buccleuch Place. He furnished his study for £ 'j. 18, his dining room for ^^13. 8, and his drawing room for £22. ig. In that establish- ment "the Edinburgh Review" was born. It was the happiest of homes, to which of evenings came quick witted friends, apt for "plain living and high think- ing." One of them was Sydney Smith, who happened then to be preacher at the episcopal chapel in Edin- burgh. Sydney Smith was born in 1771 at Woodford in Essex, and had his education at Winchester School and New College Oxford, where he obtained a fellow- ship. He took orders and began his ministry in 1794 as curate at Nether Avon in Wiltshire, not very far from Stonehenge. Mr. Hicks Beach was Squire of the parish, and Sydney Smith himself afterwards, before a collection of his own essays from the "Edinburgh Review," told briefly what followed. "When first I went into the church I had a curacy in the middle of Salisbury Plain. The Squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and after I had served it two years, he engaged me as tutor to his 156 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE eldest son, and it was arranged that I and his son should proceed to the University of Weimar. Before reaching our destination, Germany was disturbed by war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. The principles of the French Revolution were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to conceive a more violent and agitated state of society. Among the first persons with whom I became acquainted were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray (late Lord Advocate for Scotland) and Lord Brougham; all of them maintaining opinions upon political sub- jects a little too liberal for the dynasty of Dundas, then exercising supreme political power over the northern division of the island. One day we hap- pened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat" (playful exaggeration of the third) "inBuccleuch Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I pro- posed that we should set up a 'Review'; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the 'Edinburgh Review.'" The first direct suggestion of a Review may have come from Sydney Smith, but the first number or two had no sole editor; the projectors managed it among them. There had been an "Edinburgh Review" of which the first number appeared in January 1755, the second and last number in January 1756. No. i of that Review had included a slight notice by Adam Smith of Johnson's Dictionary. The desire of the founders of the new Review was to deal with politics as well IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 57 as literature, and to wage energetic war against all wrongs for which they sought the remedies. No. i appeared on the loth of October 1802. It contained seven articles by Sydney Smith, four by Leonard Horner and five by Jeffrey. Four have been ascribed to Brougham, but it is doubtful whether Brougham was among the very first who wrote. When he did presently join in the work, he was one of the most active writers, equal to the production of a whole number by himself, if need were. The first three numbers were given to Archibald Constable, the publisher, who pledged himself to take the risk of producing four. While the freshness and courage of the new Review, the wit and wisdom applied in it to foremost questions of the day, were spreading its fame to London, Jeffrey himself was in his usual or natural state of what Lord Cockburn calls "a lively argumentative despair." Jeffrey himself once wrote to Malthus, "I am very much in a state of despair, while I have scarcely any actual anxiety." While Constable was being asked by Jeffrey whether he could venture to print a fourth number, Sydney Smith was telling him that he must maintain and advance the success of the Review by paying ^ 10 a sheet to the writers in it. As the success grew rapidly, the pay- ment was raised to ^ 16 a sheet as minimum, but two thirds of the writing was paid for at a higher rate. The average rate of payment for a sheet under Jeffrey's editorship was twenty or twenty five guineas. 158 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE When the first number of "the Edinburgh Review" was on the point of appearing Jeffrey had a son born, in September 1802, who died in a few weeks. His underlying tenderness of character made the memory of this loss ever afterwards a cause of nervous anxiety about children's complaints in the households of his friends. Jeffrey's wife died in August 1805, when he was rising at the bar, and as its first editor, carrying on the Review to high success. He acquired his wide influence by nervous energy in the pursuit of worthy aims, by skill with the pen, judgment in politics, tact in relation with other men. His tact was due to a temper essentially kind and sensitive, while there was honest freedom everywhere in expression of opinion. His quick sensibility gave him a rare power of trans- forming face and voice, in playful mimicry. If he did not like the work of his best friend, and had to review it, he could not review dishonestly. He was not a man of genius, and his judgments in literature have not stood the test of time. His censures were emphatic, although there the working of his gentleness of character not seldom crumbled away some of his condemnation before all was said. None, however, would have inferred from the tone of the reviewer that, off paper, he was one of the kindest and most sensitive of men. As he rose at the bar in Edinburgh, after vain endeavours to satisfy society with the set of his wig over black bushy hair, he pleaded without his wig, and was for fifteen or twenty years almost alone in doing so. In 1829 he became acknowledged leader of the Scottish bar, and IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 59 was made Dean of the Faculty. With other office in view, he then resigned his office of Editor of "the Edinburgh Review." In 1830 he was made Lord Ad- vocate and entered Parliament. After the Reform Bill he was the first member for Edinburgh. But in the parliamentary conflict he was not at ease. His health also had failed, and he gave up political ambition. In 1834 ^^ became a Scotch judge, and was known thenceforth, by the title due in Scotland to his office, as Lord Jeffrey. That was his position at the acces- sion of Queen Victoria. He was among the veterans of Literature, honoured for what he was, not living upon the reputation of the past, until his death in January 1850. When Jeffrey, its first editor, resigned his charge over "the Edinburgh Review," in 1829, his successor was Macvey Napier, one of the principal clerks of the Court of Session at Edinburgh and Pro- fessor of Conveyancing in the University. He had shown his literary skill and powers of work by super- intending a new edition of the Encyclopsedia Britan- nica. He was Editor of ''the Edinburgh Review" from 1829 during the rest of his life. But he died, before Jeffrey, in 1847. In the first years of "the Edinburgh Review" Walter Scott was among Jeffrey's friends, and he also was a contributor, for intellectual sympathies were stronger than any differences of political opinion. Scott was then publishing his Border Minstrelsy, and editing Thomas of Erceldoune. Like Jeffrey he prac- tised in the law courts and loved literature. In 1805 l60 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Scott's genius flashed out in "the Lay of the Last Minstrel," and he suddenly attained wide fame. But when Scott's "Marmion" appeared, his friend Jeffrey did not like it, thought it unpatriotic, and found fault with it in "the Edinburgh Review." When the criticism appeared, Jeffrey sent it to Scott with a generous and honest little note. Scott did not abate in cordiality towards Jeffrey, but showed very distinctly that he had lost goodwill towards the Review. He fancied that he had been among the writers for it upon the under- standing that their papers would be rather literary than political, imagined they had broken faith with him, and ceased to contribute. At that time the founder of the publishing house of Murray was a young man with a small shop in Fleet Street and un- bounded energies. John Murray desired a share in the profit and credit of publishing the works of the new favourite, Walter Scott. He made advances, at last found his way to Edinburgh, and heard Scott's grumbling at a dinner table over the Whig Review, at a time when Jeffrey's grumbling at "Marmion"was fresh in his mind. Murray leapt at once to the conception of a Review on the other side to match the Edinburgh, with Scott himself promptly engaged for a contributor. In that way "the Quarterly Review" came into life. The first conception passed rapidly on to birth of the. new journal, of which No. i appeared in February, 1809. — Its first editor was William Gifford, a man humbly born, who owed his rise to friends won by his conspicuous abilities. He had proved himself a keen m IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. l6l satirist and a good English scholar, and he seemed to John Murray and the promoters of his new Review the right man to compete as editor with Francis Jeffrey. Gifford died in 1826. His successor in charge of "the Quarterly" was John Gibson Lockhart, who was its editor from 1825 to 1853. Lockhart's age was onlyjbrty-twp at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. He was born in 1793, studied at Glasgow where his father was minister of the College Church, and after three years at the Glasgow University won a Bursary that enabled him to continue his studies at Baliol College, Oxford. He left Oxford for Edinburgh, read there for the Scottish bar, and was called in 18 16. In the following year his keen relish for literature brought him into active fellowship with John Wilson and the men who were in that year founding the fortunes of "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine." He was then a young man of four- and- twenty, thin, eager, skilful in caricature with pen and pencil, and with an outward manner that seemed cold and supercilious. For his gift of stinging, he was figured by his com- rades as the Scorpion, but they and other of Lock- hart's intimate friends found good reason to like him heartily. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott. In 1823 he published a volume of Spanish Ballads, translated into English verse with a poetic vigour that has caused good Spanish scholars to doubt whether they may not be better than the originals. He published also four good novels, "Valerius," 0/ English Literature. 1 1 1 62 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE in 1 82 1, "Adam Blair," in 1822, "Reginald Dalton" in 1823, and "Matthew Wald," in 1824. In 1828 he published a "Life of Burns." When Sir Walter Scott died in 1832 he left his son-in-law sole literary exe- cutor, and at the beginning of the reign of Victoria, John Gibson Lockhart was producing the seven volumes of his full and elaborate "Life of Scott." John Wilson, foremost of the group of men busy in 1 8 1 7 over the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine, was about eight years older than Lockhart. Like his friend Thomas De Quincey he earned his place in literature as a journalist, and the points of likeness and difference between these two friends make it con- venient to speak of them together. They were born in the same year 1785, John Wilson, the son of a gauze manufacturer at Paisley, Thomas De Quincey, son of a Manchester merchant. John Wilson was edu- cated chiefly at a school kept in the manse of the neighbouring parish of Mearns. His teacher did not check the love of outdoor life and nature that bright- ened his work in afterlife. If the pupil shut up his Greek and said, "I should like to go fishing," the teacher said, "Go, fish." When twelve years old, Wilson left Mearns for the Glasgow University. His father had died, leaving him <5£'50,ooo. He was at Glasgow for six years, in Professor Jardine's family, and was eighteen years old when he entered as a gentleman commoner at Magdalene College, Oxford. He was at Oxford for the next three years and a half. At twenty- one he was one of the athletes of the University. He IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 63 lad a broad chest, much red-brown hair, enormous A^hiskers, his height was five foot eleven, and he was :he best man at a long jump in all England, doing :wenty-three feet on a dead level. Once, when in- sulted in the street as he came from a dinner-party in a London square, he knocked down his assailant and, to ivoid question over a street row, proceeded as he was :o Oxford, and reached his college gate as it was Deing opened in the morning. His studies, like his Dleasures, were fastened upon heartily. He graduated, md in 1807, settled at Elleray by Windermere, aged .wenty two, with ample means and vigorous of mind md body. Thomas De Quincey was the fifth of six :hildren of a Manchester merchant who died of con- sumption at the age of 39, leaving to his widow and ^amily a^30,ooo and a house near Manchester at ^reenhays. This son Thomas was precocious and sen- sitive. He was educated at home and at the Bath jrammar School. At fifteen he was eager to go to 3xford, but it was felt that his share of the patrimony lardly yielded enough to meet University expenses vithout aid from an exhibition, which could certainly oe earned at the Manchester Grammar School if he vent there for three years. He went most unwillingly. Se worked hard in his own way, and before he left school his master said of him to a friend, "That boy :ould harangue an Athenian mob better than you or ' could address an English one." But it was an abid- ng grievance to him that an enthusiastic head master :ontinued his lessons into the time left for exercise 164 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE between school and dinner. This, he said, disordered his liver, and when they gave him a dose of medicine, that he described as "a tiger drench," his cup of wrath was full. He borrowed five pounds and ran away to Chester; wandered into Wales; found his way\ to London. There in his utter poverty and solitude he had divers adventures, and first felt the enjoy- ment of a dose of opium, given to him at a chemist's^ shop in Oxford Street, to relieve rheumatic pains of the head and face. He was at last found and re- covered. In October 1803 he went to Oxford, where^ his name was on the books of Worcester College until 1808. But he studied in his own way, sought neither University honours nor College friends. Even his tutor he kept at a distance, confining intercourse be- tween them to the matter of their studies. De Quincey^ began at Oxford his habit of taking opium as a means' of intellectual excitement. The depression following the exaltation invites to another dose. The body, dried and enfeebled by the action of the drug, calls for in- creased doses; opium being one of the drugs of which what is called a tolerance becomes established, so that' doses can sometimes be gradually increased until the daily allowance becomes more than would suffice for poisoning a score of people. In the year before he left Oxford, De Quincey made the acquaintance of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey, and when he was free to choose his dwelling-place, he chose, in the winter of 1 808, the little cottage at Grasmere in which Wordsworth began housekeeping at the Lakes, and IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 65 tvhich had then been left by Wordsworth for Allan Bank. Wordsworth's old cottage — it was called Dove plottage because it had once been a little inn called ;he Dove and Olive Branch — was De Quincey's home Tom 1808 till 1829, and he continued to rent it until 1836. Here, by the year 1813, his use of opium had yrown into a daily habit. In 18 16 he was taking eight housand drops a day of laudanum; eight thousand irops are within very little of a pint. But when he narried, in that year, 18 16, he reduced his allowance o a thousand drops. John Wilson was in those days De Quincey's nearest riend. He had first found him in Wordsworth's study *in a sailor's dress, manifestly in robust health, and vearing upon his countenance a powerful expression )f ardour and animated intelligence, mixed w^ith much ;ood nature." De Quincey and Wilson both loved the )oets, looked up with reverence to Wordsworth, and in heir unlike bodies had eager minds. So Wilson strode )ver the hills with De Quincey trotting by his side, md the friendship lasted. In 1 8 11 John Wilson mar- •ied, and early in 181 2 published his poem of "the ;sle of Palms" that helped to pay for his wedding rip. The " Isle of Palms " shows action upon the young )oet's mind of the two influences of Scott and Words- vorth, and has its plot formed on suggestion of those )roblems of civilization that were common in litera- ure at the turn of the century, and of which Kotze- )ue's "La Perouse" is an example. Children were )orn, and John Wilson was enjoying life by Winder- 1 66 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE mere; with boats, a little fleet of his own, upon the j lake; with vigorous enjoyment of his strength of j limb; and, as one of his poems shows, his inner lifej stirred to the depths in nightlong mountain -walks ! beneath the stars. Then came to him the most for- tunate event of his life. In 1815, at the age of thirty, he lost all his money by the failure of an uncle inj whose hands its management was placed. John Wil- son made no complaint, but he gave up his idler en joyment and buckled to work. He left Elleray withi his family, and was for a time under strict discipline in his mother's patriarchal household at 53 Queen Street. He was called to the bar a year before John] Gibson Lockhart. He published in 18 16 a dramatic^] poem, "the City of the Plague," and was ready to thrive by Law or Literature, when there came the op- portunity for which he had not long to wait. In Decem- J ber 1 8 1 6 William Blackwood, the publisher, entertained the proposals of two gentlemen, fierce James Cleghorn, known as the editor of a Farmer's Magazine, and mild Thomas Pringle, a writer and poet, who afterwards vi- sited South Africa. They suggested the want of a new Tory monthly magazine for Edinburgh, to super- sede "the Scots Magazine" which was Whig and had become feeble. "The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine" appeared, therefore, in April 18 17, under the manage- ment of its projectors. After the second number editors and publishers were at feud. In June the publisher advertised that at the end of three months from that date the Magazine would be discontinued. The edi- IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 67 tors were then persuaded to take ^125 for their share in the copyright, and the seventh number, first of a new series, appeared with its name aUered to "Black- wood's Edinburgh Magazine," the publisher keeping in his own hands all privileges of editor, and looking about for vigorous articles from the cleverest young Tories he could find. The first number of "Black- wood" was alive with dashing personality. It attacked Coleridge and Leigh Hunt, and it gave a history of itself in the form of a "Translation from an Ancient Chaldee MS.," in which it parodied the style of the Book of Revelation. Mr. Blackwood of 17 Princes Street was a man clothed in plain apparel who stood in the door of his house, and his name was as it had been the colour of ebony, and there came up to him two great beasts — the former editors, "the one beast was like unto a lamb, and the other like unto a bear." When Blackwood called other friends to his help the "two beasts" went over to Constable, "a man who was crafty in counsel," publisher of the Edinburgh Review, and edited his "Scots Magazine." Blackwood took heart and was encouraged by his friends, but perplexed by multitude of advisers, until the veiled editor ap- peared and summoned his instruments. The first was John Wilson, who is thus described: "And the first which came was after the likeness of the beautiful leopard, from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going forth was comely as the greyhound, and his eyes as the lightning of fiery flame." Lockhart was thus figured : "There came also, from a far country, the scorpion. 1 68 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE which delighteth to sting the faces of men, that he might sting sorely the countenance of the man which is crafty and of the two beasts." This whimsical piece, representing the beginning of the war of Whigs and Tories from the camps of Constable and Blackwood, included about forty sketches of leading Edinburgh men in verses that shocked many a reader as irreverent caricatures of the phraseology of the Apocalypse. John Wilson was the leading spirit in the magazine. By the end of i8ig, its prosperity* enabled him with his wife and five children to set up a home of his own, and in the next year, when he was 35 years old, though he knew nothing of the subject he proposed to teach, he was set up, on the Tory side, as candidate for the vacant chair of Moral Philosophy in the Uni- versity of Edinburgh. Though his opponent was Sir William Hamilton, he was elected by a Tory Town Council, and at his first lecture conquered a hostile throng of students by the simple manliness with which he set about his work. He had studied hard during the vacation and prepared his course. Thenceforth, as Professor Wilson, his frank kindliness made him a power over the hearts of the young. As " Christopher North," his wit and humour, his poetic sense of nature, his heartiness not only in hard hitting but in generosity where he saw need, not only in the "Noctes Am- brosianae" — Nights at Ambrose's Tavern — but in papers of all kinds, gave to the pages of Blackwood * Tales from Blackwood are in the Tauclinitz Collection* IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 69 health and vigour. He died in April 1854. He was ill in 1852 when Macaulay was rejected at Edinburgh, and rose from a sick-bed to vote for him, Whig as he was, because he was ashamed of the cry raised against a worthy man of letters. De Quincey who had published the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," in 182 1, in "the London Magazine," lived chiefly by journalism. He wrote about fifty papers in "Blackwood," left Grasmere in 1829, was drawn to Edinburgh by the friendship of John Wilson, and in 1843 settled at the cottage Scott once had occupied at Lasswade near Edinburgh. He died in 1859. His collected magazine papers constitute his works in 14 volumes. John Foster, who was born in the year of Words- worth's birth, 1770, and died in 1843, the year of Southey's death, was essayist of another kind. He was of Yorkshire family, educated at Bristol at the Baptist College, and thenceforth a preacher. He is remembered for his thoughtful essays "on Decision of Character" and other subjects that directly concern the building up of citizens. His Essay "on the Evils of Popular Ignorance," striking the same note, allied his thoughtful teaching to the work of men who were labouring for the advance of education. James Montgomery, a year younger than Words- worth, was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, in November 1 7 7 1 . He was the son of a Moravian Missionary, who left him at a Moravian school in Yorkshire to be 170 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE educated while he went to preach to the negro slaves in the West Indies. Montgomery never again saw father or mother. They died in the West Indies. The boy was placed by the brotherhood in a general shop kept by a Moravian at Mirfield. He was a verse smitten boy, and as his verses multiplied his literary ambition rose, and he set off to walk to London in search of a publisher. On the way he was obliged to halt, and take a situation in another general shop. At last the youth and his poems reached London and a publisher was found. He did not want the poems, but offered Montgomery a place as shopman. Montgomery was glad to accept it, and from this position transferred his services in 1792 to a Mr. Gales in Sheffield, a bookseller, who had set up a newspaper, "the Sheffield Register." Montgomery managed the printing of this, and also wrote in it. The times were astir with revolutionary hope; the English government, in dread lest fire should spread from France to England, was seeking to put down the expression of distasteful opinions, Mr. Gales had to leave England to escape government prosecution. His assistant, James Montgomery, continued the paper; with a significant change of its name to the symbol of hope, he called it "the Sheffield Iri§." He was prosecuted, fined and imprisoned for a song on the Fall of the Bastille and an account given in the "Iris" of a riot at Sheffield. But after his release he went on with his paper, and published verses written in prison as "Prison Amusements." Thenceforth James IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I7I Montgomery, as journalist and poet, was a leader of thought in Sheffield, with an influence extending over England. His enthusiasm for the better life of man on earth was associated with a deep religious feeling. His volumes of poems "the Ocean," in 1805, "the Wanderer in Switzerland," in 1806, "the West Indies," in 1809, "the World before the Flood," in 18 12, though he was attacked in the "Edinburgh Review," deserved the reputation they still hold. In 18 19 followed "Greenland," a poem in five cantos, in 1828 "The Pelican Island," and in 1836, the year before the accession of Victoria, there was a collected edition of his Poems in three volumes. A volume of Original Hymns, published in 1846, was added by him to the literature of the present reign. Sir Robert Peel made the poet's latter years easier by a pension of ^ 1 50, and he died on the 30th of April, 1854. Thomas Campbell, who in the last year of the eighteenth century sang "the Pleasures of Hope," was six years younger than James Montgomery, but the elder man outlived the younger by ten years. Thomas Campbell, led by his first great success to become a working man of letters, had produced occa- sional volumes of poetry finished with the utmost care. "Gertrude of Wyoming" and other poems appeared in 1809; "Theodric" with other poems in 1824, and there was a new edition of his poetical works in 1828, when the copyrights had all reverted to him. But while he thus cared for his place among the poets he was earning by hurried task work, much of it done as 172 OF E^,TGL1SH LITERATURE editor of magazines. He edited for some time "the New Monthly." In 18 19 he was producing his seven vokmies of "Specimens of the British Poets," with critical essays. Charles James Fox obtained for him a pension of ^200 a year. In 1826 he was honoured by election to the dignity of Rector of his old Uni- versity, Glasgow. At the same time he became a leader among those who were engaged in the founda- tion of the London University. In those days the honours of the English Universities were denied to dissenters, and all public school education in England held by the old tradition that associated it entirely with the established form of the Church in which it had its origin. The dissenters proposed a University in London for themselves. Brougham Avould have followed their lead, but Campbell urged, against many difficulties, the nobler conception of a London Uni- versity tied to no party and no sect, but offering to all the highest culture, and his view prevailed. In 1828, when Campbell had a pleasure of hope fulfilled by the opening of the building designed for the London Uni- versity, he lost his wife, and at the end of the year he was honoured by election for the third time to the Lord Rectorship of the University of Glasgow. At the end of 1830 Campbell had ceased to edit "the New Monthly," of which he said, "it was impossible to con- tinue editor without interminable scrapes, together with a law-suit now and then." The editorship had added £ 600 a year to a limited and encumbered in- come. Campbell meant to escape from slavery, write m THE RF.IGN OF VICTORIA. I 73 at his own will and live content upon a little. But when he broke from his old relations a heavy balance against him made itself felt, and he was compelled to fall back upon other hackwork, and knew many troubles. Stirred by the taking of Warsaw in 1831, he helped with money, ill to be spared, and with a manly sympathy. By the Poles themselves he was declared in their journals to be the man in England to whom they owed most gratitude. He then set on foot the formation of "the Polish Association," and was enabled by the generosity of his rich brother poet Samuel Rogers to pay £ 500 for a third share in the proprietorship of a magazine, "the Metropolitan," that he was editing. Discovering in good time that the share was worth less than nothing, he with difficulty got the money back, and repaid it to Rogers. He set to work then on the Life of Mrs. Siddons, which was published in 1834; but did not cease to edit "the Metropolitan," which came soon afterwards into the possession of Captain Marryat, a kindly friend. Camp- bell at this time was practising in lodgings a close economy, and paid off in three years £ goo of debt. After the publication of the Life of Mrs. Siddons, in 1834, 1"^^ took a trip to Paris and was tempted to run farther south to Algiers. He started with close and doubtful calculations about payment of the costs of travel, but news of a legacy came to relieve his doubts, and he returned to London with his weak health strengthened. Then he made a book of his experiences, "Letters from the South," published in 1837. Thus at 174 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the age of sixty he was continuing his life into the reign of Queen Victoria. During the first two years of the reign Campbell was steadily working in chambers, at 6i Lincoln's Inn Fields, upon his "Life of Petrarch." He planned also an edition of his poems for the people, which was published by Edward Moxon in 1839, printed in double-columns and at the price of two shillings. He Avas at work also on a new poem, "The Pilgrim of Glencoe," published, with other poems then first col- lected, in 1842. In 1840 the sense of solitude of chambers had driven Campbell to take a house in Pim- lico, and establish himself in it with a niece, whom he had educated, for his housekeeper. This was his last home in England. "The Pilgrim of Glencoe" was coldly received. Campbell had relied on profit from it. He had cashed expectancies, and felt that the costs of his new house would be beyond his means. Health and vigour were failing. The sale of his collected poems fell away, and, while waiting until he could get rid of his house, he was planning a subscription edition of his poems. But the author of "the Pleasures of Me- mory," always a good friend to the author of "the Pleasures of Hope," brought Campbell into relations with Edward Moxon, the poet's publisher. Edward Moxon published a volume of Sonnets of his own, and if 'they are not immortal they were signs of a love for the poets that affected pleasantly his business relations with them. Here also the publisher made generous arrangements that relieved the poet of much IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I ye care. Edward Moxon was one of the few friends who crossed to Boulogne to take leave of the poet when he lay there dying. He died on the 15th of Tune 1844. Thus far the press of forward battle had been urged m their youth by those of whom the youngest combatant was sixty years old in 1837. After the ac- cession of Victoria they still joined in the strife on which It had become the part of other men to spend the fresh force of their lives. As they fell, men of the next generation pressed into their places. 176 OF ENCxLTSH LITERATURE CHAPTER VL OF WOMEN WHO WROTE IN THE EARLY PART OF THE REIGN. Joanna Baillie and Miss Edgeworth were the veterans of literature who represented in 1837 the woman's part in the work of civilization. Eldest among the younger women was Barbara Hofland, born ! in 1770, of like age therefore with Wordsworth. Frances Trollope was then 59; Lucy Aikin, 56; Lady ' Morgan, 54; Mary Somerville, 45; Mary Howitt, 37; j Harriet Martineau and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, other- wise unlike, were alike in being 35 years old; Anna Maria Hall was ^^; Caroline Elizabeth Norton, 29 and Elizabeth Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, who has earned the first rank among English poetesses, was also twenty-nine. There was also Lady Charlotte Eliza- beth Guest, afterwards Lady Charlotte Schreiber, who in the year 1838, at the age of about five-and-twenty, enriched English Literature with a translation of old Welsh Romances from a MS. in the Library of Jesus College, Oxford, — the Llyfr Coch o Hergest, the Red Book of Hergest, — as "the Mabinogion," stories for the young, "mab" being Welsh for a child. From one of the tales in this collection, "Geraint, the Son of Erbin," Tennyson framed his poem of "Geraint and Enid." > i IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 77 Lady Morgan, born in 1 783 as Sydney Owenson, the daughter of an Irish song\vriter, acquired reputation in 1806 by her third novel "the Wild Irish Girl" and then became, as a writer of light literature, active and popular, expressing liberal opinions. In 18 11 she married Sir Charles Morgan, a physician with literary tastes. She died in 1859, and in the early years of the reign of Victoria, like Lady Blessington, she folded in her drawing-room at evening a little flock of authors. Her Memoirs were published after her death.* Mary Somerville was the first to shake man's com- fortable faith in the incapacity of women for scientific thought. She was the daughter of Vice Admiral Fair- fax, was born at Jedburgh in 1792, and was sent to a school at Musselburgh. She had a natural taste for the study of mathematics, which was quickened by association with the studies of a young seaman whom she married early in life, Captain Greig. She married afterwards a cousin. Dr. Somerville. In 1826 Mrs. Somerville had presented a memoir to the Royal Society on the magnetising power of the more re- frangible solar rays. In 1831 she produced an English paraphrase of Laplace's "Mechanism of the Heavens," begun at the suggestion of Lord Brougham for in- struction of the people. If it had not outgrown the required limits it would have been issued as one of the cheap volumes of the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." In a book, wholly her own, on * Lady Morgan's Memoirs are in the Tauchnitz Collection. Of Englixk Liierature. 12 178 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "the Connexion of the Physical Sciences" first published in 1834, ^^^ republished in many editions, Mrs. Somerville applied exact knowledge to a broad generalization that should help men to draw from the outer world some sense of the harmonies of the uni- verse. Her "Physical Geography" belongs to the reign of Victoria. It was published in 1848, and its aim, like that of the preceding work, was to enlarge culture, in this case by widening the sense of those great operations of nature which immediately affect the conditions of the life of man. Mrs. Somerville's clearness of expression and habitual breadth of view gave a charm to her books that made them for many years a powerful aid to the advance of knowledge into wisdom. In her later life Mrs. Somerville settled in Italy, and she died at Naples in November, 1872. Lucy Aikin was probably drawn into literature by the examples of her aunt, Mrs. Barbauld, and her father Dr. John Aikin, a physician who made literature his business. Dr. Aikin edited a magazine, took part in editing a biographical dictionary, and devised a po- pular book for the young, called "Evenings at Home." His daughter Lucy began to write for magazines when she was seventeen, and obtained credit in 18 18 for the first of her books of Historical Memoirs, "Memoirs . of the Court of Queen Elizabeth." She continued the ' series with "Memoirs of the Court of James I." in 1822, the year of her father's death, and published in the following year a memoir of her father. She then settled at Hampstead, and lived chiefly there IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 179 until her death, having Joanna Baillie until 1851 for friend and neighbour. In 1825 her father's sister, Mrs. Barbauld, died. She had been born Anna Laetitia Aikin, and Lucy Aikin published her works with a memoir. In 1833 the series of Historical Memoirs was continued with "Memoirs of the Court of Charles I." The Life of Addison in 1843 and a volume of Holi- day Stories in 1858 were the only books published by Lucy Aikin in the reign of Victoria. She died in January 1865. Mrs. Holland had died in 1844 at the age of 74. Hers also had been a literary life of modest useful- ness. As Barbara Wreaks, of Sheffield, she had mar- ried and become Mrs. Hoole. In two years she was a widow, and had to support herself She published some poems in 1 805, and set up a school at Harrogate. In 1808 she married the landscape painter, Thomas Christopher Holland, and her pen was companion to his brush in the support of home. In 18 13 she published a story for young readers, called "The Son of a Genius," that was very widely popular. After- wards came novels and tales, including a characteristic series of stories in one volume designed for the pleasure of young girls, who were also to draw from them some aid to a wholesome moral training. They were often named after the qualities they recom- mended, "Decision," "Patience," "Fortitude," "Energy." More elaborate novels had been written by Mrs. Opie, also a painter's wife with the same openly didactic purpose, "Temper" was one of them published in 18 12;' l8p OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Mary Brunton had published "Self Control," in 1811, and followed with "Discipline," in 1814; in 1823 "Lying in all its Branches" was another of Mrs. Opie's books, and in 1828 there was "Detraction displayed." Mrs. Opie was only a year older than Mrs. Hofland, ^nd outlived her, for she died in 1853, but she did not continue to write after 1837. J^^^ Porter, who, with her sister Anna Maria, had been active and po- pular as novelist in the early years of the century, also survived until 1850, but she did not write under Victoria. Even Harriet Lee, who was born in 1756, and with her sister Sophia produced popular short stories, as " Canterbury Tales," between the year 1797 and 1805, was living, though not writing, under Vic- toria, and died at the age of 95 in 1851. Mrs. Hemans had died in 1835, closing a sad life at the age of forty one. Her Poetical Remains were published in 1836 with a short memoir. Two volumes of Memorials of her were also published in the same year byMr. H. F. Chorley.* The strain of sentiment in Mrs. Hemans's verse was associated with domestic feeling; the sad undertone was a real note of life in her. In Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, admired by readers of Keepsakes and Poetical Albums as L. E. L., the sentiment was more conventional, though harmless and graceful of its kind. In 182 1, when she was but a girl of nine- teen, and Byron was still living, she published the * A Selection from Mrs. Hemans's Poems is in the Tauchnit2; Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. l8l "Fate of Adelaide," and from that time her occasional verses in Magazines and Annuals were supported by- occasional books of verse, "the Improvisatrice " in 1824, the year of Byron's Death, "the Troubadour" in 1825, "the Venetian Bracelet" in 1829, each with a little following of "other Poems," and the "Lay of the Peacock" in 1835. Miss Landon produced three Novels in the reign of William IV., and in 1837 P^^" lished "Traits and Trials of Early Life." Her mind was acquiring health and strength when she married, in June 1838, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle, Mr. George Maclean. She went out with her husband to Cape Coast Castle and died there within four months of her wedding day. A tendency to artificial sentiment was certainly not the fault of Mrs. Frances Trollope as a novelist. There was a practical heartiness in her work that gave plea- sure to the readers of her own generation, and her name lives for the next generation of readers also in two sons who maintain its credit. Frances was the wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope, a barrister, to whom she was married at the age of nineteen, and by whom she was left widow at the age of thirty -five, with a family to support. Her son Thomas Adolphus was then fifteen years old and her son Anthony ten. She sent both sons to Winchester School, the elder also to Oxford, and the younger also to Harrow. In 1829 she went to America, stayed three years, and published in 1832 her experience of the "Domestic Life of the Americans," to the great discontent of those 1^2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE whose manners she described. Then followed light and cheerful records of Travel in Belgium and Western Germany and a book on "Paris and the Parisians," be- fore Mrs. Trollope began novel writing, in 1837, with "Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw," followed promptly by "the Vicar of Wrexhill." In 1838 Mrs. Trollope in "the Widow Barnaby" produced a picture of a vulgar woman on her travels, drawn with a rough good humour that pleased many readers. Following the lead of Charles Dickens, who, by his Oliver Twist, had, in 1838, quickened attention to the working of the Poor Laws, Mrs. Trollope published in 1839, i^"^ monthly parts, a novel upon life in the Factory, "Michael Arm- strong, the Factory Boy;" she also continued the ad- ventures of her Widow Barnaby in "the Widow Married," and published a book on "a Visit to Italy." Another novel, "Jessie Phillips" followed, and, in 1843, "the Barnabys in America." From this time until 1856 Mrs. Trollope's novels appeared in rapid succession with an occasional light book founded on travel. Some- times, as in "the Robertses on their Travels" (1846) travel and fiction were united in one work. Her last novel, "Gertrude," appeared in the year 1855. In that year her son Anthony Trollope published his first novel, "the Warden," which obtained immediate and permanent reputation. In the following year Mrs. Trollope published her last book, "Paris and London," and her elder son, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, pub- lished his first book, "the Girlhood of Catherine de' Medici." Then the brave, hardworking mother, who IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I»3 by her skill in furnishing wholesome entertainment to the public had secured all aids of liberal training for her children, and achieved her best success in their successes, put her pen aside. Its work was done. Mrs. TroUope spent her last years in Florence and died in October 1863. Mary Howitt and Anna Maria Hall had skill as writers of healthy stories for the young; so had Miss Martineau, although her energies went out over a wider field of labour. Mrs. Howitt and Mrs. S. C. Hall had also the happiness of long lives spent in fellowship of labour with their husbands. William 'and Mary Howitt made, as fa*- as possible, their labours one. They were both members of the Society of Friends, he born at Heanor in Derbyshire in 1795, she, as Mary Botham, at Uttoxeter in 1804. They married in 1823, and published in that year "The Forest Minstrel" with their names joined on the title-page. In 1827 they produced another joint-work, "The De- solation of Eyam and other Poems." It was after the accession of Victoria that Mary Howitt applied the sense of poetry that was stronger in her than in her husband, to the skilful invention of story books for the young, beginning with "Strive and Thrive" in 1839. The titles of the next tales will suggest their spirit: "Hope on Hope ever;" "Sowing and Reaping;" "Little Coin much Care." William Howitt had published in 1833 a "History of Priestcraft," and in 1837 "the Rural Life of England." They went to live for a time at Heidelberg in 1841. The result was that William 184 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Howitt published a book on "Student Life in Ger- many," with translations of German students' songs, and Mrs. Howitt, who improved the time by also learning Swedish, became a most graceful and pleasant translator into English of the novels of Fredrika Bremer. Husband and wife worked together on an account of Scandinavian Literature, and in 1862 a book describing "the Ruined Abbeys and Castles of England" was by them both. William Howitt laboured steadily as man of letters for the wellbeing of the people. In 1846 he was connected with a "People's Journal." He turned to useful account in books two years experi- ence in Australia, whither he went in 1852 and whence he returned in 1854. He wrote an "Illustrated History of England" in six volumes, completed in 186 1. The eldest daughter of William and Mary Howitt, trained as an artist, is known also as author of a pleasant book published in 1853, "the Art-Student in Munich." William Howitt died in March 1879. Anna Maria Fielding, of Wexford, born in 1804, was married at the age of twenty to Samuel Carter Hall, a son of Colonel Robert Hall of Topsham, Devon. He was three years older than his wife, and was then already a man of letters. He reported for a news- paper; in the year after his marriage he edited an annual. It was he who succeeded Campbell in 1830 as editor of "the New Monthly," and two years after the beginning of the reign of Victoria he founded, in 1839, "the Art Journal," which not only diffused in- formation and criticism upon all matters that con- IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 85 cerned the advance of the Fine Arts as a means of culture, but by giving every month steel-plate engrav- ings from good pictures and statues, together with many woodcut illustrations, brought the arts them- selves into the home. Mrs. Hall began her career as a writer in 1828 with "Sketches of Irish Character." These were followed by novels, short tales, "Stories of the Irish Peasantry," which first appeared in "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," and stories for chil- dren, besides books written in fellowship with her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Hall, who lived to celebrate their golden wedding-day, are said to have written three hundred and forty volumes. Whatever the number may be, health is in them all. And here also the finer grace of invention and expression is in the wife's share of the work. A third pair of workers who were active at the beginning of the reign, and who passed on to old age happy in their fellowship of work, were Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. Mary Novello, eldest daughter of Vincent Novello, and sister to the famous singer Clara Novello, was born in 1809. She was married at the age of nineteen to Charles Cowden Clarke, who had known Keats as a boy in his father's school at Enfield. He shared her love for the poets, above all for Shakespeare. In 1845 Mrs. Cowden Clarke pub- lished "A Concordance to Shakespeare," which re- mained for many years without a rival, and has at last been rivalled only in Germany by the Shake- speare Lexicon of Dr. Alexander Schmidt. Mrs. Cowden r86 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Clarke joined her husband in producing an edition of the Works of Shakespeare. She has written also many- poems and tales. In March 1877, after some years of residence together at Genoa, she was parted from the companion of all her labour, who then died at the age of ninety. But still active, Mrs. Cowden Clarke, even in 1881 is dating from her home in Genoa a book of verses, "Honey from the Weed," a very human book whatever its technical faults, pathetic with memories, womanly and true. Among foremost representatives of English thought under Victoria we still have example of this happy union of the intellectual with the domestic life. The 11 best English poetess of her own or any time became the wife of one of the best English poets, when Eliza- beth Barrett married Robert Browning. Miss Barrett was born in Herefordshire in 1809, the daughter of an English country gentleman whose kindly encourage- ment of her genius is recorded in her earliest verses. The impulse to write was strong in her youth, and at the age of seventeen she published, in 1826, "an Essay on Mind and other Poems." Her friend Miss Milford described her as "a slight delicate figure with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." In 1833 Miss Barrett published other poems together with a translation of the Prometheus Bound of ^schylus, which indicated the extent to which she had been refining her mind by Greek studies. In her as in IN THE RKIGN OF VICTORIA. 187 Other \vriters of our day the effect of fresher life in litera- ture shows itself by happy change from a dead wor- ship of Vergil and Horace, that came in with the French critical influence, to a living sympathy with the genius of ancient Greece in all its forms. Poets who feel most deeply the spirit of their time find their way in through beauty of external form to the whole soul that was in the utterance of the Greek Poets, and of Plato who was poet too. Not seldom also from poets of less mark, who connect only a few surface emotions with expression of the outward sense of beauty, English comes with a touch refined by contact with the Greeks. Miss Barrett felt the whole charm of the imaginative literature of the Greeks, and read also the works of the Greek fathers of the Church. At the beginning of the reign of Victoria, there were serious signs of consumption, for which she was sent to Torquay. A year or two later, a brother was drowned by the upsetting of a boat within her sight, close to the shore. She was removed by easy stages to London, where she still studied as- siduously and recovered health. In 1840 Miss Barrett published "the Seraphim and other Poems," and in 1844 there was a collected edition of her Poems in five volumes. Robert Browning had then been publishing plays and lyrics in occasional cheap shilling parts under the general title of "Bells and Pomegranates." A little piece by Miss Barrett in which she expressed her admiration of Mr. Browning's poetry by comparing it to the Pomegranate fruit, began a friendship that 1 88 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE led, in 1846, to marriage. It is, therefore, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning that Miss Barrett lives in English Literature. Caroline Elizabeth Norton, whose maiden name was Sheridan, was granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the author of the School for Scandal *. She was born in 1808. Her marriage at the age of twenty with the Hon. George C. Norton, brother of Lord Grantley, was not happy, and was followed after sometime by a separation. With quick wit as a family birthright, and warm feeling, she wrote in annuals and published poems; produced in 1829 "the Sorrows of Rosalie;" in 1830 "the Undying One" on the sub- ject of the Wandering Jew; in 1845 "the Child of the Islands." She showed interest in several forms of political and social reform. Her novels were "Stuart of Dunleath" in 1851, "Lost and Saved" in 1863, and "Old Sir Douglas" in 1868*"^. Her best poem was "the Lady of La Garaye" published in 1862. Harriett Martineau, the sixth of eight children, was born at Norwich in June 1802. She was an elder sister of James Martineau, who was born in April 1805, and who has taken an important place among leaders of thought under Victoria. The founder of the family in England was driven from France by the Revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes, and became a surgeon at Norwich. From him the practice of medicine was * Sheridan's Dramatic Works are in the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Mrs. Norton's three novels are in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 89 handed down as a family profession to Miss Mar- tineau's uncle, who was eminent as a provincial surgeon. Miss Martineau's bent for literature showed itself early. Before she was twenty, she published a book of "Devotional Exercises for the Young," and soon became well known as a writer of tales. In 1832 she began to aid great social movements of the time by endeavours to show political principles in action through a series of short stories. Her "Illustrations of Political Economy" written upon this plan, extended through eighteen small and cheap volumes. In 1833 she illustrated in like manner "Poor Laws and Paupers," and in 1834 "Illustration of Taxation" followed. I go OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAPTER VII. OF THOSE BY WHOM CHEAP LITERATURE WAS MADE USEFUL; AND OF THE EARLIER LIFE OF THOMAS BABINGTON; MACAULAY. Deferring Avhat has to be said of Miss Martineau's work in the reign of Victoria, we turn now to some who were fellow-workers with her in her efforts to spread knowledge among the people. Such efforts;! acquired fresh energy at the time when there was, ,] by the Reform Bill, an extension of the rights of^ citizenship. Charles Knight was born at Windsor in 1791. His mother died before he was two years old. His father, also a Charles Knight, was a bookseller and printer. He had published for the Eton boys in 1786-7 an Eton magazine, "the Microcosm" to which George Canning and others were contributors. As a boy Charles Knight read much; at twelve he was sent for two years to a school at Ealing; and at fourteen he was bound apprentice to his father. For the next three years he was at his case, learning to print. His father sold second hand books, and young Charles Knight, when he was not printing, made catalogues. He was about seventeen when he made a catalogue of the books of a clergyman who IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. IQI was selling his library before going to India. Among the books was a very defective copy of the first folio of Shakespeare, and young Charles Knight's employer had in those days no reason to be conscious of extra- vagant generosity when he said of his first folio "Young man, I give you that imperfect copy of Shakespeare for yourself" From this gift Charles Knight dated his enthusiasm for Shakespeare. He supplied the missing pages of the volume, by earing fly leaves out of the seventeenth century folios in his father's shop and printing on them with old type that happened to be in his father's printing office and was exactly like the type of the 1623 folio of Shakespeare. This kind of work was his first training to close observation of the differences between earlier and later texts. In 1808 John and Leigh Hunt had set up "the Examiner" newspaper, which blended good literature in itself and the appreciation of it in others with a keen interest in political and social progress. Charles Knight was among the first ad- mirers of "the Examiner." In 18 12 he had for two months a little half amateur experience as a reporter in London. This was designed as preparation for a venture to which he had persuaded his father. They were to produce out of their Windsor printing office an "Eton and Windsor Express," of which No. i. appeared on the ist of August 18 12. Charles Knight's account of this enterprise illustrates the difficulty of producing a provincial newspaper, when it was bur- dened with a fourpenny stamp duty upon every copy, 192 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE a duty of three shillings, raised afterwards to three: and sixpence, upon every advertisement, and wheni the duty upon the paper used for printing was three- pence a pound. The price of a newspaper was them usually sevenpence, and there were not more than a hundred country newspapers in all England. They could not easily get copies of the London papers in time for the prompt reproduction of important news. The chief London daily journals had expresses to > bring news from the outports. One or two, especially "the Times," had private packet boats to meet home- ward bound ships, and speed home before them with the news they brought. But foreign news that came after midnight, or a late sitting of Parliament, would sometimes make it impossible to get a London paper out till noon. The largest number of copies then printed by a London daily paper did not exceed four thousand. "The Times" first appeared on the 13th of January 1785, as "the Daily Universal Register." On the I St of January 1788 its name was changed to "the Times." In 18 14 it made the first attempt at printing by machinery. The compositors who had dreaded what was coming, and were preparing to protect what they supposed to be their interests, were waiting for foreign news when they were told by the manager, John Walter, son of the John Walter by whom the paper had been founded, that the morn- ing's paper had been printed already by steam. The men were warned that if they attempted violence, there was force at hand to repress it; if they were quiet. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I93 those men who were no longer wanted would have their wages paid until they found other employment. It hardly needs to be said that one result of this development of the printing press has been to open new fields of employment and enlarge the old fields, adding greatly to the earning power of the people. The stamp duty on newspapers was 2}4d. in 1S14., and the advertisement duty 3^. In 181 5 the stamp duty was raised to 4^., and the advertisement duty to 3 J. 6d. At that time the whole number of newspapers published in the United Kingdom, was only 254. The stamp duty remained at fourpence until 1836, when it was reduced to a penny, and remained a penny till its abolition in June 1855. The duty upon each advertisement remained ^s. 6d. until 1833 when it was reduced to is. 6d. in England and u in Ireland. It was wholly abolished in 1853. We return now to Charles Knight, busy upon his "Windsor and Eton Express." He printed a play called "Arminius," in 1813, and published in i8i6 a masque "the Bridal of the Isles" upon the marriage of the Princess Charlotte. In 1 8 1 7 he shewed his in- terest in Literature by printing at Windsor Fairfax's version of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," preceded by short biographies of Tasso and Fairfax. In 1820 he began to publish a monthly serial called "the Plain Englishman," with the direct purpose of opposing cheap and wholesome literature to the cheap and un- wholesome, which was easier to find. He and a friend OJ English Literature. 1 3 194 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE edited the Plain Englishman for three years, and wheri it came to an end, in December 1822, Charles Knigh was in London editing a paper called "the Guardian.' In 1823, having sold the Guardian, he attained ont object of ambition and became a London Publisherlj His shop was in Pall Mall East, then a quarter being! built upon, in the neighbourhood of the Royal Mew? which once occupied the site of what is now Trafalgar Square. He had published in 1820 — 21 at Windsor "the Etonian" for Winthrop Mackworth Praed, and other Eton boys who followed in the steps of J. Smith,i Frere and Canning. In 1823 Praed was at Cambridge, and suggested to his old Windsor publisher, fresh in his dignity as head of a London house, that he should produce for the larger public a Magazine written by^ himself and other young Cambridge men. The sugges- tion was adopted. The chief writers were Praed, who signed himself either Peregrine Courtney or Vyvyan: Joyeuse; Thomas Babington Macaulay, who styled him- self Tristram Merton; John Moultrie, who signed as^ Gerard Montgomery; Derwent Coleridge; Henry Nelson Coleridge; William Sidney Walker; and Henry Maiden. A magazine that brought such men as these together in their youth belongs to literary history. It was called "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," the first number ap- peared in June 1823 and John Wilson, — Christopher North— described it in his "Noctes Ambrosianae" as a "gentlemanly Miscellany, got together by a clan of young scholars, who look upon the world with a cheer- ful eye, and all its on-goings with a spirit of hopeful IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 95 kindness." We shall find no pleasanter occasion for a glance at the chief members of the clan. Praed himself, William Mackworth Praed, was the youngest son of a serjant-at-law, who had a country seat at Teignmouth. He was born in London in 1802, lost his mother early, and after education at a private school followed his eldest brother to Eton in 18 14. It was just before passing from Eton to Cam- bridge that Praed and his friend Walter Blunt edited "the Etonian," its monthly numbers beginning with October 1820 and ending with July 182 1. Praed commenced residence at Trinity College in October 182 1. He obtained medals for Greek Odes and Epi- grams and one for English verse; was private tutor to a nobleman's son at Eton from 1825 to 1827 when he obtained a Fellowship at Trinity, then joined an Inn of Court, and was called to the bar in 1829. In 1830 he felt deeply the death of an elder sister. He was in Parliament from November 1830 until after the passing of the Reform Bill, and again in 1834, when he held office as Secretary to the Board of Control under Sir Robert Peel. In 1835 his father died and in the same year he married. At the beginning of the reign of Victoria he was failing rapidly in health and in July 1839 ^^ ^^^^ of consumption. In 1864 ^^^ collected poems were published in two volumes and with a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. The grace of his light playfulness as a writer of vers de sociite is sustained in these volumes by an undertone of deep and pure domestic feeling. 13* ^9^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE John Moultrie was born on the last day of the yean 1799. His grandfather had been the loyal Governor of; Florida in the American War of Independence. Hisj father was a rector in Shropshire who sent him to Eton and Trinity College Cambridge. At school and College he was comrade with Praed. In 1825 he took orders, wasi presented to the rectory of Rugby, and married the sister 1 of a man, James Fergusson, who produced in 1865-67; the most important History of Architecture in ouri language. John Moultrie remained at Rugby to the; end of his life. His mother formed part of his house- hold until 1867, when she died at the age of ninety, three. His wife had died three years before. Hei himself died at the age of 75 on the day after Christ-; mas day in 1874. William Sidney Walker born at Pembroke in 1795, published part of a poem on "Gustavus Vasa" in 1813] before he had left Eton. He obtained a Fellowship ofl Trinity, and when the date of that had expired his lifej was troubled, until his death at the age of 51 on the^ 15th of October 1846. In 1852 his Poetical Remains -i were edited with a Memoir by his friend Moultrie. In 1854 a little book by him upon Shakespeare's Versifica- tion was published, and in i860 appeared three volumes; of notes by him upon the Text of Shakespeare. Derwent and Henry Nelson Coleridge, also among the contributors to "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," were son and nephew of the poet. Derwent, born inj 1800, was at St. John's College Cambridge when Praed was at Trinity. He entered the Church, was IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 97 Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea, from 1841 to 1864, and was afterwards rector of Hauwell and Pre- bendary of St. Paul's. He edited the Poetical Remains of his elder brother Hartley in 1851. He also wTOte the Memoir of Praed prefixed to the collection of his works. The father of Thomas Babington Macaulay was Zachary, one of twelve children of the Rev. John Macaulay, who was during the last fifteen years of his life minister at Cardross. Mr. Thomas Babington, owner of Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, married Jean Macaulay, another of the twelve. Zachary Macaulay was in his earlier life overseer of an estate in Jamaica, where he saw what was meant by negro slavery. At twenty four he gave up his position, and was sent to Sierra Leone by the Company formed, with Wilberforce a member of the Council, to oppose to slave labour the work done by a colony of liberated slaves. Zachary Macaulay, established at Freetown, became Governor for the Company, and worked against all difficulties with a firmness and patience founded upon deep religious faith. An attack of fever caused him to return to England, where he became engaged to a Bristol quakeress, Selina Mills, who had been a pupil and remained a closely at- tached friend of Hannah More and her sisters. But he returned to Sierra Leone, and did not marry until he was again in England and settled at home with a salary of five hundred a year as Secretary to the Com- pany. Married in August 1799, Mr. and Mrs. Zachary 1 9© OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Macaulay took a small house in Lambeth; but when] a child was to be born, Zachary Macaulay's sisteri Jean, Mrs. Thomas Babington, invited her sister-in-law to Rothley Temple. So it happened that the child was born at Rothley Temple, on the 25th of October,! 1800, and was named Thomas Babington Macaulay. Home was for the first two years of the child's life ini a house in Birchin Lane, used for the offices of the Sierra Leone Company. For the rest of the time ofi his childhood, Macaulay's home was at a house in High Street Clapham. When he was three years old, books became his companions. He had a marvellous memory and soon began to talk like print. When he: was four years old, the hostess condoled with him at J a house where hot coffee had been spilt over his legs, ,; and he replied "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." At seven years old he took it into his head to fill a quire of paper with a Compendium of Uni- versal History. Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel" he knew by heart. He had picked it up in a house at which his father made a long call, read eagerly, and when he went home sat down on his mother's bed and repeated as many cantos as she liked to hear. He knew also nearly the whole of "Marmion," when he began at eight years old to imitate Scott's verse with a poem on the Battle of Cheviot. When he had written three or four hundred lines of that, his fancy changed and he began a heroic poem "Olaus the Great, or the Conquest of Mona." At seven years old he was left for a week with Hannah More and her IN. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I99 sisters at Barley Wood, where, as Macaulay afterwards said, "They could not make enough of me. They taught me to cook; and I was to preach, and they got people in from the fields, and I stood on a chair, and preached sermons. I might have been indicted for holding a conventicle." The fluency of talk, and fluency in the outpourings of verse and prose cleverly imitative of the books over which it was his delight to hang, belonged to a frank self-confident nature, that was at the same time good-humoured and play- ful. Zachary Macaulay joined a nephew in establish- ing the firm of Macaulay and Babington, which had a large business as African merchants. When the eldest son was thirteen, there was a family of nine children, four boys and five girls, in a thriving house- hold. From a Clapham school, Macaulay was sent to Little Shelford near Cambridge, where he was placed, at the age of twelve, as one of a dozen boys under an Evangelical clergyman in whom his father trusted. Among his school fellows next year was Henry Maiden. His tutor had then removed to another house in Hert- fordshire. The lifelong friendship between Macaulay and Maiden who were competitors at School and College, was due, as friendship often is, to likeness in essentials with much outward difference. Henry Maiden became one of the finest scholars of his time, and as Professor of Greek at University College London from 1 83 1 until 1876, only a year before his death, he exercised great influence over two generations of students. He was among the young writers of "Knight's 200 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Quarterly Magazine," but in after years his fastidious] taste restrained his pen. Macaulay even among school! boys was loud and confident as a talker, and whem afterwards he wrote books had as good an opinion of] them as the kindest of his critics. A memory to which everything seemed to stick enabled him to pour out of his mind at will whatever had once come into it, and he took natural pleasure in the exercise of power. But it was natural pleasure. A quick wit went with the quick memory, and Macaulay was in all things so j! frank and kindly, that his self-confidence offended | none. Henry Maiden's quiet nature felt, no doubt, | the charm of Macaulay's boldness, though in him that sense of an unattainable perfection which is keen in minds of finest temper was a restraining influence through life. He published nothing but a Lecture on *Hhe Origin of Universities" in 1835. Macaulay's memory was such a gift as few would welcome. At thirteen he read two pieces of poor verse in a Cambridge newspaper while waiting at an inn, and forty years afterwards he could repeat them word for word. In October 18 18 he went to Trinity College Cambridge, sharing rooms with the eldest son of his father's friend and fellow-worker Henry Thornton, member for Lambeth. At Cambridge he twice gained the Chancellor's medal for English verse. In 1821 he obtained a Craven University Scholarship with Maiden and George Long. In 1822 his neglect of Mathematics deprived the brilliant student of a place in the Tripos, but he succeeded in a competition for a prize IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 201 of ten pounds annually offered to the Junior Bachelor of Trinity College who shall write the best Essay on the Conduct and Character of William the Third. This brings us to the time when, in 1823, Macaulay, twenty three years old, was among the contributors to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. In the following year, 1824, he and his friend Maiden both obtained Fellowships at Trinity. When Macaulay went to College, his father had made a fortune in the African trade; before he left College, his father had lost his fortune. But the eldest son brought cheer into the new home in Great Ormond Street. He talked politics at breakfast to the delight of his father, and with his brothers and sisters of an evening was full of loving playful- ness. To the first number of "Knight's Quarterly" Macaulay contributed his Fragments of a Roman Tale, also a satire upon the scheme of patronage embodied in the Royal Society of Literature and, to please his father, an article on West Indian Slavery. But his father was shocked by a couple of amatory poems in the number. He did not know that it was his son himself who had written of the happiness of seeing a Rosamond twine rose and eglantine round the bower he was to share with her, Still laying on my soul and sense a new and mystic charm At every turn of thy fairy shape and of thy snowy arm; but he would not allow Thomas to write again in a Magazine that would admit such naughtiness. The 202 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE second number contained nothing alarming, and Macaulay had leave to resume his place as a con- tributor. He sent to the Magazine "Montcontour," "Ivry," "Songs of the Huguenots," "Songs of the Civil War," "Scenes from Athenian Revels," an essay on "the Athenian Orators," and a "Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching the great Civil War." The two last named pieces were in the fifth number, published in July 1824. In October, after the sixth number had appeared, Charles Knight went to Cambridge to compose dif- ferences arising out of his claim to control writers in the Magazine. He found a happy dinner in Henry Maiden's rooms to celebrate the gaining of a Trinity Fellowship by Maiden and Macaulay, but the dispute proved fatal to Knight's Quarterly. Macaulay had work for another Quarterly in pro- spect. Francis Jeffrey was looking for young men who could bring new life into the "Edinburgh Review." In January 1825 he wrote to a London friend, "Can you not lay your hands on some clever young man who would write for us? The original supporters of the work are getting old, and either too busy or too stupid, and here the young men are mostly Tories." Macaulay went to Cambridge a Tory; he was almost turned into a Radical by the influence of one of his Cambridge friends, Charles Austin; and he left the University a zealous Whig. The search for a "clever young man" who could revive the youth of "the IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 203 Edinburgh Review" had caused suggestions to be made to him when he was writing in "Knight's Quarterly," and when that journal disappeared Macaulay was doing his best to write a first article with which Francis Jeffrey should be pleased. That was his article on "Milton," which came out in August 1824. Jeffrey had written to him, in acknowledging the MS., "The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." The article on Milton at once gave reputation to its writer. Macaulay was entering to the bar, was, in fact, called in 1826, and joined the Northern Circuit; but his essay on Milton pointed to another call. The "Edinburgh Review" drew from him article after article, and the attention drawn to young Macaulay by his writing in "the Edinburgh" caused Lord Lyndhurst to make him in 1828 a Com- missioner of Bankruptcy. With about ^300 a year from his fellowship, and ^^2 00 from his writing for "the Edinburgh," this office made Macaulay's income about ^^goo a year when he was twenty-eight years old. He felt — and he was — able to succeed either in Literature or in Politics. At that time of his life his ambition was towards a political career, and Lord Lansdowne early in 1830 put him into parliament as member for what was then his Lordship's pocket borough of Calne. The parliament Macaulay joined was that by which the Reform Bill was to be passed, and the success of his first speech on behalf of it strengthened his faith that he might abandon law for politics. He voted for reforms in the Bankruptcy Court which swept 204 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE away his Own small office of Commissioner, and left him with only his earnings from the Review and the income from his fellowship, which then had but a few months to run. In the autumn of 1830 a sister died, and in the spring of 1831 his mother. His home feeling was expressed in the close of a home letter: "Love to all, — to all who are left me to love. We must love each other better." On one day in January 1832 a sister records "Yesterday Tom dined with us, and stayed late. He talked almost uninterruptedly for six hours." On a day in the following February he was with his sisters "in high boyish spirits." Lord Lansdowne had been asking him about his disposition towards taking office. In the "Edinburgh Review" he felt with impatience the superior influence of Brougham, then the most popular man in England. He felt that Brougham disliked and avoided him. Macaulay, there- fore, disliked Brougham. After the passing of the Reform Bill, Macaulay was appointed Secretary of the Board of Control which re- presented the voice of the Crown in the affairs of the East India Company. In January 1833 he entered the new parliament as member for Leeds. In December he was appointed to the seat on the Supreme Council of India which was appointed to be held by one who was not a servant of the Company. The salary was ten thousand a year. Half of this he could save, and after a few years of absence he might hope to return with the independence necessary to political success. The immediate prospect of political success at home IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 205 was gloomy, and it was impossible for him to earn a living by his pen while he took active part in politics. His wellbeing was also the wellbeing of his father and sisters. In February 1834, with his sister named after Hannah More as his companion, Macaulay sailed for India. There Hannah was engaged by the end of the year to marry Mr. Charles Edward Trevelyan an energetic reformer whom Lord William Bentinck had made Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs. Macaulay said of him "He has no small talk. His mind is full of schemes of moral and political improvement, and his zeal boils over in his talk. His topics, even in courtship, are steam navigation, the education of the natives, the equalization of the sugar duties, the sub- stitution of the Roman for the Arabic alphabet in the oriental languages." Charles Edward Trevelyan, son of an Archdeacon of Taunton, was born in 1807 and educated at the Charterhouse and Haileybury. In 1848 he was made knight commander of the Bath because of his exertions for relief of Ireland under famine. After zealous service in posts of high trust that contributed much to the well- being of India, he was created a baronet in 1874. The son of Sir Charles Trevelyan, George Otto Trevelyan, born in 1838, like his father active for reform and now M.P. for Hawick, is the nephew of Macaulay to whom we are indebted for a life of his uncle first published in 1876. After the marriage of his sister Hannah More with Mr. Trevelyan, news from home of the death of another 2o6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE sister filled Macaulay with a grief that caused him to work with fresh intensity. He became in March 1835 President of the Committee of Public Instruction, and then President of a Law Commission to which he pro- posed the framing of a Criminal Code for the whole Indian Empire. In this work he took the chief labour, while his work in behalf of education and of the re- form of Indian Criminal Law was voluntary and unpaid. He might have lived an easy half idle official life; but he bent all his energies to useful labour, encouraged doubtless by the brother-in-law who had' been added to his Indian household, since the sister who went out to be his companion could not leave him to live alone. Still also there was the large habit of reading. He read through, in one year in India, Sophocles twice, ^schylus twice, Euripides once, almost all Plato, all Herodotus and Thucydides, almost all Xenophon, much Aristotle, Plautus twice, Terence twice, Lucretius twice, almost all Cicero, and many authors more; the pencil marks in the books implying that he read with care. He was also sending articles home to Macvey Napier for "the Edinburgh," among them the article on Bacon, in 1837, which filled 104 pages of the Review. That was Macaulay's position, thirty seven years old, and still in India, when the reign of Victoria began. We may return now to the publisher of the Quarterly Magazine in which Macaulay began his career as a writer. In 1825 Charles Knight published Milton's Latin Treatise on Christian Doctrine which had been discovered behind a press in the State Paper IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 207 Office, and was edited by the Librarian and Historio- grapher to George IV., the Rev. Charles Richard Sumner. He visited Paris in autumn, came home and planned a "National Library." At this time Archibald Constable, who had published the first number of "the Edinburgh Review," was at the close of his career, and was lead- ing the way in the production of new and good litera- ture at a cheap price, with his series known as "Con- stable's Miscellany." In 1826 ruin came upon many publishing houses. House after house fell, the fall of one involving fall of others. Constable and Ballantyne were among the ruined, and their fall involved the complete ruin of Sir Walter Scott who was a sleeping partner with the Ballantynes. Scott, involved in £ 130,000 of debt, refused to be cleared by bank- ruptcy and killed himself in the grand struggle to pay all. He did pay all; for what was left unpaid at his death, in 1832, was cleared by the profits of the author's edition of his works in 48 volumes, with new prefaces and notes, which he devised and prepared. Charles Knight's publishing house could not stand the strain. But in the autumn of that year 1826 Henry Brougham, not yet Lord Brougham, was organizing the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." Charles Knight's plan of a National Library was brought to his notice by Matthew Davenport Hill. The young publisher was then living at Brompton, with a wife and four little girls; his stock in trade had been sold off by private arrangement. He was thirty-six yearg 208 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE . old, and had the world to begin again. He tried a little journalism under James Silk Buckingham. James Silk Buckingham from sailor had turned journalist in India, where he gave so much offence to the East India Company that he was ordered to quit Calcutta. He came to England with a good grievance, was a fluent speaker, lectured all over England against the Constitution of the East India Company, and in so doing helped to prepare the way for abolition of its charter. He established in 1824 a journal, called "the Oriental Herald" and from 1832 to 1837 represented Sheffield in Parliament. He afterwards visited America, published travels, obtained a pension from the East India Company, published his Autobiography and died in 1855. A son of his, Leicester Stanhope Bucking- ham, who died in middle life, became a minor dramatist in London. A little was enough of journalism under James Silk Buckingham. Charles Knight also edited a "Friend- ship's Offering" for 1827. This was one of a class of "Annuals" which had been introduced into English Literature in 1822 by an enterprising German, Rudolf Ackermann, who had begun life as a carriage draughts- man, and then settled in London as a printseller and publisher of ornamental books. His "Forget-me-not" in 1822 was published as the first of a series of elegant giftbooks for Christmas or New Year, con- taining short tales and poems by popular or fashion- able writers, illustrated by pictures from good artists engraved on copper-plates. The idea was immediately IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 20g caught up by others. Alaric Watts followed with a "Literary Souvenir." Samuel Carter Hall started "the Amulet." Frederic Mansel Reynolds edited "the Keep- sake." And so the fashion spread, till it included "Bijous," "Gems," "New Year's Gifts," "Juvenile Forget- me-nots," Juvenile Keepsakes," etc. etc. The best of these giftbooks were produced with great care and at great cost. The Preface to "the Keepsake" for 1829 says that eleven thousand guineas had been spent upon its various departments. It contained pieces by Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Moore, L. E. L., Lockhart, Theodore Hook, Mrs. Shelley, fragments of Shelley's wTiting, also contributions from Henry Luttrell and other fashionable writers, and steel or copper- plate engravings from pictures by Sir Thomas Law- rence, Turner, Landseer, Westall, Stothard, and half a dozen more. These Annuals lived into the reign of Victoria, but they were gradually superseded by luxurious editions of standard works, and giftbooks of many kinds, which were lavishly illustrated when a great advance in the art of wood engraving caused woodcuts to take the place of the steel-plates. Charles Knight having edited a "Friendship's Offering" in 1827 found in July of that year work to his mind. He was then entrusted with the super- intendence of the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Its first treatises, which appeared as sixpenny numbers published once a fortnight had been introduced by Brougham with "a Discourse on the Objects, Advantages and Pleasure^ 0/ English Literature. 1 4 210 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of Science." In 1828 Charles Knight suggested that a rational Almanac might be produced, to supersede the prophetic and other almanacs that were still trading on the ignorance of the people. The suggestion was not made until the middle of November. Brougham fastened upon the suggestion with characteristic energy. The work was at once begun, and the first number of "The British Almanac" was published before the I St of January 1829. Although its price was half a crown, ten thousand were sold in a week. It was followed, within a few weeks, by "the Companion to the Almanac," a compact body of information that was to set forth — and still sets forth — from year to year the progress of the country. In 1828 Charles Knight was travelling to organize Local Committees of the Society for which he worked. He was planning also a "Library of Entertaining Knowledge." By July 1829 he had established himself again as a publisher in Pall Mall East, and started his "Library of Entertaining Knowledge" at the same time that John Murray, pliant to the new demand for cheap literature that should give real aid to the progress of thought, began the issue of his "Family Library." It was as a part of the large movement at this time towards a higher education that the London University was opened in 1828. Among its first professors were George Long, Thomas Hewitt Key and Augustus De Morgan, who all gave active assistance to the work of the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." John William Lubbock, the banker, father of Sir John IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2 I I Lubbock, who is now eminent among men of science, was skilled in Astronomy and contributed to the Royal Society valuable papers on the Tides; he it was who superintended the astronomical part of the British Almanac. Charles Knight, who was throughout life writer as well as publisher, contributed a book on Menageries to his "Library of Entertaining Knowledge," which appeared in monthly half- volumes, and Mr. George Lillie Craik first won public attention by con- tributing to the same series a book entitled "the Pur- suit of Knowledge under Difficulties." George Lillie Craik was born in Fife in 1799 and was educated at St. Andrews for the Scottish Church. But the bent of his mind was towards Literature, and at the age of twenty-five he came to London as a writer. His "Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties" was a suggestive book, helpful to many by showing through many examples, clearly and genially set forth, how the mind of man, bent upon worthy work, has strength to make its way along the worst and steepest road of life. They fail who will not venture boldly even upon a clear way for dread of an imagined lion round the corner. In the spirit of George Lillie Craik another Scotchman, Samuel Smiles, born at Haddington in 18 16, trained first to medicine, and employed after- w^ards, till his retirement in 1866, in the service of the South-Eastern Railway, has written in our later day many a good book. His "Life of George Stephenson," in 1856, "Lives of the Engineers," in 1862, "Self-Help," in 1862, "Industrial Biography," in 1863, "Lives of 14* 212 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Boulton and Watt," in 1865, "Life of Robert Dick, Baker, Geologist and Botanist," in 1878, and other books, seek, like the writings of G. L. Craik, to push forward the great battle of civilization, and aid in the work of citizen-building. Mr. Smiles received from the University of Edinburgh the honorary degree oft L. L. D. in 1878, an honour formerly conferred upon George Lillie Craik, who was appointed also in 18491 Professor of History and English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast. He had produced in 1844-5 ^^^ Charles Knight's cheap volumes "Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England," which was the first attempt to make widely known among; the English people the history of their own intellectual \ life. This was expanded in 1861 into a valuable^ "History of English Literature and of the English 1 Language," of which an abridged edition has been and is widely useful as an aid to education of the: young. "^ In 1 83 1 Charles Knight established a "Quarterly Journal of Education," edited by George Long, which 1 was continued until 1836. In 1832, the year of the; Reform Bill, there appeared on the 3 1 st of March the first number of "the Penny Magazine." Charles Knight, then living at Hampstead, was walking into town one morning with Matthew Davenport Hill, and they were regretting the large number of unwholesome penny * G. L. Cralk's Manual of English Literature and Language is ; in two volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. s m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 213 journals that degraded the minds of their readers. "Let us," said Mr. Hill, "see what something cheap and good shall accomplish. Let us have a penny magazine." "And what shall we call it?" asked Charles Knight. "Call it the Penny Magazine." In the middle of March the suggestion was made to Brougham who was then Lord Chancellor. At once a Committee was called. The very notion of a weekly sheet at a penny seemed to some as a touching of pitch. "It is very awkward," said one member of Committee. But all difficulty was overcome, and the first number of the new magazine was out by the end of the month. Charles Knight was publisher, and took the risks of publication. At the end of the year "the Penny Ma- gazine" had a sale of 200,000 copies. It is a noticeable illustration of the movement of great currents of thought that the conditions of the time in 1832 which caused Charles Knight to set up "the Penny Magazine" in London had only a few weeks before in Edinburgh caused the brothers Wil- liam and Robert Chambers to produce "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," its price being not the penny with an ill name, but three halfpence. The Penny Ma- gazine was the more popular for its use of woodcut illustrations; such pictures as it gave from large wood- blocks occupying a whole page, were then a new fea- ture in book illustration, for a great development of the use of wood-engraving dates from this time. The success of the Magazine caused Charles Knight to begin "the Penny Cyclopaedia," in which men spe- 214 ^^ ENGLISH LITERATURE dally qualified were to take the subscribers through the whole domain of knowledge, in a series of weekly penny numbers forming about eight volumes. The first number appeared on the 2nd of January 1833. As the work proceeded, its limits were so much enlarged that at the rate of issue first designed, it would have taken thirty-seven years to finish. The rate of issue, therefore, was doubled in the second year, and the price became two pence a week. After three years the quantity issued was doubled again, and the sub- scription became four pence a week. In the year of Her Majesty's accession "the Penny Cyclopaedia" was 1 still in progress, and it was not finished until 1844. In the first year its sale was 75,000. It fell at once to 55,000, when two numbers a week were issued, and sank 'to 44,000. After the rate of issue had been in- 1 creased to four numbers a week, the sale steadily declined to 20,000 at the close of 1843. The ven- ture was at the publisher's risk, and involved him m a final loss of ^30,000. In 1850, when there was question of the abolition of the paper duty, Charles j Knight contributed to the discussion an account of; "The Struggles of a Book against excessive Taxation," \ in which he showed that he had paid to the Excise .^16,500 for paper duty on "the Penny Cyclopaedia" alone, and that the further effect of the tax upon the price of paper, and other considerations, justified him: in estimating that the whole £ 30,000 lost to him by that venture in aid of higher education would have, been saved if there had been no Tax on Knowledge. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 21$ Charles Knight was more successful with a hand- some "Pictorial Bible" suggested to him by the German Bilder-Bibel for the poor. This he began to issue in parts at the beginning of 1836, and com- pleted in two years and a half. Improvements in the art of wood-engraving enabled him to reproduce scriptural designs of the great painters, scenery of the Holy Land, illustrations of costume, zoology and botany, while Dr. John Kitto, as editor, supplied ex- cellent notes. In 1838 Charles Knight, still seeking the diffusion of knowledge, began the monthly publi- cation of a "Pictorial History of England" edited by George Lillie Craik and Charles Macfarlane. It reached to the end of the reign of George II. in four volumes, but Mr. Macfarlane's strong political feel- ings caused him to give another four volumes to the reign of George III. The disproportion and the want of liberal tone in this part of the work greatly diminished its success. Mr. Craik contributed to the "Pictorial History of England" the chapters on Reli- gion, Literature, and Commerce with some aid from Sir Henry Ellis and from Mr. Andrew Bisset. Mr. Edward Poynter, father of the Royal Academician, wrote upon the Arts. Together with the Pictorial History of England there was running also, edited as well as published by himself in monthly numbers, a Pictorial Shakespeare, during the production of which his zeal for the study of Shakespeare grew. Another of Charles Knight's ventures was a work on "London" in weekly numbers. This extended to 2500 pages 2l6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE giving sketches, by different writers, of London as it was and as it had been still with abundant woodcut illustration. In 1842 the seven volumes of the Pic- torial Shakespeare were completed. Charles Knight then published a Biography of Shakespeare written by himself and began to produce a Library Edition of the poet's works. From that time forward he used his position as a publisher for the diffusion of Shake- speare's works in various forms. "Knight's Store of Knowledge for all Readers" was opened with two numbers on Shakespeare by Charles Knight himself. After the Penny Cyclopaedia was finished, there ap- peared, in June 1844, the first number of "Knight's Weekly Volume," a series which was continued for two years without missing a week. Then it was con- tinued for another two years in a monthly issue as "the Shilling Volume." In volumes of this series new books appeared which have secured a lasting reputa- tion, among them George Lillie Craik's Sketch of the History of English Literature. At this time "the Penny Magazine" was declining in sale. Its last number appeared in December 1845, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, killed by the losses on its Biographical Dictionary, took leave of the world with an address dated the nth of March, 1846. A Memoir of Robert Chambers published by his surviving brother William in 1872 "with Autobiogra- phic Reminiscences" tells the career of two brothers who, like Charles Knight, wrote, and published, and powerfully contributed to the cheap diffusion of m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. ZIJ ;nowledge. They were born at Peebles, William Chambers in April 1800, Robert in July 1802, each f them with six fingers on each hand and six toes n each foot. The outer fingers and toes were re- noved successfiilly in William's case, but in Robert's ase not without leaving tender places on the feet hat caused through life some pain in walking. Their ather employed weavers in the cotton manufacture, and ras agent also for Glasgow houses. When he went on lusiness to Glasgow, he travelled the forty miles on Dot, and was two days upon the road. Through too reat easiness in spending, lending, and giving credit .e sank in worldly position. The whole school educa- :on of William Chambers ended when he was thir- een, and cost, books included, about six pounds, "he fees at the elementary school were two and two ence a quarter, and at the Peebles Grammar School ve shillings a quarter. Five pounds in those days ^ould carry the son of a Scottish burgher through a ourse of education that included such grounding in .atin and Greek as would prepare for the junior lasses at the Scottish Universities. The introduction f the power loom put an end to the father's business s an employer of handloom weavers, and he opened draper's shop in Peebles, at which he gave un- mited credit to the French prisoners of war quartered 1 the town. They all went home at the peace in 814, and not one of them ever paid him a farthing, lefore 1813 the business had ended in bankruptcy nd ruin. 2l8 OP ENGLISH LITERATURE In December 1813 the family left Peebles for Edi: burgh, the son Robert, whose lameness confined hi much to his chair and who was looked upon as the schol; of the family, being left in Peebles to go on with h education. In Edinburgh William Chambers, in Mci 18 14 and at the age of 14, became apprentice to bookseller, whom he was to serve for five years ; four shillings a week. At the close of 18 15 his fath(i got employment as manager of a salt manufactoi called Joppa Pans, on the seashore between Portobel'i and Musselburgh. It was established to do contn band trade by smuggling salt over the border, at | time when salt was subject to high duties in Englanii William was left in Edinburgh to keep himself on h four shillings a week. The rest of the family, iii eluding Robert, went to the smoky home at Jopp; Pans. Robert was at a classical school at Edinburg] with some vague hope of his being prepared for th Church, and at first he walked to and fro betwee school and the saltworks; afterwards he shared Wi Ham's Edinburgh garret to avoid the pain of the Ion daily walk. William's employer was agent for State Lottery, and the apprentice saved his mastcj postage by personal delivery of piles of circulars. H| went weary to bed, and had no time of his own bil what he could make by early rising. He and h; brother rose in summer at five o'clock to read. The worked at French in this way, read Locke and Adai Smith, taking notes as they studied. In winter, wai of fire and candle stood in the way of home wor] m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2ig But a disreputable journeyman baker who sometimes earned a shilling a day by carrying advertisement boards of the lottery, introduced the bookish apprentice to a baker who was passionately fond of reading but had no leisure to read. If William Chambers would go at five o'clock in the morning and read to the baker and his two sons while they were preparing their batch, he should have for his fee a hot penny roll, fresh from the oven. So on winter mornings seated on a sack in the baker's cellar, with a penny candle stuck in a bottle by his side, William Chambers gave morning entertainments, by reading novels of Fielding and Smollett, also "Gil Bias." The entertain- ment occupied two hours and a half, its price being the penny roll, which was a breakfast. After payment of lodging there remained one and nine pence a week for board; and as Sundays were spent at the Salt Pans, this was three pence half penny a day for food. • Robert obtained first a little private teaching at Portobello; then a place in a counting house five miles from Edinburgh, which was ill paid and cost him a daily ten miles walk; then a place in a count- ing house at Leith. Trouble meanwhile came again over the house- hold at the Salt Pans. The father was knocked down and robbed when carrying home money collected in Edinburgh. He was disabled by the assault, and was dismissed by his employers. Henceforth he was ut- terly a broken man, and the care of the family rested 220 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE upon the mother. She would set up some little busi- ness. William Chambers hurried home after busi- ness when he heard of his father's dismissal, and he says, "On my unexpected arrival near midnight — cold, wet, and wayworn — all was silent in that poor home. In darkness by my mother's bed side, I talked with her of the scheme she had projected. It was little I could do. Some insignificant savings were at her disposal, and so was a windfall over which I had cause for rejoicing. By a singular piece of good for- tune, I had the previous day been presented with half a guinea by a good-hearted tradesman, on being sent to him with the agreeable intelligence that he had got the sixteenth of a twenty thousand pound prize in the state lottery. The little bit of gold was put into my mother's hand. With emotion too great for words, my own hand was pressed gratefully in return. The loving pressure of that unseen hand in the midnight gloom j has it not proved more than the ordinary blessing of a mother on her son?" In 1818 Robert Chambers — then only sixteen — was dismissed, as stupid, from his counting house work at Leith. William who was older by two years and three months, and who, in May of the next year would be out of his apprenticeship, then advised his younger brother to give up all notion of seeking for employment and begin work for himself, though it could be only in the very humblest way, as bookseller. There was no money, but there were as many old books still in possession of the family as would make IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 221 a row on a shelf twelve foot long. If they added their schoolbooks they would make another foot. William could supply from his small savings one or two cheap pocket Bibles, for which he knew that there was then growing demand. Here was a stock in trade. A poor shop in Leith Walk with room for a stall in front, w^as taken at a yearly rent of six pounds. Upon a plank in front of it the books of the family were placed, except only the Family Bible, which had come down for two hundred years from father to son. Wil- liam with his four shillings a week went to live with his brother, and in the following year, when, at nine- teen, he was out of his apprenticeship, he set up a business of his own in similar fashion. There were no family books to start with, but a travelling agent for the sale of cheap editions of old standard works at about half the price of those known as the "trade editions," came to Edinburgh and had a trade sale after a dinner. William Chambers, who had then nothing else to do, assisted before dinner in arranging for the sale, and next day helped in the packing up. He was asked what he was doing for himself, and replied that he was going to begin business without money. If he had money he would like, he said, to buy some of those cheap editions, for he thought he could sell them to advantage. The kindly agent liked his frankness and trusted him at once with the usual credit for ten poundsworth. He chose the books, packed them in an empty tea chest, borrowed a hotel truck and wheeled them to Leith Walk, where he 222 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE would have his own separate stall. The last week's: payment of apprentice wages enabled him to buy a few deals from a woody ard with which he made his own board, and a pair of trestles. So he began busi- ness at once, in summer weather. His books were of a saleable kind, and with great frugality and prudent i management the little became more. He learnt to! put the new books into boards himself, and thus add I three pence or four pence to the profit of each volume by buying them in sheets. In bad weather he made copies of poems and bits of prose in fine penmanship, in hope of selling them for albums. The fine penman- ship brought him the goodwill of one customer who gave him a large order for books handsomely bound, with leave to bring them in small parcels as he could afford to get them and with promise that each parcel should be paid for on delivery. Next year he was able to add to the shop a backroom for a dwelling. The bed he put in it he curtained with brown paper. Next, he wrote an account of David Ritchie, the original of Walter Scott's Black Dwarf, got it printed and made a little profit on the sale. This suggested that if he could compass a printing press of his own, it might be made a source of profit. Opportunity came, when a struggling man was selling off and quit- ting the neighbourhood. He had constructed a rude printing press for himself, a machine that stood on a table, had a printing surface eighteen inches by twelve, and creaked in working so that it could be heard two houses off. For three pounds William Chambers IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. ^23 ought this press and a small stock of worn type, laving contrived to make or buy what else was in- ispensable, he began the slow labour of printing with tiis machine an edition of 750 copies of the Songs of lurns. There was only type enough for 8 small pages, nd to produce an edition in this way the press had ) be pulled twenty thousand times. The reward of is patience was a profit of nine pounds. Part of this ould be spent on improvements of the printing lachine. By cutting letters on wood with a chisel nd penknife bold headings were obtained for posting ills. So the small business improved a little. William Ihambers wrote and printed an account of the Scottish ripsies. Robert had been, with equal thrift, improv- ig his little business as bookseller, and the two rothers in 1821 joined their wits in the production f a magazine of which Robert was to be chief writer, /illiam printer and publisher and also writer as far 3 time allowed. The magazine, called "the Kaleido- :ope, or Edinburgh Literary Amusement," made its rst appearance on the 6th of October 182 1. It was ) give sixteen 8vo pages for three pence. As William ad to set the types, to print the sheet in halves, ork off all copies and stitch the halves together in le odd time to be spared from his general business, the Kaleidoscope" obliged him to work sixteen hours day and allow only a quarter of an hour for meals, he venture paid expenses, but no more, and the last amber of the Kaleidoscope appeared on the 12th of muary 1822. 224 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE By this time each of the brothers had so manag his stock and kept down his expenses as to be wob about two hundred pounds. In 1822 Robert wrote a: William printed "Illustrations of the Author of Wav* ley." Robert at that time removed from Leith Wa to India Place, and William in the following ye removed to Broughton Street. Robert now develop^ more fully his literary taste. He wrote his "Traditio of Edinburgh," produced in numbers, published in t1 volumes in 1824, when he was only twenty- two yea old. He obtained the goodwill of Sir Walter Scott, , John Wilson, and others. There followed from Robe Chambers, in 1825, "Walks in Edinburgh;" and I 1826, "Popular Rhymes of Scotland." William Chat bers sold the old printing press to another beginne and enlarged his ventures. He wrote a "Book of Scd land" which he sold to a publisher for ^30. TI; books they had produced caused the two brothers, b chiefly William, to be employed by a publisher compilation of a "Gazetteer of Scotland." For th they were paid a hundred pounds. In those days tl "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" b gan its career. The movement towards cheap ar wholesome literature, as an aid to citizen-buildin gathered force, and William Chambers suggested his brother Robert that they should try to produce cheap weekly journal containing matter that wou] really benefit the many. Robert agreed to give a possible help with his pen, but was discouraged t the general character and condition of the low price IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 225 papers. Accordingly, with William Chambers for editor, there appeared on the 4th of February 1832 the first number of "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," price three half pence. "The strongholds of ignorance," said the editor in his opening address, "though not unassailed, remain to be carried." In a few days that first number had attained a sale in Scotland alone of fifty thousand. Copies of the third number were sent to an agent in London, and the sale then rose to eighty thousand. So it was that the brothers Chambers produced their journal, which still lives and thrives, a few weeks before the appearance in London, on the 31st of March, of Charles Knight's "Penny Maga- zine." After the fourteenth number of Chambers's Journal had appeared, the brothers no longer carried on separate businesses but formed themselves into the firm of W. & R. Chambers. In 1833 they began to produce a series of sheets on distinct subjects entitled " Cham- bers's Information for the People," which, as com- pleted, forms two 8vo volumes, and of which there were sold 270,000 sets, nearly two millions of sheets. In 1835 there was planned and begun a series of treatises and schoolbooks entitled " Chambers's Educa- tional Course," to which Robert Chambers contributed a "History of the British Empire" and a "History of the English Language and Literature." Volumes have been added to this series year after year until the present day. That was the position of the brothers Chambers at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. Of English Literature^ jc 226 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ' In 1838 William Chambers visited the schools in the Netherlands to acquire knowledge that would aid him in his practical attempts to advance education in Great Britain. What he found he told in a bookj published in 1839 ^^ a "Tour in Holland and the Rhine Countries." Another enterprise of the firm was a series of publications for parish, school, regimental, prison and other libraries, called "Chambers's Miscel- lany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts." These had a very large sale, and were completed in twenty volumes. Again another enterprise, begun in 1859 and completed in ten yearly volumes, was "Chambers's^ Encyclopaedia, a Dictionary of Universal Knowledge; for the People." The rough handmade printing press, bought for 11 three pounds, to which William Chambers had risen with the dawn from his poor bed curtained with( brown paper, had by this time grown into twelve h steam printing machines, in an establishment that! i gathered under one roof editors, compositors, stereo- typers, wood engravers, printers, bookbinders, andj which sent abroad an average daily produce of fifty | thousand sheets of publications various in kind butjfj all of service to society. In 1844 Robert Chambers, with the help of Dr. Robert Carruthers of Inverness, completed in two large 1 1 volumes a "Cyclopaedia of English Literature," intended ij to diffuse a knowledge of the great English writers by setting numerous extracts from their writings in brief |i records of their lives. This work has been, and still IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 22"]- is, widely serviceable. A new and revised edition of it was produced in i860. Essays from Chambers's Journal and other works of Robert Chambers were collected in 1847 as his "Select Writings" in seven volumes. For some years past, he had been studying geology. In 1840 he had been elected a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has generally been credited with the authorship of a book published in 1844, "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" that set many talking and some thinking, and was one bf the first signs of a new rise in the tide of scientific thought. "Ancient Sea Margins," published in 1848, svas an acknowledged book. William Chambers, in 1 849, bought an estate in his native county, and in 1859 Dresented to his native town a building known as "the "hambers Institution," containing such aids to in- iividual growth as a library, a reading room, a lecture lall, a museum, a Gallery of Art. In 1 864 he published L "History of Peeblesshire." Robert Chambers would lave been made Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1848, f rancorous feeling had not been stirred against the upposed author of a work inconsistent with a literal aith in the book of Genesis. But in 1865, and again n 1869, William Chambers was honoured by his fellow ownsmen in Edinburgh with the office of chief magi- trate, and in 1872 the Edinburgh University conferred n him its honorary L. L. D. degree. That was the ear in which he published his memoir of his brother Lobert, who had died in March 187 1. Robert's later ooks had been "the Life and Works of Burns" in 15* 22^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1 851; "Tracings of Iceland and the Faroe Islands" ir 1856; "Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reforma- tion to the Revolution" in 1858; the same work con- tinued in 1861 to the Rebellion. His "Book of Days,', a work upon which great labour was spent, was ir course of issue from i860 to 1867. Some help tha- was anticipated failed him, and the strain of labouii was too great. While engaged in the work, he los^^ his wife, also a daughter. "The Book of Days" wail a success, but he himself spoke of it as his death blowj He went for health to St. Andrews, was made L. L. Dj by the University there, and known as "the Doctor;'; but vigour of life was gone. In the course of his lifd he had produced, says his brother, upwards of seventh volumes, besides detached papers which could hardl;| be counted. So it is that our strong men now figh| with the dragons. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 229 CHAPTER VIII. OF WRITERS WHO WERE BETWEEN FIFTY AND SIXTY YEARS OLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REIGN. Aged between fifty and sixty at the accession of Victoria were Sir Henry Ellis, 60; Henry Hallam, 59; Thomas Moore, 58; Horace Smith, 58; James Morier, 57; John Wilson Croker, 57; Edward Jesse, 57; David Brewster, 56; Ebenezer Elliott, 56; William Jerdan, 55; Benjamin Thorpe, 54; Leigh Hunt, 53; Frederick Mar- ryat, 51. Of these Thomas Moore and Leigh Hunt were associated with the literature of the past. Moore was born in May 1779 in a tavern in Dublin. He was a clever child who could be set on a table to recite verses, and used also as vocalist to enliven domestic suppers. A good mother was determined that her clever boy should be well taught, and it was to her that he owed a liberal education at Trinity College Dublin, which was opened in 1753 to Roman Catholics, although they were still excluded from its honours. It was his mother, again, who scraped to- gether money enough to send her boy to London to be entered at the Temple. He took with him a Trans- lation of Anacreon into free verse, which he obtained leave to dedicate to the Prince Regent. It was published in i8oo, and followed in 1802 by frivolities 230 OF I:NGLISH LITERATURE of his own, in verse, entitled "the Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little." Lord Moira got for Moore ir 1803 an appointment in Bermuda. He went to it, bu did not take it seriously, and left it in charge of i deputy. In 1806 he published "Odes and Epistles'i which Francis Jeffrey condemned for their immorality^ explaining, after he had met the author in a bloodies^ duel, that he called them immoral "in a literary sense.': Jeffrey and Moore became good friends. In 1 8 1 1 Thomaa Moore married. He could put smooth lines, with littki sense in them, to melodies of his own shaping, ano warble them to his own accompaniment. A kindly^ witty, little man with such a gift could add greatly tcl an evening's entertainment. For want of strength oil character Moore, therefore, became a diner-out, and sank! like Sterne into the position of an ornament at great; men's tables. He loved his ^\i^, but she was not in-i vited to dine out with him. He loved his country, and of his serious verse the best is to be found in one oi» two of the "Irish Melodies" that he began to produce in 1807, and that appeared, with the music set to Irishj airs, in the course of the next years. "The Twopenny! Post Bag," in 181 2, showed an aptitude for light political satire that gave breadth to a reputation founded on the Irish Melodies. Three thousand pounds were offered to Moore for a long poem. It appeared in 18 17, asi "Lalla Rookh," a dainty confection of Eastern romance. In the next year he went to Paris, and again showed his skill in playful verse satire with "the Fudge Family in Paris." His reputation was then at its highest. m THE REION OF VICTORIA. 23 I Other works followed, including a Life of Sheridan, and a Life of Byron, in 1830, for which Moore received two thousand guineas. Li 1835 the Whigs gave him a pension of £ 300 a year. He had not only enter- tained them well at Holland House with his musical genius, but he had aided their political warfare with rhymed satire that was airy, witty and good-natured. Moore could not reach the force of Byron as satirist, but if he had less force he had more kindliness.* In the reign of Victoria Thomas Moore published "Alciphron," in 1839. ^i^ Poetical Works were col- lected in ten volumes in 1840-2, and he closed his career as a writer with a "History of Ireland," published in 1842-5. In 1848 his mind failed. He was then 69 years old, and he died in February 1852 at the age of 73. His "Memoirs, Journals, and Correspon- dence" were published after his death by his friend Lord John Russell, afterwards Earl Russell, who was by thirteen years his junior. James Henry Leigh Hunt, like Moore, had been in contact with Byron and his friends. His grandfather was a Rector at Bridgetown, Barbadoes. His father, educated in America, graduated at Philadelphia and New York, became a lawyer in America, held with the British Government in the American Revolution, and was driven to England. In England, as he could not practise law, he was ordained, and ran into debt * Moore's Poetical Works are in five volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 2^2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE - j as preacher at a chapel in Paddington. He becamei afterwards tutor for a time to Mr. Leigh, nephew tof the Duke of Chandos, and it was from him that the son born at Southgate in 1784 received his name of Leigh Hunt. The father ended a career of debts and difficuhies in 1809. Leigh Hunt entered Christ's; Hospital at seven years old, after Coleridge had left for the University. When he left school, he wrotq verses which his father caused to be published in 1 802 under the name of "Juvenilia," with a portrait of the; young poet, and a long list of subscribers, chiefly^ beaten up from among members of the admiring] father's congregations. Then followed two or three^ years of idling, playgoing, reading, and playing atf being a lawyer's clerk in the office of a brother Stephen. Li 1805 Leigh Hunt's brother John set up a paper called "the News," and Leigh wrote criticisms^ for his paper, some of which were in the appendix of a volume, published in 1807, called "Critical Essays; on the Performers of the London Theatres." At the beginning of 1808 the two brothers sat up "theJ Examiner," and Leigh gave up a clerkship in the Warj Office which had been given to him not long before.] In 1809 he married. "The Examiner" fought for re- forms in a way that gave some offence to Whigs and much to Tories. In 18 12 "the Examiner," comment- ing upon some fulsome adulation of the Prince Regent by the Morning Post, asked who could imagine "that this 'Exciter of desire' (bravo, Messieurs of the Post I) — this 'Adonis in loveliness' was a corpulent man of IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2^^ fifty! — in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasur- able, honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince, was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the com- panion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity!" A prosecution for libel having been founded upon this article, Leigh Hunt and his brother were sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of five hundred pounds each. He was imprisoned from the 3d of February 18 13 to the same date in 181 5, in a pleasant room and with much freedom of action, "the Examiner" being meanwhile continued. In 18 15 Leigh Hunt published "The Feast of the Poets" and "The Descent of Liberty." Li 1 8 1 6 he completed and published his "Story of Rimini," a development in graceful, easy rhyme of the story of Dante's Paolo and Francesca. Much of it had been written in prison. He had ac- quired the friendship of Shelley whose "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" first appeared in "the Examiner." Shelley's generosity, of which many had experience, was once shown to Leigh Hunt in the form of a present of fourteen hundred pounds to get him out of debt. "I was not extricated," says Leigh Hunt, "for I had not yet learned to be careful: but the shame of not being so, after such generosity, and the pain which my friend afterwards underwent when I was in trouble and he was helpless, were the first causes of my thinking of money matters to any purpose." Shelley 234 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE and Keats first became acquainted with each other! under Leigh Hunt's roof. In 1817, Leigh Hunt published Essays by himself and William Hazlitt under the name of "the Round Table." In October 1819 he began and continued for sixty-six weeks a paper called "the Indicator", named from an African bird, the Cuculus Indicator of Linnaeus that "indicates to honey hunters where the nests of wild bees are to be found." "The Examiner" was then declining., Shelley and Byron had a proposal for a Liberal journal. Leigh Hunt was tempted to go to Italy and talk about it. On that errand he left England in November 1 82 1. The issue of the scheme was a quarterly called "the Liberal," of which four numbers ap- peared in 1822 and 1823. The first number contained Byron's best satire, the "Vision of Judgment," the second his "Heaven and Earth," and the fourth his translation from Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore." Back in England, Leigh Hunt was again pleasantly active. For half a year, from January to July, 1828, he published some of his pleasantest essays in a series of papers called "the Companion." In September 1830 he set up a literary and theatrical paper called "the Tatler," which lasted until February 1832. It was a new form of a paper he had started as "the Chat of the Week," which brought with it difficulties about stamp duty. In 1832 he published "Sir Ralph Esher," a fictitious autobiography of a gentleman of the Court of Charles the Second. From April 1834 to December 1835 he was producing a cheap miscellany of essays, IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 235 criticisms and quotations, called the "London Journal," which avowed its purpose to be one with that of the brothers Chambers in their "Edinburgh Journal;" only its character was to be "a little more southern and literary." It was to deal with "the ornamental part of utility." Its purpose, indeed, was that which was fulfilled by the whole life of Leigh Hunt, to commend to the world, for its own health, the kindly graces of good literature. In 1835 ^^ published a poem con- demning the War Spirit. It was entitled "Captain Sword and Captain Pen," and had Milton's lines from Paradise Regained for its motto: "If there be in glory ought of good, It may by means far different be attained, Without ambition, war, or violence. " In this spirit Leigh Hunt passed into the reign of Victoria. Years had sweetened a temper always gentle, and the civilizing touch of his genius was to be felt even in the weakest of his works. In February 1840 his play of "the Legend of Florence" was produced at Covent Garden, Miss Ellen Tree — afterwards Mrs. Charles Kean — playing the heroine. The Queen went twice to see it and commanded its repetition at Windsor. Its theme was the legend of a wife, buried when in a trance, awaking in the tomb, rejected by her husband, and seeking shelter in her lover's house. A criticism attributed to Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer spoke of it as "one of the finest plays that has been ■produced since Beaumont and Fletcher." 236 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE In 1840 Leigh Hunt wrote for Editions of their Works critical biographies of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Sheridan. In 1842 he published "the Palfrey," a poem on an old romance theme. In 1844 a volume entitled "Imagination and Fancy" had for its purpose to give selections of best passages from English poets, with aids to the percep- tion of their beauty. It included an essay upon the Nature of Poetry. A companion book of "Wit and Humour, selected from the English Poets," with an illustrative essay on Wit and Humour, followed in 1846. In these books Leigh Hunt was still showing the honey hunters where the nests of wild bees are to be found. In 1846 he published also "Stories from the Italian Poets; with Lives of the Writers," bringing home to English readers some taste of the honey in Italian hives. In 1 848 appeared as a book "A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla," first published in "Ainsworth's Magazine" in 1 844. His honey was made of the history, the legends, and the poetry of Sicily. In the same year, 1848, a volume called "The Town" was formed of sketches of London, many of which had first ap- peared in Leigh Hunt's "London Journal;" it is a London graced with pleasant memories of wits and poets. In 1849 followed "A Book for a Corner," a selection of things so uttered in verse or prose that "age cannot wither nor custom stale" their infinite variety. In 1849 Leigh Hunt provided a book of what he called "Reading for Railways: or Anecdotes and other Short Stories, Reflections, Maxims, Cha- m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 237 racteristics, Passages of Wit, Humour, and Poetry, &c." In 1850, when his age was sixty-six, he published his Autobiography rich in recollections of the wits and poets who were friends of his youth, frank also in a self-revelation that extenuated nothing and assuredly set nothing down in malice. In 1853 Leigh Hunt published a volume entitled "the Religion of the Heart. A Manual of Faith and Duty," expressing pure morality, with love to God and Man, but shrinking from the dogmas of theology. In 1855 he added to his volume on "the Town" another that contained memorials of Kensington, "the Old Court Suburb," of which some chapters had been con- tributed to "Household Words," In the same year he published a selection of the beauties of Beaumont and Fletcher, and a collection of his own " Stories in Verse." Of four unpublished plays that remained by him, one, "Lover's Amazements," was produced with success in 1858, the year before its author's death at the age of seventy five. He had written also an essay of con- siderable length on "the Sonnet," as part of a book planned in America, which appeared in 1867 as "The Book of the Sonnet. Edited by Leigh Hunt and S. Adams Lee." Horace Smith, who lived through the first ten years of the reign of Victoria, and contributed some novels to the Literature of the Reign, was about five years older than Leigh Hunt. The brothers James and Horace Smith were sons of a solicitor. James the elder followed his father's profession and Horace be- 238- OF ENGLISH LITERATURE came a stockbroker. In 1812 they grew famous by- clever parodies of the styles of the chief poets who were supposed to have contributed Addresses to be spoken at the reopening of Drury Lane. "The Re- jected Addresses" went through twenty four editions. James, the elder brother, wrote no more, and died in 1839. But Horace produced a dozen books in the days of George IV. and William IV., his first and best novel being "Brambletye House" in 1826. In the years between 1840 and 1845 Horace Smith published "Oliver Cromwell;" "the Moneyed Man;" "Adam Brown;" "Arthur Arundel" and "Love and Mesmerism." In 1846 his "Poetical Works" were collected. Leigh Hunt writes that Shelley once said to him, "I know not what Horace Smith must take me for sometimes: I am afraid he must think me a strange fellow: but is it not odd, that the only truly generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, was a stockbroker! And he writes poetry too," continued Shelley, his voice rising in a fervour of astonish- ment — "he writes poetry, and pastoral dramas, and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous!" Ebenezer Elliott, who became known as "the Corn Law Rhymer," was born in 1781, one of the eight sur- vivers of eleven children. His father was a clerk in a foundry at Masborough, a suburb of Rotherham in Yorkshire, where his salary was sixty or seventy pounds a year with house, candle and coal. His mother once confided to young Ebenezer a dream of her maiden IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA, 239 life: "I had placed under my pillow a shank bone of mutton to dream upon; and I dreamed that I saw a little broad-set, dark, ill-favoured man, with black hair, black eyes, thick stub-nose and tup-shins: it was thy father." It was a lively father who preached ultra- Calvinism once a month on Sundays, and gloried on weekdays in Cromwell and Washington. After some schooling, young Ebenezer was put to work in the foundry. An illustrated book of botany drew him to plants; he traced the pictures, sought and dried the plants. He heard his brother one day read a part of Thomson's "Seasons" in which the polyanthus and auricula were described, compared the verse afterwards with the living flowers, and was drawn to delight in Thomson. Then he began to versify, with an imita- tion of Thomson's description of a thunderstorm. When Ebenezer was fourteen years old, a poor curate died and bequeathed his books to Ebenezer's father. At twelve, he says, he had almost known the Bible by heart; at sixteen he could repeat, without missing a word, the first, second, and sixth books of "Paradise Lost." His first publication was a poem written at the age of seventeen called "the Vernal Walk," for which he found a printer at Cambridge. Then he tried tales, and even a dramatic poem upon Bothwell. Till the age of 23 he was still working in the Foundry, in which he obtained a share. But the foundry failed at Rotherham, and in 1831 Ebenezer Elliott began business apart in Sheffield, with ^100 of borrowed money. He dealt in the raw material of Sheffield 240 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE cutlery, and throve for the next six years. In 1832I he published the "Corn Law Rhymes," by which he! made his mark in Literature. Intense conviction that most of the troubles of the country were rooted inii Protection gave force to the use of his gift as a rhymeri for attack upon the Corn Laws. And what, he askedj in the Prologue to his book. And what but scorn and slander will reward The rabble's poet, and his honest song? Gambler for blanks, thou play'st an idiot's card; For, sure to fall, the weak attacks the strong. ; Aye! but what strength is theirs whose might is based on wrong?' At the beginning of the reign of Victoria, Ebenezerl Elliott was in business at Sheffield with a wife andi family in his home at Upperthorpe. He still gave^ definite form to his conception of what man has made] of man, and with the zeal of a writer to whom one.^^ truth fervidly apprehended stands for all truth, heldj that "the Corn Laws are the cause of all the crime] that is committed." In 1842 he gave up business, realising about seven thousand pounds, and withdrew! to an eight roomed cottage that he buih for himself! on land bought at Great Houghton near Barnsley. He had put six sons out into the world, and there re- mained only the wife and two daughters in the happy home. One of his sayings was that "it is a positive duty to marry, and also to be a Radical, that good I legislation may allow marriage to be as happy as it ought." He was correcting proof sheets of his last volume "More Prose and Verse," just before his death in 1849.. IN THE RETCxN OF VICTORIA. 24 I The forms of character are infinitely various, though a score of generic types would probably contain them all. The shrewd, honest single-minded zealot, who fights for one cause, which is to him the cause of causes, and who looks neither to the right nor left of it, may be as great as Luther; as serviceable for one battle as Ebenezer Elliott; as weak as the feeblest crotchetmonger; who falls out of whatever ranks he enters if his comrades do not give their whole minds to the worship of' some fetish of his own. In all the type is clear, and so is its place or use in the world's history. The type of the soldier has not changed since the beginning of history; nor has that of the scholar. The Principal Librarian of the British Museum It the accession of Victoria was Sir Henry Ellis, aorn in 1777. He was educated at Merchant Tay- -or's school and at Oxford; published a History of 5t. Leonard's Shoreditch when he was 21; graduated; obtained a Fellowship from his College, St. John's, and vas an Assistant Librarian, first at the Bodleian, then n the British Museum. He married in 1805; ^^ 1806 vas made Keeper of the Printed Books and in 18 12 deeper of the MSS. in the British Museum. He was ^ellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal jociety. In 18 14 he was appointed Secretary to the Trustees. In 18 16 he published an introduction to Domesday Book. In 18 18 he edited Dugdale's "Mo- lasticon;" in 1824 published a first collection of ■Letters Illustrative of English History." In 1827 he v^as appointed Principal Librarian of the Museum, and 0/ English Literature. 1 6 242 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE about the same time published a second volume of hi Illustrative Letters. In 1832 Mr. Ellis was knighte; by William IV. Sir Henry Ellis wrote on the Townele Marbles in 1834, ^n the Elgin and Phigaleian Marblej in 1836. His chief contribution to Victorian Literatur was a third volume of "Letters Illustrative of Englis- History," published in 1846. His wife died in i85- within a year of their golden wedding day, and tw years later he resigned his office of Librarian, his ag then being seventy-nine. But he lived on into hi ninety-second year, dying in January 1869. Bliu: study of the past, as Selden said, the too studioui affectation of bare and sterile antiquity is nothing elsi but to be exceeding busy about nothing, but, he addec' "the neglect or only vulgar regard of the fruitful an<^ precious part of it, which gives necessary light to th, present in matter of State, Law, History, and the underi standing of good authors, is but preferring that kind a ignorant infancy which our short life alone allows u before the many ages of former experience and ob servation, which may so accumulate years to us as we had lived from the beginning of time." In thi true sense Sir Henry Ellis was an antiquary. Like honour is due to Benjamin Thorpe and Josepl Bosworth, who were the revivers in this country of th< study of the ancient Literature and Language of th* people. Thorpe was born in 1783, Bosworth in 1790 Benjamin Thorpe in the course of a long life of abou ninety years, edited all the chief pieces of Firs English or Anglo-Saxon Literature; Caedmon, in 183; IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 243 for the Society of Antiquaries; in 1834, his "Analecta Anglo-Saxonica" included ^Ifric's Colloquy and the fine fragment of Judith. Within the reign of Victoria Mr. Thorpe edited, in 1842, the important collection of poems known as the "Codex Exoniensis," in 1846 the "Anglo-Saxon Gospels," in 1 853 "King Alfred's Orosius," in 1855 "Beowulf," in 1865 the "Diplomatarium Ang- licum ^vi Saxonici," a collection of English Charters from the time of Ethelbert to the Conquest. Thorpe also printed at Copenhagen in 1830 a translation of Erasmus Rask's Grammar of Anglo-Saxon, and in 1865 reproduced it in a cheap form for the use of students. Benjamin Thorpe's studies in later life extended to Icelandic, and he published in 1866 a translation of Saemund's Edda. Dr. Bosworth, who published in 1823 a small Anglo-Saxon Grammar, produced a substantial Anglo- Saxon Dictionary at the beginning of the reign, in 1838, w^hich he reproduced in a cheap form revised and abridged for the common use of students ten years later. He was at work upon the larger revision and the full elaboration of his dictionary when he died, but he found time to produce in 1855 a standard edi- 1 tion of the text of "King Alfred's Orosius" from collation ; of MSS. In Oxford alone had the attempts made in : the past to found University Professorships of Anglo- Saxon not entirely failed. Dr. Bosworth occupied the chair of Anglo-Saxon when he died, and left provision by his will for the re-establishment of a like Chair at ! Cambridge. Such students as these have strengthened 16* 2 44 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the foundation of a scientific study of the past,) but History had varied little from the form of gene-j ralization that had been established by the in fluence of Hume and Gibbon when Henry Hallam] wrote. Henry Hallam, son of a Dean of Bristol, was born in 1777. He studied at Eton and Oxford, settled in London, and was among the first contributors to "the Edinburgh Review," In 18 18 he published the earliest I of his three histories, a "View of the State of Europe ' during the Middle Ages." Its wealth of good matter! was kept at arm's length from the reader by use of at Latin vocabulary and the conventional style which in^ 18 18 was still thought by many to be dignified. The style of the second work "the Constitutional History of j England from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George IL," published in 1827, was far better. Anxieties over a first book no longer op- pressed him. He had the dignity of a real interest in his theme, a theme to his taste, and he expressed accurately the result of calm and clear thought work- ing upon knowledge. Of English Constitutional History before the reign of Henry VII. Hallam had given a sketch in his "View of Europe during the Middle Ages." The superiority of Hallam's "Constitutional History" to his next book is very distinct. This third history was published at the beginning of the present reign, in 1837 -g, and is an "Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, i6th, and 17th cen- turies." Henry Hallam had lost in 1833 his eldest IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 245 son, the A. H. H. of Tennyson's "In Memoriam." Other griefs, through sickness and deaths or dread of deaths at home, troubled the mind of one of the gentlest of scholars. This may have weakened his hold on his work; but his sense of poetry was weak, and he was a blind guide to the study of the poets. Those parts of the work that had real interest for its writer, that touched the line of his own tastes and studies, and came fairly within reach of his clear judgment, are, however, of enduring value. Henry Hallam died in January 1859. His books live and will live. No historian of our time has ventured on as wide a range of study, or has shown a wider range of power. Two novelists are yet to be named among the wiiters who were nearly of Hallam's age; they are James Morier and Captain Marryat. James Morier, born in 1780, was appointed in 18 10 British Envoy to the Court of Persia. He published in 1812 his "Earlier Travels through Persia, Armenia, Asia Minor to Constantinople," and in 18 18 published "A second Journey through Persia." In 1824 he used his know- ledge of Persian life in a first novel "the Adventures of Hajji Baba in Ispahan," which was followed in 1828 by "Hajji Baba in England," where he is duly impressed by the "moonfaced Bessies" and other wonders of the land. Hajji Baba having established firmly Morier's credit as a lively novelist with a theme of his own and master of it, there followed, still with more or less in them of the humour or romance of Persian life, in 1832 "Zohrab," and in 1834 "Ayesha." ^4-6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Within the present reign he published in 1837 "Abel. Allnut;" in 1839 "the Banished;" in 1841 "thej Mirza;" in 1842 "Martin Toutrond." James Morier died in 1848. Frederick Marryat, born in 1786, like Morier drew his novels from a side of life, with humours of its own, which was familiar to him and new to most of his readers. He distinguished himself in the navy during the war time before 18 14, was made a captain for his services in the Burmese war, and earned a good service pension. In 1834 ^^ broke fresh ground for the public entertainment with "Peter Simple," a light- hearted novel of sailor life and its oddities. It was immediately followed by a second novel, not less plea- sant, "Jacob Faithful." In the following year Marryat published a collection of short stories, "The Pacha of many Tales," and then came another sailor's novel, "Japhet in Search of a Father." Upon the three novels "Peter Simple," "Jacob Faithful," and "Japhet in Search of a Father" Captain Marryat's reputation rested. He never surpassed them, but in all that fol- lowed there was wholesome variety and always a fresh breath from the sea. "Midshipman Easy," and "the Pirate," and "Three Cutters" were published at the end of the reign of William IV. In the reign of Victoria, during its first ten years, Captain Marryat re- mained a busy writer, and produced a dozen novels, beginning with "Snarleyyow, or the Dog Fiend," in 1837, ^^^ ending in 1847 with "the Children of the Forest." He died in August 1848. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 247 A daughter, Florence, born in the year of the ac- cession of Victoria, has inherited some touch of her father's skill and is known as Florence Marryat — now Mrs. Francis Lean, author of many novels* that are widely read. She published also in 1872 the "Life and Letters" of her father.* William Jerdan, born at Kelso in 1782, lived to the age of eighty-seven, and at the age of 84 published, in 1866, a book about "Men I have known." His way of life brought him for half a century in close rela- tion with good writers. He began life with little education, had a desire towards the business of litera- ture, became an active journalist, wrote for newspapers and was for two or three years part proprietor and editor of "the Sun," but he had a quarrel with a joint proprietor that found its way into the Court of Chancery. In 18 17 William Jerdan founded "the Literary Gazette," earliest of the modern literary papers; earliest of all was the "Mercurius Librarius," started in 1680. William Jerdan was editor of "the Literary Gazette" for ^^ years, from 181 7 to 1850, and in that position had abundant opportunity of busying himself among the authors. A literary paper called "the Athenaeum" had been started by Dr. Aikin in 1807, but it died in 1809. The name was revived for a literary paper that was among the feebler ven- tures of James Silk Buckingham, and Jerdan's "Literary * The Life of Captain Marryat is in one volume, and all the novels of both father and daughter are in 53 volumes of theTauchnitz Collection. 248 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ! Gazette, though not vigorous, had its own way until' "the Athenaeum" passed into the hands of Charles Wentworth Dilke (born in 1789) who had then retired on a pension from the Navy Pay Office. Under Mr. Dilke's vigorous management "the Athenaeum" soon became the leading literary journal, and "the Literary Gazette" gave but a dim light during the latter years of William Jerdan's management. After quitting it, he wrote his "Autobiography" in four volumes, pub- lished in 1853-4. "The Literary Gazette" struggled for life until 1862 when it tried the effect of change of name, and became "the Parthenon." As "the Par- thenon" it died in 1863. "The Athenaeum" has maintained its position. Various attempts have made to provide general readers with a second weekly lite- rary paper. From 1844 to 1863 there was "the Critic;" from 1863 to 1867 there was "the Reader," which did not long survive an article in which Mr. F. J. Furnivall attacked Dr. Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary under the belief that it was just written by a modern editor. In 1869 Dr. Charles Appleton, a man of fine accomplish- ments and earnest character, whose early death in 1879 was regretted throughout England, established a weekly literary journal called "the Academy," in which the writers were to sign their papers. The aim of the projector was a pure and high one, there was no thought in his mind of business rivalry or journal- founding as a money speculation; he had earnest friends to help him, and the direct sincerity of pur- pose gave an impulse to his paper, which he named LN llli, KKiGiN UF VICTORIA. 249 "the Academy," that has retained force until the pre- sent day. John Wilson Croker, born in Galway in 1780, was educated at Trinity College Dublin and called to the bar in 1807. He became Secretary to the Admiralty, an active politician, and a frequent writer in the " Quarterly Review." He was made a Privy Councillor in 1828. His chief contribution to Literature was an edition, published in 1831, of Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Within the reign of Victoria he edited in 1848 Lord Hervey's Memoirs; published in 1853 a "History of the Guillotine," reprinted from "the Quar- terly Review" of 1844; and, at the close of his life, published reprints from "the Quarterly" of Essays on the French Revolution. He died in 1857. There may have been something of the feeling of a party writer on one side towards a party writer on the other side in Macaulay's condemnation of Croker's Boswell for bad scholarship, gross carelessness, bad English, and weak judgment; but the weak book certainly came to pieces in the strong man's hand. Of Croker's imper- fect understanding of Johnson himself, Macaulay said little, for his own insight into Johnson's character was much less deep than Carlyle's. An edition of Croker's Boswell was afterwards issued in which all discovered errors were corrected. Edward Jesse, the author of some pleasant books of popular natural history, was a clergyman's son, born in 1780. He obtained offices at courts, through the friendship of Lord Dartmouth, whom he had served 250 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE li as private secretary. In 1830, when his offices were abolished, he obtained a pension. He published ini,i 1 846 "Anecdotes of Dogs," and in the following year a book of "Favourite Haunts and Rural Studies." Hej also edited Izaak Walton's "Complete Angler" andj Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selborne." He died in 1868. His literary taste was inherited by his. son, John Heneage Jesse, born in 18 15, who became a Civil Servant in the Admiralty. He publishedn a poem at the age of sixteen on Mary Queen oft Scots, and dealt afterwards with history as a prose writer. He published in 1839 ^^^^ volumes of "Me- moirs of the Court of England during the Reign ofl the Stuarts;" in 1843 three volumes of "Memoirs ofi the Court of London from the Revolution in 1688 to] the Death of George II.;" in 1845 "Memoirs of the: Pretenders and their Adherents;" in 1847-50 four volumes of "Literary and Historical Memoirs of London and its Celebrities;" in 1861 "Richard IIL and his Contemporaries;" and in 1867 "Memoirs of the Life and Reign of George IIL" He died in July 1874.. The impulse to write passed also to the eldest daughter of Edward Jesse, Mrs, Houstoun, who wrote two books of travel, and several novels, "Recommended to Mercy," "Such Things Are, &c." There remains one man of the group of writers who were between fifty and sixty years old at the be- ginning of the reign, and he is representative of pure Science, Sir David Brewster, born at Jedburgh in 1781. He left Divinity for Science. In 18 15 he received IN THK RETGN OF VICTORIA. 25 L 'rom the Royal Society the Copley Medal, and again n 18 18, for his discoveries in polarisation of light. le had been engaged at this time for some years, ind remained busy till 1830, on the production of a ^Cyclopaedia, to which young Carlyle contributed, and le was working at the practical application of his .tudies of light to the improvement of lighthouses. ie received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Aber- leen, Oxford and Cambridge; became Fellow of he Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh; re- :eived the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 830; and was knighted in 1832. He was one of he founders of "the British Association for the Ad- ancement of Science," which held the first of its annual neetings in 1831; and he was at the same time fellow^- vorker with Brougham and others for the general ad- vancement of knowledge as the chief civilizing power, ile died in February 1868. His "Treatise on Optics" vas published in 1831. Within the present reign he Dublished, in 1841, a volume entitled "Martyrs of kience," and in 1854 "More Worlds than One." This was followed in 1855 by "Memoirs of Sir Isaac "^Tewton," to the study of whom he had been espe- :ially drawn by his own study of light. 252 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE II CHAPTER IX. MEN OF THE NEXT DECADE OF YEARS. When we watch the tide as it flows in, wave aftt wave goes back over its old ground. There seems t<| be as much retreating as advancing, and it is so hen with the tide of life as it draws nearer to the grouno on which we stand. With the writers born within th( next ten years, those who were between forty and fiftt at the beginning of the reign, we have another wav« advancing over time that has already once or twic( been covered. Forty-nine was the age of Sir Francis Palgrave, Sir William Hamilton and Theodore Hookl Forty eight was the age of Richard Harris Barham: author of the Ingoldsby Legends. Dr. Bosworth already spoken of, John Payne Collier and Bryar Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall) were forty-seven. Lord John Russell and Henry Hart Milman were forty-six Half a dozen writers were forty-five years old, Michael Faraday, Sir Roderick Murchison, John Keble, Sir Archibald Alison and Sir John Bowring, also Mrs. Somer- ville and Charles Knight, who have been included in! the record of distinct movements of thought. William Maginn, who wrote as Father Prout, was forty- four. Forty.-_three was the age of John Gibson Lockhart, of George Grote and of Thomas Arnold, whose son Mat- IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 253 thew Arnold was then a boy of fifteen. Thomas Carlyle was forty-two years old and two novelists were severally aged forty-one and forty, George Richard Gleig and Samuel Lover. Sir Charles Lyell was forty. When we have glanced at the work of these writers, leaving only Thomas Carlyle to be associated with the later generation, we shall have only to speak of writers who represent the literature with which we are in immediate contact, writers of whom the earliest born, if he had reached old age, would in the course of nature have been living now. Their fellowship of work joins, as the world needs, old and young, the caution of experience and the courage of hope, in labour that, each in his own way, their living readers share. Reaction from the literature of gloom and tears and strained emotion, quickened the public readiness for jest. The healthy English character has a quick sense of fun. In the days of the stiff French critical influence, fun had been dismissed as vulgar. When the reaction against formalism set in, there was a gush of emotion, an intensity of diverse speculation, that, doubtless, was cause of good mirth in the way of ridicule, but in itself was often as oppressive as the superseded formalism. With the reaction against this kind of excess came first an increased demand for jokes, by way of change. Life had not come to be more frivolous, but its frivolity had come to be more open. And presently afterwards, since reaction is always from one extreme to its opposite, there 254 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE came over society a fashion, or as Ben Jonsor Poetaster would have called it, a humour, for tl cynical air of one who would seem to have no ze, about anything. That, being as insincere as the fali sentiment, was a form of stupidity which could hard:i pass for an improvement even upon the frank rudil ness of practical jesting. ' Theodore Hook was good for nothing if he w£ not funny, and his fun was that of buoyant spirit weighted with no wisdom. He was born in 178c and died in 1841. His father was a musical com poser, a brother of his became Dean of Worcestei He wrote for the theatres, and acquired high sociaj reputation as a table companion. He could keep up a running fire of jokes, or pour out, at will, a string o| rhymes that introduced playful allusions to even member of the company he might be in; could sit as the piano and cleverly expand a verbal joke agains; somebody present into a burlesque opera, and pass oi.: to practical jokes in the small hours of the morningj He held an office in the Mauritius from 18 13 to i8i8i| His deputy there embezzled ^12,000 of public moneyl for which Hook was responsible. Then came somJ little experience of imprisonment for debt; then fol-j* lowed journalism, and novel writing. When the "Johri^ Bull" was set up to advocate Tory policy, in 1821, * Theodore Hook was its guiding spirit, and by fun and audacity, with little or no restraint of good taste, he made his party warfare pleasant to the public of that day. He began to write stories in 1824, wit IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 255 "Sayings and Doings." His best novels are "Jack Brag" and "Gilbert Gurney" (1836-37). He was edit- ing "the New Monthly Magazine" at the beginning of the present reign. Theodore Hook's life was written and published in 1848 by his friend Richard Harris Barham, who wrote in playful irregular rhyme, under the name of Thomas Ingoldsby, "the Ingoldsby Legends." Barham was born at Canterbury in 1789, and died in June 1845. When five or six years old he inherited the estate and manor house of Sappington. When a boy at St. Paul's school he was upset in the Dover mail, and had his right arm shattered, so that it was crippled for life. In later years he was thrown from a gig and had a leg broken. Another time he damaged one of his eyes. After graduating at Oxford he took orders, and became a minor canon of St. Paul's and rector of St. Augustine and St. Faith's in the City of London. He wrote in "Blackwood's Magazine," in the "Edin- burgh Review," and other journals, and contributed to a Biographical Dictionary. In January 1837 Richard Bentley published the first number of "Bentley's Miscellany" with Charles Dickens, in the first flush of his fame, writing "Oliver Twist" in it, and a strong company of lively writers to support him. Barham was among their number, and his contributions of a series of burlesque legends in free and lively rhyme were first colfected into a volume as "the Ingoldsby Legends" in 1840. The quick play of fancy, the odd turns of rhyme, the capital illustrations by George 256 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Cruikshank to which they were wedded, and the whole- some spirit of good humour that runs though all, have made "the Ingoldsby Legends" a book about whicl\ readers have not ceased to care. Richard Barhani published also a novel in 1841 "My Cousin Nicholas/' which had been contributed in sections to "Bentley's Miscellany." William Maginn, — Dr. Maginn, — was born at Cork in 1793 and died in 1842. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and turned to account good scholar- ship in ancient and modern languages in his lively work as a journalist who had a hearty relish for true I literature and fought stoutly for Church and State, t He was one of the vigorous band of writers for j "Eraser's Magazine" in the days when its publisher I dared to print Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Maginn's series of papers contributed to "Fraser" in 1834 ^s the "Reliques of Father Prout, late RR of Watergrass- hill in the County of Cork, Ireland," illustrated with etchings by young Maclise, were first collected into a book in 1836. A new edition of it, edited by a still surviving comrade, was published in i860 in "Bohn's Illustrated Library," with the etchings. It reproduced also the sketch by Maclise of Maginn addressing his fellow contributors after a dinner at 2 1 2 Regent Street, the sketch giving more than two dozen portraits of men of mark. Theodore Hook's face, coarsely good- humoured, is between Lockhart's, refined and calmly self-possessed, and Brewster's, thoughtful. Over the heads of Brewster and David Macbeth Moir, who, IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 257 under the signature of "Delta," was especially known as the poet of Blackwood, rises the young head of Thomas Carlyle, with shaggy hair, hollow cheeks, and a kindly play of amusement about the mouth, for Maginn is speaking. Young Thackeray is on the other side of the table, drawing all his face into his eyeglass in the endeavour to see somebody. Ainsworth also is there as a serene and handsome youth. His profile is set as a foil by the full face of Coleridge, who, with great round eyes, suggests the meditative owl. In Maginn's "Reliques," the Watergrasshill Carousal has its own life, though its form was suggested by John Wilson's "Noctes Ambrosianse." The poet's love of nature that inspires many a fine passage in the "Noctes" is re- placed in the "Reliques of Father Prout" by a skill in comic rhymes, kindred to those of "Thomas Ingoldsby," and by a knack at turning verse out of one language into another, in which Dr. Maginn had no equal. One of his papers on "The Rogueries of Tom Moore" is said to have, for a time, afflicted Moore himself, who thought that he was really accused, or that the world might suppose him to be accused, of taking his songs out of the French and Latin. Of "Go where Glory waits thee" he was told that it was really written by the Comtesse de Chateaubriand, who was born in 1 49 1, and that the original referred to the battle of Pavia; the "original" being Maginn's version of Moore's song into French. In "Lesbia hath a beaming eye," "Tommy" was accused of having stolen a piece from 0/ English Literature. '7 !Z$8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the Latin, and the Latin was in like manner, given in evidence, Lesbia semper hinc et inde Oculorum tela movit; Captat omnes, sed deinde Quis ametur nemo novit; and so to the end. Samuel Lover, a lively writer of Irish stories, was born in Dublin in 1797, son of a stockbroker. He began life as a miniature painter and, in 1828, be- came a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, of which he afterwards was secretary. While succeeding as a portrait painter, he wrote in a magazine a series of "Legends and Stories illustrative of Irish Character," published in 1832. This was followed in 1833 by "Popular Tales and Legends of the Irish Peasantry," and in 1834 ^7 ^ second series of "Legends and Stories of Ireland." At the beginning of the reign of Victoria, Samuel Lover came to London and gradually gave up the pencil for the pen. He wrote for maga- zines, produced a series of Irish songs which were set to music by himself and of which some, as "Rory O'More" and "Molly Bawn" were very popular. They formed, in 1839, ^ volume of "Songs and Ballads." To successive numbers of "Bentley's Miscellany" Samuel Lover contributed, in 1842-3, a novel called "Handy Andy," having Irish blunders for its matter of amusement. He wrote also musical dramas, as "Rory O'More" and "the White Horse of the Peppers," and in the latter part of his life followed the example IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 259 of Albert Smith in setting up a popular entertainment. Albert Smith, a clever writer of gay trifles, achieved very- great success as a comic showman of Mont Blanc in Piccadilly. Samuel Lover, also depending wholly on himself, gave "Irish Evenings" enlivened with songs and music of his own. In 1848 he carried his "Irish Evenings" to America, and made on his return a new entertainment out of his adventures there. He obtained a small civil-list pension towards the close of his life, and died in July 1868. Thomas Crofton Croker, who was a year younger than Samuel Lover and died in 1854, was another illustrator of Irish song and story. He was born in Cork, and was at first put into a counting house, but he had artistic skill, was clever with the pencil, though he did not, like Lover, become painter by profession, and he had literary tastes that fastened upon legends and antiquities of Ireland. He obtained a clerkship in the Admiralty, which brought him to London. There he became known as a genial Irish antiquary. In 1825 he published "Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland," and in 1839 "^^e Popular Songs of Ireland, collected and edited with Introductions and Notes." He had planned he says "a series of songs, which would have told the history of Ireland from the battle of the Boyne to the present time, in a novel, impartial, and, according to my view, interesting and instructive form." But that would have extended to three or four volumes, and the publisher's faith in the public intelligence did not warrant more than one 17* 56o OF ENGLISH LITERATURE I volume of popular songs. Mr. Crofton Croker quotec in his preface an Irishman's view of the drawing-room ^ conventionality of Moore's Melodies. "It has ofter struck me with astonishment," said this critic, "tha the people of Ireland should have so tamely submittec to Mr. Thomas Moore's audacity in prefixing the titk of 'Irish' to his 'Melodies.' That the tunes are Irish, I admit; but as for the songs, they in genera', have as much to do with Ireland as with Nova Scotia; What an Irish affair, for example, 'Go where glory waits thee,' &c. Might it not have been sung by ai cheesemonger's daughter of High Holborn, when her master's apprentice was going, in a fit of valour, to list himself in the third Buffs, or by any other amatory person as well as a Hibernian Virgin? And if so, where is the Irishism of the thing at allr Again, * When in death I shall calmly recline, O bear my heart to my mistress dear; Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine ' — Tell her it lived upon fiddlesticks! pretty food for *an Irishman's heart for the ladies'! . . . Allusions! to our localities, it is true, we sometimes meet with, as thinly scattered as plums in the holiday puddings ol a Yorkshire boarding school, and scattered for the same reason — ^just to save appearances, and give a title to the assumed name. There's 'the Vale of Avoca,' for instance, a song upon a valley in Wicklow, but which would suit any other valley in the world, provided it had three syllables, and the middle one of due length." EST THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 26 1 This critic would have found as much Irishism or more, in English George Colman's notion of an Irish song: "Crest of the O'Shaughnashane! That's a potato plain, Long may your root every Irishman know! Pats long have stuck to it, Long bid good luck to it; Whack for O'Shaughnashane! Tooley whagg ho!" William Carleton, another Irish writer, was of the same age as Crofton Croker. He was born in 1798, the son of a small farmer at Clogher, county Tyrone. He was trained as a priest, but turned writer, and, in 1830, published "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry." They were followed by a second series in 1832, at the time when Samuel Lover was producing his "Legends and Stories of Ireland." Such books at such a time aided the movement towards a quickening of general intelligence, by seeking to bring Englishmen and Irishmen nearer together. They helped thousands of readers to a kindly understanding of the Irish character. Carleton was afterwards an active writer of Irish tales. In 1841 he published "the Fawn of Spring Vale," "the Clarionet" and other Tales; in 1845 "Valentine MCClutchy, the Irish Agent;" in 1847 "Art Maguire;" in 1852 "Red Hall," "the Squanders of Castle Squander," "Jane Sinclair" and other Tales; in 1855 "Willy Reilly;" and "the Black Baronet" in 1858. William Carleton received a literary pension of ^^ 200, and after his death in January 1869, a pension of 0^ 100 was granted to his widow. 262 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE George Robert Gleig, the son of a Scotch bishop was born in 1796, educated at Glasgow and Oxford and intended for the church. Natural inclination dre^ him to a soldier's life. He entered the army in 18 12 and was with the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula After other service with the army he returned to Oxford ' completed his studies, and in 1822 obtained a curac) from which he was advanced to the rectory of Ivy church in Kent. His experience in the Peninsul furnished matter for his first successful book, "Th Subaltern," in 1825. Besides published Sermons, ant a History of the Bible, in 1830, followed by a "Histor of the British Empire in India," he produced in 183 a Life of Monro; in 1840 a Life of Warren Hastings in 1848 a Life of Clive; the Story of Waterloo in 184; and in 1858 an adaptation of Brialmont's Life of Wei lington. Among Mr. Gleig's popular books there hav been "Chelsea Pensioners" in 1829; "Allan Breck," novel, in 1834; "Chelsea Hospital" in 1837; "^^e Onl Daughter" in 1839. ^^ 1844 he was made Chaplai to Chelsea Hospital, and in 1846 Chaplain Gener? to the Forces. Having been appointed Inspectc General of Military Schools he established and editec in 1850, a series of School books. In 1851 aj peared his "Light Dragoon." In 1856 Mr. Glei edited a book on "Religion in the Ranks." Amon writers of the reign of Victoria, Mr. Gleig is the on who has done most to associate in the public min the nobler strain of life with the profession of soldier. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 263 Of wars between France and England before Waterloo, Sir Archibald Alison gave, from his own strongly Tory point of view, an account in his "History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution in 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1 8 1 5." This work, which extended over ten volumes, was in course of publication at the beginning of the Reign of Victoria. It was completed in 1842. In 1847-9 there was a seventh edition of it, in 20 volumes post 8vo., and between 1852 and 1859 i^s author pro- duced a continuation of the history from 18 15 to 1852, the continuation occupying eight more volumes. Sir Archibald published also in 1847 "The Military Life of John, Duke of Marlborough;" in 1850 three volumes of Essays, Political, Historical, and Miscellaneous, which first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, and, in 186 1, "Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Charles Stewart, Marquesses of Londonderry," in three volumes; besides other books. This voluminous writer was the son of a Rev. Archibald Alison, who died in 1839, ^^^ who had written in 18 12 what was in its day an admired "Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste." Archibald the younger was born in 1792, and educated at Edinburgh for the Scottish bar, to which he was called in 1 8 1 4. He obtained official appointments, was elected Rector of Marischal College in 1845, and in 1851 ob- tained the like honour from the University of Glasgow. In 1852 he obtained a baronetcy, and in 1853 the honorary degree of D. C. L. from the University of Oxford. He died in May 1867. Alison, as a historian 264 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE was one of the last of the school of writers who told a piece of history through, according to their bias of opinion, with some generalization, little or no original research, and superstitious belief in a way of writing that was once supposed to befit the dignity of the historian. His book covers one of the most important periods in human history, and has its use. His facts are arranged in a clear sequence, and fully set forth, although they are diffusely told by an interpreter with- out any conception of their meaning. Sir Francis Palgrave represents in his life's labour the advance towards a later school of historians , who lay stress upon the importance of a constant trial of asserted facts by search into the evidence on which they rest. He was born in 1788, of a rich Jewish family, and his name was Francis Cohen until the age of 35, when he married and took the maiden name of his wife's mother. He was acting then as a soli- citor, but four years after his marriage he was called to the bar, and practised chiefly before the House of Lords. In the year of his being called to the bar, 1827, he published a work on Parliamentary Writs. In 1 83 1 he produced a valuable "History of England during the Anglo-Saxon Period," followed in 1832 by a "History of the Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth during the Anglo-Saxon period." In .that year he was knighted. Between 1830 and 1837, Sur Francis Palgrave produced ten volumes of the publications of the Record Commission, and in the first year of the reign of Victoria, in 1838, he was ap- m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 265 pointed Deputy Keeper of the Records. He published also in 1837 ^ picture of the Middle Ages with Marco Polo and Roger Bacon in the foreground as f'Truths and Fictions of the Middle Ages: The Mer- chant and the Friar." In 1851 Sir Francis Palgrave published the first of the four volumes of a "History of Normandy and England." The second volume fol- lowed in 1857. The third and fourth, completed from his papers after his death in July 1861, brought the history to the end -of the reign of William Rufus. This section was published in 1864. Two sons of Sir Francis Palgrave have distinguished themselves as wTiters. Francis Turner Palgrave, born in 1824, and educated at the Charterhouse and Baliol College, Oxford, was for five years Vice-Principal of a Training College for schoolmasters. He was after- wards for a few years private secretary to Lord Gran- ville and is now one of the three Assistant Secretaries of the Committee of Council on Education. Mr. F. T. Palgrave has proved himself a graceful poet and a refined critic. He published "Idylls and Songs" in 1854, and has made two choice collections from the English poets, one called "The Golden Treasury of English Songs," published in 1861, the other a "Chil- dren's Treasury of Lyrical Poetry," published in 1877. In the same year, 1877, ^^ edited a selection from the poems of Herrick. He has also aided in the re- fining of the public taste for art; was editor of the Art Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1862, and published Essays on Art in 1866. 266 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE William Gifford Palgrave, second son of Sir Franci born in 1826, and, like his brother, educated at tt Charterhouse and at Oxford, served for a short time i lieutenant in the Bombay Native Infantry. But 1: joined the Order of the Jesuits and became one of i missionaries in Syria and Palestine. In 1865 published a very interesting "Narrative of a Year Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia" mac in 1862-63. The journey was one of exploration unde: taken for Napoleon III. Since the- explorer could speaj Arabic like a native, he travelled as a native, wit elaboration of disguise not only for the more safet but also as a way to secure closer observation. Returning to the men who were of like age wit; Sir Francis Palgrave, we find one of them, John Payd Collier, who is, in 1881, the patriarch of living Englis writers, drawing towards the close of his ninety-thir year. Born in January 1789, he was but a ye? younger than Byron, and three years older tha Shelley. His father was in the service of "the Times; newspaper and he began the world as a reporter, the same time securing a call to the bar in the Middl Temple. His interest in the old English dramatist was shown by his first work, "the Poetical Decameron, published in 1820. In 1825 he produced a new editioi of Dodsley's Old Plays with addition to their numbe and in 183 1 he published, in three volumes, a "Histor of Dramatic Poetry," in which he laid broader an deeper foundations for a study of the English Drami than had been laid by any man before him. He foun^ IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 267 in the Duke of Devonshire a liberal friend. In 1835 he founded, partly upon documents in the library of Lord Ellesmere, of which some have since been con- sidered forgeries, a record of "New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare." This was followed in 1836 by "New Particulars" in a letter to Alexander Dyce, and "Further Particulars" in 1839. ^^ ^^i^ ^^^^ Mr. Collier began to produce little privately printed editions of rare tracts and poems, a very small number of copies of each, often not more than 25, being printed. In 1842 he produced his Library edition of the works of Shakespeare, its successive volumes com- ing before the public side by side with those of the Library edition by Charles Knight. A second revised edition of Mr. Collier's Shakespeare followed in 1858. This had to take account of the corrections in a volume that had become famous as "the Perkins Folio." In the spring of 1849 Mr. Collier bought, he said, from Mr. Rodd, a dealer in old books, for thirty shillings a copy of the second folio of Shake- speare (1632), which, when bought, was put upon an upper-shelf and neglected, until he discovered and, in May 1852, first published the fact, that this old folio abounded in marginal corrections, and that they were in a contemporary handwriting. The handwriting was supposed to be that of a Thomas Perkins, whose name was written in the volume, and whose correc- tions might have been based upon actual knowledge of the text. The "Corrected Folio," as it is now termed, became a subject of warm controversy. It 268 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE was then placed on view, in 1859, i^ ^^^ ^S- depart- ment of the British Museum, where any student might examine it for himself. When first spoken of, it had been shown at the Society of Antiquaries; but when the volume, having fallen into suspicion, was exposed to closer scrutiny, it lost authority. It was evident that the old writing had been carefully imitated over pencillings of the words to be engrossed, the pen- cillings being in a modern running hand which was here and there to be seen under the ink. There was nothing left to be said or thought about the Perkins folio by any temperate student but to warn others of its worthlessness and regret that Mr. Collier should have been again misled. Whose time was wasted on the manufacture of the notes we do not want to know. When Englishmen had in their own Literature an unknown world to explore, John Payne Collier was one of the few who led the first bands of the pioneers. Much of what younger men repeat by rote, it was he who found. He taught it to their grandfathers and fathers. He has done his part towards bringing many out of darkness into light, and for the stumble here and there, who is it that never stumbles? In 1880 Mr. Collier produced in three substantial volumes a second edition of his "History of Dramatic Poetry," embodying all notes of correction and addition that he had made during the interval of nearly half a cen- tury since the first issue of the book. If we turn now to the Literature of Science we find within this group of the men born in the same IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 26g decade Sir Roderick Murchison and Sir Charles Lyell, the two foremost geologists of their time. Roderick Impey Murchison was born in Rossshire, the son of Kenneth Murchison of Tarradale, in 1792. He was educated for the army, and saw service in the Pen- insular war, as an officer in the 36th Foot, in 1808-9. He was afterwards on the staff of his uncle. General Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and then Captain in the 6th Dragoons. He left the army in 18 14, married in 18 1 5, hunted, travelled, and began his active studies of geology. In 1825 he was elected Fellow of the Geological Society. In 1827 he studied the older strata in the Highlands with Professor Sedgwick, and began a course of investigation which he continued systematically in England and Wales after 1831. This led to his use in 1835 of the term "Silurian," to cha- racterize a great natural system of ancient deposits which had not before been classified, and the type of which was found in Siluria, or the country of Caracta- cus and the old Britons known as the Silures. Murchison completed in 1838, and published in 1839, ^^ ^^^ ^^" ginning of the reign of Victoria, his great work on "the Silurian System," dedicated to his fellow labourer Professor Adam Sedgwick. Sedgwick, who was about six years older then Murchison, held for more than fifty years the chair of Geology founded at Cambridge by Dr. John Woodward. Sedgwick lived to the age of 87, dying in January 1873; Murchison lived to the age of 79, dying in October 187 1. Murchison's re- searches as a geologist extended over many parts of 270 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Europe. He directed a geological Survey of Russia for the Czar Nicholas, and published, in 1845, the> "Geology of Russia and the Ural Mountains." At this time he first pointed out that gold would be discovered in Australia, and he urged government action three years before the gold was actually found. In 1854 ^^ published "Siluria. A History of the Oldest Rocks < in the British Isles and other Countries." The fourth edition of this book, produced in 1867, included "the Silurian System" and much new matter. It was the final definition of the chief work of its author's life.. He was knighted after his return from Russia; he suc- ceeded Sir Henry De La Beche in 1855 as Director General of the Geological Survey of the British Isles; ji in 1863 he was made Knight Commander of the Bath,, and in 1866 a baronet. Four years after his death i* there appeared a Memoir of his life and labours, with 1: a sketch of the rise and progress of Palaeozoic Geology - in Britain, by Dr. Archibald Geikie, who then was and ! still is Murchison Professor of Geology and Mineralogy ! in the University of Edinburgh. ' Charles Lyell, five years younger than Murchison, , and also a Scot, was born in Forfarshire in 1797, eldest son of a botanist who lived at Kinnordy. He was educated in Sussex, at the Midhurst Grammar School, and afterwards at Oxford, where he took his M. A. degree in 1821. He was called to the bar, but, having private means, applied himself to the study of Geology, to which he had been drawn by the lectures of William Buckland, then reader in IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 27 I Mineralogy and Geology at Oxford, and afterwards Dean of Westminster, in which office he died aged 72, in 1856. In 1830, 1832 and 1833 Lyell first published in three volumes his "Principles of Geology," a book of which eleven editions appeared in his life time, and which has done more than any single book to give impulse to the study of Geology, by tempering all its details with philosophic thought. In 1845 Lyell published geological investigations in the New World, in a book of "Travels in North America;" followed by a "Second Visit to the United States," in 1848. In that year he was knighted, and he was created a baronet in 1864. When Mr. Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared, Lyell, himself apt at scientific generalization, gave close attention to its reasoning, and produced in 1863, as the result of his study, a book proving "The Antiquity of Man." He died in 1873. The decade produced not only these foremost geologists, but also a great chemist in Michael Faraday, who was born in 1791 and died in 1867 at the age of 76. He was the son of a Yorkshire blacksmith who had settled in London. After some elementary education Faraday was apprenticed, at thirteen, to a bookseller and bookbinder. He had great natural genius, of which the bent was towards the form of science in which he afterwards excelled. As a boy he made experiments and he sought books to aid him. When he was twenty-one be attended lectures given by Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution, sent Davy his notes, and sought his aid to an escape fron^ 272 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE trade. Sir Humphrey Davy became interested in hin and made him, in 18 13, an assistant in the laborator of the Royal Institution. Five years later Faradai began to show results of work. In 1824 he marriec In 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Societjl In 1827 he published a treatise on "Chemical Man pulation." In 1830 he began to contribute to th Royal Society accounts of his discoveries in magnetisr and electricity. He had then been appointed Lecture on Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich In 1830 Charles Babbage, a famous mathematician who was born in the same year as Faraday and diec in 1 87 1, published "Reflections on the Decline o- Science in England." In 1831 Faraday edited "a For eigner on the alleged Decline of Science." In 1832. and again in 1838, the Copley Medal of the Roya Society was awarded to him for his discoveries. 1833 he became Professor of Chemistry to the Roya Institution with which he had been, and was after^ wards, associated during his whole scientific life. 1835 his services obtained from the state a pensior of ^300 a year. A volume of his "Experimenta" Researches" was published in 1839; ^ second in 1844 a third in 1855; a fourth in 1859. -^^ 1858 the Queen allotted to him rooms at Hampton Court, Honours were showered upon him, but he retained throughout life the simplicity of the true student oi nature. He was deeply but unaffectedly religious,! with an open kindliness, and childlike in his freedom from the outward crust that forms on most of us by IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 273 contact with the world. One of the most refined plea- sures in London was to hear Faraday at the Royal Institution giving Christmas lectures to an audience of children. The last of such courses published was on "the Chemical History of a Candle," in 1861, the year in which decline of strength caused him to resign his office at the Royal Institution. Science applied to Philosophy and History is re- presented in the group of writers who were between forty and fifty years old at the beginning of the reign, by Sir William Hamilton and George Grote. James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, was an older man, who died a year before the reign began. Sir William Hamilton, born at Glasgow in 1788, and educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Ox- ford, was called to the Scottish bar at the age of twenty- five. At the age of thirty three he became Professor of Universal History in the University of Edinburgh. His unsuccessful contest with John Wilson for the chair of Moral Philosophy has already been men- tioned. In July 1836, at the age of forty eight, he was elected at Edinburgh to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics, for which he was peculiarly qualified, and his fame then began to spread through Europe. He became the head of a distinct school of Philo- sophy. He had distinguished himself by contributions to "the Edinburgh Review" of philosophical articles on Cousin's Philosophy, in 1829; on Perception in 1830; on Logic in 1833. The first course of lectures given by him in the Edinburgh University were on 0/ English Literature. lo '274 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Metaphysics; each lecture being usually written on the evening and night before its delivery. In that way, a course of three lectures a week extending over five months, was produced. In the next session, 1837-8, a course of Logic was given, and most of the Lectures were produced in the same way. These courses of lectures, each occupying two volumes, were published after Sir William Hamilton's death edited by the Rev. Henry Longueville Mansel of Oxford and Dr. John Veitch, Professor of Logic at Glasgow. The lectures on I Metaphysics were published in 1859, ^^^ those on Logic in i860. The greater number of the footnotes which appeared in Sir William Hamilton's edition, published | in 1847, of the Works of Thomas Reid were written at the time when he was first delivering his lectures. There appeared also between 1854 and i860 an edition by him in eleven volumes of the Works of Dugald Stewart. Sir William Hamilton continued to lecture until his death in 1856. "For twenty years," say the editors of his lectures, — "from 1836 to 1856 — the Courses of Logic and Metaphysics were the means through which Sir William Hamilton sought to dis- cipline, and imbue with his philosophical opinions, the numerous youth who gathered from Scotland and other countries to his classroom; and while by these prelections the author supplemented, developed and moulded the Rational Philosophy, — leaving thereon the ineffaceable impress of his genius and learning — he, at the same time and by the same means, exer- cised over the intellects and feelings of his pupils IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 275 an influence which, for depth, intensity, and elevation, was certainly never surpassed by that of any philo- sophical instructor. Among his pupils there are not a few who, having lived for a season under the con- straining power of his intellect, and been led to reflect on those great questions regarding the character, origin, and bounds of human knowledge, which his teachings stirred and quickened, bear the memory of their beloved and revered instructor inseparably blended with what is highest in their present intel- lectual life, as well as in their practical aims and aspirations." Sir William Hamilton's essays, chiefly from the Edinburgh Review, were published in 1852 as "Discussions on Philosophy," and from these the majority of educated readers derive their impressions of his teaching. His philosophical system was that of a Natural Realist. He taught that every fact in philosophy is derived from direct consciousness. Philo- sophy is only a scientific development of the facts which consciousness reveals. The endless diversities among philosophers are due, he said, to their disposi- tion to appeal then only to consciousness when they can quote it in support of preconceived opinions. Naturally taken, it is an unerring criterion. But philo- sophers have seldom or never taken the facts of con- sciousness, the whole facts of consciousness, and no- thing but the facts of consciousness. They have either overlooked, or rejected, or interpolated. No fact is to be taken as a fact of consciousness that is not ultimate and simple. The whole fact is to be taken 18* 276 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE without reserve, and nothing but the fact. Inferences of reasoning are to be regarded as subordinate de- ductions, and rejected when they contradict the facts. In consciousness, he also taught, there is a Duality, the self and the outer world, the ego and the non- ego, known together and known in contrast to each other; mind and matter, not only given together but' in absolute coequality. The one does not precede, the other does not follow; and, in their mutual relation, each is equally dependent, equally independent. Those who accept this fact in its integrity. Sir Wil- liam Hamilton called Natural Realists, or Natural Dualists. But he said that nearly all modern philo- sophers held other views. George Grote was at once philosopher and historian. His grandfather was a merchant, Andreas Grote, who came over from Bremen in the middle of the last century, and, in addition to a prosperous business house' . in Leadenhall Street, established in 1766, with George; Prescott, the banking house of Grote Prescott and Co.! in Threadneedle Street. The eldest son of Andreas^ Grote by a second marriage was George Grote, the father of the historian. George Grote, the historian,' was born in November 1794. He had four years of I education at a school in Sevenoaks, and six at the Charter house, before his father put him, at the age of sixteen, into the business of the bank. He studied with energy in leisure hours, was up at six in the morning to read philosophy for three hours before breakfast. He had come into relation with James m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 277 Mill, who not only strengthened his devotion to study, but also exercised strong influence over his opinions. Grote married in 1820 and began housekeeping next door to the bank in Threadneedle Street. James Mill dined with him there at least once a week, and a band of earnest intellectual workers gathered about him. There were meetings on two mornings a week at half past eight for study of philosophy. As early as 1823, he formed the design of writing a History of Greece and began to collect notes for it. In the fol- lowing years, he was among those workers for advance of unrestricted education who gave the most effectual aid to the founding of the University of London. In 1830 George Grote's father died. He then inherited the family estate in Lincolnshire and became head of the banking house. To the business of the bank he gave strictest attention, while the critical condition of public affairs interested him deeply, and the "History of Greece" grew under his hand. In 1832 his interest in Parliamentary Reform, Vote by Ballot, Repeal of the Corn Laws and of Taxes on Knowledge, Extension of Education, and other great questions of the day, caused him to offer himself as candidate at the elections, and he was placed, in December, at the head of the poll in the election of members for the City of London. He then removed his home from Threadneedle Street. In 1835 he was reelected to Parliament, where he was among the chiefs of the philosophical Radical section, and moved annually for vote by Ballot. At the new Election after the accession of Victoria, he was elected 278 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE again, by a small majority against the strongest Tory opposition. After the dissolution in 1841 he withdrew from parliamentary life, and in March 1846 he pro- duced the first two volumes of his "History of Greece," of which the twelve volumes appeared during the course of the ten years from 1846 to 1856. George Grote continued his Greek studies and, blending withi them his studies of philosophy, planned large works- upon Plato and Aristotle. In i860 he published anr Essay upon Plato's Doctrine of the Revolution of thejj Earth, and in 1865 appeared in three large volumes- his study of "Plato, and other Companions of Socrates." The book abounds in acute analogies, is philosophical, | but, considering the subject, drily so. The old discipline of James Mill had weakened in Grote some of the faculties required for apprehension of the spiritual I side of Plato. He published in 1868 "a Review of! John Stuart MilPs Examination of Sir William Hamil- ton's Philosophy," and was preparing his work on Aristotle when he died in 187 1. The fragment ofi his Aristotle was edited after his death by his friends Professor Alexander Bain and Professor George Groom Robertson, and published in 1872. George Grote was successor to Lord Brougham as President of University College, and Vice Chancellor of the University of London. The chief English historian of Greece, the j acute critic of Plato, had taken his place among the foremost scholars of the age, by aptitude of mind and ' resolute self-education in hours stolen from rest, with- out help of training at a University, and with the| IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 279 hindrances of a commercial life about him. In per- sonal character and manner Grote was, in his latter years, the type of the best form of oldfashioned courtesy; its kindly dignity was graced by a sincerity that could be felt in every act and word. To the College over which he had presided he bequeathed endowment for a chair of Logic and Mental Phi- losophy, but on condition that it should be held only by a layman. John Bowring, born at Exeter in 1792, was another of the young friends of James Mill. He was especially a friend and follower of Jeremy Bentham, of whom James Mill was the leading disciple. When Bentham died, in 1832, John Bowring was his literary executor. In 1823 Jeremy Bentham resolved to establish at his own cost a journal that should make head against the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews by vigorous expres- sion of the opinions of that body of thinkers who were becoming known as philosophical Radicals. James Mill was asked to edit it; but he declined the office as incompatible with his appointment in the India House. John Bowring, then a merchant in the city, and for the last two or three years a devoted follower of Bentham' s, undertook to be editor. While the first number was being prepared, partnership was established with a writer, Henry Southern, who was at the same time pre- paring a literary Review, to be published by Longman. The two projects became one, and "the Westminster Review" was started under the two editors; John Bowring taking the political. Southern the literary department. 28o OF ENGLISH LITERATURE In the first number a declaration of faith was written by James Mill, in the form of an analysis of the British Constitution from the Radical point of view. He argued that the two great parties in the state represented con- flicts of opinion between two sections of the governing body, and that such conflicts involved no essential sacrifice of the aristocratical predominance. He illus- trated this by the conduct of the Whig party as ex- pressed by its organ "the Edinburgh Review," from which he quoted freely in support of his assertion that it coquetted with popular principles, and took care never to push home any argument that touched the power or interest of the governing classes. Because of this article, planned as the Radical's definition of the broad line by which he was separated from the Whig, Longman, as publisher of "the Edinburgh," refused to bring out "the Westminster." James Mill then went to his own publisher, by whom the first number of "the Westminster Review" was issued in April 1824. A subsequent article, levelled against "the Quarterly Review," defined the line of separation between fol- lowers of Bentham and the Tories. Mr. Bowring, while editing "the Westminster Re- view," still continued to distinguish himself by metrical translations from languages unknown to the greater number of his readers. In 182 1-3 he began with two volumes of "Specimens of Russian Poetry," in 1824 fol- lowed "Batavian Anthology," and immediately afterwards "Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain;" in 1827 he published "Specimens of Polish Poets," in 1830 "Poetry IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 261 of the Magyars;" in 1832 "Bohemian and Cheskian Anthology." In the reign of Victoria his characteristic labour was to produce an edition, in eleven volumes, published in 1838-41, of the works of Jeremy Bentham. Mr. Bowring was in Parliament, except a four years' interval, from 1835 to 1849. ^^ 1^49 ^^ became British Consul at Hong Kong, and Superintendent of Trade in China. He was knighted after his return, in 1853, and sent out again as Governor. He held also other diplomatic offices before his death in 1872 at the age of 80. In 1859 ^^^ published a book on "the Kingdom and People of Siam." In 1866 he went back to his old work and published translations from the Hungarian poet Alexander Petofi, a lover of freedom whose first songs appeared in 1843, who was accepted by the Hungarians as a national poet, and in the con- test against Austria and Russia went into the battle of Schassburg in July 1849. He was then only twenty- six years old. After the battle Petofi was not to be found either among the survivers or among the dead. A song writer belongs also to the group of English authors upon whom we are now dwelling, although the times happily did not call upon him for war songs. Bryan Waller Procter was born in 1790. He was edu- cated at Harrow, and made law his profession. In the years 1819-2 1 he acquired high reputation as a poet. In 1 8 19 he published "Dramatic Scenes and other Poems;" in 1820 "A Sicilian Story" and "Marcian Colonna." In January 1821 a tragedy by him, "Miran- dola," was produced at Covent Garden, with Charles 29>2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE I Kemble and Macready in its chief parts. The second act had been first written, then the first, and the end was known; but while the poet was considering how to fill up the third and fourth with detail, his friend' Macready sketched for him his notion of dramatic in- cident. This Procter had to accept and work out, subject to criticism and alteration. "Mirandola" filled the! house for nine nights and ran another seven, during; which the public seceded to the other house to heari the singing of a lady who had been praised by George IV. The published play ran quickly through i three editions. In 1822 Barry Cornwall maintained! credit as a poet with "the Flood of Thessaly," and hisj Poetical Works were collected. His age then was! thirty- two. In 1824 he married, worked at law tO! support his family, was called to the bar, and after- wards was appointed a Commissioner in Lunacy. He held that office until 1861 and died in October 1874. Bryan Waller Procter used as author a name — Barry Cornwall — formed by anagram from his own, without the second syllable of Waller and the P. of his surname. The volume of "English Songs," by which he is most commonly known, was first published in 1832. A plea- sant little pocket edition of them was published in 185 1, with pieces added, of which some then appeared for the first time. In the same year he published also "Essays and Tales in Prose." There was a new edition also of his Poetical Works in 1853. Procter's last work, published in 1866, when he was seventy six years old, was a "Memoir of Charles Lamb," whom IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 283 he had known in his youth. It was a short memoir written for the purpose of showing that Charles Lamb's life answered to the condhion expressed by MiUon when he said, "I was confirmed in this opinion that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well here- after in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem." "^ One of the daughters of Barry Cornwall, Adelaide Anne Procter, who was born in 1824 and died in 1864, has obtained a place among English poetesses. She published in 1858 "Legends and Lyrics, a Book of Verses," some of which had appeared in Charles Dickens's "Household Words." There was a second volume of "Legends and Lyrics" published in 1862, two years before their author's death; and after her death the "Legends and Lyrics" were published in 1868 with a memoir by Charles Dickens of her short life of earnest thought and feeling. Another poet in our group of men who were be- tween forty and fifty years old at the accession of Victoria was Henry Hart Milman; and he, like Procter, began with success as a poet on the stage. He was born in February 1791, the youngest son of a baronet who was physician to George IIL He was educated at Eton and Oxford. Li 18 12 he obtained at Oxford the Newdigate prize for an English poem, his subject being "the Apollo Belvidere." In 1815 he obtained a Fellowship at his College, Brasenose, and also * Charles Lamb's "Essays of Elia" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 284 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE published a play, called "Fazio." In 181 7 he was appointed Vicar of St. Mary's Reading. In 18 18 he published a religious poem in twelve books, "Samor, Lord of the Bright City." In 1820 he returned to dramatic poetry, and published "the Fall of Jerusa- lem," a play interspersed with lyric passages, and not meant for the stage. Its poetical view of the accom- plishment of prophecy and of the great features of the Jewish nationality suggests a fitness in the sequence when the writer who sang as a young poet "the Fall of Jerusalem ," told in after years "the History of the Jews." In 1 82 1 Milman was made Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, aud in that character he published in 1822 two new dramatic poems, "the Martyr of Antioch" and "Belshazzar." When Milman went to Reading, some of his congregation were exer- cised in mind by hearing that their new Vicar had written a stage play. From their point of view "the Fall of Jerusalem" had two merits, for its preface told them, that it was not for the stage, and that it set forth the fulfilment of prophecy. But there was set forth in it also human cause for the decline and fall of men and nations; and the strength by which a mind true to itself can stand, was the poet's theme in "the Martyr of Antioch." The martyrologists, said Milman, dwelt almost exclusively on the outward and bodily sufferings of the early Christians; but he shaped in his play a tale of the triumph over inward suffering; surrender of life and the world where the world's wealth and happiness were in the sufferer's power, IM THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 285 severing of ties that Christianity endeared the more, a self-denial of the innocent affections; "it was from such trials," said the poet, "not those of the fire and the stake alone, that the meek religion of Christ came out triumphant." The last of Milman's plays was "Anne Boleyn," in 1826. It was in 1829 that he first published his "History of the Jews," and showed in it a liberal scholarship that gave alarm to many who had been taught to put away their reason when they read the Bible. There was nothing in Milman's life or writing that did not, in the eyes of educated churchmen, harmonize with the best spirit and the true aims of the Church he served; nor did he re- main long subject to misapprehension. At the be- ginning of the reign of Victoria Milman had left Reading, and had been in London for two years as Canon of Westminster and Rector of St. Margaret's. In 1838-39 he published an edition of Gibbon's History, with notes. This was followed in 1840 by his own "History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire," in three volumes. In 1849 ^^ was made Dean of St. Paul's, and took his degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1854-55 appeared the six volumes of Dean Milman's "History of Latin Christianity, includ- ing that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V." This continued his preceding work. In 1867, the year before his death, there was a new and revised edition of each of these histories; that of Latin Christianity, being then the fourth, and extending to nine volumes. 286 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE In 1865 Dean Milman returned to his first love for dramatic poetry, and published, daintily adorned withi little woodcuts from the antique, a translation oflj the "Agamemnon" of ^schylus and of the "Baccha- nals" of Euripides into English verse. He added I translations of a considerable number of choice frag- ments from the lyric and later poets of Greece. They had all been made when he was Poetry Professor at Oxford. Being required to give his lectures — which were on the History of Greek Poetry — in Latin, he felt that many of the students would not follow readily, and chose, therefore, to animate his work by interspers- ing his own English versions of passages selected for quotation. His Latin lectures he did not care to print, for Otfried MuUer's work had since been published and translated into English; but the translations from Greek poets he was not content to part with. He, therefore, in his ripe age, added what was necessary to transform copious selections from two Greek plays into complete translations of them, and gave the rest as it remained to him. This volume Milman published at the age of 75, and three years afterwards, in Sep- tember 1868, he died. The Church of England had another poet of about Milman's age in John Keble, a clergyman's son, born in 1792 at Fairford in Gloucestershire. Keble was educated by his father in his home until he went to Oxford, to his father's College, Corpus Christi. He became a Fellow of Oriel, and had high reputation in the University; was Tutor at Oriel for five years; IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 287 served twice as Public Examiner, and once as Master of the Schools. But he gave up his University posi- tion to go home, after his mother's death, and help his father by doing the duty of two little curacies. At different times Keble had written, and still wrote, religious poems in which devotional and domestic feelings were associated with habitual reverence for ordinances of the Church. A poem had often been written on the occasion of some festival. Then came the suggestion that by adding more he might form a chain of devotional pieces extending over all occasions of church worship throughout the Christian year. Under the name of "the Christian Year" this volume of verse was first published in 1827. From that time to this, no new book of religious verse produced in England has been so widely diffused. Within twenty six years one hundred and eight thousand copies were sold in forty-three editions, and "The Christian Year" is still being reproduced in many forms from the cheap shilling edition to the luxurious and costly illustrated volume. The force of the book lies in its sincerity. Its music is the music of a well harmonized life; the devotion is real; the quiet sense of nature is real. There are no tricks of style, though there are no flashes of genius. Keble laid stress on the authority and customs of the Church, he was what in the language of party is called a High Churchman; but the true man, whichever his side and whatever his cause, belongs to all and is a help to all. In 1825, when a brother was able to take his place by the side 288 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of the old father who lived to be ninety, John Kebh took a curacy at Hursley. In 1831, he was appointee as Milman had been appointed in 1821, to the Poetr^ Professorship at Oxford, an office tenable for fiv( years. In 1833 he was appointed to preach the Assiz( Sermon at St. Mary's. He then took for his themt "National Apostasy." Dr. Newman- looked upon thaj sermon as the starting point of the great movement a; Oxford, in which Newman himself had a chief part! for the revival of English religion by the restoration of the power of the Church, a movement very dif ferent in kind from that begun at Oxford by Weslej in the eighteenth century but not less earnest in its purpose, nor, perhaps, less powerful in its effects; Keble returned to his quiet curacy. He was advanced in 1835 fi'O™^ the curacy to the vicarage of Hursleyj and then married. He edited Hooker's Works, ano wrote five numbers of the "Tracts for the Times 'j that were speeding the new religious movement at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. He edited al| the beginning of the reign a "Library of the Fathers',' published Sermons at various times, in which he laid great stress upon Sacraments of the Church, and produced in 1847 a-nother volume of poems "Lyrai Innocentium." These poems dealt with doctrines of the Church in association with the lives of chil-1 dren, whom he loved, though in his marriage he was childless. John Keble and his wife died in the same year 1866, the wife two months after the: husband. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 289 Richard Whately, also a clergyman's son, who was at Oriel with Keble, but was five years older, became Fellow of Oriel in 1 8 1 1 . Like Keble, he remained at Oxford as a private tutor. His mind was vigorous and practical. In 1 8 1 9 he met the doubts of sceptics by an imitation of their style, applied to events still within living memory, in a pamphlet of "Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon." This was suggested, probably, by a pamphlet in which his tutor, Dr. Copleston (whose "Remains" he edited in 1854), had treated with pleasant irony the destructive method of some literary critics by applying it to Milton's "L' Allegro" and "II Penseroso." In 1825 Whately, who had married and gone to a living in which his wife's health suffered, became Principal of St. Alban's Hall, and took the degree of D. D. In 1827 he published "Elements of Logic"; and "Elements of Rhetoric," in 1828. From 1829 to 1 83 1 he was Professor of Political Economy at Oxford. In 1 83 1 he was made Archbishop of Dublin, and that was his position at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. His influence, wherever he exerted it, was that of a shrewd, healthy, religious man, who battled against faction and intolerance, and sought to calm morbid excitement. He acted and spoke frankly and naturally, preached in a natural voice, and in his "Elements of Rhetoric" tried to persuade the clergy that the source of "clergyman's sore throat" was their not doing so. Two or three years after the Queen's accession he wrote to a friend, "I was at the Birth- day Drawing-room yesterday, with the Bishop and ad- 0/ English Literature, 19 290 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE dress. The Queen reads beautifully; I wish she would teach some of my clergy." In 1856 Whately edited Bacon's "Essays," with copious comments upon life which they suggested to him. In 1859 he edited, with annotations, Paley's "Evidences" and Paley's "Moral Philosophy." Whately died in 1863. Richard Whately was one of the eldest, Thomas Arnold one of the youngest of this group of workers. Arnold was born in 1795, and was the youngest son of a collector of customs at West Cowes. When he was six years old, his father died. After four years at a school in Warminster, he was sent, in 1807, at the age of twelve, to Winchester. In his sixteenth year, he won a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He obtained a Fellowship in 18 15; gained prizes in 1 8 1 5 and 1 8 1 7 for the two University Essays in Latin and English; delighted in studies of History; fastened on Thucydides, whom he afterwards edited; was earnest, ardent, lively as a boy. When he went to see Keble in his new curacy at Hursley, Keble wrote of him, "Tom Arnold ran down here like a good neighbour, and surveyed the premises and the neigh- bourhood presently after Christmas. How very un- altered he is, and how very comfortable and con- tented! He is one of the persons whom it does one good to think of when I am in a grumbling vein." In 18 19 Arnold settled with his mother, aunt, and sister, as partner with a brother-in-law, who established a school at Laleham near Staines, and undertook the preparation of young men for the Universities. There IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2gi rhomas Arnold spent nine happy years, after the first Df which he married. In 1827 the post of Head Master at Rugby was vacant. Arnold was the last to >end in his testimonials. In one of them, from Dr. Hawkins, there was the prediction that if Mr. Arnold tvere elected at Rugby he would change the face of education throughout all the public schools in England. Vir. Arnold was elected, and every public schoolboy low has reason to be grateful for the fact. He took priest's orders, entered on his office in August 1828, proceeded to his degree of D. D., and, as Dr. Arnold )f Rugby, took a place of his own in the story of the Nineteenth Century. He knew how to make religion I part of the citizenship of school, as he desired to 5ee it become part of the citizenship of life. He aboured for years, and in the end successfully, against -hose weaknesses of boy life which in a public school nay shape themselves, for want of a wise guidance— md had shaped themselves — into forms of evil, dif- icult to change. He looked especially to his sixth "orm boys, taught by himself, to be guides of opinion md public feeling, and he sought through them to put lis own mind into all. In 1832 he bought for him- ;elf a home, for vacation use and future retirement, at "ox How between Rydal and Ambleside. Upon all ;trife of party in the church he looked with pain. In [839 he wrote, "When I think of the Church I could ;it down and pine and die." There was the fury of ■trife then that, in the early part of the reign of Vic- oria, had been stirred by the enthusiasm of those 19* 2g2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE lAen who worked at Oxford for the restoration religion by the re-establishment of Church authoritj over opinion. What Dr. Arnold sought was a practia union of the spirit of religion with all action of th state or of the single citizen. He desired to see a human action founded upon Christian principles, an opinion free. In this sense he said, "It is because so earnestly desire the revival of the Church that abhor the doctrine of the Priesthood." Dr. Arnol will be more widely remembered as a shaper of me^ than of books; but his sermons delivered to the boy in Rugby Chapel, and other sermons that made pai; of his labour to build citizens, were collected intj volumes, and during that latter part of his life whic: fell within the reign of Victoria he published, betwee:^ 1838 and 1843, his "History of Rome." Its las volume was posthumous. In 1841 he had accepte(j the duties of Regius Professor of Modern History a Oxford, and read his Inaugural Lecture in Decembei to the especial delight of all Rugby boys who wer< then Oxford men. On the morning of Sunday, th< 1 2th of June, Thomas Arnold died in his bed of unj suspected heart disease. His last act before he wen to rest had been to make an entry in his diary. "Th(| day after to-morrow is my birth-day, if I am permittee to live to see it— my forty-seventh birth-day since ni} birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is al ready passed! And then — what is to follow this life' How visibly my outward work seems contracting anc softening away into the gentler employments of olc IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 293 Lge! In one sense, how nearly can I now say, 'VixiM" Then follows expression of a desire to do, if it might )e, yet one thing. "But above all," he added, and hese were his last written words, "let me mind my 'wn personal work,— to keep myself pure, and zealous, nd believing, — labouring to do God's will, yet not nxious that it should be done by me rather than by thers, if God disapproves my doing it." Here ends the record of this band of workers like lge. And with such music in its fall, another wave reaks on the shore of time. 294 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAPTER X. OF THOMAS CARLYLE, AND OF DIVINES AND WITS. Annan river, flowing through Dumfriesshire froi north to south, enters the Solway Firth when it ha passed a mile or two beyond Annan town. Five or si miles to the north of Annan is the village of Ecch fechan — the Church of St. Fechan — where an open bur once flowed along its single street. On the 4th of Augu; 1792 Edward Irving was born near the old tow cross of Annan, one of the eight children of Gavi Irving, a tanner. In an adjoining house, that had tt same yard in common, was born one of Irving earliest play-fellows, a boy about four year older tha himself, who went to sea at thirteen, and afterwarc became famous as Hugh Clapperton, the African e^ plorer. On the 4th of December 1795 Thomi Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan. His father, Jam( Carlyle, was a stonemason, belonging to a family d* scribed by one of their neighbours as "pithy, bitte speaking bodies, and awfu' fechters." Carlyle himse says they were noted " for their brotherly affection an coherence, for their hard sayings and hard strikings James Carlyle was the steadiest and most prosperor of the family, though he never had more than thn months of formal education. His first wife dying IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 295 year after marriage, he took for second wife Margaret Aitken, who had been a domestic servant, and who first learnt to use a pen in after years that she might be able to write to her son Thomas. In 1797 James Carlyle moved to a larger house, where other eight children were born. In 1806, when Thomas Carlyle's age was a little more than ten, his father took him to Annan School on a Whitsunday morning. "I," says Carlyle, "trotting by his side in the way alluded to in Teufelsdrockh. It was a bright morning, and to me full of movement, of fluttering boundless hopes, sad- dened by parting with mother, with home, and with hopes which afterwards were cruelly disappointed. He called once or twice in the grand schoolroom, as he chanced to have business at Annan; once sat down by me (as the master was out) and asked whether I was all well. The boys did not laugh as I feared; perhaps durst not. He was always generous to me in my school expenses; never by grudging look or word did he give me any pain. With a noble faith he launched me forth into a world which himself had never been permitted to visit." The schoolmaster was an Adam Hope, whose dili- gent use of the rod caused Carlyle, in "Sartor Re- sartus," to figure Annan school under the name of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, as the burn at Ecclefechan, running to the Annan and the Solway Firth, was "the little Kuhbach, gushing kindly by, among beech- rows, through river after river, to the Donau." Edward Irving also had been taught by Adam Hope, and had 296 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE left for the Edinburgh University, when he was thir- teen years old, a year before Carlyle's coming to Annan. "Old Adam," Carlyle wrote, "if you know the Annanites and him, will be curiously found visible there to this day; an argumentative, clear-headed, sound-hearted, if rather conceited and contentious set of people, more given to intellectual pursuits than some of their neighbours." At fourteen, Thomas Carlyle was sent to Edin- burgh, walking from Ecclefechan with a companion who was about to enter on his second year. Carlyle's father and mother were devout members of the Burgher Secession Kirk at Ecclefechan. It assembled in a rude meeting-house, under the ministration of the Rev. John Johnston, a venerable man to whose sermons Adam Hope and the Burgher Seceders from Annan travelled every sabbath six miles out and six miles home. The hope of James and Margaret Carlyle was to see their eldest son in the pulpit, and it was a bitter disap- pointment to the father when the son found that he could not enter the church. Carlyle himself told of this time in answer to a question from Dr. Milburn, a blind preacher from America, who asked how he came by his dyspepsia: "The voice came to me, say- ing, 'Arise and settle the problem of thy life!' I had been destined by my father and my father's minister to be myself a minister. But now that I had gained man's estate, I was not sure that I believed the doc- trines of my father's kirk; and it was needful I should now settle it. And so I entered into my chamber IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 297 iand closed the door, and around me there came a trooping throng of phantasms dire from the abysmal depths of nethermost perdition. Doubt, Fear, Un- belief, Mockery, and Scorn were there; and I arose and wrestled with them in travail and agony of spirit. Whether I ate I know not; whether I slept I know not; I only know that when I came forth again it was with the direful persuasion that I was the miserable owner of a diabolical arrangement, called a stomach; and I have never been free from that knowledge from that hour to this, and I suppose that I never shall be until I am laid away in my grave." Thomas Carlyle took no degree in Edinburgh. In the summer of 1814, when in his nineteenth year, and still looking to the pulpit as his aim in life, he ob- tained, by competition at Dumfries, the post of mathe- matical master in the Annan Academy, where he earned £60 or ^70 a year. Thus he could relieve his father of expense while making the necessary ap- pearances at Edinburgh as a divinity student. It was usual for the Scottish clerical students to earn by teaching, after their first session in the "Divinity Hall." Edward Irving, also a divinity student at Edinburgh, had in the same manner, at the age of eighteen, been appointed, on the recommendation of Dr. Christison, the Humanity Professor, and Sir John Leslie, the Professor of Mathematics, to a newly estab- lished Mathematical School at Haddington. Irving is described by a pupil as having then been "a tall, robust, handsome youth, cheerful and kindly 298 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE disposed, who soon won the confidence of his advanced! pupils, and was admitted into the best society in thej town and neighbourhood." The chief surgeon of Had-{ dington was Mr. John Welsh, with local rank as; Dr. Welsh, who owned part of some land that had belonged to his ancestors at Craigenputtock. He claimed descent from a famous John Welsh, Minister of Ayr, who married John Knox's youngest daughter. Dr. Welsh had an only daughter, Jane, whom he desired, since she was all he had, to educate as liberally as if she were a boy. Mrs. Welsh wished her to be educated as a girl, that is to say, left partly; uneducated. Little Jane, hearing the discussions about; herself, made up her own mind. Desiring to be educated as a boy, she worked secretly at Latin de- clensions, and broke, one evening, upon the discussion; between father and mother, by suddenly declining petifia, pe?tTicB, from under the table. The triumphant father asked Sir John Leslie to send him from Edin- burgh a sufficient tutor for so promising a child. Sir John replied that a sufficient tutor was already in Haddington. Edward Irving was, therefore, engaged'; to give lessons every morning to Miss Jane Welsh, from six to eight o'clock, before his own work in the school began. In that way Irving first established life-long friendship with the Jane Welsh who became Mrs. Carlyle. Carlyle, in whom some characteristics of a family of "pithy, bitter-speaking bodies" blended with a I sense of power and unsatisfied yearnings, frankly tells IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. SQQ how jealously he looked on Irving when he saw him first as an old boy of whom the Annan School was proud, returning flushed with successes from the Uni- versity, and looking in on Adam Hope in schoolhours. It was so also when Carlyle saw him for the second time, fresh from his new Academy at Haddington, where "as to his schoolmaster successes," Carlyle wrote, "I cared little about that, and easily flung that out when it came across me. But naturally all this betrumpeting of Irving to me (in which I could some- times trace some touch of malice to myself) had not awakened in me any love towards this victorious man." Of himself, as Mathematical Master at Annan, he said, "I was abundantly lonesome, uncomfortable, and out of place there. Didn't go and visit the people there. Ought to have pushed myself in a little silently, and sought invitations. Such their form of special polite- ness, which I was far too shy and proud to be able for." After two years at Haddington Irving obtained, through the good offices of Sir John Leslie, charge over a newly established Academy in "the lang town of Kirkcaldy," which stretched, little more than a thin line of street, a mile long, by the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. Irving's school -discipline was severe, beyond even the custom of the time; but out of school he was the friend and comrade of his boys and girls. One of his pupils, Isabella Martin, eldest daughter of the parish minister at Kirkcaldy, after- wards became his wife. In 1815 Irving obtained his 300 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE license to preach, and his first sermon was preached in his native town. But he remained for another three years schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy, depreciated, when he preached there, as a young man with "ower muckle gran'ner," too much grandeur. His severity caused a third or fourth part of the parents of his pupils to revolt against him. They determined to revive the parish school by buying off an effete school- master, and applying again to Professors Christison and Leslie for a competent teacher. Thomas Carlyle was recommended. While that was being arranged, Irving again was in Annan, this time comforting old Adam Hope for the loss of his wife, and he met Carlyle engaged upon like duty. The complete unselfishness with which Irving welcomed Carlyle as one who was to be his neighbour, and offered to his proposed rival the use of his house while he was settling, conquered finally Carlyle's proud shyness. Carlyle went, and he says, "room for plenty of the vulgarest peddling feeling there was, and there must still have been be- tween us, had either of us, especially had Irving, been of pedlar nature. And I can say there could be no two Kaisers, nor Charlemagne and Barbarossa, had they neighboured one another in the empire of Europe, been more completely rid of all that sordes, than were we two schoolmasters in the burgh of Kirkcaldy." Thomas Carlyle, as schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy, was not less severe than Edward Irving; but in the end of 1 8x8 both Irving and Carlyle became weary of their work and left for Edinburgh, each with a little IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 3OI money saved; Irving with several hundred, and Carlyle with about one hundred pounds. At Kirkcaldy Carlyle is said to have been little known, "being then, as afterwards, moody and retiring in his disposition." While there he spent some time on a translation of Legendre's Geometry, which was published in 1824, with an introductory essay on Proportion of which Professor De Morgan afterwards wrote that it was "as good a substitute for the fifth book of Euclid as could be given in speech, and quite enough to show that Carlyle would have been a distinguished teacher and thinker in first principles." In 18 19 a letter from Irving represented his friend Carlyle as going from Edinburgh to Ecclefechan, say- ing, "I have the ends of my thoughts to bring to- gether, which no one can do in this thoughtless scene. I have my views of life to reform, and the whole plan of my conduct to new-model; and withal I have my health to recover. And then once more I shall ven- ture my bark upon the waters of this wide realm, and if she cannot weather it, I shall steer west and try the waters of another world! So," Irving wrote, "he reasons and resolves; but surely a worthier destiny awaits him than exile." Carlyle earned, from 1820 to 1823, by writing articles in Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia and by other pen-work. His friend Irving had then begun enthusiastic labour among the poor under Chalmers at Glasgow. In 1823 Carlyle was introduced by Irving to his old pupil Jane Welsh, whose father was then dead, and had left to widow 302 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE and daughter Craigenputtock with what other pro- perty he had. In that year Irving received his call from the Caledonian Chapel in London. In July he began his ministration in Cross Street, Hatton Garden. His tall figure, the spiritual face alight with enthusiasm, the dignity of earnestness, too real to be marred by a squint that he had from his birth, the grandeur of manner that had perplexed Kirkcaldy, and the frank goodness of Irving's whole nature, were felt by all who came under his influence. Wilkie, the painter, came to hear his countryman, and came again, bringing Sir Thomas Lawrence. Zachary Macaulay was impressed. Sir James Mackintosh, induced to look in, heard Irving pray for a family of orphans as now "thrown upon the fatherhood of God," and repeated the phrase to Canning. Canning at once engaged to go with Mackintosh to Irving's church on the follow- ing Sunday. He did so. A few days afterwards some- thing was said, in a debate on Church matters, about the necessary relation between high qualifications and high pay. Canning then told the House that he him- self had lately heard a Scotch minister, trained in one of the most poorly endowed of churches, preach the most eloquent sermon he had ever listened to. This reference awakened public curiosity, and London "Society" was thenceforth set down in many carriages, Sunday after Sunday, at the small chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden. Irving had become one of the most praised and most abused of men, but kept his pure-hearted enthusiasm unstained, when he married, IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 303 in October 1823, his old pupil, Miss Martin, the minister's daughter at Kirkcaldy. In that first year of his popularity, Irving again helped Thomas Carlyle. Finding a tutor wanted to prepare Charles Buller and his brother Arthur for College, Irving advised that Charles Buller should be sent to the University of Edinburgh, and placed under the tutorship of Carlyle. This was done, and Carlyle received ^^200 a year for his private teaching of a brilliant youth whose death, when he had risen to manhood with high promise of all usefulness, was followed by no tribute to his memory more eloquent and warm-hearted than that of Thomas Carlyle, which was published in "the Examiner" newspaper. Carlyle's pen-work was growing in importance when he had Charles Buller for a pupil. Still there was the unsatisfied aspiration of a mind conscious of depths yet to be stirred. In 1823 Carlyle was impelled to some trials of verse, and in a "Tragedy of the Night Moth," who is too evidently a poetical poor cousin to Burns's "Mouse," he wrote: Poor moth ! thy fate my own resembles : Me too a restless asking mind Hath sent on far and weary rambles, To seek the good I ne'er shall find. Like thee, with common lot contented, With humble joys and vulgar fate, I might have lived and ne'er lamented, Moth of a larger size, a longer date. He had contributed a paper on Goethe's "Faust" to a "New Edinburgh Review," in 1822. The first part of 304 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE his "Life of Schiller"* was contributed to "the Londor Magazine," in October 1823, the rest appeared in thej course of 1824, in which year he received ^50 foi; his translation of Legendre, which was edited b> Brewster. In the same year also he published his translation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," with a| preface in which he expressed his wish to turn the English reader from a false and sentimental notion of* the great poet of Germany, based on a misreading of "Faust," to a true sense of his large and healthy power The translation, for which Carlyle received a^i8o, was praised and abused until it obtained public attention. After the printing of "Wilhelm Meister," Carlyle came to London, in June 1824, staying as guest with his friend Irving for the first few weeks, and then taking rooms in Irving's neighbourhood. Irving's house : was open to him as a brother's during his stay in London, which ended in March 1825. In London, plagued with dyspepsia, Carlyle was teaching Charles Buller, impatient of Mrs. Buller's changeful plans, until he finally advised that his pupil should be sent straight to Cambridge, and there placed under a Cam- bridge tutor. There was a little money now in hand, and in the next year, 1825, Carlyle received ^100 for the publication of the "Life of Schiller," in a volume. When contributed to the "Magazine," no payment had been received for it. In the next year, 1826, Thomas Carlyle married Jane Welsh. He was then thirty years old. One of * Carlyle's "Life of Schiller" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. I IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 305 the good friends he had made iu London, Bryan Procter — "Barry Cornwall" — gave him a letter of in- troduction to Francis Jeffrey. In the "Edinburgh Review" Jeffrey had pronounced the Life of Schiller "eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous and affected," but he had slipped towards the close of his review into "some feeling of mollification," and ended by finding the author to be "a person of talents." Armed with personal introduction, Carlyle faced Jeffrey in his study. Jeffrey had better insight into men than into books, and with aid of human intercourse he soon found Thomas Carlyle to be not merely "a person of talents" but a man of genius. He understood some- thing of the struggle of the soul hungering for noble work, and not without that hunger also for a sym- pathetic answer from its fellows which gives to men of genius who live secluded lives their greed for fame. It is a yearning that has not one point in common w^ith the shallow greed for notoriety in those who care more for themselves than for their thoughts. Jeffrey's kind heart was quickly moved to sympathy, and friendly relations were at once established. After much deliberation, Carlyle and his wife re- solved to live upon the wife's little property at Craigen- puttock, where the pen could be busy in earning, and the mind free to determine its true work in life. They went in May 1828, Carlyle then being thirty-two years old. Jeffrey promised to visit them, and did so. Articles in the "Edinburgh Review" became, from 1828 to 1831, one source of income. The first articles, Of English Literature. 20 306 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE written in 1828, were those on "Jean Paul Richter" and on "Burns." Some influence of Jean Paul Richter upon Carlyle's mind and style was manifest to the end, and no thoughtful reader of Carlyle's first article in "The Edinburgh" can fail to observe passages in which the writer hints unconsciously some lights and shades from his own mind as characteristics of Jean Paul. The sympathetic insight of genius was in Carlyle's paper upon Burns. In his first year at Craigenputtock Carlyle placed himself in correspondence with Goethe, who wrote a preface to a German translation of his "Life of Schiller," and regarded him as the first Englishman who had found his way to the heart of German Literature. "Let me yet confess," he wrote to Goethe, in September 1828, "that I am uncertain about my future literary work, about which I should be glad to get your opinion." Within easy reach of Edinburgh, but placed among granite hills and moorlands in what he called the loneliest spot in Britain, six miles from any person who might be disposed to call on him, Carlyle had freedom to work out the problem of his life, and with it the problem of the life of every man. In 1827 he published "Specimens of German Romance." In De- cember 1829 he wrote to Jeffrey, "I have some thoughts of beginning to prophesy next year, if I prosper." Next year, at the age of thirty four, between January and August, 1830 "Sartor Resartus" was written. All voices out of the depths of his own past and present life were there. Half disguising the intensity of direct IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 307 speech by uttering it from under the grotesque mask of the German Professor, Godborn Devilsdung, Diogenes Teufelsdrokh, who had written a book on Clothes Philosophy; with poetic irony playing the humorous critic upon quotations from the Professor's book, which were utterances that came glowing from Carlyle's own inmost soul; he felt that he had struck at last the true note of his life. In the middle of August 1831 he came to London with his book, to find a publisher. The book had been written to no pattern known in the trade. His wife followed him to London, in De- cember, with the last letter written to him by his father. In January 1832, while he was still in London, his father died. Then he closed his door and wrote :hose recollections which form one section of the "Re- niniscences" published after Thomas Carlyle's own death. "Thank Heaven," he wrote at the close, "I mow and have known what it is to be a son; to love I father, as spirit can love spirit, God give me to live o my father's honour, and to His." Disappointed in London, Carlyle after his return o Craigenputtock, in the spring of 1832, applied to effrey— then Lord Advocate— for aid to the obtain- ng of an appointment as keeper of an Observatory hen being established in Edinburgh. Jeffrey, whose indness to Carlyle had led him to offer aid of ^100 year to the Craigenputtock household,— an oifer, of ourse, not accepted— did not encourage this attempt D turn again from Literature to Mathematics. Carlyle attled on. In the years 1833-34, "Sartor Resartus" 20" 3o8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE appeared as a series of articles in "Eraser's Magazine. In May 1834 Thomas Carlyle and his wife left Craiger puttock for London, and established themselves in thl house that was Carlyle's home for the rest of his life 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea. Thenceforward Carlyle's wa was clear before him, though for some years difficu: to tread. His next book was "The French Revolutioii A History," published in the first year of the Reig] of Victoria; and it was not until the following yea 1838 that "Sartor Resartus" was published in Englan, as a volume. Thomas Carlyle came to London in May 183.^ and in December of the same year Edward Irvini died, wasted by consumption. Advance of the diseas; was hastened by the trials of his later years. Th] fervour and the high aims, common to them both, thj^ had brought Irving and Carlyle into early fellowshi] had caused Irving to magnify his priestly office wit intensity of zeal. If, like Carlyle, he chose rather 1 be master than disciple, his aspirations were not the le; pure and sincere. He felt as an Apostle when, a; sisting Chalmers in Glasgow, he entered every po(! room that he visited with a solemn "Peace be to th House." He feh as a Prophet when, at last, in 18^ the gifts lost through the little faith of men seeme to him to be recovered by disciples to whom he hiri self ministered, and he mistook the delusions of hy terical women for descent from Heaven of the gift tongues that is spoken of in the 14th Chapter the I St Epistle to the Corinthians. There never w, IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 309 a more honest or, to most men, a more obvious de- lusion than this which made ^vreck of the life of Edward Irving. His loving ardent mind had sought to lead men out of darkness far into the light beyond the veil that shrouds the mysteries of God. In the hour of death it consoled him to think that he had triumphed by the restoration in some souls of living faith, and, as he lay wasted by sickness, he believed that in his hour of utmost weakness God was about miraculously to renew his faithful servant's strength. When the end came, his last words were "If I die, I die unto the Lord;" and his strength was renewed, though not in this world. Irving's writings were collected, and his life told in 1862 by Margaret Oliphant, a lady, born about the year 18 18, who began her career as a novelist in 1849 with "Passages from the Life of Mrs. Margaret Mait- land." In many subsequent novels among which may be named "Chronicles of Carlingford" and 'Salem Chapel," Mrs. Oliphant has shown always a identic spirit under a quick, womanly sense of life and character. She published also in 1870 a life of St. jFrancis of Assisi, and in 1876 a book on "the Makers Df Florence: Dante, Giotto, Savonarola, and their City." I Thomas Carlyle, when he settled in London, had his intellectual way clear before him. He also sought, as every writer of foremost power has sought, and still seeks, in the reign of Victoria, to aid as he could in the work of citizen-building. He felt the lowness of the civilization yet attained by man, overstated it, and 310 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE laboured throughout life to raise it. "Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom," he taught in " Sartor | Resartus," and in every book written afterwards. Through the mere surroundings of life, man's clothes, his wealth and house and land, his body's dress, and his soul's dress which the body is, straight through this to the life within, we must look if we wish to see ourselves, or know one another. That is the Clothes Philosophy. The life within, which is alone worth cherishing, owes all its health to action, and for the advance of the world by true citizen -building the one thing needful is, that each should live his own life worthily. While setting aside dogmatic theology, Carlyle, in "Sartor Resartus" and in every book that followed it, held fast to a faith in God and immortality, and made it his work as a writer to teach men to live vigorous lives: "Most true is it," he said, "as a wise man teaches us, that doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action. On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept also well to heart, which to me was of invaluable ser- vice: — Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty. The second duty will already have become clearer. May we not say, how- ever, that the hour of spiritual enfranchisement is even this? When your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inex- pressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed and LNT THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 31I thrown open, and you discover with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your America is here or nowhere. The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered actual wherein thou even now standest, here or no- where, is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of. What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the Gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, couldst thou only see." Carlyle's way of thought, like that of all the fore- most thinkers in England during the Reign of Victoria, is in some sense a product of the forces that produced the great upheaval described with all the fervour of his genius in his book on the French Revolution. Throughout his life Carlyle held by the great central truth, that real advance can be secured only by de- velopment of the individual. Like Wordsworth, he in- sisted upon universal education, and dwelt on it in the book on "Chartism" published in 1839. ^^^ contempt for the blind action of the masses, and the inclination shown very distinctly in his "Chartism," and in later books with growing force, for government 312 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of the brute herd by despotism of some man who really lives his life and works his will, may be taken as part of a strong insistance upon one great truth, the deep conviction of his life, that all his genius was spent in bringing home to others. His book "On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History," published in 1841, was full of broadest sympathy with individual men, whatever their type of thought, who had known themselves and the purpose of their lives, had worked their will, and risen high above the servile crowd of imitators who reproduce dead forms of life, and so are what Carlyle called "Apes of the Dead Sea." Carlyle knew and loved a man, whenever he came near enough to see him. His own father seemed the best of men, and his own wife the best of women. Of men in the past, whose deeds and motives he could scrutinize in the retirement of his study, and who thus yielded to his penetrating genius the secrets of their lives, he discerned the worthiness or worthless- ness, and he took pleasure in the contemplation of their strength. But the men who lived about him in the world, and who could be known only by free and equal intercourse outside the study, his shy self-con- scious spirit seldom came near enough to understand. Of them he was at home a "pithy, bitter speaking body," best liking those of whom he knew the most, and full of a delicate kindness in his personal rela- tions with them. The worthiness of his subject and the fidelity with which he reproduced Cromwell speak- m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 313 ing his own thoughts in his own words, gave dignity to the study of Cromwell, simply entitled "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches; with Elucidations," which Carlyle published in 1845. His love for a friend, who was not a strong man but who yet sought honestly to work out his convictions, gives beauty as tvell as strength to Carlyle's "Life of John Sterling," Dublished in 185 1. In 1848 Archdeacon Hare, to vhom and to Carlyle Sterling had committed all dis- :retion as to the editing of his writings, had published Tohn Sterling's Essays and Tales with a sketch of his ife. Sterling had been ordained as a clergyman, had ;erved the Church for a few months, but had been ed, partly, no doubt, by his friend Carlyle, away from he fold of the Church to simple love of God and aith in Him. Julius Hare, in no narrow spirit, had liscussed this feature in Sterling from a point of view mhin the Church, and Carlyle felt bound to tell the /orld his friend's life from an other point of view. He howed him faithfully as "among the million little •eautiful, once more a beautiful human soul; whom I, mong others, recognized and lovingly walked, while le years and hours were." But Carlyle knew little f life among the million, who were therefore "little eautiful" for him. In 1858, 1862, and 1865 Carlyle published, by vo volumes at a time, the six volumes of his "History f Frederick the Great," a work by which he again Hied himself to German thought. He had been rawn towards Frederick by admiration of strong in- 314 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE dividual will. Subsequent events have shown that Frederick's work was the shaping not only of a strong Prussia but through it of a strong United Germany,, there was no want, therefore, of a right historic sense in giving fourteen years of work to such a theme. But Frederick was not another Cromwell, and Carlyle became more and more conscious of his hero's un worthiness while still he was upholding him as type of the man of strong will who beats down all obstacles, achieves his own ends and controls the destinies of others. While Carlyle showed in this History hi& marvellous power at its height, there is no book of hisj that defines more clearly the limitations of his power, or more frequently chafes the reader by the twists and wrenches given to our mother tongue. What had| been a slight fault in the earlier books, caught from' half imitation of Jean Paul and other German Writers; by a secluded man of genius who wished to speak out of his own depths in his own way, became in the later books a vice of style. Young writers with their hearts kindled at the fire of Carlyle's genius, paid him, in the only possible way, the sincere flattery of imitation. They copied the faults of style which it required no genius to reproduce. Even now there is to| be met with, here and there, a man of high and mature intellectual power who cannot altogether free his books from the trick caught in his youth through generousj enthusiasm for books glowing with true eloquenct. Carlyle's attention was fixed so exclusively on litt within each Man, that he paid no regard at all to theu IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 315 National life as it may be said to exist within a People. His friend Joseph Mazzini, whose disposition was exactly opposite in this respect, had, of course, a quick eye for such deficiency. "Mr. Carlyle," said Mazzini, "comprehends only the individual; the true sense of the unity of the human race escapes him. He sympathises with all men, but it is with the separate life of each, and not with their collective life. He readily looks at every man as the represen- tative, the incarnation, in a manner, of an idea: he does not believe in a 'supreme idea,' represented progressively by the development of mankind taken as a whole. . . . The great religious idea, the continued development of Humanity by a collective labour, ac- cording to an educational plan designed by Pro- vidence, finds but a feeble echo, or rather no echo at all, in his soul. . . . The nationality of Italy is in his eyes the glory of having produced Dante and Christopher Columbus; the nationality of Germany that of having given birth to Luther, to Goethe, and to others. The shadow thrown by these gigantic men appears to eclipse from his view every trace of the national thought of which these men were only the interpreters or prophets, and of the people, who alone are its depositary." It is so. But is it not enough for one man to uphold firmly throughout his life one vital truth? The national thought was in Carlyle himself when he became one of its prophets. The French Revolution of which he . described so powerfully the wild tumult 316"' OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of the lives that were involved in it, though he showed little knowledge of its meaning, by its failure taught us our own slower and surer way to the ideal of which it had dreamed."^ Along the path first shown to us by Wordsworth Carlyle followed unconsciously, and all the stress he laid on the shaping of each single man, was simply such work as the time required. We build a strong wall with sound bricks, a strong state with sound citizens. It is no reproach to the brick- maker that he is not bricklayer as well. In 1833-34, when Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" was first appearing in "Eraser's Magazine," there was quick movement in the University of Oxford towards use of the whole mechanism of the Church for aid in the lifting of the minds of men. There was one aim in men so different as Thomas Carlyle and John Henry Newman. Each said, Let us put a soul into our dead conventions and help men to live true lives to highest aims. John Henry Newman was born in 1801, the son of a banker in Lombard Street. He was educated at Ealing School and elected to a scholarship in Trinity College Oxford, when yet very young. He graduated with honours in 1820, and obtained a Fellowship at Oriel. Newman had, with keen shrewd- ness of wit, a poet's nature,*"^ and he has written some pieces of good religious verse. Keble's "Christian * Carlyle's "French Revolution," his "Cromwell," and his "Frederick the Great," occupy 20 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. ** J. H. Newman's "Callista" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 317 Year," published in 1827, quickened in him the belief that all the ancient forms and institutions of the Church, restored to their position of pure spiritual symbols, might cease to be dead traditions, and give aid in revival of the dying fire within the souls of Churchmen. John Keble's sermon on "National Apo- stasy," in 1833, spread zeal for this revival of religion among many members of the University. John Henry Newman suggested the issue of a series of "Tracts for the Times" — some "Ad Clerum" and some "Ad Po- pulum" — to spread abroad the desire for an escape from formalism by deepening the general sense of holiness and beauty in the rites and ordinances of the Church. The first Tract, sold for a penny, was ad- dressed to the Clergy. It contained "Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission," which dwelt upon the Apo- stolical Succession of the Bishops, and sole priesthood of those whom bishops had ordained. At the close of the year 1833, Dr. Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University, joined the movement. Ed- ward Bouverie Pusey, born in 1800, had been educated at Christ Church, and had been elected to a Fellow- ship at Oriel. He became Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church at the age of 28, and was thirty-three years old, Newman being thirty-two, when the movement began. It was in full force dur- ing the first years of the Reign of Victoria. The new Oxford movement was stoutly resisted, on the ground that the stress laid by it on priesthood and on strictness of ceremonial would cause many to 3l8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE find no stopping place until they entered the com- munioii of the Church of Rome. That Dr. Newman himself, following the bent of a devout mind in the direction to which it inclined, did find his way into the Church of Rome, and is now the most distin- guished of its Cardinals, has justified this opinion. In February 1841, No. 90 of "Tracts for the Times," written by Dr. Newman, contained "Remarks on Cer- tain Passages in the Thirty-nine Articles," in which he argued that the pale of the Church of England was wide enough to contain him. But Dr. Newman owned afterwards that he argued against doubts rising within himself. In October 1845 he joined the Church of Rome. The followers of these new teachers were called "Puseyites" and have since been called "Ritua- lists" or High Churchmen, and they have always been a cause of great alarm to the large body of English- men who hold by the ancient dread of Rome, and still wish for a Church based upon the Bible with the least possible admixture of human traditions. It is the old contest of opinion, unchanged in spirit, or in the sin- cerity of combatants on either side, that runs through our History, and has left way-marks in the writings of Wiclif, in Pecock's "Repressor," in Hooker's "Eccle- siastical Polity," and many another earnest utterance. Opposite bias of mind in brothers equally earnest in desire to be true to their deepest convictions, has caused Francis Newman, who is four years younger than his brother, to quit the Church of England by a directly opposite door. His books published in 1849 and IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA, 319 1850, "the Soul, its Sorrows and Aspirations," and "Phases of Faith," showed depths of earnest feeling in expression of his doubts. Dr. Pusey's age was 37, Dr. Newman's 36 at the beginning of the reign; his brother's ^2, and thirty-two was the age of three other men active in Church questions, Samuel Wilberforce, Frederick Denison Maurice, and James Martineau. Samuel Wilberforce, third son of the famous com- batant against slavery, became Bishop of Oxford in 1844, and was soon distinguished for his vigorous sup- port of those who sought to put new life into religion, by strengthening the claims of the English Church upon allegiance of the people to the clergy, and alle- giance of the clergy to its ancient ritual. Dr. Wilber- force, who was distinguished in society for many pleasant qualities, was translated to Winchester in 1869, and died of a fall from his horse in 1873. As X wTiter he is best known by two small religious story books, published in 1840, which are among the best of their kind, "Rocky Island and other Parables," and Agathos, and other Sunday Stories." Frederick Denison Maurice was with John Sterling as one of the pupils of Julius Charles Hare at Trinity College Cambridge. Julius Hare, with his brother Augustus, had published a volume of Thoughts called "Guesses at Truth" in 1827, the year after he was ordained. Maurice and Sterling became bound more closely together by marriage with two sisters. Julius Hare became Archdeacon of Lewes in 1840, married the sister of his friend Maurice in 1844, and died in 32p OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1855. Maurice, born in 1805, was the son of I Unitarian Minister. He qualified for his degree i\ Cambridge, but could not, in those days, take ij because he had scruples about subscription to th! 39 Articles of the Church of England. He came t| London, studied law, and wrote in journals, till th beginning of 1830, when he went to Oxford. Ther he was drawn into the Church of England as th! Castle of Unity. He graduated, and was ordained i January 1833. His sympathy with Newman and hi friends was destroyed by one of the "Tracts for th Times" in which Dr. Newman laid stress upon Baptisr by the Church as a condition of Salvation. Maurici published a tract called "Subscription no Bondage," iij which the desire was expressed for a wide comi prehension of many forms of honest opinion withiil limits of the Church of England. Broad Church wai the name given to those who laboured afterwards witl Maurice, and with others like him, for a large freedon of intellectual opinion upon matters of dogma where there was one aspiration towards spiritual fellowshij with Christ. Those who represented the old spirit 0: the Lollards and the Puritans, in dread of Romish ceremonial, and who derived from passages in the New Testament a code of doctrines which they taught as vital truths of the gospel, which they must believe who would be saved, were called Low Church o^ Evangelical. Few things have been more conspicuous during the Reign of Victoria than the slow but con- stant advance towards a tolerance of the inevitable IN, THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 321 differences upon points dependent on the bias of opinion. The various communities of Christians, through the words and deeds of men like Frederick Maurice are every year being drawn nearer to one another in the bond of peace. Few would dread in 1 88 1 such fair discussion by religious men as raised a storm over the "Essays and Reviews"* published in i860, and the "Ecce Homo" of 1866. Maurice married in 1837, when he was chaplain to Guy's Hospital, and in 1838 set forth his view of a true Church in three volumes upon "The Kingdom of Christ." In May 1840 he was appointed Professor of English Literature at King's College, London, and in 1846 Professor of Ecclesiastical History there. In 1848 he was among the founders of the first College in England for the higher Education of Women, Queen's College in Harley Street, of which he was the first Principal. For want of faith in Eternal Punishment shown in "Theological Essays," then published, Fre- derick Maurice was dismissed from his Professorship at King's College in 1853. In 1854, as the result of a movement which he had been guiding for some years, he established a Working Men's College in Lon- don. In 1866 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, for which he had proved his fitness by valuable books upon the history of Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern Philosophy published between 1850 and 1862. Among his directly * "Essays and Reviews" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. Of English Literature, 2 1 322 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE religious writings some of the best are in the form of sermons delivered by him as Lecturer at Lincoln's Inn. He died in 1872. James Martineau, the foremost representative of those English Christians who openly repudiate the doctrine of the Trinity as formulated in the Athana- sian creed, is a younger brother of Harriet Martineau. He was born in 1805 at Norwich, educated at the Norwich Grammar School, at Dr. Lant Carpenter's school in Bristol, and at Manchester New College, York. From 1832 to 1857 he preached at Liverpool; then, in London. In 1868 he became Principal of Manchester New College in London. In his "En- deavours after the Christian Life" published in two volumes, one in 1843 the other in 1847, the position is taken by which Dr. Martineau abides in all his writings. With a fine intellect and much grace of imagination to give life to his expression of deep, earnest thought, he also seeks the larger fellowship of Christians in a spiritual church. Again there is evidence of the difficulty, even within one household, of keeping earnest minds from following their own way in pursuit of truth. As George Herbert of old, one of the best and purest of what are now called "High Churchmen," had for his eldest brother a man who, in religious spirit, denied the existence of a special revelation either to the Jew or to the Chris- tian; as the brothers John Henry Newman and Francis Newman went opposite ways; so Harriet Martineau lost before death the faith in which she and her IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 323 brother had been bred, but lost no part of her desne towards the highest life. In the earlier part of the Reign of Victoria, Miss Martineau enriched its Literature with many earnest books. A novel on the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the slave who called his fellows into freedom and was crushed by the power of Napoleon, is called "The Hour and the Man." Wordsworth had written a sonnet on the fate of Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Miss Martineau's novel was written with as generous a sympathy. Her preceding novel, "Deerbrook," pub- lished in 1839, paints English domestic life, with the unobtrusive spirit of duty that sustains its charm. Among many good short stories of Miss Martineau's may be named "the Billow and the Rock," published in 1846. A more laborious enterprise, conceived and undertaken as an aid to the diffusion of a right sense of what makes the strength of nations, was her "History of the Thirty Years' Peace, 1816-46," a work planned and begun by Charles Knight but mainly written by Miss Martineau. The book was published in 1850. In 1853 Miss Martineau published a digest of Comte's Positive Philosophy. Such books as "House- hold Education" in 1849, ^^^ "Health, Husbandry and Handicraft" in 1 861, indicated her continued interest in the advance of knowledge among the people. She died in June 1876. To the group of writers who were between thirty and forty years old at the accession of Victoria belongs also Edwin Chadwick, who was of the same age as 324 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Harriet Martineau. He was in his early life one of the' friends of Jeremy Bentham, and began his career as a writer in "the Westminster Review" in 1828. Mr. Chadwick has spent a long life in strenuous labour for the well-being of the people, and is working still. He has given the most direct aid to Poor Law Administra- tion; to the relief of children from undue labour in the Factories, and to the education of Factory children; to the advance of Public Education generally, and to the advance of Public Health. He was among the first to turn the public mind to questions of sanitary reform. The two wittiest men of this group, Thomas Hood and Douglas Jerrold, gave also their best energy to the endeavour to reduce the evil done by man to man. Thomas Hood, born in May 1799, was the son of a London bookseller and publisher, of the firm of Vernor, Hood and Sharpe, in the Poultry. His mother was sister to an engraver and, after some education at a Clapham school. Hood was apprenticed to his uncle. The health of all the family was delicate. Father and elder brother died while Thomas Hood was very young, then followed the mother, and a sister, whose deathbed is the subject of her brother's touching poem "We watched her breathing through the night." The delicate health of Hood himself compelled him to give up work as an engraver. In 182 1 he was at work for the "London Magazine," and in 1824 he married a sister of John Hamilton Reynolds, one of his fellow-contributors. He joined his brother-in-law. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 325 in 1825 in producing "Odes and Addresses to Great People," which attained great popularity. Two series of "Whims and Oddities" followed in 1826 and 1827, and in 1827 Hood showed his grace as a serious poet in a volume containing "the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies" and other pieces. In 1829 Hood published, in an annual called "the Gem," the most powerful of his serious poems, "the Dream of Eugene Aram." At Christmas 1830, he produced the first volume of his "Comic Annual." The kindliest wit and satire, jokes poured out incessantly from pen and pencil, supplied the needs of Hood's household, while in himself con- sumption was not slowly advancing. In 1834, ^^e failure of a firm brought heavy loss upon him; his health also became worse, and he went abroad. In 1835 a son was born, Thomas Hood the younger, who died in 1874, and within his short life of forty years main- tained, after his father's death, by genial wit as a comic writer, pleasant associations with an honoured name. In the beginning of the present reign Thomas Hood, the father, 39 years old, was quitting Coblentz for Ostend, disease advancing rapidly. He continued the "Comic Annual" as a sure source of income; published "Hood's Own;" and suggested a grim epitaph for himself, "Here lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any other man." His "Up the Rhine," published in 1839, ^^as very suc- cessful, but troubles with publishers clouded his suc- cess. In 1840 he returned to London, and had still to earn by his wit. He wrote for Theodore Hook in 326 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "the New Monthly Magazine," and upon Hook's death, in 1 84 1, became editor, with a salary of 0^300 a year, apart from payment for the articles he wrote. At this time "Punch" was established, and a little poem by Thomas Hood calling for sympathy with the poor women ground down by employers of their labour with the needle, — a poem as pathetic as his "Bridge of Sighs," — stirred all England in 1843. Hood cared more for the success of this appeal to humanity against "what man has made of man" than for all his wit be- sides, and asked that it might be written over his grave "He sang 'the Song of the Shirt.'" In January 1844 he left "the New Monthly" and established a Magazine of his own, "Hood's Magazine." In June 1844 Sir Robert Peel, in his own gracious way that doubled the value of such kindnesses, secured to Mrs. Hood a pension of 5^ 1 00 from the Civil List, that the poet : might die with one earthly care the less. He died on. the 3d of May 1845. From Theodore Hook to Thomas^ Hood was a stride forward in civilization; for it was not in Hood only that English wit took the new way of the time and laboured for the uplifting of the: fallen. Douglas William Jerrold was born on the 3d ofl' January, 1803, son of an elderly strolling actor by his young second wife. When he was four years old, his father managed a theatre at Sheerness, and he acted when a child was needed on the stage. He was sent to a school at Sheerness where he was one of a hun-< dred boys. He was handsome, white-haired, rosy IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 327 cheeked, a great reader; "the only athletic sport I ever mastered," he said, "was backgammon." In 18 1 3, when he was ten years old, Douglas Jerrold volunteered as midshipman on board His Majesty's guardship "the Namur," lying in the Nore. In 1815, when a little more than twelve years old, he was transferred to the brig "Ernest," which brought in July to Sheerness a cargo of men wounded in battle. In the following October, Jerrold's experience as a sailor ended. The war was over; the Sheerness theatre had lived by it; Jerrold's father failed, and the family removed to London, where, in 18 16, Douglas Jerrold was apprenticed to a printer. In 1818, at fifteen years old, he wrote a farce which was acted in 18 19, at Sadlers' Wells, as "More Frightened than Hurt." This farce was translated into French, and afterwards returned to the English stage as a translation from the French under the name of "Fighting by Proxy," with Liston in its chief character. In 1823, young Jerrold, twenty years old, shared Byron's enthusiasm for the cause of Greece. He was then writing dramatic criticism in a paper published by the printer whom he served, and also writing plays for minor theatres, "the Smoked Miser" among them. In 1824, aged 21, he married. Between 1825 and 1829 he was writing pieces for the Coburg and Sadlers' Wells theatres, and for Vauxhall. In 1829, he was engaged by Ellis- ton the actor, then managing the Surrey Theatre, as Dramatic Writer at a salary of five pounds a week. In that capacity, at the age of twenty-six, he at once 328 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE gave the manager a prize in "Black-Eyed Susan." This was produced on Whitmonday 1829, with T. P. Cooke as William. All London came to see it; and when fashionable London objected to cross the Thames, T. P. Cooke was engaged to play in "Black- Eyed Susan" every evening at Drury Lane after it had been acted at the Surrey. The piece produced thousands for others, but for its author only seventy pounds. Jerrold himself laid no false emphasis on this success. "Why, Douglas," said a friend, "you will be a Surrey Shakespeare ! " "A sorry Shakespeare," he replied. Activity in playwriting was doubled, for Jerrold now was in request at all the theatres. In 1835 ^^ had four plays being acted at four London theatres, while doing day work as subeditor of "the Examiner," and writing for "the Monthly Magazine." In April 1835 he began to write for "Blackwood's Magazine" and for the newspapers. In this year, loss through default of a friend, whom he had helped too generously, brought Jerrold into difficulty, and he wintered in Paris. In that winter of 1835, Thackeray also was in Paris. Jerrold and he became acquainted, and when Jerrold republished selections from his papers in "Blackwood" and the "New Monthly," as "Men of Character,"* in 1838, Thackeray furnished pictures to them. In 1840 Douglas Jerrold edited "Heads of the People," a series of pen sketches by the artist, Kenny Meadows, with * Douglas Jerrold 's "Men of Character" and his "History of St. Giles and St. James " are in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 329 written characters by Jerrold, Thackeray, Laman Blan- chard, and others. In 1 84 1, when Jerrold was at Boulogne, his friend Henry Mayhew had projected a weekly comic paper to be called "Punch, or the London Charivari." Mark Lemon, Gilbert Abbot a Beckett, and Stirling Coyne were among the company who joined most actively in its production, and the first number appeared on the 17th of July 1 84 1. Jerrold was asked to join, and his first contribution appeared in the second number. Mark Lemon, born in i8og, was at first joint-editor. He was then, like Jerrold, a busy dramatist. Henry Mayhew (born in 1812, and best known for his books based on direct inquiry into the condition of "London Labour and the London Poor," 1851), presently retired from "Punch." Mark Lemon became, and remained until his death in 1870, the sole editor. Mark Lemon was admirably fitted for the post, with a mind broad as his body — he could play Falstaff without stuffing — a genial nature, good sense, and no tendency whatever to look on himself as chief contributor, he never lost sight of Douglas Jerrold's warning that he and his staff must spend their wit in aid of the real interests of life. For the remaining sixteen years of his life, Jerrold's writings associated in "Punch" the keenest wit with care for all that was worthiest in life; he aided every labour for the raising of society, and lashed with his satire all the vices and the vanities by which it is degraded. The light humour of Thackeray took part in the same war. Maginn joined. Hood contributed 330 . OF ENGLISH LITERATURE his "Song of the Shirt." Shirley Brooks, full of kindly courtesies, graced wit and humour with the good taste that directed all his work. Tom Taylor's love of Literature tinged his frequent verse with pleasant recollections of the poets. Year after year in "Punch" the wit was keen, the humour true. Artists of high mark, Richard Doyle, John Leech, and others, held their ground beside the writers, and the wits were among foremost combatants in the great battle of life. John Tenniel set aside other ambition and made a place of his own in the History of Art as producer, week after week, of cartoons, in which one of the best English artists is still joining wit of invention to a sustained worthiness of purpose. Upon Mark Lemon's death, in 1870, Charles Shirley Brooks succeeded him as Editor of "Punch." His kindly wit was spent in its service until his death in 1874. He was born in 181 5, and left training for the law to write plays; reported also to "the Morning Chronicle" on the condition of the peasantry in southern Russia. He wrote also some good novels.* Tom Taylor, the next editor of "Punch," was born at Sunderland in 18 1 7. He was educated at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1845. In 1850 he was appointed Assistant Secretary, and in 1854 Secre- tary, to the Board of Health, which office he held at the time of his death in July 1880. Tom Taylor also * Shirley Brooks's "Silver Cord" and "Sooner or Later," and five novels by Mark Lemon are in the Tauchnitz Collection. EST THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 331 held the office of Professor of English Literature at University College from 1844 to 1847. He was the most successful dramatist of his time. The greater number of his pieces were original. He showed skill in adapting them to the powers of the actors by whom they were to be represented, and they cover the whole range of expression, from pathos to the broadest farce. With his love of Literature was associated love of art, and he was well known among the painters as a genial and cultivated critic of their work in columns of "the Times." Among his books is one, published in 1865, on the "Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds: with Notices of some of his Contemporaries, commenced by Charles Robert Leslie, R. A., continued and concluded by Tom Taylor." Tom Taylor's successor in the editing of Punch is Francis Cowley Burnand, born in 1837, ^^^ educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge. He also has been a very successful writer for the stage, and must already have made, with un- failing good humour, more jokes than Thomas Hood, although he has not written a "Bridge of Sighs" or a "Song of the Shirt." In the spirit that Douglas Jerrold put into "Punch" he wrote for it until within ten days of his death. Li 1844 he contributed to it "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," followed by "Punch's Complete Letter Writer." In 1843 he founded and edited "the Illu- minated Magazine," which lived two years, and con- tributed to it "Chronicles of Clovernook." In 1845 followed Douglas Jerrold's "Shilling Magazine," in 332 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE which he wrote "St. Giles and St. James" showing with all his wit and earnestness "what man has made of man." In 1851 he followed the way of publishing a novel in monthly numbers, which had been estab- lished by the success of Pickwick, in "the Man made of Money," a pleasant working out of the fancy that a man really made of money, who could peel at will a banknote from his person, would not be suffered to grow stout in this world of ours, as we have made it. In 1852, Jerrold's position, as a foremost wit who had throughout his life been labouring for the advance- ment of the people, caused an offer to be made to him of a thousand a year for his services as editor of a penny newspaper "Lloyd's Weekly News," designed for widest diffusion. He accepted that trust, and made worthy use of his opportunity. Douglas Jerrold died in June 1857 leaving, like Hood, a son behind him to maintain in Literature the credit of his name. His flashes of social wit are still remembered and told again. The sharpest sayings were those levelled in good humour at friends who knew the kind heart underneath the playful malice, for Jerrold was essen- tially gentle and highminded. To the young men who gathered about him in his home, he would quote often for kindly encouragement Wordsworth's wise phrase: " Tlain living and high thinking,' " he would say; "make that your motto." IN. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. ^^' CHAPTER XL ONWARD BATTLE. Of Carlyle's articles in the "Edinburgh Review" Macaulay wrote to the Editor, "As to Carlyle, he might as well write in Irving's unknown tongue at once." Carlyle's insight into Macaulay was implied once in his advice to an invalid, to read "the last volume of Macaulay's History, or any other new novel." The great charm of Macaulay's writing lies, indeed, in a faculty akin to that of the novelist. The follow- ing passage is from a journal kept by his sister Mar- garet, "I said that I was surprised at the great ac- curacy of his information, considering how desultory his reading had been. *My accuracy as to facts,' he said, T owe to a cause which many men would not confess. It is due to my love of castle building. The past is in my mind soon constructed into a romance. . . . . Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance in my romance. Pepys's Diary formed almost inex- haustible food for my fancy. I seem to know every inch of Whitehall. I go in at Hans Holbein's gate, and come out through the matted gallery.' " This habit of realizing history to his imagination, which Macaulay 334 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE had from childhood and which strengthened with use, was aided by the absence of all qualities that could have interfered with it. He had no depths, except his depths of home affection in a genial, happy honest nature. He read eagerly, remembered easily, wove together pieces of his reading with rare cleverness into clear conceptions, till he saw in his own mind men of the past living and acting, almost heard them speak; and then he reproduced his own perceptions in words that required no thinking to understand. Beyond this, it might almost be said that Macaulay did not think. Lights and shades of truth, reserva- tions, subtle questionings, perceptions of the mysteries of life in men and nations, never troubled him. He read pamphlets by the thousand to produce his history; he made the most careful inquiries upon little points that must be cleared up to secure full sense of life- like movement to his narrative; and thus it is no dead picture that he paints. There must be an un- dying charm in work so done by such a man; never- theless its strength lies in the quality that caused Carlyle to recommend to an invalid "the last volume of Macaulay's History, or any other novel." If the stream ran clear it was shallow, and to the multitude the History was good because it put scenes of life into their minds without requiring them to think much as they read. The view taken of any man or in- cident was habitually that which accorded with the writer's predilections and which could most readily take shape in his own imagination. Complaints founded IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 335 Upon the historian's misreading of facts were many. In 1 86 1 Mr. John Paget gathered five of the most conspicuous into a book called "the New Examen," after Roger North's "Examen" of White Kennett's History. Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," published in 1842, are full of the life and heat of the old ballad style, true ballads, with quick perception, clear reali- zation, a full sweep of animated verse accordant to each story; and they are all story, as they ought to be. In 1843 Macaulay's Essays in the Edinburgh Review were republished by himself"^ In July 1847, after a dissolution of Parliament, Macaulay was re- jected at Edinburgh for his generous advocacy of a grant to the Irish Roman Catholic College at Maynooth. He had been giving divided allegiance to Politics and Literature, but he now resolved to make a pure pursuit of Literature the pleasure and the duty of his life. He expressed his feeling in some lines written on the night of the defeat, in which he pictured the Fairy Queens of Gain, Fashion and Power visiting him, as he lay newborn in his cradle at Rothley Temple, and passing by with scorn; but dwelt on the blessing of the glorious Lady with the eyes of light and laurels on her brow. It is the most thoughtful and real of all Macaulay's pieces of verse, and has great interest as genuine expression — marred only by two rhetorical * Lord Macaulay's ''History," his "Critical and Historical Essays," his "Lays of Ancient Rome," his "Speeches," and his * ' Biographical Essays ' ' are in 20 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 336 . OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Stanzas about "Thule's winter" and "the tiger's lair" — of deep and noble feeling at a turning point of life. The conception of the poem is based upon memory of a piece by his old friend Praed, entitled "Child- [ hood and his Visitors." In 1848 appeared the first two volumes of Macaulay's "History of England from the Accession of James II." Its success was enormous and immediate. In July 1852 Macaulay was re-elected for Edinburgh. Towards the close of 1855 the third and fourth volumes of the History appeared. A cheque ii for d^ 20,000 represented his share of the profits of( the History in 1856. In August 1857 he accepted the offer of a peerage and became Baron Macaulay of Rothley. He died on the 28th of December 1859, ^^^^' ing a fifth volume of the History to be published after j his death. The affection he inspired colours delight fully the sketch of Lord Macaulay's Life published in \ 1876 by his nephew, George Otto Trevelyan. This is, indeed, one of the best biographies to be found in the : Literature of the present reign. * Thomas Love Peacock, who was born in 1785 andl died in 1866, was in his earlier years a friend ofi Shelley's, and obtained in 1 8 1 8 an appointment in the India House. He left verse-writing for pure fiction, beginning with "Headlong Hall" in 18 16. After long rest upon a reputation for his wit and fancy as a satirist, he produced "Gryll Grange" in 1861, at the * "The Life and Letters of Macaulay" by G. O. Trevelyan are in four volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection, which contains also two volumes of "Selection from the Writings of Lord Macaulay." IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 337 age of 76, and published in the following year a trans- lation of "Gr Ingannati," a Comedy performed at Siena in 1531, which had been cited in 1602 for its resemblance to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." The novelists between thirty and forty years old at the beginning of the reign were — Robert Bell and Catherine Crowe, 37; Charles Lever, 34; Benjamin Disraeli, ;^t,; William Harrison Ainsworth and Edward Lytton Bulwer, ;^2; Samuel Warren, 31. Robert Bell, born at Cork in 1800, came to London in 1828 after editing a newspaper in Dublin, and until his death in 1867 worked in London to good purpose as an energetic man of letters. He began by editing a paper called "the Atlas," and gave it a distinctly literary tone. He afterwards edited other journals, wrote for "Lardner's Cyclopaedia" several volumes of History and Biography, wrote three Comedies, "Marriage" in 1842, "Mother and Daughter" in 1844, and "Temper" in 1845; two novels, "The Ladder of Gold" in 1850, and "Hearts and Altars" in 1852; and a "Life of Canning" in 1846. He also planned and executed an "Annotated Edition of the English Poets" in half crown volumes, well printed upon good paper, each poet's works being prefaced with a biographical and critical introduction and interpreted throughout, where necessary, by free annotation. This enterprise was begun in 1854, long before the conception of the ad- mirable "Globe" editions through which Messrs. Mac- millan publish their well edited cheap volumes of 0/ English Literature. 22 338 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the English classics. Robert Bell lived the vigorous and healthy life of a true man of letters who left the world something the better for his having lived in it. Catherine Crowe was born in 1800, and as Cathe- rine Stevens married Lieut. Colonel Crowe in 1822. She began work as a writer in 1838, with a published tragedy, "Aristodemus." As novelist she made her first success with "Susan Hopley," since turned into a melodrama that has won much favour on the stage. "Lily Dawson" followed in 1847; ^^^^ Y^^^ she translated "the Seeress of Prevorst," and, turning to studies of the supernatural in which her fancy took delight, she produced in 1848 "the Nightside of Nature." In subsequent books Mrs. Crowe followed, but not exclusively, this path of fancy, and she died in 1876. Charles James Lever, born in Dublin in 1806, took the degree of Bachelor of Medicine in Trinity College Dublin , and of Doctor of Medicine at Gottingen. In the first year of the reign of Victoria he began to write in "the Dublin University Magazine" an Irish novel, full of high spirits and suggestions of practical jokes, called "the Confessions of Harry Lorrequer." Lever was for three years physician to the British Embassy at Brussels, and held that office when he produced his next novel "Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon" in 1841. From 1842 until 1845 he edited the Magazine in which he had made his first success. Afterwards he held various posts abroad; and poured IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 339 out novel after novel, well flavoured with dashing military adventure and Irish fun * He died at Trieste in 1872. Benjamin Disraeli, born on the 21st of December, 1804, son of Isaac D'Israeli who wrote the "Curiosities of Literature," died Earl of Beaconsfield in April 1881, after shaping for himself, by the vigour of his own genius, as leader of one of the two great parties in the state, a large place in the History of England. Political satire abounds in his novels, of which the earliest, read by the light of his later achievements, shadow forth some of the dreams that grew to substance as he grew to power. His first novel "Vivian Grey" appeared in 1826; "Captain Popanilla" followed in 1828. Then came "the Young Duke;" "Contarini Fleming;" "Alroy;" and in 1834 "the Revolutionary Epic." In the present reign his chief novels were "Henrietta Temple" and "Venetia," 1837; "Coningsby," 1844; "Sybil," 1845; "Tancred," 1847; "Lothair," in 1870 and "Endymion," in 1880.**' He published also a tragedy, "Count Alarcos," in 1839, ^ "Political Biography of Lord George Bentinck," in 1852, and edited his father's works in 1858. William Harrison Ainsworth, eldest son of a Man- chester lawyer, was born in 1805, educated at the Manchester Grammar School, and at first bred to the * Charles Lever's Novels are in 59 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Lord Beaconsfield's Novels are in 1 7 volumes of the Tauch- nitz Collection. 34^ ^F ENGLISH LITERATURE law. He published a Romance , "Sir John Chiverton/^ before he was of age, married at 21 a publisher's; daughter, and made Literature his one profession after the success of his novel of "Rookwood," published in 1834. "Crichton" followed in 1837, ^^^ ^^ ^^le be- ginning of the Reign Ainsworth had taken his position firmly as a novelist. In 1840 he succeeded Charles. Dickens as editor of "Bentley's Miscellany," owing ; that position to the great success of his novel of: "Jack Sheppard," which began to appear in the Mis- cellany in January 1839, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The novelist was hardly answerable for the manner in which his work was dramatised for most of the minor theatres, and received in that form by the ignorant. It was said of his book that it made house-breakers, as it was said of Schiller's first play that it made robbers. Mr. Ainsworth's next subjects . were "The Tower of London," 1840; "Old St. Paul's," and "Guy Fawkes," 1841; "the Miser's Daughter," 1842; "Windsor Castle," 1843; "St. James's, 1844; "James II.," 1848; "Lancashire Witches," 1849, and many more, the series being continued till the present day, when William Harrison Ainsworth is a novelist aged 78, still true to his own chosen form of art. His novels, though readers have turned now to tales of an- other fashion, have never been without the merit of great skill in the shaping of a story from historical material well studied and understood. Ainsworth's strength has lain in the union of good, honest anti- quarian scholarship with art in the weaving of IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 34 1 romance that is enlivened and not burdened by his knowledge of the past. * Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, afterwards Lord Lytton, was the son of General Bulwer, and his mother was heiress of one of the Lyttons of Knebworth in Hampshire. He graduated at Cambridge in 1826, began to publish when he was fifteen, but obtained his first success in 1827 with a novel called "Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman." The success was followed up. Other tales succeeded rapidly; "the Dis- owned" in 1828; "Devereux" in 1829; "Paul Clif- ford" in 1830; "Eugene Aram" in 1832. Paul Clif- ford was a sentimental highwayman, and Eugene Aram a sentimental murderer; but if these novels sug- gested question, they were followed by two of entirely healthy sentiment, "the Last Days of Pompeii" in 1834, and "Rienzi" in 1835. I^ 1^37 followed "Ernest Maltravers," and in 1838 its sequel, "Alice, or the Mysteries." Thus at the beginning of the reign the writer then familiarly known as Bulwer was firmly established in the first rank of the living novelists. The rise of Charles Dickens, in 1836, and the great popularity soon afterwards acquired by fiction of an- other school, would have drawn away large numbers of Bulwer's readers, had he been less versatile. But in 1838 he broke new ground and produced an acted play, "the Lady of Lyons," that in spite of artificial sentiment, and a plot turning upon an unmanly * Ainsworth's Novels are in 53 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection, 34^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE fraud, touched the old chord of revolutionary sentiment and, by help of clever dramatic construction, set it vibrating again. "The Lady of Lyons" has held the stage throughout the reign. "Richelieu" followed in the next year, a play hardly less successful. "Richelieu" has also kept the stage. Then followed "the Sea Captain," and in 1840 "Money," a comedy; also novels, — "Night and Morning," "Zanoni," "the Last of the Barons," — all successes. Then followed satire in verse, "the New Timon," with no great success; a novel "Lucretia" of which the tendency was open to question; and, in 1849, "^^^ Caxtons" a novel with a complete change of method to the use of humour imitated from the style of Sterne. About the same time an ambitious attempt was made upon Epic poetry, with "King Arthur" for theme and an entirely new set of allegorical adventures in place of the old story. There were more books than these, and to the last the literary energy was working."^ Bulwer entered Parliament in 1832 and was one of the first and chief opponents of what were called the Taxes upon Knowledge. He obtained a baronetcy in 1838; succeeded to the Knebworth estates in 1844, and took the name of Lytton; was raised to the peerage, as Lord Lytton, in 1866; and died in 1872. Bulwer was married in 1827 to an Irish lady who separated from him and satirized him in a novel called " Cheveley." * Bulwer 's Works are in 58 volumes of the Tauclinitz Col- lection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 343 His son, Robert, the second Lord Lytton, who was Governor General of India under the administration of Lord Beaconsfield and was raised in 1880 to an Earldom, has distinguished himself in Literature under the name of "Owen Meredith." Beginning in 1855 with "Clytemnestra" and other Poems, followed by "the Wanderer" in 1859, ^ novel in verse "Lucile" in i860, and other volumes, of which the "Chronicles and Characters," published in 1868 are the most im- portant, the second Lord Lytton has taken a place of honour among living verse-writers. Without his father's versatility of power, he has much more than his father's gift of song. "^ An elder brother of Bulwer's, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, who was active in the diplomatic service, was raised to the peerage in 1871 as Lord Balling, and died in 1872, also obtained distinction as a writer. ** Samuel Warren, born in 1807 in Denbighshire, the son of a Rev. Dr. Warren, was educated at the University of Edinburgh and turned from the study of Medicine to that of Law. He became Queen's Counsel, Recorder of Hull, and Master in Lunacy; wrote legal books; and died in 1877. ^^ ^^^ ^^" ginning of the reign Samuel Warren published, in * Poems by Robert, Lord Lytton, are in 4 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Lord Balling's "Historical Characters," in 2 volumes, and his "Life of Palmerston," in 4 volumes are in the Tauchnitz Col- lection. 344 C)F ENGLISH LITERATURE 1838-40, a series of tales or sketches of life called "the Diary of a late Physician" which first appeared in "Blackwood's Magazine." In this there were touches of pathos; and there was comic power in his very suc- cessful novel "Ten Thousand a Year," which followed in 1 84 1. "Now and Then," in 1848, sustained the author's credit; but in 1851 the opening of the Great Exhibition suggested a rhapsody of neither prose nor verse called "the Lily and the Bee" that showed how a clever novelist with a good sense of the ridiculous, and a clear headed lawyer to boot, may make himself ridiculous by failing to see the limits of his power. * There were not many poets among the writers who were between thirty and forty years old at the time of her Majesty's accession. Human powers are called forth by the conditions of the life about them. Those conditions are to the mind and character of man in the days of his youth as soil to seed. Seed that would yield a Milton might possibly fall on stony places by the wayside, or on ground so poor that the weak growth barely suggests the strength and beauty of the shoot that elsewhere, "bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil." It is not worldly prosperity that gives the required conditions. Adversity often helps better to that stirring of the depths which must come to a man in his youth if he shall be in later years a man indeed. Happy the man so born that he passes from childhood to maturity, through times * Samuel Warren's three Novels, and also his "Lily and the Bee," are in the Tauchnitz Collection, IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 345 in which all faculties are awakened by keen private or public struggle, towards some aim for which he cares, and ought to care, with his whole soul. Under such conditions the great periods of Literature have always been produced. The golden time of our modern Literature, early in the Nineteenth Century, we owe, in all its forms, to stir of the French Revolution quickening the minds of men. England, in the time of George IV., was a field with its last harvest cleared, becoming overrun with weeds, and waiting for re- newal of the discipline of plough and harrow. Plough and harrow came. Expansion of thought and en- largement of the bounds of energy by development of the railway system after 1829; the whole stir as- sociated with the new French Revolution of 1830; the English Reform Bill of 1832; the energetic efforts towards better education of the People, and better care of the poor; abolition of slavery in the British Colonies in 1834; tumults of thought raised by the Chartists in 1838; the Anti- Corn -Law -League in 1839; O'Connell's Repeal agitation; Famine in Ire- land; Father Mathew's apostleship of Temperance; the French Revolution of 1848, deepening throughout Europe every feeling that was associated with the social struggles of the time, these indicate only a few furrows that broke up the hardening soil, and prepared it for a better crop of writers in those who were be- tween twenty and thirty years old at the beginning of the reign. Tennyson, Gladstone and Charles Darwin, all of like age, were then eight and twenty; Mrs. Browning 34^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE was of about the same age; Browning and Thackeray were six and twenty; Dickens was five and twenty. The best poetry produced by writers of the pre- ceding decade of years was dramatic. Henry Taylor, born at Durham in 1800, entered the Colonial-Office in 1824, was a friend and disciple of Southey's, had already at the beginning of the reign won high re- putation as a poetical dramatist, earned by his "Isaac Comnenus," in 1832, and more especially by his larger dramatic poem, "Philip van Artevelde," in 1834. 1'^is was dedicated to Southey, and in its preface advocated union of reason with imagination against poetry that, like Byron's, painted, Henry Taylor said, selfish passions of men in whom all is vanity, or poetry shaped by the more powerful and expansive imagination of Shelley, whose disciples he called fol- lowers of the Phantastic School. "Philip van Artevelde" remains its author's master-piece. It has one clear conception embodied in two plays full of a sedate dignity and beauty, is poetic in conception and construc- tion, and not without a touch or two of pathos in the equable and noble strain of a music that is not strongly emotional. Henry Taylor's dramatic works in the reign of Victoria have been "Edwin the Fair," in 1842, "the Virgin Widow," in 1850, and in 1862 "St. Clement's Eve," with its scene laid in mediaeval France. Sir Henry Taylor was knighted in 1873 for his services at the Colonial-Office. A somewhat older writer, Thomas Noon Talfourd, born at Reading in 1795, the son of a brewer, be- IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 347 came a distinguished lawyer, and wrote three poetical plays that were illustrated by the genius of Macready, the chief actor of their day. The first was the best, "Ion," first acted in May 1836. At the beginning of the reign Macready was endeavouring to establish the poetical drama at Covent Garden Theatre, and Tal- fourd's second play, "the Athenian Captive," again upon a great classical theme, came to him in 1838 as a disappointment, for it wanted, he thought, stage effect, and did not give chief prominence to his own part. The poet had to alter the play much before its production, but he afterwards printed it with his original close. The living dramatists upon whom Macready chiefly depended in his Covent Garden management were Bulwer, Talfourd and Sheridan Knowles. Bulwer's "Lady of Lyons" and "Richelieu" and Talfourd's "Ion" then first declared them dramatists. James Sheridan Knowles, an older man, who was born at Cork in 1784 and died in 1862, had been known to Macready since 1820. In that year the MS. of "Vir- ginius" w^as sent to him by a friend at Glasgow, with account of the success of the play at the Glasgow theatre. The play was then produced at Covent Garden, with Charles Kemble and Miss Foote among its actors, as well as Macready, who delighted in the part of Virginius, and to whom Sheridan Knowles be- came thenceforth a dramatic poet laureate. Although his style as a poet was but weakly imitative of our elder drama, Sheridan Knowles had skill in the con- 348 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE struction of his plots, and that quick sense of stage effect which gratifies an actor who must needs think of the figure he will make upon the stage. Knowles's " William Tell " had been written ini 8 2 5 . " The Hunch- back" was produced in 1832, and another very suc- cessful comedy, produced under Victoria, was "the Love Chase," in the first year of the reign. Talfourd's third play, "Glencoe," was shown to Macready by Charles Dickens as work of a stranger, accepted on its merits, and acted at the Haymarket Theatre in 1840. The name of the author was withheld also from the public until after the play had succeeded. This was designed as a suggestion to the unacted dramatists, who were then loudly complaining of neglect. The most remarkable instance of the influence of the Elizabethan drama on the minds of men who were looking back to the old vigorous Literature of the days before the Commonwealth, was a wildly poetical play called "Death's Jest Book, or the Fool's Tragedy," by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, which was published in 1850, after the death of its author, and followed by his "Poems" in 1851. The play might almost have been written by John Webster or John Ford, and in this respect it differs greatly from the modern Eliza- bethanism of Sheridan Knowles and others. Its author was the eldest son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes of Clifton, the early friend of Humphrey Davy, and his mother was a sister of Maria Edgeworth's. T. L. Beddoes was born in 1803, educated at the Bath Grammar school, the Charterhouse and Pembroke College Oxford, and IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 34Q showed when a student intense interest in the poetic drama. Having graduated at Oxford, he studied physic for four years at Gottingen. He lived chiefly abroad, most in Germany and Switzerland, and died in January 1849. Tn the first years of the reign of Victoria the stage had in Mr. James Robinson Planche a delightful writer of brilliant extravaganzas, fairy pieces with grace of invention and treatment, and with ingenuity and beauty in the manner of presentment. Mr. Planche is des- cended from one of the French protestant families that came to England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was born in 1796, and wrote the first of his extravaganzas at the age of twenty- two. It was produced at Drury Lane Theatre in the year 18 18. Mr. Planche distinguished himself also as a student of ancient life and manners, whose antiquarian knowledge, joined to his good taste, made him a valuable counsellor upon all points of dramatic costume. He was created Rouge Croix Pursuivant of Arms, in 1854, and Somerset Herald in 1866. He has wTitten nearly two hundred pieces, edited Fairy Tales, written upon antiquities, and produced a valuable "Dictionary of British Costume," published in 1880. Adelaide Kemble, younger daughter of Charles Kemble, who achieved in the earlier years of the reign of Victoria high reputation as a singer, left the stage in 1843, upon her marriage to Mr. Sartoris. In 1847 she contributed to the Literature of the reign a pleasant volume cailed "A Week in a French Country House." 350 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE John Anthony Heraud, born in 1799, was in his earlier years a busy man of letters and published in 1830 and 1834 two epic poems, "the Descent into Hell" and "the Judgment of the Flood." He has since written several tragedies in blank verse of which one, "Videna," was acted in 1854. Richard Hengist Home, born in 1807, began life as a sailor, saw service in war between Mexico and Spain, visited Indian tribes of North America and had many adventures before he settled in London as a writer. His work has often indicated high poetic power. Poets have felt the force and beauty of his "Death of Marlowe" published in 1838, and his "Orion" deserves a place in Literature upon higher ground than that it is an epic poem which was pub- lished in 1843 at the price of a farthing, to express its author's sense of the public estimation of such Literature. Charles Swain, who was born in 1803, and died in 1874, began life in dyeworks at Manchester, but joined afterwards a firm of engravers. He had skill as a lyric poet, and many of his songs, written to aid the progress of society, were current among the people. "There's a good time coming, boys," was once a refrain of his common throughout England. It was a good time coming for which they were to "wait a little longer"; and we battle for it yet. Thomas Cooper, known as "the Chartist," was born in 1805, at Leicester. He taught himself Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, while working at a shoe- IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 351 maker's stall; then he became schoolmaster. He was a Chartist leader at Leicester in 1841, and in 1842 was sentenced to two years' imprisonment on a charge of sedition. In gaol he wrote his poem "The Pur- gatory of Suicides," published in 1845, and afterwards he wrote both prose and verse; novels, political articles and poems bearing on the condition of the people. He lectured also in many places, preached, and battled against the loss of religious faith that spread among working men. Thomas Cooper's "Autobiography," pub- lished in 1872, gives, from a point of view most in- teresting to the student of our time, a picture of no small part of the onward battle in which true English- men of every rank and every form of opinion now are combatant. George Borrow, of Cornish family, was born at East Dereham in 1803. He began active life articled to a solicitor at Norwich, and there he became interested in the language and manner of the gipsies who camped on a neighbouring heath. He gave up Law for Literature, and after 1833 travelled, for the British and Foreign Bible Society, in Russia and Spain. In 1 84 1 he published an account of the gipsies in Spain, "theZincali;" and in 1842 "the Bible in Spain." The author's spirit of adventure, with earnestness of character and genuine enthusiasm for studies of gipsy life and language, that had its source partly in sense of the picturesque, made these books very delightful. Mr. Borrow has since travelled among gipsies of Eastern Europe, and has published other books; 352 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "Lavengro," in 1851; "the Romany Rye," in 1857; also "Romano Lavo-Lil, a word-book of the Romany, or English Gipsy Language," in 1874.. The students of our past History and Literature who were between thirty and forty at the beginning of the reign, were Alexander Dyce, Sir Frederick Madden, the Earl of Stanhope, Mr. William John Thorns and Mr. Charles Roach Smith. Mr. Dyce, born at Edinburgh, in 1798, was the son of a general officer in the East India Company's service. He was educated in the Edinburgh High-School and at Exeter College, Oxford. He was ordained, held curacies in Cornwall and Suffolk, and in 1827 settled in London, where his knowledge of Italian as well as of English Literature, and his true sense of poetry, obtained for him the first place among students of the Elizabethan Drama. He qualified himself for his place as the best editor of Shakespeare's text by editing the works of George Peele in 1829, of John Webster in 1830, of Robert Greene in 1831, of Thomas Middleton in 1840, of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1843-46. The first edition of Dyce's Shakespeare appeared in 1857. -^^ 1864 ttie second edition gave the results of continued study in fuller revision of the text. Ripe judgment and thorough familiarity with all forms of Elizabethan thought enabled the editor to be a little bolder in correction of those errors in the old printed texts which he had, at first, not ventured to touch. Dyce died in February 1864, leaving much material ready for the next revision of his work, and the publication IN THE REION OF VICTORIA. 353 of a third edition of his Shakespeare in 1874, includ- ing all his latest notes, was due to the generous care of his friend John Forster. We have in Dyce's edi- tion that which is now generally accepted as— ^thus far — the best attainable text of the Shakespeare's Plays.* Sir Frederick Madden, born in 1801 and knighted in 1833, became keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum in the year of Her Majesty's accession. Of many pieces of old English Literature first edited by him from their MSS. the most important was that of Layamon's "Brut," in 1847; ^^ was the first editor also of other works of high interest, the Romances of Havelok, the Dane, in 1828; William and the Wer- wolf, in 1832; and Sir Gawayne, in 1839. ^^^ Frederick Madden died in March 1873. William John Thoms, born in 1803, began active life as a clerk in the Secretary's Office at Chelsea Hospital. He published in 1828 a valuable collection of the "Early English Prose Romances;" of Robert the Devil, Friar Bacon, Vergil the Enchanter, Doctor Faustus, and others. Of this work there was an enlarged second edition in 1858. One of the best of many services for which students of English Life and Literature are indebted to Mr. Thoms was his foundation in 1850 of "Notes and Queries," a medium of intercommunication through which literary men can have full aid of fellowship in their research. He was himself editor * Dyce's text of Shakespeare is in 7 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. Of Ejtg-Hsh Liieratii7e, 23 354 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of his journal until 1873, and it still lives and thrives, being not only an important aid to research, but, by- its nature, also an amusing miscellany of curious in- formation for those who seek in it intellectual enter- tainment. Mr. Thoms has distinguished himself by pleasant attacks upon faith in the duration of life to a hundred years or more. The only malice of the world towards him lies in its hope that he may live to see the happy completion of his own hundredth year on the 1 6th of November 1903. Charles Roach Smith, who was born in 1804, at Landguard Manor in the Isle of Wight, has distinguished himself as an explorer and interpreter of local anti- quities. He published from 1848 to 1866 six volumes of "Collectanea Antiqua;" from 1850 to 1858 books on the Antiquities of Richborough, Reculver and Lymne, and in 1859 "Illustrations of Roman London." He has been lately interested in the discovery of a Roman Villa at Brading in his native island. Mention should here also be made of the antiquarian writings of the Rev. John CoUingwood Bruce, born at Newcastle in 1805, whose work on "the Roman Wall; a Description of the Mural Barrier of the North of England," first published in 1851, reached a third edition in 1867. In a large volume, amply illustrated, it supplies the most exhaustive treatment of its subject. The historians of this decade of years, were Macaulay, Lord Mahon afterwards Earl Stanhope, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Eyre Evans Crowe, and Thomas Henry Dyer; to whom may be added Abraham IN THE REIGN OF VICTORS. 355 Hayward and John Doran as writers of lively gossiping essays upon the past. Philip Henry Stanhope, Earl Stanhope, first known as historian under his earlier title of Lord Mahon, was born in 1805 and educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the House of Commons in 1830, was Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1832, and for a year, in 1845-6, he was secretary to the Board of Control. He published in 1829 a "Life of Belisarius," in 1832 a "History of the War of Succession in Spain;" in 1836-38 his chief work, "History of England from the Peace of Utrecht," followed in 1872 by a "History of the Reign of Queen Anne," which was designed to form a link between Lord Macaulay's History and his own.* "Historical Essays" in 1848, and "Miscellanies" in 1863 con- tained Earl Stanhope's contributions to Reviews. He published also in 1845 "the Life of the Great Conde," in 1853 "the Life of Joan of Arc," in 1861-62 "the Life of William Pitt," and took part with Edward Cardwell in the "Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel," published in 1856. In 1846 he had edited the letters of Lord Chesterfield, and in that year he was elected to the Presidency of the Society of Antiquaries. Earl Stan- hope died in December 1875. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, born in 1806, was the son of Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis, a baronet of an old Radnorshire family. He was educated at * Earl Stanhope's Histories are in 9 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 356- OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Eton and Oxford, and first entered the service of the country as one of a Commission appointed in 1831 to consider the state of the Irish Church and of the Irish People. From 1839 ^^ ^^47 ^^ was Chief Com- missioner of Poor Laws. In 1847 ^^ entered Parlia- ment and became Secretary to the Board of Control. In 1848 he was Under Secretary of the Home De- partment, and in 1850 Secretary of the Treasury. In 1854-55 he edited "the Edinburgh Review." After 1855 Sir George Cornewall Lewis served in the highest offices of the State, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer, then as Home Secretary, in 1858-9. He was Secretary of State for the War Department, when he died in April 1863. He was a keen critic of historical traditions, and applied a clear calm mind with scientific accuracy to questions of the past and present. In 1832 he published "Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Political Terms," in 1840 "an Essay on the Romance Language," and "a Glossary of Hereford- shire Provincial Words;" in 1841 "an Essay on the Government of Dependencies," in 1849 "^^ ^^^ I^^" fluence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," in 1852 two volumes on "Methods of Observation and Reason- ing in Politics," in 1855 two volumes of "Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History," remorse- lessly demolishing its legends; in 1862 "an Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients." His "Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain from 1783 to 1830" were published after Sir G. C. Lewis's death by Sir Edmund Head, in 1864; and they were followed jN iHK kkj(,;n oL' victoria. 357 in 1870 by his "Letters to Various Friends" edited by his brother, the Rev. Sir G. F. Lewis. Eyre Evans Crowe, born in 1799, was an active political journalist, Avho at one time edited "the Daily News." In 1830 he contributed "a History of France" to Lardner's Cyclopaedia. During many of the last years of his life, which closed in 1868, he lived in the neighbourhood of Paris, for access to French records while he was developing his "History of France" into a fuller work, founded on careful study of authorities. It was published in five octavo volumes between 1858 and 1868, and, unambitious in style, it is the most liberal, careful and trustworthy "History of France" that has been written by an Englishman. Thomas Henry Dyer, born in 1804, published in 1 86 1 "a History of Modern Europe;" in 1865 "a History of the City of Rome;" and in 1873 "Ancient Athens;" besides other useful historical works. Abra- ham Hayward, born in 1803, was trained to the law and became in 1845 a Queens' Counsel. He has produced a prose translation of Goethe's "Faust" that has been widely read, has written upon Law, and founded "the Law Magazine," and has published three series of "Biographical and Critical Essays," being distinguished among Quarterly Reviewers for light and lively articles abounding in literary anecdote. Mr. Hayward published also in 1861 "the Autobiography, Letters and Remains of Mrs. Piozzi," and in 1864 "Diaries of a Lady of Quality." John Doran, born in 1807 of an old family from Drogheda, received 358 OP ENGLISH LITERATURE part of his education in France and Germany, was Ph. D. of a German University, and commonly known as Dr. Doran. He was an active man of letters, journalist and author, and was pleasantly esteemed for books on various forms of the social life of the past. They had usually whimsical titles and were crowded with much anecdote. His first books were his best, upon Dining and Tailoring, "Table Traits and Some- thing on^ them," and in 1854 "Habits and Men." Then followed "Lives of the Queens of the House of Hanover" in 1855; "Knights and their Days," in 1856; "Monarchs retired from Business" in 1857; "a History of Court Fools" (the best part of its contents being borrowed without proper acknowledgment from Flogel's "Geschichte der Hofnarren") in 1858; "Lives of the Princes of Wales" in i860; "a Memoir of Queen Adelaide" in 1861; "Her Majesties' Servants," talk of the past days of the English Stage, in 1864; "Saints and Sinners" in 1868; "A Lady of the Last Century" (Mrs. Elizabeth Montague), with a Chapter on "Blue Stockings" in 1873. Dr. Doran died in 1878. Science was represented among men of this group by Sir George Biddeli Airy, Richard Owen and the, mathematician, Augustus De Morgan. George Biddeli Airy, born in Northumberland in 1801, was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1823 and obtained a Fellowship at Trinity in 1824. In 1826 he was ap- pointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and in 1828 Plumian Professor of Astronomy, with charge of the Cambridge Observatory. In 1835 ^e became Astro- IN TTTE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 359 nomer Royal. That office he held throughout the reign of Victoria until his resignation in 1881, and retirement upon a substantial and well earned pension. His researches have been honoured by medals from the French Institute, the English Royal Society and Astronomical Society. He was among the contributors to Charles Knight's Penny Cyclopaedia, and he has written treatises for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, besides the records of research contributed to the Cambridge Transactions, the Philosophical Transac- tions and the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society. Augustus De Morgan, born in Southern India in- 1806, was fourth wrangler at Cambridge in 1827. In 1828 he became the first Professor of Mathematics in University College, then opened as the University of London. He was not only the most successful teacher, but the most learned authority of his time upon the history of Mathematics, and in the practice of his science a most acute pleader for the union of Mathematics with Logic. He wrote books upon every department of Mathematics, and was conspicuous for union of shrewd critical wit with good sense and a wide erudition. This was shewn in the "Budget of Paradoxes," contributed from time to time to "the Athenaeum." He died in March 1871 and his "Para- doxes" were reprinted as a volume in 1872. Of De Morgan's ready liveliness in talk let this serve as ex- ample. Dr. Sharpey, the veteran physiologist, was talking in the College Common Room of old days be- 360 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE fore the Anatomy Act, when body snatchers provided subjects for Anatomists and Surgeons. He had as a young man to receive the supply for his teacher. A rival teacher turned informer. — At once De Morgan broke in with a new version of an old song, " If a body need a body Surgery to teach, If a body prig a body, Need a body peach?" Richard Owen, born at Lancaster in 1804, was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and at schools of medicine in Paris. He began life with the practice of medicine, but appointment to the post of Assistant Curator of the Hunterian Museum developed his inclination for the study of Comparative Anatomy. After teaching at St. Bartholomew's medical school, he became in 1836 Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the College of Surgeons. This office he held for twenty years, and then he was made Superintendent of the Natural History Departments in the British Museum. Professor Owen's Lectures on Comparative Anatomy were first published in 1843; his "History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds" in 1846. In 1849 he published a work on "the Nature of Limbs" dwell- ing upon the unity of design throughout creation, and in 1855 a Lecture "On the Classification and Geo- graphical Distribution of the Mammalia, with an Ap- pendix on the Gorilla, and the Extinction and Trans- mutation of Species." This discussion prepared the way for Charles Darwin's reasonings, in 1859, upon IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 36 1 "the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selec- tion." In i860 Professor Owen published his "Palae- ontology, or a systematic summary of Extinct Animals, and their Geological Relations." Among other works that followed was one, m 1866, on "the Anatomy of the Vertebrates." Another, in 1877, was on "The Fossil Mammals of Australia, and on the extinct Marsupials of England." There is to be included among writers born within this decade of years, Walter White, Assistant Secre- tary to the Royal Society, who has published many pleasant books describing holiday walks. In 1855 it was "a Londoner's Walk to the Land's End;" in 1858 "a Month in Yorkshire;" in 1859 "Northumber- land and the Border;" in i860 "All Round the Wrekin," and so forth; encouraging wise Englishmen to know their homes while not avoiding knowledge also of their neighbours; other of Mr. White's books being records of holidays in Switzerland, the Tyrol, Saxony, Bohemia and Silesia. Richard Chenevix Trench, born in 1807, and now Archbishop of Dublin, held a living in Hampshire when he became known by a volume of good verse, "Justin Martyr, and other Poems." His religious writ- ings have since been marked by refinement of taste, and some short courses of lectures upon the use of English, addressed to boys, have been given with great advantage to the public. "The Study of Words," published in 1852, "English Past and Present," in 1855, "Select Glossary of English Words used formerly 302 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE in Senses different from their Present," in 1859, ^^^ suggestive little books that have passed through many- editions, and are still freely used. Dr. Trench was Dr. Buckland's successor as Dean of Westminster from 1856 to the end of 1863, when he succeeded Dr. Whateley in the Archbishopric of Dublin. John Stuart Mill was thirty-one years old at the be- ginning of the reign. He was born in London in 1 806, eldest son of James Mill, and instructed by his father, who, says the son, "in all his teaching demanded of me not only the utmost I could do, but much that I could by no possibility have done." John Stuart Mill began Greek at the age of three. Children's books he seldom saw, but he read through the historical part of the first thirty volumes of "the Annual Register." The boy had a sensitive mind, and fresh shoots of imagination that dried up for want of culture. He was told to read the historical plays of Shakespeare, for their facts, and he went on to others for their poetry; but he was put upon a severe course of Logic at the age of twelve. It began with Aristotle's Organon, with which were to be taken the whole or parts of several of the Latin treatises on the Scholastic Logic. Upon them followed the "Computatio, siveLogica" ofHobbes, and he studied much in his father's "History of Lidia," which was first published in 1818, when the boy was twelve years old. Towards religion James Mill's atti- tude was what he considered logical, and he taught his son to look upon the modern as on the ancient religion as something that in no way concerned him. IN THE RKTHN OF VICTORIA. 363 "This point in my early education," wrote J. S. Mill, "had, however, incidentally one bad consequence de- serving notice. In giving me an opinion contrary to that of the world, my father thought it necessary to give it as one which could not prudently be avowed to the world." For passionate emotions of all sorts, James Mill professed the greatest contempt. "He resembled," says his son, "most Englishmen in being ashamed of the signs of feeling, and by the absence of demonstration, starving the feelings themselves." After such education, John Stuart Mill followed his father's steps in the East India House, and rose, after ^;^ years service, from a clerkship to the post his father had held as chief. This was in 1856. He had married in 1851, and suffered deeply upon his wife's death in 1858. "Her memory," he wrote in his "Auto- biography" (published after his own death in 1873) " is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I en- deavour to regulate my life." The control of the East India Company over India was transferred to the Eritish Government in 1858. John Stuart Mill was offered a seat in the new Council, but he preferred to retire upon the compensation granted him and give the rest of his life to his studies. He died in May 1873. The impulses of a fine nature, that his father's heavy and one-sided training weakened indeed but could not kill, give frequent charm to the disquisitions of John Stuart Mill. First came, from the mind thus trained, a "System of Logic" in 1843; then "Principles 364 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of Political Economy," early in 1848, a second edition being called for within the year. In 1859-67 followed three volumes of "Dissertations and Discussions" chiefly from the "Edinburgh" and "Westminster" Reviews. "Considerations on Representative Government," 1861; "Utilitarianism," 1863; "Auguste Comte and Positiv- ism," 1865; in the same year "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy" and in 1869 "the Subjection of Women," a plea for the full political and social rights of women, are the most important of J. S. Mill's other books. In the "Autobiography," published after his death, Mill indicates through all his tenderness, sincerity and truth, and his strong in- terest in questions that touched the well-being of man, a poetic temperament that had been starved in the training. There is almost pathos in his account of the great comfort he found in the poetry of Wordsworth, with the supposition that he owed it, not to sympathy with the high thought and purpose of the poet, but to the fact that he was not himself poetical. "Words- worth," he said, "may be called, the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation." His father, in fact, had not suc- ceeded in stamping all poetry out of him. Carlyle expected of John Stuart Mill, when he was a young man, that he would prove a mystic. TN THF. RFJr.N OF VTCTORTA. 365 CHAPTER XII. THE BEST VIGOUR OF OUR TIME; AND WHAT REMAE^S OF IT. Next comes the ninth wave, "gathering half the deep, and full of voices," that is breaking now upon our shore of time, while the new waves that roll up behind it must grow yet before we know their force. The best vigour of our time is in writers who were between twenty and thirty years old at the beginning of the reign. To their group belong Tennyson and Browning; Mrs. Browning; Dickens and Thackeray; the Miss Bronte's; Mrs. Gaskell; Gladstone; Darwin; and others who represent activity in many forms. Charles Dickens was born on the 7th of February 18 1 2, at Landport in Portsea, son of John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, who was then stationed at Portsmouth Dockyard. He was the second of eight children, of whom two died in infancy. In 1 8 1 4 his father's duties were transferred to London, and in 1816 to the dockyard at Chatham, where the family lived in St. Mary's Place next door to a Baptist Chapel. Coming once from Chatham with his father he passed Gad's Hill Place, admired it, and was told that he might live in it if he came to be a man and should work hard enough. It was a pleasure to him, 366 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE in after years, to bring this prediction to fulfilment. At Chatham, Charles Dickens went to a day-school in Rome Lane. His father had a cheap series of the works of novelists and essayists — Fielding, Smollett, "the Vicar of Wakefield," "Don Quixote," "Gil Bias," "Robinson Crusoe;" the "Spectator," "Tatler," "Idler," "Citizen of the World," and Mrs. Inchbald's collection of Farces. These furnished pasture ground, and Charles Dickens took, as a boy, to writing, produced a tragedy "Misnar, Sultan of India" founded upon one of the "Tales of the Genii." A cousin, James Lamert, son of a Commander in the Navy, with his widowed stepmother, sister to Mrs. John Dickens, was part of the household at Portsea and Chatham. At Chatham Mrs. Lamert married a staff doctor in the army. He is sketched in Pickwick. James Lamert, who was being educated at Sandhurst, had a taste for the stage, got up private theatricals, and took his young cousin to the theatre. In 1820-21, during the last two years at Chatham, Dickens was at a school in Clover Lane, kept by the Rev. W. Giles, of the Baptist Chapel next door. In 182 1, the family came to London and lived in Bayham Street, Camden Town. James Lamert had finished his education at Sandhurst, and was waiting for a commission. Dickens, having been brought to London, found friends in a godfather who was a well-to-do rigger, mast, oar and block maker in Limehouse, and in an elder brother of his mother's, James Barrow, who was laid up with a broken leg at lodgings in Gerrard Street, Soho, over a bookseller's IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 367 shop kept by a widow, from whom books were bor- roAved. In 1822 John Dickens, who had retired on a small pension, was in difficuUies. Mrs. John Dickens set up a school in two parlours of an empty house at 4 Gower Street, North, with some hope that Charles's godfather, credited with an Indian connexion, might bring pupils. The education of John Dickens's own children was, meanwhile, neglected, except that the eldest daughter was sent to the Academy of Music. After a few months John Dickens was arrested for debt, and lodged in the Marshalsea prison. Everything was sold and pawned, including the books. James Lamert — • still waiting for the commission, which he resigned, when it came long afterwards, to a younger brother — about this time joined a cousin George, who had some money, in setting up an opposition to Robert Warren's much advertised Blacking shop at 30, Strand. A Jonathan Warren had traded on the name which in those days was to be read on most of the walls in Eng- land, and sold "Warren's Blacking" at "30 (Hunger- ford Stairs) Strand," printing a very minute "Hunger- ford Stairs" between big "30" and big "Strand." George Lamert bought Jonathan Warren's business, and went into it with his brother James. Charles Dickens, then ten years old, was employed in the business to cover blacking pots, and received for his services six shillings a week. His home was broken up; his mother had gone to live with his father in the Marshalsea; and the boy was put to lodge with an 368 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE old lady in Little College Street, recollections of whom are in the character of Mrs. Pipchin in "Dombey and Son." He had to keep himself out of his wages; moved presently to lodgings near the Marshalsea, in Lant Street, Borough, (home of Mr. Bob Sawyer in "Pick- wick,") taking breakfast and supper in the prison. There the family was still waited upon by a small maid of all work first taken from Chatham workhouse, the original of "the Marchioness" in "the Old Curios- ity Shop." John Dickens took the benefit of the Act that cleared him as a bankrupt. About the same time the blacking business of the Lamerts had been removed to Chandos Street, Covent Garden, at the Corner of Bedford Street, and little Charles Dickens had been put into the window that the public might get an im- pression of extensive business from the sight of his swift tying of the blacking pots. John Dickens then quar- relled with the Lamerts, took his son away, and sent him, in 1824, to school. He was in 1824-26 at two private schools before he was put into business as office boy at an attorney's. In 1828 John Dickens had become a parliamentary reporter. His son Charles then followed his lead, de- voted himself to a close study of shorthand in the reading room of the British Museum, acquired skill, and practised for two years as reporter for an office in Doctor's Commons. In 1831, aged nineteen, he was reporter for "the True Sun," and it was here that he first formed his friendship with a young journalist of his own age, John Forster, who remained his life-long IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 369 friend. In 1832, Dickens's uncle Barrow started a "Mirror of Parliament" that was to excel Hansard in reporting the debates. Charles Dickens reported for it, during two years, and then the speculation failed. In January 1834 Dickens became reporter for "the Morning Chronicle" under John Black, a genial and energetic editor. He contributed street sketches also to a magazine "the Old Monthly," which could not pay for them. In August 1834, "^ "^^^ Old Monthly," he first signed himself "Boz." That was the domestic pet name of his youngest brother Augustus, who had been named after Moses in "the Vicar of Wakefield," then had his Moses turned into Boses, and his Boses into Boz. In 1835 "^^^ Evening Chronicle" was started as an offshoot from "the Morning Chronicle," and Mr. George Hogarth, musical critic of "the Morning Chronicle," was active in its preparation. Dickens was asked to supply an original sketch for the first number, like his street sketches in "the Old Monthly." He supplied it, and proposed a series, with hope of pay for it that might be added to his salary as a reporter. This was arranged, and his salary was raised from five to seven guineas a week. The sketches in "the Evening Chronicle" were signed "Boz," and were much liked. In 1836, Dickens's age being 22^ the First Series of "Sketches by Boz" was published as a volume, and the copyright sold to a young publisher for ^^ 1 50. At the same time there was a proposal by George Seymour, a comic artist, who amused himself and others a good deal at the expense of cockney sportsmen, to produce Of English Literature. 24 370 - OF ENGLISH LITERATURE a series of comic plates. The publishers of the pro- posed series, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, looked for an amusing writer of pen sketches that might be attached to them, and they applied to the lively author of "Sketches by Boz." Dickens suggested that the new Sketches written by him for Seymour's pictures should have some continuity, however slight, and it was agreed that this could be obtained by forming comic characters into a club. Thus came into existence the "Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club," of which No. i ap- peared on the 31st of March 1836. On the second of the following April, Dickens married the eldest daughter of his friend George Hogarth, drawing from "Pickwick" one month's pay in advance for wedding expenses. The payment was to be ^15 for each number. Between the appearances of No. i and No. 2, Seymour committed suicide; pictures were indispensable, and Thackeray, then an art student, offered to supply them. The artist chosen was Hablot Browne, who signed himself "Phiz." By the time the sixth number was reached, there was much talking about "Pickwick," in which a new writer, a man of genius, with high spirits that cheered all readers, was revelling in wit and whim. There was little or no plan in the book; that had not been part of the original design; but, story or no story, in 1837, at the beginning of Her Majesty's reign, there was "Pickwick." It is said that when the delight in "Pick- wick" was at its height, a ponderous divine, who had been giving counsel at the bedside of a dying man, heard as he left the room his victim sigh, "Thank' LN THIO REIGN OF VICTORIA. 37 I Heaven, there will be another 'Pickwick' in three days!" In August 1836 Dickens had agreed with Richard Bentley, the publisher, to edit a magazine for him, "Bentley's Miscellany," and write a tale in it. The tale was "Oliver Twist," begun in February 1837, ^^^ aided greatly by George Cruikshank as an illustrator. Dickens's fame had risen so rapidly that the young publisher who gave £ 150 for the "Sketches by Boz" asked £ 2000 for the surrender of his bargain. Pay- ments agreed upon for extra sale brought up the price of "Pickwick" to £ 2,500; and for the next novel, published, like "Pickwick," in twenty green-covered monthly numbers, the price was ^^ 1 50 a number, with reversion of copyright to the author in five years. In 1840 and 1841 Dickens attempted weekly publi- cation of his "Master Humphrey's Clock" which con- tained, besides short stories, "the Old Curiosity Shop," one of the best of his novels, and "Barnaby Rudge." A visit to America yielded in 1842 "American Notes." In 1843 he produced a five shilling Christmas story, daintily printed and illustrated with woodcuts and coloured plates, "The Christmas Carol." This was a new form of pleasure; and as the successful novels in monthly numbers set many producing novels in monthly numbers, so the successful Christmas book, set many producing Christmas books of the same outward pattern. Dickens continued the practice only through the next four years, publishing in 1844 "the Cricket on the Hearth;" in 1845 "the Chimes;" in 1846 "the Battle of Life;" and in 1847 "^^^e Haunted 24* 372 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Man.'' His longer tales, always first told in twenty- monthly numbers, were "Martin Chuzzlewit," in 1844, "Dombey and Son," in 1848, and "David Copperfield," in 1850. In 1845 Dickens's energy led to the establishment of an important newspaper "The Daily News." The prospectus of it was written by him; its first number, which appeared on the 21st of January, 1846, was edited by him; and he remained editor until the gth of the next month. In aid of this venture he had begun to write impressions of Italian travel, and he continued to contribute, after the editor's work had been transferred, for the rest of the year, to his friend Forster. The volume of "Pictures from Italy" appeared in 1846. In 1850 Dickens established "Household Words''"^ as a weekly journal that was to join reason with imagination in support of every effort towards the improvement of society. There were to be tales, sketches, poems, always designed in aid of right citizen-building. He would help one half of the world really to know how the other half lived. This was putting to high use the wide spread influence he had acquired. He gathered about him, as fellow workers, all whom he thought able and found ready to aid his design. "Household Words" prospered until 1859, when its sale was doubled by continuing it as a new series under a new name, "All the Year Round." * Household Words, 185 1- 185 6, is in 36 volumes, and Stories from Household Words are in 1 1 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REICJN OF VICTORIA. 373 Since Charles Dickens's death this journal has been successfully continued by his son, whose name also is Charles Dickens. In Christmas numbers of his weekly journal containing tales connected by some little frame- work of his own devising, some of the best of Dickens's own short stories were written; but he ceased to pro- duce Christmas numbers when imitation on all hands took away their freshness of design. In 1852 was published "the Child's History of England," written originally for "Household Words." The conception of the book was an honest one — to sweep away historical conventions and reach un- sophisticated truth — but the execution of it required much knowledge in which Dickens was deficient. ''Bleak House" was the next novel, in twenty numbers. It was completed in 1853. In 1854 "Hard Times" was republished from "Household Words." Then "Little Dorrit" appeared in the usual twenty numbers, completed in 1855. In 1859 Dickens's powerful story of the days of the French Revolution, "the Tale of Two Cities," was published in "All the Year Round." In the same journal appeared also the papers collected as "the Uncommercial Traveller," and the novel of "Great Expectations," finished in 1861. "Our Mutual Friend" returned to the old twenty number form, and was finished in November 1865; Dickens had added to his labours the public dramatic reading of selected portions of his works. Whatever he did was done wdth his whole energy. In 1867 he revisited America, and after his return planned "Edwin 374 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Drood" which was to be completed in twelve instead of twenty monthly numbers. Only six had appeared, and the rest was unwritten, when a sudden seizure, with effusion on the brain, brought the great novelist's life to a close on the 9th of June 1870, at the age of fifty- eight* Thackeray had already passed away. William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta on the 1 8th of July 18 11, of a family of Indian Civil Servants. His father died in 18 16, and his mother was married a few years afterwards to Major Henry Carmichael Smith. Thackeray was sent as a child from India for education in England, and placed at the Charterhouse. He was not particularly happy there, but his gentle nature looked back afterwards on his old school with growing affection. In February 1829 he went to Trinity College Cambridge, and left in 1830. An inclination towards studies of Art took him abroad. In 1 83 1 he was at Weimar. In 1832 he was at Paris, when he came of age and came into possession of a^ 500 a year. He still studied among the painters, half aimlessly, with a genius that must needs in due time make Literature his calling, but with his future business in life ill defined. In a few years he had got rid of his money, by cardplaying and newspaper speculation. The loss was gain to him. At the be- ginning of the Reign of Victoria, in 1837, ^^^ chief in- come was from "Fraser's Magazine," to which he contri- buted, in 1837-38, "the History of Samuel Titmarsh and * Charles Dickens's Novels are in 48 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 375 the Great Hoggarty Diamond/' and he was writing also in the "New Monthly." In 1837 Thackeray married. His eldest daughter, now Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, has inherited some part of his genius, and is one of the most delightful of our living novelists, gifted with delicate invention, charm of thought and grace of style.* Thackeray was in those days much in Paris. In 1840 he published his "Paris Sketch Book," and in 1843 his "Irish Sketch Book," having in the interval become an active contributor to "Punch," then just founded. Thackeray's playful humour had free range in the pages of "Punch." There was a dainty spirit of fun in his satire and his comic ballads, with a humour all his own. In 1844 he published another little book "a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo." In 1846, emulous perhaps of the success of Dickens, and strong in the growing sense of power, Thackeray followed Dickens's plan of publishing a long novel in monthly numbers and began "Vanity Fair." It was finished in 1848, in 24 numbers, and then for the first time he made known the full breadth of his genius. Dickens had leapt to fame at the age of 24 and strengthened year by year his hold upon the public. Thackeray slowly developed to the full expression of his power and was 37 when he took his place with the great English novelists by right of "Vanity Fair." In 1849 ^^ ^^^ ^^ illness which left him subject to * Miss Thackeray's (Mrs. Ritchie's) Novels and Tales are in 1 1 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 376 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE those occasional attacks of spasm in one of which he at last died. In 1850 "Pendennis" followed "Vanity Fair," still published in monthly numbers. In 1851 Thackeray delivered lectures at Willis's Rooms on "the English Humourists;" and in the winter of 1852-53 he lectured in America. The profit from lecturing enabled Thackeray to make all requisite provision for his family. In coming thus into direct relation with his readers, Thackeray preceded Dickens, who first thought of public readings in 1846, but, although he gave some gratuitous readings in and after December 1853, did not begin the paid readings until 1858. In 1853 Thackeray produced "the New- comes," and prepared a second series of Lectures on "the Four Georges." These proved not less profitable than the lectures on the "English Humourists." In 1854 Thackeray published "Esmond," one of his best novels, illustrating life in the days of Queen Anne, which was artistically coloured by making per- sons of the drama tell their story in an English imi- tating English of the days of Addison and Steele. Steele appeared in the story, a man little understood by Thackeray, the merit of whose accounts of the English Humourists does not lie in full knowledge of the men he tells about. In 1857-59 appeared the "Virginians," a sequel to "Esmond." He was forty-eight years old when he completed the "Virginians," and in the same year "the Cornhill Magazine" was founded by Messrs. Smith and Elder, with Thackeray for Editor. It was immediately preceded by "Macmillan's Magazine," IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 377 first published a month earlier than "the Cornhill." These two magazines were designed to give for a shilling, which replaced the old conventional half crown, a monthly supply of the best Literature attain- able. "The Cornhill" added pictures to letter press, and secured illustrations from some of the best English artists, including John Everett Millais, Frederick Walker, and the present President of the Royal Academy, Sir John Leighton. Thackeray was editor of the Magazine until April 1862, and continued to write for it until his sudden death, on the 24th of December 1863. He had published in the Cornhill "the Roundabout Papers," "Lovel the Widower," and "the Adventures of Philip," and left behind him a fragment of a novel, "Denis Duval," which appeared in "the Cornhill Magazine" at the beginning of 1864.* In their lifetime many vain comparisons were drawn between Dickens and Thackeray. They were the great novelists of their day, and novel readers took sides in dispute about them, after the usual way, by exalting one and running down the other. Dickens, with little aid of school education in his early years, and in much contact with the lower forms of life, had the energy of genius strengthened, and its sympathy deepened, by a youth of battle against adverse cir- cumstance. The strong will conquered, and the strong will showed its force until the end. A vigour im- patient of all check set itself face to face with the * Thackeray's Works are in 36 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 378 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ills Of life, and spent the gifts of a rare genius in strenuous service to humanity. The work of such a writer must inevitably show, at times, some traces of the want of early culture. To the fastidious, Charles Dickens would at times, often perhaps, seem vulgar, and his generous emotions would also, at times, out. run his judgment. But brilliant playfulness of fancy in a man of genius, whose very defects of conventional training belonged to a childhood and youth brought into close contact and victorious struggle with the meaner life that was about him, and who drew from, such education only a more vivid sense of social needs,! and keener sympathies with those who are forced to fight the battle with less strength to overcome, cannotj be vulgar. Extravagance in the play of whimsical li suggestion, closer sympathy with the lives of the teni million than with the lives of the ten thousand, can- not be vulgar when the extravagance is unrestrained play of an honest wit, in its fellowship with mirth and sorrow intensely human, and capable of flashing truth upon the world in forms that catch its fancy and can touch its heart. The wildest extravagance had some touch of that individual character by which humour rises above wit, and of which Dickens was brimful, the complaint being, indeed, that it ran over the brim.' When Thackeray, who had been moved to tears by No. 5 of "Dombey and Son," containing the death of Little Paul, threw the number on the table at the "Punch" office, and said, "Look there; who can stand against that?" he knew the strength of Charles Dickens's IN THE RETON OF VICTORIA. 379 senilis as truly as Dickens knew and recognized the strength of his. There can be no essential vulgarity in a writer who deliberately gives his labour to the highest aims in life; who seeks, as Shakespeare did, by his fictions to draw men to love God and their neighbour and to do their work, and who, as strenu- ously as he had done his own work, sought to put heart into every irresolute toiler and encourage him to battle on. It is said that Dickens erred in writing novels with a purpose." What does that mean? Purposeless work is not for the sane. What is meant must be that he wrote novels with a wrong purpose, that he built their plots upon accidental questions of the day and not upon essential truths that are the same to-day and for ever. In "Bleak House," for ex- ample, he attacked the delays of law, and levelled a fiction against the Court of Chancery. If that were all, the complaint would be a just one; but that is not all. Dramatist or novelist must needs construct his tale from some form of the life he finds about him, although he should base his tale upon some simple and essential truth of life. And in "Bleak House" what does the Chancery suit stand for? It is the something outside a man's life that may at any day bring fortune to him, without labour of his own. Such hope is a blight upon the life that trusts to it. Richard Carstone's life is robbed of its true vigour by such de- pendence on the chances of an outward Fortune; while Esther Summerson does her daily duty with cheerful activity, and Mr. Jarndyce, at Bleak House, much as ;8o OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the suit concerns him, puts its possibilities away fron him. He takes no thought about the Hercules whd might come down to set his waggon going, but puts when needful, his own shoulder to the wheel, and lives his own life worthily. "Fortune reigns in the gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature." Thackeray, on the other hand, was accused ol cynicism. He had the early culture of which Dickens was deprived, and special training as an artist. This gave a grace of refinement to his style, which is onei part of its charm. But another part of his charm,i and a main part, is that with a fine humour in which^; as in all true humour, the whole nature of the writerj is involved, Thackeray retained as a man the playful-! ness, the simplicity, the tender feeling of a child. In playful books, such as "the Rose and the Ring," published in 1855, and in his "Ballads," there is, with a man's fulness of power, a genuine playfulness, a childlike spirit of fun without one trick of affectation to cast doubt on its sincerity. But this is absolutely incompatible with what the world calls cynicism. Al- though his view of life was dimmed a little by ex- periences of a public school and of the ways of the young artist world in Paris, and he may therefore shake his head sometimes over a mother's faith in the goodness of her son, although reaction from the weak excesses of French Revolutionary sentiment had brought an air of cynicism into fashion, Thackeray's ideal of life is really childlike in its purity. In "Vanity Fair" he took, like Fielding whom he did not study in vain, a IN THE REIGN OE VICTORIA. 38 I proad canvas on which to paint an image of the world. !\s Fielding, in Tom Jones and Blifil, represented :he two opposite poles about which our world turns, 30 Thackeray contrasted Becky Sharp and the Craw- ley side of the world with the side of Major Dobbin and Amelia. When it was said that his good people were innocent babies, that was his praise; for a child- like innocence, remote enough from the conception of the cynic, was Thackeray's ideal to the last. If Major Dobbin seemed too weak, Thackeray mended the fault in Colonel Newcome, to whom he gave the same feature of unworldly simplicity and innocence. Thackeray's sensibility made him, perhaps, a little too much afraid of the conscious idlers who consider themselves men of the world. Being himself tenderly framed, he took refuge like the hermit crab in a shell that was not his own but served well for protection. He certainly was, in his younger days, somewhat too much in awe of the conventions of society; for there is an implied bowing down before them in some of the Snob papers that is saved only by its honest origin from being not conventionally but essentially vulgar. Dickens's Letters have been collected, since his death. They are in three volumes, two published in 1880 and one in 1881.* These show that the man spoke with his own voice in his works. If like aid to a true knowledge of William Makepeace Thackeray should ever be given in the days of our children, it will * Dickens's Letters edited by his Sister-in-Law and his Eldest ^X>aughter, are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 382 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE " make nothing more clear than the gentleness of thd fine spirit from which his novels came. . The Life of Dickens by his friend John Forster wa published in three volumes in 1872, 3, 4,* and a sketcl of the life of Thackeray has been contributed by An thony Trollope to a series of short separate biographies of "Men of Letters," edited by John Morley. John Forster was born at Newcastle in 18 12, and was educated there at the old grammar school, now pulled down to make room for a new railway station He showed his bent towards Literature as a child, and as a schoolboy wrote a play that was produced on the^ Newcastle stage. He was sent to Cambridge at thei time when the new London University was being! founded, and transferred from Cambridge to University] College, London, where he studied law, under Andrew/ Amos, with James Emerson Tennent and James White side, afterwards Chief Justice of Ireland, for his most intimate friends and fellow students. At eighteen, he was writing for magazines and studying in the cham bers of an eminent special pleader, Thomas Chitty. In the year of the Reform Bill Forster was also writ- ing politics in "the True Sun" when Dickens became! a reporter for that paper, and their life-long friendship then began. "The Examiner" newspaper, when it left the hands of Leigh Hunt and his brother, had been bought by a Rev. Dr. Fellowes, who wished to advocate many * Forstei-'s "Life of Dickens" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN" THE REICN OF VICTORIA. 3§3 reforms and religious toleration as an aid to the religious life. In 1830 Dr. Fellowes entrusted the management of "the Examiner" to Albany Fonblanque. Albany William Fonblanque, born in 1793, was the son of an eminent lawyer, and had turned first from training for the army to study of law. But at twenty he was drawn into Literature by his interest in ques- tions of the day, and he soon became a brilliant news- paper writer. Between 1820 and 1830, he had written for "the Times," "the Morning Chronicle," "the Ex- aminer" and other papers, and in 1830, when he was entrusted with the editing of "the Examiner" the old strength of the journal was renewed. John Forster was among writers in "the Examiner," and within three years after Albany Fonblanque had become its editor, Forster was as his right hand in its management. To Dionysius Lardner's " Cabinet Cyclo- paedia of Original Works on History, Biography, Na- tural Philosophy, Natural History, Arts and Manu- factures," published between 1829 and 1846, Forster contributed at the age of 24 the first of five volumes of the "Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth." The last volume appeared in 1839 ^^^ i^ 1840 there was a new edition of the whole work. In 1842-43 he edited the "Foreign Quarterly Review," he was writing also in "the Edinburgh Review," and throughout full of activity for "the Examiner," of which he became editor in 1847. Fonblanque, who had become, and remained, chief proprietor, withdrew then from the work of editing, upon his appointment as chief of the 384 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE \ Statistical Department of the Board of Trade. Fon- blanque parted with the paper only a little while, before his death in 1872, and wrote in it every week while it was his. In 1848 John Forster published his "Life of Goldsmith," which at once took its place as one of the best biographies in English Literature.* In September 1854 ^^^ Essay on Foote, and in March 1855 liis Essay on Steele, appeared in the "Quarterly Review." The Essay on Steele was the first serious attempt to rescue from misinterpretation one of the manliest of English writers. Fonblanque wrote of it, "I read your 'Steele' with admiration, not so much for the scholarly writing and fine criticism, but chiefly for the wise and, because wise, tender humanity." Forster had chosen from among the writers of Queen Anne's time Jonathan Swift for special study, and was during many years collecting materials for a Lifej of Swift. In 1855 he withdrew from "the Examiner" on being appointed Secretary to the Lunacy Commis- sion, and at that time he married. In 1858 his articles in the "Quarterly" and "Edinburgh" Reviews were published, in two volumes, as "Historical and Bio- graphical Essays," one of them including an Essay "on the Debates on the Grand Remonstrance." In i860 he published a volume containing special study of the attempted "Arrest of the Five Members" by Charles I. Then he resolved to give his latter years, with failing health, to a full reconstruction of his * Forster's "Life of Goldsmith " is in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 385 "Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonweahh" written in early life. "The Life of Sir John Eliot" appeared accordingly in 1864. The death of his friend Walter Savage Landor turned him aside to the writing of a "Life of Landor" published in i86g. The death of his nearest friend, outside his home, Charles Dickens, turned him aside to the fulfilment of an old promise that if he survived he would be Dickens's biographer. The volumes of this biography, in which Forster lived his old life again with his dead friend, appeared in 1872-4. The death of his friend Alexander Dyce in 1869 imposed upon Forster another office of love. As his own days of faithful labour drew to a close, he was producing a third edition of Dyce's Shakespeare; also an edition of Landor's works; the last volumes of both being edited after Forster's death by another old friend, the Rev. Whitwell Elwin. At the beginning of 1876 the first volume of Forster's "Life of Swift" appeared, containing much new and suggestive matter. It remains a fragment. Forster died within a month after the book appeared. Ill health had withdrawn him in his last years from society, in which he had once taken a keen delight; and he had always a loud important manner that puzzled strangers and amused his friends. But he was full of kindliness. No successful man of letters ever used his influence more steadily for the prompt recognition of the worth of others. Many who now are firm in reputation heard the first voice of emphatic welcome to the ranks of 0/ English Literature . 25 386 • OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Literature from John Forster in the "Examiner," and liked the voice for being loud. He had enthusiasm. Some say that enthusiasm has gone out of fashion. But the mind can no more live in health without it, than the body without fire. Enthusiasm gave warmth to the work of the three daughters of the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who married Maria Branwell and, in 1820, went to live in the Vicarage at Haworth in Yorkshire with his wife and six children. The children were, Maria, born in 1 8 1 4 Elizabeth, born in 1815; Charlotte, born in 18 16 Patrick Branwell, born in 181 7; Emily, born in 18 18 Anne, born in 1820. The mother died in 182 1, and her place was taken by her sister. Miss Branwell, who, being afraid of cold, kept much to her own room. In July 1824, Maria and Elizabeth were sent to a School for Daughters of Clergymen, at Cowan Bridge. Char- lotte and Emily followed in September. In the spring of 1825 low fever broke out in the school, Maria (the Helen Burns of "Jane Eyre") was taken home, and died in a few days. Elizabeth, also consumptive, was sent home, and died early in the summer. Char- lotte and Emily returned to the school after Mid- summer, but were removed before the winter. Char- lotte was sent, in January 1831, to a school at Roe Head, between Leeds and Huddersfield. She left school in 1832, sixteen years old, and taught her sisters. In 1835 she went for three months to Roe Head as a teacher. Emily, sent to school there, be- came home sick, and Anne was sent in her place. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 387 Then Emily went as teacher to a school in Halifox, while Anne and Charlotte were in situations. - In 1 84 1 there was a project of school-keeping in partnership with the Mistress at Roe Head. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily, to qualify themselves in French, went as pupils to the peiisionnat of Madame and Mon- sieur Heger at Brussels. In 1843 Charlotte Bronte returned to Brussels, as English Teacher, with a salary of ^16 a year. Estrangement arose with Madame over religious differences. At home the three girls and their brother Branwell had lived their own lives together from early childhood, little observed by their aunt, or by their father who lived chiefly in his study. They wove fictions and dreamed dreams, with sensitive child natures and a kindred gift of genius in all. But now Branwell had fallen out of the little company that once looked on him as cleverest and best. He had become dissipated. He took opium. And there was grief in the girls' hearts. -' In 1846 the three girls ventured to print, at their own cost, a slender volume of "Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell," taking a name for each that agreed with her proper initials. They could venture also to spend two pounds in advertising it. The little book, now full of literary interest, had no attention from the public. Each of the sisters was also at this time writing a novel. Charlotte's tale was "the Professor," Emily's "Wuthering Heights;" Anne's, "Agnes Grey." They have all been since published, and there is an interesting likeness in their differences; thoughts and 25* 388 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE experiences common to the three sisters are to be found j in all. They had ill fortune among the publishers; but Charlotte Bronte fearlessly began another novel. This was "Jane Eyre," begun in August 1846, at a time when she was lodging in Manchester with her father who had gone thither to be operated upon for cataract, and when she was nursing her father in the dark room to which he was then confined. Next year Messrs. Smith and Elder declined "the Professor," a novel designed for one volume, in kind terms that promised attention to a longer work from the same ; hand. In August 1847 Charlotte Bronte sent them \ "Jane Eyre." It fascinated two publishers' readers, j and then Mr. Smith himself. It was heartily believed I in by the firm, and promptly published. The reviewers ; gave only doubtful signs of appreciation. Alone, at first, John Forster, who knew genuine work when he met with it, spoke out in his hearty and decided way. As Mrs. Gaskell wrote, in her "Life of Charlotte Bronte," "'The Examiner' came forward to the rescue, as far as the opinions of professional critics were concerned. The literary articles in that paper were always remark- able for their genial and generous appreciation of merit; nor was the notice of 'Jane Eyre' an exception; it was full of hearty, yet delicate and discriminating praise." ' In the next year, 1848, her brother Branwell died, and then her sister Emily. In the following year, 1849, Charlotte Bronte was left alone, by the death of her other sister Anne. These griefs all came upon IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 389 her while she was writing her second novel, "Shirley," which had been begun soon after the publication of "Jane Eyre," and was published in 1849. ^^ ^^^is year also, the author's name, which Charlotte Bronte had succeeded thus far in concealing, became known. "Villette," the pleasantest of her books, including re- collections of the old school life in Brussels, appeared in 1853. In June 1854 Charlotte Bronte married Mr. Nicholls, who had been for more than eight years her father's curate. On the 31st of March 1855 she died. When staying with her kindly publishers she ob- served one day the absence of "the Times" from the breakfast table, and suspected that it had been put aside because it contained an unfavourable review of "Shirley" then just published. She persisted in desire to see it, found that it condemned her for in- delicacy, and, though she hid her face behind the ample pages, her tears were to be heard falling on the paper. The review was honestly meant, and the reviewer was not alone in taking a man of the world's view of imaginings that trespassed through the very innocence of the lone woman who wrote while brother and both sisters were dying by her side. Mrs. Gaskell's life of her friend, published soon after Charlotte Bronte's death, made all this clear. ♦ Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, wife of the Rev. Wil- liam Gaskell of Manchester, was born in 18 10. She was the daughter of the Rev. William Stevenson, and spent much of her girlhood with an aunt at Knutsford, in Cheshire, of which place memories abound in her 390 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "Cranford." She married in 1832, and her first book was, in 1848, a novel, "Mary Barton," suggested by questions concerning factory labour, which told a tale of factory life with blended pathos and humour, and with a keen feminine perception of character that won for it immediate and great success. Charles Dickens, in 1850, when he was establishing his "Household Words," looked immediately to Mrs. Gaskell as a fellow worker who would touch with fine imagination and with depth of feeling the realities of life. More novels followed. In 1850 the Christmas tale of "the Moor- land Cottage;" in 1852 "Lizzie Leigh, and other Tales," that had been written for "Household Words." In 1853 followed "Ruth," a novel, and "Cranford" republished from "Household Words." "Cranford" is a short tale, or series of connected Sketches, represent- ing with a delicate and playful humour society at its narrowest among maiden ladies and their friends who practise elegant economies and seem only to vegetate in a small country town. But with the tenderness of a true wisdom, the whole impression given is but an- other reading of the lesson that "the situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man." "Here in the poor, miserable, hampered actual" of Cranford, Miss Matty, with her limited view of life and its economies, shaped her ideal. Mrs. Gaskell under all her playful humour makes us feel that souls may be heroic and poetic with the narrowest sur- roundings. "North and South" followed in 1855, "the Life of Charlotte Bronte" in 1857; ^^^ among IN THE REICN OF VICTORIA. 3gl Other books, "Sylvia's Lovers" in 1863. "Wives and Daughters," her last novel, was appearing in "the Cornhill Magazine," and not quite completed, when Mrs. Gaskell died suddenly, while reading to her daughter, in November 1865.* Let us now pass rapidly along a line of writers, most of them yet living, who were twenty or thirty years old at the beginning of the reign. Charles Reade, a living novelist and dramatist of high mark,** was 2;^; Anthony Trollope, another of our old favourites, still living, was 22;*'^'^ Marmion Savage, a lively novelist of Irish family who died in 1872, began his career with a clever sketch of Irish society, "The Falcon Family, or Young Ireland" in 1845. In 1847 followed "the Bachelor of the Albany," and in 1849 "My Uncle the Curate." "Reuben Medlicott, or the Coming Man" appeared in 1852, for the first time with the author's name upon the title page. A short tale by Marmion Savage called "Clover Cottage" was dramatised by Tom Taylor as "Nine Points of the Law." Elizabeth Missing Sewell, born in the Isle of Wight in 181 5, published "Amy Herbert" in 1844, and this has been followed by a long series of religious novels, and * Mrs. Gask ell's Novels are in 16 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Novels by Charles Reade are in 1 7 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. *♦* Works of Anthony Trollope are in 79 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection, and also two novels by Thomas Adolphus Trollope. S^e page 182. 392 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE books helpful to the spread of religious education by the Church of England * Of the Churchmen, Dr. Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, still living, was 26; Dr. Colenso, Bishop of Natal, still living, was 24. It was in 1863-4 that Dr. Colenso produced the "Critical Commentary on the Pentateuch" that raised a storm in the Church by pointing out discrepancies inconsistent with faith in the verbal inspiration, or the single authorship , of the Books ascribed to Moses. Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury, who died in 187 1, and edited the Greek Testament in sections published between 1 84 1 and 1 86 1, was 25 years old; Frederick William Robertson, whose Brighton sermons represent the pure spirit of Religion freed from all sectarian hatreds, was 21 years old at the beginning of the reign and died in 1853.** Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, who sustained long battle for the advance of civilization in the same good cause, was 20, and died as Dean of Westminster, honoured and be- loved by all his countrymen in 1881. In History there was John Hill Burton, 28 at the beginning of the reign. He died in 1880, leaving among other books a "Life of David Hume," published in 1846, and a "History of Scotland from Agricola's Invasion to the Extinction of the last Jacobite In- vasion." This appeared in successive volumes be- * "Amy Herbert" and five other novels by Miss Sewell are in 12 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Four volumes of F. W. Robertson's "Sermons" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 393 tween the years 1853 and 1870, and is the best History of Scotland that has yet been written. There was also John Sherren Brewer, born in 18 10, who took orders, became Reader at the Rolls, Professor of English Literature at King's College, London, and died in 1879 soon after presentation to a vicarage in Essex. Professor Brewer distinguished himself by historical research in many forms, and chiefly as editor at the Record Office of the Calendar of State Papers for the Reign of Henry VIII. In this labour he is succeeded by a younger historian who has done sound work of his own, James Gairdner. Historical and other papers contributed by Professor Brewer to the "Quarterly Review" were published in 1880. Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, born in 18 12, published in 1 85 1 a popular history of "the Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World." He died in 1878. Charles Merivale, now Dean of Ely, born in 1808, published in 1850-62 a "History of the Romans under the Em- pire," and in 1875 a "General History of Rome from the Foundation of the City to the Fall of Augustulus." Connop Thirlwall, who died Bishop of St. David's in 1875, and whose "History of Greece" published first in "Lardner's Cyclopaedia" (1839-44) was the best be- fore Grote's, was but three years younger than Grote. He was born in 1797. His History retains its place among the best books of the reign. Sir Arthur Helps, born in 181 7, ranks as a historian for his "Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen," published in 1848-51, and his "Spanish 394, OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Conquest in America," which followed it in four volumes between 1855 and 1861; but he is perhaps best known for his thoughtful essays and dialogues upon questions of the time, "Essays written in the Intervals of Business," 1841; "Claims of Labour," 1844; and "Friends in Council," 1847-51* "The History of the Five Great Monarchies of the World" is among the writings of the Rev. George Rawlinson, who was born in 18 15, and is still active. So is Austen Henry Layard, born in 18 17, who delighted all readers in 1 846 with his account of researches in Nineveh. Thomas Wright, who was born in 18 10 and died in 1877, supplied readers in the reign of Victoria with many valuable studies of past life and Literature. He was educated at Ludlow and at Trinity College Cambridge, where he graduated in 1834. Already as an undergraduate he had begun to write, and he was honoured by many learned societies of Europe. He was in 1842 and 1856 the first editor in this reign, of "the Vision of Piers Ploughman," since edited with the most exhaustive care by the present Professor of Anglo- Saxon at Cambridge, the Rev. W. W. Skeat. He edited also in 1839 "the Political Songs of England from John to Edward II;" "the Latin Poems of Walter Map," in 1842, and his "De Nugis Curialium," in 1850; "the Chester Miracle Plays," and the "Owl and Nightingale" in 1843; Occleve's "De Regimine Prin- * "Friends in Council" and "Ivan de Biron" by Sir Arthur Helps are in 4 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 395 cipum" in i860, and other important pieces of our Early Literature; besides giving to the general public several useful and amusing books, such as the "History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments," in 1862, and his "History of Caricature," in 1865. Peter Cunningham, third son of Allan Cunningham the poet, was born in 1816, became a Clerk in the Audit office in 1834, ^-nd was Chief Clerk from 1854 to i860, when he retired. Of many books by him il- lustrative of the past, the most widely known was his "Handbook of London." He died in 1869. Among living students of the ,past there were at the beginning of the reign, Edward Augustus Bond, then aged 22, now Chief Librarian of the British Museum; Henry Octavius Coxe, then aged 26, among whose valuable services to English Literature was an edition of Gower's "Vox Clamantis" in 1850. He succeeded Dr. Bandinel as Chief Librarian of the Bodleian in i860, and held that office until his retirement in 1881. Samuel Birch, now keeper of the Oriental, Mediaeval and British Antiquities in the British Museum, was born in 181 3, and has written valuable works in his own department of study. Sir Thomas Erskine May, born in 18 1 5, should rank rather with the Historians than with the Antiquaries, for his "Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III.," a continuation of Hallam, published in 1861-63. He has written also a work of highest authority upon the "Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parlia- ment." The present editors of the "Edinburgh" and 39t) OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "Quarterly" Reviews, Mr. Henry Reeve and Dr. Wil- liam Smith, were young men of twenty-four years old at the beginning of the reign; and John Thaddeus Delane, who edited "the Times" after the death of Thomas Barnes in 184 1, and himself died in November, 1879, was twenty. William Edmonstone Aytoun, who was born in 1 8 1 3, became Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh in 1845, and died in 1865. He produced in 1848 his "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," which have passed through about twenty editions. His "Bon Gaultier Ballads," written^ by Aytoun and his friend Theodore Martin, were hardly less popular; and when a young poet, Alexander Smith, who had a touch of genius injured by overstraining for effect, found imitators. Professor Aytoun wrote, in 1854, a whimsical parody on the spasmodic style, called "Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy." Aytoun married the youngest daughter of John Wilson (Christopher North), and among his friends was Theodore Martin whom he joined in the work of translating the "Poems and Ballads of Goethe." Theodore Martin, — now Sir Theodore, — born in 18 1 6, practised law in Edinburgh, and settled to law business in London in 1846. He distinguished himself by the work done with his friend Aytoun, by metrical translation of his own from Horace and Catullus, and from German poets. He has translated Goethe's "Faust" and Dante's "Vita Nuova," and he has written, by Her Majesty's command, from papers and letters placed IN THE REION OF VICTORIA. 397 at his disposal, the "Life of the Prince Consort," of which the first vokune appeared in 1874. Of this large work, since its recent completion, a People's Edi- tion is being issued in five sixpenny parts. Wide as is the knowledge of the worth of the laborious and earnest man who used the utmost influence of cha- racter and position for the well-being of his adopted country, yet this closer study of his life deepens the prevalent impression.* The reign of Victoria has aided life and literature by highest example of a Queen who has been at all points womanly, and against whom the one complaint of the thoughtless is that she re- mains devoted to the memory of a husband in whom every Englishman has found a pattern of true manly worth. It is well that in such a reign womanhood has been w^orthily represented also in our Literature. Life speaks through literature with its true voice in the works of Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, "George Eliot" and Mrs. Browning. The strength of one such writer overweighs the weakness of a hundred triflers. Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton, was twenty- eight years old at the beginning of the reign. His "Poems" in two volumes were published in 1839; "Poetry for the People," in 1840; "Palm Leaves," in 1844. Other living workers w^ho belong to this group of men are John Stuart Blackie, born in 1809, the genial Professor of Greek at Edinburgh, who blends poetic instincts with his scholarship; Dr. John Brown * The Prince Consort's "Speeches and Addresses" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 39^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE of Edinburgh, born in 1810, whose "Horae Subsecivae," published in 1858-61, contained much good matter besides the often reprinted "Rab and his Friends," delightful alike to dogs and men, unless dogs cannot read.* Martin Farquhar Tupper, author of "Proverbial Philosophy," was 27 at the beginning of the reign; the Rev. William Barnes, author of "Poems in the Dorset Dialect," was 27; Alexander William Kinglake, who published in 1844 a delightful book of Eastern travel called "Eothen," and has since written a full History of the Crimean War, was 26.*"^ Sir John William Kaye, who published in 1851 the "History of the War in Affghanistan;" in 1853 a book on "the Administra- tion of the East India Company," in 1864-70 a "History of the Sepoy War in India," and other pieces of Indian history and biography, died in 1876. The Rev. Mark Pattison, born in 1 8 1 3, now Rector of Lincoln College Oxford, and author of a scholarly life of "Isaac Ca- saubon," published in 1875, is still busy with useful work; and the Regius Professor of Greek at Ox- ford, the Rev. Benjamin Jowett, has enriched the Literature of the Reign with what will remain the standard translations of the Dialogus of Plato (187 1) and the History of Thucydides (1881). To the same group belongs William Ewart Glad- stone, born in 1809, and still most active among the * Dr. John Brown's *' Rab and his Friends" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. ** Kinglake's "Eothen" is in one volume and his "Invasion of the Crimea" in ten volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 399 active. Early in the reign, he published (in 1838) a work on "the State in its Relation to the Church." In 1851-1852 he called strong attention in two pam- phlets to the arbitrary imprisonment of 20,000 of his subjects by King Ferdinand of Naples for political reasons. In 1858 he published "Studies of Homer" and in 1869 "Juventus Mundi: the Gods and Men of the Heroic Age."* Charles Robert Darwin has gone farther back for the "Juventus Mundi." He was born in 1809, ^^^^ i^ on his father's side a grandson of Erasmus Darwin, poet physician, and on his mother's side a grandson of the great artist potter, Josiah Wedgwood. Charles Darwin began by publishing, in 1839, "Researches into Natural History and Geology during the Voyage of the Beagle." In 1842 his book on "the Formation of Coral Reefs" was suggestive of grand operations of nature in the work of the small coral builders. His next study was of "Volcanic Islands." Then came, in 1845, "a Naturalist's Voyage round the World." In 1859 Darwin published the book that gave a new point of departure to scientific thought, "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection; or the Pre- servation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." He had been working at it since the days when he was a naturalist on board "the Beagle." Its suggestion that the continuity which former naturalists * Gladstone's "Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion," "Bulgarian Horrors"; "Russia in Turkestan" and "the Hellenic Factor in the Eastern Problem" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 400 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE had observed in the scale of Nature was , in the case of animals, produced by gradual development from lower into higher forms, appeared to some people an argument against belief in a Creator; but it in no way interferes with faith in a first cause. In 1862 followed a work "on the Contrivances by which Orchids are fertilized by Insects;" in 1865 another "on the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants." In 1 87 1 Charles Darwin wrote on "the Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex;" in 1872 "on the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," and his last book, published in 1881, was on "the Earth Worm," whose great service is shown as an agent employed in the preparation of the earth for man. Charles Darwin is a man of genius in the world of Science, whose place answers to that of a great poet in the world of Literature. Of the writers who were between ten and twenty years old at the beginning of the reign, Florence Night- ingale was seventeen. Of her "Hints on Hospitals," in 1859, ^^^ "Notes on Nursing," the result of de- voted care of the sick soldiers in the Crimea, more than a hundred thousand copies were diffused. Miss Charlotte Mary Yonge was fourteen. She published in 1853 "the Heir of Redclyffe," and, like Miss Sewell, ,has been since generously busy in using her pen, as a novelist and otherwise, in aid of religion and religious education.* James Anthony Froude, Historian of "the * Twenty works by Miss Yonge are in the Tauchnitz Col- lection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 4OI Reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth," and Edward Augustus Freeman* were at the beginning of the reign nineteen and fourteen years old. Mr. Froude's History, in twelve volumes (1856-69) was followed, in 1872-74, by three volumes on "the English in Ireland in the i8th Century." The most important of many accurate and thorough books by Mr. E. A. Freeman is his "History of the Norman Conquest of England," in five volumes (1867-79). ^^ ^^s published also, in 1 88 1, a "Historical Geography of Europe." To the best historical Literature of the Reign belongs also the series of Avorks in which Professor Samuel Rawson Gardiner has studied the reigns of the two earlier Stuart kings of England. Henry Thomas Buckle, Mat- thew Arnold, David Masson and Henry Morley were all, at the beginning of the reign, fifteen. Henry Tho- mas Buckle died in 1862, having produced in 1858 and 1 86 1 two volumes introductory to a projected "History of Civilization" in Europe. Buckle's view of History was the reverse of Carlyle's, for he ascribed no influence to the independent force of character, and pleasantly startled readers by extravagant state- ment of the half truth that all events depend on the action of inevitable law. He said also that the moral element was of less consequence than the intellectual in a History of Civilization, because moral principles are the same as they were a thousand years ago, and all the progress has been intellectual. Steam also is * Freeman's *• Growth of the English Constitution'' and "Select Essays" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 0/ English Liierature. 26 402 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE what it was a thousand years ago; and mtellect has developed the steam-engine. But where lies the motive power to which every ingenious detail has been made subordinate? Matthew Arnold, son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, has written some of the most refined verse of our day, and taken a chief place among the critics. He has aided the advance of education, and touched questions of religion. The chief work of David Masson, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh, is his Life of Milton, told in connexion with the History of his Time, in six volumes, begun in 1859 ^^^^ finished in 1880. It is a store- house of information, laboriously sought, carefully weighed. A seventh volume will consist wholly of Index. George Macdonald and William Wilkie Col- lins*, two living novelists of high mark, and George Macdonald, poet also, were boys of thirteen at the be- ginning of the reign. Sydney Dobell, who gave much promise as a poet and died in 1874, was also thirteen. Wilkie Collins's "Woman in White," published in i860, remains, perhaps, the most famous example of that skill in the construction of a peculiar form of plot which excited, at last, the emulation of Charles Dickens, who was in "Edwin Drood" a follower of his friend Wilkie Collins. Among living men of science, John Tyndall was aged seventeen, and Thomas Henry Huxley twelve. Edward Hayes Plumptre, divine and poet, now Dean of Wells, was nineteen. William Hepworth Dixon, * The novels of George Macdonald are in 18 volumes and those of Wilkie Collins in 39 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 403 who died in December 1879, after an active literary life during part of which he edited "the Athenaeum," was sixteen.* Philip James Bailey, who published in 1839 the remarkable poem of "Festus," was twenty-one at the beginning of the reign. John Westland Marston, a dramatic poet who has produced several good plays on the stage, was seventeen, and John Orchard Halli- well -Phillips, one of our ablest and most patient students of Shakespeare, was seventeen. Charles Kingsley and "George Eliot" were eighteen. Charles Kingsley was born in 1 8 1 9 in the vicarage of Holne on the border of Dartmoor. After being at school in Clifton and Helston, he was sent to King's College, London, and went thence, in 1838, to Magda- lene College, Cambridge. He graduated with high honours, took a curacy at Eversley in Hampshire, where in 1844 he became rector. In that year he married. In 1847 he first made his genius known by publishing a dramatic poem, "the Saint's Tragedy," upon the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. In 1848 he was stirred deeply by the events of the new Revolution in France. There was a menacing Chartist movement in Eng- land, and Kingsley, joining himself with F. D. Maurice whose books had strongly influenced his mind, laboured to put Christian life into the masses, while showing sympathy with their best hopes and knowledge of the evils that then cried for remedy. Kingsley's "Alton Locke," in 1850, and his "Yeast," in 185 1, represented * Works of W. Hepworth Dixon are in 23 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 26* 404 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the Stir of the time, and showed what it meant in the long struggle towards a better life on earth. Other novels and poems followed: "Westward ho!" in 1855; "Two Years Ago," in 1857; "Andromeda, and other Poems," in 1858. "The Water Babies, a Fairy Tale for a Land Baby," in 1863; "Hereward the Wake," in 1866. There were books also that helped to diffuse his love of nature, as " Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore," in 1857; with writings upon social history and volumes of sermons. In 1859 Charles Kingsley was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cam- bridge, and also Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. In 1869 he obtained a Canonry in Chester. In 1873 he became Canon of Westminster. In January 1875 he died.* A fitting biography was published by the companion of all his thoughts, his widow, in 1879. "George Eliot" was the name taken by a novelist of rare genius whose maiden-name was Mary Ann Evans. She was born in November 1 8 1 9 at Griff near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where her father was land agent and surveyor to several estates. When she was about fifteen, her mother died, and she was youngest daughter in the house. She went to a school at Nuneaton, and removed with her father, in 1 841, to Foleshill near Coventry. The elder children then were all married, and at Foleshill she was alone with her father, from whom she took some features for her Caleb Garth in "Middlemarch." The head master of * Novels by Charles Kingsley are in 12 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection, L\ TJrlE REIGN Ul'" ViCTORlA. 4O5 the Coventry Grammar School gave Miss Evans lessons in Greek and Latin. She taught herself Hebrew; learnt French, German and Italian from another master; and music, in which she took intense delight, from the organist of St. Michael's church at Coventry. Her chief friends at Coventry were a gentleman and his wife, of high intellectual and personal character, who both wrote useful books, and in whose house she found the intellectual society she needed. But her friends had put aside the Christianity to which at Nuneaton she had been strongly attached. The society at the house of her friends was intellectual and sceptical. Another friend was found, whose influence was yet stronger in the same direction. Taking up the un- finished work of a daughter of her new friend's, Mary Ann Evans completed a translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," which was published in 1846. Such work brought her at times to London and into the society of thinkers like those whom she had learned to re- spect at Coventry. Li 1849 her father died, and she left Foleshill. Her home then was with her Coventry friends till 1851. She then removed to London, to assist Mr. John Chapman in editing a new series of "the Westminster Review." This brought her next into relation with George Henry Lewes. George Henry Lewes, born in 18 17, had begun the world as clerk in the house of a Russian merchant. He had an active, eager intellect with equal appetite for Literature and Science, but none for the counting- house. He left business; studied in Germany for a 406 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE year or two; and then began to write, producing many- books and contributing to many journals. He wrote "a Biographical History of Philosophy," of which there was an enlarged fourth edition in 187 1. In 1846 he wrote two novels, "Ranthorpe"*" and "Rose Blanche and Violet," in 1847 ^^^ 1848, a Tragedy, "the Noble Heart," which was acted at Manchester in 1848, "a Life of Robespierre" in 1849. ^^ was enthusiastic for the Positivism of Auguste Comte, and published a book on "Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences," in 1853. The Philosophy of Comte has also strong supporters in a few able and earnest English thinkers, subject to impulse originally received from some enthusiastic students of Wadham College, Oxford, who have carried out their ideal in afterlife. Its aim is generous and just. It is, indeed, little more than the French crystal- lization into a single and harmonious theory of the main thought of our time, that only by the fidelity of each one to the highest sense of duty we advance Humanity. To most people this is a part of religion; to Comte it was the clear and perfect whole, expressed in formulas, and shaped into a science, of which the worst enemy can only say that it is a truth but not the whole truth, and a truth that, rightly acted on, can only work for the well-being of the world. What was fascinating in this doctrine, Miss Evans felt. She joined her life to that of Mr. Lewes by a faith- * G. H. Lewes's " Ranthorpe, " his "Physiology of Common Life" and his volume "On Actors and the Art of Acting" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN TIIE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 407 ful bond, though there were reasons why it could not have "the social sanction." In 1856 the first work of " George Eliot" — "Scenes of Clerical Life " — was offered to "Blackwood's Magazine," and the first of the three stories, "Amos Barton," began to appear in 1857. In January 1859 "Adam Bede" was published, and "George Eliot" took her place in the front rank of English novelists. "The Mill on the Floss" followed in i860; "Silas Marner," in 1861; "Romola," in 1863; "Felix Holt," in 1866; "The Spanish Gipsy," a poem, in 1868; "Middlemarch," in 1872, "Daniel Deronda," in 1877, and in 1879, "Impressions of Theophrastus Such."* Mr. Lewes had founded in 1865 the "Fort- nightly Review" — afterwards made monthly, without change of name — for the purpose of bringing within one journal both sides of the discussion of all matters that concerned the general well-being. The conception was a noble one. It was followed by the establishment, in 1866, of the "Contemporary Review," with like purpose but with a religious bias, as in "the Fort- nightly" the bias would be Positivist. These were followed yet again by another monthly, in 1877, "the Nineteenth Century," which vigorously labours also to bring the best minds of all forms of thought into council with the public. In May 1879 Mr. Lewes died. In May 1880 George Eliot was married to an old and devoted friend, Mr. John Walter Cross. On the 2 2d of the following December she died after a short illness. * Novels of "George Eliot" are in 17 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 408 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE George Eliot's novels are admirably various in their scenery. They now paint Methodist life in the days of Wesley, now Mediaeval Catholicism in the days of Savonarola, now the whole range of the Jewish nationality. They are alike in their rich play of humour and pathos, in sympathy with the varieties of human character, in the spirit of humanity that is allied with every honest aspiration; they are alike also in the steadiness with which every one exalts the life that is firmly devoted to the highest aim it knows. Again and again, there is the type of the weak pleasure-lov- ing mind, too easily misled, and of the firm spirit, capable of self-denial, true to its own highest sense of right. George Eliot's novels will cloud no true faith; they are the work of a woman of rare genius whose place is, for all time, among the greatest novelists our country has produced. John Ruskin, who was born in 1819, and began his teaching when he published his "Modern Painters," in 1843-46, has in all his writings used his genius as faithfully. Beginning with the warning to painters, that they should show truly the forms of clouds, and trees, and mountain ranges, he enlarged his teaching from the first by application of it to sincerity of life. Where he seems least reasonable, what we call his unreason comes only of the firm upholding of a single thought. One truth in Art and Life, — for Art like Literature, is but the speaking breath of life, — one great truth, is enough for one man to uphold. "We are not sent into this world," says Ruskin, "to do anything iN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 409 into which we cannot put our hearts . . . There is dreaming enough, and earthiness enough, and sen- suality enough in human existence without our turning the few glowing moments of it into mechanism; and since our life must at the best be but a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away, let it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not as the thick darkness that broods over the blast of the Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel." That thought is none the less true for a dozen errors in the application of it. There was a like sense of life in Mrs. Browning's "Cry of the Children." The first book of poems to which that true poetess set her name, "the Seraphim," represented voices of the angels as they looked at Him who yet hung dying on the Cross at Calvary. Out of the depths of Christianity came her plea for the higher life of man. Her call for union of the thinker with the worker, the idealist with the man eager to provide for each day's bitter need, gave to her poem of "Aurora Leigh," published in 1857, ^ ^^i^^ blending with the thoughtful music of her husband. Robert Browning in his "Paracelsus" showed the failure of one who desired at a bound to reach the far ideal; in "Sordello," showed the poet before Dante, seeking his true place in life, and finding it only when he became leader of men in the real battle of life, and poet all the more. If there be no full civiliza- tion to be w^on on earth by those who shall come after us in distant years, yet we must labour on, not dream- 4Ip OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ing, but doing. And to the poet we must go for utterances of the soul of action; for no true poet is "an idle singer," and no day "an empty day."^ Let us not wrest unduly from their sense these words of Mr. William Morris in the prelude to his "Earthly Paradise." Mr. William Morris's poems have their own great charm, but have not yet the greatest. Mr. William Morris was three years old at the be- ginning of the reign, and he has yet to set the crown to his career among the poets. Nor let us leave unnamed the witty novels of George Meredith,** the womanly novels of Mrs. Craik,** the pleasant songs of William Allingham, and the verse music of Jean Ingelow,*** who were all children in 1837. Thomas Hughes, aged fourteen at the beginning of the reign, was a boy under Dr. Arnold at Rugby, and has since helped to quicken a new generation with the spirit of his teacher, in the most popular of his books, "Tom Brown's School-days" first published in 1856.1 It was followed, in 1861, by "Tom Brown at Oxford." Among novelists who are now active and whose works are widely enjoyed, Mrs. Henry Wood was of * The Poetical works of Robert Browning, Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh" and a Selection from her Poetry, are in the Tauchnitz Collection. ** George Meredith's "Ordeal ofFeverel" and "Beauchamp's Career," and the works of Mrs. Craik (Miss Mulock) in 38 volumes are in the Tauchnitz Collection. *** Nine volumes by Jean Ingelow ai-e in' the Tauchnitz Col- lection. t "Tom Brown's School-days" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 4 II the same age as "George Eliot" and Mrs. Eliza Lynn Linton, daughter of the Vicar of Crosthwaite , in Cumberland, was fifteen, at the beginning of the reign. Of the same age was Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who has been an energetic and imaginative writer upon social questions.* In fiction, indeed, the Literature of our day has received large contributions from the lively fancies, quick sympathies, and shrewd observation of character, among English women. It is doubtful whether the general reader, who is en- couraged even by many erudite writers to treat Christian names as of no consequence, will ever distinguish clearly between Miss Amelia Blandford Edwards, born in 1831, daughter of a Peninsular officer, and Miss. Matilda Barbara Betham-Edwards, born in 1836, whose "Kitty," when it first appeared. Lord Houghton enthusiastically praised as "the best novel he had ever read." These excellent writers really do live separate lives, each has a distinct style of her own, and they are not the Mrs. Edwardes, who is also well known as a novelist. The Baroness Taut- phoeus, who also writes good novels, is fairly safe from the risk of a confusion of this kind.** * The Novels of Mrs. Henry Wood are in 58 volumes, and those of Mrs. Linton in 13 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection, which also contains Miss Cobbe's "Re-echoes." ** Works of Miss Amelia B. Edwards, in 20 volumes; of Miss M. Betham-Edwards in 6 volumes, and of Mrs. Edwardes in 12 volumes are in the Tauchnitz Collection; also "Cyrilla," "the Initials," "Quits," and "At Odds" by the Baroness Taut- phoeus. 412 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Lady Georgiana Fullerton, second daughter of the first Earl Granville, has also written with refinement; and Miss Harriet Parr (Holme Lee), who published her first novel in 1855. Miss Georgiana Craik began to write novels in 1859; ^^^^ ^^ have biography as well as fiction fi-om Miss Julia Kavanagh, who was born in 1824 and died in 1877. Mrs. Oliphant has been already mentioned, on page 309, as one of our novelists of finer strain. Miss Mary Elizabeth Braddon achieved her first success with "Lady Audley's Secret" in 1862; "Ouida" with "Strathmore" in 1865. Miss Rhoda Broughton began to write novels in 1867, and Miss Florence Montgomery in 1870.* Giovanni Domenico Ruffini, born in Genoa in 1807, made England for some time his home, and enriched the literature of our time, in 1852, with an admirable book, "Lorenzo Benoni," which was followed by other stories. ■^■'^ Dante Gabriel Rossetti, son of a distin- guished commentator upon Dante, was born in London in 1828; his brother, William Michael Rossetti, in 1829; his sister, Christina Georgina Rossetti, in 1830. Dante Rossetti is poet and painter:*** his brother is * The Tauchnitz Collection includes novels by Lady Geor- giana Fullerton in 2 1 volumes ; by Miss Georgiana Craik in 18 volumes; by Miss Harriet Parr in 16 volumes; by Miss Kavanagh in 35 volumes; by Miss Braddon in 64 volumes; by "Ouida" in 36 volumes; by Miss Rhoda Broughton in 12 volumes, and by Miss Florence Montgomery in 9 volumes. ** Mr. Ruffini's Novels are in 9 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. *** Poems by D. G. Rossetti are in the Tauchnitz Collection. IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 4 1 3 an active critic of poetry and art; his sister Christina is a poetess of no slight mark. George John Whyte-Melville, who was born in 182 1, and died in 1878, began his successful career as a novelist, in 1853, with "Tilbury Nogo, Passages in the Life of an Unsuccessful Man." Mr. Whyte- Melville was Captain in the Coldstream Guards when he retired from the army in 1849. Richard Doddridge Blackmore, son of a clergyman in Berkshire, graduated at Oxford in 1847, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, and practised as a conveyancer before publishing his first novel, in 1864. William Black, sixteen years younger, was born at Glasgow in 1841, and came to London as a journalist in 1864. He was special correspondent of a London daily paper at the seat of war, in 1866, and published his first novel in 1867. In 1871 he attained a great success with his "Daughter of Heth," and since that time he has maintained his place among the best of living English novelists. The characters of journalist and novelist are joined also in elder men, in two who have both worked under Charles Dickens, and been counted among his friends, the lively and energetic George Augustus Sala, who is essayist and novelist; and Edmund Yates, who looks also at life and litera- ture as novelist and journalist. Among the novelists there are to be remembered also Hamilton Aide, James Payn, and Thomas Hardy. Justin MacCarthy, born at Cork in 1830, has not only won honours in fiction. He completed in 1880 a 414 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "History of Our Own Times/' in four volumes, which, has already gone through many editions.* With all this thought for present amusement there has been throughout the reign a steady increase of attention to the past. Societies have been formed for the reprint and study of our Early Literature, and in this way no man has done more faithful and energetic service than Frederick James Furnivall. Professor Edward Arber, of Birmingham, not through Societies, but by his single personal devotion to the work, as at once Editor and Publisher, has diffused 140,000 copies of cheap editions of rare pieces of old English Literature. Professor Alfred J. Church has told afresh the stories of Herodotus, Homer, the Greek Dramatists, and Vergil, in books equally delightful to the scholar and the child. And there still lives in the England of Victoria the spirit that made Elizabeth's England dear to Richard Hakluyt. The loss of Sir John Franklin, in 1 845, with all record of Search Expeditions down to Mac Clintock's "Voyage of 'the Fox,'" published in 1859; ^^^ Journals of David Livingstone, and records of those explorations to which he gave up his life in central Africa; have added volumes of deep interest to represent the Life of England in the Literature of the present reign. Of the writers now strongly representing English * The Tauchnitz Collection includes, novels of Whyte- Mel- ville in 32 volumes; of James Payn in 35 volumes; of Edmund Yates in 27 volumes ; of William Black in 24 volumes ; of Hamilton Aide in 12 volumes ; of Thomas Hardy in 8 volumes ; G. A. Sala's "Seven Sons of Mammon," 6 volumes of Justin MacCarthy's Novels and, in 5 volumes, his "History of Our Own Times." IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 415 Literature who are true Victorians, John Morley, born in 1838, who has written faithful studies of the literary- movements that preceded the French Revolution, and has just written a thoughtful and honest "Ivife of Richard Cobden;" William Edward Hartpole Lecky, born also in 1838, who published in 1865 his "History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe," in 1869 a ''History of European Morals from Augustus to Charle- magne," and in 1878 a "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," maintain the spirit of historical research, and faithfully apply their studies to the life of their own day. Archibald Forbes, born also in 1838, represents the skill and courage of the modern News- paper Correspondent."^ Algernon Charles Swinburne has long since taken his place among the poets. There will be no want of faithful work as the genera- tions follow one another. The author of "the Epic of Hades" will sing other songs as pure as those by which he earned his fame, and rising with the years in power. Even while these lines are written, a poem in "the Nineteenth Century," called "Despair; a Dramatic Monologue," bears witness to the abiding vigour of our Laureate, the history of whose work cover the history of half a century, dating from the volume of "Poems; chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson," first published in 1830. Tennyson's verse** has shown * The "War Correspondence" and other writings of Archi- bald Forbes are in 6 vohimes of the Tauchnitz Collection, ** Tennyson's "Poems" in 9 volumes, and his plays, "Queen Mary" and "Harold," are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 41 6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE the way from death to life through the sustained song of immortality, his "In Memoriam;" has once more spiritualized our national romance hero, and associated tales of Arthur with the king within the human breast. Among poets of the Reign of Victoria he too has worn his laurel as a "blameless king," THE END. 741 .# PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER. >-%. V%i^'/ -^'^^^ '^'^^'^^ "^oo^ V ^ *S L^ -i .^ ^ , X -^ .-A * 8 I A v> . ^ ^ ■ ■ ' ' > -" \\^ :^^ ,#'^ , 1 -C- '^ '^^ C ■A y' ^\V <^^^ '/ ^r^