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 By permission of The Macmillan Co. 
 
 SPRING SONG: " SOMER IS ICUMEN IN" 
 (Thirteenth Century.) 
 
 Middle-English and Latin texts, with music, Irom a manuscript in the British Museum
 
 A FIRST VIEW OF 
 
 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM VAUGHN NJOODY 
 ROBERT MORSS LOVETT 
 
 AND 
 
 PERCY H. BOYNTON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED
 
 tOPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, B* 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS volume is based upon the authors' more advanced 
 History of English Literature. The aim has been to pre- 
 serve those features of the previous book which have most 
 commended themselves to high-school and academy teach- 
 ers, to remove everything which they have found too de- 
 tailed or too difficult for their students, and to add whatever 
 was suggested by their friendly criticism as likely to in- 
 crease the value of the book in class-room practice. The 
 literary comment has been simplified, partlj by omission, 
 partly by the substitution of explicit statement in the place 
 of what was before only suggested. The number of authors 
 treated has been much reduced, and the attention of the 
 student centred exclusively on a few great representative 
 figures. More space has been given to biography and de- 
 scriptive sketches, especially in the later periods. Each main 
 epoch has been prefaced by a full historical introduction, 
 and summarized in the form of a review-commentary and 
 questions, together with tabular views. Suggestions con- 
 cerning the best available texts, and the best biographical 
 and critical aids to study, are given at the close of each 
 chapter. A number of portraits are added, taken in each 
 case from an authentic source. For purposes of fuller refer- 
 ence, some authors not treated in the text are included in the 
 tabular views. 
 
 The thanks of the authors are due to the many teachers, 
 in all parts of the country, who have, either personally or 
 by letter, generously aided them in their effort to give a
 
 vi Preface 
 
 " first view " of English literature which should be at once a 
 practical manual adapted to the routine work of the class- 
 room, and an unfolding story whose intrinsic interest should 
 claim the student's willing attention. The authors also de- 
 sire to thank Scott, Foresman, and Company for permission 
 to include in the text two or three paragraphs originally 
 written for their school edition of Coleridge's "Ancient 
 Mariner," and the Macmillan Company for permission to 
 reproduce, from Garnett and Gosse's English Literature : 
 an Illustrated Record, the manuscript facsimile which forms 
 the frontispiece of the present volume.
 
 CONTENTS 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. OLD ENGLISH PERIOD: ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE ON 
 
 THE CONTINENT i 
 
 II. OLD ENGLISH PERIOD: ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE IN 
 
 ENGLAND 10 
 
 III. MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD: FROM THE NORMAN CON- 
 
 QUEST TO CHAUCER 25 
 
 IV. MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD: THE AGE OF CHAUCER . . 39 
 
 V. THE RENAISSANCE: NON-DRAMATIC LITERATURE TO THE 
 
 DEATH OF ELIZABETH 64 
 
 VI. THE RENAISSANCE: THE DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE . 90 
 VII. SHAKESPEARE AND His FELLOW DRAMATISTS . . . 106 
 
 VIII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: FROM THE DEATH OF 
 
 ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION . . 129 
 
 IX. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: THE RESTORATION . . 160 
 
 X. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THE REIGN OF CLASSICISM 174 
 
 XI. THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL 209 
 
 XII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THE REVIVAL OF ROMAN- 
 TICISM 224 
 
 XIII. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE TRIUMPH OF ROMAN- 
 
 TICISM 241 
 
 XIV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE VICTORIAN AGE. . 288 
 XV. THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL 335 
 
 XVI. A GLANCE IN REVIEW ....... 369
 
 viii Contents 
 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER PACE 
 
 I. AMERICAN LrrERATCTRE BEFORE 1800 377 
 
 II. NEW YORK AND THE KNICKERBOCKERS 400 
 
 III. A GROUP or SPIRITUAL LEADERS 413 
 
 IV. THE POPULAR SPOKESMEN OF THE MID-CENTURY . . 433 
 V. POE, WHITMEN, AND THE SOUTHERN POETS .... 451 
 
 VL AMERICAN FICTION SINCE 1860 ...... 466 
 
 INDEX 
 
 477
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SPRING SONG: "SOMER is I CUMEN IN" (THIRTEENTH CENT- 
 URY) Frontispiece 
 
 Middle-English and Latin texts, with music, from a manuscript in the British 
 Museum 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GEOFFREY CHAUCER 38 
 
 From the Occleye manuscript 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY . . 74 
 
 From the miniature by Isaac Oliver, in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle 
 
 EDMUND SPENSER . . . . . . .. . . .80 
 
 From an original picture in the possession of the Earl of Kinnoull 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 107 
 
 From the Chandos portrait 
 
 SIR FRANCIS BACON 132 
 
 From an engraving by I. Houbraken 
 
 JOHN MILTON 140 
 
 From an engraving by Humphreys after the Faithorne portrait 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN 164 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON 182 
 
 From a painting by G. Kneller, S. R. 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE 189 
 
 From a painting by A. Pond 
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 194 
 
 From a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 198 
 
 After a painting by a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds
 
 List of Illustrations 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 231 
 
 From a painting by Nasmyth 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 245 
 
 From a painting by Washington Allston 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH . 251 
 
 From a painting by W. Boxall 
 
 LORD BYRON 261 
 
 From a painting by J. Phillips, R. A. 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 267 
 
 From a painting by Geo. Clint, R. A. 
 
 JOHN KEATS 275 
 
 From a painting by Joseph Severn 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 297 
 
 From a painting by Whistler 
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 305 
 
 After a painting by G. F. Watts 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 313 
 
 From a painting by G. F. Watts 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 321 
 
 From a drawing by Field Talfourd, Rome, March, 1859 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT ......... 339 
 
 From a painting by C. R. Leslie, R. A. 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 347 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 351 
 
 From a drawing by George T. Tobin 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 359 
 
 From a drawing by F. W. Burton
 
 List of Illustrations xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 419 
 
 From a Photograph, Copyright, by Elliot and Fry 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 427 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 446 
 
 From a Photograph, Copyright, by London Stereoscopic Company 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 459
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OLD-ENGLISH PERIOD: ANGLO-SAXON LITER- 
 ATURE ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 I. THE EARLIEST HOME OF THE ENGLISH. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon Tribes. To find the beginnings of Eng- 
 lish literature we must go back to a time when the ancestors 
 of the English people lived on the continent of Europe, and 
 spoke a tongue which, though related in its roots to modern 
 English, is unintelligible to us without special study. Anglo- 
 Saxon, or Old English, belongs to the Low- German family of 
 languages, of which Dutch is the best modern representa- 
 tive ; and the men who spoke it lived, when history first dis- 
 covers them, along the German ocean from the mouth of the 
 Rhine to the peninsula of Jutland. They were divided into 
 three principal branches: the Saxons, dwelling near the 
 mouth of the Elbe; the Angles, inhabiting the southwest 
 part of Denmark; and the Jutes, whose territory extended 
 north of the Angles into modern Jutland. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon War and Seafaring. How extensive these 
 tribes were, and how far into the interior their territories 
 reached, we do not know. That portion of them which con- 
 cerns us, dwelt along the sea. Their early poetry gives 
 glimpses of little tribal or family settlements, bounded on 
 one side by wild moors and dense forests, where dwelt mon- 
 strous creatures of mist and darkness, and on the other by 
 the stormy northern ocean, filled likewise with shapes of
 
 2 Old English Period 
 
 shadowy fear. As soon as spring had unlocked the har- 
 bors, their boats would push out in search of booty and ad- 
 venture: sometimes to wreak blood-feud on a neighboring 
 tribe, sometimes to plunder a monastery on the seaboard of 
 Roman Gaul, or to coast along the white cliffs of England, 
 their future home. This seafaring life, full of danger and 
 change, was the fruitful source of early poetry. Whenever 
 an Anglo-Saxon poet mentions the sea his lines kindle ; it is 
 the "swan-road," the "sealbath," the "path of the whales." 
 The ship is the "sea-steed," the "wave-house of warriors"; 
 its keel is "wreathed with foam like the neck of a swan." 
 The darker aspects of the sea are given with the same fer- 
 vor. It is characteristic of the grim nature of the Anglo- 
 Saxon that he should fill with terror and gloom the ele- 
 ment which he most loved to inhabit. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Religion. The poetry which has come down 
 to us from this early period has been worked over by later 
 hands and given a Christian coloring. But from other sources 
 we know who were the primitive gods of the race: Tiu, a mys- 
 terious and dreadful deity of war; Woden, father of the later 
 dynasty of gods, and patron of seers and travellers; Thor, 
 the god of thunder; Frea, mother of the gods and giver of 
 fruitfulness. These are commemorated in our names for 
 the days of the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and 
 Friday. The rites of Eostre, a mysterious goddess of the 
 dawn, survive, though strangely altered, in the Christian 
 festival of Easter. In studying the early poetry, we must 
 put out of our minds, as far as we can, all those ideals of life 
 and conduct which come from Christianity, and remember 
 that we have to do with men whose gods were only magni- 
 fied images of their own wild natures: men who delighted 
 in bloodshed and in plunder, and were much given to deep 
 drinking in the mead-hall; but who nevertheless were sen- 
 sitive to blame and praise, were full of rude chivalry and 
 dignity, and were alert to the poetry of life, to its mystery and 
 its pathos. ' 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Love of Fame. Our Anglo-Saxon ances- 
 tors had in an eminent degree also that passion which 
 gives the first impulse to literature among a primitive people
 
 Earliest Home of the English 8 
 
 love of glory. When the first recorded hero of the race, 
 Beowulf, has met his death, and his followers are recalling 
 his noble nature, they say as their last word that "he was of 
 all world-kings the most desirous of praise." It was not 
 enough for such men as he that they should spend their lives 
 in glorious adventures ; they desired to see their names and 
 their deeds spread among distant peoples and handed down 
 to unborn generations. Hence the poet, who alone could 
 insure this fame, was held in high esteem. 
 
 The Gleeman and the Scop. Two classes of singers were 
 recognized, first the gleeman (gledman), who did not create 
 his own songs, but merely chanted what he had learned from 
 others; and second the scdp, the poet proper, who took the 
 crude material of history and legend which lay about him, 
 and shaped it into song. Sometimes the sc6p was perma- 
 nently attached to the court of an aetheling, or lord, was 
 granted land and treasure, and was raised by virtue of his 
 poet-craft to the same position of honor which the other fol- 
 lowers of the aetheling held by virtue of their prowess in battle. 
 Sometimes he wandered from court to court, depending for a 
 hospitable reception upon the curiosity of his host concerning 
 the stories he had to chant. Two very ancient bits of poetry 
 tell of the fortunes of the sc6p. One of them deals with the 
 wandering and the other with the stationary singer. 
 
 " Widsith." The first is the fragment known as " Widsith," 
 or " The Far- wanderer." The poem opens, " Widsith spake, 
 unlocked his word-hoard; he who many a tribe had met on 
 earth, who had travelled through many a folk." Then fol- 
 lows a list of famous princes of the past, an enumeration of 
 the various peoples and countries which the bard has visited, 
 and praises of those princes who have entertained him gen- 
 erously. He declares that he has been "with Caesar,* who 
 had sway over the joyous cities," and even with the Israel- 
 ites, the Egyptians, and the Indians. The poem ends with a 
 general description of the wandering singer's life, touched at 
 the close with the melancholy which occurs so often in 
 Anglo-Saxon poetry; "Thus roving, with song-deices wan- 
 
 *" Caesar" was a general name for the Roman emperors; compare the 
 German "Kaiser."
 
 4 Old English Period 
 
 der the gleemen through many lands. . . . Ever north 
 or south they find one knowing in songs and liberal of gifts, 
 who before his court will exalt his grandeur and show his 
 earl-ship; until all departs, light and life together." This 
 fragment has been held by some scholars to date, in part 
 at least, from the fourth century. If so it Is the oldest bit 
 of verse in any modem language, and with it English litera- 
 ture "unlocks its word-hoard." 
 
 " Deor's Lament." The second of these poems dealing 
 with the fortunes of the scop is probably not nearly so old. 
 It is called "Deor's Lament," and again the poet himself 
 speaks. His skill has been eclipsed by another singer, Heor- 
 renda, and his lord has taken away from him his land- right 
 and his place at court, in order to bestow them upon the suc- 
 cessful rival. The poet comforts himself by recalling other 
 misfortunes which men and women in past time have lived 
 to overcome, and ends each rude strophe with the refrain, 
 "That he endured, this also may I." The personal nature 
 of the theme, the plaintive sadness of the tone, and above 
 all the refrain, give the poem extraordinary interest. It 
 has been called the first English lyric. 
 
 II. BEOWULF, THE ANGLO-SAXON EPIC 
 
 Original form of " Beowulf." Beowulf, the most im- 
 portant work which remains to us from the pagan period 
 of Anglo-Saxon poetry, in all likelihood existed at first in 
 the form of short songs, which were sung among the Angles 
 and Jutes, inhabiting what is now Denmark, and among 
 the Goths in southern Sweden. Probably as early as the 
 sixth century these lays had begun to be welded together, 
 but just when the poem took its present form we do not 
 know.* It contains something over three thousand lines. 
 The story of the poem is as follows : 
 
 The Story of Beowulf: Hrothgar and Grendel. Hroth- 
 gar, king of the West-Danes, has built for himself near 
 
 * In all probability the development of " Beowulf " into a complete poem 
 took place largely on English soil, and was completed by the end of the 
 eighth century.
 
 Beowulf 5 
 
 the sea a great hall, named Heorot, where he may sit 
 with his thanes at the mead-drinking, and listen to the 
 chanting of the gleemen. For a while he lives in happi- 
 ness, and is known far and wide as a splendid and liberal 
 prince. But one night there comes from the wild march- 
 land, the haunt of all unearthly and malign creatures, a 
 terrible monster named Grendel. Entering the mead-hall 
 he slays thirty of the sleeping Danes, and carries their 
 corpses away to his lair. The next night the same thing 
 is repeated. No mortal power seems able to cope with 
 the gigantic foe. In the winter nights Grendel couches in 
 the splendid hall, defiling all its bright ornaments. For 
 twelve winters this scourge afflicts the West-Danes, until 
 Hrothgar's spirit is broken. 
 
 The Coming of Beowulf. At last the story of Gren- 
 del's deeds crosses the sea to Gothland, where young Beo- 
 wulf dwells at the court of his uncle, King Hygelac. 
 Beowulf determines to go to Hrothgar's assistance; With 
 fifieen companions he embarks. " Departed then over the 
 wavy sea the foamy-necked floater, most like to a bird." 
 At dawn of the second day the voyagers catch sight of 
 the promontories of Hrothgar's land; and soon, from the 
 top of the cliffs, they behold in the vale beneath them, 
 the famous hall, "rich and gold- variegated, most glorious 
 of dwellings under the firmament." The young heroes 
 in their "shining war byrnies," * and with their spears like 
 a "grey ashwood above their heads," are ushered into the 
 hall "where old Hrothgar sits amid his band of earls." Beo- 
 wulf craves permission to cleanse Heorot of its pest, and 
 Hrothgar consents that the Goths shall abide Grendel's 
 coming, in the hall that night. Meanwhile, until dark- 
 ness draws on, the thanes of Hrothgar and the followers 
 of Beowulf sit drinking mead, "the bright sweet liquor," 
 and listening to the songs of the gleeman. The feast 
 draws to a close when Wealtheow, Hrothgar's queen, 
 after solemnly handing the mead-cup to her lord and to 
 Beowulf, and bidding them "be blithe at the beer-drink- 
 ing," goes through the hall distributing gifts among the 
 
 * Corselets of mail.
 
 6 Old English Period 
 
 thanes. The king, queen, and their followers then with- 
 draw to another building for the night, while Beowulf 
 and his men lie down, each with his armor hung on the 
 nail above his head, to wait for the coming of Grendel. 
 All fall asleep except Beowulf, who "awaits in angry mood 
 the battle-meeting." 
 
 Beowulf's Fight with Grendel. The coming of the 
 monster is described with grewsome force. "Then came 
 from the moors, under the misty hills, Grendel stalking. 
 Straightway he rushed on the door, fast with fire-hardened 
 bands. On the variegated floor the fiend trod; he went 
 wroth of mood, from his eyes stood a horrid light like 
 flame." He seizes one of the warriors, bites his "bone- 
 casings," drinks the blood from his veins, and greedily 
 devours him even to the hands and feet. Next he makes 
 for Beowulf, but the hero seizes the fiend with such a 
 mighty hand-grip that he is terror-stricken and turns to 
 flee. Beowulf keeps his hold, and a fearful struggle be- 
 gins. At last the monster wrenches his own arm from its 
 socket and flees to his lair to die. 
 
 In the morning there is great rejoicing. The king, and 
 the queen, with a company of maidens, come through the 
 meadows to gaze in wonder on the huge arm and claw 
 nailed beneath the gold roof of the hall. When the even- 
 ing feast begins, Beowulf sits between the two sons of the 
 king, and receives the precious gifts, jewels, rings, and a 
 golden necklace, which the queen presents to him. But 
 at nightfall, when the warriors have again lain down tc 
 sleep in the hall, Grendel's mother comes to take ven- 
 geance for her son. She seizes one of Hrothgar's nobles, 
 Aeschere, and bears him away to her watery den. 
 
 Beowulf's Fight beneath the Sea. Beowulf vows to 
 seek the new foe at the bottom of her fen- pool, and 
 there grapple with her. With Hrothgar and a band of 
 followers he goes along the cliffs and windy promontories 
 which bound the moor on the seaward side, until he comes 
 to Grendel's lair. It is a sea-pool, shut in by precipitous 
 rocks, and overhung by the shaggy trunks and aged boughs 
 of a "joyless wood." Trembling passers-by have seen fire
 
 Beowulf 7 
 
 fleeting on the waves at night, and the hart wearied by the 
 hounds will lie down and die on these banks rather than 
 plunge into the unholy waters. The pool is so deep that it 
 is a day's space before Beowulf reaches the bottom. Snakes 
 and beasts of the shining deep make war on him as he de- 
 scends. At last he finds himself in a submarine cave where 
 the "mere- wife" is lurking, and a ghastly struggle begins. 
 Once the giantess throws Beowulf to the ground, and sit- 
 ting astride his body draws out her broad short knife to de- 
 spatch him. But with a superhuman effort he struggles up 
 again, throws away his broken sword and seizes from a 
 heap of arms a magic blade, forged by giants of old time. 
 With it he hews off the head of Grendel's mother, and then 
 that of Grendel, whose dead body he finds lying in the cave. 
 So poisonous is the blood of Grendel that it melts the metal 
 of the blade, leaving only the curved hilt in Beowulf's hand. 
 When he reappears with his trophies at the surface of the 
 water, all have given him up for dead. Great is the jubila- 
 tion when the hero returns to the mead-hall with his thanes, 
 and throws upon the floor the two gigantic heads, which 
 four men apiece can hardly carry. 
 
 Beowulf and the Fire-Dragon. The second great epi- 
 sode of the poem is Beowulf's fight with the Dragon of 
 the Gold-hoard. Beowulf has been reigning as king for 
 fifty years, and is now an old man, when calamity comes 
 upon him and his people in the shape of a monster of the 
 serpent-kind, which flies by night enveloped in fire ; and 
 which, in revenge for the theft of a gold cup from its pre- 
 cious hoard, burns the king's hall. Old as he is, Beo- 
 wulf fights the dragon single-handed. He slays the mon- 
 ster in its lair, but himself receives his mortal hurt. 
 
 The Death of Beowulf. The death of the old king is 
 picturesque and touching. He bids his thane bring out 
 from the dragon's den "the gold-treasure, the jewels, the 
 curious gems," in order that death may be softer to him, 
 seeing the wealth he has gained for his people. Wiglaf, 
 entering the cave of the "old twilight-flier," sees "dishes 
 standing, vessels of men of yore, footless, their orna- 
 ments fallen away ; there was many a helm old and rusty
 
 8 Old English Period 
 
 and many armlets cunningly fastened," and over the 
 hoard droops a magic banner, "all golden, locked by arts 
 of song," from which a light is shed over the treasure. 
 Beowulf gazes with dying eyes upon the precious things ; 
 then he asks that his thanes build for him a funeral bar- 
 row on a promontory of the sea, which the sailors, as 
 they "drive their foaming barks from afar over the misty 
 floods, may see and name Beowulf's Mount." 
 
 III. OTHER EARLY POETRY: SUMMARY 
 
 Besides Beowulf, and the short poems "Widsith" and 
 " Deor's Lament," mentioned above, two other pieces re- 
 main to us from the pagan period of Anglo-Saxon poetry.* 
 They are both fragments. One, the " Fight at Finnsburg," 
 full of savage vigor, throws light upon an obscure story 
 referred to in Beowulf; the other, " Waldhere," is con- 
 nected with the old German cycle of poems which were 
 brought together many centuries later as the Niebelungen 
 Lied. 
 
 When we look at this early literature as a whole we can- 
 not fail to be struck by its grimness. It has, to be sure, 
 genial moments, moments even of tenderness, but for the 
 most part the darker aspect of nature, storm and hail 
 and mist, the wintry terror of the sea, are what the 
 poet loves to dwell upon; and over the fierce martial life 
 which he depicts there hangs the shadow of Wyrd, or Fate, 
 huge and inescapable. The great business of life is war ; 
 from it proceeds all honor and dignity. To be faithful 
 and liberal to his friends and deadly to his foes, that is 
 the whole duty of a man. But a time was at hand when 
 these fierce worshippers of Thor and Woden were to hear 
 a new gospel. Sweeping southwestward in their viking 
 ships, they were to conquer a new home for themselves in 
 Britain; and there to be themselves conquered, not by arms, 
 but by bands of eager monks who came from the seat of 
 
 * It must be remembered that " Beowulf " is tinged with Christian coloring, 
 given to it, no doubt, by the English monks who transcribed the manu- 
 script. Still, in general tone it is pagan, and in origin continental.
 
 Review Outline 9 
 
 the Church in Rome and from Christianized Ireland, preach- 
 ing peace and good- will. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. This chapter deals with the Anglo-Saxon 
 people in their early home on the continent, before they had come in 
 contact with Christianity. Where was this home ? Into what tribes were 
 they divided ? Which one of these tribes furnished the names " Eng- 
 land " and " English " ? (The earliest form of these words was " Angle- 
 land " and "Anglisc.") Sum up for yourself their surroundings, pursuits, 
 and beliefs. In what esteem was the poet held among them? Why? 
 Pick out as many characteristics as possible of their early life, from the 
 account given of Beowulf. What virtues and personal qualities make 
 Beowulf, the young gothic Prince, the typical hero of our race in its early 
 state? Grendel is called " God's denier"; was he so thought of by the 
 original makers of the poem ? Explain how such Christian references 
 happen to occur in this pagan epic. When, where, and by whom was 
 the poem, in all probability, put in its present form, and given a Chris- 
 tian coloring? (The full answer must be sought in Chapter II.) 
 
 For reading in this period, see close of Chapter II.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 OLD ENGLISH PERIOD: ANGLO-SAXON LITER- 
 ATURE IN ENGLAND 
 
 I. THE COMING OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS TO ENGLAND 
 
 Prehistoric England: the Britons. The very earliest in- 
 habitants of Britain, the cavemen, and men of the stone age, 
 gave way before the beginning of history to a Celtic people, 
 a branch of the same race which inhabited France and Spain. 
 The Celts of Great Britain were known to the Greeks as early 
 as 300 B.C., when Pytheas, a Greek navigator and geographer, 
 visited them ; and a Greek writer of the same date mentions 
 their island, calling it Albion, "the white land," from its 
 gleaming chalk cliffs. The Celts who occupied Ireland -and 
 Scotland are known as Gaels ; those who occupied England, as 
 Cymri or Britons. They were farmers and herders of cattle, 
 and lived in wattled huts fortified with ditches and mounds. 
 Their religion was in the main a worship of the heavenly 
 bodies ; their priests, known as Druids, were astronomers and 
 bards. The circle of huge stones at Stonehenge probably 
 marks the site of their chief temple. In character the Britons 
 were impetuous, imaginative, full of curiosity, and quick to 
 learn. Their early literature, which gathers about the names 
 of legendary poets such as Merlin and Taliesin, shows a 
 delicate fancy, a kind of wild grace and love of beauty for its 
 own sake, strikingly in contrast with the stern poetry of the 
 Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 The Roman Occupation of Britain. In the year 55 B.C. 
 Julius Caesar crossed the straits from Gaul, and began the 
 conquest of Britain. This was continued a hundred years 
 later by the Emperor Claudius, who planted at Colchester 
 the first Roman colony. Agricola became governor in 78 
 A.D., and built a great wall and line of forts to keep off the 
 
 40
 
 Coming of Anglo-Saxons to England 11 
 
 Gaels of Scotland. The Roman capital was fixed at York, 
 which, with its walls and towers, temples and public build- 
 ings, became "another Rome." Here, for three hundred 
 years, the Victorious Legion, the flower of the Roman Im- 
 perial army, was stationed; and here Constantine was pro- 
 claimed ruler of the whole Roman world. 
 
 When the Roman legions crossed from Gaul there was a 
 short space of fierce resistance. Many Britons fled to the 
 fastnesses of Wales and Scotland, and there continued, even 
 to our own day, their Celtic traditions. But the greater part 
 seem soon to have submitted to the Romans, as if by a kind 
 of fascination, even giving up their language to learn that of 
 their conquerors. The Romans carried wherever they went 
 their splendid civilization, and by the end of the fourth cen- 
 tury England was dotted with towns and villas where, amid 
 pillared porticoes, mosaic pavements, marble baths, forums 
 and hippodromes, a Roman emperor could find himself at 
 home. 
 
 Recall of the Roman Legions : the Anglo-Saxon Invasion. 
 This was the state of England when there began that re- 
 markable series of movements on the part of the wild Ger- 
 manic tribes, which we know as the " migrations." About the 
 end of the fourth century, urged by a common impulse, tribe 
 after tribe swept southward ; some by sea, to harry the coasts 
 of Gaul and Britain, some over the Alps and the Pyrenees, 
 to batter at the gates of Rome,' to plunder the rich islands 
 of the Mediterranean, and to found a kingdom in Africa. 
 "Whelps from the lair of the barbaric lioness" (as an ancient 
 chronicler calls them), the fierce Teutonic warriors, armed with 
 " rough-handled spears and swords of bronze," swept down 
 upon the countries of Southern Europe, carrying terror and 
 death everywhere. In the year 410 the Roman legions were re- 
 called from Britain to guard the imperial city, and the Celtic 
 inhabitants, weakened by three centuries of civilized life, were 
 left to struggle unaided against the pirate bands of Jutes, 
 Saxons, and Angles, which appeared every spring in increas- 
 ing numbers upon their coast. The Celts did not yield to these 
 savage invaders as readily as they had done to the polished 
 Romans. From the middle of the fifth century, when the
 
 12 Old English Period 
 
 first band of Jutes landed on the Isle of Thanet, to the time 
 when the invaders had subjugated the island and set up the 
 Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, a hundred and fifty years of war- 
 fare elapsed, during which all the monuments which Rome 
 had left were ruined if not obliterated. Many Celts fled, 
 as in the times of the Roman invasion, into Wales and Scot- 
 land ; many were killed ; but a great number were undoubt- 
 edly absorbed by the invading race. During these years of 
 struggle there began to grow up, about the person of an ob- 
 scure Celtic leader, that cycle of stories which was to prove 
 so fruitful of poetry both in France and England, the 
 legends of Arthur, founder of the Round Table, and de- 
 fender of the western Britons against the weakening power 
 of Rome and the growing fury of the barbarians. 
 
 Earliest Celtic and Roman Traces in the Language. 
 Now, also, began the fusion of other languages with the 
 Anglo-Saxon, a fusion destined gradually to transform the 
 primitive speech of our Teutonic ancestors into modern 
 English. The earliest Celtic words absorbed by the Saxon 
 speech were such as have been preserved in geographical 
 names, such as Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon (from Celtic 
 Avon, and Ox or Esk, meaning water}, Holcomb (from comb, 
 meaning valley), Ben Nevis (from ben or pen, meaning moun- 
 tain.) The words down and slough, describing characteristic 
 features of the island landscape, belong also to these first 
 borrowings. We must remember that the Celtic language, 
 in the remoter parts of the country, was preserved after the 
 Teutons had established themselves, and that wherever the 
 two races met, along the disputed borderland, the process of 
 fusion went on. The amount contributed by the Celts to 
 our language remained, however, surprisingly small. 
 
 Along with the first Celtic borrowings, our speech gathered 
 up a few words which had been left behind by the Roman 
 occupation. They are words that suggest an imperial mili- 
 tary civilization: street (which appears in the name of the old 
 Roman road, Watling Street, running from Dover to Ches- 
 ter, and is derived from strata via, a paved way) ; wall, josse, 
 and port (from Latin vallum, jossa, and portus] ; the end- 
 ings for place names, coin, as in Lincoln (Latin colonia,
 
 Literature of Northumbria 13 
 
 colony), and Chester or caster, as in Winchester and Doncaster 
 (Latin castra, camp). These early borrowings, from Celtic 
 and Latin, were in themselves slight ; but they are important 
 as the beginnings of a process by which, gathering successively 
 from many sources, English became the richest of modern 
 languages. 
 
 II. THE LITERATURE OF NORTHUMBRIA 
 
 The Christianizing of England. The partial union of the 
 Celtic and the Saxon races which took place in England after 
 the Saxon conquest, was to have a great influence upon Eng- 
 lish character and English literature. But the greatest im- 
 mediate influence exerted upon the victorious Saxon tribes 
 was that of the Christian religion, with which they now for 
 the first time came into full contact. The literature of this 
 period shows very little trace of the bright Celtic imagina- 
 tion, but it is nearly all deeply colored by Christianity. 
 
 Christianity had gained some obscure foothold in England 
 before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. During the Roman occu- 
 pation a church or two had been built, and the emperor 
 Diocletian had extended his persecution of the followers 
 of Christ even to this far-off colony. But it was not until 
 after the Saxon conquest that the new religion took a firm 
 hold. The Christian teaching came into England in two 
 different streams, one from Rome, one from Ireland, which 
 country had been won from heathenism several centuries 
 before. The first stream began late in the sixth century, 
 with the coming of Augustine, who converted to the new 
 faith Ethelbert, king of Kent, and his whole people. Little 
 by little, after the advent of this great missionary among 
 the Saxons in the south of England, the new creed drove 
 out the old, winning its way by the authority with which it 
 spoke of man's existence beyond the grave. 
 
 This stream of religious influence which came from Rome 
 centred chiefly in south and central England, in the kingdom 
 of Wessex. It produced some schools of learning, but almost 
 no literature. It is to the north and east, to the kingdom 
 of Northumbria, which felt the influence of the Irish monks,
 
 14 Old English Period 
 
 that we must look for the first blossomings of Christian 
 poetry in England. 
 
 Bede and Caedmon. Many monasteries sprang up in 
 Northumbria in the train of the Celtic missionaries from 
 Ireland. Two are famous because of their connection with 
 literature Jarrow and Whitby. At Jarrow lived and died 
 Baeda, known as the "Venerable Bede," a gentle, laborious 
 scholar in whom all the learning of Northumbria was summed 
 up. He translated the gospel of St. John into English, but 
 his version has unfortunately been lost. He wrote many 
 books, nearly all of them in Latin, the most notable being 
 the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia 
 Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum). It is from a passage in this 
 book that we know the story of Caedmon, the first poet of 
 Christian England. Bede tells us that when the inmates of 
 the monastery were gathered together at the evening feast, 
 and the harp was passed round for each to sing in turn, 
 Caedmon, the cowherd, would rise and depart, for he was an 
 unlettered man and knew nothing of the gleeman's art. So 
 it was for many years, until he was no longer young. One 
 night, when he had thus left the cheerful company and gone 
 to the stables to tend the cattle, he fell asleep and had a 
 wonderful dream. The shining figure of the Lord appeared 
 before him, saying, "Caedmon, sing to me." Caedmon an- 
 swered, " Behold, I know not how to sing, and therefore I 
 left the feast to-night." "Still, sing now to me," the Lord 
 said. "What then shall I sing?" asked Caedmon. "Sing 
 the beginning of created things," was the answer. Then in 
 his dream Caedmon framed some verses of the Creation, 
 which in the morning he wrote down, adding others to them. 
 News of the wonderful gift which had been bestowed upon 
 the unschooled man was carried to Hild, the abbess of the 
 foundation, and she commanded portions of the Scripture to 
 be read to him, that he might paraphrase them into verse. 
 So it was done ; and from this time on Caedmon's life was 
 given to his heaven- appointed task of turning the Old Tes- 
 tament narrative into song. 
 
 Caedmon's Paraphrases. The poems which have come 
 down to us under Caedmon's name consist of paraphrases
 
 Literature of Northumbria 15 
 
 of Genesis, of Exodus, and a part of Daniel. An interesting 
 fragment called Judith is sometimes included in the work of 
 the "school of Caedmon." In places, especially in dealing 
 with a warlike episode, the poet expands his matter freely, 
 adorning it with his own fancy. In Exodus, for instance, 
 all the interest is centred on the overwhelming of Pharaoh's 
 host in the Red Sea. The Egyptian and the Israelitish 
 armies are described with a heathen scop's delight in war, 
 and the disaster which overtakes the Egyptian hosts is sung 
 with savage force and zest. In Judith the pagan delight in 
 battle and in blood-revenge is even more marked. First, 
 king Holofernes is shown, like a rude viking, boisterous and 
 wassailing in his mead-hall. When Judith comes to him in 
 his drunken sleep and hews off his head with a sword, the 
 poet cannot restrain his exultation; and the flight of the 
 armv of Holofernes before the men of Israel is described 
 
 * 
 
 with grewsome vividness. 
 
 Cynewulf. If we know little of Caedmon's life, we know 
 still less of Cynewulf, the poet who succeeded him, and who 
 was probably the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poets, if we 
 except the unknown bard who gave Beowulf its present 
 form. Out of very insubstantial materials a picturesque 
 story has been made for him. He is said to have been in his 
 youth a wandering singer, leading a wild life by sea and 
 shore, as he plied his gleeman's craft, now in the halls of 
 lords, now in the huts of shepherds and on the village green, 
 now on the deck of Northumbrian coasting-ships. In the 
 midst of this free existence he suddenly underwent some 
 deep religious experience, which, together with the public 
 disasters then overtaking Northumbria, completely changed 
 the temper of his mind. He gave up the half-pagan nature- 
 poetry which up to this time he had written, and turned 
 to write religious poems. We have, signed with his name 
 in strange characters called runes, two lives of saints, St. 
 Juliana and Elene, and the Christ, an epic dealing with the 
 Saviour's incarnation and ascension, and with the Day of 
 Judgment. Other poems have been ascribed to him with 
 varying degrees of probability: Andreas, a very lively and 
 naive story of a saint's martyrdom and final triumph over
 
 16 Old English Period 
 
 his enemies ; the Phcenix, a richly colored description of the 
 mythic bird and its dwelling-place, with a religious interpre- 
 tation ; and finally a number of Riddles, very curious compo- 
 sitions, some of which are full of fine imagination and fresh 
 observation of nature. 
 
 The " Riddles " of Cynewulf. These last are nothing more 
 nor less than conundrums, in which some object or phenom- 
 enon is described suggestively, and the reader is left to guess 
 what is meant. The new moon is a young viking, sailing 
 through the skies in his pirate ship, laden with spoils of 
 battle, to build a burg for himself in highest heaven; but 
 the sun, a greater warrior, drives him away and possesses 
 his land, until the night conquers the sun in turn. The ice- 
 berg shouts and laughs as it plunges through the wintry sea, 
 eager to crush the fleet of hostile ships. The sword in its 
 scabbard is a mailed fighter, who goes exultingly into the 
 battle-play, and then is sad because women upbraid him for 
 the slaughter he has done. The swan and the beaver are 
 described with an insight and sympathy which remind us, 
 in a far-off way, of modern nature-poetry. It is pleasant, 
 even if not quite scientific, to think of the Riddles as the 
 youthful work of Cynewulf, since his is the only poet's name 
 that has survived from those obscure and troubled times. 
 
 The " Phoenix." The Phcenix derives a special interest 
 from the fact that it is the only Anglo-Saxon poem of any 
 length which shows a delight in the soft and radiant moods 
 of Nature, as opposed to her fierce and grim aspects. In 
 the land where the Phcenix dwells "the groves are all behung 
 with blossoms, the boughs upon the trees are ever laden, 
 the fruit is aye renewed through all eternity." The music 
 of the wonderful bird, as it goes aloft "to meet that glad- 
 some gem, God's candle," is "sweeter and more beauteous 
 than any craft of song." When a thousand years of its life 
 are done, it flies far away to a lonely Syrian wood, and 
 builds its own funeral pyre of fragrant herbs, which the 
 sun kindles. Out of the ball of ashes a new Phcenix is born, 
 and flies back to its home in the enchanted land of summer. 
 At the end, the whole poem is made into a Christian 
 allegory of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of his
 
 Literature of Northumbria 17 
 
 ascent to heaven amid the ministering company of saints. 
 Scholars have pointed out that the description of the bird's 
 dwelling-place is influenced by the old Celtic fancy of the 
 Land of Eternal Youth; and certainly it is not difficult to 
 see, in the bright colors and happy fancy of the poem, the 
 working of the Celtic imagination, as well as the trans- 
 forming touch of hope which had been brought into men's 
 lives by Christianity. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Love Poems and Elegies. Besides the poetry 
 attributed to Caedmon and his school, and to Cynewulf and 
 his school, there exist a few short poems of the greatest 
 interest. One of these, called "The Wife's Lament," gives 
 us a glimpse of one of the harsh customs of our ancestors. 
 A wife, accused of faithlessness, has been banished from her 
 native village, and compelled to live alone in the forest; 
 from her place of exile she pours out a moan to the husband 
 who has been estranged from her by false slanderers. "The 
 Lover's Message" is a kind of companion piece to this. 
 The speaker in the little poem is the tablet of wood upon 
 which an absent lover has carved a message to send to his 
 beloved. It tells her that he has now a home for her in the 
 south, and bids her, as soon as she hears the cuckoo chanting 
 of sorrow in the copsewood, to take sail over the ocean path- 
 way to her lord, who waits and longs for her. With these 
 two little pieces begins the love-poetry of England. 
 
 " The Wanderer." The longest and most beautiful of all 
 the Anglo-Saxon elegies or poems of sentiment is "The 
 Wanderer." It is the complaint of one who must "traverse 
 the watery ways, stir with his hands the rime- cold sea, and 
 tread the paths of exile," while he muses upon the joys and 
 glories of a life that has passed away forever. "Often," he 
 says, "it seems to him in fancy as though he clasps and kisses 
 his great lord, and on his knees lays hand and head, even as 
 erewhile " ; but he soon wakes friendless, and sees before him 
 only " the fallow ways, sea-birds bathing and spreading their 
 wings, falling hoar-frost and snow mingled with hail." At 
 the close the Wanderer breaks out into a song of lamentation 
 over the departed glories of a better time: "Where is gone 
 the horse? Where is gone the hero? Where is gone the
 
 18 Old English Period 
 
 giver of treasure ? Where are gone the seats of the feast ? 
 Where are the joys of the hall? Ah, thou bright cup ! Ah, 
 thou mailed warrior ! Ah, the prince's pride ! how has the 
 time passed away, as if it had not been !" There is a wist- 
 ful tenderness and a lyric grace in this poem which sug- 
 gests once more the Celtic leaven at work in the ruder Anglo- 
 Saxon genius. It suggests, too, a state of society fallen into 
 ruin, a time of decadence and disaster. Probably, before it 
 was written, such a time had come for England, and espe- 
 cially for Northumbria. 
 
 III. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE DANES! LITERATURE OF 
 
 WESSEX 
 
 The Danes Destroy Northumbria. While the Anglo-Saxons 
 had been settling down in England to a life of agriculture, 
 their kinsmen who remained on the Continent had continued 
 to lead their wild freebooting life of the sea. Toward the 
 end of the eighth century bands of Danes began to harass 
 the English coasts. Northumbria bore the main force of 
 their attacks. The very monastery of Jarrow, in which 
 Baeda had written his Ecclesiastical History, was plundered, 
 and its inhabitants put to the sword. The monastery of 
 Whitby, where Caedmon had had his vision, was only tem- 
 porarily saved by the fierce resistance of the monks. By the 
 middle of the ninth century the Danes had made themselves 
 masters of Northumbria. They were such men as the Angles, 
 Jutes, and Saxons had been three hundred years before 
 worshippers of the old gods, ruthless uprooters of a religion, 
 literature, and society which they did not understand 
 
 Rise of Wessex: King Alfred. In Wessex, however, a 
 kingdom had arisen with strength enough to offer a firm re- 
 sistance to the Danes. King Egbert, of Wessex, after com- 
 pelling the tribes of Central Britain to acknowledge his head- 
 ship, had taken, in 828, the proud title of "King of the Eng- 
 lish," for by this time the Angles had given their name to all 
 divisions of the Anglo-Saxon people in Britain. When the 
 Danes, victorious in Northumbria, began to press south- 
 westward into the kingdom of Wessex, Alfred the Great
 
 Struggle With the Danes 19 
 
 held the throne. His heroism turned back the tide of bar- 
 barian invasion. By the treaty of Wedmore, which he forced 
 upon them in 878, the Danes pledged themselves to remain 
 north of Watling Street, the old Roman road running from 
 Dover to Chester. From this time until the Norman con- 
 quest, two centuries later, the only literature which remains 
 to us was produced in Wessex. It is almost entirely a litera- 
 ture of prose. The best of it was the work of King Alfred 
 himself, or produced under his immediate encouragement. 
 
 What King Alfred Did for Literature. As a child King 
 Alfred had seen Rome, and had lived for a time at the great 
 court of Charles the Bald in France; and the spectacle of 
 these older and richer civilizations had filled him with a 
 desire to give to his rude subjects something of the heritage 
 of the past. When, after a desperate struggle, he had won 
 peace from the Danes, he called about him learned monks 
 from the sheltered monasteries of Ireland and Wales, and 
 made welcome at his court all strangers who could bring him 
 a manuscript or sing to him an old song. It was probably 
 during his reign that the poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf, 
 as well as the older pagan poems, were brought southward 
 out of Northumbria and put in the West- Saxon form in which 
 we now have them. He spurred on his priests and bishops 
 to write. He himself learned a little Latin, in order that he 
 might translate certain books, which he deemed would be 
 most useful and interesting to Englishmen, into the West- 
 Saxon tongue; putting down the sense, he says, "sometimes 
 word for word, sometimes meaning for meaning, as I had 
 learned it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my 
 bishop, and Grimbald, my mass-priest, and John, my mass- 
 priest." The most important of these pious labors was a 
 rendering of Baeda's Ecclesiastical History, which gave a 
 native English dress to the first great piece of historical writ- 
 ing which had been done in England. Alfred also caused 
 the dry entries of the deaths of kings and the installations of 
 bishops, which the monks were in the habit of making on the 
 Easter rolls, to be expanded into a clear and picturesque nar- 
 rative, the greatest space, of course, being taken up with the 
 events of his own reign. This, known as the Anglo-Saxon
 
 20 Old English Period 
 
 Chronicle, is the most venerable monument of Old English 
 prose. 
 
 Decadence of Anglo-Saxon Literature. Despite all his 
 efforts, King Alfred did not succeed in creating a vital na- 
 tive literature in Wessex. The language was changing, and 
 the literary spirit of the people was almost dead. The ser- 
 mons or Homilies of the great and devoted Aelfric, however, 
 here and there rise to the rank of literature, by reason of 
 the naive picturesqueness of some religious legend which 
 they treat, or by the fervor of their piety. Aelfric also 
 translated a portion of the Scriptures, adding to the begin- 
 ning which Bede had made, and carrying one step further the 
 long process by which the great English Bible was brought 
 into being. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, also, which con- 
 tinued to grow in the monasteries of Peterborough, Win- 
 chester, and Ely, here and there breaks out into stirring 
 verse. One of these poetic episodes, known as the " Battle 
 of Brunanburh," is entered under the year 937. Another, 
 the " Death of Byrhtnoth," also called the " Battle of Mai- 
 don," bears date 991 ; it is the swan-song of Anglo-Saxon 
 poetry. 
 
 Latin and Danish Word-Borrowings. During the period 
 we have just traversed the English tongue was enriched from 
 two sources, Latin and Danish. The Latin words which 
 came in during the period of Christianization nearly all refer 
 to the church and its functions. They are such words as 
 church itself (originally a Greek word, kyriakon), minster 
 (inonasterium), bishop (episcopus), monk (monachus), priest 
 (presbyter), martyr (originally a Greek word, meaning " wit- 
 ness"), devil (diabolus), and a host of others. The Dan- 
 ish contribution was confined chiefly to such geographical 
 endings as -by and -thorp, meaning "town," preserved in 
 names such as Somersby and Althorp. 
 
 End of the Old English Period. So far as literature was 
 concerned, England at the end of the tenth century was in 
 need of new blood. The Danes had brought no literature 
 with them, and the Anglo-Saxon genius was exhausted. In 
 fact, in spite of all its rugged grandeur and fine persistence, 
 this genius was at its best lacking in many elements necessary
 
 Review Outline 21 
 
 to make a great national life. Anglo-Saxon poetry, looked at 
 in the large, betrays a narrowness of theme, and monotony of 
 tone, out of which a great literature could have evolved, if at 
 all, only slowly and with difficulty. Some new graft was 
 needed, to give elasticity, gayety, and range. This need was 
 met when, in 1066, William the Conqueror landed at Hastings 
 with his army of Norman-French knights, and marched to 
 give battle to the forces of Harold, the last of the Saxon kings. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Who were the earliest known inhabitants of 
 Britain during historic times ? How long a period elapsed between the 
 mention of them in Greek history and the time when Caesar made them 
 known to the Roman world ? Sum up the principal facts of the Roman 
 occupation of Britain. Why and when were the Roman forces with- 
 drawn? When did the Anglo-Saxon sea-robbers begin to conquer the 
 Britons, thus left defenceless by Rome, and weakened by her civiliza- 
 tion? How long did the struggle endure? How is King Arthur's 
 name connected with it? Bring together as many particulars as you 
 can from this chapter concerning the character of the Celts, and con- 
 trast it with what you know of the Anglo-Saxon character. Note the 
 traces which the Celts and the Roman conquerors left in the new lan- 
 guage which the Saxon invaders planted in England. 
 
 Give some account of the Christianizing of England. Who was Bede ? 
 Who was the first Christian poet? Tell his story, and indicate some 
 traces of the pagan spirit in him. What great English poet, centuries 
 later, treated Caedmon's theme, " the beginning of created things " ? 
 From what source do we learn the name of the greatest poet of this 
 time ? Relate the traditions concerning his life. Which of the writings 
 attributed to him are entirely Christian and which pagan in feeling ? 
 What qualities in the " Phoenix " and the " Wanderer " suggest the 
 influence of the Celtic spirit? Of what large group of English poems 
 is the latter a forerunner? Can you name three later English poems 
 that belong to this class ? 
 
 All the literature, both prose and poetry, which we consider in the two 
 first sections of this chapter, was produced in Northumbria. When, and 
 by what new invaders, was the literary supremacy of Northumbria de- 
 stroyed ? Why did Wessex now become the centre of learning and of 
 literary activity? What kind of literature was chiefly produced in 
 Wessex? Tell what you can of the Treaty of Wedmore. What were
 
 22 Old English Period 
 
 the influences which gave King Alfred his interest in literature, and 
 what means did he take to promote literature among his people? 
 What was the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle? What significance has it had 
 for later generations? Note carefully that while the original literature 
 produced in Wessex was of far less interest than that produced in 
 Northumbria, it is to Wessex monks and scribes that we owe the 
 preservation not only of the Northumbrian poetry but of the earlier 
 poetry produced on the Continent, including" Beowulf." Who contin- 
 ued the great work of translating the Bible, begun by Bede in his lost 
 version of the Gospel of St. John ? Give date and title of the poem which 
 is called the "swan-song" of Old English poetry. (Note the meaning 
 of the word "swan-song.") What kinds of words came into our lan- 
 guage at this period from Latin and Greek sources? Give examples. 
 Why is it probable that a large literary future was not open to the 
 Anglo-Saxon people without the infusion of some new element ? What 
 was this element to be? 
 
 READING GUIDE. Students cannot be expected to do much 
 reading in the literature of the Old English period. The teacher should 
 read to the class or have the student read a portion of " Beowulf " in 
 translation. A good translation for the purpose is that by C. G. Child 
 (Hough ton, Mifflin), Number 159 in the Riverside Literature series; or 
 that by J. Earle, " The Deeds of Beowulf " (Clarendon Press). " The 
 Battle of Brunanburh," translated by Tennyson, may also be read 
 with profit. All the minor poems mentioned in the text are translated, 
 wholly or partly, in Stopford Brooke's Early English Literature ; the 
 reading aloud of a few of these, as for instance " The Wanderer " and 
 " The Lover's Message," will greatly vivify the class's understanding 
 of the spirit of the early literature. Liberal extracts from " Beowulf " 
 are also given in Brooke, so that a separate edition of that poem may, 
 if desired, be dispensed with. Good examples of early English poetry 
 may also be found in Longfellow's " Poets and Poetry of Europe." 
 
 To give the class some notion of the old Celtic literature, and some 
 conception of what manner of men they were whom the Anglo-Saxons 
 found in England when they first invaded the island, the student may 
 profitably read " The Voyage of Maeldune," by Tennyson, which is 
 founded on an old Celtic romance. Further illustrations of the Celtic 
 spirit may be found in " The Boy's Mabinogion," by Sidney Lanier 
 (Scribner), and in the first volume of Henry Morley's English Writers,
 
 Reading Guide 23 
 
 where many beautiful Celtic pieces are summarized. The reading of 
 Morley's summary of "The Tale of the Cattle Si>oil of Chuailgne," and 
 comparison with the summary of "Beowulf" given in the text, may 
 be made of great interest ; The Cattle Spoil is a typical product of 
 an agricultural race in its heroic and semi-mythic period, as Beo- 
 wulf is a typical product of a seafaring race at a similar stage. 
 
 To illustrate the Christian literature of the Old English period, the 
 quotations from "The Phoenix" in Brooke's Early English Literature, 
 or from "Judith," translated in Morley's English Writers, Vol. I, 
 pp. 180-188, may be read to the class.
 
 24 Old English' Period 
 
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 f Wessex, 871-901. Pe: 
 King Alfred and the Dan 
 LO-SAXON PERIOD. 
 
 f Northmen, 980. Cnut 
 Saxon line restored in E 
 William of Normandy 
 ie Saxon king Harold, ic 
 
 w 
 
 . "lillllplllilppjfjllll 
 
 * gJ* 6^<^H <8.S-BQ B.froJ8 2^ 
 
 Q O'-SJs^os-Sd^S^SOg s>^ S-SSi 
 
 o
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MIDDLE-ENGLISH PERIOD: FROM THE NORMAN 
 CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 
 
 I. THE COMING OF THE NORMANS TO ENGLAND: UNION OI 
 THE TWO PEOPLES 
 
 Character of the Norman People. The Normans, or North- 
 men, were an extraordinary people. A century and a half 
 before their invasion of England, they had appeared off the 
 coast of France; and under their leader, Hrolf the Ganger 
 (the "Walker"), they had pushed up the Seine in their black 
 boats, wasting and burning to. the very gates of Paris. The 
 French won peace by giving over to them broad and rich 
 lands in the northwest, known henceforth as Normandy. 
 The Normans were a branch of the same Teutonic race 
 which had sent out the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles to conquer 
 England. But, unlike the other northern peoples, they showed 
 a marvellous power of assimilating the civilization which 
 Rome had spread among the Celts of Western Europe. The 
 Normans married with the French women, adopted French 
 manners and the French tongue. In a little over a century 
 they had grown from a barbarous horde of sea-robbers into 
 the most polished and brilliant people of Europe, whose power 
 was felt in the Mediterranean and the far East. They united 
 in a singular manner impetuous daring and cool practical 
 sense. Without losing anything of their northern bravery 
 in war, they managed to gather up all the southern suppleness 
 and wit, all the southern love of splendor and art. When 
 William advanced to meet King Harold at Senlac, a court 
 minstrel, Taillefer, rode before the invading army, tossing 
 up his sword and catching it like a juggler, while he chanted 
 the Song of Roland the French epic. Taillefer is a sym-
 
 26 Middle English Period 
 
 bol of the Norman spirit, of its dash, its buoyancy, its brill- 
 iancy. The Normans brought with them to England not 
 only the terror of the sword and the strong hand of con- 
 quest, but also the vitalizing breath of song, the fresh and 
 youthful spirit of romance. 
 
 First Effects of the Norman Invasion. The sternness and 
 energy with which King William and his nobles set about 
 planting their own civilization in the island, brought with it 
 much oppression and hardship. The land was taken from 
 its Saxon owners and distributed among Norman nobles. 
 Over the length and breadth of England rose those strong 
 castles whose gray and massive walls still frown over the 
 pleasant English landscape. The strong and gloomy Tower 
 of London, which was to be the scene of so much tragic 
 history, was built to hold the capital city in terror. Less 
 forbidding than these, but no less suggestive of the for- 
 eigner, splendid minsters gradually took the place of the 
 gloomy little Saxon churches. Forest laws of terrible harsh- 
 ness preserved the "tall deer" which the king "loved as 
 his life"; but when a man was found murdered, if it could 
 be proved that he was a Saxon, no further notice was taken 
 of the crime. The Saxon language, or "Englisc," as it had 
 begun to be called in King Alfred's time, was the badge of 
 serfdom ; and not only in the court and camp and castle, but 
 also in Parliament and on the justice-bench, French alone 
 was spoken. 
 
 Persistence of the Native Speech. If a prophet had arisen 
 to tell the Norman nobility of the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
 turies, that not French, but English, was destined to be the 
 speech of their descendants, he would have been laughed at. 
 But this incredible thing came to pass, because of the dogged 
 persistency of the Anglo-Saxon nature in clinging to its own. 
 At the Conquest English ceased to be written; with the one 
 exception of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which continued to 
 grow in the sheltered monastery of Peterborough, Eng- 
 lish literature "dives underground" in 1066, and does not 
 reappear for a century and a half. But though no longer 
 having a literary existence, the old tongue lived on the lips 
 of the subjugated race, from father to son. About 1200
 
 Coming of the Normans to England 27 
 
 it began to be used again as a language of books, disputing 
 with rude and uncertain accents a place by the side of 
 the polished language of the conquerors. When it reap- 
 peared, however, it was a changed tongue. It was no 
 longer Anglo-Saxon, but English. In spite of many words 
 now obsolete, many strange forms and spellings, the English 
 of the thirteenth century is unmistakably the same language 
 which we speak to-day. It had sloughed off its inflections, 
 simplified its grammar, and required only to be enriched by 
 French elements, and made flexible by use, to be ready for 
 the hand of Chaucer. 
 
 Fusion of the English and Norman-French Tongues. But 
 to say that English was "enriched by French elements" is 
 hardly to convey an idea of the extent to which the foreign 
 tongue entered into the composition of the language. What 
 really happened was that English absorbed nearly the whole 
 body of the French speech, or rather that the two languages, 
 like the two peoples that spoke them, gradually melted to- 
 gether and became one. The Saxon, however, formed the 
 foundation of the new language, determined its grammar, 
 and furnished the primary indispensable words. The words 
 of French origin in our vocabulary outnumber the Saxon 
 words three to one ; but in ordinary speech, where only the 
 common words of daily life and action are used, the Saxon 
 words are greatly in preponderance. French furnished many 
 of the more stately words, those which apply to matters of 
 abstract thought, to law and theology, to ceremonious inter- 
 course, and to the workings of a polished civilization. The 
 result of this fusion was to increase enormously the power 
 of the language to express thought and feeling. It has 
 made English the most splendid poetic language of the 
 modern world. The fusion was accomplished in a period of 
 about a century and a half. When English first appeared, 
 in 1 200, after its long sleep, it contained almost no French 
 ingredients; by the middle of the fourteenth century the 
 process of blending the two tongues was beginning to draw 
 to a close. Chaucer, the poet who was to complete it and 
 fix the language in much the shape that it wears to-day, 
 was then a boy in the streets of London.
 
 28 Middle English Period 
 
 Fusion of the Saxon and Norman Peoples. Hand in hand 
 with the fusion of the Saxon and Norman-French languages, 
 went the social fusion of the two peoples. The conquerors, 
 we must remember, were originally of the same race as the 
 conquered. By intermarriage with the French their character, 
 it is true, had been much altered, but not so much but that a 
 sympathy of nature existed still with their Saxon subjects. 
 The Conquest put an end to warfare between the petty Eng- 
 lish kingdoms, and gave at once a political unity to the nation 
 by placing supreme power in the hands of a single ruler. The 
 struggle of the Conqueror's son, Henry I (1100-1135) with 
 his turbulent barons, led him to draw nearer to the com- 
 mon people, and grant privileges to the towns ; he still further 
 strengthened the growing bond between the English and 
 their foreign masters by taking a Saxon wife, a descendant 
 of King Alfred. Under Henry II (1154-1189) the barons 
 refused to furnish troops to be used outside of England ; and 
 the growth o c national spirit which this shows was increased 
 by the loss of Normandy, during the reign of John, in 1204. 
 Shut in by the sea with the people they had conquered, the 
 Norman noblemen began not only to look upon England as 
 their home, but to find that they were drawn by common inter- 
 ests and a common enemy, closer and closer to the native 
 population. Under Edward I, in 1265, this new feeling of na- 
 tional unity found expression in the establishment of a Par- 
 liament composed of both lords and commons, "a complete 
 image of the nation," for the first time regularly and fre- 
 quently summoned by the king. During the next hundred 
 years the process of unifying the nation and the language 
 progressed rapidly, aided by intermarriage and by daily 
 intercourse; until, by the middle of the fourteenth century, 
 the very terms "Norman" and "Saxon" had begun to lose 
 their meaning. All were Englishmen, and the long process 
 of fusion was nearly complete.
 
 Knightly Literature 29 
 
 II. KNIGHTLY LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 
 
 The Metrical Romance. A large proportion of the literature 
 of this century and a half of preparation (1200-1350) consists 
 of efforts in a new and fascinating poetic form introduced 
 into England by the Norman-French, the metrical romance. 
 The typical romance was a rambling tale of adventure, in 
 which evil knights, robbers, giants, and Saracens were over- 
 thrown by a wandering chevalier, in the interest of some dis- 
 tressed damsel or of holy church. It dealt in a rather unreal, 
 but highly entertaining way, with the three great interests of 
 the Middle Ages battle, love, and religion. 
 
 Sources of the Metrical Romances. The trouveres, as the 
 poets who composed and recited these romances were called, 
 borrowed the material of their richly variegated tales wher- 
 ever they could find it. A part of it came from Italy and the 
 East, and out of this they made the Troy cycle and the cycle 
 of Alexander the Great. A part of it they found near at 
 hand, in the adventures of Charlemagne and his twelve peers. 
 But the richest storehouse of romance which they had to 
 draw upon, was in the Celtic parts of England and Brittany, 
 where for centuries there had been growing up a mass of 
 legend connected with King Arthur.* A number of these 
 Arthurian legends were gathered up, before the middle of the 
 twelfth century, in a great Latin work called the Historia 
 Bretonum, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh writer, who 
 also added stories of his own invention. This chronicle of 
 Geoffrey's was translated into French verse by Wace of 
 Jersey, and through this channel came, about the year 
 1 200, into the hands of Layamon, the first writer of romance 
 in the crude English speech, which was just then awaken- 
 ing from its century and a half of silence. It is a curious 
 fact that the first attempt made by the English in the knightly 
 romance should have come from the hand, not of a worldly 
 singer, but of a monk. It is true that Layamon's work is in 
 the form of a chronicle, and pretends to be history ; but the 
 material of which it is made up is legendary, and its tone is 
 that of a pure romance. 
 
 * See page 1 2.
 
 30 Middle English Period 
 
 Layamon's "Brut." All that we know of Layamon, 
 and of how he came to write his Brut, he tells himself in 
 the quaint and touching words which prelude the poem: 
 
 "There was a priest in the land was named Layamon. 
 He dwelt at Ernley, at a noble church upon Severn bank. 
 It came to him in mind and in his chief thought that he 
 would tell the noble deeds of the English; what the men 
 were named, and whence they came, who first had the Eng- 
 lish land after the flood. Layamon began to journey wide 
 over this land, and procured the noble books which he took 
 for authority. Layamon laid these books before him and 
 turned over the leaves; lovingly he beheld them may the 
 Lord be merciful to him ! Pen he took with fingers, and 
 wrote on book-skin, and compressed the three books into 
 one." 
 
 The poem opens with an account of how /Eneas's great- 
 grandson, Brutus, who gives his name to the poem, sets out 
 from Italy with all his people to find a new land in the 
 west. They pass the Pillars of Hercules, "tall posts of 
 strong marble stone," where they find the mermaidens, 
 "beasts of great deceit, and so sweet that many men are 
 not able to quit them." After further adventures in Spain 
 and France, they come at length to the shores of England, 
 and land "at Dartmouth in Totnes." The remainder of 
 the poem recounts the legendary history of Britain. In 
 treating the Arthur legends, Layamon is not content merely 
 to transcribe his predecessors. His home was near the bor- 
 ders of Wales, where these legends were native; and he 
 either gathered up or freely invented several additions of 
 the utmost importance. The most notable of these are his 
 story of the founding of the Round Table, and his account 
 of the fays who are present at Arthur's birth and who carry 
 him after his last battle to the mystic isle of Avalon. 
 
 English Imitations of Norman-French Romances. After 
 Layamon had shown the way to romance writing in the 
 native tongue, other poets in rapidly increasing numbers 
 followed in his footsteps. Rude at first, their efforts grad- 
 ually approached, in ease and grace, those of their Norman- 
 French teachers. Almost all the English romances of the
 
 Knightly Literature 31 
 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are free renderings from 
 French originals. But of all the romances in English of 
 this period, such as King Horn, Havelock the Dane, Sir 
 Tristrem, and Morte d'Arthure, the one which is of most gen- 
 uine native English workmanship is the best of all, and is one 
 of the most charming romances of the world. This is Sir 
 Gawayne and the Green Knight. Its date is about 1320-1330. 
 The summary which follows will serve to convey some idea 
 of the charm of the work, and through a single instance to 
 give some insight into the nature of the metrical romances 
 as a whole. 
 
 " Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight." When the poem 
 opens, King Arthur and his court are gathered in the hall 
 at Camelot to celebrate the feast of the New Year. Suddenly 
 there rushes in at the hall door a gigantic knight, clothed 
 entirely in green, mounted on a green foal, and bearing in 
 his hand a great axe. He rides to the dais, and challenges 
 any knight to give him a blow with his axe, and to abide 
 one in turn. Gawayne, the king's nephew, smites off the 
 head of the Green Knight, who quietly picks it up by the 
 hair, and holds it out toward Gawayne, untrl the lips speak, 
 commanding him to appear at the Green Chapel on the next 
 New Year's day. 
 
 On All-hallow's day, Gawayne sets out upon his horse 
 Gringolet, and journeys through the wilderness until at last 
 on Christmas- eve he comes to a fair castle standing on a hill. 
 Asking shelter, he is courteously received by the lord of 
 the castle and his fair young wife, and is assured that the 
 Green Chapel is near at hand. 
 
 After the Christmas festivities are over, his host prepares 
 for a great hunt, to last three days ; and a jesting compact is 
 made between them that at the end of each day they shall 
 give each other whatever good thing they have won. While 
 her lord is absent on the hunt, the lady of the castle tries in 
 vain to induce Gawayne to make love to her, and bestows 
 upon him a kiss. Anxious to fulfil his compact, he in turn 
 gives the kiss to her lord each night when the hunt is over, 
 and 'receives as a counter-gift the spoils of the chase. At 
 their last meeting the lady persuades Gawayne to take as a
 
 32 Middle English Period 
 
 gift a green lace belt which will protect him from mortal 
 harm. 
 
 On New Year's morning he sets out through a storm of 
 snow to find the Green Chapel. It proves to be a grass- 
 covered hollow mound, in a desert valley. The Green 
 Knight appears, and deals a blow with his axe upon Ga- 
 wayne's bent neck. But he only pierces the skin, and 
 Gawayne, seeing the blood fall on the snow, claps on his 
 helmet, draws his sword, and declares the compact fulfilled. 
 The Green Knight then discloses the fact that he is the lord 
 of the castle where Gawayne has just been entertained, that 
 with him dwells the fairy-temptress Morgain, who, because 
 of her hatred of Guenevere, had sent him to Camelot to 
 frighten the queen with the sight of a severed head talking, 
 and who has been trying to lead Gawayne into bad faith, 
 in order that her husband's axe might have power upon him. 
 By his purity and truth Gawayne has been saved, except 
 for the slight wound as punishment for concealing the gift 
 of the girdle. Gawayne swears to wear the "lovelace" in 
 remembrance of his weakness ; and ever afterward each knight 
 of the Round Table, and every lady of Arthur's court, wears 
 a bright green belt for Gawayne's sake. 
 
 The picturesque language of the poem, its bright humor 
 and fancy, and the vivid beauty of its descriptions, combine 
 with its moral sweetness to make this the most delightful 
 blossom of all pre-Chaucerian romance. Sir Gawayne and 
 the Green Knight contains fair promise not only of Chaucer's 
 Knight's Tale, but even of Spenser's Faerie Queene. 
 
 III. RELIGIOUS LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 
 
 The " Cursor Mundi." While the shimmering tapestry and 
 cloth of gold of these bright romances was being woven to 
 beguile the tedium of castle halls, a more sombre literary 
 fabric grew under the patient hands of monks and religious 
 enthusiasts. The Cursor Mundi, the author of which is 
 unknown, is among the most notable of these. The author, 
 in beginning, laments the absorption of the readers of his 
 day in frivolous romance, and proposes to give them in place
 
 Religious Literature 33 
 
 of these vain tales of earthly love, a tale of divine love which 
 shall be equally thrilling. He then proceeds to tell in flowing 
 verse the story of God's dealings with man, from the Creation 
 to the final redemption, following in general the biblical nar- 
 rative, but adorning it with popular legends, both sacred and 
 secular, and with all manner of quaint digressions. 
 
 Richard of Hampole : the " Prick of Conscience." Of an- 
 other religious writer whose work rises to the dignity of litera- 
 ture, the name and story have fortunately been preserved. 
 This is Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole in southern 
 Yorkshire, who was born about 1300 and died in 1349. In 
 his youth he went to Oxford, then at the height of its fame as 
 a centre of scholastic learning ; but he soon revolted against the 
 dry scholastic teaching. He left college, made him a hermit's 
 shroud out of two of his sister's gowns and his father's hood, 
 and began the life of a religious solitary and mystic. His cell 
 at Hampole, near a Cistercian nunnery, was after his death 
 visited as a miracle-working shrine, and cared for by the nuns. 
 He wrote many canticles of divine love, some of which are of 
 great intensity. His longest work is the Prick of Conscience, 
 which deals with the life of man, and the terrors of the Last 
 Judgment. 
 
 The " Love-Rune " of Thomas de Hales. Of all the re- 
 ligious lyrical writings of this period, the most beautiful is the 
 famous "Love Rune" of Thomas de Hales, a monk of the 
 Minor Friars. He tells us in the first stanza that he was be- 
 sought by a maid of Christ to make her a love-song, in order 
 that she might learn therefrom how to choose a worthy and 
 faithful lover. The monkish poet consents, but goes on to 
 tell her how false and fleeting is all worldly love; how all 
 earthly lovers vanish and are forgotten. " But there is another 
 lover," the poet continues, who is "richer than Henry our 
 King, and whose dwelling is fairer than Solomon's house of 
 jasper and sapphire. Choose Him, and may God bring thee 
 to His bride-chamber in Heaven." 
 
 " The Pearl." Another religious poem, which deserves to 
 be classed with this by reason of its beauty and humanity, is 
 much longer. It is called The Pearl. The poet represents 
 himself as falling asleep on the grave of his lost daughter,
 
 34 Middle English Period 
 
 Margaret (i.e., "the pearl"). He dreams that he is trans- 
 ported to a wonderful land, through which a musical river 
 flows over pearly sand, and stones that glitter like stars on a 
 winter night. On the other side of the river, at the foot of 
 a gleaming cliff, he sees his daughter sitting, clothed in bright 
 raiment trimmed with pearls, and in the midst of her breast 
 a great pearl. The father begs to be taken to her abiding- 
 place ; she tells him that he may see, but cannot enter, " that 
 clean cloister." She bids him go along the river bank until 
 he comes to a hill. Arrived at the top, he sees afar off the 
 city of Heaven, "pitched upon gems," with its walls of jasper 
 and streets of gold. At the wonder of the sight he stands, 
 "still as a dazed quail," and gazing sees, "right as the 
 mighty moon gan rise," the Virgins walking in procession 
 with the Lamb of God. His daughter is one of them. 
 
 Then I saw there my little queen 
 Lord! much of mirth was that she made 
 Among her mates. 
 
 He strives in transport to cross over and be with her; but it 
 is not pleasing to God that he should come, and the dreamer 
 awakes. 
 
 The language of The Pearl has the same vigor and pictur- 
 esqueness which distinguishes that of Sir Gawayne and the 
 Green Knight. This, indeed, has come down to us in the 
 same manuscript with The Pearl. Many scholars believe 
 that they are the work of the same man. If so, he was the 
 most considerable poet between Cynewulf and Chaucer. 
 
 IV. END OF THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION 
 
 Early Songs and Ballads. As early as the middle of the 
 thirteenth century, song writers began to put to beautiful 
 use the new tongue formed by the flowing together of Saxon 
 and Norman-French. We possess several songs written be- 
 tween 1250 and 1350, which have in them the promise of 
 Herrick and of Shelley. They are all songs of love and of 
 spring. The best known is perhaps the "Cuckoo Song," 
 with its refrain of "Loude sing Cuckoo 1"; but even more
 
 End of the Period of Preparation 35 
 
 charming is the spring-song "Lent is come with love to 
 town," and the love-song called "Alysoun," with its delight- 
 ful opening: 
 
 Bitwene Mersh and Averil 
 When spray * begineth to springe, 
 The little fowle's f have hyre J will 
 On hyre lud to singe. 
 
 To this period also probably belong the ballads which sprang 
 up about the name of Robin Hood, the popular hero of Old 
 England, the embodiment of its delight in the life of green 
 forest and open sky, in bluff, shrewd manners, and in gener- 
 ous adventure. Rude as many of these early ballads are, 
 they tell their story in a wonderfully fresh and vivid way; 
 and they are full of charming bits of nature-poetry. 
 
 When shaws been sheene, and shrads full fayre, 
 
 And leaves both large and long, 
 
 It is merry walking in the fayre forre*st 
 
 To heare the small birde's songe. 
 
 Final Result of the Norman Conquest. The England 
 which finds utterance in these songs and ballads is a very 
 different England from that which had spoken in "The Wan- 
 derer," and "The Battle of Brunanburh." It is no longer 
 the fierce and gloomy aspects of nature, but her bright and 
 laughing moods, that are sung. Love and merry adventure 
 have taken the place of war, as the poet's chief theme. The 
 Norman invasion has done its work. The conquerors have 
 ceased to be such, for foreign wars and centuries of domestic 
 intercourse have broken down the distinction between men 
 of Norman and men of Saxon blood. The new language 
 is formed, a new and vigorous national life is everywhere 
 manifest. A new poet is needed, great enough to gather 
 up and make intelligible to itself this shifting, many-colored 
 life ; and Chaucer is at hand. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. This chapter treats of England under the 
 rule of the Norman and Angevin kings, beginning with the reign of the 
 
 * Foliage. f Birds. J Their. Voice.
 
 36 Review Outline 
 
 Conqueror, in 1066, and ending with the close of Richard IPs reign in 
 1327. It covers, therefore, something more than two centuries and a 
 half. The first part of this period has no literary history, so far 
 as English is concerned, for no English books were written, except 
 that the English Chronicle was continued at the monastery of Peter- 
 borough until 1154. The first part of the chapter deals with the 
 fusion of the Norman and Saxon races. The Normans were not orig- 
 inally a very different people from the Saxons. How were they related, 
 in race and by their original habits of life? What had made them 
 different? State the chief facts in the history of the Norman-French 
 up to the time of the conquest of England. Note the changes which 
 took place in England by reason of the conquest, in architecture, in 
 laws, in speech. Note the steps by which the two peoples drew to- 
 gether, politically, under William I, Henry I, Henry II, John and 
 Edwp.rd I. In what manner did the English speech manage to survive? 
 When it reappeared again as a written language, how had it changed 
 in character? How long did it take this new language to absorb the 
 French? In view of the fact that English absorbed a body of French 
 words nearly three times its own bulk, how do you explain the fact 
 that it retained its individuality as a language ? The metrical romance, 
 or chanson de geste (song of deeds) was transplanted to English soil 
 at the very beginning of the Norman occupation, and was for a long 
 time written only in French. Note the various sources from which 
 these romances were drawn; note also that the use of the King Arthur 
 legends by the trouveres brought into English literature the first large 
 Celtic element, corresponding to the large proportion of Celtic blood 
 in the Normans, and the smaller but still considerable ingredient which 
 the Saxons had absorbed from the Celts of Britain. Give the story of 
 Layamon, and indicate the nature of his " Brut." What elements of the 
 King Arthur legend did he add to what was already given by his prede- 
 cessors ? How was he enabled to make these additions ? At what period 
 were the French romances translated into English ? Outline the story of 
 SirGawayne and the Green Knight, answering the following questions: 
 (a) Why does Gawayne set out to find the Green Chapel ? (b) Whose is 
 the castle where he finds shelter? (c) What compact does ne make 
 with the lord of the castle? (d) Why does Morgain try to tempt him to 
 deceive the lord ? (e) Why did the Knights of the Round Table wear 
 the green belt ? Why is " The Pearl" so called ? What are the indi- 
 cations in the ballads and songs of the late thirteenth and early
 
 Reading Guide 37 
 
 fourteenth centuries that a new spirit was coming over English liter- 
 ature? Note the joyousness and outdoor freshness of these poems 
 which herald Chaucer, the freshest and most joyous in temper of all 
 English poets. 
 
 READING GUIDE. The literature of this period is accessible only 
 with difficulty and in expensive form; little or nothing can be required 
 of a student in the way of private reading. If the teacher can secure 
 Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, or H. Mor- 
 ley's Early English Prose Romances (in the Carisbrooke Library 
 series), enough should be read to the class to illustrate the nature of 
 the early romance. Extracts from Layamon's "Brut" and an epitome 
 of the whole poem are given in Morley's English Writers, Vol. Ill, 
 pp. 212-227. This will serve admirably for illustration, and is more 
 accessible than the above. "The Pearl," text and translation, is edited 
 by Israel Gollanz (Nutt). * The lyrics "Alysoun" and "Lent is come 
 with love to town" are given in Morris and Skeat's Specimens of 
 Early English. The "Love Rune" of Thomas de Hales can be found 
 in B. Ten Brink's History of English Literature, Vol. I. 
 
 Fiction. Charles Kingsley's "Hereward the Wake" and Sir Walter 
 Scott's "Ivanhoe" give vivid pictures of society during the Norman 
 and Angevin period. Hereward deals with the times of William I, 
 Ivanhoe with those of Richard Cceur de Lion. 
 
 For a tabular view of this period, see close of Chapter IV.
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London 
 
 GEOFFREY CHAUCER 
 From the Occleve manuscript
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD: THE AGE OF 
 CHAUCER 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 Historical Events of Chaucer's Time. In 1327, thirteen 
 years before the date which scholars have set as the probable 
 year of Chaucer's birth, Edward III came to the throne of 
 England. He reigned for fifty years, and the first part of 
 his reign was one of prosperity at home and victory abroad. 
 Up to this time England had been an agricultural country. 
 Now, taking example from Flanders, the birthplace of Ed- 
 ward's queen, Philippa, Englishmen began to grow wool 
 on a large scale. Flemish weavers were imported to teach 
 them to manufacture this wool into finished products. The 
 wool industry became one of the chief sources of English 
 wealth ; and to symbolize this fact, a crimson cushion stuffed 
 with sheep shearings, the Woolsack, was used henceforth as 
 the seat of the lord chancellor in the upper house of Parlia- 
 ment. Early in Edward's reign the French, jealous of Eng- 
 land's growing trade, attacked her merchant ships. In re- 
 taliation Edward boldly laid claim to the throne of France, 
 to which he had a shadowy title. Gathering together his 
 mounted knights and stout yeomen, armed with pike and 
 long-bow, he invaded France, and in 1346 won the great 
 victory of Cre"cy. Ten years later his heroic son, the Black 
 Prince, won the still more splendid victory of Poictiers, de- 
 feating a French force five times as great as his own, and 
 bringing John, the French king, captive to London. The 
 struggle with France went on for a long time under succeed- 
 ing kings ; so long, indeed, that it is known in history as the 
 Hundred Years' War. Its effect was immensely to strengthen 
 the unity of England. It was the Saxon yeomen with their 
 
 39
 
 40 Middle English Period 
 
 long-bows who won England's victories at Cre"cy and Poic- 
 tiers, and afterwards at Agincourt under Henry V. The last 
 remnants of hatred and suspicion between Norman and 
 Saxon faded away in a common national pride and patriotism. 
 
 Edward Ill's successor, Richard II, came to the throne in 
 1377. He was so weak a ruler that he won the nickname of 
 Richard the Redeless. The royal power during a large por- 
 tion of his reign of twenty-two years was in the hands of 
 his uncle, John of Gaunt, brother of the Black Prince, and 
 the patron of Chaucer. In 1399, a year before Chaucer's 
 death, the sceptre was wrested from Richard's feeble hands 
 by Henry of Bolingbroke, duke of Lancaster, son of John of 
 Gaunt, who ascended the throne as Henry IV. As will be 
 seen, almost all these political events had an effect in deter- 
 mining the career of the poet whose writings remain as the 
 chief glory of this epoch of English history. 
 
 Society in Chaucer's Time. The society of the period, the 
 brighter and happier aspects of which Chaucer so brilliantly 
 portrayed, was full of sharp contrasts. Riches and poverty, 
 splendor and squalor, unbounded license and the most crush- 
 ing servitude, existed side by side. No bounds were set to 
 the luxury which court and nobles displayed in dress, food, 
 hunting equipage and furnishings of war. Rich merchants 
 vied with the aristocratic classes in the splendor of their way 
 of living ; and the great guilds, or brotherhoods of trade and 
 handicraft, banqueted in halls which a king might have 
 envied. On the other hand, a large proportion of the popu- 
 lation were villeins or serfs, bound to the soil, doomed to 
 pitiless labor and harsh exaction. Nor was the contrast 
 merely one of classes. Lords and ladies, dressed in rare 
 silks and cloth of gold, and loaded with precious gems, ate 
 from golden dishes with their fingers, forks being unknown ; 
 and threw fragments of the feast to the dogs who quarrelled 
 and fought among the soiled rushes of the floor. At a time 
 when Edward III was founding Winchester College, the 
 first great English public school, and when Oxford was 
 awakening to a new enthusiasm for learning, many nobles 
 could not read. Printing was unknown; books had to be 
 copied by hand, and were very cumbersome and expensive.
 
 Introduction 41 
 
 Chivalry had reached its highest point of outward splendor; 
 its tournaments and other ceremonies were miracles of great 
 display: but as a vital creed it was fast losing its hold upon 
 men. Side by side with the corrupt clergy, who in their great 
 abbeys and monasteries lived a life of sensual ease, we find an 
 organization of "poor priests" going up and down the country 
 with bare feet, staff, and russet gown, preaching the pure 
 word of God in all meekness and self-sacrifice. 
 
 The London of Chaucer's day was in some respects a 
 stately city. On the north ran a strong feudal wall with tower- 
 guarded gates; on the south flowed the broad river, crowded 
 with shipping, and spanned by a great bridge on which houses 
 and shops clustered thick ; the gloomy massive Tower rose at 
 one end of the city, the beautiful abbey of Westminster and 
 the Parliament Hall at the other, and the Gothic spires of old 
 St. Paul's crowned the hill between; noblemen's palaces, 
 guild-halls, monasteries and churches, of rich and pictur- 
 esque design, gave splendor to the narrow, tortuous, and ill- 
 kept streets. Throughout the country the gloomy Norman 
 castles, with their moats and thick- walled donjon-keeps, 
 had given way to castles which, though still fortified, were 
 more friendly and habitable. The cultivated parts of the 
 island were dotted with manor houses where hearty free- 
 holders, like the franklin of the Canterbury Tales, ruled 
 their broad acres and dispensed a bounteous hospitality. 
 Travel was very unsafe, for men in "buckram and Kendal 
 green," the successors of Robin Hood and his merry men, 
 lay in wait for booty, and levied tribute upon merchant, 
 nobleman, and churchman alike. England's navy had al- 
 ready come into being, and her growing sea-trade, with which 
 piracy and smuggling were not seldom combined, filled her 
 seaports with a motley crowd of foreign types. Internal com- 
 merce was carried on largely by means of fairs, where chap- 
 men brought their wares and mountebanks their tricks, as to 
 that fair which Bunyan described, three centuries later, in 
 his Pilgrim's Progress. News was spread chiefly by wander- 
 ing pedlers, or by pilgrims journeying to or from some holy 
 shrine. The sports of the nobility and clergy were hunting, 
 hawking, and jousting at tournaments; the poorer classes
 
 42 Middle English Period 
 
 amused themselves with wrestling, single-stick, archery, and 
 in many crueler ways, such as baiting bulls and bears with 
 savage dogs. All classes alike looked on with awed interest 
 at the miracle-plays, biblical dramas presented by appren- 
 tices of the trade guilds, with a movable wagon for stage 
 and the open street for theatre. 
 
 Such was the picturesque and varied society which Chaucer, 
 the great realist and observer, brings before us. A part of 
 the rich heritage he has left us he received from loving ac- 
 quaintance with nature ; a part came to him through books, 
 of which he was a devoted student ; but the greater part came 
 from the human life about him. He was at once a dreamer, 
 a student, and a man of affairs ; and it was in this last capacity 
 that he got his largest training, from war, the court, travel, 
 business, and politics. 
 
 II. GEOFFREY CHAUCER (1340-1400) 
 
 Chaucer's Youth. Geoffrey Chaucer was born about 1340, 
 of a family of London merchants. His father, a member of 
 the Corporation of Vintners, had been purveyor to King Ed- 
 ward III. When Chaucer was a boy of six the nation was 
 stirred by the news of Crecy ; and as a lad of sixteen he may 
 have witnessed, after Poictiers, the triumphal entry of the 
 Black Prince into London, bringing with him as a captive 
 the French king. The connection of Chaucer's father with 
 the court, as purveyor of wines to the royal table, may have 
 been the circumstance which made it possible for Chaucer, 
 when about seventeen, to become a page in the household of 
 the king's daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Clarence. Two 
 years later he went with the king's army to France. Here he 
 saw unrolled the brilliant pageant of mediaeval war, at a time 
 when chivalry and knighthood, though they had lost some- 
 thing of their inner meaning, still gave occasion for rich 
 display. He beheld the unsuccessful siege of the city of 
 Rheims, was captured by the French, and held as a prisoner 
 of war until ransomed by his royal master. 
 
 Chaucer's French Period. On his return to England Chau- 
 cer was made a Squire of the King's Bedchamber, and proba-
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer . 43 
 
 bly spent the next ten years at Edward's court, then the most 
 brilliant in Europe. The court of Edward was still prac- 
 tically a French court; and Chaucer, although he seems to 
 have decided very early to use his native tongue, necessarily 
 turned to France for his literary models. The first period of 
 his poetic life was spent in learning all that the French 
 trouveres and ballad-writers had to teach him concerning his 
 chosen art. The most famous work which the school of 
 French trouveres had produced was the Roman de la Rose, 
 an elaborate allegory of love, the rose, growing in a mystic 
 garden, warded by symbolic figures from the lover's approach. 
 The Roman de la Rose was Chaucer's first training school, 
 and he took his training with characteristic thoroughness 
 by translating the poem into English verse. Less than two 
 thousand lines of this translation have survived ; indeed, the 
 whole may never have been completed. But the Roman 
 de la Rose left a profound impression upon Chaucer's work, 
 and for years he thought and wrote in the atmosphere which 
 it created for him. During these years of French influence 
 he wrote, for the knights and ladies of King Edward's court, 
 those "ballades, roundels, virelays," by which his fellow-poet 
 Gower says "the land fulfilled was over-all." The most 
 important work which remains to us from his pure French 
 period, however, is the Book of the Dttchesse, also known 
 as "The Death of Blaunche the Duchesse," written in 1369, 
 to solace the bereavement of her husband, John of Gaunt, 
 the king's third son. 
 
 Chaucer's Middle Life : Italian Period. In 1370, Chaucer 
 was sent to the Continent on royal business. This was the 
 first of many official missions which he executed for the king 
 during the next ten years, in various parts of Europe, especially 
 in Italy, where he went twice as the king's emissary. The 
 opportunity afforded by these journeys for converse with 
 many types of men, and observation of widely varying man- 
 ners, was of the utmost importance in his poetic education. 
 
 On Chaucer's return to England after his first Italian mis- 
 sion, in 1372, his services were rewarded by the gift of the im- 
 portant post of controller of the customs on wool, skins, and 
 tanned hides at the port of London ; to which was added the
 
 44 Middle English Period 
 
 grant of a daily pitcher of wine from the king's cellars. His 
 office as controller was an arduous one, requiring his constant 
 attendance. He was by this time married to Philippa, lady- 
 in-waiting to the queen, and lived in a house over one of the 
 city gates near the Tower. We get from his poems various 
 glimpses of his daily life, especially of his eagerness for study, 
 which, after the day's work was done, would send him home, 
 regardless of rest and "newe thinges," to sit "as domb as 
 any stone" over his book, until his eyes were dazed. But 
 he was more than a student. The great books he had come 
 to know in Italy gave him no peace, until he should equal 
 or surpass them. In 1382, on the betrothal of the boy king, 
 Richard II, to the young princess Anne of Bohemia, Chau- 
 cer wrote a wedding poem for the royal pair, the Parlement 
 of Fowls. Troilus and Creseide and the House of Fame be- 
 long also to this central or "Italian," period, of Chaucer's 
 literary life. In 1385 he was allowed to discharge his duties 
 as customs officer by deputy. The first result of his new- 
 found leisure was The Legend of Good Women, dedicated to 
 the young queen. 
 
 Chaucer's Later Life : English Period. In 1386 Chaucer 
 was sent to Parliament as member from Kent. This Parlia- 
 ment was in opposition to Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt, 
 and Chaucer was deprived of his office as .controller. Three 
 years later John of Gaunt regained influence, and as a re- 
 newed sign of favor Chaucer was made clerk of the king's 
 works (supervising architect) at Westminster, the Tower, 
 Windsor Castle, and other places. During these years his 
 masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales, was written. Toward the 
 end of Richard II's reign Chaucer fell into poverty, from 
 causes not well known; but in 1399, on the accesssion of 
 Henry IV, a ballad entitled "The Compleint of Chaucer to 
 his Empty Purse" brought him substantial aid. He died 
 in 1400. 
 
 Influence of Italy Upon Chaucer. The most important 
 event in Chaucer's life was his first visit to Italy, on the king's 
 business, in 1372. Italy was then at the zenith of her artistic 
 energy, in the full splendor of that illumination which had 
 followed the intellectual twilight of the Middle Ages, and
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer 45 
 
 which we know as the Renaissance, or "New Birth." Each 
 of her little city-states was a centre of marvellous activity, 
 and everywhere were being produced those masterpieces of 
 painting, sculpture, and architecture, which still make Italy 
 a place of pilgrimage for aU lovers of art. The literary ac- 
 tivity was equally great, at least in Tuscany. The world 
 which lay open to Chaucer's gaze when he crossed the 
 Alps, was one calculated to fascinate and stimulate him in 
 the highest degree. Whether he saw Petrarch or Boccaccio 
 in person is not known, but, from this time on, his work was 
 largely influenced by them, as well as by Dante. Through 
 all three he came into closer contact with the great literature 
 of the past, and acquired a new reverence for the ancient 
 masters. 
 
 "Troilus and Creseide." Both the Parlement of Fowls 
 and the House of Fame are colored with Italian reminis- 
 cence ; but the chief fruit of Chaucer's Italian journeys was 
 the long poem adapted from Boccaccio's Philostrato (The 
 Love-stricken One), entitled by Chaucer Troilus and Cres- 
 eide. The story of the love of the young Trojan hero for 
 Cressida, and of her desertion of him for the Greek Diome- 
 des, Chaucer pretended only to translate, but he changed 
 the theme radically. In his hands, the lovers' go-between, 
 Pandarus, is transformed from a gilded youth of Troilus 's 
 own age and temperament, to a middle-aged man, plausible, 
 good-natured, full of easy worldly wisdom and vulgar ideals 
 a character as truly alive as if Shakespeare had drawn him. 
 The growth of the love-passion in Cressida's heart is traced 
 through its gradual stages with a truth and insight entirely 
 new in English poetry. The " background " of the poem is 
 painted with the most delightful realism. Though the scene 
 is ancient Troy, and the costumes are those of mediaeval 
 knights and ladies, we seem, in many passages of the poem, 
 to be looking at a modern play or reading from a modern 
 novel, so homely and actual does it appear. 
 
 " The Legend of Good Women." The Legend of Good 
 Women, which marks the close of Chaucer's Italian period, 
 has for its prologue the most charming of the poet's many 
 passages of personal confession and self-revealment. He
 
 46 Middle English Period 
 
 represents himself as wandering in the fields on the May- 
 day, the only season which can tempt him from his books. 
 The birds are singing to their mates their song of "blessed 
 be Seynt Valentyn!", and Zephyrus and Flora, as "god and 
 goddesse of the flowery mede," have spread the earth with 
 fragrant blossoms. But the poet has eyes only for one flower, 
 the daisy, the"emperice (empress) and flower of floweres 
 alle." All day long he leans and pores upon the flower; 
 and when at last it has folded its leaves at the coming of 
 night, he goes home to rest, with the thought of rising early 
 to gaze upon it once more. He makes his couch out-of-doors, 
 in a little arbor, and here he has a wonderful dream. He 
 dreams that he is again in the fields, kneeling by the daisy, 
 and sees approaching a procession of bright forms. First 
 comes the young god of love, clad in silk embroidered with 
 red rose-leaves and sprays of green, his "gilt hair" crowned 
 with light, in his hand two fiery darts, and his wings spread 
 angel-like. He leads by the hand a queen, clad in green and 
 crowned with a fillet of daisies under a band of gold. She is 
 Alcestis, who died to save her husband Admetus. Behind 
 her comes an endless train of women who have been "true 
 of love." They kneel in a circle about the poet, and sing 
 honor to woman's truth, and to the daisy flower, the emblem 
 of Alcestis. The love-god then glowers angrily upon Chau- 
 cer, and upbraids him for having done despite to women, 
 in translating the Roman de la Rose, with its satire upon 
 their foibles ; and in writing the story of Cressida, so dishon- 
 orable to the steadfastness of the sex. Alcestis comes to his 
 rescue, and agrees to pardon his misdeeds if he will spend 
 the rest of his life in making a "glorious Legend of Good 
 Women," and will send it, on her behalf, to the English 
 queen. Chaucer promises solemnly, and as soon as he 
 wakes, betakes himself to his task. 
 
 It is probable that Chaucer did indeed enter upon this 
 poem with the design of devoting to it many years, and of 
 making it his masterpiece. But he left it unfinished, per- 
 haps for the reason that all the stories illustrate the same 
 theme, and lack, when taken together, that element of sur- 
 prise and contrast essential to keep up the interest.
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer 47 
 
 " The Canterbury Tales." The drift of Chaucer's, genius, 
 as he grew older, was more and more toward the portrayal 
 of actual life. He had a wide experience of men, of all 
 ranks and conditions ; and he had been storing up for years, 
 with his keenly observant, quiet eyes, the materials for a 
 presentation of contemporary society on a great scale. More- 
 over, while Chaucer was growing up, England had been 
 growing conscious of herself. The struggle with France had 
 at last unified the people. They were no longer Norman 
 and Saxon, but English ; and the brilliancy of Edward Ill's 
 early reign had given to this new people their first intoxicating 
 draught of national pride. The growing power of parlia- 
 ment tended to foster in the nation the feeling of unity and 
 strength. As a member of parliament and a government 
 officer, Chaucer felt these influences to the full. It must 
 have seemed more and more important to him that the crown- 
 ing work of his life should in some way represent the varied 
 spectacle of the society in which he moved. With the happy 
 fortune of genius, he hit, in his Canterbury Tales, upon a 
 scheme wonderfully conceived for the ends he had in view. 
 Collections of stories, both secular and sacred, had been 
 popular in the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance inherited 
 the taste for them. Boccaccio had set the example of throw- 
 ing a graceful trellis- work of incident and dialogue about the 
 separate stories of a collection. Chaucer, while adopting a 
 similar framework, made his setting thoroughly national and 
 racy ; individualized his characters so as to make of them a 
 gallery of living portraits of his time. 
 
 The Pilgrims at the Tabard. He represents himself as 
 alighting, one spring evening, at the Tabard Inn, in South- 
 wark, a suburb at the southern end of London Bridge, where 
 afterward the famous Elizabethan playhouses, Shakespeare's 
 among them, were to arise. Southwark was the place of 
 departure and arrival for all South-of- England travel, and 
 especially for pilgrimages to the world-renowned shrine of 
 Thomas-a-Becket, at Canterbury. A company bent on such 
 a pilgrimage Chaucer finds gathered at the inn. He makes 
 their acquaintance, and joins himself with them for the jour- 
 ney. Counting the poet, they are thirty in all. There is a
 
 48 Middle English Period 
 
 Knight lately from the foreign wars, a man who has fought in 
 Prussia and in Turkey, jousted in Trasimene, and been 
 present at the storming of Alexandria a high-minded, gen- 
 tle-mannered, knightly adventurer, type of the chivalry which 
 in Chaucer's time was passing rapidly away. With him is 
 his son, a young squire, curly-haired and gay, his short 
 white-sleeved gown embroidered like a mead with red and 
 white flowers; he is an epitome of the gifts and graces of 
 brilliant youth. It is pleasant to think of the Squire as repre- 
 senting Chaucer himself, as he was when a young man at 
 Edward's court. Their servant is a yeoman, in coat and hood 
 of green, a sheaf of peacock-arrows under his belt, a mighty 
 bow in his hand, and a silver image of St. Christopher upon 
 his breast; he is the type of that sturdy English yeomanry 
 which with its gray-goose shafts humbled the pride of France 
 at Crecy and Agincourt. 
 
 There is a whole group of ecclesiastical figures, repre- 
 senting in their numbers and variety the immense growth 
 of the mediaeval Church. Most of them are satirical por- 
 traits, in their worldliness and gross materialism only too 
 faithful representatives of the corrupt Catholicism against 
 which the reformer Wyclif struggled. First of all there is 
 a monk, who cares only for hunting and good cheer ; his bald 
 head shines like glass, his "steep eyes" roll in his head; he 
 rides a sleek brown palfrey, and has "many a dainty horse" 
 in his stables; his sleeves 'are trimmed with fine fur at 
 the wrists, his hood is fastened under his chin with a gold 
 love knot. As a companion figure to the hunting monk, 
 Chaucer gives us "Madame Eglantyne," the prioress; she is 
 a teacher of young ladies, speaks French with a provincial 
 accent, "after the school of Stratford-atte-bowe"; she is ex- 
 quisite in her table-manners, counterfeiting as well as she 
 can the stately behavior of the court. Other ecclesiastics 
 are there, hangers-on and caterpillars of the Church: the 
 Summoner, a repulsive person with "fire-red cherubim face" ; 
 the Pardoner, with his bag full of pardons," come from Rome 
 all hot," and of bits of cloth and pig's-bones which he sells 
 as relics of the holy saints. Chaucer's treatment of these 
 evil churchmen is highly good-natured and tolerant; he
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer 49 
 
 never takes the tone of moral indignation against them. But 
 he does better ; he sets beside them, as a type of the true shep- 
 herd of the Church, a "poor parson," such as, under Wyclif's 
 teaching, had begun that great movement for the purifica- 
 tion of the Church which was to result, more than a cen- 
 tury later, in the Reformation. Chaucer paints the char- 
 acter of the Parson, poor in this world's goods but "rich 
 of holy thought and work," with loving and reverent touch. 
 The Parson's brother travels with him a Plowman, a 
 "true s winker and a good," who helps his poor neighbors 
 without hire and loves them as himself ; he reminds us of 
 that Piers Plowman of whom Langland, Chaucer's great 
 contemporary, wrote in his "Vision." A crowd of other 
 figures fill the canvas. There is a Shipman from the west- 
 country, a representative of those adventurous seamen, half 
 merchant-sailors, half smugglers and pirates, who had al- 
 ready made England's name a terror on the seas, and paved 
 the way for her future naval supremacy. There is a poor 
 Clerk of Oxford, riding a horse as lean as a rake, and dressed 
 in threadbare cloak, who spends all that he can beg or bor- 
 row upon books; he represents that passion for learning 
 which was already astir everywhere in Europe. There is 
 a Merchant, in a Flemish beaver, on a high horse, conceal- 
 ing, with the grave importance of his air, the fact that he 
 is in debt. There is a group of guild-men, in the livery of 
 their guild, all worthy to be aldermen; together with the 
 merchant, they represent the mercantile and manufacturing 
 activity which was lifting England rapidly to the rank of 
 a great commercial power. There is the Wife of Bath, a 
 figure conceived with masterly humor and realism ; she has 
 had "husbands five at church-door," and, though' "somdel 
 deaf," expects to live to wed several others; she rides on an 
 ambler, with spurs and scarlet hose on her feet, and on her 
 head a hat as broad as a buckler. These, and a dozen others, 
 are all painted in vivid colors, and with wonderful truth to 
 nature. Taken as a whole, they represent the entire range 
 of English society in the fourteenth century, with the ex- 
 ception of the highest aristocracy and the lowest order of 
 serfs.
 
 50 Middle English Period 
 
 At supper this goodly company hears from the host of 
 the Tabard a proposition that on their journey to Canter- 
 bury, to beguile the tedium of the ride, each of them shall 
 tell two tales, and on the homeward journey two more.* He 
 agrees to travel with them, to act as master-of-ceremonies, 
 and on their return to render judgment as to who has told 
 the best story, the winner to be given a supper at the general 
 expense. So it is agreed. 
 
 The Pilgrims on the Road. The next morning they set 
 out bright and early on their journey southward to the cathe- 
 dral city. They draw lots to determine who shall tell the 
 first tale. The lot falls to the Knight, who tells the charming 
 chivalric story of "Palamon and Arcite." When it is fin- 
 ished the Host calls upon the Monk to follow. But the 
 Miller, who is already drunk and quarrelsome, insists on 
 being heard, and launches forthwith into a very unedifying 
 tale. The Host rises in his stirrups and calls on the Parson 
 for a story, "by Goddes dignitee!" The Parson reproves 
 him for swearing; whereupon the Host cries that he "smells 
 a Lollard f in the wind," and bids the company prepare for 
 a sermon. This is too much for the Shipman, who breaks 
 in impatiently. When the Host calls upon the Prioress, he 
 changes his bluff manner to correspond with her rank and 
 excessive refinement, speaking with polite circumlocution, 
 "as courteously as it had been a maid." The Prioress re- 
 sponds graciously, and tells the story of "Hugh of Lincoln," 
 the little martyr who, after his throat had been cut by the 
 wicked Jews, and his body thrown into a pit, still sang with 
 clear young voice his Alma Redemptoris to the glory of the 
 Virgin. 
 
 So the stories continue, interrupted by vivid dialogue 
 and action on the part of the pilgrims. Two of the most 
 charming tales are told by the Clerk and the young Squire. 
 The Clerk, after he has been rallied by the Host upon his 
 
 * Counting the Canon's Yeoman (who joins them on the road) the story- 
 tellers are thirty-one in number, making a total of a hundred and twenty- 
 four tales to be told. Less than a fifth of this number were actually written, 
 and several of these were left fragmentary. 
 
 t The followers of Wyclif were called Lollards. See p. 53.
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer 51 
 
 still and thoughtful manner of riding, agrees to relate a 
 story which he learned at Padua of "Francis Petrarch, 
 the laureate poet, whose rhetoric sweet enlumined all Italy 
 of poetry." It is the story of Patient Grissel, which Chau- 
 cer borrowed from Petrarch's Latin version. The Squire's 
 tale, as befits his years and disposition, is a bright tale of love, 
 adventure, and magic, in which figure a flying horse of brass 
 and other wonders. 
 
 Chaucer's Picture of Himself among the Pilgrims. Chau- 
 cer introduces himself into the succession of story-tellers with 
 characteristic modesty and sly humor. Sobered by the 
 miraculous tale of Hugh of Lincoln, the company is riding 
 silently along, when the Host, to break the awe-struck mood, 
 turns to Chaucer, and begins to joke him upon his shy ab- 
 stracted air and his corpulency: 
 
 "what man artow?" quod he; 
 "Thou lokest as thou woldest finde an hare, 
 For ever upon the ground I see thee stare. 
 Approache neer, and loke up merily. 
 Now war yow, sirs, and lat this man have place; 
 He in the waist is shape as wel as I ... 
 He semeth elvish by his countenaunce 
 For unto no wight dooth he daliaunce." 
 
 Chaucer, thus rallied, begins one of those doggerel rhymes 
 of knightly adventure, to which the romances of chivalry had 
 in his day degenerated. The "Rhyme of Sir Thopas" is a 
 capital burlesque of a style of poetry which Chaucer himself 
 had come to supplant. He has not got far before the Host 
 cries out upon the "drasty rhyming," and Chaucer meekly 
 agrees to contribute instead "a little thing in prose," a "moral 
 tale"; and he proceeds with the story of Melibeus and his 
 wife Prudence. It is very dreary tale indeed, matched for 
 tediousness only by the prose sermon put into the mouth of 
 the Parson, with which the Canterbury Tales, in the frag- 
 mentary form in which they were left, conclude. It is 
 curious to note how Chaucer's style becomes awkward, in- 
 volved, and wearisome, as soon as he deserts his natural 
 medium of verse, and attempts to write in prose.
 
 52 Middle English Period 
 
 Chaucer's Literary Art. In the sixteenth century and 
 later, when, owing to the change in the pronunciation of 
 words (especially the loss of the final e), the secret of Chau- 
 cer's versification was lost, he was regarded as a barbarous 
 writer, ignorant of prosody, and with no ear for the melody 
 of verse. The contrary of this was the case. He was an 
 artist in verse-effects, who paid heed to all the niceties of 
 rhythm and tone-color. In a half-humorous address to his 
 scrivener Adam, he calls down curses upon that unworthy 
 servant, for spoiling good verses by bad copying, and in 
 Troilus and Creseide he beseeches his readers not to "mis- 
 metre" his book. From his very earliest poems, his work is 
 in all formal details faultless ; and as he progressed in skill, 
 his music became constantly more varied and flexible. His 
 early manner reaches its height in the exquisite rondel, in- 
 tricate in form but handled with great simplicity of effect, 
 which brings the Parlement of Fowls to a melodious close. 
 A good example of his later music may be found in the 
 description of the Temple of Venus in the "Knight's Tale"; 
 or, as a study in a graver key, in the ballad "Flee fro the 
 Press," which marks so impressively the deepening serious- 
 ness of Chaucer's mind in his last years. 
 
 III. JOHN WYCLIF (1320-1384) 
 
 The Peasant Rebellion. The second half of the four- 
 teenth century was a time of great suffering among the poor 
 people of England. Four terrible plagues, the first in 1349, 
 the last in 1375, swept over the country, carrying death 
 everywhere. Frightful storms destroyed the crops. The 
 exactions of the Church, the extravagances of Edward III, 
 and the heavy cost of his foreign wars, added to the burden 
 borne by the distracted peasantry. In 1381 an immense 
 uprising of the peasants occurred, under the leadership of 
 Wat Tyler and a socialist priest of Kent, named John 
 Balle. They marched on London, sacked the Tower and 
 the Savoy palace, and murdered an archbishop; it seemed 
 for a time as if the throne and the whole social order were 
 about to be overturned.
 
 John Wyclif 53 
 
 The Lollard Movement. During this time of social dis- 
 tress, John Wyclif planned and carried out a great practical 
 movement, known as the Lollard movement, for combat- 
 ting the corruptions of the Church, and arousing the common 
 people to a more vital religious life. He sent out simple 
 devoted men to preach the gospel in the native tongue, 
 and to bring home to their hearers the living truths of relig- 
 ion. These "poor priests," dressed in coarse russet robes 
 and carrying staves, travelled through the length and breadth 
 of the land, as Wesley's preachers travelled four centuries 
 later, calling men back to the simple faith of apostolic times. 
 Wyclif and his Lollard priests began the great Protestant 
 appeal from the dogmas of the Church to the Bible, which 
 culminated, in the sixteenth century, in Luther and the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Wyclif's Bible. In order to make this appeal effective 
 with the masses, Wyclif undertook to translate the whole 
 of the Bible into English. Up to Wyclif's time the Bible had 
 not been translated. The Saxon scholar, Bede, had done 
 the gospel of St. John into the dialect of Northumbria, and 
 Aelfric had made a version of some parts of the Old Testa- 
 ment in the dialect of Wessex ; but the men of the fourteenth 
 century could understand Saxon no more than we can to- 
 day. The Bible was in the hands of the priests, in the 
 Latin form known as the Vulgate. Wyclif determined to 
 translate it into simple English, and to put it within reach 
 of the humblest reader. With the assistance of Nicholas 
 of Hereford, he completed his great task before his death 
 in 1384. It is the first great monument of prose style in 
 English. By virtue of it, and of the sermons and tracts 
 which he wrote in homely vigorous speech for the under- 
 standing of simple people, Wyclif earned the title of "father 
 of English prose." He may with equal justice be called the 
 father of the English Reformation ; for the seed he sowed did 
 not perish. His corpse was burned by the Church, we are 
 told, and his ashes thrown into a brook near his parsonage of 
 Lutterworth, in order that no trace might remain of the ' arch- 
 heretic"; but, says a pious old historian, "this brook did 
 convey his ashes into the Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into
 
 54 Middle English Period 
 
 the narrow sea, and that into the wide ocean. And so the 
 ashes of Wyclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now 
 dispersed all the world over." 
 
 Chaucer Contrasted with Langland. The peasant rebellion 
 and the Lollard agitation give us glimpses of an England 
 which Chaucer, in spite of the many-sidedness of his work, 
 did not reveal. Chaucer wrote for the court and the cultivated 
 classes, to whom the sufferings of the poor were either un- 
 known, or accepted as a part of the natural order of things. 
 In his graceful worldliness, his delight in the bright pagean- 
 try of life, he shows the Norman-French strain, with its large 
 infusion of Celtic blood; the other half of the English na- 
 ture, its mystical, sombre, spiritually earnest side, found 
 expression in William Langland, author of the Book Concern- 
 ing Piers the Plowman. He proceeds from the pure Ger- 
 manic strain in the nation, and is the representative of 
 those moral and spiritual traits which afterward came to be 
 known as Puritan. 
 
 V. LANGLAND AND THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN 
 
 Langland's Life and Character. William Langland was 
 born at Colesbury Mortimer, near Malvern in Worcestershire, 
 not far from the Welsh border. He tells us that "his father 
 and friends" put him to school, and made a clerk of him. 
 For a time he "roamed about robed in russet," in the man- 
 ner of a mendicant, driven by vague thoughts and desires. 
 Going up to London, he got him a "chantry for souls," one 
 of the minor offices of the mediaeX'al Church, his duty being 
 to chant at stated intervals for the release from purgatory 
 of the soul of some dead man, who had left a bequest for 
 that purpose. His poverty was extreme. With his wife Kitte 
 and his daughter Calote, he lived in Cornhill, where his 
 tall, gaunt figure, clothed in a sombre priestly cloak, got 
 him the nickname of "Long Will." As he stalked through 
 the crowded Strand, he would refuse to bow to fine lords 
 and ladies clad in furs and silver, and to cry " God save you, 
 sir!" to sergeants of the law. His conduct toward the rich 
 and great, so unusual in that day, got him the name of an
 
 William Langland 55 
 
 eccentric person, somewhat touched in the brain. Hints of 
 mental struggles verging upon insanity occur in his con- 
 fessions. "My wit waxed and waned," he says, " until I 
 was a fool." His writings reveal a half-ferocious sincerity, a 
 flaming indignation against the pretences and base compla- 
 cencies of the world, combined with the inward exaltation 
 of the visionary. The last trace we get of him is in Bristol, 
 where, in 1399, he was writing "Richard the Redeless," a 
 poem of protest and warning addressed to King Richard II. 
 Apparently, news reached him of the assassination of the king 
 and of the usurpation of the throne by Henry IV., and he threw 
 the poem by unfinished. The. date of his death is unknown. 
 
 " The Book of Piers the Plowman." Langland's life-work 
 was his great poem, "The Vision of William Concerning Piers 
 the Plowman." He worked upon it for at least thirty years, 
 constantly rewriting and expanding it. In these rewritings 
 and recastings it grew from eight cantos to twenty-three ; and 
 the conception of the chief character, " Piers the Plowman," 
 grew constantly more exalted. At first he is merely an honest, 
 simple-hearted farmer, full of Christian helpfulness and prac- 
 tical justice. But in the later versions he is raised and glori- 
 fied, and is conceived of mystically as Jesus Christ, incarnate 
 in the form of a lowly tiller of the fields. 
 
 On a May morning, on Malvern Hills, the poet, "weary 
 forwandered," lies down to rest, and dreams. Beneath him, 
 in the great plain, he sees gathered together a vast crowd of 
 people, representing the manifold life of the world. All are 
 busy, but their work is, with few exceptions, evil or futile. 
 Some are sowing or ploughing, but only that idlers may waste 
 the fruit of their toil. Pilgrims are journeying to holy shrines, 
 that they rnay "lie all their lives after;" minstrels and ribald 
 story-tellers are plying their trade ; friars and pardoners are 
 abusing their priestly station for their own low ends. Law- 
 sergeants, tradesmen, and taverners mix with the changing 
 crowd, and contribute each his characteristic abuse. The 
 genius of the crowd, the incarnation of the worldly spirit, is 
 Lady Meed (Bribery), a wonderful allegorical figure, symbol 
 of that dishonesty which Langland everywhere saw poisoning 
 the springs of social and political life.
 
 56 Middle English Period 
 
 Next we are shown the "Seven Deadly Sins," and other 
 allegorical figures, painted with so much realism, that they 
 seem like living beings, with whom, indeed, they mingle on 
 equal terms. Among them is Piers, and to him they appeal 
 to show them the way to Truth, i.e., to God the Father. Piers 
 knows Truth well, but refuses to go until he has ploughed his 
 half-acre. All who come asking for guidance he sets to work. 
 Many shirk their tasks, but are driven back by Hunger. This 
 part of the poem preaches, as preparatory to personal salva- 
 tion, the Gospel of Work the same gospel which Carlyle, 
 who has many points of resemblance to Langland, was to 
 preach five centuries afterward. 
 
 The Vision reaches its highest point of imagination in the 
 account of Piers's triumph over Death and Hell. He comes 
 riding barefoot on an ass, without spurs or spear, to his "joust 
 in Jerusalem." With the news of his triumph and resurrec- 
 tion, the dreamer awakes in ecstasy, the joyous Easter bells 
 pealing in his ears. 
 
 Spirit of Langland's Poem. The name of Piers Plowman 
 was used as a rallying cry in the peasant uprising ; arid the 
 poem probably had much to do with the arousing of Wyclif 's 
 zeal as a reformer. Langland's sense of the equality of all 
 men before God, his hatred of social falsities and hypocrisies, 
 his belief in the dignity of labor, give a modern tone to his 
 poem, in spite of his archaic metrical form, and its mediaeval 
 machinery of abstract figures. His deep religious sense 
 and the grandeur of his mystical imaginings are neither 
 ancient nor modern, but of all time. 
 
 VI. FROM CHAUCER TO THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 The Chaucerian Imitators: Lydgate and Occleve. After 
 the death of Chaucer and Langland, literature declined. 
 Poets, in the dearth of original inspiration, kept turning 
 back to Chaucer, as to their "fader dere and maister rever- 
 ent," and imitating him both in matter and manner. One 
 of these disciples was John Lydgate, a monk of Bury St. 
 Edmunds (i37o?-i45i ?). Another, Thomas Occleve or 
 Hoccleve (i3yo?-i45o?) had the benefit of Chaucer's per-
 
 James of Scotland 57 
 
 sonal acquaintance and instruction, loved and mourned him 
 deeply, and preserved, in the manuscript of his "Governail 
 of Princes" (written for the Prince of Wales, afterward 
 Henry V.), the portrait of Chaucer as a gray-haired old 
 man, hooded and gowned. 
 
 James of Scotland: "The King's Quair." Another poet 
 who continued the master's tradition is the young Stuart 
 prince, afterward James I. of Scotland, who was captured by 
 English sailors in 1405, and spent the next, nineteen years in 
 England as a prisoner, in the Tower of London, Windsor 
 Castle, and other strongholds. At the time of his capture he 
 was a child of eleven. As he grew up in solitude, he turned 
 for diversion to poetry and music. One day, from the windows 
 of Windsor Castle, he saw a beautiful young girl walking in 
 the garden below, as Palamon saw the fair Emilie in the 
 "Knight's Tale." The story of his love for Jane Beaufort 
 and its happy outcome, the young prince told with tender- 
 ness and fancy in The King's Quair (i.e., The King's Little 
 Book). The King's Quair is, with all its artificiality of 
 manner, a poem which can still be read with delight by 
 reason of its fresh feeling ; and our pleasure in it is increased 
 by the modesty of the royal poet, who speaks of it as his 
 "litel boke, nakit (naked) of eloquence." 
 
 Popular Literature : Ballads and Miracle Plays. WTiile 
 the poetry of the cultivated classes languished, the poetry 
 of the people, not yet written down, but passing from mouth 
 to mouth and generation to generation in the form of ballads, 
 took on a new life. It was probably during the course of the 
 fifteenth century that a great number of those ballads arose, 
 which mirror faithfully the life of the people, and which re- 
 main to-day as fresh and moving in their simple beauty, 
 as poignant in their pathos, and as heart-stirring in their 
 rude power, as when they were first sung. " Chevy Chase," 
 "Sir Patrick Spens," "The Nut-Brown Maid," "Young 
 Waters," "Edward, Edward," "The Wife of Usher's Well," 
 "Johnnie Armstrong," "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet," and 
 other poems of the great ballad-making time, are among the 
 most precious possessions of our literature; and they will 
 continue to be more precious the further the race removes
 
 58 Middle English Period 
 
 itself from the primitive conditions of life under which they 
 arose. The fifteenth century also marks the growth of 
 another form of literature, the miracle play, which sprang 
 almost as directly from the life of the common people as 
 did the ballads.* 
 
 Fifteenth Century Prose: Sir Thomas Malory. In prose 
 the fifteenth century produced one work which has much 
 of the elevation and splendor of great poetry, the Morte 
 D' Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory. Malory was a knight, 
 a gentleman of an ancient house, with its seat at Newbold 
 Revell, Warwickshire. As a young man he served in France, 
 in the military retinue of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of War- 
 wick, a warrior in whom lived again the knightly ideal of a 
 former age, and who was known by the romantic title of 
 "Father of Courtesy." Such a lineage and training fitted 
 Malory peculiarly for his task of combining in a great prose- 
 poem the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table, which 
 he gathered from Geoffrey of Monmouth (see Chap. Ill) 
 and the French trouveres. By good fortune he was master 
 of a simple, flowing English style, very flexible and musical. 
 The only example which he had for such a use as he made 
 of the new English prose, was in the famous Travels of Sir 
 John Mandeville, compiled in French by Jean de Bour- 
 gogne, and translated into English late in the fourteenth 
 century. The translator of these fictitious "Travels" is 
 unknown, but whoever he was, he threw his marvellous tales 
 of giant sheep, human beings with dogs' faces, "anthropa- 
 phagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their should- 
 ers," into a simple, lucid prose, which, while lacking the 
 terseness and energy of Wyclif's popular sermons, was a 
 good instrument for the everyday-work of literature. This 
 instrument Malory took up; but in response to the supe- 
 rior dignity and beauty of his subject, he raised it to a higher 
 power. The Morte D' Arthur was finished in 1467, but was 
 not printed until 1485, when Caxton, the first English prin- 
 ter, published it with an interesting preface from his own 
 hand. 
 
 * We shall study the Miracle Play later, when we come to discuss the 
 beginnings of the regular drama.
 
 Review Outline 59 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Make a summary of the chief public events 
 of Chaucer's time. Give the leading events of Chaucer's life. Find 
 as many points of connection as possible between -the two. Describe 
 the state of Italy at the time of Chaucer's visits, and the effect upon 
 the poet of what he saw there. England as a whole did not feel the 
 influence of the Italian Renaissance until the sixteenth century, in the 
 reign of Henry VII.; but Chaucer was a man of the Renaissance, in his 
 gaiety, his humanity, his interest in what was known of the literature 
 of classic times, in his delight in the humor and picturesqueness of 
 social life. What evidences do you find of these traits in what is hers 
 told of his life and work ? What circumstances of Chaucer's life were 
 calculated to give him the wide knowledge of men shown in the 
 " Canterbury Tales " ? Bring together as many hints as you can find 
 in the text (or elsewhere) concerning Chaucer's personal appearance; 
 his habits; his character and tastes. Supplement this with a study 
 of the Occleve portrait here reproduced. Note the chief works be- 
 longing to each of his three literary periods. What special aspect of 
 his genius comes out for the first time in "Troilus and Cressida "? 
 Make clear to yourself the meaning of the word " realism " here 
 applied to Chaucer's treatment of the Troilus story. What special 
 aspect of Chaucer as a poet and as a man does the prologue to the 
 " Legend of Good Women " illustrate ? This prologue suggested Ten- 
 nyson's " Legend of Fair Women ": if possible, read the two together, 
 and contrast them. 
 
 In what direction did Chaucer's genius develop during his later life? 
 Note some reasons for this development in Chaucer's own life and in 
 the life of the nation. Describe the plan of the " Canterbury Tales." 
 A harmonious relation exists throughout the " Canterbury Tales " be- 
 tween story and story-teller: point out as many instances of this as 
 you can find in what is here told of the Pilgrims on the road. Note 
 the means which Chaucer takes to keep the company vividly before 
 our eyes while they are telling their stories. What sly means does the 
 poet take to ridicule the metrical romances of his day? What can you 
 gather from this episode concerning the state of the metrical romance 
 once so dignified and entertaining a form of literature at the end of 
 the fourteenth century? What is here said of Chaucer's prose as con- 
 trasted with his verse ? Note in this connection that nearly all the 
 literature we have reviewed up to this point has been poetic. Can 
 you see any reasons why poetry should develop earlier than prose ?
 
 60 Middle English Period 
 
 By what accidental circumstance was the secret of Chaucer's melody 
 and careful verse-structure lost to succeeding generations, and only 
 recently found again ? 
 
 State the social and political conditions which brought on the up- 
 rising known as Tyler's rebellion. What were the motives which 
 prompted Wyclif to originate the Lollard movement? (Illustrate your 
 answer from what Chaucer reveals of the worldliness of the church at 
 this time, in the Prologue to the " Canterbury Tales," and study the 
 Parson as a type of Wyclif 's "poor priests.") Wyclif is called the 
 " father of English prose ; " this is of course not to be understood to 
 mean that he was the first to write prose which can be understood by 
 modern readers, but that his prose style was the first to have a large 
 and lasting influence. By what works has he gained the title? State 
 in your own words why Wyclif deserves to be called the " father of the 
 Reformation." Contrast Chaucer with his great contemporary Lang- 
 land, in character, and in the kind of themes they each chose to write 
 about. What is the source of our knowledge concerning Langland's 
 life? Give the chief facts known about him. Note that his last work 
 treats of the same king whose story Shakespeare afterward presented in 
 one of his dramas: which one? Describe briefly the subject of " Piers 
 Plowman." What changes does the character of Piers the Plowman 
 undergo in the course of the poem? In what respects is Langland's 
 book mediaeval, and in what respects modern ? 
 
 How and by whom was Chaucer's portrait preserved to us? Tell 
 the story of " The King's Quair." How was lyric poetry nourished 
 and kept alive during the fifteenth century, when, because of dis- 
 turbed political conditions, it was apparently neglected among the 
 higher classes? (The simple poetry of this period was destined to 
 have a great influence on the later history of English poetry. Keep 
 it well in mind and be prepared to recognize this influence.) If possi- 
 ble read the ballads named in the text; rephrase in your own language 
 one or two of them, as " Sir Patrick Spens," the " Nut-Brown Maid," 
 etc.; then read the originals again, noting how much is lost by the 
 substitution of modern phrases for the picturesque old ones, and by the 
 substitution of prose for the rude but vigorous ballad rhythms. What 
 is the chief prose work of the fifteenth century? What modern poet 
 has used the same material for an epic poem ?
 
 Reading Gwde 61 
 
 READING GUIDE. Students should read at least the prologue 
 to the "Canterbury Tales," and "The Knight's Tale." Many school 
 editions exist; two of the most satisfactory are by F. J. Mather, Jr. 
 (Houghton, Mifflin), and by Morris & Skeat (Clarendon Press), both of 
 which contain also "The Nun's Priest's Tale." The class work can 
 be much enlivened by calling for volunteers to read and report to the 
 class upon other poems, as "The Nun's Priest's Tale," "The Clerk's 
 Tale," "The Parlement of Fowls," and the prologue to the "Legend 
 of Good Women." G. L. Kittridge's "Selections from the Canterbury 
 Tales," soon to be published (Ginn) will prove excellent for supple- 
 mentary work. The best complete single-volume edition of Chaucer 
 is "The Student's Chaucer," edited by W. W. Skeat (Clarendon Press). 
 
 Good editions of the early ballads are "The Ballad Book," edited 
 by W. Allingham, in the Golden Treasury series, and "Old English 
 Ballads," by W. D. Armes, in Macmillan's Pocket Series. An ex- 
 cellent brief selection is given in the inexpensive series of Maynard's 
 English Classics. For more advanced study consult F. B. Gum- 
 mere's "Old English Ballads" (Ginn), or Miss Child's "English and 
 Scottish Popular Ballads " (Houghton, Mifflin). 
 
 "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville " is included in Cassell's Na- 
 tional Library. Selections from Mandeville, and from Wyclif's Bible, 
 are given in Number 107 of Maynard's English Classics. Malory's 
 "Morte D'Arthur," selected portions, is edited by E. Rhys in the Game- 
 lot Series. 
 
 Biography and Criticism. Lowell's delightful appreciation of Chau- 
 cer in "My Study Windows," also in the fourth volume of his collected 
 works (Houghton, Mifflin), should, if possible, be put before the class. 
 A. W. Ward's life of Chaucer, in the English Men of Letters series, may 
 with profit be made the basis of additional reports to the class, the 
 work being distributed among several students.
 
 62 Middle English Period 
 
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 CHAPTER V 
 THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 I. ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 The century following the death of Chaucer was for Eng- 
 land a time of political and social disturbance. The deposi- 
 tion of Richard II. in 1399 left the succession to the throne 
 open to dispute among the other descendants of Edward III. 
 Henry IV., who took the throne from Richard, was a strong 
 ruler; and his son Henry V. was a wonderful soldier who won 
 the famous victory over the French at Agincourt (1415) and 
 captured Paris, where he was crowned King of France. His 
 early death left the throne to his baby son, Henry VI., who 
 grew up to be one of the weakest of English kings. His title 
 to the throne was assailed by a grandson of Edward III., 
 Richard, Duke of York, and thus began the long civil war 
 known as the War of the Roses, between the supporters of 
 the two rival families of Lancaster and York. Not until 1485, 
 when the last of the York kings, Richard III. (who had 
 gained the throne by the murder of his two little nephews), 
 was defeated at Bosworth by Henry Tudor, and the con- 
 queror took the throne as Henry VII., was England finally 
 at peace. 
 
 During the weak rule of Henry VI., when England was 
 steadily being defeated by the French, and during the dis- 
 turbed reigns which followed, the wealth which the country 
 had gained Under the Edwards was wasted. The ruin of 
 many of the great feudal families by the civil war deprived 
 literature of their support and patronage. The most in- 
 teresting literary products of this period are to be found in 
 the narrative songs or ballads composed and sung for the 
 common people, and in the early popular religious dramas. 
 Among the commons, also, the religious revival which Wyclif 
 
 64
 
 Renaissance in Italy ,65 
 
 had begun, continued, though the Lollards, as his followers 
 were called, were persecuted by successive sovereigns of both 
 houses. This popular revival prepared the way for the 
 English Reformation, which we shall treat of shortly. At 
 the same time the intellectual movement of the modern 
 world, known as the Renaissance, was having its effect in 
 England, though its full influence did not appear until after 
 the country had settled down to peaceful pursuits under the 
 strong rule of the Tudor kings. 
 
 II. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 
 
 The Renaissance Defined. The Renaissance, or Rebirth, 
 is the name given to the great awakening which marks the 
 end of the Middle Age. Its chief cause was the partial 
 recovery of classical literature, art, and civilization, and 
 of the idea therein expressed of man's life as belonging to 
 himself, and of the world as a place for his development 
 and satisfaction. This recognition of individual freedom, as 
 opposed to the rigid system of living and thinking prescribed 
 by feudalism and the church, may properly be called a re- 
 birth of the human spirit. Signs of the change are found 
 in every direction, but they all point to the development of 
 man's personal energy, accompanied by an intense interest in 
 the present world. Instead of renouncing the world as a 
 temptation, at the command of the church, men began to 
 devote themselves to gaining mastery over it through wealth 
 and political power, to discovering its secrets by exploration 
 and scientific experiment, to setting forth its pleasures and 
 adding to them by art and poetry. 
 
 The Renaissance in Italy. Already in the time of Chaucer 
 the spirit of the Renaissance had taken possession of Italy. 
 The division of that country into small states multiplied the 
 opportunities of the individual to gain personal distinction 
 in government or in war. Its situation on the commercial 
 highway between the East and the West was favorable to the 
 acquisition of wealth. The disposition of the Italians, and 
 their opportunities, led them naturally toward the enjoyment 
 of the world about them. Accordingly, the despots and the
 
 66 . The Renaissance 
 
 merchant princes, when they had gained their power or 
 wealth, made their courts and palaces centres of magnificent 
 and cultivated life, the resort of artists and learned men. 
 The fact that Italy possessed the relics of classical civiliza- 
 tfon, buildings, statues, manuscripts, constantly reminded 
 its inhabitants of the ideals of the ancient Romans, and 
 furnished examples, in all the arts, of perfection of form 
 on which the new taste for beautiful things was nourished. 
 The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 drove 
 many Greeks to seek shelter in Italy. They brought with 
 them a knowledge of the language and literature of Greece, 
 and thenceforth more than ever the Italian cities became 
 centres for the study of the classics, and for the spread of 
 the classical spirit of interest in human life and in all its op- 
 portunities a spirit which gave to this revival of learning 
 the name Humanism. 
 
 From Italy the influence of Humanism spread to other 
 nations, which in their turn contributed elements to the new 
 world which was being created. Spain and Portugal, by 
 sending Columbus to America and Vasco da Gama to India, 
 made the world a larger place for men to act in. The Ger- 
 mans, in the invention of printing, supplied the means by 
 which the new knowledge of all kinds could be diffused 
 widely among men. And Germany, as the home of Coper- 
 nicus, gave birth to the astronomical discoveries which 
 taught men that the earth, instead of being the centre of 
 the universe, was but one element in a single solar system. 
 
 Signs of Renaissance in England. In the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, England, the home of Chaucer and Wyclif, seemed quite 
 prepared to take part in this forward movement of the modern 
 world. During the fifteenth century something of the early 
 impulse was lost; but there were abundant signs that the 
 promise of new life was not dead. For one thing, the decline 
 of the old noble families, which were cut off by the civil war, 
 left an opening for "new men," as they were called, to come 
 to the front. The passing away of feudalism made the 
 merchant class of more importance, and tended to replace 
 the aristocracy of birth by that of wealth. Thus in England 
 as in Italy we have one essential condition of the Renais-
 
 The Court of Henry VIII 67 
 
 sance, the wider opportunity for individual development. 
 The example of foreign countries was not without influence. 
 In 1476 Caxton set up the first printing press in London. 
 Before this date one of the Oxford colleges had engaged 
 an Italian teacher of Greek, and by the close of the century 
 Englishmen had begun to go freely to Italy to study with 
 the Italian humanists. They returned to make Oxford and 
 Cambridge homes of classical scholarship, and especially of 
 the "new learning," as Greek studies were called. This re- 
 vival of learning had, in England as in Italy, a marked effect 
 upon literature. It turned men's minds strongly toward the 
 discussion of theories of culture and education, and the re- 
 lation of the individual to society. Further, it set models 
 for imitation, and standards of literary excellence. It is 
 true, this tendency in time became an impediment to native 
 English literature, and we find in poetry and the drama 
 that writers who wished to express themselves in their own 
 way had to struggle to free themselves from forms prescribed 
 by the authority of the Greeks and the Latins. On the 
 whole, however, the revival of learning furnished the youth- 
 ful literature of England with a very necessary schooling and 
 discipline. 
 
 The Court of Henry VIII. The centre of Renaissance 
 literature in England, however, was not the university, but 
 the royal court, especially after the accession of Henry VIII. 
 in 1509. The new king was ambitious to take a leading part 
 in the affairs of Europe, and his diplomacy, by bringing Eng- 
 land into the family of continental nations, opened many 
 channels for foreign influence, which soon manifested itself 
 in dress, building, art, and letters. Naturally Italy, as the 
 most advanced country of Europe, gave most to this new 
 civilization of England. The king, indeed, in his own 
 character resembled strongly some of the Italian princes of 
 the time, who mingled the enlightenment of the statesman 
 with the suspicious cruelty of the despot. In setting aside the 
 relics of feudalism and allowing men of low birth to rise to 
 the highest distinction by personal service of the sovereign, 
 he set a premium upon individual character and ability. 
 The men who played for power in his service had need of skill
 
 68 The Renaissance 
 
 in a game where the stakes were the highest, and defeat fataL 
 Moreover, Henry resembled the typical sovereigns of the 
 Renaissance in his fondness for art, learning, and magnificent 
 display. He was himself a musician, a lover of architecture, 
 and the patron of painters, poets, and learned men. 
 
 Sir Thomas More. The most gracious figure of the court 
 of Henry is that of Sir Thomas More (1470-1535). In his 
 early days More was a student of the new learning at Oxford, 
 and though later thrown into active life as member of Parlia- 
 ment and minister of the king, he never lost interest in the in- 
 tellectual movement of the time. He was captivated by the 
 dignified conception of human character which appeared in 
 the more serious men of the Italian Renaissance; and in the 
 accounts of his own life, notably that by his son-in-law, 
 William Roper, we catch something of the spirit of a man 
 who sought not only righteousness but beauty of life who 
 made living a fine art. In his most famous work, Utopia 
 (1515-1516), More tried to show how this ideal might be 
 realized for all men, under a properly organized social system. 
 The book is written as the narrative of a sailor, returned to 
 England after a voyage to a mysterious island, Utopia, in 
 which the inhabitants have learned to live by reason. The 
 commonwealth of Utopia is a form of what we should call 
 socialism. By simplicity of life, and the equal sharing of 
 its burdens, the Utopians have reduced the necessary labor 
 of each person to a few hours a day. They have no personal 
 wealth, and hence are free from the evil and crime which 
 spring from its possession. The adjective " Utopian " has 
 been used ever since More's time to denote a state of so- 
 ciety desirable but impossible. The book is altogether char- 
 acteristic of the hopefulness and enthusiasm of the early 
 Renaissance, when men dared to dream of the perfection of 
 human beings in a perfect state. 
 
 The New Poetry. In the later years of Henry VIII., thft 
 refinement of court life developed the practice among the 
 courtiers of addressing the sovereign, the ladies of the court, 
 or each other, in verse. Among the courtly poets of the time 
 are two who, for their reform of English metrical structure 
 by the use of models imported from Italy, may be called
 
 The Earl of Surrey 69 
 
 the founders of modern English poetry Sir Thomas Wyatt 
 (1503-1542), and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). 
 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt. The career of Wyatt illustrates par- 
 ticularly the value to English literature of the close connection 
 with foreign countries, which Henry VIII. 's ambition to take 
 part in European affairs did much to restore. Wyatt was 
 frequently abroad on diplomatic missions; like Chaucer he 
 visited Italy, and also Spain and France. His poems are, for 
 the most part, translations and imitations of Italian poetry, 
 especially of Petrarch's sonnets in praise of Laura. With 
 Petrarch's imitators the sonnet had become a mere literary 
 exercise, devoted to the expression of a love which might be 
 entirely imaginary, or directed toward an imaginary person. 
 Wyatt's sonnets, therefore, need not be regarded as having 
 strict biographical truth, though attempts have been made to 
 find in them the history of a personal relation, and some have 
 guessed that they were inspired by Henry's second queen, 
 Anne Boleyne. Wyatt's effort to achieve the regularity and 
 finish of the Italian sonnet was not always successful. Yet 
 in freer lyrical verse such poems as "My Lute, Awake," and 
 "Forget not yet," are eminent examples of his power. 
 
 The Earl of Surrey. Wyatt's companion poet, Surrey, 
 born in 1517, and beheaded in 1547, is, like More, notable 
 for his personal quality. He has all the exuberance of the 
 age, a perpetual charm of youth and promise, as his brilliant 
 figure passes through the sunlight and shadow of Henry's 
 court, moving gracefully and carelessly to the scaffold which 
 awaited him. Surrey, like Wyatt, rendered his chief service 
 to English literature by enriching its resources with foreign 
 forms, and especially by his introduction of blank verse, in 
 his translation of two books of Virgil's ^Eneid. Blank verse 
 had been used in Italy a few years before in a translation of 
 the same work, from which experiment Surrey may have ob- 
 tained the suggestion, but the happy skill with which he 
 adopted it, and thus gave to English poetry its most pow- 
 erful and characteristic verse form, is worthy of all praise. 
 To Surrey also is due the English form of the sonnet 
 which Shakespeare used, consisting of three quatrains and 
 a couplet.
 
 70 The Renaissance 
 
 " TottePs Miscellany." The work of these literary cour- 
 tiers was intended for private circulation in manuscript. By 
 the middle of the century, however, there had grown up a 
 demand on the part of the reading public which publishers 
 attempted to supply by volumes of miscellaneous verse. The 
 first of these collections, "Tottel's Miscellany," contained 
 the poems of Wyatt, Surrey, and several of their followers. 
 It appeared in 1557, a date which marks the public begin- 
 ning of modern English verse. 
 
 The Reformation. The fact that both Wyatt and Surrey, 
 the introducers of Renaissance poetry, wrote also reh'gious 
 verse, emphasizes the fact that in England the Renaissance 
 and the Reformation were nearly contemporary. The for- 
 mal beginning of the Reformation in Europe is dated from 
 1517, when Martin Luther nailed to the door of the church 
 in Wittenberg his attack upon the power of the Pope. The 
 doctrines of the German and Swiss reformers spread rapidly 
 chrough England. When in 1534 King Henry VIII. quar- 
 relled with the Pope, who refused to grant him a divorce 
 from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, he found the people 
 at large ready to support him in his proclamation of himself 
 as Head of the Church, and later in his suppression of the 
 monasteries. 
 
 The Reformation was the chief political question in the 
 closing years of the reign of Henry VIII., and indeed through- 
 out the rest of the century. Henry was strong enough to 
 hold a moderate course between the reformers and the ad- 
 herents of the old faith. After his death in 1547., the for- 
 mer controlled the policy of the boy-king, Edward VI., and 
 pushed their advantage by persecution and bloodshed. 
 When the king died in 1553, they tried to retain power by 
 setting up as queen the Lady Jane Grey, but the mass of the 
 nation accepted the claim of Mary, the daughter of Henry 
 VIII. by his first and Catholic wife. In her five years of rule 
 she did her utmost to restore the old faith, outdoing the 
 reformers in the cruelty of her persecution. At her death in 
 1558, she was succeeded by Elizabeth, who, though of the 
 reformed faith, was inclined to keep a middle course between 
 the two religious parties. However, the movement in
 
 The Reformation 71 
 
 Europe known as the Catholic Reaction was now in full prog- 
 ress under the leadership of Philip II., of Spain. His efforts 
 to stamp out the Reformation in France and the Netherlands, 
 and his support of the claims of Mary Queen of Scots to ithe 
 crown of Elizabeth, gradually forced England into open hos- 
 tility to Spain, which the queen signalized by sending troops 
 to help the Dutch revolt against Philip, and by beheading the 
 Queen of Scots in 1586. Philip's response to this challenge 
 was the Spanish Armada, which he sent against England in 
 1588. 
 
 The Literature of the Reformation. The Reformation had 
 a very important influence on English life. Coming at the 
 time when the Renaissance was drawing men into ardent 
 love of the present world and stimulating their ambition to 
 master it and to enjoy it, the Reformation brought home the 
 thought of the other world, and checked the spirit of selfish- 
 ness and self-indulgence by enforcing anew the claim of re- 
 ligion. This influence is reflected in the literature of the 
 time, especially the popular literature. The Reformation was 
 to the common people what the revival of learning was to 
 the upper classes : it set the most important topic for discus- 
 sion, and called into being a simple native English style 
 which could be understood by all. The best example of this 
 style is to be seen in the translation of the Bible by William 
 Tyndale, of which the New Testament appeared in 1526. 
 This was eagerly circulated by the reformers, in spite of the 
 efforts of the authorities to prevent it. Ten years later, 
 when the king himself had turned against the Pope, Miles 
 Coverdale was authorized to revise Tyndale's translation of 
 the scriptures, and his version, completed in 1538, was placed 
 by royal sanction in the churches all over England, where 
 the great volumes, chained to the pillars, were read to the 
 crowds of unlettered folk. Thus the English Bible came to 
 be the strongest influence on English popular prose, for 
 which it supplied a model in opposition to the artificial 
 styles imitated from foreign or classic literature. 
 
 Foxe's " Book of Martyrs." Next to the Bible the most 
 popular work of the time was the Book of Martyrs (1563) of 
 John Foxe. This was a genuine text-book of the Refor-
 
 72 The Renaissance 
 
 mation; from it we gain those accounts of the martyrs of 
 Mary's reign, of Hooper and Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, 
 which are among the best known passages of English history. 
 In its plain, literal style it reflects the strenuous temper of 
 the thorough-going reformers. Its stern realism brought 
 home to Englishmen the cruel struggle by which the new 
 faith survived, and its eloquent accounts of spiritual tri- 
 umph roused the moral enthusiasm of the nation, and pre- 
 pared the way for Puritanism. 
 
 III. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 
 
 The Spirit of the Time. The accession of Elizabeth in 
 1558 changed the entire aspect of the nation. Her mod- 
 erate policy relaxed the religious tension; the gloomy spirit 
 produced by the persecutions was lightened; the force of 
 the Renaissance manifested itself more widely, as the spirit 
 of individual freedom and of eager response to all the new 
 opportunities of the world. It was an age of romantic 
 adventure, which led men into intellectual speculation and 
 commercial enterprise, which sent them to explore the un- 
 known seas of the north, the mysterious rivers and forests 
 of the new world, or drew them into the scarcely less excit- 
 ing life of London. But the impulses of the time which 
 made for personal and selfish ends were both directed and 
 kept in check by a corresponding growth of patriotism. 
 Elizabeth's reign united the nation, and her personal presence 
 gave it a visible sign of unity. The championship of the 
 reformed faith, moreover, came to be regarded by a large part 
 of the people as a national duty, and the conquest of lands 
 beyond the seas as a national opportunity. When in course 
 of time the pursuit of these ends brought England into open 
 conflict with Spain, the country passed through an exper- 
 ience as dramatic as that of Athens at Marathon ; after a long 
 period of suspense the strain was relieved by the wonderful 
 repulse of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The national feel- 
 ing, made so intense by danger and victory, shines through the 
 literature of the time. The eager, instinctive patriotism of 
 the people found utterance in the choruses of Shakespeare's
 
 The Age of Elizabeth 73 
 
 Henry V. and in such noble lyrics as Michael Drayton's 
 "Ballad of Agincourt," the ringing metre of which Tennyson 
 used afterward in "The Charge of the Light Brigade." 
 The more conscious political virtue, which touched with 
 high purpose the lives of Sidney, of Essex, and of Raleigh, 
 is reflected in Spenser's Faerie Queene. 
 
 Lyly's " Euphues." The beginning of the great period of 
 Elizabethan literature may be dated from 1579, the year of 
 the publication of the most famous prose work of the time, 
 Lyly's Euphues and also of Spenser's decisive appearance as 
 a poet in The Shepherd's Calendar. The former, though now 
 little read, deserves mention as the best illustration of the 
 narrowly literary ideals of the age. 
 
 John Lyly (1553-1606) was educated at Magdalen Col- 
 lege, Oxford, where he seems to have gained the reputation 
 of being a trifler "the fiddlestick of Oxford," an enemy 
 called him. His superficial cleverness, however, enabled him 
 to write a successful account of the culture of the period, 
 in Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit (1579), and its sequel, 
 Euphues and his England (1580). Together they form a 
 work of fiction in which an exceedingly slight plot serves to 
 connect a succession of conversations, letters, and essays, 
 treating such subjects as love, education, religion, and man- 
 ners. The book illustrates the interest of the time in in- 
 tellectual development, restrained, however, by the feeling, 
 stirred by the Reformation, that "vain is all learning with- 
 out the taste of divine knowledge." 
 
 The artificial language which Euphues and his friends 
 talked, and which became a literary fashion, is the character- 
 istic of the book for which it is remembered to-day. Among 
 Lyly's mannerisms the most remarkable is the arrangement 
 of words in antithesis, the contrast being marked by allitera- 
 tion, thus: "Although I have shrined thee in my heart for a 
 trusty jriend, I will shunne thee hereafter as a trothless joe." 
 Another peculiarity is his lavish use of similes drawn from 
 what passed for natural history, as: "The milk of the Ty- 
 gresse, that the more salt there is thrown into it the fresher 
 it is." Euphuism was but one form of a widely diffused 
 tendency in Renaissance literature, an attempt to prove the
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 From the miniature by Isaac Oliver, in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle
 
 Sir Philip Sidney 75 
 
 artistic value of prose by giving it some of the qualities of 
 poetry. Earlier writers than Lyly had shown traces of it; 
 and English prose did not escape from its influence until 
 well on in the next century. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney. In Lyly's own generation other forms 
 of this tendency appeared, notably that introduced by the 
 most famous Englishman of the day, Sir Philip Sidney. 
 Sidney was born in 1554, of one of the most distinguished 
 families in England. He was sent to Shrewsbury school 
 and to Oxford; and then spent some time abroad. He \vas 
 in Paris at the time of the terrible massacre of St. Barthol- 
 omew's Day, 1572 an experience which must have strength- 
 ened the serious purpose of his life, the defence of the Re- 
 formed Faith. Later, in Italy, he felt the attraction of the 
 art of the Renaissance, and was himself painted by the great 
 Venetian painter, Paul Veronese. He returned to England 
 to become the most brilliant figure of Elizabeth's court. His 
 uncle, the Earl of Leicester, was the political chief of the 
 Puritan party, which favored committing England to a 
 definite alliance with the Protestant states of Europe ; and in 
 furtherance of this policy Sidney was sent on a mission to 
 Germany in 1577. He was also eagerly interested in the 
 development of English power on the sea. In 1583 he got a 
 grant of land in America, and two years later he made an 
 unsuccessful attempt to escape from court and join Sir 
 Francis Drake in one of his half -piratical expeditions against 
 the Spaniards. This same year he accompanied the English 
 army which was sent to help the Dutch Protestants against 
 Spain ; and in 1 586 he fell in a skirmish at Zutphen. 
 
 "Astrophel and Stella." Sidney's name, more than 
 any other, stands for the greatness of national and per- 
 sonal ideals which we associate with the age of Elizabeth. 
 It isj therefore, somewhat disappointing to find his writ- 
 ing less eminent than his life. It must be remembered, 
 however, that Sidney, like most men of position in his age, 
 wrote not for the public, but for himself and for a few 
 friends. This is especially the case in regard to his poetry. 
 The courtiers of Elizabeth, like those of Henry VIII., ex- 
 pressed themselves in verse, inspired sometimes by love or
 
 76 The Renaissance 
 
 by a spirit of courtly compliment, sometimes by meditation 
 and self-study. Sidney's contribution to this court poetry 
 is of unusual interest because of its connection with a fas- 
 cinating, if shadowy, love story. His collection of songs and 
 sonnets, called Astro phel and Stella, first published in a 
 pirated edition after his death, is evidently addressed to one 
 person, Lady Penelope Devereux. Sidney and Lady Penelope 
 had been betrothed when the latter was a child. For some 
 reason the match was broken off, and Lady Penelope married 
 Lord Rich, with whom she lived for a while most unhappily. 
 Whether Sidney actually came to love her, or whether he 
 wrote love sonnets as a literary exercise, addressing them to 
 his old friend out of compliment and sympathy, it is im- 
 possible to say. On the one hand there is in his sonnets 
 much of the conventional material of the Italian sonneteers ; 
 but on the other there are touches so apt to the situation of 
 a man who loves too late, that one hesitates to ascribe them 
 to mere dramatic skill. In none of the many sonnet cycles 
 of the age, except Shakespeare's and Spenser's, do we find 
 so much that has the stamp of personality upon it; surely 
 in none except these, so much that has the accent of great 
 poetry. 
 
 " The Arcadia." Sidney's chief literary enterprise was the 
 Arcadia, which he began in 1580, when, in consequence of a 
 quarrel with the Earl of Oxford, he was in temporary dis- 
 grace and banishment from court. The writing of the Arcadia 
 was merely a summer pastime, undertaken to please the Coun- 
 tess of Pembroke, Sidney's sister. The form of the work was 
 suggested by romances, popular in Italy and in Spain, of 
 which the scenes are laid in a pastoral country like the an- 
 cient Arcadia. The prose tale is interrupted at intervals by 
 passages of verse, or eclogues, in which the shepherds sing 
 of love and the delights of rural life. This form of literature 
 had a great charm for people who were becoming a little 
 weary of the activity of the early Renaissance; and Sidney 
 himself, in his banishment from court, doubtless felt the 
 influence of this mood. It was, however, a passing one, 
 for Sidney was essentially a man of action; and his story, 
 which begins in thoroughly pastoral fashion, quickly changes
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh 77 
 
 to a kind of romance of chivalry set in an Arcadian landscape. 
 Throughout its great length Sidney spins his tale with a pure 
 love for it, with the enthusiasm that he might have thrown 
 into a buccaneering expedition to the Indies, if fortune had 
 been kind to him ; and this is the real source of such pleas j 
 ure as we feel to-day in reading the Arcadia. 
 
 The " Defence of Poesy." Sidney was not only poet and 
 romancer, but also one of the earliest of English critics. In 
 1579 Stephen Gosson published a pamphlet called The School 
 of Abuse, in which, as a Puritan, he attacked the art of the 
 age, especially the drama. Sidney replied, in 1581, with his 
 Defence of Poesy, in which he replied to Gosson's strictures 
 and defended English verse, even of the native ballad sort, 
 exclaiming, "I never heard the old song of 'Percy and 
 Douglas' that I found not my heart moved more than with 
 a trumpet." 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh. A name that, partly by force of con- 
 trast, is always associated with Sidney's, is that of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh. Raleigh was born in Devonshire in 1552. He 
 was at Oxford for a while, but left to join the French reform- 
 ers in their resistance to the Catholics. Following his return 
 to England he was busy for many years with intrigues for 
 power at court, with attempts to win estates in Ireland and 
 to establish colonies in America. He took a leading part in 
 the events of the war with Spain, the destruction of the 
 Armada and the attack upon Cadiz. After the accession of 
 James I. he was charged with conspiracy against the new 
 monarch, and thrown into the Tower. The king released 
 him to lead an expedition to Guiana, in search of gold, but 
 his return without accomplishing his object was the signal 
 for his execution in 1618. 
 
 Raleigh's Character. Sidney is the best example of perfect 
 balance between the opposed tendencies of the times, the im- 
 pulses that led men to strive for pleasure, richness of experi- 
 ence, and glory, and the motives of religious and patriotic 
 devotion. Raleigh is representative of all these tendencies 
 in their most exaggerated form. The well-known story of 
 the young courtier spreading his rich cloak across a puddle 
 for Elizabeth to walk upon, marks the devotion of men to the
 
 78 The Renaissance 
 
 person of the queen at its most fantastic moment. And in 
 many other things he went beyond other men. He did more 
 against Spain both in the battle with the Armada and in 
 the great attack on Cadiz in 1596. In his expeditions to 
 South America he was the most splendid of the buccaneers, 
 and he was also the most indefatigable of colonizers. Eight 
 expeditions at his own cost he sent to the shore of Virginia. 
 He was a poet, and he wrote the history of the world. Courtly 
 chivalry, politics, love, war, art, colonization, piracy he was 
 at home in all fields. In his versatility, his energy, his dar- 
 ing freedom of will, he typifies that individual spirit of the 
 Renaissance which found expression in the exaggerations of 
 personal desires and the over- weening ambitions of Marlowe's 
 dramas. And if there is much that is inconsistent and even 
 false in his character and life, he had always the distinction 
 that came from the magnificence of his enterprises. When 
 he mentioned to Bacon his plan of seizing the Mexico fleet, 
 the latter cried " But that would be piracy." " Oh, no," said 
 Raleigh. "Did you ever hear of men who are pirates for 
 millions? They who aim at small things are pirates." 
 
 Raleigh's Writings. Raleigh's literary work consists of 
 his poems, political tracts, narratives of adventures in which 
 he was directly or indirectly concerned, such as his Discovery 
 of Guiana, and the account of the "Last Fight of the Re- 
 venge," and finally his History of the World, written during 
 the long years of his imprisonment in the Tower. 
 
 Raleigh's poems, like those of other courtly poets of the 
 time, were circulated in manuscript, and many have disap- 
 peared, including the greater part of his long poem, Cynthia, 
 written in praise of Elizabeth. Those which have survived 
 often have special reference to Events in his own life or com- 
 memorate particular moods, in a strain which a critic of the 
 time calls "most lofty, insolent, and passionate." 
 
 That Raleigh, old and in prison, should have addressed 
 himself to writing a history of the world, is another evidence 
 of the greatness of his visions, the preoccupation of his mind 
 with vast issues. He began his work in 1607, and the first 
 volume was published in 1614, under the direction of Ben 
 Jonson, from whom Raleigh received much assistance. Most
 
 79 
 
 of the history is written in the rather loose style of Raleigh's 
 personal narratives, with long formless sentences ; but at times 
 he rises to a superb eloquence, which gives passages of an 
 imaginative splendor and solemnity of music that have never 
 been surpassed in English prose. Such is the apostrophe to 
 Death with which Raleigh, himself in the shadow of the scaf- 
 fold, took leave of his mighty enterprise : 
 
 "O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! Whom none could 
 advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou 
 hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only 
 hast cast out of the world and despised thou hast drawn 
 together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, 
 and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two 
 narrow words, Hie jacet" 
 
 IV. EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599) 
 
 Spenser's Life. Spenser was born in London in 1552. 
 He was sent to the Merchant Tailors' School, and then to 
 Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took his master's 
 degree in 1576. He then spent some time in the north of 
 England. In 1578, however, he was in London, in at- 
 tendance on the Earl of Leicester, seeking to establish him- 
 self through the influence of his friends at court. After 
 the publication of his Shepherd's Calendar, in 1579, he 
 received an appointment in Ireland, as secretary to the 
 deputy, Lord Grey de Wilton. In Ireland Spenser was 
 given office, and was granted, among other estates, the Manor 
 of Kilcolman, whither Sir Walter Raleigh came in 1589 to 
 visit him. Raleigh saw the first three books of The Faerie 
 Queene ; and under his advice Spenser went to London in 
 the following year, to read them to the Queen and to publish 
 them. The success of the poem was immediate, but the 
 reward from the Queen, in whose honor it was written, was 
 disappointingly small. The circumstances of his journey 
 to London he related, after his return to Ireland, in Colin 
 Clouts Come Home Again, in which he resumed the pas- 
 toral style of The Shepherd's Calendar. In the next few 
 years Spenser commemorated his own courtship and marriage
 
 EDMUND SPENSER 
 from an original picture in the possession of the Earl of Kinnoul)
 
 Edmund Spenser 81 
 
 in the sonnet series, the " Amoretti," and in his wedding song, 
 or "Epithalamion." He went to London again in 1596, to 
 publish the second three books of The Faerie Queene. During 
 this visit he wrote the "Hymn in Honour of Heavenly Love," 
 and " Hymn in Honour of Heavenly Beauty," to accompany 
 two earlier "Hymns in Honour of Love and Beauty." He 
 also wrote at this time the most exquisite of his shorter 
 poems, the " Prothalamion." Soon after his return to Kil- 
 colman, there broke out one of those frequent insurrections 
 which marked British rule in Ireland. Spenser's castle, 
 which stood in the path of the storm, was sacked and 
 burned. He fled with his family to London, where, in 1599, 
 he died in poverty. 
 
 Spenser's Cambridge Period. Spenser's life was spent 
 chiefly in three places, each of which left strong marks upon 
 his character and work Cambridge, London, and Ireland. 
 At Cambridge he found the learning of the Renaissance, 
 especially the philosophy of Plato, which appears clearly in 
 The Faerie Queene and in the "Hymns." Here also he 
 learned to know the literature of France and Italy, and here 
 he came into contact with the literary theories of the time ; 
 one of which was the idea, put forward by Sidney and his 
 friends, that English verse should be written according to 
 Latin rules of prosody. Spenser was too genuine a poet to 
 be injured by such theories, but the influence of the environ- 
 ment where they were rife is seen in his scrupulous attention 
 to the technical requirements of his art. 
 
 Of this Cambridge period the typical product is The 
 Shepherd's Calendar, a series of twelve pastoral poems or 
 eclogues. The eclogue in general was a poem of pastoral 
 life, in which shepherds were the speakers, rural nature and 
 love their usual themes. The poet might introduce matter 
 personal to himself or his friends, or might even discuss poli- 
 tical affairs, but he kept the conventional framework of the 
 pastoral. In Spenser's fifth eclogue, for example, Arch- 
 bishop Grindal figures as the good shepherd Algrind. The 
 poems of The Shepherd's Calendar show much variety in 
 metre, for Spenser was clearly practising and experimenting. 
 But most remarkable among their literary qualities is the
 
 82 The Renaissance 
 
 diction, which he elaborated for himself with the design of 
 giving a suggestion of. antiquity and rusticity to his writings. 
 This curious fondness for obsolete or coined words is char- 
 acteristic of the artificial style affected by the age. It is 
 carried so far in The Faerie Queene that Ben Jonson could 
 say of Spenser that he "writ no language." 
 
 Spenser in London and Ireland. In London Spenser 
 was at the centre of the thrilling national life of England. 
 Through Leicester and Sidney he was introduced to the two 
 leading political conceptions of the time, England's lead- 
 ership of the Protestant cause in Europe against Spain 
 and Rome, and her expansion beyond the seas ideas that 
 were the result partly of fantastic chivalry, and partly of 
 a broad view of world politics. Finally, in Ireland he 
 saw the English race in passionate conflict with opposing 
 forces. The chronically disturbed state of the country was 
 aggravated by the intrigues of Philip of Spain and the Pope 
 with the Irish chieftains, provoking those revolts which Lord 
 Grey, strong in his belief that the Irish were the foes of God 
 and of civilization, put down with savage fury. Naturally, 
 Spenser's residence in Ireland, by bringing him into actual 
 conflict with evil, stimulated his moral enthusiasm. Out of 
 the conception of the greatness of England's mission, which 
 Spenser found in London and struggled to realize in Ireland, 
 and out of his chivalric devotion to this ideal, and to the 
 Queen who typified it, grew The Faerie Queene. It is the 
 brightest expression of the ideal morality of the time; and 
 in a sense is the epic of the English race at one of the great 
 moments of its history. 
 
 The Faerie Queene. Spenser and his contemporaries re- 
 garded moral purpose as essential to the greatest art; and 
 with Spenser this purpose took the form of dealing with the 
 old problem of the Renaissance individual character in 
 relation to the state. As he explained in his introductory 
 letter to Raleigh, The Faerie Queene was to show forth the 
 character of an ideal knight in twelve books, each devoted 
 to one of the twelve qualities of perfect chivalry. This ex- 
 position of private virtue was to. be followed by a second 
 poem, which should portray the virtues of the ideal knight
 
 Edmund Spenser 83 
 
 as governor. In fact, Spenser wrote only six books, each of 
 twelve cantos, and a fragment of a seventh. The first is 
 given to the Red Cross Knight, who represents Holiness ; the 
 second to Sir Guy on, or Temperance; the third to Britomarte, 
 or Chastity; the fourth to Cambel and Triamond, or Friend- 
 ship; the fifth to Sir Artegall, or Justice; the sixth to Sir 
 Calidore, or Courtesy. These knights, as we learn from 
 Spenser's introductory letter, are despatched on their various 
 quests by Gloriana, Queen of Fairyland. In the course of 
 their adventures appears from time to time the perfect knight, 
 Arthur, who is himself in search of the Faerie Queene. 
 The allegory takes at times a political turn, and the char- 
 acters, besides representing ideal qualities, refer directly to 
 actual persons. Spenser explained: "In that Faerie Queene 
 I mean glory in my generall intention, but in my particular I 
 conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our sover- 
 aine the Queene." Belphoebe and Britomarte also represent 
 Elizabeth ; Arthur is Leicester ; the false lady Duessa is Mary 
 Queen of Scots. In the fifth book the political state of 
 Europe is presented at length, with Lord Grey as Artegall, 
 France as Flourdelis, Henry IV. as Burbon, Holland as Beige, 
 and Philip II. of Spain as Grantorto. This was but natural in 
 an age in which politics were colored by religious feeling, and 
 in which public and private conduct, as typified by Sidney, 
 Raleigh, and Essex, was still touched with something of the 
 glamor of the chivalry which had passed away. 
 
 Spenser and Ariosto. The moral seriousness which un- 
 derlies the poem marks the great difference between The 
 Faerie Queene and its Italian prototype. Spenser, like Wyatt 
 and Surrey, was content to go to school to Italy; and he 
 chose as the model for his great work the Orlando Furioso of 
 Ariosto. Both Ariosto and Spenser deal with chivalry ; but 
 while Ariosto had merely the delight of the artist in the 
 brilliant color which chivalry gave to life, with the easy con- 
 tempt of the cynic for its moral elements, Spenser found in its 
 persons and ideals a means of making goodness attractive. 
 In details Spenser learned much from Ariosto; many pas- 
 sages he wrote in avowed imitation. His prevailing differ- 
 ence is in the greater richness and elaboration of his style,
 
 84 The Renaissance 
 
 of which the " Spenserian stanza " is typical. This stanza 
 consists of two interlinked quatrains, with an added line of 
 six feet, the arrangement thus being ababbcbcc. The brilliancy 
 of the invention is shown by the fact that it adapts itself 
 readily to the different demands of narrative, descriptive, 
 and moral poetry; and that the poem sustains itself through- 
 out its great length with so much variety of effect. 
 
 Spenser's Art. For the rest, Spenser has the great gift of 
 the poet, the power to create the illusion of a different world, 
 a world of magic where the imagination and the senses are 
 satisfied. The Faerie Queene is a long procession of figures, 
 brilliant, fantastic, or terrible, which singly or in groups pass 
 -across an ever varying, ever wonderful landscape. And al- 
 most as marked as Spenser's feeling for form and color, is 
 his use of sound. His sensitiveness of ear is shown by the 
 melody of his verse, so constant yet so varied ; but there are 
 also many passages in which he makes suggestions of the 
 music of nature an element of pleasure in his description. 
 Altogether, Spenser has the resources of the whole world of 
 sensation at command, and he never fails to heighten them 
 with the illusions of his art. Of the color, the savor, the 
 music of life, his poem is full only the color is brighter, the 
 taste sweeter, the music grander, than any which it is given 
 to mortal senses to know. 
 
 And this world of imagined splendor is presented as the 
 background of a steadily growing idea of righteousness, of 
 heroic goodness. The union of the two elements, sensuous 
 and moral, seems at times to involve a naive inconsistency. 
 But Spenser belonged to an age when it seemed not im- 
 possible that there should be some common ground between 
 the spirit of the Reformation and that of Humanism. He 
 was perhaps a Puritan ; but more fortunate than Milton, he 
 came before Puritanism had narrowed its view of life to the 
 single issue of salvation. There is indeed in Spenser, as in 
 many of his contemporaries, a note of melancholy, which 
 suggests that the eternal contradiction of the joy of the present 
 life by the threat of its hereafter, was not unheard. The 
 flowers are already lightly touched by the frost. But this 
 reminder that the time of free delight in the outer world was
 
 Professional Writing 85 
 
 so short, its sunshine so threatened by the clouds of Puritan- 
 ism, makes its brightest product the more precious. 
 
 V. PROFESSIONAL WRITING 
 
 Prose. After the literary awakening marked by the writers 
 already treated, the stream of literary production became 
 at once very copious. Curiosity about the world was a 
 leading instinct among men of the Renaissance ; this instinct 
 once aroused led to the rapid growth of the reading public, 
 and the business of ministering to its demands became a 
 recognized profession. Romances, essays on religious or 
 political subjects, histories, voyagers' tales, as well as numer- 
 ous translations from ancient and foreign literature were 
 turned out in great numbers and greedily absorbed. This 
 work was done by men of miscellaneous interests, who labored 
 indifferently in any field to which the taste of the public led 
 them. One of the most broadly characteristic of these 
 writers is Robert Greene (1560-1592). He began his career 
 by writing romances in the style of Lyly. Later, when the 
 Arcadia had begun to circulate in manuscript, he imitated 
 Sidney in a pastoral tale called Menaphon, and he pub- 
 lished also realistic accounts of life in London, translations 
 of Italian stories, pamphlets, and plays. Greene and his 
 particular associates, George Peele, Thomas Nash, and 
 Christopher Marlowe, were the first professional writers. 
 Unlike Sidney, who followed literature as an amateur, or 
 Spenser, who looked for support to the patronage of the rich 
 or preferment from the queen, they undertook to live directly 
 upon their literary earnings. Moreover, as a class, they 
 showed the intense desire for pleasure, the violence of pas- 
 sion, the impatience of restraint, social or moral, which were 
 characteristic of the Renaissance in Italy rather than in Eng- 
 land. The irregularity of their lives has made them heroes 
 of stories famous among the tragedies of literature. Mar- 
 lowe was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl ; Peele died of 
 dissipation ; Greene, as the story goes, from over-eating, and 
 Nash of starvation.
 
 86 The Renaissance 
 
 Poetry. As the prose literature of the period was in- 
 jured by the adoption of the euphuistic style for every 
 purpose, so its poetry suffered from the failure of its authors 
 to separate the proper matter of poetry from that of prose. 
 They gave verse form not only to history, but also to politics, 
 philosophy, geography, and science. It is not of these works 
 that we think, "however, when we speak of the glory of Eliza- 
 bethan verse, but of the lyric element, which in nearly all the 
 writers of the time flows somewhere like a stream of living 
 water, making glad the waste places of their larger works. 
 The romances of the time contain many exquisite songs 
 which are preserved in the anthologies of English verse, 
 while the works which furnished the original setting for them 
 are forgotten. The dramas of Lyly, Peele, and, above all, 
 Shakespeare, abound in lyrical interludes, and Marlowe is 
 as famous for his little song " Come live with me and be my 
 love," as for the most imposing of his plays. 
 
 Among the courtiers of Elizabeth, as has been said, verse 
 was a natural language. The lyrics of these courtly writers 
 circulated in manuscript and doubtless many of them have 
 disappeared. A number of them, however, are preserved 
 in the poetical miscellanies which from time to time were 
 issued after the fashion of "Tottel's Miscellany." The 
 popular demand for lyric verse is also attested by the numer- 
 ous books of songs and airs, in some of which not only the 
 words but the music also have been preserved. Indeed the 
 temperament of the age may be tested by its songs. They 
 reflect its delight in youth and nature, in love, and in the 
 glory of arms, sometimes in the mere pleasure of singing. 
 But besides this exuberant joy in life, which the Renaissance 
 brought to men, there is also a steady tone of seriousness and 
 religious feeling, which reminds us that in England the Refor- 
 mation and the Renaissance advanced together. In the lyric 
 poetry of the time, as in The Faerie Queene, we are struck 
 by the mingling of sensuousness and piety but the latter 
 is no gloomy forbidding of the joy of living, nor even a threat- 
 ening of its end by death, but a trust in the Creator as frank 
 and honest as is the delight in the world which He has 
 made.
 
 Review Outline 87 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. The political situation in England between 
 1400 and 1485 should be noted as a reason for the literary decline; 
 and the changes which followed the accession of Henry VII. and the 
 beginning of the new monarchy, as making the conditions for the Eng- 
 lish Renaissance. What was the essential element in the Renaissance? 
 What was the situation of the individual man under the feudal system? 
 Under the mediaeval church ? What change did the Renaissance bring 
 about in the attitude of men toward the world ? Suggest several rea- 
 sons for the rapid development of the Renaissance in Italy. What 
 did other nations contribute to the Renaissance? What conditions of 
 the fifteenth century tended to forward the Renaissance in England ? 
 What caused the revival of learning in Italy? How was it brought to 
 England? What was its influence on literature? 
 
 In considering the progress of the Renaissance in England it may 
 be interesting to point out some differences between the English move- 
 ment and the Italian. In the first place the influence of patriotism 
 centering about the person of the English sovereign should be noted, as 
 limiting the exercise of personal ambition, which in Italy made for 
 division. And in the second place, the fact that in England the Refor- 
 mation took place before the Renaissance had got its full headway, 
 should be recalled; and the influence of the new religious interest, 
 checking the temptations of the time toward a life of pleasure, should 
 be noted in writers from Wyatt to Spenser. It will be well also to 
 examine rather carefully the history of the time, and observe how 
 the religious and the national spirit, stimulated by various events, 
 reached their height under Elizabeth in the years which saw also the 
 appearance of the greater Elizabethan literature. 
 
 What were some of the characteristics of the court of Henry VIII? 
 Comment on the character of the king. What influences moulded the 
 character of Sir Thomas More? What was his purpose in " Utopia"? 
 What are some of the features of the Utopian society? In what way 
 is the book typical of the Renaissance? What influence did the court 
 of Henry VIII. have on poetry? Name the chief poets of his court. 
 What is the chief characteristic of Wyatt's verse? What were the ser- 
 vices of Wyatt and Surrey to English poetry? 
 
 The Renaissance was in England very largely a matter of imitation. 
 The Reformation was a more spontaneous national movement. What 
 earlier attempts at religious reform had prepared the way for the 
 English Reformation? What political situation in the reign of Henry
 
 88 The Renaissance 
 
 VIII. furthered it? What were the features of the Reformation under 
 Edward VI. and Mary? What was the religious policy of Elizabeth? 
 What was the influence of Tyndale and Coverdale's translation of the 
 Bible on literature? What was the "Book of Martyrs"? 
 
 The years between the death of Henry VIII. and the accession of 
 Elizabeth may be regarded as a period of reaction, between the earlier 
 and the later Renaissance. With the accession of Elizabeth came a 
 quickening of all the forces of the age, the individual spirit of ambition 
 and adventure, thirst for pleasure, and love of glory, which may be illus- 
 trated from the life of Raleigh, and the plays of Marlowe, to be discussed 
 in the next chapter; the spirit of religious patriotism, which finds its 
 personal representation in Sidney, and its literary expression in " The 
 Faerie Queene." Who was John Lyly? What is the character of 
 "Euphues"? What does it illustrate? What characteristic marked 
 its style? Outline the career of Sir Philip Sidney. What was " Astro- 
 phel nd Stella " ? Why did Sidney write the " Arcadia " ? Give some 
 characteristics of the story. What was the "Defence of Poesy"? 
 Contrast Raleigh with Sidney in character and in career. In what 
 respects is Raleigh an illustration of the interests of his time? What 
 are his chief works ? 
 
 Outline the life of Spenser. What was the influence on him of 
 Cambridge? of London? of Ireland? What was the "Shepherd's 
 Calendar"? Under what circumstances did Spenser write "The 
 Faerie Queene"? What was the purpose of the poem? What its 
 plan ? How does Spenser illustrate the dependence of English litera- 
 ture upon Italian? What is the Spenserian stanza? 
 
 What led to the growth of the reading public at the time of the 
 Renaissance? What effects did this growth have upon literature? 
 Illustrate from the career of Robert Greene. How do Greene and 
 his friends differ from Spenser and Sidney in their attitude toward 
 literature? In their lives? Explain the prominence of lyric verse 
 in this period. 
 
 READING GUIDE. All students should read at least Canto I, 
 Book I, of the "Faerie Queene"; this portion of the poem Is given in 
 Maynard's English Classic series. If further reading is required in 
 Spenser, it should include the "Prothalamion," and the first portion of 
 "Colin Clout" or "The Shepherd's Calendar." Convenient texts are 
 "Minor Poems of Spenser," in the Temple Classics, and " Selected
 
 Reading Guide 89 
 
 Poems," in the Canterbury Poets series. Lowell's essay on Spenser, in 
 "Among My Books," should, if possible, be read. 
 
 The "Utopia" and "Roper's Life of More" are printed together in 
 the Camelot Series and in the Temple Classics. Volunteers may be 
 called upon to read and report to the class upon each of these. 
 
 For Wyatt, Surrey, and Sidney, the poems given in "The Golden 
 Treasury" or in "Ward's English Poets," Vol. I, should, if possible, 
 be read, either privately by each student or before the class. 
 
 Sidney's "Defence of Poesy" is edited by A. S. Cooke (Ginn), and in 
 the Pitt Press Series. 
 
 Green's "Short History of the English People," chapter vii, is ex- 
 cellent for supplementing the student's knowledge of the times. 
 
 Kingsley's "Westward Ho" gives a vigorous picture of England's 
 struggle with Spain by sea and in America. Tennyson's "Ballad of 
 the Revenge" is excellent to illustrate the patriotic temper of Elizabeth's 
 reign.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE: THE DRAMA BEFORE SHAKE- 
 SPEARE 
 
 I. THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA ! NATIVE SOURCES 
 
 Norman Shows and Pageants. To trace the English drama 
 from the beginning, we must go back as far as the Norman 
 conquest. The Norman people had a great fondness for 
 shows and spectacles. When the Norman kings were once 
 firmly seated on the English throne, they gave full rein to 
 their taste for splendid pageantry. If a royal wedding was 
 to be celebrated, or a victorious monarch welcomed back 
 from war, London was turned into a place of festival. At the 
 entrance gate of the city, or at fixed places on the route to 
 church or palace, elaborate structures were built, representing 
 some mythical or allegorical scene the gods grouped upon 
 Olympus, an armed St. George giving combat to a golden 
 dragon, or nymphs and satyrs sporting in enchanted gar- 
 dens. Sometimes music was added, and the personators, 
 by dialogue and action, gave welcome to the royal party. 
 These pageants developed at the Renaissance into a special 
 form of dramatic entertainment, the Masque. Meanwhile, 
 by stimulating in the people a love of dramatic spectacle, 
 they helped to pave the way for regular drama. 
 
 The Miracle Play : Its Origin and Growth. A much more 
 important source of the drama, however, was the mass- 
 service of the Catholic church, especially at Christmas-tide 
 and Easter. The ordinary services at these times were 
 enriched with special ceremonies, such as burying the cruci- 
 fix in a tomb of the church on Good Friday and disinterring 
 it on Easter morning, with monks or choir-boys to take the 
 parts of the three Marys, the angel at the tomb, and the 
 chorus of rejoicing angels in heaven. These little dramatic 
 
 99-
 
 Origin of the Drama 9] 
 
 ceremonies gradually became detached from the service, and 
 were moved from the church into the church-yard. Later, 
 when the crowds desecrated the graves in their eagerness to 
 see and hear, the plays were transferred to the public green 
 or town square. By Chaucer's time these "miracle plays" 
 or "mysteries" had passed to a large extent out of the hands 
 of the priests, and had come under the control of the trade- 
 guilds, who made use of them to celebrate their annual festival 
 of Corpus Christi. Rivalry among the guilds, and the desire 
 of each to possess a separate play, led to the setting forth of 
 the whole Scripture story from Genesis to Revelations, in 
 a series or cycle forming a great drama, of which the separate 
 plays were, in a sense, only single acts. It was the aim of 
 these great miracle-cycles to give a connected view of God's 
 dealings with man, from the beginning of the world until its 
 destruction. 
 
 How Miracle Plays Were Presented. In order to gain some 
 idea of the impression made by the miracle plays upon the 
 people who witnessed them, let us imagine ourselves for a 
 moment in a provincial English town at the beginning of the 
 fifteenth century, on the morning of Corpus Christi day. 
 Shortly after dawn, heralds have made the round of the city 
 to announce the coming spectacle. The places where the 
 cars or "pageants," which form both stage and dressing- 
 room, are to stop, are crowded with the motley population 
 of a mediaeval city. The spectators of importance occupy 
 seats upon scaffolds erected for the purpose, or look on from 
 the windows of neighboring houses, while the humbler folk 
 jostle each other in the street. 
 
 Soon the first pageant appears, a great box mounted 
 on four wheels and drawn by apprentices of the masons' 
 guild, which guild is charged with presenting the Creation 
 of Eve and the Fall of Man. The curtains at the front 
 and the sides of the great box are drawn, revealing an 
 upper compartment, within which the main action is to take 
 place. On a raised platform sits enthroned a majestic 
 figure in a red robe, with gilt hair and beard, impersonating 
 the Creator. Before him lies Adam, dressed in a close- 
 fitting leather garment painted white or flesh- color. The
 
 92 The Renaissance 
 
 Creator, after announcing his intention of making for Adam 
 a helpmeet, descends and touches the sleeper's side. There- 
 upon Eve rises through a trap-door, and Adam wakes re- 
 joicing. Again the Creator ascends to his throne, and Adam 
 withdraws to a corner of the pageant, leaving Eve to be 
 tempted by a great serpent, cunningly contrived of green 
 and gold cloth in which an actor is concealed. This mon- 
 ster, crawling upon the stage from below, harangues Eve 
 with lengthy eloquence. Then follows the eating of the 
 apple, and the coming of God's angels, with gilt hair, scarlet 
 robes, and swords waved and ridged like fire, to drive the 
 pair from the garden into the wilderness, that is, into the 
 lower compartment of the pageant, which is now uncovered 
 to view. 
 
 A trumpeter advances before the car, and sounds a long 
 note in token of the conclusion of the play. The 'prentices 
 harness themselves to the car; and it moves off to the next 
 station, to be replaced by others. These represent in turn, 
 Noah's Flood, given by the guild of water-merchants; the 
 Sacrifice of Isaac, given by the butchers' guild; the Nativ- 
 ity, the Crucifixion, and so on in long procession, until the 
 crowning spectacle of the Day of Judgment. The chief 
 feature of spectacular interest in this last is Hell-mouth, 
 a great dragon's jaw belching flame and smoke, into which 
 lost souls, dressed in black and yellow particolor, are tossed 
 by the Devil a most 'alarming personage with a bright red 
 beard, a hairy body, a hideous mask, horns, and a long 
 forked tail. 
 
 Germs of Regular Drama in the Miracle Plays. The 
 authors of these Miracle plays were free to embellish the 
 biblical story with episodes drawn from the common life of 
 their own day. Even when these added episodes took a 
 broadly comic turn, nobody was shocked, any more than 
 by the imps and monsters which grinned at them from the 
 solemn shadows of their cathedrals. In the play of Noah's 
 Flood, the patriarch causes first the animals to enter the Ark, 
 then his sons and daughters-in-law; but when he comes to 
 his wife, she objects. She does not relish being cooped up 
 without her "gossips," leaving these amiable women to
 
 Origin of the Drama 93 
 
 drown. Remonstrances at last proving fruitless, Noah re- 
 sorts to the argument of blows, and drives his scolding help- 
 meet into the Ark, to the great delight of the crowd. In the 
 play of Abraham and Isaac, the yearning love of the old man 
 for his little son, and the sweet, trustful nature of the boy, 
 are brought home to us in such a way as to intensify the 
 pathos of the moment when Abraham makes ready, at the 
 Lord's command, to sacrifice the life which is dearest to him 
 on earth. The pleading of the boy, the gradual overmastering 
 of his fear of death by his pity for his father's anguish and 
 his solicitude for his mother's grief, are rendered with touch- 
 ing truth. 
 
 "Therfor do our Lordes bydding, 
 And wan I am ded, then prey for me; 
 But, good fader, tell ye my moder no-thyng, 
 Say that I am in another cunthre dwellyng." 
 
 In these episodes, and in many others which might be given, 
 lie the germs of regular drama. Such humorous scenes as 
 the quarrel of Noah and his wife, constitute in reality crude 
 little comedies out of which regular comedy could readily 
 grow. In such tragic scenes as the Sacrifice of Isaac, the 
 Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion, the elements 
 of noble tragedy were already present. 
 
 The Morality Plays. The miracle plays attempted to set 
 forth only a part of the teaching necessary to man's salvation, 
 namely that part contained in the history of Adam's fall, the 
 redemption through Christ, and the final Judgment. This 
 dealt with matters of belief. To complete this teaching there 
 was needed some treatment of the side of religion which 
 deals with matters of conduct; and it was this which the 
 "Morality plays" tried to supply. By means of such per- 
 sonifications or abstractions as the World, the Flesh, Man- 
 kind, Mercy, Justice, Peace, the Seven Deadly Sins, Good 
 and Bad Angels, Gluttony, Covetousness, Old Age, and 
 Death, the morality plays represented the conflict between 
 sin and righteousness for the possession of the human soul. 
 The character of Vice played a great part. He was usually 
 dressed in the costume of a court fool, and carried a sword
 
 94 The Renaissance 
 
 of lath. His function was to attend upon the Devil, and to 
 worry, trick, and belabor his master for the amusement of the 
 crowd. The Vice survived in the fool of Shakespeare's plays, 
 though it is hard to recognize him in the philosophical Touch- 
 stone of As You Like //, or the musical fool who sings such 
 charming lyrics in Twelfth Night. 
 
 Interludes. Out of the moralities arose a species of play 
 known as the Interlude. The name took its origin from the 
 practice observed in the houses of the great, of having these 
 little dramas performed in the intervals of a banquet. In 
 the old play of Sir Thomas More, a band of strolling players 
 is announced while Sir Thomas is dining, and they perform 
 an interlude before him and his guests. Usually these pieces 
 had little action, and required almost no stage-setting. For 
 example, "The Four P's," of John Heywood, "a newe and a 
 very mery enterlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potycary, and 
 a Pedlar," is nothing more than an amusing series of speeches 
 by the four impersonators, in which they vaunt their several 
 callings, make themselves out very arrant rascals indeed, and 
 by so doing satirize the society which they represent. The 
 Interludes treat all kinds of undramatic subjects, such as 
 geography, the weather, the nature of the elements, in fact 
 all the crude natural science of the time. The stage, both at 
 this time and later, largely took the place of the modern school 
 and newspaper. 
 
 Robin Hood Plays and Christmas Plays. "Robin Hood 
 plays," setting forth the merry adventures of Robin Hood, 
 Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian, in Sherwood Forest, were also 
 popular ; and, all over England, seasons of merry-making were 
 enlivened by the performance of rude Christmas plays, or 
 "mummings," in which figured certain stock characters, 
 such as Old Father Christmas, St. George and the Dragon, 
 Old King Cole, and the Merry Andrew. The student will 
 find in Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native an account of 
 the Christmas mummings as they still exist, or did exist until 
 recent years, in remote corners of England.
 
 Classical Influence on Early Drama 95 
 
 II. CLASSICAL INFLUENCE UPON THE EARLY DRAMA 
 
 Early Plays on Classic Models. Owing to the great re- 
 vival of interest in Latin literature, which marked the be- 
 ginning of the Renaissance, it became the fashion in the 
 fifteenth century to present the Latin comedies of Plautus 
 and Terence on the stages of grammar schools, with the 
 students as actors. Later, these same plays began to be 
 translated, and given in the English tongue ; and from this it 
 was but a step to the composition of simple English comedies 
 on the Latin model. The earliest of these were Ralph Roister 
 Doister, written before 1541, and Gammer Gurton's Needle, 
 written about 1566. The main characters in Gammer Gur- 
 ton's Needle are studied from real sixteenth century peasants, 
 and the background of English village life is given with much 
 humor and vividness. 
 
 In tragedy, Seneca was taken as a model. In 1561, two 
 young gentlemen of the Inner Temple, Thomas Norton and 
 Thomas Sackville, presented before Queen Elizabeth a play 
 called Gorboduc, or F err ex and, Porrex, to show what could be 
 done in handling a subject from British legend, on the lines 
 laid down by the Latin tragedian. It is a stately production, 
 and deserves veneration as the first regular tragedy written 
 in English. It had a great influence upon the native drama, 
 just beginning to take permanent form. 
 
 Latin Tragedy and Native English Tragedy Contrasted. 
 Latin tragedy has very little stage action; important events, 
 instead of being directly represented, are merely reported 
 on the stage, by messengers or others. The tendency of 
 English tragedy, on the other hand, was from the first to 
 present everything bodily on the stage, even the storm- 
 ing of cities, or battles between great armies, where the 
 means at the disposal of the actors were often laughably 
 inadequate. Latin drama, again, is usually careful to pre- 
 serve unity of time and place, that is, to make all the 
 action pass in a given locality, and to cover no more than 
 the events of a single day. English playwrights, on the con- 
 trary, had no hesitation in shifting the scene to half a dozen
 
 96 The Renaissance 
 
 different countries in the course of a single play; and they 
 thought nothing of introducing in the first act a child who 
 grew to' manhood in the second act, and in the third died 
 and handed on the story, to be acted out by his sons and 
 grandsons in the remainder. Classic drama also drew a very 
 sharp line between comedy and tragedy, admitting no comic 
 element into a serious play. The English drama, on the 
 contrary, from the miracle plays down, set comedy side by 
 side with tragedy ; it mingled the farcical with the august, the 
 laughable with the pathetic, as they actually are mingled 
 in life. 
 
 Good Effect of Classic Influence on the Drama. In the end, 
 the free native form of drama prevailed, in spite of the efforts 
 of the University "wits " (as young men of learning and clever- 
 ness were then called) .to force the Latin form upon the stage. 
 Nevertheless, the apprenticeship of English playwrights to a 
 foreign master, brief and incomplete though it was, was in- 
 valuable. It taught them to impose some restraint upon the 
 riot of their fancy; it showed them the beauty and artistic 
 necessity of good structure ; in a word, it brought form out of 
 chaos. 
 
 III. BEGINNING OF THE GREAT DRAMATIC PERIOD 
 
 The Theatre Becomes the Chief Expression of Elizabethan 
 
 Life. We now stand oh the threshold of that wonderful 
 sixty years (1580-1640) during which the Elizabethan drama 
 ran its magnificent course. As has been shown in the last 
 chapter, England found herself, at the beginning of this 
 period, quickened by three of the most potent influences 
 which can affect the life of a nation: widespread intellectual 
 curiosity; the beginnings of an intense religious ferment; 
 and the pride of suddenly discovered national strength. The 
 young wits who came up from the Universities to London, 
 tingling with the imaginative excitement of the age, seized 
 upon the popular theatre, as the most vital form of art then 
 existing, and the best instrument for the expression of their 
 own swarming fancies.
 
 Elizabethan Playhouses and Actors 97 
 
 Elizabethan Playhouses and Actors. During the youth of 
 the drama, the performance of plays had been chiefly in the 
 hands of strolling companies, who, attaching themselves 
 nominally to the household of some great lord, and using his 
 name to protect them, wandered about the country, wherever, 
 on village green, at market fair, or in the hall of some noble 
 house, they could find an audience. But shortly before the 
 period we are now studying, regular companies had begun to 
 establish themselves in the suburbs of London, and to erect 
 permanent theatres. The first of these playhouses, known 
 simply as "The Theatre," was built in Finsbury Fields, to 
 the north of the city, by James Burbage, in 1576. It was at 
 this play-house that Shakespeare first found employment. 
 Burbage's company, on the destruction of The Theatre, 
 built the Globe, on , the south bank of the Thames ; and 
 here, on the Bankside, other places of theatrical entertainment 
 rapidly sprang up. After a time the actors became bold 
 enough to push into the city itself. Burbage built the Black- 
 friars, as a winter theatre. A rival company built the For- 
 tune, also in the city limits. By the end of the century, 
 eleven theatres existed in the city, and in the free lands or 
 "liberties" adjoining. 
 
 Performances usually took place at three in the afternoon, 
 and were announced by the hanging out of a flag and the 
 blowing of trumpets. The theatres were round, square, or 
 octagonal structures, unroofed except for a shed or canopy 
 over the stage. The winter theatres, such as the Blackfriars, 
 were entirely roofed in. The stage extended out into the 
 body of the house, was open on three sides, and was sufficiently 
 elevated so that the main bulk of the audience, standing on 
 the bare ground which formed the floor or pit of the theatre, 
 could have a fair view. Persons who could afford to pay a 
 higher price than the "groundlings," took advantage of the 
 boxes built round the pit. Young gallants, for an extra 
 fee, could have seats upon the stage itself, where they smoked 
 their pipes, peeled oranges, cracked nuts, and often interfered 
 with the performance by chaffing a poor actor, or by flirting 
 ostentatiously with the fair occupant of a neighboring box. 
 In accordance with the luxurious taste of the age in dress,
 
 98 The Renaissance 
 
 the costumes of the actors were often very rich. All women's 
 parts were played by boys ; actresses were not seen in England 
 until after the Restoration. The stage-setting was of the 
 simplest, a change of scene being indicated often merely by 
 a placard, or at most by a roughly painted piece of paste- 
 board and a few stage properties. A tree and a bench did 
 duty for a garden ; a wooden cannon and a paste-board tower 
 indicated a siege. This meagreness of stage-setting, so far 
 from being a misfortune, was in no small measure responsible 
 for the literary greatness of the Elizabethan drama; for it 
 threw the dramatist back upon vivid poetic expression, as the 
 only means of stimulating the imagination of his audience. 
 The Pre- Shakespearean Playwrights. The group of young 
 dramatists which sprang up to supply the demand made by 
 the early stage included Robert Greene, George Peele, John 
 Lyly, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Nash, and 
 Christopher Marlowe. Of these Marlowe stands as undis- 
 puted leader. He is the true founder of the popular English 
 drama, though himself an outgrowth of the long period of 
 preparation which we have been studying. 
 
 IV. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: 1564-1593 
 
 Marlowe's Life. Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker in 
 the old cathedral town of Canterbury, was born in 1 564, two 
 months before Shakespeare. He was sent to Cambridge 
 by a patron, who had noticed his quick parts. He graduated 
 at nineteen; and four years later (1587) he astonished Lon- 
 don with his first play, Tamburlaine, which he brought out 
 with the Lord Admiral's Men, the rival company to the 
 Lord Chamberlain's Men, whom Shakespeare had joined a 
 short time before. During the six years which intervened 
 between the production of Tamburlaine and his death, Mar- 
 lowe brought out three more plays, Doctor Faustus, The 
 Jew of Malta, and Ed-ward II. He was killed in 1593, in a 
 tavern-brawl, at Deptford, whither he had gone to take 
 refuge from the plague then devastating London. 
 
 Marlowe's "Programme." In the brief and haughty 
 prologue prefixed to Tamburlaine, Marlowe not only an-
 
 Christopher Marlowe 99 
 
 flounced clearly the character of that play, but hinted at the 
 programme which he proposed to carry out in the future: 
 
 "From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits 
 And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, 
 We'll lead you to the stately tents of war 
 Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine 
 Threatening the world with high astounding terms 
 And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword." 
 
 The "jigging veins of rhyming mother wits," is a sneer at 
 the use of rhyme and awkward tumbling lines of fourteen 
 syllables, which was customary with the popular playwrights 
 of the time. For this "jigging vein" he proposes to sub- 
 stitute blank verse, which, though it had been employed 
 previously by Sackville and Norton, in Gorboduc, had not 
 established itself. It is a sign of Marlowe's artistic insight 
 that he should have recognized at once the value of blank 
 verse for dramatic poetry; and we can see, beneath the sur- 
 face of his words, a proud consciousness of his own power 
 over this almost untried form of verse. Out of it he built 
 that "mighty line," which astounded and fascinated his 
 contemporaries ; and his success with it fixed it firmly hence- 
 forth as the vehicle of serious drama. By his sneer at the 
 "conceits" that "clownage keeps in pay," Marlowe showed 
 his determination not to pander to the pit by means of vulgar 
 comedy and horse-play, but to treat an elevated theme with 
 seriousness. By the "stately tents of war," to which he prom- 
 ises to lead his hearer, he typified the dignity and largeness 
 of scope which he proposed to give to all his work. By the 
 last three lines of the prologue, he foreshadowed his plan of 
 giving unity to his dramas, by making them revolve around 
 some single great personality, engaged in some titanic struggle 
 for power; and likewise of treating this struggle with the 
 rhetorical splendor, the "high astounding terms," without 
 which Elizabethan tragedy is now inconceivable. This pro- 
 gramme he carried out in the main with consistency. 
 
 Marlowe's Plays: "Tamburlaine." Tamburlaine is a 
 pure "hero-play." The hero is a Scythian shepherd, who
 
 100 The Renaissance 
 
 conquers, one after another, the kingdoms of the East, 
 forcing kings to harness themselves to his chariot, and car- 
 rying with him a great cage in which a captive emperor is 
 kept like a wild beast. The huge barbaric figure of Tam- 
 burlaine is always before our eyes, and the action of the play 
 is only a series of his triumphs. His character, half-bestial, 
 half-godlike, dominates the imagination like an elemental 
 force of nature, and lends itself admirably to those "high 
 astounding terms," which fill whole pages of the play with 
 thunderous monologue. 
 
 "Doctor Faustus." Doctor Faustus, Marlowe's second 
 work, is also a hero-play, and is cast on even larger lines. It 
 is a dramatized story of the life and death of a mediaeval 
 scholar, who sells his soul to the devil, in return for a life of 
 unlimited power and pleasure. For a space of years, he has 
 at his command all the resources of infernal magic. He can 
 transport himself in a twinkling from one region of the earth 
 to another ; himself unseen, he can play pranks in the palaces 
 of popes and emperors; he can summon up the ancient dead 
 to minister to his delight. But at last the fearful price is 
 demanded, and he must render up his soul to everlasting 
 torment. The play, as it has come down to us, is disfigured 
 by comic passages of a coarse and tasteless sort, those very 
 "conceits of clownage" which Marlowe had formerly de- 
 clared war against. But even where the workmanship is 
 poor there is always something imposing in the design ; and 
 certain passages have hardly been surpassed for power and 
 beauty. When Mephistopheles raises from the dead the 
 spirit of Helen of Troy, Faustus utters one rapturous excla- 
 mation, 
 
 "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
 And burnt the topless towers of Ilion?" 
 
 And on his death-bed he starts up with the cry, 
 
 "Lo, where Christ's blood streams in the firmamentl" 
 
 three lines which would alone serve to stamp Marlowe as 
 of the company of imperial poets.
 
 Christopher Marlowe 101 
 
 " The Jew of Malta " and " Edward n." Marlowe's 
 third play, "The Jew of Malta," is again a study of the lust 
 of power this time the power bestowed by great riches. 
 Barabbas, the old Jewish merchant of Malta, is the first vig- 
 orous sketch of which Shakespeare was to make in Shylock a 
 finished masterpiece. The first two acts are conceived on a 
 large scale, and carefully worked out ; but after these Mar- 
 lowe seems again to have fallen from his own ideal, and the 
 play degenerates into melodrama of the goriest kind. Never- 
 theless it shows a remarkable advance over Tamburlaine and 
 Doctor Faustus, in the knitting together of cause and effect. 
 Marlowe's growth in dramatic skill is even more apparent in 
 his last play, Edward II. This is his masterpiece, so far as 
 play-making goes, though for the very reason that it discards 
 rhetorical monologue for rapid dramatic dialogue, it contains 
 fewer passages of pure poetry than any of the others. 
 
 Marlowe a Type of the English Renaissance. Marlowe is 
 one of the most striking figures of the English Renaissance. 
 He represents the Renaissance passion for life, grasping 
 after the infinite in power, in knowledge, and in pleasure. 
 There is something in the meteor-like suddenness of his 
 appearance in the skies of poetry, and in the swift naming 
 of his genius through its course, which seems to make inev- 
 itable his violent end. When he died, at twenty-nine, he was 
 probably only upon the threshold of his achievement ; but he 
 had already laid broad and deep the foundation of English 
 drama, and Shakespeare was already at work rearing upon 
 this foundation an incomparable edifice. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. The drama was the greatest and the most 
 popular literary form of the Elizabethan age. But before it came 
 to full flower in the work of Shakespeare and his fellow-dramatists 
 it had to go through a long process of growth. In this chapter we 
 go back to the earliest beginnings of the drama in England, and trace 
 its origin from forms of entertainment and religious ceremonies only 
 rudely dramatic in character. We then follow its development through 
 the Miracle play, the Morality play, and the Interlude, to the time 
 when the English drama put itself ta school, during the middle of 
 the sixteenth century, to Latin comedy and tragedy. By following
 
 102 The Renaissance 
 
 classic models for a time, it became better organized, but it remained 
 "romantic" in form and spirit, as it had been from the first. The pre- 
 Shakespearean drama culminates in Marlowe, who marks the close of 
 the period of preparation, and the beginning of the great dramatic 
 period, at the end of Elizabeth's reign. 
 
 How did the ceremonial life of the Norman and Plantagenet kings 
 contribute to the development of the early drama ? Keep in mind the 
 connection between these ceremonial shows and the spectacular and 
 lyric form v of drama known as the Masque, which we shall study in the 
 next chapter in the work of Shakespeare's friend and rival, Ben Jonson. 
 Trace the development of the Miracle play, from its earliest and simp- 
 lest form as a part of the Catholic church service, to its culmination in 
 the great Miracle-cycles. How did these plays come to be given in 
 cycles ? Summarize the chief facts concerning the manner in which 
 the Miracle-cycles were presented, under a number of heads, such as 
 Actors, Costumes, The Pageants, Stage Arrangements, The Audience, 
 etc. Do you notice a humorous fitness in the assignment of the 
 separate plays to particular guilds? The Miracle plays contained 
 the germs of regular comedy and tragedy; note, however, that the 
 comic element was introduced by the authors, to lighten the tone, but 
 that the tragic element existed in the Bible stories themselves. Illus- 
 trate this from the instances given. How did the Morality plays 
 supplement the Miracle plays ? What stock-character of Shakespeare's 
 plays is a survival from the Moralities? Why were the Interludes so 
 called ? What subjects did they treat ? 
 
 Describe the influence of the schools, and the enthusiasm for classic 
 studies, upon the English drama during its formative period. Name the 
 two earliest English comedies and the earliest tragedy written under 
 the classical influence. What were the chief differences between the 
 Latin and the native English form of tragedy? Most of these differences 
 arose from one circumstance, that the classic dramatists were content 
 to treat a single episode, whereas the English dramatists who were 
 "romantic" in feeling were eager to present a whole story made up of 
 maiiy incidents. Would it have been possible for Shakespeare to 
 present the history of Julius Caesar or of King Lear in "classic" form? 
 What did Shakespeare think of the inclusion of humorous and tragic 
 matters in the same play? What beneficial influences came from the 
 struggle to impose classic forms on English playwrights ? 
 
 Between what dates did the Elizabethan drama flourish ? (The term
 
 Review Outline 103 
 
 "Elizabethan drama" is used somewhat loosely. It did not begin in 
 earnest until Elizabeth, who was crowned in 1558, had been on the 
 throne for almost a quarter of a century; and it continued under James 
 and Charles for about thirty-five years after her death. Thelaterdrama 
 is sometimes called Jacobean, from Jacobus, [James], but the term 
 Elizabethan is generally used to cover the whole.) Review what is 
 told in Chapter V concerning the political and social conditions of 
 Elizabeth's reign, in order to understand the high excitement of the 
 English nation at this time, and the brilliant life which found ex- 
 pression in the drama. Summarize the chief facts concerning the early 
 theatres and theatrical companies; concerning the manner in which 
 Elizabethan plays were presented. In what poet did the long process 
 of dramatic development reach a point of comparative completion? 
 
 Give a brief sketch of Marlowe's life. Note carefully the reforms which 
 Marlowe proposed to carry out in play- writing in verse-form, in rhet- 
 oric, in the kind of themes treated, and in the unifying of these themes 
 by a single personality. Who had introduced "blank verse" into 
 England ? Where had it been already used in drama ? What was the 
 effect of Marlowe's example in the use of blank verse ? Show how 
 Marlowe's first three plays illustrate, each in its own way, the interest 
 of the Renaissance in individual man and his thirst for conquest. 
 
 READING GUIDE. Little reading of texts can be expected of 
 
 the student in the pre-Shakespearean drama. If time serve, Marlowe's 
 "Edward II." or "The Jew of Malta" should be read. "The Jew of 
 Malta," arranged for school use, is included in Maynard's English 
 Classics. "Edward II." is edited by A. W. Verity (Dent). The in- 
 terest of the class work, if students are sufficiently advanced, may be 
 much heightened by volunteer reports upon such subjects as "The 
 Mounting and Acting of Miracle Plays," "The Early Elizabethan 
 Theatres." Materials for the first may be found in the introduction 
 to A. W. Pollard's "English Miracle Plays," and in K. L. Bates's "Eng- 
 lish Religious Drama"; for the second, in "Shakespeare's Predecessors," 
 by J. A. Symonds. The study of Marlowe may be supplemented by 
 Lowell's essay upon him, in "The Old English Dramatists."
 
 104 
 
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 105 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S FORERUNNERS 
 
 )HN LYLY, 1554-1606. Endymion; 
 Alexander and Campaspe; The 
 Woman in the Moon, etc. 
 
 OBERT GREENE, 1560-1592. Friar 
 Bacon and Friar Bungay; James IV., 
 etc. 
 
 EORGE PEELE, 1558-1597. David 
 and Bethsaba; Old Wives' Tale, etc. 
 
 HRISTOPHER MARLOWE, 1564-1593. 
 
 Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; The Jew 
 of Malta; Edward II. 
 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616 
 
 hief plays falling in this period (dates 
 largely conjectural) : Love's Labour's 
 Lost, 1590; Comedy of Errors, 1591; 
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 Midsummer Night's Dream, 1593; 
 Romeo and Juliet; Merchant of Ven- 
 ice, 1596; series of English history 
 plays, 1590-1599; Taming of the 
 Shrew, 1597; Merry Wives, Much 
 Ado, 1598; As You Like It, 1599; 
 Twelfth Night, 1600-1601; Julius 
 Caesar, 1601; Hamlet, 1602; Measure 
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 CHAPTER VII 
 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOW-DRAMATISTS 
 
 I. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: 1564-1616 
 
 Shakespeare's Early Life. William Shakespeare was born 
 on or about the 23rd of April, 1564, in the village of Stratford. 
 He was the third child of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. 
 His mother was of gentle blood, and was possessed of some 
 wealth by inheritance. His father, though a man of con- 
 sideration in the village, was of lower station, a tanner and 
 glover by trade. Until the age of fourteen the boy attended 
 the Stratford grammar school, where he picked up the "small 
 Latin and less Greek," to which his learned friend Ben 
 Jonson rather scornfully refers. The better part of his edu- 
 cation, a wonderfully deep and sure insight into Nature, and 
 a wide .acquaintance with the folk-lore of his native dis- 
 trict, he doubtless began to acquire in boyhood, by rambles 
 through the meadows and along the streams of Warwick- 
 shire, and by converse with the simple folk of the country 
 side. Only a few miles away was the picturesque town of 
 Warwick, with its magnificent castle, to set him dreaming of 
 the past. Within an easy day's walk lay Kenilworth Castle, 
 the seat of Elizabeth's favorite, Leicester; and the historic 
 town of Coventry, where one might still see miracle plays 
 performed on certain festival days. Travelling companies 
 of actors visited Stratford two or three times a year, and had 
 to apply to Shakespeare's father, who was at that time a vil- 
 lage official, for leave to play. At their performances young 
 Shakespeare was doubtless sometimes present, drinking in 
 his first impressions of the fascinating world of the stage. 
 
 About 1578 the fortunes of his father began to decline, 
 and Shakespeare was withdrawn from school. In spite of 
 the rapidly failing prosperity of the family, he was married 
 
 106
 
 Copyright, 1890, by Frederick Keppel & Co. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 
 
 From the Chandos portrait
 
 108 The Renaissance 
 
 at eighteen to Ann Hathaway, a young woman eight years 
 his senior, the daughter of a peasant family of Shottery, 
 near Stratford. Some time between 1585 and 1587, he left 
 Stratford to seek his fortune in the capital, and until the close 
 of his life he returned to his native town only at intervals. 
 The immediate cause of his leaving is said by doubtful tradi- 
 tion to have been the anger of Sir Thomas Lucy, a local 
 magnate, over a deer-stealing prank in which Shakespeare 
 and other wild young blades of the village had engaged. 
 
 Shakespeare in London. Outside the walls of London to 
 the north, not far from where the road from Shakespeare's 
 country entered the suburbs of the capital, stood The Theatre, 
 one of two or three play houses which London then boasted. 
 It had at the head of its company the famous actor James 
 Burbage. Tradition says that the youthful Shakespeare, 
 on first coming to London, picked up a living by holding 
 horses at the doors of The Theatre. Whether this is true or 
 not, he soon found himself connected with Burbage's com- 
 pany, as actor and as retoucher of old plays. He continued 
 with Burbage's company, as actor, playwright, and stock- 
 holder, when the Theatre was pulled down, and rebuilt as 
 the Globe on the south bank of the Thames. 
 
 Of the external facts of Shakespeare's life in London we 
 know few. Early in his career he was attacked by Robert 
 Greene, who, in a deathbed exhortation to Marlowe, Peele, 
 and others, called him "an upstart crow beautified with our 
 feathers, that supposes he is as well able to bombast out a 
 blank verse as the rest of us." The publishers of Greene's 
 pamphlet afterward printed a formal apology, testifying to 
 young Shakespeare's worth and amiability. We know of 
 his friendship with William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and 
 with the Earl of Southampton; of his friendly rivalry, in 
 art and talk, with "rare Ben Jonson," the second dramatist 
 of the age; of his careful conduct of his business affairs, 
 and of his popularity as a playwright. Except for these few 
 gleams of light, his external life is wrapped in mystery; and 
 the very breadth and dramatic greatness of his plays prevent 
 us from drawing from them any but the broadest inferences 
 conceniing his personal history.
 
 William Shakespeare 109 
 
 Shakespeare's Return to Stratford : His Death. The foun- 
 dation of Shakespeare's modest fortune is thought to have 
 been laid by a gift from his friend and patron, the young Earl 
 of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his youthful poems, 
 "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece"; but it was mainly by 
 his earnings at the Globe and Blackfriars' theatres that he 
 was able to reinstate his parents in their old position of 
 comfort, as well as to gain for himself a patent of -gentility, 
 and the possession of the best homestead in his native vil- 
 lage, with broad acres of land to add to its dignity. Hither, 
 at the age of fifty, he retired, to spend the remainder of his 
 life in country quietude, with his wife and his unmarried 
 daughter Judith. He died in 1616, at the age of fifty-two; 
 and was buried in the old church by the Avon, where thou- 
 sands of pilgrims now go each year to read the words on his 
 tomb beseeching men to let his dust lie quiet in its grave. 
 
 The Period of Experiment. Shakespeare began his dra- 
 matic work by retouching old plays, and by a number of ex- 
 periments which show how eagerly interested he was in the 
 literary fashions of the time. One of these early ventures, 
 Love's Labour's Lost, sprang from his interest in the fan- 
 ciful, artificial language then in vogue at Elizabeth's court 
 and among the young fashionables of London. In another, 
 The Comedy 0} Errors, he joins the classical enthusiasts, 
 taking his plot from a Latin comedy of Plautus. A third, the 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, is a dramatized romance, adapted 
 freely from one of the popular love-romances of his day. 
 
 The Earliest Masterpieces. Shakespeare's time of experi- 
 ment and probation was now over. The two plays which he 
 next produced A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo 
 and Juliet were, it is true, experimental, in the sense that 
 they enter realms before unknown to drama ; but both in con- 
 ception and execution they are finished masterpieces. The 
 first of these plays is thought to have been written in 1 593 ; 
 the second, though it did not receive its final form until 1596 
 or 1597, was probably produced before the poet's thirtieth 
 year. 
 
 "A Midsummer Night's Dream." A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream is thought to have been written for some nobleman's
 
 110 The Renaissance 
 
 marriage-festival, to take the place of the masque or alle- 
 gorical pageant usual upon such occasions. Theseus, duke 
 of Athens, and his bride Hippolita, in whose lofty figures the 
 noble bridal pair are perhaps shadowed forth, represent the 
 sentiment of love in its serene and dignified mood. About 
 this central pair revolve three other groups, representing 
 love in its fanciful and burlesque aspects. The first group 
 is made up of the Athenian youths and maidens astray 
 in the moonlight woods, loving at cross purposes, and played 
 upon by Puck with a magic liquor, which adds confusion 
 to confusion in their hearts. The second group consists of 
 the fairy-queen Titania and her lord Oberon ; and here the 
 treatment of the love theme becomes deliciously satiric, as 
 it depicts the passion of the dainty queen for fhe peasant 
 Bottom transformed into an ass. In the third group, that 
 of the journeymen actors who present the "tedious brief 
 scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe: very tragical 
 mirth," the love-theme is modulated into the most absurd 
 burlesque. Then, poured over all, holding these diverse 
 elements in unity, is the atmosphere of midsummer moon- 
 light, and the aerial poetry of the fairy world. 
 
 " Romeo and Juliet." A Midsummer Night's Dream, like 
 the plays which preceded it, treats of love in a light and fanci- 
 ful way, never more than half in earnest. In Romeo and 
 Juliet love ceases to be a mere sentiment, to be played with 
 and jested over; it becomes a passion, tragical with the issues 
 of life and death. Here for the first time Shakespeare was 
 really in earnest. The two young lives are caught in a fiery 
 whirlwind, which sweeps them through the rapturous hours 
 of their new love, to their death together in the tomb of 
 Juliet's ancestors. The action, instead of being spread over 
 months, as in the poem from which Shakespeare took the plot, 
 is crowded into five days ; and from the first meeting of the 
 lovers until the end, a sense of hurry, now ecstatic, now des- 
 perate, keeps the passion mounting in a swift crescendo. Not 
 only is the play great as a "tragedy of fate" in the Greek 
 sense, but in the drawing of character the poet now for the 
 first time works with unerring deftness and power. The 
 vulgar, kind-hearted nurse, the witty, hair-brained Mercutio,
 
 William Shakespeare 111 
 
 the vacillating yet stubborn Capulet, the lovers themselves, 
 so different in the manner of their love, all these and a dozen 
 minor figures have the very hue and gesture of life. 
 
 The Historical Plays. Shakespeare now, at thirty years of 
 age, proceeded to throw into dramatic form the rough masses 
 of English history which he found in the chronicles of 
 Holinshed. One of his youthful efforts, the blood-thirsty 
 melodrama, Titus Andronicus, had been written in imita- 
 tion of Marlowe ; now, in Richard III., again working under 
 Marlowe's influence, he produced a portrait of elemental 
 energy and evil pride, which the creator of Tamburlaine 
 and Faustus might have mistaken for his own handi- 
 work. This he followed up with King John, famous for 
 the tenderly drawn and touching figure of the little Prince, 
 Arthur ; it has been thought that in writing the moving pas- 
 sages where Arthur begs for his life, Shakespeare perhaps 
 had in mind his own son Hamnet, who had just died at the 
 age of eleven. In the three connected plays, Richard II., 
 Henry IV. (in two parts), and Henry V., Shakespeare gave 
 a broad picture of English history during one of its most 
 critical periods, when feudalism was passing away, and the 
 idea of nationality was taking its place. 
 
 "Henry IV." and "Henry V." In planning Henry IV. 
 Shakespeare hit upon the admirable notion of interspersing 
 the historic matter with scenes from the London tavern life 
 of his own day a life full of racy humor fitted to afford the 
 desired comic relief. As the presiding genius of the tavern 
 world, he created Falstaff, the fat old knight who helps Prince 
 Hal (afterward King Henry V.) to sow his wild oats. The 
 immortal figure of Falstaff holds the prime place among the 
 creations of Shakespeare's humor, as royally as Hamlet holds 
 his "intellectual throne." In Henry V. we see Shakespeare 
 in a new and very charming light ; it is, indeed, hardly a figure 
 of speech to say that we see the poet for in this play, as no- 
 where else in his dramas, does he speak with the voice of 
 personal enthusiasm. The manly, open character of the 
 king, and his splendid victories over the French, made him a 
 kind of symbol of England's greatness, both in character 
 and in achievement. The poet transfers to the battle of
 
 112 The Renaissance 
 
 Agincourt the national pride which had been kindled by 
 the defeat of the Armada, and makes his play a great paean 
 of praise for the island kingdom. In the "choruses" intro- 
 ducing the several acts, and even in the speeches of the char- 
 acters themselves, he utters in lyric strophes an overwhelming 
 patriotic emotion. 
 
 " The Merchant of Venice" and the "Joyous Comedies." 
 At this time Shakespeare seems, if we are justified in guessing 
 his personal mood from the mood of his work, to have passed 
 through a period of unbroken serenity and high spirits. At 
 any rate, the fruit of these years was a succession of joyous 
 comedies, touched with the golden light of love and romance. 
 Even while writing the histories, he had found time to write 
 The Merchant of Venice. Here, in the person of Portia, 
 he drew his second great portrait of a woman. Portia is an 
 elder sister of Juliet, less vehement, with a larger experience 
 of life, a stronger and more practised intellect. The grave 
 and noble character of Antonio shows the growing serious- 
 ness of the poet's mind. The retribution which overtakes the 
 cruel usurer, Shylock, and the moral beauty of Portia's famous 
 speech concerning "the quality of mercy" indicate also the 
 ripening of Shakespeare's moral sense. Even the music of 
 the verse shows a greater breadth, a more quiet strength, 
 than are to be found in the poet's earlier work. 
 
 In the three comedies which now followed, Shakespeare 
 drew three other wonderful female portraits, Beatrice of 
 Much Ado About Nothing, Rosalind of As You Like It, 
 and Viola of Twelfth Night. And, grouped around them, 
 what a holiday company of delightful figures! Benedick, 
 "the married man," trying in vain to parry the thrusts of 
 Beatrice's nimble wit ; the philosophical Touchstone, shaking 
 his head over the country wench Audrey, because the gods 
 have not made her poetical ; the meditative Jacques (a first 
 faint sketch, it has been said, of Hamlet), with his melancholy 
 "compounded of many simples" ; Sir Toby Belch, champion 
 of the ancient doctrine of cakes and ale, and ginger hot in the 
 mouth; the solemn prig and egotist Malvolio, smirking and 
 pointing at his cross-garters; Maria, "youngest wren of 
 nine"; and the clown Feste, with his marvellous, haunting
 
 William Shakespeare 113 
 
 songs. All these and dozens more move here in a kaleido- 
 scope of intense life, flooded with an indescribable poetic 
 radiance. 
 
 The "Period of Gloom" : the Sonnets. These three com- 
 edies were written between 1598 and 1601, that is between 
 the poet's thirty-fourth and his thirty-seventh year. The 
 last of them, Twelfth Night, has been called his "farewell 
 to mirth." What happened to him at this time, or whether 
 anything tangible happened, we shall never know. Certain 
 it is, however, that in several tragedies of titanic size, and in 
 two so-called comedies, almost more bitter and gloomy than 
 the tragedies, he sounded one after another the depths of 
 human baseness, sin, and suffering. The only hint that we 
 have of the nature of that valley and shadow through which 
 Shakespeare seems to have passed, is found in his "Sonnets." 
 They are addressed to "a man right fair" and "a woman 
 colored ill." What the exact relations were between the 
 three can only be guessed at. It has been conjectured 
 that the "Dark Lady" of the Sonnets was the evil genius 
 of Shakespeare's life, and that to her was chiefly due the 
 change in his spirit and in his art. Of course no such 
 personal explanation of this change is needed. The poet's 
 sympathy was so all-embracing, and his outlook on life so 
 broad, that the darker aspects of human character and destiny 
 had sooner or later, in the natural course of things, to absorb 
 his attention. Whatever may be their personal bearing, 
 however, the Sonnets are of inexhaustible interest, for the 
 subtlety and depth of their thought, and for the curious 
 mixture of oddity and artificiality, with transcendent beauty 
 and power, in their expression. If Shakespeare had written 
 nothing but these, he would still be a commanding figure in 
 the literature of the English race. 
 
 The Roman and Greek Plays. The work of this sombre 
 middle period of Shakespeare's life includes several plays on 
 Roman and Greek subjects. In Julius Casar, the hero's 
 greatness is presented in a strange inverted way. While 
 Caesar is alive, we see only his human weaknesses and fail- 
 ings; but after he is dead, we are made to feel the majesty 
 of his spirit by the world-wide ruin which follows his re-
 
 114 The Renaissance 
 
 moval. In another sense, the hero is not Caesar, but Brutus, 
 in whom the poet saw a political idealist and generous 
 dreamer, used as a tool by selfish men, who bring over- 
 whelming disaster upon the state by their murder of the only 
 man strong enough to save it. In Antony and Cleopatra, 
 Shakespeare showed the character of a great Roman gen- 
 eral, crumbling before the breath of Eastern luxury and 
 sensuality, personified in Cleopatra, the "worm of old Nile." 
 In Troilus and Cressida he drew a picture of faithlessness in 
 love, a picture so cynical, so fierce in its bitterness, that it is 
 almost impossible to think of it as the work of the hand 
 which drew Juliet, Portia and Rosalind; and at the same 
 time he deformed the heroic figures of Homeric legend with 
 savage burlesque. 
 
 The Great Tragedies: "Hamlet." In Hamlet, the first 
 of the four great tragedies which form the " captain jewels in 
 the carcanet" of the master's work, "we have the spectacle of 
 a, sensitive and highly intellectual youth, endowed with all 
 the gifts which make for greatness of living, suddenly con- 
 fronted with the knowledge that his father has been murdered, 
 and that his mother has married the murderer, . Even before 
 the revelation comes, Hamlet feels himself to be living in an 
 alien moral world, and is haunted by dark misgivings. When 
 his father's ghost appears to him, with its imperative injunc- 
 tion to revenge, Hamlet takes his resolution instantly. His 
 feigned madness, an element of the drama retained by Shake- 
 speare from the old story whence he drew the plot, is the first 
 device which Hamlet hits upon to aid him in his dangerous 
 duty. He gives up his love for Ophelia because he cannot 
 take her with him into the dark pass which he is compelled to 
 enter; and the scathing satire which he pours out upon her 
 when he fancies her in league with Polonius and the king to 
 play the spy upon him, gathers its force from the greatness of 
 the renunciation he has made. His scheme for proving the 
 king's guilt beyond a peradventure, by means of the strolling 
 players, is carried through with ingenious skill. His dealings 
 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are those of a gifted man 
 of action. Yet it is not wholly without reason that Hamlet 
 has come to stand in most minds for a type of irresolution.
 
 William Shakespeare 115 
 
 The exaltation of excitement in him causes his mind to play 
 with feverish brilliancy over the questions of man's life and 
 death. His throbbing, white-hot imagination becomes a meet- 
 ing-place for grotesque and extravagant fancies. Again and 
 again he loses hold of his enterprise in the intellectual excite- 
 ment which possesses him, showing itself in bursts of fitful 
 eloquence, in swift flashes of wit, in contemptuous irony and 
 biting satire. From the first we feel that Hamlet is doomed 
 irrevocably to ruin in the moral chaos where the " cursed 
 spite" of his destiny has thrown him. 
 
 " Othello." Othello has a certain likeness to Hamlet in 
 that here also the hero's soul is thrown into violent pertur- 
 bation by the discovery of evil poisoning the very sources of 
 his life. In Othello's case the pathos and the tragedy are 
 heightened by the fact that the evil exists only in the hero's 
 imagination, into which we see the demon-like lago pouring, 
 drop by drop, the poison of suspicion. Othello is not by 
 nature jealous. Desdemona, in answer to Emilia's question, 
 "Is he not jealous?" says, 
 
 "Who, he? I think the sun, where he was born 
 Drew all such humors from him," 
 
 and he everywhere shows himself "of an open and free 
 nature," incapable of petty suspicion. When lago, work- 
 ing cautiously, with diabolic skill, has at last convinced him 
 that Desdemona is false, the fatal rage which seizes him 
 derives its force from the very greatness of his love. The 
 real centre of the play is lago, with his "honest" manners, 
 his blunt speech, his plausible zeal in his master's service; 
 underneath all which his nature lies coiled like a snake, 
 waiting for a chance to sting. 
 
 "Macbeth." In Macbeth, Shakespeare depicted the pas- 
 sion of ambition working in a nature morally weak, but 
 endowed with an intense poetic imagination. Macbeth is a 
 dreamer and a sentimentalist, capable of conceiving vividly 
 the goal of his evil desires, but incapable either of resolute 
 action in attaining them, or of a ruthless enjoyment of them 
 when attained. By the murder of the king, Macbeth is
 
 116 The Renaissance 
 
 plunged into a series of crimes, in which he persists with a 
 kind of faltering desperation, until he falls before the accu- 
 mulated vengeance, material and ghostly, raised up to punish 
 him. As, in Antony and Cleopatra, we are shown the slow 
 degeneration of the hero's character under the slavery of 
 sense, so here we behold the break-up of a soul under the 
 torture of its own sick imagination. The ghost of Banquo, 
 shaking its gory locks at Macbeth from its seat at the banquet 
 table, is a symbol of the spiritual sickness which results 
 from the working of a strong fancy upon a nature morally 
 weak. The witch-hags who meet Macbeth on the heath are 
 embodiments of the powers of evil, summoned from the four 
 corners of the air by affinity with the evil heart of the schemer. 
 Shakespeare did not, of course, consciously strive after sym- 
 bolism in these things. It is not impossible that he believed 
 in ghosts and witches, as did the great mass of men in his day, 
 from King James down. It is certain that he was interested 
 in'his story, here and elsewhere, as a piece of life rather than 
 as a moral symbol; his work is full of types and symbols 
 sinvply because life itself is full of them. 
 
 Beside Macbeth Shakespeare has placed a woman who 
 possesses all the masculine qualities which the hero lacks, 
 but who is nevertheless intensely feminine in her .devotion to 
 her lord's interest, and in her inability to endure the strain of 
 a criminal life after his support has been withdrawn from her. 
 Her will, though majestic when in the prosperous service of 
 her husband's ambition, collapses in sudden ruin when he 
 fails to rise to the responsibilities of their grim situation. 
 Macbeth's feebler moral substance crumbles piecemeal ; but 
 the firm structure of his wife's spirit, as soon as its natural 
 foundation is destroyed, falls by instant overthrow. 
 
 " King Lear." King Lear is often put at the apex of 
 Shakespeare's achievement, and by many judges at the head 
 of the dramatic literature of the world. The story was as old 
 as Geoffrey of Monmouth (see Chap. Ill), and, like so many 
 of the themes which Shakespeare handled, had already been 
 made the subject of a play, a crude effort by some nameless 
 playwright during the experimental stage of Elizabethan 
 drama. As was his constant custom, Shakespeare followed
 
 William Shakespeare 117 
 
 the main lines of the story given him, and incorporated into 
 his grand edifice every bit of usable material from the build- 
 ing of his predecessor. Lear is an imperious nature, wayward 
 by temperament, and made more incapable of self-govern- 
 ment by long indulgence of its passionate whims. At the 
 opening of the play, we see him striving to find a refuge from 
 himself by surrendering all his wealth and power in exchange 
 for absolute love. He demands love not only in the spirit but 
 in the letter, and thrusts his youngest daughter Cordelia from 
 him with cruel brusqueness, when she refuses to use extrava- 
 gant terms to describe her affection. Shakespeare has made 
 the same brusque and hasty spirit of the king precipitate upon 
 his old head the enmity of his remaining daughters, Goneril 
 and Regan. Before he has recovered from the shock of Cor- 
 delia's loss, this awful pair of daughters lay bare, little by little, 
 their monstrous souls to their father's gaze. As in Othello, 
 the result of the revelation is to unhinge for the sufferer the 
 very order of nature. As if in sympathy with the chaos in 
 Lear's soul, the elements break loose ; and in the pauses of the 
 blast we hear the noise of violent crimes, curses, heart-broken 
 jesting, the chatter of idiocy, and the wandering tongue of 
 madness. The sentimentalist's phrase, "poetic justice," has 
 no meaning for Shakespeare. The ruin wrought in the old 
 king's heart and brain is irreparable, and the tornado which 
 whirls him to his doom carries with it the just and the unjust. 
 The little golden pause of peace, when Lear and Cordelia are 
 united, is followed by the intolerably piercing scene in which 
 he bears her dead body out of the prison, muttering that they 
 have hanged his "poor fool." 
 
 The " Period of Reconciliation " : Last Plays. The plays 
 which mark the closing period of Shakespeare's life are pure 
 romances, conceived in a spirit of deep and lovely serenity, 
 and characterized by a silvery delicacy, a tender musing 
 touch, which is new in the poet's work. The new mood finds 
 beautiful expression in the pastoral under-play of A Winter's 
 Tale, where Prince Florizel woos Perdita, the wild-flower 
 maid. It shines out full-orbed in The Tempest, where Pros- 
 pero sways with his magic the elements and the wills of men 
 to his bidding, in the service of his daughter's happiness.
 
 118 The Renaissance 
 
 In this play all the powers of the master meet together; the 
 grace that had created the fairy world of A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, the lyric passion that had breathed through 
 Juliet's lips on her bridal morning, the drollery and wit that 
 had set the laughter of centuries billowing about Falstaff, the 
 titanic might that had sent a world crashing on the head of 
 Lear all meet together here, but curbed, softened, silvered 
 down into exquisite harmony. 
 
 The Tempest is believed to have been written for the 
 wedding ceremonies of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of 
 James I., and Prince Frederick, the Elector Palatine, in 
 1613. If this is true, The Tempest was Shakespeare's fare- 
 well to his art. When scarcely fifty years of age, with his 
 genius at its ripest, and every faculty of his mind in full 
 play, he laid down his pen forever, as Prospero, at the end, 
 abjures his magic, breaks his wand, and drowns his book 
 "deeper than did ever plummet sound." One is tempted to 
 indulge the fanciful parallel still further, and to think, of 
 Ariel, the delicate and potent sprite whom Prospero sets free, 
 as the spirit of Imagination, now released from its long labors 
 in the master's service. 
 
 Appreciation of Shakespeare in His Day. The common 
 opinion that Shakespeare was unappreciated by his own 
 generation, is only partly true. If other evidence were 
 lacking to prove the esteem in which he was held, his 
 material prosperity would be sufficient to show r at least 
 his high popularity with the theatre-going public. But there 
 is other witness that his genius was here and there recog- 
 nized. His great rival, Ben Jonson, whose burly good sense 
 was not prone to exaggeration, and who perhaps never quite 
 conquered a feeling of jealousy toward Shakespeare, wrote 
 for the first collective edition of the plays a eulogy full of 
 deep, in places even passionate, admiration; and afterward 
 said of him in a passage of moving sincerity, "I did love and 
 honor him, on this side idolatry, as much as any." The 
 most significant hint we have of his personal charm is in the 
 adjective which is constantly applied to him by his friends, 
 "gentle," a word also often used to describe his art, in allu- 
 sion evidently to its humanity and poetic grace.
 
 Ben Jonson 119 
 
 Shakespeare's Carelessness of Fame. The awe inspired 
 by the almost unearthly power and richness of Shakespeare's 
 mind is apt to be deepened by the knowledge that the noble 
 plays to which English-speaking races point as their greatest 
 single achievement, were thrown into the world carelessly, 
 and would have perished altogether if the author of them 
 had had his way. During his lifetime they were printed 
 only in pirated editions, taken down by shorthand from the 
 lips of the players, or patched up from prompters' manu- 
 scripts dishonestly acquired. He does not mention his plays 
 in his will. Not until 1623, seven years after his death, did 
 a collective edition appear (known as the First Folio), and 
 then only because of the piety of two of his actor-friends. 
 The printing of a play while it was still actable, was of course 
 disadvantageous to the company whose property it was ; and 
 Shakespeare had probably made over his plays to his com- 
 pany as they were produced. Yet even when this is taken 
 into consideration, we are filled with astonishment. We see 
 in the working of the master's spirit not only the vast liber- 
 ality but also the startling carelessness of Nature, who seems 
 with infinite loving pains to create her marvels, and then to 
 turn listlessly away while they are given over to destruction. 
 
 II. BEN JONSON AND THE LATER DRAMATISTS 
 
 Ben Jonson ; His Life. The most commanding figure in 
 the group of Shakespeare's dramatic contemporaries is Ben 
 Jonson (1573-1637). Although of humble birth, the son of 
 a bricklayer, he was sent to Westminster School and pos- 
 sibly to Cambridge; and he ultimately became one of the 
 most learned men of his time. As a young man he served a 
 campaign with the English army in Flanders, where (as he 
 afterward boasted) he fought a duel with a champion of the 
 enemy in the sight of both armies, and took from him his 
 arms. The incident is characteristic of Jonson's rugged 
 and domineering character. As he served the foreign soldier, 
 he afterward served the luckless poets and poetasters who 
 challenged him to a war of words. 
 
 After returning to England, he began to work for the
 
 120 The Renaissance 
 
 theatres. His first play was Every Man in His Humour 
 (1597), in which Shakespeare is known to have acted. A 
 series of literary quarrels followed, in the course of which 
 he wrote several elaborate plays to revenge himself upon his 
 rather puny enemies. His three masterpieces appeared be- 
 tween 1605 and 1610. They are The Silent Woman, Volpone, 
 and The Alchemist all called comedies by him, though the 
 second is a gloomy and biting satire. He also wrote two 
 massive tragedies taken from Roman history, Sejanus and 
 Cataline. For many years after his appointment by James 
 I., in 1603, as poet-laureate, he supplied the king with court- 
 masques. In his later years Jonson lost the laureateship, 
 and his plays, never very popular, failed dismally. Before 
 his death, in 1637, he was stricken with paralysis, and felt 
 the sharp pinch of poverty. He was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey. A pretty anecdote relates that when the workmen 
 were putting in place the stone slab which marks his rest- 
 ing-place, a stranger passing by gave them money to carve 
 upon it the words which may still be deciphered there, " O 
 Rare Ben Jonson." 
 
 Jonson was a critic of great sanity and force, writing a per- 
 fectly simple and unadorned prose, very different from the 
 elaborate and figurative prose-style common in his day. 
 His volume of short reflections upon life and art, entitled 
 Timber, is particularly interesting for the criticisms of 
 Shakespeare which it contains. 
 
 It was chiefly Jonson's aggressive decision and rugged 
 honesty which enabled him to hold for a quarter of a century 
 his position of literary dictator, and lord of the "tavern- wits." 
 The tavern was for the seventeenth century what the coffee- 
 house was for the eighteenth, a rallying place for literary men ; 
 and Jonson is almost as typical a tavern figure as Falstaff. 
 His "mountain belly and his rocky face," his genial, domi- 
 neering personality, ruled by royal right the bohemian circle 
 which gathered at "The Mermaid" or "The Devil." Here 
 took place those famous wit-combats between Jonson and 
 Shakespeare, described by Fuller under the simile of a sea- 
 fight; Jonson, slow of movement and "high built in learn- 
 ing," being likened to a great Spanish galleon, Shakespeare
 
 Ben Jonson 121 
 
 to an English man-of-war, swift to strike and dart away, 
 confounding the enemy with agility and adroitness. 
 
 Jonson's Method: His "Humors." The chief peculiar- 
 ity of Jonson's dramas is hinted at by the title of his first 
 play, Every Man in His Humour. The word "humor" was 
 a cant term in his day,* equivalent to "whim" or "hobby." 
 He hit upon the device of endowing each one of his char- 
 acters with some particular oddity or affectation, some ludi- 
 crous exaggeration of manner, speech, or dress; and of so 
 thrusting forward this single odd trait that all others might 
 be lost sight of. Every man, in other words, should be 
 "in his humor." This working principle Jonson extended 
 afterward in his two great comedies, Volpone and The 
 Alchemist. In Volpone he studied, not a foible or whim, 
 but a master-passion, the passion of greed, as it affects a 
 whole social group; in The Alchemist he made an elaborate 
 study of human gullibility. Shakespeare also has devoted 
 whole plays to the study of a master-passion in Othello 
 that of jealousy, in Macbeth that of ambition. But he 
 does this in a very different way from Jonson, with more 
 freedom and naturalness. Jonson seems always to have a set 
 programme: he lets us, in other words, "see the machinery," 
 and by so doing loses in spontaneousness and charm. His 
 ideal was strictly classical; and he tried, with all his might, 
 to stem the tide of the romantic drama. His failure in this 
 was one of the circumstances which embittered his old age. 
 
 Jonson's Realism. In at least one respect the comedies 
 of Ben Jonson are the most interesting plays in the whole 
 Elizabethan repertory namely, in the vivid pictures they 
 give of contemporary London life. From Jonson's com- 
 edies alone it would be possible to reconstruct whole areas 
 of Elizabethan society; a study of them is indispensable if 
 one would know the brilliant and amusing surface of the 
 most sociable era of English history. At least one of Jonson's 
 comedies, too, gives this close and realistic study of manners 
 with a gayety and grace fairly rivalling Shakespeare; The 
 Silent Woman is one of the most sparkling comedies ever 
 
 * Note Bardolph's use of the word in Henry IV. and Henry V.
 
 122 The Renaissance 
 
 written, full of splendid fun, and with a bright, quick move- 
 ment which never flags. 
 
 Jonson's Masques. One of Jonson's best claims to re- 
 membrance is that he brought to perfection the court masque. 
 Masques were an outgrowth of the ceremonial spectacles 
 of the middle ages (see page 90), modified by the classical 
 taste of the Italian Renaissance. They were little spectacle 
 plays, interspersed with songs and elaborate dances, and 
 provided with an accompaniment of instrumental music. 
 The subjects were usually allegorical. The persons repre- 
 sented were either gods and goddesses from classical myth- 
 ology, or abstract figures, such as Beauty, Wit, Passion, 
 Despair. Jonson wrote nearly forty of these masques, all 
 of them delicate in fancy and rich in lyric adornment. The 
 titles themselves suggest their character: Neptune's Triumph, 
 The Masque of Blackness, The Masque of Queens, The Fort- 
 unate Islands. They were given in the theatre of the royal 
 palace at Whitehall, by gorgeously costumed lords and ladies. 
 Magnificent stage-settings and transformation scenes were 
 contrived for them by King James's architect, Inigo Jones ; 
 the music was written by the king's musician, Ferrabosco, 
 and the dances were in charge of court dancing masters, 
 who were men of importance at that time, when dancing 
 was cultivated as a noble art. The masque was the fore- 
 runner of the opera, which after Jonson's death began to de- 
 velop in its stead. Shortly before Jonson's death, the masque 
 form was used by Milton in his Comus, and made the vehicle 
 of one of the noblest of English poems. 
 
 Jonson displayed his lyric gift also in many short poems, 
 which for their delicacy and sweetness are conspicuous even 
 in the Elizabethan age, when almost every writer was capable 
 of turning off a charming song. The best known of his lyrics 
 are " Drink to me only with thine eyes," and " See the chariot 
 at hand here of love"; of both these the old-time music has 
 fortunately reached us. His verses upon Shakespeare, pre- 
 fixed to the First Folio edition of his great rival's plays (1623), 
 have furnished many phrases of common quotation, such as 
 "Swan of Avon," and "He was not of an age but for all 
 time."
 
 End of Elizabethan Drama 123 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) 
 and John Fletcher (1575-1625) are, in Lowell's phrase, among 
 "the double stars of the heavens of poetry." Fletcher, the 
 elder of the two, was the son of a Bishop of London. Through 
 his father the young dramatist gained an insight into court 
 life, and learned to paint, better than any of his contem- 
 poraries, the hollow inside, and the exquisite outer finish, 
 of courtly manners. Another fact contributing to form his 
 genius, was that the official residence of his father, the episco- 
 pal palace at Fulham, lay amid beautiful river and forest 
 scenery. To the country memories gathered here in boy- 
 hood he gave expression later in the pastoral play of The 
 Faithful Shepherdess, as well as in the songs with which his 
 dramas are richly interspersed. 
 
 At the Mermaid tavern, among those "sealed of the tribe 
 of Ben," he met the man whose name is inseparably linked 
 with his own. Francis Beaumont was nine years younger 
 than Fletcher, being about twenty-one at the time of their 
 meeting. After their partnership began, tradition says that 
 they lived together on the Bankside, sharing everything, even 
 their clothing, in common. This at least represents a more 
 essential truth, that they entered into a wonderfully close 
 intellectual partnership ; one mind supplying what the other 
 lacked, to produce a rounded result. The fifty-two plays 
 which go under their common name illustrate nearly every 
 type of dramatic composition known to the Elizabethan 
 stage, and constitute Beaumont and Fletcher " absolute lords 
 of a goodly realm of romance." Nevertheless, in Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, and still more in their fellow- workmen, Thomas 
 Middleton (i57o?-i62y) and John Webster (dates unknown), 
 we mark symptoms which tell us that the high point of the 
 drama has been passed, and that decay and degeneration 
 is about to set in. 
 
 The Decay of the Drama. One symptom of decadence in 
 the later dramatists is an obvious straining after intensity. 
 As the ordinary "strong situations" began to be worked out, 
 dramatists made excursions into the strained and the un- 
 natural, in order to find new matter. A second and more 
 fatal flaw in the later dramatists is the laxity of the moral
 
 124 The Renaissance 
 
 atmosphere pervading much of their work. The moral values 
 are not preserved with the absolute health of soul which is 
 Shakespeare's greatest glory, but are blurred or distorted in 
 the search after excitement. After the death of Shakespeare 
 (1616) the decay of the drama was rapid. In John Ford 
 (1586-1640 ?) the morbidness of tone becomes intolerable, and 
 from the plays of James Shirley (1596-1666), the last of the 
 long line, the vital fire has almost wholly departed. 
 
 The Actors and the Puritans: Closing of the Theatres. 
 As the drama grew weaker and more corrupt, its enemies 
 grew stronger and more determined to root it out from the 
 land as an abomination. Early in the history of the drama 
 a war had begun to be waged between the actors and the 
 Puritans. In 1576 we hear of strolling companies being kept 
 out of London by Puritan law-makers; and when the first 
 theatres were erected they were placed in the suburbs to the 
 north, and in the "liberties," or exempt lands, across the 
 Thames in Southwark. Under Queen Elizabeth's protection 
 the actors grew strong enough to enter the city ; and as long 
 as her strong hand was at the helm, the Puritans did not 
 assert themselves very vigorously. But when James I. came 
 to the throne, with his lack of personal dignity, his bigoted 
 dictum of the divine right of kings, his immoral court full 
 of greedy nobles from Scotland and Spain, the Puritan party 
 gained rapidly in aggressiveness. After the meeting of the 
 Long Parliament, the Puritans quickly came to a reckoning 
 with the theatre. In 1641 appeared a pamphlet called "The 
 Stage- Players' Complaint," which says pathetically, "The 
 High Commission Court is down, the Star-Chamber is down, 
 and some think Bishops will down; but why should not we 
 then that are far inferior to any of these, justly fear that we 
 should be down too?" In September of 1642 an ordinance 
 of both Houses of Parliament closed the theatres throughout 
 the kingdom. They were not reopened until eighteen years 
 later, when the reins of power had fallen from the dead hand 
 of Cromwell, and Charles II. ascended the throne from which 
 his father had been led to the scaffold.
 
 Review Outline 125 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Give a sketch of Shakespeare's life, up to 
 the time of his establishment in London, noting as many circumstances 
 as possible which you think could have been useful in preparing him 
 for his career as dramatist and poet. At the time of Shakespeare's 
 coming to London only a few rude theatres existed, and those, owing 
 to the enmity of the Puritans (who held control of the London mu- 
 nicipal government) were all outside the walls of the city, to the 
 north, in the open fields used as public playgrounds. Review what 
 was said in the last chapter concerning the character of the early 
 playhouses, and the manner in which plays were given. Try to 
 imagine Shakespeare as a young man in these surroundings. For 
 what playhouse and what manager did he do his first work? What 
 later theatre is connected with his name? Note that the later theatres 
 were built chiefly on the south bank of the Thames, in open spaces 
 devoted to all kinds of public amusements. Call to mind Chaucer's 
 connection with this part of London. Gather together from this chap- 
 ter the known facts and the hints which have come down to us con- 
 cerning Shakespeare's life in London: his friendships, his enemies, his 
 business prosperity and the use to which he put it; the "Dark Lady" 
 of the sonnets; the impression which he made upon those who knew 
 him. Tell what you can of the close of Shakespeare's life; note in this 
 connection what is said of "The Tempest" as his "farewell to his art." 
 
 The chronology of Shakespeare's plays is, except in a few in- 
 stances, uncertain. The order in which they are given here, and their 
 grouping, is not to be taken, therefore, as absolutely true, but only as 
 representing, in a general way, what is probable. The same thing 
 must be said concerning the account here given of the growth of 
 Shakespeare's mind, based upon the chronological order of his plays. 
 With this precaution, and recollecting that we are dealing largely with 
 conjecture, describe the main periods and groups into which the plays 
 fall; name two or more plays under each head. What appropriateness 
 do you find in the title "A Midsummer Night's Dream"? In what 
 various ways is the love-theme presented in this play? Do you re- 
 member any work of Chaucer in which "Theseus, Duke of Athens," 
 figures? "Romeo and Juliet" is called a "tragedy of fate," that is, a 
 play in which the tragic outcome depends upon circumstances lying 
 outside the will of the actors; after reading the play, try to decide how 
 far the tragedy of the lovers is due to their own characters and actions, 
 how far to accidents, or to circumstances beyond their control.
 
 126 Shakespeare and his Fellow-Dramatists 
 
 In what two plays does Shakespeare show the influence of Mar- 
 lowe ? What episode of Shakespeare's personal history has been thought 
 to be reflected in "King John"? Shakespeare was the first to write 
 historical plays in a connected series: "Richard II." takes up English 
 history at a time when Chaucer was a man of middle life; "Henry IV.'* 
 and " Henry V." follow, bringing the story down into the first 
 quarter of the fifteenth century; Shakespeare's youthful work (or an 
 old work revised by him), "Henry VI.," carries on the account into 
 the wars of the Roses; then later passages of the same unfolding na- 
 tional drama are treated in "Richard III." and "Henry VIII.," father of 
 Queen Elizabeth. We see, therefore, that Shakespeare virtually covers 
 in his historical plays the story of his country from Chaucer's time 
 until his own. In which of these plays does Falstaff figure? What 
 was Shakespeare's aim in introducing such a person into an historical 
 drama? In what sense may "Henry V." be called the most personal 
 and self-revealing of Shakespeare's plays ? 
 
 How many of the characters mentioned in the text as occurring in 
 the "joyous comedies" can you place, from your own reading? Add 
 to the list, as many others as you can, and characterize them to your 
 own satisfaction. Why may "Julius Caesar" be said to have a double 
 hero? What earlier English poet had treated the subject of "Troilus 
 and Cressida"? Explain how "Hamlet," "Othello," and "Lear" may 
 all be classed together as "tragedies of disillusion." The source of the 
 Lear story is the same as that of Layamon s "Brut," of Malory's "Morte 
 d'Arthur" of the early classical play "Gorboduc" and, in part, of Tenny- 
 son's "Idylls of the King." What is this source? What change in 
 Shakespeare's mood is revealed by his last plays ? What evidence is 
 there that Shakespeare's genius was in some measure appreciated by 
 his contemporaries? Tell what you can of the manner in which his 
 plays have been preserved. 
 
 What is Ben Jonson's rank among Elizabethan dramatists? Tell 
 what you can of him, (a) as a man, (b) as scholar, (c) as lyric poet. 
 <d) as critic and literary dictator, (e) as dramatist. Draw together all 
 the circumstances of his relation to Shakespeare. Name his three best 
 plays and characterize two of them. In what way does the title of 
 Jonson's earliest comedy give the key to his dramatic method ? Taking 
 into account the fact that Jonson's ideal was the classic one, should 
 you expect to find in his historical plays such comic episodes as the 
 Falstaff scenes in "Henry IV"? Why? In what respect are Jonson's
 
 Reading Guide 127 
 
 comedies of supreme interest among the plays of the time? Describe 
 the nature of the court-masque and the manner of its presentation. 
 What modern form of entertainment has grown out of it ? Who raised 
 the masque-form to a higher beauty than even Jonson had given it ? 
 Milton's "Comus" was suggested in part by "The Faithful Shepherd- 
 ess": tell what you can of the author of this play, and of his rela- 
 tions with his collaborator. Note the signs of decay in the dramas of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher and their successors. Reflect upon the phrase 
 "health of soul" as applied to Shakespeare, and see if you can illustrate 
 its meaning from one or more of his plays. Why were the Puritans an- 
 tagonistic to the theatre ? Why did their antagonism become stronger 
 as time went on? When were the theatres closed and for how long? 
 
 READING GUIDE. The plays of Shakespeare best adapted for 
 school study are perhaps "Julius Caesar," "Macbeth," "The Merchant 
 of Venice," and "As You Like It." All these plays are included in the 
 inexpensive Riverside Literature series (Hough ton, Mifflin). Among 
 the numberless biographies and critical studies of Shakespeare, the best 
 for school use is the little volume by E. Dowden, in the Literature Primers 
 series (Appleton). The many interesting illustrations in H. W. Mabie's 
 "William Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist^ and Man," if they can be put 
 before a class, will do much toward making the surroundings of the 
 dramatist's life realizable. Emerson's essay on Shakespeare, in his 
 "Representative Men," Carlyle's essay in "Heroes and Hero-Worship," 
 and Lowell's in "Among My Books," will be found valuable in giving 
 the student a larger understanding of Shakespeare's significance. 
 
 If time serve, and the students are sufficiently advanced, a volunteer 
 report to the class upon one of Ben Jonson's masques should be asked 
 for. This will be of especial interest if given in connection with the 
 class-study of Milton's "Comus." Several of Jonson's masques, and 
 an essay on the masque as a dramatic form, may be found in H. A. 
 Evans's "English Masques." For advanced students a rapid reading 
 of one of Jonson's realistic comedies, as "The Silent Woman," and 
 one of Shakespeare's romantic comedies, such as "Twelfth Night," 
 and a comparison of the two, will be of great interest. 
 
 Those who wish to gain a first-hand acquaintance with the work of 
 Shakespeare's great contemporaries in the drama, will find excellent 
 material in "The Best Elizabethan Plays," edited by W. H. Thayer 
 (Ginn). The plays included are Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," Jonson's
 
 128 Shakespeare and his Fellow-Dramatists 
 
 "Alchemist," Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster" and "The Two 
 Noble Kinsmen" (attributed in part to Shakespeare), and Webster's 
 "Duchess of Malfi." Three of Jonson's comedies, "The Alchemist," 
 "Volpone," and "The Silent Woman," together with his beautiful pas- 
 toral play, "The Sad Shepherd" (left unfinished at his death), and 
 his poems, are to be had in a single volume in Morley's Universal 
 Library. 
 
 William Black's novel, "Judith Shakespeare, ' gives a fresh and 
 charming picture of rural England in Shakespeare's day.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: FROM THE 
 
 DEATH OF ELIZABETH TO THE 
 
 RESTORATION 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Growth of Puritanism. The period between the death 
 of Elizabeth and the Restoration (1603-1660) was one of 
 great excitement and disturbance in the national life. Puri- 
 tanism, under various names, had been growing in strength 
 since the days of Wyclif and Langland. In Henry VIII. 's 
 reign the Bible, newly translated by Tyndale and Coverdale, 
 had been set up in the churches. This mighty book, in which 
 every form of literature, idyll, song, drama, and epic, was 
 eloquently represented, became the chief food of the popular 
 mind. Crowds gathered about the pillars in the churches to 
 which the Book was chained, and listened eagerly while some 
 lettered person "with an audible voice" read from its pages. 
 Theology became the passion of the people, or at least of 
 that portion of the people, the Puritan element, which had 
 most deeply felt the impulse of the Reformation. Men were 
 brought face to face with the source of divine authority; 
 they began to feel an awful personal responsibility concerning 
 the welfare of their souls. Out of these conditions arose the 
 Puritans, whose black steeple-crowned hats and sombre 
 cloaks typified the sombreness and severity of their view of 
 life. Their distrust of forms and ceremonies in religion, 
 and of the gayeties of social life, led them to hate the painted 
 windows, gilded organ pipes, and carved chancel rails of old 
 cathedrals, and to long to sweep away all traces of the "merry 
 England "of Elizabeth's time, typified by such innocent and 
 time-honored customs as the dance about the Maypole, and
 
 130 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 the hanging of yew and holly at Christmas. The same 
 sombre zeal made of them, under Cromwell, formidable 
 soldiers, who advanced with hymns and with snatches of old 
 Hebrew war songs on their lips, to overthrow the proud cava- 
 lier armies. It made of them wanderers and exiles, seeking 
 in Holland, and in the far-off wilds of America, a place where 
 they could worship God after their own hearts. As early as 
 1620, when Milton was a boy of twelve, a band of these "pil- 
 grims" landed at Plymouth, on the coast of Massachusetts, 
 and began there the founding of a great Puritan common- 
 wealth of which we are the inheritors. 
 
 Struggle Between King and Parliament. With the de- 
 mand for religious freedom, there soon became involved a 
 demand for greater political liberty. The struggle between 
 the king and parliament grew in bitterness through the reign 
 of James I. (1603-1625). James handed on to his son, 
 Charles I., his doctrine that kings govern, not by the will of 
 the people but by divine right, and that the church is as 
 much under the royal jurisdiction as are the temporal af- 
 fairs of the nation. As Charles became more arrogant in 
 his policy, the mood of parliament became more hostile. 
 In 1629 Charles dissolved parliament, and for eleven years 
 there was no meeting of either house. With the aid of 
 judges of his own appointment, and of counsellors and favor- 
 ites pledged to his absolute view, Charles governed without 
 heed to the growing wrath of the nation. He gave the di- 
 rection of the church into the hands of Archbishop Laud, 
 who not only compelled uniformity in worship, but insisted 
 upon ceremonies, such as kneeling at the communion table 
 and making the sign of the cross, which seemed to threaten 
 the return of Catholicism. Milton's "Lycidas," written in 
 1637, expresses the indignation and fear which Laud's policy 
 aroused in the hearts of all Puritans. 
 
 The Civil War and the Protectorate : The Restoration. By 
 1639 Charles had become involved in a war with the Scotch 
 Presbyterians, upon whom he had tried to force a new prayer- 
 book. He was compelled to summon parliament, but dis- 
 missed it angrily. The Scotch invaded England. A new 
 parliament, the famous Long Parliament, which met in 1640,
 
 Introduction 131 
 
 took affairs into its own hands and made common cause with 
 the Scotch. The civil war followed. Oliver Cromwell, with 
 his "Ironsides," as the flower of the stern Puritan army were 
 called, crushed the king's forces, after three years of fighting, 
 at Naseby, in 1645. Four years later Charles was beheaded on 
 a scaffold outside the windows of the palace of Whitehall. 
 In 1653, Cromwell took the reins of power into his single 
 hands, and under the title of Lord Protector, reigned as a 
 military despot, the excuse for his despotism being that the 
 only alternative to it was anarchy. During all this troubled 
 period John Milton, whose character gives us the highest 
 and best expression of Puritanism, stood forth as champion of 
 the cause, though often at odds both with the parliament and 
 with Cromwell, and maintaining many independent convic- 
 tions. On Cromwell's death, in 1658, the dictatorship ex- 
 isted for a while under his feeble son. By this time the 
 temper of the nation had changed. Puritanism had ceased 
 to be dominant; the people were eager for the restoration of 
 the Stuart family. In 1660 Charles's son was recalled from 
 exile, and mounted the throne as King Charles II. 
 
 Rise of Scientific Thought. Along with these religious and 
 political causes of disturbance, there went also an intellectual 
 one. The seventeenth century saw the rise of modern scientific 
 thought. It was a time when- the foundations of knowledge 
 were being questioned. A spirit of bold speculation was in 
 the air. Creed clashed with creed, and theory with theory, 
 much as they have done in our age, which has been, like the 
 seventeenth century, an age of discovery and excited question. 
 This new scientific spirit found its chief expression in the 
 writings of Sir Francis Bacon. 
 
 II. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1625) 
 
 Bacon's Life and Character. Francis Bacon was born in 
 1561, three years before Shakespeare. His father was Lord 
 Keeper of the Great Seal to Elizabeth, and his uncle was 
 Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's prime-minister. He was thus 
 marked out by birth for a public career. Owing to the op- 
 position of his jealous uncle, he got little preferment under
 
 SIR FRANCIS BACON 
 From an engraving by I. Houbraken
 
 Francis Bacon 133 
 
 the queen; but under James I. he rose rapidly through 
 various offices to be Lord Chancellor, with the title of Vis- 
 count St. Albans. In this position he supported his dig- 
 nities by a magnificence of living altogether out of proportion 
 to his legitimate income. In 1621 he was impeached before 
 the House of Lords for bribe-taking and corruption in 
 office, found guilty, and subjected to fine and imprisonment. 
 He retired, a broken and ruined man, to his seat of Gor- 
 hambury, and spent the remaining five years of his life in 
 scientific and philosophic pursuits ; still, however, keeping up 
 a show of his former magnificence, with an unconquerable 
 pride which caused Prince Charles to exclaim, "This man 
 scorns to go out in a snuff!" 
 
 For Bacon's personal character it is impossible to feel 
 much admiration.. But it is equally impossible not to ad- 
 mire his spacious and luminous mind, and the devotion to 
 pure thought which constituted his deeper life. In a letter 
 written at the outset of his career, he says proudly, "I confess 
 that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate 
 civil ends ; for I have taken all knowledge to be my prov- 
 ince." 
 
 The " Novum Organum " and the " Advancement of 
 Learning." His programme was indeed a majestic one, 
 very similar in kind to that of Herbert Spencer in our own 
 time. As Spencer has attempted to organize the vast stores 
 of modern science into a "synthetic philosophy," so Bacon 
 desired to systematize the knowledge of his day, and to lay 
 down a method for carrying that knowledge indefinitely 
 farther. But before he could do so he had to reform the 
 very methods of thought by which knowledge is gathered. In 
 the philosophy of the middle ages there had been almost no 
 attempt to examine the facts of nature, and draw conclusion 
 from actual observation. Philosophers had begun by stating 
 their large theories at the outset, without the long and patient 
 process of observation, by which a modern theory, like that of 
 evolution, for example, is built up. Bacon saw clearly that 
 the modern method, which we call the "inductive method" of 
 thought (as opposed to the other, or "deductive" method), 
 was the only true one in science. He laid down the new
 
 134 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 scientific programme in the Novum Organum, and the Ad- 
 vancement of Learning. The change in method had to come 
 with the rise of the scientific spirit ; it is Bacon's glory that 
 he saw and expressed the need of change before others 
 were quite conscious of it. 
 
 The " Essays." Bacon holds his place in literature, how- 
 ever, not by reason of the Novum Organum (which is in 
 Latin) and the Advancement of Learning, but by reason of 
 his Essays. The Essays were at first mere jottings down of 
 stray ideas, brief note-book memoranda. As such they were 
 first published (then ten in number) in 1597, in the author's 
 thirty-sixth year. Fifteen years later they were issued 
 again, with additions; and in 1625 they were put forth 
 in final form, the essays now numbering fifty-eight, the old 
 ones revised and expanded. It is clear that their charm 
 grew upon Bacon, and urged him, half against his will, to 
 put more and more serious effort into the handling of a 
 language for which, in comparison with Latin, he had no 
 great respect, yet of which he is one of the greatest masters. 
 
 The Essays deal with many subjects, of public and pri- 
 vate conduct, of statecraft, of human passions and human 
 relations; and with these graver themes are intermingled 
 others of a lighter sort, on building, on the planting of gar- 
 dens, on the proper mounting and acting of masques. To a 
 modern understanding those which deal with the deeper ques- 
 tions of human nature are apt to seem somewhat shallow 
 and worldly wise. We get from them few large insights or 
 generous points of view; everywhere we find wit, keen ob- 
 servation, grave or clever worldly wisdom. Now and again, 
 to be sure, Bacon startles us with an altogether unworldly 
 sentence, such as this: "Little do men perceive what solitude 
 is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, 
 and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tink- 
 ling cymbal, where there is no love.'" Some of the essays, 
 such as the one entitled "Of Great Place," show an un- 
 worldly wisdom which, if applied to Bacon's own life, would 
 have made it a very different thing. Not seldom, too, he lifts 
 the curtain upon that inner passion of his existence, the 
 Ihirst for intellectual truth, which made him noble in spite
 
 Sir Thomas Browne 135 
 
 of the shortcomings of his character: "Truth," he says, 
 "which only doth judge itself, is the sovereign good of 
 human nature." 
 
 Bacon's Style. For the student of expression, Bacon's 
 essays are of endless interest and profit ; the more one reads 
 them, the more remarkable seem their compactness and their 
 vitality. When the bulk of English prose was being written 
 in loose sentences of enormous length, Bacon struck out a 
 thoroughly modern sentence, short, -crisp, and clear. His 
 style has a curious sharp emphasis, a tone of startling 
 authority and command. The essays shock a sluggish atten- 
 tion into wakefulness as if by an electric contact ; and though 
 they may sometimes fail to nourish, they can never fail to 
 stimulate. 
 
 Bacon represents the scientific curiosity of the later Renais- 
 sance. The mystical and religious thought of the age is 
 equally well represented by a writer whose style is as ornate 
 as Bacon's is simple Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 III. SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682) 
 
 Browne as a Mystic : The " Religio Medici." Sir Thomas 
 Browne, after studying medicine at the famous schools of 
 Montpellier in Frarce and Padua in Italy, settled as a physi- 
 cian at Norwich, in Norfolk, and there passed his life. In 
 1642 appeared his first work, Religio Medici, a confession 
 of his own personal religious creed. It is in essence a mystical 
 acceptance of Christianity. "Methinks," he says, "there 
 be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith 
 . . . I love to lose myself in a mystery; to pursue my 
 reason to an O Altitude!" This sense of solemn exaltation, 
 this losing of himself in a mystery, is Browne's charac- 
 teristic mood. We see in him how far the temper of men 
 had departed from the Elizabethan zest of life, from the 
 Renaissance delight in the stir and bustle of human activity. 
 "Methinks," he says, "I begin to be weary of the sun. The 
 world to me is but a dream and mock-show, and we all 
 therein but pantaloons and antics, to my severer contem- 
 plations."
 
 136 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 Browne as a Writer : The " Urn Burial." It was not until 
 long after the Civil War had ceased to shake the earth with 
 its "drums and tramplings" that Sir Thomas Browne pub- 
 lished his most famous piece, the Urn Burial (1658). It was 
 suggested by the finding of some ancient Roman funeral 
 urns buried in the earth in the neighborhood of Norwich. 
 It pretends to be an inquiry into the various historic methods 
 of disposing of the dead, but is in fact a sermon upon the 
 vanity of earthly ambition, especially in its attempt to hand 
 on mortal memory to future ages. 
 
 Like almost all the writers of his time, Browne is extremely 
 uneven; his great passages come unexpectedly, but these 
 have a pomp and majesty which even Milton has not sur- 
 passed. His English is full of large-sounding words coined 
 from the Latin, and the music of his periods is deep, stately, 
 and long-drawn, like that of an heroic funeral march or the 
 full-stop of a cathedral organ. The opening of the last 
 section of the Urn Burial will serve perhaps to make these 
 comparisons clear: "Now, since these dead bones have al- 
 ready outlasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard 
 under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong 
 and specious buildings above it ; and quietly rested under the 
 drums and tramplings of three conquests: what prince can 
 promise such diuturnity unto his reliques?" The way in 
 which his imagination plays through his thought and flashes 
 a sudden illumination of beauty over his pages, may be sug- 
 gested by these words, written one night when he had sat late 
 at his desk : "To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our 
 Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America!" 
 
 IV. THE CAVALIER POETS, HERRICK, AND WALTON 
 
 By-Paths in Seventeenth Century Literature. It is natural 
 in an intensely serious age like the seventeenth century, that 
 literature should escape here and there with delight into a 
 world of care-free pleasure. Such a wandering in flowery 
 by-paths we may see in the amatory verse of the Cavalier 
 poets, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling; in the lyrics of love 
 and country life of Herrick; and in Walton's famous little
 
 Herrick and Walton 137 
 
 book upon the art of angling, the humblest but one of the 
 best-beloved of English classics. 
 
 The Cavalier Poets. Of the three poets whose connection 
 with the court of Charles I. have given them the title of 
 "Cavalier Poets," the eldest was Thomas Carew (1598- 
 1638?). His best known lyric is "Give me more love or 
 more disdain," in which his felicity and courtly charm dis- 
 play themselves at their height. Carew died in 1638, just 
 before the bursting of the storm which was to scatter the gay 
 society of Whitehall, and bring to poverty, exile, and death 
 the men and women for whom he had sung. 
 
 Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) and John Suckling (1609- 
 1641) were young courtiers of wealth and great social bril- 
 liance, who practised poetry much as they practised swords- 
 manship, facility in turning a sonnet or a song being still, as 
 in the Elizabethan age, considered a part of a courtier's 
 education. Each of them wrote, it would seem almost by 
 happy accident, two or three little songs which are the per- 
 fection of melody, grace, and aristocratic ease. Suckling's 
 tone is cynical and mocking; the best songs of Lovelace, on 
 the other hand, "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars," and 
 "To Althea from Prison," breathe a spirit of old-fashioned 
 chivalry, of faithfulness to the ideals of love and knightly 
 honor. Both Suckling and Lovelace met with tragic reversal 
 of fortune ; and the contrast between their careless, brilliant 
 youth, and their wretched death, has thrown about their 
 names a romantic glamour which has had perhaps as much 
 to do with preserving their fame as the tiny sheaf of lyrics 
 they left behind. 
 
 Robert Herrick. Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was born in 
 London, and apprenticed in boyhood to his uncle, a gold- 
 smith in Cheapside. After some time spent at Cambridge, 
 he returned to London in his thirtieth year, and lived on his 
 wits in the literary bohemia of the Inns of Court. In 1629, 
 having taken orders, he was presented by King Charles to 
 the vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. Here, with no 
 duties to perform save the reading of a weekly sermon to a 
 handful of sleepy parishioners, he had ample opportunity, 
 during the next nineteen years, to develop his lyrical gifts.
 
 138 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 His genius was of the kind which carves cherry-stones, not 
 of the kind which hews great figures from the living rock. 
 Left perfectly to himself, amid the flowers of his vicarage 
 garden, with the pretty traditional ceremonies and merry- 
 makings of country life to look at, he spent his days carving 
 cherry-stones indeed, but giving to them the delicate finish of 
 cameos or of goldsmith's work. In poem after poem he 
 enters into the homely joys and pageants of rural life a 
 bridal procession, a cudgel-play between two clowns on .the 
 green, a puppet-show at the fair, the hanging of holly and 
 box at Candlemas Eve. Perhaps the most exquisite of all 
 is "Corinna going a- Maying." This little masterpiece is 
 drenched with the pungent dews of a spring morning. As 
 the poet calls his "sweet slug-a-bed" out of doors, and leads 
 her through the village streets, already decked with white- 
 thorn, .toward the fields and woods where the May-day fes- 
 tivities are to be enacted, we feel that the poetry of old English 
 life speaks through one who has experienced to the full its 
 simple charm. Even the note of sadness at the end, the look- 
 ing forward to that dark time when Corinna herself and all 
 her village mates shall "lie drowned in endless night," has 
 a peasant-like sincerity of feeling. 
 
 Herrick's Religious Poetry. When the parliamentary 
 forces had gained the battle which they had been waging 
 with the king's men, and Herrick as a loyalist was ejected 
 from his living, he went back to London. The year of his 
 return (1648) he published his poems, under the title of Hes- 
 perides and Noble Numbers, the latter half of the title re- 
 ferring to the religious poems of the collection. There could 
 be no more striking sign of the immense religious ferment 
 of the time than these poems, coming as they do from a 
 pleasure-loving, pagan nature, whose philosophy of life is 
 summed up in his most famous song, "Gather ye rosebuds 
 while ye may." In the wonderful poem called " The Litany," 
 the masterpiece among Herrick's religious poems, we see 
 how upon even his gay and sensuous nature there descended 
 at times that dark shadow of religious terror which later found 
 its final and appalling expression in the Grace Abounding 
 of John Bunyan.
 
 John Milton 139 
 
 Isaak Walton. Isaak Walton (1593-1683) is one of the 
 best remembered of the many seventeenth century writers 
 who took refuge from the troubled spirit of their age, in the 
 celebration of simple country pleasures. He was a London 
 linen-draper, who spent his working days in measuring cloth 
 and serving his customers over the shop counter; but who 
 passed his holidays in quite another fashion, roaming with 
 fishing-rod and basket along the banks of streams, and 
 gazing with unspoiled eyes at the unspoiled peace and 
 gayety of nature. His "Complete Angler" was printed in 
 1653, amid the fierce political and religious agitations of the 
 Commonwealth; but a sweeter or more untroubled book 
 has never been written. It is one of the most endeared of 
 English classics, and will be read with delight when a thou- 
 sand more imposing works have been forgotten. 
 
 V. JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) 
 
 Introduction. In the great struggle between the king and 
 parliament, between the old order and the new in government, 
 religion, and social life, the poets ranged themselves almost 
 to a man on the side of the king. But the greatest of all, and 
 next to Shakespeare the mightiest spirit in the history of the 
 English imagination, was a Puritan. In John Milton the 
 passion for liberty and the spiritual earnestness which were 
 at the heart of Puritanism, found themselves for once united 
 with the poet's passion for beauty and the great artist's power 
 of expression. The result of this fusion was a character and 
 an achievement which, whether we regard Milton as poet or 
 as patriot, must compel the wondering veneration of men. 
 
 Milton's Youth. John Milton was born December 9, 1608, 
 in Bread Street, London. His father was a scrivener (notary 
 public), who had embraced the Puritan faith. During Mil- 
 ton's boyhood, England was still Elizabethan; geniality and 
 charm of life had not yet given place to that gloomy harsh- 
 ness which Puritanism afterward took on. Milton was taught 
 music, and was allowed to range at will through the English 
 poets ; among these Spenser, the poet of pure beauty, exercised
 
 JOHN MILTON 
 From an engraving by Humphreys after the Faithorne portrait
 
 John Milton 141 
 
 over him a spell which was to leave its traces upon all the 
 work of his early manhood. He entered Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, in his sixteenth year. He had already deter- 
 mined to be a poet, and that too in no ordinary sense. His 
 mind was fixed on lofty themes, and he believed that such 
 themes could be fitly treated only by one who had led a lofty 
 and austere life. The magnificent ode, "On the Morning of 
 Christ's Nativity," which deals with the signs and portents 
 filling the world at the Saviour's birth, was written at twenty- 
 one. It showed clearly that another mighty poet had been 
 given to England. 
 
 Milton's Residence at Horton. Two years later Milton 
 left Cambridge and went to Horton, a little village west of 
 London, whither his father had retired to spend his declining 
 days. Here, in a beautiful country of woods, meadows and 
 brimming streams, the young poet spent five quiet years. 
 To the outward view he was all .but idle, merely " turning 
 over the Greek and Latin classics " in a long holiday. Really 
 hte was hard at work, preparing himself by meditation, by 
 communion with nature and with the lofty spirits of the 
 past, for some achievement in poetry which (to use his own 
 words) England "would not willingly let die." The chief 
 immediate result was the descriptive poem in two parts, 
 "L' Allegro" and "HPenseroso," the masque Comus and 
 the elegy "Lycidas." 
 
 Milton's Public Career and Prose Writings. The twenty 
 years of Milton's public life were preceded by a period of 
 travel abroad (1638-1639), chiefly in Italy. Here he met 
 Galileo, was entertained by the Italian literary academies; 
 and pondered much upon a projected epic poem on the sub- 
 ject of King Arthur's wars, a subject suggested to him by 
 the epics of Tasso and Ariosto. His return was hastened 
 by news of King Charles's expedition against the Scots, 
 a step whose seriousness Milton well knew. Once back in 
 London, he was drawn into a pamphlet war on the ques- 
 tion of church government. Then followed his marriage 
 to Mary Powell, the daughter of a cavalier squire. The 
 marriage was ill-starred. After his wife's temporary deser- 
 tion of him Milton published several pamphlets on divorce.
 
 142 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 These were received with astonishment and execration by 
 his countrymen, who did not see that Milton was only bring- 
 ing to bear, upon one issue of domestic life, that free spirit 
 of question everywhere spreading change through the social 
 fabric of England. Milton's revolutionary spirit next led 
 him to attack the censorship of the press. The time-honored 
 institution of the censorship he saw to be an intolerable hin- 
 derance to freedom of thought; and in a pamphlet entitled 
 Areopagitica, the greatest of his prose writings, he launched 
 against it all the thunders and lightnings of his magnificent 
 rhetoric. On the execution of the king (1649) Milton was 
 the first to lift up his voice, amid the hush and awe of con- 
 sternation, in defence of the deed. His pamphlet "On the 
 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" was of such timely ser- 
 vice to the Commonwealth party that he was offered the 
 position of Latin secretary to Cromwell's government, his 
 duties being to indite correspondence with foreign powers, 
 and to reply to attacks by foreign pamphleteers. In the 
 midst of a controversy of this sort his eyes failed, and hv 
 a short time he was totally blind. He continued his duties., 
 with the help of an amanuensis, until he was dismissed in 
 1658 by General Monk, who was already plotting to restore 
 Charles's son to the throne, as King Charles II. On the 
 king's return in 1660, Milton was forced to go into hiding, 
 and he barely escaped paying with his life for his fearless 
 support of the Commonwealth party. 
 
 Milton's Return to his Poetic Mission. During the long 
 period of his public career, from 1642 to 1658, Milton wrote 
 no poetry except a few sonnets. These are sixteen in num- 
 ber. Some of them, such as the famous sonnet on the mas- 
 sacre of the Piedmontese Protestants by the Catholic soldiery, 
 deal with public affairs. Others are personal. Among these 
 last the finest are two upon his own blindness, and one upon 
 the memory of his second wife, Katherine Woodcock, who 
 had died in the first year of their marriage. 
 
 Except for these brief returns to his poetic mission, Milton 
 had hidden "that one talent which is death to hide." But 
 he had more than once turned aside, in his pamphlets, to 
 throw out a proud hint concerning the work laid upon him
 
 John Milton 143 
 
 by the great Task-master, of adding something majestic 
 and memorable to the treasury of English verse. Ever since 
 his college days he had looked forward to this work, con- 
 sidering many subjects in turn. By 1642 he had virtually 
 decided upon the subject of the Fall of Adam. During the 
 sixteen years between 1642 and his dismissal from the Latin 
 secretaryship, amid all the "noises and hoarse disputes" of 
 the time, this subject lay in his mind, gradually gathering to 
 itself the riches of long study and reflection. When at last 
 his duty as a patriot was done, he turned at once to his de- 
 ferred task. Forced to seek shelter from the storm of the 
 royalist reaction, he carried with him into his hiding place the 
 opening book of Paradise Lost, begun two years earlier. The 
 poem was finished by 1665, and was published by an obscure 
 printer in 1667. 
 
 In 1671, foilr years after the publication of Paradise Lost, 
 appeared Milton's third volume of verse. (The college and 
 Horton poems had been published in 1645.) It consisted of 
 Paradise Regained, a supplement to Paradise Lost; and of 
 Samson Agonistes, a drama in the Greek manner, on an Old 
 Testament subject which Milton had thought of treating 
 nearly thirty years before. 
 
 Milton's Last Years. Milton lived for three years after the 
 publication of his last poems. Much of his patrimony had 
 disappeared in the readjustments of the Restoration, and in 
 the great London fire of 1666; but he was still able to live in 
 modest comfort. The painter Richardson gives us a glimpse 
 of the poet during his last years, as he was led about the 
 streets clad "in a gray camblet coat," or as he sat at the 
 door of his house, near Bunhill Fields, to receive visitors. 
 "Lately," continues Richardson, "I had the good fortune to 
 have another picture of him from an aged clergyman in Dor- 
 setshire. In a small house, up one pair of stairs which was 
 hung with rusty green, he found John Milton, sitting in an 
 elbow chair; black clothes, and neat enough; pale but not 
 cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk- 
 stones." The picture makes us realize how far Milton had 
 traveled from the world of his youth. In making himself 
 over from Elizabethan to Cromwellian he had suffered muck
 
 144 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 and renounced much ; he had lost many of those genial human 
 qualities which have won for less worthy natures a warmth 
 of love denied to his austerity. But though some may deny 
 him love, none can help feeling an admiration mixed with 
 awe, for the loftiness and singleness of aim, the purity and 
 depth of moral passion, which make him conspicuous even 
 among the men of those moving times. 
 
 " L'Allegro " and " II Penseroso." The first product of 
 the five happy and fruitful years which Milton spent at Hor- 
 ton, was the poem in two parts, "L'Allegro" (the joyous 
 man) and " II Penseroso " (the meditative man). The poem 
 is, in a sense, autobiographical. The two parts paint the 
 two sides of Milton's own temperament : the one urging out- 
 ward, toward the brightness and vivid activity of life; the 
 other drawing inward, toward lonely contemplation, or mus- 
 ings upon the dreamier, quieter aspects of nature and of 
 human existence. To represent these two moods he imagines 
 two typical youths, living each through a day of typical 
 thoughts and pursuits. The first poem opens at morning, 
 with the song of the lark, the rising sun " beginning his state," 
 the ploughman's whistle and the hunter's horn sounding in 
 the clear air. The day is followed through its course in a 
 series of happy pictures, ending with merry-making and fairy 
 tales by the evening fire. The music in which " the joyous 
 man" delights is the rebeck (a rustic violin), and he finds his 
 reading in the pages of gay-colored romances, in dramas and 
 poems, through which play the sunlight of life. "II Pen- 
 seroso," on the other hand, opens at midnight, when the 
 moon is stooping through the cloud-drift, and the song of the 
 nightingale, "most musical, most melancholy," is flooding the 
 air. When day appears, the "meditative man" shuns the 
 sunlit activity of the waking world and goes to dream in 
 shadowy groves and in the "dim religious light" of cathedral 
 aisles. His music is that of the solemn organ, and his 
 books are stately tragedies and epics. The poem closes with 
 the poet's wish that he may live thus, in solitude and medita- 
 tion, 
 
 " till old experience do attain 
 To something like prophetic strain."
 
 John Milton 145 
 
 Taken together the two little poems represent, under a 
 slight veil, the life which Milton led during the five happy 
 years at Horton. 
 
 " Comus." The next two poems of this period were in 
 masque form; one a fragment, "Arcades," the other a com- 
 plete masque, taking its title from the chief character, Comus, 
 god of revelry. Comus was written at the request of Mil- 
 ton's friend Henry Lawes, a musician, who supplied the 
 music, and played the part of the Attendant Spirit when the 
 masque was presented (1634) at Ludlow Castle, on the 
 Welsh border, to celebrate the installation of the Earl of 
 Bridgewater as Lord President of Wales. It is not known 
 whether the poet was present on the occasion; but in any 
 case it is strange to see Milton, who was soon to become a 
 stern fighter in the Puritan ranks, making his first great poetic 
 effort in the drama, which the Puritan party hated, and in 
 that form of the drama, the masque, which was most closely 
 associated with the court. Even here, however, the serious- 
 ness of the young Puritan's view of life and art are ap- 
 parent. 
 
 The plot of Comus is simple and very effective. Two 
 brothers and a sister, astray by night in the forest, become 
 separated; the girl is taken captive by Comus, the son of 
 Bacchus the wine-god and Circe the enchantress. He leads 
 her to the place where he dwells surrounded by strange half- 
 bestial creatures whom he has transformed. He attempts 
 to work upon her the same transformation. She resists him, 
 refusing to yield to the allurements of sense, and is at length 
 rescued by her brothers and an "attendant spirit," who takes 
 the guise of their father's shepherd. Though in the masque 
 form, Comus has none of the frivolity which usually marked 
 the masque. It contains, in fact, a whole philosophy of 
 conduct, and preaches the doctrine of purity of life. 
 
 "Lycidas." "Lycidas" is an elegy upon the death of 
 Edward King, a college mate of Milton's, drowned in the 
 Irish Sea. King ha'd been, in his way, a poet ; and it was 
 usual among the poets of the pastoral school, to represent 
 themselves and their art under the guise of the shepherd 
 life. Milton, therefore, represents himself and his dead
 
 146 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 friend as shepherds driving their flocks, and piping for fauns 
 and satyrs to dance ; he calls the sea-nymphs and the gods 
 of the wind to task for the disaster of his fellow-shepherd's 
 death. To this "pastoral" symbolism, however, Milton 
 adds another kind, not pagan, but Christian. King, besides 
 being a poet, had been a preacher, or at least had been in 
 preparation for the ministry. He was therefore not only a 
 shepherd under Apollo, but a shepherd under Christ; a 
 keeper of the souls of men, which are the flocks of the Good 
 Shepherd. This second symbolism Milton boldly identifies 
 with the first, for to him the poet and the preacher were one 
 in spiritual aim. Still more boldly, in the strange procession 
 of classic and pseudo-classic divinities whom he summons to 
 mourn over Lycidas, he includes Saint Peter, the bearer of 
 the keys of the Church; and he puts in his mouth words of 
 solemn wrath and warning against the ecclesiastical corrup- 
 tion of the age. " Lycidas " is the last work of Milton's 
 young manhood, binding together his happy and sheltered 
 youth with his maturity of strife and renunciation. 
 
 "Paradise Lost." The theme which Milton first seriously 
 considered in his search for an epic subject, was the story of 
 King Arthur, as it had been handed down by Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory. If his life as a poet 
 had not been interrupted, he would perhaps have treated 
 this subject, making out of it an epic of ideal England, that 
 ideal England which swam before Milton-'s inward vision, 
 as it had done before Spenser's. But with the years of his 
 delay, Milton's ambition grew. The subject which he finally 
 decided upon was wider than his own nation, even in its 
 ideal aspect. It dealt with the origin and spiritual destiny 
 of all mankind. Its action stretched beyond the created 
 universe, into Heaven and Hell, and reached backward 
 beyond the beginning of time. 
 
 The Story of "Paradise Lost." The action of Paradise 
 Lost begins in Heaven, before man is created, or the earth 
 and its spheres hung out in space. Lucifer, the fairest and 
 mightiest of the angels, jealous of the Son who shares God's 
 throne, rebels, and draws with him a third part of the hosts 
 of Heaven. Lucifer and the apostate angels flee to their
 
 John Milton 147 
 
 stronghold "in the north." Tremendous battle ensues be- 
 tween the hosts of the rebellious and the faithful. For three 
 days the struggle endures, and the issue is still doubtful 
 But now the Son goes forth to battle, riding upon a living 
 chariot, and clad in supernal powers and glories. Lucifer 
 and his followers are cast headlong from Heaven. For 
 nine days and nights they fall through empty chaos, into the 
 Hell which has been hollowed out of space to receive them. 
 Then Christ, in the name of the Father, goes forth into 
 chaos, and marks out the vast sphere of the universe, with 
 Earth at the centre. The six-day process of creation fol- 
 lows. Man, as the first of created things, is set in the 
 Garden of Eden, to take the place of the rebel angels in 
 God's affection. A helpmeet is given to Adam, a woman 
 formed from his rib while he slept. The wedded pair, per- 
 fect in beauty and innocence, dwell together in the happy 
 garden, the favorites of nature and of God. Archangels 
 visit them, and eat of the fruits of their pleasant toil. Heav- 
 enly warriors keep watch over their safety. But meanwhile 
 Lucifer, now known as Satan, the Adversary, brooding upon 
 revenge, conspires with the leaders of his host in Hell to 
 destroy the newly-created pair or seduce them into disobe- 
 dience to God.* At a great meeting at the infernal capital, 
 Pandemonium, Satan proposes to make his way across the 
 darkness of chaos, and to attempt some deed of enmity 
 against Earth and its fair inhabitants. He succeeds in 
 accomplishing his tremendous journey, in eluding the ser- 
 aphic sentinels, and in entering the Garden. He perches 
 "like a cormorant" on the Tree of Life; then, transforming 
 himself into various shapes of serpent, beast, and bird, he 
 spies upon Adam and Eve. Once he is found by the arch- 
 angel Ithuriel, in shape "like a toad, squat at the ear of Eve," 
 whispering evil dreams to her as she sleeps. He escapes, and 
 circles for three days and nights through space, keeping in 
 the earth's shadow. Again he steals into Paradise, this time 
 
 * It is at this point that the first book of Paradise Lost takes up the story. 
 The earlier events are related in subsequent books by the archangel Lucifer 
 and by Adam. Milton follows the example of Virgil in thus beginning his 
 epic in the middle of the action.
 
 148 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 through an underground stream. In the form of a glittering 
 serpent he tempts Eve to eat of the forbidden Tree. She 
 does so, and Adam shares with her the fatal fruit. A shudder 
 runs through all creation; the face of nature is darkened; 
 restlessness and evil passion take the place of contentment 
 and purity in the hearts of the doomed pair. In a vision 
 Adam is shown the future history of the world, and the coming 
 of Christ to redeem man from his fallen state. Then flaming 
 swords drive Adam and Eve from the garden into the gloomy 
 wilderness, to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, 
 to suffer all mortal pain and sorrow and infirmity. 
 
 The Central Motive of " Paradise Lost." The actual story 
 of the temptation and fall, it will be seen, occupies a rela- 
 tively small space in the poem; yet it is this which "motives" 
 and organizes the whole ; it is this from which it all radiates 
 and toward which it all converges. In however vast a circle 
 the great action may sweep outward, the human pair in the 
 garden is the centre of the curve. Every episode of the 
 poem, throughout its majestic course, depends for its signif- 
 icance upon the fate of the human pair, in whom are the 
 issues of all human life. Only a poet of the most wonderful 
 grasp, the most supreme sense of form, could have thus given 
 organic shape to such vast and varied materials. 
 
 The Character of Satan. Critics have often declared that 
 the real hero of Paradise Lost is Satan. They have pointed 
 out that, in spite of himself, Milton sympathized with Satan 
 as an arch-rebel against authority; for was not Milton 
 himself a rebel, not against the unchangeable will of the 
 Almighty, but against a king who sought to wield by "di- 
 vine right" an irresponsible authority? The criticism is so 
 far true that in the earlier books the character of Satan 
 and his outward aspects are invested with a wonderful dig- 
 nity. He appears indeed not "less than archangel ruined." 
 But as the poem progresses, Satan's figure is shorn beam 
 by beam Oi. dll its baleful splendor. His character loses 
 its dignity. He ceases to be the fallen "Son of the Morn- 
 ing." As the lust of evil gnaws deeper and deeper into his 
 heart, he degenerates into "the father of lies," the snaky and 
 subtle foe who cares not how he attain his hateful ends.
 
 John Milton 149 
 
 This degeneration of Satan under his own evil passions is 
 one of the largest conceptions of the poem. It disposes of 
 the often-urged objection that Satan is the hero of Paradise 
 Lost, and that therefore the poem is at war with itself. 
 
 Milton's " Sublimity." The word "sublimity," so often 
 abused, has, in the case of Paradise Lost, real fitness. It 
 was a quality to which Milton attained only after much 
 stern experience. Without those silent years when his im- 
 agination was held back by his will, gaining momentum like 
 the dammed-up waters of a stream, he would possibly never 
 have attained that peculiar mightiness of imagery and phrase 
 which causes Paradise Lost to deserve, as does perhaps no 
 other work of literature, the epithet sublime. The art of 
 "L' Allegro" and "Comus," graceful as the tracery of danc- 
 ing figures about a Greek vase, gave place, in Paradise Lost, 
 to an art as massive and severe as the frescoes of Michel- 
 angelo, depicting the solemn scenes of the creation and de- 
 struction of the world. 
 
 The Verse of " Paradise Lost." For his epic Milton de- 
 liberately chose blank verse, as the most severe of English 
 measures ; but he made out of it a type of verse before un- 
 known. The chief peculiarity of this later Miltonic verse is 
 that the sense is held suspended through many lines, while 
 clause after clause comes in to. enrich the meaning or to 
 magnify the descriptive effect; then the pericd closes, and 
 this suspended weight of meaning falls upon the mind like 
 the combing mass of a breaker on the shore. A second im- 
 portant characteristic is the extreme variety of pause; the 
 sense comes to an end, and the suspended thought falls, at 
 constantly varying places in the line, a device by which blank 
 verse, monotonous when otherwise treated, becomes the most 
 diversified of rhythms. In these and other ways Milton made 
 for himself a sublime verse-instrument to match his sublime 
 imagery and theme. The music of the Horton poems, com- 
 pared with that of Paradise Lost, is like the melody of the 
 singing voice beside the manifold harmonies of an orchestra, 
 or the rolling chant of a cathedral organ. 
 
 "Paradise Regained " and " Samson Agonistes." Para- 
 dise Regained was intended, as its title shows, as a sequel
 
 150 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 to Paradise Lost. In his first epic Milton had shown how 
 mankind, in the person of Adam, falls before the wiles of 
 the Tempter, and becomes an outcast from divine grace; in 
 his second he shows how mankind, in the person of Jesus, 
 wins readmission to divine grace by withstanding the temp- 
 tation of Satan in the wilderness. By .general consent Para- 
 dise Regained is given a lower place than Paradise Lost. 
 Samson A gonistes, however, a venture in a new field of poetry, 
 shows Milton's genius at its height once more. His desire 
 was to bring over into English the gravity and calm dignity 
 of the Greek tragedies; and, avoiding the lifeless effect of 
 previous experiments of the sort, to give to his grave and 
 calm treatment the passion, the conviction, the kindling 
 breath without which poetry cannot exist. Two circum- 
 stances made this not only easy, but almost inevitable for 
 him. In the first place his character, lofty and ardent to 
 begin with, had now under misfortune and sacrifice taken on 
 just that serene and melancholy gravity peculiar to the great 
 tragic poets of antiquity. In the second place, the story of 
 Samson was, in a sense, his own story. Like Samson he had 
 fought against the Philistines with the strength of thirty men ; 
 he had taken a wife from among his enemies and suffered 
 bitter loss at her hands; he sat now, blind and dishonored, 
 amid the triumph of the Cavaliers, as Samson among the 
 holiday-making Philistines. As he wrote, his own personal 
 bitterness found veiled expression; and the grand choruses, 
 with their dark and smothered music, pulsate with personal 
 feeling. 
 
 The grandeur of Milton's character, and the grandeur of 
 his art, become more striking when we view them against 
 the background of the age into which he survived, and in 
 which he did his later work. This was the age of the Restora- 
 tion, an age absorbed in worldly pleasures, in love with 
 "common-sense" and intolerant of ideals. We come now 
 to another great Puritan writer who did his work in this 
 same alien period, John Bunyan.
 
 John Bunyan 151 
 
 VI. JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688) 
 
 The King James Bible. Bunyan, the rude tinker of El- 
 stow, who produced, without learning or literary example, 
 one of the greatest masterpieces of imaginative English prose, 
 can only be understood by reference to another and greater 
 literary phenomenon of the seventeenth century, the Au- 
 thorized Version of the Bible. This version was made by 
 order of James I.; the work was divided among numerous 
 churchmen of his appointment, and was finished in 1611. 
 The translators used not only the original Hebrew and Greek 
 texts, and the Latin Vulgate, but also the various English 
 translations from Wyclif down. They succeeded in blending 
 together the peculiar excellences of all these, with the result 
 that we possess in the King James Bible a monument of 
 English prose characteristic of no particular age, but gather- 
 ing up into itself the strength and sweetness of all ages. The 
 grandeur, simplicity, and force of biblical prose, acting upon 
 Bunyan's passionately earnest imagination, made him, all 
 unknown to himself, a great writer. 
 
 Bunyan's Early Life; " Grace Abounding." John Bunyan 
 was born in the village of Elstow, Bedfordshire. His father 
 was a tinker, a trade then considered little above vagabond- 
 age. After a slight schooling, and a short experience of 
 soldiering in the Civil War (on which side is unknown), he 
 married a wife as poor as himself, and took up his father's 
 trade of pot and kettle mender. Before this, however, there 
 had begun in him a spiritual struggle so terrible and so vivid, 
 as we see it in the pages of his Grace Abounding to the 
 Chief of Sinners (published 1666), that by contrast the 
 events of his outer life are pallid and unreal. As he wrestled 
 and played at "tip-cat" with his village mates on the green, 
 or stood in the tower of the church to watch the bell-ringing, 
 he was haunted by thoughts of sudden death, of the Judg- 
 ment Day, and of his soul's damnation. He saw an awful 
 Face looking down from the clouds, and heard a Voice asking 
 whether he would leave his sins and go to Heaven, or have
 
 152 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 his sins and go to Hell. The tiles upon the house-roofs, 
 the puddles in the road, spoke to him with voices of tempta- 
 tion and mockery. From this religious insanity he was 
 rescued by a Mr. Gifford, a local preacher, who gave him 
 comfort and courage. Soon Bunyan himself began to preach ; 
 and a revulsion of feeling now lifted him to heights of ecstatic 
 joy in the mercifulness of God and the beauty of holiness. 
 He saw Christ himself looking down at him through the 
 tiles of the house-roof, saying "My grace is sufficient for 
 thee"; and the sense of salvation came like a "sudden 
 noise of wind rushing in at the window, but very pleasant." 
 In all this we see in its most intense form the religious 
 excitement of the seventeenth century, and also the qualities 
 of imagination and feeling which make Bunyan so powerful 
 a writer. > 
 
 Bunyan's Later Life : " Pilgrim's Progress." At the Res- 
 toration, persecution of the nonconformist sects began. 
 Bunyan was arrested for holding illegal religious meetings; 
 and he spent the next twelve years in confinement, earning 
 bread for his family by putting tags to shoe laces, and keeping 
 his mind awake by writing what he was no longer at liberty 
 to speak. In the midst of a sober controversial work, he 
 happened to employ the trite metaphor of a journey, to typify 
 the Christian life. At once the figure began to grow and 
 blossom ; a throng of pictures and dramatic incidents started 
 up before his mind. Almost before he knew it the metaphor 
 had grown into a book, and The Pilgrim's Progress, one 
 of the three great allegories of the world's literature,* was 
 written. It was published in 1678. 
 
 It furnished the simple Bedfordshire cottagers, for whom 
 it was written, with a reflection of their own inmost struggles 
 and aspirations, in a form which combined the fascinations 
 of the novel, the fairy-tale, and the romance of adventure. 
 The novel, the great literary discovery of the next century, 
 appears here in its germ. Not only is the physical world 
 through which Christian journeys from the "Wicket-gate" 
 to the Land of Beulah, pictured with the most familiar 
 
 * The others alluded to are Spenser's Faerie Queene and Dante's Divine 
 Comedy.
 
 John Bunyan 153 
 
 realism, but the wayfarers whom he meets are such as might 
 have been seen in Bunyan's day on any English market road 
 portly Mr. Worldly- Wiseman, full of prudential saws; 
 blundering, self-confident young Ignorance; "gentlemanlike" 
 Demas; and sweet talkative Piety. The landscape, the 
 houses, the people, are all given with quaint sturdy strokes 
 which stamp them upon the memory forever; so that it is 
 almost impossible for a reader of Pilgrim's Progress to 
 think of the journey otherwise than as a real personal ex- 
 perience. And added to the charm which the book has as 
 realism, is its charm as romance. If, in one sense, it may 
 be said to have ushered in the eighteenth century novel, in 
 another it may be said to have revived the mediaeval romance, 
 in which the hero was made to contend against dangers natural 
 and supernatural, on the way to the goal of his desires. 
 Giant Despair in his grim castle, the obscene devils creeping 
 and muttering in the Valley of the Shadow, the dreadful 
 enemy Apollyon, the angels and archangels who lead the 
 way, with harpings and hosannas, from the dread River of 
 Death to the shining gates of the Celestial City, give to the 
 story a fascinating element of marvel and adventure. If we 
 add to this the charm of its style, so quaintly graphic, so hu- 
 morously direct, so tender and rich and lyrical when the 
 author is moved by the beauty of his vision, it seems no 
 matter for surprise that Pilgrim's Progress, before Bunyan's 
 death, was read with delight not only throughout England, 
 but in France, in Holland, and in the far-off colonies of 
 America. 
 
 End of the Romantic Literature of the Century. Paradise 
 Lost and The Pilgrim's Progress are the two great final 
 products of that intellectual and artistic revival which we 
 call the Renaissance, and of that religious revival which we 
 call the Reformation. They mark the end of the stream 
 of literature which flows down into the second half of the 
 seventeenth century from its source in the later reign of 
 Henry VIII. and in the early Elizabethan age. We must 
 in the next chapter consider a school of literature of a very 
 different kind, which began in a revolt against the reigning 
 "romantic" style, and which at the Restoration assumed an
 
 154 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 authority which it maintained uninterruptedly for nearly a 
 hundred years. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Review what is said ofWyclif and Lollardry, 
 and of the Puritan spirit in Langland, in Chapter IV. Review also 
 what is said of the Reformation, in Chapter V. It will be clear that 
 the Puritan movement of Milton's age was the result of a long growth. 
 How did the increased knowledge of the Bible during Elizabeth's reign 
 affect the popular mind? How did the strict Puritan view of life 
 express itself in costume, manners, etc. ? Give a brief summary of the 
 struggle between the Parliament and the King; of the Civil War, and 
 the events leading up to the recall of Charles II. to the throne. What 
 great intellectual revolution accompanied the political and religious 
 disturbances of the age ? Who is the chief representative of this new 
 intellectual movement ? 
 
 Give a brief outline of Bacon's life. What was the scope of the 
 work Bacon proposed to himself ? Explain the scientific principle of 
 investigation advocated by Bacon, and contrast it with the mediaeval 
 method of reasoning, which he wished to supplant. Instance one 
 or more modern scientific theories which have been established by 
 the "inductive" process of investigation. By what work does Bacon 
 hold his place in English literature ? What was his opinion of English 
 as a literary language ? What kinds of subjects are treated in Bacon's 
 essays; and what is the general character of the thought in them ? If 
 possible, compare one of Bacon's essays named in the reading-list be- 
 low, with a passage of Milton's prose, and note the contrast in style 
 between the short, crisp sentences of the former and the long, roll- 
 ing sentences of the latter. 
 
 What side of the seventeenth century spirit is shown by Sir Thomas 
 Browne? What is the theme of the "Religio Medici"; of the "Urn 
 Burial " ? 
 
 Why were the Cavalier poets so-called ? They are the successors 
 of Wyatt, Surrey, and the "courtly makers" of the age of Henry VIII. 
 and Elizabeth; they express the lighter and brighter view of life which 
 was held by the early Renaissance, hence the sharp contrast they 
 present with the general tone of literature in their own time, when 
 the Reformation had given a serious cast to the minds of most writers. 
 If possible read, in the Golden Treasury, Lovelace's " To Lucasta," 
 and note the evidence in it of the author's " spirit of old-fashioned
 
 Review Outline 155 
 
 chivalry," his " faithfulness to the ideals of love and knightly honor.'* 
 Where and under what conditions was the greater part of Herrick's 
 poetry written ? Put in unfigurative language the judgment of Her- 
 rick ; s> genius expressed under the metaphor of the cherry-stone. What 
 were the two bents of thought and feeling displayed by Herrick? 
 Which seems the expression of his more constant nature ? Can you 
 gather from what is said of Walton the reason for his occupying a per- 
 manent place in the affection of English readers? 
 
 By a comparison of dates, select from the following writers those 
 who were alive during Milton's boyhood, and whom he may conceiv- 
 ably have met in the streets of London: Spenser, Raleigh, Shake- 
 speare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Bacon. How old was Milton 
 when Shakespeare left London ? What was Milton doing in the year 
 of Jonson's death ? Restate the facts of Milton's early education and 
 surroundings which were important in determining his character. Note 
 that on the moral side his education was Puritan in the strict sense, 
 but on the literary and artistic side that it was the liberal education of 
 the Renaissance. May not something similar be said concerning all 
 Milton's poetry? How early did Milton dedicate himself to poetry, 
 and what was his ideal of the poet's character? What important 
 poem had he written before leaving college ? Describe his life at Horton, 
 and its effect upon his taste, skill, and temperament. Name the 
 chief poems of the Horton period. In what way do " Comus " and 
 " Lycidas " reflect the growing seriousness of Milton's mind ? The 
 date of "Comus" shows that it may have been a part of the dem- 
 onstration made by sympathizers with the theatre as a reproof to 
 Puritan persecution of the stage. Connect this with the sympathy 
 for the drama expressed in " L'Allegro " and " II Penseroso." Show 
 how unlike the sour and narrow view of life held by the more fanat- 
 ical Puritans is the view taken by Milton in these two pieces. What 
 later work of Milton's is in dramatic form? In connection with 
 "Comus" review what is said of the masque-form as developed by 
 Jonson, and note the particulars in which Milton's poem answers to the 
 general description. Where, and on what occasion was "Cotnus" pre- 
 sented ? What is the " teaching " of " Comus," and what allegorical 
 means are taken to bring it out ? What are the two forms of sym- 
 bolism used in " Lycidas ? " Which of these was conventional ? 
 What moved Milton to add the second form? 
 
 What important events intervened in Milton's life between his
 
 156 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 sojourn at Horton and his life in the diplomatic service ? Did Milton 
 write any poetry while engaged in work for the government ? Name 
 the sonnets of Milton which have the greatest autobiographic interest. 
 How do we know that he was not forgetful of his great purpose? 
 To what circumstance is his blindness attributed ? 
 
 What subject did Milton at first intend to use for a great epic ? 
 By what po.et of our own time has this subject been treated ? What 
 national events finally gave Milton leisure to write " Paradise Lost" ? 
 When was it published ? How long had he had the subject in mind 
 before he began to write ? Restate in your own words the story of 
 " Paradise Lost." The story is not presented in the poem in the nat- 
 ural order of events; explain what the difference is, and upon what liter- 
 ary tradition it rests. Notice that the theme of " Paradise Regained " is 
 suggested at the end of " Paradise Lost " ; by what means ? By what 
 "central motive" is the whole action held together? Why is it an 
 untrue criticism to say that Satan is the hero of the epic ? What 
 connection is here traced between the personal experiences of Milton 
 and the grandeur of style in his later work ? Why did he choose blank 
 verse ? For what purpose had blank verse been chiefly used up to 
 this time? Describe as clearly and simply as possible the two great 
 characteristics of Milton's blank verse. Compare the first fifteen or 
 twenty lines of "Paradise Lost" with a passage from one of Shakespeare's 
 plays, such as the speech of Portia before the judges; notice how much 
 longer the sense is suspended in Milton, and how much less simple is 
 the grammatical structure of the sentences. Make clear in what way 
 Milton's second epic supplements the thought of the first. In what 
 respects may his last poem be taken as an allegory of his own life, 
 private and public ? 
 
 When was the King James or Authorized version of the Bible made ? 
 Review the history of the English Bible up to this point, beginning 
 with the partial translations made in Anglo-Saxon times. What was 
 the effect of the Bible upon Bunyan as a writer? Narrate the facts 
 of Bunyan's early life which typify the religious excitement of the 
 period. In what work has he made a revelation of his religious state 
 of mind ? How did Bunyan's masterpiece come to be written ? Ex- 
 plain the double connection of "Pilgrim's Progress" with the obsolete 
 mediaeval romance and the future eighteenth century novel. Review 
 the great names which make up the line of imaginative writers begin- 
 ning with Wyatt and Surrey, and ending with Bunyan. Notice that
 
 Heading Guide 157 
 
 only one of these, Ben Jonson, is " classic " in his sympathies; he is 
 the only one who insists first of all on correctness and restraint; 
 all the others are " romantic," that is they care for beauty and energy 
 of expression first of all. Milton holds a middle position; can you 
 explain how? 
 
 READING GUIDE. Milton All members of the class should 
 read, at least, " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso," " Comus," the first 
 three books and the ninth book of "Paradise Lost." Good school 
 editions are abundant. The most convenient complete editions are the 
 Globe (Macmillan), and the Cambridge (Houghton, Mifflin"). 
 
 If a supplement is desired for the biographical matter given in the 
 text, either the life of Milton by R. Garnett, in the Great Writers 
 series, or that by M. Pattison, in the English Men of Letters series, 
 will furnish abundant material. An excellent short biography, by D. 
 Masson, is prefixed to the Globe edition. Lowell's essay on Milton, 
 in " Among My Books," and Matthew Arnold's, in " Essays in Criti- 
 cism," will be found of value in giving a larger view of Milton's place 
 in English poetry. Macaulay's essay on Milton gives an admirable 
 study of the social and political aspects of Puritanism. This may be 
 supplemented by Chapter IX. of Green's " Short History of England," 
 and by Macaulay's " Conversation Between Mr. Abraham Cowley and 
 Mr. John Milton Touching the Great Civil War." In Ruskin's " Se- 
 same and Lilies " may be found an illuminating passage in interpreta- 
 tion of " Lycidas." Interpretative studies of all Milton's poems, and a 
 translation of his Latin and Italian verses, are given in the Cambridge 
 edition. 
 
 The routine of class work will probably allow little time for the first- 
 hand study of the other writers of this period; but ambitious students 
 will be interested to do some reading in them independently. Among 
 Bacon's essays the following are recommended: Truth, Adversity, Envy, 
 Love, Great Place, Travel, Wisdom for a Man's Self, Friendship, Dis- 
 course, Gardens, Studies. Bacon's Essays are included in Cassell's 
 National Library, and in Morley's Universal Library, and a good 
 selection from them is given in Number 3 of Maynard's English 
 Classics. 
 
 The pieces of Herrick and the Cavalier poets given in Palgrave's 
 Golden Treasury or in Ward's English Poets, should by all means 
 be read. For those who wish to learn more of Herrick, the selections
 
 158 The Seventeenth Century 
 
 from his poetry published in the Golden Treasury series is recom- 
 mended. A delightful essay upon Herrick can be found in E. Gosse's 
 " Seventeenth Century Studies." Walton's " Complete Angler " and, 
 Bunyan's " Grace Abounding " can be had in CasselTs National 
 Library. " The Pilgrim's Progress " is published in the Riverside 
 Literature series. " Gra.ce Abounding," in spite of its somewhat dry- 
 sounding title, is a most picturesque and absorbing book. Bunyan's 
 " Holy War " is certain to prove interesting to students, especially to 
 boys. Volunteer reports upon these two, or portions of them, and 
 upon " The Pilgrim's Progress," or some portion thereof, can hardly 
 fail to furnish an interesting hour.
 
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 CHAPTER IX 
 THE RESTORATION 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 Political History of the Restoration Era. The year 1660 
 marks the return of Charles II. to the throne which his 
 father had lost, and the beginning of an era known as the 
 period of the Restoration. Historically the age is in sharp 
 contrast with the grea: century that began in 1558 with the 
 accession of Elizabeth. That epoch was, as we have seen, 
 one of intense national and individual energy, of zealous de- 
 votion to religious and political ideas which finally involved 
 the country in civil war. In the age of the Restoration men 
 were weary of all this excitement and turmoil, and ready 
 to accept any system which promised order and peace. 
 The king himself was idle and pleasure-loving, indis- 
 posed to take the trouble to push his royal prerogative 
 to extremes, and inclined to a do-nothing foreign policy. 
 Under his rule England sank from the great position in 
 European affairs which she had held under Cromwell, to 
 that of paid ally of the French king. The reign of Charles II. 
 was marked by such public calamities as the Great Plague in 
 1665, and the Fire of London in 1666;- but neither these nor 
 the misfortunes of foreign war, in the course of which the 
 Dutch fleet entered the Thames, stirred the English people 
 from its lethargy. Only when, after the death of the king in 
 1685, his brother, who succeeded him as James II., at- 
 tempted to undo the work of the Reformation, did the nation 
 rise, and, by the Revolution of 1688, set aside the male line 
 of the House of Stuart and placed upon the throne the 
 daughter of James II., Mary, and her husband, William of 
 Orange. 
 
 Social and Literary Tendencies. The contrast between 
 the age of Elizabeth and that of Charles II. is as strongly 
 
 160
 
 Introduction 161 
 
 marked in social and intellectual life. The former period 
 was a time when the unmeasured possibilities of the new 
 world of the Renaissance gave scope to the far-reaching 
 desires of men. The imagination, whether dealing with 
 knowledge as in Bacon, or with human power as in Mar- 
 lowe, or with the things of faith as in Milton, took wings to 
 itself and flew. In the Restoration era, on the contrary, men 
 were content to remain at peace within the limits of the 
 world of things which they could see and touch. In science 
 they gave themselves, not to visions of all knowledge, but to 
 patient investigation of facts immediately about them; in 
 statecraft they imagined no Utopias, but worked out prin- 
 ciples of practical politics and party government; in social 
 life they had learned to fear the spirit of individualism, lead- 
 ing to such violent contrasts as that between Cavaliers and 
 Puritans, and therefore tried to set up ideals of life in ac- 
 cordance with reason and " common-sense," to which all 
 men should conform. The literature of the time is a faith- 
 ful reflection of these tendencies. It is largely concerned 
 with the facts of the immediate world of London, with con- 
 temporary men and politics, and with social life. And it 
 reflects the spirit of uniformity in the agreement of writers, 
 both in prose and poetry, upon rules and principles in ac- 
 cordance with which they should express themselves. The 
 acceptance of these literary conventions, drawn from the 
 practice of writers of the past, marks the difference between 
 the classic age of Dryden and Pope, and the romantic epoch 
 of Spenser and Shakespeare. 
 
 French Influence. In this difference the influence of 
 France counted for much. There the reaction against the 
 poetic license of the Renaissance had set in somewhat 
 earlier. Its result is seen in the work of Corneille and 
 Racine, who developed a drama on the lines of Latin tragedy, 
 succeeding where the English classicists of the sixteenth 
 century had signally failed. It must be remembered that 
 many Englishmen of the class which cared for literature 
 and the stage, spent years of exile in France, and naturally 
 came to accept the principles of French taste. Through 
 the new artistic conceptions brought back to England by the
 
 162 The Restoration 
 
 exiles, French influence upon English literature, especially 
 upon the English drama, was strengthened. To their no- 
 tions of refinement the license of the older dramatists seemed 
 uncouth. "Ijhave seen Hamlet" wrote Evelyn, "but now 
 these old plays begin to disgust this refined century, since 
 their majesties have been so long abroad." 
 
 The Heroic Couplet. The most striking way in which 
 English poetry reflected the spirit of the new era, was in 
 its substitution of a single form for the lawless variety of 
 the age which had gone before. This form, called the heroic 
 couplet, consisted of two pentameter lines connected by 
 rhyme. It had been used in earlier periods, for example 
 by Chaucer; but in his hands the couplet had not been 
 necessarily a unit, the thought having often been drawn out 
 into the succeeding pair of verses, with no pause at the 
 rhyming word. The literary ideals of the Restoration may 
 be illustrated by the comparison of a few lines from the 
 prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 
 
 " A knight ther was, and that a worthy man, 
 That fro. the tyme that he first bigan 
 To ryden out, he loved chivalrye, 
 Trouthe and honour, fredom, and curteisy," 
 
 with these from the chief poet of the Restoration, John 
 Dryden : 
 
 "A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged, 
 Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd; 
 Without unspotted, innocent within, 
 She fear'd no danger for she knew no sin." 
 
 In the first, it is clear, the couplet exerts little control over 
 the thought, which runs on into the second pair of verses ; in 
 the second the thought is limited and regulated by the accept- 
 ance of a precise and narrow form ; and this limitation and 
 regulation were the chief qualities of Restoration poetry.
 
 John Dry den 163 
 
 II. JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) 
 
 Dryden's Early Life. Dryden was born in 1631 at Aid- 
 winkle, in Northamptonshire, his parents being of the upper 
 middle class, and of Puritan sympathies. He was sent to 
 Westminster School, and thence, in 1650, to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, where he remained seven years. During this 
 time his father died, leaving him a small property. His first 
 important verse was an elegy on the death of Cromwell, 
 written in 1658. Two years later, however, Dryden, with 
 the mass of Englishmen, had become an ardent royalist; 
 and he welcomed the return of Charles, in a poem in couplets 
 called "Astrsea Redux" ("The Return of the Goddess of 
 Justice "). In 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, a 
 woman of higher rank than his own. It may have been 
 the desirability of increasing his income that, just before 
 this marriage, drove Dryden to write his first comedy, The 
 Wild Gallant. It certainly was his accumulating financial 
 necessities that kept him writing for the stage constantly 
 down to 1 68 1. During this period his only poem of impor- 
 tance was "Annus Mirabilis" (1667), ("The Wonderful 
 Year"), a chronicle of events of the preceding year, which 
 had been distinguished by several victories at sea over the 
 Dutch, and by the great London fire. 
 
 Dryden's Satires. In 1681 Dryden began the succession of 
 political poems which have generally been accounted his best 
 works. The times were troubled. The court and the country 
 were divided between the partisans of the king's brother, who, 
 though a Papist, was recognized as the heir to the throne, 
 and those of the king's illegitimate son, the Duke of Mon- 
 mouth, whom certain persons zealous for the Protestant 
 faith were disposed to set up as a rival candidate. The 
 leader of the latter party was the Earl of Shaftesbury. In the 
 Bible story of the revolt of Absalom against King David, 
 Dryden found an apt parallel to existing circumstances in 
 England; and his satire Absalom and Achitophel exposed the 
 relations of Monmouth, the prince, and Shaftesbury, the evil 
 counsellor, with merciless humor. The poem became im-
 
 JOHN DRYDEN
 
 John Dry den 165 
 
 mensely popular. The next year Dryden followed it with 
 a second blow at Shaftesbury in The Medal. Then he 
 turned aside in MacFlecknoe to attack a rival poet, Shad- 
 well, who had been employed by the Whigs to reply to The 
 Medal. In this year, also, Dryden extended his range 
 into the field of religious controversy, with Religio Laid 
 ("The Religion of a Layman"), a very temperate statement 
 of a layman's faith in the Church of England. Three years 
 after this confession of faith Dryden became a Roman 
 Catholic, and in 1687 he published a political defence of the 
 Church of Rome called The Hind and the Panther. 
 
 Dryden's Later Life. This political and religious writing 
 brought Dryden distinction and a modest income. In 1670 
 he was made Historiographer Royal and Poet Laureate, with 
 a salary of two hundred pounds a year. Later he received 
 a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and in 1683 he was 
 made Collector of the Port of London. All these honors and 
 emoluments he lost in consequence of the Revolution of 1688. 
 He was obliged to betake himself again to the stage as the 
 most lucrative department of literature, to accept aid from pri- 
 vate patrons in place of the royal bounty, to contract with 
 Tonson, the book-seller, to produce and deliver ten thousand 
 lines of verse for three hundred guineas, and to undertake 
 various jobs of translation for the same employer. In short, 
 in his old age Dryden was compelled to attempt almost all 
 the methods by which a literary man could live. Neverthe- 
 less, his production in these years added much to his fame. 
 Whatever may be thought of his poetical qualities, at least his 
 literary energy lasted well. His work of this time includes his 
 translation of Virgil, and his renderings into modern English 
 verse of stories from Chaucer, among which the Palamon 
 and Arcileis best known. These twice-told tales were pub- 
 lished in 1700, in a volume of Fables, which contained also his 
 best lyrical poem, "Alexander's Feast." 
 
 Dryden as a Literary Dictator. During these last years 
 Dryden lived constantly in London. The coffee-house of 
 that day was the chief place of resort for literary men, much 
 as the tavern had been in Elizabeth's time. At Will's or 
 Button's the wits gathered for exchange of courtesies or for
 
 166 The Restoration 
 
 \ 
 
 combat ; there their admirers or patrons met them ; and thence 
 went forth the criticism that made or marred the fortunes of 
 rising men. Dryden frequented Will's, where he was as 
 much a monarch as Ben Jonson had been at the Mermaid, 
 or as, a century later, Samuel Johnson was at the Literary 
 Club. At Will's he is pictured for us by tradition, sitting 
 in his arm-chair on the balcony in summer, and before 
 the fire in winter, burly of figure, shrewd and kindly of 
 feature, altogether a sound, stalwart, wholesome man. It 
 was to Will's that young Pope was brought to gaze on great- 
 ness and be inspired ; and it was there also that Dryden dis- 
 missed his youthful relative with the pitying words, "Cousin 
 Swift, you will never be a poet." In an age when the form 
 of poetry was all but rigidly fixed, the acknowledged master 
 of that form could be as much of a despot as he chose. 
 
 Dryden's Character. The life of Dryden seems at first 
 sight to have been an unheroic, and in some ways an ignoble 
 one. His changes of side from Cromwellian to Royalist, 
 from Protestant to Romanist, stand out in unfavorable con- 
 trast to the devotion of men like More and Milton. His 
 concern with the details of party strife is sharply opposed 
 to the ideal morality of Sidney and of Spenser. His indif- 
 ference in matters of belief seems tame and watery after the 
 flame-like faith of Bunyan. But we must not let such 
 comparisons carry us too far. Dryden illustrates the change 
 from the virtues of Elizabethan chivalry and Cromwellian 
 fanaticism, to the sober commonplace ethics of an era of 
 reason. His tendency to shift his influence to the winning 
 side was in part the patriotism of a sensible man who argued 
 that it mattered comparatively little whether the country 
 was ruled by Protector or King, whether it worshipped ac- 
 cording to Anglican or Catholic rites, so long as it was at 
 peace under institutions which were strong enough to curb 
 individual ambition. 
 
 Dryden's Poetry. There is also a temptation to extend 
 the first harsh judgment of Dryden's life, to his poetry. It, 
 too, lacks elevation, and the subject-matter of much of it, 
 the affairs of church and state, is remote from what we re- 
 gard as poetic. But in his writing also Dryden responded
 
 John Dry den 167 
 
 to the demands of his age. In the days of Charles II. men 
 were weary of revolution. To them the kingship and the 
 church, Anglican or Catholic, were interesting and beautiful 
 because they represented, for the mass of the nation, an ideal 
 of order and restraint; just as to an earlier time the bound- 
 less self-assertion of Faustus and Tamburlaine had been 
 interesting and beautiful for the opposite reason. 
 
 Not only the substance, but the form of Dryden's verse 
 has been a ground for detraction from his fame. Few poets 
 of the modern world have maintained such strict uniformity. 
 With the exception of the lyrics in his dramas, of several 
 odes, and of two early poems in the heroic stanza, Dryden 
 cultivated steadily the heroic couplet. This kind of verse 
 appealed with irresistible force to an age which desired, 
 above all, uniformity and regularity. When at the close of 
 Religio Laid Dryden says, 
 
 " And this unpolished rugged verse I chose 
 As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose," 
 
 his second line may be "taken as referring to his poems in 
 general. In them we look for the virtues of prose rather 
 than for those of poetry; for the useful qualities, exactness, 
 clearness, energy, rather than for imagination and suggestion ; 
 for epigram in place of metaphor; for boldly marked rhythm 
 instead of elusive harmony. 
 
 Dryden as Prose Writer. Dryden was not only the fore- 
 most poet, but also the most copious dramatist, and the 
 chief critic, of his time. The age of the Restoration was 
 a period of criticism rather than of creation, a time when 
 men were interested in testing the product of earlier ages, 
 and in winnowing the good from the bad. This interest 
 accounts for the fact that to many of his works Dryden pre- 
 fixed one or more critical essays in the form of dedications 
 or prefaces, in which he discussed the leading artistic ques- 
 tions of the day. Among these essays the most important 
 are "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (1668), the "Essay on 
 Satire" (1693), and the Preface to the "Fables" (1700). 
 In these essays Dryden set a model for simple, practical
 
 168 The Restoration 
 
 prose style. By his adoption of the modern sentence in 
 place of the unit of great and unequal length used by Raleigh 
 and Milton, he carried out in prose a change exactly anal- 
 ogous to that accomplished in verse by his adoption of the 
 couplet in place of the stanza. In short, he did for prose 
 what he did for poetry; he reduced the unit of treatment to 
 manageable size; he set an example of correctness; and 
 finally, by his authority, he did much to establish such a 
 standard of taste as should render henceforth impossible the 
 eccentricities to which the preceding century had been in- 
 dulgent. 
 
 III. SAMUEL BUTLER (l6l2-l68o), SAMUEL PEPYS (1633- 
 1703), AND THE DRAMATISTS 
 
 Butler's " Hudibras." Like Elizabeth and Charles I., 
 Charles II. held in some sort a literary court, of which lyric 
 poetry and satire were the language. The courtly poets of 
 the time, the successors of the Cavaliers, caught from the 
 king an attitude of moral indifference. In their circles the 
 most popular work was a fierce and scurrilous satire upon 
 the Puritan, Samuel Butler's Hudibras. Butler was doubt- 
 less meditating his attack during the years of the Protec- 
 torate, when he was acting as private secretary to a Puri- 
 tan nobleman. Three years after the accession of Charles 
 II., he published three cantos of a poem in which the vices 
 of the Puritan period, hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, and 
 intolerance, are presented with savage exaggeration in the 
 ^person of Sir Hudibras. This knight, with his squire Ralpho, 
 passes through a series of quixotic adventures, which are 
 continued in further instalments of the poem, published in 
 1664 and 1678. 
 
 Pepys's Diary. While Butler and the Cavalier poets were 
 embodying the mood of the aristocracy, Bunyan was writing 
 his Pilgrim's Progress for the serious lower class, where 
 Puritanism still survived. Between these extremes, however, 
 we have an order that was to make its presence felt increas- 
 ingly from this time on, the upper-middle class; and as it
 
 Samuel Pepys 169 
 
 happens, this class had, in the late seventeenth century, a 
 figure almost as representative as Bunyan. Samuel Pepys 
 was a busy man of affairs, a clerk of the Navy Board, and 
 secretary of the Admiralty under James II. Between 1660 
 and 1669 he kept a diary in cipher, which he left with his 
 library to Magdalen College, Cambridge. It was deciphered 
 and published in the nineteenth century, and was recognized 
 at once as a personal document of great interest. 
 
 Pepys's diary is scarcely to be called literature. It is a 
 transcript of the observations, doings, thoughts, and feelings 
 of a commonplace burgher, all set down with the greatest 
 fidelity. If Pepys goes on a picnic he mentions the time of 
 starting, the dishes of the luncheon, the substance of the 
 conversation by the way, the company he met, the sheep 
 which he saw ("the most pleasant and innocent sight that 
 ever I saw in my life"), the shepherd whose little boy was 
 reading the Bible to him, the flowers, the glow-worms which 
 came out in the evening, and the slight accident by which he 
 sprained his foot. In its detail the diary reflects the pa- 
 tient, industrious habits by which business and science were 
 to thrive in the next century for Pepys was a scientist and 
 President of the Royal Society. In its uniformity of tone, 
 its lack of emphasis and dramatic interest, it illustrates 
 again the sober modernity which the citizen's life was be- 
 ginning to assume. In its worldliness, its reflection of per- 
 fectly unashamed delight in mere comfort, well-being, and 
 success, it shows the bourgeois ideal of life. And finally, the 
 pleasure in his own life, which sustained the author in the 
 mechanical toil of recording its happenings, is to be connected 
 with the interest in human life in general, which was the force 
 behind the development of realistic fiction in the following 
 century. 
 
 The Restoration Drama. One result of the Restoration 
 was to re-open the theatres of London, which had been closed 
 since 1642. Though the great generation of dramatists had 
 come to an end, the drama had retained its hold on the masses. 
 Dryden found the production of plays the most lucrative 
 of literary employments, and he wrote many, both comedies 
 and tragedies, in prose, blank verse, and rhyme. His most
 
 170 The Restoration 
 
 characteristic dramatic works are his "heroic plays" in 
 rhyme, the use of which he defended on the ground that "it 
 bounds and circumscribes the fancy. For imagination in a 
 poet is a faculty so wild and lawless that it is like an high 
 ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it lest it outrun the 
 judgment." Dryden's two dramatic masterpieces, however, 
 All for Love and Don Sebastian are in blank verse. 
 
 In the main, the tragedy of the period interests us only as a 
 survival. The Restoration comedy, however, is a genuine 
 reflection of the temper, if not of the actual life, of the upper 
 classes of the nation. As practised by Shakespeare, English 
 comedy had been romantic in spirit. However seriously it 
 concerned itself with the essentials of human nature, it had 
 comparatively little to do with the circumstances of actual 
 human life. In Ben Jonson we find more realistic treatment 
 of the setting, the social surroundings, of the play. Following 
 his lead, the comedians of the Restoration, of whom William 
 Wycherley and William Congreve are the chief, devoted them- 
 selves to picturing the external details of life, the fashions of 
 *.he time, its manners, its speech, its interests. For scene they 
 turned to the most interesting places they knew, the drawing- 
 rooms, the coffee-houses, the streets and gardens of London. 
 Their characters were chiefly people of fashion, and their plots, 
 for the most part, were love intrigues, both often enough 
 uninteresting and improbable. For these deficiencies, how- 
 ever, the dramatist made up in part by the brilliancy of his 
 dialogue. In tendency these plays are, almost without ex- 
 ception, immoral; they represent the reaction of the play- 
 going public against Puritanism. They are anti-social, in 
 that they represent social institutions, particularly marriage, 
 in an obnoxious or ridiculous light. 
 
 This anti-social influence of the plays of the time was 
 clearly perceived, and protest was not lacking. In 1698 
 a clergyman, Jeremy Collier, published his " Short View of 
 the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage," and 
 Dryden, who was one of the dramatists particularly at- 
 tacked, admitted the justice of the rebuke. Its immediate 
 effect was not sufficient to do away with the coarseness of 
 Restoration comedy, but in Steele's plays, early in the next
 
 Review Outline 171 
 
 century, the drama is in full alliance with the forces which 
 were making for morality and decent living. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. The Restoration is held by some writers to 
 mark the beginning of modern English history. In the period which 
 followed, English life begins to assume its modern form, and to show 
 the beginnings of that political, commercial, industrial, artistic, and 
 social development, the results*of which make the England of to-day. 
 
 It was, in the main, a period of peaceful growth. How do you 
 account for its calmness? What was the character of Charles II.? 
 What were some of the events of his reign ? What caused the Revo- 
 lution of 1688? Contrast the age of Charles II. with the century 
 which preceded it. Why was the former a period of interest in society ? 
 How did the ideal of social conduct as opposed to that of individual 
 expression affect literature ? Where did men find rules for writing ? 
 What was the influence of France ? How did poetry in its form re- 
 flect the tendency of the time ? What is the heroic couplet ? How 
 did the writers of this period differ from Chaucer in their use of it ? 
 
 Outline the early life of Dryden, and mention his early poems. 
 What is the general subject-matter of these poems? Sketch the 
 political situation out of which Dryden's great series of satires arose. 
 What was his position before and after 1688 ? Mention his chief later 
 works. What was the place of the coffee-house in the literature of 
 the time ? In what sense was Dryden a literary dictator ? Give your 
 view of Dryden's personal character. Explain that character in 
 the light of his age. State your opinion of his poetic quality. Why 
 did Dryden choose political subjects ? What is the form of his poetry ? 
 What virtues has it ? What was the importance of criticism in Dry- 
 den's time ? Compare his reform in prose with that in verse ? 
 
 What is Hudibras ? Look up several passages from it in a book 
 of quotations. Who was Samuel Pepys? Of what class was he 
 representative ? What is the nature of his diary ? How does it reflect 
 the ideals of the time ? Who were the chief writers of comedy in the 
 Restoration ? What is the difference between the Restoration comedy 
 and the comedy of Shakespeare ? What is the moral tendency of the 
 former? Who protested against it? Was the protest effective? 
 (See also page 201.)
 
 172 The Restoration 
 
 READING GUIDE." Palamon and Arcite " is an excellent ex- 
 ample of Dryden's poetry, and if the poem be compared with its origi- 
 nal, Chaucer's " Knight's Tale," the result of making over a story to 
 suit the classic taste of the time may be observed. Numerous school 
 editions are accessible. Of Dryden's other poems, " Alexander's Feast " 
 should be read as an example of his power of sustaining lyric effects 
 through a variety of metres. The poem is included in The Golden 
 Treasury. Of Dryden's prose, examples may be found in Craik's 
 English Prose. Selections from Pepys's Diary may be chosen from 
 the several volumes in Cassell's National Library, and no better pic- 
 tures of English life of the time are to be found. 
 
 For fuller treatment of the general condition of society in the Res- 
 toration, the third chapter of Macaulay's " History of England " will 
 be found crowded with interesting details. The life of Dryden, by 
 Mr. Saintsbury in the English Men of Letters series (Harper), is satis- 
 factory; and the pupil will enjoy R. L. Stevenson's vivid portrait of 
 Pepys in " Memories and Portraits " (Scribner). Extended criticism of 
 the Restoration writers is given in Mr. Edmund Gosse's " From Shake- 
 peare to Pope." An appreciation of the comedy of the Restoration may 
 be gained from Thackeray's lecture on Congreve, in " T^ie English Hu- 
 mourists of the Eighteenth Century."
 
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 CHAPTER X 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 Political History of the Eighteenth Century. Almost 
 at the opening of the eighteenth century the crown passed, 
 by the death of William III., to the second daughter of 
 James II., Anne (1702-1714). Her reign was marked by 
 political struggles between the Whigs, who wished to secure 
 the Protestant succession to the throne by recognizing the 
 Elector of Hanover as ne.xt heir, and the Tories, who hoped 
 to see the kingdom revert to the son of James II. In spite 
 of the fact that the Tories were led by one of the cleverest 
 men of the time both in politics and literature, Lord Boling- 
 broke, the Whigs triumphed, and on the death of the queen 
 in 1714 the Elector of Hanover succeeded as George I. The 
 supporters of the Stuart heir, or Jacobites, revolted twice, 
 once in 1715, and again against George II. in 1745, but fruit- 
 lessly. The House of Hanover was continued by George III., 
 in whose reign England won her imperial domain from France 
 in America and India, only to lose the greater part of the 
 former by the American Revolution. 
 
 The Social Importance of Literature. The early eight- 
 eenth century shows a continuation of the literary ten- 
 dencies which marked the Restoration. Literature on its 
 serious side was largely concerned with politics. The Revo- 
 lution of 1688 had made Parliament supreme in the gov- 
 ernment of the nation, and had fixed the system of party 
 government. In the days before newspapers, the services of 
 writers were of great importance in determining public opin- 
 ion ; accordingly they were employed largely by both parties 
 and liberally rewarded. In a sense, political service took the 
 place of patronage as the chief resource of authors. It gave
 
 Introduction 175 
 
 them a place of independence and power in the state such 
 as they have at no other time enjoyed. Moreover, thoughtful 
 men saw in literature a means of improving social life and 
 purging society of evils which threatened the peace and 
 order of the community. The violence of party spirit en- 
 gendered by the expulsion of the Stuarts, the survival of re- 
 ligious fanaticism among the lower orders, the licentiousness 
 of private life among the aristocracy, which is reflected in the 
 Restoration drama against all these the literature of the 
 age made protest, partly by the use of ridicule and satire, 
 partly by an appeal to common sense. In minor respects, 
 also, the civilization of the time was imperfect. London was 
 so filthy that the plague was always imminent, so badly paved 
 that traveling was dangerous, so poorly guarded that foot- 
 pads and highwaymen operated freely, and wild young bucks, 
 who called themselves Mohocks, kept peaceful citizens in 
 terror. The crude, immature nature of the masses, as it 
 expressed itself in vulgar amusements and cruel practical 
 jokes, is portrayed in the realistic writings of the time, as 
 it is with still more vivid satire in the pictures of Hogarth 
 always with the intention of making things better. 
 
 Eighteenth Century Style. To serve such ends the writers 
 of the time found their most acceptable form in the regular 
 style which had characterized the period of Dryderi. The 
 reign of law and order, which was so much desired after the 
 turbulence of the seventeenth century, had already been 
 achieved in the realm of letters. Literary men had only to 
 practise what they preached, the cultivation of perfect man- 
 ners instead of the assertion of personal peculiarities, the 
 attainment of regularity and correctness of form instead of 
 originality of thought. If the literary fashion of the time 
 seems to us to stifle real feeling under formality, we must re- 
 member that men needed this formality, as they did their 
 wigs and ruffles and their stately courtliness of manner, to 
 remind themselves that they were not barbarians, like Shake- 
 speare and his friends, but almost as fine gentlemen as the 
 French or the Latins. Indeed, it was the boast of Queen 
 Anne's time that it resembled the first century of the Ro- 
 man Empire, whence it called itself the Augustan Age.
 
 176 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 The Age of Queen Anne. Queen Anne has given her 
 name to an age in English history only less glorious than 
 that of Elizabeth. Her short reign is famous for the won- 
 derful victories of the Duke of Marlborough over the French, 
 and for the writers who are known as Queen Anne's men. 
 These form the most compact group in the history of English 
 letters. They all shared the same interests and wrote after 
 the same models. They were all more or less in politics; 
 they lived as much as possible in London; they met con- 
 stantly in coffee-houses and clubs where they formed part- 
 nerships and alliances, or quarrelled and went away to attack 
 each other with lampoons and epigrams. All this gives a 
 peculiar sense of intimacy to literary society in the early eight- 
 eenth century, the days of Swift, Addison, Steele, Pope. 
 
 II. JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745) 
 
 Swift's Early Life. Jonathan Swift was born in Ireland 
 of English parents, in 1667. He was a posthumous son, and 
 he grew up to share his mother's poverty. He was sent to 
 the University of Dublin, where, as he says, he was "stopped 
 of his degree for dulness and unsufnciency ; and at last haidly 
 admitted, in a manner little to his credit." In 1689 he left 
 Ireland to take a position as under-secretary to a distant 
 relative, Sir William Temple, with whom he remained inter- 
 mittently for some years, reading aloud to his patron, writ- 
 ing at dictation, keeping accounts, and cursing his fate. At 
 Moor Park, Temple's country-seat, he met Esther Johnson, 
 who was also a dependent on the bounty of Temple, and there 
 began the long friendship between them which later gave rise 
 to the story of their secret marriage. While in the service of 
 Sir William Temple, Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a 
 contribution to the controversy which Temple was carrying 
 on with Bentley, the great scholar, as to the comparative 
 merit of ancient and modern writers. About this time, also, 
 he wrote a satire on the divisions of Christianity, called 
 The Tale of a Tub. Neither work was published until 1704. 
 Before this time, in despair of any other career, he had en- 
 tered the church; and after his patron's death he returned to
 
 Jonathan Swift 177 
 
 Ireland as chaplain to Lord Berkeley, by whom he was given 
 the living of Laracor. 
 
 Swift's Political Career. Then began the great period of 
 Swift's life, the time of his political power. During the 
 reign of William III., party strife was bitter between the 
 Whigs, who supported the king's foreign policy of resist- 
 ance to Louis XIV. of France, and the Tories, who op- 
 posed it; and this struggle was continued in the reign of 
 Queen Anne. Almost all the prominent literary men of 
 the time were engaged on one side or the other. Swift, 
 who was frequently in London promoting his candidacy for 
 offices in the church as they fell vacant, at first wrote on the 
 Whig side; but in 1710 he joined the Tories, who were just 
 coming into power. The Tory ministry, of which Lord 
 Bolingbroke was a member, was resolved to stop the war 
 with France; and in defence of this policy Swift put out 
 one of his strongest political writings, The Conduct of the 
 Allie.s. His life during these years is reflected in his Jour- 
 nal to Stella, a daily account of his doings which he wrote 
 to his friend, Esther Johnson. Here we find Swift playing 
 the part in which he most delighted, that of a man of affairs, 
 active, successful, and powerful. He records with gusto 
 his hours spent with the rulers of the country ; their politeness, 
 and his own half contemptuous familiarity; his pleasure in 
 his ability to serve his friends and to punish his enemies. In 
 1713, as the price of his support of the Tory government, 
 he was named Dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin, a promotion 
 little to his taste. The next year the Tories went out of 
 power, discredited by Bolingbroke's intrigues with the Pre- 
 tender; and Swift returned to Ireland. 
 
 Swift in Ireland. Here his unconquerable activity found 
 vent in defending the Irish from the careless tyranny of the 
 home government. In this endeavor he published The Dra- 
 pier's Letters, most of them in 1724, as a protest against turn- 
 ing over the right to coin money for Ireland to a private 
 individual, for his own profit. In 1726 he took the manu- 
 script of his most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, to London 
 for publication, and the next year he returned thither to 
 taste the pleasure of a great literary success. This, as all else
 
 178 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 in his life, seemed to turn only to disappointment. In 1728 
 Miss Johnson died, and her death left him desolate. As the 
 years passed, his hatred of the world grew more intense, 
 and his satire more bitter. A disease from which he had 
 suffered at intervals gained rapidly upon him, resulting in 
 deafness and giddiness ; and he suffered also from attacks of 
 epilepsy and insanity. After years of gloom and agony, 
 death came slowly Upon him. He died in 1745. 
 
 Swift's Character. It is evident from this narrative that, 
 to a great extent, Swift's writings were occasional, and grew 
 out of the circumstances of his life. He was not a professional 
 writer ; with one or two exceptions, his works were published 
 anonymously. He was a man of affairs, who became a man 
 of letters because literature was a means by which affairs 
 could be directed. His writings must be regarded, then, as 
 one expression among others of energy turned to practical 
 ends; as one evidence among others of his extraordinary 
 activity. For Swift lived hard. "There is no such thing," 
 he wrote to a friend, " as a fine old gentleman ; if the man had 
 a mind or body worth a farthing they would have worn him 
 out long ago." We are not surprised to read of Swift that 
 while he was at Moor Park with Sir William Temple he used 
 to leave his study every two hours for a half mile run. As 
 an old man, imprisoned in his deanery, he found relief in 
 rushing over the house and up and down stairs with in- 
 credible speed. 
 
 This need of exercise is the explanation of much that is 
 singular in Swift's life. It shows itself not only in his serious 
 concern with important affairs of state, but also in his gigantic 
 sense of play. The anecdotes related of him by his earlier 
 biographers are legion, most of them turning upon the trans- 
 lation of some whim into practical form, usually as a gro- 
 tesque joke. The tale of his dispersing a crowd gathered 
 to witness an eclipse, by sending a message that, according 
 to the Dean's orders, the eclipse would be put off for a day; 
 of his impersonating a poor usher at a reception, to draw 
 the contempt of a rich fool ; and of his disguising himself as 
 a fiddler at a beggar's wedding, to discover the arts by which 
 impostors live all these bear testimony to that restlessness
 
 Jonathan Swift 179 
 
 which could not be satisfied by work alone. With this 
 lighter side of Swift's nature are to be connected the works 
 by which he is chiefly known, his satires The Tale 0} a Tub 
 and Gulliver's Travels. 
 
 " The Partridge Predictions " ; Swift's Literary Method. 
 Once, indeed, this love of a practical joke was directly re- 
 sponsible for some of Swift's most characteristic writing. A 
 certain Partridge was in the habit of issuing an almanac, 
 with predictions of events to fall out in the next year. This 
 impostor Swift exposed in a set of " Predictions for the year 
 1708," one of which was the death of Partridge himself, who, 
 according to the prophecy, should "infallibly die upon the 
 2Qth of March, about eleven at night, of a raging fever." 
 This pamphlet was published over the name of Isaac Bicker- 
 staff. On the 3oth of March, Swift published a letter sup- 
 posed to be written by a revenue officer to a certain nobleman, 
 giving an account of Partridge's last days and death. He 
 also wrote "An Elegy of Mr. Partridge." Of course, Par- 
 tridge hastened in triumph to assure the world that he was 
 not dead; but Swift promptly came back with "A Vindica- 
 tion of Isaac Bickerstaff," in which, after rebuking Partridge 
 for his impudence, he proved by various logical demon- 
 strations that Partridge certainly died "within half an hour 
 of the time foretold." 
 
 This skit is broadly characteristic of the whole spirit and 
 method of Swift's work, in that it exposes, a sham or an evil 
 by setting up a more monstrous imposition against it, and de- 
 fends the latter with ironical seriousness ; the whole being per- 
 meated so thoroughly by contemptuous fooling that one hesi- 
 tates to say whether it may or may not have been written with 
 a certain amount of reforming zeal. In Swift's works gener- 
 ally there is this double aspect of earnestness and play. In 
 the " Modest Proposal, for Preventing the Children of the 
 Poor in Ireland from being Burdensome," the terrible suf- 
 fering of the Irish is revealed in the mocking suggestion 
 that the poor should devote themselves to rearing children 
 to be killed and eaten. The Tale of a Tub represents the 
 three leading sects of Christians in the story of three stupid 
 brethren, Peter, Martin, and John, and their quarrels as
 
 180 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 to how they shall wear the coats left them by their father. 
 Gulliver's Travels- is, in form, a romance of marvellous ad- 
 ventures, yet it is full of satire against all mankind. 
 
 " Gulliver's Travels." Gulliver is shipwrecked first at 
 Lilliput, where the inhabitants are six inches high except 
 their emperor, " taller by almost the breadth of my nail than 
 any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe 
 into the beholders." Here the satire consists in showing 
 human motives at work on a small scale, and in suggesting, 
 by the likeness of the Lilliputians to ourselves, the littleness 
 of human affairs. The arts by which the officers of the 
 government keep their places, such as cutting capers on a 
 tight-rope for the entertainment of the emperor, remind us 
 of the quality of statesmanship both in Swift's day and in 
 our own ; the dispute over the question at which end an egg 
 should properly be broken, that plunged Lilliput into civil 
 war, is a comment on the triviality of party divisions in the 
 greater world. Gulliver's next voyage, to Brobdingnag, brings 
 him to a people as large in comparison with man as the Lilli- 
 putians are small. Once more his adventures are a tale of 
 wonder, behind which lurks Swift's contempt for humanity. 
 Gulliver tells the giant beings by whom he is surrounded, 
 and in comparison with whom he is a mere manikin, of the 
 world from which he has come. Among other things, he 
 tells of the invention of gunpowder, and the use of instru- 
 ments of warfare. "The king was struck with horror at the 
 description I had given of those terrible engines. He was 
 amazed how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I (these 
 were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas." 
 Finally, after a third voyage to Laputa and other curious 
 places, Gulliver makes his fourth journey, to the land of the 
 Houyhnhnms, where horses are the rulers and masters, and 
 where the human animal is in a state of servitude and deg- 
 radation. Here again Gulliver relates to his incredulous 
 hosts the follies and cruelties of men. But the fiercest satire 
 is in the picture of the Yahoo, the human beast, in which 
 the worst of man is once for all told. 
 
 Swift as a Moralist. It is interesting to compare the 
 sketches of imaginary kingdoms in Gulliver's Travels with
 
 Jonathan Swift 181 
 
 the picture of society in Utopia. While More constructs an 
 ideal commonwealth, and commits himself heartily to its 
 exposition and defence, Swift occupies himself entirely with 
 railing at the follies and frailties of humanity. Even the 
 Houyhnhnms, who are as intelligent as the Utopians, and 
 conduct their lives as reasonably, lead an existence so de- 
 void of charm that we wonder whether, in picturing it, Swift 
 was not satirizing the ideals of men, as keenly as in the 
 Yahoos he scores the realities. In other words, we miss 
 entirely the enthusiastic confidence in the future of man- 
 kind which marked the early Renaissance. Swift's criticism 
 is wholly destructive. He sees the evils and follies of men, 
 but he has no hope that they will outgrow them. Indeed, 
 in his wavering between jest and earnest, it seems as if he 
 never felt quite sure that the world was worth his zeal, as 
 if he were always a trifle ashamed to declare himself a 
 reformer. Yet it would be useless to deny that in Swift's 
 ironical playfulness there is something awakening. The 
 fact that we are never quite sure of his aim keeps us on the 
 watch lest he take us by surprise ; his clever artifice calls for 
 an answering alertness in his readers. And even in Swift's 
 downright pessimism there is a certain wholesome stimulus, 
 perhaps because it is a change from the conventional light in 
 which we are taught to look at the world. Even his coarse- 
 ness contains something of vigorous challenge that forces us 
 to "prove everything, and to call things by their true names. 
 
 III. JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719), AND SIR RICHARD STEELE 
 (1672-1729) 
 
 The Early Periodicals. The practical tendency of eight- 
 eenth century literature, its direct concern with existing af- 
 fairs, is shown by the development of the various forms of 
 the periodical, from the newspaper to the magazine,. The 
 first English newspaper was Butter's Weekly Newes from 
 Italy and Germanic, which appeared in 1622. Later the 
 periodical form was used for political purposes. Swift con- 
 ducted a paper in the Tory interest known as the Examiner, 
 and the Whigs replied with the' Whig Examiner. The lighter
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON 
 From a painting by G. Kneller, S. R.
 
 Joseph Addison 183 
 
 side of journalism which lies between news and politics was 
 not adequately represented, until, in 1709, there appeared a 
 periodical of which the object was to "observe upon the 
 pleasurable as well as the busy part of mankind." This was 
 The Taller, founded by Richard Steele, who was soon joined 
 in the enterprise by his friend, Joseph Addison. 
 
 " The Tatler." The Taller appeared three times a week. 
 Each number consisted of several letters dated from the dif- 
 ferent coffee-houses of London; those from the Saint James 
 being devoted to foreign and domestic affairs, those from 
 Will's, to poetry and the drama, those from White's to " gal- 
 lantry, pleasure, and entertainment.'* There were also papers 
 dated "From my own apartment," which dealt with miscella- 
 neous topics, personal or social. It was in these last that the 
 authors carried out most fully the object which they set before 
 themselves, "to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the 
 disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recom- 
 mend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and 
 our behavior." Although The Taller appealed to the public 
 without distinction of party, it was colored by Steele's Whig 
 views. Accordingly, when the authors wished to avoid 
 politics altogether, they abandoned The Taller, replacing it 
 by The Spectator (1711), in which Addison took the chief 
 part. 
 
 Addison 's Life. Joseph Addison was born in 1672, at 
 Milston. He was educated at the Charterhouse School, 
 London, where his friendship with Richard Steele began, 
 and at Christ Church College, Oxford. At Oxford he first 
 attracted notice by a Latin poem on the Treaty of Rys- 
 wick, receiving for it a pension of three hundred pounds 
 a year, which enabled him to travel abroad. After his 
 return, the Whigs needed a poet to celebrate the Duke 
 of Marlborough's victory of Blenheim, and the commis- 
 sion fell to Addison. His poem, "The Campaign," gained 
 for its author various honors and preferments. He was 
 made Under Secretary of State, Member of Parliament, 
 editor of various Whig journals, and later Secretary for 
 Ireland. Indeed, Addison's career affords the best example 
 of the high rewards which the service of party offered in the
 
 184 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 early eighteenth century to literary men. Even his tragedy, 
 Cato, which was presented in 1713, owed its great popu- 
 larity to a supposed parallel between the struggles of parties 
 at Rome and the political situation of the time in England ; 
 and as neither party could allow the other to take to itself 
 the platitudes about liberty with which the play is strewn, 
 Whigs and Tories alike attended the performances, rivalling 
 each other in the violence of their applause. 
 
 Addison was the great literary man among the Whigs 
 and the centre of a group of minor writers belonging to that 
 party. As a young man he was a satellite of Dryden at Will's 
 coffee-house, but later he set up his headquarters at Button's, 
 where, to quote the contemptuous line of Pope, he "gave 
 his little senate laws." His worldly success, and especially 
 his marriage to a noblewoman, the widow of the Earl of 
 Warwick, raised him above the status of a literary man, and 
 perhaps for that reason he drew upon himself the enmity of 
 his rivals. He died in 1719. 
 
 No character in English letters is to-day better known 
 or more generally admired than Addison. This power of 
 attracting admiration is largely due to a certain classic qual- 
 ity which showed itself in his literary ideals, in his pure, 
 regular style, in the just appreciation of his criticism, and in 
 his singularly correct sense of conduct. His taste was nearly 
 faultless, and taste did for him what it should do for anyone, 
 it saved him from blunders and follies. In his life as in his 
 writing, what he did was well done. Every stroke that went 
 to the presentation of his character in bodily form seems to 
 have been made with conscious care and conscious pride. 
 The last touch of all, as he lay on his death-bed, and turning 
 to his step-son bade him "See in what peace a Christian can 
 die," expresses the mood in which his whole life was lived. 
 
 " The Spectator." The papers which Addison contributed 
 to The Spectator, are for the most part essays in the art of 
 living. They illustrate the practical nature of his own culture, 
 his easy mastery of life. To the world of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, with its crudeness, its coarseness, its grotesqueness, as 
 revealed in the pictures of Hogarth, Addison came as a 
 missionary, to enforce ideas of civilization, and in particular
 
 Joseph Addison 185 
 
 to overcome the anti-social tendencies of both Puritan and 
 Cavalier, preserving the zeal for conduct of the former with- 
 out his gloom and intolerance, and the lightness and gaiety 
 of the latter without his license. Thus we find many of 
 Addison's papers directed against the coarser vices of the 
 lime, against gambling, drinking, swearing, indecency of 
 conversation, cruelty, practical joking, duelling. Others 
 attack the triviality of life, special follies and foibles of dress, 
 of manners, or of thought ; others, the lack of order and com- 
 fort in the life of the community. Addison cared also for 
 the literary cultivation of his readers, as is shown by such 
 papers as the famous series of criticisms on Milton. Finally, 
 he made a novel contribution to literature in a series of 
 sketches of character and contemporary types of himself 
 as the Spectator, of Sir Andrew Freeport the merchant, of 
 Sir Roger de Coverley the country gentleman, of Will Honey- 
 comb the man of fashion. These figures are not only types 
 of the public to which The Spectator appealed; more than 
 this, they define themselves as persons, fitting members of the 
 great company of characters who live in English fiction from 
 Chaucer to George Eliot. One of them at least, Sir Roger 
 de Coverley, to whose presentation both Addison and Steele 
 contributed, is drawn with genuine affection, as an embodi- 
 ment of healthy, kindly, natural virtue, touched with just 
 enough humor to make the picture real and wholly winning. 
 
 Addison's Style. In his treatment of these various subjects 
 Addison displays the graces of style which are the expression 
 of his character. His sense of humor always gives him deft- 
 ness and lightness. Even such a serious subject as the 
 division of men on political grounds, he treats by a playful 
 comparison with the fashion of ladies in wearing black 
 patches of different shapes on their faces. This easy tone 
 comes from Addison's moderation and reasonableness, and 
 from his genuine good-nature. Satirist though he is, he is 
 never misanthropic. 
 
 Addison's style has always been a model of the more 
 regular virtues, clearness, facility, grace Benjamin Frank- 
 lin was only one among the many who have learned to 
 write by imitating it. The praise of Addison as the school-
 
 186 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 master of English prose was pronounced by Dr. Johnson 
 whn he wrote, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, 
 familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, 
 must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." 
 
 Richard Steele. Despite the close connection between 
 Addison and Steele, in friendship, political interests, and 
 literary work, the- two men were very different. Addison's 
 father was a clergyman, and Addison himself intended (at 
 one time) to take orders. "He looked," as a contemporary 
 said with some scorn, "like a parson in a tie-wig." Steele, 
 on the contrary, was for some years a soldier, and never lost 
 the bearing of his profession. He was Captain Steele and 
 wore a sword to the end of his days. 
 
 Steele was born in Dublin, in the year of Addison's birth, 
 1672. He was sent to Charterhouse School, and then to 
 Oxford, which he left without a degree, to become a soldier. 
 He gave up the army for literature, failed as a dramatist, 
 and became a journalist in the interest of the Whigs. In 
 1709 he began The Taller and his literary partnership with 
 Addison, which was continued in The Spectator and The 
 Guardian. Steele's services to the Whigs brought him 
 various offices. He was more than once Member of Parlia- 
 ment, was appointed director of Drury Lane Theatre, and 
 became Sir Richard Steele. But in the end his ventures, 
 both in business and in politics, all turned out badly. He 
 retired to Wales, where he died in 1729. 
 
 Altogether Steele's life was a thing of fragments. His 
 character, too, showed certain flaws and lapses, faults of a 
 generous, whole-hearted nature; and to these his writings 
 in a measure served to call attention. While a soldier he 
 wrote The Christian Hero, a manual of personal and .do- 
 mestic virtues; his plays were entirely moral; in The Taller 
 he appeared as a preacher. The discrepancy between his 
 personal life and the tenor of much of his writing, laid Steele 
 open to gibe and sneer ; but there is an honest human quality 
 about his inconsistencies that gives him, after all, a charm 
 which his greatest contemporaries lack. This charm is re- 
 flected in his papers in The Taller, some of which, like the 
 iSist, which describes his feelings on the death of his father,
 
 Alexander Pope 187 
 
 have an intimate and personal quality that suggests Charles 
 Lamb or Thackeray. 
 
 i 
 
 IV. ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) 
 
 Pope's Early Life. Alexander Pope, the greatest poet 
 and the most brilliant man of letters of the early part 
 of the century, was born in London, in 1688, of Catholic 
 parents. By reason of the sweeping laws against the en- 
 trance of Catholics into public service, he was shut out 
 from the ordinary career of Englishmen, in Parliament, the 
 church, or the army ; and he was, moreover, from his youth 
 feeble, almost a cripple. In consequence he is, among his con- 
 temporaries, almost the sole example of an author who was 
 entirely a man of letters ; the events of his life were altogether 
 literary events. Like Spenser and like Milton he early con- 
 secrated himself to poetry. His Pastorals, written when 
 he was seventeen, were published in 1709. The Essay on 
 Criticism two years later, attracted Addison's notice; and 
 Pope's other early poems, Windsor Forest, Eloisa to Abe- 
 lard, and above all The Rape of the Lock, of which the 
 first draft appeared in 1712, confirmed him in his position 
 at the head of English poetry. About 1713 he undertook 
 the greatest venture of his life, the translation of Homer, which 
 he did not complete until 1726. From the publishers and 
 from his sales to subscribers, Pope obtained more than five 
 thousand pounds for the Iliad, and two-thirds of this sum 
 for the Odyssey (on which most of the work was done by 
 others) much the greatest pecuniary reward which up to 
 that time had been received by any English author. It 
 made Pope independent of patronage and politics; and it 
 marks the opening of a time in which literature looked to the 
 public alone for support. 
 
 Pope at Twickenham. The profits of his translation en- 
 abled Pope to buy a small estate at Twickenham, on the 
 Thames near London. This he fitted up in the mock 
 classical style which the age affected in other things be- 
 sides literature. He subdued nature to taste by landscape 
 gardening, until his few acres must have seemed a minia-
 
 188 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 ture Versailles. He scattered statuary and temples about 
 in artistic contrast to the woods and lawns; and as his 
 crowning achievement he built a famous grotto ornamented 
 with mirrors. Against this artificial background we catch 
 the most characteristic glimpses of Pope, "a lively little 
 creature," as he describes himself, "with long legs and 
 arms; a spider is no ill emblem of him." At Twicken- 
 ham Pope lived the remainder of his life, secluded from 
 the world which he affected to despise, but very constantly 
 occupied with his own relations to it. Here he entertained 
 his friends, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and others, with whom 
 he formed a literary partnership known as the Scriblerus 
 Club. It was in connection with this partnership that he 
 published in 1728 a great onslaught on their literary foes, 
 entitled The Dunciad. At Twickenham also Pope saw 
 much of Bolingbroke, and under his influence wrote the 
 Essay on Man, published in 1732 and 1734. The remain- 
 der of his work consists of the Moral Epistle (satires in imi- 
 tation of Horace), the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which is 
 Pope's chief defence of himself, and the Epilogue to the 
 Satires. These were published before 1737, after which date 
 Pope wrote little. He died in 1744. 
 
 Pope's Character as a Poet. Pope's claim to the first place 
 among the poets of his time cannot be gainsaid, but his true 
 place among the poets of all time is a matter of dispute. At 
 the outset it must be recognized that certain sources of power 
 were denied him, partly in consequence of the nature of the 
 period in which he lived, partly by reason of the deficiencies 
 of his own temperament. The age was one in which sym- 
 pathy for nature and for humanity was limited, and in this 
 matter Pope shared the blindness of his age. Moreover, 
 Pope was from birth sickly and feeble; strong passion, great 
 emotion, richness of life, were beyond his experience. Ac- 
 cordingly, we miss in his poetry greatness of feeling for 
 the natural world and for the world of man, as well as 
 greatness of human personality. That such a man should 
 become a poet at all is as wonderful as that a deaf man should 
 be a composer, or a blind man a sculptor. That he should 
 be the typical poet of his age shows how limited was the con-
 
 ALEXANDER POPE 
 From a painting by A. Pond
 
 190 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 ception which then prevailed of the nature and function of 
 poetry. 
 
 But though certain qualities which we expect to find in 
 poetry are necessarily absent in Pope, these were replaced, 
 at least for his contemporaries, by others. First of all, he 
 owed his success to his marvellous skill in managing the 
 heroic couplet. He declared that as a child he "lisped in 
 numbers, for the numbers came." But he was not satisfied 
 with mere facility. One of his earliest friends and critics, 
 William Walsh, pointed out to him that "though we had 
 had several great poets we never had any one great poet 
 that was correct." Correctness, accordingly, Pope made his 
 aim from the first. Nor did he sacrifice to mere exactness 
 of metre and rhyme the other virtues of couplet verse, com- 
 pression, epigrammatic force, and brilliancy of phrase. In 
 his Essay on Criticism, he sets forth the artistic principles 
 of the time with special reference to poetry. In this dis- 
 cussion he bids the poet follow Nature, but Nature method- 
 ized by rules, for "to copy Nature is to copy them." The 
 substance of the poem is made up of commonplaces, for 
 Pope and his readers believed that there was nothing new 
 under the sun ; but these commonplaces are given the most 
 apt, the most chiselled form, a form in which they are fitted 
 to survive as part of the common wisdom of the race. 
 
 Pope's Homer. Pope's comprehension of the artistic de- 
 mands of his time, and his rhetorical skill, fitted him admir- 
 ably for his work of translating Homer. His own knowl- 
 edge of Homer was, it is true, second-hand and inaccurate ; 
 but the impossibility of making a literally faithful rendering 
 left him the freer to turn the material of the Greek poems 
 into the form in which it was most fitted to become a part 
 of the culture of his own time. Not only does Homer, in 
 Pope's hands, become an eighteenth century poet, by virtue 
 of his submission to the literary fashions of the day the 
 heroic couplet, and conventional poetic diction but even 
 the characters, the manners, the ethical ideals of primitive 
 Greece are run over into eighteenth century moulds. Just as 
 to the cloudy mediaeval imagination the heroes of Troy be- 
 came knights, so in Pope's conception they are statesmen
 
 Alexander Pope 191 
 
 and party leaders, treating each other with parliamentary 
 courtesy, and talking of virtue, patriotism, and fame, as 
 glibly and eloquently as Bolingbroke himself. 
 
 " The Rape of the Lock." The works of Pope thus far 
 mentioned are chiefly remarkable for their literary qualities. 
 But even more important is the group of poems in which, 
 with no loss of artistic finish, he dealt directly with the life 
 of his time. Of these The Rape of the Lock stands first. 
 The poem was suggested by a trivial occurrence, the rude 
 behavior of Lord Petre in cutting a lock from the head of 
 Miss Fermor. Only the excessive interest of the age in 
 social matters, combined with the sympathetic genius of a 
 poet, could have made such gossip as this outlast the cen- 
 turies. Pope wrote first a rapid account of the card-party 
 at Hampton at which the theft took place. Later he ex- 
 panded the poem by introducing the sylphs, who guard the 
 lady's bed, make her toilet, and attend her in public ad- 
 mirable suggestions of the artifice which directed each act, 
 however trivial, of a belle of Queen Anne's day. The Rape 
 of the Lock is not only a satire on society ; it is a witty par- 
 ody of the heroic style in poetry. Even the verse form is 
 treated humorously, especially through its tendency toward 
 anti-climax, as in the lines, 
 
 " Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, 
 Dost sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea." 
 
 Pope's Satires. In The Rape of the Lock the satire is gen- 
 eral, and, on the whole, good-natured. Pope's later poems, 
 however, are intensely personal, and grew out of the circum- 
 stances of his life. As has been said already, his character 
 was not a great one. We listen in vain in his poetry for the 
 deeper notes of individual human experience. But his lack 
 of absorption in his inner life made him morbidly sensitive in 
 his external contact with the world. No man ever had more 
 elaborate relations with people than Pope, or got more out 
 of his friends, or changed more often from friendship to 
 enmity, or pursued his enemies with more unwearied spite. 
 The Moral Epistles and Imitations of Horace are crowded with 
 satiric allusions to contemporaries. The Epistle to Dr. A rbuth-
 
 192 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 not contains the savage sketch of Addison under the name Atti- 
 cus. Countless personal grudges were paid off by the several 
 editions of The Dunciad, an elaborate satire in which, after the 
 fashion of Dryden in MacFlecknoe, the dullards, pedants, and 
 bad poets are presented in ridiculous surroundings and atti- 
 tudes. All this morbid following of "miserable aims that end 
 with self" seems remote enough from the dignity of a great 
 poet. Yet it must not be forgotten that the age itself was 
 largely preoccupied with small things. Pope's satiric genius 
 came to him as of right, at a time when the eyes of men were 
 turned away from the wonders of nature and of the human 
 heart, and were fixed on themselves and their worldly con- 
 cerns. 
 
 " The Essay on Man." One of Pope's last friendships, 
 that with Bolingbroke, proved the inspiration of the best re- 
 membered of his poems, the Essay on Man. Bolingbroke was 
 the representative of eighteenth-century scepticism in its 
 effort to substitute a religion of reason for one of revelation. 
 Pope's poem is in reality an application of common-sense to 
 the problems of the universe and to the life of man; and 
 where common-sense refuses to carry us, " beyond the flaming 
 ramparts of the world," there Pope closes his inquiry. 
 
 " Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
 The proper study of mankind is man." 
 
 The first epistle is concerned with man's place in nature; 
 the second with individual ethics; the third with the origin 
 of society and politics ; the fourth with the question of man's 
 happiness. In all four appear the satisfaction of the century 
 with things as they are, its dislike of those speculative differ- 
 ences which lead to fanaticism, its trust in downright utility. 
 
 "For forms of government let fools contest; 
 Whate'er is best administered is best: 
 For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right ' 
 
 In short, the Essay on Man is a marvellous collection of 
 happily phrased couplets, pointing neatly and exactly the 
 beliefs of the age of which Pope was so eminently the voice.
 
 Dr. Johnson 193 
 
 V. DR. JOHNSON, AND HIS CIRCLE 
 
 Social Position of Writers in the Later Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury. The social conditions under which literature was ordi- 
 narily practised in the second period of the century, were very 
 different from those of Queen Anne's day. By this time, owing 
 to the decisive victory of the Whigs, literature had lost in large 
 part its value as a political weapon in party strife, and authors 
 were obliged to rely entirely upon the public. And the reading 
 public was of slow growth. The writers who depended upon 
 it were compelled to live in a squalid Bohemia not unlike 
 that inhabited by the popular group of authors in the age of 
 Elizabeth and to put forth a mass of bad poetry, criticism, 
 and journalism merely for bread. The name of the street 
 where many of them lived, Grub Street, became a synonym 
 for hack writing and poverty. The aristocratic traditions of 
 the profession were supported by men of the highest reputa- 
 tion, like Pope, who could approach the public directly through 
 the subscription list ; but for the ordinary writer there was no 
 resource except servitude to the literary broker or bookseller. 
 Under these hard conditions Samuel Johnson and his friends 
 slowly made their way to distinction ; from that Grub Street 
 which Pope and Swift had scornfully lampooned, came their 
 successors in power and reputation. 
 
 Johnson's Life. Samuel Johnson was born in 1709, the son 
 of a Lichfield bookseller. He was at Oxford for a time, but 
 his father's failure in business obliged him to leave the Uni- 
 versity. After vainly trying to win his bread as a teacher, he 
 tramped to London. Here he lived in a state of wretched- 
 ness which is reflected in his Life of Savage, a poet who 
 was his companion in Grub Street misery. Often the friends 
 walked the streets from dusk to dawn for want of mere 
 shelter. One resource was, indeed, open to them. Fol- 
 lowing the success of The Taller and The Spectator, had come 
 the periodical magazines of miscellaneous literature, for one 
 of which Johnson wrote reports of the debates in Parlia- 
 ment. His first poem, London (1738), gave him some repu- 
 tation, which was increased by The Vanity of Human Wishes
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London. 
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 From a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds
 
 Dr. Johnson 195 
 
 (1749). He also wrote essays after the Spectator model, 
 "called The Rambler (1750-1752). But his pre-eminent po- 
 sition came to him after the publication of his Dictionary of 
 the English Language in 1755. When he had announced this 
 work seven years before, Johnson had sought the support 
 and patronage of Lord Chesterfield, but the latter had been 
 contemptuously cold toward the project. When the work 
 was about to appear, however, the nobleman let it be known 
 that he would accept and reward the dedication of the work 
 to himself ; but it was now Johnson's turn, and in his famous 
 letter to Chesterfield he wrote for English literature its final 
 declaration of independence from the institution of patronage. 
 
 The Dictionary made Johnson's fame and state secure. 
 In 1764 he formed with Burke, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and 
 others, the famous Literary Club, as chief member of which 
 he held the unquestioned ' headship of contemporary letters 
 in England. Still, Johnson was poor; and to the end of 
 his life he was forced to labor to support himself and the 
 various persons who fell dependent upon him. When his 
 mother died, in 1759, he wrote his oriental apologue, Rasse- 
 las, in a week, to pay for the funeral. He edited Shakespeare, 
 and undertook the preparation of a series of Lives of the 
 English Poets, which was completed in 1781. He died in 
 1784. 
 
 Johnson's Style. Johnson continued the literary traditions 
 of the Age of Queen Anne. In his poetry he followed Pope's 
 use of the heroic couplet. His essays are modelled upon 
 the form set by The Spectator, though Johnson's papers are 
 longer, heavier, and duller than Addison's. The Rambler 
 essays show, perhaps more clearly than any other of John- 
 son's writings, those peculiarities which have made his style 
 a by- word for heaviness. The diction involves a large pro- 
 portion of Latin words, due, as has been humorously sug- 
 gested, to the fact that Johnson was then at work on his 
 lexicon, and used his Rambler as a track where he could 
 exercise the words that had grown stiff from long disuse. 
 But this elaborate manner is not always out of place It 
 occasionally gives to Johnson's writing a sombre eloquence, 
 as in the opening passage of Rasselas. Moreover, he could
 
 196 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 be simple and colloquial when he chose; and his later works, 
 possibly because they were written more hurriedly, are much 
 more terse and rapid. 
 
 Bos well's " Life of Johnson." Johnson had in him a force 
 of character far greater than he succeeded in bringing to 
 bear on any of his literary undertakings. This force of 
 character strongly impressed his contemporaries through 
 his powers of conversation, and has been transmitted to 
 later times by the extraordinary zeal and ability of the 
 greatest of all biographers, James Boswell, whose Life of 
 Johnson, published in 1791, is one of the classics of the 
 century. From his first meeting with Johnson, in 1763, Bos- 
 well followed the great man's doings and sayings with un- 
 wearied attention. In his effort to draw Johnson out and to 
 make him expressive, he was deterred by no rebuffs, and 
 he was not ashamed to offer himself as the butt of his 
 master's wit. For twenty years he worked with his eye con- 
 stantly upon his subject, and was then prepared to write the 
 biography which still keeps Johnson in his place as the most 
 striking figure of his epoch. Of no man in the past is our 
 perception so extraordinarily keen and first-hand. His bulky, 
 awkward appearance, his brusque, overbearing manner, his 
 portentous voice, his uncouth gestures and attitudes, his 
 habits of whistling or "chuckling like a hen" in the intervals 
 of speaking, and of "blowing out his breath like a whale" 
 when he was "exhausted by violence and vociferation" 
 all these have come down to us, together with the record of 
 a great mass of his conversation. It is in this last that John- 
 son's power and BosweU's skill are most strikingly mani- 
 fested. Johnson wrote much, but nearly always under the 
 spur of necessity ; he talked spontaneously. His reputation, 
 indeed, rests largely upon such sayings as "Being in a ship is 
 like being in gaol with the chance of drowning," or "A 
 woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. 
 It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at 
 all." In such scraps of homely comment the practical sense 
 of the age expressed itself as vividly and rememberably as 
 in Pope's couplets. 
 
 To BosweU's "Life," then, Johnson owes his reputation
 
 Oliver Goldsmith 197 
 
 as an original character, and as a sayer of good things. 
 But there is another Johnson whom Boswell knew without 
 comprehending the stricken, hopeless, much-enduring, 
 brave, pious soul, who exemplifies so much of what is wholly 
 admirable in human nature. Johnson suffered grievously in 
 life. What with poverty, ill-health, and the necessity of toil, 
 which to his indolent spirit meant torture, it is no wonder 
 that he came to believe with Rasselas that the world is almost 
 barren of joy. Yet he faced life always with energy and 
 courage. In his strenuousness, his morality, his refusal to 
 yield ground anywhere to the evils without or the foes within, 
 in his resolve to draw inspiration from his own shortcomings, 
 in all this Johnson is a great man, and for this he deserves 
 his fame. 
 
 Goldsmith; His Life. Johnson's dictatorship of English 
 letters was partly the result of his conversational supremacy in 
 the Literary Club, which included nearly all the famous writers 
 of the time. Next to Johnson himself its most notable figure 
 was Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith was born in 1728 in 
 Ireland, where his father was a clergyman. He was a dull 
 boy at school, and had an undistinguished career at the 
 University of Dublin. After a succession of attempts to 
 get a start in life he went to Edinburgh to study medicine, 
 and afterward to Leyden. Thence he worked or begged his 
 way over a large part of Europe, returning to London in 1756. 
 He wavered for a x time between the practice of medicine and 
 school teaching, but finally took to literature as it was prac- 
 tised in Grub Street, and became a hack writer for various 
 magazines. His papers called The Citizen of the World 
 (1760-1761), consisted of observations upon English life 
 written from the point of view of a Chinaman. He lived in 
 extreme poverty. Johnson found him one day in lodgings, 
 the* prisoner of an unpaid landlady, with the manuscript of 
 The Vicar of Wakefield by him. Johnson sold the book, 
 which appeared some fifteen months later, after Goldsmith 
 had published his first successful poem, The Traveller 
 (1764). His second venture into poetry, The Deserted Vil- 
 lage, appeared in 1770. Meanwhile Goldsmith yielded to his 
 necessities, and at the bidding of his tyrants, the booksellers,
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London. < 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 After a painting by a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds
 
 Oliver Goldsmith 199 
 
 produced a number of histories and other works of informa- 
 tion. He was well paid for these comparatively worthless 
 labors ; and two of his plays were fairly successful, The Good- 
 Natured Man (1768), and She Stoops to Conquer (1773). 
 No success, however, could keep pace with his improvidence. 
 He died in 1774 of a fever which was aggravated by anxiety 
 over his debts. 
 
 Goldsmith and Johnson. Goldsmith is almost as well 
 known to us as Johnson, and largely through the same 
 agency, the industry of Bos well. The two figures are in 
 the strongest possible contrast Johnson, large, strong of 
 feature, with a certain dignity of bearing in spite of his 
 oddities; Goldsmith, under-sized, ill-formed, frightfully dis- 
 figured by smallpox, and with a more than childlike simplicity. 
 Again, Johnson's ponderous thought, sturdy virtue, and strong 
 common-sense were at the farthest remove from Goldsmith's 
 mental vivacity, moral laxness, and practical folly. When 
 they joined in combat of words at the club, where Goldsmith 
 was the only member who dared persistently to provoke the 
 wrath of the dictator, Johnson sometimes bore down his 
 opponent by sheer weight; but often Goldsmith sent his stone 
 to its mark and made good his retreat, as when he doubted 
 Johnson's ability to write a fable because he would inevitably 
 make the little fishes talk like whales. 
 
 Goldsmith's Humanity. Goldsmith's lack of practical abil- 
 ity brought him both scorn and pity in his own day, but in 
 our eyes his incapacity is in rather refreshing contrast to the 
 hard common-sense of that age. His difficulties came partly 
 from generosity, partly from his blind trust in the world. For 
 Goldsmith threw himself upon life with the naive impru- 
 dence of a child. Whether traversing Europe as a penniless 
 student, or selling his masterpieces, Goldsmith took no 
 thought for the morrow. And with this confidence in his 
 fellows went a great love for them, a love apparent in all the 
 writings into which he put his real self. His papers in The 
 Citizen of the World, though, like Addison's, often directed 
 against the faults and absurdities of men, have a tenderness 
 which goes beyond Addison's mildness, a note of kinship 
 with humanity that is very different from the Spectator's
 
 200 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 aloofness. Goldsmith's poems are written in the heroic 
 couplet, but in spirit they are far removed from Pope's. The 
 Traveller is a survey of the countries of Western Europe, 
 those which Goldsmith had visited in his journeyings; but 
 instead of the complacent optimism of the Essay on Man, 
 we find pictured both the evil and the good in man's situa- 
 tion. The Deserted Village is also a " prospect of society," 
 more powerful because more detailed. The village of Auburn 
 is described with its happy, humble life, centering around 
 the two characters of the village parson and the schoolmaster, 
 both drawn with tenderness and no little humor. But the 
 village is depopulated by order of its landlord, and Gold- 
 smith follows the exiles, compelled to wander over seas to 
 remote America, "where wild Altama murmurs to their 
 woe." In this protest on behalf of the individual against 
 the institution which crushes him Goldsmith was a prophet 
 of the approaching revolution. 
 
 Goldsmith's Plays. Goldsmith's sympathy, however, did 
 not lead him into extra vagartt appeals to emotion. His plays 
 were an effort to substitute for the prevailing "comedy of 
 tears " a healthy comedy of laughter. Goldsmith, indeed, took 
 his own misfortunes with so much spirit and humor that he 
 could not be much concerned about imaginary griefs, and his 
 trust in the goodness of the world was so perfect that with him 
 sorrow was always turned into joy. This optimism gives its 
 color alike to his novel and to his plays. She Stoops to Conquer, 
 the best known of the latter, is a charming idyl, in which the 
 rough edges of the world are ground smooth, in which faults 
 turn out to be virtues, and mistakes prove blessings. At 
 times the stage-land copies the actual world with fidelity, as 
 in the riotous scene at the "Three Pigeons," with which 
 the play opens. But the magic of comedy is over all, a 
 magic much subdued, indeed, from the brilliant romance of 
 Shakespeare's day, but still potent.* 
 
 Sheridan. Goldsmith's plays are a reflection of the ideal- 
 ism which was beginning to. manifest itself in the realistic 
 
 * Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield will be discussed in the next chapter, 
 together with other eighteenth-century fiction.
 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan 201 
 
 age. Opposed to him is Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751- 
 1816), whose dramas are written in a mood of satirical obser- 
 vation of the surface of life. Sheridan was born at Dublin, 
 of English-Irish stock. After a romantic runaway marriage 
 he settled in London; and when only twenty-three he pro- 
 duced The Rivals (1775). In 1777, after his assumption of 
 the directorship of Drury Lane Theatre, he put on his best 
 play, The School for Scandal, and in 1779 The Critic. 
 
 The School for Scandal sets forth the eighteenth-century 
 world of fashion, which, in its frivolous artificiality, lent itself 
 readily to the purposes of the comedian. In this corrupt 
 society Lady Teazle has, for form's sake, provided herself 
 with an admirer, Joseph Surface. Meanwhile Joseph, a cold 
 hearted hypocrite, has plans of his own, one of which is to 
 marry Sir Peter Teazle's niece Maria, and another to sup- 
 plant his own brother Charles, a good-natured spendthrift, 
 in their uncle's affection. The uncle, Sir Oliver, returns 
 from India, introduces himself, as a money-lender, to Charles, 
 whom he finds ready to sell even his family portraits, except 
 that of Sir Oliver himself. This modest bit of loyalty serves 
 to reinstate the prodigal in his uncle's good opinion; while 
 Joseph, discovered on all sides, fades out of the play in 
 disgrace. At first sight, The School for Scandal, with its 
 opening scenes in which gossip runs wild, seems to revive 
 the world of the Restoration drama, but there is a difference. 
 Light, trifling, frivolous as is Sheridan's society, it is not 
 fundamentally immoral. His people play with fire, but they 
 are not burned. So much had the moral and social force 
 of the century accomplished, in the years since Jeremy Col- 
 lier's attack on the stage. 
 
 VI. EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797) 
 
 Burke's Early Life. Burke was born in Ireland, in 1729. 
 He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and thence, after 
 taking his degree in 1 748, went up to London to study law, 
 but soon turned aside into literature. His first important 
 work was an Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the 
 Sublime and the Beautiful (1756). In 1765 he became sec-
 
 202 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 retary to the Whig prime-minister, the Marquis of Rock- 
 ingham, and Member of Parliament. Although he never 
 held high office, he was for years the brain of the Whig Party 
 in its effort to deal with the new problems arising from the 
 growth of England as a colonial power both in America and 
 in India. The view of his contemporaries, that he was a 
 man wasting the greatest powers on passing affairs of the 
 day, is expressed in Goldsmith's epigram: 
 
 " Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind." 
 
 Yet so profound was Burke's thought, and so noble its presen- 
 tation, that his writings are of value to-day, irrespective of 
 the occasions which called them forth. 
 
 Burke's Views on America and India. It is Burke's pecu- 
 liar "distinction that he saw the dangers gathering over 
 England from all quarters, and strove to avert them. He 
 pointed out the one way of escape in the American situation. 
 His first speech in Parliament was in favor of the repeal 
 of the stamp tax. His speech on American taxation was 
 delivered in 1774; his great speech on Conciliation with 
 America in 1775. When England emerged from the war 
 against the coalition of European powers, with the loss indeed 
 of America, but with victory in other quarters, Burke in- 
 stantly began to press his inquiry into the circumstances of 
 that triumph. The chief success of England had been in 
 India, and the man who had won it was Warren Hastings. 
 Against him Burke levelled his attack. Instead of thanking 
 God that things had turned out so well, he asked why they 
 had turned out well, on what principles the Indian Empire 
 had been conquered and administered, and whether those 
 principles were founded upon justice and humanity. In 
 1785 he delivered his arraignment of English methods in 
 India, in his speech on The Nabob of Arcofs Debts; and 
 the following year he moved the impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings for his cruel and mercenary treatment of his In- 
 dian subjects. Two years later he opened the case before 
 the House of Lords, and he continued to manage it until 
 the acquittal of Hastings in 1795.
 
 Edmund Burke 203 
 
 Burke's Views on France. In the last year of his life 
 Burke led the opposition to the French Revolution. This 
 attitude involved a separation from his party, but Burke 
 took the step without flinching. His Reflections on the Revo- 
 lution in France, published in 1 790, and the reviews of 
 French affairs which followed, did much to check the rising 
 sympathy with the movement, in England and on the con- 
 tinent. In this opposition Burke took a larger point of view 
 than that of mere prejudice. He believed that England had 
 a world mission in stemming the tide of the revolution and 
 in marshalling the forces of order in Europe. Right or 
 wrong, the struggle of England against France between 1794 
 and 1815 is a splendid act in the drama of nations. It is 
 scarcely too much to say that the leading role which Eng- 
 land played in those years was cast for her by Burke.. He 
 wrote the lines which the cannon declaimed at Trafalgar and 
 Waterloo. 
 
 Burke has been criticised for his attack on the French 
 Revolution, as being behind his age. Nevertheless his atti- 
 tude was the result of his principles, and rested on the same 
 philosophy that guided his action in other matters. For, 
 Burke was in character essentially practical. His speeches 
 on the American crisis testify to his power of seeing a situa- 
 tion as it really was, and tossing aside all abstract considera- 
 tions. "I think it may be necessary," he told Parliament, 
 "to consider distinctly the true nature of the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances of the object which we have before us. Because 
 after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern 
 America according to that nature, and to those circumstances; 
 and not according to our own imaginations ; nor according 
 to abstract ideas of right; by no means according to mere 
 general theories of government." This is the best expression 
 of what may be called Burke's genius for facts, a quality 
 which he shared with other great men of his century, notably 
 with Swift. It was this sense of fact which impelled his 
 opposition to the abstract political theories of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 Burke's Connection with Romanticism. The great differ- 
 ence between Swift and Burke is to be found in the imagi-
 
 204 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 native power of Burke's sympathy a sympathy which pen- 
 etrated to the uttermost parts of the earth, and made the 
 wrongs of the American colonist, the sufferings of the Hindu 
 peasant, and the sorrows of the queen of France as vividly 
 real to his hearers as the sights of London. In short, Burke, 
 like Scott and Wordsworth, was a romanticist in feeling, 
 though a conservative in political thought* 
 
 It is the feeling behind his thought that gives to Burke's 
 style its far-reaching eloquence. The subjects with which 
 he dealt are not those which we think of as lending themselves 
 to imaginative treatment. Burke got up his facts carefully, 
 and built the arguments of his speeches and papers out of 
 solid material with the most careful regard to logical structure. 
 But playing over this seemingly refractory substance of fact, 
 constantly bringing it to white heat, is the flame of his passion, 
 now a burning love of justice, now a consuming fire of hatred 
 of all the hypocrisies, oppressions, cruelties, treacheries under 
 the sun. Swift had as fierce an indignation against the un- 
 godly; but while Swift's world was the petty world of the 
 eighteenth century, Burke's world, geographically and in- 
 tellectually, was the great one of modern thought. And 
 while Swift masked his feeling behind a style of severe plain- 
 ness and restraint, Burke gave his fervent spirit utterance in 
 a rhetoric which included in its range visions as gorgeous 
 as the East, the sound of words as of many waters, effects 
 of pathos and invective that moved the hearts of his hearers 
 to pity, terror, and wrath. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. The writers of Queen Anne's day, Swift, 
 Pope, Addison, Steele, represent the classical impulse; they illustrate 
 the literary treatment of social topics with a view to artistic perfec- 
 tion according to definite standards and in approved forms, standards 
 and forms which they believed to have behind them the authority of the 
 classical writers. 
 
 Explain the connection between literature and politics in this period. 
 Was it a benefit to literature ? What elements in the life of the time 
 stirred the reforming zeal of writers? What was their method of 
 dealing with abuses ? What example of law and order did literary 
 men themselves set? How does the literary style compare with
 
 Review Outline 205 
 
 fashions of the time in dress and etiquette ? Why is the age of Queen 
 Anne called the Augustan age ? Why is the age memorable in English 
 history ? Explain the close association of writers of this period. 
 
 How was Swift's early life unhappy ? Can you trace any connection 
 between his experience in these years and his later attitude toward 
 the world ? Name his early satires. Outline Swift's connection with 
 the political parties of the day. What was his reward ? Name his 
 chief works after his retirement to Ireland. Who was " Stella " ? 
 To what personal peculiarity was Swift's writing due ? With what 
 personal trait is his satire to be connected ? Tell the story of Swift 
 and Partridge. How do the Partridge tracts illustrate Swift's method ? 
 Outline " Gulliver's Travels." Point out the opportunities which it 
 affords for satire. Compare Swift's Utopia with Sir Thomas More's. 
 Was Swift a genuine reformer ? What purpose do his writings serve ? 
 
 Explain the growth of periodical literature in the eighteenth century. 
 What was the peculiar field of " The Tatler " ? Why was it replaced by 
 " the Spectator " ? Outline the life of Addison, noting his connection 
 with political affairs. What is the source of his attractiveness ? Can 
 you suggest in what ways his character appears in his writing ? What 
 was Addison's main object in " the Spectator " ? With what subjects 
 did he deal ? What characters did he create ? Contrast his satire 
 with Swift's. Why is Addison's style a good one to imitate ? (Note 
 the passage in Franklin's Autobiography in which he describes his 
 use of " the Spectator.") Contrast Addison and Steele in character. 
 
 Why is there no sharp division between prose and poetry of the 
 eighteenth century ? Discuss the life of Pope. What is the im- 
 portance of Pope's Homer in the social history of authorship ? Describe 
 Pope's life at Twickenham. Mention Pope's later works. Was 
 Pope a great man ? Was he a great poet ? What are his limitations 
 as a poet and what his virtues ? What is the poetic creed of the 
 " Essay on Criticism " ? What was his aim in the translation of 
 Homer ? In what poems did Pope deal with the life of his own day ? 
 What is " The Rape of the Lock." ? Wherein does its satire consist ? 
 What part did personal relations play in Pope's life ? What was the 
 " Dunciad " ? Outline the " Essay on Man. " To whose influence on 
 Pope is the latter ascribed ? What is the value of the poem to-day ? 
 
 In the second half of the eighteenth century, literary men of London 
 gathered about Johnson as a centre; but it must be remembered that 
 there was a growing spirit of revolt from the classical ideals which
 
 206 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 he represented. Against the diminished realm of authorship whicTi 
 Johnson ruled must be set the romanticists, Collins, Gray, Blake, Cow- 
 per, and Burns, to be discussed in Chapter XII. 
 
 How is Johnson's life typical of the social status of authors in the 
 middle of the century? What resource was left to them after the 
 decline of their political influence ? What were Johnson's relations 
 with Chesterfield ? Mention Johnson's chief works. In what ways 
 does Johnson continue the work of the classical school ? To what 
 qualities does Boswell's " Life of Johnson " owe its greatness as biog- 
 raphy ? What personal impression does it give us of Johnson? 
 
 Sketch the life of Goldsmith. What were his personal relations to 
 Johnson ? How does his character differ from Johnson's ? Con- 
 trast the philosophy of the two men. Summarize " The Deserted 
 Village." How do its personal sketches differ from those in Pope's 
 satires ? In what ways -does the poem suggest the rise of romanticism ? 
 Why is Goldsmith called an " idealist " ? In what does Sheridan's 
 realism consist ? How does Sheridan differ from the Restoration 
 dramatists ? 
 
 What part did Burke play in the history of the time ? What did he 
 contribute to literature ? Discuss the three periods of his political 
 activity. In which was Burke successful according to the point of 
 view of the time? To which do his most valuable writings belong? 
 Can you trace any unity in Burke's intellectual attitude during all 
 three periods ? Note the points of contact between Burke's thought 
 and the romantic movement. To what is the greatness of Burke's 
 style due ? Contrast his outlook at the close of the century with that 
 of Swift at the beginning. 
 
 READING GUIDE. The works of the eighteenth century gen- 
 erally read in school are Addison's " Sir Roger de Coverley Papers," 
 and Burke's "Speech on Conciliation with America." In addition, 
 pupils should read " Gulliver's Travels, " or some abridgment of it, 
 and Goldsmith's " Deserted Village." If possible Pope's " Rape of the 
 Lock " should be added. Addison's papers furnish a great amount of de- 
 tail from which pictures of eighteenth-century life both in town and coun- 
 try may be constructed. Additional papers from " The Spectator " may 
 be chosen from Morley's one-volume edition (Routledge). " Gulliver's 
 Travels," should be read, of course, primarily for its interest as a tale.
 
 Reading Guide 207 
 
 In addition, however, the real meaning of the book as the most vigor- 
 ous criticism of life which the century has left us should be perceived. 
 Many of the references to contemporary things (especially in the third 
 book) are to be understood only by careful study, but the scope of the 
 general attack upon human nature is obvious. It may be compared not 
 only with More's " Utopia," but with " Sartor Resartus," the theme of 
 which was indeed partly suggested to Carlyle by Swift's " Tale of a 
 Tub." "Gulliver's Travels" is pubUshed in Henry Morley's Cans- 
 brook Library (Routledge & Co.). An excellent volume of selections 
 from Swift is edited by F. C. Prescott (Holt's English Readings). In 
 contrast with Swift's works, Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" affords 
 evidence of the wider view of humanity and deeper sympathy which were 
 characteristic of the new poetry. It may be compared interestingly 
 with Pope's "Rape of the Lock." Burke's speech also bears witness to 
 the breadth of thought which supplanted the narrow interests of the first 
 half of the century. 
 
 No group of authors is capable of being presented to a class more 
 attractively than those of Queen Anne's day. They are far enough 
 away in point of time to have something of the fascination of antiquity, 
 and yet not so remote as to be altogether removed from our interest 
 or comprehension. The biographies in the English Men of Letters 
 series are generally good, and in the case of Steele Mr. Dobson's volume 
 in English Worthies (Scott) is excellent. The appreciations in Thack- 
 eray's "English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century" are always sug- 
 gestive and picturesque. For fuller accounts of the history of the time 
 Green's "Short History of the English People" may be recommended to 
 the pupil. The teacher will find Lecky's " History of England in the 
 Eighteenth Century " valuable. Of histories of literature in the eight- 
 eenth century T. S. Perry's (Harper) is useful as containing much out- 
 of-the-way information. Edmund Gosse's " From Shakespeare to Pope " 
 is also valuable. Of importance to scholars is A. Beljame's "Le Pub- 
 lic et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre." There are many books 
 which deal with the social life of the age of Queen Anne, among which 
 Sydney's " England and the English in the Eighteenth Century " and 
 Ashton's " Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne " are likely to 
 prove of special use to a class reading Addison's essays. The most 
 important source of social information and personal gossip for the 
 latter part of this century is Boswell's "Life of Johnson." It does for 
 us in its period what Pepys's "Diary" and Addison's essays do in the two
 
 208 The Eighteenth Century 
 
 epochs preceding, that is, puts us directly into contact with the life of 
 the time through the records of a close observer. If pupils cannot be 
 expected to read Boswell for themselves, some selections, at least, should 
 be read aloud in class. Birkbeck Hill's edition (Clarendon Press) is 
 best furnished with notes.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Novel and the Drama. As the drama was the char- 
 acteristic and natural form of literature in the Elizabethan 
 age, so the novel has been the prevailing type in the last two 
 centuries. For this change many reasons may be assigned. 
 In the first place, the novel allows the author greater freedom 
 in handling his story. Instead of relying solely on the words 
 and acts of his characters, as in the drama, the novelist can 
 deal with their thoughts also; and instead of leaving these 
 characters to explain themselves, he can give his own com- 
 ment upon their lives. Thus the novel in some ways lends 
 itself more easily than the drama to the presentation of the 
 complicated problems and characters of modern life. More- 
 over, in the diffusion of English-speaking people over the 
 world, the pubb'c which is interested in literature has become 
 too widely scattered to be dependent in large measure upon 
 the theatre. The magazine, and the circulating library have 
 come to occupy the place which for the Elizabethan was 
 filled by the stage. This latter fact in itself is sufficient, 
 though other reasons may be given, to explain the pre- 
 dominance of the novel in modern literature. 
 
 Early Fiction. For the beginning of the modern novel 
 we must go back to the stories of the Middle Ages. These 
 were in general of two kinds, adapted to two audiences, 
 the nobles and the people. Of the first class were the ro- 
 mances clustering about such heroes as Charlemagne and 
 King Arthur, and dealing with knightly adventure, mystical 
 religious experience, and courtly love. These were told first in 
 verse, later in prose. Being written for an aristocratic class,
 
 210 The Eighteenth-Century Novel 
 
 the romances of chivalry presented a highly idealized view 
 of life, in which strength and virtue were exaggerated. The 
 fiction of the common people was decidedly more in the 
 spirit of actual life, or, as we should say, realistic. For them, 
 the stories of the knightly epics were in part retold, often 
 in a spirit of burlesque. Sometimes the vices and follies of 
 men were represented in short tales; the hypocrisy of the 
 clergy, for example, being a favorite subject. Many tales 
 were brought into Europe from the Orient, and others grew 
 up about popular characters. Such stories as these abounded 
 in Italy, where they were called novelle, from which word 
 comes the term novel. 
 
 Although the novel drew its name from Italy, it first at- 
 tained something like its modern form in Spain. There the 
 spirit of burlesque aroused by the contrast between the ideals 
 of chivalry and the affairs of actual life, led to the production 
 of stories known as picaresque romances. In these the 
 hero is a rascal (picaro = rogue) who wanders from place to 
 place, finding all manner of adventures, amusing and scan- 
 dalous; he is not, like the knight-errant, bent upon finding 
 the Holy Grail, nor upon rescuing injured princesses, but is 
 intent merely upon satisfying his personal wants. The 
 typical Italian novella and the Spanish rogue story resem- 
 bled each other in their realism, in the faithfulness with which 
 they reproduced the motives of actual men and the manners 
 of actual life. They are the source of the realistic novel 
 of to-day, while what we call the romance looks back to the 
 epic of chivalry for its origin. Both Italian and Spanish 
 stories were translated into English in large numbers during 
 the Renaissance. 
 
 In the seventeenth century Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 
 is the best example of fiction written for the Puritan middle 
 class. In the eighteenth century the demand of that class 
 for reading matter which should deal with actual life, in a 
 way productive both of amusement and profit, resulted in 
 the stories of Daniel Defoe.
 
 Daniel Defoe 211 
 
 II. DANIEL DEFOE (1659-1731) 
 
 Defoe's Life. Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1659. 
 His father was a butcher, and by religion a Dissenter. He 
 intended his son for the ministry, but Daniel preferred to go 
 into trade, which he followed for some years with fortunes 
 varying from prosperity to bankruptcy. He became inter- 
 ested in politics, and held various minor offices under Will- 
 iam III. One of his early political writings showed his na- 
 tive talent for fiction. The Tory party believed in punishing 
 persons who did not attend the services of the English Church. 
 Defoe, pretending to write as a Tory, put forth a pamphlet 
 called The Shortest Way with Dissenters, in which he ad- 
 vised treatment so severe that people generally were disgusted 
 with the policy of persecution. Although Defoe concealed 
 his real personality, the trick was discovered; he was ar- 
 rested and sentenced to exposure in the pillory and a long 
 imprisonment. While in prison he edited the Review, one 
 of the earliest English newspapers. He was released to be- 
 come a servant of the government which had imprisoned 
 him, and was employed almost until the close of his life by 
 both parties as a secret agent, perhaps as a spy. 
 
 Defoe continued to write for newspapers, and as an enter- 
 prising journalist he published the lives of various people of 
 interest to the public : of Peter the Great for one ; of Jonathan 
 Wild, a notorious criminal and thief-taker, for another; of 
 Captain Avery, a famous pirate, for a third. His life brought 
 him into contact with all sorts of adventurers ; being gifted 
 with curiosity and a retentive memory, he listened to their 
 stories and afterward wrote them out. When his material 
 failed he drew upon his imagination; but he realized that 
 he was writing for people who demanded fact, who perhaps 
 thought it wrong to read fiction, and accordingly he tried 
 to give every appearance of reality to his narratives. 
 
 " Robinson Crusoe." While working on the border line 
 between biography and fiction, Defoe was attracted by the 
 story of a sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who had been wrecked 
 on an island in the Pacific, and had remained there for many
 
 212 The Eighteenth-Century Novel 
 
 years. This story suggested The Surprising Adventures of 
 Robinson Crusoe, which was published in 1719. The book 
 proved immensely popular. Defoe added a sequel, The 
 Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and many imitations 
 appeared in England and throughout Europe. 
 
 In Robinson Cru oe Defoe shows what a contemporary 
 described as "the little art he is so truly master of, of forging 
 a story and imposing it on the world for truth. " The secret 
 of his success lies in his skill in taking the point of view of 
 his hero. Defoe throws himself completely into the situation 
 of Crusoe, wrecked on the island. He foresees the dangers 
 incident to such a situation, takes measures of precaution 
 against them, indulges the natural hope of escape, and makes 
 the wonderfully human mistake of building a boat too heavy 
 for him to launch. He is absorbed in the trivial events of a 
 solitary existence ; he is filled with satisfaction at his miniature 
 conquest of nature, and with horror at the frightful discovery 
 of the human footprint in the sand. In fact, so utterly did 
 Defoe merge himself in Crusoe that, when his work was 
 finished, he came to see in the struggles of the York mariner 
 an allegory of his own toilsome and dangerous experience 
 of life. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe is one of the great stories of the world, 
 and one of those most typical of the English race. As Bun- 
 yan's Pilgrim represents the spiritual, so does Crusoe the 
 practical element in the English character. Crusoe is indeed 
 a man of piety, but his religious experience lacks warmth. 
 His real significance is as a model of the virtues which make 
 civilization possible, courage, patience, ingenuity, prudence. 
 Bunyan and Defoe were both Puritans, and the difference 
 between them serves to show how far the spiritual tide had 
 ebbed in a generation. Bunyan is concerned with the win- 
 ning of heaven; Defoe, with the problem of staying in the 
 present world and living successfully in it. 
 
 " The Journal of the Plague Year." The success of Rob- 
 inson Crusoe led Defoe to put out a number of minor novels, 
 founded upon the lives of various adventurers. The only 
 one of Defoe's fictions, however, which ranks with Robinson 
 Crusoe is The Journal oj the Plague Year, published in
 
 Samuel Richardson 213 
 
 1722. The Great Plague visited London in 1665, and Defoe 
 as a boy must have heard many of the experiences of sur- 
 vivors. A historian would have endeavored to base his ac- 
 count directly upon these various authorities, but Defoe, as 
 a story-teller, presents all the facts which he has gathered as 
 the experiences of a single imaginary character, a citizen of 
 London who, when the tide of pestilence rose high, shut him- 
 self and his family in his house, having provisioned it as if 
 to stand a siege, and from this point of safety viewed the 
 events of that dreadful time. As in Crusoe, Defoe throws 
 himself entirely into the situation of his character, making us 
 hear with his ears the rumble of the carts, the call " Bring out 
 your dead," the blasphemous railing of the men in the tavern, 
 and the cry of "Death, Death, Death!" from the window 
 in Token House Yard ; making us believe on his author- 
 ity every gruesome anecdote, in which the misery, terror, or 
 madness of the time expressed itself. Indeed, the personality 
 of this character, the plain, careful, God-fearing citizen, 
 comes to be to the reader the ultimate reality in the book. 
 We believe in the actual horrors of the plague because we 
 believe in the truth of this imaginary spectator of them. 
 
 One very important element of the modern novel is lacking 
 in Defoe's stories that is, plot. The first great example of 
 a work of fiction guided throughout its course by a single 
 motive, a story in which all the incidents serve to bring about 
 a certain result, was Pamela, by Samuel Richardson. 
 
 III. SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761) 
 
 "Pamela." Richardson was a London printer, already 
 over fifty years old when an accident discovered to him his 
 power as a writer of fiction. A publishing firm asked him to 
 write a series of letters which should serve as models for 
 people in the lower walks of life. In order to add interest 
 to this "complete letter- writer," Richardson hit upon the 
 plan of making it the correspondence of a young serving-girl 
 who writes to her parents, telling the story of her temptation 
 by her master, and of her resistance. In the end the evil- 
 hearted master reforms and marries Pamela, thus justifying
 
 214 The Eighteenth-Century Novel 
 
 the sub-title, "Virtue Rewarded." The book appeared in 
 1740. Its popularity encouraged Richardson to publish a 
 sequel two years later, and two other long novels, Clarissa 
 (1748), and Sir Charles Grandison (1753). 
 
 " Clarissa." The former is the story of a young lady, 
 Clarissa Harlowe, who, as the result of the attempt of her 
 family to force her into ?n unwelcome marriage, flees from 
 her home. In her flight she accepts the assistance of a cer- 
 tain Lovelace, who has long been in love with her, and this 
 gentlemanly reprobate virtually kidnaps her. After many 
 attempts to escape, and much suffering, she dies, leaving her 
 relatives to repent of their cruelty, and Lovelace to suffer the 
 punishment of his guilty conscience. 
 
 Like Pamela, Clarissa is told by means of letters in which 
 the different characters speak for themselves. Indeed, it 
 is clear that Richardson thought of the novel as an elab- 
 orated drama. He calls Clarissa "a dramatic narrative"; 
 and he does so very properly, for, as in a play, there is in 
 Clarissa a definite catastrophe, every step toward which 
 is carefully prepared for by something in the environment 
 or the characters of the actors. Richardson could not, 
 however, forego entirely the novelist's right to personal com- 
 munication with his audience. He introduced footnotes in 
 which he enforced his own view of the story when he thought 
 his readers likely to go astray. Especially in the long nego- 
 tiation between Clarissa and Lovelace in regard to the lat- 
 ter's offer of marriage, the heroine . needed the personal 
 defence of the author from the charge of squeamishness. 
 Though Richardson is not entirely successful in securing 
 his heroine's acquittal, he has won a greater triumph in 
 making her so real that we are willing to discuss with him 
 the wisdom of her conduct, and pity her mistakes. Im- 
 patient as we may be of her uncertainties, scruples, and 
 hesitations, we accept them as part of the character of a 
 living woman one who, in her humiliation and suffering, 
 makes an appeal to which our. human sympathy responds. 
 
 Richardson's Character. Sir Charles Grandison is the 
 story of the hero's love affair with Miss Harriet Byron, its 
 various obstacles, and happy conclusion. In this novel
 
 Samuel Richardson ' 215 
 
 Richardson undertook to study the heart of a man with the 
 same minute analysis that he had practised earlier in the 
 case of his heroines, but his success is not the same. Gran- 
 dison, for all the ingenuity expended upon him, remains 
 like Lovelace, a machine. Richardson knew women better 
 than men. As a youth he used to write love-letters for the 
 girls of his village. As a novelist he worked in close con- 
 nection with the feminine part of his audience. His circle 
 of admirers began with his wife and a young lady visitor, 
 who stimulated him to his task by inquiring daily, "Haven't 
 you a little more 'Pamela,' Mr. Richardson?" It widened 
 with his fame until it included even great ladies of fashion, 
 who, in person or by letter, communicated with the old 
 printer upon the progress of his tales. They petted him and 
 flattered him until the good Richardson lost himself in the 
 seclusion which they provided, and forgot the world of action 
 outside. So retired did he become that at last he would 
 communicate with the foreman of his printing-house only 
 by letter. We think of him naturally as an indoor man, 
 always in dressing-gown and slippers. Because of this 
 seclusion Richardson's novels lack breadth and freshness. 
 They deal with a small world of trifles and scruples, of 
 feminine- niceties of sentiment and deportment. 
 
 Richardson's Purpose. Like Defoe, Richardson was of 
 the English middle class, and wrote primarily to minister to 
 its interest in morality and in behavior. He began his work 
 with the humble design of teaching his readers to write, but 
 his plan broadened until it covered the essentials of the art 
 of living. Pamela serves as a model for servants ; Clarissa is 
 perfection in a higher sphere. Richardson's characters are 
 all involved in intricate 'questions of conscience. Clarissa's 
 course is determined after elaborate discussion of the right 
 and wrong of each step. In Sir Charles Grandison, it is only 
 after the hero has dealt with a succession of difficult circum- 
 stances arising from the claims upon him of his friend, his 
 friend's children, his sister, and his ward, that he yields to 
 his passion for Miss Byron. Richardson surely did not 
 exaggerate when he declared the inculcation of virtue to be 
 his first object.
 
 216 The Eighteenth-Century Novel 
 
 IV. HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754) 
 
 Fielding's Life. Something like disgust for Richardson's 
 moral pretensions led Henry Fielding, the greatest of eight- 
 eenth-century novelists, to enter the field of fiction. Fielding 
 was of higher birth than Richardson, his father being a soldier 
 of some renown, and his grandfather the son of a peer ; he had, 
 too, a far wider and more varied experience of fife. He was 
 born in 1707, was educated at Eton, and afterward went to 
 Leyden to study law. In 1727 he returned to London, where 
 he supported himself for awhile by writing plays. He married 
 a lady of fortune, and lived for a time as a country gentleman ; 
 but he at length exhausted his wife's money, and returned 
 to London in poverty. Deprived of his profession of play- 
 wright by the restrictions of the licensing act of 1737, he 
 betook himself again to the study of law, meanwhile support- 
 ing his family by miscellaneous writing. His wife died in 
 1743, leaving him with two children. He struggled on until 
 life was made somewhat easier for him by his appointment 
 as police magistrate in London, in which office he was highly 
 efficient. In 1754, broken in health, he left England for 
 Portugal ; a journey of which he has left a pathetic account 
 in his Voyage to Lisbon. He died the same year. 
 
 "Joseph Andrews." While Fielding was earning his bread 
 by various literary ventures, he was moved to write a bur- 
 lesque upon Richardson's Pamela. The hero, who is de- 
 scribed as Pamela's brother, Joseph Andrews, is, like his 
 sister, a model of virtue, but unlike her he is turned out of 
 doors for his pains, and left to make his way from London 
 to his home in the country. The course of this journey brings 
 Joseph and his companion, Parson Adams, into manifold 
 adventures, and introduces them to men and women who, 
 as Fielding sketches them for us, are as vivid as the figures 
 in Hogarth's prints. Mrs. Towwouse, the innkeeper's wife, 
 Trulliber, the hog-raising parson, and Mrs. Slipslop are 
 drawn with a broad humor which becomes caricature, but 
 they are essentially true to the crude life of the English 
 country-side. In his wide vision pf the world, in the fertility
 
 Henry Fielding 217 
 
 with which his imagination peoples it, and in his power to 
 individualize types of human life, often with a touch of 
 comedy, Fielding is a realist of the company of Chaucer. 
 
 "Jonathan Wild." Joseph Andrews appeared in 1742. 
 Possibly before this Fielding had written the story called 
 Jonathan Wild the Great, suggested by the life of a famous 
 rascal whom Defoe had also celebrated. Here, also, Field- 
 ing began his work as a burlesque on other writers, in this 
 case the biographers, who find every trait in their heroes a 
 sign of greatness. Both these earlier stories are written 
 loosely, with little care for construction, but in his last two 
 novels, Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia (1751), Fielding de- 
 veloped genuine plots. 
 
 "Tom Jones." Tom Jones opens with the discovery of 
 the hero as a babe in the house of a virtuous gentleman 
 named Mr. Allworthy. He grows up with Allworthy's 
 nephew Blifil, who out of jealousy ruins Tom's reputation 
 with his benefactor, and gets him turned out into the world. 
 Meanwhile, Tom has fallen in love with the daughter of a 
 neighbor, Sophia Western. He travels to London, meeting 
 adventures in plenty by the way ; he passes through tempta- 
 tions, not unscathed; and finally, by the discovery of the 
 secret of his birth and the revelation of BlifiFs villainy, he is 
 advanced to his happy fortune, the favor of Allworthy, and 
 marriage with Sophia. 
 
 Tom Jones may be taken as an account of Fielding's 
 own experience, the vigorous, careless, adventurous life of 
 a good-hearted, thoughtless youth, turned loose upon the 
 rough life of English villages, inns, post-roads, and country 
 houses. If we think of Richardson as always in his arm- 
 chair, shod with slippers, we must fancy Fielding on horse- 
 back, in jack-boots and spurs. Richardson's scenes are 
 usually laid within doors, and the characters are engaged in 
 working out some complication of private life. Fielding keeps 
 his story out of doors, and his characters in contact with th^ 
 larger world. His novels thus gain in movement and fresh- 
 ness, in breadth and picturesqueness. Again, Richardson's 
 characters appeal to us chiefly by virtue of their mental strug- 
 gles and sufferings ; Fielding's, by their external appearance
 
 218 The Eighteenth-Century Novel 
 
 and bearing. The most fascinating element in Tom Jones is 
 the brilliant figure of the hero as he rides across England in 
 the days when travel was little less exciting than war. 
 
 "Amelia." In Fielding's last book, Amelia, we behold .this 
 brightness somewhat dimmed. Captain Booth, the hero, 
 is Tom Jones grown older, but no wiser. Like Fielding 
 himself, he has spent his wife's fortune, and is compelled 
 to resort to all manner of shifts to live. His adventures 
 lack, the picturesqueness of those in Tom Jones. They are 
 the reflection of the sordid life of poverty in London, which 
 Fielding knew only too well. The heroine, Amelia, is the 
 counterpart of Fielding's wife, a developed portrait for which 
 Sophia Western was a first sketch. Her constancy and de- 
 votion save Booth from the ruin to which his light character 
 tempts him. 
 
 Fielding's Satire. Fielding has been taken to task for the 
 frankness with which he portrayed man's life, both in the 
 case of Booth and that of Tom Jones. For the honesty of his 
 picture he is not to be blamed ; but the indifference which he 
 shows toward moral considerations, and his lack of concern 
 for a life higher than that of worldly enjoyment, are to be 
 regarded as serious shortcomings. But if Fielding is deficient 
 in the spiritual virtues, he has in abundance those that belong 
 to mere human nature. With his broad view of the world of 
 men went an immense sympathy with them that always saves 
 his satire from cynicfsm. He laughs, but his laughter is 
 never inhuman like Swift's; and it is always ready to give 
 place to tenderness and pity. For him the tragedy of life 
 lay in the appearance of virtue and innocence in a world of 
 evil, cruelty, and deception. In his presentation of this tragedy 
 Fielding is always direct, sincere, and simple. The scene in 
 which Amelia prepares supper for Booth, and when he does 
 not come puts aside the wine untasted to save a sixpence, while 
 her husband is losing guineas at the gaming-table, is more 
 moving than are the complicated woes of Clarissa. It is this 
 humanity, the most essential quality of the novelist, that makes 
 Fielding's work permanently winning and powerful.
 
 Later Novelists 219 
 
 V. LATER NOVELISTS 
 
 Smollett. Fielding's successor, Tobias Smollett (1721- 
 1771) was a Scotchman, a physician who failed in his profes- 
 sion on account of his irascible temper, and who accordingly 
 took up the practice of literature. His first novel was Rod- 
 erick Random (1748), a tale of adventure, in which he made 
 use of much of his own experience. He had been surgeon's 
 mate on a man-of-war; accordingly, after describing Rod- 
 erick's youth in Scotland, he sends his hero to sea, taking the 
 opportunity to insert some vivid descriptions of naval life. Of 
 much the same type as this first novel is Peregrine Pickle 
 (1751). Smollett's last novel, Humphrey Clinker, published 
 in 1771, is his best. The story consists of the adventures 
 attending the journeys of a Welsh family through England 
 and Scotland. The adventures are mild enough, but the 
 plan of the story gives Smollett an opportunity to describe 
 men and things; and as a contemporary record, and com- 
 ment on life and manners, the book is of decided interest. 
 Moreover, in Humphrey Clinker appear some of Smollett's 
 best characters, humorous figures who stand each for a sin- 
 gle quality or mannerism, Matthew Bramble, the irascible . 
 Welsh misanthropist, his sister Tabitha, and Win Jenkins 
 the maid, who exhausts the possibilities of fun in English 
 misspelling. To these should be added the admirable sailor 
 characters of the earlier stories: Admiral Trunnion in Pere- 
 grine Pickle, and Bowling and Pipes in Roderick Random. 
 
 Sterne. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), was the son of a 
 petty officer in the army, and he himself, born in barracks, 
 spent his sickly youth in moving from one military station to 
 another. He was sent to Cambridge, and thence drifted into 
 the church, obtaining a small living in Yorkshire, where, he 
 says, "books, fiddling, painting, and shooting were my chief 
 amusements." He began Tristram Shandy, as he says, 
 " with no clear idea of what it was to turn out, only a de- 
 sign of shocking people and amusing myself." The first 
 two volumes, published in 1 760, made him famous. He was 
 courted and flattered in London, promoted in the church,
 
 220 The Eighteenth-Century Novel 
 
 and well received at Paris, for his book was an international 
 success. Meanwhile he continued to issue volumes of his 
 masterpiece, putting into them material of any sort which he 
 happened to have on hand. His health failing, he spent a 
 year in southern France. Part of the experience of his 
 journey he turned into the seventh volume of Tristram 
 Shandy, part he saved for a book of travels called The Senti- 
 mental Journey, of which two volumes appeared in 1768, just 
 before his death. 
 
 "Tristram Shandy." Tristram Shandy is not a novel in 
 the proper sense of the word. The book is without plan; 
 without beginning, progress, or end. In the fourth volume 
 the hero laments that though he is a year older than when 
 he began to write, his story has not got beyond the life of his 
 first day. The author shifts arbitrarily from one character 
 to another, begins conversations in the middle, interrupts 
 them with little essays full of odd learning, prepares for 
 stories which are never told and scenes between his charac- 
 ters which are never acted. He introduces a new charac- 
 ter, the Widow Wadman, with whom Tristram's Uncle Toby 
 falls in love, by a blank page, on which the reader may 
 write his own description. The style is given over to man- 
 nerism ; it abounds in trick and innuendo, and has none of 
 the formal regularity that had marked written prose since 
 the time of Dryden. Like Sterne's life, the book is an ex- 
 altation of whim. In his life and in his art Sterne was with- 
 out a sense of propriety, without respect for the conventions 
 that the eighteenth century was so much interested in estab- 
 lishing. 
 
 Sterne's Sentimentality. Writing thus, at the instance of 
 his moods, Sterne is curiously sentimental. Tears and laugh- 
 ter follow each other in his pages, and sometimes are incon- 
 gruously mingled. He sits down to weep beside the poor 
 insane Maria, who stares alternately at him and at her goat. 
 " What resemblance do you find ?" he asks. His pathos is 
 not the sympathy of the strong man who weeps because he 
 must; on the contrary, he goes about seeking occasion for 
 feeling. He is thus the chief of sentimentalists, of those who 
 write not to picture the world as it is, but to draw from it
 
 Later Novelists 221 
 
 suggestions for certain moods and feelings. This attitude, 
 which became for a time a leading fashion in literature, 
 found its model largely in Tristram Shandy. 
 
 "The Vicar of Wakefield." 'Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 
 field (1766) represents a reaction against the extreme senti- 
 mentality of Sterne. The book has feeling in abundance, 
 but it is the natural, wholesome sentiment of English domes- 
 tic life. The Vicar and his family have griefs enough. They 
 fall from their happy state into poverty. Worse misfortune 
 comes in the flight of the eldest daughter, Olivia, lured away 
 by an unworthy lover; in the burning of their poor home; 
 in the arrest of the Vicar for debt. But the Vicar's confidence 
 in life is steadfast. Like Goldsmith himself, he believes that 
 to laugh is better than to weep. Many of the ills of life are 
 but the humors of comedy, as when Moses sells the horse for 
 a gross of green spectacles. Others are blessings in disguise. 
 For Goldsmith's world is an ideal one. Troubles and dis- 
 asters accumulate like threatening clouds, but only to re- 
 solve themselves into beneficent showers. Suffering is not a 
 problem ; it is little more than an artistic device to make the 
 world seem more beautiful. Evil loses its essential quality ; 
 Olivia is married to a rake who does not love her, but even 
 this we accept confidently as a part of the happy outcome, so 
 contagious is Goldsmith's optimism, so triumphant the Vicar's, 
 faith in the best of all possible worlds. One element of great 
 importance in the modern novel makes its appearance in 
 The Vicar of Wakefield that of scene. Richardson had 
 shown skill in arranging his interiors ; Fielding had given a 
 few set pieces of description, showing the preference of 
 eighteenth-century taste for artificial over natural beauty; 
 but Goldsmith pictured nature with real feeling for it, and it 
 is, throughout the book, a symbol of the eternal goodness 
 of the world, another reason for putting trust in life. 
 
 The Romantic Novel. Eighteenth-century fiction from 
 Richardson onward shows the demand of the reading 
 public for a more sympathetic treatment of life than the 
 hard, matter-of-fact temperament of men like Swift and 
 Pope could give. As we have seen, both Richardson and 
 Fielding appealed to the emotions of their readers, and in
 
 222 The Eighteenth-Century Novel 
 
 Sterne and his followers we have a school of writers who are 
 properly called sentimentalists, who write merely to play 
 upon the feelings. Toward the close of the century the novel 
 reflects that re-awakening of the imagination known as 
 the romantic movement (see next chapter), and the deeper 
 feeling for man as an individual which was one of the forces 
 beneath the upheaval of the French Revolution. The me- 
 diaeval or "gothic " romance, which sought to excite emotions 
 of wonder and terror by the use of material drawn from the 
 superstitions of the past, finds its chief representative in The 
 Castle of Otranto (1765) by Horace Walpole. The humani- 
 tarian novel, which seriously undertook to right the wrongs 
 of the individual, and cure the evils of society, was developed 
 by a group of writers more or less in sympathy with the 
 Revolution, of whom William Godwin, the author of Caleb 
 Williams (1794), was the chief. In these two schools we 
 find the beginnings of two great classes of the fiction of to- 
 day, the historical novel and the novel of purpose. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. What are the causes of the predominance of 
 the novel in modern English literature ? What forms did fiction assume 
 in the Middle Ages for different classes ? What name was given to the 
 Italian tales? What was the picaresque romance ? In what sense was it 
 the forerunner of the modern novel ? To what class did the hovel espe- 
 cially appeal ? Why was Defoe especially fitted to write for that class ? 
 What qualification for writing fiction did he show in his early political 
 articles ? How did his later life provide him with the material for his 
 stories ? On what was the story of " Robinson Crusoe " founded ? 
 In what does the art of the book consist? What is " The Journal of 
 the Plague Year " ? What element of imagination is involved in the 
 narrative ? 
 
 What narrative method does Defoe employ? What element of 
 structure do his works of fiction lack ? Under what circumstances did 
 Richardson write " Pamela " ? What purpose appears in the sub- 
 title ? What is the plot of " Clarissa " ? How does Richardson's 
 method suggest that of the drama? Wherein does the strength of 
 Richardson's character-drawing appear? Why did he succeed better 
 with women than with men ? What limitation did his character put 
 upon his work ? What place does moral purpose take in his novels ?
 
 Reading Guide 223 
 
 Outline the life of Fielding. What led him to undertake fiction? 
 For what is " Joseph Andrews " notable ? What is the element of 
 satire in "Jonathan Wild " ? Sketch the plot of " Tom Jones." How 
 does the book differ in atmosphere from Richardson's works ? What 
 relation have " Tom Jones " and " Amelia " to Fielding's own career ? 
 In what does Fielding's pathos consist ? 
 
 Mention three of Smollett's novels. What can be said of his por- 
 trayal of character? Give an idea of the method of " Tristram Shandy." 
 Of its style. What is meant by Sterne's sentimentalism ? How is 
 "The Vicar of Wakefield " a reaction against it ? How does the story 
 illustrate Goldsmith's view of life ? What use does Goldsmith make of 
 scene ? In what ways does the novel mark an advance upon the treat- 
 ment of life by Swift and Pope ? In what ways does it reflect the ro- 
 mantic movement ? 
 
 READING GUIDE. Every one should read "Robinson Crusoe," 
 "The Journal of the Plague Year," and "The Vicar of Wakefield." 
 Beyond this the reading in eighteenth-century fiction must be left largely 
 to the initiative of the pupil. It is the aim of the text to present the 
 substance and quality of a few of the greater books like " Clarissa," 
 ''Tom Jones," and "Tristram Shandy" in such a way that reading the 
 works themselves may be dispensed with .until pupils are of college age. 
 
 Lives of the novelists (except Smollett) appear in the English Men of 
 Letters series, and in addition should be mentioned Austin Dobson's 
 "Life of Goldsmith" in the Great Writers series (Scott). Sir Leslie 
 Stephen in "Hours in a Library" has essays on Defoe, Richardson, 
 Fielding, and Sterne Thackeray's "English Humorists" contains 
 lectures on Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith. 
 
 Of general works on the history of fiction *the teacher or advanced 
 student will use Jusserand's "English Novel in the Time of Shake- 
 speare " (Unwin), W. L. Cross's " Development of the English Novel " 
 (Macmillan), F. H. Stoddard's "The Evolution of the English Novel " 
 (Macmillan), and W. E. Simond's "Introduction to the Study of English 
 Fiction" (Heath).
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE REVIVAL OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 Literature at the Death of Pope. When Pope died (1744), 
 the classical ideal had been dominant for three-quarters of a 
 century. As we have seen, the civilizing effect of this era upon 
 literature had been great. But in its zeal for law and order 
 the Augustan Age had sacrificed too much. It had marked 
 as forbidden too many things which, sooner or later, men were 
 bound to find excellent and desirable. It had set up standards 
 of taste which, in their narrowness and inflexibility, were bound 
 in time to bring about a revolt. 
 
 Signs of Reaction Against the Classical Ideal. As soon as 
 Pope's commanding presence was removed, and the fascina- 
 tion of his brilliant example began to be a little dimmed, signs 
 of such a revolt were not long in making themselves apparent. 
 Even before Pope's death, the reaction against the order of 
 things for which he stood, had set in. Here and there a poet, 
 tired of the sharp click and hard polish of the classic couplet, 
 had begun to turn back to Milton and Spenser, and to imitate 
 that fuller and freer music. Shakespeare, the "splendid bar- 
 barian," began once more to cast his spell upon adventurous 
 readers, and to fill them with a new wonder and admiration. 
 Things as they were, in the world of London coffee-houses 
 and drawing-rooms, began for some minds to lose their charm, 
 and things as they had been in the mysterious past, or as they 
 might still be in remote regions of the earth, began to attract 
 men's curiosity. Chosen spirits, gifted somehow with a new 
 vision, looked out upon the world of nature, and found that 
 it was good. They looked into their own hearts, and found 
 there a thousand wayward impulses which conventions had 
 long stifled, but which clamored now for expression. With 
 
 224
 
 Introduction 225 
 
 the new feeling for nature there went a new feeling for man, 
 a greater tenderness for the unfortunate, a greater sympathy 
 with the humble and obscure, a livelier curiosity concerning 
 man's life in distant regions and far-off times. 
 
 The Romantic Movement Broadly Viewed. This great 
 awakening we call, for lack of a better word, the "Romantic 
 Movement." It was a slow awakening, for it covered the 
 whole period from about 1725 to the end of the eighteenth 
 century. It was as broad as it was slow, for it covered nearly 
 the whole of Western Europe, and brought in its train no less 
 a world-shaking event than the French Revolution. It was 
 in essence, as the Renaissance had been, a reassertion of the 
 freedom of the individual, but this assertion was made now 
 in a more spiritual sense, and with a profounder conception 
 of what freedom means to the spirit and the imagination. 
 
 The Romantic Movement in Literature. In literature the 
 Romantic revival expressed itself in three main directions. 
 In the first place, it brought with it a new interest in the past, 
 especially in the Middle Ages, because the life of the Middle 
 Ages, with its turbulence, its strong passions, its rich barbaric 
 color, was in strongest contrast to the well-ordered life of the 
 "classic era," and it therefore ministered to that hunger for the 
 "picturesque," which the formality of the Augustan Age, by 
 a natural reaction, had engendered. In the second place, the 
 Romantic revival brought with it a new interest in nature, 
 especially in the wilder and more desolate aspects of nature 
 again, by reaction from the Augustan indifference to every- 
 thing which had not been pruned and ornamented by the 
 hand of man. In the third place, the Romantic movement 
 brought with it a new human sympathy, especially toward 
 such human lives as by reason of their humbleness or their 
 rudeness had been treated with contempt by an aristocratic age. 
 
 II. THE ROMANTIC PIONEERS (FROM THOMSON TO BURNS) 
 
 Thomson's " Seasons " and " Castle of Indolence." The 
 
 earliest poet in whom the workings of the new romantic spirit 
 can be seen, was James Thomson (1700-1748). Thomson 
 was a Scotchman, who came up to London in 1725. The
 
 226 Revival of Romanticism 
 
 following year he published the first section, "Winter," of a 
 poem which he afterward continued under the titles " Summer," 
 "Spring," and "Autumn," and which was published in 1730 
 as The Seasons. To the readers of his own day the novelty 
 of this poem was great. For two generations the first-hand 
 study of nature had been neglected. Literature had found its 
 interests in city life ; or, if it ventured into the country at all, 
 it was into a country conventionalized -and unreal, a country 
 clipped and trimmed like a formal garden in the Italian style. 
 Accordingly, Thomson's poem had an aspect of daring inno- 
 vation. His views of English landscape, his description of 
 the first spring showers, of the summer thunderstorms, and of 
 the terrors of the wintry night, showed an honest understanding 
 and love of that to which the eye had long been blind. In The 
 Castle of Indolence, published in 1748, Thomson went back 
 to Spenser for his inspiration. The poem is in the Spenserian 
 stanza, and recaptures something of the master's rich, long- 
 drawn music. The same golden atmosphere which enwraps 
 Spenser's "land of faery" steeps the embowered castle of the 
 enchanter Indolence, with it? "listless climate," where the 
 plaint of stock-doves mingles with the sighing of hillside pines. 
 Gray : His Letters and Diaries. Among the early bearers 
 of the banner of Romanticism, the most important name is 
 that of Thomas Gray (1716-1771). Gray lived the life of a 
 scholar and recluse at Cambridge, where in his later years he 
 held a professorship of history, but delivered no lectures. He 
 was sensitive to all the finer influences of the time. He was 
 a delightful letter-writer and diarist, and his letters and jour- 
 nals give a very complete view of the intellectual movements 
 of the period. Particularly interesting are those passages 
 which show in him the new sensibility to picturesque scenery 
 and to Gothic architecture, two of the great enthusiasms of 
 the romantic innovators. In a letter written in early life 
 from Switzerland, during a tour which he made with his 
 friend Horace Walpole, he writes of the scenery about the 
 Grande Chartreuse: "Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a 
 cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. One need not 
 bave a very fantastic imagination to see spirits there at 
 noonday." Years after, in the Scotch highlands, he writes of
 
 Thomas Gray 227 
 
 the mountains as "those monstrous creatures of God," and 
 declares that they " ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a 
 year." A generation before Gray wrote from the Grande 
 Chartreuse, Addison had crossed the Alps, and dismissed the 
 experience thus: "A very troublesome journey. You can't 
 imagine how I am pleased with the sight of a plain." Gray's 
 enthusiasm over the marvels of mediaeval architecture at 
 Rheims and Sienna, contrasts also with Addison's comparison 
 of the nobility of the classic Pantheon with the "meanness 
 of manner" in the Gothic cathedrals. Toward the end of 
 his life Gray made one of his "Liliputian journeys" to the 
 English lake country afterward made famous by Words- 
 worth's poetry. The journal which he kept on this occasion is 
 remarkable for the intimate sympathy which it shows with 
 the changes of mood in the landscape, under variations of 
 weather and time of day. Gray sees nature with a modern 
 eye, as a living thing full of sentiment and meaning. 
 
 Gray's Poetry. Gray's most important poems are the 
 "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" and "The Bard." The 
 "Elegy" is perhaps the most widely known and loved of- 
 English poems. A large part of its charm comes from the 
 poet's personal, sensitive approach to his subject. He lin- 
 gers in the churchyard, noting the signs of approaching 
 nightfall, until the atmosphere of twilight musing is estab- 
 lished, after which his reflections upon life and death have a 
 tone of sad and intimate sincerity. In its recognition of the 
 dignity of simple lives lived close to the soil, and in its sym- 
 pathy with their fate, the " Elegy " shows the breaking-up of 
 the hard forms into which social feeling had stiffened, and 
 looks forward to the enthusiasm for humanity which marked 
 the later phases of romantic poetry. "The Bard" is more 
 distinctly romantic, both in subject and treatment. An 
 ancient minstrel, the last of the Welsh singers, escaped from 
 Edward's massacre, stops the king in a wild mountain pass, 
 and prophesies the terrors which are to gather over his de- 
 scendants. This poem, with its imaginative rekindling of 
 the passion of an ancient and perished people, shows that 
 re-awakened interest in the Middle Ages which soon became 
 the leading feature of romantic art.
 
 228 Revival of Romanticism 
 
 Percy's Reliques. In 1765 Bishop Percy, an antiquarian 
 scholar with literary tastes, published a ballad collection 
 entitled Reliques of Ancient Poetry. These old ballads^, 
 which spoke in tones of primitive freshness and passion out 
 of the distant past, had a great effect in quickening the ro- 
 mantic impulse. Long afterward, Wordsworth said of these 
 ballads that they had led English poetry back to the truth 
 from which it had wandered. 
 
 "Ossian" : Chatterton's Imitations. About the same time 
 appeared an epic poem in irregular chanting prose, entitled 
 Fingal, purporting to have been originally written in the 
 ancient Gaelic tongue of the Scotch highlands, by Ossian, the 
 son of Fingal, in a dim heroic past. It seems to have been 
 in large part a clever literary forgery, the work of a young 
 Scotchman named Macpherson, but its influence was enor- 
 mous in furthering the new taste for the mysterious past. 
 
 Of a similar nature were the series of literary forgeries 
 put forth by Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770). These con- 
 sisted of poems and prose pieces in the mediaeval style and 
 diction, which he palmed off upon the good burghers of 
 Bristol as originals which he had unearthed in the ancient 
 coffers of their church. Chatterton ended his morbid and 
 amazingly precocious life by suicide in a London garret, at 
 the age of nineteen. When the battle of the new poetry 
 had been fought and won, Keats dedicated Endymion to his 
 memory, and Shelley placed him in "Adonais" among the 
 " inheritors of unfulfilled renown." 
 
 Cowper: "The Task." William Cowper (1731-1800), 
 though he was not conscious of being an innovator, marks 
 the advent of a new realism in the poetic treatment of nature 
 and human life. His early life was spent at Westminster 
 School, and as a law-student in London. Fits of gayety, 
 and states of mystical exaltation, were succeeded in him by 
 periods of terrible depression. At the age of fifty-two, he was 
 living in the obscure village of Olney, where, under the care 
 of a widow, Mrs. Unwin, several years his senior, he was 
 spending a peaceful interval between two attacks of religious 
 melancholia. At the suggestion of one Lady Austin, he 
 began a long poem in blank verse, in which he described
 
 Cowper and Blake 229 
 
 the landscapes, the changes of seasons, the human types 
 and employments of the rural world about him, as well 
 as his own simple pleasures and occupations. The poem 
 was published in 1785, as The Task. A large portion of The 
 Task is conventional enough, but here and there one comes 
 upon little vignettes, the figure of a teamster driving home- 
 ward in a snowstorm, a postman hurrying through the village 
 with his eagerly awaited bag of news from the great world, 
 ploughmen at work in the flat fields by the river Ouse, which 
 are instinct with vivid natural life. The amusing ballad of 
 " John Gilpin" also belongs to this bright period of Cowper's 
 life. He afterward relapsed into melancholia, broken at inter- 
 vals by a ray of poetic inspiration such as produced his touch- 
 ing lines, " On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Nor- 
 folk," deservedly the best known of his poems. His last 
 poem, entitled "The Castaway," is a cry of despair from the 
 depths of visionary anguish into which he was now hope- 
 lessly plunged. 
 
 Blake. William Blake (1757-1827), was by profession an 
 engraver, and the most important part of his work is his 
 drawings, many of which are in illustration of his own 
 poems and the strange mystic writings which he called 
 "prophecies." When a very young child, he one day 
 screamed with fear, because, he said, he had seen God put 
 his face to the window. In boyhood he saw several angels, 
 very bright, standing in a tree by the roadside. In his man- 
 hood, the earth and the air were for him full of spiritual 
 presences, all concerned with his fate or with that of his 
 friends. He saw everywhere about him "armies of angels 
 that soar, legions of demons that lurk." His fame as a poet 
 rests chiefly on his Poetical Sketches, and on his Songs of 
 Innocence and Experience. Amid much that is unfinished, 
 and no little that is obscure, these little volumes contain some 
 of the simplest and sweetest, as well as some of the most power- 
 ful, short poems in the language. At his best, as in "The 
 Tiger," and "Hear the Voice of the Bard," Blake has a sim- 
 plicity as great as Wordsworth's, and a magic which reminds 
 us of Coleridge, together with a startling depth and intensity. 
 Like a true mystic, he moves us less by what he says than by
 
 230 Revival of Romanticism 
 
 what he hints, and these hints are often so shadowy that 
 they elude us at the very moment when we seem about to 
 grasp them. 
 
 III. ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) 
 
 Burns's Early Life and Poetry. Robert Burns was born in 
 a two-roomed clay cottage in Ayrshire, West Scotland, in 
 1759. His parents were God-fearing peasants of the best 
 Scotch type, who worked heroically to keep the wolf from 
 the door, and to give their children an elementary educa- 
 tion. There have been preserved to us many glimpses of the 
 family life which Burns shared, and all of them show us how 
 earnest and wholesome was its atmosphere. The father, 
 as he walked to the morning's labor with his sons Robert and 
 Gilbert, would talk to them as man to man, drawing their 
 thoughts to serious themes of conduct and belief; and he 
 would often visit his daughter, where she tended the flock 
 afield, to teach her the names of the plants and herbs which 
 grew about. The local schoolmaster brought books to the 
 family and read to them regularly. Once, when he was read- 
 ing from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and had reached a 
 particularly harrowing passage, with one voice they cried out 
 for him to desist, as they could not endure the cruelty of the 
 pictures which the drama evoked. In all this we see that 
 Burns's early life, though full of privation and harsh toil, was 
 passed among gentle influences. 
 
 The privation, however, was severe, and the toil bitter. 
 At fifteen Robert did a grown man's work in ploughing and 
 reaping. The various farms which the elder Burns leased in 
 succession, proved too poor to repay the labor put upon them. 
 In spite of all frugality and industry, ruin was seldom far 
 away. Looking back upon his youth in after years, Burns 
 described it as the "cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the 
 unceasing toil of a galley-slave." But this is clearly an ex- 
 aggeration, for we have his youthful poems to prove him 
 wrong. 
 
 He had had a few books of poetry to read, and had heard, 
 PS every Scotch peasant hears, the floating ballad verse of
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 From a painting by Nasmytb
 
 232 Revival of Romanticism 
 
 the country-side. Then he had begun to rhyme, almost as" 
 spontaneously as a bird begins to sing, or, as he says himself, 
 "for fun," as he followed his plough "in glory and in joy, 
 along the mountain-side." The youth who wrote the lines 
 "To a Mountain Daisy" and "To a Mouse," with their 
 searching sympathy, the " Epistle to Davie," with its manly 
 philosophy and genial temper, the "Address to the De'il," 
 with its rich humor and fun, "The Cotter's Saturday Night," 
 bathed in its tender light of fireside happiness, was neither 
 a hermit nor a galley-slave, but simply a healthy, impetuous 
 farm-lad, with a warm heart, a rich nature, and a God-given 
 genius for song. 
 
 Between his twenty-third and his twenty-sixth year, at 
 Mossgiel, Burns wrote the larger number of those poems 
 which have made his name loved wherever the lowland dia- 
 lect is understood. In these he revealed with wonderful com- 
 pleteness the rural Scotland of his day. He illuminated with a 
 blended light of humor and tenderness the common experi- 
 ences of his peasant world. He celebrates " Scotch Drink," 
 holds up to laughter the praying hypocrite "Holy Willie," 
 and paints the riotous games of Hallowe'en ; but he turns also 
 to mourn over the "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower" 
 uprooted in the furrow on the mountain-side, and finds in 
 a field-mouse whose snug home has been broken up by the 
 ploughshare, a thing to touch the springs of human pity. 
 
 Burns's temporary residence at Irvine, whither he went in 
 1782, with the plan of learning the flax-dressing industry, 
 marks a great change in his life, and the beginning of those 
 dissipations into which his eager and abounding temperament 
 only too easily led him. Here and at his home-village of 
 Mauchline his reputation as poet and wit threw him into 
 the company of "buckish young squires, roaring lawyers 
 and half-heretical divines," who welcomed him as a brilliant 
 addition to their circle, and spurred him on to wild extrava- 
 gances of word and deed. His was a nature which loves 
 to shine, to which the exercise of its charm and power 
 is a necessity. Even in his sober earlier years he had "worn 
 his plaid in a particular manner, and of a particular color," 
 and had had "the only tied hair in the parish." Now he
 
 Robert Burns 233 
 
 threw himself headlong into pleasure ; it was not long before 
 he had earned his title of "Ranting Rob." 
 
 Publication of the "Poems": Burns in Edinburgh. By 
 the time he reached his twenty-sixth year, his wild ways had 
 got him into desperate trouble. His father was dead, and 
 the hand-to-hand fight which he and his brother Gilbert were 
 waging with poverty, bade fair to end in absolute failure. 
 Distracted and despairing, Burns determined to go to the 
 West Indies. In order to raise the passage money, someone 
 suggested that he should publish the poems which lay in his 
 desk in the cottage at Mossgiel. Neither the author nor 
 anyone else hoped for more than a local popularity. The 
 little book was published at Kilmarnock in 1786, with the 
 title, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The few pounds 
 brought in by the small edition were in his pocket, his trunk 
 was sent forward, and he had written the solemn and moving 
 song, "The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast," as his farewell 
 word, when a letter from Edinburgh arrived which changed 
 the whole face of his fortunes. It was from an eminent 
 scholar and critic, who praised the book highly and called for 
 another and larger edition. Burns posted to Edinburgh, 
 heralded and feted on the way like a hero of romance. A 
 winter in the Scotch capital followed, during which he was 
 petted and lionized by the brilliant society gathered there. 
 Learned doctors, famous critics and men of letters, not to 
 speak of "Duchess Gordon and all the gay world," were 
 eager to flatter and amuse the "ploughman poet." In this 
 sudden revolution of his fortunes, his powerful sense and his 
 native dignity never deserted him. His head was not turned ; 
 he refused to be anything but himself. Walter Scott, then a 
 young boy, on one occasion saw Burns at close range in an 
 Edinburgh drawing-room, and has left a charming descrip- 
 tion of him as he looked at this time the burly figure in 
 boots and buckskins, blue coat and buff-striped waistcoat, 
 "like a farmer in his Sunday best/' the large head with its 
 air of thoughtful melancholy, the great dark eyes which 
 u literally glowed" as he spoke. *'I never saw such another 
 eve in a human head," Scott adds, *' though I have seen the 
 most distinguished men of my time."
 
 234 Revival of Romanticism 
 
 Burns 's Later Life : His Songs. Burns left Edinburgh after 
 a second winter, somewhat richer in money and prospects, 
 but with his energy relaxed. The flattery of the great had not 
 turned his head, but the dissipations of the capital and the 
 long period of idleness had weakened his purpose. * Never- 
 theless he made a strong effort to recover the lost ground. 
 He returned to Ayrshire with an appointment as "gauger" 
 (inspector of the liquor customs) in his pocket, married Jean 
 Armour, and took a farm at Ellisland, with the design of com- 
 bining farming and revenue service. His duties covered 
 ten parishes and compelled him to ride two hundred miles a 
 week. What was worse, they threw him constantly into 
 riotous company, where his wit and eloquence were always 
 in uproarious demand. His farm naturally went to ruin, 
 and he found time for little poetry except short snatches of 
 song. With the exception of the "Jolly Beggars" and "Tarn 
 O'Shanter," Burns did no more sustained work. But he 
 poured out in recompense hundreds of songs love-songs, 
 drinking songs, songs of patriotism, many of which are among 
 the eternal possessions of the race. They have given Burns 
 rank as the first of English song-writers. Their range is as 
 wonderful as their quality. " From the loud flowing revel in 
 'Willie Brewed a Peck o' Maut,' to the still rapt enthusiasm 
 of sadness for ' Mary in Heaven ' ; from the glad kind greeting 
 of 'Auld Lang Syne,' or the comic archness of 'Duncan 
 Gray,' to the fire-eyed fury of 'Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace 
 Bled,' he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's 
 heart." * Although pressed for money, he refused to accept 
 any pay for these songs. In the fast-gathering ruin of his life, 
 he wished to dedicate this its noblest part to Scotland, and 
 would take no wage for that which was indeed above all price. 
 
 Sincerity and Vividness of Burns 's Work. The quality of 
 Burns's poetry which first arrests a reader's interest, and 
 which makes perhaps the most lasting impression, is its 
 sincerity. In his English verse, to be sure, he often expresses 
 himself in the stilted manner which was then fashionable. 
 Even "The Cotter's Saturday Night" is hurt by passages 
 where Burns deserts the Scotch dialect for conventional 
 
 * Carlyle : Esay on Burns.
 
 Robert Burns 235 
 
 English speech. But it is not in his English verse that we 
 find the real Burns. Everything that he wrote in his native 
 dialect has the ring of absolute honesty. He expresses the 
 truth of life as it appears to him, with penetrating frankness. 
 His words have an indescribable intonation of heartiness, 
 of careless conviction. His lyric strain has a curious arresting 
 power, like that of certain human voices in whose tones there 
 seems to vibrate an inner assurance of truth, though the 
 words themselves are lightly, perhaps mockingly, spoken. 
 
 Allied to this sincerity, but more external and easier to 
 lay hold of, is the vividness of Burns's speech. In "The 
 Twa Dogs" he not only gives us with a few airy touches a 
 lively likeness of the Scotch collie Luath and the squire's St. 
 Bernard, but fixes, as it were, the universal traits of doghood. 
 In "The Holy Fair" there are scores of groups and single 
 figures, touched in with marvellous lightness and rapidity, but 
 as vivid as if bitten with aqua-fortis upon an etcher's plate. 
 The infernal dance which Tarn o'Shanter views in the ruined 
 kirk, and his flight from the witches, show the same graphic 
 power employed in portraying scenes of wild action. . In 
 "The Brigs of Ayr" and a score of other poems, it is mani- 
 fested in the description of natural scenes. And where not 
 an image but a feeling is to be evoked, Burns has the same 
 energy of utterance. His words "go home" with an in- 
 evitable force and directness. 
 
 Burns's Sympathy and Humor. But it is neither his 
 energy nor his sincerity which has made Burns the most 
 widely beloved of English poets. It is rather his sym- 
 pathy, the bright, warm geniality of nature which prompted 
 him not only to accept everything human in the world of 
 men about him, but to draw the life of beast and bird and 
 flower into the circle of his humor and tenderness. For 
 humor pervades his poetry, keeping it fresh and tonic and 
 free from sentimentality. In "The Holy Fair" Burns tells 
 us how he once met Fun come "skelpin' up the way," gay 
 in her Sunday best. She came toward him 
 
 "lap, skip, and loup, 
 As light as onie Iambic, 
 And wF a curchie low did stoop,"
 
 236 Revival of Romanticism 
 
 offering to go with him to the fair, and promising him some 
 "famous laughin'." She went with him, indeed, through 
 life, even to the dark end ; but the laughter which she brought 
 him was never harsh or bitter; it was always generous and 
 gay and kindly. 
 
 Burns and the Romantic Revival. In Burns, the eight- 
 eenth century had at last produced a man able to deliver 
 literature from the bonds of convention. His vindication of 
 the natural life, the natural instincts, humors, and affections, 
 made untenable the narrow fortress of eighteenth-century taste. 
 His glowing democracy of heart, which reached out to include 
 in fellowship not only the least well-seen among men, but 
 even the beasts of the field and birds of the air, robbed the 
 aristocratic eighteenth- century ideal of its attraction. After 
 Burns, the triumph of "romantic liberty," through the length 
 and breadth of English letters, could not be long delayed. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. It is important to note that the literary 
 movement traced in this chapter was, as the title of the chapter 
 indicates, a " revival." Romanticism, in the broad sense, was no 
 new thing in English literature. "Beowulf" is "romantic"; so is the 
 work of Chaucer, of Spenser, of Marlowe, and of Shakespeare; so is 
 "Pilgrim's Progress"; so, in almost all respects, are " Comus,'' and 
 " Paradise Lost," and even where Milton adopted " classical " standards 
 he did so in a far freer way than did Dryden or Pope. The Romantic 
 revival, therefore, is to be thought of as a return to the freedom which 
 the great writers of earlier times had enjoyed. But the tyranny of 
 the classical school was so excessive that the return to freer ways of 
 thought, feeling, and speech took on the aspect of a conscious revolt. 
 It became, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a kind of crusade, 
 and* poets fought for it as for a holy cause. It went hand in hand 
 with a great religious revival under John Wesley, and with a great 
 struggle for social and political freedom in France; and this gave to 
 the literary movement extraordinary depth and intensity. 
 
 To what earlier poets did the pioneers of the Romantic revival 
 especially turn back ? To what was due the renewed interest in the 
 Middle Ages? In natural scenery? In strange lands and distant 
 peoples? In the life of humble men? What parallelism is noted 
 here between this period and that of the Renaissance? In what
 
 Review Outline 237 
 
 respects does the spirit that underlay this reaction indicate that the 
 period between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries had been 
 one of progress ? 
 
 Note the statement that for two generations the first-hand study 
 of nature had been neglected. In what poem did it first reappear? 
 To what earlier poet did Thomson recur in his " Castle of Indolence " ? 
 Who is the most important poet of the new school among the writers of 
 this period ? Consider carefully what is said about his " seeing nature 
 with a modern eye, as a living thing full of sentiment and meaning." 
 Find something to illustrate this from the quotations given from Gray's 
 prose. For which of these aspects of the spirit of the Romantic revival 
 is Gray's " Elegy" best known ? For which " The Bard " ? What is 
 " Percy's Reliques" ? At what period were the most important of the 
 early English ballads produced ? (See Chap. IV.) In what esteem did 
 Wordsworth hold these ballads ? What was the current literary interest 
 that inspired McPherson and Chatterton to make their famous literary 
 imitations? What evidence is there from the opinions of other poets that 
 Chatterton's gifts as a poet would have entitled him to high rank if he 
 had lived ? What is Cowper's most famous poem ? Which of the 
 interests of the Romantic revival does he show in " The Task " ? What 
 is the special character of the genius of William Blake ? 
 
 Among what conditions did Burns pass his early life? What influence 
 did his father exert on him ? What did Burns say of the character of 
 this portion of his life ? What evidence of its influence on him is to be 
 gathered from his poems ? At what time of his life did he do his best 
 writing? What effect did his residence at Irvine have on his mind and 
 character? For what purpose was Burns's first book of poems published? 
 What was the immediate consequence of the publication of this vol- 
 ume ? How did the life at Edinburgh affect Burns ? What effects did 
 this experience have on his after life ? What portion of his literary 
 work was done after his final retreat from Edinburgh ? Find from 
 your own reading illustrations of the qualities of Burns's poetry 
 spoken of in the text. 
 
 READING GUIDE. The reading prescribed for the class upon 
 this period will naturally be devoted chiefly to Gray and Burns. Gray's 
 "Elegy" and "Bard" should be read by all. The following poems 
 of Burns are recommended: "The Cotter's Saturday Night," "Tarn 
 o'Shanter," "Address to the Unco Guid," "The Twa Dogs," "To a
 
 238 Revival of Romanticism 
 
 Mountain Daisy," "To a Mouse," "Is There for Honest Poverty"? 
 "John Anderson," "To Mary in Heaven," "Of a' the Afrts," "A 
 Red, Red Rose," "Bonnie Doon," and "Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace 
 Bled." A convenient edition of Gray is that edited by W. L. Phelps, 
 in the Athenaeum Press series (Ginn). Selections from Cowper and) 
 Gray are given in the Riverside Literature series; Cowper's "Task" 
 and other poems are included in Cassell's National Library. Lowell'* 
 essay upon Gray in " Latest Literary Essays," and Matthew Arnold'? 
 essay in " Essays in Criticism," are valuable. The life of Gray, by 
 Edmund Gosse, in the English Men of Letters series, is entertaining 
 The Riverside Literature series (Hough ton, Mifflin), includes a vol- 
 ume of selections from Burns with glossary of Scotch words. Car- 
 lyle's essay on Burns is not only invaluable as a commentary, but 
 is itself a classic in the literature of the essay. R. L. Stevenson : ? 
 " Familiar Studies of Men and Books " contains an excellent study 
 of B urns' s character, which may be supplemented by the widely dif- 
 ferent view taken by W. E. Henley, in the biography prefixed to ti< 
 Cambridge edition of Burns (Houghton, Mifflin).
 
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 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE ROMANTIC 
 TRIUMPH 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Revolutionary Era: the First Group of Poets. 
 
 Toward the end of the eighteenth century there occurred two 
 events of world- wide consequence, long prepared for by cir- 
 cumstances but only vaguely foreseen ; America threw off her 
 political bondage to England, and the French people, in the 
 name of freedom and universal brotherhood, rose up to 
 destroy the old fabric of the state, founded upon privilege 
 and caste. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was 
 signed at Philadelphia ; in 1789 the Bastille, the famous French 
 prison which stood as a symbol of tyranny and oppression, was 
 levelled by the revolutionists. The American revolution, 
 though destined to have an incalculable effect upon the world's 
 progress, was of far less immediate moment than the French 
 revolution. This terrible upheaval affected the whole of Eu- 
 rope. It brought in its train a series of bloody wars, in the 
 course of which the map of the continent was remade, and 
 both government and the social spirit were everywhere pro- 
 foundly changed. In England alone, by reason of her detached 
 position, the fabric of government stood firm. England's task, 
 politically, was a repressive one. She took it upon herself to 
 hold in check the powers which were making for violent 
 change, especially when the bright dreams of the early revolu- 
 tion gave place, during the Reign of Terror, to an unbridled 
 frenzy of destruction, and later to the gigantic military am- 
 bitions of Napoleon. It was English diplomacy, English 
 gold, and English arms which held back the tide of Napoleonic 
 conquest, and finally sealed Napoleon's fate at Waterloo 
 (1815). But while the British government, under the guid- 
 
 241
 
 242 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 ance of Pitt and the inspiration of Burke, was hostile to the 
 revolution, the French cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" 
 found an echo in thousands of English hearts. Burns lived 
 long enough to greet the dawn of the revolutionary struggle, 
 and to become actively involved in sympathy with the cause 
 to such a degree as to draw official reproof upon his head. 
 Of the three great literary figures of the next generation, 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge and Scott, the first two were, during 
 their young manhood, ardent champions of the doctrines of 
 the revolution. Wordsworth especially watched with en- 
 thusiastic hope the early stages of the great drama which was 
 being played in France, and he came near to throwing him- 
 self personally into the struggle, in the year preceding the 
 Reign of Terror. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," 
 he writes, "and to be young was very heaven." When the 
 fair dawn had given place to a noon blood-red with violence 
 and crime, and later, when the sun of liberty seemed to have 
 set forever in the barren military rule of Napoleon, Words- 
 worth passed through a period of gloom and despondency, 
 from which he emerged as a conservative of the school of 
 Burke. 
 
 The Second Group of Poets. This reaction toward con- 
 servatism was shared by almost all the men of the generation 
 of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott. But the next genera- 
 tion contained a group of poets who were destined to take 
 up the torch of revolutionary doctrine, after the actual Revo- 
 lution as a political fact had failed. Byron, born 1788, was 
 only a year old when the Bastille fell, Shelley was born 
 in 1792, the year before the Reign of Terror, and Keats two 
 years after it (1795). Of these three, Keats stands apart 
 from the political agitation of the time, but Byron and Shel- 
 ley were passionate revolutionists, who spent their lives in 
 storming the citadels of ancient prejudice, and attempting 
 to plant upon stronghold after stronghold of tyranny, bigotry, 
 and blind custom, the flag of the new thought. Though 
 dead as a political experiment, the revolution lived on in 
 them, as an inspiration and a beckoning light ; nor has it ever 
 ceased so to live, from then until now, though taking on new 
 forms and expressing itself in new ways.
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 243 
 
 II. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) 
 
 Coleridge's Early Life. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born 
 in 1772, at Ottery St. Mary, a Devonshire village. His 
 father was an eccentric and unworldly country parson. Of 
 Coleridge's childhood we have some vivid glimpses, one in 
 particular which shows him "slashing with a stick at rows 
 of nettles representing the Seven Champions of Christen- 
 dom." He tells us that he "never thought or spoke as a 
 child," and his precocity made him solitary in the midst of 
 his boisterous brothers. At nine he became a "blue-coat 
 boy" at Christ's Hospital, an ancient charity school in the 
 heart of London. One of his fellow-pupils was Charles 
 Lamb, who has left us a picture of the school and of Cole- 
 ridge, in his essay " Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years 
 Ago." Lamb tells us that casual visitors in the halls of the 
 school would stop spell-bound to listen while Coleridge 
 talked or recited Greek hexameters, and "the walls of old 
 Greyfriars re-echoed the accents of the inspired charity 
 boy." At nineteen he entered Cambridge. With his friend 
 Robert Southey, then a student at Oxford, he took an excited 
 share in the enthusiasm for social progress which the French 
 Revolution had kindled. Before long, anxiety over some 
 college debts drove him to London, where he enlisted as a 
 cavalry soldier, and spent two wretched months in barracks. 
 Fortunately, he was a favorite with his mess-mates, who 
 groomed and saddled his horse in return for the charming 
 letters which he wrote home for them. A Latin lament 
 scribbled under his saddle-peg by "Private Cumberback" 
 (as he signed himself in humorous allusion to his poor horse- 
 manship) gained him his release. The incident shows his 
 impulsiveness and human charm, as well as the weakness of 
 will which was to be so fatal to him. 
 
 After leaving college, Coleridge and Southey evolved a 
 radiant scheme for establishing a Utopian community across 
 the ocean, on the banks of the Susquehanna. There, in a 
 virgin Paradise, they and their fellow colonists were to spend 
 the few hours of daily toil necessary to make the wilderness
 
 244 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 bloom as a rose, and to devote the rest of their time to higher 
 things. Southey, whose nature was at bottom very prac- 
 tical, soon abandoned this grand scheme of "Pantisocracy," 
 and his desertion alienated for a time Coleridge's friendship. 
 
 In 1 795 Coleridge married Miss Sarah Fricker, sister of the 
 girl who soon after became Southey's wife. To support his 
 new household Coleridge wrote a volume of Juvenile Poems 
 and attempted to eke out the few guineas thus earned, by 
 preaching and lecturing. To get subscribers for a projected 
 periodical, called "The Watchman," he made a tour of the 
 Midland counties, preaching on Sundays "as a tireless vol- 
 unteer in a blue coat and white waistcoat," holding his hear- 
 ers spell-bound with that marvellous eloquence for which he 
 was already famous. A part of his early married life was 
 spent in the village of Clevedon, in a little rose-covered cot- 
 tage by the sea; the time was a happy one for Coleridge, 
 but an ominous sentence or two in his letters show that he 
 had already, in order to escape the pain of neuralgia, begun 
 the fatal habit of opium-taking. 
 
 Friendship of Coleridge and Wordsworth ; " The Ancient 
 Mariner." Early in 1797, Coleridge removed, with his wife 
 and baby, to a tiny cottage in the village of Nether Stowey, in 
 the green Quantock Hills; and a month later they were 
 joined by Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, who took a 
 house near by at Alfoxden. Coleridge was then twenty-five, 
 his brother poet twenty-seven. For both of them the com- 
 panionship was in the highest degree stimulating. In little 
 more than a year Coleridge wrote all the poems which place 
 him among the immortals. This was the year of "Gen- 
 evieve," "The Dark Ladie," " Kubla Khan," "The Ancient 
 Mariner," and the first part of "Christabel" truly, as it has 
 been called, an annus mirabilis, a year of wonders. 
 
 "The Ancient Mariner" was undertaken, singular to say, 
 as a mere "pot-boiler." Coleridge and the Words worths 
 had in mind a little autumn walking tour from Alfoxden 
 over the Quantock Hills to Watchet. To defray the expenses 
 of the trip, some five pounds, they determined to compose 
 together a poem to be sent to the New Monthly Magazine. 
 Coleridge suggested, as a starting point, a dream which had
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 From a painting by Washington Allston
 
 246 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 been related to him by his friend Mr. Cruikshank, a dream 
 "of a skeleton ship, with figures in it." To this Wordsworth 
 added something he had just read in Shelvocke's Voyages^ 
 an account of the great albatrosses, with wings stretching 
 twelve or thirteen feet from tip to tip, which Shelvocke had 
 seen while doubling Cape Horn. Taking a hint from the 
 same account, he suggested that a sailor should kill one of 
 these birds, and that the guardian spirits of the region should 
 take vengeance on the murderer. Wordsworth also sug- 
 gested the navigation of the ship by the dead men. 
 
 Coleridge seized eagerly upon all these hints, and began 
 to weave them into unity. The composition of the poem 
 began at once, the two poets co-operating line by line. But 
 they had not progressed far before their styles and man- 
 ners of thought were seen to be so divergent that the idea 
 of joint composition had to be abandoned. As "The An- 
 cient Mariner" bade fair to take on dimensions too large 
 to allow it to be put to the modest use originally intended, it 
 was proposed to make a little volume by adding to it other 
 poems which the friends had in manuscript, or were con- 
 templating. In the course of the following year, the volume 
 appeared, under the title Lyrical Ballads. 
 
 The "Lyrical Ballads." The ideal which underlay this 
 famous little volume was that of fidelity to nature, and the 
 use of the least artificial means possible in reproducing 
 nature. But nature, rightly conceived, is two-sided. There 
 is first the world of external fact, the visible world of men 
 and things ; and there is further the inner world of thought 
 and imagination. It was a part of the philosophy which 
 lay back of the Romantic movement, that this inner world 
 was just as "real," just as truly existent, and therefore 
 just as worthy of being talked about, as the outer one, 
 perhaps more so. This double aspect of the Romantic 
 school is illustrated by the contents of the Lyrical Ballads. 
 Wordsworth writes in simple language of simple incidents 
 and simple people, though he does not fail to find a sugges- 
 tion of strangeness and mystery in them as they are seen 
 by the spiritual eye of the poet; in other words, he makes 
 the usual appear strange simply by fastening our gaze in-
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 247 
 
 tently upon it. Coleridge writes of fantastic, supernatural 
 things, but also so simply, with so many concrete and exact 
 details, that the world of imagination into which he leads 
 us seems for the time the only real one. The Lyrical Bal- 
 lads, contained four poems by Coleridge, only a small por- 
 tion of the whole; "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 
 however, has the place of honor at the beginning. 
 
 Coleridge's Later Life. The rest of Coleridge's life, 
 though he wrote a good deal of verse, has .little importance 
 in the history of poetry. He made a trip, in the Wordsworths' 
 company, to Germany, and there became absorbed in the 
 philosophy of Kant. So far as his later life had any definite 
 purpose, it was spent in interpreting this philosophy to his 
 countrymen. He settled at first in the Lake Country, where 
 he shared a house with his brother-in-law, Southey. The 
 dampness of the lake climate brought on his old neuralgic 
 troubles, and as an escape from pain he resorted again to 
 opium. His bondage to the opium habit, made his life a 
 heartrending succession of half-attempts and whole failures. 
 He planned many books, and partly executed a few; but his 
 chief influence was exerted in talk with his friends, and with 
 those young men who, as his reputation for transcendental 
 wisdom increased, resorted to him as to an oracle of hope and 
 faith, in the years which followed the failure of the French 
 Revolution. In 1814 he voluntarily put himself under the 
 care of a London physician, Dr. Gillman. He lived in the 
 doctor's house, at Highgate Hill near London, from this time 
 forth, and gradually shook himself free from his bondage 
 to the drug which had wrecked him, " the most golden genius 
 born in that age." 
 
 Contemporary Glimpses of Coleridge. William Hazlitt, 
 the critic and essayist, who in hi? youth saw and talked with 
 Coleridge, says, "His genius had angelic wings, and fed on 
 manna. He talked on forever, and you wished him to talk 
 on forever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labor 
 and effort, but as if the wings of imagination lifted him off his 
 feet. His voice rolled on the ear like a pealing organ, and 
 its sound alone was the music of thought." Of his appear- 
 ance the same observer says, "His forehead was broad
 
 248 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 and high, as if built of ivory, with large, projecting eyebrows ; 
 and his eyes rolled beneath them like a sea with darkened 
 lustre." Carlyle, who saw him in his later years at Dr. 
 Gillman's, writes: "Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate 
 Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke- 
 tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanities of life's battles. 
 A sublime man, who, alone in those dark days, had saved his 
 crown of spiritual manhood. The practical intellects of the 
 world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a 
 metaphysical dreamer. But to the rising spirits of the young 
 generation, he had this dusky, sublime character ; and sat there 
 as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma." 
 
 Characteristics of Coleridge's Poetry. Coleridge's poetry 
 transports us into a world of strange scenery and of super- 
 natural happenings, illuminated by "a light that never was 
 on sea or land." "Kubla Khan" paints an oriental dream- 
 picture, as splendid and as impalpable as the palaces and 
 plunging rivers and "caverns measureless to man," which 
 we sometimes see lifted for a moment out of a stormy sunset. 
 " Christabel," which seems in its fragmentary form to have 
 been planned as the story of a young girl fallen under the 
 spell of an unearthly demon in woman's shape, moves in a 
 mediaeval atmosphere blended of beauty and horror; a hor- 
 ror poignantly vague, freezing the heart with its suggestion 
 of all that is malign and cruel in the spirit world. "The 
 Ancient Mariner," Coleridge's one finished masterpiece, stands 
 alone in literature for the completeness with which it creates 
 an illusion of reality while dealing with images and events 
 manifestly unreal. Its great pictures of night and morning, 
 of arctic and tropic seas; its melodies of whispering keel 
 and rustling sails, and of dead throats singing spectral carols ; 
 its strange music, richer and more various even than that of 
 "Kubla Khan," though not so grand and spacious these 
 characteristics, to say nothing of the fruitful lesson lying at 
 its heart, makJe "The Ancient Mariner" a poem without an 
 equal in its kind. It is manifestly a dream, but a dream 
 caught in a magic mirror, which holds it spellbound in im- 
 mortal freshness.
 
 William Wordsworth 249 
 
 III. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) 
 
 Wordsworth's Early Years and Education. William 
 Wordsworth was born in 1770, at Cockermouth, in Cumber- 
 land, on the borders of the Lake region in which he was to 
 spend the greater part of his long life, and the scenery of 
 which he was to weave into all his poetry. His family was 
 of ancient Saxon stock, settled at Peniston in Yorkshire 
 probably from before the Norman Conquest. His mother 
 died when the poet was eight years old, and his father 
 five years later, after William had finished his early 
 school-days at Hawkshead, at the other extremity of the 
 Lake country from his birthplace. After he had grown to 
 manhood, Wordsworth wrote, in a long poem called The 
 Prelude, the history of his growth and education. From 
 this "epic of a soul's growth," we learn the influences which 
 moulded his nature, from the time of his earliest conscious 
 experiences to the time when his character was formed and 
 his course decided. Chief among these influences were the 
 mountains, lakes, and streams in the midst of which he was 
 born and reared. His first recollections were of the grassy 
 holms and rocky falls of the Derwent, with Mount Skiddaw, 
 "bronzed with deepest radiance," towering in the eastern 
 sky. At Hawkshead, the place of his schooling, on the banks 
 of Esthwaite Water, he led a life of open-air adventure ; but 
 already there was in nature more for him than for his com- 
 panions. Setting springs for woodcock on the grassy moors, 
 scudding from snare to snare in the night, he felt himself "a 
 trouble to the peace" of the moon and stars; and when he 
 was tempted to take a bird from another's trap he heard low 
 breathings and ghostly footsteps coming after him through 
 the solitary hills. As he clung to the windy face of a cliff, 
 to rob a raven's nest, he felt himself swing loose from the 
 world, suspended in a sky which was " not a sky of earth." As 
 he rowed upon the starlit bosom of Esthwaite Water, the huge 
 peak of Wetherlam seemed to follow him, and visions of "un- 
 known modes of being" frightened his spirit. As he "hissed 
 along the polished ice" in whiter games, he would stop
 
 250 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 suddenly, and feel dizzily the motion of the rolling world. 
 In all this we see the impassioned love of nature, mingled 
 with the sense of some moral and spiritual life behind the 
 face of things, which it was his lifelong task to interpret in 
 poetry. These early days at Hawkshead also made him ac- 
 quainted with the sturdy dalesmen, whose simple life, with 
 its deep primitive joys and sorrows, he was to make his own. 
 In 1787 he entered St. John's College, Cambridge. His 
 college life meant little to him, for his lore was not of a kind 
 that can be learned from books. One of his summer vaca- 
 tions he spent in a walking trip through Switzerland; an- 
 other in revisiting the scenes of his boyhood, taking part in 
 country merry-makings. Once, he tells us, he had danced 
 till morning, and walked home in a glorious dawn. As he 
 walked there came upon him for the first time the full sense 
 of his mission as a poet. 
 
 "My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows 
 Were then made for me; bond unknown to me 
 Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
 A dedicated spirit." 
 
 Wordsworth and the French Revolution. After gradua- 
 tion he spent some time in London. Late in 1791 he went 
 to France, intending to pass the winter at Orleans, learning 
 French. France was then "standing on the top of golden 
 hours" ; the Revolution was in its first stage; the Bastille had 
 fallen, symbol of all the tyranny and injustice of the past, 
 and men stood as in the dawn of a new day, flushed with 
 visions of a world from which "man's inhumanity to man" 
 should be forever banished. Wordsworth passed through 
 Paris, and spent the greater part of the year at Orleans and 
 Blois, returning to Paris late in 1792, when the excesses of 
 the Reign of Terror were already beginning. During his 
 year of residence in France Wordsworth had become a fervid 
 revolutionist. He dimly foresaw the awful anarchy toward 
 which France was drifting, but his confidence was as yet 
 unimpaired. He had wild dreams of throwing in his lot 
 with the revolutionists, and striving for a place of control. His 
 friends in England, seeing no other way to compel him to
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 From a painting by W. Boxall
 
 252 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 return, took the prosaic but effectual course of stopping his 
 remittances of money. He returned to England at the close 
 of 1792. The later course of the revolution induced in him 
 a profound despondency and pessimism. During this crit- 
 ical period, he says, his sister Dorothy's influence kept alive 
 the poet in him, by directing his mind toward the sources of 
 permanent strength and joy, which lie in nature and in human 
 sympathy: 
 
 "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; 
 And humble cares, and delicate fears; 
 A heart, the fountain of sweet tears, 
 And love, and thought, and joy." 
 
 Real Beginning of Wordsworth's Poetical Career. The 
 
 residence of Wordsworth and his sister at Alfoxden, with 
 Coleridge, 1797-1798, marks the true beginning of Words- 
 worth's poetic career; for up to this time, though he had 
 written much, he had not found his genuine voice. In " We 
 are Seven," "Expostulation and Reply," "Lines in .Early 
 Spring," "Tintern Abbey," and other pieces written at this 
 time, the true Wordsworth is apparent. During the winter in 
 Germany which followed, he added to these pieces some of 
 his most characteristic poems, such as "She Dwelt Among 
 the Untrodden Ways," "Three Years She Grew in Sun and 
 Shower," and "The Two April Mornings." 
 
 Wordsworth at Grasmere and at Rydal Mount. On his 
 return, he settled with his sister in a cottage at Grasmere. 
 In 1802 he married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, to whom 
 the poem beginning, "She Was a Phantom of Delight" is 
 addressed. At Grasmere, and afterward at Rydal Mount at 
 the other end of the lake, he lived for fifty years among the 
 Cumberland dalesmen, leading an existence as pastoral and 
 as frugal as theirs, reading little and meditating much, looking 
 with deep, unwearied delight upon the mountains and skies 
 and waters which had fascinated him in boyhood. A legacy 
 of nine hundred pounds from a friend, Raisley Calvert, 
 and later an appointment as distributor of stamps for West- 
 moreland, made him independent, and left virtually his 
 whole time free for the pursuit of poetry. 
 
 Though living apart from the world, he was surrounded
 
 William Wordsworth 253 
 
 by his friends. Southey had made a home a few miles over 
 the hills, at Keswick. De Quincey, the essayist, took the 
 Wordsworth cottage at Grasmere, after the poet's removal 
 to Rydal Mount. Coleridge "came to and fro in those 
 fruitless, unhappy wanderings which consumed a life that 
 once promised to be so rich in blessings and in glory." As 
 Wordsworth's reputation grew, many pilgrims found their 
 way to his quiet retreat.- Sir Walter Scott and his young 
 wife visited him, and in later years (1833) Emerson came 
 from New England, to talk with one of the five great men 
 whom he had crossed the Atlantic to see. 
 
 The heights of his poetic achievement are marked succes- 
 sively by such pieces as "Michael" (1800); "The Leech- 
 Gatherer," the sonnets to Milton, to Toussaint L'Ouverture, 
 "It is a Beauteous Evening," and "Westminster Bridge" 
 (1802); "The Solitary Reaper" and "Yarrow Un visited" 
 (1803); the "Ode to Duty," "To a Skylark," and The Pre- 
 lude (1805) ; "The World Is Too Much With Us," and "The 
 Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" (1806); "Song 
 at the Feast of Brougham Castle" (1807), and The Ex- 
 cursion (1814). For many years his poetry met with neglect 
 and ridicule, but he gradually drew to himself the attention 
 and veneration of the best minds. The crowd turned aside 
 to follow first Scott, then Byron, and then Tennyson ; but 
 those whose suffrages were of most value rallied in increasing 
 numbers about the "good old steel-gray figure" of the Cum- 
 berland poet; and before his death in 1850, he enjoyed a late 
 but sure renown. 
 
 Wordsworth as Portrayed by Emerson and Carlyle. 
 Emerson has left us a delightful account of his meeting with 
 Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. The white-haired, grey-clad 
 poet led his visitor out into the garden, and showed him the 
 gravel walk where thousands of his lines had been composed. 
 Then, without solicitation; he offered to recite three sonnets 
 which he had just written. "He recollected himself for a 
 few moments," continues Emerson, "and then stood forth 
 and repeated, one after another, the three entire sonnets with 
 great animation. This recitation was so unlocked for and sur- 
 prising he, the old Wordsworth, standing apart and reciting
 
 254 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 to me in a garden walk like a school-boy declaiming that 
 I was at first near to laugh ; but recollecting myself, that I 
 had come thus far to see a poet, and here he was chanting 
 poems to me, I saw that he was right and I was wrong, and 
 gladly gave myself up to him." Beside this we may well 
 place Carlyle's portrait of him, as he appeared ten years 
 before his death. "A fine, wholesome rusticity, fresh as 
 his mountain breezes, sat well on the stalwart veteran. His 
 face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; 
 the look of it not bland or benevolent, so much as close, 
 impregnable, and hard. He was large-boned, lean, but 
 still firm-knit, tall, and strong-looking when he stood ; a right 
 good old steel-grey figure, with a fine rustic simplicity and 
 dignity about him and a veracious strength looking through 
 him." 
 
 The Nature-Poetry of Wordsworth. Wordsworth was 
 gifted with an eye and an ear marvellously sensitive to those 
 elusive impressions which most persons pass by without 
 noticing at all. This sensibility was increased by a long life 
 spent in the country, in a region full of charm and even of 
 grandeur. His poetry is full of exquisitely noted sights and 
 sounds the shadow of the daisy on the stone, the mist which 
 follows the hare as she runs across a rain-drenched moor, the 
 echo of the cuckoo's voice, the varying noise of waters, and the 
 many voices of the wind. "To read one of his longer pastoral 
 poems for the first time," it has been said, "is like a day 
 spent in a new country." And all these sights and sounds 
 are given with absolute truthfulness to the fact. Wordsworth 
 writes "with his eye on the object," content to portray what 
 he sees. He learned from Burns that "verse can build a 
 princely throne on humble truth"; and everywhere he gives 
 an impression of unquestioning faithfulness to the fact which 
 his senses have perceived. It follows that the greater part 
 of his nature-studies are in a low key. Especially noteworthy 
 is the predominance in Wordsworth of broad elementary 
 impressions mere darkness and light, the silence of the 
 sky, the moon "looking round her when the heavens are 
 bare," the twilight with its one star, the breathlessness of the 
 evening sea, the lonesomeness of upland fields, the "sleep
 
 William Wordsworth 255 
 
 that is among the lonely hills." It is the keenness of Words- 
 worth's sensibility to nature, and his quiet, religious accept- 
 ance of her as she is, and his unwearied delight in her 
 broadest and simplest phases, which together make him the 
 first of her poets. 
 
 Wordsworth's Treatment of Human Nature. This same 
 sobriety and truth of tone, this same reverent regard for the 
 great commonplaces of life, characterize also Wordsworth's 
 treatment of human nature. He deals with the broad ele- 
 mentary passions, the everyday affections, occupations, and 
 duties, in a state of society where man is simplest and nearest 
 to the soil. In T nany of his best poems, indeed, the human 
 beings whom he pictures seem almost a part of the landscape, 
 an emanation from nature herself, like the trees or the rocks. 
 The figure of the Leech-gatherer on the moor seems as much 
 a part of the natural landscape as the pool by which he stands. 
 The woman who speaks to the poet in "Stepping Westward" 
 seems a part of the sunset, so blended is she with the scene. 
 In "The Highland Reaper" the singing of the girl comes 
 out of the heart of the day, like the spirit of ancestral Scotland 
 telling over its "old unhappy far-oil things, and battles long 
 ago"; she is hardly more of a human personality than the 
 cuckoo or the nightingale to which the poet compares her 
 voice. Even when he looks closer at his human characters, 
 and shows us their passions and the accidents of their life, 
 they still partake of the simplicity and breadth of external 
 nature. The story of Margaret, in the first book of The 
 Prelude, illustrates this, as does in a stih 1 better way " Mich- 
 ael," the greatest example of Wordsworth's power to give to 
 the simple tragedies of the peasant world a kind of biblical 
 majesty. He is the poet of that joy and sorrow which is 
 "in widest commonalty spread." He looks to find the true 
 significance of life on its lower levels. The best praise he 
 can give his own wife is that she is a "being breathing 
 thoughtful breath," in whose countenance meet sweet house- 
 hold records and promises. For Milton his best praise is 
 that, although his "soul was like a star and dwelt apart," 
 yet it laid upon itself "the lowliest duties" along "life's 
 common way."
 
 256 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Wordsworth's Mysticism: "Tintern Abbey." Yet nature 
 is for Wordsworth, even when he portrays her external aspect 
 with the most naked truth, never merely a physical fact; 
 nor has man, even when most blended in with her external 
 features, merely a physical relation to her. On the contrary, 
 nature is everywhere full of spiritual meaning, and speaks 
 mysteriously to the spirit in man, working upon him by the 
 power of kinship and mutual understanding. Perhaps the 
 most complete expression of this aspect of his thought is 
 "Tintern Abbey," which appeared in the Lyrical Ballads. 
 "Tintern Abbey" was written during a walking tour which 
 Wordsworth took in 1798, in company with his sister, 
 through a country familiar to him in earlier years. The 
 well-remembered scenery of the river Wye calls up before his 
 musing thought the picture of his boyhood. He shows how 
 the influences of nature, acting upon the plastic soul of youth, 
 bear fruit in later life, in "sensations sweet felt in the blood 
 and felt along the heart," and "little nameless unremembered 
 acts of kindness and of love"; and how they lift the spirit 
 which remembers them, to 
 
 " that blessed mood 
 In which the burden of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world 
 Is lightened . . . 
 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
 And he suggests an explanation for this strange power which 
 nature has to soothe and ennoble the human soul, namely, 
 that throughout nature there is diffused the active spirit of 
 God: 
 
 " Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
 A. motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 
 And rolls through all things."
 
 William Wordsworth 257 
 
 In many noble poems Wordsworth developed the three themes 
 here given out: the eternal beauty of nature, which waits 
 everywhere about us "to haunt, to startle, and waylay"; the 
 power of that beauty to heal, gladden, and fortify whoever 
 gives it welcome; and the mystic source of this power, the 
 spirit of God, hidden yet apparent in all the visible creation. 
 Perhaps the most exquisite expression he has given to the 
 idea of nature's formative power upon the soul, and through 
 the soul upon the body of man, is the poem beginning "Three 
 Years She Grew in Sun and Shower." 
 
 " Ode on the Intimations of Immortality." In Words- 
 worth's school-days at Hawkshead, the world would some- 
 times, he tells us, seem suddenly to dissolve, and he would 
 fall into an abyss of idealism from which he had to bring 
 himself back to reality by grasping at the wall by the roadside, 
 or by stooping to pick up a stone. This ideal habit of mind, 
 sobered and strengthened by reflection, gives to his poetry a 
 peculiarly stimulating character. In reading him, we never 
 know when the actual landscape and the simple human story 
 will widen out suddenly into some vaster theme, looking 
 beyond space and time; so that he awakens in us a kind 
 of apprehension or expectancy which forces us to look be- 
 low the surface of his simplest poem, and to be on the alert 
 for a meaning deeper than its primary one. His greatest 
 poem, the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," is also 
 the one in which speculation is the boldest. In this wonderful 
 ode, which Emerson called the "high- water mark of poetry 
 in the nineteenth century," the poet looks back with passion- 
 ate regret to the lost radiance of his childhood, and tries to 
 connect childhood reassuringly not only with manhood and 
 old age, but also with a previous existence, whence it brings 
 its light of innocence and joy. The poem is a product of 
 that majestic kind of imagination which transcends space and 
 time, and makes 
 
 "Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the eternal silence."
 
 258 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 IV. OTHER ROMANTIC POETS OF THE FIRST GROUP.* 
 SOUTHEY AND SCOTT 
 
 Southey. It has long been the custom to associate with 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, to form the triad of "Lake 
 poets," the name of Robert Southey, Coleridge's colleague 
 in the youthful scheme of pantisocracy. Southey was a man 
 of amiable and nobly upright character, and of unwearied 
 industry; he had a pure-hearted passion for literature, and 
 an unfaltering belief in his own mission. He wrote several 
 very long and ambitious romantic poems, of which The Curse 
 of Kehama is perhaps the best ; and many prose works, among 
 which his Life of Nelson holds a worthy place in literature as 
 a model of succinct and vivid biography. Some of his short 
 poems have an assured place with posterity, especially his 
 verses "To My Books," in which his devotion to the literary 
 life finds classic expression. But his long poems have lost 
 most of their interest, and he holds his place in the Lake triad 
 less by poetic gift than by personal association. 
 
 Scott's Career as a Poet. The interest in the Middle 
 Ages and the storied past, which we have traced through 
 Gray, Chatterton, and Ossian, culminated in the works of 
 Sir Walter Scott. Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771; 
 his father was a lawyer, but was descended from a vigor- 
 ous and war-like border clan. Scott developed early a 
 passion for the ballad minstrelsy of his land ; and he spent 
 many days of his youth roaming over the country, gather- 
 ing ballads and scraps of ballads from the lips of Low- 
 land peasants. His collection was published under the title 
 Border Minstrelsy. Scott wrote very little original poetry 
 until his thirty- fourth year. In 1805 appeared The Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel, in which a thread of "gothic" super- 
 stition is woven into a tale of Scotch border life in the 
 Middle Ages. This was followed in 1808 by Marmion. 
 Marmion exhibited in much greater measure the brilliant 
 descriptive color, the swift and powerful narrative movement, 
 and the ringing, energetic music, which had made the "Lay" 
 instantly popular; and it showed a great advance over the
 
 Scott's Poetry 259 
 
 earlier poem in life-likeness and breadth. Scarcely more 
 than a year later appeared The Lady of the Lake, a story 
 softer and more idyllic than Marmion, yet not lacking in wild 
 and stirring episodes; in it Scott came far nearer than he 
 had done in his earlier poems, to the broad imaginative hand- 
 ling of mediaeval Scotch life which he afterward gave in his 
 prose romances. 
 
 Qualities of Scott's Poetry. These three poems, present- 
 ing many of the' new romantic motives in popular and 
 attractive form, were greeted with delight. The diction em- 
 ployed in them was fresh, but not, like the language of Cole- 
 ridge and Wordsworth, so startlingly novel as a literary me- 
 dium that it repelled the unaccustomed ear. The metre was 
 strong and buoyant, appealing powerfully to a public weary 
 of the monotonous couplets of the preceding age, but unable 
 to appreciate the delicate melodies of the "Songs of Inno- 
 cence and Experience" and the "Lyrical Ballads." The 
 wild scenery, brightly and firmly painted, the character de- 
 lineation, picturesque and broad; and the vigorous sweep of 
 the story all contributed to give these stirring verse-tales a 
 popularity which they have never lost. Scott himself de- 
 scribed the peculiar excellence of his poetry truly enough, 
 though with characteristic modesty, as consisting in a "hur- 
 ried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, 
 and young people of bold and active disposition." 
 
 Scott's metrical tales did much to win the battle for ro- 
 mantic poetry. He was, however, not much in earnest as a 
 poet ; and when the public turned to the more highly colored 
 verse-tales of Byron, Scott cheerfully resigned his place to 
 the younger man, and began his far greater work in prose.* 
 
 First and Second Poetic Groups Contrasted. The group 
 of poets who came to manhood when the French Revolution 
 was at its height, reacted during the Napoleonic wars into 
 settled conservatism. The two poets whom we now ap- 
 proach, Byron and Shelley, took up the torch of revolution 
 which had been kindled in France during their childhood, 
 and carried it flaming into new regions of thought and feeling. 
 
 * (For the discussion of Scott's prose work, and a fuller account of his life, 
 see Chapter XIV.)
 
 260 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 V. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824) 
 
 Byron's Life. George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in 
 1788, of a family of noblemen notorious for their pride and 
 their passionate temper. Their family seat was at Newstead 
 Abbey. They had come to England with the Conqueror, and 
 their names had figured in a score of battle-rolls. The poet's 
 great-uncle had been forced to flee from society, after being 
 convicted of manslaughter. The poet's father, Captain John 
 Byron, was a rake and spendthrift, who deserted his wife after 
 the birth of their son ; and the mother to whose care Byron 
 was left was a woman of weak and violent disposition. With 
 these antecedents and under these influences, it is not strange 
 that the boy grew up proud, sullen, and reckless. He was of 
 extraordinary physical beauty, and a lameness of one foot 
 added to this a touch of pathos. Personal fascination was 
 his from the first. He mastered his little world of school- 
 fellows at Harrow with the same enthralling power of person- 
 ality which later took captive the imagination of Europe. His 
 first volume of poems, Hours of Idleness (1807), was faithful 
 to the school of Pope, a poet for whom Byron throughout 
 his life professed an unswerving admiration. The immature 
 little book was mercilessly ridiculed in the Edinburgh Review. 
 Byron nursed his revenge, and in 1809, after he had taken 
 his hereditary seat in the House of Lords, he published a 
 vigorous onslaught upon his critics, entitled English Bards 
 and Scotch Reviewers. It is significant that his first note- 
 worthy performance should have been in a satiric vein, and 
 occasioned by a blow to his personal pride. 
 
 Two years later the young poet set off upon his travels. 
 Not content with the conventional "grand tour," he pushed 
 on into Turkey, Greece, and the islands of the ^Egean ; shar- 
 ing the hospitality of robber chieftains, rescuing distressed 
 beauties from the harem, and doing many other romantic 
 things. The public, at any rate, was eager to ascribe all 
 these adventures to him, incited thereto by the lurid verse- 
 romances, The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814), and others, 
 which he poured out with prodigal swiftness after his return
 
 LORD BYRON 
 From a painting by J. Phillips, R. A.
 
 262 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 to England in 1812. These verse- tales were preceded, how- 
 ever, by the first two cantos of Childe Harold, the publication 
 of which brought instant applause. " I awoke one morn- 
 ing," says Byron, " and found myself famous." 
 
 Byron's marriage to Miss Milbanke, in 1815, was followed a 
 year later by a separation from his wife and by his final de- 
 parture from his native country. The next years he spent 
 in Switzerland and Italy, part of the time in company with 
 Shelley. To this period belong his most important works, 
 the later cantos of Childe Harold (1816-1818), the dramas 
 Manfred (1817) and Cain (1821), and his satiric masterpiece, 
 Don Juan (1819-1824). The romance of his life was crowned 
 by a romantic and generous death. In 1824 he went to 
 Greece, to join the revolutionary forces gathered to liberate 
 that country from the tyranny of the Sultan. He was given 
 command of an expedition against the Turkish stronghold 
 of Lepanto, but was seized with fever in the swamps of 
 Missolonghi, and died before he had had time to prove his 
 ability in the field. On his death-bed he imagined himself, 
 in his delirium, at the head of his Suliote troops, leading an 
 attack upon Lepanto, and cried, " Forward, forward, follow 
 me!" 
 
 Byron's Eastern Tales and Dramas. In his Eastern tales 
 and his dramas, Byron presents under many names one 
 hero himself, or rather an exaggerated shadow of him- 
 self. The Conrads and Laras of the tales are all imperious 
 and lonely souls in revolt; mysteriously wicked, infernally 
 proud, quixotically generous, and above all melancholy. In 
 Manfred and Cain these crude outlines became imposing 
 silhouettes, thrown out sharply against a back-ground half 
 real and half supernatural. The scene of Manfred is laid in 
 the high Alps, where the hero lives in his castle in gloomy 
 and bitter isolation, communing with unearthly powers, and 
 scornfully working out his dark fate. In the drama of Cain, 
 we follow the earthly rebel and first shedder of human blood, 
 under the guidance of Lucifer, the rebel angel, into Hell and 
 Chaos, where he finds grounds for his hatred of God and 
 man. It was by these plays that Byron earned his title as 
 founder and chief exemplar of the "Satanic school" of
 
 George Gordon, Lord Byron 263 
 
 poetry. They are perhaps the most terrible expression of 
 egoism to be found in our literature. 
 
 Byron as a Descriptive Poet : " Childe Harold." Childe 
 Harold presents the Byronic hero in a softer mood, as a pen- 
 sive wanderer through Europe and the East. In the third 
 and fourth cantos, the scene of which is laid among the lakes 
 and mountain solitudes of Switzerland, the decaying glories 
 of Venice, and the imperial ruins of Rome, the poet's imagi- 
 nation is genuinely kindled, and the passages which celebrate 
 these scenes are among the triumphs of descriptive poetry in 
 our language. Doubtless Shelley's inspiring companionship 
 had much to do with the elevation of mood and style which 
 these later cantos show. Byron paints his pictures in free, 
 bold strokes, and with a pomp of rhetoric well suited to his 
 grandiose subjects. His music, too, is loud and sonorous; 
 without the heartfelt, searching beauty of greater melodists, 
 but with an orchestral sweep and volume which stir the 
 blood. 
 
 Byron as a Satirist: " Don Juan." In Don Juan, how- 
 ever, Byron first found his genuine voice, and it proved to be 
 neither dramatic nor lyric, but satiric. Don Juan is a com- 
 prehensive satire upon modern society. The hero is a Cas- 
 tilian youth, a light-hearted, irresponsible, pagan creature, 
 who wanders through Turkey, Russia, and England, meeting 
 all sorts of adventures, particularly such as exhibit the so- 
 cial corruption which the world attempts to hide under a 
 conventional veneer. The poem was, in effect, a long peal 
 of scornful laughter flung at British cant, at that famous 
 British cant which Byron declared was in his day the 
 main-spring of his countrymen's life, both national and 
 private. 
 
 Byron's Relation to his Age. We cannot hope to under- 
 stand Byron without taking into account the state of England, 
 and of continental Europe, in his day. England, in her 
 struggle against the social chaos which the French revolution 
 threatened, had entrenched herself in conservatism. Her one 
 desire was to preserve her ancient institutions, however false 
 they had become. Her ruling classes, taking advantage of 
 this mood of the people, used it to their own selfish ends.
 
 264 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Hypocrisy, bigotry, misgovernment, and oppression were the 
 order of the day. Against this state of things Byron revolted 
 with all his strength. 
 
 After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the governments 
 of Europe, under the leadership of Metternich, the Austrian 
 prime-minister, entered into a "Holy Alliance" to crush the 
 spirit of democracy, and to hold the continental peoples in 
 much such a bondage as England had voluntarily assumed. 
 The spirit of revolution, however, was still alive, no longer 
 joyous and hopeful, but gloomy and bitter. So long as it had 
 been possible for men to dream of freedom and justice for 
 all mankind, the revolutionary spirit had been social, but 
 when these large dreams were shattered, society became the 
 enemy of the freedom-loving soul. This mood of personal 
 rebellion, in which the individual stands apart in lawless iso- 
 lation, waging dark and hopeless war against a hateful world, 
 is the mood of Byron. His rebellion had in it an element of 
 the theatrical and the spectacular, but at bottom it was terri- 
 bly sincere. All Europe felt its sincerity, and worshipped him 
 as the embodiment of its own unhappy ideal. His fascinating 
 personality, his brilliant, defiant life, the romantic mystery 
 which surrounded him wherever he went, the audacity and 
 energy of his verse, all united to make him the idol of his age. 
 Even his loose-flowing neckerchief, his trick of deranging his 
 hair and leaving his shirt collar unbuttoned, became as signs 
 and portents to his generation. But this Byron-worship, 
 for all its extravagance, was founded upon a real greatness in 
 the man, a greatness which all men felt, from the janitor who 
 kept his rooms at college to Shelley and Goethe. Goethe 
 declared that Byron's personality was the greatest which the 
 world had seen, and he enshrined him in the second part of 
 Faust as Euphorion, the genius of modern poetry. 
 
 Byron in Our Day. Byron's reputation as a poet has 
 now considerably declined. In the first place, we miss in his 
 poetry the pleasure which comes from perfected art; for 
 Byron was a careless and hasty worker. Lara he wrote " while 
 undressing after coming home from balls and masquerades, 
 in the year of revelry, 1814. The Bride was written in iour, 
 the Corsair in ten days." He would not or could not revise.
 
 George Gordon, Lord Byron 265 
 
 "If I miss my first spring," he said, "I go growling back to 
 my jungle." All his poetry is, so to speak, an improvisation. 
 But while it has the defects, it has also the charm of what- 
 ever is impromptu and spontaneous; it has force and fire; at 
 its best, it rushes on in a splendid stream, as if rejoicing in its 
 own unbridled might. 
 
 Another, and a more serious flaw in Byron's work to the 
 reader of to-day, is that we miss in it some of the sincerity 
 which his own age felt. A suspicion of "pose," of empty 
 rhetoric, of false, exaggeration, troubles us. His scorn of 
 his fellow men seems morbid; his constant quarrelling with 
 life, his bitter mockery of society, seem one-sided, even a 
 little childish. To do him justice, we must think ourselves 
 back into the age for which he wrote, and see him struggling 
 against what was really hateful in his world. His life, thus 
 viewed, takes on real heroism ; we recognize that he battled, 
 after all, for society and not against it. We see him, as has 
 been said, engaged in "the struggle which keeps alive, even if 
 it does not save, the soul." 
 
 VI. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) 
 
 Shelley's Early Life. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born just 
 when the eyes of all Europe were fixed in hope and fear upon 
 France, and the "stars fought in their courses" for the tri- 
 umph of a new order. His home contained no elements to 
 control his peculiar temperament. His father was a Whig 
 squire of narrow views; his mother bequeathed to him 
 nothing except her extraordinary beauty. At Eton, among 
 the tyrannies of a great public school, where the "fagging" 
 system was still in force, his sensitive nature was thrown 
 into a fever of rebellion. "I have seen him," wrote a school- 
 fellow, "surrounded, hooted, baited like a maddened bull"; 
 and when thus set upon, the gentle, high-spirited, excitable 
 boy would be seized with a frenzy and paroxysm of rage 
 which frightened even his persecutors. His shyness and 
 strangeness of manner won him the nickname of "Mad 
 Shelley." In the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" he gives 
 a glimpse of his boyhood, when in the awakening spring he
 
 266 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 pursued through the starlit woods " hopes of high talk with 
 the departed dead," and felt, in the midst of the bright 
 season, the shadow of an "awful loveliness" fall upon him. 
 It is no wonder that his schoolmates thought him strange, 
 or that in the judgment of the world he remained "Mad 
 Shelley " to the end of his life. 
 
 He went to Oxford in 1810. Here his closest friend was 
 Thomas Hogg, son of a North-country Tory farmer, and as 
 keen-sighted and shrewd as Shelley was dreamy and idealistic. 
 Hogg has left us a vivid picture of Shelley at Oxford; of his 
 chambers, wildly littered with books, manuscripts, and ap- 
 paratus for scientific experiments; of his favorite sports of 
 skimming stones and sailing paper boats; of his outbursts 
 of enthusiasm over ideas of justice, and of indignation at 
 any sight of cruelty or oppression ; of his rapt search into the 
 mysteries of matter, and his high impassioned discourse con- 
 cerning the deeper mysteries of mind. Together with his 
 friend, Shelley read the French philosophers of the revolu- 
 tionary period, and the two young enthusiasts published 
 their views of religion in a pamphlet entitled "The Neces- 
 sity of Atheism." For this they were expelled, and for a 
 time lived together in London. In August of the same year, 
 1811, Shelley, then nineteen, eloped to Scotland with Harriet 
 Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, and was married in Edinburgh. 
 Then followed a quixotic attempt to Carouse Ireland to seek 
 redress for her national wrongs. The young couple carried 
 on their mission by throwing from the windows of their 
 lodging in Dublin copies of Shelley's "Address to the Irish 
 People," "to every passer-by who seemed likely." They 
 continued the campaign later in Wales, by setting tracts 
 adrift in the sea in sealed bottles, or sending them down the 
 wind in little fire-balloons. The curious mixture in Shelley 
 of the real and the unreal is sharply brought out by the fact 
 that the writings thus fantastically put in circulation are 
 often of grave and simple eloquence, wise in counsel and 
 temperate in tone, and that some of the reforms which they 
 advocate have since been enacted into law.' 
 
 An acquaintance with William Godwin, a revolutionary 
 philosopher and novelist, led Shelley to write Queen Mob,
 
 Photograph, copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 From a painting by Geo. Clint, R. A.
 
 268 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 a crude poem attacking dogmatic religion and the social 
 state. The scandal which it created was soon increased by 
 incidents of another kind. Shelley's marriage with Harriet 
 Westbrook had not only been hasty and rash; it had been 
 founded upon no sympathy of nature or genuine love, but 
 had come from Shelley's impetuous offer to release her from 
 what he deemed the "oppression" of her parents. They 
 separated, and Shelley formed a union with a daughter of 
 William Godwin. This was followed by Harriet Westbrook's 
 suicide, and the departure of Shelley and Mary Godwin 
 from England into lasting exile. The shock of the tragedy 
 dealt a blow to Shelley's already delicate health, and pursued 
 him with dark thoughts in the bright land of Italy, where he 
 spent the short remainder of his life. 
 
 Shelley in Italy. In Italy his powers developed rapidly. 
 At Este, near Venice, where the Shelleys had gone to be near 
 Byron, the beautiful "Lines Written Among the Euganean 
 Hills," were composed, as well as "Julian and Maddalo," a 
 poem in which Byron figures. At Rome, amid the tangle of 
 flowers and vines which at that time covered the mountainous 
 ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, Shelley wrote his lyrical 
 drama, Prometheus Unbound. "The blue sky of Rome," 
 he writes, "and the effect of the vigorous awakening of 
 spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which 
 it drenches the spirit even to intoxication, were the inspira- 
 tion of this drama." 
 
 In the same wonderfully fruitful year he produced The 
 Cenci, a drama intended for the stage, and written in much 
 more simple and every-day language than his other works. 
 This was composed in a villa near Leghorn, in a glazed ter- 
 race at the top of the house, overlooking the Mediterranean 
 and flooded with the sun of the Italian summer, in the 
 almost overpowering intensity of which Shelley's tropic na- 
 ture took a singular, not to say an uncanny, delight. At 
 Florence, where he went in the fall of the same year, the 
 great "Ode to the West Wind" was composed, in a wood 
 beside the Arno, on a day of magnificent storm, when the 
 wind was collecting the vapors which pour down the au- 
 tumnal rains.
 
 Percy Rysshe Shelley x 269 
 
 The next two years, 1820-1821, were spent chiefly at Pisa. 
 Several congenial friends gathered about Shelley. Among 
 them were Lord Byron, Edward Williams, who was- to share 
 Shelley's tragic death, and Captain Trelawney, a picturesque 
 and adventurous character, who has left us in his "Remi- 
 niscences," a record of Shelley's last days as vivid as Hogg's 
 memorial of the poet's life at Oxford. To this happy period 
 belong some of Shelley's most memorable poems ; "The Sen- 
 sitive Plant," suggested, we are told, by the flowers which 
 crowded Mrs. Shelley's sitting-room, exhaling their fragrance 
 to the rich Italian sunlight; "The Witch of Atlas," written 
 after a trip to the pilgrimage-shrine of Mount San Pellegrino ; 
 the "Ode to a Skylark," the most popular of all Shelley's 
 lyrics; and "Epipsychidion," a rhapsody addressed to a 
 beautiful " young Italian girl, Emilia Viviani, whom the 
 Shelleys found immured against her will in a convent. This 
 last poem is remarkable as embodying the poet's conception 
 of love, on its ethereal and mystic side. Speaking of "Epi- 
 psychidion " to a friend, he said, " It is a mystery; as to real 
 flesh and blood, you know I do not deal in these articles;" 
 and he complained that even the elect among his readers, 
 in their interpretation of the poem, reduced him to the level 
 of a servant-girl and her sweetheart. 
 
 " Adonais " : Shelley's Death. Shelley's last days were 
 spent in a bare, high-ceiled, white-washed villa at Lerici, 
 on the Gulf of Spezia. With his friend Williams he had built 
 a sail-boat, christened by Byron the "Don Juan." Shelley 
 was passionately fond of sailing, and much of the poetry 
 of his last months was written while gliding over the flashing 
 blue waters of the gulf. In April of 1821 the news of Keats's 
 death at Rome reached Shelley; and the unfounded belief 
 that it had been accelerated by a sneering review of Endym- 
 ion in the Quarterly led him to write the wonderful threnody 
 "Adonais," in the dead poet's memory. At the close of 
 "Adonais," Shelley sees himself swept out by a tempest upon 
 some vast ocean of the spirit : 
 
 "My spirit's bark is driven 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling thrqng 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given.
 
 270 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! 
 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully afar: 
 
 Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." 
 
 ' In July of 1822, a few months after these prophetic lines 
 were written, Shelley's boat, returning from Legnorn to Lerici, 
 with himself, his friend Williams, and a sailor-boy, was 
 overwhelmed by one of those swift storms which sweep the 
 Mediterranean during the summer heats. Some days later 
 Shelley's body was washed ashore at Viareggio. It was 
 burned by Trelawney and Byron on the beach; the ashes 
 were placed in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near the 
 grave where, a few months before, Keats had been laid. 
 
 Shelley as Seen by his Contemporaries. Shelley's figure 
 was slight and fragile. His wavy brown hair became gray 
 very early in life, but his face remained to the end strikingly 
 smooth, fresh-colored and youthful. "His features," says 
 Hogg, "were not symmetrical, but the effect of the whole was 
 extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, 
 an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that 
 I never met with in any other countenance." His passion 
 for study was so intense that to open a great book for the 
 first time threw him into a violent excitement "his cheeks 
 glowed, his eyes became bright, his whole frame trembled, 
 and his entire attention was immediately swallowed up in 
 the depths of contemplation." Trelawney's account of his 
 first meeting with Shelley brings him vividly before our 
 eyes. " Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin 
 stripling held out both his hands; and although I could 
 hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and art- 
 less face, that it could be the poet, I returned his warm 
 pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he 
 sat down, and listened. I was silent from astonishment. 
 Was it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy could be 
 the veritable monster, at war with all the world? excom- 
 municated by the fathers of the church, deprived of his 
 civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded 
 by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley 271 
 
 sages of our literature as the founder of a 'Satanic school'"? 
 Among the circle of his Pisan friends, the poet was known 
 by two nicknames, "Ariel" and "The Snake." Both are 
 highly descriptive. The first suggests his unearthliness and 
 spirituality ; the second was given him because of his sinuous 
 figure, noiseless, gliding movement, bright eyes, and perhaps, 
 too, because of a slight touch of the uncanny in him. Yet it 
 would leave us with a false impression not to remember that 
 all his friends testify to his manliness, his genuineness, his 
 virile mind. The fibre of his nature was as strong as it was 
 delicate and strange. 
 
 The " Prometheus Unbound." Shelley's most character- 
 istic work, both in thought and style, is Prometheus Un- 
 bound. The subject was suggested by a lost drama of 
 ^schylus, in which Prometheus, the heroic friend and lover 
 of mankind, was unchained from a bleak precipice where 
 the tyrant Zeus had hung him. In Shelley's treatment Pro- 
 metheus represents, not a superhuman helper of mankind, 
 but Mankind itself, heroic, just, gentle, sacredly thirsting 
 after liberty and spiritual gladness, but chained and tortured 
 by the ruler of Heaven. In the fulness of time Demogorgon 
 (Necessity) hurls the tyrant from his throne ; and Prometheus, 
 amid the songs of Earth and the Moon, is united to Asia, 
 the spirit of love in nature. Here as elsewhere, Shelley 
 shows himself a child of the French Revolution, in believing 
 that it is only some external tyranny the might of priests 
 and kings, the weight of " custom," the dark dreams of super- 
 stition which keeps mankind from rising to his ideal stature. 
 But if the philosophy of Prometheus Unbound is immature, 
 and tinged with the misconceptions of the time, the nobility 
 of its mood, the heroic enthusiasm which it voices, make it 
 eternally inspiring. And for its spirit of sacred passion the 
 verse of the poem is a glorious vesture. The unearthly beauty 
 of its imagery, the keen ethereal music of its songs and 
 choruses, make this not only Shelley's highest achievement, 
 but a fixed star in the firmament of poetry. 
 
 Shelley as a Lyric Poet. It is in its lyrics that Prometheu- 
 reaches its greatest altitudes, for Shelley's genius was essen- 
 tially lyrical. In all his best songs and odes, the words
 
 272 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 seem to be moved into their places in response to some 
 hidden tune, wayward and strange in its movement, but 
 always rounding into a perfect whole. Such a poem as that 
 beginning "Swiftly Walk Over the Western Wave" obeys a 
 higher law than that of regularity, and with all its way- 
 wardness it is as perfect in shape as a flower. The rhythmical 
 structure of the "West Wind" should be studied as an ex- 
 ample of Shelley's power to make the movement of verse 
 embody its mood. In this ode, the impetuous sweep and 
 tireless overflow of the terza rima* ending after each twelfth 
 line in a couplet, suggest with wonderful truth the streaming 
 and volleying of the wind, interrupted now and then by a 
 sudden lull. Likewise in the "Skylark," the fluttering lift 
 of the bird's movement, the airy ecstasy and rippling gush 
 of its song, are subtly mirrored in the rhythm. 
 
 Shelley's Myth -making Power; His "Unreality." Another 
 main peculiarity of Shelley as a poet is what may be called his 
 "myth-making" power. His poetry is full of "personifica- 
 tions" which, although in origin not different from those 
 which fill eighteenth-century poetry with dead abstractions 
 like "smiling Hope" and "ruddy Cheer," are imagined with 
 such power that they become real spiritual presences, inspir- 
 ing wonder and awe. Such are the " Spirits of the Hours" in 
 Prometheus Unbound, such is the spirit of the west wind in the 
 ode just mentioned, the latter a sublime piece of myth-making. 
 It is in " Adonais," however, that this quality is best exhibited. 
 To mourn over the dead body of Keats there gather Splendors 
 and Glooms, grief-clad Morning and wailing Spring, desolate 
 Hours, winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, and the 
 lovely dreams which were the exhalation of the poet's spirit 
 in life. 
 
 Shelley deals less with actualities than does any other 
 English poet. His imagery is that of a dream world, peopled 
 by ethereal forms and bathed in prismatic light. He is at 
 the other pole from Wordsworth's homeliness and large ac- 
 ceptance of nature as she is. Hence an air of unreality rests 
 over Shelley's work, an unreality made more conspicuous by 
 his unpractical theories of conduct and of society. Matthew 
 
 * Ten-syllable lines rhyming aba, cbc, dcd, etc.
 
 John Keats 273 
 
 Arnold called him " a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating 
 in the void his luminous wings in vain." But beauty such 
 as Shelley's verse embodies cannot be ineffectual; and his 
 burning plea for freedom, for justice, and for loving-kindness, 
 has never ceased to be potent in the deepening earnestness 
 of this century's search after social betterment. 
 
 VII. JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) 
 
 Keats's Early Life and Poetry. John Keats was born in 
 Finsbury, London, in 1795. His parentage was humble : his 
 father had been head hostler in a livery stable, had married 
 the daughter of his employer and succeeded to the business. 
 At first the family lived over the stable, but as their affairs 
 prospered they removed to a house in the neighborhood. 
 Keats and his two younger brothers were sent to a good school, 
 kept by the father of Charles Cowden Clark, the poet's inti- 
 mate friend throughout life. As a schoolboy Keats was 
 a spirited, pugnacious lad, a favorite with all for his "terrier 
 courage," as well as for his " high-mindedness, his utter un- 
 consciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his gener- 
 osity." A little later his impulsiveness and animal spirits 
 turned into a headlong interest in books, which he devoured 
 in season and out of season. He took up "for fun" the task 
 of translating the entire JEneid into prose. His father had 
 died when the boy was ten years old ; on the death of his 
 mother he was removed from school, at fifteen, and appren- 
 ticed to a surgeon at Edmonton, for a term of five years. He 
 was released a year before this term was concluded, and went 
 up to London to study in the hospitals, and to pass his ex- 
 amination for a surgeon's license. But his growing passion 
 for poetry distracted him from his profession. His last 
 operation was the opening of a man's temporal artery. "I 
 did it," he told a friend, "with the utmost nicety; but reflect- 
 ing on what passed through my mind at the time, my dexter- 
 ity seemed a miracle, and I never took up the lancet again." 
 An acquaintanceship with Leigh Hunt opened up to him a 
 circle of friends where his dawning talents found recognition. 
 The circle included Haydon, the painter, who gave the poet
 
 274 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 his first introduction to Greek art. Hunt turned his atten- 
 tion to the Elizabethans, to Milton, and to the great Italian 
 poets. In these newly discovered glories of literature Keats 
 revelled to intoxication. We are told that, in company with 
 Charles Cowden Clark, he sat up one whole night reading 
 Chapman's Homer; the next morning Keats sent his friend 
 the magnificent sonnet," On First Looking into Chapman's 
 Homer," by far the finest thing which had yet come from 
 his pen. In 1817, a year after he gave up surgery, he pub- 
 lished a little volume containing, besides this sonnet, a num- 
 ber of other early poems. The most interesting of these 
 juvenile pieces is the one beginning, " I Stood Tiptoe Upon a 
 Little Hill," which shows that his feeling for nature was 
 already exquisite, and his observation keen ; and " Sleep and 
 Poetry," where his young devotion to his art is beautifully 
 apparent. 
 
 "Endymion." After the publication of his first volume 
 of poems, Keats went to the Isle of Wight, and later to Mar- 
 gate on the seashore. He writes from there that he "thinks 
 so much about poetry, and so long togethei, that he cannot get 
 to sleep at night," and is "in continual burning of thought." 
 By this time he was deep in his first long poem, Endymion, 
 which tells the story of the Latmian shepherd beloved by 
 the moon-goddess. Endymion was published in 1818. The 
 opening passage of the poem, the Hymn to Pan, and many 
 other lines and short passages, are worthy of the Keats 
 that was to be ; but as a whole Endymion is chaotic, and too 
 full of ornament. Nobody knew this better than Keats 
 himself, as is testified to both by his letters and by the proudly 
 humble preface in which he describes the poem as a "fever- 
 ish attempt rather than a deed accomplished," and hopes 
 that "while.it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting 
 myself for verses fit to live." This preface should have 
 disarmed the most unfriendly of critics, but it did not. The 
 Quarterly printed a sneering review, and Blackwood's rudely 
 ordered him "back to the shop, Mr. John, back to plasters, 
 pills, and ointment-boxes!" 
 
 Keats 's Last Volume; His Death. To what purpose 
 Keats " plotted," the wonderful volume published two years
 
 Thotograph, copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 From a painting by Joseph Seven
 
 276 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 later, in 1820, shows. It was entitled Lamia, Isabella, The 
 Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems; besides the pieces 
 named, it contained the great odes, " On Melancholy," " On 
 a Grecian Urn," "To Psyche," and "To a Nightingale," 
 and the heroic fragment, "Hyperion." Two years had done 
 wonders in deepening and strengthening his gift. During 
 these two years he had had experience of death, in the loss of 
 his beloved brother Tom, by consumption ; he had met Fanny 
 Brawne, and conceived for her a consuming and hopeless 
 love. The funds which he had inherited were all but ex- 
 hausted, and he was confronted with poverty. His health 
 began to fail; the disease which had carried off his brother 
 progressed with dreadful rapidity in his highly-strung phy- 
 sique. To Shelley, who had invited him to stay at Pisa, he 
 wrote in the summer of 1820, "There is no doubt that an Eng- 
 lish winter would put an end to me, and do so in a lingering 
 and hateful manner." In September, under the care of his 
 generous friend, the artist Joseph Severn, he took passage for 
 Naples. While detained by contrary winds off the English 
 coast he wrote his last sonnet, the beautiful one beginning 
 "Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art," with its 
 touching veiled tribute to Fanny Brawne, whom he was not to 
 see again. The poet's eyes were already darkening when 
 he reached Rome. In February of 1821, in a house over- 
 looking the Piazza di Spagna, he died, and was buried in the 
 Protestant cemetery by the Aurelian Wall, where Shelley's 
 ashes were soon to be laid. On his tomb are carved, accord- 
 ing to his own request, the words, "Here lies one whose name 
 was writ in water." In a hopefuller time and in a mood of 
 noble simplicity, he had said, "I think I shall be among the 
 English poets after my death." 
 
 Keats as a Man. Keats's appearance is thus summed-up 
 by one of his later biographers, from the many descriptions 
 left us by his friends: "A small, handsome, ardent looking 
 youth the stature little over five feet; the figure compact 
 and well-turned, with the neck thrust eagerly forward, carry- 
 ing a strong and shapely head set off by thickly clustering 
 gold-brown hair ; the features powerful, finished, and mobile ; 
 the mouth rich and wide x with an expression at once combat-
 
 John Keats 277 
 
 ive and sensitive in the extreme ; the forehead not high, but 
 broad and strong; the eyebrows nobly arched, and eyes 
 hazel-brown, liquid-flashing, visibly inspired 'an eye that 
 had an inward look, perfectly divine, like a Delphian priestess 
 who saw visions.' " Of his impulsive generosity of nature 
 all his friends have left warm testimony. "He was the sin- 
 cerest friend," says one, "the most lovable associate, the 
 deepest listener to the griefs and distresses of all around him, 
 that ever lived." 
 
 Although the body of Keats's work lies remote from every- 
 day human interest, it is a serious mistake to think of him as 
 indifferent to human affairs, or in any sense effeminate. 
 His wonderful letters, with their rollicking fun, their quick 
 human sympathy, their eager ponderings upon life and clear 
 insight into many of its dark places, show a warm and most 
 vital nature. Through many of his later poems, especially 
 the great odes, there breathes a poignant human undertone, 
 which suggests that if he had lived he might have turned 
 more and more to themes of common human experience. 
 Dying as he did at twenty-five, after only three or four 
 years of opportunity, he yet left behind him a body of 
 poetry which has had a greater influence than any other 
 upon subsequent verse. From the youthful work of Tenny- 
 son and Browning down to the present day, the poetry of the 
 Victorian age has been deeply affected by Keats's example. 
 
 Qualities of Keats's Poetry. The essential quality of 
 Keats as a poet is his sensitiveness to beauty, and the single- 
 ness of aim with which he seeks for " the principle of beauty 
 in all things." He worships beauty for beauty's sake, with 
 the unreasoning rapture of a lover or a devotee. In his 
 first volume he tells of the "dizzy pain" which the sight of 
 the Elgin marbles gave him, of the "indescribable feud" 
 which they "brought round his heart." He opens his second 
 volume with the memorable line, "A thing of beauty is a 
 joy forever"; and in his last volume, at the close of the ode 
 "On a Grecian Urn," he declares that beauty is one with 
 truth. 
 
 It is this passion for beauty, working through a very deli- 
 cate and powerful temperament, which gives to Keats's poetry
 
 278 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 its ricliness, and which makes it play magically upon all the 
 senses of the reader. The pure glow of his color reminds us 
 of the great Italian painters ; and the music of his best verse 
 has a wonderful mellowness and depth, as if blown softly 
 through golden trumpets. From the first, his poetry has 
 extraordinary freshness, energy, gusto. His use of words 
 is, even in his earliest volume, wonderfully fresh. He re- 
 vived old words, coined new ones, and put current ones to 
 a new service, with a confidence and success unequalled by 
 any other English poets except Chaucer, Shakespeare, and 
 Spenser. 
 
 The sense of form, which is so conspicuous in Keats's 
 later work, was a matter of growth with him. Endymion is 
 formless, a labyrinth of flowery paths which lead nowhere. 
 But the great odes, especially the "Nightingale" and the 
 "Grecian Urn," and the later narrative poems, the "Eve of 
 St. Agnes" and "Lamia," have a wonderful perfection of 
 form, a subordination of part to part in the building up of a 
 beautiful whole, which is the sign of the master-workman. 
 This is particularly true of " St. Agnes' Eve," that latest and 
 perhaps most perfect flower of the old Spenserian tree. The 
 story of Madeline's dream on the haunted eve, of its magical 
 fulfilment through young Porphyro's coming, and of their 
 flight from the castle, is set in a framework of storm and cold, 
 of dreary penance and spectral old age, of barbarous revelry 
 and rude primeval passion, which by a series of subtle and 
 thrilling contrasts marvellously heightens the warm and ten- 
 der radiance of the central picture; then, when the illusion 
 of reality is at the height, the whole thing is thrown back into 
 the dim and doubtful past by the words 
 
 "And they are gone; aye, ages long ago 
 These lovers fled away into the storm." 
 
 Keats's strength, which we see in "The Eve of St. Agnes," 
 "Lamia," and the Odes, working in the service of perfect 
 grace, impelled him in Hyper'.on to attempt a theme of 
 the largest epic kind, the overthrow of the old Titan, sun- 
 deity Hyperion by the new sun-god Apollo. The subject
 
 The Romantic Essayists 279 
 
 proved too large for his undeveloped powers, and he threw 
 it aside, on the ground that there were "too many Miltonic 
 inversions in it." Probably the deeper reason was that he 
 felt as yet unequal to the task of giving form to his mighty 
 subject, and his artistic sense would no longer permit him 
 to be content with formlessness. As the poem stands it is 
 a superb fragment, an august portal to a temple which will 
 never be built. 
 
 VIII. THE ROMANTIC ESSAYISTS 
 
 Lamb and De Quincey. The leading exponents of the new 
 romantic school of criticism were Charles Lamb and Thomas 
 De Quincey. Lamb was a pioneer in the Elizabethan re- 
 vival, and De Quincey was one of the earliest champions of 
 the Lake school of poetry. Both of these writers united 
 the criticism of literature with the criticism of life, and it is 
 in the latter province that their most important work was 
 done. 
 
 Life of Lamb ; His Early Critical Work. Charles Lamb 
 was born in London in 1775, and was brought up within the 
 precincts of the ancient law-courts, his father being a servant 
 to an advocate of the Inner Temple. From the cloisters of 
 the Temple he was sent to the cloisters of Christ's Hospital, 
 where he had for a classmate Coleridge, his lifelong friend.* 
 At seventeen he became a clerk in the India House, and here 
 he spent the working hours of the next thirty-three years, 
 until he was retired on a pension in 1825.! His lifelong 
 devotion to his sister Mary, upon whom rested an hereditary 
 taint of insanity, has done almost as much as the sweetness 
 and gentle humor of his writings to endear his name. He 
 died in 1834, his sister outliving him and gradually sinking 
 into that mental darkness from which his patience and ten- 
 derness had upheld her. 
 
 Lamb's first successful literary venture was his Tales from 
 Shakespeare (1807), written in collaboration with his sister, 
 
 * See Lamb's " Recollections of Christ's Hospital " and " Christ's Hos 
 pital Five and Thirty Years Ago," in the Essays of Elk. 
 t See Elia Essay. "The Superannuated Man."
 
 280 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 and intended for children. A year later he published his 
 Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, with critical com- 
 ments. His reading in the Elizabethan drama was ex- 
 tensive, his appreciation of its qualities subtle and penetrat- 
 ing, and his enthusiasm for it unbounded. The book did 
 much to revive the almost extinguished fame of the lesser 
 dramatists grouped about Shakespeare. It is one of the 
 earliest, as well as one of the most significant products of the 
 new romantic criticism. 
 
 The "Essays of Elia." But it is not as a critic of litera- 
 ture, but as a commentator upon life, recording his moods, 
 his memories, his witty and tender observations, that Lamb 
 reveals his true greatness. The Essays of Elia,* published 
 at intervals in the London Magazine, were at length gathered 
 together and republished in two series, the first in 1823, the 
 second ten years later. The essays cover a great variety 
 of topics, but the approach to the subject is always a personal 
 one; and it is this intimate quality, communicating to us 
 the author's odd and lovable personality, which constitutes 
 their chief charm. Many of them are confessions of per- 
 sonal prejudice, such as the essay entitled "Imperfect Sym- 
 pathies," where Lamb's dislike of Scotchmen and his taste 
 for Quakers is made matter of delicious mirth. In " Old 
 China" Lamb gives a winning picture of his home life with 
 his sister, who appears here and elsewhere as " Cousin 
 Bridget." In "Dream Children," a beautiful and deeply 
 affecting essay, he talks with two children conjured from 
 nothingness to solace for an hour his lonely hearth. To 
 turn from an essay like this to the famous extravaganza 
 entitled "A Dissertation on Roast Pig," is to sound the full 
 gamut of Lamb's pathos and humor. 
 
 The style of these essays is in part borrowed from older 
 writers, especially the quaint and eloquent essayists of the 
 seventeenth century; but it is nevertheless wholly new and 
 individual, betraying its remote origin only by a certain rare- 
 ness and charming oddity of flavor. The " Elia " papers 
 
 * The pseudonym Elia was borrowed by Lamb from an Italian clerk in 
 the South Sea House, named Ellia. The change of spelling has led to the 
 broadening of the initial letter in pronunciation.
 
 Thomas De Quincey 281 
 
 continue the traditions of essay writing fixed by Addison 
 and Steele, but their range is wider, and their treatment of 
 human life is marked by the more searching pathos, the 
 more sensitive and flashing humor, which belong to Lamb 
 as a partaker in the spiritual awakening of the nineteenth 
 century. Like the Queen Anne's men from whom he bor- 
 rowed the idea of the essay, he cared little for natural beauty, 
 and was essentially a Londoner. London, its streets, its 
 shops, its theatres, was the place of his affection, and he has 
 pictured many of the phases of its life with the vividness that 
 comes from personal delight. 
 
 De Quincey : His Life. In Thomas De Quincey the ro- 
 mantic element is more pronounced, and displays itself not 
 only in his writings, but in the circumstances of his life. He 
 was born in Manchester in 1785, the son of a prosperous 
 merchant in the foreign trade. At sixteen he ran away from 
 the Manchester grammar-school, and spent a summer wan- 
 dering in North Wales, often sleeping on the open hills or in 
 the tents of gypsies. When the cold weather came on, he 
 made his way to London, where he led a starved and vagrant 
 existence, until he was reclaimed by his family and sent to 
 Oxford. He was one of the earliest converts to the "Lake 
 poetry," and after leaving college he established himself at 
 Grasmere, in the neighborhood of Wordsworth and Southey. 
 Here he lived for more than twenty years, reading prodigiously 
 and eating vast quantities of opium. By reason of some 
 peculiarity of his constitution the drug was less fatal in its 
 workings than is commonly the case; but the splendid and 
 tumultuous dreams which it brought were paid for by periods 
 of awful gloom and lassitude. In his thirty-first year De 
 Quincey married. Forced to earn money by his pen, he 
 published in 1821-1822 the famous Confessions of an English 
 Opium-Eater, and from this time forth he poured out maga- 
 zine articles on almost every conceivable topic. In 1830 
 he removed, with his wife and children, to Edinburgh, where 
 he resided until his death in 1859. 
 
 " Confessions of an Opium-Eater. " His best-known work 
 is also his most characteristic, the Opium-Eater, and its 
 sequel, Suspiria de Profundis. Only a small portion of the
 
 282 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Opium-Eater deals with the subject of opium-taking. It is 
 an extended autobiography, covering the life of the author 
 from early childhood to about the year 1819, when his 
 bondage to opium became absolute. The most powerful 
 portion of the narrative, aside from the description of his 
 opium sensations, is that which tells of his life of vagrancy 
 and starvation in London, and of his nightly wanderings 
 with "poor Ann" through the crowded desolation of Oxford 
 street. The Suspiria de Projundis (Sighs from the Depths) 
 is made up mainly of dream-phantasies transcribed from 
 the wanderings of his mind under the spell of opium, or 
 suggested by them. 
 
 De Quincey's Style. In such strange imaginings as "Le- 
 vana and Our Ladies of Sorrow," in the Suspiria, and the 
 "Dream-Fugue" appended to the English Mail-Coach, De 
 Quincey developed a kind of prose closely resembling verse, 
 in its rhythm and its rich imagery. In doing so, he revealed 
 new possibilities in the English tongue. The following pas- 
 sage from the "Opium- Eater" will illustrate the poetical 
 quality of his style. It describes a series of dreams suggested 
 by the sight of a mysterious Malay, who appeared one day at 
 De Quincey's door "I brought together all creatures, birds, 
 beasts, reptiles, that are found in all tropical regions. . . . 
 I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by mon- 
 keys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and 
 was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms; 
 I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was 
 sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the 
 forests of Asia ; Vishnu hated me ; Seeva lay in wait for me. 
 I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, 
 they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. 
 Thousands of years I lived and was buried in stone coffins, 
 with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the 
 heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous 
 kisses, by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all un- 
 utterable abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud." Upon 
 this and similar passages of richly colored, chanting prose, 
 De Quincey's fame as a writer rests. The qualities of style 
 exhibited in them have had a great influence upon the prose
 
 A Transition Period 283 
 
 writing of the century, an influence which can be traced in 
 such widely different writers as Bulwer and Ruskin. 
 
 Transition to the Victorian Era. From the death of Byron 
 in 1824 until the decisive appearance of Tennyson in 1842, 
 there was a period of comparative exhaustion in English 
 literature. Keats and Shelley were dead; Coleridge was 
 lost in metaphysics, and Wordsworth had almost ceased to 
 produce poetry of value ; Scott died in 1832, and the best work 
 of Lamb was done before that date. During this period of 
 lull, the new forces which were to go to the making of liter- 
 ature during the reign of Victoria, were gathering strength. 
 Tennyson, Browning, and Carlyle had already appeared; 
 and, although they remained as yet comparatively obscure, 
 they were doing some of their greatest work. Thomas Hood 
 (1798-1845), in his "Bridge of Sighs" and "Song of the 
 Shirt," had struck the note of sympathy with the unfortunate 
 and oppressed, which was to swell in volume and depth 
 through the whole course of Victorian literature. We must 
 consider in the next chapter that body of literature, gigantic 
 in bulk and almost infinite in variety, which places the era 
 of Victoria beside that of Elizabeth in literary importance. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. The introduction to this chapter first sets 
 forth briefly the political conditions in England and France during 
 the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. It next defines the 
 relation of hostility borne to the Revolution by England as a nation, 
 and the attitude of sympathy which the first group of poets, with 
 Wordsworth at their head, held toward the struggles of France to 
 realize a new form of society. It then shows that after this first poetic 
 group abandoned their revolutionary tendencies and swung back into 
 a conservative position, a second group of writers, of whom Byron and 
 Shelley were the chief, arose to proclaim anew the doctrines of the 
 revolutionists. Only a small portion of the poetry of the age was 
 directly inspired by the Revolution; the influence was for the most 
 part indirect, or rather it was the same impulse toward freedom and 
 truth of life which expressed itself on the one side in social revolution, 
 and on the other in that literary revolution which we call the Romantic 
 movement.
 
 284 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Give a brief account of Coleridge's early life, his friendship with 
 Southey, and his earliest literary efforts. Tell what you can of the re- 
 lations between Coleridge and Wordsworth. At what time of his life 
 was Coleridge's best poetry written ? How did " The Ancient Mariner " 
 come to be written ? What was the purpose of Wordsworth and Cole- 
 ridge in projecting the volume of " Lyrical Ballads " ? What aspect 
 of the " Romantic imagination " did each present ? Illustrate from 
 " The Ancient Mariner " and " We are Seven." Why were the " Lyri- 
 cal Ballads " an important landmark in the history of English poetry ? 
 
 Describe the influences of Wordsworth's earlier and later life which 
 .helped to give him his peculiar insight into nature. Give an account 
 of Wordsworth's relation to the French Revolution, in its earlier and 
 its later phases. During what period of his life was Wordsworth's 
 best work done ? The three qualities of Wordsworth's nature-poetry 
 noted here are its sensitiveness, its truth, and its breadth; find for 
 yourself passages which illustrate each of these qualities. In what 
 respect is Wordsworth's presentation of nature and his presentation 
 of human nature similar ? Consider the suggestion made here of the 
 union of Wordsworth's love of nature, with his love of man and of God. 
 Point out some expression of this threefold and united sentiment in 
 the quotation given from " Tintern Abbey" and if possible, in passages 
 found in your own reading. What is the theme of Wordsworth's great- 
 est poem? What quality of Wordsworth's mind does it especially 
 illustrate ? 
 
 How did Southey's name come to be closely associated with the 
 names of Wordsworth and Coleridge ? In what department of liter- 
 ature was Southey's best work done ? What general aspect of the 
 Romantic revival of the eighteenth century found its culminating ex- 
 pression in the poetry of Sir Walter Scott ? In what way did Scott's 
 poetry serve as an intermediary between that of the preceding age 
 and the delicate melodies of Wordsworth and Coleridge ? What value 
 did Scott put on his own poetry ? In what field was his most im- 
 portant work to be done ? 
 
 Give a brief biographical sketch of Byron. For what common at- 
 tribute are the names of Byron and Shelley associated ? What was 
 the cause of Byron's immense popularity ? Who was Byron's per- 
 sistent hero ? Say what you can of Byron's strength and weakness as 
 a poet. What was the most significant quality in his earlier verse- 
 tales? What in his "Childe Harold " ? What in his " Don Juan " ?
 
 Review Outline 285 
 
 Give a sketch of Shelley's life. How do Shelley's manifestations 
 of the spirit of revolution differ from Byron's ? Why is Shelley's 
 " Prometheus " said to be his most characteristic work ? What is the 
 underlying thought of this poem ? Where is its greatest beauty to be 
 found ? Explain the metrical structure of Shelley's " Ode to the West 
 Wind." Of whom is Shelley's poem "Adonais " a memorial ? What 
 other important English threnodies were written in honor of personal 
 friends who were also poets ? (See pages 145 and 306). Study the 
 "Adonais" and explain how it exemplifies Shelley's, myth-making 
 power. In what respect is Shelley said to be at the antipodes from 
 Wordsworth ? 
 
 Give a brief sketch of Keats's life. What were his relations with the 
 following persons: Leigh Hunt, Haydon, Charles Cowden Clark, Fanny 
 Brawne, Shelley, Joseph Severn ? What was his own estimate of his 
 first ambitious poem, " Endymion " ? What circumstances intervened 
 between the publication of " Endymion " and his last volume to deepen 
 his nature and strengthen his art ? From what may it be inferred 
 that Keats, if he had lived, would have turned to poetic themes of a 
 more directly " human " sort ? What is Keats's essential quality as 
 a poet ? How may we trace the growth of his feeling for artistic 
 form? 
 
 Who were the most important prose writers of the new Romantic 
 school ? Give a brief account of the life of Lamb. What is the quality 
 that gives to Lamb his peculiar influence? How do Lamb's little 
 studies of life differ from those of Addison and Steele? What is 
 meant by saying that these studies reveal Lamb's participation in the 
 spiritual awakening of the nineteenth century ? In what respect does 
 Lamb resemble the Queen Anne essayists? 
 
 Give a brief account of De Quincey's life. What is his best-known 
 work ? How did De Quincey impart a new impetus to English 
 prose ? 
 
 READING GUIDE. For class work upon this period the tallowing 
 list of reading, or as large a portion of it as can be accomplished, is 
 recommended. Coleridge: "The Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," 
 the first part of "Christabel." Wordsworth: "Michael," "The Leech- 
 Gatherer," "Ode on Intimations of Immortality," "Tintern Abbey," 
 "We are Seven," "Lines Written in Early Spring," "To a Sky-lark," 
 "The Solitary Reaper," "Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known," "Three
 
 286 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Years She Grew," "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways," "A Slum- 
 ber Did My Spirit Seal," "I Travelled Among Unknown Men"; v and 
 the sonnets, " Milton, Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour," "Scorn 
 Not the Sonnet," "It Is a Beauteous Evening," sonnet on Westminster 
 Bridge, and to Toussaint L'Ouverture. Southey: "Life of Nelson." 
 Scott: "The Lady of the Lake" or "Marmion." Byron: "Childe 
 Harold," third canto, " Mazeppa," " The Prisoner of Chillon." Shelley: 
 "Ode to the West Wind," " To a Sky-lark," "Adonais," "Swiftly Walk 
 Over the Western Wave." Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to a 
 Grecian Urn," "Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," 
 sonnet on Chapman's Homer. Lamb: "A Dissertation on Roast Pig," 
 "Mackery End," "Christ's Hospital," "The Superannuated Man," 
 "Old China," "Dream Children." De Quincey: "Revolt of a Tartar 
 Tribe" (or "The English Mail-Coach"), a portion of the "Confes- 
 sions," the "Dream Fugue." 
 
 EDITIONS: "The Ancient Mariner" can be had in the Riverside 
 Literature series, and many other good school editions. The best 
 selection of Wordsworth's poetry is that edited by Matthew Arnold, in 
 the Golden Treasury series (Macmillan). A cheaper volume, also 
 good, is included in Cassell's National Library. Selections from 
 Shelley, from Byron, and from Keats exist in Cassell's Library, and 
 in the Golden Treasury series. Southey's "Life of Nelson" exists in 
 Morley's Universal Library, and many school editions. "Old China" 
 and eight other Elia essays and Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare," 
 are to be had in the Riverside Literature series; selected essays also 
 in the Camelot series. For the study of De Quincey, the comprehensive 
 volume of selections by M. H. Turk, in the Athenaeum Press series 
 (Ginn) is recommended. Volume LXIX of Cassell's National Li- 
 brary contains "The English Mail-Coach" and "Murder as a Fine 
 Art." "The Revolt of a Tartar Tribe," edited by C. W. French, is 
 published by Scott, Foresman; other school editions are numerous. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: For advanced biographical study, the 
 English Men of Letters series will furnish abundant material. Essays 
 upon Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Keats may be found in Lowell's 
 works. Matthew Arnold's "Essays in Criticism" contain valuable 
 studies of Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Many of Lamb's 
 essays have an autobiographic interest; "The Old Benchers of the 
 Inner Temple," " Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago" (with 
 its picture of Coleridge's boyhood), "The South Sea House," "Blakes-
 
 Reading Guide 287 
 
 more," and "Mackery End" all deal with places associated with Lamb's 
 history; "Old China," " Dream Children," and "The Superannuated 
 Man" are more directly personal. For De Quincey's biography, his 
 "Autobiographic Sketches," and the "Confessions of an Opium-Eater" 
 are of fundamental intere^
 
 CHAPTER XI v 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE VICTORIAN 
 
 ERA 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 Social Changes and Their Effect Upon Literature. Never 
 before, not even in the troubled seventeenth century, have 
 there been such rapid and sweeping changes in the society 
 of the English-speaking races as have taken place since 
 the beginning of the long reign of Victoria (1837-1901). 
 Among the many circumstances making for change the chief 
 one has been the growth of democracy. The Reform bill of 
 1832 placed the political power of England in the hands of 
 the middle class, and since that date the ballot has been 
 gradually extended to the working classes. With the growth 
 of democracy has gone the spread of popular education, and 
 a great increase in the number of readers of books. Lit- 
 erature has become in consequence more democratic. It 
 has attempted more and more to reach out to all manner 
 of men, to move, instruct, and inspire them. The great 
 change from hand-labor to machine-labor, which began in 
 the latter half of the eighteenth century, and has continued 
 throughout the nineteenth, has kept the economic basis of 
 society unsettled. Labor troubles have been frequent. Social 
 unrest, and the demand for social justice, have appeared in 
 the work of nearly all the great writers of the time. The 
 growth of manufacture and commerce has brought a great 
 increase of wealth, and added greatly to the comfort and 
 luxury of living; but it has also exposed men to the danger 
 of losing themselves in these external things, at the expense 
 of the inner life. Against this danger the prophets and 
 preachers of the time have striven with all the earnestness 
 that is in them. 
 
 388
 
 Introduction 289 
 
 During the nineteenth century the means of communica- 
 tion between distant places have been vastly increased. In 
 1819 the first steamship crossed the Atlantic; in 1830 the 
 first railroad was opened, between Liverpool and Manchester; 
 in 1838 the electric telegraph was introduced into England, 
 and twenty years later the first Atlantic cable was laid. By 
 subsequent inventions and improvements, town has been 
 knit to town, county to county, nation to nation. The tele- 
 graph and the modern printing press have laid the news of 
 the world day by day before even the humblest reader. 
 Literature, in consequence, has become broader in its inter- 
 ests. A community of ideas has been established throughout 
 the civilized world ; sympathy with life in all its forms has 
 been widened. Historical science has brought, as never be- 
 fore, the buried past before our eyes, and writers have pre- 
 sented the past with a truthfulness not possible in former 
 times. The mental sciences have led to a deeper study of 
 character, a closer analysis of human motives, a broader in- 
 terest in all kinds and types of human life. Novelists and 
 poets have vied with each other in throwing light upon the 
 secret places of man's soul. 
 
 The Growth of Science. Another great cause of change 
 and unrest has been the growth of science, which has made 
 more gigantic strides in this age than in all the past history 
 of the race. Especially the world-shaking doctrine of evolu- 
 tion, dating from the publication of Darwin's Origin of 
 Species in 1859, has given men a new idea of their own 
 origin, of the prehistoric past of the human race. In so do- 
 ing it has unsettled many old beliefs. It has brought "ob- 
 stinate questionings" concerning life and death, and has led 
 many men, against their wills, into religious doubt. But 
 here again there have been voices lifted up to declare anew 
 the truths of religion, and to interpret the teachings of science 
 in a spiritual sense. 
 
 The " Time-Spirit" in the Great Victorian Writers. Each of 
 the writers whom we are about to study illustrates some phase 
 of the "time-spirit" which we have tried briefly to describe. 
 Macaulay made it his life-work to put his vast stores of knowl- 
 edge into a form easy for common men to understand.
 
 290 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Carlyle's. rugged figure stands as a protest against the self- 
 satisfied, external view of b'fe to which an age of com- 
 merce and of mechanical science is prone. He preaches the 
 dignity of the individual as opposed to the crowd ; he utters 
 fierce warnings against the levelling process of democracy. 
 Tennyson took the facts of natural science, and showed 
 the poetry hidden in them ; he helped to fight the battle of 
 faith against doubt, and to break down the opposition be- 
 tween science and religion. Browning, and the great nov- 
 elists, Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, studied the souls 
 of men as they reveal themselves in the actual life about us ; 
 or summoned up men and women from the past to reveal 
 their inmost natures. Arnold, in the poetry of his youth, 
 voiced the unrest, despondency, and doubt which afflicted 
 so many sensitive souls in this age of change ; his later life he 
 spent in preaching to Englishmen the necessity of being alert 
 to new ideas. Ruskin waged unending war against the vul- 
 garity and ugliness which he believed to be an outgrowth of 
 the commercial basis of modern life, and sought earnestly 
 for some better foundation upon which might be built the 
 society of the future. 
 
 II. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859) 
 
 Life of Macaulay. Thomas Babington Macaulay was 
 born in 1800 at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire. His 
 father, Zachary Taylor, was an anti-slavery reformer, of a 
 family of Scotch Presbyterians, many of whom had been 
 preachers. His mother was of Quaker descent, and a woman 
 of vigorous intelligence. Many anecdotes are related of the 
 boy Macaulay's startling precocity. He made at seven a 
 "compendium of universal history"; at eight he knew Scott's 
 Lay oj the Last Minstrel by heart, and himself composed 
 several long epic poems in imitation of it. Histories, odes, 
 and hymns flowed with astonishing facility from his boyish 
 pen. Throughout life he was a prodigious reader, and his 
 memory, surprising to start with, became by cultivation one 
 of the most marvellous on record. He declared that if every
 
 Thomas Babington Macaulay 291 
 
 copy of Paradise Lost or the Pilgrim's Progress were de- 
 stroyed, he would be able to replace them from memory. 
 
 At Cambridge, whither he went at nineteen, he took a prom- 
 inent part in the excited discussion which was then going on 
 all over England concerning the reform of the suffrage laws. 
 He was then, as afterward, a Whig; that is to say, he believed 
 in the gradual extension of liberty, but distrusted violent 
 and revolutionary methods. Before leaving college, he be- 
 gan writing for the reviews. In 1825 his essay on Milton 
 appeared in the Edinburgh Review. This essay made him 
 instantly famous. Even the 'potentates of the critical world, 
 such as Jeffrey, the much-feared editor of the periodical in 
 which the "Milton" appeared, wondered where the brilliant 
 newcomer had "picked up that style." 
 
 From this time on Macaulay's career was one of uninter- 
 rupted success, both in literature and politics. In 1830 he 
 entered Parliament, in time to take a prominent part in the 
 passage of the Reform bill. Four years later he went to 
 India, as legal adviser to the Supreme Council. He found 
 time from his legal duties to write the essay on Bacon; the 
 essays on Machiavelli, Dryden, Byron, and Dr. Johnson had 
 already appeared. He returned in 1838, with a comfortable 
 fortune saved from his salary, to play once more a leading 
 r61e in the Whig party. He was made Secretary of War and 
 a member of the Privy Council. During these years of 
 active political life he wrote several of his most famous es- 
 says, notably those on Addison and on Sir William Temple, 
 and the splendid ones on the Indian pro-consuls, Clive and 
 Warren Hastings, the materials for which he had gathered 
 during his stay in the east. 
 
 In 1847 he published his Lays of Ancient Rome, dignified 
 and vigorous celebrations, in ballad verse, of the antique 
 civic virtues, as shown in Horatius, Virginius, and other Ro- 
 man worthies. The next year, after long delay, he began to 
 realize the dream of his life, in the publication of the first 
 part of his History of England. This was instantly and im- 
 mensely popular ; and the remainder of the work which he 
 lived to complete increased his success. The History was 
 translated into most of the languages of Europe, and at home
 
 292 . The Nineteenth Century 
 
 took a permanent place as a classic among historical writings. 
 In 1857 he was made a peer of the realm, with the title of 
 Baron Macaulay of Rothley. He died of heart disease, at 
 Holly Lodge, Kensington, in 1859, and was buried in the 
 Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Character of Macaulay. Macaulay's nature was practical 
 and unromantic. Carlyle, who was in nearly all respects 
 his opposite, once observed Macaulay's face in repose, as 
 he was turning the pages of a book. "I noticed," he says, 
 " the. homely Norse features that you find everywhere in 
 the Western Isles, and I thought to myself, 'Well, any one 
 can see that you are an honest, good sort of fellow, made 
 out of oatmeal!' ' The biography of Macaulay written 
 by his nephew Trevelyan, shows him to have been, in his 
 private life, even more "honest and good" than Carlyle 
 knew. When his father's affairs, owing to the old reform- 
 er's unworldliness, fell into ruin, Macaulay, then a very 
 young man, quietly shouldered the burden of debt, and set 
 about retrieving the family fortunes. Many of his own 
 hopes were thus frustrated, but he took up the load of respon- 
 sibility with the sunniest radiance, with the most contagious 
 gladness and high spirits. He made those about him doubt 
 " whether it ever crossed his mind that to live wholly for others 
 was a sacrifice at all." His loyalty to his father led him 
 to break with his party on an anti-slavery bill which was too 
 moderate to suit the old enthusiasist's views. In his public 
 career he more than once gave evidence of high and unselfish 
 virtue. He voted for a reform of the bankruptcy laws, 
 though the reform included the suppression of his own Com- 
 missionership, and reduced him to such straits that he was 
 forced to sell the gold medals he had won at college. Plainly, 
 he had in him a strain of heroism like that of the Roman 
 worthies of his "Lays"; though his prosperous life kept it 
 for the most part hidden. 
 
 Macaulay as Orator and Essayist. Gladstone has told us 
 that an announcement of Macaulay's intention to speak 
 in Parliament was "like a trumpet call to fill the benches" 
 His powers as an orator were superb, and they furnish a key 
 to his fascination as a writer. In a speech the meaning
 
 Thomas Babington Macaulay 293 
 
 must be so clearly stated, so skilfully emphasized, that mis- 
 understanding shall be impossible, and the attention of the 
 audience must be continually kept awake by strong contrasts 
 and striking figures of speech. In all these respects Ma- 
 cau-lay's essays resemble good oratory. Probably no writer 
 has ever been more skilful than Macaulay in making his 
 whole meaning clear; none more successful in keeping the 
 reader's attention alert, and his dramatic sense excited. 
 He is always vivacious, loud, and positive, never in doubt, 
 and never at a loss. These qualities served him well in his 
 work of popularizing knowledge. From the stores of his 
 capacious memory, he presented in lucid and entertaining 
 form a great mass of fact and opinion, the educative power 
 of which was and still continues to be very great. 
 
 The best of the essays are those in which the author paints 
 us the picture of an era, of a social group, or of a single person, 
 addressing his story more to the eye than to the mind. In 
 dealing with the great facts of the inner life Macaulay is often 
 weak. The essay on Bacon, for instance, is an attack upon 
 all higher speculations ; Bacon as a master of pure thought 
 is belittled, and the real passion of Bacon's life, philos- 
 ophy, is held up to ridicule. The essay on Dr. Johnson gives 
 us a very wonderful picture of the old doctor's appearance, 
 manners, and surroundings, but we get from it no insight 
 into his deeper nature. Macaulay is also weak in literary 
 criticism, as he himself, always frank and modest, was the 
 first to declare. "I am not successful," he said, "in analyz- 
 ing the works of genius. I never have written a page of 
 criticism on poetry or the fine arts which I would not burn 
 if I had the power." In the essay on Milton, which made 
 him famous, he is soon drawn aside from his real subject 
 into a long and heated defence of the Puritan party, with one 
 eye always upon the political conditions of his own time. 
 He is at his best in historical portraiture, and in this field his 
 essays are incomparable. He was most at home in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries. In his series of brilliant 
 studies on' this period he did for it, in the prose essay, almost 
 as much as Shakespeare did for the fifteenth century in his 
 historical plays.
 
 294 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Macaulay as Historian. In his History he carried these 
 talents into a larger field, and won even a more striking suc- 
 cess. His aim was to write a history of England from the 
 accession of James II to the end of George IV's reign, in 
 a manner so concrete, picturesque, and dramatic, that his 
 narrative of actual events should have the fascination of 
 romance, or, as he himself put the case, that it should have 
 the power "to supersede the last fashionable novel upon the 
 dressing-table of young ladies." The portion of the story 
 which he lived to complete is, in fact, presented with a wealth 
 of detail concerning particular persons, places, and events, 
 such as a writer of fiction uses to embody the creations of 
 his fancy. But all this detail is wonderfully merged together, 
 and the whole effect is that of a canvas covered with lumi- 
 nous pictures, which change before our eyes into new group- 
 ings, and give place to other spectacles, as in a magic diorama. 
 In the art of story-telling, of chaining the reader's interest 
 with the exciting sweep of events, Macaulay stands first 
 among English historians. He cares little for underlying 
 causes. Not why, but how things happened, is his concern. 
 But he gives us the story itself with the skill of a great novel- 
 ist, and in as great fulness. The five volumes which he com- 
 pleted cover only fifteen years. To have covered the whole 
 period which he at first intended, would have filled fifty 
 volumes and even at the rapid rate at which he worked 
 would have taken a century and a half in the writing. 
 
 Macaulay's Material View of Life. Macaulay's view of 
 life is extremely practical. He wrote at a time when men 
 were inclined to exchange the longings and aspirations of 
 the Romantic era for a satisfied acceptance of the benefits 
 which commerce, liberal government, and the mechanical 
 sciences were bringing to English life. "A half-acre in 
 Middlesex," he says, "is better than a peerage in Utopia." 
 Of the Crystal Palace exhibition, one of thos.e great in- 
 dustrial fairs upon which this century has lavished so much 
 effort, he can hardly find words to express his admira- 
 tion. The spread of comfort and of material prosperity, 
 constantly arouses him to eloquence. He flattered his age 
 by his satisfaction with its practical achievements. But
 
 Thomas Carlyle 295 
 
 meanwhile another voice was raised in fierce protest and 
 warning. Thomas Carlyle, son of one of "the fighting 
 masons of Ecclefechan," arose to scourge and lament over 
 the age like a prophet of old Israel, bidding men ponder what 
 their boasted progress was progress toward, and whether, 
 in their zeal for material improvements, they were not per- 
 chance bowing down to heathen idols, forgetting the God of 
 the spirit. 
 
 III. THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) 
 
 Carlyle's Early Life. Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795, 
 at Ecclefechan, a village of the Scotch Lowlands. His 
 father was a man of strong character, and of a picturesque 
 and rugged speech to which Carlyle traced his own literary 
 gift. His peasant mother learned to write in order to com- 
 municate with her son in absence, and followed his career with 
 more than a mother's devotion. Though the family was very 
 poor, Carlyle received an excellent schooling. At fourteen he 
 walked the eighty miles from his native village to Edinburgh, 
 and entered the university, to prepare himself for the ministry. 
 After graduation, however, he renounced the church career, 
 to his father's deep disappointment, and determined to be 
 "a writer of books." He lived for a number of years in or 
 near Edinburgh, earning a living as school teacher, private 
 tutor, and afterwards as a writer for the magazines. 
 
 In these early days of privation and loneliness, with dys- 
 pepsia ' gnawing like a rat at the pit of his stomach,' he fought 
 the battle which he afterward described in Sartor Resartus. 
 The " Everlasting No," the voice of unfaith denying God and 
 the worth of life, he put from him ; the " Everlasting Yea," the 
 assurance that life could be made divine through labor and 
 courage, he accepted once for all. The climax of this 
 struggle, he has told us, came one day in Leith Walk, as he 
 was going down to bathe in the sea, after three weeks of total 
 sleeplessness. The " Everlasting Yea" sounding suddenly in 
 the depths of his despairing soul, made him "strong, of un- 
 known strength, a spirit, almost a god." 
 
 At twenty-five he began the study of German, and writes
 
 296 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 a friend about "the new heaven and new earth" which 
 German literature has revealed to him. His Life of Schil- 
 ler and his translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister got him 
 a hearing with the publishers; but his earnings remained 
 extremely small. In 1826 he married Jane Baillie Welsh, 
 a woman of genius hardly inferior to his own, a descendant 
 on her father's side from the religious reformer, John Knox, 
 on her mother's from the patriot, William Wallace. After 
 marriage, the young pair went to live at Craigenputtoch, 
 a farm-house amid miles of high dreary moor, in a "soli- 
 tude almost druidical." Here Carlyle passed six years 
 (1828-1834). During this time he produced Sartor re- 
 sartus," and wrote several masterly essays, notably those 
 on Burns and on Dr. Johnson. But the public would have 
 none of him. The wonderful essay on Burns, which has 
 been called "the very voice of Scotland, expressive of all 
 her passionate love and tragic sorrow for her darling son," 
 was saved from editorial mutilation only by the author's 
 angry protest ; and the still more wonderful Sartor Resartus 
 fell, as it seemed, dead from the press. 
 
 Carlyle and Emerson. One August day in 1833, as Car- 
 lyle sat despondent, a carriage drove up to the door of the 
 lonely house, and a young American alighted. It was 
 Emerson, come over-seas in search of a wise man the first 
 human being, said Mrs. Carlyle, who had visited those 
 moors on such an errand since Noah's flood. The Car- 
 lyles found Emerson "one of the most lovable creatures we 
 have ever looked upon." He brought with him the wel- 
 come news that Carlyle's writings had already reached Amer- 
 ica, and had found there the warm recognition which the 
 British public refused to give them. During the years which 
 followed, Emerson helped in many practical ways to further 
 Carlyle's interests in America, and, in spite of their differen- 
 ces of character , their friendship continued throughout life. 
 
 Carlyle in London; Later Life. In 1834, Carlyle decided 
 to seek his fortune in London. He had already had a 
 glimpse of the great metropolis, and had written, "It is like 
 the heart of all the universe, and the flood of human effort 
 rolls out of it and into it with a violence that almost appalls
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 From a painting by Whistler
 
 298 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 one's very senses." He settled with his wife in the suburb 
 of Chelsea, taking the house in Cheyne Row where he was 
 to spend the long remainder of his life. Of the new home he 
 wrote to his mother: "We lie safe at a bend of the river, away 
 from all the great roads, have air and quiet hardly inferior 
 to Craigenputtock, an outlook from the back windows into 
 mere leafy regions with here and there a red high-peaked 
 old roof looking through ; and see nothing of London, ex- 
 cept by day the summits of St. Paul's Cathedral, and West- 
 minster Abbey, and by night the gleam of the great Babylon 
 affronting the peaceful skies." Here Carlyle gathered about 
 him all that was best in the new intellectual life now stirring 
 in the nation John Stuart Mill, the political economist ; the 
 youthful Tennyson, who had published two slender volumes, 
 but was as yet unknown to fame; Leigh Hunt, the essayist 
 and friend of Keats; Browning, whose star had not yet 
 risen, though he had already done some of his most won- 
 derful work; Dickens, in the full tide of his fame; and 
 Ruskin, who was to be Carlyle's greatest disciple. 
 
 In 1837 Carlyle published his French Revolution. With 
 this book he at last gained the ear of the public, and from 
 this time on his reputation grew apace. For more than 
 thirty years after this, he stood as teacher and preacher to 
 the people of England and America, thundering above them 
 wrath, warning, and exhortation. The chief works of 
 this long period were Chartism (1839), an anti-democratic 
 deliverance on the labor troubles then agitating England; 
 Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841), a great sermon on vener- 
 ation, calling upon the world to love, honor, and submit 
 in childlike obedience to its great men, whether they appear 
 as warrior, poet, or priest; Cromwell (1850), Latter-Day 
 Pamphlets, the Life of John Sterling (1851), a masterpiece of 
 intimate biography, in which he enshrined the memory of a 
 friend in a work as noble in its kind as that which Milton 
 had dedicated to Henry King, or Shelley to Keats. His 
 last work of importance was the History of Friedrich II 
 (1858-1865), a vast picture of the life and times of the 
 founder of the Prussian empire. 
 
 From 1865 until his death in 1881, the veneration in which
 
 Thomas Carlyle 299 
 
 Carlyle's name was held steadily increased. In 1866 he 
 was installed as Lord Rector of his own University of Edin- 
 burgh, having been elected by the students to succeed Glad- 
 stone. The day of his installation was the proudest of his 
 life. Youths and gray-haired scholars hung upon the calm 
 and noble words of the old seer "like children held by a tale 
 of fairyland"; and when his address was concluded, the 
 students crowded about him, some shedding tears. In the 
 same month his wife died. Carlyle never recovered from 
 the shock and grief of her death. On the bright shores of 
 the Mediterranean, and later in his desolate house at Chelsea, 
 he wrote his "Reminiscences," intended chiefly as a memoir 
 of his lost wife. As he lay upon his death-bed he was heard 
 to murmur "Honesty, honesty"; the word which gives the 
 keynote of his teaching and of his life. 
 
 Carlyle's Personality. Carlyle had a most caustic tongue, 
 and hardly any even of his best friends escaped from the 
 biting humor of it. As he grew older, his petulance grew 
 upon him, and the lightning strokes of his wit and anger 
 spared neither friend nor foe. Yet underneath this bitter 
 surface was a nature of the deepest tenderness. The first 
 volume of his French Revolution, which he had lent to John 
 Stuart Mill to read, was accidentally destroyed. The labor 
 of rewriting it was so enormous as at first entirely to crush 
 his courage. Yet when Mill had left the room, after telling 
 him and his wife of the loss, all that Carlyle said was, "Poor 
 Mill ! We shall have to conceal from him how very serious this 
 is to us." The last letters written to him by his friend Sterling 
 he speaks of as "brief, stern, loving, altogether noble, never 
 to be forgotten in this world," and some verses sent him from 
 the same hand, he refers to as "verses written for myself 
 alone, as in star-fire and immortal tears." Perhaps no- 
 where does the deep tenderness of his rugged, volcanic nature 
 appear so exquisitely as in the sentences written about his 
 mother after he had been called to her death-bed in 1853. 
 "It was my mother and not my mother. The last pale rim 
 or sickle of the moon which had once been full, sinking in 
 the dark seas." His rugged, deeply-chiselled features bore 
 always the marks of spiritual pain. In moments of excite-
 
 300 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 ment and eloquence his eye, we are told, would "beat like 
 a pulse," under his abrupt, cliff-like forehead and bushy 
 brows. But there was in him, along with all that is fiercely 
 earnest, with much that is sardonic and grim, a spring of 
 genuine and ever-flowing fun. In general temper he reminds 
 us, as has been often said, of some old Hebrew prophet, 
 Isaiah or Jeremiah; but he could also be genial, graceful, 
 full of sly, delicious humor. It was this mingling of rude 
 strength with tenderness and humor that Emerson probably 
 had in mind when he described Carlyle quaintly as "a trip- 
 hammer with an ^Eolian attachment." 
 
 Underlying Spirit of Carlyle 's Work. The actual doctrines 
 which Carlyle preached with such intensity his " Gospel of 
 Work," his political dogma of "Government by the Best" 
 (instead of "government by the worst," as he held democ- 
 racy to be), and all the other war-cries of his unending 
 battle with his age are of less moment than the spirit which 
 underlies his writing. This spirit may be defined as an in- 
 tense moral indignation against whatever is weak, or false, 
 or mechanical ; an intense moral enthusiasm for whatever is 
 sincere and heroically forceful. From this point of view his 
 two typical books are Sartor Resartus and Heroes and Hero- 
 Worship. The first is an attack upon all those social shams 
 and mechanisms which defeat the sincerity of life ; the second 
 is a paean of praise for those chosen heroic* spirits who join 
 earnestness with power. Sartor Resartus is pre-eminent 
 hi philosophic interest among all his books. It is also ex- 
 tremely ingenious in plan, and is written with a wonderful 
 mingling of wild sardonic humor, keen pathos, and an elo- 
 quence and elevation almost biblical. 
 
 " Sartor Resartus." "Sartor Resartus" means "the 
 tailor re-tailored," and its theme is clothes. It purports to 
 be the fragment of a great "Clothes-philosophy," the life- 
 work of an eccentric German scholar and recluse, Herr 
 Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, professor of Knowledge-in-general 
 at the university of None-knows-where. This philosophy 
 has been left in wild confusion, scribbled on scattered leaves, 
 and stuffed helter-skelter into twelve bags signed with the 
 twelve signs of the Zodiac. Carlyle represents himself merely
 
 Thomas Carlyle 301 
 
 as editor and commentator of this weltering mass of words, 
 endeavoring desperately to extract order out of chaos, and 
 to lighten a little, with much head-shaking and consternation, 
 the dark abysses of the German professor's thought. This 
 whimsical fancy of Carlyle's enables him to be both author 
 and commentator; to state astounding paradoxes and then 
 to shrug his shoulders in sign of his own irresponsibility; 
 to take the side of his opponents against what he, as a well- 
 regulated editor, pretends to find extravagant and crazy 
 doctrine, but what is really his own heart's belief. 
 
 The book has a two-fold meaning. In the first place, it 
 is a veiled attack upon the shams and pretences of society, 
 upon hollow rank, hollow officialism, hollow custom, out of 
 which life and usefulness have departed. These are, Car- 
 lyle hints, the fantastic, outworn garments which stifle the 
 breath and health of the social body. Under the shield of 
 this novel idea, he attacks the mechanical view of life, 
 mechanical education, mechanical government, mechanical 
 religion; and he preaches, now with drollery and paradox, 
 now with fiery earnestness, a return to sincerity in all 
 things. In the second place, Carlyle applies the Clothes- 
 philosophy to the universe at large ; showing that as clothes 
 hide the real man, and as custom and convention hide real 
 society, so Time and Space and all created things hide the 
 real spiritual nature of the universe. 
 
 Carlyle's Style. The pretence that he was translating 
 from the German gave Carlyle an excuse for developing 
 in Sartor Resartus a style of expression full of un-English 
 idiom, of violent inversions, startling pauses and sharp turns 
 a style which he employed to rouse the attention of his 
 reader as by a series of electric shocks. He himself refers 
 humorously to this odd new use of language, as a " rumfus- 
 tianish roly-poly growlery of style," and says that his mood 
 in evolving it, was that of ."a half- reckless casting of the 
 brush, with its many frustrated colors, upon the canvas." 
 However recklessly or humorously evolved, the style contin- 
 ued to be his for the remainder of his life. It has been said 
 that "henceforth he wrote English no more, but 'Car- 
 lylese.' "
 
 302 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 The " French Revolution." Sartor Resartus proved Car- 
 lyle to be a great literary artist. This title was broadened 
 and confirmed by his historical masterpiece, The French 
 Revolution. Here we see to best advantage what Emerson 
 calls the "stereoscopic imagination" of Carlyle, which de- 
 taches the figures from the background, brings them, as it 
 were, close to our eye, and gives them startling vividness. 
 The stupid, patient king, the "lion Mirabeau," the "sea- 
 green incorruptible Robespierre," Marat, the "large-headed 
 dwarfish individual of smoke-bleared aspect," not only 
 these chief figures, but the minor ones, a multitude of them, 
 stand out in the reader's memory unforgettably. The larger 
 pictures are equally admirable ; the Storming of the Bastille, 
 the Feast of Pikes, the long-drawn agony of the Night of 
 Spurs. Above all, the unity and sweep of the story, re- 
 minding us of a play of Shakespeare or of ^Eschylus, only 
 acted by millions of figures on a gigantic stage, place this 
 with Macaulay's History as the two greatest examples in 
 English of the dramatic portraiture of an era. The smooth- 
 ness and lucidity of Macaulay's narrative, in comparison with 
 the ruggedness, the deep glooms and sudden splendors of his 
 own, is brought out by Carlyle's humorous exclamation upon 
 reading Macaulay for the first time "Flow on, thou shin- 
 ing river!" 
 
 Carlyle's Service to His Age. Carlyle poured into the life 
 of his time a stream of intense moral ardor and indignation 
 which broke 'up the congealed waters and permanently raised 
 the standard of feeling. He united in remarkable degree the 
 artistic and the moral impulses; and he is in this respect 
 typical of the Victorian era, during which, more than ever be- 
 fore, art has been infused with moral purpose. 
 
 IV. ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892) 
 
 Tennyson's Early Life and Poetry. Tennyson was born in 
 1809, at Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire. His father was a 
 vicar of the Established Church, holding his living by gift 
 from a large landed proprietor; so that Tennyson was from
 
 Alfred Tennyson 303 
 
 birth in close connection with the main conservative interests 
 of England, the church and the land. 
 
 The country about Somersby is a typical English country, 
 softly rolling, richly wooded, full of green lanes and quiet 
 streams. Here, and on the sea-coast of Lincolnshire, where 
 the family spent a part of each summer, Tennyson gathered 
 his first impressions of nature, and began to cultivate those 
 powers of observation which, ripening with his years, made 
 him so wonderful an interpreter of nature's moods. Pictures 
 of Lincolnshire landscape, inland and sea-coast, can be traced 
 in the poetry even of his latest years. 
 
 At Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1828, he was a 
 member of a remarkable group of undergraduates, called 
 "The Apostles," all of whom attained eminence in later life. 
 Among these his closest friend was Arthur Henry Hallam, 
 himself a poet and a youth of splendid promise. Tennyson 
 had already determined to devote his life to poetry, and had 
 published, in conjunction with his brother, a small volume en- 
 titled Poems by Two Brothers. While at Cambridge, in 1830, 
 he published his first independent volume, a group of little 
 verse-studies in melody and picture, including "Claribel," 
 "Mariana," and the "Recollections of the Arabian Nights," 
 which revealed a new music, rich, dreamy, and delicious. In 
 
 1831 Tennyson and Hallam made a quixotic journey to the 
 Pyrenees, with the aim of carrying money to the Spanish revo- 
 lutionists. The project miscarried, but Tennyson found in the 
 scenery of the Pyrenees the inspiration of his "(Enone." In 
 
 1832 he published a second volume, which showed, in "The 
 Lady of Shalott," "The Lotus-Eaters," "The Dream of Fair 
 Women," and "CEnone," a rapidly developing and already 
 exquisite art. In this volume, too, he began, with "The 
 Miller's Daughter" and "The May Queen," his long series 
 of idylls of English life, with which he was destined to gain 
 his widest popularity. 
 
 These early poems won for Tennyson the enthusiastic ad- 
 miration of a small group of young men, with Hallam as 
 leader of the chorus of praise. The critics, however, were 
 differently minded, and greeted the new poet with an out- 
 burst of ridicule. Tennyson, now and always intensely sen-
 
 304 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 sitive to criticism, determined to be silent until he could 
 overwhelm his opponents by a splendid and decisive triumph. 
 For ten years he published nothing. These were years of 
 privation, for the family property was swept away by an 
 unfortunate investment; and they were also years of sor- 
 row. In 1833, Arthur Hallam, for whom Tennyson had a 
 love "passing the love of women," died suddenly at Vienna. 
 This tragic loss threw Tennyson back upon the deeper prob- 
 lems of human life and destiny. In the struggle to relay 
 the shaken foundation of his existence, his nature grew strong ; 
 his work took on a lofty seriousness of tone and a new depth 
 of meaning. He worked away, at his bachelor lodgings in 
 London and with his family in the country, until 1842, when 
 his long probation was over, and he was ready to lay the fruit 
 of his toil before the world. 
 
 Tennyson's Triumph; The Poems of 1842. The two 
 volumes which appeared in 1842 contained the best of his 
 previously published work, jealously revised, and many new 
 poems of maturer power. These volumes took the critics 
 and the world by storm. The range and variety of work in 
 them was extraordinary. Almost every province of poetry was 
 touched upon, from the lyric simplicity of "Break, Break, 
 Break," to the largely moulded epic strength of "Morte 
 d' Arthur." The series of idylls and eclogues picturing 
 English home and country life, and pervaded by the atmos- 
 phere of familiar affections, was increased by such poems 
 as "The Gardener's Daughter," "Dora," "Lady Clare," 
 and "The Lord of Burleigh." "Ulysses," in which Tenny- 
 son gave a magnificent new wording to an old legend, deals 
 with the closing episode of the wandering hero's life. The 
 picture of the aged Ulysses, determined to employ the rem- 
 nant of his days in pushing out into the unknown waters of 
 the West, rather than "rust unused" in barren Ithaca, was 
 an outgrowth, Tennyson has told us, of his own need of tak- 
 ing heart and pushing forward, after Hallam's death. The 
 new seriousness of the poet's mind, induced by the calamity 
 of his loss, is shown also in such poems as "The Two Voices" 
 and "The Vision of Sin." In the first we are shown the 
 struggle of a despairing mind, as it beholds the misery of
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London. 
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 
 After a painting by G. F Watts
 
 306 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 life, and questions whether or not it shall take refuge in self- 
 destruction. The second touches upon a more awful subject, 
 "the end, here and hereafter, of the merely sensual man." 
 In "Locksley Hall" Tennyson infused into a story of broken 
 love, a story in its main features as old as poetry itself, ideas 
 drawn from recent discoveries of science, visions of the "in- 
 creasing purpose" which runs through the ages, by which " the 
 thoughts of men are widened." In the poems "Of Old Sat 
 Freedom on the Heights," and "Love Thou Thy Land," Ten- 
 nyson made a declaration of his political faith, in which a 
 stern and ardent love of freedom was mingled with a venera- 
 tion for old institutions, a distrust of violence and revolution. 
 Finally, the 1842 volumes displayed Tennyson's gift of pure 
 song, wonderfully refined and deepened during this ten years' 
 silence, in such poems as "Move Eastward, Happy Earth," 
 and " Break, Break, Break." The latter, " made in a Lincoln- 
 shire lane at five o'clock in the morning between blossoming 
 hedges," is as moving and lovely a lyric as had been written 
 in England since the age of Elizabeth. 
 
 Tennyson's Later Life and Poetry. In 1847 appeared 
 The Princess. This was followed in 1850 by In Memoriam, 
 begun seventeen years before, soon after the death of Arthur 
 Hallam, whose memory it celebrates. In Memoriam made 
 Tennyson's fame and material prosperity secure. In the 
 year of its publication, Wordsworth, who had been poet 
 laureate, died, and Tennyson took the laurel. A government 
 pension enabled him to marry Emily Sellwood, to whom he 
 had been engaged for many years. They settled at Farring- 
 ford, in the Isle of Wight. Here, and at Aldworth, in Surrey, 
 Tennyson lived for the rest of his life, retired from the world, 
 but constantly binding himself by his work closer with the 
 thoughts and affections of all English-speaking people. The 
 most important landmarks of the long literary life still before 
 him were: Maud (1855); Enoch Arden (1864); The Idylls of 
 the King (begun with " Morte d'Arthur " before 1842 and 
 completed in 1872) ; a series of dramas including Queen 
 Mary, Harold, Becket, and The Foresters; a splendid volume 
 of Ballads (1880), including "The Revenge," "The Defense 
 of Lucknow," and "Rizpah" ; and such striking single poems
 
 Alfred Tennyson 307 
 
 as "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," "Merlin and the 
 Gleam " and " Crossing the Bar." " Merlin and the Gleam " 
 he intended as an allegory of his own poetical career; 
 "Crossing the Bar" he wished to be printed last in all edi- 
 tions of his poetry, and to stand as his farewell word, spoken 
 with solemn gladness as he put off into the mysterious sea of 
 death. 
 
 During the forty-two years in which he held the laureate- 
 ship, Tennyson stood as the spokesman of his people in 
 times of national sorrow and rejoicing. In such poems as 
 "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Revenge," "The 
 Relief of Lucknow," and the "Ode on the Duke of Wel- 
 lington," he ministered to national pride, fired the national 
 courage, and brought poetry nearer to the national life than 
 it had been since the age of Elizabeth. In 1883 he was 
 raised by Queen Victoria to the peerage, an honor which 
 he accepted in a large spirit, as a tribute less to himself than 
 to literature. He died in 1892, and was buried beside 
 Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, with a pomp and solemnity 
 unparalleled in the case of any other English man of letters. 
 
 Tennyson's Appearance and Personality. Many of Ten- 
 nyson's friends have recorded personal impressions concern- 
 ing him which enable us to see him vividly as he lived. Car- 
 lyle, about 1842, described him to Emerson thus: "Alfred 
 is one of the few British and foreign figures who are and re- 
 main beautiful to me, a true human soul, to whom your own 
 soul can say, 'Brother!' One of the finest looking men in 
 the world. A great shock of rough dusky dark hair ; bright, 
 laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive 
 yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost In- 
 dian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes 
 infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud 
 laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; 
 speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet 
 in these late decades such company over a pipe! " A friend 
 once protested to Tennyson that it was unfair he should be 
 "Hercules as well as Apollo"; and Fitzgerald (the translator 
 of Omar Khayyam) notes: "Alfred could hurl the crow-bar 
 farther than any of the neighboring clowns, whose humors,
 
 308 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 as well as those of their betters, knight, squire, landlord, and 
 lieutenant, he took quiet note of, like Chaucer himself." Of 
 his simplicity and candor, Mr. T. Watts-Dunton says: "The 
 charm of Tennyson lay in a great veracity of soul, in a 
 simple single-mindedness, so child-like that you could not 
 have supposed but that all subtleties even those of poetic 
 art must be foreign to a nature so simple." And again, 
 "Behind his uncompromising directness was apparent a 
 noble and splendid courtesy of the grand old type. As he 
 stood in the porch at Aldworth, meeting a guest or bidding 
 him good-bye as he stood there, tall far beyond the height 
 of average men, his skin showing dark and tanned by the sun 
 and wind no one could mistake him for anything but a great 
 forth-right English gentleman." To the end of his life he 
 was excessively sensitive to criticism; but his distaste for 
 adulation was equally marked, and this, together with a cer- 
 tain unconquerable shyness, often made his manner gruff and 
 abrupt, especially toward strangers. All who knew him in 
 his daily walks about his country homes testify to his marvel- 
 lous knowledge of the world of nature; every flower, bird, 
 and insect was known to him; his knowledge of geology was 
 profound, and a lifelong study of the stars and their sea- 
 sons gave him a grasp of astronomy unequalled by any 
 other poet except Dante. Humor is seldom apparent in his 
 writings, it is in fact rather conspicuously absent ; but many 
 good sayings and amusing anecdotes bear out the testimony 
 of his friends that his daily life was illuminated by abundant 
 humor, very quaint and dry. 
 
 "The Princess." Tennyson's first long poem; The Prin- 
 cess, deals with the question, then beginning to be much 
 discussed, of the higher education of women. It has for its 
 sub-title "A Medley," and no description could be more just. 
 The story is set in a graceful framework of modern English 
 life; it is supposed to be "improvised" by a group of young 
 people gathered on the lawn of an English country-house 
 during the afternoon of a popular holiday. A modern and 
 realistic atmosphere is thus established, in which the modern 
 "teaching" of the story may emerge without a sense of dis- 
 cord. The story itself deals with the quixotic attempt of a
 
 Alfred Tennyson 309 
 
 noble-spirited maiden and her women associates to establish 
 a female college and to realize an ideal of intellectual life in 
 which love and marriage shall have no part. The college is 
 invaded by the maiden's suitor in disguise, and love finally 
 triumphs over learning. The story is fantastically mixed, 
 of elements brought from many ages and countries ; and the 
 style, always musical, dreamy, and richly colored, often wan- 
 ders from the "mock heroic" key in which the poem is 
 supposed to be pitched. Tennyson gives a fair hearing to 
 both sides of the vexed question of the emancipation of 
 women. His solution, however, given in the noble concluding 
 passage of the poem, is practically the old solution, broadened 
 and clarified, that "woman's cause is man's," that, "either 
 sex alone is half itself" but united they form a "two-celled 
 heart, beating with one full stroke, life." The songs which 
 divide the various parts of the little mock-epic are among the 
 most beautiful and best-loved of all Tennyson wrote. " Blow, 
 Bugle, Blow," "Sweet and Low," and "Tears, Idle Tears" 
 are miracles of pure and lucent melody. 
 
 "In Memoriam." In Memoriam, the greatest work of 
 Tennyson's younger manhood, may be called an epic of 
 the inner life, on its religious side. Epic in its boldness 
 and sweep, it is, however, purely lyrical in form. It con- 
 sists of a hundred and thirty-one lyrics, "short swallow- 
 flights of song," composed in the intervals of other work. 
 In the beginning of the poem, the early phases of grief are 
 touched upon, moods of stunned and bewildered sorrow. 
 Gradually the personal pain merges into anxious speculation 
 concerning the mystery of death and the hope of immortal- 
 ity. Through states of doubt, despair, and anguished ques- 
 tion, the poem slowly mounts into a region of firm though 
 saddened faith; and it ends in full hymnal music breathing 
 hope and fortitude of heart. In it we see exemplified, in the 
 struggle and hardly- won triumph of a single soul, the world- 
 wide struggle of our age to preserve its faith in the spiritual 
 significance of life and death, in the face of the revelations 
 of modern science, at first view so appalling. When In 
 Memoriam was written, Darwin's theory of the evolution of 
 human life from lower forms had not yet been given to the
 
 310 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 world ; * but the idea was already in the air, and in number- 
 less ways Science had begun to sap the old foundations of 
 religious faith. Tennyson courageously faced the facts of 
 science, as revealed in geology and biology ; and he succeeded 
 in wringing religious consolation from the very things which 
 were dreaded as a fatal menace to religion. A majestic 
 movement is given to In Memoriam by the fact that the 
 poem follows the year twice through its revolutions, so that 
 the succession of day and night, the moon's changing phases, 
 the lapsing of the stars in their courses, the slow pageant of 
 the seasons, seem at last to enfold with their large harmony 
 and peace the forlorn heart of the mourner. Although, in 
 helping to break down the false opposition between science 
 on the one hand, and poetry and spiritual faith on the other, 
 In Memoriam did a great service to the age, its definite 
 religious teaching is of minor import beside its general no- 
 bility of mood, the solemn beauty of its portrayal of the 
 inner life, its wonderful pictures of English landscape and the 
 English home, and the full deep tide of music upon which all 
 is borne along. With Milton's "Lycidas" and Shelley's 
 "Adonais" it forms the height and crown of English elegiac 
 verse. 
 
 "Idylls of the King." The greatest work of Tennyson's 
 later life is the Idylls of the King, in which he painted anew 
 the character of the first English national hero, King Arthur, 
 and gave new meaning to the cycle of legends which had grown 
 up in the middle ages about the Knights of the Round Table. 
 These legends had been gathered together by Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth, added to by Layamon in his Brut, woven into 
 romances by the Anglo-Norman trouveres, and combined 
 into a splendid .prose romance by Sir Thomas Malory. A 
 great tangled mass of legend, the King Arthur stories had lain 
 for centuries awaiting the hand of some poet able to give them 
 a monumental treatment. Milton had looked at the subject 
 longingly in his youth, and had abandoned it only to take 
 up the greater theme of Paradise Lost. Tennyson began 
 early in his career to dip into its treasure-house of fancy, and 
 
 * The Origin oj Species appeared in 1859, the Descent of Man in 1871.
 
 Alfred Tennyson 311 
 
 to make short lyric studies, such as "The Lady of Shalott" 
 and "Sir Galahad and Queen Guinevere/" 1 upon its themes. 
 As early as 1842 he had written the wonderful narrative of 
 Arthur's death, which in the completed series of "Idylls," 
 was changed in title from "Morte d 'Arthur" to "The Pas- 
 sing of Arthur," and was put last of the twelve poems making 
 up the epic. The others were written at long intervals apart, 
 and in a very different order from that in which they now 
 appear. They are bound together by the persistence through 
 them all of Arthur's personality, the attempt which he 
 made to build up an ideal kingdom, and the defeat of this 
 attempt by the forces of sin and violence. Taken together, 
 the "Idylls" form a body of blank verse which, for splen- 
 dor and charm, had not been equalled since Milton. The 
 quality of poetry in them is like that of the Faerie Queene, 
 a beauty of dream, of cloudland, of " Celtic magic." Their 
 whole effect may be best described by Keats's phrase, "huge 
 cl6udy symbols of a high romance." 
 
 Tennyson as Representative of His Age. Tennyson is 
 the supremely representative figure of the Victorian era, first 
 because he held for fifty years of Victoria's reign the poetic 
 supremacy almost unchallenged, and second because he was 
 for that long period the recognized spokesman of the English 
 people in matters both public and personal. His position 
 was always at the midway of extremes in thought, and he 
 was able to include and reconcile a greater number of the 
 age's diverse interests than any other single writer. He 
 spiritualized and poetized its science. He voiced its relig- 
 ious struggle. He shared its interest in the storied past, and 
 its vivid curiosity concerning the future. He gave inspira- 
 tion to its search after broader and more humane politics. 
 He deepened his country's patriotism and the sense of her 
 national mission. He poured a hallowing light over her 
 familiar affections. And he did all this in a medium of verse 
 always fine, with an artistic devotion equalled in English 
 literature only by Keats and Milton.
 
 312 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 V. ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (l8o6-l86l) 
 
 Browning's Early Life and Poetry. Robert Browning, who 
 disputes with Tennyson the first place among Victorian poets, 
 was born in London in 1812. English, Scotch and German 
 blood was mingled in his veins with a more distant strain of 
 Creole. This mixed ancestry has been often pointed out as 
 an explanation of his wide sympathy with different races 
 and types of men. His father, a clerk in the Bank of Eng- 
 land, was a man of literary sensibility, and full of odd learning. 
 From him Browning gained, almost without knowing it, a 
 knowledge of out-of-the-way corners of history, and of little- 
 known by-ways of literature. To the end of his life the in- 
 fluence of this early training was evident both in his choice of 
 themes and in the .immense stores of curious information 
 which he lavished upon them. Browning's boyhood and youth 
 were passed in the suburb of Camberwell, where Ruskin also 
 was brought up. Camberwell was then a green, and almost 
 a rural neighborhood, and the youthful poet's life seems to 
 have been as freshly romantic as any that was ever lived. He 
 was fond of following gypsy caravans as they passed through 
 the country-side ; the refrain of a gypsy song which he once 
 heard, "Follow the Queen of the Gypsies, O! " formed the 
 kernel of a poem which he wrote years after, "The Flight of 
 the Duchess." He would sometimes, at night, climb into the 
 elms above Norwood, and gaze with a strange wonder and 
 excitement at the lights of London on the horizon ; by day 
 and night the nearness of the vast city was a reminder of the 
 complex human life he was to interpret more subtly and 
 deeply than any other poet had done since Shakespeare. 
 When a lad of fourteen he picked up by chance on a London 
 book-stall a pamphlet labelled "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical 
 Poem 'Queen Mab.' " Shelley had been dead four years, 
 but was still so little known to the world at large that none of 
 Browning's family, though really cultivated people, could 
 tell him who this strangely fascinating poet was. By perse- 
 verance, however, he obtained the rest of Shelley's poetry,
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 From a painting by G. F. Watts
 
 314 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 and through "Adonais" came into a knowledge of Keats. 
 The two together kindled Browning's latent genius, and 
 made a poet of him. 
 
 His first long poem, Pauline, published in 1833, is a 
 half-dramatic study of the type of spiritual life which Shel- 
 ley's own career embodied ; and Shelley's influence is clearly 
 traceable both in its thought and in its style. After a trip to 
 Russia and Italy, Browning published Paracelsus, in his 
 twenty-fourth year. This, like Pauline, is the "history of 
 a soul." It gives the life-story of Paracelsus, a mediaeval 
 scholar and alchemist, and shows how his absorption in the 
 things of the intellect, to the neglect of the things of the heart, 
 causes him to fail. 
 
 Paracelsus gained Browning the attention of the dis- 
 criminating few, and led to a request from the actor Mac- 
 ready for a play. In response to the invitation Browning 
 wrote the first of his dramas, Stratford, which had a moderate 
 success upon the stage. In 1840 appeared his third long 
 poem, Sordello, obscure and difficult by reason of its youth- 
 ful, unmastered abundance of thought and feeling. Of the 
 reception which Sordello met with, several amusing stories 
 are told. Carlyle wrote that his wife had read the work 
 with much interest, and desired to know whether Sordello 
 was a man, a city, or a book. Tennyson declared that he 
 could understand but two lines, the first and the last, "Who 
 will shall hear Sordello's story told," and "Who would has 
 heard Sordello's story told," and that they both were lies! 
 In Pippa Passes, however (1841), Browning shook himself 
 free- from these faults of manner, and produced a poem of 
 sustained beauty, as clear as sunlight, a work of simple, 
 melodious, impassioned art. Between 1840 and 1845 Brown- 
 ing was chiefly occupied with attempts in the acting drama, 
 of which the most interesting are perhaps Colombe's Birth- 
 day, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, and The Return of the Druses. 
 He had also begun those short poems dealing with special 
 moments in the lives of various men and women, historical 
 or imaginary, which constitute the most important division 
 of his work. These were published under the titles Dramatic 
 Lyrics and Dramatic Romances.
 
 Robert Browning 315 
 
 Browning's Marriage; Life in Italy. In 1846 Brown- 
 ing married Elizabeth Barrett, whose poetic reputation was 
 then far greater than his. She was a frail invalid, living in 
 a darkened room, and awaiting the coming of death. Brown- 
 ing's love rescued her from the grave; and their married life 
 was one of happiness so high and clear that it has already 
 become one of the glorified facts of literary history. Owing 
 to the opposition of Miss Barrett's gloomy and tyrannical 
 father the marriage was secret. The pair settled in Italy, 
 where for the remainder of Mrs. Browning's life they lived, 
 entering intimately into the life of the country, and sharing 
 with intense sympathy in the struggle it was then waging for 
 freedom from Austria. They made their home at Florence, 
 in the house called Casa Guidi, from which was taken the 
 title of Mrs. Browning's poem on the Italian liberation, 
 Casa Guidi Windows. Here Browning wrote his great series 
 of dramatic monologues, entitled Men and Women. 
 
 " The Ring and the Book." One day in Rome Browning 
 picked up from a street-stall a faded seventeenth century 
 pamphlet narrating the trial of Count Guido Franceschini 
 for the murder of his wife Pompilia. He saw in the sordid 
 police record the material for a great picture of human life. 
 After his wife's death in 1861 he threw himself, for dis- 
 traction from his grief, into the composition of the vast poem 
 in twelve parts, The Ring and the Book (1868-69), m which 
 he told the tragic story of Pompilia from many different 
 points of view, from her own and her husband's, from that of 
 a young priest Caponsacchi, who aids her in her distress, 
 from that of the lawyers upon both sides, from that of the 
 Pope who gives the final judgment, and from that of various 
 onlookers and gossips. It is a monumental study of a chain 
 of human circumstances as they appear to minds looking 
 from many different angles, with various degrees of insight, 
 and with various warping prejudices. It is the crowning 
 effort of Browning's genius for the vastness of its scope, its 
 intense humanity, its grasp of the complex elements of hu- 
 man nature. The imperfect understanding which Brown- 
 ing's work met with even thus late in his career is illustrated 
 by Carlyle's exclamation upon reading The Ring and the
 
 316 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Book, "It's a wonderful poem, one of the most wonderful 
 poems ever written. I have re-read it all through all made 
 out of an Old Bailey story that might have been told in ten 
 lines, and only wants forgetting!" Carlyle missed in it 
 its main significance, the infinite importance of that which, 
 from the ordinary point of view, seems unimportant. 
 
 Browning's Later Life. After the death of his wife 
 Browning spent his time chiefly in England. He wrote 
 much, with a steady gain in intellectual subtlety but with a 
 corresponding loss of poetic beauty. Many of his later 
 poems, such as Bishop Blougram's Apology, Prince Hohen- 
 stiel-Schwangau, and Mr. Sludge the Medium take the part, 
 dramatically, of dubious characters, and attempt to justify 
 them from their own standpoint. He made an exhaustive 
 study of Greek life and literature, and produced several 
 remarkable poems upon Greek subjects. The most enjoy- 
 able of these is a free translation of the Alcestis of Eurip- 
 ides, set in a beautiful framework of original narrative, and 
 entitled Balaustiori's Adventure. To the last his genius 
 continued to throw out, in his short poems, bursts and jets 
 of exquisite music, color, and feeling. Such, for instance, 
 are the little pieces called "Wanting is What?" and 
 "Never the Time and the Place," written in his seventy-first 
 year; and "Summum Bonum," written just before the pen 
 dropped from his hand in 1889, at Venice, in the seventy- 
 seventh year of his age. He had had to wait long for rec- 
 ognition, but during the latter years of his life his fame 
 overshadowed even that of Tennyson, and his works were 
 studied with an enthusiasm seldom accorded to a living poet. 
 
 Browning as a Man. Although Browning spent a large 
 portion of his literary effort in defending what society has 
 generally regarded as indefensible, his conduct of his own 
 life, before and after his secret marriage and elopement, 
 was thoroughly plain and usual. He even prided him- 
 self upon being a man of the world. He was open and 
 abundant in conversation; he was fond of society; he 
 discharged all the common duties of life with thoroughness 
 and relish. A lady who saw him at a dinner-table, without 
 knowing him, asked, "Who is that too exuberant financier?"
 
 Robert Browning 317 
 
 and Browning was flattered by the question. Yet, notwith- 
 standing all this, his romanticism was as vivid as Shelley's or 
 Byron's, and perhaps deeper than theirs. Macready, the 
 actor, said of him in his youth that he looked and spoke 
 more like a poet than anyone he had ever known. Carlyle 
 tells how, on one of his solitary gallops he was stopped 
 on Wimbledon Common by a young man, singularly beauti- 
 ful, with dark Italian face and black hair flowing in the 
 wind, who poured out to him, without preface or apology, 
 his admiration for the philosopher's writings. The anecdote, 
 besides giving us a picturesque glimpse of Browning in his 
 ardent youth, shows the impulsiveness and generous admira- 
 tion for others which characterized him always, and which 
 made him the friend of men whose differences of tempera- 
 ment estranged them from each other. There was in him, 
 also, an almost savage virility and force of feeling, capable 
 at rare intervals of transforming the affable man of the world 
 into a primeval creature, violent and terrible. Much of 
 Browning's work is intellectual; but we cannot rightly un- 
 derstand him unless we remember that the core of his nature 
 was simply and glowingly human; that he was, first of all, 
 a poet, and therefore one in whom feeling and imagination 
 were the moving forces, and thought was only a secondary 
 thing. 
 
 Browning's Poems as " Soul Histories "; " Pippa Passes." 
 Browning's earliest poem, Pauline, was, he tells us, in- 
 tended as the first of a series of "mono-dramatic epics," 
 each of which was to present the " history of a soul." Broadly 
 viewed, the whole of Browning's work is what his youthful 
 ambition dreamed of making it. In three forms, pure drama, 
 dramatic narrative, and dramatic lyric, he gave the history 
 of hundreds of souls; or if not their whole history, at least 
 some exciting moment of it. In his earlier life he made 
 many attempts to present these high moments in regular 
 drama, but the form was not perfectly suited to his pecu- 
 liar task. In Pippa Passes, however, he threw aside many 
 of the conventional demands of the stage, and presented four 
 special moments of soul-history, connected with each other 
 by only a slight thread. The germ of the poem came to him
 
 318 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 In youth, while listening to a gypsy girl singing in the Cam- 
 berwell woods. He imagined someone walking alone through 
 life, apparently too obscure to leave any trace behind, but 
 unconsciously exercising at every step a determining influ- 
 ence upon other lives. This conception he afterward con- 
 nected with the personality of a little work-girl in the silk- 
 mills of Asolo, a mountain town which he had visited on 
 his first journey to Italy. Pippa walks through Asolo on 
 New Year's Day, her one holiday in the year, unconsciously 
 dropping her divine songs into the lives of various people, 
 just at the moment when their fates are trembling between 
 good and evil, courage and cowardice. By the touching 
 purity and gladness of her voice, or by the significant words 
 she utters, she saves in turn each of the four persons whose 
 lives are at the turning point. At evening she goes back to 
 her bare room, and sinks to sleep with a final song on her 
 lips, still ignorant of the service she has done. 
 
 Browning's Short Poems: Peculiarities of His Method. 
 Browning is less a dramatist than an exhibitor of single 
 dramatic situations, such as the four which are bound loosely 
 together by Pippa's chance-heard songs. It follows that 
 his most vital work is, generally speaking, in his short poems. 
 In these he not only selects a special moment in the life of 
 his characters, but as a rule he views his theme from some 
 odd and striking point of view. Perhaps the best example 
 of his skill in selecting a point of view, is to be found in 
 the "Epistle of Karshish." The aim of the poem is to 
 present the state of mind of Lazarus, who has beheld the 
 mysteries of existence beyond the grave, and who has brought 
 back into mortal life a sense of immortality so strong that 
 every act and every judgment is determined by it. The 
 time is about thirty years after the death of Christ ; and the 
 speaker, Karshish, is an Arab doctor who in travelling through 
 Palestine has met Lazarus, and who sends a report of the 
 strange case to his old master in leechcraft, Abib. Through 
 the vain struggle of Karshish to maintain his scientific scep- 
 ticism in the face of Lazarus's story and bearing, we are made 
 to feel the reality of the miracle with overwhelming force, 
 and are brought strangely near to the conditions of life in Pal-
 
 Robert Browning 319 
 
 estine in the next generation after Christ. Another pecu- 
 liarity of Browning's method in his short poems is that he 
 throws the reader into the midst of the theme with startling 
 suddenness, and proceeds with a rapidity which is apt to 
 bewilder a reader not in the secret of the method. There 
 are no explanations, no gradual transitions. A capital ex- 
 ample of this peculiarity is the "Soliloquy in a Spanish 
 Cloister," which has to be read to the end before we see it 
 for what it is, the self-revealed picture of a narrow-minded, 
 superstitious, sensual monk, stirred to hatred by a brother 
 monk, whose mild, benignant ways and genuine piety we 
 gradually discern through the speaker's jeers and curses. 
 If we add to these peculiarities of method the fact that 
 Browning's best work is very compressed, in style, we see 
 why many persons have found obscure in him what is in 
 reality clear enough, but is not to be perceived clearly with- 
 out alertness on the reader's part. Perhaps the poem which 
 best illustrates all Browning's peculiarities of method, har- 
 moniously combined, is "My Last Duchess," a marvellous 
 example of his power to give a whole life-history, with a 
 wealth of picturesque detail, in a few vivid, suggestive lines. 
 Some of Browning's Themes. In "Caliban upon Sete- 
 bos," taking a hint from Shakespeare's Tempest, Browning 
 has shown the grotesque imaginings of a half-human mon- 
 ster, groping after an explanation of the universe. In 
 "Childe Roland," starting with a snatch of song from the 
 fool in Lear, he has shown the heart of mediaeval knight- 
 hood, fronting spectral terrors in its search after the strong- 
 hold of sin, the Dark Tower, where lurks the enemy of life 
 and joy. In "Abt Vogler," and "A Toccata of Galuppi" 
 he has touched upon the inner meanings of music, and has 
 painted for us permanent types of the musical enthusiast. 
 In "The Grammarian's Funeral" he has shown the poetry 
 and heroism hidden underneath the gray exterior of the life 
 of a Renaissance pedant. In "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea 
 del Sarto," and "Pictor Ignotus," he has given the secret 
 workings of the painter's nature, and has flashed illumination 
 upon the sources of success and failure in art which lie deep 
 in the moral being of the artist. In " Balaustion's Adven-
 
 320 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 ture" he has revealed the inner spirit of Greek life in the 
 fourth century before Christ. In "A Death in the Desert" 
 he has led us into the mystical rapture of the "early Christians ; 
 and in "Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day" he has ap- 
 proached Christian faith from the modern standpoint. In 
 "Saul" he has shown us, against the splendid background 
 of patriarchal Israel, the boy David singing, in the tent of 
 the great king, songs of human joy which rise, in a sudden 
 opening of the heavens of prophecy, into a song of the coming 
 of the Messiah. Nowhere out of Shakespeare can be found 
 a mind more wide-ranging over the outer circumstances and 
 the inner significance of man's life. 
 
 Love, as the supreme experience of the soul, testing its 
 temper and revealing its probable fate, holds the first place 
 in Browning's thought. In such poems as "Cristina," 
 "Evelyn Hope," "The Last Ride Together," "My Star," 
 "By the Fireside," and a multitude more, he has presented 
 love in its varied phases; and has celebrated its manifold 
 meanings not only on earth, but in the infinite range of 
 worlds through which he believes that the soul is destined 
 to go in search after its own perfection. By the intensity 
 and positiveness of his doctrine he has influenced his age 
 profoundly, and has made his name synonymous with faith- 
 fulness to the human love which life brings, and through 
 that to the divine love which it implies and promises. 
 
 The robustness of Browning's nature, its courage, its 
 abounding joy and faith in life, make his works a perma- 
 nent storehouse of spiritual energy. In an age distracted by 
 doubt and divided in will, his strong unfaltering voice has 
 been lifted above the perplexities and hesitations of men, 
 like a bugle-call to joyous battle, in which the victory is to 
 the brave. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. One of Browning's most 
 perfect short poems, "One Word More," is addressed to his 
 wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), and is a 
 kind of counter-tribute to her most perfect work, the Son- 
 nets from the Portuguese, which contain the record of her 
 courtship and marriage. Her early life was shadowed by 
 illness and affliction; and her early poetry (The Seraphim,
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 
 From a drawing by Field Talfourd, Rome, March, 1859
 
 322 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 1838, Poems, 1844) shows in many places the defects of 
 unreality and of overwrought emotion natural to work pro- 
 duced in a sick-chamber. The best known of these early 
 poems are perhaps "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," where 
 she works under the influence of Tennyson's idylls, and 
 "The Cry of the Children," where she voices the humani- 
 tarian protest against child-labor in mines and factories. 
 After her marriage and removal to Italy her health im- 
 proved, and her art greatly strengthened. The Sonnets 
 from the Portuguese (1850) are among the noblest love- 
 poems in the language. Mrs. Browning was deeply in- 
 terested in the struggle of Italy to shake off her bondage 
 to Austria, as is shown by her Casa Guidi Windows, pub- 
 lished in 1851. In 1856 appeared her most ambitious work, 
 Aurora Leigh, a kind of versified novel of modern English 
 life, with a social reformer of aristocratic lineage for hero, 
 and a young poetess, in large part a reflection of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's own personality, for heroine. Aurora Leigh shows the 
 influence of a great novel-writing age, when the novel was 
 becoming more and more imbued with social purpose. The 
 interest in public questions also appears in Mrs. Browning's 
 Poems Before Congress (1860), and in her Last Poems (1862). 
 Mrs. Browning's touch is uncertain, and her style some- 
 times vague or extravagant. But she had a noble sympathy 
 with noble causes, her emotion is elevated and ardent, and 
 her expression, at its best (as in the Sonnets from the Portu- 
 guese}, is as lofty as her mood. Her characteristic note is that 
 of intimate, personal feeling ; even Casa Guidi Windows has 
 been called "a woman's love-making with a nation." 
 
 VI. MATTHEW ARNOLD (182 2- 1 888) 
 
 Arnold's Life. Browning's robust optimism in the face of 
 all the unsettling and disturbing forces of the age is thrown 
 out in sharp relief when we contrast him with a somewhat 
 younger poet, Matthew Arnold, in whom the prevailing tone 
 is one of half-despairing doubt. Arnold was born in 1822, 
 the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the famous head-master of 
 Rugby. The Arnolds had a house in the lake country,
 
 Matthew Arnold 323 
 
 near Wordsworth, and the two families were on friendly 
 terms. In his later life as a critic Matthew Arnold was to 
 do much toward fixing Wordsworth's high place in the minds 
 of his countrymen. From the first the influence of Words- 
 worth's poetry upon Arnold was strong. Arnold went up 
 to Oxford in 1840, and five years later won a fellowship at 
 Oriel College. His first volume appeared in 1849, with the 
 title, The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems. This was fol- 
 lowed by Poems (1853), Merope, a drama in Greek form and 
 on a Greek subject (1858), and by New Poems, in 1867. 
 From his thirtieth year until shortly before his death, he held 
 the position of inspector of schools. To the demands and 
 responsibilities of this official position were added, in 1857, 
 those of a professorship of poetry at Oxford. These outer 
 circumstances were largely instrumental in turning his ener- 
 gies away from poetry into the field of prose criticism, where, 
 for the last twenty years of his life, he held the position of 
 a leader, almost of a dictator. His most important work in 
 prose is the Essays in Criticism (1865). Toward the end 
 of his life he made a lecturing tour in America, the chief 
 outcome of which was the brilliant address on Emerson, 
 published, with other essays, in Discourses in America. He 
 died in 1888. 
 
 Arnold as a Poet. Arnold may be described as a poet of 
 transition. He grew up in'the interval between the first and 
 the second outburst of creative energy in the century. Car- 
 lyle, Browning, Tennyson, and others, were, each in his way, 
 already building anew the structures of spiritual faith and 
 hope ; but by Arnold, as by many others, the ebbing of the old 
 wave was far more clearly felt than the rising of the new one. 
 Standing, as he says, 
 
 "between two worlds, one dead, 
 The other powerless to be born," 
 
 he fronts life wearily, or at best stoically. He seeks conso- 
 lation in the intellect ; and his poetry, which addresses itself 
 to the cultivated few, is rather thoughtful than impassioned. 
 His religious dejection is expressed very beautifully in " Dover
 
 324 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Beach" and "Obermann." It is this same dejection applied 
 to the. facts of human intercourse, which breathes sadly but 
 calmly through the series of love lyrics entitled " Switzerland." 
 The imperfections and unrealized ideals of life, in which Ten- 
 nyson found cause to "faintly trust the larger hope," and in 
 which Browning saw the "broken arcs" of heaven's "perfect 
 round," Arnold made a reason for doubt, declaring that men 
 should put away delusion, and expect in the future only what 
 they see in the past. Other phases of this stoic melancholy 
 and of the struggle which it wages with the restless craving 
 for joy, are to be studied in the pieces called " Self-Depend- 
 ence" and "A Summer Night." 
 
 For his ideal of form, Arnold went to the literature of 
 Greece. When he works more deliberately in the Greek 
 spirit and manner, his style is often cold and dry. In his 
 long poems, especially, he is apt to sacrifice too much to his 
 reverence for classical tradition. Only one of them, Soh- 
 rab and Rustum, which tells an oriental story of a duel 
 between a father and his lost son, and their recognition of 
 each other in death, combines classic purity of style with 
 romantic ardor of feeling. The truth of its oriental color, 
 the deep pathos of the situation, the fire and intensity of 
 the action, the strong conception of character, and the full, 
 solemn music of the verse, make"Sohrab and Rustum" the 
 masterpiece among Arnold's longer poems. The same unity 
 of classic form with romantic feeling characterizes his two 
 shorter masterpieces, "The Scholar Gypsy" and "Thyrsis," 
 written to commemorate his college friend, Arthur Hugh 
 Clough. 
 
 Arnold as a Prose Writer. Arnold's prose has little trace 
 of the wistful melancholy of his verse. It is almost always 
 urbane, vivacious, light-hearted. The doctrine which he 
 spent his later life in preaching is based upon a classical 
 ideal, the ideal of symmetry, wholeness, or, as he daringly 
 called it, perfection. Carlyle had preached the value of con- 
 duct, the "Hebraic" element in life; Arnold set himself to 
 preach the value of the "Hellenic" element open-mind- 
 edness, delight in ideas, alertness to entertain new points of 
 view and willingness to examine life constantly in the light of
 
 Matthew Arnold 325 
 
 new theories. Wherever, in religion, politics, education, or 
 literature, he saw his countrymen under the domination of 
 narrow ideals, he came speaking the mystic word of deliv- 
 erance, "Culture." Culture, acquaintance with the best 
 which has been thought and done in the world, is his remedy 
 for all ills. In almost all of his prose writing he attacks 
 some form of "Philistinism," by which word he characterized 
 the narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction of the British 
 middle class. His ideal was that of balanced cultivation, the 
 ideal of the trained, sympathetic, cosmopolitan gentleman. 
 In his own way he was a prophet and a preacher, striving 
 whole-heartedly to release his countrymen from bondage to 
 mean things, and pointing their gaze to that wholeness and 
 balance of character which has seemed to many noble minds 
 the true goal of human endeavor. 
 
 Arnold's tone is admirably fitted to the peculiar task he had 
 to perform. He makes his plea for the gospel of ideas with 
 urbanity and playful grace, as befitted the Hellenic spirit, 
 bringing "sweetness and light" into the dark places of Brit- 
 ish prejudice. Arnold's most important work of literary 
 criticism is the series of lectures "On Translating Homer," 
 which deserve careful study for the enlightenment they offer 
 concerning many of the fundamental questions of style. The 
 essays on Wordsworth and on Byron, from Essays in Criti- 
 cism, and that on Emerson, from Discourses in America, 
 furnish good examples of Arnold's charm and stimulating 
 power as a critic. 
 
 VII. JOHN RUSKTN (1819-1899) 
 
 Ruskin's Early Life; Art Criticism. The dictatorship of 
 taste which Arnold held in matters of literature, was held in 
 matters of art by John Ruskin, who also broadened his criti- 
 cism, as did Arnold, into the region of social and moral ideals. 
 He was born in 1819. His father, a London wine-merchant of 
 wealth and liberal tastes, gave him every early advantage of 
 education and travel. Family carriage trips through England, 
 France, and Switzerland, enabled him to gather those impres-
 
 328 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 sions of landscape beauty and of architectural effect which 
 he afterward put to remarkable use in his critical writings. 
 A boyish enthusiasm for the paintings of Turner ripened 
 with years into an ardent championship of that wonderful 
 artist, then obscure and neglected. In the first volume of 
 Modern Painters, published in his twenty-fourth year, Rus- 
 kin enshrined Turner as the greatest of landscape painters. 
 In doing so, however, his powers of analysis led him deep 
 into the theory of art ; and in the remainder of his work, 
 published at intervals during the next eighteen years, he 
 examined many types and schools of painting, separating 
 what he held to be true from what he held to be false, with 
 eloquence and haughty assurance. Meanwhile, in The Seven 
 Lamps oj Architecture and Stones of Venice, he made a 
 similar examination of the principal types of European archi- 
 tecture, and attempted to establish similar underlying prin- 
 ciples concerning their growth and decay, their worth and 
 worthlessness. He believed the springs of art to lie deep in 
 the ethical nature of the artist, and in the moral temper of 
 the age and nation which produced him. This is the per- 
 vading idea of all Ruskin's art criticism. By insistence 
 upon this view, by eloquent illustration and fiery defence 
 of it, he gradually led his readers to a new understanding of 
 the spiritual meaning of art, and awakened them to a new 
 understanding of the beautiful. 
 
 Ruskin's Later Life; Ethical and Economic Teaching. 
 In 1860, at forty years of age, Ruskin finished Modern 
 Painters, and practically closed that series of works which 
 had given him repute as a writer upon art. From this time 
 on he used art mainly as illustration and text, by means of 
 which to enforce some ethical, economic, or religious lesson. 
 He became more and more absorbed in the problems of social- 
 ism, being led thereto by the conviction at which he had ar- 
 rived in his previous work, that all great art must be national 
 and social, and must spring from healthy and beautiful condi- 
 tions of life in the society where it arises. Modern art he 
 held to be, with a few exceptions, debased ; and he gradually 
 came to believe that this debasement was due to our commer- 
 cial organization of society. In two books, Munera Pulveris
 
 John Ruskin 327 
 
 and Unto This Last, he protested against the received theories 
 of political economy. The substance of his teaching is that 
 economics must be looked at from the stand-point of what 
 does and what does not constitute true "value," that is, of 
 what does and what does not contribute to the true good of 
 man. He includes, therefore, in his " political economy" many 
 things not included in the previous "commercial economy," 
 as he insists that the science of the old economists should be 
 called. In thus broadening the basis of discussion, and giv- 
 ing a new significance to the term "value," Ruskin did a real 
 service for the economic thought of the future. 
 
 His most popular book, Sesame and Lilies, was a side- 
 product of his thinking on political economy. In the first 
 division of the book, entitled "King's Treasuries," he holds 
 up to censure England's absorption in worldly success as 
 opposed to the real success which comes only from a life 
 beautifully and humanely lived. To the "gospel of getting- 
 on," which depends for its appealing power upon the idea 
 that money constitutes the only real "value," he opposes the 
 gospel of spiritual wealth, especially as deposited in books, 
 those King's Treasuries which are the real centre of the realm 
 of "value." The second part, "Queen's Gardens," is Rus- 
 kin's contribution to the "woman problem" of the century, 
 the theme being the same as that of Tennyson's Princess. 
 Sesame and Lilies is written in a style of wonderful strength 
 and richness. It affords perhaps the best example of Rus- 
 kin's prose. 
 
 As he went on in years, Ruskin's sympathy went out more 
 and more to the oppressed and unjustly treated of this world ; 
 and he spent a large part of his time and energy, as well as the 
 bulk of his large fortune, in attempting to help the work- 
 ing classes by word and deed. After his removal in 1872 to 
 Brantwood, in Wordsworth's country among the English 
 lakes, his chief connection with the outside world was through 
 a series of letters to working men, entitled Fors Clavigera, 
 which contain some of his ripest teaching, as well as much 
 humorous and sweet-minded familiar talk. In Fors Clavigera 
 first appeared the sketches afterward brought together as an 
 extended autobiography, with the title Prceterita, where a de-
 
 328 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 lightfully naive and candid account is given of his boyhood 
 and youth. He died in 1899. 
 
 Ruskin as Writer and as Teacher. Ruskin combined 
 many gifts and qualities: a subtle intellect, an intense sus- 
 ceptibility to beauty and ugh'ness, great moral ardor, marked 
 impatience and dogmatism, and a marvellous power of prose 
 expression. His style is based on the prose of the English 
 Bible, modified by the religious writers of the seventeenth 
 century, and it is enriched by a unique gift of description, 
 lyrical in movement and splendid in color. His best de- 
 scriptive passages, for example the famous dithyramb on St. 
 Mark's cathedral in Stones of Venice, that on the Falls of 
 Schaffhausen in Modern Painters, or that on the Rhone at 
 Geneva, in Praterita, are among the greatest examples of 
 descriptive eloquence in the language. 
 
 In the use to which he put his powers, Ruskin shows the 
 strong sociological drift of the Victorian era. The first half 
 of his life was taken up with the effort to vivify and spiritual- 
 ize his countrymen's perceptions of the beautiful, an effort 
 parallel with that of Arnold to combat the sloth of their intel- 
 lect, with that of Carlyle to make more sincere and valiant 
 their personal character. The latter half of his life was taken 
 up with a protest against modern civilization, and with a 
 search after some better basis of society than the present com- 
 mercial one. 
 
 The Nineteenth-Century Novel. While tracing, in this 
 chapter and the preceding, the literary history of the nine- 
 teenth century, we have omitted all but casual mention of 
 that form of literature which has been most popular, most 
 widely cultivated, and perhaps most influential of all, the 
 novel. We must in the next chapter retrace our steps, take 
 up the novel as it was handed on from the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, and consider its manifold development during the last 
 hundred years. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. With the close of the Revolutionary era, 
 political events cease to have a preponderating influence upon litera- 
 ture, and social changes become of greater importance. Summarize 
 the chief circumstances making for social change during the Victorian
 
 Review Outline 329 
 
 period, and describe briefly the influence which these changes have 
 had upon the readers and makers of books. Note the unusual con- 
 junction in Victorian literature of romantic feeling with a serious 
 aim. 
 
 State briefly the facts of Macaulay's life up to his departure for 
 India. When and how did he make his first reputation as a writer ? 
 What did the Reform Bill aim to accomplish, and what was Macaulay's 
 connection with it? What were the literary fruits of Macaulay's 
 residence in India ? Give a short account of his life from his return 
 to England until his death. In what respects does Macaulay's success 
 as a speaker furnish a key to his popularity and power as a writer? In 
 what province of essay-writing is Macaulay strongest ? In what 
 province is he, by his own confession, weakest ? How much ground 
 did he propose to cover in his " History," and how much did he actually 
 cover? It has been said that Macaulay derived his ideal of what 
 historical writing should be from the novels of Sir Walter Scott. What 
 light does this throw upon his aim and method as a historian ? Give 
 some account of Macaulay's personal character; of his attitude toward 
 his own time. How is he contrasted with Carlyle in this latter respect ? 
 
 Give an account of Carlyle's life up to the time of his removal to 
 London. From what source did he gain his greatest intellectual 
 stimulus ? What is the meaning, in Carlyle's own early history, of 
 the phrases, " Everlasting No " and " Everlasting Yea " ? What 
 famous book, and what two notable essays had he written before leav- 
 ing Craigenputtoch ? It has been said that the sympathy which 
 Carlyle shows in his essay on Burns is due in part to a resemblance 
 between them. Can you instance a leading trait of Burns's character, 
 as man and as poet, which gives him kinship with Carlyle ? Narrate 
 the chief facts of Carlyle's life after coming to London ; name and char- 
 acterize briefly some of his most important writings in their proper 
 order. Give some instances of Carlyle's wit and caustic temper; of^ 
 his generosity of character; of his tenderness. Pick out from your 
 own reading some examples of his humor. In what respects may 
 " Sartor Resartus " and " Heroes and Hero-Worship " be looked upon 
 as his two typical books, embodying his view of life ? Describe the 
 plan of " Sartor Resartus." Compare Carlyle's attitude of irrespon- 
 sibility and sly masquerading with what is said in Chapter X of Swift's 
 method of satire. Explain the twofold meaning of the "Clothes 
 philosophy," as developed in " Sartor." What is meant by the
 
 330 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 phrase " Carlylese " ? Carlyle takes rank with Macaulay as a master 
 of picturesque historical narrative; in what main respect do they 
 differ? State in broad terms the service which Carlyle rendered 
 to his age. 
 
 Note the circumstances of Tennyson's parentage and youth which 
 contributed to form his character as a poet. What was his first pub- 
 lication ? When did his first independent volumes appear ? What 
 circumstances of Tennyson's life during his ten years' silence, from 
 1832 to 1842, tended to give his work greater humanity and serious- 
 ness ? In what poems of the 1842 volumes is this particularly apparent ? 
 How is " Ulysses " connected with Tennyson's personal history ? 
 What was Tennyson's political attitude, as shown in such poems as 
 " Love Thou Thy Land," and " Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights " ? 
 Tell what you can of the relations between Tennyson and Arthur Hal- 
 lam. How long was Tennyson engaged upon " In Memoriam " ? Nar- 
 rate briefly the course of Tennyson's life from the publication of " In 
 Memoriam " until his death. How long was he engaged upon the 
 " Idylls of the King " ? What can you say of Tennyson as a laureate ? 
 What is the bearing of " Merlin and the Gleam " and " Crossing the 
 Bar " upon the poet's personal history ? Describe the plan of " The 
 Princess." With what question does " The Princess " deal, and what 
 is Tennyson's view of the question? In what form is " In Memo- 
 riam " written ? Note the admirable fitness of this form for present- 
 ing the many different moods, the many thoughts and memories which 
 the poem aims to present. What, in general terms, is the course of 
 thought in the poem ? Why was its religious aspect of peculiar im- 
 portance at the time when it was written ? With what two other 
 poems is it commonly grouped, and why? Review the history of 
 the King Arthur legends up to the time when Tennyson took them up. 
 By what central theme did Tennyson seek to give unity to the " Idylls 
 .of the King " ? In what respect is Tennyson the representative poet 
 of the Victorian age ? 
 
 Give a brief outline of Browning's life. What was the first poetical 
 influence under which he fell, and how is this reflected in his first 
 volume ? What is the theme of " Paracelsus " ? What is his most 
 perfect long poem ? Which is the greatest in scope and human mean- 
 ing? Give the titles of two or three of his most successful dramas. 
 What was Browning's conception, in his youth, of the work he wished 
 to do; in what way did he realize his ambition? In what peculiar
 
 Review Outline 331 
 
 kind of dramatic writing is Browning most successful? Explain in 
 what respect " Pippa Passes " is typical of his peculiar dramatic genius. 
 State some of the peculiarities of Browning's method in his short 
 poems, illustrating the general points, if possible, from your own 
 reading. Find for yourself further illustration, besides that given 
 in the text, of Browning's sympathy with widely different types of 
 human life. What aspect of human life held the first place in his 
 thoughts ? As an epitome of Browning's courage and optimism read 
 the " Epilogue to Asolando," the last lines which Browning published; 
 they are his farewell word in the same sense that " Crossing the Bar " 
 is Tennyson's. Read in the same connection " Prospice," in which 
 poem also he faces the fact of death, and utters his personal feeling 
 concerning it. In what two poems did Browning and his wife leave 
 to the world a memorial of their love for each other ? If possible read 
 these two works together. Give a brief outline of Mrs. Browning's 
 life, with her chief works. Where does she show the influence of Ten- 
 nyson; where the humanitarian interest of her age; where her enthu- 
 siasm for Italian liberty; where the influence of the novel-writers of 
 her time ? 
 
 State the leading facts of Arnold's iife. What, in general, is his 
 poetic attitude toward religion and human life ? How, in matters of 
 faith, does he stand contrasted with Browning; how with Tennyson ? 
 Note that, though he is in feeling a romantic poet, and born in an age 
 when romanticism was prevalent in literature, he attempts to give 
 his work classic form. What great poet of the seventeenth century 
 does he resemble in this respect ? If possible read " Sohrab and Rus- 
 tum," the masterpiece among Arnold's longer poems, noting particularly 
 the romantic strangeness and picturesqueness of the story, together 
 with the classic calmness and " poise " of the style in which it is told. 
 With wha^t three other great English elegies may " Thyrsis " be 
 grouped ? With what kind of writing was Arnold chiefly occupied 
 in his later years ? Explain, as clearly as possible, what Arnold meant 
 by the catch-words, " Perfection," " Culture," and " Philistinism.^ 
 
 What point of resemblance is noticeable between the literary positions 
 of Arnold and Ruskin. Into what two main periods was Ruskin's 
 literary life divided ? Name two or three works of each period. Note 
 Ruskin's theory of the relation between art and the ethical nature; 
 between art and the society where it is produced. What was Ruskin'* 
 great service to political economy ? Read " Sesame and Lilies " as a
 
 332 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 typical example of Ruskin's style and thought. In what respect does 
 Ruskin's later life reflect the social conscience of the Victorian age ? 
 
 READING GUIDE. Class reading of the authors treated in this 
 chapter will naturally vary greatly, according to the taste of the teacher 
 and of the student, and the time at their disposal. A selection from 
 the following list will meet most cases. 
 
 Macaulay: Essays on Milton, on Addison, and on Johnson. These, 
 together with the essay on Goldsmith, are given in Numbers 102, 103, 
 and ^04, of the Riverside Literature series. 
 
 Carlyle: Essays on Burns, on Boswell's "Johnson" (contrast with 
 Macaulay's treatment); "The Hero as Poet" and "The Hero as Man 
 of Letters," from "Heroes and Hero-Worship." These are included in 
 the Selections from Carlyle by H. W. Boynton (Allyn & Bacon). 
 
 Tennyson: "The Lotus-Eaters," "The Lady of Shalott," "A Dream 
 of Fair Women," "The Palace of Art," "The Miner's Daughter," 
 "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," "Charge of the Light Brigade," "The 
 Revenge," ode on the Duke of Wellington, "Rizpah," "The Daisy," 
 "Bugle Song" and "Tears, Idle Tears" from "The Princess"; "The 
 Coming of Arthur," "Guinevere," and "The Passing of Arthur," from 
 "Idylls of the King" ; "The Poet," "Of Old Sat Freedom on the 
 Heights," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," "The Higher Pantheism," 
 " Merlin and the Gleam," " Crossing the Bar." All these poems, with 
 selections from "Maud" and from "In Memoriam," are included in a 
 volume edited by H. van Dyke, in the Athenaeum Press series (Gum). 
 
 Browning: Short Poems "How They Brought the Good News from 
 Ghent to Aix," "Cavalier Tunes," "The Lost Leader," "Meeting at 
 Night and Parting at Morning," "Evelyn Hope," "Home Thoughts 
 from Abroad," "My Star," "Memorabilia," "The Patriot," "The Boy 
 and the Angel," "The Englishman in Italy," "One Word More," "Abt 
 Vogler," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Prospice," "Henre" Riel," "Over the Sea 
 Our Galleys Went" (from "Paracelsus"), "Never the Time and the 
 Place," "Epilogue to Asolando." Longer Poems "Fra Lippo Lippi," 
 "Andrea del Sarto," "Epistle of Karshish the Arab Physician," "Saul," 
 "The Flight of the Duchess," "Pippa Passes," "Pompilia" and "Ca- 
 ponsacchi" from "The Ring and the Book." A good selection from 
 Browning's shorter poems is edited by F. T. Baker, in Macmillan's 
 Pocket series. 
 
 Mrs, Browning: "The Cry of the Children," "Cowper*s Grave,"
 
 Reading Guide 333 
 
 "Rhyme of the Duchess May," "The Great God Pan," a few of the 
 "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Selections from Mrs. Browning's 
 Shorter Poems, by H. E. Hershey, in Macmillan's Pocket series, is 
 recommended. 
 
 Arnold: Poetry "Dover Beach," "Obermann," "A Summer Night," 
 "Self-Dependence," "The Scholar Gypsy," "Thyrsis," "Sohrab and 
 Rustum." Selected poems in Maynard's English Classics. Prose 
 "On Translating Homer," essays on Wordsworth, on Milton, and on 
 Gray (from "Essays in Criticism"), essays on Emerson and on Num- 
 bers (from "Discourses in America"), selections from "Culture and 
 Anarchy," given in Number 68 of Maynard's English Classics. 
 
 Ruskin: "Sesame and Lilies," "Crown of Wild Olive," "Unto This 
 Last," selections from "Modern Painters," given hi Number 48 of 
 Maynard's English Classics. Comprehensive selections from Ruskin, 
 with critical comment, are edited in one volume, by Mrs. L. G. Huf- 
 ford (Ginn). 
 
 Texts: Besides the editions already mentioned, the following may be 
 found useful "Macaulay's Essays" (twenty-seven essays), and "Lays 
 of Ancient Rome," in a single volume (Longmans); "Carlyle's Critical 
 and Miscellaneous Essays," in one volume (Appleton); "Heroes and 
 Hero-Worship" (Athenaeum Press series, and in Cassell's National 
 Library); "Past and Present" and "Sartor Resartus," in one volume 
 (Harpers); "Selections from Tennyson's Shorter Poems," edited by 
 C. R. Nutter, hi Macmillan's Pocket series; "The Princess" and "Idylls 
 of the King" in same series, also in Maynard's English Classics, River- 
 side Literature series, etc.; "Browning's Selected Poems" (Harpers), 
 "Principal Shorter Poems" (Appleton), selections also in Maynard's 
 English Classics; Arnold, "Selected Poems" in Golden Treasury series, 
 "Selections from Prose Writings," by L. E. Gates (Holt); Ruskin, 
 "Wild Olive" and "Munera Pulveris," in one volume (U. S. Book 
 Co.), "Wild Olive" and "Sesame and Lilies," one volume (Burt). 
 
 Biography and Criticism. Life of Macaulay, by J. A. C. Morison, 
 in the English Men of Letters; the "Life of Macaulay," by G. O. 
 Trevelyan, is one of the great biographies of English literature, but is 
 too voluminous for school use. The life of Carlyle, by R. Garnett, 
 hi the Great Writers series, is more satisfactory than the one given in 
 the Engh'sh Men of Letters; an essay on Carlyle occurs in Lowell's 
 "My Study Windows." The life of Tennyson, by A. Lyall, English 
 Men of Letters, is the best for ordinary use; H. van Dyke's study.
 
 334 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 "The Poetry of Tennyson," is the best among the many commentaries 
 upon his work. The life of Browning,' by W. Sharp, Great Writers 
 series, and by G. K. Chesterton, English Men of Letters, supplement 
 each other well; the best aid to an understanding of Browning for begin- 
 ners, is H. Corson's "Introduction to the Study of Browning" (Heath). 
 An excellent study of Arnold is prefixed to the volume of "Selections" 
 by L. E. Gates, mentioned above. Of Ruskin's life, especially his early 
 years, his autobiography entitled "Praeterita" is the best account; Ruskin, 
 in the English Men of Letters series, is by F. Harrison. Among the 
 critical commentaries may be mentioned " The Work of John Ruskin," 
 by C. Waldstein (Harpers) and "John Ruskin, Social Reformer," by 
 J. A. Hobson.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE novel of the nineteenth century is broader and more 
 complex than that of the eighteenth, by virtue of the greater 
 breadth and complexity of the life with which it has to deal. 
 The world of fiction in the eighteenth century is a small one ; 
 its characters are, with a few notable exceptions, drawn 
 from the leisure class and its dependents; they have usually 
 no business in life beyond carrying on the action of the story. 
 But in the nineteenth century we have novels which deal 
 with the life of the sea, the army, crime, sport, commerce, 
 labor, politics, and the church, and with the special dif- 
 ficulties, dangers, and temptations which each career in- 
 volves. Again, the increase in knowledge of the past, and 
 of remote parts of the world, which the century has brought, 
 has thrown open to the romancer two great new fields. 
 Finally, the deeper thought of the century, bearing fruit in 
 rapid social changes, has given to the novel of purpose greater 
 dignity and power. The attempt to reform government and 
 institutions, the labor movement, the so-called conflict be- 
 tween science and faith, all have been reflected in novels, 
 and have in turn been influenced by them. The nineteenth- 
 century novel is therefore to be regarded not only as a vast 
 and comprehensive picture of life, but as a powerful force 
 acting upon society. 
 
 II. JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) 
 
 Jane Austen's Life. The earliest of nineteenth-century 
 novelists, however, Jane Austen, is not representative of the 
 wider scope of the novel in the new period, but is remark- 
 able for her perfection in handling the limited interests of 
 
 335
 
 336 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 eighteenth-century fiction. Miss Austen was the daughter of 
 a clergyman and, except- for an occasional visit to a water- 
 ing-place like Bath or Lyme, she spent her youth hi a country 
 parish. Her acquaintance included the families of country 
 gentlemen, clergymen, and naval officers for her brothers 
 were in the navy. The chief business of these people, as 
 Miss Austen saw them, was attention to social duties, and 
 the chief subject of their thought was matrimony. This 
 world, and the influences at work there, Miss Austen repre- 
 sents in her novels ; outside of it she never steps. 
 
 Her Satiric Purpose. Miss Austen, like Fielding, began 
 her studies of real life with something of a satiric purpose. 
 Two of her early stories, Northanger Abbey and Sense and 
 Sensibility, were written in order to oppose to the impossible 
 situations and strained emotions of the romanticists and 
 sentimentalists a humorously sensible picture of life and 
 love as they are. In the former she gives us a heroine who 
 starts with a "thin awkward figure, a sallow skin, without 
 color, dark lank hair, and strong features," and who wins 
 an admirable husband, though "his affection originated in 
 nothing better than a persuasion of her partiality for him." 
 The keynote of Sense and Sensibility is expressed in the 
 remark, " Sense is the foundation on which everything good 
 may be based." In the novels which followed, "Pride and 
 Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma, Miss Austen carries 
 farther her minute observation of life, sharpened by satirical 
 comment. One suspects that she shared thoroughly in the 
 view of life put forth by Mr. Bennet in Pride and Preju- 
 dice, "For what do we live but to make sport for our neigh- 
 bors and to laugh at them in our turn?" 
 
 "Pride and Prejudice." Pride and Prejudice is Miss 
 Austen's masterpiece. There she shows her skill in con- 
 structing a plot. There also she is at her best in creating 
 a background of minor characters drawn from the world 
 of provincial folk which she knew cynical Mr. Bennet 
 and his fatuous wife; Mary Bennet the pedant, and Lydia 
 the flirt; Mr. Collins, the type of pretentious conceit, and 
 Sir William Lucas, of feeble dulness. These "humors" 
 Miss Austen develops chiefly in speech, by her wonderful
 
 Jane Austen 337 
 
 faculty of saying the thing that belongs to the character 
 at the moment. Not only is the proper sentiment caught, 
 but the turn of phrase, the manner, almost the modulation 
 of the voice. And not only is this true of the limited char- 
 acters who act always in the same way; in the sustained 
 scenes between the more developed persons, where the dia- 
 logue is more highly charged with meaning, Miss Austen 
 shows dramatic power of the highest order. 
 
 Miss Austen's stories are the most perfect examples of the 
 eighteenth-century novel of manners, though by virtue of 
 their technical skill they seem to belong almost to our own 
 day. In striking contrast to the petty, provincial world 
 which she mastered so thoroughly, is the great field of history 
 and romance brought before us in the novels of her contem- 
 porary, Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 III. SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832) 
 
 Scott's Early Life. Scott was born in Edinburgh, 
 August 15, 1771, of a family famous in the border wars, 
 and in the long struggle of the Stuarts for the throne. His 
 father, however, had forsaken the venturesome life of his 
 ancestors and had become an attorney. He sought to bring 
 up his son to the same profession, and did give to the lat- 
 ter's character that strong bent toward system and industry 
 which he never lost. The young Walter, in spite of a 
 slight lameness, the result of an illness in childhood, was 
 distinguished for activity in bodily sports; and as a young 
 man he found satisfaction for his roving disposition in jour- 
 neys through the wilder parts of Scotland the Cheviots and 
 the Highlands. On these expeditions he learned to know 
 types of Scotch character, as well as the legends and tradi- 
 tions of Scotch history of which he afterward made such 
 brilliant use. As a youth Scott was much in the company 
 of persons who stimulated and fed his interest in the past. 
 The century before his birth had been one full of excite- 
 ment. In Scotland the Puritans, under the name Covenant- 
 ers, had fought their last battles against the restored Stuarts; 
 and Scotland had been the scene of the romantic attempts
 
 338 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 of the princes of that exiled house to regain their throne m 
 1715 and 1745. To these things Scott was brought near by 
 the companionship of his grandfather whose father had been 
 a famous adherent of the Stuarts, known as " Beardie " be- 
 cause of his refusal to cut his beard until that family should 
 be restored and by the conversation of his mother. Of 
 her he wrote much later: "If I have been able to do any- 
 thing in the way of painting the past times it is very much 
 from the studies with which she presented me." 
 
 Scott at Abbotsford. Scott was married in 1797 to the 
 daughter of one of the French exiles from the Revolution. 
 He lived first in a cottage at Lasswade, a few miles from 
 Edinburgh. Then in 1804 he moved to Ashestiel, in Sel- 
 kirkshire, of which county he had been made sheriff. The 
 success of his poems, however, enabled him in 1812 to pur- 
 chase the estate of Abbotsford, with which his name is for- 
 ever connected. Scott at Abbotsford is charmingly de- 
 scribed for us by Washington Irving, who visited him in 
 1817. " He was tall and of a large and powerful frame. His 
 dress was simple, and almost rustic. An old green shoot- 
 ing coat with a dog-whistle at the button-hole, brown linen 
 pantaloons, stout shoes that tied at the ankles, and a white 
 hat that had seen service. He came limping up the gravel- 
 walk, aiding himself by a stout walking-staff, but moving 
 rapidly and with vigor. By his side jogged along a large, 
 iron-gray stag-hound of most grave demeanor, who took no 
 part in the clamor of the canine rabble, but seemed to con- 
 sider himself bound for the dignity of the house to give me a 
 courteous reception." An account of the life at Abbotsford 
 in later years, when Scott had replaced his cottage by a 
 baronial castle, and had developed his establishment to 
 feudal magnificence, is given by Lockhart in his Life of 
 Scott. It was Scott's custom to write conscientiously during 
 the early morning, but, his task finished, he delighted to put 
 himself at the head of a cavalcade of guests and retainers 
 for a hunting expedition, or a ride to the Yarrow, or to Dry- 
 burgh Abbey. 
 
 To support this train of life, Scott relied on the profits of 
 a secret partnership which he had formed with two brothers
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 From a painting by C. R. Leslie, R. A.
 
 340 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 named Ballantyne, in a printing and publishing business. 
 The firm became considerably embarrassed about the time 
 of the purchase of Abbotsford, and just then, too, Scott's 
 popularity as a poet was on the wane. He retrieved his 
 doubtful fortunes, however, when in 1814 he took up and fin- 
 ished a tale begun some nine years earlier, and published it 
 under the title Waverley. This was the first of the great 
 series of romances which fascinated the whole reading world. 
 The name of Scott was not at first connected with them, but 
 their authorship soon became an open secret. With the 
 control of the Waverley novels in their hands the Ballantynes 
 prospered, but in the end the mismanagement of the active 
 partners and Scott's own etravaxgance resulted in the failure 
 of the firm for ^117,000, all of which Scott assumed. The 
 last years of his life were a splendid struggle to pay this debt. 
 In fact he did earn more than half of the needed sum, and 
 the rest was discharged by the sale of his earlier copyrights. 
 But the effort broke him physically and mentally, and hast- 
 ened his death, which came in 1832. Carlyle, who saw him 
 in these last years on the Edinburgh streets, made a sketch 
 of him which must stand beside Irving's. "Alas, his fine 
 Scotch face with its shaggy honesty, sagacity, and goodness 
 was all worn with care, the joy all fled from it; ploughed 
 deep with labor and sorrow. We shall never forget it; we 
 shall never see it again. Adieu, Sir Walter, pride of all 
 Scotchmen, take our proud and sad farewell." 
 
 Scott's Character. Scott's life was a blending of the old 
 and the new. He tried to be both a feudal lord and a modern 
 business man, and both attempts are curiously connected 
 with his literary career. He wrote partly for the pleasure of 
 creating in fiction the feudal ideal that he sought to realize 
 at Abbotsford, partly for the money with which to sustain 
 that experiment. In this almost mercantile aspect of his 
 literary life there is something essentially unromantic, and 
 indeed in many traits of character Scott has little likeness to 
 his romantic contemporaries. We find in him nothing of 
 the spiritual experience, nothing of the revolt against the 
 conventions of the political and social world, that mark Cole- 
 ridge and Shelley. But Scott had, on the other hand, a love
 
 Sir Walter Scott 341 
 
 of Scotland, of her scenery, of her history, of her people, which 
 may be called the romantic passion of his life. 
 
 The Scotch Novels. It is worthy of note that in his first 
 novel Scott recognized his chief strength to be in his knowl- 
 edge of his native land and its people. After some hesitation 
 at the outset, he starts his hero for Scotland and plunges him 
 into a society composed of quaint Scotch types, Baron Brad- 
 wardine, the type of old-fashioned feudal prejudice, Laird 
 Balmawhapple, Baillie MacWheeble, with David Gellatley 
 and his mother, old Janet, for dependents. Waverley be- 
 comes involved in the attempt of the Young Pretender to 
 win the throne in 1745, and Scott takes the opportunity to 
 reinforce his story by the introduction of historical char- 
 acters and events, a device of which he thus early showed 
 his mastery. 
 
 In the novels which immediately followed Waverley, Scott 
 dealt with the material which he had most successfully at 
 command Scotch life in the eighteenth century, which he 
 knew at first-hand or from recent tradition. These books 
 are Guy Mannerjng (1815) and The Antiquary (1816), both 
 of which may be called novels of private life. In later works 
 he went into the more remote past, and relied more upon 
 historical sources. In Old Mortality (1816) he treated the 
 revolt of the Covenanters in the reign of Charles II., and 
 in The Abbot (1820) and The Monastery (1820) the tragic 
 events surrounding the life of Mary Queen of Scots. In 
 Redgauntlet (1824) he returned to the eighteenth century, 
 and to the last plots of the Jacobites to bring the Pretender 
 to the throne. 
 
 Scotch Characters. In this series of novels we find some 
 of Scott's best characters, drawn from the humble life of 
 both Highlands and Lowlands. In such characters Scott 
 worked with his eye upon the object; many of them have 
 been recognized as life-like portraits of persons whom he 
 met in his wanderings, or of dependents like Tom Purdie, 
 his huntsman. These local types show us the humor and 
 the pathos of humanity warped by circumstances into a hun- 
 dred fantastic forms, but capable of sometimes throwing it- 
 self into an attitude of noble disinterestedness, of dignified
 
 342 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 endurance, or of tragic despair. When in Waverley the his- 
 toric drama of the rising of 1745 has played itself out, 
 and the love-story has been tamely concluded, the figure 
 that remains with us as we close the book, is that of Evan 
 Dhu, the humble follower of the Highland chief Vich Ian 
 Vohr, standing at the condemnation of his master, and pledg- 
 ing himself and six of the clan to die in his stead. "If 
 the Saxon gentlemen are laughing," he said, "because a 
 poor man, such as me, thinks my life or the life of six of my 
 degree is worth that of Vich Ian Vohr, it's like enough they 
 may be very right; but if they laugh because they think I 
 would not keep my word, and come back to redeem him, 
 they ken neither the heart of a Hielandman, nor the honour 
 of a gentleman." Among such types as these we look for 
 Scott's greatest characters: Edie Ochiltree in The Anti- 
 quary, Baillie Jarvie in Rob Roy, Peter Peebles in Red- 
 gauntlet, and many more who stand out from the novels 
 as complete and substantial figures in which the race of 
 Scotchmen has expressed itself forever. Only once, however, 
 did Scott trust entirely to this element of native strength. 
 In The Heart of Midlothian (1818), he puts aside all con- 
 ventional plot, and gives us instead the story of Jeanie Deans 
 the peasant girl, who goes to London to beg her sister's life. 
 
 Among these local Scotch types there is a group of char- 
 acters whom Scott used especially to appeal to the romantic 
 sense of his readers. The fantastic figures which stand out 
 of the background, Madge Wildfire in The Heart of Midlo- 
 thian, Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering, and Norna of the 
 Fitful Head in The Pirate are far more terrible and myster- 
 ious in their reality than the imagined horrors of many of 
 Scott's rivals. 
 
 Description and Incident. In the Scotch novels, also, we 
 find Scott's descriptive power at its best. He himself la- 
 mented that he had not "the eye of a painter to dissect the 
 various parts of the scene, to comprehend how one bore upon 
 the other, to estimate the effect which various features of 
 the view had in producing its leading and general effect." 
 But," he adds, "show me an old castle, and I was at home 
 at once, filled it with its combatants in their proper costume,
 
 Sir Walter Scott 343 
 
 \ 
 
 and overwhelmed my readers by the enthusiasm of my de- 
 scription." And he goes on to tell how in crossing Magus 
 Moor he gave such an account of the assassination of the 
 Bishop of St. Andrews that one of his fellow-travellers com- 
 plained that his night's sleep was frightened away. Scott 
 loved scenery as a background for picturesque action. As 
 Stevenson remarks, some places seem actually to cry out 
 for an appropriate occurrence ; and Scott's minute acquaint- 
 ance with Scotch history suggested to him the incidents by 
 which he gives to his scenes their final reality, and makes 
 them an essential part in the dramatic action of his story. A 
 noteworthy instance of this faculty occurs in Old Mortality, 
 where Morton visits Balfour of Burley in the cave reached by 
 a single tree-trunk bridging the chasm of a waterfall. As 
 Morton approaches he hears the shouts and screams of the 
 old Covenanter, in whom religious fury has become in- 
 sanity; and at length he sees the fearful figure of Burley 
 in strife with the fiends which beset him. The effect of 
 threatening scenery and of the terror of madness is brought 
 to a focus, as it were, at the instant when Burley sends the 
 tree crashing into the abyss, leaving Morton to jump for 
 his life. 
 
 Scott's Use of History. In his later novels Scott went 
 more and more outside of Scotland for material. In Ivanhoe 
 (1820) he treated the return of Richard I. to his kingdom; 
 in Kenilworth (1821), the intrigues of Leicester in seeking to 
 marry Queen Elizabeth; in The Fortunes of Nigel (1822), the 
 time of James I. In Quentin Durward (1823) he went to the 
 continent, picturing the struggle of Louis XI. with Charles 
 the Bold, and in The Talisman (1825) that of Richard I. with 
 Saladin. In these English and continental novels it must be 
 admitted that historical interest and study did not supply all 
 that personal knowledge and enthusiasm gave to the Scotch. 
 Yet in the former we find some of Scott's most brilliant por- 
 traits of historical characters, and his reconstructions of social 
 and political conditions are among the triumphs of the his- 
 torical imagination. And especially do these stories display 
 Scott's mastery of the art of the historical novel his power 
 of making history live by virtue of its connection with fiction,
 
 J44 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 .and of giving interest and dignity to fiction by making it turn 
 on the progress of great historical movements. 
 
 Scott's Example. Since Scott's day many novelists 
 Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Kingsley, and George Eliot, 
 have made attempts in the historical field. Bulwer Lytton's 
 Last Days of Pompeii is the best known of his many volumes. 
 In The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade, we have 
 the author's masterpiece, and one of the best historical novels 
 since Scott. This vogue of the historical novel must be at- 
 tributed in large part to Scott's example. 
 
 In general, however, the romantic temper, which first 
 commended historical material to the novelist, gave place, 
 after Scott's death, to a different mood. Scott's romantic 
 pictures of the feudal past were flattering to a people strug- 
 gling, as they thought, to preserve the relics of that past 
 from the engulfing revolution. But after the immediate 
 effect of the Napoleonic wars had passed away, new ideas 
 began to make progress in England, broadening the current 
 of English thought and life. The rapidity of social changes 
 beginning with the Reform Bill of 1832, served to draw men's 
 attention to the life of their own time. And while the taste 
 for the new and the startling in literature still persisted, it 
 was satisfied chiefly, as in Defoe's time, by the presentation 
 of the exciting aspects of present-day society. Of these 
 tendencies the best examples are to be found in the works 
 of Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873), Charles Reade 
 (1814-1884), and Charles Dickens. 
 
 IV. CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) 
 
 Dickens's Life. Charles Dickens was born at Portsea, 
 where his father was a navy clerk in poor circumstances. 
 The family moved to Chatham, and thence to London, where 
 the elder Dickens was arrested for debt, his family accom- 
 panying him to the Marshalsea Prison. His son, a boy of 
 ten years, was thought old enough to contribute his mite 
 toward the parents' necessities, and was accordingly put at 
 work in a blacking warehouse, sleeping beneath a counter, 
 and spending his Sundays his few hours of brightness in
 
 Charles Dickens 345 
 
 these wretched weeks in the prison with his family. When 
 matters improved a little, Charles Dickens was given a few 
 years of school before he was obliged to take up again the 
 part of bread-winner, first as a lawyer's clerk, and then as 
 a reporter. His education remained deficient, but he brought 
 from these years of desperate struggle with life a character 
 of wonderful energy and resolution, a wide knowledge of 
 the under world, and a deep sympathy with its inhabitants 
 all of which played a part in his subsequent career. 
 
 It was while Dickens, then about twenty, was a reporter 
 that he began to write sketches of London life for the news- 
 papers. These were collected in 1836 as Sketches by Boz, 
 and from this time forth Dickens's fortune was changed. He 
 became editor of magazines, and, for a time, of a great Lon- 
 don newspaper ; he travelled widely in Europe and America ; 
 he took up public questions and attacked social wrongs. And 
 without any intermission he gave to the public that famous 
 series of novels in which the humors of English life were 
 displayed so abundantly, and the cause of the suffering 
 pleaded so eloquently. Before he was thirty he was a great 
 writer; and before he was forty, a notable public man. No 
 writer in English ever gathered with a fuller hand the rewards 
 of the literary calling. It is true, other writers have made 
 more money, or have won peerages ; but none has had in his 
 lifetime so wide and intensely loyal a personal following; 
 none has had, in addition to money, friends, and fame, the 
 peculiar tribute which came to Dickens from vast audiences 
 gathered together, not once or twice, but hundreds of times, 
 in scores of cities, to testify by "roaring seas of applause" 
 to his personal triumph. In middle life Dickens began to 
 give semi-dramatic public readings from his works, and 
 these grew to be his chief interest. The strain and excite- 
 ment wore him out. It is a circumstance as tragic in its way 
 as that which shadows the close of Scott's life, that this per- 
 sonal triumph was the direct cause of Dickens's deathiniSyo. 
 
 Dickens's Relation to the Public. Dickens's peculiar suc- 
 cess calls attention to the prime fact in his authorship, his 
 nearness to his public. He began his career as a reporter, in 
 the profession which is most immediately of the people. But
 
 346 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 though necessity made him a journalist, he wished to be an 
 actor. As a young man he tried to get a position at Covent 
 Garden Theatre. For years he was the leading spirit in a 
 famous company of amateurs who played in various cities of 
 England ; and, as we have seen, his chief interest came to be 
 his public readings. These two professional instincts account 
 for much in Dickens's work. As reporter and as editor he 
 studied his public ; as actor, lie taught himself to play upon 
 it, through his writings and his dramatic readings from them, 
 with incomparable skill. 
 
 Dickens's Characters. From Dickens's success in Sketches 
 by Boz came, in 1836, an engagement to write the letter- 
 press for a series of cartoons representing the humors of 
 sporting life. For this purpose he invented the "Pickwick 
 Club," which at once made a popular hit. The death of 
 the artist who was engaged upon the drawings left Dickenp 
 free to widen the scope of the adventures of the club, and tc 
 add other characters without stint. The complete result 
 was a great book, formless as to plot, crowded with humorous 
 figures. These figures are given with broadly exaggerated 
 traits, as if Dickens had always in mind the cartoon which 
 was to accompany the text. The characters talk freely, 
 not to say inexhaustibly, and all differently. But the au- 
 thor's chief resource is his faculty for bringing his carica- 
 'tures into contact with the actual world, in situations that 
 expose their oddities in high relief. Mr. Tupman as a lover, 
 Mr. Winkle as a duellist or a sportsman, Mr. Pickwick in a 
 breach-of-promise suit with the Widow Bardell, the Pickwick 
 Club contending with a recalcitrant horse, the Reverend Mr. 
 Stiggins drunk at a temperance meeting these incongruities 
 are narrated in a style always copious, but often rapid and 
 piquant. 
 
 In his later novels Dickens improved on his first attempts. 
 He continued to be a caricaturist, to rely on distortions and 
 exaggerations of feature or of manner, but his pencil became 
 more subtle and his figures more significant. Micawber 
 "waiting for something to turn up," Sairy Gamp haunted by 
 the mythical Mrs. Harris, 'umble Uriah Heep, sanctimonious 
 Pecksniff, cheerful Mark Tapley, all have distinct individ-
 
 CHARLES DICKENS
 
 348 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 uality, yet all label so conveniently common attitudes and 
 habits of mind that we use their names freely to describe 
 whole classes of mankind. 
 
 In Pickwick Dickens is purely a humorist ; in the novels 
 which followed he created figures of a different sort, to excite 
 not laughter, but loathing and terror. In the portrayal of 
 these types also he gained subtlety with practice. Fagin 
 and Sykes in Oliver Twist (1838), Quilp, the dwarf, in Old 
 Curiosity Shop (1841), monstrous as they are, do not haunt 
 the reader with the terrible suggestion of inhumanity that 
 lurks behind the placid, smiling face of Mme. Defarge in A 
 Tale of Two Cities (1859), as she sits in front of the guillo- 
 tine, knitting, and counting the heads as they fall. In the 
 stories just mentioned Dickens showed again his fertility in 
 inventing situations for his characters, using his dramatic 
 power as freely in melodrama as in farce. The part of 
 Fagin at his trial and in prison is worked out as if for the 
 stage, by an actor careful to make every gesture, every ex- 
 pression, tell on his audience. 
 
 His Purpose. A third type of character which Dickens 
 developed, and which in his time made immensely for his 
 popularity, was the victim of society usually a child. In his 
 second novel, Dickens made his story centre about a child, 
 Oliver Twist, and from that time forth children were expected 
 and necessary characters in his novels. Little Nell, Florence 
 Dombey, David Copperfield, represent in most telling form 
 the case of the individual against society. For with Dickens 
 the private cruelty which his malign characters inflict, is 
 almost always connected with social wrong. Bumble's sav- 
 age blow at Oliver Twist asking for more food, Little Dorrit's 
 life in the Marshalsea, are carried back and laid at the door 
 of a society which permitted the poor-house and the debtor's 
 prison to exist. The championship of the individual against 
 institutions, which had been a leading motive in later eigh- 
 teenth-century fiction, had been checked by the reaction 
 against the French Revolution; but in Dickens's day the 
 "redress of wrongs" had become again a great public move- 
 ment. The workings of later romanticism had begun to 
 be reflected in a kind of sentimental hatred of organized
 
 Charles Dickens 349 
 
 authority, a feeling to which Dickens constantly appealed. 
 Undoubtedly there was something theatrical in Dickens 's 
 adoption of social wrong as a motive in fiction, but there 
 was great sincerity also. He had himself known the lot of 
 the persecuted ; at the root of his zeal for reform was the 
 memory of his own bitter childhood. 
 
 Dickens 's Plots. The types of character already discussed 
 were sufficient to sustain the movement of Dickens's earlier 
 books, which were usually simple in structure* In most of 
 them we begin with the hero in childhood, and follow his 
 personal adventures into the thick of a plot involving the 
 popular romantic material of the day, kidnapping, murder, 
 mob-justice, and other incidents of criminal life. In his 
 later books, however, Dickens gained the power of con- 
 structing elaborate plots, and of creating characters of heroic 
 dignity and tragic intensity, such as Sidney Carton in The 
 Tale of Two Cities and Lady Dedlock in Bleak House (1853). 
 These are the most enduringly powerful of his novels, but 
 they are not those upon which his fame rests. Dickens is 
 remembered not as a dramatic artist in the novel form, but 
 as a showman of wonderful resources. He is master of a 
 vast and fascinating stage, crowded with farcical characters, 
 with grotesque and terrible creatures, more devils than men, 
 and with the touching forms of little children. The action 
 is sometimes merry, sometimes exciting, sometimes pathetic. 
 We have- laughter, and horror, and tears; but the prevailing 
 atmosphere is one of cheerfulness, as befits a great Christmas 
 pantomime. 
 
 Dickens dealt in the main with the world of his own day, 
 but his spirit was not that of a realist bent on representing 
 things as they are. On the contrary, his humor lies largely 
 in exaggeration, and the interest of his stories generally in 
 their use of the unusual and romantic elements in life. A 
 further step in bringing the novel down to the world as it 
 exists for the average man was taken by Thackeray.
 
 350 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 V. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863) 
 
 Thackeray's Life. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, In- 
 dia, in 1811. He was educated at the Charter-House School 
 and at Cambridge. He gave some time to art study on the 
 Continent, and after losing his small patrimony in a journ- 
 alistic venture he tried to make a living as an artist. He 
 applied, indeed, .for the position as illustrator of Dickens's 
 Pickwick Papers. Unsuccessful in this, he turned to liter- 
 ature, and became a contributor to Punch and to Eraser's 
 Magazine. His first work consisted of light essays, sketches 
 of travel, and burlesques in which the weaknesses of the 
 romantic school are cleverly hit off in imitations of Scott, 
 Bulwer and others. His intention to write of the world as it 
 is is rather broadly proclaimed in his first considerable tale, 
 Catherine (1839), of which the heroine is a female rogue, 
 drawn with unsympathetic realism as a rebuke to the sen- 
 timental treatment of criminals exemplified by Dickens's 
 Nancy, in Oliver Twist. 
 
 Thackeray gave his realistic theories larger scope in Barry 
 Lyndon (1844), a spirited account of the exploits of an 
 eighteenth-century adventurer, and in Vanity Fair, which 
 was published in parts between 1846 and 1848. This at 
 length gave Thackeray an assured position in English litera- 
 ture, but with a singular distrust in his future he made va- 
 rious attempts, fortunately unsuccessful, to escape into the 
 civil or the diplomatic service. Thrown back upon his real 
 vocation, he produced his other masterpieces, Pendennis 
 (1848-50), Henry Esmond (1852), The Newcomes (1853-55), 
 and The Virginians (1857-59). Meanwhile he delivered his 
 lectures on The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century 
 and The Four Georges, in England and in America. In 1860 
 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine, which position he 
 resigned shortly before his death. 
 
 Thackeray's Temperament. Thackeray was not happy 
 either in circumstances or altogether in temperament. His 
 long period of unsuccess, his wife's insanity, which came 
 upon her soon after their marriage, and his own ill-health,
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 
 From a drawing by George T. Tobin
 
 352 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 spoiled much of his life, and a singular quality of distrust 
 and indecision subtracted heavily from the joy of what was 
 left. He lived much in the world of London clubs and 
 society, a world of which he saw and pictured the pettiness 
 and the insincerity in his books, but in which he, like Charles 
 Lamb, found a necessary stimulus and distraction. Like 
 Lamb also, he hid his melancholy behind an aspect of mirth, 
 occasionally a little boisterous and hollow, but usually gentle 
 and almost whimsically honest in confessing itself to be but 
 a mask. Thackeray bore his own burdens with brave pa- 
 tience, and took those of others generously. He was far 
 from being, as some have thought, either a sentimentalist 
 or a cynic; he was in all ways a kind and gallant gentleman. 
 
 These facts are important, since, more than most writers 
 of fiction, Thackeray wrote himself into his books. The 
 form of his novels was determined in a way by his short- 
 comings. All his works except Esmond were published in 
 parts, and, with natural indolence which he could never over- 
 come, he seldom began his fresh instalment until it was 
 actually called for, and had to be done in a hurry. Natu- 
 rally, his novels are not models of construction; but it is 
 to be said that this loose method of working suited not only 
 Thackeray's temperament, but also his artistic problem. 
 For Thackeray is primarily an observer, not an analyst. He 
 saw life with the wide view of a man of the world. To have 
 confined his multitude of characters within the narrow limits 
 of what is technically called a plot would have introduced an 
 element of unreality into his books. Again, the pressure under 
 which he worked accounts for the many pages of comment 
 which he gives us in his own person comment that filled 
 out his number nicely when invention halted and the story 
 lagged. As a result Thackeray is, as someone has said, him- 
 self the chief figure in his novels. In the preface to Vanity 
 Fair he speaks of his characters as a set of puppets whom 
 he can make dance at will. He is the showman, and hence 
 the most important, indeed the only real, person in the show. 
 
 "Vanity Fair." As a showman Thackeray is incomparable. 
 In Vanity Fair he has arranged his stage so perfectly that, 
 but for his reminder, we should forget that it is a stage, and
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray 353 
 
 should think of it as a peopled world. The action of the 
 book revolves about the heroines, Becky Sharp and Amelia 
 Sedley "the famous little Becky puppet, pronounced to 
 be uncommonly flexible in the joints and lively on the wire: 
 the Amelia Doll, carved and dressed with the greatest care 
 by the artist." Both represent permanent types, Amelia, 
 mild and incapable a parasite, the author calls her living 
 on the chivalrous protection of Dobbin; Becky, keen and 
 competent, making her world for herself, levying tribute on 
 every man who crosses her path. The two stories begin 
 together, and Thackeray supplies a link between them later 
 in Jos Sedley ; but in the end he gives over the attempt to 
 unite them, and lets the two sets of characters diverge in his 
 novel as they must have done in life. 
 
 The satire with which Thackeray treats his characters 
 indicates his attitude toward the world which he pictures. 
 In the metaphor of the puppets lurks a gleam of the irony 
 which Swift showed in his sketch of society as Lilliput. The 
 title too, Vanity Fair Bunyan's fair, "where is sold all 
 sorts of vanity, and where is to be seen juggling, cheats, 
 games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, rogues, and that of every 
 kind," suggests something of contempt if not of bitterness. 
 The roguishness and weakness of Thackeray's puppets has 
 long been a ground for calling their showman a cynic; but 
 Thackeray's satire is strongly tempered with tolerance and 
 with pity. Dickens draws his pathos from the spectacle 
 of ideal innocence exposed to the evils of the world; but 
 Thackeray makes no less pitiful the sorrows of men and 
 women who are themselves sinful, weak, and stupid. Becky's 
 husband, Rawdon Crawley, is not an admirable figure, yet we 
 are sorry for him. George and Amelia Osborne are both in 
 their way contemptible, yet the scene of their parting is full 
 of tenderness. And in the great book which came later, 
 The Newcomes, Thackeray has given a picture of human 
 imperfection so inexpressibly real and touching, that every 
 reader believes the story of the novelist's coming from his 
 work-room one day, sobbing, "I have killed Colonel New- 
 come." Thackeray was merciful toward the feeble, flawed 
 souls that he portrayed, because gentleness was a part of his
 
 354 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 nature. Without faith in most of the pretentious virtues of 
 the world, he still believed in kindness, in the instinctive 
 goodness of one being toward another, and he exemplified 
 this belief in his books as in his life. 
 
 Thackeray's Use of History. The vogue of historical fic- 
 tion after Scott is shown by the fact that even the petty 
 world of Vanity Fair is disturbed by a great national crisis ; 
 but Thackeray, instead of using Waterloo to impose dig- 
 nity and splendor upon his story, characteristically gives us 
 a "back-stairs" view of war. We follow the battle, not in 
 the thought of Napoleon or the Duke, but chiefly as it is 
 reflected in the fears of the wretched Jos Sedley, in the 
 hopes of his servant Isidore, and in the calculations of Becky 
 Sharp; chiefly, but not wholly, for there is poor, almost 
 abandoned Amelia "praying for George, who was lying on 
 his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart." Thackeray 
 is interested in famous events and persons because of the 
 light which they throw upon the common affairs of men. 
 In Henry Esmond, however., as in Vanity Fair, Thackeray's 
 own temperament is to be reckoned with. His sympathy 
 with the preceding century gives to his treatment of it a 
 warmth and brilliancy which make the most realistic of 
 historical novels also the most poetic. 
 
 "Henry Esmond." In Henry Esmond we follow the 
 hero's childhood at Castlewood, in the mysterious atmosphere 
 of plotting Papists, and his youth in the London of Queen 
 Anne, where the persons and names of Addison, Steele, 
 Swift, and Fielding meet us as casually as those of modern 
 celebrities to-day. We see him take part in the wonderful 
 victories of Maryborough, and in the daring game which the 
 Pretender played for his crown. The vanished world lives 
 for us in character and in episode, lives with a dignity and 
 richness of conception and style that show Thackeray to 
 have been, when he chose, the greatest artist among the 
 English novelists. In his masterpiece he is writing, not as 
 a careless, rather lazy master of a puppet-show, but in .the 
 person of the chivalrous Esmond. Every incident and de- 
 scription, then, must reflect his hero's character in some 
 touch of nobility or of charm. In Esmond's repulsion from
 
 Charlotte Bronte 355 
 
 Maryborough, in his devotion to Castlewood and his son, in 
 his passion for B'eatrix, and in his love for Lady Castlewood, 
 there is the constant revelation of an honorable and loyal 
 man. When he is telling us of the quarrel between Marl- 
 borough and Webb, there is something in the account which 
 reminds us that it is a gentleman's story. When he sur- 
 renders his birthright, property, and name, he bears himself 
 with a simplicity and a modesty which are in keeping with 
 a great renunciation. The style itself, marvellous in its like- 
 ness to the manner of the eighteenth century, is yet more 
 wonderful in its reflection of Esmond's personality. When 
 he leaves Castlewood, or stands at his mother's grave, when 
 he bends beside the body of his dear lord, killed by the vil- 
 lain Mohun, always his utterance is perfect in its intimacy, 
 its simplicity, its distant, haunting rhythm. Even in a detail 
 of the picture of Lady Castlewood vanishing from Esmond's 
 sight in anger, Thackeray's distinction is evident. "He saw 
 her retreating, the taper lighting up her marble face, her 
 scarlet lip quivering, and her shining golden hair." Had 
 Thackeray written only this scene, he might have been called 
 a master. As it is he is the greatest writer who has used 
 English in fiction. 
 
 VI. CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 Charlotte Bronte. The example of Thackeray, both as a 
 realist and as a moralist, had a powerful influence upon a 
 writer who, by force of circumstances and the impulse of 
 her own temperament, was a romanticist. Charlotte Bronte 
 (1816-1855) grew up in the Yorkshire parsonage of her 
 father, with such experience of the world as came from 
 country boarding-schools, a year in Brussels, and her own 
 family life, with its terrible succession of tragedies the 
 death of her mother and three sisters, the blindness of her 
 father, and the ruin of her brother through dissipation. She 
 and her sisters wrote at first for their own amusement, in- 
 venting scenes and characters to supplement the scanty inter- 
 ests of the life that they knew. One of these stories, Wulh*
 
 356 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 ering Heights, by Emily Bronte (1847) is still among the most 
 strangely powerful of all novels. 
 
 "Jane Eyre." Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece, Jane Eyre t 
 appeared the next year. In this story Miss Bronte under- 
 took to portray a real woman without the personal attrac- 
 tions of the ordinary heroine. Jane Eyre is modest, plain, 
 insignificant in appearance. Her early life is merely a repro- 
 duction of Miss Bronte's own uneventful days at school. She 
 soon passes beyond the world of the author's experience into 
 the romantic realm of her imagination and longing, but though 
 many of the incidents of her story are improbable, she remains 
 a genuine woman. It was this honesty of purpose that at- 
 tracted the attention of critics, and under their friendly advice 
 Miss Bronte undertook in her later books, Shirley (1849), an( ^ 
 Villette (1853), to confine herself to representing the life and 
 the characters that she knew in Yorkshire and in Brussels. 
 In this conscious attempt, however, she lost something of the 
 freshness and fervor which make Jane Eyre a book of win- 
 ning power and charm. 
 
 Her Feeling for Nature. In one direction Miss Bronte's 
 experience was adequate, namely, in her contact with nature. 
 From her books we know how largely in her life the clouds, 
 the ragged hills, the wide spaces of the Yorkshire moors under 
 sunset or moonlight, made up for the inadequacy of human 
 society and interests. She makes nature enter into the warp 
 and woof of her stories through the part which it plays in the 
 most essential element in them, the inner life of her heroines. 
 
 Kingsley. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) was a man of 
 many interests, and only incidentally a writer of novels. He 
 was a clergyman, Professor of Modern History at Cam- 
 bridge, a leader in the "Broad Church" movement, the friend 
 of Tennyson, and somewhat later of Carlyle, of whose stren- 
 uous philosophy of life he was a sort of popular exponent. 
 His novels fall into two divisions. In the earlier ones, Yeast 
 (1848) and Alton Locke (1850), Kingsley gives a view of the 
 problems which perplexed men's minds in the middle years 
 of the century, and tries to point out a middle course between 
 Catholicism and scepticism in religion, between Toryism and 
 revolution in polities'. In the second division he works out
 
 Charles Kingsley 357 
 
 his purpose through the historical novel. Hypatia (1853) ^ s a 
 study of the struggle between Christianity and Paganism, in 
 Alexandria during the fourth century, and its sub-title, "New 
 Foes With an Old Face," indicates its bearing upon the re- 
 ligious questions of his own time. His masterpiece, Westward 
 Ho (1855), is a vigorous story of the times of Elizabeth, de- 
 picting the contest of England with Spain by sea and in 
 America. In these later novels Kingsley shows many of the 
 qualities of the artist. His scenes have the vividness of paint- 
 ing, and his incident is at times superbly dramatic. And in 
 both, Kingsley is chiefly concerned with the presentation of 
 types of character and ideals of life which made for national 
 greatness and social health in the England of his own day. 
 
 VII. GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880) 
 
 . George Eliot's Life. A still more significant illustration 
 of the connection between fiction and the intellectual and 
 moral development of England is the work of George Eliot. 
 The author who so signed herself, Mary Ann Evans, was 
 born in Warwickshire in 1819. Her father was of peasant 
 stock, the agent for the estates of a number of gentlemen 
 of the county, a man of strong and worthy character, in- 
 stinctively religious and conservative. Mary Ann spent her 
 earliest years in the country, except for some terms at board- 
 ing-school. When she was twenty-one, however, her mother 
 having died, her father removed to Coventry. There she 
 came into close contact with a group of people who were 
 much interested in religious questions, and disposed to treat 
 them in a spirit of rationalism. Under their influence Miss 
 Evans gave up the formal Christianity of her childhood. 
 Intensely serious and conscientious, she felt at first bound 
 to mark her change of belief by a refusal to attend church. 
 Later, however, she came to feel it right to express in every 
 way her sympathy with all forms of moral beauty and ear- 
 nest living, which were always more to her than differences 
 of faith. On her father's death in 1849, Miss Evans spent 
 some time at Geneva, returning to London to accept a posi- 
 tion as sub-editor of the Westminster Review. This maga-
 
 358 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 zine was the organ of free thought, and her connection with 
 it brought her into relation with John Stuart Mill, Herbert 
 Spencer, George Henry Lewes, and other liberals. With Mr. 
 Lewes she contracted, in 1854, a union which, on account of 
 a legal impediment, could not become marriage in the eyes of 
 the law. Her association with Mr. Lewes, while a great source 
 of happiness and inspiration, constituted a kind of moral re- 
 sponsibility, which deepened the serious purpose of her life. 
 In 1857 she wrote: "If I live five years longer the positive 
 result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will 
 far outweigh the small negative good that would have con- 
 sisted in my not doing anything to shock others." We may 
 consider that it was in part as a fulfillment of this pledge that 
 her novels were written. 
 
 George Eliot's Novels. The name George Eliot first ap- 
 peared in 1856, signed to a story in Blackwood's Magazine, 
 called "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton." 
 This was followed by two other tales of moderate length, 
 and all these were republished in 1858, as S enes of Clerica 
 Life. The secret of the authorship was well kept. Not until 
 after the publication of Adam Bede in 1859 were the names 
 of Mr. Lewes and George Eliot connected, and by that 
 time it was evident that another great writer had appeared. 
 Adam Bede was followed by The Mill on the Floss (1860), and 
 Silas Marner (1861). In her next books George Elliot broad- 
 ened her scope to take in great movements and causes. 
 Romola (1863) is a carefully wrought picture of life in 
 Florence in the days of Lorenzo di Medici; Felix Holt 
 (1866) is a study of social reform as it appeared in 1832. 
 Middlemarch (1872) is an elaborate study of English pro- 
 vincial life, her longest and one of her best stories. In her 
 last novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), she again tried to asso- 
 ciate her ideas of individual righteousness with the claims 
 of a great movement, in this case the re-establishment of the 
 Jews in Palestine. 
 
 George Eliot as a Realist. When George Eliot was making 
 her first ventures in fiction she records that Lewes, ever her 
 most sympathetic critic, applauded her wit, description, and 
 philosophy, but doubted her dramatic power. Most of her
 
 Photograph, Copyright, by Frederick Hollyer, London 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 From a drawing by F. W. Burton
 
 360 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 readers since that time have agreed that dramatic power 
 was the least of her great gifts. It was most constant when 
 she dealt as a realist with life that she knew thoroughly; 
 it waned when she was forced to rely on her imagination. 
 For example, Adam Bede, one of the most successful of 
 her novels, takes its starting-point from an incident in the 
 life of George Eliot's aunt, who once accompanied to the 
 scaffold a poor girl condemned for child-murder. This aunt 
 was the original of Dinah Morris, the woman preacher who 
 rides in the hangman's cart with Hetty Sorrel. Hetty's 
 aunt, Mrs. Poyser, is said to show some traits of George 
 Eliot's mother; and Adam Bede was drawn from her father. 
 Indeed, in her realism she was in large measure dependent 
 on the material of her own early life in Warwickshire and 
 Derbyshire. Her earlier books abound in local studies of 
 charming humor. The elder Tullivers, the Gleggs and the 
 Pullets, and Bob Jakin, in The Mill on the Floss, are as 
 definite as Scott's or Miss Austen's minor characters. The 
 chief sign of decline in George Eliot's last novel, Daniel 
 Deronda, is the attempt to replace these vigorous living 
 beings with creatures of invention. She had used up the 
 material of her youth, and found nothing in her life of cult- 
 ure and travel to take its place. 
 
 As a Psychologist. Adam Bede is the most natural of 
 George Eliot's books, simple in problem, direct in action, 
 with the freshness and strength of the Derbyshire landscape 
 and character and speech in its pages. Its successor, The 
 Mill on the Floss, shows signs of a growing perplexity on 
 the part of the author, of a hesitation between her art and her 
 message. For George Eliot was more than an observer; 
 she was also a scientist and a moralist. She was not content; 
 to picture human life as it appears. She tried to pierce be- 
 hind the shows of things, and to reveal the forces by which 
 they are controlled. Accordingly she analyzes her char- 
 acters. Tn the case of the simple types this analysis takes 
 the form of comment, rapid and suggestive. She tells us, for 
 example, that Mrs. Tulliver was like the gold-fish who con- 
 tinues to butt its head against the encircling globe, and at 
 once the type of cheerful incapacity to learn by experience
 
 George Eliot 361 
 
 is fixed before us. In the case of the more conscious, de- 
 veloped characters, her analysis is more elaborate and more 
 sustained. For her heroines George Eliot drew largely 
 upon her own inner experience, and this she supplemented 
 by wide reading, especially of the literature of confessions. 
 In this way she gained an extraordinary vividness in por- 
 traying the inner life. Her most significant passages are 
 those in which she follows the ebb and flow of decision in 
 a character's mind, dwelling on the triumph or defeat of a 
 personality in a drama where there is but one actor. Such 
 a drama is that which Maggie Tulliver plays out in her 
 heart, torn between the impulse to take her joy as it offers 
 itself, and the unconquerable conviction that she cannot seek 
 her own happiness by sacrificing others. 
 
 As a Moralist. Further, it is to be noted that George Eliot 
 never lets her case drop with the individual analysis. She 
 always strives to make her case typical, to show that the 
 personal result is in accordance with a general law. Doro- 
 thea's defeat and Lydgate's failure in Middlemarch, Tito's 
 degeneration in Romola, Gwendolen's humiliation and re- 
 covery in Daniel Deronda, are all represented as occurring 
 in obedience to laws of the ethical world, as unchanging as 
 those of the physical. This is George Eliot's chief object as 
 a writer: to show how, in obedience to law, character grows 
 or decays; how a single fault or flaw brings suffering and 
 death, and throws a world into ruin ; how, on the other hand, 
 there is a making perfect through suffering, a regeneration 
 through sin itself, a hope for the world through the renuncia- 
 tion and self-sacrifice of the individual. "It is a blind self* 
 seeking," she tells us through Dinah Morris, "which wants 
 to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation 
 groaneth and travaileth," for, as she says again, "those who 
 live and suffer may sometimes have the blessedness of being a 
 salvation." It is this possibility of blessedness which in George 
 Eliot's view is the compensation for evil; that we may 
 
 " Be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony " 
 
 in part makes up for the presence of that agony in the world.
 
 862 The Nineteenth-Century Novel 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. State some differences between the novel of 
 tSie eighteenth and that of the nineteenth century. To which division 
 does Miss Austen properly belong ? Why ? Give some instances of 
 her turn for satire. For what qualities is " Pride and Prejudice" re- 
 markable ? 
 
 Narrate Scott's early life. How did his experience and surroundings 
 equip him for his later work? What circumstances led him to at- 
 tempt prose fiction ? Relate the events of his later years. What 
 qualities of romantic character did Scott possess? What elements 
 appear in " Waverley " ? Mention several of the Scotch stories which 
 followed. For what types of character are they noteworthy? Is 
 there any element of " realism " in these characters ? What did Scott 
 think of his -descriptive powers ? What use does he make of scenery? 
 Mention some of Scott's attempts in English and European history. 
 Wherein does his mastery of the art of historical fiction consist ? 
 Point out some effects of Scott's influence. What forces made against 
 the continued supremacy of the historical novel ? 
 
 Compare the early life of Scott with that of Dickens. Trace the 
 effect of Dickens's training in his later work. Compare the later careers 
 of the two novelists. What is " Pickwick Papers " ? Wherein does 
 its humor consist ? On what types of character does Dickens chiefly 
 rely ? What connection had his novels with social reform ? What 
 advance do his later novels show in construction ? 
 
 Compare Dickens and Thackeray in their presentation of real life. 
 What was Thackeray's attitude toward " romantic realism " as shown 
 in his earliest stories ? What other realists began with burlesque ? 
 Mention Thackeray's later works. Describe his character. How did 
 this influence his books? Why is his loose structure an advantage? 
 On what ground is the amount of the author's comment in his books 
 to be justified ? What is Thackeray's view of the world implied in the 
 title, "Vanity Fair"? What is his view of his function as author? 
 Contrast his treatment of good and evil characters with that of Dickens. 
 What use did Thackeray make of history in " Vanity Fair " ? What is 
 the subject-matter of " Esmond " ? Discuss its style. 
 
 Under what influence did Charlotte Bronte become a writer ? Ex- 
 plain the presence of romantic material in her novels. Contrast "Jane 
 Eyre" with her later books. For what is her treatment of scene 
 notable? Into what divisions does Kingsley's fiction fall? What 
 element appears in all his novels ?
 
 Reading Guide 363 
 
 Describe George Eliot's early life, and its effect on her novels. In 
 what respect is " Adam Bede " superior to " Daniel Deronda " ? What 
 is George Eliot's purpose as a moralist ? 
 
 BEADING GUIDE. A few of the novels treated in this chapter 
 are included in lists for college entrance Scott's "Ivanhoe" and "Wood- 
 stock," Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," and George Eliot's "Silas 
 Marner." These may be studied for plot and character development, 
 with the general idea of bringing home to pupils the qualities of the 
 nbvel as a literary form, and the difference between the opportunities 
 open to the novelist and those of the dramatist. For the rest, the pupil 
 should be encouraged to read widely, as interest prompts, in the other 
 work of these authors. It is unnecessary to suggest any definite order, 
 but there are a few novels which no one should omit. Scott's "Waver- 
 ley," "Old Mortality," "Heart of Midlothian," "Kenilworth," "Quentin 
 Durward," and perhaps "Redgauntlet" and "The Talisman"; Dick- 
 ens's "Pickwick Papers," "David Copperfield," "Tale of Two Cities," 
 and "Bleak House"; Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes"; 
 George Eliot's "Adam Bede," "The Mill on the Floss," and "Middle- 
 march"; Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre," Reade's "Cloister and the 
 Hearth," and Kingsley's " Westward Ho," will be generally accepted 
 as belonging in such a list.
 
 864 
 
 The Nineteenth Century 
 
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 2 H C2" - M C M*O-M 
 

 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 A GLANCE IN REVIEW 
 
 Introduction. We have now followed the history of Eng- 
 lish literature from the prehistoric twilight of the race to 
 our own day, a period of nearly fifteen hundred years. Let 
 us take a hasty glance backward, and try to see the story of 
 English letters in its broad features, as it unfolds itself with 
 the centuries. 
 
 The Making of the Race and of the Language. The Eng- 
 lish are a mixed race, and English literature owes its re- 
 markable scope to the fact that many different peoples and 
 different branches of peoples have been mingled together 
 to form the national character to which literature gives ex- 
 pression. The history of English literature is, during its 
 early period, largely the history of the mingling together of 
 these different peoples and tongues, to form a single nation 
 and language, in which many diverse elements are held in 
 solution. This period of preparation begins, perhaps as 
 early as the fourth century, with the songs chanted by pagan 
 Saxons in their early home upon the German Sea, and ends 
 with Chaucer, the first great writer in whom we feel the 
 modern spirit, and whose language is near enough to our 
 own to be read by modern men with only a small amount 
 of preparatory training. If we neglect the earliest scraps 
 of song which scholars have ventured to assign to a remoter 
 antiquity, and date the true beginning of Anglo-Saxon 
 poetry from the middle or end of the sixth century, when 
 the great epic of Beowulf probably arose, we still have a 
 period of nearly eight centuries during which the nation and 
 the language were being formed. 
 
 The earliest historic inhabitants of Britain were of the Cel- 
 tic race ; but the basis of the English race and language was 
 rurnished, not by the Celts, but by the Anglo-Saxons, who 
 
 369
 
 370 A Glance in Review 
 
 invaded and possessed Britain during the fifth and sixth cen- 
 turies. They mingled, to some degree, with the conquered 
 Celts, and absorbed a small portion of the Celtic tongue, to- 
 gether with some words left behind by the Roman occupation. 
 Toward the end of the eighth century, and during the ninth, 
 England was overrun by the Danes and the Northmen, men 
 of allied race to the Anglo-Saxons, but sufficiently different 
 to contribute some new ingredients to the national character. 
 In 1066, the country was conquered by the Norman-French, 
 who had originally been Teutonic, like the Anglo-Saxons 
 and Danes, but who had become by intermarriage half 
 French in blood, and were wholly so in civilization. Thus a 
 second and far greater infusion of Celtic characteristics was 
 made in the already blended English character. For a 
 period of three hundred years the process of amalgamating 
 the natives and the conquerors went on ; by the time of Chau- 
 cer it was virtually completed. 
 
 Old and Middle English Literature. The literature of 
 these eight centuries divides itself into two parts; first, that 
 produced before the Norman Conquest, and written in 
 Anglo-Saxon, or Old English; second, that which began to 
 be produced at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in 
 Middle English, a tongue recognizably like our own, and be- 
 coming gradually more so as it absorbed French ingredients. 
 Old English literature, in turn, divides itself into two parts ; 
 first, the early pagan poetry of which Beowulf is the chief 
 monument; second, the Christianized literature of North- 
 umbria and Wessex, of which Caedmon, Cynewulf, and King 
 Alfred are the chief figures. Middle English literature, like- 
 wise, includes two periods ; first, the pre-Chaucerian period, 
 during which the metrical romance was the great staple of 
 production ; second, the period of Chaucer and his followers. 
 During this latter period literature was greatly widened, both 
 in form and matter. The verse tale was the most vital form 
 which it took; but the lyric (especially the elaborate French 
 lyric) was cultivated, the popular ballad flourished, and the 
 miracle play took its rise. 
 
 The Renaissance and the Reformation. During the fif- 
 teenth century, the wave of creative impulse which had risen
 
 A Glance in Review 371 
 
 so high in Chaucer, ebbed away, chiefly because of the dis- 
 turbed state of the country. But in the sixteenth century 
 the life of England began again to be stirred by two great 
 impulses. One of these was a literary and artistic influence, 
 which came from Italy, and which we call the Renaissance. 
 The other was a moral and religious influence, which came 
 from Germany, and which we know as the Reformation. 
 Under this double stimulus, aided later by the excitement 
 of great geographical discoveries, the growth of commerce, 
 and the national enthusiasm aroused by England's struggle 
 with Spain, literature was again quickened. During the first 
 quarter of the sixteenth century the wave of creative litera- 
 ture began to rise ; and it continued to rise more and more 
 rapidly until it reached its climax, in the latter part of the 
 reign of Elizabeth and in the reign of James I. It then 
 ebbed rapidly away; but the great Puritan writers, Milton 
 and Bunyan, continued on into a later age the double im- 
 pulse of the Renaissance and of the Reformation. 
 
 Three Stages of the Renaissance Period. We may prof- 
 itably consider this period as divided into three stages. The 
 first stage is represented by Sir Thomas More, by the trans- 
 lators of the second great English version of the Bible,* Tyn- 
 dale and Coverdale, and by the courtly figures of Wyatt and 
 Surrey, who brought the Renaissance influence into English 
 poetry. This first stage of the new era also saw the rise of 
 early Erfglish comedy and tragedy, developed out of the 
 miracle plays and moralities, and given definite form by the 
 influence of the Latin drama. 
 
 The second stage represents the high tide of Elizabethan 
 literature. Its greatest figures are Sidney, Spenser, Mar- 
 lowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Bacon; and grouped 
 around them we find a great crowd of poets, romancers, and 
 playwrights. A wonderful efflorescence of the human mind, 
 a wonderful energy and gayety in human life, mark the last 
 years of Elizabeth and the first years of James I. 
 
 The third stage is marked by the over-ripeness and de- 
 cline of the drama, and the growing sternness of the Puri- 
 
 * The first was Wyclif, whose age was marked by 'a movement somewhat 
 similar to that of the Reformation.
 
 372 A Glance in Review 
 
 tan temper. To this stage belong Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 Webster, and the later dramatists ; it saw the rise of a great 
 pulpit literature and a fervid religious poetry; the earlier 
 work of Milton, in which he shows himself half- Elizabethan 
 and half-Puritan, falls in it. It ends amid the confusion of 
 the great Civil War, and the military despotism of Cromwell. 
 By this time the great wave of imaginative energy which had 
 begun to rise hi the reign of Henry VIII. was exhausted; 
 and with the restoration of Charles II. to the English throne 
 a new epoch opened, an epoch of reaction and criticism. 
 But as we have said before, there are two great survivals of 
 the spirit of the Renaissance and the Reformation into the 
 age of the Restoration; for it was under Charles II. that 
 Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim's Progress were written. 
 
 The Era of Classicism. The epoch of English literary his- 
 tory which opened with the return of Charles II. was pre- 
 eminently an epoch of prose, as the previous one had been 
 pre-eminently an epoch of poetry. It is called the era of 
 classicism, because it believed that it had found in the 
 older classic literatures the kind of moderation and polish 
 which formed its own literary ideal. As the previous age 
 had drawn its inspiration from Italy, the age which we have 
 now reached found its example in France, where the clas- 
 sical fashion in literature, long since firmly established there, 
 exerted its influence first upon the men of letters who were 
 exiled with Charles II., and afterward upon the English 
 nation as a whole. 
 
 Three Stages of the Classical Era. The domination of 
 this "classical" ideal in English letters divides itself into 
 three parts. The first is the age of Dryden, dating from 
 the Restoration to the end of the seventeenth century. It 
 saw the heroic couplet take the place of all other forms of 
 verse (with trifling exceptions); it saw a flippant society 
 comedy in prose, and a bombastic rhymed tragedy, take the 
 place of the Elizabethan blank verse drama; it saw the de- 
 velopment of a systematic literary criticism, and the develop- 
 ment of a useful prose style. 
 
 The second epoch of the classical era is signalized by the 
 final perfecting of the heroic couplet, and of the "rational" type
 
 A Glance in Review 373 
 
 of poetry, in the masterly hands of Pope ; it also witnessed 
 the development of a magnificent prose satire at the hands 
 of Swift, and the creation of a new type of literature in the 
 essays of Addison and Steele, which deal directly with the 
 social life of the time, in a light and graceful way. Finally, 
 it saw in the work of Defoe, the beginnings of the modern 
 novel, the greatest literary discovery of the eighteenth century. 
 
 The third stage of the reign of "classicism" is represented 
 by Johnson, Goldsmith, and Burke. In Johnson culminated 
 eighteenth-century scholarship. In Goldsmith and Burke, 
 along with a pronounced classical bias, we discover the work- 
 ings of a more ardent, sympathetic, and ideal temper; in 
 other words, we note in them the signs of a new feeling 
 toward life and art, a feeling destined soon to grow strong 
 enough to overthrow the classical standards and usher in a 
 freer and more impassioned literature. This age of Burke 
 and Goldsmith is also the age of the great eighteenth- century 
 novelists who follov;ed Defoe Richardson, Fielding, Smol- 
 lett, and Sterne. The work of the novelists, though thor- 
 oughly realistic, tended, by its intimate truth to life and its 
 keen human sympathy, to contribute toward the triumph of 
 the new spirit. 
 
 The Romantic Movement. Finally, this latter half of the 
 eighteenth century witnessed the beginnings and progress 
 of a movement to regain for poetry the romantic freedom 
 and wayward beauty of which the classical school had de- 
 prived it. This movement, known as the Romantic Move- 
 ment, began with Thomson, was continued by Gray, Cowper, 
 and Blake, and came to a more or less complete realization 
 in Burns. Burns died four years before the end of the cen- 
 tury ; and two years after his death the publication of Lyrical 
 Ballads, by Coleridge and Wordsworth, marked the decisive 
 triumph of the new romantic poetry. 
 
 The Nineteenth Century: First Period. The nineteenth 
 century divides itself naturally into two parts, the first ex- 
 tending, roughly, to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 ; 
 the second covering her long reign, 1837-1901. Throughout 
 both the romantic tone prevails, but it is more conspicuous 
 in the earlier period, which, like the romantic age of Eliza-
 
 374 A Glance in Review 
 
 beth, is pre-eminently an epoch of poetry. During this 
 epoch English literature felt strongly the influence of the 
 French Revolution, which was itself the outcome of a vast 
 "romantic movement" of a social and political kind. This 
 influence is especially marked in Wordsworth, who first 
 embraced and later repudiated the principles of the revo- 
 lution. Revolutionary doctrine is deeply ingrained in the 
 poetry of Byron and of Shelley. It is, however, conspicu- 
 ously absent from the work of Keats, who stands apart as 
 the poet of pure beauty in an age disturbed by social and 
 political trouble. Wordsworth marks the entrance into 
 poetry of a new sympathy with external nature, and a new 
 understanding of the spiritual meaning of the universe in 
 its relation to man. In Coleridge we meet a new power of 
 making credible and real the world of dreams and of super- 
 natural happenings. Byron stands chiefly for the revolt 
 against social convention and hypocrisy; Shelley for the 
 search after a more ideal existence, in which truth, justice, 
 and beauty shall prevail. Scott, both in his poetry and in 
 his prose romances, represents a new interest in the storied 
 past. In the prose essays of Lamb and De Quincey.we see 
 the romantic spirit applied to the criticism of literature, to 
 the description of various phases of social and personal life. 
 
 The Nineteenth Century: Second Period. The literature 
 of the Victorian age is especially marked by its interest in 
 social problems, and in the problem of man's personal ex- 
 istence, the first being due to the spread of democracy and 
 its resultant disturbances, the second to far-reaching dis- 
 coveries in the realm of biology and psychology, which have 
 given man a new conception of his place in the scheme 
 of creation, and a new understanding of his own nature. 
 The social interest is conspicuous in the work of Macaulay, 
 Carry le, Tennyson, Arnold, and Ruskin. The psychological 
 interest also deeply colors the work of Carlyle and Tennyson ; 
 and in the work of Browning it is predominant. The novel, 
 which is the most popular and widely cultivated form of 
 literature in this age, reflects both these interests. In 
 Dickens the desire to reform abuses and champion the op- 
 pressed, holds the chief place; Thackeray's interest is also
 
 A Glance in Review 375 
 
 chiefly a social one, but he cares to study and portray 
 society rather than to reform it; in George Eliot as in 
 Browning, the interest is mainly psychological and moral, 
 dealing with the intimate personal life of men and women as 
 it is affected by the life about them.
 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE BEFORE 1800 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT 
 
 The Lack of Primitive Beginnings. As an expression of 
 national life, American literature is different from any other 
 in its lack of primitive beginnings. It does not, like the 
 early English, progress as civilization progresses, gradually 
 passing from the ruggedness of orally transmitted song to 
 the intricacies of Elizabethan verse, the polished felicities of 
 the early eighteenth century, and the studious and deliberate 
 variety of the Victorian era. Nor does it take all the suc- 
 cessive steps which lead up to, through, and out of feudalism. 
 The effect of chivalry is not to be traced in its mediaeval 
 life, for it had no mediaeval life. As a consequence, there- 
 fore, American literature does not in its beginnings directly 
 feel the world-awakening influences of the Renaissance and 
 the Reformation. These influences are, of course, traceable 
 in American life, but it is only because their effects were 
 brought over ready-made into America, just as certainly as 
 clothes and tools and furniture and books. In the Colonial 
 period one can study the process of transplanting a hardy 
 flower from a sunny and protected place around the corner 
 into the shade and the wind. Its roots are disturbed, but 
 not at first wholly torn away from the original soil. Will the 
 plant survive, blossom, and come to fruitage under the 'new 
 conditions? Is it its previous self or something new? Or 
 is it both, as the old stem drinks in new sap? 
 
 American Literature Defined. It has been the practice of 
 a number of historians of American letters to declare that 
 nothing worthy of the name of literature was produced in the 
 country before 1800. In order to differ intelligently with 
 
 377
 
 378 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 critics of this type it is well to start with a definition. What 
 is meant by literature, and what by American literature? 
 The first requisite of literature is that it have some vital in- 
 terest. If we can feel that an essay, a play, a song, or a 
 story was the product of some living, energetic individual 
 vitally interested in what he was doing, we can hardly main- 
 tain that we have not been reading literature. Yet it is 
 necessary to go farther than this. It is not enough that a 
 man show such enthusiasm or energy that " he tears a passion 
 to tatters "; for with this element of vitality in any work of 
 literature must also be combined a certain formal quality. 
 The definition must be carried a step farther, moreover, to the 
 other term, "American." What is it for literature to be 
 national? Any national literature should be so distinct in 
 its character that we could not conceive of its having been 
 produced in any other country than that in which it was 
 given birth. In this connection it appears that two main 
 qualities are to be sought. First, literature may establish its 
 claim to nationality by portraying or criticising the life in 
 the midst of which it was written. The whole course of 
 English letters is marked by works of this sort. The value 
 of the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, with its fine 
 series of portraits of the Knight and the Squire, of the Nun, 
 the Priest, of the Merchant and the Shipman, the Clerk and 
 the Wife of Bath, is that they make a composite study of 
 English life in the fourteenth century, which is as useful to 
 the historian as it is charming to the lover of literature. The 
 comedies of Ben Jonson two centuries later, again help to 
 expound the life of the subjects of Elizabeth. One hundred 
 years after this, the satires of Joseph Addison on the subjects 
 of Queen Anne are inevitably English. Then there follow 
 a whole series of story-tellers from Richardson and Fielding 
 to Dickens and Thackeray and on down to writers of the 
 present day who have been respectively English and Ameri- 
 can because they have portrayed society in its different as- 
 pects, and perhaps passed criticisms upon it. 
 
 Yet to stop here with the definition of nationalism would 
 be to omit some of the very greatest literature. Turn to 
 Chaucer again. Thus far only the Prologue and connecting
 
 Colonial Literature from 1600 to 1700 379 
 
 links to the Canterbury Tales have been cited. What are 
 the stories themselves ? They have, in the majority of cases, 
 little to do with the England of Chaucer's day. They are 
 based on originals in Greek,. Latin, Italian, and French. 
 Yet they are distinctly English in reflecting the taste of the 
 England of Chaucer's day, an England which was so full of 
 stories of romantic adventure that the love of them was one 
 of the characteristics of the age. These points should be 
 kept in mind in a survey of the literature of America between 
 1600 and 1800. Do we find anything written in this long 
 period which is full of life and therefore is literature? Do 
 we discover anything which possesses artistic form and 
 thus lays claim to the title? Can we admit that any of the 
 material portrays and criticises American life in its earliest 
 stages ? Does any reflect the taste of the times ? 
 
 II. COLONIAL LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1 700 
 
 Seventeenth-Century Life in America. The significance 
 of the century marks in the Colonial period has been well in- 
 dicated. In 1600 none of the settlements which developed 
 into the original thirteen colonies had been established. In 
 1700 all but one of the colonies, Georgia, were flourishing. 
 By 1800 the Revolution had taken place, and they had be- 
 come an independent nation. 
 
 A glance over the period between 1600 and 1700 shows 
 that whatever literature there was at the outset had to be of 
 a very elementary type. For, though it was the record of a 
 highly educated group of men, these men had left one of the 
 great centres of seventeenth-century life and settled under 
 primitive conditions from which they were trying to free 
 themselves as soon as possible. Their lives were given over 
 to the work of ploughing, building, fishing, and hunting, and 
 of carrying on an active commerce with the Old World. 
 There was, of course, plenty of material for romance in this 
 experience. They encountered resistance on every side. In 
 the north they forced the reluctant soil to yield them the 
 bare necessities of life. Their suffering brought them in- 
 timately together, and their nobler emotions and baser pas-
 
 380 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 sions offered much material for literary treatment. In fact, 
 they had everything necessary except leisure. But engrossed 
 as they were in the material problems of getting for them- 
 selves food and fuel, shelter and clothing, what they did 
 write, although sometimes not of the briefest, was of the 
 simplest nature. 
 
 Early Motives for Authorship. Their motives for author- 
 ship during the early days were few. They wrote to keep in 
 personal contact with England, tQ inform their families and 
 their friends, to keep in touch with their financial backers 
 and with the state authorities. Aside from this personal 
 sort of production they wrote to remove prevailing miscon- 
 ceptions about America, and in so doing to stimulate coloni- 
 zation. At rare intervals, even in these early days, a third 
 motive appeared in the case of a few colonists who wrote for 
 their own edification and pleasure. Yet during most of this 
 century it is significant that little printing was done in 
 America, and that comparatively few utterances were ad- 
 dressed through the press to American readers. In the 
 main, English-born men were supplying to London printers 
 material for the English public. 
 
 First Writings in the South. Captain John Smith, the 
 most picturesque of the early settlers, has appropriately the 
 honor of being first writer, by virtue of his True Relation of 
 Virginia, published in London, 1608. It is a spirited work, 
 heavy in spots where he piles up rather dry accumulations of 
 facts about plants and animals, but full of lively interest when 
 he comes to his own experiences with the colonists and the 
 Indians, and freshened by " tall " stories which, through his 
 genial disregard for the facts, cast a good deal of light upon 
 his own character. The same jaunty animation appears in 
 the so-called Burwell Papers, an incomplete account of 
 Bacon's Rebellion in 1676; and both of these works, which 
 may be taken as the most interesting early products from 
 the South, show the same evident attention to the rather in- 
 tricate prose style of the later Elizabethans. 
 
 Religious Feeling in the North. In the North, for evident 
 reasons, the output was much greater. In 1620, and again 
 in 1630, companies of Englishmen in Plymouth and in Bos-
 
 Colonial Literature from 1600 to 1700 381 
 
 ton had settled communities wfyere they meant to worship as 
 they chose. Almost at once, however, it became evident at 
 both places that they had no more intention of allowing 
 general liberty of worship than had William Laud and 
 Charles I. of granting universal toleration in England. As a 
 result, although the direct historical chronicles of such men 
 as William Bradford, Nathaniel Morton, and John Win- 
 throp may not be overlooked, we naturally turn with more 
 interest to the writings which show the struggles of the ortho- 
 dox old guard against the encroachments of the ungodly. 
 
 The Decline of Intolerance. The best fighter against the 
 sin of toleration was Nathaniel Ward, whose Simple Cobbler 
 of Agawam (1646) was a bitter protest against the very kind 
 of non-conformity of which he had previously been guilty in 
 England. His protest came none too soon, however, for al- 
 ready Thomas Morton, a somewhat irresponsible adven- 
 turer, had, in The New English Canaan, written some gall- 
 ing satire on certain discrepancies between Puritan faith and 
 Puritan practice. Sober and religious men entered the 
 arena. Roger Williams suffered banishment rather than 
 submit to the tyranny of the churchman, and Franklin's 
 grandfather, Peter Folger, in his Looking Glass jor the Times, 
 explained that God was punishing New England for " the 
 persecuting trade " by inspiring the Indians to the horrors of- 
 King Philip's War. Finally, with the last decade of the cen- 
 tury, the Salem witchcraft tragedies were followed by an al- 
 most immediate change in public feeling toward religious 
 fanaticism. Of the lack of true scientific knowledge among 
 the New Englanders, and of their consequent openness to 
 superstition, we find enough evidence in the Remarkable 
 Providences of Increase Mather, a book of prodigious anec- 
 dotes about " things preternatural," " demons and possessed 
 persons," " apparitions," and various remarkable deliver- 
 ances, destructions, and judgments. A work of this author's 
 great son, Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible 
 World, is similar in content. Both made attempts at scien- 
 tific handling of their subject, but both seem to have fanned 
 the sparks which burst into flame with the Salem inquisition, 
 causing the death within three months of nineteen alleged
 
 382 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 witches. A closing chapter, in this controversy was Robert 
 Calef s More Wonders of the Invisible World, a biting reply 
 to the unscientific credulity of all those who had been led so 
 far from the truth. 
 
 A Period of Change. With the close of the century it is 
 thus very evident that a genuine period of change had ar- 
 rived. The old domination of the church fathers had begun 
 to wane; they no longer controlled both church and state 
 without challenge; their point of view was no longer ac- 
 cepted without question by all respectable persons. They 
 had actually been tried and found guilty of grievous error. 
 Three New Englanders all living and writing at the end of 
 the century represent the conservative, liberal, and radical 
 attitudes. 
 
 Cotton Mather's " Magnalia." Cotton Mather, already 
 mentioned, to the end keeps his eye upon the past. Appro- 
 priately, his greatest work in bulk and significance is Mag- 
 nalia Chris ti Americana, or The Ecclesiastical History of 
 New England. The motive of the immense tome is made 
 clear by the concluding words of the introduction: "Grant 
 me thy gracious assistance, Oh my God, that ... I may 
 find my labors acceptable and profitable unto thy churches, 
 and serviceable unto the interests of thy gospel." He 
 deals in some detail with the famous individuals and institu- 
 tions of early New England, and concludes with " A Faith- 
 ful Record of Many Illustrious Wonderful Providences " 
 and " The Wars of the Lord, being the Afflictions and Dis- 
 turbances of the Church in New England." The whole 
 work is ecclesiastical, and based on the general assumption 
 that the salvation of New England rested upon her upholding 
 the traditions of the past. 
 
 Samuel Sewall and His Diary. A more liberal attitude is 
 that of Samuel Sewall. He was an almost exact contempo- 
 rary of Cotton Mather, and almost equally prominent in the 
 same town. After graduation from Harvard, he passed into 
 law by way of the church, being a preacher before he became 
 a barrister. Magistrate in 1692, and hence a representative 
 of temporal authority; deacon, and therefore deputy of the 
 Most High, he served in this double capacity as one of the
 
 Colonial Literature from 1600 to 1700 383 
 
 witchcraft judges. But five years later, conscience-stricken 
 at his part in the spilling of innocent blood, he arose in church 
 and made public acknowledgment of his sin and his con- 
 trition. Three years after, in his tract on The Selling of 
 Joseph, he wrote the first real arraignment of the practice of 
 slave-holding in America. His greatest work was his diary, 
 a running comment on his life in Boston from 1674 to 1729. 
 He appears in it as a fine example of the sturdy Puritan 
 whose chief characteristic was a grave severity. He was op- 
 posed almost as staunchly as Nathaniel Ward to the en- 
 croachments of frivolity, " tricks," frolics, dancing, and the 
 pagan celebrations of such festivals as Christmas. Easter, and 
 May-day; but there is nevertheless a certain humane broad- 
 ness of view in his comments on life which contrasts him 
 with the " Mather dynasty." He is a touch more worldly 
 and much less pompous, doing in the long diary the same 
 service for his community that his two English contempo- 
 raries, Pepys and Evelyn, did for the courts of Charles II. 
 and James II. 
 
 Mrs. Knight's Journal. Quite different and far less aus- 
 tere than either of these dignitaries was Mrs. Sarah Kemble 
 Knight, when, in 1 704, she wrote her now famous Journal of 
 a Journey from Boston to New . York. Whether she would 
 have written just as she did if she had known that her work 
 was ever to be published, is an open question.' As it stands, 
 it is by all odds the most uniformly genial bit of writing that 
 survives from her generation. Here and there in earlier pro- 
 ductions appear situations and phrases which amuse the 
 reader. These, however, were not always so intended, and 
 they were at best mainly brief, interpolated quips. Mrs. 
 Knight, in contrast, was irrepressibly jolly. Sometimes she 
 lapses into vulgarity; frequently she is worldly wise; scattered 
 along through the little book are refreshing signs of a very 
 mild irreligiousness, especially in her use of biblical allusion; 
 and in the fashion of many of the Puritans of her day, though 
 not with Puritan gravity, she drops from time to time into 
 verse. Withal, however, she was a devout, decent, orderly 
 person. 
 
 Seventeenth-Century Verse. Some reference is due the
 
 384 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 Colonial verse before complete leave is taken of the seven, 
 teenth century. Much of the earliest verse was used merely 
 for the sake of variety in the handling of commonplace 
 themes. Thus R. Rich, writing his Newes jrom Virginia in 
 1610, offers a half apology when he says: " If thou ask me 
 why I put it in verse, I prithee knowe it was only to feede 
 mine ovvne humour." In New England this inclination to 
 lapse into rhyme showed itself among explorers, historians, 
 and preachers alike. Thus, when Governor William Brad- 
 ford, of Plymouth, courted the muse, he wrote a set of verses 
 on Providence and the Pilgrim, the stiffness of which can be 
 gathered from the opening couplet: 
 
 "From my years young in days of youth, 
 God did make known to me His truth." 
 
 With equally awkward sobriety, William Morrell, resident in 
 Plymouth 1623-1624, wrote in heroic couplets A Recommen- 
 dation oj New England, his title well indicating the prosy 
 content of the work. Thus, again, Morton interspersed into 
 his New English Canaan rhymes which were irritatingly 
 superior to those of his Puritan adversaries. Bradford had 
 a literary as well as an ethical grievance to inspire him when 
 he recorded that " Morton likewise (to show his poetry) com- 
 posed sundry rhymes and verses, some tending to lascivious- 
 ness, and others to the detraction and scandal of some per- 
 sons, which he affixed to this idle or idol Maypole." 
 
 Two Literary Curiosities. The most curious effusion in 
 seventeenth-century American verse has also the distinction 
 of being the first volume actually published in this country 
 The Bay Psalm Book, Cambridge, Mass., 1640. The 
 original title was The Whole Book oj Psalms faithfully done 
 into English Metre, the task being a work of collaboration by 
 many. It is a pathetic fact that the book has long been 
 considered a mere curio, that the basis of choosing excerpts 
 has been to select examples of the most ludicrous verse, and 
 that dozens of historians have regarded it only as a fit target 
 for critical epigram. Michael Wigglesworth, author of The 
 Day of Doom, was probably edified by the beauties of the
 
 Colonial Literature from 1600 to 1700 385 
 
 Bay Psalm Book, for he seems to have adopted it for his 
 poetic standard. He was a theologian of the sternly Cal- 
 vinistic type who put into verse all the sense of present help- 
 lessness and future horror which belonged to the solemn 
 creed of predestination. His masterpiece was The Day of 
 Doom, A poetical description of the great and last judgment. 
 Incredible as it may seem, though his poetry is almost as bad 
 as that in the luckless Psalm Book, It was enormously popular 
 in his day; but it was a perverted poem fed to an abnormal 
 appetite. 
 
 Mrs. Anne Bradstreet. The only genuine poet of this first 
 century was Anne Bradstreet. She endured all the toils of 
 a farmer's wife and the responsibilities of a mother of eight 
 children; yet in spite of these burdens she wrote a consider- 
 able body of verse, much of which, contrary to the custom of 
 the Puritans, " deviated into downright poetry." The nature 
 of her work can in part be understood from the long title to 
 her publication of 1850: The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in 
 America; or Several Poems, compiled with great iuil and 
 learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained a 
 complete discourse and description of the jour elements, con- 
 stitutions, ages of man, seasons of the year; together with an 
 exact epitome of the four monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Per- 
 sian, Grecian, Roman; also a dialogue between Old England 
 and New concerning the late troubles; with divers other pleasant 
 and serious poems, by a gentlewoman in those parts. It is 
 sufficiently evident that there is little lightness of touch to be 
 expected in such a production. It does possess, however, a 
 fluent and rather dignified verse scheme, a richness of imagi- 
 nation, coupled with an over-eagerness to emulate the fan- 
 tastic ingenuities of the English Jacobean poets. The work 
 is better than anything else done in her generation in Amer- 
 ica. Her most effective poem, " Contemplation," a placid 
 meditation on the delights of nature, written late in her life, 
 is far superior to many of the laborious productions of her 
 English contemporaries.
 
 386 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 III. JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1755) AND BENJAMIN 
 FRANKLIN (1706-1790) 
 
 The Spirit of the Eighteenth Century. The division of the 
 whole Colonial period into halves calls attention to the 
 changing conditions at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. If this century itself be cut in two, a further change 
 in the nature of the problems to which thinking people 
 were giving their attention becomes evident about 1750. 
 From 1600 to 1700 practically all the literature had been 
 intensely individual. From John Smith to Sarah Kemble 
 Knight the authors presented their own impressions and- 
 personal experiences, whether these had to dc with this life 
 or the prospects of a world to come. By the middle of the 
 century, however, communities were firmly established and 
 things intellectual began -more generally to get their due. 
 English customs of thought were coming to be much more 
 influential in America than they had been a century before, 
 when the pick of the inhabitants had been voluntary exiles 
 or even refugees from the mother country. The fashion of 
 the day in England was the fashion of the worldly wise man. 
 It was an age given over to the study of social life as it could 
 be seen on the streets, at the club, in the coffee-house, in the 
 church, and at the court. It was a rationalizing period from 
 which all mystery was absent. Religion was a reputable 
 practice for respectable people; patriotism was something 
 to be observed without personal sacrifice; love of home was 
 less devout than in the age to come. The worldly wisdom 
 of Pope and Addison was a high ideal for the generation. 
 
 English Influence on America. In searching for the effect 
 of all this upon America, one would expect to find in the 
 colonies, too, an application of common-sense, the cardinal 
 quality of England. With reference to the life of the com- 
 munity just this is to be found. The same general problems 
 are treated in a new way. In the first hundred years of the 
 colonies the demands of material life had been in the as- 
 cendency. In the eighteenth century it was possible to turn 
 the attention from the necessities to certain of the conven-
 
 Jonathan Edwards 387 
 
 iences of life, and invention began to take the place of the 
 ruder forms of manual labor. In the first hundred years 
 with tears and sighs and lamentations the Puritan had pros- 
 trated himself before the Lord and examined his own heart 
 to see if it was good. Now heresy began to spread. The age 
 was moral rather than religious, and the study of ethics in its 
 application to man's civic duties took in some measure the 
 place of the faith of the Puritan. In the first hundred years 
 schools had been established in order that children, by learn- 
 ing the Scriptures, might " foil the old deluder, Satan." 
 Now the spirit of education became universal, and its aim 
 was to put men in possession of all good books, and to ac- 
 quaint them with their duty as members of the state. Two 
 men stand out preeminent at this mid-period, both born at 
 the very opening of the century, and both enormously active 
 minded and progressive Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin 
 Franklin. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards's Life. Edwards, born in 1703, de- 
 veloped into the greatest American divine since Cotton 
 Mather. Like Mather, he was precocious as a youth, and 
 as a man wonderfully diversified in his interests and activ- 
 ities, " fructuosus " in his good works, merciless in his dis- 
 cipline of self, and, consequently, insatiable in his demands 
 upon others. He was born in East Windsor, Conn., grad- 
 uated from Yale in 1720, a tutor in the college 1724-1726, 
 and then pastor in the Northampton church till 1750. In 
 this significant year, on account of the unrelenting rigor of 
 his demands upon his parishioners, he was dismissed from 
 the church. For seven years he acted as missionary to the 
 Indians near Stockbridge. Then, in 1758, he became presi- 
 dent of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, and a month 
 later came to an untimely death as the result of inoculation 
 against the small-pox. 
 
 Edwards as an Original Thinker. The first half of his life 
 is by far the more remarkable. As a boy he was uncommonly 
 precocious in his command of the most abstruse philosophy. 
 At the same time he was an extraordinarily promising student 
 of natural science. The catalogue of his achievements in 
 astronomy, geology, biology, and physics is wellnigh incred-
 
 388 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 ible. As might be expected, his first attitude toward re- 
 ligion was one of free inquiry. " From my childhood up 
 my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of 
 God's sovereignty in choosing whom He would to eternal 
 life and rejecting whom He pleased. ... It used to appear 
 like a horrible doctrine to me." But he " convinced and 
 fully satisfied " himself of the truth of this doctrine, and 
 finally turned all his wonderful powers of mind to expounding 
 its horrors to awe-stricken congregations. To-day Jonathan 
 Edwards is remembered for two things. One is the great 
 promise of his youth, as with his eyes to the future he searched 
 the heart of nature and arrived at conclusion after conclusion 
 which was far in advance of his time; the other is the work of 
 his maturity, as he turned toward the past and devoted all 
 his sermonic skill to reaffirming the savage doctrines of the 
 Calvinistic faith. 
 
 Franklin's Life. Benjamin Franklin, the other great 
 mid-century man of letters, furnishes interesting points of 
 comparison and contrast with Edwards. Their youthful 
 promise, their powers of intense application, their scientific 
 spirit, and their desire to share in and contribute to the life 
 of the community, are evident at a glance. Yet in many 
 phases of character and experience they were as different as 
 two men of the same generation could well be. Franklin 
 was born in Boston in 1706, the fifteenth in a family of 
 seventeen children. Naturally, his father, a tallow chandler, 
 was unable to give his youngest son many advantages in the 
 way of formal education. The boy's experiences, first in 
 his father's business and then as apprentice in the print-shop 
 of his brother, his departure from Boston at the age of seven- 
 teen, his first residence in Philadelphia, the two years in 
 England, the return to the land of Penn, and his subsequent 
 career until he came to be the most remarkable American of 
 his time these are all commonplaces of political and literary 
 history. 
 
 Franklin's Pursuit of Efficiency. The one dominant feat- 
 ure which appears consistently at every phase of his life is 
 his study of the problem of personal efficiency. His per- 
 sistent and successful course of self-education, including his
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 From a portrait by Duplessis in Boston Public Library
 
 390 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 deliberate study of Addison for the acquisition of a prose 
 style and his exercise in the use of the Socratic method to 
 develop skill in debate, his systematic tabulation of the moral 
 virtues, his adoption of a vegetarian diet, were all part of his 
 general scheme to make of himself as powerful and smooth- 
 running a human machine as nature and Ben Franklin could 
 cooperate to upbuild. Of his two best-known works, the 
 earlier, Poor Richard's Almanac, owed its popularity for the 
 quarter century from 1732 to 1757 to the skill with which he 
 preached these doctrines to an attentive public, filling all the 
 odd spaces, as he records, with original epigrams, " chiefly 
 such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of 
 procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue." 
 
 Franklin's "Autobiography." His greatest book was, of 
 course, his Autobiography, a piece of writing done at odd 
 times between 1770 and 1783 at the urgent request of friends 
 and relatives. The story is carried only up to 1757, in the 
 thirty-three years after which most of his finest achievements 
 took place. Its perfect frankness and simplicity, abounding 
 energy, good sense, and humor must be experienced at first 
 hand to be appreciated. The only excuse for lavishing 
 critical praise upon it is that thereby some new readers may 
 perhaps be converted to it. 
 
 Franklin's Doctrine of Common-Sense. Franklin is the 
 one American who, in the midst of the eighteenth century, 
 most completely embodied the spirit of his age. Edwards 
 had promised to rival him, but as he grew older he looked 
 backward. Franklin's eye, to the day of his death, was 
 turned toward the future of America. Edwards was pas- 
 sionately concerned with the affairs of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven; Franklin was a tremendous citizen of this world. 
 In religion he was, alas, on the verge of scepticism. He 
 listened to the sermons of Whitefield, the evangelist, but 
 while others were being stirred to their hearts' depths, he be- 
 came lost in admiration of the preacher's voice and in mental 
 computation of the number of individuals by whom he could 
 be heard in the open air. Yet his doctrine of common-sense 
 and clean morality made his sayings of Richard a sort of Bible 
 which edified and influenced unnumbered thousands. In
 
 Literature of the American Revolution 391 
 
 education, again, his efforts were ultimately for the good of 
 the state. As an apostle of the arts and sciences, his work 
 as printer, publisher, and founder of a library, a journal, and 
 a college would alone place him among the foremost men of 
 his day. All this appears in his own simple, personal story; 
 but even here his community interest stands out in contrast 
 to what one finds in the diaries and journals of the preceding 
 century. For Franklin, unlike most of his predecessors, 
 not only portrayed life, but also criticised it repeatedly and 
 effectively, and while he was telling his own story, was telling 
 very consciously the story of the entire group among whom 
 his circumstances placed him. 
 
 IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 
 
 The Rights of the Governed. As the century progressed, 
 the interest of the Americans in themselves arid their welfare 
 came rapidly to a climax in their increasing jealousness for 
 their own rights. This development offers one more evi- 
 dence of the closeness of America to the influences which 
 were actively working in England and on the Continent. 
 Throughout the century in letters and philosophy the sub- 
 ject of the rights of the commoner was becoming more 
 important. Gray, in his famous Elegy m a Country Church- 
 yard, upheld the doctrine that the noble poor deserved their 
 monuments no less than the noble rich. Goldsmith, in The 
 Deserted Village, sang the praises of the upright peasant 
 class, and Cowper and Crabbe in England, like Burns in 
 Scotland, wrote for increasing bodies of readers always on 
 the doctrine that all men were created free and equal. In 
 the meantime, while this theme was steadily gaining ground 
 in England, historians agree that in America the rights of 
 the governed was a subject of accumulating importance for 
 years and decades before the actual outbreak. 
 
 " Letters of an American Farmer." Throughout most of 
 these years, however, there was no talk of separation from 
 the mother country. The question was rather whether King 
 and Parliament might not be convinced that they were pur- 
 suing the wrong policy; and the discussion was based on the
 
 392 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 assumption that conditions as they existed in America were 
 almost ideal. The best presentation of this point of view 
 v/as made in the Letters 0} an American Farmer, a book ,of 
 thirteen essays by a French Huguenot, John Hector St. John 
 de Crevecoeur, who had come to America as a young man 
 about the middle of the century. He settled in Pennsyl- 
 vania, acquired and cultivated farm lands, brought up a 
 family, and enjoyed to the full the contrast between the 
 privileges of his later years and the hardships of his youth. 
 The essays fall into three groups: those resulting from his 
 travels up and down the Atlantic coast; the nature essays, 
 the most heartfelt of which is on " The Pleasures of an 
 American Farmer"; and his enthusiastic exposition of life in 
 the New World as contained in the five successive -chapters 
 on "What is an American?" All that is desirable in life 
 seemed to him to come from civic liberty and the ownership 
 of land. A new society, uncrowded, free from cramping 
 traditions, and offering to every man who desired it the 
 chance to wrest a living from the soil, was in his eyes all 
 that mortal could wish for. He looked, moreover, far ahead 
 of his own generation, and saw in prospect that process going 
 on which has made America the " melting-pot " of the 
 nations. His genuine insight into the developing conditions 
 of his adopted country was fortunately coupled with a sim- 
 ple, unaffected, spontaneous literary style. The combina- 
 tion makes Crevecceur's Letters of an American Farmer one 
 of the few real classics of Colonial times. 
 
 The War a Stimulus to Writing. It was not until after 
 Lexington and Concord that the Colonies as a whole were 
 ready to admit that war was unavoidable; but when it came, 
 instead of putting a stop to authorship, it actually furnished 
 a new impulse for literary activity. In ordinary times of 
 war there is little inclination and little ability shown for 
 letters. But the present conflict was largely an intellectual 
 revolt. Americans had not been down-trodden and op- 
 pressed; they were "prosperous and, in a certain measure, 
 content. Their struggle was against the possible loss of 
 freedom rather than a fight to regain it. They felt that the 
 Stamp Act, had they not forced its repeal, would have led to
 
 Literature of the American Revolution 393 
 
 further encroachments on their freedom. They resented the 
 tax on tea because they thought that the principle was wrong. 
 So the uprising in America was as different from the Revolu- 
 tion in France as could be imagined. Naturally, as it grew 
 out of a difference of opinion between two bodies of educated 
 men, the use of force, postponed until the latest possible 
 moment, was accompanied by a running fusillade of state 
 papers, orations and addresses, political essays, satires, songs, 
 and ballads. Throughout the war what was said from the 
 provincial point of view was met by an almost equal volume 
 of reply from the loyal supporters of the King in ^merica. 
 As time went on the Tories found it harder and harder to 
 get their work printed and distributed, and they became the 
 objects of increasingly rabid hatred and abuse; but the 
 records, the best of which are their own writings, show that 
 they were sincerely devoted to their principles and deserving 
 of respectful admiration for the courage with which they de- 
 fended a losing cause. 
 
 Thomas Paine. The prose-writer whose works stand out 
 from the great mass most clearly at this distance is Thomas 
 Paine. Paine was a strange meteor in the political sky. He 
 came to America in 1774, after half a lifetime of failures, 
 armed with a letter from Benjamin Franklin. Going to 
 Philadelphia, he " got into such company as would converse 
 with him," as a disapproving Tory said quite truly, " and 
 ran about picking up what information he could about our 
 affairs." His first conclusions were strongly in favor of 
 attempting that reconciliation which Burke advocated in 
 Parliament as late as March, 1775; but by January of 1776 
 he had swung so strongly to the other side that he came out 
 in print with his Common Sense as the first out-and-out advo- 
 cate of separation between the mother country and the 
 Colonies. The effect of this work by a " pilgrim and a 
 stranger" was astounding. Within three months 120,000 
 copies had been sold, and whereas public opinion had up to 
 this time been all against a final and complete rupture, by 
 July 4th the turning of the tide was irrevocably recorded in 
 the Declaration of Independence. Paine's later works, The 
 Crisis during the war, and The Rights oj Man and The Age
 
 394 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 of Reason after it, all show consummate journalistic skill in 
 the handling of really abstruse themes in such concrete and 
 reasonable style that his writings convinced even those whom 
 they shocked. However, it is interesting to know that, 
 though his name has come down to modern times as that of 
 a pagan and heretic, most of his dangerous views have been 
 Absorbed into the orthodoxy of to-day. 
 
 John Trumbull. Among the Revolutionary satirists two 
 stood preeminent. First is John Trumbull, the leader of 
 the " Hartford Wits." Fascinated by the eighteenth-century 
 writers as a young man, he followed in the footsteps, first of 
 Addison in the light essay, and then of Pope in verse satire. 
 His best-known work is M'Fingal, named after the Tory 
 leader in a New England town which is divided between 
 Royalists and Provincials. The first part, which includes 
 cantos one and two of the complete poem, turns him to 
 ridicule in a town meeting where he is overthrown in argu- 
 ment and then roughly handled. The remaining two cantos, 
 written six years after, picture him later in the same day 
 mobbed, tarred, feathered, and left sticking to the liberty 
 pole. He manages to release himself, but when, in the 
 evening, he attempts to hold a meeting of his allies in his 
 cellar, he is again routed and is fortunate, under cover of 
 darkness, to escape with a whole skin to Boston. The sub- 
 ject-matter and the spirit of the satire is American, and full 
 of the bitterness of partisan feeling. In form it shows Trum- 
 bull's debt to Butler's Hudibras and the satires of Churchill, 
 as well as to the works of the leading English poets from 
 Milton onward. 
 
 Philip Freneau. Philip Freneau, TrumbulFs companion 
 satirist on the Colonial side, was a Princeton graduate of 
 1 771. His verses, inspired by the war, were distributed along 
 from 1775 to 1781 and roughly indicate the course of events. 
 A group of poems were written and published in the 
 autumn of 1775; two of them, The Conquerors of America 
 Shut Up in Boston and The Midnight Consultation, were 
 exultant outbursts after the Concord fight in April and the 
 battle of Bunker Hill in June; the third, Liber a Nos, Domine, 
 an earnest prayer for escape from the horrors of a long trial
 
 Literature of the 'American Revolution 395 
 
 at arms. Toward the middle of the war Freneau's confi- 
 dence in ultimate victory for America found expression in 
 America Independent (1778) and George the Third, His 
 Soliloquy for 1779, in which the King is described as being 
 pathetically despondent. The poet's cruel experience as a 
 prisoner in a British ship impelled him to write his furious 
 British Prison Ship before he was fully recovered from his 
 experience there. Later, in 1780 or early in 1781, he con- 
 tributed his last memorable satire in a mocking set of verses 
 on The Political Balance, or the Fates of Britain and America 
 Compared. 
 
 Aside from these purely occasional poems, Freneau wrote 
 a considerable body of verse botri before and after the war, 
 in which his native ability is evident. His many experiences 
 on the sea as traveller and ship's captain, and his observa- 
 tions of nature in the north and in the tropics, share honors 
 with his short ballad poems of American history and tradi- 
 tion. Probably too much has been made of the fact that 
 Scott and Campbell seem each to have borrowed one line 
 from Freneau; it is much easier to show that the American 
 was clearly dependent on the English eighteenth-century poets 
 for the structure and versification of most of his works than 
 to demonstrate that any of them were greatly in debt to him. 
 A more evident claim for prestige may be based on the in- 
 disputable facts that Freneau, with the single exception of 
 Anne Bradstreet, was the first American to write for its own 
 sake poetry that will bear reading still, and that as between 
 these two, both in quality and quantity of work, the New 
 Jerseyan surpasses the New Englander. 
 
 Charles Brockden Brown. There is still one man who be- 
 longs in a discussion of American letters of the eighteenth 
 century Charles Brockden Brown. He is a lonely figure, 
 for his character and career separate him from all of the 
 foregoing authors, without grouping him with the great New 
 York pioneers who immediately follow. He was born be- 
 fore the Revolution, in 1771, and did his chief work just on 
 the century border-line, but for the most part actually after 
 1800. Yet no trace of the great struggle of his boyhood 
 days appears in his work, which is done in the spirit of cer-
 
 396 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 tain minor English novelists. As the first American novelist 
 (as well as the first professional man of letters) he naturally 
 was open to English influence. The peculiar quality of the 
 man determined, moreover, the kind of English models 
 which were bound to influence him. He was a lover of 
 nature, and given to solitary meditations amidst romantically 
 gloomy surroundings. At the same time, while he was full 
 of pride in his country, he had a keen sense of the abuses in 
 human institutions which emphasized the difference between 
 what they were and what they were designed to be. In view 
 of this double liability to a somewhat sentimental treatment 
 of man and nature, he was a natural admirer of the " Gothic 
 romance " as developed by Horace Walpole, Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe, " Monk " Lewis, and, most notably for him, William 
 Godwin. Of Godwin and his Caleb Williams Brown be- 
 came an ardent admirer. To the modern sophisticated novel 
 reader it is hard to see just why. Godwin's political views 
 are better presented in his essays than in his fiction, and the 
 strongest features of his story are surpassed in Smollett's 
 Roderick Random. Caleb Williams was, however, popular 
 and timely, and congenial to Brown's taste; how congenial is 
 shown- by the striking resemblances to it in his own work. 
 All his novels portray guiltless depressingly guiltless 
 heroes or heroines subjected to the hostilities of diabolically 
 powerful foes. The whole narrative is regularly enshrouded 
 in an atmosphere of mystery which is at last dissipated in 
 orthodox fashion by a scientific explanation. All have 
 deeds of darkness, sudden reactions, shiveringly prolonged 
 passages of suspense. The characters are all vague, the con- 
 versations unreal, the plots involved; but the descriptions of 
 nature, of mysteriously effective backgrounds, and of Ameri- 
 can life are very vivid, and the development of emotional 
 narrative is at times of the highest order. Brown precedes 
 Cooper in the use of American subject-matter, and Poe and 
 Hawthorne in his use of the mysterious and grotesque. Even 
 though none of them was consciously or appreciably affected 
 by his work, he still holds a well-earned place of preeminence 
 in this intermediate period in the history of American 
 literature.
 
 Review Outline 397 
 
 Concluding Summary. To go back to the tests as to 
 whether or no there was such a thing as American literature 
 between 1600 and 1800, certain general conclusions can be 
 drawn. There was a great mass of writing which portrayed 
 the Colonial life and at times passed criticism upon it. As a 
 result, the books of the period possess real vital quality, 
 though, of course, in varied degrees. As there was not, in 
 the modern sense,, either a great reading public or a class of 
 professional authors, there was not a general literary demand. 
 This decreased the conscious attention of writers to the 
 formal quality of their work, and when this did exist it was 
 in evident reflection of the literary fashions of England. It 
 must be remembered, however, that all these Colonial writ- 
 ings correspond in general to the primitive beginnings of 
 other literatures. Considered in this light, they surely lose 
 little by comparison. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. What is the reason for the striking points 
 of contrast between the primitive beginnings of American literature 
 and the early history of the English, French, or German literatures? 
 In using the term "American Literature "for products preceding 1800, 
 what tests may be applied to determine whether the writing is literature 
 and what tests to establish its genuine American quality ? 
 
 Certain broad statements may be made concerning the state of civic 
 affairs in America in connection with the century marks. What are 
 these? What material fit for literary treatment was presented 'during 
 the early days of settlement? What three general motives of author- 
 ship, even in those days of distraction, can be enumerated ? Mention 
 two writings from the South and the chief characteristics in content 
 and form. What fundamental difference existed in the character of 
 the Northern settlers and the Southern? How does this account for 
 the difference of their literary utterances ? What general line of interest 
 is shown in the writings of Ward, Morton, Williams, and the Mathers 
 up to the time of the Salem witchcraft disturbance? 
 
 With the end of the century, what contrasting points of view are il- 
 lustrated by Cotton Mather's " Magnalia," by Samuel Sewall in his 
 Diary covering a half century, and the brief Journal of Mrs. Knight? 
 Make a broad generalization as to the character of the seventeenth-
 
 398 American Literature Before 1800 
 
 century verse, keeping in mind the general tests laid down for the de- 
 termination of American literature. Can you justify the introduction 
 of " The Bay Psalm Book " and " The Day of Doom " in a literary his- 
 tory ? What can be said of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet's poetry as to con- 
 tent, and as to poetic form? 
 
 What were the general habits of thought of the eighteenth century? 
 In what respects do these become apparent in the difference between 
 eighteenth- and seventeenth-century Colonial ideas ? What were the 
 chief facts of Jonathan Edwards's life? What was the promise of his 
 youth and young manhood? What was the achievement of his later 
 years? On the basis of Franklin's experience up to coming of age, why 
 would one expect a different kind of literary output from that of Ed- 
 wards? . How does his worldliness show itself in his pursuit of personal 
 efficiency? In his contributions to the life of his community as a lit- 
 erary man, educator, and statesman? What are his chief works? 
 What are their qualities? 
 
 Does the approach of the Revolutionary War in America correspond 
 to any intellectual development in the mother country during the years 
 preceding 1775? What is the value of the " Letters of an American 
 Farmer? What is the attitude of their writer toward the coming con- 
 flict? Is this representative of the Colonies as a whole? It is a re- 
 markable fact that during the struggle the literary output should have 
 been increased. Is there a reasonable explanation for this? What 
 was the influence of Thomas Paine upon the public opinion of 1776 to 
 1783? How does his experience in this country illustrate the youth 
 and impressionableness of the country? In what respects is the work 
 of John Trumbull American and in what respects English? I 
 there an essential difference between the work of Freneau as a satirist 
 of the Revolution and as a more spontaneous poet? For what does 
 Charles Brockden Brown defy classification either with Revolutionary 
 writers or with his immediate successors ? By what minor influences in 
 the history of English fiction was he influenced ? Is there any com- 
 parison between him and the great American writers of romance who 
 followed him? 
 
 Recall the tests applied to American literature at the beginning of 
 the chapter and generalize on the basis of them concerning the nature 
 of the writings during these two hundred years.
 
 Reading Guide 399 
 
 READING GUIDE. The most useful general history of this entire 
 period has been written by Moses Coit Tyler in two parts: a "History 
 of American Literature During the Colonial Times" (Putnam), and 
 the "Literary History of the American Revolution" (Putnam). The 
 former of these is especially valuable, as it contains selections made 
 from many authors who are difficult for modern readers to reach. The 
 best collection of material for the whole range of American literature, 
 but particularly for these first years, is Stedman and Hutchinson's 
 "Library of American Literature," eleven volumes, the first three being 
 devoted to this early period. A few good selections are contained in 
 "American Prose," by G. R. Carpenter (Macmillan). Valuable his- 
 torical background can be secured through the reading of selections 
 about this period as presented in "Poems of American History," edited 
 by B. E. Stevenson (Houghton, Mifflin). Valuable prose histories are 
 numerous, but among the most readable are Alice Morse Earle's "The 
 Sabbath in Puritan New England," "Home Life in Colonial Days," 
 and "Customs and Manners in Puritan New England"; John Fiske's 
 "Beginnings of New England" and "New France and New England"; 
 Edward Eggleston's "The Beginners of a Nation" and "The Transit 
 of Civilization"; Chamberlain's "Samuel Sewall, and the World He 
 Lived In." Reprints are easy to obtain of Franklin's "Autobiography," 
 and the "Letters of an American Farmer" have recently been re- 
 published. 
 
 Illustrative prose literature corresponding to the poems in American 
 history includes Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," Mary Johnson's 
 "To Have and to Hold," Cooper's "The Spy" and "The Pilot," 
 Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne," Ford's "Janice Meredith," and Churchill's 
 "Richard Carvel."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 NEW YORK AND THE KNICKERBOCKERS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 New York a New Literary Centre. The two centuries from 
 1600 to 1800 completed a period of preparation without 
 which the pioneers of the nineteenth century could not have 
 done their work. As Irving and Cooper were growing up, a 
 new nation was also first becoming aware of itself. All the 
 scattered experiences of the separate colonies were being 
 gathered into a general fund of tradition, and rival interests 
 were slowly giving way to the impulse of a common national 
 pride. 
 
 One result of this unifying process was that it was possible 
 to develop a literary centre from which something repre- 
 sentatively national could emanate. During the Revolu- 
 tionary period and immediately thereafter Philadelphia 
 served as such a centre. Under normal circumstances the 
 national capital attracts to itself the authors and publishers; 
 but Washington in the District of Columbia differs from 
 London, Paris, or Berlin in being a compromise selection. 
 The tide of life flows by it, and as a result other cities have 
 enjoyed what might have been its privilege of being the chief 
 home of American letters. The first town to do this was 
 New York, birth-place of Irving and adopted city of Cooper 
 and Bryant. On account of the changed conditions, the 
 work of these men was destined to be of a different stamp 
 from that of their predecessors. Before their day, American 
 literature was characterized by a certain degree of vigor and 
 given almost entirely to reproducing the life of the country in 
 rough-and-ready fashion. In the pages of these early nine- 
 teenth-century writers the pictures of life are more complete; 
 
 400
 
 Washington Irving 401 
 
 the artistic finish of their work is far higher in degree. All 
 of them felt a great patriotic pride in their country, now 
 flourishing in independence, and all of them enjoyed what is 
 quite necessary to a full and just appreciation of the home 
 land varied, repeated, and long-continued travel in foreign 
 countries. 
 j 
 
 II. WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) 
 
 Irving's Youth. Washington Irving was born in New 
 York, of Scotch and English parents, in 1783. With his ten 
 brothers and sisters he was brought up in the narrow paths 
 of strict Presbyterianism, and by a natural reaction grew up 
 with an abnormally developed taste for frivolity. At sixteen 
 his formal education, at which he had but faintly applied 
 himself, was over, and his failure to make any head-way in 
 law during the next five years enrolled him in the distinguished 
 company who have developed by this route into eminent men 
 of letters. At twenty-one, threatened with consumption, he 
 was sent abroad by his family. He jaunted about through 
 France and Italy, seeing people and enjoying them with boy- 
 ish eagerness, and carefully abstaining from conscientious 
 sightseeing. He had more than one adventure that was 
 moderately exciting, and barely escaped from more than one 
 promising romance. A journal which he kept in Paris for 
 three weeks credits him with attendance on one lecture in 
 botany and scores up seventeen theatrical performances. 
 After nearly two years he returned to New York, a complete 
 dandy and an -accomplished idler. 
 
 But his training for twenty-three years had been by no 
 means useless. He had seen many peoples and had attended 
 perhaps more freely than he was aware to their manners and 
 their morals. In a fashion more or less similar to that of his 
 closest model, Oliver Goldsmith, he had knocked about the 
 world most profitably. Now he was ready to produce some- 
 thing worth while, as he gave evidence in the Salmagundi 
 Papers of 1806. 
 
 " Salmagundi Papers." These were written in the main 
 by Irving and J. K. Paulding, and enjoyed high popularity
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING 
 
 From a painting by Charles Loring Elliott
 
 Washington Irving 403 
 
 for the year in which they ran. The young satirists blandly 
 announced it as their purpose " to instruct the young, reform 
 the old, correct the town, and castigate the age." They dis- 
 coursed on the American political system from election 
 methods to the proceedings of Congress. They touched up so- 
 ciety for many of its short-comings, and even jovially bur- 
 lesqued some of the prevailing literary fashions. The whole 
 series was done in a mood of boyishly exuberant good-humor r 
 and it was brought to a conclusion only by the whim of its 
 irresponsible authors. Three years later the Knickerbocker 
 History oj New York appeared in the same general vein, but 
 from 1809 on there was an increasing element of sober dignity 
 in Irving's work. 
 
 " The Sketch Book." It was during a seventeen years' 
 absence from America that The Sketch Book appeared in 
 London in 1819, after a long and unproductive period in 
 which Irving had been dabbling more or less in business. 
 This, his best-known work, though written and published in 
 England, and for the most part on English subject-matter, 
 was very evidently from the American point of view. As a 
 visitor from a new country, he was fascinated by the dignity 
 and stability of English life and by the stalwart healthiness 
 of English traditions. But at the same time he realized the 
 virtues of his own people keenly enough to write with honest 
 indignation of those " British Writers on America," whom he 
 accused of deliberately and short-sightedly provoking hos- 
 tility between the two peoples. Moreover, two of his three 
 short stories, epoch-making in their way " Rip Van Winkle," 
 " Sleepy Hollow," and " The Spectre Bridegroom "are 
 interesting not only in themselves, but because they put upon 
 American soil foreign traditions that endured the trans- 
 planting and have flourished marvellously ever since. 
 
 Irving's Later Works. His career was now marked out 
 except for the work that he was to do as a writer of history. 
 The early period of boyish exuberance was over; The Sketch 
 Book was to be followed by Bracebridge Hall, Women's 
 Roost, Tales oj a Traveller, and The AHiambra, all collections 
 of the same general type; and besides these and several 
 lesser books, he was to write three notable works as a his-
 
 404 New York and the Knickerbockers 
 
 torical biographer the lives of Columbus, Goldsmith, and 
 Washington. With his list of productions thus finely rounded 
 out, he passed through an old age filled with honors, and died 
 in 1859. 
 
 Irving's Point of View. Throughout his work, from be- 
 ginning to end, Irving's knowledge of the external world and 
 his enjoyment of its oddities appear in his writings. He does 
 not delve very deeply into life. In literary sympathy he be- 
 longs with certain English men of letters who lived from one 
 to three generations before. In his earliest and most imita- 
 tive work he is clearly indebted to Addison and Goldsmith 
 for his style, and even for certain obvious devices in essay 
 structure. And their point of view was his. Of the great 
 spiritual problems which were absorbing men as Irving's life 
 progressed, he showed no deep consciousness. It is perhaps 
 enough to define him in this negative fashion. We might 
 call him superficial; but later we should regret the word. In 
 his way, which was the way of Hazlitt and Lamb and Gold- 
 smith and Gay and Prior, and of many another man from 
 the days of Addison to the days of Thackeray, Irving was 
 doing what it fell naturally to his lot to do, in interpreting 
 the externals of social life as they caught and held his attention. 
 
 > 
 
 III. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851) 
 
 Cooper's Early Life. James Fenimore Cooper, who was 
 born six years after Irving and died eight years before him, 
 shared the honors with his contemporary, succeeding as 
 eminently with the novel as Irving did with the essay. Like 
 Irving, too, he passed through a long period of quite uncon- 
 scious preparation for the life-work which was to make him 
 famous, and like Irving he shows in his books not only his 
 training at home but as well his experiences abroad. He was 
 brought up at Cooperstown, N. Y., a town which, though 
 only a few miles from Albany, was, in his boyhood, a simple 
 frontier settlement. After some tutoring with a ne'er-do-well 
 English clergyman in Albany, and two years in Yale, he left 
 college with more abruptness than grace and undertook life 
 on the sea, first on a merchantman and later in the American
 
 James Fenimore Cooper 405 
 
 navy. When just of age, he resigned his commission to 
 marry the daughter of a loyal supporter of George III. in the 
 War of the Revolution. 
 
 Cooper's Best Romances. It was not until he was past 
 thirty years of age, a settled proprietor of the family estates 
 at Cooperstqwn, and father of five daughters, that he turned 
 his hand to writing. The story goes that his first novel, 
 Precaution, a tale of English society life, was written as an 
 expression of his discontent with a similar work of English 
 authorship. It was of little value except to prove his ability. 
 But when he wrote a war-story, The Spy, based on recent 
 history and using much that his wife's family had lived 
 through, his success was greater. Better still was his achieve- 
 ment in The Pilot, a tale which employed his own sea experi- 
 ences placed against an historical background. And he 
 worked the richest vein of all when he wrote The Pioneers, 
 which was a development of his own frontier life that ulti- 
 mately was expanded into the whole Leatherstocking series, 
 The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, 
 The Pioneers, and The Prairie. 
 
 Cooper's Social Satires. If Cooper's productions were 
 limited to the list here mentioned, the loss of all the others 
 would not greatly affect his fame. Unfortunately for his own 
 future peace of mind, however, he took a journey abroad of 
 more than seven years which influenced his whole subsequent 
 career as a literary man, and led him to the commission of 
 two serious literary errors. The first of these was to write in 
 essay style comments and criticisms on the ways of Amer- 
 icans, Englishmen, and Europeans. His judgments were 
 many of them sound, but his manner of expressing them was 
 offensive, for he did not have Irving's gift of serving up un- 
 palatable truths with the piquant sauce of good-humor. As 
 a result, though he wrote as a loyal American, he made many 
 enemies and failed to accomplish his purpose. 
 
 A mistake which was yet more serious took place when he 
 later attempted to show his disapproval of his countrymen's 
 shortcomings in such novels " with a purpose " as The Mom- 
 kins, Homeward Bound, and Home as Found. He had 
 neither the natural ability nor the training to write fiction of
 
 406 New York and the Knickerbockers 
 
 this type. The consequence was more enemies. Then, 
 when he went a step farther to suggest how Old-World civili- 
 zation might be improved by the adoption of certain New- 
 World standards of thought and action, the reading public 
 poured "contempt on all (his) pride." 
 
 General Estimate of Cooper. Throughout his later career, 
 nevertheless, he wrote from time to time the two sorts of 
 romance on which his fame Is rightly based: the sailor yarns 
 and the tales of pioneer life. In these numerous stories of 
 exciting bodily adventure Cooper committed the faults which 
 are common to authors who write fast and abundantly. 
 These have been most aggressively set forth by Mark Twain 
 in an essay on Cooper's literary offences, in which he indicts 
 the unfortunate novelist on twenty-eight different counts. 
 Lowell, in his invaluable Fable jor Critics, is rather more 
 charitable. By all except the most enthusiastic it is agreed 
 that Cooper was often careless in diction, in sentence man- 
 agement, and in the employment of the narrative machinery 
 of plot structure and development. Most of his men, what- 
 ever their nation or race, are conventional, though no more 
 conventional than the reader learns to expect in stories which 
 are based on event rather than character. His women, it 
 must be admitted, are "all sappy as maples and flat as a 
 prairie." Yet, in spite of these defects, he shows fine creative 
 power. 
 
 "Don't suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities. 
 If I thought you'd do that I should feel very ill at ease; 
 The men who have given to one character life 
 And objective existence are not very rife; 
 You may number them all, both prose writers and singers, 
 Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers. 
 And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker 
 Than Adams the Parson, or Primrose the Vicar." 
 
 Cooper's leading male character, moreover, with his fine com- 
 bination of shrewd sense and native poetry, whether he be 
 Harvey Birch of war-times, Long Tom Coffin at sea, or Natty 
 Bumppo on the frontier, is placed before a vivid background 
 of nature and plunged into an exciting rapidity of action that
 
 William Cullen Bryant 407 
 
 well repays a great deal of wading through tedious intro- 
 ductions and unconvincing dialogues. 
 
 IV. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878) 
 
 Bryant's Boyhood. William Cullen Bryant occupies the 
 same position with reference to American poetry as Irving 
 did with relation to the essay and Cooper to the novel. His 
 long life, like theirs, was begun before 1800, and did not end 
 till after the mid-century. In poetry he was the first to win 
 a wide audience in America, and to secure recognition from 
 abroad. He was born in a Massachusetts village in 1794. 
 His father, a country doctor, was a public-spirited man, 
 active in politics, adept in his profession, and among his 
 friends known, furthermore, as a scholar. Bryant's boy- 
 hood is interesting because in the Berkshire hills he came to 
 his first love of nature, and because while still in school he 
 wrote and published his first verses. When his college ex- 
 perience came to an abrupt close through lack of funds, he 
 went on with his reading, and pored eagerly over such of the 
 English poets as he found in his father's library. Southey 
 and Cowper were the greatest whom he first came to know, 
 Wordsworth not falling into his hands until he was twenty. 
 In 1811 he wrote his "Thanatopsis," though it was not till 
 six years later that it was published in the North American 
 Review. 
 
 Law and Journalism. Until he was thirty-one years of 
 age he gave himself up to the study and practice of law, 
 swayed all the while by his feeling for pure poetry in con- 
 tention with his desire to do contributive work as a citizen. 
 It was a struggle between the "Hellenic" and the "Hebraic" 
 elements in his nature, as Arnold has defined them. Finally, 
 in 1825, he abandoned the law, went to New York, and by a 
 fortunate turn of events found himself four years later editor 
 of the New York Evening Post, a position which he held 
 until his death. During the fifty-two years of his connection 
 with this journal the character of his editorial writings gave 
 it increasing dignity. He was alive to the problems of the 
 day, and eager to do his part toward the moulding of public
 
 408 New York and the Knickerbockers 
 
 opinion. He was active in organization of the Republican 
 party, a zealous supporter of Lincoln in the campaign of 
 1860, and as time went on an ardent advocate of emancipa- 
 tion. In his closing years, by his conspicuous and popular 
 participation in public meetings of various sorts, he earned 
 the title of "the old man eloquent." It was immediately 
 after the delivery of an oration at the unveiling of a statue of 
 Mazzini in Central Park that he fell, sustaining an injury 
 which resulted in his death in June, 1878. 
 
 Bryant Not an " Occasional " Poet. Seldom is there so 
 emphatic a line between a man's daily life and his literary 
 product as was drawn during the last half century of Bryant's 
 career. His work as a journalist and his output as a poet were 
 each admirable, yet they were almost totally separated. With 
 Poe, Bryant held that poetry should be devoted to the pursuit 
 of beauty. His conscious work as an intellectual leader he 
 did from his editorial chair, even while in his capacity as an 
 artist he cried out against "the vain low strife that makes 
 men mad." In order to build for beauty alone by touching 
 the emotional side of man, he avoided, except in rare in- 
 stances, writing "occasional" poetry and devoted his pen to 
 nature themes, whether in the broader aspects, as in "Thana- 
 topsis," "A Winter Piece," "Autumn Woods," "A Forest 
 Hymn," or on the more specific subjects "The Yellow 
 Violet," "To a Fringed Gentian," and "Robert of Lincoln." 
 
 The Puritan Survival in Bryant's Poetry. Frequent though 
 the comparisons are between Bryant and Wordsworth, the 
 two poets stand in marked contrast in their attitudes toward 
 God and nature. Wordsworth regarding the external world 
 "in a wise passiveness" is uplifted in spirit, for nature to him 
 is a symbol of the Creator a vaguely abstract power. Bry- 
 ant, starting from the same point, comes back to a personal 
 God who rules His creatures by a series of conscious volitions, 
 and to whom each individual is responsible. In his con- 
 ception of death this same "Hebraic" point of view appears. 
 Just as Bryant's nature is not complete in the power to uplift 
 the soul to a height of spiritual calm, so death is not simply 
 a profound abyss of despair. It is rather a symbol of the 
 Divine Judge who has always inexorably ruled mankind.
 
 William Cullen Bryant 409 
 
 Thus the old Puritanic conceptions ' ' creep and intrude and 
 climb " into a verse from which the poet theoretically banishes 
 them. As he stands in bereavement by his father's grave, 
 for example, he recognizes the wide chasm between his own 
 stricken faith and the dogma to which he has given utterance 
 in his "Hymn to Death," where he extols death as God's in- 
 strument for striking down the tyrant, the atheist, and the 
 reveller. With difficulty lie refrains from blotting out the 
 verses of his inexperience. Again and again recurs the con- 
 flict between his inclination toward the worship of beauty and 
 his inherited deference to traditional laws of conduct imposed 
 from without. 
 
 " Thanatopsis." The whole bulk of Bryant's work is 
 slight, a fact which may account for its unusual evenness. 
 Though " Thanatopsis " was composed at seventeen, it may be 
 fairly chosen as representative. Richard H. Dana asserted 
 on hearing it read: "No one on this side of the Atlantic is 
 capable of writing such verse." It is a meditation on the 
 transitoriness of human affairs as revealed by the "still 
 voice" of nature. In the midst of eternity the poet stands 
 for a brief moment on the shore of time and tries to look 
 beyond. "Under the open sky" he makes a resolve. It is 
 sublimely worded and conceived in poetic exaltation. He 
 will so rule his life that when the end draws near he can 
 approach his grave 
 
 "Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 Milton recorded the same determination upon coming to 
 the age of twenty-three, Cotton Mather and Jonathan Ed- 
 wards on each day of their lives. For it is the resolution of a 
 Puritan poet. 
 
 The Form of Bryant's Verse. In the form of his verse 
 Bryant is more Wordsworthian than in his subject-matter. 
 He employs various simple metrical schemes with uniform 
 fluency and effectiveness. He abandons the heroic couplet 
 and uses blank verse in almost all his more sustained and 
 elevated poems. This, too, he handles freely, avoiding the
 
 410 New York and the Knickerbockers 
 
 end-stopped lines, and distributing his pauses at will. His 
 wording is simple and, like Wordsworth's, free from the 
 tiresome circumlocutions of the old-time "poetic diction." 
 He takes adroit advantage of alliteration without allowing 
 his effects to be offensively obvious. Seldom are his lines 
 harsh or rough, almost invariably his phrases are discrimi- 
 nating, and as a rule his work shows thefme sense of a classical 
 scholar whose closing diversion was found in the monumental 
 labor of translating the Homeric stories. 
 
 The Decline of the Supremacy, of New York. Before ths 
 work of these three pioneers was completed, the literary 
 supremacy of New York began to wane. The poetry of 
 Bryant was cool, quiet, and dignified, and lacking "the one 
 merit of kindling enthusiasm." No set of younger men 
 undertook to write in the same vein. In the meanwhile 
 Cooper was keeping alive a kind of story which but for him 
 would have declined in popularity much earlier than it did; 
 for the novel of adventure was giving way to the novel of 
 character. Irving was the only one of the three who served 
 in any degree as a leader for his literary generation. The 
 Knickerbocker Magazine, founded in 1833, and the so-called 
 "Knickerbocker School" of authors owe both their names 
 and something of their spirit to Irving's famous character, 
 Diedrich Knickerbocker. 
 
 Irving was a tempting but dangerous model for a group of 
 nineteenth-century men to adopt. In the first place, he 
 wrote in the spirit of a by-gone age; and, if this were not a 
 sufficient obstacle, his success lay in a certain personal grace 
 and charm of character which is seductive but almost im- 
 possible to imitate with success. Of those who tried it, some 
 fell into sentimentalism and some into cheap affectation. 
 The fruits of this school or the worst of them were col- 
 lected into a variety of illustrated annual publications. For 
 a few years there were scores of them with names as fan- 
 tastic as those of the collections of Elizabethan lyrics 
 Love's Tokens, Friendship's Offerings, Gems, Garlands, 
 Amulets. "Those steel-engraved beauties . . . that High- 
 land Chieftain, that Young Buccaneer, that Bandit's Child 
 . . . what kind of a world did they masquerade in ? It was
 
 Review Outline 411 
 
 a needlework world, a world in which there was always 
 moonlight on the lake, and twilight in the vale; where drooped 
 the willow and bloomed the eglantine, and jessamine em- 
 bowered the cot of the village maid; where the lark warbled 
 in the heavens and the nightingale chaunted in the grove 
 'neath the mouldering ivy-mantled towers; ... a world in 
 which there were fairy isles, enchanted grottoes, peris, gon- 
 dolas, and gazelles. All its pleasantly rococo landscape has 
 vanished, brushed rudely away by realism and a 'sincere' 
 art and an 'earnest' literature." With the gentle decline of 
 New York, New England reassumed the literary supremacy. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. For what reason does it happen that the 
 national capital of America is not a literary centre? As New York 
 assumes preeminence, what characteristics are found in the writers of 
 the nineteenth century who settled there? What sort of training for 
 authorship did Irving secure up to the writing of his first satirical 
 papers? What was the nature of these? By what broadly humorous 
 work were they followed? Into what two chief classes can the con- 
 tents of " The Sketch Book " be grouped ? What subsequent works of the 
 same sort followed ? What were his contributions to the writing of 
 history? To what English essayists who preceded and followed him 
 may Irving be justly compared? 
 
 What preparation up to the time that Cooper was thirty years of age 
 did he gain for writing stories of English social life, of the American 
 Revolution, of life on the sea, of life on the frontier? Why did he de- 
 part from his successful romantic writing of fiction? What two at- 
 tempts did he make in other lines? What are the most conspicuous 
 defects in his stories of adventure, and what are the qualities which 
 still make them read by readers of romance to-day? 
 
 What are the chief eventsjn the life of William Cullen Bryant ? How 
 close a relationship can be established between his work as a journalist 
 and his work as a poet after 1825? Cite the chief point of contrast 
 between Bryant and Wordsworth in their attitude toward nature and 
 the Creator. In what sense is Bryant a Puritan? What points in 
 common does he share with Wordsworth in the form into which he 
 threw his work? 
 
 Give reasons for the failure of these three New Yorkers to exert a
 
 412 New York and the Knickerbockers 
 
 lasting and significant influence on American literature during the 
 middle of the nineteenth century. 
 
 READING GUIDE Selections from Irving should come first of all 
 from "The Sketch Book," and include '"The Author's Account of 
 Himself," "Rip Van Winkle," "English Writers on America," "The 
 Spectre Bridegroom," and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." A 
 second group should include "The Boar's Head Tavern," "West- 
 minster Abbey," and the five Christmas Sketches. The best speci- 
 mens of his earlier and later styles are "The Salmagundi Papers" and 
 the "Life of Goldsmith." Good one-volume biographies are C. D. 
 Warner's (American Men of Letters series) and H. W. Boynton's 
 (Riverside Biographical series). 
 
 The reading from Cooper must be limited in such a course. Before 
 reading all the Leatherstocking series, it is highly advisable to read 
 "The Spy" and "The Pilot" in order to see Cooper at his best in 
 stories of military and nautical life. T. R. Lounsbury's life of Cooper 
 (American Men of Letters series) has no close competitor. It is brief, 
 readable, and complete. 
 
 The selections from Bryant's poetry should include "Thanatopsis," 
 "To a Waterfowl," "Hymn to Death," "Monument Mountain," "The 
 Poet." A further group should include "Green River," "To the 
 Fringed Gentian," "Song of Marion's Men," "The Planting of the 
 Apple-Tree," "Robert of Lincoln." Two good one-volume biog- 
 raphies are John Bigelow's (in American Men of Letters series) and W. 
 A. Bradley's (in English Men of Letters series). Among the best 
 critical essays are those by Churton Collins, in "The Poetry and Poets 
 of America"; E. C. Stedman, in "Poets of America"; and Walt Whit- 
 man, in "Specimen Days," April 16, 1881.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 A GROUP OF SPIRITUAL LEADERS 
 
 I. TRANSCENDENTALISM IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 Definition of Transcendentalism. During the second quar- 
 ter of the nineteenth century there developed in New England 
 a group of thinkers and writers the quality of whose work 
 was wholly different from that of the leaders in American 
 letters who preceded them. The passing of the influence of 
 the great New York pioneers in essay, novel, and poetry has 
 been accounted for in the last chapter. The time was there- 
 fore ripe for the rise of new and vigorous leaders in American 
 life; and the men who were to assert themselves were being 
 bred along the Massachusetts seaboard during those years 
 in which Irving, Cooper, and Bryant were at their height. 
 They are known as Transcendentalists because of their belief 
 in "A system of philosophy founded on the assumption that 
 there are certain great truths, not based on experience, not 
 susceptible of proof, which transcend human life, and are 
 perceived directly and intuitively by the human mind." 
 They were, it is evident, a group of reactionaries against the 
 hard common-sense which had dominated eighteenth-century 
 philosophy and literature before the triumph of the Romantic 
 Movement. 
 
 New England Hospitable to New Ideas. New England was 
 fertile ground for such a system of thinking as this. It had 
 nourished in Germany during the later years of the eighteenth 
 century and the opening of the nineteenth. Through con- 
 structive English thinkers it had been imported to England, 
 such leaders as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle per- 
 forming the work of transmission. In part through their in- 
 fluence, though in part from other causes, it had taken root 
 
 413
 
 414 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 on this side of the Atlantic. Yet only in Massachusetts did 
 it so far affect a considerable body of people and so far shape 
 their conduct of life as to earn the title of "Transcendental- 
 ism" as a school of philosophy definitely located in time and 
 place. There was a natural reason for this. Society in the 
 New World was in a plastic state, free as no Old-World 
 society was from the trammels of tradition. The country 
 had passed recently through the wars of the Revolution and 
 of 1812. It was no time for the smug adoption of self-satis- 
 fied orthodoxy in creed and conduct. Little was maintained 
 simply because of its age. Religious theory in America had 
 experienced great modifications; statehood was still much 
 more of a possibility than an achieved fact. The condition 
 of affairs was at once full of promise and full of danger; it 
 was a period of delight for the mercurial temperament. In 
 the most serious thinkers, however, was aroused the feeling 
 of mingled distress, irritation, and alarm at the flightiness of 
 the community mind. Sometimes they commented upon the 
 situation in seriousness, but more often with a touch of 
 humor. Says Emerson in one mood: "The reforms whose 
 fame now fills the land with Temperance, Anti-slavery, Non- 
 resistance, New-government, Equal-labor, fair and generous 
 as each appears, are poor, bitter things prosecuted for them- 
 selves as an end." In another he writes whimsically to Car- 
 lyle: "Not a reading man but has a draft of a new com- 
 munity in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself." 
 
 The Inspiration to Self-Perfection. In such a soil and in 
 such an atmosphere Transcendentalism took root and flour- 
 ished. What were the great truths which transcended human 
 experience upon which the new school laid its foundations of 
 belief ? They believed, as one can see perhaps most easily in 
 Emerson and Thoreau, in the creation as a great unity of 
 which God is the centre, Man the noblest achievement, and 
 Nature the physical symbol. In this great scheme the in- 
 dividual soul was to them the chief fact, and the chief duty 
 was proper nurture of this soul. Each man, they believed, 
 included within himself a spark of the divine. His task in 
 life was therefore to do justice to his own nature by perfecting 
 himself to discharge as best he could his duties in an earthly
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 415 
 
 life. The escape from one kind of hereafter was an affair 
 of little interest to him, the enjoyment of another kind a 
 f matter which could take care of itself. The greatest problem 
 of man was how best to comport himself as a God-created 
 individual in the community in which God had placed him. 
 For guidance he looked into his own heart, and to nature, 
 which was to him a symbol of the Most High. 
 
 II. RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 
 
 Emerson's Youth and Education. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
 the high-priest of Transcendentalism, was born in Boston in 
 1803. He came of good blood, boasting among his ancestors 
 on both sides a surprising number of the intellectual aristo- 
 crats of New England, the members of the professional class. 
 As was to be expected, he went to the Boston Latin School 
 and from there to Harvard. At college he was not a leader 
 in social or intellectual activities. His acquaintances, even 
 while they respected him, greatly deplored his apparent lack 
 of masculine qualities. "He was so universally amiable and 
 complying," wrote one of them, "that my evil spirit would 
 sometimes instigate me to take advantage of his gentleness 
 and forbearance; but nothing could disturb his equanimity." 
 Between the time when he was graduated and the year in 
 which he began studying for the ministry, he is remembered 
 as a school-teacher by certain youths who regarded him with 
 an almost awful respect. Unattracted by the possibilities of 
 pedagogy, he resorted to the church, studying in the Harvard 
 Divinity School and finally receiving his degree without ex- 
 amination by virtue of the fact that trouble with his eyes had 
 prevented him from taking regular lecture notes. 
 
 Emerson as a Clergyman. At the age of twenty-nine he 
 unexpectedly found himself pastor of the leading church in 
 Boston, and here, if he had chosen to remain in the rather 
 easy path of orthodoxy marked out by the most liberal of 
 churches, he might have continued in possession of a very 
 comfortable ecclesiastical berth as long as he lived. But he 
 was destined to "belong" to no church; he was moving 
 toward a condition of absolute freedom of thought; and it
 
 416 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 was therefore probably just an accident that the issue which 
 became a vital one happened to be the necessity for his ad- 
 ministering the sacrament of the Holy Communion to his 
 congregation. He believed that the formal rite was being 
 observed by a generation which did not feel its original 
 significance, and with this belief in mind preached a sermon 
 which concluded with these words: "I have no hostility to 
 this institution; I am only stating my want of sympathy with 
 it. That is the end of my opposition to it, that I am not in- 
 terested in it. I am content to let it stand to the end of the 
 world if it please man and if it please Heaven. And I shall 
 rejoice in all the good it produces." 
 
 Emerson's English Friends. Soon after, as a natural con- 
 sequence, his duties with the Second Church of Boston came 
 to an end, and he began his career anew. His first step was 
 to go abroad, visiting in the course of his trip those centres 
 of European life which travellers all "do" on their first jour- 
 ney, but coming also into contact and this was far more 
 important with certain of the great English men of letters. 
 Landor and De Quincey he enjoyed; Wordsworth he revered; 
 and with Carlyle he entered into an acquaintance which de- 
 veloped into a life-long friendship. Two years after his 
 resignation he moved to Concord, where he lived for nearly 
 all the half century which remained to him. 
 
 " Nature." During his early years in the town appeared 
 in annual succession the most significant trio of essays he was 
 to write. In 1836 was published a tiny volume under the 
 title Nature. It was Emerson's second public appeal for 
 vigorous, thoughtful, individual independence. The key- 
 note is in the first paragraph: "Our age is reduced to the 
 sepulchre of the fathers; it writes biographies, histories, and 
 criticisms. The foregoing generations beheld God and Na- 
 ture face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not 
 we also enjoy an original relation to the Universe?" He 
 tells of the delight he feels in the presence of God's creation, 
 and sees in it a source not merely of physical pleasure, but of 
 creative inspiration, and a motive for righteous living. The 
 reception of the booklet was not promising, only a few copies 
 being sold in a considerable time. Most of the American
 
 From a Photograph, Copyright, by Elliott and Fry 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
 
 418 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 critics, moreover, were hostile. In contrast, Carlyle was 
 emphatic in his commendation, and he lent it about to all 
 his friends "that had a sense for such things," always re- 
 ceiving a similar verdict. 
 
 " The American Scholar." The matter of applause was 
 of no great moment to Emerson, however, and he went on in 
 1837 to preach his gospel of independence to The American 
 Scholar. This essay, perhaps the most completely organized 
 of his productions, was read to the honorary scholarship so- 
 ciety at Harvard. At the outset, as in the opening lines of 
 Nature, he sounds the cry of freedom: "Our day of depen- 
 dence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, 
 draws to a close." Then he writes of the three great influ- 
 ences which surround the scholar that of nature, that of 
 the past, that of life. All of them demand that he have con- 
 fidence in himself. "Let him not quit his belief that a pop- 
 gun is a pop-gun, though the anointed and honorable of the 
 earth affirm it to be the crack of doom." 
 
 The " Divinity School Address." So inspiring was this 
 appeal to his auditors that a year later he was reinvited to 
 Cambridge, this time to speak to the students of the Divinity 
 School. As in his address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 
 he made a demand for honest freedom of opinion ; but when 
 he applied his principles to religion the conservatism which 
 always jealously stands guard over it was shocked and horri- 
 fied. It was indeed a new thing for a distinguished official 
 speaker to bid a group of divinity students to cast behind 
 them all conformity. Yet it was no more than Emerson had 
 done with respect to every great problem that he had faced. 
 His feeling was that he could trust his conclusions only when 
 he had worked them out for himself, and this process he 
 asked of all to whom he gave advice. Unconformity did not, 
 therefore, mean to him disagreement with others, but rather 
 freedom to agree or to differ with them as his honest judg- 
 ment might dictate. 
 
 Emerson's work for the remainder of his life followed the 
 lines marked out in these early essays. Whatever the sub- 
 ject on which he wrote, he was dealing with great funda- 
 mental ideas. He was seeking and finding his inspiration
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 419 
 
 in nature, in books, and in the life about him. He was 
 always conscious of his own noble duty as a subject of God, 
 and was practising what he preached, the fullest development 
 of his own powers. And he was perfecting himself as far as 
 he might in order best to serve his fellows. No single passage 
 better sums up Emerson's philosophy of life than this: 
 
 "Solitude is impracticable and society fatal. We must 
 keep our head in one and our hands in the other. The con- 
 ditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose 
 our sympathy." 
 
 Emerson and the New England Lyceum. The result of 
 Emerson's withdrawal from the pulpit of the Second Church 
 of Boston was simply that he continued to preach under 
 secular auspices, exchanging the pulpit for lecture platform. 
 The old New England Lyceum was a rare institution of 
 which we can get only a partial conception to-day. With a 
 perfect development of journalism, the enormous circulation 
 of cheap and more or less improving magazines, the great 
 number of low-priced books, the rise of the public-library 
 system, and the social and literary extension of the school in 
 the community, with the adoption of the summer assembly 
 and the correspondence course by the best of our colleges and 
 universities, we of the twentieth century enjoy opportunities 
 which in Emerson's day were hardly dreamed of. Yet to-day 
 there is no single medium for general culture which could 
 rival the excellence of the old Lyceum. The speakers of 
 the stamp of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, of Theo- 
 dore Parker and Holmes and Whittier, of Sumner, Webster, 
 Phillips, are hard to be found except under extraordinary 
 circumstances and before high-priced audiences. But men 
 such as these members of the academic tribe were speaking 
 all over New England to little audiences in little towns and 
 for little pay, on the great subjects of the hour. The field 
 was therefore ready for such a man as Emerson, and attentive 
 or even devout audiences gathered for nearly a generation 
 wherever he was announced to speak. It is to be anticipated 
 that he sometimes must have spoken over their heads, and 
 that from every lecture some must have gone away more 
 edified than instructed. Yet even when the plain New Eng-
 
 420 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 [and folk left his presence with a wistful desire that he had 
 spoken more simply, the testimony of thousands remains 
 that the sound of his voice was an inspiration, and his pres- 
 ence a benediction. 
 
 Emerson's Influence. Lowell writes an essay in gratefuj 
 tribute to Emerson's work as a lecturer, dwelling for the 
 most part upon his personal effect on each hearer, in spite of 
 a certain obscurity in his style. "To some of us that long 
 past experience remains as the most marvellous and fruitful 
 we have ever had. . . . Did they say he was disconnected ? 
 So were the stars that seemed larger to our eyes, still keen 
 with that excitement, as we walked homeward with prouder 
 stride over the creaking snow. . . . Were we enthusiasts? 
 I hope and believe we were, and am thankful to the man who 
 made us worth something for once in our lives. If asked 
 what was left? what we carried home? we should not have 
 been careful for an answer. It would have been quite 
 enough if we had said that something beautiful had passed 
 that way. Or we might have asked in return what one 
 brought away from a symphony of Beethoven?" It is such 
 passages as this and there are scores of them in the literature 
 of American biography and reminiscence which prove be- 
 yond doubt the width and depth of Emerson's influence on 
 modern thought. The number of his readers to-day is com- 
 paratively limited, just as was the number of intelligent hearers 
 in his own lifetime; but then as now thinking people pos- 
 sessed themselves of his ideas and passed them on to the 
 multitude. It is impossible exactly to measure his contribu- 
 tion to the preachers and teachers and poets of the twentieth 
 century. There is slight danger of over-estimating it. 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU (1817-1862) AND THE LESSER 
 TRANSCENDENTALISTS 
 
 Thoreau's Life. Of all the men who came under Emer- 
 son's spell, none has written with more freshness or originality 
 than his townsman, Henry D. Thoreau. He was born at 
 Concord in 1817; he received his degree from Harvard with 
 the class of 1837. Returning to Concord, where Emerson
 
 Henry D. Thoreau 421 
 
 was now established, he spent here the quarter century re- 
 maining to him before his death in 1862. He lived with the 
 greatest simplicity, earning what he needed from manual 
 labor, now in his father's business of pencil-making, or, 
 again, in surveying or carpentering. Through his ability to 
 do without things, and the ease with which he could satisfy 
 his simple desires, he secured for himself leisure and con- 
 tentment beyond the power of gold to buy. Like that other 
 American of French lineage, Crevecceur, he prized civic 
 freedom extravagantly, but in contrast with the author of 
 The American Farmer he felt that the possession of property 
 was more of a curse than a blessing. "I see young men, my 
 townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, 
 houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more 
 easily acquired than got rid of." The most notable experi- 
 ence of Thoreau's life was his residence at Walden, a pond 
 some two miles out from Concord. Here he built a house 
 for himself at a cost of a little over twenty-eight dollars, and 
 here he lived for something over two years, earning enough 
 from labor and the sale of garden produce to meet his ex- 
 penses of about four dollars a month. He wrote regularly 
 during this period and after it, publishing two books during 
 his life and contributing to several magazines. After his 
 death some eight more volumes were edited and published 
 by his literary executor. 
 
 "Walden." Walden, his chief work, contains in essence 
 all that is to be found in his complete writings. The im- 
 pressions gained from it naturally fall into two groups. 
 Especially in the earlier part of the book Thoreau is rather 
 impudently self-confident and ostentatiously hostile to so- 
 ciety. He asserts boldly, often peevishly, sometimes vin- 
 dictively, a large number of negations about human institu- 
 tions and mankind in general: "Thank God, I can sit and I 
 can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse." "Men 
 say, a stitch in time saves nine, so they take a thousand stitches 
 to-day to save nine to-morrow." "Wherever a man goes, 
 men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institu- 
 tions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their des- 
 perate odd-fellow society." He is not merely destructive,
 
 422 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 however, for he goes on to tell how he has solved the prob- 
 lems of food, clothing, fire, and shelter his four economic 
 necessities; and having presented his case, he urges that no 
 one follow him in any respect except that of finding and pur- 
 suing his own way. It is this advice which saves Thoreau 
 from a seeming inconsistency when in conclusion he says: 
 "I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Per- 
 haps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and 
 could not spare any more time for that one." 
 
 Thoreau's Feeling for Nature. Thoreau's love of nature 
 is a corollary to his dislike of society. He feels an " intimate 
 knowledge and delight " in all the changes of the seasons as 
 they show themselves in plant and animal life. Walden 
 Pond in both summer and winter is a sort of shrine to him. 
 Nothing about it is too minute for his attention. There is 
 a wholesomeness about his scientific interest in growing 
 things which serves as an antidote to the gushing generalities 
 of sentimental "nature lovers." He had the keen eye of a 
 trained observer and a ready pen to transcribe what he saw. 
 But he had also the eye and pen of a poet, as frequent pas- 
 sages attest. These may be mere glimpses, as when he de- 
 scribes the pond bottom seen below the ice, where "a peren- 
 nial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky"; 
 or they may be in sustained descriptions or anecdotes such 
 as are to be found in chapters on "The Bean Field," "The 
 Ponds," "Brute Neighbors," "Winter Visitors," and 
 "Spring." 
 
 Thoreau and Emerson. The inevitable comparison with 
 Emerson reveals two things. Thoreau knew far more about 
 external nature, and as a result was able to transmit his love 
 of it to many whom Emerson failed to touch. Walden is the 
 first great contribution to the modern library of nature liter- 
 ature. No one but John Burroughs, a disciple of Thoreau, 
 has yet rivalled it. In his attitude toward men and society, 
 however, Emerson shows his wider outlook and his better 
 balance. Thoreau is often saucy where Emerson is serene; 
 Mercury at the court of Jove. The older man, confident in 
 his own sincerity, felt "charity towards all"; the younger 
 was often irritated and querulous. Emerson's brilliant epi-
 
 Henry D. Thoreau 423 
 
 grams are too frequently offset by Thoreau's conscious 
 cleverness. Yet to the wider public, and particularly to the 
 inexperienced, his obviousness and his impertinence actual 
 defects are attractively refreshing, and a reading of his 
 pages acts as a sort of literacy tonic. 
 
 Alcott and the Transcendental Club. These were but two 
 men of a group so important that between 1835 and 1840 
 they were dignified as the "Transcendental Club." They 
 met informally from time to time, and without programme 
 held discussions in philosophy and religion. One of the 
 most celebrated was Amos Bronson Alcott, a strange dreamer 
 whose life, in terms of practical success, was a chapter of 
 failures at peddling, school-teaching, and lecturing. His 
 Orphic Sayings and Concord Days are little read. It is 
 hard to recall more than the ridiculous anecdotes of which 
 he is the butt. Yet among a distinguished circle he was 
 held in such high regard that he must be remembered, like 
 Dr. Johnson, more for his friends than his books. 
 
 George Ripley and Brook Farm. The Reverend George 
 Ripley was another Transcendentalist whose voluminous 
 writings have gone the way of all the earth, though his chief 
 work, as organizer of the Brook Farm Association, holds a 
 place for him in literary history. This "Institute of Agri- 
 culture and Education," established on a Boston suburban 
 farm in 1841, was designed to be a self-sufficient community 
 in which all should share in the industrial and intellectual 
 life. For six years Brook Farm was a centre of interest to 
 New England thinking people whether they disapproved, 
 endorsed, or actually promoted the enterprise; but when, in 
 1846, the new and still uncompleted main building the 
 "phalanstery" burned down, a death-blow was dealt to the 
 project, and not long after the Association was dissolved. 
 
 Margaret Fuller and " The Dial." One more evidence of 
 the strength of the Transcendentalists may be found in The 
 Dial, their literary organ, established under the editorship of 
 Margaret Fuller. For four years it appeared as a quarterly, 
 filled with essays on philosophy, art, music, literature, trans- 
 lations from the Oriental scriptures and from the German, 
 and much good verse. Yet in spite of the stalwart support
 
 424 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 of Emerson, Thoreau, Lowell, Ellery Channi'ng, and many 
 others, there was not enough demand to keep it alive after 
 1844. It was joked at by the outer world and more or less 
 criticised by the inner circle, some of whom thought it too 
 timid and others too bold. To-day we look on it as an inter- 
 esting monument to the enthusiasm of Emerson and his 
 associates. 
 
 III. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) 
 
 Hawthorne's Boyhood and College Days. Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne represents in many ways the same current of thought 
 expounded by Emerson and Thoreau. He was born in 1 804 
 in Salem, Mass., and after the death of his father at sea 
 while the son was still a little boy, lived among sober sur- 
 roundings that must have affected his whole later life. His 
 mother belonged to a generation which made it a practice to 
 surrender to prolonged and ostentatious mourning at the loss 
 of any loved one. The house in which he lived was thus 
 overshadowed by grief, and he grew up in the midst of a 
 domestic gloom from which he did not escape at all until he 
 was fourteen. For a year he lived the normal life of a boy, 
 out of doors in the country town of Raymond, Me. Then 
 followed three more years in Salem before he went to Bow- 
 doin College. 
 
 In Bowdoin he was a classmate of Henry Wadsworth Long- 
 fellow and an acquaintance of Franklin Pierce, later a Presi- 
 dent of the United States. His friendships were cordial, and 
 he seems to have indulged in frivolities now and then, dis- 
 tinct enough even to incur college censure. It is significant 
 that he lost his commencement appointment on the ground 
 of his refusal to appear on the public platform. Yet on the 
 whole, he appears to have been a normal, moderately indus- 
 trious, wide-awake college boy. 
 
 The Period of Waiting. His return to Salem, however, 
 brought him back to the sombre surroundings of his boy- 
 hood, and in the midst of these he stayed for the next four- 
 teen years, from 1825 to 1839. During all this time he was a 
 lonely figure in the midst of his home town, seldom seeing his
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
 
 426 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 neighbors and holding little intercourse even with members 
 of his own family. The records show that he was writing 
 diligently and persistently, and his journal and some of his 
 shorter published stories and sketches give evidence, not 
 only that he had the artistic gift at the time, but, further, that 
 he was very definitely, almost systematically, gathering his 
 strength for the great work still before him. Roughly, he 
 may be described as writing anonymously or under various 
 noms de plume for Peter Parley's Tokens, a kind of annual 
 publication which was popular in his day, and for certain 
 other periodicals, which paid little enough in the cases where 
 they did not become bankrupt before his claims were settled. 
 The best of this work appeared in the volume Tu'ife Told 
 Tales in 1837. His emotions and his non-success are elabo- 
 rated in 1838 in "The Devil in Manuscript," and in a notable 
 letter written to Longfellow, in both of which he shows clearly 
 how hard he had been striving to get away from himself and 
 into the world, and how almost impossible his long habits of 
 solitude had made this. 
 
 Hawthorne in the Community. Nevertheless, there are 
 three attempts recorded, each one of which emphasizes the 
 character of the man as he appears in his later works. The 
 first was when, for two years, he held a position faithfully and 
 well in the Boston Custom-House. At the outset he was 
 overjoyed to become a real member of the community, but 
 as the months went on his comments of discontent increased 
 until he hailed with positive joy the political upheaval which 
 caused him to lose his position. His next attempt to get into 
 the world was as a member of the Brook Farm Association, 
 of which he was one of the original stockholders. The ex- 
 perience of a few months showed that, at least for him, this 
 attempted combination of the intellectual and material prob- 
 lems of life was not a success, and again he withdrew. The 
 third was when, now married and the father of two children, 
 he was given another Federal appointment, this time as head 
 of the Custom-House in Salem, a task which proved as irk- 
 some to him as the earlier one in Boston. 
 
 Hawthorne's Final Success. When, however, political in- 
 triguing resulted in his dismissal from this post, he became
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 427 
 
 so embittered that it might have gone hard with him if now, 
 at the age of forty-six, his real literary career had not begun. 
 When he went home one day in the fall of 1849 to te ll ms w ^ e 
 that he had "left his official head behind him," she hailed 
 the occasion as an opportunity for him to write "his book," 
 and the book appeared as a result of her cooperation and the 
 kindly encouragement of James T. Fields, under the title of 
 The Scarlet Letter. His fame was now achieved. In the 
 next year appeared The House of the Seven Gables. In 1852 
 The Blithedale Romance, and finally, after seven years abroad 
 in the consular service the third appointment which he 
 owed to his college, acquaintanceships he published his last 
 great work, The Marble Faun. 
 
 The Central Theme. In all four of his great romances 
 Hawthorne definitely dealt with that conflict between the 
 individual and the group which his own experience had 
 illustrated. One the one hand stands the individual, sensi- 
 tive, full of emotion, keenly alive to the possible joys of life, 
 instinctively independent. Whether it be the Hester of The 
 Scarlet Letter, the Hepzibah and Clifford of The House of 
 the Seven Gables, the Zenobia of The Blilhedale Romance, the 
 Donatello or the Hilda of The Marble Faun, this character 
 persists in all of the stories, and in all of them recalls to mind 
 something of Hawthorne's own experience. In opposition to 
 this individual stands the great outer world embodied in the 
 person of one rough, harsh, unsympathetic man. 
 
 " The Scarlet Letter." In The Scarlet Letter the opposing 
 forces are Hester, with her secret lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, 
 and Roger Chillingworth, who in some measure stands for 
 the world at large. The punishment to the two who have 
 sinned is imposed on them by the machinery of the law, 
 brutal in process and ineffective in results. Man's social 
 way of dealing with sin, Hawthorne seems to say, fails be- 
 cause it does not touch the soul; and Hester, rising above the 
 persecution of her neighbors, transforms the Scarlet Letter, 
 intended as a symbol of her disgrace, "into a message of 
 mercy to all who suffer." 
 
 " The House of the Seven Gables." In The House of the 
 Seven Gables the two branches of the Pyncheon family carry
 
 428 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 on the conflict. Hepzibah is a piece of faded gentility nurs- 
 ing a passionate love in the solitude of her thwarted life. 
 Clifford, unattractive though he be in his weak sentimentality, 
 is nevertheless a touching victim of society whom the law 
 has mistaken and outraged and left ruined. Jaffrey Pyn- 
 cheon, on the other hand, is the incarnation of that sort of 
 unscrupulous shrewdness which is able to make its way 
 through life under the guise of complacent respectability. 
 There is no doubt about Hawthorne's sympathy with the 
 weaker characters, or his indignant contempt for the opulent 
 judge. 
 
 " The Blithedale Romance." In The Blithedale Romance, 
 again, these same two elements appear. The sensitive char- 
 acter in this case is Zenobia, who is set apart by her secret 
 history and physical nature; and the embodiment of the out- 
 side world, the reformer Hollingsworth, who, in an apparently 
 good cause (the elimination of certain evils in society), is as 
 harsh and unsympathetic as the villains in The Scarlet Letter 
 or The House 0} the Seven Gables. He is selfish, faithless 
 to his associates, and willing to wreck them and their enter- 
 prise because it stands in his way and does not elicit his 
 sympathy. The Blithedale Romance is an Emersonian pro- 
 test against that type of man who loses sight of the good of 
 society in his misdirected enthusiasm for some particular and 
 often petty reform. 
 
 " The Marble Faun." After The Blithedale Romance Haw- 
 thorne's first great burst of industry seems to have worn itself 
 away. The man who, for forty-six years, had achieved only 
 two small volumes of sketches and stories had in barely more 
 than two years, encouraged by the late but sincere applause 
 of the outer world, put out three times as much as in all his 
 previous career and written in this number three of his 
 greatest works. At this point, when in all probability his 
 first vein was worked out, his old classmate, now President 
 Franklin Pierce, was able to make him consul, first at Liver- 
 pool and later at Rome. More than seven years of literary 
 inactivity followed, in all of which time Hawthorne was doing 
 a dignified work thoroughly, well, and with no small degree 
 of satisfaction to himself. Daily intercourse with foreigners
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 429 
 
 and Americans abroad gave him a better acquaintance with 
 that outer world which he had long and vainly yearned to 
 know. In 1860 came out his final great book. If one were 
 to theorize in advance about it the chances would be all in 
 favor of its being closer to life, more intimately familiar with 
 the ways of the world, and more genial and cosmopolitan in 
 tone than his earlier writings. But the strange fact is that 
 The Marble Faun, which developed out of his experience at 
 Rome, while different in many ways from his first two ro- 
 mances, and while in one sense his most complete expression 
 of life, is, nevertheless, more vague, mysterious, and remote 
 than any of his previous works. It is the same old study of 
 the individual and the community. But where he had 
 "formerly set forth the history of sin in the heart, taking the 
 evil for granted, and reflecting upon it as a thing given; he 
 now looked backward and is engaged with the genesis of 
 sin in a natural man, the coming of sin into the world of 
 nature." Donatello plays the r61e occupied in the earlier 
 stories by Zenobia and Hepzibah and Hester. Innocent and 
 guileless at the start of the book, he is relentlessly drawn into 
 the current of human affairs, until finally, stained and be- 
 smirched through his intercourse with other men, he becomes 
 guilty of sin and aware of its consequences. Hawthorne 
 attempted to account for the presence of evil in human life, 
 and his conclusion is embodied in the experience of Dona- 
 tello, who is made into a living soul as the result of his crime. 
 Hawthorne as a Spiritual Leader. Throughout his works 
 Hawthorne thus developed a philosophy which is quite his 
 own, yet quite in harmony with the prevailing ideas of his 
 day. He showed a high and abounding respect for the 
 dignity of the individual man, and a conviction that each 
 member of the community should be permitted to think his 
 own thoughts and live his own life. In contrast to his con- 
 temporaries in the field of fiction, Dickens or Reade or 
 Kingsley or even Trollope, Hawthorne displayed little in- 
 terest in the handling of concrete social problems. The 
 Present of Hawthorne is a picturesque background; the 
 church, even in depraved form, furnishes him simply with 
 an occasion for a suggestive revery. The approach of the
 
 430 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 Civil War does not overshadow the pages of his fiction. With 
 the concrete social reformer Hawthorne had nothing in com- 
 mon. Moreover, he is almost equally far away, although in 
 a different fashion, from Thackeray and George Eliot and 
 Meredith. Read his pages as you will, you will find little in 
 the way of definite advice to individuals as to how to act 
 under any given set of conditions. Hawthorne was a spir- 
 itual leader; to provoke action was not his task; but deeply 
 conscious that the majority of people fail to think for them- 
 selves and fail to sympathize with those who do, Hawthorne 
 attempted to lead people into a wider and more satisfied 
 spiritual life. So, like Thoreau, Hawthorne looked upon 
 society from his own point of view, and pleaded for indi- 
 vidual freedom and individual courage. So, like Emerson, 
 he recognized "the double problem of living true to himself 
 and performing his part in the midst of the social group. 
 But to a greater extent than either of them, he had the artistic 
 gift which made it possible for him to put into almost perfect 
 literary form the essays, sketches, and stories which were 
 the expressions of his deepest life. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Summarize the reasons for the failure of any 
 permanent schools of literature founded-on the work of Irving, Cooper, 
 and Bryant. 
 
 Define Transcendentalism. In what way was this philosophy evi- 
 dently a reaction against the eighteenth-century habits of thought as 
 developed by Benjamin Franklin in America? To what Englishman 
 did Franklin correspond in his point of view? Give reasons for the 
 fertility of New England soil for the sowing of such philosophy. What 
 are the three fundamental elements in life in which the Transcendental- 
 ists believed ? What is the relation between the three ? 
 
 Give the chief facts in Emerson's career up to his return from his 
 trip abroad. What were his three notable essays in 1836-1837 and 1838 
 and what was the common element in them all ? Cite the passage in 
 which Emerson reconciles his desire for solitude and his need of society. 
 In what respect was the New England Lyceum through which Emer- 
 son addressed the public a notable institution in his day? In what lay 
 his chief influence as a lecturer?
 
 Reading Guide 431 
 
 Thoreau was a disciple and follower of Emerson and yet was too 
 individual to be a copy. In what respect did he differ in his attitude 
 toward the life of the community? In what respect did he surpass 
 Emerson in his feeling for and knowledge of nature ? 
 
 What were some of the organized ways in which the Transcendental 
 group gave evidence of their earnestness? Mention the relation of 
 Amos Bronson Alcott to one of them, of George Ripley to another, and 
 of Margaret Fuller to a third. 
 
 Mention the experiences of Hawthorne's boyhood, college days, and 
 subsequent years after his return to Salem. What negative fact in his 
 life did he first record and then struggle against? Mention his three 
 successive attempts to overcome what he felt to be a defect in himself 
 as a citizen. What fundamental fact in his previous experience ap- 
 pears in his great romances? Mention the first three of these in turn 
 with brief analyses. What in general was the effect throughout his life 
 of certain of the friendships which he made in college? What was the 
 effect of these upon his life abroad from 1853 to 1860? What is there 
 notable in the fact that his last great romance was not markedly dif- 
 ferent in fact and experience from those written before his years in 
 Liverpool and Rome? In what respect is Hawthorne comparable 
 with Emerson and Thoreau in their attitude toward individual free- 
 dom, and in their attitude toward organized reform ? 
 
 READING GUIDE. Readings from Emerson should include first 
 of all "Nature," " The American Scholar," "The Divinity School Ad- 
 dress," and "Society and Solitude." These may be supplemented by 
 "Compensation," "Self-Reliance," "Friendship," and "Character," 
 and by the following poems: "The River," "Written at Naples," 
 "Written at Rome," "The Problem," "Fable," "Hamatreya," "Brah- 
 ma." The best short biographies are E. W. Emerson's "Emerson in 
 Concord" and George E. Woodberry's (English Men of Letters series). 
 Among the good critical passages are C. F. Richardson's "American 
 Literature," I, IX and II, V; E. C. Stedman's "Poets of America"; 
 Whitman's "Specimen Days," April 16, 1881. 
 
 Readings from Thoreau should include the first fourth of "Walden," 
 together with a few of the essays which make up the rest of the book. 
 
 Readings from Hawthorne should include from "Twice Told Tales," 
 "The Great Carbuncle," "The Snow Image," "The Great Stone
 
 432 A Group of Spiritual Leaders 
 
 Face "; from the four long romances, "The House of the Seven Gables." 
 The best short biography is by George E. Woodberry (American Men 
 of Letters series). Other, good studies from his life are Rose Haw- 
 thorne Lathrop's "Memories of Hawthorne" and Bridge's "Recollec- 
 tions of Hawthorne." 
 
 For a study of the Concord group in general, the best books are 
 O. B. Frothingham's "Transcendentalism in New England," H. C. 
 Goddard's "Studies in New England Transcendentalism," and Lindsey 
 Swift's "Brook Farm." Lowell's essays on " Thoreau " and on " Emer- 
 son the Lecturer " are sympathetic and interesting.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE POPULAR SPOKESMEN OF THE MID-CENTURY 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Prophet versus The Spokesman. As between the poet 
 philosophers, often called the Concord group, and the popular 
 spokesmen who centred more about Boston and Cambridge, 
 there are certain points of clear contrast. The former con- 
 cerned themselves almost exclusively with the nature and 
 improvement of the individual; the latter 'were laboring with 
 the nation as a whole, and attempting to uplift or reform its 
 institutions. The New England prophets cried down ex- 
 isting evils and pointed to their certain consequences; the 
 spokesmen looked for causes and did their best to remove 
 them. A further distinction can be made with reference to 
 the contrasted form of their messages. It is not the function 
 of the prophet to please: his message is disturbing and almost 
 certain to be unpopular. His cause is desperate, and his 
 audience, if they listen at all, will listen only under protest. 
 The prophet, therefore, speaks with high seriousness, and em- 
 bellishes his discourse with parable and suggestive allusion. 
 He challenges attention; he stimulates thought, and leaves 
 his readers or his hearers to their own best devices, not applying 
 the moral of what he has said or written. But the spokes- 
 man has a different task. He is attempting to move men to 
 immediate action. He must be heard, he must be under- 
 stood, and that at once. His work, therefore, has certain 
 characteristics that appeal to the popular mind. In form it 
 is symmetrical and familiar; in content easy to understand 
 at a glance; the narrative scheme is frequently used, and in 
 most cases the moral is definitely applied. 
 
 433
 
 434 Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 II. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892) 
 
 Whittier a Practical Man. The life of Whittier, like that 
 of several others of the New England group, practically 
 spanned the century. He was as near to the war of the 
 Revolution in' childhood as are the present generation of 
 college students to the war of the Rebellion. He died while 
 this same group of college students were in their kinder- 
 garten days. The briefest study of Whittier's life to one 
 hitherto unacquainted with him is usually attended with a 
 distinct experience of surprise. His picture, as it is com- 
 monly published, is that of a genial, gray-haired, elderly 
 man, with a far-away expression and an almost deprecating 
 poise of the head and turn of the lip. If he had been the 
 poet simply of "Snow-Bound" and "The Barefoot Boy," we 
 should feel that his look expounded his life, and satisfy our- 
 selves by summing him up as a complacently contemplative 
 Quaker, whose whole career was passed in placid rumination. 
 But this was a part and only a lesser part of Whittier's ac- 
 tivity. For he was a most eminently practical man. 
 
 Whittier's Education. He was born of parents who lived 
 respectably but perforce with such economy that they were 
 not able to give their son a liberal schooling. Hence, in ad- 
 dition to his farm work, he learned to make shoes, and with 
 his extra earnings gathered together a sum sufficient to carry 
 him through six months at Haverhill Academy. The money 
 for further education he earned by dispensing in district- 
 school teaching the scanty knowledge that 'he had already 
 gathered. From this he drifted into a kind of journalism, 
 writing for The Boston Philanthropist and The Haverhill 
 Gazette, and actually doing editorial work on The New Eng- 
 land Review of Hartford. Thus early, by knocking about 
 among people in town and country, and acquainting himself 
 with men of all sorts of professions and prejudices, he pre- 
 pared himself for a life of intellectual activity. 
 
 Whittier and the Abolition Movement. In the course of 
 his youthful experience he had become acquainted with 
 William Lloyd Garrison, and largely through his influence
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier 435 
 
 he became more and more closely connected with the anti- 
 slavery movement. He believed that the way to achieve re- 
 form was through legislation, and that political pressure 
 could best be exerted through swaying public opinion. His 
 convictions were strong; they were not unusual; but he was 
 better able to express them than the majority, and through 
 all the long years which preceded the war, and until its con- 
 clusion in 1865, he wrote from time to time spirited popular 
 verses which carried thousands of readers with them. Five 
 of these bits of verse may be cited to show the history of his 
 relation to the abolition movement. First, " Expostulation," 
 written in 1834; then "Massachusetts to Virginia," a clear 
 protest against the enforcement of the fugitive slave law with 
 reference to the case of Anthony Burns. Next, in "Icha- 
 bod," Whittier was the voice of the North speaking with 
 hasty indignation at Webster's famous Seventh of March 
 speech (1851), in which he seemed to have sold his loyalty to 
 the North for the sake of strengthening his political future. 
 Next, "Barbara Frietchie," a typical war-ballad, no better 
 and no worse than many others. Last, that fine outburst of 
 reverent praise, "Laus Deo," at the close of the war. 
 
 Whittier's Poems of New England. At the same time that 
 Whittier was writing in this vein, he was using his poetical 
 powers even more ably in terms of many poems about New 
 England life. They may roughly be classified as verses on 
 the early history of New England, and poems on his own 
 times. He loved to look back to the lives and achievements 
 of his ancestors, and when he found incidents in history which 
 combined picturesqueness of quality with that sturdiness of 
 moral character with which the old settlers were blessed, he 
 delighted, in such poems as "Abraham Davenport," "Cas- 
 sandra Southwick," "The Wreck of Rivermouth," "The 
 Garrison of Cape Ann," and "Skipper Ireson's Ride," to 
 pay his tribute to them. In all these appear the sources of 
 poetic popularity always to be found in favorite poems. These 
 are short, clear stories couched in simple language and in 
 more or less conventional verse, and capped with a moral 
 which would be evident enough even if it were not printed in 
 black on white.
 
 436 Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 Whittier's greatest poem, "Snow-Bound," falls in the re- 
 maining group his poems of contemporary New England. 
 It could stand alone out of all his poems as earning for the 
 poet a permanent place in letters. With satisfaction and 
 sympathy it upholds the noble and simple life of the peasant 
 class. It is hardly too much to say that it deserves to* be 
 ranked with Gray's "Elegy," Goldsmith's "Deserted Vil- 
 lage," and Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." 
 
 Whittier's " Puritan Pluck." It has become a habit for 
 the present generation, as it_moves daily farther from the 
 fixed traditions of early New England days, to think and 
 speak of the old-time Puritans in a rather patronizing tone. 
 It is the fashion to refer with impatience to what we term 
 their antipathy to art, to speak superciliously of their austere 
 manners and customs, and to flout as Puritan relics the sur- 
 vival of any traditions which are more than ordinarily con- 
 servative. It is well to remember that the "Puritan prin- 
 ciple," though perhaps confined in its course to a path which 
 to-day seems narrow, was coupled with indomitable "Puri- 
 tan pluck." It is this combination which demands respect 
 in the person of the Quaker-Puritan John Greenleaf Whittier. 
 We recognize the truth of his self-criticism. He could not 
 emulate 
 
 "the old melodious lays 
 The songs of Spenser's golden days." 
 
 There does often appear in his verses 
 "The rigor of a frozen clime. 
 
 The jarring words of one whose rhyme 
 Beat often Labor's hurried time, 
 Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife." 
 
 But in the support of that noble and long unpopular 
 cause to which he devoted himself, we recognize a cou- 
 rageous consecration as great as that of the martyrs of Lex- 
 ington and Concord. Overcome with bodily weakness which 
 compelled him to withdraw from the swift currents of active 
 life, in his own way he accomplished more than many who
 
 James Russell Lowell 437 
 
 were in the thick of that conflict. Rightly he cried out in 
 his agony that God should "make the balance good." 
 
 Oh power to do! Oh baffled will! 
 
 Oh prayer and action! Ye are one. 
 Who may not strive may yet fulfil 
 The harder task of standing still 
 
 And good but wished with God is done. 
 
 Then when it was given him to rejoice at the end of the 
 conflict, and to live on to a noble old age, he was able in his 
 "simple lays of homely toil" to show, as only a few poets 
 have done, "The unsung beauty hid life's common things 
 below." Whittier, in his best work, was a frankly "pro- 
 vincial" poet, and in this fact is the source of his strength. 
 He loved the past and the present of his own people and the 
 country that they lived in, no less than did Burns and 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 III. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) 
 
 Lowell's Early Surroundings. In James Russell Lowell 
 the student finds the same practical qualities which belong to 
 Whittier, the same inclination to think about the problems 
 of the day, and the same ability to express himself on ques- 
 tions of the hour. Lowell seems, however, to have been 
 drawn into active life in spite of his expressed and strongly 
 recurring desire to devote himself to art. No one could have 
 been brought up among more genuinely literary circum- 
 stances than was he. His early home was in a dignified old 
 mansion in Cambridge, within sight of the Charles, sur- 
 rounded by magnificent trees, the visible reminders of those 
 rich memories which clustered about the estate. Born of 
 cultured parents, accustomed from youth to their conversation 
 and that of their friends, and given almost from babyhood 
 to priceless hours in the large and well-appointed family 
 library, he enjoyed an education which was calculated to 
 endow him with a love for letters. 
 
 Lowell's Early Manhood. In college he took his own time 
 and picked his own path, achieving results hardly more
 
 438 Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 notable than those of Emerson, and so conducting himself 
 during the later months of his course that the university 
 authorities were compelled to "rusticate" him for some 
 weeks. During the years that immediately followed gradua- 
 tion, Lowell was uneasily seeking his as yet not chosen field. 
 He enrolled himself in the distinguished army of literary men 
 who signally failed at law. He restlessly surveyed the motley 
 procession whom he passed in his daily walks. It was fort- 
 unate at this time that he fell in with a group of eager, con- 
 genial, and thoughtful companions of his own generation, 
 who centred about him and drew out the best that was in 
 him. One of these, Maria White, subsequently became his 
 wife. 
 
 For a short while they endured the hardship of early matri- 
 monial rigid economy until her father left them money and his 
 provided them with a roof. Then in the years that immediately 
 followed, culminating when Lowell was only twenty-six, he 
 established himself as one of the popular spokesmen of 
 America. He had passed through that period in which his 
 main attempt was to dedicate himself to the expression of 
 beauty. Aroused by the restlessness of the age, he looked 
 about him in the social world, and in the stirring lines of the 
 "Present Crisis" showed the vigorous moral sense which 
 was to find utterance in a succession of poems extending over 
 more than twenty years. 
 
 By 1848 he had come to his most productive year, pub- 
 lishing some two-score articles and poems in magazines and 
 papers, and four volumes. In these volumes are expressed 
 all sides of the character of Lowell that men remember. In 
 the "Vision of Sir Launfal" he showed his literary up- 
 bringing, his love of beauty, and at the same time his strong 
 moral bent. Verses which share honors with this poem, the 
 "Biglow Papers," show his effort to influence public opinion 
 by any effective legitimate means. The first of the two series 
 came out in protest against the Mexican War, at the time 
 when President Polk called for 50,000 volunteers, asking 
 Massachusetts for 777 men. The papers were written in the 
 Yankee dialect, a homely dress well calculated to set off their 
 whimsical seriousness. They were the pretended product
 
 James Russell Lowell 439 
 
 of Hosea Biglow, whose father, in the introduction (written 
 in the same style), comments on him as follows: "Hosy he 
 cum down stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote tales 
 flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur 
 bein he haint aney grate shows o' book larnin himself, bimeby 
 he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle tickled with 'em 
 as i hoop you will Be, and said they wuz True grit." So suc- 
 cessful were these papers that a dozen years later, upon the 
 outbreak of the war, a second series connected with the stir- 
 ring events from 1860 to 1865 met with renewed and even in- 
 creased popularity. 
 
 Lowell as Teacher and Diplomat. To return, however, to 
 1848, the struggle in his nature was still going on, for soon 
 after he writes to a friend: "Now I am going to try more 
 wholly after beauty herself. Next, if I live, I shall try repre- 
 senting life as I find it. I find that reform cannot take up 
 the whole of me." Yet in 1854 a new and dominant activity 
 for a while took up the whole of him. For in that year he 
 was called to Harvard to become the Smith Professor of 
 modern languages and literature, occupying that distin- 
 guished chair which had been held before him by George 
 Ticknor and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and which, after 
 his death in 1891, remained empty until almost the present 
 day. 
 
 Now are the three sides of his life developed the apostle 
 of the beautiful, the reformer, the teacher. To the end of 
 his life he continued his activity in all three directions. And 
 yet, long before the end of it, he was drawn out of the 
 seclusion of the college yards and classrooms into the active 
 service of his country, this time as a diplomat. In 1877 he 
 was appointed as Minister to Spain, and was welcomed cord- 
 ially there by those who could still remember the residence 
 of Washington Irving in similar capacity many years earlier. 
 In 1880 he was transferred to England, the most important 
 of all our foreign posts. Here he did his work vigorously and 
 effectively, and yet with such self-control and tact that he was 
 described as "the most invited and the most inviting man in 
 London," and credited as having found the Englishmen 
 strangers but having "left them all cousins."
 
 440 Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 Lowell's Versatility. In the roster of American men of 
 letters, Lowell has earned the distinction of being the most 
 talented and the most completely rounded of them all. His 
 work in education and in the representation of his countiy 
 abroad must, in such a history as this, be considered secondary 
 to his achievements in literature; yet in letters alone his work 
 is varied and variously successful. His poems of affairs 
 seldom failed to meet a genuine response among the great 
 body of American readers. His lyric poems were simple, 
 sincere, and affecting, and in prose his letters, as edited by 
 his friend and colleague, Charles Eliot Norton, are abounding 
 in interest, while his literary essays are as substantial and 
 discriminating as anything of their kind yet produced in this 
 country. 
 
 IV. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894) 
 
 Holmes's Uneventful Career. Oliver Wendell Holmes may 
 be said to be the last of the foremost New England writers 
 who wielded a contemporary influence, or even wished to 
 wield one. Like the great majority of the men of letters 
 with whom we instinctively associate him, he was born almoot 
 within the shadow of the Massachusetts State House and was 
 launched on the world a Harvard graduate. The story of 
 his career is remarkably uneventful. After some study of 
 medicine abroad and a short period of medical practice in 
 Boston, he occupied a chair at Dartmouth College for a year, 
 after which he returned to "the Hub " for the rest of his life, 
 holding incidentally the Parkman Professorship of Anatomy 
 at Harvard from 1847 to 1888. This long tenure of office 
 was a natural expression of Mr. Holmes's character, which 
 notably combined vigor and stability. His loyalty did not 
 impel him during the war to go to the front, and yet he was a 
 sincere patriot. His interest in men and things did not draw 
 him into long sojourns in Europe in search of recreation or 
 learning. His zeal for reform did not bring him into the 
 movement which made it necessary for him to run up and 
 down the land. Yet in the midst of one of our greatest and 
 oldest cities and in a circle of distinguished friends, the like of
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes 441 
 
 whom America will not see again for generations, he not only 
 held his own, but more often than not he made himself the 
 central figure. 
 
 Holmes's Lighter Satires. The reason for this lies in his 
 combination of fine common-sense and spontaneous humor, 
 the one leading him to seek the best in the circumstances 
 1 among which he was placed, and the other helping him to 
 interpret what he saw in a new and fresh and vivid way. 
 Throughout his career his rationalism was evident in all he 
 wrote and said. He was, on the whole, too keen to be senti- 
 mental, too observant to be deluded by meaningless doctrines, 
 too individual to accede to any habitual line of conduct which 
 did not commend itself to his judgment, and, withal, as a 
 moral agent he was gifted with a genuine power of satire 
 which made much of what he said widely influential as well 
 as very amusing. Thus in his "Ballad of the Oysterman" 
 he not only wrote an exceedingly silly bit of verse, but by 
 writing it in the fashion of much popular verse of his day he 
 turned it all to ridicule. So in the "Lines to His Aunt," his 
 "dear, unmarried aunt," he was expressing the keenest of 
 criticism upon the still popular, although improved, finishing 
 school. Again, in "Contentment," he made, from the point 
 of view of the luxury lover, a statement on the simple life 
 which has as much truth in it from the metropolitan point of 
 view as Thoreau's W olden has from that of the nature lover. 
 
 Holmes's " Occasional " Verse. As a writer of occasional 
 verse he was the indefatigable poet-laureate of the neighbor- 
 hood. It was more the fashion forty years ago in Boston 
 than it is in our own hurried day to celebrate events of minor 
 interest. So year after year, when his own class reunited at 
 the Harvard commencement, he versified for them. For the 
 annual meetings of the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society he 
 wrote more verses. When his friends left for Europe he sped 
 the parting guests and in happy verse he welcomed them on 
 their return. No poet of any celebrity could pass a birthday 
 in his region without running the risk of a commemorative 
 tribute from Holmes. 
 
 The Prose Essays. If it were only for his verse, however 
 the place of Holmes in our literature would be but a slight
 
 442 Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 one. He had the rather remarkable experience of turning, 
 at the age of forty-eight, to a new form of expression and of 
 continuing to use it successfully for over thirty years of the 
 remainder of his long life. In 1857, when the Atlantic 
 Monthly was founded, James Russell Lowell, upon assuming 
 the editorship, stipulated as one of his conditions that Mr. 
 Holmes should be secured as a regular contributor. Through 
 the columns of the Atlantic there followed as a result the 
 oracular utterances first of The Autocrat of the Breakfast- 
 Table, then, two years later, of The Professor at the Breakfast- 
 Table, then, in 1873, of The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, and 
 finally, in 1890, of the old philosopher as he talked charm- 
 ingly and genially Over the Tea-Cups. If these four books 
 had been produced among people who had less to read, 
 their popularity would have been even greater than it is 
 now. We may compare them with The Spectator, with 
 Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, with Johnson's Rambler, 
 with Irving's Salmagundi Papers, and find in them the same 
 critical sense and the same pleasant humor. They touch 
 less than these other papers upon all sorts of subjects in 
 connection with the externals of human life. They deal with 
 real matters of conduct, but avoid subjects so profound as 
 to confuse the ordinary reader. As a consequence, for 
 thirty-three years they made their author at different times 
 the public mentor of the community, counselling, warning, 
 rebuking, deprecating, or even ridiculing, as the situation 
 demanded. Holmes was not, as he is sometimes said to 
 be, a merely accomplished dabbler in letters. Like the men 
 about him, he felt the impulse to search for the truth and re- 
 port it, and much of what the Autocrat and the Professor 
 and the Poet said at the break fast- table or over the tea- 
 cups was distinctly in advance of his time. 
 
 V. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) 
 
 The Popularity of Longfellow. Though Longfellow was 
 an almost exact contemporary of the popular spokesmen 
 just discussed, his interests were not identical with theirs, 
 nor may he be classified with Emerson and the Concord
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 443 
 
 group. Yet if he does not deserve the title "Spokesman," 
 there is no American poet who has so widely earned the right 
 to be called popular. Examination of the catalogues of the 
 British Museum shows that in numbers of titles of works, 
 editions, and articles by and about Longfellow he stands in 
 the whole roster of nineteenth-century poets second only to 
 Tennyson, and far in. advance of his next rival. His works, 
 in more than a hundred editions, have been translated into 
 eighteen languages. They can be found in the book-stores 
 of almost any English-speaking city, so constant is the de- 
 mand for them; and in books of selections his poems are 
 printed in such numbers as to indicate that editors and the 
 reading public alike recognize the demand for his best-known 
 verses. 
 
 Longfellow's Education. He was born on February 27, 
 1807, of distinguished New England parentage, in Portland, 
 Me. As his father was a trustee of Bowdoin College, 
 Longfellow was sent there rather than to Harvard. Entering 
 the class of 1825, as a sophomore, he became a classmate of 
 Hawthorne. His career as a student was a little more promis- 
 ing than that of the novelist, for he was graduated third in his 
 class, showing an ability to subject himself to routine work 
 in spite of his appetite for miscellaneous reading. Before he 
 had left the college campus the two chief features of his sub- 
 sequent work as a poet had both been foreshadowed. One 
 of these came in the shape of his commencement oration, 
 which\was upon the subject "Our Native Writers." For 
 himself, he declares his purpose to speak as an American for 
 America, and the utterance is interesting as compared with 
 similar early declarations by Trumbull, Freneau, Bryant, 
 and Whittier. The other promise for the future came in his 
 skill as a student of the languages, which was so great that at 
 the age of nineteen, when the trustees of Bowdoin had de- 
 cided to establish a chair of modern languages, Longfellow 
 was offered the position. 
 
 Longfellow's Two Lines of Interest. To the acquisition of 
 scholarship, then, and to training for authorship he set him- 
 self, grateful for the intervention of Providence which saved 
 him from the irksome experience of going into the law. In
 
 From a Photograph, Copyright, by London Stereoscopic Company 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 445 
 
 1826 he went abroad for three years of study, equipping him- 
 self before his return with a thorough knowledge of three 
 languages and a reading acquaintance with several more. 
 He was ultimately more or less a master of fourteen modern 
 tongues. With all of this study, nevertheless, he had not 
 lost sight of his original desire to be distinctly an American 
 man of letters, and soon after his return he gave evidence of 
 this in a vigorous essay on the "Function of the American 
 Poet." The time for echoing foreign literatures was past; 
 foreign subject-matter should no longer usurp the attention 
 of the American writer. "To this effect it is not necessary 
 that the war whoop should ring in every line, and every page 
 be rife with scalps, tomahawks and wampum. Shade of 
 Tecumseh forbid! The whole secret lies in Sidney's maxim 
 'Look in thy heart and write'!" 
 
 His work as a teacher was far different from that of his 
 successors to-day. The only other man of his kind was 
 Professor George Ticknor, whom he was later to succeed at 
 Harvard. There was no machinery for teaching, so that he 
 had actually to prepare and publish his own text-books. As 
 a consequence, he was almost submerged with the petty de- 
 tails connected with his pioneer professorship. After seven 
 years so well had he succeeded, that upon the resignation of 
 Professor Ticknor, Longfellow was called to the Smith Pro- 
 fessorship at Harvard, the invitation being accompanied 
 with the practical request that he again go abroad " for a year 
 or eighteen months" for the purpose of a more perfect at- 
 tainment of German. Settling in Cambridge in 1836, he 
 found his work more attractive and less burdensome than 
 in his earlier position. He was confined to teaching only 
 three days in the week, and began to write, publishing The 
 Voices of the Night in 1839, The Spanish Student in 1842, 
 and The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems in 1846. 
 
 In these works the two lines of interest in Longfellow seem 
 evidently to have converged. He was still eager, as he had 
 been while in college, "after future eminence in literature." 
 He was a thorough and successful student and teacher of the 
 modern languages. He was consciously an American citi- 
 zen. A glance at the poems of the period shows his academic
 
 446 "Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 enthusiasm, as it led him to translate foreign poems, to imi- 
 tate and paraphrase them, and to use material drawn from 
 continental sources. ''The Return of Spring," "The Be- 
 leaguered City," "Excelsior," and "Nuremberg" serve by 
 way of illustration. His American poems of the same period 
 may be drawn from local American themes, as in the case of 
 "The Village Blacksmith," "The Arsenal at Springfield," 
 and "The Bridge," or written as the result of his adopting 
 Sidney's maxim and looking into his own heart, as illustrated 
 by "The Light of Stars," "Footsteps of Angels," "The 
 Rainy Day," "Mezzo Cammin." In each of these groups 
 of poems there appears a mingling of spontaneous sim- 
 plicity and somewhat conventionalized romantic feeling. 
 
 Longfellow's Long Poems on American Themes. By the 
 end of 1845 Longfellow started on a period which was to end 
 with an emancipation from his college duties and a more 
 complete devotion to the writing of essentially American 
 poems. He was reverting frequently to the monotony of his 
 college work, and frequently questioning whether he could 
 dare to continue in the harness. "I am too restless for this. 
 What should I be at fifty? A fat mill-horse, grinding round 
 with blinkers on this will not do. It is too much for one's 
 daily bread when one can live on so little." Thus he wrote 
 not long after going to Cambridge; yet lie was but three years 
 short of fifty when, in 1854, he withdrew from his professor- 
 ship. In the meanwhile Evangeline had appeared in 1847, 
 Hiawatha was completed in the following year; the New 
 England Tragedies were written in 1856-1857, although not 
 published for some time; The Courtship of Miles Stand ish in 
 1858. This short period saw the production of his great 
 group of long poems and his finest development of themes 
 drawn from the life of his own country. Too little attention 
 is given to the fine New England Tragedies, " Governor 
 Endicott," a drama based on the persecution of the Quakers 
 in Boston, and "Giles Corey," a Salem witchcraft episode 
 in dramatic form. 
 
 In spite of this great output of American material, Long- 
 fellow still drew on the fund of European literature and tra- 
 dition. His greatest remaining work in this field consisted
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 447 
 
 in the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. But at the 
 very end of his published works there appears significantly 
 a collection of twenty poems in six groups, from the Spanish, 
 the Swedish and Danish, the German, the Anglo-Saxon, the 
 French and the Italian. 
 
 The Range of Longfellow's Subject-Matter. In a general 
 estimate of Longfellow and his work it must be admitted 
 first in connection with his subject-matter that "He was in- 
 spired chiefly ... by noble and beautiful records of facts 
 long since dead and gone." Even when dealing with native 
 themes the inclination to draw upon memories and imagery 
 derived from foreign literatures is apparent. The image in 
 "The Bridge" of the goblet falling into the sea is not un- 
 familiar to students of German lyric poetry. "The Slave's 
 Dream." is told in a romantic spirit quite out of keeping with 
 the supposed subject of the poem. In his use of material he 
 shows as broad a range as Tennyson, although, with the ex- 
 ception of "The Masque of Pandora," there is exceedingly 
 little which harks back beyond the Middle Ages. Of the 
 more modern subject-matter much is presented in ballad 
 form, the briefly presented significant event full of objective 
 interest; much, as in the "Tales of the Wayside Inn," is in 
 the fashion of one or another of the longer mediaeval narrative 
 forms such as are found in The Canterbury Tales; and much, 
 notably the drama Michael Angela, shows the magic influence 
 of Italy and all the wealth of Renaissance art. He feels the 
 same spell which successively overcame before him Shelley, 
 Keats and Byron, Landor, the Rossettis, the Brownings, and 
 many another. The American subject-matter should not 
 be dismissed without reference to the simple poems drawn 
 from homely contemporary life, such as "The Day is Done," 
 "The Old Clock," "Children's Hour," and "The Hanging 
 of the Crane." 
 
 Form of Longfellow's Poems. As to the form of his poetry, 
 it was mostly in narrative discourse and characterized by 
 skilful general structure. Most notably it was simple, not 
 so much in diction, for Longfellow sometimes used recondite 
 words and conventional phrases, but simple in sentence 
 structure and easily understandable in its allusions. His
 
 448 Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 lines are either short or, if long, are broken by distinct 
 pauses; his scansion is regular; his rhymes frequent and 
 unequivocal. Further than this he has contributed to com- 
 mon speech many memorable lines, for he is distinctly 
 quotable. His "Silently blossom the stars," his "She 
 seemed to feel a thrill of life along her keel," his " Footprints 
 on the sands of time," his "He looked the whole world in the 
 face," show his aptitude for pat felicity. 
 
 Longfellow, the Man. As a man, Longfellow is eminently 
 sound and sane. Like Tennyson, he seems always to have 
 written as though "a staid matron had just left the room." 
 In general he was a man in whom a sense of the proprieties 
 was very well developed. He loved children and birds; he 
 believed in the family and the uninterrupted monotone of 
 happy domesticity; he had an unimpassioned respect for 
 patriotism. But in a larger way he upheld his belief in the 
 essential goodness of man. From "The Village Black- 
 smith" to "Giles Corey," and from "Giles Corey" to 
 "Michael Angelo," he was consistently defending mankind to 
 itself. And, last of all, he performed what Matthew Arnold 
 declared to be the function of culture: the task of "justify (ing) 
 the ways of God to man." He was a consistent, healthy, en- 
 couraging optimist, who doubted not that ' ' through the ages 
 one unceasing purpose runs." 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Contrast the essential characteristics of the 
 popular spokesmen of the mid-century with those of such men as Emer- 
 son, Thoreau, and their followers. Give an outline of Whittier's life, 
 as it shows his practical nature in his ability to support himself as a 
 youth and in his hard sense as applied to the influencing of public 
 opinion. Tell how his attitude to the Abolition movement can be 
 traced in his lyric poems from 1834 to 1865. How does he show his 
 affection for New England traditions, as well as for the New England 
 of his own day? Were his comments on his own poetical power and 
 his physical strength true to the facts? 
 
 State the main facts in the life of James Russell Lowell. Show how 
 his attempt to find himself resulted in the struggle between the love 
 of the beautiful and his strong moral sense. See how this was carried on 
 in terms of "The Present Crisis," "The Biglow Papers," and "The Vision
 
 Reading Guide 449 
 
 of Sir Launfal" in different ways. How was his versatility further de- 
 veloped by his relationship with Harvard University? In what re- 
 spects is it fair to say of him that he was the Elizabethan of the New 
 England nineteenth-century poets? 
 
 Why is the uneventfulness of the life of Oliver Wendell Holmes worth 
 commenting on in view of his work as a man of letters ? Contrast his 
 experience with that of Addison, of Goldsmith, and of Irving, all of 
 whom developed into satirists, who were comparable to himself. What 
 various kinds of society verse did Holmes write which show in different 
 ways his relation to his town and his college? Notice the shift in his 
 literary activity when at the age of forty-eight he turned toward the 
 four books of prose essays which he was originally stimulated to write 
 by Lowell for the " Atlantic Monthly." What justice is there in the 
 common assertion that Holmes was an echo of the eighteenth century 
 in the substance and in the form of his works? 
 
 What concrete evidence exists that Longfellow enjoyed greater pop- 
 ularity than any other American poet ? Give the main facts in his 
 life, particularly as these show the development of his enthusiasm for 
 scholarship and his ambition to become a man of letters. Why should 
 his mastery of various languages and literatures affect him when he 
 attempted to write native American verse? What evidences of this 
 exist in the poetry which he wrote up to 1845 ? Give the names of his 
 chief poems, drawn directly from American material. Do these show 
 that he followed Sydney's precept to look into his own heart and write? 
 Was his interest in America directed toward the social facts of his day 
 in any such way as that of Whittier, Lowell, and Holmes? Select any 
 of his most popular poems and test them to see whether there are pres- 
 ent in them the common sources of popularity: familiar and symmet- 
 rical form, clearness of content, the narrative thread, and an applied 
 moral. 
 
 READING GUIDE. Readings from Whittier should include in 
 the first group "Snow-Bound," "In School Days," "The Trailing Ar- 
 butus," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "Cassandra Southwick," "Abram 
 Davenport." The second group should include his war-poems men- 
 tioned in the text. Good short lives of Whittier are by T. W. Higgin- 
 son (English Men of Letters series) and George R. Carpenter (Amer- 
 ican Men of Letters series). 
 
 Readings from Lowell should include in the first group "The Present
 
 450 Popular Spokesmen of the Mid-century 
 
 Crisis," selections from "A Fable for Critics," "The Vision of Sir 
 Launfal," and selections from "The Biglow Papers" (second series). 
 The second group should include "She Came and Went," "The First 
 Snow-Fall," "After the Burial," "The Harvard Commemoration Ode." 
 From his prose, his essays on "New England Two Centuries Ago," 
 "Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," "Emerson the Lecturer," and 
 "Thoreau" have a double value as Lowell's work and as literary his- 
 tory. Good biographies are by H. E. Scudder and by Ferris Greenslet. 
 
 Readings from Holmes should include, from his verse: "Old Iron- 
 sides," "The Last Leaf," "Latter-Day Warnings," "The Chambered 
 Nautilus," "The Deacon's Masterpiece, or The Wonderful 'One Hoss 
 Shay'"; from his prose, chapters either from "The Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast-Table" or from "Over the Tea-Cups." The best short life 
 is by S. M. Crothers (announced in American Men of Letters series). 
 
 Readings from Longfellow should include "The Courtship of Miles 
 Standish," "The Song of Hiawatha," "Evangeline," "A Psalm of Life," 
 "The Village Blacksmith," "Excelsior," "The Bridge," "The Arrow 
 and the Song," "Curfew," "The Building of the Ship," "Paul Revere's 
 Ride," and others as time affords the opportunity. Two good one- 
 volume biographies are by George R. Carpenter (Beacon Biographies) 
 and by T. W. Higginson (American Men of Letters series). 
 
 NOTE: "The Chief American Poets," edited by Curtis Hidden Page, 
 is the most useful single book for study of the poets in this chapter. 
 Recommendations for reading are limited to the selections included 
 therein, from the poets above as well as from Bryant, Emerson, Poe, 
 Whitman, and Lanier.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 POE, WHITMAN, AND THE SOUTHERN POETS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 Two Isolated Poets. In the Old World Edgar Allan Poe 
 and Walt Whitman are considered by most critics to be the 
 greatest men of letters whom America has yet produced. By 
 their own countrymen they are not so generally applauded. 
 A possible explanation for this is suggested by the fact that 
 both of these men in a measure defy the "historical" method 
 of criticism, for neither was involved in ordinary community 
 life of the country after the fashion of the normal man of 
 letters. They belonged to no groups and represented no 
 social movements. Both of them, moreover, were victims of 
 a certain degree of unbalance as measured by the standard 
 adopted by Emerson. Poe kept his head too much in soli- 
 tude and lost sight of the world; Whitman plunged his hands 
 so deep in society that he forfeited to some extent his sense 
 of perspective. Out of this a curious paradox arises, for 
 Poe, who lived in point of sympathy almost wholly apart from 
 the people, is steadily gaining in popularity; while Whitman, 
 who was deep in the stream of life and elected himself to be 
 the poet of democracy, has always been more talked about 
 than read. 
 
 II. EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 
 
 Poe's Early Opportunities. The parents of Edgar Allan 
 Poe were actors known as the "Virginia Comedians." He 
 was born in Boston, January 19, 1809, and within two years 
 was an orphan. The three children (for he had an older 
 
 451
 
 452 Poe, Whitman^ and the Southern Poets 
 
 brother and a younger sister) were adopted into Southern 
 families, Mr. John Allan, of Richmond, Va., a prosper- 
 ous merchant, becoming the foster-father of Edgar. The 
 boy had the best of educational advantages, first in an English 
 school from the age of six to eleven, then in two Richmond 
 academies, and later in the University of Virginia, which he 
 entered at the age of seventeen. Here he was brilliant but 
 irregular, his creditable work in Latin and French not off- 
 setting the gambling debts which caused his first separation 
 from Mr. Allan. Two years in the army were concluded by 
 an honorable discharge in 1829 and a reconciliation with his 
 father; but his West Point experience, which came next, 
 ended so disastrously that Mr. Allan at his death, three years 
 later, left nothing to his foster-son. 
 
 Poe's Later Life. The remainder of his life was a pathetic 
 struggle to adjust himself to the ways of the world. He mar- 
 ried his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1834, and was faithfully 
 devoted to her till her death, thirteen years later. He became 
 the literary editor of various magazines: The Southern Liter- 
 ary Messenger, 1835-1837; The Gentleman's Magazine, 1839- 
 1840; Graham's Magazine, 1841-1843; The Evening Mirror 
 (New York), 1844; The Broadway Journal, 1845. It was in 
 these periodicals that the majority of his poems and stories 
 appeared, but his income from them never removed him from 
 the verge of poverty. After the loss of his wife, in 1847, he 
 wrote less frequently. The distressing circumstances of his 
 death in October, 1849, have never been fully explained. 
 
 The Testimony of N. P. Willis. So persistent is the tradi- 
 tion that Poe was given to unrestrained self-indulgence that 
 the characterization by Nathaniel Parker Willis, of the Even- 
 ing Mirror, cannot be quoted too often: "With the highest 
 admiration for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone for 
 more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by common re- 
 port to expect a very capricious attention to his duties. . . . 
 Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and 
 industrious. With his pale, beautiful, and intellectual face 
 as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of 
 course, not to treat him always with deferential courtesy. 
 . . . (He was) a quiet, patient, industrious, and most gen-
 
 Edgar Allan Poe 453 
 
 tlemanly person, commanding the utmost respect and good 
 feeling by his unvarying deportment and ability." 
 
 Poe's Choice of Subject-Matter. Poe is not alone among 
 artists in having developed and clearly expounded his theory 
 as to choice of subject-matter and method of workmanship. 
 No student of his works can afford to ignore two of his essays, 
 "The Philosophy of Composition," published in Graham* 's 
 Magazine in 1846, and "The Poetic Principle," delivered as 
 a lecture almost on the eve of his death. Although the larger 
 part of his work is in the form of short prose stories, these all 
 contain what he declared to be the essentials of poetry. He 
 divided the whole world of mind into the realms of pure in- 
 tellect, the moral sense, and the field of taste, and choosing 
 for his own part to deal only with beauty which "is the 
 sole legitimate province of the poem." As in his opinion no 
 piece of literature could achieve its full effect if it could not 
 be read at one sitting, he almost invariably chose to treat of 
 brief and unified conceptions. These dealt with beauty or 
 its opposite and were usually tinged with grief, so that even 
 when humor appeared, there seemed still to be underlying it 
 a "pleasurable melancholy." As a rule, the stories in their 
 progress subordinate the actual events to the feeling which 
 accompanies them, or, at the most, make what visibly happens 
 an almost incidental conclusion to a long and exciting train 
 of emotional experience. 
 
 The tales are of many degrees of credibility. Among his 
 detective stories "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," "The 
 Purloined Letter," and "Thou Art the Man" appeal, as he 
 planned, to the reader's sense of logic. Every step is de- 
 fined, every deduction demonstrated. These are the acme 
 of clearness if they were not, they would fail as detective 
 stories. Again, in such accounts as "The Gold Bug," al- 
 though deliberately an air of mystery is maintained for a con- 
 siderable time, the elucidation is all so careful that the reader 
 follows without hesitation to the end. Taking a step farther, 
 to the tales of horror and death, the same convincing quality 
 remains. You cannot interpret in ordinary terms; you can- 
 not conceive as possible in human experience such events as 
 are narrated under the titles of "The Fall of the House oi
 
 454 Poe, Whitman, and the Southern Poets 
 
 Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado,"" The Black Cat." 
 "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Tell-Tale Heart," 
 "Morella," "Berenice," and yet, as you read, it Is only by the 
 utmost exertion that you can resist their compelling detail. 
 Even in the only remaining kind of story, the accounts of 
 marvellously, incredible adventure, the episodes and situations 
 in "Hans Pfaall," "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," 
 and "The MS. Found in a Bottle" are at once beyond belief 
 and beyond doubt. 
 
 "The Fall of the House of Usher." "The fall of the 
 House of Usher " is representative. The teller of the story 
 recounts the experiences of a few short weeks which he 
 spends in the "melancholy house of Usher," in response to 
 an importunate request from its owner. Roderick Usher is 
 living in the midst of the "irredeemable gloom " of his mould- 
 ering castle, a victim to strange and awful fears. Ghostly 
 servants attend him. His only companion has been his 
 dying sister, the Lady Madeline. During the last days of 
 her life the despairing man seeks to divert himself with the 
 solace of wild music, rhapsodic verse, and the reading with 
 his guest of ancient and mysterious books. Finally comes 
 her death and then her entombment in a castle vault, for a 
 fortnight before her last burial. A week passes, when, in 
 the midst of a violent storm, under the most awe-inspiring 
 circumstances, the Lady Madeline reappears. "There was 
 blood upon her white robes and the evidence of some bitter 
 struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a 
 moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon 
 the threshold; then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily in- 
 ward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and 
 now final death-agonies bore him to the floor a corpse, and a 
 victim to the terror he had anticipated." Horrified by what 
 has occurred, the friend flees in fear from the mansion, but 
 has hardly left it when, with a roar of mighty walls, the build- 
 ing crashes to earth and thus completes the fall of the House 
 of Usher. 
 
 Poe's Methods of Story- Telling. No one reading this with 
 sceptical disbelief could be deceived into thinking that the 
 events narrated ever actually took place, and yet the story is
 
 Edgar Allan Poe 455 
 
 uncannily thrilling. If this effect upon the reader does not 
 arise from the nature of the subject-matter, it must be traced 
 to the methods by which the story is told. If one seeks for 
 an explanation in these, the reasons for the vividness of 
 interest are not hard to find. In the first place, Poe ' ' staged " 
 his stories with great care, making the backgrounds har- 
 monize perfectly with the dominant mood of the narratives. 
 He found that he could best keep the attention concentrated 
 by putting his episodes in a closely circumscribed space 
 within which no detail was beneath his concern. To the sug- 
 gestive value of draperies, for example, and especially of 
 moving draperies, Poe was keenly alive; and illustrations of 
 the subtle value of color or the absence of color can be found 
 on almost every page. With the scenery thus provided for, 
 he accumulated interest during the course of the story by a 
 variety of means. He was adroit in throwing the attention 
 forward by skilful opening paragraphs; he employed ingen- 
 ious catch words and apparently random suggestions which 
 disturb the reader's peace of mind; he was so convincing in his 
 elaboration of the concrete detail that the very material 
 progress of the story becomes a matter of engrossing interest; 
 and finally, he so felt the emotions he described that he 
 contrived to involve the reader also, and to make him re-live 
 the stories as he turns the pages. 
 
 The Limitation of Poe's Art. Such a limited kind of sub- 
 ject-matter as that in Poe's stories reflects the limitation in 
 his own experience, and suggests the intensity of his life 
 within its narrow confines. He does not attempt to instruct, 
 for he regards the intellect in connection with his art as a 
 mere channel for the emotions. He does not attempt to re- 
 form ; it was not for him to appeal to the moral sense. Neither 
 of human institutions nor of human nature in its social aspect 
 has he anything to say. Even in the realm of the emotions 
 the domain of taste he upholds no ideal but the ideal 
 ecstasy. He presents each individual passion as an end in 
 itself. In spite of his own beautiful self-abnegation for the 
 sake of his wife, he omits in his stories the devotion of self- 
 sacrifice, or worship, or patriotism. Working in this field 
 and by the most extraordinary means, he catches and holds
 
 456 Poe, Whitman, and the Southern Poets 
 
 the reader's attention, dealing with passions of love, hatred, 
 revenge, physical fear, and varying degrees of madness. His 
 works, in the effect which they produce upon the reader, are 
 like those scenes in Shakespeare which introduce the ghostly 
 and supernatural. In life and in letters Poe was a meteoric 
 character, swift-moving, saturnine, keen of intellect, a "melo- 
 dramatic creature of genius" who suggests many another man 
 of letters but can be closely compared with none. In his own 
 age he was miserably unrewarded, but to-day we see in these 
 fantastic and often horrible stories works of art which, of 
 their kind, are hardly to be surpassed. 
 
 III. WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892) 
 
 Whitman in Contrast with Poe. As an American of tre- 
 mendously marked individuality, Walt Whitman is often 
 mentioned in the same breath with Poe. Yet in the two men 
 there is much more to contrast than to compare. Whitman 
 was the son of a farmer artisan, and was given no particular 
 education. His travels were those of a wanderer and almost 
 a vagrant. Where Poe was filled with the love of the beauti- 
 ful, and was a deliberate and painstaking master of con- 
 ventional technique, Whitman was absorbed in the lively 
 contemplation of a great social idea. He was tumultuously in- 
 fatuated with the life which he could not too intimately know, 
 and in his treatment of this was regardless of conventional 
 form. Again, by way of contrast, he was able always to take 
 care of himself, and though in part he was disabled as a re- 
 sult of his work as a soldier-nurse in war time, he survived to 
 a ripe old age and achieved a wide reputation, dying finally 
 full of years in the arms of his friends. 
 
 Whitman's Training. Whitman was born at Huntington, 
 Long Island, in May, 1819. Although the family moved to 
 Brooklyn when he was four years old, he remained a country 
 boy in spirit, haunting the shores of the island winters and 
 summers. His education was gained partly like Franklin's, in 
 the printing-shop, and partly like Whittier's, in country-school 
 teaching. Between the ages of twenty and thirty he was in 
 and about what is now Greater New York, a printer, reporter,
 
 WALT WHITMAN
 
 458 Poe, Whitman, and the Southern Poets 
 
 and editor on daily papers, and contributor to at least one im- 
 portant magazine. In 1849 ne extended his intimate ac- 
 quaintance with American people by taking a leisurely trip 
 down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, and 
 thence, after working awhile on the Daily Crescent, back to 
 New York by way of the Great Lakes and southern Canada. 
 He was now ready to do the work which made him famous. 
 
 " Leaves of Grass." In 1855 appeared the first edition of 
 his Leaves of Grass, a tall, thin book, not issued by any pub- 
 lisher, but a'ctually set up in type and printed by Whitman's 
 own hands or under his direction. Its first reception was 
 similar to that of Emerson's Nature; and just as Carlyle had 
 supplied the only real piece of encouragement to the Concord 
 essayist, so Emerson was almost alone in his greeting to the 
 printer-poet. "I find it the most extraordinary piece of 
 wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. ... I 
 greet you at the beginning of a great career, which must have 
 had a long foreground somewhere for such a start." Nat- 
 urally enough, the other great original mind in Concord was 
 similarly impressed. Says Thoreau in 1856: "That Walt 
 Whitman ... is the most interesting fact to me at present. 
 I have just read his second edition . . . and it has done me 
 more good than any reading for a long time." The edition 
 of 1856 was double the size of the first. In 1860 it appeared 
 once more, with an added group of poems on the friendship of 
 men, "Calamus." The 1867 edition included "Drum Taps," 
 his poems of the war. Six times more, under the same 
 general title, the book appeared during Whitman's life, the 
 last issues being in 1888, with "November Boughs" as the 
 added section, and in 1891, when he printed his valedictory, 
 "Good-bye, My Fancy." His noble experiences as a hos- 
 pital nurse in Washington from 1863 to 1865 left him weak- 
 ened by poisoning from a wound he had helped to dress. In 
 1873 came a stroke of paralysis; for the next nineteen years, till 
 his death in 1892, he was an invalid. 
 
 Whitman's Form a Stumbling-Block. The single poem of 
 most importance in all Whitman is naturally the "Song of 
 Myself." It is a long series of discursive observations on 
 life, presented in fifty-two sections or chapters. Some of
 
 Walt Whitman 459 
 
 them are philosophical expositions; some are vivid pictures 
 briefly drawn and unaccompanied by any comments; some 
 are stirring anecdotes; some are tender and sympathetic na- 
 ture poems; but many, and far too many, are rambling lists 
 of people or places presented without any apparent coherence 
 or system. When one reads a passage like the following the 
 fatigue of the long inventory soon oppresses him, and yet the 
 quoted part is a very small fraction of the almost interminable 
 sentence: 
 
 "By the city's quadrangular houses in log huts, camping with lum- 
 bermen, 
 
 Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed, 
 Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, 
 
 crossing savannas, trailing in forests, 
 
 Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase, 
 Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the 
 
 shallow river, 
 Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the 
 
 buck turns furiously at the hunter, 
 
 Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter 
 is feeding on fish," 
 
 No discussion of Whitman is complete which does not take 
 some account of his literary form. Though the current 
 criticisms of him are for the most part, widely extravagant, 
 they have, of course, evident basis. There is no dodging the 
 fact that he shows so Jittle inclination to select or arrange his 
 material that the impatient reader is tempted to interpret 
 his long and frequent inventories or catalogues as the vagaries 
 of a wildly unregulated mind. Nor may his diction be justi- 
 fied when measured by commonly accepted standards. He 
 is given to the wanton use of words that are no words at all, 
 or words from foreign tongues used for no good reason, and 
 certainly for no American reason, such as "Habitan of the 
 Alleghenies," to "effuse," to "promulge," "imperturbe," 
 "Americanos," "comerados," " translatress," "oratress"; 
 he calls himself "no dainty, dolce affetuoso " in the same poem 
 in which he hails "Ma femme" and speaks "with reference 
 to ensemble." The critic is tempted to assent when Whit- 
 man says : " I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the
 
 460 Poej Whitman, and the Southern Poets 
 
 world." Yet it may be readily demonstrated by any who 
 will take the time, that instead of being formless he wrote in 
 a style of his own; that his earliest work, instead of being hap- 
 hazard, was a result of frequent and painstaking revision. 
 In Specimen Days he writes: "I had great trouble in leaving 
 out the stock 'poetical touches,' but I succeeded at last"; 
 and in his Rules jor Composition he expressed his desire for 
 "a perfectly transparent, plate-glassy style, artless, with no 
 ornaments, nor attempts at ornaments, for their own sake." 
 Whether the result is poetry or not has been discussed at 
 somewhat unprofitable length. It is much more important 
 to discover what his writings mean and what kind of man 
 they show him to be. 
 
 Whitman's Democracy. He considered himself to be the 
 poet and prophet of the American people. He was frankly 
 infatuated with them. Certain attributes of his country and 
 his countrymen seemed to him essentially American and the 
 birthright of his nation. Without discriminating and without 
 first knowledge of other lands, he said confidently that the 
 best sort of nation was a new nation and that all old nations 
 were abominable. So he cried up an ideal democracy which 
 was quite irrational and actually non-existent in either the 
 Old World or the New. The weakest point in the philosophy 
 of Whitman seems to have been his extravagant enthusiasm 
 over this conception of democracy which appears to deny the 
 superiority of any man to any other man, a theory which is 
 rendered void on its first application to daily life. 
 
 Whitman a Transcendentalist. This deep absorption in 
 the moral problems of life shows, however, that though he 
 did not possess the balance of Emerson, he was for the most 
 part in surprisingly close accord with the Concord sage. His 
 poems are filled with references to the dignity of the indi- 
 vidual man, and the necessity of his living freely in the light 
 of his own judgment. Against tradition and custom he 
 makes the same protests as do the Transcendentalists, and 
 like them he finds in nature not only objects of beauty for 
 passive contemplation, but also the visible handiwork of the 
 Creator. The wonder of the simplest growing things in 
 field and forest stir his heart. He sees the same law in them
 
 r A Group of Southern Writers 461 
 
 and in himself. So, when he hears in the cool night the honk 
 of the wild gander, 
 
 "The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I, listening close, 
 Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky." 
 
 Whitman's work, though it has its eminent admirers, lacks 
 the cardinal features which belong to widely popular litera- 
 ture. It is not simple and familiar in its external dress; it is 
 not easily intelligible in content; it does not take advantage 
 of that narrative form which is dear to the reading public. 
 The enthusiasm of a few champions strives in vain to offset 
 the neglect of the people at large. 
 
 IV. A GROUP OF SOUTHERN WRITERS 
 
 Sidney Lanier. Sidney Lanier was a Georgian, born in 1842, 
 of courtly and artistic lineage. Descended as he was from 
 cavalier stock, he inherited a love of the beautiful which was 
 by no means universal among the Northern descendants of 
 Puritan blood. As a boy he was ab,le to play many musical 
 instruments ; in school and college he was a natural student. 
 After four years' service in the Confederate army he came out 
 with wrecked health. For a while he taught, for a while 
 practised law. During his last nine years he was engaged in 
 a continual struggle for life and a livelihood, making Baltimore 
 his home, but for his health's sake often retiring to the up- 
 lands. He was first flute in the Peabody Symphony Or- 
 chestra; he was the editor of four boys' versions of English 
 classics; and from 1879 to his death in 1881 he was Lecturer 
 on English Literature in Johns Hopkins University. A 
 passage from one of his letters leaves a touching record of his 
 toilsome aspiration as an artist: "I find within myself such 
 entire yet humble confidences of possessing every single ele- 
 ment of power to carry (all my ideas of art) out, save the 
 little paltry sum of money that would suffice to keep us 
 clothed and fed in the meantime. I do not understand this." 
 Naturally this tragic element in his life begot a high serious- 
 ness in his work. He was convinced that he had a mission to
 
 462 Poe, Whitman, and the Southern Poets 
 
 perform to do what he might to retard certain evil ten- 
 dencies of his generation, and, as an artist, to promote holi- 
 ness and beauty. On the broad reaches of nature he loves 
 to repose: the blackness of a summer night in "Columbus"; 
 the silence just before dawn in "Sunrise"; the expanse in 
 ' ' The Marshes of Glynn " are to him full of infinite suggestion 
 and infinite sympathy. .Though he does not often write what 
 would be called religious poetry, he is as one with all men to 
 whom nature is "a living garment of God," a symbol of the 
 Most High. Two characteristics are most prominent in 
 Lanier and his work: the first is his view of art as a moral 
 force, and the success with which he combines his love of 
 beauty and his love of truth with little apparent loss of either; 
 the second is his mastery of poetic form as a pure artist. His 
 fine sense of the possibilities of the poetic line, his apprecia- 
 tion of the connection between meaning and sound, and his 
 almost complete control of various metrical schemes are 
 productive of many exquisite passages. 
 
 Timrod and Hayne. Two Charleston contemporaries, 
 towns-fellows, and friends through life, next to Sidney Lanier, 
 have made the most genuine contribution to the poetry of the 
 South Henry Timrod (1829-1876) and Paul Hamilton 
 Hayne (1830-1886). Timrod's experiences as a boy and 
 young man were very similar in some ways to those of Lanier. 
 When he went to the front during the Civil War and was re- 
 jected from the ranks as unfit, he served as nurse in the army. 
 There is a rich sensitiveness of personality which pervades his 
 work. His is the work of a Southerner in its point of view, 
 in its courtliness, in its somewhat naive self-satisfaction, and 
 also in its wealth of imagery and allusion. Most character- 
 istic of his own country are two poems, " Ethnogenesis," a 
 poem celebrating the birth of that new nation which secession 
 was to bring into being, and "The Cotton Boll," a poem of 
 the peculiar product of the South as it is suggestive of far 
 more than its commercial value. Timrod writes much, how- 
 ever, which is only tacitly local in its quality, part of which is 
 in his lyric poems of love, and part in his nature poems, 
 which are full of the South in warmth, glow, and color, and 
 of delight in the changes of the year, and references to bird,
 
 Review Outline 
 
 plant, flower, and tree. At his best, Timrod is frequently 
 suggestive of certain passages in Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 Paul Hamilton Hayne, born a year later than Timrod, 
 came of better parentage and was more robust in person, his 
 education was less interrupted, his war experience more fort- 
 unate. A comparison between the two men comes back 
 always directly or indirectly to the physical strength in Hayne 
 with which Timrod was not endowed. Assuming that both 
 are essentially Southern in character, in poetic imagery and 
 allusion, in choice of subject-matter, and in point of view, 
 certain contrasts present themselves. Hayne with his more 
 abundant vigor is at times strident where Timrod is simply 
 passionate. Hayne has a tendency to declaim his feelings, 
 and so strong an inclination to make them known, that at 
 times he appears to lash himself into a state of frenzy in 
 order, as it were, to have something to talk about. Timrod 
 shrinks sometimes from self-expression, because a thought 
 once uttered ceases to be his own. Hayne's pleasure in self- 
 revelation and in gaining an audience is revealed by the great 
 volume of his work compared with that of his friend. In 
 subject-matter this superior masculine robustness determines 
 further contrast between Hayne and his townsman. In the 
 first place, he lived long enough to see the reconstruction and 
 reconciliation for which Timrod prayed and hoped until the 
 time of his death; Hayne consequently celebrated what Tim- 
 rod could only invoke. However, as he was given to the 
 enjoyment of self-expression, Hayne tried his hand at poetic 
 construction other than lyric. He composed a variety of 
 legends derived from classical, later continental, and con- 
 temporary sources, and wrote a large number of poems in 
 memory of Northern, Southern, and foreign distinguished 
 men. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Recalling Emerson's attempt to compromise 
 the charms of solitude with the call of society, note in what respects 
 both Whitman and Poe fail to keep that perfect balance which Emer- 
 son advocated and succeeded in maintaining. Give the main facts 
 in Poe's life. What was the tribute of Nathaniel Parker Willis 
 in contrast to the common estimate of Poe's character ? Into what
 
 4G-4 Poe f Whitman, and the Southern Poets 
 
 three divisions did Poe separate the world of mind, and to which did 
 he elect to devote himself? What were his convictions as to the legit- 
 imate length of a poem, its subject-matter, and its dominant mood? 
 In what sense should his stories be read with the same kind of attention 
 which is demanded by poetry? In terms of the credibility of his sto- 
 ries, what general classes can be made ? How does Poe secure the vivid- 
 ness of interest in his narrative, (a) in the setting of his stories, (b) in 
 the methods of introduction, and (c) in the lyric or emotional quality? 
 In what degree do his stories reveal the limitation of Poe's own experi- 
 ence in the life of the world ? 
 
 Contrast in its main events the career of Whitman with that of Poe. 
 What were the circumstances attending the reception of the first edi- 
 tion of " Leaves of Grass " ? In spite of these facts, what was the his- 
 tory of the successive editions up to the time of his death ? What con- 
 cessions have to be made in connection with Whitman's style in point 
 of structure and diction? What defence can be made of it in spite of 
 these damaging admissions? Whitman, in a measure, was a Tran- 
 scendentalist. How does this show itself in his attitude toward the 
 individual, toward the democratic life of the community, and toward 
 external nature? Is there a reasonable explanation for Whitman's 
 failure to secure a wide reading in spite of the fact that he aspired to 
 be a poet of the people ? 
 
 Since early Colonial days almost all American literature up to Civil 
 War time emanated from the North; now a group of Southern poets 
 appear. What is significant in the parentage and descent of Sidney 
 Lanier? Give the main facts in his life. Note his combined desire to 
 do a work at once as an artist and as a moral agent. With what suc- 
 cess does he make this attempt? 
 
 The two Charleston poets, Timrod and Hayne, are more limited in 
 their outlook than Lanier. In what respects is their work definitely 
 Southern in its quality? How may the two be compared in point of 
 vigor of physique and character, and in what evident respect is this 
 contrast between them discoverable in their manner of writing and in 
 the nature and variety of their production ? 
 
 READING GUIDE. Readings from Poe should include from his 
 verse, "Lenore," "The Coliseum," "The Raven," "Ulalume," "Anna- 
 bel Lee"; from his prose, "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The 
 Gold Bug," "The Purloined Letter," "The Cask of Amontillado."
 
 Reading Guide 465 
 
 Good one-volume biographies are by George E. Woodberry (American 
 Men of Letters series) and W. P. Trent (announced for English Men of 
 Letters series). 
 
 Readings from Whitman should include "There Was a Child Went 
 Forth," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly 
 Rocking," "I Hear It Was Charged Against Me," "Mannahatta," 
 "Myself and Mine," "A Broadway Pageant," "The Wound-Dresser," 
 "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun," "O Captain! my Captain!" "Ethi- 
 opia Saluting the Colors," and others as time permits. The best one- 
 volume biographies are by Bliss Perry (Houghton, Mifflin) and by 
 George R. Carpenter (English Men of Letters series). 
 
 Readings from Lanier should include "The Symphony," "The 
 Marshes of Glynn," "Marsh Song At Sunset," "Sunrise." The 
 American Men of Letters series includes a good life by Edwin Mims. 
 
 NOTE: As in the preceding chapter, recommended readings from the 
 three poets are for convenience limited to selections from the contents 
 of C. H. Page's useful volume, "The Chief American Poets."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AMERICAN FICTION SINCE 1860 
 
 The Rise of Realism. In the foregoing pages three Ameri- 
 can masters of fiction have been mentioned who wrote for 
 wider audiences and did what will probably be a more lasting 
 work than any three to be mentioned in this chapter. These 
 men, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Na- 
 thaniel Hawthorne, were all writers of romance who laid 
 down their pens before the Civil War. With the new gener- 
 ation a new kind of fiction has come into vogue. Neither in 
 choice of subject-matter nor in method of narration could 
 this earlier trio be confused or identified with the leading 
 story-tellers of the present day. It is perhaps more easy to 
 feel this distinction than to define it; it is the difference be- 
 tween romance and realism. The former term has been ex- 
 pounded at length in connection with the great English poets 
 and novelists of the opening nineteenth century; the latter is 
 that kind of fiction which "does not shrink from the common- 
 place (although art dreads the commonplace) or from the 
 unpleasant (although the aim of art is to give pleasure) in its 
 effort to depict things as they are, life as it is." If this be a 
 fair definition, it follows that the essential feature of realism 
 is not so much the subject-matter as the way in which the 
 subject-matter is presented; and that the most complete 
 realist is he who has become most intimately familiar with a 
 limited section of society. 
 
 Howells's Chosen Field. William Dean Howells (1837-) 
 is doubtless the man who would be most generally selected as 
 the leader of the realistic school, both in workmanship and in 
 resultant popularity. As in the case of Dickens, his experi- 
 ence in journalism, even before he had become of age, trained 
 him as an observer and critic. Several years in the con- 
 
 466
 
 William Dean Hotvells 467 
 
 sular service in Italy were followed by his appointment to 
 the assistant editorship of the Atlantic Monthly. Since then 
 his life has been wholly spent in two strongholds of Eastern 
 conservatism Boston and New York. It is a natural result 
 that his stories develop the point of view of the fortunate and 
 cultured members of metropolitan society. In many of his 
 books he is content to indulge in a pleasantly realistic por- 
 trayal of these people. In this special field the life that he 
 deals with is a life of infinitely minute distinctions: the man 
 who departs from the norm even a fraction of a degree be- 
 comes interesting under the microscopic lens of his keen 
 observation. v 
 
 Howells's Command of Detail, Thus, in the opening 
 pages of Silas Lapham, the attention is called to a whole 
 catalogue of social peccadilloes. As Bartley Hubbard enters 
 the paint-manufacturer's office, Silas, without rising, gives 
 him "his left hand for welcome," seals a letter and pounds it 
 "with his great heavy fist," pushes the door to with a huge 
 foot, and intersperses his conversation with little touches 
 which show not actual vulgarity, but simply a lack of com- 
 plete refinement in speech and manners. By innumerable 
 little touches Silas Lapham is set apart from the group of 
 Bostonians among whom he is trying to rise. Only in the 
 hands of the most skilful could such a character be made 
 interesting; but in Mr. Howells's hands the triumph is 
 achieved. 
 
 Howells's Theory as to Plot. It is not, however, only in the 
 raw material of his craft that such a realist limits himself. As 
 he constructs his novels, he writes in the belief that life cannot 
 be separated into a series of stories which are wholly isolated 
 from the events which precede and follow them. The writer 
 of romance, starting from the traditional "once upon a 
 time," lures the attention from point to point until he con- 
 cludes with a wholly satisfactory "and so they lived happily 
 ever after." To the realist this is much more pleasant than 
 lifelike. Mr. Howells gives the impression sometimes of 
 having told as much as he chose, and sometimes implies that 
 a sequel to the story just completed might be more interesting 
 than what he has related so far. Thus, on the concluding
 
 468 American Fiction Since 1860 
 
 page of April Hopes, the reader finds himself in a position 
 hardly less baffling than that with which Stockton ends his 
 famous story, The Lady or the Tiger. Throughout the 
 book two young people have been progressing toward the 
 wedding with which it ends. The lover has been irresolute 
 at times, at times elusive and almost dishonest; the bride has 
 not been without hours of jealousy and distrust. As they 
 roll away to the station after the wedding-reception a brief 
 dialogue for the last time reminds the reader of these sources 
 of danger; and when Mr. Howells concludes with "This was 
 the beginning of their married life," the reader is by no means 
 as content with the prospects of the future as the "happy- 
 ever-after" formula would leave him. The reason for his 
 dissatisfaction is to be found at the very root of realism in 
 the theory that no story ever comes to a complete stopping- 
 point. 
 
 Howells's Interest in Socialism. Mr. Howells has not been 
 content merely with making pen-portraits of interesting in- 
 dividuals, for a group of his most important works are signifi- 
 cant as increasingly definite criticisms of society. Long be- 
 fore there was any such thing as a Socialist party, or even a 
 Socialist movement in America, A Hazard of New Fortunes 
 and The World of Chance revealed a keen interest in the 
 difference between democracy as it might be and democracy 
 as it exists in America. The appearance of The Traveller from 
 Altruria and The Eye of a Needle showed that this was no 
 passing interest, but that Mr. Howells was deliberately using 
 his story-telling skill to encourage clear thinking on one of 
 the great problems of his time. To-day scores of other 
 writers are doing, or attempting to do, the same thing. 
 
 Henry James. Henry James (1843-), a man slightly 
 younger than W. D. Howells, is so severely realistic in his 
 method that he has been the subject of much lively discus- 
 sion. Mr. Howells has declared him the most distinguished 
 author now writing English, and, naturally, Robert Louis 
 Stevensoii, as a champion of romance, assailed him with a 
 fervor which verged on bitterness. An idea of the nature of 
 his subject-matter can be gained from almost any of his books, 
 for he has been consistent from Daisy Miller to The Golden
 
 The Realism of the West 469 
 
 Bowl. His backgrounds are almost always intercontinental 
 or European; his characters belong to the leisure class. His 
 episodes, when there are any, are adventures of the mind; his 
 most abundant source of excitement, duels of repartee. His 
 narrative method is unmistakably his own. In his plots 
 there is an absence of finality, though this is sometimes 
 wrongly adduced as demonstrating that his stories lack 
 structure. To be sure, his way is "startling when contrasted 
 with the usual methods of solution by rewards and punish- 
 ments, by crowned love, by fortune, by a broken leg or a 
 sudden death." The usual demand of mankind to be set 
 at rest is never met by one of the James novels. They end 
 as episodes in life end, with the sense of life still going on. In 
 detail his analytical habits of mind lead him to a refinement 
 of accumulated detail which is interesting or fatiguing accord- 
 ing to the temperament of the reader. As for his attitude 
 toward life, he pays attention to little but the beau monde. 
 It is not to be desired that he should take a trip into the 
 slums or indulge in one digression on the masses versus the 
 classes in each book, but the fact is worth noting that he 
 never does those things. On the whole, there is a distinct 
 absence of ''problems" or discussion of human institutions. 
 He restricts himself to a treatment of human nature in the 
 narrow field of polite society. 
 
 The Realism of the West. From the realism of metro- 
 politan society to the romantic realism of the Far West, there 
 is a long step. Just after the war time, Mark Twain and 
 Bret Harte were both of them citizens of the Pacific coast. 
 The society in which they found themselves was as un- 
 governed as the society of the frontier must always be. It 
 was made up of a composite group of members in whom 
 the only common feature was their restlessness. They 
 were for the most part men who had failed to "get on" at 
 home or who rebelled at "getting on" in the manner of a 
 conventional society which restricted their goings in and 
 comings out and limited their language to the yea and nay of 
 the Sermon on the Mount. So they chose to try their fortunes 
 anew in a freer atmosphere. Here all was yet to be done, 
 and here the capacity to do was at a higher premium than the
 
 470 American Fiction Since 1860 
 
 capacity to conform. The popular idea, however, that San 
 Francisco was full of thugs and bandits is as false as that 
 early Virginia was populated only by the off-scourings of 
 London society. In both communities there were men of 
 sound character and high ideals, and in the Californian com- 
 munity the opportunity to write of both good and bad, and 
 the range of really romantic possibilities which a keen ob- 
 server could find in an account of actual conditions, made an 
 opening for something which is true realism though as far 
 from the work of Howells and James as the East is from the 
 West. 
 
 Bret Harte (1839-1902). It is interesting and amusing to 
 read Bret Harte's introductory statement concerning his 
 first success, " The Luck of Roaring Camp." While the San 
 Franciscans and the Californians were not discontented with 
 existing conditions which prevailed among them, they had a 
 lingering sense of the proprieties of the conventional East, 
 and a keen distaste for the inevitable amusement which 
 a true account of themselves was sure to stimulate. The 
 first opposition to his story which Harte encountered was 
 from a decorous young woman on the Overland Monthly, of 
 which she was proofreader at the time. She could not be a 
 partner to the publication of a story which mentioned with 
 perfect frankness characters and events which are not dis- 
 cussed in the drawing-rooms of Beacon Street and Fifth 
 Avenue. From her the contagion spread to the proprietors 
 of the Monthly, and when, by somewhat heroic means, 
 Harte succeeded in overruling them both, the publication of 
 an account of the native heroism and devotion of a Western 
 mining-camp was pounced upon by illustrious defenders of 
 California as an outrage. The significant fact is that the 
 first genuine endorsement of this scandalous production came 
 from the magazine of all magazines which stands for New 
 England conservatism the Atlantic Monthly. As quickly 
 as the slow methods of communication of a half century age 
 could reach the West, came a congratulatory letter from its 
 publishers, offering what was then almost magnificent pay 
 for as many stories of the same outrageous sort as the author 
 would supply.
 
 Mark Twain 471 
 
 The point is, that the literary East recognized the literary 
 quality of the tale, which is true and vivid even though 
 it is shocking to the pride of the people of whom it is told. 
 And so Harte went on. His first success was the tale of the 
 regeneration of a whole camp through the uplifting effect of 
 common respectability which it felt in the presence of a little 
 foundling thrown into its midst. The second was the story 
 of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," in which the evil off- 
 scourings of a tough frontier boom town showed themselves 
 capable of sacrifice and heroism in a desperate struggle for 
 life with a mountain blizzard. Full of exciting adventures as 
 the strong stories of Harte are, romantic in nature as are the 
 episodes, they are as real as the subjective adventures of New 
 York and Boston life in their effort to portray things as they 
 were and life as it was. In this vein, which necessitated the 
 introduction of the unpleasant to as great a degree as the 
 tales of Howells demanded the introduction of the common- 
 place, Bret Harte did his best work. 
 
 . Mark Twain. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-) began 
 as Bret Harte did and with equal success, but, all in all, 
 has done a much broader and more varied work. He 
 was born in Missouri and brought up in Hannibal, a river- 
 town. While a boy he learned the printer's trade, but 
 was lured away from this by the fascination of life on the 
 Mississippi, and for five years followed the profession of 
 river-pilot. It is from one of the familiar calls of the 
 boat's crew when sounding the depth of the channel that his 
 nom de plume was drawn. His next experience was in a 
 trip to the West and an unsuccessful attempt at mining. 
 Next he drifted into journalism on the Pacific coast, and at 
 last, in 1867, established his reputation with a book of 
 humorous stories of which "The Jumping Frog" was the 
 chief. The joy of this foolish yarn is not in the frog but in 
 the character of the man who is supposed to tell about it. A 
 real Western character tells the story in living tones. 
 
 Mark Twain's Personal Observations. From this point 
 on, Mark Twain's work falls roughly into two classes, of 
 which the more important contains the books filled with his 
 rambling observations on men and manners. Their titles
 
 472 American Fiction Since 1860 
 
 indicate the subject-matter : Life on the Mississippi, Roughing 
 It, A Tramp A broad, Innocents A broad, Following the Equator. 
 They are largely autobiography of a very free-and-easy sort. 
 On a rather tenuous narrative thread are strung descriptions, 
 amusing episodes, essays in satire suggested thereby, and 
 occasionally serious commentaries on the ways of the world. 
 These books are uneven in quality, and quite without struc- 
 ture, if by structure is meant a plot. Yet the reader is lured 
 on by the intrinsic interest of passage after passage. When he 
 has once really started, even if occasionally the narrative does 
 seem to flag, he is reluctant to stop, for fear of missing some- 
 thing good on the next page. 
 
 The Short Stories and Novels. The other group includes 
 his stories, long and short. The best of these are simply 
 modifications of the personal anecdotes just mentioned. 
 Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are annals of the kind 
 of boy life through which the author himself had passed. 
 Pudd'nhead Wilson was a little more mature member of the 
 same generation. The Gilded Age (written in collaboration 
 with Charles' Dudley Warner) was a series of observations, 
 as far as Mark Twain's contribution goes, on the Middle 
 West in which he had grown up. They all deal with the un- 
 polished life of a new and growing country, not shrinking 
 from the unpleasant as they introduce the corner-loafer, the 
 cheap promoter, the risky financier, and the unscrupulous 
 politician. So keen and biting is their satire, not only on 
 fallible human nature in general, but also on definite Ameri- 
 can conditions and institutions, that one might carelessly 
 assume that the novelist was in despair about his country. 
 The most aggressive portions of Martin Chuzzlewit, with 
 which Dickens offended his American friends, are no harsher 
 than many pages to be found in The Gilded Age. Yet, in 
 truth, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and 
 Prince and Pauper show that if there be any failing of judg- 
 ment it is to be found in the overzealousness with which Mark 
 Twain upholds democratic theory and turns to ridicule the 
 romantic traditions of court and castle. 
 
 Characteristics of Mark Twain. The element which 
 chiefly marks his writings is his own buoyant individuality.
 
 Aspects of Contemporary Fiction 473 
 
 He is one of the great comic story-tellers. Although he has 
 written on "How to Tell a Story," his own gift as he exercises 
 it is an incommunicable thing. His eye is keen for "copy" 
 as he goes through the world. He has the journalistic sense 
 developed to an extraordinary degree, and this journalistic 
 sense involves not only seeing things from an external and 
 superficial point of view, but also interpreting them with 
 firm, sure touch, and finally presenting the results in a simple, 
 effective, intelligible style. Mark Twain is a critic as well 
 as a jester; his contribution to American fiction comes from 
 an application of his twofold powers to the presentation of 
 the Western life of the mid-century. 
 
 Two Kinds of Realism. An evident difference exists be- 
 tween the realism of Howells and James as contrasted with 
 that of Bret Harte and Mark Twain. In the one case the 
 Eastern writers restricted themselves to a portion of life which 
 was separated from the rest by social lines, dealing for the 
 most part with the well-to-do members of a conservative so- 
 ciety, and for the most part excluding the harsh and common 
 types. The Western writers limited their field of vision as 
 well; but since they were dealing with little towns instead of 
 great cities, they succeeded in their endeavor to portray the 
 life of the whole community. Both "schools" have de- 
 veloped many writers and many good stories, but of the two 
 kinds that after the fashion of Bret Harte and Mark Twain 
 has become far the more popular both among writers and 
 readers. There is no part of the country, North, South, East, 
 or West, which has not of late been plentifully expounded in 
 fiction. Every kind of town and every kind of citizen has 
 come in for the attention of a delighted book and magazine- 
 reading American public. 
 
 Aspects of Contemporary Fiction. Nor is this all. Of late 
 the country has been passing through a period of national 
 self-consciousness, during which it has been absorbed not only 
 in the way it looked but also in the way it was behaving. 
 Questions of social conduct as they affected business, politics, 
 the bar, the school, and the church have been in everybody's 
 mind. The problems of how to hold in check the baser human 
 instincts of selfishness and insincerity, and how to promote
 
 474 American Fiction Since 1860 
 
 the feeling for business integrity and civic righteousness, have 
 attracted the novelists as well as the legislators and preachers 
 and teachers. It is natural that this should be so. The 
 present literature of affairs owes its being to the awakened 
 interest of the people in the vital questions of their own com- 
 munity life; and it is very interesting while it lasts. But 
 literary history shows beyond peradventure that the most 
 permanent kind of national literature is that which "deals 
 with what is national and local in a way that is natural and 
 universal." Much of what is written to-day could be under- 
 stood in a hundred years only with the aid of footnotes and 
 historical introductions. That of American fiction which 
 has most of human nature in it, must outlive the part which 
 is for the most part interesting merely because of its relation 
 co current events. 
 
 REVIEW OUTLINE. Note the fact that the three great American 
 fiction writers who did their work before the Civil War were all writing 
 in a different vein from the most popular story-tellers of the present 
 generation. Define realism. In what field does William Dean How- 
 ells chiefly find his characters ? What is his habit and point of view 
 in connection with the conclusions of his stories ? What is the distinc- 
 tion between the realism of character portrayal and the realism of 
 social reform ? Mention several books of Mr. Howells which fall into 
 each of these classes. In what respects is the work of Henry James 
 comparable to that of Mr. Howells ? In what way does he carry the 
 process of realism even farther? In what respect is his outlook upon 
 life rather more limited ? 
 
 What was the general character of Californian society in the years 
 following the Civil War, and what unjust generalization is frequently 
 made ? How does the nature of the life out there give rise to a new 
 kind of realistic story ? What were the circumstances of Bret Harte's 
 first success? What is the significance of the respective attitudes of 
 the West and the East to his first story immediately after its appear- 
 ance ? What variety of Western experiences did Samuel L. Clemens 
 have up to the time of his first famous story? In what books does he 
 recount directly his own personal experiences. What story-books are 
 less informal in structure and less personal in quality but still full of the
 
 Reading Guide 475 
 
 West in which he grew up ? What books develop the attitude of an 
 American toward the traditions of the Old World? Is Mark Twain's 
 attitude in this respect representative of Americans as a whole? In 
 what different ways did the Eastern novelists and the Western novelists 
 limit the field of life from which they drew their material ? Can it be 
 said that one of these pairs has had more followers than the other ? 
 
 What has been a strong tendency in the fiction of the last few years ? 
 Why is this tendency a natural one? Is fiction which deals with local 
 and contemporary problems likely to achieve permanency? What is 
 the test ? 
 
 READING GUIDE. A useful book for the general problems 
 raised in this chapter is "A Study of Prose Fiction" by Bliss Perry 
 (Houghton, Mifflin). The field is too broad and the time for extensive 
 reading in a school course too limited, to make a detailed reading list 
 of immediate value. Good representative stories of the four men 
 specifically mentioned are "The Rise of Silas Lapham," by Howells; 
 "The American," by Henry James; "Tom Sawyer," by S. L. Clemens 
 (Mark Twain), and ''The Luck of Roaring Camp," by Bret Harte.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbot, The, 341 
 
 Abbotsford, 338 
 
 Absalom and Achilophel, 163 
 
 'Abraham Davenport," 435 
 
 "Abt Vogler," 319 
 
 Adam Bede, 358, 360 
 
 Adams, Parson, in Joseph. Andrews, 
 
 216, 406 
 ADDISON, JOSEPH, 176, 183, 187, 192, 
 
 195, 199, 227, 281, 291, 373, 378, 
 
 404; his life, 183; his style, 185 
 "Address to the De'il," 232 
 " Address to the Irish People," 266 
 "Adonais," 228, 269, 272, 310, 314 
 Advancement of Learning, 134 
 Age of Reason, The, 394 
 Alcestis, 46 
 
 Alchemist, The, 120, 121 
 ALCOTT, AMOS BRONSON, 423 
 " Alexander's Feast," 165 
 Alfoxden, 252 
 Alfred, King, 18 
 
 Algrind, in The Shepherd's Calendar, 81 
 Alhambra, The, 403 
 " Alisoun," 35 
 All for Love, 170 
 Allworthy, Mr., 217 
 Alton Locke, 356 
 Amelia, 217, 218 
 America Independent, 395 
 American Scholar, The, 418 
 " Amoretti," 81 
 
 " Ancient Mariner, The," 244, 246-248 
 "Andrea del Sarto," 319 
 Andreas, 15 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The, 20 
 Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 3-9, 11 
 Anglo-Saxons, The, 1-3, 369 
 Anne, Queen of England, 174-176, 
 
 177, 193 
 
 " Annus Mirabilis," 163 
 Antony ynd Cleopatra, 114, 116 
 Antiquary, The, 341, 342 
 Antonio, 112 
 Apollyon, 153 
 April Hopes, 468 
 Arbuthnot, 188 
 "Arcades," 145 
 Arcadia, 76, 85 
 Areopagitica, 142 
 Ariel, 118 
 
 ARIOSTO, 83, 141 
 
 ARNOLD, MATTHEW, 273, 290, 325, 
 
 328, 374, 448; life, 322; as a poet. 
 
 323; as a prose writer, 324 
 Artegall, Sir, in Faerie Queene, 83 
 Arthur, in King John, 111 
 Arthur, King, 12, 31, 32, 141, 146, 210, 
 
 310; in Marie d' Arthur, 58 
 Arthur Dimmesdale, in The Scarlet 
 
 Letter, 427 
 
 "Astrsea Redux," 163 
 Astrophel and Stella, 76 
 As You Like It, 94, 112 
 Atlantic Monthly, 442, 467, 470 
 Augustan Age, The, 175, 224, 225 
 " Auld Lang Syne," 234 
 Aurora Leigh, 322 
 AUSTEN, JANE. 335-337 
 Autocrat of the breakfast Table, 442 
 "Autumn Woods," 408 
 
 BACON, FRANCIS, 78, 161, 291, 371; 
 his life and character, 132; his sy9 
 tern, 133; essays, 134; style, 135 
 
 BAEDA, 14 
 
 Balaustion's Adventure, 316, 319 
 
 Balfour of Burley, 343 
 
 " Ballad of Agincourt," 73 
 
 Ballads of 15th century, 57 
 
 "Ballad of the Oysterman," 441 
 
 Balle, John, 52 
 
 Balmawapple, Laird, 341 
 
 Barabbas, in The Jew of Malta, 101 
 
 Bard, The, 227 
 
 Bardell, Widow, in Pickwick, 346 
 
 Barry Lyndon, 350 
 
 Battle of the Books, The, 1/6 
 
 "Battle of Brunanburh," 20 
 
 "Battle of Maldon," 20 
 
 Bay Psalm Book, The, 384 
 
 "Bean Field, The," 422 
 
 BEAUMONT, FRANCIS, 123, 372 
 
 Becket, 306 
 
 BEDE (THE VENERABLE BEDE), 14 
 
 Berkeley, Lord, 177 
 
 Belch, Sir Toby, 112 
 
 "Beleaguered City, The," 446 
 
 Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 445 
 
 Bennet, Lydia, in Pride and Prejudice, 
 336 
 
 Bennet, Mr., in Pride and Prejudice, 338 
 
 477
 
 478 
 
 Index 
 
 Beowulf, 4 
 
 Beowulf, the poem, 4-8, 369, 370 
 
 Bible, The, 53 
 
 " Biglow Papers," 438 
 
 Bishop Blougram's Apology, 316 
 
 BLAKE, WILLIAM, 229, 373 
 
 Blank verse, 69, 99, 149, 169, 228, 311, 
 
 372 
 
 Bleak House, 349 
 Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A, 314 
 Blithedale Romance, The, 428 
 Boccaccio, 45, 47 
 Bolingbroke, 174, 177, 188, 192 
 Book Concerning Piers the Plowman, 
 
 49, 54, 55, 56 
 Book of the Duchesse, 43 
 Book of Martyrs, 7 1 
 Booth, Capt., in Amelia, 218 
 Border Minstrelsy, 258 
 BOSWELL, JAMES, 196, 199 
 Bracebridge Hall, 403 
 Bradford, William, 381, 384 
 BRADSTREET, ANNE, 385 
 Bradwardine, Baron, 341 
 Bride, 264 
 
 " Bridge of Sighs," 283 
 Bridge water. Earl of, 145 
 "Brigs of Ayr," 235 
 British Prison Ship, 395 
 Britons, The, 10 
 Brobdingnag, 180 
 Brook Farm, 423 
 BRONTE, CHARLOTTE, 355, 358 
 BRONTE, EMILY, 355, 356 
 BROWN, CHARLES BROCKDEN, 395, 396 
 BROWNE, SIR THOMAS, 135, 136 
 BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 315, 
 
 316, 320-322, 324 
 BROWNING, ROBERT, 277, 283, 290, 
 
 298, 312-320, 322, 374 
 Brut, 30, 310 
 Brute Neighbors, 422 
 BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN, 407-410, 
 
 443 
 BULWER LYTTON, EDWARD, 283, 344, 
 
 350 
 
 Bumble, In Oliver Twist, 348 
 BUNYAN, JOHN, 138, 150, 151-153, 
 
 168, 169, 210, 212, 353, 371 
 Burbage, James, 97, 108 
 BURKE, EDMUND, 195, 201-204, 242, 
 
 373 
 BURNS, ROBERT, 230-236, 242, 254, 
 
 373, 391 
 
 Burroughs, John, 422 
 BurweU Papers, 380 
 BUTLER, SAMUEL, 168 
 BYRON, LORD, 242, 253, 259, 265, 268, 
 
 269, 283, 291, 374, 447; life, 260; 
 
 Eastern tales and dramas, 262; as 
 
 a descriptive poet, 263; as a satirist, 
 
 263; relation to his age, 264 
 
 Byron, Miss Harriet, in Sir Charles 
 
 Grandison, 214, 215 
 "By the Fireside," 320 
 
 Caedmon, 14, 370 
 
 Caesar, 114 
 
 Cain, 262 
 
 Caleb Williams, 222, 396 
 
 " Caliban upon Setebos," 319 
 
 Calidore, Sir, in Faerie Queens, 83 
 
 Camberwell, 312 
 
 Camelot, 31, 32 
 
 "Campaign, The," 183 
 
 Canterbury Tales, 44, 47-51, 162 
 
 CAREW, THOMAS, 136, 137 
 
 CARLYLE, THOMAS, 56, 248, 253, 254, 
 283, 290, 292, 302, 307, 315, 316, 
 324, 328, 340, 356, 374, 413, 458; 
 early life, 295; later life in London, 
 296; his personality, 299; spirit of 
 his work, 300; his style, 301 
 
 Carton, Sidney, 349 
 
 Casa Guidi Windows, 315, 322 
 
 "Castaway, The," 229 
 
 Castle of Indolence, The, 226 
 
 Castle of Olranto, The, 222 
 
 Castlewood, Lady, 355 
 
 Cataline, 120 
 
 Catherine, 350 
 
 Goto, 184 
 
 Cavalier Poets, 136, 168 
 
 Caxton, 58, 67 
 
 Cenci, The, 268 
 
 " Charge of the Light Brigade," 73, 307 
 
 Charles I, 130, 131, 137, 142, 168, 381 
 
 Charles II, 124, 131, 142, 160, 163, 167, 
 168, 372 
 
 Chartism, 298 
 
 CHATTERTON, THOMAS, 228, 258 
 
 CHAUCER, GEOFFREY, 27, 32, 39, 40, 
 41, 52, 56, 57, 65, 66, 162, 165, 185, 
 217, 278, 307, 370, 378, 379; his life, 
 42; influenced by the Roman de la 
 Rose, 43; on the Continent, 43; du- 
 ties as controller, 43; middle life and 
 Italian period, 43; English period 
 and Italian influence, 44; Legend of 
 Good Women, 44, 45; Canterbury 
 Tales, 47-51; his art, 47; contrasted 
 with Langland, 54 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 195 
 
 ChUde Harold, 262, 263 
 
 "Childe Roland," 319 
 
 Christ, 15 
 
 "Christabel," 244, 248 
 
 Christian Hero, The, 188 
 
 "Christmas Eve," 320 
 
 "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty 
 Years Ago," 243 
 
 Citizen of the World, The, 197, 199 
 
 Clarissa. 214, 215, 218
 
 Index 
 
 479 
 
 Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. See 
 
 MARK TWAIN 
 Cleopatra, 114 
 Clerk of Oxford, The, in Canterbury 
 
 Tales, 49 
 
 Cloister and the Hearth, The, 344 
 Coffee houses, 165, 176, 184, 224 
 COLERIDGE, SAMUEL, TAYLOR, 229, 
 
 242, 253, 258, 259, 283, 340, 373, 
 
 374; early life, 243; friendship with 
 
 Wordsworth, 244, 413; "Lyrical 
 
 Ballads," 246; later life, 247 ; poetic 
 
 characteristics, 248 
 Colin Clout's Come Home Again, 79 
 COLLIER, JEREMY, 170, 201 
 Collins, Mr., in Pride and Prejudice, 
 
 336 
 
 Colombe's Birthday, 314 
 Comedy of Errors, The, 109 
 "Come live with me and be my love," 
 
 86 
 
 Common Sense, 393 
 "Complaint of Chaucer to his Empty 
 
 Purse, The," 44 
 "Complete Angler," 139 
 Comus, 122, 141, 145, 149 
 Concord Days, 423 
 Conduct of the Allies, The, 177 
 Confessions of an English Opium- 
 
 Eater, 281, 282 
 CONGREVE, WILLIAM, 170 
 Conquerors of America Shut up in 
 
 Boston, The, 394 
 "Contemplation," 385 
 COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE, 396-407,466 
 " Corinna going a-Maying," 138 
 Corneille, 161 
 Corsair, The, 260, 264 
 "Cotter's Saturday Night, The," 232, 
 
 234, 436 
 
 "Cotton Boll, The," 462 
 Courtship of Miles Standish, The, 446 
 Coventry, 106 
 
 COVERDALE, MlLES, 71, 371 
 
 Coverley, Sir Roger de, 185 
 COWPER, WILLIAM, 228, 229, 373, 391 
 Crawley, Rawdon, 353 
 Crevecoeur, John Hector St. John de, 
 
 392, 421 
 Crisis, The, 393 
 "Cristina," 320 
 Critic, The, 201 
 Cromwell, 124, 130, 131, 142, 160, 163, 
 
 372 
 
 Cromwell (Carlyle), 298 
 "Crossing the Bar," 307 
 "Cry of the Children, The," 322 
 "Cuckoo Song," 34 
 Curse of Kehama, The, 258 
 Cursor Mundi, 32 
 Cynewulf, 15, 370 
 Cynthia, 78 
 
 Daisy Miller, 468 
 
 Dana, Richard H., 409 
 
 Danes, The, 18-20, 370 
 
 Daniel Deronda, 358, 360, 361 
 
 Dante's Divine Comedy, 447 
 
 " Dark Ladie, The," 244 
 
 DARWIN, 289, 309 
 
 David Copperfield, 348 
 
 Day of Doom, The, 384 
 
 Deans, Jeanie, 342 
 
 " Death in the Desert, A," 320 
 
 " Death of Blaunche the Duchesse," 
 
 43 
 
 " Death of Byrhtnoth," 20 
 Dedlock, Lady, in Bleak House, 349 
 Deerslayer, The, 405 
 Defarge, Mme., in A Tale of Two 
 
 Cities, 348 
 Defence of Poesy, 77 
 DEFOE, DANIEL, 210-213, 215, 217, 
 
 344, 373 
 
 DEKKER, THOMAS, 9& 
 Demogorgon, in Prometheus Unbound, 
 
 271 
 
 " Deor's Lament," 4 
 DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 253, 279, 281, 
 
 282, 374, 416 
 Desdemona, 115 
 
 Deserted Village, The, 197, 200, 391, 436 
 Devereux, Lady Penelope, 76 
 Dhu, Evan, 342 
 Dial, The, 423, 424 
 DICKENS, CHARLES, 290, 298, 344, 374, 
 
 378,429,466,472; life, 344; relation 
 
 to the public, 345; characters, 346; 
 
 his purpose, 348; his plots, 349 
 Dictionary of the English Language 
 
 (Johnson's), 195 
 Diedrich Knickerbocker, 410 
 Discourses in America, 323, 325 
 Discovery of Guiana, 78 
 " Dissertation on Roast Pig," 280 
 "Divinity School Address," 418 
 Doctor Faustus, 98, 100, 101 
 Dombey, Florence, 348 
 Donatello in The Marble Faun, 429 
 Don Juan, 262, 263 
 Don Sebastian, 170 
 " Dover Beach," 323 
 Drama, The, 90, 161, 209; its native 
 
 origin, 90; classic influence, 95; the 
 
 Elizabethan, 96, 280; decline, 123; 
 
 during the Restoration, 169, 201 
 Dramatic Lyrics, 314 
 Dramatic Romances, 314 
 Drapier's Letters, The, 177 
 DRAYTON MICHAEL, 73 
 " Dream Children," 280 
 "Dream-Fugue," 282 
 " Drink to me only with thine eyes," 
 
 122 
 Drury Lane Theatre, 186, 201
 
 480 
 
 Index 
 
 DRYDEN, JOHN, 161, 162, 169, 170, 
 175, 184, 192, 220, 291. 372; early 
 life, 163; satires, 163; later life, 165; 
 as a critic, 165; character, 166; his 
 poetry, 166; his prose, 167 
 
 "Duncan Gray," 234 
 
 Dunciad, The, 188, 192 
 
 " Easter Day," 320 
 
 Ecclesiastical History of the English 
 People, 14, 19 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 260, 291 
 
 Edward II, 98, 101 
 
 Edward III, 39 
 
 Edward VI, 70 
 
 EDWARDS, JONATHAN, 387, 388 
 
 Elegy in a Country Churchyard, 227, 
 391, 436 
 
 " Elegy of Mr. Partridge, An," 179 
 
 Elene, 15 
 
 ELIOT, GEORGE, 185, 290, 344, 375, 
 430; life, 357; novels, 358; as a real- 
 ist, 358; as a psychologist, 360; as 
 a moralist, 361 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 70. 75, 
 77, 78, 82, 83, 95, 106, 109, 124, 129, 
 131, 160, 168, 371 
 
 Elizabethan Age, 72. 121, 122, 153, 
 160, 165, 166, 193, 209, 274, 283, 
 306, 307 
 
 Eloisa to Abelard, 187 
 
 EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, 253, 257, 
 296, 307, 323, 415-420; as clergy- 
 man, 415; English friends, 416; as 
 a lecturer, 419; influence, 420 
 
 Endymion, 228, 269, 274, 278 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
 260 
 
 English Humorists of the Eighteenth 
 Century, 350 
 
 English Mail-Coach, 282 
 
 Enoch Arden, 306 
 
 Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of 
 the Sublime and the Beautiful, 201 
 
 Epilogue to the Satires, 188 
 
 " Epipsychidion," 269 
 
 "Epistle of Karshish," 318 
 
 " Epistle to Davie," 232 
 
 Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 188, 191 
 
 " Epithalamion," 81 
 
 " Essay on Dramatic Poesy, An," 167 
 
 Essay on Man, 188, 192, 200 
 
 " Essay on Satire," 167 
 
 Essays, Arnold's, 325 
 
 Essays, Bacon's, 134 
 
 Essays in Criticism, 323 
 
 Essays, Macaulay's, 291 
 
 Essays of Elia, 280 
 
 Essays on Criticism, 187, 190 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 73, 83 
 
 " Ethnogenesis," 462 
 
 Euphues and his England, 73 
 
 Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit, 73 
 
 Euphuism, 73, 86 
 
 Evans, Mary Ann. See GEORGE ELJOT 
 
 Evangeline, 446 
 
 Eve of St. Agnes, 276, 278 
 
 "Evelyn Hope," 320 
 
 Evening Mirror, The, 452 
 
 Every Man in His Humour, 120, 121 
 
 Examiner, 181 
 
 Excursion, The, 253 
 
 "Expostulation and Reply," 252 
 
 Fable for Critics, 406 
 
 Fables (Dryden), 165 
 
 Faerie Queene, 32, 73, 79, 81-83, 86, 311 
 
 Fagin, in" Oliver Twist, 348 
 
 Faithful Shepherdess, The, 123 
 
 Falstaff, 111, 118. 120 
 
 " Fall of the House of Usher, The," 454 
 
 Felix Holt, 358 
 
 Fermor, Miss, in The Rape of the Lock, 
 
 191 
 
 Fields, James T., 427 
 FIELDING, HENRY, 216-219, 221, 336, 
 
 373, 378 
 
 " Fight at Finnsburg, The," 8 
 Fingal, 228 
 First Folio of Shakespeare, The, 119, 
 
 122 
 
 " Flee fro the Press," 52 
 FLETCHER, JOHN, 123, 372 
 FORD, JOHN, 124 
 " Forest Hymn, A," 408 
 Foresters, The, 306 
 " Forget not yet," 69 
 Fors Clavigera, 327 
 Fortunate Islands, The, 122 
 Fortunes of Nigel, 343 
 Four Georges, The, 350 
 Four P's, The, 94 
 FOXE, JOHN, 71 
 " Fra Lippo Lippi," 319 
 FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, 387-391 
 Freeport, Sir Andrew, 185 
 French Revolution (Carlyle), 298, 299, 
 
 302 
 
 FRENEAU, PHILIP, 394, 443 
 Friar Tuck, 94 
 Fuller, Margaret, 423 
 Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 
 
 The, 212 
 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle, 95 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 434 
 "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," 
 
 138 
 
 Gawayne, 31 
 GAY, JOHN, 188 
 Gellatley, David, 341 
 "Genevieve," 244 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 29, 58, 110, 
 
 146, 310
 
 Index 
 
 481 
 
 George I, 174 
 
 George II, 174 
 
 George III, 174 
 
 Giaour, The, 260 
 
 Gilded Age, The, 472 
 
 " Giles Corey," 446 
 
 Gleeman, the (glefiman), 3 
 
 Globe, The (theatre), 97, 108, 109 
 
 "Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast, 
 The," 233 
 
 GODWIN, WILLIAM, 222, 266, 396 
 
 GOETHE, 264, 296 
 
 "Gold Bug, The," 453 
 
 GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 195, 197-200, 
 202, 221, 373, 401, 404 
 
 Golden Bowl, The, 
 
 Goneril, 117 
 
 Good-Natured Man, The, 199 
 
 Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, 95, 99 
 
 GOSSON, STEPHEN, 77 
 
 "Governail of Princes," 57 
 
 Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sin- 
 ners, 138, 151 
 
 Graham's Magazine, 452, 453 
 
 "Grammarian's Funeral, The," 319 
 
 Grasmere, 252, 253, 281 
 
 GRAY, THOMAS, 226, 258, 391 
 
 GREENE, ROBERT, 85, 98, 108 
 
 Grendel, 6, 7 
 
 Grindal, Archbishop, 81 
 
 Grub Street, 193, 197 
 
 Guardian, The, 186 
 
 Guenevere, 32 
 
 Gulliver's Travels, 177, 179, 180 
 
 Guy Mannering, 341, 342 
 
 Guyon, Sir, in Faerie Queene, 83 
 
 HALES, THOMAS DE, 33 
 
 Hallam, Arthur Henry, 303-305 
 
 Hamlet, 111, 112, 114, 115, 162 
 
 " Hanging of the Crane," 447 
 
 HARDY, THOMAS, 94 
 
 Harold, 306 
 
 HARTE, BRET, 469-473 
 
 Harvey Birch, 406 
 
 HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 247 
 
 Havelock the Dane, 31 
 
 HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, 396, 424- 
 430, 466; boyhood, 424; experience 
 in the Custom-House, 426; foreign 
 consul, 426; spiritual leader, 430 
 
 HAYNE, PAUL HAMILTON, 462, 463 
 
 Hazard of New Fortunes, A, 468 
 
 " Hear the Voice of the Bard," 229 
 
 Heart of Midlothian, 342 
 
 Henry IV of England, 40 
 
 Henry IV, 111 
 
 Henry V, 111 
 
 Henry VI, 64 
 
 Henry VIII, 67-70 T5, 129, 153, 372 
 
 Henry Esmond, 350, 352 
 
 HERBERT, WILLIAM, Earl of Pem- 
 broke, 108 
 
 Heroes and Hero-Worship, 298, 300 
 
 Heroic couplet, the, 162, 167, 200, 372 
 
 HERRICK, ROBERT, 34, 136-138 
 
 Hesperides and Noble Numbers, 138 
 
 Hester in The Scarlet Letter, 427 
 
 Heywood, John, 94 
 
 Hiawatha, 446 
 
 "Highland Reaper, The," 255 
 
 Hind and the Panther, The, 165 
 
 Historia Bretonum, 29 
 
 History of England (Macaulay), 291 
 
 History of Fredrich II, 298 
 
 History of the World, Raleigh's, 78 
 
 HOCCLEVE. See OCCLEVE 
 
 Hogarth, 175, 184, 216 
 
 HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, 440; sa 
 tires, 441; essays, 442 
 
 " Holy Fair, The," 235 
 
 "Holy Willie," 232 
 
 Homer, Pope's, 190 
 
 Homilies, 20 
 
 Homeward Bound, 405 
 
 Home as Found, 405 
 
 Honeycomb, Will, 185 
 
 HOOD, THOMAS, 283 
 
 Hours of Idleness, 260 
 
 House of Fame, 44, 45 
 
 House of the Seven Gables, The, 427 
 
 Houyhnhnms, 180, 181 
 
 HOWARD, HENRY, 69. See SURREY 
 
 Ho WELLS, WILLIAM DEAN, 466, 467, 
 468 
 
 Hrothgar, in Beowulf, 4-6 
 
 Huckleberry Finn, 472 
 
 Hudibras, 168, 394 
 
 " Hugh of Lincoln," 50 
 
 Humphrey Clinker, 219 
 
 HUNT, LEIGH, 273, 274, 298 
 
 Hygelac, 5 
 
 " Hymn to Death," 409 
 
 " Hymn in Honour of Heavenly Beau- 
 ty," 81 
 
 " Hymn in Honour of Heavenly Love," 
 81 
 
 "Hymns in Honour of Love and 
 Beauty," 81 
 
 Hypatia, 357 
 
 Hyperion, 276 
 
 "Ichabod," 435 
 
 Idylls of the King, The, 306, 310 
 
 Iliad, The, 187 
 
 "II Penseroso," 141, 144 
 
 Imitations of Horace, 191 
 
 "Imperfect Sympathies," 280 
 
 Innocents Abroad, 472 
 
 In Memoriam, 306, 309 
 
 Interludes, 94 
 
 IRVING, WASHINGTON, 401-404, 439 
 
 Isabella, 276
 
 482 
 
 Index 
 
 " It is a Beauteous Evening," 253 
 Ivanhoe, 343 
 
 Jaffrey Pyncheon in The House of the 
 Seven Gables, 428 
 
 James I of England, 77, 116, 118, 120, 
 122, 124, 130, 133, 371 
 
 James I of Scotland, 57 
 
 James II, 160, 169, 174 
 
 JAMES, HENRY, 468, 469 
 
 Jane Eyre, 356 
 
 Jarvie, Baillie, 342 
 
 Jew of Malta, The, 98 
 
 ''John Gilpin," 229 
 
 JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 166, 186, 197, 291, 
 373; his life and works, 193, 196; 
 his style, 195; compared to Gold- 
 smith, 199 
 
 "Jolly Beggars," 234 
 
 Jonathan Wild, 217 
 
 JONSON, BEN, 78, 81, 106, 166, 170, 
 371, 378; his opinion of Shake- 
 speare, 118, 122; his life, 119; his 
 plays, 120; his "humors," 121; his 
 realism, 121; his masques, 122; his 
 lyric gift, 122 
 
 Joseph Andrews, 216 
 
 Journal of a Journey from Boston to 
 New York, 383 
 
 Journal of the Plague Year, 212 
 
 Journal to Stella, 177 
 
 Judith, 15 
 
 " Julian and Maddalo," 268 
 
 Juliet, 110, 112, 114, liS 
 
 Julius Ccesar, 113 
 
 KEATS, JOHN, 228, 242, 269, 270, 272, 
 283, 298, 311, 314, 374, 447; early 
 life and poetry, 273; his last volume 
 and death, 274, 275; as a man, 276; 
 qualities of his poetry, 277 
 
 Kenilworth, 343 
 
 Kenilworth Castle, 106 
 
 Keswick, 253 
 
 King, Edward, 145 
 
 King Horn, 31 
 
 King James Bible, the, 151 
 
 King John, 111 
 
 King Lear, 116, 319 
 
 KINGSLEY, CHARLES, 344, 356 
 
 King's Quair, The, 57 
 
 Knickerbocker History of New York, 403 
 
 Knickerbocker Magazine, The, 410 
 
 KNIGHT, SARAH KEMBLE, 383, 386 
 
 Knight's Tale, 32, 52, 57 
 
 " Kubla Khan," 244, 248 
 
 KYD, THOMAS, 98 
 
 Lady or the Tiger, The, 468 
 "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," 322 
 Lady Madeline in The Fall of the 
 House of Usher, 454 
 
 Lady Meed, in Piers the Plowman, 55 
 
 "Lady of Shalott, The," 303, 311 
 
 Lady of the Lake, The, 259 
 
 Lady Teazle, 201 
 
 Lake poets, 258, 279, 281 
 
 "L' Allegro," 141, 144, 149 
 
 LAMB, CHARLES, 187, 243, 279-281, 
 
 283, 352 
 Lamia, 276, 278 
 
 LANGLAND, WILLIAM, 49, 54-56, 129 
 LANIER, SIDNEY, 461, 462 
 Laputa, 180 
 Lara, 264 
 
 Last of the Mohicans, The, 405 
 Last Days of Pompeii, 344 
 " Last Fight of the Revenge," 78 
 Last Poems (Mrs. Browning), 322 
 " Last Ride Together, The," 320 
 Latter-Day Pamphlets, 298 
 Laud, William, 381 
 LAYAMON, 29, 30, 310 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 258, 
 
 290 
 
 Lays of Ancient Rome, 291 
 Leatherstocking Tales, 405 
 Leaves of Grass, 458 
 " Leech-Gatherer, The," 253, 255 
 Legend of Good Women, 44, 45 
 Leicester, Earl of, 75, 79, 81, 83, 106, 
 
 343 
 
 "Letters of an American Farmer," 391 
 Lewes, George Henry, 358 
 Libera Nos, Domine, 394 
 Life of Johnson, 196 
 Life of Nelson (Southey), 258 
 Life of Savage, 193 
 Life of Schiller (Carlyle), 296 
 Life of Scott, 338 
 Life of John Sterling, 298 
 Life on the Mississippi, 472 
 Lilliput, 180, 353 
 " Lines in Early Spring," 252 
 " Lines Written Among the Euganean 
 
 Hills," 268 
 "Litany, The," 138 
 Literary Club, the, 166, 195 
 Lires of the English Poets, 195 
 LOCKHART, 338 
 "Locksley Hall," 306 
 Lollard movement, 53, 54, 65 
 London (by Dr. Johnson), 193 
 Looking Glass for the Times, 381 
 Long Tom Coffin, 406 
 LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH, 
 
 439, 442, 448; education, 443; at 
 
 Harvard, 445; translations, 447 
 " Lotus-Eaters, The," 303 
 Lovelace, in Clarissa, 214, 215 
 LOVELACE, RICHARD, 136. 137 
 "Lover's Message, The," 17 
 "Love-Rune" of Thomas de Hales, 39 
 Love's Labour's Lost, 109
 
 Index 
 
 483 
 
 LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 437, 442; 
 diplomat, 439; his versatility, 440 
 
 Lucas, Sir William, in Pride and Preju- 
 dice, 336 
 
 "Luck of Roaring Camp, The," 470 
 
 "Lucrece," 109 
 
 Ludlow Castle, 145 
 
 "Lycidas," 130, 141, 145, 310 
 
 LYDGATE, JOHN, 56 
 
 LYLY, JOHN, 73, 85, 86, 98 
 
 Lyrical Ballads, 246, 256, 259, 373 
 
 Lyrics, Elizabethan, 86 
 
 MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 289- 
 
 295, 301, 374 
 Macbeth, 115, 121 
 MacFlecknoe, 165, 192 
 M'Fingal, 394 
 MACPHERSON, 228 
 MacWheeble, Baillie, 341 
 Madame Eglantyne, in Canterbury 
 
 Tales, 48 
 Magnolia, 382 
 Maid Marian, 94 
 
 MALORY, SIR THOMAS, 58, 146, 310 
 Malvolio. 112 
 Manfred, 262 
 Mansfield Park, 336 
 Maria, in Twelfth, Night, 112 
 Marble Faun, The, 428 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 176, 183 
 MARLOWE, CHRISTOPHER, 85, 86, 98, 
 
 108, 111, 161, 371 
 Marmion, 258, 259 
 "Marshes of Glynn," 462 
 MATHER, COTTON, 381, 382 
 Mather, Increase, 381 
 "Mary in Heaven," 234 
 Mary, Queen, 70, 72 
 Masque of Blackness, The, 122 
 Masque of Queens, The, 122 
 Masques, 90, 110, 122, 145 
 Maud, 306 
 
 "May Queen, The," 303 
 Medal, The, 165 
 
 Melibeus, in Canterbury Tales, 51 
 Men and Women, 315 
 Menaphon, 85 
 
 Merchant of Venice. The, 112 
 Mercutio, 110 
 Merlin, 10 
 
 " Merlin and the Gleam," 307 
 Merope, 323 
 Merrilies, Meg, 342 
 Metrical Romances, 29 
 Micawber, in David Copperfleld, 346 
 "Michael," 253, 255 
 Middlemarch, 358, 361 
 MIDDLETON, THOMAS, 123 
 Midnight Consultation, The, 394 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 109, 118 
 MILL, JOHN STUART, 298, 299, 358 
 
 Mul on the Floss, The, 358, 360 
 
 "Miller's Daughter, The," 303 
 
 MILTON, JOHN, 84, 122, 130, 161, 168, 
 185, 224, 235, 255, 274, 291, 298, 
 310, 311, 371, 372, 409; his youth, 
 139; life at Norton, 141; public life 
 and prose writings, 141; last years, 
 143; poems. 143-150; his "sublim- 
 ity," 140; his verse and style, 149 
 
 Miracle plays, 90-93 
 
 Modern Painters, 326, 328 
 
 "Modest Proposal," 179 
 
 Monastery, The, 341 
 
 Manikins, The, 405 
 
 Monmouth, Duke of, 163 
 
 Moral Epistles, 188, 191 
 
 Morality plays, 93, 94 
 
 MORE, SIR THOMAS, 68, 181, 371 
 
 More Wonders of the Invisible World, 
 382 
 
 Morgain, in Sir Gawane and the Green 
 Knight, 32 
 
 Morris, Dinah, in Adam Bede, 360, 
 361 
 
 Morle d'Arthure, 31, 58, 304 
 
 Morton, Nathaniel, 381 
 
 Mr. Sludge the Medium, 316 
 
 Much Ado About Nothing, 112 
 
 Munera Pulveris, 326 
 
 "Murders of the Rue Morgue, The," 
 453 
 
 "My Last Duchess," 319 
 
 "My Lute Awake," 69 
 
 "My Star," 320 
 
 Nabob of Arcot's Debts, The, 202 
 
 NASH, THOMAS, 85, 98 
 
 Natty Bumppo, 406 
 
 Nature, 416 
 
 "Necessity of Atheism. The," 266 
 
 Neptune's Triumph, 122 
 
 Nether Stowey, 244 
 
 " Never the Time and Place," 316 
 
 Newes from Virginia, 384 
 
 Neuxomes, The, 350 
 
 New English Canaan, The, 381 
 
 New England Lyceum. 419 
 
 Northanger Abbey, 336 
 
 Norna of the Fitful Head, 342 
 
 Norman Conquest, the, 25, et seq., 370 
 
 Northumbria, 13, 18, 370 
 
 Norton, Charles Eliot, 440 
 
 NORTON, THOMAS, 95, 99 
 
 Novel, The, 152, 213, 214; its origin, 
 209; romantic, 221, 222; of the 
 nineteenth century, 335, et seq. 
 
 Novum Organum, 134 
 
 "Obermann," 324 
 Oberon, 110 
 OCCLEVE, THOMAS, 56 
 Ochiltree, Edie, 342
 
 484 
 
 Index 
 
 44 Ode to Duty," 253 
 
 "Ode on the Intimations of Immor- 
 tality, The," 253, 257 
 
 "Ode to a Skylark," 269, 272 
 
 " Ode to the West Wind." 268. 272 
 
 Odyssey (Pope's), 187 
 
 "CEnone," 303 
 
 "Old China," 280 
 
 Old Curiosity Shop, 348 
 
 Old King Cole, 94 
 
 Old Mortality, 341, 343 
 
 Oliver Twist, 348, 350 
 
 Olivia, in the Vicar of Wakefidd, 221 
 
 " On First Looking into Chapman's 
 Homer," 274 
 
 41 On a Grecian Urn," 276-278 
 
 ** On Melancholy," 276 
 
 44 On the Receipt of my Mother's 
 Picture," 229 
 
 "On the Tenure of Kings and Magis- 
 trates," 142 
 
 44 On Translating Homer," 325 
 
 44 One Word More," 320 
 
 Origin of Species, 289 
 
 Orlando Furioso, 83 
 
 Orphic Sayings, 423 
 
 Osborne, Amelia, in Vanity Fair, 353, 
 354 
 
 Ossian, 228, 258 
 
 Othello, 115, 117, 121 
 
 "Outcasts of Poker Flat. The." 471 
 
 Over the Tea-Cups, 442 
 
 Pageants, 90, 110 
 
 PAINE, THOMAS, 393 
 
 " Palamon and Arcite," 50. 165 
 
 Pamela, 213-216 
 
 Paracelsus, 314 
 
 Paradise Lost, 143. 146-150. 153, 291, 
 
 310, 372 
 
 Paradise Regained, 143, 146-150 
 Parlement of Fowls, 44, 45, 52 
 "Partridge Predictions, The," 179 
 "Passing of Arthur, The." 311 
 Pathfinder, The, 405 
 Pastorals (Pope's), 187 
 " Patient Grissel, the Clerk's Tale," 61 
 Patronage, 195 
 PAULDINO, J. K., 401 
 Pauline, 314. 317 
 Pearl, The, 33 
 Pecksniff, 346 
 Peebles, Peter, 342 
 PEELE, GEORGE, 85, 86, 98. 108 
 Pendennis, 350 
 
 PEPYS, SAMUEL, 168, 169, 383 
 PERCY, BISHOP, 228 
 " Percy and Douglas," 77 
 Perdita. 117 
 Peregrine Pickle, 219 
 Periodicals, early, 181, 193 
 Peterborough, 20, 26 
 
 Petrarch, 45, 51, 69 
 
 Petre, Lord, in The Rape of the Lock, 
 191 
 
 Philistinism, 325 
 
 44 Philosophy of Composition, The," 453 
 
 Philostrato, 45 
 
 Phoenix, The, 16 
 
 Picaresque romances, 210 
 
 Pickwick, 346, 348, 350 
 
 Pilot, The, 405 
 
 "Pictor Ignotus," 319 
 
 " Piers the Plowman," 49, 55-56 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress, The, 41, 152, 168, 
 210, 212, 291, 372 
 
 Pioneers, The, 405 
 
 Pippa Passes, 314, 317 
 
 Pirate, The, 342 
 
 " Pit and the Pendulum, The," 454 
 
 Plautus, 95, 109 
 
 POE, EDGAR ALLAN, 396, 451-456, 466; 
 life, 452; editorial work. 452; char- 
 acterization by N. P. Willis, 452 
 
 Poems Before Congress, 322 
 
 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect 
 (Burns), 233 
 
 Poems by Two Brothers, 303 
 
 "Poetic Principle, The," 453 
 
 Poetical Sketches (Blake's), 229 
 
 Pompilia, 315 
 
 Ponds, The, 422 
 
 Poor Richard's Almanac, 390 
 
 POPE, ALEXANDER, 161, 166, 176, 184, 
 193, 196, 221, 224, 260, 373; early 
 life, 187; limitation, 188; Homer, 
 190; Rape of the Lock, 191; Satires, 
 191; Essay on Man, 192 
 
 Portia, 112, 114 
 
 Praeterita, 327, 328 
 
 Prairie, The, 405 
 
 Precaution, 405 
 
 Prelude, The, 249, 253, 255 
 
 Prick of Conscience, 33 
 
 Pride and Prejudice, 336 
 
 Prince Hal, 111 
 
 " Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," 316 
 
 Princess, The, 306, 308, 327 
 
 Prometheus Unbound, 268, 271 
 
 Prospero, 117, 118 
 
 " Prothalamion," 81 
 
 Puck, 110 
 
 Pudd'nhead Wilson, 472 
 
 Purdie, Tom, 341 
 
 Puritans and puritanism, 75, 77 84, 
 124, 129, 139, 145, 161, 168, 170 
 185, 210, 212, 337, 370 
 
 Pyramus, 110 
 
 Queen Mab, 266, 312 
 
 Queen Mary, 306 
 
 Quentin Durward, 343 
 
 Quilp, In Old Curiosity Shop, 348
 
 Index 
 
 485 
 
 Racine, 161 
 
 " Rainy Day, The," 446 
 
 RALEIGH, SIR WALTER, 73, 77-79, 82, 
 
 83, 168 
 
 Ralph Roister Doister, 95 
 
 Rambler, The, 195, 442 
 
 Rape of the Lock, The, 187, 191 
 
 Rasselas, 195, 197 
 
 READE, CHARLES, 344, 429 
 
 Red Cross Knight, The, 83 
 
 Redgauntlet, 341, 342 
 
 Reflections on the Revolution in France, 
 
 203 
 Reformation, The, 45, 65, 70, 71, 73, 
 
 84, 86, 129, 153, 371 
 Religio Laici, 165, 167 
 Religio Medici, 135 
 Reliques of Ancient Poetry, 228 
 Remarkable Providences, 381 
 
 " Reminiscences," Carlyle's, 299 
 Renaissance, The, 65, et. seep, 76, 82, 85, 
 
 86, 95, 101, 122, 135, 153, 161, 181, 
 
 210, 225, 371, 372; denned, 65; in 
 
 Italy, 65; in England, 66-68 
 Restoration, The, 98, 129, 143, 150, 
 
 152, 160-162, 167, 169, 170, 174, 372 
 Return of the Druses, The, 314 
 Return of the Native, 94 
 " Revenge, The," 306, 307 
 Review, 211 
 
 " Rhyme of Sir Thopas," 51 
 Rich, Lord, 76 
 Richard II, 40 
 Richard II, 111 
 Richard III, 64 
 Richard III, 111 
 " Richard the Redeless," 55 
 RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, 213-217, 221, 
 
 373, 378 
 
 Riddles (Cynewulf), 16 
 Rights of Man, The, 393 
 "Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The," 
 
 244, 246-248 
 
 Ring and the Book, The, 315 
 " Rip Van Winkle," 403 
 Ripley, Rev. George, 423 
 Rivals, The, 201 
 " Robert of Lincoln," 408 
 Robin Hood, 35, 94 
 Robin Hood plays, 94 
 Robinson Crusoe, 212 
 Roderick Usher, 454 
 Rob Roy, 342 
 
 Rockingham, Marquis of, 202 
 Roderick Random, 219, 396 
 Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet 
 
 Letter, 427 
 ROLLE, RICHARD, 33 
 Roman de la Rose, 43, 46 
 Romans in Britain, The, 10-12 
 Romanticism, 153, 203, 222, 225-227, 
 
 236, 246. 294. 373 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 109. 110 
 
 Romola, 358, 361 
 
 Rosalind, 112, 114 
 
 RUSKIN, JOHN, 283, 290, 298, 312, 325- 
 
 328, 374 
 Rydal Mount, 252, 253 
 
 SACKVILLE, THOMAS, 95, 99 
 
 " Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos 
 Barton, The," 358 
 
 "Salmagundi Papers," 401 
 
 St. Albans, 133. See BACON 
 
 St. Juliana, 15 
 
 Samson Agonistes, 143, 149 
 
 Sartor Resartus, 295, 296, 300-302 
 
 "Saul," 320 
 
 Scarlet Letter, The, 427 
 
 Scop, 3 
 
 Scenes of Clerical Life, 358 
 
 "Scholar Gypsy, The," 324 
 
 School for Scandal, The, 201 
 
 School of Abuse, The, 77 
 
 "Scotch Drink," 232 
 
 "Scots Wha Hae Wi 1 Wallace Bled," 
 234 
 
 SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 204, 233, 242, 
 253, 283, 290, 345, 350, 374; early 
 life, 337; at Abbotsford, 338; char- 
 acter, 340; career as a poet, 258; 
 qualities of his poetry, 250; Scotch 
 novels and characters, 341; use of 
 history, 343; his example, 344 
 
 Scriblerus Club, 188 
 
 Seasons, The, 226 
 
 Sedley, Amelia, 353 
 
 Sedley, Joseph, 353, 354 
 
 " See the chariot at hand here of love," 
 122 
 
 Sejanus, 120 
 
 "Self- Dependence," 324 
 
 Selling of Joseph, The, 383 
 
 Sense and Sensibility, 336 
 
 "Sensitive Plant, The," 269 
 
 Sentimental Journey, 220 
 
 Sesame and Lilies, 327 
 
 Seven Lamps of Architecture, The, 326 
 
 SEWALL, SAMUEL, 382 
 
 SHAD WELL, 165 
 
 Sharp, Becky, 353, 354 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 163 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, 69, 76, 86, 
 97, 98, 120, 121, 122, 124, 139, 
 161, 170, 195, 200, 224, 230, 278, 
 280, 302, 312, 319, 371; early life, 
 106; in London, 108; period of ex- 
 periment, 109; earliest masterpieces, 
 109; historical plays, 111; joyous 
 comedies, 112; sonnets, 113; Roman 
 and Greek plays, 113; great trage- 
 dies, 114-117; last pl&ys, 217; con- 
 temporary appreciation, 118; care- 
 lessness of fame, il&
 
 486 
 
 Index 
 
 SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, 34, 228, 242, 
 259, 262-264, 283, 298, 310, 312, 
 340, 374; early life, 265-268; in 
 Italy, 268; death, 269; as seen by 
 his contemporaries, 270; Prometheus 
 Unbound, 271; as a lyric poet, 271; 
 his myth-making power, 272 
 
 Shepherd's Calendar, The, 73, 79, 81 
 
 SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY, 201 
 
 She Stoops to Conquer, 199 
 
 "She Was a Phantom of Delight," 252 
 
 Shirley, 356 
 
 SHIRLEY, JAMES, 124 
 
 Shortest Way with Dissenters, The, 211 
 
 "Short View of the Profanity and 
 Immorality of the English Stage," 170 
 
 Shylock, 112 
 
 SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, 73, 75-77, 81, 83, 
 85, 371 
 
 Silas Laphatn, 467 
 
 Silas Marner, 358 
 
 Silent Woman, The, 120, 121 
 
 Simple Cobbler of Agawam, 381 
 
 Sir Charles Grandison, 214, 215 
 
 "Sir Galahad and Queen Guinevere," 
 311 
 
 Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, 
 31, 34 
 
 Sir Thomas More, 94 
 
 Sir Tristrem, 31 
 
 Sketches by Boz, 345, 346 
 
 "Sketch Book. The," 403 
 
 "Skylark," 269, 272 
 
 " Sleepy Hollow," 403 
 
 SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN, 380, 386 
 
 SMOLLETT, TOBIAS, 219, 373, 396 
 
 Sohrab and Rustum, 324 
 
 "Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister," 319 
 
 "Solitary Reaper, The," 253 
 
 "Song at the Feast of Brougham Cas- 
 tle," 253 
 
 " Song of Myself," 458 
 
 " Song of the Shirt," 283 
 
 Songs of Innocence and Experience, 
 229, 259 
 
 Sonnets, 69, 76, 113 
 
 Sonnets from the Portuguese, 320. 322 
 
 Sordello, 314 
 
 Sorrel, Hetty, in Adam Bede, 360 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger, The, 452 
 
 SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 243, 244, 253, 258, 
 281, 407 
 
 Spanish Student, The. 445 
 
 Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 
 280 
 
 Spectator, rfte,183,186,193, 195, 199,442 
 
 "Spectre Bridegroom, The," 403 
 
 SPENCER, HERBERT, 133, 358 
 
 SPENSER, EDMUND, 32, 73, 76, 79-85, 
 161, 187, 224, 226, 278, 371; his life, 
 79; Cambridge period, 81; in Lon- 
 don and Ireland, 82; his art, 84 
 
 "Spring," 422 
 
 Spy, The, 405 
 
 "Stage -Players' Complaint, The," 124 
 
 STEELE, RICHARD, 170, 176, 183, 186, 
 
 373 
 
 " Stepping Westward," 255 
 STERNE, LAWRENCE, 219-221, 373 
 STEVENSON, ROBERT Louis, 343, 
 
 468 
 
 Stones of Venice, 326, 328 
 Straff ord, 314 
 Strayed Reveller, The, 323 
 SUCKLING, SIR JOHN, 136, 137 
 "Summer Night, A," 324 
 "Summum-Bonum," 316 
 Surface, Joseph, 201 
 Surface, Sir Oliver, 201 
 Surprising Adventures of Robinson 
 
 Crusoe, The, 212 
 
 SURREY, EARL OF, 69, 70, 83, 371 
 Suspiria de Profundis, 282 
 SWIFT, JONATHAN, 166, 176, 188, 193, 
 
 203, 204, 218, 221, 353, 373; early 
 
 life, 176; political career, 177; his 
 
 character, 178; Gulliver's Travels, 
 
 180; his attitude, 181 
 "Swiftly Walk Over the Western 
 
 Wave," 272 
 " Switzerland," 324 
 Sykes, in Oliver Twist, 348 
 
 Tale of a Tub, The, 176, 179 
 
 Tale of Two Cities, 348, 349 
 
 Tales from Shakespeare, 279 
 
 Tales of a Traveller, 403 
 
 "Tales of the Wayside Inn," 447 
 
 Taliesin, 10 
 
 Talisman, The, 343 
 
 Tamburlaine, 98-100, 101, 111, 167 
 
 "Tarn O'Shanter," 234, 235 
 
 Tapley, Mark, 346 
 
 Task, The, 229 
 
 TASSO, 141 
 
 Tatter, The, 183, 186, 193 
 
 Tempest, The, 117, 319 
 
 Temple, Sir William, 176 
 
 TENNYSON, ALFRED, 73, 253, 277, 283, 
 290, 298, 312, 322, 324, 327, 356, 
 374; early life and poetry, 302-304; 
 his triumph, 304, 448; later life and 
 poetry, 306; his personality, 307; his 
 long poems, 308-311; as a repre- 
 'sentative of his age, 311 
 
 THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 
 187, 290, 344, 355, 374, 378, 430; 
 his life and temperament, 350, 352; 
 his attitude towards the world, 353; 
 his use of history, 354 
 
 "Thanatopsis," 407, 409 
 
 THOMSON, JAMES, 225, 373 
 
 THOREAU, HENRY D., 420-422; com- 
 pared with Emerson, 422
 
 Index 
 
 487 
 
 "Three Years She Grew in Sun and 
 
 Shower," 252, 257 
 "Thyrsis," 424 
 "Tiger, The," 229 
 Timber, 120 
 
 IiMRon, HENRY, 462, 463 
 "Tintern Abbey," 252, 256 
 Titus Andronicus, 111, 230 
 " To Althea from Prison," 137 
 "To a Fringed Gentian," 408 
 ."To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars," 
 
 137 
 
 " To a Mountain Daisy," 232 
 "To a Mouse," 232 
 "To My Books," 258 
 " To a Nightingale," 276, 278 
 "To Psyche," 276 
 "To a Skylark," 253 
 Toby, Uncle, in Tristram Shandy, 220 
 "Toccata of Galuppi, A," 319 
 Tom Jones, 217, 218 
 Tom Sawyer, 472 
 "Tottefs Miscellany," 70, 86 
 Toussaint L'Ouverture, 253 
 "Transcendentalism," 413, 414 
 " Transcendental Club," 423 
 Traveller, The, 197, 200 
 Traveller from AUruria, The, 468 
 Travels of Sir John MandeviUe, 58 
 Triamonde, 83 
 Tristram Shandy, 219-221 
 Troilus and Creseide, 44, 45, 52 
 Troilus and Cressida, 114 
 Trouveres, 29, 58, 310 
 True Relation of Virginia, 380 
 TRUMBULL, JOHN, 394, 443 
 Tulliver, Maggie, 361 
 Tupman, Mr., 346 
 "Twa Dogs, The," 235 
 TWAIN, MARK, 469, 471-473 
 Twelfth Night, 94, 112, 113 
 Twickenham, 187 
 "Two April Mornings, The," 252 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 109 
 "Two Voices, The," 304 
 TYNDALE, WILLIAM, 71, 371 
 
 " Ulysses," 304 
 Unto This Last, 327 
 Urn Burial, 136 
 Utopia, 68, 181 
 
 Vanity Fair, 350 
 
 Vanity of Human Wishes, 193 
 
 " Venus and Adonis," 109 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield, 197, 221 
 
 Victorian Era, 277, 283, 288, 302, 311, 
 
 328, 373 
 
 'Village Blacksmith, The," 446 
 Villetle, 356 
 ' Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, A," 
 
 179 
 
 Viola, 112 
 
 Virginians, The, 350 
 "Vision of Sin, The," 304 
 "Vision of Sir Launfal," 438 
 Voices of the Night, The, 445 
 Volpone, 120, 121 
 Voyage to Lisbon, 216 
 
 Walden, 421, 441 
 
 "Waldhere," 8 
 
 WALPOLE, HORACE, 222, 226, 396 
 
 WALSH, WILLIAM, 190 
 
 WALTON, ISAAK, 136, 139 
 
 "Wanderer, The," 17 
 
 Ward, Nathaniel, 381 
 
 Warner, Charles Dudley, 472 
 
 Waverley, 340, 341 
 
 " We are Seven," 252 
 
 WEBSTEK, JOHN, 123, 372 
 
 Weekly News from Italy and Ger- 
 manie, 181 
 
 Welsh, Jane Baillie, 296 
 
 " Westminster Bridge," 253 
 
 Westward Ho, 357 
 
 Whig Examiner, 181 
 
 WHITMAN, WALT, 451, 460, 461: 
 training, 456-458; literary form, 459, 
 460 
 
 WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF, 434- 
 437, 443; abolitionist, 435; "Snow- 
 Bound" his greatest poem, 436 
 
 "Widsith," 3 
 
 " Wife's Lament, The," 17 
 
 Wildfire, Madge, 342 
 
 Wild Gallant, The, 163 
 
 Wild, Jonathan, 211 
 
 Wilhelm Mei.ster, 296 
 
 William the Conqueror, 21 
 
 William III, 160, 174, 177, 211 
 
 Williams, Edward, 269, 270 
 
 " Willie Brewed a Peck o' Maut," 234 
 
 Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 452 
 
 Windsor Forest, 187 
 
 W T inkle, Mr., 346 
 
 "Winter Piece, A," 408 
 
 Winter's Tale, 117 
 
 " Winter Visitors," 422 
 
 Winthrop, John, 381 
 
 "Witch of Atlas, The," 269 
 
 Wolfert's Roost, 403 
 
 Wonders of the Invisible World, The, 
 381 
 
 WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 204, 227- 
 229, 242, 244-247, 258, 259, 272, 
 281, 283, 306, 323, 374, 407, 40S, 
 413, 416; early life, 249; real begin- 
 ning of poetical career, 252; later 
 life and poems, 252, 253; his nature 
 poetry, 254; his treatment of human 
 nature, 255; his mysticism. 25(5; 
 "Ode on the Intimations of Immor- 
 tality," 257
 
 488 Index 
 
 "World Is Too Much With Us, The," 253 Yahoo, 180. 181 
 
 Wuthering Heights, 356 " Yarrow Unvisited," 253 
 
 WYATT, SIR THOMAS, 69, 70, 83, 371 Yeast, 356 
 
 WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM, 170 " Yellow Violet, The," 408 
 
 WYCLIF, JOHN, 52-56, 58, 64, 66, 129, Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance 
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