A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 20

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken."

"Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn."

22. +Prose-Writers.+-- We have now to consider the greatest prose-writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. First comes +Walter Scott+, one of the greatest novelists that ever lived, and who won the name of "The Wizard of the North" from the marvellous power he possessed of enchaining the attention and fascinating the minds of his readers. Two other great writers of prose were +Charles Lamb+ and +Walter Savage Landor+, each in styles essentially different. +Jane Austen+, a young English lady, has become a cla.s.sic in prose, because her work is true and perfect within its own sphere. +De Quincey+ is perhaps the writer of the most ornate and elaborate English prose of this period. +Thomas Carlyle+, a great Scotsman, with a style of overwhelming power, but of occasional grotesqueness, like a great prophet and teacher of the nation, compelled statesmen and philanthropists to think, while he also gained for himself a high place in the rank of historians. +Macaulay+, also of Scottish descent, was one of the greatest essayists and ablest writers on history that Great Britain has produced. A short survey of each of these great men may be useful. Scott has been already treated of.

23. CHARLES LAMB (+1775-1834+), a perfect English essayist, was born in the Inner Temple, in London, in the year 1775. His father was clerk to a barrister of that Inn of Court. Charles was educated at Christ's Hospital, where his most famous schoolfellow was S. T. Coleridge.

Brought up in the very heart of London, he had always a strong feeling for the greatness of the metropolis of the world. "I often shed tears,"

he said, "in the motley Strand, for fulness of joy at so much life." He was, indeed, a thorough c.o.c.kney and lover of London, as were also Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Lamb's friend Leigh Hunt. Entering the India House as a clerk in the year 1792, he remained there thirty-three years; and it was one of his odd sayings that, if any one wanted to see his "works," he would find them on the shelves of the India House. --He is greatest as a writer of prose; and his prose is, in its way, unequalled for sweetness, grace, humour, and quaint terms, among the writings of this century. His best prose work is the +Essays of Elia+, which show on every page the most whimsical and humorous subtleties, a quick play of intellect, and a deep sympathy with the sorrows and the joys of men. Very little verse came from his pen. "Charles Lamb's nosegay of verse," says Professor Dowden, "may be held by the small hand of a maiden, and there is not in it one flaunting flower." Perhaps the best of his poems are the short pieces ent.i.tled +Hester+ and +The Old Familiar Faces+. --He retired from the India House, on a pension, in 1825, and died at Edmonton, near London, in 1834. His character was as sweet and refined as his style; Wordsworth spoke of him as "Lamb the frolic and the gentle;" and these and other fine qualities endeared him to a large circle of friends.

24. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (+1775-1864+), the greatest prose-writer in his own style of the nineteenth century, was born at Ipsley Court, in Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775-- the anniversary of the execution of Charles I. He was educated at Rugby School and at Oxford; but his fierce and insubordinate temper-- which remained with him, and injured him all his life-- procured his expulsion from both of these places. As heir to a large estate, he resolved to give himself up entirely to literature; and he accordingly declined to adopt any profession. Living an almost purely intellectual life, he wrote a great deal of prose and some poetry; and his first volume of poems appeared before the close of the eighteenth century. His life, which began in the reign of George III., stretched through the reigns of George IV. and William IV., into the twenty-seventh year of Queen Victoria; and, in the course of this long life, he had manifold experiences, many loves and hates, friendships and acquaintanceships, with persons of every sort and rank. He joined the Spanish army to fight Napoleon, and presented the Spanish Government with large sums of money. He spent about thirty years of his life in Florence, where he wrote many of his works. He died at Florence in the year 1864. His greatest prose work is the +Imaginary Conversations+; his best poem is +Count Julian+; and the character of Count Julian has been ranked by De Quincey with the Satan of Milton.

Some of his smaller poetic pieces are perfect; and there is one, +Rose Aylmer+, written about a dear young friend, that Lamb was never tired of repeating:--

"Ah! what avails the sceptred race!

Ah! what the form divine!

What every virtue, every grace!

Rose Aylmer, all were thine!

"Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes Shall weep, but never see!

A night of memories and sighs I consecrate to thee."

25. JANE AUSTEN (+1775-1817+), the most delicate and faithful painter of English social life, was born at Steventon, in Hampshire, in 1775-- in the same year as Landor and Lamb. She wrote a small number of novels, most of which are almost perfect in their minute and true painting of character. Sir Walter Scott, Macaulay, and other great writers, are among her fervent admirers. Scott says of her writing: "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me."

She works out her characters by making them reveal themselves in their talk, and by an infinite series of minute touches. Her two best novels are +Emma+ and +Pride and Prejudice+. The interest of them depends on the truth of the painting; and many thoughtful persons read through the whole of her novels every year.

26. THOMAS DE QUINCEY (+1785-1859+), one of our most brilliant essayists, was born at Greenhays, Manchester, in the year 1785. He was educated at the Manchester grammar-school and at Worcester College, Oxford. While at Oxford he took little share in the regular studies of his college, but read enormous numbers of Greek, Latin, and English books, as his taste or whim suggested. He knew no one; he hardly knew his own tutor. "For the first two years of my residence in Oxford," he says, "I compute that I did not utter one hundred words." After leaving Oxford, he lived for about twenty years in the Lake country; and there he became acquainted with Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge (the son of S. T. Coleridge), and John Wilson (afterwards known as Professor Wilson, and also as the "Christopher North" of 'Blackwood's Magazine').

Suffering from repeated attacks of neuralgia, he gradually formed the habit of taking laudanum; and by the time he had reached the age of thirty, he drank about 8000 drops a-day. This unfortunate habit injured his powers of work and weakened his will. In spite of it, however, he wrote many hundreds of essays and articles in reviews and magazines. In the latter part of his life, he lived either near or in Edinburgh, and was always employed in dreaming (the opium increased his power both of dreaming and of musing), or in studying or writing. He died in Edinburgh in the year 1859. --Many of his essays were written under the signature of "The English Opium-Eater." Probably his best works are +The Confessions of an Opium-Eater+ and +The Vision of Sudden Death+. The chief characteristics of his style are majestic rhythm and elaborate eloquence. Some of his sentences are almost as long and as sustained as those of Jeremy Taylor; while, in many pa.s.sages of reasoning that glows and brightens with strong pa.s.sion and emotion, he is not inferior to Burke. He possessed an enormous vocabulary-- in wealth of words and phrases he surpa.s.ses both Macaulay and Carlyle; and he makes a very large-- perhaps even an excessive-- use of Latin words. He is also very fond of using metaphors, personifications, and other figures of speech.

It may be said without exaggeration that, next to Carlyle's, De Quincey's style is the most stimulating and inspiriting that a young reader can find among modern writers.

27. THOMAS CARLYLE (+1795-1881+), a great thinker, essayist, and historian, was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, in the year 1795.

He was educated at the burgh school of Annan, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh. Cla.s.sics and the higher mathematics were his favourite studies; and he was more especially fond of astronomy. He was a teacher for some years after leaving the University. For a few years after this he was engaged in minor literary work; and translating from the German occupied a good deal of his time. In 1826 he married Jane Welsh, a woman of abilities only inferior to his own. His first original work was +Sartor Resartus+ ("The Tailor Repatched"), which appeared in 1834, and excited a great deal of attention-- a book which has proved to many the electric spark which first woke into life their powers of thought and reflection. From 1837 to 1840 he gave courses of lectures in London; and these lectures were listened to by the best and most thoughtful of the London people. The most striking series afterwards appeared in the form of a book, under the t.i.tle of +Heroes and Hero-Worship+. Perhaps his most remarkable book-- a book that is unique in all English literature-- is +The French Revolution+, which appeared in 1837. In the year 1845, his +Cromwell's Letters and Speeches+ were published, and drew after them a large number of eager readers. In 1865 he completed the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken, his +History of Frederick II., commonly called the Great+. This work is so highly regarded in Germany as a truthful and painstaking history that officers in the Prussian army are obliged to study it, as containing the best account of the great battles of the Continent, the fields on which they were fought, and the strategy that went to win them. One of the crowning external honours of Carlyle's life was his appointment as Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1866; but at the very time that he was delivering his famous and remarkable Installation Address, his wife lay dying in London. This stroke brought terrible sorrow on the old man; he never ceased to mourn for his loss, and to recall the virtues and the beauties of character in his dead wife; "the light of his life,"

he said, "was quite gone out;" and he wrote very little after her death.

He himself died in London on the 5th of February 1881.

28. +Carlyle's Style.+-- Carlyle was an author by profession, a teacher of and prophet to his countrymen by his mission, and a student of history by the deep interest he took in the life of man. He was always more or less severe in his judgments-- he has been called "The Censor of the Age,"-- because of the high ideal which he set up for his own conduct and the conduct of others. --He shows in his historic writings a splendour of imagery and a power of dramatic grouping second only to Shakespeare's. In command of words he is second to no modern English writer. His style has been highly praised and also energetically blamed.

It is rugged, gnarled, disjointed, full of irregular force-- shot across by sudden lurid lights of imagination-- full of the most striking and indeed astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim t.i.tanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: "Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular att.i.tudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable sayings, such as the following:--

"Genius is an immense capacity for taking pains."

"Do the duty which lies nearest thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer."

"History is a mighty drama, enacted upon the theatre of time, with suns for lamps, and eternity for a background."

"All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven."

"Remember now and always that Life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality based upon Eternity, and encompa.s.sed by Eternity. Find out your task: stand to it: the night cometh when no man can work."

29. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (+1800-1859+), the most popular of modern historians,-- an essayist, poet, statesman, and orator,-- was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, in the year 1800. His father was one of the greatest advocates for the abolition of slavery; and received, after his death, the honour of a monument in Westminster Abbey. Young Macaulay was educated privately, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge.

He studied cla.s.sics with great diligence and success, but detested mathematics-- a dislike the consequences of which he afterwards deeply regretted. In 1824 he was elected Fellow of his college. His first literary work was done for Knight's 'Quarterly Magazine'; but the earliest piece of writing that brought him into notice was his famous essay on +Milton+, written for the 'Edinburgh Review' in 1825. Several years of his life were spent in India, as Member of the Supreme Council; and, on his return, he entered Parliament, where he sat as M.P. for Edinburgh. Several offices were filled by him, among others that of Paymaster-General of the Forces, with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord John Russell. In 1842 appeared his +Lays of Ancient Rome+, poems which have found a very large number of readers. His greatest work is his +History of England from the Accession of James II+. To enable himself to write this history he read hundreds of books, Acts of Parliament, thousands of pamphlets, tracts, broadsheets, ballads, and other flying fragments of literature; and he never seems to have forgotten anything he ever read.

In. 1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in 1857 was raised to the peerage with the t.i.tle of Baron Macaulay of Rothley-- the first literary man who was ever called to the House of Lords. He died at Holly Lodge, Kensington, in the year 1859.

30. +Macaulay's Style.+-- One of the most remarkable qualities in his style is the copiousness of expression, and the remarkable power of putting the same statement in a large number of different ways. This enormous command of expression corresponded with the extraordinary power of his memory. At the age of eight he could repeat the whole of Scott's poem of "Marmion." He was fond, at this early age, of big words and learned English; and once, when he was asked by a lady if his toothache was better, he replied, "Madam, the agony is abated!" He knew the whole of Homer and of Milton by heart; and it was said with perfect truth that, if Milton's poetical works could have been lost, Macaulay would have restored every line with complete exactness. Sydney Smith said of him: "There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as on great; he is like a book in breeches." His style has been called "abrupt, pointed, and oratorical." He is fond of the arts of surprise-- of ant.i.thesis-- and of epigram. Sentences like these are of frequent occurrence:--

"Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer."

"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."

Besides these elements of epigram and ant.i.thesis, there is a vast wealth of ill.u.s.tration, brought from the stores of a memory which never seemed to forget anything. He studied every sentence with the greatest care and minuteness, and would often rewrite paragraphs and even whole chapters, until he was satisfied with the variety and clearness of the expression.

"He could not rest," it was said, "until the punctuation was correct to a comma; until every paragraph concluded with a telling sentence, and every sentence flowed like clear running water." But, above all things, he strove to make his style perfectly lucid and immediately intelligible. He is fond of countless details; but he so masters and marshals these details that each only serves to throw more light upon the main statement. His prose may be described as pictorial prose. The character of his mind was, like Burke's, combative and oratorical; and he writes with the greatest vigour and animation when he is attacking a policy or an opinion.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

1. +Science.+-- The second half of the nineteenth century is distinguished by the enormous advance made in science, and in the application of science to the industries and occupations of the people.

Chemistry and electricity have more especially made enormous strides.

Within the last twenty years, chemistry has remade itself into a new science; and electricity has taken a very large part of the labour of mankind upon itself. It carries our messages round the world-- under the deepest seas, over the highest mountains, to every continent, and to every great city; it lights up our streets and public halls; it drives our engines and propels our trains. But the powers of imagination, the great literary powers of poetry, and of eloquent prose,-- especially in the domain of fiction,-- have not decreased because science has grown.

They have rather shown stronger developments. We must, at the same time, remember that a great deal of the literary work published by the writers who lived, or are still living, in the latter half of this century, was written in the former half. Thus, Longfellow was a man of forty-three, and Tennyson was forty-one, in the year 1850; and both had by that time done a great deal of their best work. The same is true of the prose-writers, Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, and Ruskin.

2. +Poets and Prose-Writers.+-- The six greatest poets of the latter half of this century are +Longfellow+, a distinguished American poet, +Tennyson+, +Mrs Browning+, +Robert Browning+, +William Morris+, and +Matthew Arnold+. Of these, Mrs Browning and Longfellow are dead-- Mrs Browning having died in 1861, and Longfellow in 1882. --The four greatest writers of prose are +Thackeray+, +d.i.c.kens+, +George Eliot+, and +Ruskin+. Of these, only Ruskin is alive.

3. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (+1807-1882+), the most popular of American poets, and as popular in Great Britain as he is in the United States, was born at Portland, Maine, in the year 1807. He was educated at Bowdoin College, and took his degree there in the year 1825. His profession was to have been the law; but, from the first, the whole bent of his talents and character was literary. At the extraordinary age of eighteen the professorship of modern languages in his own college was offered to him; it was eagerly accepted, and in order to qualify himself for his duties, he spent the next four years in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. His first important prose work was +Outre-Mer+, or a +Pilgrimage beyond the Sea+. In 1837 he was offered the Chair of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard University, and he again paid a visit to Europe-- this time giving his thoughts and study chiefly to Germany, Denmark, and Scandinavia. In 1839 he published the prose romance called +Hyperion+. But it was not as a prose-writer that Longfellow gained the secure place he has in the hearts of the English-speaking peoples; it was as a poet. His first volume of poems was called +Voices of the Night+, and appeared in 1841; Evangeline was published in 1848; and +Hiawatha+, on which his poetical reputation is perhaps most firmly based, in 1855. Many other volumes of poetry-- both original and translations-- have also come from his pen; but these are the best. The University of Oxford created him Doctor of Civil Law in 1869. He died at Harvard in the year 1882. A man of singularly mild and gentle character, of sweet and charming manners, his own lines may be applied to him with perfect appropriateness--

"His gracious presence upon earth Was as a fire upon a hearth; As pleasant songs, at morning sung, The words that dropped from his sweet tongue Strengthened our hearts, or-- heard at night-- Made all our slumbers soft and light."

4. +Longfellow's Style.+-- In one of his prose works, Longfellow himself says, "In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity." This simplicity he steadily aimed at, and in almost all his writings reached; and the result is the sweet lucidity which is manifest in his best poems. His verse has been characterised as "simple, musical, sincere, sympathetic, clear as crystal, and pure as snow." He has written in a great variety of measures-- in more, perhaps, than have been employed by Tennyson himself. His "Evangeline" is written in a kind of dactylic hexameter, which does not always scan, but which is almost always musical and impressive--

"Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey; Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended."

The "Hiawatha," again, is written in a trochaic measure-- each verse containing four trochees--

"'Farewell!' said he, 'Minnehaha, Farewell, O my laughing water!

All my heart is buried with you, All' my | thou'ghts go | on'ward | wi'th you!'"

He is always careful and painstaking with his rhythm and with the cadence of his verse. It may be said with truth that Longfellow has taught more people to love poetry than any other English writer, however great.

5. ALFRED TENNYSON, a great English poet, who has written beautiful poetry for more than fifty years, was born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1809. He is the youngest of three brothers, all of whom are poets. He was educated at Cambridge, and some of his poems have shown, in a striking light, the forgotten beauty of the fens and flats of Cambridge and Lincolnshire. In 1829 he obtained the Chancellor's medal for a poem on "Timbuctoo." In 1830 he published his first volume, with the t.i.tle of +Poems chiefly Lyrical+-- a volume which contained, among other beautiful verses, the "Recollections of the Arabian Nights" and "The Dying Swan." In 1833 he issued another volume, called simply +Poems+; and this contained the exquisite poems ent.i.tled "The Miller's Daughter" and "The Lotos-Eaters." +The Princess+, a poem as remarkable for its striking thoughts as for its perfection of language, appeared in 1847. The +In Memoriam+, a long series of short poems in memory of his dear friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Hallam the historian, was published in the year 1850. When Wordsworth died in 1850, Tennyson was appointed to the office of Poet-Laureate. This office, from the time when Dryden was forced to resign it in 1689, to the time when Southey accepted it in 1813, had always been held by third or fourth rate writers; in the present day it is held by the man who has done the largest amount of the best poetical work. +The Idylls of the King+ appeared in 1859. This series of poems-- perhaps his greatest-- contains the stories of "Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table." Many other volumes of poems have been given by him to the world. In his old age he has taken to the writing of ballads and dramas. His ballad of +The Revenge+ is one of the n.o.blest and most vigorous poems that England has ever seen. The dramas of +Harold+, +Queen Mary+, and +Becket+, are perhaps his best; and the last was written when the poet had reached the age of seventy-four. In the year 1882 he was created Baron Tennyson, and called to the House of Peers.

6. +Tennyson's Style.+-- Tennyson has been to the last two generations of Englishmen the national teacher of poetry. He has tried many new measures; he has ventured on many new rhythms; and he has succeeded in them all. He is at home equally in the slowest, most tranquil, and most meditative of rhythms, and in the rapidest and most impulsive. Let us look at the following lines as an example of the first. The poem is written on a woman who is dying of a lingering disease--